Free The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim by Scott Alan Roberts Page A

with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.”
     
    (Exodus 1:8-14)
    In accordance with the dateline we hinge on the dating of Solomon’s Temple, Moses was born in 1526 BCE , during the first year of the reign of Thutmoses I, the son of Hebrew slaves Amram and Jocabel. Thutmoses I ruled Egypt from 1526 to 1513 BCE , and it was during his reign, the Bible tells us, that the Pharaoh of Egypt issued a decree that all Hebrew male children below the age of 2 years be slain and cast into the Nile River.
     
“15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 ‘When you are helpingthe Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.’ 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, ‘Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?’ 19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, ‘Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.’ 20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. 22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: ‘Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.’”
     
    (Exodus 1:15-22)
    Moses’ mother hid her infant son as long as she could, and when he was 3 months old, in a plot to spare him from the Pharaoh’s decree, she placed him in a pitch-smeared basket woven from papyrus and set him adrift on the Nile River. Although this is not implicit in the text, it can be subjectively surmised that this was no arbitrary act of blind hope on her part. When she released him to the currents of the Nile, she ordered her daughter Miriam, Moses’ older sister, to follow along in the bulrushes along the shoreline to assure that no harm came to the child and that the basket reached the destination she had hoped: the Nile backwater pools of the palace, where the Pharaoh’s household came to bathe.
     
    The idea of a “savior in a basket, floating down the river” was not exclusive to the story of Moses.
     
Sargon the Great
     
    In an Akkadian clay cuneiform tablet purporting to be the biography of Sargon the Great of Akkad, around 2400 BCE , legend states that his mother was a temple priestess. Giving birth to him in secret and setting him in a basket to float, she abandoned him to the Euphratesriver. Akki, a gardener, rescued him from the river and raised him. After working as a gardener for Akki, Sargon rose to the position of cup-bearer to Ur-Zababa, the king of Kish, and from there went on to rise in power, sacking Uruk and establishing himself as the emperor of Sumar in place of Lugalzagesi, king of Uruk.
     
Osiris
     
    Osiris, around 2500 BCE , the sacrificial savior god of Egypt, was murdered, after which his decapitated crowned head was placed in a papyrus basket and floated down the Nile.
     
Romulus and Remus
     
    Romulus and Remus, according to Plutarch, were twins descended from Prince Aeneas, a fugitive from the legendary city of Troy after its destruction by the Achaeans. Their maternal grandfather was his descendant
Numitor
, who inherited the kingship of Alba Longa. Numitor’s brother
Amulius
inherited its treasury, including the gold brought by Aeneas from Troy. Amulius used his control of the treasury to dethrone Numitor, but feared that Numitor’s daughter, Rhea Silvia, would