The Pharaoh commissioned Haman to build a tall tower using burnt bricks so that the Pharaoh could ascend and see the God of Moses. The Pharaoh, Haman, and their army in chariots pursuing Israel's fleeing children drowned in the Red Sea as the parted water closed on them. The Pharaoh's submission to God at the moment of death and total destruction was rejected, but his corpse was saved as a lesson for posterity and he was mummified. Josephus Josephus mentions Haman in his Antiquities of the Jews. Josephus's account of the story draws from the Septuagint translation of the Book of Esther and from other Greek and Jewish sources, some no longer extant. Septuagint The LXX calls Haman a "Macedonian" by Xerxes (see Esther 16:10). Scholars have had two different explanations for this naming: Macedonian was used to replace the word "Mede", and emphasises this when he also says that no Persian blood existed in him. (In practice the Persians and the Medes co-ruled an empire, but great friction existed between them.) Another opinion is that Xerxes called him a Macedonian Spy, due to his insistence on causing civil war within Persia between the Jews and the Persians. The Septuagint translates the "hang" () of Esther 7:9–10 as "crucify" or "impale" (), using the same verb later used in the New Testament's Gospel of Matthew. The fifty-cubit apparatus used in the execution is described ambiguously using a word () which could mean a tree, a club, a stave, a gibbet, a gallows, the vertical component of a cross for crucifixion, or anything made of wood, an ambiguity already present in the original (). Vulgate As in the Septuagint, Haman's execution is ambiguous, suggestive of both hanging and crucifixion. The fifty-cubit object, described as xylon in the Septuagint (), is similarly ambiguously referred to as "wood" (). The Vulgate translation of Esther 7:10 furthermore refers to a , used elsewhere to describe the cross-piece in crucifixion, when describing the fate of Haman: . In the corner of the Sistine Chapel ceiling is a depiction in fresco of the execution of Haman by Michelangelo; Haman is shown crucified in a manner similar to typical Catholic depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus, though the legs are parted and the apparatus resembles a natural tree shorter than fifty cubits high. English translations Translations of the Book of Esther'''s description of Haman's execution have variously