An intriguing bombshell, based on extensive research into Egyptian history, archaeology, literature, and mythology, presents the idea that much of biblical scholarship concerning the origins of Israel up to 1000 B.C. is completely and totally wrong.
Despite the misleading subtitle, the principal thesis of this work by Greenberg, a trial attorney and president of the Biblical Archaeology Society of New York, is simply that the monotheistic religion of ancient Israel originated in the Aten cult of ancient Egypt. While Yahwism in some ways resembles Atenism, the claim that Yahwism derives directly from it is probably incorrect. For instance, Yahweh is in origin no benevolent sun god like Aten but rather a god of thunder, cataclysm, and war. Greenberg makes other less defensible claims, for instance, that the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 are really Egyptian dynastic chronology in disguise. He energetically pursues this very speculative proposal throughout the entire book. One has the feeling, though, that the author decided in advance what his conclusions would be and organized the sketchy archaeological and literary data to prove it. Dense with footnotes and complex in its reasoning, the book presumes a good background in ancient Egyptian history; it is for specialists, not for casual readers. For academic libraries.?James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, Va.
The taking of African Cultures and rebranding it. Then selling it back to you-Khepri Neteru
The Hyksos (/ˈhɪksɒs/; Egyptian ḥqꜣ(w)-ḫꜣswt, Egyptological pronunciation: heqa khasut, "ruler(s) of foreign lands"; Ancient Greek: Ὑκσώς, Ὑξώς) were a people of diverse origins, possibly from Western Asia,who settled in the eastern Nile Delta some time before 1650 BC. The arrival of the Hyksos led to the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty and initiated the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt. In the context of Ancient Egypt, the term "Asiatic" refers to people native to areas east of Egypt.
The Hyksos continued to play a role in Egyptian literature as a synonym for "Asiatic" down to Hellenistic times. The term was frequently evoked against such groups as the Semites settled in Aswan or the Delta, and this may have led the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho (or Ptolemaeus the Mendesian) to identify the coming of the Hyksos with the sojourn in Egypt of Joseph and his brothers, and led to some authors identifying the expulsion of the Hyksos with the Exodus. For instance, Justin Martyr says:
Moses is mentioned as the leader and ruler of the Jewish nation. In this way he is mentioned both by Polemon in the first book of his Hellenics and by Apion son of Posidonius in his book against the Jews, and in the fourth book of his history, where he says that during the reign of Inachus over Argos the Jews revolted from Amasis king of the Egyptians and that Moses led them. And Ptolemaeus the Mendesian, in relating the history of Egypt, concurs in all this.
With the chaos at the end of the 19th Dynasty, the first pharaohs of the 20th Dynasty in the Elephantine Stele and the Harris Papyrus reinvigorated an anti-Hyksos stance to strengthen their nativist reaction towards the Asiatic settlers of the north, who may again have been expelled from the country. Setnakht, the founder of the 20th Dynasty, records in a Year 2 stela from Elephantine that he defeated and expelled a large force of Asiatics who had invaded Egypt during the chaos between the end of Twosret's reign and the beginning of the 20th Dynasty and captured much of their stolen gold and silver booty.
