Egyptian Origins of the Ark of the Covenant
I remember when I started studying ancient near-eastern linguistics about a decade ago. One of my primary interests at the time I started studying was the Egyptian influence on the Jewish religion, and more specifically on the text of the Torah. My rationale was that if a people and a religion claimed to have its origin in Egypt, we should expect to see Egyptian influence in the text. As I learned more about the Hebrew and Egyptian languages, I began to develop the following premise as a model: if for some reason the Greek source texts we have for the New Testament were lost, and all we had were English translations, we could use some of the technical religious language to deduce what the source language of the New Testament was. For example, if we came to the word Baptize, a Greek word, we’d know that this was a technical religious word with Greek origins, and that in Greek it simply means Dip. What happens frequently when religious texts are translated is that the technical language of the religion and its practices tend to stick in the original language. This is due to the ritualistic practices cementing the term in its original form. So at some point the word ceases to be translated and is simply transliterated.
However, I quickly found that almost all of the lexical material for classical Hebrew tends to reference eastern Semitic languages instead of western Semitic languages, such as Egyptian. And from an academic perspective this makes sense since the Torah really wasn’t solidified until after the return from the Jewish exile in Babylon under Nehemiah and Ezra. So from this perspective, we would expect to see eastern Babylonian influence on the text. But I was continually haunted by the fact that the Jewish people had a story claiming that they spent hundreds of years in Egypt and were led out by an Egyptian, Moses, who was educated and raised by Egyptian priests, who eventually wrote the Torah according to tradition. Under such circumstances, how could there not be Egyptian influence?
Naturally, I learned Egyptian after learning classical Hebrew. But as soon as I gained some proficiency in Egyptian, I began to notice that there were indeed Egyptian influences on etymology and religious themes (see my article on the origin of Yahweh as a prime example of this); and to my dismay these influences were frequently overlooked in the monumental Hebrew lexicons, such as Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon.
So with a little background on my interest in this topic, one of the easiest places we see this Egyptian influence is in one of the most revered objects in Jewish history, and possibly even Christian history: The Ark of the Covenant. And ironically, to notice the influence you really don’t even need a knowledge of the languages, even though there are some linguistic hooks that solidifies this theory.
Now, I want to make it clear that I have a bias in that I’m a skeptic and a rationalist, so whenever I see an article about the Ark, or see any reference to it in pop-culture, I generally roll my eyes and think its just another kooky exploitation of a mystical religious icon. The movie Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example, has done much to solidify our modern notion of what the ark looked like and what it was used for.
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Now the theme of the Ark of the Covenant is: two winged heavenly beings called Cherubim, a box, and two poles that were used to carry the box. Now more specifically, even though the image above of the Ark doesn’t show anything between the angels or Cherubim, the text of Exodus says that God appeared between the Cherubim and the technical name for the space between the wings was called the Kippur, which is frequently translated as “mercy seat” or “place of propitiation”, but in Hebrew it’s simply Kippur. So the theme, to reiterate is:
- Two angels or Cherubim
- God between the wings of the Cherubim in a place called Kippur
- The Cherubim and God on top of a box
- Poles mounted to the side of the box by which priests carried the Ark
Now, let’s take a look at some images from ancient Egyptian art that predates Moses and the exodus from Egypt. The image below shows two winged heavenly beings with wings outstretched on both sides of a god, on top of a box, with poles on the side, being carried by Egyptian priests:
Boat Procession with Winged Beings
This theme is found on Egyptian wall reliefs as well as smaller art objects such as the following where Amun, an Egyptian god, is fixed between two winged heavenly beings on top of a boat. This was to symbolize a real event in which the priests would parade a larger boat, mounted on poles, with Amun seated between two winged beings:
Icon of Boat with Winged Creatures
The examples of this theme are frequent and there isn’t much use in posting more examples here. Instead, I’d like to move onto a more specific form of this theme in which a Khepera beetle, or scarab, is shown seated between two winged beings, or sometimes with the two beings holding wings up to the side of the Khepera beetle:
Khepera
The Khepera beetle, or scarab, is one of the most ubiquitous symbols found throughout the ancient middle east. The word for scarab in ancient Egyptian was pronounced something like “khepera” and had a number of meanings such as: revolve, renew, regenerate, resurrect. The theme of the Khepera beetle between divine beings, sometimes winged, is extremely frequent in Egypt as illustrated by this relief in an 18th dynasty tomb:
Khepera on Boat
Why is this important to The Ark of the Covenant? The reason is because the space between the angels in Hebrew, as we noted above was Kippur. In Hebrew, which doesn’t have vowels written out, only has the consonants: KPR. I find it highly coincidental that the Hebrew Torah describes the space between the two Cherubim as KPR and that there is a frequent theme in Egyptian art in which a KPR, or Khepera, has two divine beings usually with outstretched wings. In fact, the very word Cherubim is probably derived from the Egyptian word Cheriu, or Heriu, which meant “those from above” or “heavenly beings”.
As a result, we should suspect that the real Ark of the Covenant would have looked more Egyptian in nature, most likely with a Khepera beetle, or scarab, between the two Cherubim. This makes additional sense in that the High Priest only accessed the Ark of the Covenant one time per year, and that time was at the “revolution” of the year, or the beginning of the new year. Recall, the Egyptian word Khepera means “revolution” or “renewal”. So, at the beginning of the new year, the High Priest would go in and ceremonially perform a ritual act to signify the end of the old and the beginning, or renewal, of a new year.
Below are some additional images showing the theme in Egyptian art, some original, some artistic replications:
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There are numerous other examples proving that the Ark of the Covenant’s design was a borrowed theme. Again, as I’ve said in other posts, this evidence of Egyptian themes in the religious icons of the Hebrew faith adds credibility that the Hebrew religion does in fact have some roots in Egypt.
Origins of Yahweh / Jehovah / YHWH / Yahu / Yah
Preface
The origin of the name of God “Yahweh”, or Jehovah, has been unnecessarily obscured. The reasons for this will immediately become clear once we start to dig. Most linguists who know Egyptian, Hebrew and Akkadian have long recognized this problem. Since an understanding of the languages is required to see the problem clearly, I have attempted to make it as accessible as possible without being overly technical. There are some very technically brilliant people who have studied the ancient materials used in this post.
The Torah traditionally connects Yahweh to the verb “to be”, a sort of self proclamation of Yahweh when He tells Moses “I am what I am”, in Hebrew Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. And in a more primitive sense it was probably connected to the first words spoken by God in the Torah “Let there be light”, in Hebrew Yehyeh Or, where the first Word spoken was apparently “be”, hence it was understood that the holy Name was the first utterance of God.
YHWH
Pronunciation
In the ancient text there were no vowels, only consonants. Vowel pointing, a system of dots around the consonants that provided the vowels to be read between the consonants, didn’t enter the textual tradition until around 1000 AD, nearly 2000 years after the original text was penned. The scribes that introduced this vowel system were a group of Jewish scribes in Egypt, who provided two of the greatest textual crowns to the modern world: The Leningrad Codex and the Aleppo Codex. So without the vowels in the original ancient text, all we have are the consonants YHWH, traditionally called the tetragrammaton, or “the four letters”. I’m not going to go into the modern vowel pointings that developed post-1000 AD, because it’s long and involved. The only point I want to stress is that as a language passes through time its sounds mutate rather rapidly from generation to generation. It’s not difficult to recognize a British accent, from an American accent, or even from an Australian accent, and these developed over only a couple hundred years. Had they developed over a longer period entire words would have changed pronunciation and meaning; but in our case mass communication has stabilized the situation some. But a simple example of pronunciation shift as languages evolve over time can be seen in the following words: mega, magna, and big. Mega is Greek, magna is Latin, and big is English. These words all developed from a single word in the ancient past (M and B are both labial, or lip, sounds and shift frequently as languages develop).
Sample from Aleppo Codex
So, back to YHWH. Without the actual vowel pointings, it would seem difficult to reconstruct. However, without complex linguistic analysis, which usually leads to a quagmire, we are actually in a very good situation within this tradition because the name’s pronunciation was preserved in personal names from the era. For example:
- IsaYAH (Isaiah)
- JeremYAH (Jeremiah)
- AbiYAHU (Abijahu)
The list of names is actually quite long with almost hundreds of examples. But the point is that in all cases, the pronunciation is always YAHU or YAH. So how does this fit into YHWH? First, think of W as a U. In Hebrew U, W, and V are all the same letter. So in this paradigm it’s YaHUH. So if we assume the first vowel is A, we come to YAHUH which corresponds to the YAHU preserved in names from the era. Therefore, the pronunciation of Jehova, or YHWH, was YAH or YAHU. Hold on to this fact, because it will play a part later in this story.
Key Numbers in the Torah
There are two primary numbers that occur over and over in the Torah: 7 and 12. The 7 is claimed to derive from the creation 6 day cycle followed by a 7th day of rest for the divine. The number 12 is seen as deriving from the 12 sons of Jacob and the resulting 12 tribes of Israel. But we find these numbers everywhere in the Torah. 7 and 12 are so ubiquitous one can’t really read a book without encountering multiple references to these numbers. Again, hold on to this fact that 7 and 12 are all over the Torah, and don’t forget the pronunciation of the name YAHU.
Creation Stories
Keep in mind, that before the 1800’s Egyptian hieroglyphs were a mystery, as were all of the other ancient languages of the middle east. In the 1800s we cracked almost every language from the region, which flooded our knowledge of the ancient middle east. Also, one should remember that the biblical text represents copies of copies of copies of copies ad infinitum. With these new languages as tools scholars could pull a 4000 year old clay tablet out of the ground and read it, without having it pass through the copying process. This meant we could read pure thoughts from the ancient world without scribes inserting changes or errors. With that in mind, let’s take a look at one of the most important finds as it relates to understanding the origin of the Torah from a 3000 year old tablet containing a myth from Babylon called Enuma Elish “When on High” (5th tablet):
What should stand out is that we have in this Babylonian text the moon god creating horns for 6 days and then it reached a 7th day at half moon, and continues on until the moon is full at which point the Babylonian text uses the word “Shabbatum”, or Sabbath. So we have 6 days followed by a 7th, with the word Sabbath describing the full moon. The lunar phases from December 2008 illustrate how the moon takes 7 days to move from new moon to half moon, and roughly another 7 days to reach full moon.
Lunar phases
The Egyptian Word for Moon
In ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs the word for Moon comes in two forms: YAH and YAHU. Both pronunciations occur in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. This matches exactly the pronunciation deduced above for the Hebrew divine name YHWH, which we have proved to have been pronounced YAH and YAHU. See wikipedia for Iah: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iah
Putting It All Together
We have ancient texts predating the Torah explaining that the lunar phases of new moon, half moon, whole moon, half moon occur in roughly 7 day cycles, even describing this progression as making horns for 6 days until it reaches half moon by day 7, and then iterating to full moon which the Babylonian text calls SHABBATUM or Sabbath. We know the word for moon in the near east was YAHU. And we also know the number 12 was extremely important to the ancient Hebrews. Why? Because there are 12 lunar cycles in a year. The reference to horns is also most likely why horns are so important in Judaism. Horns are everywhere in the sanctuary service, playing a prominent role in the altar and sacrificial system.
Altar with Horns
Cloud by Day, Pillar of Fire by Night
The nature of God in the Exodus story is “a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night”. A full moon in the middle of the day is milky white and has a cloud-like appearance. At night the moon becomes a flame of fire.
Also of interest, is that the Hebrews reckoned days by evening to morning. In other words a new day began in the evening. The reason they reckoned days from the evening is that they needed to see the lunar phase to know which day it was. If it was a full moon or half moon, it was a sabbath. So the modern Jewish practice of reckoning a new day from the evening is a residual marker that the night’s moon was required in order to determine which day it was.
Additional Evidence
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead we find references that parallel the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish where the moon god makes horns for 6 days until reaching a half moon on the 7th and then reaching SHABBATUM at full moon on the 15th day. This passage from the Book of the Dead comes from Plate XXVIII, chapter LXXX:
I have provided Thoth (another name for the Egyptian moon god) in the house of Yah, at the coming of the 15th day of the festival SMAT. I have carried off the crown. Right and Truth are in my body, and the emeralds and crystals of her months/moons. My estate is there among the lapis-lazuli in it’s furrows.
This passage echoes the passage from Enuma Elish. The word for the festival of the 15th day, SMAT, may be an Egyptian parallel for SHABBATUM, or Sabbath. Recall our example above where mega, magna, and big all derived from a single word in the ancient past. In this case, the M in SMAT would be the B in SHABBATUM, so would be the same word. Unfortunately, to my knowledge the pronunciation of SMAT is still contested. But because of the lunar context I’d argue it most likely was a word similar to SHABBATUM.
The other interesting thing to note from this passage is that each month is associated with a crystal. It seems likely that an association of gems to lunar phases most likely explains the origin of the Ephod’s breast plate which contained 12 crystals, which was later interpreted as relating to the 12 sons of Jacob and the resulting 12 tribes. The first century author Josephus confirms this view of the number 12 equating to the lunar cycles when he writes: “As for the 12 stones, whether one would prefer to read in them the moons (months)… he will not mistake [Moses'] intentions.” Again, regarding the 12 loaves of bread in the sanctuary, Josephus writes: “Again, by placing upon the table the twelve loaves, he signifies that the year is divided into as many moons (months).” - Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book III.
High Priest's Breastplate
Conclusion
The linguistic and literary evidence from the ancient near-east strongly suggests that the roots of the Hebrew faith reside in lunar worship, or at least a deity who was associated with the moon in the early stages and later was disassociated from the moon to create the later version western civilization has inherited: the “unseeable” God of the Torah. My personal view is that instead of defending one origin over another, dismissing useful data in order to defend a doctrine, or worse, slandering those who simply point out the data, I’d suggest that if you are a person of faith and feel that the data affects your faith adversely, rework your faith, not the data. Marcus Borg’s model of theology allows one to digest the historical data without having to give up your faith. While the data presented here may be troubling to some, it also has some positive effects. The data, while suggesting a lunar origin, also provides evidence of Egyptian origins of the Jewish faith, which for some may be of more value in that it supports the narratives of an exodus from Egypt. As a result, with any data presented that affects a religion, this data also affects the historicity of the Exodus in a positive way. My primary agenda is to point out historical data that isn’t being addressed in faith circles. I find it highly likely that in university libraries and seminaries there are dissertations that seek to dismantle the data presented here, but I find there are too many coincidences and correlations in the data, spread across multiple ancient middle eastern cultures to quietly dismiss these points. I think a healthy faith, one that is flexible and tolerant, can incorporate these data points to build a stronger, more resilient faith that can critically study the history of the ancient roots of religion without fear.
Links
Enuma Elish: http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm
Egyptian Book of the Dead, plate XXVIII: http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/ebod/ebod34.htm
Yahu, Egyptian word for Moon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iah
As a rebuttal to Robert Morey’s theory that Allah has some connections to a lunar deity, which is not true, M S M Saifullah, Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi & ‘Abdullah David have put together some very good data on this topic, although I do not agree with their findings on the deity SIN/SYN; I think this deity is clearly a lunar deity. Also, the Hebrew El and Allah in my opinion have roots in the same deity: the Sumerian god Ellil (or Enlil). I’ll address this in a later post. I respect the research of the “islamic-awareness.org” group. They hit the mark on many points, but because of their own religious bias they also miss the mark on other points. Nevertheless they have done some good research on this topic and it’s worth reading: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Sources/Allah/moongod.html.