Moses : The Righteous Sky Gazer [1 ed.] 9781443867825, 9781443862158

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Moses: The Righteous Sky Gazer

Moses: The Righteous Sky Gazer

By

Shlomo Giora Shoham

Moses: The Righteous Sky Gazer, by Shlomo Giora Shoham This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Shlomo Giora Shoham All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6215-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6215-8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vii Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 My Formative Years Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 11 Ozarzip Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 20 The New City and the New Religion Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 35 The Habiru Priesthood Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 52 Marit-Aten Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 66 The Habiru Religion Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 86 A Visit to the New Capital Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 108 Murder and Flight Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 142 A Hasty Marriage Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 157 A Visit to General Horemheb Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 168 Preparation for the Exodus

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Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 207 Crossing the Pithom Channel Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 233 Travelling through the Desert Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 249 The Commandments of God Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 261 The Tabernacle and the Weddings of my Children Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 280 The Promised Land Glossary ................................................................................................... 287

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all I would like to acknowledge, with thanks and appreciation, my virtuoso editors, Israel (Izzy) Cohen, without whom this book would not have seen the light of day, and Moshe Abramowitz. I also want to acknowledge the financial help of the Cegla Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Law at the Buchmann Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University and the continued support of its director, my friend, Prof. Sharon Hannes.

CHAPTER ONE MY FORMATIVE YEARS

When I was born, my father, King Amenhotep IV who later changed his name to Akhenaten, gave me the name Mose, a common Egyptian name which means “a man is there.” Quite soon, however, my name was changed to Me-Shu. Me was given to me by my father’s Viceroy who was a Habiru, the chief of a Semitic tribe. My father imported this tribe from Canaan after his monotheistic revolution in which he installed Aten, the Sun God, as the sole God instead of the numerous polytheistic gods of the various theologies in Egypt. The Egyptians resented the demotion of their familiar gods like Amun, Osiris, Horus, Isis, Nephthys and Nut and the myriads of lesser gods. Also, the priests of Amun had administered the religious and civil affairs of Egypt for many years and their demise and expulsion left a vacuum in the power structure of Egypt. My father couldn’t trust any of the priests and functionaries of the demoted Egyptian deities, hence he invited the Habiru to help him administer Egypt with the assurance that these foreigners would be loyal only to him and to no one else. Since my father was totally occupied with his religious revolution and the affairs of state, he entrusted my education to his Viceroy, Ozarzip, who enlightened me not only about the Egyptian religion and culture but also about his own Habiru religion and culture. My relationship with him became so close that eventually I regarded him as my adoptive father. Ozarzip recognized my charismatic potential and predicted that one day I shall become a lawgiver. His ancestors came from Ur KaĞdim (Ur of the Chaldees) and Harran in Mesopotamia. Therefore, he gave me the name Me – which means ‘law’ in Mesopotamian mythology. From a very early age I was fascinated by the sun, moon and stars in the heavens. I wandered around with my head lifted up to the skies. Therefore, my mother, Tiye, named me Shu, “sky” in Egyptian. Tiye was also my grandmother since my father sired me with his own mother. I also had a very bad stammer. That made me reserved, shy and ill at ease. Some words are more difficult for those who stammer to pronounce.

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Consequently, those who stammer do not say what they want but what they can. My stammering was the cause of my most heinous sin in the eyes of the Lord at Mei Meriva. God commanded me to speak to the rock in His name to make the water spout out of it. This would let the People of Israel quench their thirst and stop their whining against me and blaspheming against the Lord. However, I was so stressed when I had to pronounce the Lord’s name that I couldn’t utter a word and I trembled so badly to overcome my stammering paralysis that I was at a loss of what to do. I had to speak to the rock to provide water to the complaining hordes of thirsty Israelites but I was mute and my vocal cords didn’t respond to my strenuous exertion. The need to produce water pushed me into a thoughtless automatic action of hitting the stone with my rod like a zombie and the rock mercifully responded with flowing water. God held it against me that I transgressed against his command to talk to the stone with the divine Logos of his name and forbade me to enter the Promised Land. On a deeper level of understanding, God was vindicated this time as at all the times. He saw that I wasn’t really eager to leave the desert where I inaugurated, formed, and developed under his direct guidance a new universal religion which, in all modesty, had never been accomplished before. The monotony of the desert, its monochromatism, and the wandering makes an anchor for abstraction and an abstract God. Not so the agricultural and urban life in Canaan with its fertility rites and the holy prostitution of the Astarte priestesses. Consequently, the Promised Land was not for me, as God rightly surmised, and the Mei Meriva incident was just a pretext. Incidentally, how did I become a stutterer? Well, my father was omnisexual. He impregnated all the females around him: mother, wife, daughters, concubines, priestesses and maidservants. He also entered into all the males around him including sons. Since he was not only a king but also a god, intercourse with him was a coveted privilege. I, however, resented it since it was painful and disgusting to me. As the result of one such very painful intercourse with my father, I started to stammer badly and avoided all sexual contact both with females and males. When my father saw how badly I was affected by his advances, he left me alone and I retreated into a reclusive loneliness burrowing into myself for signs of transcendental grace. Incidentally, this traumatic experience with my father was the reason why, when I became a lawgiver, I made incest a cardinal sin, together with idolatry and bloodshed. My first years of life were spent in No-Amon, the imperial capital erected by my grandfather Amenhotep III on the eastern bank of the Nile,

My Formative Years

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midway between the Nubian desert and the Eastern desert on the shores of the Red Sea. My grandfather was a megalomaniac. Suffice it to look at the two colossal statutes seated at the two sides of his funerary temple at the Western side of No-Amon. These statutes depicting the emperor in full regalia were meant to stun, awe, strike and overwhelm their viewers. And they succeeded in doing so. King’s emissaries and ambassadors streamed from all over Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia to No-Amon to pay tribute to Amenhotep III who turned the New Kingdom of Egypt and its 18th dynasty into the power center of the ancient world. No power dared to challenge mighty emperor Amenhotep III who was not just a king but the head of an omnipotent empire. The architecture of No-Amon was indeed intended to overpower, paralyze and stultify foreign visitors. The temples were bordered by two gold plated pylons at the sides of its gates. Its walls were surrounded by silver plated columns inlaid by lapis lazuli. Foreign visitors were not the only ones stunned by my grandfather’s temples and palaces. I also was leveled by the ostentation of my grandfather’s imperial capital. One day I wandered to a not too impressive tomb of the vizier Ramose, one of my grandfather’s late ministers in Western No-Amon. In it I discovered the most delightful fresco. It depicted a brother and sister, the brother and the sister-in-law of the vizier Ramose. They were brother and sister but also lovers. They embraced leisurely, smiling with their almond-shaped eyes, holding hands while their sensuous lips were exchanging playful passions. The girl had an elaborate curled wig while the boy wore a shorter more serene headpiece. What a gentle and sensitive contrast with the pomp and flourish of my grandfather’s imperial art. When we moved to Akhet-Aten, the Horizon of the Sun God, the new capital built by my father from which he intended to consolidate his monotheistic revolution, I felt that I had arrived in my element. The new capital, about a whole day’s chariot ride to the north of No-Amon, was built in a bay of the Nile shaped as the sign of the Horizon in our holy script. Hence, the name of the new capital was denoted as Akhet-Aten, the Horizon of Aten, the unique God. The city itself was centered next to a long and broad road built from the north to the south of the bay, parallel to the banks of the Nile. A Jubilee festival palace and the King’s abode were the central edifices around which were built administrative offices of government. These were flanked by two large temples of Aten from which the new monotheistic creed promulgated its doctrines. The houses of the priests and the administrators of the new religion were small mud houses whitewashed and austerely decorated. The whole city was parched by the hot eastern

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desert winds. The dry clean-swept capital had an ascetic air which agreed with my temperament and suited my reclusive tendencies. My father’s Viceroy Ozarzip and I became very close and he soon assumed the role of my teacher and mentor. My father was too busy with the affairs of state and the spreading and consolidation of the new monotheistic religion to devote any time to my upbringing and education. Ozarzip became my educator, teacher and mentor. Inevitably he based his teaching on his Habiru creed, tradition and culture, which I found interesting and appealing. His Semitic nomadic ethos suited my distaste of luxury, hedonism and lavish pomp. Modesty, deprivation and restraint seemed to me the fount of purity, righteousness, and the ascendency of the soul over the vicissitudes of the body. Very early in our relationship I rejected Ozarzip’s homosexual advances. He realized that he should make do with the numerous lads in the Royal court at Akhet-Aten and also avail himself of the omnisexual appetite of my father. I always had an inner smile when someone mentioned the heroic righteousness of Ozarzip in refusing the advances of the wife of Potiphar, Ozarzip’s master and benefactor. The more plausible explanation for Ozarzip’s “heroic righteousness” was that he never cared for women. Anyway, I was bent on picking his brain about the religion of his Semitic ancestors. It seems that the initiator of the Habiru cult was Ozarzip’s great grandfather Abraham who migrated to Canaan from Haran in Mesopotamia near the lands of Mitanni and Naharin. Ozarzip explained to me some obscure events in his ancestor’s history by reference to the Hurrian culture adopted by the Western Semites in Central Mesopotamia. Ozarzip told me that the myths about his great grandfather recount that when Abraham travelled to Egypt, the reigning Pharaoh was struck by the beauty of Abraham’s wife Sarah. Abraham was apprehensive that the Pharaoh would kill him in order to take his wife. Abraham asked Sarah to declare that she is his sister and not his wife and therefore available as a possible consort of the king. When the Pharaoh took Sarah into his harem, he was afflicted by many diseases and he realized that God was warning him to stay away from Abraham’s wife. Abraham and his wife were released without harm and allowed to proceed back to Canaan. This scenario repeated itself with Abimelech, the king of Gerar in the Pharan desert in northern Sinai. Since Abraham called Sarah his sister, the king of Gerar felt free to wed her and add her to his numerous wives. However, God appeared to Abimelech in his dream and warned him not to touch Sarah because she is married to Abraham the prophet, and if he does touch her, he will surely die. Abimelech protested that Abraham told him

My Formative Years

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that Sarah was his sister and he was therefore innocent. God replied in the dream that since Abimelech tried to wed Sarah in good faith, He appeared in the king’s dream to warn him to not lay his hands on Sarah so that no further damage would befall him. Abimelech then released Sarah, gave her and Abraham many presents, and sent them home with his blessing. In return, Abraham prayed that the progeny and livestock of Abimelech would proliferate. Ozarzip enlightened me that one should not judge Abraham pejoratively because of his rather shameful behavior toward his wife since in Hurrian tradition, a sister or mother can also be adopted as a wife and in this case the sister as an adoptive wife is a double protection both as a sister and as a wife, enjoying the familial privileges of both these roles. Ozarzip singled out his grandfather Isaac as the weakest link in his patriarchal lineage. Ozarzip accounted this by the ultimate treason a father can commit against his son: his sacrifice to prove an unwavering belief of the father in a tyrannical absolutist God. This atrocious behavior of Abraham, stressed Ozarzip, was not spontaneous or on the spur of the moment but rational and calculated since Abraham had to travel for three days to the Mount of Moriah on which he was meant to sacrifice his son. Also, Isaac was a willing victim. He knew that he was to be sacrificed as a holokauston, a burnt whole offering, which Ozarzip pronounced in Greek in which he was fluent. Therefore, when his father bound him to the sacrificial altar, Isaac asked his father to also tie his hands together so that when his father cuts his throat, Isaac would not grab the blade, injure himself, and become unfit for a burnt whole sacrifice. It seemed to Ozarzip that the most humane figure in the whole episode was the devil. He came to Abraham and reprimanded him: “You screwy old man. At the age of 100 you beget a son and now you have lost your mind and you are going to sacrifice him?” Abraham chased the devil away prodded by the absolute command and the authoritarian mandate of an unwavering God. The Devil then came to Isaac and pleaded with him: “How many years your poor mother suffered until she begat you and now your demented father is about to slaughter you. Isaac also drove the devil away, becoming an accomplice to a hideous sacrifice to a despotic God. No wonder Isaac was known to posterity as the “fear of Isaac,” a fearful, anxious and stressed person resulting mainly from the trauma of this cruel sacrificial experience perpetrated by his father. Hence Isaac was overall a weak-willed unimpressive person. Ozarzip recounted the legends circulating among the Habiru concerning the betrothal of Isaac to his wife Rebecca. When Abraham wished to choose a wife for Isaac, he called Eliezer, his trusted master of the house, to go to

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Nahor in Naharaim where Abraham’s family in Mesopotamia was located and choose a bride for Isaac. Abraham then made Eliezer swear that he will never choose a bride for Isaac from among the Canaanite families and their daughters. Indeed, when Eliezer came to Nahor, he found near the well a girl who offered not only to draw water for him to drink but also to water his camels. That was the preordained sign from God that the girl was destined to be Isaac’s wife. Eliezer asked her for her name and she answered that she was Rebecca, the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah who was the wife of Nahor, the brother of Abraham. Eliezer gave her and her father many presents and announced that Abraham, the brother of Nahor, would like his son Isaac to wed Rebecca as his wife. When both Nahor’s family and Rebecca herself agreed to the betrothal, Rebecca went with Eliezer to meet Isaac, Abraham and their families at the well of Lechai Roi in the Negev in Canaan. Apparently, Rebecca fell for the virile, charming and charismatic Eliezer or at least she figured that Isaac, her husband to be, was as robust, husky and handsome as the house manager. Hence, when she came on camel-back to the well of Lechai Roi in the Negev and saw the unimpressive Isaac, she fell off the camel in disappointment. Ozarzip’s unfavorable account of his ancestors included also his narrative of his father Jacob. Isaac loved Esau – typical of a weakling who adores his strong antithesis, especially if he is his own progeny, as compensation for his own physical and mental deficiencies. Jacob was his mother’s boy, wily, astute and conniving, whereas Esau was straightforward, honest and a gentleman in his rough way. As a shrewd operator, Jacob recruited the willingly given connivance of his mother Rebecca to cheat Esau of his birthright and the blessing of his father. Irrespective of the personality of the Habiru patriarchal ancestors, they bequeathed two central pillars to the Judaic religion. First, the relationship between God and the patriarchs was contractual through a covenant with each one of the fathers. Second, the Gods of the patriarchs were not monotheistic but henotheistic. Ozarzip used this Greek term to denote a group of gods with one God being superior to the others. So we have El Tzevaot, the Lord of Hosts, El Shaddai, the Lord of Demons, and El Elyon, the superior God being a primus inter pares. In this way, Ozarzip also showed his erudition. Ozarzip told me that his first encounter with my father was way back much earlier than the present massive importation of the Habiru from Canaan to help my father, the king, administer Egypt. It seems the Egyptians hated my father and his bizarre, perverted and incomprehensible to them monotheistic religion.

My Formative Years

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Ozarzip was a very astute manipulator and he tended to mystify his past so that people would fill in the gaps of information in his biography by their imagination. This inflated and aggrandized the Viceroy’s life history. Legend has it that Ozarzip would not confirm or deny that he was sold as a slave by his brethren because they hated him since his father loved him more than them. The myth goes on to recount that God himself organized Ozarzip’s sale to a caravan of Ishmaelites bearing spices from Gilead to Egypt since he intended Ozarzip to achieve greatness in the land of the Pharaohs. The Ishmaelites sold Ozarzip to Potiphar, Pharaoh’s captain of the guard. Ozarzip even today is exceptionally good looking. He had a high forehead, thick black eyebrows over glittering violet eyes taking up most of his face. His straight Greek nose towered over the most sensuous heartshaped lips. When he smiled, the full red lips parted to reveal a mouthful of pearly white teeth. A strong chin completed the aesthetic perfection of his face. He was dressed with the gilded gown of a Viceroy. He held the Ankh and flail of his office. His Nubian short wig was covered by a gold and black headdress topped by a solid gold Cobra Uraeus. He had a circular false beard fastened to his chin by a gold chain. His appearance was spectacular and dashing. No wonder that when he arrived at Potiphar’s household, Zuleika, the chief wife of the master, immediately became infatuated with the handsome, youthful Ozarzip and she ordered his transfer to her retinue as her personal aide without delay. When he entered her living quarters, she waited for him completely naked in her double bed, covered only with a thin curtain of red silk giving her body a sensuous glow. A slave girl offered him an earthenware mug of cold beer and stewed frog legs which were supposed to be an aphrodisiac. When Ozarzip started to refresh himself slowly with the cold beer, the slave girl whispered to him that when he finishes drinking, her mistress expects him to entertain her sexually. Ozarzip answered the girl solemnly that he could not possibly betray his master Potiphar by taking liberties with his wife. Ozarzip believed this excuse would extricate him from his quandary without his having to divulge that he is attracted to men and boys and not to women and girls. When the girl gave Ozarzip’s response to her mistress, Zuleika’s face became twisted with rage. Zuleika whispered another message to the girl who hurried to Ozarzip and asked him to lend his coat to her mistress since she was naked and feels cold. She assured him she will return the coat to him the moment her mistress gets dressed. Ozarzip took off his coat and gallantly handed it to the girl, expressing a hope that her mistress would be

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able to warm herself by it. Then Zuleika whispered another message in the slave girl’s ear and the girl disappeared in a hurry. After a while, Potiphar came with two guards who whipped Ozarzip and ordered him to prostrate himself in front of the master. Then Potiphar spoke angrily to Ozarzip: “How dare you, Habiru trash, molest my good wife. After she transferred you to her retinue, you tried to take advantage of her graceful intentions by trying to satisfy your prurient lust which my honorable mate resisted and for proof snatched your coat off your dirty back. Therefore you are going to rot in prison until the pleasure of our divine king, the Pharaoh, decrees otherwise.” Ozarzip became very popular in prison. He manipulated the prison guards and the power elite of the prisoners by shrewdly allocating his sexual favors to both for lucrative considerations. He was also very adept at the interpretation and divination of dreams. His brothers had derisively and grudgingly called him “the dream monger.” Two of the prisoners, who had been the Pharaoh’s butler and baker, heard about Ozarzip’s ability to interpret dreams and they recounted to him their recurrent dreams. The butler dreamt that a vine sprouted forth in shoots, then leaves and grapes, and he pressed the grapes in Pharaoh’s cup and he gave the king the full cup. Ozarzip’s interpretation of the butler’s dream was that soon Pharaoh would restore him to his former position and he would resume his duties of serving the king his drinks. Ozarzip beseeched the butler that when this happens, he should beg the king to have mercy on Ozarzip and deliver him out of the dungeon in which he was wrongly imprisoned. The butler promised to do this but when he was pardoned by the Pharaoh and restored to his former position, he forgot about his promise to help Ozarzip. The interpretation of the baker’s dream, that birds ate the bread that the baker had baked for the Pharaoh while it was in a basket balanced on the baker’s head, was rather grim. In three days, Ozarzip predicted, the king would hang the baker on a tree and the birds will devour his flesh. Indeed this also came true. One day the king dreamt that he stood on the bank of the Nile and seven fat healthy cattle came out of the water and then seven thin sickly cattle came out of the river and devoured the healthy fat animals. The next night the Pharaoh dreamt that seven ears of corn, full and fresh, grew on one stalk and seven thin ears of corn blasted by the wind fell on the healthy ears and ate them up. The king was troubled by these dreams and told them to his butler who served him wine. Then the butler told the king about Ozarzip. The Pharaoh ordered that Ozarzip be brought to him

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immediately. When the king saw the prisoner, the omnisexual Pharaoh was immediately taken by Ozarzip’s good looks. The prisoner readily interpreted the king’s dreams. Both dreams, Ozarzip explained, predict that seven years of plenty would be followed by seven years of famine. Hence, advised Ozarzip, the king has to see to it that during the seven bountiful years, stores should be filled with the produce of the fields to provide food for both people and livestock during the lean years. The Pharaoh was so impressed with Ozarzip that he released him from prison and appointed him to be his Viceroy in charge of the seven years’ plan. Very soon they also became lovers. Ozarzip and my father spent a great part of every day and many nights together. Apart from their mutual sexual attraction, Ozarzip, as Viceroy, had many functions of state and a central role in the project of amassing the crops and livestock products during the fat years of plenty to prepare for the lean years of famine. The Pharaoh was also very interested in the religion of Ozarzip’s fathers in conjunction with the monotheistic revolution that he was carrying out in Egypt. When Ozarzip was expounding the principles of the religion of his fathers for the king, I was allowed to be present and I absorbed with great interest the foundations and history of the Habiru religion as recounted by Ozarzip. My father was sitting on his throne in the palace called “the Mansion of the Ben-Ben” in the “Select of Places” at Western No-Amon. The king had the double-crown of Upper and Lower Egypt on his head. The solid gold uraeus on his crown had the curved neck of a cobra. Its two poison glands, bursting at their seams with poison, formed a deadly triangle. The cobra’s mouth was wide open and its hollow golden poison teeth were aimed at whatever enemy the king might have in front of his face. The snake’s forked tongue was molded from gold and studded with blue diamonds. Its two eyes were two huge rubies lending the Pharaoh’s face an eerie, weird and chilling demeanor. The king’s appearance below the crown was striking. His eyes were yellowish green and their shape had the contour of outsize almonds flanking a long and boldly chiseled nose. His false beard supported a large chin which had above it the most sensuous lips, full, strong and curled at their edges. When he smiled, two rows of large, strong teeth were revealed through the narrow aperture formed by his slightly parted lips. His teeth were yellow-colored as the result of his constant munching of narcotic roots brought to him as an offering by the Midianites of Kadesh Barnea. His gown was woven from blue silk and gold thread. He wore nothing underneath it and his well-built muscular body, of which he was very

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proud, stretched the elastic gown with every movement of his limbs. When he sat on his throne, he clutched his ankh and flail as an acquired habit and he waved his flail whenever he became nervous or was harried by his many opponents within Egypt and his enemies outside the country. People are often astounded by the great disparity between my father’s actual physique and the effeminate statues of the Pharaoh with their wide haunches, developed breasts, and round belly. This was the result of my father’s express orders to his official sculpture, Bak, to depict him as both masculine and feminine, as both the mother and father of his people. His solid gold throne leaned against a gilded wall painting of the sun disk, Aten. Through the hands attached to each ray of light, Aten is forever radiating his grace to be shared equally by all plants and life forms. There is, however, an unusual, bizarre and weird feature shared by all the extended royal family. All of us have an elongated skull due to the accumulation of water in the upper cranium in early infancy. The doctors in the morgues of Osiris called people with this feature “water heads.” This uncanny elongated skull became the fashion in Egypt since the populace wished to emulate the royal look. Therefore, men, women and children fitted a bronze cover to their heads lending it an elongated appearance just like the heads of royalty. My own head was naturally elongated but I also had two sizable bumps on top of my head which looked like horns. That is why the children nicknamed me ‘the Goat’ and ridiculed me as the ‘stammering goat’. That is why I took great pains to hide my bumps with a thick short Nubian wig. I concealed my stammer by playing dumb and uttering, when absolutely necessary, only a few short monosyllabic words that I could say without a stutter. I had a relatively high forehead for an Egyptian, which could be linked to the foreign lineage of my mother Tiye. I also had very large ears that I inherited from my father. When I was vexed, I moved my forehead and my scalp which caused my ears to flap. I had the large eyes and straight sculptured nose of my father except that the color of my eyes was black and not yellow-green like his. My sensuous lips and strong chin resembled very much his mouth and chin. I also had the strong physique of my father but at my young age I was tall and spindly. I wore a bodice and skirt of blue silk embroidered with gold thread worn by princes and princesses. On my neck I had an Aten pendant of gold studded with red opals given to me by my father on my 13th birthday.

CHAPTER TWO OZARZIP

Ozarzip started to recount the main tenets of the creed of his fathers and both my father and I were entranced by his eloquence. “As you well know,” Ozarzip commenced his didactic presentation, “my fathers are from nomadic stock. We graze our flocks of goats and sheep in the outskirts of deserts and the slopes of torrent beds. We are despised by the land tillers of Egypt and Canaan. This is why we are so loyal to you, my patron majesty and esteemed prince Me-Shu.” Ozarzip’s face burst into a captivating wide smile which revealed his mouthful of pearly white teeth and created four dimples in his face, two in his cheeks, a third in the tip of his nose, and the fourth in the slit which divided his chin into two mounds. Candid statements like this endeared Ozarzip to my father. He never lied, he never flattered, and he never minced words or exaggerated in hyperboles like the court lackeys who told my father what they thought my father wanted to hear. In truth, my father despised flatterers and liars. The bond between my father and Ozarzip was based not so much on carnal attraction as on the love of truth. Whenever they met or parted, they greeted each other with “Ankh em Ma’et” (“Live in Truth”). The collective name of Ozarzip’s ancestors was “Habiru,” a social aggregate of nomads of Western Semitic stock. They led caravans from Mesopotamia to Egypt via Canaan. They were mostly carrying spices from the international spice markets in Babylon to the distributors and middlemen in Gilead and Moab, their final destination being the spice hungry Canaanites and Egyptians. The camel and donkey caravans to Canaan and Egypt were carrying allspice, aniseed and caraway from Syria and Lebanon, cardamom, hot peppers and cinnamon from India, and coriander, mint, ginger and sesame seeds from Persia. On their way back to Canaan and Mesopotamia, they carried grain from Egypt. I was amazed at Ozarzip’s wide and deep erudition for both abstract and mundane matters. “Since I had the good fortune, Sire,” Ozarzip told my father, “to interpret your dreams about the imminent famine in the area, and due to

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your foresight, we became the purveyors of grain for all the countries east of the Mediterranean Sea.” “Legend has it,” Ozarzip returned to his didactic account of the history of the Habiru religion, “that the founding fathers of our religion were the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who migrated to Canaan from Haran in Mesopotamia.” This Ozarzip had recounted to me previously but not to my father. “The Patriarchs and their tribes in Canaan were emotionally, ethnically and culturally attached to their tribal origins in Mesopotamia and they insisted that their male progeny chose their wives from their kindred origins in Mesopotamia and not of the daughters of the Canaanites in whose land they dwelt as guests, neighbors and “visitants.” Ozarzip then offered a cultural and social explanation which I found convincing for the fact that his mythological ancestors, which nobody was sure whether they indeed existed, were such great religious innovators. First he pointed out the fact that their reference group, being their tribe in Mesopotamia and not their Canaanite neighbors, made for their isolation. Legend has it that Lot, Abraham’s nephew who dwelt in Sodom, received the two angels who wished to reconnoiter the depravity of Sodom before destroying it and Gomorrah. The people of Sodom asked Lot to deliver the angels to them so they could sodomize them. When Lot refused, they rebuked and reprimanded him saying ‘This fellow came here to sojourn and now he wants to judge us’. “Second,” related Ozarzip didactically, “the Habiru were shepherds despised by the land tilling Canaanites as well as by the Egyptians. Being nomads, the Habiru didn’t value goods, riches and property. For nomads, too many goods that would not fit on the back of a camel are a liability. Hence, their God was not concrete like the gods of the Canaanites and Egyptians but an abstract God which is not confined by time and space. Presently, with the famine in Mesopotamia and Canaan, many of the Habiru migrated to Egypt, which because of your majestic foresight, became a land of plenty while the rest of the area was plagued by famine. Since the Habiru were shepherds derided by the Egyptian land tillers, they were relegated to a very isolated area in Lower Egypt. They also brought their indigenous religion with them, the main tenets of which I am going to relate to you, but first let us refresh ourselves,” Ozarzip pleaded with my father. The Pharaoh clapped his hands and a procession of young boys and girls, completely naked, came in with trays of cold beer in earthenware mugs. Both my father and Ozarzip helped themselves with large mugs of beer and quail roasted in sizzling olive oil as appetizers. After my father and Ozarzip devoured a few quail and downed them with mugs of beer,

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they concluded their refreshment with fresh figs from Nubia, dried dates from Palmyra, and large black grapes from Abydos. Then came the final phase, the refreshment which nauseated me most: The boys performed oral sex with Ozarzip and the girls with my father. Since the semen of royalty was considered sacred, its ingestion brought blessedness. Therefore, the boys and girls competed with each other for the privilege of swallowing the ejaculations of the king and his Viceroy. I was disgusted by this sexual license which was customary in the Pharaoh’s court but I felt it in my innermost self to be depravity. I left the throne room of the Ben-Ben Palace and went out to the balcony of the Gem-pa-aten colonnade that had a huge Aten disk of gold plated bronze and only three rays. These had as their termination not the all giving outstretched hand palms but hieroglyphs of Ankh-Live Em-in Ma’et-Truth. I then swore to forego the prurient indulgence of the flesh and pursue the righteousness of the soul and the purity of my spirit which sprouted from within me as the word of the One true God. This will make me worthy of my name: Me-Shu, the righteous star-gazer, the seeker of the one good, virtuous, moral, incorrupt, pure, faultless, irreproachable, just and equitable God in heaven. When I returned to the Ben-Ben throne room, the boys and girls with their food trays were gone and I was welcomed by my father and Ozarzip with a condescending chuckle and an exhortation: “Here comes our ‘Puritan Me-Shu’.” Ozarzip was ready to resume his didactic discourse on the religion of his forefathers. “The one primal God was not exclusive,” he said, “but the leading God among other gods. Even the creation of man was a cooperative venture of the chief deity in collaboration with the other gods. However, an immortal soul was infused in man by the leading deity whereas the profane mortal body was the creation of the lesser gods.” “As you can see, hear and feel, Sire and Prince Me-Shu, we are far from righteous. Hence, we would be considered sinners by the gods of our fathers. Morality and purity are the condition precedent for the chief God. He is a spiritual essence who can dwell among his people and let His holy presence, his spiritual epiphany, reveal right conduct to his followers. The carnal functions of the body and the prodding of desire, passion and coveting are the domain of the lesser gods. Only the spirit and its revelation of purity stem from the abstract, invisible, timeless and spaceless main God.” “This is why my ancestors insisted on their male progeny marrying the women of their original stock that have presumably been exposed to the revelatory truths of the one abstract God and not marry the Canaanite,

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Moabite and Phoenician women who were led by the covetousness of their senses. The Bedouin nomadic wives to be chosen for the male progeny of our ancestors would reject covetousness and embrace the frugal asceticism of the camel riders and tent dwellers who despise property and the accumulation of worthless and superfluous property and goods. The purity of spirit and the modesty of the soul of the desert wives would assure the probity of their children and the selfless obedience to the rules of an allgiving, bodyless and therefore non-coveting, non-craving, and nondesiring abstract God. “It has to be admitted, however,” Ozarzip warmed up to his subject, “that my ancestors stem from a cruel culture. As you may well know, the Babylonian creation myth depicts Marduk, the chief Deity, as fighting his mother Tiamat. When he was just about to carve her body into two parts, the creation myth declares that Marduk ‘conceived works of Art’. Imagine, Sire and Prince Me-Shu,” Ozarzip infused into his voice a resonance of righteous indignation. It always amazed me how he had complete control of his vocal chords, using them with virtuosity to impress, cajole, woo or reprimand his audience. “Marduk is just about to kill his mother and split her body, and this matricidal savage brutality gives Marduk an artistic inspiration. He presently splits her skull and cuts her arteries to let her blood ooze out of her. Then he cleaves her body ‘like a fish into two parts’. From the upper part he forms heaven and from the lower part he fashions earth. Marduk created the first Man from the blood of Kingu, a general of his slain mother.” “The absolute authoritarian cruelty of our ancestor’s God is extant in His order to Abraham, our first Patriarch, to sacrifice Isaac, the second Patriarch and Abraham’s only begotten son. But first, we must take a closer look at the Akedah myth itself. When Abraham built the altar, bound his son, and took the knife to slay him, an angel of the Lord ordered him not to lay his hand upon the lad and showed him a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. It is said that ‘Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering instead of his son’.” “The original Habiru version states that Abraham offered the ram as a burnt offering tahat his son. Tahat can mean not only ‘instead of,’ but also ‘after’. Consequently, some interpreters claim that Abraham sacrificed Isaac and afterwards slaughtered the ram. They cite traditional sources, according to which Abraham did slay Isaac and a quarter of a log (a Habiru liquid measure) of his blood was poured onto the altar. Also, Isaac’s ashes were believed to have been strewn and scattered on the altar, and Isaac’s soul was raised to paradise as a reward for his noble sacrifice. These interpreters claim that after the Akedah, ‘Abraham returned unto his

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young men’. Abraham returned by himself; there is no mention of Isaac, who must have been offered as a burnt sacrifice on the altar on top of Mount Moriah.” “This interpretation of the Akedah myth raises a number of problems. One rather confusing answer is that the story of Isaac presents more than one myth or more than one Isaac. If myths are a projection of personal history, then the Akedah myth is of prime importance as psychological source material, irrespective of its historical truth. Consequently, the Akedah myth may serve as an archetype of covert father-son relationships, both in its version as a temptation of Abraham or its interpretation as a consummated burnt offering of Isaac. Whether the event is viewed as a fulfilled command or deliberate etymological confusion in action, the impact on the father-son relationship is the same.” “The interpretation that Isaac was slaughtered as a burnt offering is in line with the ancient custom in the Middle East to offer children, especially the first-born, to the gods. A Moabite king is said to have sacrificed the crown prince, when the battle went badly for him, in order to regain his military fortunes. The Habiru imitated the Canaanites and Phoenicians by offering their children to the Ba’al, or by throwing them into the red-hot bosom of a metal Moloch. These offerings were practiced in the valley of Hinnom, which became synonymous in Habiru with hell.” “Later, the gods were cheated and had to make do with domestic animals instead of a human first-born. The offerings of the animals were conducted as if they were human. The calves offered to Dionysus were attired with children’s clothes and babies’ shoes so that the deity would think he was receiving real children and not animal substitutes. In times of great stress, parents reverted to the sacrifice of their children, but gradually substitutes of human sacrifice received full religious sanction and became symbolic of the archetypal sacrifice of the Akedah myth. Circumcision became a ritualized substitute for the sacrifice of the newborn son, and the sounding of the ram’s horn is symbolic of the sacrifice in the Akedah myth.” “The Isaac Syndrome conceives of the father as a stern authoritarian. The interpretation of the Akedah myth explains that God ordered Abraham to go to the land of Moriah (three days of travel) so that he will sacrifice his son not out of hurried obedience to God’s command but rather after three days of thinking and in a sober and determined state of mind.” “The most humane figure in the Akedah episode is none other than the Devil. When Abraham was about to slaughter his son, the Devil came and reprimanded him: ‘What happened to you old-timer? You seem to have lost your heart. A son was given to you when you were 100 years old and

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now you are about to slaughter him’. When the Devil saw that Abraham was adamant, he went to Isaac and said: ‘You poor son of your poor mother. How much pain and suffering did she undergo until she begot you and now this old father of yours is out of his mind in his old age and is about to slaughter you’. The fact that the Devil is the one to invoke ethics, pity and grace is important in this context: if absolute and abject submission to the command of the Lord (as the projection of the archetypal father) is the epitome of pious righteousness, then any attenuating emotional considerations must come from the Devil. This is even truer if the Devil speaks with the voice of the preconscious dynamism that identifies the absolute command of God as the covert infanticidal wish of the father.” “To come to my own father Jacob,” Ozarzip did not soften his tone of censure when talking about his immediate parent, “I have already related to you, my Sire and Prince Me-Shu, the tricky, conniving, crafty and deceptive nature of my father Jacob. He stole the birthright from his brother, my uncle Esau, who was a nice guy and a gentleman.” Ozarzip stressed the point by lowering his voice but augmenting its treble until it sounded like a litany. “Jacob developed a power-based relationship with God and engaged in a fierce competition of strength with a countenance of God which Jacob won. Thence his name was changed to Israel – the one who struggled with God and prevailed. This is a misnomer,” argued Ozarzip. “How can a God who should be omnipotent be vanquished by a mortal? This means that the God of the Patriarchs is not omnipotent. He has other gods to reckon with who compete with Him all the time. Hence the God of the Patriarchs is not the only God,” concluded Ozarzip. “He is an El-Elion, a supreme God who has to contend with other local gods with whom He is in constant conflict, yet make with them pacts of convenience and ad-hoc concords. The Mesopotamian God of our Patriarchs,” continued Ozarzip, “is fickle, capricious and irresolute. The account of the creation by the Mesopotamian God as conceived by the Patriarchs was that Man was created of dust and He breathed a soul in him through his nostrils and created a woman, a mate for Man, from his rib. He also forbade the first couple to eat from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden in which they were installed because He was afraid of competition. If they ate from it, they would be like gods. After the first couple ate from the Tree of Knowledge, He played hide and seek with them like a capricious parent. Consequently the Patriarchs had to anchor their relationship with such an erratic God on a dual pact and treaty made and signed violently with the blood of the circumcision of every male and supplemented by the blood of animals in a ritual reenacted separately with each patriarch.”

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“However,” the voice of Ozarzip became sweet and tender, “how fortunate, Sire and Prince Me-Shu, are we to live in this land of plenty, order and stability where the rule of the Pharaohs, dynasty after dynasty, year after year, and the ever predictable cyclic of Nile flood tides make for recurrence, solidity and strength for thousands of years. Our account of creation, in the light of your august ideals, shows organization and planning in the formation and conduct of the Universe. Even Man and Woman were created in one body, like the image of your own body sculptured by your brilliant court architect Bak who made you the epitome of both male and female, father and mother, in one body. Bless you, Sire and Prince Me-Shu, for making us content and happy under the constant shining of the Aten.” Ozarzip kissed the hand of my father and kissed my hand also, then sat down exhausted. “We earned a substantial evening meal,” he pleaded, meaning of course, a combination of food and sex. I excused myself quickly with my father and Ozarzip reprimanding me for my excessive puritanism and retreated to my quarters in the Ben-Ben Palace. When I entered my sleeping room, I sat on my bed which was quite spacious. It had a bronze frame upholstered with camel hides and a thick hemp cloth stuffed with soft papyrus grass that made a comfortable mattress. My cushions were made of Persian silk filled with goose feathers. I helped myself to some figs, fresh dates and black grapes from a tray of lapis-lazuli placed by a slave on a wooden chair with arms of carved ebony and a seat made of baby crocodile hide. After I had my fruit meal, I lay on my bed and summarized for myself the salient points of Ozarzip’s information delivered to my father and me about the religion of his Habiru ancestors. First of all, the Habiru Gods had no personal name but were denoted by their titles as local Gods. The leader of or superior to the other Gods was El Elyon, the superior God that implies that the other Gods are subordinate to him. Second, there was not any single unique, spaceless, timeless universal God. Third, El-Shaddai was the God not only of the people in a given region but also of the other gods present in that region. The God of Ozarzip’s ancestors was the God of the Covenant. He received the allegiance of his believers for a consideration: their protection from their enemies and the augmentation of their number so they could inhabit and inherit the lands they abide in that, in their case, is Canaan – the Promised Land. The covenant was separately enacted by God with each of the three Patriarchs. There were no temples and priests for the nomads to worship their God. When they wished to pray or experience a

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revelation or enact a covenant with Him, all they needed was to build an altar, to erect a high place of worship, or to select a stone to serve as a site for supplication during their wandering. A naked slave girl entered my bedroom, brought a mug of cold beer on a copper tray, and offered what she denoted as ‘a good night of sexual services’. I declined, stuttering heavily, and asked for a glass of water. When she brought the water, I detected a slight frown on her face. I fell asleep dreaming that I was ridiculed by the naked slave girl deriding my impotence. In the morning I was awakened by the naked slave girl who fanned me with a papyrus fan fastened to a palm branch. She brought me also a mug full of grape juice pressed from the vines of the Faiyum oasis which were watered by volcanic springs containing sulfurs and chlorides which gave them a special tangy taste that I liked. After I drank half a mug of grape juice, I lay on my back daydreaming and ignoring the slave girl who had this morning a puzzled look on her face pondering the reason for my ignoring her sexual services. Little could she know that all my emotional fervor was directed towards Marit-Aten, my half-sister, a princess of about my age who inherited the good looks of her mother, Queen Nefertiti. Marit-Aten’s crown had the Aten disk fastened to a solid gold tiara placed on a full size wig to cover the elongated cranium which she inherited, like all our family, from our father the king. Her almond-shaped eyes were elongated and accentuated by black mascara. Her long straight nose had very sensitive nostrils which sniffed the air with every show of emotion or mood. Her red, blue and terracotta tunic revealed two finely shaped breasts which usually had erect nipples constantly excited by her pent up ardor. She wore tightly fitting green slacks which emphasized her elegant pelvis. She always held in her hands the ankh and flail, signifying her royal descent. My infatuation with her was completely clandestine because whenever she passed me by in the palace I was paralyzed and struck dumb lest I utter a word and my ugly stutter would be revealed. Although I soon would be expected to attend another session of Ozarzip’s instruction of my father on the religion of his ancestors, I still lay on my back, daydreaming about my beloved Marit-Aten. Once I was privileged to attend a command performance of the Princess who had a wonderful voice of a canary. She undulated with her vocal chords and plucked her string musical instrument and her divine music praised the grace of the Aten. She had a flowering water lily stuck in her wig. A wide necklace of gold thread, in which carnelian, lapis-lazuli, turquoise and

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amethyst stones were woven, covered her long neck. She had a transparent yellow silk tunic that accentuated her finely shaped breasts and nipples and her adolescent pubic mound that was just beginning to be covered by finely curled black hair. My reminiscences of Marit-Aten excited me so much that my member swelled visibly. The slave girl looked at it expectantly, surmising that soon her services would be required. But I was ashamed of my prurient desires for Marit-Aten, my beloved. Instead of entering the warm bath which the slave girl had prepared, I jumped into the cold water pool to calm my prurient passions for my love. The slave girl had a flabbergasted look on her face, believing that her princely master had lost his sanity. While soaking in the cold pool, I pondered that I had to suppress my lewd carnal passions. I detested the behavior of my father and Ozarzip, both of whom molested the pubescent girls and boys who grimaced with pain while they were harassed to satisfy the lascivious lust of their masters. I vowed that if and when I have the power, which does not seem very likely right now, I shall forbid incestuous relationships. I shall decree that sexual relationships should be performed only in purity for the sole purpose of reproduction and all concupiscent lasciviousness should be suppressed. I put on a white canvas tunic and a Nubian wig to cover my elongated cranium and bumps. Then I hurried to the throne room at the Ben-Ben Palace for the morning session of religious indoctrination with my father and Ozarzip.

CHAPTER THREE THE NEW CITY AND THE NEW RELIGION

When I entered the throne room, I noticed that the usual serene demeanor of my father had changed into livid rage, twisting his face into a frenzied fury. His face was crimson and his eyes were bulging and bloodshot. His full lustful lips were wide open uttering a torrent of vehement curses against the treacherous priests of Amon, the bigoted scoundrels and thieves of the funerary temples of Osiris, and the prejudiced paganism of the Ennead of gods of On that depict a mechanical causality of nine gods (Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys) without any coordination between them. I heard my father shout, “These ignorant multitudes do not understand that only one single God can synchronize all the functions of the universe.” Ozarzip, who prostrated himself in front of my father, uttered “Yes, Sire. You are right, Sire. These are vile, sinful and corrupt criminals who have to be punished severely,” accentuating each word by pounding the floor with his fists in front of the king’s throne. I stood at the entrance to the hall paralyzed with fright. I had never seen my father so exasperated. “No! No! No!” my father exclaimed emphatically. “I am not going to meddle with these insignificant vermin.” He accentuated each word with a crack of his flail in the air. “I am going to build a new capital a long way north of No-Amon and a long way south of Moph, in the desert near a protective curve of the Nile emulating the sacred hieroglyph sign for a horizon. The new immaculate city of our unique God, the Aten, would be duly denoted Akhet-Aten, the Horizon of Aten. Built from brand new materials and erected from foundation to roof from new pure substances fit to worship in the spirit of our new religion, our unique God and master, the Aten. We shall leave our enemies and detractors to rot in their holes like worms in excrement.” My father sat down breathing heavily while Ozarzip rose slowly, applauding with his hands and exclaiming approvingly, “How wise, my Sire. What a clever decision, Sire. Your wisdom is unfathomable, Sire. We will build a new pure capital for our new immaculate religion of the Aten.”

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My father then sat on his throne and Ozarzip sat on a low bench just in front of him, moving to and fro in tense expectation. I approached my father and kissed his hand. He reciprocated with a rare show of affection by stroking my head with a gentle tenderness that I did not suspect he possessed. After he made the decision to move his capital to Akhet-Aten, he became more reserved but bursting with pent up energy to carry out his purpose with a single-minded tenacity. He lost interest in the discourses of Ozarzip on the religion of his forefathers and I remained the Viceroy’s only devout student. In the fifth year of my father’s reign, he changed his name from Amenhotep the IV to Akhenaten. He travelled with his retinue to the site of the planned new city of Akhet-Aten to lay the foundation stones for the new capital, its palaces, temples, tombs, and the residences of the functionaries of the new religion. Some 500 people attended this festive occasion. On the 13th day of the 8th month of the 5th year of my father’s reign, the foundation stones for Akhet-Aten were placed near an altar erected on a desert plateau midway between No-Amon and Moph. Our extended family, the nobles, the high officials, soldiers and their attendant slaves were transported from the cultivated western side of the Nile around the towns of Meir and Asyut to an arid and parched stretch of desert on the eastern bank of the Nile where the New Capital of Akhet-Aten was planned. The king was standing on his gilded chariot harnessed to two horses, a white horse representing Lower Egypt and a red horse Upper Egypt. He was dressed with a white and red robe, crowned by the double-crown of Lower and Upper Egypt. Above his crown an Aten gold disk was rotating with the wind and spreading the light rays of the unique God up to the horizon of the range of mountains surrounding the site of Akhet-Aten, the Horizon of Aten. Priests were pouring libations of beer, wine and oil on the altar while novices were carrying hot cast-iron frying pans spreading incense around the altar … a mixture of cinnamon, sage, cardamom, ginger and nutmeg. Most of the nobles and the king’s retinue, except the soldiers and guards, were protecting their heads from the scorching sun with parasols, refreshing themselves with cold beer, and being attended by slaves fanning their faces. The king, however, was entranced by his prophetic address to his retinue about the new creed to sprout from Akhet-Aten. He was not protected from the searing desert sun by fan-bearing or shade-carrying slaves. On the contrary, the king seemed to cherish the rays of the lifegiving Aten. He appeared to draw energy and grace from his God and

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master and the heat of the sun served him as a source of divine energy for his inaugural address for the unique religion of the Sun God. My father’s hands were raised above his head, his face was flushed, and his open mouth gushed words in a feverish torrent. His appearance was more of a prophet announcing a new creed than a monarch who should be serene and composed with the dignity of the Ma’et, the goddess of truth. My father started his address by negating the existing religious system using heated rhetoric, logic, sarcasm and ridicule. He was very excited and from time-to-time so carried away by the enormity of the occasion that his speech became garbled. His first target of attack was the theology of On. “Lo and behold,” opened my father sarcastically, “the sea, the great sea, the immense sea in the most popular theology of On in Lower Egypt is Nun – chaos – yet this chaos is also called ‘the father of the Gods’. Can chaos, turmoil and turbulence create the Ma’et, the order, the stability necessary for the existence of the world?” my father asked rhetorically. “Of course not,” he answered emphatically, waving his flail in the air for a further accentuation of the negation. “But this is not all,” my father warmed to his subject. “The absurdities increase, accumulate and multiply. Atum, the chief god of On who was supposed to issue out of Nun, the chaotic waters, creates the main gods of On, the Ennead, by an unusual, to say the least, performance: he masturbates with his long penis which reaches up to his mouth and ejaculates therein his semen. In his orifice, his two first offspring are spawned: Shu the God of Air and Tefnut, his twin sister, Goddess of Dew and Rain, which are the first two divinities of the Ennead of On. How were they born? They were spewed by their father out of his mouth. Could you imagine my colleagues, partners and brethren a more undignified parturition for the first two gods of the Ennead of On?” My father’s eloquence generated its inner momentum. “Shu and Tefnut,” my father continued, “the first couple of the Ennead of On, begat the second couple, Geb and Nut. Geb the earth God was cruelly separated from Nut his spouse and lover by Shu. Geb tried to fight his oppressor but to no avail. So he lay defeated under the feet of the tyrant Shu. Raised on one elbow, and with one knee bent, he emulates the mountain ranges. Now my compatriots,” the Pharaoh raised his voice, “why this excess of cruelty? Why should Geb, the consort, wait in anger and anguish and lament his separation from his bride? Why was this evil perpetrated in the first place? Was there any reason whatsoever other than the callous wickedness and arbitrary baseness of his father? I may ask you again, my loyal compatriots, who would acquiesce in this senseless oppression of these so-called Gods?”

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My father was indeed impressive in his righteous indignation. One could not have been sure if his audience was convinced by his arguments but his listeners were certainly enthralled and mesmerized by his charisma. “Then we come to Osiris and his wife-sister Isis,” continued my father. “Osiris, the Lord of the West – the realm of the dead – and Isis are the offspring of Geb and Nut. However, Osiris is responsible for transforming the culture of Egypt from the sprouting, flourishing, ever-renewing cycles of Life to the culture of decline, decay, cessation and death. The shady existence in the realm of the West in the misty swamps of the fields of reeds became the cherished goal of every Egyptian only because he can carry on there his earthly existence out of a mummified body and a spirit that can exist both in the temporal world of the East and the realm of the deceased in the West. The most valued attribute of existence in the Osirian West is immortality even if the routine daily life there is grim, dour and gloomy. However,” my father seemed to have worked himself up to a crucial argument, “most of the resources of the Egyptian populace are being invested in the hereafter. Tombs of the illustrious royalty and nobility and the simple burying places of the common man absorb nearly all attention and material means of the populace.” “These, however, are the lesser sacrifices compared to the vilification, humiliation, deceit, bribery and debasement the deceased have to endure in order to pass over from the temporal East to the Osirian West. The crucial ceremony is the weighing of the heart of the deceased in ‘The Hall of Double Justice’ where Ma’et, the Goddess of truth and order, weighs the heart of the deceased. If found worthy, he passes over to Osiris who waits for him at the end of the Hall. If the weighing fails, Amemait, the devourer, gulps down the guilty heart. I ask you now my brethren and compatriots,” my father’s voice rising to a shrill pitch, “how much longer should we endure this absurd deceit, manipulation, prejudice and oppression by a cult of the dead which saps and wastes away the livelihood of our nation?” My father raised his shoulders in astounded interrogation and received a mug of grape juice from Nefertiti, his astounding wife and consort whose beauty surpassed the glamour of all women except the loveliness of my Marit-Aten. Nefertiti was also holding the reins of the horses of the Pharaoh’s chariot lest they start trotting, causing the chariot to move and the king to lose his balance. When her husband spoke, she absorbed every word uttered by him, her head nodding with approval. Nefertiti was the staunchest initiate of the religion of the Aten.

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After my father downed the mug of grape juice in one long gulp, he continued his tirade against the menagerie of the sacrilegious and outrageously profanating gods of Egypt. “Now this Osiris,” continued my father, “who confers immortality on worthy humans proved to be himself mortal. His brother Set, the God of the desert, aridity and barren sterility, and hence the mortal enemy of Osiris, the Lord of the life-giving Nile, ambushes his brother. He invites his brother to a party organized by 27 of his infernal underlings who fashioned a coffin of gold studded with gems announcing that the coffin would belong to him whose body fits into it. And, lo and behold, Osiris succumbed to the ruse and lay in the coffin to measure its fit to his body. When Osiris’ body indeed fitted exactly the dimensions of the coffin, the demons closed the lid. After Osiris died, they cut his body into 14 pieces and strewed them to the four corners of the earth. Isis, Osiris’ wife and sister, collected her husband’s chopped up pieces, sewed them together, and copulated with the reconstructed body of Osiris. From this posthumous union, Horus, the lord of the temporal East, was born. Eventually Horus donated his eye to his father and Osiris was resurrected. The eye with which one sees and covets, reigns supreme with the profanating clique of the godless Egyptian deities. Only Aten, our one true God, speaks his words of truth, justice and equality and we hear with our ears and promise to obey. Let us prostrate ourselves and swear to reject the impious mockery of the so-called Gods ruling in Egypt and adopt the Aten, my father and your father, the only true, genuine and rightful one God who gives his light, grace and goodness to all creatures alike. Ankh em Ma’et em Aten: Live in the truth of Aten.” All present prostrated themselves and recited in unison over and over again: “Ankh em Ma’et em Aten, Ankh em Ma’et em Aten, Ankh em Ma’et em Aten.” When exhausted, all the retinue followed my father to the barges on the Nile which carried everybody back to No-Amon. The sun was setting and painted everybody and everything blood red. The blood of the dying false Gods sacrificed to the viability of the Aten, the one true God. When I arrived back to the Ben-Ben Palace, I was just about ready to retire to my room to rest and sleep after a long eventful and tiring day, but then I saw Nefertiti holding the hand of my beloved Marit-Aten and my blood froze. The Queen was leading my beloved to the king’s quarters. Today is her day of puberty: exactly 12 years old. And like all princesses, she has to be deflowered by her father, the Pharaoh. She was dressed in a white transparent silken tunic studded with white pearls, white being the color of virginity. After deflowering, her tunic would become red with her

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blood streaming from her narrow puerile vagina violently ravished and molested and abused by her father. She had to wear the blood smeared tunic the whole following day to attest to all her viewers to a successful bloody rite of passage. Compared to the triumphant regal strut of Nefertiti, my beloved walked reluctantly like a sacrificial lamb to her slaughter. Her delicate head slumped on her curved neck, her shoulders were stooped, her nipples were erect with fear, and her gentle triangle of black hair was curled within itself, apprehensive of its imminent molestation. I was completely immobilized with fright. I hid under a mandrake tree heavy with fruit in the royal garden. I waited for a long time which seemed to me like eternity, not daring to move. After an interminable stretch of time, the Queen came out with a triumphant gait, holding the hand of a violated Marit-Aten, her eyes overflowing with tears, her mouth twisted with pain, emitting uncontrollable sobs. Her white tunic was soaked from the blood streaming from her immature vagina brutally torn by her father. The Queen led Marit-Aten who wobbled on legs spread from pain. After they disappeared into the Queen’s quarters, I darted out of the mandrake tree and ran howling to Ozarzip’s quarters just as he was ready to go to bed. He looked at me with concern and embraced me. “What is it, MeShu,” Ozarzip uttered with concern. “You look as if you had a date with the devil.” “Worse,” I muttered stutteringly. “The devil just violated my beloved.” “So this is what it is,” Ozarzip nodded his head. “Don’t blaspheme, Me-Shu,” Ozarzip warned. “The deflowering of the pubescent girl is a sacred rite like the circumcision of a boy.” “I don’t care,” I retorted morosely. “Once we get some power you help me to eradicate the barbaric practice of parents violating their children. Now tell me more about the religion of your ancestors,” I beseeched. “I am sure they don’t approve of incest.” “You are right,” answered Ozarzip. “The three most heinous sins in the religion of our fathers are idolatry, the shedding of blood, and incest.” “How right it is,” I concurred. “Tell me more,” I beseeched. “No, no, kid. You are too worked up now.” He stroked my head to calm me. “You are tired and I am tired, so let us both go to sleep and tomorrow first thing in the morning you come here and we shall have an intensive session on the law of our fathers and now let us both go and rest.” Ozarzip embraced me warmly and kissed me good night on my forehead. I tried to sleep but I could not. Whenever I closed my eyes, my father’s huge member appeared in front of me perforating Marit-Aten’s narrow and

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tender vagina with a stream of blood gushing out of it and splashing on my face. Finally, I sank into a turbulent, agitated and distressed stupor. When I woke up, the slave girl was already there handing me a mug of grape juice which I drank thirstily. She offered to scrub my body in the warm bath which I declined. I immersed myself instead in the pool of cold water. I floated there for quite a while. The soaking in the chilly water had a sobering, soothing and relaxing effect on me. When I emerged from the pool, the slave girl dried me with a thick absorbent canvass cloth and handed me a freshly laundered white canvas gown embroidered with the princely emblems of the ankh and flail with blue thread. In its center was a large gold plated Aten disc fastened to the cloth by safety pins. I bowed in thanks to the slave girl who was embarrassed because no prince has done that to her before. I left for Ozarzip’s quarters to be further enlightened about his father’s religion so that one day, if at all, we shall be able to replace the barbaric religion reigning now in Egypt with a more humane, egalitarian and benign creed. When I entered Ozarzip’s quarters, I saw him lying on his bed wearing a coarse black nightgown. He had a gold Shebyu collar, the sign of his rank, on his neck and a gold Aten pendant with red rubies studded like rays of the sun terminated by small palms of hands fastened to the sun disk signifying the all giving function of the Aten. He had no wig on his head and his baldness made him look naked. “I came to absorb pearls of wisdom from my teacher and mentor,” I announced. “Of course, of course,” he answered, but I detected a glum undertone in his voice and his demeanor was mournful. “Before we embark on the perusal of my forefather’s religious doctrine,” Ozarzip said feebly, “I would like to share with you, my dear prince Me-Shu, my foreboding about your father’s plans for the initiation of the new Aten religion. When I watched the retinue present yesterday at the foundation stone ceremony of Akhet-Aten, I couldn’t fail to notice that most of those present were functionaries, soldiers and members of the royal court, but no priests, theologians and ecclesiastical thinkers who could be leaders of the new religion and no public figures who could support a popular infrastructure for a robust following of the new Aten religion.” “Your father’s religious revolution is very radical and very far removed from the existing pagan polytheism which is deeply entrenched in the Egyptian culture, ethos and social character. The clergy of Amun, Ptah, Osiris, Horus and Isis are numerous and strong. The Temples at On, No-Amon, and Moph are bastions of organized religion built up over hundreds of years. The new Aten religion, without any infrastructure to match the organizations of the old religious establishments, has no chance

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of survival in the long run or even in the short run. Also, your father is a great thinker with magnetic charisma but he lacks political acumen and one cannot launch a revolution and render it viable without political astuteness.” “This is why I am in a low spirit this morning, my Prince,” concluded Ozarzip, “but let us go back to the fount of knowledge, to the treasury of wisdom of our forefathers. As I have already mentioned to you previously,” Ozarzip recollected, “our ancestors, being nomads, had their own local God whom they called ‘El Elion’, the Superior God, or ‘El Shaddai’, the God of Hosts, who travelled with them wherever they went. Hence, their Gods were not universal Gods but guardian divinities who move together with their wandering charges. Since the roaming tribes do not have a legal standing in the areas in which they wander and their viability as well as their livelihood and grazing rights depend on oral or written accords, so the relationships between the nomad tribes and their deities are also regulated by covenants.” “Legend has it,” recounted Ozarzip, “that the first covenant was between God and Abraham. The first Patriarch was ordered to take a three year old heifer, a three year old she-goat, and a three year old ram and divide them in the middle. When the sun set, God caused a smoking furnace and a burning lamp to pass between the pieces of the animals. That was the attestation for God’s covenant that He would endow to the seed of Abraham the whole land between the Nile and the Euphrates. Also God ordered Abraham and all the males in his household, including his son Ishmael, to circumcise the flesh of their foreskin as a further confirmation of the accord between God and Abraham. This carnal blood treaty made Abraham and his progeny God’s chosen people. Hence, all the Habiru,” Ozarzip made an expansive gesture with his hands, “come under this Agreement which was renewed with Isaac and with Jacob. And the sacrifice of Isaac was an augmentation of God’s choice of the Patriarch’s progeny as his select and preferred people. This sacrifice made the Habiru a unique and holy nation. You see, Prince Me-Shu,” Ozarzip waved his index finger at me to stress his point, “there is a progression here from God’s covenant with the Habiru, their choice by Him as His preferred people, and their becoming unique unlike any other social aggregate.” Ozarzip then carried on his discourse about the primacy of Abraham among the Patriarchs, not only time-wise but also significance-wise. “This stature he gained by sacrificing his only son to attest to the supreme authority and eminence of God. Isaac was a willing victim. He ran to the altar on which he would be sacrificed and tied himself on it. He never had any inner conflicts about his self-oblation. Not so Abraham who suffered

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excruciating pain and inner qualms because of his surrender of his only son. Also the forfeiture of Isaac was the infringement of God’s covenant with Abraham because how could God make the progeny of Abraham as numerous as the sand on the sea shore if Isaac is slaughtered?” “This gave Abraham the right to haggle with God, which indeed he did. Abraham thus gained a prerogative to haggle with God about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, not to destroy the righteous with the wicked, and this was the eventual basis of the dialogical discourse between God and his chosen people which is unique in human history.” I took notice of this dialogue between the ancestors of the Habiru and their God. This is how it should be in contrast to the arbitrary and cruel treatment of their human charges by the Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods. I vowed to pursue this kind of dialogue with God if and when I have the opportunity to do so. Ozarzip terminated his morning discourse about his ancestors and their gods by showing that the Habiru developed an aptitude to achieve revelations about their God’s expectations and intentions. Thus Abraham came to Shechem in Samaria and had a vision under the Cedar of Elon Moreh that he shall inherit the land of Canaan and he built an altar to commemorate this prophecy. Isaac had a revelation at the Cedars of Mamre (Elonei Mamre) near Hebron, and Jacob had a communication with El-Shaddai, the Lord of Hosts, at Bet-El, the House of the God El. “Hence,” concluded Ozarzip, “our ancestors had a direct recourse to their Gods without the mediation of priests and prophets. This is enough for one morning.” Ozarzip clapped his hands and a group of boys and girls came in carrying trays of fruit and mugs of beer. Ozarzip was less interested in the fruit than in the naked boys whom he ogled pruriently. I picked up some fresh dates and ripe figs and asked for an empty tray from one of the slave girls. I put the fruit on the tray and rushed to Queen Nefertiti’s quarters. I wanted to see how my beloved Marit-Aten is enduring her trials and bring her some fruit. Also I did not wish to see Ozarzip’s orgy with the young boys which pained and disgusted me. When I came to the Queen’s quarters, I caught a glimpse of my beloved lying on her back. Her face was pale and she still had on her bloody white tunic but it was raised and I saw her private parts bandaged with canvas strips soaked with ointments and a doctor was attending her wounds. I immediately averted my eyes so as not to impinge her privacy. I called one of the slave girls attending my beloved and asked her, stuttering horribly, to give the fruit to the ailing Princess and let me know how she felt. The slave girl went to Marit-Aten’s bed, placed the tray on a nearby table, and pointed at me. The Princess gave me a puzzled look with her

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enormous hazel eyes. I lowered my eyes immediately with shame and apprehension. The slave girl came back saying that the Princess is recuperating and that she thanked me for the fruit. I ran away, not looking back and crouched under a tamarisk tree. I helped myself to some of its fruit which was sour and tangy and waited for the orgy in Ozarzip’s quarters to be over so that we could resume our discourse on the Habiru religion. But who appears, out of nowhere, looking for me? It is no doubt Aaron who recently became my shadow. He is a couple of years younger than me. He is the son of my father’s Habiru slave, Yocheved. He is a short but very agile and quick witted boy, about 10 years old, with white reddish skin full of freckles. He was dressed with a blue tunic with fringes at its four sides as ordained by Habiru law. He had yellow side curls which reached his shoulders, again decreed by Habiru religious law. His head was shaven and covered by a large knit white skullcap. When we first met, it was outside my father’s throne room where his mother Yocheved served as cook. Apparently he waited for his mother’s shift to end so he could accompany her to their quarters and have dinner with her … especially when she finagled some goodies from the royal kitchen to add luxury to their otherwise modest dinner. Aaron always helped her to carry home this extra food. When we first met, he looked at the insignia on my tunic and stretched his hand to me in welcome and said, “My name is Aaron and I am a Habiru boy and you are a prince. What is your name?” I started stammering very badly whenever I had to speak to a stranger. “You stutter so badly,” he empathized with me. “But how can you help me?” I asked still stammering heavily. “By guessing what you intend to say, interpreting your body language, and using logic.” “All right, braggart. What do you make of this?” I started to stammer so severely that I was virtually dumbed and paralyzed. “I love my half …” “Easy.” Aaron smiled. “You love your half … it could only be a male or female. Since the likelihood that you love girls is much higher than that you love boys and the only half-sister in your age range is Marit-Aten, it is her that you love.” I was so flabbergasted by his success that I let him help me in my discourse with people. Usually he was right in the interpretation of my intentions. In the minority of cases in which he was in error, he immediately corrected himself when I indicated the right interpretation with my body or sign language which we developed together. Today was the first time I invited Aaron to attend the discourses we are having with Ozarzip on the foundations of the Habiru religion.

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“Hello, boy,” I called Aaron. “Come join me under the tamarisk tree.” I invited him to have a fruit. I picked a fruit and handed it to him. “Let’s wait a bit here until Ozarzip concludes his disgusting practices with his slave boys. He will also start to make advances towards you. You have to be firm and reject him and he will leave you alone. Now, let’s go and see if the boys have left Ozarzip’s quarters,” I suggested. When we arrived at the Viceroy’s rooms and saw that he was alone, we entered and I introduced Aaron to Ozarzip by saying, “Your body of followers has doubled today.” I tried to be jocular. “Eventually it will become a crowd.” We sat in front of the Viceroy and he started to instruct us didactically. “Now, children,” he began, “I am just about to embark on the most important installment of my instructive discourse to you about the nature of the foundations of the religion of my forefathers and their relationship to the religious revolution of our king and master, the Pharaoh Akhenaten. The monotheistic innovation of the genius of our royal God was not formed in a vacuum. It had a complex infrastructure of historical, social and theological factors. I also dare say, my children, that with all due modesty,” Ozarzip touched his chest with the palms of his hands, “that Providence has chosen me to play an important part in this major religious upheaval. Since this claim seems initially to be preposterous, I propose, my children, to expound to you my stance, step-by-step, so that at the end of my exposition, my point of view will not seem to be as farfetched as it seems now at your first impression. So, let us begin, my children, where else but at the beginning.” Ozarzip tried to be jocular and gave us one of his wide smiles which generated four dimples, two at his cheeks, one at the crevice between the two parts of his chin, and the fourth at the tip of his nose. “Our three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” commenced the Viceroy, “stemming from Mesopotamia and roaming the grazing grounds in Canaan needed a protector God to fend off any aggressors from the indigenous land tillers and city dwellers of Canaan who tended to regard the nomad Habiru as trespassers, usurpers and, at least, nuisances and pests.” “My ancestors had to reach accords of no belligerence with their neighbors just the way they reached a covenant with their Gods of obedience to their laws in consideration for their protection. Therefore, their Gods had to be superior to the gods of their neighbors so that in case of conflict or war, their Gods would secure ascendancy over their enemies. Accordingly, the Gods of our fathers were denoted as El, El-Elyon, El Shaddai, Eloha, Adonai and El Tzevaot. All of them were meant to be superior to the gods of their neighbors. This, to be sure, is just an initial step in the evolution of the Gods of our ancestors: Deities who are just one

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step ahead of their adjacent gods. They are also called Elohim in the plural implying that these superior Gods are content to be just higher than their adjoining divinities … no exclusiveness, no uniqueness and no absoluteness. Then comes my father and embarks on an idea which further develops the conception and nature of God in the Habiru religion. But before I go on, let us refresh ourselves.” Ozarzip clapped his hands and a procession of naked slave boys and girls appeared carrying trays of beer, sizzling frying pans with piping hot quail and lamb chops, and an assortment of red and yellow watermelons. Ozarzip served himself a mug of beer and grabbed a lamb chop which was too hot. He uttered a cry of anguish and threw the lamb chop back to the frying pan. “This is, sire,” I suggested slyly, “the price of gluttony.” Ozarzip started to caress the buttocks of one of the slave boys. “Not this, sire,” I protested. “Let us slake first our thirst for knowledge and then you sate your prurient passions.” “Ah, prince Me-Shu, how prudish can one be,” complained Ozarzip. “Aaron, are you as puritan as your mate here?” The Viceroy tried his luck with Aaron. “Even more,” the younger boy retorted. “All right. All right, have it your way,” conceded Ozarzip. “Let’s eat something now and postpone our pleasures for later.” Ozarzip took a quail which was less hot and downed it with beer. Aaron and I had some watermelon. When we finished eating, a slave girl brought us some canvas towels soaked in rose water with which we wiped our hands, mouths and faces. Then we were ready for the resumption of our studies. “My father Jacob was the first and only one of my ancestors to have a direct dialogue with God and this happened not once but twice. The first time was at Beth-El, the House of God, where he dreamt that a ladder appeared near him reaching from earth to heaven and the angels of God were ascending on it to heaven and descending on it back to earth. That was a direct discourse with God since at the top of the ladder stood God himself repeating his covenant and promise to Abraham and Isaac and to my father Jacob, of course, to bequeath the land of Canaan to the seed of my ancestors. But this direct conversation of God and my father had a deep and clandestine meaning of paramount importance. Because of the supreme significance of this sacred message of God, it was repeated again in the conflictual encounter of my father Jacob with a countenance of God. Indeed, Jacob called the place where this encounter happened Peniel, the face of God, because my father saw God face to face and survived.”

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“So, what was the enormous secret of this communication of God to my father that necessitated not one but two encounters? Well, you are curious, of course, my children,” Ozarzip was very adept in building up a drama in his discourse, “so please lend me your ears and have patience and I shall reveal to you the most tremendous mystery in the history of your people as well as ours.” “This secret is tied up with my personal history and as you shall presently see, every phase, every event, every minute of it has been decreed by God himself. You must realize, my children, that my life in Canaan among my brethren was dire, violent and rife with treachery.” The Viceroy’s voice became somber. “My father loved me best of all his sons because he realized the great role that God has destined for me. I had the power to discern the inner intentions and thoughts of my brothers and other people and I was very adept at the interpretation of dreams.” “My brothers hated me because this ability of mine proved my ascendency over them. This and my father’s preference for me made them my mortal enemies. Now, my children, Jacob knew about the bad blood and the loathing of me by his other sons, yet in order to carry out God’s covert intention, of which he knew and to which he was a partner, he sent me to visit my brothers grazing their flock near Shechem and to bring him word about their being.” “My father knew that the encounter between me and my brothers could be fatal, yet he sent me to meet them. That was a sacrificial act, quite like Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, which my father perpetrated on me. He knew very well its dire consequence, but the need to sacrifice me was necessary to carry out the concealed wish of God.” “Indeed, legend has it that when I went to visit my brothers grazing their flocks near Shechem and they sold me as a slave to a caravan of Ishmaelites ferrying spices to Egypt, that God himself was a partner to this sale of me to the spice merchants who brought me to Egypt. God Himself was aware of the enormity of the unrevealed mission inherent in my travel to Egypt and He was present at my sale to ascertain that it would indeed be accomplished because so much was at stake.” “And this is the colossal secret. I was sent by God and by my father, God’s partner in this clandestine plan, in order to divulge and instruct the Pharaoh, your father, and you, my Prince Me-Shu, in the detailed nature of the belief in one God so that your father, the king, and you yourself, my Prince, will be instrumental in spreading the word of the one unique God in the whole world and make our God the universal absolute and exclusive Lord of the whole world.”

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“Make no mistake, my Prince, and also you, Aaron, both of you are destined to have a central role in the spreading of the dominion and authority of our one God. And I know what I am talking about because I myself am part of this undercover scheme.” Aaron and I were flabbergasted and numb with pent up emotion. Ozarzip covered his face and said tiredly, “Now leave me alone, children. I am quite worked up by divulging to you the secrets of my life, the king’s and yours. So let me unwind and seek some pleasures which you two do not approve of. Now, children, go rest or play with some slave girls. After all, you have earned the right to relax after you have absorbed such an earth-shaking revelation. If God, that is, the one and only true God wills it, we shall meet tomorrow morning. Now you can go, children.” He smiled his four dimpled smile at us and pointed his gentle effeminate hands towards the door indicating that our encounter was over. Aaron and I were so dumbfounded and stunned from Ozarzip’s disclosures and prophecies that our legs, hands and whole body seemed to us to move in an involuntary and uncontrolled manner. While walking out of the door of the Viceroy’s quarters, we met the naked slave boys and girls, who must have been summoned by Ozarzip, carrying trays of food and fruit. I grabbed a whole tray of ripe black figs so enamored by my beloved Marit-Aten and carried it to the tamarisk tree. The slave girl tried to protest but when she saw the prince’s insignia on my tunic, she stood helpless and immobilized. I picked three large fleshy leaves from the tamarisk tree and put a few figs on one leaf for Aaron, put some more figs on a leaf for myself, and the rest, a large number of figs, I put on the largest leaf for my beloved MaritAten. I gave the empty tray back to the slave girl who started crying. “What shall I tell the Viceroy,” she sobbed. “He will accuse me of stealing the figs.” “Don’t worry,” I calmed her. I asked Aaron to look after the three heaps of figs and I led the slave girl to the Viceroy’s quarters. He was busy munching some fried red snapper and ogling the buttocks of the slave boys to decide who would be his target after he finished his lunch. When he saw me leading the slave girl, Ozarzip burst into laughter, forming the deepest dimples I have yet seen on his face. “What do you know,” Ozarzip chuckled, “Our prince Me-Shu has finally discovered the delights of the flesh. Congratulations.” “No, no, no, Viceroy,” I protested, stammering. “It’s not what you think. I have taken the whole tray of figs from this girl, some for Aaron, some for me, and the largest share for my beloved princess Marit-Aten

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who is recuperating from her deflowering. This girl was afraid you would accuse her of stealing the figs, so I came to set things right.” “This is even more remarkable, Prince Me-Shu. You well remember how I predicted that you shall be the harbinger of morals for our people. Your behavior today proves my point. My felicitations, my Prince. I’ll see you and Aaron tomorrow morning.” “Certainly, Viceroy.” I bowed down to him respectfully and took my leave. I rejoined Aaron who munched his figs and I asked him to accompany me to visit Marit-Aten who was still at her mother’s, the Queen’s quarters, recovering from her wounds. When we entered the Queen’s rooms, I saw my beloved sitting on her bed and she smiled at me. I flushed crimson red in my face and lowered my eyelids. She had no wig on her head and her natural curly black hair lent charm to her head which was elongated like the skulls of all of our royal family. I approached her bed very slowly because my lowered eyes did not allow me to see ahead and I was afraid to stumble on something, fall down, and appear even more ridiculous than I usually am. I put the figs on the bed. She thanked me in the sweetest voice of angels. When I raised my eyes towards her, I saw her smiling with her huge eyes. I bowed to her respectfully, not daring to say a word.

CHAPTER FOUR THE HABIRU PRIESTHOOD

I left the Queen’s quarters in a hurry and asked Aaron to accompany me to my room. When he came into my room, I offered him more of my figs since he had finished his share. I sat in my chair and Aaron sat on the other cot in my room. I suggested that he come and share my room since I have a cot as well as a bed for me. My slave girl can also serve him and we can share my warm and cold baths. He said that he would like to share my quarters but he has to get permission from his mother. I told him that I shall be taking my bath and when he comes back, he shall let me know his mother’s decision. I asked my slave girl to put an extra amount of coal underneath my brass bath because a friend might come to visit and stay the night and he would probably like to take a bath before his evening meal. The slave girl added some more water to the bath and lit the coal underneath it. I asked her to prepare a dinner of fried red snapper and steamed black mushrooms and some white Nubian wine to drink it with. Just as I entered the bath and the slave girl poured in some musk oil and rose water, Aaron entered my quarters. “Good evening, Prince,” Aaron greeted me warmly. “My mother Yocheved is very honored by your invitation but she says that I should spend every other night with you. That is three nights and days. The other three nights and days should be spent with my father who teaches me the rites of prayers and sacrifice. I am destined to be a priest because my father is a distinguished member of the Levi tribe. And, of course, every holy Sabbath must be spent with my family.” “Very well, my boy.” I welcomed him enthusiastically. “In a moment I shall conclude my bath and you can take one before we have a dinner of choice red snapper and black mushrooms.” I jumped out of the bath and the slave girl dried me with white canvas towels perfumed with water lily scent. Aaron took off his blue tunic and white skullcap and entered hesitantly into the hot bath. When he sat down in the bath, he started splashing the water with delight. Apparently slaves and servants did not

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have the luxury of hot baths. They washed in the channels of the Nile or in the irrigation canals. While Aaron was washing, I asked the slave girl to go to the kitchen of the Ben-Ben Palace and arrange for our fish dinner. I also asked her to go to the chief butler and ask him to provide us with a goat skin of white wine from a variety of grapes grown and fermented by the Habiru. Otherwise, Aaron who is an observant Habiru would not be able to drink it. Before she left for the kitchen, she put some towels on the bed for Aaron to dry himself. When Aaron leaped out of the bath, his long wet side curls spread some water drops on the floor. He hurried to wipe them with the water towels. I told him to leave it since the slave girl is going to wipe the wet floor and that the towels are for him to wipe his body with. Aaron put on his tunic. He noticed my talking parrot and the decorative fish swimming in a glass container. I told Aaron, “These are the only two luxuries I allow myself.” The parrot immediately repeated what I said, replete with my stammer, and Aaron was greatly amused by this. Aaron was also entranced by the fish in the glass container that stood on the window sill so that the multi-colored fish reflected the light coming through the window. After a while, the slave girl came from the kitchen with a frying pan full of seething red snappers garnished by black tangy mushrooms. She also brought a wine skin of white wine and two glasses. “The chief butler,” she assured me, “said that this is from a variety grown and fermented by the Habiru.” She poured the wine in our glasses. We raised them and announced before drinking, “Ankh em Ma’et” (“Live in Truth”). Aaron told me that in the Habiru language they have a blessing before drinking wine: “Blessed be our God, our Lord, King of the world, who has created the fruit of the vine.” I asked Aaron to repeat the blessing, which I repeated word by word and then we drank the wine which was tangy and tingling on our tongues. We started to eat the fish and I asked Aaron to tell me about his ancestry. “We Habiru priests,” commenced Aaron, “stem from the Levite tribe. Our tribal ancestor was Levi, the third son of Jacob. However, the first legend linked to the name of our ancestor was far from laudatory. The story goes…” Aaron warmed up to his subject while we finished munching our red snappers and the slave girl wiped our fingers and mouths with fresh towels soaked in jasmine flower perfume. We continued drinking wine and Aaron resumed his story, “… that Dina, Jacob’s daughter and Levi’s sister, was raped by Shechem, the son of Hamor, a Hivite prince in Canaan. All the sons of Jacob were furious and decided to take revenge for the tarnishing of the honor of their sister. However,

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because the Hivite community had far more men than the number of Jacob’s sons, Dina’s brothers resorted to a ruse, connivance and deception. It seems that Shechem fell in love with Dina and he sent his father Hamor to discuss with Jacob and his sons the possibility of a marriage between Shechem and his enamored Dina. Jacob sent his sons to Hamor with the message that they would agree to the marriage provided that all the males in the city of Shechem would be circumcised since the Habiru law forbids the marriage of a Habiru daughter with any male from a community whose males are not circumcised. The people of Shechem agreed to this condition since they loved and respected their prince. When the men of Shechem were ailing and in pain from their circumcision, Levi and his brother Simeon slaughtered all the men of Shechem and took the women and children. This massacre was perpetrated unbeknown to Jacob. But listen to this, Prince,” some irony crept into Aaron’s voice, “Jacob opposed the slaughter of the Shechem males not on moral grounds but because the Hivite community was stronger than the Habiru tribe of Jacob and therefore might retaliate brutally in a blood revenge not only against Levi and Simeon, the perpetrators of the carnage, but against the whole Habiru tribe of Jacob.” Suddenly I felt tired so I lay on my bed and asked Aaron to tell me about the subjects that his father Amram is instructing him in the priestly duties. “Sacrifices, of course,” Aaron answered eagerly. “Making offerings to God is the first and foremost duty of the priest. Sacrifice in Habiru is called korban from the verb karev, to bring nearer, signifying that the offering draws Man closer to God.” The tone of voice of Aaron was didactic. He was eloquent and erudite, very remarkable for a boy of 10. I was indeed lucky to have him around since if I get badly stuck with a stutter or stammer, he could help me out by pronouncing the word correctly. “There are four main classes of sacrifice,” continued Aaron. “The sin offering, called hattat in Habiru, is for the atonement of specific sins of the one making the oblation. The guilt offering, denoted in Habiru as asham, is sacrificed when a guilty person feels ashamed because he has denied someone his rightful due. The dedicatory offering, matat in Habiru, is a gift to God following the sin and guilt sacrifices so that the repentance and atonement would be accepted by God. The burnt offering, olah in Habiru, is the most solemn sacrifice since it is burnt whole and everything goes to God with nothing to the priests. Isaac was meant to be a burnt whole offering by his father Abraham. Therefore it was called in Habiru ‘Pachad Itzhak,’ the Fear of Isaac.” This is when I lost track of what Aaron was saying and I fell asleep. I started having nightmares that my father, the Pharaoh, is sacrificing me to

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the sun God Aten as a burnt offering and my whole body was burnt by the flames from the scorching sun in the desert. In the morning I woke up with a headache, apparently from drinking too much white wine yesterday. Aaron also had a headache. I explained to him the cause of it and he vowed not to touch wine ever again in his life. He also complained that the cot he was sleeping on was too hard and I asked the slave girl to bring him some extra cushions and a thicker mattress of canvas cloth filled with soft papyrus leaves. I asked the slave girl for my customary morning mug of grape juice whereas Aaron ordered milk and cooked corn kernels for his breakfast. When we entered the quarters of the Viceroy, he greeted us with dismay. “You look horrible, children. What happened?” he asked with concern. “We drank too much wine last night,” I stammered and Aaron came to my help, completed my sentence, and added that he vowed to never touch that poison again in his life. “Very good, my boy,” agreed Ozarzip with a smile. “That stuff is not good for you. Even when you are older, don’t drink wine regularly. If you do, your hands will start shaking,” he showed us with his hands how they would shake, “your eyes will be blood shot, your cheeks red, and your nose bulbous.” The Viceroy cupped his fingers around his handsome nose and squinted his eyes to show us how terrible we would look as drunks. “I hope I have frightened you enough.” Ozarzip expressed his wish that we avoid wine and other intoxicating substances that mar our senses and blot out the clarity of our perception. “God wishes us to remain sober and sharp in our senses at all times. This will assure our being of better service to Him. Speaking of God, we may commence learning about our Lord and Master, Akhenaten, and his unparalleled earth shaking religious revolution.” Ozarzip looked out of the window and pointed at the statue of the king sculpted by Bak, the royal sculptor. “Look, children, at the head of our royal master,” Ozarzip pointed at the statue at the colonnade near the BenBen Palace. “How dignified, striking and awe-inspiring it is. Yet,” he added, “one cannot help noticing a layer of sadness apparent in its demeanor. You can also see that the sculpt features of our Lord are a combination of masculine and feminine characteristics. This has no basis in reality since as you, my children, are well aware, our Lord and Master is the epitome of masculinity in body, build and behavior. The bisexual attributes of the statute of our king were ordered by the Pharaoh himself who directed the royal sculptor Bak to stress the dual sexuality of the king

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in order to announce to the Egyptian people that Akhenaten is both the father and mother of the Egyptians.” “Yet a ludicrous fashion spread, especially among the Egyptian upper classes,” a trace of derision crept into Ozarzip’s tone of voice, “who imitated every practice of the king to portray themselves in sculpture and wall paintings also as bi-sexual. This was not only out of slavish emulation of the Pharaoh but also as a symbolic token of self-sufficiency.” “Apart from the elongated skull, which is the hereditary ‘water head’ sign of the royal family, the facial features of the Pharaoh also emulated by the Egyptian gentry were deformed and twisted in their sculpted and painted portrayals for two reasons. First, Akhenaten being not only a king but also a God, the next religious revolution was not only unique but also abstract. Hence, the defacement of the features is an intermediate step towards abstraction. The second is also in line with the king’s new religious doctrine, the blotting out of contours and form signifies the inferiority of matter to the superiority of spirit.” “Now mark my word, children,” Ozarzip pointed his two index fingers, one finger for each of us, to accentuate his intention. “The transfer of the royal capital to Akhet-Aten is also part of the king’s and the Divine scheme to innovate the whole religious life of Egypt. The king revealed to us that the site of Akhet-Aten was chosen by God’s vision transmitted to the Pharaoh that the terrain of Akhet-Aten resembles the hieroglyph for horizon. Therefore, the Horizon of Aten should be exactly where the hieroglyph of the horizon pointed at, being the revelation of God, that his abode should be at the desert horizon as the one universal abstract God. The most radical revolution of our Pharaoh was not only in theology but in the relationship between God and man, man and man, and the whole mesh of social structure and political relationship.” I was more and more impressed by the erudition and eloquence of the Viceroy. As a stammerer, I envied his total control of his vocal chords. He could raise the treble of his voice or change its timbre. For oratorical effect, he could switch in one second from vocal consonance to dissonance. My father was certainly lucky in having him as a chief advisor. “Mark my words now, children,” Ozarzip again pointed at us with his two index fingers, his solemn face expressing the paramount enormity of the issue he was raising, “this is probably one of the most important innovations in the revolution launched by our king and master. Take, for instance, Queen Hatshepsut, one of the most illustrious, powerful and astute rulers that Egypt ever had. She staunchly believed that she is carrying out the will of the Gods. Hence, her actions affecting the two

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lands of Egypt and their people and creatures are the manifestations of the multitudes of the Egyptian gods. Therefore, Hatshepsut had hoards of magicians, soothsayers, seers, and augers to divine the intentions, will and directions of the various gods so that the Queen could carry out their demands. This relationship between the gods and the Pharaoh was the propinquity between master and servant or rather an abject slave. Accordingly, the gods appoint kings to do their will within history since they cannot do it directly, so they need the kings as their political and social executives in the temporal world. Yet the king cannot but carry out the intentions of the god. If they diverge from it, they commit the heinous sin of hubris and are punished severely. The direct corollary of the master-slave relationship between the gods and the king is that humans are completely subjugated to Pharaoh’s commands since to stray from them amounts to a digression from the will of the gods. Therefore, the power of the king over the populace was absolute.” “Not so the interaction between Aten, the unique and abstract God of our King and Master, Akhenaten, and the people of Egypt.” The stern demeanor of the Viceroy while describing the master-slave bond between the many Egyptian gods, the Pharaohs and the Egyptian people changed into a benign and mellow expression and his face radiated grace. “Our Lord and Master decreed that the soul of Man is immortal, not his mummy and his body. The absurd, decadent and morbid Egyptian culture of the dead was ordained by the grim afterlife in the Osirian domain of the West where the corporal existence of the deceased continued to be macabre, gruesome and gory. Our Lord ordained that man is endowed with freedom of will and hence his soul should not be a slave to anyone but to his own inner convictions. The God Aten is abstract. Therefore, our Lord abolished all graven images of God. The will of Aten is infused into the king our lord and he conveys the abstract Aten’s directives not as absolute commands but as maieutic midwife-like triggers which are conceived by man, endowed with freedom of will, as inner suggestions to be accepted or rejected. Man’s loyalty must accrue only to Him. Any worship of any other god constitutes the cardinal sin of idolatry. Also, because the Aten is the only God, He created Man, all creatures and objects by Himself out of nothing. Consequently, Aten is self-created, unique, abstract, universal and omnipresent. The Aten being all this, our lord and master, His only son and image, denotes himself as Akhenaten meaning ‘Aten is satisfied, content and gratified’.”

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“The egalitarian nature of our God and master” Ozarzip’s voice became exalted, “stems from the fact that the Aten’s rays shine equally on the rich and the poor, on nobles and common folk, on master and slave alike. Also the wall paintings of the Aten depict the sun rays as terminated by a hand with its palm spread out in an all-giving gesture. No wish of receiving but an out-and-out act of donating. The Aten keeps nothing for himself. He bequeaths everything to His creatures. Our lord and master eliminated the elaborate nonsense of the funerary practices of the Osirian clergy which drained the resources of the Egyptian nation into a cult of death. He abolished the corruption inherent in the buying of an illusory afterlife for a mummified body.” “Our king and Aten proclaimed a notion of afterlife that is a genuine conception in its simplicity. The Aten sunk every night into the underworld to bring all creatures to sleep. With sunrise, after the scarab announced the ascent of the Aten back to the eastern horizon, every life form rose to bless the light in joy and thanks and eternal devotion to the Aten. The souls of the dead also emerged from their tombs to join the blessing and exaltation of the rising Aten only to return to their tombs with the setting of Aten. What an ingenious conception of immortality proclaimed by our genius master, King Akhenaten.” Aaron interrupted Ozarzip and said, “The scarab amulets really are popular. The Habiru call them hipusiot.” The Viceroy was beside himself with the adoration of the Pharaoh. “One day, children, you will understand the enormity of the revelation you are being exposed to here.” Ozarzip’s facial expression reflected the solemnity of the occasion. “As I have intimated to you before, my prediction is that both of you are destined to greatness in this never ending saga of religious innovation initiated by our teacher and mentor, the Pharaoh. Hence, I am sure that when the time comes, you are going to put to a good use the instruction you are receiving from me here. Therefore, I am imputing the utmost importance to our encounters here because of the major role both of you are going to fulfill in the not too distant future in one of the most spectacular religious upheavals in human history.” The Viceroy was visibly moved and quite excited. He felt hot, some buds of sweat appeared on his forehead. He asked his slave boy, a husky Edomite fellow with red hair and green eyes who was also his favorite sexual partner, to bring him some beer. Aaron and I each ordered a mug of grape juice. “I am treating you, children, as future masters,” Ozarzip related to us in deference, “thus I have to be careful, exact and meticulous in what I am conveying to you. You must, however, be very focused in your attention

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because the extent of our master’s innovations is staggering. Our sole God, the Aten, created himself by himself,” Ozarzip reverted back to his didactic tone, “and when he was all alone he created the world and its creatures. Now, children, this is ingenious,” the Viceroy infused in his vocal chords some tones of amazement “because the Aten is all giving. He implanted in the Pharaoh His essence and this Divinity was instilled in a maieutic, indirect, clandestine manner to all life forms. Consequently, the Aten permeates our Lord and Master who is then reflected in all creatures. Not only creatures but also art and artifacts reflect the benediction of Aten through the ever-giving grace of the Pharaoh. Therefore, the creative power of the Aten is a potential which is manifested in reality by the king. It follows that any prayer, invocation and supplication is also an appeal to the Pharaoh. Aten, therefore, reigns through the kingship of the Pharaoh. Thus the Aten experiences the world through the senses and the perceptions of the creature he has created and infused consciousness through the reflection of the Aten instilled in the king. Consequently the king and the creatures lift the Aten out of His existential loneliness by the God’s identification with the sorrows and joys of His creatures. The lonely individuality of the Aten led not only to the creation of the world and it creatures but also to the experience of the world and its creatures through the myriad prisms of the different life forms. Humans, animals and even plants are actors in an arena the experiences of which are absorbed by the Aten and disentangle, save or even rescue Him from the agonies of His solitude. This is a remarkable God-Man partnership which makes for a dialogue between Divinity and humans. This is a measure of egalitarianism between God and his creatures complementing the basic equality stemming from the equal shining of the life-giving sun rays on all creation. This is why the religion of Aten is universal because the sun’s rays shine equally on all creatures and objects in the entire world. Yet, my children, all these wonderful aspects of the religious revolution of our lord and master did not receive a uniformly laudatory reception. On the contrary,” some sadness and even rage crept into the Viceroy’s tone of voice, “the sacrilegious, corrupt, so-called priests of the idolatrous Amon are already scheming, like rats in the sewers into which they have been chased after their being deposed from power, how to regain their former power, fleshpots, and bales of corrupt gold. I am full of apprehension.” Ozarzip covered his face momentarily with the palms of his hands and then let them dangle helplessly. “Our prophet and savior is

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pure, burning with idealistic fervor. He taught us to love God in the way God loves himself. Our Amonic enemies, on the other hand, are ruthless, without scruples, and with no barriers or limits of conscience to their actions. Hence, they are free in their plotting, connivance, and conspiracy against our master who might be vulnerable to the criminal plans, conspiracies and ruses of these enemies of the Divine light of our Lord. Our enemies are waiting for their chance to injure the wonderful political and social revolution based on the religious innovations of our master, to regain their usurped privileges and their corrupt theocracy, and thus bring to naught the glorious upheaval of equality, justice, truth, plenty and joy that our Master brought about by his inspired actions. The laudatory innovations of our Lord are too many to enumerate but I would like to point out to you, my children, some of the most important ones for you to remember.” The Viceroy pointed his two index fingers at us as was his habit whenever he wished to single out an issue. “A very crucial doctrine expounded by our master is that every one of the life forms has been created in the image of the Aten. What does it mean, you may ask, my children,” Ozarzip infused a note of interrogation in his discourse, “that every creature was created in the image of a sun disk? This sounds overtly absurd. But the wisdom of our Lord decreed that the Aten imbued his light into the king, our master, who as both Divine and human, serves as a prism, a filter to the Light of the Aten and our Lord reflects the light in him to each creature, which then absorbs it according to his specific individual features. Therefore, the reflection of the light of the Aten through the mediation of our master becomes exclusive, unitary and unique according to the peculiar attributes and specific characteristics of each creature. Hence, each reflection of the Aten in every life form is unique the way the Aten is singular and this is the ingenious explanation of our master that every creature has been created both in the uniqueness of the Aten and in the solitary unity of our master himself. This is complicated, my children, but I hope you understand this important premise of our master’s teaching.” Although I was quite confused, I nodded in the affirmative, not to disappoint the Viceroy since he exerted himself visibly to convey to us the rather convoluted premise of my father’s doctrine. Aaron, who looked completely puzzled, looked at me and imitated my nods of approval, although he appeared to me more bewildered than I was. Ozarzip sensed our confusion and remarked, “I shall present to you now a couple of our master’s premises which are less puzzling yet not less important. The first,” Ozarzip enumerated, “is that the Aten shines in the

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continuous present. The past fades away and is imperceptible whereas the future is not yet there. All there is, is an ever shining present, which is eternal without beginning and without end, like the Aten itself. Hence, the ever-shining light in the present is the only truth there is. Consequently, Ankh em Ma’et, the traditional Egyptian benediction ‘Live in Truth,’ received a new meaning in our master’s creed: ‘Live in the eternal shining of the Aten’s truth’.” The second premise,” the Viceroy continued, “is ‘nefer nefer Aten,’ the beauty which surpasses all beauty is beautiful Aten. The beauty of the eternal light, bright gold in the morning, white hot at noon, and blood red in the evening breaks up in prisms to the colors of the rainbow and permeates into all the glories of art.” Ozarzip started to sound weary after a long and charged morning of instruction to us. It was approaching midday and the Viceroy was ogling hungrily the body of the young Edomite slave. He appeared to be ready to make an interim summary for the day and then indulge in food and fornication. Later he will have a stretch of sleep and rest in the afternoon. In the evening he will have the ear of the King who was always ready to hear his advice. “And now, my children, let me elaborate the foremost principle of the creed of the Aten.” Ozarzip again pointed his two index fingers at us but this time they seemed quite weary. “The Aten’s permanent giving, endowing and bestowing of light, grace and goodness to the world and its creatures give a meaning, a reason and a purpose to the God’s existence. This all giving nature of the Aten manifests itself through our Pharaoh. In return, all creatures pledge their devotion, loyalty and love to the Aten and our king and master. This partnership of God, King and creatures is the dynamic relationship between Aten the Pharaoh and creation which provides the viability and endurance of both Divinity, king and life forms. God and Man are thus entwined together in running the world.” Ozarzip sat down on his throne and confessed, “I am tired, my children. Instructing you saps my energy but all this is to the good since both of you are destined to greatness and you shall apply the wisdom of our master to the good of Egypt and the world at large. Now, children, I shall withdraw for some food and pleasure. You are welcome to join me.” “No, no, no, Viceroy,” I declined stammering very badly since I was just about to tell a lie. “We have been invited for lunch at the abode of Aaron’s parents.” Aaron looked askance at me. “Enjoy your lunch at the abode of the esteemed Habiru Priest Amram and his honorable wife Yocheved. Give them my regards.” The Viceroy then clapped his hands and droves of naked boys and girls brought in trays

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loaded with food and fruit. When we took our leave, Aaron said, “I understand you don’t want to stay for food and fornication with the Viceroy, but if you wish to join us for a meal I have to run and announce you to my parents since you are royalty and my mother will prepare something special for you.” I started to stutter my protests that something simple will do but Aaron asked me to wait for him outside the Ben-Ben Palace and he will run to his parents’ servants abode and announce our coming for lunch and then he will come back and lead me to his parents’ house. While Aaron was away, I sat at the base of one of the columns of the Ben-Ben Palace’s colonnade. The columns were about 12 times the height of a man. It would take about four men holding hands to measure the circumference of a column. The length of the avenue leading to the main gate of the palace was about fifty columns long and the breadth of the colonnade was four columns wide. The columns were sculptured out of sandstone and were covered with gold and silver plate hieroglyphs inlaid with Egyptian faience, lapis lazuli and mother-of-pearl describing hunting, battle and harvest scenes painted on the columns with ochre, black, white and blue wall paints. The sun was burning hot It was midday and the sun rays were perpendicular to the ground casting no shadows. Aaron ran back to me and announced that his parents would be honored and delighted to have me join them for the midday meal. “Follow me, Prince,” Aaron suggested. Aaron led the way and I went behind him. We crossed the avenue and went out of the gate, which had a stone falcon, the sign of Horus, one of the chief deities of the previous regime, fastened at the top. My father had the good sense not to tear down the Horus falcon and offend a great many of the populace who still worshiped him, but he attached a large gold Aten disk to the head of the bird that shined so brightly that it obliterated for the viewers the image of Horus altogether. We then passed through the ostentatious abode of the extended royal family, the chief functionaries and administrators of the regime. The tombs of the notaries were as conspicuous as ever. Although the Osirian cult of the dead was abolished by my father, large and well decorated tombs were still a status symbol. After we went past the rows of tombs, we emerged in front of a weird sight. A large area covered with black tents. “These are our abodes,” explained Aaron. The tents are made of black goats’ hair, which has been proved for hundreds of years to be the best insulator there is against the vicissitudes of the weather, both hot and cold.” I had never seen anything like it before and I asked Aaron to explain how tents function as abodes. “Not only as abodes,” explicated Aaron. “They also house the small livestock, goats, and sheep, which are sheltered for the

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night after their grazing and for milking. The camels spend nights outside and are bound for the night to the pegs of the tents. Chicken roam all around and peck leftovers. My curiosity was not yet quenched and I kept on inquiring, “But how are the men, women and children divided from one another and where and how is the cooking done?” “Well,” Aaron started to arrange his answer which his pause promised to be a lengthy one, “the largest tent is the guest divan. As you know, the Habiru are nomads, so hospitality is their prime duty. If hospitableness is mutual, as it should be, it becomes a prime maxim of survival in the wilderness. Hence, as you shall presently see, we take great care to wine and dine our guests in a lavish manner. Only the head of the family, like my father, is entitled to a tent for himself. The women have a tent each together with their children. The pubescent girls and boys are separated from their mothers and lodged together, girls and boys separately. As for cooking, mothers cook for their children and themselves in their tents whereas special slaves cook for the bachelor girls and boys and for the head of the family. Hospitality of the guests, as you shall see, is the paramount task and mission of the head of the family.” The long winded explanation by Aaron seems to have taken us directly to the entrance of the guest tent where we were welcomed by a dignified middle-aged man with a long grey-white beard, burning black eyes, bushy black eyebrows, long grey side curls, and a white-gold embroidered turban on his head. He was wearing a white striped blue tunic with four tassels at its edges. His wife was a large woman clad in a black wide gown that concealed the contours of her body. A grey shawl covered her head and shoulders and only her face with big brown eyes, a bulbous nose and creased cheeks were visible. A young girl older than Aaron and me was clad in a longsleeved gown reaching to the floor and up to her neck covering all of her body. She had one long pigtail circling her head. Her face was white and freckled and her deep set blue eyes were lined by round thick eyebrows. When we walked towards the center of the guest room, all three were just about to prostrate in front of me since I was a prince. “No,” I protested vehemently. “I am just a young boy and you should not bow to me.” I whispered to Aaron that if his parents and sister insist on prostrating themselves in front of me, I shall leave the guest room. Aaron hurried to his parents and whispered in their ears. They looked bewildered but then muttered back to Aaron in Habiru, a language in which I was not fluent. Aaron hurried back to me and said, “My parents say that you are a prince and for them any wish of royalty is their command.”

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He led me to the chair of honor which was a throne-like wooden artifact with gold and silver connecting rods and the backrest was a woven tapestry depicting birds and water lilies in green, gold and blue colors. The arms of the chair were carved and gold-plated wood and heads of lions were fastened for the palms of the hands to rest on. The other chairs in the guest room were made of folded wooden structures with canvas seats and backs embroidered with gold and silver thread. The floor and walls of the guest room were covered with papyrus carpets depicting the sowing of barley, the reaping of wheat, and the picking of grapes. Aaron’s parents and sister bowed to me slightly and sat near me on the folded chairs. The father introduced himself as Amram the Priest. His wife’s name, he said, was Yocheved and his daughter’s name was Miriam. “My dear Prince,” Amram opened with a deep resonant voice, “we are deeply honored and pleased that you have agreed to visit our humble abode. We cannot match the illustrious royal kitchen in the Ben-Ben Palace but I have prepared a suckling lamb and stuffed it with my own hands with fresh black mushrooms dug out by my sheep dogs from the banks of the nearby irrigation canal. I also added some pine nuts and spiced it with rosemary, nutmeg and cardamom. It is simmering slowly in the oven outside the tent and it will be ready in about an hour. Meanwhile, let us taste some of the fresh dates. A slave boy who is an expert in climbing up palm trees picked them for us just an hour ago. I understand, Prince,” the Priest addressed me, “that you are a very cultured young man and very interested in the Habiru religion. I shall be delighted, my prince, to answer any of your questions until the food is ready and, of course, we can continue the discussion after the meal for as long as you wish.” “Yes, of course, very venerated priest,” I started to stutter and Aaron helped me out whenever I got stuck on a word. “I am fascinated by your religion that is so close to the religious reform launched by my father the Pharaoh. Your son Aaron is my friend but is more like a brother to me.” I put my hand around Aaron’s shoulder in a loving embrace and he blushed red in his face, both in embarrassment and delight. “Aaron was kind enough to introduce me to the intricacies of the Habiru sacrifice, but I would be beholden to you, sir, if you could enlighten me as to the function of a priest as eminent as yourself in the Habiru religion” “Of course, my Prince” Amram agreed, “with great pleasure. The most conspicuous difference between pagan idolatry and the Habiru religion is that the pagan idols are tangible whereas our God is not. Therefore, we need a priest to serve as a mediator, as a go-between, to bond an abstract God and tangible concrete worshippers. The priest’s most important role is to interpret the word of an intangible God to His concrete followers. I, as

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priest, experience a revelation of the word of God and His message to His believers and I am thence able to convey the expectations of God to His initiates. The concrete pagan Gods can be seen, felt and touched. But they are seen and not heard. They have no words for revelation. Therefore, their believers employ diviners, magicians, soothsayers and fortune tellers which stem from themselves without any real link with their concrete, lifeless, blind and dumb Gods. Therefore, their divinations are nothing but deceit, lies and false pretenses.” “It is very impressive, sir,” I reacted “I would like to hear more about it.” “Of course, Prince” Amram agreed readily, “but let me see first how our suckling lamb is doing.” The priest went out of the guest tent and after a while he came back beaming. “The lamb looks astounding,” he announced. “In no time we shall have a glorious meal. I think though,” he added, “that we still have time to discuss a couple of important things before we eat.” I started to feel somewhat hungry, so I reached out to the tray on the low table of wood upholstered by camel hide and picked up a large violet skinned fresh date. My hosts and their children, Miriam and Aaron, followed suit and also helped themselves to some dates. Apparently the nomadic Habiru custom decreed that only after the guests have sampled the food may the hosts also eat. The date tasted exquisite. I bit through the outer brittle peel and the tangy sweet sour juice of the fruit filled my mouth. The priest munched quickly and swallowed his date and continued his discourse: “The first issue that I would like to raise, Prince,” the priest commenced, “is that the idolatrous pagans regard priests as the abject slaves of their Gods. The idols are the absolute masters of their priests and they should fulfill to the hilt even their slightest whims. Not so the Habiru priest. Being an intermediary between God and His people, he is a partner to God’s administration of his chosen people, the Habiru, and creation as a whole. There is indeed a continuous dialogue between God, his priests, anointed prophets, and contractual leaders of his flock. Thus, Abraham could haggle with God about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah and Noah forced the hand of God not to destroy the world again by flood. This mediation and complementarity between opposites being the privilege of priests seems to permeate many areas of mundane life. For instance, only the priests as intermediary may dress with cloths woven from two different materials like wool and hemp. Not so the non-priestly Habiru whose gowns have to be from one material only.

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Another important issue is that Habiru priests can only be males. This stems from the proliferation of priestesses in Canaan who are actually whores. A priestess of the Canaanite goddess Ashtoreth, for instance, is denoted in Habiru k’desha-k’dosha, a sacred whore. They are performing their sacred duties of copulating with the male population in the temples of Ashtoreth which are denoted as Bet Hamikdash, the house of the vagina, since Mikdash is the place where the intercourse between male worshippers and the k’desha-k’dosha, the sacred whore of Ashtoreth, takes place. Hence, we cannot risk having priestesses in our houses of worship. Amram paused and said, “After elucidating these two important premises, I think that we are ready to eat.” He hurried out of the tent while Miriam fetched some bronze plates with copper inlays in Habiru and placed them in front of each of us. Yocheved brought a large jar of water with green mint lives in it and some earthenware mugs. No fermented drinks were served since these, if brewed by non-Habiru breweries and wineries, were forbidden. Yocheved took away the tray of dates from the table and placed a square board of wood where the tray had been. Presently the priest came back into the tent holding by its handles, insulated by pieces of cloth, a large earthenware pot with a piping hot lamb browned on its top and simmering in its juices. He put it on the wooden board which Yocheved had placed on the table. The smell of the roasted lamb filled the entire tent with the odor of tender slowly cooked lamb meat, the strong earth smell of the black mushrooms mixed with the woody fragrance of pine nuts, the odor of cardamom, the whiffs of nutmeg, and the aroma of rosemary. The rich and appetizing redolence of the suckling lamb made me quite hungry. Yocheved brought in some thin round bread that she baked beforehand on a concave cast iron stove heated from below by coal. She placed the thin bread on each of our plates and sat down. The priest stood up and blessed the bread in Habiru with a deep rich voice. I made a mental note to ask Aaron at the end of the meal to teach me the Habiru language. Amram then divided the lamb in the pot with a large knife into five unequal parts. The biggest part which included the lower leg and a generous helping of stuffing he placed on my plate. I protested that it was too much. The priest retorted that I was a royal guest and therefore entitled to the largest portion. He then served all the members of his family and himself last. That was the custom of the nomadic Habiru stemming from the times of the Patriarchs, that the host is served only after all present in the guest tent have been waited on. The juices of the baked lamb moistened the round bread on which it was placed and gave it a tender aroma. I picked up the lamb’s leg with my

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thumb and fingers and tasted it. It was soft, delicate and refined. The mushrooms gave it a strong aroma and the combination of the nutmeg and cardamom made the flavor exquisite. I told the host how much I enjoyed the lamb and that I never savored anything like this before. The priest thanked me and said that the baked lamb came out especially flavorful in my honor and to please me. I blushed because of the host’s hyperbole. To extricate myself from the embarrassment, I asked the priest to clarify a point he made before the meal about the difference between the pagan priests who are the abject slaves of the Gods and the Habiru priests who train themselves to be near to God so that He may reveal his wishes and intentions to them so that they can transmit these to His people. “If I understand well,” I stammered, “the Habiru priest becomes, thereby, a partner with God in the task of the proclamation of the divine mandates to the initiates.” “Exactly, my Prince,” agreed the Priest. “You have understood well. Therefore, the priests have to be as pure as they can be to get to be acceptable to an ethereal, intangible and metaphysical God. He should at all times wash, clean and purify himself when he performs his sacral duties. He should not consume wine and other intoxicating substances so that his spirit, thinking and consciousness should be clear in order to perceive with supreme clarity God’s messages. Likewise, the priest should not marry a divorcee or a whore whose moral propriety can be questioned and he should refrain from any prurient, obscene and gross behavior. The priest has to bless the people; hence, he must be of a blessed nature himself, conferred on him by the grace of God. The priest must be versed in the laws and commandments of God since he is the anointed teacher of these divine directives to the people. Finally, the role of priest is hereditary, allotted to the Levite tribe because the sacrificial functions are the main bonding rituals between Man and God and thus paramount. Therefore, the various sacrificial duties of the priests are studied and transmitted from father to son from generation to generation so that the priesthood would be meticulously expert in their sacred tasks. The priests had also a judicial function and served also as doctors. Consequently, they have to be conspicuous and wear special clothes like me,” Amram pointed to himself, “so that the people could accost us if they need our help.” By the time Amram finished his discourse, all present finished eating. Miriam brought in a bowl of rosewater for everyone present to wash their fingers. I thanked Amram and his wife profusely and announced while stuttering that I never had such a tasty meal in my life. I also said that I feel very close to the Habiru and, as a token of this proximity, I will ask

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my brother Aaron … I embraced Aaron warmly … to teach me the Habiru language. I took my leave and the Priest invited me to come again whenever I felt like it and bowed to me in farewell. Aaron insisted on accompanying me back to the Ben-Ben Palace. When we came out of the guest tent, the sun already slanted to the West. When we approached the Ben-Ben Palace, its colonnade already cast long shadows. I told Aaron how much I was impressed with his father, his erudition, and personality. He seems to be a true spiritual leader of his people. I told him that I felt very close to the Habiru people and their religion and that I could see a close affinity between the Habiru religious doctrine and the monotheistic revolution of my father the Pharaoh. I told Aaron again about my decision to study the Habiru language and that I would appreciate it if he could teach me his tongue as often as he could. When we reached the entrance to the palace, I thanked Aaron exuberantly for a wonderful meal and afternoon with his family. I embraced him warmly and reminded him that tomorrow morning we have a date with the Viceroy in which he will carry on his discourse on the nature and extent of my father’s religious revolution. Entering the palace, I decided to walk towards Queen Nefertiti’s quarters and try to steal a furtive glance at my beloved princess MaritAten. When I approached the Queen’s residence, I saw the personal slave girl of my beloved. She was a tall black Nubian teenage girl with large breasts and pointed nipples and a short white linen skirt which revealed her rounded thighs and even some of her black curled pubic hair.

CHAPTER FIVE MARIT-ATEN

I introduced myself, stuttering horribly, which made the girl grin and her thick lips opened and revealed two rows of pearly white teeth. I interpreted her leer as derision, which most probably it was, which made me stammer even worse. The girl went in and came back quite swiftly announcing that the princess will see me for just a short while. I went into the Queen’s rooms following the Nubian slave girl. I walked as if I was engulfed by a thick fog. I was also afraid to raise my eyes, so I walked very closely to the footsteps of the Nubian girl. In a very short while, the black legs in front of me stopped moving and we stood in front of my beloved lying on her bed. The black girl left the room and I was standing the first time ever in front of my love. She was lying on her back, dressed in a transparent tunic of white silk. She had a long black curled wig on her head which accentuated the elongated contours of her white face. Her thick eyebrows shadowed her brown almond shaped green eyes. I cast some quick glances to her delicate breasts, the erect nipples of which were clearly visible through the transparent tunic. Her belly was firm and the button of her severed umbilical cord indicated centrality and stability. Her hips were thin and sculptured. The contours of her pelvis led to long thighs and legs. In the center of her pelvis, which was also the center of her being, was a triangular mound of thick curly black hair which was visible like a small dark tent beneath her white silken tunic. This mound covered her pubescent vagina which was ravished so cruelly by our father, the King. She motioned me to approach her and sit near her on her bed. I came near her very timidly and clumsily, my legs entangled one with the other, and I almost toppled on top of the princess. I did, however, regain my balance and sat cautiously near the princess on her bed. “Good to have you here, my dear Prince Me-Shu,” she said in a sweet sing-song voice. “I remember you came every day to ask about my health when I was ailing and you brought fruit to refresh me. Come near me, my Prince, and take my hand. She smiled at me, took my hand, and led it to her nipples. I blushed so badly that my face was actually burning with

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heat. My member, which was usually dormant, started to have a life of its own. When she led my hand to the top of her mound, my member developed a full-fledged erection. I was so fearful that the Princess would notice my stiff member that I extricated my hand from hers and ran out of the Princess’ room in panic. I ran all the way to my quarters, threw myself on my bed, and whined morosely to myself how I messed up my relationship with my beloved and would I ever be able to make it with her. I was so angry with myself. Why did I have to run away? She could not possibly see my erection when she was lying on her back. Also she was the one who initiated the prurient touches of her nipples and her pubic mound. My love for her is so spiritual, so pure, so tender, with no salacious, prurient lust in it, and yet she wanted this contact. What shall I do? Who can help me untangle the mysteries of love for me? I decided to go and see the Viceroy somewhat earlier in the morning. He is an experienced man of the world, versed in the pains and joys of all kinds of love, both pure and obscene. Ozarzip will understand and help me out. With this thought, I slumped into a troubled sleep. Just after sunrise I hurried to the Viceroy’s quarters without even downing my customary mug of grape juice. At the entrance of Ozarzip’s rooms, I met the husky Edomite slave boy and asked if I could see his master. While staring at the royal insignia on my chest, he answered that the Viceroy is still asleep. “Could you tell him, please, that Prince Me-Shu is here,” I stuttered, “and that it is a matter of urgency?” The slave boy went in and after a short while he came back and told me that the Viceroy is ready to see me. I went in and saw Ozarzip sitting on his bed without a wig, dressed in a white and blue nightgown favored by the Habiru nobles. “Prince Me-Shu,” he uttered with concern, “what happened to you? You look as if you have seen a ghost, coming to me like this in the middle of the night.” “You must help me, Viceroy,” I beseeched. “Sure, sure, sure” he answered, “but for me to help you, my boy, I have to know exactly what happened.” “You see, Viceroy,” I stuttered painfully, “I fell in love with a girl and I messed it up.” Ozarzip looked at me incredulously, than banged his thighs with glee and threw himself on his bed, laughing, giggling, chuckling, cackling and chortling uncontrollably. “I cannot bear it,” he tittered. “Ha, Ha, Ho, Ho, Ho ‘o ho, I shall soon perish,” he sniggered. He then composed himself and grinned at me with his four-dimpled face. “I am sorry, my boy,” Ozarzip apologized, “you must realize that I was dismayed thinking that

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something horrible has happened to you, like the doctors at the funerary palace having discovered an incurable disease in your body, and then you announce that you have fallen in love. This was such an anticlimax that I could not contain myself and I burst out laughing, but no offense meant. I am really sorry,” Ozarzip excused himself again. “You know how much I love you, Prince Me-Shu, and I respect you. Also, I have great expectations for you and I predict eminence, distinction and grandeur for you. So do not hold my burst of glee against me. But now, let us get to business.” The Viceroy became assiduous. “Tell me, Prince, who is the girl?” “She is Princess Marit-Aten, Viceroy.” “Oops.” Ozarzip protruded his lips forward in amazement and said, “Frankly, Prince, your choice could not be worse. But love is a disease. Like a malady, you do not choose it, it chooses you. So you could not help it. It is not your fault. But did you know, Prince,” he enquired, “that your father deflowered her not that long ago and tore up her unripe vagina, causing her bad hemorrhages? She was ailing for quite a while and barely recovered only recently.” “I know,” I affirmed. “I came every day to visit her and brought her some refreshments and fruit. She was very thankful and my love for her increased and flourished. When I saw my love ailing, I vowed that if you are right in your predictions, Viceroy, and I shall have some power in the future, the first proscription I shall enact is the prohibition of incest. It will be a capital crime punishable by death. Let me now confess to you, Viceroy…” Whenever I was excited, my stammering became worse. Because I was about to reveal a personal secret, my stammering became so bad that my words were almost completely blurred and all but incomprehensible. “I feel very close to you,” I confided, “hence I wish to tell you a mortal secret. My stammering started when my father entered me from behind.” I lay my head on my hands and started to sob. After a while, I felt Ozarzip’s hands on my shoulders stroking me and trying to calm and sooth me. “Tell me, sweet Prince,” what happened yesterday with the Princess and I shall try and set things right for you.” I composed myself and told Ozarzip about Marit-Aten trying to entice me sexually and my running away from her because I was afraid she would notice my erection. The Viceroy looked at me incredulously. “My dearest Prince. This is all such a painful misunderstanding on your part that I would like to reveal to you one of the most cherished secrets of womanhood: Sex is the most important asset, strength, and weapon of women of all ages. The Princess wished to show you her gratitude with the

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only resource she had, although still weak and recovering. Your erection would have been the greatest compliment to her, demonstrating that although convalescent, she is still enticing. So instead of cashing in on the stiffness of your member, you ran away. Now do not worry, my boy,” Ozarzip pacified me, “we shall solve your quandary right away.” He asked the Edomite slave boy to call the chief scribe of the Ben-Ben Palace to come right away since the Viceroy needs to dictate an urgent letter. The chief scribe is a very important figure in the king’s household since the writing of hieroglyphs is very complex and intricate due to the many idiograms and picture words in the Egyptian language. If it was not the Viceroy who invited him, he probably would have refused to come. When the chief scribe came in, he was still groggy with sleep. He was a rather short individual, chubby with a sizable belly and breasts. A very round head, very unusual for an Egyptian whose heads were more elongated. His eyes were also very round. His very fair skin was probable evidence for a foreign extraction. He wore no wig which was also unEgyptian. He bowed very low to the Viceroy, ignored me altogether, and placed a cushion in front of Ozarzip who started dictating right away. The scribe wrote with a charcoal pointer on firm papyrus pages. “Most Esteemed and beloved Princess Marit-Aten,” the Viceroy began dictation. “I was so happy and delighted to encounter your lovely and beautiful person and to see that thanks to Aten you are fully recovered and are radiant with health and loveliness. However, I am so angry with myself because your graceful show of thanks was completely misunderstood by me because of puerile inexperience and excessive bashfulness. Hence, my subsequent behavior must be taken as a momentary show of fright and not of disrespect. You should rest assured, my Princess, of my everlasting respect and eternal love. I am sending you a potted lotus plant, a symbol of rejuvenation, recuperation and constant renewal, and a flask of musk oil to perfume your exquisite body with heavenly perfume. I shall come tomorrow before sunset to hopefully receive your graceful forgiveness and assure you of my love forever. Prince Me-Shu” The Viceroy thanked the scribe profusely. The scribe bowed again and took his leave. Ozarzip then asked his slave boy to go to the king’s bursar, obtain a potted lotus plant and a flask of musk oil, and bring these and the letter to Princess Marit-Aten. When the slave boy left, I embraced Ozarzip in thanks. The sun was already up and Aaron showed up at the door of the Viceroy’s abode. Ozarzip greeted Aaron heartily and announced that we were ready for our morning lesson on our King’s religious revolution.

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Before engaging in his discourse, Ozarzip asked his slave boy to bring him some rosewater to wash his face which he then wiped with a course linen cloth. He then asked the slave boy to bring him his short Nubian wig. “Without my wig, I feel naked” Ozarzip chuckled and the four dimples appeared on his face. I was always amazed how the dimples never missed an opportunity to appear on the face of the Viceroy whenever he laughed, smiled, smirked or leered. Ozarzip also asked the slave boy to bring him some black mascara, crimson-red face paint, and some brushes. Ozarzip lined his eyes with the black mascara. Each eye was emboldened by two thick lines from the stem of his nose stretching almost to his ears. He also accentuated his eyebrows which made his face look ominous. He then painted his lips crimson-red in a wide but shallow heart shape which gave him the appearance of one of the whores roaming the boulevards of NoAmon, but apparently he liked it this way. “Well, children, now I am ready for you.” This declaration made me quite apprehensive knowing the sexual preference of the Viceroy, but then he added “I am about to divulge the earth-shaking innovative ideas of our Lord and Master, the King Akhenaten, our Pharaoh, our Lord, Master, and Savior.” The Viceroy started his colloquy with hyperbole, “One of his apt denotations is ‘The good ruler who loves mankind,’ but he is much more than that,” Ozarzip tilted his head backwards, looked at the ceiling, and searched for a more excessive, extravagant encomium that he had not yet used to crown the Pharaoh. Then he lowered his head, fixed his violet eyes at us, and pointed his two index fingers at both of us. “I know what he is, children,” the Viceroy exclaimed triumphantly. “He is the first individual in human history who became a ruler and, being conscious of his individuality, imbued the world with his uniqueness and envisaged a one unique God, the Aten disk which shines on all life forms and objects equally. Hence, each life form and object is also unique in its individuality. Since our master has been created in the image of the Aten, he imbues the essence of his individuality in the multitudes of the life forms and objects. This makes our Master rule a universe of ‘uniquenesses’. This is the solution to the apparent paradox that all the life forms and objects have been created in the image of the unique Aten, yet the Aten is not alone because he has a partner in creation, our lord and master, the Pharaoh.” Ozarzip’s exposition made my head swim and I hardly understood his argument. When he asked whether we understood what he said, Aaron answered “Yes” although I doubted whether he did. I nodded my head in the affirmative, which was also not the case. We simply did not wish to

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embarrass the Viceroy after he invested so much energy and effort in our education. We encountered the same incomprehension with a similar point the Viceroy raised in our previous encounter with him. “Now, children, the point we have raised in our previous session might help us understand the present point which I sense is quite unintelligible to you.” Ozarzip seemed quite apologetic because he was bringing to us very convoluted philosophical subjects that could be opaque, obscure and incomprehensible to us. “But this, children, is quite straight forward,” Ozarzip stated confidently. “You remember, children, last time we stated that our master presented his body as bisexual contrary to actual fact because he wished to convey that he is self-sufficient and is able to create himself. Hence, he is the self-generator. He creates a unity out of a sexual duality all his own. This is the self-generation of monotheism. In a sense, children” the Viceroy pointed both his index fingers again at us to stress an important point, “both the Aten and our king complement each other: The abstract divinity which is the Aten, and the ruler of the world which is the King, are interdependent complementarities and from separate entities become enmeshed into unity.” “This uniqueness makes for an eternal sameness. All time is in the synchronic present, no past and no future but a constant now. No Osirian cycle for the ebb and flow of the life-giving Nile but the regular uniform and even flow of the ever donating, bestowing and conferring sun rays ending in the palms of hands awarding the grace of livelihood to everyone and everything alike. The difference between Aten and the previous sun Gods like Re-Harakhte, Atum, Horus of the Horizon, Horus of the Eastern sky, and Horus Shesemti is that these stand for the Sun, represent the Sun, signify the Sun, but Aten is the Sun disk itself.” “The sun disk is where light, the generating Genesis energy came from. Hence, Aten is the sole source of creation. The direct light radiating directly from the Sun disk creates Man and all the creatures. It implants into every Man, creature and object the particle of luminosity stemming indirectly from Aten that endows these life forms and objects with their viability. Hence our master can sing in his Hymn to Aten: ‘You are in my heart and no one knows you except your son’. Therefore our master, by rejecting the death religion of Osiris and the deceit of the magic of the priests of Amon, lives in the only truth cherished by the eternal Goddess Ma’at who is the abstract light of Aten.” Ozarzip stopped his discourse, covered his face with his hands, and complained, “Children, I am momentarily tired. I need a break. I shall rest

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for a while and you, my Prince, why don’t you go and visit your beloved and see how she reacted to your letter?” The Viceroy motioned to his Edomite slave boy to accompany him to his bedroom and we, of course, understood what that meant. He called to us, “I shall see you in a while, my children.” I walked toward the Queen’s quarters where my beloved was lodged until she completely recovered. Aaron said that he wished to accompany me. I agreed but told him to wait for me outside near the pond of water lilies and goldfish. “Of course, Prince. I shall wait for you near the pond until you return. I just do not wish to be a witness of the fornication of the Viceroy with his slave boy.” I embraced Aaron and we both walked to the Queen’s quarters. When we reached the Queen’s premises, Aaron hurried to the fishpond and told me to take my time since he is fascinated by goldfish and he will be delighted to watch them playing hide and seek among the water lilies. I asked the slave girl to announce me to the Princess. She came back very soon and announced that the Princess will be delighted to see me. I came in and the Princess was sitting on her bed, leaning on cushions placed next to the headboard of the bed. She was wearing a white linen dress embroidered with black and blue wool thread. The dress accentuated her delicate body contours but was not transparent. She had a blue Nubian short wig on her head and a tiara of gold and silver thread studded with lapis lazuli and faience fashioned in the shape of an Aten disk adorned her head. She smiled at me warmly with her elongated eyes and she invited me to sit near her on her bed. I was quite apprehensive to do so because of my traumatic experience in our previous encounter, but her inviting smile was so open and warm that I sat down. The Princess reached for my hand. I became again momentarily frightened but then I felt a stream of energy flowing from her hand through my arm into my heart, the beats of which became slower and lighter. The sparks of vitality filled my head with ardor. I started to thank her for her gracious welcome and a stupendous sensation permeated my vocal cords and I spoke without stammering. I was so overcome with emotion that I started crying. I told her that she cured me of my stuttering and I lowered my head to kiss her hands, but she drew them away. “No, no, no,” she protested, “I did nothing of the sort.” Her voice sounded to me like tinkling bells from heaven. “When you sent me your wonderful letter, the lotus plant and the musk oil, I realized how intense your unrequited love and pent up adoration weighed on our soul. Now

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your letter sprouted in me an emotion which I never felt before and that I may, although I am not sure, identify as love.” I cried uncontrollable tears of joy. I took the hand of the princess and pressed it to my lips and whispered “I love you, I love you, I love you,” and never stammered even once. “You see, Prince,” Marit-Aten chimed, “your intense emotion of pent up love touched my soul and sowed some sparks of grace and adoration in it so when our hands touched, the magic of the mutual flow of tenderness cured your affliction. So you can thank your own consuming adoration that flowed out of you and touched my spirit with your soul. These energies reverted back to you and your speech became normal.” “No,” I disagreed. “It is only because of your beauty, generosity, goodness and charity that triggered this miracle of two hearts pounding in unison. How can I make it last?” I beseeched. “You do not have to, Prince,” she calmed me. “Once the barrier between our two suffering souls has been surmounted, the grace of love between us will flow forever.” I again pressed the palm of the princess’s hand to my lips and covered it with hot and wet kisses which I then wiped embarrassedly with a cloth. I thanked the princess profusely and told her that that was the happiest day of my life and that she brought to me today immense joy, felicity and divine bliss.” “I am so glad,” Marit-Aten answered, “That I was able to bring you some pleasure. Rest assured, prince, that you also caused me much elation. Come again whenever you are able or feel like it.” “Thank you, thank you, my beloved,” I blurted out and immediately regretted my uncalled for familiarity so I took my leave as quickly as I could, walking backwards. When I emerged from the Queen’s premises, I ran to the fishpond and embraced Aaron who waited for me and started to tell him what a miracle has happened to me, but my stutter came back. “It is not so important,” I curbed my enthusiasm. “The princess has recovered miraculously.” I covered my embarrassment by a true platitude. Apparently only the company of my treasured princess can cure my stuttering and stammering. When we entered the premises of the Viceroy, the signs and traces of his fornication were all over him. He was sitting on his bed, the cushions of which were crumpled. He was sitting without a wig, the black mascara around his eyes smeared away and the crimson lip paint spread all over his face. Apparently Ozarzip expected us to return later. The Edomite slave boy looked also disheveled. “Give me a minute, children,” he asked, “and I shall be ready to resume our studies in a very short while.” “Certainly,

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Viceroy,” I bowed and so did Aaron. “We shall wait outside. Take your time, Viceroy, and whenever you are ready, call us back.” Aaron and I hurried outside and crouched beneath a Tamarisk tree. Its fruits were ripe and juicy and we felt somewhat hungry. We helped ourselves to some tamarisk fruit. Its flesh was yellow-brown and its taste was a pleasant combination of sweet, sour and tangy. The kernels were very large dark tan balls which we immersed in the fertile soil of the BenBen garden. In a year’s time these kernels would develop into a fullfledged tree. We ate quite a lot of the tamarisk fruit since the shadows of the colonnade shortened signifying that the hour of the noon meal is approaching and our hunger increased. Presently the Edomite slave boy emerged from the Viceroy’s premises. His disheveled look was gone; his face was clean. He had combed his red hair and put on a new red tunic which went very well with his red complexion. When we entered Ozarzip’s room, we were in for a surprise. The Viceroy covered the traces of his debauchery by an ochre face powder, which together with the black mascara around his eyes and the heart shape red painted mouth, topped by a full-fledged royal wig gave Ozarzip an eerie, weird, and unearthly look that was in line with his penchant of mystifying himself and his personal history. “Welcome back, children, to our noon session,” the Viceroy accosted us pleasantly. “Let us explore the epoch-making religious revolution of our Lord and master.” “His major step was to annul, abrogate and abolish all gods except Aten,” Ozarzip started his discourse. “The harshest conflict was with the Osirian cult of the dead that offered the Egyptian populace a false promise of resurrection and immortality. Akhenaten denied the Osirian belief of physical resurrection that entailed the conviction of a space-time physical reality of the ever-after. The Atenian creed postulated a spiritual resurrection only that involved the return of the divine soul to its sacred origin in Unity.” “The other war that Akhenaten had to wage was against the powerful organization of the priests of Amon at On who amassed a huge fortune from the corrupt sales of indulgences that assured passage to the Osirian ever-after. The possession of a vast amount of corrupt gold assured the Amon priesthood a direct control of the Amon cult and an indirect domination of the balance of power within the secular government. The abrogation of the Amon priesthood by the Atenian creed rendered the deposed Amon clergy the mortal enemies of Akhenaten’s regime.” “The important point, children,” the Viceroy pointed his two index fingers at us, as was his habit whenever he wished to stress a point, “is that

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the Aten religion is difficult, demanding and taxing. Our Master, children, decrees that since each of us is endowed with a spark of divinity stemming from the Aten itself, we have freedom of will like He himself and our God, the Aten’s incarnation in history. Freedom of will entails the knowledge of good and evil, of right and wrong, and of morality. Therefore, we, the children of Aten, are responsible to ourselves, to our king, and to Aten in the free choice of moral or sinful alternatives. “The relationships between man, king and the Aten are dialogical and entail a partnership in freedom. Therefore, the most heinous sin and crime in our master’s religion is Pride. There is nothing more despicable to our master than the overweening pride of one creature over another because the grace of Aten shines with his wish to give, confer, and endow all his creatures in equality.” “We are the incarnation and reflection of the Aten and our lord Akhenaten. We who have been created in the image of our God and Master have their kernel of Divinity implanted in us and the freedom of their will was ingrained in us. As an extension of their being, we have the immediate sense of right and wrong in us. The morality of truth and falsehood, the sense of fairness, equality, and virtue is sensed directly in our inner self and conveyed to us in judgment by our lord in whose image we have been conceived and formed.” “Conversely, every action that is felt by us to be wrong, immoral and vile is also judged as such by our master ingrained in us. This gives us the opportunity to change our ways. Not so in the Osirian cult of the dead. The Scripture that decrees the procedure of weighing the heart of the deceased embodied in the texts of the Pyramids but mostly in the coffin texts and the Book of the Dead. These describe the Judgment in the Hall of Truth presided over by Osiris himself enthroned at the end of the Judgment Hall with Isis his wife and Nephthys his loyal sister standing behind him.” “In the Hall are the nine Gods of On, standing like sentries. The mortuary Gods Anubis and Thoth conduct the actual weighing of the heart that appears as a tiny vase. It is placed on one side of a scale and the other side of the scale has a feather, the hieroglyph of Ma’at, the Goddess of Truth. The devourer, Amemait, crouches behind the scale. She has the head of a crocodile, the torso of a lion, and the behind of a hippopotamus. She is ready to devour the deceased if he is found unworthy. The deceased recites a long list of negative virtues, namely that he did not engage in crimes, sins and immoral deeds, proclaiming thus his overall innocence. But, my children,” Ozarzip’s eyes were blazing with righteous indignation, “the corrupt priests turned the ritual of the weighing of the heart into a farce. Everyone who could pay the price received from the scoundrels a

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document copied a thousand times with a blank for the name of the deceased to be inserted after the payment of the gold to the crooked clergy. This document shamelessly stated that by the Authority of the Gods, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Anubis and Thoth, the deceased so-and-so was found worthy to pass to the ever-after. This despicable deceit could not last. And our master and savior put an end to it in his justified, truthful and moral revolution that should and will last forever and ever, children.” The Viceroy switched from a dramatic tone of voice to a matter-of-fact one. “I am hungry and thirsty and I believe that you are also ready to eat.” “My very eminent and respected Viceroy,” I reacted. “I wish to convey to you some good news coupled with my heartiest thanks to you since princess Marit-Aten reacted very warmly to your letter and we became very close now.” “Oh, my dear Prince Me-Shu,” Ozarzip reacted exuberantly, “I am so happy and glad for you. Love is the great unknown that makes us seek the impossible. Even if we cannot reach it, it makes us exhilarated on the way.” “Viceroy, will you be cross with me if I spend the noon meal with my beloved?” “Of course not, my prince,” Ozarzip responded generously. “Could I encroach upon your kindness,” I requested, “and bring her a tray of figs and a tray of quails as a token of appreciation from you?” “Certainly, certainly, my Prince. I shall ask for the noon meal to be brought to me right now and I shall request my slave boy to help you carry the trays to the Queen’s quarters.” “No, no, no, Viceroy. This would not be necessary. I shall ask Aaron, my brother to help carry one tray.” I endowed Aaron with fraternity and everyone believed that he really was my brother. When Ozarzip clapped his hands, slave boys and girls started streaming into his rooms. The Edomite slave boy gave us the trays of figs and quails. We thanked him wholeheartedly and arranged to meet tomorrow morning. We took our leave and on the way I asked Aaron whether it would be possible to continue our discussions with his father in the afternoon. “I think, yes,” Aaron reacted, “since my father said that you are welcome to come to us anytime you wished but let me go and ask. By the time you have seen the princess I shall be back and have for sure a positive answer.” I embraced Aaron and said that we shall meet again in a little while. I gave him some figs but did not give him any quail since they were not slaughtered according to the Habiru laws. I entered the Queen’s quarters with the two trays and asked the slave girl to announce me to princess Marit-Aten. The slave girl came back

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smiling and announced that the princess will see me gladly. I gave her the two trays saying that this was my contribution to the princess’ noon meal. She took the trays with a smile and entered the Queen’s quarters. I followed her slowly and cautiously. When I entered the princess’ room, I saw her sitting in front of a low table with another chair vacant. The slave girl was just placing the two trays of figs and quails on the low table. When the princess saw me, she stood up and approached me. She was fully recovered. She looked radiant, glittering and ravishing. She was wearing a green tunic. Its hem, collar and sleeves were embroidered with gold threads and studded with pierced white pearls. She wore a long royal striped wig. A large Aten gold sun disk pendant was on her neck. Her sandals had soles of camel hide with two gold straps, one horizontal to hold her foot close to the sole, the other perpendicular that passed through the gap between her big toe and the toe next to it. Her eyes were gleaming a glow of acceptance She embraced me and I froze into a slab of stone, not able to move a limb. Then she kissed me on my forehead and led me back to the table. I grabbed hold of her hand and covered it with kisses. “How are you my dear prince,” she asked in her sweet resonant tone of voice which so relaxed me, loosened me up, and untightened my vocal chords that I became fluent in my speech without stammering even once. “Thanks to you, my dearest,” I answered readily, “I am cured of my affliction.” “No, my prince, I disagree,” she refuted me in her mellow melodious voice. ‘”It is our mutual love that generates the flow of grace which restores our bodies. Our souls have found each other and the curative elixir of our spirits mends our blemishes.” “It is more than that, my beloved.” I was emboldened by the disclosure of her love and allowed myself to call her by endearing names. “The common suffering that we endured, my treasure, was caused by the same moral aberration of our father.” I burst out sobbing bitterly. “I shall disclose to you a heinous secret. My stuttering started when my father mounted me forcefully from behind and caused me infernal pain and bleeding. He is the same father who deflowered you, my darling sweetheart, and tore up your immature and delicate entrails. I could have killed him for that.” The princess grabbed my hand and pressed it to her eyes, which started to emit tears without any accompanying sounds of weeping from her mouth. I kissed her eyes and swallowed her tears. I found it quite easy to swallow Marit-Aten’s tears, which increased and streamed incessantly,

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and to speak fluently without stammering. The Viceroy Ozarzip who is a diviner of sorts miraculously predicted this would happen one day. “One day I shall have the power.” My voice changed its timbre and became harsh and coarse, “I vow to you I shall make it a capital offense for fathers to violate their children, both female and male.” “Now my love,” I continued, “I have brought you some food for your noon meal that I hope you enjoy. As for me, I shall go and eat with a Habiru priest whose religion I find more humane and moral. When I know more about it, I shall come and share my knowledge with you.” I embraced the princess and she embraced me forcefully, “Now, the love of my life, I shall take my leave but not for long. Tomorrow, God willing, I shall come again at the same time when the columns of the palace’s colonnade do not cast any shadows. Be well, my one and only beloved. Stay glowing and dazzling like the crown of creation that you are.” I again kissed her eyes and bade her farewell. Aaron was already waiting for me near the fishpond. He was amusing himself by throwing corn kernels to the goldfish. When I saw Aaron, I embraced him lovingly and implored, “Tell me, brother, why is it that when I am in the company of Princess Marit-Aten, I do not stammer and do not stutter but when I go out from the Queen’s quarters and even with you, my brother, my vocal chords freeze and I become almost dumb?” Let me try and explain it for you, Prince," Aaron obliged. "The way I see it … I take the liberty of telling this to you because I can see that you are very stressed. I respect and love you very much, so I try to assuage your suffering. The fact, Prince, that you stop stammering when you are in the company of the Princess stems from two sources: one is good and the other bad. The good cause is that two people in love weave an enclosure around themselves that separates them from the wickedness, vileness, and grudges of the world surrounding them and they float in a graceful womb, soft, nourishing, and embracing. There is nothing stressful in this protective cocoon that could mar the harmony in the fantasy world you have created for yourself in which all is pleasurable, splendid, and wonderful. The evil origin of your common wellbeing, Prince, is that both you and the princess have been abused by your father. Suffering, my most esteemed Prince, is a choice bonding agent. You identify with the pain of your beloved and she lives through your ordeals. These mutual involvements with the misfortunes of the other create a barrier that wards off any intruders into the protective cocoon of the lovers and does not let in any tension to mar your speech." "Thank you, my brother, for your deep insight. But how did you know about my abuse by my father?" I asked Aaron anxiously. "I am sorry,

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Prince," Aaron answered apologetically. "The Habiru priests have a very effective net of collecting information. It is a means of survival for us as a dependent minority and they knew about your misfortune a few days after it happened. Since we are talking about the Habiru priests," Aaron tried to change the subject, "My father is waiting for us for food and for further discussions of the Habiru sacred doctrine. My father was impressed, Prince, with your intelligence and lust for knowledge leading to truth. He is eagerly awaiting your visit at our abode."

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"Let us go, my brother," I urged Aaron. "Why don't you lead the way?" Because I already knew the direction to the tents of the Habiru, I followed Aaron with sure steps. The wind from the east brought whiffs of rot coming from the putrid waters of the Nile, the stench of decomposed dead fish and the reek of the excrement of the people of No-Amon flowing freely into the Nile. From the west, the warm desert wind smelled of purity, clarity and wholesomeness. How much more I preferred the fresh decontaminated desert air to the putrid stench of civilization and rot coming from the Nile. When we reached Amram's tent, the priest, his wife Yocheved, and his daughter Miriam were already at the entrance of the tent waiting for us. All three of them bowed and the priest announced: "Welcome, Prince, to our modest abode. The noon meal is already waiting for you. After the repast we shall go on discussing the Habiru religious doctrines that you, Prince, graciously agreed to get acquainted with." “You are more than generous, Priest,” I answered, “to devote so much of your precious time to a mere boy like myself.” "No, Prince," Amram warded off my modesty, "my son Aaron here tells me that you are very erudite and intelligent, and with God's help you are destined for greatness. So, let us go into the guest tent and have our noon meal." When we entered the tent, I was again astonished at the Habiru nomadic lavish bounty. A virtual feast was prepared. There were many colorful appetizers on the table: vine leaves stuffed with rice and others with lamb meat; steaming hot chickpeas sprinkled with pepper and balsamic vinegar; sesame sauce with parsley and basil; eggplant fried in olive oil and basted with tamarisk juice; red snapper rolled in flour and salt and fried in sesame oil; and rock-fish steamed in white rice. Miriam passed with the trays of appetizers and served each one on the diners according to his wish. I selected some red snapper and rock-fish garnished with sesame sauce, garlic and parsley. The appetizers were prepared just before the meal and they tasted fresh and exquisite.

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For the main course, each one of us received half a suckling lamb stuffed with pine nuts and mushrooms and baked slowly in a coal oven. The priest drank white wine with his meal and he blessed the wine for all of us before we ate. Yocheved, Miriam, Aaron and I drank freshly squeezed grape juice that went very well with the stuffed lamb and thin baked bread. For dessert we had dried figs and a strong spicy brew from a dozen spices served in small brass cups. The meal was both tasty and balanced like a melodious love song and I told them so. Indeed it was a labor of love for our hosts. They thanked me intensely and with an open show of emotion so unlike the stiff protocol of the Egyptians. After the meal, the priest and his family praised the Lord and thanked Him for a wonderful, tasty and plentiful meal. After they finished their prayer of thanks, I apologized for not joining them in prayer and promised that with the help of my brother Aaron … I embraced Aaron's shoulder … I will be able to pray in Habiru in no time. "I am sure of it, Prince," the priest reassured me, "and now let us relax and learn some of the lore of our Habiru forefathers. Let us discuss paradise," the priest suggested. Yocheved and Miriam left discreetly to clean trays and put away leftover food while Aaron and I remained with his father. "Habiru lore has two different accounts of the creation of the world," Amram opened. "One influenced by the ideas of our master the King and the other from the tradition of our ancestors in Mesopotamia. The first as conceived by our Lord Akhenaten is that in the beginning there was the formless void, and the spirit of God hovered, touching and not touching this chaos. Then a dramatic event took place. God spoke. But to whom did he speak?" the priest asked rhetorically. "There was nothing and nobody to speak to, so to whom did God speak? Apparently to himself," Amram deduced a logical answer. “But, children, God's voicing a word is pregnant with meaning.” The priest's eyes were glistening with sparks of revelation. “The word of God is the prime tool of creation,” he said, accentuating each word with intensity. “And what does the word of God create by a divine edict?” asked the priest again rhetorically. “The Light of Aten shining on all life forms and objects equally. But, my children,” the priest, being apprehensive of the enormity of the mystery he was going to reveal to us, covered his face with the palms of his hands. “Light, the source of Life, Goodness, Righteousness and Grace creates by contrast darkness, the essence of naught, death and evil.” “Our task in life, my children," the priest pounded his thighs with his closed fists to mark the paramount importance of his disclosure, "is to sustain Light by righteousness, virtue and devotion to Aten-Aden-Adonai.

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As you can see, children, the name of the God of our Lord the King is paraphrased in Adonai, the name of our Habiru God. And we have to fight darkness, the abode of corruption, malevolence and malice. These again we fight by virtue, uprightness and honesty from which darkness shrinks away with horror. Thus, children, we become Aten-Adonai's partners in upholding, nurturing and fostering Light and in combating, struggling and waging war against darkness. This is why we have been created in God's image. We are His comrades in arms to fight darkness and instill light in God's creation.” “Aten-Adonai then created man and woman in his own image. AtenAdonai is sexless. He does not need intercourse to create Himself. He is perfection as is. So is our Lord and Master Akhenaten the Pharaoh. As you can see from his sculptures and wall pictures, he is both male and female. He can reproduce by fructifying himself. This is how he produced the first male and female who were both in one entity that is the image of AtenAdonai and Akhenaten producing himself without recourse to the prurience of sex and the painful labor of birth. He and she were installed in the perfectly harmonious order of the Ma'at in Paradise. And then came disaster.” A cloud covered the serene countenance of the priest and a slight shudder passed through his body. “Before, however, recounting to you the horrors of the primal sin and the expulsion of man/woman from Paradise, let us refresh ourselves.” Out of deference to his wife and daughter, he did not clap his hands to invite them to the guest tent like the Egyptians call their slaves and servants. Amram went into the small kitchen tent and asked them to bring the afternoon refreshments: grapes, fresh figs, dates and pomegranate kernels. These were pressed into a mash and pressed through a sieve into a large glazed earthenware jug. The juice was then poured into mugs and Yocheved and Miriam brought these mugs on bronze trays for the five of us to drink. I had never tasted the like of it. It was a harmonious, melodious and mellifluous orchestra of tastes that was both heavenly and earthly and that filled the mouth with a lasting chorus of smells and flavors. After having drunk the wonderful mixed juice prepared by Yocheved and Miriam, I thanked them abundantly and they retired modestly to their kitchen tent. Amram had started his account of the expulsion of the first human couple from Paradise following their sinful covetousness of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, of good and evil, forbidden expressly by the word of God. “This heinous sin was committed,” recounted Amram as a background for the moral layer of the second Habiru account of creation influenced by Mesopotamian lore. “We should remind ourselves,

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children,” the tone of the priest became didactic, “that our forefathers, the patriarchs, stemmed from Mesopotamia, a culture and a religion so different from the Egyptian.” “First and foremost, the Mesopotamian religions were harsh, cruel and violent. The life forms and especially humans were created by the Gods for their personal service and were expected to be abjectly obedient to their deities. There was no possibility of dialogue and partnership between God and Man like between Aten, Akhenaten and the Egyptians. In Mesopotamia, the only possible tie-up between the Gods and men was that of Masters and slaves. The cruelty of the Mesopotamian Gods was horrendous. No extenuating circumstances, no identification with the suffering of the victim, no compassion, and no pity. Tiamat, the mother of the Gods, and Apsû, their father, decided to do away with their children. Do you know why, Prince?” This time the priest's question was not only rhetorical but tinged with righteous indignation. “Because they disturbed the afternoon sleep of their father.” “Now, children, listen to this.” The ire in the priest's voice was rising. “Marduk, the successfully rebellious son of Tiamat, cut her into two after his victory over her and called this carving 'a work of art'. No commiseration, leniency or mercy for the progenitor who gave birth to him. Finally, you will be surprised to know, children,” the priest's irritation was mixed with astonishment, “that man in the Mesopotamian legend was created by Marduk, the victorious chief deity from the blood of Kingu, his defeated mother Tiamat's chief evil general. What a perverse idea.” The priest's anger was surging. “This is what happens when a religion completely lacks any moral basis.” “Now, children, we have surveyed the unruly Mesopotamian sources of the second Habiru account of creation. Here we have to be prepared for some surprises.” Amram seemed to be bracing himself for a difficult task. “The gist of our dilemma in the second Habiru account of creation is a moral one: God created Man out of dust and then breathed a divine soul into his nostrils. He then planted a Garden and placed the Man he created in it. The man was supposed to be the keeper of the Garden and its guardian. However, two of the trees in the Garden constituted the base of the moral dilemma of the second Habiru account of creation. One tree was the Tree of Life, the fruits of which may be eaten by the first man. He could also eat of the fruit of all the other trees in the Garden except for one: the Tree of Knowledge, of good and evil. Once he eats thereof, God says he would die. Then God created all kinds of life forms, placed them in the Garden, and asked Adam, the first man, to give them names, thus endowing them with an identity.”

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“Meanwhile, God created a woman from a rib of Man and Adam called her Eve, the mother of all. God repeated to the woman the injunction against eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, of good and evil, with the sanction of death if infringed. The snake, also a resident of the Garden, enticed the woman to eat from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, telling her that God misled her, that she would not die when helping herself to the truth, and that God was just guarding his own interest. The snake explained that when the woman and her husband partake of the forbidden fruit, their eyes would be opened and they will be as Gods. God does not want this to happen because it usurps his omniscience and omnipotence and he cannot afford any competition.” “The woman was easily enticed because she was covetous. First, the tree had good looking fruit, handsome and desirable. Second, it would make both her and her husband wise. Therefore, the woman ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and she also enticed her husband to do likewise. Now, children, let us count the numerous moral problems extant in the story of the Tree of Knowledge, of good and evil, and the punishments meted out by God to the man, woman and snake for the infringement of God’s proscription against eating the fruit of this tree.” The Priest was counting the moral enigmas presented by the account of this primary sin utilizing the fingers of his hands to make it simpler to follow. “One, first and foremost,” the Priest lifted the index finger of his right hand with his left hand, “the snake was right and God did not speak the truth. Adam and Eve did eat from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge but did not die.” “Second,” Amram lifted the second finger of his right hand, “God is playing hide and seek with the first couple. God walks like a human being and asked Adam where he was and why did he hide among the trees of the Garden. Adam answered in a deceitful self-defense that he was hiding because he was ashamed of his nakedness. And God kept on questioning Adam like a criminal prosecutor, claiming that Adam knew he was naked because he ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Is this necessary for an omniscient and omnipotent God to play games with one of his creatures?” “Third,” Amram lifted his third finger and asked, “why have the first couple and the snake been punished so harshly? Does God have such low self-esteem that He is afraid of competition from his creatures?” “Fourth and last,” the Priest asked, “why is it wrong of a creature to know why he has been created, what is the purpose of his sojourn during his lifetime, and above all, if the all-knowing God must have been aware that the first couple was about to infringe his injunction of eating the fruit

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of the Tree of Knowledge, why did he not prevent it instead of letting them sin and then punish them severely? Children, these are earth shaking, mind boggling and dangerous dilemmas,” the Priest sounded tired and harassed. “It is late now, children, and I have to prepare myself for the evening prayers. Let us call it a day and meet again tomorrow noon with renewed energies to try and tackle the alarming quandaries posed by the Mesopotamian account of creation.” I thanked the Priest lavishly and assured him that he enlightens us and opens up for us the virgin soils of knowledge that we could never surmise by ourselves. “It is a great honor to me, Prince,” replied Amram. “Our grapevine net of information discloses to us, Prince, that you are destined for greatness. Hence, our deliberations are going to be put to good use.” “Your wisdom, Priest, has already been illuminating and insightful to us here and now, irrespective whether Ozarzip’s divination about my future will come true or not. For this we are beholden to you and we shall call you our teacher and mentor.” You are more than generous, Prince.” Amram bowed and I took my leave. Aaron offered to accompany me to the Palace and I gladly agreed. I told him that I would like, for a change, to enter the Ben-Ben Palace from its Eastern gate. I told him that I would like to see the wall painting on one of the pylons, the two wide towers forming the stone foundations on which the iron gates were hinged. In that painting, the royal family is depicted with a king and queen holding three of their daughters with the Aten disc shining on them benevolently with each ray terminated with an outgiving palm offering grace to whomever is willing to receive it. My clandestine reason, however, was that the Queen’s quarters, where my beloved is lodged, is closer to the Eastern gate than to the Western entrance. When we reached the two pylons of the Eastern gate and the ominous black basalt obelisk that stood like a sentry in front of the gate depicting sacred hieroglyphs beseeching the health and wellbeing of the royal family, I embraced Aaron and reminded him of our meeting with Ozarzip tomorrow morning. When Aaron left, I did not stop to look at the wall paintings on the pylons of the Eastern gate of the Palace but hurried directly to the nearby Queen’s quarters to see my beloved. When I announced myself to MaritAten’s Nubian slave girl, she told me that the Princess was taking a bath and she will soon finish and gladly see me. She offered me a tiny cup of a strong spice brew while I waited for the Princess. After a while the Nubian girl called me in to meet the Princess. MaritAten looked exquisitely different. She had on a white silk dress that

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accentuated her well-shaped breasts and nipples. Her rounded pelvis looked somewhat more rounded and mature. A golden belt tied her dress to her waist. She had a leopard skin short jacket covering her shoulders and torso and a double crown with a sacred serpent uraeus in front, all of pure gold. An expensive wig covered her natural hair. She smelled of lotus flower perfume, very costly and used mostly by royalty and the rich nobility. I noticed that she had a tin glazed faience jar molded in the shape of Nefertem, the “Lord of the Nose,” with a lotus flower on his head. This jar was so expensive that she could not possibly have purchased it herself. Something weird was going on and I asked her cautiously, “My beloved, you look stunning. Where did you get the crown and the expensive perfume?” “My father gave it to me,” she answered feebly. “Why did he give you a queen’s crown and a queen’s perfume?” I asked with mounting dismay. “The king is going to demote Nefertiti, my mother the Queen, and crown me in her stead,” Marit-Aten said almost inaudibly. “How can he do this,” I demanded flabbergasted, “to your mother and to you? You are just a child, to me.” “My dear Prince, you are well aware that the King is not only the Pharaoh but also a God.” The Princess sounded much more mature than her age, “And as a God he can do whatever he likes. When he deflowered me some time ago, he already had this plan of his in mind.” Her demeanor changed and tears started to flow from her eyes, dissolving the black mascara which lined her eyes and eyebrows. “If he does this perfidy to you, my beloved,” rage mounted in my chest and threatened to explode my entrails, “I swear to you that I shall kill him and then kill myself.” “The Princess stopped crying and washed her face with some rosewater which her slave girl brought her. She then wiped her face with a linen cloth without the black mascara on her eyes and the crimson paint on her lips. Her face looked haggard, weary and careworn. Her eyes were puffed from crying. When she pulled off her wig, her clean shaven elongated head made her look eerie. “Prince,” she commanded, “stop being childish. I feel that I have aged a few years in this fortnight. Your talk about killing the King is hollow nonsense and it annoys me.” I kneeled in front of her, started crying, and started to kiss her hand which she pulled back. “Stop sobbing, Prince, stand up and behave with dignity,” she ordered with a hint of authority in her voice.

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“You know, Princess, how much I love you and only because I was overcome with emotion for you I lost my head and blurted out nonsense. Please forgive me.” My stuttering came back and I stood in front of her with head lowered in shame. “Do you want me to go?” I asked meekly. “No,” she retorted firmly, “sit down and we shall have a cup of a strong spice brew. We both need it.” She clapped her hands and asked the Nubian girl to prepare a spice brew with a double dose of nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and sage. She asked me to sit beside her on her bed. She took my hand and my stammering disappeared as if by magic. Without a crown, wig and face paint, she looked a totally different person. She also sounded different. Her voice changed from chirping sweetness to metallic authority. While waiting for our spice brew, the Princess spoke to me with compassion laced with reprimands: “You are wrong on all counts, Prince,” she opened. “Love is a luxury in the power game. The King, your father and my father, is a powerful person full of nervous energy and revolutionary zeal. He is obsessed with Aten. People, including his wife and children, do not really count with him. He is a partner to God in eternity and the achievement of their common goals makes humans, including you and me, dispensable means to these ends.” The Nubian girl came in with a silver tray with a steaming copper kettle on it surrounded by small white glazed cups. The slave girl poured the Princess and me two cups of the spice brew and left discreetly, leaving the tray and kettle in case we should like to have a refill of the brew. When the spice brew entered my throat, a powerful gust of scent rushed and opened my trachea and esophagus, filling my lungs and digestive tracts with a sharp and invigorating freshness. “My dearest Prince,” Marit-Aten resumed her speech which became more of a sermon, “you should forget about loving me. A Queen loves only her King and Master and you, my Prince, should divert all your love to God. I understand from our Master the Pharaoh that Ozarzip, the Viceroy, divines a great future for you as a religious reformer, so just divert all your energies to God and try and forget about me, since as a Queen, I am forbidden to you by divine order and under penalty of death.” My eyes started to stream tears. “My beloved,” I stammered between sobs, “I cannot infringe a divine edict but I cannot stop loving you as long as I live.” I rushed out of the Queen’s quarters and ran to my room. I threw myself on my bed and cried, sobbed and wailed all night. My slave girl watched me transfixed with dismay. She thought that I had lost my mind and, in all probability, I had.

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In the morning I woke up from a short nightmarish sleep in which I dreamt that I was being led to the gallows after I killed the King. Apparently I shrieked in my sleep when the executioner was about to slit my throat with the knife of Amram, the Priest, with which he slaughtered animals according to the sacred rituals of the Habiru. My slave girl was ready with an extra strong spice brew in which she mixed many restoring remedial and healing herbs that the royal doctor gave her for me after she described to him the bout of madness that afflicted her master. I asked her to prepare a hot bath for me with salts from the health spas of Moph to alleviate my agonized soul and ailing body. After the bath and the spice brew, I felt somewhat better and hurried to the Viceroy’s quarters. Aaron was already there. I embraced him and greeted the Viceroy. Both of them looked at me in dismay. “What has happened to you, Prince? You look as if Beelzebub himself haunted you.” “Much worse, Viceroy. The King is going to wed my beloved MaritAten and enthrone her as queen instead of her mother, Queen Nefertiti.” “I know this, Prince, but prefer to discuss it with you alone.” “No, Viceroy,” I disagreed, “Aaron is my brother. I have no secrets from him.” “All right,” Ozarzip agreed, “but both of you have to be very discreet about the whole affair until the official coronation of Marit-Aten takes place. Now listen carefully to me, my dear Prince. Marit-Aten is not just a Princess. She is becoming the wife of a god and, as such, is divine and sacred. She is out of your reach and cannot be the object of any of your emotions. If you entertain them, they are capitally sacrilegious. You have to worship her as a divine entity, nothing more and nothing less. Both of you, my children, are destined for greatness. I know it for sure now after I consulted the Urim VeTumim, the divination stones of your father, the Habiru Priest Amram. So please, children, let us suppress all thinking of our divine future queen Marit-Aten and concentrate on the religious ideology of our king and master as supplemented by the doctrines of the Habiru religion which I understand Priest Amram is teaching you.” “All right, children, let us now go back to our serious business, the understanding in depth of the revolutionary religious doctrines of our king and master, the Pharaoh Akhenaten. Thanks to your quick grasp of the complicated doctrine I have presented to you, we have made good progress. Another few sessions and you will know as much about the monotheism of Aten as I do. Now, children, try to concentrate,” Ozarzip pointed both his index fingers at us in his customary manner of

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emphasizing a point, “because we are approaching the gist of our master’s doctrine.” I felt that my head and heart was with my beloved Princess who was raped and had her childhood usurped by an absolute tyrant who forced the crown of a queen on her head prematurely. All in the name of a Divine will, mandate, and authority that I must accept, worship and admire. I could not do it and I listened to Ozarzip’s indoctrination half-heartedly. “Aten is a universal God,” the Viceroy opened, “He shines on all equally and gives life to Man, creatures and plants to one and all alike without discrimination. Hence, not only all men, women and children have been created equally but all creatures also secure the Grace of Aten equivalently. This is the basis of the belief of our master that the commensuration of human beings is paramount whereas the differences between them are relatively small. Aten is eternal because he shines incessantly in a continuous present. He does not diminish and never dims. He is forever and ever, endlessly. The main difference between paganism and the monolatry of our master,” Ozarzip raised his right hand in a didactic gesture, “is that the idols like Horus, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Thoth and Nut intend to dominate the world and its creatures by reigning over the cycles of nature. Hence, they wish to perpetuate their dominion over humans, creatures and life forms and maintain their control over them in perpetuity in order to assert their powers. The well-being of the world’s creatures concerns these gods only insofar as the creatures can better serve them. The relationship between these gods and their creatures is a master-slave bond where the interest of the gods reigns supreme and the servant-creatures are completely instrumental to the gods’ interests.” “Not so, the affinity between the Aten, Akhenaten and the world’s creatures whose goals are mutual salvation. All three are a Trinitarian partnership in redemption whose goal is to mend their blemishes, shortcomings and longings, which even Aten has. Otherwise, He would not have gone to the travail of creating the world and its creatures. This partnership will eventually lead to an association in the wholeness of Unity.” “Now listen to this, children,” the Viceroy again waved his two index fingers at us. “What is the worst blemish of the pagan idols in Egypt?” Ozarzip asked. “Obviously,” he answered himself, “the egotistical egocentrism of the idols and their constant receiving, taking, and obtaining anything and everything from their creatures who they treat as slaves and servants. This moral blemish of the idols is rectified and mended by the Aten whose shining equally on all creatures is depicted graphically in

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sculptures and wall paintings as rays of light terminated by outgiving palms of hands. This constant giving, in contrast to the idols of Egypt, not only provides a cosmic balance in the metaphysics of the Egyptian culture but also fills the Aten, Akhenaten and their creatures with grace that is the essence and the life force of our revolutionary monotheistic religion. This constant endowment of the Aten without discrimination and value judgment provides the egalitarian moral fiber of our Master’s religious innovation.” “The light of Aten is the source of all creative energy. When the sun sets, everything goes into a hibernating moratorium that sprouts again with renewed force and regenerating potential at sunrise in the morning. The Light of the Aten in its primeval purity is the constantly radiating present. Our Master the King is the mediator diverting this direct pure light into the indirect creativity of history and its creatures. This is how our Master transforms the direct light of Aten into the indirect usage of the light in the everyday life of the world and its life forms.” Ozarzip seemed exhausted as he said, “We made good progress this morning, my children.” He announced, “We covered quite a lot of important ground and we have delved in depth into some of the basic revolutionary doctrines of our King and Master. Hence, we have earned a respite.” The Viceroy clapped his hands and a procession of naked boys and girls entered Ozarzip’s quarters carrying trays of fruit, food and drink. I was quite relieved for this interval which came earlier than usual since my mind, heart, body and soul were all immersed in my brutally murdered love for Marit-Aten. The assassin, executioner and butcher of my adoration, devotion and infatuation for my beloved Princess was none other than my father, the Pharaoh, whose religious doctrines I had to study, memorize and cherish. The Viceroy, as was his custom, invited us to stay for the noon meal, but we excused ourselves since the Priest and his family had prepared a meal for us and Amram the Priest has another installment for us in the Habiru religion. We took our leave from Ozarzip and arranged to meet again tomorrow morning. The Viceroy was hardly listening since he was ogling voraciously the naked bodies of the tray carrying slave boys. When we were outside the Viceroy’s room, I confided to Aaron that I am quite broken in spirit and I would like to rest a while in my room before joining his family for the noon meal and another session of instruction from his father about the Habiru creed. Aaron embraced me and said that he fully understood my mood and that he will let me repose while he goes to his family’s tents to tell them that I shall be somewhat late for the meal. After a while he will come to pick me up.

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I embraced him again and hurried to my rooms and flung myself on my bed crying. After becoming worn out from wailing, howling and lamenting, I dozed off. I was awakened by my slave girl who said that my friend was waiting for me for quite a while and told me that his parents have prepared a noon meal for me. She therefore prepared a double strength spice brew to boost me up. When I sipped the powerful brew, it opened up my trachea and esophagus and cleared some of the mucous residues in them. I vowed never to love anyone again so that my love for the Princess will be the sole, unique, and only love that I have and shall ever have. When I came out of my rooms, I saw Aaron sitting near the goldfish pond, his face tense, drawn, and concerned. When Aaron saw me he ran to me, embraced me, and exclaimed anxiously, “I have been worrying about you, Prince, although I fully understand your agony. Also I have been waiting quite a while for you near the fishpond while you were asleep. The slave girl asked me whether I wanted her to wake you up. She said that before you fell asleep, you were screaming and howling and while you were sleeping you constantly repeated the name of Princess Marit-Aten. I told her that I do not think she should wake you up but after a while she came out and again asked my advice since a troubled sleep should be interrupted especially if one is constantly muttering the name of Princess Marit-Aten, and especially when everyone in the Palace knows by now that she will soon be crowned queen instead of her mother Nefertiti. The girl confided to me what I already knew, that being obsessed with a reigning queen is sacrilegious and is a capital offense. Then she said ‘I think that we should wake him up’. I agreed and advised her to prepare you a strong spice brew to boost up your spirits. So here you are, Prince. I am so glad to see you and I fully identify with your sorrow. I only wish I could do something to alleviate it.” I embraced Aaron again and told him that his concern and care for me is like the Balm of Gilead for my blemished soul and that he is more than a brother to me. And that from now on, we shall always stay together and nothing will ever part us. We went hand in hand to the tents of Aaron’s family to have the noon meal with them and continue learning about the Habiru religion and lore with Aaron’s father. When we reached the Habiru tents, the Priest, his wife Yocheved, and daughter Miriam were standing outside their guest tent waiting for us. Their faces expressed concern, since we were late for the noon meal and the lamb soup, one of the Habiru famous specialties, would be overdone. Ideally this delicious soup should be prepared by frying a lavish number of diced onions and garlic in the sizzling fat of the lamb’s tail. Then a large

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assortment of fresh vegetables ௅ beet roots and their leaves, carrots, cabbage, turnips, leaves and flowers of wild mustard, fresh cumin flowers and leaves, and young vine leaves ௅ would be cut and steamed in the hot sauce. After a while the meat of the lamb would be added and mugs of sweet bitter beer would be added to cover the large earthen pot. Salt, pepper, cardamom and thyme would be sprinkled and the pot would be placed in a low heat oven to cook slowly. Since I was late, beer had to be added from time to time so that the liquids and sauce of the soup would not evaporate and its delicate texture, taste and aroma would not be destroyed. At a certain point when we had still not arrived, the earthen pot was taken out of the oven and allowed to cool. When we finally came, the pot was returned back to the oven to reheat the soup and lamb. While the food was in the oven, the Priest asked me how I felt. “Do not be cross with me, Prince,” the Priest beseeched, “as I have divulged to you the last time we met, Prince, the Habiru priesthood, as a means of survival, developed a net of information with the help of which we know almost every important event in the realm of the two kingdoms of our gracious Pharaoh almost immediately after it happens. Hence we know about the imminent demotion of Queen Nefertiti and the coronation of her daughter and your half-sister Princess Marit-Aten in her stead. We also know, my dear Prince, the horrible shock which this event has caused you and the anguish, frustration and disaster which this event precipitated to your young love. Let me tell you, my dear Prince, that we in our religion have forbidden sexual intercourse within the original family, punishable by death together with the other two capital offenses of idolatry and murder. I hope that if one day you have the power that Ozarzip predicts you are sure to have, that you do likewise in your religion whatever it happens to be.” “Rest assured, Priest,” I affirmed, “that if I do have this power, the first offense to be forbidden would be this monstrosity of sexual intercourse of a father with his young immature children.” “I am sure of it, Prince, and now, children, all of us are hungry so let us eat the wonderful soup prepared by my beloved wife and daughter.” At the request of the Priest, a couple of servants brought in the large earthenware pot with the bubbling hot soup in it and placed it on the low wooden table. Yocheved placed copper trays in front of each of us with a thin, round bread on each tray. Then Miriam placed some pieces of the leg of the lamb and a couple of lamb chops in a deep glazed earthenware bowl and the Priest poured the soup in each bowl with a large brass kitchen spoon until it covered the pieces of lamb meat in the bowl. The Priest then folded the flat, thin bread on each tray to make room for the bowl of soup. After the Priest blessed the food, each one of us tore a piece of bread,

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dipped it in the soup, and then ate the soup-soaked bread, chewing it slowly. The taste was outstanding. Each spice that was absorbed by the hot fatty sauce emerged individually to tickle the taste buds on the tongue and palate and then fused into a harmony of flavors that merged into a mellifluous unique culinary experience. When I reached the lamb meat at the bottom of the bowl, I sampled a piece of the leg of lamb. Never before had I savored anything like it. Its texture was delicate and soft, yet the pepper and sweet bitter beer gave it an aroma of sharpness, delicacy and strength which stayed in the mouth long after the mouthful had been swallowed. When the food rested in the stomach, it did not feel heavy, but light and pleasantly satisfying not only the body but also the spirit. After the meal, we rinsed our hands with a bowl of rosewater passed around by the servant and we terminated our exquisite sustenance experience with a pleasurable sweetish spice brew to round up the delightful feeling within our digestive tracts. After the Priest offered the after-meal thanks, Yocheved and Miriam left quietly and discreetly and Aaron and I remained with Amram to receive another installment of indoctrination in the Habiru religion. “As you well remember,” the Priest began, “we had four open queries after we had studied the legend of the sin and punishment of Adam and Eve according to Mesopotamian lore. We were too tired and engrossed with the enormity of the problems posed by the Mesopotamian account as to the attitude of God to the infringements of the first couple and their enticement by the snake to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Now, children, after we have been invigorated by our noon meal and energized by a spice drink, I think we are ready to tackle the convoluted problems of the Mesopotamian account of the primary sin of the first human couple.” “The first quandary is that indeed God lied to the first human couple and the snake was right. After they have eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve did not die as warned and predicted by God. So why did the omnipotent Divinity resort to deceit. The answer could be that the Garden of Eden was a first breeding ground for human beings, the crown of God’s creation, who have been formed in His image. He needed a reason to expel them from the protection of Eden and expose them to the harshness of the competition, the travail, and the hardship outside the protective cocoon of Paradise in order to harden them and prepare them for the trials of the survival of the fittest.” “Second, the hide-and-seek and the reprimands of God were meant to instill in humans a sense of guilt that would serve as an inner sentinel within the human psyche without the necessity of outside coercion.”

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“Third, did the injunction against partaking of the Tree of Knowledge stem from the apprehension of God from human competition? Not at all,” claimed the Priest pounding his fist on his other hand for stress. “God needed the partnership of man in solving a nagging problem the nature of which should not be known to humans. If they would know it, their awareness of it would hamper their usefulness as partners in seeking a solution of God’s dilemma since their behavior would be biased by the forbidden knowledge. Once they were informed of their self-awareness through their infraction and the secrets of sexual intercourse and pleasures that God, being unique, has to experience through them, they gained a measure of self-importance abhorrent to God and had to be expelled from Eden, the site of this experimentation in partnership between God and humans. Their way back was barred forever by the Cherubim who guard the entrance to Paradise with a flaming sword that turned every way.” “Finally, the fourth predicament, and seemingly the most severe one, was that the omniscient God did not prevent the first couple from sinning but instead let them transgress and punished them tyrannically. Adam and Eve sinned,” the Priest stressed emphatically, “with God obviously aware of their callous intentions. Being omniscient, He could easily have had prevented their infractions. Why didn’t He? Well,” Amram paused for a greater effect of his imminent statement, “God had a reason for his abstention. The punishment for the transgression of Adam and Eve causes them to suffer and suffering raises them to a higher level of awareness and greater and better achievement in the harnessing of their ability to overcome the obstacles to their progress in reaching their goals. Hence, both the sin and the punishment thereof are instrumental in God’s design for the development of the human species.” “Having tackled hopefully some of the most pressing doctrinal difficulties in the Mesopotamian legend of the primary sin of the first couple, we are in a position, my children, to delve into the lore of the first fratricide perpetrated by Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, against his brother Abel. We should be very careful, my children,” Amram warned, “not to be carried away by the story but to examine the morale of the legend to the Habiru religious doctrine.” “The facts of the myth are rather commonplace: the two sons of the first human couple chose different vocations. Cain, the firstborn, was a tiller of the ground and the second, Abel, was a shepherd, a keeper of sheep. Outwardly, the rivalry between the two brothers was a common sibling competition but on a deeper examination,” the Priest became assertive, “the rift between the brothers had an ideological and religious background.”

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“Cain was the tiller of land and builder of towns whose progeny would create artifacts and art. To succeed in their agricultural endeavors, artisanship, and artistic efforts, they needed the support, good will, and blessings of the local gods, the gods of nature and the specialized functional gods. In other words, children, and this is the punch line,” the Priest emphasized his words by raising his voice. “Cain and his progeny have to be idolatrous and polytheistic and to worship the multitude of gods needed to accomplish their various projects.” “Not so, Able and his nomadic descendants. Their grazing of sheep and goats induces them to roam the steppes and deserts to seek growing fodder for their flocks. They shun property and heavy loads of goods since it hampers their mobility. The monotonic and monochromatic deserts and steppes in the nomadic shepherds’ wanderings induce their anchorage on abstraction rather than concreteness.” “Therefore, the roaming of the nomads is more conducive to a belief in an abstract monotheistic God whereas the stationary land tiller is more attracted to a reliance on the functional specialized multitudes of the gods of nature who assure the viability of the crops as determined by the year’s seasons and, in Egypt, the periodic flooding of the Nile. This makes for the basic cultural and normative differences between the land tillers and the shepherds.” “In the case of the Egyptians it reached to a virtual detestation of us Habiru nomads. No wonder your father had to make the necessary decision to bring us, Habiru monotheistic nomads, to help him sustain his religious revolution and help him administer His kingdom since the cadre of bureaucrats dominated by the polytheists of the Amonic clergy fear and, I am sorry to say, even hate your father and his monotheistic revolution. This enmity between the land tiller and shepherd was highlighted in the legend of the murder of Abel the shepherd by Cain the crop cultivator. This animosity was exacerbated by God’s preference for the shepherd Abel which a monotheistic God would tend to have.” “Another problem posed by the legend is that Cain was not really punished. He had to toil very hard in order to eke a miserly crop from the land which he tilled, but so did everyone else after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Moreover, he was protected by a mark set by God so he would not be killed by those who identify him as a fratricide.” “There were two reasons Cain’s life was saved by God, both of them pedagogical and educational. First, he was forced to become a vagabond and forced to identify with the life of his slain brother, a nomadic shepherd, and perchance be exposed to the monotheistic conducive monotonic abstraction of the desert. Second, and of more importance, he

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learned the hard way that he had to curb his evil impulses and that sin is always nearby. His passions and coveting tempt him all the time and he has to fight to control and curb them. Cain demonstrates, to whoever is ready and willing to learn, that Man is endowed with free will and that the evil inclinations of Man can be blocked, confined and overcome. Cain was therefore the instrument used by God to demonstrate the acquisition of morality by learning to suppress the evil impulse through the faculty of free will that God implanted in Cain after he gave in to his fratricidal inclination.” “We have covered a lot of ground, children.” The Priest was about to sum up our deliberations. “We have examined two of the basic pillars of Habiru religion: The notion of sin and the concept of free will. That will do for today. Let us meet again tomorrow, same time, same place. The Priest tried to introduce a humorous tone in his voice, but it sounded awkward and out of place. I thanked him warmly and I took my leave. I felt that I would like to be by myself, like a wounded animal that licks his wounds in seclusion. I embraced Aaron and asked him not to exert himself and go to rest and that I shall go to the Palace by myself. Aaron sensed my desire to be alone and he obliged me. I rushed quickly through the colonnade of the Ben-Ben Palace and entered the Aten chapel in the Palace. I crouched near the wall painting depicting the King, Queen Nefertiti, and Princess Marit-Aten offering lotus flowers to the Aten disk radiating sun rays terminating by ever giving palms of hands. The position and size of the royal worshippers was in their order of importance. The huge figure of the Pharaoh Akhenaten was first. His bisexual features were exaggerated: the rounded feminine pelvis and breasts made him look perverted and to me quite repellant. That could have been colored by his atrocious and tyrannical torture of his daughter and my beloved, the Princess Marit-Aten. After him stood Queen Nefertiti, about two thirds the size of the King. She was wearing a transparent gown revealing her breasts and pubic mound. Her head was covered by a short Nubian wig and on it the crown of the two kingdoms of Lower and Upper Egypt. Bak, the royal sculptor, twisted the delicate and beautiful facial features of the Queen to look like the inflated and grotesque face of the King with his swollen lips, protruding chin, and huge flapping ears. Princess Marit-Aten was sculptured about half the size of her mother, thin, immature, delicate and vulnerable. Now she had been molested by her father, coerced to be a woman prematurely, forced by him to be a Queen, a role for which she was not ready, and forced to depose her mother whom she loved and respected.

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I felt bewildered, confused and alienated by the violent, inhuman cruelties perpetrated by my father against his wife, against his daughter, my beloved Marit-Aten, and against me bodily and spiritually. And yet he was my father, king, and god. I fully accepted his monotheistic revolution and the replacement of the multitudes of concrete idols by a unique somewhat abstract God in whose image we have been created. I left the chapel and retired to my rooms and my bed, perplexed, puzzled and mystified. I was rather paralyzed by the paradox that assaulted me: First and foremost, my father is also a god and who am I to doubt his actions, but I felt within my inner being that the sexual liberties he took with me, his son, and with Marit-Aten, his daughter, were wrong and immoral. On the emotional level, how could he humiliate, shame and hurt his most loyal wife who stood by him staunchly and unwaveringly. Is this betrayal not unlike the arbitrary cruelty of the pagan gods against their creatures who regard them as instrumental to fulfill their needs and desires? However, maybe the Pharaoh as a God possesses knowledge of a higher truth unknowable to me that justifies whatever he does. Finally, the King could be in agony himself and our suffering might be a means to help him reveal the source of his pain and thus we could be the vehicle to understand and solve his quandaries and thus help us also to fathom our role in this world as partners of our Master in managing our complicated world. With these thoughts I fell asleep in a dreamless slumber and woke up in the morning still disordered, disorganized and muddle-headed. My slave girl who was sleeping in the anteroom outside my sleeping room sensed that I was awake and rushed in with a decanter of grape juice, but I told her that I woke up with a headache and that I shall appreciate it if she prepared for me an extra strong spice-brew. She brought me a bowl of rosewater to wash my face and a towel of linen to wipe it. After a while the girl brought a steaming kettle of spice brew with small white ovenglazed cups. A few cups of the brew invigorated, stimulated and braced me. My thoughts focused and I decided to bring my dilemmas to the Viceroy and ask his advice since I valued his astuteness. After sunrise, Aaron appeared and announced himself to the slave girl. Since I was awake, I heard him. I came out of my bedroom and met Aaron in the anteroom. I embraced him warmly and offered him a cup of my spice-brew. Aaron declined and asked whether the girl could prepare porridge of corn kernels cooked in goat milk. “I am sorry, brother,” I apologized. “We don’t have goat milk. As your good and wise father taught us, the Egyptians abhor shepherds and their

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livestock. The girl could prepare porridge of corn kernels cooked in cow’s milk.” ”I am sorry, Prince, to be difficult,” Aaron sounded genuinely apologetic. “For us, cows are linked to idolatry, Nut the heavenly cow, and Hathor the holy cow. If the girl cooks the corn in water, that will be fine.” “Of course, my brother. Your porridge will be ready in a jiffy.” I asked the girl to cook the corn in water. She looked surprised but she obliged me. “Would you like, my brother, to sweeten the porridge with some raisins?” “No, Prince, I am being difficult again,” Aaron sounded regretful, “but we cannot eat raisins from grapes not grown and dried by the Habiru.” “Of course, my brother, how stupid of me. It is like with wine. Grapes are a holy crop and should be cultivated only by the chosen people. Well, it is so good of you to have come earlier.” I changed the subject to avoid further embarrassment to Aaron and myself. “We still have some time, my brother, before we are due to meet the Viceroy. I would therefore like to have your advice, which I value very much, about a very important issue which bothers me greatly. You must realize, my brother, how badly I was shaken, jolted and disturbed by the atrocities committed by my father, the King, to my beloved Princess. This tarnished my enthusiasm for the Pharaoh’s religious revolution. What would you say,” I asked hesitantly, “my brother, if I converted to the Habiru religion? Thanks to you, I have started to acquire the Habiru language and due to the generosity of your father, the Priest, I am versed in the basics of your religion, which appeals to me very much. Hence, I seriously consider joining the Habiru religion, the moral principles of which make it more humane than the harsh and cruel monolatry of my father.” “Not so fast, Prince,” urged Aaron, “not so fast. You are a member of the nuclear royal family, my dear Prince, and as such you will need the permission of the King for your conversion and I doubt that you could receive it right now. You can convert to any religion you like when you reach maturity at the age of 21. Also, the Habiru religion is very strenuous, demanding and exerting. What you heard from my father is just a small fraction of the commandments, duties and mandates regulating the daily life of the Habiru. Finally, my father always counsels us that his worst decisions were made when he was stressed. So, my good Prince, my advice to you, given in love, is to be cautious and defer your decision to a time when you are less perturbed. Also, the Habiru network of clandestine information conveyed to us that all of us, the royal family, the chief clergy of Aten, the high functionaries, the garrison, the high command of the

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army, and us, the Habiru in the service of the King, are going to move to the new capital at Akhet-Aten. As they say in Habiru, ‘Change of place entails a change of fortune’.” Aaron smiled a wide smile that made his freckled face gleam with inner light. I embraced him and assured him that his counsel was well taken and that I shall not make any major decision without consulting him. “Let us hurry, my brother,” I urged. “I am sure that the Viceroy is already waiting for us.” Indeed Ozarzip was sitting in the anteroom of his quarters dressed in full regalia replete with his gold necklace of office and the double crown of Lower and Upper Egypt. He seemed to be impatient to see us.

CHAPTER SEVEN A VISIT TO THE NEW CAPITAL

“Children, I have great news,” he announced. “The King decreed that we are to move to our new capital at Akhet-Aten. Therefore, instead of studying some more of the religious doctrines of our Master the King’s revolution, we shall make a journey on our vice-regal barque to inspect the progress made in the construction of our capital.” I was full of admiration for the Habiru grapevine network of information. Apparently, the Habiru get to know the news almost instantaneously after its occurrence. “Let us go, children,” Ozarzip suggested. He called the Captain of the barque who organized our excursion and asked him whether the vice-regal barque is ready for boarding. “Not yet, Sire, but in a while,” answered the Captain, who wore wide coarse canvass pants fastened by braided leather belts from which dangled short gold chains that indicated his rank was that of a captain. “I would suggest, Sire, that you walk slowly, escorted by myself and the crew of the barque, towards the pier on the bank of the Nile.” The Captain led the way. The Viceroy followed, strolling leisurely with a dignified gait and holding each of us by the palms of our hands. We made our way from the Ben-Ben Palace in Eastern No-Amon rather quickly. We were led by the Captain of our barque to a platform on which were upholstered couches covered by shades against the sun. These were reserved for royalty and important dignitaries. The moment we sat on the couches, slaves with fans of papyrus approached and stood behind us stirring the air and driving away insects with their fans. Other slaves rushed to offer us fresh dates, juicy ripe figs, black and green grapes, all chilled in a nearby spring of fresh water flowing into the encampment for boats and barques on the Eastern bank of the Nile just in front of us. They also brought mugs of grape juice, beer and decanters and glasses for choice white wine from Abydos. After a short while, the Captain came and announced that the barque is ready for boarding. When we sat down on the center bench of the barque, Ozarzip sat in the middle and we both flanked him on each side. The sailors hurried and hung a transparent net on the mast of the barque and tied it to

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its sides so that we could see the view but not be pestered by the clouds of flying insects and stinging mosquitoes. The view from the western side of the embankment was indeed breathtaking. The few monuments of Karnak on the eastern bank of the Nile were impressive and all of them were built in the vicinity of the BenBen Palace. On the other hand, most of the monuments of No-Amon were concentrated on the western bank of the Nile. Just in front of us was an island in the middle of the river without any buildings or monuments on it. It was all marsh land covered by a profusion of vegetation with a few wild goats and gazelles. There were also quite a few crocodiles feeding on the animals that had the misfortune of straying within the reach of the monstrous jaws of the huge reptiles. We also witnessed the quite effective hunting techniques of the crocodile. It slid inaudibly on the smooth semi-liquid clay of the marsh towards a somnolent unsuspecting flamingo standing on one leg with its other leg tucked under its belly. The crocodile approached the bird inch by inch until he reached the leg of the flamingo immersed in the marsh and snapped it. The bird tried to escape by flapping its wings but to no avail. The reptile swallowed the flamingo whole. The bird quickly disappeared in the digestive track of the crocodile. After the carnage, the marsh quickly returned to its pastoral tranquility with multicolored butterflies dancing gaily over the high papyrus plants and the water nymphs courting and then mating graciously in midair adorning the white, blue and red water lilies with specks of violet, red and magenta colors. On the Western side of the river, the huge royal palaces and funerary temples and tombs loomed high over the palaces and tombs of the nobility and state functionaries. The funerary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut was leaning against a red sandstone mountain on the far edge of the Eastern bank of the Nile on the outskirts of No-Amon. There were four rows of limestone colonnades marking the boundaries of three outsize buildings decorated with wall paintings and the gold plated gates of the temple were hinged on tall, thick pylons. When we started our cruise toward Akhet-Aten, we moved rather quickly since we sailed downstream. The oarsmen rested and saved their energies for the strenuous journey back upstream. We sailed around the detour of the Nile between Qena and Dendera leading to Abydos. Both banks of the Nile were planted with rows of date palms. The dates were ripe and had various sizes and colors. The huge violet juicy dates were more delicious when eaten fresh. The yellow small ones were harder but very sharp and aromatic whereas the brown wrinkled dates had dried on the palm trees and were ready to be packed in bales

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wrapped in papyrus and shipped to the whole world with the trademark “Best dates of the Nile, the Gift of the Gods to Mankind.” The banks were lined with thick and dense papyrus bushes that had nests of turtle doves, swallows, and colorful sunbirds that look like humming birds. Flocks of ducks were following our barque waiting for handouts. The huge gulls were roaming the river, diving from time to time into the water, and coming up with a trembling fish in their beaks. The voyage from Abydos to Asyut was quite uneventful. The barque passed through a desert stretch almost without vegetation with the fauna being mostly poisonous brownish-yellow vipers and grey even more poisonous horned vipers hunting the small lizards, which rushed between the mounds of sand. After a short while we reached Akhet-Aten sparkling in its newness. It is located in a curve of the Nile that resembles the hieroglyph for a horizon. That is why the name of the New Capital of the Pharaoh is ‘The Horizon of Aten’. We landed at the northern port of the city, which was smaller, less crowded and more comfortable than the main port opposite the central quarter that was bustling with boats carrying marble and gilded limestone to cover the new buildings of the city and food for the ever growing population of the new capital. A chariot harnessed to a black mare with an officer of the guards dressed in a terracotta colored uniform with a gold insignia of the Viceroy was holding the reins of the chariot that was waiting for us in the Army encampment of the port. He bowed low when he recognized the Viceroy disembarking from the vice-regal barque, then he held our hands and led us down the wooden steps, which the sailors had placed near the middle of the barque facing the encampment. When we mounted the chariot, the officer asked the Viceroy where he wanted to visit first. Ozarzip asked him to drive us to the North Palace that was not far from the northern port and situated just south of the Northern part of Akhet-Aten and its central quarter. The North Palace was destined to be the Viceroy’s abode and had been designed by him so he had a special interest in visiting it. The officer obliged and led the chariot to the Northern Palace. The mare trotted elegantly on the new wide road paved with square limestone bricks hardened with brown ceramics. We reached the North Palace after a short ride on the wide road that ran parallel to the Nile and served as the main connecting avenue of all the parts of the New Capital stretching from the North City through the North Palace to the Central Quarter of the city until it ended at the southernmost structure of Akhet-Aten at Maru-Aten.

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The North Palace was a trapezoid structure with its wider side facing the road and its narrower side facing the desert altars on the Eastern side of the city. The silver plated gates of the North Palace were hinged on huge gilded limestone pylons that faced the road. A short colonnade flanking a mosaic pavement depicted geese flying to the Nile and linked the palace to the road. When we entered the main hall of the palace, a huge fresco covering the entire wall facing us depicted the gold painted Aten disc with its shining rays terminated by open palms. Beneath the sun disk, my father, the Pharaoh, was sitting on his royal throne holding in his lap my beloved Princess Marit-Aten. Opposite the king, Queen Nefertiti was sitting dressed in full regalia on her throne holding one Princess on her lap and another one perched on her shoulder. When I realized that in a short while the fresco of Queen Nefertiti would be defaced and the childish and immature figure of my beloved Marit-Aten would be inserted instead of her mother, I burst out crying. Ozarzip looked at me with great concern and with intense empathy. “I know what you are feeling, Prince,” the Viceroy spoke with compassion, “but do me a great favor. You can moan, wail and sob, but at the end of the day you should realize that there is nothing you can do about this. So, come to terms with the fact that Princess Marit-Aten is soon going to be enthroned as queen. She is not your equal anymore and cannot be the subject of your love, adoration and infatuation. She is to become a queen and a Goddess and as such she can only be worshipped in a self-effacing manner. I counsel you, my Prince,” Ozarzip sounded persuasive, “to concentrate on your education and self-accomplishment since I have no doubt in my mind that you have been destined to greatness.” Ozarzip led us to the right wall of the main hall of the North Palace which displayed an elaborate wall painting. Large carps in shades of gold, black and white were swimming in the marshes among the lotus flowers and the red, blue and white water lilies with their huge green round fleshy leaves. Papyrus bushes were painted in bluish green hues. A variety of birds were nesting in them: storks, sea gulls, ducks, geese and flamingoes. Naked girls were dancing on the shores of the marshes. Their hands were raised in adulation of the Aten sun disk which was radiating towards them its all giving rays ending in open palms of hands. The Viceroy then led us hurriedly to the left side wall of the main hall, all of which was occupied by an outsize aquarium. He seemed especially enthusiastic about the aquarium since he called us to approach the glass wall of the aquarium as close as we could and watch what was going on inside it. He pointed at about a dozen cages covered by white fishnets with

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small holes. In each cage was a single large fish with long magenta, blue, violet and red fins. When Ozarzip pointed a finger at the fish, they responded with a sudden spread of their fins, brandishing them at the Viceroy’s finger in a menacing saber dance since the spines of the fins protrude from their edges as sharp pointed pikes. “The fish in the cages are only the males,” explained Ozarzip. “They are the fighters. If we release them from the cages, they will fight one another to death over the favors of the females.” The Viceroy pointed his finger at about two dozen fish smaller than the males. They had rather dull colors. “The males build up nests,” Ozarzip warmed up to his subject, “and then the females lay their eggs and the males dance around them and fertilize the eggs in the process. They then catch the eggs with the help of their fan-like fins and place them gently on the nest. They guard the nests and the eggs ferociously since both the females and other males are liable to devour them. They keep watching over the baby fish after they spawn until they grow up and are able to feed on the small brine shrimps which are released in the aquarium.” “The point of the exercise, my children,” Ozarzip burst enthusiastically into his four-dimpled smile, “is the eventual fighting fish tournament when we get installed in this Palace. The nobility and high officials in the new capital will be invited to sit in this hall on rows of couches. Two single adult fighting fish are then released into the aquarium, each one identified by a different color. The fish are fighting until one is defeated and sinks to the bottom of the aquarium. During the fight, bets are placed for great sums of gold and silver coins with me serving as treasurer,” Ozarzip declared with visible satisfaction. The rest of the North Palace was not ready yet since the furniture, the mosaic floors, the carpets, and the wall paintings were not finished, so we went out of the North Palace and walked toward our chariot which was waiting for us outside. “Are you not hungry, children?” the Viceroy asked. I was actually starving since I had eaten nothing after my meager breakfast of a glass of beer and a slice of unleavened bread. “It is past midday already and the only place where we can get a decent meal is the kitchen of the great Palace, about 35 rods-of-cord south of here. So let us go, children,” the Viceroy urged. We mounted the chariot and we rode southward on the wide avenue that stretched along the bank of the Nile. We passed the North suburb that was built for the high officials of the government that was only sparsely populated since most of the members of the Pharaoh’s bureaucracy still resided at No-Amon. When we reached the central quarter of the city, we passed on our left the great temple of Aten that was

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the largest building in the new capital. It was quite ostentatious with its gilded sanctuary in the rear of the temple that towered above all the other monuments in its vicinity. The ‘House of Rejoicing’ at the front of the temple was covered by white glazed tiles that reflected the rays of the sun. The worshippers came to rejoice in it early in the morning to welcome the rising Aten who emerged from the darkness of the night. We continued our ride on the Royal Avenue past the ‘Ka of Re’ storehouse that was the main warehouse of Akhet-Aten. It contained a huge amount of provisions, sufficient for stocking the new residences in the capital as well as the royal abodes and the garrisons serving and guarding them. After the main storehouse, we saw on our left the King’s House in which the royal kitchens were located. The King’s abode was relatively modest in size but glittering in its luxury. Its façade was studded with lapis-lazuli, mother-of-pearl, white-rose cameo, magenta colored sheets of copper, and windows with multi-colored rainbow glass. When we dismounted from the chariot, the sentry recognized the vice regal insignia on Ozarzip’s chest and he led us to the Very Important People’s reception room. Maid servants immediately brought us mugs of cold beer on brass trays, tall glasses of grape juice, and decanters and glasses of white wine. The sentry called the captain of the guards who came rushing and bowed low to Ozarzip. “What would be the pleasure of his royal highness,” he asked servilely. “Captain, we are starving,” answered the Viceroy in exasperation. “Yes, your highness.” The captain bowed again. “Immediately, your most esteemed majesty.” The captain went out and returned with the Chief Steward who invited us to follow him to the dining hall of the very important guests. While walking, we saw on the Eastern wall of the King’s house a gilded wall painting of the Aten disk shining on the Pharaoh and his wife. I noticed that the queen depicted on the wall painting was the puerile figure of my beloved Marit-Aten with the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt weighing too heavy on her small and delicate head. Tears started streaming involuntarily on my cheeks and down my neck. Ozarzip looked at me and commanded: “Prince, please control yourself. There is nothing you can do to change this situation that is so painful to you. Wisdom is inherent in the realization of what can be changed and what cannot. So please, my boy, be wise.” Ozarzip’s words introduced some warmth and softness in an otherwise quite harsh directive. The Steward brought us to the King’s own dining hall and invited us to sit at the round dining table made of cedar of Lebanon wood around which stood a dozen throne-like chairs. I was stunned by the luxury, splendor and

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extravagance of the furniture, wall paintings and dining ware. The floor was covered with the hides of lions, tigers, leopards and zebras. The heads of the animals were stuffed to look lifelike and their mouths were open, replete with menacing teeth. Their eyes were studded with gems: the lions with red rubies, the tigers with emerald green smaragdos, the leopards with yellow onyx, and the zebras with blue aquamarine. The Eastern wall of the hall depicted again the King and Queen welcoming the rising disk of Aten. The tender and vulnerable figure of my beloved on the wall caused a lump in my throat but I controlled myself and did not burst out crying in order not to face a reprimand from Ozarzip. Another wall had paintings of men picking large bunches of black grapes and putting them into baskets on their shoulders. The third wall had a painting of a group of girls picking yellow ears of ripe corn and placing them into baskets balanced on their heads. The fourth wall had shepherds grazing sheep and goats. Girls were milking some of the goats with the milk spouting into buckets. The most lavish display was that of table utensils and dining ware on the table and in cupboards. All the cutlery, trays and wine cups were of pure gold. The decanters, mugs and chalices were made of cut glass honed to glittering perfection sharpening the edges to refract the light into myriads of rainbows that covered the walls of the King’s dining hall with gem like patches of brilliant colors. All the kitchen and dining ware were imprinted with cartouches of hieroglyphs of the King and Queen. Slave boys and girls started to stream into the dining hall carrying trays with a variety of appetizers and placed them on the dining table. The trays contained shrimps fried in butter and garlic, and squid pulps cooked in red wine, served with a golden sauce of olive oil spiced with Phoenician saffron from Tyre, and laced with their own ink which gave them a rich dark texture. There were trays of quail, some cooked in white wine, some roasted in butter and almonds, and others stuffed with pitted olives and baked in the oven. Finally, there were a couple of trays of fried red snappers and a tray of baby corn cooked in sour cream. For drinks they brought decanters of red and white wine, beer, grape juice, and cold water. When Ozarzip saw the trays he burst into cries of ecstasy, “ooh, ha ha ooh, woah” and grabbed the tray of pulps and a decanter of red wine. He poured himself a gold cupful of wine and drank all of it in one long gulp. He poured himself another cupful and muttered, “Oh wine, wine, wine, the juice of life.” He grabbed some pulps and swallowed them without chewing and washed them down with a mouthful of wine. He smacked his lips with delight and some of the sauce dripped on his tunic, staining his

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vice regal insignia. “Eat, children, eat,” he urged us. “Life is short and full of sound and fury with only a few delights and eating is one of them.” The Viceroy turned to a tray of large shrimps and started to gobble them one after the other, holding each one by its tail, biting off the tender reddish body up to its tail, and swigging a mouthful of white wine to swallow it down, licking his lips and belching with satisfaction. I chose a quail and a red snapper for my midday meal whereas Aaron helped himself frugally to a sauce of baby corn and sour cream. For the main course, the cook brought an earthenware pot of boiling white wine with small onions floating in it and a bucket full of water with three giant lobsters thrashing in the water. He placed three silver nutcrackers on the left of each of our gold plates. Ozarzip dipped his right hand into the bucket and fished out one of the gigantic lobsters. It was greenish grey and its enormous pincers were safely tied up with palm leaves. The Viceroy threw the prodigious crustacean into the piping hot white wine and the lobster started wailing a heart-breaking shriek. It continued sobbing with creaking raspy sounds until its color turned shining red and it apparently gave up its tortured soul to be ready for the Viceroy’s plate and palate. I cringed with empathy for the suffering creature and, from the look on his face, so did Aaron. But Ozarzip quipped philosophically, “You must learn the laws of nature, children. Some creatures must die so that the life of others would be more enjoyable.” He took the nutcracker, grabbed one of the lobster’s pincers with it, lifted the whole crustacean out of the hot wine, and threw it on his plate. He then cooked the other two crustaceans for me and for Aaron and served them on our plates. He started to devour his lobster while we still ate our appetizers. I nibbled the red snapper and Aaron ate his baby corn and sour cream with a golden spoon. Ozarzip tore one pincer from the lobster and cracked it expertly with his nutcracker. He extracted the muscle from the broken crusts of the pincer. It looked juicy and freckled with red spots. The Viceroy stared at it lovingly and masticated it before swallowing it and washing it down with a full mouthful of white wine from a golden cup. After cracking the second pincer, Ozarzip attacked the robust body of the huge crustacean. He lifted it from his plate by its fan-like tail, slashed its tail, belly and torso with the gold knife on the table, spread it out, placed it on his plate, and gazed at it with intense passion. “Look at it,” he exclaimed, “how white, soft and succulent it looks. Why don’t you eat yours?” he asked while helping himself to his lobster’s tail. “Ah, oh,” he uttered in ecstasy, smacking his lips while munching the savory crustacean’s flesh. “What a delight, what a delicacy, what a

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rapture,” he blurted while swigging gulp after gulp of white wine from his own golden cup imprinted with the vice regal cartouche of hieroglyphs denoting his name and rank. “After the meal, children,” Ozarzip announced, his speech blurred from the huge amount of wine he downed, “we shall discuss the vision of our Master, how his revolutionary creed will spread from the new capital here at Akhet-Aten to engulf the two kingdoms of Egypt and from there to enlighten the whole world.” The Viceroy then looked at us and at our plates with the untouched crustaceans. “Eat, children, eat,” he urged us. “It is so good, so good.” He sighed and leaned his head onto the back of his throne-like chair. I wanted to assuage Ozarzip, so I tore one of the pincers off of the lobster on my plate and I started to crack it with my nutcracker but I met the reprimanding look of Aaron. I was already quite deep in my studies of Habiru religious doctrine and I was already fluent in the Habiru language. I knew that a lobster was treif or unclean in Habiru because it has no scales and hence is inedible. I laid down the crustacean’s pincer and the nutcracker on my plate and was about to tell the Viceroy that I cannot eat it but that was unnecessary because Ozarzip was heavy with drink, fast asleep, and already snoring. We did not dare wake him up. We also figured that if we let him sleep off his wine, he would be able to tell us on our way back some important tenets of the religion of Aten and we would be able to compare and relate them to the Habiru religious doctrines. We decided to wander around Akhet-Aten by ourselves and do some sightseeing while Ozarzip was asleep. We went out of the King’s House and looked at its façade. It was covered with inlays of stone and glass of all colors: red quartz, blue chevron stone, black granite, and white calcite. Gilded limestone depicted the customary Aten disc with its rays ending in open palms. Glazed tiles depicted palm trees, tamarisk, lotus plants and flowers. Others displayed red, blue and white water lilies sprouting between large green leaves surrounded by gold, black and rose-white albino carp fish. The colored façade, shining with its gems, glazed tiles and gilded limestone, bedazzled us with the refracted light from the afternoon sun. We went under the bridge connecting the King’s House and the main Royal Palace on the other side of the Royal Avenue and north towards the Great Temple of the Aten. The ‘Great House of the Aten,’ as it was denoted by my father, opened to the Royal Avenue with a colonnade leading to the ‘House of Rejoicing’ in which worshipers would welcome each morning the return of the rising sun from the darkness of the night with songs of glee and thanks. The inside of the temple had six open courts to welcome the shining of the sun.

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The last court, named Gem-Aten, ‘the Aten is Found,’ was flanked by 365 altars divided into 12 groups of 30, one group for each 30-day month of the Egyptian year, plus a group of five altars for the extra days at the end of the year. Each of the 12 groups was divided into three subgroups of 10, one for each day of the 3 weeks in an Egyptian month. The altars were meant to receive donations of foods, agricultural products and livestock feed from all the districts of Upper and Lower Egypt, not only for the priests and the Aten clergy but also for the poor and needy of the New Capital. Farther to the east was the mansion of the Ben-Ben which was the sanctuary of the Aten creed. It was flanked by two rows of sphinxes which served as metaphysical protection against the forces of evil and idolatry that scheme to harm the Aten creed and the Pharaoh, its prophet. The sanctuary was the Holy of Holies of the Aten creed. It had choirs singing odes to the Aten and to the King. The offering altar of the sanctuary was in front of a stela stone monument and next to an outsize statue of the King. The stela depicted the King, Queen and Princess Marit-Aten kneeling and prostrating themselves in front of the Aten disk radiating sun rays terminated by open palms. The sanctuary was where all the souls of the believers would eventually be united with the spirit of god and the king in the never-ending present of the Holy of Holies. We went back south on the Royal Avenue passing on our left the main storehouse of the capital, denoted dramatically as ‘the Ka of Re lives,’ past the King’s House in which we had our meal and in which the Viceroy hopefully still sleeps and snores vociferously, until we reached the Mansion of the Aten. Its proximity to the King’s House made it a natural royal chapel for the exclusive worship of the Pharaoh, his family, and his retinue. Except for an altar and a sanctuary in its eastern end, the royal chapel was largely empty since the King and his family had not yet moved into their abode. We crossed the Royal Avenue to the west side of the road and presented ourselves at the gate of the main Palace of the Capital which housed the harem of the King, his wives, concubines and their children as well as the members of the extended royal family which included myself. I was curious to see my imminent abode. The two sentries at the gate stopped us with their menacing spears but when they saw the insignia of a royal prince on my tunic, they bowed low and let us in. The most spectacular scene that was revealed to us immediately after entering the gate of the Palace was the enormous Garden that occupied most of the space inside the walls surrounding the outsize yards and edifice. As we learned later, the royal garden housed the multitude of plant

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varieties collected by the King’s gardeners and those donated by other regions and countries following the solicitation of the royal horticulturists. The plants were arranged according to their species, varieties and temperature and watering specifications in different hothouses. The most spectacular were the black and white flowered trees and the Birds of Paradise with their tiny delicate gold, violet and yellow flowers surrounded by feather-like green leaves. The Anthuriums had a profusion of vagina-like shining red flowers with a penis-like stamen protruding erect from its center. The lotus and water lily hothouse was actually a large tropical fishpond of many colors and sizes covered by flowering lotus and water lily plants. The most interesting, however, was the cacti hothouse, housing the desert and arid region’s plants. They ranged from the giant Euphorbias through the prickly round plants with very small delicate flowers sprouting from their midst to the lithops, stone-like plants that could not be distinguished from their surrounding limestone and basalt pebbles. We sat down on a stone bench in the cacti hothouse to rest and discuss our impressions from our excursion inside the new capital. I started by expressing my admiration for my father for having had the inspiration to choose the site for the construction of the new capital Akhet-Aten, the horizon of Aten, in a place where the terrain had the outward appearance of the hieroglyph for Horizon. Indeed, the Hymn to Aten, the main manifestation of the Aten in poetic form, starts with the verse “Thou arises fair in the horizon of heaven, O living Aten, Beginner of Life.” The uniform range of distant cliffs on the eastern banks of the Nile is interrupted and broken by the torrent bed of the winter flood, which formed a wide gap between the two bands of hills creating thus an outsized hieroglyphic structure of an enclosed horizon fit for the construction of Akhet-Aten, the new capital aptly denoted as Horizon of Aten. “Prince,” Aaron interjected, “whatever you said about the religious revolutionary ideas of your father is well taken but the Habiru religion went a step further. The hieroglyphic script is still related to a form like you righty stated, the similarity between the hieroglyphic sign for horizon and the structure of the terrain of Akhet-Aten, the new capital denoted as the Horizon of Aten. The Habiru script, on the other hand, is more abstract. Hence, it is more suitable for describing an abstract God without any trace or vestige of concreteness or a graven image. “First of all, my dear Aaron,” I reacted, “don’t call me ‘Prince’. We are brothers, brothers.” I embraced Aaron warmly. “However, you must admit

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that although Aten is not as abstract as the Habiru God, yet he is also a universal God.” “Well, my brother,” Aaron reacted, “abstraction is paramount. An abstract God without any concreteness has no beginning and no end. He was not created and will not die or be resurrected. By contrast, the Aten’s vestige of concreteness is related to his creation, although of himself by himself, and to his eclipse at night and resurrection every morning.” “You are right, my brother,” I conceded. “It also reflects on the striving for self-sufficiency of my father and his Hermaphroditism, which is rather repulsive to me. He is depicted in paintings and statutes, contrary to his real form as we know him, as both male and female to denote his selfsufficiency in his creation of himself. My father, as you know, declared that only he, as the true and only son, is fit to receive the revelations of God’s timeless doctrines and proclaim, infuse and implant them in history. As the Aten is pure light, his temples have many roofless encampments to receive the sacred life enduring radiation in equal profusion and without hindrance. My father, as the only recipient of the Aten’s grace, is the agent through whom the Aten’s eternal and timeless luminosity is refracted, integrated and instilled into every life form and object within time and space.” My eyes were raised to a wall painting above the entrance to the hothouse that depicted my father, the King, and his new Queen, my MaritAten, praying to the Aten radiating rays of light ending with outstretched palms. I couldn’t look at the king, but I concentrated my gaze on the huge stunning eyes of my love, made even bigger by the lines of black mascara above and below them. They were radiating acceptance of the sanctity of the light with dainty and elegant charm stemming from an inner maieutic dialogue with the benevolent and benign piety of Aten's light. Her heartshaped full lips were slightly open, emitting a silent prayer for her divine fate that she could not change but had to accept unequivocally. We left the main building of the royal palace and climbed the steps that led us to the bridge over the Royal Avenue, leading us back to the King’s House and to the main dining hall in which Ozarzip has hopefully slept off his wine. Indeed the Viceroy was crouching on the couch on which he was sleeping, holding his head and moaning. When he saw us he lamented, “Oh children, my head, my head is splitting. I think I am going to die. Please rush to the King’s physician and ask him to prepare me a glass of his concoction to cure my hangover. Otherwise I shall exude my sinning soul and expire.” We rushed to the doctor who was wearing a black gown with the insignia of a crowned snake, the sign for a royal doctor, on it. On his head

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was a turquoise silk turban with an outsize emerald on which an ostrich feather was glued. The doctor welcomed us with deference after he saw the princely sign on my tunic. “What is it, Prince,” he asked when he saw the look of concern on our faces. “We need your help, sir,” we implored. “The Viceroy in the Dining Hall wails with pain. He thinks he is dying, sir, and needs you to prepare your concoction to save his life” “Calm down,” the doctor pacified us. “The Viceroy is not dying. He is just in his cups. If he does not stop abusing his drink he will eventually die of cirrhosis of the liver, but not right now. Wait for me here. I shall bring the ingredients for the medicine easing the hangover of drunks like your Viceroy.” The doctor returned with half a dozen bottles, poured some of their contents in a mug, and stirred the liquids violently. A smell of rotten eggs filled the room and nauseated me. After a while, he added some drops of acrid hemlock to the concoction, poured it into a golden cup, and gave it to me. “Take it to your Viceroy, Prince, but do not smell it. If you do, it will knock you down. I took the cup and Aaron and I rushed back to the Dining Hall. When Ozarzip saw us, he grabbed the cup and downed its contents. He shuddered all over his body and emitted croaks of disgust. “What a horrible taste. What a vile smell.” After a few minutes, the medicine took effect on him and his trembling and agony subsided. “Oh my children,” he sighed. “I am good at preaching to others but in my behavior I am an unpardonable sinner. I am rotten through and through. I am a black mirror of what you should not do. I am attracted to boys and this is a mortal sin in the Habiru religion. I worship power and I steer my way in the corrupt court politics by connivance, intrigue, and flattery. I am addicted to the pleasures of the stomach and to wine which corrodes my liver and my brain. My body and soul communicates to my inner being that my lifestyle and behavior are against nature and in stark infringement of the commandments of God. I am trapped by the devil and will surely burn in Hell.” Ozarzip covered his face with his palms and started sobbing with self-pity. “No, no,” I protested. “We love you. You do have some peccadilloes, but who has not? Your heart is pure.” I embraced him and said, “And God loves you. You have done more for your people and for the Habiru than any other human being alive. You are my teacher and mentor in religious doctrine and I should thank you for all that I know.” He held me tightly to his chest and thanked me. “You are a sweet boy, my Prince, and rest assured that you are destined for greatness.” Ozarzip wiped his face and a slave boy brought him a towel dipped in rosewater to

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clean his face He freshened his face with it, then he lined his eyes with back mascara, painted his lips with crimson raspberry juice, and changed his short Nubian wig to a full-fledged long and curly black royal wig. He clipped his rectangular artificial beard and assumed a demeanor of authority. Then he announced, “Children, we have to rush back before the sun sets and Aten our God descends into the nether-world, to the intestines of Nut, the queen of heaven and earth, from which he will rise again in the morning. The captain of our barque appeared and asked us to follow him to our chariot in a conversational tone as if carrying on a discourse he started before our noon meal. We mounted the chariot and drove north on the Royal Avenue to the North Palace opposite which our barque was anchored in the small port on the Eastern banks of the Nile. We boarded our barque and headed south to No-Amon, full of our impressions of Akhet-Aten, the Horizon of Aten, the New Capital of my father’s revolutionary religion, which is going to be our future abode. We started our voyage upstream towards No-Amon in the south. The sun, the disk of Aten our Lord, slanted towards the West. On our left, the New Capital of my father, the King Akhenaten, is glowing. We had a panoramic view of Akhet-Aten, the Horizon of Aten. All its buildings and monuments were sparkling in its novelty. Lapis lazuli, faience, emeralds, rubies, gold, silver, bronze, copper, and glazed tiles were refracting the mellow old gold and ochre rays of the afternoon sun. However, the surroundings of the new capital were a barren desert: dunes, pebbles, torrent beds of wadis that were dry and parched. On our right, the Western banks of the Nile were flourishing oases of palm trees heavy with dates, and olive orchards with green-silver leaves and oval dark green olives bursting with oil. The vineyards with high bushes had black grapes to be trodden upon, pressed in stone pools, and fermented into red wine. The vineyards with low bushes had huge bunches of green elongated grapes to be pressed and distilled into white delicate wines to accompany gourmet fish dishes. The West bank does not accept Aten but worships Osiris, the God of the Nile, Horus of Life, the son of Osiris, who infuses life in man and beast and ripens the grapes, dates and olives. RaHorakhty ("Ra, who is Horus of the Two Horizons"), the sun god, makes the sun rise and set. The peasants of the West bank of the Nile do not want Aten. Neither do they want Akhenaten, my father, to be their king and god. Ozarzip seemed to have regained his nervous energy and addressed us. “I think, my children, that as a sequel to our very informative excursion to the new capital of our King and Master,” he opened with a resonant

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didactic tone, “let me summarize for you the main tenets of his religious doctrines. Since my foreboding is that both of you are destined for greatness, you may be the conveyors of these doctrines to new frontiers and farther domains, so let us be quite thorough and precise.” The Viceroy pointed his two index fingers at us. This was his way of requesting special attention. “First of all,” he enumerated informatively, “the religious revolution of our master was directed against the corrupt, hedonistic and greedy clergy of Amon who exploited the people’s quest for the eternity of an afterlife to enrich themselves and amass power beyond the force, might and fortune of any Pharaoh. This is why he abrogated the Osirian cult of the dead and built his new capital on the arid desert terrain of the Eastern bank of the Nile that enhances asceticism and not on the opulent and affluent West bank. The monochromatic monotony of the desert is also more conducive to the abstract monotheism of our Master’s revolution than polytheistic manifestations of the luxurious abundance of nature along the Nile valley. Our Lord, the King, the Aten bless his soul,” Ozarzip raised his hands in pious adulation, “is the incarnation of Aten in history. He is the Son of God whose image is reflected in each human being. Hence, each man and woman has been created in the shining image of the Aten. The vital energy of the Aten infuses life in all creatures and plants. Therefore, they too are imbued with the viability of the Aten equally and without discrimination, endowed uniformly by his palm-ended rays on all creation. The Pharaoh is the executor of the will, quests and intentions of the Aten of which he is the sole interpreter.” “Our Master is both father and mother of mankind. Hence, he is depicted by sculptures and paintings as a hermaphrodite contrary to his actual appearance as we all know him. The moral mandates of our gracious king are enlightening, refreshing and therapeutic. His main directive was to discard the sorrows of the past, to shun the illusions of the future, but to embrace the present in the pleasures of the moment, not the carnal desires of the flesh but the delight of the spirit as ordained by our Ka, the spark of the Aten ingrained in us.” “We should also shun the darkness of death and the Osirian twilight of the kingdom of the West where the dead are supposed to exist in the limbo of suspended animation. The Aten brings to us the joy of light, life and creativity which is the purpose of man’s life and which the Aten enjoys vicariously through the sparks of divinity ingrained in every human being.” “Our Master banned all magicians who were so popular in the courts of other Pharaohs. The Egyptians who were staunch believers in causality

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searched for a way to force the hands of the various gods who were responsible for the various functions of nature by the wondrous tricks of the sorcerers and wizards. Not so, the creed of our Master who proclaimed an abstract monotheism which avoids causality and adopts the revelation from the all-embracing one God who through his son and prophet, the King, guides all the creatures of the world.” “Our Master is a pacifist who hates war and bloodshed and believes that all conflicts can be solved by compromises and mediations through the wisdom of our God who beams his shining rays of goodwill on all humans and creatures alike. Our Master is the first individual human being who is aware of his inner uniqueness and in the creation of each individual in the sacred image of a unique, abstract and eternal God. Our God, the Aten, was not created. He was there from the beginning of time and will exist forever and ever.” The Viceroy’s voice became somewhat hoarse and he asked the captain of the barque for a decanter of white wine and a glass. When the decanter of wine was brought to him on a brass tray with glasses, he grabbed the decanter and drank directly from it, holding it with both hands which shook visibly. I pitied Ozarzip who obviously could not function without a continuous flow of drink that he poured continuously inside his body. He waited for the drink to take effect on him. Meanwhile, we looked at the changing scenery reddened by the setting sun. We noticed from afar the No-Amon temples and monuments painted by the fiery red sun’s rays. The air stood still and there was no wind to fill the sails of the barque and move it upstream. Hence, the rowing slaves chained to the oars had to exert themselves to the extremity of their energies to push the barque against the strong downstream northward current of the Nile. The slaves were a heterogeneous lot, black Nubians, blond Greeks with blue eyes, red-headed Etruscans, and slanted-eyed Lycians. The slave driver was a large brown brutish Egyptian from the Upper Kingdom. He had a loin cloth covering his pelvis. He was naked from the waist up. On his head he had a coarse camel-hair wig and in his hand he cracked a whip made from the dried long penis of a camel made supple by soaking in olive oil. The crack of the whip was marking the pace for the rowing slaves. It also landed with a slash on the naked body of a rowing slave who the slave driver thought did not exert himself enough. When the sun sank down into the West, the captain ordered the attending slaves to light torches, the burning of which gave off a vile smell. Ozarzip finished his decanter of white wine and was again full of spirited energy. “In a while, my children, we shall have our evening meal but before this, let us round up the odds and ends of our Master’s religious

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doctrines. We shall soon have to move to our new capital and as much as I would like to spend more time with you, I am afraid that I shall be very busy to help our Master, the King, to settle in his new capital. Hence, let us try and cover as much new ground as we can tonight.” The Viceroy’s face looked eerie and quite demonic in the dancing light and shadows of the torches. He resumed his lecture on the religious ideas and dogmas of my father, the King. Suddenly Ozarzip raised his hands to heaven and leaned his head on the back of his throne-like chair and started to sing. His voice was thin but then it assumed a deeper timbre. When his voice undulated, his longing pain, unrequited love, frustrations, joys, disasters and triumphs burst forth in an avalanche of prayer, protests, adulation, supplication and thanks. He sang to the Aten: “Thy dawning is beautiful in the Horizon of Heaven, O Living Aten. Thy rays encompass the lands. Thou bindeth them by thy love. When thou setteth in the Western horizon, the world is in darkness. Bright is the earth when thou riseth in the Eastern horizon. The darkness is banished. All animals and plants live when thou shineth upon them. O Lord, how manifold are thy works. O thou sole God, whose powers no other possesseth. Thou art in the heart of the King. There is no other that knoweth thee save thy son Akhenaten.” He stopped singing and asked for a decanter of the stronger red wine. He again drank it directly from the decanter and wiped his mouth with a soft linen cloth handed to him by a slave. “You see, my children,” he started to interpret the Hymn to Aten, which he sang. “This is the essence of our creed: We live by the rays of our Lord Aten. When he sets, we are also eclipsed. Then we are resurrected in the morning when he rises again. Our Lord created everything from naught. He is the fount of life, beauty, and love meted out on all creatures, plants and objects in equality. He is the source of bodies and souls, words, time and space, good, evil, and justice. Akhenaten, the King, is God’s emissary in creation and all grace flows from God through the King to all life forms and objects in creation. This link between God, the King, and the world enables Man to instill in himself the ability to create art and artifacts and thus he becomes the source of the beauty of the Aten in the world. Every monument, statute, picture and poem is the embodiment of the genius of the Aten, ingrained in the works of art by Man.” “Hence, through art, the divine spirit of the Aten endows beauty and meaning to the life of humans. Also the Ma’at, Truth, Justice and Righteousness, can be learned, adopted, and practiced by Man from the revelations from God through the mediation of our Master, the King. This is it, my children.”

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Ozarzip sounded exhausted. “We had a long day and this afternoon and tonight I tried to summarize for you the teaching of our Lord, the King, and his revolutionary religion of the Aten. You are fit now to convey this earth-shaking revelation to your people and I am sure you will do it and enlighten the world with the foundations of this new creed. You are well equipped to do so and after you diffuse the articles of our faith to the world, it will change completely and never be the same again.” Ozarzip became dramatic. “You are well equipped now to save Man from idolatry and from the evil in himself and embrace the life, truth and justice of the Aten.” The Viceroy embraced us both and announced, “We earned our evening meal. Let us have it on our barque and then we shall have a good night’s sleep in our homes at No-Amon, the lights of which I can already discern on the horizon.” Ozarzip cooked an enormous lobster in boiling white wine. He then cracked it with a nutcracker and devoured it voraciously while downing it with white wine. Out of empathy with Aaron, I ate exactly what he ate, a soup of corn kernels cooked in goat milk. When we arrived at the port of No-Amon, the Viceroy was already drunk. His eyes were red and his speech blurred. After we disembarked, Aaron and I helped the Viceroy to reach his quarters since his gait was unsteady. We each held him by an arm. While we walked, Aaron sang a Habiru 5-7-5 haiku in a pleasant baritone with many undulations: “She-ma Yis-ra-el, A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu, A-do-nai E-had” (Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One). When we brought Ozarzip to his quarters, a slave boy undressed him and clothed him with a night tunic. The moment he lay on his bed, he started snoring bibulously. When we went to my quarters, I offered to walk Aaron to the Habiru tents but he declined and said “You are tired, Prince.” “Not Prince. Please call me brother,” I implored. “You should go to bed, brother,” Aaron complied with my wish. “You look exhausted. Have a good night’s sleep and you will wake up tomorrow as good as new. I shall run to our tents and I shall be there in a minute.” Indeed Aaron ran like a young stag, swift, supple and sure of himself. In a few seconds he disappeared in the darkness of the night. In the eighth year of my father the King’s reign, the royal family, the chief bureaucracy of the government, the army, the royal guards and the police constabulary as well as the Aten clergy, the scribes, and the Habiru aids and servants of the royal retinue moved to the new capital of AkhetAten. The center of the new city was “the Island distinguished in Jubilees.” It was denoted as an island because on its west ran the Nile and

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it was circled on the south, east and north by a torrent bed that was almost dry when the Nile was low but gushing and stormy when the Nile was high. Therefore, it constituted a natural protection of the central site and abode of the Pharaoh’s government. The “Island” included the King’s records, office, the scribes’ quarters, and “The House of Life” that housed the official texts that were easily preserved in the dry desert climate. Further to the east were the army and police barracks. To the west was the Royal chapel and farther to the west connected by a bridge over the Royal Avenue was the main Royal Palace where the nuclear royal family as well as myself had our rather lavish quarters. The Habiru tents where Aaron, his family, and the whole tribe lived were located south of the torrent bed and connected to the “Island of Jubilees” by a mobile bridge of bamboo and papyrus woven with camel wool cables. After we settled in Akhet-Aten, I started to experience changes in my body. I grew quickly to the stature of a man, my voice changed, my beard grew wildly and I let it grow in the tradition of the Habiru. I had erotic dreams and nocturnal emissions of semen. I acquired considerable physical prowess as well as a virile demeanor. Still, my true love, my only love, my eternal love was Marit-Aten, the Queen. Her image was everywhere in Akhet-Aten. A bas-relief in the ‘House of Rejoicing’ of the Great Temple depicted my father, the King, with his heavy facial features, huge eyes, straight nose, sensuous lips, rectangular artificial beard, and the Ankh and flail of his office. On his head he had a double crown, the first as the Aten ruler of the Universe and the second as Shu, the God of the Luminous Void from which the world was created. The bas-relief of my beloved was smaller and her facial features delicate. She had a small artificial beard and the heavy crown of Tefnut, the daughter of the sun god Atum-Ra. Her bare delicate breasts had erect nipples and her round exposed belly had a deep navel. Her pelvis was covered by a loin cloth and in her right hand she had a flail, a symbol of her office. The images of Shu and Tefnut, the two chief gods of the On theology were co-opted by my father and his queen on the advice of Ozarzip, arguing that the vestiges of the old creed should be adopted by the symbols of the new religion to facilitate conversion of the followers of the old creed to believe in the new one. The Eastern wall of the King’s abode was made of transparent quartzite glass to absorb the first rays of the rising Aten disk. The King welcomed the resurrected God with raised hands and my beloved held the palms at the end of the sun rays in her two delicate hands. In the Royal Chapel, the eastern wall had a bas-relief of the King under the royal

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baldachin or ciborium with my beloved, the Queen, stroking the King’s shoulder with one hand and with the other presenting a good wish symbol for an everlasting rule. In all of her statues, paintings, and bas-relief images, I could discern the pain, sorrow and dread emanating from her shining eyes of the cruel rape of her innocent pubescence by the King. The sexual violence perpetrated by my father, the King, on his daughter, my beloved Princess Marit-Aten, and on me, his son, had irreversible traumatic consequences. One thing, though, I know. I feel it in my heart, my gut, my brain. I shall not let myself be prey to my passions, my whims, my loving, and the coveting of my eyes. I shall let my spirit guide me, the vital force in me that is part of God. The craving of my senses, the quest of the juices in my groin, the pounding of my heart when I see the naked breasts and buttocks of women shall all be directed to the love of God and obeying his commandments. Even my love for the Queen, my beloved Marit-Aten, shall be transformed to partaking in her suffering and thus make me ready to help all sufferers ease their pain. The giving of myself to the needy, the dejected, and the wretched of the earth will be my vocation, duty and religion. The destitute others come first. I come last. God’s soul through Man moves the world. The flesh, the senses, the lust can be harnessed, contained and impelled by the psyche of God through Man. Hence, ultimately, my eternal love for Marit-Aten will generate a torrent of grace, piety, compassion, leniency, charity, and forgiveness that will enable me to change the world and its creatures. I was dismayed by my hubris, so I retreated to my quarters in the King’s abode, lay on my bed trembling with pent up emotion, and sank into a troubled slumber. In the morning, I woke up invigorated and strengthened by my vow of chastity as an anchor to my total devotion to the worship of God. I decided to share my decision with Aaron. I drank my morning mug of grape juice, dressed, and rushed out of the King’s House and walked south on the Royal Avenue past the Mansion of the Aten and the storehouse of the service of the Aten. I reached the Palace garbage heap from which the mobile bridge stretched over the torrent bed to the encampment of the Habiru. Aaron had, by now, a tent of his own since, according to the laws of the Habiru, every male who reached puberty was married to a girl who had not yet experienced her first intercourse. She was chosen by his parents according to her family’s prestige, wealth and stature in the tribe. The bridegroom never saw the bride before marriage. After marriage, she wore a black gown and head cloth covering her whole face except for a narrow slit in front of her eyes.

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Walking over the mobile bridge proved to be a tricky business. The bamboo steps were spaced quite far apart and the danger of falling into the gushing water down below in the torrent bed was quite real. Also the desert khamsin dry wind was lively and the whole bridge rocked to and fro, so walking on the bridge was quite risky. When I reached the other side of the bridge, I saw the tent encampment of the Habiru, which looked more expansive and spacious than at No-Amon. I went to the largest tent of the encampment with the intention of locating the tent of Aaron and indeed it was the right place. It was the tent of Amram, the Priest of the Habiru and the father of Aaron. Miriam, Aaron’s sister, welcomed me. She was quite embarrassed and announced confusedly that her father is in the slaughter house and her mother is in the service of the king in the royal house. But if I wanted to meet Aaron I could go there now. He is there with his new wife. She pointed to a small tent adjacent to theirs. “Right here,” she pointed to it and disappeared quickly into her father’s tent before I had time to thank her. I entered Aaron’s tent and a young woman, visibly pregnant, covered from head to foot by a long black gown welcomed me. She said that her name was Elisheva and that she was Aaron’s wife. She told me that Aaron is a great admirer of me and that he loves me as a brother. “Please sit down, Prince,” she invited me. “Aaron went to the Temple to pray the morning prayers and he will soon come back. I shall prepare a strong spice brew for you.” She disappeared behind a partition in the tent to prepare the spice brew. Meanwhile, Aaron came back from prayers. We embraced warmly and I congratulated him on his marriage and the expectation of a baby. Aaron thanked me profusely and intimated that he is very lucky since Elisheva is a good woman, a wonderful wife, and she is sure to be an excellent mother. “I am very happy for you, my brother,” I replied and embraced Aaron again. Elisheva brought in a piping hot kettle of spice brew emitting odors of cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. She poured the brew into small white ceramic glasses placed on a brass tray with copper inlays proclaiming in the Habiru language: “God is our shield.” Elisheva placed the brew glasses on a small table in front of which we were seated and both of us blew on the hot brew to cool it slightly before we sipped small sips of it. “My brother,” I opened, “I came to confess to you and I want you to be the first to know that I vowed to celibacy, chastity, and poverty and to devote all my passion, might, and energies to the absolute belief in one God and to his worship and adoration.” “This is excellent news, Prince.”

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“Not Prince,” I interceded, “Brother, brother.” “Sure, of course, my brother” Aaron agreed. “I am thrilled by your spiritual transformation. Let me assure you that the love of God is the most stable anchor of Man’s life and the noble fount of meanings and values. Passions and the pursuit of carnal adventures as well as the quest for possessions and wealth are as erratic as dunes of sand and volatile as the foam of sea waves.” “I thanked Aaron heartily for his staunch and unequivocal support of my vows of celibacy, chastity, and poverty and embraced him fervently. I told him that I would have liked to spend more time with him but unfortunately I had to rush back to the Royal House since the Viceroy has intimated to me that he has a message for me from my father, the King.

CHAPTER EIGHT MURDER AND FLIGHT

Aaron said that he will accompany me back to the Royal House, to which I gladly agreed. I took my leave from Elisheva, Aaron’s wife, and then both of us walked to the mobile bridge on our way to the Royal House. Midway on the bridge I noticed trouble approaching on the other side from the Royal Palace. That was Neferhotep, the youngest son of Ay, the chief advisor to the Pharaoh. Neferhotep was a drunk, a lecher and a violent person. He approached the western edge of the bridge with the wobbly gait of a drunkard surrounded by a coterie of naked slave girls. When he reached the edge of the bridge he started to rock it to and fro so that Aaron and I had to hold the ropes of the bridge in order to not fall into the stormy torrent waters below. We edged our way slowly step by small step on the bridge and made very slow progress since the bully rocked the cable of the mobile bridge with all his might and the unstable linkage over the gushing waters tilted to a rather dangerous angle. After a strenuous struggle we finally arrived at the western side of the bridge. “Look who is here,” Neferhotep accosted us with drunken derision. “A goat fucking Habiru boy and a royal prince who shames his ancestry by associating with the goat fucker. He probably fucks him from behind while the Habiru boy screws the goat. I know that your god is a big hegoat with long horns and a large prick. Why don’t you dance for us the jig you do when worshiping your goat-god?” He then grabbed Aaron’s side curls and pulled them around in the direction he expected Aaron to dance. My blood rushed to my head. My heart pounded wildly. I choked with rage and jumped on the bully with the whole weight of my body. Neferhotep lost his precarious balance, fell on the ground, and bumped his head on the hard cement in which the metal poles of the bridge were inserted. I sat on his chest and banged his head again and again on the hard cement. I heard Aaron whisper to me “No, Prince, No! Don’t do it, my brother, it is not worth the consequences.” But I could not stop. I kept pounding his head against the cement until his skull broke and the blood burst out from his eyes, mouth and nostrils. He stopped moving. The slave girls ran in panic towards the Royal Palace

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and Aaron looked at me in dismay. I told Aaron “Run back home and wait for me. I might be away but I shall come back. Remember we are brothers in the spirit of God.” I embraced Aaron strongly and urged him, “Do not cry, my brother. Great things are destined for us. Now, run home, brother. I do not want you to be involved in this messy business.” He disentangled himself from my embrace and hurried back home without looking back at me. I sized up the situation and decided that first of all I had to get rid of the body. That was easy. I just pushed it into the outflowing torrent and it immediately disappeared downstream. As for the blood on the hard cement, that would dry and evaporate in minutes in the warm dry weather, but for good measure I covered the blood stain with sand and pebbles. After I had disposed of Neferhotep’s body and blood stains, I rushed to the Royal Palace to see Ozarzip. After I recounted my story to the Viceroy, he became pale and seemed to panic. “You could not have chosen a worse victim. His father is the most powerful person in both kingdoms of Egypt. His might exceeds that of the Pharaoh. The King is hated by the clergy of the demoted pagan gods but not Ay, who secretly converses with them and gives them clandestine favors with the assertion that the reign of Akhenaten will soon pass and the pagans will return to power. Ay expects them to remember the concessions he gave them as the chief royal council.” “We must act quickly, Prince,” Ozarzip urged. “I have to write a letter. You stay here,” he ordered, “and when I come back I shall tell you what to do.” He then disappeared into the back rooms of his vice-regal quarters. A slave girl appeared and brought me some fresh dates and figs, grape juice, and a decanter of white wine. Contrary to my habit, I poured myself a glass of white wine to assuage my nervousness. After a while, which seemed to me an eternity, the Viceroy came back. He seemed tense and very concerned. “Your situation, Prince, is severe,” he declared, “and we have to act without delay. Ay is going to demand your head. The most you can hope for is life imprisonment with hard labor, which amounts to a prolonged death sentence. So, my dear Prince, run for your life. Please listen carefully. The success of your escape to freedom depends on your meticulous attention to detail. As the saying goes, ‘God lies in the particulars’.” “First,” Ozarzip enumerated his directives on the fingers of his right hand, “you board the vice regal barque as soon as possible and sail to the eastern side of the Nile Delta to Goshen, the largest settlement of the Habiru in Egypt. I am giving you a letter addressed to my distant cousin Zichri, the son of Itzhar the Levite. Second, Zichri is going to provide you

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a caravan to cross the Shur desert to Kadesh Barnea in the northeast edge of the Sinai Desert. Third, I have another letter to Jethro the Kenite, the Priest of Midian, who was at one time grazing the flocks of my father Jacob. He will provide you with shelter until it would be safe for you to return to Egypt. Fourth, and most important, I have here written on parchment the Ten Commandments of God to the Habiru. When the time comes, and it will come, you shall engrave these commandments on stone and endow them to our people on the mountain of God. Now you have to swear to me solemnly, so put your hand on my loins, and swear that when you come back to Egypt and lead our people back to Canaan, the Promised Land, you take my coffin with you. I do not wish to lie forever in the gentile soil of Egypt. Now you go quickly. Every moment counts.” He handed me a leather pouch full of gold coins. He embraced me with great emotion and ordered, “Hurry now. The captain of the vice royal barque waits for you outside the Royal Palace.” He pushed me gently to make haste and waved to me when I went out of the palace. The captain of the vice regal barque waited for me anxiously and quite nervously since he was aware of the urgency of my trip. We boarded the barque and the captain asked me to hide myself in the cubicle at the center of the barque since the river guards are liable to look for me. He apologized for the inconvenience and then ordered the crew to set the barque sailing downstream to the north. The small cubicle of the barque served as a storage area for food and utensils so it was rather cramped, but I accepted the discomfort as a necessary requirement for my safety. My view through a narrow aperture near the top of the cubicle was quite limited. I slumped into rather pessimistic meandering thoughts. First and foremost was my concern about the future of my father’s religious revolution. My father’s religious conversion was total. The polytheistic gods were demoted. Their Temples were desecrated and the Osirian creed of the afterlife in the “West,” which was one of the basic foundations of traditional Egyptian religious belief, was superseded. The dispossessed clergy did not change their convictions but just went underground and bided their time to come back to power. Indeed, the Amon, Osirian and Horian clergy were corrupt and power crazed, but the viability of Egypt depended on the Nile’s flood cycles, which were dominated and controlled by Osiris, the Nile God. The life-giving cycles of the sun and other stars and planets were directed by Ra-Horakhty, the God of Celestial Bodies. The Egyptians did not understand monotheism and the reigning Egyptian theologies advocating sequential movement and causality shunned monotheism and did not fathom an abstract God.

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Akhenaten deserted the flourishing cities of On, Moph and No-Amon, whose green moist life was endowed by the waters of the Nile, and erected his new capital in the desert, a dry parched area ruled over by the god Seth who, for the polytheistic Egyptians, represented death. Since the Egyptians resented Akhenaten and hated his religion, my father brought the tribes of the Habiru to man the administration and to levy taxes. This made the Habiru sheep and goat shepherds despised and rejected by the majority of Egyptians and the focus of their hostility. Above all, Akhenaten neglected the army and the administration of government. He did not wage war. All his might was funneled into his religious revolution. I felt that this neglect of the administration of state and the army would cost my father his reign and even his life. With these elegiac thoughts, I watched the sun setting from the aperture at the top of the cubicle, which now felt like solitary confinement in a prison. The evening meal of white cheese, fresh vegetables, and corn soup was brought to me by a slave girl who seemed to be the cook. I asked her where we were and she answered that we passed Moph and were approaching On in the Nile Delta. Hence we sailed rather quickly and we shall soon be in Goshen. Ozarzip planned rather well. We shall enter Goshen at night. He had given the captain a woman’s Habiru gown which will cover me from head to toe and nobody would even notice me when he whisks me off to the house of Zichri, the son of Izhar the Levite. When we reached On, the captain avoided the easternmost branch of the Nile that passed through the city and chose the western wider and more robust branch of the Nile in the Delta. It passed through agricultural land and the chances of the river guards detecting me, his hot cargo on the barque, were meager. This branch of the Nile went directly to Goshen. I could see that the captain was anxious to get rid of me as soon as possible. He knew that if caught, he would certainly be punished. I, as a prince, would get life imprisonment, but he would most likely be beheaded. When we passed through Goshen, I discovered another reason why the Egyptians despised the Habiru. Goshen was the most fertile region in the whole of Egypt and the Habiru tribes possessed it. The land-starved Egyptians resented this bitterly and took it as another proof that the foreign Habiru were being treated better than the native Egyptians. When we reached the city of Goshen, the captain took out from his pocket a map, which Ozarzip had drawn. It indicated the approximate location of the abode of Zichri, the son of Izhar the Levite. It was night already and we landed in a small port outside the city of Goshen where the tents of the Levite tribe were located. When we anchored the barque, the captain handed me the woman’s gown and urged me to cover myself with

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it. The urgency in his voice revealed how much he wished to get rid of me as soon as possible. I put on the gown which covered me from head to toe. The captain and I disembarked. I could hardly see my way so the captain held my hand and led me out of the barque. He paused for a moment near the torches lighting the small port in order to read the map which directed him to the tent of Zichri. Then we started walking with the captain still leading me by holding my hand. His rapid, confident pace assured me that he knew where to find Zichri’s tent. After a while the Captain stopped in front of a tent and asked permission to enter, which was granted. Apparently Ozarzip’s map was accurate and the Captain’s sense of direction was keen, sharp and alert since he found Zichri’s abode rather quickly and without trouble. The Captain whisked me in and unceremoniously took off the woman’s gown that covered me and announced, “I have the pleasure and honor to present to you his royal highness, Prince Me-Shu, the son of his divine Majesty, the Pharaoh Akhenaten. The Prince is delivered to you by the orders of his royal highness, the Viceroy Ozarzip. A letter of introduction will be given to you by the Prince. I am sorry but I must go now.” The Captain threw down my two bags near my bare feet, bowed low to the host, and hurried out of the tent as if running away from the plague. I stood there in my underpants shivering from the chill of the night and fatigued by the cramped trip in the cubicle of the barque. Zichri was standing in front of me. He was an impressive figure resembling very much Amram, Aaron’s father. Apparently the Levite genetic imprint was quite dominant. Zichri was clad with the garb of a high ranking Levite Priest. His gown was blue. Above it a goldembroidered apron covered his pelvis. On his chest, he had a square plate studded with gems that was called in Habiru Hoshen Mishpat (Breastplate of Justice) and Urim veTumim which served as an oracle for the worshippers. He had an unkempt grey-white beard with long side curls. His large black eyes were shadowed by bushy eyebrows. On his head he had a white turban with a large diamond fastened to it by blue ribbons. I fished from one of my bags the letter of introduction to him dictated by Ozarzip. It was on a rolled parchment closed by a red ribbon and sealed with wax and the seal of the Viceroy. While Zichri was reading the letter, a heavy matron came into the guest room of the tent carrying a yellow camel wool gown. She covered me with it and reprimanded Zichri, who was apparently her husband, for letting me stand almost naked, shivering from the cold. I put on the camel wool gown, which felt warm and soft, and after a while I stopped shivering.

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When Zichri finished reading Ozarzip’s letter, he invited me to sit down on a cushion by a low Lebanese cedar table. In order to do so, I had to fold my legs below my pelvis, which I found painful but the Habiru were used to it from childhood. Zichri sat quickly on his cushion near the table simultaneously folding his legs while lowering himself. When he landed on his cushion, he sat comfortably and relaxed while I crouched on my cushion tense and uneasy. Zichri’s wife came into the guest room and brought in a decanter of bubbling hot spice brew surrounded by glazed small white cups on a brass tray. She placed the tray on the table and went back to the service rooms behind a partition in the guest room. Zichri poured some spice brew in the small glasses for me and himself. The odor of cardamom, the smell of cinnamon, and the whiff of nutmeg streamed into my nostrils and pepped up my brain. The taste of the brew was exquisite. It warmed up my intestines and went out of the pores of my skin as musk scented sweat. I felt warm and cozy. “It is a great honor, Prince, to receive you in our home,” Zichri opened. “My kin and soul brother Ozarzip praises you highly and predicts a great future for you. I shall certainly help you to reach the oasis of Kadesh Barnea and find refuge with our ally Jethro the Kenite. I know the circumstances of your flight, not only from Ozarzip’s letter but also from our own intelligence sources, which are swift and accurate. I therefore advise, Prince, to proceed with the utmost caution. By now search squads both formal and clandestine are looking for you all over the country and the spies of Ay, the father of the deceased, are searching for you everywhere. Also a prize of 10,000 gold coins has been set on your head to be paid to whoever delivers you into Ay’s hands dead or alive. I advise, Prince, to travel by night. Journeying by day even through the desert would be too dangerous. I have already arranged a caravan led by experienced Habiru scouts who often lead caravans of goods to and from the oasis of Kadesh Barnea, the abode of our ally Jethro the Kenite, a priest of God. They take wheat, barley and corn that we grow in Goshen and bring back dried dates, figs and raisins processed in the oasis and spices which arrive from India. They will not take the busy sea road along the land of the Philistines. It is very risky. They will proceed through the desert of Shur, which is dry, barren and, except for passing caravans, hardly inhabited. You will ride on a donkey completely covered by a woman’s gown. Habiru women ride donkeys because they are almost continuously pregnant, fulfilling God’s command to multiply and replenish the earth. Riding a camel with its heavy rocking might injure the

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fetus. You too, Prince, being unused to camel riding will become sick and nauseated on camel back. Finally, touching a married Habiru woman, which the all covering gown signifies, is a capital offense punishable by death by stoning. So, Prince,” Zichri summed up, “you are quite safe with our caravan. I suggest, Prince, that you have a good night’s sleep before you embark on your quite strenuous trip to Kadesh Barnea. I would, however, like to encroach on your kindness and try your patience and ask you to relate to me some of the news and occurrences happening in the New Capital of Akhet-Aten, which do not reach us here in the provinces.” “Gladly, your Excellency Priest Zichri,” I answered, “but I am afraid that I am a harbinger of disquieting foreboding. My father, the King, is totally immersed in his religious revolution and neglects the affairs of state, the administration of the vast Egyptian bureaucracy, and the maintenance, efficiency and preparedness of the country’s immense army that the previous Pharaohs build up to sustain the Egyptian Empire. My father mismanages the Empire, lets it deteriorate, and allows it to disintegrate. This power vacuum, your Excellency, allows scoundrels, profiteers, and double-crossers like councilor Ay to gain control over the bureaucracy. Councilor Ay flatters my father but at the same time signals the deposed priests of Amon that he is on their side and when the time comes, he will join forces with them to depose the current Pharaoh, my father.” “How right you are, Prince,” replied Zichri. “We feel everywhere the laxity of the central government and the disintegration of the control of Pharaoh’s administration. Every local kingpin usurps the power of the Pharaoh in his region and exercises complete sovereignty over the people with arbitrariness and cruelty. I am also apprehensive,” added Zichri sadly, “that the Habiru people are going to suffer because the Pharaoh neglects the supervision of the government and leaves the administration of power and justice to the local potentates.” “We Habiru have aligned ourselves completely with the Pharaoh and have declared our unconditional allegiance to his religious revolution. The majority of Egyptians resent the rejection by the Pharaoh of their traditional Gods: Ra-Horakhty, the God of the Sun and of Life, Osiris, the God of the Nile and of the all-important afterlife, the cow mother Nut, Goddess of both Heaven and Earth, and so many other gods that they trust, believe in and pray to. They do not understand the abstract unitary God of the Pharaoh and they blame us, the Habiru, for adhering to Pharaoh’s religious revolution. They do not understand that we believed in one abstract God long before Akhenaten’s religious revolution.”

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“Also, the Pharaoh entrusted us with the levying of taxes from the populace and the Egyptians hate us for taking away their money. If the Pharaoh cannot or would not protect us, I have bad premonitions for our future. I am sorry for being pessimistic, but I prefer to share with you, my Prince, my candid foreboding. Now, let us eat something before retiring to bed.” Zichri called his wife who brought in two bowls of hot corn soup cooked in goat milk and cheese. Being hungry, I gulped the hot brew avidly. After the meal, we prayed the evening prayers in Habiru which I learned from Aaron. After the prayer, Zichri embraced me warmly and led me to a side compartment in the tent in which a soft mattress of camel wool was prepared for me. I was quite exhausted and when I lay on the bed, I sank immediately into a heavy sleep In the morning I was woken up by Zichri’s wife who came in and asked with a voice the sweetness of which intended to please: “Good morning, Prince. I hope you slept well since tonight you have a long and tedious journey ahead. What is your pleasure, Prince, for your morning meal? “I would like to have some of your corn soup which you prepare so well and tasty with milk and goat cheese,” I complimented her, “and, of course, your exquisite spice brew to invigorate and energize me.” After the meal which was indeed tasty and refreshing, Zichri came into my tent and asked whether he can join me in the morning prayers since he did not wish to risk my accompanying him to the prayer tent because it would be too dangerous for me to be seen in public in daylight. Ay has his spies all over Goshen and a strange new person could draw their attention. I was quite fluent in the Habiru language and prayers and I enjoyed listening to the undulations of Zichri’s liturgy. He sang his prayers in a deep low voice. After the prayers, Zichri remained to keep me company. He obviously did not wish me to be incarcerated in the small tent compartment all by myself. I thanked him for his gentleness and concern for me, but I assured him that I am accustomed to staying by myself and if he is busy he could leave me and pursue his business because I never feel lonely if I am by myself. Zichri answered that he was very happy to spend some quality time with me since he is worried about the future of the Habiru in Egypt and I was the right person to discuss this problem with. “It is not by chance that Ay has his thickest spy net in Goshen, Prince. He knows that we are loyal to your father, the King, and by and large we are the only ethnic group that staunchly supports him. The majority of Egyptians do not understand the Pharaoh. They reject monotheism and despise us, the foreign nomads, who don’t belong in Egypt. And we do

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not, Prince. We are desert people and monotheism is a desert religion. Ay knows that monotheism in Egypt, the perennial land of Amon, Osiris, RaHorakhty, and Nut, is a passing episode and so, unfortunately, is your father, the King. Being a double-crosser, Ay has established strong clandestine connections with the deposed Amon clergy. When the time of reckoning comes, his net of spies will denounce us Habiru as the collaborators of the tyrant Pharaoh. What is your view of this dire foreboding, Prince, and what is your counsel to us as to the right course of action?” “Unfortunately, your Excellency Priest Zichri, I not only agree with you but in my own view, the situation is more serious than you have described. My father neglected the affairs of state, did not concern himself with the administration and control of the country’s bureaucracy, and did not support the army nor replenish its arsenal. Therefore, he is losing control of the country and its government. His monomaniacal immersion in his religious revolution alienated the people from him and, except for the Habiru, he does not have any allies. He is surrounded by lackeys and hypocrites who will desert him with the first cracks in his royal authority.” “As for the Habiru, I count myself now as one of you. We should prepare ourselves sooner or later, rather sooner than later, to leave this country and go to the desert. How right you are, your Excellency, that we belong to the desert. We should spend a considerable time in the desert to be seared and purified by its scorching sun. To wean ourselves from the pleasures of the flesh and our dependence on property, we should go back to the grass roots of the nomadic life where chattels are a burden and the monotony and monochromatism of the desert will cleanse our souls from coveting and enable us to embrace our God with the purity of our soul and the clarity of our vision. We shall decontaminate our hearing, purge our inner selves, and become worthy of the sanctity of God.” “I am very impressed with you, Prince,” Zichri expressed his admiration. “You are a young man of vision and I can see now why my friend and ally Viceroy Ozarzip has singled you out for leadership and greatness.” “I am not sure about that, but whatever destiny is in store for me, I shall devote all my might and energies to the welfare and fulfillment of my people, the Habiru.” “May God help you to implement these worthy goals. Now let me show you, Prince,” the priest unrolled a parchment on which a map was drawn, “the route that you will take tomorrow to the desert oasis of Kadesh Barnea.”

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I crouched near the Priest who pointed out with his finger on the map. “This is the desert route of Shur,” Zichri pointed out a black line crossing from west to east in the northern part of the triangular map of Sinai. “The caravan leader has my instructions not to wander off the desert Shur road and by no means to approach the Philistine sea road which is busy and where you are in danger of being detected. You should stick to the Shur road even if covered by sands. The caravan leader is an accomplished scout and he is trained to detect the route of the road even if covered by desert sand. The sand-covered road will eventually reappear with its square cobblestones.” “The caravan will leave the land of Goshen avoiding densely populated areas. It will enter the Sinai peninsula between the crocodile shaped lake and the big Bitter Lake in the south. The road leads from one desert oases to another where the few water wells in the desert are located. The road is flanked by mountains.” He pointed out the range of mountains to the north and south of the Shur desert road. “On your right you will pass Mount Ya’alek, the highest mountain in the region. Still on your right are the Harim and Burka mountains. On your left to the north are three mountains.” “Most important of all is the sacred Mount Halal. This is a volcano site holy to Jehovah, the Storm God of the Midianites. It is still an active volcano. By the time you reach Mount Halal, the sun will have already risen and you will spend the day in a spacious cave at the foot of the mountain. By evening you will have only a few hours travel before you reach Kadesh Barnea and the encampment of our friend and ally Jethro the priest of God. I suggest, Prince, that you rest until evening comes because you have a strenuous journey ahead of you.” Zichri embraced me and left my narrow tent partition with a low bow. I was quite tired. I lay on the narrow cot in the tent partition and fell asleep immediately. I dreamt about Marit-Aten. She was being deflowered again not by my father but by councilor Ay. He was talking to her and announcing that her violation by him marks the end of the tyrant’s reign. “And now,” Ay declared, “I am taking you to become queen of my harem. You shall be the diamond in my crown.” I woke up with a jolt. I was too disturbed by my dream to go to sleep again so I peered out of the narrow aperture at the top of my tent compartment and saw the afternoon sun slant its rays to become the color of old gold. It lent a golden hue to the expanse of tents, the abode of my host and the tribe of Levi. Further on I saw the round domed buildings of the town of Goshen and the minarets of temples and synagogues topped by shining sun disks refracting the sun’s rays all over the area. I noticed an

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open market at the interstitial border between the Habiru tents and the houses of the town of Goshen. The vendors announced with shrill voices their wares: dry dates from Palmira, ripe figs from On, green and red grapes from Moph, sheep skin bottles filled with white and violet wines from the famous wineries of No-Amon. And spices: cinnamon, nutmeg and coriander from India, saffron and cloves from Babylon, and cumin and pepper from Lebanon. When the sun’s rays became reddish, I noticed the half moon rising on the horizon. That was good because too much light would make us conspicuous and no light at all would make our trip impossible. Hence a half moon was ideal. When the rays of the sun became reddish and the sun disk approached the westernmost channel of the Nile, Zichri came into the tent compartment and announced that the caravan to Kadesh Barnea will soon be ready and that we should start our journey. He handed me a woman’s gown and a parchment letter. “I am sorry, Prince,” Zichri apologized, “but you will have to wear this dress all along your trip. The letter is to our friend and ally Jethro, the priest of Jehovah. I shall come back in a moment to call you after I made the final inspection of the caravan and check that everything is in order. I covered myself with the woman’s garb. I felt awkward in it but I knew that it was necessary for my safety. After a while, Zichri came back and announced that the caravan is ready for its trip to Kadesh Barnea. The priest embraced me and said that he bids me farewell in the tent since the Habiru do not embrace women in public. I thanked him profusely and I assured him that we are bound to meet again in the future. I lifted my two bags and accompanied the priest out of the tent. A caravan of ten camels and a donkey loaded with goods and merchandise waited outside. The leader of the caravan, a husky bearded Habiru armed with a curved sword, was perched on the first camel. The donkey was for me. The priest helped me mount the donkey sideways and sit on the saddle with my two legs on one side, the way modest women ride horses and donkeys chastely. I was aware that riding a donkey for a long trip in this posture would be quite uncomfortable, but again that was necessary for my security. Zichri bowed to me, the leader of the caravan emitted a throaty grunt, and the head camel started trotting, drawing the whole procession after him. When we left the city of Goshen, it was already night and we travelled by the dim light of the half moon. On our way eastward, we crossed the bridge over the canal connecting the crocodile lake and the big Bitter Lake. We hit the Shur desert road and traveled on it for quite a long time.

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The animals trotted monotonously, unheeding the shrill wailing of the jackals and the blood curdling laughter of the hyenas. They started to emit impatient short gasps when they smelled water. It was the oasis of Kafkafa. The leader of the caravan stopped the camel and the animals, except for the donkey, crouched down. The riders of the camels led them to the water. I also dismounted the donkey and the leader led him also to drink. He also filled a skin bottle with water and handed it to me with a gallant bow. I was thirsty and drank the water eagerly. We remounted the animals and continued our travel on the road of Shur towards the east. The terrain became hilly and on our right, as shown to me on the map by priest Zichri, Mount Ya’alek rose to towering heights. Sand and stone terraces prevented the pebbles and sand dunes from sliding down the slopes of the mountain. Farther up green patches of acacia bushes became thicker and thicker until they formed a whole green carpet studded by yellow flowers which covered the summit like a pious skull-cap. On our left, the summits of three mountains formed a low continuous range of elevated craggy heights. The peak of these heights was a cakelike plateau sharpened at the edges by the hot winds and supported by layers of clay that was hardened to flint like dark tan mortar. After a long uncomfortable ride sideways on the back of the donkey, an eerie sight appeared to us farther east: a smoking mountain with a fiery glow emitting from its apex surrounded by frozen waves of limestone that solidified way back when they sprouted as molten lava out of the mountains gaping crater. That was the holy Mount Halal. The eastern horizon became lighter and the brilliant morning star rose spreading a corona of brightness around it. In a couple of hours the morning sun will start spreading its cool light over the cold terrain chilled by the desert night. By then we shall reach the holy Mount Halal in one of whose caves we will spend the day. After sunset we will proceed to our final destination at Kadesh Barnea. The leader of the caravan decided on another stop at the Hassana oasis to replenish the water reserve of the camels and refill the water skins of the humans. We also helped ourselves to some fresh violet skin dates and green juicy figs. After the animals drank water and the water skins were refilled, the camel riders continued to pick up more fruit. The leader, however, urged them to hurry since he was afraid that we would not reach our reposing cave before sunrise. That would be very risky for our mission, the nature of which he did not divulge to his subordinates. After we mounted the animals, the leader of the caravan looked with concern at the eastern horizon, which became brighter and brighter every moment

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and the first rays of light shot like searchlights from behind the crevices at the top of the holy Mount Halal signifying that the presence of the God Aten would soon flood the world. The leader decided to leave the desert road of Shur which circled Mount Halal on the north and proceed along the stream of Egypt that flows from the oasis of Hassana and circles the holy mount in a valley on the south. The leader figured that the way along the banks of the Egypt stream to Mount Halal would be quicker and the caravan would be less conspicuous in the valley. Then the leader did something unexpected. He ordered the camel riders to push the animals to run. He then came to me and whispered, “Prince, the other camels would soon start running, so you can ride the donkey with a leg on each side pressed against the sides of the belly of the animal. You should kick the donkey sideways with your legs and the animal will start running. You should hold the reins in your right hand and crouch on its neck with your torso while holding its neck with your left hand. The other camel riders would soon disappear from your sight because a running camel is a faster animal. They will not see that you ride the donkey like a man and not ride sideways like a modest woman. Also, I shall not order my camel to run but to trot quickly after you so I will not lose sight of you. Even if we arrive at the caves of Mount Halal after the running camels, we will still make it in time to hide in the caves for the day because the sun light reaches the low valley much later than the top of the mountains.” The running camels trampled the wild mint bushes, the greenish white sage plants, and the thorny thick sprouts of thyme under their broad round feet. The mixed scent was intoxicating. When we reached Mount Halal, the other camel riders were already there. They selected the two most spacious caves and lit fires at the mouth of the caves so that any wild animals in them would be driven out by the heat and smoke. The snakes and scorpions would also be driven out and killed by one of the camel riders who is an expert “reptile hunter.” He will then sell the dead reptiles to the Habiru doctors who will dilute their blood and poison in castor oil to make love potions and a sprinkle to exorcize evil spirits. After a while, a family of desert hyenas, a father, mother and six puppies, sprang out of the cave with mad laughter. The leader of the caravan dragged me away from the caves because the mother hyena can be very dangerous if its young are threatened. Then a male and female jackal ran out wailing at the top of their lungs, freezing me by their shrill laments. A lone wolf rushed out with his head lowered and tail between his legs, signifying defeat and a lack of fighting spirit. The brown yellow vipers and grey horned vipers then started to crawl out of the caves with

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the snake hunter catching their tails two at a time with his two hands, twirling them with lightning speed around his head and then suddenly smashing their heads on the rocks lining the caves and putting their dead cadavers in leather sacks. I was fascinated by the expertise of the snake hunter and did not notice that a large yellow scorpion of the most poisonous variety was just about ready to push his bulging poison tail in my big toe protruding from my sandal. The caravan leader jumped towards me and trampled the scorpion under his sandal. After the snake hunter had killed some ten snakes, he diverted his attention to the scorpions. He caught the small arachnids with lightning speed by their poisonous tails, clipped off their heads, and then threw their bodies in the leather bags together with the dead snakes. Apparently the poisonous desert creatures fetched a high price with the Habiru doctors and the snake hunter carried his catch with a satisfied smile. After the caves seemed to be safe, we had our morning meal of unleavened bread, dried dates, figs and raisins. We drank the fresh water that we had replenished in the oasis and prepared to rest. All the males were allocated one cave but, as a woman, I had the second cave all to myself. I was tired and fell asleep immediately, resting my head on my bag. I dreamt of booming noises coming out of mountains and then of voices enunciating my name, “Me-shu Me-shu.” I woke up in a cold sweat. The booming thunder-like noises were still being emitted from the depth of the ground under the holy mountain. I fell again into a troubled sleep. In the middle of the day I woke up to the sound of hoarse voices singing torch songs accompanied by an instrument with a single catgut string played by scratching a horsehair bow. The beat of the music was provided by small drums held by one hand while their stretched cow hide was struck by the other hand. This also jiggled the brass trinkets inserted in the bamboo frames of the hand drums. I slowly approached the mouth of the camel drivers’ cave and observed that all of the drivers except the leader were dancing in a circle, beating their hand drums. In the center of the circle, the snake hunter was crouching on his legs playing the one-stringed instrument and undulating to the rhythm of the monotonous tune that he sang in a raspy, throaty voice. “Prince,” the leader whispered behind my back and shook me out of my senses. He had the training and ability to walk noiselessly and invisibly like a leopard and then materialize out of nowhere behind one’s back. “You frightened me, Leader.”

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“I know,” he retorted, “surprise gives you the upper hand in combat, especially in the desert. I did not wish to scare you. I was sure that the dancing and singing of the camel drivers must have woken you and I wanted to show you the vagaries caused by “Sinai madness,” the root of a weed that grows in the Shur desert about a foot deep in the sand. If smoked in a pipe, it produces the elation that you now see displayed by my drivers. If eaten raw, it poisons or drives one to madness. I never touch the stuff. I need to have control of my senses at all times.” “Good man,” I embraced him warmly. “I am quite hungry. Would there be anything for me to eat?” “I am sorry, Prince,” he apologized. “It would be too risky on a secret mission like ours to light a fire during the night. Also, fires during the day may reveal our location by their smoke. So the only food I can offer you is the nomad staples of dry unleavened bread, dried dates, figs and raisins washed down by water. I am sure that when we reach the abode of Jethro, the Priest of God, you will be welcomed with a lavish meal. But now I shall bring you some dry food and a skin of water. Have some patience, Prince. In about three hours the sun will set and then we shall travel for about two hours along the banks of the spring of Egypt which flows into the oasis of Kadesh Barnea. That will be the end of this leg of the journey for us and the escape into freedom and security for you, Prince. I shall now bring you the food and afterwards I suggest that you get a few hours of rest before we embark on the path to our final destination. It took me some time before I fell asleep again. I dreamt that I was dancing in the middle of a circle of camel drivers beating time to my steps with huge drums fastened to their bellies. Then one of the camel drivers bounced his drum on my head and I woke up with a splitting headache. Apparently the strenuous galloping on the back of the donkey did not agree with my sedentary constitution. The head of the caravan leader was bent over me and he announced, “Prince! The sun has set. It is time for us to continue our journey. I have brought you some dates, figs, unleavened bread, and a skin of water. You can eat on your way but right now we have to hurry. Jethro, the Priest of God, expects us to arrive at Kadesh Barnea in two hours sharp.” I put on the woman’s gown, pushed the food in my bag, and went out of the cave. The caravan was ready to go. The leader mounted the head camel which crouched on the ground waiting for him and I mounted the donkey sideways. The donkey was tied to the last camel in the caravan. We rode on the banks of the stream of Egypt and made a detour around the southern slopes of Mount Halal. We then proceeded straight east towards the Kadesh Barnea oasis.

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The ride was quite uneventful. Some desert hyenas that were drinking the stream’s water ran away when they were disturbed by the pounding hooves of the camels. The jackals stopped their wailing until the caravan passed and then they resumed their disquieting laments. Each pace of the camels and each trot of the donkey trampled bushes of wild mint, oregano and sage and filled the chilly evening air of the desert with fresh whiffs of spices. I started to munch the unleavened bread, the figs and dates and drank the cool water from the goat skin. The austere meal agreed with me. Eating a heavy meal while riding the donkey would have upset my stomach and nauseated me. The half moon dimly lit our way. After an hour’s ride the camels smelled the extended expanses of water of the Kadesh Barnea oasis and quickened their pace. The donkey I was riding also became more alert and after a short while the low hills on both sides of the stream of Egypt opened into a wide expanse of water lined by reddish-brown stones and pebbles. On the shores of the small lake at a short distance from the waterfront, there rose a thick rampart of palm trees of various heights, most of them bearing fruit: yellow, brown, red and violet dates. Behind the palms were immense grape vines leaning on bamboo and papyrus supports and displaying elongated green grapes. After the grape vines, we saw the silvery green leaves of olive trees that survive on the least amount of moisture. The rays of the half moon were reflected in the shallow waters of the Kadesh Barnea oasis. Behind the olive trees, a row of quite spacious two story sandstone buildings flanked a large tall limestone building with decorated gold-plated gates fastened on two massive pylons. The façade of the large building had a silver moon crescent fastened at its top signifying that it was a temple of the moon god Sin, the patron God of the Sinai desert. Behind the row of houses and the temple I saw a vast expanse of tents like the ones at the abodes of the Habiru at No-Amon and AkhetAten. Seeing them brought tears to my eyes since they reminded me of Aaron whom I missed very much. The riders of the camels led the camels as well as the donkey to be watered and fed at the waterfront. The leader took me aside and told me to take off the woman’s gown and helped me straighten the prince’s gown I wore underneath and then whispered to me solemnly that we were going to meet Jethro, the Priest of God. He resided in a rear compartment of the Sin Temple. When the caravan leader led me into the guest room of the Jethro residence, the Priest of God rose from his throne-like chair and bowed low in welcome. I reciprocated by not only bowing very low but also by kissing his hand. Jethro protested and retorted that he is very honored and complimented by a royal Prince visiting his remote and humble residence.

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The leader of the caravan delivered the letter of Zichri from Goshen and I gave him the sealed letter from Ozarzip the Viceroy. After the caravan leader bade us farewell, I embraced him in warm gratitude and gave him 10 pieces of gold from the bag which Ozarzip furnished me. At first he protested but I convinced him that I shall be offended if he does not take the gold coins as a token of my gratitude. He bowed to Jethro and left. The Priest of God pointed to a chair upholstered in camel leather and wool. When I sat on it he resumed his seat on his throne-like chair. “Allow me, Prince,” Jethro requested, “to have a look at the letter of his royal highness Ozarzip which you have delivered and the letter from Priest Zichri that the caravan leader brought. Then we shall have a meal and discuss matters of common interest.” When Jethro started reading the letters I had an opportunity to observe closely the very impressive figure of the Priest of God. He had a red head cover that flowed over his shoulders. It was fastened to his head by a gold embroidered red and black wool circle. His reddish white hair was curly and contrasted with his straight haired stringy beard. His eyes were deep set and burning with clarity of purpose. An inner light emanated from them and spread a divine aura over his whole person. His body was covered by a black gown, the collar of which was also embroidered by gold thread. His sandals were of crude camel leather. He had no signs of rank or ornaments except a gold pendant with the name of the volcanic Midianite god Jehovah that only a Priest of God was allowed to wear. The same austerity marked his chair and the rest of the furniture in the guest room. No image of man, animal or tree was in sight. Everything was austere, chaste and puritan. “I can see, Prince,” Jethro lifted his gaze from the letter of Ozarzip and directed his soul piercing eyes at me, “that his royal highness, the Viceroy, has high expectations for you. He even sees unprecedented greatness in your future with your religious innovations shaking the foundations of existing religions in our part of the world.” I was very flattered and excited by the laudatory welcome of the Priest of God and this exacerbated my stammer. “Your Em-Emi-Eminence,” I started painfully. Jethro interrupted me. “Prince,” he stated firmly, “I can sense your greatness through your stuttering. Please do not try to mar your meaning by succumbing to your handicap. Choose words that are easier for you to pronounce and discard expressions that fit the meaning but are toothbreaking for you.”

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“Thank you, your Eminence.” I had tears in my eyes with gratitude to this great man who did not try to brush away my disability and gloss over it by nice deceitful hypocrisy but confronted it with courage, adroitness and constructive advice. “Thank you, your Eminence, for your candid understanding and support. I hope that your insight will serve as a solid basis for my discipleship under your guidance.” “All in due course, my Prince,” Jethro reassured me. “Could I tax your patience, your Eminence,” I supplicated, “and enquire about my whereabouts in your household since I would like to be of help while I am here.” “Of course, Prince,” the Priest complied readily. “I would like to discuss with you two major issues and afterwards you should surely wish to retire after the strenuous journey you have had coming here all the way from Akhet-Aten.” “The first issue,” Jethro raised the index finger of his right hand, “is that you familiarize yourself with the desert, Prince. Monotony of landscape facilitates the conception of unity and monochromatism enhances the perception of abstraction. Not so, the cycles of agriculture related to paganism and the high places of worship consecrated to each god of nature and the bounty of plenty promised to his initiates. Agriculture, crops, wealth, the luxury of cities, and the ostentation of temples breed passions, jealousy, greed and covetousness. The desert shuns property and lust so you came to the right place, to the God who values humility and esteems self-denial, simplicity and self-sufficiency.” “The second principle you have to master, Prince,” Jethro raised the index finger of his left hand, “is how to be a shepherd. A leader of his people is nothing more but not less than a good shepherd. Prince, you shall have to learn how to be a shepherd in the desert. There is no more noble an occupation then a shepherd. Jehovah, our God, is the shepherd of his people. Indeed, a new-born suckling lamb is the most gentle, naïve, trusting, good, loving creature. The scene that always brings tears to my eyes and induced me to become a vegetarian is the tendency of a lamb to lick the hand of the priest who is just about to slaughter him as a sacrificial offering. My daughter, Zippora, is an accomplished shepherd. She will teach you how to become a shepherd of sheep and goats and perforce to become a shepherd of your people.” “Your advice is well taken, your Eminence,” I reacted, “and I wish to thank you heartily for your hospitality. Rest assured, your Eminence, that I shall make myself useful in whatever capacity and according to my ability in your household.”

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“We shall have something to eat now. As I have mentioned to you, Prince, our kitchen is vegetarian.” “That suites me very well, your Eminence. I have accustomed myself to the vegetarian food of my brethren, the Habiru. I find that it agrees with me very much and I wish to thank you again for your kindness.” “You are most welcome, my Prince. It is an immense honor and privilege to welcome you in our abode.” The priest clapped his hands and a servant girl and a boy came in with four trays, one in each hand, and placed them on the wooden table in front of us. One had vine leaves stuffed with rice and pine nuts. Another had tender hearts of palms cooked in white wine and goat cheese. The other two had fresh dates, figs, grapes, a decanter of grape juice and white wine. I raised a glass of white wine and blessed my host and his God in Habiru. Jethro reciprocated by drinking to my health and to the might, justice and virtue of our unique God who infuses his grace in all of us. After the priest blessed the food, I helped myself to some stuffed vine leaves and palm hearts. They were tasty and refreshing. For desert I ate some cool green grapes and downed them with grape juice. After the meal I thanked the lord in Egyptian, which the priest understood. Then I begged to retire since I was very tired. “Of course, my Prince. You must be exhausted after the long and strenuous trip from Akhet-Aten to us. The boy here will show you to your compartment. Jethro then embraced me and wished me a good night. The boy led me to a spacious room furnished with characteristic austerity. It had a bamboo bed covered by coarse woolen blankets, an olive wood table, and two papyrus straw chairs. A small bamboo cupboard contained linen, blankets, towels, earthenware cups and dishes. When the boy left, I undressed and lay on the bed without even washing since I was very tired and I fell asleep immediately. In the morning, I woke up early. It took me quite a while to reorient. In Akhet-Aten, although on the western outskirts of the desert, the proximity to the Nile moistened the dry air and tempered the heat of the eastern desert winds. The typical desert climate of Kadesh Barnea was freezing cold at night and piping hot during the day. I left my bed and did some calisthenics to enhance the circulation of my blood. Then I put on my head phylacteries and rolled the hand phylacteries on my left hand and covered myself with a prayer shawl according to the Habiru custom and sang the morning prayers in the Habiru language. I sang the liturgy with the tunes taught me by Aaron whom I missed very much. Every morning, the Habiru prayers brought tears of longing to my eyes.

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The servant boy must have heard my movements and knocked gently on the door. I invited him in Egyptian to come in. He opened the door hesitantly and asked me something in Midianite. I motioned with my hands that I did not understand. He came in and asked with a rudimentary body language whether I would like to wash and eat. I nodded my head affirmatively. He then brought in a wooden basin with hot water and a tray of fresh unleavened bread, salted goat cheese, and a decanter of grape juice. On my bed he placed a coarse thick woolen tunic embroidered with gold around the collar, a leather bag, and high boots to protect my feet from sharp splinters and insect stings. He also brought a shepherd’s staff of hard cedar wood, apparently imported from Lebanon. I noted that Jethro was attending to every detail of my breaking into the vocation of a shepherd. I washed myself in the warm water and rubbed myself with the suds which made a profusion of bubbles. I dried myself with the linen towel and put on the shepherd’s tunic. I then ate my morning meal. The combination of goat cheese and fresh unleavened bread was delicious. The grape juice was refreshing and invigorating. After I finished eating, the servant boy knocked again on my door and drew in the air the figure of an ample woman with a generous bosom and a round pelvis. Then he pointed his index finger at me. My first impression of his message was that he proposes a full bodied woman to me. I meant to nod “no” with my head but to my surprise, I nodded in the affirmative. In came a husky lady with a developed bosom and hard round buttocks, a sign of strenuous menial work. Her head was covered by a large knit skull-cap of blue and white wool thread. Her thick flowing hair was knit at the back of her head into a thick bundle revealing a neck with strong muscles. Two side curls of hair dangled down her temples and cheeks onto her flowing bust. She wore a thick coarse tunic of woven linen with a pattern of blue and white circles with a red dot in their centers. She had big leather boots on her legs scratched by the thorns and thistles of the desert. The skin of her hands was thick and rough, the sign of hard labor. She bowed and when she greeted me in Midianic, I moved my hands towards my ears to signify my lack of understanding. She said in very rudimentary Egyptian with bad grammar that her name was Zippora, that she was the daughter of Jethro, and that she was assigned by her father to instruct me how to become a shepherd. I stammered badly and tried to use simple and basic Egyptian words. I welcomed her and thanked her and her father for their hospitality and kindness and tried to instill some humor in our encounter by remarking that limited use of language and stammering makes for a perfect relationship.

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She looked at me and pointed at my head. “Head sun no good.” She ran out of the room with quick agile movements, quite surprising for a heavy-built woman. Apparently her body was packed with muscles with hardly any fat, the result of continuous bodily exertion and hard menial work. She came back with two square headdresses, one for me and the other for her, to guard our heads from the heat of the midday desert sun. She covered my head with the black and red linen headdress and fastened it on my skull with a round black camel wool circle. She covered her head in a similar manner. This was a standard, quite effective, desert head cover that also protects the neck and shoulders. We seemed to be ready to launch my apprenticeship as a novice shepherd but Zippora apparently remembered something of utmost importance. “Water,” she announced. Water is the life sustaining elixir, the scarcity of which in the desert makes it so inestimable and priceless. She ran outside and asked me to follow her to one of the spacious tents. Inside were about 50 sheep and 50 goats, a small herd. Jethro apparently wanted me to become initiated in the vocation of a shepherd with a small herd that would be easier to handle and less likely to frustrate me. Zippora pointed to the herd and then said “Water” and pointed to the shallow lake that was the center, life fount, and source of viability of this important oasis in the desert peninsula of Sinai. She uttered some throaty noises and the sheep, lambs, ewes and kids rushed in unison to the waterfront to drink. I realized that the calling of a shepherd has much more than meets the eye and that my initiation into this central craft of the arid wilderness of Sinai would be long, tedious, arduous and full of pitfalls. After the whole herd was drinking on the shores of the lake, Zippora came over to me with a rake, led me back to the tent, and pantomimed the act of cleaning the hard round droppings of the herd of young sheep and goats. She also gave me some large sacks of thick linen and showed me how to fill these sacks. “Good manure for vegetables,” implying that I am performing a vital task. After I cleaned the tent and amassed the animal droppings in heaps, I diligently filled up the sacks, closed them with a strong linen cord, and lined them up like soldiers guarding the entrance to the tent. When Zippora came back from the lake, she looked at the sacks of manure leaning against one another in an orderly parade. “Very good,” she praised me. “Now, fill water skins,” she ordered. She located a large canvas bag at the corner of the tent filled apparently with empty water skins. “For you, me, animals if stay long in desert.”

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She led me to a very simple but effective mechanism to fill up water skins. There was an ox with eyes covered by a wide leather band giving it the illusion that it is progressing forward and not going around in circles. While going round and round, he is turning a horizontal wooden wheel with bamboo sticks that engage similar sticks on a perpendicular wheel. The movement of the horizontal wheel caused a wooden bucket attached to the vertical wheel to dip into the lake and become filled with water. When the bucket was near the top of the vertical wheel, a fixed horizontal bar caused its contents to be poured into a large brass funnel connected to a brass pipe under whose outlet an empty water skin was tied. When the water skin was filled up, it was tightly corked and another empty skin was fastened to the pipe’s outlet. This ingenious machine, the likes of which I had never seen in No-Amon, Moph or On, was so user-friendly in its simplicity that I clapped my hands in applause. “I am very impressed by the wisdom of the desert,” I announced. I have seen nothing like this in the cities. This is pure desert genius.” Zippora was beaming with pleasure at my praise. After we filled up about two dozen water skins, Zippora announced that we were ready to go. She loaded the camel she was riding with a dozen water skins tied up in pairs so that each side of the camel had six skins for balance. She then loaded a second camel with the other water skins, again balancing six on each side. “This camel is for you, Prince,” pointing the index finger of her right hand at my chest. “But slowly,” as she pantomimed a slow movement with her hands. “One day, one hour. Two days, two hours. Three days, three hours. If more, your head go round,” as she swirled her hand above her head, “and you fall. Today, Prince, only donkey.” Zippora again emitted a throaty gargle and the herd collected itself around her. She had a handful of pebbles in the palm of her left hand and she pressed some into my left palm too. She mounted her camel and started moving and the other camel followed it. I mounted the donkey which started moving. My bag was hanging sideways on my shoulder, but I did not know where to put my shepherd’s staff. Zippora noticed my embarrassment and showed me that she held her staff horizontally on her thighs so that both her hands were free. I did likewise. Then I realized what she needed the pebbles for. When a goat or sheep left the flock, she threw a pebble with lightning swiftness at its ear or tail, never at a vital organ. Her marksmanship was perfect. She asked me to try my hand at it. I threw the pebble in a curved trajectory and it went into the lake. Zippora almost fell off the camel with laughter. I was rather hurt and promised myself to learn how to throw pebbles with an accurate flat trajectory as soon as possible.

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Meanwhile my whole body was trembling with the trotting of the donkey on the pebbly road leading west away from the oasis of Kadesh Barnea. I watched Zippora slowly undulating on the top of the camel in harmony with the swaying of the animal from side to side and to and fro induced by the slow movements of its long legs and the wide round feet serving as shock absorbers while moving on a large variety of terrains from the pebbles of artificially constructed roads like the one on which we were travelling, to round stone hills, to the moving dunes of the vast wilderness. On the horizon loomed the holy Mount Halal, the Mountain of God, with its three peaks. I noticed something on the western sky that I was told was not unusual in the desert but I had never seen it before. It was a mirage, a spacious palace on the shore of a lake which should not be there because the real lake was behind us in the east. The image was quite hazy and different mirages appeared in diverse places and unusual times. The nomads knew better than to follow these mirages because they lead to delusions, especially if one is thirsty, hungry or tired, that can cause the loss of orientation, sickness, injury and death. The wanderers were also led by these phantom visions to distrust their senses and outward perceptions and rely on their inner introspection as the sole reliable reality. I found myself fixing my gaze on the three peaks of the holy Mount Halal on the horizon so that I am not swayed by the jittery vagaries of the hazy mirage. I tried to take stock of the vicissitudes of my situation as an apprentice shepherd in the service of Jethro, the Priest of God. Here I am, riding a donkey behind his daughter Zippora, who is riding a camel and supervising the grazing of a herd of sheep and goats. The consensus of everyone I talked to, including Ozarzip who was too tactful to express it, Priest Amram, Aaron’s father, Priest Zichri of Goshen, and Jethro himself, was that the days, months, certainly years of my father as Pharaoh were numbered. He was absorbed completely by his religious revolution and neglected the affairs of Egypt and the convoluted administration of the two kingdoms. He left the secular power to the likes of Ay, double-crossers who developed closer and closer ties with the demoted Amon priests who bided their time and connived to topple Akhenaten when the time was ripe and popular discontent with the Pharaoh’s monotheism reached its peak. The situation was exacerbated by the levying of exorbitant taxes that were collected by the Habiru tribe that the Pharaoh installed as regional administrators and tax collectors. This caused the Habiru to be viewed as oppressors by most of the Egyptian people. When the counterrevolution takes place and my father is demoted, Ay would certainly be one of the

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first choices for Pharaoh. Since he was corrupt through and through, he could be easily bought and diverted to the use and benefit of the Amon clergy who had plenty of gold and jewels stashed in caves and in the cellars of their temples. When this happens, the Habiru are going to be in great trouble. If Ozarzip was right, I was destined to play a role in the deliverance of the Habiru from the backlash of the Egyptian people against their apparent Habiru oppressors, I am not eager to play this role because I am a stammering depressive with a low self-image, but suppose this role is imposed on me by divine authority. What should be done? I have a hunch that I should bring the Habiru tribe to the desert and deliver them from the Egyptian corruption surrounding them. I must cleanse them by taking them out of the fleshpots and the horns of plenty back into a nomadic life of purity asceticism and faith. But how to do it? It is going to be anything but easy. Ozarzip brought to my father the Gods of his Patriarchs. These were divine chieftains who made contracts with their believers, nomadic tribes who would receive protection from them in exchange for undivided loyalty. Their gods were just chief potentates who reigned over a host of lesser divinities. Hence, they were denoted as El Shaddai, the lord of hosts, and El Elion, the commander in chief of a pantheon of underlings. My father, the Pharaoh, did not really understand the Habiru religious system. His capacity for abstraction was also limited. Hence he adopted for his monotheism a concrete disc of the well-established Egyptian sun god Ra. I am being exposed to Jehovah, the Midianite volcanic god who seems to be, I am not sure yet, a universal abstract god. This is a progression I have to make if I wish to make sense of monotheism, not a mixture of creeds but an integrated belief system. I very often read the first commandment of the ten given to me by Ozarzip when I had to leave Akhet-Aten in haste. It declared: ‘I am the Lord your God who led you out of the land of Egypt. There shall not be for you other gods apart from me. You shall not make for yourself an idol nor yet a likeness of anything of all the things that are in the heaven above and that are in the earth beneath and that are in the waters underneath the earth. You shall not make obeisance to them, nor be a servant to them, for I am the Lord your God’. If ever I am given authority, by whatever circumstance that is surely unpredictable, I shall use this first commandment as my canon for a desert monotheism. Suddenly I saw Zippora in front of me. “Prince,” she reprimanded me, “You almost fall off the donkey. Good thing. He thirsty and wants drink water from Egypt spring that we just reach. Come down and we eat.”

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I dismounted the donkey and saw that all of the herd, sheep, goats, lambs, kids and ewes as well as the two camels were thirstily drinking the clear and cool water of the Egypt spring that was flowing into the shallow lake of the Kadesh Barnea oasis. My donkey ran quickly to the stream to make up for the lost time of his drinking compared to the more agile animals. Like any desert spring, it attracted a great variety of animals competing for the scarce life-giving liquid. Zippora spread a blanket quite far from the spring because its vegetation teems with reptiles and insects. Many of them have poisonous stings because survival in the desert depends on a successful fierce combat for food that is always in short supply. On the blanket, Zippora placed a wooden tray with pieces of white, fresh, slightly salted goat cheese, a few pieces of unleavened round bread, and a skin of water. Suddenly Zippora ran toward the spring and located a large plant with a white root and dark green leaves. “Basil,” she declared, “the king of spices.” She put some leaves on the goat cheese and placed the cheese on the round bread. The combination was delicious, savory and delicate, delectable and succulent. The exposure to this royal spice, “basileus” meant king in Greek, was exhilarating. I promised myself that on our way back to the oasis, I shall think about ways and means of familiarizing myself thoroughly with the flora and fauna of the desert. But apparently Zippora had another adventure for me. She told me that we are heading back to Kadesh Barnea and that I should start accustoming myself to travelling by camel like a true desert dweller. “Donkeys are for women,” she explained, “camels for men.” She uttered a prolonged throaty gargle and both camels lowered themselves on their knees. Zippora mounted the first camel and I ascended the second. The donkey followed the camels looking lonely, dejected and rejected. Zippora uttered a throaty hiss and the entire herd followed us. At first I enjoyed my swaying camel ride. The height of the camel’s hump gave me a panoramic view of the valley of the spring of Egypt flanked by Mt. Burka on our right and Mt. Libri on our left. On the eastern horizon the oasis of Kadesh Barnea loomed large, this time not as a hazy mirage but as a real, fresh, cool looking lake surrounded by fruit bearing trees, houses and tents. But after a while my head started to swim from the undulations of the camel. My stomach contracted and I started to throw up. Zippora saw my agony, stopped the camels, and ordered them to crouch on their knees. I dismounted the camel and vomited all my morning meal, which on its way out through my constricted mouth and nostrils tasted acrid and vile. I took a swig of water from the skin and I felt somewhat relieved.

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“Go back to donkey, Prince,” Zippora ordered. Your stomach weak. Camel back needs practice.” The sad face of my donkey when I returned to him seemed to radiate empathy. He seemed to sympathize with my humiliation and his lively trot expressed satisfaction at my demotion to his status and a warning not to jump higher than my belly. I decided that I had enough embarrassing thoughts for the day and retreated into a taciturn silence. When we approached Kadesh Barnea, it was midday. The sun was hot and the massively evaporating water vapor above the lake refracted the direct light into a myriad of rainbows. I was still somewhat nauseated from my humiliating experience on the back of the camel and I decided to ask Zippora when we reach the oasis to take me to their doctor so that he can give me an ointment to prevent further loss of face the next time I mount the back of a camel. After all, I intend to become a respectable nomad and a proficient desert roamer as soon as possible. When we reached Kadesh Barnea, I told Zippora that I do not feel too well and asked her if she could bring me to see a doctor. “Sure, sure, Prince, but the duty of a shepherd goes first to animals,” she reprimanded me, “and only later to humans. Let us bring the animals to the lake to drink and then feed them in their tent with barley and wheat to add to their grazing, and then I take you to doctor.” She had a metallic trace of hardness to her voice and I even detected an undertone of contempt in it. When the animals were slaking their thirst at the lake, she asked me or rather ordered me to open some sacks of barley and wheat and pour their contents inside the animal tent. When the sheep, goats, camels and donkey quenched their thirst, they rushed to their tent and started to eat the barley and wheat voraciously. When they sated their hunger, they crouched on the floor of the tent and sunk into a contented slumber. “Now, Prince, animals happy. We go and see a doctor for you.” I just learned the hard way another desert principle: In the wilderness, animals are far more important than humans. Men and women are disposable, animals are not. “Now we go see doctor,” Zippora announced. “Doctor Amalekite. No good. Amalekite another tribe. No believe in Jehovah good God but in Ba’al, Ashtoreth, bad gods. Amalekite bad people. Robbers, killers. But Omri good doctor. Let go see.” I started to pick up some Midianite and soon I shall switch my conversations with Zippora to this language rather than suffer Zippora’s atrocious Egyptian. She brought me to a spacious house not far from her father’s abode. A copper snake, a universal symbol of medicine, was

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fastened to its roof. The Lebanese cedar doors were carved with pagan symbols. Zippora left me in front of the doctor’s door. “This Omri, Amalekite doctor,” she declared. “Good doctor, evil house. Me no go there. Good luck, Prince.” She bowed and left. I knocked on the door and an apparition opened it. He was clad in a red and black gown. A heavy gold chain hung on his neck and a pendant of Hathor, the Egyptian goddess who personified joy, feminine love, and motherhood but also desire, lust and covetous envy loomed large on his chest. He had a cut off chimney pipe hat on his head. The chimney segment was black and the top red. A golden cobra Uraeus was fastened to the top of the hat. The cobra’s eyes were large rubies. The open mouth was studded with black pearls and the long tongue was inlaid with outsize white diamonds which sparkled in the sun with an eerie glow. I presented myself in Egyptian assuming that the doctor spoke the language. “I need your help doctor,” I blurted out quickly to prevent any stutter. “I heard about you. There is talk in the oasis that an Egyptian prince who ran away from justice in his home sought refuge with the high priest of God. My name is Omri. I am an Amalekite and a physician,” the doctor described himself, “and I am at your service. Why don’t you sit down and tell me your problem.” Omri sat down on an ostentatious throne cluttered with trinkets and bric-a-brac. A huge double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt adorned the top of the throne. When the physician sat on his throne, a devious glint emanated from his tiny beady black eyes and penetrated my eyes and brain. I tried to resist it but to no avail. It permeated all the pores of my soul. Then for an unmeasured span of time, a horde of snake-like black tentacles invaded my psyche and I felt naked and defenseless against them. They probed every corner of my mind and after a while I was immobilized and prey to their spying on my innermost privacy. I woke up as if from a bad dream and eyed the doctor with mounting anger. “This is telepathy,” the doctor declared with a pseudo-scientific seriousness. “It is most efficient direct brain-to-brain diagnosis.” “I know,” I answered coldly, “but you should have asked my permission before your blatant invasion of my most cherished clandestine confidentialities.” “You are right, Prince. I am sorry.” I did not think he was. “It will not happen again,” he promised. “What is your problem?” the doctor enquired. “Well, you see doctor,” I explained, “being a city dweller, I am not used to ride camels and today in the morning when I rode a camel I became very sick and nauseated.”

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“There is a very simple solution to your quandary, Prince,” the doctor declared authoritatively. “The name of the herb is sheeba and it is a genus of desert hemlock.” “But is not hemlock a poison?” I enquired suspiciously. “Of course, Prince,” the doctor agreed empathically, “but are you not acquainted, Prince, with the first rule of medicine: that much poison kills but a measured dose may cure, heal and resurrect?” The doctor rose from his throne, went to a cupboard that leaned against the wall behind his throne, and fished out a small bottle made of opaque glass. “Here is a concentrated solution of the sheeba plant in alcohol. You should use not more than 10 drops in a cup of water before mounting a camel. That will keep your head steady for a whole day.” He gave me the bottle and I asked, “How much do I owe you, doctor?” “Nothing. A token of hospitality,” he answered expansively. “I am honored to serve Egyptian royalty.” I thought to myself that that small bottle will eventually cost me dearly, but I decided to accept the present with thanks. Just then a slave girl entered the room. She was tall, pitch black, and completely naked. She must have been in her late teens since her breasts were large and firm. Not a muscle in her chest was sagging and her nipples were erect, slightly pointing sideways and up. Her make-up was prurient. Her eyes were lined with violet paint and so were her full lips and nipples. She wore a short Nubian black wig matching the color of the hair on her pubic mound. She wore camel leather sandals with very high golden heels. Every trot made her breasts and pelvis tremble with the allure of a high class whore. Indeed she was! Her bare buttocks had the Phoenician sign of a holy prostitute from the Astarte temple at Cyrene in the domain of Libu at the edge of the western desert singed on the poor girl’s bare skin by hot metal. Cyrene was a large town on the southern shores of the Mediterranean catering to the supply of merchant vessels and the sexual urges of their sailors. Omri must have bought her from a caravan of Habiru slave merchants. Nobody knew and nobody asked how she came to be in the possession of the Habiru. It was obvious, however, that she was a thoroughly accomplished courtesan. She approached me and enquired in Midianite with a coquettish intonation while pressing her nipple to my back. “What would be the pleasure of his royal highness?” I was by then proficient in Midianite and I answered that I would like to have a strong spice brew, but absolutely no narcotics added. I also declared that, no offense meant, but I do not plan to have sex with her in the foreseeable future.

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“Will do,” she answered nonchalantly without any show of emotion and the remarkable self-control of a professional whore. “Your wish is my command.” She trotted out of the room with excessive suggestive movements of her pelvis and torso. When the slave girl brought a copper kettle of bubbling hot spice brew, she poured two cups of the dark steaming brew that filled the room with sharp odors of sage, cardamom, thyme, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon. Since her sexual services did not seem to be required, she left us to drink the brew and go on with our conversation. “My dear doctor, I would like to have some invaluable advice about an idea I had while grazing our herd.” I tried to flatter him since someone with an ego like his is always vulnerable to flattery. “I would like, doctor, to try and establish a herbarium to cater for the maladies of animals feeding in the wilderness of northern Sinai and belonging to the nomadic tribes roaming this part of the desert when travelling to Canaan from Goshen and back and their animals are afflicted by a sudden disease or reptile bite in the oases of Kafkafa, Hassana and Kadesh Barnea, moving mostly on the Shur desert highway and the valley of the Egypt Stream. What would be your good advice presenting the question as a student to a master?” “Well, this is a hard one, Prince,” the doctor spoke from his belly signifying complexity of the issue. First of all,” he counted the fingers of his right hand to enumerate the problems, “the anatomy of animals differs greatly from one another and you shall have, Prince, to acquaint yourself with a large variety of animal physiognomy before embarking on your venture. Second, if an animal becomes sick, a nomad may decide, unless it is a camel or a precious horse, to slaughter it and eat it right away. Third, the nomads are moving all the time. One day they are here, the next they are there. You would not be able to follow up the effect of the medicine you administered. You will need to have a quarantined area. Where will you put it? You know what, Prince,” his face beamed with the eagerness of greed, “why do we not form a partnership and use my backyard as a quarantined area. We shall make a good business. I shall be very honored to have royalty as my partner.” So this is it, I thought to myself. The rogue is trying to use me to further his interests. “I am very flattered by your offer,” I answered nonchalantly. “Let me think about it.” I drank some of the spice brew. It was indeed refreshing and invigorating. The doctor drank his in one gulp and then offered to show me his collection of medical herbs. He stood up and his movements made his gem studded uraeus tremble menacingly.

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He opened one of the cupboards made of Lebanese cedar behind his throne and revealed rows of small earthenware jars. The doctor explained that the jars must be opaque and air tight. Hence, the jars must always be of non-transparent earthenware and air-tight by closely fitting covers because both light and air could induce chemical reactions and damage the potency of the medications. He took a few jars and showed them to me. He opened one that was filled with crimson balls, the fruit of the sumac plant, and said, “It is used first and foremost by tanners to cure leather. As medicine, a weak solution of the sumac fruit, when ground to powder and soaked in alcohol, stops diarrhea.” The second jar had pine secretions dissolved in ethereal oil and administered as medication against tuberculosis and hemorrhoids. The third jar had dry leaves of marjoram. Apart from being a very popular spice for vegetable salads, as medicine it was a choice cure for jaundice. “I have a few hundred of these jars. All contain freshly picked herbs, dried by the sun and then ground to powder or soaked in alcohol and sealed in these jars as ready-to-use remedies with full potency. I do hope, Prince, that you will bond your enthusiasm to my knowledge and experience to build an animal clinic that will become renowned throughout the Sinai Peninsula.” “Of course, Doctor,” I reassured him. “I shall consider your generous offer very seriously.” “Now let me show you, Prince, something very interesting.” The doctor smiled slyly and let me to a side room. Most of the space of the room was taken up by an outsize bronze statue of Ba’al in the manifestation of a bull making love to his consort, Astarte. Her legs were spread to allow the outsize penis of the bull to enter her vagina. She was clinging to the bull’s belly fastening her legs around his hind legs. Her hands were clasping his forelegs. Her enormous breasts were pressing against the bull’s torso and her face expressed a prurient rapture. Omri smiled and declared, “I have here a tremendous assortment of aphrodisiac preparations to cure impotence, to induce erection, to increase desire, and to kindle love. I have clients from Egypt, Canaan and Mesopotamia. The renown of Doctor Omri’s erotic preparations has spread all over the Middle East,” the doctor announced with pride. “This room houses the erotic preparations for men. Let me show you the inducing potions for women.” Omri led me to another room and opened the door. A bronze statue in the middle of the room portrayed the mounting of the goddess Astarte from behind by a satyr, upper half man and lower half goat. Its long penis was penetrating her vagina. She was holding the satyr’s penis by her right hand and pushing it deeper into her

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vagina while squeezing her breasts with her left hand. Her face was twisted with ecstasy. “Very interesting,” I muttered. The doctor must have sensed my impatience and led me back to his reception room. Before sitting down I asked the doctor to lend me a text about medical herbs, which I could consult and then give it back to him. He opened one of the compartments of the wall that revealed tightly packed scrolls of papyri and rolled parchments. He searched a while and brought with him a rolled papyrus which had drawings of plants and explanations in hieroglyphics. This is a comprehensive guide for the flora of Sinai. It is priceless and as rare as an ascetic prince.” The doctor tried to be sarcastic at my expense. “Please peruse it, Prince, and return it to me because it is the only copy in my possession.” I thanked the doctor expansively and assured him that I shall take good care of his scroll and give it back as soon as possible. I also thanked him profusely for the ointment against nausea and took my leave with a low bow. When I came back to my quarters in the residence of Jethro, Zippora was already waiting for me. “You was too long time with Doctor,” she sounded worried. “You know Doctor dangerous man.” “Yes I do, but I got some important information for a project I have in mind. I want to establish a clinic for animals here in Kadesh Barnea.” “You, Prince, big man, think big. I simple woman, not know read and write. Talk with father. He big important man.” “Well, first of all, we are to deal with your literacy right away.” I sounded very determined and resolute. “Beginning tomorrow we will spend two hours every day teaching you to read and write Egyptian and Habiru and we will ask your father to provide a teacher to teach both of us to read and write Midianite.” “Oh, oh, oh,” she emitted sounds of surprise. “We Midianites not teach girls.” “I do not care,” I declaimed adamantly. “I do not think girls and women should be ignorant and I am going to teach you literacy with no further delay.” The sun was setting and Zippora brought in some unleavened bread with some pieces of my favorite goat cheese garnished with fresh basil. She also ate and we drank red grape juice which was stronger and more tangy than the green juice. I then described my plan for establishing a clinic at Kadesh Barnea for the medical treatment of domestic animals of the Sinai Peninsula. I showed her the scrolls that Omri gave me and I told her about my plans for a large quarantine area for sick animals at Kadesh Barnea that would become the cultural and commercial center of Sinai.

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Because the nomads of the desert are a society of shepherds, their herds’ health and wellbeing were the focal center of their interests. Hence our clinic for animals will become the pivotal nucleus of Sinai and the kernel of its social activities. “This is too big for me, Prince,” Zippora protested. You have to talk about it with my father.” “In due course,” I assured her, “but we have to build first our infrastructure while grazing our herds on the banks of the Egypt stream. We will take turns. One of us will tend the herd and the other will look for the herbs described by the doctor’s scrolls and locate them on the banks of the stream. Meanwhile, you become fluent in languages and I will become more adept as a shepherd. Then we shall go to your father and discuss the project with him.” “All right, all right,” she seemed to be satisfied. “By the way, Omri proposed that we become partners in this project. I said that I shall think about it, but I have no intention of becoming his partner.” “You beware. Omri dangerous crook. Amalekite no good.” “I know,” I agreed. “I shall ask his advice whenever I need it but nothing beyond it.” “Let go sleep, Prince,” Zippora urged. “Tomorrow hard day.” I bade her good night and went to sleep on my mobile bed. Although I was tired, a cauldron of thoughts and emotions swirled in me and prevented me from falling asleep. I felt an unrequited longing within me that pushed my psyche to a tumultuous, undirected and unfocussed expansion. On the emotional level, the brutal disrupture of my love of Marit-Aten left a gushing wound that was still bleeding profusely without solace to this very minute. The religious revolution of my father also disquieted me because it did not seem to make any headway. The contractual henotheism of Ozarzip’s patriarchy, who migrated from Ur Kasdim in Mesopotamia to the fertile plains of Canaan, served as an initial infrastructure to partially extricate the religion of the nomadic western Semites from stark paganism. The Habiru patriarchs envisaged a pantheon of gods headed by a chief deity. The initiates who entered into a contractual relationship with him were rewarded with a horn of plenty overflowing with promises of progeny as numerous as the sand on the seashore if they follow the canons of his religion. My father went one step farther by postulating a unique god but not an abstract one since it was a concrete disc of the sun. My task, to be sure not an easy one, is to reach, if Ozarzip’s predictions come true, the ultimate purist goal of a religion dominated by a monotheistic abstract

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God. With this lofty seemingly unachievable aim perturbing my mind, I fell asleep. In the morning, before sunrise, Zippora woke me up. “Sorry, Prince,” she apologized. “If you want graze flock and find plants, you wake up now. Circle around moon means very hot day, maybe sandstorm. She brought me a bowl of sour milk with fresh needles of rosemary spice in it. It was cool, fresh and aromatic. I was hungry and gulped it down voraciously. When Zippora came to fetch me to embark on our trip, she brought with her two head covers of heavy wool with holes for the eyes and nostrils in case the sandstorm would strike. She had also head covers for the camels and donkey. The sheep and goats protected one another by huddling together and lowering their heads. Zippora explained that the danger for the animals was from suffocation because the loess clay particles are liable to enter the animal’s nostrils and mouths. Moistened by their mucus membranes, the particles would become clay-like. When dried by the air they breathe, the clay would become as hard as earthenware and clog and block their wind pipe threatening suffocation. Before mounting my camel, I mixed 20 drops of the Sheeba hemlock that Doctor Omri gave me in water and drank it. After a while, when swaying on the back of the camel for some time without displaying signs of nausea, Zippora stared at me in amazement. This turned into astonishment when I threw pebbles at straying sheep and goats with precise marksmanship, the result of my clandestine practice. My selfesteem as well as Zippora’s opinion of me seemed to ascend due to this manifestation of my adjustment to the life of a shepherd. While Zippora tended the flock, I started to look for some medical herbs on the banks of the Egypt Spring, guided by the Egyptian scrolls about desert herbs written and illustrated in hieroglyphic script. I think I was in luck that morning since I discovered three plants in a row with obvious medical functions. The first was the Stream Asparagus, a hardy climber with a profusion of red fruit. Its medical use is the ingestion of a paste made from its red fruit. It is a very effective urination enhancer and it helps to dissolve kidney stones. The second plant was the Batbut, a long leggy plant with deep roots. Its adult stems are hollow and like an oboe. The nomads call it the oboe of the shepherds. Its main use in medicine is the ability of the mashed pulp of its young shoots to extract the poison from snake bites. The third plant was the Babonag, a low plant with a profusion of yellow and white flowers exuding a strong tangy odor. Tea brewed from the Babonag’s dry flowers serves as a potent cure for belly ache and intestinal infections.

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Just then the sandstorm started. Zippora motioned to me to put on my head cover which I did. She put on hers and dismounted the camel. When the wind started to shriek, wail and chatter, my camel also rushed to the water and kneeled on the banks of the spring. The air became opaque with dust and my nostrils were filled with sticky loess dust. I tried to rub my eyes and Zippora shrieked, “No! Go to the water.” I rushed to the stream and washed my eyes. If I would have rubbed my eyes, the dried loess crystals would have damaged my eyes irreparably. Zippora ordered to take the goats and sheep to the water and then constantly wash their eyes and nostrils and not let the loess dry and choke their wind pipes and damage their vision. After about an hour, the storm subsided and the air cleared. The desert is never constant. The onset of changes is sudden and so is their cessation. No twilight, just light or darkness. Also, no memories and no expectations. No past and no future. Only the present. In a few minutes there was no trace of the disrupting storm with its tons of blotting loess clay and its searing winds. The desert sank back into its monotonous, monochromatic normalcy.

CHAPTER NINE A HASTY MARRIAGE

When we came back to Kadesh Barnea, Jethro, the Priest of God, was waiting for us. His demeanor was serious. “Prince, we have to talk. Can you come to my chambers to discuss an issue of the utmost importance?” He phrased his query as a request, but the underlying meaning was a command. He asked Zippora in an unequivocal tone of authority to also come to the priestly abode and wait in her quarters until called to join us in the priestly throne room. When we reached Jethro’s throne room where the priest held his ritualized functions of office, he asked me to sit in front of him on a straight armless chair much lower in stature than the priestly throne. He then sat on the throne with a heavy thud signifying finality of intention and put on his priestly official head cover marking solemnity. “Prince,” he began with a voice thicker than usual indicating emotion. “Word is circulating in the oasis that you spend most of the day, including the evening when the animals have to be fed dry food and closed in their tents, with Zippora. In fact, you spend all of your time together and both of you are unmarried. This, Prince, is untenable in our religion and borders on immoral cohabitation which would spoil the chances of my daughter to marry any other man except yourself. Moreover, if this continues, my daughter will be declared impure. Do you know what that might mean, Prince?” “No.” I answered quickly. “By desert law, she could be liable to be stoned to death.” “No, No, No!” I shrieked. “Yes, Prince,” the priest retorted slowly and pointedly. Here the lax city laws do not hold. We are bound by the authoritarian sanctity and purity of our women. Hence, you and Zippora have to be married without further delay.” “But, Priest,” I protested. “I vowed a vow of celibacy when my father tore away my beloved Marit-Aten and made her prematurely his consort.” “Vows are invalid, Prince,” the priest uttered his judgment, “when they cause the demise of an innocent third party.”

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“But what about your flesh and blood, your daughter Zippora? Would she concur to this hasty marriage?” “Her consent is not essential according to our laws,” the Priest decreed. “She has to abide by the consensus of her elders and by the absolute behest of our desert laws.” “Could we at least ask the opinion of the bride-to-be,” I implored, “about this crucial event in her life?” “This is not customary,” the Priest ruled, “but if you insist we can do it.” Jethro asked the slave girl to call Zippora in. When she came she stood shyly near the entrance. Her father asked her, “Would you marry Prince Me-shu?” Zippora moved her head in affirmation, her face beaming crimson with bashfulness. “This settles it,” the Priest ordained. “Your marriage will be held in this room officiated by me on the first day of the second month. That is the day after tomorrow. You should fast and purify yourself and drink only water. You should not see your future wife until the actual ceremony of the marriage. I shall announce the dowry allotted to you at the marriage ceremony. Your seclusion starts from now. You should go to your quarters and a bathtub full of water and suds to wash will be brought to you by the slave girl as well as water skins of drinking water. As from now, Prince, you should not communicate with anyone until the marriage ceremony. Good luck, Prince, and welcome to our family.” The Priest allowed himself a stiff smile, dismounted his throne, and disappeared through a door behind it. I was stunned and flabbergasted and wondered what the Priest’s reasons were for this hasty marriage. One reason is that he is genuinely worried about our proximity and the derogatory notoriety she could gain if we are not married. Second, that I could have some impediment to my willingness or ability to marry his daughter, which indeed I had due to my vow of celibacy following the brutal disruption of my intense loving relationship. Third, Zippora was plain looking and quite coarse from the hard menial labor she was engaged in. She also had some masculine bearings and the Priest was worried about her lack of suitors. She had long passed the customary age of marriage. Hence, Jethro resorted to coercion. Whatever the reasons of Jethro for his browbeating pressure to marry me to his daughter, I felt dazed, bullied and quite humiliated. I secluded myself in my quarters, fasting and contemplating the hypocrisy and manipulation of the High Priest in forcing me to marry his daughter under the guise, exaggerated to say the least, of saving her life. Still, hypocrisy and manipulation make for adjustment and viability and hence survival.

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One must adjust in order to survive and this applies not only to flora, fauna, and humans but also to gods. The henotheistic tribal pantheon of the patriarchs must have changed because it did not fit the transformation of the existence of the Western Semite tribes from wandering shepherds to farmers and city dwellers. The concrete monotheism of Akhenaten is one step of evolution towards a unique and therefore universal God, but it still has to evolve to an abstract, space-less and timeless God to reach the omnipresence and eternity that makes for an absolute, imperishable and indestructible deity. This, according to Ozarzip, would be my role: to elevate the God of the Habiru to the stature of an eternal, immortal, all-embracing God. I could hardly see myself rising from my present abject degradation to the lofty roles assigned to me by Ozarzip. I spent all night and the following day sleeping. It helped me get over the period of fasting preceding my coerced marriage. Also it helped me to assuage my resentment against my bride and father-in-law caused by this major infringement of my freedom of choice. I mulled it over numerous times while I lay on my cot and alternated between somnolence and troubled wakefulness. I came to the ultimate conclusion that since I am in no position to change my compulsory conjugal bonding, I have to relax and make the most of an unpredicted encroachment on my independence. I decided to try and raise a family, which I had not intended to do up to now, and devote myself and my family to build a reputable and reliable medical center at Kadesh Barnea and devote my spirit to distill and purify my ideas as to the ideal nature of a monotheistic abstract creed. This course of action would enable me to be prepared if and when Ozarzip’s prophecy comes true and I am called to play a decisive role in leading the Habiru tribes out of Egypt. I was bewildered, perplexed and quite confused from my brutal catapult into a conjugal bond for which I was not prepared, which I did not wish, and against which I had vowed not to enter. I was also very hungry from my two-day fast and I gulped the only substance which was available, cold spring water. I gorged myself on it and it made me groggy and I mercifully sank into a heavy sleep. Very early the next morning before sunrise, Jethro in his full priestly regalia woke me up. “Prince, wake up, please. We have to prepare you for your great day of holy matrimony. We shall ride on my white horse to the Holy Mountain of Jehovah. Incidentally, you shall receive this very aristocratic and fast race horse as your wedding present. After the prayer, you shall break your fast with unleavened bread and virgin olive oil. Then we shall come back to my temple and I shall perform the marriage ceremony in the presence of

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our family only. I am sorry that you shall be the only member of your original family present. But after the marriage you shall have a large, warm, embracing and protecting extended family. After the wedding ceremony we shall have colorful and spectacular celebrations carried out separately for men and for women. At night you shall have to consummate the marriage. In the morning the evidence of consummation will be presented to the family and you shall be officially declared man and wife. Now hurry, Prince. I shall ask the slave girl to bring a tub of warm water and suds for you to wash. I shall wait for you outside with the horse ready to take us to Mount Halal, the Holy Mountain of Jehovah.” When the slave girl brought in the tub of warm water, I jumped in and rubbed myself vigorously with the suds. I dried myself quickly since I did not want the Priest to wait for me too long. I put on a coarse linen gown and I was ready to go. When I emerged from the Priest’s abode, I saw Jethro on the back of a gorgeous white stallion with two saddles. The priest sat on the front saddle and the rear one was for me. I mounted the steed cautiously and Jethro helped me. He asked me to hold his midriff with my two hands and when I did, the horse started galloping very fast. I held the Priest’s waist very tightly so as not to fall off the horse. I did not have any nausea since I swallowed a double portion of Omri’s sheeba hemlock. Riding on horseback made the distance between Kadesh Barnea and the Holy Mount Halal seem short. I could discern the three crests of the mountain and after an easy trot along the green bank of Egypt Spring we stood in front of one of the spacious caves of the holy mountain. The Priest helped me dismount the horse and after he alighted he led the horse to the stream to drink. The horse drank for quite a while until it slacked its thirst. Jethro then brought the horse to the entrance of the cave and tied it to a pole that was anchored in the loess clay above the cave. The Priest then tied a nose bag full of barley to the horse’s mouth and the animal munched contentedly. We then entered the cave. Muffled sounds that came from the ground filled the inside of the cave with a mysterious multiple echo. The Priest bowed and started to pray, singing with a sonorous low voice in Midianite which, by then, I understood: “The God Jehovah spake these words saying, I am the Lord Jehovah. Thou shall have no other god before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in the heavens above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them, for I am Jehovah thy God.”

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I noticed immediately that that was the first command written for me by Ozarzip when I left Akhet-Aten in haste. Ozarzip was close to Jethro and they met and had mutual respect for each other and hence could have influenced each other’s religious ideas. Or both of them could have been exposed to another common source. Be what may, this clear declaration of abstract monotheism was common both to the Midianites and to the Habiru. I then prayed my favorite prayer in Habiru in which Jethro was fluent. I sang in a soft voice: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, for his Name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointeth my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” “Amen,” the Priest boomed, and his approval echoed throughout the cave. “Let us hurry now, Prince,” the Priest urged. “We have to prepare for the wedding. Our way back seemed to be even quicker than our ride to Holy Mount Halal. Domestic animals like horses, camels and donkeys run faster when returning home than when going away from home. When I entered my quarters, the slave girl brought me a meal to break my fast. Although I was not allowed to see my future wife until the actual wedding, I could see that the meal for breaking my fast was prepared by Zippora. The meal included fresh salted goat cheese, basil with wide aromatic leaves recently picked from the garden, black olives cured by Zippora in salt, and new olive oil pressed from olive trees in Jethro’s orchard. I was so hungry that I wolfed down the meal in large successive gulps and washed it down with red tangy grape juice. After a while the High Priest came into my quarters and brought me a black goldembroidered brocade prince’s gown with the royal insignia of the 18th Egyptian dynasty to wear and a gold double crown representing the two kingdoms replete with a gem studded uraeus to be placed on my head for the wedding ceremony. A black pearl necklace completed my regalia. The priest placed his arm in mine and led me out of the house. A huge open tent was erected on the yard in front of the Priest’s abode. It covered the whole open space of the yard and was divided into two parts, the larger part for male guests and celebrants and the smaller part for the women. The Priest led me to an elevated stage. I must have cut an impressive

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figure clad in royal garb since all the eyes present were glued to my figure led by Jethro. We mounted the elevated stage. Zippora was also dressed from head to foot with black brocade embroidered with gold and studded with red rubies, yellow onyx, white opals kindled by inner fires, and green emeralds. No part of her body could be seen. Only two narrow slits in front of her eyes allowed her to see and two apertures, one on top of the other, allowed her to breathe and eat. Zippora was led to the stage by her mother, a thick matron also clothed from head to foot with gold fastened to her clothes, heavy bracelets and jewelry adorning her feet, hands and neck. When both Zippora and I were standing on the stage, the marriage ceremony started, conducted by her father. He gave me a golden ring and asked me to put it on Zippora’s middle finger and say to her: “With this ring I, Me-Shu the son of Akhenaten, king of Egypt, betroth you, Zippora, daughter of Jethro the High Priest of God, with the blessing of Jehovah, the unique creator of the world, to love and respect each other, for better or for worse, with devotion and friendship, with the grace of God Jehovah until death.” We pressed hands and then the celebrations started. Zippora left to the woman’s compartment and a troupe of Midianite virgin girl dancers clad in pure white linen, the symbol of virginity, started to whirl and twirl around the bride. They were singing the praises and virtues of the bride and throwing wild flowers on her. A troupe of Midianite shepherds emulated a fertility dance of male goats holding the index fingers of both hands imitating the fierce he-goat impressing and fighting for females. The whole tent was sizzling with the fat dripping from skewered lambs and catching fire on brass trays, keeping the lamb meat hot and fresh during the entire ceremony. The slaves were also bringing to the tables fresh fruit, green and crimson grapes, green and violet figs, and yellow and brown dates. Many of the guests came from the four corners of the earth bearing gifts and good wishes. A black Nubian prince brought a camel load of fresh coconuts, Illyrian wine growers brought a load of wine skins bursting with choice Illyrian wine. A delegation from the kingdom of Egypt brought their good wishes and a live elephant. The red Edomites brought copper ores from their Timna mines. And the Amorites brought white and black thoroughbred horses. There were street performers, fire eaters, trapeze dancers, lion tamers clad in lion skins, snake charmers, and fortune tellers. After the celebrations subsided towards evening, Zippora and I retreated to our new conjugal quarters in the Priest’s abode to consummate our marriage. I was tense and tired but I realized the crucial importance of this exercise to both our wellbeing and even our life. The bloodied bed

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cloth has to be exposed to the nuclear family. If the linen remained white, clean and unsoiled, all hell may break loose. When I entered our conjugal bed chamber, Zippora was waiting for me stark naked. I had never seen any bare parts of her body before except her face and the palms of her hands. I was, of course, taken by surprise but not unpleasantly so. She was muscular because of her hard work, yet was well built. Her breasts were large but firm and her nipples were long and erect due to her excitement. Her pelvis was well rounded. The curly black hair on her mons venus was glistening from a generous anointment of oil with a strong odor of Damask perfume. Her legs were muscular but long and shapely. Her natural hair was long and curly and shaped her face into a rather attractive oval. “Prince,” she announced solemnly, “we have a very important task to perform. Show me your member,” she ordered unabashedly and resolutely. “What do you mean?” I enquired bewildered. “Do not argue,” she commanded steadfastly. “Show it to me.” I felt awkward and perplexed but I lifted my gown and lowered my underpants and showed Zippora my member. “I thought so,” she asserted. “Once when you washed and I waited for you in your chambers so we could go together and graze the flock, I had a fleeting glimpse of your member and I thought that you were uncircumcised. Now I am sure! We have to act quickly,” she sounded hurried and harassed. “If it gets known that you married me while uncircumcised they will kill you first and then me as an accessory after the fact.” “So what do we do?” I asked helplessly, still holding my gown up and my underpants down. “Take off your gown and underpants,” she instructed, “and I shall tell you what to do.” I took off my clothes and stood self-consciously in front of my new wife having a premonition that I am being prepared like a lamb for the slaughter. And indeed I was. “I have here a potion,” she showed me a large earthenware jar, tightly sealed. It is a poppy seed solution that I got from Omri, the Amalekite doctor. It is called ‘opium tincture’ and it is the strongest pain killer there is. You, Prince, my husband, will soak your member in it for at least an hour and it will become completely numb. Then I shall circumcise you with this.” She showed me an ominous flint knife which made my balls sink with fright. “Circumcision is not performed with metal knives,” she explained. “You are not going to do this to me,” I stammered horribly.

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“Yes I shall,” she asserted resolutely. It is either this or your head goes rolling down in a basket after the executioner cuts it off with a curved sword. Visualizing the alternative that Zippora described to me vividly, I resigned to my fate and dipped my member in the opium solution. After a while my member indeed felt numb. Zippora brought from the kitchen a wooden board which was used for cutting meat. She put it on the table and asked me to approach. She took my member, pressed it on the board with her left hand and with her right hand she took the flint knife and used it to cut my foreskin. I shrieked more from apprehension than from pain because my member was numb. I did however bleed profusely and Zippora said, “I have now a bloody husband.” Zippora also brought from Doctor Omri a mashed jelly of the aloe vera plant which had both a soothing effect and a blood coagulating impact. She applied a generous portion of the jelly to my member. She then asked me to lie on my back and she started to caress and cajole my member. Apparently a retired courtesan instructed and trained Zippora a couple of weeks before our wedding how to sexually excite her future husband. It seems the ex-courtesan did a competent job and although my member was numb, Zippora succeeded in resurrecting it and produced a remarkable erection. She then mounted me and induced my member to deflower her. She started to bleed abundantly and the bed cloth was soaked through and through by blood. Zippora’s family would no doubt be delighted when the bloody bed cloth would be displayed to them and they would chant “Marriage consummated, consummated, consummated.” Zippora continued riding me with rhythmic movements as if she was riding a horse. After a while Zippora came with a roar and I too followed with a streaming ejaculation that flowed into her vagina and womb. Our marriage was surprisingly calm and orderly after its stormy beginning. Two sons were born to us in close succession. We named the first Gershom because Ger means “a guest” and I have been a guest in a strange land. We named the second Eliezer which means Eli, my God, will help me. Zippora proved to be a good mother and a good wife. She became fluently literate in Midianite and Habiru. Egyptian with its convoluted hieroglyphics was too complicated for her. However, the two languages which she mastered made her a great help in identifying the medical herbs for the herbarium that we started to construct in our home. In fact, Zippora became the main driving force behind the venture. She asked her father to request the spice merchants passing through the oasis of Kadesh Barnea from Egypt on their way to Canaan and Mesopotamia to bring us picture

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directories of the various plants, especially the flora of arid areas. Afterwards we would roam the valleys south of Kadesh Barnea and the Holy Mount Halal and the valley of Arish and, of course, the most familiar valley of the Spring of Egypt for pasture and medical plants. Zippora would carry one of the boys on her back and a wet nurse would bear the other and both of them would search for plants while I grazed the herd. I became quite adept at the vocation of being a shepherd. I taught myself the secrets of animal medicine and delivering the young of goats, sheep, camels, donkeys, horses and cattle. In the evening after we watered and fed the herd and the boys, Zippora and I would sit, identify the various herbs according to their drawings in the scrolls, and prepare them to be dried by the sun. Some of them would be soaked in alcohol to distill their etheric oil that constituted their medical essence. We boiled the aromatic herbs and condensed the vapors into concentrated perfumes. The fleshy cacti would be mashed and a medical jelly would be prepared as ointments for a large assortment of skin diseases. We prepared a special room for the jars of the medicines and placed them in cupboards made of Lebanese cedar. Each cupboard was allocated to medicines for specific diseases like intestines, skin, lungs, eyes and hooves. Gradually the shepherds from Kadesh Barnea and its surroundings started consulting us about the diseases of their animals and purchasing our medicines to treat them. Eventually my renown as the animal doctor spread to Canaan and Egypt. Caravans from Goshen in the Egyptian delta passed through Kadesh Barnea on their way to Canaan. They often stopped at our abode for help to heal a sick animal. The Priest allowed us to build a quarantine area for sick animals. Roaming shepherds and caravan merchants would leave their sick animals in our care so that we could treat them and they would collect the animals on their way back. Year after year passed in a rather quiet and uneventful way and we became quite prosperous as our animal clinic thrived and caravans came to seek our help even from Mesopotamia. The Priest was impressed and allowed us to build a proper quarantine area and animal clinic on the whole yard in front of his abode. We had many helpers and assistant doctors to help us. When our Gershom, whom we lovingly called Geri, became eleven and our second son Eliezer, Eli for short, was ten, we started to teach them animal medicine. They were avid students and in quite a short time they mastered the basic tenets of the art of veterinary medicine. We decided to groom them to take over the now huge herbarium and the animal medical apothecary that occupied by then a whole house. Then

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something formative occurred: I took the flock to graze in the valley of Egypt Spring near the slopes of the Holy Mount Halal. Zippora and the boys stayed at home tending the sick animals and observing the secluded ones in the quarantine area. They also had to classify and arrange the backlog of herbs that we ourselves collected and the plants amassed by the network of scouts we organized among the shepherds of northern Sinai, the Edomite, Amorite and Moabite caravan leaders from Canaan, and the Habiru spice merchants from Goshen. I became quite adept at shepherding, which involved leading the herd, selecting grazing sites, handling emergencies such as snake bites and broken bones, as well as midwifing the delivery of the young. I also became an expert camel rider. Since I became familiar with the various short cuts leading to various grazing sites, I arrived quite early to the slopes of Mount Halal. The sheep and goats flocked to the Egypt Spring to drink and afterwards munched voraciously the juicy luscious green grass on the banks of the spring. I was a bit weary from the camel ride and I sought a spot where I could rest in the shade yet keep an eye on the feeding animals. I found a suitable angle at the mouth of a cave at the foot of the mountain from which I could have a full view of the grazing herd but also hide in the shade. I sat leaning against the sandstone entrance to the cave and refreshed myself with a long gulp from a skin of my favorite green Hebron grape juice. Suddenly I heard a whooshing noise and a jet of gas bursting from the floor of the cave caught fire and cast eerie shadows on the wall of the cave. The center of the flame was blue but farther from the center it became yellow and then orange and red. In the center of the flame in the blue transparent circle all kinds of images formed but the steadiest one was an image of a tree whose branches trembled and danced as if moved by the wind. Then the shadows on the wall swerved and twitched until they became momentarily steady with the image of an angel. I did not believe in magic but I was confident that God speaks to us all the time. We have only to open up and listen to Him. Hence, revelation is no doubt an epiphany of God and the image of the angel is meant to convey a message to me. The whooshing of the burning gas made all kinds of noises and I remembered when I was a small boy at No-Amon that I used to sit near the waterfalls of the Nile and their rhythmic sounds arranged themselves into meaningful words. Thus when I listened to the sounds of the burning gas, they arranged themselves first into my name, repeating Me-shu, Me-shu, Me-shu many times and then formed other words of three syllables: Eh-he-yeh, and kept repeating it continuously, Eh-he-yeh, Eh-he-yeh, Eh-he-yeh, until I grasped the essence of the

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message. It was the Habiru word for continuously being, a flow of an everlasting present future progression. I was so excited by the revelation that divinity was a continuous present that I started to tremble when I realized that the name Jehovah, which was a Midianite denotation of God, means ‘present’ in Habiru. I took it to be an express communiqué from God that his name in Habiru and in Midianite is identical. The Existence in history is godless and profane. The paganisms of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece are profane. The pagan gods depend on Nature, which is determined by temporal sequences, but the revelation of the true God, as evident from my epiphany in the whooshing of the cave in the Holy Mountain, is in the sacred present. The epiphany of the true one God is by the word that one hears and not by an image which is pagan idolatry and hence sacrilegious. Moreover, God speaks to one’s inner self in a maieutic midwife manner, letting me feel as if the word of God has been conceived by me myself following the divine inner trigger. This is, no doubt, the nature of revelation. But does this make me a prophet? I would shudder to think such a hubristic idea and yet I am the only one to hear exclusively the word of God. In pagan Egypt the all-seeing eye of Horus constituted the omnipotence of divinity. Whatever one does not see does not exist. Hence, Egyptian art reveals everything, all members and images are on the painting. Nothing is hidden. Even in three dimensional paintings and sculpture, perspective gives an intuitive understanding of the existence of the clandestine parts of the body. Therefore, traditional Egyptian art has to exhibit to the eyes of the viewer all members of a body and all parts of an object. Words for me are so precious, cherished and adored because of my handicap. Being a stutterer, clear words that are so difficult for me to elucidate must be sacred. And the Logos, the word of God, is indeed divine. The one unique universal God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. He need not see to know and He communicates by the invisible word that penetrates into the inner self of the audience without any outward visible intervening media. Outward transmission is idolatrous. True belief comes exclusively from within. Then a loud sound came from inside the cave and started booming ominously. The earth started to tremble, which I recognized as a precursor to an earthquake. I rushed out of the cave because a quake could topple the cave and me within it. I ran to the Egypt Spring and the earth trembled there too. The animals, including the camels, huddled together in fright. I waited for the earth tremors to subside and then mounted the camel which

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started to run uncontrollably. The entire herd rushed after him. After a while I managed to subdue the camel. Although it stopped running, it trotted quickly. So did the sheep and the goats. I had a bad premonition that stayed with me all the way back to Kadesh Barnea. Indeed when I came to our abode, Jethro met me. His face spelled disaster. He said, “Let us go into the house. Zippora and the boys will take care of the animals.” When we sat in his throne room, Jethro spoke in a low voice almost a whisper. “Horrible news, Prince. The priests of Anon conducted a counter revolution and slaughtered your father and all your family, including Marit-Aten who I know you loved. Ozarzip is also dead. Scores of thousands of functionaries and soldiers loyal to your father were also butchered. Akhet-Aten is all but destroyed. The capital reverted back to No-Amon. The temples of Akhet-Aten and the statutes of the royal family were defaced and the temples and statutes of Amon have been resurrected. The Habiru are in a critical situation since they are treated as traitors and collaborators with the now deposed heretic king.” Jethro continued, “Aaron the Priest has been installed as High Priest of the Habiru. He barely escaped Akhet-Aten with the skin of his teeth. He resides now in Goshen. He sent me word that he has to meet you urgently. He proposes that you meet at the Holy Mountain Halal tomorrow. It will be dangerous for him to meet you since you are now the only member of the royal family who remains alive. So please be careful, Prince.” I rushed to my quarters and threw up for quite a while. Then I sobbed and cried incessantly. Zippora came to my side and comforted me. Then she came with a spice brew. “Drink it,” she recommended gently. “I put a lot of a tranquilizing herb in it. It will calm you down.” I drank a glassful of the calming spice brew. After a while I mercifully slumped into a slumber. I slept all afternoon and all night. Zippora’s tranquilizing potion worked well. In the morning she woke me up. She brought me a simple coarse shepherd’s garb and a wide black head cover to conceal half of my face and thus hide my identity. “You are not a prince anymore,” she declared. “It is too dangerous. The Amon priests are going to hunt you down and kill you. You are not Me-Shu the Prince but Moshé the Midianite shepherd. Your Midianite is fluent by now and without accent. If you suspect that someone doubts your Midianite origin, you could always stammer, which you do anyhow.” “What a thing to say,” I riposted with a hurt demeanor. “I did not mean anything bad,” she countered. “All I want is to protect you.” “I know,” I rejoined. “I am sorry. You are a good wife and mother. I am just over-sensitive because of all the disasters that befell me.”

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“I understand,” She put her hand on my shoulder, a forbidden show of affection for a married Midianite woman even to her husband. She brought me my favorite dish of unleavened bread and salted goat cheese, laced with olive oil and garnished with a generous bouquet of fresh basil. She also brought a boiling kettle of spice brew. “I put a pepping solution to counter the sleep inducing tranquilizer I gave you yesterday. I do not want you to fall asleep on the camel and, God forbid, fall off. You have to hurry. Guards who protect the High Priest Aaron are going to wait for you at Mount Halal by midday sharp. I wanted to arrive at the holy mountain somewhat earlier and see whether the whooshing flame is still in the cave and perchance experience another formative revelation. The camel trotted quickly but being impatient I spurred the animal into running. The desert wind was quite hot and my head cover covering the lower half of my face indeed protected me from the dust and the flying pebbles kicked up by the feet of the running camel. I must have looked like one of the nomadic Libu who roamed the western desert. I indeed arrived quite early to the Holy Mount Halal. I let the camel drink at the Egypt Spring. Having run so fast, he drank a large amount of water to slake his thirst and refill the depleted reservoir of water in his hump. I then tied a nose bag that was full of barley to his head. He munched the grain contentedly. I ran up the slope of the Holy Mountain and rushed to the cave, but there was no fire. However, two sentries stood at the mouth of the cave and accosted me. They asked why I was there and I explained that I came to meet Aaron ben Amram, the Habiru High Priest. They introduced themselves by saying, “We serve in the company of the body guards of the High Priest. We are the advance unit and came to check the security at the site of the meeting of the High Priest with his interlocutors. May we ask your identity,” they demanded formally. “I am Moshé, a Midianite shepherd,” I replied. “Since the High Priest is due to meet his royal highness, Prince MeShu, we shall have to ask you to stay with us until the meeting actually takes place,” they declared. “I shall not quibble with you,” I said, “but I have one request. My camel is feeding down below on the banks of the spring. I shall have to bring him up and tie him to the metal pole at the mouth of the cave.” “We have no problem with that, but we shall accompany you,” they answered. They descended with me to fetch the camel and then ascended back to the cave in complete silence. Their mouths were clamped as if guarding

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the secrets of the state. I then tied up the camel to the metal pole and crouched near the animal manifesting an empathy with the camel who had become over the years my closest companion apart from my nuclear family. After a while, a whole company of body guards appeared riding on horseback. Half of the company surrounded the Holy Mountain on horseback and the other half dismounted and the guards searched the caves for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary. The captain of the guards arrived to the cave where the two sentries watched over me. I stood up in reverence and the captain started to interrogate me. Just then I saw the carriage of Aaron near the slopes of the mountain. He was fully dressed in his robes of office. The breastplate, called the Hoshen, on his chest had twelve multicolored gems that sparkled in the midday sun. His carriage was escorted by sentries on horseback armed to their teeth with swords, spears, and bows and arrows. When he saw me, he waved to me. The captain noticed it and instead of questioning me, he escorted me to Aaron’s carriage. When we reached the carriage, the captain bowed to the High Priest. Aaron invited me to join him and the captain helped me mount the carriage. I fell on his chest and started to sob bitterly. The sentries eyed me with distrust but the captain of the guards looked away discreetly. Aaron embraced me lovingly and stroked my back gently while I wet his chest and his shoulders with my tears. I must have wept for quite a while until my sack of tears dried up and left a black hole of unrequited grief inside my soul. When I disengaged myself from Aaron’s embrace, I moved some distance away for better perspective and viewed him intensely. “Look at you,” I exclaimed. “You hardly changed. Only a few grey hairs in your beard, which became bushy.” I embraced him again lovingly and pleaded, “Tell me all brother. I am crushed with grief and mourning. I hardly know what happened and do not know what to expect. I am tormented by horrible premonitions so please enlighten me, my brother.” Aaron leaned back and answered in a grim voice. “The situation could not be worse, my brother. All the Egyptian populace blames the ills of your late father’s regime, may his soul rest in peace, on us, the Habiru people. We have been, no doubt, his closest collaborators. He chose us to be his trusted allies and functionaries since the Egyptians despised his religious revolution.” “Their negative attitude towards us turned into stark hatred because of our role as tax collectors. Especially Korah, Dotan and Aviram, unfortunately of our own tribe, who bled the Egyptian populace white.

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They were totally corrupt, augmenting the levy of the taxes so that a greater share would go to themselves. They became notoriously rich through their extortion and bribery. ‘To be rich like Korah’ became a negative expression throughout Egypt. Of course, they have been instrumental in defaming the whole Habiru people.”

CHAPTER TEN A VISIT TO GENERAL HOREMHEB

“These guards and sentries that you see around me,” Aaron said, “are not by choice but by necessity. The Habiru people, especially those with official functions like me, are in mortal danger and we have to protect ourselves. Thank God, General Horemheb is the power behind the throne. The corrupt double-crossing Ay, the pharaoh who was instrumental in helping the vile Amon clergy come back to power, leaves all the administrative control to Horemheb. The General recognizes the great contribution of the Habiru people, both spiritually and materially, to the Egyptian culture. Therefore, he tries to curb the Habiru baiting by the Egyptian people and especially by the vengeance seeking Amon clergy.” “I went to see General Horemheb at his palace in Moph not very far from Goshen. He urged me to find a way for the Habiru people to leave Egypt as soon as possible. Otherwise, we are courting disaster.” Aaron told me that Horemheb remembered me fondly when we both played in my father’s court. “Why don’t we go together to see him at his palace,” Aaron suggested. “It is a shot in the dark but maybe your presence might be conducive to his devising a positive solution to an impossible quandary.” “Of course, my brother,” I agreed enthusiastically. “I shall do everything to save my brethren. Just notify me a day or two in advance and I shall be there in your service and for the welfare of your people who are my people.” Aaron embraced me again and declared that our meeting with General Horemheb seems to him the only course of action that has any promise of a way out from the dead-end situation that the Habiru people have been forced into. Therefore, he will do his utmost to organize this encounter as soon as possible. Aaron then apologized that as much as he would like to spend more time with me, he had to go back to Goshen because he has to attend to the affairs of the Habiru community, which numbered about 3,000 people of which he became the titular head.

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“Of course, my brother,” I responded. “I am longing to commune with you like in the good old days, carrying on a dialogue about the wisdom of God. But in these horrible times, I need your company and counsel more than ever. Especially I have to know more about the fate of my beloved and our friends in Akhet-Aten.” “I am sorry, brother,” Aaron answered with a great sadness. “No one remained. All were consumed by the scourge of the vengeful Amon priests. We even do not know their burial sites except for Ozarzip who closed himself into his sarcophagus after taking poison. He gave orders to engrave his name on the sarcophagus in the Habiru language as Joseph so that only we, the Habiru, could read and recognize it. It is now buried in a secret place in my temple at Goshen.” My tears started to flow again and he embraced me warmly in farewell. I stayed waving after he left and stood until Aaron’s carriage and caravan disappeared from the area. I then mounted my camel, which trotted slowly and carried me and my heavy heart towards Kadesh Barnea. The afternoon sun’s rays slanted towards the west where Aaron disappeared with heavy foreboding. I did not really share Aaron’s optimism about the outcome of our meeting with General Horemheb but it looked like the only course of action open to us. After a couple of days a courier pigeon arrived from the temple of Aaron, the High Priest of Goshen, to Jethro, the Priest of God at Kadesh Barnea. The message it carried stated that a carriage and a caravan would come in the morning of the 3rd day of the month to bring me to a meeting with General Horemheb at his palace at Moph. High Priest Aaron will also be present at this meeting. I was very excited by this news. Maybe Ozarzip’s prediction will come true after all and I might have a role in the redemption of the Habiru people. Also, since that revealing encounter with the whooshing flame at the cave of the Holy Mountain, I kept experiencing direct transmissions of communications into my inner self that can only be interpreted as divine messages and this adds a metaphysical dimension to Ozarzip’s prophecy. These communications could only be interpreted as the word of God and a token of his decision to speak to me alone. This also explained my stammering and my painful difficulties with outside communication. God wants me to be almost completely attuned to my inner self to the exclusion of messages coming from the outside. The voice from within makes for unity since one can hear only one word at a time, and for abstraction since hearing has no image unlike seeing which is conducive to idolatry. The Aten is, of course, unique but not completely abstract. Hence, we have to be in the desert and be formatively exposed to monotony and

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monochromatism and ascetic living in order to be tutored into the purity of unique abstraction. We could accept the inchoate abstraction and unity and exhort: ‘Hear, my People. Aten-Aden-Adonai is our God’ but complement it with the declaration that Jehovah is the complete, abstract and One God. I was engulfed by the enormity of my mission to meet with General Horemheb because it might become the initiation of an arduous process of redeeming our people from the yoke of Egyptian paganism and embarking upon the route to the purity of the abstract unity of the religion of the desert. On the 3rd of the month early in the morning I was already waiting for the carriage and caravan sent by Aaron that would bring me to General Horemheb. Zippora and the boys, who became hefty and impressive young men, came to see me off. When we sighted the carriage and caravan which came for me, I embraced them and told them not to worry and that I shall be in touch with them daily by courier pigeon. The caravan was manned by a unit of High Priest Aaron’s guards. The driver was an officer of the guards, a taciturn young man who said only one sentence during the whole trip: “By the order of High Priest Aaron, I should accompany his royal highness Prince Me-Shu and deliver him safe and sound to the palace of General Horemheb at Moph.” The route from Kadesh Barnea on the banks of Egypt Spring leading to the Holy Mountain Halal, as well as the valley of the Arish Spring flowing by the mountains of Ya’alek and Marara then passing through the oases of Masana and Kafkafa on its way to the great Bitter Lake on the eastern outskirts of the delta of the Nile is well known to me. I have traveled it scores of times grazing my herds and collecting herbs for our ever growing medical herbarium. Since my uncommunicative driver was reluctant to indulge in conversation, I quietly contemplated the likelihood that Aaron and I would make any headway in our meeting with General Horemheb. I quickly surveyed the career of this remarkable man since the time we knew each other as teenagers in my father’s palace in No-Amon. He was the son of a captain of the guards and an aspiring soldier. Short, stocky, physically powerful and astute with people. He was single-minded and ruthless in his military ambitions and after joining my father’s elite bodyguard regiment, he quickly rose in the ranks. As for his career after the death of my father, I collected the information from Jethro, my father-in-law. He became a young general commanding the palace guards of the short-lived rather insignificant Pharaoh Tutankhamun. After Tutankhamun died, his ambitious widow, Queen Ankhesenamun, had the high-falutin and supercilious plan to marry

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the crown prince of the powerful Hittite Emperor Suppiluliuma. The Hittite emperor agreed and sent his son to marry the widow queen. If this marriage would have taken place, a Hittite prince would have become the king of Egypt. Horemheb plotted successfully with Ay, my father’s double-crossing counselor, to kill both the queen and her Hittite suitor and make Ay Pharaoh. The aging and ailing Ay gave Horemheb all the administrative power of both Egyptian kingdoms, not out of choice but as an ultimatum of the Army of which Horemheb became the all-powerful chief of staff. Therefore, Horemheb is not only the power behind the throne but since the days of Ay as Pharaoh are numbered, Horemheb could succeed him any day now. The outcome of our encounter with the general may be predicated on one fact known to us, important no doubt, but not conclusive. There are unknown factors that may tilt the course of the meeting to unknown and, in all probability, contradictory directions. The only known solid fact about General Horemheb is his complete pragmatism. He never was a member of a faction or of a religion. Even when he was the commander of my father’s bodyguards, he did not convert to the religion of the Aten. He always was and still is a lone wolf. However, being a realist, he will weigh the pros and cons of any action for his own welfare first and Egypt’s wellbeing and prosperity second. Hence, we can expect everything or nothing from our meeting. I therefore decided to discard my futile guesses as to the outcome of our meeting with the General. My meandering thoughts about our meeting with Horemheb seem to have absorbed me completely and I hardly noticed that we had reached the outskirts of the city of On, not far from the eastern bank of the Nile. Moph was not very far south on the western bank. When we arrived opposite the city of Moph on the east side of the Nile, it appeared to be smaller and more compact than the sprawling city of On. Both my carriage and the caravan of the High Priest’s guard embarked on a ferry to go to the western side of the river. A military escort was waiting for us to bring us to the General. Moph was not only the abode of Horemheb but also the camp of the headquarters of the Egyptian Army of which the General was chief of staff. For logistic reasons, the army camp was right on the western bank of the Nile. The sentries at the gate of the army camp saluted our escort of two officers on horseback rather reverently by bowing and lowering their right arm to the level of their knees and rotating the spear in their left hand to a horizontal position. Apparently, the members of our escort were high ranking officers.

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We reached the central building in the camp, a massive edifice of sandstone, seemingly the command post of the General. My taciturn driver saluted for farewell with his right hand lowered to his knees and so did the camel riders. The escort officers dismounted from their horses and two sentries saluted low and led the horses to their stables. My two escorting officers led me to a room at the back of the edifice. The two sentries recognized my escorting officers, saluted low, and opened the heavy Lebanese cedar door. We entered a huge ornate room lined with red marble at the far edge of which was an outsize table and behind which was situated an outsize throne of dark wood inlaid with jewels. At its top was a double gold crown of the two kingdoms and a cobra uraeus. Horemheb who had gained considerable weight since I saw him last sat on the throne and two almost naked black Nubian girls clad only with a narrow loin cloth stood on each side of the general waving decorated palm leaves to circulate the air. The escorting officers saluted and left. When Horemheb saw me he left his throne and ran towards me, embraced me, and wept on my shoulders. “Oh Prince Me-Shu,” he sobbed. “How glad am I to see you after all these years. You remember how as children we used to poke fun at Ozarzip the Viceroy? He used to dose off on his throne after a night of heavy drinking and fornication with the boys. We used to steal his long wig. And the bald patches on his scalp made him look unkempt and ugly. Ozarzip was vain and took great pains to beautify himself. When he woke up and touched his naked scalp, he must have gathered how desolate, messy and disheveled he looked. He grabbed a short Nubian wig from the head of one of the litigants who came to plead with him and put it on his head with its front in back. He looked awkward but better than the bald patches, the result of badly cured ringworm. How we laughed, my dear Me-Shu,” the sobbing of the general changed into glee and he banged his thighs with laughter. “Let us go to a more cozy place,” Horemheb suggested, and led me to a divan room where special guests may be entertained discreetly. It had heavy carpets on the floor. Numerous cushions stuffed with lamb’s wool and upholstered with blue, red and turquoise damask silk were strewn in profusion and disorder on the carpets. Low tables were stuffed with sugared almonds, raisins, and dried figs. We squatted leisurely on the cushions. Slave boys and girls, naked except for loin cloths, served white and red Illyrian wines that they squeezed from wine skins: black for red and green for white. Horemheb drank everything: red wine, white wine, and chasers of distilled grape alcohol that the slaves poured from opaque earthenware bottles into tiny golden cups. I asked for grape juice.

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“Ah, Prince Me-Shu,” the General admonished. “Always the puritan, forever the ascetic.” Just then Aaron came into the divan room accompanied by the captain of the guards. The High Priest bowed low towards the General and came to embrace me. I rose towards him and held him for a long while close to my chest. Then he sat on a cushion forming a threesome with Horemheb and me. The captain left the divan room discreetly. I looked at Aaron. He was an imposing figure. His blue and gold embroidered ephod looked good on his tall and well-built torso. It had two onyx stones on which the names of the twelve Habiru tribes were engraved, six on each stone. The two onyx stones were framed by pouches of gold and these were fastened to the shoulders of the ephod. The Hoshen, the breastplate of judgment, was fastened on the front of the ephod. It had twelve stones, each engraved with the name of a tribe of the Habiru. They were set in the breastplate in four rows of three each. The first row had a red sardius, a blue topaz and a brown carbuncle. The second row shined with a green smargd, a blue sapphire, and a white diamond. The third row contained a golden ligure, a white-violet agate, and a crimson crystalline amethyst. The fourth row flashed a spiraled beryl, a dark onyx, and a burgundy jasper. His beard had streaks of white in it as did his side curls. His head was covered by a white turban, lined with blue threads. His eyes under bushy eyebrows were burning with a single-minded purpose. The stones of the Hoshen were sparkling on the General and me with rays of grace. When asked what would be his pleasure in drinks by one of the slaves, he answered, “Grape juice.” The General who was already somewhat tipsy retorted, “So I am the only sinner among you saints.” The slaves started to bring in trays of food. A slave girl brought a tray with a sizzling roasted leg of lamb, garnished by rosemary, sage and allspice for the General. She placed it on the low table in front of Horemheb. He pinched her tight buttocks, producing a playful cry signifying willingness and familiarity. He grabbed the searing leg of lamb and emitted a shriek of pain. “The wages of greed is burning,” he quipped and asked for a towel. When one of the slaves brought him a linen towel, he wrapped it around the leg of lamb and grabbed it by his right hand and started to devour it voraciously with his strong teeth and square jaw. He gulped down a large slice of lamb meat with mouthfuls of red wine. In between mouthfuls, he announced, “I engaged a special Habiru cook for you, High Priest. He is knowledgeable about your elaborate dietary laws.” “I shall also like to have Habiru food,” I interjected.

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“What do you know,” exclaimed the General. “Today is the day of surprises. As you wish.” The slaves brought Aaron and me a stew of fowl and barley and we started to eat. “And now to business,” the General announced, gulping down a generous mouthful of red wine. “My dear Prince and High Priest. Life, health and prosperity, my friends.” He used the customary words Egyptians used and then continued to convey his material message. “The situation of our legitimate subjects, the Habiru, a very valuable and industrious tribe in our mesh of many peoples and ethnic groups, became critically precarious and dangerous due to the following reasons. They are identified completely with your late father and his religious revolution that is now discredited by the new regime and its religious backers, the hierarchy of the Amon pagan clergy. The Habiru constituted the rank and file of the tax collectors for the late Pharaoh and hence the front representing the oppression, extortion and corruption of the regime. Not all but some Habiru tax collectors were corrupt, notably Korah, Dotan and Aviram who became heavy with gold and diamonds by crookedly wringing, wresting and squeezing the Egyptian populace. These corrupt tax collectors gave a bad name to your whole tribe and kindled the hatred, detestation, and indeed loathing of your whole people including the worthy ones who no doubt were many. My friends,” Horemheb banged the table with drunken force as he stated, “we have to act quickly and radically to avert a violent catastrophe against your people which is indeed imminent.” “Your warning is well taken,” responded Aaron in bewildered anxiety, “but what shall we do. We shall obey every single suggestion of yours to the hilt because we know that you are a friend.” I thought to myself that Aaron learned the art of flattery as an aid of survival. The General asked his adjutant to bring him a map of the Nile delta with all the channels of the river flowing into the sea clearly marked on it. The adjutant rushed and brought in a rolled parchment and left. Horemheb asked us to come closer to his table which we did. He unrolled the parchment and placed it on his low table. He asked the slaves to fill four glasses with wine and placed them on the four corners of the map to keep it spread out. He crouched on his knees in front of the map and asked us to do likewise, which we did. “I have done my homework, friends,” the General announced assertively, “and I shall show you exactly now what we should do.” He pointed the fat index finger of his right hand at the map. “You see the easternmost path of the Nile running from Moph through On, then

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right through the land of Goshen where most of the Habiru live, then through Raamses, and then it flows into the sea. You shall have to leave Egypt as soon as you can and your route will cross this channel. “Where should we go?” asked Aaron surprised. “To Canaan, of course, where you came from,” answered the General, as if it was the only solution. “Mark my word, High Priest. I have my intelligence and the information is unequivocal. Either you leave Egypt or, due to the pent up hatred against your people, the alternative is going to be, God forbid, a massacre. Although I am a general, I hate bloodshed, especially a senseless carnage against innocent people like most of the Habiru. Hence, let me show you, High Priest and Prince Me-Shu, what we are going to do in order to help your people go back to the land of your fathers that was promised to your patriarchs by your God.” The General reached for one of the glasses of wine holding the map steady to replenish his energies and drank it thirstily. The corner of the map on which the wine glass stood curled back. A slave rushed to put another glass in its stead and filled it up with red wine. “Please come closer,” Horemheb asked us and we crawled on our knees nearer to the table and looked at the map at the point indicated by the right index finger of the General. It was the town of Pithom in the land of Goshen, on the east side of the easternmost channel of the Nile. Pithom was also just north of the entrance of the Royal Canal to the Red Sea via Tumilat, Lake Timsah and the Big Bitter Lake. “As you know,” Horemheb explained, “the Royal Canal is only used for larger boats during the flood stage of the Nile from late summer to mid-winter. During those months, water can be diverted into the canal to reduce downstream flooding in the Delta. During the spring and summer, all the Nile water is needed for irrigation in the Delta.” “When the canal was first built, we didn’t have pairs of locks. We only had a single lock at the Pithom entrance. When we opened that lock, the Bitter Lake became much less salty and rose to sea level allowing the migration of organisms from the Red Sea to reach the Nile where they did not have any natural enemies. The results were horrendous. The downstream Nile turned red and became undrinkable, and then we had plagues of frogs, lice, wild creatures and some pestilence that killed a lot of cattle.” I interrupted the General and asked, “Why wasn’t the canal built from the Bitter Lake north to the Great Sea, from salt water to salt water, so that it did not contaminate the water of the Nile?”

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“Now that’s a good question,” said Horemheb with a smile. “Our water engineers actually recommended doing that. But a canal that long that did not follow a pre-existing river valley would take so long to build that it could never be completed during the lifetime of any Pharaoh. And no Pharaoh wanted to start such an expensive project knowing that he would never get credit for it.” “Today, the Bitter Lake is again lower than the Nile and the Red Sea. So we now have pairs of canal locks at the Pithom entrance, on both sides of the Bitter Lake, and at the Red Sea exit. Usually we only allow enough water to flow into the area between a pair of locks to enable boats to enter or exit at the higher level. And we allow enough water to flow out of that area to enable boats to enter or exit at the lower level.” “In the vicinity of Pithom, the difference in elevation between the Nile and the Bitter Lake is now greater than the height of the Nile above sea level. When the Nile is not at flood stage, simultaneously opening all of the canal locks on this side of the Bitter Lake causes the water in the canal to flow faster than the Nile itself. This will cause the river bed downstream from the canal entrance to become almost dry. The water should not be more than ankle deep. My water engineers tell me that the locks can be left open for not more than five hours. Keeping them open longer would cause the Bitter Lake to again reach sea level. This would enable water from the Red Sea to reach the Nile and that would again cause disastrous plagues. So you will have a maximum of five hours during which your people can cross the Pithom channel on almost dry land towards the desert of Shur. Now, how many are you?” enquired the General. “About three thousand,” replied Aaron. “Hu-ha,” exclaimed Horemheb in surprise. “That is a lot of people,” he announced with astonishment. “My friends,” his voice became shrill with urgency. “You have to act quickly. You have to organize your mass of people into natural cohorts. Do you have some easily discernible groups among your people?” interrogated Horemheb, ever falling back on to his forte, administration and organization, whenever he encountered a problem. Usually it worked and it did now. “Yes, General,” reposted Aaron. “We have 12 tribes.” “Excellent!” exclaimed Horemheb. Gratified that his concept of operational control also paid off this time, he took another glass of red wine from the edge of the map spread on the low table to celebrate a minor triumph and gulped it down. The weightless edge of the map rolled up, of course. The slaves familiar with the drinking habits of their master rushed to replace the glass on that edge of the map and filled it up with red Illyrian wine.

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“When you go back to Goshen, invite the tribe chieftains in all urgency to your abode,” the General ordered. “Not all the tribes have chieftains,” said Aaron apologetically. “So appoint new ones,” commanded Horemheb with a trace of impatience creeping into his voice, “without any delay.” “Certainly, General,” complied Aaron. “Your wish is our command.” Apparently, Aaron decided to not contradict Horemheb since the General was notorious for the short fuse of his temper. Although appointing chieftains might not be so difficult, it seemed to me that organizing disbanded tribes so they could cross a channel of the Nile in a short span of time and in an orderly manner would be difficult and would require proficiencies that neither Aaron nor I possess. I decided to cross that bridge when we reach it and just now to pay attention to the more urgent matters raised by the General. He talked quite tipsily. Based on the amount of wine that he drank, he should have been flat on his back but apparently he had a mighty liver. He raised the issue of the multitude of criminals, ex-cons and prisoners, some of them serial murderers, who were released by the Amon clergy and are now roaming Pharaoh Ay’s palace for the main purpose of baiting the Habiru. “I have stationed a whole regiment,” stated the General with great empathy, “to serve as a buffer between our riff-raff and the Habiru people. This regiment serves as a barrier to secure the well-being of your people. Let me say this,” the General became resolutely articulate, “our aim is to get rid of our riff-raff coincidental to our getting rid of you.” Horemheb emitted a drunken chuckle at what he considered to be a witty wise-crack. “My plan is,” he winked at us, “to let the bulwark of the buffering regiment disappear once you have passed the easternmost channel of the Nile in the delta just north of Pithom and let the riff-raff rush after the Habiru tribes. Little would they know that once they reach the Pithom channel, all the canal locks will have been closed and the Nile will again follow its customary course and wash our human scum into the Great Sea. We thus solve two of our major problems with one stroke.” He banged on his sizable belly with his two hands and burst into a drunken laughter. I had a hunch that if sober he would not have divulged this testy secret to us. “When is all this meant to happen?” asked Aaron cautiously. “Well,” the General was hesitant for the first time in our encounter, “not while Pharaoh Ay is still alive. It will be one of my first tasks as Pharaoh. As you know, Pharaoh Ay is old and ailing. My doctors tell me that he would not live past the end of this year which is in about three

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months. Unless,” the General chuckled nervously, “we help him leave earlier.” Horemheb felt that he should not have said that and added quickly, “This is a joke, of course. The body and soul of the Pharaoh are sacred.” I was not convinced that he was joking and he probably divulged his clandestine intentions because of excessive drink. “You should, therefore, be ready, my friends, and make all the preparatory steps for the operation to be launched in the very near future.” He stood up and embraced each of us and kissed our cheeks with wet slobbering kisses emitting strong vapors of alcohol from his mouth. This farewell signified that our meeting was over. On our way back to Goshen, I rode with Aaron in his High Priest’s carriage. It was night and the carriage was covered. Hence the secrecy of our encounter with the General, which was paramount to the probabilities of the success of the operation, was well guarded. My arrival at Horemheb’s palace at Moph was insignificant because I was now unknown to the Egyptian people whereas Aaron travelled from Goshen to Moph incognito, covered by a black shawl from head to toe. At the beginning of our trip back, we hardly talked. We were overwhelmed by the enormity of the tasks awaiting us. We really did not know where to begin, how to organize the mostly disordered, disrupted, and chaotic tribes for an exodus from the country of their birth, a lush green fertile land, into the dry, parched, arid desert which, for them, signified death. Moreover, this massive exit of about 3,000 people should take place in a few months.

CHAPTER ELEVEN PREPARATION FOR THE EXODUS

When we left the outskirts of Moph, we waited for the ferry that would take us to the east bank of the Nile. From there we would proceed to Pithom, the town on the east side of the easternmost channel of the Nile, the site of the exodus of the Habiru people to the Sinai desert. This would happen when we receive a directive from General Horemheb to do so after he becomes Pharaoh. We shall pass again by a ferry to the west side of the Pithom channel into the land of Goshen. Finally we shall reach our destination, the High Priest’s abode in the town of Zoan, the capital of the land of Goshen. Aaron broke his taciturn silence when we disembarked the ferry and proceeded on our ride to On. “The late Ozarzip knew what he was talking about when he predicted,” Aaron began, “that you, Prince …” “Not Prince,” I interjected, “but brother Moshé, the shepherd from Kadesh Barnea.” “Alright, brother Moshé,” Aaron repeated, a bit of bemusement creeping into his voice. “You and I are destined for greatness. You see, brother, we have been ordered by the General, the future Pharaoh, to do nothing less than save our people, the Habiru nation, from being slaughtered by Egyptian murderers by leading our people out to the Sinai desert and from there to Canaan, the Promised Land.” “Have you thought, brother,” I asked cautiously, “how to proceed to implement this gigantic task?” “I have, my dear brother,” Aaron answered, “but it will take all our might, nerve and sinew to coordinate, marshal and prepare our disordered, harassed and discredited people into a manageable and orderly community that can safely pass over the Pithom channel into the Sinai desert without casualties during the short time allotted to us.” “So what should we do, brother? I am sorry I keep querying you,” I apologized, while stammering badly, “but I want to familiarize myself with the details of our complicated and stupendously hazardous task so that I know better how to combine forces with you to carry out this seemingly impossible mission.”

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“Certainly, brother,” Aaron reassured me, “we have to familiarize ourselves with every detail in order to have a fair chance of success. Two of our Habiru maxims are that God speaks to us in the details of any task and that whoever does not believe in miracles is out of touch with reality.” Aaron smiled self-deprecatingly at his unwarranted optimism. “My dear brother, let us plunge into the details of our operation while focusing on its processes and not necessarily on its ultimate outcome. Thus we shall familiarize ourselves with its step-by-step implementation without being awed by its incredible hardships, obstacles and obstructions. First, my brother,” Aaron pointed the index finger of his right hand at me, reminding me of the oratorical gimmicks of the late Ozarzip, “we have to take a census of the Habiru people at Goshen to include all males from age twenty upwards by the house of their fathers and bridal affiliation. Second,” Aaron lowered the middle finger of his right hand and held it close to his index finger with his left hand, “we have to appoint chieftains to our tribes to be responsible to us as required by the General.” “Do you know who should be appointed? After all, this is a most crucial step.” “I do have a fair notion who would be able to be a leader of his tribe from the point of view of his personal charisma and rectitude. He must also be loyal to us and to our God. Otherwise he will stray away from his calling, vocation and ideals. He must put the welfare of the community and the law of God above his own interests. Third,” Aaron pressed the ring finger of his right hand to the other two with his left hand, “we have to send emissaries to all Habiru communities in the two Egyptian kingdoms to migrate as clandestinely as possible by travelling at night in covered boats on the Nile to the land of Goshen. The emissaries must convince them that they are in mortal danger if they do not leave their homes and come to be protected in Goshen by the regiments of General Horemheb. Fourth,” Aaron pressed his little finger to the other three, “we shall have to train our people and drill them on moonless nights how to pass over the Red Sea channel in a quick and orderly …” “You mean the Pithom channel?” “Yes, but we often call it the Red Sea channel because it is the only one that has an entrance to the Royal Canal that goes to the Red Sea.” “Your ideas are good ones, brother, and I shall be honored to take directives from you.” “No,” Aaron replied empathetically, “since the episode of the burning bush in the cave of the Holy Mountain that you related to me, God, no doubt, speaks directly to your inner self. So you give the orders and I shall

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be your mouthpiece and executive. This is how it was ordained and this is how it will be.” I was too tired to argue and I said nothing. As we approached On, we saw that a fertility rite was being staged on the roof of the open air ‘Temple of the Goddess of Heaven’ with priests and dignitaries as audience. This Temple was brand new, built after the demise of my father’s regime. The roof was lit by many torches so it was visible from afar. Because we were riding quite near to the temple, we could discern the details of the fertility rite. It was performed in front of a fresco on a welllit wall depicting the creation of the world. Shu, the God of life, separates his daughter Nut, the sky Goddess, from the primeval embrace of her husband-brother Geb, the earth God. Geb remains lying on his back, his huge ithyphallic penis pointing in unfulfilled agonized desire at his wifesister Nut, who is being held up by Shu, her father, as a sky. He declares her sexual possession by his right hand clutching her nipple while his left hand is immersed in her crotch announcing full mating dominion of his daughter. Incest in Egypt was not only allowed but seems to be a favorite passion of parents towards their children. Shu, the father, declares his exclusive sexual dominion of his daughter to the exclusion of her mate Geb. Poor Geb, however, was laying there under his usurped consort and pointing his unfulfilled penis in a universal erection to the sky, motivating thus the creation of the world and its creatures by his wife who was impregnated by her father and continued to be inspired to creativity by her and his unfulfilled passions. Slave boys and girls were copulating in front of the divine fresco while the audience clapped their hands in time with the thrusts of the mating pelvises. At the end of the fertility rite, a Herald appeared on the stage and announced happily that since Nut married Geb, her brother, without the permission of Ra, the Sun God, the chief of the On pantheon, she was proscribed from giving birth during the days of the official moon year. But thanks to the fertility rites performed here on the roof of the Nut Temple, Thoth, the herald of the Gods, played Senet with the moon and added five extra days at the end of the year during which Nut could give birth to five more children, the gods Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis and Nephthys. When we left On, we moved along the easternmost delta channel on our left towards the town of Pithom where our exodus from Egypt should take place. I found my voice and spoke to Aaron. “You well know, my brother,” I began stammering painfully, “that I cannot speak in front of

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crowds. I shall become a laughing stock the moment I open my mouth and your authority as High Priest will also be blemished if you are identified with me.” “Don’t worry, brother,” Aaron placated me, “we shall complement each other the way we did in your late father’s, may his soul rest in peace, palace. You had the insights, the inner visions, the intuition, the mental revelations and I immediately perceived them in my inner psyche in a clandestine manner by a transmission from yourself to myself in a direct non-verbal communication. Our souls are entwined together in a miraculous manner and we do not have to speak. We sense each other through our subterranean consciousnesses. So be calm, brother, you are the prophet and I am your mouthpiece and so be it from now on as ordained by God.” It seemed that I had no choice but to accept Aaron’s directives since he presented it as a divine decree. We neared the town of Pithom and the Nile’s channel on our left rushed in high and mighty waves north to the sea like a seething caldron. Its boiling foam seemed impassable. I decided that we have to check very carefully the General’s information as to the behavior of the Pithom channel after the flood stage ends and all the Royal Canal locks on our side of Bitter Lake are open because right now it looks as if the Nile’s flood stage rushing waters sprout directly from hell. When our carriage was carried by the ferry to the western side of the channel at Pithom, the passage was so stormy that I was sure that we shall drown before reaching the western bank. I heard Aaron mumble a prayer and maybe because of his piety we barely made it to the other side with the skin of our teeth. The last leg of our trip to Zoan, the capital of Goshen, was uneventful. We rode through the lush green fertile land of the Nile delta. We saw sweet corn, sugar gum to feed the cattle, wheat for the famous white unleavened bread of Goshen, and barley for the brewers of the beer consumed by the Habiru in enormous quantities. The contrast between the horn of plenty at the fecund, luxuriant and teeming land of Goshen and the arid, barren and sterile Sinai desert made me quite apprehensive. I could already hear the whining complaints and bemoaning of the pampered Habiru blaming Aaron and me for tearing them away from the plentiful abundance of Goshen to die from hunger and thirst in the desert. Aaron reminded me that I shall have to stay with him in Zoan for an indefinite period until we prepare the Habiru people for their fateful exodus. “You should better notify your family about it by courier pigeon.” “Of course, brother,” I concurred, “I can feel the flapping of the eagle’s wings kindling the fires of the divine calling within my inner self.” When we arrived at the High Priest’s abode at Zoan, I noted the rather small,

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unassuming and austere edifice in line with the ascetic nature of Aaron and his conception of the Habiru religion and its contrast to the ostentation of the Egyptian pagan palaces and temples. Once inside, I was struck by the puritanical, frugal and nomadic minimalism of the interior of the abode as if it tried to emulate the ambiance of a tent. Aaron showed me my quarters in his abode. Indeed it was devoid of any decorations, ornaments and embellishments. It had a simple sleeping cot, coarse linen, woolen blankets, and a wash basin. The only luxuries were a thick, soft, multicolored carpet on the floor depicting a hunting scene and a Lebanese cedar low table inlaid with mother-of-pearl. There were no Egyptian slaves in the High Priest’s abode, only a parttime girl servant who cleaned my room and prepared my meals. She was a teenage girl, covered from neck to hands and feet by a blue and white gown, a sign of pure virginity. Her name was Rebecca, like the mother of Jacob and Esau. She was a Levite from Aaron’s tribe and related remotely to his wife Elisheva. At first she was uneasy about my stammering but then she got used to it. When I arrived she brought me a hot corn soup which I gulped down hungrily. I asked her where the courier pigeon was. She pointed her index finger up. “On the roof,” she indicated. “There is a boy there called Joseph. He is there all the time. He sleeps there. You go up on the roof and he will help you. Now I go to say my evening prayers and to sleep. I shall see you tomorrow morning. Good night, sir.” She smiled with her brown eyes and when she opened her lips to smile, she revealed a mouth full of pearly white teeth and had two deep dimples in her cheeks. I went up to the roof. Joseph, a boy in his late teens, had a large white skull cap, long blond side curls, and a sparse reddish beard. He had on a blue gown with four fringes at its corners. “My name is Joseph, but everybody calls me Yossi. Rebecca alerted me to your coming. She says that you are an important man, yet you modestly refer to yourself as Moshé, the shepherd. I understand that you come from Kadesh Barnea. I have a male pigeon that is mated to a female based at the abode of Jethro, the Priest of God at Kadesh Barnea.” Yossi handed me a very thin piece of papyrus made from the new leaves of the plant and asked me to write on this single leaf. It will be tied to the leg of the pigeon and dispatched to its destination without any problem. “More than one leaf on the pigeon’s leg,” Yossi explained, “or two leaves with one tied on each leg, would hamper the pigeon’s navigation. So please, sir, be precise, concise and succinct. I shall wait for you here and when you are ready, I shall send your message right away.”

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He burst with a smile involving his whole face, eyes, mouth, cheeks and flaring nostrils exuding infinite charm. Back in my room I wrote in tiny Habiru letters on the thin papyrus leaf: “Dearest Zippi, Geri and Eli. For lack of space I shall be short. I miss you very much. I shall be away on an important mission the nature of which I cannot disclose. I feel now how important the three of you are to my life and wellbeing. I shall write to you every day by courier pigeon. Please answer to the abode of the High Priest in the town of Zoan in the land of Goshen. Your letters are going to assuage my loneliness and longing for you. Write about your new findings of plants and herbs to add to our medical herbarium. I shall write to you every day and convey an idea that was revealed to me in my lonely hours of meditation. The first revelation, which I felt in my inner self, was that God created us to radiate our love of Him because he obviously cannot love himself the way we love him. Thus our existence lends a divine meaning for us and for God. Please write every day so that our eternal love will augment every day. Moshé the Shepherd, your adoring husband and father.” I brought the letter to the roof and Yossi promised me to send it right away. “Thank you, Yossi, but please,” I beseeched him, “I am waiting for an answer and when it comes, please notify me without delay.” “Will do, sir,” he complied without submission and with dignity. I took an immediate liking to the boy. I went down to my room and Rebecca waited for me with my austere evening meal of vine leaves stuffed with cooked barley and spiced with rosemary and sage, my favorite spices. I was hungry and wolfed the meal down with green grape juice easing the entry of the vine leaves to my empty stomach. In my loneliness, I calculated the hour for the pigeon to reach Kadesh Barnea. It would take about four hours for it to arrive to the oasis of Jethro. Hence, it would be there after midnight while Zippora and the boys were sleeping. The chances are that she would check the courier pigeon nests in the morning before she feeds the herds and she would find my letter. It would take her and the boys about two hours to feed the animals and then she would write a letter and send it to me by courier pigeon from Kadesh Barnea. It would reach Zoan by noon tomorrow. While calculating the time when I could expect an answer to my letter, I was lying on my cot thinking: God created the world and encased it in time and history. Only those who experience a divine revelation like me are exposed to the sacred present. The question is: are there more like me or am I unique? Are all the prophets of God like me and Jethro aware of their privileged stance in the face of God or is this privilege unique to one person?

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Because I stammer, God has compensated me by being able to converse with him in my inner self. But thinking that I am unique in front of God would lead me to hubris, to solipsism, and to believing that the world has been created only for me. This is obviously madness, so I decided not to involve myself anymore in this mind-boggling quandary. Yet Egyptian polytheism believes in the cycles of existence in diachronic history. The cycles of becoming and the fading away replete with restoration in the Osirian West draw the sum total of Egyptian creation and re-creation, the ebb and tide of cyclic existence like the sequences of growth and decline of the vegetation and life-forms and of the Nile itself. Not so the revelation of God, the synchronic Jehovah, and the continuous present of Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh which was revealed to my inner psyche in the cave of the Mountain of God. The revelation of the synchronic God is instrumental to the extrication of our people from Egyptian paganism. This is the essential mythical and religious quintessence of the Habiru deliverance from Egypt. The core nature, the kernel of the spirit, and the marrow of the soul of the redemption from Egypt is the transition from the cyclic diachronicity of the Nile to the linear synchronicity and monotonic monochromatism of the desert. The formative substance of our religious revolution is the purity of the desert and I for myself have no desire to return to the cities around the Nile, the viewing of a concrete God, the coveting of goods, and the slavery to sensual passions. The abstract non-objective deity and the sacred sound of His divine words can be revealed only in the synchronic desert. The sole unique God hears me. He hears my supplications when I suffer and rejoices with me in my joy. When he reveals Himself to my inner self, He asserts His dialogue with me. He assures me that His conversation with me is as necessary to His affirmation of being as His revelation to me is an avowal of my existence. God becomes a complete being through his existential dialogue and relationship with me, His creature who is attuned to His revelation in me. I and God are inchoate entities. I in Him and He in me together constitute a completeness. With these meandering thoughts mixed with a tinge of hope, I fell asleep. I woke up with the blond side curls of Yossi, our courier pigeon operator, brushing my face. He waved a thin leaf of papyrus at me with the widest smile from ear to ear revealing a crescent of white perfect teeth. “It just arrived,” he announced gleefully. I clutched the letter to my chest and then descended from my cot and embraced him warmly. My servant girl announced that it was midday and I missed my morning meal, so she will serve me my noon meal. Meanwhile, I read Zippora’s letter. It was written in Midianic, a language I mastered during my long years at

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Kadesh Barnea. It occurred to me that I also should write my letters in Midianic, a little known language with a script known mostly to the literate Midianite priests. Yossi, the boy in charge of the High Priest’s courier pigeon in Zoan, knows only Habiru and Zippora would be the first to check my letters at the roof of Jethro, the Priest of God’s abode at Kadesh Barnea. Therefore, I could use Midianic as a coded secret language in case I would like to divulge to my wife some classified clandestine information. The letter read: “Dearest husband and father. We miss you painfully. When you were with us, we took you for granted. We were exposed to your wisdom, your warm soul, and the overflowing love emanating from you to us. Now that you are away, all three of us feel how central you were as an anchor to our sense of security and wellbeing. I am sorry that for lack of space in this letter. I shall give Geri the whole next letter to write to you all for himself and the day after tomorrow shall all be Eli’s.” “Dearest beloved husband, you asked that I describe for you the latest of our finds for our medical herbarium. These were from the banks of the Egypt Stream: the Apple of Sodom, juicy thick leaves with small flowers and round yellowish fruit that looks like an Egyptian lemon. The fruit, when touched, bursts open and the seeds of the Apple of Sodom are spread around in a wide circle. This is a very clever trick of nature for viable reproduction. The nomadic women of the desert smear themselves with the white sap of the Sodom Apple believing that this will enhance their pregnancy.” “We found the zalaf caper growing on sandstones lining the entrance to one of the caves of the Holy Mountain Halal. This caper has spectacular violet flowers with yellow pollen on long reddish stems. Its flowers, cooked in balsamic vinegar, serve as an appetizer. Its roots alleviate the symptoms of madness. After being singed by fire and soaked in honey, the roots are used as a medicine for leprosy. When soaked in balsamic vinegar, caper leaves are used by the Habiru to treat toothache.” “We also found the Raphanus growing as weeds under the birds of paradise plants on the shores of the lake at Kadesh Barnea. Its roots and stems are thick and sharp and its leaves are wide, fleshy and very sharp in their taste. The leaves and stems of the Raphanus prevent and cure constipation. The bitter roots of the Raphanus, when applied to festering wounds, heal them. Cooking the entire plant in brine and drinking the resultant soup alleviates the fever and other symptoms of malaria. For lack of space, I have to end my letter but rest assured of our everlasting love. Zippi, Geri and Eli.”

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The maidservant brought me my noon meal: three roasted quail in olive oil and pine nuts garnished with allspice and basil leaves. It was accompanied by red orange juice. The meal was so good that I asked the maidservant “Who prepared it?” intending to thank her. She told me that it was prepared by Elisheva, the wife of the High Priest. I made a mental note to remember to thank her. The girl took the plates off the table and announced that the High Priest will come to see me in a few minutes. When Aaron came in to my room, he embraced me warmly but he looked tense, haggard and harassed. “I had a very tense night and all but a violent morning. It seems, my brother, that our brethren are divided amongst themselves. They despise each other more than they resent their Egyptian detractors. Their jealousy of one another is such that they are willing to lose one eye provided they can deprive the sight of both eyes from their adversary. I am apprehensive that our strife with our own people is going to be more rabid, raging and berserk than our struggle with our external foes, adversaries and combatants and, for that matter, than our combat with the fierce natural elements of the desert. I would like to spare you, my brother, the gory details of our devastating deliberations with the Habiru elders, rampant with verbal violence that was on the verge of erupting into bloody physical combat.” Aaron’s voice was tired and hoarse as he continued. “However, our night long arguments about the chieftains of our tribes who were chosen for their rectitude, piety and unwavering devotion to a unique God of truth, produced these results:” “The chieftain of the Reuben tribe is Elizur, the son of Shedeur. The Simeon tribe chief is Shelumiel, the son of Zurishaddai. Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, is the chieftain of the tribe of Judah. The head of the tribe of Issachar is Nathanel, the son of Zuar. The chieftain of the Zebulun tribe is Eliab, the son of Helon. The chieftain of the tribe of Ephraim, the younger son of Joseph, is Elishama, the son of Ammihud. Gamaliel, the son of Pedahzur is the chief of the tribe of Menasha, the older son of Joseph. Abidan, the son of Gideoni, has been chosen after a fierce conflict to be the chieftain of the Benjamin tribe. Ahiezer, the son of Ammishaddai, has been nominated as the chief of the Dan tribe. Pagiel, the son of Ochran, is the chieftain of the tribe of Asher. The chieftain of the tribe of Gad is Eliasaph, the son of Deuel. Ahira, the son of Enan, has been chosen as the chieftain of the tribe of Naphtali.”

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“However, the worst struggle was about the election of the titular head of the tribe of Levi. Our main opponent was my cousin Korah, the son of Izhar, the brother of my father Amram. As I recounted to you, he became so rich from bleeding dry the Egyptian peasants with excessive taxes that he did not transfer to the treasury that his name became synonymous with opulent moneyed affluence. He bribed most of the elders to elect him as chieftain of the tribe. Since the Levites are the elite tribe of the Habiru people, he connived to control thereby the entire Habiru people. I jeopardized his corrupt connivance to seize control of our people by using my prerogative as High Priest. Being the titular head of the Levite tribe, I declared myself to be the Levite chieftain, stemming from the prerogative of my office.” I embraced Aaron and congratulated him on his wisdom. Then I invited him for a cup of spice brew, which the maidservant prepared for us, and I enquired about his plans for the near future. “First of all, my brother,” Aaron answered, “we have to meet now, day by day, you, me, and the chieftains of the tribes, to plan our operation in detail. As the saying goes, ‘Divinity lies in the details’. We have to plan all the particulars with the greatest care since we have only a short span of five hours in which 3,000 people will have to pass over the Pithom channel. One mistake and the passage will be clogged, the people will panic, and the whole operation fails. Also I want the chiefs to be exposed to your presence.” “But you are well aware, my brother,” I interjected, “of my shortcomings.” “You do not have to speak,” responded Aaron. “Your imposing presence would suffice and I shall do the talking.” The servant girl brought in the spice brew. It was hot, strong and delicious. We both sipped it with great relish. “We also have to train and drill our people for the actual passage by conducting exercises that will reveal any weak points of our plan so that we can correct them in time before the operation itself.” After we had a few cups of spice brew, Aaron took his leave and invited me tomorrow morning to the sessions of the Habiru chieftains that would take place in the great hall downstairs in the High Priest’s abode. He then embraced me and left. I sat down on my cot and wrote a letter to Zippora and the boys: “Dearest Zippi, Geri and Eli. I so much enjoyed your wonderful letter, especially the account of your finding plants that will enrich our ever growing collection of medical herbs. As you can see, I am writing to you in Midianic so I can divulge to you and to you only some of the

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clandestine details about the operation we are planning. As to the nature of the operation itself, I better not write to you since if only one person outside the planning group knows about it, it might leak out and endanger the whole enterprise. One thing, however, I may disclose to you in utter confidence: your husband is going to play a central role in the fate of the Habiru, my adoptive people, as well as in the assessment and diffusion of the true monotheistic religion that is a complementarity between the monolatric Aten creed of my late father and the belief in Jehovah of your father, let God prolong his years. I am awaiting the separate letters of Geri and Eli, my darling boys, and more letters from you, my beloved wife. With everlasting devotion to the three of you, Your husband and father who misses and longs for you constantly.” I climbed up to the roof and Yossi, the courier pigeon operator, welcomed me with his wide smile, revealing a mouthful of pearly white teeth. I handed him my letter and asked for some spare thin papyri leaves since I wished to prepare some letters in advance to dispatch to my family more frequently, if possible, than once a day. I then lay on my cot and reviewed the enormity of the events that Aaron and I would have to plan and contemplated the deliberations with the tribal chiefs of the Habiru tomorrow morning. I tried to distill a fundamental principle that will guide my religious thinking in contradistinction to the Egyptian paganism. In paganism, Nature is paramount. It is the supreme power. It controls creation and its creatures through the nature gods: Osiris, the god of the Nile; Shu, the god of air; Nut, the goddess of the sky; Geb, the lord of the earth; and so on. In our religion, God controls nature, which is subservient to Him. The spirit and morals stemming from God reign over the earthly passions. The supreme power is the spirit of God, which hovers over the chaos, molds it into life, and creates its flora and fauna. We shall extricate ourselves from the Egyptian pagan creed of somatic resurrection of the body as mummified in a sarcophagus and reappearing after rites of passage. We will especially get rid of the weighing of the heart to decide whether the deceased is worthy of a somatic afterlife in the Osirian realm of the everlasting West. Our creed would postulate a resurrection of the worthy spirits in their origin in the unique abstract synchronic divinity. I envisaged with apprehension the hardships we would experience with the Habiru people during their sojourn in the desert. These privileged servants, functionaries and tax collectors for my father were his protégées and were pampered by him during all the years of his reign. They became accustomed to the fat of the fleshpots. Some of them became rich with

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corrupt money and with taxes they had collected but not turned over to the coffers of the king. They traveled by carriage connected to five horses like lords of the land. Their wives were clad with damask silk and ostentatiously brandished their gold bracelets studded with diamonds and sapphires. I could well imagine how this hedonistic, spoiled, pampered and over-indulged horde would react to the vicissitudes of life in the desert. An abstract synchronic God whose epiphany is by an inner revelation of being is an antithesis to the quest of hoarding gold and gorging oneself on fleshpots. It would be a constant struggle between their memory of the carnal pleasures of lush crops and well-fed livestock and the arid scarcity of the wilderness. These dire premonitions caused me to slouch into a depressed drowsiness. In the morning my maidservant woke me up early. “The High Priest alerted me to the fact,” she explained apologetically, “that the chieftains of the Habiru tribes are going to convene rather early right after the morning prayers in the guest room downstairs to meet you and the High Priest. So you are kindly requested,” she said politely but firmly, “to be ready as soon as you can for the meeting. I shall prepare your bath and bring you your morning meal right away.” The warm bath invigorated me and my favorite morning meal of corn kernels cooked in goat milk and butter replenished my depleted energies. White grape juice and a few cups of extra strength spice brew pepped me up for the most fateful encounter with the tribal chieftains to be held shortly in the guest hall down below. When I descended to the hall, Aaron and two younger persons were already there. Aaron introduced me first to Joshua ben Nun, who was dressed like an Egyptian officer. He had a mail loin cover and a mail short bodice leaving his midriff bare. The rank insignia on his shoulders indicated that he was a commander of a thousand. He had a false beard, a large black wig covering both his ears and neck, and a tall metal helmet on his head. “This is our future chief of staff. He is one of the most trusted officers of General Horemheb and trained by him. He will make an excellent chief of staff with the difficult task of turning the Habiru peasants, traders, functionaries and tax collectors into swordsmen, archers, and cavalry. And this is our prime minister, Caleb ben Jephunneh.” Aaron introduced to me a husky fellow about sixty years of age. He was clad in a coarse linen tunic colored in blue and white stripes with four fringes around its hem. He had a long red beard and reddish grey side curls. His head was shaven and covered by a white turban on top of which was a peacock feather fastened to a ruby, a sign of high rank in the Habiru religious hierarchy.

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“Caleb is going to coordinate between the various functions of the tribal chieftains and mediate among them in case of conflicts of interest. After Joshua and Caleb had been introduced to me, the chieftains started to arrive at the rather austere guest hall. Except for the heavy carpets and cushions on which the guests could lean, there were some low tables on which the servants could place food and refreshments. First came Nahshon, chief of the Judah tribe, a heavy-set brute brandishing a curved sword. From his looks, it seems that he would not hesitate to use the sword on the slightest provocation. He bowed to all present and sat down with his feet tucked under his belly, leaning against the wall. He glared around menacingly, marking the entire guest hall as his birthright territory. Ahiezer, chieftain of the Dan tribe, came in and tried to be amicable to all present. He extended his hand to Aaron, to me, to Joshua, Caleb and Nahshon while mumbling words of endearment. All of us reciprocated the compliment, except for Nahshon who glowered even harder at everyone. Ahiezer hurried somewhat dejectedly to the farthest corner of the hall, as far away from Nahshon as possible. Nathanel, chieftain of Issachar, was sure of himself and his stature in the world since he was the richest Habiru except for Korah. He walked slowly with small steps and a vacant look made opaque by a necklace of gold and diamonds. Nahshon, however, was resuscitated by the sight of Nathanel. Apparently he was deferential to money. Nahshon jumped with agility surprising for a heavyweight like himself. His face was glowing with the sulfuric rot of greed and flattery as he approached Nathanel who, with poetic justice, ignored Nahshon completely. Shelumiel, the chief of the Simeonites, was thin, ascetic and neurasthenic. He secluded himself away from everyone in an agoraphobic distance of anxiety. Elizur, the chieftain of the Reubenites, was an ebullient busybody. He buttonholed everyone in sight, announcing how exhilarated he was to encounter each one. Abidan, potentate of the tribe of Benjamin, was all self-importance, sure that no venture could succeed without him. Eliab, the chief of the Zebulon tribe, was a saint, upright, pious and poor. He was constantly endeavoring to help all who suffer knowing full well that misery never ends, but he never stopped trying to ease the plight of the needy since it gave meaning to his existence. Elishama, the chieftain of Ephraim, was as elegant, slick and sparkling as the founder of the tribe, a pampered darling of his father, clad in a striped tunic of Damask silk. Gamaliel, the chief of the Menasha tribe, was dull, sloppy and stooped, the antithesis of Elishama. Gamaliel is a

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philosopher of sorts and Aaron chose him to be a chief because of his vast erudition in the theology and mythology of Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia. Ahira, the chief of Naphtali, was a prototypical bureaucrat, arranging all things by the book. He should be appointed as the keeper of the archives. Pagiel, the chieftain of the Asher tribe, was always ready to please, to gratify everyone in sight, and hence to satisfy no one. He should never be trusted. Eliasaph, the chief of Gad, was a stingy tax collector. Hence, he should be nominated as the treasurer. Aaron stood up and invited everyone to sit down around the walls of the hall. When they did, he began his oration. He cut an impressive figure with his reddish-white beard and side curls. His turban was blue silk embroidered with gold. It had a peacock feather fastened to a huge diamond on top of it, the emblem of the High Priest. The Hoshen on his chest sparkled, the multicolored gems embedded in it refracting the morning light. “My brethren,” he opened, “the elect, the select, and the chosen, the anointed by God to save our people from an immense catastrophe and lead us out from the den of agony, pain and torment to the Promised Land. It is my privilege to introduce to you three leaders who will be central to our grand design of this great exodus of our people from Egypt so fateful to our future. The first…,” Aaron motioned to me to stand up which I did. I was self-conscious, fidgety and slightly trembling, which I hope the chieftains did not notice because it would be a derogatory first impression of a future leader. “The first is Prince Me-Shu, the son of the late Pharaoh Akhenaten. He is now one of us. The shepherd Moshé is a prophet. I know him since childhood. He always foresaw the coming events. God has chosen him as his sole prophet. Moshé hears the Lord speak to his inner self. We became blood brothers many years ago and I have become adept at interpreting Moshé’s prophesies to the people at large.” “The second is Caleb ben Jephunneh. Please stand up for everyone to see you.” Caleb stood up, smiling tensely. I felt relieved and sat down. “Caleb,” continued Aaron, “is the most adept organizer, clever coordinator, and astute moderator. He is our prime minister chairing the plenum sessions of the chieftains and supervising the execution of their decisions.” “Joshua ben Nun, please rise.” Joshua stood up dressed in his military garb of commander of a thousand and Caleb sat down. “Joshua is our chief of staff,” Aaron announced festively. “He is trained by our renowned General Horemheb and is his most trusted officer. He is going to coach our youths to be soldiers, become swordsmen, to drill as archers, to qualify as

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grenade throwers, to tutor them as charioteers, and to instruct them how to become leaders of men.” “We will not disclose right now how and when we shall carry out our spectacular exit from Egypt. There are too many among the Egyptian riffraff and the marauding Amalekites who would use any foreknowledge of our plans to jeopardize and, if possible, prevent our escape. So let us train and prepare our people and ourselves for the great moment but the actual time, place and manner of the exodus will be kept secret until the very instant of its execution. We shall leave you now in the trusted care of Caleb and Joshua.” “After the refreshments, which are going to be served right away, you will have the first session of our government headed by the able and wise Caleb and by Joshua, who is responsible for our security. We shall leave now with the spirit of God hovering with great care and guidance over you.” Aaron waived his hand in farewell with the chieftains reciprocating. Servants started to bring in trays of soft goat cheese garnished with sweet basil and red peppers, unleavened bread soaked in olive oil and topped by scrambled quail eggs, fried red snappers decorated by parsley and a large number of decanters of red and white wine. Aaron and I climbed to my room to discuss our impressions of the first meeting of the Habiru chieftains and plan for the future. When we sat down, my servant girl brought in a kettle of piping hot spice brew and fresh fruit. I poured some spice brew into a small white cup for Aaron and a cup for me. When we started to sip the brew, I thanked Aaron profusely for not inducing me to speak in front of the chieftains. “My stuttered first impression would abide with them forever and would destroy the chances of forming a respectful attitude towards their prophet.” “Not to worry,” Aaron soothed me. “I shall be your mouthpiece until all the Habiru people are convinced that you are the one and only true prophet of God. Then they will accept your verbal messages in whatever form they are delivered.” “I trust you, my brother, fully,” I asserted. “Now what would be the first actions that our new government of chieftains should take?” I enquired. “There are three most important preliminary steps to be taken,” responded Aaron, “to prepare us for our exodus from Egypt. First to take a census of men, women and children in order to know how many are to pass the Pithom channel at the fateful hour and how many young men are eligible in every tribe to serve as policemen to supervise the passage and

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how many can serve as soldiers to defend the people from Egyptian riffraff, marauding nomads, and Amalekite murderers. The census will be taken in each tribe by the chieftain and special assistants designated especially for this task and the overall supervision will be handled by Caleb ben Jephunneh, the prime minister.” “The training of the police and army will be implemented by Joshua ben Nun with the active involvement of the chieftains. After these two first steps have been implemented and if the change of monarchy from Ay to Horemheb has not yet taken place, we shall carry out maneuvers to stage the deployment of the people at the Pithom channel during the five hours between noon and five in the afternoon for the actual passage to the eastern side of the channel. Short of the actual passage, the organizing for the transit should be repeated many times and honed to perfection since the success or failure of the whole operation would depend on it. After Aaron laid out our plans for the immediate future, he drank a last cup of spice brew. He embraced me warmly and left. I prepared myself for my afternoon rest but prior to it I wrote a letter to my wife and sons. “Dearest Zippi, Geri and Eli. You cannot imagine how I long, pine and yearn for you. I wish that our immense operation were over and we could be together again. The chief organizer, planner and visionary of the operation is my brother Aaron. He is clever, astute, and a great leader of men. He keeps me as a figurehead. I cannot imagine what good I can bring to the operation. I guess I have a symbolic value to the Habiru since my father, the Pharaoh Akhenaten, brought them to Egypt and was their patron, benefactor and protector. Be that as it may, I am very apprehensive at the moment that they discover my stuttering. Aaron, however, is optimistic since once the Habiru people discover my powers of prophecy, they will accept my guidance. I think Aaron overrates my powers of intuition and insight, but I am in no position to contradict him. These are great times and in due course you shall know the enormity of the events to come. Please write soon and every day. Your letters are my lifeline. Your adoring husband and father.” Yossi, the courier pigeon operator, welcomed me with his ever ready smile. He was aware of the regularity of the letters to and from my family and he made arrangements for the prompt dispatch of my letters and the reception of the replies from my family at Kadesh Barnea. When I came back to my cot, I could not sleep nor could I rest. I was too worked up and I started to doubt whether our operation would succeed. And what if we fail? We shall be washed to the sea by the waves and the survivors will be slaughtered by the vengeful Egyptian riff-raff. The whole

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operation seems stupendous but should not I believe in my own preaching that whoever does not give credence to miracles is not realistic? I was also quite dismayed by Aaron’s designation of me as a prophet. I did not really know what was expected of me. True, I had some inner insight that bordered on transcendental revelation. But could I foretell the future? Could I predict and forecast events? If this is expected of me, I shall not be able to deliver the goods. I did experience an epiphany of sorts of Divinity. I certainly had a theophany within my inner self and hence I could assert the existence of God. I could very cautiously evince the expectation of the holy spirit from his creatures, which to me is a great mystery and a colossal revelation. The question is, whether the Habiru who are accustomed to the foretelling of every future evil by the diviners, soothsayers, and oracles of the Egyptian gods would be satisfied by the revelation of the word and intention of an abstract God? I doubt it very much and I see a lot of conflicts with the people in this realm. It does not really help that the creed of Aten of my father was not completely abstract. The disc of the sun is visible and it undergoes daily cycles of death and resurrection. These cycles are not as extensive in time nor of such paramount importance as the Osirian cycles of life and death, or the life giving cycles of the flood of the Nile, but they are still a constant daily epiphany of circular extinction and resurrection. My belief in an abstract synchronic God of revelation, of a timeless and placeless essence that I have adopted from the Midianite belief in Jehovah as presented to me by Jethro, my father-in-law, are also foreign to the Habiru. And this would be another stumbling block to my acceptance by them as a prophet. The creed of Jethro is the religion of the nomads of the desert, of the disdain of land and property which ties one to the land. It is the abstract synchronic religion of the monotony and monochromatism of the desert. It is the religion that decrees a jubilee year every fifty years during which the land reverts back to God to whom it belongs. Hence, it is futile for man to be attached to the land which is not his to begin with. Also, the land generates fertility rites with erotic counterparts in man. Not so the abstract religion of the desert which induces synchronic revelation like the one experienced by me in the cave of the Mountain of God in the Sinai desert. Jehovah, the Kenite God of the desert and volcanic fire, is timeless and eternal. Therefore, the wisdom of our God is permanent with no later or earlier points in diachronic time. Man should not be imbued with and guided by a spirit that constantly needs to be renewed and resurrected in the continuous present. The desert, which is the formative and normative crucible of the nomadic life and its rejection of property as a burden, should be the source of our religion and

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the spirit of an abstract God should be our inspiration. It is natural, therefore, that the most rabid opponents of my father were the clergy of Amon, who worshipped concrete idols and who relied on strict causality so much that Atum, the chief god of On, masturbated in his mouth and then spewed out his offspring gods. I did not feel how I sank into a dreamless sleep. I woke up with a jolt. It was early morning. It seems that I was so tired that I slept all late afternoon and night until morning. It was indeed a refreshing sleep and I felt full of nervous energy. I remembered that Aaron invited me to join him in the supervision of the census of the Habiru taken by the chieftains under the guidance of Caleb ben Jephunneh in preparation for the exodus from Egypt. An extrication not so much from the land of Egypt as a deliverance of the spirit of the new abstract synchronic religion from the fetters of the concrete cyclic diachronic paganism of the dual Pharaonic kingdom. I woke up my servant girl who opened her beautiful eyes not comprehending why she had to get up so early in the morning. “Wake up, my child,” I urged her, adding apologetically, “I am sorry but the High Priest invited me to join him quite early. I woke you up at this ungodly hour so that you can prepare my bath and morning meal so that I can be in time for my encounter with the High Priest.” It took her a while to free herself from the webs of somnolence but when she did, she prepared my bath and meal very quickly. She learned to prepare my porridge of red lentils and quail eggs cooked in goat milk and laced with a spoon of honey and spiced with cinnamon and cardamom, the way my father’s cook in the palace of Akhet-Aten used to make it for me. It pleased me very much and I complimented her for it. I washed and ate quickly and joined Aaron who waited for me outside the High Priest’s abode in his carriage. Aaron was clad in his full regalia, the Hoshen on his chest, the ephod on his shoulders, and the diamond on top of his turban glittered in the morning sun with a rainbow of colors. By comparison, I looked rather inconspicuous with my coarse linen tunic, bare head, and bushy beard. We embraced and the driver of the chariot hurried to the central square of Zoan in which were assembled the chieftains of the tribes, about 130 censors, ten for each tribe, and Caleb ben Jephunneh and Joshua ben Nun to supervise the operation. The idea was that the census takers would be deployed outward from Zoan because it was at the center of Goshen, which occupied most of the eastern part of the Nile delta. From Zoan, the census takers would cover the whole of Goshen in carefully delineated sections. Criers would announce the census in the various districts of Goshen the night before and

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early in the morning, asking everyone to stay at home all day until night by the authority of the High Priest, Aaron ben Amram. The members of the various tribes were clustered throughout Goshen so that the task of the censors was complicated. However, when the tedious operation was completed, the 130 censors were reassembled at night in the central square of Zoan. Soldiers lit many torches spreading eerie light on the faces of all present. A tent was erected in the center of the square in which Aaron, I, Caleb and Joshua were seated. Then each chieftain with his ten censors came in and gave us the result of their census on papyrus sheets placed in a square wooden box. When all the 13 chieftains and their censors handed in their wooden boxes with the papyrus sheets in them, we counted the number of the Habiru people. They numbered 3000 persons divided into 600 families. We figured that if well organized, these 3000 Habiru people would be able to pass safely across the Pithom channel to the eastern banks during the 5 hours that the river could be diverted into the Royal Canal. When the chieftains and the censors left, Aaron asked the servants to bring us food. Aaron and I ordered vegetarian foods preferably stuffed vegetables. Caleb asked for roasted quail and Joshua wished to eat a leg of lamb very rare. When the food was brought in, Aaron and I each had a tray of stuffed vegetables, vine leaves, squash, and cabbage leaves. Caleb picked the wings and legs of the quails very delicately and munched them methodically and pedantically. Joshua took the leg of lamb in his right hand and bit it with his open mouth and strong white teeth. The blood sprouted from the open bite and dripped onto his beard and mail tunic. I thought to myself that this guy was a carnivore, a born killer, whose business is blood. When I came back to my quarters in the High Priest’s abode, I found three letters on my cot which Yossi brought down to me. They were, of course, from my wife and sons. Zippora wrote: “Dearest husband and consort. You cannot imagine how I miss you. Our unexpected separation highlighted to me how much you mean to me, how much our relationship is important to me, and how ardently I love you. I do not know exactly what kind of project you are engaged in, but I can sense from your letters that it is of paramount significance. I hope to learn more about it when we meet, which I hope will be very soon. I am, however, puzzled by the strange position you are entangled in. On the one hand, you have a close relationship with the Habiru High Priest. On the other, you have been initiated into the Kenite Midianite creed of Jehovah, who assumes a central role in the fate of the Habiru people. Are the Habiru readily accepting you? How are you managing with your verbal handicap? The

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boys are going to write to you separately. With unrequited longing, your loving wife, Zippi.” My son Gershom wrote: “Dearest father, We miss you so much. We miss your wisdom, your guidance in our daily chores, and your overall loving care. I wish I were with you in Goshen and could witness the great operations you are engaged in. I do understand that this is impossible so I hope you come back to us as quickly as possible since our sudden parting from you is unbearable to me, to Eli, and to mother.” “Just to give you a whiff from home, I shall write, for lack of space, a short description of some new additions to our herbarium. The first is the Baccatus Kurchi. It is a rather tall plant of three cubits or ammah, with white greenish flowers. Its fruit is fleshy, green, and eaten by birds, which spread its seeds through their feces. I found this specimen at the eastern edge of the Egypt Spring not far from Kadesh Barnea. Its main usage in medicine by the desert nomads is for the alleviation and cure of muscle ache. The nomads dig a trench the size of the patient, burn a sack full of dry Baccatus branches in the trench, then they quench the fire with camel urine. The patient then lies naked on the still warm ashes for an hour. This treatment is repeated for three times with an interval of two days for each treatment.” “The second specimen was the Rheum ribes. I found it growing in a crevice on the slopes of the Holy Mountain Halal. It has broad fleshy leaves and its small flowers grow on a stem that has a long bulbous and fleshy root. In cases of poisoning, the drinking of the water in which the Rheum root was soaked induces vomiting and this extracts the poison from the stomach of the patient. The Rheum ribes leaves, flowers and roots are also effective when ingested to lower fever and regulate menstruation.” “For lack of space, I shall mention just another valuable addition to our herbarium. This is the Retama bush that we found growing among rocks in the Shur desert. It is about 5 cubits tall. It has thin leggy branches that flower with a profusion of white blossoms. Its fruit is small and is filled with black seeds. The fruit of the Retama when cooked a long time on a low fire provides a solution that melts gall stones, cures eye inflammation, and exterminates intestinal parasites.” “I close my letter to you, dearest father, with an intense longing and ardent love. Your adoring son, Geri.” My son Eli wrote: “My most beloved father. Your absence must be for a paramount and momentous cause. Mother, Geri and I yearn for you so ardently that every day that passes without you is extremely painful for us. Dearest father, I have a surprise for you. I am planning to extend our

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clinical services not only for animals but also for human beings. I have consulted many physicians from Kadesh Barnea and also the doctors who accompanied the caravans that camped for some days in our oasis. I composed a classification of diseases for your perusal and approval so that it can serve as a framework for our human clinic: diseases of the heart, veins and arteries, sickness of the lungs and wind pipe, illness of bones and muscles, maladies of the brain and nervous system, ailments of the soul and spirit, afflictions of the mouth and teeth, disorders of the intestines and stomach, upset of the liver, disability of the kidneys and inflammation of the urinary tract, skin infestations, dysfunction of the ear, nose and throat, eye complaints, women and child disorders, and injuries from accidents. I hope, beloved father, this classification meets with your approval. Your loving and revering son, Eli.” I hastened to answer the letters of my family. First of all to my wife: “My treasured Zippi. After reading your letter, I realized that apart from being a devoted wife and loving mother, a hard worker and excellent organizer, you have also political acumen and religious intuition. Indeed, the religion I am preaching and, in due course, am proselytizing to a whole people is an amalgamation of three creeds. I was introduced to the first by Ozarzip, my father’s Viceroy, who was actually a Habiru patriarch by the name of Joseph whose two sons became the chieftains of the two tribes named after them: Ephraim and Menasha. I was very close to Ozarzip and he taught me the principles of the Habiru religion, which was a nomadic creed elevating one God, theirs denoted as El Elion, the supreme God, superior to all the other gods the Habiru encountered in their wanderings.” “My father, who was close to Ozarzip and influenced by him, took the Egyptian god Ra, actually the sun disc, and raised it to be an exclusive god but not completely abstract. So also is your God Jehovah. He is a volcanic god and therefore not completely detached from nature. The God I am going to introduce to my people is completely spiritual without form, time or space. You are the first to know it because you are my one and only mate, companion and the love of my life. With longing without end. Moshé the shepherd.” To my son Gershom I wrote: “To my cherished first born Geri. I was thrilled, excited, and gratified by your wonderful letter. How I would have liked to have you, your brother and your mother here with me. You could witness firsthand the enormous epoch-making and dramatic projects we are planning. This, of course, is impossible for security and secrecy considerations. However, I hope that in the not too distant future we shall be reunited and never part again. As for the medical herbarium you are .

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building, I am so proud, delighted and satisfied by your endeavors. The herbal apothecary will supplement the human clinic which Eli is planning. He sent me a classification of diseases that the projected hospital would provide treatment for and I am going to write that I approve of it wholeheartedly. I would suggest to you, however, that you develop bilateral ties with the caravans that pass through Kadesh Barnea going to Egypt from the Far East and coming from Egypt headed to Canaan, Syria and Mesopotamia. They very often carry medical herbs and spices and you could initiate a barter arrangement with them, exchanging medical plants that you have and they do not and vice versa. Please let me know if this meets with your approval. Your loving and yearning father.” To Eli I wrote: “Dearest son Eli. You cannot surmise how overjoyed and elated I was by your letter. Not only do I approve of the classification of the maladies to be treated by your projected hospital but I endorse it whole-heartedly. I cannot divulge to you right now the nature of the project I am engaged in because secrecy in this matter is paramount, but once we get together, you should realize how important your ingenious venture is to all of us. I can, however, allow myself to make one request without infringing unduly on the rules of secrecy. If possible, your efforts should be geared more to the maladies, ailments and discomforts of the human body in the desert. You should, of course, collaborate closely with your brother Geri since the medicines, ointments and herbs to cure maladies are tied together with the nature, type and seriousness of the affliction. My dearest Eli, I feel that by parting from you, Geri, and mother, I left the most important part of myself in Kadesh Barnea. By getting together again with you, which I hope is going to be soon, my disrupted self is going to become whole again.” I ran up to the roof to deliver my three letters to Yossi, the courier pigeon operator. He welcomed me with his usual open face and wide smile. “Well done, sir,” he obliged and handed me some more thin papyrus leaves for future letters. I thanked him lavishly, went down to my room, and notified my maid that I was ready for my evening meal. She came back with a tray and on it was a dish I had never seen before. She announced that the High Priest has a new cook, a Canaanite, and he prepared a dish from his country of origin. “If you like it, sir,” she said in her sweet unassuming manner, “he will be ready to prepare for you more Canaanite delicacies, which he hopes you relish.” She placed the new dish on my low table and explained that it is a chickpea paste laced with olive oil and spiced with garlic. It is topped by a sesame paste garnished with parsley. She brought me some soft unleavened bread on which I could smear the chickpea and sesame pastes

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and wash it down with green grape juice. It was delicious and I told the maid so. She rushed to the kitchen and brought to my room the Canaanite cook, a dark bearded young man with a yellow turban on his head. He bowed very low and I complimented him on his tasty dishes. He thanked me lavishly and promised that from then on he will prepare for me a great variety of Canaanite dishes and he hoped I would also like them. I told him that I am a vegetarian. He declared that that was not a problem since most of the Canaanite dishes were vegetarian. He took his leave while bowing and retreated from the room backwards. I was afraid he would miss the entrance and topple on the door and injure himself but he did not since he was adept at walking backwards. When he left, I informed my maid that I was ready to retire for the night and she brought me a basin of water and suds for my evening ablutions. The water was cold as a ritual aid for purification since cold water invigorated the spirit and shocked the body to provide new nervous energy and enhance a calming night rest. When I got out of the bath, I dried myself and considered some ideas that provided new food for thought. I felt within me the tremendous mystery of sensing God inside my inner self. This direct immediate intimacy with God constituted the single most acute conundrum of my life. The dilemmas correlated to this central riddle were numerous. Am I the only individual chosen to have this dialogue with God? If yes, why? If other human beings or life forms have this feeling, how does it correspond to my consciousness that I am the exclusive entity to perceive my body as the sole avenue through which the universal essence flows as a unique awareness of being? Also, how can I cope with this mind-boggling responsibility of having in myself the monopolistic cognizance of the world? Finally, is it not a stupendous hubris and a heinous sin for a self-effacing, awkward stammerer to think this way? And yet God did reveal himself to me in that cave on the Holy Mount Halal. I have no doubt in my mind that God spoke to my inner self in a clear, precise and intelligible manner. Since that formative revelation, I became convinced that God speaks to every human and life form. All one has to do in order to effect a discourse with God is to open up to him attentively. The messages of God are broadcast equally to all life forms but their reception differs depending on the biological and mental capacities of the receiver. I therefore surmise that the man-God relationship is not based, like the Habiru patriarchs conceived, on a bilateral covenant, but on a direct flow of the divine intention to the inner psyche of His interlocutor.

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Also, since there is a direct man-God dialogue, man is answerable to God in a free manner and, in case of default, man may feel guilt, shame and culpability. When I call Jehovah in a cave in His Holy Mountain Halal, He answers me in a whoosh of flaming volcanic gas that forms an image of a burning bush, the flames of which are a permanent epiphany of an angel, and He speaks His divine words directly into the core of my soul intended only for me and grasped exclusively by my inner self. Yet this exclusive dialogue is in each life form in its discourse with God. This is the mystery of a unity conveying a single message, which is reflected in the self of each life form and refracted by the biology and psyche of each individual creature into an infinite number of percepts. This is how the Logos, the single words of God, are multiplied into endless messages to all His living creatures. With this interim conclusion concerning my internal enigma, an angel of God engulfed me with his wings and carried me to the world of dreams. In the morning, my maid notified me that the High Priest would like me to join him quite early to observe the training by Commander Joshua of the policemen and soldiers who will carry out the security and combat missions of the Habiru people. She therefore prepared my morning bath and meal so that I would be ready in time. My bath water had an innovation. Instead of the coarse suds with its corresponding roughness, my maid put bath salts in the water with a stunning fragrance of jasmine flowers. My morning meal had also an innovation: quail eggs fried in olive oil and spiced with cardamom. They were delicious. When my maid came into the room and brought me a newly laundered black gown with a sky blue collar, I complimented her on her delightful innovations of the jasmine scented bath salts and fried quail eggs. She blushed with pleasure when I came out of the High Priest’s abode. The morning air was fresh and chilly and filled my lungs with the humid scent of hyacinth blossoms coming from the delta swamps. Aaron was already waiting for me in his chariot. He held the reigns himself. He was not accompanied by a driver since he did not wish to divulge to other people the site of the military maneuvers and training, which were held in an olive orchard belonging to a wealthy member of the Benjamin tribe. When I got into the chariot, Aaron embraced me and invited me to sit beside him and declared that we are going to witness a crucial step of our operation, the training of law and order forces to keep internal security and the preparation of soldiers in the various martial arts for combat with external enemies. These were chosen by Joshua and his Egyptian lieutenants lent to him as mercenaries by the authority of General

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Horemheb. Since Aaron was not thoroughly familiar with the policing instruction and army drilling conducted by Joshua and his Egyptian aides, he suggested that we delay our discussion of these matters until we meet Joshua himself. In the remainder of our trip to the Benjaminite olive orchard, Aaron asked me about my family. I proudly recounted to him the progress Gershom, my first born whom I lovingly called Geri, made in building up our medical herbarium and the plans of my second son Eliezer, shortened by me to Eli, to build a mobile human hospital to supplement our existing veterinarian clinic. Aaron responded by describing the roles of his four sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, who rose to prominence in the priestly hierarchy, especially Eleazar who was destined, with God’s help, to inherit the High Priesthood. I complimented Aaron on the great success in raising such a fine family, which, of course, is a joint venture with his good wife Elisheva. My own family could not be such a remarkable accomplishment without the full collaboration of my wife, mate and partner Zippora. We approached the dry and somewhat rocky terrain, which is more suitable for growing olives. Our chariot bumped against the rocks and the morning sun filtered through the green and silver leaves of the olive trees. Between them we could already discern the chortle of the horses of the war chariots, the clacking of swords, and the whooshing of arrows. When we reached the orchard, Joshua met us in front of his tent. He saluted us in the Egyptian military manner with his right hand reaching low towards his right knee, signifying symbolically that he kneels before the masters. When we entered the Commander’s tent, Joshua invited us to sit on two throne-like chairs while he sat on his army cot, which served him also as a bed. A Nubian slave girl entered the tent, black as pitch yet stunningly beautiful. She had a Nubian short and curled black wig and her huge eyes were a crimson violet color. Her nose was straight, reigning magnificently over full sensuous lips, dimpled cheeks and a strong chin. Her hands were long thin and delicate. Her bare breasts were enormous but firm and her nipples were passionately erect. Her bare midriff was slender. Her pearshaped pelvis was covered by a yellow silver-embroidered loin cloth, which contrasted admirably with her shining black skin. Her long and slender legs emerged from the loin cloth and danced their way down to the ground in a stylized elegance. When she asked Aaron and me what our pleasure would be, both of us averted our eyes from her bare breasts and asked for an extra-strong spice brew. Joshua eyed the luscious body of his slave girl with open prurience, signifying that he will ravish her when the

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first opportunity arises. As for the drink, he ordered dispassionately: “the usual.” While we waited for our drinks, I examined Joshua closely. He was quite impressive. His long grey army wig covered his head and reached to his shoulders. A mail cap protected his skull. His eyes were remarkable: large, pale blue and unblinking, like the eyes of a cobra. These were quite unusual for a Habiru, most of whom had black or brown eyes. His nose, however, was a Habiru nose, bulbous, prominent, and crooked with some short hair above his nostrils and within them. His beard was unkempt and flowed down to his chest. His torso was covered by a mail tunic with the insignia of an Egyptian commander pinned on it. His loin cloth was of camel leather and a short sword was fastened to a belt to be easily reached and drawn by his right hand. His hairy and muscular legs were bare and he wore sandals fastened by strips of leather reaching to his knees. The slave girl came in and brought us our drinks. For Aaron and me, two decanters of spice brew and small white glazed cups to drink it with. For her boss, she brought a mug of beer, a chaser of grappa-alcohol distilled from the fermented peels and kernels of grapes and as a long drink, a large goat skin of chilled white wine. That guy was an alcoholic, but unlike Ozarzip, whose excessive drinking played havoc with his body giving him bloodshot eyes and trembling hands, Joshua’s heavy drinking had no discernible outside effects. His hands were firm, his eyes clear, and his diction precise. Apparently he had a strong liver. He emptied his beer mug in one long draught and downed the chaser glass of grappa. He then started his locution in a dispassionate tone in the clipped accent of the high ranking Egyptian officers. “We have chosen,” he opened, “five hundred young men aged from twenty to thirty years, husky and healthy of body and spirit. The heftiest one hundred were chosen to be trained as charioteers. You see, my lords,” Joshua became didactic, “the Egyptian chariot is the lightest yet the strongest and most effective warfare instrument in existence.” There was more than a trace of esprit de corps in his voice and pride of identity with the Egyptian army. “It is made of wood and leather and it is so light that one soldier could carry it on his back and walk with it for quite a long distance without becoming exhausted. The chariot has two occupants. One is a fighter who is a trained archer and spear thrower. The other is the driver holding the reigns in his right hand and a shield in his left hand protecting the fighter and himself. The driver is also trained as an archer and a lance thrower so that in case of need, he could take turns with the fighter who was also trained as a chariot driver. When fully armed, the chariot holds six lances, three for each fighter, six bows, three per soldier,

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and two quivers with a hundred arrows in each one. We have 15 Egyptian trainers hard at work with our 100 charioteers who will man 50 chariots.” Joshua sprouted a jet of red wine directly from the goat skin into his throat and continued. “The second squadron is of a hundred recruits to become infantry fighters. They are armed with a short double edged sword tied to their waist and a quiver with 50 arrows tied on their back. They hold a bow in their right hand made of a hardy yet flexible bamboo shoot tied at both ends with an animal gut. They are protected by a mail head cover with holes for eyes, nose and mouth, as well as a metal helmet and a mail tunic. These soldiers are carried on camel back, the driver of which is also a trained soldier. The animal is very effectively trained for war. On its back is an arsenal of three lances, a quiver for the driver, the arrows of which are wrapped with soft linen drenched in tar. The pouch on the right side of the camel holds three bows, one for the driver and two extra ones in case the bows of the soldier and driver get damaged or lost. The driver held the reigns of the animal in his right hand and in his left hand he held a shield to protect himself and the soldier who sat behind him on the back of the camel and was tied to the driver’s back with a leather belt. The camel was also protected by a mail head and torso cover with holes for the animal’s eyes, ears, nose and mouth. The hundred camels and their drivers constitute our cavalry.” Joshua made another pause for a long jet of red wine to stream into his throat and continued. “The actual warfare would be carried out this way. The infantry carrying the arsenal of weapons and the soldiers tied to the backs of the drivers would comprise the main thrust of our fighting force. Our military tactics would be more or less as follows:” Joshua spread a parchment map on the low table in front of us. I was amazed how Joshua’s hands were stable, his non-blinking watery blue eyes were clear and his diction not slurred after drinking so much beer, grappa and wine. He showed us the map on which the positions of the enemy were marked in red whereas our positions were marked in blue. Joshua pointed out on the map how our camel-cavalry would approach the tent encampment of the enemy at night. How the camels would encircle the enemy camp and draw as near to it as possible without being detected. Then the drivers of the camels would make the camels kneel and both the drivers and the soldiers would light the tar-drenched arrows and fire them onto the enemy tents, which would catch fire and burn. The camels would then rush with shrieks into the burning camp and play havoc with the enemy warriors who have been taken by surprise. Then the animals would kneel again and both the drivers and the soldiers taking cover behind the bodies of the animals would shower arrows on the soldiers fleeing the

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burning camp and those enemy soldiers who would approach the animals having still a fighting spirit in them would be killed by lances and the short swords of our soldiers and the battle would be won. Joshua leaned backwards on his chair, his wide grin indicating satisfaction, his eyes still unblinking, and clapped his hands. When the Nubian slave girl appeared, he told her “We worked hard. We earned some refreshments. Please bring our guests a strong spice brew, for me the usual, and some appetizers.” I was speechless and did not say anything fearing that I would stammer badly. However, Aaron was full of praise. “Amazing … astounding … magnificent, Commander!” The slave girl strutted in. Her bare breasts, trembling with each step, and I had to fight with myself not to fix my gaze on her magnificently erect nipples. In front of Joshua, she placed a large mug of beer, a large glass of grappa, and two goat skins of choice Illyrian wines, one white and one red. For Aaron and me she brought two kettles of spice brew which filled the Commander’s tent with strong odors of cardamom, sage, rosemary, clove and cinnamon. She placed on the table appetizers of stuffed vine leaves, cucumbers in goat cheese, spiced with garlic and dill, turnips soaked in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and chick pea paste laced with black bean sauce and garnished with fresh parsley and coriander. Joshua downed the mug of beer in one draught and stuffed a handful of vine leaves into his mouth and washed them down with the glass of grappa and concluded his rather comprehensive briefing by describing the last two squadrons, the policemen and eliminators (assassinators). We sipped the exquisite spice brew that the slave girl poured for us into small glazed white cups and listened to Joshua. “The hundred policemen,” he said, “are the huskiest youths aged twenty to thirty. They are all more than 4 cubits (more than 6 feet) tall, muscular, and tough. They are clad in black mail from their neck down. Their head is covered by a tough black wig of camel hair covered by a black helmet. They have two weapons. The first is a nail studded cudgel. Just a brush from it leaves bloody bruises. A blow may tear away a limb and a sharp whack on the head could result in a fatal crack of the skull. They also have an ax which is a very effective breaker of doors and windows in case people have been trapped in a building by fire or flood.” “The hundred eliminators are clad with mail like the policemen except that their head is covered by a black canvas headgear with holes for eyes, nose and mouth. They are agile, lithe, swift and supple. They are armed only with a sharp crooked bronze short dagger, which kills instantly when pressed from behind into the heart or when the jugular veins are slashed by

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it. They are eliminating the enemies of the Habiru people or creed. Then they are buried by them. The elimination is then attributed to divine wrath since the earth opened its jaws and swallowed them alive.” I gasped for air and Aaron’s face was grim but Joshua’s face remained impassioned and his eyes unblinking while he squirted red wine from a goatskin directly into his throat. We spent the afternoon watching the training, drilling and maneuvers of our nascent army. We watched the Egyptian mercenaries, about 15 to each of our 5 squadrons, coaching our recruits. The charioteers were learning to discipline their horses. The camel riders were practicing how to make their animals genuflect. The archers were learning how to shoot arrows to the bull’s eye in the middle of a round target about 70 cubits (about 100 feet) away. The policemen were tearing away limbs and cracking skulls of training dummies with their cudgels, and the eliminators were stabbing the backs of dummies in the middle of the torso between the third and sixth ribs with quick thrusts of their short, razor sharp bronze daggers. They also practiced how to strangle the dummy’s neck from the back with a supple whip made from a camel’s dried penis soaked in olive oil for flexibility. In the evening, I wrote to my wife: “Dearest Zippi. Today I encountered to my horror some varieties of legitimate murder known as the art of war. The orchestrator of these martial exploits is either a born killer or trained to be one. For secrecy’s sake, I can divulge neither his name nor the exploits he was organizing, directing and commanding. One thing I am certain is that whenever our people should be led to a Promised Land wherever it would be, I could not take an active part in it because I abhor violence and the shedding of blood. Even in war it is a most heinous sin against God. I vow to you, my dearest wife, partner and mate, that if and when I have authority, I shall decree that the taking of a human life created in the image of God should be proscribed and resisted even at the cost of the loss of one’s own life. Murder together with idolatry and incest should be condemned and resisted even at the cost of risking one’s own being. This I shall proclaim, if anointed a prophet of God and a teacher of man. But to slaughter, assassinate and exterminate human beings even for the lofty aim of inheriting the Promised Land, never. This I leave for our Commander and his ilk. I shall have no part in it. With everlasting longing, adoration and adulation, Moshé the Shepherd.” After having sent off the letter, my servant girl brought me my evening meal prepared by the new Canaanite cook. It consisted of a large bowl of peeled cucumbers, salted goat cheese, and fresh yoghurt spiced with garlic

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and dill. I was hungry and wolfed down my meal with a decanter of aromatic white Muscat grape juice. I was physically tired and emotionally exhausted from my deep impressions of the experiences of the day. I lay on my cot and some ideas meandered through my mind. I contemplated the convoluted route of the revelation of God to man as an inner experience. Basically, the revealing of God to the inner consciousness of man is two-fold. The first path is a direct immediate dialogue, not mediated by symbol, ritual or myth, between Divinity and the inner consciousness of man. The second path is the maieutic midwifely indirect prodding into man’s self, catalyzing an aperture into the psyche of the individual enabling him to conceive an image of God unique and peculiar to himself and to no one else. The two routes may complement and intersect each other and thus form a vast array of modes of inner divine revelation. The inner dialogue of God was a blessing for me, a painful stammerer so distressfully isolated from the human beings around me due to my verbal handicap. My inner link with God was a salvation, a deliverance from my loneliness. But what is more, words that could hardly come out of my mouth flowed so delightfully and easily from God Himself, the unique abstract divinity, into my inner being without any obstacle, barrier or hindrance. If God himself has chosen my body to be the route through which the universal consciousness gains awareness, then I also must be unique or rather chosen to have the ontological relationship with divinity, which constitutes the essence of being. This initial association, which makes for the constitutive bonding of existence, is then reflected in every human and non-human life form and imprints in them the life-giving divine complementarity. This makes me the arch linkage between man and His creation. This is mind-boggling and patently absurd. Yet this mystery pushes me to contemplate transcendence and thus becomes the prime motivation for my seeking the basics of a religion to confer on the Habiru, obviously chosen by God, an exclusive, matchless, incomparable religion of a single, omnipresent, eternal God. My second mode of revelation of God, which is not direct but indirect, lets me chose maieutically the mode of revelation that suites me at that particular moment. The direct revelation imposes on my inner self one specific directive that does not give me a choice and I have to accept it or ignore it and become sacrilegious. The maieutic indirect revelation gives me an infinite number of choices, or rather interpretations, as to the meaning of the revealed communication from God. Once I choose an

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interpretation, it makes me feel as if I have given birth to it triggered by the maieutic assistance of God. These indefinite choices give both God and me infinite possibilities of belief and a free choice of modes of creativity. Since creativity entails communication, man becomes a partner of God in his creative endeavors. I became quite scared by my megalomaniacal reveries and decided to embrace doubt, indecision and uncertainty as my counsel rather than categorical assertions. I don’t remember falling asleep but Aaron came rushing in to my room, woke me up, and announced dramatically that the old Pharaoh Ay died, probably with the aid of General Horemheb, who has been proclaimed Pharaoh in his stead. He asked me to be ready as soon as I can for an urgent consultation with Caleb ben Jephunneh and Joshua ben Nun. I washed and ate a bowl of chickpea paste laced with sesame paste diluted by virgin olive oil and garnished by fresh parsley and black olives cured in salt, another delicious creation of our new Canaanite cook, and gulped in haste a hot spice brew which scalded my mouth and throat. Then I donned my coarse shepherd’s gown, put on sandals of thick camel hide, and was ready to join Aaron who was already waiting outside the High Priest’s abode in his chariot. We drove to Joshua’s tent in the Benjaminite olive grove where, during the training of our squadrons, he spent the nights in the company of his black Nubian slave girl. Aaron had already notified Joshua and Caleb about our meeting. During the training of the troops, the four of us were often seen in the Benjaminite olive grove so our presence there this morning did not raise undue attention. When we reached Joshua ben Nun’s tent in the olive grove, Caleb was already there drinking a spice brew and talking to Joshua who was taciturn and drinking his threesome of beer, grappa and red wine. When we entered the tent, Caleb stood up and embraced both of us whereas Joshua rose up from his chair bowed to us and then gave the military salute of lowering his right hand to his right knee. When we sat down, the Nubian slave girl brought us two kettles of extra strong spice brew remembering our preference from our last visit. The tent was filled with the odors of cinnamon, cardamom and cloves of the spice brew mingled with the yeasty, musty, pungent whiffs of Joshua’s alcoholic drinks. Aaron opened the session. “Gentlemen, we have reached the decisive phase of our operation.” His face was solemn, grave and somber, reflecting his glum mood and the critical situation and the onus of responsibility on his shoulders. “With the old Pharaoh dead and the new Pharaoh being pragmatic, his interests coincide with ours. He wants to get

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rid of us as well as to unburden himself and the Egyptian people of the riff-raff, scum and trouble-makers of their unruly fringe. We have, therefore, to act quickly yet cautiously. We cannot possibly approach the new Pharaoh before the period of mourning for the old king and the coronation of the new one.” “We have, however, arranged to see the new Pharaoh as soon as possible after his coronation. As time is of the essence, we have to find out from Horemheb when exactly does he intend to withdraw his regiment serving as a buffer between our people and the Egyptian riff-raff. Also, aligned with this, we have to learn from the king’s hydraulic experts when would be the best time to begin crossing the Nile’s Pithom channel. Brother Joshua, can you arrange, through your high-level connections in the Egyptian army, an audience with the king as soon as possible after his coronation to gain information about these two dates so crucial for our operation?” “Your wish is my command, High Priest,” answered Joshua with unabashed flattery. “Also, brother Joshua,” Aaron continued his queries, “when would our soldiers and policemen be ready to supervise and regulate the crossing of the Pithom channel? As you well remember, my brother, we promised the general that we shall be ready for the operation in six months and four months have already elapsed. Hopefully, after his coronation, the new Pharaoh will not remember that conversation in his palace at Moph when he drank so much.” Aaron accosted the Commander with friendly reverence. “When do you expect the training of our soldiers and policemen to be operationally ready for crossing the Pithom channel?” “Not before three months, High Priest,” answered Joshua submissively. “I do hope the Pharaoh would not begrudge us the additional month.” “Or better still, he would not remember our original six month agreement,” retorted Aaron. “It is now of the utmost importance, Commander,” urged Aaron, “that you arrange an audience with the new Pharaoh as soon as you can.” Aaron stood up signifying that the meeting is over. Caleb ben Jephunneh bowed lowly in farewell and Joshua bowed and gave us the military salute. I accompanied Aaron to his chariot that waited for us outside the Commander’s tent. On our ride back to the High Priest’s abode, Aaron was reticent and withdrawn, heavy with the burden of the forthcoming fateful events. When we reached the High Priest’s abode, Aaron, still not talking, embraced me, accompanied me to my room, and bade me farewell by a silent hug.

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When I entered my room, my favorite noon meal waited for me: a cucumber salad in goat cheese and yoghurt sauce spiced by salt, pepper, dill and garlic. It was prepared by the new Canaanite cook and brought in by my maid, accompanied by a decanter of aromatic Muscat grapes. It was indeed delectable. After the meal, I wrote a letter to my wife: “Zippi, my spouse, partner and lover. I am so excited by the forthcoming events, which are so crucial, decisive and pivotal for our people, as well as for our family. Unfortunately, I cannot divulge to you even one detail of the earth-shaking imminent events since any disclosure of even a minute item of information about our epoch making operation, if reaching the wrong ears, might jeopardize its success. So, my dearest, it is one of the stark absurdities of our life that my most ardent wish to share the most momentous news with you, my beloved, cannot be realized and I will have to content myself with the hope that when we meet we shall be able to experience sharing the fulfillment of gratifying prophecies for the deliverance of our people and their return to the land promised by God. With eternal love, devotion and adoration, your husband, Moshé the Shepherd.” I asked my maid for an extra bowl of the cucumber, goat cheese and yoghurt sauce plus a mug of grape juice and brought them to the roof to Yossi, the courier pigeon operator, together with my letter to my wife. He welcomed me with his open face and ready smile and thanked me warmly for the food. It occurred to me that when we leave Egypt, Yossi could be of great service to us by organizing a pigeon mail service while we wander in the desert. I asked him if he would like to serve as my special assistant. “With pleasure, sir,” he answered showing his pearly white teeth, “but we shall have to have the permission of the High Priest for this,” he added. “Of course, of course,” I responded. “I shall speak to the High Priest about it without delay.” I took my leave from him while he bowed low, and I descended back to my room. I was emotionally exhausted and decided to take an afternoon rest. I lay on my cot and contemplated the vicissitudes of the events which befell me lately. The visions I had in the cave of the Holy Mountain in Sinai were indeed formative. The images of the burning bush and the angel formed by the flaming volcanic gas are always present with me as if singed into my soul. God was, no doubt, talking to me with my inner self and imposing on me a role I did not wish and for which I deemed myself unfit with my painful stammer, debilitating shyness, and anxiety encountering people. But then he showed me the impossible: A holy present inherent in the Habiru name: Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh. He then

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imposed on me the duty to proclaim to my people the existence of the sacred present and to proselytize them to embrace it. I realized that by this inner dialogue, God convinced me that I was the only one in existence who experienced directly this continuous divine presence of Jehovah and no one but me could endow the knowledge of this revelation to the Habiru, His chosen people. I was the only one. He ingrained into my innermost being the conviction to deliver my people from their slavery in Egypt and from the pagan belief in a coercive causality that compulsively connected a paralyzing past and an illusory future. I had no choice but to accept the duty he enforced on me, since he revealed exclusively to me the enormity of the task that only I could carry out. I was not aware that I fell asleep. In the morning, I prepared myself for another day of watching the training, coaching and maneuvers of our squadrons of soldiers and policemen. After a couple of days, Aaron came to collect me in the morning for a meeting in Joshua’s tent. When we came in, both Caleb and Joshua stood up bowing while the Commander gave us his military salute. When we sat down, the Nubian slave girl rushed in with three kettles of spice-brew and the usual threesome of beer, grappa and wine for her boss. Her strutting made her bare breasts tremble and her erect nipples sent ripples of desire to my hungry groin, but I controlled myself and sublimated my prurient passion into an anxiety for the successful planning, organization and execution of our fateful operation of paramount importance to the future of our people. Joshua downed the glassful of grappa with a surprisingly steady hand for a heavy drinker. “Gentlemen,” he opened, “we now have word from the new Pharaoh.” He spoke with a dispassionate monotonous voice coming out from his mouth with clenched teeth. It sounded like a cobra’s hiss. What with his unblinking eyes, I would not have been surprised if a forked tongue would emerge from behind his clenched teeth to prepare his poison fangs for a strike. A perverse thought formed in my head that if he would have had to announce the death of his mother, it would emerge from his clenched teeth in the same flat, unemotional and colorless voice in which he was speaking to us now. He recounted that Horemheb, the new Pharaoh, did not want to meet us because he did not want the Egyptian riff-raff and his enemies amongst the Amon clergy to know that he has friendly ties with us. The new Pharaoh did remember that he allotted us six months to prepare our exodus from Egypt and he insisted that we abide by this deadline for two reasons: “One,” Joshua touched the index finger of his right hand with the index finger of his left, “because at the end of the sixth month the flow of the

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Nile will be at its minimum before the next flood stage begins. The amount of water that can be safely diverted into the Royal Canal and its rate of its flow will not change, so crossing on that date will minimize the amount of water that continues downstream on the rocky bed of the Pithom channel.” “Second,” the Commander touched the middle finger of his right hand with the index finger of his left, “the Pharaoh needs the regiment serving as a buffer between our people and the Egyptian scum to quell insurgents against the regime in Libya and Nubia. Those insurgents thought they could take advantage of the change of kings at a time when the new Pharaoh did not yet have firm control over his government right after his coronation. Little do they know that Horemheb always was the military power behind the throne and that he will smite them to dust if they keep making trouble.” “Therefore,” concluded Joshua, “we have to rush and double the training of our troops by two shifts every day instead of one so that we can be ready to meet the deadline for our exit from Egypt.” Joshua stood up, signifying that the meeting ended. “We have a lot to do and time is short,” he quipped. “We expect each one of us to do his duty in this fateful hour.” He bowed and saluted and left strutting with the Egyptian officers out of the tent. Aaron, Caleb and I were still sipping our spice-brew while Joshua left. Aaron was the first to break the silence. “When do we divulge to our people that they have to leave their homes and lands and be ready to cross over the Pithom channel?” he asked, “and how do they get there in time?” Caleb intervened cautiously and hesitantly. I liked the fellow. He was modest and unassuming, yet clever and astute about people. “I guess,” he opened, “that we announce to our people that they have to leave their homes not earlier than the night before the crossing. Our emissaries accompanied by policemen would explain to our people that due to the arbitrary evacuation of the Egyptian buffer regiment defending us from the Egyptian thugs threatening vociferously to attack us, we have to leave our homes taking our families and chattels and relocate to a pre-determined safe place. The short time between the announcement and the actual move would ensure secrecy and prevent attempts to sell land and houses to Egyptian neighbors and thus disclose our plan to leave Egypt although the location of the exodus would not be known to our people until the actual crossing of the Pithom channel. We will have to arrange the logistics of transporting people who live farther south in Goshen and not in or near Zoan to a location closer to the point of crossing the channel. Finally, we

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shall have to plan exactly the pace of the crossing of the channel to fit the five hour time span that will be available.” I permitted myself one of the rare interventions I have been making in our meetings. “Prime Minister Caleb,” I stammered badly, “your words are well taken, but are we not assuming more liberties in our deliberations than would be wise without knowing the military constraints of the situation?” “I think our shepherd Moshé is right,” Aaron interceded. “We should continue our meeting tomorrow morning in the presence of our Commander Joshua.” All three of us agreed. Aaron and I bowed farewell to Caleb and we headed to our carriage. So did Caleb, whose carriage of office was of gold-plated wood. On our way back to the High Priest’s abode, Aaron complemented me on my intervention. I thanked him for his kind support and presented to him my request to co-opt Yossi, the courier pigeon operator, to my service so that when we are in the Sinai desert, he will be able to connect us with the many important junctions of our wandering in the wilderness. Aaron agreed enthusiastically and promised to speak to Yossi about it. In my room, my noon meal waited for me: chickpea paste and black beans in sesame sauce. On it, hard boiled eggs basked in olive oil and fresh parsley and mint. This dish, another creation of the Canaanite cook, was delicious and the cold Muscat grape juice was the right companion to it. After the meal, I took my customary afternoon nap. I was excited and rather tense with anxiety. What if our soldiers and policemen could not control the unruly crowd of our people? Those who did not finish crossing the Pithom channel in time would be washed away by the rapidly rising water. I also had gnawing suspicions about the trustworthiness of Pharaoh Horemheb. Maybe his idea of crossing the Pithom channel while most of the Nile water was diverted into the Royal Canal was a trap and the canal locks would be closed while we were still in the channel and the Nile would actually wash away both our people and the Egyptian riff-raff. Thus, he would not be accused of favoritism towards the hated Habiru by saving them and killing only Egyptians. I discarded these disturbing thoughts since, even if plausible, there was nothing I could do to prevent any impending disaster. I, therefore, let my meandering thoughts soar and took stock of some of the formative ideas that would serve as the foundation of the nascent religion of our people. The religion of my father envisaging an all-pervasive sun disk favors the desert as its site, the scorching Akhet-Aten and not the lush green NoAmon. The searing sun cleanses, purifies and purges. Hence our religion

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has to be conceived, elucidated and molded in the desert. The second layer is the Kenite volcanic god whose name whooshed out to me in the cave of the Holy Mountain near the Egypt Stream not far from the oasis of Kadesh Barnea, the abode of Jethro, my father-in-law and the priest of Jehovah. The name, as revealed to me, was Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, denoting in Habiru the continuous present, the holy essence of divinity. The continuous flow of being is eternal and immortal in contradistinction to the pagan past and future, which stands for the ephemerality of history. I shall convince Aaron that Jethro should be invited to serve as our religious advisor since being the Priest of Jehovah he is in the best position to proselytize our people regarding this unique creed of eternal truth. When we are delivered out of Egypt, cross over to the Sinai desert, and reach the Holy Mountain where Jehovah first revealed Himself to me and disclosed his sacred name, all of our people should be exposed to the word of God at the very same mountain where I was initiated into His creed. I slept heavily and dreamlessly. When I woke up, it was night. Oversleeping was my way of shortening the stressful days and prolonging the relatively tranquil nights. Since there was no rain in Egypt, I had a round open air window in the ceiling of my room through which I could observe the clear starry night sky. Ozarzip was learned in astronomy and familiar with astrology. He instructed me in these subjects and informed me what he learned from a Greek astronomer that all the planets, including our earth, revolved around the sun. This was quite revolutionary and innovative and reinforced the heliocentric theology of my father. The court astrologers taught me about the astral constellations and their power over man’s fate. I identified though my circular window the familiar constellations of the Stork, Bull, Andromeda, Scorpion, Orion and Lion. I lit a candle and wrote a letter to my wife. “Treasured Zippi, lifelong companion and lover, Whenever I am tortured by doubts about our mission, or uncertainty about my role in it, or lack of conviction about the support of God for it, I gaze at the sky, which is, after all, the meaning of my name in Egyptian: Me-Shu, the sky gazer. I fill my lungs with the night air and absorb the starlight which twinkles only for me and I am struck by the great mystery that I am the center of the universe. When I slept a few moments ago, the whole world was dormant with me and when I awoke, the universe flowed into my body giving me exclusive rights to the perception of being excluding all life forms and objects whose existence streams out of my awareness of them. I do, however, need you and the boys here in my immediate presence. Without you I am inchoate, incomplete and fragmentary. I do hope that we shall soon get together and

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be reunited as a happy, mutually supportive and creative family. With unlimited longing, your husband, Moshé the Shepherd.” I went up to the roof to send the letter and Yossi, who was asleep, woke up from the sound of my footsteps. The moment he saw me, his face burst into a welcome smile. I told him about the High Priest’s agreement that he should undertake to organize a courier pigeon service all over the Sinai desert. Yossi told me that he was very happy about this and had already heard about it from the High Priest. In the morning, Aaron came to collect me for the ride to Joshua’s tent, which was going to be, in all probability, the last briefing before the actual exodus of our people out of Egypt. When we entered the Commander’s tent, both Caleb and Joshua were already there. Caleb rose and bowed and Joshua saluted. We sat down and the Nubian slave girl brought in our usual drinks. Caleb, Aaron and I sipped our spice-brew and Joshua guzzled his alcohol. “Commander,” Aaron opened. “We very much need your good guidance about the timetable and procedure of notifying our people about their need to evacuate their homes and prepare themselves to leave Egypt. Could you enlighten us, sir, about this most paramount issue?” This was the first time I heard Aaron call Joshua ‘sir,’ a title given to superiors. Apparently, Aaron, the accomplished politician, decided these crucial events need submission to a military authority. Joshua gulped down his mug of beer and was gulping down a chaser of grappa. His capacity for drink is indeed amazing. “Well,” he opened with his unsmiling face, unblinking eyes, and hissing his words through clenched teeth, “Our operation calls for a precise, exact, and meticulous execution. Otherwise, our whole undertaking could go down the drain of the Nile into the Great Sea.” He tried to infuse a touch of macabre humor into his monotonous presentation. “What we need,” he accentuated his point by piercing the air with both index fingers, “is precision and meticulous attention to detail. The notification of the exodus to the people should be carried out by our soldiers and policemen. The southern part of Goshen where the livestock and agricultural products would abound would be the first to be alerted at nightfall. Our charioteers would be there passing from house to house notifying the Habiru peasants that they are in mortal danger because the Pharaoh has decided to withdraw his buffer regiment in a few hours. They have to load their families onto carriages and carts, load foodstuffs, grain, oil and wine onto wagons and lead their livestock to the Benjaminite orchards south of Zoan, ready for departure.” “The livestock would provide food in the desert but also serve as a barrier between the pursuing riff-raff and the Habiru people in front. Grain

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and wine would, of course, be useful in the desert. An important point,” Joshua again punctuated this point with his index fingers, “is the proclamation of strict communism. You, my leaders,” he waved his hands at the three of us, “would have to proclaim the principle of share and share alike, enforced by our soldiers and policemen. Otherwise, we shall not survive our wandering in the desert.” “The people in the town of Zoan would be notified about the exodus after midnight. Those who would refuse to leave and ask time to sell their chattel and lands would be warned that if they don’t leave in time, they will be left behind and slaughtered cruelly and their wives and children would be raped and reduced to slavery.” Joshua’s face remained stony when he said this without flinching or wincing. “We shall be organized in six groups of 500 people, everyone having a sequential number in his group. No one would know the actual point of crossing the Pithom until the actual exodus. We have exactly 60 days to organize and train for our departure. Any mistake or negligence in the preparation, organization or execution could be fatal.” Joshua stood up saluting and bade us farewell. “Good day, gentlemen.” His demeanor expressed urgency and the burden of the hour but also that he had more important things to do than spend his time with the likes of us. The three of us remained in the tent. We were troubled by the enormity of the events but also convinced that we are in good hands and that Joshua is the man of the hour.

CHAPTER TWELVE CROSSING THE PITHOM CHANNEL

The 60 days until the departure passed quickly in hectic monotony. On the eve of the departure there was a final briefing parade of all six squadrons: charioteers, cavalry, infantry, policemen, eliminators and mercenaries. All dressed up in their uniforms, spick and span, armed to the teeth; equipment, animals and chariots ready for action. Caleb dressed in his Prime Minister’s garb, Aaron in his High Priest regalia, and me in a simple shepherd’s gown. We and our staff were standing behind Joshua lending him religious and civil authority. The Commander was standing up front, giving and repeating the specific assignments to each squadron before they go out to perform their specific tasks. After the briefing, Joshua asked whether there were any questions in a rather threatening tone of voice. There were none. Everything was either clear or they were afraid to ask. Aaron blessed the squadrons with raised hands and Joshua gave the order to march. The chariots and the cavalry of camel riders and half the squadron of eliminators moved to the southern agricultural communities of Goshen to alert them about the immediate danger to their lives and the necessity to leave in all urgency to the Benjaminite orchards near Zoan. Later on in the night, the infantry, policemen and the remaining half squadron of eliminators spread around Zoan and its suburbs to organize the inhabitants to move towards the Pithom channel. After midnight, while the four of us were waiting in the Commander’s tent for the peasants to arrive from the southern areas of Goshen, the Nubian slave girl served us a night meal. She brought in a roasted lamb stuffed with pine nuts and truffles, and spiced with nutmeg, rosemary, sage and cumin. It was searing hot in a cast iron pot roasting in its own juices. The slave girl placed the pot on the low table. Joshua did not wait for the lamb to cool. He grabbed a leg of lamb holding it with an empty wine skin insulating his fingers from the heat. He tore the lamb meat with his strong teeth, forcefully and methodically, until he left a clean red thigh bone connected at a right angle with the leg bone by a round knee cap. Caleb was less carnivorous. He amassed a plate full

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of mushrooms and pine nuts and covered them with strips of lamb meat. Both Joshua and Caleb drank red wine. Joshua squeezed the red jets directly from the wine skin into his throat whereas Caleb drank the wine in a more civilized manner from a Phoenician rainbow glass. Aaron and I ate a cucumber salad in yoghurt and dill sauce and drank green grape juice. At the fourth hour after midnight, the first peasants started to arrive. The heads of the families travelled on horseback or rode mules and donkeys. The women, children and servants travelled in carts driven by oxen. Chattels and sacks of grain were also on these carts. The men looked harassed and shocked by the sudden uprooting from their homes. Their families were dazed and frightened by the unexpected move. As more and more families arrived at the olive grove, travelling by oxcart and trailed by their livestock, the grove became crowded and the noise became loud and disturbing. The oxen mooed, the lambs bleated, the camels, not being used to dense crowds, groaned nervously, and the dogs barked. The barking of the dogs was indeed loud. Joshua remarked that the barking of the dogs might alert the riff-raff that something unusual is happening in Zoan and that it has to be taken care of. “Kill the dogs,” Joshua ordered the eliminators present in the olive groves. The black clad hooded thugs jumped on the dogs and, with some well-aimed stabs to the hearts of the animals, they killed them summarily. The peasants looked flabbergasted and the children wept in dismay, but the eliminators buried the corpses of the dogs rather quickly and the groves became relatively quiet. Joshua decided that the four of us move to Zoan to see how the operation of evacuating the inhabitants and leading them to the banks of the Pithom channel was proceeding. We drove in two carriages, Joshua and Caleb in the lead in the golden chariot followed by Aaron and me in the High Priest’s chariot. I remarked to Aaron that Joshua both frightens and fills me with admiration. Aaron replied that Joshua is the right man in the right place at the right time. “No one else could lead us out of Egypt,” he said, “peregrinate with us through the Sinai desert, and lead us to the Promised Land.” When we reached Zoan, it was already the sixth hour after midnight. The morning star shone in the east and the day dawned. The commander of the policemen accosted us and told Joshua that there was trouble with a guy called Korah who claims that he is the chief man in Goshen and that he is the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi and therefore entitled to the High Priesthood more than High Priest Aaron.

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“Take us to him,” commanded Joshua. The chief of police led us to the most ostentatious palace I have ever seen in Goshen. The front of the edifice was a jigsaw puzzle of white Carrara marble, red Edomite stone brought all the way from Etzion Geber the southernmost port of Canaan on the northern edge of the Red Sea. Green copper ore from the quarries of Aurona in the Zin desert of Sinai alternated with black basalt from the Nile delta. The gold plated gate of the palace reflected the yellow rays of the rising sun. Joshua knocked on the door and a uniformed doorman opened the door. “Who are you?” he inquired. “Tell your master that the High Priest would like to talk to him.” The doorman came back a while later with an answer that his master was still sleeping and that we should come later. “Tell your master,” Joshua retorted menacingly, “that if he does not let us in now,” Joshua’s accentuated the word now with both index fingers very close to the doorman’s eyes, “we shall break the door to pieces and when the riff-raff come they will loot all the goodies from inside without any hindrance.” After a while a short, fat, double-chinned individual clad in a Damask silk turquoise colors, who probably had been eavesdropping to the conversation, came to the door. “Although you are uninvited,” he whined morosely, “I shall let you in because of the High Priest’s emblem, not his person.” He opened the door and we found ourselves standing in front of the most obtrusive, pretentious, and pompous room imaginable. The walls of the guest hall were covered with thick carpets from Elam depicting hunting scenes in deep warm colors. Furniture with Damask inlays of not only different shades of wood but also mother-of-pearl, lapis lazuli, and emeralds lined the walls and were scattered around the outsize hall. In the middle of the guest hall was a fenced deep water pool with a live crocodile that eyed the newcomer guests hungrily. Next to the crocodile pool were two life-size stuffed elephants and two giant African tigers. Aaron embraced Korah warmly. “Good morning, cousin. How are you and how is your family?” he enquired. “We are well, but what business does this Egyptian have with you?” he asked belligerently. “Does he bring some sacrilege to the High Priest’s office?” “Calm down, cousin. Shepherd Moshé is one of us,” Aaron placated him. “Not only is he one of us, he is our visionary and prophet.” “Woe to me,” reacted Korah. “Our grandfather Kohath is in all probability turning in his grave on hearing such blasphemy.” Korah invited us to sit on the low chairs. A bare breasted Canaanite slave girl appeared and asked for our pleasure. Caleb, Aaron and I ordered

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spice-brew and Joshua ordered beer and a glass of grappa which he downed immediately. “What are the problems?” enquired Aaron in a friendly tone. “I cannot leave, cousin,” Korah answered emphatically. “I have an enormous fortune here in gems, gold and land. I cannot possibly sell my land now since my neighbors know that they will get it for free. Also,” he added in stark contrast with his cocky confidence, “people like me here and I am on very good terms with my neighbors.” “Sure, sure,” interceded Joshua sarcastically. “After bleeding your Egyptian neighbors white as the chief tax collector for the late Pharaoh, within a few hours after Pharaoh Horemheb withdraws his buffer regiment, the riff-raff waiting not very far from here are going to loot all your treasures in this palace. They will rape your wife and daughters before slashing their bellies. They will burn down your palace and throw you alive to your crocodile which will relish your fat juicy body.” Korah burst into tears. “What shall I do?” he moaned. “Collect your family and belongings,” Joshua answered calmly, “and come with us without further ado.” Korah seemed to comply docilely. We left Korah’s palace and the morning sun was already scorching. We rode to the banks of the Pithom channel where hundreds of the inhabitants were already gathering and huddling together in fright, uncertainty and anxiety. By the 11th hour, six groups of about 500 people each were already organized in front of the Pithom channel. The first three with a relatively small number of livestock from the town of Zoan would pass first and the three others from the southern agricultural areas of Goshen with a large number of livestock would pass last with their livestock serving as a barrier between the Habiru people crossing the channel and the pursuing Egyptian riff-raff. The soldiers and policemen were mingling with the people helping old folk to walk, handing out goat-skins of water to the thirsty, and goat-skins of fresh goat milk to babies. That was the finest hour of the generous who shared their dried figs, dates, bread and honey with the needy and the worst hour of the stingy, greedy and miserly, usually the richest of the rich, who refused to share their horns of plenty with the deprived. The surplus of their goods and provisions were confiscated under the orders of the Prime Minister and High Priest and distributed to the poverty-stricken under the vociferous protest of the close-fisted niggardly. Only a few people refused to leave their homes. These were the big land owners, the very old, and the very sick. They were warned that they are risking their lives, but to no avail.

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By the 12th hour, the six groups were ready to pass over the Pithom channel. Each group was led by half a dozen chariots and rear-guarded by camel riding cavalry with additional infantry archers facing the assaulting Egyptian riff-raff. By the 12th hour a virtual miracle happened. I raised my hands instinctively. My hands seemed to have a life of their own and reached up automatically. My right hand brandished my shepherd’s staff. When the people saw my raised hands and the staff of the shepherd brandished high, they emitted a roar of awe. The water level of the Pithom channel dropped rapidly as the water in it ran out to the sea while very little water arrived from the south. Most of the steep rocky torrent track became surprisingly dry with a damp haze steaming from the torrent bed in the searing sun. The soldiers and policemen started to hurry, urge and rush the people in the predetermined order of groups of five hundred to pass over the channel. The policemen brandished their rather menacing clubs and the sight of black clad hooded eliminators by itself accelerated the scurry of the people, the galloping of the horses, and the clattering of the carts. When a bottle-neck or a traffic jam occurred, a camel rider would tie his animal to the stuck vehicle and drag it out. Joshua and the soldiers and policemen patrolled the passing constantly. They disentangled traffic jams and pushed ahead some vehicles lagging behind. I could not help admiring the precision and meticulous proficiency of Joshua. Before the end of the 5th hour in the afternoon, it was clear that the operation succeeded beyond imagination. That could not have happened without God’s help. By the end of the 5th hour, the last livestock of the peasants of Goshen had passed over the almost dry rocky torrent bed and three lit lances, as prearranged with the Pharaoh Horemheb, were launched toward the western side of the Pithom channel. That was the signal for the Egyptian buffer regiment to withdraw. Immediately afterwards, the chariots of the Egyptian riff-raff started galloping towards the channel. They had many empty carts, which clattered noisily. They brought these carts to carry the booty and would-be slaves of the Habiru. Just when the riff-raff were in the torrent bed of the channel, the waters of the Nile returned with boiling force and washed away the riff-raff and their vehicles. The rest of the riff-raff on the western banks of the channel looked on dazed at the demise of their comrades. Our archers rained a thick volley of arrows which felled many of the pursuing riff-raff. The rest retreated in confusion. Our victory was complete. Suddenly my hands were raised involuntarily and my shepherd’s staff was waving lively in my right hand. I started to sing in a clear loud voice without any trace of a stammer. It was not my hands that were raised in the

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air and it was not my voice that sang. It was God’s. These words were coming out of my mouth involuntarily, automatically and spontaneously: “I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation; He is my God, and I will prepare him a habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt Him. The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name. The chariots and his host hath He cast into the sea; the villains drowned in the sea. The depths have covered them; they sank to the bottom as a stone. Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power; Thy right hand, Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of Thine excellency, Thou hast overthrown them who rose up against Thee; Thou sendest forth Thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble. And with the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as a heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters. Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? Thou stretchest out Thy right hand, the earth swallowed them. In Thy mercy, Thou hast led forth the people who Thou hast redeemed; Thou hast guided them in Thy strength unto Thy holy habitation. The people shall hear, and be afraid; sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread shall fall upon them. By the greatness of Thine arm, they shall be as still as a stone; till Thy people pass over, O Lord, till Thy people pass over to the land which Thou hast purchased. Thou shall bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of Thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Lord, which Thy hands have established. The Lord shall reign forever and ever.

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For the horse of the villains went in with chariots and with horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Habiru went on dry land in the midst of the sea.” Then Miriam, the sister of Aaron took a timbrel in her hand. A group of women went out after her with timbrels and danced. And Miriam sang: “Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.” After the women stopped singing, Miriam gave them some thick green narcotic leaves from a bush called khat growing in the marshes of the Nile delta north of Zoan. After the women munched and swallowed the leaves, they started trembling from their necks to their toes. Their outsize breasts began to sway in erotic cadence. Their pelvises undulated in coital frenzy after which they crouched on the ground and emitted ecstatic groans of sexual ecstasy. Finally, they fell exhausted on the pebbles lining the eastern banks of the Pithom channel. The mercenaries dragged the limp bodies of the women to some carts and covered their disheveled bodies with linen cloth. I watched Aaron’s face grim with consternation, trepidation and distress. I felt empathy for him having been shamed publicly by his sister. I embraced his shoulder lovingly. Joshua ordered the soldiers and policemen to lead the people to Succoth about two hours’ travel northeast of Pithom where we shall camp and reorganize. The people started to move in the order in which they passed the Pithom channel, slowly, heavily and fatigued. Our first encampment after we left Egypt was in a hut village called Succoth containing sheds of reeds and dry palm branches. This signified our transition from the permanence of the abodes of Goshen to the ephemeral transitory life of nomads in the desert without the permanence of time and space. It was the beginning of a deliverance from the fetters of the pagan religion of Egypt to a religion of one God, abstract without temporal and spatial boundaries. When we arrived at Succoth, it was already night. Although the full moon was still low in the sky, it cast a dim and eerie light. Succoth in Habiru means ‘huts’. Indeed, Succoth was a small village in which nomads could rent a hut for a few days sojourn and stock themselves with water from the two wells and foodstuffs, especially bread from the many bakeries in the village. The name of Succoth in Egyptian is Teku meaning ‘bread’. It was famous for its bread throughout the region. Many of the Habiru from Goshen crossed the Pithom channel, travelled to Succoth, and bought bread for a whole week since the bakers of Succoth had a method of baking bread which stays fresh for many days.

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The people started to unpack their belongings and began to erect the tents, which they had kept at their homes as relics of their nomadic past. They used to go camping with them in the country. Even at home, they would spend a week or two in their tents whenever they felt nostalgic for their nomadic heritage. While the people got organized for the night, the sight of the busy bakeries baking bread for the Habiru people triggered an idea in my head. We should commemorate our miraculous exodus from Egypt by a feast, a ritual, and a holiday. We shall call this feast Pesach, which means ‘passage’ in Habiru, because God made death, dying and expiration pass over us and hurled them onto the Egyptian riff-raff. We shall eat only unleavened bread for seven days, which the bakeries at Teku are going to bake for us, to symbolize the haste with which we left Egypt so the bread did not have time to leaven. Also, we shall pick the very bitter wild mint bushes that grow in profusion on the pebbles lining the Eastern banks of the Pithom channel. We will distribute them to each family to munch as a commemoration of the bitter hatred that the Egyptians felt towards us after having served as tax collectors for my late father, the Pharaoh Akhenaten. Each family shall slaughter a whole lamb. Those who have a herd of sheep shall donate lambs to those who have none so that all our people will be able to feast on a Passover lamb. I told my idea to Aaron who was very enthusiastic about it and we have decided to proclaim the feast of Passover tomorrow morning. I assigned some policemen to pick the bitter mint bushes and went over to the bakeries of Teku and paid them coins of gold to bake unleavened bread the whole night so that we shall have enough of it for our people in the morning. I watched some of the bakeries bake the unleavened bread and I was fascinated. The ovens were made of hardened clay and their rounded interiors were studded with spherical white pebbles. The fuel was camel, goat and sheep dung. When ignited, it was slow burning and emitted the glow of a very hot heat. The unleavened dough was pasted onto the white pebbles and after a short while, it had brown blisters and was ready to eat. It tasted quite good with the bitter mint leaves. Joshua, Caleb, Aaron and I slept in an outsize tent of terracotta camel hair that was empty except for the four mattresses on which we slept and the sarcophagus that contained the mummified body of Ozarzip which Aaron and I promised to bury in Canaan. In the morning we sent the criers to wake up the People. They rang brass hand bells and shouted: “Wake up, O People, to the worship of God.

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Emerge without delay from your tent and stand attentively to hear the words of our Lord as spoken by His prophet, the shepherd Moshé.” After we had our morning meal, we emerged out of our tent and the people were already standing attentively near their tents. I looked with amazement at the hundreds of tents which were erected around the huts and bakeries of Succoth. Many of them had a terracotta color of camel hair. Others were woven out of white sheep’s wool. Most of the tents, however, were made of black goat’s wool which was more durable. I was elated because Yossi, who has already started to build a network of courier pigeon posts, received a message from my wife and sons that they would come and join me in a couple of days in Succoth and that Jethro, my father-in-law, would come to visit. I lifted my hands forcefully, my shepherd’s rod in my right hand, and tilted my head towards heaven. “My brethren,” the words came out loud and clear, “I proclaim in the name of our almighty God a feast to last seven days, the number of days we shall camp here in Succoth. We will call this feast Pesach; because God pasach (passed over you) and did not harm you whereas he smote and drowned the Egyptian riff-raff. Because you left Egypt in a hurry, you carried with you unleavened dough. Therefore, we have arranged to bake for you unleavened bread. They are spread out for you on long tables for the taking and each day the unleavened bread will be replenished by the bakeries for seven days. We have also prepared for you bitter herbs of wild mint commemorating the hardship you suffered because of the hatred of the Egyptian people from whom you collected taxes for the king.” “Finally, you shall slaughter a lamb, one for each family, and if a family should not have a lamb, a family that has a herd shall donate lambs to those who have not, so that each family will have a Paschal lamb to slaughter and eat at night. You should eat it in your clothes of travel like you are dressed for a journey with your bags on your backs and your staffs in your hands, as if you are ready for departure in haste like you did before crossing the Pithom channel. And you shall observe this feast of Pesach every year in which you shall eat for seven days the unleavened Matzo bread and the bitter Maror wild mint for generations to come.” “So be it,” all the people roared in unison to indicate their agreement. “We shall listen and observe. Amen and Amen.” The people then lined up near the long tables loaded with unleavened bread. The policemen kept the line in order. After receiving the unleavened bread, each person took some twigs of bitter wild mint. The taste of the two when combined was quite appetizing. Some of the people were quite creative and prepared a dish of soft goat-cheese laced with

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olive oil and mixed with the bitter wild mint. When eaten with unleavened bread and downed with wine, it was quite delicious. We also tried this culinary innovation, which Joshua’s slave girl prepared for us. I announced with elation that my family is going to join me tomorrow noon and that Jethro, the Priest of God, is also coming to visit and will stay with us for seven days. Aaron, Joshua and Caleb congratulated me and Joshua announced that this calls for celebration and asked his slave girl to bring a sack of the extra old Minoan goat skins of red wine that he keeps for special occasions. I announced that I invite all present and their families to a second feast of a Passover lamb tomorrow night. All present thanked me profusely and we started to eat the goat cheese laced with olive oil, spiced with chopped wild mint and a touch of balsamic vinegar, which was the novelty of Joshua’s slave girl. We dipped the unleavened bread in the dishes and ate. It was really delicious. Joshua was already guzzling the second goat skin of Minoan wine. Caleb, Aaron and I decided also to drink a glass of wine to celebrate the feast. I rarely drink wine but this wine was outstanding. It had an aroma of strawberries, wild cherries, nutmeg and Damask rose. It had a slightly tangy taste at first but then it burst in a full bloom of cinnamon truffles, persimmon and guava. Some sips made my head swim and I blessed this glorious wine. “Be praised, God, our Lord, the King of the world, who created this fruit of the vine.” After the meal, Joshua guzzled the wine steadily whereas Caleb drank moderately. Aaron and I slowly sipped our spice brew from small white glazed cups. Joshua suggested that we discuss our plans after the sojourn of seven days at Succoth. The austere nomadic emptiness of the large tent we sat in, with Ozarzip’s sarcophagus as the only elaborate relic of an advanced civilization, was the right setting for our deliberations about the resumption of our wandering. “My brethren,” Joshua opened. This indicated that the wine he had ingested had mellowed the Commander. When he was relatively sober, he accosted us with the more formal denotation, ‘My comrades’. “We have to plot our advance to the Promised Land whenever and however we are destined to reach it. Our first logical station is Marah, if we are heading to the holy Mount Halal by the road of the Philistines in the northern part of the Shur desert. It is about three days’ travel from Succoth. To the northeast there is a spring and a pond around it. The problem, however, is that the water is bitter.” “Ah,” I interjected enthusiastically without any stammer. Since my public appearances, my speech became much more clear and coherent.

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“When my sons come tomorrow and bring with them their rich medical herbarium, we shall surely find a solution to this problem.” “I hope you are right,” Joshua retorted, “since going for three days without water in the sweltering sun of the Etham desert north of the Shur desert is a heavy chore, which many of the old folk, women and children could hardly bear. If all goes well and your sons will be able to perform the magical trick of sweetening the Marah water…” “Pardon me, Commander,” I interposed forcefully. “It is not magic but a miracle through God’s will.” “All right, my shepherd, call it a miracle. I do not really care provided it is effective.” Efficiency was apparently Joshua’s creed. “From Marah,” Joshua continued, “we shall proceed northeast on the Philistine road for about five hours’ travel on the borders of the Zin desert not far from the great sea to the oasis of Elim, a luscious green haven in the middle of an awesome desert. Twelve streams filled up a pond of cool, crystal clear water. White, red and blue water lilies and their broad green leaves serve as a setting for numerous nymphs who, with white, blue and red transparent wings and tall, supple and sensitive bodies, pirouette their wedding dances. About 70 palm trees surround the pond. At this time of the year, they bear violet juicy fruit.” “How do you know all this?” asked Aaron in amazement. “I roamed all this area as a reconnaissance scout,” answered Joshua, with a trace of pride, “during my long service in the Egyptian army.” We took a short pause during which the Nubian slave girl replenished our drinks. Aaron, Caleb and I ordered two kettles of extra-strong spice brew whereas Joshua switched from his refined exquisite Minoan wine to beer which chasers of grappa. “After a couple of days at the luxuriant oasis of Elim,” continued Joshua, “we shall proceed to Rephidim, about half a day’s travel south in the desert of Zin.” “But, Commander,” I queried, “is not Rephidim the place where the Amalekite bandits and pirates are roaming? The Amalekites are the mortal enemies of the Kenites and we are the allies of the Kenites. So by the timehonored rule of the nomads, ‘the ally of your enemy is also your enemy,’ they are sure to attack us the moment we trespass on their territory.” “Precisely, my dear shepherd,” Joshua’s expansive mood was a sign that the drink has gotten hold of him. “We want them to attack us so that our soldiers and policemen would experience their first battle and bloodletting. They need it as the most important training in the martial arts.” I hardly believed my ears, but this is what Joshua said. He plans to

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deliberately expose our people to death and bloodshed as the most effective mode of military training. “Our next station,” continued Joshua, is the Holy Mount Horeb, another half day’s travel to the east in the desert of Zin. But you, shepherd Moshé, know much more about it than I do. Why don’t you tell us about it?” “Honestly,” I confessed, “I did have a formative experience on the Holy Mountain, a message from God revealing to me His name as well as endowing me with the role, or rather the onus, of divulging to our people the principles of our religion. It is quite inevitable that when all our people are going to be present around the Holy Mountain that God is going to reveal His mandates to us, and I say it in all modesty, through me. But it is certainly premature for me to say what these mandates would be. I hope that when I am on the top of the mountain, I shall experience some kind of divine revelation and I shall be able to announce the word of God as unfolded to me, but right now I am in the dark as much as you are as to whether God is going to communicate to me during my sojourn on the Holy Mountain and what His message would be. I suggest we wait until we reach the sacred mount and all of us are, hopefully, going to be enlightened.” “Your words are well taken, shepherd Moshé,” asserted Joshua as he reverted to administrative matters that were his forte. “I understand,” he said, “that you people,” he pointed to Aaron and Caleb, “are going to have your Paschal lamb with your families. As for me, I am married to an Amorite woman from Shechem who does not really observe the Habiru religion, so, if shepherd Moshé will have me, we could celebrate the Pesach together.” “It would be a great honor and a pleasure,” I replied, “to share with you the Paschal lamb. However,” I added apologetically, “I shall provide the lamb but I have no wine.” “Do not worry about the wine,” asserted Joshua. “I have plenty of good wines and I shall bring them with me tonight. As for tomorrow, I suggest that the three of us vacate this tent so that your family including Jethro, the Priest of God, can stay in this tent while they are with us.” “You are more than generous, Commander.” I embraced Joshua in thanks. Aaron and Caleb bade us farewell and left for their families to feast on the Paschal lamb with them. I told Joshua that I was going to buy a Paschal lamb for us. He said that he would go to his family tent and fetch some superior Illyrian wine to accompany the lamb. “Very good, Commander,” I agreed. “We shall meet again here in a while.” I hurried to the tent of one of the shepherds from the south of

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Goshen whom I befriended since he asked my help when we were still in Goshen, knowing my reputation as an experienced shepherd, to deliver a complicated birth of a lamb or a kid. His name was Shelah and he was a distant cousin of Caleb, our Prime Minister. Shelah received me regally, although many people came to buy lambs for the Paschal feast. He left all the other clients to be attended by the other members of his family and came to me declaring expansively, “Not half the kingdom but the whole kingdom for my teacher and master, Moshé the grand shepherd. What would be your pleasure, sir?” he enquired. “I would like to purchase a lamb for the paschal feast.” “I will not hear of it, my teacher and master,” Shelah protested vehemently. I shall just now choose the best of the lambs, juicy, fat and succulent, for my master as a token of esteem, appreciation and friendship.” “No, no, Shelah,” I argued. “I have to pay for the lamb. Otherwise, it would not be a proper sacrificial lamb. Here is a gold coin, Shelah, and please accept it, I beg of you.” “No way, master,” Shelah refused. “Only a copper agora to make the sacrifice legal. Now let us go and choose the best of the best lambs for you, master.” He asked me to accompany him while he tapped the numerous lambs for weight, fat and tenderness. He chose a large lamb and handed me the animal. I gave him the copper coin and Shelah declared, “I am going to gild it and wear it on my neck on a gold chain since you are a Tzadik, a saint in Habiru.” I embraced him warmly and hurried back to my tent, holding the lamb in my hands. Joshua was already there and opened a wine skin of a very aromatic Muscat Illyrian wine and squeezed jet after jet into his throat. I asked him to help me build a stove outside the tent on which to roast the lamb. He gladly agreed. We dug a small hole in the brittle loess ground and brought two earthenware bricks that were strewn around from some of the dilapidated huts. We filled the hole with camel dung and lit it with some soft papyrus. The camel dung caught fire quickly and spread a thick smoke around us. I asked Joshua to slaughter the lamb, which he did quickly and expertly. He slashed the animal’s throat with his army dagger and its blood sprouted out into the fire. Then Joshua skinned the animal by cutting a hole in the skin of its hind leg. He then blew air into the cut to separate the skin from the flesh. When the skin was inflated, he slashed it with a quick and sharp movement and the skin peeled off and left the animal clean and ready to roast.

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Because the paschal lamb has to be roasted whole as a sacrifice (Greek holokauston), we did not open its belly and left its entrails inside its body. We then stuck two sharp sticks into the animal, one at its head and the other in its behind, and placed the sticks on the two bricks with the fire in the hole roasting it. Joshua and I turned the two sticks, one at each side, so that the lamb roasted evenly. The sun was already setting in the west and the smell of roasting flesh all around the camp rose and engulfed the tents with a tangy aroma. I looked at our surroundings. Our camp was situated on the dividing line between the fertile Nile delta and the desert. One could clearly see that without the Nile, all of Egypt would revert to an arid wilderness. The desert on the east side of Succoth already manifested itself with all its cruelty. Scorpions, lizards and snakes roamed the dry brittle loess clay. Fortunately there were no snake bites but there were many casualties from painful scorpion stings. Hopefully, the serums that Eli and Geri will bring will save the victims of viper and cobra bites from a certain death. While rolling the lamb on the roasting fire, Joshua started to moan and to sob. Apparently the drink started to get hold of him and he lost control. I never thought that it would happen, but even the sturdiest of livers could not hold as much liquor as Joshua consumed. “Oh my shepherd, friend and master, I am full of respect and, yes, envy for the wonderful family life you have, whereas mine is in shambles. When I served in Shechem, I fell in love with a beautiful Amorite girl, a daughter of one of Shechem’s notables. I fell in love with her raw beauty, wild demeanor and sensuous body. I paid a huge dowry for her and we got married in a pagan Amorite temple under the heathen Amorite rites to which I also subscribed. I did not care about religion. I was madly in love with a body and bursting passion. After a while and 6 children she exhausted me. I brought her to Goshen but when I was away on duty, she quenched her insatiable appetite for sex with her Nubian slaves. I was so humiliated that I started to drink. The more I drank, the more the situation became worse. Now with my almost constant drinking I have become virtually impotent. Except for the sucking of my Nubian slave girl, I can hardly have it up. What shall I do, my friend and master?” His sobbing became uncontrollable and he hardly could manage to turn the roasting lamb. At last the lamb was ready and Joshua tore a leg from it and started to munch it. “Be careful, Commander. First of all, the lamb is searing hot and second, you should not break the lamb’s bones. It is a holokauston and its remains should be burned whole. Joshua could hardly listen. He was too far gone. I lifted him gently and carried him to a mattress. He was very heavy, but I managed to drag him

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to the mattress. After a while he snored drunkenly. I had empathy and compassion for the Commander, the outwardly tough soldier had a suffering soul. I did not have much appetite. I was excited by the imminent coming of my family and I was moved and pained by Joshua’s agony. I munched some morsels of the lamb and then burned it entirely on the glowing hot fire. The fat meat burned well and after a while it was consumed whole like it should be. I extinguished the fire and went to sleep. The events of the day made me fall asleep immediately. I woke up to the sound of Joshua’s moaning. His whole body was trembling. I embraced the Commander and held him firmly to my chest. “What is it with you, my commander, my master and my dearest of friends?” “I am hooked, my shepherd,” Joshua moaned. “I became a slave to the liquor. The worst slavery there is. I cannot start my day without downing a whole glass of grappa, which stops my trembling, and then I have to continue drinking beer with chasers of grappa supplemented by white and red wines. Otherwise, I cannot function.” Joshua covered his face with his hands and sobbed. “What shall I do, shepherd, what shall I do?” “There is something for you to do, my dearest of friends, provided you have the will power, which I am sure you do, to refrain from drinking.” “Right now I am unable to do it,” answered Joshua apologetically while fumbling into his bag and fishing out a skin bag of grappa. He squeezed some long jets of the liquid into his throat. He shuddered like alcoholics do when ingesting a large amount of liquor in the morning. After a while his hands steadied and his demeanor became composed. “My dearest friend,” I accosted Joshua, “I have to recount to you and then counsel you about issues of the utmost importance.” Joshua was sitting docilely and attentively while I carried on my sermon to him. “Commander,” I continued, “You are the pivotal anchor on which our deliverance, the resurrection of our political existence, and the formation of our revolutionary religion are founded. You are our Chief of Staff, our political leader, and our strategist who will lead us to our Promised Land. I am just a figure head. Aaron is a religious functionary. Caleb is a bureaucrat. But you are the real leader, director, captain and trailblazer of our political, ideological and religious renaissance.” “You are surely aware of your immense responsibility to us, your brethren, and to God. I, Aaron and Caleb are replaceable. You are not. Hence, I beseech you, implore you, and supplicate you to curb and get rid of your addiction to this lurid substance which weakens your capacities to function and mars your judgment. Please, please, please, Commander, as from this evening you shall stay with us in a special compartment of this

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tent. We shall notify your family that you shall be absent from home a few days. Geri and Eli have the right medication for drying you up and ridding you from this diabolic substance that threatens to destroy you and us with you. From this moment on, you are not touching any liquor.” “In the afternoon my sons will be here and give you some medicine to alleviate your withdrawal. Now, please, accompany me to my friend Shelah to purchase four lambs for our paschal feast tonight in the company of my family and God’s Priest Jethro who will be coming to join us later in the day, as will Aaron, Caleb and their families and you, of course. Commander, you, and I and your slave girl are going to prepare the feast for tonight.” On our way to Shelah’s herd on the southern outskirts of our camp, we bought some unleavened bread from the bakeries. We also picked up some wild mint, which the bakers put in a sack with the bread for us. Before reaching Shelah’s herd, I beseeched Joshua not to touch any liquor until my sons come and are sure to find a solution to his quandary. “I shall do my best, my shepherd,” Joshua warranted, “but it is going to be difficult. I have already a craving for a stiff drink.” “Please be strong,” I encouraged the Commander, “for your own sake and for the sake of all of us.” When we reached Shelah’s herd, the owner welcomed us with awe, respect and enthusiasm. “Oh, what an honor,” Shelah bubbled over with excitement. “Not only Shepherd Me-She but Commander Joshua himself have come to visit my lowly abode. What is your pleasure, gentlemen? It will be fulfilled right away.” We asked for four lambs for the second Pesach feast, which is legal to be held in the diaspora in which we were and not yet settled in the Promised Land. We insisted that he should be paid. Shelah refused, but Joshua offered him four gold coins and vowed that he donates them to charity, so Shelah reluctantly agreed. We chose four fat, husky and succulent lambs. Shelah saw that we are also carrying unleavened bread and bitter herbs, so he asked one of his boys to help us carry the lambs. The boy carried two lambs, one under each arm, and Joshua and I carried one each. When we reached our tent, I almost fainted. My wife Zippi, my sons Geri and Eli, and my father-in-law Jethro were already there, staring at me and beaming. Aaron and Caleb were also there smiling happily. Apparently, they conspired with Yossi, our courier pigeon operator, to notify my family to come in the morning and surprise me. So they traveled all night and indeed astounded me. When I encountered my wife and my boys, I could hardly see them since my tears filled up my eyes and marred my vision. I embraced the

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three of them and huddled my head with theirs. We stood like this for an interminable moment of bliss, hugging, embracing, clasping and clinging to one another. While embracing my family, I let go of the lamb under my arm. It ran out of the tent but Shelah’s boy ran after it and fetched it back. Then he tied up all four lambs to the central tent pole. They bleated together in a sad unison, maybe with a premonition of the dire fate that awaits them later tonight. I disentangled myself from the lovers’ embrace of my family and exclaimed, “Zippi, my beloved, you look wonderful. I forgot how beautiful you are.” “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,” Zippora reacted coyly and coquettishly. I embraced the shoulders of my sons and admired them excitedly. “Look at you,” I called out unrestrainedly, “you have grown immensely and become the most handsome men in the whole of the Orient. It is a pleasure to behold you.” “You exaggerate as always,” protested Geri while Eli smiled bashfully and said pleasantly, “It is so joyful to be reunited with you, dearest of all fathers.” Jethro was dressed in his full regalia as Priest of God, talking to Joshua and Caleb. Just when Joshua was about to uncork a goat skin of grappa, I rushed over to him and snatched it from his hands and at the same time, for camouflage, I embraced Jethro warmly. I then asked Joshua to accompany me since I wanted to introduce my family to him. I came over to my wife and sons with the Commander and Joshua saluted in the military fashion. I asked Geri to accompany me and the Commander outside the tent to discuss a matter of urgency in utter discretion. When outside the tent, I embraced Geri and asked forgiveness for encroaching on his kindness so early upon his arrival. “But dearest, son,” I supplicated, “Commander Joshua is the cornerstone of the deliverance of our people from Egypt and he will be the one to lead us to the Promised Land. Unfortunately, however, this great man has become addicted to alcohol and he drinks uncontrollably. So please, my beloved child, can you think of something to help our distinguished Commander and leader and extricate him from his affliction?” “Let me see,” answered Geri pensively. Then he ran to the cart full of herbs and medicines parked outside the tent. He fumbled inside a wooden box and came out with a small sack and a corncob pipe. “You see this, most esteemed Commander?” Geri said to Joshua. Geri opened the bag and took out a handful of small black balls and showed them to Joshua.

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“You see, sire, these are called opium. They come from Carchemish up north from the high mountains from which flows the source of the river Euphrates. They were brought to us by the caravans coming from Babylon. They are quite expensive since they come from the poppy fruit after the gorgeous colorful flower petals wilt and fall off. The skin of the fruit is then cut open and the sap, which is yellow, comes out. The small blobs become black and are collected by the growers.” “These balls of opium are a very powerful narcotic and you take only one and no more than one at a time,” Geri moved his index finger for a warning, “in the corncob pipe and light it, and inhale its fumes deeply into your lungs. You will experience a stunning euphoria, which will give you a feeling of bliss, rapture, and felicitous elation. You will not need a drink to lift your spirits. One ball a day will suffice. You are going to get from me one ball a day for ten days and then your addiction to alcohol should go away.” Geri put a ball of opium in the corncob pipe, lit it with a sulfur stick that he rubbed against the thick cloth of his pants to ignite. Then he gave it to the Commander to inhale. When Joshua did so, his face became glad, happy and ecstatic. He sat on the wheel of the cart to cherish its heavenly effect. “Remember, Sire, your addiction is a continuous disease. You should not touch a drop of liquor again. If you do, you shall revert back in no time to a full-fledged addiction again.” “Thank you, Geri-Gershom, a Tzadik, a worthy son of a Tzadik.” We left Joshua to cherish his piped euphoria and returned to our tent. There Joshua’s slave girl served appetizers: stuffed vine leaves, squash filled with minced lamb and cooked in almond sauce, onions filled with mushrooms, chickpea paste with minced lamb meat fried with pine nuts, cubed fresh cucumbers with yoghurt sauce spiced with garlic and fresh basil leaves, and sesame paste mixed with fresh parsley and balsamic vinegar. She also served spice-brew, grape juice, and white and red wine. When we sat down, Jethro reviewed the first period of Pharaoh Horemheb’s reign. Jethro’s imposing figure dominated the ambiance in our tent. Jethro analyzed the political and military ravages which my father Akhenaten left. “Your father, Prince Me-Shu or rather shepherd Moshé, was a religious virtuoso. His spiritual innovations were tremendous but this kind of single-mindedness has a price. His neglect of the army and political ventures caused the disruption of Egyptian military power and the decline of the Egyptian political influence.” “Pharaoh Ay was too old, ailing and weak to effect any military and political amelioration. All he was interested in was palace intrigue as

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orchestrated by Queen Tey. Pharaoh General Horemheb was the right man in the right place, a professional soldier who reconstructed the army and an astute politician who built up again Egypt’s political influence in Africa and the Middle East. He was also very clever in helping you people to get out of Egypt as his allies. He solved at once his two grand problems. He got rid of Egypt’s violent riff-raff and he accomplished the exodus of the Habiru who had become a political liability. He did this while keeping you as friends who will remain his allies in the years to come even after you reach and forcefully obtain your Promised Land.” Everyone listened attentively and in agreement with the discourse of Jethro and he established his position as the supreme advisor and elder statesman of the Habiru people. Joshua cut a strange figure with the corncob pipe in his mouth. He still had a wide smile on his face, quite rare with the Commander. It was the lasting effect of the opium. “How are you feeling, Commander, “I asked.” “Wonderful,” he whispered into my ear. “I have a ditty,” he quipped. “A ball of opium a day keeps your mischief and troubles away.” “I did not know you had a sense of humor, Commander,” I whispered back. “Keep it this way, master. One ball of opium and no liquor.” Aaron thanked Jethro and, probably to change the subject, he suggested we discuss the significance of the feast of Pesach we are having tonight. “I have discussed this at length,” continued Aaron in a sonorous voice, “with my teacher and mentor here,” Aaron pointed his hands reverently at me. “The first principle of the feast of Pesach, ‘passed over’ in Habiru,” continued Aaron, “is God’s skipping over us and saving our people from his destructive fury while venting His rage on the pursuing Egyptian rabble who hated our people and thirsted for our blood. This Pesach, the saving and protecting Pass-over of God is symbolized by the smearing of the blood of the sacrificial paschal lamb over the entrance of the tents and the cross-bar of the doors of the houses as an attestation of God’s passing over and deliverance of His people.” “The second formative element of the Passover feast is the Matzo, the unleavened bread, which signifies the haste in which our people had to leave Egypt because of the secrecy concerning the time and place of our departure. Hence, we could not wait for the leavening of the dough and the bread is baked in the flat unleavened form of the Matzo.” “The third focal concern of our feast is the bitter herbs symbolizing the hatred of the Egyptian populace of our people who were identified with what was considered by them as an oppressive regime of the Pharaoh Akhenaten.”

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“Now I understand that we should go and wash and purify ourselves for the feast and wear our travel clothes to indicate our haste in our exodus from Egypt. Also the criers will announce that as from tomorrow our two experienced doctors, Gershom and Eliezer, the sons of our prophet and visionary leader Moshé the Shepherd, will treat the ailments of our people and their livestock. Also, the criers are going to invite our people to this tent to relate their grievances and conflicts to our four leaders here so that they may be relieved of their worries and their stress.” Caleb and Aaron left to go to their tents to wash and purify themselves. Zippora bathed and cleaned herself in a special compartment of the tent. When she completed her cleansing ablution, Zippora donned her travel clothes and started to warm the water in large copper tubs for the cleansing of the men in our tent. When the baths were ready, my wife left the tent to allow privacy to the bathing men. She went out and spent some time in the herbarium cart sorting some new additions of medical herbs to our collection of curative plants. When the men finished washing and dressed in their travel clothes, Zippora came back to the tent to help prepare the paschal feast. Joshua occupied himself with the slaughter of the lambs and their skinning. He said that he will do it outside the tent but that he will smear some of the blood on the two tent flaps at the entrance to symbolize the skipping Pesach of God over the tent and its inhabitants thereby ensuring their deliverance, redemption and salvation from any demise, injury or mischief while leaving Egypt in contrast to the pursuing Egyptian mob. Joshua kept the corncob pipe in his mouth as a reminder to not drink alcohol even when the pipe did not contain an opium ball. I helped my wife set and arrange the tables since I cherished every moment in her company after our long separation. Geri and Eli unloaded the boxes of medicines and therapeutic herbs from their cart, which was parked outside the tent, and placed them inside the tent near the entrance in anticipation of the many people who are sure to come to the tent seeking medical help. When the sun started to set, our guests and their families started to arrive. Caleb ben Jephunneh, who was married to the daughter of one of the prominent chieftains of the tribe of Judah, had a very large family with numerous children and grandchildren, some of the suckling babies in the arms of their mothers. Less numerous but still quite large was Aaron’s family, again with many children and grandchildren. Our family numbered just four. Zippora always intimated that Geri and Eli should get married, having reached maturity. She pressed for Midianite wives whereas I argued that Habiru wives would be more appropriate.

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Finally we settled for one Midianite girl and one Habiru lass according to the choice of our sons. Joshua was frying the lamb outside the tent and when the table was set with unleavened Matzo bread and bitter Maror herbs, Zippora placed candles on the table and Jethro was given the honor to light and bless them. The Priest of God sang with a deep baritone: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light candles for Pesach.” All present, dressed in their travel clothes, answered in a booming unison: “Amen, so be it.” Again Jethro sang, “Blessed are thou O Lord, our God, King of the universe, who hast kept us alive and sustained us and brought us to reach this Pesach feast.” All present again resounded, “Amen, so be it.” Then all the guests sat around the table which was loaded with salads, fruit and drinks. There was a stack of Matzo in its middle and on top of the unleavened bread was a bunch of bitter herbs. I cut pieces of Matzo and bunched them with leaves of bitter herbs and distributed them to everyone. Then I pronounced: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who has saved us from Egypt where our life was bitter and we left in haste with unleavened dough. Hence we eat Matzo and bitter herbs together at this Pesach feast.” Then Aaron recited: “And the Lord brought us forth from Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, with great terror and signs and wonders. And the Lord brought us forth from Egypt, not by means of an angel, not by means of a seraph, not by means of a messenger, but by Himself, the Holy One, blessed be He in His glory.” Just then, Joshua came into the tent with a sizzling roasted lamb on a brass tray and said, “Why do we eat this Paschal lamb? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, passed over our people when we left Egypt but smote the Egyptian rabble who pursued us.” Then Geri my son recited, “What is the significance of this Matzo that we eat? Because there was no time for the dough in Egypt to become leavened before the Supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed himself to our people and redeemed us. As it is said: The dough we brought out from Egypt was baked into cakes of unleavened bread. It had not leavened because we were expelled from Egypt and could not tarry, nor had we prepared for ourselves any provisions.” And Eli, my son, said: “What is the significance of these bitter herbs that we eat? Because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our people. As it is said: And they embittered their lives with hard labor, with mortar and bricks, with every manner of work in the fields; all their servitude, which they made them serve with rigor.”

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And Caleb declared: “In every generation one must look upon oneself as if one personally had come out from Egypt, as it is said: And thou shall tell thy son on that day, saying, This is done on account of what the Lord did for me when I went forth from Egypt. The Holy One, blessed be He, redeemed not only our forefathers. He also redeemed us together with them, as it is said, He brought us out from Egypt so that He might bring us to, and give to us, the land which He swore to our forefathers.” After this, we ate the paschal lambs that Joshua brought into the tent one after the other, sizzling, searing and piping hot on brass trays. We made room for them on our festive table and Joshua carved pieces of them, taking care not to cut bones and not to pierce their bellies and their entrails, and placed them on earthenware plates and distributed them to the guests. I poured red wine into the glasses of the adults and grape juice into the cups of the children and I blessed the wine: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast chosen us from among all peoples, and exalted us above all tongues, and sanctified us with Your commandments. Thou hast lovingly granted us, O Lord our God, festivals for joy, holidays and seasons for gladness, and this day of the Feast of Matzo, the season of our freedom, a holy assembly, and a memorial of the departure from Egypt. Thou hast chosen us, sanctified us, and caused us to inherit Thy holy festivals, in joy and gladness. Blessed art Thou, Lord, who sanctifies Israel and the seasons.” We ate the lamb, which was delicious, all of us complimented Joshua on his expert roasting proficiency, and we drank the wine, which was glorious. Just then I overheard Joshua whispering in the ear of Geri, “I have the craving. I need a ball of opium.” All right,” Geri agreed, “but only one. Tomorrow you get another one. Come with me please, sir,” Geri invited Joshua with deference. They went outside the tent. Geri fumbled in one of the boxes in his cart of herbs and medicines. He fished out the small canvas bag containing the opium balls. Geri handed Joshua one ball. The Commander grabbed it hungrily, put it in his corncob pipe, lit it, and drew the fumes into his lungs. His drawn, stressed demeanor changed instantly into one of bliss, grace and heavenly elation. He went back into the festive tent as if floating on the wings of angels. After the meal, Aaron recited thanksgiving for the sustenance: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, Who does sustain the whole world with His goodness. With His grace, His mercy and His compassion, He giveth food to every creature, for His mercy

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endureth forever, and in His great goodness we have never been in want, and may we never be in want of sustenance, forever and ever. For the sake of His great name, for He provideth food and sustenance for all, and is beneficent to all, and prepares food for all His creatures that He hath created. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who provideth food for all.” To conclude the feast, Jethro, the Priest of God, sang in his reverberating voice: “I love the Lord for He hath heard my voice, and my supplications, for He has inclined His ear unto me, all my life I will call upon Him. The cords of death encompassed me, the agony of the tomb seized me, I found sorrow and grief and I called the name of the Lord, O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul. The Lord is gracious and just, our God is merciful. The Lord watches over the simple, I was brought low and He saved me. Be at rest again, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with me. Thou hast delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling. I will walk before the Lord in the lands of the living. What can I render unto the Lord, for all His benefits towards me? I will raise the cup of salvation, and I will call the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord, yea, in the presence of all his people. Hallelujah.” Everyone sang: “Hallelujah, this year we celebrate here in freedom but next year we shall feast in our Promised Land.” All present were happy, sated, and ready to sleep. The guests dispersed to their quarters and Zippora and I retired to her compartment in the tent. Jethro and the boys slept on mattresses on the floor of the tent after the festive table was dismantled. Early in the morning, we woke up to the turmoil, uproar and commotion of pandemonium. I peeped out of the tent flap closing the entrance and I saw and heard multitudes of men, women and children clamoring, “We need a doctor. You promised us yesterday help from a doctor. My eyes are infected. I am losing my eyesight.” Another man shrieked, “My wife is going to give birth. I do not know what to do. Help me.” A fat woman with a triple chin, outsized belly, and hanging breasts shrieked: “My neighbor, the thief, stole my jewelry. Shepherd Moshé should judge her as a thief and force her to return my jewels.” Her shriek became hoarse with hatred. Other people started to shriek their grievances at the top of their voice. “Where is Shepherd Moshé? He promised us the world when we were in Egypt. Now we have nothing. Where is High Priest Aaron? Me-Shu is an Egyptian Prince. He is not one of us. He is an Egyptian stooge. The rabble, the mob, the camp followers and a mixed horde of beggars, thieves and whores who joined our people at the last moment expecting to benefit their

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lot were the most vociferous. “Where is Me-Me-Shu-Shu?” they shouted mocking my stammering. “Let him show himself and we shall teach him a lesson.” A lame beggar brandished a knife menacingly. A fat whore was fumbling in a box on the medicine cart and stuffing herbs into her ample bosom. I called Eli my son to the rear of the tent, opened slightly the rear tent flap, and urged Eli, “Quick, my son. You see the fourth tent from here. That is the tent of Joshua. Crawl out through this tent flap, go to him, and have him come with some policemen and eliminators. Hurry, my child, we are in mortal danger.” Eli had a lithe and agile body. He easily crawled out of the tent and ran to Joshua’s tent. Just when the lame beggar started to pierce the tent flap at the entrance to our tent, Joshua and a couple of eliminators, who were billeted near the Commander’s tent, arrived. One of the eliminators stabbed the beggar in the back. He shrieked in mad agony and then his body became limp. The other eliminator stabbed the fat whore in her bosom and the stolen medicines fell down, the whore howled as if in labor, and then fell down with a thud. The mob screamed in horror and fled back to their tents. The eliminators dragged the bodies of the beggar and the whore to the outskirts of the camp and buried them in the sand. I asked Joshua to summon Aaron and Caleb to our tent and provide an escort for them. When they came in escorted by policemen, I called a special meeting of what I denoted as our ‘steering committee’ consisting of Aaron, Caleb, Joshua and myself. Zippora brought in some strong spice brew to stir us up from our interrupted sleep. When everybody sipped their spice brew, I intended to open the session of our steering committee but, unexpectedly, Jethro asked for the floor. “Gentlemen, lend me your ears,” Jethro opened. “Listen to me because I am experienced in these matters. If you carry on the way you are now, your operation is sure to fail before you even get started. Here are the first things you have to do.” Jethro became didactic. “You have to teach your people the laws of behavior before God. The teachers of these rules should be God fearing, able men, truthful men who hate covetousness and care for people and feel for them in their suffering and try to assuage their miseries, men who give more than they receive, who are guided by the spirit of righteousness and not by the passions of the body. Each of these men shall be appointed leaders of ten in their respective tribes and guide and coach these ten in all matters of laws and the right behavior between man and man and between men and God. These leaders of ten shall be responsible to, guided by, and subject to rulers of fifty. And these would

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be led by the leaders of hundreds, and these would be ruled by one leader of 250 of each of the twelve tribes.” “The leaders of ten should decide whatever they can. If not, they should refer the matter to the leaders of fifty and these to the guiders of hundreds and these to the rulers of the 250 people of each tribe. Only the matters that these rulers are unable to deal with should be referred to you. Thus your work and the duties of High Priest Aaron, Prime Minister Caleb, and Commander Joshua should be manageable. Also the whores and camp followers should be delivered to the mercenaries and they will know how to deal with them. The beggars and thieves should be identified and arrested by the policemen and loaded on the first ferry of the Pithom channel that will take them back to wherever they came from.” “Your words of wisdom and experience are well taken, my father-inlaw and most esteemed Priest of God. We shall, of course, do what you advise us but why do not you stay with us and keep advising us and come with us to the Promised Land which God has endowed us?” “I am very flattered, my son,” answered Jethro, “but I have to return to my own land and my own congregation which awaits me. God willing, I shall depart tonight to avoid the heat, but since we are family, we will be in touch constantly by the courier pigeon service which you so expertly and wisely organized.” “I embraced my father-in-law and wept on his shoulders with tears of gratitude. Jethro retired to a side compartment of the tent to prepare for his departure later in the afternoon. Joshua went out to his policemen and ordered them to round up the whores and deliver them to the quarters of the mercenaries and to arrest the beggars and thieves and send them back to Egypt. He did not, however, leave the tent without asking my son Geri for another ball of opium, which he lit and breathed its fumes. When Joshua left the tent, my sons started to arrange the medicine and herb boxes against the tent flaps whereas the three of us, Aaron, Caleb and myself, sat down and discussed how to implement Jethro’s advice to us. Meanwhile, my wife Zippi started to prepare our morning meal. When she brought in six different salads which she prepared so quickly, I complemented her and divulged to her how I longed for her and her cooking all this long separation. She also brought in a bowl of hot porridge sweetened by fresh dates. Indeed, her proficiency in mixing fresh vegetables with all kinds of fresh and seasoned cheeses was unique. Her spicing was harmonious and appetizing. After a while, Jethro joined us for a morning meal. Following another round of extra strong spice brew, which again my wife Zippi prepared

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expertly, Jethro joined us and advised us how to implement his counsel of organizing, structuring and coordinating our governmental and judicial systems. His words were always measured, logical and wise and I was indeed sorry to see him go. I only hoped that he would be able to continue advising us from his abode in Kadesh Barnea. After a few hours of intensive deliberations, the immense and convoluted problems of managing our unruly crowd started to be defined and the ways and means of coping with them began to be clarified. After some time, Joshua came back from his unpleasant task of rounding up the whores and entrusting their care to the Egyptian mercenaries. Also many but not all of the thieves, beggars and camp followers were sent downstream the Pithom channel to the Nile delta. The owners of the ferries asked exorbitant prices for transporting the bizarre and quite likely dangerous cargo. When Joshua came in, he described to us his needs for means, money, equipment and arms to maintain our military and police administration. I also mentioned that our medical services for humans and animals would be operational in a few days. When the time for Jethro’s departure approached, his daughter Zippi loaded grape juice and goat sour cream for her father’s delicate digestion, some unleavened bread, and large goat skins with water. Geri and Eli gave him some bottles of medicine for their grand-father’s dyspepsia, and I gave him a parchment with the Ten Commandments I intend to declare on the Holy Mountain when we get there. Zippi was already shedding tears. Aaron embraced him and thanked him for all his wisdom and good will. Caleb assured him that he will always be our elder statesman. I embraced him for a long time, transmitting my love, devotion and thanks to him by my embrace without words. Joshua saluted him and announced that a platoon of cavalry will escort his carriage to his abode in Kadesh Barnea. When his daughter and his grandsons bade him farewell, Jethro’s eyes became moist with emotion. When the great man departed, I sensed a void in my chest.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN TRAVELLING THROUGH THE DESERT

After Jethro left, Joshua, Caleb, Aaron and I looked at the maps of north Sinai to plot our route of about three days’ travel across the Etham desert that leads east to the oasis of Elim. That oasis has 12 water wells and 70 palm trees. We shall camp there by the water where Joshua showed us on the map. The Etham desert stretches south of the Philistine’s road along the great sea and north of the desert of Shur, which leads to the Holy Mountain of God. Just before the oasis of Elim is Marah, a lake of bitter water about two hours’ travel from the oasis. Joshua predicted that by the time our people reach Marah, their supply of water would be exhausted and the bitter water of the Marah Lake is undrinkable. We can travel by night and rest by day to avoid dehydration, but lack of water would be a problem. I said “Wait a moment, Commander,” and went out of the tent and called my sons who were sorting the herbs at their medicine cart to enter the tent. When they came in, I asked them, “My children, would you know of a means to sweeten bitter water?” “Certainly, father,” answered Eli. There is a bitter thorn growing in the desert known by the nomads and called Mellimaran. When thrown into bitter water, it has a reaction with it and it neutralizes the bitterness.” “How much of it do you have in your stock?” I asked. “Not much,” answered Geri, “but it is a very recognizable plant and as we travel in the desert, we can easily spot it.” “So this is your task, my children,” I requested. “We are going to travel for three days in the desert and you should collect as many of these Mellimaran plants as you can. When we reach the bitter lake Marah, our people will fill their empty goat skins with bitter water and you will then insert twigs of the Mellimaran bush into their goat skins to neutralize their bitterness.” “Excellent idea,” exclaimed the usually taciturn Caleb. “I suggest, gentlemen,” I tried to muster some authority, “that you make it an early night since tomorrow morning we shall start dismantling

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our camp and with sunset we shall start moving in the Etham desert on our three days’ travel towards the Elim oasis via the bitter lake of Marah.” “Of course, shepherd Moshé. You are right, as always. But Geri, my boy,” Joshua accosted my son. “I need another ball of opium for a nightcap.” “OK, Commander. This evening only because we have a strenuous day tomorrow, but no more. By the way, Commander, have you been dry these last days?” enquired Geri. “Of course, my boy,” Joshua assured Geri. “Don’t you remember? A ball of opium a day keeps your troubles away.” When our guests left, Zippora and I started to argue again about the appropriate brides for our sons. “I have a surprise for you,” intimated my wife, as if divulging the most guarded secrets of the universe. “Eli, our son, fell in love with the youngest daughter of Aaron, the High Priest. So now we have to find a match, a Midianite girl, as we have agreed for our Geri.” “First of all,” I argued, I do not remember that we had a deal. Then what happens if Geri does not like the girl we or rather you present him? “Since when does a child have a say in the identity of his mate? It is for us to decide who would be the suitable bride for our Geri,” Zippora countered. “How can you be so old fashioned,” I protested. “These days, the young have a say in the choice of their mates.” “Do they?” she asked with a trace of sarcasm in her voice, which I did not think she had. “Let me ask you this, my dear husband,” Zippora seemed to be ready for a lengthy discourse. “When my father proposed that you marry me, did you love me?” Zippora asked rhetorically and answered herself, “Of course not.” I reacted automatically, “I was a fugitive and I was in no position to refuse.” “But do you love me now?” “Ah,” my eyes became moist with emotion, “you are my sunshine, you are the air in my lungs, you are the treasure in my heart, you are the reason for my being, you are the apple of my eye, and you are the fount of my life.” “You see,” Zippi exclaimed triumphantly and jumped on my lap and almost toppled me down. “Control yourself, woman. The children are watching.” “So much the better. Let them learn how a coerced marriage became the most romantic love story that proves my point. Our Geri is going to marry my niece, the youngest daughter of my brother.”

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“Not so quick. Let us defer our decision until we reach Kadesh Barnea.” “All right, but for tonight you and I are going to our compartment to make love all night,” she whispered in my ear. “Oh my God,” I gasped for air. “What happened to my bashful, modest, reserved, reticent and chaste wife?” “She is gone, my love, and in her stead you have now a priestess of passion.” She took my hand and led me unabashedly to our compartment in our tent. Luckily, our sons were outside sorting out some medical herbs on their cart. Zippora and I made love incessantly, vigorously and continuously until we fell asleep, exhaustedly, in each other’s embrace. In the morning, Zippora prepared our morning meal. It consisted of barley oats porridge sweetened with fresh dates, a cucumber salad with goat cheese, yoghurt and spiced with fresh basil, Indian allspice, laced with olive oil, and a dash of balsamic vinegar. There was also the traditional morning chickpea salad mixed with sesame paste and black beans and spiced with fresh parsley, coriander seeds, and thyme. She made a wonderful spice brew, extra strong, which pepped us up with vital nervous energy for the whole day. Her grape juice was also special. She had a way of crushing the Muscat grape kernels with a sledge hammer and the splinters gave the grape juice a tangy bite on the tongue. Eli ate quickly in order to be able to visit the tent of High Priest Aaron and have a morning chat with his beloved. Geri chided him that he went to see his heartache so that he, Geri, would do all the work and get a backache. All of us smiled, lovingly, while Eli rushed out of the tent. The advice of Jethro was implemented by us quite effectively. From time to time, a chieftain of a tribe would come to me for advice. I served largely as a clearing agency. Most of the logistic problems I referred to Joshua. The administrative queries I directed to Caleb. And the moral and religious questions I brought to Aaron. The sick looking for medical help also trickled back to our tent and arranged themselves in an orderly queue to be treated by Geri and Eli. Some of them sought help for their herds and these I could help thanks to my years of experience as a shepherd. Because we would be moving tonight, we folded and packed most of our chattels, utensils, trays, cutlery and staples. While packing, I reminded myself of the ideal of the nomad: “My house is on the back of a camel.” How true, wise and fit for survival. The horse that would pull our chariot was a hardy Edomite species accustomed to the desert climate, but the ox dragging our cart would be a problem. He has to have his skin moistened

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every few hours. Otherwise, he would suffocate. Eventually we shall have to slaughter the ox and replace it by a camel, the hardy, patient and durable “vessel of the desert.” Zippi and I would drive the chariot. Geri and Eli would travel in the cart. When we dismantle our tent, we will use its heavy goat hair fabric to cover the herbs and medicines in the cart to protect them from the dew that forms during the cold desert nights due to the difference in temperature between the searing days and the chilly nights. With the tent flaps made of camel wool, we will cover ourselves to keep warm in our open chariot. Most of our cargo would be water skins, the most precious commodity in the desert. When the sun was setting in the west with crimson rays coloring the lush green vegetation of the Nile delta with dark red, we left our encampment at Succoth moving east through the Etham Desert towards the Elim oasis, a distance of about three days’ travel. Our twelve tribal contingents proceeded with exemplary order. Each tribal chieftain had his personal banner and emblem attached to the front of his chariot making them recognizable from afar. The significance of the tribal groups as ordained by Caleb was by birth order of the children of the Patriarch Jacob. The first division of the tribe of Reuben was headed by Elizur, the son of Shedeur. The second group of the tribe of Simeon was led by Shelumiel, the son of Zurishaddai. The third company of the tribe of Judah was headed by Nahshon, the son of Amminadab. The fourth company of the tribe of Issachar was guided by Nethanel, the son of Zuar. The fifth detachment of the tribe of Zebulun was ushered by Eliab, the son of Helon. The sixth faction of the tribe of Ephraim was marshaled by Elishama, the son of Ammihud. The seventh party of the tribe of Manasseh was marshaled by Gamaliel, the son of Pedahzur. The eighth section of the tribe of Benjamin was convoyed by Abidan, the son of Gideoni. The ninth quota of the tribe of Dan was piloted by Ahiezer, the son of Ammishaddai. The tenth complement of the tribe of Asher was steered by Pagiel, the son of Ochran. The eleventh contingent of the tribe of Gad was guided by Eliasaph, the son of Deuel. The twelfth party of the tribe of Naphtali was ushered by Ahira, the son of Enan. Apparently Joshua and Caleb carried out a wonderful job of arrangement and administration together. The policemen and dreaded eliminators were moving around the contingents and their mere presence was sufficient to keep law and order. Joshua and Aaron moved at the head of our procession whereas Caleb and his family and our family made up the rear guard. Geri and Eli’s cart moved in front, since their pace was slower whereas our chariot was the last vehicle of the whole caravan. I

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liked it this way since the setting sun cast a long dark shadow over the whole procession and it looked as if God is utilizing our chariot to provide his protective presence over his people moving towards their destiny. The sun set very quickly in the flat desert of Etham. There was no twilight. The night was clear with the half-moon slightly illuminating the desert pebbles. The temperature dropped quickly with the change of white hot sun rays to bluish chilly moonlight. The brightness of the stars dimmed because of the radiance of the half moon. The purity of the desert air had a different feel in the lungs than the humid Nile delta air. The fetid swampy odor of the Nile delta gave way to the sharp, crisp and fresh dryness of the whiffs of the desert. The monotony of the poverty of the soil and the minimalistic palette of the desert colors gave me a sense of lightness, cleanliness and chastity. The revelation of my God could only have been in the desert Mountain of God, not in the prurience of Egypt. Our people should stay as much as possible in the cleansing desert where they can learn the vanity of property, the sickness of gluttony, and the defiling rot of coveting the possessions of others. The desert breeds modesty, frugality and wholesomeness of spirit. I shudder to think what would happen when we reach the pagan passions of Canaan, the high places of Baal, and the sacred whores of the Ashtoreth temples. Thank Jehovah, our desert God, that for the foreseeable future we are going to be in the desert. I also had no desire to exchange the cathartic spotlessness of the nomadic life in the wilderness for the corruption of the peasant and the pollution of the cities. I asked Zippora to take the reins of the chariot so that I could dose off for a while. I fell asleep and dreamt. I was in the Ark built by Noah, the ancestor of our first Patriarch Abraham. In the Ark was my father Akhenaten, the visionary of the single God Aten, the life giving disc of the sun ever shining in the cloudless desert. Also in the Ark was Jethro, the Priest of God who introduced me to his volcanic single abstract God Jehovah, who revealed himself to me in the Holy Mountain of God in the desert. The Ark was forcing its way over the stormy waters of the Nile channel at Pithom. When we landed on the bank of the channel, I led the way out of the Ark holding in my left hand my father and in my right hand my father-in-law Jethro, the Priest of God. Thus, I combined their two creeds into the unique religion of the single abstract God of the desert. I woke up murmuring: “Hear O my people, shining Aten is your God, Jehovah is One.” Zippora asked me, “What kind of gibberish is this?”

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“It is not nonsense, my beloved,” I assured her. “I just dreamt what to say to the people on the Holy Mountain of God in the Sinai desert. Since the cart of Geri and Eli was in front of us, we could see one or the other of my dear boys spotting with their sharp hawkish eyesight the thorny shrub with its red berries to use as an acid neutralizer for the brackish water of the bitter Lake Marah, half a day’s travel before reaching the sweet water oasis of Elim. The water supply of our people would be used up by the time we reach Marah. That’s why my boys are stocking a large supply of the Mellimaran bush in order to render the brackish water of the bitter Lake Marah potable to slake the thirst of our people. It occurred to me that miracles are man-made by the guidance of God. The passing of the Pithom channel and now, with God’s help, the neutralizing of the bitterness of the Marah water by the Mellimaran bush. These miracles are the combination of our belief in God through His revelation to us. I managed to transmit to our people the force of the revelation I had in the cave of the Mountain of God. With His help I should be able to transmit this revelation to all of them as a group miracle. They have to open up to the theophany of God in their hearts and then the impossible becomes possible. The essence of a miracle is the power of man kindled by the revelation of God. God helps man to help himself through his belief in the bonding between the natural and the supernatural. This is the secret of the theophany of the divine in the mundane. This is how the routine may emerge from the sequences of time and become sacred and timeless. This is the essence of the group revelation, which I hope to catalyze into the hearts of our people when we reach the Holy Mountain. I did not feel that I should divulge these insights to my wife. Hence, I just embraced her tightly and took the reins of the chariot from her so that she could rest a bit. She laid her head on my thighs and dozed off for a while. The clear blue sky, the endless stretches of pebbles, the dim glare of the pale moon, and the twinkling of the stars like the myriad eyes of God’s angelic hosts are clear only in the desert, untarnished by the covetousness of possessions, power and prurient passions. When the time comes, I shall therefore, on the Holy Mountain of God, condemn the three most heinous sins: bloodshed of the first born, idolatry to which it is linked, and incest from which it all started. The travel east on the first night, then the rest on the second day and the travel on the second night as well as the subsequent rest on the third day were relatively uneventful. Some women had complicated births,

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which my wife and sons took care of, and there were intricate and complex births of some animals which, as an experienced shepherd, I helped take care of. However, towards the end of the third night, when the water supply of the people ran out, all pandemonium burst into bedlam. The shouting started with the rise of the morning star and became a howl, a growl, and then a thunder with sunrise. The familiar ‘Me-Me Shu-Shu’ began again when we stopped at early morning on the shore of the bitter lake Marah. Then it became more vociferous. “Why did you have to drag us out of Egypt, the land of huge fish, flesh pots, succulent fruit and fresh, cool water? Water, water, water,” thousands of throats yelled, bellowed and shrieked for water. The screams were unbearable. I shut my ears, but it did not help. It sounded like thousands of desert hyenas crying, laughing, squealing, bellowing, moaning, mourning, bawling, screeching and yowling all at the same time. Geri and Eli tried to approach the bitter water of the lake with their cart loaded to its brim with Mellimaran bushes, bristling with thorns and flaming red berries. The multitude, however, interfered with the cart and a thirst-crazed slave knifed the behind of the ox pulling the cart. The animal started to gallop, ran over some women and children and almost toppled the cart with the Mellimaran bushes and medicines in it as well as Geri and Eli. Joshua ordered the soldiers and eliminators to get into action. An eliminator gouged the offending slave and threw his body into a nearby ditch. All the yelling people drew back in dread and the rest became paralyzed with horror. Then the soldiers shouted, “Draw back and let the women and children come forward. Bring the empty goat skins with you so that Doctors Gershom and Eliezer can fill them with water and sweetening herbs.” Geri and Eli started to fill up the goat skins with bitter water and then stuffed pieces of Mellimaran shrub and red berries in each one. A small goat skin for each child and a bigger one for the mothers and women. They showed the people how to shake the goat skin so that the Mellimaran bush and berries would neutralize the bitterness of the water. The Levite priest Korah, a rich and fat usurer, pushed his way forward, followed by his half dozen wives. A huge black Nubian slave with a baby suckling her dangling breasts was waving her empty goat skin in one hand and suggestively rubbing her crotch with her other hand. Korah kept pushing his way forward, holding an out-size goat skin in one hand and a bag of gold coins in the other, trying to bribe my son Eli with it.

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Joshua came over to him with his corncob pipe, which became a fixture of his face, and snarled, “I said women and children first.” Korah waved a larger gold coin bag at Joshua. Joshua snatched the bag, opened it, and threw the tingling gold coins on the dead slave’s body. All the people gazed in dismay at this combination of death and mammon. By noon, thanks to the frenzied toil of Geri and Eli aided by the squadron of policemen, all the people had slaked their thirst with the sweetened water of Lake Marah. Towards evening after half a days’ travel eastward, we reached the oasis of Elim on the banks of the Egypt stream near the Mediterranean. The nomads had built a dam to prevent the fresh sweet water of the Egypt stream from flowing into the sea. This created a lake of sweet water fed by twelve subterranean wells and surrounded by seventy palm trees bearing large bunches of crimson violet dates full of aromatic sweet and sour juices. All one has to do is lift one’s hand, pick up a ripe date, bite it, and your mouth was filled with the crispy flesh of a generous fruit whose odor had a pleasant fragrance and whose juice had a sublime taste, the original fruit of paradise. We then drank the clear cool water of the lake. In just a few hours we emerged from the vaults of Hell of the bitter lake of Marah where nothing could live … even the scorpions and snakes avoided it … to the blossoming gate of Paradise at Elim where hope, grace and bliss burst out from the horns of plenty of fruit, fowl and fish. The people quickly erected their tents and encamped around the lake in a spirit of content, rapture and permanence. They had no desire to move away from Elim. Everyone, including us and especially my boys, were exhausted from the vagaries, vicissitudes, and fluctuations of the day. By sunset, all of us were fast asleep. In the morning we were woken up by a hue and cry. Geri and Eli jumped instinctively from their mattresses. This is the first reaction of a true leader who my boys were when they heard the sound of anxiety, the shriek of pain, and the moans of suffering. They put on their gowns, pushed their bare feet into sandals, took their boxes of first-aid and ran towards the source of the shrieks. When they came to the source of the howls of agony, they found a snake in paradise. A viper with black and yellow coils was glued to the bare breast of a woman who clutched its head in a hysterical convulsion and prevented it from moving. Apparently she was suckling her baby when she felt the burning bite of the snake. She had the automatic instinct to toss her baby far from the tent flap and, clutching the head of the snake whose poison fangs were stuck in the bulging flesh of her lactating breast, she pinned down its head so it could not move any farther.

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Eli came in first so he lifted the crying baby and ran out of the tent with him to protect him from the imminent danger of a snake bite which could cause immediate death to the small infant. Then Geri went into the tent, sized up the situation, took a forked stick out of his first-aid box, and pressed the fork of the stick against the triangular head of the viper to prevent its glands from pumping more venom into the poor woman’s breast. He threw the writhing reptile into a thick leather sack and closed it tightly. He then cut a criss-cross incision into the dazed woman’s breast. She was too flabbergasted to protest. Then Geri pressed his mouth to the incision and sucked vigorously, spitting out the blood mixed with poison. Eli came back to the tent and warned, “Be careful, Geri. This is an adult viper. One drop of poison into your blood stream and you will be in serious trouble.” “Don’t worry, my brother, everything is under control,” answered Geri. After a few minutes of sucking, when Geri felt that most of the poison was sucked out, he took out a succulent leaf of the aloe vera plant, split it, pressed it against the wound, and bandaged it with clean soft linen. The succulent aloe vera would slowly extract the rest of the poison from the wound. Eli gave the shrieking baby back to its mother but instructed her to suckle it only from the other breast because the bitten breast would swell and be painful for a few days. As for the reptile in the sack, Geri would “milk” out its poison and dilute it with alcohol. The resultant solution would serve as the only known effective medicine for leprosy when spread generously on the affected skin for a few weeks. The people did not want to move from Elim south to the Rephidim oasis in the Sin desert, complaining all the time that Me-Shu has brought them out from Egypt to die from thirst and hunger in the desert. This amounted to a resurrection against God since we were travelling to the Holy Mountain of God to receive His commandments and His covenant. The people were not interested in covenants and commandments. They thirsted for water and for the horns of plenty and fleshpots of Egypt. After marching for some hours in the searing heat, we reached the semi-dry oasis of Rephidim. Parched palm trees sucked some moisture from a subterranean well. The people were ready to stone me when Geri came to me and pointed at a large rock in the oasis of Rephidim which dripped drops of water. “What we have to do, Father, and quickly,” he whispered in my ear, “is to take a hammer and a chisel, which I just happen to have here in my tool box. I will hold the chisel in the crevice of the rock and you will hit the

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chisel with the hammer to split the rock and hopefully the water will spout out.” I hit the chisel with all the rage in me which flowed to my hand holding the hammer. The rock split and fresh clear water flowed out of it. All the people rushed to drink, trampling on each other. The policemen and eliminators stopped them and arranged a queue as at Lake Marah for women and children to fill up their goat skins first and then the rest of the people by their tribal affiliations could slake their thirst. By that evening, all the people had sated their thirst and erected their tents around the pool which formed beneath the rock on the top of which we released the water which was now flowing freely. The people started to murmur again, “Me-Me Shu-Shu. Now we are not thirsty but we are hungry. All we have is goat milk that we are sick of. It oozes out of the pores of our bodies. We want the Shibuta fish that weighed three stones which we caught with our nets in the Nile. We want the suckling lambs and the juicy veal we had in Egypt, the land of plenty. Me-Me Shu-Shu, we want to go back to Egypt. We do not want to die in the desert.” While the people whined, whimpered and grumbled, Eli came over to me and told me about the quail which fly at this time of the year to Edom to breed in Etzion Geber on the eastern horn of the Red Sea. On the way, many of them fall exhausted from heat and thirst. There is a good chance that a lot will show up this evening at the oasis of Rephidim. They can be collected by hand since they are too tired to fly, but one should not eat too many of them since overeating can cause disease and even death. “Also,” Eli intimated, “I have studied the flora and fauna of the Rephidim oasis in depth. All its ground is covered with the Tamarisk bush and on it reside myriads of mealy bugs extracting syrupy sweet jelly which dries on the bush. If tent flaps are spread underneath the tamarisk bushes before the sun rises and the bush is swung to and fro and made to tremble, the sweet white jelly balls fall down. When collected in containers, they are a very tasty sweet energy-giving addition to the morning hot porridge.” With this information, I ran to the top of the hill from which, with the help of Geri earlier in the day, I had split the protruding rock to release the water flowing out of it. With a loud, clear voice that I did not know I had and which my inner rage must have engendered in me, I bellowed, “Listen you thankless blasphemers, you iniquitous adulterers and idolaters. Despite your raising sinful voices against me, which amounts to sacrilegious profanation since God speaks through me, I am just the Almighty’s mouthpiece.”

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“He in His immense compassion, grace and infinite benevolence is going to send you flesh from heaven and food from the earth in a few hours when the sun is about to set and the wind blows from the great sea. Quail are going to crash land on this area from heaven as a sign of the endless, interminable grace of God. However, you should be careful not to exaggerate since to eat the quail in excess can bring sickness and even death. Also, tomorrow morning, you should spread tent flaps underneath the tamarisk bushes and before sunrise you should collect them covered by white jellied small balls, which in Habiru you ask “man hu?” what is this?, and the answer is Manna from God. Eat it raw, mix it in hot porridge, give it to women and children. It is full of good energy and full of ingredients that both the body and soul need. But again, use it in moderation because excess hurts the body, confuses the soul and enrages God because God despises covetousness, greed and gluttony.” Indeed, towards evening with the red rays of the setting sun and the north wind blowing from the sea, the sky was covered by small fowl falling from heaven in exhaustion and crawling to the small pool around the hill to drink some water. The people rushed to collect hundreds of them and stuffed them into canvas sacks. Later on they cleaned and cooked and roasted them, and, of course, did not heed God’s warning and ate to excess. At night, Geri and Eli had to treat many people who ate the tasty but hard to digest quail meat and some of them even died of intestinal complications. We buried them in Rephidim as the victims of their own gluttony. In the morning we had a session of our quartet: Aaron, Caleb, Joshua and me. We co-opted my sons Geri and Eli and all of us ate and complimented the knowledge, expertise and presence of mind of my sons concerning the information about the source of water on the rock at the top of the hill of the Rephidim oasis, the migration of the quail, and the Manna produced by the mealy bugs nesting in the Tamarisk bushes. We ate the hot porridge laced with Manna globules and it was rich, aromatic and delicious. All of us praised the cooking of my wife. Joshua opened the session and announced that based on the most recent intelligence reports and the accounts of nomad scouts, the attack of the Amalekites on our people is imminent and may happen even today or rather tonight. “Before presenting to you my plans of defense and attack, let me ask shepherd Moshé to brief us on this issue of the Amalekites, their hatred of the Kenite Midianites, and their enmity towards our people since he studied this complicated topic in depth.”

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“The Amalekites,” I started, “are Midianites in origin related to the Kenites, the leader of whom is my father-in-law Jethro, the most venerated Priest of God. However, despite their common origin and ethnic proximity, they are now worlds apart as far as their religious affiliation, spiritual beliefs, and ethical convictions. The Amalekites are pagan, greedy, cruel desert marauders and unscrupulous pirates. In contrast, we have adopted the monotheism of Jethro, the Priest of God, and have strengthened our ties by marriage so that we became one family. Although the Amalekites and Kenites are related ethnically, they are so different religiously and morally that the Amalekites became the negative mirror image of the Kenites and they are now mortal enemies. Because we are so close to the Kenites and Jethro became our advisor and elder statesman, the Amalekites also became our enemy based on the old rule that ‘the friend of our enemy automatically becomes our enemy’.” “My religious formation was initiated by my father and the pervasive sun of his Aten, the sun disk, ever shining in equality from the cloudless skies of the desert. The Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh of Jehovah, the Kenite God, is a direct corollary of the ever present sun in the desert. The ever burning bush is the revealed sacred present of the synchronic sun and the Kenite present-future permanence of Jehovah. This volcanic God whose theophany was revealed in the burning bush on the Holy Mountain in Sinai is the generator of the Sneh-bush, the fire of which kindled the anchor of our creed, flaming from the sacred fire of Rephidim the Torah to be endowed to our people on the Holy Mountain of God. Jethro proselytized us into his creed and thereby turned us into the foes, adversaries, and antagonists of the Amalekites. A Kenite is literally one who knows God. The kingdoms of the Amalekite pagan gods are in the bygone past and the non-existent future. Jehovah’s theophany is in the omnipresent Light, in the sacred now. Jehovah has no history. It is therefore sacrilegious to describe Him in terms of past, future or space.” “Amalekites are therefore our archetypal opposite, dissimilar in all dimensions, polytheistic paganism versus our monotheism, violence in contrast to our peace-loving nature, greediness in contrast to our asceticism, prurient as opposed to our chastity. Therefore, Amalek is our prototypal foe. The two of us cannot breathe the same air. We are destined, therefore, to fight each other to the extinction of each other’s definitiveness. There can be no compromise, mercy, or comparison. It is either them or us.” “Thank you, shepherd Moshé, for your excellent briefing,” Joshua complimented me, and continued, “My teachers and mentors, I would like to present to you now my plan to vanquish our mortal enemies, the

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Amalekites. Our intelligence and reconnaissance reports,” Joshua switched to a professional tone and demeanor, “indicate that our enemy would start his attack on us with the first twilight. However, the twilight fighting is just the Amalekites way of testing our might and preparedness. Being night marauders, their main thrust of fighting would be at night. Hence, I prepared a ruse. The twilight phase would have you, shepherd Moshé, me and Hur, the husband of Miriam, the Chief Priest Aaron’s sister, sitting on the top of the hill of the Rephidim oasis. Hur and I will be holding your hands, shepherd Moshé, up high since your raised hands have become our symbol of faith. The higher they are raised, the stauncher is your faith in God and in the destiny of our people who would be watching us from below the hill. If doubt gnaws you and you are not sure about the successful final arrival of our people to the Promised Land, your hands would become heavy and your uncertainties would filter into the heart of the people watching you from below. Our task would be, therefore, that whenever your hands would feel overweight and threaten to fall down, Hur and I would lift them up high over your head for all to see how sure you are in your confidence in God and your credence in your people.” “However, when the sun sets, the Amalekites are going to start their attack on our people who camp around the Hill at the center of the Rephidim oasis. Also, they would certainly try to shoot at you, shepherd Moshé, me and Hur being the most conspicuous targets. The Amalekites are accomplished archers known for their marksmanship throughout the desert. Hence, the three of us are going to be dead even before we realize what has hit us. Therefore, I resorted to a ruse. I asked Bezalel ben Uri ben Hur, an inspired artist, to make a statue of wood, linen, and papyri glued and molded into the likeness of the three of us. You, shepherd Moshé, holding your hands up- in supplication to God and Hur and I supporting your hands as evidence of your unwavering belief in God and the staunch devotion of the people to you and to our Lord. With the darkening of the twilight, the three of us are going to descend to the valley of the stream of Egypt at the foot of the hill of Rephidim. Instead of us, we will place the statue of the three of us created by Bezalel to absorb the arrows of the Amalekites.” “All the people are also going to vacate their tents and descent for their protection into the valley of the stream of Egypt. In the empty tents we shall cache our cavalry: camels trained for war with the drivers being also lance throwers and behind them archer soldiers also armed with short swords. Our cavalry is going to be a surprise for the Amalekites because their arsenal of weapons includes only chariots hitched to quick horses

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manned by a driver who is also a lance thrower with his right hand while holding the reins of the horse in his left hand. Their sniper archers sit near the driver with a great supply of arrows and some extra bows and, in case of need, they have a short double-edged sword attached to their loin cloth with a leather belt.” “When the Amalekites charge our tents with the full force of their chariots, our cavalry of camels are going to emerge from our empty tents with lighted torches in the hands of the camel drivers to ignite the tent flaps. The horses of the attacking Amalekite chariots will be frightened by the fire and turn backwards and run for their lives. Our chariots will wait for them and our archers will aim for the drivers. Our eliminators, almost invisible in the darkness, will slash the bellies of the retreating horses causing them to topple down and be trampled by our charging camels. In an hour or two, the battle should be decided in our favor. Do not worry, my teachers and mentors. Carts are already on their way to Kadesh Barnea to our Kenite allies to purchase tent flaps of yellow camel wool and dark goat hair to replace the burnt tent flaps destroyed in battle.” I embraced Joshua with great emotion and denoted him as the most brilliant warrior which God has sent, and I exclaimed, “Thank God for Joshua!” All present repeated this phrase of gratitude. The Amalekites indeed attacked us in full force after sunset. Towards midnight the battle turned decisively in our favor. Joshua’s strategy of war, his tactics and ruses paid off but the price was heavy. We lost fifty of our best warriors. In the morning we buried our dead. I recited the burial prayer. God full of mercy who dwells on high Grant perfect rest on the wings of Your Divine Presence In the lofty heights of the holy and pure who shine as the brightness of the heavens to the soul of all who have gone to their eternal rest as, without making a formal vow, I pledge to give charity in memory of his soul, His resting place shall be in the Garden of Eden. Therefore, the Master of mercy will care for him under the protection of His wings for all time and bind his soul in the bond of everlasting life. God is his inheritance and he will rest in peace, and let us say Amen. We also buried the Amalekite dead, which numbered about 200. The rest of the attackers fled and left some chariots, lances, bows & arrows, and swords that we confiscated. At noon, I built an altar of four stones and

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denoted it ‘Jehovah Nissi’ (God is my miracle). Aaron sacrificed a lamb, burnt whole, to thank God and all the People prayed: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul, He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, For Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies, Thou hast anointed my head with oil, my cup runneth over, Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” From Rephidim we travelled south in the Sin desert along the banks of the Egypt stream about half a day’s journey towards the Holy Mountain of God. When we approached the mountain, the earth started to tremble and the people were afraid. In Egypt there were no earthquakes and no active volcanic mountains. The people felt the solidity, stability and firmness of the ground under their feet disappear and in its stead, the tremors, shaking and quivering of the earth signified the volatility of their existence and filled their hearts with apprehension and evil premonitions. When we reached the Holy Mountain, it was late afternoon. We decided to camp near the torrent bed of the Egypt spring south of the Holy Mountain since the flow of the water there was more accessible to fill up our water skins to drink and water the animals. Towards evening, when the sun started setting, we realized that our decision was indeed wise. The mountain started to erupt. It looked as if the top of the mountain was on fire. Hot fumes shot high up to the sky and the crimson red of the setting sun fused with the white hot molten lava, which started to flow down the slopes of the mountain and sizzled like a tributary of hell down the northern bed of the Egypt spring towards the sea, evaporating the water and consuming everything in its path. The mountain was also spewing infernal bombs of burning stones, which were mercifully directed northwards, away from our tents. The eerie sky flooded the surroundings of the mountain with blood-colored light and the tremors of the earth paralyzed our people with fright.

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Our ruling quartet, Aaron, Joshua, Caleb and myself, convened in our tent. We planned the ritual procedures of our people’s covenant with God to start tomorrow morning. I recommended instructing the people to purify their bodies and clothes for three days so that they can come into the presence of God in immaculate cleanliness. I planned to climb the mountain and enter the clouds of mist and smoke that surrounded the erupting mountain. I shall receive the word of God in the cloud and deliver it viva voce to the people. “But, shepherd Moshé,” Aaron interceded argumentatively, “You and your sons are doing your utmost in explaining the miracles that God has endowed us with … such as the crossing of the Pithom channel of the Nile, the sweetening of the Marah water, the gift of the Manna, the sending of the quail, the provision of water at Rephidim, and now the cloud engulfing the Holy Mountain … by natural causes. Does this not diminish the power of God, His prestige, and His glory?” “Not at all, brother Aaron,” I reacted. “All the natural phenomena are the expression of God’s grace to the world and the antecedent of the physical theophany of our Lord to His miracles make them more credible to human beings. This is the added value of Nature to the force of true religion. The cloud on the Holy Mountain constitutes God’s holy presence and the revelation I experience when engulfed by it will enable me to translate God’s will into words for the people to hear and obey.” I then went on to describe the three days’ purification of the clothes and bodies of the people including marital abstinence. On the third day, God will descend on the Holy Mountain for all the people to see. They should, however, take care to not approach the mountain and to stay away from its northern slopes lest they die.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD

On the third day, I summoned all the people to stand south of the Holy Mountain since on its northern incline they could be burnt by the white hot lava flowing into the northern bed of the Egypt stream. When the ram’s horn sounded, the whole mountain trembled and fog, mist, smoke and dust descended on the Holy mount and obscured the morning sun. A ball of fire descended on the mountain and that was the theophany of God. The people gasped in awe. I felt the voice of God within me ordering me to ascend the mountain. I was dismayed and my legs hardly obeyed me, but I could not disobey the command of the Lord. I climbed slowly on the inclines of the mountain until I was swallowed by the fog, hot wind, and ashes covering the mount. God’s voice clearly vibrated in my chest. He ordered me to descend the mountain right away and warn the people to not approach too close because stones and burning ashes from the erupting volcano could injure them. Also gazing at the glaring bursts of lightning could harm the eyesight of those exposed to the radiation of this violent expression of God in nature. God also ordered me to bring Aaron with me to the mountain but not the other priests who should remain with the rest of the people at the foot of the mountain. When Aaron and I climbed back onto the mountain and entered the cloud, which was the theophanic presence of God, the Lord inscribed into my soul the distilled essence of our religion in ten directives to transmit to the people down below. When I repeated God’s commandments in my own voice, it had a resounding resonance and a booming echo refracted from the numerous caves in the Holy Mountain. The first commandment decreed, “I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” I then added my own interpretation of God’s words, taking this liberty to make the Lord’s succinct, sacred logos more accessible to our people. The land of Egypt, I explained, stands for the Habiru denotation of Mitzraim, which connotes Metzarim, the dire straits of coercion, constraint and compulsion of the Egyptian ethos. The deterministic Egyptian religion

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does not allow any leeway for free will because the livelihood of Egypt depends on the exact cyclic clockwork of the flood stages of the Nile feeding the irrigation systems of Egyptian agriculture. Free will would confound the order and predictability of Egyptian life and throw it into chaos, which, for the Egyptians, was tantamount to death. The cornerstone of Egyptian religion is, therefore, strict causality. The theology of On decrees, therefore, a stringent chain of causal sequences linking one generative move to the next. Thus, Atum, the chief deity of On, initiates the creation of gods and men by masturbating his long ithyphallic member into his own mouth, forming from his own seed the first pair of gods, Shu and Tefnut, which he aptly spews out in conformity with the inflexible determinism of On. The god Shu has an onomatopoeic airy sound and the chain of creation goes on uninterruptedly. Not so the formative ethos of our people. One of our basic myths is the slaying of Abel by Cain, the two sons of Adam, the first man, out of sibling rivalry. God then decrees the first indeterministic rule, which ordained the essential rule of free will in our ethos. Our Lord instructs Cain, the first fratricide, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be this desire and thou shalt rule over it.” This is the cornerstone of free will in our religion and morals. By coming out of Egypt, we have extricated ourselves from the slavish Egyptian deterministic coercion and emerged into the freedom of our own indeterministic religion which is the fundamental deliverance from the coercive causality of Egypt and the embrace of the liberty of our own religion. I explicated God’s words about the house of bondage by explaining that the Egyptian gods regarded themselves as absolute masters and the people were their abject slaves. We, however, are allowed to have a dialogue with our God and this lends us a degree of freedom and a measure of equality with Him. God then decrees that, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” This, I elucidated, stems from the fact that our unique God is omnipotent. Therefore, to have other gods would decimate and diminish the almighty sovereignty of our one God and this cannot be. God continued His injunctions and warned, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them.” I interpreted to the people God’s injunction that there should be no graven image of our Lord by the extension of His unity to his abstraction and lack of concreteness. The omnipresence of God entails his

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limitlessness. His boundlessness entails the lack of any substantive coagulation of a form, frame or structure. God goes on to proscribe uttering His name in vain, saying, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh His name in vain.” My own explication elucidated that for an abstract entity, a name is the only defining identity and to use it in familiarity towards a God is lack of respect bordering on disrespect. Also, the use of a sacred name is permissible for the achievement of revelation but its use to gain divine favor is forcing the hand of God and is blasphemous. The Sabbath, the day of rest, has a prominent place in God’s commandments. “Remember the Sabbath day,” God ordains, “to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. On it thou shalt not do any work, not thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger who is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. “Why is the Sabbath so holy and sacred” I asked on behalf of the people, “that its profanation constitutes a capital offense?” I pondered my response by the denotation of God, which was revealed to me in the cave of the Holy Mountain as “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” which, in Habiru, means a continuous present future. Therefore, synchronicity, which is a continuous present, is God’s own time or rather no time. It complements His spacelessness with an indefinite timelessness, becoming together a nobeing in contradistinction to the created world that exists in space and confinement, rather like an aquarium, in which creation and its creatures exist. Because God was not created, His being is spaceless and timeless and the Sabbath is His holy timeless present which no man, woman or creature should infringe and profanate by performing impious secular work during it. God can enter into a dialogue with his creation only through His essence in the non-being of synchronic no-time and no-space. One should not trespass God’s sacred non-being by the trivial drudgeries of mundane matters in the diachronic aquarium of time and space and jeopardize, thereby, the delicate balance of God’s dialogue with history. The sacred Sabbath kept in its Holy purity is, therefore, necessary to guard God’s wellbeing and His vital relationship with His creation and its creatures.

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God ordains the honoring of parents and says, “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God has given thee.” My hermeneutics of this commandment were manifold. First, God sees a reciprocal relation between honoring one’s progenitors and being rewarded by God Himself with longevity. Man as a creature of God who should revere his Maker must extend this honor to his biological begeters. Next, the neglect of the sick and helpless old is a most heinous social ill and moral sin. Therefore, it is important that children see the way their parents respect and take care of their elders so that those children will likewise take care of their own parents. In extreme cases, a violent and disrespectful child could be chastised, injured or even killed by their offended, insulted and humiliated parents. Finally we shall certainly enact a binding law that whoever curseth his father or mother shall be put to death. God goes on to proclaim by injunction against murder with the sixth commandment, which states laconically, “Thou shalt not kill.” The underlying reasons for this commandment, I explained, are that God created Man and breathed His spirit into him, and no one can take away the life of God’s prime creation with impunity. Also, the sacrifice of human beings, especially children and particularly the firstborn, was in many instances the antecedent to the sacrilegious worship of idols and hence strictly forbidden. In the seventh commandment, God proscribes adultery. My own elucidation of this commandment is again in contradistinction to the Egyptian prurient fornication, perversion and incest of fathers copulating with their sons and daughters, sisters with their brothers, mothers with their sons and daughters. Where everything is permitted, nothing is true. Because God is truth, He can relate to His creatures only in purity, to a family where husband and wife are loyal to each other. With God’s grace, this conjoining of body and soul produces immaculate feelings so that the love of God permeates the conjunction of man and woman in untainted wholesomeness. The family unit as the channel through which God’s commands are transmitted to the young should exist as a container of God’s glory and not wallow in man’s carnal perfidy. The eighth commandment sanctifies private property. God does not wish to investigate the means by which private possessions have been acquired by individuals and groups but when goods are in the lawful custody of people they should remain there. Otherwise, human society reverts to chaos. My own nomadic bias is against the acquisition of goods as a reason for existence. Indeed, I regard covetousness as a root of much evil, but even nomads would like to keep their cot at night, their skin bag

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of water for themselves, and guard jealously their favorite horse and not share it with others. The ninth commandment forbids the bearing of false evidence in the legal process. This is an innovation, I instructed the people, compared to the arbitrariness of the pagan gods and rulers. Heathen gods and potentates mete out punishment by whim. There are no curbs or limits to the absolute power, caprice and cruelty of idolatrous gods and kings. By specifying that evidence must be truthful, God’s ninth commandment ordains that the legal process should aim to set clear the facts and hence the truth of the issues under judgment. God set the foundations for the rule of law in which the rules of evidence ensure the investigation of facts, aiming to establish truth as a basis for the administration of justice. Hence, God’s ninth commandment sets limits to the absolute power of rulers. Because truth is one of the main attributes of our Lord, the administration of verifiable justice by means of straight-forward evidence is one of the foundation stones of our Lord’s dominion. God’s tenth commandment states, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.” This, I pointed out to the people, is our God’s negative attitude towards coveting, which is the root of all sin and evil since coveting entails taking steps to sate one’s appetite, if possible, by legal means and, if not, by deceit, connivance and ruse. Coveting also characterizes the life of the city and agriculture in contrast with the frugality, asceticism and self-sufficiency of our God’s ethos of the desert, wilderness and wasteland. After God terminated the spelling out of the Ten Commandments, the ram horns burst into wailing and the trumpets sounded in ecstatic frenzy. The volcanic eruption of the Holy Mountain increased. Its crater spewed crimson hot stones, which shot upwards like rocks catapulted from Hell, defying our God for divulging the true Torah to His chosen people. The thunders made the mountain shake and the lightning blinded our people at the slopes of the mountain. They retreated backwards in dismay. The smoke became thicker and I could hardly see Aaron who stood in front of me. The Chief Priest asked me whether it would not be an opportune time for him to go down the mountain and stay with the people to reassure them in this turmoil. “Of course, of course, my brother,” I agreed. I also detected an undertone of fright in his voice, “but please tell Joshua to climb up and keep me company on the mountain since I am waiting for God’s signs of revelation within me and I do not know when and how they

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come. Also please ask Nadab and Abihu, your sons, and seventy of the elders of the people to stand with you with the people at the foot of the mountain but do not come too near since God wishes only Joshua and me to ascend the mountain. I embraced Aaron farewell and he ran down the mountain seemingly quite happy to put a safe distance between himself and the pandemonium of the erupting volcano. Right now, however, my main problem was that I did not experience a divine revelation in my inner self for quite a while. Without it I felt like a totally incompetent false prophet. As a spiritual guide of my people, a clue, a sign, a directive is absolutely necessary for me to issue directions of right behavior and signposts of a true belief. Such a token indication from our Lord infused into my inner being was paramount at this crossroad of our spiritual development, this main junction of our religious revolution, with the ten cornerstones of our spiritual doctrines clearly spelled out through me by our God. What was lacking was a blueprint, a paradigm, a searchlight to illuminate our laws, which seemed to be convoluting within the mists, fogs and clouds enveloping the Holy Mountain. I wandered day after day around the caves of the Holy Mountain fasting most of the time and praying, supplicating for enlightenment. When my desperation was too intense for me to feel hunger, Joshua would follow me with vine leaves stuffed with pine nuts and spiced with rosemary, water melon with salted goat cheese, and a goat skin filled with fresh chilly grape juice. The monotony of the days without any divine sign stressed and depressed me but on the 39th day, something happened. I wandered around quite high up on the mountain and heard a shrill whoosh quite muffled so that I found it difficult to locate its source. However, when I approached a well-developed caper bush with thick green leaves, ominous long yellowish thorns, and large red flowers with crimson pollen stems, the shrill whistling noise increased and was heard to come from behind the caper bush. I pushed the bush aside with my staff and indeed behind the bush was the mouth of a cave and opposite the entrance a narrow slit in the rock emitted gasses, which were ignited and burned with a shrill whistle. The fire and its heat repelled all animals, reptiles and insects and prevented weeds from growing and plants from developing. That is why this cave was barren, sterile and completely empty. The light was pale blue and spread a mystical aura throughout the interior of the cave. It dawned on me in full force with the bold proclamation of an epiphany that divinity sprouts out of emptiness. Nothingness is the source of being and divinity is bred out of the sanctity of naught. I, no doubt, experienced my revelation.

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I took out a stylus from my bag and saw a flat slab of soft limestone on the ground of the cave. I sat down on the floor of the cave, used my stylus to divide the slab of stone into two halves, and wrote down on it the Ten Commandments, five on each side. I did not write them. It was God who moved my hand with His will, bid, and command. When I finished inscribing the commandments of God on the stone, I rushed out of the cave and looked for Joshua. He was also looking for me. “Let’s go down,” I urged. “I had my revelation.” When we approached the foot of the mountain, I told Joshua that I heard the sound of commotion. “It is not commotion, Shepherd Moshé, but the voice of blasphemy, the noise of sacrilege, and the ecstasy of fornication.” When we reached the gathering of the people, we saw a huge golden cow, the big horned goddess of heaven and earth and the symbol of procreation. A large crowd of men, women and children were dancing around Nut, naked and drunk with Sinai madness which Omri, the Amalekite doctor, was handing out for free from a huge pile of raw plants. Some women were begging for intercourse. One fat black Nubian slave with huge breasts was lying on the floor, her legs spread, imploring, “Please fuck me, fuck me deep, fuck me hard.” A priest in his worship garb, drunk with Sinai madness, complied and copulated with her. After she had an orgasm, she jumped to her feet, grabbed a suckling baby, and skewered him on one of Nut’s horns. The infant shrieked, then a flow of blood streamed from his groin, and then he remained immobile. His mother ran to him with a shriek, took his limp body off of Nut’s horn, and pressed his tiny body to her bulging breasts bursting with milk. She then threw herself to the ground with the dead infant’s body and emitted blood curdling shrieks. Another woman stood with her naked body facing the mountain and groaned, “Me-Me Shu-Shu, come down the mountain and fuck me.” She started to masturbate with both her hands. “Your God does not have a face, he has no body, and he has no prick, but they tell me that although you are a stammerer, you have an enormous prick. So come and fuck me Me-Me, fuck me Shu-Shu, fuck me quick Me-Me Shu-Shu. Now hard, strong, now fu-u-uck. She came and threw herself on the sand, gasping. A red head Illyrian slave with jug-like breasts and long bare legs grabbed the long prick of a Nubian slave and demanded, “Fuck me now or I bite it off.” She turned around and inserted the slave’s outsize prick into her vagina, stood on all four, and ordered the slave, “Now mount me like a dog.” The slave complied and she started to bark like a bitch in heat. “Yes, yes, yes,” she shouted. “I am your horny bitch. Fuck me, fuck me.” She then disengaged herself from the slave, climbed on the head of Nut, spitted

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herself on Nut’s horn which still had the blood of the infant on it, and cried, “Fuck me, my Goddess. Pierce my cunt with your horn.” A gush of blood streamed from her vagina while she moved up and down on Nut’s horn. After a while, her body became limp and she fell on the sand. “Take the eliminators and slay them all,” I hissed to Joshua. “All of them. All those taking part in the atrocities. Not one should remain. Start with Omri, the Amalekite blasphemer. Go, Joshua, go quick, quick, quick.” When Joshua’s sword slashed Omri in two, my rage waxed red and white hot and I ran to Nut and I threw the limestone slab on which the Ten Commandments were written with the hand of God on the cow’s Golden body. The commandments smashed to pieces. Some three hundred blasphemers and fornicators were killed this day by the eliminators. I asked Joshua to order the soldiers to break the golden idol of Nut, the heavenly cow, into pieces and towards evening the bodies of the idol worshippers and the gold fragments of Nut were loaded on carts and thrown into the molten lava flowing north in the bed of the Egypt stream. They were immediately consumed by the white hot lava, becoming cinders. In the morning the Quartet convened in the command tent. I asked Aaron how did it happen that a golden cow was formed infringing the capital offense of not to erect idols and worship them. “My lord and master,” he answered. Aaron never denoted me with these titles before. It smacked of flattery, which was not to my liking and it could have served as a cover up for the guilt, which he must have felt for being instrumental for the most heinous sacrilege against our Lord. “When you delayed your descent from the Holy Mountain, the people came to me and complained that you have disappeared. Maybe, they said, God forbid, a catastrophe might even have happened and Shepherd Moshé could have been injured or even killed by the volcanic eruptions on the mountain. His abstract God was apparently helpless in helping and defending our prophet from death. “We are now without a prophet and we dare say,” the spokesmen for the people intimated, “that we are without a God. We do not understand this God of Shepherd Moshé without a face, without a body, and without a voice. We need, High Priest, a God we can see and worship, a God we can relate to, and it is your duty to provide us with a God.” “I cannot be a party to this atrocious sacrilege,” I told them. “You better provide us with a God, High Priest, the spokespeople disputed with a shade of a threat. “We need a solid God like we had in Egypt. We want you to fashion us a god or rather a goddess we can see,

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relate to, and understand, and to whom we can supplicate. We suggest that you mold us the image of Nut, the Egyptian Goddess of heaven and earth without any delay. Nut is going to be our lady and mistress forever and ever.” “You can see, my lord and master,” Aaron declared apologetically, “that I had no choice but to comply with their demand. The alternative would have been that they would have killed me, formed an idol anyway and, with you absent, they would have returned to Egypt and all our vision, dreams and aspirations for a new religion and a Promised Land would have come to naught. Therefore, under duress, I asked them to strip their wives of their jewelry of gold and donate it to shape the idolatrous form of Nut. I am sorry, my lord and master,” Aaron grabbed my hand and kissed it in reverence and atonement. I retrieved my hand in embarrassment. I embraced him and we both wept. After we sat down, I asked what we should do. Aaron responded dejectedly, “All of us have been traumatized by the disaster of the golden cow, worst of all myself because I feel the guilt, shame and culpability of the one who molded the cow. However, I have a practical suggestion to offer which is timely, necessary and essential. It is a compromise between your purest aim, my lord and master, to which I wholeheartedly subscribe of envisaging a timeless and spaceless God and the practical need to come to terms with the difficulty of our people to envision an abstract, infinite and boundless God. We have, therefore, to erect a tabernacle, a mobile tent, to move with our people in their wanderings in the wilderness. In this tent of congregation, the people could convene and meet the spiritual presence of God, not His physical essence, which He does not possess, but His temple sanctuary and tabernacle. In this sacred abode of God, the people could supplicate to the divine spirit and expose themselves, thereby, to the sacred essence, to feel part and parcel of His entity, and have a soulful dialogue with Him.” “Your words are well taken, High Priest,” I agreed, “but how do we go about implementing your inspired idea?” “Well,” Aaron replied hesitantly, “We could approach the people and ask them to donate gold and silver and brass. And the women could donate their bracelets, rings and earrings and jewelry. Also, donations of scarlet, blue, fine linen cloth, camel wool and goat hair will be received with thanks as well as red skins of rams and badgers. We shall then approach Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur of the tribe of Judah, and Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan, who are imbued with the spirit of God to create inspired works of art and exquisite artisanship for the Tabernacle.”

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“Why,” I asked Aaron, “do you call it a Tabernacle?” “Because its main purpose is to provide a safe place, a housing, a nacelle for the Tablets that contain the words of God.” “But I broke those Tablets on the horns of the gold cow. They were thrown into the lava along with that atrocious idol.” “We will have to replace them,” Aaron said with irrefutable logic. “They represent something that we received from our God, something physical that the people can relate to. While you, my master and lord, again go up the mountain to receive from our Lord the new Tablets of the Decalogue and Covenant, Bezalel and Oholiab and their helpers will construct our Tent of Congregation and the Tabernacle of Testimony.” “What,” I asked Aaron, “will this Tabernacle look like?” Aaron took out from his bag a plan drawn meticulously on parchment and showed it to us. “This, my teachers and mentors, is a plan of the Tabernacle of Congregation prepared by Bezalel and Oholiab and given to me to show you.” Aaron pointed out for us the details of the Tabernacle tent. The outer walls of the Tabernacle were 100 cubits long and 50 cubits wide. The external curtains of the tent would be made of fine twined linen with blue, purple and scarlet colors, with cherubim embroidered with gold thread. Aaron provided more details. “They will make a covering of the tent of ram’s skin dyed red and a covering of badger’s skin above it. They will make boards of shittim wood to support the Tabernacle and the Tabernacle door will have scarlet, blue and purple needlework entwined with gold embroidery. They will then make an ark of shittim wood, overlaid with pure gold and topped by a crown of gold inlaid with diamonds, rubies, and lapis lazuli. Two cherubim of gold covered the ark with their wings while perched on the gold cover of the ark facing each other. They will mold a candelabrum of pure gold to hold six candles to set on the table of the Tabernacle. Then they will make an altar of shittim wood for burnt offerings.” “Then,” Aaron explained, “while you descend again from the mountain with the new Tablets of the Covenant written by the hand of God, we will place the Tablets in the Ark of the Covenant to accompany our people and protect them with the presence of God.” “Thank you, my brother. I want to compliment you on this expert and thoughtful plan for the Tabernacle. I hope Bezalel and Oholiab will be able to carry out the plan completely. Obviously you will oversee and supervise the builders and artisans in brass and cloth, which the people will surely donate prodded by their piety but also by their guilt because of the atrocity of the golden cow. Hopefully, by the time I descend from the

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mountain in 40 days, the Tabernacle will be ready and the slabs of stone with God’s commandments, laws and covenants can be placed in the Tent of the Covenant. I intimated to Aaron that I shall return to the Holy Mountain and probably stay in the company of God until I have again a revelation and write his Torah under his guidance. This could take not less than 40 days. Aaron should, therefore, urge Bezalel and Oholiab to hurry and complete the building of the Tabernacle to accomplish their sacred mission right away.” All of us again thanked Aaron for his expert and brilliant plan to build the Tabernacle. I took my leave and hurried up the mountain again and rushed to the empty cave behind the caper bush, which contained a profusion of limestone flat slabs on which I could write with God’s guidance not only another version of the Ten Commandments but the whole divine Torah of God directing his people as to proper behavior towards one another and matters of faith and worship of God. I entered the cave and it was in exactly the same condition as it was last time when I left it. The same whoosh of the bluish fire, the same immaculate emptiness, and the same feeling of pregnant ideas hovering in a divine presence. I sat down and started to write ecstatically God’s directives with a hand that was moved by Him and not by me. I sat there day and night without sleep. I ate dried figs, dates and raisins and the goat cheese and watermelon and grape juice that Joshua brought me every morning. He left the food at the entrance of the cave without a word so as to not disturb my intense concentration. He left modestly only to appear again the next morning. I wrote hectically with God’s hand not only the Ten Commandments but His directives as to the nature of God, faith, and divine grace; the nature of the people’s offerings to God and the way religious rituals should be conducted by the priests; the rules for feasts and festivals; the laws concerning the defense of life and wellbeing of the people; and the laws relating to property. The sanctity of the Sabbath was strictly proclaimed and the rules for gentiles and Habiru slaves were clearly set down. Laws proscribing idolatry, incest and bloodshed were strictly proclaimed as well as directives guarding the purity of marriage and the family. The administration of justice according to our new religion was proclaimed and equality under the law was solemnly declared. After 40 days and nights of trance-like writing, the task was completed and ten slabs of limestone were closely covered with small clear script divulging the Torah ௅ the true words of God. God ordered me to go down to the people and proclaim his laws and the

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covenant with Him. I asked Joshua to help me carry the ten slabs because they were too heavy for me to carry alone. We carried five each. As we approached the people standing at the foot of the mountain, they retreated from me in fright. Aaron intimated to me that my face was glowing and the people were frightened by God’s reflection from my face. Aaron told me that the Tabernacle was miraculously completed in the 40 days of my sojourn on the Holy Mountain.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE TABERNACLE AND THE WEDDINGS OF MY CHILDREN

I told the people that beginning tomorrow morning, I shall pronounce to them God’s Torah. They averted their eyes from me because they could not bear the glare from my face. I bade them farewell until tomorrow and they departed hurriedly, still apprehensive of the shine of my face. Aaron suggested that he help me carry the slabs of limestone on which the Torah was inscribed to the Ark of Covenant inside the Tabernacle, which was erected outside the encampment on the southern banks of the Egypt Spring. Bezalel and Oholiab were waiting for us outside the gate of the Tabernacle. When we approached, they tried to kiss my hand but I dissuaded them and embraced them instead, thanking and praising them profusely. The Tabernacle was magnificent. The rays of the setting sun flooded the outer curtain with gold, crimson and red. The altar sparkled with the refracted sunlight and the Ark was receptive to our approach and seemed to engulf the slabs of stone, which we placed within it. Aaron asked Bezalel and Oholiab to prepare a gold mask to cover the dazzling blaze of my face so that the people would not be frightened of me and they promised to prepare the gold mask by tomorrow morning. They just asked me to oblige them by letting them make a wax mold of my face so that they could cast a mask that fit. I readily consented. We embraced in farewell and arranged to meet tomorrow morning in the Tabernacle of Congregation. In the morning, all the people were present in the courtyard of the Tabernacle. We planned to inaugurate the temple by reading God’s Torah. Before the reading, I invited Bezalel and Oholiab to step forward and I complimented, praised and thanked them. “Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur of the tribe of Judah and Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan, you have been imbued with the spirit of God who endowed you with talents of the soul, intelligence of your hands, a keen eye and a generous mind. You have been blessed by God to grasp his wish to

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provide the people with a place of prayer and convention in which His presence may reside. Let us thank the Lord for this abode and pray:” How lovely are Thy Tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul yearneth, yea, even pineth for the courts of the Lord; My heart and my flesh sing for joy unto the living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself Where she may lay her young; Thine altars, O Lord of hosts, My King, and my God -Happy are they that dwell in Thy house, They are ever praising Thee, Selah. Happy is the man whose strength is in Thee; In whose heart are the highways, Passing through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; Yea, the early rain clotheth it with blessings. They go from strength to strength, Every one of them appeareth before God in Zion. Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; Give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah. Behold, O God our shield, And look upon the face of Thine anointed. For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand, I had rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God, Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and a shield, The Lord giveth grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, Happy is the man that trusteth in Thee. I then invited Aaron and Joshua to bring the slabs of the limestone for the reading of the Torah. Aaron, as High Priest, opened the Ark of the Covenant and all the people prostrated themselves. “No,” I shrieked. “You should not prostrate yourself in front of the Ark of the Covenant as if it was an idol. Stand up. Stand up,” I commanded. The presence of God does reside in the Tabernacle but not as a pagan idol,

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an effigy, a graven image. You should revere it and thus bow to it as a spiritual bond between your God and you as his chosen people. Now bow to the open Ark of the Covenant and the High Priest Aaron and Commander Joshua will bring the tablets of the Torah.” The people bowed low in reverence while Aaron and Joshua brought the tablets of the Torah, five each, for me to recite and explain. I stood on the golden altar of the Tabernacle with the golden mask that Bezalel had molded for me to hide the glow of my face. The brilliance of the glare from the altar and the radiance from my mask fused with the morning sun rays. I started to declaim God’s Torah. It took three days for me to recite the Torah and for the people to absorb it. At the end of the third day, when I finished declaiming the scripture, the people boomed in unison: “We shall do and comply.” After having presented the Torah to our people in the Tabernacle at the foot of the Holy Mountain, we started to plan our journey to Kadesh Barnea, the largest oasis in Sinai, about a days' travel east of the Holy Mountain in the Sin desert. This oasis is situated on the border of our Promised Land and from there we could plan our campaign to inherit it as promised by our God. Last, but not least, Jethro, the Priest of God, holds court in Kadesh Barnea. His deep wisdom, experience and thorough knowledge of the area would enable him to advise us how and when to carry out our campaign. Also, my father-in-law Jethro will organize, conduct and oversee the marriage of my son Eliezer to his beloved Batyezer, the youngest daughter of Aaron the High Priest, and my son Gershom to Yehoateret, the grand niece of Jethro. This double wedding is going to be the most spectacular social event with all our people present as well as invitees from all over Sinai and Egypt including, if he is not tied up with the affairs of state, the Pharaoh Horemheb himself. In the morning before embarking on our journey to Kadesh Barnea, the people were convened in the court of the Tabernacle and Aaron and his sons were anointed and consecrated as Priests of God in the service of God and the people at the Tabernacle. The holy garments of service of Aaron the High Priest were of blue, purple and scarlet cloth. The ephod worn as an apron by the High Priest was made of gold, blue and purple woven into fine entwined linen. It was made with shoulder plates to couple the parts of the ephod together. Two onyx stones enclosed in pouches of gold and engraved as signets with the names of the tribes of the people were fastened to these shoulder plates of the ephod. The breastplate of the ephod was foursquare with four rows with three stones in each row. The first row had a sardius, a topaz and a carbuncle.

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The next row consisted of an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond. The third row contained a ligure, an agate and an amethyst. The last row had a beryl, an onyx and a jasper. The robe of the ephod was all blue. At the hem of the robe they fixed pomegranates and between the pomegranates they hung bells of pure gold. They made coats of service of pure linen and miters and crowns of pure gold for Aaron and his sons. The writing engraved on the crowns was 'Holiness to the Lord’. When I saw Aaron and his sons in their full regalia, I called Aaron and his sons to the door of the Tabernacle. I anointed them with holy oil and declared them to be Holy Priests of God to serve the Lord and his people. Then Joshua gave orders how our journey to Kadesh Barnea should proceed and he took great care to instruct how the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant and the Altar should be carried and moved. The Ark was wrapped for the journey in the veil, which isolated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Tabernacle. The two altars were to be carried upon the shoulders of the children of Kohath, the patriarch of the Levites, and were to be under the supervision of the High Priest. The rest of the dismembered Tabernacle would be carried in six wagons to be drawn by two oxen. Towards evening we were ready to move in a long caravan led by the camel cavalry and rear-guarded by the chariots and the archers riding on them. Of course we decided to travel by night to avoid the searing heat of the desert day. While we travelled, static electricity was generated by the mass movement of our people, chariots, carts and animals. The entire procession was engulfed by twinkling, glimmering, glowing blue and crackling yellow lights. The people said that these lights are evidence of God's holy presence following and protecting us. In the morning, the desert fata morgana, the mirages of oases floating in the air, and whirl winds and storms caused by the hot layers of air seemed to accompany our progress and they both intrigued and delighted us as God's blessed companionship. We arrived at Kadesh Barnea towards noon. It is the largest and most developed oasis in the Sinai Peninsula. It is an inner junction of the desert routes in the Sinai linking the Philistine route on the Mediterranean shore and bonding the Shur desert on the east and the Sin and Paran deserts on the west. It is also a strategic juncture between Egypt, Canaan, Mesopotamia, Damascus, Mitanni, and the land of the Hittites. It has a central lake teaming with fish and water lilies surrounded by orchards of palms, olives, figs, pomegranates, and vineyards. The veterinary and medical clinics established by Geri and Eli, my sons, became famous all

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over the Middle East and numerous caravans were bringing ever larger numbers of people and animals to be treated at our clinics. This bustling international crossroads made Kadesh Barnea one of the most spectacular, rich, colorful and well-stocked markets in the Middle East. Spices from India, carpets from Susa and Nineveh, silk from Damascus, cedars from Lebanon, wood and artistic furniture from Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, persimmon from Jericho, pomegranates from Hebron, goats from Samaria, horses from Gilead, camels from Rabat Ammon, and wines from Illyria, Thessalia and Sardis. When we arrived at Kadesh Barnea, Jethro, the Priest of God, waited for us with a warm welcome. He embraced me, my wife Zippora, and our sons, his grandsons. He invited us to camp in the north part of the Oasis behind the rows of palm trees. He suggested that we erect the Tabernacle tent in front of the Priest of God abode as well as the tent of command. He explained that politically, the tent of command would gain an aura of metaphysical support by being situated between two religious abodes. He suggested that since we have just arrived, we would be most welcome to have a noon meal at the Priestly abode and then we could discuss some urgent matters while the people encamp north of the oasis. We gladly agreed and the three of us, Aaron, Caleb and myself, entered the Priestly residence while Joshua excused himself since he had to give instructions to his adjutants as to the deployment of the caravans and then he would join us later. We were ushered into the guest room of Jethro’s residence and served a noon meal. The maid servants brought in the appetizers: squash stuffed with minced lamb baked in pomegranate sauce; cucumbers in goat cheese with olive oil, sweet basil, and garlic sprinkled with balsamic vinegar; marinated bamboo shoots cooked in white wine and garnished with black mushrooms; and a spinach tart baked with quail eggs, butter and crushed chestnuts. They brought in white and red wine as well as fruit juices. After Joshua rejoined us, I noticed that he did not touch any liquor but he had increased the number of opium balls he smoked in his corncob pipe. For the main dish, the girls brought in red snappers fried in olive oil, onions and peppers. Both the appetizers and red snappers were delicious and we asked Jethro to compliment the cook who prepared them. The girls brought in the kettles of spice brew and poured the dark aromatic liquid into small white glazed cups. When we started to sip the bubbling hot brew, Jethro divulged the news that the Pharaoh Horemheb sent word that as much as he would have like to partake in the wedding of our sons, some pressing affairs of state,

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including a punitive expedition against the Philistines, would prevent him from partaking fully in this happy occasion, but he would gladly pass through Kadesh Barnea on the morning of the weddings on his way to the land of the Philistines and embrace the brides and grooms and rush to his pressing assignments. He promised to invite the young couples to be his guests in his palace at Moph and stay there as long as they liked. Jethro said he answered the Pharaoh that he and the young couples are greatly honored by his planned visit, although a short one, and that all of us are thrilled by the imminent encounter. Jethro explained, “We should remember that our Pharaoh is a very astute politician. He knows that after the Habiru inherit, by force of course, the Promised Land as ordained in the covenant between God and you, Canaan, under your dominion, will be a vassal state of Egypt. Therefore, Horemheb will do his utmost to have a good relationship with your people as well as with us whom he knows to be your close allies.” “Now, gentlemen, what is next on our agenda?” Jethro assumed the role of chairman as his natural prerogative as host and a Priest of God. “Spies,” Joshua retorted curtly, and then warmed up to his subject. “We need information. An army with no or poor intelligence about his foe is both deaf and blind. We shall send a reconnaissance squadron to Canaan consisting of leading members of the twelve tribes of our people. All of them experienced scouts and well acquainted with the terrain they have to explore and the communities they have to investigate. The candidates we propose for our spying squad are: Shammua, the son of Zaccur of the tribe of Reuben; Shaphat, the son of Hori of the tribe of Simeon; Caleb, the son of Jephunneh of the tribe of Judah; Igal, the son of Joseph; Joshua the son of Nun of the tribe of Ephraim; Palti, the son of Raphu of the tribe of Benjamin; Gaddiel, the son of Sodi of the tribe of Zebulun; Gaddi, the son of Susi of the tribe of Menasha; Ammiel, the son of Gemalli of the tribe of Dan; Sethur, the son of Michael of the tribe of Asher; Nahbi, the son of Vophsi of the tribe of Naphtali; and Geuel, the son of Maki of the tribe of Gad.” “The suggested route to be followed,” Joshua pointed at a map he fished out from his bag, “unless unexpected events necessitate detours, should be from Kadesh Barnea through the Pharan desert to Hor Hahar. Then the Atarim road would lead through the Negev Mountains to Arad, Horma and Beer-Sheba. Then farther north we would reach Dvira and our final destination would be the town of Hebron. The way back should be different to avoid detection and ambushes. I suggest we descend east to the Dead Sea and walk along its western shores south to Zoar and then along the Arabah valley south to Zalmonah, then west to Tamar. We shall pass

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the Negev Mountains in the territories of Edom and Moab. We shall reach Hor Hahar and from there southwest to Kadesh Barnea. At all times we should walk at night to avoid detection and hide and rest in the numerous caves on the way. This is it,” Joshua ended and lit his pipe with a ball of opium in it. After a while, his tense demeanor relaxed into a beaming selfsufficiency. “Well done, Commander,” Jethro complimented Joshua. “And now, gentlemen, I wish to remind you,” Jethro raised his voice to emphasize the importance of his message, “that we have a huge event on our hands to organize. Invitees to our wedding will come from all over the Middle East. Apart from the chieftains of the nomadic tribes from the Sinai, we can expect guests from Samaria, Edomea, Rabat-Amon, Damascus, Babylonia, Nineveh, Zor and Sidon, and, of course, Egypt. We shall have to erect hundreds of tents to lodge our guests and sheds and stables for their animals. We shall have to prepare feasts, organize musicians, dancers, and entertainers for the two days of the wedding ceremonies, for two days before the actual wedding, and for a couple of days afterwards, all in all, six days. Therefore, I would ask the Commander and Caleb, our Prime Minister, both great organizers, to help us in the actual management, coordination and arrangement of the event. High Priest Aaron could kindly supervise the arrangements while Shepherd Moshé could attend to the many ritualistic details of the wedding.” “We shall also have to give an impressive present to the Pharaoh when he stops here on his way to chastise the Philistines. I suggest we ask Bezalel ben Uri ben Hur to mold a replica of pure gold of the Tabernacle menorah to present to the Pharaoh. So please let everyone of us do his duty,” Jethro implored, “since the reputation of our families, the honor of our people, and the renown of our enterprises would depend on the success of this momentous event.” Jethro bade us farewell and each of us left the tent to pursue our roles as indicated by Jethro, the Priest of God. After a week, on the first day after the Sabbath, everything was almost ready for the wedding ceremonies. We moved the Tabernacle south of the lake at the center of the oasis and the whole space in front of Jethro’s priestly abode was transformed into a large amphitheater constructed of strong beams of cedar wood and able to seat a sizable audience. At the center of the amphitheater, a stage was constructed on which the actual wedding ceremony would be conducted by Jethro, the Priest of God. To the west of the oasis, hundreds of robust tents of brown camel wool and black goat hair were hurriedly erected. To the east of the lake, a good number of round huts woven from entwined palm branches were set up. These are

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preferred as airy and light abodes by the Sinai desert nomads and the Tuareg camel nomads who roam the Libyan Desert west of Egypt and man many of the caravans that pass through and camp in Kadesh Barnea. The guests started to arrive already. They preferred to come early and get organized in more spacious lodgings and have their animals tended to and rested, and they could also do their shopping in the rich and well stocked markets of the oasis so that they could be rested, relaxed and ready for the wedding ceremonies and celebrations to start on the third day of the week. Edomites with unkempt hair and beards, with wild intense green eyes, and clad in exotic leopard skins came armed to the teeth with bows and arrows, swords, lances and heavy axes. Sleek Moabites heavy with gold and clad ostentatiously with gold embroidered red gowns were always ready to strike a bargain. Phoenicians from Zor accompanied by their scantily dressed enticing slave girls, high class nobles from Damascus with flowing robes of Damascene silk spreading the strong aroma of Damask rosewater, and chieftains from Nubia adorned by shell necklaces and surrounded by naked slave girls with only a slim slip to hide their private parts. Fishermen from the island of Elisha just opposite the shores of the Great Sea came with presents of dried fish which had a fierce smell and contaminated the air around them with an indelible odor. Princes and princesses from the island of Caphtor farther west in the Great Sea drew the utmost attention, especially the princesses who were stunning beauties with a towering hair-do elongated eyes accentuated by black mascara, red painted sensuous lips, bare firm breasts, and a flowing robe of turquoise Persian silk. A whole herd of animals were confined in a fenced area, some of them for a burnt offering on the altar of the Tabernacle, the rest to be slaughtered for the wedding feast. Large cages full of quail, geese, ducks, hens, and pheasant were to be slaughtered ritually, plucked and roasted for the feast. Fresh fish from the Sirbonic shallow lagoon on the shores of the Mediterranean … snappers, stone fish, sea wolf, bass, plaice, and mullets … were caught and kept in containers of sea water to be fried just before being served. Loads of vegetables and fruit were brought in carts and then placed in the cold springs of the oasis to be kept cool and crispy for the feasts. On the morning of the day of the wedding, we waited tensely for the military procession of the Pharaoh and for his short encounter with our quartet, Jethro, and the two young couples. There was apprehension that if the Pharaoh would be too late, the time table of the wedding ceremonies

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would be adversely affected. Towards noon, Jethro, our quartet, the two couples to be wed, and a large crowd went to the desert road of Zin passing to the north of Kadesh Barnea, to wait for the Pharaoh’s convoy. Fortunately, we got word from our scouts, transmitted by Yossi’s carrier pigeon, that the procession of the Pharaoh is approaching. The Pharaoh Horemheb being a consummate tactician did not transport his punitive expedition on the Philistine road passing through the Etham desert just parallel to the sea shore. That shorter route would reveal to the Philistines, through nomad spies in their pay, the whereabouts of the Egyptian expedition and the numbers of its chariots, soldiers and weaponry. The expedition would also not have the advantage of a surprise attack, so valuable in combat. However, having taken the route of the Shur desert, a good distance south of the Etham desert, and then proceeding to Hazeroth and the desert south of the Holy Mountain to reach Kadesh Barnea, the Pharaoh Horemheb would have the advantage of a surprise attack. This he would achieve by descending to the bed of the Egypt Spring and marching north on the solidified lava, which had cooled and hardened since the volcanic eruption of the Holy Mountain stopped. The firm lava made an excellent road for the vehicles and animals of Horemheb’s punitive expedition. When the expedition reaches the mouth of the Egypt spring at the Great Sea, it will march along the shore to launch surprise attacks against the Philistine strongholds of Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod. Therefore, the visit of the Pharaoh to Kadesh Barnea has political and emotional reasons but also very sound and solid military advantages. When the procession of the Pharaoh arrived, the advance guard preceding the royal gilded chariot of Horemheb was a squadron of chariots with two fierce archers in each chariot flanking the driver who was armed with a lance and a sword. One of the archers was aiming his arrow to the front and the other to the side of the chariot. After the advance guard, the royal gilded chariot arrived, moving in a slow, dignified pace. It had a gold double crown representing Lower and Upper Egypt with the golden Cobra Uraeus protruding ominously in front of it. An exact replica of this crown was on the head of Horemheb who seemed to be heavier and stockier than the last time I saw him. After the royal chariot there was a whole regiment of camel cavalry, which seemed to be the main thrust of the force, with the driver having 10 lances, five on each side of the camel. A shield of elephant hide fastened to the belly of the camel protected the archer from enemy arrows and lances. A large company of carts driven by oxen were carrying the extra ammunition for the expedition, water, wine and live animals to be

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slaughtered for the soldiers, and fodder and grain for both man and beast. About 50 elephants were moving heavily after the carts. The task of these huge beasts was to crush and overwhelm the carriages of the enemies. Since no arrow or lance could penetrate their thick hide, only their eyes were protected by brass goggles with narrow slits for vision. The rear guard consisted of another squadron of archers aiming their arrows to the rear of the procession. When the procession of the Pharaoh stopped, all the people prostrated themselves except the four of us and the two couples. We just bowed low. When Horemheb saw me, he jumped from his chariot and embraced me. He was quite agile for a person as stocky as himself. “Oh, Prince MeShu,” he exclaimed. “What a delight to see you.” He then embraced and kissed me on both cheeks. He reeked heavily of liquor so that his drinking habits seemed unchanged. “I have brought you something,” he declared, “which I am sure you will appreciate.” He asked his adjutant to bring him the Golden Cylinder of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. The adjutant brought an elongated cylinder of gold with cartouches of hieroglyphs inscribed on it. The Pharaoh opened it and spread out the parchment scroll which was in it. “Prince Me-Shu,” he announced festively, “It is the original text of the Hymn to Aten in your father’s own handwriting. It is for you, Prince Me-Shu and for the newlyweds and for all your people to remember and understand where your monotheistic creed stemmed from.” Horemheb rolled the scroll, inserted it back in the cylinder, and gave it to me. I fell on his shoulders and wept tears of thanks while he embraced me gently and stroked my shoulders lovingly. “Bring the Menorah,” I asked Aaron who brought me the exact replica of the Golden Menorah sculptured by Bezalel ben Uri ben Hur. I held it in my hands, brandished it, and told the Pharaoh. “This is for you, my dear Sire and friend, an exact copy of the Menorah in the Holy of Holies of our Tabernacle. We are endowing it to you as a token of your greatness, your kindness, and your prophetic vision in helping to implement the will of our God to leave your country and reach our Promised Land as ordained by God.” The Pharaoh embraced me again while holding the Menorah. Just then, Korah, a rich usurer and a Levite who wanted to be a priest, a role that was bestowed by divine edict only to Aaron and his progeny, plus Dotan and Aviram, who organized a circle of opposition to Aaron and me, shouted: “Sacrilege! You present the Menorah to a pagan.” “Shut up,” retorted Joshua. “It is just a replica with no sacredness imbued in it.” Joshua’s reprimand hushed the trouble-mongers. It was a

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good thing that Horemheb did not understand Habiru. If he did, he might have been offended. The Pharaoh then embraced Aaron and Caleb and gave a military salute to Joshua who reciprocated by a salute and a bow. Horemheb then embraced the two couples He climbed aboard his chariot and when the royal procession started to move, the people chanted, “Hallelujah, Hallelujah, God bless our king and protector.” After Horemheb’s cavalcade passed, the wedding ceremony started. A canopy of white linen tied to four poles, two held by Habiru priests, the sons of Aaron, and the other two by two Midianite priests, the sons of Jethro. The two brides were clad in white with veils of white lace. The bridegrooms were clad in blue with white turbans. Jethro started the ceremony with a deep baritone voice singing: “Gladden the beloved companions as You gladdened Your creations in the Garden of Eden in ancient time. You are Blessed, Lord, Who gladdens groom and bride. You are Blessed, Lord our God, the Sovereign of the world, Who created joy and gladness, groom and bride, mirth, glad song, pleasure, delight, love, brotherhood, peace, and companionship. May there soon be heard, Lord our God, in the cities of the Promised Land the sound of joy and the sound of gladness, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the grooms' jubilance from their wedding canopies and of the youths from their song-filled feasts. Blessed are You Who makes the bride and groom rejoice together.” Then Jethro asked his grandsons whether they would take the brides in holy matrimony to cherish, love, and be loyal under God. When answered in the affirmative, he asked the brides if they would take the grooms in holy matrimony to cherish, love, and be loyal under God. When they asserted they would, he requested each groom to place a ring on the forefinger of his bride. After this, Jethro declared the two couples to be husband and wife. He asked Geri to read a prepared text to his wife Yehoateret: “How fair is thy love, my sister, my bride! How much better is thy love than wine! And the smell of thine ointments than all manner of spices! Thy lips, O my bride, drop honey – honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. A garden shut up is my sister, my bride; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Thy shoots are a park of pomegranates, with precious fruits; henna with spikenard plants, Spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices.” Yehoateret responded by also reading from a text: “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. As a lily among thorns, so is my love among

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the daughters. As an apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. Under its shadow I delighted to sit, and its fruit was sweet to my taste. He hath brought me to the banqueting-house, and his banner over me is love.” Jethro then asked Eli to read his prepared text to his wife Batyezer: “I am come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved. My dove, my undefiled, is but one; she is the only one of her mother; she is the choice one of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and called her happy; yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.” Finally he asked Batyezer to read to Eli her husband a text proclaiming: “The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines in blossom give forth their fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards; for our vineyards are in blossom. My beloved is mine, and I am his, that feedeth among the lilies. Until the day breathes, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a gazelle or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.” After these mutual declarations of love, a troupe of female dancers, the peers of the brides and dressed like them, started to circle the high place and the canopy in a hora dance. A group of male dancers dressed in blue like the bridegrooms started also to circle the high place but in the opposite direction. The music for the dance was played by a band of strings, wind instruments and nomadic cymbals and drums. The dance started in a subdued pace, it then gained momentum, the pace of the music and the dancers accelerated until it culminated in a whirlwind like a tornado. After the dance, the guests were already seated at long tables around the high place. The two couples were introduced to the guests by Jethro, Aaron and myself while the slaves and servants placed a large variety of appetizers on the tables: vine leaves stuffed with barley and pine nuts, squash filled with minced lamb cooked in pomegranate sauce, red peppers filled with goat cheese and baked in earthenware ovens, sardines marinated in balsamic vinegar and olive oil, fried red snappers served in mushroom sauce, quail stuffed with chestnuts and roasted in mint sauce,

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chickpea paste spread on a deep plate surrounded by squares of fried calf cubes basted in sesame sauce and spiced with fresh coriander. Then Aaron sacrificed four heifers burnt whole for each of the newlyweds. Afterwards lambs, goats and calves were slaughtered for the guests. While the invitees were being entertained with folkloristic songs and dances, they were feasting, eating and drinking wines from Illyria, Muscat wines from Megiddo, dark red robust wines from Beit Shean, dry white wines from the island of Elisha, and 96 proof grappa from the island of Caphtor, they were being entertained with folkloristic songs and dances. A group of Tuareg nomads were performing a crooked sabre dance on the stage just vacated by the newlyweds. They were clad in black and their faces were half covered by black veils. They were enacting the ritualistic abduction of a bride customary with Tuareg tribes. The actor playing the role of bridegroom and his brothers were dancing a blood curdling sabre dance while the actress playing the role of the bride shrieked and howled while being hoisted on the bridegroom’s shoulders. The next group were the princes and princesses of Caphtor dancing their elegantly erotic fertility dance. The princes wooed the princesses with enticing songs and passionate movements until the princesses succumbed to their paramours. The most spectacular dance was performed by a group of giant males from Upper Egypt. They had raffia straw skirts and were adorned with ostrich feathers. They had long bamboo sticks in both hands and they performed acrobatic jumps and pirouettes that were breathtaking in their daring. By then, the guests were well fed and all but drunk and they slowly retired to their quarters. That night the spies, led by Joshua bin Nun and Caleb ben Jephunneh, left for their reconnaissance mission in Canaan. After 40 days, the spies came back. They entered the tent of command where Aaron and I were already waiting for them. When the people saw that the spies came back and entered the tent of command, they came close to the tent and some of them eavesdropped through the entrance of the tent to hear what information the spies had brought. All present were impressed by the huge bunch of grapes that two of the spies had to carry on a lance perched on their shoulders. They also brought baskets of outsize figs bursting at their seams with juice and big red pomegranates that advertised the savor, aroma and taste of their kernels by the tightly packed contours of their peels. Ten of the spies, all except Caleb ben Jephunneh from the tribe of Judah and Joshua ben Nun of the tribe of Benjamin, presented their majority report to Jethro, Aaron and me. “The land is indeed a land of milk

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and honey” they opened, “and the fruit we brought will confirm that, but it is also,” they added with a sad demeanor “a devourer of its inhabitants. The people we saw there are Anakim, giants. The Nefilim, the fallen angels who bethrothed mortal women and their offspring, were half temporal and half divine. We, in comparison, were like insects. In Hebron, the city that we reached last before returning back, we encountered ominous tribes. The Ahiman stemming from awe-inspiring gods, the Sheshai, descendants and protégées of the Sun god, and the Talmai, the progeny of the nomad gods of the desert. Part of the land is ruled by the Amalekites, the mortal enemies of our people. The other provinces are inhabited by the all but invincible Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites. We have no chance against these formidable people of Canaan. We propose to appoint new leaders instead of Prince Me-Shu, High Priest Aaron, Commander Joshua, and Prime Minister Caleb who misled us. They induced us to leave Egypt, the land of fleshpots, giant fish, and horns of plenty to die in the desert and be slaughtered by the fierce and fearsome Canaanites. Our people should be advised to save themselves, their women and children and return to Egypt where the Pharaoh Horemheb would gladly receive us back.” Caleb and Joshua then gave their minority report and declared that the land is a good land, fertile, and generous to its tillers and its inhabitants can be overcome if we believe in God. He will help us to defeat them. The report of the other ten spies and their recommendation to return to Egypt is sacrilegious and a rebellion against God since it is God’s promise and covenant with us to lead us safely into the Promised Land. Then Joshua recounted that he and Caleb overheard a conversation of the other ten spies when they were huddled together in a cave near Hebron on the night before they returned back to Kadesh Barnea from their reconnaissance mission. He and Caleb were standing outside the entrance to the cave overhearing the conversation of the other ten without being noticed by them. “They intimated,” recounted Joshua, “that the people do not want to fight. They are peasants and merchants and this is what they were doing when they were in Egypt. They are not soldiers and they have no wish or ability to conquer the land of the Canaanites and be killed while engaging in a war for which they have no training. They are peaceful people and they will organize the Habiru to return to Egypt and resume theirs productive life of agriculture and commerce so vital to the economy of Egypt. The Pharaoh Horemheb showed his friendly disposition towards us just a few weeks ago and he will certainly receive us back,” they concluded, “with open arms.” The ten renegade spies were received with applause by the people surrounding the tent.

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I told Joshua, Caleb, Aaron and Jethro that I am rushing to consult God in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle as to what to do. The people shouted at me with the pejorative “Me me Shu shu” while I headed towards the Tabernacle. I opened the Holy of Holies and saw the tablets of the Torah. I looked at the ceiling of the tent and saw the blue spirals of static electricity dancing merrily. They were in stark contrast to my dark and desperate mood. I waited for a revelation and it came with a brutal force. I started to shake violently. God ordered me to lead the nation of infidels, traitors, coveters, greedy usurers, whiners and self-centered egotists to be smitten by the plague and let their children grow up in the ascetic, frugal, modest self-sufficiency of the desert. I rejected this idea and pointed out that it will be sacrilegious because it would profane the name of God by admitting to all the enemies of God that He failed in his mission to deliver His chosen people from the fleshpots and idolatry of Egypt to the bliss of a belief in an eternal, boundless abstract God and He broke His covenant to lead His people to inherit their Promised Land. Just then Joshua came in looking for me, blood flowing down his face. “Shepherd Moshé,” come back quick,” he urged. “The scoundrels started stoning us.” “Joshua, take the eliminators,” I ordered, “and kill the ten traitors. Throw their corpses in the valley outside the east borders of the oasis to be devoured by the desert hyenas and the ever hungry desert wolves. Let us hurry,” I urged, while my rage made my body tremble and shake badly. When we approached the command tent, Joshua ran to summon the eliminators from their tent and I tried to enter the command tent. A stone dented my gold mask. The tent was closed since Aaron, Caleb and Jethro defended themselves from the violence of the crowd. I raised my hands and howled with a raspy voice, “You can kill me now, but God will then smite you instantly into perdition.” Just then, a quake shook the earth, probably the nearby Holy Mountain erupted again. The crowd froze in fright. Joshua came with the eliminators who slaughtered the ten resurgent spies one by one. The crowd dispersed with shrieks of dismay, seeking the safety of their own tents. I went back to the Tabernacle and waited for God’s word. It came with a subdued tone. The compromise that God proposed was that the people stay in Kadesh Barnea for 40 years, one year for each day of the spies’ rebellion and incitement of the people against God. They would die out and their children would be strictly indoctrinated into the right spirit of God in His Torah. After 40 years, they will be ready and worthy to inherit the Promised Land.

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In the morning, I sent criers to summon the people to present themselves in front of the Tabernacle. When the people assembled, I announced to them God’s verdict. “Since you have sinned against God and blasphemed his name, you shall die in the desert and your carcasses will rot and be eaten by the beasts of prey and the devouring fowl. Your children will roam the desert for 40 years, one year for each day that the falsifying spies were concocting their lies. When you die out, your children will enter the Promised Land.” The people rent their clothes and dispersed to their tents, weeping. The people slowly started to settle at Kadesh Barnea. They tried to overcome the trauma of the spies by hyperactivity. Each one tried to apply the profession, proficiency and occupational expertise acquired elsewhere to the different conditions in the desert oasis. Irrigation engineers tried to utilize their experience in the Egyptian delta to dig irrigation canals leading from the oasis lake to the surrounding loess soil, which is fertile and rich but barren because of lack of water. When irrigated, the loess soil produced wonderful crops of vegetables, grain and perennial bushes like persimmon, tamarisk and black berries. The jewelers opened stands in the market of gold and silver filigree art including head bands, earrings and bracelets for the wives of the nomads. The spice dealers with good connections with the spice and incense caravans travelling from Egypt to Mesopotamia and India and back had a bustling business with our people as well as the nomads from all over Sinai. The cloth and silk merchants with their links in Damascus and the Phoenician ports of Zor and Sidon opened several stands in the Kadesh Barnea market. They sold the most colorful cloth and silk and they became famous throughout Sinai, Lower Egypt and Mesopotamia The human and veterinarian clinics under the direction and supervision of my sons Geri and Eli and their young wives flourished and attracted sick and ailing humans and animals from the entire Middle East. Jethro encouraged these activities since they would eventually transform Kadesh Barnea from a mere oasis into an important urban center of commerce, agriculture and industry. Korah, a Levite, was the richest man in the community. He made his money by extorting the Egyptian peasants on behalf of my father, the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who was unaware of Korah's deceit. Korah was also lending money to our people at exorbitant interest rates, despite the fact that he was committing a grave sin against the Torah by extorting usurious profits from his brethren. Just then when things seemed to be settling down peacefully, Korah incited a rebellion against me and Aaron.

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After he was brought to trial in front of me, he lent money to a young Judean family with interest that jumped in a geometrical progression until it became an astronomical sum. Since the young family could not pay the debt, he demanded that one of the daughters of the family, a girl of twelve, become his slave. The girl stood in front of me and cried while her mother wailed and offered that Korah take her as a slave instead of her daughter. "Shut up, you old bag," Korah answered with venom sprouting out of his fat lips, his protruding belly accentuated with decisive punctuations his haughty refusal. The young woman's husband drew out his sword, preparing to charge at Korah. He was subdued by a policeman. My verdict was that since usury was illegal when taken from one's brethren, the exorbitant interest was null and void and hence the loan itself was against the Torah. The young mother threw herself at my feet and started kissing them. Her husband grabbed my hand to kiss it. I drew my hand away from him and lifted the woman up from the floor. The family with the beautiful daughter went to their tent weeping tears of joy. "You shall pay for it, Me me Shu shu. You have become a dictator," Korah yelled, his fat body trembling with anger and frustration. "I am a Levite who is as fit to be a priest as much as your protégée Aaron. A group of our brethren, among them the most revered chieftains Dotan and Aviram, are organizing against your tyranny and despotism. "I shall tell you what," I started to stammer with emotion, "You crave to be a priest, not because you wish to serve the community and God but because you could sell indulgencies and favors to your cronies like Dotan and Aviram and their ilk who are in your pay. You, Dotan, Aviram and your other stooges should come tomorrow noon and bring your censers with you. Put incense in them and light them. Aaron will also bring his censer with incense and fire in it. God will make the censer of his chosen one remain lit longer. "So be it," Korah replied. The next day at noon, Korah, Dotan, Aviram and about 50 of their followers were at the Tabernacle. I arranged with Aaron that he obtain from my son Eli some crystals that if placed in the censers will burn for a whole hour. Also I asked Joshua to prepare his eliminators to slaughter the rebellious group but not in the Tabernacle. They should be dragged out from the holy premises to the precipice bordering the valley of the Egypt Spring, killed there, and their corpses thrown down into the valley to be devoured by animals and birds of prey. By the afternoon, this operation was over. Since then we are having peace and quiet. The people are content with their prosperity as each year brings more business ventures and industrial development. The irrigation engineers extended the fields for grain and

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animal fodder by several kha (27,500 sq.m. each) into the desert. We have become self-sufficient for baking flour and animal grains. With the help of Geri, who is an accomplished agronomist, we developed a special olive tree named Barnea that produces a bountiful crop of tasty olives. We build an oil refinery and erected an earthenware factory. Jars with the Barnea Olive brand are now marketed all over the Middle East. Geri also hybridized dates, figs and grapes of special quality. We dried and pressed the dates and figs, packed them in palm containers, and marketed them all over the Middle East under the trade name Barnea. Jewelers, money changers, and merchants of precious materials did a bustling business. Instead of market stands, they build houses with sandstone from the Paran desert. In a few years, the oasis became more of a teaming town than an oasis. Our population was increasing and caravans were constantly streaming to Kadesh Barnea bringing and taking goods, foods, animals, and people. Thanks to the initiative of our people, Kadesh Barnea changed from a desert oasis to an important international junction. One day the spring feeding the lake at Kadesh Barnea dried out and the perennial whiners of the congregation started complaining: "Now we are again doomed to extinction. Because of the lack of fresh water, the lake is soon going to dry out and we and our animals are going to die of thirst. Would that we had perished together with our brethren Korah, Dotan and Aviram. Aaron and I rushed to the Tabernacle, entered the Holy of Holies, and asked God for instructions. His message was clear. We were instructed to speak to the rock from which the spring flowed and ask it, as per God's orders, to resume the flow of water. We asked the whiners to convene in front of the rock at the source of the lake and I asked Geri to get a hammer and chisel and accompany Aaron and me to the rock. We climbed up on the rock and the people huddled around us. I asked Geri to hold the chisel in the hole from which the water sprouted and I hit it twice with the hammer. The rock around the hole broke, the blockage cleared, and the water began flowing merrily. The people sang ‘Hallelujah’. But God was angry. I felt it in my bones, in my heart and in my soul, especially in my spirit. He ordered us to speak to the rock and we hit it with a hammer and chisel like I did in Rephidim. God has been slighted in front of the people. He ordered us to speak to the rock, but we hit it instead, showing a disbelief in God's powers and thus it was a profanation of His word and name. For this we shall be punished and not lead our people to the Promised Land. I felt an inner serenity. I did not wish to fight the Canaanites and my own stiff necked people. I wished to remain in the desert in the serenity,

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frugality and parsimony of sun and sand. The years at Kadesh Barnea followed one another in quick succession. The generation of the traumatic fiasco of the spies died out and their children and grandchildren now constituted the backbone and main body of our people.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE PROMISED LAND

According to God’s covenant, we should multiply and replenish the earth. Now, 39 years after the spies’ treachery, we numbered 30,000 instead of the 3000 that left Egypt. Our army now numbered 6000, a thousand charioteers, a thousand archers, a thousand cavalry on camels, with a thousand infantry on the backs of camels, a thousand close combat dagger-men, and a thousand policemen to keep law and order. By the beginning of the 40th year, the quartet in command, presided over by Jethro, decided that we were ready to launch our campaign to conquer our Promised Land. We tried to convince Jethro to come with us to Canaan since he became one of us. He declined claiming that he is nearing the end of his days and he would like to end them where he began them, in Kadesh Barnea. We honored Jethro’s wish and we examined the maps to decide how to proceed with our campaign. “The best route would be to proceed from Kadesh Barnea to the northeast along the Atarim route encompassing the southern border of Canaan and pass through the territory of Edom without conflict, if possible, because the Edomites are nomadic pirates and cruel fighters. Then we shall proceed north,” Joshua pointed on the map, “through the Moabite territory. We are bound to have a conflict with Sihon, the King of the Amorites. His army, however, is untrained and its weapons are antiquated. They are no match for our well-trained troops who are wellequipped with modern weaponry. We decided to send a friendly message to the king of Edom calling him our brother and recounting our suffering in Egypt and in the oasis of Kadesh Barnea on the border of his kingdom. We explained that we want to pass through his land on the common highway. We will not trample on his fields or damage his vineyards. If we or our animals drink some water, we shall gladly pay for it. We asked that we be allowed to pass as quickly as possible through his borders to the land promised by our God. The answer of the King of Edom was an emphatic “No” and he threatened that if we dare to approach the Edomite border, he and his army will meet us with arrows, swords and lances. We decided to bypass Edom

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and travel northwest on the Atarim road to Hor Hahar. Joshua showed us the map and pointed out that we shall proceed west from Hor Hahar to Zalmonah outside the southern border of Edom. Then we shall travel south on the banks of the Arabah Spring to Punon. From there we shall circle the southern border of Edom to Oboth, then north to the Zared spring which flows on the southern border of Moab and from there north to the Arnon spring which marks the southern border of the Amorite Kingdom of Sihon where we are bound to encounter a martial conflict. “But let us worry about it when we reach the Amorite border,” concluded Joshua. “Meanwhile we have to plan our departure from Kadesh Barnea.” “Now, Priest of God,” I accosted Jethro, “we shall have a small farewell meeting with you tomorrow morning in the Tabernacle with our families and the chieftains of the tribes. I did not divulge the secret that we prepared for him, as a parting present, an exact replica of our Golden Menorah like we gave to Pharaoh Horemheb. In the morning, the families of the quartet as well as the families of Jethro and the twelve tribes’ chieftains were present in the inner court of the Tabernacle in the space between the Altar and the tent of the Holy of Holies. Aaron in his full regalia of high priest looked shriveled, old and quite sick. I was really worried about him and his health. Joshua was promoted to the rank of a general having amassed great experience in his long years of service and having such a sizable army under his command. The six-pointed golden stars indicating his rank were fastened on the front of his army tunic. He was still smoking balls of opium in his corn-cob pipe. He added some chasers of Grappa but did not overdo it, being afraid of losing control and exhibiting behavior unbecoming a chief commander of his People’s army. My family was flourishing. Geri was now over 60 years old with a white beard and a balding head. He had four children and 12 grandchildren. Eli had 5 children and 20 grandchildren. He was 58 years old and had completely white bushy hair and a sparse long beard. He looked like me. People said jocularly that I am a whole tribe all by myself. My Zippora looked elderly. She had put on weight but she was very active and was still bursting at the seams with energy. “Dearest Priest of God,” I opened the farewell gathering to honor Jethro, “Father, grandfather, great grandfather, teacher, mentor, leader, protector and overall wise man. You accepted me as a fugitive, offered me shelter, and gave me your daughter Zippora as my dearest wife, the mother of my children and grandchildren. You are the revered progenitor of our sizable tribe. Most of all, you have introduced me to your spiritual God who became our God as a complement to the unique God of my father

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Akhenaten. You are therefore my spiritual father as well as the ancestor of your numerous family here. Every one of us adores you, cherishes you, and admires you. We see in you the ideal father figure to love, emulate and follow your ways forever. As a token of esteem, we are giving you an exact replica of our Menorah, the original of which is ever present in our Holy of Holies, just behind you in this Tabernacle, to give you the hallow of our God, your God. Amen, Hallelujah. Jethro, overcome with emotion, took the Menorah while all present sang “Praise God in his Holiness” (Psalm 150). Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in the firmament of His power. Praise Him for His mighty acts; praise Him according to His abundant greatness. Praise Him with the blast of the horn; praise Him with the psaltery and harp. Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; praise Him with stringed instruments and the pipe. Praise Him with the loud-sounding cymbals; praise Him with the clanging cymbals. Let every creature that hath breath praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Jethro went to each member of his extended family and embraced every one of them. After the farewell ceremony for Jethro, the camp at Kadesh Barnea was dismantled and a huge procession of 30,000 people with their livestock and possessions was organized. Towards evening we embarked on the route of Atarim east along the southern border of the land of Canaan heading towards Hor Hahar, the mountain on the south-east corner of the Edomite border which we expected to reach towards morning. Sometime before sunrise, Aaron collapsed and lost consciousness. We emptied a cart and Geri and Eli tried to resuscitate him. Geri tried to administer mouth-to-mouth respiration while Eli gave Aaron strong smelling salts and put pills in his mouth, all to no avail. I prayed: O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever. So let Israel now say, for His mercy endureth forever, So let the house of Aaron now say, for His mercy endureth forever. So let them now that fear the Lord say, for His mercy endureth forever.

The Promised Land

Out of my straits I called upon the Lord; He answered me with great enlargement. The Lord is for me; I will not fear; what can man do unto me? The Lord is for me as my helper; and I shall gaze upon them that hate me. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. All nations compass me about; verily, in the name of the Lord I will cut them off. They compass me about, yea, they compass me about; verily, in the name of the Lord I will cut them off. They compass me about like bees; they are quenched as the fire of thorns; verily, in the name of the Lord I will cut them off. Thou didst thrust sore at me that I might fall; but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength and song; and He is become my salvation. The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the righteous; the right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly. The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly. I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. The Lord hath chastened me sore; but He hath not given me over unto death. Open to me the gates of righteousness; I will enter into them, I will give thanks unto the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter into it. I will give thanks unto Thee, for Thou hast answered me, and art become my salvation. The stone which the builders rejected is become the chief corner-stone. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. We beseech Thee, O the Lord, save now! We beseech Thee, O the Lord, make us now to prosper! Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord; we bless you out of the house of the Lord.

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The Lord is God, and hath given us light; order the festival procession with boughs, even unto the horns of the altar. Thou art my God, and I will give thanks unto Thee; Thou art my God, I will exalt Thee. O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever. Aaron died at sunrise when we arrived at Hor Hahar. We buried Aaron in a cave at the bottom of the mountain, which had the shape of a thinner rock on top of a broader one. We blocked the mouth of the cave to protect Aaron’s body from beasts of prey. I recited the God Full of Mercy prayer and then spoke while weeping: “Aaron, my brother, my companion, my soulmate, my trusted ally, my partner in God. You are resting now in the purity of the desert where I long to be with you by your side. I too will not enter the Promised Land. So be it, I shall stay with you in the desert where our souls will be entwined in the immaculate grace of God.” I fell on my face and wept uncontrollably until Geri and Eli lifted me up and carried me to my carriage. The people mourned Aaron all day. Towards evening, Eleazar, Aaron’s son, put on the full regalia of the High Priest replete with the Ephod, the Hoshen, and the turban of his father. I anointed him with the holy oil at sunset while the sky was filled with torrents of blood red cloud whirls, as if the heavens were mourning the death of Aaron. We embarked on our route encircling the southern border of Edom travelling from Hor Hahar east to Zalmonah and then south to Punon and then to the Oboth, the flinty plateau of the eastern border of Edom. Towards morning, we reached the spring of Zared on the border of Edom and Moab. We camped for the day in the valley of Zared where we refreshed ourselves and our livestock with the clear water of the Zared springs. We rested until evening and then proceeded north along the Moabite border. We travelled all night to protect ourselves from the searing desert sun. In the morning, we arrived at the Arnon spring on the eastern border of the Amorite kingdom of Sihon, which was at the bottom of a deep canyon. We camped for the day in the canyon of the Arnon spring and drank the fresh cool water. We replenished our water skins and let our animals drink, eat and rest. In the evening we travelled north on the Amorite border and reached Mattanah which is Habiru for “gift”, being a small oasis which looks like God’s gift after the arid wilderness of the desert. Then we came to Nahaliel, a lovely spring aptly phrased “God’s stream.” When we came to Bamoth, we found many high places of

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worship of the god Ba’al. We finally reached Pisgah, which is a high plateau that overlooks the desert leading to the Dead Sea. In the morning we sent messengers to Sihon, the king of the Amorites, asking to let us pass through his land on the highway and promised not to trample the fields nor damage the vineyards and not drink any water from the wells. The king refused and threatened war. He concentrated all of his army at Jahaz, a desert enclave in the valley on the eastern border of the Amorite territory. That was a bold tactic since we were encamped on the plateau of Bamoth, just above Jahaz. Joshua ordered his archers on the chariots to be ready for action and then ordered the cavalry of camels with archers well equipped behind the camel drivers to march north on the plateau unseen by the Amorites in Jahaz in the valley. Then when he lit a torch, both the archers in the chariots on the south of Jahaz and the cavalry of camels on their north sent a hail of arrows which slaughtered and scattered them. The Amorites fled in every direction and then our infantry and assassins completed the carnage of the Amorites who lost most of their army. We also had casualties and we buried them with solemn prayers in the valley of Jahaz. Then we conquered the city of Heshbon, the capital of the Amorites. We captured Sihon and his wives and children and by evening it was all over. We arranged for a garrison to occupy Heshbon and stay there until we reached the borders of Canaan on the river Jordan and then the garrison will rejoin us. We stayed for the night in Heshbon, spent the day after resting and replenishing our food and equipment, and proceeded in the evening. We travelled from Heshbon southwest to Almon-diblathaim and from there pitched tents in the mountains of Abarim before Mount Nebo overlooking the Dead Sea, the city of Jericho and the Jordan valley. I suddenly felt very weak. I asked my servant girl to call Geri and Eli. They rushed to me, emptied a cart, and carried me to it. They brought some cushions to support my back so that I could sit comfortably. They examined me and found that my heart pounded weakly. They brought some tinctures and herbs and they let me swallow them and their medicine indeed helped me and strengthened me. They stayed with me. Zippora, my wife, came to my side and held my hand. Both Joshua and Caleb also came and sat on the cart at my feet. At sunrise I looked down at the Jordan valley at the Dead Sea and saw Jericho, a flourishing city bustling with life, fertile fields, and life-giving fruit. This was symbolic of God’s message to me: life which breeds death and the naught, the barren nothingness, which erupts into life, and so

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endlessly unto infinity. I asked Joshua to convene the people since I felt that my hours are numbered and I would like to give them a parting message. Zippora, my wife, and Geri and Eli, my sons, started to weep. When the people convened at the foot of Mount Nebo, I summoned all my strength and tried to call out my message in a strong voice. “Hear, O my People,” I heard my voice booming. It seemed to be God’s voice emerging from my mouth. “Hearing, my People, is the way God accosts us in our inner self. Seeing is coveting and leads to idolatry and the sinful passions of the senses. God speaks to us all the time. We only have to listen. It is our choice to listen to him by accepting the word of God. Then it is His choice to make us his Chosen People. After the heinous sin of the Golden Cow, you have become holy. Your indoctrination, repentance, and purification of your children for 40 years in the desert after the iniquitous fiasco of the spies taught you the power of the spirit over matter, the supremacy of the soul over the body.” “God instilled in you a free will to choose between right and wrong, the way he has chosen you freely to be his elected Nation. Never be proud. God despises pride. Be self-effacing and modest with your God the way I tried to be but not always succeeded. If you are modest with your God, He will engage in a direct dialogue with your inner self on an equal basis, not like the pagan gods who regard humans as their abject servants and themselves as cruel masters.” “God is not concrete but abstract; hence, space and time do not limit his possibilities. He does not demand blind obedience but a free choice of following and understanding the moral difference between right and wrong and choosing right out of inner conviction and not through outside coercion. I do not wish to enter the Promised Land with the seduction of the senses and the dangers of covetousness and the sins of hedonism. I want to stay in the purity of the desert.” “Don’t cry for me, my beloved wife and children, since I shall be buried here at Mount Nebo, overlooking the Promised Land, out of my free choice. God implanted in me a free will for his own ends of which I know nothing. By freely choosing to not enter the Promised Land, I am implementing God’s will to unite with the soul of my brother Aaron. I therefore anoint with my hands my general Joshua who will lead you to the Promised Land. The Promised Land can be reached only through our soul and the longing for it by itself structures the Millennium in our self within. Now I depart gladly with my soul uniting with the wholeness of God.”

GLOSSARY

Abarim mountains

Hebrew ʭʩʸʕʑ ʡʲʏ ʤʕ ʩʸʕʒ ʤ, mountain range east & south-east of the Dead Sea. Deut 32:49 gives its meaning as ‘passages’. Its northern part was Pisgah and its highest peak was Mount Nebo (Num 23:14; 27:12; 21:20; 32:47; Deut 3:27; 34:1; 32:49). From the top of Pisgah, Moses saw the Promised Land (Deut 3:27; 32:49), and there he died (34:1, 5).

Abidan ben Gideoni

Tribal chief of Benjamin (Numbers 1:11, 17, 2:22, 7:60, 65, 10:24).

Abihu

(Hebrew ʠʥʤʩʡʠ Avihu ‘He [God] is my father’) Second son of Aaron. He and his brother Nadab offered a sacrifice with strange fire and were consumed immediately by God’s fire.

Abimelech

Name (“my father is king”) of two kings of Gerar involved in wife-sister stories of Abraham (Genesis ch. 20) and Isaac (Genesis ch. 26). The Haggadah says the 1st was father of the 2nd and the 2nd changed his name from Benmelech (“son of the King”) to that of his father.

Abydos

Name of the 8th nome (ancient district) in Upper Egypt and also the name of its capital city.

Adonai

The name of God used most often in the Hebrew Bible is the 4letter ʤʥʤʩ (YHWH), also known as the Tetragrammaton. El (god), Elohim (god, singular and plural form, depending on the context), El Shaddai (god almighty), Adonai (master), Elyon (highest) and Avinu (our father) are regarded by many not as names, but as titles highlighting different aspects of YHWH and the various 'roles' of God.

agate

A gem with multicolored layers. Sebo in the Masoretic text may be cognate with Assyrian Subu, meaning agate. Achates in the Septuagint is cognate with agate.

agorah

A coin of minimal value. A piece (of silver) 1 Samuel 2:36.

Ahiezer ben Ammishaddai

Dan’s tribal chief (Num 1:12, 17, 2:25, 7:66, 71, 10:25, 1 Chron 12:3).

Ahiman

One of the three giant sons of Anak. See Talmai.

Ahira ben Enan

Tribal chief of Naphtali (Num 1:15, 7:78, 10:27)

Glossary

288 Akedah story

The Binding of Isaac (Hebrew Akedát Yitzhák) is a biblical story in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah.

Akh

The transfigured soul of a person who died and whose soul had been judged by Osiris and found ma’at kheru- justified. The akh and ka were believed to need a preserved body and tomb in order to exist.

Akhenaten

Pharaoh Akhenaten (meaning “Effective for Aten”) ruled 17 years. Before the 5th year of his reign, he was known as Amenhotep IV (Greek Amenophis IV meaning Amun is Satisfied).

Akhet-Aten

Capital city (“Horizon of the Aten“) built by Pharaoh Akhenaten of the late 18th dynasty but soon abandoned. Later known as Amarna.

Almondiblathaim

Hebrew ʤʕʮʍ ʩ ʕʺʕʬʡʍ ʑː ʯʖ ʮʍʬʲʔ , also called Diblath, was a place in Moab the Israelites stopped at during the Exodus. Meaning: Almon of the double cake of figs. It may be the same as Beth-diblathaim of Jeremiah 48:22.

Amalekites

A nomadic nation related to the Edomites. Amalek is a son of Esau's first-born son Eliphaz and of the concubine Timna, the daughter of Seir, the Horite, and sister of Lotan (Gen. 36:12 and I Chron. 1: 36).

Amarna

See Akhet-Aten.

Amarna letters

Diplomatic correspondence mostly written in Akkadian cuneiform on clay tablets between Egyptian administrators and representatives in Canaan and Amurru during the New Kingdom. The letters were found at Amarna, the modern name for the Egyptian capital of Akhetaten founded by pharaoh Akhenaten during the 18th dynasty.

Amemait

Female funerary deity/demon in ancient Egyptian religion with a body that was part lion, hippopotamus and crocodile – the three largest man-eating animals known to ancient Egyptians. Her titles included “Devourer of the Dead,” “Eater of Hearts” and “Great of Death.”

Amenhotep III

Amenhotep III (Egyptian AmƗna-‫ـ‬Ɨtpa meaning Amun is Satisfied, Greek Amenophis III) was also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent. He was the 9th pharaoh of the 18th dynasty.

Amenhotep IV

See Akhenaten.

amethyst

A violet variety of quartz. Ahlamah in the Masoretic text / Amethystos in the Septuagint. Translated in the Jerusalem Targum as “calf's eye.”

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Amminadab

Father of Nahshon, chief of the tribe of Judah (Numbers 1:7; 2:3; 7:12, 17; 10:14). His daughter Elisheva was Aaron's wife (Exodus 6:23).

Amorites

Biblical Amorites occupied the area from the heights west of the Dead Sea (Gen. 14:7) to Hebron (13:8; Deut. 3:8; 4:46-48), embracing "all Gilead and all Bashan" (Deut. 3:10), with the Jordan valley east of the river (4:49), the land of the "two kings of the Amorites," Sihon and Og (Deut. 31:4; Josh. 2:10; 9:10). They were described as a powerful people of great stature "like the height of the cedars" (Amos 2:9).

Amram

Amram (Hebrew ʭʸʍʕ ʮʲʔ , friend of the most high/the people are exalted) is the father of Aaron, Moses & Miriam and the husband of Yocheved. Some Greek and Latin manuscripts of the Septuagint state Yocheved was Amram's father's cousin. Others state Amram was Yocheved's cousin. The Masoretic text states he was Yocheved's nephew.

Amun

Amun (Greek ‫ھ‬ȝȝȦȞ Ámmǀn/Hámmǀn) was a local deity of NoAmon/Thebes. He replaced Monthu as the patron deity of NoAmon. He was attested since the Old Kingdom with his spouse Amaunet. After the rebellion of Thebes against the Hyksos and with the rule of Ahmose I, Amun combined with the Sun god, Ra, as Amun-Ra.

Anakim

Giants descended from Anak who lived near Hebron (Gen. 23:2; Josh. 15:13). According to Gen 14:5-6, they lived in Edom and Moab in the days of Abraham. Their appearance, as described by the 12 spies, filled the Israelites with terror. The Israelites identified them with the Nephilim (Gen 6:4, Num 13:33). Joshua expelled them, except for some who found a refuge in Gaza, Gath & Ashdod (Josh 11:22). The Philistine giants (2 Sam 21:15-22) were descendants of the Anakim.

Ankh

The ankh symbol‫ܗ‬is known as the “key of life,” ”key of the Nile,” or crux ansata (Latin for “cross with a handle”) and was a hieroglyphic that meant “life.”

Ankhesenamun

Queen whose name means ‘Her life is of Amun‘. She was the 3rd of 6 daughters of Pharaoh Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti. She became the wife of her half-brother Tutankhamun. Her original name Ankhesenpaaten was changed due to changes in Egyptian religion during her lifetime after her father's death.

Anthurium

In Greek, it means tail flower from anthus (flower) and oura (tail). It is also known as painted tongue and flamingo flower.

Glossary

290 Anthurium

In Greek, it means tail flower from anthus (flower) and oura (tail). It is also known as painted tongue and flamingo flower.

Anubis

Greek name for a jackal-headed god associated with mummification and the afterlife. Replaced during the Middle Kingdom by Osiris.

Aphrodite

Aphrodite (Greek: ਝijȡȠįȓIJȘ) is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation. Her Roman equivalent is Venus. According to Hesiod's Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranus's genitals and threw them into the sea. According to Homer's Iliad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. According to Plato, they were two separate entities: Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos.

Apple of Sodom

See Lemon of Sodom.

Apsu

Apsu or Abzu (ab='water' or 'semen,' zu='to know' or 'deep') was fresh water from underground aquifers with a fertilizing quality. Lakes, springs, rivers and wells were thought to draw water from the Apsu.

Arabah valley

A section of the Jordan Rift between the southern end of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) to the Dead Sea and then to the Gulf of Aqaba.

AramNaharaim

Region mentioned 5 times in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Gen 11:31, 24:3-4, 24:10. Identified with Nahrima mentioned in three tablets of the Amarna correspondence as the location of the Mitanni kingdom.

Arish

Capital of modern North Sinai and the largest city in the Sinai Peninsula. The etymology of its name may be associated with the poisoning (Hebrew ʺ˒ʩʑʱʸˋ) described in Numbers 11:32.

Arnon

A spring in a valley on the border between the Moabites & Amorites (Num. 21:13-15, 26; Deut. 3:8; Judges 11:18) and between Moab and the tribes of Reuben & Gad (Deut. 3:12, 16). See Isaiah 16:2 and Num 21:28. It may mean ‘noisy’.

Ashtoreth

See Astarte.

Astarte

Astarte is the Greek name of the Mesopotamian Semitic goddess Ishtar (Hebrew ʺʸʺʹʲ Ashtoret). She was associated with fertility, sex and war. Her symbols were a lion, horse, sphinx, dove and Venus, the evening star. The Greeks called her Aphrodite or Artemis. The island of Cyprus supplied her alternate name Cypris.

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Asyut

Capital of the 13th nome of Upper Egypt (Lycopolites) around 3100 BC. It was on the western bank of the Nile. The two most prominent gods in Asyut were the funerary deities Anubis and Wepwawet.

Atarim road

An important road in the central Negev by which the Israelites went from Kadesh-Barnea to Mount Hor (Num 20:22, 21:1).

Aten

The disk of the sun in ancient Egyptian mythology, and originally an aspect of Ra. The deified Aten is the focus of the religion of Atenism established by Amenhotep IV, who later took the name Akhenaten.

Atum

Atum has been interpreted as the 'complete one' and finisher of the world. As creator, he was seen as the underlying substance of the world. The deities and all things were made of his flesh or his ka.

Ay

Last Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty. He ruled for only 4 years but was a close advisor to two or three pharaohs before him and was the power behind the throne during Tutankhamun's reign. His successor, Horemheb, instigated a campaign of damnatio memoriae against Ay and other pharaohs associated with the Amarna Period. See Tey.

Ba’al

Baal or Ba’al was a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning “master” or “lord“ that was used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor.

babonag

Matricaria chamomilla, commonly known as chamomile or scented mayweed, is an annual plant of the composite family Asteraceae. It is the most popular source of herbal chamomile.

Baca, Valley of

Psalm 84.

Bak

The chief royal sculptor during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten.

baldachin

A baldachin or baldaquin is a canopy of state over an altar or throne. It began as a cloth canopy but can be a permanent architectural feature more correctly called a ciborium.

Balm of Gilead

Mentioned in Genesis 37:25 and Jeremiah 46:11 & 8:22. Produced from the tree Commiphora gileadensis at Ein Gedi and Jericho.

Bamoth

And from the wilderness to Mattanah; and from Mattanah to Nahaliel; and from Nahaliel to Bamoth; and from Bamoth to the valley that is in the field of Moab, by the top of Pisgah, which looketh down upon the desert (Num 21:19-20, 22:41, Josh 13:17). Meaning: ‘heights of Baal’.

Barnea olive tree

This cultivar was named for the Kadesh Barnea region where it was found, on the border between the Sinai Desert and Israel.

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barque

A boat used from the earliest recorded time in Egypt. Transportation to the afterlife was believed to be accomplished in barques and their image is used in religious murals and carvings in temples and tombs.

Beelzebub

The name Beelzebub is in 2 Kings 1:2-3, 6, 16. Ba‘al ZΩbûb is variously understood to mean ‘lord of the flies’or ‘lord of the (heavenly) dwelling’. Originally, the name of a Philistine god, Ba'al, meaning ‘Lord’ in Ugaritic, was used as the name of a specific god. The Septuagint renders the name as Baalzebub (ȕĮĮȜȗİȕȠȪȕ) and as Baal muian (ȕĮĮȜ ȝȣȚĮȞ, "Baal of flies").

Beit She’an

Hebrew ʯˌʍˇ ʺʩʒˎ is at the junction of the Jordan River and Jezreel valley. After its conquest by pharaoh Thutmose III, Beit She’an became the center of the Egyptian administration of the region.

Ben-Ben

Name of the No-Amon palace of Akhenaten. Egyptian hwt benben means “The Mansion of the Benben stone.”

beryl

A gem called shoham in the Masoretic text. In the Septuagint beryllios refers to beryl but earlier to the blue-green color of the sea.

Beth-El

In Genesis 28, Jacob flees from his brother Esau, falls asleep on a stone, and dreams of angels climbing up and down a ladder between Heaven and Earth. God stands at the top and promises Jacob the land of Canaan. Jacob names the place Bethel. Genesis 35 repeats the covenant with God when Jacob's name is changed to Israel. The original Canaanite name was Luz.

Bezalel

Hebrew ʬ ʒʠʍʬʶʔ ˎʍ , was the chief artisan of the Tabernacle and was in charge of building the Ark of the Covenant. "Bezalel" means "in the shadow [protection] of God." Bezalel is described in the genealogical lists as the son of Uri (Exodus 31:1), the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah (I Chronicles 2:18, 19, 20, 50).

biblical names, Egyptian origin of

Page 223, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, James K. Hoffmeier, Oct. 2005, Oxford University Press, New York

bird migration in Sinai

Leshem, Y., Israel: An International Axis of Raptor Migration, ICBP Technical Publication No. 5, 1985

Bird of Paradise

Strelitzia reginae is a monocotyledonous flowering plant indigenous to southern Africa. Common name: Crane Flower or Bird of Paradise.

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Book of the Dead

An ancient Egyptian funerary text used from the beginning of the New Kingdom to around 50 BCE. The original name is translated as “Book of Coming Forth by Day” or “Book of emerging forth into the Light.” The text consists of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife.

Brahmin

Brahmin (Sanskrit brƗhma૽a ĦȡƺŽ) are traditional Hindu castes in India, Nepal and the Far East. Cf. the phonetics of Abraham.

Breastplate, Priest’s

See Hoshen.

Calamus

Tall perennial wetland monocot of the Acoraceae family, genus Acorus. Its scented leaves and rhizomes were used medicinally and to make fragrances. The dried and powdered rhizome was used as a substitute for ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Caleb

Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, one of the 12 spies sent into Canaan (Numbers 13:6 & 13:30). He and Hoshua/Joshua the son of Nun said the Promised Land can be conquered. The others said it was impossible.

Calendar of Egypt

The ancient civil Egyptian calendar had a 365-day year that was divided into 12 months of 30 days each, plus 5 extra days (epagomenae, from Greek ‫ۂ‬ʌĮȖȩȝİȞĮȚ) at the end of the year. Each month was divided into three weeks of 10 days each.

Canaan

Hebrew ʯʲʰʫ. Canaan is attested in archaeology. The Amarna Letters use Kina‫هه‬u. Egyptian New Kingdom sources mention military campaigns in Ka-na-na. Biblical Canaan extended from Lebanon south to the "Brook of Egypt" and east to the Jordan River. Canaanite languages form a group in Northwest Semitic. The best-known member today is Hebrew. Other Canaanite languages are Phoenician, Ammonite, Moabite, and Edomite.

Caper

See zalef caper.

Caphtor

Genesis 10:14, 1 Chron 1:12. Maimonides places Caphtor in the vicinity of Damietta (at the eastern edge of the Nile delta near classical Pelusium).

carbuncle

Archaic name of a red gemstone, especially garnet. Ex. 28:17 & 39:10 both refer to the third stone in the Hoshen. Latin translation of Greek anthrax in the Septuagint meaning (the color of burning) coal. Bareket in the Hebrew text reverses to the KRB in carbuncle.

Carchemish

Hittite Kargamiš was an ancient capital, at times independent but also part of the Mitanni, Hittite and Neo-Assyrian Empires, now on the border between Turkey and Syria. Location of a battle between the Babylonians and Egyptians mentioned in Jer. 46:2.

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Carrara marble

A type of white or blue-grey marble used in sculpture and building decor. It is quarried at the city of Carrara in the province of Massa and Carrara in the Lunigiana region of modern-day Tuscany, Italy.

Chieftains of the Habiru tribes

Numbers 1:5 And these are the names of the men that shall stand with you: of Reuben, Elizur the son of Shedeur. 1:6 Of Simeon, Shelumiel the son of Zurishaddai. 1:7 Of Judah, Nahshon the son of Amminadab. 1:8 Of Issachar, Nethanel the son of Zuar. 1:9 Of Zebulun, Eliab the son of Helon. 1:10 Of the children of Joseph: of Ephraim, Elishama the son of Ammihud; of Manasseh, Gamaliel the son of Pedahzur. 1:11 Of Benjamin, Abidan the son of Gideoni. 1:12 Of Dan, Ahiezer the son of Ammishaddai. 1:13 Of Asher, Pagiel the son of Ochran. 1:14 Of Gad, Eliasaph the son of Deuel. 1:15 Of Naphtali, Ahira the son of Enan.

ciborium

The ciborium arose in the context of a wide range of canopies, both honorific and practical, used in the ancient world to cover important persons and religious images or objects. Some were temporary and portable and others permanent structures.

Dendera

Small town on the west bank of the Nile, about 5 km south of Qena and 60 km north of Luxor.

Desert of the Exodus

The Desert of the Exodus: journeys on foot in the wilderness of the forty years' wanderings: undertaken in connection with the ordnance survey of Sinai and the Palestine exploration fund, E. H. Palmer, M.A., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. http://www.archive.org/stream/desertofexodusjo01palmuoft/desert ofexodusjo01palmuoft_djvu.txt

diamond

Yahalom in the Masoretic text, Onychion in the Septuagint. Perhaps meaning strike hard in Hebrew. Hebrew hallamish is flint. Assyrian elmeshu is a precious stone that was hard and white.

Dionysus

God of the grape harvest, wine, ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets indicates that he may have been worshipped as early as 1500–1100 BC by Mycenaean Greeks. Dionysian cults have been found in ancient Minoan Crete.

Dvira

Biblical city (Joshua 21:15)

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Edom

Hebrew ʭˣʣ ʎʠ, area into Sinai as far as Kadesh Barnea. Southward as far as Eilat. North of Edom was the territory of Moab. Edom's ancient capital was Bozrah. Also called the land of Seir. At the time of Amaziah (838 BC), Selah (Petra) was its principal city, Eilat & Etzion-geber its seaports. Gen 36 lists the kings of Edom.

Egyptian deities

List of Egyptian gods and goddesses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Egyptian_deities

Egyptian mythology

The collection of myths from ancient Egypt that describe actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_mythology

El Elyon

Usually "God Most High" in English and "God the highest" in the Septuagint. The Ugarit tablets indicate this name is pre-Mosaic.

El Shaddai

One of the Judaic names of God, with its etymology coming from the Ugaritic religion. Shaddai was one of many Gods in Canaanite religion. El Shaddai is conventionally translated as God Almighty.

El Tzevaot

The names YHWH and Elohim frequently occur with the word tzevaot or sabaoth ("hosts" or "armies," Hebrew: ʺʥʠʡʶ).

Elam

Ancient civilization in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran. Elam is a transcription from Biblical Hebrew, corresponding to Sumerian elam(a), Akkadian elamtu, and Elamite haltamti.

Eleazar

The third son of Aaron (Hebrew ʸʕʦʲʕ ʬʍ ʠʓ ‘God has helped’) became the second Kohen Gadol (High Priest) succeeding his father.

Eliab ben Helon

Chief of the tribe of Zebulun (Numbers 1:9, 2:7, 7:24).

Eliasaph ben Deuel

Tribal chief of Gad (Numbers 1:14, 2:14, 7:42, 47, 10:20) ‘God has added’.

Eliezer

Abraham’s chief servant (Gen 15:2). Moses & Zippora's second son (Exodus 18:4). The name means "Help of my God."

Elim

A place where the Israelites camped after their Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 15.27 and Numbers 33.9). It was described as a place where there were 12 wells of water and 70 date palms.

Elisha island

Ezekiel 27:7: "Your sail was of fine embroidered linen from Egypt So that it became your distinguishing mark; Your awning was blue and purple from the coastlands of Elishah. Ancient Cyprus was known as Alashiya, named after Elishah, a son of Javan. Josephus says AEolia was named from Elisha, or at least the Ionian or AEolian islands.

Elishama ben Ammihud

Tribal chief of Ephraim (Numbers 1:10, 2”18, 7:48, 1 Chron 7:26) ‘whom God hears’).

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Glossary

Elisheva

(Hebrew ʲʔʡ ʓˇʩʑʬʠʎ ) The wife of Aaron, daughter of Amminadab and sister of Nahshon (Exodus 7:23).

Elizur ben Shedeur

A chief of the tribe of Reuben (Numbers 1:5; 2:10; 7:30, 35; 10:18). Compare Zuriel (Numbers 3:35).

Eloha, Elohim

When used with singular verbs and adjectives, elohim is usually singular, "god" or the God. When used with plural verbs and adjectives, elohim is usually plural, "gods" or "powers." It is generally thought that Elohim is a formation from eloha, the latter being an expanded form of the Northwest Semitic noun il (ʬ ʒʠ).

Elon Moreh

Elon Moreh is where God told Abraham, “To your descendants will I give this land” (Gen 12:6). Jacob bought land near Elon Moreh and Shechem (Gen 33:19). The name is derived from the name of the first place where Abraham settled after crossing the Jordan River.

Elonei Mamre

Site where Abraham set up camp, built an altar, and was brought divine tidings, in the guise of three angels, of Sarah's pregnancy.

Ennead

A group of 9 deities in Egyptian mythology. The Ennead consisted of the god Atum, his children Shu and Tefnut, their children Geb & Nut and their children Osiris, Isis, Set & Nephthys.

Ephraim

Hebrew ʭʑ ʩʸʍʔ ʴʠʓ / ʭʑ ʩʸʍʕ ʴʠʓ , the 2nd son of Joseph & Asenath an Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the daughter of Potipherah, a priest of On (Gen 41:50-52). Ephraim was born in Egypt before the children of Israel arrived from Canaan (Gen 48:5).

Etham desert

Second place where Israelites stopped during the Exodus. It may be another name for Khetam (fortress) on the great wall of Egypt which extended from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Suez.

Etzion Geber

Place where the Israelites camped after leaving Sinai. Num 33:35, Deut 2:8, 1 Kings 9:26, 22:49, 2 Chron 20:36. According to Targum Jonathan, the name means city of the rooster. ( ʪʸʍʔ ˗ ʠʕʬˣʢʍʰʸʍ ʔˢ).

Euphorbia

The botanical name Euphorbia derives from Euphorbus, the Greek physician of king Juba II of Numidia, who married the daughter of Anthony and Cleopatra. The cactus-like Euphorbia is a laxative.

Euphrates

Hebrew: ʺʸʴ ,the longest river of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia.

Exodus route

Page 117, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, James K. Hoffmeier, Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2005 and Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., A History of Israel From the Bronze Age Through the Jewish Wars, Broadman & Holman, 1998.

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faience

Egyptian faience is a sintered-quartz ceramic displaying surface vitrification which creates a bright luster of various blue-green colors. It is made from powdered quartz covered with a true vitreous coating, usually a transparent blue or green isotropic glass.

Faiyum Oasis

A depression in the desert west of the Nile south of modern Cairo. It is now watered by a channel of the Nile.

flail of office

See the flail in the picture of Queen Ahmes, mother of Hatshepsut. http://ascendingpassage.com/S-12-queen-hatshepsut-deir-elbahari.htm

Flood Cycle of the Nile

Ancient Egyptians believed the Nile flooded because of Isis' tears of sorrow for her dead husband, Osiris. The cycle’s stages were: ƒ Akhet (emergence) and Retake (mid-June to mid-Sept) ƒ Peret (Oct to mid-Feb when crops grew and were harvested) ƒ She mu (the drought from mid-February to end of May) Typical flood heights were ƒ 45 feet (13.7 meters) at Aswan ƒ 38 feet (11.6 meters) at Luxor & Thebes ƒ 25 feet (7.6 meters) at Pithom

Gamaliel ben Pedahzur

Chief of the tribe of Ephraim (Numbers 1:10, 2:20, 7:54, 59, 10:23) ‘Reward of God’.

Geb

Egyptian god of the Earth and a member of the Ennead. Egyptians believed his laughter caused earthquakes and he made crops grow.

Gem-pa-aten

Egyptian temple whose name means “The Sun Disc is Found in the Estate of the God Aten.”

Geography of Exodus

Page 47, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, James K. Hoffmeier, Oct. 2005, Oxford University Press, New York

Gerar

Gerar (“lodging-place”) was a Philistine town mentioned in Genesis. Conflicting opinions identify it as Wadi el-Jerdr, or a place south of Gaza, or Tel Haror. See Abimelech.

Gershom

Firstborn son of Moses & Zippora.

Gilead

An area bounded on the north by Bashan, and on the south by Moab and Ammon (Genesis 31:21; Deut 3:12-17).

Habiru

Egyptian name for people otherwise known as Hebrews or Israelites.

298

Glossary

haiku

A very short form of Japanese poetry. The essence of haiku is “cutting” (kiru) often represented by the juxtaposition of two ideas with a kireji (“cutting word”) between them. A haiku has 17 on (also known as morae) in three phrases of 5, 7 and 5 on in that order. The Shema prayer, in Hebrew, is a haiku.

Halal, Mount

Mount Halal is located in northern Sinai. It is thought by some, including Claude Scudamore Jarvis, to be the biblical Mount Sinai. See Mountain of God.

Hamor

Dinah, the daughter of Jacob by Leah, was abducted and raped near the city of Shechem by Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite.

Haran

Haran/Aran (Hebrew ʯʸʕʕ ʤ) died in Ur of the Chaldees (Ur KaĞdim). He was a son of Terah and brother of Abraham. Through his son Lot, Haran was the ancestor of the Moabites & Ammonites. Through his daughter Milcah he was the ancestor of Aramaeans.

Harran

Harran (Turkish: Harran, Kurdish: Herran) was a major ancient city in Upper Mesopotamia whose site is near the modern village of AltÕnbaúak, Turkey, 24 miles (44 km) southeast of ùanlÕurfa.

Hathor

Egyptian goddess, “mansion of Horus,” who personified feminine love, joy and motherhood. Also the goddess of music, dance, foreign lands, fertility and the patron goddess of miners. She is depicted as “Mistress of the West” welcoming the dead into the next life.

Hatshepsut

“Foremost of Noble Ladies” (1508-1458 BC) was the 5th pharaoh of the 18th dynasty. She reigned longer than any other queen. Hatshepsut was the daughter of Thutmose I with his primary wife Ahmes. Her husband Thutmose II was the son of Thutmose I with his secondary wife Mutneferet. See scarab.

Hazeroth

Hebrew ʺˣʸʒʶʧʏ (‘yards’) is a place where the Israelites stopped during the Exodus. It is referenced in Numbers 11:35; 12:16; 33:17. "Hazeroth" means yards.

Hebron

Burial site of the biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs and considered the second-holiest city in Judaism after Jerusalem.

Heliopolis

Greek for “city of the sun.” Principal place of worship of the sun god Ra and closely related deity Atum. Capital of the 13th Lower Egyptian nome. Now at the northeast edge of Cairo. See On.

hemlock

Conium is a genus of highly poisonous perennial herbaceous flowering plants in the family Apiaceae, native to Europe and the Mediterranean region as Conium maculatum (hemlock).

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Henotheism

Greek İ‫ۥ‬Ȣ șİȩȢ “one god.” The worship of a single superior god while accepting the existence of other deities that can be worshipped.

Heshbon

Hebrew ʯʥʡʹʧ, an ancient town east of the Jordan River. Heshbon was taken by the Israelites on their entry to the Promised Land and given to the tribe of Reuben. Afterwards it was given to the tribe of Gad.

hieroglyphic

Picture writing of ancient Egypt. When Joseph’s brothers arrived in Egypt the first time, they did not recognize him, partly because Joseph used an interpreter (thought to be his older son Menasha) as if he did not understand Hebrew. The Hebrew root “to make a picture” is tzadi-lamed-mem. To translate from Egyptian to any other language is to “un-picture.” That may be why this root reverses to make the hapax legomenon haMayLiTZ (the interpreter) in Genesis 42:23.

Hinnon, Valley of

A place, also known as Gehenna, where some Israelites and followers of Ba'al and Canaanite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6). Therefore, it was cursed (Jer. 7:31, 19:2-6).

Hittites

A biblical people descended from Heth, son of Canaan, son of Ham, son of Noah. Gen 10:1, 1 Chron 1:13, Gen 23:2, 26:34, 25:8, 27:46, 36:2, 49:29, 50:13, 15:18, Nehemiah 9:8, Deut 20:17, 7:1, Num 13:29, Ex 3:8, 13:5, 23:23, 32:2, 34:11, Joshua 1:4, 11:3, 12:8, 24:11, 3:10, 9:1, Judges 1:18, 3:1, 2 Kings 7:6, 1 Sam 26:5, 2 Sam 23:8, 1 Chron 11:10, 2 Sam 11:3, 12:0, 1 Kings 15:5, 9:20, 2 Chron 8:7, 1 Kings 10:28, 2 Chron 1:16, 1 Kings 11:1, 2 Kings 76:6, Ezekiel 16:1, 1 Esdras 8:3 (Apocrypha), Ezra 9:1.

Hivite

According to the Table of Nations (Genesis 10), the Hivites are descendants of Canaan, son of Ham. (Also 1 Chronicles 1:13-15.)

holokauston

An animal sacrifice offered to a god in which the whole (olos) animal is completely burnt (kaustos).

Hor Hahar

(Hebrew ʸʕʤʤʕ ʸʖ ʤ, Hor HaHar) is the name of two distinct mountains. One is in the Land of Edom, the burial site of Aaron (Num 33:37) on the East shore of the Dead Sea; the other by the Mediterranean Sea at the northern border of the Land of Israel.

Horeb, Mount

Hebrew ʡʸʖʒ ʧ, Greek ȤȦȡȘȕ, where the Ten Commandments were given to Moses. It is called ʭʩʑʤ˄ ʎʠʕʤ ʸʔʤ the ‘Mountain of God’ in Exodus 3:1 and 1 Kings 19:8. See Mountain of God.

Horemheb

(‘Horus is in Jubilation’) was the last Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty. He was the commander in chief of the army under Tutankamun and Ay. Horemheb presumably was childless since his successor was his vizier Paramesse who assumed the throne as Ramesses I.

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Glossary

Horus

One of the oldest and most significant deities in ancient Egyptian religion. Horus was worshipped from the late Predynastic period to Greco-Roman times.

Hoshen

Sacred breastplate worn by the High Priest. Sometimes called the breastplate of judgment because the Urim and Thummim, which were used in divination, were placed within it.

Hurrians

A Bronze Age people who spoke a Hurro-Urartian language called Hurrian and lived in Anatolia & northern Mesopotamia. The largest and most influential Hurrian nation was the Mitanni.

Illyria

A region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by the Illyrians.

Isaac Syndrome

This is not neuromyotonia. In most cultures, the father is a doctrinaire figure who imposes norms and duties on his sons and daughters. The Isaac Syndrome refers to the effect of these impositions on his son.

Isfet

Isfet (“injustice,” “chaos,” “violence,” “to do evil”) is a term from Egyptian mythology which was built on a religious, social and political dualism. It is the opposite of Ma'at (“order” or “harmony”).

Isis

An ancient Egyptian goddess (Greek ۬ıȚȢ) who married her brother Osiris. Her worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world.

Ithamar

(Hebrew ʸʕʮ ʕʺʩʑʠ ‘palm tree isle’ ancient expression for ‘father of Tamar’. The youngest son of Aaron. Ithamar was a priest with Aaron’s 3rd son, Eleazar. During the Exodus, Ithamar stood at the head of the children of Gershon & Merari, the carriers of the Tabernacle. Ithamar and Eleazar are regarded as the male ancestors of all Kohanim.

Izhar

Son of Kohath, grandson of Levi, father of Korah, Nepheg and Zichri, brother of Amram and uncle of Aaron, Miriam (and Moses).

Jahaz

Sihon gathered all his people together, and went out against Israel into the wilderness, and came to Jahaz; and he fought against Israel (Num 21:23). See also Deut 2:32, Josh 21:36, Judg 11:20, Isaiah 15:4, Jer 48:34.

jasper

A gem that is usually red, yellow, brown or green in color. Yashfeh in the Masoretic text / Iaspis in the Septuagint.

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Jebusites

A people who lived in the mountains of Canaan. Gen 10:15,16, 1 Chron 1:13,14, Num 13:29, Gen 15:21, Ex 3:8, Josh 11:3, Judges 19:10,11, 2 Sam 4:6, Josh 10:1-27, Josh 15:63, Judges 1:21, 2 Sam 6-8, 2 Sam 24:18-24, 1 Chron 21:18-25, 1 Kings 9:20,21, Zech 9:71,

Jehovah

Jehovah is a Latinization of Hebrew ʤʕʥʖʤʍ ʩ YHWH the Tetragrammaton. It has also been transcribed Yahweh. ʤʕʥʖʤʍ ʩ appears 6,518 times in the Masoretic Text in addition to 305 instances of ʤʑʥʖʤʎ ʩ.

Jethro

Hebrew ˣʸ ʍʺʑ ʩ, ‘His Excellence/Posterity,’ Moses’ father-in-law, a Kenite shepherd and priest of Midian. Jethro is called Reuel in Exodus 2:18 and Hobab in Numbers. He is revered as a prophet by the Druze and considered an ancestor of the Druze.

Joshua ben Nun

Joshua became the leader of the Israelite tribes after the death of Moses. His name was Hoshe'a the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, but Moses called him Yehoshu'a (Numbers 13:16).

Judgment Hall of Truth

At the Hall of Judgment, the deceased encountered the most difficult challenge before reaching the Beyond – the weighing of the heart.

Ka

Ka was the Egyptian concept of vital essence, that which distinguishes a living and a dead person, with death occurring when the Ka left the body. This resembles the concept of spirit in other religions.

Ka of Re

Attributes of the god Ra: Strength, Power, Abundance, Light, Spirit, Divine Food, Majesty, Wealth, Skill, Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Intelligence, Knowledge, Honor and Reckoning.

Kadesh Barnea

Chief encampment of the Israelites while wandering in the wilderness of Zin (Deut. 1:46). The spies were sent into Canaan from Kadesh (Num. 13:1-26). The first failed attempt to take the land was made from Kadesh (Num. 14:40-45). Moses struck the rock that brought forth water near this location (Num. 20:11). Miriam and Aaron died and were buried nearby (Num. 20:1, 2229). Moses sent envoys to the King of Edom from Kadesh (Num. 20:14) asking for permission to pass through his terrain. The king denied this request.

Karnak

The area now known as Karnak Temple Complex was the main place of worship of the 18th dynasty Theban Triad with the god Amun as its head. It was part of the city of No-Amon. Also see Thebes.

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Glossary

Kenite

Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, was a shepherd and priest in the land of Midian. Judges 1:16 states that Moses’ father-in-law was a Kenite. Moses identified Jethro's concept of God, El Shaddai, with Yahweh. The Bible mentions the Kenites as living in or around Canaan as early as the time of Abraham (Genesis 15:18-21).

khamsin

A dry, hot, sandy wind blowing from the south in North Africa and the Arabian peninsula similar to a sirocco or simoom. From the Arabic word for 50 because these winds often blow sporadically for 50 days.

khat

Flowering plant native to the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula that contains a monoamine alkaloid called cathinone, an amphetamine-like stimulant, which causes excitement, loss of appetite and euphoria.

Kingu

Kingu, also spelled Qingu, was a Babylonian god who, after the murder of his father Apsu, became the consort of his mother, the goddess Tiamat. See Apsu.

Kohath

Kohath had four sons, Amram, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel. Amram married Yocheved and sired Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. Some Greek and Latin manuscripts of the Septuagint state Yocheved was Kohath's cousin. The Masoretic text states she was his sister, that is, Amram's aunt. According to the Book of Numbers, Kohath had 8,600 descendants during the lifetime of his grandson.

Korah

(Hebrew ʧʸʖʔ ʷ ‘baldness; ice; hail; frost’) Son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi. Numbers 16:1-40 indicates Korah rebelled against Moses. God sent fire from heaven that consumed him and 249 co-conspirators. His two Reubenite accomplices, Dothan and Aviram, perished when God caused the ground to open and swallow them.

Korban

The Semitic root Q-R-B (Hebrew ʡ-ʸ-ʷ) means “to be close to someone/something.” The sense “to offer” suggests that the act of offering brings one closer to the receiver (here, God). However, it may be a reversal of the noun barak, which means lightning, because the victim of a lightning strike is a Korban.

lapis lazuli

A deep blue semi-precious stone prized since antiquity for its intense color. Used for eyebrows on the funeral mask of King Tutankhamun.

Lechai Roi

When Abraham's servant Eliezer returned with a bride for Isaac, he met Isaac returning from Beer-lechai-roi (Well of the Living One). This well is located between Kadesh and Bered.

Lemon of Sodom

Egyptian name for Calotropis procera, a flowering dogbane plant native to North Africa and Asia usually called Apple of Sodom. The flesh of its hollow green globes has a bitter toxic milky sap.

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Levi

Levi (Hebrew ʩʑʥ˘ʒ "joining") was the 3rd son of Jacob & Leah and the founder of the Tribe of Levi. Levi had three sons – Gershon, Kohath and Merari. Kohath's sons included Amram who married Yocheved, the parents of Moses, Aaron and Miriam. The Masoretic text states Yocheved was Amram's father's sister. In the apocryphal texts Testament of Levi, and Book of Jubilees, Levi's wife is named as Milkah, a daughter of Aram.

Libu

Ancient Libyan tribe from which the name Libya derives. Libu is an ethnic name on the Merneptah Stele, also known as the Israel Stele.

ligure

A gem that probably had a pale gold or amber color. Leshem in the Masoretic text / Ligurios in the Septuagint. Ligure in the Latin Vulgate is a Latinization invented by Flavius Josephus. Luther used hyacinth.

lithops

A genus of succulent plants in the ice plant family, Aizoaceae. The name is derived from Ancient Greek lithos, meaning “stone,” and ops, meaning “face,” referring to the stone-like appearance of the plants. They are also known as pebble plants or living stones.

log

A Hebrew unit of liquid measure thought to be about ½ liter. See Measurement units, Ancient Egyptian.

Lycians

An Anatolian people living in Lycia. Known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age, it was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group.

Ma’at

Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice. Ma’at was also personified as a goddess regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of creation. Her ideological opposite was Isfet.

Manna

An edible substance that God provided for the Israelites during their travels in the desert (Exodus 16:1-36 and Numbers 11:1-9).

Marah

Marah (Hebrew: ʤʸʕʮ ʕ 'bitter') is a location which the Torah identifies as having been travelled through by the Israelites during the Exodus.

Marduk

Marduk (“solar calf”; Hebrew Merodach; Greek Mardochaios) was the Babylonian name of a god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon.

Marit-Aten

Meritaten was the first of 6 daughters born to Pharaoh Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti. Her sisters are Meketaten, Ankhesenpaaten, Neferneferuaten Tasherit, Neferneferure and Setepenre.

Maror

Bitter herbs eaten at the Passover Seder in keeping with the commandment ‘with bitter herbs they shall eat it’ (Exodus 12:8).

Glossary

304 Maru-Aten

Short for Pa-maru-en-pa-aten (Viewing-Palace-of-the-Aten) 3 km south of central Akhet-aten. It is a sun-temple thought to have been constructed for Kiya, one of Akhenaten's wives, but on her death, her name and images were altered to those of Marit-Aten, his daughter.

Mattanah

See Bamoth.

Matzo

Unleavened bread traditionally eaten by Jews during the Passover holiday, when eating chametz – bread and other food made with leavened grain – is forbidden according to Jewish religious law.

Measure, Ancient Egyptian units of

For length, area, volume, weight and time measurements, see

Megiddo

Megiddo guarded the western branch of a trade route connecting Egypt and Assyria. Thutmose III waged war on the city in 1478 BC. Armageddon is from Hebrew Har Megiddo meaning Mount Megiddo.

Mei Meriva

Numbers 27:12-14. “God said to Moshe, … you will be gathered to your people, … Since you rebelled against Me, in the Zin Wilderness, in the congregation's strife, to sanctify Me by water before their eyes; they are Mei Meriva [Waters of Strife] of Kadesh, Zin Wilderness.”

Meir

Village in Upper Egypt on the west bank of the Nile in the Asyut Governorate.

Mellimaran

Probably Nitraria retusa, also known as the Salt Tree, Peganum retusum and Hebrew ʭʥʢʴ ʧʥʬʮʩ.

Menashe

Hebrew ʤʓˉʔʰ ʍʮ, the first son of Joseph & Asenath (Gen 41:50-52), an Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the dau of Potipherah, a priest of On (Gen 41:50-52). Manasseh was born in Egypt before the children of Israel arrived from Canaan (Gen 48:5).

Midian & Midianites

Midian was the son of Abraham & Keturah. His 5 sons, Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abidah and Eldaah were the progenitors of the Midianites (Gen 25:1-4; I Chron 1:32-33). Midian also denotes the nation of the Midianites. Their original location was east of Palestine. When Moses led the flocks of Jethro, the priest of Midian, to Mount Horeb (Ex. 3:1), the Midianites dwelt in Sinai. Later, Midian occupied land between Edom and Paran on the way to Egypt (I Kings 11:18).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_units_of_measurement

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Mitanni

Mitanni (Mittani or Hanigalbat) was a Hurrian state in northern Syria and SE Anatolia. Mitanni became a regional power after the Hittite destruction of Amorite Babylon and a series of weak Assyrian kings.

Moloch

Moloch (from a Semitic root meaning “king”) is the name of an ancient Ammonite god. Moloch worship was practiced by Canaanites, Phoenicians and related cultures in North Africa and the Levant. Moloch was associated with a kind of propitiatory child sacrifice.

Monolatrism

Monolatrism or monolatry is the recognition of many gods but with the worship of only one. In Henotheism, the believer worships only one god without denying the validity of other gods worshipped by others. Monotheism asserts the existence of only one god.

Moph

Ancient Egyptian city later known as Memphis near modern-day Cairo. It is mentioned in the Bible (Isaiah 19:13; Jeremiah 2:16; 44:1; 46:14, 19; and Ezekiel. 30:13, 16). See Noph.

Moriah

Traditionally, Moriah is the name of the mountain where Abraham was going to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Mountain of God

Mount Halal in Northern Sinai. See page 111, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, James K. Hoffmeier, Oct. 2005, Oxford University Press, New York. Also see Horeb, Mount and Halal, Mount.

Nadab

Nadab (Hebrew ʡʣʰ nadav "generous, giving") was the first son of Aaron. He and his brother Abihu offered a sacrifice with strange fire and were consumed immediately by God’s fire.

Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar

The four sons of the High Priest Aaron. Numbers 26:60.

Nahaliel

See Bamoth.

Naharin

Ancient Egyptian term for the Mitanni kingdom. The 18th dynasty was in conflict with Mitanni for control of the Levant during the reigns of Thutmose I, Thutmose III and Amenhotep II. Amenhotep II's son, Thutmose IV, made peace with the Mitannians.

Nahor

A town in Aram-Naharaim that was named after the son of Terah. Nahor II was the son of Terah. He had two brothers, Abram & Haran. His grandfather was Nahor I, son of Serug. Nahor II married Milcah, the daughter of his brother Haran.

306

Glossary

Nahshon ben Amminadab

Brother-in-law of Aaron and an important figure in the Exodus The popular Yiddish saying "to be a Nachshon" means to be an "initiator."

Neferhotep

Neferhotep I and Neferhotep III were pharaohs. There was also an Egyptian scribe with that name.

Nefertem

Nefertem, also Nefertum or Nefer-temu, was a lotus flower that arose from the primal waters. He represented the first sunlight and the smell of the Egyptian blue water-lily, Nymphaea caerulea.

Nefertiti

Neferneferuaten Nefertiti (1370 - 1330 BC) was the Great Royal Wife (chief consort) of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Nefertiti and her husband were known for a religious revolution in which they worshiped only one god, Aten, the sun disc.

Nephilim

"Sons of god" and "daughters of men" before the Flood according to Gen 6:4. Also, giants who inhabited Canaan at the time of the Israelite conquest according to Num 13:3.

Nephthys

Nephthys or Nebthet is a member of the Ennead of On in Egyptian mythology, a daughter of Nut & Geb. Nephthys was paired with her sister Isis in funerary rites because of their role as protectors of mummies. See Ennead.

Nethanel ben Zuar

A chief of the tribe of Issachar. ‘God has given or a gift from God’ (Num. 1:8; 2:5, 7:18, 23; 10:15).

Nile-Red Sea canals

The Nile was connected to the Red Sea by a canal during the Persian (Achaemenid), Ptolemaic, Roman and Arab-Islamic historical periods. Usually the canal was a seasonal waterway operating only during the Nile flood stage, probably Aug - Dec. https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/90806/ CooperRS4Canal%5B1%5D.pdf?sequence=1

No-Amon

Prior name of the city of Thebes and referred to as “No, the city of the god Amon,” in Nahum 3:8. Compare Jeremiah 46:25 where Amon is referred to as the god of No. See Thebes & Karnak.

Nomes/sites, Ancient Egyptian

List of districts and links to sites in ancient Egypt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Egyptian_sites

Noph

Hebrew name for the ancient Egyptian city later known as Memphis near modern-day Cairo. It is mentioned in Isaiah 19:13; Jeremiah 2:16; 44:1; 46:14, 19; and Ezekiel 30:13, 16). See Moph.

Nubia

A region along the Nile river located in northern Sudan and southern Egypt. Throughout classical antiquity, Nubia was known as Kush and, in Classical Greek usage, Ethiopia (Aithiopia).

Numbers 1:5 – 1:15

See Chieftains of the Habiru tribes.

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Nun

Nu (“watery one”) or Nun (“inert one”), the deification of the primordial watery abyss in Egyptian mythology. In the Ogdoad cosmogony, the word nu means “abyss.”

Nut

Nut or Neuth, also spelled Nuit or Newet, was the goddess of the sky in the Ennead of Egyptian mythology. She was seen as a starcovered nude woman arching over the earth or as a cow.

Oboth

Hebrew ʺʖ ʡʖ ʠ, one of the places the Israelites stopped at during the Exodus. Its name may mean ‘bottles’.

Oholiab ben Ahisamach

An artisan (weaver) of the tribe of Dan, assistant to Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur of the tribe of Judah (Exodus 31:6).

On

City dedicated to the worship of the god Atum. The Egyptian name was Iunu or Aunu which means "(Place of) Pillars." In biblical Hebrew it was Ôn (ʯʠ or ʯʥʠ). See Heliopolis.

onyx

A gem in the Hoshen whose nature and color is uncertain. Tarshish in the Masoretic text / Chrysolithos in the Septuagint.

Osiris

Egyptian god of afterlife, underworld and the dead. He is depicted as a green-skinned man with a pharaoh's beard, wearing a crown with ostrich feathers on either side, and holding a crook & flail.

Ozarzip

In this book, the Egyptian name of the biblical Joseph who became the Viceroy of Egypt. Compare Zaphnath-Paaneah (Hebrew: ʧʔ ʒʰʲʍ ˝ʔ ʺʔʰʴʍ ʶʕ ,Genesis, 41:45).

Pagiel ben Ochran

Tribal chief of Asher (Num 1:13, 2:27, 7:72, 77, 10:26) ‘Prayer or Event of God’.

Palestine (1906)

The portion of Syria which was formerly the possession of the Israelites. It includes the whole of the country between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean as well as the country immediately to the east of the Jordan. The word represents the Greek form, ȆĮȜĮȚıIJȓȞȘ, of the Hebrew ʺʹʬʴ (Ex. xv. 14; Isa. xiv. 29, 31; Ps. lx. 10 [A. V. 8]), although in the Old Testament ʺʹʬʴ is applied only to the land of the Pelishtim (ʭʩʺʹʬʴ), or Philistines, and hence denotes merely the coast district south of Phenicia.

Palmyra

An important caravan stop known as the Bride of the Desert northeast of Damascus and southwest of the Euphrates.

Paran

Desert of Paran, a place where the Israelites temporarily settled during the Exodus (Num 10:12). See Deut 1:1, “Mount Paran” at Deut 33:2, “Wilderness of Paran” I Sam 25:1, I Kings 11:17-18.

Paschal lamb

Passover sacrifice (Hebrew Korban Pesakh ʧʱʴ ʯʡʸʷ) that the Torah mandates to be eaten on the first night of the holiday with bitter herbs and matzo. Although practiced by Jews in ancient times, today it is only practiced by Samaritans at Mount Gerizim.

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Glossary

Peniel

A place “Face of God” (Gen. 32:30) not far from Succoth east of the Jordan River and north of the Jabbok river. Here Jacob’s name was changed to Israel (Gen 32:28) after he wrestled with an angel.

Pharan desert

(Pharan, Hebrew ʯʸʠʴ ʸʡʣʮ) A place where the Israelites spent part of their 40 years of wandering after the Exodus. It was also a home to Ishmael and a place of refuge for David.

Pharaohs, list of

For lists of Egyptian God-Kings, Dynasties and Pharaohs, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pharaohs

phylacteries

Tefillin (also called phylacteries from Greek phylacterion “to guard, protect”) are a set of small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, which are worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers.

Pisgah

Region directly east of the Jordan River and northeast of the Dead Sea. Mount Nebo is its highest peak. ‘And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah that is over against Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land, even Gilead as far as Dan; and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah as far as the hinder sea; and the South, and the Plain, even the valley of Jericho the city of palm-trees, as far as Zoar. And the Lord said unto him: 'This is the land which I swore unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying: I will give it unto thy seed; I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither’. (Deut 34:1-4).

Pithom

Pithom (Hebrew ʭʺʴ, Greek ۗȡȫȦȞ ʌȩȜȚȢ or ۗȡȫ, Heroöpolis, Per-Atum) was a large city east of the Nile delta near the mouth of the Royal Canal that connected the Nile with the Red Sea. It gave its name to the arm of the Red Sea that runs up the Egyptian mainland as far as Arsinoë near the Gulf of Suez. It was the capital of the 8th nome of Lower Egypt.

Potiphar

Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, taken to Egypt, and sold to Potiphar as a slave. Potiphar's wife, furious at Joseph for resisting her attempts to seduce him, falsely accused him of attempted rape.

primus inter pares

This Latin phrase means “first among equals” or “first among peers.” It describes the most senior among a group who have the same rank.

Psalm 150

This is the last psalm in the Biblical book of Psalms.

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Ptah

In the triad of Moph, Ptah was the spouse of Sekhmet and the father of Nefertum. He was also the father of the sage Imhotep. Ptah is a creator god who existed before all things. He conceived the world by Thought and produced it by the Word: He was the patron of craftsmanship, architects, metalworking, carpenters, shipbuilders and sculptors.

Punon

Ancient city in the Arava. Center of copper and iron mines in biblical times. Visited by the Israelites during the Exodus. "They traveled from Zalmonah and encamped in Punon." (Num 33:42).

Qena

City in Upper Egypt on the east bank of the Nile. Known in antiquity as Kaine (Greek ȀĮȚȞȒ ‘new [city]’; Latin transliteration Caene) and later as Maximianopolis.

Ra

Egyptian solar deity. The major cult center of Ra was On or Iunu, “Place of Pillars,” where he was identified with the local sun-god Amun, as the originator of the Ennead, and associated with the falcon or hawk. Akhenaten suppressed the cult of Ra in favor of Aten, the deified solar disc, but the cult of Ra was restored after his death.

Raamses

One of the store cities built by the Habiru. See Exodus 1:11, Genesis 47:11, Exodus 12:37, and Numbers 33:3,5.

Ra-Horakhty

In later Egyptian mythology, Ra-Horakhty was more of a title or manifestation than a composite deity. It translates as “Ra (who is) Horus of the Horizons”. It was intended to link Horakhty (as a sunrise-oriented aspect of Horus) to Ra.

Ramesses I

Menpehtyre Ramesses I was the founding Pharaoh of Egypt's 19th dynasty. His reign marked the transition between that of Horemheb in the late 18th dynasty and his own son Seti I and grandson Ramesses II.

Ramesses II

The 3rd Egyptian pharaoh of the 19th dynasty. Ramesses II led several military expeditions into the Levant, reasserting Egyptian control over Canaan. He also led expeditions to the south into Nubia.

Ramesseum

Mortuary temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the Theban necropolis across the River Nile from the modern city of Luxor. Its French name Rhamesséion was coined by Jean-François Champollion who identified the hieroglyphs of Ramesses' names and titles on its walls. It was originally called the House of millions of years of Usermaatra-setepenra that unites with Thebes-the-city in the domain of Amon.

Raphanus raphanistrum

Flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae. Native to Asia or the Mediterranean. It spreads rapidly, and is often found growing on roadsides or in other places where the ground has been disturbed.

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Glossary

Re-Harakhte

Horus merged with Re to become Re-Harakhte (Horus of the horizon) personifying the morning sun. He is depicted with a human body and the head of a falcon wearing a sun-disk surrounded by a uraeus snake.

Rephidim

A stopping place of the Israelites during the Exodus (Ex. 17:1; 19:2; Num. 33:14–15). At Rephidim, Moses struck a rock and water gushed forth. Later, the defeat of the Amalekites took place at Rephidim.

rod

An Egyptian unit of length equal to 100 cubits or about 35 meters. One mile would be about 45 rods.

Royal Canals

See also Nile-Red Sea canals. http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/canals.htm

Sardis

Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia in Anatolia, one of the important cities of the Persian Empire.

sardius

Both carnelian and sard are varieties of the silica mineral chalcedony colored by impurities of iron oxide. The color can vary greatly, ranging from pale orange to an intense almost-black coloration. The Hebrew odem (translated sardius) was the first stone in the High Priest's breastplate.

scarab

Scarabs were amulets in the form of a scarab beetle (Hebrew hipusit) that became popular by the early Middle Kingdom and remained popular for the rest of the Pharaonic period. There may be an etymological link between Hebrew hipusit and Hatshepsut.

Senet

A board game from ancient Egypt. The meaning of its Egyptian name is “game of passing.” By the time of the New Kingdom, it had become a talisman for the journey of the dead. It was believed that a successful player was under the protection of Ra, Thoth, and sometimes Osiris. Consequently, Senet boards were often placed in the grave alongside other useful objects for the dangerous journey through the afterlife and the game is referred to in Chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead.

Serbonic lagoon

Lake of Serbonis in Egypt.

Seti I

Menmaatre Seti I (Greek Sethos I) was a Pharaoh of the 19th dynasty , the son of Ramesses I and Queen Sitre, and the father of Ramesses II.

Shebyu collar

The shebyu collar was introduced by Thutmose IV. It was worn by New Kingdom pharaohs but also given as a reward for distinguished service, especially during the reign of Akhenaten.

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Shechem, city of

A Canaanite city mentioned in the Amarna letters. Later an Israelite city of the tribe of Menashe and the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel. Now identified with the site of Tell Balata in the West Bank.

Shechem, Hamor’s son

See Hamor.

Shelah

Hebrew: ʤʕʬ ʒˇ, the youngest of Judah's first three sons. He was born at Chezib.

Shelumiel ben Zurishaddai

Chief of the tribe of Simeon (Numbers 1:6, 2:12, 7:36, 41, 10:19). ‘Friend of God’.

Shema Yisrael

Hebrew ʬ ʒʠʸʍʕ ˈʑʩ ʲʔʮ ʍˇ epitomizes the monotheistic essence of Judaism: ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one’ (Deut 6:4). See haiku.

Sheshai

One of the three giant sons of Anak. See Talmai.

Shibuta fish

Barbgus grypus is a large freshwater carp that can grow to a length of nearly two meters and a weight of over 50 kg. It may be the fish called shibuta (ʠʨʥʡʩʹ) in the Talmud.

Shoham, Shlomo Giora

The author of this book was born in Lithuania in 1929 and immigrated to Palestine in 1935.

Shu

Shu, meaning “emptiness” and “he who rises up,” was one of the primordial gods in Egyptian mythology, a personification of air and one of the Ennead.

Shur, Desert of

When Hagar fled from Sarai (Abram's wife), the angel of the Lord found her by the fountain on the way to Shur (Genesis 16:7). In Exodus 15:22–23, Marah is located in the wilderness of Shur.

Sidon

Greek ȈȚįȫȞ; Latin Sidon; Hebrew ʯʥʣʩʶ is in Lebanon, about 40 km (25 miles) north of Tyre and 40 km south of Beirut. In Genesis, Sidon was the son of Canaan and the grandson of Noah.

Sihon, king

Amorite king who refused passage through his territory. Num 21:23.

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Glossary

Sinai

Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, James K. Hoffmeier, Oct. 2005, Oxford University Press, New York Researches in Sinai, W. M. Flinders Petrie with chapters by C. T. Currelly, E. P. Dutton and Co., New York, 1906 Sinai and Palestine in connection with their history, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, John Murray, London, 1856 Biblical map of Sinai http://www.bibleexplained.com/Gospels/map-egypt-sinai.html

Sites and Nomes in Ancient Egypt

List of districts and links to sites in ancient Egypt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Egyptian_sites

skin of my teeth

Translation of B’3or SHinai in the biblical book of Job 19:20. It means 'barely, hardly, with difficulty' because it is a transliteration pun on the Hebrew word B’QoSHi which has that meaning.

smaragdos

Greek word for emeralds, green gems.

spies, the twelve

The names of the 12 spies are recorded in Numbers 13:1-14: ƒ Shammua son of Zaccur, from the tribe of Reuben ƒ Shaphat son of Hori, from the tribe of Simeon ƒ Caleb son of Jephunneh, from the tribe of Judah ƒ Igal son of Joseph, from the tribe of Issachar ƒ Hoshea (Joshua) son of Nun, from the tribe of Ephraim ƒ Palti son of Raphu, from the tribe of Benjamin ƒ Gaddiel son of Sodi, from the tribe of Zebulin ƒ Gaddi son of Susi, from the tribe of Manassah ƒ Ammiel son of Gemalli, from the tribe of Dan ƒ Sethur son of Michael, from the tribe of Asher ƒ Nahbi son of Vophsi, from the tribe of Naphtali ƒ Geuel son of Maki, from the tribe of Gad

stela

A stone or wooden slab, usually taller than it is wide, erected as a monument, very often for funerary or commemorative purposes. Stelae may be used for government notices or to mark borders or delineate land ownership. They often have texts and may have decoration, which may be inscribed, carved in relief, or painted.

Succoth

The first rest stop during the Exodus (Exodus 12:37).

sunbirds

Sunbirds belong to the Nectariniidae family of small passerine birds in Africa, the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Most feed on nectar but also eat insects. Some species can take nectar by hovering like a hummingbird but usually perch to feed.

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Suppiluliuma I

Hittite king (ca. 1344-1322 BC). He achieved fame as a warrior and statesman, successfully challenging the Egyptian empire for control of the lands between the Mediterranean and Euphrates.

Tabernacle

Protective enclosure for the "Ten Commandments." Etymology: Latin tabula = table, list + nacelle = safe housing, nest

Talmai

Talmai, Ahiman and Sheshai were Nephilim, three giant sons of Anak whom the spies saw (Numbers 13:22) when they went to explore the land. They were later driven out and slain (Joshua 15:14; Judges 1:10).

Tamar

A place mentioned in Ezekiel 47:19; 48:28. Meaning: palm tree.

Tefnut

Goddess of moisture, moist air, dew and rain in Egyptian religion. She is the sister and consort of the air god Shu and mother of Geb and Nut.

Teku

The Israelites went to Succoth, a site identified with Egyptian Teku at the mouth of the Tumilat near modern Ismailia.

Temple of Hapshepsut

This “Holy of Holies” mortuary temple next to that of Mentuhotep II is located beneath the cliffs on the west bank of the Nile near the Valley of the Kings. It is dedicated to the sun god Amon-Ra.

Tetragrammaton

See YHWH.

Tey

Wife of Kheperkheprure Ay, the next to last pharaoh of the 18th dynasty. Ay filled an important role in the courts of several pharaohs – Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamen – before ascending the throne himself. He may have been a brother of Queen Tiye (wife of Amenhotep III), the father of Nefertiti (wife of Akhenaten) and a grandfather of Ankhesenamen (wife of Tutankhamen).

Thebes

Greek name of No-Amon in Ancient Egypt about 800 km south of the Mediterranean on the Nile east bank within the modern city of Luxor. The Theban Necropolis is nearby on the west bank. See Karnak.

Theophany

Ancient Greek șİȠijȐȞİȚĮ (“appearance of god”) refers to the appearance of a deity to a human.

Thessalia

Thessaly was previously known as Aeolia (Greek ǹ۞ȠȜȓĮ) in Homer's Odyssey.

Thoth

Thoth, messenger of the gods, often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or baboon. His feminine counterpart was Seshat. His wife was Ma'at. His temple was in Khmun, later called Hermopolis Magna because the Greeks thought he was the same as their god Hermes. In that city, he led the Ogdoad pantheon of 8 deities.

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Glossary

Tiamat

In Mesopotamian (Sumerian, Assyrian, Akkadian and Babylonian) religion, Tiamat was a primordial monster goddess of the ocean who mated with Abzû, the god of fresh water. She was both a peaceful creatrix and later a Chaoskampf, the embodiment of primordial chaos. When she was split in two by Marduk, her lower part became the earth and her upper part became the sky.

timbrel

Israelite percussion instrument (Hebrew tof), similar to a tambourine.

Timna

Valley located in the southwestern Arabah, about 30 km (19 mi) north of the Gulf of Aqaba. The area is rich in copper ore and has been mined since 5000 BCE.

Timsah, Lake

Also known as Crocodile Lake near the Bitter Lakes region. In 1800, a flood filled Wadi Tumilat causing water to flow south into the Bitter Lakes about 14 km away. In 1862, the lake was filled with water from the Red Sea. It has been asserted that, in ancient times, Lake Timsah was the northern terminus of the Red Sea.

Tiye

Tiye (Taia, Tiy, Tiyi) was the daughter of Yuya and Tjuyu (Thuyu). She became the Great Royal Wife of the pharaoh Amenhotep III. She is the mother of Akhenaten and grandmother of Tutankhamun.

topaz

Blue topaz is a rare gem. Pliny said topaz was mined at Topazos, a legendary island in the Red Sea. Etymology: Sanskrit tapas ("heat" or "fire") and Hebrew tapooz ʦʥʴʺ ("orange" the fruit). The first row [of the Hoshen] shall be a sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle (Ex. 28:17).

Tuareg nomads

The Tuareg inhabit the Saharan regions of North Africa: Niger, Mali, Libya, Algeria and Burkina Faso. Tuareg is Arabic (‘abandoned by God’). They call themselves Imohag, translated as ‘free men’.

Tumilat

Current name (which may have been derived from the god Atum) of a 50 km long dry river valley east of the Nile delta. In ancient times, it was a major caravan route between Egypt and the East. The Canal of the Pharaohs was built there. See Nile-Red Sea canals and Royal Canals.

Tutankhamun

Egyptian 18th dynasty pharaoh popularly called King Tut. His original name, Tutankhaten, means “Living Image of Aten.” Tutankhamun means “Living Image of Amun.” Tutankhamun was usually written Amen-tut-ankh in hieroglyphs because of a custom that placed a divine name at the beginning of a phrase to show reverence.

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Ur KaĞdim

Ur of the Chaldees (ʭʩ ʑʣ ʍˈʔ˗ ʸ˒ʠ) is mentioned in Genesis 11:28, 11:31 and 15:7 as the place that the Patriarch Abraham may have been from.

Uraeus

Greek Ƞ‫ۺ‬ȡĮ‫ݶ‬ȠȢ (ouraƯos, “on its tail”; Egyptian “rearing cobra”) is a stylized, upright cobra (asp, serpent or snake) used as a symbol of sovereignty, royalty, deity & divine authority in ancient Egypt.

Urim VeTumim

A phrase from the Torah associated with the hoshen (High Priest's breastplate), divination in general, and cleromancy in particular. Most scholars believe the phrase refers to objects involved in the divination.

viva voce

By word of mouth.

water-heads

A medical condition caused by excessive production, impaired flow or insufficient reabsorption of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

weights & measures

See Measure, Ancient Egyptian units of

Wepwawet

Wepwawet (Upuaut, Wepawet & Ophois) was a war deity whose cult center was Asyut (Lycopolis). The name means ‘opener of the ways’. He is depicted as a wolf standing at the prow of a boat.

Ya’alek

A mountain in Sinai. See the map.

YHWH

The tetragrammaton (Greek IJİIJȡĮȖȡȐȝȝĮIJȠȞ, meaning "four letters") is the Hebrew theonym ʤʥʤʩ, commonly transliterated into Latin letters as YHWH. Religiously observant Jews are forbidden to say or write the Tetragrammaton. When reading the Torah they say Adonai. The name may be derived from a verb that means "to be, to exist."

Yocheved

Daughter of Levi and mother of Miriam, Moses and Aaron. She was the wife of Amram as well as his aunt.[

zalaf caper

Capparis spinosa, the caper bush, is a perennial winter-deciduous plant that bears rounded, fleshy leaves and large white to pinkishwhite flowers. It has edible flower buds (capers) used as a seasoning and a fruit (caper berry), both usually pickled. Other parts of this plant are used in medicine and cosmetics.

Zalmonah

Hebrew ʤʕʰʖʮʍʬʶʔ , a place where the Israelites stopped during the Exodus (Num 33:41,42). Its name may mean shady.

ZaphnathPaaneah

Egyptian name given by Pharaoh to Joseph (Genesis 41:45).

Zared spring

Place where the Israelites camped on the way to Moab (Deut. 2:13, Numbers 21:12-13). The name denotes a ‘brook’.

Zichri

Son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, and grandson of Levi (Ex 6:21).

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Glossary

Zin desert

Hebrew ʯʩʶ ʸʡʣʮ, an area mentioned in the Torah as containing Kadesh Barnea. Therefore, it is also called Wilderness of Kadesh.

Zippora

Wife of Moses, daughter of Reuel/Jethro (the priest of Midian) and mother Gershom and Eliezer.

Zoan

City in the eastern Nile delta. Numbers 13:22 says it was built 7 years after Hebron. Psalm 78:12, 43 mentions the “field of Zoan.” The city is mentioned in Isaiah 19:11, 13, Isaiah 30:4 and Ezekiel 30:14. The Greek Septuagint uses the Greek name Tanis. Both Tanis and Tso'an are ultimately derived from the Egyptian name Djanet or Djan.

Zoar

Town in the Jordan plain to which Lot and his daughters escaped when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed (Genesis 19:20-23).

Zor

Tyre (Hebrew tzadi-vav-resh meaning ‘Rock’) became the largest and richest commercial city of the ancient world (Joshua 19:29)

Zuleika

The name of the biblical Potiphar's wife in Jewish and Muslim tradition. Her name is not mentioned in the Bible or Koran.