Were there actually Jewish slaves in Egypt?

[HumanityBlues]

I got into an argument with my religious catholic uncle about whether there were actually Jewish slaves in Egypt and whether Moses was a real person. My answer was no to both and he got really angry. I wanted to give him specific reasons, but have not really researched this at all.

So, Jewish slaves in Egypt is total BS right?

 

[jeremyp]

According to Israel Finkelstein in The Bible Unearthed, the word "Jewish" only came into use following the return from the Babylonian Exile. If ny of the ancestors of Jews were in Egypt at the time Moses is alleged to have lived, their religion and culture would probably be unrecognisable as Jewish. For example, they would have been polytheistic.

Also, there's no evidence of Moses' existence outside the Bible.


So the answer is yes it is BS

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The world's early obsessive record keepers never recorded hundreds of thousands of Hebrew slaves in the country. They kept records of cats and dogs, but there are no records of Hebrews.

This is your basic, "see how tough our god is?" storytelling. If they were around today it would "our god destroyed the President of the United States!"

 

[fuelair]

DK/WT

 

[Elagabalus]

I got into an argument with my religious catholic uncle about whether there were actually Jewish slaves in Egypt and whether Moses was a real person. My answer was no to both and he got really angry. I wanted to give him specific reasons, but have not really researched this at all.

So, Jewish slaves in Egypt is total BS right?

In regards to what? A whole nation enslaved to build the pyramids? Then, no. If there were slaves it wouldn't be until much later i.e. after the pyramids were built. Kind of a gray area-did some Egyptian family have a couple of Jewish slaves at one point or another? Get your uncle to commit to more details and then deliver the Coup de grâce!!!

http://www.quora.com/What-archeolog...-were-ever-slaves-or-even-just-lived-in-Egypt

 

[The Big Dog]

The world's early obsessive record keepers never recorded hundreds of thousands of Hebrew slaves in the country. They kept records of cats and dogs, but there are no records of Hebrews.

This is your basic, "see how tough our god is?" storytelling. If they were around today it would "our god destroyed the President of the United States!"

The world's what? Spend some time in Egypt. The only thing they were obsessive about was destroying the records of unpopular history.

Yes there were "Jewish" slaves in Egypt.

 

[Meadmaker]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habiru


From reading this, it would appear that some of the ancestors of the Hebrews were in fact slaves in Egypt. Lots of other people of the same tribe were not slaves in Egypt. There's no evidence I am aware of of anything remotely like Moses.

 

[Slowvehicle]

The world's what? Spend some time in Egypt. The only thing they were obsessive about was destroying the records of unpopular history.

Yes there were "Jewish" slaves in Egypt.

What evidence do you offer for this unsupported assertion?

What evidence do you offer that millions of "slaves" raped Egypt's economy, and hauled her riches off into the desert?

Isn't it...odd...that Egypt's external enemies did not take advantage of her helplessness, including the destruction of her military?

Evidence, ducks, evidence.

 

[devnull]

The world's what? Spend some time in Egypt. The only thing they were obsessive about was destroying the records of unpopular history.

Yes there were "Jewish" slaves in Egypt.

Smells like wishful thinking.

Cite?

 

[fuelair]

Smells like wishful thinking.

Cite?

The Ten Commandments !!!!!!!!

Would DeMille lie to you?????

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

What evidence do you offer for this unsupported assertion?

What evidence do you offer that millions of "slaves" raped Egypt's economy, and hauled her riches off into the desert?

Isn't it...odd...that Egypt's external enemies did not take advantage of her helplessness, including the destruction of her military?

Evidence, ducks, evidence.

It seems to me like he didn't say there were millions of slaves in Egypt, just that there were some.

And in fact, we do know that there were semitic slaves from Canaan in Egypt. There's even essentially a mail order for sex slaves in the Amarna letters. Or we have a first hand account of someone being rewarded with Hyksos slaves for his bravery in the final assault on the Hyksos capital. Essentially every single Hyksos captured there was enslaved and distributed as rewards. (And I mention the Hyksos because some speculated that in fact they are the 'Hebrews' that escaped Egypt with the pharaoh's army in hot pursuit.)

Essentially it's not a dichotomy. It's not like either there were millions or there were none. Egypt had slaves all along, and some were traded from abroad. Some Nubians, some from the neighbouring Semitic nations, some from captured Sea People raiders, etc. Not millions and not used for the pyramids, but they had slaves.

And yes, they had them for a long time. One of the 42 "I did not" confessions in the Papyrus of Ani says "I have not vilified a slave to his master." That's circa 1250 BCE for the papyrus itself, but the Book Of The Dead itself appears around 1550 BCE.

But that goes even farther back. The biography of Metjen in the 3rd dynasty mentions: "There were presented to him the things of his father, the judge and scribe Anubisemonekh; there was no grain or anything of the house, [but] there were people and small cattle. "

That's the frikken 3rd dynasty, man. Old kingdom. Not only it's not from after they stopped building pyramids, it's around where they began building them.

 

[Aepervius]

I do not think it is disputed that the egyptian of old had slaves which were from the region. I think what is disputed is that the exodus narrative had any basis in reality. There is as far as i can tell no basis to "Egyptian enslaved whole folk", they used and captured folk in some war (as mentionned Hyksos above) they had slave trade, but it does not seem they went out of their way to target specifically a whole Ethnic group and enslave them. From what i could read, neither did they use slave as cheap stuff to whip and use to death.

So stating there were "hebrew" slave in egypt is beyond the point. The point is that it was nether systematic, nor it was in such massive numbers, nor the treatment is as people think it was.

As such , the imagery your uncle has is with a good certainty false, and its origin has only hollywood.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The world's what? Spend some time in Egypt. The only thing they were obsessive about was destroying the records of unpopular history.

Been there several times while I was stationed in the Med.

Yes there were "Jewish" slaves in Egypt.

Show us.

 

[rjh01]

If thousands of people lived for several years in the sinai desert then that would leave traces visible even today. No such traces exist. How could these people live there anyway? The whole story makes little sense.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If thousands of people lived for several years in the sinai desert then that would leave traces visible even today. No such traces exist. How could these people live there anyway? The whole story makes little sense.

Not to mention that we had a thread here where I asked how long it would take to walk the entire Sinai looking for an exit. The answer was considerably less than 40 years. Walk a straight line in any direction and you'll hit the sea with a few months at most, going dead slow.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I do not think it is disputed that the egyptian of old had slaves which were from the region. I think what is disputed is that the exodus narrative had any basis in reality. There is as far as i can tell no basis to "Egyptian enslaved whole folk", they used and captured folk in some war (as mentionned Hyksos above) they had slave trade, but it does not seem they went out of their way to target specifically a whole Ethnic group and enslave them. From what i could read, neither did they use slave as cheap stuff to whip and use to death.

So stating there were "hebrew" slave in egypt is beyond the point. The point is that it was nether systematic, nor it was in such massive numbers, nor the treatment is as people think it was.

As such , the imagery your uncle has is with a good certainty false, and its origin has only hollywood.

Mostly. While Egypt didn't have such a policy of moving whole ethnic groups around, like the Assyrians did, in the Hyksos instance they did just that. Egypt didn't just fight to free itself, it fought to outright annihilate the Hyksos. They didn't take vassals, for a change. All captured Hyksos, even women and children, were enslaved. The city where the fleeing Hyksos armies fortified for their final stand wasn't just taken and vassalized, as would be the usual course of action, it was razed.

And indeed, after that, the Hyksos completely disappear from history.

Mind you, I'm not saying that the Exodus story has any base in reality. It doesn't. It's just fiction composed during the Babylon captivity to make a "God freed us before, he'll do it again" point.

All I'm saying is, well, when talking about 3000+ years of recorded history of pharaonic Egypt, I would be wary of making absolute statements about what they would or wouldn't do. While, yes, we can say that 90%+ of the time the Eyptians would obey a certain code of Ma'at and would do that or wouldn't do that, at times that prescribed order fell apart rather spectacularly and brutally.

Would they normally wage a totaly war against an ethnic group? Well, no, the notion would be very strange. Did they do it once anyway? Hell, yea.

So basically, yeah, I'd focus on the specific Exodus story being unsupportable, rather than absolute statements about what they would always do or wouldn't ever do.

 

[Craig4]

Well, we can say that slaves didn't build the Pyramids. We can say that there is no evidence for the Exodus Myth. All humans have to eat, get out of the elements and use the toilet. All those things leave marks on and in the ground. That many people would leave marks which would be hard to miss.

Now, there were probably slaves from Israel in Egypt. Slavery was widely practiced by pretty much everyone so yeah, some may have been in Egypt. Were the all Charleston Heston "let my people go". Almost certainly not.

 

[Rincewind]

Been there several times while I was stationed in the Med.

Show us.

You were a slave?

 

[Rincewind]

Not to mention that we had a thread here where I asked how long it would take to walk the entire Sinai looking for an exit. The answer was considerably less than 40 years. Walk a straight line in any direction and you'll hit the sea with a few months at most, going dead slow.

Ancient GPS clearly had a few blank spots.

 

[Giordano]

Not to mention that we had a thread here where I asked how long it would take to walk the entire Sinai looking for an exit. The answer was considerably less than 40 years. Walk a straight line in any direction and you'll hit the sea with a few months at most, going dead slow.

You know the old joke? Why did the Jews wander the Sinai for 40 years? Moses, like most men, refused to ask directions.