Moses and Akhenaten

by Ahmed Osman

  The impossibility of this prompted Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist, to shorten Seti’s reign considerably: ‘I had first supposed his reign to have been a long one, merely on the evidence afforded by Manetho’s lists, but the presence of Ramses II as a stripling, in the campaign of Seti’s first year, forces us to limit its duration to fifteen or twenty years at most, possibly to only twelve to fifteen.’1

  James Henry Breasted, the American Egyptologist, took a different view. He began by pointing out that Ramses appears at Karnak ‘in a scene of the Libyan war, without a date, far from the scenes of the Shasu war of Year 1, on the other side of the door. This appearance of Ramses with his father was therefore not necessarily in his father’s first year, as has been so often assumed.’ He then goes on to say: ‘Furthermore, a close examination of the accompanying figures will show, first, that this scene is no proof that Ramses ever appeared in battle with his father at all, and, second, that Ramses was not the first heir to Seti’s throne.’ He bases his argument on the fact that a second prince, described as ‘first king’s son, of his body’ – the name that follows is missing – is shown in the scene. ‘ … The historical conclusion here is important: the “first king’s son” of Seti I was not his successor, Ramses; that is, that Ramses II had an older brother, who did not reach the throne.’2

  Breasted then went on to argue that the figure of the king’s first-born son was not in the scene when it was completed, but was added by the elder prince at a later date. It was also clear that, at a later date still, probably after his elder brother’s death and he had become the heir, Ramses chiselled out his brother’s figure and the accompanying inscriptions and inserted his own figure ‘for his own figure is not original in the scene’.3

  The highest date we have for Seti is Year 11, on a stela from Gebel Barakal in Nubia. This has been taken as his last year. Yet, in the light of the available evidence, the arithmetic doesn’t work, whether one starts with the childhood of Ramses III and works forward or with his death and works backward. The essential facts are:

  • Ramses has himself recorded the story of his childhood and accession in a narrative to be found in Seti I’s temple of Abydos, and the account is confirmed by other evidence: ‘From the time I was in the egg (a baby) … the great ones sniffed the earth before me; when I attained to the rank of the eldest son and heir upon the throne … I dealt with affairs, I commanded as chief the foot-soldiers and chariots. My father having appeared before the people, when I was but a very little boy in his arms, said to me: ‘I shall have him crowned king, that I may see him in all his splendour while I am still on this earth!’ … “Place the diadem upon his head,” said he.’4

  In many other inscriptions Ramses stresses that he was a mere child, not a young man of fighting age, while his father ruled the country.

  • The precise identity of the heir whose inscription Prince Ramses usurped has since been established as someone named Mehy. He appears to have taken part in all of Seti I’s campaigns, from the first against the Shasu, and to have enjoyed a favourable position, at least up to the king’s Year 8 when his wars in western Asia came to an end. Moreover, as Seti’s war reliefs were carved on the exterior of the northern wall of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak some time after these wars had come to an end, it suggests that Mehy was regarded as Seti’s heir up to that time. Yet, as Mehy himself was not included in these scenes originally and he is known to have inserted his figure at a later date, this could take us even to Seti I’s Year 10.

  The Abydos story tells us that Prince Ramses was about ten years of age when his father took the unusual step of appointing him as ‘eldest son’ and heir to the throne. This cannot have happened earlier than at least Year 9 when Mehy seems to have been regarded as heir to the throne.

  • It is generally accepted, from examination of his mummy, that Ramses II was about ninety-four when he died, having ruled for sixty-seven years. This would point to his having come to the throne at the age of twenty-seven. If his father had ruled for only eleven years, Prince Ramses could not have been a child, as he claims, in the early stages of his father’s rule and would have reached his tenth year before his father came to the throne.

  • Seti gave his son wives, beautiful ‘as are those of his palace’, plus three of his heiress sisters, which – in the light of the above evidence of the time he was appointed ‘eldest son’ and heir to the throne – indicates that Seti ruled long after his Year 9 or 10.

  • Later, Prince Ramses became an army commander and is thought to have been in charge of a campaign in the south at the time his father died.

  Some further light is thrown on the length of Seti’s reign by the career of a man named Bekenkhons, who, as a youth, worked for eleven years as an ‘overseer of the training-stable’ for Seti I before joining the priesthood. On his statue, now in Munich, he gives details of his priestly career, which lasted seventy years, during the last twenty-seven of which he was the High Priest of Amun. The statue was dedicated in the reign of Seti’s son, Ramses II, while Bekenkhons was still alive.

  From another source we know that Bekenkhons’ successor as High Priest of Amun was a man named Rome-Roy, who also served under Ramses II. As we know that Ramses II ruled for sixty-seven years, even if we make the unrealistic assumptions that Bekenkhons died and was succeeded by Rome-Roy in the very last year of Ramses II’s reign, the former’s priestly career must have started no later than three years before Seti’s death. Adding on the eleven years he served in the training-stable, and making another assumption, that he joined the king’s service in Seti’s Year 1, means that Seti’s reign must have lasted at least fifteen years – and, on the balance of probabilities, even longer.

  Another argument against a short reign is the fact that Seti I’s mummy convinced Maspero that he was well over sixty when he died, which means, if he ruled for only eleven years, that he was well over fifty when he came to the throne. It is difficult to match such an advanced age with the figure of the mighty warrior who fought the Shasu in Sinai immediately after his accession and then proceeded to head further campaigns in south and north Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Libya. Nor can we believe that, had he been that old when he came to the throne, his heir had not yet been born.

  The amount of construction work in which he was involved is another indication of a substantial reign. Only Pharaohs who ruled for a considerable time – Tuthmosis III, Amenhotep III and Ramses II, for example – were able to leave great buildings. Seti I completed a funerary temple that had been started by his father, Ramses I, at Kurnah in Western Thebes. Although the pylon of the temple, which he dedicated to the cult of himself and his father, is no longer to be found, the façade, with lotus-bud columns, is still in perfect shape, together with a number of the chambers in front of the sanctuary. The decoration is very carefully executed.

  At Abydos, the centre of worship of Osiris, god of the dead, Seti built a great and beautiful temple which Maspero describes in the following terms: ‘The building material mainly employed here was the white limestone of Turah, but of a most beautiful quality, which lent itself to the execution of bas-reliefs of great delicacy, perhaps the finest in Ancient Egypt … When the decoration of the temple was complete, Seti regarded the building as too small for its divine inmate, and accordingly added to it a new wing, which he built along the whole length of the southern wall; but he was unable to finish it completely .. .’5

  Another great architectural work, started by Seti and completed by his son, Ramses II, is the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, described by Maspero as ‘this almost superhuman undertaking’: ‘The hall measures 162 feet in length, by 325 in breadth. A row of 12 columns, the largest ever placed inside a building, runs up the centre, having capitals in the form of inverted bells. One hundred and twenty-two columns with lotus-form capitals fill the aisles, in rows of nine each. The roof of the central bay is 74 feet above the ground, and the cornice of the two towers rises 63 feet higher … The size is immense, and we rea
lise its immensity more fully as we search our memory in vain to find anything with which to compare it.’6

  All of this great building work must have required a great deal of time in planning, the cutting and transportation of stone, and painting and decorating to a perfect finish, certainly longer than eleven years, particularly when Seti I was engaged in his many wars during the early part of his reign.

  A further pointer to a substantial reign is the fact that evidence from the south shows that, while Seti ruled Egypt, there were two viceroys for Kush, Amenemopet, son of Paser I, and Yuni.7 This is unlikely to have been the case had Seti ruled for only eleven years.

  If the arguments in favour of a reign of twenty-nine years for Seti I are accepted, this would mean that he was born in Year 2 of his father, which seems possible from the above evidence.

  We are now in a position to construct a chronology for the period that concerns us:

  On the basis of this chronology of Egyptian history and the chronology of the Sojourn set out in an earlier chapter, we can make the following deductions:

  • Akhenaten was born in Year 11 or 12 of his father, 1394 BC;

  • Akhenaten fell from power and fled to Sinai in 1361 BC at the age of thirty-four or thirty-five;

  • If Akhenaten was Moses, he was around sixty when he returned to Egypt and led the Exodus in the reign of Ramses I.

  Whether or not Akhenaten lost his life at the time he fell from power, which has been widely assumed, will be argued in a later chapter.

  11

  THE BIRTHPLACE OF AKHENATEN

  IF Moses and Akhenaten are the same person, they must have been born at the same place at the same time.

  From Old Testament and Egyptian sources we have mention of six Eastern Delta cities:

  • Avaris, the old Hyksos capital, dating from more than two centuries earlier;

  • Zarw-kha, the city of Queen Tiye, mentioned in the pleasure-lake scarab of Year 11 of her husband, Amenhotep III;

  • Zarw or Zalw (Sile of the Greeks), the frontier fortified city, mentioned in texts starting from the Eighteenth Dynasty, whose precise whereabouts in the fourteenth nome is known;

  • Pi-Ramses, the Eastern Delta residence of Pharaohs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, known as ‘House of Ramses, Beloved of Amun, Great of Victories’;

  • Raamses, the city built by the Israelites’ forced labour;

  • Rameses (the same place as Raamses), where the Exodus began.

  There is now general agreement among scholars that Pi-Ramses was situated on the site of the former Hyksos capital, Avaris, and that it was the same city as Raamses, the city built by the Israelites’ harsh labour, and Rameses, named in the Old Testament as the starting point of the Exodus. The two questions at issue, therefore, are: are Pi-Ramses/Avaris to be found in the same location as Zarw? Was Zarw also Tiye’s city, Zarw-kha? The answers to these questions are critical because of what we know of the birth of Moses and Akhenaten.

  On their arrival in Egypt the Israelites settled at Goshen in the Eastern Delta, near to the known position of Zarw. As there is no evidence that they ever migrated to another part of the country, this must have been the area that provides the background for the Book of Exodus account of the birth of Moses. It is also implicit in the story that the ruling Pharaoh of the time had a residence nearby: he was in a position to give orders in person to the midwives to kill the child born to the Israelite woman if it proved to be a boy, and, according to the Book of Exodus, the sister of Moses was able to watch what happened when ‘the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river’ and noticed the basket containing Moses hidden among the reeds on the bank of the Nile. Later, when Moses and his brother Aaron had a series of meetings with Pharaoh there is no indication that they had to travel any distance for these meetings to take place.

  In the case of Akhenaten, the pleasure lake scarab, dated to Year 11 (1394 BC) of his father, Amenhotep III, plus other evidence, points to his birth having taken place at Zarw-kha. Six versions have been found of the scarab, issued to commemorate the creation of a pleasure lake for the king’s Great Royal Wife, Tiye. Although there are some minor differences, they all agree on the main points of the text, which runs as follows:

  Year 11, third month of Inundation (first season), day 1, under the majesty of Horus… mighty of valour, who smites the Asiatics, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Neb-Maat-Re, Son of Re Amenhotep Ruler of Thebes, who is given life, and the Great Royal Wife Tiye, who liveth. His Majesty commanded the making of a lake for the Great King’s Wife Tiye, who liveth, in her city of Zarw-kha. Its length 3700 cubits, its breadth 700 cubits. [One of the scarabs, a copy of which is kept at the Vatican, gives the breadth as 600 cubits, and also mentions the names of the queen’s parents, Yuya and Tuya, indicating that they were still alive at the time.] His Majesty celebrated the feast of the opening of the lake in the third month of the first season, day 16, when His Majesty sailed thereon in the royal barge Aten Gleams.1

  In my previous book2 I argued that Pi-Ramses, Avaris and Zarw-kha were all to be found at one location – the frontier fortified city of Zarw, to the east of modern Kantarah, which is to the south of Port Said on the Suez Canal. To recapitulate what I believe to have been the correct sequence of events …

  Here the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty are known to have built a fortified city (20th century BC.) The autobiography of Sinuhi, a court official who fled from Egypt to Palestine during the last days of Amenemhat I, the first king of the Twelfth Dynasty (1970 BC), mentions his passing the border fortress, which at that time bore the name ‘Ways of Horus’. The border city was rebuilt and refortified by the Asiatic Hyksos rulers who took control of Egypt for just over a century from the mid-seventeenth century BC. During this period it became known as Avaris. Later, when the kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty expelled the Hyksos, they in turn rebuilt the city with new fortifications, it was given the new name of Zarw and it became the main outpost on the Asiatic frontier, the point at which Egyptian armies began and ended their campaigns against Palestine/Syria.

  During the time of Tuthmosis IV (1413–1405 BC), his queen had an estate and residence within Zarw. Subsequently, Amenhotep III, the son of Tuthmosis IV, gave this royal residence, Zarw-kha, within the walls of Zarw, to his wife, Queen Tiye, as a present. I explained this event as stemming from the king’s desire to allow Tiye to have a summer residence in the area of nearby Goshen in the Eastern Delta where her father’s Israelite family had been allowed to settle. (I regard Yuya, Queen Tiye’s father, as being the Patriarch Joseph, of the coat of many colours, who brought the tribe of Israel from Canaan to dwell in Egypt.)

  Later still, after the fall of the Amarna kings, who were descendants of both Amenhotep III and Yuya, Horemheb, the king who succeeded them, deprived the Israelites of their special position at Goshen and turned their city of Zarw into a prison. There he appointed Pa-Ramses and his son, Seti, as viziers and mayors of Zarw as well as commanders of the fortress and its troops. Pa-Ramses, the new mayor of the city, forced the Israelites into harsh labour, building for him what the Book of Exodus describes as a ‘store city’ within the walls of Zarw. Pa-Ramses followed Horemheb on the throne as Ramses I in 1335 BC, establishing the Nineteenth Dynasty, and it was during his brief reign, lasting little more than a year, that Moses led the Israelites out of the Eastern Delta into Sinai.

  At the time he came to the throne, Ramses I already had his residence at Zarw, being the city’s mayor. His son, Seti I, and the latter’s son, Ramses II, later established a new royal residence at Zarw that became known as Pi-Ramses and was used as the Delta capital of the Ramesside kings of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties for about two centuries. The kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty established a new residence at Tanis, south of Lake Menzalah, and made use in its construction of many monuments and much stone from Pi-Ramses, which misled later scribes into the erroneous belief that Pi-Ramses and Tanis were identical locations.

  The
whole issue of whether or not Pi-Ramses/Avaris and Zarw are to be found at the same location has been clouded by the fact that, while we know the precise location of Zarw, scholars have in the course of this century canvassed the claims of no fewer than six other sites in the Eastern Delta, in addition to Tanis, as the location of Pi-Ramses/Avaris, and two alternative sites – one at Thebes, the other in Middle Egypt – as the site of Tiye’s city. The Delta sites have been advanced even if they failed to yield the required archaeological evidence, were in the wrong nome and, in some cases, did not exist at the relevant time. Each was abandoned in turn to be replaced by a seventh site, Qantir/Tell el-Dab’a. Investigations at Tell el-Dab’a, just over a mile south of Qantir (one of the sites suggested earlier, and now revived), were begun by the University of Vienna and the Austrian Archaeological Institute in 1966 and are still continuing.

  This location has achieved considerable acceptance as the site of Pi-Ramses/Avaris since Manfred Bietak, the Austrian Egyptologist in charge of the excavations, gave an interim report on the expedition’s findings in 1979. Yet this site, too, does not withstand close scrutiny any more than the previous six in the Eastern Delta that had been put forward. Recent archaeological discoveries in the Kantarah area make it unnecessary to argue at this point the objections to the Qantir/Tell el-Dab’a location, which can be found in Appendix D: instead I am concentrating here on some of the mass of evidence that Pi-Ramses/Avaris is to be found on the same site as Zarw. From written sources we know that: