Ezekiel 30:13 'Thus says the Lord God: "I will also destroy the idols, and cause the images to cease from Memphis; there shall no longer be princes from the land of Egypt; I will put fear in the land of Egypt.'"
The largest Kansas City’s Union Station has ever attempted starts April 4th – it’s the recreation of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, known affectionately as ‘King Tut", and is this exhibit’s first stop in its tour of North America. It’s created quite a buzz around Kansas City. Visitors are being told they can travel back in time on a ‘virtual tour’ of King Tut’s recreated tomb, going through each chamber in pitch black rooms that have spotlights highlighting the golden treasures just as they were found when his tomb was discovered.
Union Station, the exhibit’s first stop in North America, hopes to bask in that glow.
It is pretty awesome, and the golden mask of the pharaoh tends to take center stage. But the reality of this exhibit is that precious little documentation is known of ‘King Tut’, except that he wasn’t a very important figure in the line of Egyptian pharaohs. We think he ruled Egypt around 1330BC, from the capital city of Memphis, and was probably the 12th pharaoh of Egypt's 18th Dynasty. This would be around 100 or so years after the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt (which was sometime around 1440BC).
Memphis was also the center of Egyptian idol worship, where everything from sphinxes to cats were part of Egyptian idol worship. A common example of a cultic idol worshipped in ancient Memphis was one of the gods of Egypt, the Apis Ox, which became a snare for the Israelites after they wandered in the wilderness from their exodus of Egypt (in the book of Exodus, Aaron had a ‘golden calf’, an idol fashioned after Apis, created by the Israelites while Moses was away receiving the 10 Commandments from God).
What happened to the splendor of the Egyptian capital city of Memphis? Assyria happened. And then the Persians. And finally the Greeks under Alexander the Great. Alexander was actually crowned pharaoh in the Temple of Ptah in Memphis, who was the Egyptian god of creation whose temple to this day is guarded by the Sphinx that is a symbol of the once great dynasty of the pharaohs. That was when Alexander took control of Egypt from the Persians in 332BC.
Today, other than the scattered ruins, most of Memphis is gone, or lies beneath cultivated fields, Nile silt and local villages. When the Muslims conquered Memphis in 641AD, they established their new capital a short distance north of Memphis at Fustat, abandoning Memphis and leaving it to be nothing more than a source of stone for the surrounding settlements.
Who could have ever predicted such a devastating future for the former great capital city of the Egyptian empire? Once again, if we study the Bible we would have seen it coming. The prophet Ezekiel, who wrote his book around 580BC, predicted in our verse this week that the capital city of Memphis would have all its idols destroyed, essentially decimating the city and striking fear into the hearts of the Egyptians.
Floyd Hamilton, in his book "The Basis for the Christian Faith", comments on this incredible exact prediction by Ezekiel that it would be Memphis, and not Thebes, which would have its stronghold of idols destroyed: "If we compare Memphis with Thebes, where idols are still standing today in great numbers, and where the images are still seen on the temple walls, the wonder of the fulfilled prophecy grows even more amazing. How did it happen that the prophecies about the two cities were not interchanged? How did it happen that it was not Thebes where the idols were destroyed, and Memphis which was to exist and yet be broken up? How did it happen that among all the ruined cities of Egypt, Memphis was selected for the peculiar fate of having its idols destroyed?"
If you visit the exhibit this spring and summer at union Station, instead of marveling at an obscure, long dead Egyptian pharaoh’s remains, think about how this archaeological display points to the prophetic words of the God of the Bible is, who is alive and well.
Ed Croteau is a resident of Lee’s Summit and hosts a weekly study in Lees Summit called "Faith: Substance and Evidence." He can be reached with your questions through the Lee’s Summit Tribune at Editor@lstribune.net.