Pillar of Fire (novel)

This article is about the Judith Tarr novel. For the Ken Follet novel, see A Column of Fire.
Pillar of Fire
AuthorJudith Tarr
LanguageEnglish
SubjectEgypt--History--Eighteenth dynasty
GenreHistorical fiction
PublisherForge
Publication date
1995
Pages448
ISBN0-312-85542-7
OCLC32088557
813/.54 20
LC ClassPS3570.A655 P55 1995

Pillar of Fire is a 1995 historical fantasy novel by Judith Tarr. It deals with the reigns of Egyptian pharaohs Akhenaten and Tutankhamun and the Exodus from the perspective of a Hittite slave girl of Ankhesenpaaten.[1] It draws heavily on Ahmed Osman's suggestion that Moses and Akhenaten were the same person.[2]

The idea of Akhenaten as the pioneer of a monotheistic religion that later became Judaism has been considered by various scholars starting with Sigmund Freud's views in Moses and Monotheism.[3][4][5][6][7][8] Tarr comments in the endnotes that she was surprised at how little she had to tweak historical fact to write the story.

The audiobook version, published in 1998, ran for approximately 22 hours and was read by Anna Fields.[9]

  1. ^ "Pillar of Fire: A book review by Mark L. Olson". NESFA Members' Reviews. New England Science Fiction Association. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  2. ^ Scott, Whitney (1995-06-01). "Pillar of Fire, by Judith Tarr (REVIEW)". Booklist. American Library Association. Retrieved 2009-04-12.
  3. ^ Freud, S. (1939). Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays.
  4. ^ Gunther Siegmund Stent, Paradoxes of Free Will. American Philosophical Society, DIANE, 2002. 284 pages. Pages 34 - 38. ISBN 0-87169-926-5
  5. ^ Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. Harvard University Press, 1997. 288 pages. ISBN 978-0-674-58739-7
  6. ^ N. Shupak, The Monotheism of Moses and the Monotheism of Akhenaten. Sevivot, 1995.
  7. ^ Montserrat, (2000)
  8. ^ William F. Albright, From the Patriarchs to Moses II. Moses out of Egypt. The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 36, No. 2 (May, 1973), pp. 48-76. doi 10.2307/3211050
  9. ^ "Pillar of Fire". Blackstone Audio. Archived from the original on 2005-04-05. Retrieved 2009-04-12.