 How did Joseph the Dreamer succeed in preserving the grain during those seven lean years and then prevent Egypt’s population from starving?? A group of researchers from Bar-llan University struggle with a key question for which the Bible didn’t give a definite answer.
Found in a grain of wheat around 3500 years were the remains of a burnt beetle which has caused researchers to ponder questions surrounding the time of the seven years of plenty of Egypt when Joseph had the wheat all collected in silos. “And he gathered up all the food of the seven years which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities, the food of the field, which was round about every city, laid he up in the same. And Joseph laid up grain as the sand of the sea, very much, until they left off numbering; for it was without number” (Genesis 41: 48-49). The wheat and barley supplies served all the people of Egypt during this period of drought and great hunger. How did Joseph and all the Egyptians succeed in preventing pests from destroying the inventory they had accumulated when they had no pest control and no storehouses that were sealed completely? Professor Mordechai Kisley, Dr. Orit Simhoni and Dr. Yoel Melamed would try and answer this question from the laboratory for archaeological botany in the Life Sciences department of BIU using the burnt corpse of the beetle from the grain of wheat. The beetle, also known as the Lesser Grain Borer, belongs to the Rhyzopertha Dominica species which is one of the three insects among the most important storehouse pests. Yes these insects do eat grain but they prefer to wait to eat the grain after the humans have harvested the wheat or barley into the storage of the silo. A huge amount of damage can be done by the Lesser Grain Borer, when the female lays between 300 – 500 eggs a month. One female can give birth to a 1,000 offspring in just one year’s time. The larvae from the grain borer will eat wheat or barley and the pest alone can finish off a granary within a short time frame. In Egypt, when Joseph was the leader, the lesser grain borer was just beginning to migrate westward, which was a good thing. India, which was in this era known as East Asia, was the insects’ original dwelling. A family whose larvae bore into trees changed their taste thousands of years ago is the family the insect belongs to. Now they prefer wheat and barley. Along with her partners, Dr. Simhonj studied the beetle found in one grain of wheat that was discovered in a dig at Tel Beit She’an, conducted by Professor Amihai Mazar of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The granary has been dated to the Middle Bronze Age ll B, meaning this was around the time Joseph was in Egypt. Following many tests, it was discovered that the beetle from Tel Beit She’an is among the most ancient ever found in the Land of Israel. Excavations reveal only one other beetle from an earlier time. What we know is that during that period, the lesser grain borer was just beginning to spread in the Middle East. The three researchers were aware of the granary pests from their previous study of grains found in Tel Hadar, which is located on the shore of Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), north of Ein Gev. The grain that was gathered at Tel Hadar was found to have a large number of such pests. After examining the vestiges of the plants in the granary at Tel Beit She’an, the three researchers came to the conclusion that the wheat was harvested in the Gilead region. Professor Kisley was then reminded of the caravan of Ishmaelites that came from Gilead who bought Joseph from his brothers and then took him with them to Egypt (Genesis 36: 25-28). Due to Joseph’s great talent of interpreting dreams and cleverness, he attained the rank of viceroy to the king and was then appointed to run the kingdom’s storehouses. Joseph’s success was based not only on his talents for planning but his ability to also see the future. Because of its phenomenal reproductive capacity, storing one batch of grain containing a small population of the grain borer was enough to bring destruction to the entire granary and threaten a city with starvation. Kisley, Simhoni and also Melamed believed Joseph knew of this and he therefore isolated the grain of each city in its own jurisdiction, which prevented batches being transferred from one community to another. This was the meaning of the verse in their opinion “and (he) laid up the food in the cities, the food of the field, which was round about every day.” It was also concluded that the possibility of those living in ancient Egypt were familiar with a simpler means of pest control. This explanation came from the story of Rashi, the 11th century Biblical commentator. “And people put amongst the grain some of the earth of the place, and this prevents it from decaying,” written by Rashi. According to the interpretation of the three researchers, this refers to a method where fine sand is added to the grain. Grains of sand scratch the hard covering that surrounds the body of the beetle making it dry up and die. Today this method is still used by various African tribes so we can assume it was effective to exterminate a pest upon arrival in the region much like the lesser grain borer.
| Published in : The News, Education |
| Keywords : News, Education, Joseph?s Secret of Biblical Pest Control, Bible, Joseph, Joseph the Dreamer, Pest Control, Bar-llan University, Egypt, Genesis, beetle, Lesser Grain Borer, Rhyzopertha Dominica |
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