Who was Abraham? (14)

Based on the works of scholars, who will be revealed when the blogging for this topic ends. Works of other authors may be included, but where these are done, full acknowledgement will be made.

Advice: Those who may take offence in seeing biblical (OT) quotations or liberal discussion of OT biblical characters should not read this topic.
Keith Laidler in his book The Head of God quoted extensively from the work of Ahmad Osman, the Egyptologist-author, who identified Moses as the Pharaoh Akhenaten. I decided to read first hand Osman’s account, and obtain a copy of his book Moses and Akhenaten: The Secret History of Egypt at the Time of the Exodus.

As it just arrived recently I haven’t as yet completed reading the fascinating document but of the part that Laidler quoted, Osman gave a highly plausible and very detailed account of why he thought the two personalities, Moses and Akhenaten were the same person.

Apparently Joseph, he of the technicolour coat, was Yuya, the famous Grand Vizier to Tuthmoses IV, the Pharaoh who had a strange dream while sleeping at the place where the Sphinx was buried. In the dream, the Sphinx told him he would be Pharaoh if he cleared the sand off the buried mysterious monument. He did so, and lo and behold, the Sphinx was revealed from the digging.

Tuthmoses IV’s grandfather was Tuthmoses III, the powerful Pharaoh-conqueror, acclaimed as the Egyptian Napoleon who ruled from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Tuthmoses IV in turn was the father of Amenhotep III and thus the grandfather of Akhenaten.

Yuya’s daughter was Tiye, whom Amenhotep III (Akhenaten’s dad) fell in love with. Yuya also had a son called Ay.

However, when Amenhotep III (Akhenaten’s dad) was still a very young prince, he had to marry his sister, Sitamum who was still an infant, in order to inherit the throne – note: some historians put Sitamun as his and Queen Tiye's daughter, whom he, the father-Pharaoh, also married.

Remember all those seemingly incestuous marriage had to do with the matrilineal succession of Egyptian royalty - note: it is also interesting to learn that Judaism follows a similar matrilineal lineage.

But once the marriage to Sitamun was taken care off to secure the royal succession, Amenhotep III married his real love, Tiye. Among his royal progenies was Amenhotep IV, soon to be Akhenaten the heretic King.

So was Joseph (Yuya) the father-in-law of Amenhotep III? In the Bible, Joseph was quoted as saying to his brothers, asking them to bring his father Jacob into Egypt:

“Haste ye, and go to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 45:9)

We’ll return to this Biblical quotation later on.

To be continued ……..