Did the Egyptians Depict the Splitting of the Red Sea? An Archaeological Mystery

The year was 1880. French Egyptologist Gaston Camille Charles Maspero stood excitedly at the opening of the seventh tomb his team began exploring. Since Napoleon's conquest of Egypt, French scholars had been meticulously investigating the pharaohs' tombs, which had been merely tourist sites until then.

Researcher Champollion discovered a stone dubbed the "Rosetta Stone," inscribed in three languages, one of which was ancient Egyptian. With this discovery, he managed to decipher the ancient Egyptian language, enabling French researchers to read the characters that had been inscribed on pyramid walls for millennia, without anyone understanding a single word!

The Egyptian tombs span different eras, but Maspero found a recurring text in many New Kingdom tombs from the 13th century BCE, persisting for two hundred years, known as the "Book of Gates."

Among all the stories in the "Book of Gates," there is a recurring scene where the sea splits into two, with desert sand in between, resembling "dry land amidst the sea." Snakes, symbolizing enemies in Egypt, pass through this area.

And what about the Egyptian heroes? They are depicted entering paradise via the sea's floor...

This is the next scene as illustrated on the wall of Amenhotep II's tomb.

According to Egyptologist Brad Sparks, these depictions might indeed be about the Red Sea's parting, which the Egyptians later claimed as their path to paradise, much like Muslims describe their martyrs as earning paradise, may their names be erased.