Could Moses Have Been The Pharaoh Akhenaten?
The Strange Similarities About These Figures
“Moses is a figure of memory, not of history, whereas Akhenaten is a figure of history, but not of memory.”
— Historian Jan Assmann, interview in the Guardian
What if I could turn a story you knew well completely on its head? I’m sure it wouldn’t be completely surprising, new things are discovered every day. But, what if this story was something that’s embedded in religion, culture, and history of a sort?
The image of Moses splitting the Red Sea and holding the ten commandments are iconic in Western culture. However, the icon that is Moses bears some striking similarities to another figure of history.
In the land of Egypt there was a certain pharaoh that declared that his people should only worship one god. He may have also been chased away to a new home, possibly crossing a body of water as well. There are also hieroglyphs in existence of this pharaoh holding tablets that are the ‘word of god’.
Sounds strangely familiar doesn’t it? If so, it wouldn’t be the first time a story from another culture was incorporated into a Biblical tale.
