Endnote 15 – Moses

Frank M. Snowden, Jr., however, argues that interracial marriage between blacks and other ethnic groups, especially Egyptians, was not all that unusual. In Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, Belknap Press, 1970), pp. 192–193, he cites Herodotus (2.30) and Plutarch (De exilio 601 E), who refer to an event in the reign of the Egyptian king Psammetichus I when 240,000 rebellious Egyptian men moved south, settled and intermarried with the Cushites (called Ethiopians by these Greek writers). In Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983), p. 95, Snowden states that there was an unknown prince of a royal family in Egypt with a Negro wife. Snowden cites B.G. Haycock, “Landmarks in Cushite History,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 53 (1972), pp. 230, 237. Snowden also argues that the physical features of queen Tiy, the wife of Amenophis III, indicate that she was a Cushite (Snowden calls her Nubian). Snowden cites Steffen Wenig, The Woman in Egyptian Art (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 50. Donna Runnalls (“Moses’ Ethiopian Campaign,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 14 [1983], pp. 135–156) states that the Egyptian pharaohs frequently took Cushite (Nubian) wives to provide legitimacy for ruling Cush (Nubia).