Cheremon's Amenophis could be who you think.

This is a follow-up to my post about Amenophis in Manehto as Quoted by Josephus. 

After dealing with Manetho in Against Apion Book 1 section 32 Josephus recounts a certain Cheremon’s version of the Exodus, which Josephus then critiques in the following two sections. 

As someone who believes Manetho as received by Jospehus was already corrupted from the original in part by these Alexandrian Judeophobes, it’s possible that this story in Cheremon predates and references to Moses ever being added to Manetho, but it would probably have to be older then Cheremon himself for that to be the case. 

This account also has a Pharaoh named Amemenophis and he also has a son named Rameses.  One thing I glossed over in the prior post is Josephus saying Seti II was also called Ramses, in fact he winds up calling him Rameses more than he does Seti/Sethos.  There are to my knowledge no Egyptians records of Set II having Rameses among his names. But in the version where Seti II is the one identified with Aegyptos, Rameses is the name of his brother he had a civil war with, and since the New Kingdom loved Synchronizing Amun with Ra it’s easy to imagine Amenmese being also called Rameses. 

This version does not mention the name Osarshiph or refer to anyone as a Priest of Heliopolis. 

If we look at Cheremon’s account without Manetho based preconceptions then the only thing that might lead one to looking at the 19th Dynasty is the use of the name Rameses.  But the name Rameses was already being used in the 18th Dynasty, one just hadn’t been the King yet.  Wikipedia pages use Ramose when talking about the 18th Dynasty ones but it’s the same name in Egyptian just with arbitrary differences in transliteration. 

However there is currently no known correlation with a Pharoah named Amenhotep with a son named Ramose. The only Ramose who was the son of a Pharoah was the son of Ahmose the first 18th Dynasty Pharoah. Then there is the father of Senenmut who likely lived during the reigns of Amenhotep I through maybe the early years of Hatshepsut. Then there is one who was a Vizier under Amenhotep III and Akhenaton, and a general during the Amarna period, and possibly another general.

Of course there is also the matter that the Meneptah discrepancy is not the only time when Manetho called Amenophis doesn’t line up with who we call Amenhotep.  And Manetho could still be who the creator of this story got the name from.

Manetho’s first Amenophis has the right reign length to be Amenhotep I but is placed too late in the sequence The scholars Wikipedia cites use reign length to decide who is who in Manetho which for the Amenhoteps works here and here alone. The first Amenophis’s placement in the sequence is as the brother and predecessor of Hatshepsut (called Amesses but this is the least disputable identification, the 18th Dynasty had only two ruling Queens and only she reigned between 21 and 22 years, the name Amesses probably comes from her mother Ahmose) telling me he’s supposed to be Tuthmosis II with an exaggerated reign length.

The second and last 18th Dynasty Amenophis in Manetho has a reign length that lines up perfectly with none of the Amenhotep, but the same scholars cited by Wikipedia say he is Amenhotep II. He is in the placement of Amenhotep II however, being the 4th King after Hatshepsut. Orus has the reign length of Amenhotep III but is in the placement Akhetnaten as the father and predecessor of the other ruling Queen called Achenres by Manetho, among her known Egyptian names was Ankheperure, she didn't rule 12 years but isn’t the only one Manetho gives way too long a reign length to.

In Manetho as quoted by Josephus the Pharaoh in the place of Amenhotep II is Mephramuthosis who also has a pretty close reign length, 25 years and 10 months. He’s followed by a Tuthmosis who reigned about a decade, a rare case of Manetho using the right name in the right position and the right reign length. 

So could the popular Exodus Pharoah choice Amenhotep II have had a son also known as Ramose? Well there is an Ahmose who was High Priest of Ra at Heliopolis and is presumed to be Amenhotep II’s son. 

Let’s step back a moment.  Remember the Ramose I referred to before as a son of Ahmose?  Well it’s actually who his father was, our source for him is a much later 2oth Dynasty Tombs depicting various Pharaohs and Princes where the order seems to be random. 

My using Hatshepsut as the main anchor in how I deciphered Manetho’s account of the 18th Dynasty has the issue of there being only 3 Pharoah’s before her not 4. There is ambiguity on when to distinguish Dynasty 17 from 18, they are technically the same Dynasty by the same Royal Family definition. Dynasty 17 as we know it isn’t in Manetho at all, his later transcribers just mirror the Hyksos account there.  Cheremon’s account of Amenophis kind of sounds like the entire Hyksos period condensed to the reign of one Theban King. 

In addition to all the things Josephus should be taking issue with in these hostile versions of The Exodus, he also objects even to the suggestion that the Jews are of partly Egyptian stock. But that is consistent with what The Pentateuch says, it was a Mixed Multitude (Exodus 12:38 and Nehemiah 13:3), probably mostly made up of other slaves, but slavery in Ancient Egypt wasn’t categorially race based the way the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade was, those slaves would have included Egyptians who were outcasts, some perhaps exactly the way these accounts are describing. “Leprosy” in ancient text usually doesn't mean the exact disease we today associate it with, even Albinos were included in it. Leviticus 24 refers to a person whose mother was a Danite and father was an Egyptian, they probably weren’t the only one. Deuteronomy 23:7-8 makes clear Egyptians in the congregation are to be Nationalized. 

The overarching theme of these hostile retellings of The Exodus is to change it from a story of slaves escaping a tyrant who wouldn't let them go to outcasts being forced out of a country that didn’t want them, and blaming them for everything that was going wrong.  To us moderners neither version makes The Jews look like the bad guys or the Egyptians look good. And the tragic irony is that kind of thing would become the origin story of Modern Israel.