Free Moses and Akhenaten by Ahmed Osman Page B

semantic confusion, cited by Professor Cassuto, with the source again the Book of Exodus: ‘And Moses took his wife and sons, and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt …’ (Exodus, 4:20). Professor Cassuto remarks: ‘The plural – sons – is somewhat difficult, for till now only one son (Gershom) had been mentioned (Exodus, 2:22), and below, in Exodus, 4:25, we find “her son”, in the singular, as though Moses and Zipporah had just one son. Possibly the ancient spelling here was b n h, which could be read as either singular or plural, and the singular was actually intended; when, however, the scribes introduced the present spelling they wrote ba na w [his sons] (the Septuagint [the Greek version of the Old Testament], too, has the plural) because they thought the two sons spoken of (later) in Exodus, 18:3–4 were already born.’ 5
    The royal mother of Moses was therefore the Queen of Egypt. But which queen? As we saw earlier ( Chapter Two ), Manetho, the third century BC historian, identified the reign of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye – while son of Habu was still alive, some time before the king’s Year 34 – as the right time for the religious rebellion that led to the persecution of Akhenaten’s followers, and Redford has made the point that it is not built simply on popular tales and traditions of Manetho’s time, but on old traditions, passed on orally at first, then set down in writing, that he found in his temple library.
    If we compare in greater detail the Koran account (Sura XX:38–40 and Sura XXVIII:7–15) with the biblical account (Exodus, 2:1–12) of Moses’ birth and eventual flight after the slaying incident, we find the stories are fundamentally the same, yet also contain some interesting differences:

    The significant differences in these accounts are:
    â€¢ The Koran story does not give us the names of Moses’ parents;
    â€¢ While the biblical story tells us that the rush basket was left by the river, the Koran refers to ‘the water’, which could be a lake joined to the river;
    â€¢ While Pharaoh’s daughter (or wife, as we saw before) is said by the Bible to have been the child’s rescuer, it was ‘Pharaoh’s people’ according to the Koran;
    â€¢ The biblical version says that Moses’ sister watches events while the child is in its basket, hidden in the reeds outside Pharaoh’s palace, but this is not the case in the Koran; there it is only after the child was in the possession of ‘Pharaoh’s people’ that his sister is asked by the mother, who must have been in the vicinity at the time, to follow after him, which she does secretly, indicating that this incident must have taken place in the palace itself;
    â€¢ Pharaoh’s wife, who, according to the Koran, had nothing to do with the child until he had fallen into the hands of ‘Pharaoh’s people’, then intervened to prevent them – probably the guards – from killing him;
    â€¢ Once the child was in the custody of ‘Pharaoh’s people’, we are told in the Koran that the child’s mother became worried about what might happen to him. Why would she be worried unless she was in a position to know what was going on inside the palace?
    â€¢ The mother, according to the Koran, was about to reveal her hidden fears for the safety of the child. This is the strongest indication so far that the child’s mother and Pharaoh’s wife were one and the same person. After her intervention to prevent him from being killed, he was taken away from her. She then became so worried that she was about to reveal that she was the mother of the baby, but instead she sent the sister to find out what was happening inside the palace;
    â€¢ Rather than killing the child, Moses’ sister, according to the Koran, succeeded in persuading ‘Pharaoh’s people’ to