In the time period when the Exodus supposedly took place (in Judaism, we generally place that at 1313 BCE), the Hebrews (the early Jews) worshiped God and Goddess. But by the time the Torah was written (about 1000 years later), we are left with only hints of our history.

For the purposes of my novel, my goal is to treat the Torah as factual. Or at least as much as possible. I use midrash and Talmud and other sources to flesh things out, and I’ve made changes where they make sense, but mostly, I try to tell the story as is (I mean, to a point. It’s fantasy after all, complete with magic and time travel). I actually believe that Torah is our stories, our mythology, with only some of it based in history.

The novel is also, in many ways, historical fiction. I’ve tried my best to be accurate with how Ancient Egypt would have been in 1313 BCE and thereabouts. Even though there’s no historical evidence of an enormous group of Hebrew slaves, or of an exodus.

My struggle comes from the mismatch in the timeline. With few exceptions, Torah only refers to God as singular and male. There are no singular female Gods mentioned, though there is a hint of plurality and as God as two (or no) genders.

And God created humankind in the divine image,
creating it in the image of God—
creating them male and female.

Genesis 1:27

Yet we have a long history of Goddess worship. Not just in the regions where Jews lived, but within Judaism itself. This history is not absent from Torah and other parts of the Bible, but it’s obscured. The primary Goddess, the consort of the primary male God, Yah or El (names still in use by Jews), was Asherah. The name Asherah appears in the Hebrew Bible 40 times, starting with Exodus, where it appears once, though it is usually plural.

Mark well what I command you this day. I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Beware of making a covenant with the inhabitants of the land against which you are advancing, lest they be a snare in your midst.

No, you must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, and cut down their sacred posts;

for you must not worship any other god, because יהוה, whose name is Impassioned, is an impassioned God.

You must not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for they will lust after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and invite you, and you will eat of their sacrifices.

Exodus 34:11-15. “Sacred posts” (also translated elsewhere as “wooden images”) is אֲשֵׁרָ֖יו or Asherim, the masculine plural of Asherah. This comes as part of several new rules God gives to Moses when he is on top of Mount Sinai completing the second set of Tablets.

What is startling to me with this passage, and the dozens of later ones that are similar, is the twist the mythology gives to our history. If you take Torah as completely factual, then Jews came from the land of Israel and from our patriarch Israel (formally Jacob) who, with his entire family (then 70 people) immigrated to Egypt where (in 400 years) they became perhaps a couple million people who immigrated back to the land of Israel and had to murder and destroy all the other peoples living there.

The core myth is that we, as Jews, arrived en masse to Israel around 1273 BCE and “took” the land from the non-Jewish Asherah worshippers who were living there. The reality is that Canaanites were our people and Canaanite was our language. I’m not sure about the other people’s mentioned but they were, at the very least, our cousins. There’s no evidence of a mass arrival (of an Exodus from Egypt or anywhere, aside from the later return from Babylon, see below). We were already there. The Asherah worshippers were us. The wiping out of the “not us” peoples was in reality the systematic destruction of Goddess worship from within.

These are the laws and rules that you must carefully observe in the land that יהוה, God of your ancestors, is giving you to possess, as long as you live on earth.

You must destroy all the sites at which the nations you are to dispossess worshiped their gods, whether on lofty mountains and on hills or under any luxuriant tree.

Tear down their altars, smash their pillars, put their sacred posts to the fire, and cut down the images of their gods, obliterating their name from that site.

Do not worship your God יהוה in like manner,

but look only to the site that your God יהוה will choose amidst all your tribes as God’s habitation, to establish the divine name there. There you are to go,

and there you are to bring your burnt offerings and other sacrifices, your tithes and contributions, your votive and freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herds and flocks.

Deuteronomy 12:1-6. Here, Moses is relaying God’s instructions to the Hebrews just before they cross the Jordan River and enter the land of Israel.

The sacred posts, wooden pillars, and the trees. All symbols of Asherah. The instructions are to destroy our own history.

As part of understanding all of this, I had a conversation with Shoshana Fershtman, who taught a course I attended on Hebrew Goddesses and the Sacred Feminine in Biblical Text. Her class and various communications informed my post greatly. I’ve also written up my notes from our conversation below.

Israelite villages came into being about 1000 BCE, in the time of king Soloman. Some say we were Canaanites that split off and became Israelite. What we do know comes from archeological evidence around 1000-1100 BCE.

Early Israelites had a Goddess-centered culture, with both Gods and Goddesses. Timbrels and other instruments are very much a part of Goddess iconography. New moon celebrations tie in to the feminine. Miriam’s Well is also feminine. There was Goddess worship both in the home and in the temple.

While Kabbalists (who came much later, around the 12th-13th centuries CE) said God was male and female, ancients said the God entity was a couple.  Yah was the primary God, even when there were several other Gods and Goddesses.  And Yah was male, with a female partner Asherah.

In 586 BCE, the Jews were exiled to Babylon. That is when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. When people returned from exile about 30 years later, there was a power shift and priestly elites wanted to centralize. They also wanted power under male authorities.  As the Torah was written and codified, all authority for women and Goddess worship was eradicated. Asherah was outlawed and Shekhinah (the divine feminine) emerged and later became the Kabbalist view.

References:

• Asherah pole. Wikipedia.
• Asherah. Wikipedia.
• 842. Asherah. Bible Hub, Strong’s Concordance.
• ‘ăšērâ. Blue Letter Bible, Strong’s Concordance.
• Personal correspondence with Shoshana Fershtman, JD, PhD, a Jungian analyst and psychologist. She is a member analyst and teaches at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, and serves on the spiritual leadership team of Congregation Ner Shalom. Author of The Mystical Exodus in Jungian Perspective: Transforming Trauma in the Wellsprings of Renewal. Abingdon, Oxon, and New York, NY: Routledge, 2021.

The kids living in Egypt (all Hebrew slaves in my novel) start saying “dude” a lot but what can the America kids learn from their counterparts? Let’s start with modern Egyptian Arabic.

One of my favorite set of insults is the references to shoes. Because they’re low and dirty. You can be the son or daughter of a shoe. Or have a mind like a shoe. You can also be the son or daughter of a bitch (female dog), a donkey, a whore, or a lioness. This source is a single page and very worth reading.

Arabic isn’t Egyptian though, and Ancient Egypt had not only its own language but multiple cultures and ways of speaking (in a time period that spanned thousands of years). We have Hieroglyphics and other writing systems to go on, mostly found in tombs (because they’re better preserved), though there are other documents.

If you’ve watched American horror movies, you might think tombs were chock-full of colorful and detailed curses towards would-be grave robbers. Alas, they are not. One reads: “As for he who covers it [the tomb] in its place, great lords of the west will reproach him very very very very very very very very much.” (The eighth “very” is the scariest.)

Hieroglyphics in general have have a multitude of useful phrases, as translated here by Angela McDonald. They run from the familiar (“don’t be daft” and “just talking to you is exhausting”) to the unusual (“you’ve made a home for yourself in the brewery” and “you’re acting like a mosquito after wolves”).

I’ve pulled out the insults from McDonald’s long and excellent book, along with a few assorted extras. Now you can swear like an (ancient) Egyptian!

Insults:

• Fool! Idiot! Spouter of water!
• Don’t be smart, mate!
• Don’t be daft!
• You foul-mouthed pipsqueak!
• Just talking to you is exhausting!
• What’s with this attitude?
• Your heart is disturbed and your senses scattered!
• Your silence is better than your blathering!
• Straighten your tongue!
• You’re acting like a mosquito after wolves
• You’re worse than the Nile goose of the river-bank that abounds in mischief!
• You’ve made a home for yourself in the brewery!
• You’re like a boat without a captain!
• Your mind’s like an empty room!

Laments:

• My heart’s not in my body.
• My eye is faint through looking.
• My words are upside down.
• That’s heavy.
• Have mercy!

Terms of endearment:

• One who fills the heart.
• One who enters the heart.

Greeting/goodbyes/etc:

• May joy and delight cling to you.
• May you multiply happy years!
• May you be established like the hours!
• May you see well and hear happily!
• May a torch be lit for you in darkness until the sun shines on your breast!

McDonald, Angela. Write Your Own Egyptian Hieroglyphs. United States, University of California Press, 2007.

References:

• Egyptian Arabic insults and crude language. Arabic learning resources.
• Ancient Egyptian tomb warnings, curses and ghosts. June 23, 2024. Dr. Dan Potter, Assistant Curator, Ancient Mediterranean. National Museums Scotland.
• McDonald, Angela. Write Your Own Egyptian Hieroglyphs. United States, University of California Press, 2007. You can find the full text at Archive.com (you need to sign up for a free account then “borrow” the book).
• Swearing in Ancient Egyptian. Mini Grey. October 30, 2014.

It’s not so simple. The reality is that many cultures have more than two genders. My focus here is on how gender has worked within Judaism over the millennia.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a huge male-female divide in traditional Judaism, with all the rigidity of roles you might expect from that. It’s only been 102 years since the first bat mitzvah and 89 years since the first female Rabbi. But we also have a tradition of six or eight genders (depending on if you separate whether changes in sexual characteristics come about naturally or with human intervention) which the Talmud and other sources discuss at length.

Six Genders

1. Zachar/זָכָר: This term is derived from the word for a pointy sword and refers to a phallus. It is usually translated as “male” in English.
2. Nekeivah/נְקֵבָה: This term is derived from the word for a crevice and probably refers to a vaginal opening. It is usually translated as “female” in English.
3. Androgynos/אַנְדְּרוֹגִינוֹס: A person who has both “male” and “female” sexual characteristics. 149 references in Mishna and Talmud (1st-8th Centuries CE); 350 in classical midrash and Jewish law codes (2nd -16th Centuries CE).
4. Tumtum/ טֻומְטוּם A person whose sexual characteristics are indeterminate or obscured. 181 references in Mishna and Talmud; 335 in classical midrash and Jewish law codes.
5. Ay’lonit/איילונית: A person who is identified as “female” at birth but develops “male” characteristics at puberty and is infertile. 80 references in Mishna and Talmud; 40 in classical midrash and Jewish law codes.
6. Saris/סריס: A person who is identified as “male” at birth but develops “female” characteristics as puberty and/or is lacking a penis. A saris can be “naturally” a saris (saris hamah), or become one through human intervention (saris adam). 156 references in mishna and Talmud; 379 in classical midrash and Jewish law codes. 

More Than Just Male and Female: The Six Genders in Ancient Jewish Thought, Sarah Freidson. Sojourn. (Based on Rabbi Elliot Kukla’s classification.)

Eight Genders

1. Zachar, male.
2. Nekevah, female.
3. Androgynos, having both male and female characteristics.
4. Tumtum, lacking sexual characteristics.
5. Aylonit hamah, identified female at birth but later naturally developing male characteristics.
6. Aylonit adam, identified female at birth but later developing male characteristics through human intervention.
7. Saris hamah, identified male at birth but later naturally developing female characteristics.
8. Saris adam, identified male at birth and later developing female characteristics through human intervention.

The Eight Genders in the Talmud: Judaism has recognized nonbinary persons for millennia. Rachel Scheinerman. My Jewish Learning.

Rachel Scheinerman’s article, among others, lays out the discussion clearly but is very focused on genitals. This isn’t on her or any of the authors; it’s exactly how the Talmudic Rabbis considered gender. In these categories, the first two are cis men and women, and everything else is a form of intersex.

The old term for intersex is “hermaphrodite,” which you’ll see in translations of these works, as well as in modern articles written in English. Hermaphrodite in biology means both fully male and female, which is not what it ever meant in humans. “Intersex” is a much better term which doesn’t make assumptions about how this difference manifests. The Talmudic discussion makes a distinction among people who have both male and female genitals at birth and people who have other gender differences. (See also: Androgynos.)

Although Scheinerman uses the term “nonbinary,” it does not have the modern meaning here. Nonbinary is not the same as intersex. It’s certainly possible to be both, but they’re quite different things. Intersex means there is a biological difference where the person does not fit neatly into male and female designations.

Nonbinary is about identification. Someone who is nonbinary doesn’t feel completely (or at all) male or female, even if they have all the physical characteristics associated with one of those genders. Some nonbinary people present more androgynous, but others present more as either male or female (which can be the gender they were designated at birth, or not).

“Gender fluid” (sometimes called “gender queer”) is a term some people use when they go back and forth between either feeling or presenting (or both) among different genders (male, female, and nonbinary). As you can imagine, there’s a fair bit of overlap between nonbinary and gender fluid. A related term is “gender non-conforming.”

None of the Talmudic gender distinctions are about identification, even though in many cultures gender differences can be all about identification. We have “two spirit” people (by a variety of different names) as well as men and women who are living gendered lives different from the ones they were expected to live.

It may seem confusing but, once we let go of the need for people to fit into neat gendered boxes, it all works. Judaism’s gender classifications though seem to mostly be about keeping those neat little boxes. Men and women have different requirements and permissions when it comes to keeping Jewish law (halacha) and it was of the utmost importance to Talmudic-era Rabbis (among others) to make sure nobody neglected to do something they were supposed to do (or did something they weren’t supposed to do). I won’t go through all the details of how the laws apply because it’s covered by several others (see References below).

Discussions within Judaism of gender beyond the binary didn’t start with Talmud. Nor do they end there. Despite Talmudic obsession with genital appearance and function, that’s not the whole story. Rabbi Elliot Kukla writes beautifully on this topic and I highly recommend reading this and his other works.

Binary categories for the human experience grew in popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries, as a way to regulate and control society. The Victorian science of difference discovered “evidence” of binary differences between men and women; between working and owning classes; between white people and people of color. This evidence was used to justify and reinforce fundamental social and economic hierarchies at a time when these power structures were under siege by various emancipation movements….

Judaism speaks in a different voice. Although Jewish Sages often tried to sort the world into binaries, they also acknowledged that not all parts of God’s creation can be contained in orderly boxes…We read in the Babylonian Talmud: “Our sages taught: As to twilight, it is doubtful whether it is part day and part night, or whether all of it is day or all of it is night.…We might have thought that the ambiguity of twilight would have made it dangerous or forbidden within Jewish tradition. But in fact our Sages determined that dawn and dusk, the in-between moments, are the best times for prayer. Jewish tradition acknowledges that some parts of God’s creation defy categories and that these liminal people, places and things are often the sites of the most intense holiness. After all, the word for holiness in Hebrew, “kedusha”, literally means set aside or out of the ordinary….

Reuben Zellman, a transgender activist and rabbinical student writes: “Twilight cannot be defined; it can only be sanctified and appreciated. People can’t always be defined; they can only be seen and respected, and their lives made holy. This Jewish approach allows for genders beyond male and female. It opens space in society. And it protects those who live in the places in between.”

A Created Being of Its Own: Toward a Jewish Liberation Theology for Men, Women and Everyone Else. Rabbi Elliot Kukla.  Transtorah.

There is no “always” in history. To understand a society we have to immerse ourselves in it. And to understand our current selves, we can reference the past but we can’t bind ourselves to it. At first glance, all of the 6 or 8 Jewish genders are about genitalia. Yet we have the Tumtum, a person whose gender is obscured (the discussions talk about a flap of skin covering the genitals) in ways that simply do not happen biologically. And as we dig deeper into our texts, we see a lot more ambiguity in gender discussions than just the biology.

Rabbi Yirmeya ben Elazar said: When the Holy One blessed be He created Adam the first man, He created him androgynous. That is what is written: “He created them male and female” (Genesis 5:2). Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman said: When the Holy One blessed be He created Adam the first man, He created him with two faces, and [subsequently] He sawed him in two and made [for] him two backs, a back here and a back there. They raised an objection to him: But is it not written: “He took one of his ribs [tzalotav] … [and the Lord God built the rib that He took from the man into a woman]”? (Genesis 2:21–22). He said to them: [It means that He took] one of his two sides…

Bereshit Rabbah 8. Talmudic Israel, 400 CE. The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022.

As a writer of historical fiction (which The Boat Children is, even if it is also fantasy), I can’t just impose modern views on the past. But it’s hard when the available sources don’t actually come from the time period or the place I cover. Even if you believe the Torah was written in the 1300’s BCE (and I don’t), obviously the Talmud (and even Midrash) came much later. This means a bit more poetic license than for some of the other topics in the novel.

References:

Gender:

• Gender and Jewish studies. Wikipedia.
• More Than Just Male and Female: The Six Genders in Ancient Jewish Thought, Sarah Freidson. Sojourn. (This is a web archive version as the original is no longer on the Sojourn: Southern Jewish Resource Network for Gender and Sexual Diversity site. It’s a poor copy and you need to refresh constantly.)
• More Than Just Male and Female: The Six Genders in Ancient Jewish Thought, Sarah Freidson. Sefaria. (Despite the similar name, this is a different (but related) article from the Sojourn one.)
• The Eight Genders in the Talmud: Judaism has recognized nonbinary persons for millennia. Rachel Scheinerman. My Jewish Learning.
• Gender Identity In Halakhic Discourse. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert.  The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.
• For Centuries, Jewish Tradition Has Recognized Trans People.  Rabbi Elliot Kukla.  October 26, 2018.  The Forward.
• Androgynos. Wikipedia.
• Tumtum (Judaism). Wikipedia.
• A Created Being of Its Own: Toward a Jewish Liberation Theology for Men, Women and Everyone Else.   Rabbi Elliot Kukla.  Transtorah. 
• Arachin 4b ~ The Tumtum, the Androgyne, and the Fluidity of Gender. June 20, 2019. Jeremy Brown, Talmudology.

Additional Resources:

• Honoring the Real First Woman Rabbi. Rabbi Amy Eilberg, Women Rabbis.
• Judith Kaplan Celebrates First American Bat Mitzvah Ceremony: March 18, 1922. Jewish Women’s Archive.
• Two-Spirit. Wikipedia.
• Thomas/in Hall: Subverting the Gender Binary in Colonial Virginia. Rebecca Schneider, Senior Reference Librarian. April 17, 2023. The UncommonWealth: Voices from the Library of Virginia.

Senet (aka the game of passing through) may not be the very oldest of board games, but it was deeply popular in Egypt from the third millennia B.C.E. through to the Roman period. Although the above exhibit does not say which game(s) the box and pieces represent, other sources indicate that Senet and a game called Game of Twenty Squares (aka Game of Twenty) used different sides of the same box (much like chess and checkers use the same board). This picture shows the Twenty Squares side. This particular box is known as The Game Box of Taia.

With some similarity to modern versions of both backgammon and (to a lesser degree) chess, Senet uses a block with 30 squares and 5 or more pawns for each of the two players.

The Game of Twenty or Game of Twenty Squares is another ancient tables game similar to the Royal Game of Ur. Egyptian gaming boxes often have a board for this game on the opposite side to that for the better-known game of senet. It dates roughly to the period from 1500 BC to 300 BC and is known to have been played in the region that includes Babylon, Mesopotamia and Persia, as well as Egypt. The board comprises two distinct sections; a quadrant of 3 × 4 squares, like that in the Ur game, and a row or ‘arm’ of 8 squares projecting from the central row of the quadrant. It has five rosettes. The rules are not precisely known but it appears likely that players entered all their 5 pieces onto the arm and aimed to bear them off from the sides of the quadrant, perhaps having contested the arm by hitting opposing pieces off.

Royal Game of Ur. Wikipedia.

Now what about the sticks? These were apparently an ancient form of gaming dice or counters. The ones at The Met have a fox head on one side and a fingertip on the other.

Although we don’t know the exact rules for Senet, both the Otago Museum and the Ram Museum have made some educated guesses as they describe how to prepare to play then dive in. You need the following items:

• A board with 30 squares (3 by 10). Can be made of any material. Each square should be around 3 cm, though the exact size doesn’t matter.
• Two sets of five pieces (counters) to fit in the squares. Each set should be separate colors or shapes as each player has a set.
• Six throwing sticks (or maybe five). They should each be flat enough such that they land either face up or face down. Mark them such that you know which side is up or down. When you throw them, you’ll use the number of sticks that end up face up.

To play, place the board horizontally. Use all 10 game pieces in the squares on the top row, alternating. Your goal is to move your pieces across to the right, down one row, across to the left, down one row, then across to the right and off the board. You can move one piece of your choice forward the number of boxes as indicated by your throwing sticks. You can only land on a blank square or a square with your opponent’s piece (which then goes back to the beginning). There are a few more complex rules as well. First person to move all their pieces off the board wins.

References:

• Senet. Wikipedia.
• Is this the original board game of death? Ancient Egyptian senet board may signal shift from mere pastime to a more serious game. Science. 6 Feb 2020. By Colin Barras.
• How to make and play Senet. Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Exeter, United Kingdom. 2020.
• How to play Senet. Otago Museum, Dunedin, New Zealand.
• Royal Game of Ur. Wikipedia.
• Game Box Inscribed for Taia and His Family. New Kingdom, ca. 1550–1295 B.C. On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 118.

• When is it “eighth grade” vs. “eighth-grade”?
• “First born,” “first-born,” or “firstborn”?
• Do I capitalize “ark”? What about “mishkan”?

Many of these things are covered in basic style guides. Others are easily Googlable. But some require specialized sources. Let’s start with some sources for standard English language copyediting. Stuff that isn’t specifically Jewish (or religious). Then let’s move into religious copyediting. Expect this list to grow over time.

General Editing Sources

Books or online subscriptions

• Chicago Manual of Style is one of the mainstays. The online version requires a subscription.
• Associated Press (AP) Stylebook is a must-have for journalists and many others. The online version requires a subscription.

Online sources

• Dictionary dot com.
• Purdue Online Writing Lab has abbreviated versions of many styles.
• How to Write Grade Numbers in APA Style. Chelsea Lee. March 14, 2018.

Religious Writing Sources

• URJ Transliteration Guidelines and Master Word List. Debra Hirsch Corman and Rabbi Hara Person. February 4, 2005. This is a terrific find put together by the Union for Reform Judaism. It has a huge list of English and transliterated words relating to Judaism, showing which ones we capitalize, italicize, etc.
• When to Capitalize Religious Terms. 19th May 2019. Proofed. A helpful discussion of how to decide which religious terms (mostly Christian and Jewish but with others represented) should be capitalized.
• Woods Guide to Capitalizing Theological Terms. List of mostly Christian (but some shared Christian and Jewish) terms to capitalize and another list of ones not to capitalize.

The standard practice of childbirth in ancient Egypt has long been known from papyrus texts. A woman would deliver her baby while squatting on two large bricks, each colorfully decorated with scenes to invoke the magic of gods for the health and happiness of mother and child.

But archaeologists had never laid their hands on a single one of these magical ”birth bricks” until last year. In excavations at Abydos, ruins of an ancient city in southern Egypt, archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania have uncovered such a brick, 14 by 7 inches, among artifacts from a 3,700-year-old house.

Ancient ‘Birth Bricks’ Found in Egypt.  John Noble Wilford.  The New York Times.  August 6, 2002, Section F, Page 4.

Alas, I have not found a picture of the magical birthing brick (yes, just one was found) that is under a Creative Commons or similar license, but you can find the images in the articles I link to. The picture above is for regular bricks but gives an idea of the size, shape, and materials.

The idea is that a birthing woman would have two, one under each foot. She’d somehow balance and squat and give birth that way. Ummm, sure. Some other interpretations are that the bricks would be for laying the newborn on in a religious ritual.

Then there is this. A “modern” (1880’s) woman birthing with her hands and knees supported on top of a cloth covering two piles each consisting of three large bricks. Her toes barely touch the ground. I suppose it’s possible that some births are acrobatic feats, but… But. (My concern is not so much the position (which appears to have merits) but the precariousness of the bricks and being on tippy toes.)

Births in all but the last couple of centuries in the West (and more recently around the world) are often done in a squatting position, usually supported. Some are standing. Others are on hands and knees. We also see semi-reclined and side laying. A post with an amazing assortment of pictures and descriptions comes from The Well Rounded Mama.

A birthing stool or chair is a very common tool. Its support is to the butt or upper legs. Additional support (including from the floor/ground) can be to the knees or hands. More importantly, other women were there to help. Often by sitting (or sometimes standing) behind the birthing woman.

The Hebrew term for “birth stool” in Exod 1:16, obnayim, means literally “two stones.” It may refer to the primitive form of the birth stool, which was simply two bricks (or stones) placed under each of the buttocks of the woman in labor. Such birth stools are depicted in the later forms of the hieroglyphic symbol for “birth” and are referred to in ancient Egyptian folk sayings, such as “He left me like a woman on the bricks.” Ancient Egyptian pictorial art shows that the two bricks were replaced by a chair with an opening in the middle (like a toilet seat) through which, with the help of gravity, the mother could push out her baby into the deft hands of the midwives.

Puah: Bible, in The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.  Mayer I. Gruber, updated by Tamar Kamionkowski.  Last updated June 23, 2021.  

So here we have birthing bricks (the magic is optional). No balancing acts. Just solid and practical support. In older Egyptian depictions, the birthing woman is kneeling with her arms free. While we don’t see the birth stool, it must be there, because the baby is able to emerge under its mother’s body. This is a more detailed version of the hieroglyph.

We also see more squatting positions.

Birth chairs and backless birthing stools help people feel balanced and supported in an upright position as they give birth. With three or four legs, they usually feature a semicircular cutout on the seat. The position of the body in the birthing chair not only makes use of gravity as the baby drops from the womb and emerges through the vagina, but also maximizes the ability of muscles (abdominal, back, stomach, legs, arms, and vaginal sphincter) to efficiently work in concert. Babylonian birthing chairs date back to 2000 BCE. An Egyptian wall relief dating to 1450 BCE in the birth room of the Luxor temple shows Queen Mutemwia giving birth to her son, Amenhotep III. A birthing chair is also depicted on a Greek votive from 200 BCE. Some millennia-old birthing stools from Britain were designed to be carried while disassembled, suggesting that they belonged to midwives rather than individual households.

Birthing Furniture: An Illustrated History. An excerpt from “Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births.” Michelle Millar Fisher & Amber Winick.   September 14, 2021. The MIT Press.

References

• Ancient ‘Birth Bricks’ Found in Egypt.  John Noble Wilford.  The New York Times.  August 6, 2002, Section F, Page 4.
• Childbirth Magic: Deciphering Bed Figurines from Ancient Egypt.  Charlotte Rose.  Penn Museum.  Volume 58, Issue 3.  Originally Published in 2017.
• Bricks of birth: “The names of the three bricks upon which Mary gave birth”. Markéta Preininger. The Coptic Magical Papyri: Vernacular Religion in Late Roman and Early Islamic Egypt.  7th January 2020. 
• The Magic of Birth and Bricks.  The Pennsylvania Gazette. 01 Mar 2003.
• A Decorated Birth Brick from South Abydos: New Evidence on Childbirth and Birth Magic in the Middle Kingdom. Josef Wegner, University of Pennsylvania.  In Archaism and Innovation: Studies in the Culture of Middle Kingdom Egypt, Yale Egyptological Seminar (June 15, 2009), edited by David P. Silverman, William Kelly Simpson, Josef Wegner.
• The physical activity of parturition in ancient Egypt: textual and epigraphical sources.  Susanne Töpfer, Institute of Egyptology, University of Heidelberg. Dynamis vol.34 no.2 Granada, 2014.
• Puah: Bible, in The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.  Mayer I. Gruber, updated by Tamar Kamionkowski.  Last updated June 23, 2021.  
• Birthing chair. Wikipedia.
• Birthing Furniture: An Illustrated History. An excerpt from “Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births.” Michelle Millar Fisher & Amber Winick.   September 14, 2021. The MIT Press.
• Historical and Traditional Birthing Positions.  The Well-Rounded Mama Blog.  Pamela Vireday. March 18, 2015.
• Labor among primitive peoples. Showing the development of the obstetric science of to-day, from the natural and instinctive customs of all races, civilized and savage, past and present (1883). George Julius Engelmann. Second Edition— Revised, Enlarged and Re-Arranged. St. Louis: J. H. Chambers & Co. 1883.

Growing at the edges of the water, 4 to 5 m (13 to 16 ft) high, this plant had multiple uses. “In Ancient Egypt, papyrus was used for various of purposes such as baskets, sandals, blankets, medicine, incense, and boats. The woody root was used to make bowls and utensils, and was burned for fuel.” There was also “hats, fish traps, trays or winnowing mats, and floor mats.” Papyrus paper dates back to the fourth millennium BCE, well before our New Kingdom setting.

Mats

Many rural peoples engage in traditional activities for the benefit of tourists, employment, or their own personal use. We can’t assume that what people do now is what they did thousands of years ago (or even a decade ago).

Mat making using papyrus was not traditional uses by the ethnic communities around Simiyu wetland, though at present is the major economic use. Initially, the technology of mat making around Simiyu wetland was introduced by Waha and Wanyamwezi people who used a sedge Schoenoplectus corymbosus. (locally called malago or ndago) in making mats locally known as ‘vilago’. The local Sukumas also learnt from skilled weavers, who lived at Nsola and Bubinza, to make vilago for use as beds and seats. The technique of using papyrus to make mats around Simiyu wetland was introduced by Wajaluo and Wanyala tribes who immigrated into Nsola and Bugabu villages, and camped at Sangayika beach during 1960s and 1970s….The Luos and Wanyara used mats as beds and construction of shelters.

Traditional Uses of Cyperus Papyrus (L) and Associated Problems at Simiyu Fringing Wetland of Lake Victoria, Mwanza region, Tanzania. Josiah M. Katondo, National Environment Management Council, P.O. Box 63154, Dar Es Salaam. [Lake Victoria is the head of the Nile River which flows north through modern-day Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea.]

Mohamed Badry describes making mats from “reeds and grasses especially el-Summar herbs (Juncus), and linen.” Unfortunately, he does not state which species of Juncus (rushes) and he doesn’t define “el-Summar,” a term I can’t find outside his work. He does, however, include pictures of sheaves of dried thin straight stalks of around 4 feet in length. These are cut in half and soaked in water, then woven on a loom with linen thread as the warp and rushes as the weft. Mats could also be coiled or plaited. And they could use various materials, including palm tree wicker (“el-Fahl” or “el-Talil”).

One possible material could be Juncus rigidus aka sea rush. “In Ancient Egypt, Juncus rigidus was used to make pens for writing on papyrus. The rush has also been used for weaving mats and the fibre can be used in paper manufacture.”

Weaving

Mats can be woven on a loom (some are complex, others very simple) or hand-braided.

While fancy patterns and looms did exist in Ancient Egypt, an easier method appears to be stringing several threads from a header (parallel to the weaver), arranging dried plant material sideways a couple inches deep, then tying them off and adding more.

Depending on the reeds/rushes used, the sizes, and the care taken with weaving, this could produce floor mats, sleeping mats, roofing material, or a countless number of other useful things.

References

• Cyperus papyrus. Wikipedia.
• Reed (plant). Wikipedia.
• Papyrus. Wikipedia.
• Papyrus-Making in Egypt.  Rebecca Capua, Sherman Fairchild Center for Works on Paper and Photograph Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  March 2015.
• Traditional Uses of Cyperus Papyrus (L) and Associated Problems at Simiyu Fringing Wetland of Lake Victoria, Mwanza region, Tanzania. Josiah M. Katondo, National Environment Management Council, P.O. Box 63154, Dar Es Salaam.
• Unrecognised Egyptian Intangible Heritage: Mats. Mohamed Amer, Università Degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Latium, Italy.  November 2016.
• Egyptian Intangible Heritage between Preservation Management and Sustainable Development Pattern: Analysis of the Popular Craft of Manufacturing Mats. Mohamed Badry, Freelance Heritage Researcher, Cairo, Egypt.   March 2017.  In book: A River Runs Through It: Studies in Honour of Prof. Fekri A. Hassan (pp.226 – 242),  Edition: 1, Chapter: 15. Publisher: Golden House Publications.
• Juncus rigidus. Wikipedia.
• Local resource use, nature conservation and tourismin Mkuze wetlands, South Africa: A complex weave of dependence and conflict. Annika Dahlberg.  Geografisk Tidsskrift, Department of Human Geography, Stockholm university.  Danish Journal of Geography 105(1):43-55, 2005. 

Videos

• Vietnamese women making mats from Papyrus grass | Cyperus Papyrus plant | Vlog by Meigo Märk. [These are sitting mats about the size of a dining room chair seat. They are thick and formed around a wooden frame. They take an hour to make.]
• Cattail Weaving: Simple Sit Mat.  Mink Taylor.  2022.  YouTube Video.
• Weaving a rush mat.  Desmond gaming.  2020.  YouTube Video.

Due to the scarcity of wood, the two predominant building materials used in ancient Egypt were sun-baked mud brick and stone, mainly limestone, but also sandstone and granite in considerable quantities. From the Old Kingdom onward, stone was generally reserved for tombs and temples, while bricks were used even for royal palaces, fortresses, the walls of temple precincts and towns, and for subsidiary buildings in temple complexes. The core of the pyramids consisted of locally quarried stone, mud bricks, sand or gravel. For the casing, stones were used that had to be transported from farther away, predominantly white limestone from Tura and red granite from upper Egypt.

Ancient Egyptian houses were made out of mud collected from the damp banks of the Nile river. It was placed in moulds and left to dry in the hot sun to harden for use in construction. If the bricks were intended to be used in a royal tomb like a pyramid, the exterior bricks would also be finely chiselled and polished.

Ancient Egyptian architecture. Wikipedia.

There was very little wood in Egypt, especially wood one might build with. The wealthy imported their wood, and scrap pieces or used items probably made their way to all people. While grand structures often used stone such as limestone, houses mostly used mud brick. The exact same bricks Torah describes Hebrew slaves making for Pharaoh (bricks that were certainly made in other desert areas, so we can’t use this as evidence that there were in fact Hebrew slaves in Ancient Egypt). So it only makes sense that the huts in my Hebrew village would also be made of mud brick.

Homes of those who were better off often had flat mudbrick roofs where people slept to get away from the heat. Some homes had multiple rooms. I’m assuming each family unit had one small room (closer to worker village rooms of 25 square meters (270 square feet)) without a second story. Roofs and even some of the walls would be reed, not brick.

Roofs

What I keep going back and forth on is the roofs. Some articles say that most (or nearly all) homes in Ancient Egypt had flat roofs made of mudbrick (or a mud/straw plaster) that were used for sleeping. A few articles say that homes of poorer people would have reed roofs. Few to none of these articles actually have any primary sources (mudbrick and reeds do not last long enough) and it’s all guesswork.

We know what the grand structures were made of. We know what people aspired to after death (soul houses being models of ideal homes found in gravesites). And we’re still learning more about recently excavated worker villages. But there’s very little about how the poorest of the poor, those in their own rural villages, would have lived.

So I will assume a simple mudbrick construction (single layer, as many sites claim the poor used) for single room huts. Some windows and broken spots covered in reeds. Roofs made from reeds, with perhaps the occasional full mud roof one can climb on. Open doorways with reed or cloth coverings.

Because my main family is an extended family (all descendants of the matriarch, Jochebed), they share a courtyard, kitchen, well, gardens, livestock areas, and toilet. To make their 11 huts fit the space, some will have shared walls but others will have air space between them, for noise and air circulation.

References

• Ancient Egyptian architecture. Wikipedia.
• Urban planning in ancient Egypt. Wikipedia.
• The Technology of Mud-bricks from the Sacred Architecture in Ancient Egypt to the Green House Revolution (Case Study of Luxor City, Egypt).  Falana J. N, Reda Attalla, Gelany A. F. International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology, Vol. 29, No. 4s, (2020), pp. 1264-1277.
• Ancient Egyptian Houses: Domiciles From Pharaohs to Farmers. History on the Net. 2023, Salem Media.

But let’s go with it. Assume the Hebrews of the Exodus existed and had their own language(s) plus learned the ones spoken in Egypt. Which languages would they be? Even the obvious choices aren’t so straight-forward. Remember, we’re talking about New Kingdom Egypt. Well before most time periods called “Ancient.”

Nor is there a primary language. The countries that border the Mediterranean Sea, as well as surrounding areas, had substantial trade and movement of people. There would have been multiple languages and nearly everyone would have spoken more than one.

Afroasiatic Languages

Let’s start with the Afroasiatic languages, a group of 300 languages that includes those from Egypt and the Levant. This includes the Berber, Chadic, and Omotic branches, none of which are from areas near the settings of the novel, though there was likely travel to and from.

Another branch is Cushitic (some include Omotic here). This branch hails from the horn of Africa, which is not nearby but a place that Ancient Egypt would have traded with. I note it only because Cushites are mentioned in Torah. In particular, at one point Moses’ wife is said to be Cushite, though other parts point to her being from what is now northwest Saudi Arabia. Both these things could be true, due to the miracle of migration, but we just don’t know (some commentators explain the discrepancy by suggesting Moses had two wives, but I stick with just the one).

The last two branches are Egyptian and Semitic.

Egyptian

The Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian is an extinct Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt…Egyptian is one of the earliest written languages, first being recorded in the hieroglyphic script in the late 4th millennium BC. It is also the longest-attested human language, with a written record spanning over 4,000 years. Its classical form is known as Middle Egyptian, the vernacular of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt which remained the literary language of Egypt until the Roman period. By the time of classical antiquity the spoken language had evolved into Demotic, and by the Roman era it had diversified into the Coptic dialects. These were eventually supplanted by Arabic after the Muslim conquest of Egypt.

Afroasiatic languages. Wikipedia.

So, Egyptians in the mid-New Kingdom would have used Late Middle or Early Late forms of Egyptian. Got it? Good. In these periods they used both hieroglyphics and hieratic (cursive) scripts. The best known hieratic scripts for Egyptian were demotic and coptic, but those came much later than our time period.

Middle Egyptian was spoken for about 700 years, beginning around 2000 BC, during the Middle Kingdom and the subsequent Second Intermediate Period. As the classical variant of Egyptian, Middle Egyptian is the best-documented variety of the language, and has attracted the most attention by far from Egyptology. Whilst most Middle Egyptian is seen written on monuments by hieroglyphs, it was also written using a cursive variant, and the related hieratic…

The Middle Egyptian stage is taken to have ended around the 14th century BC, giving rise to Late Egyptian. This transition was taking place in the later period of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (known as the Amarna Period). Middle Egyptian was retained as a literary standard language, and it experienced a renaissance after the Third Intermediate Period (1070–664 BCE), when it was often used in hieroglyphic and hieratic texts in preference to Late Egyptian. Middle Egyptian as a literary language survived until the Christianisation of Roman Egypt in the 4th century.

Late Egyptian was spoken for about 650 years, beginning around 1350 BC, during the New Kingdom of Egypt. Late Egyptian succeeded but did not fully supplant Middle Egyptian as a literary language, and was also the language of the New Kingdom administration…

Late Egyptian is not completely distinct from Middle Egyptian, as many “classicisms” appear in historical and literary documents of this phase. However, the difference between Middle and Late Egyptian is greater than the difference between Middle and Old Egyptian. Originally a synthetic language, Egyptian by the Late Egyptian phase had become an analytic language. The relationship between Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian has been described as being similar to that between Latin and Italian…The Late Egyptian stage is taken to have ended around the 8th century BC, giving rise to Demotic.

Egyptian language. Wikipedia.

Semitic Languages

The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages and include the well-known living languages of Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic.

Semitic languages occur in written form from a very early historical date in West Asia, with East Semitic Akkadian and Eblaite texts (written in a script adapted from Sumerian cuneiform) appearing from the 30th century BCE and the 25th century BCE in Mesopotamia and the north eastern Levant respectively. The only earlier attested languages are Sumerian and Elamite (2800 BCE to 550 BCE), both language isolates, and Egyptian (3000 BCE), a sister branch of the Afroasiatic family, related to the Semitic languages but not part of them. Amorite appeared in Mesopotamia and the northern Levant circa 2000 BC, followed by the mutually intelligible Canaanite languages (including Hebrew, Phoenician, Moabite, Edomite and Ammonite, and perhaps Ekronite, Amalekite and Sutean), the still spoken Aramaic, and Ugaritic during the 2nd millennium BC.

Semitic languages. Wikipedia.

The Northwest Semitic languages are the ones of greatest interest to us. This includes two important branches: Aramaic and Canaanite.

Aramaic

Aramaic was the common tongue among Jews around the time of classical antiquity so it’s tempting to think it was around during the imagined time of the Exodus, but even its beginnings came well after (more than 300 years after).

Aramaic is thought to have first appeared among the Aramaeans about the late 11th century BCE. By the 8th century BCE it had become accepted by the Assyrians as a second language…in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE it gradually supplanted Akkadian as the lingua franca of the Middle East…Aramaic had replaced Hebrew as the language of the Jews as early as the 6th century BCE. Certain portions of the Bible—i.e., the books of Daniel and Ezra—are written in Aramaic, as are the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. Among the Jews, Aramaic was used by the common people, while Hebrew remained the language of religion and government and of the upper class.

Aramaic language, Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Canaanite Languages

Now we’re getting somewhere. Canaanite gave rise to Hebrew as well as other languages which are extinct. Many of these languages are mentioned in Torah: Moabite, Edomite, and Ammonite.

The dialects were all mutually intelligible, being no more differentiated than geographical varieties of Modern English. This family of languages has the distinction of being the first historically attested group of languages to use an alphabet, derived from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, to record their writings, as opposed to the far earlier Cuneiform logographic/syllabic writing of the region, which originated in Mesopotamia.

These extremely closely related tongues were spoken by the ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of Canaan and Levant, an area encompassing what is today Israel, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and also some areas of southwestern Turkey (Anatolia), western and southern Iraq (Mesopotamia) and the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia.

The Canaanites are broadly defined to include the Hebrews (including Israelites, Judeans and Samaritans), Amalekites, Ammonites, Amorites, Edomites, Ekronites, Hyksos, Phoenicians (including the Carthaginians), Moabites and Suteans…Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language today.

Canaanite languages. Wikipedia.

Hebrew

When we ask the question of what language did the people of the Exodus speak, the answer so obvious that it seems ridiculous to even ask it is of course Hebrew. But it’s not that easy. Hebrew became a language 400 years after the Exodus.

The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date back to the 10th century BCE.  Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, during the time of the Babylonian captivity….The language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Bible, but as Yehudit (transl. ‘the language of Judah’) or Səpaṯ Kəna’an (transl. ”the language of Canaan”).  Mishnah Gittin 9:8  refers to the language as Ivrit, meaning Hebrew; however, Mishnah Megillah refers to the language as Ashurit, meaning Assyrian, which is derived from the name of the alphabet used, in contrast to Ivrit, meaning the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

Hebrew language. Wikipedia.

So, yes, in the 14th century BCE, Hebrews would have spoken Canaanite, not Hebrew per say. But we know that Canaanite was a collection of dialects that were then mutually intelligible and later split in to different languages, including Hebrew (and that would have been Classical or Biblical Hebrew, not anything very close to modern Hebrew). Even early Hebrew wasn’t called that, it was called “the language of Canaan.” So there couldn’t have been much of a linguistic shift over the transition. Rather, it was likely that people split off from each other and, slowly, the different dialects became more distinct.

Arabic

Arabic is the most commonly spoken and written language today not only in Egypt and the rest of North Africa but also in many parts of the Levant and in a variety of places all over the world. It developed relatively recently though. Classical Arabic began in the late 6th century CE. Proto-Arabic may have its beginnings as early as the 9th century BCE (still 500 years too late for our purposes) but the earliest form that could be called Arabic wasn’t until the 1st or 2nd century BCE.

Writing Systems

The writing systems evolved from out of Egyptian hieroglyphs into Proto-Sinaitic (mostly dated to between the mid-19th and the mid-16th century BCE and/or proto-Canaanite (around 1550 BCE). Then to Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew around 1100 BCE. This is a vast oversimplification and involves huge debates I’m not the slightest bit versed in.

The Phoenician alphabet…is an early development of the Proto- or Old Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic script, into a linear, purely alphabetic script, also marking the transfer from a multi-directional writing system, where a variety of writing directions occurred, to a regulated horizontal, right-to-left script.  Its immediate predecessor, the Proto-Canaanite, Old Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic script, used in the final stages of the Late Bronze Age, first in either Egypt or Canaan and then in the Syro-Hittite kingdoms, is the oldest fully matured alphabet, and it was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The Phoenician alphabet was used to write the Early Iron Age Canaanite languages, subcategorized by historians as Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, Ammonite and Edomite, as well as Old Aramaic. Its use in Phoenicia (coastal Levant) led to its wide dissemination outside of the Canaanite sphere, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it was adopted and modified by many other cultures. It became one of the most widely used writing systems…it diversified into numerous national alphabets, including the Aramaic and Samaritan, several Anatolian scripts, and the early Greek alphabets. In the Near East, the Aramaic alphabet became especially successful, giving rise to the Jewish square script and Perso-Arabic scripts, among others.

Phoenician alphabet. Wikipedia.

References

• Aramaic language. Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• Aramaic. Wikipedia.
• Semitic languages. Wikipedia.
• Canaanite languages. Wikipedia.
• Afroasiatic languages. Wikipedia.
• Egyptian language. Wikipedia.
• Coptic language. Wikipedia.
• Northwest Semitic languages. Wikipedia.
• Hebrew language. Wikipedia.
• Biblical Hebrew. Wikipedia.
• Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. Wikipedia.
• The Hebrew Alphabet.  Mark Lidzbarsky.  The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia.
• Phoenician alphabet. Wikipedia.
• Proto-Sinaitic script. Wikipedia.
• Old Arabic. Wikipedia.
• Classical Arabic. Wikipedia.
• Arabic. Wikipedia.
• Proto-Arabic language. Wikipedia.
• Classification of Arabic languages. Wikipedia.