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April 1, 2020

What Were the Israelites Building in Egypt?

Storehouses for the wealth of priests.

Neither the biblical text nor archeological evidence supports the enduring misconception that Jewish slaves in Egypt built the pyramids. But references in the book of Exodus to the Israelites gathering straw to make mudbricks, and having specific quotas to fill, resemble quite closely slave labor as described in ancient Egyptian texts. David Falk, drawing on the latest scholarship, makes some specific conjectures about the construction projects these slaves may have been involved in:

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