Biblical Hebrew Forum

[MarianneLuban AT aol.com]

In a message dated 7/29/2004 8:10:50 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
neitian AT nyc.rr.com writes:


> De Moor has this to say about BEYA - MOSES: "Formerly Egyptologists were
> accustomed to vocalize his name as Bay, but the pronunciation as Beya has
> now been ascertained through the Babylonian tablet RS 86.2230 from Ugarit
> ... Beya was his Semitic name, possibly even a Yahwistic name. His Egyptian
> name was R'-mssw-h'.m-ntrw, Ramseskha'emneteru,
> "Ramses­is-is-the-manifestation-of-the-gods".  Following a suggestion 
> put
> forward by Knauf, I have proposed to identify this man with Moses. Long
> before the identification of Moses with Beya had been proposed, it was
> established that the Egyptian name of Moses should probably be regarded as a
> shortened form of some name containing the element mssw. The name R'-mssw-h'
> .m-ntrw meets that condition. For obvious reasons, the name of the Egyp&
> shy;tian
> Sun-god R'  was omitted from the Israelite tradition." - Noam Eitan,
> Brooklyn, NY
> 
> 

The problem with that ID is--what happens to the number in Kings I--where it 
states that Solomon's temple was built 480 years after the exodus from Egypt? 
 
This "Beya" lived circa 1180 BCE.  Not only that, he was murdered.  By a 
pharaoh.  The inscription reads "Year 5, 3rd month of Shomu, Day 29.  This 
day the 
scribe of the tomb, Paser, has come to say 'Pharaoh, lph, has killed the 
great enemy Bey.'"  Pierre Grandet believes the king who did the deed was 
Siptah, 
the same boy-king whom Bey/Beya had once manipulated as a puppet.  Indeed, 
Year 4 of Siptah is the last we see of the chancellor in other records.

Marianne Luban