Moses and Ancient Egypt

It has been speculated (that the biblical prophet Moses could have had links to Atenism, the monotheistic solar cult introduced to (and imposed upon) the Ancient Egyptians by the maverick Pharaoh Akhenaten (died c. 1336 BC). One famous individual to advance this theory was psycho-analyst Sigmund Freud, in an essay of 1939. This theory makes Atenism the precusrosr of Jewish and ultimately Christian monotheis. Sometimes Moses' God is called Adonai, which, as it was claimed, may be a related word to Aten/Aton. This linguisitc association does not seem wuthstand scrutiny, but other connections have been made besides. There are, for example, similarities between the Biblical Psalm 104 and the so-called 'great hymn to Aten' This hymn, attributed to the heretic king, was inscribed in a tomb near Akhenaten's short lived capital Akhetaten (modern Tel-El Amarna).
The tomb in question was the original tomb of Ay, the Grand Visier, who ultimately succeeded as Pharaoh and who turned his back on Atenism (after the brief reigns of Semkhare and Tutankhamen). Ay was succeeded as king by Horemhab, the general of the army. Horemhab totally erased the cult of Aten. If there was a pharaoh who expelled the Hebrews he is a likely candidate. (This expulsion may have coincided with the Thera eruption, fall out from which could explain the plagues of Egypt- it's a compelling theory anyway and one explored well by Graham Phillips among others). Some have even supported the claim that Moses and Akhenaten were one and the same. This hypothesis seems highly unlikely. Surely if a former king became a prophet it would have been recorded somewhere. Moses could, however, have been a priest of Aten fleeing Horemhab's persecution.

The idea of the Ark of the Covenant, which Moses introduced, does not seem to me to be reconcilable with what we know of Atenism or any form of solar worship. It is more like a shrine for an ancient Egyptian idol, with poles for carrying in procession. This seems to tap into an older Egyptian tradition- although in the Ark's case the conventional statue was replaced by the stone tablets of the law. Moses does not seem to have completely practiced the monotheism he supposedly preached. The 'cherubim' on the Ark have their precedents in the winged Egyptian goddesses Isis and Nepthys, and another part of the Bible Moses (Numbers 21: 4-9) seems to instruct his followers to venerate a brazen statue of a serpent, as a protection against snake bites. This is hard to reconcile with the commandments against idolatry or the making of graven images; or the outrage with which Moses reacted to the worship of the golden calf! Maybe, in the latter case, he was not so concerned with idolatry in itself, but in the people engaging in religious practices which he himself did not control.

This is largely speculation, and there is no definitive archaeological evidence for the Biblical exodus from Egypt. The first known mention of the tribe of Israel occurs on the Merneptah Stele. This is a stone inscribed in heiroglyphs during the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah in the early 1200s BC, commemorating the Pharaoh's victories in the Levant. Merneptah was the fourth king of the 19th dynasty, which succeeded after Horemhab (the last of the 18th). Mermeptah's inscription mentions Israel in the following context:

'Canaan is captive with all woe. Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer (Gaza) seized, Yanoam made nonexistent; Israel is wasted, bare of seed.'

If Israel's exodus from Egypt was a relatively recent happening then the tribe might well be expected to be found in the border region of Ashkelon and Gaza. (It is also apparent from the language that 'Israel' here refers to a people rather than a territory). If this is to be squared with the Bible, however, then the tribe can't have been quite as wasted as the Egyptians made out. It may be noted that there is no Egyptian mention of the Israelites as escaped slaves, and at any rate this impression is difficult to square with other parts of scripture. (The received 'Ten Commandments', for example, seem to be addressing slave-owners as much as escaped slaves.)