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Is the Film the Prince of Egypt Historically Accurate

1 byte added, 02:13, 27 February 2019
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===Historical Fiction in the Film===
[[File: Senet_Tut.jpg|200px|thumbnail|left|King Tutankhamun’s (King Tut) Senet Board.]]
One of the primary points in the film that has a little fact and fiction in it is the very presence of the Hebrews in Egypt in the New Kingdom and their treatment. The film and the book of Exodus depict a large number of Hebrews slaving away to build temples for their cruel Egyptian overlords. It is known that large numbers of Canaanites and other foreign peoples began migrating to Egypt during the Middle Kingdom (ca. 1975-1640 BC) and that those numbers increased even more during the New Kingdom. Reliefs in the tomb of the New Kingdom noble Rekhmira show foreign workers, possibly slaves, making bricks, which does echo the story in the Exodus and the movie. <ref> Kitchen, p. 247</ref> With that said, the Egyptians never practiced mass or chattel slave like it was practiced in the modern world. <ref> Shaw and Nicholson, p. 272</ref> So this depiction of the Hebrews being worked to death is partially true. There very well may have been Hebrew slaves in Egypt, possibly thousands, but they would not have been segregated and would have instead been working alongside slaves and workers from other lands, as well as native Egyptians.
One of the details in the film that was more anachronistic as opposed to being an outright fiction was the prominence of camels. Yes, camels were a major part of travel and sometimes warfare in the pre-modern Middle East, which included Egypt, but in the Late Bronze Age they were primarily used as pack animals and for food. It was not until after the Bronze Age when they were first ridden as they were in the film. <ref> Drews, Robert. <i>The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 120 BC.</i> (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1993), p. 165</ref>

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