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“The Blackening of Egypt's Reputation

Prof. Jan Assmann

It was from Egypt –and not, e.g. from Babylonia or Khatti (Turkey—Hittite land) or any other country of the Ancient world – that the Israelites believed themselves to have emigrated in order to enter the covenant with God and eventually the Promised Land of Canaan. The reason for this choice may be historical, if we believe in the historicity of the exodus, or symbolic, if we take the exodus story as a foundational myth rather than a historical account. In either case, however, it is legitimate to ask about the significance and origin of the stark antagonism that the biblical account constructs between Egypt and Israel.

The negative image of Egypt in the exodus story blackens the memory of Pharaonic Egypt until today. It focuses mainly on two points: Egypt as the “house of serfdom” and Pharaoh as the paragon of tyranny and despotism.[1]

Conscripted Labor not Slavery

In Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, slaves were understood to belong by nature to a lower species of human beings; this idea was unknown in Egypt. Egyptians worked as servants, laborers, and peasants, but not as slaves. There was, however, the institution of corvée or conscripted labor.

Throughout the Ancient Orient, conscripted labor was a customary form of taxation and could be paid in the form of labor service. In Egypt, conscripted labor played a particularly important role since the annual flooding of the Nile put a halt to work in the fields for three to four months at a stretch, freeing up farm hands for other activities. Furthermore, huge loads that would otherwise have had to be arduously hauled overland could now be transported by ship.

We must further distinguish between normal conscripted labor and forced labor. The first form is free from every degrading or punishing aspects, the second form, however, is the usual form of punishment in antiquity and highly degrading.

Apiru

‍In the New Kingdom (1500-1100 BCE), forced and corvée labor was more and more left to prisoners of war and people deported from occupied countries like Nubia (to Egypt’s south) and Canaan. In this way, even Hebrews and other Canaanites may have been engaged in the large building projects of Ramses II. In Egypt, these foreign workers were called capiru, a Babylonia loan word (hapiru), meaning “vagabonds, outlaws, migrants.”[2] This fits the meaning of capiru in the exodus story, in which the enslavement of the Hebrews begins with conscripted labor, then forced labor, and eventually full enslavement.

Solomon’s Conscription of Captives

The closest the Bible comes to describing an Israelite king enslaving his population is the text concerning Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, which focuses on domestic rather than foreign corvée labor. When asked to lower the service burden, Rehoboam famously said: “My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions” (1 Kings 12:14). But Rehoboam never gets to make good this promise; unsurprisingly, his outburst brings on the secession of the Israelite northern kingdom.

When describing the “actual” corvée system under Solomon, however, the Bible does not make use of the same hyperbolic tone as we see in Exodus, though both texts use same term, mas (מס). Exodus 1:11 describes Pharaoh appointing “officers of the levy/labor (שרי מסים)” over the Hebrews; in 1Kings 5, the term is used both for the levy (מס) Solomon demanded of his own people and for the forced labor exacted from defeated cities and enslaved captives.

The book of Kings reports that Solomon, who spent twenty years building the Temple and royal palace in Jerusalem while also undertaking further construction projects in Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, conscripted 30,000 men (1 Kings 5:27-30 [=vv. 13-16 in most English Bibles]):

מלכים א ה:כז וַיַּעַל הַמֶּלֶךְ שְׁלֹמֹה מַס מִכָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיְהִי הַמַּס שְׁלֹשִׁים אֶלֶף אִישׁ. ה:כח וַיִּשְׁלָחֵם לְבָנוֹנָה עֲשֶׂרֶת אֲלָפִים בַּחֹדֶשׁ חֲלִיפוֹת חֹדֶשׁ יִהְיוּ בַלְּבָנוֹן שְׁנַיִם חֳדָשִׁים בְּבֵיתוֹ וַאֲדֹנִירָם עַל הַמַּס. ה:כט וַיְהִי לִשְׁלֹמֹה שִׁבְעִים אֶלֶף נֹשֵׂא סַבָּל וּשְׁמֹנִים אֶלֶף חֹצֵב בָּהָר. ה:ל לְבַד מִשָּׂרֵי הַנִּצָּבִים לִשְׁלֹמֹה אֲשֶׁר עַל הַמְּלָאכָה שְׁלֹשֶׁת אֲלָפִים וּשְׁלֹשׁ מֵאוֹת הָרֹדִים בָּעָם הָעֹשִׂים בַּמְּלָאכָה.

1 Kgs 5:27 And King Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men. 5:28 And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand [men] a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was [supervisor] over the levy. 5:29 And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains; 5:30 Besides the chief officers of Solomon which were [deployed] over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work.

Although the Bible describes what sounds like very hard work, the text offers not the slightest suggestion that the levy introduced by Solomon was tainted by indignity, degradation, enslavement, suffering, or the deprivation of rights.

A little later in the Book of Kings, however, we are told that Solomon levied only Canaanites for construction work and spared the Israelites for service in the army:

מלכים א ט:כ כָּל הָעָם הַנּוֹתָר מִן הָאֱמֹרִי הַחִתִּי הַפְּרִזִּי הַחִוִּי וְהַיְבוּסִי אֲשֶׁר לֹא מִבְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל הֵמָּה. ט:כא בְּנֵיהֶם אֲשֶׁר נֹתְרוּ אַחֲרֵיהֶם בָּאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר לֹא יָכְלוּ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לְהַחֲרִימָם וַיַּעֲלֵם שְׁלֹמֹה לְמַס עֹבֵד עַד הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה. ט:כב וּמִבְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא נָתַן שְׁלֹמֹה עָבֶד כִּי הֵם אַנְשֵׁי הַמִּלְחָמָה וַעֲבָדָיו וְשָׂרָיו וְשָׁלִשָׁיו וְשָׂרֵי רִכְבּוֹ וּפָרָשָׁיו.

1 Kgs 9:20 And all the people that were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, which were not of the children of Israel, 9:21 their children that were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel also were not able utterly to destroy, upon those did Solomon levy a tribute of bondservice unto this day. 9:22 But of the children of Israel did Solomon make no bondmen: but they were men of war, and his servants, and his princes, and his captains, and rulers of his chariots, and his horsemen.

This passage navigates the difficultly between two conflicting principles: not to oppress the Israelites with bondservice and the obligation of Deuteronomy 7:1-2 and 20:16-18 to annihilate the Canaanites.[3] Solomon’s treatment of the Canaanites that are still living in Israel amounts to a flagrant violation of Deuteronomistic puritanism, but by enslaving them and thus avoiding the creation of Israelite bondsmen, the passage ameliorates the problem somewhat. It also demonstrates some ambivalence about the idea of Solomon levying his own people to do hard labor; no such ambivalence is expressed about doing so to foreigners.

Pharaoh’s Shift to Forced Labor and the Use of Genocide

Considering the fact that a king levying work, even physical labor, from his citizens and certainly from foreign residents was the norm in the ancient Near East, including Egypt and Israel, the accusation against Pharaoh in Exodus needed to be about something more extreme than this. And thus we read in the exodus story, about how Pharaoh gradually exchanges the normal forms of conscripted labor to aggravated forms of forced labor (Exod 5:6-9).[4]

But the accusation against Pharaoh is much more serious and by far exceeds anything connected with forced labor: In order to cull the Israelite population, he commands his people to kill all the males among the Hebrew newborns by drowning them into the Nile:

שמות א:כב וַיְצַו פַּרְעֹה לְכׇל עַמּוֹ לֵאמֹר כׇּל הַבֵּן הַיִּלּוֹד הַיְאֹרָה תַּשְׁלִיכֻהוּ וְכׇל־הַבַּת תְּחַיּוּן.

Exod 1:22 And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

This step, however, is told in chapter 1, long before Pharaoh’s negotiations with Moses, and is never referred to in the later unfolding of the narrative. The story belongs within the widely-known myth of the Exposed Child and bears unmistakable fairy-tale traits. It may, however, serve as a foreshadowing of the 10th plague, the killing of the Egyptian firstborn and is, in the Christian reading of the Old Testament, the typos or prefiguration of the massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem recounted in Matthew 2.

The Narrative Logic of the Sinister Egypt

The sinister role Egypt and Pharaoh play in the story of Exodus reflects the narrative logic of the story that leads from utter God-forsakenness in Egyptian slavery to the status of God’s Chosen People and the enjoyment of permanent divine presence. God, who is completely absent in the two first chapters describing the sufferings of the Israelites[5] (through Exod 2.23-25 where in five sentences Elohim is mentioned five times), ends up by entering into the tabernacle in order to “dwell in the midst of his people,” “speaking from above the Kerubîm.”[6]

The dark image of Egypt in the book of Exodus is a construct, not founded in historical reality. Its depiction of Egypt as a paradigmatic rogue state is a theological and narratological necessity. The Egyptian enslavement is needed in order to understand the covenant and its laws as liberation. God is the liberator “who led thee out of Egypt, the house of bondage.” They themselves are continually reminded of this fact and enjoined never to forget that they “were slaves in Egypt.”

They are to remain slaves, however; from slaves (avādîm) of the Egyptians they have become the servants[7] of YHWH:

ויקרא כה:נה כִּי לִי בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל עֲבָדִים עֲבָדַי הֵם אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִי אוֹתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם אֲנִי יְ־הֹוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם:

Lev 25:55 For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am YHWH your God.

The Torah’s message is that servitude to God frees one from human enslavement.

ויקרא כו:יג אֲנִי יְ־הֹוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִהְיֹת לָהֶם עֲבָדִים וָאֶשְׁבֹּר מֹטֹת עֻלְּכֶם וָאוֹלֵךְ אֶתְכֶם קוֹמְמִיּוּת.

Lev 26:13 I am YHWH your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt from being their slaves, and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright.

Historical Context of the Narrative

In the Bible, the story of the exodus from Egypt is set in the New Kingdom or Late Bronze Age. The orally transmitted myth that serves as the basis for this story may very well go back to this age, when Canaan was ruled by Egypt and its inhabitants suffered under the Egyptian occupation[8] or even – as deportees – in Egypt itself.

In my opinion, however, in its current, elaborated form, it must postdate the time when the kingdom of Judah collapsed (586 BCE) and the people were deprived of any exterior stabilizers of memory and identity: kingship, state and territory, temple, priesthood and cult. In exile, they experienced, discovered or invented a new form of spiritual resettlement in the ideas of revelation, covenant and faith, which they codified in the Torah. Upon their return to Jerusalem, they made this Torah the spiritual foundation of the new Second Temple Judaism.

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Prof. Jan Assmann is Professor (Emeritus) of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg and is now Honorary Professor of Cultural and Religious Studies at Constance. He received his Ph.D and Dr.habil from Heidelberg, as ... Read more

Source: https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-blackening-of-egypts-reputation

Professor Jan Assmann

Jan Assman is for sure a great Egyptologist and this article of his offers very important insights. I think, however, that it is well established that slavery existed in Egypt too, not only in Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome. Moreover, corvée labor, although not slavery in the strict sense of the term, is a form of forced labor, which can be very harsh. This was also the case with the corvée labor performed in ancient Egypt by the Egyptian population, which was a standard feature of the Pharaonic political and socio-economic system. But of course forced labor imposed on foreigners by the Egyptian state could be even harsher. 

Connective Structure - binds people together by providing a 'symbolic universe' (Berger and Luckmann) - 'a common area of experience, expectation and action whose connecting force provides them with trust and orientation' - links yesterday with today by giving form and presence to influential experiences and memories, incorporating images and tales from another time into the background of the onward moving presence, bringing with it hope and continuity. Aspect of culture that underlies MYTHS and HISTORIES, in which the normative and narrative elements create a basis of belonging and identity.

Ritual Coherence - the repetition that is the basic principle behind all connective structures. Repetition serves to re-presentify tradition and memory.

Ritual - all contain these 2 elements of repetition and re-presentification: if the rituals are more rigid, they are more repetitive. If there is more freedom of individual expression then they allow greater re-presentification in present context - these are the two poles between which the dynamic process that gives WRITING its all important function in the connective structure of culture.

Writing - it is through this that the dominance of repetition gradually gives way to that of re-presentification -- ritual gives way to coherence. A New connective structure emerges out of this - one which consists not of imitation and preservation but of interpretation and memory. 

“In contrast to Israel’s, the Egyptian monotheistic reform failed to take root. After the death of its originator, the Amarna religion was rigorously suppressed. The desctruction of all memory of this epoch is not simply an official damnatio memoriae, but has the intensity of a traumatic experience. Such experiences do not lend themselves to representation in the symbolic forms of cultural memory. They are not only simply passed over in silence, but are so supremely dreadful as to actively resist any representation at all...The memory of Amarna was not merely obliterated; it was repressed or, to use the psychanalytic term, “encrypted”; Amarna represented a “crypt” in collective remembrance and was thus inaccessible to conscious cultural symbolization...

In my view, the following features justify referring to the experience of the age of Amarna as traumatic: the symbolic, and possibly physical violence with which the new religion was enforced; its absence of meaning for the majority; the internal and external political crises with which the period ended; and the psychohistorical consequences of collective repression, which took the form of distorted memories, legends, demonization of foes, and various forms of explicit cultural abhorrence.

To illustrate the first point it may suffice to engage in a thought experiment. Let us imagine a traditional society convinced that not only the political and economic welfare of the country but the very survival of the natural life depends on the celebration of three religious services every day in all churches through the length and breadth of the nation. Let us further imagine that as a result of a revolution “from above” all churches are suddenly closed, all scriptures destroyed, and all consecrated objects smashed. How would such a society come to terms with this catastrophe? 

Though the average Egyptian had no access to the temples and might not have been much troubled by their closing, Akhenaten’s ban on traditional religious activity extended to the festivals-  a prohibition whose impact can hardly be overestimated.

The festivals were the very foundation of the individual Egyptian’s social identity. His allegiance was in the first place a town and its deity, and the fundamental structure of his social and religious integration was dramatized in the major processional feasts particular to each town. The ban on religious feasts must have been experienced as an eradication of meaning, as is indeed attested by the Graffito of Pawah, written in the seclusion of the tomb of Pairi. The text begins: “My heart longs to see you”, a reference to the author’s yearning for the sight of the deity as made manifest and tangible in religious processions...For the majority of Egyptians, the age of Amarna was one of destruction, persecution, suppression, and godlessness - of “darkness by day,” the formula used to refer to the experience of divine absence. The gods had turned away from Egypt.

The experience of being forsaken by the gods as a result of a heinous crime, unspeakable in the truest sense of the word, found apparent confirmation in the severe crises that beset Egypt toward the end of the period of Amarna. The Restoration Stela of Tutankhamun refers to this desolation, resorting to the traditional form of chaos description...Forsaken by the gods, the land lapses into “grave illness” and suffers from foreign attacks. Those to blame for these catastrophes (”they’) are not mentioned by name, as it is consistent with the systematic suppression of their memory. The text’s term for “illness” must be understood metaphorically; it figures in literary texts in the same sense and is part of the symbolic topology of chaos description...There are, however, a number of Hittite sources indicating that a plague actually did break out at the end of the Amarna period. Egyptian soldiers captured by the Hittites during a raid on Syria brought with them a plague that raged for twenty years in Anatolia and extensive areas of the Near East. It is not likely that Egypt itself would have been spared...If, indeed, there was an epidemic in Egypt, it would not have been experienced as one of those “mishaps”  against which, in traditional Egyptian semantics, the creator had provided humans with magic as a defense. In the light of a theology of will that imputes the course of history to divine volition, a plague could only have been interpreted as an expression of the ire of the gods. The idea that the gods would turn away from a land that breaks with its own system of order can already be found in the Prophecies of Neferti, but the idea of punitive wrath was previously unknown. This motif bears the seeds of a new semiology that was to assert tself in the subsequent period and would indissolubly link good fortune and prosperity with the favor of the gods.”

“The revelation effected by Akhenaten’s god is more an act of enlightenment than the establishment of a new religion. Akhenaten’s key insight is that god is only light and time; all reality, visible and invisible, can be traced back to light and time. But does not the true nature of god, as represented in the many deities of traditional Egyptian religion, go far beyond visible and invisible physical reality? I refer to two religious ideas absolutely crucial for the Egyptians and conspicuous by their complete absence from Akhenaten’s hymn, having fallen foul of Amarna’s censorship: (regenerative) immortality and justice. Truth and justice were now identical with the will of the king and his teachings. It was not god but the king who “lived on ma at” at Amarna. To live in ma at no longer meant solidarity in thought, speech, and action; it now meant casting in one’s lot with the king and following his teachings.”

“...For him [Akhenaten], god is nothing but light and time. He overcomes neither evil nor death, as neither has any place in the new vision of the world. Akhenaten’s vision was the most consistent Egyptian attempt to transcend the idea of a “riven world”. But Akhenaten’s emphatically undivided world has no place for the moral aspect of the divine and the claims that attend it. Even so brief an outline of Akhenaten’s vision makes it apparent that his monotheism has very little in common with the bibilical variety - the one notable exception being its antipolyheistic impetus. In the fourteenth century BCE this impetus fleetingly presaged the conflict in which the One and the Many were later to form irreconcilable opposites. For Akhenaten, the One appears in a cognitive, rationalist guise: the Egyptian king has no need of many gods because he believes he can refer back to one controlling principle and agency the energies that create and sustain the world. In the Bible the antipolytheistic impetus takes on a political form, as fidelity to the covenant with the one and only God. Akhenaten’s monotheism is cosmological, a philosophy of nature in religious garb. Biblical monotheism is historical, political, and moral; its  main vehicles of expression are historical narrative, legislation, and constitution.

Both monotheisms were revolutionary. They did not evolve from earlier religious developments but owed their existence to what Erik Hornung calls ‘a complete about-turn” in thinking... Both innovations were imposed by military force. In Egypt, we can still see the traces of that force on the monuments; in Israel, we hear its echo in the biblical account of Josiah’s religious reforms. It was in the exercise of such force that the antipolytheistic impetus manifested itself.’