One of the peoples who were around at the time, actually little more
than desert nomads living in tents and herding goats, were the original
Israelites. A lot of our knowledge of the Israelites comes from the
Holy Bible, in the Old Testament which makes mention of the Egyptians
and the Pharaoh. There is no mention of any specific Pharaoh, except
one (I Kings 14) called King Shishak, whomay have been the Pharaoh
Sheshonq III (835 - 783 BC), but this is almost one thousand years after
the time I am talking about now. In fact, as recorded in the Bible,
the Israelites were enslaved by the Egyptians and, for generation after
generation, were treated cruelly and used to build cities and monuments.
There is no mention of the Israelites in the few contemporary Egyptian
stories that we have discovered and no mention in the Bible of any
pyramid building (although there is a reference to a capstone). The
only building task named in the Bible is connected to the city of
Pi-Ramesse, which was somewhere in the Nile Delta and long destroyed.
Reading
and writing had been around in Egypt for at least 1500 years by this
time, but was reserved for royalty, scientists, doctors, astrologers,
military commanders and courtiers. The ‘ordinary’ people and certainly
the slaves, had very little education outside the family group or
community and lived very basic lives, working hard from a very early
age. They were involved with farming, goat-herding, construction,
service to the rich, army duties and worshipping their various gods. A
papyrus has been found that lists the cost of feeding one large group of
pyramid construction workers; it seems that they mostly had to survive
on things like unleavened bread, onions and garlic! The rich, no
doubt, enjoyed a wide range of fish, birds, meat, vegetables and fruit
and almost certainly drank wine and beer from very early times. Many of
the tomb paintings in Egypt show scenes of life for the Pharaohs and
their courtiers, including scenes of hunting, fishing and even making
wine.
There is, however, a very interesting and relevant story in
the Bible, about an Israelite who became very powerful and went against
the Pharaoh and eventually won, enabling the slaves to escape Egypt.
The story is called Exodus and the hero was Moses.
The Bible
story tells that the Pharaoh strongly believed in astrology and when his
Royal Astrologer predicted that an Israelite boy would be born and grow
to overthrow the Pharaoh, he hit back and cruelly ordered that all the
newest born Israelite boys should be slaughtered. So Moses’ mother
decided to hide him in a basket in the bulrushes which grew along the
Nile. Well, the story goes, the Pharaoh’s daughter, or one of them,
happened to be bathing in the river and spotted the basket and , after
sending her maids to bring it back, looked inside and saw the beautiful
boy baby whom she named Moses. If you think about the name Moses and
realise some of the Pharaohs had names like Amenophis, Tuthmosis and
Dudimose, you may see some similarity. Pharaoh’s daughter was so in
love with this baby that she decided to keep him for herself and
educated him in reading and writing, which the Israelite slaves could
not do. She brought him up into the Egyptian way of life, keeping him
in ignorance of his true origins. This was a big mistake for the
Pharaoh, because eventually Moses grew up and discovered he was really
an Israelite and turned against the Pharaoh.
Moses adopted a
different religion to the Pharaoh and worshipped the Hebrew god Yahweh.
Moses also became very sensitive to the suffering of the slaves, his
own people, and the scripture tells us he received instruction from his
god to end the bondage of the slaves. Moses went to the Pharaoh and
said “Let my people go!”, or words to that effect. Of course the
Pharaoh wasn’t too happy about letting all this cheap labour go, so he
refused and Moses had to resort to threats of violence and destruction,
claiming that his god, Yahweh, was much more powerful than the Pharaohs’
gods all put together.
It is uncertain who the Pharaoh was
when Moses was born, or when Exodus happened. Maybe it was Merneptah in
the XIX dynasty, 1213 - 1203 BC as some claim, but other historians
think differently. In his book ‘A Test of Time’, David Rohl presents a
good argument that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was probably Dudimose, the
last Pharaoh of the thirteenth dynasty, about 450 years earlier. Rohl
also reconsiders the dating of the dynasties based on lists of Israel’s
Kings. The Bible tells us that the Exodus was 480 years before the
founding of the Temple of Jerusalem by Solomon. An early Christian
historian Eusebius, referring to the work of an earlier Jewish
historian, Artapanus, tells us about a Pharaoh called Palmanothes, who
was cruel to the Hebrews He had a daughter called Merris who adopted a
Hebrew boy called Mousos. Merris then married a Pharaoh called
Khenephres who eventually became jealous of Mousos, causing Mousos to
flee. Rohl argues that Khenephres was in fact the Greek version of the
name Khaneferre, meaning ‘the perfection of Re shines in the horizon’,
the twenty-third ruler of the thirteenth dynasty, Sobekhotep IV.
Sobehhotep IV was a great and powerful ruler. Moses was 80 years old at
the time of the Exodus and this was when Dudimose ruled. According to
the historian Manetho the reign of this Pharaoh witnessed a ‘blast of
God’. Other writers place Moses in the eighteenth dynasty and some even
claim he was the same person as the Pharaoh Akhenaten. The truth is
that nobody knows who the Pharaoh of Exodus really was.
Although
there had been magicians in Egypt for many years, Moses’ magic was said -
in the Bible - to be a different sort of ‘magic’. The difference was
that Moses prayed to his God Yahweh for the miracles, whereas the
Egyptian magicians were said to have performed their feats through
powers which they had learned.
Moses, whether through prayer or
magic, was able to do some very magical and wonderfully nasty things to
the Pharaoh and his people, eventually starting plagues, turning the
river to blood and causing the death of the new-born. The Pharaoh had
to let them go. But that was not the end of the story because the
Pharaoh cheated and went back on his word, leading his armies to bring
his slaves back. This was really the worst thing he could have done,
because somehow Moses was able to pray and part the waters of the sea,
just long enough to let the Israelites through, but, when the Pharaoh
and his army went through to chase them, the waters fell back together,
drowning them all. Moses, with his brother Aaron, led the people on and
on through the deserts, performing many miracles, causing ‘manna’ to
fall from heaven, which they could eat when they were starving, as well
as getting water out of a rock when they were thirsty. Moses had been
taught how to read by the Egyptians and wrote down the stories that had
been passed down through the generations, about how the world was made,
Adam and Eve, Noah and his ark and who was whose son. In fact Moses
wrote the first 5 books of the Old Testament.
As I said, there
were many stories of magicians in Egypt long before Moses and in fact
documents have been found with stories of similar miracles or magic
being performed even as long as 1200 years earlier. For instance, the
parting of the waters story can be seen in an old papyrus document,
called the Westcar Papyrus, which was written in the early part of the
XVIIIth dynasty, about 1550 BC, but it is clear that it has been copied
from stories dating from the time of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, 2550
BC. The story is told to King Cheops by a person called Baiuf-Ra and
is said to have happened in the time of the King’s father, Snorfu. It
is about a powerful magician called Tchatcha-em-ankh (sorry about that,
but I didn’t name him!). Well, apparently, one day old Snorfu was
feeling a little miserable so called to his nobles to do something to
cheer him up. After a while they brought in Tchatcha-em-ankh and he
suggested that the king go out on the lake. “For”, said the magician,
“the heart of Your Majesty will rejoice and be happy when you sail about
and see the beautiful thickets which are on the lake.” Then
Tchatcha-em-ankh persuaded Snorfu to allow him to arrange the trip and
the story tells that he brought ‘twenty ebony paddles inlaid with gold
and also twenty young virgins having beautiful heads of hair and lovely
forms and shapely limbs and twenty nets wherein these virgins may dress
themselves instead of in their own normal clothes.’ The virgins were to
row and sing for his Majesty. Well, believe it or not, the old king
was cheered up and had a very good time, until suddenly the leader of
the rowers got her hair tangled up and her favourite piece of jewellery
made of ‘new turquoise’ fell into the river. This made her stop rowing
and singing, then, because she was their leader, all the other girls
stopped as well. When Snorfu found out why she was so upset he promised
to recover the jewellery and called for Tchatcha-em-ankh. The
magician then did a spell (‘spoke certain words of power’) and caused
one part of the lake to fold up and over on top of the other and so
found the ornament. Snorfu was well pleased and arranged a big feast to
celebrate.
This story tells of the power of just one magician,
although there are many other stories and they are all just as
impressive and reliable as any story ever told or written anywhere. You
may choose to believe them or not.
There is another story from
the time of Cheops about one of his sons, called Herutataf and a
powerful magician called Teta ‘who is one hundred and ten years old’ and
knew ‘how to fasten on again to its body a head that has been cut off’.
At all times and in most places man has believed and feared magic,
both White Magic, which is said to be for a good cause and Black Magic,
which is said to be evil. This has led to all sorts of secret societies
and rites and rituals, from chanting to sacrifice. Unless you have met
a witch or magician yourself you either believe or you don’t.
At
this point, we could decide to read the Bible and get an overall
picture of what was happening to the Israelites; but I will not be
going into biblical details here, as I am more concerned with telling
you about the ancient Egyptians. But one thing which I must mention is
what happened after the Israelites got away. Whilst they were out in
the desert, Moses went up a mountain to pray. When he got to the top of
the mountain he saw Yahweh in the form of a burning bush and God spoke
to his servant and told him to write down a set of ten laws, The Ten
Commandments. Moses was to give them to the people so they would know
how to live their lives and be able to get to heaven. Moses carved
these out on stone tablets and took them back down the mountainside.
Unfortunately when he got there he was horrified and very angry, because
all his people had missed his leadership and reverted to worshipping
idols, probably in a panic. He found them worshipping a golden calf and
in his anger Moses smashed the tablets, so had to go back up and write
them again. We can only hope he got them all right the second time and
didn’t miss any.
Moses’ set of commandments have been passed
down through the ages and millions and millions of people have based
their lives on them, or tried to. All in all, they’re not a bad set of
rules to help us lead good and consistent lives without harming society
around us.
As I said before, Moses was an expert with the writing
materials and probably got hold of a whole load of papyrus. He put
down on paper all the old stories that were passed down through the
ages, about his ancestors and maybe even yours. Right from the very
beginning, of how his God, Yahweh or Jehovah as we mostly call Him
today, created the world out of the waters (sounds a bit like some of
the Egyptian stories of the creation doesn’t it?), made all the earth,
sky, oceans, trees, grass, animals and birds and fishes, the lot! Then
Yahweh made man and because man was lonely Yahweh made woman. He put
man and woman, who he called Adam and Eve, in an absolutely beautiful
garden called Eden, with all the creatures and plants. He told Adam he
could eat anything he wanted, “the seed bearing herbs and the fruit
bearing tree, except the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge”. Up until
now Adam and Eve had everything going for them and could do whatever
they wanted, just wandering round naked in this beautiful Garden of
Eden, in a state of innocence, with nobody bothering them.
Unfortunately, like all good things, it came to an end, because a rebel
angel from Yahweh’s heaven, who was called Satan, came down to earth and
started crawling round the garden trying to get up to no good. Well,
to cut a long story short, said Moses in his book ‘Genesis’, Satan
managed to persuade Eve to try some of the fruit from the Tree of
Knowledge, because, as he said “It must be good if God doesn’t want you
to eat it”. Eve then got Adam to eat some and all the troubles of the
world started. Adam and Eve suddenly became ashamed of their nakedness.
God became very angry and kicked them out of the garden, saying “Go
forth and multiply”, which is exactly what they did and their
descendants have been doing ever since.
Moses then went on to
tell us that Adam and Eve had three boys, Cain, Abel and Seth, who
became farmers and shepherds. Mankind’s trouble was far from over and
Cain ended up getting very jealous of Abel and killed him. Once again
there is a similarity with the old Egyptian mythology, in which Seth
killed Osiris. Do you think it could be the same Seth and maybe that
Osiris and Abel were the same person? Who knows? It could be that Cain
said Seth did it and Seth said Cain did it. Anyway, in Moses’s story
Cain went off and founded his own line and the descendants of Seth, who
are listed in the Old and New Testaments, became the Israelites. A lot
happened between the time of Seth and that of Moses but Genesis tells us
not only who had (begot) whom as a son, but also how long they lived
for. If you trace this back it looks like Adam and Eve were around
about 4004 BC
Moses went on to write the story of the Israelites
leaving Egypt in his book called Exodus and then wrote books of laws and
a sort of census. These books, called Leviticus, Numbers and
Deuteronomy, together with Genesis and Exodus, make up the first five
books of the Old Testament and, whatever your religious beliefs are,
they make good reading!
Most of the writing in Ancient Egypt was,
as I have said, in hieroglyphs and used by specially educated scribes.
Royalty was also taught and sometimes even princesses; we know that two
of Akhenaten’s daughters possessed writing equipment. The scribe’s
writing tools consisted of a palette holding two cakes of ink, one black
and the other red, a pot of water, various size brushes and a holder
for the brush. The brushes were made, often by the scribe himself, by
cutting short lengths of rushes and sucking one end until it became
soft. Young scribes were taught a simplified version of hieroglyphics
referred to as hieratic script. The difference between these two
writing styles is like the difference between our modern day capital
letters and handwriting. There are many pictures of scribes on the
walls of tombs and statues in Cairo Museum and elsewhere. The scribes
were such a valued profession that they were always respected, paid well
and could afford good tombs of their own. They often acted as advisors
and became knowledgeable in sciences such as astronomy, astrology,
medicine, architecture and official letter writing. Parents in Egypt
would have been very keen on their son becoming a scribe.
Generally
the boys of the family would take up the craft of their fathers;
baker’s sons would become bakers, sandal-makers’ sons would be
sandal-makers. The teaching was done by dad. But to enter the higher
ranks of society a boy would have to learn to read and write. The boy
would start his lessons in these arts at a young age and probably at
considerable expense to his family It was usually the nobility rather
than the wealthy, who were educated best. The schooling, often at the
palace, lasted ten or twelve years and would consist of hard work
memorising all the characters and lots of practice writing them. There
were over seven hundred different characters of hieroglyphics and one
would have to remember them all.
Here is a report of a conversation of a father to his son, taken from an ancient papyrus, exhorting him to work hard:
“It is greater than any other profession. There is nothing like it on earth.
I have seen a coppersmith at work at his furnace. His fingers were like the claws of
the crocodile and he stank more than a fish.
The jeweller...when he has completed the inlay work of amulets,
his strength vanishes and he is tired out.
The
barber shaves until the end of evening. But he must be up early...He
takes himself from street to street to seek someone to shave. He wears
out his arms to fill his stomach.
The potter is covered with dirt. His clothes are stiff with mud, his headwear like rag.
The
weaver inside the weaving house is terrible. He cannot breathe the
air. If he passes just one day without weaving he is beaten with 50
lashes of the whip. He has to give food to the doorkeeper to let him
come into daylight. The arrow maker is completely wretched.
The furnace maker, his fingers are burnt, his eyes are inflamed because of the
heaviness of the smoke. The washerman launders at the river bank near the crocodiles!”
Then the father tells his son “See, I have placed you on the path of God”.
So, as you can gather, there were lots of professions open to a young boy, but to be a scribe was the best.
The
700 odd hieroglyphs were little pictures of animals, birds, wavy lines
and strange shapes, but each picture was meant to represent the actual
object. They were carved on stele, statues, walls and doors of tombs,
temples as well as on everyday possessions. Later they were written
onto papyrus. It was believed that hieroglyphics were the ‘words of the
gods’ and therefore possessed magical powers. Not only did they
represent objects, but in the afterlife they would actually become the
objects. In the tomb of a king’s son called Rahotep, who was also a
high official in the sixth dynasty, there is a list of objects and food
he would need with him in the afterlife and , of course, his name and
position. If the dead person was a Pharaoh then his name would be put
into the oval shaped outline called the Cartouche. This is mostly how
we identify relics today, although it was often the case that a later
Pharaoh would wipe out the cartouche of an earlier Pharaoh. For
instance nearly every cartouche of Hatshepsut was wiped clean by her
step-son Tuthmosis IV who hated her for preventing him from becoming
Pharaoh when he was a boy. Fortunately, several avoided the destructive
chisel and so we do know a little about Hatshepsut.
In Egypt,
magic spells were written on the tomb walls inside pyramids and these we
have called the ‘Pyramid Texts’. This practice was often reserved for
royalty. Noblemen sometimes had pyramid text spells written on the
inside of their coffin. These spells were meant to protect the dead
person on the journey through the underworld, so that he would suffer
neither hunger, nor thirst and be safe from dangers.
Later on, in
the New Kingdom and about the XVIIIth dynasty, priests sold spells in
‘Books of the Dead’, although they were not really books, but scrolls
which contained spells to be chanted at funeral ceremonies and placed in
the tomb or coffin, often with a statuette of the god
Ptah-Sokaris-Osiris.
The word ‘hieroglyph’ comes from the Greek
name for these characters; ‘hiero’ is the Greek word for ‘holy’ and
‘glyph’ is the Greek word for ‘carving’. Hieroglyphics were used as the
language of official documentation in the time of Alexander the Great
and used in Egypt up to 300 AD. Then, however, the ability to
understand hieroglyphs was lost for 1500 years.
In 1799 AD some
troops of Napoleon found a basalt stone tablet bearing three types of
script, at a place called Rosetta. This stone, which we now call the
‘Rosetta Stone’ contained hieroglyphics, a demotic script and Greek. It
was lucky for us, because that was the key to deciphering the
hieroglyphics, since people still used the same Greek letters. A man
called Jean François Champollion decided to devote his time to the task
of deciphering, which, even with knowledge of Greek, was not easy.
http://buffry.org.uk/fromdot.html
