Evidence From Matthew that Moses was Akhenaten

Cecil B. DeMille, in his classic movie, "The 10 Commandments" (with Charleston Heston playing Moses) made "Nefretiri" the wife of the historical Ramses (as played by Yul "Moses-shall-have-been-a-fool" Brennor). In the movie "Nefretiri" (played by Anne Baxter) had the hots for Moses but never married him because "Nefretiri" (played by Anne Baxter) was betrothed to her brother Ramses.

But the name of the historical wife of Ramses' was Nefertari. DeMille may have been confused because he thought the famous statue of the wife Akhenaten whose name was Nefertiti was the wife of Rameses so he came up with the hybrid name of "Nefretiri."

Nefertiti: Wife of Akhenaten
Nefretiri: Wife of Yul Ramses
Nefertari: Wife of Ramses

He may even have suspected that the Moses of the bible was Akhenaten! If so, then his suspicion is corroborated by the Book of Matthew!

According to the author and egyptologist Ahmed Osman Akhenaten (the pharaoh who founded the first monotheistic religion) was, in fact, the historical Moses.

Sir Cedric Hardwick playing "Sethi" in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandents" said:

"Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt. Let the name of Moses be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men for all time."

But the name that was stricken from all Egyptian temples was not the name of Moses but the of name Akhenaten.

There are many other curious facts which point to Akhenaten as being the Moses of the bible.

But one unlikely source which archaeologists may have overlooked is the genealogy of the Patriarchs in the Book of Matthew.

If we take the reign of Solomon to have begun in the year 972 BC then we can figure out what a generation would be in the genealogy of Jesus in the Book of Matthew. From our knowledge that the birth of Christ occured during a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the year 7 BC we can determine that a Patriarchal generation is about 37.113 years.

Based on the Books of Ruth and Exodus we know that Hezron (Esrom in Matthew's genealogy) would have been a contemporary of Moses. He lived circa 1306 BC placing the Exodus about 30 years after the end of the reign of Akhenaton.

The time of Moses marked the liberation of the "Hebrews" from the bondage of Egypt. In terms of archaeology the most logical candidate for the "Hebrews" of the Bible would be the Hyksos who were Canaanites who had conquered Egypt and ruled it for 100 years before they were overthrown by an Egyptian revolt.

These Canaanites most certainly would have been enslaved after their kingdom in Egypt was overthrown circa 1540 BC.

Their kingdom may have reached from the Nile to the Euphrates for after the Egypt overthrew the Hyksos its empire did reach form the Nile to the Euphrates. Here is what the Egyptian Empire looked like in those days:

Makes one wonder if the Exodus was more a matter of Egypt leaving the Hebrews than the Hebrews leaving Egypt doesn't it?

Matthew's timeline places Abraham in the year 1492 BC - at the very height of the Egyptian Empire under Thutmoses I (1493-1482) when it reached as far north as the Euphrates River! So did Israel go "down into Egypt" or did Egypt come up to Israel? if Israel went "down into Egypt" he would not have had to walk very far to get there. It was only a few miles from Damascus to Egypt in those days.

Another thing that we can glean from Matthew's genealogy is that it is impossible for anyone to claim a god given right to own the territory which has become associated with the ancient kingdom of Israel. Simple Mendelian genetics tells just this.

For each generation from the time of Abraham would loose 1/2 of Abraham's chromosomes. That is Abraham's chromosomes would be diluted by half each generation. So by the time of Esrom or the 5th generation onwards only the male line could be certain of inheriting at least one chromosome from Israel - his Y chromosome. You can not inherit Israel's Y chromosome form your mother.

With the mass conversion of Khazars, Berbers, and Arabs to Judaism during the middle ages together with the switching from a patrilineal descent system to a matrilineal descent system in determining "who is a Jew" following the rape of Judea by Roman in 70 AD suggests the "seed of Abraham", if it ever existed, must have been totally wiped out by now. The only Jews to still practice a patrilineal descent system are the Cohens and DNA studies show that they have Italian Y chromosomes.

In his book "Moses and Akhenaten", Ahmed Osman makes Hormeheb the "Pharaoh of the obression", Akhenaten the Moses of the bible, and Rameses I the Pharaoh of the Exodus. According to his timeline the Exodus occured circa 1334 BC when Akhenaten was around 60 years of age.

Matthews timeline as given above would make Akhenaten 80 years old at the time of the Exodus circa 1306 BC.

This agrees with the more traditional view that Rameses II was the Pharaoh of the Exodus but would make Moses/Akhenaten 120 years old after wondering in the wilderness for 40 years. This difficulty can be overcome by assuming that Solomon's reign began around 28 years after he was "begot" or assuming that the 40 year figure has some sort of symbolic significance.

But the Moses in the bible is actually a composite of 2 pharaohs - the pharaoh who drove the Hyksos out of Egypt (Amosis), the pharaoh Akhenaten who was a monotheist at war with the polytheist priests of Egypt) and an ancient king of "Babylon."

"The story of Moses's discovery in the bulrushes was plainly borrowed from the much earlier legend (with which it is identical) of a king of Babylonia, Sargon the Elder, who lived between one and two thousand years before him; the Commandments much resemble earlier law codes of the Egyptians, Babylonians and Assyrians.

Whether Moses lived or not, he cannot have led any mass-exodus from Egypt into Canaan (Palestine). No sharply-defined Israelitish tribes existed (says Rabbi Elmer Berger) at any time when anyone called Moses may have led some small groups out of Egyptian slavery. The Habiru (Hebrews) then were already established in Canaan, having reached it long before from Babylonia on the far side: Their name, Habiru, denoted no racial or tribal identity; it meant "nomads".

Long before any small band led by Moses can have arrived they had overrun large Canaanite areas, and the governor of Jerusalem reported to Pharaoh in Egypt, "

"The King no longer has any territory, the Habiru have devastated all the King's territory".

And Josephus, who certainly would have had a greater number of historical documents than Osman to peruse, believed that it was Amosis, the founder of the New Kingdom, who drove the Hyksos out of the land of Egypt - the Moses of the Exodus.

"the vengeful conquerors of Asia. Never before had Egyptian territory been held for centuries by foreigners. And although the rulers these foreigners dressed themselves in the titles and authority of native pharaohs, they were never accepted as rightful kings. Only for a short period did they succeed in conquering Upper Egypt and ruling the whole country.

Thebes made a stout fight against them at the beginning under the later Intefs; and it was at Thebes under their descendants the Sekenenres that the national revolt began which ended in their final expulsion by the founder of the XVIIIth Dynasty, I'ahmases or Ahrnose (Aahmes, Manetho's Amosis), an event which the great Jewish historian Josephus regarded} and justly, in the present writer's opinion, as the original of the biblical story of the Exodus"

The linking of Moses killing the Egyptian in the bible with Akhenaten suggests that the authors of the narative transformed a historical event in the life of Akhenaten into a tract for political propaganda. The land of Goshen in the bible was a strong hold for the Hyksos not an enclave for "Hebrew slaves." The Hyksos in the land of Palestine were enslaved after they were driven out of Egypt. Egypt expanded into an empire in the New Kingdom as a defensive move to prevent another invasion of the Hyksos. Ergo Palestine is the "Goshen" of the bible.

"The only clue to the' historical source of the account of how Moses slew an Egyptian would appear to lie in the Amarna Tablets, the foreign archives of the Eighteenth Dynasty, which were found by a peasant woman in the ruins of Akhenaten's capital in 1887 and, unfortunately, suffered considerable damage before they reached a dealer in antiquities and their importance was realized.

Among them is a letter, sent to Akhenaten by Abd-Khiba, King of Jerusalem, in which the king accuses him of allowing the Hebrews in Egypt to kill two Egyptian officials without being punished for their crime: "

'the Khabiru (Hebrews) are seizing the towns of the king ... Turbazu has been slain in the very gate of Zilu (Zarw), yet the king holds back ... Yaptih-Hadad has been slain in the very gate'

Osman considers the Talmud and Koran to be reliable sources yet he asserts that the Solomon of the Old Testament is a mythical figure patterned after an Egyptian pharaoh. Matthew's timeline upon which the birth of Solomon depends suggests otherwise.

Solomon may not have ruled from the "Nile to the Euphrates" but he may have been a real historical king in Palestine who ruled over a short lived small kingdom between the rise and fall of the various empires which swept over the region after Egypt began its decline.

And just who was the "Pharaoh of the oppression" if, as Osman states, the city which the enslaved Israelites supposedly built is the same as the capital of the Hyksos capital - Avaris?

"There is now general agreement among scholars that Pi-Ramses was situated on the site of the former Hyksos capital, Avaris, and that it was the same city as Raamses, the city built by the Israelites' harsh labour, and Rameses, named in the Old Testament as the starting point of the Exodus."

Moses and Akhenaten: The Secret History of Egypt at the Time of the Exodus.

I doubt that there is agreement among scholars who believe that Moses is a mythical figure that "the Israelites" built the "city of Raamses" which Osman identifies as Avaris. There is no evidence that Moses and his Israelites ever existed unless you consider the possibility that Moses was the rebel King Akhenaten and his followers were the enslaved descendants of the Hyksos who built the Hyksos capital at Avaris.

Osman believes that Joseph, the son of the patriarch Jacob, was Yuya - the vizier of Tuthmosis IV (1413-1405). But Matthew's timeline places the birth of Judas (circa 1380), Joseph's brother - the one who came up with the idea of selling him to the Egyptians - during the reign Amenhotep III (1405-1367). As Joseph was Israel's youngest son he would have been born even later than Judas.

The most fascinating part of Osman's book is the evidence which he presents that Akhenaten was not buried in his tomb. Osman suggests that his protector Aye advised him to abdicate in favor of his son Tutankhamun and flee the country. This was due to the unpopularity of his beliefs and to the opposition of the powerful priesthood whose religion Akhenaten had destroyed.

Did Akhenaten flee to the Sinai and then come back and challenge the reigning pharaoh on behalf of his followers? If so, did his religious ideas change after years in the desert? Was his switch to monotheism merely a reaction to the priests who considered him to be an illegitimate heir to the thrown or did Akhenaten have some kind of religious experience connected to the sun such as in the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima?

Miracle of the Sun

Texe Marrs did not believe in the Marian apparitions at Fatima citing the verses in the bible concerning consulting with "familiar spirits" by "witches." "Witches" in ancient times had nothing to do with Satan but were pagan priestesses who consulted the gods such as the legendary priestess who predicted on orders from Augustus that the Roman empire would be conquered by a king in the far off land of Palestine whose kingdom would have no end before he had her put to death. She went into a trance and was possessed by the spirit of the gods while practicing her divination.

Leviticus|19:31 Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.

Isaiah|19:3 And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof; and I will destroy the counsel thereof: and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards.

No spirit appeared to her in a vision as Mary appeared to the children of Fatima and in the transfiguration of Christ which was obviously a vision of Mosses and Elisa (i.e. Elijah)

Mark|9:4 And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus.

Mark|9:5 And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.

Mark|9:7 And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.

Mark|9:8 And suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves.

The Old Testament transformed these spirits into evil spirits sent by God to carry out his will by possessing false prophets thus explaining why some prophecies did not come true but leaving theologians with some puzzling questions. Like how to distinguish between the Holy Spirit and evil spirits.

1 Kings|22:23 Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee.

Elisa (i.e. Elijah) never died but was taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire.

2 Kings|2:11 And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

His spirit possessed both Elisha and John the Baptist.

2 Kings|2:9 And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.

2 Kings|2:15 And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him.

Malachi|4:5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:

Matthew|11:13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. Matthew|11:14 And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.

Both Elijah and Moses appear in the transfiguration suggesting that Moses like Elijah never died. And they are not the only ones who were taken up into heaven.

Mark|9:1 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

This lends theological credence to the Catholic doctrine that Mary did not die but was taken up into heaven. Her death was never recorded in the New Testament. So the Marian vision at Fatima was very much like the transfiguration of Moses and Elijah who are the most likely candidates for the 2 witnesses in the Book of the Revelation.

Hebrews|9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

Malachi|4:5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:

Revelation|11:3 And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.

It is curious that Texe Marrs said that the finding that the galaxies of the universe are moving away from each other at increasing speeds proves that the big bang theory is wrong ergo the bible is true, while atheists claim that the big bang theory is motivated by people who want to believe in God.

But the increasing velocities of the galaxies as they move away from each other is due to the radiation pressure of the light streaming from the stars of these galaxies which may not have existed until some indeterminate time after the big bang. When the stars run out of fuel the acceleration will stop and the universe may begin to collapse changing it from an open to a closed system whose physics may be the reverse of what we know now with energy changing into matter and the universe collapsing at an ever increasing rate. Then, perhaps another big bang and a new heaven and a new earth as predicted in the Book of the Revelation.

At any rate, scholars have determined that the bible (the Old Testament) is actually two bibles - one written by the "Northern Kingdom of Israel" and the other written by the "Southern Kingdom of Judah."

"Much of the Old Testament is best seen through the lens of two related rivalries, one between Israel and Judah and the other between two circles of priests..."

"Who Wrote the Bible?" by Richard Elliott Friedman

"I am reminded of a conversation about the Bible I had several years ago with a skeptical friend. When he asserted that the Bible contained contradictions, I hastened to correct him-- there are no contradictions in the Bible, I said, only apparent contradictions.

In retrospect, I see that he was right; there are contradictions, and they aren't hard to find. There are two creation stories, two flood stories, and two instances of Moses bringing water from a rock, to cite just a few well-known examples.

And as if to top all the contradictions off, D calls P a lie, using the startling wording, "the lying pen of scribes." Finally, in what must be one of the most astounding ironies of all time, someone known as R (the Redactor) combined all these disparate sources into one document, which forms the core of the Old Testament we have today. "

"Who Wrote the Bible?" by Richard Elliott Friedman

Douglass Reed in his "Controversy of Zion" gives, I believe, the correct interpretation of the situation - that Christianity evolved from the universal religion of the kingdom of Israel while Judaism evolved from the racist tribal religion of the kingdom of Judah.

"today's authorities agree about the separateness of "Israel" and "Judah". In the Old Testament Israel is often called "the house of Joseph", in pointed distinction from "the house of Judah".

The Jewish Encyclopaedia says, "Joseph and Judah typify two distinct lines of descent" and adds (as already cited) that Judah was "in all likelihood a non-Israelitish tribe". The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that Judaism developed long after the Israelites had merged themselves with mankind, and that the true relationship of the two peoples is best expressed in the phrase, "The Israelites were not Jews".

Historically, Judah was to survive for a little while and to bring forth Judaism, which begat Zionism. Israel was to disappear as an entity, and it all came about in this way:"

Transcendental Christianty: In Search of the God of Jesus

If Christianity transcends the narrow bigotry of the Old Testament (to which Christ and his true followers were opposed) then one can account for the similarities between pagan religions and Christianity in terms of symbolic prophecy. No religious leader has ever used symbolic imagery and allegory more than Jesus Christ. The Book of the Revelation can only be understood in terms of symbolic imagery. Every generation of Christians interpreted it differently and they all believed that they were living in the last days and the end would come soon. Of course, the length of a human life in terms of the age of the universe (which had a beginning and must have an end according to the laws of thermodynamics) is shorter than the blink of an eye.

I don't propose to preach "another Jesus" but to suggest that those who preach Jesus in the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Churches are all preaching a different Jesus because of all of those contradictions which they say are not contradictions in their bibles. They all violate the spirit of the early Christians who died rather than worship the emperor as god. Like Saint Paul and Saint Peter, they were martyred because of the relentless persecution of the Synagogue of Satan whom the modern Churches now worship in order to retain their tax-exempt status, thus preserving their respective religious rackets.

Saint Paul told his followers to stay away from such people who only saw Christianity as a way of making a good living. And many of the televangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart made a great deal more than a just a "good living." In fact, they became rich off of the donations of their followers many of whom were poor. Even Billy Graham, who ostensibly only made just "a good living" funneled his donations into shopping centers bought for his family. These televangelists apparently did not believe the words of Jesus about how hard it was for rich men to enter the Kingdom of God. They were frauds.

After Constantine had triumphed and began to change the pagan Roman Empire into a Christian community there was a flood of converts to Christianity many of whom converted only to gain favor with the emperor. When a pagan emperor regained control for a time these false converts re-converted back into paganism.

All Constantine wanted was for the Christian bishops to agree on a common creed so as to not confuse converts like himself. But the bishops with their pride and arrogance all saw things differently. Had Constantine not insisted on uniformity there might have been a thousand different versions of the bible like there are a thousand different Korans and a thousand different denominations of the Protestant Churches today.

But trying to place the life of Jesus into the history of Egypt (as Ahmed Osman does) is erroneous. The Old Testament is a compilation of stories written by a priestly caste wanting to legitimize the authority of their Kings and of their holy men (the Levites.)

By contrast, the New Testament was written by ordinary people: a fisherman (Peter), a despised tax collector for the Romans (Matthew), a Greek physician (Luke), a tent maker (Paul) etc. If you listen to (not just read) the Old and New Testaments on tape you come away with a very different feeling about these two compilations of books. I must have listened to the New Testament on tape over a hundred times. I have listened to the Old Testament all the way through but once, and I don't care to listen to it again.

It was not that Constantine wanted a uniform faith to impose on his subjects as so many anti-Christian authors have suggested. For centuries, the Roman Empire got along just fine with the innumerable pagan gods that it had adopted from the lands that it had conquered. The Christian god would just have been one of many in its pantheon if it was the cynical consolidation of power that Constantine was after.

But Constantine believed that it was the Christian god which gave him his thrown and he believed that he had to do what that god wanted to retain it. It was the moral authority of the Christian martyrs and their good example which they had set that gave him his thrown and made his empire the longest lasting in history. Although he was not baptized until the end of his life, because the requirements of being an emperor and a good Christian were obviously incompatible, the fact that he did decide to become a baptized Christian suggests that he was a true believer ever since he saw that cross in the sky. That cross, I believe to have been a parting of the clouds in the shape of a cross with the rays of the sun shining through.

If there is any connection between the stars of the universe it is the rays or beams of light from the stars which are pushing the galaxies further way from each other at increasing velocities.

Perhaps it is the destiny of man to chase those beams of light carrying with him the Gospel of Christ. Or perhaps he will never make it beyond his first step on the moon and the earth will be kept "in balance with nature" at only 500,000 people until an asteroid turns it into a heap of rubble in a new asteroid belt.

"The Sun and the Solar System, including the Earth, are in a Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Sun and Earth happen to currently be near the "inner edge" of an Arm segment called the Orion Arm. There are virtually no nearby stars farther inward, but several billion of them that are nearer the center-line of the Arm are (currently) gravitationally pulling the Sun and Earth "outward", toward that center-line of the Arm. Collectively, this gravitational attraction creates a relative net acceleration,

ACROSS THE ARM, toward the center-line of the Arm. Over a very long period of time, this crossways acceleration creates a crossways velocity, and the Sun will certainly move across the width of the Arm! The Sun therefore "weaves" continuously back and forth across the width of the Arm! preliminary computer analysis of the many gravitational forces acting on the Sun, and its resultant acceleration variations, suggest that the Sun will complete one whole cycle across the Arm and back, in roughly 52 million years....

Interestingly, the geologic record suggests that mass extinctions occurred on Earth at roughly those eras. A 26 million year pattern of repetition of mass extinctions was noted during the 1980s.

The general premise suggested here just implies that the Sun and Earth would pass through such congested areas at roughly 26 million year intervals. The appearance of a 26 million year periodicity of passing through the Arm's centerline, and our known current position near the inner edge of the Arm we are in, seemed like amazing coincidences, in presenting seemingly very obvious explanations for the known mass extinctions.

There seems to be additional solid evidence for this concept. For centuries, scientists have been mystified by the fact that the southern hemisphere of the Moon has an enormous number of craters while the northern hemisphere has far fewer and is covered by a lot of smooth areas that are believed to be much younger.

The Surveyor spacecraft mapped Mars and found the same pattern, many craters in the southern hemisphere and more young smooth areas in the northern hemisphere. Scientists seem to either think this is a remarkable coincidence or simply ignore it! But this premise provides a wonderful explanation for these findings.

If, as the Sun and Earth last passed through the centerline region 13 million years ago, the northern hemispheres of all solar system objects were leading (the Solar System was essentially going upward through the centerline region of the Arm), then many ferocious impacts would have occurred primarily in that hemisphere.

This reasoning would then suggest that the heat of the impacts would have caused extensive melting and then lava flows which would have created the smooth areas that are fairly young. Actually, it predicts that the regions should be 13 million years old!"

At any rate, unlike Frank Tipler, I believe that a Galaxy Organizer and Dispatcher, if it exist, is not a species of robot but the Gospel of Christ.

"A space traveling species can ultimately engulf and control the entire universe"

In the modern era of astrophysics and evolutionary science all faith seems to have gone by the wayside but I believe that Christianity with its moral traditions and its belief in resurrection still has much to offer. We need not throw the baby out with the bathwater nor the fetus into the bucket.

There is no question that randomness has a great deal to say about what happens in the universe but the universe is also governed by mathematical laws and mathematical laws can be described by computer algorithms. One algorithm that casino operators have to be aware of if they don't want their customers to break the bank on their slot machines is the algorithm that produces the pseudo-random numbers that determine whether the one armed bandit empties its contents onto the lap of the sucker.

If one can determine the seed number that the computer starts off with then one can predict when the one armed bandit will shell out. Similarly, if one knows the conditions which were present before the Big Bang and the algorithm by which the universe is expanding one might be able to predict the future; like when the universe will stop expanding and collapse back into itself, if we are living in a cycling universe, that is.

There is no question that GOD plays dice with the universe but are the dice rigged? And if so can puny man or his descendants rig them so as to insure his own resurrection? Perhaps the ancient pyramids are resurrection machines after all.