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PASSOVER
Ancient Influences
While in Egypt, the Israelites picked
up a few practices from their neighbors. A tour of the Egyptian
galleries at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem reveals that some Jewish
traditions actually have their roots in ancient Egypt.
by Heidi J. Gleit
When the Israelites
left ancient Egypt, they did not only take the Egyptians’ jewels of
silver and gold, as it says in the Bible (Exodus 11:2-3), but also took
some less tangible but perhaps more important jewels – Egyptian
practices and concepts. A tour of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem
revealed that a surprising number of modern Jewish traditions have their
roots in ancient Egypt.
For example, one of
the best-known customs of the Jewish people is the circumcision of
newborn sons when they are eight days old. The Jews may have adopted
this custom from the Egyptians, who traditionally circumcised their
sons, as can be seen in the picture in Gallery 7, which comes from a
tomb dating back to 2320 BCE. The only difference is that the Jews
circumcised their sons at a much younger age than the Egyptians, said
the museum’s curator Joan Goodnick Westenholz. The Egyptians and the
Jews were the only peoples in the ancient Middle East to practice
circumcision, she noted, adding that though the tradition began with
Abraham, before the Jews sojourned in Egypt, he may have picked it up
during his journey through Egypt. It also is interesting to note that
Moses did not circumcise his sons when they were eight days old, but
just before he returned to Egypt with them.
A model boat from 2000-1900 BCE.
Another practice
that was adopted temporarily was preserving the body after death by
mummification – both Jacob and Joseph were mummified and Egyptian and
Jewish culture share a belief that the body is necessary in the
afterlife. For the Egyptians, mummification was a key practice that
developed into an art form over the centuries. Jewish burial practices
changed over time and ultimately Jewish law prohibited mummification.
To preserve the
body, the ancient Egyptians removed the organs to prevent them from
causing the body to rot. They preserved the organs they believed were
important separately, storing them in canopic jars, like those on
display in Gallery 10. They believed that when the person was
resurrected in the afterlife, the preserved organs would magically
return to the preserved body and both would continue to function.
The heart was
believed to be the most important organ, responsible for personality,
conscience and will. Unlike the other organs, the heart was generally
either preserved with the body or returned to the body after being
preserved separately. An additional sign of its importance was that a
heart-shaped amulet was placed in the cavity along with the heart, in
the wrappings, or on top of the body.
The other important
organs were stored in canopic jars. Originally, the canopic jars had
simple lids, but by the time of the Passover story, they had become more
complex. Each lid was shaped like a different animal’s head to represent
one of the four sons of the god Horus, each of whom was responsible for
guarding the organ inside his jar. The liver, which was associated with
emotions, was put in a jar with a human head. The lungs went into a
baboon-headed jar, the stomach into a jackal-headed jar, and the
intestines into a hawk-headed jar. The brain was not considered
important at all or necessary in the afterlife; it was simply removed
and discarded.
This should not be
taken to mean that the Egyptians were gloomy people obsessed with death.
In fact, they enjoyed life, as the luxurious items on display in Gallery
10 show, and unlike any of their neighbors, including the ancient
Israelites and Mesopotamians, had a positive view of the afterlife. A
stone relief from a tomb chamber, that is on display in Gallery 10,
provides insight into their ideas on this. The Egyptians believed that
they were expected to live honorable, ethical lives, after which they
would enter the “Hall of Truth” shown in the relief. There, the dead
person’s heart would be weighed on a scale. If the heart was found to be
lighter than the feather on the other side, which symbolized the goddess
of righteousness, then the person would be allowed to continue to enjoy
the pleasures of the material world in the afterlife. If not, the heart
would be fed to the monster lurking beneath the scale and the person’s
soul would simply cease to exist. A similar scene, as well as a scene
showing the embalming ritual and other beliefs about death, is depicted
on the lid of the coffin of an anonymous Egyptian noblewoman that also
can be found in Gallery 10.
The Egyptians’
expectations for the afterlife were relatively modest. They did not
believe that an endless stream of food, drink, and luxury goods would be
available there, but that arrangements must be made to provide for them.
They left behind instructions for their descendants to leave food for
them by their tombs and would have inscriptions carved on their tombs
asking passersby to make sacrifices to them. However, they did not just
depend on the living. As shown in Gallery 7, they painted murals in
their tombs of servants bringing them trays of figs, breads and cakes,
pots of wine and milk, and boatfuls of lotus blossoms, among other
items. They believed these scenes would come alive and serve them in the
afterlife. Over time, the murals were supplemented by detailed models,
such as those in Gallery 9, that show servants making beer and baking
bread or a boat that would provide transportation in the next world.
Other models contain entire workshops, such as a scene from a
slaughterhouse that is meant to ensure a supply of fresh meat in the
afterworld. Though these models and the ideas they represent are
approximately 4,000 years old, they seem surprisingly contemporary,
though childlike.
The model of the
slaughterhouse shows that the Egyptians slaughtered animals the same way
that religious Jews do – by severing the carotid artery in the throat
and causing a quick, painless death. In the model, an Egyptian is
collecting blood from the slaughtered animal. While the Egyptians would
use the blood to make blood pudding, the Jews would discard it as Jewish
law forbids consuming blood. Prior to the tenth plague, the smiting of
the firstborn, the Jews did collect the blood of lambs, the way the man
in the slaughterhouse model is doing. As the Book of Exodus tells, this
blood was used to mark the doorposts of the Jews’ homes so that they
would not be harmed by the tenth plague: “And the blood shall be to you
for a token upon the houses where ye are; and when I see the blood, I
will pass over you, and there shall no plague be upon you to
destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.”
(Exodus 12:13)
One final example of
the Egyptian influence is the name of the hero of the Passover story.
The Bible (Exodus 2:10) says that the pharoah's daughter named him Moses
“because I drew him out of the water.” However, there is more to it than
that. Though he is not mentioned by name in the Bible, the name of the
Egyptian ruler at the time is believed to be Ramesses II; a life-sized
statue of him is on display between galleries 9 and 10. Ra was the name
of the Egyptian sun god, one of the most important gods in the Egyptian
pantheon. When the name of the Egyptian god is removed from the ruler’s
name, what remains is Moses. This name, therefore, is not just a
description of how he was saved from drowning, but a rejection of the
Egyptian divinities.
ERETZ Magazine thanks Joan Goodnick Westenholz and Riki Morginstin for
their assistance in preparing this article.
This
article
appeared in ERETZ Magazine 103. To subscribe to ERETZ Magazine,
click here.
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