Who was the girl who took Moses out of the river? It could not possibly have been the daughter of Pharaoh, the divine ruler of Egypt (Ex. 2,5); a Jewish woman of the servant class would never have dared to aim so high. The Bible uses the word "Pharaoh" to describe any person whosoever represents the Egyptian State, personified by its ruler (later named "Pharaoh"). But we have already seen in Genesis that Egypt's true sovereign is never indicated with the term "Pharaoh;” only officials are indicated with such a term. The same thing also apparently applies in Exodus, where the term "Pharaoh" is used to indicate the Egyptian local authority, whether civil or military (Pharaoh was also the officer commanding the troops that were engulfed in the waters of the Red Sea). This parallels today’s custom when we say "the State,” to indicate the public administration. Therefore, the term "Pharaoh's daughter" must have applied to a somewhat less important person, probably the daughter of a local official, of middle to upper class status, or of a priest, or perhaps of the very Governor of Goshen.
Tradition requires that Moses was brought up as a son in that house, but this is an idea that can be dismissed without difficulty. He was a Jew and not only that, but a child of unknown parents, for those times little more than an animal. However much his stepmother may have grown fond of him, Moses was destined to remain simply a servant. In order to understand the character, culture, aspirations, and all of Moses' subsequent activities, it is important for us to try and reconstruct what were most probably the circumstances of his early formative years.
According to the Bible, Moses' nurse was his biological mother; therefore, his infant years were probably happy and quite normal. But this is the last we hear of his mother. Probably she did her best to remain in the service of the Egyptian family even after her son was weaned, in order to stay near him. But sooner or later they had to be separated and this must have been a psychological shock to Moses. A hint of this shock is to be found in the fact he began to stammer (Ex. 4,10 and 6,12), a speech defect that is often traceable to some psychological trauma suffered in early childhood.
To be a stammerer in those times was really a tragedy; derisive laughter, mockery, and various jokes must have been much like his daily bread. If to this we add the fact that he was a Jew of uncertain birth, it is not difficult to imagine what his situation and future prospects were like. These are factors normally sufficient to destroy a man's dignity, to make him an outcast. But in combination with an acute sensitivity and lively intelligence, these factors can merge to form an explosive mixture capable of releasing the wildest dreams of revenge.
Moses was undoubtedly intelligent, eager to learn, sharp, and endowed with a great talent for analysis and synthesis. These qualities must have attracted the attention of his master, who launched him on a career reserved strictly for the highest social classes, that of scribe, probably with the idea of using him as his personal "secretary.”
Moses thus came into contact with the more intimate aspects and secrets of the Egyptian civilization; he came to know the political backstage and all the tricks, greatness, and shortcomings in the exercise of power. He learned the more refined techniques of imposing his authority on other man. He realized that those in power were simply men like himself, with their weaknesses and paltriness, men less intelligent than he.
The sector in which he was mainly involved was civil and religious law [i], as well as the administration of justice (Ex. 18,13). He learned the civil and penal codes of that time by heart. He evaluated their importance and effects, and he understood the mechanisms by which they were made operative. In short, he accumulated vast knowledge concerning the culture of public administration and religion. Essentially, an Egyptian culture.
He lived in the house and participated in family life. He listened to the conversations, knew their interests and occupations, and his masters' ambitions. What, then, could the interests and the dominant themes of conversation have been in a family of high level bureaucrats (or priests) in ancient Egypt? Above all it was the Pharaoh, the true Pharaoh, distant, inaccessible, but omnipresent in the conversations, in the affairs, in every minute of the day. Pharaoh: feared, respected, venerated, a true god who dominated every act and every thought, arbiter of the fate of men who, in the eyes of a Jew, must have seemed also omnipotent.
Then there was the tomb. The Pharaoh's naturally, dug out of the bowels of the earth, and the great funerary temple on which all Egypt worked and for which the officials squeezed out taxes, labor, and infinite energy. But also the tomb of the bureaucrat himself, who surely aspired to a burial worthy of his rank, and to which he dedicated much energy and a large part of the fruits of theft and embezzlement.
Moses soaked up all these things like a sponge. His mentality, his moral principles, his aspirations and ambitions, were no doubt much closer to those of an Egyptian of his times than of a today’s Jew. But there was one thing to which we must believe he was particularly sensitive, his tomb. Much more so because, according to customs of those times, he had no right to a proper burial. His body would have been left to the dogs and the vultures, as befitting the son of unknown parents. [ii]
[i] The family where Moses was grown up was probably that of a high priest of the temple of Heliopolis. Joseph had married Asenath, daughter of the high priest Potiphar, so the Jews had a special relation with that temple and some child could have been dedicated to its service. The analysis made of Moses’ character would not change too much.
[ii] <<After-life was so important to Egyptians as to condition all their life. There did not exist a clear separation between the world of the living and that of the dead (...). Egyptians imagined death as the separation of the body from spiritual principles; since the most ancient times, they had always believed that the soul needed the body to survive and without it, the soul would perish forever (...). During the Ancient Reign's dynasties the top officials were buried in Mastabas aligned around the pyramids, sharing in this way their sovereign’s destiny... During the Middle Reign, private citizens received from the Pharaoh stone blocks in order to build themselves a tomb. Poor people, naturally, had to do with a hole in the bare sand.>> (F. Cimmino, "Vita quotidiana degli Egizi", op. cit., pp. 122-128)