APPENDIX
III
EGYPTIAN NAMES AMONG THE LEVITES
After Sigmund Freud made the link between the Amarna age and the life of Moses during the late 1930s, the subject was destined to be ignored by the Egyptological community until the publication in 1990 of a book entitled MOSES: PHARAOH OF EGYPT, by the Egyptian-born historian Ahmad Osman. He went further than Freud, and Arthur Weigall before him, by stating boldly that Akhenaten and Moses were one and the same person.
Osman attempted to make a case for Akhenaten's abandoning the throne of Egypt in Year 17 of his reign. According to him, the heretic king then exiled himself to the Sinai peninsular, where he remained for forty years, before returning to demand the release of the imprisoned followers of the Aten in Year 1 of Rameses I's brief reign, c. 1308-1307 BC. Despite the fact that there is no clear indication that Akhenaten might have survived after Year 17, Osman's book brought the idea of a relationship between the collapse of the Amarna regime and the historical origins of Moses and the Exodus into the modern era. Osman has also demonstrated that some of the most important Israelites who left Egypt at the time of the Exodus bore Egyptian names. For example, Moses has always been thought to derive his name from the Hebrew Moše(h), 'to draw', or 'drawn', as in 'I drew him out of the water'. More likely, however, is that it comes from the Egyptian mose, meaning '(is) born', or more simply 'son', as in Thutmose, 'son of the god Thoth', or Rameses, 'son of the sun-god Re'.
In addition to this, Merari, the youngest son of Levi, who became the eponymous ancestor of the Merarites, one of the three branches of the Levite priesthood, is traditionally thought to derive his name from the Hebrew/Canaanite word meaning 'bitter'. However, it is more likely that it comes from the Egyptian mrry/mrrě, meaning 'to love', or 'beloved'. Curiously enough, there was a Mery-re II, a high priest of the Aten, who lived during the reign of Akhenaten and whose empty rock-cut tomb is situated in the cliffs beyond the site of Akhenaten's city at Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt.
Then there is Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the high priest and chief of the Levites, who was the grandson of Aaron. He played an active role during Israel's forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and went on to become the ancestor of the Zadok priesthood. The Hebrew meaning of his name is 'mouth of brass', but it quite clearly derives from the Egyptian p3-nhsy, meaning 'the Nubian', denoting a person with dark skin or a true Nubian. Strangely enough, there was also a Pinehesy, a Chief Servitor of the Aten, who lived during the reign of Akhenaten. Like that of Mery-re II, his empty tomb can be found in the cliffs beyond the site of Akhenaten's city.
Osman has attempted to demonstrate that Merari and Phinehas were indeed the two historical figures of similar-sounding names who served Akhenaten at Amarna, and then took flight with the pharaoh when he departed for Sinai after abandoning the throne. Whereas Osman might well be right in this respect, there is no real evidence to prove this theory one way or another, especially as the names Mery-re and Pinehesy were probably not unique to Akhenaten's reign.
The Levite priesthood
Even so, Osman certainly seems to have been on to something, for there appears to be a pattern in the distribution of the Egyptian personal names found among the Israelites. For instance, the grandmother of Phinehas is given as Putiel, a hybrid name derived from the Hebrew/Canaanite el, 'of God', and the Egyptian p3 dy, meaning 'the given'. While Assir (Izhir), a son of Korah, the Levite, and grandson of Izhar, the brother of Amram, Moses's father, would seem to have derived his name from asar, or Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld.
Lastly, there is Hur, a companion of Moses and Aaron, whose name in Hebrew means 'a hole', as of a snake. Yet it is more likely to derive from the Egyptian hr, 'Horus', the falcon-headed god whom the pharaoh embodied during his lifetime. The book of Exodus tells us that, in the company of Moses and Aaron, Hur ascended the 'mountain head' at Rephidim, unquestionably Horeb , on the occasion that the Israelites under Joshua went to battle against the Amalekites when they were encamped in the wilderness of Sin. With Yahweh's rod in his hand, Moses would lift up his arm and the battle would go in Israel's favour, but when it dropped through exhaustion the Amalekites would prevail. As Moses became more weary, and the Amalekites started to gain the upper hand, Aaron and Hur placed a stone beneath him and held up each of his arms until 'the going down of the sun' ('until the sun's entry' in earlier versions ). Eventually, Joshua and the Israelite army were victorious. Thereafter, Moses built an altar on the 'mountain head' which was called ' "Yahweh Is My Flag(Pole)", and he said, "For an arm (is?) on Yah[weh]'s kes."'
Quite obviously, an explanation of this final line is in order before we can go any further. Yahweh's flagpole or arm, and Moses's rod would seem to refer to a 'memorial pillar' of some sort, established by an altar on the 'mountain head'. Furthermore, the word kes is thought to mean 'seat', thus implying 'an arm (is) on Yahweh's seat', indicating that the altar is a 'memorial [pillar] on Yahweh's throne', i.e. the mountain. Should the authors be correct in their identification of Horeb or Sinai, the Mountain of Yahweh, as Petra, then these expressions might well relate to the twin pillars and altar upon Jebel al-Madhbah (see Chapter 20).
We read about Hur again on the occasion when Moses allowed Aaron, his two eldest sons Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders to ascend to the first level on the Mountain of Yahweh. Just as Moses and Joshua are about to ascend still further, the lawgiver asks the elders to 'Tarry [i.e. wait] ye here for us, until we come again unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you'. Even though Hur is never mentioned again in the Bible, his close connection with both Moses and Aaron on the Mountain of Yahweh strongly suggests that he was both a blood relation and a member of a priestly caste.
If this assumption proves correct, then it would mean that each and every one of the Israelites shown to have Egyptian personal names, i.e. Moses, Merari, Phinehas, Assir and, almost certainly, Putiel and Hur, were Levites, or their immediate family belonged to the tribe of Levi, who was the third son of Jacob. According to the Bible, it was from Levi's three sons - Gershon, Kohath, the grandfather of Moses and Aaron, and Merari, whom we have already encountered - that the three branches of Levites stemmed. Each one took on priestly duties on behalf of the Israelites right down until the time of King Solomon, when they became the jurisdiction of the Zadok priesthood alone.
The book of Numbers records that the role of high priest of the Levites was conferred originally on Aaron and his four sons by Moses, and after the death of his eldest sons, Nadab and Abihu, it was shared jointly by Eleazar and his younger brother Ithamar. Yet later we read how Aaron and Eleazar were requested to accompany Moses on to Mount Hor, where Aaron was stripped of his priestly garments, which were then given to Eleazar as his successor, making him chief among the Levite leaders. According to the account, 'And Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest shall be prince of the princes of the Levites, and have the oversight of them that keep the charge of the sanctuary [of Yahweh]'. Eleazar's son Phinehas, who was placed in the service of the Ark of the Covenant, succeeded his father. As we have seen, he was destined also to become the ancestor of the Zadok priesthood.
In the book of Deuteronomy the Levites are charged with carrying the Ark of the Covenant, serving Yahweh and blessing the people. It is also the Levites who proved themselves particularly zealous on the occasion that, when encamped at Mount Sinai, the Israelites began worshipping the golden calf in Moses's absence. It is said that they rounded up some three thousand individuals and put them to death. Levites from later periods also bore Egyptian names. For example, Hophi and Phinehas, the sons of Eli, were the priests of the sanctuary at Shiloh and accompanied the ark on its travels during the war with the Philistines, thus c. 1200-1150 BC. The name Phinehas we know already, but Hophni we find has been thought to derive from the Egyptian hfn(r), meaning a 'tadpole'! More likely is that it comes from the root hfn, meaning 'to fear' or 'to be humble'.
Such a profusion of Egyptian personal names among the Levites is difficult to explain, especially as none appear among any of the other tribes. Either it indicates that the family began using Egyptian names simply because of their long association with Egypt, or they really were Egyptians, or certainly descendants of Egyptians. If so, then could they have originally been followers of Akhenaten's monotheistic religion as Osman proposed in the cases of Merari and Phinehas? Might they themselves have had Asiatic connections? Certainly, Akhenaten is known to have employed the services of high-ranking Asiatics at his royal court. For example, in 1988 the Belgium archaeologist Alain Zivie found in the Memphite necropolis at Saqqara the intact tomb of a hitherto unknown chief minister of the heretic king named Aper-el (or Abd-el), 'servant of El', a name of clear Asiatic derivation.
If nothing else, this evidence for the presence of Egyptian names among the Levites and their families is a further indication that at the core of the Israelite tribes was a priestly elite. Although its origin remains obscure, the chances are that it was Egyptian in origin, or it contained Asiatics who had become Egyptianised through generations of settlement in Egypt's Eastern Delta. Either way, it helps ally any doubts regarding the historical validity of the Exodus account.