Has the Haman of the Koran been found?

Inspired by the video by CaptainDisguise on Egypt and a Pharaoh, I pulled out a project which I had shelved for a year or so, as it stems from a translation cooperation with 80Koe, who thus deserves all credit due. Creating the video is quite tricky, multi level and requires a lot of leg-work. I will look into the claims made in the Koran and the subsequent justifications made by Muslims and one of my favourite frauds: Dr. Maurice Bucaille, surrounding a name in the Koran: Haman.

What most people here have probably seen is the video from the miracle factory "Harun Yahya".

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The claim is that a Haman was commissioned in his capacity as close advisor to "Pharaoh" (sic) or even being part of The Court of a Pharaoh, to build a tower reaching "heavens". This Haman is mentioned six times in the Koran (surah 28:6, 8, 38; surah 29:39 and surah 40:24 and 36). CaptainDisguise does an outstanding job of identifying the inconsistencies around a Pharaoh, the Pharaoh or just Pharaoh as is mentioned in the Koran, where he is called Firoun (Fir`awn).

From the video of CaptainDisguise we know the attributes of the Pharaoh of the Bibles and the Koran is just as fictitious as is Moses himself. But what about Haman? The only Haman I have come across is in the Biblical book of Esther, where he is placed into Babylon and roughly 1000 years after the Pharaoh associated with Moses to build - a tower. It seems the authors of the Koran once again mixed up stories - unless Bucaille is right, of course. The video and the various Muslim Dawah sites all copy the same nonsense and parrot the lies of Bucaille. I will try here to show why I call this nonsense and outright lies.

And just when I thought I was incredibly clever, when researching some background, I came across a site (answering-islam.org), where a Jochen Katz debunks the entire story in great detail and with more knowledge than I have. But I was already halfway through this, so I took some of his findings, included them here and decided to finalise this in video format. I don't agree in every detail with their findings, especially the conclusion.

In his 1995 book "Moses and Pharaoh: The Hebrews In Egypt", Bucaille claims that he has unravelled the mystery and he can prove that Haman existed as a close advisor to the Pharaoh. And this is what Muslims consider to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They go and spend a lot of time disassembling the Biblical account in Esther, showing how it can't be trusted and that this makes their own version the correct one. Then they show in great detail how the Rosetta stone has enabled us to decipher hieroglyphs, unfortunately overshooting the mark by claiming that all hieroglyphic orthography is known today, which is not true. They follow Bucaille's story, without really adapting to reality, which, as some research shows, they are fully aware of.

As I don't have access to the book itself, I will use the excerpts as found on the page by Jochen Katz and www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Contrad/External/haman.html, where they cite the book and try to prove the claims as being correct. So let's go to the beginning.

What Bucaille claims:

We will show that the name, as it is written in Arabic in the Qur’an, is the exact transliteration of the name of a person whose hieroglyphic orthography is perfectly known today.

Well, if you look in the Koran it is written as

هامان

which is haa alif mim alif nun. Door-post: ح ḥ, Koran : ه h

So we have the consonants haa, a mim and a nun plus 2 vowels. The haa in Arabic is pronounced similar to the English h in hat. The Egyptian hieroglyph however, is pronounced more like the Arabic version of gh. So it is not a perfect transliteration. A perfect transliteration does not exist anyway. Similarly, the Egyptian hieroglyphs do not show any vowels, so we have hmn, which could mean anything from haman or himon to homuni. The hieroglyphic orthography is NOT perfectly known today as there are some letter combinations which still elude us.

So, all we have so far is a match consisting of 2 letters, the m and the n.

One of the most prominent French Egyptologists, fulfilling these conditions, was kind enough to answer the question. (The conditions being: Egyptologist and specialist in classical Arabic)

I find this statement extremely weird, given that Muslims love name dropping. Here, Bucaille magically comes up with an unknown expert of everything, without naming her or him, without showing what exactly makes this expert an expert and in what field. No references to papers or credentials, just: a prominent Egyptologist.

This is the second expert Bucaille claims to have consulted, but I would imagine that no renowned expert would associate herself or himself to an endeavour such as this. I also think that Bucaille simply invented these experts to boost his credibility. And reading up on the topic will show that I am not alone with this impression.

I showed him the word “Haman” that I had copied exactly like it is written in the Qur'an

If you have an expert in classical or ancient Arabic she or he should not really be surprised to see a page from the Koran.

he advised me to consult the Dictionary of Personal Names of the New Kingdom by Ranke

In every field you have standard or reference works. Hermann Ranke is one of them. If someone claims to be an Egyptologist and needs to be pointed to Ranke, it immediately disqualifies him from knowing anything about the topic. Anyone even remotely interested in Egyptology knows Ranke. In addition, the book he quotes does not exist. Ooops. Bucaille is so desperate to get Haman into the era of Ramesses and Merenptah of the 19 Dynasty, the New Kingdom period of Egyptian history, which ended ~1200 BCE, commonly associated with Moses that he invents a title.

The title he presumably refers to is a book by Hermann Ranke called “Die Ägyptischen Personennamen” (Egyptian Names, covering roughly 3000 years of Egyptian history), which consists of several volumes, but none with any suffix resembling New Kingdom.

What is actually comical is what happens when this is copied to websites such as IslamicAwareness and Harun Yahya, where a spelling error is copied along with everything else. The same applies when Hermann is suddenly spelt with an e at the end as Hermanne.  Now this could be coincidence that 2 people put an e or a space in exactly the same place independently of each other, but.....

and the transliteration in German

A French expert referring to German transliteration as opposed to a French transliteration? Hm. But as anyone with only cursory knowledge of hieroglyphic transliteration knows, there is no language based transliteration. They are standardised, as anyone can see in the attached references.

I was stupefied to read the profession of Haman: “Chief of the workers in stone-quarries,”

As we will see later, Bucaille had every reason to be stupefied as he could not possibly read the profession there. Ranke writes no such thing. There is no mention of any profession, just the name and the description, hetep.

the name of “Haman” had been engraved on a stela kept at the Hof-Museum of Vienna (Austria). Several years later, when I was able to read the profession written in hieroglyphs on the stela, I observed that the determinative joined to the name had emphasised the importance of the intimate of Pharaoh.

Bucaille claims the inscription is on a stele. It is not. It is on a piece of a door-post.

Bucaille claims the inscription is in the “Kaiserlich-Königliches Hofmuseum” in Vienna. It is not. It is found in the “Kunsthistorisches Museum” in Vienna. It changed its name decades ago - after Austria lost its monarchy in 1918, something he would have obviously seen, had he been there.

Ranke did NOT consider these signs to be determinatives, because he transcribed them.

The Curator of the Egyptian-Oriental Collection, Michaela Hüttner, checked the records and found no visitor or correspondence with any Bucaille enquiring to see the door-post before it went on public display in 1996, after Bucaille's book came out. Before that it was kept in the Museum storage.

Bucaille claims the inscription emphasises an intimate of a Pharaoh. It does not. The description refers to a god. The gracious falcon god Hemen.

Harun Yahya and his fairytale factory have changed their pages on Haman over the years, toning down the claims, but keeps some hilarious ones. A single inscription on a doorpost magically evolves into "inscriptions" and a fragment of a door-post becomes a monument to Haman and they copy the error in the museum's name. On another page Yahya claims that Haman is mentioned in the Gospels. Really? Where? They also say that the name in the Old Testament refers to a Babylonian King who lived 1100 years after Moses. The real difference is more like half that and they confuse the contents with when the Book of Esther (in the Ketuvim) was written. Sloppy.In another section the collective brainpower of Harun Yahya dreamworks come up with yet another claim: the single inscription now grows into an entire collection of inscriptions and this - as well as the job description - is based on the book "People in the New Kingdom".

it is a fact that the hieroglyphs had been totally forgotten at the time of the Qur'anic "Revelation"

That the meaning of hieroglyphs was forgotten does not automatically mean that the stories went missing as well. They could well have been handed down orally: there once was a guy who was commissioned to build a gigantic tower all the way to the stars for a big king.

My version of the story:

Bucaille and al Zindani have set themselves the task of proving that a Haman, as mentioned in the Koran, existed. They contact some Egyptologists to ask if anyone knows a Haman. They don't. Someone guides them to Ranke. They look for a name resembling Haman in the books by Ranke and don't find any Haman. The only name Bucaille manages to identify is a hmn-h, which, in his ignorance is as close as he wishes. In addition, the last h is marked with a question mark. What Bucaille, Yayha and IslamicAwareness are saying: surely, even if Ranke says it is an abbreviation of something, you can just drop the h and voila, you have hmn, as desired. Now you just add the vowels you require, ignore the diacritical marks and you get the required result: Haman.

As the entry also refers to a Wreszinski, he goes off and finds Wreszinski's book "Aegyptische Inschriften aus dem K.K. Hof Museum in Wien". Here he finds a lot of information, which should actually have stopped any further investigation in this direction, but he chooses to ignore this and build a false construction based on what he finds. Well, he is, after all, now clutching at straws, as he has nothing else to go on.

If we go back to the Ranke entry, we see that he draws the hieroglyphs, consisting of

1.      V28 sound sign for alas

2.      Y5 senet board

3.      N35 sound sign for n. water line

4.      F18 sound sign for stream

5.      Y1 Papyrus scroll

You can get the pronunciation from the Gardiner-List in the link.

Ranke quite rightly points out that the pronunciation of the h is a so-called emphatic h, which corresponds neatly with the Gardiner list. He therefore marks the h with a dot underneath it.

In the Koran, we have

1. normal H
2. an Alif
3. the Mim
4. another Alif
5. the final Nun

So how does this correspond to the hieroglyphs? Well, only the Mim and the Nun are comparable, the rest is not. The one of the three possible h sounds in Arabic is different.

So much for the perfect transliteration.

But now we come to the second part of the name inscribed on the door-post:

Ranke writes that hmn-h originates from an artefact in Vienna, refers to Wreszinski and adds in footnote 2 that this could be an abbreviation, very common in hieroglyphs hewn out of stones. Just underneath that entry he shows what the abbreviated inscription could mean: Hemen is merciful, Hemen being the Egyptian falcon god. Just above the entry he also refers to the god Hemen, who is great.

So all three entries on this page refer to a god and his attributes, marked as a hyphen and the description, not a determinative which can be dropped.

No mentioning of any Haman, Pharaoh's Vizier, who is the chief builder. None of that can be found here.

We have so far an entry in a book which was unknown to a claimed Egyptologist, is being relabelled by Muslims, confirmed by an unnamed French expert, with a name that hardly resembles the name in the Koran and refers to a god.

It's not looking good so far.

Let's resume with Wreszinski.

His entry  I.34 is a "Pfeiler einer Grabtuer", a pillar of a doorpost from inside a grave, not a stele or a tablet.

He can't allocate a time or era to it and gives the name and profession in hieroglyphs and a remark: "Vorsteher der Steinbrucharbeiter", or chief/ foreman of quarry workers.

Looking at the details we see that there are 3 parts in the inscription regarding the name and title.

   is a name, transcribed as hmn-h by Ranke.

   “of Amun”.

   “chief of the quarry workers”

The 1st and 3rd part are used and translated by Bucaille, but the middle part is omitted. Is it because it would disqualify our foreman from being close to the ruling Pharaoh and some 500km away from Cairo?

Wreszinski is highly experienced and does not even find it necessary to mention the fact that the -h is indeed an abbreviation for hetep.

He also does not see the necessity of translating the rest of the inscription, as they are standard offering formulas for the dead person.

This is the translation of the entire text:

(1) An offering, which the king gives to Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, Lord of Infinity, Ruler of Eternity, so that he may give everything that is offered on his food table; the sweet breath of the northern wind; a goodly funeral for his old age, for the Ka of the overseer of the stonemasons of Amun Hemen-hetep, true of voice.

(2) An offering, which the king gives to the Western Desert and Amaunet, the Lady of Heaven, so that she may give food and sustenance and all kinds of offerings, all things good and pure, for the Ka of the overseer of the stonemasons of Amun Hemen-hetep, true of voice. (3) His son Pu-hetep.

(4) The mistress of the house Nefret-nub. [1]

Is there anything in here indicative of a relationship of any kind with a Pharaoh? Nope.

Bucaille simply makes this up and Yahya and IslamicAwareness simply copy it.

For further references, you can read about these offerings here: Ramesside inscriptions: Translated and annotated, by Kenneth Anderson Kitchen.

Finally, the claim regarding building using baked bricks, reading Spencer's "Brick Architecture in Ancient Egypt", we see that bricks were usually used to build smaller buildings and using mud bricks and that during the Ramesside era, buildings made from BAKED bricks were an absolute rarity, let alone in huge monuments. Also, no evidence for the construction of a monumental tower has ever been found, even though the Koran suggests that building actually started.

Conclusion:

No name matching Haman has been found in Egyptian inscriptions or other materials.

The grave of a foreman of a quarry hundreds of miles from Cairo, who was buried with good wishes for his personally preferred god, the falcon god Hemen, was used as an excuse to falsify evidence to make it the stele in memory of Haman, the chief builder and close ally of an unnamed Pharaoh.

Reality shows that the name does not match. The title does not match. The profession does not match. The book cited as proof does not exist. The museum cited as proof does not exist. An unnamed expert has to provide basic information.

Hardly anything in this claim resembles the truth. Both, IslamicAwareness and Harun Yahya have toned down their claims over the years, using the Mafia method of only accepting and admitting what is an absolute must and unavoidable. You can see some of the versions in Appendix 4 on the pages of AnsweringIslam.

In addition, there are indications in the form of e-mails sent by IslamicAwareness to various people, begging them to confirm their assumptions, which never happened. On the contrary: when one of their cited experts on the pronunciation of the h's in the inscription, Prof. Jürgen Osing, found out about their attempts to falsify his texts also, he wrote an open letter to them, chastising their dishonesty and ripping their claims apart. The German text for this is also in the description box. This means that in spite of their knowing full well that the entire construction by Bucaille is false, they still keep other Muslims misinformed and misled. Is this what an honest Muslim should do to other Muslims?

Thank you for your time and patience!

Sources:

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Contrad/External/haman.html

http://www.king-tut.org.uk/ancient-egypt/ancient-egyptian-hieroglyphics.htm

http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/Gardiner-sign-list.html

http://www.rostau.org.uk/AEgyptian-L/reference/faulkner_index.html

http://static.egyptology.ru/scarcebooks/ranke/bd1-216-332(r-S).pdf

http://us2.harunyahya.com/Detail/T/EDCRFV/productId/3445/THE_WORD___HAMAN__

http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/offeringformula.html

http://www.answeringislam.info/authors/katz/haman/bucaille.html

http://www.beyondbooks.com/wcu81/3b.asp

http://www.islaminstitut.de/Artikelanzeige.41+M5fff2d8c174.0.html

Peust

http://diglit.ub.uniheidelberg.de/diglit/peust1999/0099?sid=8780ba563e6a623fb4a5b9b9ab31dc30

http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/katz/haman/app_ia_coverup.html

http://books.google.de/books?id=i6p1ULHKxPoC&lpg=PA166&ots=asbJ2dGkM6&dq=%22An%20offering%2C%20which%20the%20king%20gives%20to%20Osiris&pg=PA166 - v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/detail.aspx?id=5136

Hermann Ranke, Die Ägyptischen Personennamen, Verzeichnis der Namen, Verlag Von J J Augustin in Glückstadt, Band I (1935)

Walter Wrszinski, Aegyptische Inschriften aus dem K.K. Hof Museum in Wien: J C Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1906

Dr. M. Bucaille, Moses and Pharaoh: The Hebrews in Egypt: 1995, NTT Mediascope Inc., Tokyo.

C. Peust, Egyptian phonology: an introduction to the phonology of a dead language, S. 54ff.
J. Osing, die Nominalbildung des Ägyptischen, S. 367f.

A. J. Spencer, Brick Architecture In Ancient Egypt, 1979, op. cit., p. 140; B.

The clip using material from Harun Yahya is used under the Fair Use Provision and by permission from Harun Yahya, stating that

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Audio clip: Egypt 2008 -original song, Mente Zsolt,instrumental song,

Aqua - original song, Mente Zsolt, instrumental song,saját zene from:

http://www.youtube.com/user/mentezsolt

28:6       show Pharaoh, Haman and their armies

28:8       Pharaoh, Haman and their armies were mistaken

28:38     So kindle for me, O Haman, a fire on the clay and build for me a tower

29:39     And Korah, Pharaoh and Haman! Moses came unto them with clear proofs

40:24     Unto Pharaoh and Haman and Korah, but they said: A lying sorcerer!

40:36     And Pharaoh said: O Haman! Build for me a tower that haply I may reach the roads

    In the book Reflections on the Qur'an (Réflexions sur le Coran), I have related the result of such a consultation that dates back to a dozen years ago and led me to question a specialist who, in addition, knew well the classical Arabic language. One of the most prominent French Egyptologists, fulfilling these conditions, was kind enough to answer the question.

    I showed him the word "Haman" that I had copied exactly like it is written in the Qur'an, and told him that it had been extracted from a sentence of a document dating back to the 7th century AD, the sentence being related to somebody connected with Egyptian history.

    He said to me that, in such a case, he would see in this word the transliteration of a hieroglyphic name but, for him, undoubtedly it could not be possible that a written document of the 7th century had contained a hieroglyphic name - unknown until that time - since, in that time, the hieroglyphs had been totally forgotten.

    In order to confirm his deduction about the name, he advised me to consult the Dictionary of Personal Names of the New Kingdom by Ranke, where I might find the name written in hieroglyphs, as he had written before me, and the transliteration in German.

    I discovered all that had been presumed by the expert, and, moreover, I was stupefied to read the profession of Haman: "The Chief of the workers in the stone-quarries," exactly what could be deduced from the Qur'an, though the words of the Pharaoh suggest a master of construction.

    When I came again to the expert with a photocopy of the page of the Dictionary concerning "Haman" and showed him one of the pages of the Qur'an where he could read the name, he was speechless...

    Moreover, Ranke had noted, as a reference, a book published in 1906 by the Egyptologist Walter Wreszinski: the latter had mentioned that the name of "Haman" had been engraved on a stela kept at the Hof-Museum of Vienna (Austria). Several years later, when I was able to read the profession written in hieroglyphs on the stela, I observed that the determinative joined to the name had emphasised the importance of the intimate of Pharaoh.

    Had the Bible or any other literary work, composed during a period when the hieroglyphs could still be deciphered, quoted "Haman," the presence in the Qur'an of this word might have not drawn special attention. But, it is a fact that the hieroglyphs had been totally forgotten at the time of the Qur'anic Revelation and that no one could not read them until the 19th century AD. Since matters stood like that in ancient times, the existence of the word "Haman" in the Qur'an suggests a special reflection.

Those who keep themselves occupied by looking for inconsistencies in the Qur'an refer to a man named "Haman" who is mentioned in the Qur'anic verses as one of Pharaoh's men.

In the Torah, the name Haman is not used when the life of the Prophet Moses (as) is quoted. On the other hand, it is mentioned in the Gospel to refer to a helper of the Babylonian king who lived 1,100 years after the Prophet Moses (as) and persecuted the Jews.

Moses Exodus 1450 BCE and Xerxes, the King of Haman 450 BCE, max 1000 years later.

HYahya does not understand this and blindly copies the CREATION date of Esther instead of the life date and comes up with 1100 years after Pharaoh.

Rosetta Stone discovered in 1799, first deciphered 1822, 23 years later

Bucaille "discovered" Haman in 1994

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[1]  http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/detail.aspx?id=5136