AHMED OSMAN was born in Cairo in 1934 to Egyptian Muslim parents. He studied law at Cairo University and later worked as a journalist and playwright. Since 1965 he has lived in England. This project is the culmination of twenty-two years of writing and research. Osman is also the author of Moses and Akhenaten and Out of Egypt.
"A startling new theory that brings to life the biblical world of Joseph and places it firmly in the lead-up to Ancient Egypt's most controversial period of history- Andrew Collins, author of From the Ashes of Angels and Gods of Eden
"In the Hebrew Pharaohs of Egypt, Ahmed Osman single-handedly moves the goal post of biblical scholarship. He successfully narrows the search for the historical Hebrew patriarchs by giving us a novel and persuasive case for a secret lineage of the patriarch Joseph. This is a 'must read' for all alternative history buffs and scholars alike."- Rand Flem-Ath, coauthor of When the Sky Fell and The Atlantis Blueprint
"---a fascinating and thought provoking read. It is thoroughly well researched and convincingly argued." - Graham Phillips, author of Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt
When Joseph revealed his identity to his kinsmen who had sold him into slavery, he told them that God had made him "a father to Pharaoh." Throughout the long history of ancient Egypt, only one man is known to have been given the title "a father to Pharaoh" --- Yuya, a vizier of the Eighteenth Dynasty king Tuthmosis IV. Yuya has long intrigued Egyptologists because he was buried in the Valley of Kings even though he was not a member of the Royal House. His extraordinarily well-preserved mummy has a strong Semitic appearance, which suggests he was not of Egyptian blood, and many aspects of his burial have been shown to be contrary to Egyptian custom.
As The Hebrew Pharaohs of Egypt shows, the idea that Joseph and Yuya may be one and the same person sheds a whole new light on the sudden rise of monotheism in Egypt, spearheaded by Queen Tiye and her son Akhenaten. It would clearly explain the deliberate obliteration of references to the "heretic" king and his successors by the last Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh, Horemheb, whom the author believes was the oppressor king in the Book of Exodus. Osman also draws on a wealth of detailed evidence from Egyptian, biblical, and Koranic sources to place the time of the departure of the Hebrews from Egypt during the short reign of Ramses I, the first king of the Nineteen Dynasty.
Excerpt :
Chapter 47 of the Book of Genesis is devoted to an account of how, in the course of Joseph's preparations for the impending seven years of famine, all the land of Egypt came into Pharaoh's possession, various attempts have been made, without success, to relate this to some specific period of Egyptian history. I, personally, share the view of Joseph Vergot, who says in his book Joseph en Egypte that he considers the table of the patriarch Joseph's agricultural policy to be an invention on the part of the Hebrew narrator and sees no point in trying to relate it to a particular Pharaonic time. In any case, if Joseph had forseen the famine and prepared for it one would not expect it to be written about at any length. Incidentally, Amenhotep III appears in a scene in the tomb of Anen, Yuya's son, sitting inside a granary in a harvest festival celebration. After the death of Jacob in Egypt, he was mummified on Joseph's personal instructions:
And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel. And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those who are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days. (Genesis 50:2,3)
From their earliest timers, the Egyptians tried to preserve humans as well as animal bodies after death. They believed that the spiritual element in a person leaves the body after death. They believed that the spiritual element in a person leaves the body at the time of death, but would one day return provided the body had not been destroyed. It was because of this belief that, from the early days of the Old Kingdom, they worked at developing the techniques of mummification. As it was an expensive process, only members of the Royal family were able to afford mummification initially. By the time of the New Kingdom, the Eighteen to Twentieth Dynasties, nobles and official, too, were receiving this treatment, but ordinary people were not able to have their dead mummified until after the end of the dynastic period.
The Greek historian, Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the fifth century B.C. described the mummification process, and his account agrees with the biblical statement that it took seventy days. About half of this time- forty days, according to Genesis- was required for dehydration of the body.
Mummification was associated virtually from the beginning with belief in the resurrection of Osiris, a dead god, ruler of the underworld and judge of the dead. Osiris remained the symbol of resurrection until Roman times, when belief in Jesus Christ replaced this ancient Egyptian creed, but even than it was a long time before Egyptian Copts (native Christians of the Jacobite sect of Monophysites) abandoned completely the practice of mummification.
Softbound, 6x9", 166 pages