Doug Wrote:
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> While I don't agree with everything in the article
> or the way it was presented, that doesn't mean
> that such linkages between ancient Egyptian
> language, culture and Judaism are far fetched,
> considering that these people say in their own
> historical religious books that they came from
> Egypt as the seminal moment that began their
> religious identification with Yahweh, by a former
> high priest of Egypt, Moses.

Er, you don't read your Old Testament much, do you?

Yahweh is first acknowledged as deity by the Hebrews before their entry into Egypt. He is acknowledged as their unique and sole deity before the 13th century BCE (Niditch 1997:10), when they were a "decentralised yet identifiable people related in language and culture to the Canaanite population around them." In Genesis 12:8, Abram (before given his name of Abraham by his deity) invokes deity by name (Yahweh = LORD), and this period is dated to about 2250 BCE. So, there's no way any book of the Torah says that "...they came from Egypt as the seminal moment that began their religious identification with Yahweh..."

Further, as noted, Moses in Egypt is acknowledged in the Bible not as a priest, but only as part of the royal household, since it is a "daughter of Pharaoh" who "draws forth" (Hebrew: masheh, which is equated by the Hebrews, via punning, to the name Mosheh = Moses) from the water the infant and raises him as her own son. Moses' actual career as a son of the "daughter of Pharaoh" is not known, although he would have had some religious training as a royal child.

> I have thought about the idea of the relationship
> between the modern word Amen as an ending to a
> prayer or sermon and the ancient diety of Amun,
> but I have never found any concrete evidence tying
> the two together. For me, the idea just remains
> an intriguing coincidence.

It's not even a coincidence, it's a non starter. Here's the actual origin of the term "Amen" - and /imn/ = 'Hidden, to conceal' (the meaning the the name "Amun") - has nothing to do with it:

[C] TOTAL NONSENSE

1) To "prove" that Israel was an Egyptian colony

Examples: "Zion derives from On (Heliopolis)"; "the pharaohs were annointed with crocodile fat, crocodile is msH in AE, so that's why the jews called a messiah a massiach"; "IsRaEl means "Ra is El" "; "Miriam derives from Meryamun"; "Adonai derives from Aton" [XX]; "the jews say the name of an Egyptian god, Amen, at the end of their prayers" [[b]17[/b]]; etc.

[...]


NOTE 17:

This one also often comes up, namely the suggestion that the Biblical word amen was the Egyptian god's name Amen, borrowed by the Hebrews during their stay in Egypt. Needless to say that semantically, historically and etymologically, there is no connection between the two words at all.

The Hebrew word 'amen, used at the end of a prayer or at the beginning or end of a statement, has the meaning "so be it!","let it be so!","certainly!", "verily!", and derives from the Hebrew verb 'aman "to confirm", "to be firm", "to strengthen" (cp. the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, at URL).

Besides, the Egyptian god's name never sounded like Amen (that's again a modernism!), but was written imn, which in the New Kingdom was pronounced 3Ama:ne (as testified by the cuneiform texts that render the name with vowels) and which after ca 1000 BC developed into 3Amu:n(e) (hence the Coptic form Amoun and the Greek form Amoun). The Egyptians themselves connected the name with the verb imn, "to conceal", so the god's name would mean "the Hidden One" (cp. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, ch. 9 = Manetho, Fr. 77).

Source: EGYPTIAN LOAN-WORDS IN ENGLISH, by Aayko Eyma, Egyptologists Electronic Forum.

Finally, I don't think the books you posted prove much of anything as well, since Freud's work is an interpretation of the Moses study, vis a vis the story of the Amarna period (that is, Freud made the comparison between the Biblical Moses and the historical Akhenaten and thought the two were similar in their thought processes, but then carried on to expound further, without support, that the two must have known and borrrwed from one another - now, where that came from is anyone's guess).

Assmann's book, on the other hand, proves just the opposite of what you wish to assert, for Assmann doesn't believe that Moses' story is actual history or even related to Egypt. It's mnemohistory, which, as Assmann defines, is a subjective form of history, which comes about MUCH later than the actual historical events:

"...Mnemohistory is reception theory applied to history. But 'reception' is not to be understood here merely in the narrow sense of transmitting and receiving. The past is not simply 'received' by the present. The present is 'haunted' by the past and the past is modeled, invented, reinvented and reconstructed by the present...

The aim of a mnemohistorical study is not to ascertain the possible truth of traditions such as the truth about Moses but to study these traditions as phenomena of collective memory. Memories may be false, distorted, invented, or implanted...Memory cannot be validated as a historical source without being checked against 'objective' evidence...The task of historical positivism* consists of separating the historical from the mythical elements of memory and distinguishing the elements which retain the past from those which shape the present. In contrast, the task of mnemohistory consists of analyzing the mythical elements in tradition and discovering their hidden agenda." (Assmann 1997: 9-10)

*This is the form of historical method based upon analysis and cross-referencing of events are recorded contemporaneously, for example.

Now, when you read through the Table of Contents of Bargeman's book, you see she is merely drawing parallels between the rites of the Catholic Church and what appear to be their counterparts in ancient Egyptian religion.

That the idea of Christianity drew some of its concepts and rites from ancient Egypt is not new. That Egyptian religion created Christianity, which is not Bargeman's point as far as I can see (but could be close) would be something of a misstatement, just as Issa's comment that Amen = Amun are the same.

Reference:

Assmann, J. 1997. Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press.

Niditch, S. 1997. Ancient Israelite Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

See also:

Currid, J. D. 1997. Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Books. (Currid discusses, for example, some of the inherent differences between Egyptian religious thought and Hebrew/Israelite/Judaic religious thought.)

von Rad, G. 1972. Genesis: A Commentary. J. H. Marks. The Old Testament Library. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. (On the early use of "Yahweh" as a designation for the Hebrew deity.)

Redford, D. B. 1996. The Monotheism of Akhenaten. In H. Shanks and J. Menhardt, Eds., Aspects of Monotheism: How God is One: 11-26. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeological Society. (Discussing how the religion of Akhenaten was not, in fact, a monotheism, a position shared by several other scholars.)

Tucker, G. 1971. Form Criticism of the Old Testament. Old Testament Series. Philadelphia: Fortress Publishers.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg

Doctoral Candidate
Oriental Institute
Doctoral Programme in Oriental Studies [Egyptology]
Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom