AAL’S LABYRINTH HISTORY An Alternative Viewpoint…..contd. #45.

                                    THIRTEENTH CENTURY BCE (1299-1200)

Dionysius, Greek God of Wine [1966 Time Life]

1300 BCE         By this century, the hero Dionysius has reached divine status for the Greeks. 

Dionysian Maenad [1966 Time Life]

c1290 BCE      In Egypt, pharaoh RAMESSES II (1304-1237) and joint wives Nefertari and Isnofret are ruling the country. Ramesses II is the 13^th son of Sethos I, and thus known as the Ombite, for he is a follower of the ancient god Seth.  Ramesses worships 57 ancestors as indicated on the king list of the ‘Table of Sakkara’.  ‘Rameses the Great’ as this pharaoh is known, is a Master of one of the principal esoteric lodges of the day. 

Rameses II and his Queen Nefertari

 

                       Ramesses II engaged in major rebuilding at Ihnasya el-Medina, ancient Henen-nesut, (Greek Herakleopolis named after the hero Herakles). Such rebuilding included that at the temple of the ram headed god Harsaphes, anciently known as Herischef, ‘He who is on his Lake’. The earliest monuments of this area date from the 12^th Dynasty. indicating its long-term importance to the Egyptian religious cults. Rameses II built two other temples at Abu Simbel, the Great Temple to Ptah, and the smaller temple to the goddess Hathor and to his wife Nefertari. 

 

                       This great pharaoh was active in regaining many territories and power for Egypt and in this effort there is much communication with Asyrian and Hittite Empires. 

 

                       The annals of Rameses II specify that at this time a Semitic people were settled in the land of Goshen after leaving Canaan during a famine. The Bible says that this event occurred three centuries earlier; perhaps there were two famines, an earlier one as experienced by Joseph (1840 BCE) and now a second in the Ramesses period.

Engraving by Filippo Pistrucci [1816] 

[Jan Assmann 'Moses the Egyptian']

 

                       Around this time is an alternate date for Moses [previously logged at 1362 BCE]. Moses is said to be the cousin of Menephtah, a son of the Pharaoh Ramesses. As an Egyptian, Moses is known as Osarsiph [according to the writings of Greek historian Manetho]. Moses was brought up and educated in the Egyptian temples in dedication to Isis and Osiris to whom he will become a priest. Manetho himself is an Egyptian priest and will record a different story of Moses to that of the Hebrew version recorded in Exodus ii. Manetho says that Moses in being an Egyptian priest establishes the fact that there is a secret filiation between the Mosaic religion and Egyptian initiation.  Manetho/Africanus gives a time for Moses leaving Egypt as in the reign of Amos.  He subsequently left Egypt as a High Priest of On and took with him the sacred books of Thoth, in order to establish a new regime in a new country. But first he took refuge at the Midian temple of Sinai after ‘killing’ an Egyptian, and placed himself under the resident priest Jethro an Ethiopian. Moses’ five books called the ‘Pentateuch’ has a different interpretation when placed against the background of his training in the solar temple of Memphis. When he left Egypt, Moses took the Egyptian sacred literature with him, in an ark, replica of the Egyptian model and which is to be kept in the Temple Holy of Holies.