#ramesses the great

[thehereticpharaoh]

🏛️ Abu Simbel Temple: Then and Now 🏛️

Abu Simbel Temple, one of Egypt's most magnificent monuments, was originally constructed by Pharaoh Ramses II in the 13th century BC.

This stunning temple features colossal statues of Ramses II, intricately carved into a mountainside, symbolizing his power and divine connection.

In the 1960s, to save it from the rising waters of the Aswan High Dam, the entire temple complex was relocated to a higher ground, a remarkable feat of modern engineering.

Today, Abu Simbel continues to awe visitors with its grandeur and historical significance, standing as a testament to ancient Egyptian ingenuity and resilience.

[spiritsdancinginthenight]

[asdaricus]

Midjourney's portraits of the ruler Naram-Sin, ruler of the Akkadian Empire, and Ramesses the Great, ruler of Egypt, respectively.

by Midjourney v5

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II was issued a passport 3,000 years after his death in order for his mummy to fly to Paris.

Ramesses II (c. 1303 BC – 1213 BC), commonly known as Ramesses the Great, is often regarded as the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh of the New Kingdom.

His successors and later Egyptians called him the “Great Ancestor.”

Ramesses II was originally buried in a grand tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

He was subsequently moved many times by priests who feared looters. He spent as little as three days in some places, and the priests recorded their actions on wrappings on his body.

Despite his resplendent wealth and power in life, his body was later moved to a royal cache.

With the passage of time, his sarcophagus  was lost to history.

It was re-discovered in a deteriorating condition in 1881. It is now on display in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

It was his poor condition that prompted Egyptian authorities to seek help preserving him in the mid-1970s.

They found their experts in France and reluctantly decided to transport the 3,000 year-old mummy to Paris.

In 1975, Maurice Bucaille, a French doctor studying his remains, said that the mummy was threatened by fungus and needed urgent treatment to prevent total decay.

French laws dictated that entry and transportation through the country required a valid passport.

To comply with local laws, the Egyptian government issued a passport to the Pharaoh.

Seemingly, he was the first mummy to receive one. His occupation was listed as "King (deceased)."

The government didn’t want him to get a passport for publicity but believed it would afford them legal protections to ensure his safe return.

As countless artifacts and mummies have been plundered and stolen from Egypt, museums in Europe didn’t always respect Egyptian claims.

In 1976, his remains were issued an Egyptian passport so that he could be transported to Paris for an irradiated treatment to prevent a fungoid growth.

The New York Times reported on 27 September 1976 that the French military aircraft that brought Ramesses' remains from the Cairo Museum was greeted by the Garde Republicaine, France's equivalent of a U.S. Marine honor guard.

“The mummy was greeted by the Secretary of State for Universities, Alice Saunter‐Seite, and an army detachment.

Ramses II, who ruled Egypt for 67 years, received special treatment at Le Bourget Airport.”

It was then taken to the Paris Ethnological Museum for inspection by Professor Pierre-Fernand Ceccaldi, the chief forensic scientist at the Criminal Identification Laboratory of Paris.

During the examination, Cecaldi noted:

“Hair, astonishingly preserved, showed some complementary data, especially about pigmentation.

Ramses II was a ginger-haired ‘cymnotriche leucoderma'” (meaning he was a fair-skinned person with wavy ginger hair).

He is 5 ft '7 inches tall. They found battle wounds, arthritis and tooth abscess.

In ancient Egypt, people with red hair were associated with deity Set, the slayer of Osiris. The name of Ramesses II’s father, Seti I, means “follower of Seth.”

The examination also revealed evidence of previous wounds, fractures and arthritis, which would have left Ramesses with a hunched back in the later years of his life.

In 2007, it was discovered that small tufts of the Pharaoh’s hair were stolen during the 1976 preservation work (published by the BBC).  

A Frenchman named Jean-Michel Diebolt said he had inherited the hair from his late father, a researcher from the team who analysed the mummy.

Deibolt had tried to sell the hair through an online auction for 2000 euros (£1360) but was quickly apprehended by French authorities.

📷 : An artist’s creation of the passport. Image is for representative purposes only. The actual passport is not publicly available.

[teachanarchy]

History vs. Egypt’s "most powerful" pharaoh - Jessica Tomkins

[blogdemocratesjr]

1. Ramses II at British Museum, London 2. OG Ramses Thug, Portorro marble by Léo Caillard  (2020) 3. Horus by Revelations Museum 4. A limestone relief depicts Ramses II smiting his enemies 5. Shabti of Ramses II at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum

RAMESSES THE GREAT, aka:

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

by Percy Bysshe Shelley, featured in Cracks by Jordan Scott (2009)

HORUS

Osiris is represented in the legend as the benefactor of humanity under whose wise guidance Hermes or Thoth gave the Egyptians their ancient culture. Osiris had an enemy, for whom the Greek name was Typhon. Typhon pursued Osiris, killed him, dismembered the body, hid it in a coffin and threw it into the sea. Issus, the sister and spouse of Osiris, sought unceasingly for him who had been torn from her by Typhon or Seth, and when at length she found the fragments of his dismembered body, she buried them in different places in the land where Temples were then erected. Then, after the death of Osiris, Issus gave birth to Horus. A spiritual ray descended upon Issus from Osiris, who had meanwhile passed into another world. The mission of Horus was to conquer Typhon and, in a certain sense, to re-establish the dominion of a life, which, proceeding from Osiris himself, was again to stream into mankind. … Let us try to conceive what the names of Osiris and Issus conveyed to the ancient Egyptian. He said to himself: “Behind man there is a higher spiritual essence, which does not proceed from his material existence. This spiritual essence has ‘condensed' into material, human existence. The real evolution of man has proceeded from a more spiritual existence. When I look into my own soul I realize that I have a longing for the Spiritual, a yearning towards the spiritual wellsprings of being from which I myself have descended. The forces from which I came forth are still living within me. My highest powers are inwardly related to these primordial Osiris- powers within me, bearing witness that I was once a super-sensible being dwelling in other worlds, in worlds of Spirit. And although this being of Spirit has but a dim and instinctive life, although it had perforce to be clothed with the physical body and its organs in order to perceive the physical world, yet in days gone by this being lived a purely spiritual existence.” … According to the ancient Egyptian conception, human evolution must be regarded as a duality, consisting of the Osiris-forces and the Isis-forces. “Osiris-Isis” — this was the duality. . . They said: “The super-sensible power of Osiris may be envisaged as the active power of light proceeding from the Sun, living and moving through space. Isis may be seen in the sunlight reflected by the dark Moon — just as the soul is dark when the active principle of thought does not enter. The Moon awaits the light of the Sun in order to reflect it, even as the soul awaits the Osiris-Power to reflect it back as Isis-Power.” … The Osiris-power living in man is fettered by Typhon — fettered within a form that is the “coffin” of the spiritual nature of man. Into this coffin the Osiris-nature in man disappears and is invisible to the outer world. The mysterious Isis-nature remains, in order that in future ages, after it has been permeated by the power of the intellect, it may again reach the well-springs of man's being. … And according to every true thinker, this higher Ego is there, deeply concealed in all the powers of man. This being — who is not the outer physical man but the man who has an unceasing urge to rise to the light of spirit, who is ever impelled by the hidden Isis-forces — appears as the earthly son of One who did not arise in the earthly world. He is the earthly son of Osiris who remained in the spiritual worlds. This invisible being — the being who strives to reach the Higher Self, was known by the name of Horus, the posthumous son of Osiris.

—Rudolf Steiner, Hermes and the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt

[floatyflowers]

Dark! Ancient Rulers (Ramesses II amd Alexander the Great) x Reader

Ramesses II

You are a daughter of one of the senior officials in Egypt, making you be considered one of the higher ups social class citizens.

But still, you didn't mind joking around about the Pharaoh and his family.

Yet, this is what led you to this fate in the first place of getting locked up.

You see, one day you were having fun around with your friend, and she made a joke about Ramesses and him already having too many children.

"I know right, I would rather drown in the nile river then be used as a broodmare or a pleasure sleeve by the pharaoh"

Let us just say that there were spies around you, and the moment the word reaches the ears of Ramesses, is the moment you condemned yourself and your friend.

The guards would arrest you in the middle of the night, and bring you to him tied up in ropes.

"It was only a joke, your highness, I did not mean to offend you nor did my friend" you exclaim in fear.

Ramesses looks down at you with a smirk, his back leaned against his throne.

"I go fight in brutal wars, while you sit at home and sleep peacefully at night, so I have the right to get offended"

The fact that the man hasn't shown any signs of anger or displeasure is what is making you feel worried.

However, Ramesses knew that he didn't need to overreact because he is one at advantage not you.

"Tell me now, why shouldn't I execute you and your family just like I did with your little friend"

Your eyes widened in fear at the news of your friend's death, but his threat to also kill your family was enough of a warning for you to plead.

"Please, I will do anything you want, don't kill my family"

Ramesses only narrows his eyes at you, his smirk only growing larger.

"You shall become my broodmare"

Alexander the Great

You have known him since you both were children, your father was a great general, a friend of Alexander's father, Philip II.

However, you and Alexander were not friends, you felt uneasy every time you were around him.

Anyone could see how infatuated Alexander was with you, yet you found comfort in avoiding him.

You are shy in personality and only found comfort in reading.

Knowing very well that your father and Philip planned to wed you to Alexander once you reached a proper age to marry, you decided to become a priestess.

However, that didn't prevent Alexander from kidnapping you and forcing you to marry him the moment his father dies and he becomes King.

You thought you would stay at home while Alexander goes on his journey to conquer the world.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

"Alexander, please, I'm pregnant, the traveling might harm the baby"

Your husband would only smile at you, assuring you.

"Do not worry about our baby, the physicians said it is safe for you to travel"

Of course, that is a lie, as the physicians warned him that it might cause you great stress.

But, Alexander would not leave you behind, he doesn't trust anyone to keep you safe, he fears that you might leave him for another.

You do have a safe birth, and things were going well at the conquests.

However, Alexander gets deadly ill.

And orders that you get poisoned.

After all, he won't leave you in this cruel world alone without him.

[thefollowersofthedivinesnake]

(Full view plz)

Some historical characters that will be making an appearance in the webcomic I'm developing!

[egypt-museum]

Heads of Ramesses II taken from the facade of the Great Temple at Abu Simbel during its relocation, 1966

[viktorreznikov]

OK HERE WE GO CLONE HIGH OC Ramesses II aka "Ozzy" (haha get it like Ozymandias thats what the greeks call him haha). Basically JFKs replacement for the head of the football team while he was frozen he also is like super hot and cool and rich and has hella bitches also a great architect like his clone father and better than all the other pharaoh clones (coming soon) in terms of building

[mid0o]

Ramesses II was a poweful pharaoh who maintained stability within the empire, preserved its borders, and built immense monuments throughout Egypt. His unprecedented sixty-six year long reign and countless achievements immortalized him as 'Ramesses the Great!

[dwellerinthelibrary]

Left to right: Neith; Amun-Re; Ramesses II, kneeling; and Mut-Werethekau. The gods are granting the king many jubilees (the sed festival, held after thirty years' reign and every three-four years after that). The Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak.

[antiquitiesandlabyrinths]

Ramses I

Ramses the I is usually somewhat overlooked, partially due to being overshadowed by his eventual successors and namesakes, Ramses II and Ramses III, the former of which is considered to be 'Ramses the Great', and both of which achieved great things in the realm of battle and buildings. Also unfortunate for Ramses I is the length of his reign, which while disputed, is considered to have been relatively short.

Menpehtyre Ramses, born of Seti, started and was the first Pharaoh of the 19th dynasty of Egypt, and the dates of his reign are generally considered to be around 1292–1290 BC or 1295–1294 BC. However, he was born as a common man, and his father, Seti, was a military commander. Originally, Ramses I's name was Pa-ra-messu, and he eventually grew to succeed his father's rank in the military. Due to this, he became a close confidant with the Pharaoh of the time, the Pharaoh Horemheb.

You may know Horemheb as being one of the main successors of the throne after Tutankhamun's death which, to my knowledge, is wrapped in a little bit of a mystery, but was likely due to genetic malformations from his many diseases. Ay and Horemheb, the Grand Vizier and the General of Armies (respectively), held the main power of the country while Tutankhamun was Pharaoh. This was a time of turmoil––the country was just recovering from the reign of the heretic Akhenaten, who had banned religious worship of any God but the Aten, and essentially attempted to enforce monotheism upon a culture that had been polytheistic for thousands of years previously. Akhenaten had also severely neglected Egypt's relationship with foreign powers. Obviously, people weren't very happy with Akhenaten, and I think it likely they were not fond of Akhenaten's son, Tutankhamun, either. But Tutankhamun, with the help of his advisors and of Ay and Horemheb, reversed many of his heretic father's commands and laws. But Tutankhamun still sailed to the west at the age of 19. He had two baby girls, but neither of them survived past infancy. He had no successors, so Ay took the throne, and then Horemheb.

Horemheb enacted many more reformations to remove Akhenaten's efforts to change Egypt. He tore down the statues of Akhenaten and his monuments, reusing the stone in monuments and temples of his own. He also reused the monuments built for Ay and Tutankhamun, though this was a common practice in Egypt. But Horemheb had no surviving sons, so when it came time for Horemheb to pass on and appoint a new Pharaoh, his Grand Vizier took his place; Paramessu, who would take the name Ramesses I, meaning "Ra has fashioned Him". Ramses I was nearly 50 years old when he ascended to the throne. It was a remarkable age to become Pharaoh, as at this time, he would've already been considered elderly.

What little he did during his life was later completed by his son and successor, Seti I. He himself accomplished mainly one thing, which was to send additions to the garrison at Aswan, the border between Egypt and Nubia; though he also led a military expedition into west Asia and reopened turquoise mines in the Sinai. But the most remarkable things are the ones he didn't complete himself, such as additions to the Karnak temple complex in east Thebes, known as Waset at the time. He ordered to be carved great reliefs into the second pylon of the Karnak temple, which is a massive gateway that one sees relatively soon upon entering the complex. In Abydos, he began construction of a chapel and a temple, but it would have to be completed by his son, as Menpehtyre Ramses died in either the year of 1290 or 1294. His reign was so short that he had very little time to schedule or complete any great monuments, and even his tomb was rushed to be completed, and he was hastily buried in the Valley of the Kings. This rush unfortunately led to a great deal of errors being made in the paintings upon his sarcophagus. Later, however, Ramses I's son, Seti I, finished the chapel in honor of his father, with beautiful carvings and reliefs at Abydos.

His tomb was robbed thoroughly. By the time archaeologists got to it, all that remained were two six-foot tall (1.8 meters) wooden guardian statues who once had gold-foil skin, statuettes of Gods from the underworld, and the massive granite coffin which no longer carried its' owner. Menpehtyre Ramses had been taken to the Royal Cache, located above Hatshepsut's mortuary temple to the southeast. It was the tomb of the pharaoh Amenhotep II, but repurposed to be a protective place for the mummies of many Pharaohs and Queens, as most of the tombs of the Valley of the Kings had become victims of graverobbers. These protective actions were taken by the High Priest of Amun, Pinedjem II, in the 21st Dynasty.

Unfortunately this did not stop the usurping of Ramses I's body. He was stolen by the Abu-Rassul family of grave-robbers and sold by a Turkish vice-consular agent named Mustapha Aga Ayat in Luxor to a man named Dr. James Douglas. Douglas brought Ramses I to the US around the year of 1860, where he was placed in a museum in Niagara Falls with little information known about him. All that was speculated was that he was 'a Prince of Egypt'. Ownership of the museum, and thus of Ramses I, was passed through several hands, but his importance was only recognized with the help of the Canadian Egyptologist Gayle Gibson. Fortunately, in the year 2003, October 24, Menpehtyre Ramses was returned to his homeland of Egypt, and is now resting in the Mummification Museum in Luxor, Upper Egypt.

[fdelopera]

Hi curious anon here. You mentioned in one of your posts (I think the sennek one? If I’m spelling it right) that the exodus from Egypt was metaphorical as the enslavement in Egypt didn’t happen, but I thought it did? Can you explain? (If you’re happy to of course)

Hi Anon! Thanks for your question. My response is looong lol (you got me going about a special interest), so buckle up!

Sooo I’m going to make a few guesses here, based on the way you’ve phrased your question. Judging from the fact that you’ve written Sukkot as “sennek” (I've looked through recent posts, and I think this is the post you're referring to), I’m going to guess that you’re not Jewish.

And judging from the fact that you think that Shemot, or “Names” (commonly written in Christian bibles as Exodus), is a literal historical account of Jewish history, I’m guessing that you have a Christian background.

You’re not alone in this. And I’m not saying this to pick on you. Many Christians have a literalist interpretation of the Bible, and most have zero knowledge of Jewish history (aside from maybe knowing some facts about the Holocaust). And so, what knowledge of Jewish history you have mostly comes from the Tanakh (what you call the Old Testament).

Tanakh is an acronym. It stands for Torah (the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (Prophets), Ketuvim (Writings). Also, the Tanakh and the “Old Testament” are not the same. The Tanakh has its own internal organization that makes sense for Jewish practice. The various Christian movements took the Tanakh, cut it up, reordered it, and then often mistranslated it as a way to justify the persecution of various groups of people — I’m looking at you, King James Bible.

But back to Shemot, the “Exodus” story. The story of Moshe leading the Israelites out of Egypt is more of a Canaanite cultural memory of the Late Bronze Age Collapse between around 1200 – 1150 BCE, which was preserved in oral history and passed down through the ages until it was written down in the form that we know it in the 6th century BCE by Jewish leaders from the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

Since the text is influenced by Babylonian culture and mythology, just as Bereshit is (which you know as Genesis), it is likely that some of the writing and editing of Shemot took place during and after the Babylonian exile in the 500s BCE.

Now, I’m guessing that what I’ve just written in these two paragraphs above sounds very strange to you.

Wait, you might say, didn’t the Israelites conquer the land of Canaan?

Wasn’t the "Exodus" written by Moses’s own hand during the 13th century BCE?

And wasn’t the Pharaoh in the Exodus Ramesses II (aka Ramesses the Great), who ruled in the 13th century BCE?

Actually, no. None of that happened.

The Israelites didn’t conquer Canaan. The Israelites were the same people as the Canaanites, and these are the same peoples as who later became the Jews, as I will explain. The Semitic peoples who would become the Jewish people have been in this area of the Levant since the Bronze Age.

Moshe was not a historical figure and did not write the Torah.

The “Pharaoh” in Exodus is not any specific Egyptian ruler (Ramesses the Great as the “Pharaoh” is mostly a pop culture theory from the 20th century).

Okay, now that I’ve said all that, let’s dive in.

The first ever mention of Israel was inscribed in the Merneptah Stele, somewhere between 1213 to 1203 BCE. Pharaoh Merneptah, who was the Pharaoh after Ramesses the Great, describes a campaign in Canaan to subdue a people called Israel. But there is no mention of plagues or an exodus because those things didn’t happen. The Canaanites were not slaves in Egypt. Canaan was a vassal state of Egypt.

In fact, the events that occurred during the reign of a later Pharaoh, Ramesses III, relate more to Jewish history. Ramesses III won a pyrrhic victory over the Peleset and other “Sea Peoples” who came to Egypt fighting for resources during a time of famine, earthquakes, and extreme societal turmoil. And Ramesses III would witness the beginning of the end of the Bronze Age.

The Canaanites, who were a Semitic people in the Levant, gradually evolved into the people who would become the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah (i.e., Jewish people), but during the 13th Century BCE, they were Canaanites, not Jews.

The Canaanites were polytheistic, worshiping a complex pantheon of gods; they didn’t follow the later Jewish dietary laws (i.e., they ate pork); and their religious practice bore little to no resemblance to the Jewish people of the Second Temple Period.

So, to reiterate, the people in Canaan who called themselves Israel during the Bronze Age were a Semitic people, but they were not recognizably Jewish, at least not to us Jews today. Canaan was a vassal state of Egypt, just as Ugarit and the Hittite Empire were.

Canaan was part of the vast trading alliance that allowed the Bronze Age to produce the metal that historians have named it for: bronze.

Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin (about 90% copper and 10% tin), and in order to make it, the kingdoms of the Bronze Age had to coordinate the mining, transportation, and smelting of these metals from all over the known world. This trading network allowed for the exchange of all sorts of goods, from grain to textiles to gold. Canaan was just one of these trading partners.

Well, between 1200 BCE and 1150 BCE, this entire trading alliance that allowed Bronze Age society to function went (pardon the expression) completely tits up. This is likely due to a large array of events, including famine and earthquakes, which led to an overall societal disarray.

Some of the people who were hardest hit by the famine, people from Sardinia and Sicily to Mycenae and Crete, came together in a loose organization of peoples, looking for greener pastures. These were all peoples who were known to Egypt, and many of them had either served Egypt directly or had traded with Egypt during better days. According to ancient records, this loose grouping of peoples would arrive at various cities, consume resources there, and then leave for the next city (sacking the city in the process).

Just to be clear, these people were just as much the victims of famine as the cities they sacked. There were no “good guys” or “bad guys” in this equation, just people trying as best as they could to survive in a world that was going to shit.

Well, these “Sea Peoples” (as they were much later dubbed in the 19th century CE) eventually made their way to Egypt, but Ramesses III defeated them in battle around 1175 BCE. He had the battle immortalized on his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu.

We don’t know much about these Sea Peoples, but we do know what the Egyptians called them. And from those names, we can figure out some of their origins. Peoples such as the Ekwesh and the Denyen. These were likely the Achaeans and the Danaans.

If you’re familiar with Homer’s Iliad, you’ll recognize these as some of the names that Homer gives to the Greek tribes. Many of the Sea Peoples were from city states that are now part of Greece and Italy.

Yes, the Late Bronze Age Collapse of the 12th Century BCE didn’t just get handed down as a cultural memory of the “Exodus” to the people who would centuries later become the Jews. That cataclysm also inspired the stories that “Homer” would later canonize as the Trojan War in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Exodus and the Trojan War are both ancient cultural memories of the same societal collapse.

And neither the Trojan War nor the Exodus are factual. However, despite having little to no historicity, they both capture a similar feeling of the world being turned upside down.

Well, back to the Sea Peoples. Remember the Peleset that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago? They were one of these “Sea Peoples” that Ramesses III defeated. They were likely Mycenaean in origin, and possibly originated from Crete. After Ramesses III defeated them, he needed a place to relocate them along with several other tribes, including the Denyen and Tjeker. It was a “you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here” situation.

So, Egypt rounded up the surviving Peleset and sent them north to settle — to the land of Canaan.

Now, if you have some Biblical background, let me ask you this. What does “Peleset” sound like? What if we start it with an aspirated consonant, more of a “Ph” instead of a “P”?

That’s right. The Peleset settled in Canaan and became the Philistines.

This is where the real story of the people who would become the Jews begins.

As the Mycenaean (aka Greek) Peleset settled in their new home, they clashed with the Semitic Israelite people of Canaan. Some of these Canaanites fought back. These Canaanites also organized themselves into different groups, or “tribes.” (See where this is going?) Some of these tribes were in the Northern area of Canaan, and some were in the South, but there was a delineation between North and South — aka they did not start out as one people and then split in two. They started as two separate groups.

If you’re following me so far, you’ll know that I’m now talking about what would in time become the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

Well, backtracking a bit. The Bronze Age was ending, and the Iron Age was about to begin. The Peleset/Philistines were experts at smelting iron, which was harder to work with than bronze due to it having a much higher smelting temperature. When the Peleset settled in Canaan, they brought this iron smelting knowledge with them, and they used it to make weapons to subdue the local Canaanite peoples. The Canaanites therefore had to fight back “with sticks and stones.”

Hmm. Does that sound familiar? Who is one of the most famous Philistines you can think of from the Tanakh (the Old Testament)? I’ll give you a guess. It’s in the Book of Samuel (in the Tanakh, that’s in the Nevi’im — The Prophets).

That’s right. Goliath.

The story of “David and Goliath” is likely a Jewish cultural memory that was transmitted orally from the time of the Canaanite struggles against the Peleset.

The man who would become King David used a well-slinged stone to fell the much greater Goliath, and then he used Goliath’s own iron sword to cut off Goliath’s head.

In this metaphor, we can see the struggle between the Canaanite tribes and the Peleset, as the Canaanites fought to hold off the Peleset’s greater military might.

Historically, the Peleset eventually intermarried with the Canaanites, and within several generations, they were all one people. Likewise, the Mycenaean Denyen tribe may have settled in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, intermarried with the Canaanites, and become the Tribe of Dan.

The Book of Samuel, containing the story of David and Goliath, was written down in the form we would recognize today in the 500s BCE during the Babylonian Exile. It is a cultural memory of the time that the Canaanites were unable to wield iron weapons against a much more technologically advanced society, and it would have resonated with the Jews held captive in Babylon.

And with this mention of the Babylonian Exile, I come to the question that remains. And I think the question that you are asking. Where did the story of Shemot, the “Exodus,” the “Going Out,” come from?

And more importantly, why was that story so important to canonize in the Torah — the Jewish people’s “Instruction”?

The Shemot was likely written down and edited in a form that we would recognize today during and after the Babylonian Exile.

So, what was the Babylonian Exile? And what was its impact on Judaism?

To answer that, I need to start this part of the story about 130 years before the Babylonian Exile, in around 730 BCE. We’re now about 450 years after the Late Bronze Age Collapse, when the Canaanites were fighting the Peleset tribe.

Between about 730 and 720 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

Now, you may know this as the time when the “Ten Tribes of Israel were lost.”

In reality, the Assyrians didn’t capture the entire population of Israel. They did capture the Israelite elite and force them to relocate to Mesopotamia, but there were many people from the Israelite tribes left behind. The Ten Tribes were never “lost” because many of the remaining people in the Northern Kingdom migrated south to the Kingdom of Judah.

One such group of people from the Northern Kingdom of Israel maintained their distinct identity and still exist today: the Samaritans. These are the people who today are the Samaritan Israelites. They have their own Torah and their own Temple on Mount Gerizim, where they continue the tradition of animal sacrifice, as the Jews did in Jerusalem before the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE. The Samaritans keep the Sabbath, they observe Kashrut laws (i.e., they keep kosher), and they hold sacrifices on Yom Kippur and Pesach. In short, they have maintained religious practices that are similar to Judaism during the Second Temple period.

This mass migration into the Kingdom of Judah in the late 700s and early 600s BCE is where Judaism as we know it today really started to take shape.

At that time, the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel were polytheistic. They ate pork. They did many of the things that the writers of the Torah tell the Jews not to do.

This is where many of these commandments began, when the priests of Judah needed to define what it was to be a Jew (a member of the Tribe of Judah), in the face of this mass migration from the Kingdom of Israel.

You see, the Ancient Jews didn’t know about germ theory or recognize that trichinosis was caused by eating undercooked pork. That’s not why pigs are treyf. Pigs are treyf because eating pork began as a societal taboo. In short, pigs take a lot of resources to care for, and they eat people food, not grass (i.e. they don’t chew a cud). So if you kept pigs, you would be taking away resources from other people. When you are living in a precarious society that is constantly being raided and conquered by outsiders, you have to make sure that your people are fed, and if you’re competing with a particular livestock over food, that livestock has to be outlawed.

This time period is also likely when the Kingdom of Judah started to practice monolatry (worshiping one God without explicitly denying the existence of other Gods). The people of Judah worshiped YHWH (Adonai) as their God, and the Northern Kingdom of Israel worshiped El as the head of their polytheistic pantheon. The Jews put both of them together as the same G-d. That is why the Bereshit (Genesis) begins:

When Elohim (G-d) began to shape heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste, and darkness over Tehom (the Deep), and the breath of Elohim (G-d) hovering over the waters

NOTE: This is a modification to Robert Alter’s translation of the first two lines of Bereshit (Genesis) in the Tanakh. In a few paragraphs, I will explain the modification I’ve made of transliterating the Hebrew word “Tehom,” instead of (mis)translating this word as “the Deep” as in nearly every translation of Genesis.

Then over the next two hundred years, monolatry would gradually become monotheism. One of the Northern Kingdom’s gods, Baal, was especially popular, so the Judean leadership had to expressly forbid the worship of this god during the writing of the Tanakh.

The message was clear: If we’re going to be one people, we need to worship one G-d. And the importance of the Babylonian Exile cannot be overstated in this shift from monolatry to monotheism. The period during and after the Babylonian Exile is when most of the Tanakh was edited into a form that we would recognize today.

So, I come back to the question, what was the Babylonian Exile? It began, as many wars do, as a conflict over monetary tribute.

Around 598 BCE, the Judean King Jehoiakim refused to continue paying tribute to the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. And so in around 597 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II’s troops besieged Jerusalem, killed King Jehoiakim, and captured much of the Judean leadership, holding them captive in Babylon. Over the next ten years, Nebuchadnezzar II continued his siege of Jerusalem, and in 587, he destroyed the First Temple, looted it for its treasures, and took more of the Jews captive. The deportation of the Jewish people to Babylon continued throughout the 580s BCE.

So, by the 570s BCE, the majority of the Jews were captives in a strange land. They were second-class citizens with few rights. The Jews feared that their people would start to assimilate into Babylonian society, intermarry so that they could secure greater freedom for their descendants, and then ultimately disappear as a unique people.

The Jewish leadership knew that this assimilation would begin by the Jews worshiping Babylonian gods.

So the Jewish leadership had a brilliant idea. They said, “We are not in danger of our people drifting into polytheism, assimilation, and cultural death, because we declare that the Babylonian gods do not exist. There is only one G-d, Adonai.”

Now we have left monolatry, and we are fully in monotheism.

And so, the Jews in captivity took Babylonian stories that their children heard around them, and they made these stories Jewish.

That is why the opening lines of Genesis sound so much like the opening lines of the Babylonian creation story, the Enuma Elish.

And remember when I mentioned that I had transliterated “Tehom” in the first two lines of Bereshit (Genesis) above, instead of using the standard translation of “the Deep”? That is because Tehom is a Hebrew cognate for the Babylonian sea goddess Tiamat, who the Babylonian god Marduk defeated and used to shape the heavens and the earth, just as Elohim shaped the heavens and the earth.

When you read the Enuma Elish, you can see the parallels to Genesis:

When the heavens above did not exist, And earth beneath had not come into being — There was Apsû, the first in order, their begetter, And demiurge Tiamat, who gave birth to them all; They had mingled their waters together Before meadow-land had coalesced and reed-bed was to be found — When not one of the gods had been formed Or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed, The gods were created within them

That is also why the flood story of Noah and the Ark sounds so much like the flood story from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

That is why the story of Moshe’s mother saving him by placing him in a basket on the Nile River parallels the story of King Sargon of Akkad’s mother saving him by placing him in a basket on the Euphrates River.

In order to survive as a people, the Jews consolidated all gods into one G-d. Adonai. Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad. "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One."

The Jews said, yes, we acknowledge that we are hearing these polytheistic Babylonian stories in our captivity, but we will make them our own so that we can continue to exist as a people.

But back to your question. What about the story told in Shemot, the “Exodus” from the Land of Egypt?

I think by now you can see the parallels between the Jewish people held as captives in Babylon and the story that they told, of the Israelites held as slaves in Egypt.

And so, the Exodus story, which had been told and retold in various ways as a means to process the cataclysmic trauma of the Late Bronze Age Collapse (similar to the oral retellings of the Trojan War epic before they were written down by “Homer”), now took on a new meaning.

The Exodus story now represented the Jewish people’s hope for escape from Babylon. It represented the Jewish people’s desire to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem that Nebuchadnezzar II had destroyed. It represented the acceptance that it would take at least a generation before the Jews would be able to return to Jerusalem.

And it represented a cautionary tale about leaders who become too powerful, no matter how beloved they may be.

At a Torah study this Sukkot, the Rabbi discussed why the writers of Devarim (Deuteronomy) said that Moshe couldn’t enter Canaan, even though he'd led the Israelites out of Egypt (which, again, didn't literally happen). And one interpretation is because the Jewish leaders were writing and editing the Exodus during and shortly after the Babylonian Exile, and after seeing the Kingdom of Judah fall because of bad leadership. And they were saying, “It doesn't matter how beloved a leader is. If they start becoming a demagogue, and start behaving as someone who is drunk on their own power, you can't trust them as a leader. And you need to find new leadership.” And damn if that isn't a lesson that we could all stand to learn from!

So, was the Exodus story historically true? No. But does it matter that the Exodus story isn’t historically true? No, it does not. It was and is and will continue to be deeply meaningful to the Jewish people. The Shemot, the Exodus, the breaking of chains, the escape from the “Pharaohs” that enslave us — these are still deeply meaningful to us as Jews.

Was Moshe a historical figure? No, he was not. Is he one of the most fascinating, inspiring, and deeply human figures in Jewish tradition, and in literature in general? Yes, he is. Moshe was an emergent leader, an everyman, a stutterer, and yet he was chosen to lead and speak for his people. He was chosen to write the Torah, the “Instruction,” that has guided us for thousands of years. It doesn't matter that he was not a historical person. What matters is what he stands for. He is the one who directed us in what it is to be Jewish.

Now, fast forward to 538 BCE, around 60 years after the Jews were first taken as captives to Babylon. The Jewish people’s prayers were answered when Persian King Cyrus the Great defeated Babylon in battle, and allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, where they began construction on the Second Temple, which was completed around 515 BCE.

The Persian Zoroastrians were henotheistic (they worshiped one God, Ahura Mazda, but they recognized other gods as well). They also had a chief adversarial deity, Angra Mainyu, who was in direct opposition to Ahura Mazda.

Just as the Jews had incorporated Babylonian stories into their texts as a way to preserve their identity as a Jewish people, the Jews now incorporated this idea of “good versus evil” (i.e., It’s better to assimilate the foreign god to us, than to assimilate us to the foreign god).

This shift can be seen in the later story of the Book of Job, which is in the Ketuvim (Writings). Jews have no devil and no hell. There is no “eternal afterlife damnation," and there is no “original sin.” Jews believe in living a good life, right here on earth, and being buried in Jewish soil. Some Jews believe that we go to Sheol when we die, which is a shadowy place of peaceful rest, similar to the Greek realm of Hades. In the Book of Job, the Hebrew word “hassatan” (which Christians transliterate as “Satan”) is just a lawyerly adversary, like a “devil’s advocate” who debates for the other side of the argument. It’s certainly not anything akin to a Christian “devil.”

However, throughout the Second Temple period, various apocalyptic Jewish sects would arise in response to Greek and then Roman persecution, inspired by the Zoroastrian idea of a battle between “the light and the dark.”

In the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, this would lead to a search for the Moshiach: a human leader (not divine) who was descended from the line of King David, and who would restore Jerusalem. And that would not culminate in Jesus (Jews don’t recognize Jesus as Moshiach — for us, he's a really cool dude who said some very profound things, but he's not That Guy).

Rather, the search for Moshiach would stem from the events leading up to the Jewish War, which concluded in 70 CE with the Romans destroying the Second Temple and sacking Jerusalem, and it would culminate in the Bar Kochba revolt between 132 and 135 CE. The Bar Kochba revolt resulted in a Roman campaign of systematic Jewish slaughter and “ethnic cleansing” that nearly destroyed the Jewish people a second time. But that’s a story for another day!

In closing, I encourage you to learn more about Jewish history. And don’t just learn about us from the Holocaust, our darkest hour. Learn about our full history. I highly recommend Sam Aronow’s excellent series on YouTube, which is an ongoing Jewish history project. The YouTube channel Useful Charts also provides excellent overviews of Jewish history.

[ptseti]

Nefertari the Queen of Egypt

Nefertari, also known as Nefertari Meritmut, was an Egyptian queen and the first of the Great Royal Wives of Ramesses the Great. She is one of the best-known Egyptian queens, among such women as Cleopatra, Nefertiti, and Hatshepsut, and one of the most prominent not known or thought to have reigned in her own right.

[ancientstuff]

I had no idea we didn't have his sarcophagus. And that's all I'll say about Ramesses II.