I had this revelation of renewed interest in Don't Know Much About Mythology since writing the "Floods" article, so I was paging through it looking for something interesting to share with you. And so the Spirit moved me to pick a little controversial sounding title in the Egypt section:
Did a pharaoh inspire Moses to worship one god?
“Even as Egypt became the world's greatest power, it fell into disarray over religious politics, an intriguing moment in history that might provide a valuable lesson about the volatile combination of belief and government. During his reign, the pharaoh Amenhotep IV (1352-1336 BC) made a remarkable and radical - if somewhat mysterious and unexplained - decision. Amenhotep severed all links with the traditional religious capital of Egypt in Memphis and its god Amun-Re, chose Aten as the only god of Egypt, and set out to build an entirely new city devoted to this god. Located about two hundred miles north of Thebes, the city is known today by the name "Amarna," and this period is called the "Amarna Revolution." It affected Egypt in its time as profoundly as the Protestant Reformation affected Europe.”
“Aten had previously been a little-known god worshipped in Thebes. Unlike Re and the other gods, Aten, whose name meant "disc of the Sun," had no human characteristics. Aten was depicted only as a sun from which rays emanated, ending in hands that held the ankh, Egyptian symbol of life. Amenhotep was so devoted to the worship of Aten that he changed his name to Akhenaten. Akhenaten's wife Nefertiti was his supporter in this transformation, taking on the role of priestess and assisting Akhenaten in the new religious ceremonies. Supposedly one of the most beautiful women in Egyptian history, Nefertiti is the subject of several sculptured portraits that have survived from ancient times. She and Akhenaten began a full-scale attempt to wipe out references to all other gods. Throughout Egypt, statues to Amun-Re were smashed and the god's name was literally chiseled out of monuments. State temples were torn down, and the traditional religious festivals and public holidays were no longer celebrated. The reason for this radical reformation - the equivalent of the a modern American president trying to wipe out any reference of Christianity in America and banning Christmas, Easter, and other religious holidays - are uncertain. There may have been a political reason behind Akhenaten's purge of the other gods.”
“Within a short time, the vast state mechanism of religion had been reduced to worship of a single god led by one man, the pharaoh. Only he and Nefertiti could communicate with this god. As popes and other religious leaders have well understood over the centuries, the professed ability to communicate exclusively with the gods is a great way to consolidate power.”
“After Akhenaten's death, the Egyptians stopped worshipping Aten. The new pharaoh, Tutankhamun, began the restoration of the old gods, and traditional worship was completely restored under Horemheb, a general in Tut's service, who managed to secure the throne for himself after the death of Tut's successor, and then leveled Amarna.”
“But for years, many scholars have argued that the worship of this one divinity lingered among the people of Israel, who, according to biblical accounts, had lived in Egypt for hundreds of years. And that creates another interesting collision of myth and faith. The concept of one god became an important part of the religion that was developed by the Israelite leader Moses. The history of the cult of Aten had led to the suggestion that the Jewish and Christian belief in one God may have been derived from Egyptian worship. Among the proponents of this idea was Sigmund Freud, who laid out his theory in his final book, Moses and Monotheism. Or perhaps the other way around. As Bruce Feiler writes in his best seller Walking the Bible, "Might the Israelites have learned to worship one god following the lead of some maverick pharaoh? Or might the Egyptians have the learned the same thing by taking an idea from the patriarchs?"
“In traditional Jewish and Christian view, such questions are heresy. But they point to the reason why mythology matters. Cultures collide. Myths are absorbed in the aftermath of the collision. The ideas of one civilization are borrowed and remolded by another. There is no question that the Egyptians profoundly influenced the Greeks in their beliefs and practices. Is it reasonalbe to ask if they had done the same to the ancient Hebrews. Aten's monotheistic revolution raises a beguiling set of questions. Where do the Hebrews, the twelve tribes of Israel, fit into Egyptian history? And did these Egyptian ideas influence the man who brought Israelites out of Egypt adn delivered God's biblical law on a set of tablets received on Mount Sinai?”
“This is where myth and history collide - and it is one of the fundamental reasons to understand mythology. Where is one faith or religion - or mythology - born? Whose divinely revealed truth is the one and only truth?”
“Other intriguing questions surface, the foremost of which involve Moses. In spire of his exalted status in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - Moses is referred to fifty times in the Koran, which credits him with negotiating with God down to Islam's five prayers a day - Moses is a mystery man. There is no evidence of his existence in any historical documents outside the Bible or Koran. Extensive Egyptian records contain no reference to a Moses - an Egyptian name; it is Moshe in Hebrew - raised in the house of a pharaoh, as the biblical account and the Hollywood version of The Ten Commandments have it. There is also no reference in Egypt's ancient monuments of bureaucratic records to "the children of Israel" working as slaves and then escaping en masse. There is a single reference to a battle with Hebrews in a victory column - or stela - erected by Pharaoh Merneptah.”
“This lack of historical records has led many scholars over centuries to doubt the existence of Moses. That is, of course, a radical idea to many believers, since the story of Moses leading the captive Hebrews out of Egypt, miraculously crossing the "Red Sea" - a mistranslation of the words for "Sea of Reeds" - and entering the wilderness, where they spent forty years before entering the Promised Land, is the essence of Judaism. It also provides important symbolic connections to the life of Jesus.”
“The biblical account of the sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt goes back to the story of Joseph, one of the twelve sons of the patriarch Jacob (son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham). The favorite son, Joseph was famed for his "coat of many colors," but was envied by his brothers, who sold him into slavery and told their father that Joseph was killed while tending sheep. Taken to Egypt, Joseph eventually rose to become a counselor to the Egyptian throne because of his uncanny ability to interpret dreams. One biblical account tells the story of how the wife of Potiphar, Joseph’s master, accused Joseph of attempting to rape her after he had actually rejected the woman’s advances. This story, told in Genesis, echoes an old Egyptian folktale called “The Tale of Two Brothers,” which contains all the details that were presumably “sampled,” in modern terms, by the authors of Genesis.”
“The Joseph story continues as, years later, his brothers come to Egypt in the midst of a drought in their land and are brought before Joseph, now a highly placed advisor to the pharaoh. The brothers do not realize who Joseph is, but he recognizes them, and in an act of forgiveness Joseph is reconciled with his brothers who had sold him. Joseph’s father, Jacob – or Israel, as he is called – and all his descendents make the trip to Egypt, where they are welcomed by Joseph.”
“After hundreds of years in Egypt, in the biblical version, the Hebrews are eventually viewed as a threat to the pharaoh – unidentified in the Bible – and they are enslaved, put to work building cities and fortifications. Eventually the pharaoh is so worried about these Israelites that he orders the killing of their firstborn. A Jewish woman places her child in a basket of reeds to save his life. Found floating in the Nile by the daughter of the pharaoh, the child – Moses – is raised as a prince in the royal house. Moses later sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew worker and he kills the Egyptian. Frightened, Moses leaves Egypt, has a divine encounter with God in the form of a burning bush, and returns to Egypt to set his people free. After the ten plagues are visited upon the Egyptians, the pharaoh – usually identifies as Ramses II, but there is considerable disagreement over that - consents to let Moses leave with his people, who cross into the Sinai Desert, and receive the Ten Commandments; then, after more tribulations, they eventually enter Canaan, the Promised Land. Moses, however, does not go with them. He dies before entering the Promised Land, his final resting place a complete mystery.”
Maybe that’s what I should find, the resting place of Moses. That’d be cool. I don’t know. There’s so much, why should I stop at one! In the words of Lara Croft, “Everything lost is meant to be found.” =)
I had been writing this article before I went to Genius’ site, but then when I got there I was pleasantly surprised to see an article about Moses and the movie The Prince of Egypt. And then I found a perfect example about what I’d been saying about how most Christians tend to be narrow-minded. And then right in front of me, “One thing that stuck out to me was that Moses’ brother, Ramsees, gives a slave to Moses as a gift.” Wow - huge assumption there. If you scroll up a little bit you’ll read in the last paragraph how there’s “considerable disagreement” over whether or not Ramses II was the correctly identified pharaoh. This is exactly the blindness I’ve been talking about. Most Christians assume too much.
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