Israel's deliverer, lawgiver, and prophet — born to a Levite couple (Amram and Jochebed) under Pharaoh's death-order, hidden three months, then floated on the Nile in a papyrus ARK (the same word, tevah, as Noah's; see the dictionary) and drawn out by Pharaoh's own daughter, who raises him in the Egyptian court. Grown, he kills an Egyptian overseer, flees to Midian, marries Zipporah, and is called back at the burning bush to bring Israel out (Exodus 3). The New Testament frames his life in three forties (Acts 7:23, 30, 36): forty years an Egyptian prince, forty a Midianite shepherd, forty leading Israel; he dies at 120 (Deuteronomy 34:7), the prophet 'whom Jehovah knew face to face.' His name is Egyptian. The story gives a Hebrew reason — Pharaoh's daughter names him Mosheh 'because I DREW HIM OUT (meshitihu) of the water' (2:10), from the Hebrew verb mashah, 'to draw out.' But the name itself is the ordinary Egyptian element MOSE / MES, 'born of, son, child' — the very piece in THUT-MOSE ('born of Thoth'), AH-MOSE, and RA-MESSES ('born of Ra') — the kind of theophoric court-name an Egyptian princess would actually give (likely with a god's name once attached and later dropped). Even the Hebrew wordplay betrays the seam: the form Mosheh is ACTIVE, 'the one who draws out' — not the passive mashuy, 'drawn out,' that the daughter's own explanation would require — a Hebrew pun laid over a genuinely Egyptian name. Far from an embarrassment, that Egyptian name is a fingerprint of authenticity: a later writer inventing a national hero would hardly hand him a foreign name advertising an Egyptian upbringing. Ancient Jewish writers already knew it was Egyptian (Philo; Josephus derives it from the Egyptian for water + saved). Who he likely was. On the EARLY DATE this translation follows (Exodus 1446 BC; see the Pharaoh-of-the-Exodus entry and Joel Kramer / Expedition Bible), Moses is born about 1526 BC and raised in the 18th-dynasty court during the reign of Thutmose I–III — the pharaoh he later flees (2:15) being Thutmose III, whose death (2:23) clears his return to Amenhotep II. Some early-date readers go further and identify the princess who drew him out with Hatshepsut, the great female pharaoh of that court — a striking fit, though an identification the text does not make and this entry offers only as a possibility. What is not speculative is the shape: an Egyptian name, an Egyptian upbringing, and a Hebrew heart — the man at home nowhere (he names his own son 'a resident alien in a foreign land,' 2:22) whom God makes the way home.