Parshat Shemot6 min read

Twin Cities Rising, Rome's Walls and Egypt's Yoke

As a she-wolf nursed the twins who would wall Rome, Pharaoh tightened the yoke on Israel, and two cities climbed on one dark clock.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Wolf and the Mortar
  2. The Same Dark Hour in Egypt
  3. The Yoke Comes Down
  4. What the Angel Carried to the Field
  5. Two Houses Built on One Foundation
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A she-wolf bent her head over two newborn brothers and let them drink. Their mother had died bringing them into the world, and there was no one else, only the wolf that God had appointed to keep them alive. Remus and Romulus grew up on that milk, on a hillside above a river, in the reign of Jotham who sat as king in Judah. The wolf did not know what she was raising. She fed the founders of the empire that would one day march on the Temple and set it burning.

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The Wolf and the Mortar

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Romulus came down from the hill and began to lay stone on stone. He marked out the line of a city and called it Roma, and he raised its walls high enough that no army could come over them easily. He chose one hundred old men to sit as his counselors, the first of the elders whose word would shape the place for centuries. Stone went up. The walls closed around the seven hills like a fist closing.

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After Romulus came others. Numa Pompilius looked at the year and found it too short. The old Romans had counted only ten months and let the dead of winter run uncounted, so Numa cut two new months out of the silence and named them, January and February, and made the calendar honest. After him, Tullus Hostilius wrapped himself in robes dyed the deep red of purple, the first man in that city to clothe his body in the color of kings. Seven kings in all sat over Rome, one after another, for two hundred and forty years. Then the line broke. For four hundred and sixty-four years no crown rested on any Roman head, until Julius Caesar took it.

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The Same Dark Hour in Egypt

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While the mortar dried on Rome's walls, a different door was closing far to the south. A new Pharaoh rose over Egypt who did not know Joseph, did not remember the man who had filled the granaries and saved the kingdom from famine. He looked at the children of Israel multiplying in his land and he was afraid.

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The Egyptians of that country worshipped a strange thing. Each day at the fourth hour an ox came up out of the river and flew. Sarapis, they called it, a flying ox that rose into the sky, sang its hymns across the morning, and vanished again into the water. Before that singing ox the Egyptians bowed, and from a people who bowed to a flying ox there would be no mercy for slaves.

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The Yoke Comes Down

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Pharaoh laid the weight on Israel and pressed. They were driven into the fields and into the canals. They cut channels for the river to run where Egypt wanted it to run. They carried dung in clay pots balanced on their shoulders, hauling it through the heat from morning to dark. They mixed mud and straw and baked brick, and with the brick they built two cities for Pharaoh, fortified storehouses with walls of their own, Pithom and Piramses.

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So the walls rose in two places at once. In Italy the wolf's foundlings stacked the stones of an empire. In Egypt the bent backs of slaves stacked the stones of their own prison. One city was a throne going up. The other was a grave being dug. They climbed together, hour for hour, on the same dark clock.

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Then Pharaoh sharpened the decree into three blades. The first was labor that broke the body. The second was the field, where men and women were worked like beasts under the sun. The third was the worst, and it fell on the unborn. Every Hebrew boy, the order ran, was to be drowned in the Nile the moment he drew breath. The river that fed the flying ox would now be fed Hebrew sons.

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What the Angel Carried to the Field

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The women of Israel would not let their children be counted and killed. When their time came they went out alone, away from the houses and the soldiers, out into the open fields, and there among the furrows they gave birth in secret and laid the infants down in the dirt.

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And God did not leave them in the dirt. He sent an angel down into the fields, and the angel went from child to child like a midwife. The angel washed each newborn clean of the birth and the dust. Then into the small closed hands the angel pressed two stones. One stone gave milk when the child pressed it to its mouth. The other gave honey. The hidden sons of Israel lay in the open ground of Egypt and nursed on milk and honey from stones in their own fists, fed by heaven while Pharaoh's order to drown them ran through the streets above.

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Two Houses Built on One Foundation

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The chronicle holds the two pictures up side by side and will not let them apart. Remus and Romulus at the wolf's belly, Israel at Pharaoh's whip. The hundred elders taking their seats in Rome, the three decrees coming down in Egypt. The purple robe on Tullus Hostilius, the dung pot on the shoulder of a slave. Rome counting out its kings, Egypt counting out the drowned.

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One day the children fed by the angel would walk out of that land with their tribes behind them. And one day the city the wolf had nursed would send its legions east and burn the House that those tribes built in Jerusalem. The first house of bondage and the last empire of bondage went up out of the ground in the same years, under the same sky, while the wolf licked her two foundlings and the angel pressed stones into the fists of the drowned.

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Chronicles Of JerahmeelRomeEgyptSlaveryRomulusExodusApocrypha
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From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Chronicles of Jerahmeel XLIChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

The Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, preserves an unusual parallel timeline linking the rise of Rome with the suffering of Israel in Egypt. Two brothers, Remus and Romulus, arose as the first kings of Rome during the reign of Jotham, King of Judah. According to the chronicle, their mother died giving birth to them, and God appointed a she-wolf to nurse the twins until they were grown.

Romulus built the city of Roma, appointed one hundred elders as counselors, and erected its walls. After him came Numa Pompilius, who added two months to the Roman calendar. January and February, since the Romans originally counted only ten months in a year. Tullus Hostilius was the first king to clothe himself in purple robes. In all, seven kings ruled Rome for 240 years, after which Rome went without a monarch for 464 years until Julius Caesar.

The chronicle then pivots abruptly to Egypt, where a new Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph. The Egyptians worshipped a flying ox called Sarapis that appeared daily at the fourth hour, rising from the river to sing hymns in the sky before vanishing again. Pharaoh imposed crushing slavery on Israel, the people were forced to dig channels, carry manure in pots on their shoulders, and build the fortified cities of Pithom and Piramses. The Egyptians decreed three punishments: hard labor, field slavery, and drowning every Hebrew male infant in the Nile. But God sent an angel to the fields where Hebrew women gave birth in secret, who washed their children and placed two miraculous stones in their hands, one giving milk, the other honey.

Full source
Chronicles of Jerahmeel XLChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

After the Tower of Babel, the descendants of the nations scattered into separate companies. The Kittim settled in the plain of Campania by the river Tiber, while the children of Tubal built the city of Sabino nearby. Conflict erupted immediately, the children of Tubal refused to let the Kittim intermarry with them. So during harvest, the young men of Kittim raided Sabino and kidnapped their daughters.

The next year, when Tubal's army marched against them, the Kittim held up the babies born of those stolen daughters on the city walls. "You have come to fight your own sons and daughters," they called out. "Are we not your own flesh and blood?" The attack was called off.

Into this world came Sefo, the son of Eliphaz, the grandson of Esau. He had fled from Egypt after Joseph's death and served as a captain in Carthage. One day, searching for a lost bull near a mountain, he discovered a cave containing a monstrous creature, human from the waist down, goat from the waist up, devouring his cattle. Sefo split its skull open. The grateful Kittim named the beast "Janus" and gave Sefo that name as an honorific, crowning him their king.

He acquired a second name, Saturnus, after the planet Shabtai, which the Kittim worshipped. Janus Saturnus reigned fifty-five years over all the Kittim and Italy. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, this genealogy traces Rome's founding directly back to the house of Esau. Through Sefo's line came generations of kings who built temples, waged wars, and eventually established the city of Roma, named after Romulus, who built its walls and made a covenant with David.

Full source