Moses and Akhenaten

by Ahmed Osman

  Scholars disagree about how many books can actually be attributed to Manetho, but it is accepted that he was the author of The History of Egypt (or Aegyptiaca) in three volumes. The main difficulty we face in trying to establish the contents of Manetho’s original work, however, is the fact that we do not have direct access to it: the fragments available have all come to us via other authors. Quotations from his work have been preserved mainly by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (AD 70); the Christian chronographers Sextus Julius Africanus (3rd century AD) and Eusebius (4th century AD); in isolated passages in Plutarch and other Greek and Latin authors, and a later compiler called George the Monk – an ‘attendant’, also known as Syncellus (AD 800), of Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople – who contributed greatly to the transmission.

  According to Josephus in his book Contra Apionem, Alexandria had become a main centre for the Jews during the time of the Ptolemies. They enjoyed both Alexandrian citizenship and the city’s ‘finest residential quarter’ by the sea. The Alexandrian Jews were naturally interested in Manetho’s account of their historic links with Egypt, although they found some aspects of it objectionable. His original work therefore did not survive for long before being tampered with. The efforts of Jewish apologists account for much of the subsequent corruption of Manetho’s text and the creation of what is known as ‘Pseudo-Manethonian’ literature.

  Although, as we shall see, Egypt tried to wipe out all trace of the four Amarna kings – Akhenaten, Semenkhkare, Tutankhamun and Aye – by excising their names from king lists and monuments after the fall of the Amarna regime, they are correctly named by Manetho as having ruled between the reigns of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten’s father, and Horemheb, who is to be identified as the Pharaoh of the Oppression. In addition, an epitome of Manetho’s history had already been made as early as Ptolemaic times in the form of lists of dynasties accompanied by short notes on outstanding kings and important events, including the defeat of the Hyksos invaders, followed by the founding of the Eighteenth Dynasty and the Exodus. These versions of the epitome differ from one another, indicating that some distortion has occurred in the process of transmitting and editing Manetho’s Aegyptiaca itself. However, a number of points are worth making:

  • The list of Syncellus (according to Africanus) places the Exodus, when ‘Moses went forth from Egypt’, in the reign of Amos (Ahmosis), founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who drove out the Hyksos shepherds: this is an error arising from wrongly identifying, as Josephus did, the arrival of the conquering Hyksos as the Descent into Egypt of the Israelites and the subsequent expulsion of the Hyksos by Ahmosis as the Exodus;

  • The lists of Syncellus (according to Eusebius) and the version of Eusebius which was found translated into Armenian place the Exodus of the Jews, with Moses at their head, more than two centuries later in the reign of the king who succeeded Orus (Amenhotep III, c. 1405–1367) – his son and coregent Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten);

  • Syncellus (according to Africanus) also states that it was in the reign of Amos (Ahmosis), the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, that Moses led the Exodus;

  • Syncellus (according to Eusebius) claims that it was ‘about’ the reign of a Pharaoh named Achencherres (Amenhotep IV, who later became Akhenaten) – that ‘Moses led the Jews in their march out of Egypt’;

  • The Armenian version of Eusebius similarly lists the reign of Achencheres (Akhenaten) as the time ‘when Moses became the leader of the Jews in their Exodus’.

  Josephus made an error by identifying the arrival of the conquering Hyksos as the Descent into Egypt of the Israelites and their subsequent expulsion by Ahmosis as the Exodus. What helped him to make the mistake was his desire to show that the Israelites had left Egypt long before Amenhotep III and the religious revolution that began in his reign. Josephus begins by saying that the Jews’ ancestors, whom he regarded as the Hyksos, ‘entered Egypt in their myriads and subdued the inhabitants’.4 Later they were driven out of the country, occupied Judaea and founded Jerusalem. At this point he complains that Manetho ‘took the liberty of introducing some incredible tales, wishing to represent us [the Israelites] as mixed up with a crowd of Egyptian lepers and others who for various maladies were condemned … to banishment from the country.’ (We should not take the descriptions of the rebels as being literally lepers or suffering from other maladies, the sense here being that they were impure because of their denial of Egyptian gods.) This sequence of events, says Josephus, is linked with a king named Amenophis (Amenhotep III), whom Josephus – believing that the Jews (Hyksos) had left Egypt centuries earlier – describes as ‘an imaginary person’. Josephus’ account then goes on: ‘This king, he [Manetho] states, wishing to be granted … a vision of the gods, communicated his desire to his namesake, Amenophis, son of Paapis [son of Habu], whose wisdom and knowledge of the future were regarded as marks of divinity. This namesake replied that he would be able to see the gods if he purged the entire country of lepers and other polluted persons, and sent them to work on the stone quarries to the east of the Nile, segregated from the rest of the Egyptians. They included, he adds, some of the learned priests, who were afflicted with leprosy. Then this wise seer Amenophis was seized with a fear that he would draw down the wrath of the gods on himself and the king if the violence done to these men were detected; and he added a prediction that the polluted people would find certain allies who would become masters of Egypt for thirteen years …’

  The adviser known as son of Habu started his career under Amenhotep III as an Inferior Royal Scribe, was promoted to be a Superior Royal Scribe and finally reached the position of Minister of all Public Works. He was also appointed as Steward of Sitamun, the sister Amenhotep III had married in order to inherit the throne but failed to make his Great Royal Wife (queen). Son of Habu lived to be at least eighty and the last date we have for him is the thirty-fourth year of Amenhotep III. Later he became for the Egyptians a kind of saint whose cult was reported as late as Roman times.

  Eventually, after the men in the stone quarries had spent many miserable years, the king heard their pleas for less harsh treatment and gave them the abandoned city of the Hyksos, Avaris. There, having at last a base of their own, they appointed as their leader one of the priests of Heliopolis (On), called Osarseph, and undertook to obey all his orders. By his first law, Osarseph ordained that his followers should not worship the gods of Egypt, nor abstain from the flesh of any of the animals held in special reverence in the country. He also commanded that they should form an exclusive society, mixing only with their own kind. Manetho’s account, as interpreted by Josephus, then goes on:

  After laying down these and a multitude of other laws, absolutely opposed to Egyptian custom, he [Osarseph] ordered all hands to repair the city walls and make ready for war with King Amenophis [Amenhotep III]. Then, in concert with other priests and polluted persons like himself, he sent an emissary to the shepherds who had been expelled by Tethmosis [the Asiatic Hyksos, who were expelled by Ahmosis] in the city of Jerusalem, setting out the position of himself and his outraged companions and inviting them to join in a united expedition against Egypt. He undertook to escort them first to their ancestral home at Auaris [Avaris], to provide abundant supplies for their multitudes, to fight for them when the moment came and, without difficulty, to reduce the country to submission. The shepherds, delighted with the idea, all eagerly set off in a body numbering two hundred thousand men …

  In the face of this threatened invasion, Amenophis (Amenhotep III) ‘sent for the sacred animals which are held in most reverence in the temples and instructed the priests in each district to conceal the images of the gods as securely as possible.’ However, he did not do battle with the invaders, but retreated to Ethiopia (Kush), ‘whose king was under obligation to him and at his service’. This king made Amenophis welcome and provided accommodation and food for him and his followers for the thirteen years of banishment that the son of Habu had predicted. Manetho’s account, according to Josephus,
then continues:

  ‘Meanwhile, the Solymites [who originated in Jerusalem] came down with the polluted Egyptians and treated the inhabitants in so sacrilegious a manner that the regime of the shepherds seemed like a golden age to those who now beheld the impieties of their present enemies. Not only did they set cities and villages on fire, not only did they pillage the temples and mutilate the images of the gods, but, not content with that, they habitually used the very sanctuaries as kitchens for roasting the venerated sacred animals, forced the priests and prophets to slaughter them and cut their throats, and then turned them out naked …’ Manetho adds that Amenophis subsequently advanced from Ethiopia with a large army and his son, Rampses, at the head of another, and that the two attacked and defeated the shepherds and their polluted allies, killing many of them and pursuing the remainder to the frontiers of Syria.

  Modern scholars have tended to accept the view that Manetho did not rely in his account of the Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt entirely on Ancient Egyptian historical sources. Gardiner, for instance, says in his book Egypt of the Pharaohs: ‘… the story of Amenhophis (Amenhotep III) and the lepers quoted from him by Josephus … show that he made use not only of authentic records, but also of popular romances devoid of historical value.’ He also makes the point a page earlier: ‘… Josephus’ excerpts from Manetho were introduced to support the latter’s belief that the biblical account of the Exodus and the expulsion of the Hyksos under Tethmosis refer to one and the same historical event … Admittedly the lengthy excerpts in question embody also several popular stories of the most fantastic description, explicitly recognized as such by the Jewish historian.’

  This view has been challenged recently, however, by Redford in Pharaonic King-Lists, Annals and Day Books. After giving an account of the surviving library of the temple of Sobek in Fayum, which dates from the first century BC to the fourth AD, has been brought to light over the last hundred years and is currently in process of publication, he comments, in discussing some aspects of Manetho’s work that is conventionally dismissed as ‘Pseudo-Manethonian’: ‘There is absolutely no justification in … construing them as interpolations. Nor is it correct to imagine Manetho garnering oral traditions and committing them to writing. He would have had no use for, and probably would have despised, material circulating orally and not found formally represented by the temple scroll. What he found in the temple library in the form of a duly authorized text he incorporated in his history; and, conversely, we may with confidence postulate for the material in his history a written source found in the temple library, and nothing more.’ Redford identified the source of Manetho’s Osarseph story as the events of the Amarna religious revolution, first remembered orally and later set down in writing.

  Although the leader of the contaminated people was given as Osarseph by Manethos, other writers have favoured the name of Moses. In his History of Egypt in five books, Apion himself – who lived in the first half of the first century AD, was born in Upper Egypt, studied in Alexandria and taught rhetoric in Rome under Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius – wrote in his third book, as quoted by Josephus: ‘Moses, as I have heard from old people [the elders] in Egypt, was a native of Heliopolis who, being pledged to the customs of his country, erected prayer-houses open to the air in various precincts of the city, all facing eastwards, such being the orientation also of Heliopolis. In place of obelisks he set up pillars, topped by human figures, beneath which was a model of a boat; and the shadow cast on this basin by the boat described a circle corresponding to the course of the sun in the heavens.’5

  Another Alexandrian author named Chaereman (1st century AD philosopher and librarian of Alexandria, who afterwards became the tutor of Nero), also favoured Moses: ‘Moses and another sacred scribe Joseph’,6 as did Lysimachus (Alexandrian writer of uncertain date, but later than the 2nd century BC), also quoted by Josephus.7

  There are a number of conflicts between these various accounts of the life of Moses, which one would expect with stories passed on by word of mouth for centuries before they were finally written down. We are, for instance, given two dates, more than two centuries apart, for the Exodus. Furthermore, while the Talmud tells us that it was Moses who fled to Ethiopia, Manetho claims that it was Amenhotep III, whom I look upon as having been Moses’ father. For the moment, however, several points in these two opening chapters are worth emphasizing.

  Both at the time of the birth of Moses and when he was seeking permission for the Israelites to leave Egypt, the indications are that the ruling Pharaoh was in residence in the vicinity of Goshen, where the Israelites had been allowed to settle … Moses, who is described as a native of Heliopolis, where Akhenaten is thought to have spent much of his childhood, protested to the Lord that he would have difficulty in communicating with the Israelites … the Exodus is linked in three cases with the reign of Akhenaten … the name of the Egyptian queen who became the wife of Moses is given as Adonith (Aten-it) and is clearly derived from the Aten, the one God whom Akhenaten attempted to force upon the Egyptian people … Moses remained in Egyptian memory also by the name of Osarseph, a priest of Heliopolis, which links him with vizier Joseph, the Patriarch who brought the tribe of Israel down to Egypt, whom I have identified as Yuya, Akhenaten’s maternal grandfather8 … Manetho’s identification of the reign of Amenhotep III – while the son of Habu was still alive, some time before the king’s Year 34 – as the right time for the start of religious rebellion and the Jewish Oppression is not built simply on popular tales of his time, but on old traditions, already set down in writing, that he found in his temple library … it is clear from the biblical narrations that the Oppression of the Israelites took two separate forms – the threat to the lives of Hebrew male children and the use of the Israelites’ forced labour to build the cities of Pithom and Raamses, which, as we shall see, followed a period of religious upheaval … Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land for the alleged offence of striking a rock with his rod to obtain water for his followers.

  On the subject of the Israelite occupation of the abandoned Hyksos city of Avaris, Redford has also commented: ‘The occupation of a deserted area, set apart (though in the modified form of the story replaced by Avaris) sounds like the hegira to Amarna’ – Akhenaten’s move from Thebes to his new capital in the face of opposition to his religious ideas by nobles and priests of the State god Amun – ‘and the thirteen years of woe wrought by lepers and shepherds can only be the term of Akhenaten’s stay in his new city. The figure of Osarseph/Moses is clearly modelled on the historic memory of Akhenaten. He is credited with interdicting the worship of all the gods and, in Apion, of championing a form of worship which used open-air temples oriented east, exactly like the Aten temples of Amarna.’9

  What are the historical events that inspired these varied, and often contradictory, accounts – and at what precise point in history did they take place?

  3

  THE ISRAEL STELA

  A CHRONOLOGY for the life of Moses clearly depends upon establishing in the first place when the Descent of the Israelites into Egypt took place and how long they remained there before the Exodus. It is generally accepted that they were in the country at the end of the Eighteenth and start of the Nineteenth Dynasties (c.1308 BC), but when they arrived and departed have both been the subject of considerable disagreement. The Old Testament is not very helpful in this matter. It does not give any dates, or the names of any reigning monarch, referring to him only as ‘Pharaoh’, ‘King’ or ‘Pharaoh, King of Egypt’. Nor does it tell us where the capital city of the Pharaoh in question was situated. It also provides us with some conflicting statements about how long the Sojourn lasted:

  And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years. (Genesis, 15:13)

  But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again … (Genesis, 15:16)

  Now the sojourning of the ch
ildren of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.

  And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. (Exodus, 12:40–41)

  In addition, the Old Testament always provides us with the names of heads of tribes and the names of their descendants who are important to the story that is being related. In the case of the Sojourn we are given the names of four generations – Jacob’s (Israel’s) third son, Levi, and Levi’s son (Kohath), grandson (Amram) and great-grandson (Moses).

  If we examine Egyptian sources we find nothing that matches precisely the broad outline of the biblical account of the Descent, Sojourn and Exodus. Yet this lack of precise evidence cannot be taken as a reason to dismiss the account as a complete fabrication or to suppose a mythological origin for these narrations. The Bible gives some inside details of life in Egypt during the Empire (the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties) that in many cases have to be seen as originating as a result of first-hand knowledge. These details cannot be regarded as a later colouring, as some scholars maintain, for how could a Jewish priest and scribe like Ezra, returning to Jerusalem from the Exile in Babylon in the fifth century BC, be expected to have inside details about life in Egypt during the Empire eight centuries earlier? The only logical explanation is that the biblical accounts of the Descent into Egypt and eventual Exodus have at their core real historical characters and events. It is therefore a matter of seeking clues within the Old Testament that may help us to determine to which period of Egyptian history these events belong.