All the Waters Were Turned to Blood

‘All the Waters Were Turned to Blood’ Commentary by Geoffrey Nuttall Bible Passage This manuscript illumination of The Plague of Blood (bottom left) shares a page with three other episodes from the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt—all four scenes set within a gold and blue frame. The manuscript as a whole is of such opulence that it has come to be known as The Golden Haggadah, and was made in Catalonia around 1320, probably for a wealthy Jewish family in Barcelona. The refined elegance of the figures and the sumptuousness of the materials used emulate the royal workshops of Capetian France, then the apogee of artistic fashion. They bear witness to the wealth of the manuscript’s unknown patron, and, more generally, the cosmopolitan outlook of the Iberian peninsula’s mercantile elite. Codified in the second century CE, the Haggadah is that part of the Jewish prayer book read and discussed during the ritual feast (the Seder) on the eve of the Passover to instruct the sons of the household as Moses commanded. It recalls the exodus from Egypt, and the lessons to be learned from it. At the far left of this particular scene, the pharaoh, in the guise of a medieval king, sits enthroned beneath a stone canopy, suggesting a royal palace on the banks of the Nile. His gaze and right hand are directed accusingly at Moses, who responds by pointing at the river of blood flowing between them, the broad band of vivid red all the more striking against the gold background above. Next to Moses, Aaron looks down at the point of his rod, just as it touches the surface of the Nile and effects the river’s horrific transformation. The deadly consequences of the pharaoh’s defiance are evident in the three dead fish whose positions emphasize the river’s direction of flow towards the king. On the opposite bank two labourers seem to be digging into the earth for fresh water, only to bring more blood bubbling up through the ground. Symbolized during the Seder by the act of spilling red wine onto the tablecloth, the transformation of the waters of the Nile into blood strikes at the very foundation of the pharaoh’s divine status within the Egyptian pantheon, and at the very heart of his authority. As such, it is appropriate that it is the first of the ten plagues brought down by the God of Moses on the people of Egypt. References Narkiss, Bezalel. 1997. The ‘Golden Haggadah’ (London: British Library) Harris, Julie. 2002. ‘Polemical Images in the Golden Haggadah (British Library Add. MS 27210)’, Medieval Encounters, 8: 105–22