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162 There is no other that knoweth thee except thy son Akhenaten; Thou hast made him wise in thy plans. And this, too, was unacceptable to the Theban priests of Amon. As soon as Akhenaten was gone (and it is uncertain how ...), they restored the worship of Amon—the Unseen god—and smashed and destroyed all that Akhenaten had erected. That the Aten episode in Egypt, as the introduction of the Jubilee—the “Year of the Ram’—were the stirrings of a wider expectation of a Return of a celestial “star god” is evi- dent from yet another biblical reference to the Ram, yet an- other manifestation of a Countdown to the Return. It is the record of an unusual incident at the end of the Exodus. It is a tale that is replete with puzzling aspects, and one that ends with a divinely inspired vision of things to come. The Bible repeatedly declared divination by examining animal entrails, consulting with spirits, soothsaying, en- chanting, conjuring, and fortune-telling to be “abominations unto Yahweh’—all manners of sorcery practiced by other nations that the Israelites must avoid. At the same time, it as- serted—quoting Yahweh himself—that dreams, oracles, and visions could be legitimate ways of divine communication. It is such a distinction that explains why the Book of Numbers levotes three long chapters (22-24) to tell—approvingly!— the story of a non-Israelite Seer and Oracle-teller. His name was Bil’am, rendered Balaam in English Bibles. The events described in those chapters took place when the Israelites (“Children of Israel” in the Bible), having left the Sinai Peninsula, went around the Dead Sea on the east, advancing northward. As they encountered the small king- loms that occupied the lands east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River, Moses sought from their kings permission for peaceful passage; it was, by and large, refused. The Israel- ites, having just defeated the Ammonites, who did not let them pass through peacefully, now “were encamped in the THE END OF DAYS