When read­ers ask if I enjoy writ­ing his­tor­i­cal nov­els, one of the first things I always tell them is that the research is the fun part, writ­ing the book is hard work. That was cer­tain­ly the case for The Mid­wives’ Escape: from Egypt to Jeri­cho. 

There were so many inter­est­ing pieces of his­to­ry to learn! For exam­ple, unlike most ancient cul­tures where men mar­ried more than one woman, in Lagash (mod­ern-day Iraq) the cus­tom was that a woman could mar­ry more than one hus­band — as long as they were broth­ers. Of course I put that sit­u­a­tion in my nov­el.

I had already learned a great deal about medieval mid­wifery while writ­ing Rashi’s Daugh­ters, so I decid­ed to put that knowl­edge to use by mak­ing my Egypt­ian moth­er and daugh­ter hero­ines mid­wives. I couldn’t resist nam­ing them after the famous Egypt­ian mid­wives from Exo­dus 1:15. But I still had to research ancient mid­wifery to ensure that my mid­wives stayed in char­ac­ter. To my sur­prise, and delight, I learned that ancient Egypt­ian mid­wives uti­lized bronze for­ceps to pull out a baby wedged in the mother’s birth canal (a pro­ce­dure I endured with my first child’s birth). So I made sure to write a scene that includ­ed the tech­nique and, to show my old­er heroine’s exper­tise, I includ­ed a breech birth scene. They also knew what herbs brought on an abor­tion, and so I men­tion that as well. 

Yet my mid­wife char­ac­ters were by neces­si­ty heal­ers. Accord­ing to Num­bers and Deuteron­o­my, Israelites were involved in a series of wars with var­i­ous Canaan­ite armies while con­quer­ing the Promised Land. But I didn’t want to describe every con­flict the Torah men­tions, so I only detailed bat­tles with the Israelites’ most well-known adver­saries: Amalek and Bashan. Which meant learn­ing about ancient weapons, var­i­ous com­bat strate­gies, and com­mon injuries. I turned to nov­els fea­tur­ing sol­diers for some of this back­ground work and I was impressed by nov­els about ancient wars such as Har­ry Sidebottom’s War­rior of Rome and Made­line Miller’s Song of Achilles. 

In use were swords, shields, javelins, char­i­ots, and bows and arrows. And a pop­u­lar weapon was the sling — think David and Goliath. There are ancient paint­ings of sol­diers that show slingers rid­ing in char­i­ots or walk­ing beside them, their slings hang­ing from their belts. Used by shep­herds and goat herders to keep car­ni­vores away from their flocks, slings were rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple and inex­pen­sive to make. And their ammu­ni­tion — stones — was read­i­ly avail­able and free. 

Since my main char­ac­ters were going to be women from the mixed mul­ti­tude (non-Israelites) who left Egypt with the Israelites, the first thing I had to deter­mine was who the mixed mul­ti­tude were. Thank­ful­ly Los Ange­les has many reli­gious research libraries, includ­ing those at Hebrew Union Col­lege (HUC), Amer­i­can Jew­ish Uni­ver­si­ty (AJU), and Loy­ola-Mary­mount Uni­ver­si­ty (LMU), which is with­in walk­ing dis­tance of my house. 

Ear­ly on, I found out that ancient Egypt had trade rela­tions with many coun­tries pri­or to 1700 BCE, espe­cial­ly with the Hit­tites from Ana­to­lia (mod­ern-day Turkey). In between their own wars, these men were for­mi­da­ble mer­ce­nar­ies, some serv­ing in Egypt. I was famil­iar with Hit­tites from the Bible sto­ry of David and Bathshe­ba (wife of Uri­ah the Hit­tite). Since I knew my nov­el would fea­ture sol­diers, (in par­tic­u­lar I had been think­ing of for­eign ones, who could then train the flee­ing Israelite slaves) Hit­tites were a log­i­cal choice. With a focus on women, I includ­ed Nubians, also known as Cushites, famous for their female eques­tri­an-archers. This allowed me to intro­duce a spe­cif­ic Cushite who would mar­ry Moses, much to Miri­am and Aaron’s disapproval.

I learned about the Bronze Age Col­lapse at the end of twelfth cen­tu­ry BCE, which caused many Mediter­ranean locales, such as Troy, Lebanon, Canaan, Syr­ia, Cyprus, Lagash, Ana­to­lia, Crete, and more to suf­fer drought and famine. Bib­li­cal schol­ars posit that this was when Jacob’s fam­i­ly left Canaan for Egypt, along with oth­er starv­ing peo­ples who lat­er became part of the mixed multitude. 

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, mod­ern Bible schol­ars are skep­ti­cal of the ver­sion of his­to­ry pre­sent­ed in the Torah, pre­fer­ring to call it leg­end. Of course, six mil­lion Israelites didn’t escape Egypt; the entire Egypt­ian pop­u­la­tion was bare­ly six mil­lion. Still, I couldn’t ignore all the mir­a­cles described in Exo­dus, such as the man­na appear­ing in the desert just as food is run­ning out, or the pil­lar of fire that kept the Egypt­ian army at bay all night. And how did so many peo­ple cross the Sea of Reeds, if not by a miracle?

I recalled a col­lege astron­o­my class where I learned how tides are affect­ed by the moon and sun. When the sun, moon, and Earth are in align­ment (at a new or full moon), solar tides have an addi­tive effect on lunar tides, cre­at­ing extra high, high tides, and very low, low tides. Dur­ing the ver­nal and autum­nal equinox­es (March 21 and Sep­tem­ber 23, respec­tive­ly) the sun is posi­tioned direct­ly above the equa­tor, caus­ing even high­er high tides and low­er low tides.

I found myself con­sid­er­ing when Israelites observed the first Passover. In nar­row low-lying wet­lands, such as the Sea of Reeds, peo­ple could walk on crushed reeds dur­ing low tide, but the high tide would be over fif­teen feet at its height, deep enough to drown heav­i­ly armored Egyp­tians and hors­es. But if the Israelites, and the mixed mul­ti­tude, left one side of the shore and arrived at the oth­er dur­ing high tide, espe­cial­ly when the east wind blew, they would be at the deep­est water dur­ing the low­est tide and thus able to walk through it. 

Was this a mir­a­cle? Maybe, it depends on whom you ask.

For those read­ers who want to delve deep­er into this top­ic, I high­ly rec­om­mend The Exo­dus: How it Hap­pened and Why it Mat­ters by Richard Elliott Fried­man.

And for read­ers who want to explore the rich world of ancient Egypt, I hope you’ll read my new book, The Mid­wives’ Escape: from Egypt to Jeri­cho.