Joseph and Moses loom large in Egyptian dynastic history
by Damien F. Mackey Joseph and Moses serve to knit together Egypt’s early dynastic history, and they even bring into synchronicity the Old Kingdom with the so-called ‘Middle’ Kingdom. Introduction Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) renders to Joseph the highest praise (49:15): “… no man like Joseph has been born , and his bones are cared for”. Joseph, a saviour of Egypt during the Famine, may have said this very thing of himself. For, in what was one of his many Egyptian guises, as I think (see below), he will say: “I am a man without equal …. I am the front of people and the back of people because (my) like will not exist; he will not exist. (My) like could not have been born; he was not born”. Moses, on the other hand, would probably never have said anything like this about himself. Although it was later written of him that (Acts 7:22): “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful ...
