Starting with our clues leading from Ludim as a sort of Proto-Dynastic Egyptian population, it would follow that Anamim are the first few dynasties and people of the Old Kingdom period. While in the earliest dynastic period the Pharaoh’s center of power was located at Thinis, during the Third through the Eighth Dynasty this center was moved north to Memphis. Memphis remains capital through the vast majority of the Old Kingdom, and doesn’t move back south to Thebes until the Middle Kingdom. This would imply the Anamim, or tentatively the “Old Kingdom people of Egypt” would have been identified around Memphis. Given Memphis’s centrality and grandeur early in their history it’s likely included within the designation.
While Memphis was certainly the most important city in the north, there was also the crucial religious center of Heliopolis, otherwise known as On, or “Jwnw” in Egyptian. On is the original Egyptian name which translates to “Pillars” and Heliopolis is a Greek name meaning “City of the Sun” alluding to its key placement at the center worship for the sun god Ra during the Old Kingdom when Ra was their most important god.
Also critical to the city's religious worship was the god Atum, whose cult center similar to Ra was located at Heliopolis and during later periods fused into Ra forming the god Atum-Ra. This Atum-Ra was viewed as the originator of the Ennead, the nine major gods worshiped throughout Egypt that developed following the decline of Ra’s worship in the Old Kingdom. Essentially all these gods are strongly associated with Heliopilos, rather than Memphis, implying Memphis was more of a governance center and Heliopolis was a religious or cultural center. The early people of Lower Egypt would have viewed these cities as their “father and mother” cities, in a sense similar to how the Ennead came from Heliopolis, helping us locate a possible homeland for the Anamin. By the Middle Kingdom, Ra worship and Heliopolis shifted extensively to something that could be viewed as an entirely separate culture.
Another element of the religious worship at On was the presence of a sacred bull cult centered in the city. The Hellenized name is “Mnevis”, but Egyptians called the bull “Mer-wer”. This bull was very similar to the worship of the much more famous Apis bull at Memphis, but in this period Mnevis was nearly Apis’s equal. Both bulls eventually get subsumed as the “living embodiment” of their respective Gods, Mnevis representing Atum-Ra, and Apis representing Ptah and later Osiris. In a comedic twist, the Mnevis priests contended that Apis was the son of Mnevis no less!1 The people of On, and obviously their leaders with them, would have viewed On as the primary center of Egypt, not actually Memphis, and felt a bit of rivalry between these two cities.
If On was so crucial then one would expect to find multiple references to it in the Torah. There are four potential references to the Egyptian city of On starting with Genesis 41:45 where Joseph marries the daughter of the governor of On spelled “אֹ֖ן”. Later on in line 50 discussing the same daughter of Pharaoh uses the hebrew “אֽוֹן“ which sounds nearly identical but is spelled slightly different. Interesting about these lines is that Joseph is not merely being handed a wife, but he is merging into a royal dynasty of the governors of On, making himself a legitimate potential ruler of the city.
As mentioned early on when discussing Mizraim, marriage through these dynasties was often how power transferred from one ruler to the next, and the Pharaoh would intermarry with important local dynasties to bolster his own family's royal claim. In essence we can see Joseph doing the same, most critically with the major religious center of Egypt no less, not just any military or economic city, which correlates to his importance as a Vizier of Pharaoh.
Another example is found in Ezekiel where we get the line: “The youths of Aven and Pi-beseth will fall by the sword, and they will go into captivity.”2 In this example On is spelled “אָ֛וֶן” which curiously has a slightly different sound. Here “On” is spelled as “Aven”, but this could easily be pronounced “Awen” which is nearly identical to the Egyptian name for the city Jwnw. We can be sure this is the same On due to the “youths of Aven” being located roughly near, or next to Pi-Beseth; Pi-Beseth being the Hebrew term for the Egyptian city of Bubastis - Per-Bastet - located just north of On. Included within this reference are multiple cities located nearby to On such as Zoan (near Tanis) and Tehaphnehas (Daphnae); the parts of Nile that are closest to Israel helping affirm this reference is most certainly to On despite the different spelling.
There is a fourth reference in Amos 1:5 with “Aven” but this one is called “Bikath-Aven” and is somewhere near Damascus, not Egypt.
What is crucially notable about On is its regional importance as a central node of religious activity. On’s main temple was known as “PrꜤꜣt”, or “Per Aat” meaning “Great House”. An interesting cognate of this name is “Per Atum” meaning “House of Atum” from which the Hebrew “Pithom” most likely descends. Indeed not far from On is where the reported “Pithom and Rameses” would have been built as storehouses for Pharaoh by the Jews in Egypt likely within the Land of Goshen. Quite strangely is that in the Greek Septuagint, a third city is added to the list, none other than Heliopolis. The Septuagint most definitely messed something up during its translation, as On was not built later like Pithom and Rameses, and would be a scribal conflation, but it does serve as increasing evidence.
It wasn’t just in the classical Egyptian pantheon that On was a major center of worship, but also during the brief henotheistic period of Akhenaten this city was also set up as a center of worship around a temple called “Wetjes Aten” or “Elevating Aten”. Akhenaten’s reign correlates roughly to a 20 year period only a few decades prior to the timeframe for the Exodus - according to classical Rabbinic dating which places the Exodus around 1313 BCE; however, there are a range of dates and competing estimates for how the Hebrew dating actual correlates to our usual calendar and I’d leave room for interpretation of this information. While not during the Old Kingdom, Akhenaten was arguably the most unique Pharaoh whose borderline monotheistic worship could be seen as a blueprint either for the later Mosaic system, or itself based on the Mosaic innovations in an attempt to bring them into an Egyptian context and would be a similar system to what the Egyptian ‘Jews’ would have known prior to Moses conferring the Torah.
Whether realized, or not, the Torah is employing identical language to the Egyptians when attempting to “transfer the throne of power from Pharaoh to the God of Israel”, and like Akhenaten, the Torah purports Joseph to have a legitimate claim over Egypts religious center through his marriage to the ruler of On, and thus the descendants of Joseph share his claim, among those Moses. Is this a sneaky way for the Torah to claim Moses truly understands the legacy of the high priests, and God's intention?
When the Rabbi’s say that God approached all the nations of the world with the Torah, and the belief in one God prior to approaching Israel, why should we do anything but take them at their word? God approached Egypt, through Akhenaten, but the collective decision was to reject him, and attempt to wipe out Akhenaten’s name. He was seen as the darkest stain in their history books, but one descendant of the priests of On, Moses, was willing to take up that mantle.
Furthering this argument slightly is the fact Akhenaten ordered the construction of a necropolis for the Mnevis bull in his capital Amarna!3 The cult of Mnevis was one of the few to be tolerated during Akhenaten’s so-called monotheistic religion, which is what helps us view it as something closer to henotheism. From Akhenaten’s perspective the bull was likely nothing more than an intermediary for the god Aten, but from the Torah we are well aware of the slippery slope initiated when one enables idols to stand in as embodiments for God. People end up worshiping these idols as individual deities. Indeed the Rabbi’s state that at one point there was only monotheism, and polytheism was an outcropping of monotheism through this system of idolization. Was Akhenaten caving into the demands of his people, similar to the demands of Aaron during the absence of Moshe, and giving his people their “Golden Calf” intermediary to worship?
For now we will stick to the Table of Nations, but in a later volume discussing the Exodus these are going to be central theories modeling how the historical context shifts our understanding towards a deeper, richer grasp of what God’s Torah is attempting to communicate.
Looking at this from a linguistic angle, the root of the word “Anamim” in Hebrew could possibly be related to the term “Anem” meaning “Two Fountains”. “-im” as we’ve discussed references water, or waters, or the sea. Strangely this term seems remarkably similar to the “Pillars” - the presence of plurality implying at least two pillars - but also has a more diverse meaning as On was found very close to where the Nile Delta split off its headwaters into two major branches. Putting the full word together it may be implying something related to the “Two Fountain Branches” of the Nile. This could have been a quirky reference, or a coincidence, but for those who do not chalk up God’s words to “coincidence” it’s more likely a double entendre.
Alternatively one could view this as “Ana-Mayim” which might be translated to “Waters of Affliction” offering a whole host of potential biblical implications. Since the latter doesn’t provide any “location” relative to the city, and sounds fairly generic, I would defer to the former meaning especially when viewed next to his brothers who have the -im suffix, not “mim”.
Returning to the great sage Saadia Gaon, he identifies the Anamim with Alexandria. Sadly this is guaranteed to be wrong, since the city was founded by none other than Alexander in the 4th century BCE. Presumably, Saadia would have known this since Alexander was nearly the most universally well known figure in the world for much of history, and most young children would be able to identify this city with Alexander, even lacking knowledge of the Greek records stating as such. I would propose Saadia knew this, and when identifying Alexandria was attempting to correlate it to what he understood with the “Nile Delta”, but with some meaning relative to “fountain”. He likely was assuming it was located where the Nile “dumped, or fountained into” the Mediterranean, rather than where the Nile “created a fountain” and split into multiple branches.
Owing to the over-importance of the city of Alexandria in later dates, completely dominating the Delta regions economy, it’s probable it consumed much of the mental focus and the identification really was more colloquial than exact. Saadia’s identification gives us a clue though that this location was variously northern within Egypt, and somewhere in the delta region proper - as opposed to the south, the Faiyyum, even Memphis or some coastal region which would have a more specific identification than “Alexandria”, similar to his identification of North Africa as Tunisiin.
We do find an Assyrian text from the time of Sargon II dated sometime between 722-705 BCE where he refers to the Egyptians as the “Anami” in Assyrian.4 This would be an extremely strong link, but it is only from a later period and there is no reason to believe the Hebrews and Assyrians, both having major Kingdoms in this period, wouldn’t have gotten this from a shared source. This text does help affirm that the Torah was not the only text, or people, that referred to the Egyptians as the Anamim.
We must remember we are not looking for a “region” but rather a Kingdom, or culture, that was centered on a region, whose people mixed through the region forming the identities of later Egyptian periods. The Assyrian text using this term to refer to “Egypt” rather than “Egyptians” would make sense here, but without more usages of the term in Assyrian it would be difficult to glean much more of a context.
One final etymological link might be drawn between the term Anamim and its composite parts: An-am-im. We’ve discussed the ‘-im’ suffix at length, and “An” contains enough sounds alone to be a reference to the city of “Awn”, but the term “Am” as a separate entity hasn’t been explored by any authors prior. The term “Am” - written עַם - means people, sometimes nation, in Hebrew. Putting this together get’s us “The People of On”. Those who do not believe in coincidence will view this as the Torah clearly indicating who the Anamim might be, but those who believe in coincidence will likely view the root “Am” as being a misreading. I choose to take the view that no roots in the bible are coincidental, but a reader can choose to believe whatever they prefer.
Whether or not one views the Anamim as “The People of On”, or a wider “Nile Delta” population isn’t exactly important, since these areas mostly overlap in Lower Egypt’s north. Based on all of these identifications I would place the Anamim centered around On (Heliopolis) not far from where the branches of the Nile first begin, but including a generalized “Nile Delta” region in Lower Egypt while excluding the Faiyyum, but possibly including Memphis (although Memphis would fit better as “Mizraim” proper). What the delta looked like in this era is difficult to say, but On certainly operated as a center for the delta's power during the Old Kingdom. However, the actual identification of the Anamim is not a “region”, but rather the people who were in the region that On governed during the Old Kingdom period.
Wilkinson, Richard H. (2003). The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. New York: Thames & Hudson. pp. 174-175
Ezekiel 30:17
Wilkinson, Richard H. (2003). The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. New York: Thames & Hudson. pp. 174-175
I believe this is from Albright, but I can’t find his source for the material. I don’t doubt him, but I’d like to know the original text for further clues. https://www.jstor.org/stable/593644?seq=3 https://archive.org/stream/jstor-593644/593644_djvu.txt
good work, Benjamin