The Prince of Egypt / Fridge

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Fridge Brilliance

During The Plagues, we hear Moses singing to Rameses of letting his people go. Throughout the song, Moses references how Rameses was (and still, in a way, IS) his brother, and how by being so stubborn he's harming the people of Egypt, which was their home. We also see Moses' face during the sequence isn't just a grave look at seeing the en masse destruction— he looks downright anguished at seeing his old home in that state. In a sense, the people he is begging Rameses to free aren't just the slaves: it's also the Egyptians themselves. He's telling Rameses how he's enslaving his subjects to the punishment of God, which they didn't deserve. They too are Moses' people. This makes the song that more haunting. It also doubles as a Tear Jerker in a way.
The Villain Song by the two priests (Playing with the big boys now...) is full of varying Fridge interpretations:
- The first interpretation of the opening lines "So you think you've got friends in high places/With the power to put us on the run" initially seems to be a mocking allusion to the Hebrew God as a "friend in a high place" of Moses. However, it is actually very probable that the Priests were referring to Rameses. In their intrigue-addled mind, they probably thought Moses was just as much of a faking hypocrite as them, and he was going after their job, hoping to use his past relation to Ramses to upstage them and become the new High Priest of Egypt. wich is not as far fetched as it sounds as many high priests in egyptian history where either sibling of the ruling Pharaoh or close family members.
  - Extra Fridge Brilliance when you realize that as a speaker for God, Moses DOES technically become a priest, just not for the Egyptian pantheon.
- Everything about the song and the two priests actions is made to look like a magician act; even the priests refer to themselves as magicians at one point. However magicians have no real magic- they use tricks and illusions to create the appearance of magic. We get to watch in detail as Moses' staff changes to a serpent before our eyes. By comparison the priests do a big distracting song and number with lights and smoke before creating a flash of light that causes everyone to look away before showing up holding snakes. This is almost exactly how a real life magician would go about doing such an illusion, distracting everyone with their music while everything was set up, force the audience to look away, then pull a snake out of a hidden location and pretend you just created them. The implication is that while God performed an indisputable miracle the priests could easily have been powerless and just pulling off a good stage show.
- The second point is further emphasized by what happens during and after the song. During the song, Moses' staff-turned-snake eats the other two with zero problems or interference in a fraction of the time it took for the Egyptian priests to change theirs. Second, the Egyptian magicians after this moment are so dumbfounded they don't try again... presumably because they wasted all their theatrics on the first set where Moses can do it at a whim because of God.
  - Also interesting to note is that (unlike in the Bible) nobody in the scene witnesses the magician's cobras being eaten. It seems a strange oversight. But it hammers home why the Egyptians were so dumbstruck and horrified when the Plagues started proper. Without evidence that God is the One True God, they were less likely to believe it was possible, throwing them off balance.
- Another bit of brilliance that crosses into Genius Bonus: Some viewers have noted that one of the only deities not mentioned is Ma'At, the Egyptian goddess of justice, balance, and harmony. This could be read as, Egypt's choice to enslave, kill, and torment the Hebrews has no justice, balance, or harmony—thus, nor does the empire of Egypt. One could also read this as Yahweh defeating the Egyptian pantheon yet again, making the point that justice, balance, and harmony are found in Him alone.
  - Another major deity not mentioned is Isis, the goddess of healing and magic. She's also considered the most powerful goddess in the pantheon. Not invoking her seems like a major oversight on the part of the filmmakers (who did meticulous research)...until you realize that by not invoking the goddess of magic, Hotep and Huy showed that they're haughty and think they're above seeking the aid of and obeying the one powerful deity in the pantheon. Gee, who else does this in the story...?
In "When You Believe", the phrase, "We were moving mountains long before we knew we could" is sung. What were the Hebrews doing at the beginning of the movie? Building Egyptian architecture, which tended to involve cutting out massive blocks of stone from a quarry by the thousands.
Rameses is against anything that will make him look like "the weak link in the chain" because he wants to live up to his father's hopes, but his inability to bend and change was his downfall. In short, the kingdom fell, not because he was weak, but because he was strong. Or rather, he valued strength far too much. He had neither the wisdom nor the confidence in himself to realize the strength that lies in gentleness and mercy.
"Force follows stiffness"; a hard wooden pole would hold more than a rubber one before buckling, but overloading a wooden pole breaks it (or whatever it's attached to; whatever gives first) while the rubber one would just bend before snapping back, no harm done. Had Rameses freed the slaves at the first command, sure it would have been an economic blow to lose their free workforce, but everyone and everything else would be intact to find a way to recover. By refusing to bend early enough, Rameses' lost everything to the plagues and later to his failed attack.
Why is God voiced by Moses' voice actor? The same reason God was represented by a burning bush. It was a form Moses was comfortable with. What is more comfortable and secure than the sound of your own voice?
- Furthermore, Moses is given the task to speak for God. He literally IS God's voice!
Water seems to represent some connection with a home: Moses is found by Queen Tuya in the Nile and immediately adopts him into the family. Thus, Baby!Moses enters another home. Moses tricks Tzipporah into falling into the moat. The next scene? He helps her escape so she can return home. Moses finds the home of his infancy and meets Aaron and Miriam when he sees them giving Tzipporah water for her journey. Moses accidentally falls into a well. He is then welcomed to join Tzipporah's home and (eventually) her family. The famous parting the sea. God helped lead Moses and the Hebrews to a newer home.
In the scene where Moses and Rameses are touring the construction site, just after Rameses has been made Prince Regent and Moses has found out about his true heritage, it seems like Moses and Rameses are on different pages. Rameses is excited and optimistic, planning a grandiose new building project. Moses is depressed and ashamed, focused on the suffering of the slaves surrounding them. But really, they're focused on the same thing—the damage done by the chariot race (on one hand), and the heritage they have to live up to (on the other hand). They're just coming at it from opposite angles: Rameses is work-focused, thinking about what he can contribute to the Pharaonic legacy, while Moses is people-focused, thinking about what he has contributed (harmfully) to his people's well-being. It also demonstrates how, throughout the movie, Rameses is consistently self-focused, while Moses is consistently focused on others. To this troper, this one scene epitomizes how Moses and Rameses are polar opposite people with very different destinies despite both being leaders and both growing up together in the same context.
During the first half of "When You Believe," many of the newly-freed Hebrews seem to be in a daze as if they're not quite sure what to think of being free. Many seem hesitant, and while some actually seem happy, none are ecstatic or "jumping for joy", etc. Viktor Frankl, who was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, wrote in Man's Search for Meaning that when the Nazis overseeing his camp surrendered and fled before the Allied forces arrived, the newly-freed prisoners there experienced this same thing:
"'Freedom'—we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it. We had said this word so often during all the years we dreamed about it, that it had lost its meaning. Its reality did not penetrate our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours...In the evening when we all met again in our hut, one said secretly to the other, 'Tell me, were you pleased today?' And the other replied, feeling ashamed as he did not know that we all felt similarly, 'Truthfully, no!' We had literally lost the ability to feel pleased and had to relearn it slowly."
- Then there's the fact that the Hebrews, at this point, had never experienced freedom, and life outside of Egypt. It was what they were familiar with. So, even without the burden of taskmasters over them, the prospect of heading out into the unknown, never to return, would be difficult to be overjoyed about.
Rameses' reactions to the Plagues: he looks sure and safe through most of them (until the final one, that's it), but the Mosquitoes, the Darkness and the Hail of Fire scare him and the Boils enrage him. It seemed strange that he could shrug off the others (especially the Locusts) but react to those, but three of them hit his beliefs hard: the Darkness? In his own words, Rameses is "the morning and the evening star", and as the Pharaoh, he's the living incarnation of many sun and sky gods, and yet he can do nothing about this. On top of that, a statue of the sun god Ra crumbles as the darkness washes over it. The Hail of Fire? Hail and storms are the dominions of Set, who at the time was not only not demonized yet but one of the most important gods of the Egyptian pantheon, after whom Rameses' own father had been named. The Boils? They fall under the dominion of Thoth, who is both God of Medicine and administrator of justice, and he's furious because he can't see what he did wrong to call for the punishment of that one god. As for the Mosquitoes, why did he show fear of that one before steeling himself? I had to rewatch the scene many times, but finally, I got it: he was scared for his son, and was preparing to defend him with everything he had.
It also seems kind of strange at first that Ramses is so quick to dismiss the river of blood, even though the priests clearly hadn't reproduced the effect (they just dyed a small amount of water red). Then again, Ramses was in a situation where he felt the need to maintain a sense of control. He was likely delusional enough to just take any sign that Moses was a fraud and run with it.
Just like the source material, each of the Plagues was made that way because God may have also wanted to prove his dominion over the Egyptian pantheon. Notably, many of the gods shown up are also the ones the priests invoke for power during the initial confrontation... and one of the gods invoked is Reshpu, god of plagues.
- Turning the Nile River into Blood: Signifies God's supremacy over the the various gods associated with the Nile, many of whom (Anukis, Khnum, Sobek) the priests invoke.
- Frogs from the Nile: Illustrates God's power over the frog-headed goddess Heqet, another of the gods Hotep and Huy invoke.
- Lice from the Dust: Signifies God's power over Geb, the Egyptian god of the earth/land.
- Swarms of Flies: This Shows God's authority over Khepri, the Egyptian god who moved the sun with the head of a fly/scarab/insect.
- Pestilence of the Livestock: This shows God's victory over Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of love usually depicted with a cow head and is closely associated with cattle. This also was an affront to Heqet, a goddess of birth and fertility.
- Boils and Sores: Represents God's power over the gods of healing, such as Isis and Thoth, along with two the priests name- Sekhmet and Selket (who specifically healed venomous bites and stings).
- Thunderstorm of Hail and Fire: Signifies God's dominion over Nut, Egyptian goddess of the sky (one of the invoked gods), Shu, the Egyptian god of the winds, and Sekhmet (goddess of fire amongst other things).
- Locusts: Illustrates God's supremacy over Seth/Set, the Egyptian god of chaos and the desert, and Neper, the Egyptian god of grain.
- Three Days of Darkness: Represents God's supremacy over Ra, the Egyptian sun god, who is the first god the priests turn to for power. Possibly also demonstrates superiority over Aten (another solar deity) and Khonsu (deity of time and the moon).
- Death of the Firstborn: Signifies God's ultimate authority over the pantheon, especially gods associated with protection and death. This demonstrates power over many gods invoked (Anubis and Nepthys who protected the dead, Nekhbet and Wadjet who were protectors of Egypt, and Meshkent and Heqet who were goddesses of birth), along with multiple other major gods; Osiris as lord of the dead shouldn't have let it happen, Horus as protector of Egypt should've stopped it, and, most pertinently, it was a personal failure of the Pharoah himself, as it was a direct attack on the people of Egypt that he allowed to happen when he could've easily stopped it by letting the Hebrews go free.
The dying gasps in the scene with the Angel of Death. It's kind of a Freeze-Frame Bonus, but when the Angel of Death passes, it sucks their soul out. The dying gasp refers to the Hebrew concept of the soul leaving with the breath. And it also provides a (very small) Pet the Dog moment for the Angel of Death, as the way it's killing the children is both gentle and painless.
The portal that the Angel of Death comes out of? Pay attention to the stars around it in the night sky- it is the constellation Orion, which to the Egyptians was the constellation for Osiris, aka the God who judges the dead. This could be taken in various ways, either that Osiris is the Angel of Death and thus a god of Egypt is subservient to the Abrahamic God (or at the very least helping Him out of distaste for what Egypt has become), or it could be that God is once more being symbolic with his plagues and choosing to clue in anyone who notices that it is He and He alone who judges the dead.
Moses being completely unhurt after a trip down the incredibly dangerous Nile River in a little basket looks highly improbable - that's the point. The fact that he even made it to the palace must have been what convinced the queen that he was sent to her from a higher power and she was right. She just assumed her gods sent him, rather than the Hebrew God.
- One little known detail of the scene where Moses floats up in a basket that is lost on modern viewers is as follows: not only would it have been the then-current pharaoh's daughter rather than his wife as noted above, but the "bathing" she was in the middle of doing wasn't run-of-the-mill cleaning of oneself; it was likely a fertility ritual for a just-reaching-puberty princess. "When the gods send you a blessing" indeed.
Doubles as Fridge Sadness. Tzipporah immediately goes to comfort her husband after he confronts Rameses for the very last time. This scene is actually quite brilliant, as well as heartbreaking because Tzipporah is the only one to truly understand Moses's pain: the loss of a family forever. Tzipporah understands why Moses is feeling such pain. Surely, during the years Moses has known her, he must have told her about the palace and his close brotherly relationship with Rameses. Here, Tzipporah doesn't need to be told to know that the final confrontation with Pharaoh did not end peacefully—the people are free, but Moses and Rameses' relationship is broken, almost certainly for good. As for Moses, his adoptive family was all the family he had known for eighteen years, until he met Tzipporah and her sisters, and had a family again. Leaving Midian would have been really difficult for Tzipporah, as she knew she would likely not see her father or her sisters ever again, if not for a very long time. So she can empathize with Moses when he has lost all the adoptive family he had known and loved, possibly forever. On the other hand, Miriam and Aaron have lost their parents, but they had—and still have—each other, and now they have Tzipporah and Moses too. They have never known what it is to have to lose all the family you've known (whether adoptive or not). So Miriam is sympathetic, as she can tell how grieved Moses is, but does not understand the true agony of knowing you have lost someone you knew as your whole family likely for good. She can feel bad for Moses—and does feel bad for our favorite shepherd—but does not truly understand as Tzipporah does. Miriam loves her brother and tries to comfort him, but only Tzipporah, who knows she has likely said goodbye to her Midian family forever, truly understands what Moses is feeling at that moment.
In "The Plague" the choir representing God ends with "Thus Saith the Lord". Apparently, it's a biblical reference...except it's not God singing, it's His Angels singing His praise and what they're doing in His name.
- The repeated chanting of "thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord" also sounds like "no longer safe, no longer safe," which is also perfectly appropriate to the situation. The Egyptians are no longer safe from God's wrath, and they are about to witness His wonders...and terrors.
In the short interlude before the final plague, Ramses and Moses share a quiet moment where they reminisce about the trouble they got into as boys. Things change when Ramses' son calls out to them and Ramses becomes the cold Pharaoh. Why? Because his son was his heir and he felt that he needed to set things right, not just so his son wouldn't be afraid anymore...but to leave a legacy behind for his son to rule just as Seti had left for him. He didn't want to lose face.
The ancient Egyptians revered the Nile as the divine source of all life and a godly figure in its own right. That means that when Moses "stabbed" the Nile and it began to "bleed", he wasn't just doing something grand and bizarre—he was attacking a deity and physically wounding it.
One of the final lines in "Deliver Us", sung by the Hebrew slaves, is: "Deliver us, send a shepherd to shepherd us!" Guess what Moses was working as immediately before he found the Burning Bush and heard God's calling?
One thing that's always bothered me about the Exodus story is why choose Moses in the first place. If God knew that Pharaoh would not listen and the plagues were needed to convince Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go, then why choose Moses specifically? Then it hit me watching this movie. When speaking to Moses, God says that "Pharaoh will not listen", God never says Ramses will not listen. God makes the distinction between Ramses the Pharaoh and Ramses the person, Ramses the Brother. If anyone had gone to him and spoken for God, he would not listen and would probably have put them to death but Moses was the only one who could attempt to appeal to Ramses' humanity, to convince to put aside his responsibility to his kingdom, his father and his son, and instead embrace the moral responsibility he has to his fellow human beings.
You all know that Ramases' whole motivation is to surpass his father to prove himself as "not the weak link". Notice in the scene he talks with Moses in private and during The Plagues: his enormous bust is right behind his father's and it's bigger and towering over it. This guy has issues as big as that thing.
Moses refusing to dance. When Tzipporah's youngest sister ask him, he refused. He still was lost, depressed and thinking of himself as a stranger in a strange land. Time passed and he got used to living among the Midians so when Tzipporah dragged him to the dancing circle, he still fought back a little, but at the end gave in. Despite living with them for around ten years (I suppose), he still considers himself an outsider, despite being happier than before. Only when he got married to Tzipporah and officially entered her family, did he start to clumsily dance with her at his wedding. He was finally happy.
Moses' first try on Rameses is saying that "the God of the Hebrews commands you to let His people go". He's still reluctant to face Rameses but puts it as it's the will of a higher being. It's only after Rameses increases the slaves' labor and talking with Miriam that Moses realizes it's more than just God's will. These are his people, too, for he's also a Hebrew. Next time, he demands at the top of his lungs, "Let my people go!", and when Rameses ignores him, he says "You can't keep ignoring us". Now It's Personal.
The reason why Moses' first attempt at convincing Rameses failed was he said "The God of the Hebrews commands you". That's not what God said to Moses to say, He said Moses should just say "Let my people go". Moses was at that moment speaking man's words, not God's.
Further Fridge Brilliance comes from the fact that God spoke to Moses in the latter's own voice. This makes God's original command for Moses to say "Let my people go" ambiguous: does "my people" mean God's people, or Moses's people? At first, Moses takes the first interpretation, but once he fully realizes how personal the issue is, he switches to the second.
Aaron, despite being from the same family as Moses and Miriam, is noticeably more emaciated than either of them. While Moses was understandably well-fed for most of his life, Aaron and Miriam live in the same homestead. The reason he's far thinner and more malnourished is that he likely gives most of the food to his sister, keeping only enough for himself so he doesn't completely starve.
Jethro honoring Moses seems to be just him being nice to a stranger, but when you think about it, Jethro owes a lot to Moses. Moses saved Tzipporah from Egypt, a fate she likely wouldn't have escaped otherwise. He also drove off two bandits who were accosting his remaining three children. Said bandits were manhandling them and likely wouldn't have spared a thought about killing them or selling them into slavery, even if Tzipporah had shown up in time. If it wasn't for Moses, Jethro would have lost all of his children in the span of a few months.
Jethro describes the Midians as having little to nothing, but from what we see, they're actually doing pretty well for themselves. They've got water, enough food for the occasional celebratory feast, some pretty nice clothes, and plenty of sheep. And this makes sense, really. They're rich in all the things that matter and only "poor" in comparison to the life Moses has left behind.
As in Exodus, there is an uncomfortable moment in which God states that He will harden Pharaoh's heart, which seems like it would do nothing but seriously over-complicate things and needlessly draw out the destruction of Egypt. However, in the plagues, Rameses specifically says, "Let my heart be hardened, and never mind how high the cost may grow." Between God's omniscience and the Bible's recurring themes about free will, God did not force Rameses to become cold and senseless, He just allowed it.
Furthermore, another potential translation of the biblical line is not 'hardened Pharaoh's heart' but 'suffered Pharaoh's heart to be hardened' (Hebrew can be difficult to translate). IE, God tolerated his heart to be hardened, and thus Pharaoh made the choice of his own free will and God merely tolerated him to make his own decisions, which seems to be exactly what direction the movie takes.
In Ancient Egypt, slaves were extremely rare and mostly composed of war prisoners or criminals, yet the Hebrews are shown as a people of slaves. Most people who know about Ancient Egypt would cringe...except the movie subtly provides a justification in Moses' nightmare, when God "signs" it with the disk of Aten: the Hebrews did commit a crime, namely keep their monotheistic religion when Egypt was busy wiping out Aten's monotheistic cult. This would also explain the extermination of the Hebrew children: a show of force to break the Hebrews when they were posing a perceived danger as the last massive holdout of monotheism. A rather successful show of force, given just how meek they are until the Plagues.
At first glance, it just seems like artistic license to have Pharaoh Seti's wife instead of his daughter find and adopt baby Moses, so that Moses and Ramases could be raised as brothers instead of just as relatives. But as pointed out below, Seti I's reign only lasted either eleven or fifteen years. Moses seems older than fifteen and is obviously much older than eleven when he flees Egypt while Seti is still alive and well. Also, notice that when Tuya takes in baby Moses, she tells toddler Ramases "We will show Pharaoh your new baby brother". "Pharaoh," not "your father". Ergo, Seti wasn't Pharaoh yet when Moses was adopted: it was his father, Rameses I. Tuya wasn't queen yet, she was Pharaoh's daughter, or to be exact, his daughter-in-law.
- And in an aversion of the Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole, Yocheved is not hired as Moses's nurse this time around. This is because in the text, the daughter needed someone to breast feed him, as she hadn't had children yet. In the movie, Rameses is already born, so no need for Miriam to suggest a nurse (as Rameses likely had one).
The animations for the burning bush and an angel of death look completely out of place compared to the rest of the film... and that's because they are. All we see otherwise are humans and animals, compared to the otherworldly beings that are Yahweh and angels.
Moses was a sheep shepherd, and his herd was a large one. Surely he must have stepped over sheep poop for a long while. No wonder God told him to take off his sandals; I mean, it's quite rude to enter into someone's house with mud on your shoes, imagine that but with animal feces.
- As someone who lives in a desert, this troper can tell you that taking your shoes off outdoors carries with it considerable risk. At best, you're only dealing with sand that has been cooking in the Sun for hours. At worst, you run the risk of stepping on sharp rocks, thorny plants, or even accidentally treading on a scorpion or a venomous snake. God commanding Moses to take off his shoes was likely also a request that he place his faith in God that he would not be harmed.
Moses's Broken Pedestal for Seti after his nightmare...he's realising not just that innocent babies were thrown into the Nile, but that he could have been one of them! And that to the man he looked up to as a father figure, he once would have been another slave. And if it had been another boy raised in the palace instead of him, his own death would have been justified as "only" a slave.
The Angel of Death kills all the firstborns of Egypt but somehow spares Rameses... But Rameses had an older sister, Tia, who would have been the Angel's target in Rameses' place.
It's subtle, but it's possible to identify three different cities in the movie (or temporary royal residence):
- In the opening scene it's shown the Hebrews live in the city's outskirts, indicating the city is in or near the Land of Goshen where they resided. Goshen is believed to have been in the Nile Delta near Avaris, the capital of Egypt under the Hyksos.
  - This also explains why Tuya and Rameses were there: 19th Dynasty founder Rameses I is believed to have been born at Avaris.
- The throne room in Seti's time is smaller and less grandiose than in Rameses', showing that they're indeed two different cities... But not which one, since Egypt under Seti I had two capitals, Thebes and Memphis, where Seti resided depending on the needs of the moment. The presence of the princes and the Hebrew workers, on the other hand, identify it as Memphis: Memphis was the main center of education for the sons of royalty and nobility, thus where Rameses and Moses would have been at the time, and given her position at the mouth of the Nile Delta moving in Hebrew slaves would be easy.
- At the start of "The Plagues" an outside visual from the Nile shows a very similar palace to the one visible when Tuya found Moses, even if we are in or near the capital. Rameses built his capital, Pi-Ramesses, just north of Avaris. The fact the majority of the Hebrew population lives relatively close to the capital and that the Bible identifies "Ramesses" as the starting point of the Exodus also help confirming we're back to the Land of Goshen, just in a different city from Avaris.
Why was Moses, a foreigner travelling alone with his wife and not dressed very impressively, permitted to enter the palace and gain an audience with the Pharaoh in the first place? Presumably he was taught as a prince the proper procedures for requesting such an audience, and the palace staff assumed anyone who knew how to submit that request properly must be someone with the authority to make it. He had a special ring too with an extremely expensive jewel, which King Ramses gave to Moses in a public ceremony. (Also, despite the changes to Moses' appearance, it's possible Rameses was not the only one to recognize him as the 'missing prince'.)
During 'The Plagues', there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment when Ramses angrily kicks Hotep and Huy out of the palace. Aside from being a bit of Black Comedy in an otherwise joyless song, it also serves as an indicator of the movie's shift in tone. Ramses is literally ushering the comedic relief out of the film, and you'll notice that after their disappearance, there are seldom few moments in the film which warrant a laugh.
Tzipporah dropping Moses into the well is rather reminiscent of Moses dropping^note Tzipporah into a moat behind her during their first meeting.
As noted below, the entire persecution of the Hebrews is a consequence of Akhenaten's attempt at replacing the traditional Egyptian gods with Aten's monotheistic cult. This also explains Seti's obsession with Pharaoh needing to be strong and the belief a "weak link" could destroy a mighty dynasty: he saw it happen, having been born and grown in the aftermath of Akhenaten ending the golden age of the XVIII Dynasty by almost causing a civil war and letting Egypt's control over Canaan and Syria collapse and his successors Tutankhamon and Ay fail to fix it through their own weakness (Tutankhamon being a child and little more than a figurehead before dying, and Ay an old man who lacked the strength to deal with the brewing conflict between the traditionalists and the Aten followers), and while Horemhab managed to forcefully fixing the situation by crushing the monotheistic Aten followers (with the Hebrews being collateral damage) he also had to sign the death warrant of his own dynasty rather than risk a child rising to the throne at such a delicate moment.^note
Miriam's faith remained strong as she grew to adulthood, while many other Hebrews—including her brother—became jaded and hopeless. Why? She tracked Moses' basket down the river and watched him narrowly avoid being killed by wild animals, oarstrikes, and fishing nets, and then come to a stop in the hands of someone who had both the desire to raise him and the power to nullify the threat of murder. With eyewitness evidence of God's intervention in saving her brother, Miriam was able to believe that their suffering would end in her lifetime. But even though she doubtlessly shared the good news with her family, the continued suffering and the implicit death of Yocheved probably allowed Aaron to eventually write off Miriam's report as a series of coincidences or a failure on the part of either God, Moses, or both, leading to their opposite reactions to meeting their baby brother as an adult.
The scene where Queen Tuya comforts Moses after he learns of his true heritage seems a bit superfluous and could be cut out with little impact to the storyline. But the line "when the Gods send you a blessing, you don't ask why it was sent" hammers home a key fact of the story's message; faith performs miracles. In order for miracles to happen, you need to trust completely; no explanations needed, no bargains made. Just complete and total faith. The Queen had absolute faith in her pantheon and is grateful that Moses was brought into her life.

Fridge Horror

That sequence of young Miriam watching her brother endure everything in the Nile, looking terrified? At first glance, we may be used to it, because we've seen terrified characters before...but think about it. This is a terrified young girl who is watching helplessly as her infant brother narrowly misses getting eaten by crocodiles and hippos, being knocked around by oars, then raised onto a net before dropping back into the Nile.
- Even before then, as they and their mother are running from the guards, Aaron is too excited and rushes forward...only for Yocheved to yank him back from being seen. Had she not acted so quickly, Aaron could have gotten all four of them killed.
Aaron and Miriam must have seen a lot of very awful things throughout the time they spent in slavery, even as kids. It's possible that toddler Aaron was dimly aware of the massacre of the Hebrew newborns, or he at least got a sense of the danger. And he had to know he'd once had a baby brother who was no longer in his family. (As per the WMG section, it's possible Aaron always believed his baby brother had been killed.) Miriam was almost certainly old enough to know what was going on. (She even sort of alludes to it at the end of "Deliver Us" — there's this danger that Moses has been saved from, and she hopes he will grow up to save the rest of the Hebrews from it too.) They both saw Pharaoh's guards raiding their neighborhood and violently snatching up newborns. Even if they couldn't see exactly what was being done to them, they had to be aware that those babies — some of them no doubt part of their friends' families, or maybe even newborn relatives of theirs — never came back. And we haven't even gotten to what they probably saw as adults while toiling for Pharaoh. When the old slave is being whipped close to death, Aaron turns away, completely resigned to what is about to happen, like he sees this all the time and that's just how things are.
At the beginning of "All I Ever Wanted", Moses accidentally knocks over an old Hebrew man on the streets as he's running away from his sister. The man cringes in fear, as though he's expecting to be beaten. Moses might not seem imposing to the audience, but he's a prince of Egypt, after all. He's one of the most powerful men in the world and has no reason not to horribly punish a random slave just for making him trip.
Moses seems to be Rameses's emotional support or Morality Pet during their youth. Rameses says so later that Moses was always the one who got him out of trouble and made him feel better. Well, it's very likely that Moses running away robbed Rameses of his only friend - thus turning him into the cynical tyrant he is years later.
Aaron's behavior early in the movie. As a kid? Kinda funny to see him acting like a complete doormat towards Prince Moses by first calling Miriam crazy from overwork and immediately adding "not that we mind the work, we quite enjoy it", and generally acting like a spineless coward. As an adult? You realize that this is the best way he knows to survive. Just look at the way he turns frantically to his work when the overseer starts beating the old man—he's seen things like this before and he can't do anything about it without getting himself and maybe his sister killed, so his only defense is to not watch.
Tzipporah was a Sex Slave. It's unknown whether or not she was captured specifically for this reason, but it is apparent (given Hotep's description of her, and probably her outfit too) that this was why she was brought into the court. She's aware of this, which explains both her rage/indignation and her fear (see the Oh, Crap! look she gives when she hears she's being sent to Moses' chambers).
At the same time (and this definitely counts as Fridge Brilliance), Hotep and Hoy seemed aware of Tzipporah's fiery, indomitable nature. Thus, they knew that she would cause Rameses grief—hence, they chose her as their "offering" to him to get back at him for his shenanigans. (This is why they're so excited to get her.) But that being the case, it's doubtful they expected things to end well for her, so this goes right back to being Fridge Horror.
- Perhaps this was why she attempted to bite Rameses. Was she hoping that she would be killed for attacking him, sparing her the horrors that awaited her in the bedroom?
During the mocking of Tzipporah, Queen Tuya is the only one who isn't laughing, she just looks on in silent grief. This single look probably speaks volumes of her personal life.
Also counts as Fridge Sadness. Tzipporah is now in a new home with her husband and the Hebrews. But, there's zero chance of her seeing her family again.
How did Moses's adoptive parents react after they found out that their youngest son ran away in the desert right after killing an Egyptian worker?
After the Pharaoh's "They're only slaves" line, it makes one wonder: Would he have said that had he known Moses was Hebrew? What would he have done to a son he has raised and loved during his entire childhood?
The Angel of Death is seen chasing one of the palace guards at one point. That means that adults who were firstborn weren't spared either. How many awoke to find that not only were their firstborn children/older siblings dead but that they had also lost a parent or a spouse?
Imagine the reaction of all of the fathers whose babies were killed in the opening.
In the original story of Exodus, it was mentioned that God made the Pharaoh stubborn so that he would have to face a series of increasingly horrific moments before being allowed to surrender. If that part of the story is being kept here, then it makes any scene where Rameses and Moses argue look even more sinister. Moses isn't reasoning with the man he knew as his brother, he's talking to a puppet.
In a span of roughly a few days, Jethro almost loses all of his daughters. No wonder he's so nice to Moses (besides the Sacred Hospitality thing).
Seti I reigned for either eleven or fifteen years, depending on the dates one accept. This adds quite some horrors all around: If one accepts the longest dates and that Seti gave the order, the extermination of the firstborn Hebrews was Seti's first order as a pharaoh. Alternatively (and more likely considering that Moses' adopted mother was supposed to be a princess), Seti didn't give the order, but it was either his father Ramses I or, considering how short his reign was, Horemheb of the previous dynasty. When Moses confronts him about the killing of the Hebrew newborns, Seti is trying to defend either his father or his father's predecessor...and confused on why Moses is blaming him.
Considering the Hebrews were monotheists and Horemheb's reign was characterized by the struggle to eliminate the consequences of Akhenaten's monotheistic reform (and God actually adopts Aten's iconography during Moses' dream about the killing of the Hebrews). If Horemheb gave the order, the Hebrews were enslaved and suffered the death of their newborns simply as collateral damage of a political struggle they had nothing to do with.
- A part of it is the timing of the Hebrews' arrival in Egypt: the Bible includes various hints that Joseph's story is set during the 15th Dinasty, when Lower Egypt was ruled by the Hyksos invaders.^note Once the 17th Dinasty expelled the Hyksos the Hebrews became immediately suspicious due their association with the invaders but tolerated because they hadn't done anything yet... But when they maintained their monotheistic religion during Horemheb's struggle against the remnant's of Akhenate's reform, they set off the Egyptian paranoia.
Seti and Tuya knowingly took in a Hebrew child, in open defiance of Horemheb's decree. Even if they asked him for permission, they took a serious risk. It would also add to Seti's reaction when Moses confronted him about it, as Seti was the one who risked his life to save him.
- Then again the fact that Moses was discovered in a basket that had been floating on the Nile (which was/is filled with dangers both natural and man-made), Tuya and Seti took Moses in, no doubt confident that even if he was a Hebrew infant Horemheb and his men wouldn't dare lay hands on Moses as his arrival by river would be seen as a clear sign that the infant was firmly in the gods' favor and that harming him would be a very bad idea.
  - Not only that but the Nile was considered the giver of life in Ancient Egypt and was revered as a deity in its own right. Not only would they be defying the pantheon but arguably the most critical part of Egypt's existence.
Moses is no young boy when he runs away: he seems sixteen at the very youngest, more likely eighteen or twenty. Knowing how short Seti's reign was, it seems likely that he died soon after Moses left. Since he did genuinely love his adopted son, his death may have partly been Death by Despair due to losing him...and for Ramases, not only losing his beloved brother (as pointed out above) but losing his father and having to assume the responsibilities of the throne so quickly afterwards may well have contributed to his becoming tyrannical.
Moses was a baby during "Deliver Us." As noted above, Moses is not young when he runs away, and given that when he returns, Rameses is Pharaoh with a son who is at least five years old, it could have been twenty years since the opening. At least one old man was toiling in construction, and who knows how many more died young from being overworked, malnourished, or sick? Most of the slaves singing "Deliver Us" probably didn't live to see freedom.
Rameses tries to comfort Moses about killing the guard, offering to "make it so that it never happened". Was he planning on blaming it on a slave, who would then be punished? And when Moses ran away, is that what ended up happening?
- To make matters worse, that poor old man who Moses was trying to save? He was most likely the one scapegoated for the guard's death.
The slaughter of the Hebrew babies is depicted on the Hieroglyphics. Imagine how the people who had to paint that felt. And if it was done by slaves, they had to illustrate a horrific event that happened to their own people. Worse still, if the slaves did do it, some of them could have been painting the murder of their own children.
- Going by Egyptian practices they wouldn't have entrusted such a sacred duty to slaves but to paid professionals certified by the temples. Professionals who would have considered it depicting the act that broke the last holdovers of Akhenaten's heresy that had almost torn apart the Land of Egypt, and would have been glad of depicting such a glorious endeavour. And that makes it even worse, considering the Hebrews were extraneous to that dispute and would have been targeted simply because both their religion and Akhenaten's heresy were monotheistic...
The fact that God allowed Rameses to live in the end was, when one thinks about it, an act of Cruel Mercy. The Pharaoh's kingdom is in ruins and his people are scared and angry, and no doubt some are eager to gain some measure of vengeance if possible. And with Moses and the Hebrews beyond their reach, they may very well settle for unleashing their rage against the Pharaoh who angered the Hebrew God in the first place. Now Rameses has a choice: return to his shattered kingdom and possibly face the wrath of his people, and most certainly spend the rest of his life in a vain attempt to piece his kingdom back together, or walk away and take his chances in the Egyptian desert, where water and shelter are rare, the sun scorches the land during the day, and the nights are as cold as death.
- Given this is Rameses the Great, he walked back to his shattered kingdom, pieced it back together, crushed the Lybian tribes and Kushite that tried to take advantage of Egypt's weakness, and then made the kingdom greater than ever while fathering at least eighty-seven other children from his many wives (in fact he already had other children from both Nefertari and the future queen Isetnofret), with his only real loss being his older sister (Seti's firstborn). Though this experience would explain why Rameses became such an overachiever, especially in the bed: he felt he had to compensate for what he caused to Egypt.
  - which could also be seen as a Pet the Dog from God as Rameses returns a changed man with none of the destructive pride that left his country on the cusp of collapse and as the Egyptians as a whole were forced to suffer tragedy after tragedy due to said pride the years of peace and prosperity that followed were no doubt very welcomed.
- On the other hand, Amun-her-khepeshef, Rameses II's eldest son, is recorded to have died in the 25th year of Rameses' reign. The child we see in this film is not him, and would be erased from history to preserve his father's glory. The same reason could be as to why there isn't any records of the exodus among Egyptian sources: they wouldn't future generations to see Rameses as the egotistical person who nearly brought his own nation to ruin over slaves.
It becomes a Downer Ending when Moses was later not allowed to enter the Promised Land, because he no longer trusted God, over a very trivial matter as well. Not speaking to a rock as instructed, to send out water for the Israelites in the desert, striking it with his staff instead. It seems whenever God appoints a human to act as his representative, Failure Is the Only Option.
During the Plague of Boils, there is a shot of a young girl and her little brother clinging to each other and watching the infected women run through the streets, shrieking in terror. That girl was, most likely, later killed by the Plague of the Firstborn, unless she was fortunate enough to have an older sibling.
The Plague of the Firstborn is implied to target adults (and the real plague in Exodus did). But Rameses is not personally affected. Either God chose to spare Pharaoh to get him to submit, or Tuya had at least one child before Rameses who did not survive.

Fridge / The Prince of Egypt

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