Is This Moses?

[Music] hello and welcome to let the stone speak my name is Nicholas Irwin I'm the assistant managing editor of our magazine and your host for today's show on today's program I'm going to interview Christopher em he's one of our contributing editors and one of our most prolific writers in the March April issue of our magazine he asked the question is this Moses in that article he looked into the life of a man from Egyptian history who parallels really closely with that of biblical Moses so in today's interview we'll be talking to him a little bit more about that and getting some more information from him on that subject this is a super interesting topic it's something that requires a lot of deep research there's a lot of details there's a lot of information so in addition to this interview I highly recommend that you go back and read Christopher's article from the March April issue titled is this Moses I will put that into the show notes so that you can find that easily in addition to that article I also recommend that you read his article from last year titled who was the Pharaoh of The Exodus this article really does go hand and glove with his article on Moses because it gives you a little bit more about the time frame a little bit more about the Egyptian key players at this time so I'll be sure to put that in the show notes as well if you enjoy this interview then please subscribe be to our Channel be sure that you turn on notifications so that you're notified whenever we post new content and then of course if you're not already please sign up for our free bimonthly biblical archaeology magazine let the stones speak you can sign up for that at Armstrong institute.org magazine but for now enjoy this interview thank you Christopher for taking the time to do this interview my pleasure in your article at the very beginning you say that one of the biggest questions in the field of biblical Archaeology is who is the Pharaoh of The Exodus that's a subject that you've tackled in an article you did an interview with Brent noxall about it I think it was this time last year that that article came out so in this article you ask the question well what about Pharaoh's arch rival is he presented anywhere in Egyptian history and then in 5,000 or so words you give this pretty thorough and interesting option for the identity of Moses so before we get into the nitty-gritty details of that what brought this subject about what was the process of coming to find out about potential Moses okay so whenever it comes to dealing with a subject like this there's going to be a lot of controversy there's a lot of debate surrounding not just who was Moses who was the Pharaoh of The Exodus but especially when was the time frame of The Exodus and you've got to have the time frame locked in mind before you can start making these other associations so like you mentioned this latest article on Moses really builds off of last year's article on the Phar of The Exodus and the time frame and that earlier article makes makes the case for the time frame in in which I go with the more literalist time frame of the 15th century uh BCE for The Exodus and then identifying the Pharaoh with aotp II and So within that framework then uh you can start to look uh more closely for a Moses figure and so to to answer your question as to what prompted uh this particular individual a feature of this article I was reading a book one day I I think two or three years ago um it it's a co-authored book by Scott Ellen Roberts and John Richard Ward and uh both were making different cases for the Exodus the book is called The Exodus reality and so it's a bit of a different book it kind of jumps between one the from one Theory to the next and within it uh Scott Roberts made the case for a certain individual uh called senmut in Egyptian history and he identified the senenmut as none other than Moses like he goes outright in that book there is no one that matches up so well this has to be Moses boom period like that's the language he uses in the book and he made an interesting case for it and uh I thought okay well this is pretty interesting this is something I'd like to tackle uh maybe look a little bit into I'm sure it's probably uh going to come apart in the details like the It surely it's got to be too good to be true I'll look into it makes an interesting case but it's probably going to be too good to be true a lot of these kinds of things can turn out that way so uh much later on more recently as well and putting together this article I'm going into more of these details and doing my own study and I realized that wait a second he could have made a much stronger case for this individual like there's all these other angles that line up to where now I'm thinking well this is a really good potential identification with Moses and and in the article I I don't come out and say this absolutely is Moses but then I try and flesh out some of these ideas that that he at least had started to put together together um pointing to this as none other than Moses so what do we know about the life story of senmut and then who are some of the key Egyptian players at this time as well again going back to our time frame like this is the really critical thing uh establishing the chronology so uh and we've done this in previous articles you can find a lot of detail on our website about this basically for our starting point we take 967 uh which is a widely agreed upon date for the start of Solomon's Temple uh from a number of different sources converging on that date as as the time in which Solomon started building his Temple 967 B.C first king 6 ver1 gives us uh a period of 480 years from The Exodus to when Solomon started the temple or it gives in the 480th year IE 479 years so winding that back gives us an exodus date of 1446 40e soj in the wilderness puts them arriving in Canan 1406 BCE and now with that we can apply the lifetime of Moses which the Bible gives as 120 years and it splits apart into three 40-year brackets so and it has him dying just before the Israelites entered Canaan okay so if the Israelites are entering Canaan 1406 BC 120 years earlier puts his birth at around 1526 BCE so with that date we can compare that to Egyptian chronology but it's not quite that simple because there are several different Egyptian chronologies there's a high chronology there's a low chronology and we deal with the sum in the article but basically we aligned this with a high chronology uh to to to make it long story short so this would put Moses's birth during the reign of tmos I so tmos the and it would put am manate thei as the Pharaoh of The Exodus but again that's the subject for that that article from last year so it puts Moses's birth during the reign of tmos I first and it identifies the pharaoh's daughter the all important Pharaoh's daughter with hat sheepo who was the daughter of tmos I first and uh it would make her around 10 to 15 years old at the time of the discovery of Moses depending on what version of high chronology you go with okay so we that would have his Discovery at that time period and then uh it would basically have his first 40 years in Egypt going all the way to 1486 BCE okay so do we see anything interesting during that window of time uh in ancient Egyptian history well we do see the rise of uh a nobody a no name to the very highest levels of princedom during this period during the reign of hpu so hatchepsut she was this uh Royal Pharaoh's daughter during the reign of tmos I and especially so because she was a fully Royal daughter tmos I first did not produce a fully royal son he had a half royal son uh tmos II whom at at just before he died he made tmos II marry had sheeper who was fully Royal in order to bring the Royal Line together like that okay so after tmos the first then TMO the second Reigns he was a rather sickly pharaoh and uh didn't have a long Reign before uh he had a son not with hetep he only had a daughter with hpit uh but he had a son with another minor wife who would become tmos thei okay so tmos thei now dies but tmos is only 2 years old so his stepmother at sheput begins a co- Regency with tmos III for something like 20 22 years okay and so during this time of hatp there's this individual called senenmut who goes from a noname to the highest ranks of power he has nearly a hundred different titles he is named The Crown Prince he's named named the head of the certain League of prophets he's named The Royal architect he's named the overseer of the greeneries uh like right down the list all the top titles for this guy to where some of the experts on this period they're like there's no way that sen can even fulfill a fraction of these responsibilities but for whatever reason hat epit is giving this noname all of these titles um so sen and mut he he comes from a family which is often referred to as this peasant family uh just this no-name commoner class uh next to nothing is known about his family they're not mentioned with any titles his father evidently had a pretty poor burial but as sen and mut got older and was beginning to be raised in rank he was able to reberry his father in a more Royal kind of way later along with his mother so we have this senut coming from peasant status and being gradually catapulted all the way to what some say is he was the de facto ruler of Egypt basically under hat sheeper and it just it just matches so well with what we read about in the early Exodus account this nobody Moses taken and then raised as Prince of Egypt uh thanks to the kindness of what at the time was Pharaoh's daughter who we identify as het chepot who later became a queen or a pharaoh in her own right and then there's a lot of really interesting um angles with hat cheper as well and her benevolence toward foreigners uh her inscriptions which speak to such a thing her heart full of love like as a pharaoh these are kind of amazing uh sentiments which kind of match really well with the biblical account of uh the pharaoh's daughter and someone who would raise this nobody to the highest level of power uh in the land so I'm not sure if I answered that entirely or maybe too much but well you definitely gave really compelling case just as you do in your article when I was first going through your article and I was introduced to the name Senate one of my first questions was why is the name so different from Moses we have the hios rulers and the the names there match very closely with the names of the Patriarchs the Hebrew names of the Patriarchs so I I I I wondered you know why is this same very very different but then pretty quickly in your article you give a really compelling answer to that okay yeah that's a good point this is really the first question that has to come why isn't he called Moses if sen is Moses then why isn't he called Moses so uh Scott Roberts handles this pretty well um because actually the meaning of the name senmut is really strange as well it means mother's brother like what on Earth kind of a name is this uh and he sees this name as another title like all these other titles that the that senmut has been given and senan mut as a personal name given to him as well as another form of title meaning this mother's brother and that this was the uh Pharaoh Queen had chepo's way of basically elevating sen and mut to the level of fonic royalty by tying him in as almost a familial kind of member because you've got to remember that the pharaohs were like a demigod class or even more than that like they were seen as Divine and so they had no interactions with the commoners like this and so in order to make this commoner what he became he would need to be raised to that kind of a a level as well and so that would make sense of this in its own right really strange name senmut meaning Mother's brother um there and it would kind of fit as well with the uh this idea of adoption by a young head chip so if you look at the Timeline she would have been fairly young 10 to 15 years old and so not so much of a Mother's Son as kind of like a mother's brother so i' emphasiz is that familial link and also raises him to that rank where he can be kind of classed on par with the with the Pharaohs with the royalty uh which he very much wasn't originally there seems to be some more kind of familiar relationship there with Hood's daughter correct yes with his statues maybe you could tell us about that exactly so again hpit was married to her step or her half brother tutos II and again he produced an heir through a a minor wife his his son tmos III but he did produce a daughter with that chapet neur so uh senmut actually became the tutor to uh nephu uh on behalf of hatet and there are actually several statues of senut seated and holding nephu the princess on his lap uh in his position as tutor and her as his student and this is really weird this has been described in scholarly articles for the past Century or more how odd this image is uh because commoners cannot touch royalty like this is the Divine fonic family and so not only can commoners be interacting in this way or touching in this way even the fact that you have this young child this princess depicted so much smaller than a commoner is uh breaks various tabos normal normal restrictions in the way art was was done things were portrayed in ancient Egypt anything in the royal family would have to be depicted much larger than the commoner but you have the slew of statues of senmut as a tutor with nephu seated in front of or or on him um depicting this really close intimate uh relationship with the pharaoh's family uh which really was a sign of how close had cheper and Sen and M were in order to allow those kind of interactions to take place and it naturally it's taken to another level in kind of the theories about what the relationship between senut and hatp was like uh there's there's been a lot of speculation were they lovers even did they have some kind of a relationship uh at senut sorry at sheepit Mortuary complex in De Al Bahari there is a graphito that that's pretty lured of the two of them uh kind of hidden away and it was accomplished by one of the workmen at the site um so so there there are some theories and speculations like was there some kind of a relationship uh forbidden relationship between the two but there was a study done I forget exactly the the name of the individual who did it study done in the 1980s which pretty effectively went through all of that and debunked the idea of uh of any kind of sexual relationship between the two uh but all of it does just show how close the senut had become with the Royal uh demigod fonic family at the time you said before that he had about a 100 Royal titles I think it was more around 90 but yeah basically known for having like many achievements um many skills we know that among some of his achievements sentiment was a royal architect and you already mentioned has sheep's Mortuary so maybe you can tell us a little bit about how he contributed to that Monumental structure sure so uh he's he's widely attributed as having built it there's there's nothing any that there's nothing anywhere that says outright that uh he built it but most people agree especially in his role as Chief Royal architect that he completed it uh there is some debate but but not too much about that uh so this huge complex uh is really one of the wonders of the the world you can see it uh parked up right against The Cliff face there in in in Egypt uh just incred design and layout and it consists of this huge outer Courtyard uh framing this inner UHA jezeru or holy of holies uh which which was part of the whole ferary uh complex layout which itself is really interesting uh in relation to Moses for a number of reasons because of course Moses in the wilderness oversaw the construction of the uh the Tabernacle uh which also is uh described in similar terminology with the holy of holies so it kind of makes you wonder if that terminology was kind of uh understood already uh as being like that inner sanctum type area uh but then the Bible also describes uh a kind of obscure pillared building that Moses also made up against the side of a mountain in the wilderness as well uh with with a number of pillars or colonades which um this the albahari complex has it's a big colon building and then it's interesting from another angle as well because in the Exodus 2 account you have Moses uh who visits the workmen uh some of them Hebrew workmen at the certain work site and he he watches um an Egyptian Master beating one of the Hebrew workmen and then he makes sure he can makes sure that no one's watching and goes and kills this Egyptian Workman and buries him and of course everyone knows the story story goes that uh word got out about this Moses realized it and that's when he fled into Midian uh for his life um so this story kind of brings up some logical questions as well what was Moses doing at this work site uh like did he have perhaps some kind of responsibility ities in this kind of an environment as maybe some kind of architectural guide maybe he was overseeing certain Egyptians at the site himself and went to check on how the Hebrews who were working at the site uh were were being treated and maybe this even took place at at De Al Bahari so there's there's room for a lot of speculation but certainly this idea of architecture and Moses SL sen having skill in this area would seem to be a really good fit cot had his own Tomb at that complex right how does that contribute to this narrative yes so senot has a had a twin tomb which started to be made for him nothing unusual anyone in his kind of high office would have a royal tomb set up the thing that is unusual is that his tomb was never finished his tombs were never finished and they were pretty violently destroyed so the archaeologists have found these tombs uh having been prematurely closed up blocked off inside of them there are still Quarry remains from the Rocks there are still workman's tools his sarcophagus had been smashed into pieces absolutely obliterated uh so for whatever reason senmut came under sen mut's memory and even before he died because he obviously wasn't buried in there I mean they were half finished these tombs senmut came under someone's bad Graces uh to a pretty extreme degree and this is one of the most interesting parts of the story because senmut we we don't know where he's buried we don't have his tomb he disappears someone that that goes from nobody to such a high princely level in ancient Egypt completely disappears at or around 1486 BCE if you're following the chronology uh which which we walk the readers through in in the article uh and this would be right at the time when the biblical Moses disappears like the last mention of him on an artifact in ancient Egypt would align following our Chron chronology that we lay out with 1486 BCE uh like there's a mention of him a few years earlier with nephu in the SI and then a few years later there's this other mention and then that's it he disappears and one of the leading experts on this time period she writes that that this we quot it in the article I forget the quote exactly but she writes how this disappearance has led to all manner of theories uh like some of them beffiting a murder mystery for why senm completely disappears from the record well if you know the Bible and why Moses disappears well that that may not be too far from the truth like maybe this is why uh uh sen and mut completely disappears because of his story paralleling that of Moses him being Moses and therefore at this time fleeing from Egypt for his life after working on this article doing all of the research how convinced are you that Senate is Moses I think I'm as con Ved as can be uh some it's interesting that you put it like that someone came by uh The Institute yesterday and asked that very question on a percentage level uh I said maybe 90% but it's hard to say you know I'm as convinced as can be like the way this lines up is just so incredible right the way down the list there are still questions like the most obvious being the the thing that would settle it would be the name Moses if if ever that kind of equivocation was found that senmut equals Moses um like Scott Roberts deals with uh this question of the meaning of the name senmut even like um the laser Egyptian priest historian Mano of the third Century BCE he writes that actually Moses used that name Moses among the Israelites and another name among the Egyptians um so which which would also make sense um but kind of the qu the question remains open-ended until you have that kind of absolute equivocation sen is Moses somewhere um but besides that I just think it lines up so well that who else could it be now there there is one specialist uh for this time period and for queen cheper that notes that uh during her reign she elevated several other um commoners into high ranking positions so this something I mentioned in the article that could it be another commoner during her Reign was Moses yes it could be and there could be something to that but really nothing quite hits the level of senmut nothing that we know about and you go right down the list uh to from his position in life when he started to his position in life when he ended his disappearance the later destruction of his remains as well as Hut's remains uh it's it's pretty remarkable all the way down so maybe 90 95% maybe I would say but uh as as much as can be I think this is the Moses uh that the Bible is describing well you frame it so well in the article just telling the reader decide for yourself here's the research so we thank you for for that research we thank you for the article and for taking time to do this interview my pleasure thank you very much

Channel: Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology

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Id: dXvbydWE6tg

Length: 27min 7sec (1627 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2024