Significant Find by the Israel Antiquities Authority

[Minimalist]

[Anomalocaris]

Somehow the fucking bible manages to miss this period of history altogether.

You expect originators of OT myth - a bunch of provincial, wishthinking, wife beating, illiterate, self-important, self-righteous, thuggish, sheep fucking yokels - to keep an accurate account of someone else's history?

[Minimalist]

Nope but it is good to have tangible evidence that they are full of shit!

Annoys the piss out of the fundies.

[Confused Ape]

[Jackie]

Wait, so finding evidence of polytheism of both Egypt and the Canaanites, should prove that the Hebrew cult was a spinoff. But somehow Jews will spin this to mean they got it right despite the fact the other two were around prior. Still doesn't make their Lilith story or an other fantastic claim in their texts true.

They simply found a man who believed in the superstitions of his time.

---

They shoehorned Moses in after the fact. There were no Jewish slaves in Egypt. There certainly would have been mixing of Egyptian and Mesopotamian polytheism considering the close geographical proximity.

The idea of a "rebel" slave is not new to Hebrews. Humans like the idea of an underdog and "Moses" would have been a character name based upon the myths of polytheism that got filtered through time ending up in Hebrew Text.

No different than El, Elohim and Yahweh all being names taken from the Ugartic text from the Canaanite Polytheism to be later used by the Hebrews.

[truthBtold]

They will have better luck finding one of the passengers earrings from the missing plane then they will find anything left over in the dessert from the flight from Egypt. .

[The Valkyrie]

This is an awesome find. I was reading about it on the train this morning

Love archaeology

[Minimalist]

You have some great questions in there, Ape. Amenhotep III was one of the most powerful Egyptian rulers, ever. His son, initially Amenhotep IV was something of a nut who moved the capital to Amarna, began worshiping the Aten (sun) and changed his name to Akhenaten. At the end of his rule his reforms were overturned, the capital returned to Thebes, and his infant sun, Tutankhamun - originally Tutankhaten - became pharaoh at about the age of 8-9. Obviously, he was under the control of his handlers, notably Ay who became pharoah on Tuts' death. Ay reigned for only a short time and was succeeded by Horemheb who was the last king of the 18th dynasty.

So what we see is a period of internal weakness in Egypt during which the Hittites took advantage and moved south into Syrian (or Hurrian as it was then known) regions. Egyptian hegemony over Canaan remained intact however. Subsequently, the 19th Dynasty pharaohs, Seti I and Ramesses II, stabilized the border, Ramesses fought the Hittites to a draw at Kadesh and subsequently a peace treaty was worked out which established the respective spheres of influence between the Hittites and Egypt. Said treaty remained unbroken until the Hittites were overrun by the Sea People, local enemies or internal rebellion....or a combination of the 3.

By the way, the Amarna tablets also give us the name of the ruler of Jerusalem in the 14th century BC: Abdi Heba(t) The name is a theophoric. meaning "Servant of Heba(t)." Hebat being a goddess from the aforementioned Hurrian region. Thus, it appears that as is customary with empires, a commander from another region was brought in to rule. The Russian Tzars used to do that with the Cossacks all the time! It does give some suggestion of the cosmopolitan nature of the Egyptian Empire in Canaan, though.

[Confused Ape]

[Minimalist]

"Moses" would have been a character name based upon the myths of polytheism

Amusingly, the root form "mss" (moses, messes, or mosis) in Egyptian meant "born to" or "son of." Thus, Thutmoses meant "Born to Thoth," Ramesses meant "Born to Ra" and Ahmoses meant "Born to Ah."

"Moses" by itself, in Egyptian, would mean "Born to Fucking Nobody!"