|The statement in the Hebrew Scriptures that Abraham came from Ur does
not
|necessarily mean that his ancestors were all from Ur... some could have
come
|from Egypt, or anyplace for that matter.
You know, I need to get back to working on my homepage again. I'm
thinking about having a theme about ancient history, myths, urban legends,
conspiracy theories, and of course proto-linguistics...
They could come from any place. Noah's flood was in Asia Minor
along the Black Sea coast (Nat'l Geographic had a nice article on this a couple
months back), so there's one place. Hebrew is classified linguistically as
Canaanite, so they could've been a tribe in the Jordan valley who rise to
prominence among the other Canaanite tribes (the Philistines, Edomites, Moabites
etc.). And there's always Egypt, where people of many origins served as
slaves.
But the Semitic languages in general are likely to have origins in
northern Arabia and the Sinai, and migrated from there in two main groups (one
north and east, the other through southern Arabia and into eastern
Africa). At least I get that impression.
|There is a fringe theory that Moses was Akhenaton, the fanatically
|monotheistic Pharaoh... in any case, there is every reason to at least
|suspect an Egyptian influence on the Israelites, considering that they
|supposedly were in Egypt for four centuries. The origins of Abraham are not
|necessarily as relevant as the later history of his descendants. And at the
|same time, Mesopotamia and Egypt were close to each other, and certainly
|interacted with and influenced each other.
The same theory claims that Tutankhamun and Jesus
are the same person.