Osarseph /ˈoʊzərˌsɛf/ or Osarsiph /ˈoʊzərˌsɪf/ is a legendary figure of Ancient Egypt who has been equated with Moses. His story was recounted by the Ptolemaic Egyptian historian Manetho in hisAigyptiaca (first half of the 3rd century BC); Manetho's work is lost, but the 1st century AD Jewish historian Josephus quotes extensively from it.
The story depicts Osarseph as a renegade Egyptian priest who leads an army of lepers and other unclean people against a pharaoh named Amenophis; the pharaoh is driven out of the country and the leper-army, in alliance with the Hyksos (whose story is also told by Manetho) ravage Egypt, committing many sacrileges against the gods, before Amenophis returns and expels them. Towards the end of the story Osarseph changes his name to Moses.[1]
Also much debated is the question of what, if any, historical reality might lie behind the Osarseph story. The story has been linked with anti-Jewish propaganda of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC as an inversion of the Exodus story, but an influential study by Egyptologist Jan Assmann has suggested that no single historical incident or person lies behind the legend, and that it represents instead a conflation of several historical traumas, notably the religious reforms of Akhenaten (Amenophis IV).[2]
Story[edit]
Josephus's Against Apion[3] gives two long quotations from Manetho's Aigyptiaca.[4] The first is Manetho's account of the expulsion of the Hyksos (the name is given by Manetho) and their settlement in Judea, where they found the city of Jerusalem. Josephus then draws the conclusion that Manetho's Hyksos were the Jews of the Exodus, although Manetho himself makes no such connection.[5]
The second, set some two hundred years later, tells the story of Osarseph. According to Josephus, Manetho described Osarseph as a tyrannical high priest of Osiris at Heliopolis. Pharaoh Amenophis had a desire to see the gods, but in order to do so he first had to cleanse Egypt of lepers and other polluted people, setting 80,000 of them to work in the stone quarries, and then confining them toAvaris, the former Hyksos capital in the Eastern Delta. There Osarseph became their leader and ordered them to give up the worship of the gods and eat the meat of the holy animals. The Osarsephites then invited the Hyksos back into Egypt, and together with their new allies drove Amenophis and his son Ramses into exile in Nubia and instituted a 13-year reign of religious oppression: towns and temples were devastated, the images of the gods destroyed, the sanctuaries turned into kitchens and the sacred animals roasted over fires, until eventually Amenophis and Rameses returned to expel the lepers and the Hyksos and restore the old Egyptian religion. Towards the end of the story Manetho reports that Osarseph took the name "Moses".[6]
Interpretations[edit]
Three interpretations have been proposed for the story: the first, as a memory of the Amarna period; the second, as a memory of the Hyksos; and the third, as an anti-Jewish propaganda. Each explanation has evidence to support it: the name of the pharaoh, Amenophis, and the religious character of the conflict fit the Amarna reform of Egyptian religion; the name of Avaris and possibly the name Osarseph fit the Hyksos period; and the overall plot is an apparent inversion of the Jewish story of the Exodus casting the Jews in a bad light. No one theory, however, can explain all the elements. An influential proposition by Egyptologist Jan Assmann[7] suggests that the story has no single origin but rather combines numerous historical experiences, notably the Amarna and Hyksos periods, into a folk memory.[8]
An alternative theory that identifies Osarseph as the historical figure of Chancellor Bay, identified as Irsu, an alleged Syrian usurper of the Egyptian throne after the Nineteenth Dynasty died out, is generally rejected;[9] another theory is that Osarseph's name is based on the biblical Joseph, as a combination of Osiris and Joseph.[10]
Some modern scholars have suggested that the Osarseph story, or at least the point at which Osarseph changes his name to Moses, is a later alteration to Manetho's original history made in the 1st century BC, a time when anti-Jewish sentiment was running high in Egypt; without this, Manetho's history has no mention of the Jews at all. If the story is an original part of Manetho's history of Egypt, as many other scholars believe, the question arises of where he would have heard it, as the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Torah (i.e., the Exodus narrative) had not been made when he was writing. It is therefore supposed that he had an oral (Jewish) informant, or possibly an otherwise unknown pre-Septuagint translation.[11]
See also[edit]
Atenism, or the Amarna heresy, refers to the religious changes associated with the eighteenth dynasty Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known under his adopted name, Akhenaten. In the 14th century BC Atenism was Egypt's state religion for around 20 years, before subsequent rulers returned to the traditional gods and the Pharaohs associated with Atenism were erased from Egyptian records.
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[hide]History of the Aten before Akhenaten[edit]
The Aten—the god of Atenism—first appears in texts dating to the 12th dynasty, in the Story of Sinuhe. Here during the Middle Kingdom, the Aten "as the sun disk...was merely one aspect of the sun god Re."[1] The Aten, hence, was a relatively obscure sun god; without the Atenist period, it would barely have figured in Egyptian history. Although there are indications that the Aten was becoming slightly more important in the eighteenth dynasty period—notably Amenhotep III's naming of his royal barge as Spirit of the Aten—it was Amenhotep IV who introduced the Atenist revolution, in a series of steps culminating in the official installment of the Aten as Egypt's sole god. Although each line of kings prior to the reign of Akhenaten[2] had previously adopted one deity as the royal patron and supreme state god, there had never been an attempt to exclude other deities, and the multitude of gods had been tolerated and worshipped at all times. During the reign of Thutmosis IV it was identified as a distinct solar god, and his son Amenhotep III established and promoted a separate cult for the Aten. There is no evidence however that Amenhotep III neglected the other gods or attempted to promote the Aten as an exclusive deity.