Community Magazine April 2014

72 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE DID AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SCRIBE WITNESS THE PLAGUES? t hat’s the controversy surrounding the writings of an Egyptian named Ipuwer. Etched on what is believed to be a 3,300-year-old papyrus are his accounts of an Egypt in turmoil, a depiction which some scholars say refers to the ten plagues and Israelite Exodus. Also called The Admonitions of an Egyptian, or The Dialogue of Ipuwer, the papyrus was discovered in the early 1800s in Memphis, near the pyramids in Saqqara. In 1828, it was sold to the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands by the Swedish consul to Egypt. Not much is known about Ipuwer, other than his etchings on papyrus, which detail a violent upheaval in his homeland. Among the accounts described are natural disasters, drought, the fleeing of slaves, death throughout the land, and starvation. He also writes of the rich becoming poor and the poor becoming rich. One academic sees the text of Ipuwer as a parallel account of the Biblical events which we celebrate each year on Pesach. In 1909, A.H. Gardiner published the first full translation and interpretation of the papyrus, which appeared in his book, Admonitions of an Egyptian From a Heiratic Papyrus in Leiden . More recently, Roland Enmarch, author of a new translation of the papyrus, acknowledged that there are some parallels between the papyrus and the Biblical account of the plagues, “particularly the striking statement that ‘the river is blood and one drinks from it’” and the references to servants freed from the shackles of servitude. “On a literal reading, these are similar to aspects of the Exodus account,” he writes. Not everything in Ipuwer’s account is in sync with the Biblical text, however. Ipuwer describes a Semitic people invading the land, in contrast to the Biblical account of a mass Exodus. This discrepancy, among others, has led some scholars to believe that the papyrus wasn’t necessarily an eye-witness account, but rather a poem, or an account of an army’s invasion of Egypt. However, there also exists a possibility of revisionist history from the perspective of a person on the losing side of a humiliating battle between the Egyptians and an all-powerful Gd. Veteran filmmaker and archaeology sleuth Simcha Jacobovici believes that the papyrus indeed describes the events of the Exodus, while also proving that they occurred. As a possible eye-witness account, Ipuwer’s narrative outlines how, in his words, Semites caused chaos in Egypt. The frequent mention of natural disasters – “pestilence is throughout the land, blood is everywhere, death is everywhere” – mirrors the account of the Torah, as does his aforementioned reference to the river turning into blood. Ipuwer further describes how “poor men have become wealthy,” likely describing how the Hebrew slaves en route to freedom took possession of Egyptians’ valuables, such as jewelry and gold, as we read in the Book of Shemot (12:35-36). Ipuwer writes of this bounty in stark detail: “gold and lapis lazuli, silver and turquoise….are strung on the necks of maidservants.” Indeed, later in Shemot, we read how the ancient Israelites had enough gold to DAVE GORDON OUR SAGES INSTRUCTED THAT AS WE GATHER AROUND THE SEDER TABLE WITH THE HAGGADAH AND RETELL THE STORY OF THE EXODUS, WE ARE OBLIGATED TO IMAGINE WHAT IT WAS LIKE HAD WE BEEN SLAVES OURSELVES, FLEEING EGYPT. BUT WHAT IF THERE WAS ANOTHER TEXT – ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE – PERHAPS AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN’S POINT OF VIEW, WHO MAY HAVE EVEN BEEN A WITNESS TO THE EVENTS THAT TRANSPIRED? The frequent mention of natural disasters – “pestilence is throughout the land, blood is everywhere, death is everywhere” – mirrors the account of the Torah.

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