Detail of the astronomical ceiling of Seti I tomb showing the personified representations of stars and constellations. Wikimedia
Reading the Plagues in their Ancient Egyptian Context
Why is Moses portrayed as a “god” to Pharaoh? And why does the plagues story highlight frogs, blood, and boils in particular? These details take on new meaning in light of ancient Egyptian religion and culture.
Published: January 10, 2015
|
Last Updated: September 7, 2026
For more on this, see Shalom Holtz, “The Flood Story in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” TheTorah (2014).
The precise connotation of the phrase עֲרַל שְׂפָתַיִם, lit. ‘uncircumcised of lips’ (Exod 6:30), remains unclear.
Note that Aaron already is called ‘the Levite’ in Exod 4:14.
The sole surviving manuscript is the Westcar Papyrus, housed in the Ägyptisches Museum (Berlin); for a photo go to: http://www.egyptian-museum-berlin.com/c54.php#q_papyrus_westcar_01.jpg. The manuscript is dated to c. 1800 b.c.e., but the action takes place almost a millennium earlier, during the Old Kingdom period, since the Pharaohs mentioned by name in the composition ruled during the 3rd and 4th Dynasties.
For hieroglyphic transcription, transliteration, and English translation of the story, go to http://mjn.host.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/egyptian/texts/corpus/pdf/Westcar.pdf, with this portion of “The Wax Crocodile” tale on pp. 5-11 of the pdf file.
A word about terminology: While we typically translate חַרְטֻמִּים ḥarṭumim as ‘magicians’, these individuals served a variety of contexts within ancient Egyptian religion, including that of ‘lector-priest’, that is, one who recites spells and hymns during Egyptian temple rituals. For our present purposes, I ask the reader to understand ‘magician’, ‘magician-priest’, ‘lector-priest’, and even simply ‘priest’ as all one and the same position.
For an English translation of the entire composition, go to: http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/ipuwer.htm.
The sole surviving manuscript of “The Admonitions of Ipuwer” is housed in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Leiden); for a photo go to: http://img.rmo.nl/imageproxy/proxy.aspx?server=62.221.199.226&port=5297&filename=\148486.jpg). The manuscript is dated to c. 1200 b.c.e., but the composition itself is much older. Several different periods in ancient Egyptian history have been proposed, though c. 1800 b.c.e., during what Egyptologists call the Second Intermediate Period, is both the most likely and the most widely accepted. To be sure, the statement of the river turning to blood cannot be understood as an eyewitness account to the first plague, as some have intimated (see, for example, http://ohr.edu/838).
This point is noted by Herodotus, Histories, 2.37.
