Even Their Barbarism Was Civilized
We think of ancient life as cruel and backward compared with our own times, but often it wasn’t.
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Pharaoh
Say Thou Art My Sister
Thousands of clay tablets dating from the time of Abraham reveal crucial cultural context for some weird episodes in the Hebrew Bible.
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Medicine and Monotheism
Many people know about the Jewish practice of circumcision. But in ancient Egypt, pharaohs were circumcised as well. Medical expertise may have been shared by the Israelites and their taskmasters – but what about the belief in a single, unified god?
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Climate Plagues
A toxic algae bloom in a primary water source causes a mass die-off of amphibians, attracting insects that become vectors of disease. Changes in weather patterns bring on freak storms and an explosion of vermin, wiping out crops and livestock. The government responds to criticism with crackdowns, worsening the overall disaster. And finally, a deadly food-borne illness turns a joyful holiday into a national calamity.
All of this could be in our future. But could it also be what happened almost five thousand years ago, when the Book of Exodus tells us the plagues came to Egypt?
Pithom and Ra’amses
What is a “store city,” anyway? The ancient Egyptian equivalent of a gigantic Amazon fulfillment center? Archaeologists have never found anything matching that description, in Egypt or anywhere else. Every village and town in the world has depots and repositories of various types, but – at least until very recently – there’s never been so much stuff around that you needed a metropolis to store it where people had no room to live.
So, assuming that at least part of the Exodus story contains elements of truth, the products of Israelite labor mentioned in the Hebrew Bible were more likely to be city-sized storage facilities within much larger municipalities than actual “store cities.” But that still begs the question of where Pithom and Rameses were located.
After more than a century of searching, now we know.
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