So important was this story to the people of Israel that it occupies almost a third of the Book of Genesis. Now, we ask ourselves, was Joseph remembered in the native traditions of Egypt?
Before attempting to answer that question, we must remember that Joseph, as portrayed in the Genesis account, was an extraordinary figure. We are led to believe that he singly-handedly changed the course of Egyptian history. Genesis is specific in describing him as the greatest seer who ever lived, and it is strongly hinted that it was the Egyptians themselves who proclaimed him this. In our search for Joseph then we should not be looking amongst minor figures among obscure dynasties. We should be searching amongst the great characters of Egypt’s past.
It so happens that around two centuries or so after the time of Menes there lived in Egypt the greatest wise man the country ever knew. This was Imhotep, the semi-divine seer and vizier of King Djoser. A rock-cut inscription at Gebelein in Upper Egypt described how, early in the reign of Djoser, the country found itself in the midst of a most terrible crisis. A great famine, which had endured for seven years, devastated the land. The pharaoh bewails his lot:
I was in distress on the Great Throne, and those who are in the palace were in heart’s affliction for a very great evil, since the Nile had not come in my time for seven years. Grain was scant, fruits were dried up, and everything which they eat was short. (Trans. John A. Wilson in Pritchard (ed.) Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton, 1950))
In his distress, the king asks Imhotep, described as the “Chief Lector Priest,” for advice. He wishes to know the secrets of the river: “What is the birthplace of the Nile? Who is … the god there? Who is the god?” At this, Imhotep departs and returns with a strange tale about the island of Elephantine in the upper Nile:
There is a city in the midst of the waters [from which] the Nile rises, anmed Elephantine. It is the Beginning of the Beginning, the Beginning Nome, [facing] toward Wawat. It is the joining of the land, the primeval hillock of earth, the throne of Re, when he reckons to cast life beside everybody. (Ibid.)
Elephantine, says the wise priest, is the home of the ram-headed Khnum, and it is he who sends the life-giving waters of the Nile thence. He goes on to recite Khnum’s divine powers, and mentions some of the other gods of the region. Pharaoh then performs a number of services to Khnum and the other divinities as an act of repentance. Next, we hear how Khnum appears to the king in a dream:
As I slept in life and satisfaction, I discovered the god standing over against me. I propitiated him with praise; I prayed to him in his presence. He revealed himself to me, his face being fresh. His words were:
“I am Khnum, thy fashioner … I know the Nile. When he is introduced into the fields, his introduction gives life to every nostril, like the introduction [of life] into the fields … the Nile will pour forth for thee, without a year of cessation or laxness for any land. Plants will grow, bowing under the fruit. Renenut will be at the head of everything. … Dependants will fulfil the purpose of their hearts, as well as the master. The starvation year will have gone, and [people’s] borrowing from their granaries will have departed. Egypt will come into the fields, the banks will sparkle … and contentment will be in their hearts more than that which was formerly.” (Ibid.)
On awakening, the pharaoh ordered that a large tract of land stretching from Elephantine to Tacompso should be dedicated to Khnum, and that a temple should be erected on the island in his honour. In addition, various other pious decrees were enacted in gratitude to the god.
Ever since the discovery and translation of this text, scholars have been aware of its striking resemblance to the story of Joseph. (See eg. H. K. Brugsch, Die biblischen sieben Jahre der Hungersnoth (Leipzig, 1891)) All the elements in the Genesis story are there, though in a different order. In Joseph’s tale the pharaoh’s dream comes first, although both legends agree that the dream’s interpretation provided the key to alleviating the famine. Again, the Egyptian story has the wise seer Imhotep assist the king in dealing with the famine, and it is obvious that Imhotep’s role closely resembles that of Joseph. Yet in spite of all this, and in spite of the fact that scholars repeatedly drew attention to the two accounts, Imhotep was never identified with Joseph because to do so would have overturned the whole of Egyptian chronology, which by then was believed to be firmly established. Historians therefore had to content themselves with vague “connections” between the two legends. Some argued that the story of Joseph had influenced the Egyptian tale, whilst others argued that the Genesis account was influenced by the Egyptian story.
Such ideas hold good only if the conventional chronology is correct. However, as I have shown in great detail in my Ages in Alignment series, this is by no means the case, and the history of Egypt – at this early stage – needs to be brought forward by a full thousand years in order to synchronize with biblical history. As soon as we align Abraham and the early Hebrew migration from Mesopotamia with the establishment of the First Egyptian Dynasty, then we find that all the major events of Egyptian history begin – for the first time – to match the major events of Israel’s history.
The next “match,” and the third in the sequence, comes just a few generations after the lifetime of Imhotep. Here we find, at the end of the Third Dynasty, a little-known pharaoh named Huni, or Ka-nefer-re, presiding over an apparent collapse of Egyptian society and disintegration of royal authority. The monuments and tombs of the Third Dynasty are wrecked either by the action of nature or man, and the sovereignty of the kingdom passes to a new dynasty. The first pharaoh of the new line, Sneferu, apparently a commoner, has to fight invaders on the borders of Egypt, and is long remembered as a saviour of the country.
I intend to go into Sneferu’s life and times in detail in a future article, but suffice for the present to note that, with him, the great age of pyramid-building commences, and that the pyramids of his time are clearly related to the cult of the sun-god Atum (god of the setting sun), whose “death” and apparent rebirth are mentioned repeatedly in the Pyramid Texts. These texts, I shall show, deal in detail with the cosmic events described in the Book of Exodus, when the sun was darkened and apparently “killed” for a period of several days.