Which hebrew governed egypt

They were also put to work in the fields. The frantic building activity in the region of the Eastern Delta called for the organization of a brickmaking industry of unprecedented dimensions. The ordinary private dwellings and the administrative buildings were mostly constructed of brick. Studies done on the pyramids of Sesostris III at Dahshur calculate that the structures took about Egyptian papyri and paintings yield a clear picture of the work and techniques involved.

The industry would be located by a plentiful supply of water, usually a pool or canal. Some laborers would do nothing but cart the water back and forth all day. Others would be employed in the collection of stubble from the fields. The artisan who actually molded the bricks would receive from the workers baskets of water-soaked clay mixed with stubble. He would then shape the material either by hand or in a rectangular wooden mold. The brick would be left to dry for about three days and then would be turned over; the entire process took about a week.

A practiced artisan in present-day Egypt, where the same brickmaking technique as employed from time immemorial can still be observed, is capable of turning out about three thousand bricks in the course of a seven- to eight-hour working day. Such a quota imposed on raw slaves would constitute an intolerable burden. A leather scroll from the fifth year of Ramses II tells of forty men who were each assigned a quota of two thousand bricks, making a total supply of eighty thousand.

The text shows that the target was rarely reached by any of them. One inscription accompanying wall paintings from the days of Thutmosis III ca. His clothes are stiff with clay; his leather belt is going to ruin. Accordingly, the king resorted to more barbarous measures. To achieve immediate and certain regulation of the population, he decreed the murder of all newborn Israelite males. The obligation to commit this infanticide was thrust upon the midwives.

See Ex. Midwifery in Egypt was one of the few professions open to women. Its practitioners seem to have been held in esteem. It must have been a regular institution in Israel, to judge by the matter-of-fact way in which the presence of the midwife is mentioned.

See Gen. It would appear that in addition to attending the mother at the time of birth, the midwife cut the umbilical cord, washed the baby in water, rubbed its skin with salt, and swaddled it. In the case of twins, she had to testify as to which was the firstborn. In issuing his decree to the midwives, the king obviously relied upon the ease with which the baby could be killed at the moment of delivery by means not easily detectable in those days.

It would have been strange for the king to have expected the Israelites to kill the males of their own people. Another oddity is that only two midwives are mentioned for such a large population. Either they were the overseers of the practitioners and were directly responsible to the authorities for the women under them, or the two names, Shiprah and Puah, are those of guilds or teams of midwives called after the original founders of the order.

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See More. United States Change. Noah foresaw that Canaan would follow in the immoral steps and behavior of his father Ham and, as a consequence, Noah declared Canaan to be cursed. The curse was ultimately fulfilled in the total destruction of the Canaanites Phoenicians as a nation by the Roman Empire. Today Egypt is referred to as an Arab nation, but this is only because the Arabs conquered Egypt centuries ago and imposed upon the original people their Arab language, culture and Muslim religion.

Many in Egypt today are really the descendants of Arab, Persian, Greek, and other non-African peoples that entered and conquered Egypt over the centuries. Cleopatra who ruled Egypt, for example, was of Greek descent. Genetically, it was possible for Noah and his family to carry the genes for producing all the races just as it is genetically possible today for a white couple with black hair to carry the genes to produce children with different color hair.