{"id":40697,"date":"2018-09-23T00:10:25","date_gmt":"2018-09-22T21:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=40697"},"modified":"2022-04-14T18:19:20","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T15:19:20","slug":"the-reality-of-ancient-egypt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-reality-of-ancient-egypt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reality of Ancient Egypt"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[469,364,354],"acf":{"old_id":"40697","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":33923,"related_cahpter":"51","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Rulers who were more than human, subjects who were less","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By the time of Moses, Egypt of the pharaohs was eighteen centuries old, already longer lived than any subsequent empire. Its wealth and military power were unsurpassed, but it was not altogether unassailable. The Egyptians had, in the sixteenth century BCE, endured the rule of foreigners, the Hyksos, a fact that gives an edge to the statement of pharaoh at the beginning of Exodus, \u201cLook, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we\u201d (Ex. 1:9). This was not a theoretical fear. The Egyptians knew themselves to be vulnerable to incursion especially, though not only, from the north. Egypt had many gods, some 1,500 of them according to recent estimates. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But by Rameses\u2019 day the real gods of\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Egypt were its rulers. It was they who were divine, who had communication with the gods and ruled even after death, whose buildings testified to their immortality, whose colossi dominated the landscape, striking fear in all who passed by. Rameses ruled Egypt as the sun ruled the sky.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The wealth of the royal court was astonishing, as become clear after the 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, with its coffin of pure gold, its funerary mask of gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian, quartz, obsidian and turquoise, and its treasury of precious objects. At the same time the population as a whole lived a wretched existence. Remains of human skeletons show that they suffered not infrequently from starvation. There were regular epidemics among the urban population living crammed together in unsanitary conditions. Hepatitis, amoebic dysentery and schistosomiasis were common. Those who did not die were often disfigured. Contemporary documents speak of whole villages of people with impaired eyesight, the bleary-eyed, the one-eyed and the blind.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Farming at best yielded subsistence. Taxes had to be paid on all produce. Defaulters were thrown into prison. The vast majority of the population were illiterate, and virtually all able-bodied men were subject to the corv\u00e9e, forced to work when the Nile flooded and fields were inundated, on the pharaoh\u2019s latest building extravaganza. The corv\u00e9e was not abolished in Egypt until 1889. The conditions under which the Egyptians worked were not significantly better than those suffered by the Israelites. Their rations were barely enough to sustain life, and the backbreaking work under a sweltering sun with little food and less water meant that many died in the course of the great constructions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Excerpted from: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Introduction: Finding Freedom, Koren Pesach Machzor<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":104050,"id":104050,"title":"-62583b2747855--62583b2747856ex1-egypt slaves.jpg","filename":"62583b2747855-62583b2747856ex1-egypt-slaves.jpg.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/cetwpuploads.blob.core.windows.net\/wp929\/uploads\/2018\/09\/62583b2747855-62583b2747856ex1-egypt-slaves.jpg.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-reality-of-ancient-egypt\/62583b2747855-62583b2747856ex1-egypt-slaves-jpg\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"62583b2747855-62583b2747856ex1-egypt-slaves-jpg","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":40697,"date":"2022-04-14 15:17:59","modified":"2022-04-14 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