World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Exodus 11
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said to , "I will bring yet one more plague on , and on ; afterwards he will let you go. When he lets you go, he will surely thrust you out altogether. Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man ask of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold." gave the people in the sight of the . Moreover, the man was very great in the land of , in the sight of servants, and in the sight of the people. said, ": 'About midnight I will go out into the middle of , and all in the land of shall , from of who sits on his , even to of the female servant who is behind the mill, and all of livestock. There will be a great cry throughout all the land of , such as there has not been, nor will be any more. But against any of the a dog won't even bark or move its , against man or animal, that you may know that makes a distinction between the and Israel. All these servants of yours will come down to me, and themselves to me, saying, "Get out, with all the people who follow you;" and after that I will go out.'" He went out from in hot . said to , " won't listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of ." and did all these wonders before , but hardened , and he didn't let the go out of his land.
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The world at this moment · Egypt and Sinai, 1450 BC to 1200 BC ›
Israel in and then out of Egypt, at a period when Egypt was an imperial power that also controlled Canaan. The nation is formed as a people with a law before it has any land.
- Egypt
- The New Kingdom at its imperial peak, with a professional army, a chariot corps, and control reaching up through Canaan. Ramesses II reigns for sixty-six years and covers the country in monuments to himself. Egyptian power in this period is the reason Canaan is garrisoned rather than free.
- The Hittites
- The other superpower, in what is now Turkey, and Egypt's rival for the Levant. The two fight the largest chariot battle of the ancient world at Kadesh, then sign a treaty whose text survives from both sides. Hittite treaty form, with its historical prologue, stipulations, witnesses, blessings, and curses, is the shape the Sinai covenant takes, which is one of the stronger arguments for the antiquity of that material.
- The Aegean
- Mycenaean Greece: warrior kings in stone citadels at Mycenae and Pylos, keeping palace accounts in Linear B. The world of the Trojan War stories, whatever lies behind them.
- Further afield
- The Shang dynasty in China is casting extraordinary bronzes and writing questions to its ancestors on ox bones. In Mesoamerica the Olmec are beginning the first civilisation of the Americas.