Jan Assmann's relationship to Judaism has always been less historical than ideological, almost emotionally determined. He recapitulated this relationship in his inaugural lecture. For him, the exodus of Israel from Egypt is the real fall of mankind. Because with it the intolerant monotheism arose against the tolerant “cosmotheism” of the Egyptians and all high civilizations of that time in a kind of “puritanical cultural revolution”. The relationship of the ancient Israelites to Egyptian culture must be imagined as the relationship of Islamism to Western culture today.