Is This Moses?

Hello and welcome to let the stone speak. My name is Nicholas Irwin. I'm the deputy editor of our magazine and your host of today's show. I'm going to interview Christopher. He is one of our contributing editors and one of our most prolific writers in the March and April issue of our magazine asked the question: This Moses? In that article he examined the life of a man from Egyptian history who closely resembles that of the biblical Moses, which is why in today's interview we will talk. to tell you a little more about that and get more information from him on that topic,

this

is a super interesting topic, it is something that requires a lot of deep research, there are a lot of details, there is a lot of information, so in addition to

this

interview, I highly recommend Please go back and read Christopher's article from the March/April issue titled "Is This Moses." I'll put it in the show notes so you can easily find it 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 goes hand in hand with their article on Moses because it gives you a little more about the time period and a little more about the key Egyptian players at this time, so I'll be sure to put that's in the show notes too, if you enjoy this interview, please subscribe to our channel, be sure to turn on notifications to get notified every time we post new content and of course if you haven't already. Subscribe to our free bimonthly biblical archeology magazine.

Let the stones speak. You can subscribe to the magazine at Armstrong Institute.org, but for now enjoy this interview. Thank you Christopher for taking the time to do this interview. I am pleased with your article in the From the beginning you say that one of the most important questions in the field of biblical archeology is who is the pharaoh of the Exodus. That's a topic you addressed in an article. You did an interview with Brent Noxall about it. I think it was this time. That article came out last year, so in this article you ask the question: what about the pharaoh's archrival?

Is it featured anywhere in Egyptian history? We get into the nitty-gritty details of what this topic brought up on what the process was of coming to discover about the potential Moses. Well, when it comes to addressing a topic like this, there will be a lot of controversy. There is a lot of debate surrounding not only who Moses was and who the pharaoh of the Exodus was, but especially when the time period of the Exodus was and you have to have the time frame in mind before you can start making these other associations, like the ones you mentioned.

This latest article on Moses really builds on last year's Far article on the Exodus and the time period, and that earlier article defends the time period I'm going with with the more literalist 15th century time frame. BCE for The Exodus and then identify the Pharaoh with aotp II and then, within that framework, you can then begin to look more closely for a Moses figure and thus answer your question about what prompted this particular individual to have a characteristic from this article I was reading a book one day, I think two or three years ago, it's a book co-authored by Scott Ellen Roberts and John Richard Ward and they were both presenting different cases for the Exodus, the book is called The Reality of the Exodus and so.

It's a slightly different book, it jumps from one theory to the next and within it, Scott Roberts defended a certain individual called senmut in Egyptian history and identified the senenmut as none other than Moses as he openly says in that book, there is no no one that matches that well, this has to be the period of the rise of Moses, that's the language he uses in the book and he made an interesting case for it and, uh, I thought, well, this is pretty interesting. It's something I'd like to address, maybe do some research. I'm sure it'll probably break down into details like Surely It Has To Be Too Good To Be True.

I will look into it, it makes an interesting case, but it will probably be too good to be true, many of these things can turn out that way, so much later, more recently as well and in preparing this article, I will go into more detail about these and do my own study and I realized that wait a second, he could have made a much stronger case for this individual, since there are all these other angles that line up with where I'm now thinking, well, this is a very good identification potential with Moses and in In the article I don't come out and say this is absolutely Moses, but then I try to develop some of these ideas that he had at least begun to put together, pointing this out as none other than Moses, so what do we know? about senmut's life story and then who some of the key Egyptian players are at this time, as well as getting back to our time frame like this is what's really critical, establishing the chronology, so, and we've done this in previous articles.

You can find a lot of details on our website about this, basically, for our starting point, we take 967 uh, which is a widely agreed upon date for the beginning of Solomon's Temple, uh, from several different sources that converge on that date, so as the time when Solomon began to build his temple in 967 BC, first king 6 ver1, gives us a period of 480 years from the Exodus until Solomon began the temple or gives us in the year 480, that is, 479 years , so sinuous that they give us a date of the exodus of 1446. 40e soj in the desert places them arriving in Canan in 1406 BC.

C. and now with that we can apply the life of Moses that the Bible gives as 120 years and is divided into three sections of 40 years and has him dying just before the Israelites. he entered Canaan, okay, so if the Israelites entered Canaan in 1406 BC. C., 120 years before, his birth is around 1526 BC. C., so with that date we can compare that with the Egyptian chronology, but it is not that simple because there are several different Egyptian chronologies, there is a high chronology. there is a low chronology and we covered the sum in the article, but we basically align this with a high chronology, uh to to, to make history short, so this would place the birth of Moses during the reign of tmos, so tmos and would put I refer to them as the Pharaoh of the Exodus, but again that's the topic of that article last year, so it places the birth of Moses during the reign of Tmos I first and identifies Pharaoh's daughter, Pharaoh's most important daughter. with sheep hat, who was the daughter of tmos me first and uh, she would have been between 10 and 15 years old at the time of Moses' discovery, depending on which high chronology version you choose, okay, so we would have his discovery in that period of time and then uh Basically, his first 40 years in Egypt would go up to 1486 BC.

C., okay? Do we see anything interesting during that time frame? In the history of ancient Egypt, well, we see the rise of a nobody, a nameless one, even himself. highest levels of princedom during this period during the reign of hpu, so hatchepsut she was the daughter of the royal pharaoh during the reign of tmos I and especially because she was a completely royal daughter. tmos I first did not produce a completely royal son, he had a half royal son, uh tmos II, who just before he died he had tmos II marry, he had a shepherd who was completely royal to join the royal line that way, okay, after tmos the first and then TMO the second reign, he was a pretty sick guy. pharaoh and he didn't have a long reign before, he had a son, not with hetep, he only had a daughter with hpit, but he had a son with another minor wife who would become tmos, okay, so tmos, now he dies, but tmos is . he's only 2 years old, so his stepmother in sheput begins a co-regency with tmos III for something like 20 22 years, okay, and during this time of hatp there is an individual named senenmut who rises from a non-name to the ranks highest of power who has almost a hundred different titles they call him The Crown Prince they name him the head of a certain League of prophets they name him The royal architect they name him the overseer of the green areas uh like just below the list all the main titles for this type where some of the experts in this period say that there is no way that Sen can fulfill even a fraction of these responsibilities, but for some reason, Hat Epit is giving this no name all these titles, um, Sen and, Furthermore, he comes from a family that is often known as this peasant family uh just this nameless commoner class uh almost nothing is known about his family, they are not mentioned with any title, his father evidently had a rather poor burial, but As Sen and Mut grew up and began to be elevated in rank, he was able to have his father again in a more real way later along with his mother, so we have this Senut coming from peasant status and being gradually catapulted. even what some say was the de facto ruler. of Egypt basically under the shepherd's hat and it just coincides very well with what we read in the early account of the Exodus, this nobody that Moses took and then raised as Prince of Egypt, thanks to the kindness of what at that time was the daughter of the Pharaoh whom we identify as het chepot, who later became a queen or pharaoh in her own right and then there are a lot of really interesting angles with hat cheper as well and her benevolence towards foreigners, her inscriptions that speak of such a thing, her heart full of love. like a pharaoh, these are amazing sentiments that match up very well with the biblical account of the pharaoh's daughter and someone who would elevate this nobody to the highest level of power on earth, so I'm not sure if I answered that completely or maybe too much, but hey, you definitely made a really compelling case just as you do in your article when I first read it and was introduced to the name Senate.

One of my first questions was why the name is so Unlike Moses, we have the godly rulers and the names there match very closely with the names of the Patriarchs, the Hebrew names of the Patriarchs, so I was wondering: do you know why which is this very different thing, but 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 up, why isn't his name Moses? If Sen is Moses, then why is he not called Moses? So Scott Roberts handles this pretty well, because actually, the meaning of the name senmut is really weird and it also means mother's brother, like what kind of name is this, and he sees this name as another title like all these other titles that they have given that senmut and senan mut. as a personal name that was given to him, as well as another form of title that means this mother's brother and that this was the uh, Queen Pharaoh had a chepo way of basically elevating sen and mut to the level of phonic royalty by link it almost like a family type. of membership because you have to remember that the pharaohs were like some kind of demigods or even more than that, like they were seen as Divine and therefore did not have interactions with commoners in this way and to make this commoner what he became He would also have to be raised to that kind of level and that would make sense in itself.

A really strange name, Senmut, which means mother's brother, um, and would fit this idea of ​​adoption as well. for a young head chip, so if you look at the timeline, she would have been quite young, 10 to 15 years old, and not so much like a mother's son but more like a mother's brother, so I emphasize is that familial bond and also raises him to that rank where he can be ranked on par with pharaohs with royalty uh, which originally he wasn't, there seems to be some kind of more familial relationship there with Hood's daughter, right, yeah, such time with his statues. you could tell us about that exactly, so again hpit was married to his stepfather or half brother tutos II and again he had an heir through an underage wife, his son tmos III, but he had a daughter with that chapet neur, so which, in reality, senmut. he became the tutor of uh nephu uh in the name of hatet and actually there are several statues of senut sitting and holding princess nephu on his lap uh in his position as a tutor and her as his student and this is really strange, this is has described in academic studies. articles from the last century or more, how strange is this image, uh, because commoners can't touch royalty, this is the Divine phonic family and therefore commoners can't just interact this way or touch each other this way way, even the fact that you have this little boy. this princess depicted much smaller than a commoner breaks several boards, normal normal restrictions on the way art was made, things were portrayed in ancient Egypt, any member of the royal family would have to be depicted much larger than the commoner , but you have the large number of statues of senmut as a tutor with nephu sitting in front of him or on him, which represent this really close intimate relationship with the pharaoh's family, which was really a sign of how close cheper, Sen were and M to allow them kinds of interactions to take place and naturally it has been brought toanother level in the type of theories about what the relationship between senut and hatp was like.

There has been much speculation about whether they were lovers, even if they had some kind of relationship. in senut sorry in the Sheepit mortuary complex in De Al Bahari there is a graphite that is quite attractive to the two uh like hidden and it was achieved by one of the workers at the site, so, there are some theories and speculations like if there was some kind of relationship, a forbidden relationship between the two, but a study was done. I don't remember exactly the name of the person who did it. made in the 1980s that effectively went through all of that and debunked the idea of ​​any kind of sexual relationship between the two, but this all shows how close the senut had become with the royal family of phonic demigods in the The Time You Said before he had about 100 actual titles, I think it was more than 90, but yeah, basically he was known for having a lot of accomplishments and a lot of skills.

We know that among some of his achievements was that of a royal architect and you already mentioned that he has sheep. Mortuary, so maybe you can tell us a little bit about how he contributed to that monumental structure. I'm sure he is widely credited with having built it. There's nothing that directly says he built it, but most people especially agree. on his role as the actual chief architect who completed it, there is some debate, but not much about it, so this huge complex is really one of the wonders of the world, you can see it parked right against The Cliff. face there in Egypt uh just an amazing design and layout and it consists of this huge outer courtyard uh that frames this inner UHA jezeru or holy of holies uh that was part of the whole complex design of ferary uh which in itself is really interesting uh in relation to Moses for various reasons because of course Moses in the wilderness oversaw the construction of the Tabernacle, which is also described in terminology similar to the holy of holies, so it makes you wonder if that terminology was anything like that.

It was already understood as that inner sanctuary type area, but the Bible also describes a kind of dark pillared building that Moses also built against the side of a mountain in the desert, as well as with a series of pillars or colonnades. Which, um, the Albahari complex has a large colon building and then it's interesting from another angle as well because in the story of Exodus 2 you have Moses, who visits the workers, some of them Hebrew workers at a certain workplace and he watches. um an Egyptian teacher beating one of the Hebrew workers and then he makes sure no one is watching and he goes and kills this Egyptian worker and buries him and of course everyone knows the story that says word got out about this Moses.

He realized it and that's when he fled to Midian for his life, so this story raises some logical questions, like what was Moses doing in this workplace, maybe he had some kind of responsibility in this kind of situation? environment as perhaps some sort of architectural guide, perhaps he himself was supervising certain Egyptians at the site and went to check how the Hebrews who were working at the site were being treated and perhaps this even took place at De Al Bahari, so there is room for a lot of speculation, but certainly this idea of ​​architecture and Moisés SL Sen, who has skill in this area, would seem to be a cot that fits very well.

He had his own grave in that complex. How does that contribute to this narrative? Yes, Senot has had a twin tomb that they started making for him, nothing unusual, someone in his high-ranking position would have a real tomb installed. What's unusual is that his tomb was never finished, his tombs were never finished and they were quite violent. destroyed, so the archaeologists found these tombs, uh, having been closed prematurely, locked inside them, there are still remains of the rock quarry, there are still work tools, their sarcophagus had been smashed into pieces, absolutely destroyed, uh, so for some reason senmut came under sen. the memory of Mut and even before he died because he obviously wasn't buried there, I mean, they were half finished, these tombs Senmut fell under someone's bad grace, uh, to a pretty extreme degree, and this is one of the parts most interesting in history because Senmut we, we don't know where he is buried, we don't have his tomb, he disappears, someone who goes from being nobody to such a high princely level in ancient Egypt disappears completely around 1486 BC.

C. if you follow the chronology, uh, which one, which one. We guide readers through the article, and this would be right around the time that the biblical Moses disappears, as if the last mention of him on an artifact in ancient Egypt would line up following our Chronology chronology that we presented with 1486 BC. C., as there is a mention of it a few years earlier with nephu in the SI and then a few years later there is another mention and then it disappears and one of the leading experts on this time period writes that we quote this in the article I forget the quote exactly, but she writes how this disappearance has led to all sorts of theories, some of them worthy of a murder mystery, about why senm completely disappears from the record, if you know the Bible and why Moses disappears, that may Not being too far from the truth, maybe that's why uh uh sen and mut completely disappear because his story parallels that of Moses, he is Moses and therefore at this moment he flees Egypt to save your life after working on this article by doing your best.

She investigates how convinced you are that the Senate is Moses. I think I am as convinced as possible. It's interesting that you said it like that. Someone came to the Institute yesterday and asked that same question on a percentage level. I said maybe. 90%, but it's hard to say you know, I'm as convinced as I can be that the way this lines up is so incredible. At the bottom of the list, there are still questions like the most obvious one: what would it solve. be the name Moses if ever that kind of misunderstanding was found that senmut is equal to Moses um as Scott Roberts deals with this question of the meaning of the name senmut even as um the historian Egyptian priest laser Mano of the 3rd century BC.

C. writes that Moses actually used that name Moses among the Israelites and another name among the Egyptians, um, which would also make sense, um, but the question remains open until you have that kind of outright equivocation, sen, is Moses somewhere, um, but also? which I think lines up so well that who else could it be now there is a specialist for this time period and for queen cheper who points out that during her reign she elevated several other commoners to high ranking positions so this is something I mentioned in the article that could be another commoner during his reign, Moses, yes it could be and there could be something to that but nothing really rises to the level of senmut, nothing that we know of and you go to the bottom of the list. from his position in life when it started to his position in life when his disappearance ended, the subsequent destruction of his remains and Hut's remains, uh, it's pretty notable until the end, so maybe 90 95% maybe I would say, but uh as much as possible, I think this is the Moses that the Bible describes well, you frame it very well in the article just telling the reader to decide for yourself here's the research so we thank you for that research We thank you for the article and for taking the time to do this interview, it is a pleasure for me, thank you very much