The Ethiopian Connection
The Dynasty of Moses and the Queen of Sheba
Unknown to historians, the prophet Moses of the Bible actually sired
a long line of kings which has ruled from the middle of the second mil-
lennium before the present era until this very present age! Here is dy-
namic new understanding of the real origin of the famous Eighteenth
Dynasty of ancient Egypt, and the origin of the long line of kings which
have ruled in Ethiopia until Haile Selassie, the recent Emperor!
William F. Dankenbring
Historians have overlooked an amazing fact which should have been self evident, if they had but understood the right time-frame of Egyptian chronology, and believed the historical record of the Bible, and the Jewish historian Josephus.
In the book of Deuteronomy, God made Moses an amazing promise. After Israel had sinned, and made a golden calf to worship, God was furious. He declared to Moses: "I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiffnecked people: Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven: and I will make of THEE a nation MIGHTIER AND GREATER THAN THEY" (Deut. 9:13-14). Moses, however, interceded for the people, and turned away God's wrath from them (verses 18-19, 22-29).
However, prior to Moses leaving Egypt, the Jewish historian Josephus points out that he had been a great general who led Pharaoh's army to victory over the kingdom of Ethiopia, which had conquered most of Egypt. While attacking the Ethiopian capital city, Tharbis, the daughter of the king of Ethiopia, became enamoured of Moses, seeing his valiant exploits, and bargained to deliver the city into his hands if he would but marry her. Moses agreed, and she fulfilled her promise -- and Moses married her, and fulfilled the obligation of a husband to her, causing her to become pregnant (Josephus, Antiquities, II, x). This occurred sometime before 1532 B.C., when Moses was driven out of Egypt for slaying an Egyptian (Exodus 2: 11-150. The vitally important royal city where this conflict culminated was "Saba." Josephus relates:
"...he came upon the Ethiopians before they expected him; and, joining battle with them, he beat them, and deprived them of the hopes they had of success against the Egyptians, and went on in overthrowing their cities, and indeed made a great slaughter of these Ethiopians...the Ethiopians were in danger of being reduced to slavery, and all sorts of destruction; and at length they retired to SABA, which was a royal city of Ethiopia, which Cambyses afterward named MEROE, after the name of his own sister. The place was to be beseiged with very great difficulty, since it was both encompassed by the Nile quite round, and the other rivers..." (Ant., II, X, 2).
The Greek historian Herodotus spoke of Meroe, or Saba, as
"...a great city, the name of which is MEROE. This city is said to be the mother of all Ethiopia" (The History, p.142-143, quoted in The Sign and the Seal, p. 448).
When Egyptian history is properly restored and reconstructed, this event means that Moses' son by Queen Tharbis became the progenitor of a line of Ethiopian kings. When Israel left Egypt in 1492 B.C., the land of Egypt was in a shambles -- utterly destroyed, as the Papyrus Ipuwer states with awesome clarity in describing the plagues which fell upon that land -- including the plague of blood. The papyrus also shows that invaders from the east, the Hyksos, conquered nothern Egypt (lower Egypt) and dominated the region as cruel "shepherd kings" for about 500 years. These "Hyksos" were the Amalekites who fought the children of Israel in Sinai as they left Egypt (Exodus 18). They were not thrown out of Egypt until the reign of king Saul of Israel, who conquered the Amalekites in Arabia (I Samuel 15), and Samuel the prophet slew their king Agag (vs. 32-33).
At this same time, the famous and powerful Eighteenth Dynasty arose in southern Egypt and Ethiopia -- a dynasty of dark-skinned kings and queens! Among the famous kings of this powerful dynasty, which overthrew the Hyksos and conquered northern (lower) Egypt, Immanuel Velikovsky writes in Ages in Chaos:
"The kingdom of Egypt, after regaining independence under AHMOSE, a contemporary of Saul, also achieved grandeur and glory under Amenhotep I, THUTMOSE I, Hatshepsut, and THUTMOSE III. Egypt, devastated and destitute in the centuries under the rule of the Hyksos, rapidly grew in riches" (p. 103).
Notice the strange sounding names of this line of kings from southern Egypt and Ethiopia -- they contain the name of their ancestor, who was none other than the Biblical MOSES! Why would Egyptian kings of the most powerful dynasty that ever ruled Egypt be called by the name of Moses, and be named after Moses? Because this dynasty of kings and queens was descended from Tharbis, who became Queen of Ethiopia, and her husband was none other than MOSES! As Josephus writes, after she delivered up the impregnable city of Saba to Moses,
"No sooner was the agreement made, but it took effect immediately; and when Moses had cut off the Ethiopians, he gave thanks to God, and CONSUMMATED HIS MARRIAGE, and led the Egyptians back to their own land" (Ant., II, x, 2).
Notice! The royal city where this marriage was consummated was "Saba." Saba can be none other than the same as SHEBA! Thus, the Queen of Sheba, whom Josephus says was the Queen of Ethiopia and Egypt, who visited Solomon in 992 B.C., roughly 540 years after Moses married the Ethiopian princess, came from this same royal city of SABA-SHEBA. This means that she was a royal descendant of Moses and Tharbis, the daughter of the king of Ethiopia -- a descendant of MOSES!
God fulfilled his promise to make a powerful dynasty of kings from the loins of Moses.
And in the days of Solomon, the Queen of Sheba -- Hatshepsut, her Egyptian name, or Makeda, her Ethiopian name -- like Tharbis, her ancestor, had a love affair or romance with a Hebrew leader -- King Solomon. Thereby the royal lines of Moses and David became intertwined, and have ruled in the nation of Ethiopia ever since, till Haile Selassie, of our own day!
The very name "Hatshepsut" itself may be indicative of the fact that this famous Queen, who visited the land of Punt, the "Divine Land," and who built a temple on the banks of the Nile at Thebes in upper Egypt patterned after Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, was indeed the Queen of Sheba. "Ha," in Hebrew, means "the." "Sut is a suffix which may relate to royalty. Thus her actual name is "Shep," but nominatives are often interchangeable, and it could be rendered "Sheb," that is, SHEBA -- thus her very name could mean, "The Sheba Queen," or "The Queen of Sheba."
Interestingly, historians know that the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, its most powerful, was a "colored" dynasty -- that is, Ethiopian or Nubian! On page 105 of his book Ages in Chaos, Velikovsky has a plate showing the visage of Queen Hatshepsut, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is a regal looking statue showing her distinctive Ethiopian features, or a mixture of Ethiopian and Semitic -- but of course, for she was the descendant of Tharbis and Moses!
Was Hatshepsut the same person as the Queen of Sheba, or the Queen of Ethiopia, as Josephus states clearly that the Queen of Sheba was? The Ethiopian name of this Queen, who visited Solomon and had a son by him, was Makeda. Did Hatshepsut have this as her personal name? Velikovsky quotes the Karnak obelisk, in Breasted, Records, vol. II, sec. 325, in its description of the famous Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut:
"Thy name reaches as far as the circuit of heaven, the fame of MAKERE (Hatshepsut) encircles the sea" (Ages in Chaos, p. 105).
Makere is clearly the same name as Makeda, the Ethiopian name for the Queen of Sheba or Saba. The term "Sheba" or "Saba" refers to the name of the famous Ethiopian royal city at the confluence of the Nile and two other Ethiopian rivers, at the upper reaches of the Nile!
The word "Ethiopia" is a Greek word meaning "burnt faces." The Hebrew word Cush, translated as "Ethiopia," was used in Biblical times to refer to "the entire Nile Valley south of Egypt, including Nubia and Abyssinia" (Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible, p. 5, quoted in The Sign and the Seal, p. 450).
The 1955 Revised Constitution of Ethiopia confirms the age-old monarchy's Divine Right to rule. It states:
"The Imperial dignity shall remain perpetually attached to the line of Haile Selassie I, whose line descends without interruption from the dynasty of Menelik I, son of the Queen of Ethiopia, the Queen of Sheba, and King Solomon of Jerusalem..." (ibid., p. 24).
Haile Selassie, the former Emperor of Ethiopia, claimed to be the 225th direct line descendant of Menelik I, the son of the Queen of Sheba or Saba, the royal city and "mother" city of all Ethiopia. Thus her Biblical name, "Queen of Sheba," actually helps to prove her true identity!