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  • From: James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>
  • To: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org, George.Athas AT moore.edu.au
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Akhenaton - From the Moderators
  • Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:42:35 +0200

If I'm understanding you right here you are suggesting that the author made
up Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Judah and stories about them to
convince Akhenaton that he wasn't the only person in the world with these
family problems so that he would save Canaan from the Hittites?

James Christian

2010/2/18 <JimStinehart AT aol.com>

>
> On reconsideration, I think the blame here should fall not on National
> Geographic for inaccurate reporting, but rather on JAMA for its misleading
> summary/abstract of its findings. The actual findings are likely very
> accurate,
> but the short summary of the findings in JAMA’s abstract is misleading.
>
> 1. Here is a more accurate, though extremely short, summary:
>
> “The researchers found that several of the anonymous mummies or those with
> suspected identities were now able to be addressed by name, which included
> KV35EL, who is Tiye, mother of the pharaoh Akhenaten and grandmother of
> Tutankhamun, and the KV55 mummy, who is most probably Akhenaten, father of
> Tutankhamun. This kinship is supported in that several unique
> anthropological
> features are shared by the 2 mummies and that the blood group of both
> individuals is identical. The researchers identified the KV35YL mummy as
> likely
> Tutankhamun's mother.”
>
> Contact: Carsten M. Pusch, Ph.D.
> _carsten.pusch AT uni-tuebingen.de_ (mailto:carsten.pusch AT uni-tuebingen.de)
>
> _JAMA and Archives Journals_ (http://www.jamamedia.org/)
>
> 2. The new biological evidence is consistent with Akhenaten and his
> full-sister Sitamen being Tut’s parents, and the KV55 mummy being
> Akhenaten.
> But my point is that as far as I can tell, that biological evidence is also
> consistent with Amenhotep III being Tut’s biological father, and KV55 mummy
> being Smenkhkare.
>
> What I have never seen so far is any article, whether popular or scholarly,
> stating that the researchers wanted to find out if Amenhotep III could have
> sired Tut by his own daughter, Sitamen, but they concluded that such was
> not possible, or at least was not likely, and that the biological evidence
> suggests that instead Akhenaten was Tut’s father. Until and unless some
> article compares those two possibilities straight up, these blanket
> statements one
> reads that Akhenaten was Tut’s father have little meaning. The DNA
> evidence shows that Akhenaten could have been Tut’s father, but to the best
> of my
> knowledge, this DNA testing has not ruled out Smenkhkare or Amenhotep III
> as
> being Tut’s father. And on the historical side, we know that Amenhotep III
> married his daughter Sitamen, and bestowed up her the title of full queen
> of
> Egypt, a title she held simultaneously with her mother, Queen Tiye. By
> contrast, there is not a scintilla of evidence in the historical record
> that
> Akhenaten married Sitamen (or another of his full-sisters), much less that
> Akhenaten and Sitamen had a child, Tut, in Year 11. Since Amarna has been
> more
> closely studied than any other period of ancient history, how could every
> single Egyptologist in the last 100 years have missed that important
> marriage
> and important childbearing? To me, that’s unlikely.
>
> 3. To prove the point that nothing is definitive yet, here are the
> initial musings of a true expert on Amarna, Katherine Griffis-Greenberg,
> Oriental Institute, Oriental Studies Doctoral Program [Egyptology], Oxford
> University, Oxford, United Kingdom (who on occasion has gotten more
> exasperated
> with me than anyone on the b-hebrew list, but she knows her stuff):
>
>
>
> “[T]he identification of the KV 55 mummy as Akhenaten, from the DNA and
> supposedly "advanced" CT scan which claims the "body is much older" than 20
> years of age, is very vague. In fact, [t]hey were also hedging bets, IMO:
> The
> wording is that the KV 55 mummy is "most probably Akhenaten," and to be
> blunt, that is not as definitive as I would have expected.”
>
> …”Interestingly, the alleles that Princess KV 21A has more in common is
> not with the KV 55 mummy, as would be expected, but with the mummy
> identified
> as Amenhotep III! …All I'm saying here is that it's odd that the Princess
> KV 21A who produced two female foetuses with Tutankhamun should share more
> alleles in common with the WV 22 mummy (ostensibly Amenhotep III) rather
> than
> her putative father, if he is the KV 55 mummy.”
>
> 4. The bottom line is: Stay tuned. The science may soon figure it
> out. But to date, I see nothing that prohibits Amenhotep III from being
> Tut’
> s biological father, which is my own theory of the case.
>
> If Akhenaten sired Tut by Akhenaten’s full-sister (who would be a very
> important princess and a very important marriage), why then is Akhenaten
> not
> succeeded by his son Tut, but rather is succeeded by Smenkhkare, who likely
> is
> Akhenaten’s full-brother? That succession strongly suggests that Akhenaten
> had failed to sire a son as his heir.
>
> There is a very close parallel of Amarna to the Patriarchal narratives if
> and only if Akhenaten, like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had a terrible time
> siring a son by his favorite main wife. Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
> Akhenaten was a younger son who was not his father’s favorite son. Like
> Isaac,
> Jacob and Judah, Akhenaten became the sole leader of an early generation of
> semi-monotheists in large part because his birth mother was his father’s
> original main wife #1, and he inherited that mantle from his father, even
> though
> he was not his father’s favorite son. Like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and
> Judah,
> Akhenaten is his father’s only son who voluntarily left his father’s home
> and went off on his own. Perhaps uniquely in history, Akhenaten and
> Nefertiti, like Abraham and Sarah, both changed their names as religious
> leaders to
> honor their semi-monotheistic/monotheistic deity. Like Abraham, Akhenaten
> exiled a foreign minor wife (Kiya/Hagar) and her only child (Kiya’s
> daughter/Ishmael). Like Isaac, Jacob and Judah, Akhenaten had a pushy
> mother, who
> was audaciously aggressive, and such women are greatly honored, not reviled
> (unlike in the rest of the Bible and in most other ancient literature).
> Like
> Jacob/“Israel”, Akhenaten was the semi-monotheistic leader of his people in
> Egypt for 17 years/“years”. Like Abraham, Akhenaten had a good-natured
> nephew (Tut, Lot), who had little individual merit and ordinarily would
> have
> seemed to be of little importance, but who nevertheless is surprisingly
> prominent in the story of the first historical monotheist. Like Lot,
> Akhenaten’s
> wife (Nefertiti) became a royal/“salt” statue upon failing to bear him a
> son and heir, and he (Lot/Akhenaten) then impregnated his own young teenage
> or pre-teenage daughters, who righteously wanted to bear him a male heir.
> Like Joseph, Akhenaten had a full-brother who was 10 years younger than him
> (Smenkhkare/Benjamin), who had no individual merit, and who was handed
> everything on a silver platter by his older full-brother, but had no
> gratitude for
> that. And on and on and on. Virtually every famous, awkward family
> situation in the Patriarchal narratives has a direct parallel at Amarna.
> That’s
> because the first Hebrew, who composed the Patriarchal narratives in Year
> 15,
> was trying to convince Akhenaten that despite appearances to the contrary,
> Akhenaten had not done everything wrong in his own family life, and
> Akhenaten should now focus on saving the world from the threat of the
> Hittites just
> north of beloved Canaan -- which was the first Hebrew’s real concern, not
> Akhenaten’s strange religion or Akhenaten’s strange family problems.
> That’s
> my own super-controversial, unique theory of the case. If my northern
> geography theory of the Patriarchal narratives were adopted, then Genesis
> 14:
> 1-11 would be seen as being a pinpoint historically accurate account of the
> onset of the Great Syrian War in Years 13 and 14, when the mighty Hittites
> for
> a very brief moment in time seemed to threaten virtually the entire Near
> East, including the early Hebrews’ beloved Canaan. The first Hebrews
> credited
> YHWH with having saved Canaan and the Hebrews from being overrun by the
> seemingly unstoppable Hittite war machine. I see Judaism as historically
> being
> born in Year 15, the year in which the Patriarchal narratives were
> composed.
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
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>




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