Spreading the Anecdote

Abstract

Chapter 20 tells the history of the Red Sea anecdote. When and why exactly did the wall come to be covered over with the red of the Red Sea? Why was a fictional rogue painter replaced by a real painter only thereafter for the fiction to be endlessly confused with the facts? This chapter writes the history of all the interrelated tales associated with the anecdote as a common knowledge. It serves as a walking guide, vade-mecum, to take us, in the final chapter, to the final missing link. Together, the two chapters recapitulate all the threads of the detective work woven through every chapter of this book.