Friday, December 1, 2023

OTHERS Who Were Included in the Freeing of Israelite Slaves By Moses

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             


Moses learned that he, a Prince of Egypt, was really a son of the Israelite slaves of his country.  When he finally confronted a new pharaoh, one that he didn't know, didn't grow up with, he said he wanted to free all the Israelite slaves.  He finally got them, and the group included Others besides the Israelites.  Who were the others that were also slaves?  

On blocks of stone found on the Sinai peninsula, we can see carvings that resemble the Hebrew script - they are quite different to the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. The writing provides evidence of an independent culture, and several historians believe that the images carved in the stone prove that these people were the slaves of the Egyptians. And this is also the story that the Bible tells.  

Because the slaves were an invaluable work force, it was in the state's best interests to keep them alive. But they were made very much aware who wielded the power. 

                         Moses, captured here by the 17th-century Spanish artist Jusepe de Ribera, is an icon of leadership, piety, and liberation throughout western culture.  He died at the age of 120.  

During the Islamic history of Egypt, slavery were mainly focused on three categories: male slaves used for soldiers and bureaucrats, female slaves used for sexual slavery as concubines, and female slaves and eunuchs used for domestic service in harems and private households.  

At the end of the period, there were a growing agricultural slavery. The people enslaved in Egypt during Islamic times mostly came from Europe and Caucasus (which where referred to as "white"), or from the Sudan and Africa South of the Sahara through the Trans-Saharan slave trade (which where referred to as "black"). Could this had been true of the biblical days as well?                                     


Our Others, most likely, were also Semites like the Israelites.  Some of these Semites came to Egypt as traders and immigrants. Others were prisoners of war, and yet others were sold into slavery by their own people. A papyrus mentions a wealthy Egyptian lord whose 77 slaves included 48 of Semitic origin.In fact, by the late Middle Kingdom era, around 3700 years ago, Canaanites had actually achieved absolute power, in the form of a line of Canaanite pharaohs ruling the Lower Kingdom, coexisting with the Egyptian-ruled Upper Kingdom. (These Canaanite pharaohs included the mysterious "Yaqub," whose existence is attested by 27 scarabs found in Egypt, Canaan and Nubia and a famous one found at Shikmona, by Haifa.) The biblical tradition of the patriarch Jacob settling in Egypt could well derive from this time. Abraham, Jacob's grandfather, was born about 1948 BCE which was 3,971 years ago.  The Middle Kingdom era of 3700 years ago would be just right.  

Conscription of prisoners of war into the military continued into the Middle Kingdom, in which Nubian and Levantine troops were conscripted in order to accompany Egyptian troops on quarrying expeditions as armed support. Women and children were also captured and enslaved en masse: 

As we know from the Torah, our Israelite slaves were used to build the storage cities of  Pithom and Ramses.  The pyramids had already been built.  The storage cities Pithom and Rameses, built for the pharaoh by the Hebrews, were located in the northeastern part of the Egyptian delta, not far from Goshen, the district in which the Hebrews lived. Goshen is the Nile Delta.                                       


The Hebrew Bible was written in Hebrew.The Hebrew Letter Bet (ב).  The letter Bet is the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet and the first letter of the Hebrew Bible. This letter is actually the source of the Greek letter Beta .  An ancient B in Hebrew:

Beytb, bh
 Its Greek translation, with all its errors in translation,  with Beta 

 Symbol in Greek Alphabet

Β β


 the Septuagint  (c. 300 BCE–c. 300 CE) and provided a language for the New Testament and for the Christian liturgy and theology of the first three centuries CE. The Bible in Latin, the Vulgate, shaped the thought and life of Western people for a thousand years. Bible translation led to the study and literary development of many languages.


In Egypt at a later date, the slave concubines in the harems of rich Egyptian men were often Circiassian women, while the concubines of middle class Egyptians were often Abyssinians; while the male and female domestic slaves of almost all classes of Egyptian society often consisted of Black Africans. After all, Egypt is on the continent of Africa.  

In time, the Canaanite leaders were themselves ousted by the Hyksos, a mysterious group who settled in Egypt some time before 1650 BCE, and who came to rule the Lower Kingdom from the city of Avaris. Controversy remains, but it is increasingly agreed that the Hyksos originated from northern Levant - Lebanon or Syria.

The Roman-era Jewish historian, Josephus for one, identifies the Hyksos with the Israelites.  He cites the 3rd-century Egyptian scribe and priest, Manetho, who wrote that after their expulsion. Some scholars suspect that Exodus is based on distant Semitic memories of the expulsion of the Hyksos.  Others are dubious about Manethos' history, which was penned centuries after the actual event.  But we know that the Torah was written by Moses himself and kept by his descendants.  Our culture glorifies this with our practice of Passover, practiced ever since the event had happened.  So we have the written proof of our history and the physical tradition of our remembrance with Passover.  

                A Passover Seder in early 1900s

 According to historical evidence and modern-day practice, the festival was originally celebrated on the 14th of Nissan which in our year of 2023 fell on April 5th which was Erev Pesach (the night before Passover).  It's the night that we have our seder (teaching  the story from our textbook (Haggadah) which includes a huge meal with certain foods standing in for certain memories like eating matzoh which stands for the unleavened bread made in a hurry with no time to rise as Moses would be saying to start the walk, and the mixture of haroset (the stuff used to glue bricks together.) The night at the table starts with ?We were slaves....In this way, we re-hash the Exodus every year of our lives and so on to our children.  No, we haven't forgotten.                                         

   

Whether we were Hyksos or not or even if our ancestors knew who they were besides being Israelites, it doesn't matter.  After 400 years of being brainwashed by the Egyptians and building and building, they needed the next 40 years to be conditioned into another people, Moses's people, and glorifying the beliefs they already had from Abraham by adding to them from Moses.  The OTHERS were with us and included in the expectations.  


Now, in the day of DNA, a day in the future in which our ancestors could not even imagine, we can tell our individual history of where our ancestor started from by a DNA test of the Y haplogroup for men.  This tells us that Moses' brother Aaron, who we know had sons, and was the high priest of our people, have the Y haplogroup called J1.  It is the haplogroup of Abraham.  Many Arabs also have this haplogroup as they also came from Abraham.  (This is why we have today the Abraham Accords) trying to unify our relatives together and be at peace with each other.)  

    High Priest Aaron, brother of Moses, a J1, with Moses and Pharaoh 

This haplogroup of J1 is found to have arisen 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, and Abraham was born only about 4,000 years ago. He is mentioned in Genesis, living in about the 2nd millennium BCE. His father was Terah and was unhappy with his life in Ur in about 2,000 BCE. and left Ur, which was part of the Sumerian civilization. Besides Jews, Arabs, Armenians and Kurds are found in this haplogroup. Interestingly, Kurds are still living in Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein gassed many of them. Kurds have the closest dna to most Jewish men. The highest frequencies are in Iran and Iraq. It was carried by traders into Europe, Central Asia, India, and Pakistan. Most likely traders could have been Jews, who became involved in such endeavors.

There is a J1c3 which seems to be the oldest found.  It used to be called J1e,   In the website-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Victar/Haplogroup_J1c3_(Y

-DNA), they said that 30% of Yemenite Jews have the 

haplogroup of J1c3 or P58, as it is also called. As I see it, J1c3 

was the original or oldest, going back 9,000 to 10,000 

years J1c3d is a subgroup of it.  The J1 SNP of L859 tells if you 

are an Arab Hashimite.

We find we also have a few other representations of the Jewish men with the Y haplogroup of E.  Many Jews have this, and Arabs too. 

E, (E1b1b1) whose name was then changed to E-M35.  Another line on the same level was E-M35.1 which is now being called E-L117, and  E-M84 of Berber origins.   E1b1b1-m35 is now Z830 cluster B or E-Z830-B.  This is the haplogroup of Albert Einstein whose ancestor was Naphtali Hirsh Einstein b: 1733-d: 1799. 
E1b1b1c1a is now called M84.  About 4% of Jews are of M84.  E3b, mentioned by Harry Ostrer in Legacy,  
Update 6/27/17
 Originally from Africa 50,000 years ago it was thought, now more likely the Middle East, shares common ancestry with haplogroup D.  It has groups in Africa and the Middle East.  Some clades are also found in Europe among those living near the Mediterranean, believe to represent the ancient genetic influence from the Middle East to Europe.20% of Ashkenazi Jews are E1b1b.

Haplogroup E1b1b1 is a very Jewish line.  (from Albert Benhamou)  added 5/2/2012 Albert  Einstein  belonged to haplogroup E1b1b1b2* E-Z830, with a sample taken from a paternal descendants of Naphtali Hirsch Einstein  Also,  According to a genetic study in December 2012, Ramesses III, second Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty and considered to be the last great New Kingdom king to wield any substantial authority over Egypt, belonged to Y-DNA haplogroup E1b1a, mainly found in sub-saharan Africa.  He of course was not Jewish but Jews lived in Egypt for 400 years as slaves.  Added 2/15/13.  

E-M35.1 now called  (E-L117) is the 2nd most frequent  haplogroup found in Jewish families.  This is the same as  E1b1b1 that Einstein had. It's just been given a newer title.  18% to 20% of Ashkenazi Jews carry this and 8.6 % to 30% of Sephardi Jews carry it. It is the 2nd highest haplogroup found in Jewish men after J1.   "The E1b1b1 men claiming to be Levites may have existed in Israel before the Diaspora of 70 CE.  

This does not mean that E men were part of the "OTHERS".  There are other ways that it could have taken place.  Sons are not always produced in a marriage, so daughters with their husbands could have taken the position. The difference would have been that OTHERS did not have the additional upbringing  of their ancestors on Abraham's teaching of there being only one G-d.  However, after living with Israelites possibly for the past 400 years, they would have learned, I bet.  

There are a few other Y haplogroups found within the Jewish family.  R, G, Q, perhaps I.  

Our Others may have been descendants of African slaves who had built the pyramids.  Most likely Jacob and his family from the North looked a little different as they were not born in Africa but were descendants of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees on the Euphrates River of the Middle East.  The Hyksos could have been Middle Easterners as well, from Ur, from Babylonia.  Any unlucky person could have been captured and used as a slave in Egypt in Biblical days.  All the people who wanted to leave this position followed Moses and left.  


Resource:

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Egypt#:~:text=At%20the%20end%20of%20the,to%20as%20%22black%22).

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-03-25/ty-article/were-hebrews-ever-slaves-in-ancient-egypt-yes/0000017f-f6ea-d47e-a37f-fffeebef0000

https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-c998-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99#:~:text=Egypt%3A%20Israelites%20build%20cities%20of,slays%20Egyptian%20%2D%20NYPL%20Digital%20Collections

https://www.britannica.com/video/179508/Israelites-Overview-Moses-slavery  (left out errors)

https://ancient-hebrew.org/learn/learn-the-ancient-pictographic-hebrew-script.htm


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