Preface 1. Mnemohistory and the Construction of Egypt 2. Suppressed History, Repressed Memory: Moses and Akhenaten 3. Before the Law: John Spencer as Egyptologist 4. The Moses Discourse in the Eighteenth Century 5. Sigmund Freud: The Return of the Repressed 6. Conceiving the One in Ancient Egyptian Traditions 7. Abolishing the Mosaic Distinction: Religious Antagonism and Its Overcoming. Notes Index
Assmann's story is as good an explanation of this history as anyone has come up with, and it must be based on a firmer foundation than anyone else's could be. It is tantalizing and inviting. No one can fault him on his scholarship or erudition. He is one of the most talented historians of the Ancient world. -- Saul Friedlander
Jan Assmann is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg.
A brilliant study...World-renowned as a specialist on Egyptian
texts, beliefs, and rituals, Assmann combines great technical
virtuosity in his chosen field with wide--very wide--theoretical
and comparative interests...Elegantly argued, impressively
documented, and written in eloquent English, Moses the Egyptian
offers challenging new findings on the early history of monotheism,
and a new reading of the place of Egypt in modern Western
culture--and it puts both into the larger context of a theory of
cultural memory.
*New Republic*
For early writers...Moses invented a religious tradition that was
the deliberate antithesis of that of Egypt. Later, in the period
treated here...they credited Moses with having instructed the
Hebrews in a version of Egyptian religion...This is certainly a
fascinating work...This account of the theme of Moses the Egyptian
should appeal to students of the time period mostly treated here.
Moreover...the volume will serve to introduce any number of
students of the Near East to several thinkers who were prominent in
their own time but not widely known today.
*Journal of Near Eastern Studies*
Jan Assmann revisits the ground covered by Freud [in Moses and
Monotheism], but with important differences. Assmann is no amateur.
He is an eminent German Egyptologist, and no one writes with more
authority about relations between ancient Egypt and ancient Israel.
Equally important, Assmann aspires to something at once more
tenable and more valuable than Freud. Freud tried to describe Moses
as he really was... Assmann instead chose to write an account of
how Moses has been remembered in different times and places...
Assmann gives a dazzling account of several centuries of [the
Moses-as-Egyptian] tradition...Moses the Egyptian, for all its
brilliant erudition, is not simply dispassionate history. It is
equally a homily. It is this that makes [it]--so rare for an
academic monograph--a profoundly moving book...Assmann argues
passionately that we today have much to learn from the ancient
Egyptians whom he has spent his life studying...Most moving of all,
Assmann is a consummate scholar with courage enough to
moralize...Assmann's reconstruction of an ecumenical tradition of
interpreting the Exodus is an important contribution to the history
of religion. At the same time, his plea that modern theologians
adopt similar views has great moral force. Assmann has done nothing
less than suggest that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam be set upon
different, more inclusive foundations. By demonstrating that these
alternate foundations have long been part of the Judeo-Christian
tradition, Assmann makes such sweeping reform almost plausible.
Plausible or not, Assmann has written a book that is scholarly and
passionate, a book that inspires as well as informs.
*Boston Book Review*
[Moses the Egyptian's] scholarly depth lends legitimacy to its
revisionist claim. [It is not] designed to ignite controversy in
the culture wars--something that cannot be said for some other
efforts in the field. This deep seriousness alone is sufficient to
recommend Assmann's study. Assmann tells several interlocking
stories. His primary narrative line is the memory of Egypt in the
European scholarly imagination. Here he attempts--with considerable
success--to move beyond a conventional history of scholarship...
Assmann moves beyond cultural history to something more subtle: the
complex transmission of ideas which are sometimes recorded,
sometimes recessive, sometimes almost forgotten. What is striking
is not only Assmann's account of the written record of the Moses
and Egypt story but his recovery of the reasons for its historical
retention...Assmann has produced a learned study whose theses will
themselves endure in the scholarly memory.
*American Historical Review*
[Moses the Egyptian] opens up a question that is crucial to
adherents of all three religions that claim their origin in
biblical Judaism. That question has to do with the religious
distinction between truth and falsehood. It seems natural to a Jew,
a Christian or a Muslim to consider his or her own religion true
and other religions false. This tendency is especially strong in
Christianity. But according to Egyptologist Jan Assman, people who
practised the ancient religions we call pagan did not see the world
in this way. People of difference nations might worship difference
sets of goddesses and gods, but there were alternative expressions
of the same underlying reality.
*Catholic News Times*
This very ambitious book keeps its promise...Assmann tells us that
he wrote the book as if under a spell. Its readers, too, can feel
spellbound...Rather than seeking to cover the whole historical
span, Assmann has wisely chosen to focus on some of the major
articulations of the Moses/Egypt discourse throughout intellectual
and religious history. One hopes that this strategy, which leaves
other books to be written, has reopened an inexhaustible well of
inquiry.
*Journal of Religion*
One will find in this fascinating book an investigation of 'the
history of Europe's remembering Egypt.' Assmann's term for this is
'mnemo-history,' a way of studying the past that is concerned 'not
with the past as such, but only with the past as it is remembered.'
Assmann serves as a penetrating critic who shows that before the
Enlightenment the books on Egypt spoke the language of the
Enlightenment. What the scholars and philosophers presented when
they described ancient Egyptian religion looked very much like
Spinozism, Deism, pantheism, or 'natural religion,' the kinds of
religious sensibilities they favored. This is a feature that is no
less apparent today than it was two hundred years ago.
*First Things*
In this remarkable book, Assmann takes the very essence of Western
religion--the principle of monotheism--as his topic, tracing its
effects by looking at its counter-image in the Western
imagination--the memory of Egypt...Based on his intimate and
profound knowledge of ancient Egyptian religion, Assmann is able to
construct a new image of the contrast between Egypt and
monotheism.
*Biblical Archaeology Review*
This is a gripping and richly documented response to Y. H.
Yerushalmi's tracing of Freud's Moses to Schiller, John Spencer,
Strabo, Celsus, Apion and Manetho, and a development of Assmann's
earlier complementary attempt to link Akhenaten's religious
revolution with the story of the reception of the memory of Moses
via a similar chain of classical, mediaeval, renaissance and
enlightenment authors by Schiller and Freud.
*Society for Old Testament Study*
Assmann's story is as good an explanation of this history as anyone
has come up with, and it must be based on a firmer foundation than
anyone else's could be. It is tantalizing and inviting. No one can
fault him on his scholarship or erudition. He is one of the most
talented historians of the Ancient world.
*Saul Friedlander*
Assmann's fascinating book is a meditation on the very notion of
true vs. false religion and its historical effects...There is a bit
of something for nearly anyone in church history in this book, and
a lot of methodology for everyone. The book is highly recommended,
and...quite a good read.
*Church History*
Moses the Egyptian is a book of great learning, historical savvy
and keen insight as well as a cornucopia of fascinating
information.
*Los Angeles Times*
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