Appendix: an exchange of letters between Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé

Summary

An exchange of letters between Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé

6.1.1935 Vienna IX, Berggasse 19

My dear Lou

… What you have heard about my last piece of work I can now explain in greater detail. It started out from the question as to what has really created the particular character of the Jew, and came to the conclusion that the Jew is the creation of the man Moses. Who was this Moses and what did he bring about? The answer to this question was given in a kind of historical novel. Moses was not a Jew, but a well-born Egyptian, a high official, a priest, perhaps a prince of the royal dynasty, and a zealous supporter of the monotheistic faith, which the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV had made the dominant religion round about 1350 bc. With the collapse of the new religion and the extinction of the 18th dynasty after the Pharaoh's death this ambitious and aspiring man had lost all his hopes and had decided to leave his fatherland and create a new nation which he proposed to bring up in the imposing religion of his master. He resorted to the Semitic tribe which had been dwelling in the land since the Hyksos period, placed himself at their head, led them out of bondage into freedom, gave them the spiritualized religion of Aten and as an expression of consecration as well as a means of setting them apart introduced circumcision, which was a native custom among the Egyptians and only among them. What the Jews later boasted of their God Jahve, that he had made them his Chosen People and delivered them from Egypt, was literally true – of Moses.