Osarseph or Osarsiph () is a legendary figure of
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...
who has been equated with
Moses. His story was recounted by the
Ptolemaic Egyptian historian
Manetho in his ''
Aegyptiaca'' (first half of the 3rd century BC); Manetho's work is
lost, but the 1st century AD
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
historian
Josephus quotes extensively from he claims are
epitomes of the original.
According to Josephus, the story depicts Osarseph as a renegade Egyptian priest who leads an army of
lepers and other "unclean" people against a
pharaoh
Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian language, Egyptian: ''wikt:pr ꜥꜣ, pr ꜥꜣ''; Meroitic language, Meroitic: 𐦲𐦤𐦧, ; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') was the title of the monarch of ancient Egypt from the First Dynasty of Egypt, First Dynasty ( ...
named
Amenophis, who was the son of
Ramses and the father of another Ramses, and whose original name was Sethos (Seti). The pharaoh is driven out of the country and the leper-army, in alliance with the
Hyksos (whose story is also told by Manetho) ravage Egypt, committing many sacrileges against the gods, before Amenophis returns and expels them. Towards the end of the story Osarseph changes his name to
Moses.
Much debated is the question of what, if any, historical reality might lie behind the Osarseph story. An influential study by
Egyptologist Jan Assmann has suggested that no single historical incident or person lies behind the legend, and that it represents instead a conflation of several historical traumas, notably the religious reforms of
Akhenaten
Akhenaten (pronounced ), also spelled Akhenaton or Echnaton ( ''ʾŪḫə-nə-yātəy'', , meaning 'Effective for the Aten'), was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh reigning or 1351–1334 BC, the tenth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Eig ...
(Amenhotep IV).
Story
The story of Osarseph is known from two long quotations from the ''Aegyptiaca'', a history of Egypt by the Egyptian historian Manetho, in Josephus's ''
Against Apion''. The first is Manetho's account of the expulsion of the
Hyksos (the name is given by Manetho) and their settlement in
Judea
Judea or Judaea (; ; , ; ) is a mountainous region of the Levant. Traditionally dominated by the city of Jerusalem, it is now part of Palestine and Israel. The name's usage is historic, having been used in antiquity and still into the pres ...
, where they found the city of
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
. Josephus then draws the conclusion that Manetho's Hyksos were the Israelites of the
Exodus, although Manetho himself makes no such connection.
The second story is of Osarseph, set some two hundred years later. According to Josephus, Manetho described Osarseph as a tyrannical high priest of
Osiris
Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wikt:wsjr, wsjr'') was the ancient Egyptian deities, god of fertility, agriculture, the Ancient Egyptian religion#Afterlife, afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He was ...
at
Heliopolis. Pharaoh Amenophis had a desire to see the gods, but in order to do so he first had to cleanse Egypt of lepers and other polluted people, setting 80,000 of them to work in the stone quarries, and then confining them to
Avaris, the former Hyksos capital in the Eastern Delta. There, Osarseph became their leader and ordered them to abandon worship of the gods and eat the meat of the holy animals. The Osarsephites then invited the Hyksos back into Egypt, and together with their new allies drove Amenophis and his son Ramses into exile in
Nubia
Nubia (, Nobiin language, Nobiin: , ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the confluence of the Blue Nile, Blue and White Nile, White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), and the Cataracts of the Nile, first cataract ...
and instituted a 13-year reign of religious oppression: towns and temples were devastated, the images of the gods
destroyed, and sanctuaries turned into kitchens where sacred animals were roasted over fires. Eventually, Amenophis and Rameses returned to expel the lepers and the Hyksos, and restore the old Egyptian religion. Towards the end of the story, Manetho reports Osarseph took the name "Moses".
Interpretations
Three interpretations have been proposed for the story: the first, as a memory of the
Amarna period; the second, as a memory of the Hyksos; and the third, as anti-Jewish propaganda. Each explanation has evidence to support it: the name of the pharaoh, Amenophis, and the religious character of the conflict fit the Amarna reform of Egyptian religion; the name of
Avaris and possibly the name Osarseph fit the Hyksos period, and the overall plot is an apparent inversion of the Jewish story of
the Exodus
The Exodus (Hebrew language, Hebrew: יציאת מצרים, ''Yəṣīʾat Mīṣrayīm'': ) is the Origin myth#Founding myth, founding myth of the Israelites whose narrative is spread over four of the five books of the Torah, Pentateuch (specif ...
which now casts the Israelites in a bad light. No one theory, however, can explain all the elements. An influential proposition by Egyptologist
Jan Assmann suggests that the story has no single origin but rather combines numerous historical experiences, notably the Amarna and Hyksos periods, into a
folk memory.
An alternative theory identifies Osarseph with the historical figure of
Chancellor Bay, a prominent Syrian officer who rose to power during the reign of Pharaoh
Seti II and later attempted to usurp the throne, only to be arrested and executed by order of Pharaoh
Siptah. However, such identification is usually rejected by scholars.
Israel Knohl recently proposed to identify Osarseph with
Irsu, a
Shasu who, according to
Papyrus Harris I and the Elephantine Stele, took power in Egypt with the support of "Asiatics" (people from the
Levant) after the death of Queen
Twosret; after coming to power, Irsu and his supporters disrupted Egyptian rituals, "treating the gods like the people" and halting offerings to the Egyptian deities. They were eventually defeated and expelled by the new Pharaoh
Setnakhte and, while fleeing, they abandoned large quantities of gold and silver they had stolen from the temples.
It is possible that the Osarseph story, or at least the point at which Osarseph changes his name to Moses, is an alteration to Manetho's original history made in the 1st century BC when anti-Jewish sentiment was running high in Egypt, since without this Manetho's history has no mention of the Jews at all. If the story is an original part of Manetho's history of Egypt, the question arises of where he could have heard it, as the Greek
Septuagint
The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...
translation of the Hebrew
Torah
The Torah ( , "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch () ...
(i.e.,
the Exodus
The Exodus (Hebrew language, Hebrew: יציאת מצרים, ''Yəṣīʾat Mīṣrayīm'': ) is the Origin myth#Founding myth, founding myth of the Israelites whose narrative is spread over four of the five books of the Torah, Pentateuch (specif ...
narrative) had not been made when he was writing. It is possible that he had an oral (Jewish) informant, or possibly an otherwise unknown pre-Septuagint translation. In accordance with this, Manetho, indeed, stated that Amenophis was the son of Ramses and the father of Ramses, whose original name was Sethos (Seti).
[''Against Apion'' 1:26]
See also
*
Hyksos
*''
Joseph and His Brothers''
*''
Moses and Monotheism'' by
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
References
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Ancient Egyptian priests
Moses
Antisemitism in Egypt
Legendary Egyptian people
Josephus
Supernatural beings identified with Christian saints
Propaganda legends