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  • From: RGmyrken AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The Exodus Mention in Egyptian Annals ?
  • Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 22:58:20 EDT

Dear Walter,

Donald Redford also tried to correlate Manetho's second story with
Akhenaten (see Redford, Pharaonic King-Lists, pp. 292-93; idem, Egypt,
Canaan,
and Israel, pp. 415-16). Redford's central argument was that the
sacrilegious
legislation and acts of the heretic Osarseph reflected the theological
reforms
of Amenophis IV (Akhenaten) who promoted the monotheistic religion of the sun
disk Aten. This interpretation of Osarseph does not appear to be correct.
Osarseph is associated with Seth-Typhon and Avaris, not Aten and El Amarna.
The
Sethian context to these stories has been overlooked in earlier discussions
on Manetho, including that of Redford. Yet Manetho is quite clear in
associating the Hyksos (in both stories) and Osarseph (in the second story)
with
Avaris, and associating Avaris with Typhon, i.e. Seth-Typhon:

"When the men in the stone-quarries had suffered hardships for a
considerable time, they begged the king to assign to them as a dwelling-place
and a
refuge the deserted city of the Shepherds, Auaris, and he consented.
According
to religious tradition this city was from earliest times dedicated to
Typhon." (CAp I.237, LCL)

Manetho's geography is quite accurate, in that Avaris was a Hyksos
center and a center for the cult of Seth (in Manetho's day equated with
Typhon).
Manetho's chronology is also correct in assigning a revival of the worship of
Seth to the Ramesside period. In Manetho's day, the cult of Seth was
demonized as atheistic, a religion of (evil) foreigners, inimical to the rest
of
Egypt's gods, etc. -- exactly as the Hyksos and especially the followers of
Osarseph are described in Manetho. Clearly Manetho's literary source was
aiming its
invective at the cult of Seth-Typhon, and not at the cult of Aten (or, for
that matter, the Jews, although some in Manetho's time tried to identify
Yahweh
with Seth-Typhon and Moses with Osarseph). "The Expulsion of Seth and his
Gang" into Asia is a common theme in Egyptian literature, and is quite
adequate
to account for both stories in Manetho.
This native Egyptian background to the stories in Manetho is further
extensively discussed in my book "Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus"
(forthcoming).

Best regards,
Russell Gmirkin




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