Moses & the Feathered Serpent: Did the Hebrew Lawgiver Secretly Inspire a Mexican Myth?
Moses, the ancient Hebrew Lawgiver, is certainly never associated with Mexico in any traditional texts, either religious or not, in either the Old or New Worlds. So when a Vermont pastor named Ethan Smith proposed in an 1825 book that Moses may have provided the basis for the Mexican legends of Quetzalcóatl, the famous “Feathered Serpent”, it seemed a radical theory to say the least.
He writes: “Though their ancient ‘legislator’ is called by a name importing the serpent of green feathers; yet he was an ancient man, a white man and bearded; called by Montezuma, a saint, who led them to this country, and taught them many things … Who could this be but Moses, the ancient legislator in Israel?”
The following is an excerpt from the new book Moses in Mexico, which explores this hypothesis.
The Aguada Fénix Connection
Hundreds of previously-unknown ancient settlements have been discovered recently in Mexico, and their apparent antiquity has forced archaeologists to rethink how civilization evolved in the New World. Hiding under a dense jungle canopy, the ruins of once-massive monumental stone constructions were detected using a sophisticated new survey technique called LiDAR. Who had built these structures, and when? The largest and most mysterious was called Aguada Fénix, the “Reservoir of the Phoenix”. It appeared to be oriented towards the rising sun on certain days of the year in February and October.
Aguada Fénix, 2009, by Takeshi Inomata.
(Takeshi Inomata/CC BY-SA 4.0)
In a 2020 Nature article, Takeshi Inomata and his team explain how they found these sites:
“We describe an airborne LiDAR survey and excavations of the previously unknown site of Aguada Fénix (Tabasco, Mexico) with an artificial plateau, which measures 1,400 m in length and 10 to 15 m in height and has 9 causeways radiating out from it. We dated this construction to between 1000 and 800 BCE, while charcoal samples from the earliest deposits yielded dates of 1250–1050 BCE. To our knowledge, this is the oldest monumental construction ever found in the Maya area and the largest in the entire pre-Hispanic history of the region.”
LiDAR image of the ancient Maya site of Aguada Fénix, ~1000 BCE. The sprawling platform stands between 33 and 50 feet tall and measures almost a mile long.
(Takeshi Inomata)
Meanwhile, a 2023 study of the settlements’ solar alignments revealed:
“the distribution pattern of dates marked by solar alignments indicates their subsistence-related ritual significance … and represent the earliest evidence of the use of the 260-day calendar.”
These discoveries have forced a rethinking of the history of the New World. Where and when did civilization truly begin? At what point do we see the most accelerated cultural development? Was there a linear trajectory of development, or did it experience any burst of particular magnitude at any point that cannot be explained via standard cultural mechanisms?
There is yet another peculiarity about Aguada Fénix, the largest and earliest Maya structure: its orientation is skewed slightly south of east. While this does not immediately appear to connect with any obvious astronomical occurrence, such as the equinoxes, solstices, or minor or major lunar standstills - it is the same angle of orientation as observed at Tell-El Amarna, the ancient city of Pharaoh Akhenaten in Egypt (specifically between the Small Aten Temple and the Royal Wadi east of the city). Along this angle for twice a year in February and October the king could watch the Aten sun disk rise directly through the Royal Wadi, forming a symbol for the akhet (a hieroglyph that represented the sun rising between two mountains).
We therefore have not only massive stone buildings, which would have required a substantial amount of organized labor to complete, dating from the very earliest years of Mesoamerica culture, but they seem to share specific solar alignments that were used by Akhenaten in Egypt. What is going on here? What inspired a group of hunters and gatherers to suddenly construct the largest religious structures in the region’s history, oriented towards sunrises along the same angle as Akhenaten’s architecture in Egypt, and dating from not long after his historical period? Could it be that Akhenaten-Moses once visited Mesoamerica in the distant past? Could Moses have come to Mexico?
Sunrise over the jungles of Mexico, at the Maya site of Yaxuna, Yucatan. Observing sunrises on certain days in February and October were key aspects of the early 260-day calendar, which may have originated at the Egyptian site of Amarna.
(By author.)
Akhenaten was Moses … And Quetzalcóatl?
My first book Moses Restored (2017) argued how the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten became the Hebrew Lawgiver Moses. It was the first complete biography of this astounding human being. It aimed to show how he continued his religious revolution, by taking the Israelites out of Egypt to Canaan, and laying the foundation for what would become the Judaism we know today.
The history of his kingship was concealed in the early chapters of the Book of Exodus, creating a “Moses mystery” that cried out for a solution. Fitting Moses to Akhenaten solves this mystery, along with so many others, and perhaps only one glaring enigma remains: his death. The Torah ends, as does Moses Restored, with the death of its central character Moses, just outside the boundaries of the Promised Land of Israel, as narrated in the book of Deuteronomy 34: 5-7:
“And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said. He (the Lord) buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone.”
Akhenaten wears a crown he developed himself, based on the Atef crown of Osiris. It is festooned with sun discs and protective uraei cobras wearing ostrich feathers, literal feathered serpents! Could these motifs have prefigured the Feathered Serpent of Mexico? He burns incense before the sunrise, similar to some Maya priests today. (Plate VIII, Davies, N. de G., The Rock Tombs of El Amarna: Part II, The Tombs of Panehesy and Meryra II, London, Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
The book Moses in Mexico continues the amazing story of Moses. What, you ask? Continues the story? Didn’t Moses die? What’s going on? How can his story continue? Well, as will soon become apparent, the death of Moses is as mysterious as his origins. First, as the verse above makes clear, no human buried Moses, but the Lord himself did it. Second, no human knows the location of his grave. Third, despite Moses being of advanced years, his eyes were not weak nor was his strength gone. This seems to suggest that he was not ready to die.
View from the Small Aten Temple at Amarna, the ancient city built by Akhenaten around 1350 BCE, looking east towards the desert cliffs and the distinctive opening to the Royal Wadi, which archaeologists theorize represented the first half of the akhet symbol, the glyph for mountain, djw. Twice a year in February and October the sun appears to rise through the valley opening, completing the akhet symbol and forming a solar hierophany.
(By author. ADDED: The akhet hieroglyph, 2023. By Mazapan3210.)
We therefore have three aspects of the supposed “death” of Moses that immediately seem to cast doubt upon it. These unusual aspects have not gone unnoticed, and several scholars have brought into question whether Moses died as depicted in the Bible or if he actually lived on. Could the Bible be hiding yet another Moses mystery for us to rediscover? I believe the answer is yes, and Moses in Mexico represents the explanation for that answer. It chronicles the final stage of Moses’ life, which I believe brought him to the shores of the New World, specifically Mexico.
It was there, I believe, that he became the mythical hero remembered so fondly across Mesoamerica: the Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcóatl. It was there that his two previous lives, that of a rebellious Pharaoh of Egypt and a renegade Israelite leader and judge, collided to create a new manifestation of his previous likes and interests. It was there that his presence over three millennia ago created such an impact that memories of it rippled out across time and space, creating a strange Pan-Mesoamerican cultural form that retained its basic shape across thousands of miles and years, and has continued to baffle scholars to this day.
AI-generated image of a hypothetical Pharaoh Akhenaten in Mexican graffiti style.
(By author.)
What initiated this sweeping and bold new cultural program in Mexico after 1250 BCE, a program which saw the origins of so many of its diagnostic features, such as: intricate creation cosmologies, urban plans, monumental stone architecture oriented towards sunrises, the priesthood, writing, divine kingship, and even acts of revolution such as the mutilation and decapitation of idols and statues? I believe that it was Moses, who lived in the decades before 1250 BCE.
I believe that by understanding that Akhenaten became Moses, we can understand how Moses became Quetzalcóatl. Without understanding his youth and kingship, obscured in the Bible but nevertheless manifested in hundreds of tiny clues, we cannot understand how or why Moses would have desired to become the Feathered Serpent.
Ultimately, the idea of the historical Moses becoming the historical Quetzalcóatl has never been properly scrutinized because the character of Moses himself has never been properly scrutinized. Scholars have yet to paint in the details of his youth and adult life, before he became the desert exile in Midian. These details are infuriatingly sparse in the Bible. However, if we understand that the Bible was trying to conceal the fact that Moses had once been a King of Egypt (to avoid unwanted future questions), and that Akhenaten had lived on to become Moses, then we can begin to clearly see how he may have carried on to become Quetzalcóatl, bringer of civilization to the New World.
For instance, Quetzalcóatl has been called the Lord of Dawn, he combined serpent imagery with that of birds, feathers and flight, and was remembered as a lawgiver and bringer of civilization to the New World. Comparing this to Moses certainly yields interesting connections, since Moses was associated with giving the Law as well as serpent imagery, most famously regarding the Bronze Serpent he set up in the desert. But was Moses called the Lord of the Dawn? No. Was he associated with bird imagery? Not particularly.
The author and his sister Jennifer Stephenson in front of the Maya Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent at Chichén Itzá, Mexico. Mexican architecture is replete with depictions of feathered serpents, as well as solar hierophanies.
(By author.)
However, if Moses is connected to his former life as Akhenaten, then these aspects all assume powerful meanings. First, Akhenaten worshiped one lord called the Aten, the sun disk, called the “Lord of the Dawn”. Second, Akhenaten was strongly associated with bird imagery, as I have chronicled in a previous article called “Akhenaten the Bird King”. Third, I suggested in another article that Akhenaten was attempting to portray himself as a “new Osiris”, having discarded and outlawed the worship of the god of the dead.
Osiris, in Egyptian mythology, was Egypt’s first king, who once travelled the world bringing its peoples civilization and knowledge. He taught agriculture and law, arts and crafts, stone architecture, writing and religion. He was murdered by his jealous brother Set, resurrected by his sister and wife Isis as Egypt’s first mummy, and finally became the god of the Dead. It is therefore not surprising that Akhenaten, who once considered himself a “new Osiris” would have ultimately wished to travel across the ocean, to the west, to parts unknown, bringing and teaching knowledge and the civilizing arts to whomever he encountered.
It will be difficult at times to clearly see the trajectories of ideas from Akhenaten to Moses to Quetzalcóatl. The attributes of Quetzalcóatl in particular are difficult to quantify and classify because they have been much distorted through history, and there are no ancient written sources from Mesoamerica that clearly outline his life and to which we may turn for a single, unbiased account.
Rather, the information concerning Quetzalcóatl comes to us as fragments of memories and shards of stories, from Spanish-influenced codices and enigmatic stone architecture devoid of writing and lacking exact context or meaning. While these challenges appear daunting, they are not insurmountable. The fact that I have already connected Akhenaten to Moses will only help to bolster my argument that he ultimately became Quetzalcóatl.
By understanding that he was, at heart, a man of change, who constantly shifted and evolved his ideas of God, we can better understand how he could have adopted the persona of the Feathered Serpent. Just as the snake sheds its skin, so too did Akhenaten shed his many guises. First, as a youth when he shed his given name of Amenhotep IV, adopting a strange name that he seems to have invented himself: Akhenaten, “Shining Spirit of the Aten”. During his reign, he shed several older names of the Aten, becoming more and more abstract in his naming of his one God.
Six AI-generated images of the same person, Pharaoh Akhenaten, at six distinct stages of his life.
(By author.)
When he disappeared from Egypt after seventeen years on the throne, I believe he did not die as is popularly assumed, but shed his Egyptian past all together to become a new persona, Moses. Finally, decades later, when he had succeeded in bringing the Israelites to the Promised Land, I suggest he shed his persona once again, and adopted yet another new guise.
This one fused his beloved uraeus cobra, protective serpent that sat above the brow of every Egyptian king, with the feathers of his three favorite birds: the bennu bird of immortality (the Phoenix to later Greeks), the hawk of Ra-Horakhty, and the akh northern bald ibis. By combining serpents with birds, an idea already being developed in Egypt at that time (for example, in the tomb of Tutankhamun), I believe he created a powerful new image which would have left an indelible mark in the consciousness of New World populations for millennia: the Feathered Serpent.
Relief of Osiris from the Temple of Seti I, Abydos, Egypt. According to Egyptian mythology, Egypt’s first king Osiris sailed around the world spreading knowledge, exactly like the Feathered Serpent was believed to have later done.
(By author)
Possible Origin of the Feathered Serpent Myth:
In the guise of the Feathered Serpent, Moses could attempt to teach the peoples of the New World everything he knew, finally becoming the New Osiris he had always dreamt of becoming in his youth. By piecing together the vague and distant memories of Quetzalcóatl discernible from the Spanish codices along with physical clues from the archaeological record, we can begin to form a picture of what the historical Quetzalcóatl may have once been like when he arrived on the shores of Mexico from a distant land to the East.
Remarkably, he comes across exactly like how I would expect Akhenaten-Moses to come across: as a focused, intense religious leader, a king, a high priest, who was chaste, moral, ethical, just and wise, who taught reading, writing, the calendar, and how to live a holy and respectful life following divine laws. He also likely had a paradoxical dark side that called for periodic capital punishment and sacrifice when his religious edicts were not obeyed.
LEFT: Detail of the side of Tutankhamun’s golden throne showing the winged cobra motif common in royal New Kingdom art of the time. By Yveke, 2009. RIGHT: The image of the uraeus (i.e. protective cobra of the king) was common at Amarna, where they were often shown wearing sun disks and ostrich feathers, making them quite literally feathered serpents. They demonstrate that Akhenaten loved this blended magical motif for many years before he used it in Mexico.
(Left; Yveke/CC BY-SA 2.0, RIGHT: (Plate X, ‘Panehesy decorated by the King’, Davies, N. de G., The Rock Tombs of El Amarna: Part II, The Tombs of Panehesy and Meryra II, (London, Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
Moving beyond simple parallelism, connecting Akhenaten to Moses and ultimately to Quetzalcóatl requires an understanding of their temporal contexts. For example, Elliot Smith, the pastor who connected Moses to Quetzalcóatl two centuries ago, exclusively used parallelism. He argued that Native Americans were descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, who migrated to North America circa 720 BCE, after their defeat by the Assyrian Empire. This contradicted his argument that Moses was actually Quetzalcóatl, because Moses lived centuries before the Assyrian defeat. Smith was forced to conclude that only the memories of Moses were transferred to the Feathered Serpent myth encountered by the migrating Israelites, as it could not have been based on the historical Moses.
Conversely, I argue that yes, it actually was the historical Moses who traveled to the New World and became the Feathered Serpent, in the decades before 1250 BCE. No one has yet put forward any cogent argument that explains how Moses could have become Quetzalcóatl, and more importantly, why he would have wanted to become the Feathered Serpent. I believe it is only by understanding his past as Akhenaten - the “Bird King” who was protected by fiery serpents and wings and who cast himself as a “New Osiris” - that we can truly understand his final stage of life: the bearded Feathered Serpent who sailed across the Ocean.
Moses in Mexico argues that Moses in the Torah and the Bible did not die as depicted, but lived on, unbeknownst to the Israelites, who had assumed he had died. He lived on to bring ethics, rules, and religion to the peoples of the New World, creating yet another entirely unique and astounding new persona. These clues lie scattered across Mesoamerican jungles and ruins, throughout Spanish codices and Maya records, and within the deep memories of the people who still call that wonderful land home. Others lie buried in the sands of Amarna, or even hiding in plain sight in church stained glass windows, which so often feature Moses’ bizarre “feathered” serpent.
Who was this most inexplicable creature of myth and history, an aged prophet with a monstrous visage that needed concealment, a sage wizard and magician associated with the dawning sun and the wind, bringer of culture and religion, writing and law, who was wiser and more wonderful than any person in memory? Does a historical seed lie buried at the heart of the strange and twisted tree that is Quetzalcóatl mythology? Could a real human being have journeyed from “across the sea” (ch’aqa palow), as the Maya legends claim, bestowed culture upon the people, and then returned to the east, to “his father the Sun”, over three thousand years ago?
AI-generated image of King Quetzalcóatl in 13th century BCE Mexico.
(By author.)
If so, then he must have been an intellectually-towering individual, a man of immense insight and wisdom, ambition and drive, religious passion and devotional zeal. Placing a headdress of resplendent green quetzal feathers upon his head, incense smoke curling around his head, there can be no better candidate for the original Quetzalcóatl than Moses himself, Pharaoh Akhenaten.
- This article is an an excerpt from the new book Moses in Mexico)
- Top image: Montage (by author) of Akhenaten, Moses, and the Feathered Serpent, first priest-king of ancient Mexico. LEFT: Statue of Akhenaten from Karnak, 1355 BCE (By José-Manuel Benito Álvarez/CC BY-SA 2.5), CENTER: Moses Showing the Ten Commandments (By Gustave Doré, 1865/Public Domain), RIGHT: an AI-generated image of Moses as Quetzalcóatl in Mexico in the 13th-century BCE.
By Jonathon Perrin
Jonathon Perrin is the author of five books on Amazon. His newest is Moses in Mexico (2025). A sequel to Moses Restored (2017), it examines the provocative theory that Moses sailed to the New World over three thousand years ago to become the Feathered Serpent of myth and legend. Visit www.jonathonperrin.com for more.
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