The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times.

Hokitika Guardian, 1 December 1924, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times.

Q MONDAY, DECEMBER Ist, 192-1. O —•—■ O ANCIENT HISTORY, sj I Tiie suggestion ot' the learned Jewish q professor that Tutankhamen was in rj reality Joseph of Israel, mentioned in 3 a cable message last week, is interest* 3 ing enough, says the Lyttelton “Times’’ 3 to provoke speculation, although it does 2 not appear to accord at all closely with the published facts. Joseph’s resid--3 cnee in Egypt was a matter rather of 3 I tradition than of history at the time 2 when the story was compiled and the j best evidence seems to place it some j four hundred years prior to the time of 3 Tutankhamen, who reigned in Egypt 3 roughly from 1358 B.C. to 1350 B.C. 3 A much more probable theory is that ? which identifies Tutankhamen as the j I Pharaoh of the Exodus; because there j is a reasonable amount of historical > evidence to support it, and the dates I fit in with tolerable exactitude with the I I Biblical accounts. The evidence is sumI marised in one of Mr Arthur Weigall’s fascinating essays. He shows that for some years prior to 1350 B.C. Semitic I tribes, closely related to the Israelites had been on the move and taking advantage of the weakness of Egypt during the reign of Tutankhamen’s predeI cessans they had invaded Palestine and ] j had conquered portions of Asia that had ;

been under Egyptian domination. There are on record letters, discovered at Toll-el-Aniarnn, in which a Queen in Judea appeals for help against tribes which were called Khahiri and which may have been Hebrews. Moses bad been in exile and may have come into contact with the Khahiri and it is reasonable to suppose that be letunied to Egypt during the reign of Tutankhamen. organised the Israelites for revolt and persuaded them to join the other Hebrew tribes in the invasion of Palestine. From other sources it is known that at one time then* were some eighty thousand heretics in

Egypt, fora certain Pharaoh had them herded together in a region east of the Nile where they were compelled to work in quarries. When Akhuatoii, predecessor cf Tutankhamen, came to the throne, lie abandoned the worship of the ancient gods and declared himself a monotheist. Most accounts say that he worshipped the sun. as did the other heretics, but actually the sun was for him only the visible sign of the one God. Akbnaton went so far as to abandon the ancient capital at Thebes and established a new capital at Toll-el-Atnarnn, on the cast bank of the river, where the 80,000 heretics had been segregated. If (lie rest i f tbe evidence is reliable it. is an easy infiTonio that tbe lion-tics were in tbe main Israelites, in which case the task of Moses when be returned from exile would he relatively tin easy one. Air AVeiga-ll mentions inscriptions and carvings which show dearly that Tutankhamen employed Asiatic, slaves in the rebuilding of the temples when he restored the capital to Thebes, and that he subsequently chased Asiatics out of Egypt. Naturally evidence that identified Tutankhamen with the Pharaoh of the Exodus does not lend colour to the new supposition that Tutankhamen may have been Joseph, since Joseph, according to th(> Biblical story, was not at all likely to desert the worship of one (Jod, restore the worship of the ancient gods, rebuild the temples and re-establish the priests in their old magnificence and power.