User:Jaredscribe/Egyptology

Our knowledge of the 32 pharaonic Dynasties of ancient Egypt comes through the BCE 3rd century Egyptian Priest Manetho, whose Aegyptaica has been lost, but fragments preserved by Josephus, and later by Africanus, Eusebius, and George Syncellus. The Palermo Stone is important for dating the Early Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom.

Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion decoded the Rosetta Stone, revealing the phonetic character of Egyptian hieroglyphics and their relation to the demotic script. More on the Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts.

The stratigraphic excavation and 'sequence dating' of artefacts was invented by Flinders Petrie in 1899.

Simcha Jacobovici's arguments

From the documentary Exodus Decoded he:פענות יציאת מצרים

Egyptian

• The Hyksos Expulsion, contemporaneous Egyptian records of the driving out of the mysterious Hyksos people. Jacobovici suggests that the Hyksos and the Hebrews were one and the same, a thesis he supports with Egyptian-style signet rings uncovered in the Hyksos capital of Avaris (30°47'14.71"N, 31°49'16.92"E) that read "Yakov/Yakub" (from Yaqub-her), similar to the Hebrew name of the Biblical patriarch Jacob (Ya'aqov).
• The Ahmose stele, also called the Tempest Stele. Pieces of this stone tablet were unearthed in Karnak by Henri Chevalier in 1947. In it an unknown god incurs one of the same plagues described in the Biblical account (darkness, also described as "a great storm"). The Exodus Decoded official website quotes the stele, "How much greater is this the impressive manifestation of the great God, than the plans of the gods!" An alternative reading is "Then His Majesty said 'How these (events) surpass the power of the great god and the wills of the divinities!'".
• Ahmose I. Jacobovici suggests that the name of the Pharaoh at the time of the Exodus may have been a pun (paronomasia). Jacobovici states that in Hebrew, the Egyptian name Ahmose would mean "Brother of Moses." Yet in Egyptian, "Mose," "Moses," "Mes," etc. means "son of." and "Ah" is a common part of Egyptian royal names referring to the moon god Iah. The documentary also examines the mummy of Ahmose's son, Ahmose Sapair, who appears to have died at the age of 12. In the Bible, the pharaoh loses a son to the Plague of the Firstborn.
• Serabit el-Khadim turquoise mine, a labour camp in the Sinai with a Semitic alphabetic inscription that reads "O El, save me from these mines." He argues that the use of "El" suggests that it was written before the alleged revelation at Sinai, supporting the thesis that Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, although this inscription was undated.

Mycenaean

• Gravestones. Jacobovici suggests that three of the stones marking the wealthy tombs of Grave Circle A in Mycenae depict the parting of the Sea of Reeds. The stones, Jacobovici claims, show a man on a chariot in pursuit of a man on foot carrying a long, straight object. Jacobovici proposes that the man on the chariot is Ahmose I, the man on foot is Moses, and the long, straight object is the staff of Aaron. Above and below the scene are rows of swirls which, in Jacobovici's interpretation, represent the parting waters. He admits, however, that archaeologists have typically interpreted the scene as a chariot race, with the long, straight object being a spear or sword.
• A Gold ornament excavated from one of the tombs in the Grave Circle is believed by Jacobovici to show the Ark of the Covenant against a background of the tabernacle altar. However, when you compare the photo of the gold ornament to the Biblical story of God telling Moses how to build the Ark, the descriptions differ in several ways. Jacobovici suggests that members of the Tribe of Dan may have emigrated to Mycenae after the Exodus. This, the documentary suggests, is why Homer refers to the buried at Mycenae as "Danaoi." The Greek myth states, however, that the Danaoi were descended from the Argives under the matriarch Danaë.

Theology

The documentary claims that most historians consider the Exodus a "fairy tale," and it also claims that others reject scientific explanations that are not explicitly miraculous. Jacobovici reminds viewers that God, according to the Judeo-Christian description, manipulates nature, having an intimate understanding of it. His miracles may therefore be an efficient and timely exploitation of natural cycles and logic. The documentary ends by posing the question of whether the Exodus was just a natural event or "the Hand of God," implying that it is for the viewer to decide.

References and Further Reading

• Shaw, Ian (2003). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-500-05074-3.
• *Buchwald, Jed Z.; Josefowicz, Diane Greco (2020). The Riddle of the Rosetta: How an English Polymath and a French Polyglot Discovered the Meaning of Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-20091-0.
• Steindorff, George; Seele, Keith C. (1957). When Egypt Ruled the East. University of Chicago Press.