When
Abraham and Sarah traveled to Egypt
in a time of famine, the story goes that Abraham feared that the
pharaoh, finding her beautiful, would kill him to have her for a wife.
Hence he passed her off as his sister, even letting the pharaoh marry
her. Eventually discovering the truth, however, the pharaoh gives her
back, and sends them both off with gifts.
When their son Isaac is born, however, it seems the father
is really the pharaoh. There are a number of clues pointing to this, in
spite of the writer of the history trying to prolong the time frame to
disguise this, not quite successfully. And the father would have been
this same Thutmose III, or King David. Hence “David’s line” begins
here, through Sarah.
Of Isaac’s two sons, Esau, the elder, trades his birthright
to Jacob for “a mess of pottage”.
[vii] His birthright would have been the
kingdom
of Egypt
to which he had some claim, although at that point it would have seemed
only a vague dream. Esau in exchange gets the tangible flocks of cattle
and other possessions of their father, as the Talmud confirms.
Jacob later, after wrestling all night with an angel and
being blessed by him, has his name changed to
Israel.[viii]
The last part refers to his god El, as in Elohim, the rest in Hebrew is
Ysra (or sar) indicating a prince or ruler. It is his son Joseph with
the “coat of many colours” who is sold into slavery by his brothers,
ending up in Egypt.
The wife of his master, Potiphar, tries to seduce him, but on being
rebuffed, gets hold of his garment and uses it to accuse him of
attempted rape and send him to prison. When Joseph, from prison, is
able to interpret the pharaoh’s dream and correctly predict seven years
of plenty then seven years of famine, he is freed and made right-hand
man to the pharaoh.[ix]
Joseph’s later story matches only one person in the Egyptian history,
Yuya, a minister to Amenhotep III. His name is written in eleven
variants in his tomb. Evidently Yuya never abandoned his faith in
Yahweh or Jehovah, and Yu or Ya are the Egyptian attempts to write it.
The pharaoh also gave him an Egyptian name, and records show he had a
minister named Sef. The result is the name Yusef or Yosef.
Yuya (Joseph) was known to be non-Egyptian, and his
well-preserved mummy shows a strong face that could easily be Semitic.
There is the story of his brothers, during the famine, coming to him for
food. Joseph at first conceals his identity, but then reveals it,
reconciles with them and sends them home with the food. Later he sends
for his father, who comes with a group of seventy Hebrews who settle in
the Land
of
Goshen
in the Eastern Delta of the Nile.
Joseph actually serves under two pharaohs, and it is the
second, young one, who marries Joseph’s daughter Tiye (by his Egyptian
wife). This pharaoh, Amenhotep III, however, turns out to be identified
as the wise King Solomon.
Thus Solomon is not David’s direct son, by Bath-Sheba, as
the Bible says, but his great-grandson. By marrying Tiye, who is half
Hebrew, Solomon re-establishes the connection of the Jews with the
Egyptian line. To inherit the throne, however, he had to have a royal
Egyptian wife. Hence he also marries his sister Sitamun, (thus
explaining the Bible’s reference to his marrying an Egyptian princess,
whereas as King of
Israel,
it would have been impossible).
This Solomon (Amenhotep III) has a peaceful reign (1405-1367
BCE), wherein rather than fighting, he makes alliances and strategic
marriages. He organizes the country into twelve administrative
districts (cf. the “twelve tribes”). He also embarks on a massive
building program, which partly confirms the list in I Kings—but
in the 14th century BCE, not the 10th. The palace
he is supposed to have built in
Jerusalem
cannot be found by archeologists, but the description tallies exactly
with Amenhotep III’s palace in
Thebes,
built in the 14th C.
The story of the birth of Moses in Exodus is full of
inconsistencies and muddled chronology, but Ahmed Osman, with his
thorough research and wide knowledge of the relevant languages, makes
sense of it. The story in Exodus goes that, to avoid the
pharaoh’s order to have all Hebrew boy-infants killed, the mother puts
him afloat in a basket in the Nile.
Here he is found by the pharaoh’s daughter, who takes pity on him,
adopts him and has him nursed by a Hebrew woman who is actually his real
mother.
He grows up in the palace, but when he sees an Egyptian
beating a Hebrew and kills him, he has to flee the country to Midian.
Here he marries Zipporah, daughter of Jethro, and takes care of Jethro’s
herds, until a voice from a burning bush, calling itself “The I am that
I am”, tells him to go back and bring the Hebrews out of Egypt to the
land he will promise them. Moses goes to Egypt, and the story is that
one of the miracles he employs to convince the pharaoh of his mission is
to cast his staff onto the ground whereupon it turns into a snake. It
still takes a series of seven plagues, however, before they are allowed
to leave, and even then, they are pursued until the parted Red Sea
is released to drown the Egyptians in their chariots. There follow the
forty years in the wilderness, the manna, the golden calf, the giving of
the Ten Commandments, etc. until Moses hands over his mission to Joshua,
Son of Nun, who leads them into the Promised Land of Canaan.
