If there is an ongoing Great Philosophical Debate between Science and Religion, there is an equally salient if less public debate between the claims of Religion and those of History.
The very allegation that sacred texts, in an attempt to establish as fact some particular cultural narrative or cosmological idea, make quasi-historical claims, is offensive to some religious dogmatists. The historical discipline examines the literature of a people, whether claimed as secular or sacred, with the understanding that it represents a collective expression of the intellect, imagination and memory of a particular group.
Knowing where to draw the lines between intellect and imagination – (the source of theory and myth, essential tools for the exploration of the metaphysical/spiritual domain); and memory, the only thing that factually grounds us to common coherent physical reality is often a matter of contention, especially when a particular set of purported historical facts suits the purpose of one culture/group over another.
A thing about memory (common human flaw both historians and religionists alike often fail to avoid) – is the extent to which sentiment and experience become almost inextricably bound, painting fact so heavily with opinion, that the two are no longer distinguishable. Misty, water colored memories are the result. Facts fade. Mists thicken. Water colored legend is born.
In the end, we remember what feels good (or bad). Cultures, nations and individuals alike.
True history however, is more science than sentiment. While it is practically impossible to distil all subjectivity from memory, attempts at the purest strains represent the most reliable historical records.
The story remembered in Queens of Courage 1, is a great demonstration of the above argument. Thought by some to be the ancient Egyptian version of the Jewish Exodus, the story known as the Expulsion of the Hyksos has so many consonant themes, some historians believe that these are the ‘Fox vs. CNN’ accounts of the same historical encounter between two cultures, diametrically recalled through distinct politico-cultural prisms.
Whether Exodus or Expulsion, for the pure historian, which one is ‘fake news’ is not a thing of cultural sentiment or of faith grounded in such, but an issue mediated by the archaeological investigation of geological sediment and the facts that can be pieced together from such.
Here we merely tell the story – Starring: Ahmes Nefertari, the female Moses, (quite literally, her name means The Great Moses, Beautiful Queen) Enjoy what might be an ‘untold half’ of a story much told:
YeKengalé 