Abimelech of Genesis may be the legendary Nebka of Egypt
by
Damien F. Mackey
N. Grimal refers to another Aha (that being the name of Abraham’s
proposed contemporary, Hor-Aha) as living at the same time as Khety II.
The king of Egypt at the time of Abram (Abraham) I have identified, e.g. in my article:
From Genesis to Hernan Cortes. Volume Four: Era of Abraham
as the first ruler of the First Dynasty, the very long-reigning Menes Hor-Aha (‘Min’).
And I have been able - following the structure of the Book of Genesis (toledôt and chiasmus) - to link that ruler with Abimelech known to Abram (Genesis 20:2) and to Isaac (26:1).
that is, “Father Ra is King”.
Before I had come to the conclusion that Abram’s ruler of Egypt belonged to the First Dynasty, I had thought - the same as David Rohl, although quite independently of him - that he must be the Tenth Dynasty’s Khety.
Rohl numbers him as Khety IV Nebkaure, whereas I had numbered him as Khety III (though N. Grimal has a Khety II Nebkaure, A History of Egypt, pp. 144, 148).
If the so-called Tenth Dynasty were really to be located this early in time, I had thought, then this would have had major ramifications for any attempted reconstruction of Egyptian history. Having Abram’s Egyptian ruler situated in the Tenth Dynasty fitted well with my view then, at least, that Joseph, who arrived on the scene about two centuries after Abraham, had belonged to the Eleventh Dynasty (as well as to the Third, as Imhotep).
Although I would later drop from my revision the notion of Khety (be he II, III or IV) as Abraham’s king of Egypt, not being able to connect him securely to the Old Kingdom era, I am now inclined to return to it.
Previously I had written on this
So far, however, I have not been able to establish any compelling link between the 1st and 10th Egyptian dynasties (perhaps Aha “Athothis” in 1 can connect with “Akhthoes” in 10). Nevertheless, that pharaoh Khety appears to have possessed certain striking likenesses to Abram’s [king] has not been lost on David Rohl as well, who, in From Eden to Exile: The Epic History of the People of the Bible (Arrow Books, 2003), identified the “Pharaoh” with Khety (Rohl actually numbers him as Khety IV). And he will further incorporate the view of the Roman author, Pliny, that Abram’s “Pharaoh” had a name that Rohl considers to be akin to Khety’s prenomen: Nebkaure.
Here, for what it is worth, is what I have written about pharaoh Khety III:
There is a somewhat obscure incident in 10th dynasty history, associated with … Wahkare Khety III and the nome of Thinis, that may possibly relate to the biblical incident [of “Pharaoh” and Abram’s wife]. It should be noted firstly that Khety III is considered to have had to restore order in Egypt after a general era of violence and food shortage, brought on says N. Grimal by “the onset of a Sahelian climate, particularly in eastern Africa” [A History of Ancient Egypt, Blackwell, 1994, p. 139]. Moreover, Khety III’s “real preoccupation was with northern Egypt, which he succeeded in liberating from the occupying populations of Bedouin and Asiatics” [ibid., p. 145]. Could these eastern nomads have been the famine-starved Syro-Palestinians of Abram’s era - including the Hebrews themselves - who had been forced to flee to Egypt for sustenance? And was Khety III referring to the Sarai incident when, in his famous Instruction addressed to his son, Merikare, he recalled, in regard to Thinis (ancient seat of power in Egypt):
Lo, a shameful deed occurred in my time:
The nome of This was ravaged;
Though it happened through my doing,
I learned it after it was done.
[Emphasis added].
Cf. Genesis 12:17-19:
But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai ....
So Pharaoh called Abram, and said,
‘What is this you have done to me?
Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?
Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’? so that I took her for my wife?
Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone’.
It may now be possible to propose some (albeit tenuous) links between the era of Khety and what is considered to be the far earlier Old Kingdom period to which I would assign Abraham. N. Grimal refers to another Aha (that being the name of Abraham’s proposed contemporary, Hor-ha) as living at the same time as Khety II.
Another tentative suggestion would be that the legendary Nebka, ruler of Egypt, whom Grimal and the likes find difficult to locate precisely in early Egyptian history, was Nebkaure, Nebkare, the traditional ruler of Egypt at the time of Abraham – and Khety Nebkaure according to David Rohl.
This name, in turn, Nebka, may then allow for a link also with Raneb, whose name we found is like Abimelech.
There may be more yet to this king, since “Egyptologist Jochem Kahl argues that Weneg was the same person as king Raneb …”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weneg_(pharaoh)
If Menes Hor-Aha (‘Min’) had really reigned for more than sixty years (Manetho-Africanus), then he is likely to have accumulated many other names and titles.
We may need to start investigating First, Second and Tenth Dynasty inter-connections.
Comments