STRANGER IN THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS

The Identification of Yuya as the Patriarch Joseph by Ahmed Osman

Pub. Stoddart 1988

Throughout the long history of Ancient Egypt, only one man is known to have been given the frle`a Father to Pharaoh - Yuya. vizier of the Eighteenth Dynasty king Tuthmosis IV. It was the discovery of this identical title in the Book of Genesis. applied to the patriarch Joseph. that led the author of this sensational book to a revelation that demolishes many of the accepted theories about Egyptian and Old Testament history.

Yuya has long been a mystery to egyptologists. Although not a member of the Royal House, he was buried in the Valley of the Kings, where his tomb was discovered in 1905: his extraordinarily well preserved mummy. now in Cairo Museum, bears a strongly semitic appearance. suggesting that he was not of Egyptian blood; his name. too. is foreign and there are many aspects of his burial that were contrary to Egyptian custom. Yet his daughter. Tiye. became the Great Royal Wife of Tuthmosis' son, Amenhoteb III, defying the tradition by which the Pharaoh gained his right to the throne through marriage to his sister.

If, as the author sets out to prove. Yuya and Joseph were the same person. a whole new light is thrown on the sudden rise of monotheism in Egypt under Queen Tiye and her son, Akhnaten, and on the deliberate obliteration of references to the 'heretic king and his successors by the last king of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Horemheb. who, the author believes. was the oppressor king of the Book of Exodus.

Drawing on a wealth of detailed evidence from Egyptian. biblical and koranic sources, the author is able to date the Descent into Egypt not under the Hyksos invaders but in the Eighteenth Dynasty, and to place the Exodus in the short reign of Ramses I, first king of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Illustrated with many pertinent photographs, it is a piece of inspired research that allows many puzzling factors to fall into place and gives a new validity to Old Testament accounts.

Scholars and the general public will alike be enthralled by a book that allows us to fit together many more pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of ancient history.