FURTHER THOUGHTS ON MY PAST-LIFE MEMORY OF MOSES CARRYING THE BODYOF AKHENATEN INTO THE SINAI

It must have been a great blow to the faithful when Akhenaten died, he was the physical embodiment of the Aten on Earth, his androgynous depictions are attributed to the Aten being mother and father to humanity; earlier representations of him as Amenhotep IV are male. His new capital Akhetaten was designed with many royal viewing balconies, so the residents could gaze upon the living god. Now Akhetaten was abandoned as the religion of the one god was being repressed, the name Akhenaten erased from inscriptions and the old gods of Egypt reinstated. One cannot overemphasize the hardship facing the Egyptians and Egypto-Hebrews upon forsaking civilized Egypt, only a leader with an iron grip upon them would have been able to motivate them through the perils ahead; so that they didn’t fracture and flee. One must conclude Moses was such a person.

In Exodus the journey of Moses and his followers into Sinai culminates at a holy mount where Moses spoke to God and received the ten commandments; if one considers he and his followers had carried with them the body of Akhenaten, how would it have influenced what took place there? I will try and answer the question by presenting what I call an Atenist version; but whatever the truth, it is clear the account in Exodus is open to question According to modern scholarship, there are two versions of the Ten Commandments story, in Elohist (Exodus 20) and Jahwist (Exodus 34); this gives some antiquity and there may be some original events serving as a basis to the stories. The golden calf story is only in the Elohist version and a later editor added in an explanation that God made a second pair of tablets to give continuity to the Jahwist story. The actual Ten Commandments as given in Exodus 20 were also inserted by the redactor who combined the various sources. Golden Calf Wikipedia. There is also much to question about the man history calls Moses, including his name which may be half a name. His name derives from the Ancient Egyptian msn meaning ‘son of’ such as in Thutmosis ‘son of Thoth’ or Ramesses ‘son of Ra’; was the first part of his name too revealing of an Egyptian heritage by the Hebrew priestly scribes? In a similar vein the names of two sons of Saul King of Israel were changed from Eshbaal and Meribaal to Ishbosheth and Mephibosheth for fear their names implied worship of the Hittite god Baal. 

Lawrence Gardner in ‘Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark’ identifies the holy mountain where Moses spoke directly to God and received the ten commandments as being the Serabit el-Khadim red sandstone mountain rising 3596ft over the plain of Paran in the southwest Sinai peninsula. Situated on a plateau 2680ft up the mountain, is an Ancient Egyptian temple dedicated to the cow goddess Hathor and the god Sopdu. In 1905-6 the archaeologist Flinders Petrie carried out an excavation of the temple and published the results in ‘Researches in Sinai’. Lina Eckenstein, who accompanied Petrie, wrote her own account of the expedition in ‘A History of Sinai’ in which she reveals her belief that the Serabit el-Khadim mountain was the Holy mount of Moses.

In Exodus the Mount of God in Sinai was called Har-ha-elohim Exodus XVIII.5 that can be interpreted as ‘height of the priests’ which relates to the Serabit temple situated on its lofty promontory. The physical features of Serabit conforms to the description of the holy mount in Exodus a mountain with a wilderness at its foot, rising so sharply that its base could be fenced in while yet it was easily ascended, and its summit could be seen by the multitude below. Excavation of the Hathor-Sopdu temple revealed the continual practice of ritual burning, which corresponds to the holy mount said to have fires upon it and also being wreathed in smoke. And I would add a temple is where you commune with the god you worship and where the deity may ‘speak’ to you. These factors make sense in identifying Serabit as the holy mount of Exodus; in the following Atenist account it also makes sense it was chosen by Moses because of the nature of the sacred Hathor- Sopdu temple upon its heights.

The body of Akhenaten would have been conveyed in state to Sinai, his sarcophagus placed on a ceremonial representation of a barque (boat) which is thought to represent the boat used by the sun god Ra who traversed the dangers of the Underworld from sunset to emerge victorious and reborn in the west at sunrise – so did the dead hope to be reborn into eternal life. The sarcophagus on the barque was then covered with a square box-like, often gold-plated, catafalque which was often decorated with the goddesses Isis and Nephthys facing each other with outstretched wings symbolizing resurrection. The barque and its burden would have been then loaded, doubtless disguised with some form of camouflage, onto a wagon pulled by bullocks for the long journey ahead.

The Hathor-Sopdu Serabit temple had chambers added to it by the father of Akhenaten, Amenhotep III, he flanked the entrance with two stelae recording a mining expedition in his reign, also a relief there shows Amenhotep making an offering to Sopdu; Petrie’s expedition unearthed a beautiful head of Queen Tiye the mother of Akhenaten.

The Serabit temple has two sacred caves, one dedicated to the sky cow goddess Hathor, the other to the sky god Sopdu. In many civilizations a cave was regarded as an entrance to the underworld; the Téomin cave in the Jerusalem hills, the Cape Malapan caves in Greece, the Necromantria of Ephyra, cave of the Sibyl in Italy, the Ploutonion at Hieropolis in Turkey; I believe this is also true of the Serabit caves, supported by the number of small shelters made of stone slabs erected on the site, dedicated to the ancient practise of temple incubatio in which devotees would sleep on holy ground in the hope of receiving divine communications or a cure, being covered by stones and sand to make them subterranean, cave-like – for their sleep journey was to the Duat the Ancient Egyptian Underworld, the land of the gods.

The god and goddess worshipped at Serabit have strong ties to the Duat and the dead. Sopdu was a guardian of the Duat, he was the celestial manifestation of the solar warrior Horus; who when the religiously important star Sirius (in her personification as the goddess Sopdet the star was his mother) became invisible from Earth, due to the Sun’s dominance, it was Sopdu as an emissary of light, in the absence of Sirius, who patrolled the Duat thirty-five days from west to east and thirty-five from east to west. His emblem was the cone of zodiacal light, which appears before morning twilight in the east and just after evening twilight in the west, as a huge pyramid or cone shape; this light tracks along the stars of the zodiac; was it viewed as a path of ascension to the Duat (his mother Sopdet had created such a stairway in the heavens)?

I wonder if the mysterious cone-shaped substance mfkzt (mufkurt) called a ‘white bread’ and ‘precious stone’ which was offered to pharaoh and the gods and mystifies archaeologists who conclude it is some form of mineral composition (which might include gold being a mineral and an element) was a manifestation of Sopdu and his cone of light? In the Pyramid Texts mfkzt is connected to the Duat and immortality, the deceased Pharaoh Unas was said to live forever in a field of mfkzt. At Serabit there are a great many inscriptions about mfkzt accompanied by the hieroglyphic for light.A stone that is also a bread means it can be ingested, was this strange bread perhaps manufactured at Serabit where a workshop was discovered, with tools and a crucible and offered to those undergoing incubatio? I also wonder if the twelve standing stones erected at the holy mount by Moses (there are an abundance of standing stones around the temple site), are in truth dedicated to the god Sopdu representing the circle of the twelve signs of the zodiac?

The cow goddess Hathor was the one who admitted all the dead to the Duat and provided them with spiritual sustenance, she was closely linked to burial sites and gave birth to the calf the dead are shown in tombs riding upon, as a symbol of their resurrection into eternal life.

In this Atenist story Moses has come to Serabit with a two-fold purpose: firstly, he would undergo incubatio in one of the cave-like chambers there (in Exodus 33:22 Moses is put in a cleft in the rock on the holy mount) and seek communion with the shade of Akhenaton – Manetho’s Osarseph who is identified with Moses was a tyrannical high priest of Osiris the pharaoh who became lord of the Duat – in consecration of the next flowering of the Atenist religion, which encompassed his second purpose, to enact the ritual resurrection of his beloved pharaoh the living Aten so that he could continue to guide his people from the Duat; as the means to achieve this down below his followers were creating a golden calf. Was the calf produced with the aid of the Hathor-Sopdu priests? The nature of this calf is widely speculated upon, was it a divine image, a symbol or a pedestal for a god; for gods in near Eastern art were often depicted standing on an animal. In this Atenist story it is the calf Hathor gave birth to, the calf upon whose back the deceased are resurrected; this calf is golden because gold is the material of the gods, their flesh was gold and it was a symbol of their spiritual power and immortality; and upon his gold back the ritual resurrection of Akhenaton the living Aten would take place; his funerary barque would then be transformed into the abode of a living god, his presence would continue to speak to his people and guide them.

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON MY PAST-LIFE

MEMORY OF MOSES CARRYING THE BODY

OF AKHENATEN INTO THE SINAI

It must have been a great blow to the faithful when Akhenaten died, he was the physical embodiment of the Aten on Earth, his androgynous depictions are attributed to the Aten being mother and father to humanity; earlier representations of him as Amenhotep IV are male. His new capital Akhetaten was designed with many royal viewing balconies, so the residents could gaze upon the living god. Now Akhetaten was abandoned as the religion of the one god was being repressed, the name Akhenaten erased from inscriptions and the old gods of Egypt reinstated. One cannot overemphasize the hardship facing the Egyptians and Egypto-Hebrews upon forsaking civilized Egypt, only a leader with an iron grip upon them would have been able to motivate them through the perils ahead; so that they didn’t fracture and flee. One must conclude Moses was such a person.

In Exodus the journey of Moses and his followers into Sinai culminates at a holy mount where Moses spoke to God and received the ten commandments; if one considers he and his followers had carried with them the body of Akhenaten, how would it have influenced what took place there? I will try and answer the question by presenting what I call an Atenist version; but whatever the truth, it is clear the account in Exodus is open to question According to modern scholarship, there are two versions of the Ten Commandments story, in Elohist (Exodus 20) and Jahwist (Exodus 34); this gives some antiquity and there may be some original events serving as a basis to the stories. The golden calf story is only in the Elohist version and a later editor added in an explanation that God made a second pair of tablets to give continuity to the Jahwist story. The actual Ten Commandments as given in Exodus 20 were also inserted by the redactor who combined the various sources. Golden Calf Wikipedia. There is also much to question about the man history calls Moses, including his name which may be half a name. His name derives from the Ancient Egyptian msn meaning ‘son of’ such as in Thutmosis ‘son of Thoth’ or Ramesses ‘son of Ra’; was the first part of his name too revealing of an Egyptian heritage by the Hebrew priestly scribes? In a similar vein the names of two sons of Saul King of Israel were changed from Eshbaal and Meribaal to Ishbosheth and Mephibosheth for fear their names implied worship of the Hittite god Baal. 

Lawrence Gardner in ‘Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark’ identifies the holy mountain where Moses spoke directly to God and received the ten commandments as being the Serabit el-Khadim red sandstone mountain rising 3596ft over the plain of Paran in the southwest Sinai peninsula. Situated on a plateau 2680ft up the mountain, is an Ancient Egyptian temple dedicated to the cow goddess Hathor and the god Sopdu. In 1905-6 the archaeologist Flinders Petrie carried out an excavation of the temple and published the results in ‘Researches in Sinai’. Lina Eckenstein, who accompanied Petrie, wrote her own account of the expedition in ‘A History of Sinai’ in which she reveals her belief that the Serabit el-Khadim mountain was the Holy mount of Moses.

In Exodus the Mount of God in Sinai was called Har-ha-elohim Exodus XVIII.5 that can be interpreted as ‘height of the priests’ which relates to the Serabit temple situated on its lofty promontory. The physical features of Serabit conforms to the description of the holy mount in Exodus a mountain with a wilderness at its foot, rising so sharply that its base could be fenced in while yet it was easily ascended, and its summit could be seen by the multitude below. Excavation of the Hathor-Sopdu temple revealed the continual practice of ritual burning, which corresponds to the holy mount said to have fires upon it and also being wreathed in smoke. And I would add a temple is where you commune with the god you worship and where the deity may ‘speak’ to you. These factors make sense in identifying Serabit as the holy mount of Exodus; in the following Atenist account it also makes sense it was chosen by Moses because of the nature of the sacred Hathor- Sopdu temple upon its heights.

The body of Akhenaten would have been conveyed in state to Sinai, his sarcophagus placed on a ceremonial representation of a barque (boat) which is thought to represent the boat used by the sun god Ra who traversed the dangers of the Underworld from sunset to emerge victorious and reborn in the west at sunrise – so did the dead hope to be reborn into eternal life. The sarcophagus on the barque was then covered with a square box-like, often gold-plated, catafalque which was often decorated with the goddesses Isis and Nephthys facing each other with outstretched wings symbolizing resurrection. The barque and its burden would have been then loaded, doubtless disguised with some form of camouflage, onto a wagon pulled by bullocks for the long journey ahead.

The Hathor-Sopdu Serabit temple had chambers added to it by the father of Akhenaten, Amenhotep III, he flanked the entrance with two stelae recording a mining expedition in his reign, also a relief there shows Amenhotep making an offering to Sopdu; Petrie’s expedition unearthed a beautiful head of Queen Tiye the mother of Akhenaten.

The Serabit temple has two sacred caves, one dedicated to the sky cow goddess Hathor, the other to the sky god Sopdu. In many civilizations a cave was regarded as an entrance to the underworld; the Téomin cave in the Jerusalem hills, the Cape Malapan caves in Greece, the Necromantria of Ephyra, cave of the Sibyl in Italy, the Ploutonion at Hieropolis in Turkey; I believe this is also true of the Serabit caves, supported by the number of small shelters made of stone slabs erected on the site, dedicated to the ancient practise of temple incubatio in which devotees would sleep on holy ground in the hope of receiving divine communications or a cure, being covered by stones and sand to make them subterranean, cave-like – for their sleep journey was to the Duat the Ancient Egyptian Underworld, the land of the gods.

The god and goddess worshipped at Serabit have strong ties to the Duat and the dead. Sopdu was a guardian of the Duat, he was the celestial manifestation of the solar warrior Horus; who when the religiously important star Sirius (in her personification as the goddess Sopdet the star was his mother) became invisible from Earth, due to the Sun’s dominance, it was Sopdu as an emissary of light, in the absence of Sirius, who patrolled the Duat thirty-five days from west to east and thirty-five from east to west. His emblem was the cone of zodiacal light, which appears before morning twilight in the east and just after evening twilight in the west, as a huge pyramid or cone shape; this light tracks along the stars of the zodiac; was it viewed as a path of ascension to the Duat (his mother Sopdet had created such a stairway in the heavens)?

I wonder if the mysterious cone-shaped substance mfkzt (mufkurt) called a ‘white bread’ and ‘precious stone’ which was offered to pharaoh and the gods and mystifies archaeologists who conclude it is some form of mineral composition (which might include gold being a mineral and an element) was a manifestation of Sopdu and his cone of light? In the Pyramid Texts mfkzt is connected to the Duat and immortality, the deceased Pharaoh Unas was said to live forever in a field of mfkzt. At Serabit there are a great many inscriptions about mfkzt accompanied by the hieroglyphic for light.A stone that is also a bread means it can be ingested, was this strange bread perhaps manufactured at Serabit where a workshop was discovered, with tools and a crucible and offered to those undergoing incubatio? I also wonder if the twelve standing stones erected at the holy mount by Moses (there are an abundance of standing stones around the temple site), are in truth dedicated to the god Sopdu representing the circle of the twelve signs of the zodiac?

The cow goddess Hathor was the one who admitted all the dead to the Duat and provided them with spiritual sustenance, she was closely linked to burial sites and gave birth to the calf the dead are shown in tombs riding upon, as a symbol of their resurrection into eternal life.

In this Atenist story Moses has come to Serabit with a two-fold purpose: firstly, he would undergo incubatio in one of the cave-like chambers there (in Exodus 33:22 Moses is put in a cleft in the rock on the holy mount) and seek communion with the shade of Akhenaton – Manetho’s Osarseph who is identified with Moses was a tyrannical high priest of Osiris the pharaoh who became lord of the Duat – in consecration of the next flowering of the Atenist religion, which encompassed his second purpose, to enact the ritual resurrection of his beloved pharaoh the living Aten so that he could continue to guide his people from the Duat; as the means to achieve this down below his followers were creating a golden calf. Was the calf produced with the aid of the Hathor-Sopdu priests? The nature of this calf is widely speculated upon, was it a divine image, a symbol or a pedestal for a god; for gods in near Eastern art were often depicted standing on an animal. In this Atenist story it is the calf Hathor gave birth to, the calf upon whose back the deceased are resurrected; this calf is golden because gold is the material of the gods, their flesh was gold and it was a symbol of their spiritual power and immortality; and upon his gold back the ritual resurrection of Akhenaton the living Aten would take place; his funerary barque would then be transformed into the abode of a living god, his presence would continue to speak to his people and guide them.

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON MY PAST-LIFE

MEMORY OF MOSES CARRYING THE BODY

OF AKHENATEN INTO THE SINAI

It must have been a great blow to the faithful when Akhenaten died, he was the physical embodiment of the Aten on Earth, his androgynous depictions are attributed to the Aten being mother and father to humanity; earlier representations of him as Amenhotep IV are male. His new capital Akhetaten was designed with many royal viewing balconies, so the residents could gaze upon the living god. Now Akhetaten was abandoned as the religion of the one god was being repressed, the name Akhenaten erased from inscriptions and the old gods of Egypt reinstated. One cannot overemphasize the hardship facing the Egyptians and Egypto-Hebrews upon forsaking civilized Egypt, only a leader with an iron grip upon them would have been able to motivate them through the perils ahead; so that they didn’t fracture and flee. One must conclude Moses was such a person.

In Exodus the journey of Moses and his followers into Sinai culminates at a holy mount where Moses spoke to God and received the ten commandments; if one considers he and his followers had carried with them the body of Akhenaten, how would it have influenced what took place there? I will try and answer the question by presenting what I call an Atenist version; but whatever the truth, it is clear the account in Exodus is open to question According to modern scholarship, there are two versions of the Ten Commandments story, in Elohist (Exodus 20) and Jahwist (Exodus 34); this gives some antiquity and there may be some original events serving as a basis to the stories. The golden calf story is only in the Elohist version and a later editor added in an explanation that God made a second pair of tablets to give continuity to the Jahwist story. The actual Ten Commandments as given in Exodus 20 were also inserted by the redactor who combined the various sources. Golden Calf Wikipedia. There is also much to question about the man history calls Moses, including his name which may be half a name. His name derives from the Ancient Egyptian msn meaning ‘son of’ such as in Thutmosis ‘son of Thoth’ or Ramesses ‘son of Ra’; was the first part of his name too revealing of an Egyptian heritage by the Hebrew priestly scribes? In a similar vein the names of two sons of Saul King of Israel were changed from Eshbaal and Meribaal to Ishbosheth and Mephibosheth for fear their names implied worship of the Hittite god Baal. 

Lawrence Gardner in ‘Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark’ identifies the holy mountain where Moses spoke directly to God and received the ten commandments as being the Serabit el-Khadim red sandstone mountain rising 3596ft over the plain of Paran in the southwest Sinai peninsula. Situated on a plateau 2680ft up the mountain, is an Ancient Egyptian temple dedicated to the cow goddess Hathor and the god Sopdu. In 1905-6 the archaeologist Flinders Petrie carried out an excavation of the temple and published the results in ‘Researches in Sinai’. Lina Eckenstein, who accompanied Petrie, wrote her own account of the expedition in ‘A History of Sinai’ in which she reveals her belief that the Serabit el-Khadim mountain was the Holy mount of Moses.

In Exodus the Mount of God in Sinai was called Har-ha-elohim Exodus XVIII.5 that can be interpreted as ‘height of the priests’ which relates to the Serabit temple situated on its lofty promontory. The physical features of Serabit conforms to the description of the holy mount in Exodus a mountain with a wilderness at its foot, rising so sharply that its base could be fenced in while yet it was easily ascended, and its summit could be seen by the multitude below. Excavation of the Hathor-Sopdu temple revealed the continual practice of ritual burning, which corresponds to the holy mount said to have fires upon it and also being wreathed in smoke. And I would add a temple is where you commune with the god you worship and where the deity may ‘speak’ to you. These factors make sense in identifying Serabit as the holy mount of Exodus; in the following Atenist account it also makes sense it was chosen by Moses because of the nature of the sacred Hathor- Sopdu temple upon its heights.

The body of Akhenaten would have been conveyed in state to Sinai, his sarcophagus placed on a ceremonial representation of a barque (boat) which is thought to represent the boat used by the sun god Ra who traversed the dangers of the Underworld from sunset to emerge victorious and reborn in the west at sunrise – so did the dead hope to be reborn into eternal life. The sarcophagus on the barque was then covered with a square box-like, often gold-plated, catafalque which was often decorated with the goddesses Isis and Nephthys facing each other with outstretched wings symbolizing resurrection. The barque and its burden would have been then loaded, doubtless disguised with some form of camouflage, onto a wagon pulled by bullocks for the long journey ahead.

The Hathor-Sopdu Serabit temple had chambers added to it by the father of Akhenaten, Amenhotep III, he flanked the entrance with two stelae recording a mining expedition in his reign, also a relief there shows Amenhotep making an offering to Sopdu; Petrie’s expedition unearthed a beautiful head of Queen Tiye the mother of Akhenaten.

The Serabit temple has two sacred caves, one dedicated to the sky cow goddess Hathor, the other to the sky god Sopdu. In many civilizations a cave was regarded as an entrance to the underworld; the Téomin cave in the Jerusalem hills, the Cape Malapan caves in Greece, the Necromantria of Ephyra, cave of the Sibyl in Italy, the Ploutonion at Hieropolis in Turkey; I believe this is also true of the Serabit caves, supported by the number of small shelters made of stone slabs erected on the site, dedicated to the ancient practise of temple incubatio in which devotees would sleep on holy ground in the hope of receiving divine communications or a cure, being covered by stones and sand to make them subterranean, cave-like – for their sleep journey was to the Duat the Ancient Egyptian Underworld, the land of the gods.

The god and goddess worshipped at Serabit have strong ties to the Duat and the dead. Sopdu was a guardian of the Duat, he was the celestial manifestation of the solar warrior Horus; who when the religiously important star Sirius (in her personification as the goddess Sopdet the star was his mother) became invisible from Earth, due to the Sun’s dominance, it was Sopdu as an emissary of light, in the absence of Sirius, who patrolled the Duat thirty-five days from west to east and thirty-five from east to west. His emblem was the cone of zodiacal light, which appears before morning twilight in the east and just after evening twilight in the west, as a huge pyramid or cone shape; this light tracks along the stars of the zodiac; was it viewed as a path of ascension to the Duat (his mother Sopdet had created such a stairway in the heavens)?

I wonder if the mysterious cone-shaped substance mfkzt (mufkurt) called a ‘white bread’ and ‘precious stone’ which was offered to pharaoh and the gods and mystifies archaeologists who conclude it is some form of mineral composition (which might include gold being a mineral and an element) was a manifestation of Sopdu and his cone of light? In the Pyramid Texts mfkzt is connected to the Duat and immortality, the deceased Pharaoh Unas was said to live forever in a field of mfkzt. At Serabit there are a great many inscriptions about mfkzt accompanied by the hieroglyphic for light.A stone that is also a bread means it can be ingested, was this strange bread perhaps manufactured at Serabit where a workshop was discovered, with tools and a crucible and offered to those undergoing incubatio? I also wonder if the twelve standing stones erected at the holy mount by Moses (there are an abundance of standing stones around the temple site), are in truth dedicated to the god Sopdu representing the circle of the twelve signs of the zodiac?

The cow goddess Hathor was the one who admitted all the dead to the Duat and provided them with spiritual sustenance, she was closely linked to burial sites and gave birth to the calf the dead are shown in tombs riding upon, as a symbol of their resurrection into eternal life.

In this Atenist story Moses has come to Serabit with a two-fold purpose: firstly, he would undergo incubatio in one of the cave-like chambers there (in Exodus 33:22 Moses is put in a cleft in the rock on the holy mount) and seek communion with the shade of Akhenaton – Manetho’s Osarseph who is identified with Moses was a tyrannical high priest of Osiris the pharaoh who became lord of the Duat – in consecration of the next flowering of the Atenist religion, which encompassed his second purpose, to enact the ritual resurrection of his beloved pharaoh the living Aten so that he could continue to guide his people from the Duat; as the means to achieve this down below his followers were creating a golden calf. Was the calf produced with the aid of the Hathor-Sopdu priests? The nature of this calf is widely speculated upon, was it a divine image, a symbol or a pedestal for a god; for gods in near Eastern art were often depicted standing on an animal. In this Atenist story it is the calf Hathor gave birth to, the calf upon whose back the deceased are resurrected; this calf is golden because gold is the material of the gods, their flesh was gold and it was a symbol of their spiritual power and immortality; and upon his gold back the ritual resurrection of Akhenaton the living Aten would take place; his funerary barque would then be transformed into the abode of a living god, his presence would continue to speak to his people and guide them.

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON MY PAST-LIFE

MEMORY OF MOSES CARRYING THE BODY

OF AKHENATEN INTO THE SINAI

It must have been a great blow to the faithful when Akhenaten died, he was the physical embodiment of the Aten on Earth, his androgynous depictions are attributed to the Aten being mother and father to humanity; earlier representations of him as Amenhotep IV are male. His new capital Akhetaten was designed with many royal viewing balconies, so the residents could gaze upon the living god. Now Akhetaten was abandoned as the religion of the one god was being repressed, the name Akhenaten erased from inscriptions and the old gods of Egypt reinstated. One cannot overemphasize the hardship facing the Egyptians and Egypto-Hebrews upon forsaking civilized Egypt, only a leader with an iron grip upon them would have been able to motivate them through the perils ahead; so that they didn’t fracture and flee. One must conclude Moses was such a person.

In Exodus the journey of Moses and his followers into Sinai culminates at a holy mount where Moses spoke to God and received the ten commandments; if one considers he and his followers had carried with them the body of Akhenaten, how would it have influenced what took place there? I will try and answer the question by presenting what I call an Atenist version; but whatever the truth, it is clear the account in Exodus is open to question According to modern scholarship, there are two versions of the Ten Commandments story, in Elohist (Exodus 20) and Jahwist (Exodus 34); this gives some antiquity and there may be some original events serving as a basis to the stories. The golden calf story is only in the Elohist version and a later editor added in an explanation that God made a second pair of tablets to give continuity to the Jahwist story. The actual Ten Commandments as given in Exodus 20 were also inserted by the redactor who combined the various sources. Golden Calf Wikipedia. There is also much to question about the man history calls Moses, including his name which may be half a name. His name derives from the Ancient Egyptian msn meaning ‘son of’ such as in Thutmosis ‘son of Thoth’ or Ramesses ‘son of Ra’; was the first part of his name too revealing of an Egyptian heritage by the Hebrew priestly scribes? In a similar vein the names of two sons of Saul King of Israel were changed from Eshbaal and Meribaal to Ishbosheth and Mephibosheth for fear their names implied worship of the Hittite god Baal. 

Lawrence Gardner in ‘Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark’ identifies the holy mountain where Moses spoke directly to God and received the ten commandments as being the Serabit el-Khadim red sandstone mountain rising 3596ft over the plain of Paran in the southwest Sinai peninsula. Situated on a plateau 2680ft up the mountain, is an Ancient Egyptian temple dedicated to the cow goddess Hathor and the god Sopdu. In 1905-6 the archaeologist Flinders Petrie carried out an excavation of the temple and published the results in ‘Researches in Sinai’. Lina Eckenstein, who accompanied Petrie, wrote her own account of the expedition in ‘A History of Sinai’ in which she reveals her belief that the Serabit el-Khadim mountain was the Holy mount of Moses.

In Exodus the Mount of God in Sinai was called Har-ha-elohim Exodus XVIII.5 that can be interpreted as ‘height of the priests’ which relates to the Serabit temple situated on its lofty promontory. The physical features of Serabit conforms to the description of the holy mount in Exodus a mountain with a wilderness at its foot, rising so sharply that its base could be fenced in while yet it was easily ascended, and its summit could be seen by the multitude below. Excavation of the Hathor-Sopdu temple revealed the continual practice of ritual burning, which corresponds to the holy mount said to have fires upon it and also being wreathed in smoke. And I would add a temple is where you commune with the god you worship and where the deity may ‘speak’ to you. These factors make sense in identifying Serabit as the holy mount of Exodus; in the following Atenist account it also makes sense it was chosen by Moses because of the nature of the sacred Hathor- Sopdu temple upon its heights.

The body of Akhenaten would have been conveyed in state to Sinai, his sarcophagus placed on a ceremonial representation of a barque (boat) which is thought to represent the boat used by the sun god Ra who traversed the dangers of the Underworld from sunset to emerge victorious and reborn in the west at sunrise – so did the dead hope to be reborn into eternal life. The sarcophagus on the barque was then covered with a square box-like, often gold-plated, catafalque which was often decorated with the goddesses Isis and Nephthys facing each other with outstretched wings symbolizing resurrection. The barque and its burden would have been then loaded, doubtless disguised with some form of camouflage, onto a wagon pulled by bullocks for the long journey ahead.

The Hathor-Sopdu Serabit temple had chambers added to it by the father of Akhenaten, Amenhotep III, he flanked the entrance with two stelae recording a mining expedition in his reign, also a relief there shows Amenhotep making an offering to Sopdu; Petrie’s expedition unearthed a beautiful head of Queen Tiye the mother of Akhenaten.

The Serabit temple has two sacred caves, one dedicated to the sky cow goddess Hathor, the other to the sky god Sopdu. In many civilizations a cave was regarded as an entrance to the underworld; the Téomin cave in the Jerusalem hills, the Cape Malapan caves in Greece, the Necromantria of Ephyra, cave of the Sibyl in Italy, the Ploutonion at Hieropolis in Turkey; I believe this is also true of the Serabit caves, supported by the number of small shelters made of stone slabs erected on the site, dedicated to the ancient practise of temple incubatio in which devotees would sleep on holy ground in the hope of receiving divine communications or a cure, being covered by stones and sand to make them subterranean, cave-like – for their sleep journey was to the Duat the Ancient Egyptian Underworld, the land of the gods.

The god and goddess worshipped at Serabit have strong ties to the Duat and the dead. Sopdu was a guardian of the Duat, he was the celestial manifestation of the solar warrior Horus; who when the religiously important star Sirius (in her personification as the goddess Sopdet the star was his mother) became invisible from Earth, due to the Sun’s dominance, it was Sopdu as an emissary of light, in the absence of Sirius, who patrolled the Duat thirty-five days from west to east and thirty-five from east to west. His emblem was the cone of zodiacal light, which appears before morning twilight in the east and just after evening twilight in the west, as a huge pyramid or cone shape; this light tracks along the stars of the zodiac; was it viewed as a path of ascension to the Duat (his mother Sopdet had created such a stairway in the heavens)?

I wonder if the mysterious cone-shaped substance mfkzt (mufkurt) called a ‘white bread’ and ‘precious stone’ which was offered to pharaoh and the gods and mystifies archaeologists who conclude it is some form of mineral composition (which might include gold being a mineral and an element) was a manifestation of Sopdu and his cone of light? In the Pyramid Texts mfkzt is connected to the Duat and immortality, the deceased Pharaoh Unas was said to live forever in a field of mfkzt. At Serabit there are a great many inscriptions about mfkzt accompanied by the hieroglyphic for light.A stone that is also a bread means it can be ingested, was this strange bread perhaps manufactured at Serabit where a workshop was discovered, with tools and a crucible and offered to those undergoing incubatio? I also wonder if the twelve standing stones erected at the holy mount by Moses (there are an abundance of standing stones around the temple site), are in truth dedicated to the god Sopdu representing the circle of the twelve signs of the zodiac?

The cow goddess Hathor was the one who admitted all the dead to the Duat and provided them with spiritual sustenance, she was closely linked to burial sites and gave birth to the calf the dead are shown in tombs riding upon, as a symbol of their resurrection into eternal life.

In this Atenist story Moses has come to Serabit with a two-fold purpose: firstly, he would undergo incubatio in one of the cave-like chambers there (in Exodus 33:22 Moses is put in a cleft in the rock on the holy mount) and seek communion with the shade of Akhenaton – Manetho’s Osarseph who is identified with Moses was a tyrannical high priest of Osiris the pharaoh who became lord of the Duat – in consecration of the next flowering of the Atenist religion, which encompassed his second purpose, to enact the ritual resurrection of his beloved pharaoh the living Aten so that he could continue to guide his people from the Duat; as the means to achieve this down below his followers were creating a golden calf. Was the calf produced with the aid of the Hathor-Sopdu priests? The nature of this calf is widely speculated upon, was it a divine image, a symbol or a pedestal for a god; for gods in near Eastern art were often depicted standing on an animal. In this Atenist story it is the calf Hathor gave birth to, the calf upon whose back the deceased are resurrected; this calf is golden because gold is the material of the gods, their flesh was gold and it was a symbol of their spiritual power and immortality; and upon his gold back the ritual resurrection of Akhenaton the living Aten would take place; his funerary barque would then be transformed into the abode of a living god, his presence would continue to speak to his people and guide them.

So, in this Atenist story the funerary barque of Akhenaton is what came to be known as the Ark of the Covenant. Scott B. Noegel of the University of Washington in his published article titled ‘The Egyptian Origin of the Ark of the Covenant’ in ‘Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective’ Springer Switzerland 2015 considers the Ancient Egyptian funerary barque the most complete and compelling parallel for the Ark for they bear so many similarities, both were carried ceremonially by the use of poles, the wooden box overlaid with gold of the Ark mirrors the box-like structure of the catafalque which was often gold-plated. The Ark, the presence of God manifesting between the cherubim was a vehicle for oracles, similar to an Ancient Egyptian ceremonial barque carrying the image of a god within a naos, a box-like chamber, which would offer guidance and advice to supplicants. When Akhenaten was ritually resurrected as the living Aten, his funerary barque was transformed into the ceremonial barque of a god; whose presence manifested between the ‘cherubim’ – the out-spread winged Isis and Nephthys.

So, in this Atenist story the funerary barque of Akhenaton is what came to be known as the Ark of the Covenant. Scott B. Noegel of the University of Washington in his published article titled ‘The Egyptian Origin of the Ark of the Covenant’ in ‘Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective’ Springer Switzerland 2015 considers the Ancient Egyptian funerary barque the most complete and compelling parallel for the Ark for they bear so many similarities, both were carried ceremonially by the use of poles, the wooden box overlaid with gold of the Ark mirrors the box-like structure of the catafalque which was often gold-plated. The Ark, the presence of God manifesting between the cherubim was a vehicle for oracles, similar to an Ancient Egyptian ceremonial barque carrying the image of a god within a naos, a box-like chamber, which would offer guidance and advice to supplicants. When Akhenaten was ritually resurrected as the living Aten, his funerary barque was transformed into the ceremonial barque of a god; whose presence manifested between the ‘cherubim’ – the out-spread winged Isis and Nephthys.

So, in this Atenist story the funerary barque of Akhenaton is what came to be known as the Ark of the Covenant. Scott B. Noegel of the University of Washington in his published article titled ‘The Egyptian Origin of the Ark of the Covenant’ in ‘Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective’ Springer Switzerland 2015 considers the Ancient Egyptian funerary barque the most complete and compelling parallel for the Ark for they bear so many similarities, both were carried ceremonially by the use of poles, the wooden box overlaid with gold of the Ark mirrors the box-like structure of the catafalque which was often gold-plated. The Ark, the presence of God manifesting between the cherubim was a vehicle for oracles, similar to an Ancient Egyptian ceremonial barque carrying the image of a god within a naos, a box-like chamber, which would offer guidance and advice to supplicants. When Akhenaten was ritually resurrected as the living Aten, his funerary barque was transformed into the ceremonial barque of a god; whose presence manifested between the ‘cherubim’ – the out-spread winged Isis and Nephthys.

So, in this Atenist story the funerary barque of Akhenaton is what came to be known as the Ark of the Covenant. Scott B. Noegel of the University of Washington in his published article titled ‘The Egyptian Origin of the Ark of the Covenant’ in ‘Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective’ Springer Switzerland 2015 considers the Ancient Egyptian funerary barque the most complete and compelling parallel for the Ark for they bear so many similarities, both were carried ceremonially by the use of poles, the wooden box overlaid with gold of the Ark mirrors the box-like structure of the catafalque which was often gold-plated. The Ark, the presence of God manifesting between the cherubim was a vehicle for oracles, similar to an Ancient Egyptian ceremonial barque carrying the image of a god within a naos, a box-like chamber, which would offer guidance and advice to supplicants. When Akhenaten was ritually resurrected as the living Aten, his funerary barque was transformed into the ceremonial barque of a god; whose presence manifested between the ‘cherubim’ – the out-spread winged Isis and Nephthys.