Original subtitles

Narrator: According to the bible, moses is one of

the most important prophets in history.

But what do we know about the actual man himself?

Surprisingly very little.

There seem to be no factual accounts of moses

and little evidence

from archaeology or historical records to prove

the exodus story is true.

Whether moses is legend or fact,

he is a towering figure in all abrahamic religions.

Narrator: Academics, archaeologists,

and historians debate over when

moses lived and if he lived at all,

whether the stories of the ten commandments,

the burning bush, and even the parting of the red sea

actually happened.

Kirkpatrick: He performed great acts of magic,

which he claimed were miracles...Or were they?

Boxall: Is there a scientific explanation behind this story?

And the answer is, yes, we can do it very simply.

Phillips: If my historical research is correct,

then moses was the most important person

who ever lived.

♪

♪

♪

narrator: Moses is one of the most important figures

in the old testament,

according to the bible,

but who is this mysterious character?

Gough: Moses was a prophet

according to christianity and islam.

The jury is still out on

whether he is a real,

historical figure or mythological.

Mcmahon: I mean, he may have been a legendary figure.

He may have been factual, but he's the most important

prophet in the old testament.

You know, he writes the torah, the laws of god.

He leads the israelites out of egypt,

out of bondage to the promised land.

And he is, among all the prophets, the most revered,

the most important.

[ singing in foreign language ]

young-somers: Moses holds a very important role in the three big

monotheistic faiths,

as the archetype leader certainly forms the majority

of the narrative through the five books of moses,

which are obviously cortex for both jews and christians,

whether that's in the old testament or in the hebrew

bible and torah, and then he's also considered a very

important prophet in islam, too, so,

I think, a core figure for all the three abrahamic faiths.

Narrator: The traditional story is that moses was

the son of a hebrew slave in ancient egypt.

At the time, the pharaoh feared his growing

hebrew population

and ordered all of their newborn boys to be slain.

So to escape this fate, moses's mother

hid her son in a basket and set it free on

the river nile.

Moses is found by no less a person than

pharaoh's daughter,

who brings him to the royal palace, where he's brought up.

Now, not only is that dramatic in terms of the context,

but in terms of story-writing and symbol, that's the most

powerful you get,

because it's a transitional moment.

It's liminal, he's moving from one world into the next world

through the water -- he's being set up as a hero in the making.

Narrator: As moses enters adulthood,

he embarks on a troubling path,

torn between his egyptian upbringing and his hebrew roots.

Bianchi: Moses, as this adopted egyptian,

sees his people being mistreated, and moses sees

an egyptian overseer beat a hebrew worker.

And moses waits for an opportune time,

goes up to the egyptian, and murders him.

News of his murder

is on everybody's lips, and pharaoh starts

to look for him.

Narrator: Moses escaped to the desert and led

a simple life in exile as a shepherd.

One day, while tending his flock, he encountered

a burning bush and the voice of god,

telling him to return to egypt, confront the pharaoh,

free the hebrews, and take them to the promised land.

To support moses's mission,

god summons ten plagues to terrorize the pharaoh.

♪

after agreeing to moses's terms,

the pharaoh changed his mind and gave chase.

With the hebrews trapped on the edge of the red sea,

moses used his staff to part the waves,

allowing the desperate group to escape.

The egyptian army followed,

but is engulfed by the violent waters.

This allowed moses to lead his people to mount sinai,

where god gave him the ten commandments

and then took his people to the promised land.

Young-somers: Moses is a flawed individual

in the jewish tradition,

but also the greatest leader that we've had.

And I think moses's

flaws are -- are, for me,

an important part of the narrative,

because it teaches us that

even as flawed people ourselves,

we can still make a difference.

We can still contribute, and that

god can still be in a relationship with us,

even though we make mistakes.

Gough: By all accounts, moses was a virtuous man,

a man of his principles.

He was dedicated -- no matter how difficult

or arduous the task that he was given,

he did it, so he's become this sort of

inspirational figure who wanted to do things his way

no matter what the established norm was at that time.

Narrator: For such a central religious figure,

the lack of evidence around him is, well, outstanding.

There are no archaeological findings to support

the biblical story

and certainly no extra biblical references

in egyptian inscriptions.

The absence of proof is a huge problem for historians,

archaeologists, and academics.

There is strangely no evidence that moses

was a historical figure, and I say strangely,

because the egyptians were so good at keeping records,

and to not have a record there is interesting.

We even have records of people who -- whose records were

effaced, like hatshepsut

when she was stricken from records by her son

after he came to power.

We know that that happened, but we have nothing on moses.

Like many, many great, epic tales,

there might be

just a kernel of truth

upon whom the character of moses is based,

and I'm not prepared

to dismiss him out of hand.

Although, when you study traditions,

you understand that...

History has a chance of being

morphed into something larger than life.

Gough: Now those who believe it is a authentic story

that the israelites were held captive in egypt

and left in the exodus point us to different locations

and different periods in time,

which is why we don't find the evidence we think we should.

Narrator: So where can we find evidence for the real moses?

And what controversial theories are

given to explain his supernatural powers?

♪

narrator: Did the legendary biblical figure

of moses really exist?

Archaeological evidence has yet to unearth any proof of

his life, or even that

of his followers in egypt or in the deserts of

the sinai peninsula.

Yet there are tantalizing clues in the story of

something that may be more than mere folk tale.

For a start, there is the name moses itself.

Bianchi: The name moses can etymologically be related

to the egyptian,

the ancient egyptian verb, meaning "to be born."

and so, in a sense, if you want to take an egyptian slant,

moses has an egyptian name, because, quote,

"he was born out of the water."

mcmahon: The old testament tells us that moses was

a fourth generation egyptian, I mean, this is

essentially a citizen of ancient egypt,

as were most of the jewish people that he led out

of bondage.

So if we'd met moses, we'd have met essentially

an ancient egyptian by appearance,

possibly even by language, by culture.

Narrator: Although he led the hebrews out of slavery,

moses's egyptian link might

be stronger than the bible reveals.

Interestingly, his story has a strange echo

of the life of egyptian pharaoh akhenaten,

the first monotheist known to history.

Author and egyptologist ahmed osman has written

several books outlining his belief that moses was

akhenaten.

Akhenaten reigned from 1352 to 1338 bc

and proclaimed that there was only one true god,

aten, the sun disc.

All others were false.

But when akhenaten died, the old religious system revived

and then obliterated

akhenaten's memory and that of his son and heir,

tutankhamun.

Mcmahon: You could rightly call akhenaten the heretic pharaoh,

because he rejects the official religion,

the state religion of ancient egypt,

I mean, which was hugely important to people.

I mean, they governed their lives

by what they thought the gods wanted.

Akhenaten comes along. He throws all that out.

He goes to war against thebes and the temples of luxor

and memphis,

against all the priests, he sends in his soldiers

to smash up statues, to hack faces off the temples.

I mean, this is an extraordinary,

short-lived period in egyptian history.

Narrator: But can this mysterious pharaoh really

be the historical moses?

Was akhenaten's religion

the forerunner to the abrahamic faiths?

It's possible that moses was inspired by akhenaten in --

in some ways and ran with it and changed it,

turned it on its head.

But we really don't know,

and I think the monotheistic thing is overplayed.

The similarities are overplayed.

Bianchi: The israelites are not monotheists

until after they leave israel

and form a national covenant.

So here, you know, you're putting the horse

in front of the wagon or behind the wagon,

okay, he's not a monotheist until they get to

the promised land,

and they don't get to the promised land

until after moses is dead.

So trying to connect those dots just ignores

all of the evidence as we know it.

Narrator: Even if akhenaten is not the real moses,

some experts believe there is still a link.

By researching the bible and writings

of the ancient jewish historian josephus,

author and historian graham phillips agrees that akhenaten

is not moses,

but his brother, thutmosis.

Phillips: Thutmosis was a prince in the court.

Thutmosis was also a leading general.

He was, in fact, in charge of

all the king's chariot forces, and thutmosis

also acted for a while as the grand vizier,

the prime minister, the chief minister of egypt.

All of those things

we are told by josephus and also

partly in the bible, applied to moses -- moses,

we are told,

was exiled from egypt, and exactly the same thing

happens to thutmosis.

He was exiled from egypt.

We know this, because archaeologists have discovered

a tomb prepared for him,

but it was never used.

And the only conclusion that people have come to, because

they can find no records of him

dying in office, is that he was exiled.

Once again,

moses and thutmosis are living almost identical lives

at exactly the same time.

Narrator: Whether or not moses was, in fact, a well-documented

egyptian leader,

his story goes on to tell of fantastic miracles.

Could the story of the burning bush really have happened?

And could mind-altering substances have generated

moses's visions?

Narrator: The historical existence of

the biblical prophet moses might be debatable,

but as the traditional story goes, after he was exiled

in the desert wilderness for decades,

a miraculous encounter changed his life.

The story goes that on mount horeb,

moses saw a burning bush, which was, in fact, god

speaking to him, telling him,

instructing him to take the israelites out of egypt

to the promised land.

Mcmahon: The burning bush is -- is what

movie makers call an inciting incident.

It's that plot point.

It's that moment in the story of moses

when he's got to go on his quest.

The burning bush is what makes it all happen.

Narrator: This fantastic vision was traditionally seen as

a miracle,

but some believe there is a radical alternative theory.

Doblin: I think moses could very well have been

using psychedelics -- we don't know for sure,

but I think it's entirely possible.

Narrator: Rick doblin is the founder

of the association for psychedelic studies.

He believes moses could have used

mind-altering drugs to generate his visions.

Doblin: So the burning bush, to me, represents a not uncommon

experience that people have

under the influence of psychedelics,

where they look at nature, and they realize that it's alive.

It's got energy in it.

And so the course of energy through

this plant could be interpreted as fire.

And so my interpretation of that event was that it was more

that, uh, you know,

moses saw the inner fire, and that if we could see

the energy, we might interpret it as fire.

Narrator: In fact, nature might provide another explanation.

In the area where this is said to have occurred,

there grows acacia wood.

And if you burn acacia wood or an acacia tree burns

and you're close enough to inhale the smoke,

you will hallucinate.

Narrator: This is because acacia bark

contains a substance called dmt,

or dimethyltryptamine, which is

a powerful hallucinogenic.

Mcmahon: It's even suggested that moses was a kind of

shaman-type figure

who may have known this and set the bush alight in

order to have that kind of experience,

that communing with the spiritual

that only basically a narcotic-driven high

could've given him.

Narrator: But is this really an outlandish theory?

Artificial methods to achieve spiritual enlightenment

have been used by cultures

all across the world for thousands of years.

Doblin: I think they're -- psychedelics were seen

as powerful tools to

help us get out of our, sort of,

ego identification, our sense of self,

and that there has been a reason for people to do

various things in terms of

drumming or fasting, vision quests,

and so I would imagine that psychedelics could be

something that was appreciated by moses

and people around that time.

Picknett: That could have been a completely pivotal moment

in several great religions,

and it might all have been due to burning bark.

Bianchi: So there's nothing in the biblical account

to suggest that he's eating or...

Inhaling or... Uh...

Hallucinogens,

so I -- I take

scripture literally.

He's watching a slot.

He sees something.

He goes over to investigate

and gets the conversation with the almighty.

Narrator: Aside from talking to god in the burning bush,

there are still other miracles

moses is said to have performed, such as parting

the red sea.

It is not surprising that such

an unbelievable tale raises debate among scholars.

The miraculous crossing of the red sea has to be

the most -- one of the most stunning, incredible events

in the old testament.

It's the fact that moses is able to lead

the jewish people, the israelites,

out of egypt through what seems like an impossible

stretch of water.

And then, as the egyptians come chasing after them,

god closes the sea in on pharaoh and his hundreds of

chariots, drowning them all.

Narrator: But could this really have happened in the red sea

we know today?

The very name of the body of water

moses crossed may have been mistakenly identified

for centuries.

I'm not entirely sure where the mistranslation of "red sea"

comes from -- it's in hebrew, yam suph,

which is reed sea.

It may have bean that someone wrote "reed sea,"

and then it was missed out,

the e got dropped, and actually, in hebrew,

that happens quite frequently

that manuscripts would have been repeatedly written down

by hand, and little errors will creep in.

I think red sea will be pretty hard to get rid of now.

It's pretty much embedded in how we tell the story.

Narrator: Regardless of whether moses crossed the red sea

or the reed sea,

can science proved he was capable of parting the waves?

Narrator: The bible tells us that moses led his followers

to safety by parting the waters of the red sea.

But could the fantastical event really have happened in

the red sea we know today or another nearby body of water?

Simon boxall is an oceanographer

from southampton university in England.

He evaluates the modern scientific ideas

that explain this mysterious sea crossing.

♪

boxall: There are many theories that go with this story.

One is that around

about the same time, we know that there was a huge explosion,

volcanic explosion, eruption, on santorini,

and that basically caused a huge tsunami.

And one theory is that it was a tsunami that

came at just the right time to allow them to cross.

Now the theory there is flawed, it's flawed for two reasons.

One is, if you look at models of the tsunami that would have

occurred, then the island chain,

crete, to the south off santorini, would have protected

the egyptian coast, and the biggest tsunami that

would've got there would have been about a meter,

a meter and 1/2,

and when a tsunami hits,

the tide or the water can recede for a short while

and then come back in again.

That's great -- the problem with that is,

that it only happens for about five minutes,

and you're not going to get an entire army

or population across that sort of causeway in that period.

A second theory that's put down is that

the bible talks about strong winds from the east.

The idea that the wind literally blows the sea

and creates a pileup somewhere,

which means you then get a sort of gap somewhere else,

is flawed -- it's flawed

because the effect isn't that great.

You're not going to suddenly clear a causeway

as a result of that setdown.

Narrator: Back in his lab, simon demonstrates how

he believes the sea crossing really took place.

Boxall: I think the reason that the seas parted

was because of a seiche effect.

Now that sounds very technical, but actually it's

something that happens around the world every single day,

and it's...

An event hitting the natural frequency of a basin.

That also sounds complex, but we've done it as kids.

If we lay back in the bath

and rock backwards and forwards at just

the right speed,

then we suddenly take the water with us,

and we can actually effectively empty half a ton

of water onto the floor very efficiently.

You could do that from splashing,

and that's because we're hitting the critical frequency,

and we can see that in a very simple experiment here.

We have a bottle of water, and that bottle of water,

you can imagine that is your red sea,

and actually, I can sort of create disturbances,

and I can create waves -- it splashes around a bit.

Yeah, storms happen.

But actually, if I hit the right frequency,

if I can just find the frequency in that bottle,

and I move it very gently, side to side, then effectively,

I'm like the child in the bath, emptying the bath out.

And suddenly, you've gone from a tide out here,

which is maybe two or three feet,

to a tide in here, which could be 60 feet.

Now that doesn't happen in the red sea,

but we know the fact that the tide at the top of

the channel of the red sea,

the suez channel, go from one or two feet outside,

inside the channel, at the top of the channel,

they go almost 15 feet.

That's a huge difference -- if you come from a culture that

only sees tides on the mediterranean along

the red sea coast of

a few -- one or two feet,

you're not prepared for these huge tides,

which are over ten times as big.

And that big four-meter tide

was more than sufficient to wipe out an army.

Narrator: While nature may have allowed the hebrews

to cross the sea,

simon thinks moses may possibly have

had an important role to play.

Boxall: What moses might have done, if he's observant

and canny, was observe

that the tides existed, the tides were high,

that actually he had a narrow window, but enough of a window,

to lead his people to safety

and to actually not only do that,

but then inundate the pursuing army with

an incoming tide.

And so...

Was moses a magician?

No, but like many magicians,

he was clever and applied science.

Narrator: Yet some speculate that moses actually

was a conjurer with supernatural powers.

Witch, priestess, and magician, carrie kirkpatrick,

believes moses's egyptian upbringing

may have given him a grounding in magic.

Kirkpatrick: It's very likely that moses was

a magician in egyptian noble circles.

It was not a big deal to learn about magic.

It was part of the culture.

It would be part of the everyday education.

So it's very likely that all of these miracles that we see

that have been attributed to god

were actually spells cast by moses himself,

using the training that he had been given in egypt.

Narrator: The suspicion that moses may have possessed magical

or supernatural abilities was amplified with the discovery of

the sixth and seventh books of moses, a collection of hidden

texts allegedly written by the man himself.

Mcmahon: The sixth and seventh books of moses are

particularly mysterious, because they try and explain

through magic

how the miracles in the story of exodus happened.

These books appear about 200 years ago in germany, and then

immigrants take them to the united states, where,

for whatever reason, they're adopted quite

enthusiastically by the african-american communities,

religious communities, and in the caribbean.

And many of the spells, a lot of the magic in those books,

are used, actually in practical cures back in those days

to treat people.

Kirkpatrick: We can't really know for sure

that moses wrote the sixth

and the seventh books, however,

you can see in the book of exodus that the use of magic

was expressly forbidden.

So you wouldn't say that if it

wasn't a problem or regarded as a problem.

It's a bit like prohibition.

They wouldn't have brought it in if alcohol wasn't a problem.

Narrator: Aside from the miracles of moses,

are there more concrete things

that history can prove,

such as the true location of mount sinai?

And could archaeological evidence show that the spot

venerated by pilgrims for centuries

isn't the legendary site after all?

Narrator: Who was the real moses?

Is there a historical figure behind

the religious legend and tales of fantastic miracles?

While it is hard to unearth

concrete evidence for his exploits and deeds,

can we pinpoint the locations he's associated with?

One of the most famous must be mount sinai.

Mcmahon: Mount sinai has this huge significance, obviously,

for jews, christians,

muslims, because that's where moses gets the ten commandments.

That's where he meets god, and god gives him

the laws that are gonna govern his people,

the believers. Moses comes down,

of course, finds the israelites worshipping a golden calf,

smashes them angrily, has to go

back up the mountain and get them all over again.

But it's for that reason that this mountain is so sacred.

Narrator: For hundreds of years,

it has been accepted that jebel-musa

in the sinai peninsula of egypt is the legendary

mount sinai.

But is this correct?

Phillips: Interestingly, the bible doesn't tell us

directly where mount sinai is.

It is just somewhere in the sinai wilderness,

which is a huge expanse east of the red sea.

The emperor constantine decided it was a place

now called jebel-musa,

meaning the mount of moses, which is in eastern egypt

within the sinai wilderness.

And he came up with that idea, because his mother had had

a dream that that's where it was, and a monastery was

founded there, but there's no historical

or archaeological evidence to support it.

Narrator: Since the mid-19th century,

debate has raged between

scholars on where this holy site actually is,

with over ten possible locations given.

After excavations by

the english archaeologist sir flinders petrie

in the 1900s,

serabit el-khadim

has emerged as a likely candidate.

Serabit el-khadim is the 600-pound gorilla in

the story of moses that no one is really talking about.

I've been there.

It's an incredible place, excavated by petrie, who found

lots of temples of hathor,

the bull god that moses is known to have banned,

but also, writing in semitic language,

which you'd still see on the temple walls,

proto-semitic,

a language that is associated with the people of israel.

Narrator: Excavations at serabit el-khadim

also revealed possible animal sacrifices

and ritual washing,

religious practices not commonly associated with

egyptian worship but hebrew ceremonies.

In addition, there is evidence for

the mining of materials important to the jewish people.

Gough: There's evidence of jewish worship

at a place where there shouldn't be.

There's evidence of the creation of

the jewish alphabet here.

And thirdly, there's evidence of artisans, of mining of

turquoise and copper,

the kinds of people who could have constructed

the ten commandments and tablets.

And if that's not enough,

there's also tablets shaped like the image we're told

the ten commandments were written in.

All the scholars argue that moses would have stopped there

on his path of the exodus to the promised land,

but what very few want to acknowledge is that

this could very well have been the true mount sinai.

♪

narrator: But author and historian graham phillips

has another radical idea.

He believes the historical mount sinai is

actually found 150 miles away in jordan,

near the ancient city of petra.

Phillips: When I got there, I found so many things

that tied up with the description of mount sinai

in the bible that I was literally,

I don't know, flabbergasted, knocked off my feet,

to how many similarities there where between this place

and the biblical description

that seem to have been completely overlooked

by previous historians.

Gough: The theory that graham phillips has put forward,

that mount sinai is actually in petra, is very viable,

and that's because the whole valley around petra is within

the right distance of where the exodus started from in egypt.

His brother, aaron, is buried there,

and on top of the mountain

that graham suggests is mount sinai,

there's actually architecture, there's temples,

there's pillars, just like are stated in the bible.

Mcmahon: Clues there include the fact that the valley

in which petra is based is called the wadi musa,

the valley of moses, and there is a rock, the ain musa,

the rock of moses, where the water is said

to have spouted out, and it would

make a lot more sense for petra to be

the location as a major trade and commercial hub back in

those days than somewhere,

some dusty hole, at the bottom of the sinai peninsula.

Narrator: Yet moses's most important

legacy is giving the ten commandments

to the jewish people.

While the inscribed tablets most likely

have not survived to modern times,

could their origins be less miraculous

than the famous story tells us?

Narrator: For thousands of years,

the biblical figure of moses has

been associated with amazing miracles,

with some alleging he might actually have possessed

magical powers.

Whether miracle or magic,

he had one indispensable possession --

his staff.

Phillips: Again and again,

moses is associated with a miraculous staff.

When he first encounters god at the burning bush,

he has this staff with him, and god says that he would imbue

this staff with miraculous powers.

Kirkpatrick: A magician always has a wand or a staff.

It's like a conduit

for focusing his will and controlling the energies

and making things happen,

effecting change -- it's a kind of directional tool.

Even today, druids, magicians, will use

a wand or a staff in their practice.

Narrator: Intriguingly, graham phillips believes

he knows where this mythical relic is kept today.

His theory relies on moses's link to snakes.

It's said that moses's staff was once turned into a serpent,

and an intriguing snake-themed monument has been discovered

at petra.

Phillips: In the mid-1800s,

a cave near the snake monument was

excavated by a couple of english archaeologists

and they found a tomb there.

There was no body any longer in it, but it didn't have a few

items remaining,

the most important of which was a staff with egyptian

hieroglyphics on it, an egyptian staff

at the city of petra

in southern jordan.

What was it doing there?

Clearly, somebody from egypt had been buried

in this tomb below the snake monument.

Now, if my theory is all right,

then the snake monument

is erected in memory of moses, and this tomb could be

the tomb of an historical moses.

Narrator: So could this discovery really be

moses's legendary staff?

For such a possibly important artifact for

three of the world's main religions,

its home today is in a quiet corner of England.

The staff of moses, today, is here

at the birmingham museum in central England.

Upon the staff there are hieroglyphics telling us

that the staff had belonged to someone called thutmosis,

who held a high position at

the egyptian court around about 1350 bc.

Now the historical moses,

according to my research, was

a man called thutmosis, who held just such a position at exactly

the time that moses is said to have been

high in the egyptian court.

As such, the staff of thutmosis could be one

and the same as the staff of the biblical moses.

Narrator: It may be debatable whether the staff in

the birmingham museum is really that of

the biblical moses,

but the egyptian influence over

this religious figure was strong.

Controversially, the ten commandments are alleged

to be plagiarized from an earlier egyptian tradition.

Bianchi: The ten commandments are prohibitions that

the faithful, the moral, the ethical

should not indulge in.

Don't covet your neighbor's wife, don't commit adultery,

don't murder an individual, etcetera.

And the interesting thing about

the ten commandments is they resonate

with the so-called negative confession

chapter 125 of the book of the dead

of the ancient egyptians.

Pinknett: This was a formula, lines, if you like,

that they had to learn to say in the afterlife

when they were in the halls of justice,

and their souls were being weighed in the balance,

and they stood there, and they said,

"I have not committed adultery.

"I have not borne false witness.

I have not killed."

and it was supposed to get you off

all the punishments of the afterlife.

Gough: Did moses draw upon an earlier edict

and say they were written by the finger of god?

Narrator: Without concrete evidence,

the historical and biblical moses

will probably remain elusive forever.

But these tantalizing clues might just give us

a glimpse of the real man.

Young-somers: In my view, moses may have been

a real figure who lived,

but I don't know, and I like the not knowing, and for me,

actually, the importance isn't whether

or not moses literally lived.

Gough: Moses appears to have been an archetype,

but if he was an historical person,

I know of no better historical inspiration than that of

the heretic king who introduced monotheism,

akhenaten.

Even when the egyptians lose a battle,

they portray themselves as the victors.

So it's very, very hard for me to believe that a story

that paints the egyptians

in such a horrible light could have

possibly had an egyptian origin.

Young-somers: I think it's inevitable that,

as such an important figure,

he's going to create interest and intrigue,

and we're going to want to try to understand as much as we can,

because there is so much that's interesting

and so much that's mysterious.

♪