Asenath or Asenith (in modern times sometimes transliterated as Osnat) is a figure in the Book of Genesis (41:45.50; 46,20), an Egyptian

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

 woman whom Pharaoh

Pharaoh

Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...

 gave to Joseph

Joseph (Hebrew Bible)

Joseph is an important character in the Hebrew bible, where he connects the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Canaan to the subsequent story of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt....

 son of Jacob

Jacob

Jacob "heel" or "leg-puller"), also later known as Israel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the New Testament and the Qur'an was the third patriarch of the Hebrew people with whom God made a covenant, and ancestor of the tribes of Israel, which were named after his descendants.In the...

 to be his wife. The daughter of Potipherah

Potipherah

Potipherah was a priest of the ancient Egypt town of On, mentioned in the and of the Hebrew Bible.He was the father of Asenath, who was given to Joseph as his wife by Pharaoh, and who bore Joseph two sons: Manasseh and Ephraim....

, a priest of On

Heliopolis (ancient)

Heliopolis was one of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt, the capital of the 13th Lower Egyptian nome that was located five miles east of the Nile to the north of the apex of the Nile Delta...

, she bore Joseph two sons, Manasseh

Manasseh (tribal patriarch)

Manasseh or Menashe was, according to the Book of Genesis, the first son of Joseph and Asenath. Asenath was an Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the daughter of Potipherah, a priest of On. Manasseh was born in Egypt before the arrival of the children of Israel from Canaan...

 and Ephraim

Ephraim

Ephraim ; was, according to the Book of Genesis, the second son of Joseph and Asenath. Asenath was an Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the daughter of Potipherah, a priest of On. Ephraim was born in Egypt before the arrival of the children of Israel from Canaan...

, who became the patriarchs of the Israelite

Israelite

According to the Bible the Israelites were a Hebrew-speaking people of the Ancient Near East who inhabited the Land of Canaan during the monarchic period .The word "Israelite" derives from the Biblical Hebrew ישראל...

 tribes of Manasseh

Tribe of Manasseh

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Manasseh was one of the Tribes of Israel. Together with the Tribe of Ephraim, Manasseh also formed the House of Joseph....

 and Ephraim

Tribe of Ephraim

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Ephraim was one of the Tribes of Israel. The Tribe of Manasseh together with Ephraim also formed the House of Joseph....

.

Modern scholarship says her name derives from the Egyptian

Egyptian language

Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...

 "holy to Anath", and that her name may be phonetically transliterated from the New Kingdom Egyptian hieroglyphs as Ns-Nt.

In Hellenistic texts

Genesis records nothing more about Asenath, but her story is elaborated in the apocrypha

Apocrypha

The term apocrypha is used with various meanings, including "hidden", "esoteric", "spurious", "of questionable authenticity", ancient Chinese "revealed texts and objects" and "Christian texts that are not canonical"....

l Joseph and Asenath. There, she is a virgin who rejects several worthy suitors in favor of Joseph, but Joseph will not have a pagan for a wife. She locks herself in a tower and rejects her idolatry in favor of Joseph's God Yahweh

Yahweh

Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...

, and receives a visit from an angel who accepts her conversion. A ritual involving a honeycomb

Honeycomb

A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal waxcells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen.Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey...

 follows. Bees cover her and sting her lips to remove the false prayers to the pagan gods of her past. Joseph now consents to marry her. She bears him their sons Mannaseh and Ephraim. Pharaoh's son wants Asenath for himself, however, and with the aid of Joseph's brothers Dan

Dan (Biblical figure)

According to the Book of Genesis, Dan was the fifth son of Jacob with Bilhah. He was Bilhah's first son. He was the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Dan. In the biblical account, Dan's mother is described as Rachel's handmaid, who becomes one of Jacob's wives...

 and Gad, he conspires to kill her husband. The loyal brother Benjamin

Benjamin

Benjamin was the last-born of Jacob's twelve sons, and the second and last son of Rachel in Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition. He was the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Benjamin. In the Biblical account, unlike Rachel's first son, Joseph, Benjamin was born in Canaan. He died in Egypt on...

 interferes, and Pharaoh's son is ultimately slain. Asenath forgives the conspirators, and she and Joseph rule over Egypt for 48 years, after which they pass the crown to Pharaoh's grandson.

Rabbinical literature

The Midrash

Midrash

The Hebrew term Midrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....

 Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer

Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer

Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer is an aggadic-midrashic work on Genesis, part of Exodus, and a few sentences of Numbers, ascribed to R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus , a disciple of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai and teacher of Rabbi Akiva. It comprises fifty four chapters...

 records a view that Asenath was actually the daughter of Joseph's sister Dinah

Dinah

According to the Hebrew Bible, Dinah was the daughter of Jacob, one of the patriarchs of the Israelites and Leah, his first wife. The episode of her abduction and violation by a Canaanite prince, and the subsequent vengeance of her brothers Simeon and Levi, commonly referred to as "The Rape of...

, conceived in her rape by Shechem. Some of the circumstantial textual evidence supporting this view is laid out in an article by John Pratt.

The name Asenath today

"Asenath" or "Osnat" is a commonly used female first name in present-day Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. Asenath is also the name of a character in H.P. Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep

The Thing on the Doorstep

"The Thing on the Doorstep" is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft, part of the so-called Cthulhu Mythos universe of horror fiction. It was written in August 1933, and first published in the January 1937 issue of Weird Tales.-Inspiration:...

."