By  OVE VON SPAETH  
- Published in Swedano Journal, September 2002 (Vol.1, pp.53-66) - Featuring Article
 

New discoveries with interesting finds concerning the enigma of Moses are re-establishing important historical coherence - now being presented in the book-series 'Assassinating Moses'. In these books a unique historical material is vitalizing the both fantastic and dramatic background for Moses in Egypt. Moses belongs to the most well-informed and spiritual personalities of our early history.


The vast amount of new, exciting information about the fate and mystery of Moses were found after thorough investigations lasting many years. The great uncovering was executed by tracking down the many, often repressed sources and relate them to the recent conquests of research.

          Since the publication of the first book of the five volume-series many inquiries have been received as to the creation of the books and the procedures used by the writer. The present article will inform about relevant features of a sequence of events lasting several years, with special detours and important milestones - a personal introduction to the writer's reasons for being occupied with the subject, and about the objective of the unusual project.


The Eternal Question

The fact that the cosmos, the huge space with stars and planets and the sun, our eternal vigorous source, is of so decisive importance for each of us as individuals, irrespective of our different ways of living, remains all valid also if we live in places where the sky can rarely be seen, and even whether we are conscious at all of the existence of these conditions. These celestial circumstances have become so much a matter of course to us that they are often receding into the background now in favour of more immediate things that usually are occupying our attention.

          Much from all this I realized at a rather early stage, but the space with its oceans of stars remained more often in my consciousness than the daily events of the neighbourhood. I started to
read about how other peoples throughout history have understood these conditions. There was so much to learn and adapt, and gradually I became aware that it was indeed necessary that I got a huge library of my own. After some years my library comprised around 5,000 volumes - mostly professional topics and editions of the texts to be studied. An invaluable aid through the many years before the Internet.
          Also, I read about our historical relationship with astronomy and its influence on our religions and the ways of thinking. In other words, the mystery of existence in a cosmic perspective relating to our ways of beliefs in western religions - would it be possible to combine these elements at all?

          "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" - the biblical Commandment so well known, is by many people related to the learning of Jesus. But Jesus was quoting Moses! (from Leviticus 19;18). This very commandment has been considerably influential through times. So, who was this Moses, who lived almost 1,500 years prior to Jesus?
          Moses was the earliest known historical person who initiated a religion. A religion which became a deep inspiration to the three main religions, i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And simultaneously a religion which for posterity based itself in its own special book, the Bible, the world's most wide-spread and read book, the oldest parts of which especially Moses has written, according to the tradition.

          In several parts of the Bible can be found a number of serene rules of conduct and ethical claims, but also - according to modern times concepts - robust and cruel features. How can this be compatible - did the same person write both parts?
          And almost 3,500 years after the works of Moses - how could it be meaningful at the present that some groups are trying to live according to the most severe, literal "understanding" of these texts? Especially when such disputed ways of understanding also can be experienced so destructively used in connection with huge, political and ethnic-religious problems of our era?
Since then and along the way - could something have happened to the texts late after they were created? Many questions like these had been "aroused" in me, when I, independently, started a number of special studies.


The World's Oldest Star Map

Through my early founded interest on history and astronomy - many years before my first book on Moses was published - I got acquainted with the world's oldest star map. It is a beautifully made, ancient Egyptian survey of the sky designed in a special form, much different from our way of doing these things. The map was made by the most gifted person of that time, Senmut (or Senenmut), minister-in-office of Queen Hatshepsut. After having studied, independently, several subject lines like history, religion-traditions, astronomy, old star lore, the myths of Antiquity, etc, I gradually realized, that this star map dates from the epoch specific of Moses. The map proved to describe a certain constellation in the sky in 1534 BC.
          The relation was supported, furthermore, by indications from the historians of Antiquity concerning the chronology connecting to Moses. However, by closer investigating the historical events of Moses, I soon discovered that within existing research there is a lot of internal confusion about this important figure.

          Without having been first introduced to theological hypotheses about Moses - capable of drawing investigations in a certain direction - I tried from the very beginning to maintain a broad view all around. But also without an idea about the extensiveness of the subject, I worked methodically uncovering everything relevant, i.e. often rare material about Moses and chronology. This was to last for many years.

          It was during these investigations that the star map was dated. In July-August 2000 the result was published as a scientific treatise in the "Centaurus International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Astronomy" (Vol. 42). Prior to this I was fortunate enough to have my discoveries about the historical Moses accepted by C.A. Reitzel Publishers, Copenhagen, a tradition-ridden publishing house for the universities, and I was also comfortable with the fact that this was the original publishing house of Soeren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen.
          The huge material turned into becoming the book-series, "Assassinating Moses"; and here in the second volume an edition of the star map treatise was included. Also, I had the pleasure of being a referee/reviewer with the "Isis Journal of the History of Science", the world's biggest and oldest international science-history magazine.
          During these long-lasting studies the enormous Moses bibliography was established (also reproduced in the books). And it was encouraging too that for instance the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem had started to buy this (Danish) series of books.

The world's oldest star map, Egypt 1,500 BC. Ceiling decoration in the tomb of Senmut, the vizier.

Bound To the Mysterious Traces of Moses

Without realizing it from the beginning I had started a completely new project only by originally wanting to write a by-line to a picture of the star map. All of a sudden the text took up one whole page. And very soon also a complete article. Based on many years of intensive work with the relevant historical and spiritual subjects, it proved that actually I knew a lot, which I had not realized at that time. This knowledge and connection were within me, but at a kind of stage like the toy of a transparent glass ball with shakeable snowfall. Where was I to start and to end?

          The fortunate decoding of a certain date of the star map proved to be the very first exact dating of this map. When this also appeared to be a tool in determining the time of Moses, all the pieces found their right place. The positive consequence of this was that here - exactly on the right track - the material itself could easily show the way. Now the text became a complete book.

          And quickly two books. Soon also three. Extending gradually even to five books - at one point, even six - so I disciplined myself very much to getting this truly incredible and lively material into a more limited scale - preferably without loosing anything. The entire work - so unforeseen - took more than twenty years, besides years of preliminary studies which were then crystallizing.

          One fine day I discovered that in reality I was on a mission. Like in the old days when the captains were sent out with their ships on dangerous and strange expeditions with sealed orders to be disclosed at the open sea only, i.e. after a long time without landfall, and being unable to reach land, for instance, by escaping using a rowing-boat. No escape possibilities. The way out is the way through - and was here - to bring back the existence of Moses into the consciousness of history.

          Very many essential circumstances of Antiquity becoming of importance even in our culture today stem from Moses and his time. To incorporate innumerable pieces of the wide-spread material of sources appeared to be an incredibly hard and lengthy work. Being so immensely fascinated, and despite of all the external problems and an even tough, hostile opposition, and also deep personal privations, I discovered to be simply bound to do this, no matter what.


'In the last minute'

During my working with this huge writing the strangest things happened - several peculiar inconveniences got in the way together with strange but very positive events. For instance - often "in the last minute" - I had inestimable assistance from experts in Egyptology, Hebrew, Ancient Greek, etc. This was often only shortly prior to the passing away of several of these personalities after long lives of research and experience. - In a longer fortunate period prior to the big, problematic rebuilding of the Royal Danish National Library, around the year 1999, I was able to use its old and immensely abundant reference library, a most paradisiacal reading room. Furthermore, this room was for a long time in reality Denmark's greatest open interdisciplinary forum (now expired) where many prominent researchers met.
          Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), who later also was director of the National Public Library in Buenos Aires, could view any book as being a world of forking paths, and he opens his short story "The Library of Babel" (La biblioteca de Babel, 1941) with these words: "The universe, otherwise known as the library ...". It covers precisely my own feeling and condition.
          It was essential to my investigations that in Denmark's Royal National Library, I had the access to one of the world's greatest collections of older Hebrew texts and literature. - Some of the best hours of my life I spent there, (see some similar impression here: Librophiliac Compendium of Beautiful Libraries).
          For several years at that special place, Denmark's Royal National Library - and also through its contact with foreign libraries - I borrowed and copied more than a thousand very important books, which had been out of print for a long time, besides articles and documents, exactly those I should use. This I was just able to carry out until the introduction of prohibitively burdensome high taxes or fees - all straining for independent researchers - on foreign book lending and copies. Later even the library's professional consultants and other normal assistance from specialist librarians were closed down together with other specialist library services (thus for instance hampering source searching concerning old works not registered electronically) - in reality it would have made it nearly impossible to continue the unusual extent of research which was being conditioned by the creation of the book-series on Moses.

          Concerning much of the collected, unusual knowledge we are greatly indebted to the élite scientists from the early period of researches, who from older vanishing cultures, often at the last minute, managed to obtain and preserve a special knowledge about man, his conduct of life and his history. Therefore, many of the early academic works are priceless which is the reason for the fact that whole annual volumes of, for instance, German scientific journals dating back to 1920's were photographically reprinted - often by American universities as publishers.
          I had heard about the British explorer Alfred Russel Wallace who for several years in the mid-1800's had researched the Amazon jungle - where it could take many months for him to capture, for instance, a butterfly important to his line of evidence, while he suffered from tropical diseases, poisonous insects, hostile Indians, and troublesome transport through the jungle and on the rivers with his collections and many scientific records.
In the end everything was destroyed when in 1852 the homebound ship in the Atlantic burned like a torch (fire in a cargo of balm oil and resin products). On return, after 10 days in an open rowing boat, he had to write his texts mainly without notes, samples, and preparations. He then encouraged so incredibly generously his colleague Charles Darwin to hasten with Darwin's own somewhat similar theory of evolution so it could be published.
That makes the impression. Now being more aware of risk (read 'anxiety') of irreparable loss, many years of my research and the amount of results and documentation I therefore copied on even three sets of disks constantly to update for safe keeping different locations.

 

          On the Internet, the fantastic tool of the new millennium, the Moses-series' own website, www.moses-egypt.net , was created by me in 1999. Around the world it was read and it was becoming very well-known internationally for its contents, and for a longer period it was placed on Google's first page at the top of 30 million entries for the index word Moses. Few years later after many millions of websites had been established it became more difficult to obtain the Moses-series' site to be found immediately. However, during the early "free" years the site had the good opportunities of receiving a huge amount of responses - much of this still being maintained on the web.
          On Facebook, the free-access and popular social networking website currently including hundreds of millions active users worldwide, some very interested people have established: "Interest Group for The Ove von Spaeth Papers" - namely, the Interest Group for The Ove von Spaeth Papers on History and Knowledge: - Rediscovery, Insight, Renewal. In particular dealing with: - Communication and debate on Ove von Spaeth's exploration and discoveries regarding his research on the historical Moses, the Egyptian legacy, ancient sciences and astronomy, (in English and Danish).

          For more than a thousand years until our recent centuries almost everybody were familiar with the contents of the Bible. Still in 1900's, the older generations in the western world have the history as a part of their learning and from their school, they own the accounts of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. Later, in the emerging mass culture a growing 'illiteracy' paradoxically developed during history's longest school terms - has barred new generations from much knowledge about the cultural roots - a knowledge which even the poorest children in the Middle Age had learned about.
          Therefore, just before the first book of the Moses-series was published, I made many special changes in the script because I could foresee that many features and subjects which generally had been obvious agreements soon could become a problem. For example, it was not efficient simply to refer to the "Book of Job", many younger readers could easily misread it as if it were a book about "how to bget an employment", but instead I had to clarify it as "the biblical Book of Job". Similar changes I had to carry out all the way, because many people no longer neither seem to know the names of biblical persons or that the Bible consists of a whole collection of individual "books".
          The western Christian culture was strongly contributing in making the modern world's development possible. But a particular cultural tradition with many rebels just against the Christian religion was an equally important factor for the development. Challenges to existing circumstances are, as we know, a necessary dynamic, - even also in this case, for although my books initially were met also with much hostility from certain established theologians and Egyptologists, eventually such opposition later diminished. This was often due to the fact that many new academics of these study lines simply no longer seem to have sufficient knowledge on the referred historical topics in the book-series.
          In many ways the situation seemed as if I was working strongly competing with time. When the first volume of the Moses series appeared in 1999, the major newspapers still had many book reviewers with their hitherto cultural background and sphere of interest - just like most of their audience. In public attention the first books of the Moses-series even get good footing. But shortly after, in the new millennium, new generations arrived with other of the modern society's new media habits and different interests. It was like standing on the boundary between two worlds and being trusted to convey a very valuable special knowledge in the best way of protection into the new era.


The Shape Discloses the Message

That it just should be yours truly, a Danish researcher, who traced the facts of the historical Moses and placed the conclusive steps, was apparently contributed by, not the least, the presence of The Department of Judaica and Hebraica of the Royal Danish National Library in Copenhagen with the - envied abroad - exclusively fine and comprehensive collections. Furthermore, here in the great astronomer Tycho Brahe's native country this library owns a considerable collection of both his original texts and the related documents and literature. A great help, because in parts of my research, it was most important to be able to examine the original prints, the genuine first editions of e.g. Tycho Brahe's works (and also Shakespeare's texts).

          My dealing with the original prints also concerned included forms of information in older texts, a method well-known as a normal procedure of the living tradition from ancient Egypt and later with the Greeks and the Romans. - As a result of the dissemination of the art of printing, the form of code could also be found in the typography of the Shakespeare texts. In these, some names or messages have been created by a systematic use of "uneven" printing composition types - a method which specially was developed by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) who, at his observatories on his residential island of Ven, also had his own workshop for printing books - and the principle of the method was later seen also in many first editions of the Shakespeare-texts.

          However, such were often deleted in later editions, as it also happened in the case of Tycho Brahe, probably because non-initiated laymen assumed them to be "printing errors", which were then "corrected".
          By here, my old education from my teenage years as a typographer (compositor, typesetter) became a new advantage. Gutenberg's invention of mass-producing texts by composing their printing blocks of loose letter types, remained in 540 years and suddenly, from around 1980, this method of operation almost everywhere became antiquated and was now carried out by computer technique. Today, many people would hardly understand that it was not unusual in the past that different styles of printing types could be mixed by accident, so even when the spelling was correct there could be a visual mix of different styles of alphabets. Therefore, no reader would note immediately, or at all, if someone deliberately had arranged a mixture in order to form a codified message.

          The Danish astronomer, researcher, and historian of science, J.L.E. Dreyer (1852-1926), published in 1890 in English a book about his fellow countryman and colleague, Tycho Brahe - now a standard biography and even reprinted still. Dreyer was from 1874 to 1916 the leader of several major observatories in Ireland. Later in Denmark, he published Tycho Brahe's magnum opus, the Collected Works, "Opera Omnia", a total of 15 volumes. Contributing to this, quantities of rare material of - and about - Tycho Brahe was gathered by Dreyer who often had to acquire copies of the original papers from many of Europe's main libraries, in particular the Habsburg collections in Austria's National Library in Vienna, and in addition collected through purchase at international auctions. These works in Latin he had corrected for all original scribal errors and had annotated the texts.
          In Copenhagen, at this incomparable Royal Danish National Library, I have sat for weeks and examined a particular heritage, namely Dreyer's boxes containing these things, including the many leaflets and pamphlets from the 16-17 centuries, in all languages from all over Europe. I was impressed by all these old prints and lampoons showing admiration and tribute to the pioneer scientist Tycho Brahe regarding his proposed prediction in his book "De Nova Stella" from 1573 - of what later was described as the Thirty Years' War in 1618 -1648, and of a Nordic (Swedish) king's conquests of the identified vast areas in Central Europe.

          In my research project on the historical Moses it was important that in this unique library's department of The Judaica Collection, I was able directly to access the texts of many Rabbinical Writings instead of reading them as extracts or summaries. Concerning the Bible's texts connected to Moses, I was grateful for receiving assistance from several Hebrew experts when one person's opinion alone was hardly sufficient in cases of difficult translation problems.
 

The Royal Danish National Library, the wonderful reading room with its immensely abundant reference library - prior to the year 2000 with rebuilding and change of the contents. Much time I spent here with happiness - also grateful for the knowledge, experience, and contacts of many experts visiting this interdisciplinary hall, not least the gentleman sitting in the background, Professor Erik Iversen, Dr. in Egyptology, who at 'his' desk no. 47 used the library almost every day for fifty years. (courtesy: Royal Danish National Library)