Did Genesis Borrow From Kemet? What the Specialists Say

Around 710 BCE, King Shabaka of Kemet’s 25th Dynasty ordered a text carved into a slab of black granite. It was for the temple of Ptah at Memphis. The carving says the king had found an older writing, eaten by worms, and copied it anew. Egyptologists call the result the Memphite Theology. (We have written about Ptah and the Memphite Theology before. This piece looks at one question that follows from it.)

The text says Ptah made the gods by what his heart thought and his tongue commanded. Anyone who knows Genesis hears an echo of “And God said”. So the question keeps coming back. Did the writers of Genesis borrow from Kemet? (Kemet is the old name for the land the Greeks later called Egypt. More on the names.)

The honest answer has three parts. The likeness is real. A borrowing has not been shown. And the Ptah text is not the strongest candidate for a source, if there was one.

What the stone says

Here is the central passage, in the 1912 translation of James Henry Breasted, professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago. An ennead is a group of nine gods.

In Kemetic writing the heart was the seat of the mind (Breasted, 1912, p. 44). So the claim is plain. A thought forms first. A spoken command then makes it real.

Breasted saw the link to Genesis at once:

The Logos is the creative Word of John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word” (King James Version). The Egyptologist James Allen (1988, p. 46) agrees that the likeness to the Greek idea of the logos “has long been recognized”.

How old is the Ptah text?

People often call the Memphite Theology one of the oldest texts in the world. That claim is not safe.

In 1912 Breasted agreed with a 1911 study by Erman, which placed it in the pyramid age (Breasted, 1912, p. 47, note). Lichtheim’s 1973 anthology prints it among the Old Kingdom texts. Then the view moved. Allen (1988, p. 43) writes: “Until recently, general opinion dated the original mentioned by Shabaka to the Old Kingdom or even earlier, on the basis of the text’s archaic language and orthography as well as the political prominence of Memphis that it supposedly reflects.” A study in the early 1970s argued instead that it was an old-style composition from Shabaka’s own dynasty, the 25th. Allen himself puts it probably in the reign of Ramesses II, about 1250 BCE, and calls that reign the earliest possible date (1988, pp. 43, 59).

So we have one stone from about 710 BCE. The writing it copies has been dated anywhere from the pyramid age to Shabaka’s own day, depending on the scholar and the decade.

Genesis 1 is also hard to date. Hoffmeier (1983, pp. 39–40) reports the long-held view that its Priestly author wrote in or after the exile. He also reports a view that puts the writer in the time of David. Because both dates are open, the question of which came first cannot be answered for this one text.

The idea is easier to date than the document. Allen (1988, p. 59) traces creation by the spoken word back at least to the Coffin Texts, a body of Kemetic spells. That is our reading of his point. A date for a text’s wording says little about how old its thinking is.

Why the Ptah text is a weak candidate

There are three reasons, and the first is the date above.

The second is what the texts do. The Ptah text explains how the gods, offerings, cities and crafts came to be (Breasted, 1912, pp. 45–46). Genesis 1 tells how one God made light, sky, land and living things in order. Both begin with a word, but the stories do different work. Genesis also tells creation twice, and scholars treat the Priestly account and the Garden of Eden story as separate pieces (Carr, 2020).

The third is that Kemet has other creation-by-word texts. Hoffmeier (1983, p. 45) writes: “Old Testament scholars are familiar with the Memphite Theology as a creation by fiat that predates Genesis. However, this concept is found elsewhere in Egyptian literature, too.” He points to the Coffin Texts. His main comparisons are with other Kemetic texts, not the Ptah text. He sets the eight gods of Hermopolis beside the darkness and the deep in Genesis 1:2. He sets Khnum, a Kemetic god who shapes people on a potter’s wheel, beside Genesis 2:7: “the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”.

Then there is Mesopotamia. The Hebrew Bible scholar David Carr (2020) argues that Genesis 1 shows “a particular engagement with the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish epic”, a Babylonian creation poem. In the same chapter he says Genesis 1 seems to know the tradition behind Psalm 104. That tradition, he writes, reflects “nonbiblical traditions about origins from Canaan and (perhaps earlier) Egypt”.

Where borrowing is shown, and where it is not

Hoffmeier argues the Kemet side with care. He writes: “There are extremely few cases where direct borrowing of an Egyptian literary work (or for that matter any other near eastern literature) can be demonstrated.” He adds: “Most of the influences from Egypt come by way of diffusion of ideas and motifs, often by artistic objects” (1983, p. 41). He warns against “pan-Egyptianizing” the Hebrew text. His verdict on creation is measured: “There is no reason to doubt that there could have been literary influence on Hebrew cosmology as there was in other areas of Hebrew literature” (1983, p. 48).

The case he calls the best example is not about creation. It is the Teaching of Amenemope, a Kemetic book of advice, and a passage in the Book of Proverbs. Hoffmeier says the borrowing can be shown “with some certainty” (1983, p. 41). Ruffle (1977, p. 63) disagrees. He found the link often goes no further than a shared subject, and he thought it could earn no firmer verdict than “not proven”. So even the best case is argued over.

A word on Rome

A common version of this idea says Rome took Kemet and then wrote the Bible from Kemetic teaching. We looked for peer-reviewed work that makes this claim and found none. We cannot rule out that such work exists. We can say we did not find it.

The dates also work against it for Genesis. The Roman historian Cassius Dio writes that after the fall of Alexandria, Caesar “made Egypt tributary” (Cassius Dio, 51.17). Dio places this in the year of Caesar’s fourth consulship, which is 30 BCE. The dates Hoffmeier reports for the Priestly writer run from the time of David to the exile and after, and none falls in the Roman age. This is a narrow point about Genesis. The New Testament is a separate question that we have not examined here.

Where this leaves us

What is shown: creation by the spoken word is a real Kemetic idea, and it reaches back at least to the Coffin Texts, which are older than any date proposed for Genesis 1. Egyptologists have noticed its likeness to Genesis since at least 1912.

What is plausible: some Kemetic ideas reached Hebrew writers. Hoffmeier sees no reason to rule it out, and thinks it came mostly through the slow spread of ideas and images.

What is not shown: a route by which a Kemetic creation text reached the author of Genesis 1. Nor is there proof that Genesis depends on the Ptah text in particular.

Our own inference, and only that: the likeness may come from a shared habit of thought across the ancient Near East. Hoffmeier points the same way in his closing pages. He thinks a fuller study would probably show that “the Mediterranean world was very ecumenical” and that ideas were freely exchanged (1983, p. 48). If so, Kemet was one voice in a long conversation, and an early one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Genesis copy the Memphite Theology?

That has not been shown. Both texts have a creator who makes by speaking, but the Ptah text is hard to date and no route to the author of Genesis 1 has been shown.

How old is the Memphite Theology?

The stone dates to about 710 BCE. The older writing it says it copied has been dated from the pyramid age to the reign of Ramesses II, about 1250 BCE, depending on the scholar and the decade.

Did Rome write the Bible?

We found no peer-reviewed work that makes that claim, though we cannot rule out that some exists. The dates reported for Genesis 1 do not fall in the Roman age. We did not examine the New Testament.

What do specialists say about Kemet and Hebrew writing?

Hoffmeier (1983) says direct borrowing of a Kemetic text is demonstrated in extremely few cases, and that most influence came through the spread of ideas and images. He sees no reason to doubt that there could have been literary influence on Hebrew ideas of creation.

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