The title of this post is CAPITALIZED SO YOU CAN HEAR IT!
As many approach their “Golden Years” (we never quite get there, if you know what I mean) some begin to experience the annoyances of aging.
One annoyance is the way folks mumble; who can understand them? To encourage folks to speak more clearly, I have included actual verbal exchanges — recorded over the past months — between Grandma Bevy and me.
I hope readers will take the hint and learn to enunciate!
Grandma Bevy: I think it’s bean soup.
Grandpa Billy: What’s been sued?
Grandma Bevy: Julian’s mom worked at Eyde.
Grandpa Billy: Julian’s mom worked and died?
Grandma Bevy: Oh look, my pill is scored.
Grandpa Billy: I got gored? I don’t think so.
Grandma Bevy: Put your hat in the closet, like a that.
Grandpa Billy: Like a bat?
Grandma Bevy: Like a that.
Grandpa Billy: Like a vat?
Grandma Bevy: Like that!
Grandpa Billy: What?
Grandma Bevy: Do you want one egg or two?
Grandpa Billy: I want new.
Grandma Bevy: I said, one or two. Turn up your hearing aid!
Grandpa Billy: OK. An old one, then.
Grandma Bevy: So, Chuck got the take out and…
Grandpa Billy: Chuck got the tank out?
Grandma Bevy: Take out… take out!
Grandma Bevy: I guess my group won’t be meeting for another two weeks.
Grandpa Billy: You aren’t eating for two weeks? Bev, you don’t have to do that for me.
Grandma Bevy: Now is a good time to take your blood pressure.
Grandpa Billy: Take my butt pressure?
Grandma Bevy: Yes, your blood pressure.
Grandpa Billy: Sounds good.
Grandma Bevy: You can have some turkey later.
Grandpa Billy: I have a turkey flavor?
Grandma Bevy: If you want to.
Grandma Bevy: Our kids are traveling in Europe this summer. We’ll probably be at home.
Grandpa Billy: We’ll be in a home?
Grandma Bevy: You might be.
Grandma Bevy: There are some real egos in that neighborhood.
Grandpa Billy: Eagles? No way.
Grandma Bevy: I said egos. There are some big egos in those big houses.
Grandpa Billy: Maybe some hawks. No eagles.
Grandma Bevy: Oh look! A new dishwasher.
Grandpa Billy: A nude dishwasher?
Grandma Bevy: I texted Doug for his birthday.
Grandpa Billy: You hexed Doug on his birthday? That’s not right.
Grandma Bevy: I have to call Perry’s office to get a refill on my prescription.
Grandpa Billy: Call your parent’s office?
Grandma Bevy: Perry’s office. Perry’s office! Clean your ears!
Grandma Bevy: Am I in your way?
Grandpa Billy: Am Miami way?
Grandma Bevy: No. Am I?
Grandma Bevy: Mary has been placed in hospice care.
Grandpa Billy: Mary hasn’t paid her hospice care? She was always so responsible.
Grandma Bevy: You put the shades down in the bedroom. Afraid someone’s going to see your body?
Grandpa Billy: Seize my coffee? I don’t drink coffee in the bedroom. Never have.
Grandma Bevy: We haven’t seen the neighbors in their hot tub lately.
Grandpa Billy: In their hot dog?
Grandma Bevy: You can put the plates and silverware on the table.
Grandpa Billy: I can put the plastic silverware on the table?
Grandma Bevy: Plates, PLATES!!! (Throws up hands)
Grandma Bevy: I’m going to physical therapy now.
Grandpa Billy: Hysterical therapy?
Grandma Bevy: Oh, for crying out loud.
Grandma Bevy: Guess what? I have a urinary tract infection.
Grandpa Billy: You have a yearning for a track infection? Why, Bev, why?
Grandma Bevy: My sciatic nerve is killing me.
Grandpa Billy: Your psychiatric nerve is bothering you?
Grandma Bevy: You certainly are. (Glares, rolls eyes)
Grandma Bevy: I thought you said you were going to e-mail her.
Grandpa Billy: Female her?
Grandma Bevy: Billll…Y.. !?!
Grandma Bevy: Did you know that tea, coffee, and cocoa contain different stimulants? I’m a nurse, right? I studied dietetics.
Grandpa Billy: Diuretics? Heh! I studied beer-drinking. ‘Course, that was a long time ago — before my prostrate swoll and nearly killed me.
Grandma Bevy: You don’t drink much now.
Grandpa Billy: I think plenty. I’m sharp as a tack.
Grandma Bevy: Don’t hear so good either.
Grandpa Billy: Donneer soggy ether?
Grandma Bevy: Here’s a straw. Finish your soup, dear.
Grandma Bevy: You dropped a glob of jelly on the table cloth.
Grandpa Billy: … on the tuna cloth?
Grandma Bevy: [starts singing to herself]
Pele’ with Bobby Kennedy in Rio, 1965. Pele’ died 29 Dec 2022 of complications from colon cancer. He was 82.
Our gross national product…counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear away…carnage. It counts…locks…and jails…. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets….
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials…. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
Bobby Kennedy 1968
Capitalism is a system of wealth creation characterized by private ownership of the means of production (land, buildings, factories, labor, patents, intellectual property, etc.), where products are made and sold in unregulated markets to generate the revenues that sustain production and provide profits for the owners to use as they see fit.
Capitalism works best in a stable legal environment, where laws protect owners sufficiently that their ability to produce products is unimpeded.
Under this definition, Capitalism differs little from Slavery until the legal environment secures certain rights to labor.
In the USA, the legal environment takes the form of a constitutional republic undergirded by a bill of rights. The bill-of-rights secures certain safeguards to labor in the arenas of religion, speech, arms, assembly, petitions and so on. The constitutional republic secures representative government, which enables labor to choose its political leaders.
The owners of businesses make up a small percentage of the population and would be insignificant players in the parts of the legal environment where voting majorities determine the operation of government if they were not protected by privileges which, as a practical matter, are not enjoyed by labor.
In the United States the powers of government are divided into the three branches to provide checks on usurpation of powers. Further checks on government power are provided by business owners—specifically those individuals who own media and entertainment; individuals who direct cartels in certain industries like defense, medicine, agriculture, transportation, information technology, and pharmaceuticals; and those individuals who own and operate private militias.
It is understood and admitted by independent economists and historians (those who don’t work for the cartels) that without intervention by government, Capitalism tends to concentrate wealth in the hands of business owners—even in those rare circumstances when owners show little interest in manipulating the system to maximize their advantages.
The inability of Capitalism to generate a vigorous and sustainable middle class creates problems of poverty and is one reason why economists tend to advocate for government programs to redistribute wealth to the lower-earning labor sector.
An important historical example followed the aftermath of World War Two. Millions of GIs returned home to the United States after defeating Germany and Japan. Business owners tied to the war profited well and wanted to give something extra to the families of soldiers who fought to protect them.
Because the tax code at that time limited how much revenue owners could keep, they looked for ways to dump windfalls into worthy causes. They worked with government to fashion programs for low-cost education, home loans, and other perks for returning GIs. Windfalls permitted the USA to build highway systems and inexpensive cars for ordinary people to enjoy. Within a few years of the start of these initiatives America built a middle class.
So, what eventually happened?
In the years after 1980 a new generation of business-owners took power and convinced Congress and the president that taxes on large incomes should be reduced from 92% to 28%. These capitalists were sons and grandsons, for the most part, of the same men who helped build the middle class in the first place.
What is the effect of these tax rate changes? What do tax changes mean for society and labor, where most Americans live?
And let’s be clear. The 92% tax rate on earnings above $250,000 during the Roosevelt-Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy-Nixon-Carter years was a de-facto cap on high-incomes. Workarounds did exist for those lucky few who had access to stockbrokers — men mostly who opened doors to low tax rates for privileged elites — but all non-stock market income was capped.
One good example is the medical profession. After 1980 the dramatic reduction of top tax-rates eliminated what had been a practical limit on incomes. Doctors — many operated as business owners — learned that income limits were gone; minus a small tax fee, they could keep as much money as they could collect.
What happened?
Doctors increased fees at a frenetic pace.
Medical care costs became prohibitive for the majority of workers. As a result, some migrated into programs like Medicaid and Medicare. Others found themselves locked into jobs they disliked because quitting meant losing insurance. Today medical care is so expensive that Congress felt compelled to pass the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to avert systemic collapse of public access to healthcare.
With limits on incomes now gone, doctors, some of them, seem to be overcharging government healthcare programs for services; a few have been arrested for committing crimes to maximize their incomes. The temptations of unlimited Benjamins have ignited a frenzy for dollars that shows no signs of abating.
In the USA, chasing after unlimited wealth seems to have overtaken every profession and institution. Businesses and public institutions are being looted by the professionals who run them.
Owners drive down wages because they can keep the difference for themselves. Operators drive businesses nearly into bankruptcy to skim as much money as they can in as short a time as possible—so they can retire to a private island, perhaps. Who knows?
Concentration of wealth can be a bad thing because it influences what society produces to the disadvantage of labor and the poor. Expensive luxury items (like $500M homes) are built to satisfy the appetites of the wealthy while products and services like schools, clean water, and nutritious food needed by labor are neglected.
These trends (and anyone could list dozens more) are not new. Every civilization that has allowed unreasonable concentrations of wealth has come to a bad end. Ordinary citizens are demoralized, excesses are committed, cynicism and cruelty increase.
An example is gated neighborhoods. It is humiliating to be ostracized by the privileged. Humiliation of citizens without redress breeds despair, which leads to pathologies destructive to society.
Segregation is an impulse strongly felt by a slave state with a long history of income inequality. It behooves those of us who live in the USA—a country with the reputation for promoting the cruelest form of slavery—to guard against trends (like gated-living) that reek of segregation and slavery.
Another problem with unlimited wealth is that it tempts those who have it to buy hi-tech weapons. Many wealthy individuals have created militias to enhance their power.
Everyone knows about the Mafia but respected individuals with good public relations have established private militias as well. A family in Michigan owns an air force and drones plus soldiers who work under contract with the US military to fill in gaps overseas.
A concentration of wealth combined with military power in the hands of an entitled few can become a clear and present danger to the liberty and way of life of ordinary citizens.
Now… a few sentences about Ayn Rand who, more than any other public figure I know, provided the moral justification for the rapid sequestration of wealth by our elites.
I met this squat, chain-smoking, thick-accented Russian woman 50 years ago after having read every book and newsletter she had published at the time. She wrote with seductive logic that appealed to me and I suppose other average people and probably a lot of billionaires as well. The utopian vision described in her book The Virtue of Selfishness undergirds extremist groups like the Tea Party and their spin-offs.
Like most utopian thinkers, her logic was flawless yet led to ridiculous conclusions false on their face. As fantasy her fiction has a certain appeal but to advocate for turning a country over to its richest citizens to do as they please is folly and counter to every form of democracy and free society.
Consider these questions. Who spies more—government or the companies we work for? Who looks at social media sites, credit ratings, where we live, or what our hobbies are—government or the companies we work for?
Who discourages us from speaking our minds? Who stops ordinary people from discussing religion and politics? Who intimidates folks from protesting social injustice? Who blacklists professionals when they “go-rogue” ? Who controls how much money anyone makes?
Clearly, private companies exercise these powers.
What about government?
It collects taxes and arrests bad people who commit crimes.
Companies? They control our lives.
Think about it.
What are we? Slaves?
The answer is, yes, kind-a.
Under Capitalism business owners are an existential threat to people’s freedom. But we have a representative government, don’t we?
In theory at least, folks can use the government to their advantage—not only to limit the powers of business owners over their personal lives but to limit the incomes and estate sizes of private individuals through appropriate tax policies.
And they can forbid the acquisition of military-style powers by civilian elites. It’s important. Read the Second Amendment to convince yourself that it’s true. Outside of the limits of a well-regulated militia, gun-runners are anathema to freedom. Limiting military powers to well regulated militias is the reasonable prerogative of free people in democratic republics like the United States.
How do we preserve the best elements of Capitalism—a proven wealth generator—while eliminating threats it can impose on our liberties and, for most people, their standard of living?
My proposal is this: pass a maximum-income law. This law would set the maximum income from all sources as a multiple of the minimum wage.
Let’s say the multiple is set to 1,000. When the minimum wage is set to $20,000 per year, the maximum income from all sources would be pegged at 1,000 times that—$20 million.
In the same way, the maximum size of estates could be set at some multiple of the maximum income. The multiple might be set by Congress at 20, for example. Then the maximum size of an estate would be 20 times $20M—a $400M maximum.
Now these multiples are simply one example. It might be that folks decide a multiple of 1,000 is too high or too low; they might decide to set the multiple at something lower—say 100 or 50—like it was during the 1950s and 60s. Then again, folks might agree that a figure of $400M isn’t enough for high achievers in the modern age and set maximums higher.
What’s important is to set maximum incomes high enough to preserve incentives to create wealth while at the same time reducing the incentive to loot that unlimited incomes encourage. Unreasonable profits which might end up in owners’ pockets would then more likely be distributed inside companies to workers or to the existential needs of the companies themselves.
Wealth not distributed inside companies could be given to charity or society (e.g. through the mechanism of taxes) to be spent on programs beneficial to labor.
Of course, concentrations of wealth are necessary for economic development. This need for capital is where well-regulated public corporations and public banks come into play.
I hope to write an essay about the role of corporations in society sometime in the future. Hopefully, someone else will write the essay before I get around to it. For now let me suggest that the United States might be better off if corporations and financial institutions were made truly public and regulated like public utilities.
A challenge presented by this proposal is to apply these income and estate-size limits internationally to prevent individuals and cartels overseas from gaining advantages that would threaten our country and its citizens.
Another challenge worth mentioning is that although this proposal puts limits on only a few thousand, or perhaps a few tens-of-thousands of individuals and their families, these are the folks who actually control governments by the power of their concentrations of wealth. It might be problematic, at least at first, to convince the truly wealthy to go along.
But we should try. They are tens-of-thousands. We are billions. Think about it. The grandfathers of the current generation of the wealthy shared their wealth to benefit ordinary people. I don’t believe that any billionaire thinks that their sharing after World War II hurt any of them in any way that counts for anything.
Billy Lee
Click Watch on YouTube link below to view Michael Moore’s award winning movie,Capitalism: A Love Story.
Postscript added 3 December 2022: During the past two years of pandemic, oligarchs increased their wealth by five trillion dollars. The gap between wealthy and poor, in both resources and power, increased dramatically worldwide. The predicament of ordinary people changed. To help readers understand, the Editors agreed to include the following video, which we hope everyone will watch and absorb.
This month marks the 43rd anniversary of the birth of Joint Issue, a publication my friends and me produced, which became the Newspaper of Record for the anti-Vietnam War movement and counterculture “happenings” in East Lansing, Michigan during the years 1971-1973.
Hippie Rescues Drowning Child. Michigan legend, Denny Preston, illustrated this famous cover from the Underground Press.
Other papers like the Red Apple News, The Paper and the Bogue Street Bridge were around before and after Joint Issue. But none covered the anti-war movement and the counterculture like Joint Issue. None commanded the large readership, the community support, — including substantial advertising by local merchants — or the attention from police and other protectors of public morals.
Every local “radical” of consequence passed through our doors at one time or another. Every Lansing-area revolutionary and revolutionary wannabe read our paper and tried to know us.
Even the MSU police paid a visit from time to time. At 3AM one morning we found them in our Student Services office rummaging through our stuff. No warrants required, of course.
During the past months I have reread many of the old issues that me and my friends Ken, Davy, Patti and others once proudly worked to publish. It’s amazing how prescient we were, how many of our “wild” ideas caught hold and became mainstream. But there are disappointments too. Some causes, like gay rights, are still being fought. Editors Note:In June 2003, the Supreme Court legalized gay relationships; on 26 June 2015 all gay marriages became legal and constitutionally protected in the United States.
I included below a photo of each page of our first issue for folks to read. Some will be relieved to learn that many issues of the original Joint Issue are protected at libraries with a complete collection in very good condition in the archives of the MSU library.
Historian Ken Wachsberger covers some of the history of Joint Issue in his book Insider Histories, available on Amazon.com
The history of the underground press in general and of Joint Issue in particular remains largely untold by mainstream media. It is good that Kenny Wachsberger stepped up to preserve much of this history in his important and thorough Insider Histories — available through Amazon.com. The section on Joint Issue begins on page 195. It is a must read for anyone who wants to know what was really going on during this transformational era in US history.
Other important books by Ken Wachsberger can be found at this link.
The photos below are of a newspaper that is showing its age after forty-three years sitting in a library’s cardboard collection box or on the back shelf of a closet.
Back in the day, we published Joint Issue on clean white Demy-sized sheets folded in half to make the individual pages. We often used colored sheets — pink, blue, orange, green and yellow were our favorites — to give the Joint Issue a fresher look. Sometimes we used colored ink to highlight important stories.
Impco Graphics of Mason was our printer. Denny Preston, the local artist and musician who created the LugNuts logo, designed ours.
Joint Issue began publishing during the year Hewlett-Packard marketed the first hand-held calculators to the public. Like the HP calculator — able only to multiply and divide — Joint Issue faced technical hurdles of its own. Personal computers hadn’t yet been invented, so each page had to be painstakingly laid out by hand.
We typed up the copy on paper sheets with an actual Smith-Corona typewriter (remember those?), cut the typewritten sheets into usable bite-size pieces with scissors or exacto-knives, slopped on the glue with brushes or fingers, and carefully tweezered the pieces into location onto white cardboard layout sheets hanging on clotheslines in our basement office.
We pasted cool graphics (pictures) we scissored (if we had to) from books and magazines (expensive!) or we got them from our volunteers and donors. Sometimes a picture or piece of text would fall off the copy-sheet before it made it to Impco Graphics in Mason to be published. Someone might shove a piece of text into an inappropriate location. Shit happened.
But that was its charm and our purpose. We weren’t supposed to be a polished publication put out by an aristocracy trying to sell poisons to the public. Joint Issue was a people’s paper published by common people without an internet, Facebook, or Instagram.
Our first issues, like the one featured below, were crude. But over time the sophistication of Joint Issue grew and its reputation as a reliable chronicler of what was happening in the street became established.
Billy Lee
Note: tomagnify photos for reading, click on individual photo. Some pages are out of sequence.
During a recent doctor visit I noticed that the Physician Assistant taking my blood pressure wore an Archie Watch, purple wristband, and Batman necklace. “You like cartoons?” I asked.
“I love comics,” he said, “don’t you?”
We bantered about comic book characters, then I asked about his wristband. Oh, it’s a ”pride” bracelet, he gushed.
He pulled off the blood pressure cuff and stepped back. He twinkled like a playful puppy.
My mind glazed as I remembered the “controversy” at our church. The national denomination had voted to allow women and gays to serve as ministers and marry same-sex couples.
Local leaders threw a fit. They said things like: The Bible says… We cannot in good conscience… God will judge… remember Sodom and Gomorrah… etc. etc.
They arranged meetings, made phone calls, fired-off texts, e-mails, and scrambled into Chevy Suburbans to meet like-minded others to make plans and discuss strategies.
What were their options? What to try next? How would they shape the congregation to challenge heresy?
At a meeting I suggested that breaking with the denomination seemed like divorce, at least to me. I asked, “What about unity? Doesn’t commitment count for anything?”
It didn’t. Not when commitment countered God’s Word.
Every question, each objection, all challenges met articulate response. The Pastor and Elders were ready, prepared, determined. They would do God’s Will come Hell or high water.
The PA turned to go. I blinked my eyes. “Say”, I called after him. “…ask a question? No need to answer.”
He turned. “It’s ok.”
I cleared my throat. “Well… religions…all religions… are conservative about sex, right?” I stammered. “You know… it’s true… Christian churches especially. They don’t believe in sex until married.” I shrugged. “It won’t change anytime soon.”
“Listen!” he interrupted. “I don’t care about religion. I have my beliefs. I’m comfortable. What Christians think, I don’t give a shit.”
“Oh”, I said.
I gathered my thoughts and pushed on. “Well, hear me out, OK? A second of your time, that’s all. I want to ask… really, what can Christians do to make it better for gay people?” I tried a sweet smile. “What can we do to show love?”
“That’s easy,” he said. “Stop judging.”
His eyes darkened.
“I don’t like it.It makes us feel bad.”
He took a quick breath.
“Marry us. In churches… really.” His eyes settled, then he paused. He raised his hands. “Don’t get me wrong. Right now, I don’t want marriage.” He blushed and looked away. A vein in his neck throbbed.
He showed his teeth. “I have issues with commitment, OK?”
I waited for more, but he stopped. He turned to leave, then paused. He clenched his fists and twirled. Eyes wet, he seemed to cry. Maybe… I wasn’t sure.
“Why can’t anyone marry the ones they love?”Rising on his toes, he glared, pirouetted, and walked away.
After looking into the history that archaeologists think they know of the time around Horemheb, it seems to me that a compelling narrative of the Exodus and Horemheb can be constructed consistent with what is known from archaeology and written historical records including (and especially) the Bible, since it is the one and only account of the Exodus that exists today, I’m told.
Pharaoh Horemheb with Amun-Ra, the king of the gods, standing beside him.
So here is my version of events.
The Son of Ra, Amun, Loves Horemheb
After comparing the dates Egyptologists have assigned to the reigns of the pharaohs with the date of Moses’s birth worked out by rabbinical scholars, it seems to me that Horemheb could have been the Exodus pharaoh.
But in a search of the Internet and other sources, I found that most historians don’t believe the Exodus occurred, and among other researchers, few say the Exodus pharaoh was Horemheb. Some claim he was Ramesses II; some, Thutmosis III; others speculate about other pharaohs; but very few have said, as far as I can tell, that he was Horemheb.
According to most Egyptologists, Horemheb ruled from 1319 to 1292 BCE. Some Rabbis claim that Moses was born in 1391 and, according to the Bible record, confronted Pharaoh eighty years later in 1311 — eight years after Horemheb took power.
Seder Olam (sequence of world events -lit. World Order)
Rabbinic Judaism uses the Seder Olam (World Order) from the 2nd century CE to date Biblical events. According to the Seder Olam, 832 BCE is the date Solomon started construction of the first temple. 1311 BCE is the date of the Exodus.
The interval agrees closely with the 480-year period described in I Kings, 6:1. More importantly, the date 1311 BCE places Moses and the Exodus squarely in the reign of Horemheb if the chronology of modern Egyptologists is accepted.
To be fair, a few fundamentalist millennial Christian sources place the start of temple construction at 1000 BCE but this date strains credulity, because it was established to fit the theory of millennialism where history is divided into seven one-thousand year “days.” History is almost never as precise or the calendar that clean, even when written by God.
Historians have established that, before he was pharaoh, Horemheb commanded the Egyptian army under Pharaohs Tutankhamun and Ay. After he became pharaoh and lost the army (as described in the Exodus story of the Bible; see a summary below), an angry Horemheb enlisted his allies, the polytheistic priests and their cults, to erase the history of the “monotheist” former pharaoh, Akhenaten, his allies, and family members.
One of those family members was Akhenaten’s adopted cousin, Moses (see next section, The Exodus Story), who Horemheb blamed for bringing Egypt to ruin.
Historians agree that during his reign Horemheb intensified a damnatio memoriae (campaign to strike from memory) against the former pharaoh, Akhenaten. The campaign was initiated by Akhenaten’s son, Tutankhamun, and the pharaohs that followed — Smenkhkare, Neferneferuaten and Ay.
These pharaohs during the years 1334-1319 BCE reversed many — but not all — of Akhenaten’s reforms, because they thought the reforms created uncertainty and turmoil over the status of the priesthood and the gods, which to them seemed essential to the economy and stability of Egypt.
But Horemheb took the reversal to another level — restoring order by turning back all of Akhenaten’s reforms and re-establishing traditional polytheism throughout the whole of Egypt.
Ipuwer Papyrus
The surviving copy of the Ipuwer Papyrus — housed in the Netherlands at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities and dating to the 19th dynasty (13th century BCE) — may actually describe the conditions in Egypt during the Amarna/post-Amarna period before and after Horemheb took power. It may have been during this period that the Hebrews, led by Moses, lobbied Horemheb to let them leave Egypt for their ancestral lands in Canaan.
The Exodus Story
Pharaoh Thutmose IV died around 1390 BCE leaving a very young son, Amenhotep III, to become pharaoh. To fashion the story to fit the Bible narrative, that same year a teenage daughter of Thutmose IV, possibly Princess Tiaa, found Moses floating in a basket on the Nile River. She brought Moses into the palace to be a playmate for her brother, the new pharaoh.
The sister of the deceased Thutmose IV located Moses’s mother, Jochebed, and brought her into the palace to wet-nurse Moses. Soon after, Princess Tiaa adopted Moses and raised him as her son.
Through this arrangement Tiaa’s much younger brother, the new Pharaoh Amenhotep III, became Moses’s uncle, though they were about the same age. Perhaps the two grew up together and were close — more like brothers than uncle/nephew.
The influence of religion on the Thutmose family by Moses’s mother — a monotheistic Jewish woman — might have been considerable. No one can know for sure, but what followed — the eventual embrace of monotheism by Amenhotep III’s son, Amenhotep IV (who later changed his name to Akhenaten) — might be understood as having evolved under her influence.
Jochebed may have continued to live within the pharaoh’s household for many years assisting Princess Tiaa to raise her own son and through him influencing Tiaa’s grandson, Akhenaten, who would become the famous founder of Egyptian monotheism. Jochabed’s influence could make sense out of the history that followed.
According to this version of events, when Moses was forty years old, in 1351 BCE, Amenhotep III died. Amenhotep IV (his son and young cousin to Moses) became pharaoh.
Moses fled Egypt, according to the Bible to avoid trial for killing an overseer. But, because he was the adopted son of the prior pharaoh’s older sister, Moses may have worried that his cousin, Amenhotep IV, (or more likely, his aides) considered him a rival for power.
A few years later, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten to reflect his revolutionary belief in a single creator god he called Aten, the Sun Orb. He then suppressed the existing polytheistic cults.
Akhenaten built a new city, Amarna, to honor Aten. This move toward a form of monotheism turned Egyptian society upside down and angered the priests who depended on polytheism for their economic well-being.
Pharaoh Akhenaten — formerly Amenhotep IV
In 1335 BCE Akhenaten died, and Moses at age 56 returned to Egypt. He found Egypt in chaos and rebellion due to outrage by the priests and their acolytes over the move away from polytheism.
During the next 15 years Moses lived among the Hebrews and by age 70 had become their de-facto leader. Horemheb meanwhile became pharaoh.
By age 80 Moses was challenging Horemheb to let the Hebrews leave Egypt. Eventually, Horemheb did — issuing a directive, according to the Bible, that the general population provide the Hebrews with gold and silver when they left.
Horemheb’s plan may have been to trap Moses and the Hebrews against the marshes in the Sea of Reeds and annihilate them to recover their newly acquired wealth to re-stock the depleted Egyptian treasury.
But during the Exodus of 1311 BCE an unexpected inundation (the famous Red Sea flood in the Bible account) cost Horemheb his army and his plans to destroy the fleeing Hebrews. The Hebrews escaped, so Horemheb, encouraged by the priests, turned his fury against the Amarna cults and ramped up the ongoing damnatio memoriae started by Tutankhamun against his father, the former Pharaoh Akhenaten, and his allies.
I should mention that although the Egyptians closely watched, recorded, and forecast the yearly inundations of the Nile, unexpected floods sometimes did occur in the Delta region through which the Exodus may have taken place.
Pharaoh Ramesses II
When Horemheb died leaving no heir, the Ramesses family seized power. Ramesses I, Seti I and Ramesses II spent the next forty years continuing the damnatio by finishing the demolition of the town of Amarna and its temples, destroying steles, and grinding down glyphs and cartouches that referred to anyone associated with the heretical Amarna one-god movement.
They also sent armies into Canaan to hunt down Moses and the Hebrews in the territory that both Moses and Joseph — who died 59 years before Moses’s birth — had claimed was the eternal homeland given to the Hebrews by God.
[Those readers unfamiliar with Joseph’s bio are advised to read his story in Genesis chapters 37-50. Billy Lee claims that it’s the most interesting passage from world literature he’s ever read. THE EDITORS]
Unknown to the pharaohs, Moses and the Hebrews decided to stay away from Canaan. Instead, according to the Bible, they found a source of water and hid themselves in the vast Sinai wasteland where they believed their pursuers were less likely to look.
The pharaohs sent at least three armies into Canaan to hunt them down. Unable to find Moses, they marched north to search in Syria where the Hittites ambushed them.
As a result, the Egyptians conducted a number of military campaigns against the Hittites. The most reliably verified and documented of the conflicts occurred in 1274 BCE, led by Pharaoh Ramesses II. This war financially exhausted and militarily weakened both sides.
Forty years after the Exodus (and just three years after the Ramesses II incursion into Syria) in 1271 BCE, Moses died. Egypt had by then already withdrawn from Syria and Canaan. The time would never be more right.
According to the Bible, Joshua (Moses’s successor) walked the Hebrews out of their Sinai desert hiding place and entered the land of Canaan.
Twelve years later in 1259 BCE — sixteen years after the end of hostilities between the Syrian Hittites and Egypt and fifty-two years after the Exodus — Egypt signed the famous peace treaty of Kadesh with the Hittites. The peace treaty — concluded between Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II and the Hittite King Hattusili III — is the oldest surviving treaty in existence.
It diminished the most dangerous existential threat to the new Israel by making less likely Egypt’s return to wage war either in Syria or Canaan. Egypt desired a lasting peace in order to rebuild its society and military and to restore its wealth.
The desire for peace didn’t last. By 1208 BCE (fifty years later), Egypt was aware that the hated Hebrews had returned to Canaan where they were building fortified towns and cities.
Ramesses’ son, the aging Merenptah, decided to finish his family’s vendetta and go into Canaan to do battle with the fledgling Israel. According to the “Merneptah Stele” (found by Flinders Petrie and housed in the Cairo Museum), he “destroyed Israel’s seed” such that “they were no more.”
History and the Bible agree that Merenptah exaggerated his assessment.
On this stele Merneptah claims that he destroyed Israel.
It is interesting to note that Merneptah’s inscriptions describing Israel’s destruction were carved on the back of a stelae that once belonged to Amenhotep III, Moses’ “uncle” and childhood companion. Merenptah simply turned it around and used it as his own.
It is fascinating (perhaps macabre) to recall — in light of the Bible account of the Passover and the killing of the first-born by the Angel of Death — that tomb examiners found the fetus of Horemheb’s son and heir-apparent inside his wife’s mummified body. Horemheb had no heir, and the Ramesses’ family was able to take power.
No records of Moses or the Exodus itself, in hieroglyphs or Egyptian script, have been found.
