5/17/23
Newsletter #339
The Crack of Dawn
My newest project that I’m writing is called, 10 Commandments: The Musical. Unsurprisingly, it is the story of Moses and the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II. When I got the idea a few months ago, I began my research by reading the one and only account of those events in the Old Testament Bible. That was pretty good, although it’s short and sadly, there is no corroborating historical evidence of any kind. Therefore, I turned to the movies. I’ve seen Cecil B. DeMille’s film, The Ten Commandments (1956) several times. I have even seen a brand-new, 35mm, CinemaScope print at the Cinerama Dome, and you know what? That movie sucks. The Oscar-winning special effects particularly suck. As me and my buddy Rick were leaving the theater, Rick said, “Cecil B. DeMille was the best filmmaker in the world in 1913, and he never got any better.” I then downloaded the original shooting script of the film, and surprise, it’s awful, too.
Moses is not an historical character; Moses is a mythological character, exactly like Zeus and Thor. So, forgetting about Moses and the ten commandments for a moment, I crazily turned to “actual” history, and began reading about Egypt and Ramses II, who is an historical character. The history of Ramses II (1303 BC – 1213 BC) is documented well enough that Egyptologists believe that he assumed the throne on May 31, 1279 BC. That’s pretty specific. In the Egyptian accounts of Ramses II, there is a reference to an enslaved tribe that could have been the Hebrews, but it doesn’t say that. In any case, that’s when Moses was supposed to have lived.
I digress. I recently attended the Ramses exhibit at the museum in San Francisco with Bruce Campbell, his wife and her brother. As we drove there, I told them what little I knew about Ramses II. Most importantly, of course, was that he was portrayed in DeMille’s movie by the young, handsome, and outlandish ham, Yul Brynner, so that’s my image of him. I told them the story of the ten plagues and the ensuing exodus of the Hebrews. At the museum we are first shown a 20-minute, History Channel-style documentary about Ramses and there is no mention of the Hebrews. As we were led through the museum by a guide, once again, Hebrews are never mentioned. I whispered this to the others, and they had already not only noticed, but had come up with a woke conspiracy theory, that’s probably true, that it would be uncool to show Ramses or the Hebrews/Jews in that slave-master/slave relationship. They decided, let’s just concentrate on Ramses’ achievements, and overlook his foibles.
Which almost brings me to my point.
However, I must digress again. I just watched the first 30-minutes of Ridley Scott’s instantly forgotten epic motion picture, Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), which is the story of Moses and Ramses. Instead of Charlton Heston with a big beard as the Hebrew Moses, this version has Christian Bale as a much hipper, more action-oriented Moses, wearing black leather and always ready to kick ass. In between the scenes of scorching human drama — including an incredibly bored-looking, John Turturro, as Ramses I — are expensive digital effects showing aerial views of Memphis, Egypt, circa 1250 BC. In all of the shots the pyramids and tombs are surrounded by scaffolding while thousands of slaves – presumably Hebrews – are busily building them.
You may have noticed that I refer to these enslaved folks in Egypt as Hebrews, not Jews. In the Bible they are referred to as either Hebrews or Israelites. It’s not until much later in the story in the Sinai Desert that Moses makes a covenant with the Lord and receives ten commandments, that causes the Hebrews finally become Jews. “Israelites” is something that occurred in translation, because that’s jumping the gun.
Alas, I have arrived where I was going. So, I am setting my fabulous new stage musical version of this story against a severely decaying society that has been in decline for over 1,000 years. All of the great structures of ancient Egypt are from around the same period, 2613 – 2494 BC, known as the Fourth Dynasty, or this inventive name, “The Golden Age of Pyramids.”
The story of Ramses and Moses takes place in 1250 BC. Therefore, it has been over 1,000 years since most of those pyramids were built. 1,000 years! 1,000 years ago it was 1023, and the center of western civilization was Cordoba, Spain, where the Muslim Moors were doing the world a great favor and saved the literary works of the Greeks and Romans. Christianity was in the Dark Ages and had burned all of those books as heretical. 1,000 years is a long time. Nobody was building any pyramids or great tombs during the time of Moses and Ramses, so Ridley Scott was just plan-old ripped-off on those overpriced digital effects.
In my play, I have two Egyptian engineers in a palm frond construction shack, with a crude clay miniature of all the pyramids on a table in front of them. They point offstage to where there is the sound of construction on a small tomb for Ramses I, who has recently died. I don’t have a composer, so I’m stealing tunes. You figure it out. The two older engineers sing wistfully.
A long, long time ago/ I can still remember/ How pyramids used to make me smile . . .
It is exactly 6:00 and I see orange behind the trees. That means sun.
Was a sunny day, not a cloud was in the sky.
Not a negative word was heard from the people passing by.