A provocative new reading of the 3,800-year-old inscription found in Egypt’s turquoise mines rekindled one of the toughest questions in archaeology: Was Moses a historical figure?
according to Archaeological Journal, Independent researcher Michael S., who has used 3D scanning and high-resolution photos from the Harvard University Museum after nearly a decade of research, Bar-Ron claims to have decrypted two phrases in Hebrew: zot mi’moshe (“This is from Moses”) and Ne’um Moshe (“The Word of Moses”).
If he read correctly, these would be the oldest transbirth mentions of Exodus, even the earliest known Hebrew words and Phoenician letters.
These inscriptions are part of a group of original works first discovered by the famous archaeologist Flinders Petrie in the early 1900s. Scholars believe that during the reign of Pharaoh Aminihart III (around 1800 B.C.), they were engraved by the workers of the Semitic people, which made them the oldest alphabetical work on record.
However, Bar-Ron’s explanation is controversial. In one paper, he argued that many of the inscriptions might come from a single author, which could be the fluent Semitic scribe of Egyptian hieroglyphs, who used the original script for religious and personal reflection.
Some nearby inscriptions mention “El”, an early Hebrew name for God, while others mention BAAratSemitic people with the Egyptian goddess Hathor. In some cases, Bharat’s name seems to suggest a theological schizophrenia. Burning a burning temple in Bharat, as well as inscriptions citing “Supervisors”, “Slavery”, and what Bar-Ron thinks is a request to go (“Ni’mosh”) to guess that the site contains the echoes of the real-life Exodus.
But scholars remain skeptical. Thomas Schneider, an Egyptologist at the University of British Columbia, told this The Daily Mail, the findings are “completely unproven and misleading”, warn that “letter recognition of arbitrary identities can distort ancient history.” The original script is difficult to decipher, and academic consensus remains elusive.
Bar-Ron’s research has not been peer-reviewed, which he admits is still underway. But his consultant Pieter van der Veen recognized the findings and encouraged further research.
