Moses was Joseph’s Grandson
… and he was not encountered on a water course
Exactly how did Joseph (Yuya to the Egyptians) look like, General Atiku? The answer is not a difficult one as his well-preserved mummy, along with that of his wife Tuya, was found in a tomb of the Valley of the Kings in Egypt in 1905.
He does not remotely look like the Egyptians of the day, General, who were Negroid, but comes across as a white Jew. One description characterises him thus: “He was a person of commanding presence, whose powerful character showed itself in his face. [ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”1,2,3″ ihc_mb_template=”1″ ]
One must picture him now as a tall man, with a fine shock of white hair; a great hooked nose, like that of a Syrian; full, strong lips; and a prominent, determined jaw. He has the face of an ecclesiastic, and there is something about his mouth that reminds one of the late Pope, Leo III.”
Joseph and his wife Tuya had at least three children General. They were Tiye, a daughter, and two sons, namely Anen (Manasseh in the Bible) and Aye (Ephraim in the Bible) in that order. The names, General, are a tell-tale: they demonstrate quite clearly that Joseph’s religious leanings were at least in public non–committal. Anen was Jehovah-Enlil’s real name, the name he was given at birth, and Aye, spelt Ea in Sumerian rendering, was Enki’s principal name.
Meanwhile, General, Pharaoh Tuthmosis IV had produced a heir, Amenhotep III. Since Joseph lived at the Great House, the Pharaoh’s palace, young Amenhotep and Tiye, who was about five years his junior, were in constant interaction. In fact, by all indications, General, the two were told from a very early age that they were future spouses.
Now, Tuthmosis, like basically all his predecessors of the 18th Dynasty, General, was a sickly King and he was gone by the time his son was only about 12 to 13 years old. As was the contemporary Egyptian custom, Amenhotep was made to legally wed his full sister, Sitamun, who was only 3 years old, so as to make clear-cut the woman from whom the succession would arise. But since Sitamun was still a toddler, Amenhotep took a second wife.
This was Tiye. At only 8 years of age, Tiye was also still a kid but she would attain puberty and therefore eligibility for intimate relations much earlier than Sitamun. We can see the Enlilites shrewdly at work through Joseph, General, ensuring that an Enlilite daughter was wedded to a Pharaoh albeit it in a secondary capacity as that was the best they could do for now.
Yet the Enlilites’ intentions were not ambiguous, General: they were crystal-clear. For in the same year Amenhotep married Tiye, he was manipulated into issuing a commemorative scarab which partly read as follows: “Long Live King Amenhotep [III], who is given life, and the Great King’s Wife Tiye … The name of her father is Yuya, the name of her mother is Tuya.
She is the wife of a mighty king whose southern boundary is as far as Karoy (in the Sudan) and northern as far as Naharin (in northern Iraq).” The Great Wife, General, was the Pharaoh’s main wife. For Amenhotep to so describe Tiye suggests that from the word go, Sitamun was meant to be strategically sidelined, which indeed did happen. What further worked against Sitamun was that she had no sons with Amenhotep: only two daughters, one of whom was the famously beautiful Nefertiti.
Shortly after the nuptials, General, Amenhotep retrofitted the frontier fortress of Zaru and presented it to Tiye as a summer residence since it was just a stone’s throw from Goshen, where her compatriots on her father’s side, the Hykso-Hebrews, abounded. And in the 11th year of his reign, Amenhotep constructed a lake with a view to linking the fortress of Zaru and Goshen (a distance of only 1 km and therefore a unnecessary waste of national resources).
Since the lake was primarily a pleasure lake for Tiye, a royal barge named the Aten Gleams was made available to her whenever she was holidaying at Zaru. The lake was opened with a great deal of fanfare three months after completion. It was becoming clear, General, that Sitamun, who was supposed to be the chief wife (she was now aged 14, a conjugable age those days) had taken a back seat and Tiye was running the show. This Earth, My Brother …
JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS RULE EGYPT
It is apparent, General, that the reason Tiye was being so favoured as the King’s wife was thanks to her all-powerful father Joseph. Joseph was now even more so the real ruler of Egypt than he had been under Thuthmosis IV. Lying on his death bed, Thuthmosis had commanded his young heir to retain Joseph as his viceroy and to obey without question all what Joseph said to him in light of the extraordinary prosperity he had helped bring to Egypt.
These instructions were also rendered in writing and throughout his reign, Amenhotep heeded the letter and spirit of his father’s wishes. He actually referred to Joseph as “Dad” and as “Holy Father”. In fact, General, Amenhotep put Joseph at a higher pedestal venerationwise than even Thuthmosis did.
Since Joseph was now firm in the saddle of political power in Egypt, General, he decided to take further steps in cementing Hykso stranglehold on the rulership of Egypt. He asked Amenhotep to allow him to resettle his father and all his siblings, who lived in Canaan, in Egypt.
The version of events as related in Genesis is a made-up story, General. It was intended to accord with the equally fictitious line that Joseph was kidnapped when in truth he was spirited into Egypt as part of the long-term Enlilite agenda to take over the country.
Amenhotep of course would never be in position to refuse Joseph anything, General, and so it was that Jacob and his entire clan came to live in Egypt. They did not all come at once though: they arrived in three batches, with the aged Jacob arriving last. Altogether, they were an extended family of 70 people.
Joseph first received them at Thebes, the national capital. The first thing he warned them was not to say to the people of Egypt that they were “shepherds”, meaning Hyksos. Instead, they were to say they were “cattle people”. The term cattle, General, was how the Egyptians were referred to in astrological nomenclature.
The Egyptians had so dubbed themselves because they were wroth that Enlil had appropriated the term sheep (denoting the Age of Aries) and tagged it on his people, the Hebrews. As such, the Egyptians called themselves cattle people in deference to the bygone age of Taurus (which was symbolised by the bull) just to be different from the Hebrews.
Their continued commemoration of the Age of Taurus was evidenced by their veneration of the Apis Bull imagery, which they now associated with Marduk when in the Age of Taurus it symbolised Jehovah-Enlil. Joseph himself was officially a cattle man: if you recall, General, two of his clutch of official titles were Overseer of the Cattle of Min (that is, Egyptian worshippers of the god Horus) and Overseer of the Cattle of Amun (that is, Egyptian worshippers of the god Marduk, known as Amen-Ra in Egypt).
In sum, General, members of Joseph’s family were to pose as adorers of the Apis Bull so as to appease Egyptian sensitivities. So when they presented themselves as such to Amenhotep, he was more than pleased for what it meant was that they had renounced their Canaanite nationality and were now Egyptian citizens just like Joseph was.
Thus euphoric, Amenhotep said this to Joseph: “In the best of the land of Egypt make thy father and brethren dwell; in the land of Goshen let them dwell; and if thou knowest any men of activity among them, then make them rulers over my cattle.” In other words, General, Joseph’s brothers were not going to be simply ordinary citizens of Egypt: they were going to be governors of Egypt’s provinces. Indeed, Herodotus, in his book titled Euterpe, confirms that there was a time when Egypt was administered by 12 brothers.
Initially, General, Joseph’s family were settled at Goshen. Exactly 17 years after their arrival, Jacob died. The biblical story goes that on his death bed, Jacob, as he pronounced blessings on and voiced disillusionment with members of his clan, spoke benedictively of Joseph’s younger brother Ephraim (Aye) and not his older brother Manasseh (Anen).
“His younger brother will be greater than he,” Jacob is quoted as saying. Again this is a made-up story, General. It were the Genesis authors who made Jacob say so because they were aware that of the two kids, it was Ephraim who became Pharaoh of Egypt at some stage. Ephraim’s blessings from his grandfather were put in Jacob’s mouth by the Genesis writers with the benefit obviously of hindsight.
Exactly how did Ephraim become Pharaoh, General? That we shall unpack at the appropriate time. But before that, a grandson and great grandson of Joseph had to be pharaohs. The grandson, General, was the famous Moses, who in Egypt was first known as Amenhotep IV and later as Akhenaten.
MOSES IS BORN
Now, although Joseph was wildly popular in Egypt, General, arguably its first political superstar, the conservative elements among the Egyptian establishment didn’t entirely embrace him as a true-blue Egyptian. They also suspected, and rightfully so, that his ultimate goal was to create a Josephite dynasty that would rule Egypt in perpetuity.
So privately, they contrived for Tiye not to raise a boy child as they feared Amenhotep might favour him and anoint him as his heir. That would automatically pass the sovereignty of Egypt into Hykso-Hebrew hands since Tiye was a Hykso-Hebrew on her father’s side.
Thus when Tiye had her first child by Amenhotep, a boy christened Tuthmosis V, he was tactfully eliminated when he was scarcely in his teens. In his book Christianity: An Ancient Religion, the authoritative Egyptian historian Ahmed Osman writes that, “Tuthmosis (V) had disappeared in mysterious circumstances while being educated and trained with the sons of nobles at Memphis, the administrative capital 15 miles south of modern Cairo.
His fate remains a mystery.” Tiye, General, was aware that her son was murdered and so when she fell pregnant again, she took extra precautions to ensure the safety of her infant child in case he was targeted at an even earlier age than his deceased brother. When her pregnancy was advanced, she took up residence at her summer palace at Zaru, where she could be attended to by her Hebrew relations and midwives to make doubly sure no harm came to her child.
Once again, General, she had a baby boy, in 1413 BC. The baby was given the name Amenhotep IV. This time around, Tiye did not bring her son with her back to the palace. She left him at Zaru, under the care of Tey (Jochebed in the Bible), one of Joseph’s relatives who had arrived with the Jacobite contingent from Canaan.
Tey was married to Ephraim, Joseph’s second-born son, and therefore was trusted to take excellent care of young Amenhotep IV, the Moses of Genesis. Tey was at the time nursing her own baby boy, her firstborn with Ephraim, who was about two to three years older than Moses. The name of the kid was Smenkhkaraon, which was abbreviated as Smenkhkare. The name meant “Vigorous is the Soul of Ra”, which was a way of paying homage to Egypt’s national god Marduk. In the Bible, General, Smenkhkare is known as Aaron, which is the truncated version of Smenkhk[araon].
THE PLAGIARISED BIBLICAL VERSION OF THE BIRTH OF MOSES
The above story of the birth of Moses, General, differs markedly from the biblical version, which reads as follows as per EXODUS 2:1-10:
“Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. ‘This is one of the Hebrew babies,’ she said. Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?’ ‘Yes, go,’ she answered.
So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.’ So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, ‘I drew him out of the water’.”
The biblical version, General, is fraught with falsities as we well as rather unseemly scenarios. First, every objective scholar knows that it is not original: the substance of it was lifted from The Legend of Sharrukin, best known as Sargon the Great, who we have already dwelt upon.
Sargon relates his birth circumstances thus: “My mother was a high priestess; I knew not my father … My mother, the high priestess, who conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen sealed the lid. She cast me into the river; it did not sink me. The river bore me up: it carried me to Akki the irrigator. Akki the irrigator lifted me up when he drew water. Akki, the irrigator, as his son made me and reared me.”
The other troubling aspect about the biblical story, General, has to do with the likelihood of a royal maiden adopting a child. Just where on Earth, General, do virgin girls as yet unmarried adopt children? It really sounds stranger than fiction. No King would allow his teenage daughter to adopt a kid unless she had long been married and had proved to be barren.
Then there’s, General, the glaring implausibility of the name that was chosen for the adopted baby. If Moses is Moshe as per the Hebrew language, it defies logic that an Egyptian royal maiden would adopt a child and give him a Hebrew name when Hebrews were regarded as an abomination by Egyptians.
Even Joseph, wary, perhaps, of a possible public backlash, did not give his sons Hebrew names: their Hebrew names were given to them by their grandfather Jacob. The public knew them simply as Anen and Aye. Even his daughter’s name, Tiye, was not Hebrew at all.
In any case, General, the Hebrew term Moshe does not mean “one drawn out of water”, as Moses allegedly was: it actually refers to the drawer, the person who draws whatever it is out of water. In the case of the Pharaoh’s daughter, she would have been the real Moses in that she was the one who drew the baby out of water. The whole story clearly does not make sense at all, General.
However, General, when the name Moses is rendered in an Egyptian context as opposed to a Hebrew context, it does indeed make sense. Exactly how we shall unpack at the appropriate time.
NEXT WEEK: MOSES IS JOINT-RULER OF EGYPT!
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GONE FISHING
In recent years, using personal devices in working environments has become so commonplace it now has its own acronym, BOYD (Bring Your Own Device).  But as employees skip between corporate tools and personal applications on their own devices, their actions introduce a number of possible risks that should be managed and mitigated with careful consideration. Consider these examples:
Si-lwli, a small family-run business in Wales, is arguably as niche a company as you could find, producing talking toys used to promote the Welsh language. Their potential market is small, with only some 300,000 Welsh language speakers in the world and in reality the business is really more of a hobby for the husband-and-wife team, who both still have day jobs. Yet, despite still managing to be successful in terms of sales, the business is now fighting for survival after recently falling prey to cybercriminals. Emails between Si-Iwli and their Chinese suppliers were intercepted by hackers who altered the banking details in the correspondence, causing Si-Iwli to hand over £18,000 (around P ¼ m) to the thieves. That might not sound much to a large enterprise, but to a small or medium business it can be devastating.
Another recent SMB hacking story which appeared in the Wall Street Journal concerned Innovative Higher Ed Consulting (IHED) Inc, a small New York start-up with a handful of employees. IHED didn’t even have a website, but fraudsters were able to run stolen credit card numbers through the company’s payment system and reverse the charges to the tune of $27,000, around the same loss faced by Si-Iwli.  As the WSJ put it, the hackers completely destroyed the company, forcing its owners to fold.
And in May 2019, the city of Baltimore’s computer system was hit by a ransomware attack, with hackers using a variant called RobinHood. The hack, which has lasted more than a month, paralysed the computer system for city employees, with the hackers demanding a payment in Bitcoin to give access back to the city.
Of course, hackers target governments or business giants  but small and medium businesses are certainly not immune. In fact, 67% of SMBs reported that they had experienced a cyber attack across a period of 12 months, according to a 2018 survey carried out by security research firm Ponemon Institute. Additionally, Verizon issued a report in May 2019 that small businesses accounted for 43% of its reported data breaches. Once seen as less vulnerable than PCs, smartphone attacks are on the rise, with movements like the Dark Caracal spyware campaign underlining the allure of mobile devices to hackers. Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission released a statement calling for greater education on mobile security, coming at a time when around 42% of all Android devices are believed to not carry the latest security updates.
This is an era when employees increasingly use their smartphones for work-related purposes so is your business doing enough to protect against data breaches on their employees’ phones? The SME Cyber Crime Survey 2018 carried out for risk management specialists AON showed that more than 80% of small businesses did not view this as a threat yet if as shown, 67% of SMBs were said to have been victims of hacking, either the stats are wrong or business owners are underestimating their vulnerability. A 2019 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests the latter, stating that the majority of global businesses are unprepared for cyber attacks.
Consider that a workstation no longer means a desk in an office: It can be a phone in the back of a taxi or Uber; a laptop in a coffee shop, or a tablet in an airport lounge. Wherever the device is used, employees can potentially install applications that could be harmful to your business, even from something as seemingly insignificant as clicking on an accidental download or opening a link on a phishing email. Out of the physical workplace, your employees’ activities might not have the same protections as they would on a company-monitored PC.
Yet many businesses not only encourage their employees to work remotely, but assume working from coffee shops, bookstores, and airports can boost employees’ productivity.  Unfortunately, many remote hot spots do not provide secure Wi-Fi so if your employee is accessing their work account on unsecured public Wi-Fi, sensitive business data could be at risk. Furthermore, even if your employee uses a company smartphone or has access to company data through a personal mobile device, there is always a chance data could be in jeopardy with a lost or stolen device, even information as basic as clients’ addresses and phone numbers.
BOYDs are also at risk from malware designed to harm and infect the host system, transmittable to smartphones when downloading malicious third-party apps. Then there is ransomware, a type of malware used by hackers to specifically take control of a system’s data, blocking access or threatening to release sensitive information unless a ransom is paid such as the one which affected Baltimore. Ransomware attacks are on the increase,  predicted to occur every 14 seconds, potentially costing billions of dollars per year.
Lastly there is phishing – the cyber equivalent of the metaphorical fishing exercise –  whereby cybercriminals attempt to obtain sensitive data –usernames, passwords, credit card details –usually through a phoney email designed to look legitimate which directs the user to a fraudulent website or requests the data be emailed back directly. Most of us like to think we could recognize a phishing email when we see it, but these emails have become more sophisticated and can come through other forms of communication such as messaging apps.
Bottom line is to be aware of the potential problems with BOYDs and if in doubt, consult your IT security consultants. You can’t put the own-device genie back in the bottle but you can make data protection one of your three wishes!
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“I Propose to Diana Tonightâ€
About five days before Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed landed in Paris, General Atiku, a certain Edward Williams was taking a walk in a woods in the Welsh town of Mountain Ash. Williams, then 73, was a psychic of some renown. He had in the past foretold assassination attempts on US President Ronald Reagan, which occurred on March 30, 1981, and Pope John Paul II, which came to pass on May 13, 1981.
As he trudged the woods, Williams  had a sudden premonition that pointed to Diana’s imminent fate as per Christopher Andersen’s book The Day Diana Died. “When the vision struck me, it was as if everything around me was obscured and replaced by shadowy figures,†Williams was later to reminisce. “In the middle was the face of Princess Diana. Her expression was sad and full of pathos. She was wearing what looked like a floral dress with a short dark cardigan. But it was vague. I went cold with fear and knew it was a sign that she was in danger.â€
Williams hastily beat a retreat to his home, which he shared with his wife Mary, and related to her his presentiment, trembling like an aspen leaf as he did so. “I have never seen him so upset,†Mary recounted. “He felt he was given a sign and when he came back from his walk he was deeply shaken.â€
The following day, Williams frantically sauntered into a police station to inform the police of his premonition. The officer who attended to him would have dismissed him as no more than a crackpot but he treated him seriously in view of the accuracy of his past predictions. He took a statement and immediately passed it on to the Special Branch Investigative Unit.
The report read as follows:
“On 27 August, at 14:12 hrs, a man by the name of Edward Williams came to Mountain Ash police station. He said he was a psychic and predicted that Princess Diana was going to die. In previous years, he has predicted that the Pope and Ronald Reagan were going to be the victims of assassination attempts. On both occasions he was proved to be correct. Mr Williams appeared to be quite normal.â€
Williams, General, was spot-on as usual: four days later, the princess was no more.
Meanwhile, General,  even as Dodi and Diana were making their way to the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in central Paris, British newspapers were awash with headlines that suggested Diana was kind of deranged. Writes Andrew Morton in Diana in Pursuit of Love: “In The Independent Diana was described as ‘a woman with fundamentally nothing to say about anything’. She was ‘suffering from a form of arrested development’. ‘Isn’t it time she started using her head?’ asked The Mail on Sunday. The Sunday Mirror printed a special supplement entitled ‘A Story of Love’; The News of the World claimed that William had demanded that Diana should split from Dodi: ‘William can’t help it, he just doesn’t like the man.’ William was reportedly ‘horrified’ and ‘doesn’t think Mr Fayed is good for his mother’ – or was that just the press projecting their own prejudices? The upmarket Sunday Times newspaper, which had first serialised my biography of the princess, now put her in the psychiatrist’s chair for daring to be wooed by a Muslim. The pop-psychologist Oliver James put Diana ‘On the Couch’, asking why she was so ‘depressed’ and desperate for love. Other tabloids piled in with dire prognostications – about Prince Philip’s hostility to the relationship, Diana’s prospect of exile, and the social ostracism she would face if she married Dodi.â€
DIANA AND DODI AT THE RITZ
Before Diana and Dodi departed the Villa Windsor sometime after 16 hrs, General, one of Dodi’s bodyguards Trevor Rees-Jones furtively asked Diana as to what the programme for the evening was. This Trevor did out of sheer desperation as Dodi had ceased and desisted from telling members of his security detail, let alone anyone else for that matter, what his onward destination was for fear that that piece of information would be passed on to the paparazzi. Diana kindly obliged Trevor though her response was terse and scarcely revealing. “Well, eventually we will be going out to a restaurantâ€, that was all Diana said. Without advance knowledge of exactly what restaurant that was, Trevor and his colleagues’ hands were tied: they could not do a recce on it as was standard practice for the security team of a VIP principal. Dodi certainly, General, was being recklessly by throwing such caution to the winds.
At about 16:30, Diana and Dodi drew up at the Ritz Hotel, where they were received by acting hotel manager Claude Roulet. Â The front entrance of the hotel was already crawling with paparazzi, as a result of which the couple took the precaution of using the rear entrance, where hopefully they would make their entry unperturbed and unmolested. The first thing they did when they were ensconced in the now $10,000 a night Imperial Suite was to spend some time on their mobiles and set about touching base with friends, relations, and associates. Â Diana called at least two people, her clairvoyant friend Rita Rogers and her favourite journalist Richard Kay of The Daily Mail.
Rita, General,  was alarmed that Diana had proceeded to venture to Paris notwithstanding the warning she had given Dodi and herself in relation to what she had seen of him  in the crystal ball when the couple had consulted her. When quizzed as to what the hell she indeed was doing in Paris at that juncture, Diana replied that she and Dodi had simply come to do some shopping, which though partially true was not the material reason they were there. “But Diana, remember what I told Dodi,†Rita said somewhat reprovingly. Diana a bit apprehensively replied, “Yes I remember. I will be careful. I promise.†Well,  she did not live up to her promise as we shall soon unpack General.
As for Richard Kay, Diana made known to him that, “I have decided I am going to radically change my life. I am going to complete my obligations to charities and to the anti-personnel land mines cause, but in November I want to completely withdraw from formal public life.â€
Once she was done with her round of calls, Diana went down to the hair saloon by the hotel swimming pool to have her hair washed and blow-dried ahead of the scheduled evening dinner.
THE “TELL ME YES†RING IS DELIVERED
Since the main object of their Paris trip was to pick up the “Tell Me Yes†engagement ring Dodi had ordered in Monte Carlo a week earlier, Dodi decided to check on Repossi Jewellery, which was right within the Ritz prencincts, known as the Place Vendome.  It could have taken less than a minute for Dodi to get to the store on foot but he decided to use a car to outsmart the paparazzi invasion. He was driven there by Trevor Rees-Jones, with Alexander Kez Wingfield and Claude Roulet following on foot, though he entered the shop alone.
The Repossi store had closed for the holiday season but Alberto Repossi, accompanied by his wife and brother-in-law,  had decided to travel all the way from his home in Monaco  and momentarily open it for the sake of the potentially highly lucrative Dodi transaction.  Alberto, however, disappointed Dodi as the ring he had chosen was not the one he produced. The one he showed Dodi was pricier and perhaps more exquisite but Dodi was adamant that he wanted the exact one he had ordered as that was what Diana herself had picked. It was a ploy on the part of Repossi to make a real killing on the sale, his excuse to that effect being that Diana deserved a ring tha was well worthy of her social pedigree. With Dodi having expressed disaffection, Repossi rendered his apologies and assured Dodi he would make the right ring available shortly, whereupon Dodi repaired back to the hotel to await its delivery. But Dodi  did insist nonetheless that the pricier ring be delivered too in case it appealed to Diana anyway.
Repossi delivered the two rings an hour later. They were collected by Roulet. On inspecting them, Dodi chose the very one he had seen in Monte Carlo, apparently at the insistence of Diana. There is a possibility that Diana, who was very much aware of her public image and was not comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth, may have deliberately shown an interest in a less expensive engagement ring. It  may have been a purely romantic as opposed to a prestigious  choice for her.
The value of the ring, which was found on a wardrobe shelf in Dodi’s apartment after the crash,  has been estimated to be between $20,000 and $250,000 as Repossi has always refused to be drawn into revealing how much Dodi paid for it. The sum, which enjoyed a 25 percent discount, was in truth paid for not by Dodi himself but by his father as was the usual practice.
Dodi was also shown Repossi’s sketches for a bracelet, a watch, and earrings which he proposed to create if Diana approved of them.
DIANA AND DODI GUSH OVER IMMINENT NUPTIALS
At about 7 pm,  Dodi and Diana left the Ritz and headed for Dodi’s apartment at a place known as the Arc de Trompe. They went there to properly tog themselves out for the scheduled evening dinner. They spent two hours at the luxurious apartment. As usual, the ubiquitous paparazzi were patiently waiting for them there.
As they lingered in the apartment, Dodi beckoned over to his butler Rene Delorm and showed him the engagement ring. “Dodi came into my kitchen,†Delorm relates. “He looked into the hallway to check that Diana couldn’t hear and reached into his pocket and pulled out the box … He said, ‘Rene, I’m going to propose to the princess tonight. Make sure that we have champagne on ice when we come back from dinner’.†Rene described the ring as “a spectacular diamond encrusted ring, a massive emerald surrounded by a cluster of diamonds, set on a yellow and white gold band sitting in a small light-grey velvet boxâ€.
Just before 9 pm, Dodi called the brother of his step-father, Hassan Yassen, who also was staying at the Ritz  that night, and told him that he hoped to get married to Diana by the end of the year.
Later that same evening, both Dodi and Diana would talk to Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s dad, and make known to him their pre-nuptial intentions. “They called me and said we’re coming back (to London) on Sunday (August 31) and on Monday (September 1) they are
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RAMADAN – The Blessed Month of Fasting
Ramadan is the fasting month for Muslims, where over one billion Muslims throughout the world fast from dawn to sunset, and pray additional prayers at night. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to Allah, and self-control. It is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. As you read this Muslims the world over have already begun fasting as the month of Ramadan has commenced (depending on the sighting of the new moon).
‘The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for people, in it are clear signs of guidance and Criterion, therefore whoever of you who witnesses this month, it is obligatory on him to fast it. But whoever is ill or traveling let him fast the same number of other days, God desires ease for you and not hardship, and He desires that you complete the ordained period and glorify God for His guidance to you, that you may be grateful”. Holy Qur’an (2 : 185)
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars upon which the structure of Islam is built. The other four are: the declaration of one’s belief in Allah’s oneness and in the message of Muhammad (PBUH); regular attendance to prayer; payment of zakaat (obligatory charity); and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
As explained in an earlier article, fasting includes total abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking, refraining from obscenity, avoiding getting into arguments and including abstaining from marital relations, from sunrise to sunset. While fasting may appear to some as difficult Muslims see it as an opportunity to get closer to their Lord, a chance to develop spiritually and at the same time the act of fasting builds character, discipline and self-restraint.
Just as our cars require servicing at regular intervals, so do Muslims consider Ramadan as a month in which the body and spirit undergoes as it were a ‘full service’. This ‘service’ includes heightened spiritual awareness both the mental and physical aspects and also the body undergoing a process of detoxification and some of the organs get to ‘rest’ through fasting.
Because of the intensive devotional activity fasting, Ramadan has a particularly high importance, derived from its very personal nature as an act of worship but there is nothing to stop anyone from privately violating Allah’s commandment of fasting if one chooses to do so by claiming to be fasting yet eating on the sly. This means that although fasting is obligatory, its observance is purely voluntary. If a person claims to be a Muslim, he is expected to fast in Ramadan.
The reward Allah gives for proper fasting is very generous. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) quotes Allah as saying: “All actions done by a human being are his own except fasting, which belongs to Me and I will reward it accordingly.†We are also told by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that the reward for proper fasting is admittance into heaven.
Fasting earns great reward when it is done in a ‘proper’ manner. This is because every Muslim is required to make his worship perfect. For example perfection of fasting can be achieved through restraint of one’s feelings and emotions. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that when fasting, a person should not allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel or a slanging match. He teaches us: “On a day of fasting, let no one of you indulge in any obscenity, or enter into a slanging match. Should someone abuse or fight him, let him respond by saying: ‘I am fasting!’â€
This high standard of self-restraint fits in well with fasting, which is considered as an act of self-discipline. Islam requires us to couple patience with voluntary abstention from indulgence in our physical desires. The purpose of fasting helps man to attain a high degree of sublimity, discipline and self-restraint. In other words, this standard CAN BE achieved by every Muslim who knows the purpose of fasting and strives to fulfill it.
Fasting has another special aspect. It makes all people share in the feelings of hunger and thirst. In normal circumstances, people with decent income may go from one year’s end to another without experiencing the pangs of hunger which a poor person may feel every day of his life. Such an experience helps to draw the rich one’s conscience nearer to needs of the poor. A Muslim is encouraged to be more charitable and learns to give generously for a good cause.
Fasting also has a universal or communal aspect to it. As Muslims throughout the world share in this blessed act of worship, their sense of unity is enhanced by the fact that every Muslim individual joins willingly in the fulfillment of this divine commandment. This is a unity of action and purpose, since they all fast in order to be better human beings. As a person restrains himself from the things he desires most, in the hope that he will earn Allah’s pleasure, self-discipline and sacrifice become part of his nature.
The month of Ramadan can aptly be described as a “season of worship.†Fasting is the main aspect of worship in this month, because people are more attentive to their prayers, read the Qur’an more frequently and also strive to improve on their inner and outer character. Thus, their devotion is more complete and they feel much happier in Ramadan because they feel themselves to be closer to their Creator.