Image Details

IMAGE BY DAVID A. FALK

STORAGE WARS. These mudbrick storage depots stand outside the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramesses II in Thebes. Built of mudbrick, the 13th-century B.C.E. depots stored food to guarantee that the temple could keep functioning even after the pharaoh’s death. Exodus 1:11 says that Israelite slaves built the “storage cities” of Pithom and Rameses. It is likely that the “storage cities” of this verse actually refer to mudbrick storage depots within these cities, similar to the ones pictured above.