The Eleventh Brother

by Rachel S. Wilcox

  The all-important purpose of life, from an Egyptian perspective, was not explicitly focused on seeking a personal relationship with a personal deity (and using the deity’s commands as a basis for human interaction) but rather in cultivating and conducting proper, harmonious, and just relationships with one another based on the more amorphous concept of ma’at. The practice of ma’at—frequently personified as a winged, protective goddess—along with religious practice (which focused on worshipping and acknowledging a multitude of divine forces) and the strong rule of a divine king (considered the ultimate link with the gods) helped keep Kemet in a state of proper balance and order. Kemet herself was seen as a bastion of civilization, order, and justice, albeit under constant threat from the upending forces of disunity and chaos found beyond her borders. Like the Israelites, a life in conformance with a higher divine will, personified in the practice of ma’at, was the ultimate requirement for peace in this life and passing into the exalted afterlife. But in contrast to the wandering Israelites, to the Egyptian mind the Red Land that lay beyond the peaceful, orderly borders of Kemet—Deshret, from which we get the English word desert—was nothing to be desired. It was a place of disorder, death, and chaos. The Egyptians even buried their dead on the west side of the Nile—facing toward the uncharted Deshret.

  Reunion

  Along with spending their adult lives in very different worlds, Joseph and Judah are also the only two of Jacob’s sons of whom we have any record showing significant time spent away from their father and family. In the story, therefore, they grapple with the fundamental questions of identity and survival in a different way from their more insular brothers. They are equally pursued by recurring questions regarding their true identities: Joseph as a displaced and inadvertent citizen of Kemet, an heir who becomes a slave who becomes a prisoner who becomes the vizier who eventually saves the brothers who betrayed him, and Judah as a refugee (and, he fears, a murderer), a man of some stature among the Canaanites, and, eventually, the brother who plays the other pivotal role in unifying and saving his family. Each undergoes a process of transformation and recollection in his sojourn, being alternatively humbled and enlivened by his experiences. Each ultimately comes to remember (or re-member) himself as Jacob’s son and Abraham’s heir.

  The larger issue of remembrance—re-membrance, re-membering, a literal piecing back together—is a significant one, and so it should be, coming from a biblical text so wonderfully full of resurrection and reunion imagery. Potiphar’s sacred writings, which come from the Egyptian Book of Breathings, are no less saturated with restoration imagery. Indeed, the central theme of the Breathings text is essentially one of resurrection by reunion: a reunion of body and spirit, of mortality and divinity, of man and the gods.

  In the Israelite story of the Garden of Eden, the man Adam is tricked by the serpent, Satan, and doomed to suffer physical death and permanent isolation from God as a result of his changed nature. His hope turns to the eventual promise of a redeemer, who will have power over death and possess the ability to restore his divine nature. In Egyptian mythology, the god Osiris, with whom the initiate identifies himself, is killed and dismembered by his jealous brother; he is then literally “re-membered”—pieced back together and regenerated—by his wife, Isis. Even the word breathings—snsn—apparently has strong implications of union, or reunion, as well as life-breath. It is life restored through the restoration of body, soul, and divine association. The giving and receiving of breath is thus a sort of divine embrace, a sacred, life-reviving kiss.

  Joseph’s story is perhaps the perfect blend of Israelite and Egyptian restoration imagery, particularly in regard to the episode in which his coat (the symbol of the covenant and the birthright) is dismembered and he himself is thrown into the earth as a dead man and separated from his home and birthright. Happily, when he is eventually reunited with his father and family, he has the power to restore life to his family—ironically, but in keeping with both the Egyptian and the Israelite redemption narratives, as a direct result of an earlier treachery.

  Such a deft touch in the Genesis narrative can hardly be coincidental.

  Caveat Emptor

  The characterizations and structure within the novel have sought to be reasonably supported by the original narrative, though they may not necessarily follow its most familiar interpretations. At times, language and cadence are directly borrowed.

  The characters of Amon, Asar, and Joseph and the others of Potiphar’s household staff are entirely fictional. There is also no explicit evidence that Joseph’s wife, Asenath, has any particular relation to the elusive character Potiphar, who is only ever identified as the captain of the guard, not the vizier. However, we do know that Asenath’s father is “Potipherah, priest of On.” On is Heliopolis, or the Temple of Ra, and Potipherah and Potiphar are the same name. Incidentally, this is also the same name that appears in Abraham’s account of his near-sacrifice at “Potiphar’s Hill” (Abraham 1:20), though the full implications of this detail remain to be explored another day.

  The name Potiphar indeed means “Given-of-Ra” and derives from the divine name of the sun god, the dominant royal deity of the Old Kingdom. Although Osiris appears to have become the dominant deity figure by the Middle Kingdom (and is the god with whom initiates identify themselves in the funeral texts), Ra, the father of Osiris, remained a powerful and important figure. The Temple of Ra at Heliopolis (Greek, “City of the Sun”)—called by its native name “Iunu” in the novel and “On” in the Genesis account—served as a religious site of enormous importance. Indeed, it may well have been founded to commemorate the first moment and first geographic spot of the original creation—where a sacred mound rose up out of the primordial waters and was struck by a ray of light.

  Finally, the events presented in the novel have been juxtaposed for the sake of elucidating the parallels, foils, and repetitions nestled within the original narrative, all of which can be studied, poked, prodded, and researched but never improved upon.

  Works Cited

  The Book of Breathings text quoted throughout the novel is taken from Hugh Nibley’s translation of the ancient Egyptian text of the same name, published in his book The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment (Deseret Book and Maxwell Institute, 2005). Any alteration of Dr. Nibley’s translation is the author’s own.

  The writings of Abraham are taken from the Pearl of Great Price, as translated by Joseph Smith and published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981. Again, any alteration is the work of the author.

  Works Consulted

  Additional sources consulted in researching and writing the novel include The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, translated by Raymond O. Faulkner, London: British Museum Press, revised edition, 2010; The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, Oxford University Press, 1993; The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, Oxford University Press, 2000; Jan Assman, The Mind of Ancient Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, translated by Andrew Jenkins, Metropolitan Books, 2002; Mark Collier and Bill Manley, How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs, revised edition, University of California Press, 1998; Rosalie David, Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt, revised edition, Oxford University Press, 1998; Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, University of Chicago Press, 2003; Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Press, 1967; Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 2nd edition, Deseret Book and Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), 2000; Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, 2nd edition, Deseret Book and FARMS, 2005; R. B. Parkinson, Voices from Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Middle Kingdom Writings, British Museum Press, 1991; Donald P. Ryan, Ancient Egypt on 5 Deben a Day, Thames & Hudson, 2010; Joyce Tyldesley, Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt, Penguin Books, 2010; Gordon Wenham, World Biblical Commentary: Genesis 16–50, Thomas Nelson, 1994; Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Genesis: The Beg
inning of Desire, Jewish Publication Society, 1995.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks and love, first and foremost, to my family—to my mother, who read to me; to my father, who brought me books; to my sister and brothers as partners in crime and dearest friends; to my little rascals; and to grandparents who opened the world to all of us. My thanks and love, too, to those friends who have become family and who have been my light in dark places, and to those mentors who have stepped into my life and given light to my path. And many thanks, of course, to those whose time and talents have transformed a manuscript into a book. Merci à tous.

  About the Author

  After spending her high school years in the south of France, Rachel K. Wilcox studied philosophy, literature, and film at Brigham Young University, where she graduated as the class valedictorian. After college, she moved to West Africa to make a documentary film and instead used her camera to co-found a humanitarian project. She has been a researcher and case writer at Harvard Business School and writes and researches in the interdisciplinary fields of law and the humanities. She is in her final year of law school at Stanford University.