{"id":13583,"date":"2025-08-21T12:02:02","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T16:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=13583"},"modified":"2025-08-21T12:02:02","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T16:02:02","slug":"researcher-claims-ancient-egyptian-inscriptions-may-refer-to-moses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2025\/08\/researcher-claims-ancient-egyptian-inscriptions-may-refer-to-moses.html","title":{"rendered":"Researcher Claims Ancient Egyptian Inscriptions May Refer to Moses"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_13586\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13586\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13586\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2025\/08\/Ancient-Moses_credit-Left-Adobe-Stock-Right-Michael-S-Bar-Ron.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13586\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Adobe Stock | Right: Michael S. Bar-Ron<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A mine in the Egyptian desert could hold the first-ever extra-biblical evidence of Moses\u2019s existence. Moses is a key figure in both Jewish and Christian faiths, credited for helping bring the nation of Israel out from slavery under a tyrannical Egyptian Pharoah. It\u2019s the stuff of cinema and has been the source of inspiration of such cultural classics like <em>The Ten Commandments <\/em>starring Charlton Heston and the surprise animated hit, <em>The Prince of Egypt<\/em>. Moses\u2019s existence, however, has never been confirmed beyond the pages of the Bible. That is, until now.<\/p>\n<p>Two etchings found at Serabit el-Khadim, an ancient turquoise mining site in the Sinai Desert, could hold the key to extra-biblical proof of Moses\u2019s existence. Semitic laborers once worked the mines during the Middle Bronze Age, leaving behind Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions that date back between 1800 and 1600 B.C. Researcher Michael Bar-Ron has claimed that one of the inscriptions may read, &#8216;zot m&#8217;Moshe,&#8217; Hebrew for \u201cThis is from Moses.\u201d Another inscription could read \u201cNe\u2019um Moshe,\u201d which means \u201cDeclaration of Moses.\u201d Bar-Ron believes the inscriptions could date during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, who some believe could have been the biblical Pharoah mentioned in Exodus.<\/p>\n<p>Bar-Ron arrived at the conclusion by using high-resolution images and 3D casts at Harvard&#8217;s Semitic Museum. He grouped the inscriptions into five overlapping categories, or \u201cclades.\u201d There are inscriptions that reference \u201cEl,\u201d the God of the Hebrews and mentions of the Egyptian goddess Ba\u02bfalat. References to Ba\u02bfalat appear to have been defaced by followers of El, indicating tension between the Semitic workers and the faith of the Egyptians. There are also references to slavery and overseers, which could reflect events mentioned in Exodus. The nearby Stele of Reniseneb and a seal of an Asiatic Egyptian high official give indications of a Semitic presence and may point to the existence of Joseph, Moses\u2019s predecessor mentioned in the book of Genesis.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/travel\/oldest-written-reference-moses-may-hiding-ancient-egyptian-desert-inscriptions-researcher-says\"><em>Fox News<\/em><\/a>, Bar-Ron described his decade-long process in translating the inscriptions. \u201cI spent eight years actively involved in the painstaking, oft-frustrating reconstruction of some 23 wordy Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions. That is, based on the principles of the foremost greats in the field, and informed by the work of my distinguished colleagues in the field,\u201d he said. There are some, however, that have pushed back at Bar-Ron\u2019s assertion. Dr. Thomas Schneider, an Egyptologist at the University of British Columbia, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sciencetech\/article-14947429\/First-words-Moses-inscribed-Egyptian-prove-Bible-true.html\">called<\/a> Bar-Ron\u2019s claims \u201ccompletely unproven and misleading.\u201d Bar-Ron\u2019s academic advisor, Dr Pieter van der Veen, however, agreed with the reading. Bar-Ron\u2019s work is awaiting to be published in a peer-reviewed paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A mine in the Egyptian desert could hold the first-ever extra-biblical evidence of Moses\u2019s existence. Moses is a key figure in both Jewish and Christian faiths, credited for helping bring the nation of Israel out from slavery under a tyrannical Egyptian Pharoah. It\u2019s the stuff of cinema and has been the source of inspiration of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":13586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Researcher Claims Ancient Egyptian Inscriptions May Refer to Moses<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ancient Sinai inscriptions may offer the first extra-biblical evidence of Moses, sparking debate among scholars and excitement.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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