Moses, Man of the Mountain

Within the world of Moses, Man of the Mountain, the presence of God in nature is universally acknowledged. The Egyptians see gods in hawks, calves, and other wild animals. Jethro leads Moses to worship a god living on Mt. Sinai, and teaches him to identify God’s presence on the mountain. This link between God and nature forms an important thread connecting the religious experiences of characters of different backgrounds. Hurston’s introduction of Amram, the enslaved father of Aaron, Miriam, and perhaps Moses, is indicative of her thematic interest in the presence of God in nature. As Amram works under the “brilliant, cloudless, Egyptian sun” (12), his Egyptian overseer loudly praises “Horus, golden god! Lord of both horizons! The weaver of the beginning of things” (12). The inclusion of this prayer to the hawk-god Horus at the beginning of Hurston’s novel emphasizes the powerful presence of God in nature. For the Egyptians, the sun was a divine presence that had the power to begin the day and guide human activity. Repeated references to Horus throughout the novel (41, 51, 74, 180) provide evidence of the link between the presence of the divine and nature in the imagination of Hurston’s Egyptian characters.