Amun

To better understand the relationship between the Bible and ancient Egypt, let us go back 200 years before the Exodus to the reign of Ahmose, the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, a turning point in the history of ancient Egypt. It was the Pharaoh Ahmose who drove out the Hyksos, who had conquered the country and ruled it from about 1630 to 1523 BC.1 These invaders founded Avaris, a garrison town, as their capital. Manethon, an Egyptian priest of the third century BC, described Egypt's capture: "Without warning, people of an unknown race, coming from the East, had the audacity to invade our country [Egypt] and, without difficulty or combat seized it by live force."

In addition to their culture and their philosophy, the Hyksos introduced the use of the horse, the war chariot, and bronze work, thus definitely making their imprint on Egypt. In turn the Hyksos adopted the Egyptian gods, their sacred hieroglyphic writing, and Egyptian traditions. A hundred and fifty years after their conquest of the country, they became, in their own minds, true Egyptians. The expulsion of the Hyksos undertaken by Ahmose foreshadowed the events of the Exodus that occurred two centuries later. The reconquest was bolstered by the retaking of Avaris, around 1520 BC, and by driving the invaders back towards Asia. The Hyksos became the "sacred enemy," an appellation that left its mark on future dynasties century after century.

The Egyptians left us a great deal of information about the Hyksos and their invasion. Does it not, then, seem strange that they left us not even a footnote about the Hebrews? Here are "Chosen People," who refused to accept the established gods and beliefs of Egypt, who, as slaves of Pharaoh, remained in the country for 430 years, yet who are never mentioned in any way in the writings that were penned on papyrus, chiseled into temple and tomb walls, or engraved on gold leaf.

How could the Egyptians ignore the God of the Hebrews who had caused them so much suffering with ten successive plagues and ruined the kingdom? Egyptian scribes would, without doubt, have recorded some information, at least a few traces of such devastation.

The Book of Exodus, chapter five, mentions that Pharaoh himself appeared to be unaware of the One God of the Children of Israel after 430 years of their presence, 210 of those years in slavery.2 "Afterward, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, 'Thus saith Yahwe, "Let my people go, that they may hold a festival to me in the desert."' But Pharaoh said, 'Who is Yahwe that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know Yahwe, and will not let Israel go'" (Hebrew Bible, Exodus 5:1-2).

There does not exist any kind of Egyptian statement about the Hebrews, whereas, for the expulsion of the Hyksos,3 the Egyptian scribes show them belittled, made petty, and driven out of the country.

After their victory over the Hyksos, the Eighteenth Dynasty was founded and Egypt pursued territorial advances to the South as well as to the North, as far as the Euphrates. to Thutmose's conquests, Pharaoh added to his name and to his title the supposed qualities that had accrued through these conquests: greatness, power, force (the weaponed arm of pharaoh), and beauty. These were the qualities that were customarily used either in Pharaoh's throne name or in his royal cartouche. Pharaoh's attributes are identical to those claimed for the God of the Bible.

Amenhotep III had the good fortune to possess a veritable empire bequeathed to him by his forebears. Thutmose III had conquered the Near East as far as the Euphrates. In the south of Egypt, he annexed Nubia, the Land of Kush, and extended his kingdom to the third cataract of the Nile (today's Sudan).

At the age of fourteen, Thutmose Ill's great grandson, Amenhotep III, married Teye, the daughter of Yuya, who came from a tiny village called Akhmin in Upper Egypt. After the marriage of his daughter to Amenhotep, Prince Yuya was promoted to the supreme rank of "Father of the God," or father-in-law of the God-King. He later passed this title on to his son, Ay.

At that time an ancient god, Aten, resurfaced in Egypt. Aten's origin, in all likelihood, goes back to Atum,4 a primordial Egyptian god of around 2200 BC. This resurgence of Aten was favored by Amenhotep Ill's in-laws, and most particularly by Teye, Yuya's daughter, the future high queen of Egypt, and Akhenaten's mother. The education she gave her son was influenced by Yuya.5 And so both Teye and Yuya played a role in the first stage of the process that led to the rise in power of the religion of Aten after the coronation of Akhenaten.

Amenhotep III was instructed, as were all the pharaohs, in sacred writing, in arithmetic, and in science. But, above all, he was initiated into the cults of the main Egyptian divinities. Among these, the principal god was Amun, whose temple - the great Temple of Karnak - was located in the capital, Thebes. The origin of this god is obscure. He may have issued from the metamorphosis of a "primordial serpent"6 that transformed itself into a divine being. During the Old Kingdom (2625-2130 BC), Amun was a god without cachet. His name is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts, but is not emphasized. Toward the time of the Ninth Dynasty his name became associated with the god Re, representing the sun (Amun-Re). By the Eighteenth Dynasty, Amun definitively took the first place in the Egyptian pantheon. Amun means "the hidden one." As in the Bible, no one could see the face of God.

Amenhotep III was not a conquering king. He had already inherited an empire, and now he had to consolidate it with alliances with his powerful neighbors, mainly Mianni (Mesopotamia), with which he made a pact by marrying Gilheba, the daughter of King Sutarna. At the death of Sutarna, Amenhotep III sealed a new pact with his Midianite successor Tushratta (or Dushratta), who gave him his daughter Taduheba in marriage.

The peace thus established predisposed Amenhotep III to concentrate his energy on constructing numerous buildings throughout Egypt to encourage the different cults in the land. Among the most important was the magnificent Temple of Karnak (Thebes), and its replica in Soleb, in Upper Egypt.

Amenhotep III also had a sumptuous palace built near Thebes, which is now called Malkata. At that time, ancient Egypt had attained a very high degree of refinement in its arts and sciences.

The power of Amun's clergy accrued considerably. This supremacy generalized into the acquisition of real estate, with an increase of bare land, cultivated land, and vineyards awarded to the priests of Amun, making Thebes the religious and political capital of the country. Amun was consecrated there as King of the Gods, next to whom the other divinities seemed to play only a secondary role. The surface area of the Temple of Karnak was augmented by the addition of imposing columns, and its facade was enlarged. The pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty began to inscribe the names of the gods Amun and Thoth inside their cartouches.

The Eighteenth Dynasty, which included the pharaohs involved in the Exodus, was extinguished with the death of Pharaoh Horemheb in 1292 BC. The pharaohships of the Ramesseans established the Nineteenth Dynasty. By then, the events of the Exodus were old history.

Abraham's sacrifice of the ram is the symbol of a rupture with the god Amun. At the beginning of the Book of Exodus, the "Hebrews" were asked by Pharaoh to "sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians." "Moses said [to Pharaoh], 'It would not be right to do so, for we shall sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians to our God Ay'" (Aramaic Bible, Exodus 8:22; Hebrew Bible, Exodus 8:26). One of Rashi's most important commentaries follows:

The abomination of the Egyptians. The idol worshiped by the Egyptians cf: and for Milkom, the abomination of the sons of Amun (II Kings 23:13). With regard to Israel, the text calls it an abomination. It can still be explained in another sense: the abomination of the Egyptians would be something detested by the Egyptians that is the sacrifice we are going to offer, since it is their idol that we sacrifice.

The text associated with the commentary confirms that it dealt with a religious conflict between a monotheistic Atenian people, "sacrificing" the Amunian gods that existed then. This explanation makes it possible to establish a bridge between the Bible and history, since in all the history of ancient Egypt, the only period when there was a conflict similar to that in the Bible (the One God Adonay against Amun's idol) is found, as Freud suspected, just after Akhenaten's death.

Notes

1.  The dates are always approximate, cf. Claude Vandersleyen, Egypt and the Valley of the Nile, Vol.

2. Nouvelle Clio, 1995, p. 663. The translators have chosen dates commonly agreed on in the English-speaking world.

2.  Exodus 12:40. For a stay in Egypt of 210 years, see Rashi, Pentateuch According to Rashi, Exodus. Samuel and Odette Levy, 1990, p. 89.

3.  John Adams Wilson, Egypt. Life and Death of a Civilization. Arthaud, 1961.

4.  Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism. Gallimard, 1986.

5.  Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten, King of Egypt. Le Seuil, 1997, pp. 214-15.

6.  Ibid., p. 86.