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About the Book
The future of a people lies in the
hearts of two women
Seven Days to the
Sea is the story of the Exodus, from before the birth of Moses
through the first two years of life in the wilderness. It is told from
the point of view of Moses's sister, Miryam, and his wife, Tzipporah.
Through alternating narratives, these two women offer different
perspectives of the critical episodes---including the plagues, the
crossing of the Red Sea, and the Golden Calf---as well as their own
difficult, but ultimately close relationship. This is the story of two
women who made a difference in the most important event from biblical
history. As a child, Miryam
foretells the birth of a leader who will save their people from
oppression---a vision so vivid that she dedicates her life to seeing it
fulfilled in her brother, Moses. But after many years, she wonders in
the deepest confines of her heart if her sacrifices mean anything, if
her calling is real.
Tzipporah, a desert shepherdess who knows nothing of her husband's
divine purpose, suffers as he is torn from her by a strange god, a
foreign people, and an unforgiving sister. In her heart, she harbors
terrible secrets that haunt the love she shares with Moses and threaten
her tenuous peace
with Miryam.
Together, Miryam and Tzipporah weave a narrative that
gives voice to the women of Exodus---their lives, their community, and
ultimately, their sisterhood.
The Research Behind the Story
When I began Seven Days to the Sea, I decided that I wanted to make
the novel as historically accurate as possible, even (or perhaps
especially!) if that meant dispelling certain notions that we might already
have about the biblical story of the Exodus. While many facets of human
existence are surely universal across time and place, probably no aspect of
our lives is untouched by our cultural, political, economic, and physical
circumstances. And so I believed that to breathe life into Miryam and
Tzipporah I would need a good understanding of the religion, society,
politics, and geography of their time.
The task I set myself---to recreate the world of ancient
Egypt and Midyan---turned out to be an enormous challenge. After all, how can
we really know what life was like in the year 1200 BCE? For some aspects of
the story, material proved to be abundant. For others, I had to be a little
more creative!
Though I did not set out to write a literalist
interpretation of the bible, I did begin with the assumption that somewhere
behind the text lay at least a thin level of deep historical truth. Of
course scholars have spent lifetimes debating this point and surely no
science will ever prove or disprove it. But this seemed like a reasonable
working assumption--a place to begin. So first I read the biblical text very
closely for clues. I looked at commentaries by scholars and theologians.
After that I read books and articles about the science behind some of the
miraculous phenomena in the story including the plagues, the burning bush,
and the parting of the Red Sea. One book in particular, The Miracles of the
Exodus, by Professor Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University, was extremely
influential in my thinking. And while the characters in my book all accept
the miracles simply as coming from God---no further explanation
necessary---understanding some of the possible scientific phenomena behind
these events allowed me to write about them in a more authentic way.
The details of everyday living in ancient Egypt were
not hard to find. Through tomb art, religious writing, government records,
and archaeological remains, we know quite a lot about agriculture, life on
the Nile, architecture, religious life, and the material stuff that
interests me so much---pottery, cookware, food, cosmetics, medicine, textiles,
furniture, jewelry, and so on. I incorporated all these details into my
description of the pharaoh's palace and the princess as well as in the lives
of the Israelites who most likely farmed the fertile land of Goshen, east of Rameses' capital. Scholars have also been able to identify the main trade
routes and various outposts of the Egyptian army which also became very
important to the part of my story that involves the flight from Egypt into Midyan.
Determining a specific historical context for my story
required a little more digging. When I turned to scholarly work on ancient
Egypt, I became persuaded that the pharaoh in the first part of the Exodus
is Rameses II. This pharaoh built a new capital in the Nile Delta, which
matches the geography and political circumstances of the biblical text. He
had an ambitious son who most likely murdered at least several of his
thirteen older brothers in order to inherit the throne. This, in turn,
provided me with a good context to explain why Moses left Egypt. The
biblical explanation for his flight--that he murdered an overseer who was
beating an Israelite--always struck me as unrealistic. After all, this was a
world that did not value human life. If Moses was a favorite at court,
wouldn't he be able to get away with murder? But once I began to imagine the
character of Meremptah as a jealous prince who perceives Moses as a threat
to his position at court, everything fell into place---the murder became a
pretext for the Meremptah to rid himself of a political rival.
Much of what I learned about ancient Egypt found its
way into the first part of the book. But perhaps the most startling and
important discovery I made was about slavery. Under Rameses slave labor was
a standard practice imposed on all foreigners. Instead of being conscripted
into the army, all non-Egyptian men---not just the Israelites---were required
to spend a certain period of the year working on the pharaoh's building
projects. So every family living in Egypt was forced to serve the state in
one way or another. From my point of view this made the Israelites' escape
from oppression all that much more dramatic and important. It was not just
physical slavery that they fled but a system that accepted political tyranny
of a whole population as a given. In my book, Miryam soon realizes that the
main task of her people is not simply to run away but to build a just
society.
Finding information about Midyan---Tzipporah's
home---proved much more difficult. This is an area on the west coast of Arabia
where there has been little archeological exploration. Also, the Midyanites,
being much less sophisticated culturally than the Egyptians, did not have
writing. We know from the bible that they were a semi-nomadic shepherding
people. We do have some remains of pottery and metalworking. Rock art and
several sacred sites have been helpful to scholars in determining something
about the religion in the area. Also, I found several very helpful books
about flora and fauna. But I had to be a little more creative in my research
for this part of the book.
I began by supposing that until the nineteenth century,
when modernization came to Midyan, life among the Midyanite tribes probably
had not changed much for thousands of years. Then I found books written by a
number of authors, including Sir Richard Burton, T.H. Lawrence ("Lawrence of
Arabia") and Alois Musil, all of whom spent time living among the Midyanites
and exploring the terrain. Musil in particular drew detailed maps and wrote
much about clan relations, magical beliefs, and customs. All of this rich
information helped me draw a picture of the primitive and brutal world of
Tzipporah's home. The contrast between Tzipporah as a country girl and
Miryam as a city girl also help me explain and explore some of the tensions
between them, only hinted at in the bible.
I spent about six months doing research for Seven
Days to the Sea. In the process I purchased many books, I utilized at
least four different university libraries, and found material via the
internet from as far away as Bahrain. Sometimes I felt more like a detective
than an author! Perhaps my favorite piece of research involved learning
about sheep obstetrics. Because Tzipporah is a shepherdess and her
relationship to animals plays an important part in her story, I needed to
know something about the subject. But the closest I had ever been to a live
sheep was the zoo. I discovered a series of educational tapes made by two
veterinarians for people studying animal husbandry. Unfortunately, no
library was willing to lend them to me so I had to purchase them myself from
a livestock supply catalogue. To this day I am still on their mailing list!
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