Nadene Goldfoot
Marilyn Robinson
Since the initial translation and examination by French Egyptologist Paul Barguet in 1953, the Famine Stela has been of great interest to historians and Egyptologists. Paul was born September 8, 1915 and died February 1, 2012 in France.
This amounts to another proof of the history found in the Torah. It's a stele telling of a 7 year drought that we have read about included in the story about Joseph, the 11th son of Jacob and Rachel. Joseph was treated as Jacob's favorite son which irked his other 11 brothers. Their jealousy drove them to sell Joseph to a passing Ishmaelite caravan heading for Egypt. There, Joseph was bought as a slave to Potiphar, chief of Pharaoh's household, but wound up in prison on a false accusation by Potiphar's wife. He hadn't fallen for her enticing moves on him and he remained chaste.
In prison he interpreted the dreams of other prisoners and this skill reached the ears of the king who was also having some bad dreams. He interpreted the king's dreams. He then came before Pharaoh and told him that his dream meant there would be seven years of abundance in the land of Egypt followed by seven years of famine. Joseph recommended that “a discerning and wise man” be put in charge and that food should be collected in the good years and stored for use during the famine.
It happened as he predicted. The Pharaoh was so impressed that Joseph was made viceroy. This is how his father and family came to join him in Egypt and were given Goshen the Nile Delta, to live upon. Joseph died at age 110 anad his body was later brought by the Israelites to Canaan for reburial. the story of Joseph has been dated during the Hyksos domination of Egypt (18th to 16th century BCE). Now for the Stele found. This find is quite exciting. History Three Thousand
The Famine Stela
• It is an inscription written in Egyptian hieroglyphs on a 2.5 m high and 3 m wide block of granite located on Sehel Island near Aswan, Egypt.
On July 21, 1970, engineers completed the Aswan Dam in southern Egypt. The Aswan Dam was an enormous project, lasting more than 10 years and costing more than a billion dollars. The Aswan Dam created a huge reservoir, called Lake Nasser. Lake Nasser and expansion of the Nile behind the dam displaced more than 50,000 people in Egypt and Sudan. The dam also drowned priceless archaeological sites.
• The top part of the stele depicts three Egyptian deities and in front of them Djoser carries offerings in his outstretched hands. The text describes how the king is upset and worried as the land has been in the grip of a drought and famine for seven years and how the Egyptians are suffering as a result of the drought and that they are desperate and breaking the laws of the land.
• At the time of the first translation of the stela, it was thought that the story of a seven-year famine was connected to the biblical story in Genesis 41.
• More recent investigations have shown that a seven-year famine was a common thing to nearly all cultures of the Near East: a Mesopotamian legend also speaks of a seven-year-famine and in the well-known Gilgamesh-Epos the god Anu gives a prophecy about famine for seven years.
The Gilgamesh Epic is an ancient Babylonian creation myth. Several stories are similar to the Biblical narrative, especially the story of the Flood, which indicates that the ancestors of the Jews may have brought a knowledge of the epic with them from Babylon to Canaan. Abraham could have done that.
• Another Egyptian tale talks about a long-lasting drought that appears in the so-called "Book of the Temple.
My question: Did they all hear about Egypt's famine, too?
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Torah, in Tanakh; Stone Edition: Genesis 41 (17-41)
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