EXODUS, SCHMECH-XODUS

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ancient history, Bible, Brunner, chariot, Commandments, Egypt, Exodus, Goshen, Hatshepsut, Hebrews, Heston, horses, Isrealites, Moses, movies, Old Testament, Passover, pharoah, Plagues, Ramesses, Red Sea, Torah

Oy vey, yet another mixed-up rendition, but nice.

When I was in second grade, the nuns rented the local movie house, cleared out the school, and walked us seven blocks to see The Ten Commandments. Special effects in 1956 were nothing like they are today, and yet the film influenced me more than any other. There was Egypt, in all its jaw-dropping splendor, with the ferociously yummy Yul Brunner as Ramesses. He looked just like Ramesses the Great but with muscles. Made my heart go platz.

There’s a lot of squabbling about who was pharaoh at the time of the exodus. Given the records of Ramesses’s history—even taking away some of the hyperbole loved by Egyptian historians—this does not sound like the right guy. But back to some blatant film errors with Exodus: Gods and Kings, which still has Moses doing all the talking, and not Aaron, as was also done in the 1956 version. Doesn’t anybody in Hollywood read the Old Testament or Torah?

One thing I did love about this new version, whether accurate or not, was the production work involving Egypt, the city and palace settings, the gorgeous costuming. Luscious and reminiscent of how it was reported to look by historians of the day. (The HBO Rome series had Egypt horribly depicted, dry and dull. One of Caesar’s soldiers wrote about gold everywhere and walls embedded with real jewels.)

Then there was the ill-conceived background shot of Moses fleeing Egypt. The Sphinx, with her crumbling face looks as it does today, not as it would have thousands of years ago. Doesn’t anybody bother to do historical research? Sketches done by Frederic Louis Norden in 1737 and Vivant-Denon’s depictions of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, show a less damaged face.

The equine mess-ups are silly. In this new version, Moses rides and drives Friesian horses, a breed not developed until the Middles Ages. Egyptians didn’t ride a lot, and when they did, they are depicted bare-back, no stirrups. Stirrups as we know them were not widely used until the Middle Ages, although there is some argument about that. It’s said the present day stirrups were devised to steady the knights carrying all that metal and for support with the lance.

Then we have the Biblical issues and omissions, too many to count. The one that got me in this recent version was how the Red Sea parted, sort of drizzling away. It’s stated more than once that when the sea waters parted, they crossed on “dry” land. No mud flats or rushing streams as in this latest film. They walked between walls of water, on dry ground, like the 1956 film.

Back to using Ramesses II as the bad guy. It’s now thought that Thutmose III is the dummy who kept ignoring God and prophecy, and that it might have been the marvelous Hatshepsut who pulled Moses from the river. Whoever hauled him out had to be very high up on the chain. Hatshepsut was pharaoh’s daughter, married to Thutmose II (half-brother), and later became regent for her step-son, the not-so-nice Thutmose III. Much of her personal history was expunged, which might have contained remarks about Moses. I’ve included some sites about the controversy.

In the end, I enjoyed the movie when I stopped obsessing about the errors and just enjoyed the scenery. Christian Bale, whose accent had Variations-on-an-English-Theme throughout, is nice to look at, but the Old Testament (don’t remember reading this bit in the Torah) says Moses was beautiful in God’s eyes. Maybe Heston should have played pharaoh and Brunner, Moses. Oy.

http://www.bible.ca/archeology/bible-archeology-exodus-date-1440bc.htm

http://www.thechurchesofgod.com/WHO%20WAS%20THE%20PHAROAH%20OF%20THE%20EXODUS.html

 

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My Secret Sin

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adventure, ancient history, Egypt, Stonehenge, temptation, y

Sometimes temptation sucks me in. OK, so it’s more often than sometimes. In this instance, I was lured by a stack of magazines. They’d been set out for anyone to read, not take home. But I couldn’t resist and didn’t.

I promise to return it tomorrow. Or the next day. If I’m done.

You see, it’s a subject I can’t resist, archaeology. The glossy cover is a delicious photo of the pharaoh Amenhotep III rendered in quartzite, serene and smiling. This article is about a new find in the Valley of the Kings that doesn’t pertain to kings or queens, but about less elevated people. Historical detritus of every day folks, like us, isn’t usually hashed over with the same amount of glee as the finds that yield the treasures of the rich and famous. But for me, archaeology is a form of controlled substance, and here’s an article that gives a peek into the lives of every day Egyptians. These are the people who thousands of years ago used honey on bone fractures, which is starting to catch on today. Skulls are found with trepanning holes, brain surgery folks, and they’ve unearthed a battery that worked. Didn’t you ever wonder how they painted all those murals with no smoke smudges on the tomb ceilings?

Yeah, I’ll admit to being a bit loony about ancient history. There’s so much we don’t know and so much that we believed to be true and are now discovering it’s wrong.

I love reading about archeology so much that I made up a character for one of my books, Philadelphia Hafeldt, spoofing Indy Jones. I’m hooked on it because it’s the investigation of the mysteries of history contemplated, studied, and on occasion, figured out with accuracy.

Fossilized history can be tricky. Relics unearthed have provided educated types with opportunities to proclaim their discoveries as definitive. History’s joke is that often down the road, the facts turn out to be not so true. (Did George really chop down that cherry tree?) Some overlooked piece of the grand puzzle gets tweaked into place, and poof, up goes the definitive fact. So what is real? Will these discoveries change our lives?

In this issue, there are the top ten discoveries of 2014. I drool during the reading of that article. There are pictures of misty, mystical jungles, shipwrecks found, and perhaps the juiciest bit of all, we learn that the Stonehenge we see is only the tip of a vast site. More structures are found underground. Nowadays, buried history is having a hard time staying buried with the onset of ground-penetrating radar, aerial laser scanning, and other remote sensing, hi-tech equipment.

On the other hand, I have a lot of faith in oral history, the stories told by aboriginals and pooh-poohed by accepted experts because it can’t be authenticated with physical evidence. I was entranced by the ending of Enemy Mine, the part about coming of age and reciting one’s entire family ancestry.

One of the purposes of history, for me, is seeing how we don’t change much as people, especially when one considers that the same mistakes keep being made, over and over, down through the ages. On the upside, there’s always a chance to learn, since history never ends.