Oahspe Study
The Exodus of the Hebrews, Moses and the Pharaohs Part 3
The Search for the Identities of the Pharaohs of Moses' Time
Having identified the time of the Exodus to be circa 1546 b.c.e. in previous parts of this series (See The Date of the Exodus), the search for the identities of the pharaohs of Moses' time is correspondingly narrowed, but not necessarily clear cut. Egyptology is rife with conundrums in its royal genealogies whereby lists of pharaohs, co-rulers, regents and nomarchs (sub-rulers of regional areas) are simply identified as successive rulers. Thus there are inconsistencies in various conventional listings of dynasties by succession and date which means that a simple search by date will not quickly reveal the identities searched for.
Since historically accepted dates of specific periods are not always accurate it is therefore important to identify the period in which the Hebrews inhabited Egypt as servants and slaves to the Egyptians independently of a given date of a particular period; and this should bring us closer to finding the pharaohs. It becomes apparent from archaeological and historical references that the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom was that period. The archaeological evidence of Asiatic culture integrated into Egyptian culture in the Delta and Lower Egypt of the Middle Kingdom and so called Second Intermediate period, contextualizes the ubiquitous and abundant presence of Asiatic slaves. In particular Asiatics were usually referenced and depicted in images to be widely employed as slaves to wealthy Egyptians:
Evidence of Asiatic Slaves in the 12th Dynasty
||....From the historical records we learn that Asiatic slaves were used during the twelfth dynasty.
"The Asiatic inhabitants of the country at this period must have been more times more numerous than has been generally supposed. Whether or not this, largely slave, population could have played a part in hastening . . . the impending Hyksos domination is difficult to say." Cambridge Ancient History, vol II part I, page 49."Asian slaves, whether merchandise or prisoners of war, became plentiful in wealthy Egyptian households." Encyclopaedia Britannica 1964, volume 8, page 35.The buildings constructed in the delta under the twelfth dynasty were made of mud brick. Mountains of such bricks went into the city of Avaris and nearby cities.
Moreover the pyramids of Sesostris III and Amenemhet III were also made of mud bricks. The early dynasties' burial places were made of mud brick. The magnificent third and fourth dynasty pyramids were built of stone. For some strange reason these twelfth dynasty rulers reverted to mud brick. It is interesting in this connection to note that Josephus wrote:"They (the Egyptians) set them (the Israelites) to build pyramids." Antiquities of the Jews, book 2, chapter IX, paragraph 1.
On the assumption that the oppression took place during the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty [in the time of Ramesses II], this statement is regarded by scholars as a glaring blunder by Josephus, for by this time, according to their view, the Pyramid Age had ended. The pharaohs of the New Kingdom dynasties were buried in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor. But maybe it is the scholars who have blundered, for the kings of the twelfth dynasty did build pyramids, and what is more, they built them of mud bricks mixed with straw. "Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves." (Exodus 5:7) Especially relevant is the research done by Rosalie David whose book The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt was published in 1986. She researched the work done by Sir Flinders Petrie in the Faiyyum. Petrie worked in the Faiyyum in 1889 and he explored the pyramids of the 12th dynasty and identified the owners.
He also excavated the remains of a town that had been occupied by the workmen who actually built these pyramids. He wrote: "The great prize of Illahun was unknown and unsuspected by anyone. On the desert adjoining the north side of the temple, I saw traces of a town, brick walls, houses and pottery; moreover, the pottery was of a style as yet unknown to me. The town wall started out in a line with the face of the temple; and it dawned on me that this could hardly be other than the town of the pyramid builders, originally called Ha-Usertesen-hotep, and now known as Kahun. A little digging soon put it beyond doubt, as we found cylinders of the age, and no other; so that it was evident that I actually had in hand an unaltered town of the twelfth dynasty, regularly laid out by the royal architect for the workmen and stores required in building the pyramid and its temple....."|| (retrieved 30 Sept, 07)
The genealogies of the pharaohs and their reigns are particularly unreliable for the decades prior to 1550 b.c.e., which according to conventional Egyptology is the end of the Second Intermediate period. Various king lists range widely in regnal dates or overlap other reigns or attribute unrealistically short periods of reign. Thus for the time of Moses' adoptive father, whose reign, according to the Oahspe account, extended for a minimum of 44 years before ca 1546 b.c.e., there are at least 5 or 6 possible pharaohs for that time in the Second Intermediate period. Likewise, his successor, named Nu-ghan in Oahspe, is not simple to identify in Egyptian records, because for the time that he would have succeeded the throne, which was ca 1546 b.c.e. there are also a number of possible candidates besides Ahmose I, even though Ahmose I is positively identified as the first ruler of the New Kingdom.
Difficulties of Dating Ancient Egypt
||....As well as using inconsistent Greek forms of Egyptian names, occasionally repeating kings, the preserved king lists of Manetho also omit many rulers and the reign lengths rarely agree in the different versions. As his work survives, it is hopelessly garbled in places....The most important of these king lists was found carved on a corridor wall in the temple of Sety I at Abydos.....This list is perfectly preserved but there are certain political omissions such as the entire Second Intermediate Period, Hatshepsut, Akhenaten and his immediate successors.|| (retreived 30 Sept, 07.)
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The Abydos King List contains the names of seventy-six kings of Ancient Egypt, found on a wall of the Temple of Seti I at Abydos, Egypt. Significantly, this list omits the names of some well known earlier pharaohs who were 'erased' from this 'revised history'. Among the missing are Akhenaten, Hatshepsut, Smnkhkare, Tutankhamen, and Ay, who were apparently considered illegitimate.
The Karnak king list, a list of early Egyptian kings engraved in stone (only remnants exist located in the Louvre, France), was located in the middle of the Precinct of Amun-Re, in the Karnak Temple Complex which was in the vicinity of Ancient Thebes in Upper Egypt. Composed during the reign of Thutmose III, it listed sixty-one kings. It is not a complete list of the Egyptian Pharaohs, but this list is valuable as it contains the names of 'kings' of the First and Second Intermediate periods, which are omitted in most other king lists. |
The exclusions of the Abydos King List (a.k.a. Sety I king-list) speak volumes, since it excludes legitimate rulers such as Hatshepsut and Arkenaten, who were nonetheless pariahs in the eyes of their successors. Therefore it appears that only "true" pharaohs made it to that exclusive list. Or should it be said that loyalty and acquiescence to the powerful nobles and priests and compliance with historical precedents defined a "true" pharaoh.
Since the entire 2nd Intermediate Period is missing from the important Sety I temple wall it is also highly significant, and strongly suggests that the dynasty lists from the so called 2nd Intermediate period contained no legitimate Egyptian pharaohs at all!
The inaccuracy of the Egyptian records at that time, are also mentioned in Oahspe. The record keepers used two calendars, one had two solstices or two suns (12 months) in a year and the other had one solstice or one sun (six months) and a system of genealogies that led to the corruption of birth dates and ages. As a result, the records of the time were in confusion and no coherent record was available to be passed down into history.
Oahspe, Bk of the Arc of Bon; 27/14.1-5; 27/20.19, 20.
|| In these days in Egupt there were houses of records, where the affairs of the state, and of the king and governors, were recorded; and there were recorded also the births, marriages and deaths of people.
The languages of the learned were Fonecean and Par'si'e'an; but the native languages were Eguptian, Arabaic, Eustian, and Semis. The times (calendar) of the learned gave two suns (365 days) to a year, but the times of the tribes of Eustia gave only six months to a year. Accordingly, in the land of Egupt, what was one year with the learned was two years with the Eustians and Semisians.
God said: My people shall reckon their times according to the place and the people where they dwell. And this they did. Therefore, even the tribes of Israel had two calendars of time, the long and the short.
For events of prophecy there was also another calendar, called the ode, signifying sky‑time, or heavenly times.....there three hundred and sixty‑three days in one year, besides the two days and a quarter when the sun stands still on the north and south lines.
In consequence of these three calendars, the records of Egupt were in confusion. The prophecies and the genealogies of man became worthless. And as to measurements, some were by threes, some by tens, and some by twelves; and because of the profuse number of languages, the measurements became confounded; so that with all the great learning of the Eguptians, and with all the care bestowed on the houses of records, the records themselves became the greatest confounding element of all....
....Touching genealogies, in which men seemed to have lived to so great an age, this, then, is the explanation for it:
Thothma had said to his recorders: In searching for the truth of legends, give the latitude of it. For one legend will say, such a man lived seven hundred years ago; another legend will say he lived one thousand fifty years ago. The latitude between them is, therefore, three hundred fifty years, which shall be the time of that man's life. || And in this way latitude became confounded with fact, and with no intent to deceive.||
Even Moses' age was computed differently in Egyptian time compared to Hebrew time (See The Mythical Conquest of Canaan):
Oahspe, Bk of the Arc of Bon; 27/20.15.
|| At the time Moses reached Shakelmarath he was forty-four years old by the Hebrew sun, but by the Eguptian he was eighty-eight years old.||
Oahspe reveals that the records of the pharaohs had been in confusion for some time, at least several hundred years dating back to Thothma's time (when the Great Pyramid was built). Biblical scholars trying to match events in the Ezra bible with surviving Egyptian historical records (the early parts of the Ezra bible originate from Egypt, See Who was Thoth) identify an anomaly of some 600 years they consider to have been added to the Egyptian records. But this does not mean that it is the Ezra bible which is accurate. In dating the Exodus according to time computed by events in the Ezra bible, 1446 b.c.e. there is a gap of 100 years between the Exodus and the foundation laying of Solomon's temple (See The Date of the Exodus).
And added to this confusion, is the practice of subsequent pharaohs to have history rewritten to extirpate the memory of an earlier "pariah" ruler, and altering details of events unflattering to the pride of Egyptian Hegemony.
However, even though the identities of the two pharaohs of Moses' time cannot be known with certainty, Oahspe has provided details which can be correlated with surviving historical accounts and archaeological references, making possible some startling connections to individuals within the periods associated with the Israelite Faithists' inhabitation of Egypt and their migration led by Moses.
Among these details are:
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Particular events and their chronology
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Contextual references to the Kings' laws, relationships with foreign and subsidiary kingdoms
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Descriptions of the designs and construction of the king's palace and pyramid complex
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Impact of the presence of the Israelites on Egyptian culture, including the work they did and the materials they used
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Pharaohs' actions which can be contextualized in historical and archaeological references
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Personal details about the individual identities of Moses and the two pharaohs |
1550 b.c.e. was the dawn of a new 3000 year cycle, as detailed in Oahspe. At such a time, and some time leading up to it, the earthly histories of nations would be expected to reflect the effects of the great changes involved in the ending and disintegration of old established dominions, and the beginning of new orders in the lower heavens of the earth. Egyptian history is no exception, for circa 1550 b.c.e. is a time when several significant events converge in a nexus of great change:
1) It was at the end of The Middle Kingdom, but erroneously believed to be an intermediate period named by Egyptologists as The Second Intermediate Period, believed to be an unstable period between the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, supposedly being about 230 - 250 years. The latter 108 years of this period was supposed to have seen Egyptian domination by the Hyksos rulers (foreigners/Asiatics) of the Eastern Delta regions of the Nile, with a number of dynasties running concurrently in Nubia to the South, the Western Delta and Eastern Delta Regions in Lower Egypt and Theban Egyptan Rule in Upper Egypt. The New Kingdom began around 1550 b.c.e. with Ahmose I, after the so called expulsion of Hyksos eastward out of Egypt.
2) Ahmose I was the first ruler of a new dynasty and a new period, The New Kingdom, which also represented the power of the Theban princes. Ahmose I was the first of a new era of Egyptian Warrior Kings.
3) Part and parcel of this transformation, was the rise of the power base of Thebes over all of Egypt and displacing the previously more powerful rule of Lower Egypt and the Delta regions. This coincided with a new location for the burial places of the pharaohs of the New Kingdom. They would no longer be buried as the Middle Kingdom rulers were with their pyramids in the southern Delta regions, but as God Kings in the tombs of the Valley of the Kings near Thebes much further south in Upper Egypt.
4) This was also the end of the Pyramidal Age. It was around 1550 b.c.e. that the last of the royal pyramids was built at Abydos, historically attributed to Ahmose I. Unlike the previous ones built in the Twelfth Dynasty, Ahmose's pyramid was built without mudbrick, and as a consequence, it now exists as no more than a pile of rubble.
5) These changes were also associated with the end of the Egyptian Osiris cult (which was connected to pyramid building) and the establishment of Amun / Re as the supreme deity of the newly transformed Egyptian religion of the New Kingdom and its power base in Thebes. This change of religious cults was also historically attributed to Ahmose I.
By placing Ahmose I into his correct position in relation to the legitimate Egyptian throne, a clearer understanding of the events that were occurring in the last few hundred years of the Middle Kingdom will emerge. The sub-dynasties of the Southern / Theban nomarchs / princes have been mistakenly attributed to Pharaonic dynasties by Egyptologists and given a separate time period called the 2nd Intermediate period. The corrected time periods that accord with details given in Oahspe will illustrate how the rising of the nomarchs (regional sub-rulers) of Amenemhet II's time, some 200 years before the end of the Middle Kingdom, caused the existence of concurrent sub-dynastical ruler lists which eventually became incorrectly attributed to an additional period of time called: "The 2nd Intermediate Period".
Our research has led us to identifying (with as much certainty as can be had for any modern scholar) the identities of Moses, Pharaoh and his Daughter who were foster parents to Moses, and the Pharaoh who resisted the migration of the Israelites and thus suffered the plagues and loss of his army in the Red Sea. These are revealed together with substantial archeological evidence in Part 9 of this series, Who were Moses, Pharaoh, Pharaoh's Daughter and Nu-ghan.
All Oahspe references are from the Standard Edition Oahspe of 2007
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The Exodus Part 4 -- Sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt .