Hebrew influence upon Amenhotep son of Hapu

by Damien F. Mackey The enigmatic Amenhotep son of Hapu, who had hoped to attain the age of 110 (that reached by Joseph of Egypt), has even been identified (wrongly) as this Joseph. His career in Egypt seems to have been closely modelled on that of Senenmut (my Solomon). Like King Solomon, he was an educated Steward. Amenhotep son of Hapu was a highly influential figure, whose fame reached down even into Ptolemaïc times: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu Amenhotep, son of Hapu, was a high official of the reign of Amenhotep III of ancient Egypt (reigned 1390–53 bce) [sic], who was greatly honoured by the king within his lifetime and was deified more than 1,000 years later during the Ptolemaic era. Amenhotep rose through the ranks of government service, becoming scribe of the recruits, a military office, under Amenhotep III. While in the Nile River delta, Amenhotep was charged with positioning troops at checkpoints on the branches of the Nile to regulate entry into Egypt by sea; he also checked on the infiltration of Bedouin tribesmen by land. On one of his statues, he is called a general of the army. Some time later, when he was placed in charge of all royal works, he probably supervised the construction of Amenhotep III’s mortuary temple at Thebes near modern Luxor, the building of the temple of Soleb in Nubia (modern Sudan), and the transport of building material and erection of other works. Two statues from Thebes indicate that he was also an intercessor in Amon’s temple and that he supervised the celebration of one of Amenhotep III’s Heb-Sed festivals (a renewal rite celebrated by the pharaoh after the first 30 years of his reign and periodically thereafter). The king honoured him by embellishing Athribis, his native city. Amenhotep III even ordered the building of a small funerary temple for him next to his own temple, a unique honour for a nonroyal person in Egypt. Amenhotep was greatly revered by posterity, as indicated by the reinscription of the donation decree for his mortuary establishment in the 21st dynasty (1075–c. 950 bce) [sic] and his divine association with Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, during the Ptolemaic period. Influenced by the Patriarch Joseph Professor Joseph Davidovits had gone so far as to identify Amenhotep son of Hapu as the biblical Joseph of Egypt: https://www.geopolymer.org/shop/product/the-secrets-of-joseph-the-patriarch/ In 1935 in Karnak, in Egypt, two French Egyptologists discover a fresco in the ruins of the memorial temple of Amenophis (Amenhotep) Son of Hapu, the most eminent scribe and scientist of ancient Egypt, Great chancellor of the Pharaon Amenhotep III, father of the monotheist Pharaon Akhenaton. Recently, 75 years later, it was noted that the text of this fresco was reproduced almost word for word in the Bible in Genesis 41, when Pharaon [Pharaoh] installs the biblical Patriarch Joseph to rule over all Egypt. It is apparent that the royal scribe Amenophis Son of Hapu and the Patriarch Joseph are thus the same person. …. [End of quote] Professor Davidovits, however, was not the first to have discerned similarities between Amenhotep son of Hapu and Joseph - at least with the historical Joseph, who was Imhotep of Egypt’s Third Dynasty: Enigmatic Imhotep – did he really exist? (7) Enigmatic Imhotep - did he really exist? Even in antiquity it was thought of Imhotep and Amenhotep that, as we shall read further on, “they have a single ‘body’ and a single ba, ‘soul’ or ‘manifestation’, as if Amenhotep son of Hapu were a veritable reincarnation of his colleague who had lived one thousand years prior”. Dietrich Wildung wrote a book, Egyptian Saints: Deification in Pharaonic Egypt (NYUP, 1977), in which he nominated these two officials as the two real geniuses of ancient Egyptian history. At https://henadology.wordpress.com/theology/netjeru/amenhotep-son-of-hapu/ we read of some of the connections that Dietrich Wildung had made between Imhotep and Amenhotep: Amenhotep, Son of Hapu (Amenophis, Amenotes) … served in the local government and in the priesthood of Khenty-khety before being called to the royal court at Thebes in his early fifties. He had an extraordinarily distinguished career under Amenhotep III, holding the positions of chief architect (he is credited with the temple of Soleb), chief scribe and secretary in charge of recruiting, as well as steward to the king’s daughter. Amenhotep son of Hapu died at the age of around eighty. After his death he acquired a cult as a healer and an intermediary of the God Amun, and was often worshiped alongside his fellow deified architect and healer Imhotep, surpassing the latter in popularity in the vicinity of Thebes. In a hymn inscribed on the temple of Ptah at Karnak, it is said of Amenhotep son of Hapu and Imhotep that they have a single ‘body’ and a single ba, ‘soul’ or ‘manifestation’, as if Amenhotep son of Hapu were a veritable reincarnation of his colleague who had lived one thousand years prior. The spell Pleyte 167 of the Book of the Dead is labeled as having been found by “the King’s chief scribe Amenhotep the son of Hapu … He used it for him [the king] as protection for his body.” Amenhotep son of Hapu and Imhotep are mentioned in the Papyrus Boulaq (first century CE) as welcoming the soul of the deceased: “Your soul will go to the royal scribe and chief scribe of the recruits Amenhotep; your soul will be united with Imhotep … you will feel like a son in the house of his father,” (Wildung 1977, 105). Amenhotep son of Hapu is depicted as a scribe, often with palette and scroll, somewhat older and corpulent, with a fuller hairstyle or wig than the standard kind, a short beard, and often wearing a long apron. Votive inscriptions from a Ptolemaic chapel behind the upper mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari show that Amenhotep son of Hapu was still worshiped in the second century CE, more than 1,500 years [sic] after his death. Perhaps due to the similarity in name, Amenhotep’s father Hapu is sometimes identified in later texts with “the living herald Apis,” that is, the Apis bull, while his mother, Idit, is referred to as “Hathor-Idit, the justified, the mother of the helpful God who issued from her on this beautiful day, the 11th of Phamenoth, in her name ‘rejoicing’,” (Wildung 1977, 98-99). In addition to the divinization of his mortal parents, Amenhotep is often characterized as the son of Amun, or of Ptah, or of Seshat and Thoth. A text dating from the time of Tiberius refers to him as the “youthful repetition of Ptah … You give a child to the sterile; you release a man from his enemy; you know the hearts of men and what is inside; you increase the lifetime; there is no distress in you. You renew what has fallen down; you fill up what was found destroyed,” (ibid., 105). [End of quote] And again we read at: http://www.boap.org/LDS/Hugh-Nibley/TrFac.html …. The biographies of such great men as Imhotep and his later counterpart Amenhotep Son of Hapu are enough to show that. They were commoners, both of them, living some 1500 years apart, yet each achieving a renown equal to or surpassing that of Pharaoh himself. "As long as he lived, and no matter what he did," writes D. Wildung in his study of these two men, "no king of Egypt was able to ascend to the realm of the gods. Two mortals did." (Wildung, 28) How? Other Egyptians achieved a fame approaching theirs, but they were always remembered as the very top achievers. Their greatness and glory depended entirely on what they did for others: their religious writings and offices, their practical genius as inventors of useful devices and administrators of consummate skill in dealing with people, their all-embracing humanity as friends and benefactors of all their fellow-men, their modest, kindly and ever good-humored deportment, their contributions to the arts and sciences, great innovations in architecture, engineering, literature and philosophy, were all made possible by that one mysterious quality of intelligence in which they were supreme. After their deaths they were venerated in temples dedicated to them, to which for thousands of years pilgrims have repaired for the blessings of healing and especially for posterity. …. "To be united with Amenhotep and Imhotep in the after life" (Wildung, 105), even as the pious Jew or Christian longs to be clasped to the bosom of Abraham. They are depicted through the centuries clothed with the garments and insignia of various gods, but always with their own faces. …. Thus the Greeks in Egypt identified Imhotep in his healing capacity with their own Aesulapius, as a builder with Daedalus, as a Scribe with Thoth or Hermes; and Imhotep and Amenhotep, though living ages apart, were shown fused into a single person …. Right down to the 19th century pilgrims would come to Imhotep's shrine at [Saqqara], where he built the magnificent Temple complex 4500 years ago, for the healing of their bodies and especially for the promise of having children, for Imhotep like Abraham was the great patron of the family. To suit Moslem and Christian faith, however, the designation of the shrine was changed from the Tomb of Imhotep, pagan, to the Prison of Joseph--it could not be the Tomb of Joseph, since he was buried in Canaan, but the next best thing is the jail in which he was buried for years. And so for 1500 years Imhotep has been identified with Joseph, Abraham's own great-grandson, whose own biography shows us that the [honours] bestowed on great commoners in Egypt were not withheld from supremely deserving foreigners who showed the same capacity and zeal in the service of Egypt; one of the greatest merits of Imhotep like Joseph, was saving the land from a seven-years' famine. [End of quote] Imhotep, of course, was Joseph! 110 Years of Age One will read in books and on sites re ancient Egypt about the age of 110 being the ‘ideal’ one. Take e.g. this paragraph: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/oldage.htm#ixzz49uHnsTKu And yet, one hundred-and-ten years seems to be the ideal Egyptian life-span. There are 27 places in documents where this figure crops up, and it had its widest acceptance during the 19th and 20th Dynasties. King Pepi II of the 6th Dynasty certainly came close, since we know of events that took place in the 94th year of his reign. Ptahhotep, who was vizier to King Djedkare Isesi of the 5th Dynasty, and two others individuals, are reputed to have lived to that age as well. [End of quote] Since Imhotep was Joseph himself, then I would say that - given the Hebrew patriarch’s profound influence over Egypt - he was the reason why the age of 110 was so aspired to. Amenhotep son of Hapu was one who, according to http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Karnak/resource/ObjectCatalog/1853 had hoped to reach this sublime age of 110, but, despite being old, fell well short of it: Seated Statue of Amenhotep, son of Hapu Author(s): C. Zarnoch, E. Sullivan Description: This seated statue represents Amenhotep son of Hapu, the royal scribe and architect of Amenhotep III. He is depicted here as an aged man: his chest sags, his stomach is rounded, and the fleshiness of old age marks his face. The inscription states that he had reached the age of 80 (extraordinarily old for an ancient Egyptian) and wished to attain 110 years (the perfect lifespan). In a recent article: Akhnaton not obscure before he became Pharaoh (2) Akhnaton not obscure before he became Pharaoh I have traced the biblico-historical development of Amenhotep son of Hapu, starting with the leprous Na’aman (Osarsiph) the Syrian, who attained Syrian kingship as Hazael through the agency of the Sinai Commission, who became Aziru of Amurru (Syria) of the El Amarna archive and also (Irsu, Aziru) of the Great Harris Papyrus, who, finally, was pharaoh Amenhotep (so-called IV) Akhnaton. Hence: Akhnaton’s Theophany (2) Akhnaton's Theophany was entirely due to Hebrew influence, to the intervention of the great prophet Elisha.