Jordan's Milk and Honey
Margaret Jervis on a new exhibition at the British Museum on the Egyptian empire.
New-found treasures of the later dynasties of the Egyptian empire in the twelfth century BC can be seen in a special exhibition entitled 'Digging in Jordan' which opens this month at the British Museum.
The British Museum's excavations at Tell es Sa'ideyeh, just east of the Jordan river, furnish a rich insight into the opulence of a period of transition just prior to the rise of the Israelites.
Fighting off the incursions of the Sea Peoples, the name given by the Egyptians to the cultural rotavators of the east and west Mediterranean, Egypt embarked on a radical restructuring and rationalisation of its empire in Canaan.
At the instigation of Ramesses II around the hypothetical period of the exodus, cities were abandoned with local inhabitants retreating to pastoral subsistence in the hill country, while strategically important outposts were strengthened which, for a fleeting moment of history, flourished.
Perhaps comparable to a Birmingham of the late Bronze Age, the inland city at Tell es Sa'ideyeh briefly enjoyed frenetic prosperity as a metal bashing, craft and distribution centre to service ailing Egypt.
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