One unexpected side effect of retelling the story of Exodus as historical fiction has been a deeper appreciation for the sophistication of the ancients. Discovering the complex Code of Hammurabi, the far-flung exploits of spice merchants from India, the extraordinary medical expertise documented in pharaonic Egypt, and the accomplished urban engineering of Mesopotamia has gobsmacked me over the years. That’s why I started this blog.
But I still hoped to prove myself wrong in this month’s post. While I was in one of my character’s heads a couple of weeks ago, as he imagined what might have ensued had the Red Sea not parted, I remembered an article I’d recently read about a cache of hand skeletons showing up in Egypt. These appendages had presumably been hacked off and presented to Pharaoh as a trophy of military victory. I put that thought into my character’s head and then found the piece again to reread it and finally write about the brutality of ancient life.
I’m sure there was plenty of it, but unfortunately the gruesome remains — which had been buried in pits just outside an Egyptian royal palace — weren’t a very good illustration of said savagery. There were no cut marks on any of the bones, which meant that the hands had been “carefully cut from the arm” in “an almost surgical effort,” according to Andrew Curry of Science Magazine, summarizing an article in Scientific Reports. Curry quotes the lead researcher, German Archaeological Institute paleopathologist Julia Gresky, as saying that the hands were “all prepared properly to look just like a hand should,” with only bones from below the wrist removed. The surgeons — possibly priests, since the scientific consensus seems to be that this was a ritual — waited until after rigor mortis had passed so that the bones could be severed intact without interference from tough tendons.
So all in all, except for their human provenance, these war souvenirs weren’t any less civilized than the trophy rugs of wild animal pelts.
The hands date from the time of the Hyksos, known as the “rulers of foreign lands” where “of” doesn’t mean that’s where they ruled, but rather where they came from. Their capital city was named Avaris, which I’ve written about elsewhere. Although the Hyksos seem to have spoken a Semitic language, and their religion featured a deity who shared similarities with the divinity we know today as Jehovah, Avaris was also the center of worship for an Egyptian god named Set, sometimes spelled Seth. Seth played the role of a troublemaker in such famous myths as that of Isis, Osiris and Horus, but over the many centuries of his veneration he was also thought of as a storm god from Canaan, much like Yahveh Elohim from the Hebrew Bible.
The Hyksos brought the horse-drawn chariot to Egypt, enabling pharaohs like Seti (who derived his name from Seth) and Raamses to conquer empires that extended through the Levant. It is these chariots that, according to Exodus 15, are “hurled” into the Red Sea by Jehovah after the Children of Israel escape to the other side.
It’s a textbook example of dramatic irony: A Semitic people bring a new technology to Egypt and use it to conquer Pharaoh, thereby becoming oppressors themselves; and when the subdued Egyptians fight back, eventually oppressing the Semitic tribes once more, they are defeated through the destruction of that technology.
Yet another way we moderns might take a few lessons from those very savvy ancients.
