Matthew's Gospel (chapter 2, verse 14) tells us that King Herod wanted to kill the young Jesus, so the family went to Egypt and waited until Herod was dead. This report has led to a lot of discussion, because no other Gospel mentions the flight to Egypt, but let's assume Matthew was correct. If so, what does the flight to Egypt mean? Terrain is remarkably stable over thousands of years, so the land-forms in Israel are still quite similar to what they were two-thousand years ago.

  Road routes are usually determined by terrain, even though engineers sometimes defy terrain and blast rock out of mountain sides to make roads in otherwise impossible situations. We can be pretty sure that modern roads follow closely the routes covered by ancient roads. We can look at a topographic map of modern Israel and imagine the route that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus would have followed.

  This month I am showing you a map I have drawn based on modern topographic maps. The Holy Family would have traveled to the coast and taken passage on a ship bound for Alexandria. That was one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire and had a large Jewish population where Joseph could have found work. The family would have gone to the port at Ashdod or Ashkelon.

  I imagine the route to Ashdod was less likely to have been patrolled by Roman soldiers, so in my imagination I see them winding their way along that northern route.

  I have published this map in a small book titled "Mary Remembers." It is covrered by the copyright on that book. If you would like to use it, please contact me.

   This month we have an exercise in humility. The photo is of two objects made out of metal (a copper alloy). Each has 12 sides and each side is a regular pentagon. In geometry this sort of solid (as opposed to a plane, or flat, figure) is called a regular dodecahedron. Each side (or face) has a hole, and the holes are various sizes. The object has a knob at each corner.

   These two are about the size of a softball, but they are found in various sizes. Archaeollogists have found about 130 of them, 33 in England and the rest across northern Europe. None have been found in Italy. They are definitely from the Roman era.

   The question: what are they? What are they for? No one knows. They are never mentioned in Roman literature (at least not mentioned in a way that we would recognize). We have no pictures of people using them. No patterns of wear provide a clue to their use.

   Every suggestion about these objects is an absolute guess.

   One interesting idea is that they were used in knitting. Yarn could be placed inside through a big hole, then a strand could be fed through a small hole with the knobs being used to control the yarn. But many other suggestions have also been made. The fact is that we don't know anything about these objects.

   When we read any ancient literature (including the Bible), we assume that the ancients did things somewhat as we do them, and we need to be reminded that there is much that we don't know about the ancient world. Indeed, there is much that we don't even know we don't know. These objects remind us of our ignorance.

   These two are on display in the Louvre, #Br 1601 and Br 1602. Photo by Richard Davies. Feel free to use the photo under a creative commons license. Please give credit to the photographer and please no commercial use.

  It is likely that the first person to establish a retail store (or stand in the marketplace) used scales to weigh the product. Archeologists have found really old balance scales, and it wasn't long before someone invented the beam scale with a movable weight so that the merchant could weigh something that wouldn't fit into the pan of a balance scale.

  The Romans used weights cast in the form of stern, forbidding figures, such as goddesses and champion wrestlers, and I think the point was to intimidate people who might want to cheat on the sale.

  We know that cheating was a problem because the Old Testament prophets condemned it in the name of God. For example, look at Micah, chapter 6: "Can I (God is speaking) forget the treasures of wickedness . . . the scant measure . . . Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights?" (6:10-11.)

  The height of wickedness was to cheat someone in a business deal. That's worth thinking about.

  The scales in the photo are displayed in the Roman Nartional Museum, Terme di Diocleziano, g327.45. Photo by Richard Davies, who has enhanced it to emphasize the weight. If you make use of it, give credit to Richard Davies. No commercial use, please.