Tuesday 13 January 2009

Memphis, Merneptah and Ramesses And the Winged Disk of Judah

The title of my first book is Memphis, Merneptah and Ramesses And the Winged Disk of Judah. The book is an analysis of William Flinders Petrie's excavation reports of his archaeological diggings at Memphis Egypt between 1908 and 1914.  For a free copy, please download from the following URL/address: 


or email me at ttdonaldstewart@hotmail.com.  The size is 47.8 MB.  You may get best results by using your browser facility "Save Target as File" because of thr size and complexity of this document.  I had been working on my book about Queen Hatshepsut-Sheba. If we can confirm this woman who ruled Egypt and Ethiopia was the same "Queen of Ophir" (Africa) who came to see Solomon in circa 950 BC, we will effectively dismantle the whole chronology currently used by Egyptologists to explain ancient Egypt's 'political' history. Also affected will be those of the many countries that dealt with Egypt in the Biblical Period. The stakes are high.

However, I stumbled across Petrie's excavation reports and realised he had actually found "Pithom and Ramesses" (Exodus 1:11). The conclusion I came to after studying them was that:
  • Pithom and Ramesses were two capital cities of ancient Egypt on the same site in two different eras (1500 and 600 BC), not two cities in the same era (1500 or 1300 BC) in two different sites.
As my study of these reports progressed, I also realised that Dr Velikovsky's apparently outrageous suggestion that the 19th and 26th dynasties were the same was precisely the problem affecting Professor Petrie's attempts at making sense of the stratigraphy at Memphis. He kept finding Ramesses II and Merneptah (19th dynasty, circa 1250-1200 BC) in the same level that Apries-Hophra (26th dynasty, circa 650-580) was supposed to occupy. Actually, instead of finding material linked to Apries-Hophra much more abundant than Merneptah's era, Petrie found things the other way around. I realised Merneptah's full name or Merneptah Baenre Meriamun Hotephir-maat provides the basis for the Hebrew and Greek "Hophra-Apries". Also, "hotephir-maat" is better written "Ho'ephir-maat". The 't' simply instructs the reader to emphasise both vowels. Of course, many readers will read "hotephir-maat".

These simple observations enabled me to see where ancient and modern historians went wrong. Thinking 'Pithom and Ramesses' (or "Raamses") of Exodus 1:11 indicated a king called "Ramesses" was contemporary with Moses, Egyptologists and historians before them placed Ramesses II and his son Merneptah in the 13th century BC after initially placing them in the 16th. Bible scholars later followed suit and shifted Moses from 1500 BC (at the Exodus) to 1300 to 1200 BC although that range proved difficult to sustain. Even Jewish monitors of the Hebrew calendar seem to have incorporated this 250-year re-adjustment into their age-old calendar (Year 5774 as at July 2014) which explains why it is about 244 years short of Usher's 4004 BC for Adam.

A close look at the Hebrew text of Genesis 47:11, Exodus 1:11, 14:2, Numbers 33:7, Jeremiah 44:1 and 46:14, revealed that later redactions where old scrolls were replaced and updated for changes in geographical and political circumstances, necessitated allowable but very slight amendments for clarity (c.f., Judges 19:10, I Chronicles 11:4). In 600 BC, Pithom became known as Ramesses. When the Carthaginians and Phoenicians had control of the city it became known as Migdol or Israel's nickname for "Tyre" (or Tower/Turret).

However, the verb 'to build' in the text of Exodus 1:11 necessitated the Israelites had to actually build both cities. How could this be possible unless two different sites were envisaged? By recognising they could be the same site but in two different eras and probably under different ruling powers, even foreign powers. The Hebrew language-text allows for this conclusion. The special definite article the scribes used for "the" in 'The Pithom and The Raamses' is the Hebrew eth (aleph, tav). It's technically or grammatically unnecessary or superfluous in this context. A definite article is not really needed in Exodus 1:11 anyway. The normal, more common or regular 'he' (the Hebrew letter for 'h') would suffice if a definite article was desired or thought necessary. This word (eth or the) is composed from the first and last Hebrew alphabetic letters (signs). Actually, in Exodus 4:8, 8:23 and 12:13 the word for sign (properly aleph, vav, tav) is also eth, the vav or 'u' being omitted. This suggests the scribes were also showing Israelites built Pithom (or Pit-mem = Mem-phit = Memphis) in 1500 BC (in the first place), and Raamses-Migdol, in the Phoenician-Carthaginian era, from circa 610 to 586 BC (in the last place). The latter Israelites were the 'renegade folk from Judah' trying to 'escape from Nebuchadnezzar'. Those, at any rate, were the words that Jeremiah, Israel's most unpopular prophet, gave to them.

A very difficult conundrum that has bedevilled scholars seems to be solved by this simple paradigm:

  • "Pithom and Raamses" were two cities on the same site (Memphis-Pithom) built in two different eras by the same ethnic group (Israelites); not two different cities, on two different sites, built in the same era by Israelites.
Budge's apparently discredited dictionary of Egyptian hieroglyphs shows an entry for Heri-Pitomai which he describes as a "suburb of Memphis". Searches for Pithom, under 'P', obviously would miss this entry as seems to have been the case for a century or so.
Furthermore, it seems the last two kings of the 12th dynasty, the titles "Amenemhat" numbers III and IV, were Moses' contemporaries instead of Ramesses II or III. Putatively, "Amenemhat" means "Leader (chosen?) of God (Amun)". Amenemhat is probably a title reflecting the concept "Divine Right of Kings". This is not a mystical term. Belief in the concept led to a civil war in England between 1642-49 and might do so again one day if Parliament does not behave itself and obey the Queen's Law. The Hebrew author probably did not wish to write the capital of this king with Amun in the text, for obviously pious reasons, so he shortened it to Pi (= place of) em-hat or 'Place of the leader'. That is what a capital city is. It is the residence (place) of the King (leader), his Government and Treasury (Miskenot). Only one city can be the true capital. That's why we also need to divide "Pithom and Raamses" as the same place with different names over two (very) different eras not as two different locations in the same era. Thus Pithom is actually:
  • Pi-em-H'at, or, accounting for variations in the way letter-signs were ordered (e.g., left-right, right-left, columns);
  • Pi-Th-em = Pithom.
Similarly for Memphis:
  • Mem-phis (Greek) = Memphit (Semitic) = Phit-mem = Pithom.
H'at from both Egyptian- and Hebrew-semitic has a range of meanings through 'sign' or 'prophet' to 'leader'.

Hatshepsut-Sheba used this term to describe her title as meaning "The Sign of the Sheba of the South". Other kings also used shepses which Petrie defined as the "Ra Shepses" or "Keeper of the Records" which is what kings and queens do.

However, in Hebrew sheb is used to describe a wide range of officials sitting or administering at their desks. In Egyptian (ancient and modern) there is a confusion in hearing 'p' or 'b'. So whether we should read shep or sheb in either Hebrew or ancient Egyptian is a guessing game. Other background information accorded by a correct interpretation of history is needed to interpret these subtle difficulties.

By using the Bible's chronology, many difficult enigmas can be resolved relatively simply. The current chronological mess in modern Egyptology differs little to the banking crises sweeping the world. Modern Egyptology and modern Economics are so-called sciences but they are now virtually worthless in their current states because they either got paradigms wrong or they ignored them if true.

The Winged Disk of Judah

Merneptah, who wrote on the Israel Stele (or Merneptah Stele), "Israel's seed is destroyed; the land razed to the ground", also displayed himself worshipping Ptah with "The Behudet Winged Disk" in the background. "Behudet" is 'Pi-' or 'B-ehudah-t'. The 't' is simply a plural like 's' in English. It means the land or people of Judah-Israel. The reason why Merneptah displayed this disk, a circle with wings stretching out to the left and right, is that the angel of God who destroyed Sennacherib's army in 700 BC apparently chose not to destroy Nebuchadnezzar in 600-586 BC. Instead the Jews had to go running back to Egypt for refuge. This reversed the events of 1500 BC: in Merneptah's opinion at least.

Of course, for that to make sense, Merneptah and Ramesses have to be shifted forward by 600 to 700 years. The "Israel" in Merneptah's statement refers to Jacob-Israel the ancestor of the Israelites (or Judeans) of 586 BC. The "seed" is the descendants of Jacob. They were cut-off or castrated as the Book of Daniel implies (Daniel 1:3, 8, 9, 11 ff). The castration of the Royal family was not quite complete as Merneptah, not unreasonably under the circumstances, surmised. A cadet branch of David through his son Nathan managed to escape the cut and, quite a few generations later, this branch sired a man named Heli who fathered Mary the Mother of Jesus. And that is why this information becomes so critical. This is historical evidence for the claims of the Old (really "First") and New (really "Last")Testaments in the Bible.

What drove the inclusion of this Egyptian symbol ("The Behudet Winged Disk"), in the book's title was the publication in Biblical Archaeological Review (Vol., 28 No., 4), in an article by Robert Deutsch, of a royal seal belonging to King Hezekiah of Judah (700 BC). It had the same object as Merneptah's except it also had six sticks branching out of the central disk to indicate six wings the object had. This was the six-winged angel Isaiah the Prophet reported seeing (e.g., or c.f., Isaiah 6:2).   This is embarrassing because it confirms an angel did destroy Sennacherib's army. There is no enigma to what happened at the end of the history described by the Assyrian (Lachish) frescos displayed at the British Museum.

The problem is embarrassing enough because the Israeli Antiquities Authority is trying to punish Mr Deutsch by convicting him for antiquities fraud. However, the real frauds, it would seem, are the chronologists in the Academy.

If you are interested in discussing this or want to talk to me about the issues, please email me at ttdonaldstewart@hotmail.com or phone 00 64 0210 298 9320 (vodafone network, New Zealand).   Also search my files at:


3 April, 2017

1 comment:

  1. You may be interested to learn of a new resource, The Velikovsky Encyclopedia at:
    http://www.velikovsky.info

    ReplyDelete