Parashat Beshalach includes the crossing of the “Red” Sea, Yam Suph — possibly translated as “Rede Sea” or some such in one of the English bible versions translated between approx. 1522-1611, as English spelling wouldn’t be standardized for hundreds of years yet. Literally, “Sea of Reeds” was a term for the Suez valley/isthmus Lake Timsah, drained by construction of the Suez Canal (1869)... or Yam Suph may refer to the reed fields of the Nile Delta ...or the Gulf of Aqaba/Eilat ...or the Lake of Tanis, “a former coastal lagoon fed by the Pelusiac branch of the Nile” ...or the Sabḫat al Bardawīl, lagoon on the Sinai’s north coast… or, “more conjecturally,”
...suph may be related to the Hebrew suphah ("storm") or soph ("end"), referring to the events of the Reed/Red Sea escape itself...
and the photo up top shows the fresco section identified as the crossing, among other biblical depictions on the 3rd century Dura Europos Synagogue west wall excavation, introduced at Wikipedia:
...an ancient synagogue uncovered at Dura-Europos, Syria, in 1932. The last phase of construction was dated by an Aramaic inscription to 244 CE, making it one of the oldest synagogues in the world. It is unique among the many ancient synagogues that have emerged from archaeological digs as it was preserved virtually intact, and it has extensive figurative wall-paintings. These paintings are now displayed in the National Museum of Damascus.
Dura-Europas was a small garrison and trading city on the river Euphrates, and usually on the frontier between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Parthian and finally the Sassanid Empires of Persia. It changed hands at various points but was Roman from 165 CE.
Before the final Persian destruction of the town in 256-257 CE, parts of the synagogue which abutted the main city wall were apparently requisitioned and filled with sand as a defensive measure. The city was abandoned after its fall and never resettled, and the lower walls of the
rooms remained buried and largely intact until excavated. The excavations discovered also very important wall-paintings from places of worship of Christianity and Mithraism, and fragmentary Christian texts in Hebrew…
While I wouldn’t necessarily argue that a Reed Sea Crossing actually happened as a unique historical event, the geological theories about the spreading of the East African and West Arabian tectonic plates along the axial trough of the Red Sea Rift sounds as if many geographical features were a lot closer together in the past (and closer still, the further back you go). And further evidence suggests that we can give credence to the possibility of many crossings and therefore not rule out entirely the one in Beshalach, wherever we interpret it to have occurred :
TRADE ACROSS THE RED SEA between [the] Thebes port of Elim and Elat at the head of the gulf is documented as early as the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt [c. 2613 to 2494 BC]. Expeditions crossing the Red Sea and heading south to Punt are mentioned in [the documents of] the fifth, the sixth, the eleventh, the twelfth and the eighteenth dynasties of Egypt, when Hatshepsut [1507 to 1458 BC — a female pharoah, reigning about 22 years, generally regarded by Egyptologists as among the most successful of any gender, daughter of Thutmose I and widow of Thutmose II] built a fleet to support the trade and journeyed south to Punt in a six-month voyage… Thebes used Nubian gold or Nub from her conquests into Kush to facilitate purchase of frankincense, myrrh, bitumen, natron, juniper oil, linen, and copper amulets for the mummification industry at Karnak. Egyptian settlements near Timna at the head of the gulf date to the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt.
By a dozen centuries or so later:
... the ancient city of Ayla (in present-day Aqaba) was a commercial hub for the Nabateans. The Romans built the Via Traiana Nova, which joined the King's Highway at Aqaba and connected Africa to Asia and the Levant and Red Sea shipping.
After all, in order for the Silk[/spice] Road[s][/routes] to develop into such a vast network of trade at every point between China at the east, and Europe and Africa at the west, “beginning during the Han dynasty (207 BC – 220 AD)” —
...main traders during antiquity were the Chinese, Persians, Somalis, Greeks, Syrians, Romans, Armenians, Indians, and Bactrians, and from the 5th to the 8th century the Sogdians. Following the emergence of Islam, Arab traders became prominent...
— there had to have been before then enough commodities trickling around from distant enough points among traversible enough routes for those commodities to be enough known about and desired by enough of the most wealthy individuals and most ambitious rulers of empires and cultures in between, for enough centuries, that crossings of all kinds of barriers would be attempted, failed, managed, survived, explored, utilized, expanded, and repeated.
Enough localized trading partners found for acquisition of fresh-water and other provisions for caravans and boat crews every few days to some weeks apart as well as for commodites to trade-&-trade-about along the way to pay their way ... and enough profit realized by the earliest traders and the earliest backers of these expeditions consistently enough that China would consider it lucratively worth sponsoring by the 2nd century BCE Before the Common Era. For that to happen by then, intercultural travel had to be happening for centuries, even millenia, and that would require sophisticated, technological, observation-science-based cultures —(e.g., celestial navigation, Minoan culture. Note Speculation on an Exodus connection to the regional impact of the the eruption of Santorini c. 1600 BCE)— themselves first to exist way, way back. And we find they do, globally:
By 4000 BC [in the Indus Valley], a proto-Harappan culture emerged, with trade networks including lapis lazuli and other raw materials... Urban centers during this phase spanned northern and western India and what is now Pakistan. [This] phase ... comprised several large cities … Latest discoveries ... indicate that [settlement in] this area dates from as early as 7500 BC— link
The rise of dynastic Egypt ... in the Nile Valley occurred with unification of Upper and Lower Egypt approximately 3200 BC, and ended [with] Achaemenid control of Egypt. … Evidence indicates human habitation in the south-western corner ... near the Sudan border, before 8000 BC. From around 7000 BC to 3000 BC the [Sahara] climate was much moister, offering good grazing even in areas now very arid. — link
The Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer emerges in the Ubaid period (6500–3800 BC) and Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BC) ... giving rise to the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC ... often identified as the first empire in history. Eridu … several miles southwest of Ur... was the southernmost of a conglomeration of early temple-cities … dating to around 5000 BC. — link
Chinese civilization originated with city-states in the Yellow River valley … [which was] irrigated around 2205 BC, reputedly by Yu the Great, starting the semi-mythical Xia Dynasty … Archaeological sites such as Sanxingdui and Erlitou show evidence of a Bronze Age civilization … The earliest bronze knife … dated [to] 3000 BC — link
The Norte Chico/Caral/Caral-Supe civilization—c. 3200–1800 BC—comprised several interconnected settlements on the Peruvian coast ... an early form of quipu at Caral indicates ... the antiquity of this unique recording system. The stone pyramids on the sites are thought to be contemporary to the great pyramids of Giza. Unusually ... no evidence of fortifications, or of other signs of warfare, have yet been found … — link
The Olmec [considered the mother culture of] Mesoamerican civilization, beginning around 1600–1400 BC … [produced] the Mesoamerican calendar, numeral system, writing, [a pantheon]. … domestication of maize thought to have begun around 7,500 to 12,000 years ago... lowland maize cultivation dates to around 5100 BC.[30] Agriculture [was] mixed with a hunting-gathering-fishing lifestyle until … by 2700 BC, [they] were relying on maize, and living mostly in villages. Temple mounds and classes started to appear. By 1300/ 1200 BC, small centres coalesced into [what] seems to have been a set of city-states, united in religious and commercial concerns. — link
A KIND OF ODD THING ABOUT ART and literature from previous eras is how often they extremely understate the actual levels of science and technology in the culture portrayed, not least in the technology of the art itself often being least sophisticated of all artifacts available. Fortunately, two centuries of archaeology increasingly give us fuller breathtaking dimensional context!
We find that cultural exchange across distance and across time changes the individuals and cultures it touches; it can expand horizons, open new perspectives and dimensions, inspire new syntheses and new ideas. It also makes people very nervous, because the reality —as we see in our own countries and worldwide today— is that not all change is for the best, being always experimental, with more error than success in every try/trial of another way to do things presumably better than how we’ve been doing it.
So, hypothetically, a naturalized-Midian-citizen, former political refugee from Egypt, using knowledge of
surrounding cultures to cross enough bodies of water and expanses of wasteland to survive escaping, then learning the technology and methodology of wilderness (Egypt was pretty urbanized, so wilderness was new to him) the next ten or so years from wife Zipporah and her sisters and father-in-law, passing his practicum via return to Mitzrayim, to accept the job of shepherding a mixed multitude out of slavery. It’s probably a good thing he had training first with sheep and goats in Midian,
because there’s going to be a lot of butting heads and rocky roads for the forty-plus years he’s employed in that start-up endeavor, alongside a lot of co-workers and subordinates who come from a huge range of other employment and background themselves. In having to work together, they’ll encounter a lot of situations in which they feel like they’re all up a tree without a ladder….
Thanks for reading this little something for parashat Beshalach. It was a very interesting experience putting it together for the Dvar Torah series. More sections of the Dura Europos frescoes and related photos can be viewed at this link and this one (floor plans from the excavation) and this one. Explore and find more!
UPCOMING CALENDAR/SIGN-UP
Monday Jan 25: Tu B’Shevat — New Year for Trees. ______
Saturday Jan. 30: PARASHAT YITRO Ex. 18:1 to 20:22. Isaiah 6:1 to 7:6, 9: 5-6. “The Top Ten Commandments “ play text by quarkstomper
Saturday February 6: PARASHAT MISHPATIM Exodus 18:1–20:23. Isaiah 6:1–7:6; 9:5-6 [Sephardim do haftarah Isaiah 6:1-13] by Navy Vet Terp.
Tuesday February 9/Wednesday Feb.10: Rosh Chodesh 1 Adar 1 Num. 28:1-15 (new moon) ___________
Saturday, February 13: PARASHAT TERUMAH Exodus 25:1–27:19. 1 Kgs. 5:26–6:13. __________
Saturday, February 20: PARASHAT TETZAVEH Exodus 25:1–27:19. 1 Kgs. 5:26–6:13. __________
Tuesday, February 23: Purim Katan פורים קטן __________
Saturday, February 27: PARASHAT KI TISA Exodus 30:11–34:35. 1 Kgs. 18:1-39 [Sephardim haftarah 1 Kgs. 18:20-39] by ramara
INTERESTED VOLUNTEER DVAR WRITERS PLEASE KOSMAIL TO Navy Vet Terp or ramara, scholar-admins of this series. They can also answer questions and give guidance if you haven’t written a dvar before.
Shabat shalom!