Freud, Sigmund (1939-001/1939): If Moses was an Egyptian...

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
OF

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

VOLUME XX JANUARY 1939 PART ı

ORIGINAL PAPERS

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN .. .!
BY
SIGM. FREUD
LONDON

In an earlier publication ? I have tried to strengthen by a new argu-
ment the suggestion that the man Moses, the liberator and law-giver
of the Jewish people, was not a Jew, but an Egyptian. That his name
derived from the Egyptian vocabulary had long been observed, though
not duly appreciated. I added to this consideration the further one
that the interpretation of the exposure myth attaching to Moses
necessitated the conclusion that he was an Egyptian whom a people
needed to make into a Jew. At the end of my essay I said that impor-
tant and far-reaching conclusions could be drawn from the suggestion
that Moses was an Egyptian ; but I was not prepared to uphold them
publicly, since they were based only on psychological probabilities and
lacked objective proof. The more significant the possibilities thus
discerned the more cautious is one about exposing them to the critical
attack of the outside world without any secure foundation—like an
iron monument with feet of clay. No probability, however seductive,
can protect us from error ; even if all parts of a problem seem to fit
together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, one has to remember that
the probable need not necessarily be the truth and the truth not
always probable. And, lastly, it is not attractive to be classed with
the scholastics and talmudists who are satisfied to exercise their
ingenuity—unconcerned how far removed their conclusions may be
from the truth,

3 This is the second section of a book entitled Moses and Monotheism
which will be published in the spring by the Hogarth Press, London, and
Knopf, Inc., New York.

3 + Moses an Egyptian,’ Journar, Vol. XIX, p. 291.

ı I

z SIGM. FREUD

Notwithstanding these misgivings, which weigh as heavily to-day
as they did then, out of the conflict of my motives the decision has
emerged to follow up my first essay by this contribution. But once again
it is only a part of the whole, and not the most important part.

I

If, then, Moses was an Egyptian, the first gain from this suggestion
is a new riddle, one difficult to answer. When a people or a tribe *
prepares for a great undertaking it is to be expected that one of them
should make himself their leader or be chosen for this röle. But what
could have induced a distinguished Egyptian—perhaps a prince, priest
or high official—to place himself at the head of a throng of culturally
inferior immigrants, and to leave the country with them, is not easy
to conjecture. The well-known contempt of the Egyptians for
foreigners makes such a proceeding especially unlikely. Indeed, I am
inclined to think this is why even those historians who recognized the
name as Egyptian, and ascribed all the wisdom of Egypt to him, were
not willing to entertain the obvious possibility that Moses was an
Egyptian.

This first difficulty is followed by a second. We must not forget
that Moses was not only the political leader of the Jews settled in
Egypt, he was also their law-giver and educator and the man who
forced them to adopt a new religion, which is still to-day called Mosaic
after him. But can a single person create a new religion so easily ?
And when someone wishes to influence the religion of another would
not the most natural thing be to convert him to hisown ? The Jewish
people in Egypt were certainly not without some kind of religion, and
if Moses, who gave them a new religion, was an Egyptian, then the
surmise cannot be rejected that this other new religion was the
Egyptian one.

This possibility encounters an obstacle: the sharp contrast
between the Jewish religion attributed to Moses and the Egyptian one.
The former is a grandiosely rigid monotheism. There is only one God,
unique, omnipotent, unapproachable. The sight of his countenance
cannot be borne; one must not make an image of him, not even
breathe his name. In the Egyptian religion, on the other hand, there
is a bewildering mass of deities of differing importance and Provenance.
Some of them are personifications of great natural powers like heaven

® We have no inkling what numbers were concerned in the Exodus.

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIIAN ... 3

and earth, sun and moon. Then we find an abstraction such as Maat
(Justice, Truth) or a grotesque creature like the dwarfish Bes. Most
of them, however, are local gods from the time when the land was
divided into numerous provinces. They have the shapes of animals as
if they had not yet overcome their origin from the old totem animals.
They are not clearly differentiated, barely distinguished by special
functions attributed to some of them. The hymns in praise of these
gods tell the same thing about each of them, identify them with one
another without any misgivings in a way that would confuse us hope-
lessly. Names of deities are combined with one another, so that one
becomes degraded almost to an epithet of the other. Thus in the best
period of the “New Empire’ the main god of the city of Thebes is called
Amon-Re, in which combination the first part signifies the ram-
headed city-god, whereas Re is the name of the hawk-headed Sun-God
of On. Magic and ceremonial, amulets and formulas, dominated the
service of these gods, as they did the daily life of the Egyptians.

Some of these differences may easily derive from the contrast in
principle between a strict monotheism and an unlimited polytheism.
Others are obviously consequences of a difference in intellectual level ;
one religion is very near to the primitive, the other has soared to the
heights of sublime abstraction. Perhaps it is these two characteristics
that occasionally give one the impression that the contrast between
the Mosaic and the Egyptian religion is one intended and purposely
accentuated: for example, when the onereligion severely condemnsany
kind of magic or sorcery which flourishes so abundantly in the other ; or
when the insatiable zest of the Egyptian for making images of his gods
in clay, stone and metal, to which our museums owe so much, is con-
trasted with the way in which the making of the image of any living
or visionary being is bluntly forbidden.

There is yet another difference between the two religions, which the
explanations we have attempted do not touch. No other people of
antiquity has done so much to deny death, has made such careful pro-
vision for an after-life ; in accordance with this the death-god Osiris,
the ruler of that other world, was the most popular and indisputable
of all Egyptian gods. The early Jewish religion, on the other hand, had
entirely relinquished immortality ; the possibility of an existence after
death was never mentioned in any place. And this is all the more
remarkable since later experience has shewn that the belief in a life
beyond can very well be reconciled with a monotheistic religion.

We had hoped the suggestion that Moses was an Egyptian would

4 SIGM: FREUD

prove enlightening and stimulating in many different respects. But
our first deduction from this suggestion—that the new religion he gave
the Jews was his own, the Egyptian one—has foundered on the differ-
ence, nay the striking contrast, between the two religions.

u

A strange fact in the history of the Egyptian religion, which was
recognized and appraised relatively late, opens up another point of
view. It is still possible that the religion Moses gave to his Jewish
people was yet his own, an Egyptian religion though not the Egyptian
one.

In the glorious Eighteenth Dynasty, when Egypt became for the
first time a world power, a young Pharaoh ascended the throne about
1375 B.C., who first called himself Amenhotep (IV) like his father, but
later on changed his name—and not only hisname. This king under-
took to force upon his subjects a new religion, one contrary to their
ancient traditions and to all their familiar habits. It was a striet
monotheism, the first attempt of its kind in the history of the world—
as far as we know—and religious intolerance, which was foreign to
antiquity before this and for long after, was inevitably born with the
belief in one God. But Amenhotep’s reign lasted only for seventeen
years ; very soon after his death in 1358 the new religion was swept
away and the memory of the heretic king proscribed. From the ruins
of his new capital which he had built and dedicated to his God, and
from the inscriptions in the rock tombs belonging to it, we derive the
little knowledge we possess of him. Everything we can learn about
this remarkable, indeed unique, person is worthy of the greatest
interest.t

Everything new must have its roots in what was before. The
origin of Egyptian monotheism can be traced back a fair distance with
some certainty.® In the School of the Priests in the Sun Temple at
On (Heliopolis) tendencies had for some time been at work developing
the idea of an universal God and stressing his ethical aspects. Maat,
the Goddess of truth, order and justice, was a daughter of the Sun God
Re. Already under Amenhotep III, the father and predecessor of the

* Breasted called him ‘ The first individual in human history ’,

* The account I give here follows closely J. H. Breasted’s History of
Egypt, 1906, and The Dawn of Conscience, 1936, and the corresponding
sections in the Cambridge Ancient History, Vol, II.

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN... 5

reformer, the worship of the Sun God was in the ascendant, probably in
opposition to the worship of Amon of Thebes, who had become over
prominent. An ancient name of the Sun-God Aton or Atum was
rediscovered, and in this Aton religion the young king found a move-
ment he had no need to create, but one which he could join,

Political conditions in Egypt had about that time begun to exert
a lasting influence on Egyptian religion. Through the victorious
sword of the great conqueror Thothmes III Egypt had become a world
power. Nubia in the south, Palestine, Syria and a part of Mesopo-
tamia in the north had been added to the Empire. This imperialism
was reflected in religion as Universality and Monotheism. Since
Pharaoh’s solicitude now extended beyond Egypt to Nubia and Syria,
Deity itself had to give up its national limitation and the new God of
the Egyptians had to become like Pharach—the unique and unlimited
sovereign of the world known to the Egyptians. Besides, it was natural
that as the frontiers extended Egypt should become accessible to
foreign influences ; some of the king’s wives were Asiatic princesses,®
and possibly even direct encouragement of monotheism had penetrated
from Syria.

Amenhotep never denied his accession to the Sun Cult of On. In
the two hymns to Aton, which have been preserved to us through the
inscriptions in the rock tombs and were probably composed by him,
‚he praises the sun as the creator and preserver of all living beings in and
outside Egypt with a fervour such as recurs many centuries after only
in the psalms in honour of the Jewish god Jahve. But he did not stop
at this astonishing anticipation of scientific knowledge concerning the
effect of sunlight. There is no doubt that he went further: that he
worshipped the sun not as a material object, but as a symbol of a
Divine Being whose energy was manifested in his rays.?

$ Perhaps even Amenhotep’s beloved spouse Nofertete.

? Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 360 : ‘ But however evident the Helio-
politan origin of the new state religion might be, it was not merely sun-
worship ; the word Aton was employed in the place of the old word for
“god” (nuter), and the god is clearly distinguished from the material sun.”
“ It is evident that what the king was deifying was the force by which the
Sun made itself felt on earth’ (Dawn of Conscience, p. 279). Erman’s
opinion of a formula in honour of the god is similar: A. Erman (Die
Ägyptische Religion, 1905). ‘There are... . words which are meant to
expressin an abstract form the fact that not the star itself was worshipped,
but the Being that manifested itself in it."

6 SIGM. FREUD

But we do scant justice to the king if we see in him only the adherent
and protector of an Aton religion which had already existed before
him. His activity was much more energetic. He added the something
new that turned into monotheism the doctrine of an universal god: the
quality of exchusiveness. In one of his hymns it is stated in so many
words: “Oh, Thou only God! There is no other God than Thou.’ ®
And we must not forget that to appraise the new doctrine it is not
enough to know its positive content only ; nearly as important is its
negative side, the knowledge of what it repudiates. It would be a
mistake, too, to suppose that the new religion sprang to life ready and
fully equipped like Athene out of Zeus’ forehead. Everything rather
goes to show that during Amenhotep’s reign it was strengthened so as
to attain greater clarity, consistency, harshness and intolerance.
Probably this development took place under the influence of the
violent opposition among the priests of Amon that raised its head
against the reforms of the king. In the sixth year of Amenhotep's
reign this enmity had grown to such an extent that the king changed
his name, of which the now proscribed name of the god Amon was a
part. Instead of Amenhotep he called himself Ikhnaton.? But not
only from his name did he eliminate that of the hated God, but also
from all inscriptions and even where he found it in his father’s name,
Amenhotep III. Soon after his change of name Ikhnaton left Thebes,
which was under Amon’s rule, and built a new capital lower down the
river which he called Akhetaton (Horizon of Aton). Its ruins are now
called Tell-el-Amarna.!°

The persecution by the king was directed foremost against Amon,
but not against him alone. Everywhere in the Empire the temples were
closed, the services forbidden, and the ecclesiastical property seized.
Indeed, the king’s zeal went so far as to cause an inquiry to be made
into the inscriptions of old monuments in order to efface the word
“ God ” whenever it was used in the plural.“! It is not to be wondered

® Idem, p. 374, History of Egypt.

* Ifollow Breasted’sspellingin thisname; (theaccepted English spelling
is Akhenaten). The king’s new name means approximately the same as his
former one: God is satisfied. Compare our Godirey and the German
Gotthold.

1° This is where in 1887 the correspondence of the Egyptian kings with
their friends and vassals in Asia was found, a correspondence which proved
so important for our knowledge of history.

22 Idem, History of Egypt, p. 363.

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN... 7

at that these orders produced a reaction of fanatical vengeance among
the suppressed priests and the discontented people, a reaction which
was able to find a free outlet after the king’s death. The Aton religion
had not appealed to the people ; it had probably been limited to a small
eircle round Ikhnaton’s person. His end is wrapped in mystery. We
kam of a few short-lived, shadowy successors of his own family.
Alrcady his son-in-law Tutankhaton was forced to return to Thebes
and to substitute Amon in his name for the god Aton. Then there
followed a period of anarchy until the general Haremhab succeeded in
1350 in restoring order. The glorious Eighteenth Dynasty was extin-
guished ; at the same time their conquests in Nubia and Asia were
lost. In this sad interregnum Egypt’s old religions had been reinstated.
The Aton religion was at an end, Ikhnaton’s capital lay destroyed and
plundered, and his memory scorned as that of a felon.

It will serve a certain purpose if we now note several negative
characteristics of the Aton religion. In the first place, all myth, magic
and sorcery are excluded from it.!?

Then there is the way in which the Sun God is represented : no
longer as in earlier times by a small pyramid and a falcon, but—and
this is almost rational—by a round disc from which emanate rays
terminating in human hands. In spite of all the love for art in
the Amarna period, not one personal representation of the Sun God
Aton has been found, and, we may say with confidence, ever will be
found.?

Finally, there is a complete silence about the death god Osiris and
the realm ofthe dead. Neither hymns nor inscriptions on graves know
anything of what was perhaps nearest to the Egyptian’s heart. The
contrast with the popular religion cannot be expressed more vividly.!*

»2 Weigall (The Life and Times of Akhmaton, 1923, p. 121) says that
Ikhnaton would not recognize a hell against the terrors of which one had
to guard by innumerable magic spells. ‘ Akhnaton lung all these formule
into the fire, Djins, bogies, spirits, monsters, demigods and Osiris himself
with all his court, were swept into the blaze and reduced to ashes.”

19 A. Weigall, 2.c., p. 103,‘ Akhnaton did not permit any graven image
to be made of the Aton. The true God, said the king, had no form ; and
he held to this opinion throughout his life.’

4 Erman, .c., p. 90: ‘Of Osiris and his realm no more was to be
heard.’ Breasted, Dawn of Conscience, p. 291: ‘ Osiris is completely
ignored. He is never mentioned in any record of Ikhnaton or in any of
the tombs at Amarna.’

8 SIGM. FREUD

II

We venture now to draw the following conclusion : if Moses was an
Egyptian and if he transmitted to the Jews his own religion then it was
that of Ikhnaton, the Aton religion.

We compared earlier the Jewish religion with the religion of the
Egyptian people and noted how different they were from each other.
Now we shall compare the Jewish with the Aton religion and should
expect to find that they were originally identical. We know that this
is no easy task. Of the Aton religion we do not perhaps know enough,
thanks to the revengeful spirit of the Amon priests. The Mosaic
religion we know only in its final form as it was fixed by Jewish priests
in the time after the Exile about 800 years later. If, in spite of this
unpromising material, we should find some indications fitting in with
our supposition then we may indeed value them highly.

There would be a short way of proving our thesis that the Mosaic
religion is nothing else but that of Aton, namely, by a confession of
faith, a proclamation. But I am afraid I should be told that such a
road is impracticable. The Jewish creed, as is well known, says:
‘Schema Jisroel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echod.’ If the similarity
of the name of the Egyptian Aton (or Atum) to the Hebrew word
Adonai and the Syrian divine name Adonis is not a mere accident, but
is the result of a primzval unity in language and meaning, then one
could translate the Jewish formula: Hear, oh Israel, our god Aton
(Adonai) is the only God. I am, alas, entirely unqualified to answer
this question and have been able to find very little about it in the
literature concerned,!5 but probably we had better not make things so
simple. Moreover, we shall have to come back to the problems of the
divine name.

The points of similarity as well as those of difference in the two
religions are easily discerned, but do not enlighten us much. Both are
forms of a strict monotheism, and we shall be inclined to reduce to this
basic character what is similar in both of them. Jewish monotheism is
in some points even more uncompromising than the Egyptian, for
example, when it forbids all visual representation ofitsGod. The most

*s Only a few passages in Weigall, L.c., pp. 12, 19: ‘ The god Atum,
who described Re as the setting sun, was perhaps of the same origin as
Aton, generally venerated in Northern Syria. A foreign Queen, as well as
her suite, might therefore have been attracted to Heliopolis rather than
to Thebes.’

4E MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN... 9

essential difference—apart from the name of their God—is that the
Jewish religion entirely relinquishes the worship of the sun, to which
the Egyptian one still adhered. When comparing the Jewish with the
Egyptian folk religion we received the impression that, besides the
contrast in principle, there was in the difference between the two
religions an element of purposive contradiction. This impression
appears justified when in our comparison we replace the Jewish
religion by that of Aton, which Ikhnaton—as we know—developed
in deliberate antagonism to the popular religion. We were astonished
—-and rightly so—that the Jewish religion did not speak of anything
beyond the grave, for such a doctrine is reconcilable with the strietest
monotheism. This astonishment disappears if we go back from the
Jewish religion to the Aton religion and surmise that this feature was
taken over from the latter, since for Ikhnaton it was a necessity in
fighting the popular religion where the death god Osiris played perhaps
a greater part than any god of the upper regions. The agreement of
the Jewish religion with that of Aton in this important point is the
first strong argument in favour of our thesis. We shall see that it is
not the only one.

Moses gave the Jews not only a new religion ; it is equally certain
that he introduced the custom of circumcision. This has a decisive
importance for our problem and it has hardly ever been weighed. The
Biblical account, it is true, often contradicts it. On the other hand,
it dates the custom back to the time of the patriarchs as a sign of the
covenant concluded between God and Abraham. On the other hand,
the text mentions in a specially obscure passage that God was wroth
with Moses because he had neglected this holy usage and proposed to
slay him as a punishment ; Moses’ wife, a Midianite, saved her husband
from the wrath of God by speedily performing the operation. These
are distortions, however, which should not lead us astray ; we shall
explore their motives presently. The fact remains that the question
concerning the origin of circumeision has only one answer : it comes
from Egypt. Herodotus, “the Father of History ', tells us that the
custom of circumeision had long been practised in Egypt, and his
statement has been confirmed by the examination of mummies and
even by drawings on the walls of graves. No other people of the
Eastern Mediterranean has—as far as we know—followed this custom ;
we can assume with certainty that the Semites, Babylonians and
Sumerians were not circumcised. Biblical history itself says as much
of the inhabitants of Canaan ; it is presupposed in the story of the

10 SIGM. FREUD

adventure between Jacob’s daughter and the Prince of Shechem.!*
The possibility that the Jews in Egypt adopted the usage of circum-
cision in any other way than in connection with the religion Moses gave
them may be rejected as quite untenable. Now let us bear in mind
that circumeision was practised in Egypt by the people as a general
custom, and let us adopt for the moment the usual assumption that
Moses was a Jew who wanted to free his compatriots from the service
of an Egyptian overlord, and lead them out of the country to develop
an independent and self-confident existence—a feat he actually
achieved. What sense could there be in his forcing upon them at
the same time a burdensome custom which, so to speak, made them
into Egyptians and was bound to keep awake their memory of Egypt,
whereas his intention could only have had the opposite aim, namely,
that his people should become strangers to the country of bondage
and overcome the longing for the ‘ fleshpots of Egypt’? No, the fact
we started from and the suggestion we added to it are so incompatible
with each other that we venture to draw the following conclusion : If
Moses gave the Jews not only a new religion, but also the law of circum-
cision, he was no Jew but an Egyptian, and then the Mosaic religion
was probably an Egyptian one, namely—because of its contrast to the
popular religion—that of Aton with which the Jewish one shews
agreement in some remarkable points.

As I remarked earlier, my hypothesis that Moses was not a Jew
but an Egyptian creates a new enigma. What he did—easily under-
standable if he were a Jew—becomes unintelligible in an Egyptian.
But if we place Moses in Ikhnaton’s period and associate him with that
Pharach, then the enigma is resolved and a possible motive presents
itself, answering all our questions. Let us assume that Moses was a
noble and distinguished man, perhaps indeed a member of the royal
house, as the myth has it. He must have been conscious of his great

* When I use Biblical tradition here in such an autocratic and arbi-
trary way, draw on it for confirmation whenever it is convenient and dis-
miss its evidence without scruple when it contradiets my conclusions, I
know full well that I am exposing myself to severe criticism concerning
my method and that I weaken the force of my proofs. But this is the only
way in which to treat material whose trustworthiness—as we know for
certain—was seriousiy damaged by the influence of distorting. tendencies.
Some justification will be forthcoming later, it is hoped, when we have
unearthed those secret motives. Certainty is not to be gained in any case,
and, moreover, we may say that all other authors have acted likewise.

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN.... 10

abilities, ambitious and energetic ; perhaps he saw himself in a dim
future as the leader of his people, the governor of the Empire. In
close contact with Pharaoh he was a convinced adherent of the new
religion, whose basic principles he fully understood and had made his
own. With the king’s death and the subsequent reaction he saw all his
kopes and prospects destroyed. If he was not to recant the convictions
so dear to him then Egypt had no more to give him ; he had lost his
native country. In this hour of need he found an unusual solution.
The dreamer Ikhnaton had estranged himself from his people, had let
his world empire crumble. Moses’ active nature conceived the plan of
founding a new empire, of finding a new people, to whom he could give
the religion that Egypt disdained. It was, as we perceive, an heroic
attempt to struggle against his fate, to find compensation in two direc-
tions for the losses he had suffered through Ikhnaton’s catastrophe.
Perhaps he was at that time governor of that border province (Gosen)
in which—perhaps already in “the Hyksos period ’—certain Semitic
tribes had settled. These he chose to be his new people. An historic
decision.!?

He established relations with them, placed himself at their head
and directed the Exodus ‘by strength of hand’. In full contra-
distinction to the Bibical tradition we may suppose this Exodus to
have passed off peacefully and without pursuit. The authority of
Moses made it possible, and there was then no central power that could
have prevented it.

According to our construction the Exodus from Egypt would have
taken place between 1358 and 1350, that is to say, after the death of
Ikhnaton and before the restitution of the authority of the state by
Haremhab.!® The goal of the wandering could only be Canaan. After

37 If Moses were a high official we can understand his being fitted for
the röle of leader he assumed with the Jews. If he were a priest the
thought of giving his people a new religion must have been near to his
heart. In both cases he would have continued his former profession. A
prince of royal lineage might easily have been both : governor and priest.
In the report of Flavius Josephus (Antigu. jud.), who accepts the exposure
myth, but seems to know other traditions than the Biblical one, Moses
appears as an Egyptian field-marshal in a victorious campaign in Ethiopia.

38 This would be about a century earlier than most historians assume,
who place it in the Nineteenth Dynasty under Merneptah : or perhaps a
little less, for official records seem to include the interregnum in Harem-
hab's reign.

12 SIGM. FREUD

the supremacy of Egypt had collapsed, hordes of war-like Arameans
had flooded the country, conquering and pillaging, and thus had shewn
where a capable people could seize new land. We know these warriors
from the letters which were found in 1887 in the archives of the ruined
city of Amarna. There they are called Habiru, and the name was
passed on—no one knows how—to the Jewish invaders, Hebrews, who
came later and could not have been referred to in the letters of Amarna.
The tribes who were the most nearly related to the Jews now leaving
Egypt also lived south of Palestine—in Canaan.

The motivation that we have surmised for the Exodus as a whole
covers also the institution of circumeision. We know in what manner
human beings—both peoples and individuals—react to this ancient
custom, scarcely any longer understood. Those who do not practise it
regard it as very odd and find it rather abhorrent ; but those who have
adopted eircumceision are proud of the custom. They feel superior,
ennobled, and look down with contempt at the others, who appear to
them unclean. Even to-day the Turk hurls abuse at the Christian by
calling him “an unceircumeised dog’. It is credible that Moses, who
as an Egyptian was himself circumcised, shared this attitude. The
Jews with whom he left his native country were to be a better substi-
tute for the Egyptians he left behind. In no circumstances must they
be inferior to them. He wished to make of them a ‘ Holy People ’—
so it is explicitiy stated in the Biblical text—and as a sign of their
dedication he introduced the custom that made them at least the
equals of the Egyptians. It would, further, be welcome to him if such
a custom isolated them and prevented them from mingling with the
other foreign peoples they would meet during their wanderings, just
as the Egyptians had kept apart from all foreigners.1®

* Herodotus, who visited Egypt about 450 B.c., gives in the account
of his travels a characteristic of the Egyptians which shews an astounding
similarity with well-known features of the later Jewish people. ‘ They are
in all respects much more pious than other peoples, they are also distin-
guished from them by many of their customs, such as circumeision, which
for reasons of cleanliness they introduced before others ; further, by their
horror of swine, doubtless connected with the fact that Set wounded Horus
when in the guise ofa black hog ; and, lastly, most of all by their reverence
for cows, which they would never eat or sacrifice because they would
thereby ofiend the cow-horned Isis. Therefore no Egyptian man or woman
would ever kiss a Greek or use his knife, his spit or his cooking vessel, or
eat of the meat of an (otherwise) clean ox that had been cut with a Greek .

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN ... 13

Jewish tradition, however, behaved later on as if it were oppressed
by the sequence of ideas we have just developed. To admit that
circumcision was an Egyptian custom introduced by Moses would be
almost to recognize that the religion handed down to them from Moses
was also Egyptian, But the Jews had good reasons to deny this fact ;
therefore the truth about circumcision had also to be contradicted.

IV

At this point I expect to hear the reproach that I have built up my
construction—which places Moses the Egyptian in Ikhnaton’s era,
derives from the political state the country was in at that time his
decision to protect the Jewish people, and recognizes as the Aton religion
the religion he gave to his people or with which he burdened them,
which had just been abolished in Egypt itself—that I have built up
this edifice of conjectures with too great a certainty for which no
adequate grounds are to be found in the material itself. I think this
reproach would be unjustified. I have already stressed the element of
doubt in the introduction, put a query in front of the brackets, so to
speak, and can therefore save myself the trouble of repeating it at
each point inside the brackets.

Some of my own critical observations may continue the discussion.
The kernel of our thesis, the dependence of Jewish monotheism on the
monotheistic episode in Egyptian history, has been guessed and hinted
at by several workers. I need not cite them here, since none of them
has been able to say by what means this influence was exerted. Even
if, as I suggest, it is bound up with the individuality of Moses, we shall
have to weigh other possibilities than the one here preferred. It is not
to be supposed that the overthrow of the official Aton religion com-
pletely put an end to the monotheistic trend in Egypt. The School of
Priests at On, from which it emanated, survived the catastrophe and
might have drawn whole generations after Ikhnaton into the orbit of

knife. . . . In haughty narrowness they looked down on the other peoples
who were unclean and not so near to the gods as they were.’ (After
Erman, The Egybtian Religion, p. 181, ete.)

Naturally we do not forget here the parallels from the life of India.
Whatever gave, by the way, the Jewish poet Heine in the nineteenth
century the idea of complaining about his religion as ‘ the plague trailing
along from the valley of the Nile, the sickly beliefs of the Ancient
Egyptians’ ?

14 . SIGM. FREUD

their religious thought. That Moses performed the deed is quite
thinkable, therefore, even if he did not live in Ikhnaton’s time and
had not come under his personal influence, even if he were simply au
adherent or merely a member oftheschoolofOn. Thisconjecture would
postpone the date of the Exodus and bring it nearer to the time
usually assumed, the thirteenth century ; otherwise it has nothing to
recommend it. We should have to relinquish the insight we had
gained into Moses’ motives and to dispense with the idea of the
Exodus being facilitated by the anarchy prevailing in Egypt. The
kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty following Ikhnaton ruled the country
with a strong hand. All conditions, internal and external, favouring
the Exodus coincide only in the period immediately after the death of
the heretic king.

The Jews possess a rich extra-Biblical literature where the myths
and superstitions are to be found which in the course of centuries were
woven around the gigantic figure of their first leader and the founder
of their religion and which have both hallowed and obscured that
figure. Some fragments of sound tradition which had found no place
in the Pentateuch may lie scattered in that material. One of these
legends describes in an attractive fashion how the ambition of the man
Moses had already displayed itself in his childhood. When Pharaoh
took him into his arms and playfully tossed him high, the little three-
year-old snatched the crown from Pharaoh’s head and placed it on his
own. The king was startled at this omen and took care to consult his
sages.?° Then, again, we are told of victorious battles he fought as an
Egyptian captain in Ethiopia and, in the same connection, that he
fled the country because he had reason to fear the envy of a faction at
court or even the envy of Pharaoh himself. The Biblical story itself
lends Moses certain features in which one is inclined to believe. It
describes him as choleric, hot-tempered—as when in his indignation he
kills the brutal overseer who ill-treated a Jewish workman, or when in
his resentment at the defection of his people he smashes the tables he
has been given on Mount Sinai. Indeed, God himself punished him at
long last for a deed of impatience—we are not told what it was. Since
such a trait does not lend itself to glorification it may very well be
historical truth. Nor can we reject even the possibility that many
character traits the Jews incorporated into their early conception of
God when they made him jealous, stern and implacable, were taken

?% The same anecdote, slightly altered, is to be found in Josephus.

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN ... 15

au fond from their memory of Moses, for in truth it was not an invisible
god, but the man Moses, who had led them out of Egypt.

Another trait imputed to him deserves our special interest. Moses
was said to have been ‘ slow of speech ’—that is to say, he must have
had a speech impediment or inhibition—so that he had to call on
Aaron (who is called his brother) for assistance in his supposed discus-
sions with Pharach. This again may be historical truth and would
serve as a welcome addition to the endeavour to make the picture of
this great man live. It may, however, have another and more impor-
tant significance. The report may, in a slightly distorted way, recall
the fact that Moses spoke another language and was not able to com-
municate with his Semitic Neo-Egyptians without the help of an inter-
preter—at least not at the beginning of their intercourse. Thus a fresh
confirmation of the thesis: Moses was an Egyptian.

It looks now as if the train of thought has come to an end, at least
for the time being. From the surmise that Moses was an Egyptian, be
it proven or not, nothing more can be deduced for the moment. No
historian can regard the Biblical account of Moses and the Exodus as
other than a pious myth, which transformed a remote tradition in the
interest of its own tendencies. How the tradition ran originally we do
not know. What the distorting tendencies were we should like to
guess, but we are kept in the dark by our ignorance of the historical
events. That our reconstruction leaves no room for so many spectacular
features of the Biblical text—the ten plagues, the passage through the
Red Sea, the solemn law-giving on Mount Sinai—will not lead us
astray. But we cannot remain indifferent on finding ourselves in
opposition to the sober historical researches of our time.

These modern historians, well represented by E. Meyer,!t follow
the Biblical text in one decisive point. They concur that the Jewish
tribes, who later on become the people of Israel, at a certain time
accepted a new religion. But this event did not take place in Egypt
nor at the foot of a mount in the Sinai peninsula, but in a place called
Meribat-Qades, an oasis distinguished by its abundance of springs and
wells in the country south of Palestine between the eastern end of the
Sinai peninsula and the western end of Arabia. There they took over
the worship of a god Jahve, probably from the Arabic tribe of Midianites
who lived near-by. Presumably other neighbouring tribes were also
followers of that god.

21 E. Meyer: Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme, 1906.

16 SIGM. FREUD

Jahve was certainly a volcano god. As we know, however,
Egypt has no volcanoes and the mountains of the Sinai peninsula
have never been volcanic ; on the other hand, volcanoes which may
have been active up to a late period are found along the western
border of Arabia. One of these mountains must have been the
Sinai-Horeb which was believed to be Jahve’s abode.*2 In spite of all
the transformations the Biblical text has suffered, we are able to recon-
struct—according to E. Meyer—the original character of the god: he
is an uncanny, blood-thirsty demon who walks by night and shuns the
light of day.2®

The mediator between the people and the god at this birth of a new
religion was called Moses. He was the son-in-law of the Midianite
priest Jethro and was tending his flocks when he received the divine
summons. Jethro visited him in Qade$ to give him instructions.

E. Meyer says, it is true, that he never doubted there was a kernel
of historical truth in the story of the bondage in Egypt and the
catastrophe of the Egyptians,?* but evidently he does not know where
that recognized fact belongs and what to do with it. Only the custom
of eircumcision is he willing to derive from the Egyptians. He enriches
our earlier discussion by two important suggestions. First, that Joshua
asked the people to accept circumcision ‘ to roll away the reproach of
Egypt’; and, secondly, by the quotation from Herodotus that the
Phoenicians (which probably means the Jews) and the Syrians in
Palestine themselves admitted having learned the custom of circum-
cision from the Egyptians.?° But an Egyptian Moses does not appeal
to him. ‘ The Moses we know was the ancestor of the priests of Qades ;
he stood therefore in relation to the cult, was a figure of the genealo-
gical myth and not an historical person. So not one of those who has
treated him as an historical person—except those who accept tradition
wholesale as historical truth—has succeeded in filling this empty shape
with any content, in describing him as a concrete personality ; they
have had nothing to tell us about what he achieved or about his
mission in history ’.26

On the other hand, Meyer never wearies of telling us about Moses’
relation to Qade3 and Midian. ‘ The figure of Moses so closely bound

2: The Biblical text retains certain passages telling us that Jahve
descended from Sinai to Meribat-Qade£.

= L.c., pp. 38, 58. 2 L.c.,p. 40.

28 1.c., P. 449. 2° L.c., P. 451.

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPIIAN ... 17

up with Midian and the holy places in the desert. . .’?” ‘ This figure
of Moses is inextricably associated with Qades (Massa and Meriba) ;
the relationship with a Midianite priest by marriage completes the
picture. The connection with the Exodus, on the other hand, and the
story of his youth in its entirety, are absolutely secondary and are
merely the consequence of Moses having to fit into a connected, con-
tinuous story.?®’ He also observes that allthe characteristics contained
in the story of Moses’ youth were later omitted. ‘ Moses in Midian is
no longer an Egyptian and Pharaoh’s grandson, but a shepherd to
whom Jahve reveals himself. In the story of the ten plagues his
former relationships are no longer mentioned, although they could have
been used very efiectively, and the order to kill the Israelite first-born
is entirely forgotten. In the Exodus and the perishing of the Egyptians
Moses hasno part atall; heisnot even mentioned. The characteristics
of a hero, which the childhood story presupposes, are entirely absent in
the later Moses ; he is only the man of God, a performer of miracles,
provided with supernatural powers by Jahve ’.®

We cannot escape the impression that this Moses of Qade$ and
Midian, to whom tradition could even ascribe the erection of a brazen
serpent as a healing god, is quite a different person from the august
Egyptian we had deduced, who disclosed to his people a religion in
which all magic and sorcery were most strietlyabhorred. Our Egyptian
Moses differs perhaps no less from the Midian Moses than the universal
god Aton differed from the demon Jahve on his divine mountain.
And if we concede any measure of truth to the information furnished
by modern historians, then we have to admit that the thread we
wished to draw from the surmise that Moses was an Egyptian has
broken off for the second time: this time, so it seems, without any
hope of its being tied again.

v
A way unexpectedly presents itself, however, out of this difficulty
too. The efiorts to recognize in Moses a figure transcending the priest
of Qade$, and confirming the renown with which tradition had invested
him, were continued after E. Meyer by Gressmann and others. In
1922 E. Sellin made a discovery of decisive importance.?° He found
in the book of the prophet Hosea—second half of the eighth century—

2? L.c., D. 49. 28 L.c., p. 72. 29 L.c., P. 47.
0 E. Sellin, Mose umd seine Bedeutung fuer die israclitisch-juedische
Religionsgeschichte, 1922.
2

18 SIGM. FREUD

unmistakable traces of a tradition to the effect that the founder of
their religion (Moses) met a violent end in a rebellion of his stubborn
and refractory people. The religion he had instituted was at the same
time abandoned. This tradition is not restricted to Hosea: it recurs in
the writings of most of the later prophets; indeed, according to Sellin,
it was the basis of all the later expectations of the Messiah. Towards
the end of the 'Babylonian exile the hope arose among the Jewish
people that the man they had so callously murdered would return from
the realm of the dead and lead his contrite people—-and perhaps not
only his people—into the land of eternal bliss. The palpable connec-
tions with the destiny of the Founder of a later religion do not lie in
our present‘course.

Naturally I am not in.a position to decide whether Sellin has
correctly interpreted the relevant passages in the prophets. If he is
right, however, we may regard as historically credible the tradition he
recognized : for such things are not readily invented—there is no
tangible motive for doing so. And if they have really happened the
wish to forget them is easily understood. We need not accept every
detail of the tradition. Sellin thinks that Shittim in the land east of
the Jordan is indicated as the scene of the violent deed. We shall see,
however, that the choice of this locality does not accord with our
argument.

Let us adopt from Sellin the surmise that the Egyptian Moses was
killed by the Jews and the religion he instituted abandoned. It allows
us to spin our thread further without contradicting the trustworthy
results of historicalresearch. But we venture to be independent of the
historians in other respects and to blaze our own trail. The Exodus from
Egypt remains our starting-point. It must have been a considerable
number that left the country with Moses; a small crowd would not
have been worth the while of that ambitious man, with his great
schemes. The immigrants had probably been in the country long
enough to develop into a numerous people. We shall certainly not go
astray, however, if we suppose with the majority of research workers
that only a part of those who later became the Jewish people had
undergone the fate of bondage in Egypt. In other words, the tribe
returning from Egypt combined later in the country between Egypt
and Canaan with other related tribes that had been settled there for
some time. This union, from which was born the people of Israel,
expressed itself in the adoption of a new religion, common to all the
tribes, the religion of Jahve ; according to E. Meyer, this came about

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN... 19

in Qade3 under the influence of the Midianites. Thereupon the people
felt strong enough to undertake the invasion of Canaan. It does not
fit in with this course of events that the catastrophe to Moses and his
religion should have taken place in the land east of the Jordan—it must
have happened a long time before the union.

It is certain that many very diverse elements contributed to the
building up of the Jewish people, but the greatest difference among
them must have depended on whether they had experienced the
sojourn in Egypt and what followed it, or not. From this point of
view we may say that the nation was made up by the union of two
constituents, and it accords with this fact that, after a short period of
political unity, it broke asunder into two parts—the Kingdom of Israet
and the Kingdom of Judah. History loves such restorations, in which
later fusions are redissolved and former separations become once more
apparent. The most impressive example—a very well-known one-—
was provided by the Reformation, when, after an interval of more than
a thousand years, it brought to light again the frontier between the
Germania that had been Roman and the part that had always remained
independent. With the Jewish people we cannot verify such a faithful
reproduction of the former state of affairs. Our knowledge of those
times is too uncertain to permit the assumption that the northern King-
dom had absorbed the original settlers, the southern those returning
from Egypt ; but the later dissolution, in this case also, could not have
been unconnected with the earlier union. The former Egyptians were
probably fewer than the others, but they proved to be on a higher level
culturally. They exercised a more important influence on the later
development of the people because they brought with them a tradition
the others lacked.

Perhaps they brought something else, something more tangible
than a tradition. Among the greatest riddles of Jewish prehistoric
times is that concerning the antecedents of the Levites. They are said
to have been derived from one of the twelve tribes of Israel, the tribe
of Levi, but no tradition has ever ventured to pronounce on where
that tribe originally dwelt or what portion of the conquered country of
Canaan had been allotted to it. They occupied the most important
priestly positions, but yet they were distinguished from the priests. A
Levite is not necessarily a priest ; it is not the name of a caste. Our
supposition about the person of Moses suggests an explanation. It is
not credible that a great gentleman like the Egyptian Moses approached
a people strange to him without an escort. He must have brought his

20 SIGM. FREUD

retinue with him, his nearest adherents, his scribes, his servants. These
were the original Levites. Tradition maintains that Moses was a
Levite. This seemsa transparent distortion of theactualstate of affairs:
the Levites were Moses’ people. This solution is supported by what I
mentioned in my previous essay: that in later times we find Egyptian
names only among the Levites.®! We may suppose that a fair number
of these Moses people escaped the fate that overtook him and his
religion. They increased in the following generations and fused with the
people among whom they lived, but they remained faithful to their
master, honoured his memory and retained the tradition of his teach-
ing. At the time of the union with the followers of Jahve they formed
an influential minority, culturally superior to the rest.

I suggest—and it is only a suggestion so far—that between the
downfall of Moses and the founding of a religion at Qade$ two genera-
tions were born and vanished, that perhaps even a century elapsed. I
do not see my way to determine whether the Neo-Egyptians—as I
should like to call those who returned from Egypt in distinction to the
other Jews—met with their blood relations after these had already
accepted the Jahve religion or before that had happened. Perhaps the
latter is more likely. It makes no difference to the final result. What
happened at Qade$ was a compromise, in which the part taken by the
Moses tribe is unmistakable.

Here we may call again on the custom of circumcision which—a
kind of ‘ Leitfossil ’—has repeatedly rendered us important services.
This custom also became the law in the Jahve religion, and—since it is
inextricably connected with Egypt—its adoption must signify a con-
cession to the people of Moses. They—or the Levites among them—
would not forgo this sign of their consecration. They wanted to save
so much of their old religion, and for that price they were willing to
recognize the new deity and all that the Midian priests had to say about
him. Possibly they managed to obtain still other concessions. We
have already mentioned that Jewish ritual ordains a certain economy
in the use of the name of God. Instead of Jahve they had to say
Adonai, It is tempting to fit this commandment into our argument,
but that is merely a surmise. The prohibition upon uttering the name
of God is, as is well known, a primsval taboo. Why exactly it was

® This assumption fits in well with what Yahuda says about the
Egyptian influence on early Jewish writings. See A.S. Yahuda, Die Sprache
des Pentateuch in ihren Beziehungen zum Aegyptischen, 1929.

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN... 21

renewed in the Jewish commandments is not quite clear ; it is not out
of the question that this happened under the influence of a new motive.
There is no reason to suppose that the commandment was consistently
followed ; the word Jahve was freely used in the formation of per-
sonal theophorous names, i.e, in combinations such as Jochanan, Jehu,
Joshua. Yet there is something peculiar about this name. It is well
known that Biblical exegesis recognizes two sources of the Hexateuch.
They are called J and E because the one uses the holy name of Jahve,
the other that of Elohim: Elohim, it is true, not Adonai, But we may
here quote the remark of one writer : the different names are a distinct
sign of originally different gods.3?

We admitted the adherence to the custom of circumeision as
evidence that at the founding of the new religion at Qade$ a com-
promise had taken place. What it consisted in we learn from both J
and E; the two accounts coincide and must therefore go back to a
common source, either a written source or an oral tradition. The
guiding purpose was to prove the greatness and power of the new god
Jahve. Since the Moses people attached such great importance to
their experience of the Exodus from Egypt, the deed of freeing them
had to be ascribed to Jahve ; it had to be adorned with features that
proved the terrific grandeur of this volcano god, such as, for example,
the pillar of smoke which changed to one of fire by night, or the storm
that parted the waters so that the pursuers were drownced by thereturn-
ing floods of water. The Exodus and the founding of the new religion
were thus brought close together in time, the long interval between
them being denied. The bestowal of the Ten Commandments too was
said to have taken place, not at QadeS, but at the foot of the Holy
Mountain amidst the signs of a volcanic eruption. This description,
however, did a serious wrong to the memory of the man Moses; it
was he, and not the volcano god, who had freed his people from
Egypt. Some compensation was therefore due to him, and it was
given by transposing Moses to Qade$ or to the mount Sinai-Horeb and
putting him in the place of the Midianite priest. We shall consider
later how this solution satisfied another, irresistibly urgent, tendenoy.
By its means a balance, so to speak, was established : Jahve was
allowed to extend his reach to Egypt from his mountain in Midia,
while the existence and activity of Moses were transferred to Qade$
and the country east of the Jordan. This is how he became one with

#2 Gressmann, l.c., P. 54

22 SIGM. FREUD

the person who later established a religion, the son-in-law of the
Midianite Jethro, the man to whom he lent his name Moses. We know
nothing personal, however, about this other Moses—he is entirely
obscured by the first, the Egyptian Moses—except possibly from clues
provided by the contradictions to be found in the Bible in the charac-
terization of Moses. He is often enough described as masterful, hot-
tempered, even violent, and yet it is also said of him that he was the
most patient and sweet-tempered of allmen. It is clear that the latter
qualities would have been of no use to the Egyptian Moses who planned
such great and difficult projects for his people. Perhaps they belonged
to the other, the Midianite. I think we are justified in separating the
two persons from each other and in assuming that the Egyptian Moses
never was in Qade$ and had never heard the name of Jahve, whereas
the Midianite Moses never set foot in Egypt and knew nothing of Aton.
In order to make the two people into one, tradition or legend had to
bring the Egyptian Moses to Midian ; and we have seen that more than
one explanation was given for it.

vI

I] am quite prepared to hear anew the reproach that I-have put
forward my reconstruction of the early history of the tribe of Israel
with undue and unjustified certitude. I shall not feel this criticism to
be too harsh, since it finds an echo in my own judgement. I know
myself that this reconstruction has its weak places, but it also has its
strong ones On the whole the arguments in favour of continuing this
work in the same direction prevail. The Biblical record before us con-
tains valuable, nay invaluable, historical evidence. It has, however,
been distorted by tendentious influences and elaborated by the pro-
ducts of poetical invention. In our work we have already been able
to divine.one of these distorting tendencies. This discovery shall
guide us on our way. It is a hint to uncover other similar distorting
influences. If we find reasons for recognizing the distortions produced
by them, then we shall be able to bring to light more of the true course
of events.

Let us begin by marking what critical research work on the Bible
has to say about how the Hexateuch—the five Books of Moses and the
Book of Joshua, for they alone are of interest to us here—came to be
written.” The oldest source is considered to be J, the Jahvistic, in

” Encyclopedia Britannica, XI. Edition, 1910, Art. : Bible.

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN .. . 23

the author of which the most modern research workers think they can
recognize the priest Ebjatar, a contemporary of King David.# A
little later, it is not known how much later, comes the so-called
Elohistic, belonging to the northern kingdom.3® After the destruction
of this kingdom, in 722 B.c.,a Jewish priest combined portions of J and
E and added his own contributions. His compilation is designated as
JE. In the seventh century Deuteronomy, the fifth book, was added,
it being alleged that the whole of it had been newly found in the
Temple. In the timeafter the destruction of the Temple, in 586 2.c.,
during the Exile and after the return, is placed the re-writing called
the Priestly Code. The fifth century saw a definitive revision, and
since the work has not been materially altered.3°

The history of King David and his time is most probably the work
of one of his contemporaries. It is real history, five hundred years
before Herodotus, the “Father of History’. One would begin to
understand this achievement if one assumed, in terms of my hypothesis,
Egyptian influence.?” The suggestion has even been made that early
Israelites, the scribes of Moses, had a hand in the invention of the first
alphabet.?® How far the accounts of former times are based on earlier
sources or on oral tradition, and what interval elapsed between an
event and its fixation by writing, we are naturally unable to know.
The text, however, as we find it to-day tells us enough about its own

% See Auerbach, Wüste und Gelobtes Land, 1932.

35 Astruc in 1735 was the first to distinguish between Jahvist and
Elohist.

36 It is historically certain that the Jewish type was definitely fixed as
a result of the reforms by Esra and Nehemiah in the fifth century n.c.,
therefore after the Exile, during the reign of the friendly Persians. Accord-
ing to our reckoning approximately 900 years had then passed since the
appearance of Moses. By these reforms the regulations aiming at the
consecration of the chosen people were taken seriously: the separation
from the other tribes was put into force by forbidding mixed marriages ;
the Pentateuch, the real compilation of the law, was codified in its definitive
form ; the re-writing known as the Priestiy Code was finished. It seems
certain, however, that the reform did not adopt any new tendencies, but
simply took over and consolidated former suggestions.

»? C#. Yahuda, Ic.

3% If they were bound by the prohibition against making images they
had even a motive for forsaking the hieroglyphic picture writing when they
adapted their written signs for the expression of a new language.

24 SIGM. FREUD

history. Two distinct forces, diametrically opposed to each other,
have left their traces on it. On the one hand, certain transformations
got to work on it, falsifying the text in accord with secret tendencies,
maiming and extending it until it was turned into its opposite. On
the other hand, an indulgent piety reigned over it, anxious to keep
everything as it stood, indifferent to whether the details fitted together
or nullified one another, Thus almost everywhere there can be found
striking omissions, disturbing repetitions, palpable contradictions,
signs of things the communication of which was never intended. The
distortion of a text is not unlike a murder. The difficulty lies not in
the execution of the deed but in the doing away with the traces. One
could wish to give the word ‘ distortion ’ the double meaning to which
it has a right, although it is no longer used in this sense. It should
mean not only ‘to change the appearance of’, but also “to wrench
apart’, “to put in another place’. That is why in so many textual
distortions we may count on finding the suppressed and abnegated
material hidden away somewhere, though in an altered shape and
torn out of its original connection. Only—it is not always easy to
recognize it.

The distorting tendencies we want to detect must have influenced
the traditions before they were written down. One of them, perhaps
the strongest of all, we have alrcady discovered. We said that when
the new god Jahve in Qade$ was instituted something had to be done
to glorify him. It is truer to say: He had to be established, made
room for; traces of former religions had to be extinguished. This
seems to have been done successfully with the religion of the settled
tribes ; no more was heard of it. With the returning tribes the task
was not so easy; they were determined not to be deprived of the
Exodus from Egypt, the man Moses and the custom of eircumeision.
It is true they had been in Egypt, but they had left it again, and from
now on every trace of Egyptian influence was to be denied. Moses was
disposed of by displacing him to Midian and Qades and making him
into one person with the priest who founded the Jahve religion.
Circumeision, the most compromising sign of the dependence on
Egypt, had to be retained, but, in spite of all the existing evidence,
every endeavour was made to divorce this custom from Egypt. The
enigmatic passage in Exodus, written in an almost incomprehensible
style, saying that God had been wroth with Moses for neglecting eir-
cumeision and that his Midianite wife saved his life by a speedy
operation, can be interpreted only as a deliberate contradiction of the

IF MOSES WAS AN EGIFIIAN.. . . 25

significant truth. We shall soon come across another invention for the
purpose of invalidating a piece of inconvenient evidence.

It is hardly to be described as a new tendency—it is only the con-
tinuation of the same one—when we find an endeavour completely to
deny that Jahve was a new god, one alien to the Jews. For that
purpose the myths of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are
drawn upon. Jahve maintains that He had been the God of those
patriarchs ; it is true—and He has to admit this Himself—they did not
worship Him under this name.®

He does not add under what other name He used to be worshipped.
Here the opportunity was taken to deal a decisive blow at the Egyptian
origin of the custom of circumcision. Jahve was said to have already
demanded it from Abraham, to have instituted it as sign of the bond
between him and Abraham’s descendants. This, however, was a parti-
cularly clumsy invention. If one wished to use a sign to distinguish
someone from other people, one would choose something that the others
did not possess—certainly not something that millions could shew.
An Israelite, finding himself in Egypt, would have had to recognize
all Egyptians as brothers, bound by the same bond, brothers in
Jahve. The fact that circumeision was native to the Egyptians
could not possibly have been unknown to the Israelites who
created the text of the Bible. The passage from Joshua quoted by
E. Meyer freely admits this, but nevertheless the fact had at all costs
to be denied.

We cannot expect religious myths to pay scrupulous attention to
logical connections. Otherwise the feeling of the people might have
taken exception—justifiably so—to the behaviour of a deity who makes
a covenant with his patriarchs containing mutual obligations, and then
ignores his human partners for centuries until it suddenly occurs to
him to reveal himself again to their descendants. Still more astonishing
is the conception of a god suddenly “ choosing ’ a people, making it
“his” people and himself its own god. T believe it is the only case in
the history of human religions. In other cases the people and their
god belong inseparably together ; they are one from the beginning,
Sometimes, it is true, we hear of a people adopting another god, but
never of a god choosing a new people. Perhaps we approach an under-
standing of this unique happening when we reflect on the connection

3% The restrictions in the use of the new name do not become any more
comprehensible through this, though much more suspect.

26 SIGM. FREUD

between Moses and the Jewish people. Moses had stooped to the Jews,
'had made them his people ; they were his “ chosen people ’.t°

There was yet another purpose in bringing the patriarchs into the
new Jahve religion. They had lived in Canaan ; their memory was
connected with certain localities in the country. Possibly they them-
selves had been Canaanite heroes or local divinities whom the immigrat-
ing Israelites had adopted for their early history. By evoking them
one gave proof, so to speak, of having been born and bred in the
country, and denied the odium that clings to the alien conqueror. It
wasa clever turn : the god Jahve gave them only what their ancestors
had once possessed.

In the later contributions to the Biblical text the tendency to
avoid mentioning Qade$ met with success. The site of the founding of
the new religion definitely became the divine mountains Sinai-Horeb.

40 Jahve was undoubtediy a volcano god. ‚There was no reason for
the inhabitants of Egypt to worship him. Iam certainly not the first to
be struck by the similarity of the name Jahve to the root of the name of
another god : Jupiter, Jovis. The composite name Jochanaan, made up
in part from the Hebrew word Jahve and having a rather similar meaning
to that of Godfrey or its Punic equivalent Hannibal, has become one of the
most popular names of European Christendom in the forms of Johann,
John, Jean, Juan. When the Italians reproduce it in the shape of Giovanni
and then call one day of the week Giovedi they bring to light again a simi-
larity which perhaps means nothing or possibly means very much. Far-
reaching possibilities, though very insecure ones, open out here. In those
dark centuries which historical research is only beginning to explore, the
countries around the eastern basin of the Mediterranean were apparently the
scene of frequent and violent volcanic eruptions which were bound to make
the deepest impression on the inhabitants. Evans supposes that the final
destruction of the palace of Minos at Knossos was also the result of
an earthquake. In Crete, as probably everywhere in the AEgean world,
the great Mother Goddess was then worshipped. The observation that she
was unable to guard her house against the attack of a stronger power might
have contributed to her having to cede her place to a male deity, where-
upon the volcano god had the first right to replace her. Zeus still bears
the name of ‘the Earth-shaker.’ There is hardly a doubt that in those
obscure times mother deities were replaced by male gods (perhaps
originally their sons). Specially impressive is the fate of Pallas Athene,
who wasno doubt the local form of the mother deity ; through the religious
revolution she was reduced to a daughter, robbed of her own mother, and
eternally debarred from motherhood by the taboo of virginity.

JF MOSES WAS AN EGYFILIAN . . . 27

The motive is not clearly visible ; perhaps they did not want to be
reminded of the influence of Midian. But all later distortions, especi-
ally those of the Priestly Code, serve another aim. There was no
longer any need to alter in a particular direction descriptions of happen-
ings of long ago; that had long been done. On the other hand, an
endeavour was made to date back to an early time certain laws and
institutions of the present, to base them as a rule on the Mosaic law
and to derive from this their claim to holiness and binding force.
However much the picture of past times in this way became falsified,
the procedure does not lack a certain psychological justification. It
reflected the fact that in the course of many centuries—about 800
years had elapsed between the Exodus and the fixation of the Biblical
text by Ezra and Nehemiah—the religion of Jahve had followed a
retrograde development that had culminated in a fusion (perhaps to
the point of actual identity) with the original religion of Moses.

And this is the essential outcome: the fateful content of the
religious history of the Jews.

VII

Among all the events of Jewish prehistory that poets, priests and
historians of a later age undertook to portray there was an outstanding
one the suppression of which was called for by the most obvious and
best of human motives. It was the murder of the great leader and
liberator Moses, which Sellin divined from clues furnished by the
Prophets. Sellin’s presumption cannot be called fanciful; it is
probable enough. Moses, trained in Ikhnaton’s school, employed the
same methods as the king ; he gave commands and forced his religion
on the people.*! Perhaps Moses’ doctrine was still more uncompromis-
ing than that of his Master ; he had no need to retain any connection
with the religion of the Sun God since the school of On would have no
importance for his alien people. Moses met with the same fate as
Ikhnaton, the fate that awaits all enlightened despots. The Jewish
people of Moses was quite as unable to bear such a highly spiritualized
religion, to find in what it offered satisfaction for their needs, as were
the Egyptians of the Eighteenth Dynasty. In both cases the same
thing happened : those who felt themselves kept in tutelage, or who
felt dispossessed, revolted and threw off the burden of a religion that
had been forced on them. But while the tame Egyptians waited until

#1 In those times any other form of inflüence would scarcely have been
Dossible.

28 SIGM. FREUD

fate had removed the sacred person of their Pharach, the savage
Semites took their destiny into their own hands and did away with
their tyrant.t®

Nor can we maintain that the Biblical text preserved to us does not
prepare us for such an end to Moses. The account of the ‘ Wandering
in the Wilderness —which might stand for the time of Moses’ rule—
describes a series of grave revolts against his authority which, by
Jahve’s command, were suppressed with savage chastisement. It is
easy to imagine that one of those revolts came to another end than the
text admits. The people’s falling away from the new religion is also
mentioned in the text, though as a mere episode. It is the story of the
golden calf, where by an adroit turn the breaking of the tables of the
law tablets—which has to be understood symbolically (= “he has
broken the law ’)—is ascribed to Moses himself and imputed to his
angry indignation.

There came a time when the people regretted the murder of Moses
and tried to forget it. This was certainly so at the time of the coming
together at Qade8. If, however, the Exodus were brought nearer in
time to the founding of their religion in the oasis, and one allowed
Moses—instead of the other founder—to help in it, then not only were
the claims of the Moses people satisfied, but the painful fact of his
violent removal was also successfully denied. In reality it is most
unlikely that Moses could have participated in the events at Qade8,
even if his life had not been shortened.

Here we must try to elucidate the sequence of these events. We
have placed the Exodus from Egypt in the time after the extinction of
the Eighteenth Dynasty (1350). It might have happened then or a
little later, for the Egyptian chroniclers included the subsequent years
of anarchy in the reign of Haremhab, the king who brought it to an
end and who reigned until 1315. The next aid in fixing the chronology
—and it is the only one—is given by the stele of Merneptah (1225-
1215), which extols the victory over Isiraal (Israel) and the destruction
‚of their seeds (sic). Unfortunately the value of this stele is doubtful ;
it is taken to be evidence that Israelite tribes were at that date already

“2 It is truly remarkable how seldom we hear during the millennia of
Egyptian history of violent depositions or assassinations of a Pharach. A
comparison with Assyrian history, for example, must increase this astonish-
ment. The reason may, of course, be that with the Egyptians historical
recording served exclusively official purposes.

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN... 29

settled in Canaan.t® E. Meyer rightly concludes from this stele that
Merneptah could not have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus, as one
had previously been wont to assume. The Exodus must belong to an
earlier period. The question who was Pharaoh at the time of the
Exodus appears to me an idleone. There was no Pharach at that time,
because the Exodus happened during the interregnum. But the
Merneptah stele does not throw any light on the possible date of the
fusion and the acceptance of the new religton in Qade$. AIl we can
say with certainty is that they took place some time between 1350 and
1215. Within this century we assume the Exodus to have been very
near to the first date, the events in Qade$ not far from the second.
The greater part of the period we would reserve for the interval
between the two events. A fairly long time would be necessary for
the passions of the returning tribes to cool down after the murder of
Moses and for the influence of the Moses people, the Levites, to have
become so strong as the compromise in Qade$ presupposes. Two
generations, sixty years, might suffice, but only just. The date
inferred from the stele of Merneptah falls too early, and as we know
that in our hypothesis one assumption only rests on another we have
to admit that this discussion shews a weak spot in the construction.
Unfortunately everything connected with the settling of the Jewish
people in Canaan is highly obscure and confused. We might, of course,
use the expedient of supposing that the name in the Israel stele does
not refer to the tribes whose fate we are trying to follow and who later
on were united in the people of Israel. After all, the name of the
Habiru (= Hebrews) from the Amarna time was also passed on to this
people.

Whenever it was that the different tribes were united into a nation
by accepting the same religion it might very well have been an occur-
rence of no great importance for the history of the world. The new
religion might have been swept away by the stream of events, Jahve
would then have taken his place in the procession of erstwhile gods
which Flaubert visualized, and of his people all the twelve tribes
would have been ‘ lost ’, not only the ten for whom the Anglo-Saxons
have so long been searching. The god Jahve, to whom the Midianite
Moses led a new people, was probably in no way a remarkable being.
A rude, narrow-minded local god, violent and blood-thirsty, he had
promised his adherents to give them ‘a land flowing with milk and
honey ’ and he encouraged them to rid the country of its present

30 SIGM. FREUD

inhabitants ‘ with the edge of the sword’’. It is truly astonishing that
in spite of all the revisions in the Biblical text so much was allowed to
stand whereby we may recognize his original nature. It is not even
sure that his religion was a true monotheism, that it denied the
character of god to other divinities. It probably sufficed that one's
own god was more powerful than all strange gods. When the sequence
of events took quite another course than such beginnings would lead
us to expect there can be only one reason for it. To one part of the
people the Egyptian Moses had given another and more spiritual con-
ception of God, a single God who embraces the whole world, one as all-
loving as he was all-powerful, who—averse to all ceremonial and
magic—set humanity as its highest aim alife of truth and justice. For,
incomplete as our information about the ethical side of the Aton
religion may be, it is surely significant that Ikhnaton regularly
described himself in his inscriptions as “living in Maat’ (truth,
justice).“# In the long run it did not matter that the people, probably
after a very short time, renounced the teaching of Moses and removed
the man himself. The tradition itself remained and its influence
reached—though only slowly, in the course of centuries—the aim that
was denied to Moses himself. The god Jahve attained undeserved
honour when, from Qade& onward, Moses’ deed of liberation was put
down to his account ; but he had to pay dear for this usurpation. The
shadow of the god whose place he had taken became stronger than
himself ; at the end of the historical development there arose beyond
his Being that of the forgotten Mosaic God. None can doubt that it
was only the idea of this other God that enabled the people of Israel
to surmount all their hardships and to survive until our time.

It is no longer possible to determine the part the Levites played in
the final vietory of the Mosaic God over Jahve. When the compromise
at Qade$ was effected they had raised their voice for Moses, their
memory being still green of the master whose followers and country-
men they were. During the centuries since then the Levites had
become one with the people or with the priesthood and it had become
the main task of the priests to develop and supervise the ritual,
besides caring for the holy texts and revising them in accordance with
their purposes. But was not all this sacrifice and ceremonial at bottom

“4 His hymns lay stress on not only the universality and oneness of
God, but also His loving kindness for all creatures ; they invite believers
to enjoy nature and its beauties. Cp. Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience.

IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN ... 31

only magic and black art, such as the old doctrine of Moses had uncon-
ditionally condemned ? There arose from the midst of the people an
unending succession of men, not necessarily descended from Moses’
people, but seized by the great and powerful tradition which had
gradually grown in darkness, and it was these men, the prophets, who
sedulously preached the old Mosaic doctrine: the Deity spurns
sacrifice and ceremonial; Hedemands only belief and a life of truth and
justice (Maat). The efforts of the prophets met with enduring success ;
the doctrines with which they re-established the old belief became the
permanent content of the Jewish religion. It is honour enough for the
Jewish people that it has kept alive such a tradition and produced men
who Ient it their voice, —even if the stimulus had first come from
outside, from a great stranger.

This description of events would leave me with a feeling of uncer-
tainty were it not that ‘I can refer to the judgement of other, expert,
research workers who see the importance of Moses for the history of
Jewish religion in the same light, although they do not recognize his
Egyptian origin. Sellin says, for example: 4° ‘ Therefore we have to
picture the true religion of Moses, the belief he proclaimed in one,
ethical god, as being from now on, as a matter of course, the possession
of a small circle within the people. We cannot expect to find it from
the start in the official cult, the priests’ religion, in the general belief
of the people. All we can expect is that here and there a spark flies
up from the spiritual fire he had kindled, that his ideas have not died
out, but have quietly influenced beliefs and customs until, sooner or
later, under the influence of special events, or through some personality
particularly immersed in this belief, they broke forth again more
strongly and gained dominance with the broad mass of the people.
It is from this point of view that we have to regard the early religious
history of the old Israelites. Were we to reconstruct the Mosaic
religion after the pattern laid down in the historical documents that
describe the religion of the first five centuries in Canaan we should
fall into the worst methodical error.’ Volz 4% expresses himself still
more explicitly. He says: “ that the heaven-soaring work of Moses
was at first hardly understood and feebly carried out, until during the
course of centuries it penetrated more and more into the spirit of the
people and at last found kindred souls in the great prophets who
continued the work of the lonely Founder.’

«5 Sellin, L.c., p. 52.
4 Paul Volz: ‘Mose ’, 1907, P. 64.

32 SIGM, FREUD

With this I have come to an end, my sole purpose having been to
fit the figure of an Egyptian Moses into the framework of Jewish
history. I may now express my conclusion in the shortest formula :
To the well-known dwality of that history—two peoples who fuse
together to form one nation, two kingdoms into which this nation divides,
two names for the Deity in the source of the Bible—we add two new
ones: the founding of iwo new religions, the first one ousted by the
second and yet reappearing victorious, iwo founders of religions,
who are both called by the same name Moses and whose personalities
we have to separate from each other. And all these dualities are
necessary consequences of the first: one section of the people passed
through what may properly be termed a traumatic experience which
the other was spared. There still remains much to discuss, to explain
and to assert. Only then would the interest in our purely historical
study be. fully warranted. In what exactly consists the intrinsic
nature of a tradition, and in what resides its peculiar power, how
impossible it is to deny the personal influence of individual great men
on the history of the world, what profanation of the grandiose multi-
formity of human life we commit if we recognize as sole motives those
springing from material needs, from what sources certain ideas,
especially religious ones, derive the power with which they subjugate
individuals and peoples—to study all this on the particular case of
Jewish history would be an alluring task.. Such a continuation of my
essay would link up with conclusions laid down twenty-five years ago
in ‘ Totem and Taboo’. But I hardly trust my powers any further.