THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Ancient Egypt
Hieroglyphs
The language of ancient Egypt is Egyptian. It has a single descendent language known as Coptic which is used now only as liturgical language by the Coptic Church much the way the Roman Catholics used Latin. Contemporary Egypt speaks Arabic, a Semitic language related to Hebrew. Both of these are related to Egyptian but are not direct descendents of it.
Hieroglyphs is a term that refers to the ancient Egyptian system of writing. It is pictographic and uses symbols numbering in the hundreds. Some symbols represent single sounds, others combinations of sounds. The language is written "artistically" - that is to say with an eye towards making it look pleasing so there is no official way to order the hieroglyphs. The rule is that when you read hieroglyphs you have to read into the faces of the animals which are used as some of the symbols. An important aspect of hieroglyphic writing is that it lacks vowels, so no one knows for sure how the language was pronounced or even where the vowels went. A word like "house" is written "pr" but there is no way to know what vowels were used or where they went. Egyptologists generally insert the letter "e" wherever they need one to make the word easily pronounceable. So one would read "per" for house. Some consonants like "w" and "y" are often written as "u" and "i" to make those words easy to say without having to introduce vowels. In addition, the language would have changed significantly over the several thousand years it was spoken.
There is some clue to the pronunciation as a result of the Greeks have been in contact with the Egyptians and having written down some of the words in Greek, which while it probably distorts the Egyptian to some degree, gives some approximation of the actual form at the time. So the sun god is read "re" by Egyptologists but is often given as "Ra". Similarly the person who ordered the building of the great pyramid at Giza is given in by Egyptologists as Khufu and Cheops by the Greeks.
The Exodus
In The Bible the Exodus deals largely with the departure of the Jews from Egypt to Canaan.
The Jews are held to have been in slavery in Egypt and ultimately a confrontation occurs between Moses and the Pharaoh (generally thought to be Rameses II). There is no record of anything like the Exodus anywhere except in The Bible. There are no Egyptian records that indicate any of this happened at all. Although some have argued that the Egyptians would not have refrained from writing about such a negative event, and this might be true on monument walls and so on, but it is certainly not true with accounting records and the like, which the Egyptians kept very careful records about - even when they contained negative information about Egypt. The idea that an entire army could have been wiped out and the Egyptians made no records of this seems impossible to most Egyptologists and to many bible scholars.
No archaeological materials have been found anywhere to indicate this massive departure and 40 years of wandering in the desert.
Interestingly enough, in most stories in The Bible there are descriptions of the "other" culture's culture - especially religion. We hear about gods like Baal and Dagon and so on, but there is no mention of anything about Egyptian materials - nothing about the religion, social structure political organization etc.
The question of Jewishness and the Old Testament films
The Exodus
The Exodus deals largely with the departure of the Jews from Egypt to Canaan.
The Jews have been held in slavery in Egypt and ultimately a confrontation occurs between Moses and the Pharaoh (generally thought to be Rameses II). There is no record of anything like the exodus anywhere except in the Bible. There are no Egyptian records that indicate any of this happened at all. No archaeological materials have been found anywhere to indicate this massive departure and 40 years of wandering in the desert.
Some have argued that the Egyptians would not have refrained from writing about such a negative event, and this might be true on monument walls and so on, but it is certainly not true with accounting records and the like, which the Egyptians kept very careful records about - even when they contained negative information about Egypt. The idea that an entire army could have been wiped out and the Egyptians made no records of this seems impossible to most Egyptologists and to many bible scholars.
In addition, The Bible indicates that 600,000 men left with their families and animals and others. This is estimated to be close to 2.3 million people (one wife and two children for each adult Jewish male plus the "others" that are mentioned, along with animals and material goods) left Egypt (total population estimated at 2.5 million at the time) overnight without having an impact on the country is rather difficult to comprehend. The "logistical nightmare" of this move is evident. It has been estimated that this number of people lined up 10 across would be a line 150 miles long and would take about 8 days for them to march past a single point.
To make matters worse, Siegmund Freud wrote a book called Moses and Monotheism in which he argues that Moses was an Egyptian, not Hebrew who may have been involved with monotheism in Egypt which occurred during the reign of Ankhenaten. Later much of Ankhenaten's reign was eradicated from edifaces by the priests of the old religion when they returned to power. Freud starts his argument claiming that it is odd for an Egyptian woman to find Moses in the bullrushes and call him Moses in Hebrew when she would have spoken Egyptian. Moses or similar forms are common in Egyptian names like Tutmose.
The Film
This silent version of The Ten Commandments is indicative of one of the earlier approaches in bible films - that is the linking of the story from The Bible with a contemporary story on the textual level, not the subtextual one. In many of the early films this is the case. The classic example is Intolerance in which stories are woven together in complex ways. How is it done in this film?
What do the "prologue cards" do for the film?
What visual parallels are there in the two stories?
After the Film
From the very beginning the title cards set up the idea that religion is still important and the moral tale which forms the second half of the film as tied to the biblical story of the Ten Commandments. The film in the historical section is clearly epic. The scenes of the exodus and the events that occur in the desert have all the elements of epics.
The set pieces are usually those major moments of disaster and orgy. How does the second story tie to the first?
What parallels are there visually to the first?
In addition to the parallels between the "Prologue" and "The Story", there are some parallels within the story itself. For example, Mary opens the window at the dinner to steal Dan;s food, and then slips the window open again to put the flowers back in John's room. In a sense this brings us full circle. Mary is back where we first saw her (in desparate albeit different straits) only this time she turns to John rather than Dan and is saved. Can you find other parallel structures?
Do you find any evidence of "tableau" in the film? What are they? Moses on the rock, at the Red Sea etc.
This idea develops even more in the remake. What significant shift happens to this Old Testament story when in moves into the contemporary one? Does it remain Old Testament? In a strange way the fiml co-opts the Old Testament story of the Ten Commandments and winds up being a new testament story about Christ and redemption. How does this tie in with the structure of Hollywood studios at the time?
The second story moves beyond the first in its Christian aspects.
In the "Prologue" does the scene of pharaoh's court look remarkably empty? What might this emptiness imlpy relative to "power"? Is an empty court the equivalent of Pharaoh not having any real power?
Consider the use of light. Notice how Miriam first appears almost in a soft spotlight surrounded by darkness. The appearance of the sacred in films is often tied to light. Remember Lot in the prison when the angels appear and Lot is "bathed" in light. How does this relate to John's statement about "The Light" at the end of the film?
What is John's occupation? How is this relevant?
There are some interesting questions which will develop in these films about patriarchy and a feminizing of Christ. In one sense here, the mother strongly upholds the patriarchal Old Testament (God) wherein Moses does not help the leperous woman, while in the modern version the leperous woman is healed by a New Testament Christ. This contrast between the Old and New Testament is something which will appear over and over in criticism.
Another theme of both the films and the religion itself is the pairing of spiritual and material as oppsotites.
Yet another deals with the idea of sexuality as bad. This is something which stems largely out of a Judaic tradition as opposed to the Greek and ROman traditions to which most of Western society links its ancestory. The West tend to have a kind of conflict between its Greco-Roman roots and its Judeo=Christian religion and morality.