Pharaohs liked to claim (in inscriptions on the walls of tombs) that they gave their people justice. Egypt did have an effective legal system, and the proof of this survives in letters, wills, and wall inscriptions. On a wall in the tomb of a scribe archaeologists discovered the revealing story of a trial.
This is what had happened. Long before, a pharaoh had given fourteen acres of land to a navy captain to reward him for his service. Three centuries later, the captain’s female descendants quarreled in court about who was the rightful owner of this land. Then, for a while, a male member of the family named Huy farmed it. After his death, his widow, Nubnofre, was driven off the land by a relative of her husband named Khay. She took the matter to court, but the judge decided against her.
Later Mose, the son of Huy and Nubnofre, appealed this verdict. When another judge examined the title deeds he realized that one of them must be forged, so he sent a court official with Khay to consult official records. Khay and the official schemed together, and returned with papers that appeared to show that Huy, Mose’s father, had never had any right to the land. So the judge decided in favor of Khay.
Mose then gathered witnesses who swore that Mose’s father Huy had farmed the land for years and paid the taxes on it. The end of the inscription is missing, but it seems likely that the final verdict was in Mose’s favor. The tangled story suggests that courts worked carefully to provide justice.
Egypt was a power in the ancient world until about 1100 B.C., and even after that it sometimes showed its former strength. Later, one after another of the great empires of antiquity conquered it. But, as they did with Sumer, others would absorb Egyptian lore and learning. Egypt stands as the great example of a civilization that remained true to itself for thousands of years, almost as unchanging as her great river, which still
flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands.1
1Leigh Hunt, “A Thought of the Nile.”
Chapter 3
The wanderers settle down.
ABOUT FOUR THOUSAND YEARS ago a group of Hebrews left their home in Sumer and wandered north along the Euphrates River. Wandering was nothing new for them, since they were seminomads whose name, Hapiru, means “wanderer.” They led their flocks from pastureland to pastureland. Possibly they were like those desert nomads whom (you may recall) Sumerians looked down on as a people “who do not bend their knees [to farm],…who have no houses during their lifetime, who are not buried after their deaths….” When these Hebrews reached Harran, just inside the southern edge of modern Turkey, they settled down awhile and then moved on again.
We know what happened to them next because the Jews, a thousand years later, wrote about the Hebrews in their book of history, myths, and laws called the Bible. We now have crossed a border in this story of mankind. Modern scholars wrenched the history that you have read so far out of stones and bones in digs, or scraps of writing left by folk who didn’t care about their past. But now we meet a people whose history enthralled them. They told it and retold it, no doubt making many changes, and then they wrote it down.
Perhaps you wonder why a tale of errant shepherds should deserve a chapter in this book. Well, for reason one, their story illustrates how other wandering peoples on the borders of the settled places such as Sumer, Egypt, ancient China, and the Indus valley settled down. The Hebrews’ story illustrates this civilizing process. What is equally important (reason two), the religion of this group of seminomads, after they had settled down, later influenced the creeds of several billion people.
ONE DAY, SAYS the Bible, God appeared in Harran to a Hebrew named Abram and gave him both an order and a promise. According to the Bible, “The Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great.” So Abram and his kindred and their flocks and herds moved west, then south, skirting the Syrian desert, into Canaan.
The little city-states of Canaan took up much of Palestine, the strip of land along the Mediterranean’s eastern shore. (See the map on p. 16.) They therefore lay astride the route from Egypt to Mesopotamia. Compared to the Hebrews, at least, the Canaanites were more civilized. Some were farmer-herders; others lived in market towns in houses built of sun-dried bricks. They wove and sold rich crimson/purple cloth of great prestige.
Once arrived in Canaan, the Hebrews who had come with Abram didn’t settle down. Unlike the Canaanites, the newcomers were always on the move to fresher pasture for their flocks. For generations they would wander over Canaan’s semiarid hills, the adults walking, the donkeys bearing tents and children, and the sheep and cattle grazing. From time to time, they parleyed with each other over grazing rights. At one point, for example, Abram and his nephew Lot agreed that Abram and his kin would pasture in the hilly country westward from the Jordan River, while Lot would graze his flocks along the river.
The Hebrews traded animals and cheese and wool for goods the Canaanites produced, goods the Hebrews hadn’t learned to make. They learned and used the language of the Canaanites.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old (according to the Bible), God appeared again and made a pact with him. He promised Abram, “I will give to you, and to your descendants…all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.” But Abram and his people had a duty in return. “This is my covenant…between me and you and your descendants after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.” On that same day Abram, whom God now renamed Abraham, had himself, his son, his slaves, and no doubt all his tribesmen circumcised.
That is how the Bible explains why the Hebrews became a people with one god. Nowhere else, so far as we can tell, were there any other monotheists. In Mesopotamia, from which Abraham had come, the Sumerians and Babylonians and Assyrians worshipped many gods. So did the Egyptians. Even Pharaoh Akhenaten, when he ordered worship of the sun and scrapped the other gods, required that he be worshipped also, as a pharaoh-god.
Only Hebrews worshipped just one god. Even after they had made their pact, the Hebrews may have still believed that other gods existed. In his covenant with Abraham, God had not forbidden such belief. But whatever they believed regarding other gods, the Hebrews made a pact of loyalty to only one.
On one occasion, so the Bible tells us, God tested Abraham’s commitment to him. He ordered Abraham to take his only son, whose name was Isaac, to a distant mountain and to offer him as a sacrifice, on a fire, to God. When they reached the mountain, Abraham put up an altar made of stones, prepared some sticks to make a fire, tied up Isaac, and laid him on the wood. But as he raised his knife to slay his son, the “angel of the Lord” stopped him, saying “now I know that you fear God.” He told him that God promised that he would multiply Abraham’s descendants “as the stars of heaven and the sand upon the seashore.”
After Abraham, Isaac became the Hebrews’ leader. God renewed to him the promise he had made his father: “Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and your descendants for the sake of Abraham, my servant.” A generation later Jacob, son of Isaac, took his father’s place, and God renewed his promise to him. Once when Jacob traveled to the family’s homeland at Harran, he dreamed he saw a ladder reaching up to heaven and angels climbing up and down it. God appeared and said, “The land on which you lie I shall give to you and your descendants; and your descendants shall be [many] like the dust of earth.”
On another journey Jacob met a stranger, seemingly an angel. He wrestled with him all the night. Just before dawn the stranger changed Jacob’s name to Israel (“God rules”), because “you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”
Perhaps these ancient leade
rs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel), really lived and led their families and flocks amid the hills of Canaan. The Bible tells so much about them that they seem like men of flesh and blood. If they were, they probably lived in about 1800 B.C.
But it seems more likely that when later generations told the Hebrews’ story they used a family as a narrative device. They may have used, indeed invented, a father, son, and grandson to connect events involving many long-forgotten forebears. This would have made the story vivid, easy to remember. It may be too that during many tellings they added made-up stories of the ancient leaders’ talks with God. Thus they may have made these Hebrew patriarchs the founders of a religion that others (as we’ll see) perhaps developed many centuries later.
Their covenant with God didn’t cause the Hebrews to abandon their nomadic ways. The Bible tells of an event that makes that point. A Canaanite ruler’s son raped a daughter of Jacob, but he fell in love with the girl and wanted to marry her. His father held a meeting with the Hebrews, and he urged them to permit the marriage and to “give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us; and the land shall be open to you; dwell and trade in it, and get property in it.” With words like these he urged the wanderers to settle down.
The Hebrews hid their wrath about the rape. They pretended they’d permit the marriage if the Canaanites would meet just one condition: to be circumcised like Hebrews. The Canaanites agreed and did what they had promised. The demand for circumcision, though, was just a ruse. “On the third day, when [the Canaanites] were sore,” Jacob’s sons surprise-attacked the town. They slaughtered every male and “took their flocks and herds, their asses, and whatever was in the city and in the field; all their wealth, all their little ones and their wives.” And they continued with their wandering life.
Slowly, though, the Hebrews did give in to civilization. No doubt they couldn’t help seeing merit in the Canaanites’ settled way of life. Here and there in early chapters of the Bible we read about the Hebrews buying land or houses — sometimes even farming.
IN ABOUT 1600 B.C., a group of Hebrews moved from Canaan down to Egypt. The Bible personalizes the story of the move like this. Israel, the former Jacob, had twelve sons. Joseph, next-to-youngest, was his father’s favorite, but his brothers hated Joseph, especially after their father gave the boy a handsome robe. They seized their brother and sold him to a caravan of merchants taking balm and myrrh to Egypt. They killed a goat, dipped Joseph’s robe in blood, and brought it home to Israel. They told their father that some animal had killed his beloved son.
In Egypt, Joseph had remarkable success. Although he was a foreigner and slave, the pharaoh summoned Joseph to interpret his strange dreams. In one of them, seven fat cows were eaten by seven poor and gaunt ones; in the other, seven full ears of grain were eaten by seven withered ones. Joseph told the pharaoh the meaning of his dreams: seven years of plenty lay ahead, then seven years of famine. His explanation satisfied the ruler, who made the lowly slave his minister-in-chief. In the seven years that followed Joseph gathered great amounts of grain and stored it in the cities.
Later came the famine, as the pharaoh’s dream had warned, and not to Egypt only but to all the lands around it. Up in Canaan, Joseph’s family was hungry, so his brothers journeyed down to Egypt, where they had heard that they could purchase grain. Joseph, now a great official, met his brothers and forgave them. He told them to go home and then return with Israel (or Jacob) and all their wives and children. They settled in the delta of the Nile, near the sea, and took charge of the pharaoh’s cattle.
This story is believable. Egyptian documents reveal that pharaohs did allow other peoples to trade in Egypt and to settle there in time of famine. And the pharaohs did own herds of cattle in the delta that the Hebrews might have tended. However, the Hebrews (not just a family but a people) may really have entered Egypt as warriors. They arrived there at about the time when the “Hyksos” conquered Egypt and ruled it for two hundred years. Documents suggest that these invaders included Hebrews.
Joseph died, and centuries may have passed, and the Hebrews in Egypt multiplied. But, the Bible tells us, “Now arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” He enslaved the Hebrews and made them farm his fields and build his fortress towns. This biblical account fits what is known of Egypt in the 1200s B.C. Just at this time the pharaohs moved their capital northward to the delta, and they would have needed laborers to fortify the area against invaders coming down through Palestine. Egyptian texts from this time mention the use of “Habirus,” perhaps Hebrews, for forced labor.
The Bible doesn’t tell us much about the Hebrews in Egypt, but apparently there were twelve “tribes” or clans of them. Their names reveal a little. Some of those who soon would lead the Hebrews in their great adventure had Egyptian names. These included Moses, Phinehas, Puti-el, and maybe Hophni, Aaron, and Merari. These names suggest that their captivity had lasted long enough to partly Egyptianize the Hebrews.
Moses, who would later be the Hebrews’ leader, was young when the oppression reached its peak. One day he witnessed an Egyptian overseer cruelly beat a Hebrew slave. Moses killed the man and fled from Egypt, eastward to the Sinai Desert. He tended sheep there for a priest named Jethro, whose tribe, significantly, worshipped one God.
One day as Moses roamed this barren country, seeking pasture for his flock, he saw a bush that burned and yet was not consumed by flames. Intrigued, he neared the bush, and from it God called out to him: “Moses! Moses!” God told Moses that he was “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” He had heard his people’s cries from Egypt, so he said. He ordered Moses to approach the pharaoh and to tell him he must free the Hebrews. Moses then should lead the Hebrews up to Canaan, a land that flowed “with milk and honey.”
The Bible’s rapid telling leaves one point unclear. Did Moses already believe in the God of Abraham when he slew an Egyptian to help the Hebrew worker? Or did he believe in a sole god only after he had learned from Jethro’s tribe about their father-god? Or did he start to worship this god only when he spoke to Moses from the burning bush?
Moses now returned to Egypt and he tried, again and then again, to do as God had ordered and persuade the pharaoh to release the Hebrews. Finally the ruler gave consent, or else the Hebrews simply fled — the Bible story isn’t clear. With several thousand Hebrews and some other captives Moses headed east. The pharaoh led an army in pursuit, and his soldiers trapped the Hebrews near a reed-choked lake. According to the Bible, God then sent a wind to drive the water back and let the Hebrews through. When the water rushed back it swamped the pharaoh’s chariots.
For years, perhaps for decades, Moses and his people wandered in the Sinai Desert. Food and water were hard to find, and often they looked back with longing to their years as slaves, when at least they rarely suffered hunger.
They reached the barren land around Mount Sinai, which was “wrapped in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire.” Moses climbed the mountain to the top, and God declared to him, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” God renewed his pledge to help the Hebrews win the promised land of Canaan. “I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.”
The Bible says that he gave to Moses ten commandments, carved in stone. They ordered those who heard them to honor God and their parents, and forbade such crimes as murder and adultery. (Some modern scholars date the “Ten Commandments” earlier than Moses, others later.)
It wasn’t easy, though, for Moses to convince the Hebrews and the other former slaves that they had a pact with God. Even while their leader stood atop Mount Sinai and conversed with God, they melted their earrings and made a golden calf, a symbol of fertility. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai he found them dancing by it. But he persisted, and he shaped his dozen Hebrew “tribes” (and presumably the others) in
to a fairly united group. The Bible now begins to call these tribes the “Israelites,” meaning the children of Israel (or Jacob). They had a single purpose, to conquer Canaan.
One may well wonder why anyone would hanker much for Canaan. While some of Palestine, where Canaan was, is green and fertile, much of it is dry and bare, and rain is scarce. But the Israelites were trudging in the desert, where they may indeed have pictured Canaan as a land that flowed with “milk and honey.” In any case, Canaan was the land of their forefathers, and God had promised it to them.
But another people occupied this promised land. As we said above, the Canaanites were more advanced than those who now were poised to take their home. They lived in towns and may have been the first people in the world to write with an alphabet of letters that stood only for sounds. They cooked and ate on handsome pots and plates and made their tools with iron, which the Israelites did not know how to do.
Just before the conquest started, Moses climbed Mount Pisgah, east of Canaan, so that he could view the land that God had promised. There he died. According to the Bible, God buried him and “no man knows the place.”
THE BIBLE OFFERS two conflicting stories of the conquest. According to the first, Joshua, the Israelite leader after Moses’s death, led them across the Jordan River. As God directed, he circumcised his men with knives of flint. They stormed the town of Jericho and then they swiftly conquered all the promised land. They did this cruelly (says the first account), “utterly destroying” towns and “smiting,” “wiping out,” and “slaughtering” the Canaanites. Archaeologists have found remains of towns that were indeed destroyed and then rebuilt at just this time.
The Human Story Page 4