Oh lord, Help Me


I have a question about the part where they're trying to prove that the slaves were hebrew by saying they found some writing on the wall which was not hyrogliphic(sp?), and says "Oh Lord, Help us".

Would a slave be educated enough to be able to read and write?

I could understand if it were by someone who was forced into slavery (say after egyptions have conquered his country), but in this case, they are claiming it was carved by a hebrew, someone whose family have been enslaved for generations. I doubt this man would have gone to school.

Your thoughts?

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We're not talking Shakespeare here. Slaves would presumably know a few characters. And a few characters for "God" is surely something they'd know. It had to have been all over. And all it takes is one slave that obsessively writes something to leave a trace or for others to pick up the habit. (Think of all the times GIs wrote "Kilroy was here".) And surely some slaves served masters that forced them to learn a bit writing.

On the other hand, a few characters could mean a zillion different things. I would've found it more compelling if the video actually showed us the alphabetic characters. But it didn't and hurriedly panned over something unreadable and with no further explanation. Sigh. Perhaps if they had a quick interview with a scholar at that point, at least to say "yes, these have no meaning as ideograms and do have this singular meaning as alphabetics." Something like that.

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