‘Chenephres’ drives Moses out of Egypt
by Damien F. Mackey Ancient tradition (the Jewish-Hellenistic, Artapanus) has served us well by preserving the names of Moses’s Egyptian foster-mother, “Merris” and her pharaonic husband, “Chenephres”, thereby enabling us to situate Moses at the time of pharaoh Chephren and his wife, Meres-ankh. This was the great Pyramid and Sphinx building age of Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus had written that the oppressed Israelites built (amongst other things) pyramids for the pharaohs ( Antiquities, Bk. II). Moses would have begun, as a young adult, by officiating for the infanticidal ruler, Khufu (Cheops), the “new king who knew not Joseph” (Exodus 1:8). But his mature strides towards becoming a famous character in ancient Egypt (Acts 7:22): “ Moses … was powerful in speech and action”, would have become most manifest during the next reign, that of pharaoh Chephren (“Chenephres”). In Sixth Dynast...