The Education of Moses

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 13, 1874

The Education of Moses.

THE following instructive and highly interesting article is from the pen of the Rev. Joseph Haven, LL. D., one of the first writers of the day. It is quoted from the January number of Bible Studies, and unless we greatly mistake, will be re-read by hundreds of the readers of the REVIEW.

G. W. A.

We are told (Acts 7: 22) that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. And how much was that? What could they teach? What state of culture and civilization had the nation attained? Her own existing monuments enable us to answer this question, and place it beyond all reasonable doubt that Egypt was at that time, and had been for centuries, the source and center of the world's civilization; that she was—what Greece afterward became—the mistress of the nations in letters, science, and art.

If, with the highest authorities, we place the date of the Exodus at about 1300 B. C., the period at which Moses flourished, falls about midway between the original founding of the empire by Menes, and the Christian era. The Egypt of that day had already a history of at least twelve or fifteen hundred years—Lepsius and Bunsen would say from two thousand to twenty-five hundred years—a period sufficient, if we take the lowest estimate, to allow a very high degree of attainment in whatever constitutes the intellectual culture and supremacy of a nation.

There is the clearest evidence that, at the time of which we speak, Egypt held, and had long held, such supremacy. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries B. C. were in fact the golden period of Egyptian greatness, the Elizabethan age of her culture. The education of Moses would, naturally, under such circumstances, be that of the highest nobles and princes of the realm, the best the nation could afford; and that this was of a high order, there is the clearest monumental evidence.

From the first, the Egyptians possessed the arts of civilized life. From the earliest centuries of their national existence they had been workers in wood, and stone, and brass; gold, silver, and bronze, were in common use among them; so was iron, that latest product and surest test of high civilization. The gold neck-lace and ear-rings of Menes, the first king of Egypt, and the signet-ring of Shufu, the builder of the great pyramid, are as elaborate and elegant in their workmanship and finish as anything in that line which modern art can produce. In the chamber at Karnak, which commemorates the wars and triumphs of Thotmes III., of the 18th dynasty—some 200 years before the time of Moses—there is a record of the offerings made to the temple to complete it, in which list mention is made of the metals, silver, copper, iron, tin, and lead, good bronze of the land of Babel, tusks of ivory richly carved and polished, and solid rings of gold. The value of the treasure contributed to the temple by Thotmes as the result of these military expeditions is set down in the record at 2,374 solid rings of gold. It was in the ships of Tyre that these treasures were brought by the king to Thebes, his capital. The art of working iron must have been possessed by the Egyptians from the very first, for a piece of wrought iron has been found by Col. Howard Vyse imbedded among the solid masonry of the great pyramid, near the summit, where it must have been left by the original builders.

In other arts, the great proficiency of the Egyptians is attested by the paintings in the tombs at Thebes and Beni-Hassan. The process of glass-blowing, usually regarded as a modern invention, is there plainly depicted; while the articles of luxury, the vases, couches, ottomans, chairs, and other furniture of a richly furnished house, can hardly be surpassed for elegance, richness, and variety. And, what is singular in regard to the matter, the older monuments and works of art, as compared with those of later date, are not the less but the more perfect of the two. The sculptures and inscriptions of the age of Thotmes III., and of Sesostris, prior to Moses and the exodus, are far superior to those executed by the Ptolemies in the later period of the empire.

Of the science of the ancient Egyptians not much is known to us, but it is certain that they understood the science of agriculture, and carried it to perfection. They understood and successfully executed works of civil engineering, before which modern science stands aghast. They turned the course of the Nile into new channels, so as to redeem wide regions of desert from barrenness to highest fertility. In mathematical and astronomical science, the Egyptians seem to have been proficient. The great pyramid is itself, according to the astronomer royal of Scotland, Piazzi Smith, one of the most remarkable scientific and astronomical buildings ever erected. On the ceiling of the temple at Denderah, one sees the characters and signs of the Zodiac as complete as in our modern astronomy.

Nor was Egypt without a literature. On the walls and columns of her sacred edifices, graven in the rock forever, under the care and keeping of the gods, her history, as regards at least its leading events, stands written. Not merely the wars, the battles, and sieges, and conquests, are there recorded, but accompanying the pictorial representations of these are historic inscriptions, and invocations addressed to the conqueror, often in the highest style of oriental poetry. I had intended to give a few specimens of these, as illustrating the character of Egyptian poetical art, especially its marked resemblance to the spirit and style of the Hebrew prophets; but space will not permit.

But such historic inscriptions were not the only literature of this remarkable people, at the time of which I speak. They had also books, libraries, and schools of instruction. An inscription on one of the tombs of the period of Sephres, the builder of the second pyramid, some 2,000 years B. C., speaks of lands devoted to the library of that monarch. This was several centuries prior to the time of Moses. One of the beautiful tombs at Beni-Hassan is that of one of the nobles of the twelfth dynasty—Nahrai who, as the inscription informs us, was steward of the land tax for the support of the schools of the sons of the kings of lower Egypt. This was a thousand years or more before the exodus; and shows the care of the nation, at that early period, for the education of its future rulers. The famous Memnonium at Thebes, palace of

Remeses II., the Pharaoh by whose daughter Moses was adopted and educated, contained a library of sacred books, over the entrance to which may still be seen this most appropriate inscription,—“The Remedy for the Soul.” When after the death of this monarch, and of his son, who survived him but a few years, his infant grandson, Sethos II., came to the throne, Thouoris, the daughter already mentioned, who was guardian and co-regent of the young king, appointed scribes to write books of instruction for him, that he might be incited to noble deeds by the histories of his ancestors. The tomb of one of these scribes has been discovered at Thebes, and in it the books he had written for the young king—the Pharaoh, it is supposed, of the exodus.

From these various facts respecting the general culture and attainments of the Egyptians in art, science, and literature, in the time of Moses, and earlier, it may be inferred, with almost absolute certainty, that the education he received at the court of Thouoris, and perhaps also of her father, the great Sesostris, was of the very highest order, and such as could probably have been obtained in scarcely any other nation of the world at that time.