What Makes People Tick?

Serabit el Khadim is a mountain in the Sinai peninsula in Egypt. Near it are two other peaks with names that, to those who read the Torah / Pentateuch, may sound familiar: Jebel Saniya and Jebel Ghorabi. There is a temple to the goddess Hathor on Serabit el-Khadim. After reading about the location in a fantasy fiction book that mentioned prominent archaeologist Flinders Petrie as well as the temple to Hathor, I became intrigued and wanted to learn more about this desert location. The book also mentioned the possibility that this location had been where Moses received the Ten Commandments, something that most definitely intrigued me as well. I am personally interested in the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt and enjoy learning about the period of our world's history in which this Exodus may have taken place. Unlike many, I do not believe that Rameses II was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, believing it to be much more likely that the Exodus occurred around the time of Akhenaten...

The Biblical Archaeology Society reported on the 15th August 2014 that new research has found that the ancient Egyptians began mummifying their dead much longer ago than previously thought. About fifteen hundred years earlier to be exact. Reading the article inspired me to learn some more about Egyptian mummies and the mummification process. The British Museum's website explains that "the earliest ancient Egyptians buried their dead in small pits in the desert. The heat and dryness of the sand dehydrated the bodies quickly, creating lifelike and natural 'mummies'." ( Mummification , Ancient Egypt | The British Museum) The Ancient History Encyclopedia explains that although unintentional mummification happened as far back as prehistoric times, mummification as a purposeful and ritualistic process started around 2600 B.C.E. It was a long and expensive procedure which is why mummification was first reserved solely for Pharaohs whose mummies were placed in opulen...

The University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research has conducted an extensive survey in seven Muslim-majority countries -- Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- looking at Tunisia as the birthplace of the Arab Spring and how happenings in Tunisia effect other Arab countries. The study itself is very interesting - read it as a PDF here  - however what caught my eye was a January 2014 article by the Pew Research Center (using UoM's data)  looking at the way MEN prefer women to dress in public places in the above-mentioned countries.

According to an 09 August 2013 article by CNN, part of a sphinx statue has been found in northern Israel. The find is important for many reasons, not least because it is the only piece of Egyptian sculpture found anywhere in the Levant. As the article reports, excavations at Tel Hazor in northern Israel first began in the 1950s. The capital city of Canaan some 4,000 years ago, Tel Hazor is conveniently located on the route connecting Egypt to Babylon. Some quotes from Mystery surrounds Egyptian sphinx unearthed in Israel which you can read at the CNN website : "Inexplicably buried far from Egypt, the paws of a sphinx statue, resting on its base, have been unearthed with an inscription in hieroglyphs naming King Mycerinus. The pharaoh ruled in 2500 BC and oversaw the construction of one of the three Giza pyramids, where he was enshrined.  "This is of extreme importance from many points of view, since it is the only sphinx of this king known in the world -- even in Egyp...