Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Actually, I'll read it to you because it's really lovely.

In the Book of Numbers, it's known as the Priestly Blessing, and it says, "'Yahweh bless you and keep you.

Yahweh make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

Yahweh lift up His countenance upon you and give you shalom, give you well-being, give you peace.'"

And this is solar imagery, lift up your face and shine upon you.

Interestingly, alongside these little amulets were also found little Bez figurines.

Bez, the little dwarf god from Egypt who was this kind of monstrous composite deity.

Weird face, flaccid penis, huge but flaccid penis.

He was meant to scare off demons and all sorts of other sort of evils.

He's alongside these little amulets that have almost exactly this little refrain, the Lord bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon you.

Protect us from the evil eye.

That's what these little scrolls were doing.

So that solar imagery, those little Bez figurines in the 7th century inscription in a little amulet in a tomb in Jerusalem, I think that is an afterlife of the power of the Aten.

and the resonance of what Akhenaten, I think, was trying to harness, this idea about protection, that all life and in death, not to be scared of the darkness, that all life and protection comes from the Aten itself.

I think that's where we get a resonance of that in Yahweh worship.

Thank you for having me.

Goodbye from me, Francesca Stavrakopoulos.