To thicken the "mystery" comes a scene as important as in the shadow of the story itself, indeed if we want to say it all, completely omitted in the biblical text. Always referring to our "travel companion", that is Giuseppe Flavio, this is what he himself reports in the "Against Apion" about this man:
Book 1 - ver 232
"After having agreed that for many years our fathers had left Egypt, he introduces * the fictitious king Amenophis, and says that he wished to contemplate the gods as Or, one of the kings who had preceded him. his desire to his namesake Amenofis, son of Paapi, who appeared to participate in the divine nature for his wisdom and his knowledge of the future. "
Ver 236
"That Amenophis, then, wise and fortune-teller, feared that the wrath of the gods turned against him and against the king, if the violence done to those men had been seen ... "
Ver 243
" [...] Amenophis, the king of Egypt, as he learned their invasion, was troubled remembering the prediction of Amenophis, son of Paapi. "Already from these lines one can guess that this figure was particularly dear to Pharaoh, indeed I would say that Pharaoh blindly trusted his vizier. Here Giuseppe Flavio makes the name of the Pharaoh, taking up the text of Manetore, and introduces us precisely the name of his vizier, a namesake, but nicknamed "son of Paapi".
Luxor: February 2020
Here in February of this year we were in the land of Egypt, and we come across (but we already knew it) in the museum of Luxor, and in particular in this statue
It is the statue of the royal scribe Amenhotep, son of Hapu, who was in the service of Amenhotep III. The assonance of the name of the royal scribe to the name of the vizier of Amenhotep III is interesting, given that this scribe was called "son of Hapu". The name Paapi's son hides the root "Pa" which is to be translated as "of", in this case the translation is "son of Api", but the assonance is too strong to not lead us to think that Giuseppe Flavio could have call him "son of Paapu", so much so that probably the Jewish tradition has crippled the word Hapu with Api. The extraordinary coincidence between Giuseppe Flavio's story and Egyptian history, during the XVIII Dynasty, is evident. One wonders what are the sources of Manetone at this point (to which Giuseppe Flavio refers) and how much the story of Manetone / Giuseppe Flavio was a source of inspiration to the biblical story. This scribe was so important, that time later his death, his memory is celebrated
*Manetone