The Prince of Egypt (1998)
DreamWorks SKG
Val Kilmer as the speaking voice of Moses
Amick Byram as the singing voice of Moses
Animation
DreamWorks SKG
Val Kilmer as the speaking voice of Moses
Amick Byram as the singing voice of Moses
Animation
Time has passed, and Moses descends the mountain carrying two stone tablets. If we look quickly and carefully we might make out some kind of writing on the topmost stone. Surely, these must be the Ten Commandments, and the source of the stone’s text must be the Bible--or so one might assume.
Looking at an enhanced close-up of the tablet, shown in The Prince of Egypt, it is clear that the language does not seem to be modern. What language is it, then? The Bible does not describe how the physical commandments looked, nor the language in which they were written. Taking an educated guess at the answer is harder than one might initially think.
Tradition holds that the Israelites were in Egypt for 400 years.
The Bible does not state what language they spoke when they entered or when they left, nor whether they could read or write. It might be assumed that Moses, raised in an Egyptian court, could read and write several languages, but it was God who the Bible says engraved the commandments on the stone—and Masoretic Hebrew (the language of the Torah scroll), was not yet in existence.
Hoping to present an authentic representation, DreamWorks turned to Ziony Zevit, Professor of Bible and Northwest Semitic Languages at The University of Judaism in Los Angeles, and author of The Anterior Construction in Classical Hebrew (published by Scholars' Press). Since there is no known existing examples of the language of the Israelites at the time the film shows (approximately Thirteenth Century BCE), Dr. Zevit wrote out the text in the Hebrew of the Torah scroll, using several different styles of Canaanite script from later periods. For artistic reasons, a style was chosen from among these by DreamWorks, which resembles that found on the Mesha stele* of approximately 850 BCE. The language of the tablet shown in The Prince of Egypt is, therefore, biblical Hebrew, but written in Moabite script of the mid-ninth century BCE.
There is no consensus as to the numbering of the first several
commandments. (Jews have generally considered the first commandment to be “I am the Lord your God,” which some others feel is merely a preamble.) However, the film does not present an opinion on the subject, for the lettering on the first tablet is hidden behind the second tablet, which depicts the last five commandments.
Footnote:
The source for the above information was Professor Zevit. A representative of DreamWorks provided the following reaction to the paragraphs above:
“…Ziony Zevit chose the 'style of writing' and the artists here copied it EXACTLY. So the placement of the style of writing in a time frame was done by Prof. Zevit, not Dreamworks' artists."
Tradition holds that the Israelites were in Egypt for 400 years.
The Bible does not state what language they spoke when they entered or when they left, nor whether they could read or write. It might be assumed that Moses, raised in an Egyptian court, could read and write several languages, but it was God who the Bible says engraved the commandments on the stone—and Masoretic Hebrew (the language of the Torah scroll), was not yet in existence.
Hoping to present an authentic representation, DreamWorks turned to Ziony Zevit, Professor of Bible and Northwest Semitic Languages at The University of Judaism in Los Angeles, and author of The Anterior Construction in Classical Hebrew (published by Scholars' Press). Since there is no known existing examples of the language of the Israelites at the time the film shows (approximately Thirteenth Century BCE), Dr. Zevit wrote out the text in the Hebrew of the Torah scroll, using several different styles of Canaanite script from later periods. For artistic reasons, a style was chosen from among these by DreamWorks, which resembles that found on the Mesha stele* of approximately 850 BCE. The language of the tablet shown in The Prince of Egypt is, therefore, biblical Hebrew, but written in Moabite script of the mid-ninth century BCE.
There is no consensus as to the numbering of the first several
commandments. (Jews have generally considered the first commandment to be “I am the Lord your God,” which some others feel is merely a preamble.) However, the film does not present an opinion on the subject, for the lettering on the first tablet is hidden behind the second tablet, which depicts the last five commandments.
Footnote:
The source for the above information was Professor Zevit. A representative of DreamWorks provided the following reaction to the paragraphs above:
“…Ziony Zevit chose the 'style of writing' and the artists here copied it EXACTLY. So the placement of the style of writing in a time frame was done by Prof. Zevit, not Dreamworks' artists."