Pini Dunner
Algemeiner, Apr. 8, 2022
“One possibility that might explain the ultimate complete collapse of Egyptian ideas and ideals is the determined approach of Judaism to replace the religion and culture of their former masters, with a system that was the absolute antithesis of everything that Egypt represented.”
For as long as there have been historians and archaeologists, ancient Egypt has been an object of fascinated study and research. During the earliest era of human history, Egyptian influence and culture dominated the developed world, with its complex perception of the human experience and its sophisticated approach to every aspect of human existence.
And yet, unlike the cultures of subsequent world powers, such as those of the Greeks and the Romans, the impact of ancient Egypt on the world that ensued after its dramatic decline was minimal in real terms — with numerous features of its all-encompassing worldview abandoned entirely, in favor of new ideas that were precursors of many aspects of the world with which we are familiar in the 21st century.
The dominant view of historians is that an economic decline precipitated the collapse of the Egyptian empire. Egypt’s earliest pharaohs presided over a wealthy kingdom, and built temples, palaces, and pyramids. But Egypt’s prosperity was entirely contingent on the Nile River, which provided bountiful water to a country that is essentially a desert. All it needed was a few years of drought, amplified by military invasions and a range of bitter internal disputes, and the result was widespread ruin and irreversible decline.
But even if this explains why Egypt lost its status as a superpower, it does not explain why ancient Egypt’s approach to life and death — and to so many other aspects of the human condition — were completely discarded and replaced by the civilizations that followed on after it. From the sixth century B.C. onward, Egypt was governed by a succession of foreign powers. But although these rulers left Egyptian culture largely intact, the ideas and ideals that Egyptian culture represented lost their grip, and eventually they vanished completely.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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