The Finding of Moses
Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, the distinguished Anglo-Dutch painter and Royal Academician in London, has put an end to our illusion that Moses as a child was found in the bulrushes. Sir Lawrence painted a picture of “The Finding of Moses,” which proved to be one of the features of the Royal Academy exhibition, and on attention having been drawn to the fact that there are no bulrushes in the painting, Sir Lawrence immediately proved that there were no such things as bulrushes in Egypt, and especially not on the Nile. Sir Lawrence explains that he had assured himself of this fact while in Egypt, which he had visited in order to get the local color before painting the picture, which had already been purchased by Sir John Arid, the constructor of the great Nile dam. The picture possesses special interest for Sir John Arid in view of the fact that it is his own daughter who sat for the figure of Pharaoh’s daughter. Our illusion about the bulrushes seems to have originated in a faulty translation of the passage in Exodus xi. 3. The bulrush of Egypt is the papyrus (cyperus papyrus).