Some Moses Fiction For Passover!

 With Passover just around the corner, I thought it might be time to talk about some Moses-themed fiction. I’ve read a few over the years, beginning with a novel by Howard Fast. When I read it in my teens, it was called Moses, Prince Of Egypt. You can still buy it in ebook, with a different title and an introduction by the author, written in 1999.

The original title suits the book, really, because it began when he was a ten year old prince in the court of Ramses II and ended with him walking into the desert accompanied by his faithful servant Nun, future father of the tribal leader Joshua. He did intend to do it as a trilogy, but it didn’t happen. He did, many years later, write a novella set on the last night of Moses’ life, but seen from the viewpoint of the new leader Joshua. I have that story in a Howard Fast Reader, which contains a couple of his novels and quite a few short stories.

It was an intriguing tale, which suggested a plan to bring back the worship of Aten, which had gone with the death of the monotheist Pharaoh, Akhenaten. It is, of course, a deep secret, because anyone caught at it would be in big trouble. The name Moses actually means “a child is given” and usually a god’s name is added, eg , Thut-Mose, meaning “Thoth gave a child”. The hero of this novel is called “Moses of the half name” by people who don’t like him, but his royal mother deliberately left off the god-name in hopes of one day calling him Aten-Moses. Of course, that never happens. Young Moses has adventures and sees people he loves die before he finally has to leave Egypt. It is one of my favourites on this theme, perhaps my very favourite. Like Fast’s other novels it’s very character-driven; for me, no matter how good a story, it doesn’t work if you don’t care about the characters.

A novella-length Moses story by Thomas Mann appears in a themed anthology called The Ten Commandments, but the theme isn’t about Moses, it’s about how the Nazis broke every one of the Commandments. Mann’s is the only one of the ten stories that references the original. I have to say, if you can get a copy of this book, probably on ABEBooks, the rest of the stories are well worth a read. 

Like Joseph And His Brothers, Thomas Mann’s thick-as-brick rendering of a very short story from the Bible, his Moses novella is fun. What? Moses funny? Oh, yes. Mann manages it. Like Howard Fast, he writes a character-driven tale, and you really feel for this young man! 

Mann’s Moses is actually the child of Pharaoh’s daughter, conceived one afternoon when she spots a rather nice-looking Hebrew slave working in the garden. The poor man is killed soon afterwards, though not on her orders. When the baby is born, his mother pretends to find him in the bulrushes. 

He is brought up with the family of his nurse, to whom he returns when school is getting a bit much of a hassle for him. His foster siblings are, of course, Aaron and Miriam.

When he does turn up with Aaron at Pharaoh’s court, the king has trouble keeping a straight face, especially when Aaron does the rod-into-snake trick(a very old magic trick involving holding a snake so it gets stiff). Pharaoh doesn’t kill Moses because he recognises his grandson and knows his daughter will make a fuss if he does.

The most recent book I’ve read on this theme is Judith Tarr’s Pillar Of Fire, which I have reviewed here. https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2020/07/on-unearthing-another-treasure-pillar.html It’s not a new book, and I had a copy in hardcover, bought years ago at a shop long since closed, but you can still get it, at least in ebook; for the details, follow the link. Judith Tarr has read Freud’s Moses And Monotheism and in her novel Akhenaten is Moses! He is a lousy king, but a true prophet of his god, so when it’s becoming clear that he is going to end up killed, he is persuaded to fake his death and is smuggled out into the desert by some Hebrew relatives(long story, you need to read it). He is a lot happier outside of Egypt and respected by his new tribe as a prophet. He also becomes sane. The story is seen from the viewpoint of Nofret, a Hittite slave who has been serving Akhenaten’s daughter Ankhesenpaaten. 

There are quite a few films or miniseries. There is the Charlton Heston version, which is famous for the parting of the Red Sea sequence. I probably shouldn’t call it silly, even if it is, but it has an impressive cast, amazing costumes(more Hollywood than ancient Egypt), music by Elmer Bernstein. 

The Prince Of Egypt is an animation voiced by some big names, including Val Kilmer as Moses and Patrick Stewart as Seti I, who in this version is the king who ordered the deaths of the male babies. It’s also a musical... I did read somewhere that we narrowly escaped this being a Moses film with a singing camel! The animation is terrific, though, and you have almost certainly heard of everyone in the cast. Here is the Wikipedia entry. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince_of_Egypt  It ends with the parting of the Red Sea, with Moses being sad to have to say farewell to his foster brother Ramses, stuck in the other side.

A TV miniseries, Moses The     Lawgiver, is now up on YouTube, here.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hGwZVocmr98 The lead is played by Burt Lancaster, the younger Moses by his son, who has very similar mannerisms to his father. Most of the extras are Israelis, and it’s interesting to hear Hebrew being spoken in the background in the Israelite camp. Some of those with speaking roles are dubbed with British accents(I’ve seen at least one of them in another film with a very strong Hebrew accent). The music is by the wonderful Ennio Morricone, whom you probably know best for composing music for classic Westerns.

The series was novelised by Aussie author Thomas Keneally, best known for Schindler’s Ark and historical fiction. In recent years he has been collaborating with his daughter Meg on historical crime fiction, set in Van Diemen’s Land(Tasmania), during the convict era. The Moses novel was not much like the miniseries, though, and is seen from the viewpoint of a Cretan engineer who somehow ends up marrying an Israelite woman and heading for the desert with the tribe.

Well there’s a few for you. Have a happy Passover if you celebrate it and a wonderful Easter next week if you don’t.