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...Or Solomon the Judaized Egyptian?

Posted By: Helge Harbard
Date: Friday, 15 September 2006, at 11:09 a.m.

In Response To: Solomon, the Egyptian. (tim)

Thanks for the links you provided. I´ll look into them. However my spontaneous thoughts run somewhat like this:

Now, if "David" and "Solomon" actually WERE the Egyptian kings, then they are still not portrayed as such in the Judaic scriptures. As we all know, the Hebrew Bible portrays these kings as Judaic "kings of Israel", ruling their illustrious kingdom from their seat in the Judean city of Jerusalem.

That´s why I find it hard to regard the biblical kings as actually BEING the kings of ancient Egypt. After all, biblical scriptures are literature, and thus biblical figures are of course fictional characters. To a certain extent they may very well have been patterned on the lives and reigns of some actual kings of ancient Egypt. But in my opinion that does not make them IDENTICAL to those kings.

What I´m saying is that IF the biblical David and Solomon actually were identical with authentic Egyptian kings, then they ought to have been portrayed as such. But they are not, and therefore must be considered fictional characters, what we might call judaized versions of the ancient Egyptian kings.

And to me "David" looks a lot like a judaized version of Tuthmose III, the great warrior, while "Solomon" in a similar way looks a lot like a judaized version of Amenhotep III, the famous author of wise sayings whose name - like the name of Solomon (Shalomo) - carry connotations of "peace" ('hotep' or 'hetep' in ancient Egyptian).

But, as I said, I´ll look into the links you referred to.

Helge

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