King Josiah and the Formation of Jewish Law

Revised stories of the patriarchs proved powerful propaganda, and Deuteronomy presented the moral code of early Judaism — with a surprising amount of human rights. 

The penultimate king of Judah, Josiah is held up as the best of the best. We have him to thank for the Judaism practiced today.

King Josiah receives more superlatives of awesomeness than any other figure in the Old Testament. And with heavy hitters like Moses, David and Joshua, that’s saying something. 

“Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him,” gushes 2 Kings 23:25.

Not too bad for a kid who was crowned in 639 BCE at the tender age of 8, after his father, Amon, was assassinated in a coup, having reigned only a year.

King Josiah oversees a ritual sacrifice in this illustration from an Egyptian manuscript.

Of course, it turns that the early books of the Old Testament were written in the 7th century BCE, when Josiah ruled the kingdom of Judah. The writings were planned specifically to bolster his vision of a unified Israel, where everyone abandoned all other deities to worship only YHWH (aka Yahweh, or God), according to Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. 

The book of Law that King Josiah discovered in the Temple was, most likely, the original book of Deuteronomy. We’re not sure why this prompted him to tear his robe, though.

Finding the Book of Law

In the 18th year of Josiah’s reign, 622 BCE, the king commanded his high priest to renovate the Temple. During the work, a new book of Law turned up. 

“That book, identified by most scholars as an original form of the book of Deuteronomy, sparked a revolution in ritual and a complete reformation of Israelite identity,” Finkelstein and Silberman explain. “This was the formative moment in the crystallization of the biblical tradition as we now know it.”

King Josiah has the idols of Baal destroyed (and the priests killed) in this illustration by Gustave Doré.

According to Josiah and other hardcore monotheists, there was a lot of work to be done (and undone). 

The new book of Law “suddenly and shockingly revealed that the traditional practice of the cult of YHWH in Judah had been wrong,” the authors continue. 

Pagan practices were taking place even within the confines of the Temple itself. Josiah had all the iconography of Baal removed, along with anything used to worship the sun, moon and stars, and had it all burned. He also broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes (!!!). 

That was just the beginning. Josiah marched northward, smashing stone altars to other gods and killing their priests. 

The frontispiece to the book of Deuteronomy in the Nuremberg Bible

A Revolution in Human Rights

The new Law wasn’t all just destruction and death, though.

Josiah made Passover an official holy day, which linked him with Moses, who was involved in the holiday’s gruesome origin. 

More than this, “Deuteronomy calls for the protection of the individual, for the defense of what we would call today human rights and human dignity,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Its laws offer an unprecedented concern for the weak and helpless.” 

For example, Deuteronomy 15:7-8 states, “If there is among you a poor man … you shall open your hand to him, and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.” Imagine if that were still in practice today.

Joseph’s awful brothers sold him into slavery. He was born too soon — thanks to the book of Deuteronomy, his servitude would only have lasted six years.

In addition, Josiah’s law gave inheritance rights to wives, instructed farmers to give tithes to the poor every third year, protected resident aliens from discrimination and freed slaves after six years of servitude. 

The Death of King Josiah by Francesco Conti, who lived 1681-1760

Josiah’s Lasting Legacy

Was Josiah successful in his campaign of religious centralization? Perhaps not on as broad a scale as he would have liked. Evidence suggests that he “failed to stop the veneration of graven images, since figurines of a standing woman supporting her breast with her hands (generally identified with the goddess Asherah) have been found in abundance within private dwelling compounds at all major late-seventh century sites in Judah,” explain Finkelstein and Silberman. 

One god just wasn’t enough for the ancient Judahites — many a household had figurines of the goddess Asherah like this one.

In 610 BCE, the new pharaoh, Necho II, launched a military expedition, allying with Egypt’s old foes the Assyrians to battle an even greater threat: the Babylonian Empire.

No one is quite sure why Josiah joined the fray against Egypt. Whatever the reason, it was a decision that led to his death. 2 Kings 23:29 glosses over the loss of the greatest king of Judah as if the writer were embarrassed: “In his days Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. King Josiah went to meet him; and Pharaoh Necho slew him at Megiddo, when he saw him.”

Pharaoh Necho II, who killed King Josiah. The Old Testament glosses over this event, as if the writers were embarrassed and wanted to downplay it.

“In his days Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. King Josiah went to meet him; and Pharaoh Necho slew him at Megiddo, when he saw him.” (2 Kings 23:29)

“One thing is clear. The Deuteronomistic historian, who saw Josiah as a divinely anointed messiah destined to redeem Judah and lead it to glory was clearly at a loss to explain how such a historical catastrophe could occur and left only a curt, enigmatic reference to Josiah’s death,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Decades of spiritual revival and visionary hopes seemingly collapsed overnight. Josiah was dead and the people of Israel were again enslaved by Egypt.”

By 597 BCE, all the cities of Judah had been crushed under the Babylonian assault, culminating with the defeat of Jerusalem, which was burned to the ground. The Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar, looted the Temple and deported all but the poorest inhabitants of Judah. 

The Babylonians, led by King Nebuchadnezzar, defeated Judah, enslaved its people and burned Jerusalem to the ground.

Judah’s last king, Zedekiah, was captured. He had to watch the Babylonians slaughter his sons before he was blinded.

Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, didn’t fare so well. Tragedy of Zedekiah by Charles Monnet, 1750

Nebuchadnezzar had Zedekiah blinded — only after the king of Judah had watched his sons get slaughtered.

Nevertheless, there was a power in Josiah’s movement. His revisionist history and rallying cry have become parts of the most popular book on the planet. And the laws of Deuteronomy found within “served as the foundation for a universal social code and system of community values that endure — even today,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. –Wally 

Cochineal Red: How Bugs Created One of the World’s Most Expensive Colors

From Aztec “cactus blood” to British redcoats to a Starbucks scandal, cochineal has long been coveted. Just don’t tell your vegetarian friends they’ve probably eaten bugs.

Who’d have thought that a tiny cactus-eating bug would end up being responsible for one of the most-sought-after dyes?

Primal and elemental, the color red is associated with such varied emotions as love, sin, anger — and even, thanks to Charles Dickens — the frustration that comes from red tape, a metaphor for the rigid rules and procedures of bureaucracy. 

First coveted by the ancient Aztec and Inca civilizations, the highly prized crimson dye-producing cochineal insect has been used since then to create the color red. It even enabled the Spanish Crown to finance its empire for nearly two centuries. 

“It takes nearly 70,000 cochineal bugs to make a single pound of red pigment. ”

For a long time, a Mexican bug had the entire world seeing red.

Bugging Out: The Nopal Cactus and the Cochineal 

Although occasionally referred to as a beetle, cochineal (pronounced “coke-in-neel”) is in fact a scale insect, a parasitic bug that attaches itself to a host plant, drawing sustenance from it. They’re about the size of a peppercorn and resemble a burgundy-colored piece of gnocchi. 

It’s the female cochineal bugs that can be used to create red — it just takes 70,000 of them to make 1 pound of dye.

At maturity, it produces a white, cottony covering as camouflage to hide from predators. Clusters can be found in abundance on the wide, flat “paddles” or “pads” of the nopal, the fruit-bearing prickly pear cactus. In addition to their downy coats, the female cochineal produces a chemical called carminic acid, which is the source of the color used to make a red dye. 

The lifecycle of a Polish variety of the cochineal insect

The Aztecs were the first to domesticate cochineal and referred to the insects as nocheztli, Nahuatl for “cactus blood.” A colorfast pigment was produced by harvesting and grinding the dried carcasses of the female cochineal bug into a fine powder. In the dyeing process, a mordant is used to fix the color. Different metallic compounds yield different shades. Aztecs often added a mordant of aluminum sulfate to the dye bath to bind the carminic acid to ritual and ceremonial textiles worn by their rulers as a symbol of wealth and status. 

A red to dye for

Blood Money

Cochineal quickly became a prized commodity for Spain soon after Hernán Cortés and the conquistadors discovered macnu, the scarlet-colored pigment sold in cakelike form in the Aztec markets of Tenochtitlan. The Spanish saw the commercial value of these bugs, which quickly became the third-most valuable export of the New World, after gold and silver. 

Nothing in Europe could match the bright red that came from the cochineal bug. The Madonna With the Iris, from the workshop of Albrecht Dürer, circa 1500-1510

Cochineal red finally escaped the clutches of Spain-controlled Mexico, thanks to a sneaky botanist named Thiéry de Menonville. Here are pages from his sketchbook showing cochineal and the nopal cactus.

It takes nearly 70,000 insects to make a single pound of pigment. At the time, Europe didn't have a dye that matched the brilliance and longevity of cochineal. For this reason, cultivation was restricted to Spanish-controlled Mexico from the 16th century up until 1777, when a young French botanist by the name of Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville managed to smuggle cochineal-infested cactus pads to Haiti. 

Some of the iconic redcoats of the British military were dyed with cochineal — the fact that they somewhat masked blood stains was a bonus.

The Redcoats Used It, as a Madder of Fact

The term “redcoats” was coined in Tudor Ireland to refer to the British military uniform, which included the now-iconic fiery red jacket.

Only officers’ coats were dyed scarlet with cochineal bugs.

After passing the New Model Army ordinance in 1645, the British military officially adopted red as its uniform color. Most were dyed a rusty red using the cheaper and more accessible madder root. The costlier scarlet obtained from cochineal was reserved for officers and sergeants. It’s said that red was used because it wouldn’t show blood stains, but blood dries to a blackish color, and this is believed to be a myth. 

Taste the rainbow — as well as some bugs! Prior to 2009, the “natural color” used to make your favorite red candies, including Skittles and Starburst, came from dried, ground-up cochineal insects.

Food for Thought: You’re Eating Bugs!

Not limited to clothing, cochineal (or carmine, as it’s also called) is used to give alcoholic beverages, cosmetics, shampoo and pharmaceuticals a bright red color. 

It’s also used in food. In 2012, cochineal made headlines when Starbucks faced a public relations furor. Vegetarians and others who didn’t like the idea of eating bugs learned that the source of the red color in popular food items such as their Red Velvet Whoopie Pie and Strawberries and Crème Frappuccino contained insect guts. 

But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has tested and approved cochineal as a food coloring. To make this more appealing to consumers, it's often listed by other designations. So the next time you’re picking up something at the store, watch out for these ingredients, which are all other names for cochineal or carmine: E120, carminic acid, crimson lake or natural red 4 — because, really, what’s more natural than bugs?

I’ve unintentionally swallowed my fair share of insects while riding my bike to work. Sure, it’s gross — but compared to synthetic red dyes such as Red No. 2 and Red No. 40, which carry far greater health risks and are derived from coal or petroleum byproducts, bugs sound positively appetizing. –Duke

National Museum of Mexican Art: A Hidden Gem in Chicago

Remedios Varo, Frida Khalo and Diego Rivera are all part of the rich heritage of Mexican artists honored at this all-too-often-overlooked museum.

If you’re not all tied up, make a visit to the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago — it’s dog-gone great!

It’s one of our favorite fall activities. Every October, Duke and I make a trip to the National Museum of Mexican Art on the South Side of Chicago to see the ofrendas set up for the Day of the Dead. These altars for loved ones who have died are always colorful, touching and artistic — and, despite being tributes to the dead, they never fail to make you smile. 

An ofrenda to Diego Rivera, one of the most famous Mexican artists of all time

Plus, it’s an excuse to wander the Pilsen neighborhood to see its street murals and grab some tacos and tamales. Pilsen is known as a Mexican neighborhood, though the artists who once called it home got priced out and vacated to Logan Square (and have most likely been priced out again and moved on to the new up-and-coming enclave). 

When you visit the museum, be sure to take a walk through the colorful neighborhood of Pilsen and go mural-hunting.

We were unable to see the ofrendas this year because of that pesky pandemic, so we reached out to the museum to tell us a bit more about one of the most impressive cultural centers in the city and to share their favorite artists (the founder seems particularly fond of the Surrealists).

The gift shop at the museum is filled with great Mexican handicrafts.

When the museum reopens, be sure to visit. It’s a small space, so you could easily see it all in one visit. And the gift shop is an exhibition itself, filled with Mexican handicrafts, from brightly painted fantastic beasts to comical skeletons. If that’s not enough to entice you, admission to the National Museum of Mexican Art is always free.

Here’s a Q&A with the museum’s founder, Carlos Tortolero. –Wally 

Duke loves the National Museum of Mexican Art thiiiiiiiis much!

Wally in front of a cool exhibit with knitted fruit

How did the museum come about?

Founder Carlos Tortolero, a former high school teacher who’s now president of the museum, invited four of his fellow teachers and his sister, also a teacher, to form a nonprofit to create a museum in 1982.

CHema Skandal’s take on lotería cards depicts Donald Trump as “the Evil One.” After launching his political career by calling Mexicans rapists and drug dealers, we agree with that moniker.

What is its mission?

To showcase the richness of Mexican art from both sides of the border from ancient times to the present.

Laura Molina’s Amor Alien from 2004 is part of the museum’s permanent collection.

Tell us about Mexican art.

Mexican art is an amazing cultural tradition. From ancient times to the present, the manifestations of Mexican art have earned worldwide recognition.

Who are some of your favorite artists?

Artists who are deceased that I admire are:

• Saturnino Herrán

Saturnino Herrán, The Offering, 1913

• Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo, Simpatía (La Rabia del Gato), 1955

• José Celmente Orozco

José Celmente Orozco, The Trench, 1926

• Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera, detail from Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park, 1948

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• David Alfaro Siqueiros

David Alfaro Siqueiros, La Marcha de la Humanidad, 1966

• María Izquierdo

María Izquierdo, Viernes de Dolores, 1945

• Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939

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Coyoacán, Frida’s Boho Neighborhood

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• Salvador Dali

• Rene Magritte

Living artists: 

• Patssi Valdez

Patssi Valdez, The Enchanted Garden, 2005

• John Valadez

John Valadez, Pool Party, 1987

• Marcos Raya

Marcos Raya, Girl With Prosthesis, 2010

• Nahum Zenil

Nahum Zenil, Con Todo Respecto, 1983

Murals have long been an important part of Mexican culture.

What’s special about the Pilsen neighborhood?

Pilsen has historically been a port of entry for immigrants from Europe and now from Mexico. There’s a dynamism of activism that has always made Pilsen stand out from other communities. Pilsen also has excellent restaurants and bakeries based on Mexican cuisine.

Skeletons are a popular motif in Mexican art — especially around Día de los Muertos.

What else is the museum used for?

The museum hosts numerous events during the year, from health workshops dealing with health issues like HIV, cancer and lupus, community fundraisers, immigration presentations, city-wide initiatives and, of course, presentations of authors, musical groups and theater.

Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl by Jesus Helguera welcomes visitors to the permanent collection gallery at the National Mexican Museum of Art.

 

Ancient Egyptian Words You Should Know

Do you know your ba from your ka? What’s a vizier? How about a cartouche? Our handy glossary of Ancient Egyptian terms will have you speaking like a pharaoh in no time.

How many Ancient Egyptian terms can you spot in this image?

The terms we use to describe the religion, history and artifacts of Ancient Egypt are a strange mishmash of words that have French, Greek, English, Arabic — and yes, sometimes even Egyptian — origins.

Talk Like an Egyptian 

As you read more about the fascinating and complex world of Ancient Egypt, it helps to familiarize yourself with the terms that come up the most often. It’s probably a good idea to bookmark this page for easy reference — especially if you’re considering a visit. 🤗 

ankh: The hieroglyphic symbol for life, similar to a cross but with a loop in place of the upper arm. It was especially popular in jewellery and on temple carvings, where it was held in the hands of deities or being given by them to the pharaoh, to represent their power to sustain life and to revive human souls in the afterlife.

atef: The atef crown was made up of the White Crown of Upper Egypt with red ostrich feathers on either side. It was worn by the god of the underworld, Osiris.

ba: The ba is, essentially, the concept of the soul. Depicted as a bird with a human head, it could leave a person’s tomb to fly about. 

barque: These thin boats that curve up at either end were the transports of the gods, especially during festival processions. In temple sanctuaries, models of barques held statues of a deity. When a pharaoh died, a barque would transport them on their way to becoming a god.

Book of the Dead: This is the modern name ascribed to a collection of 200 hymns, rituals and spells that allowed the deceased to travel safely through the underworld and enter the afterlife. Ancient Egyptians knew it as the Spells for Going Forth by Day.

canopic jars: Four containers used to store the preserved internal organs of the deceased (the lungs, stomach, liver and intestines) extracted during the mummification process. Each jar was topped with the head of one of the god Horus’ sons.

cartouche: The oval frame that surrounds the name of a king, queen or god in inscriptions.

Coffin Texts: Collected during the First Intermediate Period, around 2134-2040 BCE, these 1,185 incantations and other forms of religious writing were inscribed on coffins to help the deceased navigate the afterlife, providing maps of the underworld and the best way to avoid dangers on one’s way to paradise.

deshret (or Red Crown): The crown, with a square base that curved upward into a point and had a coil spiraling out in front, was worn by the rulers of Lower Egypt.

djed: A representation of the spine, it symbolized stability. A djed amulet was often placed in coffins, where the backbone of the deceased would lay, to ensure eternal life. During a Sed festival, the pharaoh, with the help of priests, would raise a djed column. 

Duat: The underworld, home of the gods Osiris, Anubis and Ma’at, as well as many grotesque monsters. The sun deity Ra travels through the Duat every night, where he battles the serpent Apep, or Apophis. This is where a deceased person’s soul travels for judgment. 

Eye of Horus (aka udjat eye or wedjat eye): A falcon’s eye that acts as a protective talisman and symbolizes rebirth after death. Its origins lie in a myth where the evil god Set plucks out one of his nephew Horus’ eyes. 

faience: A powdered quartz paste that ranges in color from turquoise to teal. Modeled and sometimes fired, it was commonly used for jewelry, pottery and sculptures.

hedjet (or White Crown): The crown of Upper Egypt, it’s often irreverently (but accurately) described as looking like a bowling pin.

hieroglyphs: Think of them as the emojis of their day. Often mistakenly called hieroglyphics, they make up the system of pictorial writing used in Ancient Egypt. Though they sometimes represented the actual objects they depicted, hieroglyphs usually stood for particular sounds. 

Horus name: Beginning in the Predynastic Period, pharaohs would take on an additional name, cementing their relationship with the falcon-headed god Horus. The pharaoh oversaw their entire country and, like the bird of prey, could strike at enemies below. 

hypostyle hall: The reception area of a temple. Originally, most would have had a roof over rows of densely packed columns with capitals depicting palms, papyri or lotuses to represent the lush island of creation.

ka: The best way to describe this is as a soul — it’s someone’s other self, what makes them unique. It’s with a person throughout their life, but upon death the ka and the body become separate. The body has to be preserved, and the ka nourished, or it will starve and cease to exist. It’s represented as a human with upraised arms — or just the arms raised at a 90-degree angle. 

khepresh (or Blue Crown): Often worn by pharaohs when going into war, the khepresh was a blue headpiece with a uraeus on the brow.

kohl: Black powder made from galena ore (the chief source of lead) mixed with oil and used as an eyeliner by women and men.

Lower Egypt: The Ancient Egyptian worldview was upside-down compared to ours. Lower Egypt was the northern half of Egypt, so called because the Nile flows north before entering the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital was Memphis.

ma’at (aka maat): The principle of balance and cosmic order, personified by a goddess of the same name. It was a pharaoh’s duty to rule according to ma’at.

mammisi: A birth house, where a woman would go to deliver a child and recover for two weeks or so. These chapels were often situated in front of a temple and were said to be where a god had been born.

mastaba: A type of tomb first created in the Old Kingdom. From the Arabic word for “bench,” they were rectangular and flat-roofed, with a substructure belowground. As time went on, architects stacked stories atop them, leading to step pyramids and, eventually, the triangular pyramids like those at Giza.

nemes: A striped head covering worn by pharoahs. It covered the brow and skull, hung down on the side to rest on the shoulders, and was drawn together in the back in a sort of ponytail. King Tut was a fan. 

Opening of the Mouth: A ceremony held at the tomb, where the mouth of a mummy was symbolically opened so the dead could use their senses in the afterlife.

Opet: A festival held during the inundation, or flooding of the Nile. The statue of the chief god Amun would travel upon a barque from his sanctuary at Karnak to Luxor Temple.

papyrus: The writing surface used by Egyptian scribes. Derived from the pith of the stalks of papyrus, which grew along the banks of the Nile, the plant was also used to make boats, sandals, baskets and rope. 

pectoral: An elaborate necklace that covered much of the chest.

pharaoh: The supreme ruler of Ancient Egypt. He or she (there are a few times when a woman took the throne, like the remarkable Hatshepsut) was considered a god.

pschent (or the Double Crown): A combination of the deshret and hedjet crowns, it showed that the pharaoh controlled both Lower and Upper Egypt.

pylon: A massive gateway leading into a temple. Some held rooms, like the one for the harem at Medinet Habu.

Pyramid Texts: The earliest religious texts of Ancient Egypt. These spells, religious beliefs and myths were inscribed on the walls of Fifth and Sixth Dynasty pyramids (2465-2150 BCE). They were used to magically transform the deceased into the god of the afterlife, Osiris. Composed of 2,217 spells grouped into 714 “utterances,” they gave way to the Coffin Texts.

rekhyt: A stylized lapwing bird with wings spread and human arms raised in adoration, representing the general populace or the pharaoh's subjects. When depicted on the walls of ancient temples, it signified that the public was allowed in that area. 

sarcophagus: A large stone container that held a mummy's coffin. Its name comes from the Greek sarkophagos, meaning “flesh-eater.”

Sed: A festival of rejuvenation that renewed the powers of a pharaoh, it was usually — but not always — held in their 30th year of rule.

senet: A game played in Ancient Egypt. No one knows the rules, but they think it was a bit like chess. Pieces were usually fashioned from animal bone or clay. 

shabti (also shawabti or ushabti): A small mummy statuette of a servant placed in tombs that could be magically brought to life to perform tasks for the deceased in the afterlife.

sistrum: A sacred rattle made of a wood, metal or clay frame set loosely with crossbars strung with small metal discs. It was shaken during ritual dances for the goddess Hathor and later Isis.

sphinx: A mythological beast with the body of a lion that usually had the head of a pharaoh or god. The famous one sits outside Cairo at Giza. 

stele (also stela): An upright slab of stone that served as a monument, inscribed with religious or historical text.

Upper Egypt: The southern half of the kingdom of Ancient Egypt. It’s called Upper Egypt because the Nile River flows northward, from Upper to Lower Egypt. Its capital was Thebes.

uraeus: A rearing cobra in a threatening pose that represented divine authority, worn as a crown or head ornament by Ancient Egyptian divinities and rulers. It showed that the pharaoh had the protection of the goddess Wadjet, the patroness of Lower Egypt.

vizier: The second in command after the pharaoh. The role held many responsibilities, including administration of the government, security, judgement and the safety of the empire.

was scepter: A staff that’s often forked at the bottom and topped with the head of a creature, possibly the Bennu bird, a mythological heron who wears the atef crown. Carried by gods and pharaohs, the was scepter stood for power and dominion. –Wally

The True Story of the Assyrian Conquest of Judah

The Old Testament says that good King Hezekiah fended off the Assyrian army at Jerusalem, but his triumph was undone by bad King Manasseh. Archaeology proves otherwise.

Instead of scurrying home in defeat, did the Assyrians actually successfully conquer Jerusalem?

It just doesn’t seem fair that the fate of an entire kingdom would be dependent upon its king’s behavior — namely whether or not he worshiped other gods besides YHWH (Yahweh). 

But that’s exactly what happens throughout the Old Testament. In general, the kingdom of Judah fared much better than its northern neighbor, Israel, which was ultimately laid to waste by Assyria.

“A contemporary record explains how Sennacherib laid siege to city after city throughout Judah, conquering them with ramps and battering rams.

He captured King Hezekiah and kept him “like a bird in a cage.” ”

The Bible tells us that King Hezekiah defeated the Assyrians with divine intervention. But archaeological evidence from the time suggests otherwise.

Hezekiah and the Miraculous Defeat of Assyria

With King Sargon II of Assyria dead since 705 BCE, Hezekiah (who reigned from 727-698 BCE) decided it was time to rebel, entering a coalition backed by Egypt. Of course, that prompted the new ruler of Assyria, Sennacherib, to gather his formidable army and march upon Judah. 

The book of 2 Kings in the Bible tells the story of a miraculous defeat: The Angel of the Lord went forth, slaying 185,000 soldiers in the Assyrian camp. Needless to say, that frightened King Sennacherib enough that he scurried home — only to be murdered by two of his sons. 

After his supposed defeat, the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib was killed by two of his own sons.

For some reason, Hezekiah’s son and successor, Manasseh (698-642 BCE), isn’t impressed enough with the power of Yahweh to insist upon sole worship of the deity. He makes a theological about-face, and even goes so far as to burn his son as an offering to one of the local gods, practice soothsaying and augury, and deal with mediums and wizards. (Sounds like fun to me — except for the human sacrifice bit.)

The evil King Manasseh had to repent for his sins in the Old Testament — but historical evidence doesn’t jibe with the Bible’s version of events.

Archaeology Tells a Different Story

Were the Assyrians defeated during their invasion of Judah? If the story in the Old Testament seems almost too fantastical to believe, that’s because it probably is. Archaeological evidence — granted, some from the Assyrian point of view — tells another version.

A contemporary record explains how Sennacherib laid siege to city after city throughout Judah, conquering them with ramps and battering rams. He captured King Hezekiah and kept him prisoner in his palace, “like a bird in a cage,” while the Assyrian army plundered his land. 

So who’s telling the truth? The authors of the Bible or the Assyrian historians?

Bad news for biblical literalists: “The devastation of the Judahite cities can be seen in almost every mound excavated in the Judean hinterland,” write Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.

Sennacherib, the ruler of Assyria at the time of Hezekiah and Manasseh

Manasseh and Assyria

Perhaps Manasseh is remembered so poorly because he actually became one of Assyria’s most loyal vassal states — despite the prosperity it brought. 

“[A] seventh century text reporting tribute given by south Levantine states to the Assyrian king indicates that Judah’s tribute was considerably smaller than that paid by the neighboring, poorer Assyrian vassals Ammon and Moab,” write Finkelstein and Silverman.

Manasseh was said to be captured and marched to Assyria in chains — including one through his nose. But a contemporary record says it was Hezekiah who was captured and kept “like a bird in a cage.”

In another document, Manasseh is reported as giving gifts to the Assyrian king and helping him conquer Egypt. And while this certainly would have displeased anyone who wanted a free, unified kingdom of Israel, Manasseh’s long reign of 55 years was a peaceful time for Judah. 

The Defeat of Sennacherib by Peter Paul Rubens, 17th century

“For all the Bible’s talk of Hezekiah’s piety and YHWH’s saving intervention, Assyria was the only victor,” Finkelstein and Silverman write.  “Sennacherib fully achieved his goals: he broke the resistance of Judah and subjugated it. Hezekiah had inherited a prosperous state, and Sennacherib destroyed it.”

The author of the books of Kings seems to have hoped that by the time he wrote his version of the account, people would have forgotten what actually had happened. For centuries, this is what people have believed — until archeological evidence has come along to prove them wrong. –Wally

Apple Cider Donut Bread

Sweet! A favorite fall treat gets a new preparation in this dessert recipe that uses stuff you’ve probably got at home already. 

A new fall tradition: whipping up some apple cider donut loaves!

Fall has officially arrived in Chicago. The mild 80-degree days of early October plummeted to the 30s and 40s in the blink of an eye. This delicious baked loaf is the perfect combination of fresh cider cake-style donuts and cinnamon sugar.  

I miss our annual autumnal visit to my family in Ellicottville, New York and going through the legit-scary Pumpkinville cornstalk maze. After making it through, Wally and I would always treat ourselves to some fresh-pressed apple cider and cider donuts. You know the kind that are still warm, a little bit cakey and covered with generous amounts of cinnamon sugar?

Duke and Wally goofing around at Pumpkinville, with their creepy friend Chris in the background

Our favorite fall tradition: visiting Pumpkinville in Ellicottville, New York, with its a-maize-ing corn maze

You can imagine how excited I was when I found a recipe on Epicurious for apple cider donut loaf. Three loaves and a bit of experimentation later, I finally figured out the right ratio. This bread has a subtle apple flavor and is totally acceptable to eat for breakfast. You probably have everything you need in your fridge and pantry right now except cider — so what are you waiting for?

Eggs, flour, spices: Check your kitchen — we bet you’ve got most of these ingredients already.

Ingredients

• 1 large apple, peeled, cored and chopped 

• 1½ cups apple cider

• ½ cup whole milk

• ¼ cup sour cream

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 2½ cups all-purpose flour 

• 1½ teaspoons baking powder 

• ½ teaspoon baking soda

• 1 teaspoon salt

• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

• ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

• ¼ teaspoon ground allspice

• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature 

• ¾ cup brown sugar

• ½ cup organic granulated cane sugar 

• 3 large eggs, room temperature 

Anything topped with cinnamon sugar is A-OK in our book.

Cinnamon Sugar 

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon 

⅓ cup granulated sugar

How you like them apples? Some people have said there’s not enough apple taste, so ramp that up if you want.

Preparation

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat to 350°F. 

Grease and flour a loaf pan. Line the bottom with parchment paper. 

For the apples, I used a Honeycrisp, but a Granny Smith would work, too.

Place the chopped apple and cider in a saucepan and bring to a boil. 

Lower heat and simmer for 8 minutes until reduced to 1 cup. 

Remove from heat and let cool, then pulse in a food processor until puréed. The texture will resemble apple sauce. 

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg and allspice. Set aside. 

Using a stand mixer, beat the butter, sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. 

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. 

Add sour cream and beat until incorporated, about 1 minute. 

Decrease mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture in three batches. After the first portion of the flour mixture is added, pour in the apple mixture. Then add the other two batches of the flour mixture, scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl with rubber spatula as needed. Increase the speed to medium and beat until just combined, about 30 seconds. 

Add vanilla and beat once more, just to combine, about 10 seconds. 

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. 

Bake for 50 to 55 minutes until the tester inserted into the loaf comes out clean. 

Leave to cool for about 1 hour. 

Generously sprinkle the top of the loaf with cinnamon sugar.

Everyone’s favorite apple cider donuts now come in bread form!

We think this sweet treat works for breakfast or dessert!

The end result is a bit subtle on the apple front, but there’s a nice burst of apple flavor when you first take a bite. We’ve added an apple to the original recipe to increase the concentrated flavor; see if that works for you. If you find something you really like, please let us know in the comments section. –Duke

For the Love of Latin Food

Most cooking sites get Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican recipes wrong. Familia Kitchen sets out to correct that by highlighting authentic family recipes.

Home cooking should be easy and delicious.

I admit that when it came to Latin cuisine, I was hopelessly naïve. I expected all of the countries of Central and South America to have the bold, spicy flavors of Mexico. So I was quite surprised when I got to Peru and realized that the national cuisine had little in common with Mexico’s. But the soups I had along the Incan Trail to Machu Picchu were absolutely delicious, and I had a tres colores ceviche that might be the best I’ve ever had. I also enjoyed my alpaca medallions on the shore of Lake Titicaca — just don’t ask me about the guinea pig.

Now, as a more seasoned traveler (and foodie), I realize that every country has its own distinct cuisine, each delicious in its own way.

Food is an essential part of travel for us, and Duke and I eat as globally in our cuisine as possible. So it was with great excitement and anticipation that we awaited the launch of Familia Kitchen, by my friend and former colleague, Kim. –Wally

What’s not to love about Latin food, in all its many varieties?!

“Grandmother cooking is fast, because abuelas know how to get dinner on the table quickly. And it’s authentic, because it comes from their heart and their homeland soil.”

— Kim Caviness, CEO and editor in chief, Familia Kitchen

What made you decide to launch Familia Kitchen? 

I’ve long been fascinated by what people cook at home, for themselves. On a regular weeknight and on important occasions, like a family holiday: What do they make and why? If I meet someone new, I’ll try to find a way to ask them a typical thing they make for dinner and about their family food heritage — by the way, it almost always comes from their mother’s culture. Their face lights up when they start talking. 

Food is family is history is identity. 

Li’l Kim in Puerto Rico, already a big fan of food

I grew up in Puerto Rico, right by San Juan, surrounded by so many cousins and aunts and uncles. My mother’s family goes back many generations on the island. We rotated from aunt to aunt for family holidays, which always involved lots of cooking.

In Puerto Rico, my family owned a little hotel, a guesthouse called El Canario. It was my mother’s house when she grew up. My grandmother, Rocío — which  means “morning dew,” isn’t that so pretty? — lived next door. That’s the Latino way: Family lives near each other and gets together a lot, over food. My parents would often invite our American hotel guests back to our place across the street for drinks. Dad had this tiki bar in our apartment and he’d swish up daiquiris and piña coladas, and Mom would make delicious dishes, often Puerto Rican traditional ones. I’d watch her in the kitchen. I wanted to do that when I grew up.

Kim’s family owned El Canario Hotel near San Juan, Puerto Rico, where they’d invite guests to their apartment-cum-tiki-bar across the street.

Now I’m the grownup hosting family holiday meals, and if I want to make authentic dishes from my childhood, the only way to get them is straight from Mom. There are lots of good blogs, but when I consult the major recipe websites, they don’t get Latino food right. They often mix up Mexican and Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban and so on. They water down the flavors and ingredients. They use the wrong kind of rice or not-quite-right spices. It seems like they see all Latinos as one monolithic Hispanic food segment. Sometimes, they’ll have a talented chef doing a traditional dish “Nuevo Latino” style. Which usually sounds great and I’m all for innovation, but it will list 20+ ingredients and steps. You couldn’t make it for a normal, daily, family dinner. 

Kim, with her son, Bob

For years, I’d think to myself: That’s not how Latina abuelas — our good-cook grandmothers — would make that dish. Why overcomplicate?  And how do we keep their recipes alive?

So I determined to do something about it. I decided to create a website with only authentic abuela cooking. We’d publish the favorite family recipes of Latino/a/x homecooks who have their go-tos dishes memorized. Who know when and how to break traditional food rules — and when not to. They are the OG keepers of our culinary traditions.

Mmmmm…nachos!

When did you get the idea for the site? 

The specific idea for Familia Kitchen, a crowdsourced and curated Latino/a/x family recipes and food stories website, came to me the week of Christmas 2019, when I was trying to find a Puerto Rican recipe online — and struck out. 

Nine months later, like a baby: Familia Kitchen launched. Our mission is to celebrate and collect Latinx families’ favorite recipes, as we really make them. We’ll go country by country, island by island, memorializing families’ favorite recipes before they get lost to time. 

Kim, Lisa and Ana decided to found Familia Kitchen — the kind of Latinx recipe site they dreamed of.

What’s your site’s mission?

Our dream is to create the best, biggest and most authentic treasury of Latinx culinary legacies — for all 19 Spanish-speaking destinations in Latin and Central America and the Caribbean — showcasing their simplicity and sophistication. Very important: We’ll celebrate the home cooks who submit by posting their bylines, family food stories and cook’s notes.

Boricua-style Puerto Rican rice with chicken. Sharing your family’s recipes on Familia Kitchen could score you a free trip home!

Tell us about your recipe contests. 

One of the ways Familia Kitchen will gather the best traditional Latinx recipes is by inviting users to submit to our 12 Familia Kitchen recipe contests a year. Each month, we’ll feature one defining dish from a Latinx country or island and invite cooks to submit their family’s favorite. In October, we launched with Your Familia’s Favorite Puerto Rican Arroz con Pollo. In November, we switched to Your Familia’s Favorite Mexican Pozole. We will publish every recipe and food story submitted. They’re all authentic, time-honored and loved. 

Familia Kitchen will build our culinary treasury one recipe, one food story at a time.

At the end of each year, the cook who submits the “most popular” family recipe — the most likes, most shares, most comments — will win a trip (flight, hotel, an amazing meal) for two to their Latinx homeland. Our tagline is “Cooking your way home” — and Familia Kitchen is excited to literally make that happen for one Latinx cook and their plus-one each year. We’ll also donate 5% of our profits each year to a Feeding America Latino community program.

What’s your favorite aspect of Latinx cuisine?
The richness of the regionality of each Latinx nation’s flavors and food histories. And the way each destination’s food is different from each other in foundational ways, yet in the same food family. Cuban and Argentinian cuisines are pretty different, yet they are both unmistakably “Latino.”

Family gathered to celebrate young Kim’s birthday.

What’s the best part about cooking?

Feeding people you love: friends and family. I also love experiencing someone’s life and family through their food stories and memories. When they tell you that this is the very beef picadillo that they always ate at their grandparents’ house on Father’s Day when they were growing up. And then you make that picadillo, with its hints of that family’s own way of cooking and living — you can literally taste a time and place and people. Food anthropology.

One of Kim’s favorite recipes: pasteles with pork, wrapped in banana leaves

What are some of your favorite recipes?

I love so many. We have a recipe for pasteles with pork, green bananas and yautia from a friend I went to elementary school with that takes me back in time to Puerto Rico of 100 years ago. My husband’s cousin Anjie, whose family came from Spain to New Mexico in the 1600s, submitted their never-see-it-anywhere-else recipe for sweet chile rellenos with hatch chiles that is a revelation. A friend, Susana, who is from Peru, sent me her family recipe for the fish ceviche they eat at the beach. What an honor. 

And one of my co-founders, Ana: Her husband Brian writes a regular column for us called “Guero Corner.” Guero is a nickname Mexicans give light-haired people. The funny thing is he’s the gringo family cook who sits with his Mexican mother-in-law, an amazing abuela cocinera nicknamed Gollita. One of our most popular recipes on the site right now is his: Gollita’s porkchops with tomatoes and onions, which are unlike any porkchops I’ve had before. They are tangy, textured and so easy! My husband and son said they are the best chops they have ever had, and now I make them on the regular.

What do you love about “abuela cooking,” as you call it?

Grandmother cooking — it’s the best. Here’s why: It’s trusted. It’s been honed over decades to its most simple and delicious version. It’s fast, because abuelas know how to get dinner on the table quickly. And it’s authentic, because it comes from their heart and their homeland soil.

Tacos could be one of the most versatile of dishes, with a potentially infinite amount of variations — almost always tasty.

What ingredients are essential for a Latinx home chef?

For all Latinx cuisines? I’d have to say rice, of course, as well as garlic — which means we all need a good garlic press to squeeze every liquidy last bit from each clove. 

If Wally sees a cubano on the menu, there’s no turning back.

What’s something most people don’t know about Latinx cuisine?

How complex and sophisticated each country’s dishes are. They’re not as spicy as people think. And how wide the range of cuisine is. Peruvian is as different from Mexican cuisine as German is from Italian food.

Wally has already whipped up a huge batch of Doña Felipa’s sofrita — and is experimenting by putting it on pretty much everything he can think of.

Tell us about Doña Felipa, your neighborhood “abuela.”

One day I heard someone speaking Spanish while watering her back garden, which is literally next to my house in Chicago. I could tell from the woman’s accent she was from Puerto Rico. What are the chances? I waited for her to finish her phone call, introduced myself, and we immediately started talking. 

Doña Felipa, who is 83, and I discovered we both love cooking, and that cemented our friendship. She and I spend a lot of time at her kitchen counter, while she chops and teaches me how she makes our island’s most traditional dishes. Even now we do that, wearing masks.

Doña Felipa loves to tell stories of growing up on the western side of the island and raising her kids in Chicago. She spoils us with Puerto Rican food packages all the time. Last month, she brought over a little statue of El Niño Divino, the divine child Jesus, to watch over our health and house. She blessed me right there on the street in front of our house, on busy Diversey. Total abuela thing to do.

Everyone should live next to a Puerto Rican abuela. 

Or the next closest thing: Cook like one. #abuelacooking

7 Reasons to Visit the French Island of Corsica

From the towns of Ajaccio and Calvi to beaches and mountains, there’s no shortage of things to do in Corsica, whether you want culture or outdoor adventure.

The French isle of Corsica has a culture influenced by both France and Italy.

A paradise in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea — there’s no better way to describe Corsica. One of the 18 administrative regions of France, Corsica lies southeast of the French mainland, west of the Italian Peninsula and immediately north of the Italian island of Sardinia. 

The beautiful island is known far and wide for its dramatic mountain ranges, which cover two-thirds of it, and the pristine waters that will surely take your breath away. Aside from its magnificent landscape, the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, as it’s officially known, boasts an incredibly rich history, showcased by the various ancient buildings that pepper the city, the winding cobbled streets, the flavorful cuisine, and the colorful art and music scenes. Here are seven of the best reasons why you should visit the French island of Corsica.

“Corsica boasts a rich history, ancient buildings, winding cobbled streets, flavorful cuisine, and colorful art and music scenes. ”

The weather in Corsica is gorgeous year-round.

1. The weather

Nothing beats a summer spent on Corsica — an island where you can enjoy hot, dry weather by the beach. Due to its location, this paradise enjoys a Mediterranean climate that has an average temperature of 27ºC (81ºF) inland and year-round sunshine that’s a welcome getaway for those who live in countries where a cold, harsh climate is the norm. 

For those of you who want to avoid crowds during the high season, September and October would be the best time to visit the island since the pleasant weather only drops to the mid to low 20s Celsius (high 60s to mid 70s Fahrenheit).

One of the best beaches on the island is Plage de Saleccia — you just might have to share your spot with a wild cow! Be careful: Don’t try to take a selfie with them. A woman was gored by those horns a few years back.

2. The beaches

From wide bays that lap upon smooth rocks to remote sandy beaches only accessible by boat, you will never run out of stunning spots to go to in Corsica. If you are after a serene and quiet trip, you can go to some of the undeveloped coastlines, such as Plage de Saleccia and Lotu Beach. 

If you are traveling with kids and want to enjoy the seaside with the magnificent Corsica land formations as the backdrop, try Roccapina and Palombaggia.

The terrain on Corsica allows for lots of adventure activities, including canyoneering (which we hadn’t heard of before!).

3. The outdoor activities

The perfect mix of land formations and bodies of water in Corsica provides tourists with ample opportunity to partake in a wide array of outdoor activities. For those thrill-seeking tourists out there, activities include parasailing, canyoneering, river rafting, 4x4 off-road tours and rock climbing. There are also plenty of activities for those who are a bit less extreme, such as horseback riding, fishing, canoeing, cycling and kayaking.

The cuisine of Corsica takes cues from France and Italy. If you’re lucky, you’ll happen upon a market of fresh-baked goods like this one.

4. The cuisine

If you are a foodie with a love for all things Italian and French, then you would definitely enjoy the delectable dishes of Corsica. Thanks to its location, the island’s cuisine takes inspiration from both Italy and France. This then gave birth to traditional Corsican meals that are usually hearty, made of fresh seafood, local meats and locally produced dairy products like brocciu (ewe’s milk).

One of the most famous Corsican dishes is civet de sanglier, a wild boar and vegetable stew made with red wine.

Some of the dishes that will surely take your Corsican vacation to the next level are civet de sanglier, a hearty wild boar stew made with onions, carrots, fennel and red wine, and agneau corse, lamb slow roasted with whole garlic cloves, fresh rosemary and potatoes.

Pay a visit to the Musée Fesch, itself a work of art.

5. The arts

On top of the awesome mountain ranges and impressive beaches, Corsica is also home to magnificent art galleries and august historical establishments. Two museums you wouldn’t want to miss are Musée Fesch in Ajaccio and Musée d’Archéologie d’Aleria in Aleria.

The Musée d’Archéologie d’Aleria is housed in the historic Fort de Matra.

While the Musée Fesch is a 19th-century palace that houses one of the finest Napoleonic collections in all of France, the Musée d’Archéologie is situated in the Fort of Matra, which was constructed by the Genoese in the 14th century and houses the various artifacts discovered at the site.

Before Napoleon became emperor of France (and liked to tuck his hand into his shirt), he was a newborn babe on the island of Corsica.

6. The historical sites

After a fulfilling art trip, you can go on a historical tour of Corsica. Maison Bonaparte was the ancestral home of the Bonaparte family from 1682 to 1923. Here you can see lavish family rooms, galleries and drawing rooms as well as the bedroom of Madame Mère, where Napoléon was born. 

Visit the Maison Bonaparte to see the bedroom where Napoleon was born.

Tour the Calvi Citadel, which offers views of the port.

Visible from the beaches, the Calvi Citadel reveals the deep influences of the Genoese rule in Corsica through the different bastions that were once home to the Genoese governor and are now used by the legendary Foreign Legion.

Corsica offers scenic vistas, from rustic villages to rugged mountains.

7. The flora and fauna

Corsica is more than just an island that can be eye-candy for many tourists around the world: It is also home to some of the world’s rarest animals and plants.

Keep an eye out for the endangered (and adorably named) mouflon.

You might stumble upon a herd of mountain goats on a hike through the hills.

The best way to go on a nature trip in Corsica is by visiting the Parc Naturel Régional de Corse. First opened in 1972, the park will give you the chance to see some of the most endangered animals on the planet, such as the hoofed mammals known as mouflons and Corsican red deer.

If you can’t visit Corsica in person, you can always explore it from the comfort of your home, thanks to stunning drone photography.

A Virtual Tour of Corsica

Given the travel restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of people might find it hard to get to Corsica in the coming months. Fortunately, there are many ways to get a taste of Corsica without physically going there. For instance, you can listen to some of the best musicians from Corsica through a Spotify playlist curated by National Geographic. The playlist features songs by the vocal groups A Filetta and Voce Vetu.

Corsica, France has much to offer, whether you’re a boater, outdoor enthusiast or culture lover.

You can also count on drone technology, which has made it possible for virtually anyone to see magnificent views of the world’s best travel destinations from the comforts of their home. Through drone cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles, you can see sweeping takes of beautiful vistas and can explore places no human has ever been able to visit. Many such videos have been shot of Corsica’s one-of-a-kind landscape, giving you a taste of what to expect when you do visit:

Tour de Corse en drone (4K) !

The astonishing island of Corsica is only one of the many majestic places France has to offer. To make your French trip count, read about the different beautiful destinations. The country has perfect spots for couples, history junkies, nature lovers and all kinds of travelers. –Shannon Nichol

 

Alien-Human Hybrids: A Plot to Conquer Earth?

Yes, it sounds like science fiction. But a preeminent ufologist believes that for over 100 years alien abductees around the world have had their DNA harvested and manipulated by aliens.

Are alien-human hybrids living among us? And if so, what’s their nefarious endgame?

Dr. David M. Jacobs, in his research on UFOs and alien abductions, has come to a shocking conclusion: Extraterrestrials have been harvesting — and using — our DNA for over a century. The goal? Making alien-human hybrids. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking: That’s crazy. It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie. It can’t possibly be real. 

But I assure you that David struck me as an intelligent man. He taught history at Temple University for over 35 years. He’s spent the better part of his life interviewing hundreds of people who have recalled over 2,000 abduction events, and the details were so strikingly similar that he eventually became convinced of their truth. 

Dr. David M. Jacobs was skeptical at first. But after 35 years of interviewing hundreds of potential alien abductees, he’s convinced. And he says an alien invasion is escalating.

“They’re living here among us, just like everybody else.
It’s assimilation. It’s planetary acquisition. ”

— David M. Jacobs, author, "Walking Among Us"

“Almost every aspect of this phenomenon is astonishing,” David says. “It’s so amazingly bizarre and yet logical all the way through. It’s hard for anybody to imagine it ever happening. And yet we have millions of people who are saying the same thing.”

David was reluctant to believe in such an astounding claim as human-alien hybrids — but, as his latest book, Walking Among Us: The Alien Plan to Control Humanity, attests, he’s come around.

That book concluded his research on the subject, though a final book about abduction research methodology is in the works. Today, David can’t continue on with his research: The thought of alien hybrids living among us is a bit too much for him. 

“After learning that, I said, OK, I’ve done the best I can do,” he tells me. “I want to sit around and watch television for the rest of my life. I want to be happy.” –Wally

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DISCOVER THE EVIDENCE for alien abductions in the first part of our interview with David M. Jacobs

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An alien-human hybrid uses telepathic mind control on an abductee. These drawings were all done by people Jacobs interviewed.

What do the aliens look like? 

Here’s the problem: When people remember things without help, they can often get them wrong. The physical descriptions are largely very consistent, but there are still a few outliers. 

Almost every abductee reports interacting with small gray aliens and tall gray aliens. Both typically have four fingers and are slender, with smooth, hairless skin and huge black oval eyes. 

The small grays are usually 3 or 4 feet tall and do a lot of the grunt work, you could call it — like orderlies at a hospital.

The taller grays are 5 or 6 feet tall. They’re more complex and act as sort of bosses. I guess you could say they do the managerial roles on the ship. They’re the ones that come in and do the procedures, like doctors. One common procedure abductees report is called a “staring procedure,” where a tall gray will put their head about an inch away from the abductee’s face and stare directly into their eyes. Abductees report that it feels as though the alien is rifling around in their brain — as though it’s opening up cabinets to figure out the stuff that you’ve been up to and figure out what your motivations are and so forth.

There’s another distinct kind of alien that people report: the insectoid or mantid. They kind of look like a praying mantis. They are much taller, with even larger, more triangular heads and very thin bodies. They’re not seen very often, but abductees say that they get the sense these guys are the leaders, the ones who are in control. 

Are there any physical signs that someone has been abducted by aliens? 

People don’t quite understand that there are many physical signs of abduction: Abductees frequently report waking up to find dimple indentations or fully formed geometric scars on their bodies, as though they were branded and then have healed. Sometimes people will report pulling out little rods of metal from their skin. We have many photos and evidence jars to prove it.  

What percentage of abductees have physical marks like these?

A hundred percent. Everyone has some sort. Sometimes they last for a very short time. And some people have shown me stuff that they’ve had for years.

Are there other physical signs?

Sometimes women will return from an abduction event and say that they feel pregnant. So they’ll run out and get a pregnancy test — and it comes back positive. And then they’ll say to themselves, “How could this be? I had my uterus removed 10 years ago,” or, “My doctors have assured me that I’m infertile,” or, “I haven’t been intimate with anyone in years.”

Like anyone would do, they’ll panic and call their doctor immediately. They’ll make an appointment for the end of the week. And yet, by the time of the appointment, the fetus has already been taken out, leaving them and their doctors stunned. They never start showing. The thing is, that from everything we know, this all makes total sense. They’re an incubator. 

It’s unbelievable. It’s crazy. And yet all these people are saying the same things, all described in the same way.  

Are the aliens violent? 

It’s clear that the aliens put abductees into a kind of a fugue state and order them around. They want abductees to remain sedate and compliant.

But every once in a while an abductee might somehow slip loose from this twilight state and gain some consciousness, running down the hallway, screaming, “Where am I? What’s happening?” Next thing you know, the aliens run after them and calm them down. There’s no violence that happens onboard a ship. There’s no physical coercion, no threats.

What’s one of the most surprising things about alien abductions?

Although some aspects of this research have filtered into pop culture, most people still don’t understand that abductions always follow hereditary lines. So, if you are an abductee, your children will be abductees, and at least one of your parents was one as well. To our knowledge, no one has ever been purposefully abducted whose parents were not abductees. And again, there’s a reason for this, too. 

Over the past 20 years or so, people stopped talking about having their sperm or eggs collected, and instead started telling stories of hybrid babies.

What was the first clue that alien abductions had taken a scary new direction?

After interviewing abductees for about 20 years, people started to tell me something that I had never heard before — and these stories became more and more common. They’d say that when they’re abducted they weren’t just being taken onboard a craft, but they would be taken to someplace else in their town or city to meet another person — all while still under control of the aliens. 

For example, a woman knows she’s been instructed to go to a certain corner and meet someone. So, under their telepathic influence, she heads over to the corner and waits. Sure enough, a man approaches. He looks just like a regular guy — but he isn’t. He takes her to a nearby apartment. Inside, she encounters several other normal-looking people, ostensibly living together. And then she notices that all of the apartment’s furniture is pushed off into a heap on one side of the living room. The man asks her, “How do we make this look normal?” Of course, these are all hybrids. 

The first thing she says to him is, “No, no, no, you can’t do that. The couch has to be over here, and then you put a little table in front of it, and then put a television over here,” and so on.

Then, a few days later, she’s with him and another hybrid in a supermarket and it's the same deal. “What is this?” “When do you eat it?” She’s teaching them what a loaf of bread is, what an egg is, how you eat them, etc. 

Abductees remember meeting hybrids living among us and teaching them the basics of their culture, from placing furniture to cooking.

Events like these weren’t just some strange reports — everyone I was working with, from new relationships to those I’d spent years with, were all reporting this.

The aliens were doing this for a reason. The whole thing, from sperm and egg collection to implanting fetuses and growing hybrids, was all about one thing: They’re living here among us, just like everybody else. It’s assimilation. It’s planetary acquisition. 

An alien holds a hybrid infant onboard a UFO, as recalled by an abductee. Those babies have now grown into adults, they say.

What can we do to address this threat? 

I just know something’s going to happen in the future. And that’s the key thing: If I get the word out, everybody will think I’m nuts — well, they already do. But if I don’t get the word out, none of it matters anyway. Based on where we are today, we can’t control it. We’re not sophisticated enough and we don’t have the kind of legitimacy and resources needed to actually find a way to solve the problem. The scientific community has no interest in it whatsoever. So how do you stop a global threat when no one believes it’s real, it’s global or that it’s a threat at all?  

One of the scariest things about hybrids (besides their powers of mind control) is that they look just like us.

So does that mean anyone could be a hybrid?

It’s important to know that while these human-alien hybrids look nearly identical to humans, they were not raised on Earth and they have certain abilities that we lack — specifically telepathy. So, though you have a being who is 90% or 99% human (whatever it may be), they will always be different. They know what you’re thinking. They can communicate telepathically with you, abductees and each other. And they can influence your thoughts and actions like a Jedi mind trick.

For example, one abductee met with her assigned hybrid while she was on the way to a sporting event. The hybrid wanted to join along, so she explained that he needed to root for a team if he wanted to fit in. So they went into a nearby store, and the hybrid walked out wearing a jersey. She stopped him, explaining that he had to pay it. He said that he had “spoken” with the store manager and was told he could just take the jersey. The lesson here is that whether or not the hybrid had intended it, he had been able to telepathically influence the store owner and walk away without paying. You don’t need money, or a job, or a social security number, if you can simply make every person you meet forget your face. 

Here’s another example of how hybrids work. There was this one situation where an abductee was onboard a UFO. She had been interacting with a group of teenage hybrids that she was told were about to come down to Earth. She noticed that one of the hybrids was talking quite boisterously and was informed, telepathically, by the hybrid in charge, that this individual was going to be culled from the herd — the point being that his behavior would have brought too much attention to himself and would jeopardize the secrecy of the program.

Some skeptics suggest that alien abductions might actually be sleep paralysis or some other psychological condition. What do you say to this?

This is a common debunking argument. Sleep paralysis is a real phenomenon, where your mind kind of wakes up before your body does. So you can feel like you’re trapped in bed, and it can feel like there’s a presence in the room. It can be very terrifying for people. 

But this kind of paralysis describes roughly 10 minutes of any given abduction event. It doesn’t describe working with hybrids, meeting them at Walmart, seeing the babies in jars onboard a ship or the strange scars that people have on their bodies. And don’t forget, the majority of abductions happen while people are awake.

Some say that abduction reports are just repressed trauma or sexual abuse trauma, and these people have mapped it onto this sci-fi narrative. But of course many of these people are not abuse victims of any kind. Many have seen or were referred to me by therapists and trained psychologists — after all, my colleague, the late John Mack, was chair of the psychology department at Harvard Medical School. 

And, like sleep paralysis, the repressed trauma argument can’t account for the litany of details, the accounts of missing time, or the fact that when I started this research no one knew anything about it. There wasn’t a book or sci-fi narrative anywhere they could’ve accidentally internalized.

Why do you think people have such a hard time believing in alien abductions?

Ghosts have been popular for thousands of years and fit, in some ways, into people’s religious and spiritual worldviews. Aliens, however, don’t. The phenomenon hasn’t had the benefit of centuries of folklore. And, of course, the aliens aren’t offering something as nice as talking with a dead relative. Everything about the subject is disturbing and fantastic. And there’s really no good incentive for someone to want to believe it — especially considering the social and professional stigma attached to it.

“How do you stop a global threat when no one believes it’s real, it’s global or that it’s a threat at all?”

— David M. Jacobs

Did you ever try to document the abductions?

For many years, I would give abductees home video cameras to see if they could get something on video. We knew this would be unlikely, and we didn’t get any aliens. But what did get is a ton of video of someone waking up at 4 in the morning, walking over to the camera and turning it off or walking into another room. And that was a little odd because they had set up the camera themselves, to capture an abduction. The next morning, they’d report having been abducted and race to the camera to find that they had inexplicably turned it off. 

Here’s the best one: This woman wanted to catch them. She was sleeping and then she woke up, got out of bed, walked over to the corner of the room and turned the camera off. Next thing you know, the video shows her asleep in bed — as though it had been edited. But it hadn’t been touched. And the question is: Who turned the camera on? If she had done it, we should have seen her walk back to the bed and get under the covers.

Alien hybrid children like to play, just like humans. Is your neighbor’s kid really part-alien?!

What other evidence do you have of alien abductions?

Years ago, my fellow researchers and I put together a nationally representative survey of the American population put out by the Roper Center at Cornell. It was a 10-question survey, and we had thousands of respondents. When we got the results, we were shocked. So we only looked at the people who answered yes to all 10 questions (when answering yes to even one might indicate you’re an abductee), just to be ultraconservative. It came down to 2% of the American population in 1992. 

If the U.S. population was 257 million back then, that would mean 5.1 million people were alien abductees!

And that’s with us being super conservative. And of course that’s just in the United States. This is a global phenomenon. And it also might be the most important thing that’s ever happened in the history of humankind.

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If you want to learn more, read David M. Jacobs’ books: 

• Secret Life: Firsthand, Documented Accounts of UFO Abductions

• The Threat: Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda

• Walking Among Us: The Alien Plan to Control Humanity

Lead White: The Deadliest Color?

Other ways to make white pigment paled in comparison — but was it worth the risk of lead poisoning?

Queen Elizabeth I loved her white makeup (made from a toxic blend of lead and vinegar) so much that she supposedly had an inch’s worth on her face when she died.

White: the color that evokes the purity of freshly fallen snow and the innocence of virgins. If you’ve ever flicked through a bridal magazine, you can’t help but notice the color white — though you no longer need be chaste to wear it.

But how can one of the earliest and most important pigments produced by mankind be one of the deadliest in the history of color? Its popularity was all the more alarming, given that it could result in lead poisoning (also referred to as painters’ colic or plumbism). Adult symptoms include headaches, abdominal cramps, joint and muscle pain and high blood pressure. Children can suffer developmental delays, learning difficulties and weight loss.

“Geishas used lead white makeup — it contrasted beautifully with their teeth, which they painted black.”

Japanese geishas are part of a long line of standards of beauty that decree that the whiter the skin the lovelier.

A Recipe for Lead White: Don’t Try This at Home 

Since antiquity, artists have used pigments to represent the colors they saw in the natural world. Lead was used  as the principal white pigment in paintings and glazes from ancient times until the 20th century. 

The statues you see in museums and at historic sites were originally painted — and that often included the poisonous lead white.

The laborious process was documented by Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder. First, pour a bit of vinegar into the bottom of an earthenware pot. Place a wooden spacer in the pot with a coiled band of lead on top so that only the rising vapors from the vinegar come in contact with the metal. The clay vessel was then surrounded by fresh animal dung and left in a sealed chamber for 30 days. As the manure fermented, it released carbon dioxide, which reacted with the vinegar and chemically corroded the lead, producing the perfect conditions for white papery flakes to grow. 

Pliny the Elder shared his recipe for the bright but toxic shade of white made from lead.

After a month or so, some poor soul was sent to retrieve the pieces of lead, which were now covered with a crust of lead carbonate. This was scraped, cleaned and washed to remove impurities. The raw pigment was ground into powder, formed into small cakes and left to dry in the sun for several days before being sold.

Sure, the process to make lead white cakes could lead to severe ailments — but it was just so bright and pretty!

The resulting pigment was highly valued by artists. Affordable and dense, painters swore by its ease to work with and primed their canvases with it to make their works appear more luminous. 

Art historians are also grateful for its use. When combined with the use of x-ray imaging technology, the paint reveals details such as the earlier stages, alterations and additions of a painting. 

A self-portrait of James McNeill Whistler, who used lead white paint in his works.

Whistler: What a Mama's Boy

One such painter who used lead white was the American-born, British-based artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). Whistler is perhaps best remembered for the iconic portrait, painted in 1871, of his mother. Titled Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1, most know it as Whistler’s Mother. It was the first artwork by an American artist to be purchased by the French government for display in a museum. When it’s not traveling, it resides at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The painting represents the peak of Whistler’s radical method of modulating tones of a single color.  

This technique began years earlier when he submitted The White Girl to the 1862 Royal Academy of Arts exhibition in London to demonstrate his talents to the world. The ethereal painting depicts his mistress, Joanna Hiffernan, a well-known beauty who modeled for other artists of the day. Tousled locks of red hair frame her expressionless face as she stands atop a wolfskin rug that, to me, disturbingly resembles the pelt of a yellow Lab. 

Whistler’s The White Girl was deemed too modern for the Salon exhibition in Paris.

As far as the British were concerned, the work was too avant-garde. It was rejected by the Academy and ended up in the Salon des Refusés, a protest exhibition organized by the French painter Gustave Courbet.  

Whistler later retitled the work Symphony in White, No.1, perhaps after empathetic art critic Paul Manz commented on the subtle variations of white in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts as a “symphonie du blanc.”

Geishas still wear a stark white makeup as a sort of mask.

The Lingering Perception That Pale Is Beautiful 

In addition to painting, lead white was used in cosmetics. The controversial quest for lighter skin and its association with beauty, social status and wealth has existed since Ancient Egypt. Women of Ancient Greece and Rome whitened their skin with powders and creams made from lead. Japanese geishas also used it — it contrasted beautifully with their teeth, which they had fashionably painted black using a solution of powdered oak galls and vinegar.

Japanese felt that a geisha’s stark white skin paired perfectly with blackened teeth.

The beauty product Snail White (made from actual snail secretions!) is said to leave your skin more pale — and therefore more beautiful.

When Wally and I visited Thailand, we saw shelves at the 7-Elevens stocked with pink and white boxes of Snail White skincare products to give you paler skin. The main ingredient? Mucus secreted by snails. Pretty!

Queen Elizabeth I first began using her lead white makeup as a sort of putty to spackle smallpox scarring.

Fit For a Queen: From Elizabeth I to Laird’s Bloom of Youth

What could have possessed 15th century European courtiers to smear the stuff on their faces? Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was 29 years old when she was diagnosed with smallpox. She survived the deadly illness but was left with smallpox-scarred skin. She appreciated the cosmetic’s ability to conceal her scars, so she adopted her now-famous chalk-white visage. The queen used Venetian ceruse (also known as spirits of Saturn), a foundation produced by combining powdered lead and vinegar. While it may have smoothed her complexion, it was exceedingly toxic — especially when worn for long periods of time. 

Elizabeth I’s legendary white makeup was used to help rebrand herself the Virgin Queen.

Elizabeth used her image to frame the narrative of a virgin queen who didn’t need a husband — she was wedded to her country. When she died at the age of 69, it was rumored that she had a full inch of makeup on her face, which, ironically, may have contributed to her death. 

Commercial lead makeup products like George W. Laird’s Bloom of Youth were introduced in the 19th century. Laird ran a series of advertisements in fashionable New York magazines, promising to smooth and whiten the skin. 

“It will immediately obliterate all such imperfections, and is entirely harmless. It has been chemically analyzed by the Board of Health of New York City and pronounced entirely free from any material injurious to the health or skin,” the ad (untruthfully) claimed.

Laird’s Bloom of Youth claimed to be harmless — but it wasn’t!

Women took notice and applied Laird’s Bloom of Youth foundation to their faces. Perhaps some women thought that a little bit wouldn’t hurt, and by the time the truth was clear, it was probably too late. –Duke