Moses and the Egyptian Priesthood
"The House of Life was a building, or perhaps a small group of buildings, where the library of the temple was kept and where the custodians of the knowledge of the temple studied. Here the layman would come it he had a problem and needed a magic spell or charm. The priests could interpret dreams, supply incantations to make someone fall in live, cure an illness, dispense magic amulets, or counteract malevolent influences. To maintain their powers, the priests kept their books away from the few laymen who could read. Indeed secrecy was an important part of their business. In the Book of the Dead prepared for the priest Nebseni, one of his titles is given as 'presiding over the secrets of the temple'."
"Their treasure papyri were kept in a secluded section of the House of Life, often in niches dug into the walls of the temple. There was an important House of Life at Edfu, a great temple dedicated to Horus. Edfu is the best preserved temple in all of Egypt, as it was covered in sand until recent times. On one of the walls of the temple is engraved a list of the sacred books kept in the House of Life. Along with the books on rules of the temple, inventories of the temple holdings, and religious calendars, there were numerous books on magic. These give us an idea of the powers supposedly possessed by priest-magicians of ancient Egypt:
The Book of Appeasing Sekhmet
The Book of Magical Protection of the King in His Palace
Spell for Warding Off the Evil Eye
The Book of Repelling Crocodiles
The Book of Knowledge of the Secrets of the Laboratory
The Book of Knowing the Secret Forms of the God."
"Eventually, the priesthood became a tremendous bureaucracy numbering thousands of men. There were hundreds of temples dedicated to the various gods, and each temple was somewhat autonomous, having its own hierarchy and division of labors. However, all temples had similar offices with extreme specialization of services.
"Perhaps one of the most important functions of the priests was caring for the cult statues of the gods, or 'oracles'. Only a select few of the priests were permitted to enter each temple's holy of holies and care for the oracle. This involved presenting food before the god several times a day, clothing him in the morning, sealing the chamber in the evening, and so forth. These priests were called the stolists by the Greeks, because they were in charge of the clothing of the god."
- Bob Brier, Ancient Egyptian Magic
In the New Kingdom of Egypt, "the service performed about the image [of the god] takes place in private. In theory at least, it is the privilege of the priest of the highest rank. It takes place at that point in the temple furthest removed from the entrance and the court, in a chamber where there is no room for the general public, in pitch darkness. For the structure of the temple, including the sanctuary, was completely roofed over; light penetrated the ante-room only sparingly through apertures in the ceiling and walls. The Egyptian gods would have shared Yahweh's wish 'that he would dwell in thick darkness' (I Kings 8:12). Consequently it is said of the divine image that it is 'less accessible than that which is in heaven, more secret than the affairs of the nether world, more (hidden) than the inhabitants of the primeval ocean'....We are told, although only briefly: God, the Distant One, is made present in the image by he daily service. Therefore he is really present in the temple, which is also visualized as an image of the world, combining heaven and earth; it is in fact a representation of the world, combining heaven and earth. In particular the shrine of the deity is simply called 'heaven', or with an eye to its doors 'the doors of heaven'."
- Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion
"The dwelling of god - its abomination is clamor. Pray thou with a loving heart, all the words of which are hidden, and he will do what thou needest, he will hear what thou sayest, and he will accept thy offering..."
- Ani II 2f (supplement to Hymn of Thoth)
"At the entrance to the sanctuary in the Horus temple at Edfu we find, in varying phraseology, an inscription to the effect that the god, as a winged sun-disk, takes a delight in his temple and his images".
- Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion
He "comes daily from Naunet [the underworld] to see his image at his great seat. He descends to his image and joins his falcon idols'."
- Inscription at Edfu
"Most frequently of Amun, these statues were kept in shrines of stone and were carried about in shrines made of guilded wood, much like the sacred barks sailed on the Nile by the pharaoh during festivals. These portable shrines rested on two long wooden poles, so that they could be carried about on the shoulders of the priests during religious ceremonies.
"According to various ancient texts oracles could nod their heads and even talk. Since no talking oracle statue has ever been found, we are not certain how this was done. Perhaps the priests surreptitiously pulled strings to make the head nod or, divinely inspired, spoke for the god."
- Bob Brier, Ancient Egyptian Magic
"Prince Khaemwaset, son of Ramses II, was reputed to be a great magician as well as being the first Egyptologist. A number of folktales were written about his magical powers, but he was merely one of many attributed with these gifts. Other famous magicians included , the vizier and architect of King Djoser (2630 BC), and Djedi who, in the tale of 'Cheops and the Magicians', entertained the king by performing feats of magic and predicting future events."
- Great Events of Bible Times
(2) "First Prophet of the God"
Moses "simply means 'born of'. The name normally required another name prefixed to it, such as Thothmoses (born of Thoth), Rameses (born of Ra) or Amenmosis (born of Amen) Whilst the 'moses' element is spelt slightly differently when rendered in English, they all mean the same thing and it seems very likely to us that either Moses himself or some later scribe dropped the name of an Egyptian god from the front of his name."
The birth narrative of Sargon I, who ruled over Babylon and Sumer hundred of years before Moses states his mother "set me in a basket of rushes; with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river, which rose not over me."
"...The birth story is almost certainly a fiction created in the sixth century BC echoing, for the birth of the Jewish nation, the ancient theme of creation emerging from the waters."
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
"And Moses became learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds."
- Acts 7:22
"Moses was a skilled performer of magical rituals and was deeply learned in the knowledge of the accompanying spells, incantations, and magical formulas of every description...[Moreover] the miracles which he wrought...suggest that he was not only a priest, but a magician of the highest order and perhaps even a Ker Heb [Egyptian High Priest]."
- Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt
"At the top of the hierarchy of priests was the high-priest, the sem priest, or 'First Prophet of the God'. He would have been an extrmely learned man, an elder of the temple, a man with considerable administrative ability and political sense. He would have been in charge of seeing that the temple and all its hodings ran smoothly, and officiating at the most important ceremonies. While normally such a man would have risen to his position through the ranks, it was the pharaoh's perogative to place whomever he wanted in that office.
- Bob Brier, Ancient Egyptian Magic
"Moses, a son of the tribe of Levi, educated in Egypt and initiated at Heliopolis, became a High Priest of the Brotherhood under the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep [Akhnaton]. He was elected by the Hebrews as their chief and he adapted to the ideas of his people the science and philosophy which he had obtained in the Egyptian mysteries; proofs of this are to be found in the symbols, in the Initiations, and in his precepts and commandments....The dogma of an 'only god' which he taught was the Egyptian Brotherhood interpretation and teaching of the Pharaoh who established the first monotheistic religion known to man."
- Egyptian High Priest Manetho (3rd Century BC)
"If Moses was a High Priest of the Brotherhood under Akhnaton, as Manetho states, but did not lead the exodus until the reign of Rameses II, as many historians believe, then Moses must have been an extremely old man at the time of the exodus. (Rameses II did not rule until almost one hundred years after Akhnaton.) The Bible, in Deuteronomy 34:7 states that Moses was 120 years old when he died."
- William Bramley, The Gods of Eden
(3) Concealed Mysteries
"...The teaching of Akhanjati (Akhnaton, 1361- c. 1340 BC) was abandoned in essence (belief in Jati [erroneously known as 'Aton' ]) immediately after the king's death, whereupon the gods who had been expelled were permitted to return; nevertheless the idea that there was a basic unity in plurality received a powerful impetus and was to have tremendous historical consequences. The existence after the end of the Amarna period of a trinity comprising Amon, Re and Ptah, a trinity in which there is no 'second' figure, is hardly accidental."
"...Behind the countless deities in the pantheon there was a growing awareness of the existence of a single God. Ordinary believers offered their prayers to one God; the theologians provided this God, whichever one it might be, with supreme and extensive power; they gave him an appropriate identity, choosing from the wealth of forms available; and they forged a dialectical unity between the one god and the many gods in the pantheon."
"...The intimate link that existed between temple and ritual on one hand and personal piety on the other...was...based on a single belief in a living God at work everywhere in the world."
- Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion
"The Egyptians concealed mysteries that were above the capacity of the common herd under the veil of religious rites and hieroglyphic symbols."
"It was the most ancient opinion that the planets revolved about the sun, that the earth, as one of the planet, described an annual course about the sun, while by a diurnal motion it turned on its axis, and that the sun remained at rest."
- Sir Isaac Newton
"...Moses...was frequently compared to Thoth (indeed, in the second century BC an entire work was filled with such comparisons by the Judaeo-Greek philosopher Artapanus, who credited the prophet with a range of remarkable and clearly 'scientific' inventions)."
Sir Isaac Newton believed that "Moses understood that matter consisted of atoms, and that these atoms were hard, solid and immutable: 'gravity accrued to both atoms and to the bodies they composed; gravity was proportional to the quantity of matter in every body'."
- Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal
"Moses, that ancient Theologue, describing and expressing ye most wonderful Architecture of this great world, tells us that ye spirit of God moved upon ye waters which was an indigested chaos, or mass created before by God."
- Sir Isaac Newton
Newton's favorite biblical passage was:
"And I will give the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by they name, am the God of Israel."
- Isaiah 45:3
After killing an Egyptian hitting a Habiru, Moses "went on the run, heading east into the Sinai where he was taken in by the Midianites (also called Kenites) and where he married the king's daughter, Zipporah.
"It was here that Moses was introduced to the god of the Midianite tribes, a god of storms and of war whose symbol was a crucifix-like motif worn on their foreheads; it later became known as the 'Yahweh Mark'. This god, who lived in the mountains, provided the inspiration and central theme for the God of the Jews following Moses's conversations with Him on Mount Horeb."
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
For the story of Moses' deliverance of the Israelites to the Promised Land, see The Exodus, The Ark of the Covenant and associated links.
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