My Passover GD thread was hiden

[onager]

16. One other annoying thing about this topic...

As I've ranted before - there's a rich and real historical story about Egypt and the Jews, hidden behind all the mythical glurge about raining frogs etc.

Here are a couple of places to find some of it:

Merneptah Stele - the first direct mention of "Israel" in Egyptian history. Pharaoh Merneptah was the son of Ramses II. The Stele is a straightforward account of a military expedition dealing with various insurgencies, first in Libya then in Palestine.

The Stele brags that "the seed of Israel is crushed. It is no more." Pretty funny, since the seed of Israel today is exactly where it always was. And still annoying the Egyptians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele

The Alexandrian Wars, Julius Caesar:

Relief for the Romans came from Mithridates of Pergamum and Antipater from Judea. A final pitched battle was fought on the west side of the Nile River with Caesar victorious and Ptolemy drowning while attempting to cross the river.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Alexandria_(47_BC)

Antipater was the father of Herod The Great. He not only sent Julius Caesar badly needed money, but 3,000 Jewish soldiers.

Later, Cleopatra tried repeatedly to take over Judea/Palestine and attach it to Egypt. The Romans put a stop to that. They thought Cleopatra was quite powerful enough already, thank you very much. And they liked the idea of having Judea ruled by a local kinglet like Herod. Especially a kinglet who owed his power to the Romans and wasn't likely to rock the boat. Political boat-rocking being one of Cleopatra's specialties.