The Exodus And Egypt

More has been added to this and it has been added to "The Wars Of The Gods", last week.

Critics claim that there is no evidence that the story of the Exodus, the delivery of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, actually took place. One side of this story that I have never seen anywhere is what kind of an effect it might have had on the Egyptians. 

If this fantastic story really took place then it must have had some effect on the Egyptians. It seems to me that it did.

What I see as the greatest mystery of ancient Egypt is the era known as the Amarna Period. The name also refers to the "Amarna Letters", letters by the Egyptian leadership during this period to diplomatic posts in other lands.

Egypt was a very polytheistic nation which honored a broad pantheon of gods. Like any other comparable civilization that we can see, Egypt had a god for everything. Many gods, with control over certain aspects of life, were not universal. In one city a request might be made to one god, but the same request would be made to a different god if in another city. Egypt's gods were very important to it, and there was a long and hallowed tradition of how they must be worshiped.

All of a sudden, a new pharaoh comes to the throne, Amenhotep IV. He surprises and dismays all of Egypt by announcing that one god is supreme above all others. He changed his name to Akhenaten to reflect devotion to this one supreme god, which was called Aten.

The new pharaoh destroyed many of the temples of the traditional gods, making many enemies in the process, and built a new capital city to reflect the new era of devotion to his god. The city was called Amarna, which gives it's name to this brief era. This was not exactly monotheism, the old gods of Egypt were still there. But now one of the gods was to be honored far above the others.

The disk of the sun was considered as the manifestation of this one supreme god. The people would actually worship the pharaoh while he worshiped the one supreme god, putting himself in a role somewhat like a high priest or the earthly son of this god.

The position of women in Egypt improved during this time and from it comes the best-known face of ancient Egypt, the bust of Nefertiti. She was the queen of Akhenaten during his great religious reform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefertiti#/media/File:Nofretete_Neues_Museum.jpg

But the change of religion did not go over very well at all. It was unpopular with nearly everybody and was reversed just as soon as Akhenaten died. The capital city was moved back to Thebes. The son of Akhenaten was the famed King Tut, short for Tutankhamen. King Tut actually died as a teenager, might have actually been the most insignificant of pharaohs, and you have heard of him only because grave robbers never found his tomb.

Horemheb was the following pharaoh who really reversed the religious reforms. He destroyed the capital city that had been built for the new supreme god, and not much remains of it today. Being childless he appointed his vizier as his successor, who would take the throne as "Ramesses I", as we saw in the posting by that name. This began a new dynasty, the Nineteenth Dynasty.

It is true that there is little historical record of the Exodus from Egypt. But the Egyptians did not like to be defeated, and they were in the habit of selectively recording, and even erasing, parts of their own history. 

We know for sure that a warlike people called the Hyksos conquered and ruled Egypt for a time but there is very little Egyptian record of that. Ramesses II, grandson of Ramesses I, was known as the Great Builder of ancient Egypt, he wanted to be remembered by his endless building, but he is also known to have imposed his cartouche on buildings that others had built.

We have to understand that this is so out of the ordinary, so unique in ancient Egypt that it demands special explanation. No other pharaoh ever attempted anything like this. Akhenaten had all of the makings of a great pharaoh. But he put himself down in the history of his nation as a criminal and heretic. He was buried in a very small tomb and generally scorned after his death. He became essentially a non-person in Egypt and his name is missing from later lists of previous pharaohs. Akhenaten's mummy, nor that of his queen Nefertiti, have even been positively identified. Virtually anything to do with his new religion was destroyed, and his religion of one supreme god forgotten.

What then made him do it? There is a clear explanation that really should get some attention.

What if the story of the Exodus, as told in the Bible, really did happen as told. The Egyptians saw the awesome power of the Israelites' God. While they may not have paid much attention to the religion of their slaves, the Bible records Moses describing their God to the unnamed pharaoh. They knew that the Israelites worshiped only one God. During the Exodus, the Egyptians saw the power of this God.

The Egyptians would not have known the details of their former slaves' religion, this was before the Bible was written, all they knew was that they worshiped only one all-powerful God which, at the time, was a very unique idea.

The timing is right, the Fourteenth Century B.C. We know that King David ruled over Israel around 1000 B.C. Before the Exodus and that time, the Israelites had to go through the long periods of wandering in the wilderness, gradually clearing the land of the Canaanites, and the period when Israel was ruled by leaders known as Judges.

Doesn't it look to you as if the Egyptians, having seen the power of the Israelites' God as described in the Bible, but really not wanting to admit that they and their gods had been defeated by the God of their slaves, had a pharaoh who thought that the best thing for Egypt was to incorporate this one supreme God, and facilitated that as best as he could, even though destroying his own reign and legacy in the process?

He even changed his name to signify his new religious convictions, from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, just as Abram had his name changed to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, and Jacob to Israel.

I see this as the best evidence that the Exodus, as described in the Bible with all of it's miracles, took place just as described. It could not have been that the Egyptians had gotten dissatisfied with the old gods because the country was poor or subject to foreign domination, and sought a new god to change their fortunes, because Egypt was near the height of it's power at the time.

But there is still more to consider.

Of all the hundreds of pharaohs and other important people in the long history of Egypt, two have emerged as the "faces" of old Egypt. These are Nefertiti, as we saw above, and King Tutankhamen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun#/media/File:CairoEgMuseumTaaMaskMostlyPhotographed.jpg

Nefertiti was the queen of Akhenaten, the pharaoh who tried to get Egypt worshiping one supreme God, and Tutankhamen was his son. Although Nefertiti was not Tutankhamen's mother. The only other name from Egypt that has any comparison to these two is Ramesses II, who would rule in the following dynasty.

Now, stop and think. Doesn't it strike you as very noteworthy that the two who should emerge as the most familiar faces from Egypt's very long history are the queen and the son of this scorned pharaoh who had tried to get Egypt to abandon it's historic pantheon of gods, in order to worship one supreme God?

King Tutankhamen was actually quite likely the most insignificant of pharaohs. He became king as a child, was in exceptionally poor health, and died in his teens. Decisions during his reign were almost certainly made by advisers, who would succeed Tutankhamen as pharaohs themselves, Ay and Horemheb. The reason that he is so famous today is that, unique among the pharaohs of Egypt, grave robbers never found his tomb before archeologists did in modern times.

Could it be that God arranged it for Tutankhamen and Nefertiti to emerge as the best-known figures of the long history of Egypt to show that the Egyptians had certainly seen the power of the Israelites' God in delivering them from slavery? Even though they were not about to record it, the world could see their reaction to it. This could not have been done for Akhenaten himself because he was scorned upon death, becoming a non-person whose name is missing from later lists of past pharaohs, and was buried in a very modest tomb.

King Tutankhamen, son of Akhenaten, is recorded as going against his father's religious ideas upon succeeding him. In fact, the new king's original name was to have been Tutankhaten, recognizing the one supreme God, but was changed to Tutankhamen, for the original Egyptian gods. But he was a child upon becoming pharaoh and decisions were certainly being made for him.

In the campaign of Horemheb against this new religious idea, the following statue of King Tut and his queen was severely damaged. But yet they have emerged in modern times as the faces of ancient Egypt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun#/media/File:Tutankhamun_at_Luxor_temple.jpg 

POSTSCRIPT

Not long after I wrote the above posting came the announcement that an entire ancient city was unearthed in Egypt. The name of the city is Aten. This is certainly one of the most important archeological discoveries ever. It is reminiscent of the excavation of the city of Ur, in Mesopotamia, about a century ago.

The name of the one supreme god, represented by the disk of the sun, was also Aten.

As it turns out the city of Aten was founded by Amenhotep III, who was the father of the pharaoh who tried to move the country toward monotheism. His name was Amenhotep IV but he changed it Akhenaten to in order to reflect the new religious movement.

The city of Aten was in use during the Amarna Period, the time of the move toward monotheism, but the capital was moved to Amarna, hence the name of the period. The son of Akhenaten was the famous King Tut, short for Tutankhamen. Tutankhamen was actually what his name was changed to in order to reflect the move back to the traditional pantheon of gods.

For readers in the Niagara Falls area this took place during the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Tutankhamen was followed as pharoah by Ay and Horemheb. Horemheb was childless so he appointed his vizier as his successor.

The vizier took the throne as Ramesses I, the first pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty. There was a mummy from Egypt in the museum that used to be just at the Canadian end of the Rainbow Bridge, but the mummy was unidentified. It was later definitely identified to be Ramesses I and was given back to Egypt. The mummy had spent over a hundred years in Niagara Falls.

Possibly the most important pharaoh, at least of the New Kingdom, was Ramesses II, who was the grandson of Ramesses I. He did a lot of building, although not of pyramids. By this time the era of pyramid building, which took place in the Old Kingdom, was long past and the pyramids were already very old.