Pharaoh Adamenemhept I — The Author of Genesis?

As an individual with a passion for ancient history, my inquisitive mind has found itself turning towards the historical legitimacy of Christianity and the many questions that believers and non-believers alike have asked when contemplating this religion and its extraordinary claims. One such question refers to Adam and Eve, and of course Noah, and the extraordinarily long lives that they are said to have lived.
Now one explanation for the ages of these characters is that they are based on Egyptian calendars and when researching back from an average age of people living at that time, which corresponds to the ages given for Adam, Eve and Noah, we can find that the ages date back to the time of the Twelfth Dynasty, a Dynasty from which the first legend declaring the king to be the ‘Son of God’ came from, and we are told that “Adam” in Genesis is the “Son of God”. In the Twelfth Dynasty, we find a Pharaoh called Amenemhat I, who was also called Amenemhet or Adamenemhept I.
Of course, the first thing to notice here is the name ‘Adam’.
As an English word, ‘Adam’ comes from the Hebrew ‘Adamah’, which is pronounced ‘Ah-dahm’. ‘Adamah’ (Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon #H127 and 128) is said to mean “of the Earth, earthlings, ground or land”, and relates to the Hebrew words adom (red) and admoni (ruddy).
But before we go into more detail regarding the various links between Adam/Amenemhat I and Genesis, let’s first take a look at some background information regarding this 12th Dynasty Pharaoh.
Pharaoh Amenemhat I, who ruled from 1991 BC to 1962 BC, was the first ruler of the Twelfth Dynasty, a dynasty considered to be the golden-age of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt.
The Middle Kingdom is considered to be ancient Egypt’s Classical Age during which the culture produced some of its greatest works of art and literature. The 12th Dynasty is often described as the beginning, which is what ‘Genesis’ basically means, because of the vast improvement in the quality of art and architecture, but these developments were only possible because of the stability the 11th Dynasty secured for the country. The 13th Dynasty was never as powerful or stable as the 12th Dynasty and allowed an immigrant people known as the Hyksos (meaning “Shepherd Kings”) to gain power in Lower Egypt, a power which eventually grew strong enough to challenge the authority of the 13th Dynasty and bring in the era known as the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt (approx. 1782-approx.1570 BCE). According to every estimation of the Middle Kingdom, Egypt reached its highest point of culture during the 12th Dynasty, and the innovations of this period influenced the rest of Egypt’s history.
The Hyksos were the foreign rulers who conquered and ruled the land of ancient Egypt in the Second Intermediate period during the 15th/16th and 17th Dynasties. There was only one dynasty of “Shepherd Kings” which was founded by Salatis who was followed in succession by Beon, Apachnas, Apophis, Jannas, and Asses. According to the ancient Egyptian historian Manetho, these six “Shepherd Kings” reigned for 198 years and 10 months.
Apparently, the Hyksos were forced out of Egypt and into Syria, according to Manetho and quoted by the ‘Josephus’ — “After the conclusion of the treaty they left with their families and chattels, not fewer than two hundred and forty thousand people, and crossed the desert into Syria. Fearing the Assyrians, who dominated over Asia at that time, they built a city in the country which we now call Judea. It was large enough to contain this great number of men and was called Jerusalem.”
–Josephus, Against Apion 1.73.7, quoting Manetho’s Aegyptiaca
Manetho reports that they wandered the desert before establishing the city of Jerusalem.
While ‘Josephus’ quotes Manetho’s history associating the Israelites with the Hyksos, there are many modern scholars which see problems with Manetho’s merging of the expulsion of the Hyksos and the Biblical literature. Manetho lived many centuries after these events took place, and he may have combined two different stories when associating the Hyksos and the Israelites. Ahmose’s defeat of the Hyksos occurred centuries before the traditional written date of the Exodus story, Ahmose I being a pharaoh and founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. In addition, the basic statement of the Hyksos and Exodus histories have minor differences — the Hyksos were expelled rulers of Egypt, not slaves, and they were forced out, not pursued.
But from my experience researching this time period, I have realized that taking these stories and the details within them too literally is a bad idea.
But in regards to Amenemhet I, he was not of royal lineage, and the composition of some literary works (the Prophecy of Neferti and the Instructions of Amenemhat) and the return to the pyramid-style complexes of the 6th Dynasty rulers are often considered to have been attempts at legitimizing his rule. There is some evidence that the early reign of Amenemhat I was troubled with political turmoil, which is indicated by the inscriptions of Nehri, a local governor. An associate of Amenemhat I, who is known by the name of Khumhotep I was involved in some naval battles and helped to secure victory for Amenemhat I. Later, Khnumhotep was appointed as an important local governor at Beni Hasan, and he founded a dynasty of local governors there. There are also mentions of military campaigns against the Asiatics and the Nubians in inscriptions made by Khnumhotep.
The Position of the King in the Middle Kingdom
Since the old kingdom (2686 BC — 2134 BC), belief in the absolute power of the king in a theological sense had been lost. The Middle Kingdom’s history is described by the active hostility between the king and the powerful families who assert their influence in the provinces, and with the help of literature and theology, an attempt is made to strengthen the position of the king. That literature and theology comes in the form of the “royal novel” and acts as both propaganda and justification of the kings position, and the 12th Dynasty, or the Middle Kingdom, produces the origin of the royal birth legend, which declares the king to be the ‘Son of God’, as mentioned earlier.
So taking into account the information above, let’s start looking at some of the details which link the Genesis story to the Pharaoh Adamenemhept I.
The first to know is that “Adam” is not originally a Hebrew personal name of a male person, but a generic word for humanity. While “adamah” is both the Hebrew word for woman and also earth or ground, the ‘ah’ part indicating the feminine gender, “Adam” would only later become a name for a male person, which means this verse from Genesis 1:26–27, should read -
“And Elohim said, Let us make humanity” and so “Elohim created humanity … male and female created he them”.

The Hebrew word “Adamah” comes from “Adapa”, the Sumerian word for “humanity”, and the Sumerian word “Adapa” in turn comes from “Atum”, who according to Egyptian mythology, emerged from the primeval ocean of chaos called ‘Nun’, which is a Babylonian word for ‘fishes’. This ‘Sun God’ was said to be the creator of the world at the beginning of time, and the ancient Egyptians’ creation myth ‘Atum’, spat out the elements of moisture and air that became the Goddess ‘Tefnut’ and the God ‘Shu’.
So Amen/Amun/Atum (jtm)/Amen-Ra in is ‘Adam’ in Hebrew, and ‘Atum’ or ‘Adam’ was worshipped in Ancient Egypt as the ‘God of Gods’, or “sky-god”, and is said to be the first God to manifest in flesh on Earth. However, another interesting fact regarding this Pharaoh Adamenemhept I, (or Phala-Oh, as it should be pronounced), is that he had a son and that son was called Seth, who was known as Sesostris, which was his Egyptian name while he was ruling Egypt. This ‘Seth’ is mentioned as a son of ‘Adam’ by the historian Josephus, but Adamenemhept I had another son named Cain, who in turn had a son named Enoch.
What we have then is a development and change of the original spelling of the Egyptian name, which has happened because over the centuries languages have developed and changed, but the key is to learn and understand what the original meaning behind the names was. With the name “Eve”, we have the same issue, in Hebrew, the earth goddess is known as “Hawwah” or ‘HOH’, which in Greek is “Eve”, because ‘H’ and ‘E’ are the same letter in Greek, and the two H’s, the “Breath-of-Life” letters, are placed on each side of the ‘O’ (the ‘woman) to create the ‘HOH’ word and the letter ‘V’, along with ‘O’ and ‘U’, was the Roman symbol of the female organ. This female character’s name has the same linguistic origin as the Yoruban uwa/iwa, meaning “earth, world, life, state of being”. Yoruba is an ethnic group of southwestern and north-central Nigeria, as well as southern and central Benin.
So these two characters, “Adam” and “Eve”, are simply two Egyptian deities, which is represented by the Egyptian word “netjer”, which is sometimes spelled “netcher” and is transliterated as nTrw, the ‘T’ representing the “ch” sound in Western speech. These two Egyptian gods/deities have been ‘demoted’ in Genesis.
As mentioned above, “Adam” is simply Amen/Amun/Atum (jtm)/Amen, and “Eve” is simply ‘Hawwah’, which is a variant of the Egyptian deity “Gb”, “the god Geb”, which comes from the Egyptian ‘gbb’, which means “earth”. In Egypt, the earth is represented in human form as a masculine deity.
So now that we learned the origins of the above names, ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, let’s now focus on the ages solution mentioned earlier, and the ages of the characters in the Bible being based on Egyptian calendars and when counting back from an average age of people living at that time, the ages date back to the time of the Twelfth Dynasty.
This leads us to answer the question regarding the long lives, as the word used for ‘years’ in the Old Testament actually means ‘rotations’ and the ages given for the Biblical figures have been misinterpreted by translators. These misinterpretations are only incorrect by a factor of 2, or in some cases as much as 12 or 13, and this is because they are based on different interpretations of ‘lunar years’, ‘lunar months’ (or ‘seasonal years’) and ‘Egyptian seasonal years’. So for the ages given for these characters in the Bible, we are dealing with lunar years, which consist of thirty days, which is what we now describe as a ‘month’, but was known to the Egyptians as a ‘year’. At one time, only three seasons instead of four were recognized by the ancient Egyptians, but because of information provided by the ancient writers, a conflict with our familiarity of what we know as “terrestrial years”, which for us is a normal 365 day year, is discovered.
The ancient Egyptian historian Manetho writes-
“Most Egyptian Kings alleged that their years were lunar years, whereas the Demigods who succeeded them gave the name “horoi” to years which were three months long.”
Which means that at least two types of lunar years are used in the Biblical accounts — one year that lasted 30 days (Egyptian lunar year) and another that contained 84 days (called a lunar seasonal year).
So knowing this information, the reported age of 930 for ‘Adam’ at his death would be based on ‘lunar years’, which would be divided by 12 to become 77.5 terrestrial years, which is much more realistic, especially for an Egyptian king
The same division can be done for Noah’s age of 950 at his death, which when divided by 12, becomes 79 terrestrial years, again far more realistic.
This age issue arises from both a lack of information written in the Bible regarding these different calendars and a translational misunderstanding, which switched moons to years.
Conclusion —
The key thing to remember about these stories, is that there had to be a reason to write them and they were written by someone. The story of Adam and Eve is not a historical fact, and the evidence that points to Pharaoh Adamenemhept I being the original author, or basis for the Genesis story, and the creator of a monotheistic religion (the belief that there is only one God) that would later become known as Judaism, is compelling. Especially when we consider the names he used and their meanings, and the literature and theology created in this time in an attempt to strengthen the position of the king, because this Pharaoh needed to justify his reign in order to continue to rule over Egypt.
So what did the term ‘Eden’ refer to?
Firstly we should note that the Aramaic letter ‘ayin’ can be transliterated into English as either an ‘e’ or an ‘a,’ so the name Eden could easily be read as an Aden. If there was a Garden of Eden located in Egypt then the direct Egyptian counterpart of it would be the Garden of Aden (Aten), located in Middle Egypt. That garden was created by Pharaoh Akhenaton for his god, the Aton.
Aton can also be spelled as Adon, (the god Aton or Aten is spelled as Aden in The Book of Precepts of Amenemhat/het, the son of Kanekht). In addition, the god Aton was spelled with the reed glyph, which is the Egyptian equivalent of the Hebrew ayin, so the god Aton could equally be pronounced as Iten or Eten (and as Iden or Eden).
I should also point out, that the snake/serpent is a symbol of the “life-giving phallus” and in the Genesis story is a creation of ‘God’, has been worshipped in every warm climate from Mexico and Central America to Cambodia and Siam, right through Asia and Europe. The cobra is a main element on the crown of the Pharaohs of Egypt, which shows us that they got their religion from India, as the cobra is a purely Indian reptile.
