March 2004

Hello friends,

Passover is coming, and I've got some stories for you. A week ago I went with a group of students to the Royal Ontario Museum, to see an exhibition of ancient Egyptian art from the British Museum. The guide was a university professor of Egyptology (a person who can read hieroglyphs).
It was really interesting. First, the art itself was very high quality and was made to last. I don't think modern paintings will last so many years. Some modern digital forms of art will not last even ten years (some are just not worth keeping). Secondly, some exhibits there, like a statue of a man with a head of a turtle, could be placed in a modern art gallery and nobody will notice that it is 3,000 years old. That means that after all, art didn't progress that much (maybe it is limited by the human brain).

There were many statues of kings at the exhibition. The history of ancient Egypt spans about 30 dynasties. One king should be familiar to you, Raamses II, the guy who supposedly dealt with Moses. Tradition says he had 100 children. Apparently "makat bechorot" was not very effective against him personally. He reigned for 67 years, and was around the age of 90 when he died. Unlike Moses, Raamses II is still with us today. Considering his age, he is still in pretty good condition. His mummy is kept at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In a hundred years, he will be in better condition than all of us.

It is very interesting that several names of Egyptian gods survived as words or names in Hebrew. My interpretations are only speculative. Still, the proximity of the sound and meaning suggests that they come from a common origin. Some examples of Egyptian gods with meaning in Hebrew are: Amun (the hidden god), Amut (the devourer), Ammit (eater of the dead), Anat (mother of gods), Bat (cow goddess), Baal (god of thunder and storm), Min (god of fertility), Ptah (was in charge of the opening of the mouth ceremony), Renenutet (goddess of harvest), Reshep (a war god). An interesting case is their sun god, Ra (or Re). He was believed to create the world, and therefore was very important. In their language, Raamses is literally the son of Ra. My wild guess is that initially in Hebrew it had the meaning of "friend", and after the exodus the meaning was changed to "bad".

The statue I liked the most at the exhibition was of a beautiful goddess with a golden feather attached to her black hair. Her job was to sentence the souls of the dead. She was a symbol of truth, order and cosmic harmony. Her name is Maat.


Ady.