Pharaoh’s Daughter

A Commentary on Exodus 2:5–10

The Exodus narrative shaped, and was shaped by, the Jewish people trying to hold on to their identity as a nation under Babylonian exile. Many biblical historians believe that stories like the Exodus story originated in oral traditions as proto-Israelites and refugees from an Egypt losing power during the late Bronze age settled in Canaan. So, it would be no far stretch to include an Egyptian perspective to this story. That’s what I’ve done. None of my speculations about Pharaoh’s daughter here appear in the Exodus cycle or anywhere else in scripture.

The story in these passages is about the birth of Moses, who was the prophet who grew up to free the Israelites and lead them to the Promised Land. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. But somehow, they kept growing stronger and more numerous, so that the Pharaoh started getting nervous. He first asked the head midwives of the Hebrews to kill the baby boys as they are born, but they trick him, saying that the Hebrew women are too badass, and their babies are born before the midwives get there. Since that doesn’t work, he decrees that all newborn Hebrew boys should be thrown in the Nile river to drown.

But Moses is born and his mother sees that he is a beautiful child. She hides him three months, then finally makes a basket, lines it with tar, and sets him afloat on the Nile. Pharaoh’s daughter comes down to bathe, and finds him there. She takes up the child to raise in her own (which would be Pharaoh’s) household. This is a common motif in folklore, where the eventual usurper grows up right under the nose of their oppressor.

My attention snagged on Pharaoh’s daughter when I was reading this story, so I did a little research. There are some things here that I think we don’t see with our modern eyes when reading this story.

In Egypt, everything had its god or goddess. The goddess of the Nile was Anuket, who was also goddess of childbirth. Pharaoh, then, was not only committing violence against the Hebrew people, he was violating his own goddess by throwing babies into her to die.

His daughter was going down to bathe in the Nile, and I wonder; was she just swimming, or was this a way of asking Anuket for a child? Maybe she went every day, hoping to be blessed with a baby. Could it be that what her father was doing made it seem that Anuket was turning away from his daughter?

She wanted a baby. She prayed.

And a baby came. A Hebrew baby, in a little womblike basket, floating down the river.

She named him Moses, which is nothing but a generic Egyptian word for god; you see it in a lot of Egyptian names, like Thutmose.

I think she named him this because she was asking, “Who is your God?”

I think she was asking, “Who just answered my prayer?”

She dipped herself in Anuket

Silver tears slide

From eyes, from skin,

Down thighs longing to stretch

In birth;

Please goddess

Please,

Each morning bewailing

That empty space.

A small womb comes floating,

Slowly, serenely circling,

Dreaming its way through the rushes.

“Who is your god, little child?

Who just answered my prayer?”