MOSES' MOTHER

Moses' Mother

Please note that some of the conclusions reached in this article are the author's and are not necessarily endorsed by this website.

According to the record in Exodus 2:5-10,

"The daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river and her maidens walked along the river's side. When she saw the ark among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it and wheen she had opened it, she saw the child and behold, the baby wept. So she had compassion on him and said, 'This is one of the Hebrews' children. ... And the child grew and she brought hm to Pharaohs daughter and he became her son, so she called his name 'Moses', saying, 'Because I drew him out of the water.'"

Many consider this an implausible story. They question the possibility of an Egyptian princess adopting a slave child and proposing to make him the next Pharaoh. Others have regarded it as factual and have tried to locate it in its historical setting. Dr Siegfried Horn of Andrews University, Michigan, claimed that Queen Hatshepsut of the 18th Dynasty was the princess.

Matching the Biblical date of the Exodus, about 1445 BC, with the usually accepted date for the 18th Dynasty would produce an approximate synchronism, but the known historical facts do not fit the story.

When Tutmoses II, the husband of Hatshepsut, died prematurely, his son by a secondary wife was immediately crowned as Pharaoh Tutmoses III. On Hatshepsut's death, Tutmoses III assumed the throne and became the greatest pharaoh that ever ruled the land of Egypt. There is no place for Moses in this scenario.

Queen Sobekkara Sobekneferu, Queen of the Twelfth Dynasty.

 However recently some scholars have challenged the standard Egyptian chronology and called for a revised dating that would locate the Moses story in the 12th Dynasty. If this is correct, the most likely contender for the princess who adopted Moses would be Sobekneferu, the daughter of Amenemhet III.


Amenemhet had two daughters but no sons have been positively identified. Amenemhet IV has been suggested as a son of Amenemhet III, but he could just as plausibly be the son of Sobekneferu. He is a mysterious figure who may have been a co-regent of Amenemhet III or even of Sobekneferu. Dr Donovan Courville claims that he should be identified as Moses, the foster son of Sobekneferu.

Josephus wrote:

"Having no child of her own, she thought to make him her father's successor."
Antiquities of the Jews Book II, chapter ix, par. 7

Certainly there seems to be no historical record of her having a son. When her father died she assumed the throne and ruled for only four years. Having no heir, the dynasty came to an end and was replaced by the 13th Dynasty.

If Sobekneferu was the foster-mother of Moses, the circumstances seem to fit the story. She would not have been down by the river taking a bath because she had no bathroom in the palace. The river god Hapi was the fertility god of Egypt and she would have been down there observing a religious ritual and praying to the Hapi for a baby. The arrival of the beautiful Hebrew baby would seem like an answer to her prayers.

Amemenhet probably ruled for 43 years. If Moses was born near the beginning of his reign, he would have fled from Egypt forty years later near the end of his reign. Moses showed his sympathy for the Israelites by murdering an Egyptian task-master who was flogging an Israelite.

"When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian."
Exodus 2:15

If Sobekneferu was Moses' foster-mother she was certainly well qualified to fill the role. She was one of Egypt's few reigning queens and set the pace for the more famous Queen Hatshepsut. Wriing in KMT (1998 spring edition) Dr Gae Callender of Sydney's Macquarie University has presented a well-researched article on Sobekneferu.

Gae frankly admits that very little is known about Sobekneferu's reigh, but then proceeds to delineate a lot of interesting material on this remarkable queen. The writer is understandably vague about the relationships of these last monarchs of the 12th Dynasty.

"Sobekneferu may have been a sister or half-sister of Amenemhet IV, whose reign lasted just over nine years. He perhaps shares a co-regency of an uncertain length with Amenemhet III."

The name 'Sobekneferu' means, "The beauties of Sobek", the crocodile god. The rulers of the 12th Dynasty established a religious and economic centre in the Fayyum Oasis where crocodiles were nurtured and worshipped.

Sobekneferu left very few known statues of herself and none of them are complete. Three life-sized basalt statues of her were found in the delta at Tel el-Daba, but they were all headless and, in fact, were subsequently lost! No one knows where they are today. In 1973 the Louvre in Paris purcased a large reddish statue which has no arms, legs or head. When complete it would have stood 5'2" in height. This may be a representation of Sobekneferu.

Queen Hatshepsut presented herself as a male pharaoh, but she was not the first queen to have done so. In the British Museum there is a cylinder seal of Sobekneferu which gives her Horus name in a masculine form. In a glorious mixture of gender pronouns, she also refers to herself as "She whose appearance is stable, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Sobekneferu of Shedet, she lives." Her pernomen was "Son of Re, Sobekneferu". In another conglomeration of sexes, the statue in the Louvre depicts her wearing a male kilt worn over a female shift. No wonder Gae Callender comments,

"To put it simply, Sobekneferu may have been uncertain exactly what sex she should be for the official record!"

The four statues referred to above have no heads, so her facial appearance cannot be determined from these, but Dennis Forbes, the editor of KMT speculateson the possibility of another statue belonging to Sobekneferu. Dr Dorothea Arnold of New York's Metropolitan Museum commented on a head that is in that museum. It as a beautiful young face and has been assumed to belong to Amenemhet III, who left many statues of himself, but they all depict him as a sour-faced monarch with features appropriate for a pharaoh who cruelly enslaved the Israelites. The Metropolitan Museum head bears no resemblance to Amenemhet III and as it has no inscribed name, it may be the head of Sobekneferu.

David Down


Exo 2:5  And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. 
Exo 2:6  And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children. 
Exo 2:7  Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? 
Exo 2:8  And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother. 
Exo 2:9  And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. 
Exo 2:10  And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water. 

Exo_2:5
Pharaoh's daughter is called Thermouthis or Merris in Jewish tradition, and by the Rabbins בתיה. עַל־הַיְאֹר is to be connected with תֵּרֶד, and the construction with עַל to be explained as referring to the descent into (upon) the river from the rising bank. The fact that a king's daughter should bathe in the open river is certainly opposed to the customs of the modern, Mohammedan East, where this is only done by women of the lower orders, and that in remote places (Lane, Manners and Customs); but it is in harmony with the customs of ancient Egypt,
(Note: Wilkinson gives a picture of bathing scene, in which an Egyptian woman of rank is introduced, attended by four female servants.)
and in perfect agreement with the notions of the early Egyptians respecting the sanctity of the Nile, to which divine honours even were paid (vid., Hengstenberg's Egypt, etc. pp. 109, 110), and with the belief, which was common to both ancient and modern Egyptians, in the power of its waters to impart fruitfulness and prolong life (vid., Strabo, xv. p. 695, etc., and Seetzen, Travels iii. p. 204).
Exo_2:6-8
The exposure of the child at once led the king's daughter to conclude that it was one of the Hebrews' children. The fact that she took compassion on the weeping child, and notwithstanding the king's command (Exo_1:22) took it up and had it brought up (of course, without the knowledge of the king), may be accounted for from the love to children which is innate in the female sex, and the superior adroitness of a mother's heart, which co-operated in this case, though without knowing or intending it, in the realization of the divine plan of salvation. Competens fuit divina vindicta, ut suis affectibus puniatur parricida et filiae provisione pereat qui genitrices interdixerat parturire (August. Sermo 89 de temp.).
Exo_2:9
With the directions, “Take this child away (הֵילִיכִי for הֹולִיכִי used here in the sense of leading, bringing, carrying away, as in Zec_5:10; Ecc_10:20) and suckle it for me,” the king's daughter gave the child to its mother, who was unknown to her, and had been fetched as a nurse.
Exo_2:10
When the child had grown large, i.e., had been weaned (יִגְדַּל as in Gen_21:8), the mother, who acted as nurse, brought it back to the queen's daughter, who then adopted it as her own son, and called it Moses (מֹשֶׁה): “for,” she said, “out of the water have I drawn him” (מְשִׁיתִהוּ). As Pharaoh's daughter gave this name to the child as her adopted son, it must be an Egyptian name. The Greek form of the name, Μωΰσῆς (lxx), also points to this, as Josephus affirms. “Thermuthis,” he says, “imposed this name upon him, from what had happened when he was put into the river; for the Egyptians call water Mo, and those who are rescued from the water Uses” (Ant. ii. 9, 6, Whiston's translation). The correctness of this statement is confirmed by the Coptic, which is derived from the old Egyptian.
(Note: Josephus gives a somewhat different explanation in his book against Apion (i. 31), when he says, “His true name was Moüses, and signifies a person who is rescued from the water, for the Egyptians call water Moü.” Other explanations, though less probable ones, are attempted by Gesenius in his Thes. p. 824, and Knobel in loc.)
Now, though we find the name explained in the text from the Hebrew מָשָׁה, this is not to be regarded as a philological or etymological explanation, but as a theological interpretation, referring to the importance of the person rescued from the water to the Israelitish nation. In the lips of an Israelite, the name Mouje, which was so little suited to the Hebrew organs of speech, might be involuntarily altered into Moseh; “and this transformation became an unintentional prophecy, for the person drawn out did become, in fact, the drawer out” (Kurtz). Consequently Knobel's supposition, that the writer regarded מֹשֶׁה as a participle Poal with the מ dropped, is to be rejected as inadmissible. - There can be no doubt that, as the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter, Moses received a thoroughly Egyptian training, and was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, as Stephen states in Act_7:22 in accordance with Jewish tradition.
(Note: The tradition, on the other hand, that Moses was a priest of Heliopolis, named Osarsiph (Jos. c. Ap. i. 26, 28), is just as unhistorical as the legend of his expedition against the Ethiopians (Jos. Ant. ii. 10), and many others with which the later, glorifying Saga embellished his life in Egypt.)
Through such an education as this, he received just the training required for the performance of the work to which God had called him. Thus the wisdom of Egypt was employed by the wisdom of God for the establishment of the kingdom of God.