The historical Moses was heir to the Egyptian throne and was driven away by his brother. Moses became the leader of the rebellion leading to the exodus from Egypt. Astronomical observations combined with the oldest handed down information dating his birth to 1534 BC.

          Generally the story is known to most of us (cf. the Book of Exodus, 2nd chap.): by accident Moses strikes a man to death and had to be exiled.
          The historical circumstances behind this are disclosed in this work which is a pioneering work within the Moses research, providing evidence that Moses must be considered as a historical person.

          A number of disciplines of the Humanities are being involved, and a glimpse of an astro-magic ritual can be catch behind the acccount about Moses who was found by Pharaoh's daughter in the small ark on the Nile the day when the sun and moon were close to each other (astronomical conjunction).
          The reader gets a very thorough review of the history, rites, and myths of ancient Egypt, thus accessing a fine understanding of the events.

          The book is characterized by an immense thoroughness which may go beyond a survey. The author has been through very profound studies, and numerous professional experts provide their recommendations of the work. This is the first book (independent) in a series of 5 volumes.

H.M.

Spaeth, Ove von: "The Suppressed Record: Moses' Unknown Egyptian Background". - C.A. Reitzel, 1999. - 235 pages. - (Assassinating Moses; I). - Library classification 91.21.

Moses was not a Hebrew, he was Egyptian, probably his name was Tuth-mosis, and he was the genuine child of Hatshepsut, the daughter of the former pharaoh, and he was the heir to the throne in the vast Egyptian kingdom. He was born on Tuesday, February 8, 1534 B.C.
          Such a spectacularly precise dating is established by Ove von Spaeth in his current book, "The Suppressed Record", which is the first volume of a planned series of five about Moses and his time. And which has caused as much amazement and admiration with a number of scientists and researchers of religion, as it has been met with a mixture of noisy silence and neglecting shrugs of shoulders by the theological establishment.

          Ove von Spaeth make his take-off by the thesis that the widespread dating of Moses is approx. 200-300 years too late, partly due to an error made more than 150 years ago (1840ties) by Lepsius, the Egyptologist. Lepsius claimed that Moses was contemporary with Pharaoh Ramses II around 1500 B.C. However, when it was later discovered that Ramses II was probably living in 1200, the dating of Moses was also removed to 1200, because in the meantime the anticipation of the time of the two persons being the same had become evident.
          Since it was not possible to find a shadow of a trace of Moses around 1200, the theological consensus was widespread that Moses, the most important personality of the Old Testament, had to be - only and definitely - a fictive figure. And furthermore that one of the most conclusive features of Jewish self-understanding was, thus, to be reduced to being an odd idea among Jewish priests, who themselves had produced the myth of Moses without any historical evidence whatsoever.
          However, by demonstrating that Moses and Ramses II are not at all contemporaries and that dating of the life of Moses to 1500-1400 BC is much more realistic, the jigsaw puzzle pieces are finding their correct position. And although they at certain moments are somewhat distorted in the Old Testament - which for instance makes the Egyptian heir to the throne a Hebrew - convincing outlines of Moses as a historical person are established.


The theologians are missing the Egyptian factor

"The Suppressed Record" (C.A. Reitzel Publishers, 1999) is a comprehensive and severe showdown with wide habitual anticipations of the Moses research.
          As von Spaeth says (Danish version, p. 58), heading openly towards a clash with prevailing theological schools: "Research is being done as if only the biblically known Moses exists."
          And (von Spaeth) continuing: "... offshoots from the German school (of theological research) - as well as in the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian framework, e.g. "the Copenhagen School", who deprives Moses of any historical authenticity - (have) avoided to see the Egyptian factor among the most important elements of understanding of the many claimed textual discrepancies. A 'filter of knowledge' has been created, which automatically is sorting out what is not acceptable within the prevailing theories; However, critics of those schools would designate this as committing murder on history. The Egyptian factor has been better represented by the less partial 'French school', which to a broader extent has been influenced by Egyptologists ..." ("The Suppressed Record", p. 67).

          Thus, von Spaeth's opinion is especially supported on Egyptian sources as well as Jewish traditions not included in the Old Testament. These traditions describe among other things that the "daughter of Pharaoh", in the Moses-narrative, actually seemed to be pregnant prior to the birth of Moses. It is being noted that Moses was genuinely royal and was to become a future pharaoh, and that he was crowned as a crown prince at the age of three. And further that the specific offices and posts possessed of Moses were simply the traditional tasks of pharaonic princes.
          The surnames and features - presented in the Jewish traditional commentaries, The Rabbinical Writings - are so very well corresponding with Hatshepsut, who was in power ca. 1509-1487 B.C. This person, "the daughter of Pharaoh" is in the von Spaeth analysis being the mother of Moses and, thus, not his adoptive mother, as the Old Testament is suggesting.

          However, the Bible is trying to delete the Egyptian background of Moses; nevertheless it appears in the text now and then, for instance when the daughter of Jethro talks about Moses as an "Egyptian" (Book of Exodus, 2:19); likewise, when Yahwe in a fit of anger says in the face of Moses that he is going to "exterminate" the Israelites, whereas he intends to make Moses to be "a people greater and stronger than that" (Book of Numbers, 14:12) - statements hardly corresponding, unless Moses is belonging to another people than the Israelites. Nowhere in the books of Pentateuch is Moses referring to "my people" about the Israelites, and he does not mention Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as his ancestors - while the Israelites talk about their great leader as "this Moses, who took us out of Egypt" (Book of Exodus, 32:1).
          Artapanos, the Egyptian-Jewish Historian wrote (ca. 100 B.C.) that "the Egyptian priests honoured Moses as a god and called him Thoth" - this could be corresponding to the well-known pharaonic name, Tuth-mosis. A couple of centuries earlier, Manetho noted about Moses that "he only took the name of Moses" around the great Exodus.

          Within the 18th dynasty (ca. 1585-1310 B.C.) and thus also during the times of Hatshepsut, his title, i.e. "Son of Pharaoh's Daughter", mentioned in the Bible, was particularly important. This being the fact, because at that time evidently the women of royal blood carried on the order of succession according to the habits of the time, while their less royal spouses normally and primarily became pharaohs by virtue of their marriage. Only three times during the 18th dynasty a son was born and considered a genuinely royal son, which is the reason why the designation, "Son of the Pharaoh's Daughter" was used about Moses as a special emphasis of his right to the throne.
          Speaking against being the legitimate Son of Pharaoh's Daughter is the Old Testament's own narrative about the pharaonic decree to drown all boys in the Nile, where Moses as is known to have been put on a vehicle and incidentally discovered and saved by Pharaoh's Daughter.
          However, this narrative is so contradictive that it is reasonable to consider it a deliberate disguise of the actual events. Why should Moses have been placed on the Nile, helpless and in danger of being discovered in the area of the pharaonic court, the court that according to the narrative was seeking the lives of all Hebrew boys? And the fact that the very daughter of Pharaoh should wash herself in public in the dirty waters of the Nile, which already at that time could be unhygienic, is not likely, unless the narrative of the Old Testament might have made a slight re-written version of something completely different: - an Egyptian ceremony for a royal child - according to von Spaeth's suggestion. In that case it would be more than realistic that the very Daughter of Pharaoh made her ritual cleansing in the sacred Nile, before she received the (her) royal child, who came floating on the Nile according to the same ritual context.

          In myths, this is a scenario that is universally circulated in slightly different versions: - the royal child arrives on a ship or a vehicle on the sea or a river. (Cf. for instance our Danish king Shield or king Sheaf, - or Karna, the Indian sun god's royal son, Romulus on the Tiber, Sargon I on the Euphrates, etc.).
          Ove von Spaeth combines features from the Moses narrative with the Horus child: The teaching about Orisis, the mythological, royal god, who, after he passed away, was placed in a sailing coffin - correspondingly described by the Rabbis as "the little ark" on the Nile. By the help of Isis, the goddess, he was to resurrect in the shape of Horus, his son with Isis, a royal child bound to become the new king. In other words - exactly corresponding to Moses ("The Suppressed Record", p. 27).
          In texts of non-biblical, Jewish origin, from which von Spaeth is frequently making quotations, this event is also referred to as "the holy event on the divine River Nile", and the daughter of Pharaoh says, "… consequently, I will bring up this child for the purpose of his succession to the throne".
  

Kristeligt Dagblad (Danish daily): "Ove von Spaeth lacks a scientific method"

Ove von Spaeth recites numerous other Egyptian conditions relating to Moses, and the first book of his five-volume work presents a wide selection of arguments for referring these traces to a whole line of exact names, ideas, themes, and rituals in Egyptian royal cults. Of course this is not the first occasion that Moses has been claimed to be of Egyptian origin, or that his time should be dated to 1400-1500 B.C. - but rarely, if ever, has the dating been so clearly defined or the implications elaborated in such meticulous detail combining comprehensive studies in history, Egyptology, history of religions, archaeology, and astronomy.
          For a long time the theological reaction to the challenge - in particular from the so-called Copenhagen School - was silence. Obviously, a contributory reason for this was the spectacular statement, which probably caused a lot of theological hesitation to go deep into the extensive and very detailed references in so many fields of knowledge. Much more prestige is at stake than immediately anticipated, because if Ove von Spaeth proves correct even only in the main features, many years of hegemonic theological perceptions in this field are simply going to tumble like dominoes.

          On November 11, 1999, more than six months after the book had been published, Tine Lindhardt, the Theologian, reviewed the book in the Kristeligt Dagblad (Danish daily). However, the review is revealing that the newspaper had probably not the desire to find a qualified reviewer, since the dealing with the book bears the notion of lack of elementary knowledge about the subject, but is taking into use a square scientific idol, hardly acceptable any longer except than in the simplified text books of the elementary school.
          Of course it is possible to agree or disagree with the scientific view of "The Suppressed Record". When Lindhardt, however, maintains that it "lacks scientific method", it is close to being an unbecoming arrogance in relation to a work, which is dispassionately combining factual recognitions within many fields of knowledge, while she is demonstrating low-key "scientific treatment".
          Thus, Lindhardt "instructs" von Spaeth with the following tautology: "In order for us to say that something is historically true, it must really have happened", - followed by her irrelevant and erroneous oversimplifying as if she was correcting a child: "Therefore, we are selecting between historical facts, which have really happened, and myths, legends, adventures. The last mentioned may very well be true to the extent that they deal with some kind of truth in human life, but they are not true to the extent that they inform us about what has happened".
          Evidently, historical "facts" are problematic and are being depending on different sources and interpretations, which again are depending on different, historical as well as modern situations of observation. A hardcore difference between mystery or history or fiction or facts may thus be currently removed and sometimes deleted, which is the reason for the fact that an ordinary assessment separating fiction from fact, at its best is unnecessarily insignificant. And at its worst, implying a classical, positivistic, scientific idol, which can be said to be even more controversial than the von Spaeth hypotheses about the life of Moses, and thus the poorest argument against these.

          Lindhardt's contention about Moses seems to be apparently blindfolded, deliberately inferior performance, when she says: "Not many sources besides the Bible can tell anything about him". The fact that she has a book in her hand, the entire purpose of which is a methodical explanation of a possible relation between the many references to Moses from sources outside the canon of the Old Testament (for instance Talmud and Midrash as well as Philo, Manetho, and Josephus), is apparently irrelevant to her, as is her negligence to consider the relation between these sources and the Old Testament.
          Therefore, the starting point of Tine Lindhardt appears to be symptomatic for the lack of theological, factual criticism and discussion, when detailed arguments and painstaking analyses are being presented contradicting predominant theological trends. Such a reaction being also known from the strategy of the theological establishment to (the journal) "Faklen"s philological criticism of the (Danish) Bible Society's manipulative, but authorised translation of the Bible in 1992. In general, not only research is to pity - it is a theological admission of failure.


The astronomical-historical angle

Besides Ove von Spaeth's convincing claim that Moses is of Egyptian descent, and the identification of Hatshepsut as the mother of Moses - of course the most spectacular about the present book is its exact precision of the birth of Moses by means of modern, astronomical computation of surviving star data in accordance with these circumstances.
          Here von Spaeth draws a line to Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508) the Spanish Rabbi, who in one of his commentary works reproduces the tradition about a special, astronomical event - a very rare grand conjunction in a certain section of the sky three years prior to the birth of Moses. On this background the phenomenon of the sky can be determined and dated to have happened exactly in the course of a certain new moon in February/March, 1537 B.C.

          Peder Moesgaard, D.Sc., Professor at the Department of History of Exact Sciences, Aarhus University, and also Director of the Steno Museum, the Science Museum of Denmark, writes in his preface to the book, "... from the astronomical-historical point of view I find the starting point at a specific planetary constellation in 1537 B.C. worth a trial in relation to biblical research, Egyptology, archaeology, and general history."
          And it is just by the means of being able to piece the traditions together with these and several other fields of knowledge that the parts may find their proper place with a considerable, mutual harmony, used by von Spaeth to date the birth of Moses to be exactly on Tuesday, February 8, 1534 B.C. In the book this is followed by such a thorough analysis of religion-historical value in many other fields than those specifically related to Moses, and which - also irrespective of whether the next volumes will live up to the present standard - is bound both to encourage new breaches and corrections for a long time to come.

R.E.L.

Rune Engelbreth Larsen, is M.A., History of Ideas & History of Religion, and Editor-in-chief of "Faklen" Journal ( www.faklen.dk ).

(This article is from the "Faklen" Journal, No 14, 5th year, and is reproduced by OvS. with acceptance of the writer on January 7, 2000).