Apparently, the old king didn't go peacefully. According to Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, he died in utter shame and disgrace, a repulsive figure to everyone. They buried him in the royal tombs in Zoan, Egypt, but there was a problem. Usually, they'd embalm their kings, right? Not this guy. His body was so… well, gone bad, that no one could even get close enough to perform the embalming. Imagine the stench! They had to bury him in a hurry. The text says, "Thus the Lord requited him with evil for the evil he had done in his days to Israel." Harsh, right? After a long and terrible reign of ninety-four years, he met a terrifying end.

And then there's his son, ADIKAM.

Adikam, a mere twenty years old, took the throne. Now, the Egyptians, they just called all their kings "Pharaoh," like it was a title. But his wise men had a different name for him: AKUZ. In Egyptian, akuz means "short." And apparently, Adikam was quite the awkward, undersized fellow.

But don't let his stature fool you. Adikam quickly proved to be even worse than his father, which, let’s be honest, is a pretty low bar. He really cranked up the oppression of the Israelites. He went to Goshen, where they were slaving away, and basically said, "No more slack! Get those bricks made!" He intensified their labor.

Here's where it gets truly horrific.

He put officers from among the Israelites in charge of the labor, and over them, he put Egyptian taskmasters. It was a system designed to break them. And then came the truly unspeakable part. Pharaoh set a quota for bricks that had to be made every single day. According to Legends of the Jews, whenever they fell short – and they always fell short – the taskmasters would do something unimaginable. They would go to the Israelite women and take their infants. The number of babies they took corresponded to the number of missing bricks.

And what did they do with these innocent children? They put them into the buildings instead of the missing bricks. Can you even imagine that?

The taskmasters forced the Israelite men to put their own children in the walls. Picture this: a father, weeping uncontrollably, placing his own son into the brickwork, covering him with mortar, his tears mingling with the dust. This, according to the legend, is the depth of depravity that ADIKAM, this “short” Pharaoh, sank to.

Think about that for a moment. The weight of that image. It’s not just a story from a book. It's a stark reminder of the unimaginable cruelty that humans are capable of, and the enduring power of stories to keep these memories—and warnings—alive. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? How far will power go? And what are we doing to stand against such darkness?