Return of the Storm God - Appendix VI: Moses as Osiris
The Judaic faith began with the Mosaic Law - and it is almost entirely Egyptian in origin.
Introduction
When earlier chapters showed the Egyptian version of the Jesus story preserved in the New Testament, it became clear that the Bible often preserves older mythic patterns recast in a new register. Perhaps the clearest example of this phenomenon in the Old Testament is the story of Moses. The tale of the lawgiver and the Exodus is not merely an isolated national memory; in its structural grammar it is a recension of far older axis and storm-god material, refracted through Egyptian and Levantine ritual and then reworked by later editors.
To understand Moses properly we must first set aside the assumption that the biblical books present a single, linear history. The text was compiled, edited and retrojected over centuries. The Deuteronomist corpus - the Mosaic law and the constitutional framework associated with it - stands at the core of what later became known as Judaism. In the political and religious crises of the post-exilic period a Jerusalem patriarchy produced Deuteronomy as law, identity and polity. Much of what reads as ‘prehistory’ in Genesis and Exodus was written afterwards to provide a backstory and to harmonise the community’s past with the central Mosaic law. In short, Moses functions as the foundation stone of the tradition; Abraham and the patriarchal narratives were later insertions designed to give ancestry and continuity to that foundation.
That Mosaic foundation is itself not an invention ex nihilo but the next chapter in a very long story. The Sinai peninsula and its mountain shrines belonged to a living cultic geography long before the Deuteronomist project. Inscriptions from the turquoise mines and shrines at Serabit el-Khadim record early alphabetic signs and personal invocations of a mountain deity - inscriptions that give us the earliest attested forms of the divine name in a Proto-Sinaitic script. These marks are both religious and linguistic origins: the mountain god of Sinai already had a following in the Levantine highlands, and the same region witnessed the first steps toward the alphabet that would later carry the Torah’s words. Moses at Sinai therefore sits in a chain that is archaeological as well as theological - a mountain cult and an emerging script together forming the medium and place for the law narrative to take root.
Mythological continuity reaches far deeper than these inscriptions. The god encountered on Sinai belongs to a lineage that predates writing by many millennia. For countless generations before inscriptions, human communities observed thunder, lightning, floods and the behaviour of the heavens. Those repeated observations crystallised into the image of the Storm God - the thunderer and axis-lord whose voice is thunder, whose hand is lightning, whose presence is felt on mountain and in storm. Locally he wore many names: Ishkur or Adad in Mesopotamia, Teshub among the Hurrians, Baal Hadad in Canaan, and later Yahweh in Israelite theology.
In Egypt the same archetype finds expression in the forms of inundation and renewal associated with Osiris, and in the sky as Orion, the cosmic barque and hunter. The Storm God is therefore not a single named deity but an archetypal figure with prehistoric depth - a shared human recognition of a power that orders rain, flood, thunder and the vertical link between earth and sky.
It must also be acknowledged that the familiar Isis–Osiris–Horus triad is itself the product of a long historical process. The earliest Egyptian pantheons were more dispersed and role-specific. Ptah, Atum, Nun, Shu, Tefnut and others represent elemental functions of origin, craft, air and water; Horus appears early as the falcon of kingship and sky. Over time, a syncretic consolidation occurred and Isis and Osiris absorbed many older functions, becoming the archetypal mother and the axis-king respectively. That later consolidation, however, only strengthens the argument: the Osirian form is a concentrated expression of layers that reach back into earlier strata of myth and ritual. When we read the Moses story as Osirian in structure, we are tracing Moses not just to a single stage of Egyptian religion but to a deep current that runs through older pantheons into later forms.
Seen in this light, the birth and preservation of Moses - the reed-ark on the Nile, the hidden child in the papyrus marsh, the double motherhood of birth and adoption - are not accidental plot devices. They echo lived Egyptian ritual and festival practice: the chest or ark borne to the river in processions such as Opet; the papyrus thicket as a symbolic womb and place of sanctuary; the barque imagery that links river and sky; and the seasonal cycle of inundation tied to stellar phenomena such as the heliacal rising of Sirius and the reappearance of Orion. These ritual realities were enacted and observed, not imagined in isolation. The Bible contracts them into concise narrative, but the underlying grammar of coffin, barque, reed, mother and celestial bark is recognisably Egyptian.
Finally, the Sinai encounter itself - law delivered from a mountain amid cloud, fire and thunder - is a Levantine articulation of the same Storm God schema. The mountain as axis and throne, the thunder and whirlwind as the god’s voice, the gift of law descending from above: these are universal motifs of the thunderer figure. The Deuteronomist editors gave this Storm God the name Yahweh and set the law within that dramatic theophany. But archetypally nothing new was created; Moses at Sinai is simply the local and textual expression of a pattern that we have traced from prehistory into Mesopotamia, into Egypt, across the Levant, and into later Roman reworkings, unto the Hill of Tara in Ireland.
This is the thesis of the appendix: the Moses story is at once political foundation and mythic recurrence. It is the Deuteronomist law at the heart of Judean identity; it is a Levantine recension of Osirian and Horian motifs; and it is part of the much older Storm God current that humanity has long recognised. To apprehend these connections is to demystify the narrative - not to strip it of meaning but to relocate its meaning in environment, ritual and social formation. That repositioning frees us to ask the right questions about power, law, identity and memory, rather than to remain hypnotised by miraculous claims.
The Earlier Pantheons of Egypt
The chronology of Egyptian mythology does not begin with Isis, Osiris, and Horus. That triad is a development of later theology, the result of centuries of syncretism. At the start we find something far simpler and more role-specific.
The earliest gods were elemental: Ptah as craftsman and shaper, Atum as the self-generated origin, Nun as the primeval waters, Shu and Tefnut as air and moisture, Geb and Nut as earth and sky. Horus in his earliest form belongs with this archaic pantheon – the falcon of the heights, the distant seer, the living sky. He is one of the oldest figures, embodying vision, kingship, and the balance of inheritance.
Osiris and Isis came later, rising as composites that gathered many earlier functions into themselves. Isis absorbed the qualities of multiple goddesses – Hathor’s maternal role, Nephthys’s mourning, the magic of Serqet and others – until she stood as the archetypal mother, queen, and magician in one. Osiris likewise took on the roles of fertility and inundation, then absorbed the functions of death-god, judge, and king of Amenta. What had once been distributed among many deities was by the Middle and New Kingdoms invested in this single pair.
The prime trinity of Osiris–Isis–Horus, so familiar from later Egyptian thought and from classical accounts, was not primary. It was the outcome of long development. What we encounter in Moses, then, is not the borrowing of a late cult alone, but the channelling of a current that runs back through those layers into the earliest strata of Egyptian belief – the elemental gods, the primordial pantheon, and beyond them the cosmic archetype of Orion.
The Birth of Moses in the Reeds
The story of Moses begins with one of the most evocative scenes in the Bible: a child hidden for three months, then placed in a small ark of bulrushes among the papyrus reeds of the Nile, and finally discovered by the daughter of Pharaoh. On the surface this is a tale of deliverance from royal persecution. At a deeper level, it is a direct survival of Egyptian ritual and myth, where the chest on the river, the marsh of concealment, and the divine child preserved by a woman’s care were recurring archetypes.
Osiris in the chest
In one of Egypt’s best-known myths, Osiris is tricked and enclosed in a chest by his brother Set, then cast into the Nile. The coffin drifts northwards, eventually reaching Byblos, where it is recovered by Isis. This myth carries a complex symbolism. The coffin is both tomb and barque: it contains the seed of life apparently extinguished, yet borne upon the waters that are themselves the source of renewal. The river is at once the chaos-flood that threatens to overwhelm and the life-stream that conveys the god towards his resurrection. To set a divine figure adrift on the Nile in a chest is therefore to express death and rebirth in a single act. In the biblical retelling, the chest becomes a basket, the corpse becomes an infant, but the grammar of the scene is the same - vulnerable life enclosed in a vessel and entrusted to the waters of transformation.
The reeds as sanctuary and womb
The papyrus marsh carried its own weight of symbolism. Papyrus was a sacred plant of Lower Egypt, used in writing, in ritual objects, and in the construction of boats. Mythologically, it was also a place of concealment. In the Horus cycle, the infant heir is hidden by Isis in the papyrus thickets of Chemmis to escape the fury of Set. There, in the reed-marsh, the fragile child of light is protected until he can grow strong enough to avenge his father. The marsh is at once a sanctuary against enemies and a symbolic womb in which life is gestated unseen. To place Moses among the reeds is to reproduce this archetype in Hebrew form. What reads as an act of desperation by his mother is in fact a compressed survival of a long-established Egyptian motif: the divine seed concealed in the swamp until its appointed emergence.
The Opet Festival and the ark on the Nile
The annual Opet Festival of Thebes makes clear how these images were not confined to myth but enacted in ritual. During the inundation season, the portable bark-shrines - sacred arks borne on poles by priests - were taken from the great temple of Amun at Karnak to Luxor, either along the avenue of sphinxes or floated upon the Nile itself. Within these arks were the cult images of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu, concealed from the people yet present among them. At Luxor, rites of renewal reaffirmed the power of the king and the fertility of the land. The ark upon the waters was therefore the divine presence entering the river of life, guaranteeing cosmic order and agricultural abundance. To any Egyptian witness, the sight of a chest set upon the Nile was not novel but an annual vision - gods borne in arks to the flood to secure renewal. The biblical motif of the babe in a bulrush-ark rests firmly upon this ritual grammar.
The cosmic parallel: Orion and the flood
The symbolism extended beyond festival into the sky itself. The Nile flood coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius and the reappearance of Orion on the eastern horizon. In Egyptian cosmology, Orion was the celestial bark, the god who sailed the Duat by night and returned each year with the inundation. The cycle of disappearance and return in the heavens corresponded to the cycle of flood and renewal on earth. The ark on the Nile thus mirrored the stellar barque in the sky: both carried the seed of life through chaos to rebirth. When the Hebrews told of Moses set in a basket upon the river, they were repeating in narrative form the stellar-seasonal drama that every Egyptian priest knew and every farmer lived by.
The flattened Hebrew retelling
In Egyptian thought, these motifs - the coffin-chest of Osiris, the papyrus marsh of Horus, the ark of the Opet procession, and the stellar bark of Orion - were parts of a single symbolic web linking death, concealment, fertility, and resurrection. In the Hebrew text, they are reduced to a single anecdote of rescue. The basket is no longer a coffin-barque, the reeds are no longer the womb of Chemmis, the act of drawing forth is no longer tied to cosmic creation. Yet the structure remains visible beneath the surface. The editors preserved unconsciously the very grammar they inherited: life hidden in a chest, concealed in reeds, entrusted to the waters, drawn forth by a royal woman.
Thus, the birth of Moses is not biography but archetype. It is the Osirian coffin, the Horian marsh, the Opet ark upon the Nile, and the Orion bark in the sky - all contracted into Hebrew story. The child in the reeds is the vulnerable seed of light, preserved through concealment, destined for emergence and deliverance.
The Horus Cycle and the Hidden Child
Alongside the Osirian layer of coffin and river stands the Horus cycle. Horus, the posthumous son of Osiris and Isis, is born in a time of danger. His uncle Set, who has slain Osiris, now seeks to destroy the child before he can grow to avenge his father and reclaim the throne. To preserve him, Isis conceals the infant in the papyrus thickets of Chemmis, a marshland sanctuary on the Nile Delta. Here the myth locates the child in a liminal zone: the swamp is both a place of concealment and a symbolic womb. It is precisely the same image as Moses in the reeds - a child of light hidden in papyrus, threatened by the power of darkness, preserved until the moment of triumph.
Egyptian texts describe the role of Isis as not only mother but sorceress and protector. She chants spells to ward off serpents and scorpions in the marsh, invoking divine aid to keep Horus alive in his fragile state. These incantations survive in magical papyri and amulets, showing that mothers in Egypt drew on the myth in their own households, appealing to Isis’s protection over their infants. The biblical narrative has forgotten the spells, but retains the structure: concealment in the reeds, protection by the mother, survival against the odds.
The Two Mothers
The motif of dual maternity is equally ancient. In the Horus cycle, Isis is the true mother, while Nephthys - sister of Isis and consort of Set - becomes the foster or protective mother, aiding in concealment and care. This doubling echoes in the Osirian cycle as well, where Isis and Nephthys flank the bier of Osiris, mourning and guarding him as two sisters. In Egyptian funerary art, the paired goddesses are depicted at head and foot of the coffin, arms outstretched in protective gesture.
The Exodus account retains this motif in transformed guise. Moses has his natural mother, Jochebed, who hides him for three months and then places him in the ark. He then gains a second mother when Pharaoh’s daughter discovers him and raises him as her own. The two women - one the mother of birth, the other the mother of adoption - replicate the Isis–Nephthys pairing. What is in Egypt a divine archetype becomes in the Bible a domestic anecdote of courtly rescue. Yet beneath the narrative lies the same structure: two women preserving the seed of life, one by giving birth, the other by giving protection.
The Egyptian Name
The name ‘Moses’ itself confirms the Egyptian origin of the tale. The biblical story provides a folk etymology: Pharaoh’s daughter names him Mosheh ‘because I drew him out of the water’ (Exodus 2:10). Yet in Egyptian onomastics, the element ms or mesu means simply ‘born of’ or ‘child of.’ It is ubiquitous in royal names: Thutmose (‘child of Thoth’), Ramesses (‘child of Ra’), Ahmose (‘child of the moon-god Iah’). The Hebrew form retains only the suffix, omitting the divine prefix. To an Egyptian ear, ‘Moses’ would be incomplete - a child ‘of …’ with the deity left unspoken. This places Moses firmly within the Egyptian naming tradition of royal sons and divine offspring. He is not a Hebrew innovation but an Egyptian type: a ‘born one’ of some deity whose name has been forgotten or suppressed.
The Solar Archetype
The symbolic function of the episode emerges once its roots are recognised. In both Osirian and Horian cycles, light is endangered at birth. The adversary - whether Set, serpent, or tyrant king - seeks to extinguish it while still weak. Therefore the divine seed must be hidden, protected, nourished, and only revealed in due time. This is a solar motif: the young sun at dawn, still low on the horizon, vulnerable to the darkness it is displacing. Concealed in cloud or mist, it rises with strength only when its time has come. Moses in the bulrushes is this archetype in human form: a hidden child of light, threatened yet preserved, set upon the waters of chaos yet carried toward redemption.
From Lived Experience to Myth
Beneath the myth lies an even deeper root in human experience. All birth is fraught with danger, all infants are vulnerable. The mother’s task is always to protect the helpless child from the perils of exposure, disease, or violence. Every babe ‘comes from the waters’ of the mother’s womb, emerging wet, fragile, and in need of shelter. The archetype of the babe protected from the elements is therefore not an isolated miracle but a universal reality. The Egyptians, with their acute eye for environment and human experience, encoded these realities in symbolic form. The marsh became the womb, the ark became the protective vessel, the mother became Isis, the child became Horus. Religion and myth evolved from this observance of nature and the cycles of life, not from abstract doctrine. The story of Moses is therefore part of a shared cultural heritage in which the vulnerability of new life, the protective role of the mother, and the triumph of light over darkness were expressed in enduring archetypes.
Pharaoh’s Decree and the Threat to the Child
The story of Moses does not begin with his concealment in the reeds but with a decree: Pharaoh orders that all male Hebrew children are to be slain at birth. To a literalist this is evidence of tyrannical paranoia. In mythological terms it belongs to a much older pattern - the attempt to extinguish the seed of light at the very moment of its emergence.
Set and the archetype of the destroyer
In the Osirian cycle, Set embodies the adversary role. He betrays and kills Osiris, scattering the fragments of his body, and then turns his fury against the infant Horus, who as rightful heir threatens to avenge his father. Egyptian texts and magical charms describe Isis hiding the infant and surrounding him with protective incantations against scorpions, serpents, and hostile forces. This is not simply a folktale but a ritualised drama: the community repeatedly enacted the defence of the child of light against the destroyer. The Pharaoh’s decree belongs to the same class of motif. It is a narrative form of a ritual truth: chaos seeks to extinguish the order-bearing seed before it matures.
This motif is widespread. In Greek myth the newborn Zeus is hidden from Kronos, who devours his children lest they usurp him. In Christian tradition, Herod orders the massacre of Bethlehem’s children to prevent the rise of the messiah. In Mesopotamian hymns, dragons and monsters lie in wait to devour the young sun at dawn. In each case the logic is identical: the light or heir must be protected against annihilation at birth.
The dual nature of Set
To reduce Set to a simple Satanic enemy is to flatten the Egyptian understanding. Set is not merely darkness and opposition. He is also potential - the raw chaos from which Ma’at, order, must be drawn. In early dynasties, Set was honoured alongside Horus as a necessary counterforce. Pharaohs bore names invoking Set, recognising him as part of the balance of kingship. It is only later, under redaction and cultural shift, that Set is cast as the demonic opposite, the pure adversary.
The Egyptians saw more clearly: chaos is not only destruction but also the matrix from which renewal arises. The very contest between Horus and Set represents the dynamic tension of nature - storm against sun, desert against river, disorder against measure. Ma’at is not imposed in a void but wrested from the field of Set. By understanding this, the Egyptians encoded a psychology that was layered and subtle: Set is danger and necessity in one, destroyer and substrate together.
From Set to Satan
Only later, when Egyptian myth was inherited and simplified by other cultures, does Set collapse into Satan - the Lord of Darkness, the adversary without nuance. In this simplification, the archetypal complexity is lost. The Bible preserves the structure of the motif - Pharaoh as tyrant, decree against the infants - but strips away the Egyptian sense that the adversary is also the ground from which order emerges. Thus the biblical form becomes more stark but less profound: the decree is simply evil, the Pharaoh a simple villain. The Egyptian original, however, taught that the struggle with chaos is perennial, and that even the adversary has a place in the cosmic balance.
The archetype of the threatened child
Placed back into this broader frame, Pharaoh’s decree is not historical memory but mythic necessity. The divine seed of order must always be threatened at birth; chaos always resists the dawn. The decree is the narrative mask of Set’s hostility. Moses in the bulrushes is Horus in the papyrus marsh, protected by the vigilance of the mother until he is strong enough to rise. The survival of the child is the triumph of light over darkness, of potential order drawn from the field of chaos.
Set as the natural archetype of darkness
Any careful observation of nature links the darkness and the world below with what is fearful. The Nile taught this directly. Its surface gave life, but beneath lurked crocodiles that struck without warning. Death, too, drew every body back into the soil. In tomb and field alike, human, animal, and plant remains broke down into their elements. Egyptian texts described this vividly. In the Coffin Texts, the demons of the Duat ‘tear the body apart limb by limb,’ yet the vital spark is preserved to be justified before Osiris. The myth encoded what everyone knew: life ends, matter returns to darkness, but light endures.
Fire reinforced the same lesson. Burn wood, flesh, or grain, and it blackens. The residue is carbon, soot – the natural result of combustion. The Egyptian language itself preserves the link between Set and this blackened matter. Set is the red-desert god, but also the ‘black one,’ and in later Coptic the word sot was used for ‘burnt’ or ‘charred.’ English still carries these ancient phonemes: soot for ash, set for the underground den of a badger. Neither soot nor an animal’s set is evil. They are facts of life. The Egyptians understood this instinctively. Set was not Satan but the natural principle of darkness, the lurking and the below.
The Pyramid Texts show both sides of this figure. In Utterance 356 Set is invoked positively as a supporter of the king: ‘Horus has seized Set by the hand for you, that he may lift you up.’ In Utterance 570, Set is again helper: ‘Set is the one who lifts you up, he who raises you.’ Yet in other spells Set is the one who blinds, who cuts, who threatens. The duality is open: danger and support, chaos and axis together. Pharaohs took his name in their titles – Seti, ‘man of Set’ – proof that he was not only feared but honoured as part of cosmic balance.
Thus, Set emerges from experience of the world: the crocodile beneath the surface, the grave that receives the dead, the blackened residue of fire, the desert wind that scorches. Myth did not invent these – it encoded them. Set became the archetype of darkness, but also of potential. Out of his domain Ma’at was drawn, as order from chaos. Later redactors simplified him into Satan, pure adversary. The Egyptians knew better. They saw that the same power that menaced also provided the substrate from which renewal could arise.
The Slaughter of the Innocents as Archetype
The ‘slaughter of the innocents’ motif, whether in Exodus with Pharaoh’s decree or in Matthew with Herod’s massacre, is not a record of history but a mythic recurrence. The theme is always the same: darkness attempts to extinguish the seed of light at its weakest stage. What the biblical editors cast as a bureaucratic edict is a recasting of the primordial assault of Set on the divine heir.
Infant concealment and revelation
In Egypt, Horus the child must be hidden in the papyrus swamps of Chemmis. Isis conceals him from Set’s malice, weaving incantations around the cradle to protect him from venom, disease, and the lurking dangers of swamp and serpent. Magical texts from the New Kingdom survive in which mothers invoked Isis’s spells over their own infants, asking for protection ‘as Horus was guarded in Chemmis.’ The Hebrew account reproduces this in the story of Jochebed. She hides Moses for three months, then when concealment is no longer possible, entrusts him to the river in a small ark. The peril imposed by Pharaoh’s decree thus becomes the very pretext for the archetypal act of concealment. Both myths preserve the same dual rhythm: peril and concealment, danger and preservation, darkness pressing but light protected.
Cross-cultural parallels
The motif of infant persecution is not unique to Egypt or Israel but is found across the ancient world. Kronos devours his children to prevent their rise; Zeus is hidden in a cave on Crete, guarded by the Curetes whose clashing shields drown out his cries. In Indian tradition, Kamsa attempts to slay the infant Krishna, but the child is hidden away until he can return to overthrow the tyrant. In Christian scripture, Herod plays the role of Pharaoh, slaughtering Bethlehem’s children in order to prevent the rise of the messiah. In each case the structure is the same: the seed of renewal must endure persecution, and its concealment becomes the guarantee of future triumph.
Cosmological background
Behind all of these stands the cosmology of night and dawn. Each night Ra sails his bark through the Duat, and each night he is attacked by fiends who seek to destroy him before he can rise. The Pyramid and Coffin Texts describe these hostile beings as devourers who assail ‘the younglings of light,’ enemies who strike at the newborn rays of dawn. Their role is to prevent the sun from being reborn, to slay the ‘firstborn’ of the coming day. The Pharaoh’s decree in Exodus echoes this imagery exactly. The newborn males symbolise the nascent powers of light, targeted for annihilation before they can grow.
Inversion in the Passover
Later in Exodus, the Passover account inverts this theme. It is the firstborn of Egypt who perish, while the Hebrew children are spared. The mythic logic is still in play: the younglings of light must be protected, and the adversary’s seed destroyed. The underlying archetype has not changed - only the narrative vantage. What was once a universal truth of cosmology becomes partisan memory, a tale of national deliverance. Yet even in this narrowed form, the trace of the original myth is unmistakable.
Examples from the Egyptian texts:
Pyramid Texts
Utterance 244 (Pyr. 261–262): ‘The demons who live on the younglings shall not seize you, the eaters of their innards shall not have power over you. You shall not be given to the slaughtering knife, you shall not be handed to the executioner.’
Here the adversaries are explicitly described as those who prey upon the ‘younglings’ (ndrw), linked with dawn or newly-risen souls.Utterance 302 (Pyr. 472): ‘The children of the light are not delivered up to the slaughter, the firstborn of the dawn are not handed to destruction.’
A clear cosmological expression: the newborn rays of the sun (‘children of light’) under threat of destruction, yet protected.
Coffin Texts
Spell 148:
‘I repel for you the devourers who come in the darkness, who would seize the young ones, who live on their blood.’
The imagery of night-fiends seeking to consume the vulnerable, directly paralleling the massacre motif.Spell 168:
‘The children of the dawn are not delivered to the slaughterhouse; they go forth alive as the sun goes forth.’
The mythic assurance that the newborn powers of light survive the night’s assault.
The Name and the Double House
The biblical account tells us the child drawn from the waters was given the name Moses. The Hebrew explanation that it means ‘drawn out’ is a late pun. In reality, ms or mesu in Egyptian meant ‘born of’ or ‘child of,’ always requiring a divine prefix. Names such as Thutmose (‘born of Thoth’), Ramesses (‘born of Ra’), and Ahmose (‘born of the moon-god Iah’) show the pattern. Moses, standing alone, is an incomplete fossil of this naming formula. This already ties him to the Egyptian tradition of divine children. But the greater significance is not his name as such, but what his story reveals about duality.
Moses is raised in two houses: concealed by his Hebrew mother in the hidden household of his people, yet brought up openly in Pharaoh’s palace as an adopted royal. This is more than a biographical detail. It embodies a fundamental Egyptian insight - that reality is always double, that every visible order rests on an unseen counterpart. Horus was protected by both Isis, his true mother, and Nephthys, his foster. The king bore the double crown, ruling Upper and Lower Egypt as one. The land itself was twofold: the fertile black soil of the Nile valley and the barren red desert. The Pharaoh was Horus by day and Set by night. Life and death, light and darkness, above and below were paired expressions of a single truth: Ma’at held balance between them, and within each pole the other was hidden.
Hiddenness itself is the key to this reciprocity. Life already conceals death within it; every child born is also already mortal. Day is always followed by night, yet night carries within it the promise of dawn. A body after death returns to the soil, broken down into darkness and decay, yet out of that decomposition comes renewal and growth. Burn living matter and it becomes blackened carbon, soot - a residue that still contains the memory of life. The Egyptians understood this: in myth demons of the Duat tear the dead apart, but the light endures and is ‘justified.’ Set embodies this duality: chaos, darkness, and death, but also the substrate from which order, light, and life arise.
Moses, child of two houses, encodes this archetypal pattern. In him, the hidden and the manifest, the humble and the royal, the dark and the light coexist. He is the concealed child of the reeds and the adopted son of the palace. His story is thus not a simple tale of survival but a narrative expression of the Egyptian vision that what is hidden sustains what is revealed, and what is revealed contains what is hidden.
The Egyptians saw myth not as a single event in time but as a continuum. Every Egyptian familiar with the archetypes knew that Osiris the father was present in Horus the son, and Horus in turn would become Osiris. Father and son were not separate beings but two phases of the same current. The mythic stream was cyclic: son to father, father to son; light to dark to light. The divine was always returning into itself and rising again.
This continuity is implicit in the Egyptian word iu - ‘the ever-coming,’ ‘the perpetual becoming.’ Creation was not a completed act but an ongoing process, the world always in a state of arising. The gods, therefore, were not men living once and dying, but symbols and totems of natural cycles and forces: the flood returning, the sun rising, the seed sprouting, the body decaying and giving rise to new life.
Moses, as child of two houses, is cast into this same archetypal rhythm. He is both concealed and revealed, both humble and exalted, both child and ruler. His story is not linear biography but mythic pattern - the cycle of concealment and manifestation, of death hidden in life and life emerging from death. In Egyptian thought, that cycle was eternal.
The Call – Fire and Voice
In the book of Exodus, when Moses has grown and fled into the wilderness, he receives his commission in a vision of fire. He sees a bush burning yet not consumed, and from the midst of the flame a voice calls his name. To the literalist this is a singular miracle, the instant when Yahweh reveals himself. In mythic analysis it is a Hebrew reshaping of a scene already central in Egyptian ritual, where the divine presence is manifested in flame and in utterance.
The epiphany of fire
In Osirian and solar traditions, the god is revealed in two primal ways: by fire and by voice. The shining presence is fire, the illuminating force that cannot be consumed. Ra reveals himself daily as the burning splendour of the sun, a fire that lights without being diminished. In the Pyramid Texts the deceased king is said to ‘shine as a flame that cannot be quenched.’ Osiris too is hailed as ‘the one who burns, who is not consumed.’ The imagery of a fire that endures, perpetually renewed yet never spent, was central to Egyptian liturgy. The unconsumed bush in Exodus is a Hebraic form of this archetype - the perpetual flame transposed into a narrative setting.
The voice as creative power
The second element is voice. In Egyptian cosmology creation itself proceeds by word. Ptah creates by heka, the effective utterance. The Memphite Theology declares that ‘the tongue of Ptah repeats what the heart has devised, and all gods are born.’ In solar theology Hu (utterance) and Sia (perception) travel in the barque with Ra, personified as deities in their own right. Together they represent the creative power of divine speech and the comprehension that makes speech meaningful. Thus when Moses hears his name spoken from the midst of the flame, this is not an innovation but a continuation: the god manifests as both brilliance and command, fire and voice, light and word.
The sacred tree as seat of the divine
The bush itself is not unique. In Egypt theophany was often linked with sacred trees. The sycamore of Hathor offered water and sustenance to the dead. The ished tree of Heliopolis bore the names of kings inscribed upon its leaves, recording divine sanction of earthly rule. The tamarisk at Byblos enclosed the chest of Osiris until it was discovered by Isis. Each tree was more than plant: it was a seat of life, growth, and divine manifestation. The ‘burning bush’ is therefore not an unprecedented marvel but a contracted emblem of this arboreal type - a plant in which the divine presence appears, enlivened by flame and voice.
The commission to lead
The commission Moses receives - to return and confront Pharaoh, to lead his people forth - echoes Egyptian precedent. Horus, preserved from Set’s attack, is charged to vindicate his father, to defeat the adversary, and to guide the souls of the justified through the Duat. In funerary spells the king is told: ‘You are Horus who vindicates his father, who drives back Seth, who leads the followers of Osiris.’ The archetype is clear: the child preserved through danger is appointed as champion and leader. In Hebrew narrative Moses is the one preserved from Pharaoh’s decree, now charged to return and confront Pharaoh anew. Both are mythic leaders authorised by flame and voice.
Leadership as the Role of Horus
Leadership was integral to the archetype of Horus. In Osirian myth, Osiris embodied the axis and stability around which order revolved. Horus, by contrast, was the mover - the little hero (Heru) whose journey from vulnerable infancy to triumphant avenger became the pattern of kingship and of every initiate. He was movement, he was light, he was life.
In Egyptian cosmology Horus bore his mother’s essence as vitality and renewal. He was ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ - phrases later applied to Christ but originally descriptive of the falcon of the sun. As falcon, Horus rose daily with the dawn; as the benu bird he perched upon the benben stone, the first mound of creation, and began the cycle anew. He was Alpha and Omega, not as linear beginning and end but as eternal recurrence: Horus the child, Osiris the father, one flowing into the other in ceaseless return.
At night Horus remained the light in the dark. At the prow of the solar barque, or in the stellar body of Orion, he guided the vessel through the Duat. His eye was the beacon, his sight the assurance that the journey continued. In ritual the king assumed this Horus-role, standing at the prow to lead the souls of the justified. The Pyramid Texts (Utterance 222) proclaim: ‘You are Horus at the prow of the bark, who leads the gods, who vindicates his father, who avenges Osiris.’ In this single line are gathered the archetypal roles of guidance, leadership, and vindication.
When Moses hears the call from flame and voice in the bush, he is stepping into this same archetype. The Hebrew account frames it as Yahweh appointing a prophet; the Egyptian logic is deeper. The very birth of Horus is itself prophecy: the son is destined to become his father, to grow into Osiris and continue the cycle. Every appearance of the child already contains the inevitability of his fulfilment as avenger, heir, and king.
This archetype is older than the Hebrew story and wider than any single culture. The child preserved from peril inevitably receives his commission to lead, to embody light, to go before as guide. In Egypt this was Horus - falcon of the horizon, eye of the sun, beacon at the prow of the barque. In the Hebrew recension it is Moses - the hidden child of the reeds who emerges to confront Pharaoh, to bring law from the mountain, and to lead his people through the wilderness. Both figures stand in the same continuum: light concealed, preserved, revealed, and then appointed to guide.
The Signs – Staff and Serpent
When Moses receives his commission, he is also given signs to authenticate his mission. Chief among these is the transformation of his staff into a serpent and back again. Later, in the wilderness, he will raise a brazen serpent upon a pole as a healing emblem for the stricken people. To the conventional reader, these are miracles granted by God. To Egyptian eyes, they are recognisable fragments of familiar symbolism, transposed into Hebrew narrative.
The staff as axis
The staff is the rod of authority, the portable axis. In Egyptian ritual the sceptre and the djed-pillar represented the same principle: stability, uprightness, the axis of order. In the Ritual of the Raising of the Djed, performed at Memphis and elsewhere, priests heaved upright the heavy wooden pillar that embodied the spine of Osiris. This action re-enacted the restoration of life and balance after chaos. Reliefs from Abydos and Dendera show Pharaoh holding the djed or sceptre, flanked by Isis and Nephthys, affirming his role as axis of maat. To hold the rod was to hold the power of truth that steadies creation. Moses’s staff is this same axis-symbol reduced to a shepherd’s tool.
The serpent as wisdom and vitality
When the rod is cast down and becomes a serpent, it reveals the other half of the archetype. In Egypt the serpent was never only a symbol of danger. Wadjet, the cobra, was the uraeus placed upon the brow of the king. In the Pyramid Texts (Utterance 478) the king is hailed as ‘the Great One who has ascended, the fiery serpent upon the brow.’ This serpent was the living flame, the protective goddess who spat fire at enemies and embodied divine vision. The serpent was also the wave of vitality, the curve of life that animates form.
Thus, when Moses’s rod becomes a serpent and then returns to a rod, the mythic meaning is clear: axis and serpent are one. The raised pillar and the coiled snake are two aspects of the same life-force - stability and wisdom, order and vision.
The god/goddess pairing
This pairing was fundamental. Without the goddess-function, the god was inert, a dried husk. Osiris needed Isis as his breath, his wave of life. The serpent embodies this feminine dynamic: the living undulation that brings movement, fertility, and renewal to static form. In Egyptian iconography Isis could appear in serpent form, winding protectively around the coffin of Osiris or spitting flame as uraeus to defend the king.
Moses’s sign is therefore not arbitrary. It encapsulates the union of the two poles: the rod of maat and the serpent of vitality, the male axis and the female wave. What is raised before the people in the desert is not a new emblem but an ancient image - the same serpent-on-standard carried in Egyptian processions, the same axis-serpent union carved in relief on temple walls.
Healing by Elevation
The brazen serpent raised on a pole in Numbers follows the same principle as Moses’s earlier sign. The power does not lie in the bronze image itself, but in the act of elevation: the serpent raised upon the axis. Egyptian ritual often worked this way. In festivals and temple rites, the sight of a raised emblem - whether djed, ankh, or uraeus - brought protection and renewal. The raised symbol was a visual declaration that order and vitality were re-established.
In Egypt the serpent was never merely a crawling creature. Wadjet, the cobra of vision, crowned the king as uraeus, spitting flame at enemies and blazing as a guardian of divine sight. The serpent could harm, but when lifted aright it healed and protected. To place the serpent on the pole was to transform chaos into wisdom, threat into insight. When Moses’s rod becomes a serpent and then returns to a rod, the logic is the same: the axis is revealed as living, and wisdom is shown to be stabilised by maat.
Thus the healing of the people in the wilderness is not a novel miracle but the re-application of an old ritual grammar. Life is preserved not by the creature itself, but by serpent-wisdom aligned with the staff of order. In Egyptian terms, the rod is the djed - Osiris’s spine, the portable axis of stability - while the serpent is Wadjet, Isis in serpent form, the wave of vitality that animates the husk of form. The miracle is the union of axis and serpent, of structure and living motion. Seen in Hebrew narrative it appears as a divine wonder; seen through Egyptian eyes it is the drama of balance and breath enacted once again.
The Plagues and the Passover Night
The Exodus story gathers its momentum in the sequence of plagues that devastate Egypt and culminate in the death of the firstborn and the Passover deliverance of Israel. On the surface this is a tale of divine punishment upon a stubborn king. Beneath the Hebrew dress lies the Osirian night of conflict - the ritual drama of darkness and dawn recast as national memory.
The night journey of Ra
In the Egyptian Ritual, Ra’s nightly passage through the Duat (Amenta) is marked by ordeals and assaults. Hostile beings rise up in the darkness to obstruct the solar bark. Pestilence, blight, bloodied waters, and swarms of devourers are not random images but recurring foes in the funerary texts. They are the brood of Set - the offspring of chaos, who rise each night to halt the coming of dawn. Coffin Text spells warn of ‘those who come with pestilence, who drink blood, who live on filth,’ and describe ‘the devourers in the darkness’ who must be overcome hour by hour.
The plagues of Exodus replicate these mythic trials in narrative form. The Nile turned to blood echoes the waters of chaos reddened with slaughter in the night battles. Frogs, flies, and locusts mirror the swarming spawn of Set, hostile creatures released to overwhelm. Boils and disease are the pestilence that clings to the bark of Ra. Even the penultimate plague, the darkness over the land, is the direct survival of Egyptian imagery: the obliteration of day, the triumph of shadow just before the rebirth of light.
The death of the firstborn
The climactic stroke, the death of the firstborn, also has an Egyptian precedent. In the Ritual, the enemies of Ra attempt to slay the ‘younglings of light,’ the firstborn of dawn, before they can rise. Pyramid Text utterances describe demons who ‘devour the children of the dawn’ and ‘strike at the seed of light.’ The Exodus story inverts this archetype. It is the Egyptian firstborn who perish, while the Hebrew children are spared. Yet the underlying myth remains: the night battle is fought over the seed of life, and the god of order protects his own while the adversary’s brood are destroyed.
The justified as the true Hebrews
What the biblical narrative encodes as Hebrews or Israelites are, in mythic terms, the justified souls who complete the journey of at-onement with Ra. They are not literal slaves escaping bondage, but archetypal souls traversing the Duat, guided by order, and vindicated by Ma’at. Those ‘slain’ in the mythos are the unworthy aspects of the self, torn apart by the forces of dissolution before renewal can occur.
Death as natural consumption
The Egyptians saw this in nature and mirrored it in myth. A body returns to the soil, devoured by earth and by its own decomposition. Fire reduces matter to soot and ash. Animals die and are consumed by others. These were not abstractions but observed facts, translated into myth as demons that dismember, serpents that bite, crocodiles that devour. The Exodus plagues are the literary residue of this same natural philosophy. The justified endure because they align with Ma’at; the unworthy fall back into the jaws of Set’s brood.
As above, so below
This is the basis of the Egyptian conviction that life after death was a continuum, not a rupture. What was seen on earth was mirrored in the heavens, and what was enacted in the Duat was reflected back into earthly existence. ‘As above, so below; on Earth as it is in Heaven.’ The plagues and Passover night are Hebrew retellings of this eternal cycle - the night of terror and assault that precedes the dawn of deliverance.
The Passover and its Egyptian Roots
The Passover rite is a direct contraction of Egyptian funerary practice. In the Osirian mysteries, the souls of the justified were sealed against the destroyer, marked with protective signs, and provisioned with bread and beer for their passage through the night. Funerary texts describe the justified as those who ‘have bread, who have beer, who shall not be delivered to the slaughterers’ (Coffin Texts Spell 148). The sacred meal was not incidental: it was the pledge of survival, taken before embarking on the perilous journey through Amenta.
The Exodus account preserves the structure, though in Hebraised form. The Hebrews mark their doorposts with blood as a sign of protection against the destroyer, and they eat unleavened bread in haste. The protective marking, the meal, the sense of urgency, and the expectation of deliverance at dawn all follow the Egyptian ritual grammar: the company of souls sealed and nourished before their emergence from the night.
The rejection of the Goddess
The Storm God pattern clarifies the striking difference. In Egypt, bread was leavened - it rose with the breath of life, a feminine principle embodied in the goddess. Leavening symbolised the living wave, the infusion of spirit that animated substance. The Hebrew ritual strips this away. Only the masculine imagery is retained: the dry bread of haste, substance without breath, the husk without the wave. By rejecting leaven, the Hebrew rite rejects the goddess principle, cutting away the imagery of Isis as breath and life. This is no accident but an editorial choice, reflecting the Deuteronomist tendency to excise feminine archetypes from the cultic system.
Cosmological allegory
At daybreak the Exodus unfolds as the counterpart of the solar triumph. The plagues are the trials of the Duat, the assaults of Set’s brood. The Passover meal is the ritual pledge of protection. The death of the firstborn is the destruction of the seed of darkness. And the departure from Egypt is the emergence of light from the underworld - a nationalised retelling of Ra’s rising or Osiris’s triumph over death.
The true meaning of Passover
For the Egyptians, the earthly and the otherworldly were two mirrors of the same truth. The nature of the afterlife was the same nature seen in life: duality, balance, as above so below. What was seen in funeral ritual was enacted in daily bread and seasonal renewal. The Hebrew narrative preserved the structure but narrowed the meaning, turning a universal allegory into a national deliverance story. Yet the deeper truth remains visible. The night of terror in Egypt is the night of the sun in Amenta. The dawn of Exodus is the rising of Osiris triumphant, the eternal cycle of concealment and return, loss and renewal, enacted once more.
The Crossing of the Waters
At the heart of the Exodus story stands the crossing of the Red Sea, the moment when the waters part to let the people pass and then close again to overwhelm Pharaoh’s host. To the literalist, this is the supreme miracle of Israel’s deliverance. In archetypal terms it is another Osirian motif recast as tribal history: the journey of souls through the divided waters of chaos, led by the divine guide, with the adversary drowned in their return. The ‘Red Sea’ is a redacted form of the Field of Reeds - the Egyptian paradise, Sekhet-Aaru, where the justified passed after surviving the dangers of the Duat.
The channel through chaos
In the Amduat and Book of Gates, the path of the solar barque is hewn through the primordial waters of Nun. Each night the god cuts a channel through the floods of darkness, making a way where none existed, so that the company of the justified may follow. The texts describe the souls as walking on firm ground between the walls of water, guarded by the power of Osiris and Ra. The Hebrew story substitutes Israelites for the justified souls, Pharaoh’s chariots for the fiends of Set, but the structure is unchanged: a miraculous division, a passage on dry ground, and a closing flood that engulfs the pursuers.
Cosmic allegory of separation
The motif of waters divided and closed is one of Egypt’s oldest cosmological images. Creation itself begins with the separating of waters, with light distinguished from darkness, order from chaos. Each dawn replays the act as the sun rises from the night-flood and cuts a pathway of light across the sky. The Exodus crossing is therefore a cosmological allegory. Israel represents the souls of the dead, Pharaoh is the adversary Set, and the waters are the primeval abyss. The biblical narrative has nationalised the motif, but its cosmic sense remains intact.
The drowning of the adversary
The destruction of Pharaoh’s army is the Hebrew counterpart of Set’s defeat. In the Ritual of the Duat, the enemies of Ra are overwhelmed by the returning flood, torn apart by crocodiles and serpents, their fragments scattered in the abyss. In Exodus, the chariots are swallowed as the walls of water collapse. The logic is the same: the very passage that secures the justified destroys their foes. The waters are both path and weapon, both way and doom.
Moses as Osirian guide
Moses’s role in the episode is to stand as guide. With his rod he stretches out his hand and the waters divide. The staff is the axis, the djed in Hebrew dress, opening the path through chaos. He is Osiris leading the manes, Horus wielding the sceptre, Ra cutting the channel of light. The narrative casts Moses as national liberator, but structurally he is the archetypal leader of souls, the one who makes a way through the flood for those who follow.
The Wilderness Trials
After the crossing of the waters, the Israelites wander in the wilderness for forty years. On the surface this is punishment for disobedience, a generation condemned to die in the desert before the promise is fulfilled. In archetypal terms it is not geography but ritual. The wilderness is the red land of Set, the barren zone of trial where the souls of the departed are tested and purified before entry into paradise.
The desert as Set’s domain
Egyptian cosmology divided the world into the fertile black land (kemet), sustained by the Nile, and the red land (deshret), the sterile desert associated with Set. The red land was chaos, drought, sterility, and danger. Funerary texts describe the justified as crossing ‘the desert of fire’ and ‘the valley of flame’: ‘I cross the desert of fire, I traverse the valley of flame; it does not burn me, the flame does not consume me’ (Coffin Texts, Spell 472). Others evoke the desolate wastes: ‘The deserts of sand are before me, the place without water; but Shu gives me breath, and Osiris gives me drink’ (Book of the Dead, Spell 144). To wander here was to endure Set’s realm, where hostile beings and elemental dangers tested the soul before it could reach the Field of Reeds.
The number forty as probation
The Hebrews’ forty years in the wilderness echo this ritual logic. In Egyptian mysteries, cycles of forty symbolised periods of purification and initiation. Coffin Texts, Spell 335, preserves the formula: ‘Pure for forty days, pure for forty nights, until you are justified among the gods.’ Horus himself is described as tried ‘forty days in the desert’ before contending with Set - a mythic cycle that later reappears in Christian narrative when Jesus fasts forty days in the wilderness. In every case the number represents a complete span of trial, the measure of probation before renewal.
Bread and water in the wilderness
The sustenance of the wandering is also Egyptian in form. ‘Manna from heaven’ is Osirian bread. The Pyramid Texts proclaim: ‘Osiris gives you bread, Osiris gives you beer, Osiris gives you water, that you may live’ (Utterance 373). In the Coffin Texts, Spell 330, the justified soul boasts: ‘Bread is given to me at the gate of the earth, beer is poured for me at the gate of the horizon; I live on what the gods live on.’ The Book of the Dead, Spell 148, makes the petition: ‘Give me bread at the mouth of the river, give me beer at the source of the streams, that I may not thirst, that I may not hunger in the presence of the gods.’
This was the model for divine sustenance in the desert. Water from the rock in Exodus is the Hebrew form of Osiris as provider. In the arid desert of Set, fountains spring only through divine action; Moses striking the rock repeats Osiris’s role as life-giver in barren lands.
Seeking water in stone is a primordial necessity for all cultures, and remains so for nomadic peoples today. Water is not only survival - it is the goddess herself. Across the Drift Culture this truth was enshrined: the first act of any settlement is to secure water, and this act is sacred, for without it there is no life.
The Tabernacle as portable shrine
The Tabernacle carried with the Israelites is another survival of Egyptian practice. Reliefs from Karnak and Abydos depict the bark shrines of Amun, Osiris, and other gods borne on poles by priests, shaded by incense and canopy, accompanied by musicians. Inscriptions describe how the gods ‘come forth in procession to travel with the people.’ Exodus reproduces this in the ‘tent of meeting,’ a portable naos that makes the divine presence journey with its followers through the desert of Set.
The movable axis
At the heart of this lies the archetype of the movable axis. Every culture fixed its order around an axis - Pharaoh enthroned, emperor at his capital, temple at the city’s centre. Yet these axes were not immovable. Egyptian capitals shifted from Memphis to Thebes to Amarna; new cult centres rose; each king raised his own djed. Even Medjed, the ‘djed with legs,’ embodied the truth that the axis could walk.
The Hebrews encoded this same principle in narrative. Their axis was not yet planted in a temple but carried in a portable shrine, moving through the wilderness toward a promised centre. To ‘make a name’ (shem) in a new land was to plant a new axis of order. Nature itself does not operate around one eternal axis, but many: rivers shift, stars precess, dynasties pass, and new centres arise. The wilderness wandering expresses this truth: the axis can move, and wherever it is established, there the centre of the world is.
Thus, the wilderness wandering is the Osirian probation retold. The desert is the red land of Set, the period forty the ritual cycle of trial, the manna and water the gifts of Osiris, the Tabernacle the shrine in procession. Israel in the wilderness are the manes in Amenta, the company of souls undergoing their probation before the fields of eternity. In Massey’s vision, their wanderings are not map but myth, the ritual journey of the departed through Set’s land toward the promised paradise.
The Battle with Amalek and the Raised Hands
During the wandering, the Israelites are attacked by Amalek. The narrative says that as long as Moses holds up his hands, Israel prevails, but when he lowers them Amalek gains the upper hand. Aaron and Hur support him, one on each side, until the sun sets and the battle is won. To the casual reader this is a quaint miracle of intercession. In archetypal terms it is another Egyptian motif in Hebrew guise: the raising of the axis, the exaltation of order over chaos, the Osirian struggle of Horus and Set replayed in tribal history.
Raising the axis
The image of Moses with arms uplifted is transparent when compared with Egyptian ritual. To raise the arms is to raise the axis. The djed pillar, symbol of stability and the backbone of Osiris, was ceremonially raised each year at festivals, signifying the triumph of Osiris over death and the restoration of maat. Reliefs from Abydos show the Pharaoh, assisted by priests, heaving the djed upright while Isis and Nephthys flank it in support. The Book of the Dead invokes this act: ‘Raise yourself, Osiris, you have your backbone once more.’ When Moses’s hands are held aloft, Israel prevails because the axis is upright, the pillar of truth exalted. When his arms sink, disorder gains ground, as when the djed falls.
Twin supports
The support of Aaron and Hur on either side of Moses is another survival of Egyptian imagery. In Egyptian art the djed was often flanked by twin supporters, or the solar disk upheld between two pillars. In ritual, the raising of the pillar was not done alone but stabilised by attendants at its base. The Hebrew story reflects this structure, but the names are telling.
The image is of the Egyptian god Heh - the symbol of eternity. It is Heh, as HUHI - or IHUH - that evolved to become the Hebrew name YHWH. (See Additional Information below).
Hur is Hor - Horus. The very name preserves the Egyptian ḥr, the falcon god who embodies the axis of kingship. In the scene, Horus stands as one support of the exalted arms of Moses, just as the Horus-king was always the stabiliser of Osiris’s pillar.
Aaron, however, is the polar counterpart. If Hur/Horus embodies the eastern rising force, Aaron represents the western descent. His rod becomes a serpent before Pharaoh (Exod. 7:10), echoing the uraeus of Wadjet upon the brow - the protective flame of Isis transfigured into a male priestly emblem. In Aaron we glimpse the survival of the goddess principle, flattened into male form. The serpent is preserved, but its feminine vitality is reassigned to a masculine priesthood.
Thus, the two supports embody the duality of the axis. Hur is Horus, the rising east. Aaron is the vestige of Isis, the serpent goddess, reassigned to the west and masculinised in the Hebrew cult. Together they steady the arms of Moses, upholding the axis until the sun sets. The battle is not won by sword but by the exaltation of the cosmic pillar, borne by Horus on one side and a diminished echo of Isis on the other.
What happened to Isis?
In the earliest Drift Culture archetype, one thing was always fundamental: nature is a duality comprised of god-form and goddess-life. The theanonyms are continuous through our saga. Whether typified in the name lugal or krst, or in the duality of Ptah and Atum, there is no creation without both male and female principles. Isis embodied the feminine as everything that gives life: water, breath, movement, regeneration.
But Judahite religion, founded on a policy of male-only rulership, consistently excised the goddess. Isis was hidden, diminished, or reassigned into male roles. Yet she always remains in other guises: in the serpent of Eve, in the serpent-rod of Aaron, in the mourning sister-figures reduced to silence.
In the wider mythos, the goddess is continuum itself. She is the cycle of existence that never ceases: mourning, rejoicing, regenerating. The male figure is transient, a form that dies and returns. God is emblematic of cyclic change - the seasons, the axis - but the goddess is the continuum of life, the ratio behind form, the field that endures.
Aaron’s role in the biblical redaction is to provide continuity of this goddess principle under a male mask. No female in the Bible is ever afforded the prime status of the goddess. She is always edited out, reduced, or hidden in male characters - as she would later be in the tale of David (dwd, the duat). Aaron’s serpent staff is the survival of Isis, displaced into priestly form, a token of the goddess flattened by patriarchal redaction.
The arc and the pillars of the horizon
The dualist psychology of Egypt is everywhere in this scene. Be it North and South, East and West, or the two crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, all are stations of the sun. The sun’s daily course was envisioned as an arc: Horus rising, traversing the sky, and descending into Set - Osiris in the underworld of night. The two mountains of the horizon were depicted as twin supports of this arch, the ‘royal arch of the sun.’
It is no coincidence that sacred temples were built using arcs and pillars. The sun was seen sailing the sky in a barque or ark - a vessel of light following an arched course. The ark is also a container, a chest of divine presence, itself an ‘arc’ in form. The same word-root resonates in arch, arc, ark, and barque. All describe an archetypal curve, first observed daily in the heavens for hundreds of millennia, later encoded into myth, and finally built into stone. Egyptian architects translated the arc of the sky into the arches of their temples, and the cross within the arc of a circle into the ground plans of their sanctuaries. Four directions, four seasons, and the equinox balance of light and dark were inscribed into stone as cosmic geometry.
Amalek as adversary
Amalek in the Hebrew tale plays the role of Set, the adversary who rises against the company of souls. The contest is eternal: Horus against Set, Israel against Amalek, light against darkness. Victory is secured not by force alone but by the maintenance of the axis, upheld by twin supports beneath the arc of heaven.
Ritual memory
Thus, Moses with arms uplifted is no anecdote of battlefield prayer but a contracted ritual memory. It is the raising of the djed, the upholding of the axis beneath the arch of the sky. Aaron and Hur are the twin supports, Amalek is the adversary of Set, and the victory of Israel is the triumph of maat over chaos. The very structure of Egyptian cosmology - arc, axis, twin pillars, balance of light and dark - is here reframed in Hebrew narrative. The scene encodes in miniature what Egyptian priests carved on walls, enacted in ritual, and embedded in the very architecture of their sacred spaces.
Sinai and the Law
The defining moment of Moses’s career in the biblical narrative is his ascent of Mount Sinai to receive the law. The scene is saturated with thunder, lightning, fire, and cloud - the trembling of the mountain and the voice of God proclaiming commandments. The tablets of stone, written by the divine hand, are brought down to the people as covenant. To the orthodox reader this is the beginning of Hebrew law. In archetypal terms it is a recension of the Osirian revelation of maat - the eternal law of truth and balance - dramatized in Hebrew form.
The mountain as akhet
In Egyptian cosmology, the mountain is the horizon-mound, the akhet, where the sun rises and sets, the place of revelation and transformation. The Pyramid Texts declare: ‘The doors of the horizon (akhet) are opened for you, the doors of the sky are thrown open for you, that you may rise as the great star’ (Utterance 364). The Coffin Texts likewise affirm: ‘I know the mountain of the horizon where Re goes forth’ (Spell 335). To stand upon the mount is to stand at the cosmic threshold of divine manifestation. Moses on Sinai is the Hebrew echo of Horus or Osiris revealed upon the horizon. The thunder and fire are not new miracles but the natural epiphanies of Ra, long familiar in ritual texts: ‘I am that flame which shines in the horizon’ (Coffin Texts, Spell 1130).
The tablets as twin pillars
The two tablets of stone correspond to the twin supports or stelae that stood at temple gateways and along processional routes. They symbolised dual witness: heaven and earth, north and south, east and west. The Pyramid Texts declare: ‘Stand firm, you two supports of the sky, that the sky may be lifted up by you’ (Utterance 600). The Hebrew version contracts this into two inscribed stones, but the logic is the same: truth established by paired witnesses, the law fixed in dual form. The ‘ten words’ written upon them are not novel legislation but the numerical condensation of cosmic order.
Maat as eternal law
Maat was not invention but the eternal principle by which creation stood. The Pyramid Texts affirm: ‘Maat is given to you; you live by maat, you eat by maat, you speak by maat’ (Utterance 254). The Instruction of Ptahhotep is equally clear: ‘Maat is great, and its worth is lasting. It has not been disturbed since the time of Osiris.’ Long before Deuteronomy, the Egyptians knew law as cosmic balance, not tribal statute. The Hebrew law is a transcript - a narrowed covenantal form of maat.
Law as judgment
The Sinai revelation also parallels the judgment scenes of the Book of the Dead. Osiris presides as judge while the heart of the deceased is weighed against the feather of maat. ‘My heart shall be weighed in the balance against the feather of maat. The verdict shall be true, my soul shall not be found wanting’ (Book of the Dead, Spell 125). When Moses proclaims blessing and curse, life and death, he is enacting this same drama: the scales of maat, transposed from the hall of Osiris to the desert mount.
Storm God typology
That the event is conducted on a mountain preserves the Storm God typology: the life-bringer enthroned upon the axis mundi, the cosmic judge whose presence is fire and cloud. Pyramid Texts describe the king ascending ‘in a flame of fire, his enemies fall as smoke’ (Utterance 217). The horizon mount is always doubled in funerary texts as twin points of dawn and dusk, the two supports of the royal arch. Sinai collapses this into one scene: storm, fire, voice, and command concentrated into a single mountain theophany.
The Mesopotamian parallel
The motif was not Egyptian alone. In Mesopotamia, Kingu bore the Tablets of Destiny and handed down the mandate of cosmos to the lugal, the earthly king. The transaction took place on the ziggurat, the man-made mountain that replicated heaven’s axis in clay and stone. The Sinai narrative fuses these traditions - duality, axis, mount, and law - into the story of one god giving tablets to one prophet. What was originally a shared archetypal drama became narrowed into a national myth.
Continuity of myth
Sinai is therefore not the start of law but the continuation of myth. The mountain is the akhet, the horizon of revelation. The thunder and fire are the epiphanies of Ra. The two tablets are the twin witnesses of maat. Moses as lawgiver is Osiris as judge, proclaiming order to the souls. The Hebrew covenant is the Osirian balance retold, the eternal law once more inscribed, now reframed as tribal covenant but in essence still maat: truth, measure, and cosmic balance.
The Golden Calf
While Moses lingers on the mountain, the people below fashion a golden calf and proclaim it the god who brought them out of Egypt. In anger, Moses breaks the tablets and grinds the idol to powder. To the historian, this is a story of apostasy and correction. Archetypally it is a distorted memory of Egyptian bovine symbolism - torn from its context and recast as error.
The bull as sacred power
In Egypt the bull was a central emblem of sacred vitality. Apis of Memphis was revered as the living manifestation of Osiris. Pyramid Texts already declare: ‘The king is the bull of the sky, mighty, who begets the gods, who begets the people’ (Utterance 442). In later cult practice, Apis was chosen by distinctive markings and housed at Memphis with royal honours. Inscriptions from the Serapeum call him ‘the living image of Osiris.’ Herodotus describes the Apis bull as ‘sacred to Ptah but honoured as Osiris manifest,’ kept in splendour and consulted as an oracle. At Heliopolis, the Mnevis bull was equally venerated as the embodiment of Ra. Plutarch states plainly: ‘The Mnevis bull is considered the sacred image of Ra, as Apis is of Osiris’ (On Isis and Osiris 33).
These were not inert idols but living sacraments: vitality, fertility, and cosmic force embodied in animal form. To erect a golden calf in the wilderness is therefore a crude survival of this tradition - a symbol remembered but stripped of the maat that gave it coherence. The Hebrew narrative condemns as apostasy what was, in Egypt, the highest form of divine embodiment.
The calf as saviour
The irony deepens when the calf is described as ‘the god who brought you out of Egypt.’ Egyptian texts describe precisely this role. In funerary spells, the bull guides the justified to paradise: ‘O Bull of the West, strong one who carries the sun in the night-bark, guide me to the Field of Reeds’ (Book of the Dead, Spell 162). Apis was the Osirian guide, leading souls from death into renewal. The biblical calf, denounced as false, carries the same meaning: the divine power who delivers, remembered but miscast.
The cosmic bull
The bull was also a celestial archetype. In the night sky, Orion (Osiris) eternally faces Taurus, the Bull. Across the Drift Culture, the bull is both adversary and strength: the beast to be overcome and the power to be assumed. Egyptian ritual harnessed this duality - the bull as sacrificial victim, but also as the force of renewal that feeds gods and men alike. Agriculture reinforced this symbolism: the ox drew the plough that opened the earth for seed, making civilisation possible. Language itself encoded it: the first letter of the proto-Sinaitic and Hebrew alphabet, aleph, comes from the ox (ʾalp), its early form a stylised bull’s head. To honour the bull was therefore to acknowledge the unity of heaven and earth, the strength in nature that sustains culture and mediates between cosmic order and human need.
Breaking the tablets
Moses shattering the tablets encodes rupture at the deepest level. When truth is betrayed, maat is fractured. In Egyptian logic, when the bull is honoured apart from Osiris - power without order - chaos ensues. Thus the breaking of stone is not only anger but mythic drama: the sign of law collapsing when symbol is divorced from its rightful context.
Fragmentary inheritance
The episode marks a transition between two poles: revelation on the mount and disorder below. It dramatises the danger of fragmentary inheritance. The Hebrews preserved Egyptian signs but without their cosmological logic. Severed from context, the bull became ‘idol.’ The golden calf is Apis without Osiris, vitality without balance, form without law.
The ghost of Osiris
The golden calf, then, is not history but myth inverted. The sacred bull, revered in Egypt as the living Osiris, is remembered in distorted form and condemned as folly. The broken tablets mark the fracture of truth when symbol is misapplied. The tale reveals how Hebrew tradition both preserved and repudiated its Egyptian parentage - condemning in story what it still carried in form. In the calf stands the ghost of Osiris, misunderstood and rejected, yet still bearing witness to the Egyptian origin of the myth.
The bull rejected, Egypt repudiated
In the earliest layer of the Bible - the Deuteronomic text - the bull is already fixed as the sign of Israel’s sin. Yet in Egypt the bull was emblematic of the oldest Memphite cult. At Saqqara, the necropolis of Memphis, the Apis bull was buried in the Serapeum, and its cult was bound to the earliest pyramid tradition. Saqqara itself was the site of Egypt’s architectural genesis: the step pyramid of Djoser, overseen by his vizier Imhotep, the legendary builder whose very name encodes the principle of Atum, ‘he who comes in peace,’ and whose epithets identified him with creation, healing, and wisdom.
To denounce the bull, therefore, is to denounce Saqqara - the source of pyramid-building, maat-architecture, and the Memphite theology that declared Ptah and Atum as first principles. It is to reject Egypt wholesale, not only as foreign but as evil. Yet this was a rejection built on appropriation. The Deuteronomist redactors who fashioned the earliest form of Judaism constructed their new identity by repudiating the very archetypes they inherited. The bull that once symbolised Osiris at Memphis and Ra at Heliopolis becomes, in their text, the emblem of apostasy.
Judahite religion thus formed itself on a paradox: a cultic system indebted to Egyptian cosmology and ritual, yet framed in opposition to Egypt. To reject the bull was to reject their own origin, rewriting inheritance as sin. The covenant law of Sinai was cast as triumph over the ‘idolatry’ of Egypt, but in truth it carried Egypt within it. In condemning the golden calf, the Deuteronomists revealed the fault line at the root of Judaism: an identity created by the rejection of its own ancestral source.
The Tabernacle
After the breaking of the tablets and the renewal of the covenant, the Israelites are instructed to build a sanctuary, a tent of meeting, in which the divine presence will dwell and accompany them. Exodus describes its curtains, gold-covered boards, altars, lampstands, and incense in exacting detail. To the casual reader this is the foundation of Hebrew worship. In archetypal terms it is a contracted memory of Egyptian shrines - the portable sanctuaries that carried the gods in procession.
Sacred arks in procession
In Egypt the gods were not confined to immovable temples. They also travelled in sacred arks - gilded wooden shrines carried on poles, veiled and overshadowed by canopies. Reliefs from the Opet Festival at Luxor show Amun’s bark borne by priests through the streets, shaded by a canopy, accompanied by incense bearers, lamp bearers, musicians, and standards. At Abydos, Seti I had carved processions of Osiris’s bark: a golden shrine with carrying poles, libations, and clouds of incense before it. The Hebrew Tabernacle reproduces this form: a mobile sanctuary, veiled, perfumed, borne in journey, and treated as the presence of the god among the people.
The Holy of Holies
The innermost chamber of the Tabernacle - the Holy of Holies - corresponds to the Egyptian naos, the hidden cella where the god’s image dwelt. At Karnak and later at Edfu, the naos was veiled and closed, entered only by Pharaoh or the high priest. Exodus commands: ‘The veil shall divide for you the holy place from the most holy’ (Exod. 26:33). This is identical in function to the Egyptian veil concealing the divine presence from the uninitiated.
The menorah and sacred light
The Hebrew lampstand of seven branches echoes Egyptian cult objects. Reliefs from Karnak and Dendera show stylised trees and lamps placed in sanctuaries as perpetual symbols of life and light. The number seven, sacred in both cultures, often marked completeness. The menorah is therefore not innovation but the Hebrew contraction of perpetual Egyptian temple lights into portable form.
Incense before the shrine
The altar of incense in Exodus likewise mirrors Egyptian practice. At Deir el-Bahri, Hatshepsut’s temple shows priests swinging censers before Amun’s ark, clouds of smoke rising as the ‘breath of the god.’ Hymns to Amun describe him as ‘he whose incense is smoke by day, whose flame shines by night’ (Papyrus Leiden I 350). Exodus 30:7–8 preserves the same formula, commanding incense to be offered ‘every morning’ and ‘between the evenings’ before the Lord.
Cloud and fire as signs of presence
The cloud and fire associated with the Tabernacle are also Egyptian. Hymns describe divine shrines as ‘overshadowed by cloud and gleaming with flame.’ In Egyptian imagination, incense smoke by day and firelight by night were visible tokens of the god’s presence. Exodus translates this directly: ‘For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night’ (Exod. 40:38).
Ritual continuity
This is not ornament borrowed but ritual remembered. The Tabernacle is the Egyptian shrine adapted to wilderness conditions. Its features - the veiled inner chamber, the lamp of perpetual light, the altar of incense, the ark on poles overshadowed by smoke and flame - are all elements of Egyptian cult. The Hebrews did not invent them; they preserved them in contracted form, inscribing them into their own law.
The ark-shrine in tent form
Thus, the Tabernacle is another witness that the Mosaic cult is Egyptian at its root. It is the ark-shrine in tent form, the naos made portable, the festival procession turned into wilderness liturgy. The Israelites carried with them not only fragments of Egyptian myth but the very forms of Egyptian worship, reduced to desert scale yet unmistakably bearing the lineaments of Osiris’s shrine.
The Ark of the Covenant
At the centre of the Tabernacle stands the Ark of the Covenant - a gilded chest borne on poles, overshadowed by cherubim, and regarded as the throne of the divine presence. Exodus describes it as both the vessel of testimony and the footstool of God. To the believer it is unique in history. In archetypal terms it is a replica of the Osirian chest: the coffin of the god, borne in procession, attended by winged guardians, functioning as both tomb and throne.
The Osirian chest
In the myth of Osiris, after the god is slain by Set, his body is enclosed in a chest. This chest became the focus of ritual: mourned, recovered by Isis, carried in procession, and enshrined in temples. Reliefs from the temples of Seti I and Ramesses II at Abydos show Osiris’s bark borne on poles by priests, enclosed in a shrine with canopy, accompanied by incense bearers. The chest was carried using rings and staves - exactly the design Exodus prescribes for the Ark (Exod. 25:12–15). Egyptian ritual texts also warn: ‘Handle him not, approach him not, lest you be scorched by his flame’ (Pyramid Texts, Utterance 574) - a striking parallel to the Hebrew prohibition against touching the Ark.
Winged guardians
The cherubim with outstretched wings above the Ark also have clear Egyptian antecedents. In tomb and temple art, Isis and Nephthys are depicted at the head and foot of Osiris’s coffin, wings extended in protection. Coffin Texts, Spell 148, records: ‘Isis is at your head, Nephthys is at your feet, they spread their arms over you.’ In the burial of Tutankhamun, four golden shrines enclosing the sarcophagus are embraced by winged goddesses - Isis, Nephthys, Neith, and Serqet - shielding the king in death. The Hebrew cherubim facing one another with wings touching over the Ark are a contraction of this imagery. The divine presence ‘between the cherubim’ is Osiris enthroned between his sisters, recast in Hebrew idiom.
Throne and tomb
The Ark is both throne and tomb. For Osiris, the chest was his coffin - but also the seat of judgment from which he ruled the dead. Coffin Texts describe the deceased as ‘Osiris, lord of the throne, who is in the coffin’ (Spell 1). The Book of the Dead affirms: ‘He sits upon the throne of maat, his body is in the coffin, his power is in heaven’ (Spell 17). For Israel, the Ark is the throne of Yahweh and the footstool of his invisible kingship. In both systems, duality is preserved: death and sovereignty, coffin and throne, absence and presence.
The Ark in battle
The martial use of the Ark likewise mirrors Egyptian precedent. At Abydos, inscriptions describe Osiris’s bark ‘coming forth to overthrow the enemies of the king.’ Ramesses II had divine shrines accompany his campaigns, borne into battle as talismans of victory. The Hebrew Ark performs the same role: carried around Jericho until the walls fall, or borne into battle as the assurance of triumph. In each case, the chest is the god in portable form, the embodiment of divine presence on the field.
Continuity of form and function
The Ark of the Covenant is not sui generis. Its form, function, and symbolism are Egyptian. It is the Osirian coffin reimagined as Yahweh’s throne, the shrine of procession transposed into desert liturgy, the talisman of battle carried into conquest. The gilded chest with poles, the winged guardians, the enthroned presence, the prohibition against touching - all belong first to Egypt. In this sense, the Ark is the most transparent witness that Moses is Osiris in Hebrew dress: the lawgiver’s cult carried into the wilderness, a contracted survival of the Egyptian mysteries under a new name.
The Serpent Reappears
The episode of the brazen serpent in the wilderness is another contraction of the same imagery already encountered: the serpent that wounds also heals when raised upon the axis. In Egypt, this was Wadjet - uraeus on the brow, flame-spitter and guardian of sight - and the serpent standards borne in procession as talismans of protection. In Exodus the motif is repeated: the people are bitten by fiery serpents, and the cure is to elevate their image upon a pole. Nothing new is added beyond what has already been seen: the axis-serpent union, stability ordered by maat, chaos transfigured into wisdom. The serpent is one of the continuous presences in the tale, appearing again and again in different guises, always pointing back to the same truth - that life is preserved not by denial of chaos, but by its raising and integration into order.
The Priesthood and the Vestments
Another strand of the Mosaic tradition is the consecration of Aaron and his sons as priests, with elaborate rites of washing, anointing, and robing. Exodus describes garments rich in symbolism: a breastpiece with twelve stones, a linen ephod, a robe adorned with bells and pomegranates, and a golden plate upon the forehead inscribed ‘Holiness to the Lord.’ To a biblical reader these are the unique ordinances of Hebrew cult. Archetypally they are recognisably Egyptian, survivals of priestly investiture as practised for centuries in the temples of Osiris and Ra.
Initiation rites
In Egypt, priests underwent rigorous initiation. Candidates were washed with pure water, shaved of all hair, and clothed in linen, the colour of purity. They were anointed with sacred oils, marked with ritual words or symbols, and invested with insignia of office. Hymns and temple reliefs describe this ‘purification by water and natron’ as the act that made a man fit to approach the god. The Hebrew rites of washing, anointing, and robing mirror this sequence almost exactly.
The cosmic breastpiece
The breastpiece with twelve stones is Egyptian in conception. High priests in Egypt wore pectorals inlaid with jewels representing gods, stars, or nomes (territorial divisions). Rows of stones were protective talismans, each linked to a deity or cosmic power. Tutankhamun’s treasure hoard includes pectorals set with lapis, carnelian, turquoise, and feldspar, arranged in rows symbolising order and completeness. The ephod of Aaron reframes this same principle: twelve stones not for gods or stars but for tribes. The function is unchanged - the priest bears the order of the cosmos upon his breast as he enters the holy place.
Sound and abundance
The bells and pomegranates woven into Aaron’s robe echo Egyptian ritual attire. Priests in Egypt wore garments or carried sistrums that jingled in sacred chambers, ensuring their presence was ritually audible and pure. Floral and fruit motifs, especially lotus and pomegranate, adorned sacred vestments and temple walls, signifying abundance, life, and regeneration. The Hebrew text reproduces these features in miniature, woven into the hem of the high priest’s robe.
The golden plate on the brow
The golden plate inscribed ‘Holiness to the Lord’ corresponds directly to Egyptian headbands bearing the uraeus or divine name. Upon the brow of the Pharaoh, the cobra of Wadjet blazed forth as a sign of consecration. Coffin Texts speak of the king as one ‘whose forehead is bound with the uraeus, whose flame repels his enemies.’ The Hebrew plate serves the same symbolic role: the mind bound to holiness, the brow bearing the visible sign of divine authority.
Continuity, not innovation
These correspondences are too precise to be dismissed as coincidence. The Mosaic priesthood is not invention but survival. Its rites of ordination are the Egyptian initiation adapted to desert conditions. Its vestments are temple garments reframed, retaining cosmic logic even as they are Hebraised. Aaron, robed in breastpiece, ephod, robe, and golden plate, stands not as the first of a new order but as the Egyptian initiate retold in Hebrew words, preserving the rites of Osiris under the name of Moses.
Threshold Deaths and Mount Nebo
As the Exodus story nears its end, a series of threshold deaths occur. Miriam, the sister of Moses, dies and is buried in the wilderness. Aaron, the high priest, ascends Mount Hor and dies there, his vestments passed to his son. Finally, Moses ascends Mount Nebo, beholds the promised land from afar, but does not enter. He dies upon the mountain, and his grave is unknown. To the historian these are episodes of succession and mortality. Archetypally they are mythic closures - the Osirian pattern of the guide who leads the company to paradise but does not enter himself.
The guide who remains behind
In the Egyptian mysteries, the divine guide is distinct from the souls he leads. Osiris is the way-shower, the one who stands at the threshold, securing the passage but abiding as judge rather than participant. The Book of the Dead portrays Osiris enthroned in the Hall of Judgment, weighing the hearts of the manes against the feather of maat. The justified pass into the fields of Aaru, the paradise of reeds, but Osiris himself remains seated, presiding over order. So too in the Hebrew story: the people cross the Jordan into their land of promise, but Moses remains behind. He is the Osirian guide in Hebrew form.
Miriam and Aaron as ritual thresholds
The deaths of Miriam and Aaron function as ritual markers. Miriam, the prophetess, represents maternal protection and nurture. Her death signals the end of concealment - the stage of the journey where the mother shields the vulnerable child. Aaron, the high priest, represents cultic mediation. His death marks the passing of priestly power to the next generation, the handing on of ritual knowledge. In Egyptian logic, these correspond to the losses endured by the souls in Amenta: they shed what is temporal before entering the eternal fields.
Moses barred from entry
The second striking of the rock, for which Moses is told he will not enter the land, encodes this truth. The guide cannot partake of the paradise; his role is to lead, not to arrive. In Egyptian myth, Osiris secures the way but does not share the bliss of the justified. The biblical phrase that Moses ‘did not hallow’ the source is a narrative device masking a deeper archetype: the leader is distinct from the company he leads, the threshold figure who shows the way but does not cross it.
Mount Nebo as horizon-mount
Mount Nebo, where Moses dies, is the horizon-mount - the akhet - the place of revelation and transition. Egyptian texts speak of the blessed who behold the fields of Aaru from the high places before entering them. The Pyramid Texts open with: ‘The doors of the horizon are opened for you, the doors of the sky are thrown open for you, that you may rise as a star’ (Utterance 364). Moses gazes on the land, as the justified gaze on Aaru, but he remains on the mountain. His grave unknown is the signature of myth: the guide vanishes into the archetype, absorbed into the eternal role.
Mythic closure
Thus the deaths of Miriam, Aaron, and Moses are not historical bereavements but mythic thresholds. Miriam’s nurture ceases, Aaron’s priesthood passes, Moses as guide ends upon the horizon. The people enter, but the guide does not. This is the Osirian truth: the guide is the way, not the passenger. The Hebrew narrative preserves it faithfully, transposed into desert geography, but the underlying pattern is Egyptian - the journey to paradise led by one who remains forever at the threshold.
The Promised Land as Aaru
At last, the long journey culminates in the sight of the Promised Land. Israel crosses the Jordan, led by Joshua, and enters Canaan. Yet Moses himself does not go in. To the biblical historian, this is the fulfilment of divine oath and the beginning of national settlement. Archetypally it is a transposition of the Osirian paradise, the Field of Reeds - Sekhet-Aaru - into terrestrial geography. The Promised Land is not Palestine but paradise, the blessed fields beyond death.
The Egyptian paradise
In the Egyptian Ritual, the journey of the justified ends in Aaru, the fields of peace. These are described in the Book of the Dead as fertile lands watered by canals, where wheat and barley grow to seven cubits, where the soul reaps abundantly, and where the air is pure and the waters calm. Spell 110 proclaims: ‘This is the Field of Reeds, where the barley is seven cubits high, and the ears thereof are two cubits, for the spirits of the blessed to live upon.’ It is the eternal estate of the faithful - the homeland promised to the justified after their trials.
From paradise to geography
The Hebrew account mirrors this vision but plants it on earthly soil. The Promised Land is described as ‘flowing with milk and honey,’ the imagery of abundance transposed from mythic paradise to Canaanite territory. The mythic paradise has been historicised as a conquest narrative. Where the Egyptian soul arrives at Aaru after judgment, the Hebrew tribes arrive at Canaan after wandering. The company of Israel is the company of souls in disguise.
Wilderness trials and entry
The logic is consistent: the wandering in the desert corresponds to the souls traversing the red land of Set. The crossing of the Jordan corresponds to the passage through the waters into Aaru. The entry into Canaan corresponds to arrival in paradise. The geography is symbolic, not literal. To enter the land is to be justified, not to conquer.
The conquest redaction
The violent stories of Joshua are, in this reading, later expansions masking the older truth. The original land entered was not won by sword but bestowed as inheritance. In the Ritual, the soul declares innocence before the scales of maat, is judged justified, and then passes into the fields. In Exodus, the people follow the Ark, cross the Jordan, and receive the land. Both encode the same process: paradise attained through righteousness after trial.
Moses as threshold figure
Moses remains outside, revealing but not entering. This too is Osirian logic. Osiris enthroned at the threshold shows the justified the way but abides as judge. The souls pass, but the guide does not. Moses dies on Nebo gazing at the land, as the Osirian judge gazes upon the Field of Reeds but does not join the company.
Paradise disguised as history
Thus, the Promised Land is Aaru in disguise. The canals of Aaru become the milk and honey of Canaan. The arrival of the souls becomes the settlement of the tribes. And Moses, as Osiris, is the guide who unveils paradise yet remains apart. In this, the Hebrew story preserves the Egyptian archetype almost intact. For Massey, this is the final proof: Exodus is the Ritual retold, and the goal of Israel is not history but eternity.
Aaron and Aaru: The Pillar of the Continuum (a speculative etymological connection)
In Egyptian cosmology the Field of Reeds (Aaru) was not simply paradise as a fixed destination, but the continuum of passage — the liminal space of motion through which the justified souls travelled on their way to union with Ra. It is feminine in essence: the reeds, the waters, the flow of movement that carries the dead onward. Aaru is the journey itself, the medium of continuity.
In this book we have reduced the root word ru to its essence. Likewise, we have traced the logic behind words derived from the same stream in the Gothic Script logic of the Drift Culture: Ra, Ar, Or, and On.
Structurally:
ru = path — the typical destination is Ra.
ar/ur = source, field, apex of the axis, origin (as in Ar Tor or Ur of the Chaldees).
on = axis, standing point (as in the city of On or Innu).
Within this framework, Aaru (the Field of Reeds) is not simply paradise as a fixed destination but the continuum of passage — the liminal field of reeds through which the justified soul must travel to union with Ra. Feminine in essence, it represents water, reed, and flow: the goddess principle of movement and continuity.
Aaron’s name encodes this principle. Aaru combined with On makes Aaron: the continuum stabilised at the axis, the feminine field conjoined with the masculine pillar. He is both the journeying flow and the fixed point, the way and the standing support.
This dual role explains Aaron’s function in the narrative. As priest he officiates the rites of passage, guarding the continuity of the journey. As Moses’s supporter, he literally holds up the prophet’s arms — the pillar that steadies the axis so the passage remains open. In Aaron, the goddess principle of continuity is preserved but redacted into male form, bound to the stabilising archetype of On.
Thus Aaron is more than assistant or ancestor. His name marks him as the pillar of the continuum: the Field of Reeds embodied, the journey itself made stable in priestly form.
The Name, Number, and Geometry of 345
Beyond story and symbol, the very name of Moses carries numeric and geometric significance. In Hebrew gematria, the letters of Mosheh (משה) total 345. To the ordinary reader this is incidental. In fact, the number 345 encodes the sacred right-angled triangle of 3-4-5 - the foundation of Egyptian surveying and temple building, a practical emblem of maat, truth and cosmic order.
The Egyptian 3-4-5 triangle
The 3-4-5 triangle was central to Egyptian geometry. With a rope knotted into twelve equal parts, the rope-stretchers (harpedonaptai) pulled it into a triangle of sides 3, 4, and 5, guaranteeing a perfect right angle. Plutarch notes that these rope-stretchers laid out temples ‘using the knowledge of the heavens’ (Isis and Osiris 56). Reliefs from Edfu and Dendera show the Pharaoh, assisted by the goddess Seshat, stretching such a cord to orient temples. This was not mere engineering: it was a ritual act, aligning stone with the cosmic order. Herodotus confirms that ‘geometry was first discovered by the Egyptians and passed on to the Greeks’ (Histories II.109).
Archaeological evidence reinforces this. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (c. 1650 BCE) sets out methods for calculating areas and pyramid slopes, preserving the same geometric ratios. The ‘seked’ system for pyramid incline corresponds to 3-4-5 triangle proportions. Fragments from Kahun show ropes marked for surveying, consistent with the 12-unit triangle. Even the great pyramids of Giza preserve alignments traceable to Pythagorean ratios, long before Greece articulated them.
Moses as 345, the law embodied
For the Egyptians, the triangle was not abstract mathematics but sacred measure: the act of ‘making true’ (maat kheru) in stone. The right angle embodied order imposed upon chaos. A figure whose name resolves to 345 is therefore archetypally a lawgiver - the one who ‘makes true.’
The sum of 3+4+5 is 12, the archetype of wholeness: the twelve months of the year, the twelve tribes, the twelve signs of the zodiac. Twelve reduces further to 3, the triad of balance. The name of Moses therefore encodes, in number, the very principles he is said to reveal at Sinai: law, order, completeness.
The Greek echo
In Greek isopsephy the name Mōusēs totals 1,648. Reduced by successive operations, it resolves to 10 and finally to 1: the decad made whole, the monad restored. This is the cycle of emanation and return, the many folded back into the one. Even in Greek letters, the figure points to cosmic recurrence rather than biography.
A cipher of Egyptian origin
Such numerics reveal the artificiality of the figure. Historical men do not bear names that encode geometric theorems. Mythic figures do. Moses as 345 is the 3-4-5 triangle personified - the right angle embodied in story, the lawgiver whose very name declares his function.
Thus, even apart from narrative, Moses testifies to his Egyptian origin. His name is ms, ‘child of,’ left incomplete. His number is 345, the triangle of the temple builders. His geometry is maat in numeric form. He is not a Hebrew foundling made prince, but a cipher of Egyptian sacred science: the rope-stretcher’s truth translated into Hebrew letters.
Further Proof of Osirian Origin
Perhaps the most compelling evidence that Moses is an Egyptian archetype, that the Bible’s stories are cyclic, and that Moses is based entirely on Osiris, is the way the cycle continues in Joshua. The Hebrew text itself preserves Egyptian logic so transparently that it cannot be ignored.
Joshua as Horus
Joshua is the inheritor son who completes the work of Moses, just as Horus completes the work of Osiris. His very name reveals the archetype. ‘Joshua’ (Yehoshua, יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) derives from the same root as ‘Jesus’ (Yeshua, יֵשׁוּעַ), both carried into Greek as Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς). Both, in consensus sources, mean ‘YHWH saves,’ but the deeper etymological line runs to the Egyptian iusa - the ever-’coming son,’ a title of Horus. The logic is exact: the son inherits the spirit of the father, the cycle renews.
The laying on of hands
Just as Osiris transfers his power to Horus, so Moses lays his hands upon Joshua and his spirit passes into him (Numbers 27:18–23). The inheritance is continuous: Horus becomes Osiris, Osiris becomes Horus. The archetype is not broken but perpetually renewed, as one guide gives way to the next.
Son of Nun
The Hebrew text calls Joshua ‘the son of Nun’ (Numbers 13:8). This is more than genealogy. It is Egyptian cosmology in disguise. Moses, drawn from the waters as a babe, is the Horus-child of Nun. Joshua, ‘son of Nun,’ is the explicit heir: the son of the primordial waters, the ever-coming one, the iusa. The phrasing is too precise to be accidental. What begins in Moses as child of Nun is completed in Joshua, son of Nun - the inheritor who leads the people into paradise.
Mount Hor and the Horus-name
The scene of succession unfolds on Mount Hor (Numbers 20:25–28). The name is unmistakable. Hor is the Egyptian ḥr - Horus. This is not coincidence but survival. In Egypt every king bore a personal name and a Horus-name, the oldest of the five great titulary names. Written within a serekh surmounted by the falcon, the Horus-name proclaimed that the reigning king was Horus in life and Osiris in death. From the First Dynasty onwards, rulers were explicitly styled ‘Horus So-and-So.’ Examples abound: Horemheb (‘Horus in festival’), Horhotep (‘Horus is satisfied’), Horsiese (‘Horus son of Isis’). Almost every pharaoh was identified in this way.
The Horus-name was the constitutional claim: the current axis is Horus. It declared cosmic continuity - the king as incarnation of the falcon, the ever-coming son of Osiris. When the Hebrew text says Moses’ authority is transferred on Mount Hor, it is doing precisely the same thing: marking the point where Horus is enthroned. Joshua is the Horus-king, inheriting the mantle of Osiris-Moses.
The eternal cycle
Atum-Ra rises in the east, becomes Osiris in the west, and returns again into Atum. From there he merges with Ptah, the formless potential. The son of Nun is therefore the iusa - the ‘ever-coming one,’ the young Horus who embodies eternal recurrence. This same root runs through Joseph, son of Jacob, and into Yeshu/Jesus, son of Joseph son of Jacob. The cycle repeats: Moses–Joshua–Jesus are not separate founders, but variations of one archetype - the Horus-child of the waters, inheriting Osiris, guiding souls to the field of eternity.
Eleazar and El-Asar
The officiant at this transfer is Eleazar, son of Aaron (Numbers 20:26–28). His very name is Egyptian: El-Asar is ‘God Osiris’ (Asar being Osiris in Egyptian). The same element reappears in the later figure of Lazarus (El-Asar-us), raised from the tomb by Jesus as a symbolic resurrection. Both are Osirian survivals embedded in Hebrew and Christian text alike.
The most overtly Egyptian moment in the Bible
Here the Egyptian framework is laid bare. The spirit of Moses passes to Joshua, the Horus-son, on Mount Horus, overseen by El-Asar. Moses, as Osiris, does not enter the land; his role is to pass the axis onward. Joshua, the son of Nun, the iusa, inherits the mantle and leads the souls into paradise. This is the Osirian succession enacted in Hebrew words.
No passage in the Bible is more overtly Egyptian. The titulary of Horus, the cycle of Osiris and Horus, the son of Nun, the Mount of Horus, the name of Osiris preserved in Eleazar - every detail is Egyptian. Judaism, in its earliest layer, rests upon this succession rite. It is the continuity of Osiris and Horus retold as Moses and Joshua.
Concluding Summary
When the narrative is read through the Egyptian lens, the figure of Moses dissolves as a man of history and re-emerges as a mythic type: the Hebrew recension of Osiris, Horus, and the ritual journey of the soul. Every episode bears the imprint of Egyptian origin.
The birth in the bulrushes is Osiris enclosed in the Nile chest and Horus hidden in the papyrus of Chemmis. The decree to slay the male children is Set’s assault upon the divine seed, reframed as Pharaoh’s edict. The name Moses is Egyptian ms - ‘born of’ - a fragment of divine sonship. His call at the burning bush is the epiphany of fire and voice, the revelation of Ra and Hu. His staff that becomes a serpent is the djed-pillar and Wadjet, the axis and wisdom in one. The plagues are the fiends of Amenta, the night trials of Ra, retold as judgments on Egypt. The Passover is the sealing and feeding of souls before the passage through night. The crossing of the Red Sea is the solar barque cutting the flood of Nun, the adversary drowned as Set. The wilderness is the red land of Set, the forty years the ritual cycle of probation, the manna and water the bread and beer of Osiris. The Tabernacle is the portable shrine of Egypt; the Ark is the Osirian chest borne on poles, overshadowed by Isis and Nephthys. The raised serpent is Wadjet exalted on the axis, healing by sight. The priesthood of Aaron is the Egyptian investiture preserved in Hebrew words.
The battle with Amalek is the raising of the djed, upheld by twin supports. Hur is Horus, his very name preserving the ḥr root of the falcon-god. Aaron is the polar counterpart, carrying the serpent-symbol of Isis but flattened into a male priest. The Hebrew narrative thus preserves the dual supports of the pillar but erases the goddess. What was Isis and Horus flanking Osiris becomes Aaron and Hur flanking Moses - the female principle absorbed into male-only priesthood.
The deaths of Miriam, Aaron, and Moses are ritual thresholds; Mount Nebo is the horizon-mount, where the guide sees but does not enter. The Promised Land is not Canaan but Aaru, the Field of Reeds, paradise eternal. Even the very name of Moses encodes 345, the sacred 3-4-5 triangle of maat, the law of cosmic rightness embodied in number. Joshua, ‘son of Nun,’ inherits as the Horus-figure, on Mount Hor - the Mount of Horus - in a succession rite identical to the Horus-name tradition of Egypt. Eleazar (El-Asar, ‘God Osiris’) officiates. Nothing in the Bible is more overtly Egyptian.
Moses is therefore Osiris-Orion, the archetypal guide who leads the manes through trial to paradise. Israel are the souls of the dead; Egypt the body of matter; Pharaoh the Setian force; the Exodus the passage after death; the Promised Land the eternal field. The saga is funerary allegory - the Book of the Dead rewritten as tribal history. What is proclaimed as the history of a people is, at root, the myth of the soul.
Thus ‘Moses’ is not a historical lawgiver but the cipher of maat; not a man but a myth. His story is the Egyptian Ritual in Hebrew form, the Osirian journey cast into scripture. Behind every Hebrew scene stands an Egyptian prototype. Moses is Osiris retold - the eternal guide of souls, the lawgiver whose law is cosmic balance. The Exodus is not from Ramses to Canaan but from death to life. The Promised Land is not Palestine but Aaru.
The thesis of the Storm God is exemplified here in the very first written book of the Bible. The foundation of Judaism rests on the god atop the mountain who roars and flashes, the storming axis who is light and word, who is life in water. In Egyptian thought, god and goddess archetypes were united - Osiris with Isis, Ra with Hathor, Horus with Wadjet. In the Hebrew recension, the feminine was stripped away, flattened into male roles like Aaron, and finally erased. What remains is a male-only cult, but the traces of Isis and the goddess continuum are still visible in the serpent, the hidden archetypes, and the very names of the figures.
Osiris was the Egyptian form of a still older archetype: the Orionic - the observation of the sky as axis and guide, the cosmic pattern underlying life and death. Orion is a universal figure, seen prehistorically by every culture that raised its eyes to the heavens. What later appears miraculous in myth is grounded in this experiential bedrock: the sky, the flood, the fire, the cycles of birth and death. Myth is the record of humanity’s evolving consciousness of nature in time and space. It belongs to all peoples. Religion later sought to monopolise the archetype, to claim it for one tribe or creed, but myth reveals it was always shared.
The Importance of Recognising a Culture’s Own Language
One of the greatest obstacles to recognising the Egyptian origin of biblical myth is the language we use. The names that dominate public discourse - Isis, Osiris, Horus, Imhotep - are not Egyptian at all, but Greek renderings. The Egyptians themselves never spoke these names. Their own words were Aset (ꜣst), also written Auset or Iset; Wsjr (wsjr), also Asar or Ausar; Ḥr (ḥr), preserved as Heru, Hor, or Har; and Iu-em-hetep (im-ḥtp), ‘he who comes in peace.’ Each of these carried layers of semantic and phonetic meaning that vanish once we flatten them into later Hellenic forms.
This is not a trivial point. The Egyptian consonantal skeleton - the roots, suffixes, determinatives - reveals the functions and archetypal fields of the deities. Aset is not simply ‘Isis, goddess of magic’ but a name-group bound to vessel, seat, and water. Wsjr is not merely ‘Osiris, lord of the dead’ but a cluster of meanings tied to inundation, renewal, and field-process. The ḥr of Horus appears not only in the falcon but in names like Horemheb, Horhotep, Horsiese - the living Horus-name that every king bore. When we say ‘Mount Hor’ in the Bible, or meet the figure ‘Hur’ beside Moses, we are reading ḥr - Horus himself - hidden in plain sight. But because we habitually use the Greek forms, the recognition is lost.
The same applies to Aaron, Eleazar, and Lazarus. The Egyptian root of Osiris is Asar. El-Asar is ‘God Osiris,’ preserved directly in the name Eleazar. In the Gospel of John the same becomes Lazarus (El-Asar-us), raised from the tomb by Jesus. Yet when public texts speak only of ‘Lazarus,’ with no hint of Asar, the Osirian core is concealed. Likewise Imhotep: originally the epithet Iu-em-hetep, ‘he who comes in peace.’ Over centuries it was historicised into a single figure, then recast in Hellenistic cult as Asclepius, and finally turned by modern cinema into a mummy-monster. What began as a sacred epithet became biography and then fiction.
The consequence is epistemic blindness. When only Greek headwords are given, readers never see that Aaron’s serpent is Wadjet displaced, that Hur is Horus, that Eleazar is Osiris, that the iusa-name reappears in Joshua, Joseph, and Jesus. The Egyptian phonemes show the continuum of archetypes, but the Greek masks obscure them.
This practice is not accidental. As I showed in Appendix V, the Roman method was to obscure, reduce, redact, and replace. Naming is one of the simplest tools of that process. By standardising Greek forms in encyclopaedias, museum labels, and school texts, the older Egyptian voice is silenced, its plurality reduced to one or two foreign names. The result is that the public memory is curated - Egypt becomes background ‘influence,’ while the real lexical and archetypal continuity is hidden.
The remedy is simple but profound: begin with the names as the Egyptians wrote them. Aset, Wsjr, Ḥr, Im-ḥtp. Recognise the phonetic and morphological clues that tie them to ritual vocabulary - krst (the anointed), iusa (the ever-coming son), maat (truth and balance). Only then can we see that Moses, Joshua, Eleazar, and Jesus all carry Egyptian roots, and that Judaism itself was founded not on abstract revelation but on the very titulary of Horus and Osiris.
Unless we return to the culture’s own words, the most compelling evidence remains hidden in plain sight.
The Propaganda of Translation
When we are told by consensus sources that ‘Joshua’ and ‘Jesus’ both mean ‘YHWH saves,’ we are not receiving a neutral linguistic truth but a theological gloss. The definition was written by the same priestly editors who shaped the texts, canonised by later rulers, and repeated until it became orthodoxy. It is a closed loop: the religion defines the name, the name confirms the theology, and the theology proves itself by pointing back to the name.
This self-fulfilling etymology obscures the Egyptian root. The deeper line runs not through the contrived formula of YHWH saves, but through the Egyptian iusa - ‘the ever-coming son,’ a title of Horus. This is the archetype visible in Joshua, Joseph, and Jesus alike: the inheritor-son who continues the work of the father, the cycle renewed again and again. But when the public is told only the Judeo-Christian gloss, the Egyptian continuity is hidden.
As propaganda, the rulers wrote the rules. They interpreted the history they themselves created, and handed it down to the masses. Consensus academia repeats it still, often without noticing that the circle is self-closed. Only by returning to the original Egyptian forms - to iusa, to ḥr, to wsjr, to ꜣst - can we see the real inheritance. What survives in the Bible is not an original Hebrew revelation but an Egyptian archetype, renamed, reframed, and redacted until its source is invisible.
The Jesus Parallels
Even in the father–son cycle that defines Osiris and Horus, the Bible preserves the Egyptian pattern in its genealogies - but only partially and often in disguise. Inheritance is typified in the repetition of names: Jacob–Joseph–Jacob–Joseph. Such overt sequences are rare in the Bible, precisely because the redactors laboured to obscure the Egyptian origin. The texts were written and revised to close loopholes, encode numerology, retroject prophecies, and flatten archetypes into historical narrative.
One such case is Jesus’s paternal lineage. His father Joseph is styled in Greek as a tekton, translated commonly as ‘carpenter.’ This is a deliberate obscuration. Joseph is not a humble woodworker but the archetypal Master Craftsman - the role of Ptah, the great artisan-god of Memphis. Here the earliest Egyptian mindset is preserved in outline but concealed in gospel language. Jesus is then further distanced from the Osirian inheritance by being made only the adopted son of Joseph. His ‘true’ father is God, and his only biological parent is Mary - the Christianised Isis.
The genealogy presses the point further. Joseph’s father is Jacob, just as in the Old Testament story. The typology of the ‘adopted son’ recalls Imhotep - Iu-em-hetep, ‘he who comes in peace’ - remembered as Djoser’s vizier and titular heir, later deified and syncretised as Asclepius. The redactors inserted this Imhotep typology into their Joseph cycle, so that Joseph son of Jacob in Genesis becomes the prefiguration of Joseph father of Jesus. Both are masks of the Egyptian vizier who was already a proto-Christ.
Yet a rupture remains: Jesus is also a Joseph, a iusa, the ‘ever-coming son.’ How did the redactors resolve this? They closed the loop in the canonical gospels by giving Jesus a brother named James - the Greek rendering of Jacob. Thus the cycle Jacob–Joseph–Jacob is restored within the Jesus story. Jesus himself embodies Joseph and Jacob: Horus and Osiris united in one figure.
The Egyptian duality is preserved even more deeply. Atum, the primordial unity, was both one and two - Tum or Tom becoming the root of ‘twin.’ Jesus after the crucifixion is presented as Atum in totality, the man merged with God. Yet the archetypal doubling is still acknowledged: Jacob/James remains as Osiris, while the inheritor - the Horus–Jesus - advances to the Promised Land of heaven. The gospel tradition embeds Thomas, whose very name means ‘twin,’ and in non-canonical texts ‘Didymus Thomas,’ literally ‘the twin twin.’ Here again the Egyptian base shines through: Osiris and Horus, father and son, twin forms of one archetype, preserved even in the loopholes and redactions of later scripture.
One further truth must be acknowledged: the deliberate cover-up and lexical updating that close the loops in the canonical texts are not accidental. Every competent theologian and philologist knows that James is originally Jacob, Osiris is Asar/Asar/Wsjr, and Isis is Aset/Auset - yet mainstream presentations almost always offer the Hellenised forms (James, Osiris, Isis) without the qualifications that expose the deeper continuity. The Bible was not written to instruct the learned but to hypnotise the many. As propaganda it self-affirms: names, glosses and genealogies are re-written to validate the theology that produced them.
This has consequences. Massey, Acharya and a host of other investigators have shown for more than a century that large parts of the Bible are pagan in origin and heavily Egyptianised, yet the consensus lexicon and popular scholarship continue to obscure that fact by omission. The effect is institutional amnesia: the lexical and archetypal threads that would allow readers to join the dots are excised or softened, and the mass audience remains unaware that the ‘history’ presented is often a redaction of older ritual myth.
If we are to recover a truer account, the remedy is simple - restore the old names and read the texts in the light of the cultures that first named them. Only then can the public answer Pontius Pilate’s old question for themselves: ‘What is truth?’
Birth and the Hidden Child – Moses and Jesus as Osirian Types
Moses and Jesus are both presented as children born under threat, preserved by divine providence, and hidden until their appointed time. In Exodus, Pharaoh decrees the death of Hebrew sons; Moses is concealed for three months and placed in a reed ark. In Matthew, Herod orders the slaughter of Bethlehem’s children; Jesus is carried away into Egypt. These are not distinct histories but two renderings of the same Egyptian myth: Osiris cast in the Nile chest and Horus hidden in the papyrus marsh of Chemmis, threatened by Set but preserved by Isis.
Even the titles confirm the type. Moses (ms, ‘born of’) encodes Egyptian divine sonship. Jesus as Christos encodes krst - the embalmed Osiris, the anointed corpse wrapped in oil and linen, awaiting resurrection. Both names identify the hidden child of Osiris, concealed until destiny calls.
The Exodus and the Flight into Egypt – Departure as Osirian Journey
Moses leads the Exodus, departing Egypt, crossing the sea of chaos, and guiding the souls through wilderness trial toward the Field of Reeds. Jesus, in infancy, enters Egypt to be preserved from Herod’s sword, ‘that the oracle be fulfilled: Out of Egypt I have called my son.’ At opposite poles of movement - one out, one in - the archetype is the same: the soul preserved in Egypt, sheltered in Osiris’s land before emerging to lead.
Pharaoh and Herod are masks of Set - tyrant rulers who seek to destroy the child of light but fail, because the archetype insists the seed is preserved. Both Exodus and Gospel turn the Osirian journey of souls into national and personal narrative.
Ministry, Kingship, and Entry
Moses ascends Sinai to receive law; Jesus ascends mountains to deliver sermons. Moses establishes a priesthood with Aaron; Jesus establishes disciples as ‘fishers of men.’ Moses enters the wilderness for forty years; Jesus fasts forty days. The numbers and settings are archetypal, not historical.
Even the entry into Jerusalem repeats the type. Moses leads Israel toward the land of promise; Jesus enters the holy city on a donkey, greeted with palms, acclaimed as king. Both are the Horus-son arriving to inherit the throne, the cycle of Osiris fulfilled.
Death, Resurrection, and Return
Moses dies on Nebo, seeing but not entering the Promised Land. Jesus dies outside Jerusalem, entering death but promising paradise. Both embody the Osirian guide: the leader who shows the way but remains at the threshold.
Jesus’s crucifixion is Osiris dismembered by Set. His embalming and anointing repeat the krst. His resurrection is the rising of Horus - the ever-’coming son’ (iusa), inheriting the father and guiding souls. His ascent mirrors Orion, the eternal axis.
Even the supporting cast encodes the Egyptian archetype. Mary is Aset/Isis, the mourning mother. Joseph is Ptah the craftsman, and his father Jacob repeats the Osirian loop of Jacob–Joseph–Jacob. The gospel introduces James (Greek for Jacob) as Jesus’s brother, restoring the cycle: Jacob–Joseph–Jacob, Osiris–Horus–Osiris. Thomas Didymus, the ‘twin twin,’ preserves Atum-Tum, the primal duality of completion.
One Archetype, Two Retellings
Thus, Moses and Jesus are not separate founders but variations of one archetype. Moses is ‘born of’ (ms), the Osirian son preserved in reeds. Jesus is the ‘anointed one’ (krst), the Osirian corpse restored to life. Both are hidden, both are threatened, both guide the souls through waters, both die at the threshold, both hand their spirit to the ever-coming son.
The Hebrew editors and Christian evangelists did not invent new histories; they re-clothed the Osirian cycle in new garments. The chest of Osiris became the bulrush ark, the swaddling clothes, the tomb, the shroud. The goddess Isis became Miriam, Mary, the hidden presence flattened but never erased. The archetype endures, the Egyptian continuity shines through.
The above list is heavily redacted for brevity, set out simply to evidence a chain of parallels. One could extend it enormously - through every stage of the gospel story, the Egyptian prototypes are visible for those with eyes to see. Hopefully, by now, the reader will be empowered to do that for themselves.
Before Moses and Jesus, Orion Was
Orion as Prime Osirian Myth and Axis
Orion is not an overlay to the myth - he is its prime form. Before there were tribal histories, before scribes re-clothed the star-sentences in Hebrew or Greek idioms, there was the giant in the sky: Sah-Orion, the form of Osiris. Every layer of the Moses and Jesus stories is cut from this stellar cloth.
Shepherd and king. Orion’s outline carries the crook and sceptre of Osiris. The raised arm traces the Pharaoh’s throwing stick turned shepherd’s crook; his belt and body yield the wsr sceptre. In Egyptian regalia the crook (heka) and sceptre (wsr) paired care and rule. Moses’s staff is this crook, used to lead and to strike; Jesus takes it in language, the ‘Good Shepherd’ and bishop of souls.
Axis and balance. Orion’s vertical body and horizontal belt make the cosmic doorway, the akhet. When he stands on the meridian he is maat embodied - the divider of waters, the stabiliser of storms. Moses raises the rod and the sea parts; Jesus is lifted on the cross at the equinox. Both replay Orion’s role as cosmic axis.
Ruler and judge. In the Pyramid Texts the king becomes a sahu, a star-soul in Orion, enthroned with Osiris to judge the dead. Orion is the court in the sky. This becomes Moses on Sinai receiving law, Jesus on the mount giving law: maat in human speech because Orion is the visible law in form.
Death and resurrection. Each year Orion vanishes into the sun’s glare, mourned like Osiris, and each year he rises again. Moses dies on Nebo, seeing the land but not entering; Jesus dies on the cross, laid in a tomb. Both vanish from sight but carry the promise of return, mirroring Orion’s reappearance.
Boat and ark. Orion’s belt is the hull, the sword the mast: Egyptians saw the solar bark in his outline, sailing the Duat. This stellar bark is reduplicated in Osiris’s chest, Horus in papyrus, Moses’s reed ark, Noah’s ark, Jesus calming storms in a boat, and the Christian nave. All are earthly echoes of Orion’s ship.
Seven-in-one lights. Orion’s bright stars and clusters were seen as the sah-souls, the ‘many in one.’ Egyptian texts call them the followers of Osiris. This plurality-in-unity becomes Israel as a host led by Moses, disciples gathered by Jesus, the ‘many mansions’ of John’s Gospel.
Sun by night. Orion is the sun’s soul in darkness, battling Apophis each night. Hence Jesus’s ‘three days in the heart of the earth,’ and Moses’s three days of plague-darkness. Both repeat the solar soul continuing unseen - the astronomical fact of the sun’s pause at solstice and equinox.
Beast-battler. Orion raises his sword against Apophis. Moses lifts the serpent on the pole; Jesus tramples scorpions and is lifted up to draw all men. The adversary subdued by the axis of light is Orion’s enduring role.
Thus in Orion all strands already exist: shepherd, king, axis, judge, boatman, ark, resurrection, beast-battler. Moses and Jesus are garments woven from this stellar linen. The certainty of return, the promise of resurrection, the guidance of souls, the weighing of truth - all are Orion’s prime myth, the axis in the sky that guarantees life through flood and death.
Orion as Shepherd King
In Egyptian liturgy, Osiris carries the heka crook and wsr sceptre. These were not arbitrary symbols but stellar glyphs. In the sky Orion’s arm is a crook; his belt traces the sceptre. To join the stars is to trace the insignia of kingship.
Moses begins as a shepherd at Horeb, his crook the staff that becomes the rod of signs and the sceptre of command.
Jesus declares himself the Good Shepherd and is hailed as king; the bishop’s crozier is Orion’s crook preserved in Christian liturgy.
The sah-souls in Orion’s train are the celestial flock; Israel in the wilderness are ‘sheep without a shepherd’; the disciples are the little flock gathered into pasture.
The duality of pastoral and regal is continuous. The throwing stick of Pharaoh becomes the shepherd’s crook, becomes the crozier of the Church. Orion was always the Shepherd King, and Moses and Jesus inherit his role in Hebrew and Christian dress.
Orion as Boat and Ark
The Egyptians read Orion as a boat: the three belt stars as keel, the sword as mast, the shoulders as high prow and stern. This was the solar bark, sailing the celestial river and ferrying souls through the Duat.
Orion also doubles and triples the archetype of a being in the waters. Depending on how the star-joins are traced, the figure can appear boat-shaped, fish-shaped, or even as a vertical ark. In each case the image is the same: a vessel that crosses the abyss. The belt may be seen as hull, as mast, or even as rudder - the steering axis by which the cosmic ship is directed.
This imagery interlocks with the northern constellations. Just as Orion provides the bark of souls, the Great Bear and Little Bear (Ursa Major and Minor) provide the eternal pivot: the polar foreleg or ‘ham’ around which the sky revolves. The Egyptians saw the severed thigh of Set fixed in heaven, tethered as a constellation near the pole. Orion’s bark sails by this fixed axis, boat and foreleg together defining the cosmic order: the motion of waters steered against the still point of the pole star.
Scholars such as Santillana and von Dechend (in Hamlet’s Mill) have explored these archaic associations - how myths across the world preserve memories of the ‘mill’ of heaven, the turning of stars around the pole, and the journey of the soul’s ship through the flood of time. Orion’s boat belongs to this archaic grammar. He is at once the ark sailing the celestial waters, the fish crossing the abyss, and the judge enthroned in the boat of millions.
On earth this stellar vessel was reduplicated again and again. The coffin of Osiris was at once chest and boat. Horus was hidden in the papyrus skiff. Pharaohs were buried with solar ships at Giza - earthly replicas of Orion’s hull. The same grammar entered biblical scripture:
Moses placed as an infant in a reed ark - a miniature coffin-bark carrying light upon the waters.
Noah’s ark - a cosmic vessel ferrying creation across the deluge.
The Ark of the Covenant - a gilded chest borne on poles, a portable bark of divine presence.
Jesus asleep in the stern of a boat during the storm; later calling disciples from their fishing boats; finally, the church itself naming its central chamber the nave (ship).
All are re-dressings of the same star-sentence. Orion is the boat in the sky; Osiris is carried in the chest; Moses, Noah, Israel, the disciples, the church itself - all are passengers. The ark is both coffin and craft, tomb and womb, ferrying the living and the dead.
In Christian iconography the ark merges into the body. Jesus declares, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ His flesh is ark and bark, destroyed and rebuilt, sunk and raised. The coffin of Osiris, the reed basket of Moses, the nave of the church, the body of Christ - not separate inventions but one archetype: Orion as boat, Orion as ark.
Orion as Axis and Cross
Running through Orion’s form is the axis mundi. Draw a vertical from head to foot, a horizontal through the belt, and the result is the cosmic cross. This was not Greek invention but Egyptian recognition: the akhet horizon was depicted as two hills with a bar between - the gate through which the sun passed each morning and evening. Orion stood in that gate as the living axis.
As axis he is divider of waters and stiller of storms. In Exodus, Moses raises the rod and the Red Sea parts - a human echo of Orion splitting the abyss with his vertical. In the Gospels, Jesus is lifted on the cross at the equinox, balanced between day and night, a living axis raised up for sight and salvation. John makes the typology explicit: ‘As Moses lifted the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.’ The serpent on the pole is Wadjet raised upon the axis; the crucifixion is the same archetype in flesh.
The equinox-cross is maat in stellar geometry: the balance of scales, day and night equal, the world weighed in truth. When Jesus dies, the veil of the temple is torn - the cosmic curtain split at the axis. When Moses lifts his hands and staff, Israel prevails; when his hands fall, chaos returns. The cross is not merely a Roman device of execution but the cosmic axis itself: Orion upright, with his belt as cross-bar, maat inscribed in stars.
Comparative mythologies confirm this archetype. The Norse Yggdrasil is the world tree, a vertical pillar rooted in the underworld and stretching to heaven, its cross-branches supporting the worlds. In India, the cosmic pillar (skambha) upholds the universe, its balance marked by the equinoxes. In Mesoamerican traditions, the world-tree or world-cross divides the four directions and serves as the path of the sun.
Santillana and von Dechend, in Hamlet’s Mill, show that these structures preserve archaic recognition of the equinoctial balance, the ‘world cross’ of time and space. Orion, standing at the meridian with his belt-bar, was the visible form of this truth - the star-giant embodying the axis and the cross.
In art and star-joins Orion yields every cross-type: Tau, Chi, Latin, anchor-cross. This explains why the early Christians used the cross as sign long before it became an instrument of Roman execution. Orion in the sky was the first cross; the gospel lifted it onto earth.
Orion as Resurrection and Return
Orion vanishes each year into the glare of the sun and rises again in season, striding once more across the night sky. This rhythm was the oldest resurrection myth: the god who departs, mourned by the goddess, and the god who returns, greeted with joy. Egyptians told it as Osiris slain by Set, reassembled by Isis, and reborn in Horus. The stars told it as Orion disappearing, then reappearing.
The certainty of return made Orion the guarantor of immortality. He was the ‘once and future king,’ the sky’s eternal axis whose cycle could not fail. Moses embodies this in his death on Nebo: he sees the land but does not enter, vanishes from the story, yet endures in memory as guide. Jesus embodies it in crucifixion and resurrection: he departs in death, mourned by Mary and the women, then rises, proclaimed as the one who will come again. Both narratives retell Orion’s seasonal pattern - the assurance that what disappears will return.
The mourning goddess is always present. Isis laments Osiris; Miriam sings and then is lost in the wilderness; Mary weeps at the tomb. Their grief is Sirius separated from Orion, their joy the heliacal rising, the reunion of the companion star and the hunter that heralds the Nile flood.
This seasonal cycle was not unique to Egypt but resonated across cultures. In Mesopotamia, Tammuz descends to the underworld and is mourned until restored. In Greece, Persephone disappears into Hades, her mother Demeter grieving until she returns with the spring. In Norse myth, Baldr the shining god is slain, his return foretold for the new world. Each tells the same truth Orion embodies in the sky: that death is not final but part of a cycle, and that return is guaranteed.
Santillana and von Dechend (Hamlet’s Mill) note that these myths encode archaic star-knowledge - the recognition that certain constellations vanish in the sun’s light only to return, marking seasons and sustaining the cosmic calendar. Orion’s rising and setting became the prototype of this archetype: his disappearance a death, his return a resurrection.
Thus the annual cycle of Orion is the skeleton of the salvation myth: departure, mourning, return, enthronement. Osiris, Moses, Jesus - each clothed in the same linen, unwound and rewoven, each promising the same truth: that death is not the end, that the axis of life guarantees return.
Orion as Sun by Night
In Egyptian cosmology the sun had a twin existence. By day he shone in the sky; by night he was Osiris in the Duat, the sun-soul traversing darkness. Orion was that night-sun - the visible body of the solar soul in the underworld.
Each night Orion marched across the heavens while the day-sun was hidden below. Funerary texts instruct the king: ‘You are the son who travels with Ra by day, with Osiris by night.’ Orion carried the soul of the sun through the Duat, contending with Apophis, guarded by Isis-Sothis (Sirius), nourished by the cows of Hathor.
The gospels preserve this truth. Jesus prophesies: ‘The Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.’ His descent to the dead, his proclamation to spirits in prison, and his rising at dawn are the solar cycle in Orion’s form. Moses likewise partakes of the pattern: the plague of darkness brings three days without sun; the people stumble in night until light returns.
Thus Orion is not only the giant in the sky but the sun’s alter ego, the light who walks the waters of night. He is the guarantee that the sun continues unseen, that light endures even in darkness. Jesus walking on Galilee - ‘light on the waters’ - and Moses borne as an infant on the Nile are variations of the same archetype: the sun-soul afloat on chaos, guided by Orion’s stride.
Orion as Beast-Battler
Each night the solar soul in Orion had to contend with Apophis, the serpent of chaos. Texts describe the coils that sought to block the barque, devour souls, or swallow the light. Orion with raised arm and sword was the cosmic beast-battler, the giant who pierced the serpent so the journey might continue.
This image was refashioned in Hebrew and Christian scripture. Moses raises a serpent upon a pole - the chaos-creature transformed into healing when aligned with the axis. Jesus is lifted on the cross - death itself transfigured into life. Both are Orion-gestures, the adversary overcome not by denial but by elevation.
The wilderness scene makes it plain: the people are bitten by fiery serpents, Apophis’s brood, and cured only by looking upon the raised emblem. In the gospel, Jesus promises his followers power ‘to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.’ In both, the serpent remains present but subdued, changed from destroyer to protector.
Orion as beast-battler is the archetype behind all these scenes. The giant lifts his weapon; the serpent is pierced, bound, or transformed; order is restored. Every miracle of mastery over serpents, storms, or seas - from Moses before Pharaoh to Jesus on Galilee - is a retelling of Orion’s nightly combat with the beast.
Orion as Provider - Bread, Beer, Wine, Water
Osiris was lord of grain and beer, the god who fed the dead with loaves and jars. In the sky Orion announced the season of plenty: when Sirius rose with Orion’s return, the Nile flooded, fields renewed, and bread and wine were assured.
The Hebrews wove this into Exodus. In the wilderness manna fell from heaven and water flowed from the rock - Osirian gifts retold in desert form. In the gospels Jesus multiplies loaves and fishes, offers living water, and turns water into wine. The Last Supper crystallises the cycle: bread and wine as covenant meal.
These are not innovations but star-rites. Orion marked the flood, Sirius timed the year, Hathor’s cows provided milk and bread, the vines ripened into wine. The Last Supper table is Orion’s season transposed: the company gathered at night, bread and cup distributed, covenant declared. Moses’s manna, Jesus’s loaves, Osiris’s bread - all fragments of Orion’s agricultural sentence.
Thus the god as provider, the star as announcer of harvest, becomes the prophet as feeder of souls. Bread and wine in Christian liturgy, manna and water in Hebrew tradition, loaves and beer in Egyptian tombs - all are one provision from Orion the nourisher.
Orion as Navigator of the Duat
The night sky was the Duat: a river with gates, caverns, guardians, and beasts. Orion was its pilot and protector. Funerary texts show the king boarding Orion’s barque, sailing through twelve hours of night, fed by divine cows, guarded by fire, weighed in maat.
This is exactly what Moses’s Exodus replays: plagues as night terrors, Red Sea as primordial flood, wilderness as the desert of Set, Promised Land as the Field of Reeds. It is what Jesus’s passion retells: descent to the dead, three nights in the earth, resurrection at dawn, paradise promised.
The Duat map is not hidden in scripture but rewritten as story. Moses conducts the manes as a people; Jesus sails the night as the Son of Man. In both, Orion is the pilot: the strider whose axis opens gates, whose sword drives off the serpent, whose crook gathers the flock. The Duat remains, even when reframed in narrative. Orion as navigator is the skeleton key to both Moses and Jesus.
Orion as Symbol-Maker - Cross, Anchor, Fish
Egyptian priests joined Orion’s stars into teaching signs. The belt and sword yielded the Tau cross; shoulders to hips gave the Chi; the belt and vertical made the Latin cross. Extend the line downward and curve the belt - an anchor appears. Link belt to sword to Rigel - a fish or dolphin leaps.
These joins became Christian symbols. The cross was revered long before the crucifixion story; the anchor was carved in catacombs; the fish became the ichthys sign. Each was first Orion’s geometry. Even the pun of ‘ankh-or’ - life + Orion - lies behind the anchor.
Thus Christian iconography did not invent but inherited. The signs were mnemonic devices from temple roofs, later copied into gospel art. Moses’s rod as Tau, Jesus’s cross as Latin, the bishop’s crozier as Orion’s crook, the anchor of hope in Hebrews - all are star-joins of Orion.
The sky was the pattern-book; the church redrew it. Every cross on earth was once a line in Orion.
Orion as Shepherd of Souls
Orion was shepherd not only by crook and staff but by role. The sah-souls, the blessed dead, were his flock. He gathered them, guided them through the Duat, and brought them to Aaru. He was both king and herdsman, ruler and carer.
Moses inherits this role explicitly. He shepherds sheep in Midian; he shepherds Israel in the wilderness. His rod guards, strikes, leads, and comforts. Jesus too declares, ‘I am the good shepherd.’ He lays down his life for the sheep, calls them by name, gathers them into one flock. Both are Orion-roles retold.
Even Pharaoh’s throwing stick is a shepherd’s tool in disguise, just as Orion’s arm is both weapon and crook. The heka crook and wsr sceptre in Osiris’s hands are stellar glyphs of Orion’s figure. The flock on earth - tribes, disciples - are reflections of the flock of stars above.
Thus the archetype is clear: Orion the Shepherd King, Moses the shepherd-lawgiver, Jesus the shepherd-messiah. All three guide flocks through desert and death to promised pasture. The crook in the sky was the first staff; scripture is its earthly echo.
Orion as Nexus - The Seven-in-One Lights
The Egyptians called Orion’s attendants the sah-souls, a company of many lights bound to one giant. Sometimes they were counted as seven, sometimes more, but always as plurality-in-unity: the archetype of the one-who-is-many, the principle later called Elohim.
In Hebrew tradition Israel is the host of the Lord, a people of twelve tribes moving as one body. In Christian tradition the disciples are twelve around one master, or seventy sent two by two. John’s gospel speaks of ‘many mansions’ in the Father’s house, echoing the many lights within Orion: one body, many rooms.
The sah-souls were also prototypes of resurrection crowds. Just as Orion rises again each year, so his company rises with him. Moses leads a multitude out of Egypt; Jesus rises as ‘firstfruits of those asleep,’ promising all will follow. The host of stars becomes the host of souls.
Thus Orion’s seven-in-one lights gave scripture its nations, tribes, disciples, and saints. The giant in the stars bore a family, and Hebrew and Christian texts clothed that family in story.
Orion as Storm God
Finally, Orion is the storm’s man - the hunter who strides through clouds, whose rising brings winds and rain. In Egypt, the inundation was heralded when Orion and Sirius returned: storm, flood, and renewal together.
In Exodus, a strong east wind drives back the sea; thunder and lightning shroud Sinai; plagues strike as storms. In the gospels, Jesus rebukes the wind and it obeys, walks upon the waves, and stills the squall. These are storm-god scenes, re-clothed in scripture.
The Psalmist already sings, ‘He treads the waves of the sea’ (Psalm 77:19). This is Egyptian speech transposed. Ra’s bark on the waters, Horus striking the serpent at dawn, Osiris striding through the flood - all are Orion’s storm roles. Moses and Jesus are simply clothed in them.
Thus Orion as storm-god is the last strand of the tapestry. He is axis, shepherd, king, judge, ark, provider, resurrection, beast-battler, and storm-stiller. He is the proto-figure behind Moses and Jesus - the one whose linen wrappings were unwound and rewoven into Hebrew law and Christian gospel.
Two interesting points of speculation
1. Amalek and the Moloch confusion
With the lesson well learned from history - that we must face the past honestly or risk repeating it - we have shown that what we call ‘old religion’ was itself consensus history and science. The Victorian era inherited the Bible as history, and modern academia inherited many of its assumptions. Has consensus scholarship yet thrown off the shackles of that structure? When religion once wore the robes of academia, is academia still promoting religion unawares?
One question that naturally arises from our restoration of the original biblical stories concerns Amalek, and a curious figure known as Moloch or Molech. Was Moloch really a demonic pagan god who demanded child sacrifice, as both religion and academic consensus still claim? Or is there a more likely translation of the Moloch passages in the Bible? We are entitled to hypothesise - even if we cannot yet conclude - that there is much more to Moloch than meets the eye.
Massey associated Moloch with ‘Ammoloch,’ a devourer or demon. Yet the evidence for Moloch as a god of literal child sacrifice is far thinner than the popular image suggests. The association may be the product of redaction and later commentary more than of primary texts.
The charge of child sacrifice
The Bible mentions Moloch (or Molech) only eight times, in Leviticus, Kings, and Jeremiah. The references speak of ‘passing children through the fire,’ but never explicitly describe immolation or slaughter. Later commentators - rabbinic, patristic, and eventually modern - assumed this meant sacrifice by burning. The image of a bronze idol with outstretched arms, consuming infants, became fixed. Yet this picture rests on interpretation, not direct statement.
The Talmud itself is more nuanced. Sanhedrin 64a acknowledges Molech as connected to kingship (mlk = king). Sanhedrin 64b clarifies that the ritual of ‘passing through fire’ did not consume the child: bricks or pathways were laid so that the initiate passed between or over flames, not into them. This reads more like a rite of dedication than a death-rite. Fire-walking and purification by flame are well attested across the Drift Culture: in Egyptian initiations, in Brahmanic ritual, in Celtic practice.
Moloch as king, not demon
The root MLK means ‘king.’ Molech may therefore mean simply ‘the king,’ a title or epithet. To call worship ‘to Molech’ could mean dedication to the priest-king cult of Amun, Ptah, or Aten. Indeed, Leviticus calls Molech ‘the abomination of the children of Ammon’ - that is, the children of Amun. Here the inversion is plain: the god Amun, revered as creator and hidden source, is re-cast as abomination. Yet Amun survives in psalms as ‘Amen,’ and Christians still pronounce his name at the close of prayers, unaware of its origin.
Demonisation and inversion
It seems far more likely that Molech was not a devil of child sacrifice but a rival cult of kingship and dedication, later demonised by the Levitical editors. Just as Baal - meaning simply ‘lord’ - was turned into an enemy name, so Molech became the false god of abomination. By branding rival rites as ‘burning children,’ the priestly caste both demonised the kingly tradition and reinforced their own priest-led system.
The archaeology
The so-called tophets of Carthage are often cited as evidence of child sacrifice to Molech. Yet archaeologists remain divided: were the urns containing cremated infants sacrificial remains, or simply cemeteries for children who had died prematurely? Without explicit inscriptions, certainty is elusive. The demonisation of Carthage by Rome - itself a rival empire - should give pause.
Amalek, Molech, and Hamlet’s Mill
The similarity of Amalek and Molech is striking. Amalek is the eternal adversary in Exodus, yet the name resonates with Molech/Melek (king). Massey, working within his time, accepted ‘Ammoloch’ as demonic. But the data is thinner than the certainty suggests. Amalek/Molech may originally have been axis-figures - guardians of the fiery threshold - later re-cast as enemies. The echo of ‘Amleth’ (Hamlet), noted by Atwill and others, recalls the cosmic axis archetype preserved in Hamlet’s Mill: the mill that grinds at the pole, vengeance turning at the axis.
A question of propaganda
If the Bible does not plainly state that Moloch was a demon who demanded child sacrifice, why has that reading become the only accepted one in religion and academia? The answer must lie in propaganda. Rome and the Church had every incentive to paint rival cults as monstrous, to suppress the priest-king lineage in favour of their own priestly law, and to frighten the masses with stories of ‘child-burners.’ Consensus then repeats the claim until it becomes unexamined truth.
Passing through, not perishing
‘Passing through fire’ implies continuity, not annihilation. A burnt corpse does not pass - it ends. The Egyptian archetype is clear: the children of light pass through fire to Ra, the greatest flame of all. To walk through fire is to dedicate, to be purified, to emerge transformed.
2. Aaron and Apion - A Speculative Note
Having examined the data and drawn firm conclusions on Moses, and explored uncertainties as evidenced with Moloch, it remains to look at another possible thread. This time the case is not in any way certain, nor fully explored - barely even a theory as yet. What follows is presented as speculation only, a line that may prove fruitful should experts in philology and history wish to examine it further.
Aaron, in the Hebrew tradition, is the priestly support to Moses - bearer of the rod, counterpart to Hur/Horus, the one who mediates cult and continuity. His name in Greek is Ἀαρών (Aarōn).
Apion, in Josephus’s Contra Apionem (Against Apion), is cast as the Egyptian-Greek grammarian who attacks Judaism, against whom Josephus defends his people. His name in Greek is Ἀπίων (Apíōn).
Placed side by side, the spellings are strikingly close:
Ἀαρών (Aarōn) = Α (1) + Α (1) + Ρ (100) + Ω (800) + Ν (50) → 952
Ἀπίων (Apíōn) = Α (1) + Π (80) + Ι (10) + Ω (800) + Ν (50) → 941
The only real difference is Ρ (rho = 100) swapped for Π (pi = 80), plus the presence of Ι (iota = 10). In other words, Aaron and Apion are numerically and orthographically near-identical - variants of the same five-character frame.
Why might this matter? Because the redactors and editors of these texts did not only swap myth for history. As we showed earlier in this appendix, they also encoded number into letters, and changed words to accord with number. Scholars of words, letters, and myths often overlook this dimension. We do not have the decrypt manual, but we have enough clues to see patterns: names are not arbitrary, they are chosen to yield meaningful totals.
When we apply what I have identified as an encryption device - the ‘rho-operator’ (the ratio 5/6 we have traced elsewhere) - Π = 80 collapses to 66.6 - a number fraught with symbolism, shadowing the “triple six.” By contrast, Ρ = 100 keeps Aaron’s name “whole.” This invites the possibility that the swap was not innocent but deliberate, aligning Aaron and Apion to archetypal numerologies of wholeness and corruption.
Atwill has already shown that Josephus used pun, typology, and etymology as encryptions for his Flavian patrons in Caesar’s Messiah. What he - and all others so far - have missed is that Josephus and his contemporaries also had the ability to manipulate names by isopsephy, deliberately choosing spellings whose numerical footprint encoded additional layers of meaning.
Atwill has shown in Shakespeare’s Secret Messiah that Shakespeare’s works contain elaborate encrypted polemic against the Flavians - their destruction of Judaism, the dispersal of the Jews, and the crimes later inherited by the Roman Church. He points to the hand of Emilia Bassano, a Jewish woman from London’s émigré community, whom he believes coordinated the plays and whose childhood nickname, “little Moor,” appears echoed in Shakespeare’s frequent motifs of Moors as persecuted figures. This hidden encryption explains much: the implausibility of the consensus story of Shakespeare as an under-educated provincial turned national genius, and the recurring undercurrent of coded dissent within the plays.
(see Shakespeare’s Witness to the Paradox below)
The lesson is simple: if Shakespeare’s works were so carefully encoded, with complex wordplay functioning as resistance polemic, then we must approach Josephus with even greater suspicion. Josephus was not a free author but an employee of the Flavian household, rewarded for producing propaganda that served his patrons’ political ends. If Shakespeare’s texts can conceal, Josephus’s texts almost certainly do - and his use of names like Aaron and Apion may be examples of precisely such encryption.
Seen in this light, Aaron and Apion could be more than two unrelated figures. Aaron is the insider-priest whose name totals the “complete” value; Apion the outsider critic, whose near-identical name has been nudged numerically toward 66.6. If this is correct, Josephus’s Against Apion may itself be a carefully encrypted polemic, its very title hiding a numerical cipher.
This remains speculation. The philology is not yet proven, and the Egyptian roots of the names would need rigorous testing. But the similarity of the Greek spellings, the tiny numerical shift caused by Ρ and Π, and the likelihood that Josephus deliberately encrypted meaning through names, together provide enough reason for scholars to revisit this with fresh eyes.
Additional Information
Epithets of Nature and the Lost Dualities
The so-called “gods” of antiquity were never persons in the modern sense. They were epithets for Nature, compressed into symbolic form. Each divine name expressed a particular quality, mode, or function of the cosmos.
Ptah and Atum are not individuals but epithets for creation itself – Ptah as the fashioner, Atum as the one who completes or brings into form. From this logic Atum and his feminine counterpart were re-written in Hebrew memory as Adam and Eve, the primordial pair of creation.
Heh and Hauhet stand as epithets for eternal duality. Heh embodies unending time and measure, the raised-armed figure with notched palms marking the cycles of duration. His consort Hauhet is the eternal abyss, the serpentine endlessness. Together they symbolise the polarity of eternity – masculine and feminine, duration and abyss, arms raised in balance.
It is this figure – Heh – that Massey rightly traced into the biblical Ihuh/YHWH. The god made known to Moses as “Ihuh” is not an innovation but the Egyptian Heh, the eternal. What is lost in the biblical redaction is his consort: Hauhet, the veiled serpent-goddess of endlessness. As with so many other examples, the feminine polarity is removed as a matter of course in Hebrew scripture, leaving only the male epithet behind.
This is a pattern: where Egyptian theology preserves the full polarity – Ptah with consort, Atum with Iusaas, Heh with Hauhet – the biblical record isolates the masculine epithet and erases the feminine counterpart. What remains appears as a solitary “God” rather than the balanced epithets of Nature.
Thus the central importance of Heh lies in his transformation into Ihuh/YHWH – the eternal made into the biblical deity. Yet the removal of Hauhet demonstrates the wider tendency: the stripping away of the serpent-goddess, the abyssal consort, the eternal feminine. In this process the balanced epithets of Nature became unipolar theology.
Here is Massey from Ancient Egypt, Light of the World:
Hebraists have surmised, and some Hebrews (known to the writer) have admitted, that the prefix B in B’Jah (B’Jah is Jehovah, Is. xxvi. 4, and B’Jah is his name) is an abbreviation for the name of Baal. If written out fully this would read, Baal-Iah = Baal is Jah. Bealiah is a proper name in the book of Chronicles I. xii. 5, in which we see that Baal-Iah as divinity supplied a personal name. Thus the Baal who is Iah Hy would be the Iah who was one of the Baalim; and the earliest Baalim were a form of the seven companions, like the Kabarim and Elohim, which are followed in the book of Genesis by the god named Iahu-Elohim. The one god in Israel is made known to Moses by the two names of hvhy and Hy, Ihuh and Iah. Now a priest of On (Osarsiph) would naturally learn at On of the one god Atum-Ra, who was Huhi the eternal in the character of God the father and Iu in the character of God the son, which two were one.
In accordance with Egyptian thought, that which was for ever was the only true reality. This was represented by Huhi the eternal. And Huhi is the god made known to Israel by the priest of On. Gesenius derives the name of Ihuh from a root huh, which root does not exist in Hebrew. But it does exist in Egyptian. Huh or heh signifies ever, everlastingness, eternity, the eternal. Huhi was a title that was applied to Ptah, Atum-Ra, and Osiris, as Neb-Huhi the everlasting lord, or as the supreme one, self-existing, and eternal god, which each of these three deities represented in turn as one divine dynasty succeeded another in the Egyptian religion.
An eternity of existence was imaged by the Egyptians as ever-coming or becoming; hence ever-coming or ever-becoming was a mode of imaging the eternal being. Thus the one god as their Huhi was not only he who is for ever as the father, but also he who comes for ever as the son. This visible mode of continuity by means of coming naturally involved becoming, according to the Egyptian doctrine of kheper, which includes ever-evolving, ever-transforming, ever-perpetuating, ever-becoming, under the one word kheper. Thus the name of an eternal, self-existent being which is hvhy in Hebrew can be traced as Huhi, the name for the one eternal, ever-living, ever-lasting god as Egyptian.
And now for the first time we can distinguish the one name, hvhy from the other Hy, if only on Egyptian ground. “Iu,” with variants in Au, Iau, Aui, and others, is also an Egyptian word, but with no linguistic relationship to the word Huh. Iu is likewise the name of an Egyptian god, as Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with peace, who was primarily the son of Ptah, and who was repeated in the cult of Atum-Ra as Nefer-Atum. In fact, Atum-Ra is both Huhi and Iu as the one god living in truth, the father manifesting as the ever-coming son, who was Iu-sa the son of Iusāas in the cult of On.
All that was ever represented to the Jewish mind by the name of Ihuh (Ihvh or Jehovah) had been expressed to the Egyptian by the word huhi, or, later, hehi. As Egyptian “huh” signified everlastingness, millions of times, eternity, and “Huhi” was also a name of their god the eternal. It had been a title, we repeat, of Ptah, of Atum, and of Osiris, each in turn, in three different cults at Memphis, On, and Abydos. Huhi, then, was the eternal as the father; he who always had been, ever was, ever should be, and hence the everlasting god.
Iu was the ever-coming son, Iu-sa or Iu-em-hetep, the son who comes with peace as periodic manifestor for the eternal father. Thus the One God of the Jews was Egyptian in this twofold character, both by nature and by name.
The change in Israel from the worship of El-Shaddai to the worship of Ihuh, from the Elohistic to the Jehovistic god, corresponds to the change from the stellar to the solar worship in the astronomical mythology. El in the highest was the star-god on the summit of the mountain, who in the Kamite mythos might be Sut, Seth, or Anup at the pole. The pole was represented by the mount, one Egyptian name of which is Sut, denoting standing-ground. The ruler of the pole-star was the lord of standing-ground or station at the fixed centre of the heavens.
The highest El was the eighth of the Ali or Baalim. In Hebrew he is called El-Shaddai, commonly rendered the powerful or mighty one. Another rendering, however, of the name is more than probable. This was the most high god, El-Elyon, whom the Phoenicians also called Israel. As Egyptian, it was Anup on the mount, or at the pole, the highest of the star-gods or Elohim who preceded the solar sovereignty of Ra. El-Shaddai, who was Phoenician, and had been co-worker with the Elohim in the legends of creation, was succeeded and superseded by the god of two names who is made known to Israel as “Ihuh” and Iahu, or “Iao” = Egyptian Iu.
The Egyptian word Iu is also written Ï, with u inherent, and has the meaning of coming, come, to come, and is the name of the ever-coming and eternal child, Iu-em-hetep, or Iusa, the coming son. In the Phoenician version the deity Iao = Iu is the coming son, the well-beloved, the only-begotten son of El, who was to be called Ieoud (or dvhy), the supposed prototype of “something to come” in Christianity (see Bryant). The word Iu with these meanings in Egyptian agrees with Iah or Iahu in Hebrew, signifying come and to come. Thus Huhi is equivalent to hvhy, and Iu is equivalent to Hy as Ihu or Iao, the two forms of which name are different from each other at the root, but could be applied as two titles of the one god.
Iah is portrayed as the god who is operative, audible, and visible in material phenomena. His are the mighty deeds. He is the manifestor for the father, the opener of Amenta in the solar mythos. The Song of Moses shows that Iah was the divine deliverer who triumphed gloriously over the adversaries of the father, as did this deliverer in the exodus from the lower Egypt of Amenta (Ex. xv. 2). Iah is the opponent of Amalek, with whom he makes war for ever, as did Horus with Apap, the eternal enemy (Ex. xvii. 16).
Iah is the god who rides as conqueror through the deserts (Ps. lxviii. 4) and goes forth before his people marching through the wilderness. It was he who led his people “like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Ps. lxxvii. 20). Iah is called upon as deliverer from death and as the saviour from the sufferings of Sheol (Ps. cxvi.). He is the coming one who is looked to and watched and waited for as the redeemer of Israel. It is to Iah the Hallelu-Iah of the Psalmist is raised.
In short, the character is that of God the son, and therefore Iah is one with Iu the son of Atum-Huhi. Iah is god the son, and the son in Egyptian is the Messu. Thus Iah the Messu is the Mes-Iah, hence the Messiah in Hebrew. The Messiah as Iah the Messu was the ever-coming son, like Iu, and Iu as Egyptian is he who comes as manifestor for the eternal father.
The duality of Ptah, also of Atum as Huhi the eternal father, and Iu the ever-coming son, is repeated and preserved in the Pistis Sophia of the Egypto-gnostics.
Gerald Massey Ancient Egypt, Light of the World, Vol. I, p. 498-500)
Moses as Heh – the Eternal Axis
The account of Moses raising his arms during the battle with Amalek (Exodus 17:8–13) preserves a far older Egyptian symbolism. In Egyptian iconography, Heh is the god of eternity, depicted with arms raised, often grasping notched palm-branches of time. Gerald Massey identifies Huhi or Hehi as a title of Ptah, Atum-Ra, and Osiris, meaning “everlasting, ever-living, eternal.” He demonstrates that the Hebrew divine name, Ihuh (YHWH), derives directly from this Egyptian Huhi:
“Huhi was a title applied to Ptah, Atum-Ra, and Osiris, each in turn, as the eternal, ever-coming god… Thus the name hvhy in Hebrew can be traced as Huhi, the one eternal, ever-living, everlasting god as Egyptian.” (Massey)
When Moses stands with raised hands, he is not acting as an individual but embodying Heh himself – the axis of eternity through which victory or defeat depends. The mountain becomes Sinai-as-axis; Moses becomes Heh the eternal.
The detail that Aaron and Hur stand on either side, holding up his hands when he tires, confirms the typology. Aaron, in name and role, preserves Sia – perception, sight, the principle of insight. Hur preserves Hu – utterance, the divine word, the principle of creative speech. Together they support the axis. Thus Moses in the centre, arms upheld by Aaron and Hur, is an enactment of the primal Egyptian polarity: Hu and Sia, utterance and perception, east and west, word and sight.
In Egyptian theology, creation was the function of this duality. Hu (utterance) was the spoken fiat; Sia (perception) was the mental or spiritual vision. The two always appear together as faculties of the god. By setting them on either side of Moses, the biblical text unwittingly preserves their role in supporting the axis of eternity – the raised-armed Heh.
The symbolism deepens when read against the imagery of birth. The uttered word (hu) and the perceived form (sia) are functions of the same primal origin: the uterus as utterer, the place from which the word is made flesh. Horus arises in the east as the first utterance, while Osiris receives in the west as perception fulfilled. Moses, as Heh, unites the cycle: axis, eternal, raised between word and sight.
What emerges is not a Hebrew innovation but an Egyptian inheritance. The “god of Moses” is Huhi, the eternal. Moses’ role in this episode is that of Heh the eternal principle, upheld by Hu and Sia. Victory flows not from the strength of Israel’s army but from alignment with the eternal axis. The scene, once read with Massey’s translations, is perfectly consistent with Egyptian dualistic thought, where polarity and axis are the foundation of being.
Moses, Heh, and the Eternal Axis
The episode of Moses with arms upheld (Exodus 17:8–13) is not a literal battle scene but a survival of Egyptian cosmology. In posture and function Moses becomes Heh, the god of eternity, who is shown with arms raised, balancing the bilateral principle of time and measure. Heh never stands alone: his feminine counterpart is Hauhet, the goddess of endlessness, often depicted alongside him. The axis is thus dual, masculine and feminine, eternal duration joined in reciprocity.
The notched palm-branches in Heh’s hands are not incidental. They are the Egyptian signs of time and cyclicity, the dual stalks that mark measure in eternity. When Moses’ hands grow heavy, Aaron and Hur support them – Aaron taking the role of Sia (perception, mediation), and Hur preserving the name and function of Ḥeru/Horus, the bright one who steadies kingship. The tableau is an enactment of eternal polarity: axis upheld by vision and light, with the goddess as the hidden half of balance.
This logic resurfaces in the Jesus myth. At his entry into Jerusalem (John 12:13; Matthew 21:8–9), the people wave palms before him. These are not festive decorations but ritual symbols of Heh, carried into the Temple-city that is itself the new axis mundi. What Sinai was for Moses, Jerusalem becomes for Christ – the mountain-axis now embodied in stone and rite. Palms at the triumphal entry reproduce the same sign Moses bore: the notched fronds of eternal duality, now translated to the new axis.
Thus the Jesus–Moses parallel deepens. Moses as Heh on Sinai embodies eternity through raised arms; Jesus as the new axis enters the city crowned with palms. Both moments mark the meeting of heaven and earth at the axis, supported by the duality of goddess and god, vision and voice, serpent and palm.
The Movable Axis
The axis is both fixed and mobile. In its eternal form it is unmoving – the polar star, the Djed pillar, the cosmic tree – the point of balance around which all else revolves. This primal axis is Nature’s own epithet of stability, the eternal centre. Yet in its human form the axis travels. Wherever the king or pharaoh or emperor stands, there the centre of the world is made present.
Thus Egypt was not bound to the Nile valley alone. When the pharaoh marched into Nubia or into Canaan, Egypt moved with him, for the axis was in his body. The Romans held the same understanding: the emperor was the omphalos. When he travelled to Britain, South Shields was briefly the centre of empire, because the axis had shifted with him.
The Jesus tale repeats this logic. The palms waved and laid before him are the ancient signs of Heh, of eternity, carried into Jerusalem to announce that the axis had arrived. The temple became Sinai renewed: not a building of stone but the cosmic centre, activated by the presence of the axis in human form.
This mobility of the centre explains the paradoxes of sacred geography. Sinai cannot move, so Moses ascends it. Jerusalem is made axis by the king’s entry. Mecca becomes axis because Mohammed comes to it, and the mount is sanctified by his presence. Wherever the king goes, there is the world’s centre.
The axis is therefore not a historical accident of place but an archetypal function. It is eternal in the heavens, yet movable on earth. Its epithets are mountain and pillar, city and temple, pharaoh and messiah. In every culture the logic remains: the king is axis, the consort is field, and together they form the movable centre of the world.
Prophecy as Imperial Proof
The pattern of Roman–Flavian propaganda was simple but devastating.
Rewrite prophecy: The Hebrew scriptures, especially apocalyptic texts like Daniel, already anticipated a coming king or messiah. Under imperial and Alexandrian influence these passages were shaped and expanded so that the expected figure could be made to fit Roman objectives.
Write the “history” of that messiah: The gospels were then cast as a retrospective biography of the messiah who fulfilled those prophecies. Jesus became the perfect narrative vehicle – a Moses-axis figure entering the temple city, palms waving, Hosanna rising – the ancient archetype embodied.
Transfer fulfilment to Rome: Once Jesus’ story existed, Titus’ conquest of Jerusalem could be read as the literal outworking of Jesus’ prophecies. Jesus’ credibility proved the legitimacy of Titus; Titus’ destruction of the temple proved the validity of Jesus’ predictions. The messiah had arrived, and Rome had won.
This was not done overnight. It was the work of generations of scribes and scholars steeped in Alexandrian culture, Egyptian symbolism, and Jewish apocalyptic. Josephus – Flavian client, self-appointed historian, and the man who first proclaimed Vespasian messiah – stands at the earliest stage of this redaction. But the text we call “the Bible” did not emerge in his lifetime. It took centuries of careful editing to produce a canon that was internally cross-referential, harmonised, and stripped of counter-evidence – a scripture that appeared ancient and prophetic but in fact retrojected Roman imperial theology into the past.
In this way Rome achieved in literature what it had achieved on the battlefield. The Jewish hope of a coming messiah was not merely neutralised; it was inverted. Prophecy was no longer a threat to empire; it was proof of empire. Jesus as axis is Moses rewritten; Jesus’ “prophecies” are the Flavian conquest encoded backwards; Titus as Son of Man is the culmination of both. All of it rides on the same Egyptian archetypes of kingship, movable axis, and cosmic legitimacy – recast as the imperial cult’s claim to rule the world by divine right.
Two Dependent Theologies
From the wreckage of Jerusalem in 70 CE, two distinct theologies emerged.
Rabbinical Judaism was the theology of the dispersed. Its centre was no longer a city or a temple but the memory of them, codified in text and ritual. It insists that Jerusalem is the axis of the world and that the “return” is divinely mandated. The hardships of exile and dispersion are interpreted as the price of chosenness, the preparation for eventual restoration. The vengeance of God and the survival of his chosen people become proof that Rome’s victory was temporary, and that Israel will once again stand as the axis through which divine administration governs the world.
The Christian Church, by contrast, became the theology of progression. It internalised the movable axis and claimed that it could appear anywhere – Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, the Vatican. The story of Jesus was framed as a universal prophecy fulfilled, a divine victory already accomplished. The Church must therefore adapt to history, reinvent itself in each age, and expand control outward. The demand of Judaism is a reset, a return to origin; the demand of the Church is progress, an unfolding dominance.
Yet these two systems remain inter-reliant. Christianity derives its legitimacy from Judaism: Jesus is meaningful only as the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy. Judaism in turn thrives in the shadow of Christianity, its survival and identity sharpened by the need to contest and endure against the dominant Church. Each validates the other, yet each exposes the other.
To admit the Christian claim is to admit that Judaism’s prophecies were diverted and rewritten. To admit the Jewish claim is to admit that Christianity is illegitimate. But in truth both are illegitimate: neither rests on history, both on appropriation. The Jewish axis is a re-claimed Egyptian archetype, reworked through Moses. The Christian axis is the same archetype, re-scripted as Roman propaganda. Each has taken fragments of earlier culture and turned them into a theology of authority.
The paradox is that each needs the other to survive – and each is the other’s undoing. To expose one is to expose both.
Shakespeare’s Witness to the Paradox
The interdependence of Judaism and Christianity after 70 CE – each illegitimate, yet each propping the other up – is not confined to theology. It surfaces in the cultural record, encoded in works that appear at first glance to belong only to Elizabethan England. Through Aemilia Bassano’s hand, the Shakespeare canon preserves a memory of the Flavian crime and stages the unresolved struggle between Jew and Gentile.
Titus Andronicus: Rome devours itself
The bloodiest play in the canon becomes legible when placed beside Josephus. The title alone twines “Titus” with “Andronicus,” the name of a real Roman officer in Judea. What the Flavians celebrated as triumph – famine, mutilation, the Temple’s destruction – is inverted on stage. Tamora’s sons are baked into a pie and served at table: Rome forced to eat its own children.
The mutilated Lavinia, the severed hands, the cycle of vengeance are not gratuitous horrors. They are prophetic countersigns. Rome violated covenant and axis; now Rome’s own household is destroyed from within. The play gives voice to a Judaic cry for vengeance, showing the Gentile house reduced to grotesque parody. This is the smoking gun: Shakespeare naming the Flavian crime, memorialising Jerusalem’s desolation, and turning the triumph inside out.
The entire plot is blamed on the Moor. But Atwill has exposed the code in his work. The Moor is code for the identity of Bassano herself - an Italian Jew, known to her family as The Little Moor, because of her skin tone. Moor is code for Jew.
The ‘chief architect and plotter of these woes’ is Aaron!
With no examination of the origin of both Judaism and Christianity in the Egyptian, Atwill is simply scratching the surface and describing one level of the history that belies the rationale. The origins of which are far more ancient and significant, relating to Moses and Aaron. Both of whom are Egyptian in origin. With Aaron maintaining the goddess archetypes, again the Shakespearean Aaron is a self-admitted deceiver, venomous and adder like, dark and manipulative. He is the archetypal adversary, Satan himself. Thus Aaron’s goddess role is incorporated into Aaron the Moor, and thoroughly demonised in typical Biblical typology.
Romeo and Juliet: Verona as “truth”
Where Titus is overt, Romeo and Juliet is cryptic. The setting in Verona – from Latin vērus, “true” – makes the prologue’s words plain: “In fair Verona, where we lay our scene” is “In beautiful truth, here we stage it.” What follows is a parable of the two dependent theologies.
“Two households, both alike in dignity” are Jew and Gentile, Israel and Rome. Their “ancient grudge” is the covenantal schism; their “new mutiny” is the war that destroyed the Temple. It is the recurring tragic result of the stalemate between religious cults. Romeo’s name encodes Rome itself, a son of the city. Juliet, from Julius and Jupiter, is the daughter of Rome’s divine line. Their union could have signified reconciliation – the restoration of the most ancient god–goddess pairing, the return to Egypt’s balance. Instead it ends in mutual destruction.
The agent of that destruction is Friar Lawrence – his very name bearing the laurel, crown of conquest. He could have delivered warning; instead he delays. He could have healed; he could have easily sent the warning to ensure Romeo understood that Juliet’s death was a charade; instead he subverts it all. In him the Church appears in miniature: the priest of Rome ensuring that reconciliation fails.
The archetypal inversion
The play’s ending subverts the deepest archetype. In Egypt the god dies, the goddess mourns, and renewal comes. Here Juliet dies first, then Romeo, then Juliet again – both extinguished, no return. The regenerative cycle is sabotaged. What might have been reconciliation – Jew and Gentile restored to primordial archetype – is prevented by the laurel-bearing priest.
The intent here is to have vengeance upon the gentile ‘Amalekite’ Roman and Christian imposition. It is vengeance. It does not seek a fair treatment in reconciliation of the ancient enmity between Jew and Gentile. It is a deliberate act of doing unto others what they did to you; an eye for an eye.
Thus Romeo and Juliet stages the same paradox seen in the twin theologies. Each household alike, each dependent on the other, yet together locked in destruction. The truth is declared – “in fair Verona” – yet the archetype is veiled and broken.
Bassano as veiled Isis
Behind both plays is the dark lady herself, Aemilia Bassano. Known as “little Moor” – a cipher for Jew – she is Isis veiled, carrying the hidden field into Elizabethan drama. Her converso identity explains the precision of the cipher. She stages Rome’s crime (Titus) and Rome’s sabotage (Romeo) with the archetypal language of god and goddess inverted.
Literature as axis
What theology did in text and dogma, Shakespeare did in theatre. The plays expose the paradox: Jew and Gentile as rival theologies, each claiming truth, each sabotaging the older archetype, each dependent on the other for survival. By encoding vengeance, subversion, and archetypal ruin, the canon shows that from 70 CE onward, the axis was no longer stone or temple, but text and stage – and that the truth, like Isis, remained veiled.
Atwill’s contribution and its limits
Joe Atwill’s thesis – that the Flavians constructed the Gospel narrative as propaganda to pacify Jewish resistance – is a major contribution. He shows how Josephus’s Jewish War was repurposed into the pattern of Jesus’s ministry, turning Roman victory into messianic fulfilment. On that point the case is strong: scene by scene, the Flavian hand is visible. Christianity in its canonical form is partly a Roman artefact, a literary control device.
But as an account of origins, this is only the outer layer. Atwill’s framework is bounded by the Rome–Judah polarity. He does not ask what lies beneath both traditions. He avoids the deeper wellspring from which Judaism and Christianity alike drew their language, structure and rites: the Egyptian and pan-Near Eastern archetypes of axis, field and renewal – Isis, Osiris, Ma’at, Orion – and their later Greek and Levantine evolutions. Without that layer, the Flavian parody cannot be seen for what it is: a targeted rewrite of a much older architecture.
Four specific limits matter:
The goddess is absent
Atwill sidesteps the persistent substratum of goddess-field in the Mediterranean world – Isis, Sophia, Shekhinah, Inanna – not as “fertility cults,” but as the field-principle of measure, balance and restoration that sits behind temple, kingship and law. He leaves unexamined how both Judaism and Christianity suppressed and repackaged that feminine ground. As a result, the deepest act of theft – the veiling of Ma’at/Isis – remains invisible in his analysis.The tragedies are missing
He confines himself to Josephus and the Gospels. He does not read the literary echoes that carry the same polemic forward: Shakespeare through Aemilia Bassano staging the Flavian crime in Titus Andronicus and the failure of reconciliation in Romeo and Juliet. Those plays enact precisely the pattern his thesis predicts – the Gentile house devouring itself, the two households alike in dignity unable to reconcile, the laurel-bearing priest sabotaging union. Without these, his argument remains strictly historical when the culture itself preserved and transmitted the memory through ciphered art.The wider mythic continuity is ignored
He does not engage with the long drift of the axis – from the Danube and Anatolia to Egypt and Sumer, into Israel and Greece, and then into Rome. He does not see the way the elder god–goddess pairing, the Djed/benben, the sovereign-goddess validation of kingship, and the foundation rites of measure were first natural, ritual and architectural – and only later theologised. His analysis captures the Roman rewrite, but not the older structure being rewritten.The twin theologies after 70 CE are left under-examined
He does not consider how Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity became mutually dependent systems – both illegitimate in origin (yet ‘both alike in dignity’), both based on appropriation, each requiring the other’s existence for its own claim to stand. That is why both traditions must keep Isis veiled. Exposing one exposes both.
Such elements are crucial, for example, in understanding why fish was chosen as the archetype for Jesus’s “fishing for men” at Galilee. This imagery cannot be reduced to Titus literally “fishing for men.” Long before the Flavians, the fish was an ancient and well-established mythic symbol: bodies in the great waters of space, stars and planets swimming in the cosmic sea. The same motif appears in Abraham’s fish pond at Urfa – Balıklıgöl (the Pool of Abraham) – which corresponds to the fish in the Abzu, the Apkallu sent by Enki/Ea. Star gods had been symbolised for millennia as aquatic beings – fish, amphibians, water-creatures – forming the pantheons of the Anunnaki and providing the mythological substrate later absorbed into the Bible.
To view fish merely as a cipher for men caught by Titus is to miss both the wider language of myth and the deeper significance of the codes carried into scripture. Without this broader comparative frame, Atwill’s thesis remains too narrow. It explains one level of why the Flavians wrote as they did, but not the full spectrum of what mythic data was transformed, nor the deeper why of its perennial recurrence.
What Storm God contributes
Storm God takes the next step Acharya and Massey had opened. It refuses to isolate Rome and Judah in a vacuum. It restores the underlying architecture – the axis, the field, the sovereign-goddess and the measured king – from Vinča script and early metrology through Egypt and Mesopotamia to Shakespeare’s England. It shows:
• that the Bible and the Church sit upon older structures – not accidentally, but by deliberate appropriation and inversion;
• that Rabbinical Judaism is likewise shaped by the same elder body of myth and measure, reworked into text and law;
• that Shakespeare, via Bassano, staged this conflict as living testimony – Titus Andronicus as the Flavian smoking gun, Romeo and Juliet as the Veneto cipher of Jew and Gentile and the archetype’s sabotage;
• that the slaughter of the innocents is not only a biblical trope but an Egyptian-derived funerary pattern distorted into history – and that this becomes the chreode of empire, demanding sacrifice to preserve the veil.
Atwill proves one essential limb of the case: the Roman invention of a pacifying religion. Storm God places that limb back into the whole body – the goddess, the axis, the tragedies, the twin theologies, and the price paid by the innocent to maintain the mutual lie. It is the wider picture – the one that must be told, because no one else is telling it. It can be explored by other academics with expertise in these areas, for undoubtedly, much is yet to be recovered.
Conclusion: The Slaughter of the Innocents
The tragedies of Shakespeare are not isolated plays but ritual testimonies of a longer historical chreode. The archetype of slaughter – already present in the Orion cycle of Egyptian funerary texts – became distorted into the biblical stories of Moses and Jesus. Both begin with massacres of children, framed as the necessary backdrop for the hero’s survival. In truth these are mythic inversions: the loss of the young to preserve the axis, the sacrifice of the innocent to sustain the lie.
This pattern resurfaces in Romeo and Juliet. The children of the two households perish not for their own sins, but for the feud of their fathers. The “sins of the fathers” are the inherited lies of Jew and Gentile alike – each clinging to its theology, each suppressing the goddess, each dependent on the other to survive. Their children, like the slain innocents of Exodus and Bethlehem, are the cost of maintaining the veil.
So it has remained for two millennia. To guard the mutual falsehood, both systems have required sacrifice. Whether by crusade, inquisition, pogrom or revolution, the axis is fed with innocent lives. The fathers – Jewish and Roman alike – perpetuate their theologies, and the masses pay in blood.
This is why the tragedies still strike us as true. They are not fictions of Verona or Rome, but archetypal re-enactments of a historical process. The reconciliation that would have restored the elder god–goddess pairing is sabotaged. The veil of Isis is preserved. And the innocent continue to be consumed.
From the clash of Rome and Judea to the managed societies of today, we have all been Huxwelled: forced into a dialectic of fear and desire, bound to a cycle of concealment and sacrifice. The tragedies remind us that the slaughter is not accident but design. The sinners are the fathers, and the children always pay.