First Person: Should Israel Return the Tablets of the Law to Egypt? [ hypothetically ]

Biblical Archaeology Review ^ | BAR 38:05, Sep/Oct 2012 | Hershel Shanks

[SunkenCiv]

In 1969, barely two years after the 1967 Six-Day War, a team of Israeli archaeologists made an exploratory excavation at the base of one of the numerous sites in the Sinai Peninsula proposed as Biblical Mt. Sinai. It was not long before a member of the team exposed a piece of rock with a single Hebrew letter on it. This naturally led to more intensive excavation in this area, as a result of which additional, larger pieces of inscribed stones were recovered. They were taken to Israel for further study.

When examined by paleographers, experts in dating inscriptions by the shape and form of the letters, they were in agreement that this inscription dated to about 1200 B.C.E.

Gradually, the pieces of stone were fitted together. In the end, a few pieces from the end and on the side were missing, but they did not appear to have contained letters. What could be read was clear. Word for word, the inscription was identical to the text of the Ten Commandments...

It was difficult for the scholars to resist the obvious conclusion: These were the original Tablets of the Law that Moses destroyed when he came down from the mountain and found the Israelites worshiping the Golden Calf...

Since the Arab Spring and the revolution in Egypt, the new Egyptian government has learned of this archaeological discovery and made a formal demand for the return to Egypt of the two Tablets of the Law, claiming that they were recovered in territory under the sovereignty of Egypt. There can be no doubt is where they were found. Is Israel obligated to return them under international law if found in an excavation in the Sinai?

[SunkenCiv]

This is hypothetical -- there was no such find. Shanks is making a point here.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Note: this is a hypothetical situation. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.bib-arch.org/bar/article.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=38&Issue=5&ArticleID=12

BAR 38:05, Sep/Oct 2012

Violence Ramps Up Against Israel’s Archaeological Sites

http://www.basarchive.org/bswb_graphics/BSBA/38/05/BSBA380501003.jpg

http://www.bib-arch.org/image.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=38&Issue=05&ImageID=01003&SourcePage=article.asp

Vandals spray-painted graffiti on the walls of the fourth-century C.E. synagogue at Hammath Tiberias in May and severely damaged its famous mosaic floor. Such acts of vandalism have occurred several times in Israel recently. And the suspects are always the same: members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community known as haredim. The chief rabbinate of Israel has condemned the vandalism.

For years haredi demonstrations have disrupted legal excavations, ostensibly to protest the desecration of Jewish burials. It is archaeological policy in Israel to treat the discovery of human remains respectfullya and to carefully rebury them elsewhere after excavation. Nonetheless some haredim often respond with destruction as they recently did at Hammath Tiberias — even though the synagogue had been excavated in the 1960s. Many of the mosaic tesserae were hacked up, including the panel depicting the Torah ark and menorahs. Mosaic Greek inscriptions were covered with spray paint, and graffiti sprayed on the walls. One read, “To Shuka the cannibal.” referring to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) director Shuka Dorfman. Another said, “for every tomb a[n archaeological] site, [there will be a] reaction for years [to come],” promising continued retribution.

http://www.basarchive.org/bswb_graphics/BSBA/38/05/BSBA380501030.jpg

http://www.bib-arch.org/image.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=38&Issue=05&ImageID=01030&SourcePage=article.asp

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[Jonty30]

I say no. God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, not the Egyptians.

I wonder if the Moslems would destroy the Ten Commandments, if Israel received them?

[null and void]

I wonder if the Moslems would destroy the Ten Commandments, if Israel received them?

I don't.

[Uncle Slayton]

From this map of Biblical Israel, the discovery was clearly within the borders of Israel and these are the borders that Israel must return.

[Chode]

give them something they don't believe in and that never belonged to the in the first place??? please...

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

That is a fake. Ezekiel clearly tells where the borders of Israel were.

From the bottom of the dead sea, to Kadish, to the Wadi el Arish (River of Egypt).

Then in up the coast to Hamath near Damascus, and down through the Jordan River to the bottom of the dead sea.

The early Israelis who settled EAST of the Jordan were admonished to come over to “THE POSESSION OF THE LORD” in Judges, which was WEST of the Jordan river.

Another simple proof is that Moses had to lead the Israelis into the Promised Land. If he had just stopped East of the Nile he would be there, but he was not.

When the people sinned and were forbidden to enter the promised Land they stayed OUTSIDE the promised land near Kaadish. Moses also was forbidden to enter the Promised Land and was buried East of the Jordan River.

So those areas could NOT be the Promised land.

[Rocky]

A horribly written article, in the fact that he doesn’t let on that it’s hypothetical until you have read about halfway through the article, and then he says it in passing.

Thanks for putting “hypothetical” in the title of your post.

Still, it’s an interesting subject. The irony of Turkey demanding the return of artifacts, while holding artifacts from other countries, demonstrates what a thorny issue this is.

[1010RD]

It doesn’t take much brains to destroy something does it? Creation is the true mark of a civilization.

[madison10]

The Egyptians were still recovering from a trouncing at the hands of, oh I don’t know...The One that handed the Ten Commandments out to the Jew, Israel, the Apple of God’s eye. Yeah, sure give them “back” to Egypt.

[Rabin]

Sunk, “Tablets of the Law”?

Box fulla rox, not a tablet in the bunch (corners included).

R.

[BlueDragon]

as it says;

"...This hypothetical case would surely be one of them."

Oh well. I wasn't "in" soon enough to have been the first to say

"Moses' fault"

anyway.

Freerepublic can be disappointing that way.

[JoeProBono]

[publius911]

Is Israel obligated to return them under international law if found in an excavation in the Sinai?

Depends.
On whether all the fragments were found before the "land for peace" agreement that returned the Sinai to Egypt. And, if all the fragments had not been found, whether the Israelis were wise enought to condition the completion of their dig under the old status quo ante pacem.

The Sinai was sovereign territory of Israel, after the 6 day war. As was the Suez Canal.

[golux]

Can you tell me more about why this is Biblical Israel?

[Ecliptic]

I second that.

[golux]

Yeah but it’d be fun to see the looks on the faces of the Cypriots when the Israeli Army makes its first beachhead landings at Larnaca.

[SunkenCiv]

I put the “hypothetically” up there to avoid having people flip out the same way I did. :’) And it’s not horribly written, it’s excellent! :’)

[SunkenCiv]

:')

In the sixties of the last century, in el-Arish, a town on the border between Egypt and Palestine, the attention of a traveler was attracted to a shrine (naos) of black granite inscribed with hieroglyphics over all its surfaces. It was used by the Arabs of the locality as a cattle trough... Sometime during the [20th] century the stone was brought to the Museum of Ismailia and a new attempt to translate the text was undertaken... The march of the pharaoh with his hosts is related amidst the description of the great upheaval in the residence and the tempest that made the land dark. He arrived at a place designated by name: ...this place called Pi-Kharoti... The explanation of the translator of the text concerning this geographical designation "Pi-Kharoti is: "... is not known except in this example." ... Pi-Kharoti is Pi-Khiroth of the Hebrew text. It is the same place. It is the same pursuit. It is erroneous to say that the name is met nowhere else except on the shrine... The inscription on the shrine at el-Arish says that the name of the pharaoh who perished in the whirlpool was Thom or Thoum. It is of interest that Pi-Thom means "the abode of Thom." Pithom was one of the two cities built by the Israelite slaves for the Pharaoh of Oppression. In Manetho, the pharaoh in whose days the "blast of heavenly displeasure" fell upon Egypt, preceding the invasion of the Hyksos, is called Tutimaeus or Timaios. The question, centuries or even millennia old, as to where the Sea of Passage was, can be solved with the help of the inscription on the shrine. On the basis of certain indications in the text, Pi-ha-Khiroth, where the events took place, was on the way from Memphis to Pisoped. [Immanuel Velikovsky, "Ages In Chaos" (1952), pp 39&44]

see also:

• Immanuel Velikovsky, "Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History from the end of The Middle Kingdom In Egypt to the Advent Of Alexander the Great", thesis #12 (1945)