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Osarseph and Exodus


docyabut2

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The story of Osarseph, preserved by Josephus and attributed by him to an Egyptian priest named Manetho, tells of the struggles between a rebellious Egyptian priest named Osarseph and a Pharaoh Amenhotep and his son “Ramesses also called Sethos”. Osarseph, according to the story, seized control of Egypt for thirteen years, instituted a reign of terror, and destroyed Egypt’s religious institutions. The pharaoh fled from Egypt and hid his son away for safety. Later, the son returned and expelled Osarseph from Egypt. This Osarseph, says Manetho, was Moses, the biblical hero.

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The story of Osarseph, preserved by Josephus and attributed by him to an Egyptian priest named Manetho, tells of the struggles between a rebellious Egyptian priest named Osarseph and a Pharaoh Amenhotep and his son “Ramesses also called Sethos”. Osarseph, according to the story, seized control of Egypt for thirteen years, instituted a reign of terror, and destroyed Egypt’s religious institutions. The pharaoh fled from Egypt and hid his son away for safety. Later, the son returned and expelled Osarseph from Egypt. This Osarseph, says Manetho, was Moses, the biblical hero.

There are way too many problems with Josephus' claims.

1) There never was a Pharaoh named Amenhotep who had a son named Ramesses, also called Sethos.

2) There's no evidence that an Egyptian priest, by any name, seized control of Egypt for 13 years.

3) There's no evidence that an Egyptian priest, by any name, destroyed Egypt's religious institutions.

4) There's no evidence that any Egyptian pharaoh fled Egypt, taking his son along with him.

5) There's no evidence of an Egyptian prince returning to Egypt and expelling a priest, turned usurper.

Josephus' and Manetho's writings are a conflated retelling of a history that neither one really knew anything about. All in an attempt to rationalize into existance a religious history, of the Hebrews, that didn't exist.

cormac

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Cormic so much of Egypt`s history was wiped out, one wonders:)

Edited by docyabut2
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Could Moses have been akhenaten` brother Thutmose, he was a priest.

http://en.wikipedia....Prince_Thutmose

While Thutmose was a priest Moses was never a priest, at least not in Egypt as mentioned in the Bible. Also, Thutmose was of full Egyptian birth while Moses was of full Hebrew birth. Thutmose disappears from history somewhere in his fathers 3rd decade of ruling and is believed to have died, while Moses is supposed to have been at least 40 when he leads the Exodus. There is no evidence of a large population of peoples, to be equated with the Hebrews, that left Egypt during that time. There's no real consistancy between the two.

cormac

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Cormic so much of Egypt`s history was wiped out, one wonders:)

Not to the extent your link is suggesting, it wasn't.

cormac

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er yes he was.. Psalm 99:6

  • In Leviticus, specifically chapter 8, Moses washed Aaron and his sons, anointed Aaron and his sons with oil, purified and sanctified the altar, offered burnt sacrifices to the Lord, and sanctified Aaron and his sons, and even their clothing.These are the actions of a priest.

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I said:

While Thutmose was a priest Moses was never a priest, at least not in Egypt as mentioned in the Bible.

What he may have been in Zion has nothing to do with what he may have been in Egypt, not that there's any evidence for his existance in any case. There's not.

cormac

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Comic there has to be a connection to the bible story, people just don`nt make up all this stuff :) :)

The only 'connection' is in the Hebrews/Jews attempt to give their stories a greater level of historical authenticity then it otherwise deserved. So they borrowed bits and pieces from other, more ancient cultures and incorporated it as their own. As to people making up such stuff, sure they did. Happened all the time back then. An example being the Greeks attempt to equate their own gods with the Egyptian gods, since Egypt had the greater antiquity. The Greeks were, in effect, hoping some of that antiquity would rub off on their culture.

cormac

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Wa's goin on? Every week we have a new Moses 'round here!

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Manetho's accounts are generally agreed to be garbled and unreliable in these matters. It's possible the Osarseph story, which on the face of it is obvious fiction, was a misremembered albeit dim memory of what historians call the Amarna Interlude—the Amarna Period of Akhenaten's reign. Little to nothing of Akhenaten and his court would be well remembered by Manetho's time, which was a thousand years later, but perhaps oral traditions preserved something of these Dynasty 18 events.

Moses of the Old Testament and Tuthmose, eldest son of Amunhotep III and brother of Akhenaten, are quite clearly not the same person. It's simply impossible for any number of reasons. One of the most obvious is that, by all appearances, Prince Tuthmose died very young. Very few monuments are known for him and the most famous, as well as the single-most informative, is the pink-granite sarcophagus he commissioned for his cat, Ta-miw:

c5c29cac-d897-44d9-a836-cb3662b6b649HiRes.JPG

Again, I stress this is the single-most informative monument we have for Prince Tuthmose. This is important to understand because a royal son, had he lived to maturity, would've left a hell of a lot more in the archaeological record (think of several of the sons of Ramesses II, who reached maturity, are well attested, but died too young to become their father's successor). It is generally felt that Prince Tuthmose would've died as a boy, and this mummy is a leading candidate for him:

Unknown_Boy.jpg

This boy died at around age eleven. He was one of three mummies found in a side-chamber cache in KV35, so his actual identity cannot be known. I admit that we cannot say with certainty that this is Prince Tuthmose, but he was found in a Dynasty 18 tomb in the middle of two other Dynasty 18 mummies, so it is plausible.

In short, there is no chance that Moses and Prince Tuthmose were the same people.

Let's return to cormac's list in Post 2. I am in full agreement with it, with the exception of #4. Well, with the first half of #4. The last native pharaoh of Egypt, Nectanebo II, fled Egypt at the return of the Persians, and disappeared into Nubia. He was never heard from again. As for the second half of #4, I myself cannot say whether Nectanebo II took a son with him, but it's possible—along with other family members and court officials, all of whom might have faced execution at the hands of Artaxerxes III and his Persian army. However, this occurred in Dynasty 30 in around 342 BCE, so there of course can be no connection with the time of Akhenaten. No such event as a fleeing pharaoh occurred in Dynasty 18, so on that score I agree with cormac.

But look at some of cormac's other points. Although no king named Amunhotep had the sons mentioned by Manetho (#1), Amunhotep III was Akhenaten's father. No priest seized control of Egypt, for 13 years or any other time span (2), but Akhenaten reigned for 17 years and his enforcement of the cult of the Aten represented something of a tyranny for that period of Dynasty 18 as well as a tremendous upset to religious orthodoxy (#3). Akhenaten didn't return from anywhere as a prince and in fact almost certainly never set foot outside of Egypt, but upon assuming the throne and enforcing his Aten cult, he expelled the priests of Amun as well as the cults of numerous other state deities (#5).

All in all, Manetho's garbled accounts do reflect, in my opinion, a dim memory of the Amarna Period.

There is also a certain level of lively debate among historians who specialize in late antiquity that Josephus, whose work preserves so much of Manetho for us, perhaps freely edited Manetho's original accounts to express his, Josephus', clear Judaic bias to history. I mean, that's why Josephus wrote so much: to help Rome understand the traditions and history of the Hebrews. Given that no original works of Manetho survive, we don't know what Josephus may or may not have done with Manetho's accounts.

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Cormic so much of Egypt`s history was wiped out, one wonders:)

One shouldn't wonder that much. While it's true a lot of historical facts will never be known to us, the sort of events described in Manetho's accounts would've been reflected in innumerable pharaonic inscriptions, monuments, and texts. However, pharaonic inscriptions, monuments, and texts preserve nothing of the sort described by Manetho. Another critical point, which I seem to have to stress endlessly at UM, is that the Hebrews simply did not exist in a time period contemporary to Amunhotep III or Akhenaten. Archaeology of both Egypt and the Holy Land is crystal clear on this. Archaeology of the Hold Land alone has been able to track the rise and development of the Hebrews, and their rise is not event evident until later in the Late Bronze Age.

er yes he was.. Psalm 99:6

  • In Leviticus, specifically chapter 8, Moses washed Aaron and his sons, anointed Aaron and his sons with oil, purified and sanctified the altar, offered burnt sacrifices to the Lord, and sanctified Aaron and his sons, and even their clothing.These are the actions of a priest.

These are the actions of priests from practically all cultures of the ancient Near East—from Egypt to the Levant, through Mesopotamia and Persia, and up into Anatolia. In fact, these are very generic priestly actions, with the exception of sanctifying an altar (which would be the duty of a high-ranking priest). But certainly nothing here hints at an Egyptian connection.

Comic there has to be a connection to the bible story, people just don`nt make up all this stuff :) :)

But yes, they did. All ancient Near Eastern civilizations did this sort of thing. It's how kings promoted their authority and how religious institutions built and maintained their power. Moreover, writers of late antiquity—from Herodotus to Manetho to Plutarch to Diodorus, in no particular order—are notorious for incorrectly recording historical events or for simply making them up.

A story such as told in Exodus was the perfect device for building a fledgling kingdom and for establishing its legitimacy in the eyes of neighboring civilizations. Two centuries of Near Eastern archaeology have firmly revealed the absolute lack of evidence for anything like Moses and Exodus, so it's quite obvious that the story is a fabrication or at least an exaggeration of some much more minor event.

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This boy died at around age eleven. He was one of three mummies found in a side-chamber cache in KV35, so his actual identity cannot be known. I admit that we cannot say with certainty that this is Prince Tuthmose, but he was found in a Dynasty 18 tomb in the middle of two other Dynasty 18 mummies, so it is plausible.

The scary photo edited out :cry:

And this question could probably be answered by somebody from SCA writing just one sentence.....

Moses, Joseph, blah blah blah. As you wrote here, and I in another thread, dimly remembered stories, corrupted by time and religious/political machinations, still echo down the millenia and, unfortunately, are seen as the "truth".....

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qoute -Josephus' and Manetho's writings are a conflated retelling of a history that neither one really knew anything about.

Josephus may have adopted the story as he was Jewish , but Manetho was a Egyptain Historian, it seems this all occur arround the time of Akhenaten , Ramesses1 and his son Seti, since Ramesses1 tried to wiped out all of Akhentaen`s history.

Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten 1350 - 1334

Smenkhkare (Ankhkheperure) 1336-1334

Tutankhamun (Nebkheperure) 1334 - 1325

Ay (Kheperkheperure) 1325 - 1321

Horemheb (Djeserkheperure) 1323 - 1295

19th Dynasty

Ramesses I (Menpehtyre) 1295 - 1294

Seti I (Menmaatre) 1394 - 1279

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qoute -Josephus' and Manetho's writings are a conflated retelling of a history that neither one really knew anything about.

Josephus may have adopted the story as he was Jewish , but Manetho was a Egyptain Historian, it seems this all occur arround the time of Akhenaten , Ramesses1 and his son Seti, since Ramesses1 tried to wiped out all of Akhentaen`s history.

Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten 1350 - 1334

Smenkhkare (Ankhkheperure) 1336-1334

Tutankhamun (Nebkheperure) 1334 - 1325

Ay (Kheperkheperure) 1325 - 1321

Horemheb (Djeserkheperure) 1323 - 1295

19th Dynasty

Ramesses I (Menpehtyre) 1295 - 1294

Seti I (Menmaatre) 1394 - 1279

Actually he wasn't. He was an Egyptian Priest. There were no historians in the modern sense back then. More often than not history, myth and legend became intertwined. As can be seen by previous mentions of Amenhotep and Ramesses, also called Seti. All the priests back then really had were names, with no real historical knowledge of who they were or even their backgrounds. This is not a good basis for making the claims that many have tried to make.

cormac

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Manetho (11px-Loudspeaker.svg.png/ˈmænɨθ/; Ancient Greek: Μανέθων, Manethōn, or Μανέθως, Manethōs) was an Egyptian historian and priest from Sebennytos (ancient Egyptian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manetho

Wikipedia makes alot of wrong claims. Your point was?

cormac

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Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay were excised from the official lists of Pharaohs, which instead reported that Amenhotep III was immediately succeeded by Horemheb. This is thought to be part of an attempt by Horemheb to delete all trace of Atenism and the pharaohs associated with it from the historical record. Akhenaten's name never appeared on any of the king lists compiled by later Pharaohs and it was not until the late 19th century that his identity was re-discovered and the surviving traces of his reign were unearthed by archaeologists.

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Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay were excised from the official lists of Pharaohs, which instead reported that Amenhotep III was immediately succeeded by Horemheb. This is thought to be part of an attempt by Horemheb to delete all trace of Atenism and the pharaohs associated with it from the historical record. Akhenaten's name never appeared on any of the king lists compiled by later Pharaohs and it was not until the late 19th century that his identity was re-discovered and the surviving traces of his reign were unearthed by archaeologists.

That still doesn't many any of the kings of the Thutmose lineage the Biblical Moses.

cormac

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Manetho (11px-Loudspeaker.svg.png/ˈmænɨθ/; Ancient Greek: Μανέθων, Manethōn, or Μανέθως, Manethōs) was an Egyptian historian and priest from Sebennytos (ancient Egyptian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manetho

Not a lot is known about Manetho but "historian" was not one of his titles. There was no such title in Egypt. There was no such tradition. The Greeks had been developing a legitimate tradition of historical inquiry, but it was nothing like historical study as we understand it today. As can be seen in the accounts of Herodotus, historical inquiry was mostly story telling; where facts were lacking, imagination took over.

We modern people have assigned the title of "historian" to Manetho. Had you mentioned the title to him, he would've been nonplussed. There was no such word in his language.

I maintain that Manetho's story of Osarseph is possibly a jumbled memory of the Amarna Period, but it doesn't make the account a reality—any more than it would prove that the biblical character of Moses was real. It certainly doesn't.

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Comac, Pharaohs were given up to six different names so how do you know who was who:)

Most kings of the New Kingdom possessed five names. Of these, only the nomen and prenomen were widely known and recorded. These were the two names—birth name and throne name—which appeared in cartouches. The other three names were largely ritual in nature and it's unlikely kings were referred to by them in person. They appear only in formal inscriptions.

Nevertheless, the royal titulary (various names) of all major New Kingdom kings are well known and attested. Nothing in Manetho's account fits with them in a reliable manner.

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What was Moses if not priest? Mage? Wizard?

We have evidence ot 10 plagues of Egypt. Tempest Stele of Ahmose I,Hatshepsut's Speos Artemidos, an ancient water-trough found in El Arish bears hieroglyphic markings detailing a period of darkness,Egyptian Ipuwer papyrus .

From wiki:

book The Plagues of Egypt: Archaeology, History, and Science Look at the Bible, Siro Igino Trevisanato explores the theory that the plagues were initially caused by the Santorini eruption in Greece. His hypothesis considers a two-stage eruption over a time of a bit less than two years. His studies place the first eruption in 1602 BC, when volcanic ash taints the Nile, causing the first plague and forming a catalyst for many of the subsequent plagues. In 1600 BC, the plume of a Santorini eruption caused the ninth plague, the days of darkness. Trevisanato hypothesizes that the Egyptians (at that time under the occupation of Hyksos), resorted to human sacrifice in an attempt to appease the gods, for they had viewed the ninth plague as a precursor to more. This human sacrifice became known as the tenth plague.

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