Exodusand the treasure of Pharaoh

Abstract

Some years ago Professor Fred C. Robinson advised retention of the usually emended manuscript readingafrisc meowlein line 580b of the Old EnglishExoduspoem. His argument was thatafrisc meowle, ‘African woman’, alluded to the wife of Moses, who is mentioned elsewhere in the biblical Exodus though not in the passage to which the last lines of theExoduspoem correspond. Moreover, Robinson maintains, Moses's wife might have been familiar otherwise to an early medieval audience, for among the commentators she was identified as a type or figure of ‘the church gathered out of the nations’. In explaining why Moses's wife might be alluded to at this point, Robinson considers the suitability of such an allusion as an amplifying, even though extra-biblical, detail. His reasons are of weight. They concern, however, only the literal identity of theafrisc meowleas the wife of Moses; they make nothing of her significance as a type of the church. But another compelling reason for retaining the manuscript reading here may be found if the phraseafrisc meowleand also the following lines 582–9a are considered from the figural point of view. The passage as a whole has never been so considered. The Israelites plunder the Egyptian treasure washed up on the shore, and that is that.