ers of the princes who appear before them, and notably fewer than the three people-groups listed after them.158 The scribe of the Memphis Stele attrib

insula under Moses’ leadership (Num 14:33)? The date for A2 in November of the exodus-year coincides with a silent period in Biblical history. Exodus concludes with Israel near Mount Sinai, though Moses parenthetically adds a retrospective summary of how the Lord guided them during their subsequent journeys (Exod 40:36–38). Meanwhile, Numbers begins in the 14th month after the exodus (Num 1:1), about five months after A2 concluded. Therefore, A2 fits into this silent period, with no inherent conflict between the capture of the 3,600 Israelites—who probably left the Israelite camp and journeyed toward southern Palestine, near the travel route of A2—and the Biblical events that transpired after the exodus.159IX. AMENHOTEP II AND THE DESECRATION OF HATSHEPSUT’S IMAGEEgyptian history itself may confirm that Amenhotep II was the exodus-pharaoh. The Thutmosid succession entered into an extraordinary phase at the death of Thutmose II, as the throne was given first to his son, Thutmose III, and later assumed as well by his widow, Hatshepsut. Her rise to power resulted from her position as the child-king’s regent; given his youthfulness, her self-appointment to the rank of coregent probably met little or no opposition within the royal court.160 Sometime between Year 2 and Year 4 of Thutmose III, Hatshepsut assumed full royal titulary, making herself a female pharaoh of equal rank.1611. Identifying Moses’ Adoptive Mother.Moses evidently was born during the reign of Thutmose I, whose daughter, Hatshepsut, qualifies as a legitimate candidate for the pharaoh’s daughter who drew Moses from the Nile River (Exod 2:5).162 Was she old enough during her father’s second regnal year, most likely the time in which Moses was born (ca. 1527 BC), to qualify as his Egyptian stepmother?a. Hatshepsut’s Age Viewed as Being Insufficient. One scenario may preclude Hatshepsut from being the princess who drew Moses from the Nile. The chief wife of Thutmose I, Queen Ahmose, was called “the King’s Sister,” but never “the King’s Daughter,” a title given only to a princess. Egyptians generally were not reserved about recording ranks and titles, so this reticence may indicate that Ahmose was not a pharaoh’s daughter, and thus was neither the daughter nor the sister of Amenhotep I. Instead, she may have been the sister or half-sister of Thutmose I. If this were true, a brother-sister marriage almost certainly would have occurred after Thutmose I was promoted to heir apparent, as incestuous marriages are extremely rare outside of the immediate royal family, and such political matches that consolidated a would-be successor’s claim to the throne were standard procedure in ancient Egypt.163 Perhaps, then, Hatshepsut was born after Thutmose I was coronated (ca. 1529 BC), and thus was barely over twelve years old when she married her (half-)brother (ca. 1516 BC). This means that Hatshepsut would have been less than three years of age at the time of Moses’ birth, at which age she hardly could have ventured down to the Nile, let alone draw out an infant-bearing reed basket from the river.b. Hatshepsut’s Age Viewed as Being Sufficient. Yet there is no proof that Hatshepsut was born after her father’s accession, and the current lack of attestation to Queen Ahmose being a “King’s Daughter” does not preclude her from being the daughter of Amenhotep I. In addition, the uncertainty about when Thutmose II’s reign began means that he may have served as co-regent with his father, Thutmose I, for several years before he ruled alone. Hatshepsut thus would have been of sufficient age to draw Moses out of the Nile during her father’s second regnal year, so she remains a legitimate candidate for Moses’ Egyptian adoptive-mother, especially since her father was already over 35 years old when he assumed the throne.c. Hatshepsut’s Sister Akhbetneferu as a Candidate. Is Hatshepsut the only candidate for Moses’ royal adoptive-mother? Confusion exists over the number of children actually born to Thutmose I and Queen Ahmose. Only two daughters, Hatshepsut and her sister, Princess Akhbetneferu, are known to have been born to the royal couple. However, Princess Akhbetneferu died in infancy, so she cannot qualify as a candidate for the princess who found Moses, leaving Hatshepsut as the only known daughter of Thutmose I who does qualify.164d. Hatshepsut’s Potential Step-Sister as a Candidate. One other option exists for Moses’ adoptive-mother, but not through Queen Ahmose. Thutmose I had a secondary wife named Queen Mutnofret, the mother of Thutmose II. Little is known of her but that she was a person of rank, probably even royal blood, as an inscription at Karnak calls her “the King’s Daughter.” Mutnofret, and not Ahmose, actually appears in the king’s mortuary chapel alongside the royal princes Ramose and Wadjmose, both of whom probably died before their father.165 Therefore, perhaps even numerous princes were born before their father married Ahmose.



No princesses are known to have been mothered by Mutnofret,
but the possibility does exist; if Mutnofret did bear a daughter, undoubtedly this princess—given the ages of the princes—would have been old enough to qualify.e. Hatshepsut’s Position as the Most Likely Candidate. All of the evidence points to Hatshepsut as the most likely candidate for Moses’ stepmother, for several reasons: (1) Hatshepsut’s blood-sister, Princess Akhbetneferu, was the only other daughter whom Queen Ahmose is known to have borne, but her death in infancy eliminates her candidacy. (2) Lady Mutnofret bore several sons to Thutmose I before she died, but there is no indication that she ever bore him any daughters.166 (3) The text of Exod 2:10 states that after “the child [Moses] grew, she [his mother] brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son.” Therefore, Moses’ Egyptian stepmother obviously lived a considerable length of time after she retrieved him from the Nile, increasing the likelihood that an account of this “Daughter of Pharaoh” (Exod 2:5) would be documented and preserved somewhere in the Egyptians’ detailed records, a qualification true of Hatshepsut alone.2. Identifying the Defacer of Hatshepsut’s Image. At some indeterminable time after Hatshepsut’s death, a serious attempt was made to obliterate all record of her from history. Many inscribed cartouches of her were erased, while her busts were smashed or broken into pieces, perhaps by gangs of workmen dispatched to various sites throughout Egypt. In some cases, the culprits carefully and completely hacked out the silhouette of her image from carvings, often leaving a distinct, Hatshepsut-shaped lacuna in the middle of a scene, often as a preliminary step to replacing it with a different image or royal cartouche, usually that of Thutmose I or II.167 At Karnak, her obelisks were walled-up and incorporated into the vestibule in front of Pylon V, while at Djeser-Djeseru her statues and sphinxes were removed, smashed, and cast into trash dumps.1Rosetta Stone Spanish