• From Brickmaking Slavery to Freedom!
    The Watchtower—1987 | November 15

    • And they kept making their life bitter with hard slavery at clay mortar and bricks.”​—Exodus 1:7-14.

      On the right, you can see that bricks are still made in Egypt, some being baked in kilns such as the one seen here. (Compare Genesis 11:1-3; 19:28.) Evidently, however, most ancient Egyptian bricks were sun dried. What persists is the use of straw in making bricks. Straw is visible in bricks found in the unearthed ruins of ancient Beer-sheba (inset).

      Adding straw strengthened the bricks. To make them, mud (or clay), water, and straw were slowly trampled by foot, then pressed in molds, and finally set out to dry. Imagine toiling at such work one long day after another. Surely, you can understand why the Israelites ‘sighed because of the slavery and cried out in complaint, so that their cry for help kept going up to the true God.’​—Exodus 2:23.

      Jehovah heard them and sent Moses to Pharaoh to gain the Israelites’ freedom. Instead, haughty Pharaoh increased their burden. Now they would have to gather their own straw, still maintaining their quota of bricks as before.