Biblical prophet and lawgiver
Moses
The Bible's leader of the Exodus. His birth resembles a Sargon legend, and the chapter leaves his historicity unresolved.
What the sources say
Each block is a sourced statement. Click the number to see the cited page.
3 statements
Tradition or narrative
According to the Bible, Jacob's son Joseph was taken to Egypt as a slave and, thanks to his skill at interpreting dreams, rose to the second-highest post in the kingdom; during a famine in Canaan his father and eleven brothers moved there. His descendants, the 12 tribes, thrived until a new king enslaved them. Moses, raised in the household of the king's daughter, freed them with ten plagues, and they left, crossing the Red Sea, which God parted and closed over the Egyptians.
The account of Moses's mother setting him afloat in a Nile basket closely resembles legends about other Near Eastern rulers. One concerns Sargon I, who founded Mesopotamia's first great empire around 2300 BCE: his inscription says his mother put him in a reed basket on a river, and he was found by a water-drawer, Akki, who raised him.
Contested interpretation
As David's portrait may incorporate stories associated with other heroes, Moses's image may likewise have grown through literary elaboration. A historical Moses remains possible, but the biblical account does not reveal a clear boundary between history and fiction.