Hi wonderful folk! I have an extensively reworked and researched Platinum Post coming up on 11/11 on my hypothesis that the biblical Moses is based on Thutmose, the Overseer of Foreign Lands. I give a looot of time to counterarguments, but any questions or contraindicating evidence you’d like to share now?
This may help to drum up interest for the actual day of.
Thutmose is listed as serving Amenhotep III then Akhenaten, and then—then his records are etched out from there. They’re there, just erased. My premise is that Thutmose confronts the [non-divine] Pharoah Ay, the guardian of his adopted first-born Tutankhamen, who passes from malaria.
The [divine God-king] Horemheb then proclaims an edict of banishment of the masses to Tjaru, which serves the Southern route. 40 years later, Ramses II then proclaims that he settled nomad warriors near Beth-Shean (where the only public worship is the colossus of Ramses II as the Great God. While in the Sinai, Ramses II has a stelae of himself as Baal Saphon-El, ie, the Lord God of Canaan in the Levant.)
That’s a non-spoiler there —I don’t go into divine god-kings in the Platinum Post at all, just in my extended paper, which will be linked in the comments section of the Platinum Post. Platinum Post is ~2500 words + 15 citations. I used Claude AI for feedback to make it super readable!
Full paper on Scribd is about 10,000 words and so many citations. So many.
In the Platinum Post, I also briefly explore whether Moses could be a role name like his father-in-law Yithro (His Excellency) is, meaning that it could also be occupied by an immediate descendant. My hypothesis is not dependent on this in any way, of course. A 120 year lifespan is likely an honorary number given notbles like Rabbi Hilell and others.
Authors in Canaan, near a millennia after this event, may not have understood elite Egyptian royal tradition as:
(1) They didn’t name their sons identical to the father
(2) Canaanites may not have had the privilege to know a private name, as Egyptian nobility, such as Moses. They only shared their private name with other nobility of equal or greater stature, afaik.
Think “Hello Governor” and not “Hello Governor Newsom.”
And this Platinum Post is also chock full of artifacts and stelae and little statuettes. Let me know if there’s anything you wanted to pre-discuss as we pre-game!
Way outside of any area where I am entitled to opine, but a fascinating suggetiion, especially with the connection to Akhenaten.
Presuming the basic thesis is right, have you worked out any theory of how some story based on Thumoses would have been taken up in the Hebrew people’s origin story?
Hi Serena,
Below is the information I’m going with until I learn better.
A Delta pharaoh at Avaris named Palmanothes had a daughter, Princess Meriss. In approximately the year 1535 BCE, she found a baby and decided to keep him. When Palmanothes ruled in the Delta, another pharaoh ruled south of there. His name was Sobek-hotep IV and his coronation name was Kha-nefer-re, Khenophres in Greek. Kha-nefer-re was the prenomen (coronation name) of Sobekhotep IV, 29th ruler of the 13th dynasty. Sobekhotep IV married Palmanothes’ daughter, Princess Meriss and became the step-father of Princess Meriss’ find, the biblical Moses. The Bible does not tell us the name of the pharaoh-stepfather of Moses. The ancient historian, Artapanus of Alexandria does.
And Artapanus says, in his book Concerning the Jews…
…Palmanothes succeeded to the sovereignty.
This king behaved badly to the Jews; and first, he built Kessa, and founded the temple therein, and then built the temple in Heliopolis.
He begat a daughter, Merris, whom he betrothed to a certain Chenephres [Kha-nefer-re, Khenophres in Greek: Sobekhotep IV], king of the regions above Memphis [but below the region of the Delta where Merris lived] (for there were at that time many kings in Egypt); and she being barren took a suppositious [based on assumption rather than fact] child from one of the Jews, and called him Mouses (Moses)…
Eusebius. Praeparatio Evangelica Book IX. Chapter XXVII.
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On the Wadi Hammamat stela, Sobekhotep IV’s first son is listed as Sobek-hotep Mio.
Correction: that is one interpretation I have about Moses coming from multiple explanations about the Exodus.
For example, I look at the Moses of the 18th Dynasty as well.
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
(working on the second edition, or maybe under a better title for marketing purposes)
Makes sense to me,
There is a motif of brotherly feuds in Genesis. Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers,
Father: Amenhotep III
Sons: Moses and the pharaoh of Exodus 3 onward. (Thutmose Crown Prince and Akhenaten/Amenhotep IV)
So Amenhotep III is the pharaoh in Exodus 2, and Moses’ brother Akhenaten is the pharaoh beginning in Exodus 3.
Moses and pharaoh have a huge brotherly fued going on.
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BDEhrman
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