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66 The Dynasty of the Oppression

It is in cred i ble to re al ize that two obe lisks from this city were trans ported from Egypt and
erected on the Thames Em bank ment in Lon don and in Cen tral Park, New York re spec tively, the
chief cit ies of the peo ples de scended from the two sons of Jo seph, Manasseh and Ephraim -- the
very peo ples de scended from the slaves who built the city of On! It is as though YEHOVAH God
Him self di rected the re moval of these obe lisks AS A REMINDER to the de scen dants of Is rael of
their na tional or i gins!

The city of PITHOM is an enigma! In 1883, Edouard Naville of Swit zer land claimed to
have un cov ered this city at the site of Tell-el-Maskhutah in the Wadi Tumilat; how ever, re cent ex -
ca va tions at this site by Uni ver sity of To ronto Egyptologist John S. Holladay have com pletely over -
turned the work of Naville. Ap par ently Tell-el-Maskhutah went un oc cu pied from the Mid dle
Bronze Age un til the Saite and Early Per sian pe ri ods of Egyp tian his tory. In other words, it was un -
oc cu pied through out the en tire pe riod in which the ex o dus of the Is ra el ites could con ceiv ably have
oc curred. The city of Pithom still waits to be un cov ered in the “land of Sukot” -- east of Egypt!

Bricks of Mud

In Ex o dus 1:13-14, we read: “And the Egyp tians ty ran nised over the chil dren of Is rael by
force. And they em bit tered their life by hard la bours, IN THE CLAY AND IN BRICK-MAKING,
and all the works in the plains....” (Sep tu a gint ver sion).

This is reiterated in Exodus 5:5-8:

And Pha raoh said, “Look, the
peo ple of the land are many
now, and you [Mo ses and
Aaron] make them rest from
their la bor!” So the same day
Pha raoh com manded the task -
mas ters of the peo ple and their
of fi cers, say ing, “You shall no
lon ger give the peo ple straw TO
MAKE BRICK as be fore. Let
them go and gather straw for
them selves. And you shall lay
on them the QUOTA OF
BRICKS which they made be - Israelite slaves making bricks for Middle Kingdom pyramids
fore. You shall not di min ish it.
For they are idle; there fore they
cry out, say ing, ‘Let us go and sac ri fice to our God.’” (NKJV).

We can only con clude from these verses that the main thrust of the Is ra el ites’ work in Egypt
was MAKING BRICKS. We find no men tion of cut ting or quar ry ing stone, or pre par ing any other
type of ma te rial.

The Berean Voice