El Shaddai's (Seti's) Conquest

[Richard Stanley]

In the Sabbahs' Secrets of the Exodus they have equated the biblical Joshua, son of Nun, with the general Seti, who later became the pharaoh Seti I. This forms the THIRD SO..MOKING GUN IMHO linking the biblical Exodus to the so-called Amarna experience.

Here the number of names and attributes linking Joshua to Seti I is just ridiculous, and in my first reading of the book not all of this resonated, as with for instance the name of the god El Shaddai was underplayed by the Sabbahs. Previously in the OT series I have discussed the various names of gods that were later attributed to the Biblical ... God, as the so-called 70 names of him. In addition, the name of Nun is a direct reference to an iconic aspect of being a 'pharaoh', as they were said to have ultimate ascent from the primordial Sea of Nun. Another iconic aspect of many pharaohs was the dual 'Yod' or 'reed'.

Here we can centrally see in the Exodus story that Moses (and God) parted the Sea of Reeds to facilitate the passage of the 'Hebrews' on their way to the 'Wilderness' before being allowed to enter the Promised Land. Only now we can comprehend that the two Yods can represent a Janus like, two-faced aspect that is being alluded to. This metaphor can then be individually applied to each pharaoh that takes part in the project as well as being applied to those who played more on one side of the contrived Aten / Amun divide than the other. Furthermore, I shall also provide a hieroglyph of the Sea of Nun with the waters divided by two 'yods'.

From chapter 18, Joshua and Seti I, page 162:

In Chapter 33 of the Book of Exodus, we meet a young man who becomes one of the great warriors of the Bible. "And Adon-Ay [God] spoke with Moses face to face, as one man speaks with another. And Moses returned to the camp. But Joshua, son of Nun, his young aide, did not leave the inside of the tent" (Aramaic Bible, Exodus 33:11).

Joshua ben-Nun appears to be the character devised by the scribes to tell the story of the Egyptian pharaoh Seti I. The word "Nun" ties the pharaoh in with the Egyptian creation story.

In earlier chapters dealing with the Egyptian creation story, we encountered the word Nun. The Egyptian meaning of the word is found in the Pyramid Texts.1 It is the primordial ocean, the original place which gave birth to everything, and the cradle where each pharaoh was born: "Pharaoh was conceived in the primordial energy [Nun], before the existence of the heavens and the earth." Like the God of the Bible, Pharaoh existed before the creation of the universe.​

Above is a hieroglyph of "the waters" (sorry about the focus). Note that the 'waves' are parted by two yods, or reeds. In the Bible the parted waters of the Exodus were called the "yam suf" with 'yam' being the word for 'sea', derived from the Canaanite god of the Sea, Yam. 'Suf' meaning 'reed', and in the book, one can see how this hieroglyphic 'yod' became the corresponding character in the 'modern' Hebrew script, as did all the others derive from Egyptian phonetic glyphs.

If fact, each individual wavy line is an Egyptian 'N', and one might speculate that the very name Nun might be derived from the above, assuming the affinity between the 'Y' of the yod and the letter 'U'.

The book goes on to derive the name Shaddai from the cartouche of Seti I with the dual yod glyphs associated with the glyph for the god Seth (or Shad as an acceptable pronunciation). Then the Sabbahs equate biblical term "Yahu-Shua, son of Nin" with the Egyptian "The great God Shaday, beloved of Ptah and Nun.

Then another form of the cartouche is presented that allows a the derivation of AH-SH-YA MEN NUN, or Joshua men Nun, presumably MEN meaning 'son of', but I'm not sure of this.

In this regard the glyph for MEN is also given as "loved by Meri" above the Nun. Separate from the book, it is known that Jesus, is a type of Joshua, both being 'Yeshuas', and this was the source of considering the Jewish messiah to be a secular military hero, as was Joshua. The name Meri (Mery) is well known as the wife of Amun, and evokes the virgin wife of a god --- giving birth to ... Yeshua .. the pharaoh .. and Christ.

As such note the various Egyptian queens prepended with the name Meri/Mery. If they are having relations with their husband, a god, then she might be considered a virgin - in human terms.

Thus Mery, the virgin mother of Jesus / Yeshua, a god in his own right.

They go on to discuss that Joshua is allowed into the sacred Tabernacle, as was Moses and Aaron. They suggest here that Joshua was Moses son, as Seti I was the son of Ramessee I. What the Sabbahs did not realize to their benefit was that such a tabernacle as described in the Bible is the exact definition of a pharaonic portable shrine used for military campaigns. This even includes the security perimeter that the Bible calls a mishkan(?).

The Sabbahs then go on to discuss the military campaign of Joshua and how it matches that of Seti I. Joshua began his campaign upon the death of Moses, while Seti began his campaign upon the death of his father Ramesses I.

Not mentioned is that the Bible claims that the land of Canaan was then divided up amongst the 12 tribes, but this is not so as many of these 'tribes' were merely the pre-existing Canaanites and such as the odd tribe of Dan - related to the 'Greek' Mycenaeans - aka the Danoi. The Book of Leviticus tells that the Levites were assigned political control of the 48 largest cities irrespective of the twelve tribal regions. Odd the the different leaders of the respective tribes don't even control their own capitol city.

Thus is was not such a massive number of people being moved around, more like the Yahudites, the Benjamites, and the two half tribes of 'Joshua' from around Jerusalem to the south. The elites 'expelled' so-to-speak from Akhet-Aten. Thus the people most loyal to the pharaoh, under the Sabbah scenario are forming a better buffer perimeter for the Egyptians. This is exactly the 'buffer' role that the Jews have been placed in throughout the rest of Western history, as discussed by Israel Shahak and James Carroll.

Next is related that Seti had to confront a coalition of unhappy Canaanite kings, just as Joshua did. Then he must deal with such as the powerful Hittites as at Kadesh. Seti and Joshua set up stone memorials (stele), with Seti's being found in Beth-Shean in Israel.

There is no recorded war between the Egyptians and these otherwise rather powerful forces of Hebrews described in the Bible. That's because they were the forces of the Egyptians, the same stories being told from two perspectives.

Later on it will be in the time of Ramesses II, the son of Seti I, that the Sea Peoples come to the Levant and Egypt. This is associated with the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, the outcome of which leaves only the Egyptians standing as a power. Even Mycenae collapses after supposedly winning the Trojan War, and in which those lands will not be occupied for centuries till the rise of the Classical Greeks. Yet the the tribe of Dan survives in northern Israel (the men of Ra and El).

Remember from my just prior posts that it is Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, who has a uniquely documented mission to Mycenea, to visit the Danoi.

Lastly, the Sabbahs mention the silver trumpets which God order Moses to have made. These are used by Joshua's men to help bring down the walls of Jericho. In Tut's tomb were found four silver military trumpets.

 

[Marcilla Smith]

Forgive me for not being able to figure this out on my own already, but how could Ramesses I be Moses if Ramesses was the Amun priest who re-established the pantheon? Wouldn't Moses have been an Atenist?

 

[Richard Stanley]

Janus had a face that looked left, while his other face looked right.

 

[Richard Stanley]

OK, so here's another way to look at it:

The Egyptian baker says to the Egyptian candlestick maker: "Gee, why don't we ever see Moses and General Ramesses at the same time?"

The candlestick maker say to the baker: "Hmmm, that's a really good question."

 

[Richard Stanley]

The Hebrews were not allowed to hang pictures of Moses, Aaron, or Joshua on their walls. This also meant they could not have television.

 

[Richard Stanley]

Wait a minute, I just checked Wikipedia, and it says they could watch things like Ed Sullivan, but never the news, either in print or on TV.

 

[Jerry Russell]

The Egyptian baker says to the Egyptian candlestick maker: "Gee, why don't we ever see Moses and General Ramesses at the same time?"

The candlestick maker say to the baker: "Hmmm, that's a really good question."

Unfortunately for this proposal, the OT does have Moses and Pharaoh acting together in exactly the same scene, with their competing miracles. And the primitive level of technology cuts both ways: they couldn't do a composite scene with Final Cut Pro and just put it out on You-Tube. I'd score a point for Osman's theory here, or at least Ziggy's.

 

[Richard Stanley]

That's not what Marcilla asked about.

But in any case, you're funny Jerry. That scene is a joke. A real joke. Pharaoh's priests turn the Nile red. And then Moses (or was it Aaron?) turns the Nile red. Too bad it was already red. They forgot(?) to turn it back to non-red so that Moses (or was it Aaron?) could turn it red. Or are you saying that turning something from red to ... red is magic? I wonder what Penn and Teller will say about this?

And guess what? The Egyptian priests never turned the Nile red in the first place. This was just taking advantage of older stories of the river turning red from red algae blooms (that kind of magic). Why does everyone insist on such 'biblical' accuracy?

The Bible might have helped us out by naming the 'pharaoh', as they named Shishak and Necho in subsequent centuries. Maybe there was a reason why they didn't want to name pharaohs from this period.

OK, so let's review the dialogue. Moses and "General Ramesses" are not ever seen together, not Moses and Pharaoh - who are two different people. General Ramesses becomes a pharaoh years later. Likely the pharaoh under this scenario is Tut (controlled by Ay).

And in any case, like I said, the whole business never happened in the first place. It's just a fictional gloss to explain why the Hebrew's God was more powerful than Pharaoh and his god(s).

 

[Jerry Russell]

Osman thinks it really happened. It's a lot easier to make movies about scenes that happened, as opposed to fictional glosses that never happened. And besides, it's a lot easier to wave your rod and say the sea is red, if it's already red.

Just like anybody who wants to tell the sun what to do, had better give orders to make it rise in the morning and set at night. This is something you also learn if you're married.

 

[Richard Stanley]

Osman thinks it really happened. It's a lot easier to make movies about scenes that happened, as opposed to fictional glosses that never happened. And besides, it's a lot easier to wave your rod and say the sea is red, if it's already red.

Approaching this episode as a reality means that the entire Exodus and foundatoin of Israel was either an organic or divine (as the Bible depicts) event. As such I say that Mr. Machiavelli miraculously played his hand first.

Just like anybody who wants to tell the sun what to do, had better give orders to make it rise in the morning and set at night. This is something you also learn if you're married.

I guess that's why I never had occasion to tell the sun what to do. How many times have you had to do this?

 

[Jerry Russell]

Approaching this episode as a reality means that the entire Exodus and foundatoin of Israel was either an organic or divine (as the Bible depicts) event. As such I say that Mr. Machiavelli miraculously played his hand first.

I'm not claiming that I know what really happened, or that Osman did for that matter. I'm just asking, what makes a better movie. If Machiavelli needs to make an appearance, then Ramses and Akhenaten could meet beforehand and plan out the whole thing. Or maybe Ramses and Seti realize afterwards, that it really works to their benefit to have an alliance with Akhenaten.

How many times have you had to do this?

You question the great and powerful wizard?

 

[Richard Stanley]

I'm not claiming that I know what really happened, or that Osman did for that matter. I'm just asking, what makes a better movie. If Machiavelli needs to make an appearance, then Ramses and Akhenaten could meet beforehand and plan out the whole thing. Or maybe Ramses and Seti realize afterwards, that it really works to their benefit to have an alliance with Akhenaten.

The context of this thread is historical only Jerry. That is, unless you use the designated Hollywood font and color.

For example:

I think I'm going to have to start the spreadsheet comparison of the different scenarios. Then maybe a best path for a movie can be plotted. Of course, one way to do it is to use the Bibles own method, by not naming any pharaohs at all. We can have little clouds floating over each one holding their generic ID, e.g. Egyptian #3, etc..

You question the great and powerful wizard?

OK

 

[Jerry Russell]

The context of this thread is historical only Jerry.

Getting back to history, then -- what evidence do we really have about when any of the Mosaic laws, or Hebrew monotheism, actually started to be implemented in Canaan? Aside from possibly the prohibition on pork-eating, I was under the impression that the Canaanites were polytheistic idol-worshippers right up until the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, and also that there was no evidence of any incursion of Hyksos people, much less Egyptians. Although Seti conquered the area, Egyptologists think he was content to extract tribute, and left behind no social control mechanism.

So would it be correct to say that all of this material about Akhenaten and/or Seti establishing a monotheistic regime in Canaan, with Egyptian culture and inverted Egyptian legal system, is purely speculation? (That is, aside from any resemblances between Seti and biblical Joshua, and so forth)? Could we go so far as to say the evidence is stacked against it? Are we conjuring something up to go into a vacuum of historical knowledge? Or, am I missing something?

 

[Richard Stanley]

Getting back to history, then -- what evidence do we really have about when any of the Mosaic laws, or Hebrew monotheism, actually started to be implemented in Canaan? Aside from possibly the prohibition on pork-eating, I was under the impression that the Canaanites were polytheistic idol-worshippers right up until the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, and also that there was no evidence of any incursion of Hyksos people, much less Egyptians. Although Seti conquered the area, Egyptologists think he was content to extract tribute, and left behind no social control mechanism.

As far as I know there is no hard evidence of this juncture in time. In fact, the best 'evidence' is that the OT spends so much effort on trying to convince us that the 'Hebrews' and even the Levites of the Exodus period were constant backsliders to paganism. When in fact many of these 'Hebrews' were just in situ Canaanites and similar needing to be converted in the first place.

So would it be correct to say that all of this material about Akhenaten and/or Seti establishing a monotheistic regime in Canaan, with Egyptian culture and inverted Egyptian legal system, is purely speculation? (That is, aside from any resemblances between Seti and biblical Joshua, and so forth)? Could we go so far as to say the evidence is stacked against it? Are we conjuring something up to go into a vacuum of historical knowledge? Or, am I missing something?

I would have to say that if this evidence was presented in a court of law (to an unbiased jury), that the plaintiff or the prosecutor would win hands down.

There is already a vacuum of historical and archaeological knowledge about such as (Ra-) Moses. One is then left with the irrational conventional notion of the so-called rationalists [sic] that a perfect storm of unlikely circumstances led the Israelites (and thus Jesus) to develop into the core of Western Civilization.

 

[Marcilla Smith]

If Joshua is the most martial of the Israelite figures, maybe that is the best anchor point. Even if other characters have proven more interesting narratively (Moses), a military campaign will be easier to pinpoint archaeologically than an ideological shift within a culture.

If I may ask, what makes Seti a better candidate for Joshua than, say, Ramses II?

I think your patience with me may finally be paying off, as I think I am starting to get what you mean with the talk of "ISIS = Exodus," "terrorism = distraction," "false dialectic cynicism," etc. Please allow me to try putting this in different words and see if I am following.

Amenhotep IV comes into office like some drawling, peanut-farming southern governor-turned president. Soon enough, he gets off script, changes his name to Akhenaten, starts reading a bunch of Jack Kerouac, rearranges worship life, and experiments with zero-based budgeting.

Meanwhile, Ay (how's my chronology holding up?) is off to the side watching this like some son of a New England industrialist serving as CIA DIrector. But more about him, later.

Soon enough, Akhenaten is sent to go build some Heavenly Habitats for Humanity. His successor, Tutankhaten is all smiles for the camera and ready to welcome back the Holy departed like so many hostages held by a nation-state destabilized by his predecessors, but first he has to change his name to Tutankhamun faster than a Hollywood Democrat can pin on a "Goldwater in '64" button.

Now maybe because of his age, or maybe because someone had photos that would compromise the new pharaoh's claim that he didn't dye his hair, but for whatever reason Ay's neo-conservativism is a consistent thread running through the policies of the new administration. So Aten is out like garish solar panels on the White House roof, and the Amunist pantheon is in like listening to Men at Work on your Walkman while sitting at an Erhard Seminars Training in your Members Only jacket. "It's morning again in the Nile Valley..."

A few years down the line and we'll see Ay put his hands directly on the wheel, followed at some point by his (adoptive) son, like a family who owe their fortune and allegiance to a patriarch who "held the assets" of Nazi industrialists.

Now don't misunderstand. This isn't to say that the nominal Amunists were so partisan. Their true allegiance is to Ra, and by Ra, I mean ra(w) power like the power of the sun. "Power [that] grows out of the barrel of a gun shaft of a spear." But maintaining a certain level of Amunist/Atenist tension is good for business. Just ask Coke and Pepsi, Republicans and Democrats, the Christians of the right wing and the Islamists of the... well, the other right wing.

Wait a sec! They're fighting for two sides of the same coin! Well that's odd, isn't it? I mean, can you imagine if the same interests were invested in both Coke and Pepsi or Democrats and Republicans. That just starts to sound like so much bread and circuses to keep people from disturbing Nero from his fiddling until it's time for them to rebuild Rome... again.

So Moses Smith and his merry band of polymonogamists want to cross Old Man River and head out west east to the wilderness. Great news for the status quo! Now the troublemakers are out of the royal hairpieces, there's some place to tell any straggling evangelizers "where they can go," and the pilgrims serve as an ultra-low cost tripwire slash buffer between "the truly civilized" and "those filthy savages."

How close is that?

 

[Richard Stanley]

Grasshopper is fleet of feet.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Obviously there couldn't be the slightest bit of projection of our modern conspiracy theory onto the ancient hieroglyphs. They're nothing at all like Rorschach blots.

As the attorney for the defense, I'd like to suggest that for all we know, Akhenaten might have fled to Persia after he was so rudely deposed, rather than Sinai or Ethiopia. Where else did the Persians get the idea for Zoroaster? Your suggestions that Seti was a double-dealing monotheistic poseur are nothing but scandal-mongering. Seti was a polytheistic Satanist to the core, otherwise why would he have called himself S(a)ti? All of the monotheistic propaganda you're talking about, wasn't even conceived of for Canaan until the neo-Assyrians aka Achemenids conquered Palestine and drove out the Egyptians.

 

[Richard Stanley]

If Akhenaten went to Persian, Media, or Mittani (if Media and Mittani weren't one and the same), works even better for the plaintiff's case.

As we litigated in previous trial, Satan is an inherent and necessary construct of those theological systems. If Satan is not present, then who needs to be saved from him? As such, any system of governance that claims to mirror or associate itself with such theology likely must have such dark side players, especially if it has a geopolitical agenda to advance.

All of the monotheistic propaganda you're talking about, wasn't even conceived of for Canaan until the neo-Assyrians aka Achemenids conquered Palestine and drove out the Egyptians.

As Putin likes to say: "Sto what?"

Finalized propaganda is something that can be put together after the fact. This cobbled together from historical factoids of Egyptian black ops dudes running around claiming they are Hebrews and such.

 

[Jerry Russell]

"Sto what" you say? You never tell the same story twice! Which is it: was Seti a two-faced Janus lifetime actor who was trying to hoodwink the Hebrews into thinking he had magic trumpets from Yahweh? Or was he nothing more or less than a proud upstanding Egyptian Sith Lord from the Dark Side? If the latter, I rest my case, my client is innocent. Or at least, as innocent as any Satanist war criminal / mass murderer could be.

How do you even know that those Egyptian black op dudes were pretending to be Hebrews? Maybe they just stayed in their tabernacles and collected burnt offerings and gold for Amun, and everybody knew Pharaoh's army was behind it. Or maybe the Levites did make up this alibi, but not until Cyrus came to round them up. "No Egyptians here, nobody but us Hebrews..."

If it all boils down to "maybe this, maybe that" then Marcilla can make her movie however she likes. But when we put our historian hat on, don't we need to be more circumspect about jumping to conclusions, or even insinuating things that might not be true? Or if we're going to insinuate, at least we can insinuate in all directions, while being clear about how speculative these various possibilities are?

 

[Richard Stanley]

"Sto what" you say? You never tell the same story twice! Which is it: was Seti a two-faced Janus lifetime actor who was trying to hoodwink the Hebrews into thinking he had magic trumpets from Yahweh? Or was he nothing more or less than a proud upstanding Egyptian Sith Lord from the Dark Side? If the latter, I rest my case, my client is innocent. Or at least, as innocent as any Satanist war criminal / mass murderer could be.

You have to tell the story twice, and different each time, in fact inverted.

How do you even know that those Egyptian black op dudes were pretending to be Hebrews? Maybe they just stayed in their tabernacles and collected burnt offerings and gold for Amun, and everybody knew Pharaoh's army was behind it. Or maybe the Levites did make up this alibi, but not until Cyrus came to round them up. "No Egyptians here, nobody but us Hebrews..."

Only a select few were allowed in THE tabernacle. Violators who wanted to gnow the real story, the ingredients to the magic sauce, would indeed be told, and then they had to die. Interestingly the Sabbahs laid out the ancient code for one of lesser rank not looking at someone of higher rank, unless spoken to. So likely many commoners had no idea what these generals (pre-pharaohs) really looked like. Ironically, the likes of Akhenaten would have been more known amongst the true exiles of his court, as he was know to like to publicly strut his stuff in his golden chariot.

As most of the alternate accounts have it there was indeed a waiting period, known from the Bible as the idiomatic '40 years' of wandering in the Wilderness. The reason this would be for is to have the Promised Land pacified and 'cleansed' sufficiently such that the exiles from Amarna could then be grafted into their new seats of authority in the various cities of Old Canaan, just as the Book of Leviticus states.

As such, the forces of the Egyptians variously under Horemheb, Ramesses, and Seti may indeed have not been black ops in the sense we think of them today. But yet, if there is a dual role playing going on, then from one perspective say the Amunist at home on the Nile, the troops are performing one function, while from the opposite perspective in Canaan and Moab, they are doing something else. Whatever the people at the time, on either side, are being told, hundreds of years later, when the OT gets fully redacted the troops of Seti become known as the Hebrews of Joshua. This is the magic of the Logos Jerry, the Word of The Man.

If it all boils down to "maybe this, maybe that" then Marcilla can make her movie however she likes. But when we put our historian hat on, don't we need to be more circumspect about jumping to conclusions, or even insinuating things that might not be true? Or if we're going to insinuate, at least we can insinuate in all directions, while being clear about how speculative these various possibilities are?

We should just stop all this then, including the same speculations with CM.

I am discussing my provisional interpretation of the Sabbah brother's Exodus interpretation, which I feel is the best available to date.

Perhaps we need to use a color code to indicate 'Provisional' from 'Definitive and Unassailable' and such?