Coins from the time when the Israelites moved to Egypt found in the basement of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo?
December 25, 2009 – The online edition of the Mideast Jerusalem Post from September 25th, 2009, reported that in the archives of the Egyptian Museum, among a multitude of unsorted artifacts, coins were found dating to the time when biblical Joseph lived in Egypt. The Mideast Jerusalem Post even cites a report: “A thorough examination revealed that the coins bore the year in which they were minted and their value, or effigies of the pharaohs [who ruled] at the time of their minting. Some of the coins are from the time when Joseph lived in Egypt, and bear his name and portrait.” This was taken as evidence that already in ancient Egypt coins were circulating! According to the Mideast Jerusalem Post, the report continued as follows: “Studies by Dr. Thabet’s team have revealed that what most archeologists took for a kind of charm, and others took for an ornament or adornment, is actually a coin. Several [facts led them to this conclusion]: first, [the fact that] many such coins have been found at various [archeological sites], and also [the fact that] they are round or oval in shape, and have two faces: one with an inscription, called the inscribed face, and one with an image, called the engraved face – just like the coins we use today.”
Now, the decisive question is whether we are facing enemy propaganda a number of serious journalists have fallen for. Are Egyptian scientists are deliberately presented as ignoramuses? Or was it an inexperienced archaeologist who…? But no, surely we would not accuse anyone of doing such things.
Actually, that does not prevent bible-abiding Christians to rejoice as follows: “Amongst the recent finds made in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo coins were discovered bearing the image of a cow, a reference to Pharaoh’s dream of the seven fat cows and the seven starving cows. The name of Joseph appears twice on these coins, written in hieroglyphics: once, the original name, Joseph, and once Joseph’s Egyptian name, Saba Sabani, which was given to him by Pharaoh when he became treasurer. Time and again, the historical reliability of the Bible is questioned. The high number of archaeological finds of the last decades, however, is proof to the contrary.”
Embarrassingly enough, this report’s teaser was published on the entry page of www.evangelisch.de, a website that provides the opportunity for private persons to publish their own contributions and produced in close cooperation with the central editorial office of the “Evangelischer Pressedienst” (Protestant Press Service).
What is the moral of this story? Any information – especially on the internet – is only as good as the research that was done on it in the first place.
With this in mind, CoinsWeekly whishes all of you a very Merry Christmas!
Yours, Ursula Kampmann