The Exodus Quest

TWELVE
I

Lily put her hand surreptitiously on Stafford's arm, an effort to calm him down a little, but he merely shrugged her off, refilled his wineglass, and continued. 'People have Judaism all wrong,' he declared. 'They read about Abraham, Noah, Jacob and all those other patriarchs, and assume that the Jews arrived in Egypt with their beliefs and practices fully formed, that they retained them during their sojourn, then left without being one whit influenced. But it can't have been like that. It wasn't like that. Look dispassionately at Judaism and you'll see that its roots lie in Egypt, specifically in the monotheism of Akhenaten.'

'That's quite a claim,' said Fatima.

'Just look at the creation account in Genesis, if you don't believe me. The notion that everything came from the void was an Egyptian conceit, as was the idea of mankind as God's flock, crafted in His image, for whom He made heaven and earth. There are countless passages in the Bible stolen virtually verbatim from Egypt. Take the Negative Confessions of the Book of the Dead. "I have not reviled the God. I have not sinned against anyone. I have not killed. I have not copulated illicitly." Replace "I have not" with "Thou shalt not" and you have the Ten Commandments. Psalm Thirty-four is based on an Amarna inscription; Psalm One hundred and four is a rewrite of Akhenaten's Hymn of the Aten.'

'A rewrite!' frowned Fatima. 'They have a few images in common, that's all.'

'A few images!' scoffed Stafford. 'It's word for word in places. But even if you won't allow me that, you surely can't dispute the similarity of the Bible's Proverbs to Egypt's Wisdom texts; or that the so-called "Thirty Sayings" are nothing but a rehash of Amenemope's "Thirty Chapters". Granted, on their own, each might conceivably be coincidence. But they aren't on their own. They're part of a pattern. The very name Hebrew is a corruption of the Egyptian word 'Ipiru, people who've stepped outside the law. Jewish priestly robes are virtual replicas of the costumes of Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs. The Ark of the Covenant is almost identical to an ark found in Tutankhamun's tomb. And, speaking of the Ark, during the Exodus the Jews housed it in a great tent called the Tabernacle, just like the tent Akhenaten lived in when he first settled in Amarna. Tithes were an Egyptian practice taken up by the Jews. Magic likewise. Did you know that Egyptians wrote down their spells, soaked them in water, and drank the resulting brew, precisely as advocated in the Book of Numbers? Egyptian voodoo dolls are mentioned in the Psalms. And circumcision wasn't originally a Jewish practice, you realize? It was Egyptian; they even found a clay model of a circumcised penis in Akhenaten's tomb. "They are in all respects much more pious than other peoples," claimed Herodotus. "They are also distinguished from them by many of their customs, such as circumcision, which for reasons of cleanliness they introduced before others; further, by their horror of swine. In haughty narrowness they looked down on the other peoples who were unclean and not so near to the god as they were." Was he talking about the Jews? No, the Egyptians.'

'The best part of a millennium later.'

'Atenism was sun-worship,' asserted Stafford, barely breaking stride. 'So was early Judaism. Ezekiel, chapter eight, talks bluntly about worshippers in the Temple of the Lord adoring the rising sun. On Mount Sinai, Moses' God describes himself by the Tetragrammaton YHWH: "I am who I am." The Egyptian Prisse Papyrus describes an Egyptian God as "nk pu nk". You know what that translates as? Yes. "I am who I am."'

'The Prisse Papyrus was-'

'Everywhere you look, there's compelling evidence that Judaism was originally Egyptian, derived from Akhenaten's monotheism. But do you know what the smoking gun is? The absolute, incontrovertible proof?'

'Go on, then.'

'The Hebrews called the Lord their God Adonai. But in ancient Hebrew the "d" was pronounced "t", the suffix "ai" was optional. Yes. That's right. The Hebrews worshipped a God called Aten, which means that Moses' admonition to his people Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad translates as "Hear, O Israel, the Aten is the only God." Refute that, Professor. Refute that.'