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:

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:

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 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.

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:

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:

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:

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

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:

However, the webpage of the Roemer-und Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim writes the name of Khufu’s vizier as Hem-iunu (*).⁷ 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 webpage 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:

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:

This book by Hermann Junker⁸ 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?⁹ 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 Jánosi¹⁰ 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).¹¹ So, his name became Hem-On instead of Hem-Iunu in the Coptic language, but this appears to be an anachronistic spelling.¹² 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.¹³

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,

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.¹⁴

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 literature¹⁵ 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:

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).