In describing the Israelites’ slavery in Egypt, the Bible gives but a few clues about the sort of work they were doing. Some of these clues match well with what is known to archaeologists and historians about ancient Egyptian construction. For instance, the Israelites produced bricks and were required to meet specific production quotas; many ancient Egyptian structures were made from mud bricks, and documents mention workers who made these bricks being forced to meet regular quotas. David Falk explores how other evidence can shed light on Israelite slavery:

One verse in the Torah describes the Israelites building actual structures, not only making bricks: “Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh.”

What are supply cities? They cannot simply be coterminous with [the historical] Pithom and Rameses, since these two cities were large with multiple buildings in them, including temples made of stone, [not only brick]. In other words, Pithom and Rameses were cities, but they cannot really be described as “supply” cities, and thus, the verse likely refers to structures inside these cities.

I suggest that the term “supply cities” refers to a series of mud-brick storage depots that were attached to the temples in these two cities (and many others), and which were built to store vast quantities of food that would be used for offerings to the Egyptian gods.

That the Bible refers to these structures as “cities” instead of merely “buildings” is likely a consequence of the magnitude of these projects. The area that these supply depots covered often exceeded by many times the area taken up by the temple itself. . . . [Thus] Pharaoh’s command to force the Israelites to build these temple storage depots was concomitantly a command to make God’s chosen people labor in service to gods other than God.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.