In 1939, Jewish father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Schlomo Freud, published the book Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion (translated as „Moses and Monotheism” in English), in which he demonstrated that there are great similarities between the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten’s religion and the teachings attributed to Moses. For example, he wrote that one of the beliefs of the Jews, „Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad” („Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord”), could be translated as „Hear, O Israel, Aton our God is the only god” because the Hebrew letter „d” is a transliteration of the Egyptian letter „t„. In addition, Freud showed that the Jewish leader’s name did not come from Hebrew, as had been thought until then, but from the Egyptian word „mos„, which means „child” or „heir”, and that Moses’ birth in the Bible is a reproduction of other ancient myths about the birth of great heroes, such as Sargon the Great, the founder of the Akkadian Empire. To hide Moses’ Egyptian origin, the myth of his birth was modified, and the editors of the Bible made him born of poor parents and later adopted into a noble family. Freud suggested that one of the high officials, probably named Tutmes, was a follower of god Aten (called Aton by the Greeks)’s religion. After the pharaoh’s death, Tutmes led the Jews living in the land of Goshen in the eastern Nile Delta out of Egypt, teaching them the principles of Akhenaten’s religion. „Moses, who had come out of Akhenaten’s school, used no other methods than the sovereign: he commanded and imposed his faith on his people (…) Moses had the same destiny as Akhenaten, which awaits all enlightened tyrants (…) Suddenly, it becomes clear that Moses was an Egyptian, probably of high rank, whom legend has made a Jew„, Freud further noted.
Although in the years that followed many scientists made considerable efforts to destroy any connection between Moses and Akhenaten, in 1990, Egyptian journalist Ahmed Osman published the book Moses, Pharaoh of Egypt: The Mystery of Akhenaten Resolved, in which he demonstrated that the Jews’ prophet and the rebel pharaoh were one and the same person. Canadian archaeologist and Egyptologist Donald Bruce Redford confirmed the hypothesis, arguing that the figure of Moses is modeled on the historical memory of Akhenaten. In a book published in 1945, Austrian Jewish philosopher Martin Buber considered the biblical texts about Moses to be legendary stories rooted in a concrete personality, without specifying which personality he was referring to. Although Osman’s evidence is solid, most researchers prefer to continue discrediting his theory without realizing that by identifying Moses with Akhenaten they would provide the Bible with historical coverage. Let’s see if Freud, Osman and Redford were right.
The most detailed source of information about Moses’ life is the Tanakh or the Old Testament, but we find additional details in the Talmud, another holy book of the Jews, and in the Quran. However, we can find clues about the Israelite Exodus not only in religious books. Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived in the 3rd century BC, during the last dynasty of pharaohs, wrote a history of his country, Aegyptiaca, compiling stories he found in the library of Ra’s temple in Heliopolis. Unfortunately we do not have access to the original work, only fragments quoted by other authors (such as Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, Christian chronographers Sextus Julius Africanus and Eusebius), isolated passages from the works of Plutarch and other Greek and Latin authors, or Byzantine chronicler George Sincellus’ writings, a former patriarch of Constantinople. According to Manetho, quoted by Josephus, the ancestors of the Jews were the Hyksos, who occupied Egypt for more than a century. Expelled from Egypt by Pharaoh Ahmose I, the Hyksos occupied Canaan and built Jerusalem. Later, another pharaoh, Amenophis III (Amenhotep III, Akhenaten’s father), cleansed Egypt of lepers and other unclean persons, sending them to work in the stone quarries east of the Nile. After a few years, the pharaoh gave them the city of Avaris, the former capital of the Hyksos, where the exiles chose as their leader one of the priests of Heliopolis, named Osarseph. He asked those who followed him not to worship the Egyptian gods, ordered them to repair the walls of Avaris and prepare for a war with Amenophis III. He sent emissaries to the Hyksos in Jerusalem, to unite in a joint expedition against Egypt, and they came in a group of 200,000 people. Threatened by this invasion, Amenophis III fled to Ethiopia, where he lived in exile for 13 years. Meanwhile, the Hyksos and the unclean Egyptians burned the cities and villages, desecrated the temples, mutilated the images of the gods and used the sanctuaries as kitchens, where they roasted the animals revered by the Egyptians. Learning about this, Amenophis III returned from Ethiopia at the head of a great army and his son, Ramses, at the head of another. The two armies defeated the Hyksos and their Egyptian allies, killing many and chasing others to the border with Syria.
Although Manetho claimed that the leader of the unclean Egyptians was Osarseph, other authors used the name of the biblical prophet. Apion, an Egyptian from the first century who taught rhetoric in Rome, wrote that Moses was born in Heliopolis; he raised open-air houses of worship and he built pillars with human figures on top in place of the obelisks. Other authors from Alexandria, such as Chaeremon and Lisimachus, also supported Moses as the leader of the unclean Egyptians. Sincellus, according to Africanus, claimed that the Exodus took place during Amosis I (Ahmose I)’s reign, the first king of the 18th Dynasty. According to Eusebius, Sincellus claimed that the departure of the Jews from Egypt occurred during Pharaoh Akhenkherres (Akhenaten)’ reign. The Armenian version of Eusebius’ work similarly identifies Akhenkherres’ reign as the time when Moses became the leader of the Jews. In De Vita Mosis („The Life of Moses”), Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria wrote about Moses that „by divine grace he was at the same time king, legislator, high priest and prophet, and in each of these functions he was in the first place„, functions that fit Akhenaten.
An unconventional method of finding details about Moses is extrasensory perception. Between 1948 and 1949, Professor Dr. Milan Ryzl conducted a series of experiments in Prague (the capital of Czechoslovakia then and of the Czech Republic today). He hypnotized several subjects whom he sent to certain periods in the past, and the results of his experiments were published in the book Biblical Miracles: Parapsychological Interpretation Attempts. In an experiment on 9th February 1949, Milena, a 17-year-old girl, went back in time under hypnosis, to the time of Moses. She described the leader of the Jews as being about 1.65 meters tall, with dark hair, a fairly large nose and an elongated beardless face. This is a different description from that of Jewish historian Artapanus of Alexandria, who considered him „tall, red-haired, with white locks and much dignity„, or from that of the Arab tradition, where he is black. Milena also said that the prophet did not look like a Jew, although he had some Jewish features. He was dressed almost like the Romans, as depicted in paintings; he had something wrapped around his body and something over his shoulders, like a coat. Moses’ brother, Aaron, was a little shorter. He also had an elongated face and only slightly Jewish features, his beard and hair being red. Milena also said that Moses and Aaron learned the art of hypnosis from a sorcerer; before he died, the sorcerer taught Aaron hypnosis, who in turn passed it on to Moses. Regarding the „divine” miracles in the Old Testament story, the two brothers hypnotized the pharaoh and suggested him to see the Nile turned into blood. The Egyptian cattle did not die because of any god, but because they grazed on fields infested with ticks. The Egyptians became ill because they drank dirty water. There was no fire and hail over Egypt, but only a strong storm. There was no darkness for three days, but only a very cloudy sky. The locust invasion was not caused by the god of the Jews, but was just a common occurrence in ancient Egypt. Aaron knew it would happen and informed Moses, who attributed the „miracle” to Yahweh. The biblical god did not kill all the firstborns of the Egyptians, but rather about a hundred Egyptian children died, probably poisoned by the Jews. In the desert, Moses did not throw a piece of wood into bitter water to make it sweet, because that was normal, fresh water. Above the tent where the Ark of the Covenant was located, there was indeed a column of clouds, but it never spoke to Moses. In fact, the column only appeared when Aaron was sleeping. There were no fiery snakes that bit some people, but rather the people scratched themselves on some thorns. 24,000 Jews were not punished by Yahweh, but rather about 200 – 300 died from an infectious disease. The water in the Jordan River did not stand still for the Israelites to pass; they crossed through a ford where the water was shallow. 14,700 people did not die in the desert and Moses probably died suddenly in his sleep. In another experiment that took place on 22nd January 1949, Milena said, also under hypnosis, that Moses was about 40 years old and Aaron was around 50 when they appeared before the pharaoh. At the first appearance Moses was hypnotized by Aaron, but at the second one both were awake. In another visit, Moses did not have a big staff in his hand, but a flexible rod. The rod did not turn into a snake, but Aaron hypnotized the pharaoh and suggested him to see this. Moses did not part the waters in two; the Jews crossed the Red Sea during low tide, while the Egyptians tried to cross during high tide. Moses did not strike the rock with his staff, making water gush out of that place, but simply found water under some stones that he moved with his staff. When the soil opened and swallowed 250 people, in reality they fell into an animal trap. The number of Jews in the desert was not the one specified in the Bible, but much smaller: about 20,000 people. The manna that Yahweh sent them daily was the juice of a tropical plant that grows near the desert. This plant is about 75 centimeters tall, has very resistant leaves, grows in sand and looks like a cactus, but it does not have as many thorns. After Milena and other girls ended their collaboration with Professor Ryzl for personal reasons, he had to find another subject. And he found Sonya, who was only 16 years old. In experiment number 24 from 12th October 1949, Sonya was also sent back in time under hypnosis to verify if Moses was indeed left in a basket on the Nile by his mother and found by the pharaoh’s daughter. In a trance, Sonya declared that she did not see anything of that sort and that „it’s probably just a legend„.
To avoid falling into the naivety trap, we must acknowledge that we cannot rely on the accuracy of these experiments. Firstly, we cannot be sure that they actually took place and are not just the product of a rich imagination. Secondly, if we assume that they did take place as presented, we cannot be certain if the hypnotized persons actually saw what they claimed to have seen or if all those images were influenced by their own opinions, consciously or unconsciously. As hypnosis subjects often display subjectivity („Egyptian children were probably killed by the Jews„, „Moses probably died in his sleep„, „it’s probably just a legend„), we can assume influence. Thirdly, we cannot know if the hypnotized subjects were influenced by the hypnotist. And lastly, we do not know exactly how extrasensory perception works. Therefore, we cannot trust its accuracy. However, when multiple persons see the same things under hypnosis and there are no external or internal influences, it is possible to approach the truth. Therefore, even if we view the results of parapsychologist Milan Ryzl’s experiments with skepticism, certain aspects deserve to be considered.
Are Moses, Osarseph and Akhenaten the same person? Manetho stated that Osarseph changed his name to Moses towards the end of his life; Akhenaten was called Mose towards the end of his life. Both prohibited their followers from worshiping Egyptian gods, establishing a monotheistic belief. Osarseph was a priest in Heliopolis; so was Akhenaten. In the Talmud, Moses officiated as the high priest; Akhenaten was Aten’s high priest. Also in the Talmud, Moses was considered the king of Israel during their stay in Sinai; Akhenaten was the king of Egypt and even in exile, his followers considered him the true king, even after he was forced to abdicate. Moses and Akhenaten were in danger of losing their lives at birth. According to the Talmud, when Moses was young, he took the pharaoh’s crown and placed it on his head; Akhenaten became a co-regent with his father in childhood. The Bible says that Moses was 40 years old when he fled Egypt; Akhenaten was almost 40 years old when he was forced to abdicate and leave Egypt. In the Bible, Moses led the Exodus at the age of 80; Akhenaten took his Israelite followers and relatives from Egypt at the age of 83. The name of Moses’ Ethiopian wife, Adoniya (Aton-ia in Egyptian), suggests a connection to Aten / Aton, Akhenaten’s god. One of the epithets of Moses’ god, Adonai („my Lord”), comes from the Egyptian Aton-ai („my Aton”). Moses was inseparable from his shepherd’s staff, which turned into a snake twice in the biblical myth; the shepherd’s staff and the snake headed scepter were the symbols of Egyptian kings. Moses became a shepherd after fleeing from Egypt; Akhenaten was depicted in sculptures as Osiris, the shepherd god. In fact, all pharaohs considered themselves shepherds, an epithet that signified the role of leader of the subjects flock. Both Moses and Akhenaten died in the Sinai desert. Moses’ Ten Commandments were copied from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which Akhenaten was surely aware of from his time as a priest in Heliopolis. Moses had three wives: an unknown woman from Kush (Nubia / Sudan), the Ethiopian queen Adonith and the Midianite Zipporah. Akhenaten had at least three wives: Nefertiti (the Great Royal Wife), Kiya (a Mitannian princess) and a third whose name is unknown (Akhenaten’s sister and Tutankhamun’s mother). In the Talmud, Moses was forced to leave the throne of Ethiopia and flee the country; Akhenaten was forced to leave the throne of Egypt and flee the country.
If Moses and Akhenaten are one and the same, why did Manetho call him Osarseph? This name is composed of Asar (called Osiris by the Greeks) and Ioseph (the Greek version of the Hebrew Yosep, Joseph in English). Akhenaten was represented as Osiris in Aten’s temple in Karnak and even copied certain parts of the god’s life, so we can understand the first part of the name. For the second part we need to know that he was Yuya’s grandson, a nobleman of unknown origin. Yuya and his wife Thuya’s tomb was found in 1905, located between those of the pharaohs Ramses III and Ramses XI. Unlike his wife, who had a conventional Egyptian appearance, Yuya had Semitic features, as noted by Arthur Weigall in his book The Life and Times of Akhnaten, published in 1910: „He was a person with an imposing presence, whose strong character was visible on his face. We can imagine him as a tall man with wild gray hair, a large aquiline nose like that of a Syrian, full and strong lips, and a decisive, slightly pronounced jaw. He has the face of a clergyman and something about his mouth reminds us of Pope Leo XIII. Looking at these well-preserved features, we feel that we can discover in him the initiator of the great religious movement that his daughter and grandson accomplished„. Yuya’s and Thuya’s daughter was Tiye, Akhenaten’s mother and Amenhotep III’s Great Royal Wife; on 9th February 1949, under hypnosis by Professor Dr. Milan Ryzl, Milena claimed that Moses and his brother Aaron had slightly Jewish features, undoubtedly inherited from their grandfather, Yuya. The Old Testament considers Moses to be an Israelite, while the Quran says that Allah raised kings from among the Israelites, who could be the four descendants of Yuya who became pharaohs: Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun and Ay. If the Semitic Yuya was indeed an Israelite, it means that he was a descendant of Jacob / Israel. The Jacobites / Israelites, divided into 12 tribes founded by Jacob’s sons, were expelled from Egypt along with the Hyksos in 1550 BC and took refuge in Canaan, the land promised by Yahweh / Marduk to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jacobites’ presence in Egypt less than two centuries after their expulsion raises some questions. Why would they return to a country where Asian Semites were not welcome, due to the Hyksos who ruled half of Egypt for a century? The only ones who would have dared to do so were most likely the descendants of Joseph, who centuries earlier held the position of vizier of Egypt. Joseph was loved and respected by the Egyptians because of his solutions to avoid famine; therefore, based on that respect, his descendants could hope for the goodwill of the Egyptians. In Joseph’s time, the Jacobites lived an excellent life, even establishing their own royal dynasty in the Nile Delta; in Canaan they were just immigrants, forced to settle for a miserable life in a poor territory. Therefore, their desire to return to Egypt was natural. According to the Old Testament, Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, established two of the 12 Jacobite tribes; the Israelites in Egypt could be members of one or both of these tribes or just a small part of them. If Joseph’s descendants had returned to Egypt, they would likely have enjoyed some benefits (important positions and even noble titles), unlike other Asians; the Israelite Yuya was a prophet of god Min and „Administrator of Cattle” of the god, later becoming the father-in-law and chief adviser to Pharaoh Amenhotep III, bearing the titles „King’s Lieutenant„, „Master of Horses” and „Father of the God„. He married Thuya, a descendant of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari (Ahmose I’s wife, founder of the 18th Dynasty), an extremely influential woman with many functions in Egypt’s various religious cults. Only a descendant of the respected Joseph could have reached such a position in the royal family, given the Egyptians’ aversion to Asiatic Semites. Several biblical scholars have concluded that Joseph’s descendants are the only Israelites who went to Egypt and returned, with the rest of the Jacobite tribes remaining in Canaan. Egyptian journalist Ahmed Osman went further, matching Yuya with the biblical Joseph, which cannot be true, given the several centuries between them. The Old Testament indirectly confirms this hypothesis, considering Joshua (the leader of the Israelite Exodus after Moses’ death) a member of the Ephraimite tribe, that is a descendant of Ephraim, Joseph’s son. And it becomes increasingly certain that Yuya may have been a descendant of the same Joseph. The same his grandson, Akhenaten / Moses, which would explain the name Osarseph, attributed to him by priest Manetho, which could be translated as the „Josephite Osiris”.
If Akhenaten is indeed the one who led the Josephite Israelites out of Egypt, who named him Moses and why? The Bible states that the Pharaoh’s daughter, when she found the child among the reeds, named him Mošeh (the original Hebrew name) because „I drew him out of the water„. However, in this case he should have been named Moshui („the One who was drawn out”), not Mosheh. In addition, if he was adopted by an Egyptian and raised as an Egyptian prince, it is natural for him to have received an Egyptian name, not a Hebrew one. Especially since there was little chance that an Egyptian princess would know Hebrew. In a time when Israelite children were being killed on the Pharaoh’s orders, giving a child a Hebrew name would be equivalent to painting a big target on him; if the princess wanted to save his life, she would not have given him a Hebrew name. But, as Sigmund Freud noticed, the name Mošeh / Moses does not come from Hebrew, but from the Egyptian word „mos„, which means „child”. In ancient Egyptian, the word „child” was written with two consonants, „m” and „s„. If we remove the two vowels from „Mošeh„, we are left with the consonants „m„, „š” and „h„. As the Hebrew letter „š” is equivalent to the Egyptian letter „s„, we can see that the two words are almost identical. However, the Egyptian word „mos” not only means „child”, but also „heir”, as seen in the names of some pharaohs such as Ahmose („Yah’s heir”), Ramesses („Ra’s heir”), Thutmose („Thoth’s heir”) or Amenmesse („Amen’s heir”). All these pharaohs’ names suggest that they were the legitimate sons and heirs of the gods and their rule was legitimate. When pharaoh Horemheb banned the mention of Akhenaten’s name, the king’s followers censored him by calling him Mos or Mose, suggesting that he was the rightful heir to the throne. Considering the royal names forms, the second version is most likely correct. Later, biblical editors translated „ms” (Mose) as „mšh” (Mošeh / Mosheh), inventing an explanation for his Egyptian name to break any connection between their prophet and Egypt.
To find out who Moses really was, we need to determine the time in which he lived. Below is a table of the 18th Dynasty’s pharaohs and the 19th Dynasty’s first four:
| The 18th Dynasty | ||
| Ahmose I | 1551 – 1526 BC | 25 years |
| Amenhotep I | 1526 – 1506 BC | 20 years |
| Tuthmosis I | 1506 – 1493 BC | 13 years |
| Tuthmosis II | 1493 – 1480 BC | 13 years |
| Hatshepsut | 1480 – 1458 BC | 22 years |
| Tuthmosis III | 1480 – 1426 BC | 54 years |
| Amenhotep II | 1428 – 1402 BC | 26 years |
| Tuthmosis IV | 1402 – 1392 BC | 10 years |
| Amenhotep III | 1392 – 1354 BC | 38 years |
| Akhenaten | 1366 – 1337 BC | 29 years |
| Smenkhkare | 1339 – 1337 BC | 2 years |
| Neferneferuaten | 1337 – 1335 BC | 2 years |
| Tutankhamun | 1335 – 1326 BC | 9 years |
| Ay | 1326 – 1322 BC | 4 years |
| Horemheb | 1322 – 1295 BC | 27 years |
| The 19th Dynasty | ||
| Ramesses I | 1295 – 1293 BC | 2 years |
| Seti I | 1293 – 1282 BC | 11 years |
| Ramesses II | 1282 – 1216 BC | 66 years |
| Merneptah | 1216 – 1206 BC | 10 years |
In The Enlightenment chapter we saw that 1378 is the total number of „masters” in the Masonic pyramid and that 1378 BC is also the year when Akhenaten, Jews’ greatest prophet, who was called Moses, was born. Thus, we learn that when Akhenaten / Moses ascended the throne of Egypt, which he shared with his father for 12 years, he was only 12 years old. It is said that his father also became king at the same age. Coincidence or not, 12 is one of the most important numbers in Jewish symbolism.
Most Bible scholars believe that Ramses II was the pharaoh who oppressed the Jews and Merneptah was the pharaoh during the Exodus. This conclusion was due to an erroneous method of calculation. They believe that Joseph came to Egypt with the Hyksos, the Asiatic shepherds who invaded northern and central Egypt in the 17th century BC, whom they led for more than a century, until they were expelled by Ahmose I, the founder of the 18th Dynasty. The calculation method was as follows: according to the Bible, Joseph was imprisoned in Egypt for two years, after seven years of fertility the famine began, after two years of famine Joseph’s family came to Egypt and the Israelites left after 430 years; a total of 441 years. From the Egyptian records, the Hyksos spent 108 years in Egypt, the 18th Dynasty lasted 256 years and from the 19th Dynasty Ramesses I ruled for two years, Seti I for 14 years, Ramesses II for 67 years and Merneptah for 10 years; a total of 441 years. This would mean that the Exodus took place at the beginning of Merneptah’s reign. However, according to this calculation, it would mean that Joseph arrived in Egypt as a slave during the Hyksos’ reign and we have already seen that his arrival in Egypt took place in 1855 BC, two centuries earlier. In addition, these researchers’ calculations are erroneous; the 18th Dynasty lasted 256 years, not 240, and the first four pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty ruled for 89 years, not 91. Although Egyptologists have not reached a consensus, with different theories circulating, the 14-year difference is still significant enough to be ignored.
These misconceptions were shattered in 1896, when British Egyptologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie discovered a giant granite stela in Merneptah’s funerary temple. The stela, which originally belonged to Amenhotep III, had a text commissioned by him inscribed on one side while on the other what scientists believed to be the account of two military campaigns of Merneptah. Since the stela also contains a reference to a military campaign against Israel, which matches the biblical account of the pursuit of the Israelites by the Egyptians, the stela became known as the Israel Stela. It dates back to the fifth year of Merneptah’s reign (1212 BC) and speaks of the Israelites as a people who had already settled in Canaan. This means that the Israelites had left Egypt by that time, spent 40 years in the wilderness and had been in Canaan long enough to become a threatening power. After praising the pharaoh’s victory over the Libyans, the stela mentions in the last 12 lines that „Tehenu (Libya) is desolate, Hatti (the land of the Hittites in Asia Minor, which also included northern Syria) is pacified, Canaan (western and southern parts of Palestine) is plundered with every evil, Ascalon (Canaanite port in northern Gaza) is defeated, Gezer (Canaanite city west of Jerusalem) is captured, Yanoam (city in northern Palestine) is nonexistent; Israel (the sign used here indicates a people, not a territory) is laid waste and his seed is not; Hurru (Hurrian land by the Dead Sea) is become a widow because of Egypt! All lands together, they are pacified…„. Initially it was believed that these lines relate Merneptah’s victories, but there is no evidence that the king fought anyone other than the Libyans. If, at the age of 60, the pharaoh had defeated the Hittites (with whom his father, Ramesses II, had concluded a peace treaty), the Hurrians and the other peoples mentioned on the stela, it is hard to believe that he would not have boasted about these victories in other documents. Instead, all we have is a list of names in the epilogue of the Israel Stela. Merneptah did not claim to have subjugated those peoples, but only to have brought peace to Egypt after his victory against the Libyans, with the final section of the stela indicating the state of affairs inherited from his grandfather, Seti I, and his father, Ramesses II. In this case, who defeated the Israelites?
Ramesses I was old when he ascended the throne and did not survive his second year of reign. Manetho, quoted by Flavius Josephus, attributed him a one year and four months reign. He was succeeded by his son, Seti I, and by his grandson, Ramesses II, during whose reigns we find details about campaigns that fit both the Israel Stela and the biblical story of the Exodus. In his first year of reign, Seti I received news that the Shasu people planned to revolt, the leaders of these tribes reuniting in Khor (the Egyptian term for Canaan and Syria). The name „Shasu” was used by the Egyptians to refer to the Bedouin tribes of Sinai, nomadic peoples who spoke a West Semitic language, different from those of Canaan, which they called „Aamu„. Later, in the first centuries AD, the word „shasu” became the Coptic word „shos„, which means „shepherd”. Shortly after his coronation, Seti I headed north, conquering the city of Pi-Kanan in Gaza, then conducting campaigns against the Canaanites, Libyans and Hittites in northern Syria. Later, the pharaoh waged two more wars against the Libyans. His son, Ramesses II, passed through Canaan to the kingdom of Amurru in northern Syria. He conquered the city of Kadesh of the Hittites, restored order in Galilee, regained Damascus and attacked the Amorite city of Dapur, north of Kadesh. In his twenty-first year of reign, Ramesses II concluded a peace and alliance treaty with the Hittites. He also launched several campaigns against the Shasu people, recorded at Tanis, a city south of Lake Menzalah. Professor Kenneth Anderson Kitchen of the University of Liverpool concluded that the territory of the Shasu people was the area of Edom and Moab in the Bible. Therefore, in the first year of Seti I’s reign, the Shasu people emerged from Sinai threatening Canaan, Edom and Moab. Over two decades later, during Ramesses II’s reign, the Shasu had left Sinai, to be found in Edom and Moab. If we compare the sudden appearance of the Shasu people, their territorial movement and the Israelites’ exodus in the Old Testament, we notice that both followed the same route. It follows that Israel and Shasu are names that define the same people. When Moses and his tribe, consisting of Egyptians and Israelites, joined the Midianites in Sinai, they were called Shasu by the Egyptian scribes. Later, when they settled in Canaan and the Israelite identity became clear, the scribe of the Israel Stela was able to recognize them for who they really were. This is why the name Israel does not appear in Egyptian writings until 1212 BC and the name Shasu is not written on the Israel Stela, although it is known that Merneptah’s predecessors fought against this Semitic Bedouins tribe. Therefore, we can safely assume that the biblical Exodus took place in 1293 BC, with the pharaoh losing his life while chasing the Israelites in Sinai, in accordance with the Old Testament account. If Ramesses I is the pharaoh of the Exodus, then Horemheb is the one who oppressed the Israelites, resulting in Moses and Akhenaten living in the same time, as ancient chroniclers Eusebius and Sincellus claimed. If we were to consider them as two different characters, we would encounter several coincidences: both had similar beliefs, both built temples facing east, both had Jewish blood, both went to Sinai and both led the Israelites out of Egypt. The similarities between them being far too many, as noted by Sigmund Freud, means that journalist Ahmed Osman correctly assumed that Moses and Akhenaten are one and the same.
The contradictory accounts of the Bible make it difficult for researchers to determine the year in which the Israelites arrived in Egypt, especially since we are given three different time intervals. The Old Testament says that the Israelites stayed in Egypt for 430 years, 400 years or four generations. The first option is accepted by most, although it is by far the farthest from the truth. How did we get to this number? The four generations mentioned in the Bible are: Levi (Joseph’s brother), Kehath (Levi’s son), Amram (Kehath’s son) and Moses. Levi came to Egypt at the age of 57 and, according to the Talmud, lived another 80 years. Kehath lived 133 years and Amram 137. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt at the age of 80. Adding all these ages together (80+133+137+80) gives a total of 430 years. But this calculation is obviously incorrect. To reach the number 430 would mean that each generation was born at the death of the previous one, which is absurd. The real option can only be the third one. The Israelites who returned to Egypt stayed there for four generations, namely: Yuya, Ay (his son), Akhenaten (son of Queen Tiye, Ay’s sister) and Tutankhamun (Akhenaten’s son).
After establishing when did Moses lived, we can try to learn details about his life. The biblical book of Exodus begins with a brief account of the Israelites’ arrival from Canaan. Vizier Joseph managed to gain permission from the pharaoh for his tribe to move to Egypt. The 70 Israelites were given the land of Goshen, in the same area of the Nile Delta where the Hyksos later settled. The Bible says that the Israelites multiplied greatly and the pharaoh of that time oppressed them, forcing them to build the cities of Pithom and Ramses. When the Israelites continued to multiply, the pharaoh ordered all male children who were to be born to be killed. At that time, Moses was born into a family from Levi’s tribe. His father’s name is not given at this point in the story but much later, when we learn that his name is Amram. His wife, named Jochebed, hid their son for three months. Unable to keep him hidden for much longer, she abandoned him among the reeds on the bank of the Nile, in a basket made of papyrus coated with tar and clay. The pharaoh’s daughter found the basket when she came to bathe, and upon seeing the child, she decided to keep him. Moses’ older sister, Miriam, who had seen from a distance what had happened, offered to bring him a nursemaid from among the Israelites. She brought their mother, who agreed to breastfeed Moses in exchange for a sum of money. When the boy grew up, he was brought back to the pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him.
The Talmud offers a different motivation for the pharaoh’s decision to kill the newborn Israelite babies; Moses was the one who had to be killed because he was a threat to the throne of Egypt. The pharaoh had a dream in which an old man placed all the princes and wise men of Egypt on one side of a giant balance scale, while on the other side he placed a lamb, which turned out to be heavier. The counselor Balaam explained to the pharaoh what the dream meant: „a son will be born among the sons of Israel who will destroy Egypt„. Reuel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law in the Old Testament, is depicted here as one of the pharaoh’s counselors. He advised him not to oppress the Israelites, but to let them go to Canaan. The king preferred to heed Balaam’s advice and commanded that all the boys born to the Israelites be thrown into the river and Reuel to be exiled. In agreement with the biblical account, the Talmud says that Amram married Jochebed, who bore him a daughter, Miriam, followed by a son, Aaron. Miriam, considered a prophetess in the Old Testament, predicted that from her parents a second son would be born, who would save the Israelites from their Egyptian oppressors. The pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted Moses, is named Bit-Yah („Yah’s Daughter”) in Leviticus Rabbah and the biblical Books of Chronicles.
The Bible says that in order to save his life, Moses was abandoned by his Israelite mother in a basket made of papyrus coated with tar and pitch among the Nile bank’s reeds, where he was found by the pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him. German historian Eduard Meyer assumed that the original myth was different: the Pharaoh left Moses on the Nile, from where he was rescued by the Jews, and the story was reversed because the Egyptians had no reason to glorify the prophet of the Jews with such a legend, while the Jews did not want their hero to be a foreigner. In his autobiography, Akkadian king Sargon the Great claims that his mother was the high priestess in the city of Azupiranu and his father was unknown. After secretly giving birth to Sargon, the priestess placed him in a basket made of papyrus coated with bitumen and released him on the Euphrates River to avoid his murder. He was found and adopted by Akki, the king’s gardener. Later, Sargon became goddess Ishtar’s lover, who granted him the throne. Because Moses lived long after Sargon, it is obviously plagiarism, as Freud also pointed out, who considered both versions just myths, the child in a basket being a symbolic representation of birth (the basket is the mother’s womb and the water is the amniotic fluid). The Israelites learned the story of Sargon’s birth during their Babylonian exile and, when they returned to Jerusalem and began to write their sacred texts, they included that part in Moses’ legend. However, it is possible that both versions, of Sargon and Moses, are copies of a much older Egyptian myth. After giving birth to Horus, the true heir to the throne of Egypt, goddess Isis hid him among the reeds on the bank of the Nile, to avoid being found by the usurper Seth, Horus’ uncle and Isis’ brother, who had killed Osiris and taken his throne. If he had known that Osiris had an heir, the usurper would undoubtedly have tried to eliminate his competition. Therefore, the goddess raised her son in secret until he was old enough to claim his rights. Isis was helped to raise the child by her sister, Nephtys, Pharaoh Seth’s wife, in contrast to the biblical story where the Pharaoh’s wife was helped by the child’s mother to raise Moses. This legend, regardless of the version, is absurd. A mother who wanted to save her child from death would not have abandoned him on the banks of the Nile, where crocodiles, hippos, snakes and other animals could have endangered his life. For the same reason, the pharaoh’s daughter / wife would not have bathed in the river unless she had suicidal tendencies, which is highly unlikely. Egyptian mythology tells us that the young Horus, while hiding from his uncle, was stung by a scorpion, but he survived thanks to god Thoth, who arrived just in time to recite a saving magic formula. So if a god could lose his life on the banks of the Nile, how could a human be safe there? Especially a newborn?
If, however, the Talmud and historian Eduard Meyer are right, it means that Amenhotep III really wanted to kill his son by throwing him into the Nile. But who saved him? The Old Testament and the Talmud say that the pharaoh’s daughter found and adopted Moses, but in the Quran the boy’s savior is the pharaoh’s wife. Which version is true? Most likely, the truth is somewhere in between: the one who found the boy was both the pharaoh’s daughter and wife. The Jews named her Bit-Yah („Yah’s Daughter” in Hebrew). The eldest daughter of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye was Sitamun („Amun’s Daughter” in Egyptian), who became the pharaoh’s Great Royal Wife after her mother’s death. The names Bit-Yah and Sitamun are similar, both denoting the daughter of a deity. Sitamun was both the pharaoh’s daughter and wife, as mentioned in her titles: „Daughter of the King„, „Daughter of the King whom he loves„, „Older Daughter of the King„, „Older Daughter of the King whom he loves„, „Wife of the King” and „Great Wife of the King„. Therefore, we can assume that Amenhotep III threw his newborn son into the Nile and the boy was saved by his sister, Sitamun, the pharaoh’s daughter and future wife. And so, the story was embellished by biblical editors with elements from the myths of Horus and Sargon.
Beyond legends, Amenhotep III probably married his heir sister to ascend the throne. Later he married Tiye, nobleman Yuya’s daughter, and named her the Great Queen of Egypt, to the displeasure of the Theban priests. Being not purely Egyptian because of her Israelite blood, Tiye could not be the rightful heir to the throne, nor god Amun’s bride, as all the queens of ancient Egypt were considered. Therefore, her children could not inherit the kingdom. In order to keep his throne, being pressured by the priests of Amun, Amenhotep III decided to get rid of the sons bore to him by Tiye. Thus, their first son, Thutmose, disappeared under unexplained circumstances. The queen did not want to repeat the story with the next boy. Therefore, when she gave birth to the second son in her husband’s fourteenth year of reign (1378 BC), Tiye tried to persuade the pharaoh. She named the newborn Amenhotep Netjer-Heqa-Waset (Amenhotep IV) to show that he was Amenhotep III’s successor and the true heir to the throne. However, the priests of Amun were more convincing, reminding the pharaoh that an impure child on the throne would mean calamities for Egypt, as it would attract the wrath of the gods. The Talmud emphasizes this through the pressures of adviser Balaam on the pharaoh. Seeing that her son’s life was still in danger, Tiye sent him to her Israeli relatives in Goshen, in the Eastern Delta of the Nile. Perhaps the version of German historian Eduard Meyer and the Talmud is at least partially true and the pharaoh really wanted to kill his son by throwing him into the Nile, but he was saved by Princess Sitamun. The threat to Amenhotep IV’s life in childhood can be deduced from the epithet he often attributed to himself, „He who has lived long„, which means that no one expected him to survive at the beginning of his life. In addition, he depicted himself as Osiris in Aten’s temple in Karnak, suggesting that he had overcome death, like the god. Those who composed the first books of the Old Testament tried to hide Moses’ Egyptian origins by inventing a story in which he was the son of some Israelites from Levi’s tribe, simply because the greatest prophet of the Jews, considered by most of them to be their true Messiah (savior or liberator), had to be a pure-blooded Israeli. Believing that Israel is Yahweh’s chosen people, the Jews could not accept that their savior belonged to another nation, especially the one that had enslaved them. Therefore, they turned Moses from an Egyptian prince into an Israeli raised as a prince of Egypt.
The Old Testament provides no information about Moses’ childhood, only saying that he was raised as an Egyptian prince. However, from the Talmud we learn that at a royal banquet, when Moses was about three years old, the pharaoh took him in his arms and the child grabbed the royal crown and put it on his head. The pharaoh felt that this gesture had a sinister significance, with Balaam reminding him of the dream with the scales. The wise men and judges were called to ask for their advice. Reuel, who wanted to save the child’s life, suggested bringing two plates, one with fire and one with gold. If Moses had chosen the gold, it would have meant that he understood things and chose to rise up against the pharaoh knowingly. But if he chose the fire, he would have to be left alive. The vessels were brought before the child, who reached out for the fire and took a coal, which he put in his mouth, burning his tongue and becoming, as the Bible says, „slow of speech„.
Amenhotep III gave his queen, Tiye, the city of Tjaru (also called Zarw) in the northeast of the Nile Delta. In the Bible, the east of the Delta is called „the land of Goshen„. As it was a frontier area in an inhospitable desert region, his gift was just a political move. To escape the pressures of the Theban priests and the rest of the Egyptians who still could not tolerate the Semitic Asiatics because of the Hyksos, the pharaoh offered his queen the border city to move there her Israelite relatives who had come with Yuya to Egypt. The further away they were from the capital, the greater the chances of calming the protests of the dissatisfied. In his books, journalist Ahmed Osman has shown that Tjaru was the city previously called Avaris, the former capital of the Hyksos. According to historian Flavius Josephus, priest Manetho wrote that the pharaoh gave the Israelites the city of Avaris; in the Bible, the pharaoh offered the land of Goshen to Joseph’s family. Tiye sent her son to Tjaru, under the Israelites’ care, to keep him away from the pharaoh. There was the first temple of Aten in Egypt and Prince Amenhotep IV had his first contact with the sun-god’s cult. He also lived for a while in Heliopolis, where he strengthened his belief in the solar deity, becoming a priest of Aten, a fact confirmed by Manetho, who considered Osarseph a priest from Heliopolis. For this reason Apion was misled, believing that Moses was born in that city. As Sigmund Freud noted, in Aten’s religion can be noticed its Heliopolitan origin. He also wrote that in the solar cult of Heliopolis, tendencies towards the development of a universal god and the accentuation of the ethical aspect of his nature had already been noticed for some time. The Sun’s worship gained momentum during Amenhotep III’s reign, probably as a sign of hostility towards Amun from Thebes, which had become too powerful. And perhaps to reduce the Theban priests’ influence who opposed his marriage to Tiye, as well as the coronation of their children. Then an ancient name of the Sun, Aten (Aton for the Greeks), a derivative of Atem or Atum, was revealed, most likely on the pharaoh’s orders; the arise of the first Aten’s Egyptian temple in Tjaru, the city inhabited by Queen Tiye’s Israelites, strengthens this suspicion. The development of the sun-god’s cult did not only aim to diminish Amun’s influence. Through Thutmose III’s military victories, Amenhotep III’s great-grandfather, Egypt had become an empire. Nubia had been added to the south, and Canaan, Syria and a part of Mesopotamia to the north. As the pharaoh was the sole ruler of the world known to the Egyptians, so their supreme god had to be. This explains the tendencies in Heliopolis towards the development of a universal god. Therefore, both in Tjaru and in Heliopolis, Amenhotep IV, the future Akhenaten, found the movement already formed, which he later developed into the first monotheistic religion in history.
When he grew up, the prince was allowed to go back to Thebes. Tiye arranged for him to marry his step-sister, the heiress princess Nefertiti, the daughter of the pharaoh and his eldest sister. Although the priests of Amun continued to object, Amenhotep III named his son co-regent, believing that the 12-year-old boy had earned the right to the throne through his marriage to the heiress princess. The story from the Talmud, in which Moses placed the pharaoh’s crown on his head during a banquet, only signifies his coronation as a young boy.
Who was Nefertiti? As her name, which means „The Beautiful One Has Come”, suggests, she was indeed very beautiful, a fact that Akhenaten emphasized many times in his writings. As her parents’ origin is unknown, various suppositions have arisen. Some have suggested that she was Tadu-Hepa, Mitannian king Tushratta’s daughter, sent to Amenhotep III as a wife towards the end of his reign. However, Prince Amenhotep IV married Nefertiti in the twenty-sixth year of his father’s reign, ten years before Tadu-Hepa’s arrival in Egypt. Others believed she was Ay’s daughter, from a deceased wife, or Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye’s daughter. The young prince, rejected because of his mother’s Israelite origin, would only have married the heiress, the pharaoh’s eldest daughter. If Nefertiti had been Queen Tiye’s daughter, she would not have had the right to the throne (according to Egyptian law, the throne belonged to the one who married the Great Queen’s first daughter). In Aten’s temple in Karnak there are 63 statues of Nefertiti, 38 of her husband and 11 unidentified. The largest statues are hers. In ornamental frames and offering tablets, her name appears 67 times, Amenhotep IV’s name three times and only 13 tablets mention both names. The importance given to Nefertiti in the early years of her marriage, even greater than that given to her husband, suggests that she was the heir princess, Amenhotep III’s daughter. As Horemheb later married Mutnedjmet, Nefertiti’s sister, to have the right to the throne, we conclude that their mother was Amenhotep III’s sister and first wife, Tuthmose IV’s eldest daughter. Nefertiti and Amenhotep IV grew up together, their nurse being Tey, wife of Ay (Yuya’s son and Queen Tiye’s brother). Even today, Bedouins raised by a nurse call her „mother„, just as they call their biological mother. This could be the reason why, in the Bible, Moses’ Israeli nurse is considered his mother. As Ay and Tey had a child, Nakhtmin, it is very possible that he was raised with the two princes, becoming their „milk brother”. Therefore, if Amenhotep IV is Moses in the Bible, Nefertiti can only be Miriam and Nakhtmin, Aaron. The Quran also implies that they were brothers only through their nurse-mother relationship, Aaron calling Moses „Son of my mother” (Surah 7:150). Aaron appears in the Old Testament quite late, when Moses was almost 80 years old and had long been a fugitive in Sinai. The prophet sought excuses not to return to Egypt, arguing that the Israelites could not understand him because of his slow speech and his god needed to remind him that he had a brother who could help him: „Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well” (Exodus 4:14). If Moses really had a brother, there is little chance that he would have forgotten about him. But we can attribute this forgetfulness to old age and the emotions caused by his encounter with the god. We also emphasize the phonetic similarity between Aaron and Aton / Aten, Amenhotep IV’s god, which does not seem to be accidental.
As a co-regent of Egypt, the young Amenhotep IV chose the throne name Neferkheperure-Waenre („Beautiful are the forms of Ra, the One and only of Ra”), dedicated to the sun-god whom he served as a priest in Heliopolis. For 12 years he shared the throne with his father in peace and quiet, even though the Theban priests vehemently opposed him. A graffiti in the temple of Medium, from the 30th year of Amenhotep III’s reign (1362 BC), proves the rejection by the priests of Amun of the king’s decision to name his son heir to the throne. After his father’s death, as the only ruler of Egypt, Neferkheperure-Waenre began his revenge against the priests who opposed him. In his fourth year of reign as sole ruler (1350 BC) he renounced his birth name, Amenhotep Netjer-Heqa-Waset, which included god Amen / Amun’s name, and named himself Akhenaten („Effective for Aten”). A year later, he elevated Aten to the status of supreme god, and at the same time his wife, Nefertiti, adopted the name Neferneferuaten („Beauty of the Beauties of Aten”). Akhenaten built temples for Aten in Karnak and Thebes, cities dedicated to Amun. The young pharaoh even decorated the southern entrance of Amun’s temple in Thebes with scenes depicting him worshiping the sun-god. A boundary stele from Amarna shows that Akhenaten faced strong opposition and criticism. To prevent a rebellion, his mother advised him to build a new capital, which he named Akhetaten („Horizon of Aten”), which is now called Amarna. Contrary to popular belief, the name Amarna does not derive from the Muslim tribe that settled in that area later, but from Imran, the name in the second cartouche of Akhenaten’s god. Amram is the name given to Moses’ father in the Bible and Imran is the name given by Akhenaten to his „divine” father, god Aten. It is obvious that this name was also attributed to the rebel pharaoh’s city in a slightly modified form. After the capital Akhetaten was built, the pharaoh became much stricter, declaring Aten not only the supreme god, but the only god, forbidding all others. He called himself Aten’s son and the only intermediary between humans and this god, adopting the role of Aten’s high priest and officiating religious services alongside Nefertiti. For this reason, the Talmud and Manetho say that Moses officiated as high priest and Apion that he raised outdoor prayer houses and built columns with human figures on top instead of obelisks. The pharaoh even composed a few hymns dedicated to Aten, which later served as a model for David’s psalms in the Old Testament. To complete his revenge against the Theban priesthood, Akhenaten ordered the destruction of all temples dedicated to Amun. The new religion of Aten gained many followers in Egypt, to the displeasure of the Amunite clergy who were losing their power. But due to the army that the king had on his side, with Akhetaton being practically a military camp, the priests avoided confrontation. The army leader was Ay, Akhenaten’s uncle and husband of Tey (Akhenaten’s and Nefertiti’s nursemaid).
In his new capital, the king dedicated himself to family life, along with venerating his god. Nefertiti gave birth to six daughters: Merytaten („Beloved of Aten”), Meketaten („Protected by Aten”), Ankhesenpaaten („Living for Aten”), Neferneferuaten Tasherit („Younger Beauty of Aten’s Beauty”), Neferneferure („Beauty of Ra’s Beauties”) and Setepenre („Chosen of Ra”). Very proud of them, Akhenaten represented the great and happy royal family in many frescoes, protected by Aten.
If the Bible claims that Moses granted the Levites functions in the priesthood, alongside him, archaeological discoveries demonstrate that Akhenaten did the same thing. The city near Amarna is called Mallawi, which means „The City of Levites”. Meryre II, Queen Nefertiti’s administrator, held the positions of royal scribe, supervisor of the two treasuries, steward and overseer of the queen’s harem; his Hebrew equivalent is Merari, who appears in Genesis 46:11 as one of Levi’s sons. Panehesy was the Great Servant of Aten in the temple of Akhetaten; his Hebrew equivalent is Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson and the third high priest of the Israelites in the Bible. Another Israelite who held an important position among Akhenaten’s officials was Vizier Aperel, whose tomb was discovered in 1989; the name „aper” corresponds to the Egyptian word for „Hebrew”, which for the ancient Egyptians meant „nomad”, and the particle „el” is the West-Semitic word for „god”. Queen Tiye herself joined her husband, Amenhotep III, in donating a box for Aperel’s funerary furniture, suggesting the possibility that he was a relative of the queen on her Israeli father’s side. Thus, we realize that the Israelites who returned to Egypt with Yuya were not part of the Josephite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, but rather of the Levites. They were even more entitled to leave the „promised land” given that Levi’s tribe was the only one of the twelve Israelite tribes that did not receive a territory in Canaan, according to the Bible. In addition, Moses and Aaron were Levi’s descendants, according to the same book, which confirms our hypothesis. Of course, it is possible that not all the Israelites who returned to Egypt were part of the Levite tribe, but among them there may have been members of other tribes. Which matters too little. We only know for sure that among the Israelites in Egypt were those from Levi’s tribe, who were in a fairly large number, since they received a city of their own.
According to the Talmud, when Moses fled from Egypt after killing an Egyptian, there was a rebellion against the king Nikanos in Ethiopia. While he was away to quell the rebellion, the king of Ethiopia left in his place Balaam, one of Pharaoh’s former counselors who had fled from Egypt. However, Balaam usurped the throne, fortified the walls of the capital, built huge fortresses and dug ditches between the city and the nearby river. When King Nikanos returned home and saw that he could not pass through the fortifications, he waged a nine-year war against Balaam. Moses, who had fled from Egypt to Ethiopia instead of Sinai, fought on king’s side and became his close friend. When Nikanos died, Moses was appointed leader „in the hundred and fifty-seventh year after Israel descended to Egypt„. Moses defeated Balaam, who managed to escape back to Egypt. The Ethiopians gave to Moses the throne of their country and the widow of their former king, Adoniya (Aton-ia in Egyptian), as his wife. After 40 years, the queen accused him of refusing to share her bed and to worship the Ethiopian gods, and demanded the throne for her and Nikanos’ son, Munahas / Munakaros. Moses relinquished power and left for Midian in the Arabian Peninsula. In Surah 28:20, the Quran supports the idea that Moses was forced to leave Ethiopia because his life was threatened. Although at first glance it may seem that the Talmud refers to the African country with the same name, Ethiopia is described here as a city, not as a country. Undoubtedly, Ethiopia of the Talmud is the capital Akhetaton / Amarna, where Moses ruled alongside his queen, Adoniya. The queen’s Egyptian name, Aton-ia, suggests that she could only have been Aten / Aton’s high priestess, Nefertiti. Like any monarch, Akhenaten wanted a male heir, but his queen could only give birth to daughters. The pharaoh concluded that another mother was needed to give birth to the future pharaoh, and Nefertiti had no choice but to obey his desire. Akhenaten’s new wife was the Mitannian princess Kiya, who bore him another daughter. Egyptologists believe that at some point she fell out of favor and was either exiled or killed. If this was indeed the case, Nefertiti’s jealousy was most likely the cause of Kiya’s banishing or death. Still not obtaining the much-desired heir, Akhenaten took a third wife. In the twenty-second year of his reign (1344 BC), she bore the king a son who was named Tutankhaten („The Living Image of Aten”) Hekaiunushema. The mummy of Tutankhaten’s mother was discovered in 1898 by archaeologist Victor Loret in tomb KV35 in the Valley of the Kings. DNA tests confirmed that she was Tutankhaten’s mother, as well as the daughter of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. Therefore, she was Akhenaten’s sister on both parents and Nefertiti’s half-sister by her father. Since her identity remains a mystery, archaeologists named her „the Young Lady„. She could be any of Akhenaten’s sisters, considering that most of them are not mentioned after their father’s death. A possible candidate could be Princess Henuttaneb, Amenhotep III’s third daughter, whose name means „Lady of all lands”. Although she is not mentioned anywhere as a „wife of the king„, like her elder sisters Sitamun and Iset, her name is inscribed in a cartouche on a carnelian plaque, a privilege accorded only to kings and their wives. This means that at some point she was a king’s wife, albeit briefly, and someone took great care to erase her completely from history. We cannot know for sure if Henuttaneb is „the Young Lady” who, like Kiya, did not have a happy fate; her right hand and one ear were broken, her chest was crushed and her left jaw was shattered. Although it was initially thought that tomb robbers had caused the injuries, a thorough examination revealed that the wounds were inflicted before embalming, actually causing the „Young Lady„‘s death. Even we cannot prove it, it seems that Nefertiti took care to remove all her rivals… We cannot ignore the resemblance between Akhenaten’s three wives (Nefertiti, Kiya and the unknown one) and Moses’ three wives (Adoniya, Zipporah and the unknown one from Cush).
Tutankhaten was adopted by Nefertiti and raised as her son, just like in the biblical story of Moses, where the future prophet was adopted by the pharaoh’s daughter or wife and raised as her own son. Before ascending to the throne, Akhenaten’s son lived with Nefertiti and her daughters in their palace in the north of Akhetaten. Tutankhaten’s story is found in an old Egyptian myth. God Osiris, pharaoh of Egypt, was married to his sister, Isis. Although they loved each other very much, Isis was unable to provide the god with an heir. One night, Osiris slept with their sister, Nephtys, impregnating her. She gave birth to Anubis, whom Isis adopted and raised as her own son. Also, Akhenaten, pharaoh of Egypt, was married to his sister, Nefertiti. Since she was unable to bore him a son, the king slept with their sister, who gave birth to Tutankhaten. Nefertiti then adopted the boy and raised him as her own son. The two stories are almost identical, so excluding the possibility of coincidence there remains only one explanation: the story of Tutankhaten’s birth was included in the myth of Anubis’ birth. In fact, many statues of this god were discovered in the boy-king’s tomb. Akhenaten and Nefertiti believed they were reincarnations of the gods Osiris and Isis. In several statues, the two are dressed exactly like these gods. In the four corners of Akhenaten’s sarcophagus, goddesses Isis, Nephtys, Selket and Neith were replaced with Nefertiti. Because in legends Isis ruled Egypt alongside her husband as equals, it is possible that she became a model for Nefertiti. In the early years of Akhenaten’s reign, his wife was depicted wearing a crown with horns holding the solar disc between them, just like Isis. Manetho called Akhenaten / Moses Osarseph, associating him with Osiris. As Plutarch reported, Osiris was often considered sun-god Ra’s son; Akhenaten considered himself sun-god Aten’s son, as noted on a border stela in Akhetaten. Osiris was viewed as the reincarnation of Ra, the two merging in the afterlife, and Akhenaten believed he was the „Living Spirit of Aten” or the god’s reincarnation. Therefore, if the two rulers of Egypt considered themselves Osiris’ and Isis’ incarnations, details from their lives were included in these deities’ myths. Perhaps even this fanaticism led Akhenaten, after his father’s death, to close the temples of all other gods, forcing Egyptians to worship only Aten. Although it all started as revenge against the priests of Amun, who refused to recognize him as king, things degenerated. Rebellions spread in Egypt, probably instigated by the Amunite priests. Because „he commanded and imposed his faith on the people„, as noted by Sigmund Freud, forbidding the ancient gods of the Egyptians, Akhenaten became a full-fledged tyrant, hated by an entire country, which called him „The Rebel” or „Pa-kherw-n Akhetaten” („The Fallen One from Akhetaten”). „Moses had the same fate as Akhenaten, which awaits all enlightened tyrants„, Freud said. Moses’ despotism is also mentioned in the Quran; when he wanted to capture an enemy, the enemy told him: „You only want to be a bully in the land, and do not want to be a peacemaker” (28:19). Also in the Quran, the pharaoh says of Moses: „I fear he may change your religion, or spread disorder in the land” (40:26). As history recorded, Akhenaten brought „disorder in the land„, Egypt being on the brink of chaos. To calm things down, Akhenaten had to appoint his younger brother, Smenkhkare, as his co-regent in his twenty-seventh year of reign.
As unrest in the country persisted, in his twenty-ninth year of reign (1337 BC), Akhenaten learned of a plot against him and was forced to abdicate and flee to Sinai. The one who warned him may have been Ay, his mother’s brother and the leader of the army. Queen Nefertiti did not follow her husband and remained in Akhetaten with their children, most likely attempting to secure the throne for her adoptive son. The Talmud explained this choice by the episode in which Queen Adoniya (Nefertiti) wanted her son (Tutankhaten) to ascend the throne, so Moses (Akhenaten) left Ethiopia (Akhetaten). The Quran is closer to the truth, stating that Moses was forced to abdicate due to the nobles’ plot to kill him. The Old Testament, on the other hand, claims that he chose to flee out of fear of being punished for killing an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite. It is possible that a similar event occurred; among the Amarna Tablets, discovered by a peasant woman in 1887, there is a letter sent to Akhenaten by Abd-Khiba, king of Jerusalem, in which the pharaoh is accused of not punishing the Israelites in Egypt who killed two Egyptian officials. All these sources indicate the true reason for the pharaoh’s flight to Sinai: fear of being killed.
Why did Akhenaten choose the Sinai Peninsula as his refuge? Because, although Sinai was part of the Egyptian Empire, no military garrison was stationed there. The border town of Tjaru / Zarw was Queen Tiye’s city, who remained loyal to Aten during the reigns of Tutankhaten and Ay. In Sinai, Akhenaten could receive support from his allies in Tjaru and, at the same time, could freely express his religious ideas.
We don’t know much about what Akhenaten did in the Sinai Peninsula. The Bible says he stayed in Midian for 40 years, married a priest’s daughter and was a shepherd of his father-in-law’s flock. On the top of Mount Sarabit, archaeologist Flinders Petrie discovered an altar dedicated to goddess Hathor, initially built in a cave that was later developed into a temple. Here there was a stela in which pharaoh Ramesses I described himself as „the master of everything embraced by Aten„. This surprised researchers because Horemheb, Ramesses’ predecessor, banned Aten’s cult. Ramesses I’s depiction at the top of the stela preserves the realistic style from Akhetaten and his clothing resembles that of Akhenaten. Additionally, Petrie found the head of a statue of Queen Tiye, Akhenaten’s mother, in the same location. The archaeologist also discovered that the rituals performed at the temple in Sarabit were of Semitic nature. Without a doubt, that altar was built by Akhenaten, thus explaining his mother’s statue, Aten’s cult, the Akhetaten style and the Semitic rituals. Ramesses I replaced the rebel pharaoh’s name on that stela with his own, which is why Aten’s name is mentioned after his cult was banned.
After Akhenaten fled, his brother, Smenkhkare, briefly ruled Egypt alone before being killed after only a few days. This means that the plot Akhenaten feared did indeed exist. Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten then ascended to the throne, a character who still represents an enigma to researchers, as her identity is unknown. It has been established that she was female based on occasional feminine traces found in her name, as well as the epithet „Akhet-en-hyes” („Effective for her husband”), incorporated into a version of her second cartouche. This mysterious queen, who ruled Egypt alone for two years, could only be Neferneferuaten Nefertiti. Her throne name, Ankhkheperure, is the same as that used by Smenkhkare and her personal name, Neferneferuaten, is identical to that adopted by Nefertiti in 1349 BC. Additionally, the most powerful woman in Egypt at that time was Queen Nefertiti. Shortly after Akhenaten’s departure from the country and Smenkhkare’s death, when Egypt was in a critical situation due to the revolts stirred up by the priests of Amun, a strong leader was needed to keep things under control. At the age of seven, Tutankhaten, the rightful heir to the throne, was not capable of doing so. Therefore, the only one with the power to maintain order was Nefertiti. And thus we advance a bold hypothesis: the queen did not become the sole ruler of Egypt due to fortuitous circumstances, but because she created those circumstances herself. If Akhenaten’s life had been in danger because of unknown conspirators, the same would have been true to his relatives. Someone who wanted to destroy the pharaoh who banned the ancient gods of Egypt would have had the same goal as the one who stood by the king in that religious revolution; they would certainly have killed the children as well, to ensure that the heretic line was wiped off the face of the Earth. Nevertheless, Nefertiti did not flee with Akhenaten, but remained in her palace with her children. Why did she take the risk? There is only one answer: she knew that her life and her children’s lives were not in danger. And this could only happen if she was the one conspiring against Akhenaten. Feeling the danger that the entire royal family was in due to the riots that had probably reached the capital Akhetaten, Nefertiti chose to sacrifice her husband, hoping that this would appease the rioters and the priests of Amun. After Akhenaten disappeared, removing Smenkhkare would have been a piece of cake. To put her plan in motion, Nefertiti needed to win over Ay, the leader of the army. We do not know how she managed to do this, but it seems that she did. Just as we do not know whether Ay informed Akhenaten of the plot without the queen’s knowledge, advising him to flee, or whether that warning was also part of her plan. Most likely, Nefertiti did not want to kill her husband, but only to convince him to abdicate and flee. Because Akhenaten left alone, without his family, we understand that he knew the identity of the person who was conspiring against him; only betrayal could convince him to leave the family he loved beyond words, which can be easily seen from the numerous frescoes he commissioned, in which he is depicted with his wife and children. A few days after Akhenaten’s escape, Smenkhkare, the only remaining king of Egypt, was killed on the queen’s order. With no more rivals, Nefertiti proclaimed herself the ruler of Egypt in 1337 BC, taking the throne name of her predecessor, Ankhkheperure, and abandoning her birth name, Nefertiti, keeping only the one adopted 12 years earlier, Neferneferuaten. It seems that she reached an agreement with the priests of Amun, as noted by British Egyptologist Carl Nicholas Reeves, studying scribe Pawah’s inscriptions in Pairi’s tomb. This could be true, considering that she was buried in the Valley of the Kings near Thebes, Amun’s religious center. The queen died two years later and the cause of her death is unknown. She was between 40 and 50 years old, so she could not have died of old age. Therefore, she was either struck by an illness or killed.
Tutankhaten Hekaiunushema succeeded to the throne and adopted the throne name Nebkheperure. Becoming king at just nine years old, the boy married one of his half-sisters, Ankhesenpaaten. Among the young king’s advisors there were Ay, who became vizier, and Horemheb, the leader of the army. To restore order in the country, Tutankhaten repealed his father’s monotheistic law, decreeing religious freedom in his third year of reign and reopening the ancient gods’ temples. To appease the Theban priests, he offered them the privileges confiscated by his father, named Amun the supreme god in favor of Aten, moved the capital of Egypt back to Thebes, abandoning the city of Akhetaten, and rebuilt several buildings in Thebes, where he also erected a temple for Amun. Moreover, he changed his personal name to Tutankhamun („Living Image of Amun”) and that of his wife to Ankhesenamun („Living for Amun”). He tried to restore diplomatic relations with neighboring kingdoms and fought against Nubians and a group of Asiatics. It seemed that the new king had restored order in his country, but after a nine years reign, Tutankhamun met his end. After examining his mummy, researchers concluded that the king died from a fracture of his left foot bone, which likely became infected, combined with malaria that drastically weakened his immune system.
The Thutmosid dynasty came to an end with Tutankhamun’s death, who had no heirs. To remain queen, his widow, Ankhesenamun, wanted to marry one of Hittite king Suppiluliuma’s sons, but the prince was killed before reaching Egypt. Under these circumstances, Ankhesenamun married vizier Ay, who became king and adopted the throne name Kheperkheperure-Irimaat. It is not known what happened to Ankhesenamun, but at some point she disappeared from history and Tey, Ay’s first wife, became the Great Queen of Egypt. Ay died after only four years and the throne was usurped by general Horemheb, although it should have belonged to Nakhtmin, Ay and Tey’s son. To gain the right to rule, the general married Mutnedjmet, Nefertiti’s sister. The new king, who adopted the throne name Djeserkheperure Setepenre, took drastic measures against the kings of Akhetaten / Amarna, ordering the erasure of their names from all inscriptions. Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Nefertiti and Tutankhamun were condemned to oblivion and Horemheb’s law even prohibited mentioning their names. Akhenaten, the only survivor among the censored kings, was called Mose („Heir”), both to avoid breaking the law that prohibited mentioning his name and to suggest that he was the rightful heir to the throne. One of the manuscripts of the Essenes, discovered at Qumran, even prohibits the utterance of the names of Moses and Yahweh. To ensure that the old belief was restored, Horemheb appointed Paramessu, high priest of Amun, as vizier and gave him the east of the Nile Delta. Most likely, this was to deprive Akhenaten of the support offered by the city of Tjaru’s inhabitants, the Israelites of Yuya’s tribe. Paramessu and his son, Seti Merenptah, subjected the Israelites in the Delta to hard labor, forcing them to build the cities of Pithom and Pi-Ramesses. Journalist Ahmed Osman has demonstrated that Pi-Ramesses was Tjaru / Zarw, the city previously named Avaris, which was given by Amenhotep III to the Israelites. After becoming pharaoh, Paramessu moved his residence from Memphis to his new city, rebuilt by the Israelites, which he renamed Pi-Ramesses. The Israelites did not work alone in rebuilding Ramesses’ city, as criminals from all over Egypt were exiled to Tjaru. In his Great Edict, Horemheb even threatened punishment such as mutilation and exile to Tjaru for various crimes. The Egyptian priest Manetho wrote that lepers and other „unclean” people were banished to Avaris and forced to work in the stone quarries east of the Nile. Horemheb died after 27 years of reign, leaving the throne to his vizier, Paramessu, the founder of the 19th Dynasty, who changed his name to Ramesses and adopted the throne name Menpehtyre. Due to his advanced age, Ramesses I ruled Egypt for less than two years, and his son, Seti I, became the next king.
According to the Bible, Moses / Akhenaten spent 40 years in Sinai, where he married Zipporah, daughter of Reuel or Jethro, a priest from Midian who was a reliable ally of the exiled pharaoh, considering that Reuel was one of the advisers of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten’s father, according to the Talmud. He was the one who tried to persuade the pharaoh to let the Israelites leave for Canaan, which is why he was exiled. Researchers believe that Yahweh was worshiped in Midian and the Israelites adopted him following Moses’ association with his father-in-law. Therefore, it is possible that Moses / Akhenaten and his father-in-law, who was a priest, exchanged religious ideas. Moses thus became acquainted with Yahweh’s cult and Reuel with Aten’s. And it seems that each influenced the other. Reuel is considered the spiritual founder and prophet of the Druze sect (even the ancestor of all Druze), an Abrahamic monotheistic cult based on the teachings of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hamza ibn ‘Ali ibn Ahmad, Abu ‘Ali Mansur al-Hakim bi-Amr-Allah and… Akhenaten. And Moses had the chance to meet his father-in-law’s god. At least that’s what the Bible claims.
In the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament, while tending Reuel’s sheep on Mount Horeb, Moses met Yahweh, who informed him that he would soon have to return to Egypt to free the Israelites. If in verse 2 of chapter 3 it is written that „the angel of Yahweh appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush„, in verse 4 Yahweh himself spoke to him from the flame. We can’t really understand how an angel was in the fire and the god was in the angel, but we can assume that the „angel” was a means of transportation for Yahweh, with the „flames” being the shuttle’s lights. The vehicle most likely emitted radiation, as Moses was not allowed to approach until he had taken off his shoes. Grounding seems to be the real reason for this gesture, not sacrilege of treading on any holy ground. Moses did not seem too thrilled with the mission he was entrusted with and even tried to avoid it, reasoning that he couldn’t speak very well. The god suggested that Moses take his brother Aaron with him, who could speak to the Israelites. Although the Bible and Talmud claim that Moses was „heavy of tongue„, it is hard to imagine that this was the real reason why he could not make himself understood by the Israelites. An „almighty” god like Yahweh could easily have healed any speech defect, instead of bothering another person for this mission. Moreover, if Moses had a speech defect, Aaron would not have been able to understand him either, just like the rest of the Israelites. Moses’ „heavy of tongue” is a disguise for the fact that he did not know the language of the Israelites. Being an Egyptian, even though he had Israelite blood, it is natural that he only spoke Egyptian. Therefore, he was afraid that he would not be able to make himself understood by the Israelites, needing his „brother” to speak for him. Moses spoke to Aaron in Egyptian and he translated to the Israelites in Hebrew. As we have already seen, Aaron, son of Ay and Tey, was raised with the princes Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Therefore, he received the same education as them, also learning the Egyptian language. When the princes grew up, they moved to the royal palace in Thebes, while Aaron stayed in Tjaru with the Israelites.
To convince pharaoh Ramesses I to let the Israelite people leave, Yahweh taught Moses some tricks. He made his shepherd staff turn into a snake, covered his hand with leprosy and, if these illusions were not going to impress the audience, he also taught him how to turn the Nile water into blood. In addition, he urged them that when the Israelites would leave Egypt, they should all steal gold, silver and expensive clothes from the Egyptians. It is difficult to understand why the god urged the Israelites to steal, even though later he will give them the commandment „Thou shalt not steal!„, or why he entrusted Moses with a mission but put obstacles in his way: „And Yahweh said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go” (Exodus 4:21). These contradictions make us believe that Yahweh either sought reasons to punish Egypt, or he was not entirely sane, or there was something else at play.
In 1295 BC, after Horemheb’s death, power was taken over by Ramesses I, the founder of the 19th Dynasty. Learning of the death of the one who tried to erase the Akhetaten kings from history and even forbade their names to be mentioned, Akhenaten returned to Egypt to reclaim the throne. However, the Old Testament claims that the reason for his return was the mission entrusted to him by Yahweh. Moses took his shepherd staff, which turned into a serpent, he put his wife and children on donkeys and they set out for Egypt. Along the way, a bizarre thing happened, according to the Book of Exodus: „And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that Yahweh met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision” (4:24-26). The official version of the Bible interpreters is that Yahweh was angry with his prophet because he did not circumcise his sons, so he decided to kill him. However, it is hard to believe that a god would be willing to let the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt be jeopardized over a foreskin and kill Moses after entrusting him with a crucial mission. If we accept the idea that Yahweh’s anger arose because Moses did not circumcise his sons, why did he stop after the foreskin of the eldest son was cut off? What about the second one? A logical conclusion would be that Moses wanted to circumcise his eldest son, according to the custom of the Egyptians, but his wife disagreed with such an inhumane practice. Wanting desperately to achieve his goal, he lied to his wife that Yahweh would kill them all. Zipporah circumcised the boy and, after realizing that she had been deceived, she called Moses a „bloody husband„.
After Moses met Aaron in Egypt, they both went before the Sanhedrin, the governing council of the Israelites made up of 71 members. Aaron spoke to them while Moses showed them the magic tricks he learned from Yahweh, which impressed the Israelites. In reality, Moses did not use illusions, but revealed his identity before the Sanhedrin. The shepherd staff, transformed into a snake, actually represents the shepherd staff with a serpent head, a symbol of the pharaoh’s authority. The Talmud confirms that it was not an ordinary staff, but a royal scepter: „The staff that Moses used had the appearance and was engraved in the form of a scepter„. Moses was not trying to convince the Israelites through magic tricks that he was a messenger of a god, but showed them the royal scepter, thus proving that he was Akhenaten, the true pharaoh of Egypt. The Israelites recognized him and decided to follow him. The same „magic tricks” were used before Ramesses I. In addition to the scepter, Moses showed how his hand turns white and then returns to normal, which seems to be another magic trick. However, the truth is different: during the festivals of the Egyptian kings, rituals were performed that included both the staff-snake and the white-hand rituals. Such a ritual is engraved in the tomb of Kheruef (one of the queen Tiye’s attendants, Akhenaten’s mother). In front of Amenhotep III and the queen, Kheruef, followed by eight officials, puts his right hand across his chest and his left hand on his left shoulder, while holding his right forearm with his left hand. One of the officials holds a stack of clothes in his right hand and a curved scepter with a serpent head in his left hand. Therefore, since during these festivals the hand and staff-snake rituals were performed, we understand what Moses was doing before the Sanhedrin and the pharaoh: he was trying to prove that he was truly Akhenaten. In front of Ramesses I he most likely used this demonstration to request the throne. Although everyone present recognized his identity and therefore his right to the throne, the pharaoh did not give up his supreme position, having the support of the army (his father, vizier Seti or Suti, was also the commander of the army). So Akhenaten was forced to give up his dream of ruling Egypt again, content to ask to be allowed to leave the country with his Egyptian followers and his Israelite relatives. This was not accepted by Ramesses and ten plagues followed. After more than a year of negotiations, the pharaoh allowed the mixed group of Moses’ Egyptian and Israelites followers to leave Egypt. Then he changed his mind and pursued them in Sinai, where he lost his life in 1293 BC. Seti I, Ramesses I’s son, succeeded to the throne and avenged his father. According to Jewish folklore, the Israelites wandered for 40 years in the Sinai Peninsula, during which time Moses performed some „miracles” and had meetings with Yahweh, who dictated a set of laws to him, similar to Marduk to Hammurabi almost five centuries earlier. Assuming that the meetings with the god actually took place, although the Ten Commandments are copied from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which Moses / Akhenaten most likely had access to during his time as a priest in Heliopolis. In the Sinai Peninsula, Akhenaten’s group, made up of Israelites and Egyptian criminals, joined forces with the Midianite Bedouins tribes, as concluded by both Sigmund Freud and Ahmed Osman. The Old Testament states that Yahweh became angry with his prophet and killed him after 40 years of wandering through the desert, not allowing him to enter Canaan, with Joshua becoming the new leader of the Israelites. Initially named Hosea, Joshua was Moses’ assistant and the son of Josephite Nun (who bears the name of the primordial cosmic ocean in Egyptian mythology) from the tribe of Ephraim. Unfortunately for Bible fans, there is no evidence of a massive exodus from Egypt to Canaan in the 13th century BC. If the Israelite men were 600,000, as the Old Testament claims, the total number of the group would have reached two to three million, which is impossible, considering that in the 2nd millennium the total population of Egypt was 3-4 million inhabitants. Even if their number was smaller, within acceptable limits, there is no archaeological or Egyptian chronicle evidence to support the biblical story. For example, after 15 years of research, Israeli archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni concluded that Joshua’s Israelites did not conquer any city in Canaan, because those cities mentioned in the Bible no longer existed. Also, historian Manfred Claus believed that the takeover of Canaan by military means was a made up story. Israeli archaeologist Finkenstein found that more than 90% of researchers have agreed that there was no exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, and therefore no conquest of Canaan. The city of Jericho was not destroyed by Joshua, but long before, in 1549 BC. Similarly, the city of Ai, whose name means „heap of ruins”, was not destroyed by Joshua. The only such migration is that of the Hyksos, around 1550 BC. If Jericho was destroyed in 1549 BC, it means that the Hyksos obtained the military victories later attributed to Joshua’s group. Therefore, biblical writers attributed the exodus of the Hyksos to the small group of Moses / Akhenaten, made up of a few hundred Egyptians, Israelites and Midianite Bedouins.
If the Exodus did not occur, Moses’ group did not wander for 40 years in the desert. 40 was the number attributed to god Enki and Sinai was his territory. The Akkadians named the moon-god Sin or Su’en, and Sinai means „my Sin”. In the biblical Book of Numbers „Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived” (21:9). That bronze serpent likely served as a request to the god Enki, known as „The Great Serpent„, for permission to cross his territory. Alternatively, by affiliating with that god, the Israelites may have been seeking alliances with local Bedouin tribes. On Mount Nebo in Jordan, where Moses is believed to have died, there is currently a monument depicting a snake coiled around a „T”, in the shape of the Egyptian ankh (the symbol of eternal life). Nebo is god Nabu’s biblical name, Marduk’s son and Enki’s grandson. In the Book of Joshua it is specified that „Joshua the son of Nun called the priests, and said unto them, Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of Yahweh” (6:6), the ram being also a symbol of Enki. The Ark of the Covenant, in which Moses placed the Ten Commandments, seems to be a copy of the Ark of Sin (Enki); the Babylonian model of the Ark can be seen in its decoration with cherubs (sphinxes), which in Mesopotamia and Egypt were guardians of the secrets of the gods. This god’s number appears several times in the Exodus’ story: the Israelites spent 40 years in the desert, Israeli spies explored Canaan for 40 days, Moses fled Egypt at the age of 40, returned after 40 years to take his people, died after another 40 and spent three periods of 40 days and 40 nights on Mount Sinai. The biblical writers also hid the Babylonian name of the god, Ea, in chapter 3 of the Book of Exodus. When Moses received the mission of liberating the Israelites, he wanted to know the identity of the god who was speaking to him. „And Moses said unto Yahweh, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The god of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And Yahweh said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you” (3:13-14). The god’s response not only confused poor Moses, but would have had the same effect on the Israelites to whom he was sent, all because of an incorrect translation. In Hebrew, the god’s response was „Ehyeh asher ehyeh„. „Asher” means „happy, blessed” and „ehyeh” has been interpreted as „I am”. Therefore, a complete translation would be „I am the happy / blessed one I am”, which still makes no sense. However, upon closer examination, it is evident that the god used the word „ehyeh” as a proper noun, declining his identity to be recognized by Moses and the Israelites: „I am the blessed Ehyeh (…) Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Ehyeh hath sent me unto you„. The Hebrew „ehyeh” is pronounced identically to the Akkadian „Ea„, the name of one of the great gods of Babylon, none other than the Sumerian Enki. The god would not have told Moses an ambiguous sentence, considering that he entrusted him with the mission of convincing the Israelites that he was sent by their god to liberate them. Therefore, the god’s correct response is: „I am the blessed Ea (…) Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Ea hath sent me unto you„. Enki could not have been Moses’ / Akhenaten’s god, considering that he had been dead for over 750 years. Additionally, he was known in Egypt as Amun, the great enemy of Akhenaten and his god. Therefore, the name Ea in the form of Ehyeh is the invention of the biblical editors who included the Sumerian number of Enki several times in the story of Exodus. The use of an Akkadian name proves that the scriptures of the Jews were made after their return from the Babylonian exile. This wordplay, by which the Akkadian „Ea” was replaced by the Hebrew „ehyeh„, is not an uncommon one; the Jews often encode information in their religious writings.
If Moses was indeed Akhenaten, then he could only have listened to Aten’s orders. To the surprise of some, traces of Atenism can be found in the biblical god’s cult. Akhenaten did not only ban polytheism but also idolatry, just like Moses. His god had no physical form, just like Aten, even though he had been seen by many prophets until then. As noted by the famous Egyptologist Arthur Weigall, Akhenaten did not allow Egyptians to make any carved image of Aten because the true god had no form; for this reason, he changed Aten’s image to a sun whose rays had hands at their ends. This is reminiscent of the second of the Ten Commandments dictated by Yahweh to Moses: „Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image„. Adonai, one of the biblical god’s names, comes from Aton-ai („my Aten”), because the Hebrew letter „d” is a transliteration of the Egyptian letter „t„. Aten’s biggest rival was Amun. In the Middle Ages, Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides said that Moses’ laws were given to oppose pagan laws; for example, the sacrifice of the Passover lamb is polemically directed at Amun, who was symbolized by the ram. In other words, the Israelites symbolically sacrificed Aten’s rival. Latin historian Tacitus, who had the same idea, wrote that Moses gave the Jews rituals that were opposite to those of other mortals: „They sacrifice the ram as if to insult Amun and the bull because the Egyptians glorify Apis„. In the Bible, Moses was angry with the Israelites who worshiped a calf made by Aaron from melted jewelry. The Quran prefers exaggerations, stating that the Jews „adopted a calf made from their ornaments – a body which lowed” (7:146). As one of Amun’s epithets was „Kamutef„, meaning „Bull of his Mother”, we understand who was the deity that drove Aten’s prophet insane.
I have explained the „miracles” of Moses, the so-called transformation of the staff into a snake and the white hand. What about the rest of the biblical story, assuming it is true? Was it divine miracles or magic? Medieval Europe considered the Jews to be a people of magicians. This passion of theirs is abundant in the Bible where, for example, vizier Joseph used a silver cup for divination (Genesis 44), King Saul consulted a witch from Endor for a séance (1 Samuel 28:7), King Jehu mentioned „the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts” (2 Kings 9:22), King Manasseh „used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards” (2 Kings 21:6), in the Book of Isaiah, the house of Jacob „are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers” (2:6), Prophet Jeremiah tells the Jews not to listen „to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers” (Jeremiah 27:9), Prophet Nahum speaks of a wellfavoured harlot, „the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts” (Nahum 3:4), The Acts of the Apostles mention the sorcerers Simon of Samaria, Bar-Jesus and Elimas of Paphos; sorcery is also spoken of in other biblical books, such as Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and the Book of Zechariah. One of the most important traditions of the Jews is the occult doctrine of Kabbalah, a set of esoteric teachings and magical rituals. The Sefer Raziel HaMalakh manuscript from the 13th century states that the angel Raziel („God of Secrets”) taught Kabbalah to Adam, and those teachings were passed down from generation to generation; Noah used Kabbalah to build his ark and Solomon to summon demons whom he forced to build the Temple of Yahweh. Another Jewish tradition claims that Kabbalistic teachings are an integral part of the Torah, which Yahweh dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai. Magic was one of the most important aspects of ancient religions, including Egyptian religion. As a priest of Ra in Heliopolis and of Aten in Akhetaten / Amarna, Akhenaten used magic. The Israelites may not have learned it from him, but rather may have known it since the arrival of the first Jacobites in Egypt. As a vizier, the second man in the state, Joseph had access to all the secrets of the Egyptians, including the magical rituals of the priests, and he married the daughter of the high priest of Heliopolis. Secrets that he probably also shared with his family. Egyptian mysticism was combined with Akkadian mysticism, shared from father to son by Abraham (whose royal family had many high priests), thus giving rise to Kabbalah. The experiments of Czechoslovakian parapsychologist Mylan Ryzl prove that the Israelites had occult knowledge before leaving Egypt with Akhenaten. On 9th February 1949, under hypnosis, Milena claimed that a sorcerer had taught Aaron hypnosis. Aaron, in turn, taught Moses and together they hypnotized the Pharaoh. If this really happened, we can assume that the art of hypnosis is part of Kabbalah, to which Aaron, like the other Israeli initiates, had access.
Was Moses / Akhenaten really in contact with Yahweh? Theoretically it is possible, as Yahweh / Marduk was the ruler of the Earth at that time. But it is also possible that the god existed only in Moses’ mind, through telepathic suggestion or hypnosis. Or perhaps it was the astral projection of an initiate in the secrets of Kabbalah. It is strange that Yahweh makes a lot of mistakes that cannot be attributed to a superior entity, but only to a human. It is also bizarre that when Moses asked to see his face, Yahweh refused, stating that no one could look upon his face without dying, although the Old Testament claims that many prophets looked upon him and lived long afterwards: Adam, Noah, Enoch, Abraham, Jacob and later Ezekiel, David and Solomon. Why was Moses the only one not allowed to look at the god’s face? The only logical explanation is that if Moses saw the face of the one speaking to him, he would have recognized him. He had to believe that he was truly speaking with his god and not with the astral projection of someone he knew. Who could that be? And why did Yahweh urge the Israelites to steal gold, silver and expensive clothes from the Egyptians before leaving for Canaan, only to later command them „thou shalt not steal„? The only ones who would have gained from the theft were the Israelites, which means they motivated their actions through a command from their god. Considering the occult power conferred by Kabbalistic teachings, it is possible that the Israelites used their former king to escape slavery. Moses’ meeting with Yahweh and the mission entrusted to him could have been just a telepathic suggestion induced to him by Kabbalistic practitioners to make him return to Egypt. If Akhenaten had regained his throne, the Israelites would have enjoyed the same benefits as during his reign. Using his religious fanaticism, it would not have been difficult to convince him that a god (possibly even Aten, his god) enthrusted him an important mission. And when the Israelites realized that Akhenaten had no chance of regaining his throne, and therefore they could not return to the previous good life, they decided to leave. They manipulated him through the same method, suggesting that the god had asked him to lead the Israelites to Canaan. They needed him because the Israelites and the Egyptian followers of Aten would not have followed just any man, only their former king. In addition, Ramesses I would not have allowed them to leave, so they needed someone influential to convince him. The fact that Moses was manipulated from the shadows is also obvious from his illogical actions mentioned in the Old Testament. After giving the Israelites the Ten Commandments, including „Thou shalt not kill„, he divided them into two groups and asked them to kill each other. Although he was angry with them for making a golden calf and gave them the commandment „Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image„, later he asked them to make a bronze serpent, to carry it before them and to ask for its help if they were bitten by snakes. Since the serpent symbolized an evil deity in both Israeli and Egyptian beliefs, Moses’ gesture is almost shocking. It is also curious that Yahweh, the god with whom Moses is supposed to have communicated quite often, is not bothered by the bronze serpent. This strengthens our belief that the „god” giving him orders was actually one of the Israeli Kabbalists.
If Moses was truly manipulated, it means he wasn’t the true leader of the group that left Egypt. In 1949, during hypnosis, Milena claimed that at the first appearance before the Pharaoh, Moses was hypnotized by Aaron. Aaron was also the one who hypnotized Ramesses I. Moreover, we know from the Bible that Aaron, not Moses, spoke to both the Israeli Sanhedrin and the Pharaoh. Before the royal court, he threw his staff, which turned into a snake. Aaron also struck the waters of the Nile with his staff, turning it into blood, and he stretched out his hand over the waters, from which frogs emerged, invading Egypt. He struck the ground with his staff, causing the appearance of gnats. The next two plagues upon Egypt (the invasion of flies and the death of livestock), as well as the final one (the death of Egyptian firstborns), are attributed to Yahweh. Only four of the ten plagues were brought about by Moses (the plague of pestilence, the hail, the invasion of locusts and the three days of darkness), and each time Aaron accompanied him. If the death of the livestock and Egyptian firstborns can be attributed to the Israelites and the subsequent plagues were brought about either by Aaron or by Moses under Aaron’s supervision, one could conclude that no divine punishment took place. Those magic numbers were the work of a Kabbalah initiate: Aaron, who secretly performed all those „miracles,” leaving Akhenaten with the impression that he was accomplishing them with the powers given by his god. More than likely Aaron was the one who spoke to Moses as a god and was careful not to show his face to avoid being recognized. Aaron was the true leader of the group that left Egypt, with Moses / Akhenaten being just a puppet in his hands. Only in this way can we understand Yahweh’s statement, a god who did not accept competition and who claimed to be recognized as the only god: „And Yahweh said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet” (Exodus 7:1). The philosopher Philo of Alexandria reinforced the biblical idea, noting that Moses was not only called a „king„, but also a „god„. This is confirmed by Egyptologists, with Akhenaten being depicted in the early years of his reign as Osiris, one of the great gods of Egypt.
How did Aaron become the shadow leader of the Israelites? He wasn’t just anyone, but Prince Nakhtmin, son of Pharaoh Ay and Queen Tey, who grew up with Akhenaten and Nefertiti. During Tutankhamun’s reign he was the supreme general of the army, the king’s scribe and one of his most prominent advisers. After his father’s coronation, Nakhtmin / Aaron became a prince and the rightful heir to the throne. However, when Ay died, General Horemheb took over the leadership by marrying Mutnedjmet, Nefertiti’s sister, and having the army on his side. It seems he was entitled to do so because Tutankhamun had named him as his successor, but because he was in Asia when the pharaoh died, Ay seized the opportunity and usurped the throne by marrying Queen Ankhesenamun. When Horemheb ascended to the throne, Nakhtmin was forced to hide among the Israelites in the Nile Delta in case the new pharaoh decided to eliminate his possible rivals. This was a wise move as Horemheb’s hatred towards the royal family from Yuya’s lineage was very real, given his order to erase all mentions of them. Being the rightful heir to the throne of Egypt, Prince Nakhtmin became the shadow ruler of the Israelites (remaining hidden to avoid being discovered by Horemheb). Perhaps to punish Nakhtmin, Vizier Ramesses subjected the Israelites to hard labor, forcing them to build two cities, most likely at Horemheb’s command. After his enemy, Horemheb, died, Prince Nakhtmin believed he had a chance to get the throne. However, not being strong enough to confront the new pharaoh, Ramesses I, who had the army on his side, Aaron / Nakhtmin brought Akhenaten back to Egypt. If Akhenaten had succeeded in regaining the throne, with no male heirs, Nakhtmin would have become his successor. He wouldn’t have had to wait long to gain power; Akhenaten was old and would have been much easier to eliminate than Ramesses, who not only had the army on his side, but also a legal heir, Seti. However, things did not go according to plan and Aaron / Nakhtmin and the Sanhedrin decided it was no longer safe for them to remain in Egypt, so they went to Canaan with the other Israelite tribes. They used Moses / Akhenaten to obtain Ramesses’ permission and to lead their group out of Egypt, closely monitored by Prince Aaron. And when they no longer needed the former pharaoh, they eliminated him.
The Old Testament states that Pharaoh Ramesses I allowed Moses to take his group and leave Egypt, but later changed his mind and pursued them in the Sinai. Moses parted the waters of the sea for his group to cross and the Egyptians followed them. Then „Yahweh looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, And took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily: so that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel; for Yahweh fighteth for them against the Egyptians” (Exodus 14:24-25). But they didn’t get a chance to flee; the god asked Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea, causing the waters to drown the Egyptians „and Yahweh overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea” (14:27). The Bible says that the Pharaoh himself perished then. Ramesses I’s reign was very short, less than two years, which means that it’s possible he lost his life in 1293 BC while pursuing Akhenaten’s group. Perhaps even in the manner described in the Bible. Amenhotep III, Akhenaten’s father, attempted to connect the Nile to the Red Sea with a canal that he was unable to finish due to the significant difference in elevation between the sea and the ground of the Nile Delta. The problem was solved only in the 3rd century BC by Ptolemy Philadelphus’ engineers. Specifically, the canal consisted of two parts: the larger one was supposed to connect the Nile to the Great Bitter Lake and the smaller one was supposed to connect the lake to the Red Sea. Starting from Tjaru to the Red Sea, Akhenaten’s group couldn’t avoid crossing that unfinished canal. It’s possible that in the small portion between the lake and the sea they caused a fissure that flooded the canal while the Egyptians were crossing it. Therefore, the biblical account could have an explanation that doesn’t involve the miraculous intervention of any deity.
The next pharaoh was Seti I, Ramesses I’s son, who, as soon as he ascended to the throne, continued the pursuit of Moses’ followers to avenge his father. We know from Egyptian chronicles that he conducted campaigns against the Shasu people (the name given by the Egyptians to Akhenaten’s group), conquering the city of Pi-Kanan in Gaza, then in the northern Canaan, against the Hittites of Northern Syria and the Libyans. If indeed a god had drowned a large part of the Egyptian army, undoubtedly the new pharaoh would not have dared to pursue the group protected by that deity, which means that the biblical story is just a myth. Egyptian journalist Ahmed Osman believes that Seti I killed Akhenaten in the Sinai Peninsula. In the Old Testament the prophet is killed by Yahweh, who became angry with him for a foolish reason. In the Book of Numbers, the god commanded Moses: „Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water” (20:8). Instead of speaking to a rock, the leader of the Israelites preferred to strike it: „And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also” (20:11). This infuriated Yahweh, who decided to kill the two before they could enter Canaan: „Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them” (20:12). On Mount Nebo, „Moses the servant of Yahweh died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of Yahweh” (Deuteronomy 34:5). Ahmed Osman found a logical explanation for this biblical story, considering that Moses / Akhenaten used his royal scepter to request water from a fortress on the road between Tjaru and Gaza; Seti I was alerted, caught up with the former pharaoh and killed him on Mount Nebo. The Talmud somewhat confirms this hypothesis by stating that before his death, Moses was attacked by Samael, the angel of death; as the angel was afraid of the prophet, Yahweh descended to Earth, accompanied by the angels Michael, Gabriel and Zagziel, to carry out the mission. The General Epistle of Jude in the New Testament says that archangel Michael argued with Satan over Moses’ body, although we cannot understand what these two entities could do with a dead body. Osman’s hypothesis is reinforced by an Egyptian myth in which god Osiris was killed by his brother, Seth; Akhenaten was depicted in statues as Osiris, considering himself the god’s reincarnation, and Seti I bears Seth’s name. This could mean that the Egyptian myth was created after the story of Akhenaten and Seti. But, as usual, the truth is different.
In 1922, German theologian Ernst Sellin found in prophet Hosea’s biblical book traces of an old tradition suggesting that Moses met a violent end, caused by a rebellion of his stubborn and refractory people. This tradition is repeated by most subsequent prophets and even became the basis for all later messianic expectations. At the end of the Babylonian exile, the Jewish people held out hope that the one killed in such an infamous way would return from the dead and lead their repentant people into the kingdom of eternal happiness. Sigmund Freud also believed that Moses was killed by his people who rebelled against the new religion and preferred to return to the golden calf. These rebellions against his authority were repressed by bloody punishments, as seen in the Old Testament, which led to the growing discontent of the people. A few years after Moses’ killing, the Israelites regretted their actions and invented the concept of Mashiah (the savior or liberator of a group of people, Messiah in English) in the hope of Moses’ return as the savior of the Israelites. This guilt has been passed down from generation to generation, drawing Jews towards religion. Mashiah comes from the name Mosheh, which is the transliteration of the Egyptian Mose (sometimes written as Messes, as in Pharaoh Ramesses’ case); like Moses, the Jewish Mashiah is a savior or liberator of the people. Freud also said that the guilt felt by the Jews transformed Moses in their conception from a king to a lesser divinity, whose behavioral traits were transferred to Yahweh. In the early years of his reign, Akhenaten was even represented as god Osiris. Philo of Alexandria argued that Moses was not only called „king„, but also „god„, while in the Old Testament Yahweh said: „See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh” (Exodus 7:1). According to historian Flavius Josephus, the Essenes believed that defaming Moses’ name was as serious as defaming the divine name; his story is confirmed by one of the Qumran manuscripts, which prohibits the utterance of Moses’ and Yahweh’s names. Christians adopted the Jewish idea of a divine Mashiah, written in Greek as Khristos (Christ in English), and transferred it to Jesus. In reality, the Messiah awaited by the Jews is not a deity, but Moses / Akhenaten, the pharaoh whom their ancestors killed. Here are some biblical passages where the tradition of Moses’ killing by the Israelites is hidden, according to Sellin and Freud: „The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred. The watchman of Ephraim was with Yahweh: but the prophet is a snare of a fowler in all his ways, and hatred in the house of his god. They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah: therefore he will remember their iniquity, he will visit their sins” (Hosea 9:7-9); „In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction: your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion” (Jeremiah 2:30); „For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces. Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened” (Zechariah 11:16-17); „Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones” (Zechariah 13:7); „He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of Yahweh, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Yahweh hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him; he hath put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:3-10).
If Moses / Akhenaten was indeed killed by the Israelites, their reason cannot be hard to guess. The leaders of the Israelites, members of the Sanhedrin, cared little for the former pharaoh or his religion, but used him first to try to regain their privileges from previous reigns, and then to be allowed to leave Egypt. When Seti I’s army caught up with them, the leaders of the Israelites killed Akhenaten hoping that the pharaoh would be satisfied and will leave them alone. They told the people that Yahweh was the one who had killed him, as seen in Hebrew legends, but the truth eventually came to light. This explains the guilt that Freud spoke of, passed down from generation to generation, the hope of the Jews that he will return and the respect they still have for him, considering him the greatest prophet who ever lived. To be sure, the elders of the Sanhedrin also killed Prince Nakhtmin, called Aaron in the Bible, former pharaoh Ay’s son, and blamed it on Yahweh. As Moses’ assistant became the leader of the Israelites after his death, Joshua from the Josephite tribe of Ephraim, it is possible that he was also part of the plot; perhaps even Joshua delivered the final blow to the former pharaoh on Mount Nebo. Seti I did not seem too pleased with the killing of his rivals to the throne, considering he fought the Shasu people, as recorded by Egyptian chronicles. After dispersing the former followers of Akhenaten, he headed towards Canaan, where he collected tribute from some cities and captured others with little effort, and from there towards Lebanon. We do not know what happened to the former followers of Akhenaten, who were dispersed by the Egyptians. They certainly did not go to Canaan, because their attackers went there. It seems that they continued to stay in the desert because, after 20 years, Ramesses II, Seti I’s son, recorded a victory against the Shasu people. Then, the pharaoh divided his army into two. The part led by him attacked Jerusalem and Jericho, while the other, commanded by his son, Amun-her-khepeshef, chased the Shasu to the Dead Sea and captured Edom, then Moab; after the two armies reunited, they headed towards Syria. This is why the Old Testament considers that Moses’ Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years: they avoided entering Canaan for fear of the Egyptians, preferring to hide in the Sinai Peninsula and in Edom. After a while, probably in small groups, the Jacobites mixed with Egyptians and Midianites arrived in the land promised by Yahweh to their ancestors, where they mixed with the rest of the Israelite tribes.
From these events it appears that Moses / Akhenaten was the victim of manipulation and betrayal by the Jacobites returned in Egypt, as well as by those close to him. But was there also a divine influence in his story? Akhenaten belonged to the 18th Dynasty, during which a series of divine interventions were recorded. The founder of the dynasty was Ahmose I (whose name means „Yah’s heir”), who around 1550 BC banished the Hyksos out of Egypt. The pharaoh recorded that he achieved the surprising victory only with Amun’s help, declaring him the national god for this reason. He was followed to the throne by Amenhotep I („Amun is satisfied”), Thutmose I and Thutmose II („Thoth’s heir”), his son, grandson and great-grandson. The latter’s sister and wife, Hatshepsut, then obtained the throne, which she shared with her stepson, Thutmose III, Thutmose II’s son. The queen claimed that her true father was not Thutmose I, but the god Amun, who assumed the king’s guise when he impreganted her mother. He is also the one who entrusted his daughter with the position of monarch. After her death, Thutmose III remained the sole ruler of the country. After conquering Phoenicia, Canaan and Syria, he made Egypt a global superpower. The pharaoh claimed that god Amun had asked him to expand Egypt’s borders by conquering the Middle East, and that in the battle of Megiddo, against a coalition of Canaanite kings, the same god taught him to launch a daring frontal attack against the enemies. He was respected by the Jews as well, with the editors of the Bible attributing his deeds to the mythical king David. An inscription at Karnak describes the ceremony of Thutmose III’s selection as king, in Amun’s temple in Thebes: he disappeared into the sky to be named by Amun-Ra, who gave him a snake-shaped diadem, and then stood with the gods of the Council in Amun-Ra’s house. We do not know how much truth there is in the stories about the king’s meetings with the gods, but in a papyrus translated by Prince Boris de Rachewiltz, which was part of The Annals of Thutmose III, UFOs are mentioned: „In the 22nd year, in the third month of winter, at six o’clock in the day, the scribes of the House of Life saw a circle of fire coming from the sky… it had no head. From its mouth came an unpleasant breath. Its body was one rod (i.e. approximately five meters) long and one rod wide, and it was noiseless. And the hearts of the scribes were horrified and frightened, and they threw themselves on the ground… They told the Pharaoh. His Majesty ordered… investigated thoroughly… and meditated on what had happened, which is recorded in the papyri of the House of Life. A few days after it passed, it happened that these objects came from the sky more numerous than ever. They shone more than the brightness of the Sun and spread to the edges of the four pillars of the sky. The stationing in the sky of these circles of fire was dominant. The Pharaoh’s army watched with him, who was in their midst. It was after dinner. Immediately afterwards, these circles of fire rose high in the sky, towards the south. Fish and winged or bird animals fell to the ground from the sky. A wonder that has never been heard of since the founding of this country! And the Pharaoh ordered incense to be brought, to make peace on Earth… And for what happened, the Pharaoh ordered it to be written in the annals of the House of Life… so that it would be remembered forever„. The next pharaohs of Egypt were Thutmose III’s son and grandson, Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV. On a stela placed between the Sphinx’s front paws it is written that when he was a young prince, Thutmose IV dreamt of the god Harmakhis-Khopri-Tumu, who promised to make him pharaoh if he removed the sand from the Sphinx. It seems that the god kept his word, as Thutmose became pharaoh, even though he was not the rightful heir to the throne. Also, a text inscribed on the underside of a scarab beetle mentions the presence of god Aten at the head of the pharaoh’s army during a battle. The next king of Egypt was Amenhotep III. In a temple in Luxor, where his miraculous birth is recorded, it is said that his true father was god Amun, who assumed Thutmose IV’s guise when he impregnated his mother, an identical story to that of Queen Hatshepsut. Amenhotep III married Tiye, Israelite Yuya’s daughter, organized the Egyptian empire into 12 administrative sections, according to the number of Israelite tribes, and gave the Jacobites of Egypt the eastern Nile Delta. Which was appreciated by the Jews, the editors of the Bible attributing his deeds to the legendary King Solomon. Amenhotep also ordered the development of Aten’s cult (the god who appeared at the head of his father’s army) to decrease Amun’s influence. His son, Akhenaten, considered himself Osiris’ reincarnation and Aten’s son, while the Old Testament mentions many close encounters of the third kind between the rebellious pharaoh and god Yahweh. Also, his son, Tutankhamun („Living Image of Amun”), initially called Tutankhaten („Living Image of Aten”), is considered „the great son of Aten from heaven” on an object discovered in his tomb.
All these stories contain numerous influences of the gods in the destiny of the 18th Dynasty. Were at least some of these pharaohs children of the gods, as they claimed? Among all the 15 kings of the dynasty, Akhenaten is by far the most mysterious character. Not only because of his story, but also because of his physical appearance. He was always depicted with an elongated skull, feminine hips and a large belly. It has been suggested that these physical attributes were due to a condition called Froehlich Syndrome, which is responsible for both androgynous features and facial elongation. However, this cannot be true, considering that Froehlich Syndrome causes impotence and obesity, and Akhenaten had seven children and was never depicted as obese in sculptures. At that time, artistic representations had become realistic, as can be seen in the depiction of animals, plants and humans. However, the pharaoh and his family were portrayed differently: elongated heads, prominent bellies, large hips, exaggerated facial features, thin hands and feet. The elongated heads of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters resemble those of today’s so-called „gray aliens„. Tutankhamun, Akhenaten’s son, had an elongated skull not only in statues, but also in reality, as those who examined his mummy discovered. Even his two stillborn children, mummified alongside him, exhibit the same cranial deformation. After studying brain and bone samples from Akhenaten, Stuart Fleischmann, an assistant professor of comparative genomics at Swiss University of Cairo, discovered a gene called CXPAC-5, responsible for cortical growth, which enlarged the fallen pharaoh’s cranium. Additionally, Professor Fleischmann discovered that Akhenaten’s DNA had undergone powerful mutations of unknown nature. This means that at least some of the 18th Dynasty’s pharaohs might have been, indeed, children of the gods. Not made naturally, but through genetic engineering. We have seen that Watchers often genetically modified some of their subjects by inserting „divine” genes. In times close to Akhenaten’s, Marduk frequently used genetic engineering in Abraham’s family, both to cure women from sterility and to offer men superhuman traits. With divine genes, Abraham’s family had white skin, as confirmed by one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, where Egyptian nobles marveled at „how white is the face” of Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Swiss researchers from the DNA Genealogy Center in Zurich, who studied the DNA of the pharaohs Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun, concluded that these kings belonged to the Caucasian race, being part of haplogroup R1bla2, like over half of Western European men. Like members of the Egyptian royal houses, those in Abraham’s clan married among themselves to keep their divine genes unaltered. Yahweh / Marduk entrusted both Abraham and Moses with the mission of settling in Canaan. Abraham’s birth name, read in reverse, means „Marduk’s soul”, while Akhenaten believed he was „the living spirit of Aten„. The two were even related according to the Bible, with Abraham being Moses’ ancestor, so both had Marduk’s DNA. Therefore, there is a high chance that Marduk entrusted a mission to the fallen pharaoh, as the Old Testament claims. If we attribute Akhenaten’s close encounters of the third kind to the Israeli Kabbalists, then the genetic interventions of the god would be unnecessary. However, if we remember the covenant between him and Abraham, everything makes sense. Marduk left Canaan to Abraham’s descendants to guard Mount Moriah / Zion in today’s Jerusalem, that very important energy center for the god, considered by Kabbalah a spiritual point from which reality is born. The 12 tribes of Abraham’s descendants settled in Canaan after being expelled with the Hyksos, but the Levites and some of the others returned to Egypt after a few centuries. This did not please the god, which is why he ordered former pharaoh Akhenaten to take the rebellious Israelites out of Egypt and bring them back to Canaan to fulfill their mission of guarding the „holy” mountain. Moses / Akhenaten was a descendant of Abraham through his mother (Yuya’s daughter from a Jacobite tribe), but not through his father. That is why Marduk intervened in the paternal line of his new prophet, enriching it with his own genes. Why was it so important that the DNA of the god’s chosen ones to contain a large part of his own? Why were divine genes necessary? Well, to achieve the compatibility necessary for possession. An ordinary body cannot sustain such a powerful entity as Marduk without deteriorating, so it needs to be improved with divine genes. But why possession? To understand how Akhenaten came to be in this position, we need to find out the events that shaped his destiny even before he was born.
Magic was an important part of ancient Egyptian life. Not only for the common people, but also for their leaders. Magic was part of the Egyptian religious cults, with the high priests acting as keepers of the gods’ secrets, which they passed to initiates from generation to generation. It was not about tricks performed to impress the masses; the secret rituals, performed away from public eyes, were very real. And dark… Historian Plutarch even said that the religion of the Egyptians was a dark and enigmatic science. Sometimes, the pharaohs, especially those involved in religion, accessed some of this knowledge. One of them was Tuthmose IV, who wrote on a stela placed between the Sphinx’s front paws that god Harmakhis-Khopri-Tumu appeared to him in a dream and promised to give him the throne of Egypt if he removed the sand from the Sphinx. He also mentioned in a text inscribed on the lower part of a scarab the presence of the god Aten at the head of his army. Tuthmose IV had a strong inclination towards religion, which is obvious from his two accounts. It is known that he erected a unique chapel next to the main temple in Karnak for people who were not allowed to enter the temple, a place where god Amun could hear anyone’s prayers. After his mummy was examined, it was discovered that the pharaoh suffered from temporal epilepsy, which causes religiosity and intense spiritual visions, which could explain his two close encounters of the third kind. During this religious king’s reign, Yuya came to Egypt with his Israelites. For an unknown reason, at a time when Egyptians despised Asian Semites because of the Hyksos, Yuya, an immigrant, managed to marry Thuya, a descendant of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari (wife of the 18th Dynasty’s founder), a highly influential woman with many functions in various religious cults of Egypt. He became a prophet of Min, administrator of the god’s cattle and later Pharaoh Amenhotep III’s father-in-law and chief advisor, receiving the titles „Lieutenant of the King„, „Lord of Horses” and „Father of the God„. It is possible that Yuya offered the pharaoh, who was attracted to mysticism, the secrets of Jewish Kabbalah in exchange for permission to settle in Egypt with his tribe and for material gains, such as marriage to Thuya, wealth, noble titles and the promise of kinship through their children’s marriage.
Which is exactly what happened: once on the throne, Amenhotep III, Thutmose IV’s son, married Tiye, Yuya’s daughter. It would not have been too difficult for Yuya to reach this agreement with a religious pharaoh, considering that he was a prophet of Min, a priest who communicated with the god. Also, the power of Kabbalah was seductive for a king who believed that a god had granted him the throne. Among the secret teachings of Kabbalah there are various methods of summoning and communication with powerful malevolent entities, none other than the Watchers. However, these secrets come at a price, the supreme one being the sacrifice of children. For the initiate to prove his loyalty, he must offer the divinity he summons the life of his firstborn, his heir. This dark part of Jewish mysticism appears several times in the Bible: Abraham wanted to sacrifice Isaac (who was not his firstborn, but his heir) to Yahweh and sent Ishmael (his firstborn) to die in the desert. In Moses’ story, the Pharaoh ordered the murder of Israelites’ firstborns, as did Herod in Jesus’ story. Yahweh killed the Egyptians’ firstborns before the Exodus and Jephthah of Gilead sacrificed his daughter to Yahweh. Leviticus prohibits the sacrifice of children in god Moloch’s name. The Jews „have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire” (Jeremiah 7:31) and „have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal” (Jeremiah 19:5). King Ahaz „burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom Yahweh had cast out before the children of Israel” (2 Chronicles 28:3), King Manasseh „caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards” (2 Chronicles 33:6) and „made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards” (2 Kings 21:6). In Europe, Jews were often accused of killing Christian children, especially during Jewish holidays. The oldest documentary evidence of such an accusation dates back to 1144 in Norwich, England. Sacrifices were part of all ancient religions, usually with animals being sacrificed; however, for great favors from powerful dark deities, the ultimate sacrifice was needed. Under these conditions, in order to receive the secrets of Kabbalah and the support of the Watchers, Pharaoh Thutmose IV would have had to sacrifice his firstborn son. We know very little about his children, except for the one who succeeded him to the throne, but we know that at least one of them, Prince Amenemhat, died in childhood under unknown circumstances.
After Thutmose IV’s death, his son, Amenhotep III, became king and immediately married Tiye, the daughter of Yuya and Thuya. He, too, was drawn to religion. Or, more precisely, to the power of magic behind religion. From the beginning of his reign, he started to restore the ancient temples of Thebes and to build new ones. The main court of the Theban temple was decorated with representations of gods Amun, Mut and Khonsu. In goddess Mut’s temple were placed 600 statues depicting goddess Sekhmet. Some of the most impressive statues in Egypt were built under his orders, such as those in Soleb’s temple in Nubia or the colossi that depict him. More than likely, Amenhotep III was also initiated into the secrets of Kabbalah, just like his father. This would explain the functions he offered to his father-in-law, Yuya, as well as the gift of the Eastern Delta to Queen Tiye’s Israelite relatives. If true, then this pharaoh should have also sacrificed his first son. We do not know if this was the case, but we do know that Prince Thutmose, the eldest son of the pharaoh and Queen Tiye, died under mysterious circumstances. The life of his second son, Akhenaten, was also in danger, as Tiye sent him away from the royal palace to her Israelite relatives in the Eastern Delta of the Nile. If we believe the Jewish legends that say the pharaoh wanted to kill Akhenaten in his childhood, it was probably a required ritual sacrifice in Kabbalah. Priest Manetho also suggested that Amenhotep III and his father were involved in summoning deities, noting that the priest, scribe and architect Amenhotep, son of Hapu, gave an advice to a king named Amenophis, who was „eager to become a spectator of the gods just as Oros, one of his predecessors in that kingdom, had desired the same thing before him„. This son of Hapu was the architect of Amenhotep III, undoubtedly the king referred to by Manethon as Amenophis. And „Oros, one of his predecessors„, can only be his father, Tuthmose IV, who claimed that god Horus (Horos for the Greeks) had given him the throne of Egypt. The two pharaohs wanted to become spectators of the gods, meaning they wanted to see the gods, which they could only achieve through Kabbalistic summoning rituals. But most of the links between Amenhotep III and magic are found in the story of the biblical Solomon.
There is not a single shred of evidence that King Solomon ever existed in Israel. Archaeologists have found no trace of him, his name is not mentioned in any extrabiblical chronicles from that time and the wisdom he is supposed to have possessed was unknown to contemporary neighboring peoples. Moreover, there is no evidence that Israel was ever a major military power or an empire, as the Old Testament claims. The truth is that the deeds of biblical Solomon are those of Amenhotep III. Here are some examples: in the Bible, Solomon inherited his father’s Israelite Empire and he maintained diplomatic relations; in reality, Amenhotep inherited his father’s Egyptian Empire created by Thutmose III and he maintained diplomatic relations as well. It is said that Solomon married many princesses of different nationalities; Amenhotep did the same, marrying two princesses from Syria, two from Mitanni, two from Babylon and one from Arzawa. One of Solomon’s wives was the Pharaoh’s daughter; one of Amenhotep III’s wives was his eldest daughter, Sitamun. In his old age, Solomon worshiped Astarte and Moloch; in his old age, Amenhotep received a statue of Ishtar from King Tushratta of Mitanni to cure his toothache. Solomon changed the military organization by introducing chariots as an essential weapon; Amenhotep organized chariots as a separate unit of the army. Solomon had 12 governors who administered his empire; Amenhotep divided his empire into 12 administrative sections. During Solomon’s reign, his empire became increasingly fragile; problems arose in southern Palestine and Edom, Rezon conquered Damascus and the Israelite king’s influence diminished in Syria. During Amenhotep’s reign, his empire also became increasingly fragile; rebellions arose in southern Palestine and Edom, his influence diminished in Syria and the Hittite king Suppiluliuma threatened the north of Syria, including Damascus. Solomon gave Hiram, king of Tyre, 20 cities in the land of Galilee; Amenhotep gave prince Abimilki (who became king of Tyre after his father’s death) the cities of Huzu and Zerbitu in Galilee. Solomon built cities for provisions and garrisons and reconstructed the cities of Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Lower Beth-Horon, Balat and Tadmor; Amenhotep III reconstructed Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Milo, Beth-Shean and Lachish. Solomon built the wall of Jerusalem, the First Temple of Yahweh and a palace; Amenhotep built a palace in Thebes and temples in almost all the cities in Canaan where he had garrisons. Solomon reigned for 40 years; Amenhotep for 38. After Solomon’s death, the Israelite Empire was destroyed and divided into two parts; after Amenhotep’s death, Egypt was on the brink of collapse due to Akhenaten’s religious reforms. In his old age, Solomon gave up his father’s god, preferring others; although officially he was a devoted follower of Amun, Amenhotep secretly developed Aten’s cult. Solomon is praised for his legendary wisdom; in an inscription, Amenhotep considered himself as wise as Thoth, the god of wisdom. Solomon’s father was David, written in Hebrew as Dwd, which becomes Tht or Thoth in Egyptian; Amenhotep III’s father was Tuthmosis IV. The name Solomon, attributed by the Greeks to the biblical Shlomo, is made up from „sol” (meaning „Sun” in Latin) and „omon„, a derivative of the name Amon. During the 18th Dynasty, the fusion of Amun and Ra (god of the Sun) took place and the new deity was named Amun-Ra. In a novel published in 1992, Russian author Victor Pelevin preferred the variant „Omon Ra„. In other words, Solomon is a hidden form of the name Amun-Ra, the supreme god of Egypt during Amenhotep III’s reign. Considering all of these similarities, we can conclude that the biblical writers invented Solomon using Amenhotep III as a model. As the deeds of the former actually belong to the latter, we can learn more details about Akhenaten’s father from Solomon’s legends.
Medieval Arab and European myths portray Solomon as a powerful wizard who controlled spirits with the help of a magic ring given to him by an angel. The ring was engraved with a symbol called „the Seal of Solomon„, which has the shape of a hexagram (the symbol of the State of Israel and of the god of the Jews). With the help of the ring, King Solomon summoned demons and interrogated them to learn their secrets. It is also said that he forced the demons to build the Temple of Yahweh alongside humans. In The Book of Deadly Names, translated from Arabic manuscripts found in a building in Spain, Fiqitush, king of the jinn, brought 72 jinn before Solomon to confess their sins. In another myth, jinni Sakr managed to steal the king’s ring and throne, ruling the country for 40 days. Solomon recovered his ring and locked Sakr in an iron box, which he threw into a chasm in a distant country. Other legends suggest that the king used to travel the world, sometimes using a flying carpet. References to the story of Moses are not lacking either: in the Testament of Solomon, demon Abezethibou is the one who hardened the Pharaoh’s heart to not let the Israelites go, while in another myth, demon Amelouith helped the Egyptian sorcerers against Moses. It is not known what happened to the magic ring, but in the first century AD, historian Flavius Josephus mentioned that a guy named Eleazar had a ring which he used to command demons, and one time he did so in the presence of the future Roman emperor Vespasian. According to Jewish folklore, Solomon’s „playing” with the demons eventually led him to lose his faith in Yahweh. If the biblical Solomon’s deeds are actually those of Amenhotep III, it means that he was indeed initiated into the secrets of Kabbalah, which helped him to keep the prosperity of his empire. „Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites” (1 Kings 11:5), says the Bible. In Moloch’s cult, ritual sacrifice of children was practiced; being a follower of this deity means that Pharaoh Amenhotep III sacrificed his first son, Prince Thutmose, as we had already suspected. Although officially he was a follower of the dark god Amun, he secretly developed the cult of Aten, an ancient aspect of the Sun. The entities he summoned were not positive at all, as Aten was presented, which is also confirmed by the legends of Solomon, who considered them to be demons. In reality it was the classic trick of the Watchers, who used to present themselves as positive entities and their enemies, the Celestials, as maleficent deities. Aten derives from Atem or Atum, one of the Egyptian names for Enlil; however, Aten of the 18th Dynasty was not the ancient Atem. Researchers have discovered that Amenhotep III not only chose Aten as his personal deity, but even came to identify himself with the god. This is bizarre, considering that until then he declared himself Amun’s son. His identification with this unknown god can be attributed to possession. In occultism, whether we are talking about spiritism or other forms of summoning entities, it is customary for spirits to be offered a human host for a short period of time. In Egyptian cults, as well as in shamanic ones, hallucinogenic drugs were used, which caused the priests to enter a trance state that blocked conscious thinking, allowing the spirits to take control of the bodies they possessed. The capture and interrogation of demons from the legends of Solomon could not have taken place without the temporary possession of human bodies. Therefore, matching the pharaoh with the god could mean that his body had become a host for that entity. This explains why Akhenaten considered himself Aten’s son. Amenhotep III’s „miraculous” birth can also be attributed to possession; god Amun did not assume his father’s guise when he impregnated Mutemwiya, but entered his father’s body. This seems possible, considering that Thutmose IV was also initiated into the mysteries of Kabbalah, summoning evil spirits. The presence of Aten at the head of the Egyptian army, in place of the pharaoh, without being seen by anyone, may be another testimony of possession. Similarly Queen Hatshepsut’s account, who also claimed that Amun impregnated her mother assuming King Thutmose I’s guise.
Akhenaten himself was initiated into the mysteries of the Israelite Kabbalah, just like his father and grandfather. The initiation took place in Tjaru / Avaris in the Eastern Delta, among Yuya’s Israelites, where his father had developed the first cult of Aten. By resorting to this practice, undoubtedly Akhenaten was also temporarily possessed by the deity that had genetically modified him and his ancestors to achieve the necessary compatibility for possession. Unlike his father and grandfather, about whom we don’t have many details, Akhenaten’s possession is obvious. The biblical Moses displays a dual personality, which was also observed by Sigmund Freud, who believed that two characters were compiled into one: one Egyptian and one Midianite, one gentle and patient, the other authoritarian, quick to anger and violent. Freud did not take possession into account, which could explain the two different personalities of the fallen pharaoh. Aten’s religion was highly spiritualized, with Akhenaten even considering himself „living in Ma’at (i.e. in truth)”, which would mean that gentleness and patience were part of his character, attributes opposite to those he displayed through his tyrannical side, which emerged especially in the biblical story. Yahweh was cruel, harsh, bloody and violent, so the moments when the pharaoh displayed these aspects were the ones when the god took control of his body. His personality change is obvious even from historical data: while he shared the throne with his father and in the early years of his reign, he had a normal behavior; suddenly he changed and applied a religious reform that no one expected. The prohibition of all deities except one reveals the identity of the deity that possessed him: Marduk was the one who imposed himself as the supreme god and then as the only god in Babylon, Persia and Israel after becoming the supreme ruler of the Earth. Marduk was the one who possessed Akhenaten from time to time, most likely only during mystical rituals. Otherwise, the god used other methods to contact his prophet and his Sanhedrin subjects. He may have preferred to possess Aaron, who performed from the shadows the „miracles” attributed to Moses. Or maybe he had another method.
To understand „divine” possessions, we have as an example Roman poet Virgil’s Aeneid, where the possession „of the Sibyl, whom Apollo fills with his mighty spirit and reveals the future to her” is described. After announcing to the Trojans who had taken refuge in Italy that „it is time to consult the oracle! The god! Here is the god!„, the priestess „suddenly changes her face, her hair falls loose; she began to gasp and her breast swells in a terrible turmoil. It seemed to become larger, and her voice was no longer that of a human, being troubled by the ever-closer breath of the god„. Because of this transformation of the priestess, „a chill ran through the bones of the Trojans„. After the demigod Aeneas spoke with the god, „the priestess, still unsoothed by the power of Apollo, was tormented in the cave and sought to drive the mighty spirit of the god from her soul, which wearied her even more, filling her mouth with foam and subdued her wild frenzy, enslaving her will„. Through the mouth of the possessed priestess, god Apollo gave the demigod the answers he sought; „with such words the Sibyl of Cumae spoke her dread secrets from the depths of the temple and bellowed in the cave, wrapping truth in obscure words, so powerfully did Apollo strike her with his rein and stir her wandering soul. As soon as her prophetic rage subsided and her foaming mouth was stilled, the hero Aeneas began…„. And this episode would seem ripped from a horror movie if it were not written in ancient Rome more than 2000 years ago…
A case of possession shortly after Akhenaten’s death is encountered in a story from Pharaoh Ramesses II’s time, Seti I’s son of the 19th Dynasty. In the fifteenth year of his reign (1268 BC), the king learned that his queen’s sister had fallen seriously ill in Bakhtan. He sent twelve of his best doctors to Bakhtan, who returned without any results. Ramesses then sent his best magician to solve the problem, but he too was unable to cure the princess. However, he was able to identify the cause of the illness: the Queen of Egypt’s sister was possessed by an evil spirit, which only god Khonsu could exorcise. Ramesses sent Khonsu’s statue from his temple in Luxor to Bakhtan and the god exorcised the evil spirit from the princess after it had possessed her for nine years.
The intervention of etheric entities in Akhenaten’s story is confirmed by Philip Kindred Dick’s 1978 book VALIS, in which the American writer claimed to have contacted an entity who told him that „our world is still secretly governed by the hidden race descended from Ikhnaton (i.e. Akhenaten) and their knowledge is the knowledge of the Macro-Mind itself… From Ikhnaton this knowledge passed to Moses and from Moses to Elijah, the Immortal, who became Christ. But behind all the names there is only one Immortal and that is us„. Dick also spoke of a coded signal sent into the ether in 1974, which consisted of only two words: „King Felix„. That coded signal „was not intended for humans, but for Ikhnaton’s descendants, the three-eyed race who secretly exist alongside us„. About the three-eyed Akhenaten’s descendants („the enlightened ones” who had their third eye opened, which brings knowledge), one entity told him that „they are the original builders„, while another replied: „We never stopped… We’re still building. We built this world, this space-time matrix„. This refers to the Masons, who claim to have their origins in ancient Egypt during Solomon’s Temple’s construction. As Freemasonry is led by a Zionist elite that forms the Jewish Great Sanhedrin, also present in Akhenaten / Moses’ entourage, there may be a connection. The Order of the Knights Templar, founded by a group of French nobles who discovered the secrets of Kabbalah, is the predecessor of modern Freemasonry. The Templars communicated with an evil entity called Baphomet, who gave them orders through a chalice known as the Holy Grail. The most famous representation of this demon is the drawing made by Jewish magician Eliphas Levi from the 19th century, called „Baphomet of Mendes„, with Mendes being the Greek name for the Egyptian city of Djedet in the Nile Delta. Unsurprisingly, Levi’s Egyptian Baphomet has both masculine and feminine features, just like Akhenaten in sculptures. The hidden message in this depiction represents the well-hidden secret of the Zionist elite, namely Moses / Akhenaten’s possession. Perhaps for this reason artist Michelangelo Buonarroti portrayed Moses with horns in his famous sculpture in Rome.
If Akhenaten was a practitioner of Kabbalah, it means that he too would have had to sacrifice his firstborn to the malevolent deity he summoned, as tradition required. His only son was Tutankhamun. Did the pharaoh try to kill him? The Bible claims that the blood of Moses’ firstborn was indeed shed. In Exodus, when he returned with his family to Egypt, „Yahweh met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision” (4:24-26). The official version of the Bible interpreters is that Yahweh was angry with his prophet for not circumcising his sons, so he decided to kill him. However, it is hard to believe that a god would be willing to jeopardize the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt by killing Moses over a foreskin. A more logical version would be Akhenaten’s desire to sacrifice his son to his deity. Nefertiti found out and, during the ritual, quickly circumcised the boy, stopping her husband in time. The god was pleased with the child’s spilled blood, „so he let him go„. Then „she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision„. Perhaps out of fear that Akhenaten might try to kill the young prince again, Nefertiti chose not to live with her husband, but with their daughters and son in a palace in the north of the capital Akhetaten. And maybe for this reason she plotted the conspiracy that forced the pharaoh to abdicate and flee to Sinai. We have seen that around 1337 BC, when Tutankhamun (then called Tutankhaten) was only seven years old, Akhenaten was likely warned by his uncle, the army leader Ay. After his flight, his brother, Smenkhkare, was killed and Nefertiti became the supreme ruler of Egypt under the name Neferneferuaten. When Akhetaten returned to reclaim his throne, his son had been dead for several years. Thus, a new question arises: is it possible that the biblical tenth plague, the killing of the Egyptians’ firstborns, was actually a Kabbalistic sacrifice made by the Israelites to attract Yahweh’s help? According to the Bible, Yahweh said: „I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them” (Exodus 7:3-5). Only after this genocide did the god give up on „harden Pharaoh’s heart” and decide to „bring out the children of Israel” from Egypt.
Although we have learned the dark secrets of the greatest prophet of the Jews, there remains one confusion. Considering the biblical account is at least partially true, why did pharaoh Ramesses I allow the Israelites and the followers of Akhenaten to leave Egypt, and then change his mind? It is true that he was old, but we cannot assume that he changed his mind due to his whims. In Exodus, Yahweh urges the Israelite women to „borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment” from the Egyptians, which they are to take with them to Canaan. In other words, to steal. Therefore, this seems to be the reason why they were pursued by the pharaoh; when he realized that he had been robbed, Ramesses I took his soldiers and chased after the thieves. But it couldn’t have been about clothes and vessels. It must have been something very important to the Egyptians. What could Akhenaten’s group have stolen that was so important?
In an ancient Egyptian myth presented in the New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, supreme god Ra placed several objects in a „golden box„: his staff, a lock of his hair and his uraeus (a golden cobra worn on the royal head covering). After Ra ascended to heaven, when Geb, the god of Earth, came to power, he demanded that the box be brought to him. When it was opened, a flame described as „the divine serpent’s breath” shot out of it, burning the god and killing all his courtiers. As a dangerous talisman, Ra’s box remained locked in a fortress on the „eastern border” of Egypt, its location known only to the pharaohs. The Egyptians left behind many depictions of Ra’s box; during religious festivals, priests paraded its replicas around temples. Even in Tutankhamun’s tomb a replica of Ra’s golden box was discovered, guarded by a statuette of Anubis, like a secret taken by the pharaoh to the afterlife. We cannot be sure if the Israelites stole the sun-god’s box, but according to the Bible, they had a similar one with them in the Sinai desert, the Ark of the Covenant, into which the tablets with the Ten Commandments, a golden cup of manna and Aaron’s rod were placed. The Old Testament states that this box also claimed victims. In the Second Book of Samuel, Uzzah was killed after touching it (6:6-8), and in the First Book of Samuel, Yahweh „smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into the ark of Yahweh, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because Yahweh had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter” (6:19), just like in the Egyptian myth. Although the biblical story says the Ark was made in Sinai at Yahweh’s command, it would be quite a coincidence for the Israelites to have made one just like the Egyptians’ immediately after their flight from Egypt. In addition to the identical appearance of the two boxes, their contents are also similar: one contained Ra’s staff, the other Aaron’s rod; one a golden crown, the other a golden cup. The third object is different, Ra’s hair on one side and the tablets of the law written with Yahweh’s finger on the other. Let’s not forget that both were capable of killing a large number of people, which means only one thing: the Ark of the Covenant was Ra’s box, stolen by the Israelites when they left Egypt. The fortress on the „eastern border” of Egypt, where the box was hidden, can only be Tjaru or Zarw in the northeast of the Nile Delta, formerly known as Avaris, renamed Pi-Ramesses by Pharaoh Ramesses I. Both the Hyksos when they invaded Egypt and Yuya’s Jacobites settled here after Amenhotep III gave them the citadel. The city was the residence of Ramesses I and his son, Seti I. Why would two pharaohs choose a citadel on the border of Egypt, in an inhospitable desert region where criminals from all over the country and the Israelites they despised were exiled? The only reason is to closely monitor the Box of Ra. When Ramesses I learned that Akhenaten had stolen it upon leaving, he gathered his soldiers and chased the thieves without hesitation.
What was the Box of Ra or the Ark of the Covenant? In Egyptian mythology, a ray that came out of it destroyed Geb’s courtiers, while in the Hebrew one, Uzzah and 50,070 inhabitants of the city of Bethshemesh were killed. In the Book of Joshua, Yahweh taught the leader of the Israelites to surround Jericho for seven days, carrying the Ark of the Covenant, and on the seventh day to make noise, which led to the collapse of the city walls. The Israelites led by David took the box with them during the fight against the Ammonites. When the Philistines sent the Ark to Gath and Ekron, the inhabitants of the cities were filled with boils. Therefore, it was a weapon that emitted radiation (which caused the Philistines’ boils) and could also launch a deadly beam. It seems that the weapon was not the box, but rather the weapon was locked inside the box alongside a transceiver, with the box being protected by a strong electric field (Uzzah was struck when he touched it). Ra / Anu’s weapon, locked in the Ark of the Covenant, is also mentioned in other cultures’ writings. For example, Nabonidus, the last ruler of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, noted that god Sin destroyed his enemies with a beam of light emitted by „Anu’s weapon„, just as in Egyptian and biblical myth. Ancient Sanskrit writings speak of Brahmastra, a weapon with immense destructive power, created by Brahma (Anu), which once launched never missed its target. The only defense against this terrible weapon was a similar one. In the Mahabharata there is a projectile loaded with the full power of the Universe, considered by researchers to be similar to a nuclear bomb. According to Sanskrit writings, Brahmastra can only be summoned with a specific key phrase or incantation; in other words, it can only be activated by voice, based on a password. This is not the only weapon created by Brahma, as Indian texts mention two others: Brahmashirsha astra and Brahmanda astra. Also, according to the text categorized under the index CT-xvi-44/46, a minor deity informs Marduk of the existence of „seven terrible weapons created by Anu (…) The destruction of these seven weapons against you is being prepared„. In the Epic of Erra, Ninurta launched Anu’s weapons against the enemy cities, which we have identified with the five cities in the Jordan plain, including the well-known Sodom and Gomorrah. If Anu’s weapons were indeed seven and Ninurta used only five, it means that two are still missing. One could be the one closed in Ra’s Box and hidden in Egypt, later stolen by the Israelites. There is a good chance that this is Sharur, Ninurta’s weapon from Mesopotamian myths, an enchanted club capable of flying long distances and communicating with its owner. In the Heroic Deeds of Ninurta, Sharur is not only a weapon, but also provides vital information about the enemy to the hero and facilitates communication between Ninurta and his father. This reminds us of the weapon inside the Ark of the Covenant, which also served as a means of communication between Yahweh and Moses. In myths, Ninurta’s weapon had the ability to transform into a winged lion; if Sharur is the weapon closed in the Ark of the Covenant and hidden in Avaris / Tjaru / Zarw / Pi-Ramesses before being stolen by the Israelites, it is not surprising that the fortress was also called „the Lion’s Den” and the main deity of the city was Seth (Enlil), Ninurta’s father. In addition, the cherubs (winged sphinxes) on the Ark suggest the same Sharur transformed into a winged lion.
Now, the story of the so-called exodus makes sense. After Akhenaten was forced to abdicate and left for Sinai, vizier Ramesses, at pharaoh Horemheb’s order, subjected the Israelites and exiled criminals in Tjaru to forced labor, rebuilding the city and renaming it Pi-Ramesses. Seeing that the situation was getting worse, the Sanhedrin of the Israelites (which included Prince Nakhtmin / Aaron, former pharaoh Ay’s son) decided to leave Egypt. Through a Kabbalistic ritual of summoning or perhaps even through the Ark located in Tjaru, the leaders of the Israelites contacted Marduk, their god, who ordered them to go to Canaan to guard the Mount Zion in Jerusalem. However, not empty-handed, but with the Ark of the Covenant containing „Anu’s weapon„, named Sharur by Ninurta. The Old Testament confirms that the terrible weapon was supposed to guard the Mount Zion, as David brought it there and placed it in a tent, and later it was moved to the temple of his son, Solomon, which was built on the same mountain. We understand that Marduk was expecting an attack, as he desired the powerful weapon to be in that location. To move the weapon, the Israelites needed the support of the former king, Akhenaten. Probably, the weapon had a measure of protection against potential thieves, as it could only be touched by someone with divine DNA, as the story of Uzzah in the Bible demonstrates what happened to ordinary mortals who dared to touch it. As the fallen pharaoh was the only one with divine genes, the Sanhedrin needed him. Marduk probably wouldn’t have bothered to look for the former king in the Sinai Peninsula to entrust him with a mission. Close encounters of the third kind only took place during secret magical rituals, so the Israeli Kabbalists had to rely on their esoteric knowledge to convince Akhenaten that he was being contacted by a deity. For this reason, Aaron / Nakhtmin was always around him to secretly perform the necessary magical rituals to manipulate the former pharaoh. When he realized that Akhenaten’s Egyptian-Israeli group had fled with the Box of Ra, Pharaoh Ramesses I set out to pursue the thieves with all the soldiers he had at his disposal. It didn’t matter that he was too old for such a military campaign; the king had to recover the god’s ark. However, the Israelites managed to kill him and his soldiers through a so-called divine miracle; most likely, Akhenaten and the Sanhedrin used „Anu’s weapon” to make a hole in the unfinished canal between the Great Bitter Lake and the Red Sea, flooding it while the Egyptians were crossing. Learning of his father’s death, the new pharaoh, Seti I, also set out to pursue the thieves to recover the Box of Ra. However, he did not repeat his father’s mistake, but took his entire Egyptian army with him. The group formed by the Israelites and Egyptians had joined forces with the Midianite tribes in the area, but they were in no way able to face the huge Egyptian army. We don’t know why they didn’t use the divine weapon against the attackers. Perhaps its range was limited to a few hundred meters, which was not enough to destroy the entire enemy army. Or perhaps it was truly similar to an atomic bomb, and using it would have meant a violation of Marduk’s orders, who wanted it on Mount Sinai. All we know is that the Sanhedrin killed Moses / Akhenaten and Aaron / Nakhtmin hoping that the new pharaoh would leave them alone. However, they did not give up the Ark, with some of them fleeing with it before the arrival of the Egyptians. Egyptian chronicles say that Seti I defeated and scattered the Israelites, and then went to Canaan and from there to Lebanon, undoubtedly to search for those who had fled with the Box of Ra. The pharaoh’s most important victory was the conquest of the Syrian city of Kadesh from the Hittites; the Book of Judges claims that after crossing the Sinai Peninsula, the Israelites went to Kadesh: „But when Israel came up from Egypt, and walked through the wilderness unto the Red sea, and came to Kadesh” (11:16). Not all of them, but only the group that had fled with the Box of Ra. The Bible acknowledges that the Israelites always kept the Ark hidden behind a large veil made of animal skins and blue cloth. Being constantly pursued by Egyptians, they stayed hidden in the Sinai Peninsula and in Edom. After 20 years, Ramesses II, Seti I’s son, found and defeated them. Then the pharaoh split his army in two: the part led by him attacked Jerusalem and Jericho, while the other, commanded by his son, Amun-her-khepeshef, chased them to the Dead Sea and captured Edom, then Moab. After the two armies reunited, they went to Syria. As the pharaoh led several campaigns in Canaan and Syria, we can assume that he did not find the Ark of the Covenant.
After many years of searching for the Box of Ra, the Egyptian royal family accepted that they had lost it, so they tried to find another divine object that would give them immeasurable power. Prince Khaemwaset, one of Ramesses II’s sons, was nicknamed „the first Egyptologist” because of his efforts to identify and restore ancient buildings, tombs and temples. He spent a lot of time in the necropolis of Memphis when he was a priest of god Ptah, studying sacred books, learning magic and deciphering inscriptions on temple walls and stone steles. One day, a stranger shared with Khaemwaset the Book of Thoth (a book which offered incredible powers, written by the god himself)’s location: the tomb of Naneferkaptah, a prince who had lived long ago. Khaemwaset found the Book of Thoth there and took it with him, but he was forced to return it because of Prince Naneferkaptah’s spirit, who chased him. After some time, he was announced in a dream that he would have a son who would perform many miracles. The child, named Ramesses (or Senosiris in the Greco-Roman stories), had extraordinary wisdom and great magical powers. It was believed that he was the reincarnation of a wizard from ancient times, returning to Earth after 1500 years to defend Egypt from the dangers that threatened it. Not all the miracles he performed are known, but it was said that he took his father to the afterlife to show him the judgment of the dead, and later he read a letter from an Ethiopian messenger without opening it, then burned the messenger with a magical formula and finally disappeared from the royal court. With or without divine objects, the ancient Egyptians continued to benefit from the direct help of the gods, according to the ancient chronicles. For example, in the battle of Kadesh, Ramesses II was aided by Amun, who made his hand power as powerful as 100,000 soldiers, while goddess Sekhmet was seen on the pharaoh’s horses, blowing flames that burned the enemy soldiers. Also, Ramesses III of the 20th Dynasty said that he defeated the Sea Peoples with the help of the same Amun.
The Ark of the Covenant eventually arrived in Jerusalem, according to the Old Testament, remaining in the temple on Mount Zion until 597 BC, when Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II looted Jerusalem. He most likely took the Ark, considering that four decades later Nabonidus, the last ruler of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, noted that god Sin, using „Anu’s weapon„, defeated his enemies with a ray of light. Persian king Cyrus the Great, conqueror of Babylon, allowed the Jews to return home after seven decades of exile, at Marduk’s command. Most likely, the Jews took the Ark of the Covenant with them and hid it to protect it from potential attackers. No one knows what happened to the Ark, but in 1120 AD, after discovering Kabbalah, nine French nobles formed the Order of the Knights Templar, calling themselves „Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon„. Their headquarters were on the Temple Mount (Zion) in Jerusalem, where the temple that housed the Ark of the Covenant had once stood. It is not known what the Templars found there, but they soon received a series of benefits from the papacy: money, land and an extremely profitable business. Furthermore, Pope Innocent II’s bull of 1139 exempted the Templars from obeying the laws, paying taxes and any authority outside the papal one. During their interrogations at the beginning of the 14th century, it was discovered that the Templars communicated through a golden chalice, called the Holy Grail, with a dark entity named Baphomet (the demon who had possessed Akhenaten over two millennia before). According to the Bible, there was a golden cup with manna in the Ark of the Covenant, and the Ark (or an object inside it) served as a means of communication with Yahweh. This brings to mind the silver cup that Vizier Joseph used for divination, mentioned in chapter 44 of the Book of Genesis. Therefore, we can assume that the Templars found either the Ark or just a part of its contents in the caves beneath the Jewish temple, which would explain the numerous benefits they enjoyed. In his 1992 book The Sign and the Seal, writer Graham Hancock also concluded that the Holy Grail is nothing more than a coded description of the Ark of the Covenant. Contrary to popular belief, the Holy Grail is not the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper. In French it is called „san greal” which, as writer Dan Brown observed, by moving one letter becomes „sang real„, meaning „royal blood”. If for Brown the Holy Grail was a reference to the descendants of Jesus Christ, in reality this cannot be true. Not only because the main character of Christianity never existed, but also for a very logical reason: accessing the Box of Ra / Ark of the Covenant, and thereby activating the weapon inside it or contacting Marduk, required the god’s genes. These genes were found in Akhenaten’s „royal blood”. In some magical rituals, spilled blood is used to summon entities; most likely, the Templars used the same method to communicate with Baphomet, pouring a little of Akhenaten’s „royal blood” into the golden chalice from the Ark. This means that fallen pharaoh’s descendants survived at least until the Middle Ages. Akhenaten had seven daughters about whom we know absolutely nothing; neither when they died, nor if they had children. If some of them or their children survived Horemheb’s reign, they most likely left for Canaan with Akhenaten’s group. This means that the possibility of the existence of some fallen pharaoh’s descendants is plausible. Let us remember that for American writer Philip Kindred Dick, the Judeo-Masonic elite is made up of Akhenaten’s descendants, „the three-eyed race that secretly exists among us„. The 12th century Irish manuscript Lebor Laignech speaks of Scota, daughter of a pharaoh contemporary with Moses, who left during the Exodus and settled in what is now Scotland, where she founded Scotland (or „Scota’s land”). The Scotichronicon manuscript, written by historian Walter Bower in the 15th century, considers her to be the daughter of Akhenkherres, the same name used by Eusebius for Akhenaten. We do not know which of his daughters Scota could be, but we do know that the fate of his first daughter, Meritaten, is unknown. She disappeared suddenly from records after her husband, Pharaoh Smenkhkare, was killed. It is not impossible that she fled in fear to a far-off land. In Kingdom of the Ark: That Startling Story of How the Ancient British Race is Descended from the Pharaohs, Egyptologist Lorraine Evans claims that Egyptian jewelry similar to that found in Tutankhamun’s tomb has been discovered in Neolithic tombs in Ireland, as well as the wreckage of an Egyptian ship in northern England, carbon dating indicating a period around 1350 BC. Surprisingly or not, one of the most important Masonic rites is the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, whose members hold titles containing references to both Moses and the Temple of Solomon, such as „Master of the Bronze Serpent„, „Master of the Temple„, „Royal Architect of Solomon„, „Prince of Jerusalem„, „Prince of Lebanon„, „Prince of the Tabernacle„, „Commander of the Temple„, „Knight of the Sun” (Aten?) or „Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret„. If indeed the Zionist elite is made up of Akhenaten’s descendants, as Philip Kindred Dick suggested, this being the great „royal secret” of the Holy Grail, then we understand why Moses is considered the greatest prophet of Judaism, why in the Quran „The Jews and the Christians say, ‘We are the children of Allah, and His beloved’„, why Jews consider themselves superior to all others and why Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983, stated in 1982: „Our race is the Master Race. We are divine gods on this planet„.
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