Egyptian Influence in Ancient Israel

Presentation

The Book of Mormon mentions Egypt in its background. It’s used in part of its writing and forms a background in language. In the past, many people have criticized this notion that ancient Israel was ever mixed up with the Egyptians, so I am going to talk about some of the evidence. I am going to start with the quotation from the massive 4000 page doctoral dissertation by Greg Mumford which he completed at the University of Toronto in 1998.

His dissertation, which for obvious logistical reasons has not been published, is entitled “International Relations between Egypt, Sinai, and Syria-Palestine during the late Bronze-age into Early Persian Period Dynasties 18 to 26 about 1550 to 525 BC,” and I’ll leave out the sub-title.

He looked at about 34 different sites throughout Syria, Palestine and Sinai. He looked at all the Egyptian and Egyptianizing artifacts, dividing his time period into about 19 to 20 different intervals, roughly about every 50 years, and looked through archaeological reports and did extensive analysis. This is from his conclusions. If you ever get a chance to look at the dissertation, it is on page 3986.

He says “Examination of the overall Egyptian/Egyptianizing artifact proportions from cultic mortuary occupation and combined the context at Syria- Palestine’s sites yields clear peak in Egyptian activity during late-Bronze 1B 1450 to 1400 BC, late-Bronze 2B to Iron 1A, 1200 to 1150 BC, early-Iron 2B 925 to 850 BC, and late-Iron 2B-2C, 750 to 600 BC.” So that’s precisely a peak during the time of Lehi.

We actually have a certain chart that shows you, from selected sites, where there are peaks in the percentage of Egyptian artifacts. Unfortunately these are only percentages and don’t tell you the numbers, so 3% may represent 8,000 artifacts in the site.

Iconographic Evidence

I would like to show you some iconographic evidence. I just brought some slides to show you, which show some of the Egyptian influence in Israel in the 7th and 8th centuries BC. So this is roughly from the time of Isaiah to Lehi. All of these artifacts are Israelite artifacts that come from that time, so we will consider them one by one.

These are Israelite seals, and we’ll start off with the ones showing scarabs. The first one here shows a very nice Egyptian scarab beetle with the wings out pushing the solar disc across the sky, with a nice Hebrew inscription saying “belonging to the ruler.”

It was bought in the antiquities market in Jerusalem, and is supposed to be from the area of Hebron, and is currently in Tel Aviv. This is just the impression of it, which lets Hebrew be read in the correct direction. These seals were designed to stamp on letters and let you know who owned them, or wrote them.

And the next one is currently in France, location is not known. It’s a human-headed Egyptian scarab with wings. This actually represents one of the 4 winds, with a nice Hebrew inscription and saying “this belongs to Wilcah.”

Next one is a royal seal, and according to the inscription belonged to Manassah the son of the king, and later became king himself. Again the Egyptian scarab beetle with the solar disc.

Our next one belongs to a man named Aukeymelek, and he was the son of the man named Samack. You notice on the slide that his father’s name is worked around the scarab on the top, his own name is on the bottom. Again, clear Egyptian influence, nice little ankh on your left.

This one is not a scarab but an actual seal impression. The back of this would be put on some papyrus. For whatever reason the papyrus is gone, and this is on a lump of clay. From what we can read of it, a man by the name of something like Domlah. This was also found in the antiquities market around Hebron.

Next one is a fellow by the name of Kamenjahu, son of Emet, which is the Hebrew word for truth. And this one is flanked by two birds. It’s a little unusual in that way. It is late 8th century in date. And the next one I have here belongs to a man by the name of Sayid Yahu. This one is a very nice because we have a lion drawing beside it. As you can see this is a fairly common motif during this time period. Same with the next one here. This is a man by the name of Shaffat, son of Yennah Yakub. And we have two bullae that have the same stamp on the impression. We are quite fortunate in that regard, in some cases we have as many as three.

The next one actually comes from the royal seal of King Hezekiah with a beautiful scarab beetle and solar disc. And the last one we have is found on a jar handle. Somebody stamped it in while still making this clay pot, and this belongs to Shemanjahu, son of a King. Unfortunately we don’t know which king.

Now moving from the stamped seals depicting scarabs, we also have a whole whole series of them that show winged uraei, or winged cobras, which are native to Egypt, with wings, shown in classic Egyptian style. The first one is the one of three bullae, which was found at Lachish. This one apparently got around because the next one here is the impression made by the same seal, but it was found in Jerusalem. The third one here is from Tele Judaida. We only have a drawing of this one. It was found in the Tele Judaida expeditions back in 1900, its present location is unknown.

Next one here belongs to a man by the name of Yakamoh Yajuh son of Mosseh Yajuh. You will see a nice Egyptian uraeus. The next one belongs to a man by the name of Saadha, and I noticed a little ankh sign over here. Somebody punched a hole and drew a little “T” shape under it making the ankh sign. And this one also has nice winged solar discs at the bottom.

The next one belongs to Elishama who is the son of a king. This fellow is known from the Book of Jeremiah. So here we are in Lehi’s day, with a good Egyptian uraeus sporting the crown of upper and lower Egypt. This is sporting a royal Egyptian crown as well.

The next one was found in the antiquities market in Beirut; it is now in Oxford. They took this scarab, most of these seals are actually shaped like Egyptians scarabs following Egyptian prototypes. Someone carved out the bottom, so we get the nice letters here “belonging to the son of” and someone carved out the rest of it and it is probably in some rubbish heap somewhere.

The next one here belonged to a fellow by the name of Eljahu, son of Geljahu. This also should remind you of the Exodus account of those fiery flying serpents. This one belongs to a man by the name of Jeremiah. It’s not the one from the Bible, this is the son of Asah. These things are also quite small. This one for example, which is typical, is 19 millimeters in height. So just about 2 centimeters long. And the writing on there is very small, but they do tell us something about the carvings in Lehi’s day.

The next one here belongs to a man by the name of Shaufat, and has this winged uraeus sitting on a lotus flower. We have another one with the ankh sign put on its side, and was found in Jerusalem and belongs to a fellow by the name of [Abuyao?].

We have another one here–this one is two sided. So this one is the inscription from the one side, and the other is the inscription from the other side. It belongs to the man by the name of Sadok, and he is the son of Lechad. Then it was re-used by a man by the name of Zacharyu. It says that he is the Priest of Dor. So here we have a man with a clear Yaju name, so it seems at least his parents worshipped Jehovah, and he seems to have followed suit. But he is a Priest at Dor. There is no biblical record or archaeological record of a sanctuary to the Lord ever being there, but there was apparently one there at this time. Because Dor was conquered by the Assyrians in 733 BC, we can gauge this one pretty clearly to be from the 8^th century.

This is Shecenyaju son of Elasa, and another winged scarab belonging to Yeddayaju. Now in some cases we don’t get the nice winged scarabs, instead we get the side view as in this one. You get the scarab with a solar disc on his head, and an ankh sign with an extra bar on it. This one belongs to Cheppetyaju, son of Osayaju. Most of what we get out of these are the names.

This one here is another unusual one because the uraeus is looped over the solar disc, the solar disc is winged. There is another solar disc on the serpent’s head, there is an ankh sign with a fish. There are a number of these scarabs with fish.

This motif with the winged scarab became very common much later in Egyptian history, but it is a testament of their presence at this time. This one here shows no wings whatsoever on the snake, although this one does. What would really be interesting is to have the papyrus which these seals attached. If we had two or three of these instead of just the bullae, it would probably rewrite our history of Israel.

The next type we have has Egyptian sphinx’s on it. So the first one here, there are only a couple of these, belongs to a man by the name of Sholomet. If you notice the carving style, the lines are much thicker and deeper than they are on most of these other scarabs and this has led some people to wonder if this one is actually authentic. While that one may not be authentic, this one belonging to Hannah, is.

Now here again we have the Egyptian crown on the sphinx. What is unclear on this particular seal is Hannah is usually a woman’s name, although most of these seal impressions belong to men. And Egypt not only has human sphinx’s, but also what are called cryo sphinx’s, sometimes called griffins. They have a falcon’s head rather than a human head on them. First one here belongs to a man and by the name of Giki, strangely enough it sounds similar to the name of a Bishop I’ve been working with recently.

This next one was found at Ashkelan. A lot of these were found during illicit digs, when there were only about 2 centimeters left. One could easily skip over them. They are also easily secreted off a dig. This one is a very nice one with a nice double Egyptian crown with the white crown of upper Egypt and the red crown of lower Egypt. We also have an almost identical one here belonging to Yohokim, and another one here belonging to Hosea. We are not sure if it is the same Hosea of the Bible.

This one is really unusual because it has a cricket at the bottom, and is attested on other seals. This one belonged to Asaf, and has the ankh sign, while this one here belonged to someone possibly named Pechab. Oddly enough there is a Was-scepter staff sticking up out of the griffin’s head. At least, that is what I take it as. It might be a representation of the double crown but it looks much more like a jackal-headed Was-scepter.

This one provides an example of the certain bakeries of pre-Israelite script, something that we may not have appreciated when The Book of Mormon talks about difficulty of writing in Hebrew. Those two letters look like they might have a tick or might not. If they don’t have a tick they’re read as “p’s” if they do that the tick they are read as “n’s”.

This one has the name of Allah, and this one’s name is almost Ezekial, it’s just missing the “l” on the end. This one, his name is Jonathan. It’s a little bit late to be the prince with that name. This one belongs to the son of Hosea. I don’t know if that is the prophet, it’s probably just a common name.

Then we come to seals that have human figures emerging out of a lotus. In an Egyptian motif, there is a wonderful example of this from the tomb of Tutankhamun, where Tutankhamun’s head is seen coming out of a lotus blossom. This is equated with the Egyptian God Nepertune, as well as the god Horus. So this is a nice one here belonging to Abigow, servant of Uzziah. There is a king by that name.

We have others that are just Egyptians solar discs, you’ve already seen a couple of these. This one is one of those inspired by two sides except this one does not have two different names, it is not re-used. It is the same name on both, he just flips it over. This is a nice Egyptian figure standing and his name is Shebanjayu and the bottom is identified as Shebanjayu, servant of Uzziah.

This one has a wonderful elaborate Egyptian crown with the solar disc and uraeus hanging off of it, a wonderful late period motif. I don’t have it in color, but it is a beautiful, glowing orange.

This one here is a combination of motifs. You see two uraei hanging off an ankh sign, with a winged solar disc at the top, a scarab pushing the sun on the one side and a fish on the other, with a very odd mask in the middle. And the inscription on the back side says it belongs to Uzza.

Now in some of these cases they decided to go for a very elaborate type of seal. These are based on earlier second intermediate period scarabs that were used by Egyptian officials and often contained cartouches of kings. This one, which belongs to Shmaryahu, at least the lower cartouche is a badly done imitation of the cartouche of Tuthmose III. I am not quite sure how to read the cartouche on the top. Shmaryahu actually stuck his name in the cartouche, which is a little unusual because Egyptian cartouches are reserved for the names of kings. Everyone else isn’t allowed to cartouche.

There is this other one belonging to Palty. He doesn’t bother to put his name in a cartouche, but again, a rather garbled version of the name of Thutmose III at the bottom. This is actually much later than Thutmose III. The style, with all the fancy work, is more like the second intermediate period scarabs.

We had one miscellaneous one. You can tell it is Egyptian by the ankh sign, but it had to be reconstructed from two different seals of the same person. You can see in this one you get the legs, and this one you get the ankh sign. You get a little bit of the inscription on the second one over, and you are able to come up with a composite line drawing. It belongs to Thotunyahu’s son, Huni.

And finally, I thought I’d just go over some of these seals that are connected with royalty because these have a secure date, and from them we can get a feel for the time period when this was used. So the first one of these belongs to a servant of Uzziah, and Uzziah reigns from 783-742 BC.

The next one belongs to the servant of Ahaz, who is Uzziah’s grandson. This one belongs to Ahaz’s son, Hezzekiah. And this one to Hezzekiah’s son, Manassah. Note the similarity in the motifs. This one here belongs to a son of the king during Jeremiah’s time period. I am not sure exactly which king it is. And finally this one just tacked on the end of a jar handle, tells us he is the son of a king, but does not tell us which one.

Conclusion

So if you look at the time periods this is covering, we have Uzziah 783-742 BC, Ahaz 735-715 BC, Hezzekiah 715-687 BC, Manassah 687-643 BC, and then the time period of Jeremiah around 600 BC. This period of using the royal seals with Egyptian iconography happens to match the time period where there is a peak in Egyptianizing materials found in Israelite settings. This helps form some of the backdrop for Lehi’s time in Jerusalem. It gives us some background which Lehi came out of, that we read about in the beginning of The Book of Mormon, about having Egyptian influence there, which is repeated again in the end of The Book of Mormon.

All of this doesn’t necessarily prove anything about The Book of Mormon. It is not one of those things that give sufficient proof, but provides a backdrop for Lehi’s day, and a background from which The Book of Mormon comes.

TOPICS

Book of Mormon

Egyptian in The Book of Mormon