![]() It is possible that the princess’s appearance by the river, and her nourishing of Moses, led some early Jewish writers to associate Pharaoh’s daughter with this goddess. Thermuthis (=Tharmuth), a popular Greek name for Egyptian women during this period, is a corruption of the Egyptian Renenūtet, the Egyptian goddess of nourishment, whose name comes from the verb meaning “to fondle, nurse, rear.” In some ancient representations of the goddess, Renenūtet is presented as married to the god Sobek, the crocodile deity who represented the Nile River. Jub 47:5 And in those days Tharmuth, the daughter of Pharaoh, came in order to bathe in the river and she heard your voice as you were crying and she told her maids to fetch you. In the scene with Pharaoh’s daughter, the angel says to Moses: ![]() Jubilees: TharmuthĪt approximately the same time that Exagoge was composed in Egypt, a Judean writer composed a Hebrew work known as Jubilees, in which the Angel of the Presence retells the stories of Genesis and much of Exodus to Moses, with multiple narrative and legal expansions. In this account, Moses comes off as appreciative and loving in his description of his life as a boy brought up by Pharaoh’s daughter. I quit the royal house, impelled to deedsīy my own heart and by the king’s device. ![]() In the end, Moses still chooses his Israelite destiny: Provide all things, as though I were her own Throughout my boyhood years the princess did,įor princely rearing and instruction apt, Moses credits his biological mother with providing him with his Israelite identity, and goes on to explain that his adopted mother provided him with love, instruction, and material possessions: ![]() Then he recounts how his mother returned him to Pharaoh’s daughter (§31–41), and says:īut first all things she did declare to me At one point, Moses, who serves as the narrator, recounts how Pharaoh’s daughter discovered him in the Nile (§13–31). in the vicinity of Egypt, composed a Greek play called Exagoge (ἐξαγωγή) “Drawing Out,” in which he retells the story of Moses and the Exodus. Ezekiel the Tragedian: A Loving Adoptive MotherĮzekiel the Tragedian, a Jew who likely lived in the second or first century B.C.E. Each retelling highlights how they understood the character and place of Pharaoh’s daughter in the story of Moses. Moreover, the Torah never gives us any sense of whether she, like the midwives in the previous story, objects to her father’s cruel killing of the Israelite boys, or whether her attachment to the baby she herself found was exceptional.Įarly biblical interpreters, in light of their own time and culture, rewrote her story adding, subtracting, or adjusting details to produce their own versions of Pharaoh’s daughter, filling in many details of the laconic biblical tale. Pharaoh’s daughter is not mentioned again in the exodus story, and we hear nothing of her relationship with Moses, whether she encouraged, discouraged, or kept hidden his Israelite identity, what she thought of his becoming an outlaw, etc. She named him Moses ( moshe), “because,” she said, “I drew him ( meshiti) out of the water.” Exod 2:10 When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. Pharaoh’s daughter agrees, and offers that Israelite woman-who happens to be the child’s mother-wages as a wet-nurse (2:7–9). Hearing the princess’s recognition of the baby’s identity, the sister steps out from the rushes and offers to fetch an Israelite woman to nurse the child. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. 2:6 When she opened it, she saw the child. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. Exod 2:5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. To save baby Moses from Pharaoh’s murderous decree against the Israelite boys, his mother places him in a basket along the bank of the Nile River in the hopes that an Egyptian would discover him and keep him safe (Exod 2:1–4).
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