SOLOMON, FALCON OF SHEBA Ralph Ellis, Edfu Books, Cheshire, 2002. Paperback, 384 pages, £12.00. ISBN 0-9531913-4-6.

This book claims that ‘the Egyptian monarchy invaded Judaea and Israel during the tenth century BC’ (p. 285), and hence ‘the whole of Judaic, Christian and Islamic belief systems and iconography were based upon Egyptian antecedents’ (p. 343). The Israelites are identified with the Hyksos, while Solomon and the Egyptian pharaoh Sheshonq are one and the same, ‘the Masonic Grand Master’, and Hiram Abif, or more correctly, ‘Atif’ is ‘Haramsaf’, the ‘historical architect of the Temple of Sheshonq I’ (p. 181).
    These fictions ignore a great deal of knowledge. Recent Israeli archaeology has demonstrated the appearance of indigenous farming settlements in the central highlands, from which the bulk of the population of the kingdom of Israel (and Judah) was probably drawn. These began in 1200-1250 BC, some 300-400 years after the Hyksos left Egypt. The culture, religion and language of these farmers and of Israel and Judah are all easily distinguishable from Egyptian but hardly different from that of the rest of Canaan. The biblical legends of settlement in Egypt, Exodus, wilderness wandering and conquest are now highly questionable. Ellis is no better at philology. He tries to establish several Egyptian words in Hebrew, but does not know how Semitic languages work. Among many errors, he is unaware that ‘Sabbath’ comes from the Babylonian’s shabbatum, with a related meaning), and seems to think that ‘Ananias’ is a Hebrew name, instead of a Greek rendering of ‘Hananyah’ (Greek has no hard guttural sound, so cannot reproduce the harsh initial ‘h’). Finally, he ignores the more extensive evidence in the Old Testament of Mesopotamian rather than Egyptian, influence: myth (Eden, the Flood, the tower and city of Babel [=Babylon!]); the lunar, rather than solar, calendar; Semitic deities, types of sacrifice and festivals, and law (e.g. the code of Hammurabi, or Assyrian vassal treaties). It was not until 315-200 BC, after the death of Alexander the Great, that Palestine was politically or culturally close to Egypt, when it was annexed by the Greek-Egyptian Ptolemies.
    A conceit of books like this is that an industrious amateur can penetrate where professionals are unable, or refuse, to see the obvious truth. The world is not like that: and Ellis’s ancient world is just as far from reality. It is difficult enough to maintain any longer, in the face of recently-accelerated archaeological activity, that much of the biblical history is reliable. A claim that the Bible’s stories are really coded accounts of something else entirely does not open the way to some hidden truth, but only replaces one fiction by another.
    Philip R Davies