101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

Myths of the Heroes 209
that the Israelites could travel across. When the Egyptians followed in after them, the
waters reunited, flooding over all of pharaoh’s chariots and over six hundred soldiers.
For many people, the defining image of the drowning of Pharaoh’s army comes from
the Cecil B. DeMille production of The Ten Commandments, which used cherry gelatin
to simulate the parting and reassembling of the Red Sea.
The Red Sea is the northwest corner of the Indian Ocean that separates Africa
from the Arabian Peninsula. It is not improbable that the Israelites might have crossed
from Egypt to Arabia by this route, but is this where the crossing actually occurred?
The chief difficulty with assuming that is that the Hebrew words translated as “Red
Sea,” “yam suf, ” actually mean“Sea of Reeds,” a description inconsistent with the physical
setting of the Red Sea.
So where is the Sea of Reeds? If the description applied to an actual location, the
most likely area would be in the Egyptian delta, which has numerous reed marshes,
but there is no particular marshy area known as the Sea of Reeds. Egyptians, however,
did know of a mythological Sea of Reeds where enemies of Re, the chief deity, were
destroyed and covered over by a flood of red waters.
This sea was described in the Book of the Divine Cow in a story about a time when
humanity had revolted against the rule of Re. Angered by the apostasy, Re sent Hathor,
a sky goddess, to wipe out the rebellious humans, which she did with great relish. Her
joy at the devastation gave Re second thoughts about his goals and he decided to cancel
his vendetta. In order to distract Hathor, he arranged for a mixture of red ochre and
barley beer to fill the fields where Hathor was to continue the final acts of destruction.
The beer served its purpose and Hathor fell into a drunken stupor.
After a break in the text, Re declares, “How peaceful it is in this field!” The god
then planted green plants there and called the place the Field of Reeds. However, the
word translated as“field,” “sekbet,” usually refers to marshy locations with birds and fish.
So, this myth tells about a Reed Marsh, or the equivalent of a Sea of Reeds, where
the enemies of Re lay slaughtered and the fields flooded over with a red liquid. This
might easily lead to confusion between an actual Reed Sea and a Red Sea.
The drowning of the pharaoh’s army draws primarily on this story. The location is
the same, a Sea of Reeds, and the pharaoh’s army takes on the role of the humans who