Staff of Moses 'found' in Birmingham

BBC News ^ | Thursday, 11 April, 2002, 17:27 GMT 18:27 UK | BBC Staff

[vannrox]

Staff of Moses 'found' in Birmingham

Was Moses was an Egyptian official called Tuthmosis?

An ancient staff in a British museum may be connected to the Biblical figure of Moses, a new book claims.


Coventry writer Graham Phillips believes the staff, on display at Birmingham Museum, belonged to the historical Egyptian official Tuthmosis, whose life had strong parallels with the Moses of the Bible.


"I am certain that this is the actual staff that the Bible asserts Moses used to perform the miracles of the Exodus," he told BBC News Online.


But his claims are disputed by the curator of Birmingham Museum, Phil Watson.


An Egyptian inscription to Tuthmosis

The Bible says that Moses was raised by the daughter of the pharaoh, led the enslaved Israelites out of Egypt and parted the Red Sea using his staff.


Mr Phillips argues that the historical Moses was based on two figures in different time periods, 100 years apart.


The first, dating from about 1460 BC, was an Egyptian court official called Tuthmosis, who like the biblical Moses, was brought up by the daughter of the king of Egypt.


Like Moses, Tuthmosis was expelled from the pharaoh's court and was sympathetic to the plight of the slave workers.

'Ordinary people'

Mr Phillips said the staff has the name of Tuthmosis on it and describes him as a court official.


His research has revealed that the staff was found in a tomb in southern Jordan in the 1800s before being bought by a British collector and later acquired by Birmingham Museum.

Mr Watson, principal curator of human history at Birmingham Museum, said he had not yet had a chance to study Mr Phillips's book The Moses Legacy, but said some of the claims linking the staff to Moses were "tenuous".


"Tuthmosis was a very, very common name in Egypt. The staff was acquired by the museum in 1952 and its history before that is somewhat problematic."

Graham Phillips believes it is the staff of Moses

Mr Watson said it was more likely the staff had originally come from a tomb in Egypt rather than in Jordan.


"I will look at the book and I am sure it will be interesting," he said.


"But I have spent a lot of my time telling people ancient Egypt is about ordinary people and not about treasure or some really important people."

[F.J. Mitchell]

#18: I forgot about that test. With the French half way across the channel when the waters closed, that would authenticate the rod and improve the planet at the same time.

[BlueDragon]

Uh, wasn't it Aaron's rod that budded? Not the staff of Moses?

[BlueDragon]

The "snake test" might not work, or if it did, it would still be "inconclusive", for the Pharoah's magicians threw down their staffs, too. Those also turned into snakes! They knew the method...! But Mose's staff, went after and swallowed up all the magicians staffs. Stronger "magic", right from THE Source, beat the most potent that the Egyptians had. Some things never change. I thank God for that!

[F.J. Mitchell]

It was Aaron's rod that budded-I need to reread Exodus.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 04/12/2002. Thanks vannrox. One of *those* topics.

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Desert of Wandering, Immanuel Velikovsky

The desert of the forty-year wandering was not the Sinai. Peninsula, but a much larger area. The inclination of the historians is generally to deny the ancients long itineraries; Midian being the Medina of Moslem times, actually deep in the Arabian Peninsula, all indications in the Old Testament are for a deep penetration of the Arab Peninsula by the wandering Israelites who escaped the land of Egypt destroyed by the catastrophe in the mid-fifteenth century before the present era. There are autochthonous Arab traditions about the wandering tribes led by Mosaikaia, his brother Arnran, and his sister Zeripha. These traditions have not been borrowed from the Old Testament or rabbinical tradition. From the Bible and Midrashim, the Arabs culled much of the content of the Koran, but they did not realize that their traditions about Mosaikaia (and the catastrophe that took place in his time) are of independent origin, though referring to the same persons and events. All together indicates that the Israelites under Moses did not spend forty years in the small triangular Sinai Peninsula, but in the western regions of Arabia.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 04/12/2002. Thanks vannrox. This topic got added to the catalog, but never got a ping message.

[SunkenCiv]

Graham Phillips Interview The Moses Legacy

[SunkenCiv]

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The Moses Legacy: The Evidence of History by Graham Phillips The Moses Legacy homepage

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