03x11 - Queen Esther And Purim

[bunniefuu]

♪ He's a tall, tall man ♪

- What does it all mean?

This is where the archeology has been found.

Oh, hi, how are you?

Oh, look at that.

I need a planter.

♪ From the mountain tops ♪

A shrine to a bellybutton.

This is a rock of salt?

♪ He digs for clues ♪

♪ In his dusty boots ♪

Look at that.

No one gets into this place. - No.

- Let's, whoa, don't take me too far.

Now that's naked archeology. (laughs)

♪ For his archeology, for his archeology, for his archeology ♪

(lively band music)

Every year, Jewish people around the world get together

to celebrate a festival called Purim.

(shakers rattling) (crowd cheers)

They dress up in Halloween-type costumes,

they parade carnival style around the streets, drink wine,

dance, and sing the night away.

And here in my house, my family celebrates Purim

by getting together in the kitchen

and making triangular-shaped pastries, called Haman's Ears.

Do they look like ears?

(family laughs)

But what we're celebrating is actually serious business.

Purim is a holiday that celebrates the victory

of Queen Esther against bad guy, Haman.

And he lived in ancient Persia, he was bent on genocide.

He was a kind of an ancient h*tler.

(h*tler speaking in German language)

(crowd shouting)

- But when the Persian Haman plotted his ancient holocaust,

he decided to leave the date

for the beginning of the slaughter up to a game of chance.

In fact, the word Purim itself is the Persian word

for throwing dice or casting lots.

Now, most people, they want to figure out is this myth

or is it history?

I want to go beyond that.

I want to go and actually find the game he played.

I want to find the archeological proof of the dice,

that Haman threw.

I'm goin' out there to find the pur in Purim.

(lens clicks) (light music)

Because the story of Purim first comes to us

from the Book of Esther in the Hebrew scriptures,

I'm going back to the original text to look for solid clues.

(tense percussion music) (horses neigh)

The story begins by telling us

how the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed

by the Babylonians back in the th century BCE

and the Jews were exiled to Babylonia,

what is now modern Iraq.

(soldiers shouting)

Later, when Babylon is taken over by the Persians,

the Persian king, Ahasverus, throws a party for himself

where he demands that his wife, Vashti,

dance naked before him in front of all his guests.

A demand that Vashti outright refuses.

And so to find out

what naked dancing has to do with genocide,

I'm meeting with biblical expert, Rabbi Shmuel Spero.

He wants her to dance naked, isn't that true?

- That's what we're told.

In the end, the response that is chosen

is to exit her out of the picture.

- k*ll her.

"Vashti Gone," was the headline.

- Right.

- Now the king's got a problem, no queen.

So what happens next?

- Maybe the first recorded pageant.

- Wow, it's like the Miss Universe pageant.

- Yeah. (light music)

With his queen now dead,

King Ahasverus orders his royal scouts

to gather up the most beautiful women

from all the towns in the Persian empire,

which at that time included countries,

from Egypt to India,

with their headquarters in modern Iran.

And one of these women was a good-looking Jewish girl,

who is known to us as Esther.

Even though Esther is forced into a harem

with the unsavory prospect of having to have sex

with a pagan king,

Esther's Uncle Mordechai is a political leader

in the Persian capitol and he convinces her

that it would be in both of their best interests

to win the beauty pageant outright.

He also advises her

to keep her Jewish identity a secret from the King.

And then, Esther's natural beauty wins the king's heart

and she beats out hundreds of other would-be brides

to become the queen of all of Persia.

(audience applauding)

But at the same time that Esther becomes queen,

there's another figure rising up the ranks of Persian power.

His name is Haman.

Haman is the king's most trusted vizier

and he hates Esther's Uncle Mordechai.

More than that,

he has a maniacal plan to k*ll all the Jews in Persia.

Genocide, like a h*tler-type Holocaust plan, right?

- Yeah, he wants to really get rid of them

and he has a day for it.

- But he gets to that date through a game.

They drew lots or they threw dice,

but they did something that they felt.

- Yeah, they felt it had some, you know-

- Divine intervention.

- Right, above force, fate, yeah.

- Wouldn't it be great to figure out what game did he play

to determine the date?

- I'd like to hear it.

It may even give insights into the story of Purim

and the Book of Esther itself.

- [Simcha] Finding out which game Haman played

when deciding the fate of the Jews

isn't the only mystery surrounding the story of Purim.

Another mystery is the fact

that the Book of Esther is the only book

in the holy Hebrew text that doesn't mention God at all

and Esther's name is actually the Hebrew word for hidden.

So if I'm going to find the pur in Purim,

my quest should begin with Queen Esther.

♪ He's a tall, tall man ♪

♪ He's a tall, tall man ♪

(upbeat music)

I'm on a quest to decode the Purim story

in the Book of Esther

and find out which game Haman could have played

when deciding the date of his planned holocaust.

So who better to start with then Queen Esther herself.

If I can find evidence of her,

then maybe I'll find clues for the game Haman played.

One tradition says that Esther is buried

alongside her Uncle Mordechai

in the Galilee of Northern Israel

near the ancient city of Baram.

So that's where I'm meeting

with the archeologist, Danny Herman.

- [Danny] This is the synagogue of Baram.

- [Simcha] So this is , , years old?

- [Danny] Yeah, pretty impressive.

- Now the earliest reference to the grave of Esther

is to this place and people dig and they find this village.

- Limited excavations were done here.

- So maybe there's yet an Ester scroll over here somewhere.

- [Danny] Yeah, it would be a nice discovery.

- [Simcha] But the suspected location of Esther's grave

was discovered in the forest just outside Baram

back in .

So that's where I'm headed now to see if I can find clues

that will tell me which game Haman really played.

I look at it and I see a big pile of rocks.

- Well, it's handmade rocks in some cases.

Look at this stone slab, it's definitely manmade.

It's hewn to this shape.

- Look at the size of these stones.

It's not so easy to hew even today, stones of this size

and you don't really put them

in the middle of nowhere for no reason.

Okay, now right over here it says, "The place of burial

of Mordechai and Esther."

They are the heroes of the Purim story.

- Yes.

- [Simcha] You know, people don't just walk around

and choose a rock

and say this must be the burial place of Esther.

How did people get to this conclusion?

- In the th century,

some rabbi who comes here in the times of the crusades,

he mentions a mark of the tomb of Esther

near the village of Baram.

In some process it's sanctified and venerated ever since.

Here, right next to us,

we have people coming and praying at the site.

(upbeat music)

- [Simcha] The ground beneath these stones

has yet to be excavated.

So there's no way to say if Esther

or her Uncle Mordecai are actually buried here.

And because there's no mention of games

anywhere around Esther's grave,

I still can't say for sure which game Haman played.

So to uncover more clues,

I'm taking another look at the Book of Esther

where it clearly says that Haman cast lots.

Back then, casting lots was an all-purpose term

for playing any game of chance

and appears different times in the Bible itself.

And probably the most famous instance of casting lots

comes from the Gospel of Luke,

where it says that at the time of the crucifixion,

Roman soldiers cast lots

to decide who gets Jesus' garments.

Luckily, the Romans left a lot of evidence

for which games they liked to play.

And back in Jesus' time,

one of the most popular games of chance

was called Nine Men's Morris, which as fate would have it,

was found carved on Roman roads

not far from Queen Esther's tomb

in the ruins of ancient Susita.

- [Danny] And here we are.

This is- - This is it?

- [Danny] That's the best example of the Nine Men's Morris.

- The game involves two players with nine pieces each,

which are introduced to the board, one at a time.

The goal of the game is to form rows of three,

at which point you can remove one of your opponent's pieces.

And the player who's left

with less than three pieces is the loser.

(bell dings)

With these rules in mind,

Danny and I start playing on a ,-year-old board game.

We're actually playing, we're not kidding around.

I'll block you over here.

Could this really be the game that Luke was describing?

So do you think they were playing this game?

- This was a popular game back then.

It's very possible.

- You're connecting it to the games

that were played over Jesus' clothes.

- Yeah.

- And this is a Roman road and this is a Roman game

and those were Roman soldiers that played the game.

- Yes.

- And they say they played it

like literally on the street almost.

- This was not just for the fun of it.

This was over money, I'm sure about this.

- But it's fun. - Yeah.

(Simcha laughs) Especially when you win.

(laughs)

- Wow, I just played the same game

that Roman soldiers played , years ago

over Jesus' clothes.

And on a purely karmic level, I'm glad I didn't win.

But then I don't believe that this version of casting lots

is the same game that Haman played.

First of all, Nine Men's Morris was played

by st century Roman soldiers,

not the Persian elite of some years earlier.

But also, it doesn't involve dice,

whereas the game Haman played

must have used some sort of dice

since Purim is the Persian word for dice.

If I can find a game of chance

that better matches this criteria,

then I can decode how Haman tried to plan

his holocaust against the Jews.

♪ He's a tall, tall man ♪

♪ He's a tall, tall man ♪

(engine hums)

Hey, a tractor isn't exactly a subtle archeological tool,

but I'm trying to uncover which game Haman would have played

when trying to decide the fate of the Jews.

And to discover that,

I'm going to have to learn some of the ancient world's

most famous games of chance.

In the Book of Esther it says, "Haman cast lots,"

but then I also know Purim is the Persian word for dice.

So whatever game Haman really played,

it would have had to involve throwing some kind of dice.

And one of the ancient world's most popular forms of dice

were called Astragali,

which were made out of the knuckle bones of sheep.

(sheep bleating)

To find out how knuckle bones work as dice,

I'm enlisting the help of an expert in ancient games,

Dr. Irving Finkel.

- So in front of us we've got knuckle bones

or what the Romans called it Astragali.

So knuckle bones have been used as dice-

- For thousands of years.

- For a very long period of time.

If you take one of these for instance and look at it,

you've got two flat sides and two narrow sides.

When you're familiar with these bones,

you can tell instantly which of the face is upper most.

So it generates numbers one to four.

- What's the significance of these guys?

- [Irving] Well these are rather interesting

because they're not real bone, they're artificially made.

- They're fake bone? - They're fake.

This one is iron.

It's kind of stylized.

In comparison with the real bone,

it's lost a lot of the subtlety.

Because if you look at a knuckle bone,

you can see there are all these caves and scoops

and each face has a specific shape,

which they knew by heart.

But when they made one out of metal, the edge is just flat.

You see here, it doesn't have any of the scoops.

So if you threw this you wouldn't be sure

whether it was meant to be one or the other,

and the person who owned this or made this

has put the number three on here.

- Oh my God- - Three little holes-

- It's the origin of the dice.

This is fantastic.

This is, this is when I get excited about these things.

Here you have the original.

Look at all the subtlety that it has

because it's a real bone.

And now they're into manufacturing it,

so you actually see the evolution of the dice

because here you have character

and here you have- - Modern rubbish.

- (laughs) It's not quite modern rubbish,

but it's getting to be modern.

Here everybody can tell which side is which,

but here they can't, so they have to put three little dots.

And now we have the birth of the modern dice.

Wow, I've just traced the evolution of these knuckle bones

into four-sided dice.

The modern six-sided dice evolved separately however,

more than , years ago.

Either way, both knuckle bones and dice were far too common

to be used by the elite

and too simple for Haman to have used them

to decide the perfect day for his genocide.

Another clue for which game Haman would have played

comes from the Talmud, the Jewish book of rabbinic law,

where it says that Haman started out as an astrologer

before becoming chief advisor to the Persian king.

So if I'm going to find out which game Haman played,

it'll need to have an astrological code

built right into its design. (bells tinkling)

♪ He's a tall, tall man ♪

♪ He's a tall, tall man ♪

(upbeat music)

I'm on a quest to uncover which game of chance

Haman would have played to determine the best date

for his planned holocaust.

I've managed to come up with a short list of clues.

The game would have been popular with Persian royalty

back in the th century BCE.

It also would have involved dice

and it would have had an astrological coding

that could be used to predict the future.

And it just so happens

that I've managed to uncover one game

that's matches all these traits.

This is a replica of a , year old board game,

called The Royal Game of Ur.

It was first discovered in the s

in the royal tombs of Ur by archeologist Sir Leonard Woolley

in what's now Iraq

and it's one of the oldest board games ever.

It's also the best bet yet for the game

Haman could have played.

To make sure I'm right,

I'm headed to the British Museum in London

where they have one of the original game boards,

including cuneiform tablets

that record the rules of the game

and where my friend, Irving Finkel,

just happens to be the curator.

- When Sir Leonard Woolley found these things,

he also found the pieces

and there were seven for each of the two players.

- Can I get seven? - You can have seven.

And there were these funny dice, these tetrahedral dice.

They have four sides and when you throw them,

some upturn corners have a white mark

and these are the ones that you count.

(upbeat music)

- [Simcha] Unlike other ancient board games,

these pure metal-shaped dice were unique

to the Royal Game of Ur.

But over time,

the general public replaced these with knucklebones

and the pure metal dice became rare,

perhaps used only by the elite and by astrologers.

- And it was a race game.

So, Simcha, you will come in here

and your route is as follows,

you come along here, turn the corner,

up in the middle, 'round this corner and off.

- [Simcha] We stick to our own side.

- [Irving] And in this avenue we're at w*r.

So if I'm sitting here

and you get enough score to come along like this

and land on this square, you knock me off,

I have to start again.

- Great. - Okay?

(dice clatter)

- I got nothing.

- All right, see, you got to try harder.

Just watch this show.

- I'm sure you will never get.

- What do we have? - Oh, no, you had two,

so you didn't land on me.

- No, stop right here. - Oh.

(die clatters)

(Irving sighs)

- Experience shows at a time like this, you know?

(lively music)

- Playing the game for myself,

I can see how it would have been entertaining

for the ancients.

But when Haman played,

he wouldn't been competing against Irving Finkel,

instead he would have pitted his own belief in random chance

against both God and the Jewish people.

(crowd shouts)

But to come up with an exact date for his genocide,

he would have attempted

to tap into the game's astrological code,

which he could have done by playing on an alternate version

of the game's basic design.

This alternate royal game had squares in the middle row

and these represented the months of the year.

Depending on which month you landed on,

this could bring either good or bad fortune.

Using this code,

Haman could have come up with the month of Adar.

Adar being the th and final month of the year

in both the Babylonian and Hebrew calendars.

But choosing a specific date was a bit more complicated.

You see, the seven pieces that Haman played with

actually represented the seven classical planets.

One of which was Mars,

which the Persians identified with Nergal,

the Babylonian God of w*r and death.

And since the night of the th and th day of each month

were considered Nergal's holy days,

then by landing with a Nergal piece on the Nergal square,

Haman could have easily come up with the th day of Adar

as the perfect time to k*ll the Jews,

especially since cults devoted to Nergal's wicked ways

had become popular in the Persia of the th century BCE,

when the story of Purim takes place.

Farfetched?

Well the British Museum also has a gate from ancient Babylon

that not only depicts Nergal,

but also has the Royal Game of Ur scratched into its base.

I'm now convinced that I found the game Haman played

in the Book of Esther,

but thankfully Haman's schemes never worked out.

And before Haman could turn this game into genocide,

Queen Esther caught wind of his plans.

So she set up a trap that lured Haman to her bedroom

and when King Ahasverus discovered Herman

seemingly trying to force himself on his new bride,

Haman and his sons were put to death by a public hanging

(solemn music)

and the Jewish people were saved.

(crowd cheers)

Which is why Purim is still celebrated every Adar,

every year by Jews around the world.

(lively music)

And this year in my house,

I've invited Irving Finkel

to celebrate Purim with my family

by making the traditional cookies called Haman's ears.

These look yummy,

yummy, yummy. - Yes, they do.

- [Simcha] And playing several rounds

of the Royal Game of Ur.

Why are we making these cookies?

- [Son] It looks like it's because it's the same shape.

This is like the triangle.

- You're right.

Look at that.

They look just like the dice of the Royal Game of Ur.

Hey, do I have a family here?

You know what?

I think we found it.

We went out looking for a ,-year-old game of dice

and we found it.

We found a game that was used by the elite,

that was played for thousands of years,

that had encoded astrological symbols.

We're talking about the Royal Game of Ur.

It must have been the game that Haman played

when he attempted to decide the fate of the Jewish people

by the throw of a dice.

But what's hidden in the Purim story is that while Haman

seemingly chose the month of Adar by chance,

he inadvertently picked Adar,

the month of the birth and death of Moses,

the most important prophet in the Jewish faith.

In doing so, he fulfilled the biblical proverb,

"The lot is cast into the lap,

but its every decision is from the Lord."

(dramatic music)

Or as Einstein once theorized, "God doesn't play dice!"

♪ He's a tall, tall man ♪

♪ From a tall, tall land ♪

♪ He makes no apologies ♪

♪ For his archeology ♪

♪ He's a tall, tall man ♪

♪ From a tall, tall land ♪

♪ No apologies ♪

♪ For his archeology ♪