Moses and Multiculturalism

5. Moses, the Egyptian

46 C h a P t e r F i v e Moses, the egyptian We learned what we had always suspected, that the Masonic mysteries were of a Blacker origin than we thought and that this man had in his possession a Black sacred book. Ishmael reed, Mumbo Jumbo It was not only Freud who announced to the world that Moses was really an egyptian; so did the prominent egyptologist Jan Assmann. Assmann’s Moses the Egyptian gives solidity to Freud’s claim. But it does more: Assmann makes a useful distinction between history and memory, traditions and “what really happened.” This distinction suits egypt in europe’s memory almost better than anything else. It is this distinction that explains the effect of egypt on europe and even, by contrast, the image of Greece as europe’s pure childhood —an image of european origins that was fundamental to philosophical and literary theory. The other important point Assmann makes is that the birth of monotheism is the birth of religious intolerance and, in general, that to claim a religion as “true” is to claim all other religions as “false.” Thus every religion that claims truth is a counterreligion—defining itself against a specific error. Polytheism always had room for another god, or considered other people’s gods as translations of their own. But monotheism was exclusive : “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” In his search for an egyptian Moses (having detected his egyptianness Moses, the Egyptian / 47 even in the Bible), Freud admitted that the official egyptian religion was quite contrary to the one Moses founded. Indeed, as we have seen in Walzer’s book and as anyone who has looked in a Passover Hagaddah knows, the opposition between Israel and egypt is fundamental to the exodus story. Without Moses and Pharaoh opposing each other, there would not be an exodus story. The liberation of the slaves and the threat of missing “the fleshpots of egypt” have given meaning to many a narrative of freedom. It is perhaps what underlies the idea that freedom means giving something up. Clearly, Moses couldn’t just be the kind of egyptian he opposes. Freud was convinced he had found the answer to the conundrum in the ruins of Tel el-Amarna, the new capital built by the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, who reigned for seventeen years during the eighteenth Dynasty and was reputed to be the first monotheist. First named Amenhotep Iv, he changed his name to Akhenaten (Ikhnaton)1 and erased the names of other gods from monuments in order to worship only Aton, the sun god,2 whom he represented by a disc with rays ending in hands or ankhs (caresses or the principle of life). Here was a counterreligion, and it was egyptian. Akhenaten was called “the first individual in human history.”3 When he died, the traces of his ideas were erased, his statues defaced, and his city abandoned. Freud is fascinated by the notion that an egyptian follower of the heretic pharaoh’s ideas had chosen a scruffy, oppressed people to receive the religion he couldn’t abandon. Hence the origin of the “chosen people.” Freud develops in detail the psychology of this “great man,” the original Moses. Freud’s initial intention, indeed, was to write a historical novel about “the man Moses,” and for that, character psychology was necessary. As Assmann puts it, “Unlike Moses, Akhenaten, Pharaoh Amenophis Iv, was a figure exclusively of history and not of memory. . . . Until his rediscovery in the nineteenth century, there was virtually no memory of Akhenaten. Moses represents the reverse case. no traces have ever been found of his historical existence. He grew and developed only as a figure of memory, absorbing and embodying all traditions that pertained to legislation, liberation , and monotheism.”4 Assmann does a close reading of the “Great Hymn” that remains from Akhenaten’s heresy. But worship of “the one” was in 48 / Moses, the Egyptian the air: in Plato’s Republic, the three degrees of distance from the real—the painter’s bed, the carpenter’s bed, and God’s bed—make much more sense if there is one God. They often even involve the sun: Plato’s sensual sun versus the intelligible sun, for instance. systems of thought by which we are still influenced today often revolve around a single center. The opposition between history and memory seems especially useful in...