Koran has confused Haman with Hemiunu, Vizier and Architect of Pharaoh Khufu

 

 

Wrong person! Completely wrong era!

 

For the correct era of Haman of the Book of Esther, see our:

 

Belshazzar’s Feast in the Book of Esther?

 

http://www.academia.edu/5365514/Belshazzars_Feast_in_the_Book_of_Esther

The following is taken from:
http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/katz/haman/app_hammon_hemiunu.html

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The Haman Hoax

Jochen Katz

 

[To fully understand the following discussion, one should first read the Introduction, Stage One and Stage Two of this series.]

 

Appendix 5

 

The psychology of Islamic Awareness: It may be probable that it is somebody else?

 

Just how much the IA-authors are groping in the dark can be seen in one little formulation in one of their footnotes. Before they turn to their “substantiation” and promotion of Bucaille’s claims, they present this introductory paragraph:

Haman is mentioned six times in the Qur'an: Surah 28, verses 6, 8 and 38; Surah 29, verse 39; and Surah 40, verses 24 and 36. The above ayahs portray Haman as someone close to Pharaoh, who was also in charge of building projects, otherwise the Pharaoh would have directed someone else. So, who is Haman? It appears that no commentator of the Qur'an has dealt with this question on a thorough hieroglyphic basis. As previously mentioned, many authors have suggested that "Haman" in the Qur'an is reference to Haman, a counsellor of Ahasuerus who was an enemy of the Jews. Meanwhile others have been searching for consonances with the name of the Egyptian god "Amun."^[58]

There would not be much to comment on in this paragraph, were it not for the fact that they added the following footnote to their last sentence:

[58] Syed suggests that "Haman" is a title of a person not his name, just as Pharaoh was a title and not a proper personal name. Syed proposes that the title "Haman" referred to the "high priest of Amun". Amun is also known as "Hammon" and both are normal pronunciations of the same name. Syed's identification of Haman as "the high priest of Amun" may be probable. See S. M. Syed, "Historicity Of Haman As Mentioned In The Qur'an", The Islamic Quarterly, 1980, Volume 24, No. 1 and 2, pp. 52-53; Also see a slightly modified article by him published four years later: S. M. Syed, "Haman In The Light Of The Qur'an", Hamdard Islamicus, 1984, Volume 7, No. 4, pp. 86-87. (Source; bold emphasis mine)¹

On one hand, they seem to discount the suggestion of connecting the name Haman with the god Amun since that is something that was only done by “others”, and they do not come back to this idea in their article. On the other hand, they write in their footnote that this “identification of Haman as ‘the high priest of Amun’ may be probable”. What is that supposed to mean? Is it probable or is it not probable? And if this identification is probable, does that mean that Bucaille’s claims are then improbable? Why then do they dedicate most of the space in their article to propagating Bucaille’s claims? After all, two contradictory answers cannot both be probable at the same time. In normal language, “probable” means that it has a probability that is higher than 50%. And that means that all other potential solutions have a probability that is less than 50%. Despite the fact that they expanded this footnote when they revised their paper, this nonsensical formulation stayed the same.

After Islamic Awareness argued their case for the Bucaille-ian Haman, they then write:

It is also interesting to note that there also existed a similar sounding name called Hemon^[71] (or Hemiunu / Hemionu^[72] as he is also known as), a vizier to King Khnum-Khufu who is widely considered to be the architect of Khnum-Khufu's the Great Pyramid at Giza. He lived in the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom Period (c. 2700 - 2190 BCE).

It remains unclear, however, why Islamic Awareness considers this interesting. Do they seriously consider him a candidate for the quranic Haman, or do they not? If not, why would they introduce him in their article? Somehow, it seems to be an implicit suggestion of Hemiunu as a candidate for Haman – particularly since there are indeed a number of Muslims who are seriously propagating Hemiunu as the Haman of the Qur’an!² In any case, we will take a closer look at Hemiunu shortly.

So, all in all, Islamic Awareness offers the world three Hamans: (a) the high-priest of Amun (a speculative construct and mere hypothesis, no evidence is provided in their article, not connected to a specific date or person), (b) “hmn-h, the overseer of the stone-quarry workers of Amun” (19^th or 20^th dynasty, roughly 1300-1100 BC), and (c) Hemiunu the vizier of Khufu (4^th dynasty, ca. 2570 BC). First the Muslims had the problem that there was no Haman in Egypt, contrary to the claims of the Qur’an, and now we have the opposite problem that there are too many.

Why is that a problem? Because adding more and more “potential Hamans” to the discussion also means that the probability for each one of these to be the right one is decreasing. Some Muslims are approaching that topic with the attitude of a garage sale: Buy our main theory, and you get two extra ones for free. When dealing with collectors’ items that is fine. But is “collecting unsubstantiated Haman claims” our aim? When we search for the truth, offering several answers that are so radically different in character and timing is counter-productive. It exposes the desperation of the Muslims to find “just anything” that could “somehow” connect the Haman of the Qur’an with actual history.

In academic discourse, it is appropriate to present several potential alternatives and to weigh the reasons that may support or refute each of these options. However, that is not what the IA-team does. They are apparently after the psychological effect that “if we provide a range of several possibilities, Muslims will get the feeling that one of them must be true”.³ Accordingly, the authors avoid explicitly ruling out any of the suggested identifications they have listed, and they even call “the high-priest of Amun” hypothesis “probable” despite not giving it much space. This most probably means they don’t find that suggestion probable after all.

Hammon, the high priest of Amun

Since Islamic Awareness does not actually argue the hypothesis of Haman being the high priest of Amun and presents basically no reasoning to interact with, I will not discuss this suggestion in great detail here either,⁴ save to raise some questions that indicate why this proposed identification strikes me as highly unlikely, not to say entirely impossible.

“High priest of Amun” is an expression consisting of a title / function and the name of a deity. Let me illustrate the problem this way: Muhammad is called “Rasul Allah”, i.e. “the Messenger of Allah”. That is a title / function (rasul) connected with the name of the deity that he serves (Allah). How likely is it that Muhammad would also be called Allah? To even suggest something like this sounds ridiculous, and rightly so. He may be called by his title alone, i.e. “ar-Rasul”, “the Messenger”, i.e. the name “Allah” may be dropped from the full title, but one could not drop the function and simply attribute the name of the deity to the human who serves him. Calling Muhammad “Allah” would be blasphemy. Similarly, “the High-Priest of Amun” could certainly be referred to as “the High-Priest” without stating the name of the deity explicitly, but for the same reason as above, it is rather strange to suggest that the chief servant of Amun would be called “Amun”.

Syed claims that in Egyptian religion there were role plays during which the priests were impersonating the gods. So, the high priest would be called by the name of his deity. Even if that is true, this identification was restricted to the time of the sacred rite (indicated by the priest wearing the mask of his god). I am not aware of any evidence that the high priest of Amun was called “Amun” in his daily life, outside of those special occasions when he officiated in those specific religious rituals.

Throughout all the quranic passages mentioning his name, Haman consistently appears as a government official in government business, not as a priestly actor impersonating a deity during a ritual role play. It is certainly noteworthy that although the Qur’an mentions several different functions of Haman (cf. Appendix 1), it does not give any indication that Haman was (also) the high priest of an Egyptian deity. If that was his main function, this would be a rather strange omission.

Moreover, the chief priest of Amun would (usually) have to be present at the main temple of Amun in Karnak (near Luxor). During the time to which IA is dating the Exodus (around 1210 BC), the capital of the Empire was Pi-Ramesses (Avaris), several hundred miles north of Luxor located in the southern part of the Empire (central Egypt).

....
(Sources: 1, 2)

It is more than unlikely that being the high-priest of Amun was compatible with being at the court of Pharaoh as the second man in charge in the Egyptian Empire (vizier), chief advisor of Pharaoh and being also responsible for the military (usually located close to the border of the Empire). These functions don’t go together very well (see Appendix 1: Haman in the Qur’an).

Finally, it would be exceedingly unlikely that Pharaoh would speak right into the face of the high-priest of Amun that he knows of no god other than himself (Surah 28:38, see this article). The whole scenario does not make sense.

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Update (14 June 2010): Andrew Vargo’s article, Was Haman the high-priest of Amun?, provides now a detailed examination of Sher Mohammad Syed’s alleged resolution of the Haman problem in the Qur'an.

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Hemiunu
Never mind all those obstacles to this particular hypothesis, Islamic Awareness is able to offer us yet another candidate! Let’s try some Hemiunu for a change. Here is their suggestion:

It is also interesting to note that there also existed a similar sounding name called Hemon^[71] (or Hemiunu / Hemionu^[72] as he is also known as), a vizier to King Khnum-Khufu who is widely considered to be the architect of Khnum-Khufu's the Great Pyramid at Giza. He lived in the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom Period (c. 2700 - 2190 BCE).

....

(a)

....

(b)

Figure 6: (a) Statue of Hemon, Khufu's master builder. The eyes have been hacked out by robbers, and restored.^[73] This statue is in the Hildesheim Museum. (b) The hieroglyph showing the name "Hemiunu".^[74]

Hemiunu was the vizier of Khufu, so that he had at least the right political position, being the second in authority after the supreme ruler (cf. Appendix 1). Moreover, he certainly was a master builder. However, that is where his usefulness for Muslim propaganda ends.

Since it remains somewhat nebulous why Islamic Awareness introduced Hemiunu into the discussion, let’s consider some possible reasons. First, they could be claiming that Hemiunu is a genuine candidate for having been the Haman of the Qur’an. In that case, however, they would be contradicting themselves several times over. In more than one article they are dating the Exodus to the end of the 13^th century BC, to either the end of the reign of Ramses II or his son Merenptah (i.e. 1212 or 1202 BC), so that identifying Haman with Hemiunu (2570 BC) would result in a severe chronological contradiction with their other claims. Moreover, it would destroy one of their alleged Qur’an miracles. Let’s quote from the conclusion of one of their other articles:

… the Egyptians did not call their ruler "Pharaoh" until the 18th Dynasty (c. 1552 - 1295 BC) in the New Kingdom Period. In the language of the hieroglyphs, "Pharaoh" was first used to refer to the king during the reign of Amenhophis IV (c. 1352 - 1338 BC). We know that such a designation was correct in the time of Moses but the use of the word Pharaoh in the story of Joseph is an anachronism, as under the rule of the Hyksos there was no "Pharaoh." Similarly, the events related in Genesis 12 concerning Abraham (c. 2000-1700 BCE) could not have occurred in a time when the sovereign of Egypt was called Pharaoh, and this exposes yet another anachronism. …

The situation is entirely different in the Qur'an. As is the case with the Bible, reference to the sovereign of ancient Egypt is found throughout various chapters of the Qur'an. A careful study of the minutiae of each narrative reveals some compelling differences. With regard to the Egyptian king who was a contemporary of Joseph, the Qur'an uses the title "King" (Arabic, Malik); he is never once addressed as Pharaoh. As for the king who ruled during the time of Moses, the Qur'an repeatedly calls him Pharaoh (Arabic, Fir'awn). (Qur'anic Accuracy Vs. Biblical Error: The Kings & Pharaohs Of Egypt)

If the authors of Islamic Awareness want to suggest that Hemiunu might be the Haman of the Qur’an, then they need to own up to the unavoidable conclusion that in that case the Exodus would have taken place at around 2550 BC and therefore the Qur’an anachronistically called the king of Moses’ time “Pharaoh”, about a thousand years too early. If they don’t see a problem with that, then their whole article about the title Pharaoh is exposed as a smoke screen, or even worse, as blatant hypocrisy.

Now, again, they did not explicitly suggest that Hemiunu could have been Haman, but by simply listing him in that article – and not stating what their purpose is for doing so – they have given that appearance, and some readers would certainly have understood them this way, as if they consider him a genuine candidate.
Second, they could have introduced Hemiunu in order to claim that even though this particular person, the vizier of Khufu, was not the quranic Haman (for chronological reasons), here we have the name that we are looking for. In other words, Hemiunu and Haman are linguistically equivalent, and if this name existed before the time of Moses, then there is a considerable probability that there may have been others with the same name at the time of Moses. Therefore, it is quite possible that there may have been an advisor to the Pharaoh of Moses with this name.
However, this conclusion doesn’t follow as effortlessly as the IA-team might like to (make us) believe. Even assuming that these names were equivalent, this argument would have had a lot more force if they had found that name in reference to a person in the same century because 1300 years are quite a time gap to bridge.⁵
Most importantly, we need to end these speculations and face up to the fact that the name of Khufu’s vizier was not Haman but Hemiunu and these two names are quite different. I am not aware of even one scholarly publication about this person in which his name is rendered as “Haman”. His name was Hemiunu and the transliteration used by Egyptologists is “Ḥmỉwnw”. The initial letter is again the H with a dot beneath it, i.e. the same consonant that also appears in the name “ḥmn-ḥ” (featuring in IA’s main theory) and which we have already identified as being not the same sound as the initial letter of the name Haman in the Qur’an.
Note how Islamic Awareness is, yet again, manipulating the facts in order to make his name look more similar to Haman than it actually is. They introduce the person with this sentence:

It is also interesting to note that there also existed a similar sounding name called Hemon^[71] (or Hemiunu / Hemionu^[72] as he is also known as), … (Bold emphasis mine)

The primary way of writing that name is given by them as “Hemon”⁶ which looks quite similar to “Haman”, particularly when we discard those questionable vowels. Though they could not bring themselves to completely suppress the alternative spellings “Hemiunu/Hemionu”, they do their best to make those other spellings appear secondary, relegating them to a parenthetical remark. In order to support their preferred spelling, i.e. Hemon, they reference

[71] P. A. Clayton, Chronicle Of The Pharaohs: The Reign-By-Reign Record of The Rulers And Dynasties Of Ancient Egypt, 1994, Thames and Hudson: London, p. 47.

Clayton’s book is, by and large, a useful overview over the whole of Egyptian history, achieving the purpose for which it was written. However, it appears to be more a book for popular consumption than a scholarly resource and is not always adhering to strict standards of academic rigor. Clayton’s use of the name “Hemon” is a case in point. The author does not provide any justification for deviating from the commonly used name. In fact, the reader is not even informed that this person is usually listed under another name in the scholarly literature. The name “Hemiunu” appears neither in the text nor in the index to this book. No reason is given why Clayton calls him Hemon instead of Hemiunu, nor does he provide a bibliographical reference where such an argument could be found. Clayton simply calls him “Hemon” without any evidence to support this choice.

At least in regard to this question, Clayton’s book provides a very weak basis upon which to argue for the spelling preferred by these Muslim authors. Islamic Awareness’ use of this reference amounts to little more than the fallacy of appeal to authority. IA basically says: His name is Hemon because Clayton says so.
In their caption to the image of Hemiunu’s famous statue, they write:

Figure 6: (a) Statue of Hemon, Khufu's master builder. The eyes have been hacked out by robbers, and restored.^[73] This statue is in the Hildesheim Museum.

However, the webpage of the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim writes the name of Khufu’s vizier as Hem-iunu (*). Should not the museum that hosts the statue know the correct spelling of his name? In footnote 73, Islamic Awareness refers to relief fragments from the tomb of this man. These fragments are in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and their webpages also gives the name as Hemiunu (*). Why then does Islamic Awareness write "Statue of Hemon" under the image of this statue?

The second part of the caption from the IA-article is:

(b) The hieroglyph showing the name "Hemiunu".^[74]

Why did they write Hemon without quotation marks but put "Hemiunu" in quotes? That is all very deliberate psychology on their part. Footnote 74 refers to the standard reference on this man and his grave. When we consult this book, we learn the following:

Ḥm-Iwnw ( ) means “Servant of (the god of) Iunu”, Iunu being the old Egyptian name of Heliopolis (cf. Junker, Giza I, p. 148).
The manipulation by the IA-team becomes particularly obvious when we examine this footnote more closely:

[74] H. Junker, Giza I. Bericht über die von der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wein auf Gemeinsame Kosten mit Dr. Wilhelm Pelizaeus unternommenen. Grabungen auf dem Friedhof des Alten Reiches bei den Pyramiden von Giza, 1929, Volume I (Die Mastabas der IV. Dynastie auf dem Westfriedhof), Holder-Pichler-Tempsky A.-G.: Wein and Leipzig, pp. 132-162 for the complete description of Hemon's mastaba. The name and title of Hemon are discussed in pp. 148-151. For the hieroglyphs inscribed at the footstool of the statue of Hemon representing the titles see Plate XXIII; For a good discussion of reliefs of Hemon / Hemiunu, see W. S. Smith, "The Origin Of Some Unidentified Old Kingdom Reliefs", American Journal Of Archaeology, 1942, Volume 46, pp. 520-530. (Bold underline emphasis mine)

This book by Hermann Junker⁷ contains the official report of the archaeological excavation and examination of Hemiunu’s mastaba. In it, the name “Ḥmỉwnw” is mentioned over and over again, at least 130 times (e.g. p.132, 148-151), but this book does not once use the spelling “Hemon”. Why then does the IA-team refer to this work as if it is speaking about Hemon, and that even several times?⁸ This authoritative source definitely does not support the choice of spelling used by Islamic Awareness. Like in the case of Ranke, they are again misrepresenting their referenced source. Another standard reference by Peter Jánosi⁹ consistently uses the spelling “Hemiunu” (77 times, e.g. p. 125) and the transcription “Ḥm-ỉwnw”, and one cannot find even once the spelling “Hemon”.

Moreover, in the same footnote, they refer to William Stevenson Smith’s article, “The Origin Of Some Unidentified Old Kingdom Reliefs”, also trying to suggest that he speaks of Hemon, but Smith consistently writes “Hemiuwn”, never Hemon.
What then is the origin of the spelling “Hemon” that is found in a number of popular publications? The explanation is easy. The ancient Egyptian city Iunu (Heliopolis) is pronounced “On” in the Coptic language (i.e. about 2500 years after the time of Hemiunu).¹⁰ So, his name became Hem-On instead of Hem-Iunu in the Coptic language, but this appears to be an anachronistic spelling.¹¹ To my knowledge, Egyptologists do not use the spelling “Hemon” in scholarly books and articles.
Even Wikipedia knows this; their entry on Hemon redirects to Hemiunu.¹²
If Islamic Awareness wants to insist that Hemon is the more appropriate way of writing this name, then they need to find a scholarly reference, i.e. an article in a peer-reviewed journal of Egyptology or an academic monograph, which carefully argues why the pronunciation “Hemon” is to be preferred over “Ḥemiunu”. Or they need to argue this case themselves, but merely pointing to Clayton’s book is not sufficient to establish their desired spelling, as much as I understand the appeal it has for them due to its visual similarity to the name Haman.
It is particularly ironic that Islamic Awareness specifically states in footnote 74,

The name and title of Hemon are discussed in pp. 148-151.

because they do not take this discussion seriously and they still write “Hemon” instead of “Ḥmỉwnw” as it is written in these pages that present the analysis of this name.¹³

Incidentally, in Ranke’s dictionary of Egyptian personal names, just one page before their favorite “Haman” of Bucaille-an origin, one can find his name transcribed as “ḥm-ỉwn” (Vol. 1, p. 239, No. 18).
Given that the Muslim missionaries from Islamic Awareness have (allegedly?) consulted the scholarly literature¹⁴ and have seen the way this name is consistently transliterated there, it is difficult to not conclude that they are deliberately trying to mislead the readers by using another spelling and trying to support that by a reference to a book for popular consumption.
To recapitulate: Not one of the scholarly references which IA themselves list in their footnotes uses the name “Hemon”. Most importantly, the book by Junker not only uses the name “Ḥmỉwnw” but explicitly discusses the derivation of the transliteration and Islamic Awareness specifically points to the pages of this discussion. But then they throw all that over board and speak of Hemon based on Clayton who does not give any reason for his choice.
Then, their final paragraph about Hemiunu:

He is said to have been buried in a large and splendid tomb at Saqqara in the royal necropolis. There is an extant statue of Hemiunu / Hemon, which resides in the Hildesheim Museum [Fig. 6(a)]. Although the name Hemiunu / Hemon is quite similar to Haman, they are written differently [compare the hieroglyphs in Fig. 6(b) with Fig. (4)] and perhaps also pronounced differently. The writing of Hemiunu employs Gardiner signs U36 O28. This is different from what we have seen for hmn which employs V28 Y5 N35.

Well, “Ḥmỉwnw” is not quite so similar to Haman as Islamic Awareness would like to make us believe, and Hemon is simply not an accurate transliteration. It is not used in the scholarly literature. The fact that in hieroglyphs the name “Ḥmỉwnw” is written and pronounced differently than the name “Ḥmn-ḥ” is true but irrelevant to this discussion. Even if these two Egyptian names had been identical, what would be the implication? The point is that both of them are pronounced differently than the name Haman in the Qur’an and neither one of them is a possible candidate for being this mysterious Haman.

Conclusion
Even though Islamic Awareness made a valiant effort and came up with not only one but even three different Hamans, under closer examination not one of them is a possible solution and therefore there is still no credible candidate in recorded Egyptian history that could validate the Haman of the Qur’an as a historical figure.
With this, the discussion is back to square one. The only remaining credible explanation for the occurrence of Haman in the Qur’an is that he was ignorantly confused with or deliberately modelled upon the Haman in the Book of Esther (cf. Appendix 1 and Appendix 2).

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Footnotes

¹ Actually, yet another "revised & updated" version of the same argument, this time under the new title "Haman in the Quran: A Historical Assessment", was included on pages 176-189 of the series Encyclopaedic survey of Islamic culture by Mohamed Taher, Anmol Publications, 1997, found on Google Books (*).

² For example, these pages: (1) The Word "Haman", (2) Khufu: Firaun of the Holy Qur'an, and (3) yet another discussion (*). Then there is a rather unique article, titled Pyramids, variously attributed to Maulana Iftikhar Ahmad (1997) and Iftkhar Khan (10/07/03), that mixes the two theories, i.e. the author identifies Harun Yahya' (i.e. Bucaille's) "head of stone quarry workers" with Hemiunu without realizing the severe chronological incompatibility between the two.

³ However, reflecting on this approach for just a short moment, Muslims and non-Muslims alike should be able to understand that adding several obviously wrong theories doesn’t increase the probability for a genuine solution even the least bit.

⁴ This is, after all, a response to the article by Islamic Awareness. Should they decide to abandon their support of the Haman hoax created by Bucaille and instead argue the hypothesis of Sher Mohammad Syed, we will certainly find time to return to this discussion in more detail.

⁵ Most languages change over time and that includes the way people are named. To illustrate the problem: In the English and the German language, the two languages I am very familiar with, there are very few names which were in use 1300 years ago in Germany or England which are still used today. Specifically, Egyptian language scholars have identified a number of periods or stages of development and Hemiunu belongs to the period of Old Egyptian (2600-2000 BC). Then comes Middle Egyptian (2000-1300 BC) and if the Exodus took place around 1210 as Islamic Awareness assumes, then the Haman of the Qur'an belongs to the period of Late Egyptian (1300-700 BC), cf. this categorization.

⁶ Appendix 6 proves that they knew very well that the usual spelling is Hemiunu. Despite specifically asking for it, they were apparently unable to find any reasonable argument in support of the alternative spelling Hemon, or they would surely have mentioned it in their article.

⁷ The bibliographical reference given by Islamic Awareness contains several typos. Correct is: Hermann Junker, Gîza I: Bericht über die von der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien auf gemeinsame Kosten mit Dr. Wilhelm Pelizaeus unternommenen Grabungen auf dem Friedhof des Alten Reiches bei den Pyramiden von Gîza, 1929, Band I (Die Mastabas der IV. Dynastie auf dem Westfriedhof), Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky A.-G.: Wien and Leipzig, pp. 132-162. Less cumbersome would be this abbreviated version: Hermann Junker, Gîza I. Die Mastabas der IV. Dynastie auf dem Westfriedhof. Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Wien und Leipzig 1929, S. 132-162.

⁸ The reader can easily confirm that the author consistently uses “Hmiwnw”, or rather “Ḥmỉwnw”, and never “Hemon” because the book is online as a searchable PDF file (26.1 MB).

⁹ Peter Jánosi, Giza in der 4. Dynastie. Die Baugeschichte und Belegung einer Nekropole des Alten Reiches. Band I: Die Mastabas der Kernfriedhöfe und die Felsgräber. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien 2005 (PDF; 8.9 MB)

¹⁰ This city is also referred to as On in Greek literature (according to the Wikipedia entry Heliopolis, 3 October 2009), and probably also in Hebrew in Genesis 41:45,50 and 46:20.

¹¹ And it would not be the only anachronistic terminology in Clayton's book. On pp. 45-46, Clayton writes, "It is curious that Khufu should be placed third in line; there do not appear to be any other records of an intervening pharaoh between him and his father Snefru." Note that Clayton calls the rulers of Egypt "pharaohs" nearly a millenium before the time of Joseph, an anachronism which Islamic Awareness abhors so much that it prompted them to write a long article about it (here) and which they consider sufficient to dismiss the Bible as unreliable. Strangely, the same anachronism in Clayton’s book was no reason for the IA-authors to dismiss this book. They apparently still consider it sufficiently trustworthy to make it the basis for their use of the name Hemon in preference over Hemiunu.

¹² However, even the Wikipedia entry on Hemiunu is not free from Islamic propaganda, see the Excursus.

¹³ Or is mentioning and recommending what they themselves do not actually believe in part of a new strategy of confusing the readers? In other words, just as Islamic Awareness references the discussion of this name by Junker but does not believe it to be true, so they merely list Hemiunu in their discussion of the person of Haman in the Qur'an even though they do not believe that he actually is this Haman?

¹⁴ Or can we not assume that they read at least those articles or entries or chapters of a book which they referenced?

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The Haman Hoax
Answering Islam Home Page

Not the Templars, but the enemies of the Jews, arrested on the 13th day of the month.

- Bigger than Dan Brown!

by

Damien F. Mackey

Introduction

For some, the origin of the 13^th as being an unlucky day has arisen from a famous conspiracy in the Old Testament’s Book of Esther; for others it may have come about due to an incident in (presumably) modern European history about which very much has been written in recent times. In the first case, in the Book of Esther, it is the plot of the evil Haman and his co-conspirators to annihilate all the Jews in the 13^th day of the month Adar (Esther 3:6-13). This is perhaps the first famous 13^th day incident in history, that is if you believe that the story of Queen Esther is in fact history, rather than just a pious and edifying fiction. (On this, see our: http://amaic1.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/the-talmud-declares-that-when.html). But some historians regard the arrest of the leaders of the Knights Templar on the 13^th day of October, 1307, as the reason why the 13^thday is considered to be unlucky. Sharan Newman has considered the thirteenth in the context of the Templars in her brand new book, The Real History Behind the Templars (Penguin 2009, p. 249):

I have often heard that our superstition about Friday the thirteenth being an unlucky day stems from the arrest of the Templars. It’s very difficult to trace the origin of a folk belief. It does seem that the thirteenth was an unlucky number long before the Templars, and there are traditions that Friday is an unlucky day, perhaps stemming from Friday being the day of Jesus’ crucifixion. I haven’t been able to discover when the two beliefs were joined. It was certainly unlucky for Jacques [de Molay] and the rest of the Templars. In fact, Jacques’ world was shattered in the predawn hours of the next morning, Friday, October 13, when the Temple in Paris was invaded by agents of the king.“All the Templars that could be found in the kingdom of France were, all at once, in the same moment, seized and locked up in different prisons, after an order and decree of the king”.

[End of quote]

So which of these views, if either, is the correct one?

I would say both.

But how, both?
 

When reading Newman’s critical account of the famous Templar incident I was struck for the first time (even though I had read about this many times before) by the host of likenesses in the overall account of this gripping story with the details of the biblical Book of Esther.

The comparisons are amazing.

Just to take as a starting-point the brief account given above by Newman, we have here all of the basic elements that we find also in the plot of the Book of Esther, namely:

The leader of a group of supposed conspirators arrested without warning

at the behest of the king (not mentioned in the above account),

by“agents of the king”,

on the thirteenth day of a month,

with his fellow conspirators also seized “all at once”.

This action was followed by the execution of the leader and of all of his followers.

Both accounts are fascinating.

The Book of Esther is considered by some to be a well worked out piece of literature, with not too much in it by way of historical reality. And, there is again so much intrigue surrounding the Knights Templar - as nearly anyone living today would probably know, thanks to authors such as Dan Brown - that it is often hard to separate what is fact about them from what is fiction. Books continue to be churned out on this most fascinating of subjects. The logistics of the arrest of these formidable knights, on the 13^th day, “in the same moment”, for instance, can almost beggar belief. And for what reason? There is no unanimity at all about the why’s and the wherefore’s of it. It is all a bit bizarre, something like the cruel execution of the old and amiable Socrates.

In various of my now many historical reconstructions (some might call them historical deconstructions), dedicated to Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega, and Lord of all history, I have argued that some key Old Testament personages and events have, strangely, been sucked into the Black Hole of so-called ‘Dark Ages’ history (600-900 AD), where they have been re-cast - given a modern colouring (names, geography). The supposed incident of king Philip the IV’s capture of the chief Templars, on that fateful 13^th day of October 1307, is of course outside that timescale. However, thanks to Newman’s critical account of it, I have been suddenly struck by the host of likenesses in the overall account of it with the Book of Esther, with which I am well familiar.

Though this event, as just said, falls a bit outside the ‘Dark Ages’ period, it, too, seems to be largely fictional. I am not going to go so far as to deny the historical existence of the main players in the drama, but I am going to make bold as to insist that many of the dramatic events in this terrible tale are completely fictitious as to AD time, though they did actually occur (with different names and geography, of course) back in about the C6th BC, in an equally terrifying conspiracy of biblical proportions: the story of Queen Esther.

It will be the purpose of this article to unravel the modern tale by showing how it, in its basic elements, finds its real place in the Book of Esther.

An Important Note About the Characters Involved

As was the case in my article, “Beware of Greeks Bearing Myths” (http://bookofjob-amaic.blogspot.com/search/label/Beware%20of%20Greeks%20Bearing%20Gifts)- in which I had argued that the biblical books of Tobit and Job underlie much of Homer’s Odyssey - I had noted that what certain characters might have done or said in the original (biblical) versions, can be, in the case of the copycat version, transferred to another character: “I need to point out that it sometimes happens that incidents attributed to the son, in the Book of Tobit, might, in The Odyssey, be attributed to the son's father, or vice versa (or even be attributed to some less important character). The same sort of mix occurs with the female characters”, so now do I say the same thing again in the case of the Book of Esther as absorbed into the presumed C14th AD scenario.

So who are the main players in the supposed C14th incident involving the Knights Templar, who I believe find their basis in the Book of Esther?

Most obviously, to begin with, there is the king.

The King

King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther and King Philip IV le Bel (“the Fair”)in the C14th. Both can be competent, but they are also flawed. Both are keen on money. Both have a tendency towards gullibility - being “duped and taken advantage of by his entourage” is a description of King Philip that we shall encounter below - he being prepared to leave important affairs in the hands of his trusted officials. Philip IV’s supposed contemporary, Bernard Saisset, certainly thought that Philip le Bel was all show and no substance. Thus Newman (p. 241):

One comment that Saisset made became famous throughout Europe. “Our king resembles an owl, the fairest of birds but worthless. He is the handsomest man in the world, but he only knows how to look at people unblinkingly, without speaking”.

And similarly, p. 244:

Historians have disagreed as to how much Philip was the instigator of the deeds attributed to him. ….

Another contemporary said, “Our king is an apathetic man, a falcon. While the Flemings acted, he passed his time in hunting …. He is a child; he does not see that he is being duped and taken advantage of by his entourage” ….

This last aspect of the king’s make up is certainly apparent at least in his counterpart in the Book of Esther, king Ahasuerus (of whom we do not have a physical description). King Ahasuerus, after he had been duped by Haman and his fellow conspirators, seems then to have come to his senses, to have matured. Thus he decrees with the wisdom of hindsight (Esther 16:8-9): “In the future we will take care to render our kingdom quiet and peaceable for all, by changing our methods and always judging what comes before our eyes with more equitable consideration”.

Still, Ahasuerus must have been basically a most competent king to have been able to rule over so massive an empire (127 provinces, Esther 1:1). It is only to be expected that he would have had to delegate responsibilities to his ministers. He had an active and close-knit bureaucracy (Esther 12:10: 1:13, 14; 2:14; 3:12; 4:6; 7:9) and he kept close about him “sages who knew the laws (for this was the king’s procedure toward all who were versed in law and custom” (1:13). He had also a most efficient courier and postal service (3:13; 8:1; 12:22). Newman has made some favourable comments on King Philip as an administrator (p. 245): “From looking at the records, I’m inclined to think he was smarter than people thought and not just a puppet …”.

Another of the significant changes in King Philip’s reign is his reliance on lawyers to maintain the workings of the state. Unlike his ancestors, Philip’s advisers were not relatives or knights who owed him military service, but legal administrators. “The strongest, most highly developed … branch of the government was the judicial system” …. Philip was a master at using this system to give legal justification for all his actions, including annexing the land of other countries, bringing down a pope, expelling the Jews, and, of course, destroying the Templars.

His legacy is still being disputed. In many ways he strengthened the French government …. He established a weblike bureaucracy that, as far as I can tell, still survives.

Essentially this is all perfectly apt for king Ahasuerus as well. Did he not, for instance, employ his legal team to determine the case of his first wife, Queen Vashti, whom he subsequently dismissed on their advice (Esther 12:12-21)? – thereby paving the way for the young Esther. He also greatly strengthened his kingdom, adding further tribute to his treasuries (Esther 10:1-2): “King Ahasuerus laid tribute on the land and on the islands of the sea [presumably Greece]. All the acts of his power and might, and the full account of the high honor of Mordecai, to which the king advanced him, are they not written in the annals of the kings of Media and Persia?”

The Wicked Conspirator

In the Book of Esther the chief conspirator is of course Haman himself, who, as we have read, conspires to massacre all the Jews. Haman is the archetypal secret Masonic or Illuminati type of conspirator, bent on world domination. Now Jacques de Molay, because of the ambiguity (good and bad) associated with him, also partly fills the role of Haman, as the wicked conspirator, but partly, too, he emerges as the righteous persecuted party. Newman tells as follows of this most enigmatic Jacques de Molay (p. 227):

Jacques de Molay, the final Grand Master of the Templars, has become a figure of legend. To some he was a martyr, to others a heretic. He was either the victim of a plot or justly punished for the crimes of the order. Plays have been written about him. A Masonic youth group is named after him. Was he the last master of a secret society? Was he a heretic who denied the divinity of Christ? Or was he just a devout soldier caught up in the snares of the king of France, a relic of a dying world?

Who was this man who presided over the Templars in their last days?

Similarly Guillaume de Nogaret, the king’s adviser and henchman, can on the one hand represent the wicked Haman in the C14th saga, whilst, on the other hand, he can appear to be the hero, or righteous adviser, like Mordecai, who got rid of a most pernicious influence (Haman/fallen Templars). It is de Nogaret who apparently organises the 13^th day capture of the Templars.

For some, though de Nogaret definitely had an evil (Haman-like) reputation. Thus Newman (pp. 244-245):

[King Philip’s] close adviser Guillaume de Nogaret has been blamed for every evil thing Philip did, especially regarding Pope Boniface and the Temple. It’s possible that Philip was easily duped. It’s also possible that Philip, like many people, preferred to make a good impression on the public and let underlings take the heat. He might have been a Teflon king.

…. I’m sure the matter will continue to be debated for years.

“[Nogaret] also earned the enmity of a much better writer than he”, Newman goes on to tell (p. 274).“In the Divine Comedy Dante compared Nogaret to Pontius Pilate …”.

This particular Guillaume may very well merge in the story of the Templars with Guillaume de Paris, the Inquisitor General of Paris, whose directions King Philip was, as we shall read below, inclined to follow.

The Persecuted Jews

Persecuted Jews are a common factor in both ‘histories’, the biblical and the C14th. Newman considers the Jews in our context in a section, “Philip and the Jews”, pp. 243-244:

Money still being a problem, Philip’s next target was the Jewish population … they were already set apart from the rest of the population and could be more easily targeted. They were not numerous and concentrated mostly in the major cities. Jews were also considered a separate society ….

By 1306 …Philip began looking for a new source of cash. In the Jews he suddenly noticed a section of the population that had a good deal of disposable income and who wouldn’t be missed at all.

…. Philip made a plan to expel the Jews and take their property. His excuse was that they were known usurers who gouged honest Christians with exorbitant interest ….

Actually it was Haman who had prompted the king about the Jews in the kingdom, owing to the fact that the Jew, Mordecai, had refused to do obeisance to Haman, despite the king’s directives. In the following account, Haman, after having cast lots and having determined on the 13^th as the most propitious day, then tells king Ahasuerus about these unco-operative Jews in his kingdom. It is Haman, too, who adds the money element to it. The singularity of the Jews is again here, as in the case of Philip IV, a major issue (Esther 3:8-9):

‘There is a certain people scattered and separated among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued for their destruction, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king’s business, so that they may put it into the king’s treasuries’.

Apparently the Templars were also amongst the beneficiaries of the Jewish purge (Newman, p. 244): “Evidence that the Templars weren’t expecting to be put among the outsiders was the fact they bought the synagogue complex in Belvèze either from the fleeing Jews or from the king. The complex was walled and had a moat, perfect to the needs of the Templars …”.

That King Philip IV was interested in money and pomp is apparent from any written account of him. And these identical factors also seem to be well to the fore in the Book of Esther in regard to king Ahasuerus. Thus he, in a great banquet, “displayed the great wealth of his kingdom and the splendor and pomp of his majesty for many days, one hundred eighty days in all” (Esther 1:4). Just as Haman had provided big money for the king’s treasury, “so that the king would not suffer any loss”, so presumably had “the treasurer of the Templars [given] Philip a loan of 200,000 florins … enormous loan …” (Newman, p. 231). Around 1297, the king had collected another sum from the Templars (p. 230): “… King Philip had borrowed 2,500 livres from the Temple”.

Haman seemed to know the empire better than did the king, as he has to tell the king of the geography of the Jews. The Jews were largely at this time in the‘Babylonian Captivity’, due to the destruction of their city and Temple by king Nebuchednezzar II. And indeed we read that there was also a ‘Babylonian Captivity’ of Temple Knights as late as 1302, but by the Saracens, supposedly, not by the Chaldeans (Newman p. 230): “… the brethren of the Temple were dishonourably conducted to Babylon…”.

Likewise, Jacques de Molay well knew the kingdom of his king and beyond it, due to his vast travels (ibid.): “The next two years [1294-1295] were spent in a tireless crisscross of the countries in which the Templars were most invested: France, Provence, Burgundy, Spain, Italy, and England”.

The Band of Conspirators and/or the Persecuted

The enigmatic Knights Templar are at once - because of the mystery surrounding them- the dark conspirators, Haman’s allies, of the Book of Esther, but they are also the ones who, like the persecuted in the Book of Esther, are marked out for a 13^th day annihilation. The “rival operation” (as discussed in our Five First Saturdays book, with its many references to the Book of Esther, at: http://amaic2.blogspot.com.au/2008/04/five-first-saturdays-of-our-lady-of.html), that complete bouleversement in the plot of the Book of Esther, with the persecuted suddenly becoming the persecutors, is what has apparently caused so much of the confusion.

The tension between the two warring sides, symbolised in “Mordecai’s Dream” by the “two great dragons” (Esther 11:2-12), is picked up in the Templar story, as we shall see, in the frequent rivalry and competition between the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers, who outlast them. “The Templars and Hospitallers are often seen as rivals, even enemies”, writes Newman (p. 157). And (p. 159): “The main issues that divided the two orders were political. Although in theory they were supposed to be outside of local squabbles, in reality it was impossible not to get pulled into them”. On one occasion, in a dispute over property, “the Hospitallers supported the Genoese and the Templars the Venetians. This more than once led to blows between the knights”.

Does this all symbolically recall the great political division between the Persians and the ‘Macedonians’ in the Book of Esther?

Comparing the Book of Esther with

the Fall of the Knights Templar

127 Reasons to Compare the Book of Esther and the Downfall of the Templars

King Ahasuerus is introduced into the Book of Esther as the ruler of a vast empire (1:1): “This happened in the days of Ahasuerus, the same Ahasueurus who ruled over one hundred twenty-seven [127] provinces from India to Ethiopia”.Whilst the extent of the territory ruled by the king of France could by no means compare with that, what we have here in the Book of Esther is a second figure (apart from the number 13) that re-occurs in the Templar saga. I refer to the number 127. It is the number of provinces in the king’s empire. It is also, as Newman has noted, the number of charges issued against the Templars (p. 265): “In the next few months [after the first questioning of de Molay on October 24, 1307], the list of accusations grew to 127”.

The Mysterious Haman

Haman has been a person most difficult to identify historically, but even to understand properly within the context of the Book of Esther.

Who was he, and from whence did he arise?

Even his nationality seems to vary from text to text: ‘Bougaean’, ‘Agagite’,‘Macedonian’.

We have seen above similar questions asked about de Molay’s origins, whose birthplace too, apparently, is by no means certain. Thus Newman (p. 228):

The place of [de Molay’s] birth is not certain, either. He seems to have been from a village in Burgundy, but there are several there named Molay. His biographer, Alain Demurger, has narrowed it down to two towns …. But one can’t be certain about even that.

….Jacques’ family and early life are a complete mystery. We don’t know why he decided to join the Templars. There isn’t a mention of him in any surviving Templar documents that might tell us what he did before he was elected Grand Master. It seems ironic that the most famous of the Templar Grand Masters is also the one we have the least information on.

Ironic indeed!

Newman has dedicated her Chapter Thirty-Two to a character whom she says has been “considered the most sinister”, Guillaume de Nogaret. She begins (p. 272):

Of all the people involved in the arrest and trials of the Templars, Guillaume de Nogaret has been considered the most sinister, the man who was the mastermind behind everything that happened. This servant of the king had cut his teeth on the stage with Pope Boniface VIII in 1303 and was ready once again to prove himself to his master, King Philip IV, by destroying the Templars as well. Many have considered him the evil genius behind the trial of the Templars as well as the campaign against Boniface.

Who was this man? Was he pulling the strings to make King Philip dance to his tune or was it Guillaume who was the puppet, taking the fall for the king?

What a marvellous description - this could also be of the rise and fall of Haman!

The name“Nogaret” is, according to Newman (ibid.), “not the name of a place but is a variation on the Occitan word nogarède, or “walnut grower” ….Interestingly, the Jews, on the Feast of Purim – the feast that grew from the Jewish victory over Haman (Esther 10:13; 11:1) – eat what they call “Haman’s ears” (Oznei Haman); a special triangular pastry whose ingredients include chopped up walnuts.

Nogaret’s rise to power had been rapid, just as Haman’s was (Esther 3:1-2):

… King Ahasuerus promoted Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him and set his seat above all the officials who were with him. And all the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate bowed down and did obeisance to Haman; for the king had so commanded concerning him ….

Newman (pp. 273-274):

Sometime around 1296, Nogaret received a call from Paris. He’d made the big time, legal counsel to the king! …. Over the next few years he successfully handled several negotiations for Philip. In 1299, he was rewarded by being promoted to the nobility. After that, he was entitled to call himself “knight” …

Nogaret seems to have been Philip’s main counselor during the king’s battle with Pope Boniface. ….

In Philip’s confrontation with the pope, Nogaret was apparently the guiding hand and also the one who physically led the attack on the pope in his retreat at Anagni in 1303. ….

In [his use of the media], Nogaret was a master. According to Nogaret’s defense of the king’s actions, Boniface was a heretic, idolater, murderer, and sodomite. He also practised usury, bribed his way into his position, and made trouble wherever he went. …. These charges were never proved but they convinced many. They also gave Guillaume de Nogaret good material for his diatribe against the Templars four years later.

Similarly, Haman had earlier dubious ‘form’. He had actually been secretly plotting, via the agency of “two eunuchs of the king”, against king Ahasuerus himself (Esther 12:1-6). Haman had obviously covetted the first place in the empire right from the start. The plot was foiled by Mordecai, who then became the object of Haman’s wrath. But Haman was proud. “… he thought it beneath him to lay hands on Mordecai alone. So, having been told who Mordecai’s people were, Haman plotted to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus” (Esther 3:6).

As noted earlier, Guillaume de Nogaret may also be merged with Guillaume of Paris, at whose instigation King Philip claimed to have sent out his secret orders for the arrest of the Templars on that fateful 13^th day. Newman (p. 249):

Philip winds up by telling his officials that he is only taking this drastic step at the request of the Inquisitor General in Paris, and with the permission of the pope, because the Templars pose a clear and present danger to all the people of Christendom.

….Guillaume de Paris, the Inquisitor, was also Philip’s private confessor.

This is exactly the same scenario as in the case of Haman’s plot. The king is, in this instance at least, passive. And, for Ahasuerus, it is owing to the advice of the “counselors”, as he said, with “Haman … in charge of affairs”, that the king had proposed to annihilate the Jews (Esther 13:3-7):

When I asked my counselors how this might be accomplished, Haman - who excels among us in sound judgment, and is distinguished for his unchanging goodwill and steadfast fidelity, and has attained the second place in the kingdom - pointed out to us that among all the nations in the world there is scattered a certain hostile people, who have laws contrary to those of every nation and continually disregard the ordinances of kings, so that the unifying of the kingdom that we honourably intend cannot be brought about. We understand that this people, and it alone, stands constantly in opposition to every nation, perversely following a strange manner of life and laws, and is ill-disposed to our government, doing all the harm they can so that our kingdom may not attain stability.

Therefore we have decreed that those indicated to you in the letters written by Haman, who is in charge of affairs and is our second father, shall all – wives and children included – be utterly destroyed by the swords of their enemies, without pity or restraint, on the fourteenth day of the twelfth month, Adar, of this present year, so that those who have long been hostile and remain so may in a single day go down in violence to Hades, and leave our government completely secure and untroubled hereafter.

The Counter Plots

In the Book of Esther the original plot is the secret covenant of Haman and his allies to annihilate the Jews. The conspirators then cleverly, through deceit, manage to gain the king’s co-operation in their evil plan. Eventually, of course, all that is turned around, thanks to Queen Esther, prompted by Mordecai, leading to the exposure of the conspiracy to the king and the death of the conspirators. In the Templar tale, the Templars are both the secret schemers, supposedly (thus reflecting one aspect of the Esther story), but they are also the victims of the king’s wrath (thus reflecting another aspect of it).

The motivation for the destruction of the Jews in the story of Esther is basically Haman’s pride and ambition, hurt by the refusal of Mordecai to bow down before him as the king had commanded all the officials to do (Esther 3:2). Lots (“Pur”) were cast before Haman to determine the most propitious day for the destruction of the Jews (3:7). According to Queen Esther, in her prayer to God:“…[the conspirators] have covenanted with their idols to abolish what [God’s] mouth has ordained … to open the mouths of nations for the praise of vain idols, and to magnify forever a mortal king”. In this, including also Haman’s accusation above that “this people, and it alone, stands constantly in opposition to every nation, perversely following a strange manner of life and laws, and is ill-disposed to our government”, I think we have the very foundation of the charges against the secretive Templars for idolatry, singularity and their bowing down.

The secretive Haman and his fellow conspirators were certainly practising idolatry- they were up to no good. But the charge of secrecy against the Templars may be a bit odd, as this was typical of religious orders. Newman explains it (p. 269):

On the accusation that the Templars met at night, and in secret, that’s one of those no-win situations. They sometimes met at night after reciting the predawn prayers called matins. According to the rule, they were first to check up on their horses and gear and then could go to bed. But this was also a convenient time for holding chapter meetings. The meetings were held in secret in the sense that what happened in them was not to be discussed with outsiders.

The odd thing about the charge is that most religious orders had closed meetings. The purpose of the chapter was to discuss faults and problems. These weren’t things they wanted the public at large to know about. I don’t know why no Templars bothered to mention this ….

{Because it didn’t actually happen}.

What is most sinister and Mason-like in the case of Haman and company, turns out to be perfectly normal, however, in the context of a religious order such as the Templars. “Why did Philip decide that the Templars would be his next target?”Newman asks next (p. 248):

It’s not really clear, even with the mass of material his counsellors wrote to justify his actions. If we take these documents at face value, the pious king had recently been horrified to learn that the Templars were not as they seemed. Instead of being the pillars of Christendom, a bulwark against the heathen, they had really renounced Christ and were working actively against Him and, by extension, against the most Christian king of France and, oh yes, the papacy.

One month before the arrest, on September 14, 1307, Philip sent secret orders to his officials throughout the land. His words leave no doubt of his shock and horror at what he was asking them to do.

Compare this with Haman’s accusations against the Jews. But most especially also, later, king Ahasuerus’realisation in his decree of what Haman was really all about, which could almost be a manifesto of what the Templars were supposed to have degenerated to (Esther 16:2-7):

Many people, the more they are honoured with the most generous kindness of their benefactors, the more proud do they become, and not only seek to injure our subjects, but in their inability to stand prosperity, they even undertake to scheme against their own benefactors. They not only take away thankfulness from others, but, carried away by the boasts of those who know nothing of goodness, they even assume that they will escape the evil-hating justice of God, who always sees everything. And often many of those who are set in places of authority have been made in part responsible for the shedding of innocent blood, and have been involved in irremediable calamities, by the persuasion of friends who have been entrusted with the administration of public affairs, when these persons by the false trickery of their evil natures beguile the sincere goodwill of their sovereigns. What has been wickedly accomplished through the pestilent behavior of those who exercise authority unworthily can be seen, not so much from the more ancient records that we hand on, as from investigation to matters close at hand.

This situation explains the genuine shock of the (less than historically genuine, as according to the Templar story, at least) much less grand and eloquent king of France (Newman, p. 248):

“A bitter thing, a doleful thing, a thing horrible to contemplate, terrible to hear, a detestable crime, an execrable pollution, an abominable act, a shocking infamy, something completely inhuman, even more, outside of all humanity”.!!!

The men who received this must have been quaking in their boots as they read, not knowing what monster was about to be unleashed. Philip’s orders continue in this way for a full page before he lets on that the perpetrators of this evil are, gasp, the Templars! “Wolves in sheep’s clothing, under the habit of their order, they insult the faith. Our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified for the salvation of mankind, is crucified again in our time …”.

Likewise, the more composed king Ahasuerus, does not immediately name to whom he is referring. For, so far from what has been quoted above of his decree, the public would not have known about whom he was actually talking. But now, after his statement about his intending to be more prudent in the future (v. 8), Ahasuerus does name the chief culprit in this most damning statement (vv. 10-14):

For Haman son of Hammedatha, a Macedonian (really an alien to the Persian blood, and quite devoid of our kindliness), having become our guest, enjoyed so fully the goodwill that we have for every nation that he was called our father and was continually bowed down to by all as the person second to the royal throne. But, unable to restrain his arrogance, he undertook to relieve us of our kingdom and our life, and with intricate craft and deceit asked for the destruction of Mordecai, our saviour and personal benefactor, and of Esther, the blameless partner of our kingdom, together with their whole nation. He thought that by these methods he would catch us undefended and would transfer the kingdom of the Persians to the Macedonians.

Now, thisis a reason for a king’s anger!

King Philip’s letter was written on a 14th day, a figure that also appears in Haman’s decree for the slaughter of the Jews, “on the fourteenth day of the twelfth month” (Esther 13: 6). Just as king Ahasuerus had commanded, through Haman’s design, the destruction of all the Jews (vv. 6-7), so King Philip, likewise (Newman, p. 249):

…commands his men to arrest all the Templars in their jurisdiction and hold them. The officials are also to seize all their goods, both buildings and property, and hold them for the king (ad manum nostrum – “for our hand”), without using or destroying anything. Because, of course, if it should turn out that the Templars were innocent, everything ought to be returned to them just as they left it ….

To which Newman adds (in footnote 8): “If you believe this, I have some land in Atlantis I’d like to sell you”.

Greed, the procuring of the victims’ goods and property, was also a motivating factor in Haman’s cruel decree (Esther 3:13): “Letters were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces, giving orders to destroy, to kill and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods”. The“king’s provinces” here takes the place of “their jurisdiction” in the case of King Philip’s “men”.

It is noticeable that the Jews who were victorious on the 13^th day of the month, killing all their enemies, “laid no hands on the plunder”. Did Ahasuerus also decree in his case the equivalent of Philip’s ad manum nostrum? On the day of Haman’s death, Queen Esther had been given by the king “the house of Haman, the enemy of the Jews”. Then the king took off the signet ring, which he had taken from Haman, and gave it to Mordecai. So Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman” (8:1-2).

And, in the case of King Philip:

“It was rumoured that Philip even spent the night of October 13, 1307 at the Temple so that he could be the first to start counting the loot after the arrests. It’s a nice image”, writes Newman (p. 208), “but there is no evidence”. She is more definite that: “After the fall of the Templars, the Templar enclosure was taken over by the crown for a time before it was finally turned over to the Hospitallers”.

Again it is the same parallel scenario.

The king (Ahasuerus) has a sleepless night (the night before Haman’s arrest). (Esther 6:1). After the arrest, he takes over Haman’s possessions, holds them for a while, but then hands them over to Queen Esther (whose vindicated party “the Hospitallers” sometimes, as we have found, seem to represent).

Queen Esther

Does the regal person after whom the Book of Esther is named figure anywhere, in any shape or form, in our reconstructed history?

Not obviously. There is no queen of King Philip who appears able to match the status of Queen Esther by any stretch of the imagination. His wife, we are told, was “Jeanne, heiress of Navarre and Champagne” (Newman (p. 239).

A far more significant queen is Queen Melisande, from about a century earlier, presumably, who might be a faint reflection of Queen Esther. Newman has considered her important enough to have dedicated an entire chapter (Ten) to her, as “Melisande, Queen of Jerusalem”. There is perhaps an incident in the Book of Esther, known as “Esther’s banquet” (5:1-14; 7:1-10), where there may be something of a partly parallel situation of Melisande with Esther. Queen Esther is preparing to lure Haman into a snare for his destruction at a dinner attended by the king. According to the story, Queen Esther, previously, had bravely gone before the king to request that he and Haman attend a banquet that she had prepared for them (Esther 15). She had won over the king, who had then promised that he would fulfil whatever she might request, “even to the half of my kingdom” (5:1). Her only request at the first banquet would be for a repeat of it on the second day, “let the king and Haman come tomorrow to the banquet that I will prepare for them and then I will do as the king has said” (v. 8). A crucial section now follows that just may have some resonances in the Templar story, but not yet with Queen Melisande (vv. 9-14):

Haman went out that day happy and in good spirits. But when Haman saw Mordecai in the king’s gate, and observed that he neither rose nor trembled before him, he was infuriated with Mordecai; nevertheless Haman restrained himself and went home. Then he sent and called for his friends and his wife Zeresh, and Haman recounted to them the splendor of his riches, the number of his sons, all the promotions with which the king had honoured him, and how he had advanced Haman over the officials and the ministers of the king. Haman added, “Even Queen Esther let no one but myself come with the king to the banquet that she prepared. Tomorrow also I am invited by her, together with the king. Yet all this does me no good so long as I see the Jew Mordecai sitting at the king’s gate”.

In the Templar story, it is Jacques de Molay who is supposedly feeling secure, blissfully unaware of the trap into which he is about to plunge headlong. Of course he did not have a wife and many sons, as in the case of Haman. That part of the story may pertain to de Molay’s sometime ‘double’, de Nogaret who “had a wife Beatrix, and three children, Raymond, Guillaume and Guillemette …” (Newman p. 235). Nor was it a banquet that de Molay had attended on his last day, supposedly, but a funeral. Newman tells of it (p. 249):

On Thursday, October 12, 1307, Jacques de Molay attended the funeral of Catherine de Courtenay, the wife of Charles de Valois …. He was given a place of honor and even held one of the cords of the pall …. That night, he must have gone to bed feeling sure of his place in court society.

The“funeral” aspect of this story may have arisen from how it all develops, with the sleepless king finally recalling what Mordecai had done for him, and deciding to honour him. This all happens just prior to the second banquet (Esther 6:1-11). Certainly Haman is suddenly reduced from his high pitch of arrogance to a flat state of mourning: “… but Haman hurried to his house, mourning and with his head covered”. It sounds like a funeral alright! His wife then predicts her husband’s complete fall before Mordecai the Jew (v. 13).

It is during the second banquet, to which Haman is now whisked off (v. 14), that there occurs an incident with the queen that the already angry king views in the worst possible light. The terrified Haman (once Queen Esther has exposed him before the king as a mortal enemy) throws himself on the couch where Esther was reclining to beg his life from her. The king had just risen from the feast in wrath and gone into the palace garden (7:5-7). “When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall … the king said “Will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house?””.

Now this serious story may have its slight resonance in the following account that Newman gives about Queen Melisande at a banquet, where it is the queen herself who is up to mischief (p. 59):

William of Tyre relates with great relish a story of how the queen was having an affair with her cousin, Hugh of Le Puiset ….The tale says that, one day at a dinner, one of Hugh’s stepsons accused him of being Melisande’s lover and plotting to kill the king. The young man challenged Hugh to prove his innocence in combat. When the day came, Hugh was nowhere to be found. He was judged guilty and his lands forfeit.

The accuser of the rebel in the Book of Esther is the king’s eunuch, Harbona. The‘guilty’ man who has “his lands forfeit” is Haman. But the queen is not an active partner in any sort of affair with this guilty man, who had indeed harboured an ambition “to kill the king”. (And, when transferred to de Molay, the guilty man’s death is not by fire, but on the gallows). Thus Esther (7:9-10):

Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, “Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high”. And the king said, “Hang him on that”. So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.

Similarly King Philip makes his decision on the fate of de Molay in relation to his own palace garden (Newman p. 236):

King Philip was at his palace nearby and was immediately informed of the stand taken by Jacques and Geoffrey de Charney. The king had had enough. The chronicler, Guillaume de Nangis, says, “Without telling the clergy, by a prudent decision, that evening, he [the king] delivered the two Templars to the flames on a little island in the Seine, between the royal garden and the church of the Hermit brothers ….

King Ahasuerus had permitted Queen Esther to ask even for half of his kingdom. He subsequently gave her all of the deceased Haman’s property. In the Templar story it all goes one better – but most unbelievably. A whole kingdom is actually given to the Templars and the Hospitallers, as Newman tells (p. 157):

Many donation charters gave property equally to the Templars and Hospitallers. The most astonishing of these is that of Alfonso I, king of Aragon and Navarre, made in 1131 in which he left his entire kingdom to the Templars, Hospitallers, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ….

Conclusion

Dan Brown could never have guessed that the ancient Book of Esther, an inspired book of the Holy Scriptures, may contain all the secrets of the Knights Templar and may be the very key to unlocking their many mysteries.

Feast of Christ the King