moses and akhenaton

grahamhancock | The Bible and the Kuran speak of Moses being born in Egypt, brought up in the pharaonic royal palace, and leading the Israelites in their Exodus to Canaan. In historical terms, when did Moses live, and who was the pharaoh of Oppression? Now that archaeologists have been able to uncover the mysteries of ancient history, we need to find answers to these questions. Egyptian born Ahmed Osman, believes that he has been able to find the answers for these questions which bewildered scholars for centuries. He claims that Moses of the Bible is no other than King Akhenaten who ruled Egypt for 17 years in the mid-14th century BC. 

During his reign, the Pharaoh Akhenaten was able to abolish the complex pantheon of the ancient Egyptian religion and replace it with a single God, Aten, who had no image or form. Seizing on the striking similarities between the religious vision of Akhenaten and the teachings of Moses, Sigmund Freud was the first to argue that Moses was in fact an Egyptian. Now Ahmed Osman, using recent archaeological discoveries and historical documents, contends that Akhenaten and Moses were one and the same person.

In a stunning retelling of the Exodus story, Osman details the events of Moses/Akhenaten’s life: how he was brought up by Israelite relatives, ruled Egypt for seventeen years, angered many of his subjects by replacing the traditional Egyptian pantheon with worship of Aten, and was forced to abdicate the throne. Retreating to exile in Sinai with his Egyptian and Israelite supporters, he died out of the sight of his followers, presumably at the hands of Seti I, after an unsuccessful attempt to regain his throne.

Osman reveals the Egyptian components in the monotheism preached by Moses as well as his use of Egyptian royal and Egyptian religious expression. He shows that even the Ten Commandments betray the direct influence of Spell 125 in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Osman’s book, Moses and Akhenaten provides a radical challenge to the long-standing beliefs concerning the origin of Semitic religion and the puzzle of Akhenaten’s deviation from ancient Egyptian tradition. In fact, if Osman’s contentions are right, many major Old Testament figures would be of Egyptian origin.