Memorable quotes for
The Ten Commandments (1956)

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Moses: No son could have more love for you than I.
Sethi: Then why are you forcing me to destroy you? What evil has done this to you?
Moses: The evil that men should turn their brothers into beasts of burden, to be stripped of spirit, and hope, and strength - only because they are of another race, another creed. If there is a god, he did not mean this to be so.

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Sethi: Harden yourself against subordinates. Have no friend. Trust no woman.

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Sethi: Do you mean to tell me he would turn the slaves against me? I've been his father!
Jannes: Ambition knows no father.

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Nefretiri: [approaches Rameses as he is praying to an idol over his dead son] How many more days and nights will you pray? Does he hear you?
Rameses: [praying] Dread Lord of Darkness, I have raised my voice to you, yet life has not come to the body of my son. Hear me!
Nefretiri: He cannot hear you. He's nothing but a piece of stone with the head of a bird.
Rameses: He *will* hear me. For I am Egypt.
Nefretiri: Egypt? You are nothing. You let Moses kill my son. No god can bring him back. What have you done to Moses? How did he die? Did he cry for mercy when you tortured him? Bring me to his body! I want to see it, Rameses! I want to see it!
Rameses: This is my son. He would have been Pharaoh and would have ruled the world. Who mourns him now? Not even you. All you can think of is Moses. You will not see his body. I drove him out of Egypt. I cannot fight the power of his God.
Nefretiri: *His* God? The priests say that Pharaoh is a god. But you are not a god. You are even less than a man. Listen to me, Rameses. You thought I was evil when I went to Moses. And you were right. Shall I tell you what happened, Rameses? He spurned me like a strumpet in the street. I, Nefretiri, Queen of Egypt! All that you wanted from me he would not even take! Do you hear laughter Pharaoh? *Not* the laughter of kings, but the laughter of slaves on the desert island!
Rameses: Laughter? Laughter? My son I shall build your tomb upon their crushed bodies. If any escape me, their seed shall be spattered and acursed forever. My armor! The war crown! Laughter? I will turn the laughter of these slaves into wails of torment! They *shall* remember the name of Moses! Only that he died under my chariot wheels!
Nefretiri: Kill him with your own hands!

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Moses: Will you swear in the name of your god that you are not my mother?
Yochabel: We do not even know His name.
Moses: Then look into my eyes and tell me you are not my mother.
Yochabel: Oh, Moses, I cannot!

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Bithiah: I am the pharaoh's daughter, and this is my son. He shall be reared in my house, as the prince of the two lands.
Memnet: My mother and her mother before her were branded into the pharaoh's service. I will not see you make this son of slaves a prince of Egypt.
Bithiah: Bithiah: You will see it, Memnet. You will see him walk with his head among the eagles. You will serve him as you serve me. Fill the ark with water sink it into silence. Raise your hands, Memnet. What you have buried in the Nile will remain buried in your heart. Swear it.
Memnet: I will be silent.
Bithiah: The day you break that oath will be the last your eyes shall ever see.

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Bithiah: A conquerer already conquered?
Moses: The first face I look for and the last I find. Mother!
Bithiah: I was thanking the gods for your safe return. But I find you in grave danger here.
Moses: An intoxicating danger, Mother.
Bithiah: Marry her if you can, my son, but never fall in love with her.
Nefretiri: Oh, I'll be less trouble to him than the Hebrew slaves of Goshen.
Bithiah: Goshen?

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Sethi: With so many slaves, you could build an army.
Moses: But I have built a city. These lions of pharaoh will guard its gates, and it shall be the city of Sethi's glory.
Sethi: Are the slaves loyal to Sethi's glory or to you, Moses?
Moses: The slaves worship their god. And I serve only you.

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Memnet: For many years, I have been silent. Now all the kings of Egypt cry out to me, "Let no Hebrew sit upon our throne."
Nefretiri: What are you saying?
Memnet: Ramses has the blood of many kings.
Nefretiri: And Moses?
Memnet: He is lower than the dust. Not one drop of royal blood flows through his veins.
Nefretiri: I'll have you torn into so many pieces, even the vultures won't find them. Who hatched this lie? Ramses?
Memnet: Ramses does not know... yet.
Nefretiri: You will repeat this to Bithiah!
Memnet: Bithiah drew a slave child from the Nile, called him son and prince of Egypt, blinding herself to the truth and the pain of an empty womb.

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Nefretiri: Take care, old frog, you croak too much against Moses.

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Moses: What has this cloth to do with me? Tell me.
Nefretiri: A child was wrapped in it.
Moses: What child?
Nefretiri: Bithiah drew him from the river. Memnet was with her.
Moses: Who was this child?
Nefretiri: Memnet is dead! No one need know who you are! I love you. I killed for you. I'll kill anyone who comes between us.
Moses: Why did you kill for me, Nefretiri? If you love me, do not lie.
Nefretiri: Hold me in your arms. Hold me close. You were not born prince of Egypt, Moses. You are the son of Hebrew slaves.

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Moses: Love cannot drown truth, Nefretiri. You do believe it, or you would not have killed Memnet.
Nefretiri: I love you. That's the only truth I know.
Moses: Did this child of the Nile have a mother?
Nefretiri: Memnet called her Yochabel.
Moses: I will ask Bithiah.

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Bithiah: How could you doubt me? You did not doubt when when I held you as you took your first step. It's a wicked lie spun by Ramses.
Moses: Mother, did Ramses spin this?
Bithiah: The word of your mother against a piece of cloth found by Memnet?
Moses: How did you know Memnet found it?
Bithiah: Who else? Memnet nursed Ramses. She will pay for spreading his lies.
Moses: She has paid.
Bithiah: She is dead?
Moses: At the hand of Nefretiri.

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Moses: Memnet spoke a Hebrew woman named Yochabel. Did you ever know her?
Bithiah: No.
Moses: Yours was the face I saw above my cradle. The only mother I've ever known. Wherever I am led and whatever I must do, I will always love you.

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Yochabel: Why have you come here?
Bithiah: Because Moses will come here.
Yochabel: My son?
Bithiah: No, my son! That's all he must know.
Yochabel: My lips might deny him, Great One, but my eyes never could.
Bithiah: You will leave Goshen, you and your family, tonight.
Yochabel: We are Levites, appointed shepherds of Israel. We cannot leave our people.
Bithiah: Would you take from Moses all that I have given him? Would you undo all that I have done for him? I have put the throne of Egypt within his reach! What can you give him in return?
Yochabel: I gave him life.
Bithiah: I gave him love!

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Bithiah: Moses, do not enter! There is only sorrow here.
Moses: Are you comforting it, Mother? I followed you here to find this woman Yocha... You were the woman who was caught between the stones.
Bithiah: Until you freed me.
Moses: My son, if you love me, you will...
Moses: I love you, Mother, but am I your son? Or yours?
Yochabel: No, you are not my son. If you believe that men and women are cattle to be driven under the lash, if you can bow before idols of stone and golden images of beasts, you are not my son.

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Bithiah: They're going away, Moses, and their secret's going with them. No one need ever know the shame I brought upon you.
Moses: Shame? What change is there in me? Egyptian or Hebrew, I am still Moses. These are the same hands, the same arms, the same face that was mine a moment ago.
Yochabel: A moment ago you were her son, the strength of Egypt. Now you are my son, a slave of Egypt. Do you find no shame in this?
Moses: If there is no shame in me, how can I feel shame for the woman who bore me, or the race that bred me?

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Yochabel: God of our fathers, who has appointed an end to the bondage of Israel, blessed am I among all mothers in the land.

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Nefretiri: If you want to help your people, come back to the palace.
Moses: And hide the truth from Sethi, that I am a Hebrew and a slave?
Nefretiri: The truth would break his dear old heart, and send Bithiah into exile and death. Think of us and stop hearing the cries of your people.
Moses: Their god does not hear their cry.
Nefretiri: Will Ramses hear it, if he is made pharaoh? No, he would grind them into the clay they mold and double their labors. And what about me? Think of me as his wife. Do you want to see me in Ramses's arms?
Moses: No!
Nefretiri: Then come back with me.

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Sethi: Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt. Let the name of Moses be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men for all time.

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Jethro: You have come far.
Moses: From Egypt.
Jethro: You crossed the desert on foot? He has no name surely guided your steps.
Moses: He who has no name? Do bedouins know the god of Abraham?
Jethro: Abraham is the father of many nations. We are the children of Ishmael, his firstborn. We are odedient of God.
Moses: My people look to him for deliverance, but they are still in bondage.

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Moses: Does your god live on this mountain?
Sephora: Sinai is His high place, His temple.
Moses: If this god is God, he would live on every mountain, in every valley. He would not be the god of Ishmael or Israel alone, but of all men. It is said he created all men in his image. He would dwell in every heart, every mind, every soul.
Sephora: I do not know about such things, but I know that the mountain trembles when God is there, and the earth trembles, and the clouds are red with fire.
Moses: At such a time, has any man gone to see him face-to-face?
Sephora: No man has ever set foot on the forbidden slopes of Sinai. Why do you want to see Him, Moses?
Moses: To know that he is. And if he is, to know why he has not heard the cry of slaves in bondage.

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Joshua: Praise God, I have found you.
Moses: Joshua? I thought you dead.
Joshua: In the copper mines of Sinai, the living are dead.
Moses: Sephora, bring water. How did you find me?
Joshua: A merchant buying copper saw you in the tent of Jethro.
Moses: Here you too will find peace, Joshua.
Joshua: Peace? How can you find peace or want it, when Ramses builds cities mortared with the blood of our people?

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Nefretiri: Oh, Moses, Moses, why of all men did I fall in love with a prince of fools?

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Moses: Let my people go.

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Joshua: Water lily!
Lilia: My name is Lilia.
Joshua: To me, you are a lily, and I want water.
Lilia: Joshua, I thought you'd never come down.
Joshua: Water before love, my girl.
Lilia: Oh, does it take the entire Nile to quench your thirst?
Joshua: No, only your lips.
Lilia: Be careful, my love. Dathan's eyes can see through stone.
Joshua: Dathan is a vulture, preying on the flesh of his own people.
Lilia: When he looks at me, I - I am afraid.
Joshua: If he touches you, I'll strangle him with his own whip!
Lilia: And bring death to a thousand others?
Joshua: Is life in bondage better than death?

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Lilia: Joshua, we must have hope. God will send us a leader.
Joshua: Hope. On the heels of every hope walks Dathan.

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Joshua: Let the old woman loose!
Egyptian guard: She'll stay where she is, and you'll die in the lion pit!
Lilia: Joshua!
Yochabel: Run to the prince and beg mercy!
Lilia: Mercy from Ramses!
Yochabel: No! From the Prince Moses, there on the pavilion.

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Moses: Would you bury this old woman alive in a tomb of rock?
Yochabel: Wise and Noble One, I was caught. I had not the strength to free myself.
Moses: Your shoulders should not bear a burden, old woman.
Yochabel: The Lord has renewed my strength and lightened my burdens.
Moses: He would have done better to remove them.

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Moses: You know it is death to strike an Egyptian.
Joshua: I know it.
Moses: Yet you struck him. Why?
Joshua: To free the old woman.
Moses: What is she to you?
Joshua: An old woman.
Egyptian guard: Lord Moses, send him to his death!
Moses: The man has courage. You do not speak like a slave.
Joshua: God made men. Men made slaves.
Moses: Whose god?
Joshua: The God of Abraham, the Almighty God!
Moses: If your god is almighty, why does he leave you in bondage?
Joshua: He will chose the hour of our freedom and the man who will deliver it!

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Nefretiri: I could never love you.
Rameses: Does that matter? You will be my wife. You will come to me whenever I call you,and I will enjoy that very much. Whether you enjoy it or not is your own affair. But I think you will...

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Lilia: You are strange to the pits. Your back is unscarred.
Moses: You bring a warm smile with your cool water.
Lilia: My smile is for a stonecutter. The water is for you.
Moses: I thank you.
Lilia: But your voice is not strange. You are...?
Moses: One of many who thirsts.
Baka: You there! Come here!
Lilia: That is Baka, the master builder.
Moses: Does he call you or me?
Baka: You, water girl! I'm thirsty!
Lilia: He does not thirst for water.
Slave: Beauty is but a curse to our women.

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Lilia: Water, Noble One?
Baka: No, wine. The wine of beauty.
Lilia: What beauty can my lord find in these mud pits?
Baka: A lotus flower blooms out of the muck. Dathan, she will do well as a house slave.
Lilia: Please, Lord Baka, do not take me from my people! There will be danger.
Baka: Danger? From such lovely hands?
Lilia: There are other hands! Strong enough to kill.
Baka: Our mud flower has a thorn.
Lilia: Please, Lord Baka, I beg of you!

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Baka: You foolish, stupid man. I would have kept Lilia only a short while. I would have returned her to you, shall we say, more worthy. Now to whom shall I return Lilia? You will not be there, Joshua. You've seen me drive my chariot. I can pick a fly from my horse's ear without breaking the rhythm of his stride. You've seen me use my whip. You make no outcry, Joshua. But you will. You will cry for the mercy of death.
Joshua: One day you will listen to the cry of slaves.
Baka: This is not that day, Joshua.

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Joshua: Four hundred years we have waited.
Moses: Pharaoh's soldiers will not wait so long.
Joshua: The Almighty has heard our outcry. You are the Chosen One!
Moses: I know nothing of your god.
Joshua: He knows you, Moses. He has brought you to us, and you cannot turn your back upon Him. You will deliver us!

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Rameses: So, Moses, it is I who own your woman. I know that when I hold you in my arms, it will be his face that you will see, not mine.
Nefretiri: Yes, only his face.
Rameses: I have defeated you in life, Moses. You shall not defeat me with your death. The dead do not scorch in the desert of desire, suffer from the thirst of passion, nor stumble blindly towards some mirage of lost love. But you, Hebrew, will suffer all these things by living.
Nefretiri: You will let him live?
Rameses: I will not make him a martyr for you to cherish. No phantom will come between you and me in the night. Yes, I will let him live. From where I send him there is no return. You will never know if he has found forgiveness in some other woman's arms. Now look upon each other for the last time.

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Lilia: Dathan, if you fear God, let me go.
Dathan: I am here, girl, because I would put no fear in a desert god and his mud-pit prophet. I am here because I bowed lower than my brothers before the Egyptians. Now the Egyptians bow low before me. Joshua wanted you. Baka wanted you. But you belong to me, a gift from Rameses.
Lilia: I will bow before you, Dathan. I will work my hands raw for you. But please do not shame me before my Lord.
Dathan: Your lord is the govenor of Goshen.
Lilia: What difference to my shame?
Dathan: No difference to you, my dove of Cannan, but to a condemned slave like Joshua it could mean the difference between death on the spikes and life in the copper mines of Sinai. What would you do to influence his excellency's clemency?
Lilia: [sobbing] Anything, Dathan, anything.
Dathan: Joshua will always be grateful to you.

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Nefretiri: Do not exhaust yourself, Great One.
Sethi: [on his deathbed] You are the only thing I regret leaving. You have been my joy.
Nefretiri: And you my only love.
Sethi: Now you're cheating. There was another. I know. I loved him, too. With my last breath, I'll break my own law and speak the name of... Moses. Moses.

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Moses: You gave me this staff to rule over scorpions and serpants. God has made it a staff to rule over kings.

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Joshua: They told me you were dead.
Lilia: To all I love, I am dead, Joshua.
Joshua: Dathan?
Lilia: Dathan.
Joshua: Not of your own free will?
Lilia: Of my own free will.
Joshua: You are no man's slave! The hour of deliverance has come!
Lilia: Not for me, Joshua.

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Lilia: [singing] Death cometh to me, cometh to set me free. Death cometh to me.
Joshua: No, Lilia, death will not come to you.
Lilia: Joshua! You risk your life in coming here. You are first-born.
Joshua: So are you. I have brought lamb's blood to mark the door posts and lintels, that the shadow of death may pass you by.
Lilia: It is enough that you thought of me, Joshua. I am outcast among our people. Do not save me from death, Joshua, save me from life!
Joshua: Tomorrow will bring a new world for us, Lilia!

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Dathan: Remember, Joshua, of her own free will she belongs to me!

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Bithiah: In fear of your God they have set me free. May a stranger enter?
Moses: There are no strangers among those who seek God's forgiveness.
Bithiah: And my bearers?
Moses: All who thirst for freedom may come with us. The shadow of death will pass over us tonight, and tomorrow we will see the light of freedom.
Bithiah: I shall go with you, Moses.
Miriam: One from the house of pharoah?
Aaron: An Egyptian?
Sephora: An idol-worshipper?
Moses: This woman drew me from the water and set my feet upon the path of knowledge. Aaron, bring another chair to our table.
Bithiah: A great light shines from your face, Moses. Perhaps one day I shall come to understand it.

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Egyptian soldier: Out! Out, all of you!
Dathan: Why do you come here? I put no blood on my door!
Egyptian soldier: Then stone bleeds!
Dathan: Your stonecutter did this to me!
Lilia: All the gold in Egypt cannot wipe that mark from your door, Dathan, nor from my heart.
Dathan: Just for that, you'll walk all the way to... Where are we going? Do you know where we're going?
Egyptian soldier: To hell, I hope!

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Nefretiri: [hands Rameses a sword as he is preparing to battle the freed Israelites] Bring it back to me, stained with his blood!
Rameses: I will... to mingle with your own!

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Sethi: The one who I choose will be the best man to rule Egypt. I owe that to my fathers, not to my sons.

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[Answering accusations that he is treating the slaves too generously]
Moses: The city is made of bricks. The strong make many, the starving make few, the dead make none. So much for accusations.

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Moses: Great one, I bring you Ethiopia.
[Trumpets play, Ethiopians step forward]
Rameses: Command them to kneel before Pharaoh.
Moses: Command what you have conquered my brother.

---

Baka: We use the old ones for greasing the stones. If they are killed it is no loss.
Moses: Are you a master builder or a master butcher?
Baka: If we stop moving stones for every grease woman who falls, the city will not rise.
Overseer: If the slaves are not driven they will not work.
Joshua: If their work lags it is because they are not fed.
Moses: You look strong enough.
Joshua: I am a stone cutter. The pharoah likes his images cut deep.

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Baka: Will you lose a throne because Moses builds a city?
Rameses: The city that he builds shall bear my name, the woman that he loves shall bear my child. So let it be written, so let it be done.

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Sethi: Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet. Stricken from every pylon and obelisk of Egypt. Let the name of Moses be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of man, for all time.

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Bithiah: Your tongue will dig your grave, Memnet.

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Joshua: God made men. Men made slaves.

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Nefretiri: You will be king of Egypt and I will be your footstool!
Moses: The man stupid enough to use you as a footstool would not be wise enough to rule Egypt.

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Moses: Love cannot drown truth, Nefretiri.

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Nefretiri: Oh Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!

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Moses: What change is there in me? Egyptian or Hebrew I am still Moses. These are the same hands, the same arms, the same face that were mine a moment ago.

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Baka: You make no outcry, Joshua, but you will; you will cry for the mercy of death.
Joshua: One day you will listen to the cry of slaves.
Baka: This is not that day, Joshua.

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Rameses: You have a rat's ears and a ferret's nose.
Dathan: To use in your service, son of Pharaoh.

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Rameses: Now speaks the rat that would be my ears.
Dathan: Too many ears tie a rat's tongue.

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Moses: It would take more than a man to lead the slaves from bondage. It would take a god.

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[to Nefretiri]
Rameses: You will be mine, like my dog, or my horse, or my falcon, except that I shall love you more - and trust you less.

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Sethi: With my last breath I'll break my own law and speak the name of Moses... Moses.

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Rameses: [banishing Moses to the desert] Here is your king's scepter, and here is your kingdom, with the scorpion, the cobra, and the lizard for subjects. Free them if you will. Leave the slaves to me.

---

Moses: There is a beauty beyond the senses, Nefretiri. Beauty like the quiet of green valleys and still waters. Beauty of the spirit that you cannot understand.

---

Nefretiri: You need have no fear of me.
Sephora: I feared only his memory of you.
Nefretiri: You have been able to erase it?
Sephora: He has forgotten both of us. You lost him when he went to seek his god. I lost him when he found his god.

---

Nefretiri: I saved your son.
Moses: It is not my son who will die, it is the first born of Egypt, it is your son, Nefretiri!
Nefretiri: You would not dare strike Pharaoh's son!
Moses: In the hardness of his heart, Pharaoh has mocked God and brings death to his own son!
Nefretiri: But he is my son. You would not kill my son.
Moses: Without God I am nothing. I am the tool by which he works his will.
Nefretiri: But I saved your son!
Moses: I cannot save yours.

---

Dathan: Moses has words. Pharaoh has spears!

---

Commander of the Host: Let us go from this place, men cannot fight against a God.
Rameses: Better to die in battle with a God then to live in shame.

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Moses: The Lord of Hosts will do battle for us. Behold his mighty hand.

---

Little Boy: The wind opens the sea.
The Blind One: God opens the sea with a blast of his nostrils.

---

Moses: Go, proclaim liberty throughout all the land, and to all the inhabitants thereof.

---

Rameses: His God... *is* God!

---

[Nefretiri and Sephora look upon one another for the first time]
Sephora: The Queen of Egypt is beautiful . . as he said.

---

Dathan: Where are we going? Do you know where we're going?
Egyptian Soldier: To Hell, I hope!

---

Memnet: What have you found?
Bithiah: The answer to my prayers!
Memnet: You prayed for a basket?
Bithiah: No, I prayed for a son.
Memnet: Your husband is in the house of the dead.
Bithiah: And he has asked the Nile God to bring me this beautiful boy.

---

Memnet: Do you know the pattern of this cloth?
Bithiah: If my son is wrapped in it, it is a royal robe!

---

Nefretiri: [sorting through various veils and scarves] This is for the temple ceremony... this is for my wedding night!
Memnet: You will never wear it.
Nefretiri: [surprised] Why not?
Memnet: I have brought you a cloth more revealing... send them away.
Nefretiri: [nodding to her servants] Go then, while I hear what this puckered old persimmon has to say!

---

Bithiah: They will stop for me!
Hebrew man: A charging chariot knows no rank!

---

Dathan: We shall wander north from Egypt! Do you know why?
The entire tribe of the Children of Israel, in one voice: For peace?
Dathan: No! For food!

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[to Nefretiri]
Moses: You may be the lovely dust through which God works his purpose!

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Narrator: The steel has been tempered. The metal is ready - for the Maker's hand.

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Rameses: You have rats' ears and a ferret's nose. Add to them the eyes of a weasel and find me this deliverer.

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Nefretiri: Oh Memnet! You're only happy when you're miserable.

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Rameses: Let him rave on, that men will know him mad.

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Moses: [to Jethro's daughters who are washing his feet] Never has a sheep had so many shepherds

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