Rabbinic midrash included Egyptian religious concepts. These textual images are compared to Egyptian culture. Midrash is analyzed from a cross-cultural perspective utilizing insights from the discipline of Egyptology. Egyptian textual icons in rabbinic texts are analyzed in their Egyptian context.Rabbinic knowledge concerning Egypt included: Alexandrian teachers are mentioned in rabbinic texts; Rabbis traveled to Alexandria; Alexandrian Jews traveled to Israel; trade relations existed; Egyptian, as well as Roman and Byzantine, artifacts relating to Egypt.Egyptian elements in the rabbinic discourse: the Nile inundation, the Greco-Roman Nile god, festivals, mummy portraits, funeral customs, language, Pharaohs, Cleopatra VII, magic, the gods Isis and Serapis. The hermeneutical role of Egyptian cultural icons in midrash is explored. Methods applied: comparative literature; semiotics; notions of time and space; the dialectical model of Theodor Adorno; theories of cultural identity by J??rgen Habermas; iconography (Mary Hamer); landscape theory; embodied fragments of memory (Jan Assmann).
Author(s): Rivka Ulmer
Edition: 1
Publisher: De Gruyter
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 405
Front Cover
......Page 1
EGYPTIAN CULTURAL ICONS IN MIDRASH......Page 4
Acknowledgements......Page 6
Table of contents......Page 8
Introduction: The Significance of Egypt in Rabbinic Texts......Page 10
I. Pharaohs Shoshenq, Necho, and Apries......Page 30
II. The Nile......Page 50
III. Egyptian Festivals
......Page 90
IV. The Osiris Myth and Egyptian Magic......Page 116
V. History, the Roman Emperor, and Egyptian Funeral Practices......Page 152
VI. Alexandria......Page 176
VII. Cleopatra, Isis, and Serapis......Page 224
VIII. The Egyptian Gods, Language, and Customs......Page 254
IX. The Divine Eye......Page 282
X. The "Finding of Moses" in Art and Text......Page 306
Figures......Page 332
Copyright......Page 334
Bibliography......Page 336
Authors......Page 388
Biblical Literature......Page 396
Midrashic and Related Rabbinic Literature......Page 402
Greek and Latin Works......Page 410
Egyptian Sources......Page 414
Plates......Page 416
