Brian E. R. Limmer
2018
Introduction Did you know the Egyptians had more than two-thousand gods? The most High of all these gods was Amun. Amun’s right-hand-god was Ra, the god of fire. Whenever the Egyptian army went to war, Amun and Ra teamed up to ensure victory. The Egyptian army called this team Amun-Ra. Amun-Ra was a ruthless combination, destroying anything in the way, the army would help the work of Ra by torching everything in its path. Ra was believed to visit the sky in his chariot each morning and pass through the realms of the underworld each night. If the weather became cloudy while an army was at war, the solders would presume Ra was no longer on their side. That may be why they panicked when the Hebrew slaves, shielded by a cloud, crossed the Red Sea. The god of the Nile was named Hapi1. Hapi was the fertility god and very popular throughout Ancient Egypt. According to myth, Hapi set out from his home in the heavens, travelled through the land of the dead, emerging in an unknown cave in upper Egypt before taking a journey down the Nile every year. For more than three-thousand-years, people have tried to pin-point the source of the Nile and it is still in dispute today. So the assumption he emerged from a cave in the hills was as good as any other explanation to them. The Arrival of Hapi coincided with the season of floods each year. To appease Hapi and ensure he did not destroy the mud huts along the river’s edge, and, of course, to ensure the increase in population, they were required to throw a firstborn male into the Nile as a sacrifice. One year, during a period when the Egyptian population was in decline and the Hebrew population was on the increase there came a devastating flood. A decree went out that they should use Hebrew firstborn sons to sacrifice to Hapi. Now, this ties nicely into the story of Moses in the bulrushes of course. It also adds credibility to a young Egyptian princess believing Hapi had brought her a present of a baby in a basket when he arrived tha
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