Never forget the mysterious Hyrkanians and their snake cult. From whence did they come, and where did they go? Described as light skinned, fierce and warlike with hooked noses, and at the time taking over N. Egypt prior to Amenhotep. Did you know that his Grandpa was a snake cultist? Posted by: tinyfrog | June 16, 2007 3:51 PM

2 God, I'm sorry for the length of this but I hope you find it of interest.

It's easy to either blindly believe, against evidence and good sense, that these myths in Genesis are true, or as most do, accept these stories as myths and try to make some sense of them while maintaining a respect for the deeper truth of the scriptures. I prefer not to carry a reverence for the Bible into any analysis or critique of it. This means examining the text without an already accepted bias and answering questions of when, where, why and how without preset boundaries. When approached this way, Genesis reeks of Egyptian influence. This makes sense because how can a group of people live in a country for 430 years and not be enculturated. What evidence would lead us to believe that they came out of Egypt maintaining their own unique beliefs, language and culture without influence? I look briefly at this, then from there use this information to shed light on the Tower of Babel.

The pharaoh Akhenaton is the first pharaoh to be monotheistic. He changed his name from Amenhotep IV to reflect his reverence for the Aten who could only be depicted as a sun disk. No images could be made of Aten and "Thou shalt make no graven images" comes to mind. He eliminates worship of all other gods and builds a great city specifically dedicated to Aten called Akhetaton. (This is the setting for the Tower of Babel story). He even composed the Great Hymn to Aten which is in style and sequence like Psalm 104 which was said to be written hundreds of years latter.

As to language (which also figures into the story), Hebrew and Egyptian are very similar and Ralph Ellis, in his book Eden in Egypt, translates Genesis into Egyptian from Hebrew then into English and the result is a truly Egyptian story. As an example of verse 1: At the sunrise the Elohims illuminated the eastern lands (horizon). Verse 2: And the land was an empty wilderness and the last of the night's darkness was upon the face of the watery abyss of Nu. And the rays of Ra bathed the upturn boat in the waters. (The boat refers to the solar boat sailing through the night towards the dawn of a new day around the firmament). So the creation story when read this way becomes a priestly ritual for the greeting of a new day. The Sabbah brothers in their book "Secrets of the Exodus" give a scholarly work based on 20 years of research showing how the Hebrew alphabet came from Egyptian hieroglyphics.

As to the culture, the priests of Egypt were part of the nobility and as such never were slaves (according to The Hagadah and Rashi) but instead owned slaves themselves. These priests were called the "servants of Pharaoh" and the word servant can more precisely mean "to offer worship to Pharaoh." The Aramaic Bible distinguishes between the Yahuds (monotheistic priests) and the Hebrews (the multitudes). The name Yahud comes from the Egyptian words Yahu-Dueh meaning adoration, prayer, and homage. From it we get the names Judah and Judea. So, according to Sabbah, the Yahuds were the nobility and clergy from the era of Akhenaton and there could not have been two separate clergies and two nobilities of different origins in Egypt at the same time.

This brings me to the brink of the discussion of the Tower of Babel. First, there needs to be one more character to fill out the story and that would be Adonai. This word is made up of the word Adon, meaning Lord and the name of Ay who was the grand vizier of the Pharaoh, the one who actually ran the country. (The Aramaic Bible states one of the names of God as Ay). This man was called The Divine Father Ay and is said (by Sabbah) to be responsible for the exodus of the Yahuds from Egypt. He later became Pharaoh after Semenkare and Tutankhamen. There is no record outside the Bible of an Exodus as described therein. However, Egyptian history and archaeology do report an exodus dated about 1344 BC of the population of an entire city, the newly built capital of Egypt, the city of Akhetaten.

In the Temple of Abu Simbel there are engraved these words: "The master builder constructed a temple whose summit is as high as the heavens. The sun rises for love of it". Thus, there is a precedent for the language of the Babel story. These words would be appropriately written also for a city that was built to honor a deity symbolized by the sun, Akhetaton. This city was built by thousands of workers and artisans from all over the region and since it was the capital it was populated by representatives of nations and provinces from that part of the world. The Bible speaks of a variety of languages in Gen. 10:20 then says that "the whole world had one language and one dialect". This is a contradiction. The story of the Tower of Babel seems to be telling a part of the history of Akhetaten and the Divine Father Ay. As I said, the city was built with workers, artisans, builders and priests from around the region and over the years of working, first on the Temple to Aten in Karnak and then on the city, had developed a dialect that differed from Egyptian. This language, discovered in the Armana Letters is called Pre-Biblical Hebrew. Adon-Ay saw that Egypt was being destroyed by the resources of the country being channeled solely to the city and to the worship of Aten. The rest of the country was being neglected and the other gods and the priests who worshiped them were not being funded. The Stela of Restoration speaks of this when it says: "The temples have begun to collapse. The sanctuaries are falling, little by little, into ruins in front of piles of rubble covered by weeds". In observing this, Father Ay fears "this is just the beginning of what they can do" and plans to relocate the Yahuds and the Hebrews (common people of the city who followed the religion of Aten) to an Egyptian territory in Canaan. This move would serve to re-unite Egypt and the Hebrews would serve as a buffer to invaders at a troublesome border region. The Stela says after the exodus: "He drove out deceit from one end of the two lands to the other. And Maat was re-established. The lie became an abomination within the land". Later, the city was destroyed and its materials used to build other projects. Evidence of this has been found in the remains of other structures. Finally, Akhenaton himself was erased from history in the same manner in which he tried to destroy the pantheon of Egyptian gods.

Some hymns to Amun speak of Akhenaton as a criminal and tell of the fall of those who attacked Amun. Also, of interest, is an unprecedented appeal for priests to replenish the priests of Amun who were depleted from the neglect suffered during the reign of Akhenaton. Since the priesthood was a noble class the right to priesthood was based on birth or station in life. However, there is an historical reference to an unprecedented call for recruits to the priesthood. This was due to the loss of so many priests choosing to be exiled to Canaan rather than worship gods other than Aten.

It is believed that when Israel was conquered and taken into Babylon that the priesthood tried to mask their Egyptian roots and turn their story into a story of victimization by a mutual enemy of Babylon rather than have their texts destroyed and lost forever if they were perceived as having ties with an enemy of Babylon. So they told stories from a Mesopotamian bias and changed things enough to mask the true nature of their past. An example of this is having camels being used in the same manner as in Mesopotamia in their stories of the Patriarchs even though the camel wasn't domesticated until much later in history. It worked, but many forgot the real truth.

For more on this subject read, in addition to Ellis (who comes to some weird conclusions) and the Sabbaths (who are quite remarkable in their research), Ahmed Osman who has written many books on the subject and is good throughout, although he may come to some erroneous conclusions. Also, Robert Feather speaks on the subject of Akhenaton in his research on the copper scroll of Qumran. It is a good intro into the Egyptian influence of the Jewish sect called the Essenes which wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and greatly influenced Christianity. Hope that satisfies your curiosity for now. Got to start supper.

I would really have to write a book to express those few malformed sentences. Just trying to keep in context, and dumb it down for those not fluent in recent history.

One more up for you

Your words sounded like a shill trying to keep people away from good information.