The Moses Legacy - Adam Palmer [45]
‘Oh, you’re not going to throw that in surely?’ Mansoor sneered.
‘Why not?’
‘Wait a minute,’ Daniel interrupted. ‘What’s the Great Harris Papyrus?’
He looked back and forth between Mansoor and Gabrielle, who were looking at each other. Eventually Gabrielle shrugged and spoke.
‘The Great Harris Papyrus was the longest papyrus ever found in ancient Egypt. Named after the collector who acquired it, the Great Harris Papyrus was one of the most important papyri of ancient Egypt. Some 42 metres long, it contained 1,500 lines of text.’
‘But what’s it got to do with Joseph?’
‘In its final section, it refers to someone called “Yarsu”, which sounds a bit like Yosef, the Hebrew form of Joseph. The text goes something like “Yarsu, a Syrian was with them as Leader. He made the whole land pay tribute to him; he united his companions and looted their possessions. They made the Gods like men, and no sacrifices were offered in the temples.”’
‘Syrian,’ Mansoor echoed for emphasis.
‘Yes, but the term Syria was sometimes used to include Canaan, where Joseph originated. And making “the whole land pay tribute to him” sounds like the way Joseph gained effective control of Egypt, by winning the support of the pharaoh.’
Mansoor looked decidedly underwhelmed.
‘And what about: “united his companions and looted their possessions”?’
Gabrielle thought about this for a few seconds.
‘It could refer either to the act of holding the ordinary Egyptian people to ransom because of the famine and his monopoly over the grain supplies. Or it might refer to the way he played those mind games with his own brothers before revealing himself. But the clincher is: “They made the Gods like men.” Who else do we know who made Gods like men? Who believed that man was created in the image of God?’
‘The Israelites,’ Daniel muttered, not quite trusting his voice.
‘Exactly!’ cried Gabrielle triumphantly. ‘And it says that no sacrifices were offered in the temples. That must be a reference to the Amarna experiment when Akhenaten not only banned the worship of Amun and decreed the Aten to be the one true God, but even created a new city in his honour and moved his entire court there.’
‘But that was a generation later,’ said Mansoor. ‘Yuya wasn’t around by then.’
‘Yes, but the papyrus was written over 200 years after that, when the time-scale might have got confused.’
Mansoor was shaking his head.
‘Most historians believe Yarsu to be another historical figure.’
‘But there’s no proof that they’re right,’ Gabrielle declared. ‘In any case Yarsu clearly sounds like Yosef or Joseph. But more important than that, it means “the self-made man”. Who could be more of a self-made man, than a foreigner who rose from humble origins to become the pharaoh’s right-hand man – like Joseph?’
Mansoor was not one to admit defeat easily, but he smiled at Gabrielle’s arguments, impressed. He turned to Daniel, who seemed to be in a dream world as he stared at a wall.
‘Earth to Daniel,’ he said, remembering the old taunt that his American students sometimes used.
‘What’s that?’ asked Daniel, pointing to a part of the wall.
‘Those are inscriptions from the Book of the Dead. Every tomb has some. Why?’
‘Every tomb has the same inscriptions?’
‘No, every tomb is different. The inscriptions are supposed to relate to the individual.’
‘And those illustrations?’
‘That’s Chapter 148.’
‘The cows?’
‘The seven celestial cows and a bull. A symbol of fertility. What of it?’
‘It’s just that it reminded me of… the very thing that led to Joseph being appointed Pharaoh’s right-hand man: he predicted the seven years of famine to follow the seven years of plenty by his correct interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream about the seven fat cows and the seven thin cows.’
Chapter 32
The office was busy when a six-page fax arrived at the Egyptian Ministry of Health. The message was