The Plagues of Egypt: Archaeology, History and Science Look at the Bible 1593332343, 9781593332341

Citation preview

The Plagues of Egypt Archaeology, History, and Science Look at the Bible

The Plagues of Egypt Archaeology, History, and Science Look at the Bible

Siro Igino Trevisanato

EUPHRATES 2005

First Gorgias Press Edition, 2005. Copyright © 2005 by Gorgias Press LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Gorgias Press LLC, New Jersey.

ISBN 1-59333-234-3

EUPHRATES 46 Orris Ave., Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA www.gorgiaspress.com

Printed in the United States of America

Conflict is father and ruler of all: some he turns into gods, others into men. Some he enslaves, others he turns free. Herakleitos

CONTENTS Contents ............................................................................................................... v Foreword ............................................................................................................vii Introduction.......................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 The Biblical Plagues............................................................................ 9 Chapter 2 Egypt Under Attack: The Onset of the Plagues (Plagues 1 & 2)....... 17 Chapter 3 A Series of Unending Disasters (Plagues 3-8)................................... 33 Chapter 4 No Light at the End of the Tunnel (Plague 9).................................... 43 Chapter 5 Death Over the Land (Plague 10) ...................................................... 49 Chapter 6 Finding the Right Volcano ................................................................ 59 Chapter 7 When the Gods Manifested Themselves … ...................................... 73 Chapter 8 … and Nearly Obliterated Greece ..................................................... 83 Chapter 9 Greece and Egypt in the Same Boat .................................................. 95 Chapter 10 Egyptian Parallels: The Day the Gods Visited the Nile Delta ....... 107 Chapter 11 Egyptian Parallels: Records of a Battered Land ............................ 123 Chapter 12 Egyptian Parallels: Toward Freedom ............................................ 135 Chapter 13 A Date for the Eruption and thus the Plagues? .............................. 149 Chapter 14 The Year the World Changed........................................................ 157 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 169 Glossary ........................................................................................................... 191

v

FOREWORD With a wide experience in research and a passion for ancient cultures, Dr. Siro I. Trevisanato is a scientist who has explored the question of the plagues of Egypt by applying a scientific approach to the biblical texts. The Plagues of Egypt: History, Archaeology and Science Look at the Bible answers the questions surrounding the apparently mythical nature of the plagues that—according to the biblical texts—struck Egypt. The complexity encountered when examining the question required a wide array of techniques and documents to probe the evidence, evaluate the issues, and find the solution. The conclusion, which emerged from investigating archaeological, historical, and scientific data, first surprised the investigator himself. By traveling on the same journey, the reader will be able to recreate this same experience. The quotations from the biblical texts herein are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA) and are used by permission. All rights are reserved.

vii

INTRODUCTION The plagues of Egypt recorded in the biblical texts constitute a historical event that took place in the middle of the Bronze Age. As the research presented in this book details, the plagues were not the fruit of fiction, as they today are so often, and misguidedly, perceived. Rather, the plagues listed in the Bible constitute a series of events that—within a short period of time—hit Egypt with extraordinary might. Evidence from historical, archaeological, and scientific sources agrees in the reconstruction and the unfolding of the plagues. Likewise, the evidence and the reconstruction indicate that the biblical texts faithfully describe a historical event. Grappling with the biblical texts being historically faithful compels us to read them—at least those parts linked to the plagues—as a history book. This is news in a world grown accustomed to spurning the Bible as fiction. As a result, we can be sure of three points. One, we can now close the debate as to the factual validity of this portion of the Bible: the narrative of the plagues (Ex. 7:14-13:16; Ps. 78:43-51, Ps. 105:26-36) is historical. Furthermore, we can also be confident that the passages in the Bible linked to the plagues can be safely used to provide insight into the Bronze Age for the Eastern Mediterranean. Finally, we can touch, smell, feel, see, and hear events that influenced the exodus of the Hebrews, and thus the development of Judeo-Christian values. At the start of the present research the plagues listed in the Bible appeared to stagnate at a moot point: no one could prove whether (and when) these disasters, which purportedly had struck Egypt, had happened. Arguments on opposite sides appeared equally valid. The biblical texts are silent on names of people or sites that we might otherwise know from other reliable sources (historical or archaeological). The biblical texts report data which do not appear to be echoed in Egyptian texts. Yet the Jewish community has built its raison d’être around a mass exodus from Egypt which was made possible by the plagues. To break the gridlock around the question, a novel approach was first tested, and then applied. Briefly, the ancients’ worldview was translated into our contemporary one, enabling us to understand both the world and words of the ancient writers. Additionally, nothing was ever taken for granted: all hypotheses and findings were verified on their own, as well as double-checked against other data. Historical documents, archaeological artifacts, and scientific data were 1

2

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

slowly and painstakingly assembled like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Slowly, yet steadfastly and coherently, a coherent picture of biblical disasters—compatible with data from physics, biology, geography, and history—started to emerge. More pieces started to fit. Once complete, the picture showed that the plagues did in fact take place, and that they had taken place as described in the biblical narrative. Once the plagues had been reconstructed, further inquiry also uncovered the year when the plagues occurred. It all started—the biblical narrative tells us—when the Nile became red and was littered with dead fish. Soon thereafter frogs invaded the land, and were followed by kinnîm and ‘ârôb (ill-defined bugs, usually translated as lice and flies). Animals then died, boils ravaged the skin, hail shattered the Egyptian sky, locusts invaded the fields, darkness took over the day, and firstborn died. These were no mere accidents of nature, but carried a meaning that went beyond the destruction of rivers and fields, the maiming and killing of people and livestock. These plagues bear a “signature”, or—in other words—they share a striking characteristic: they were all very intense, and unfolded as a continuum. The disasters followed each other, as if they had been planned, planned by higher powers, that is. Thus, each of these events was understood in theological terms. The plagues carried a divine message. This metaphysical message the biblical writer tried to capture and convey within the text. No easy task. As a result, the retelling of these events in the biblical texts tried to provide both the details of the plagues, and the aura of awe that people perceived at the time the plagues took place. Justice could be rendered to the to the red Nile, boils covering men and animals alike, the darkness enveloping the land, only by explaining them in light of a theological interpretation. Unlike present-day history, the biblical account is a dialogue interweaving theology and history. Indeed, Hebrew tradition understood the plagues in light of an earlier painful experience. The Hebrews claimed that their homeland, Canaan, had been hit with drought. They had been able to resettle along the plentiful rivers of the Nile thanks to the intervention of their ancestral god. However, as time went by, the Hebrews had been caught in Egypt’s internal politics. As a result, they were all thrown into labor camps. There the Hebrews expected that their god was going to act once again on their behalf. One of the Hebrew leaders, Moses, presented himself as God’s mouthpiece. He warned the ruler of Egypt that God was on the side of the slaves, and that it was time for him to let the slaves go free. The ruler—known in the biblical texts by his title of pharaoh (i.e., master of the house, and thus estate and the land linked to it) rather than his name—refused in blasphemous steadfastness. He paid no attention and no respect to the messenger, the message, or its Author. As a result, we are told, ten plagues struck the country. They inflicted pain and death on the population, devastated the land and the economy, and enabled the Hebrew slaves to escape from the camps and into freedom.

INTRODUCTION

3

It stands to reason that the Hebrews would have understood—I daresay must have understood—the whole event of the plagues as well as the exodus in a theological sense. It stands to reason that the Hebrews would have linked the plagues to the ruler’s foolish dare, and looked at the plagues as signs of divine retribution. Thus, it also makes sense that the plagues and the exodus were embedded in the cornerstone of Hebrew faith in a God that liberates and protects. By detailing and recording the plagues and the escape, the text of the Torah was to guarantee for all generations to come that god had manifested itself at a specific point in human history. The article of this faith was later reinterpreted by the Christians, and accepted in their faith experience. Today events are explained in the light of factors derived from society, economy, physics, and biology, rather than the interplay between God (or gods) and humanity. The classical case is World War I, where—we are told—the ambitions of powerful national industries pushed different states into a global war that had had no parallels to that day. The United Kingdom and Germany were vying for the control of sea routes. The Austro-Hungarian crown was trying to keep its privileges across central Europe, while the Russian Czar was eyeing a pan-Slavic empire stretching all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Turkey was trying to keep a hold on the Middle East while at the same time undergoing vital reforms to modernize. The Japanese alliance of military and economic interests was in the middle of an expansionist thrust to secure resources and markets in the Pacific and on the Asian mainland. The United States of America was breaking out of its isolationist mold. The interplay of these socioeconomic clashes favored the development and the spread of a plague, and one broke out. The disease was understood to have developed under the influence of unknown factors and was first reported in the Spanish press, which unlike the countries at war (Spain was neutral), was not affected by military censorship. Thus, the disease became known as the Spanish Flu. During 1918-1919, the dreaded flu spread like wildfire. Hundreds of millions of people contracted the disease. Upward of 40 million, more people than the war had killed, died. What was this disease? How did it spread? Where did it come from? The spreading pattern could be traced with a fair sense of certainty. Soldiers returning home or being dispatched to new assignments carried the disease across oceans and lands, reaching the farthest corners of the globe. American soldiers landing in Boston brought the flu to their homeland, New Zealander soldiers, stopping at harbors along the way back home, brought the flu to Africa, and all the way to the Pacific Ocean. As to the disease, it was in 1933 that it was first shown that the causative agent of flu was a virus. The influenza is—scientifically speaking—very special. It carries two external structures (dubbed H for hemagglutinin and N for neuraminidase) which enable us to naturally develop antibodies and fight off the ill-

4

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

ness. However, people unable to generate antibodies against the H and N structures on the virus will perish as a result. This virus continued to intrigue the scientific community for a long time to come: flu epidemics—albeit not as deadly—hit the world several times in the second half of the 20th century. Research revealed that this virus could live in pigs and birds, where it could also change, returning in humans with new Hs and new Ns against which antibodies had not yet developed. Scientists went one step further when, in 1997, the original Spanish Flu virus was extracted from corpses of frozen coal miners who had died on islands near the Svalbard Islands near the North Pole. The viral material became available for further studies using today’s molecular biology tools. The information can be compared with a whole slew of data on that specific epidemic and later ones, thus providing insights into the disease and the prevention thereof. In our modern times, we look at the biblical plagues of Egypt the same way we look at the Spanish Flu. What exactly were the plagues? How did they originate? How did they spread? Can we prevent them in the future? In order to answer these questions, one must realize that the plague narrative was written within a different cultural framework than our own. Biblical texts are a dialogue between history and theology. Today, history is seen as the product of socio-economic, physical-chemical, and biological factors. Thus, we need to “translate” the worldview of the biblical writers into our contemporary terminology. For instance, when the biblical texts mention a red Nile and dead fish as the result of Egypt’s ruler challenging God, what was going on? Scholars, archaeologists, and historians have tried to “translate” and recover the exact nature of the physical/historical events of the ten biblical plagues of Egypt. These attempts, however, became stuck in endless loops. No one could clearly identify what each plague was, let alone how they were linked, and—to make matters worse—no one could clearly identify the time they happened. The list of plagues made no sense. It was not flashy (Egypt invaded by lice and frogs?) which would indicate that the writer did tell the real story, rather than inventing it or embellishing it. Had the writer invented the story, or “improved” it, the plagues would have been spiced up with “interesting stuff”, an infection of epic proportions, for example. Instead we have a red Nile, frogs, lice, and flies, dead cattle, boils over the bodies of men and animals, hail, locusts, darkness, and then the death of the firstborn. And the oddities did not stop there. There are some Egyptian counterparts to the biblical text. They make no sense either. Fragments from Egyptian historians quoted in ancient works claim that there was a time when Egyptian gods— rather than the God honored by the Hebrews—took action with great might and dire consequences. They had done so to show their deep discomfort that the Hebrews were living in Egypt. The names of the kings and/or their actions men-

INTRODUCTION

5

tioned by these fragments do not match the names of historically known kings, though. For instance, the Amenhotep in whose reign the Egyptian historian Manetho places the plagues/exodus, does not fit any of the four Amenhotep kings known from history who reigned roughly 1525-1350 BC. There are no documents of plagues for the years of the historical Amenhoteps, nor is there any evidence indicating a mass escape of slaves either. Another example is king Bocchoris mentioned by Lysimachus of Alexandria in the context of a plague/exodus related to Hebrews in Egypt. Historians only know one such king. He ruled around 725 BC—500 years after the so-called Merneptah stela on which the Egyptians themselves had recorded that Hebrews were actually already living in Canaan! Matching biblical data to historical data from Ancient Egypt thus appeared to be a task akin to squaring a circle. If such a match existed, it would at best be partial. Looking for it, theories have placed the timing of the biblical disasters as far back as 2200 BC, or as recently as 1200 BC. The former approximate date coincides with a time when—apparently—Egypt was drying up, causing the collapse of the so-called Old Empire civilization. Egypt did rebound later on, over two centuries later, when plentiful amounts of water apparently returned. The latter date garners the most consensus among scholars as fitting as close as possible historical and biblical Egypt. This date was also popularized by the American movie The Ten Commandments (1956). The date was later used the world over in movies, documentaries, cartoons, and novels directly dealing with the subject, or using it as backdrop for the plot of their story. The main basis for this scenario is the papyrus Leiden 348. This Egyptian document mentions anonymous foreign slaves toiling to build the new capital planned by the powerful Ramses II. Thus, it echoes the story of the Hebrews, who slaved at “Pitôm and Ramses” (Ex. 1:11). Yet no Egyptian document related to Ramses II indicates that plagues struck the country. On the contrary, Ramses II was a conqueror and a builder. His armies of soldiers and construction workers were supported by a powerful economy, which is incompatible with the Egypt thrashed by plagues as described in the Bible. The biblical Egypt is far from fitting Ramses II’s Egypt. As the Ramses II theory offers a very meager match, many have attempted solving the mystery of the plagues through alternative time periods. Sigmund Freud, for instance, had a pet theory on the matter. In Moses and Monotheism (1936), the father of psychoanalysis linked the exodus that followed the plagues to the reign of the Egyptian ruler Akhenaton around 1350 BC. Similarly, Mircea Eliade, the great scholar of comparative religion, agreed with Freud on this point. Eliade’s A History of Religious Ideas (1976-1985) draws parallels between the monotheistic views held by Moses and those held by Akhenaton. The author inferred that Moses had been influenced by Akhenaton’s religious

6

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

views. This point currently enjoys wide popularity amongst today’s Egyptian intellectuals as exemplified by Ahmed Osman’s publications on the topic. Christian fundamentalists, especially in North America, tend to place the biblical plagues one century earlier, that is, around 1450 BC. They are actively looking for historical documents and archaeological data that would lend support to such a date. A quite different approach emerges from the archaeologists’ side. The Austrianborn archaeologist Hans Goedicke focuses on the time of Queen Hatshepsut (ca. 1475 BC). A brief inscription from her time mentions enemies of the country being swallowed up by desert sands. Goedicke proposed that this text constitutes an Egyptian match to the flight of the Hebrews after the plagues. A different text chiseled on a stela relates to a very powerful storm that devastated southern Egypt. It is dated to 1550-1525 BC, and it is thought it may offer an explanation to one or more of the biblical plagues. Additionally, the Austrian archaeologist Prof. Manfred Bietak points out that the exodus of the Hebrews perhaps reflects a documented expulsion of a large number of Asiatics from northern Egypt. Around 1560-1550 BC Hyksos invaders were being driven from Egypt and—briefly—resettled in Canaan. The difficulty of finding a match between Egypt’s history and the biblical verses has led many to think that the biblical plagues were—to put it simply—bogus. It has been supposed that no one could match the plagues to known historical events because the plagues never existed. It is as simple as that. The case is closed. Or is it? In order to break through the stalemate, we devised a different approach. We used a detective-like approach, combining the translation of the ancients’ worldview with the rigor of scientific methodology. Thus, the plagues became events taking place within a closed system, the “Egypt lab”. Taking nothing for granted, all hypotheses and findings on these plagues were double-checked in light of historical documents, archaeological artifacts, and scientific data. This approach yielded meaningful results. The results were then assembled into a scenario which was tested on its own merit. It needed to be inherently coherent and supported by all available historical, archaeological, and scientific documentation on the subject. Only a scenario that passed this test could be deemed robust and go on to the next step. Only one reconstruction vividly brought back to life the ancient disasters that struck Egypt. It unequivocally revealed that the plagues were linked to each other in a domino-effect fashion. These disasters took place over a relatively short period of time, were all weather-borne, and affected a much larger area than previously thought, encompassing the whole Eastern Mediterranean as well as Egypt.

INTRODUCTION

7

The finding that the plagues had destroyed an area beyond Egypt provided us with one additional tool: we could now check once more whether other “labs” could confirm the scenario established in the “Egypt lab”. And it worked! The picture of what Egypt had gone through that had emerged from reconstructing the plagues was mirrored in the neighboring countries. The same patterns for the plagues—adjusted for local geographical realities—became manifest. Last but not least, the data yielded the time when the plagues ravaged Egypt. The picture was now complete. These results shatter the current myth that the biblical plagues were the product of fiction or embellishments. Rather, this biblical narrative describes events which were historical in nature. Welcome to the vast world of biblical mysteries. Beyond this page awaits a journey through the reconstruction of the puzzle of the plagues. You will be sifting through theories, pious wishes, and hard data, just like detectives while working on a case. Leveraging different disciplines, as well as letting one’s curiosity explore the options, will be your key to unlock the answers. Discover the biblical plagues from a physical perspective and catch a glimpse of how the plagues came to be understood within a theological framework.

CHAPTER 1 THE BIBLICAL PLAGUES The extent and value of historical content in the biblical texts is a controversial topic, one well exemplified by the narrative of a series of ten plagues. These disasters were said to have disabled Egypt, thereby enabling the Hebrew nation to leave Egypt en masse. Arguments for and against the historical nature of the plagues appear to cancel each other out. For instance, biblical “minimalists” deny that the plagues/exodus were historical. One of their arguments is that there are no archaeological records for an exodus through the Sinai Peninsula. The absence of pottery fragments or other physical evidence that might retrace an exodus route, however, is not enough to disprove the historical nature of the plagues/exodus. In fact, archaeologists have not been able to uncover records for any mass displacement of people through the Sinai Peninsula, despite the fact that mass displacements through the area are documented in Egyptian records. The end of the war between the Egyptians and the Hyksos (1567-1564 BC), for instance, saw not one, but three mass movements of people across the Sinai. In one movement, the Hyksos, unable to sustain the waves of Egyptian attacks, left the Nile Delta and retreated to their forts in Canaan. Some must have traveled aboard ships, but others certainly journeyed by land along the Horus Road. Yet there are no fragments of pots, weapons, clothes, or tombs of people dying while retreating. In a second movement, the Egyptian army followed the fleeing Hyksos. The Egyptians seized the control of the coastline and the Horus Road as well as the forts along the road. They then attacked the Hyksos sites across Canaan in a three-year war. Yet there are no traces of the army’s presence (fragments of pots, weapons, clothes, or tombs of soldiers dying while on their way to Canaan). In the third movement, having destroyed the Hyksos, the Egyptian army returned to rebuild the homeland. Yet there are no fragments of pots, weapons, clothes, or tombs of wounded or sick soldiers dying along the road back home. Three mass movements of people across the Sinai, and no physical evidence amidst its sands! Why would the mass movement of Hebrews across the 9

10

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Sinai have been any different and leave material evidence, while three others did not? Matching the plague narrative to historical/archaeological evidence seems similar to the squaring of a circle. What exactly should we be looking for in order to make a match? The answer comes by starting to look at the plagues, which are compared in Table 1. The principal account of these disasters is contained in the biblical book of Exodus (Ex. 7:14-13:16) which is part of the Torah. The narrative mentions ten plagues that began when the Nile turned red. The fish of the river turned up dead, floating in waters that people refused to drink. Frogs, maggots, flies, mosquitoes, lice, or some other form of insects invaded the land. Later, animals began to die, people and animals developed boils, and hail fell and ruined the upcoming barley and flax crops. Locusts then ate what was left in the fields. Then darkness enveloped the land. Finally, an angel of death passed over the land and killed the Egyptian firstborn. Less widely known are three additional narratives. The biblical book of Deuteronomy, which—like the book of Exodus—is part of the Torah, contains scattered lines bearing resemblance to some of the plagues. It mentions darkness, locusts, boils, and the destruction of trees. Finally, Psalms 78 and Psalms 105 also mention disastrous events. The former psalm describes a Nile that had turned red, the waters of which were no longer potable. Crawling vermin, frogs, and locusts invaded the land. Hail destroyed vineyards, while cold weather destroyed fig trees. The cattle died, struck by lightning during storms, while some time later, anger and lack of breath plagued the nation’s inhabitants. Then the Egyptian firstborn were slaughtered (Ps. 78:43-51). The latter psalm speaks of darkness, red waters, dead fish, frogs, crawling vermin, mosquitoes, hail, and fire. Fig trees and vineyards were ravaged, while locusts and worms ate the fruits of the soil. Finally, the firstborn died (Ps. 105:28-36). There are other references to such events in Hebrew tradition. Later Jewish authors (from 300 BC onwards) like Artapanus, Eupolemus, Philo of Alexandria, and Josephus also commented on the plagues. At times they introduced elements that do not seem to appear in the biblical account including earthquakes, destruction of Egyptian temples, and rains. At first glance, the different biblical texts (let alone the extrabiblical tradition) offer different scenarios. As shown in Table 1, some plagues appear frequently, while others are limited to one or two narratives. As far as the order of the plagues is concerned, each account has its own sequence for the events. For centuries rabbis and other commentators have discussed the correct order of the plagues.

CHAPTER 1 THE BIBLICAL PLAGUES

11

The headache of reconstructing the plagues is well illustrated by Rein W. van Bemmelen’s proposal (Acta of the 1st International Scientific Congress on the Volcano of Thera, 15-23 September 1969, [1971]). The Dutch geologist, famous for unraveling the nature of the large lake Toba on the island of Sumatra, was convinced that the plagues had a volcanic origin. He tried to fit the biblical account (restricting his efforts to the Exodus account, that is) into his model, tinkering with the order of the plagues and organizing them in a way he thought would fit a standard volcanic eruption. Thus, van Bemmelen placed the plague of darkness (ninth in the order in Exodus) at the beginning of the eruption, arguing it was a sign of a volcanic plume stemming from an eruption. He then argued that the storm of hail (the seventh plague) came next, and was caused by the fine volcanic ash in the air. Thereafter, the frogs (the second plague) would have fled the waters, which were being transformed into acid baths because of the ash fallout. Finally, as the ash acidified and discolored the waters, the Nile turned red and carried dead fish. The remaining plagues (the third through the sixth—i.e., crawling vermin, flies, dead animals, and boils—as well as the eighth—i.e., locusts) were understood as normally occurring events in a time of poor hygiene. For some reason, they became incorporated into the biblical story, just as did the tenth plague (the death of the firstborn), which van Bemmelen attributed to a moral tale that made perfect sense in a text that was first and foremost religious. In the present work, the series of disasters will be discussed in the order given in Exodus. The reason for this choice is that Exodus—and the other four books of the Torah—was considered to be holy par excellence. In fact, the Hebrew nation even experienced a schism because part of the nation felt that the sanctity of the Torah had been broken. The Samaritan movement accused the rest of the Hebrews of introducing extra-Torah elements into religious practice. Being “holier”, the Torah would be less susceptible to change than other texts. As such, the passages in the Torah would be considered more accurate, and the Psalms would fare worse when compared to the Torah. Even if we were to accept the rationalist/minimalist approach, which doubts the historical value of the Torah, the Psalms would still be considered less valuable. Finally, the passages in Deuteronomy are fragmentary, and do not provide as much information as those in Exodus. Hence the Exodus text is—as far as the plagues are concerned—a superior text. If the research reveals that the present order for the plagues is meaningless, then we will revisit the decision to follow the numbering in the Exodus narrative. At that point we will identify a more appropriate order for the unfolding of the plagues (if any such unfolding ever happened). Among the plagues, the first thing that catches the eye is that the plagues appear to have started when the Nile turned red and ended when the firstborn were slaughtered. Psalms 105 places a plague of darkness just before the waters

12

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

turned red. This may be the same darkness, which is listed as the ninth plague in the Exodus account. Deuteronomy appears to provide the middle plagues. As a result, we are placing the red river with the dead fish as the first plague and the massacre of the firstborn as the last plague. The two plagues of darkness are placed together in the order provided in the Torah. Then there is the question of filling the blanks and fitting the other plagues. The invasions of frogs, crawling invertebrates, and swarms of insects seem to form a unit across several accounts. Thus, the plague of frogs should occupy the place of the second plague in our working list. The plague of crawling invertebrates follows the frogs and becomes the third plague. The plague of swarms of insects would thus fill the space reserved for the fourth plague. There is another plague that appears relatively easy to place: the appearance of locusts. The account in Exodus mentions them. Both Psalms 78 and Psalms 105 mention these creatures alongside worms or other invertebrates eating away at the crops in the fields. Deuteronomy mentions them twice. The “missing” worms in the Torah account may merely indicate that the two Psalms may preserve a more detailed description of the event. It is also possible that worms gnawed at the crops not long after the locusts passed by. Given the similarity between the disasters, the Torah may have condensed the two into one allencompassing plague. Alternatively, the worms were not deemed a bona fide plague by the Exodus writer (or writers). Just as was the case for the plagues of frogs and crawling vermin, we will keep the order shown in the Exodus. Thus, the locusts are to be situated just prior to the darkness, which took place before the slaughter of the firstborn. Completing the synchronization of the plagues: the Torah mentions the death of five kinds of animals in the fifth plague: horses, donkeys, camels, oxen, and sheep. Psalms 78 links the deaths of animals to severe storms. Concomitantly, some of the damages attributed to the storms (destruction of fig trees and vineyards) are akin to the destruction attributed to hail by Psalms 105. Thus, it is not clear how many storms took place. For instance, it is not clear whether the distinction made in Exodus between a fifth and a seventh plague is correct. However, until proof to the contrary, we will still use this order. Furthermore, we will also keep in place the event that occurred before the two storms, namely skin problems, which Exodus describes as the sixth plague and Deuteronomy mentions twice. This analysis of the plagues leaves an outsider: the plague of rage and suffocation which Psalm 78 includes among the disasters and which is still looking for a “home”. The plagues can now be re-tabulated in a more coherent fashion—albeit not yet final—as shown in Table 2. The river turned red, then frogs, followed by crawling invertebrates, and flies, invaded the land. People developed boils; storms and locusts destroyed the countryside. People were in anger. Darkness

CHAPTER 1 THE BIBLICAL PLAGUES

13

enveloped the land. Finally, the firstborn were slaughtered. How do we explain all these events? Analysis of the nature of the disasters will proceed by using one hypothesis at a time. Hypotheses unable to explain a plague will be discarded. Any hypothesis explaining a plague will be kept and checked against the subsequent plagues. If these plagues reflect facts, it should be possible to uncover what the facts are. For instance, many today think that some of the plagues have a biological origin. Thus, the plague of boils may have been caused by insects from the third and fourth plagues: as people squashed the insects that were attacking them, toxins within the bodies of the creatures came into contact with the skin of the people. These chemicals then started to react and a few days later caused blisters and burns. However, the plagues could turn out to be fiction. For instance, they could be artifacts created by biblical authors to reinforce an ethical statement. The authors warn that not listening to God may carry severe consequences. The plague narrative would thus be akin to a tale, which children would grow up hearing from parents and grandparents, a tale of when the ruler of Egypt dared God: “Once upon a time, in the ancient land of Egypt there was a man, a very foolish man, who …”. Alternatively, the plagues could be—as van Bemmelen argues—both, reflecting facts and fiction. Perhaps some plagues did take place and they were then enriched to provide a meaning to history for the keepers of the tradition of the Hebrew nation.

14

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 1. List of the plagues as described in the biblical texts. Exodus Psalms 78 Psalms 105 (Ex. 7.14-13.16) (Ps. 78.43-51) (Ps. 105.27-36) Red waters and Red and poisonous Darkness dead fish waters (Ex. 7.14-25) (Ps. 78.43-44) (Ps. 105.27-28) Frogs Crawling Red waters and invertebrates dead fish (Ex. 7.26-8.11) (Ps. 78.45) (Ps. 105.29) Crawling Frogs Frogs invertebrates (Ex. 8.12-15) (Ps. 78.45) (Ps. 105.30) Insects Locusts and other Crawling invertebrate invertebrates (Ex. 8.16-28) (Ps. 78.46) (Ps. 105.31) Dead animals Animals killed by Insects thunderstorms (Ex. 9.1-7) (Ps. 78.47) (Ps. 105.31) Skin problems Vines and fig trees Hail and lightning, destroyed by hail vines and fig trees and cold destroyed (Ex. 9.8-12) Hail (Ex. 9.13-35) Locusts (Ex. 10.1-20) Darkness (Ex. 10.21-29) Death of firstborn (Ex. 11.1-13.16)

(Ps. 78.48) Rage and suffocation (Ps. 78.49) Death of firstborn

(Ps. 105.32-33) Locusts and worms (Ps. 105.34-35) Death of firstborn

(Ps. 78.50-51)

(Ps. 105.36)

Deuteronomy (Dt. 28.23-42) Sky of bronze, rain of dust (Dt. 28.23-24) Boils of many kinds (Dt. 28.27) Inability to see (Dt. 28.28-29) Boils (Dt. 28.35) Locusts (Dt. 28.38) Worms damage vines, olives fail to ripen (Dt. 28.39-40) Locusts (Dt. 28.42)

CHAPTER 1 THE BIBLICAL PLAGUES

15

Table 2. Working hypothesis for the synchronization of the plagues described in the biblical texts Exodus Psalms 78 Psalms 105 Deuteronomy (Ex. 7.14-13.16) (Ps. 78.43-51) (Ps. 105.27-36) (Dt. 28.23-42) Red waters and Red, poisonous Red waters and dead fish waters dead fish Frogs Frogs Frogs Crawling Crawling Crawling invertebrates invertebrates invertebrates Insects Insects Dead animals Animals killed by thunderstorms Skin problems Boils Hail Vines and fig trees Lightning and hail Worms damage destroyed by hail destroy vines and vines, olives fail and cold fig trees to ripen Rage and suffocation Locusts Locusts, other Locusts and Locusts invertebrates worms Darkness Darkness Sky of bronze, rain of dust ; Inability to see Death of firstborn Death of firstborn Death of firstborn

CHAPTER 2 EGYPT UNDER ATTACK: THE ONSET OF THE PLAGUES (PLAGUES 1 & 2) The biblical texts report that the plagues had a sudden and violent start. Out of the blue, the Nile turned red, and at its surface dead fish floated. Later, the waters spewed out uncountable frogs onto the banks of the river. A slew of additional plagues followed. […] all the water in the river was turned into blood, and the fish in the river died. The river stank so that the Egyptians could not drink its water, and there was blood throughout the whole land of Egypt. … And all the Egyptians had to dig along the Nile for water to drink, for they could not drink the water of the river. Ex. 7.20-24 […] And turned their rivers to blood, so that they could not drink of their streams. Ps. 78.44 […] He turned their waters into blood, and caused their fish to die. Ps. 105.29 The first plague was particularly violent and set the tone for the remaining nine events that were to follow. This first disaster poisoned Egypt’s lifeline, an umbilical cord on which the land had relied for millennia, the Nile River. We all depend on water. Our very bodies are 60-70% composed of water. In North America and other countries, we usually take the availability of plentiful and clean water for granted, yet most of the planet is not in this fortunate position. To better appreciate the central role of water, one may for a brief moment pause and think what life would be without it. It would not be the life to which we are accustomed. In Egypt, there is only one source of water, one single river, the Nile. Egyptians have mastered the art of living along and with the Nile. Beyond the fertile banks of this river one finds only sand and sun-blasted rock; to the west the Sahara and to the east the Nubian Desert, an equally forbidding place— 17

18

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

albeit smaller in size. The Nile that crosses Egypt from its southern end to the northern one makes the difference between life and death. Imagine life in North America—its population, agriculture, farming, industry, etc.—restricted along one major waterway, be it the Saint Lawrence River in Canada or the Mississippi in the United States. Imagine the rest of the country a vast bowl of dust and sand on both sides of the river. This is Egypt. The ancient inhabitants of Egypt dwelled on the banks of the river that were characterized by fertile black soil, or in ancient Egyptian, kemet. In contrast, the surrounding wilderness was tinged by sands that were red in color, known as desheret. The people of Egypt looked at the world as the work of gods. Thus, in the eyes of these Egyptians, the duality of the river and the desert was also the work of gods. The dark and fertile soil became linked to the divine triad Osiris-IsisHorus, which represented the tripartite agricultural cycle of the river described below. The reddish sands became linked to the god Seth. Since areas irrigated by water could become fertile while areas deprived of water remained desert, these ancient people understood that the gods were clashing among each other. For instance, Seth was threatening Osiris and his family by having the red sands of the desert place the Nile under siege. The very waters of the Nile became regarded as a god. They seemed to have a three-step life of their own. The waters would rise after the star Sirius appeared at dawn above the horizon in mid-July, after having been absent from the sky for months. The waters would then flood their banks and deposit rich soil. Then, the waters would retreat to the riverbed around October, enabling farmers to start their work. Seeds would sprout from February onwards and provide rich harvests for several months. The fields would then be left fallow under the hot summer months. Then the rise of Sirius above the horizon at dawn would signal a new cycle. The regularity of the phases was so evident and vital that the Egyptians based their calendar on the “life cycle” of the river. The rising waters in July signaled the flood season and rang in the new year. The retiring waters around October signaled the sowing season. Harvests characterized the subsequent time. The Nile provided Egyptians with a rich and diversified agriculture and enabled a solid husbandry. Additionally, the mud of the banks was made into bricks, which were used across all social classes. The bricks provided material for the palaces of aristocrats and kings, the silos and stables of landowners, forts for the army, and shelters for the workingman and his family. The Nile provided one more asset, as well. It was a wonderful waterway linking the whole country. It was used to transport people and troops, and to exchange goods and information. In short, the Nile was Egypt: its soul, its gods, its food, its culture, its time, its life. The fertile banks and the waters flowing between them ensured stability

CHAPTER 2 EGYPT UNDER ATTACK: THE ONSET OF THE PLAGUES (PLAGUES 1 & 2)

19

for the social system in place throughout Egypt and constituted the envy of the neighboring nations. In Egypt everything seemed perfect. And then one day, according to the biblical narrative, Egypt was hit with a huge disaster: the Nile had turned the color of blood. Fish were dead and floated at the surface of the river. People could not drink the waters. The country was at a standstill. In a world understood as the work of gods, the Egyptians would have been totally frightened. The life-giving waters of the Nile had assumed the color of the surrounding desert! The god Seth had declared war on the other gods of Egypt. The Hebrews had their own theological interpretation. Egypt was being punished for not allowing their Hebrew slaves to leave the labor camps in which they had been trapped and exploited for generations. In either case, the disaster was so colossal that it could only be understood to have divine roots. Trying to survive the wrath of the gods, the Egyptians resorted to digging wells further away from the Nile and only consumed water from these wells. The catastrophe was understood to constitute an attack on Egypt’s soul, identity, and existence, much like the impression better known to us of what was felt in the United States on September 11, 2001, or in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II. There is no shortage of data on these two attacks against the United States: contemporary reports, statements from witnesses, film footage, photographs, rubble, corpses, etc. But what do we have on the attack against Ancient Egypt? Is it even possible to obtain evidence about an attack that was understood to be the result of the intervention of one or more gods? What are we dealing with? The biblical texts do provide details. These documents make clear that the disaster manifested itself under three forms: ● the waters were reddish in color ● the fish were dead ● the waters could not be consumed by humans. Yet, in spite of the clear description, centuries later we are still left wondering what this disaster looked like. In our modern world, red waters, dead fish, and undrinkable waters are associated with pollution. But thousands of years ago? A detail in the narrative itself guarantees that the event did indeed take place and was no fiction: Egyptians dug wells to look for drinkable water. This brief note adds an eyewitness touch to the story. The soil along the riverbanks would have filtered the water of the Nile and made it fit for consumption. The process of purification through filtration was unknown to the Egyptians who acted by using empirical savvy rather than a planned scientific approach.

20

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

We know from two ancient Egyptian texts, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden (Gardiner, 1909) and the London Medical Papyrus (available in Grundniss der Medizin der alten Ägypter IV1, Übersetzung der medizinischen Texte, [Hildegard von Deines, Hermann Grapow, Wolfhart Westendorf, 1958]) that the Nile had been red sometime in the history of the country. The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage relates the words of the courtesan Ipuwer. The document preserved in the Leiden Museum in the Netherlands (Leiden 344), is often referred to more briefly as the Ipuwer Papyrus. We will use this shorter title throughout the present work. A couple of words on when and how the text on the papyrus came to be are in order. The scribe to whom we owe this piece of literature wrote the text in the so-called hieratic script, one of the three writing styles existing in Ancient Egypt. The examination of the style of writing indicates that the scribe performed his work around 1250-1225 BC. The scribe, however, merely copied words from an earlier manuscript. The words in the text betray a much earlier author (possibly Ipuwer’s own secretary). Thus, whoever penned the words on the papyrus now held in the Leiden Museum transcribed older literature in order to preserve it on a fresh piece of papyrus or to supply a copy for the library of a wealthy buyer. The Ipuwer Papyrus is particularly interesting in its presentation of Egypt at a time when the country was sinking into total chaos. Among the events causing, accompanying, or resulting from the chaos, Ipuwer stated, “[…] Blood is everywhere. … The river is blood. Men shrink from tasting … and thirst after water.” [Ipuwer, 2.5-6, 10]. The analogy to the biblical texts is quite clear. The Nile—the only river in Egypt—was red as blood and no one was drinking from these waters. Even clearer is the fact that the Nile did at least once turn red, and when it did, Egypt had been in big trouble. At this point in time it is irrelevant whether the Ipuwer Papyrus is an Egyptian record of the plagues that are described in the biblical narrative. If Ipuwer’s words turn out to be an Egyptian counterpart to the Torah, additional similarities between the two texts will emerge when we turn to the nine plagues that followed. At that point we will resume our examination of the Ipuwer Papyrus. Now, our focus is an explantion of the red Nile. Ipuwer confirms that the Nile did turn red in Ancient Egypt. Paragraph 55 in the London Medical Papyrus also states that the waters of the Nile had a red color and here the claim is made in the context of a report of people suffering from burns. The remedy recommended consisted of using finely chopped wax to bind a mix of mud, resin, ochre, oil, and cow fat. The burning sensation would certainly have deterred the Egyptians from drinking the red waters. Again we have an Egyptian account of a red Nile. The

CHAPTER 2 EGYPT UNDER ATTACK: THE ONSET OF THE PLAGUES (PLAGUES 1 & 2)

21

account confirms what the Ipuwer Papyrus and the biblical texts state: the red Nile spelled trouble. Going back to our original question: what caused the Nile to become red, kill the fish, and stay unpalatable for seven days? One suggested answer that has turned out to be a dead end was the possibility that red sands had turned the river the same color. To this day reddish dust and sand from the desert are common nuisances in modern Cairo. It is therefore possible that powerful winds blowing from the deserts could have swept large amounts of red sand into the waters of the Nile. We know that rain can be red. It was observed millennia ago, notably by Cicero (106-43 BC) who mentions such a phenomenon in his De divinatione (2.58). To this day Cicero’s Italian homeland occasionally receives red rain when red soil brought by the wind from the Sahara is mixed with ordinary rain. Moreover, in his De Dea Syria (8), Lucian (roughly 115-190 AD) referred to and explained the red waters of a river (present-day Nahr Ibrahim) running down from Mount Lebanon and reaching the Mediterranean near Byblos (present-day Jounieh). According to Lucian, the waters become red and turn the mouth of the river red as well. In his day, the inhabitants of Byblos linked the red soil on the mountain, which seasonal winds would dump in the waters, to the change in color of the nearby river. Thus, if winds can turn Italian rain red hundreds of kilometers away from the Sahara, what about waters next to the Sahara? If seasonal winds can move red dust into the river and turn the waters red in Lebanon, why not in Egypt? Perhaps the red dust (but not sand, which does not dissolve in water) from the Sahara can explain the color. We still have to explain why the fish died and floated on the Nile. Here we hit a snag. The only way dust would kill the fish is if enough dust were dumped in the water to turn the river into either very shallow waters or mud pools. This, however, does not fit with the biblical text, which speaks of a red river. There is one more point to ponder. The dust would not have poisoned the waters and prompted the Egyptians to dig wells and drink exclusively from them either. Poisoned dusts or soils are a phenomenon of modern times where chemicals enter the soil or waters (e.g., Love Canal in New York State or Minamata in Japan) or are extracted because of overutilization of wells (e.g., arsenic contaminated waters in Bangladesh). In either case, even with industrial use, rivers like the Nile do not turn red, kill the fish, or become undrinkable overnight. However tempting it might be to associate the red Nile with the soil of the desert, we need to look elsewhere. An alternative to a physical cause for the red Nile (i.e., soil) is a biological cause. The most popular biology-based argument runs as follows. Algae tinted the waters red, killed off the fish by exhausting the oxygen in the water, and fouled the waters to the palate of the Egyptians.

22

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Most people are familiar with algae. They have seen them in aquariums, along a beach, or in biology class. They may have eaten algae in Korean and Japanese restaurants. Such algae are large in size, and are green or brown in color. These are not the algae potentially involved in the plague. Other algae exist which can be red in color. These, however, are microscopic in size and can damage the environment. For instance, the cyanophyte Oscillatoria rubescens (rubeo = Latin: “I am red”), first identified in Plön Lake in Northern Germany, can give rise to blooms or periods of rapid growth that give the waters a reddish color. When blooming, cyanophytes will use the oxygen in the water for their own vital functions, depriving all other organisms of this essential gas. When the fish are unable to breathe, they die and begin to float on the surface of the water. This is the mechanism responsible for the formation of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico just below the delta of the Mississippi River. Have we now finally identified the cause for a red Nile in which fish died and from which men could not drink? Not really. Blooms of algae occur rather calm waters, and not in rivers where waters are constantly flowing. Additionally, blooms only take place when large amounts of nutrients appear very rapidly in an area inhabited by algae. This phenomenon can be easily tested in a laboratory using algae in a glass vessel called chemostat. In a controlled environment, the size of the population and the amount of nutrients are carefully maintained. The algae are fed a minimal diet that keeps their number low. The amount of nutrients is replenished, yet kept at the same concentration, by the continuous removal of small amounts of liquid which is compensated by the continuous addition of small amounts of fresh water with fresh minimal diet. The net result is a dynamic equilibrium in which the nutrient pool and algae mass are kept constant. However, when the nutrients in the water are quickly changed from minimal to enriched, a bloom takes place. In nature such a phenomenon is extremely rare and essentially requires human intervention. The standard scenario today is that of large amounts of fertilizers washed off from fields and into streams, eventually reaching the habitat of the algae. The large quantities of fertilizers appearing suddenly are used as food by cyanophytes and trigger a bloom. The result is a demographic explosion of the algae. Such a phenomenon, however, cannot have taken place thousands of years ago when the only fertilizers available were limited quantities of dung and ashes. Thus, cyanophytes cannot be held responsible for the red Nile, the dead fish, and the undrinkable waters. Dr. Greta Hort authored what turned out to be a landmark study of the plagues (“The Plagues of Egypt,” Zeitschrift für die altestamentische Wissenschaft 69 (1957):84-103; 70(1958):48-59). She attempted to show how all ten biblical plagues were linked to each other in a domino-effect fashion. From a logical standpoint, she was building a frame of plausibility for all ten biblical plagues.

CHAPTER 2 EGYPT UNDER ATTACK: THE ONSET OF THE PLAGUES (PLAGUES 1 & 2)

23

Dr. Hort hypothesized that the plagues were the result of an initial flood which poisoned the river with organisms as well as mud and killed the fish. The mass extinction of fish enabled bacteria to grow and release anthrax toxins. The presence of these toxins pushed the frogs (second plague) onto the Nile’s banks and, in turn led to the events of the subsequent plagues. Dr. Hort’s scenario hypothesizes an initial event of unusually bad weather characterized by unsually heavy rains. Such a weather pattern would have displaced microorganisms from their usual habitat in the highland Lake Tana, bringing them together with copious amounts of red mud into the Nile through its tributaries. The river would have turned red both from the mud and from the natural red color of the microorganisms Euglena sanguinea and Haematococcus pluvialis. Blood from the fish attacked by the two microorganisms might also have contributed to the red color observed. The large numbers of fish killed and floating would have horrified onlookers and kept them from drinking the waters. Dr. Hort’s explanation appears quite solid: she has a red Nile, dead fish, and water repulsive to would-be drinkers. But are the claims of her hypothesis warranted? Do we really have an explanation for the first plague and the beginning of a chain reaction of disasters? A first objection arises from the fact that severe adverse weather or flooding in conjunction with the first plague is nowhere to be found in the biblical account. This is a minor point, though. After all, perhaps the biblical writers were simply not interested in bad weather. More troubling, however, is that neither Euglena sanguinea nor Haematococcus pluvialis are toxic to humans. To make matters worse, neither of these organisms, nor similar ones, have been found in the Nile, its tributaries, or Lake Tana. On the contrary, such organisms appear to thrive in cooler waters such as Øland in southwestern Finland or in the Pian Perduto di Gualdo Lake in the Apennines. This point reveals a serious flaw in Dr. Hort’s argument, as we can no longer account for the Egyptians’ inability to drink the water. To double-check the invalidity of this appealing theory, let us briefly consider the second plague: frogs invading the land of Egypt. Dr. Hort postulated that the dead fish in the Nile were a breeding ground for anthrax which pushed the frogs onto the banks of the river. Anthrax. however, only affects land mammals; frogs are amphibians, spending half of their lives in water. Thus, on a number of counts, Hort’s mud and microorganisms theory does not hold ground—or water for that matter. We very much cherish the idea of a chain reaction and shelve this specific approach with some regret. The theory of a flood of red mud and microorganisms fails to explain the first plague and thus will not do for the remaining nine. Before discarding Dr. Hort’s idea, let us consider whether a different microorganism might be more suited to the task of providing an explanation. Euglena or

24

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

a Euglena–like organism does not seem to meet the criteria, but perhaps a different one would have been able to trigger the chain reaction of disasters. Enter Dr John S. Marr, chief epidemiologist at the New York City Department of Health, and Dr. Curtis D. Malloy, an epidemiologist at Exponent Health Group in Washington, DC. These two scientists recently claimed that pathogens—starting with the microorganism Pfiesteria—appeared sequentially, causing disasters in a falling domino effect (“An Epidemiologic Analysis of the Ten Plagues of Egypt,” Caduceus 12 (1996):16-24). Their work was published in the scientific press, publicized on the Internet, and was then turned into the television documentary The Ten Plagues of Egypt (1998). Their theory also inspired a book by Rodney Baker entitled And the Waters Turned to Blood (1998). Marr and Malloy linked the first biblical plague to a demographic explosion of the microorganism Pfiesteria. This organism was implicated in the deaths of roughly one billion fish at the mouths of the rivers of the state of North Carolina in 1996. News of this calamity made headlines worldwide. The skin of the animals revealed they had suffered severe, perhaps lethal wounds … and some other smaller organisms were also at the scene: Pfiesteriae. Could Pfiesteriae or related organisms have tinted the water red with blood and made it undrinkable in Ancient Egypt? That is what it was initially postulated at the time of the North Carolina fish event. After years of investigation, however, it is still not clear how the dinoflagellate Pfiesteria piscidia might cause the death of fish. Biologists have—without reaching a conclusion—proposed a variety of hypotheses including a toxin model, spores, co-infection with fungi, or other modes. Additionally, it appears that the health risks posed to humans were overestimated. In other words: we still do not know whether Pfiesteria killed the fish in North Carolina. This, though, provides no ground to simply reject the theory. Pfiesteria appears as a possible solution to the problems of the red Nile, poison, and dead fish. Pfiesteria or Pfiesteria-like organisms could have attacked the fish and released their blood in the waters. The contaminated waters as well as the sight of dead fish and the foul smell would have deterred people from drinking from such a river. Confirmation of this possibility awaits a consideration of the subsequent plagues. If Pfiesteria started the domino effect, its effects would be present in the later biblical plagues. There is one more theory that deserves our attention: did volcanic ash turn the Nile red? The question is not exactly new, but it has never been fully explored. Already in the 19th century the Englishman Charles Beke indicated that the plague/exodus event would have had a volcanic component. John G. Bennet elaborated the idea proposed by his countryman, and in 1925 stated that the eruption on the volcanic island of Thera (also known as Santorini) in the Aegean Sea was the volcanic component that started the plagues.

CHAPTER 2 EGYPT UNDER ATTACK: THE ONSET OF THE PLAGUES (PLAGUES 1 & 2)

25

Following digs started on the site, Dr. A.G. Galanopoulos wrote an article entitled “Die ägyptischen Plagen und der Auszug Israels aus geologischer Sicht” (Das Altertum 10(1964): 131-137). In it the biblical texts of the plagues were described as historical documents that had recorded the effects of the eruption, which was known by 1964 to have halved Thera and reduced Minoan culture to rubble across the Aegean Sea in the Bronze Age (2000-1200 BC). Galanopoulos, however, did not supply details as to how the plagues in Egypt could have been derived from the volcanic event at Thera, which took place 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the Nile Delta. The event at Thera was the most violent eruption in the Mediterranean within the last 10,000 years. To provide an idea of its extent and devastation, details were gleaned from accounts of a multitude of other known eruptions. A list of possible analogies was drawn up, but no unifying theory could be established: ● the sole survivor of the 1902 eruption of the Pelée, a volcano in Martinique (Caribbean), was a man in his jail cell; ● the Tambora (present-day Indonesia) event of 1815 tinged the sky as far as the United States, and caused severe weather changes for at least one year over the whole globe; ● the Krakatoa (present-day Indonesia) eruption of 1883 was heard in the Chagos islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean hundreds of kilometers away; ● the eruption at Mount Vesuvius (present-day Italy) in 79 AD buried several towns—Pompei, Herculaneun, and Stabia—under ashes and other material; ● the Greek poet Pindaros described in detail a nocturnal eruption of the Etna (Sicily) volcano around 450 BC; ● Hesiod’s Theogony (perhaps finalized around 800 BC) may contain the memory of Thera’s eruption in the Bronze age; ● Çatal Höyük, a Neolithic site in Anatolia, preserved the oldest known representation of a volcano erupting as a painting on a wall in one of the dwellings (possibly one of the peaks in the Kaparinar area, 50 kilometers/30 miles away from Çatal Höyük), and also shows the direction of the plume. As fascinating as volcanoes have been throughout the ages, how are we to put together these data? And which of these accounts are in fact useful for gaining insight into the biblical plagues? Can they help to cure the extra headache that each plague and its order in the sequence must also be explained so that the red Nile (the first plague) precedes the frogs (the second plague), and not the other way around?

26

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Unable to find adequate explanations for the biblical plagues, many scholars either confessed their inability or claimed the biblical texts were wrong. Thus, where they thought they could explain a plague and the sequence, they would accept the biblical texts, but if they could not find a match, they concluded that the biblical text was faulty. As a result, some plagues were explained in light of a volcanic origin (e.g., a volcanic plume for the darkness of the ninth plague), whereas other disasters (e.g., the lice, sometimes attributed to poor hygienic conditions) were explained in terms of causes not linked to a volcanic origin. To this day no one has ever produced a complete picture in which all ten plagues could be understood to derive from a volcanic event. Neither has anyone been able to link all the plagues to each other using a volcanic event as a common denominator, or “glue”. This just makes finding the “glue” the more challenging! Examining the possibility of a volcanic source for a red Nile, we first notice that the Torah does not directly mention a volcanic eruption. This would seem to be the last nail in the coffin of the volcanic theory, but I contend that we are on the right track. Hear me out. Egypt has not had active volcanoes in very recent geological times, that is, within the last 10,000 years. Thus, any volcanic event, which could have triggered the plagues, would have taken place outside of Egypt. Since the Hebrews claimed to have been in Egypt at the time of the plagues, we cannot expect the biblical texts to describe an eruption itself, but rather the aftermath of an eruption. The absence of the description of an eruption in the biblical texts is therefore coherent with a volcanic origin for the first plague: the volcano that erupted was not in the geographical vicinity of the Hebrews. It was elsewhere. The effects of the volcanic eruption affected the Hebrews, though, and that is what the biblical texts record. This fact brings us to the next question: if the eruption did not take place in Egypt, how did it affect Egypt? The short form of the answer is: volcanic ash. Let us briefly review the typical events accompanying the eruption of a volcano. In the minds of many people, the idea of an eruption is closely linked with televised images of molten lava in all its glory. Some people might also think of earthquakes and eventual tidal waves. While all of these are associated with volcanic eruptions, volcanoes are, quite simply, ejection points for gases, liquids, and solids which are trapped under the surface of the earth. Gases are released at the moment of any volcanic explosion. These gases are rich in corrosive compounds such as sulfur and will combine with aqueous vapor and particles to form a volcanic cloud, or plume, which simmers out of the volcano.

CHAPTER 2 EGYPT UNDER ATTACK: THE ONSET OF THE PLAGUES (PLAGUES 1 & 2)

27

Liquids are also involved in volcanic eruptions. The molten rock that flows from an erupting volcano is known as lava. Above the lava itself floats what might be considered “lava foam”, which upon solidification will form pumice stone. In addition to gases and liquids are the volcanic solids, which come in different sizes. Some are the so-called bombs (molten material covered by a layer of solidified rock); these form the dramatic golden rays coming out of volcanoes, best seen at night. Bombs usually fall within 3 kilometers of the mouth of the volcano. There are other solids, much smaller in size and known as ash, which can travel much farther. Because of its size, once in the air, the ash responds to air currents. Together with the gases, it will contribute to the volcanic cloud and will be displaced by winds. While most particles will travel as a group, many will also disperse, and form a film between the soil and the sun. Thus, ash can block sunlight and cause colder temperatures over large stretches of the globe. Being airborne and small, particles of volcanic ash can travel over long distances and cause damage far away from the volcano that first spewed them into the air. More specifically, they are capable of causing phenomena exactly compatible with the events of the first biblical plague. Volcanic ash is made of several materials including glass as well as salts. The former material is not water-soluble, but the latter material is. Salts can change the color of the waters into which they fall and dissolve. Many sulfate salts, for instance, including iron, strontium, and sodium, confer a red color. Thus, volcanic ash can explain a Nile the color of which was red. The same ash can also explain dead fish. This volcanic material is highly acidic and—in large amounts—would also have soured the water into which it fell. Fish at the site would have been affected, and—according to the magnitude of the amount of acids dumped—would have died. Similar cases of dead fish caused by the acidification of aquatic habitats were observed as the result of airborne industrial waste in Scandinavia in the 1980s and the volcanic acidification of bodies of water bodies has also been documented in Indonesia, for example. What about humans? Red and sour waters where dead fish were floating— and giving off a stench—would certainly have kept people away. Last but not least, sand along the banks would have filtered the waters and made them clean for consumption, just as described in the biblical texts. Volcanic ash from an eruption outside of Egypt explains the three components of the first biblical plague: the red color of the river, the death and odor of the fish, and the taste of the waters. Thus, at the end of the analysis of possible explanations for the red Nile, three theories (sand storm, cyanophytes, and the red mud combined with microorganisms) can be safely discarded. Two theories, the one involving Pfiesteria, and the one involving volcanic ash pass muster and are still viable as the study of the

28

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

following calamity commences: after the fish died, frogs entered the dwellings of the common people and were even so bold as to also invade the royal palace. When the creatures died the Egyptians gathered them into large piles. In the words of the biblical authors: […] the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt. … Moses said to Pharaoh, “Kindly tell me when I am to pray for you and for your officials and for your people, that the frogs may be removed from you and your houses and be left only in the Nile.” … the frogs died in the houses, the courtyards, and the fields. And they gathered them together in heaps, and the land stank. Ex. 8.6-14 […] He sent … frogs Ps. 78.45 Their land swarmed with frogs, even in the chambers of their kings. Ps. 105.30 The plague of frogs is commonly explained as a cyclical occurrence. Usually in the fall (until the building of the Aswan Dam in the 20th century), frogs made it a habit to invade the banks of the Nile. The biblical frogs would thus be a larger than usual autumn gathering of amphibians. The explanation sounds quite reasonable at first. It is, however, too good to be true, and in fact carries several insurmountable problems. A normally reoccurring autumn invasion of frogs—even if unusually large—does not fit the description of the biblical plague for three reasons: ● such frogs or toads are not much of a plague ● the explanation fails to account for the death of the frogs ● the explanation violates the principle of Ockham’s razor. A very large invasion of frogs taking place when such invasions are expected does not constitute something really stunning. People would have expected the frogs. The animals may have constituted a nuisance—but perhaps people even counted on feasting on the annual arrival of that much meat as an addition to their usual daily diet. This might especially be the case if the large numbers of frogs appeared following the dearth of fish that had presumably just taken place. Even if the size of the frog crowd turned out to be larger than anticipated, the biblical narrative states that there was something more … something odd. The frogs did not only invade the banks, they then spilled into the fields and even invaded human settlements. The creatures entered the houses of the Egyptians, infiltrating all the way into a place where they would not normally

CHAPTER 2 EGYPT UNDER ATTACK: THE ONSET OF THE PLAGUES (PLAGUES 1 & 2)

29

go: the royal palace. Conceivably the largest building inhabited by humans, the royal palace would not exactly have been a place frogs would go on their own. There is a second discrepancy that disqualifies the “autumn frogs” as those observed at the time of the plague. Under normal conditions, the frogs invaded the banks, but later they happily went back to the waters. The biblical texts state, however, that the frogs were found in homes, courtyards, palaces, and fields rather than going back where they came from. It is as if the frogs were barred from returning to the water. In fact, rather than going back to the waters, the creatures died en masse on land. An invasion of “autumn frogs” fails to explain why the frogs chose to die along the banks of the river, just a few steps—or jumps—from the water. Finally, there is one more issue with the “autumn frogs” hypothesis: its violation of the principle known as Ockham’s razor. This is a special razor. It is a logical argument formulated by the British philosopher William of Ockham (12851349), that is designed to eliminate superfluous explanations. The argument states that “things are not to be multiplied beyond necessity” (“entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”). For our purposes here, Ockham’s razor may be used to argue that a series of events has a higher chance of taking place if the events are related to each other. Thus, it is much more likely that one big calamity (the first plague) generated a follow up, rather than that two unrelated disasters took place (i.e., that the first plague and the second plague were completely independent events). Indeed, a single scenario that can explain both the first and the second plague constitutes a much more compelling argument than the claim that the frogs had nothing whatsoever to do with the earlier deadly waters. Summing up, Ockham’s razor—just as common sense—prefers a simpler explanation to one that is more complex. Now, if we were to accept that the “autumn frogs” constituted the second plague, we put ourselves in a position that requires us to deal with one explanation for the first plague (Pfiesteria or volcanic ash), and a second explanation unrelated to the first plague (a seasonal invasion of frogs albeit in large number) for the second. In the real world, however, chances are that if both plagues took place they were related and took place in a domino-effect fashion. Using the Ockham’s razor shows exactly what the previous two methods showed: a large invasion of frogs in the fall is weak at best. It does not explain the second plague, let alone provide a link to the first plague. As an aside, there is another frog argument that could explain this plague. In some places there have occasionally been rains of frogs. Winds or other events may pick up frogs from one location, then dump them elsewhere. The problems with this argument are multiple. In the first place, it is not linked to the first plague. Secondly, frogs would presumably have rained down together with other material (weeds, leaves, worms, fish, etc.), yet there is no mention of any other

30

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

material in the biblical texts. Third, it is not clear why the frogs, having survived the impact of falling from the sky, would not have gone back to the nearby river, preferring instead to die on the banks. The rain of frogs fails to explain the second biblical plague. In contrast with October frogs and rained frogs, both the Pfiesteria and the volcanic ash hypotheses propose a scenario in which the frogs cannot stay in the Nile: as they were for the fish, the waters are lethal for the frogs.Unlike the fish, however, these creatures had the chance to get out of the Nile. This would account not just for a larger than normal invasion, but for an invasion on a scale never seen before and impossible to imagine! Once outside of the river, however, these frogs were caught between a rock and a hard place, that is, between death in the Nile or drying up on land. Trusting their instincts, the animals sought clean waters away from the river. Frogs in numbers never seen or imagined went in search of the kinds of “regular” places we might expect them to, such as ponds. Unable to find any, they made their way into cities, civic spaces, homes of the common people, and larger buildings. They even penetrated into the palace of the king! The the animals had probably sensed fountains and water basins in these places. Eventually, the frogs died, desiccated across the land, looking for clean water that they never found. Here we have a plausible explanation for the second plague, and a link to the first plague. Given the circumstances—be they derived from Pfiesteria or volcanic ash—it stands to reason that all animals that could leave the poisoned Nile did so in order not to perish. Egypt’s “entrepreneurial” frogs did just so. Pfiesteria would have attacked the fish, and tinted the waters with blood. The microorganism would have also attacked the frogs, but these creatures— unlike the fish—would have been able to get out of the compromised environment. Alternatively, sulfur-based acid ash would have turned the waters red. The high acidity of the river would have killed the fish, and sent the frogs onto the banks. The color, the sourness, and the dead fish of the river would have kept people from drinking its waters. In neither case were the frogs going to return to the water. In both cases they were left to die on the banks of the Nile—as the saying goes—to croak. Just like the digging of the wells in the first plague, the fact that the frogs looked for water in the shade of the palace and its fountains, as well as the fact that the creatures died shortly thereafter, add touches of eyewitness account to the biblical narrative. One may ask why it took so long for the frogs to jump out of the waters: one week elapsed between the red Nile and the event of the frogs (Ex. 7.25). It stands to reason that the frogs would have gone in and out of the waters as long as they could do so. However, as the amounts of ash or the concentration of microorganisms increased, the frogs no longer had that choice. Over a week, the

CHAPTER 2 EGYPT UNDER ATTACK: THE ONSET OF THE PLAGUES (PLAGUES 1 & 2)

31

microorganisms might have multiplied to the point that they made life unbearable to the frogs. Alternatively, the concentration of ash could have increased as waters upstream became impregnated with the volcanic material. The frogs downstream would then have been hit twice as hard. It is not clear whether the Nile was still red, or whether we have a second wave of volcanic ash that, this time around, did not color the water. At the end of the analysis of the onset of the plagues, we are left with two viable theories: the biblical plagues were either triggered by an organism similar to Pfiesteria, or by volcanic ash. An analysis of the remaining eight plagues ought to solve the riddle of whether Pfiesteria or pollution by volcanic ash caused the phenomena described in the biblical narrative under examination.

CHAPTER 3 A SERIES OF UNENDING DISASTERS (PLAGUES 3-8) Once in motion, the plagues appeared never to stop. The biblical narrative tells us that after the river was filled with dead fish and heaps of frogs rotted along its banks, huge amounts of kinnîm started to crawl over the land, followed by ‘ârôb. …gnats came on humans and animals alike; all the dust of the earth turned into gnats throughout the whole land of Egypt. Ex. 8.17 … great swarms of flies came into the house of Pharaoh and into his officials’ houses; in all of Egypt the land was ruined because of the flies. Ex. 8.24 He sent among them swarms of flies, which devoured them. Ps. 78.45 He spoke, and there came swarms of flies, and gnats throughout their country. Ps. 105.31 The exact nature of either vermin has puzzled people. The terms in the Hebrew text do not correspond to the one used in modern biology. Most scholars understand the kinnîm as mosquitoes, gnats, or lice, while the‘ârôb may have been flies, gadflies, or just unspecified vermin. Yet many have sought to find the exact names for the two pests. For instance, Marr and Malloy, who proposed the Pfiesteria hypothesis, looked at kinnîm and ‘ârôb as constituting two very distinct and specific kinds of insects, and went to great length to identify possible candidates. The reason why the two bugs would have followed in the tracks of the previous disasters is pretty simple. Frogs and fish eat insects, but with the frogs and the fish dead, the insects were enabled to multiply unchecked. In their review of candidates, the two authors excluded the following impossibilities: tsetse flies, black flies, horse flies, and house flies would not fit 33

34

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

these plagues. Tsetse flies occur in tropical areas with high rainfall, which is not the case for Egypt. Neither black flies nor horse flies explode demographically. House flies form swarms but do not bite. One of the two plagues would have been the small and fastidious Culicoides. They bite humans, their bites cause a severe itch, and they have limited flight distances, up to 50 meters (150 feet). Stable flies, which are known at times to explode in number, also deliver painful bites, and would have been the plague of ‘ârôb. In Marr and Malloy’s explanation, both Culicoides and the stable flies would have arisen from the earlier plague. So far, it seems we have an explanation that holds. A separate and equally interesting species of bugs has been identified by other investigators. In the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, Norton and Lyons briefly proposed that the third and fourth plagues were the product of one single insect, the blister beetle (“Blister Beetles and the Ten Plagues,” The Lancet 359 (2002):1950). The beauty of this observation is that the beetle, a Paederus alfierii, contains toxic chemicals. Once squashed, as unfortunate bugs are, chemical residues are left behind. If killed on skin or hide, the chemical residues can be absorbed after a few days later and begin to react with the body causing severe burns. Thus, Norton and Lyons linked the third and fourth plagues to the sixth one, characterized by boils on the skin of humans and animals. Let us now consider whether a volcanic event can also explain the third and fourth plagues. Actually, it does: after the second plague, Egypt was a country with heaps of dead animals. Dead fish floated in the water, while dead frogs lined the the river banks. As also observed by Marr and Malloy, both fish and frogs feed on insects, so the deaths of these animals enabled the insects to grow unchecked, at least by those predators. Additionally, the “prey” were now feasting on the putrefying meat of their predators. Flies and other insects would lay eggs in this enormous amount of meat and larvae would then hatch. Soon the land would have been crawling with vermin, exactly as described in the biblical texts: kinnîm everywhere. Commonly translated as lice, kinnîm are best understood in this context as crawling invertebrates, or “bloodsucking maggots”. This crawling vermin soon developed into adult insects, just as biologists would predict, and just as described in the biblical texts. In fact, the text states that swarms of ‘ârôb formed describing the fourth plague as a multitude of flying insects. Thus, rather than chasing after one specific insect per plague (or one for two plagues as Norton and Lyons would have it), we prefer a simpler explanation. There were (and still are) a great variety of different insects in Egypt. These insects vary from area to area. In some areas there are more flies, in others there are more mosquitoes, in others there are more moths. Insects of all

CHAPTER 3 A SERIES OF UNENDING DISASTERS (PLAGUES 3-8)

35

kinds buried their eggs in the dead fish and dead frogs and grubs of all species hatched and developed into a multitude of adults. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that only Culicoides, or stable flies, or Paederus alfierii developed. Thus, even Marr and Malloy’s theory should be amended accordingly: Pfiesteria killed the fish and pushed the frogs unto the banks enabling insects to lay eggs which developed into larvae, and—in due time—adults. There is yet another point that needs to be examined before closing our consideration of these two plagues. The text states that the third plague struck Egypt, but the fourth did not strike Goshen, that is, the area where the Hebrews lived. How can we account for this? The number of insects (grubs first, adults later) would have been more or less proportional to the number of eggs in the dead fish and frogs. The number of flying insects would have also been proportional to the number of eggs deposited in the dead animals by the species of flying insects. We cannot be sure exactly which insects placed their eggs in the fish and frogs. Ants and other nonflying insects could have been more numerous in Goshen, generating large numbers of larvae but few flying insects. Similarly, mosquitoes and other flying insects could have been more numerous in other parts of Egypt, thus generating large numbers of grubs, and large numbers of flying adult insects. We just do not know enough to be specific on this point: when the fish and the frogs died, it was a free-for-all, and all insects laid their eggs. There is no reason to suppose that Egypt had a uniform distribution of insect species across the land. Thus, the grubs and the adult insects would reflect the distribution of insects already present in each area of Egypt. There is one more thing to add: both Marr and Malloy’s original Pfiesteria hypothesis (as amended per above), or the volcanic ash hypothesis, can explain both the third and fourth plagues. Thus, at this point in time we cannot distinguish which of the two causes set in motion the series of the biblical plagues. A clear-cut distinction can be made upon consideration of the next plague. Exodus speaks of the death of animals. This would be pretty straightforward, if it were not for the fact that the only mentions of animals in the other accounts are in conjunction with storms that devastated the countryside. Exodus does mention a storm, but only one, and it was characterized by hail and by the destruction of barley and flax. …the hand of the LORD will strike with a deadly pestilence your livestock in the field: the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks. But the LORD will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing shall die of all that belongs to the Israelites. Ex. 9.3-4

36

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE there was hail with fire flashing continually in the midst of it, such heavy hail as had never fallen in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. The hail struck down everything that was in the open field throughout all the land of Egypt, both human and animal; the hail also struck down all the plants of the field, and shattered every tree in the field. Only in the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were, there was no hail. … (Now the flax and the barley were ruined, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was in bud. But the wheat and the spelt were not ruined, for they are late in coming up). Ex. 9.24-26; Ex. 9.31-32

Psalms 78 and 105, however, appear to tell a different story and point toward two storms, one of hail and one of rain. They both shattered Egypt’s skies, culled its animals, and destroyed its trees. He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycamores with frost. He gave over their cattle to the hail, and their flocks to thunderbolts. Ps. 78.47-48 He gave them hail for rain, and lightning that flashed through their land. He struck their vines and fig trees, and shattered the trees of their country Ps. 105.32-33 Exodus, however, states that the fifth plague was quite distinct from the seventh, to the point that there was a whole separate plague of boils in between. The scattered fragments in Deuteronomy are of little help. The lines that come closest speak of vines damaged by worms, and olives failing to ripen (Dt. 28.3940). The multiple narratives present us with a mess. No wonder other reconstructions do not take the Psalms and the Deuteronomy narratives into account! In fact, Marr and Malloy’s hypothetical reconstruction just keeps churning out more pathogens. Leaving aside any correlation to the accounts in the other biblical texts, they looked only at the deaths of the animals, seeking to determine which disease might have caused it. Anthrax could not be a candidate because it would also have killed humans, which was not the case. Foot and mouth disease was also discarded: the symptoms of the disease on the animals (e.g., lameness) are absent in the biblical narrative. Sura, spread by tsetse flies, is also out of the realm of possibility: these flies do not live in Egypt. African horse sickness affects horses, mules, and asses, but not cows and camels, which did die according to the biblical text. Blue-tongue affects cattle, sheep, and goats. Thus, Marr and Malloy concluded that the fifth plague was a concomitant occurrence of African horse sickness and blue-tongue. In this way,

CHAPTER 3 A SERIES OF UNENDING DISASTERS (PLAGUES 3-8)

37

all the animals mentioned (and the fact that humans had been spared) could be accounted for. This explanation, however, holds no water. First of all, it does not take into consideration the parallel texts in Psalms and Deuteronomy, which at this point offer very different plague scenarios. To make matters worse, neither African horse sickness nor blue-tongue can be linked to Pfiesteria. The two diseases are unrelated to each other (orbiviruses cause the African horse sickness, and reoviruses cause blue-tongue) and are unrelated to Pfiesteria. This is a major violation of Ockham’s razor. We have here three separate causes, two of which—orbiviruses and reoviruses—must appear at the same time even if they are unrelated to each other! The dominoes stop falling here, and here stops our consideration of the Pfiesteria-based theory. Norton and Lyons’ variant cannot rescue the Pfiesteria-based hypothesis. It is true enough that they would have provided a link between the insects (the third and fourth plagues) and the boils (the sixth plague), but they provide no explanation of the fifth plague. For that matter, there is no link to the seventh plague either. The biology-based theories fail, and the question is whether the physicochemical theory, the volcanic ash hypothesis, has legs at this point. As surprising as it may sound, the apparent mess generated by comparing accounts across Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms 78, and Psalms 105 acquires meaning through the hypothesis that the plagues derived from volcanic ash. Both psalms speak of hail and rains, characterizing the latter as anomalous and also hot or burning. Since it does not rain when it hails, there must have been one storm of hail, and one of anomalous burning rain. It is not clear which of the two destroyed trees (vines and fig trees) and killed animals. At least one of the storms—and perhaps both—did. Storms make sense within a volcanic outlook: airborne volcanic ash can disperse in the air, and can be known to affect weather patterns for long periods of time. As a result of the presence of large quantities of volcanic dust in the air, the can temperature drop and the weather can generally worsen. For instance, vast parts of North America experienced poor weather as a result of the eruption of the volcano Mount Saint Helens located in Washington state in May 1980. Thunderstorms, moreover, have been known to kill animals. A very severe storm was recently reported by the Ritzau agency, and was published in the Scandinavian papers in mid-August 2004 (e.g., BT, Ekstrabladet, Dagbladet). Near Herning in Jutland, 31 cows that had sought cover under a tree, were directly struck by lightning and killed. Two thousand mink on a mink farm at Grindsted, Jutland, were also killed. Not even the Guinness World Records office had ever recorded such a massive killing. Similarly, the thunderstorm

38

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

over Egypt would have had equally hard to forget killings, which, due to their rarity, were deemed to constitute a plague or the most relevant part thereof. The question now is this: Does a theory of one storm for the fifth plague and one storm for the seventh plague make sense and allow for all the elements of the four biblical narratives to coexist? (We will discuss the sixth plague immediately following.) The short answer to the question is: yes. The volcanic dust appears to have triggered a storm just before the regular season of rains in Egypt (October to March). There are signs that indicate that we are dealing with summer weather since the animals were outside and there were lightning bolts. The confusing mention of vines and fig trees, which are especially important around August and September when both trees bear fruits may again reflect a summer event (the fifth plague). Particularly interesting is the fragment in Deuteronomy that states that the olives fell to the ground before they were ripe. This detail would also point toward a time before the olive harvest, that is sometime around October, or even earlier, confirming the scenario suggested by the mention of fig trees and vines. The other—later—storm seems to have happened during the winter: hail came down and destroyed the flax when it was blooming, the barley was almost ready to be harvested, and wheat and spelt had not yet grown. All of these are events that in Egypt take place around February. Again the texts indicate a differentiation: Goshen was not hit the same way that Egypt was. We now need to account for the difference between Egypt and the land of Goshen (present day Wadi Tumilat, just east of the Nile Delta) where many immigrants settled in Egypt. This stretch of land lives off a branch of the Nile that ends up in marshes. The area apparently also receives less rain than the rest of the Nile Delta. Thus, it is quite possible that the storms that hit the rest of the Nile Delta could have spared the Wadi Tumilat. In fact, the fact that “Egypt” (though it is unclear how much thereof) was hit, while the Wadi Tumilat was not, would indicate that the event was rather local. If indeed the fifth plague was a summer storm that was due to fresh volcanic ash and killed animals caught by surprise outside, this storm was very peculiar. The high amount of ash in the air would have made the rain associated with the storm very acidic. In fact, right after the fifth plague, Exodus tells us that people and animals developed boils—or better—acid burns on their skins and hides: “…boils on humans and animals” (Ex. 9.11). Furthermore, this plague is the only one in the list of disasters that gets a medical designation. The sixth plague, of boils, is dubbed, shehin, that is, a medical condition (S.S. Kottek, “Epidemics in Ancient Jewish Lore,” Isr J Med Sci 32:(1996):587-588). This is a case of skin burns, a condition which is abundantly discussed in ancient medicine, including in Egyptian medical papyri.

CHAPTER 3 A SERIES OF UNENDING DISASTERS (PLAGUES 3-8)

39

It is no wonder that neither Psalms 78 or 105 (nor Deuteronomy) report this plague separately. The two storms and all their damages were written in an amalgamated form, detailing the damage to the countryside, and thus the food supply, rather than—as in Exodus—the wider psychological impact on people. For those who are not convinced that the sixth plague was due to acid rain, the alternatives can be considered to find out whether they offer a better explanation. Skin conditions can be explained in many ways: biological, biochemical, and chemical. Biological explanations are linked to agents such as bacteria and viruses, causing pimples, rashes, and scars as evidenced by different diseases like chicken pox. Biochemical explanations are linked to the improper function of the biochemical pathways of the body. For instance, eating food too rich in lipids will cause the formation of pimples filled with fat. Chemical explanations are linked to exposure to irritants, which cause a response on the skin. For this reason, workers manipulating acids, bases, benzene, and other caustic or otherwise harmful agents use protective clothing. One could attempt to pin down the boils on a bacterium such as Mycobacterium lebbrae which causes leprosy. But this microorganism does not explain the red Nile, the dead fish, the frogs fleeing to the banks and unwilling to go back to the water, the crawling vermin, the flies, and the storms. Leprosy violates Ockham’s razor. Leprosy is also difficult to pass on—one needs direct contact with the wounded area—and would not have appeared at the same time over a multitude of victims. Yet—unlike the volcanic ash hypothesis—none of these explanations satisfies the criteria of the biblical plague which requires a massive distribution of boils across humans and animals, all within a short time. Thus, the fifth, sixth, and seventh plagues form a “unit” which can be explained in light of volcanic ash, but not in light of a Pfiesteria-based origin. Furthermore, this explanation takes into account all four biblical narratives, and does not introduce any new cause, thus respecting Ockham’s razor. The plagues did not stop here, though. After the winter, locusts invaded the area and ate whatever was in the fields. The magnitude of the disaster was amplified by the fact that worms also appear to have hit the crops. … the LORD brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night; when morning came, the east wind had brought the locusts. The locusts came upon all the land of Egypt and settled on the whole country of Egypt, such a dense swarm of locusts as had never been before, nor ever shall be again. They covered the surface of the whole land, so that the land was black; and they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left; nothing green was left, no tree, no plant in the field, in all the land of Egypt. Ex. 10.13-15

40

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE He gave their crops to the caterpillar, and the fruit of their labor to the locust. Ps. 78.46 He spoke, and the locusts came, and young locusts without number; they devoured all the vegetation in their land, and ate up the fruit of their ground. Ps. 105.34-35

Locusts are a nuisance which afflicts Middle Eastern countries to this day. These insects are known to form large groups, cross the Red Sea, and invade swaths of land in search of food. Just east of Egypt is Saudi Arabia, a well-known breeding ground for locusts. In fact, there is even a locust season, and it runs roughly from November to May. The east wind would have helped the swarms to cross the Red Sea and reach the land of the Nile. The question is whether we can in fact link this plague to the volcanic ash. Environmental factors such as ground moisture and general humidity appear to trigger the change from peaceful to aggressive behavior in locusts. We know from the earlier storms, and we know from the volcanic particles in the air that Egypt was more moist than usual, thus offering very favorable conditions—perhaps the best in centuries—for the arrival of locusts. As far as concerns the worms which are mentioned alongside the locusts, it stands to reason that the higher moisture in the soil also, fostered a greater number of worms and other parasites. These invertebrate also would have attacked the crops. So far, we have been able to derive explanations for all the plagues we have examined (1 through 8) from one single event—a volcanic eruption—that triggered a chain reaction of disasters. The volcanic explanation is the only one left standing. We still need to explain three further disasters: the darkness that enveloped Egypt, the anger and suffocation of the Egyptians (not stated as such in the Exodus account), and the final plague, namely, the death of the firstborn.

CHAPTER 3 A SERIES OF UNENDING DISASTERS (PLAGUES 3-8) Table 1. Synopsis of the biblicalplagues after examination of first eight. Exodus Psalms 78 Psalms 105 Deuteronomy (Dt. (7.14-13.16) (Ps. 78.43-51) (Ps. 105.27-36) 28.23-42 Red waters, dead Red, poisonous Red waters, dead fish Waters fish (Ex. 7.14-25) (Ps. 78.43-44) (Ps. 105.29) Frogs (Ex. 7.26-8.11)

Frogs (Ps. 78.45)

Frogs (Ps. 105.30)

Crawling invertebrates (Ex. 8.12-15)

Crawling invertebrates (Ps. 78.45)

Crawling invertebrates (Ps. 105.31)

Insects (Ex. 8.16-28) Dead animals

(Ex. 9.1-7)

Insects (Ps. 105.31) Thunderstorms kill animals, and destroy vines and fig trees (Ps. 78.47-48)

Lightning destroys vines and fig trees

Worms damage vines, olives fail to ripen

(Ps. 105.32-33)

(Dt. 28.39-40) Boils (Dt. 28.27, 35)

Skin problems (Ex. 9.8-12) Hail (Ex. 9.13-35)

Hail (Ps. 78.48)

Hail (Ps. 105.32-33)

Locusts

Locusts and invertebrates (Ps. 78.46)

Locusts, worms

Locusts

(Ps. 105.34-35)

(Dt. 28.38, 42)

Darkness

Rage and suffocation

Darkness

(Ex. 10.21-29)

(Ps. 78.49)

(Ps. 105.27-28)

Sky of bronze and rain of dust (Dt. 28.23-24) Inability to see (Dt. 28.28-29)

Firstborn die (Ex. 11.1-13.16)

Firstborn die (Ps. 78.50-51)

Firstborn die (Ps. 105.36)

(Ex. 10.1-20)

41

42

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE Mediterranean Sea

Buto

Canaan Nile Delta

Herakleopolis Pi-Ramesse Rowaty/Avaris

Memphis LOWER EGYPT

Wadi Tumilat

Saqqara Ict-towy Akhetaton Red Sea

Sahara Abydos

Thinis Thebes

0

200 km

Hierakonpolis

UPPER EGYPT

FIGURE 1 Map of Egypt, showing the main towns in ancient times, and the Wadi Tumilat depression

CHAPTER 4 NO LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL (PLAGUE 9) As Egypt, its people, flocks, and fields were recovering from the eighth plague, everything seemed to go back to normal. The gods had gotten over their anger and life was going back to what it used to be and ought to be. Then suddenly, Ra, the god of the sun, was gone. Darkness enveloped the land. People could not see each other for three days and walked as if they had been blindfolded. … a darkness that can be felt. … and there was dense darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days they could not move from where they were; but all the Israelites had light where they lived. Ex. 10.21-23 Ancient Egyptian texts attest to familiarity with periods of prolonged darkness. Such periods did not happen often, and when they did, they were unwelcome. After all, the sun god Ra was one of the most powerful gods and regulated the day. When the sun was in trouble, Egypt was in trouble. The Prophecies of Neferti, for instance, written around 2000-1950 BC, stated that people could no longer live when the sun was covered and looked like the moon (Prophecies of Neferti, 24-25 and 53-54). However, there is more than a poetic metaphor of a cloudy sky to the biblical ninth plague. All plagues preceding the darkness were physical events and not metaphors. Thus, a poetic license for the ninth plague would be out of line with respect to the earlier ones. Additionally, Exodus states that the darkness was palpable, that is, it could be physically touched. We need a physical explanation for the darkness. The standard explanation for the darkness is that strong winds from the desert could have blown huge quantities of sand which could have blocked the light of the sun. It is an explanation mentioned by scientists such as Marr and Malloy, and it is an explanation used both by minimalist/ rationalist scholars, and those in line with Christianity such as James Hoffmeier (Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the

43

44

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Exodus Tradition, 1999). These storms would account for the darkness and provide for the palpability of the darkness. However, no winds are mentioned in the biblical account. And it is quite strange that winds would be missing from the text, if they had been the cause of the darkness. After all, winds are mentioned in several other instances in the Torah, including the arrival and the departure of the locusts of the eighth plague (Ex.10.13; Ex.10.18). The wind that pushed the waters in the proper direction, helping the Hebrews to cross the Sea of Reeds is also mentioned (Ex.14.21). Additionally, winds do not explain the earlier eight plagues. They do not explain the frogs and the boils. They do not explain any of the previous plagues. Thus, sandstorms causing the ninth plague introduce a second cause to the series of disasters, weakening the whole explanation. This brings us back to the theory that has brought us this far: volcanic ash. At first glance, a darkness constituted by a cloud of volcanic ash, would have made sense at the onset of the disasters rather than at this point in time. In fact, Psalms 105 mentions darkness, and places it at the very beginning. Similarly, Deuteronomy places a sky of bronze at the onset of the plagues. Furthermore, if the volcanic hypothesis is correct, the plague of suffocation in Psalms 78 that was left unaccounted for could also describe a volcanic plume, and thus the ninth plague. If, indeed, the ninth plague were the plume of a volcanic eruption, the inhabitants of the land abused by the ash would be properly described as angry and suffocated (Ps. 78.49). Going through the smoke of a large fire is rather unpleasant. The plume of a volcano is worse, for it contains ash and gases, which are highly toxic and fill the mouth and nose. Vomiting and loss of consciousness commonly occur in this case. Some particles are also abrasive and would cause wear and tear, most notably on the cornea of the eyes. Moreover, the Deuteronomy passages speak of a sky of bronze from which dust rains down and the inability to see. In light of all the evidence of a volcanic eruption, we can associate both passages with a volcanic cloud. A problem remains, however: logically, we ought to place all these events at the beginning of the series of plagues, yet the Exodus account insists that it took place after the first eight of the plagues in the series. More information may be derived from several of the Psalms. Without providing details about the plagues, they do hint at volcanic activity at the time the Hebrews left Egypt, that is, right after the plagues. Progressing in numerical fashion, we will begin with Psalms 18, which states that Yhwh listened to the pleas of his people in Egypt, and shook the earth. The foundations of the world trembled, smoke and fire came forth from the soil, Yhwh rode on these creatures and—hidden among the clouds—he pelted the world with rocks, fire, and thunderbolts (Ps. 18.7-15). This text

CHAPTER 4 NO LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL (PLAGUE 9)

45

clearly describes a volcanic eruption and the accompanying earthquakes. The text also associates these seismic events with the time of the exodus. Psalms 46 describes a similar event at a similar time. Nations shook and perished as mountains shook, disintegrated, fell into the sea, and generated foam. The Hebrews recognized in these signs the voice of Yhwh (Ps. 46.2-8). A similar picture is found in Psalms 68, which speaks of the Hebrews leaving Egypt led by Yhwh after the skies had opened and the earth had shaken (Ps. 68.8-9). Once again we have an explicit connection between volcanic activity (described as the opening of the skies linked to an earthquake) and the exodus (described as the Hebrews leaving Egypt en masse). A fourth indication is found in Psalms 77, which deals with Yhwh’s accomplishments during the exodus. Yhwh covered the sky with clouds, pelted the enemies from above, thundered through the air, shook the earth, and opened a way through the sea for his people (Ps. 77.12-21). Once again we have a text with a list of volcanic phenomena associated with the exodus. In Psalms 97 the clouds hide Yhwh’s majesty from mortal eyes. Yhwh’s presence is manifested through fire, thunderbolts, and earthquakes. Mountains melted like wax while the sky proclaimed Yhwh’s justice and might (Ps. 97.15). Once again a volcanic activity is linked to Yhwh’s answer being a retribution. Although the exodus is not explicitly mentioned, circumstantial evidence in this case would match Yhwh’s manifestation to the exodus narrative. A sixth indication comes from Psalms 104: Yhwh looked at the earth and it shook, Yhwh touched the mountains and they smoked (Ps. 104.32). A volcanic activity is linked to Yhwh. The exodus is not explicitly mentioned, however— once again—circumstantial evidence would match Yhwh’s manifestation to the exodus narrative. Finally, Psalms 144 states that Yhwh opened the skies, came down to earth, and touched a mountain. The mountain started to smoke and spewed thunderbolts and arrows. As a result Yhwh saved the Hebrews from the sea and hands of impious men (Ps. 144.5-8). Yet again we have a psalm, which explicitly mentions volcanic activity in conjunction with the exodus from Egypt. These passages reinforce the volcanic nature of the plagues, yet they fail to explain the ninth plague, or better, they fail to explain the placement of the plague of darkness within the series of plagues. In contrast, extrabiblical documents within the Judeo-Christian tradition insist that the event was volcanic and that a cloud was associated. Eusebius Pamphilis (Evangelicae praeparationis, 1.37, 9.27) and Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, 1.23.; 154.2) are very clear: just before the tenth plague, that is, during the days of the ninth plague, earthquakes shook the Nile delta. Furthermore, a rain of objects also hit the area which is coherent with the volcanic activity we have hypothesized as a ninth plague. But then what about the earlier ones? The same headache comes from another biblical passage. After the plagues, the Hebrews were able to leave Egypt, and followed what appeared as a

46

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

pillar of smoke during the day, and a pillar of fire at night (Ex. 13.21-22, Ps. 78.14, Ps. 105.39, Ne. 9.12). The only natural phenomenon that can be described as such is—once again—a volcanic event. The plume consists of gases and volcanic ash. Similarly to the smoke from a fire, the volcanic material would appear like column of smoke during the day. Similarly to a fire, the volcanic material would also contain glowing ash, which are masked by the smoke during the day, but reveal their glow at night, like a lit cigarette. Thus, the whole volcanic plume will appear as a column of red fire. Such columns can be very visible. For instance, during the recent eruption at Mount Ruapehu in New Zealand (17 June 1996) the volcanic plume was photographed by the satellite NOOA-11. Three days after the eruption, the plume appeared to be 150 kilometers long (Science 281 (1998):910-911). This combination of smoking and glowing is also the way that an eruption of Mount Etna on Sicily was described in ancient times. In his Pythic Odes, the Greek poet Pyndarus speaks of a river of boiling smoke that becomes a red flame at night (Pythic Odes, 1.22-24). The parallel is unmistakable. The Greek poet Pyndarus offers one of the best known descriptions for a volcanic eruption in ancient European and Mediterranean times. In fact, most eruptions have been barely described, if at all. Such is the case of the event at Methana in the Saronic Gulf of Greece in the 3rd century AD. Even for the huge volcanic events of the Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD, we only have a detailed account by pure chance. The historian Svetonius—more interested in gossip about the emperors—dismisses the eruption of Vesuvius in a handful of lines (De vita caesarum, Divus Titus, 8). Other historians fail to mention the eruption. The reason we do have the details of the burial of Pompei, Herculaneum, and Stabia, is because the historian Tacitus had asked Pliny the Younger for information regarding the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder. Thus, two letters (Pliny the Younger, Letters 6.16 and 6.20) recall the events witnessed from afar, describing how Vesuvius started to erupt, littering the whole Gulf of Naples, killing many, and covering cities and villages under ash and lava. Pliny the Elder, leaving his nephew at the villa went by boat to observe the matter as closely as possible, and died in the process. Summing up, the biblical texts seem to contradict themselves. On the one hand some passages indicate a volcanic plume at the onset of the plagues (which makes sense, as the first eight plagues can be understood to derive from volcanic ash). On the other hand, Exodus places the darkness toward the end of the series of disasters and labels it as the ninth plague. It further corroborates this placement by stating that a volcanic plume could be seen as the Hebrews left Egypt. What is going on here? Do we perhaps have two separate volcanic clouds? One perhaps less dark, yet richer in ashes, dumping reddish acid compounds across Egypt? Another one perhaps richer in smoke and engulfing Egypt?

CHAPTER 4 NO LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL (PLAGUE 9)

47

The former event would reflect a cloud higher in the air, and fresher, that is, more recently formed. The latter event would reflect a cloud much lower, actually touching the ground; it would also reflect a cloud that had been formed for some time, and had already dumped a large amount of ash. A double cloud is quite possible. It implies a double eruption, or—better said—one eruption from the same volcano, but in two phases. Thus, the volcano was not finished erupting, but briefly paused before its outburst came to completion. This event may sound odd at first, but it does happen. Ask any volcanologist. In turn, we need to amend the volcanic origin for the plagues to reflect the new data that has just emerged. This eruption was not only very large, but also happened in two phases. Psalms 105 provides a record of the first phase of the eruption. Deuteronomy with its sky of bronze and rain of dust describes the same event. And then we have reported in Exodus the darkness of the ninth plague and the column followed by the Hebrews as they were leaving Egypt, that is, the second phase of the same volcanic eruption. The rage and suffocation mentioned in Psalms 78, and the curse of losing one’s sight in Deuteronomy also appear to depict the same event. We now have a nearly complete synopsis of the plagues (Table 1) which awaits a volcanic explanation of the tenth and last plague. Let us put ourselves in the place of the inhabitants of the Nile Delta. These individuals had first witnessed a volcanic cloud, which had brought subsequent calamities such as death, hunger, and destruction. Some time later a new similar cloud was covering the cities and the villages. It stands to reason that the inhabitants of the Nile Delta expected a reoccurrence of the disasters that had taken place after the first cloud. And, indeed, the biblical narrative mentions a tenth plague.

48

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 1. Synopsis of the biblical plagues after examination of first nine. Exodus Psalms 78 Psalms 105 Deuteronomy (Ex. 7.14-13.16) (Ps. 78.43-51) (Ps. 105.27-36) (Dt. 28.23-42) Sky of bronze and Red waters, dead Red, poisonous Red waters, dead rain of dust fish waters fish (Dt. 28.23-24) (Ex. 7.14-25) (Ps. 78.43-44) (Ps. 105.29) Frogs (Ex. 7.26-8.11)

Frogs (Ps. 78.45)

Frogs (Ps. 105.30)

Crawling invertebrates (Ex. 8.12-15)

Crawling invertebrates (Ps. 78.45)

Crawling invertebrates (Ps. 105.31)

Insects (Ex. 8.16-28) Dead animals

(Ex. 9.1-7)

Insects (Ps. 105.31) Thunderstorms kill animals, and destroy vinesa and fig trees (Ps. 78.47-48)

Lightning destroys vines and fig trees

Worms damage vines, olives fail to ripen

(Ps. 105.32-33)

(Dt. 28.39-40) Boils (Dt. 28.27, 35)

Skin problems (Ex. 9.8-12) Hail (Ex. 9.13-35)

Hail (Ps. 78.48)

Hail (Ps. 105.32-33)

Locusts

Locusts and invertebrates (Ps. 78.46)

Locusts and worms (Ps. 105.34-35)

Locusts

Darkness

Inability to see

(10. 21-29)

Rage and suffocation (Ps. 78.49)

(Ps. 105.27-28)

(Dt. 28.28-29)

Firstborn die (Ex. 11.1-13.16)

Firstborn die (Ps. 78.50-51)

Firstborn die (Ex.105.36)

(Ex. 10.1-20) Darkness

(Dt. 28.38, 42)

CHAPTER 5 DEATH OVER THE LAND (PLAGUE 10) The tenth plague is probably the most problematic of all. The biblical account states that an angel passed through the land of Egypt and slaughtered the firstborn of humans and animals. Attributing a natural cause to such a plague is very challenging. Additionally, the cause needs to be linked to the previous nine plagues. … Every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the firstborn of the female slave who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the livestock. … But not a dog shall growl at any of the Israelites—not at people, not at animals—so that you may know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. Then all these officials of yours shall come down to me, and bow low to me, saying, “Leave us, you and all the people who follow you.” After that I will leave. Ex. 11.4-8 At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, … Pharaoh … summoned Moses and Aaron in the night, and said, “Rise up, go away from my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD, as you said. Take your flocks and your herds, as you said, and be gone. And bring a blessing on me too!” Ex. 11.29-32 He made a path for his anger; he did not spare them from death, but gave their lives over to the plague. He struck all the firstborn in Egypt, the first issue of their strength in the tents of Ham. Ps. 78.50-51 He struck down all the firstborn in their land, the first issue of all their strength. Ps. 105.36

49

50

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

The tenth plague affected such diverse biological organisms as humans, cattle, and other animals. However, diseases caused by bacteria and viruses are specific. It is seldom that one pathogenic agent can cause a disease in such diverse organisms as humans, cattle, sheep, and horses. Additionally, bacterial diseases such as anthrax kill humans and animals alike, but do not distinguish between firstborn and other offspring. Similarly, children’s diseases will not serve as an adequate explanation: the plague only hit the firstborn, and their ages are not specified. Natural poisons from snakes, spiders and other organisms would kill humans, cattle, sheep, and horses, yet kill other animals, too. Thus, poisons do not offer an explanation. In other words, we need an explanation that can account for the selective killing of the firstborn and can be linked to the previous plagues. The group of biologists led by Marr and Malloy investigated emerging diseases and in this case proposed an explanation based on Stachybotris atra. This black mold is known to produce poisonous substances called mycotoxins. These chemicals are very small in size and can be inhaled. Once in the organisms of humans or animals, the toxins may cause internal bleeding with lethal results. Marr and Malloy postulate that S. atra or similar molds had contaminated the food supply at the time of the earlier plagues. Once the plague of darkness (which Marr and Malloy attribute to sandstorms) was over, hungry people raided the granaries. The two researchers also postulate that the socially powerful and their animals would have been the first to enter the granaries and eat the contaminated products. Marr and Malloy also postulate that firstborn would have been killed in a higher proportion than any other group, thus giving the impression that there had been a slaughter of firstborn. This explanation is seriously flawed, though. There are no historical data on similar events when only the firstborn— both human and animal—were preferentially fed, and thus would have died in higher numbers than the rest of the population. Marr and Malloy are therefore making an assumption for which there is no basis. The explanation also falls short if we consider human behavior. For argument’s sake let us accept Marr and Malloy’s gratuitous premises that there was a sandstorm and that later on people rushed to the granaries. Even such a scenario would not result in the outcome they propose: people would have stolen food, or died in the attempt. Somehow people would have been able to obtain imports and traded on the black market. This is the outcome one ought to expect from the granary-mold scenario. As a result, those who had stolen the food would have died, and those who were rich—and their firstborn—and could afford imports on the black market would not. The granary-mold scenario does not hold: it does not fit human behavior, it does not fit any precedent, it does not fit the biblical account, and it introduces additional causes for the plague.

CHAPTER 5 DEATH OVER THE LAND (PLAGUE 10)

51

An alternative explanation for the tenth plague was explored by Immanuel Velikovsky. In the 1950s his theory correlated the biblical plagues to a near collision between the Earth and other planets. According to Velikovsky, the stability of the Solar system is a very recent event, and until 800 BC or so the trajectories of the planets were more flexible than today. Around 1450 BC, which is when Velikovsky placed the biblical plagues, the Earth experienced one of these hypothetical near collisions. As a result, the Earth suffered severe damages, exemplified—wrote Velikovsky in Worlds in Collision (1950) and Ages in Chaos (1952)—by the biblical plagues of Egypt. Focusing on the tenth plague, Velikovsky argued two points. First, the victims of the plague were not the “firstborn” (Hebrew: bkhor), but rather the “chosen ones” (Hebrew: bchor). The biblical texts would thus have carried a slightly misspelled word. Second, an earthquake resulting form the near collision of the planets selectively killed Egyptians. The selection was based on the assumption that Egyptians lived in housing more prone to crumbling during earthquakes. The Hebrews were all presumed to be living in huts and tents, which would have not resulted in the same kind of damage as crumbling houses made of bricks, wooden beams, and stone. However, what collapses on itself is Velikovsky’s proposal. Even agreeing that only Egyptians lived in houses that could have crumbled, the people trapped and/or killed would have been first and foremost individuals sleeping or having problems in moving out fast enough. Thus, paralytic, obese, older people, pregnant women, infants, and many others would have been “chosen” by the earthquake. As far as animals are concerned, if no animals were let out, all of them would have received the beams on their skulls! Moreover, one cannot overlook the fact that many people do not die in their homes during earthquakes, but in the street, hit by pieces of other people’s homes. The selection criterion in place is the law of gravity, and it is not clear why only Egyptians would have been hit. Did no Hebrew have to walk through at least one street in an Egyptian neighborhood? During earthquakes some people suffer cardio- and cerebrovascular events. Thus, there ought to have been some heart attacks, strokes, and heart failures. Only among Egyptians? As far as the near collision of the planets is concerned, which according to Velikovsky started the whole series of plagues, it violates the laws of physics. If the near miss took place as he presents it, Velikovsky would not have been born to present his theory to the world. The hypothetical near miss also fails to account for all the plagues and rests on several causes. For instance, Velikovsky had traced the cause of the first plague to rust falling off Mars and cluttering, as luck would have it, the Nile. The proposal is fraught with problems. One such problem is that the other plagues cannot be derived from a Nile filled with rust. Frogs would not have

52

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

fled the waters because iron minerals would have sunk to the bottom rather than dissolve in the water to produce a poison. To make a long story short, Velikovsky used a physically impossible event to explain the plagues at an impossible point in time (i.e., around 1450 BC). Velikovsky violated the laws of physics, Ockham’s razor, and all known historical and archaeological records for that period in time as well as the biblical text. So, apparently, we are back to square one. Though we are close to explaining all ten plagues, it appears that we cannot explain the last plague, like a ship sinking upon arriving in the harbor before delivering its cargo. So far the volcanic explanation had shed light on every single plague. Is there any way volcanic ash may be linked to the tenth plague? If so, how? The biblical texts restrict the tenth plague to the firstborn, a selection that cannot be explained simply by natural events. Diseases, accidents, or other phenomena are unable to distinguish a firstborn from the rest of the offspring. Something additional was at work. So far we have found that the best explanation for each plague was obtained by placing ourselves in the Nile Delta at the time the plague took place. The key for the tenth plague should probably be sought in a similar fashion, and—hopefully—be linkable to volcanic ash. Looking at the earlier plague, the darkness that covered Egypt, we noticed that the darkness signaled to the inhabitants of the Nile delta that a new series of disasters was on its way. In the minds of these people the gods were angry. This climate of divine curse is confirmed by an ample array of documents. The Egyptians thought that there had been a time during their history when the Hebrews’ presence in the country angered the gods. Apparently, the Hebrews had not observed the Egyptian customs, thus bringing the wrath of the Egyptian gods on the land. The presence of Hebrews in Egypt is mentioned by several ancient sources. Herodotus (484-425 BC), the father of Greek history, stated that the Hebrews had moved from Egypt to Palestine (Histories, 2.104). Strabo (58 BC-21 AD) briefly mentioned that in his days the Jews claimed that they had come from Egypt (Geography, 16.2.34). The Egyptian historian Manetho, whose work can be dated around 300 BC, preserved a story which he presented and was understood as an Egyptian rendering of the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt. He stated that lepers who had been sent to cut stones in quarries elected Osarseph, a former priest from Heliopolis, as their leader. He gave laws for the lepers, allowing them to break all taboos existing in Egyptian society. An Egyptian king threw the lepers out of the country; Osarseph and his followers left for Canaan (Flavius Josephus, Contra Apionem, 1.26, 2.2).

CHAPTER 5 DEATH OVER THE LAND (PLAGUE 10)

53

Manetho’s story is similar to the one told by the historian Diodorus Siculus (90-20 BC), who stated that the Hebrews used to be in Egypt, but were expelled because they were cursed and afflicted with leprosy and scurvy (1.28.1). The Egyptian Chairemon of Naucratis (ca. 25-75 AD) provided yet another version, which is understood to retell the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt. His Aigyptiaka recorded that a certain king Amenophis saw the goddess Isis in a nightmare. She accused him of being host to unclean people throughout Egypt and its temples. As a result of the dream, he expelled 250,000 such people from the country. These people formed a strong army with 380,000 more lepers living along the borders of Egypt. The army invaded the land and drove king Amenophis out of Egypt. Amenophis’ son—called Rameses or Messenes—won back his family’s throne, and drove the lepers out, pursuing them as far as the Syrian borders (Flavius Josephus, Contra Apionem, 1.32). Apion (ca. 30-90 AD) was an anti-Semite, who was locked in a controversy with Flavius Josephus. Apion claimed that the Jews had lived in Egypt and had been thrown out of the country because they were infected with all sorts of hereditary and infectious diseases (Flavius Josephus, Contra Apionem, 2.2). Similar thoughts were harbored by Lysimachus of Alexandria (1st century AD). He stated that the Hebrews were cursed with diseases and during the reign of king Bocchoris a plague broke out. An oracle told the king that the only way for the land to return to normality was to kill and expel the unclean from the country. The Hebrews were able to gather in the desert under the leadership of Moses. They crossed the wastelands and entered a new country which they sacked and settled (Flavius Josephus, Contra Apionem, 1.34). Finally, the Roman historian Tacitus (55-120 AD) stated that the Hebrews lived in Egypt and had been expelled because they were cursed and afflicted with leprosy and scurvy (Historiae, 5.3-5). The key point here is that pagan authors were under the impression that the Hebrews had lived in Egypt, and that there was a point in time while the Hebrews were there when severe problems occurred. Those problems were attributed in one way or another to the presence of the Hebrews. In ancient times people thought they could capture the benevolent attention of the powers that be through sacrifices. Additional sacrifices, that is, gifts to the gods, would be made in recognition that a wish had been granted. Those were the normal sacrifices. The biblical plagues were abnormal, and as such they required sacrifices adequate to the wrath of the gods. Archaeological findings on Crete, an island just off Egypt’s coast, provide a record for what ancient populations resorted to during disasters of great magnitude. At Anemospilia were found the remnants of an adolescent male ritually killed by exsanguination. The sacrifice can be dated to 1750-1720 BC, that is, to a period of time when very intense earthquakes shook the Aegean area. During this time, the great cities of Knossos and Phaistos were seriously damaged. The

54

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

archaeological data indicate that—at least within Minoan culture—human sacrifices were the response to very severe catastrophes. Within Egyptian culture, sacrifices of sacred animals are known to have been conducted when times “required it”. Plutarch recorded that in times of great distress, such as famine, and only on such grave occasions, priests would perform sacrifices of sacred animals (De Iside et Osiride, 45.5, 45.73). Sources also indicate that—similarly to other Mediterranean cultures— human sacrifices are also attested in ancient times in Egypt. They are also known to have been very rare. Apparently, the Egyptians held such sacrifices in abomination. Three such instances come from very disparate sources. Apollodorus indicated that during a time of severe plagues, the king of Egypt consulted the oracle of a god. The answer he received was that he was to make annual sacrifices of foreigners to the god. Soon people were being offered. The story goes on to say that the very priest who had given the response to the king, being himself a foreigner, was put to death. Subsequently, the prince and the king were also put to death (Apollodorus, Library, 2.5.11). Additionally, king Ahmose was said to have put an end to annual sacrifices of three men at the shrine of Iunnu (Porphiry, De abstinentia, 2.55). Furthermore, in the tomb of Rekhmire at Thebes (around 1400 BC) is mentioned a practice that appears to be related to human sacrifices. The socalled tekenu—alongside sacrifices in the Khepri lake—is described on the walls of the tomb. The tekenu is understood to be a human sacrifice of very ancient origin, possibly attested as far back as the earliest Egyptian dynasties around 3000 BC. The reference to the Khepri lake appear to link the sacrifice to an appeasement of the god Seth, always threatening the stability of Egypt. Thus, Rekhmire remembers a time when Egyptians sacrificed to the god Seth, or were compelled to do so by the Hyksos, who were very devoted to Seth. Finally, we have archaeological data at Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos dynasty at the end of the Second Intermediate period (1786-1567 BC). Archaeologists have uncovered that from 1680 BC onwards animals were being sacrificed. At that point in time large numbers of tombs or remains of young humans are also attested. Animal sacrifices continue until the E/1 stratum (1620-1590 BC), dwindling down later on. Remains of young human at Avaris are attested in high number until Stratum D/3 (1590-1560 BC), which corresponds when Ahmose wrested Avaris from the Hyksos. The later D/2 layer (1560-1530 BC) shows a more normal distribution of people from across a wide spectrum of ages, and few animal remains. We also know that the Hebrews performed sacrifices in Egypt, especially at the time of the plagues. Thus, unblemished one-year old goats and sheep were ritually killed and the blood was posted on the doors right after the ninth plague, and just prior to the tenth plague (Ex. 12.5). Moreover, the Hebrews appeared to be poised to go and perform sacrifices at the time they left the labor camps en

CHAPTER 5 DEATH OVER THE LAND (PLAGUE 10)

55

masse. The Egyptian ruler even asked for a prayer for himself (Ex. 12.32), and people gave valuables to the Hebrews (Ex. 12.35-36). In other words, is it possible that every ethnic group in Egypt was conducting its share of sacrifices (or wanted to show that it was?). Interestingly enough, the biblical texts forbid performing sacrifices of the newborn, who are instead bought back by Yhwh. The interdiction has a meaning only if the firstborn were at risk of being sacrificed. In fact, the biblical texts detail the risk: the Torah vetoes sacrifices to the monster molék (Lv. 2.5, Lv. 18.21, Dt. 12.29-31). The Hebrew word mélék means king, and molék is a name, which is thought to deride the king who had asked for the sacrifice of children (Dt. 12.31). The veto in the Torah only makes sense if the Hebrews had been asked or were going to perform those sacrifices. In doing so, the Hebrews would be imitating the pagans and thus indicating a lack of faith toward their God Yhwh. Apparently, just like the Egyptians, the Hebrews were supposed to perform human sacrifices. Moses himself, the leader of the Hebrews, had asked several times for permission to take his people in the desert to perform prayers and sacrifices to ask their God to stop the plagues (Ex. 8.21-23). The king had always been suspicious and refused to grant the request (Ex. 8.24). Oddly enough, only after the tenth plague, that is, when the Egytians were conducting serious sacrifices of their own, that the Hebrews were allowed to leave. This implies that Moses was going to a place in the desert to perform sacrifices on his own. As a matter of fact, an Egyptian tradition mentioned by Apion stated that Moses intended to follow the tradition of his forefathers, and offered prayers in the open outside of the city (Flavius Josephus, Contra Apionem, 2.2 ). Apion was an anti-Semite. Hence his statements corroborating the validity of the biblical account cannot be labeled as being concocted on purpose in later times to validate the Bible. According to the present reconstruction of the events, Moses would have told the king that he was going to make human sacrifices alongside other sacrifices. The site for the ritual was to be in the countryside because some of the sacrifices were abominable to the Egyptians, and because Hebrew tradition asked for the ritual to take place in the countryside. Yet one more confirmation that indicates that the tenth plague consisted in human sacrifices comes from the Torah which states that all the firstborn were pledged to Yhwh and that their lives had to be “bought back” from Yhwh (Ex. 11.14). Moses indicated that Yhwh did not want human blood, but a payment was still due for the firstborn of the Hebrews. This payment consisted in one of the 12 tribes of Israel, thereby substituting the human sacrifices performed by the Egyptians with servitude to Yhwh. A whole tribe of Hebrews—the Levites to whom the Hebrew leader Moses himself belonged—was also pledged to Yhwh from the tenth plague onwards (Ex. 30.11-16; 34.19-20; Nu. 3.11-13; 3.40-51; 8.14-19; 18.12-20; Dt. 15.19-20; 26.1-11).

56

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

The summary of the narratives of the plagues appearing in Table 1 indicates that all the events point to a very powerful two-phase volcanic eruption that started a chain reaction of disasters. Our reconstruction of the plagues has been problematic due to several factors: the belief that the plagues were fiction, confusion in the order of the plagues, a multiplicity of possible explanations for each plague, admiration for catastrophic theories, inability to identify Egyptian equivalents for the plagues, and the perception that a chain reaction of events was involved. As the biblical texts indicate, the first phase of the eruption ejected volcanic material in the air, which reached the Nile Delta where it dumped its acidic contents. The ash colored the river red and poisoned the water. The fish died, human beings refrained from drinking the water, and any animal able to leave the waters for the banks did so. The frogs, unable to go back to the water, died desiccated; insects buried eggs in the huge number of animals—which used to prey on the same insects—now dead in the river and along the banks. The eggs hatched and larvae crawled over the whole area. As the larvae matured, they became adult insects and tormented humans and animals alike. Large quantities of minute volcanic ash remained in the atmosphere and affected the weather. A severe storm damaged the countryside and killed many cattle. The rain that came down during the storm was highly acidic and caused rashes on the skin of the people and animals caught outside during the storm. The bad weather persisted for several months. Some time later hail damaged crops such as barley and flax. The climatic variations pushed hungry locusts to look for food. As they passed over the Nile Delta, they ate the few leftovers of the crops spared by the hail. Sometime later, a darkness which somehow resembled the earlier volcanic cloud enveloped the Nile Delta. The inhabitants thought that the gods were still angry and were going to start a new series of disasters. The pagan inhabitants of Avaris tried to appease the gods by offering them sacrifices. Thus, the tenth plague should be seen as a plague that the pagan inhabitants of the Nile Delta brought upon themselves because of their fear that the the earlier plagues would be repeated. They killed animals and their own firstborn. The Hebrews went to the desert to perform their own sacrifices. In reality, they placed one twelfth of their own people under a taboo by consecrating the Levites to Yhwh. The Hebrews also seized the occasion to flee.

CHAPTER 5 DEATH OVER THE LAND (PLAGUE 10)

Table 1. Synopsis of the biblical plagues after examining all ten plagues Exodus Psalms 78 Psalms 105 Deuteronomy (Ex. 7.14-13.16) (Ps. 78.43-51) (Ps. 105.27-36) (Dt. 28.23-42) Red waters and Red and poisonous Red waters and Sky of bronze and dead fish waters dead fish rain of dust (Ex. 7.14-25) (Ps. 78.43-44) (Ps. 105.29) (Dt. 28.23-24) Frogs Frogs Frogs (Ex. 7.26-8.11) (Ps. 78.45) (Ps. 105.30) Crawling Crawling Crawling invertebrates invertebrates invertebrates (Ex. 8.12-15) (Ps. 78.45) (Ps. 105.31) Insects Insects (Ex. 8.16-28) (Ps. 105.31) Dead animals Animals killed by Lightning destroys Vines damaged by thunderstorms, vines and fig trees worms, and olives vines and fig trees failing to ripen destroyed (Ex. 9.1-7) (Ps. 78.47-48) (Ps. 105.32-33) (Dt. 28.39-40) Skin problems Boils of many kinds (Ex. 9.8-12) (Dt.28.27, 35) Hail Hail Hail (Ex. 9.13-35) (Ps. 78.48) (Ps. 105.32-33) Locusts Locusts and other Locusts and worms Locusts invertebrate (Ex. 10.1-20) (Ps. 78.46) (Ps. 105.34-35) (Dt.28.38, 42) Darkness Rage and Darkness Inability to see suffocation (Ex. 10.21-29) (Ps. 78.49) (Ps. 105.27-28) (Dt. 28.28-29) Death of firstborn Death of firstborn Death of firstborn Death of firstborn (Ex. 11.1-13.16) (Ps. 78.50-51) (Ps. 105.36) (Ps. 135.8-9, Ps. 136.10-11)

57

58

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 2. Synopsis of the reconstruction of the biblical plagues A volcanic cloud arrived and dumped Sky of bronze and rain of dust (Dt. 28.23ash, which turned the Nile red, killed the 24) fish and made the waters non-drinkable, Red waters, dead fish (Ex. 7.14-25, Ps. 105.29, Ps. 78.43-44) later pushing the frogs onto the banks, Frogs (Ex. 7.26-8.11, Ps. 78.45, Ps. where they dried up and died. 105.30) Insect eggs in the meat of the dead frogs Crawling invertebrates (Ex. 8.12-15; Ps. and fish hatched, releasing larvae, 78.45, Ps. 105.31) which turned into swarms of adult Insects (Ex. 8.16-28, Ps. 105.31) insects. Ash still in the air triggered severe Dead animals (Ex. 9.1-7), killed by weather; a thunderstorm caught Egypt by thunderstorms, vines and fig trees surprise, culling the cattle. Trees were destroyed (Ps. 78.47-48). Lightning also severely damaged. destroys vines and fig trees (Ps. 105.3233). Worms damage vines, olives fail to ripen (Dt. 28.39-40) The acidic rain burns the skin of people Skin problems (Ex. 9.8-12, Dt. 28.27, Dt. and the hide of animals. 35) The bad weather persisted due to the Hail (Ex. 9.13-35, Ps. 78.48, Ps. 105.32high amount of ash still in the air, 33) triggering a storm of hail in the winter. Locusts were particularly numerous, due Locusts (Ex. 10.1-20; Dt. 28.38, Dt. to the higher humidity (which also 28.42) and other invertebrate (Ps. 78.46, fostered worms), and famished, due to Ps. 105.34-35) the lack of food. The volcano entered a second eruptive Darkness (Ex. 10.21-29, Ps. 105.27-28), phase, and a new volcanic plume rage and suffocation (Ps. 78.49), and enveloped the Nile Delta. inability to see (Dt. 28.28-29) The inhabitants thought that sacrifices Death of firstborn (Ex. 11.1-13.16, Ps. would appease the gods. Non-Hebrews 78.50-51, Ps. 105.36, Ps. 135.8-9, Ps. killed their firstborn, and the firstborn of 136.10-11) the flocks, while the Hebrews killed lambs, and claimed to be en route to a ritual site in order to perform more sacrifices.

CHAPTER 6 FINDING THE RIGHT VOLCANO Our reconstruction of the plagues shows that all ten disasters can be linked to volcanic activity. Confirmation of this reconstruction comes from parallels to a variety of known volcanic eruptions. Possibly the most compelling evidence can be derived from the little known, yet very powerful eruption of the Hudson volcano in Chile. The remoteness of the area explains why this huge disaster has so far eluded the attention of the wider public. The activity was studied and recorded by volcanologists using modern equipment (R. Scasso, H. Corbella, P. Tiberi, “Sedimentological Analysis of the Tephra from the 12-15 August 1991 Eruption of Hudson Volcano,” Bulletin of Volcanology 56 (1994): 121-132, and J.A. Naranjo and Ch.R. Stern, “Holocene Explosive Eruption of Hudson Volcano, Southern Andes,” Bulletin of Volcanology 59 (1998):291-306), enabling us to obtain and study a wealth of information which we will compare to the biblical plagues. Also known as Cerro de los Ventisqueros, the Hudson Peak stands 1905 meters (5700 feet) above sea level in the southern Chilean Andes. It was thought to be an ordinary mountain until it erupted in 1891. The volcano became active again in 1971 when it went through a minor explosion (Volcanic Explosive Index (VEI) = 3). Twenty years later the Hudson volcano was the site of very violent activities which were recorded by scientists and offer parallels to the biblical plagues. The 1991 eruption at Hudson was a very powerful two-phase explosion. It all started on August 8-9, 1991. Seismic activity was noticed only a few hours before the explosion, which had a VEI under 5. Ejects were spewed 7-10 kilometers (4-6 miles) high. The initial column later gave rise to a dense column of ash light brown-greyish in color, reaching a height of 12 kilometers (7 miles). Volcanic activity appeared to decrease, and was reduced to a white-greyish column up to 6 kilometers (3.5 miles). Then, on August 12-16 the second and much more violent phase (VEI around 5.5) took place. A river of magma and mud poured along the nearby Huemules Valley for 45 kilometers (28 miles). The flow was such that it more than doubled the width of the river width from 80 meters to 170 meters (240 feet to 500 feet), wiping out all life in the valley where 50 families used to raise cattle. 59

60

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Large debris littered roughly a 60 square kilometer area (33 square miles). The material dammed rivers, cut roads, destroyed houses, and forced the immediate evacuation of 600 residents as well as their 10,000 sheep and cattle. Smaller debris, such as pumice stone, were ejected over a vast area in southern Chile and Argentina. The debris reached as far as the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands, which lie over 1100 kilometers away from the volcano. Coarse lapilli up to 5 centimeters in diameter (2 inches) fell as far as 55 kilometers southeast of the eruption. Ash ranged in thickness from 0.1 to 10 centimeters, and was mixed with sulfur dioxide gases, forming a cloud over 18 kilometers tall (11 miles) and 5 kilometers thick (3 miles). This volcanic plume went around the globe. Born in southern Chile, the cloud moved eastward and first crossed the Andes into Argentina. Upon reaching the Atlantic seashore, the cloud was 6.5 kilometers thick and progressed toward the Falkland/Malvinas Islands. Near southern Georgia the volcanic plume had grown to a gigantic mass, 370 kilometers long (220 miles). The cloud was unable to keep its unity and split into two unequal halves. The smaller part dispersed south toward Antartica, but the larger part traveled further east and was observed on August 20 by airline pilots near Melbourne, Australia—15,000 kilometers (9,400 miles) from the volcano. The column had developed into a mass with a brownish-orange tinge. The Australian science agency CSIRO estimated the column to be roughly 500 kilometers long and 100 kilometers wide (300 x 60 miles). The plume continued eastwards and reached Chile the following day on August 21. Ash fell over a wide area. In Chile, where the volcano is located, deposits of tephra were calculated at 1 cubic kilometer. For instance, Puerto Chacabuco (50 kilometers away) received 5-7 millimeters of ash while at Puerto Aisén (~ 65 kilometers north-northeast) ash accumulations reached 5 millimeters in 16 hours. Argentina, the next country hit by the ash, received around 2.8 cubic kilometers (2.3 x 109 metric tons of ash). Since the elongated plume traveled compact at relatively low altitude (12-16 kilometers), the tephra fallout was concentrated in a narrow triangle-shaped sector of around 100,000 square kilometers (roughly 55,000 square miles). Cities were affected as far away as the Atlantic Ocean including Puerto Deseado (580 kilometers from the volcano) and San Julián (550 kilometers southeast). An additional 2 cubic kilometers of material fell in the Atlantic Ocean or was dispersed in the atmosphere. The 1991 Hudson eruption bears several parallels to the biblical plagues. It had dynamics similar to the volcano that generated the plagues: a powerful explosion that took place in two phases and generated ash that traveled far causing disasters over a wide area (Table 1). More specifically, we can find similarities to the first plague, as Hudson’s ash littered thousands of square kilometers of land.

CHAPTER 6 FINDING THE RIGHT VOLCANO

61

We can also see parallels to the fifth and sixth biblical plagues. Acid rain was reported in Gobernador Gregores, a site 360 kilometers (225 miles) away from the volcano. People developed burns on their hands and faces, while the paint on roofs suffered damage. Reminiscent of the fifth and seventh biblical plagues, the local agriculture suffered heavy losses. Ash contaminated rivers, streams, fields, and meadows. All pastures in Coihaique, 120 kilometers (70 miles) away from the volcano, were contaminated and many husbandry animals died. The losses were heaviest in the Argentinian province of Santa Cruz, just east of the volcano, where roughly 50% of the 50-60,000 sheep and cattle located within the fallout zone died within a month of the eruption. Having confirmed the volcanic nature of the plagues, we are now ready to go one step further. We are now ready to search for the actual volcano that was at the origin of the biblical plagues. That eruption—we know—carried a signature. It was huge, affected Egypt, took place in two phases, and we can—using a rough calculation—estimate that the time elapsed between the two phases was just shy of two years. The calculation goes as follows. The first plague took place when the waters of the Nile were still flooding the banks, that is, after mid-July. Plagues two through four developed within weeks. The fifth plague, the thunderstorm that killed the animals, took place at the end of that summer, around September, while the sixth plague took place right after. The seventh plague took place around February. The eighth plague occurred at the end of that year, at the start of the locust season. The ninth plague took place around March of the following year, while the tenth plague took place either in March or in April of that year. All in all, the plagues extended for 20 to 22 months, from July/August to March/April. This is the signature for the eruption we are looking for: huge, traceable to Egypt, two phases, and 20-22 months between the phases. Volcanologists clearly indicate that no eruption has taken place in Egypt within the last 10,000 years. The volcano must therefore lie outside of this country, which, as it happens, is encircled by volcanoes (Figure 1). To the south is the Jebel Marra in the Darfur (1600 kilometers from the Nile Delta). Further west is the Greater Tibesti Region at the border between Libya and Chad (1300 kilometers from the Nile Delta). To the east is the Harrat Hutaymah in central Saudi Arabia (1000 kilometers from the Nile Delta) and the lava fields of Harrat AshShamah at the border between Saudi Arabia and Jordan (500 kilometers from the Nile Delta). To the north is the volcanic arc in Cappadocia and the Taurus mountains in Turkey (600 kilometers from the Nile Delta) as well as several volcanoes of the Aegean Arch, extending from the Corinthian Isthmus to Nissiros (1000-600 kilometers from the Nile Delta). We also know that we are looking for a catastrophic explosion in the 20001000 BC period. Volcanic data enable us to take a short cut, excluding all of

62

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

these volcanoes but one, and hone in on one eruption: the one that took place during the Bronze Age on the island of Santorini in Greece. Did the Santorini eruption, a volcanic island also known by the name Thera, provide the ash that unleashed the plagues in Egypt and were recorded in the Bible? Volcanologists have studied Santorini for many years: the eruption ranks among the most powerful volcanic events of the last 5000 years. The island lies in the southern part of the Aegean Sea, and is roughly 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the Nile Delta. The island used to be much larger, but a very powerful eruption sometime in the Middle or Late Bronze Age (1900-1200 BC) left only a few pieces of the island. That volcanic event appears to have marked a watershed in ancient history: the growth of the local Minoan culture was stunted and was soon to be replaced by the Mycenaeans, the ancestors of modern Greeks. The date for the event is unclear, though. Historians prefer a date around 1550 BC, although dates as low as 1350 BC had previously been suggested. Volcanologists, however, prefer a date around 1670-1620 BC, and the date of 1627 BC is often mentioned, and will be discussed later in this book. Scientists have reconstructed the dynamics of the eruption at Santorini, piecing together archaeological and geological data on what is left of the island (A. Kalogeropoulou, ed., Acta of the 1st International Scientific Congress on the Volcano of Thera, 15-23 September 1969 (1971); C. Doumas, ed., Thera and the Aegean World I (1978); C. Doumas, ed., Thera and the Aegean World II (1980)). The eruption had a lengthy time of preparation. At first quakes shook the earth for several years, even decades. The intensity of these seismic activities indicated to the inhabitants of Santorini that something big was going to happen. From archaeological data we know that all inhabitants on the island fled in panic. The quakes stopped, and people appear to have returned in small numbers to check on their properties. Some repair works have been uncovered. A new series of quakes, however, signaled again that something big was coming, and everyone fled anew. In fact, the volcano spewed pinkish ash into the air in what was to be labeled by scientists the first eruptive phase. Such ash can still be observed today as the bottom layer of that eruption on what is left of the original Santorini. The perfect match between the color of the layer at Santorini and the color of the Nile in the biblical texts describing the first plague is already strong evidence. More evidence matching the volcano at the origin of the biblical plagues to Santorini comes from the fact that the Aegean volcano stopped erupting. This lull lasted for a period of time ranging from a minimum of two months to a maximum of two years. Here again we have a match with the biblical plagues, where the period between plague 1 and plague 9 is less than two years.

CHAPTER 6 FINDING THE RIGHT VOLCANO

63

A second explosion at Santorini disintegrated most of the island. Lava and other materials were ejected. This constituted the second phase of the eruption. The second eruption was not pinkish, but darker in color, again matching the biblical data. The total amount of energy involved in the two phases of the eruption was calculated on the basis of the amount of tephra (airborne ejected material). Roughly 28 cubic kilometers of rocks, ash, and soil appear to have been thrown into the air. Roughly 1027 ergs would have been needed to displace such a volume of material, placing the eruption at 6.9 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI). While the Santorini eruption carries a “signature” which fits the volcanic eruption that would have caused the disasters described in the biblical account of the plagues of Egypt, right now we only have a theoretical link between Santorini and the biblical plagues. What is still missing is a direct link between Santorini and Egypt. Let us start by comparing the Santorini eruption to known historical disasters where we have a wealth of data. Santorini ranks in the same league with the most powerful eruptions known to mankind. As compiled by Zielinski et al. (Science 264 (1994): 948-952), Krakatoa, which exploded in 1883, had a VEI around 6. Tambora, which exploded in 1815, had a VEI of 7 (Table 2). A difference of 1 on the VEI scale indicates a 10-fold difference in magnitude. Thus, Santorini’s VEI of 6.9 indicates that it was was roughly 4-8 times more powerful than the Krakatoa eruption, and was almost identical to the Tambora eruption. Both the Krakatoa and Tambora eruptions generated huge walls of water, which moved and crushed everything in their paths. These waves carried boats several kilometers or miles inland, and annihilated crops and villages. Scores of thousands of people lost their lives. 92,000 deaths are attributed to the eruption of Tambora alone, most of which occurred on the islands of Sumbawa and Lombok, just east of Java. Material was ejected to a distance of 80 kilometers (50 miles), and darkness extended 175 kilometers (110 miles) around Krakatoa, while at Tambora the darkness extended 500 kilometers (315 miles) away. Echoing another biblical plague, at Makasar—400 kilometers away from Tambora—3 centimeters (1 inch) of ash acidified a pond, killing all of its fish. The Tambora explosion is known to have affected weather patterns as far away as the United States, which lie on the other side of the globe from the volcano. The sound of the Krakatoa eruption was heard 5000 kilometers (3000 miles) away in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Given the rich parallels between known volcanic activity and the biblical plagues (Table 3), it stands to reason that Santorini’s eruption also ought to have affected areas outside of the Aegean, most notably Egypt (800 kilometers away).

64

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Actually, we do have an idea of how Santorini’s eruption affected the area close to the volcano. Archaeologists have dug out the remains of the highly advanced Minoan culture, of their sophisticated towns, villages, and villas. Minoan culture had several “modern” features: their lives were already interacting with bureaucracy. The houses were 2-3 stories high and had such amenities such as plumbing. Paved roads linked some sites. Writing, albeit undeciphered, existed. The Minoans expressed a keen aesthetical sense in pottery, dress, and perfumes as well as paintings. Crete, the main island, was famous for medicines. Their economy was quite diversified and included fishing, mining, crafts, agriculture, and trade. Minoan settlements were leveled or seriously crippled by powerful earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eject, the volcanic plume, and the subsequent “nuclear winter”. Ash found in Crete, Kos, and Rhodes show that a huge volcanic cloud hovered over Santorini and then moved, pushed by the winds (C. Doumas and Z. Papazoglou, Nature 287 (1980):322-324). Scientific work in the mid-20th century found ash from the volcano distributed across a wide area, even as far away as the Black Sea on the northern coast of Turkey (Guichard et al., Nature 363(1993): 610-612). The eruption dealt a blow to the Minoan culture from which it would never recover. The Minoan world was to dwindle, slowly coming under the influence of nations from the mainland. Further data on how Santorini’s eruption would have influenced Egypt come from observations on a later (1925-1926), and 1000 times smaller, explosion at the same volcano. Already pointed out by Ian Wilson in The Exodus Enigma (1985), from July 1925 to June 1926 Santorini erupted with a Volcanic Explosivity Index under 4, over 1000 times weaker than the one in the Bronze Age. Yet even this weaker event was accompanied by earthquakes powerful enough to damage buildings throughout the Aegean. Iraklion on the northern coast of Crete was damaged. So were the island of Rhodes (225 kilometers/140 miles away), the neighboring islands of Karpathos and Castellorizzo, as well as the Aegean coast of Turkey. The earthquake was also felt outside of the Aegean area and was recorded in the city of Tripoli in Libya, in Damascus in Syria, in Jerusalem, and last but not least, in northern Egypt. Since the weaker eruption of 1925-1926 affected Egypt through earthquakes, common sense dictates that the Bronze Age eruption must also have affected Egypt. Volcanic ash ejected by a the Bronze Age eruption at Santorini was identified at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea off the Aegean islands of Rhodes, Kos, and Crete. From the mid-20th century onwards more Santorini ash was found at the bottom of the Gölcük lake in Western Anatolia and at the bottom of the Black Sea.

CHAPTER 6 FINDING THE RIGHT VOLCANO

65

Ash from an eruption carry a “signature” because it comes from a common batch of molten rock which is shattered by the explosion. The fragments are akin to glass and have a unique refractive index to light. The Bronze Age eruption at Santorini, for instance, spewed out ash with a refractive index of 1.507-1.509. The volcanic material ejected from Santorini provides two pieces of information: it shows the area covered by the ash, and it shows the direction of the wind that dumped the ash over the area. By measuring the amount of material found at each site, one can reconstruct the direction of the winds at the time of the eruption. Smaller amounts would indicate the sides of the cloud, while higher amounts would indicate the center of the cloud. As the cloud dumped ash, a higher concentration would be observed closer to the source, and a lower concentration would be observed further away. The reconstruction of the fallout indicates that ash was dumped twice. One fallout drifted southeast from Santorini toward Cyprus, that is, toward the Nile Delta and the Sinai Peninsula from a northwest direction. A subsequent, separate, fallout moved northeast, then south across Anatolia, that is, toward the Nile Delta coming from a northern direction. Moreover, the material ejected contained metals. Examination of the metal content reveals that levels of SiO2, CaO, and MgO change according to the area. In other words, we have indication of which areas were affected only (or mostly) by one of the phases (i.e., they have either a high or low content) and which areas were affected by both phases. The Black Sea, for instance, was only affected by one of the phases (high SiO2 and CaO and low MgO). Rhodes was affected by the other phase (low SiO2 and CaO and high MgO). Santorini was affected by both, having average SiO2, CaO, and MgO (Guichard et al., Nature 363 (1993): 610-612). The biblical data fit a first phase moving southeast and going over Rhodes, and a second phase moving north and going toward the Black Sea. Combining the biblical with the scientific data, we can have quite a complete reconstruction of how the events unfolded. The first cloud would have traveled at a middle height, rapidly crossing the Mediterranean in a straight path. Ash would have been dumped in large quantities over the Nile Delta, which is 800 kilometers (500 miles) away from Santorini according to this itinerary (Figure 3). The second cloud is quite different, though. Starting at Santorini, a huge plume, larger than the first, emerged and moved east/northeast into Anatolia 150 kilometers (100 miles) away, crossing this land (800 kilometers or 500 miles) until reaching the Black Sea, and moving 50 kilometers or more from the shore. The cloud then moved south, returning to the shore, and crossing Anatolia from a different angle for roughly 650 kilometers (400 miles). Continuining south, the cloud crossed a swath of the Mediterranean (150 kilometers or 100 miles), then Cyprus (150 kilometers or 100 miles), and then the water between Cyprus and

66

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

the Nile Delta (400 kilometers or 250 miles), entering Egypt at a very low altitude and then moving away east (Figure 4). Thus, comparing the two clouds, the first one dumped a large amount of ash over the Nile Delta, while the second did not. Instead, the second cloud suffocated the inhabitants and the animals in Egypt, having littered Anatolia with ash (Figure 5 and Figure 6). There is yet one more detail to in need of accounting. The volcanic plume—the one from the second phase, that is—appears in the biblical account as the darkness that covered the Nile Delta and formed the ninth plague. It also appears as a faraway column of smoke during the day and a glowing pillar at night after the column moved away from the Nile Delta. Using trigonometric calculations in order to take into account the curvature of the Earth, Ian Wilson (The Exodus Enigma, 1985) showed that a plume over Santorini as high as 100 kilometers (60 miles) would have been visible from as far as the Nile Delta. Contrasting Wilson’s views, William Stiebing (Out of the Desert?, 1989) made a clever counterpoint. He observed that, given the height, the distance of the plume, and the scattering effect of light, if such a plume existed, only 6% of it would have been visible from the Nile Delta. Stiebing’s point is well taken, and he is right on all accounts except for one: plumes move. The plume was a column of smoke and ash expelled above Santorini, but it moved from its original position, a point illustrated by any volcanic eruptions when wind is present. The plume over the Hudson volcano, for instance, was initially just under 20 kilometers (12 miles) high. It drifted, however, and was observed across the Andes in Argentina and over the Falkland/Malvinas Islands (1100 kilometers or 650 miles away). Likewise, Santorini’s plume would have traveled and been observed hundreds of kilometers away from the volcano. Summing up, scientific, historical, archaeological, and biblical data all converge on the Bronze Age eruption at Santorini. The most powerful eruption in ancient times was the “culprit”. Schematically, the volcano blew up most of the island in a two-step fashion, twice sending twice ash across a wide area, and affecting the whole eastern Mediterranean. The first explosion generated a cloud of reddish ash that started to dump its content as it traveled pushed by the winds. Roughly 800 kilometers downwind was the Nile Delta, where the cloud arrived high in the sky, dropping acid ash. The Nile was stained and turned into a deadly trap for fish. Humans refrained from drinking the water, which appeared to have been attacked by the reddish storm god Seth, a great menace to Egypt since times immemorial. As the acidity also started to affect the more buffered mud banks, frogs fled to the land. Unable to return to the waters, the creatures died desiccated. The dead fish and dead frogs constituted a feast for insects, which deposited eggs in the dead animals. Larvae hatched a few weeks later, and crawled every-

CHAPTER 6 FINDING THE RIGHT VOLCANO

67

where in large numbers. Those larvae that had come from flying insects later became swarms of adult insects tormenting people and domestic animals. The volcanic ash dispersed in the air, producing unstable weather. Thus, that year, the rainy season came earlier and more violently than usual. Lightning killed cows and destroyed trees. The rain also brought down large amounts of sulfuric ash, which caused burns on the skin of humans and animals. The persistence of ash in the atmosphere triggered hail a few months later. Crops were ruined, and people were starving. The higher humidity due to the more frequent and more abundant precipitation favored the formation of worms. It also attracted locusts. What had been spared by the hail ended up annihilated by this later plague. Seismic activity persisted: Santorini was preparing for the final release of the material within its chambers. A second explosion took place roughly 20 months after the earlier one. A new volcanic cloud lifted itself above the volcano and moved northeast, reaching the Black Sea, dumping ash at it passed. The plume, having already lost ash, then moved across Anatolia and reached the Nile Delta containing less ash, but still a lot of smoke. Fearing that this second cloud would bring a repeat of the earlier plagues, the inhabitants of the Nile Delta resorted to the only solution they could think for these kinds of disasters and sacrificed sacrifices their firstborn and the firstborn of their animals.

68

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 1. Comparison between the 1991 Hudson eruption and the biblical plagues. Biblical narrative Event at Hudson Red Nile, dead fish Cloud of ash turns streams and meadows deadly for livestock Invasion of frogs Invasion of kînnîm Invasion of insects Storm that killed animals and destroyed Death of animals and destruction of trees countryside Boils on humans and animals Acid rain caused burns on skin, and peeled paint from buildings Hail Death of animals and destruction of countryside Locusts Darkness Second huge volcanic cloud crossing over the Andes Death of firstborn

Table 2. Comparison among the three most violent eruptions in the last 4000 years (data derived from A. Kalogeropoulou, ed. Acta of the 1st International Scientific Congress on the Volcano of Thera, 15-23 September 1969, 1971; C. Doumas, ed. Thera and the Aegean World I, 1978; C. Doumas, ed. Thera and the Aegean World II, 1980). Tambora (1815) Krakatoa (1883) Santorini (Bronze Age) VEI: 7.0 VEI: 6.1 VEI: 6.9 8x1026 erg 1x1025 erg 1x1027 erg 67.5 km3 tephra 13.5-18 km3 tephra 28 km3 tephra

CHAPTER 6 FINDING THE RIGHT VOLCANO

69

Table 3. Parallels between known eruptions and biblical plagues. Biblical plague Known volcanic parallels 0. A cloud reached the Nile Delta dumping ash (Dt. 28.24; Ps. 105.27-28). 1. The waters became red, the fish died and people refused to drink (Ex. 7.14-25; Ps. 78.43-44; Ps. 105.29). 2-4. Frogs invaded the banks, vermin crawled, and swarms of flies appeared (Ex. 7.26-8.20; Ps. 78.45; Ps. 105.30-31). 5-8. Ruined countryside: dead cattle, fig damaged trees and vines (Ex. 9.1-7; Dt. 28.16-18, 28.28-31, 39-40; Ps. 78.47-48; Ps. 105.32-33). Humans and animals were covered with boils (Ex. 9.8-12; Dt. 28.27, 28.35). Hail ruined the flax and barley crops (Ex. 9.13-35; Dt. 28.16-18, 28.28-31, 39-40). Locusts and worms ate the little left in the fields (Ex. 10.1-20; Dt.28.38, 41; Ps.78.46; Ps.105.34-35). 9. A thick palpable cloud covered the Nile Delta and suffocated the inhabitants (Ex. 10.21-29; Dt.28.28-29; Ps.18.7-20; Ps.46.2-8; Ps.68.8-9; Ps.77.12-21; Ps.78.49; Ps.97.1-5; Ps.144.5-8). 10. The firstborn of men and animals were killed (Ex. 11.1-13.16; Ps. 78.5051; Ps.105.36; Ps. 136.10).

Volcanic cloud from Hudson crossed the Andes into Argentina, depositing ash over 100,000 km2. Streams and ponds around the Hudson, and at Makasar, were contaminated and full of dead fish.

Volcanic dust results in bad weather, as shown by the aftermath of the Mt. St. Helens (USA, May 1980), and Mt. Pinatubo (Philippines, May 1994) eruptions. Hudson volcano eruption (1991) resulted in burns on humans and animals. The raes affected show a higher humidity than normal. Eruptions can take place in a two-phase fashion, e.g., the one at the Hudson in 1991, whose second cloud went across the Andes, and across the world. To this day, religious rites are linked to eruptions, e.g., masses were celebrated during the 2001 eruptions at the Mt. Etna (Italy), hoping it might help the villages threatened by the volcanic activity.

70

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE FIGURE 1 Map of Egypt, and the surrounding volcanic areas

Taurus Aegean Arch

Santorini

o Avaris o Memphis

Harrat Ash-Shamah

o Ict-tawy Harrat Hutaymah

EGYPTo Thebes

Tibesti

Darfur

Black Sea

FIGURE 2 Map of areas affected by 1925-1926 Santorini eruption

ANATOLIA

Kos AEGEAN Santorini Crete

Rhodes

Cyprus SYRIA

Karpathos

Mediterranean Sea CANAAN

LIBYA

EGYPT

CHAPTER 6 FINDING THE RIGHT VOLCANO

71

FIGURE 3 Bronze Age Santorini eruption: path of first cloud

Samothrace Phrygia Ossa Lemnos

Pelium

Thessaly

Anatolia

Mytilene

Lydia o Gölcük

Area of fall out from first phase of eruption

o Nysa

Peloponnesus

Kea Lycia Kos Milos Rhodes

Santorini Cythera

Karpathos Crete

Area of fall out from second phase of eruption

Samothrace

Ossa Thessaly

Lemnos

Pelium

Mytilene

Phrygia

Lydia o Gölcük o Nysa

Peloponnesus

Anatolia

Kea Lycia Rhodes Kos Milos Santorini Cythera Karpathos Crete

FIGURE 4 Bronze Age Santorini eruption: path of second cloud

72

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE Black Sea Second cloud

Thessaly

Anatolia

Lydia

Nysa

Attica

Cilicia Lycia

Peloponnesus

Syria Rhodes Santorini Crete

Cyprus First cloud

FIGURE 5 Bronze Age Santorini eruption: path of volcanic clouds Mediterranean Sea

Canaan

Lake Manzala

Nile Delta Libya Avaris




Mediterranean Sea

Egypt

^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __ 100 km

Aegean Sea

^~~~


CHAPTER 7 WHEN THE GODS MANIFESTED THEMSELVES … Historians and archaeologists have shown that the Santorini eruption resulted in the twilight of Minoan societies which managed to survive for a few additional generations before being replaced by the Mycenaeans. Since cultures across the Aegean did not vaporize overnight, but survived, it stands to reason these cultures would have preserved records of the volcanic event. So-called Classical Greece (900 BC-300 AD) has preserved a rich tradition of events which the Greeks attributed to earlier—mythical—times. These texts constitute a mine which we will first probe. One specific genre, the theogony, appears particularly promising. The word theogony refers to the gods’ birth (theôn gonos). The most famous such composition is Hesiod’s. The Greek poet presents his work as the retelling of the birth of the gods. Both Hesiod’s (Theogony, 139-155, 616-735, 819-868) and Apollodoros’ (Library, 1.34-44) work, however, can be better described as the stories of coups staged by the gods and of conflicts among them. According to the tale, the first ruler of the gods was Ouranos, a sky divinity, possibly seen as fertilizing the earth goddess thanks to rain. One of Ouranos’ sons, however, displaced him and took over. Khronos was a god who ruled over the flow of time, and thus the arrival of the seasons. He overthrew his father at the request of his mother, the earth goddess, who was continuously abused by her spouse. With the help of darkness, so goes the story, Khronos ambushed his father and castrated him. He then tossed his father’s genitals and the sickle that was used to carry out the action into the sea. This was not the end of the fight, though. Fearing one of his sons might attempt something against him, Khronos ate them all, unaware that he had been duped and that the storm god (literally, the cloud-gatherer) Zeus had been replaced by a stone. Zeus, hidden by the noise of the Kouretes which covered his cries, grew mighty. The storm god came back to challenge his father and overpowered him. His victory was total when Zeus compelled Khronos to vomit his brothers and sisters, over whom Zeus was now going to rule. In between the different fights, several gods were born, hence Hesiod’s own presentation of the Theogony as the story of gods’ birth. But Hesiod’s work 73

74

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

also presents us with the struggles and fights of the gods as well, a point that is not fully explained when the theogony is understood only as the birth of the gods. Thus, there is a second way of looking at a theogony, which does not contradict the former, but rather enriches it: theogony can also mean gods’ struggles or fights (theôn agones). Is it therefore possible that the births of the gods constitute a lesser theme in the Theogony? Is it possible that the real point in the Theogony escaped Hesiod? In fact, already in classical times Hesiod’s work drew sharp criticism both from Greeks and foreigners. The Greek philosopher Herakleitos of Ephesos pointed out that Hesiod did not know of what he was speaking (Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903—fragment Heraclitus 40, 57). Similarly, Philo of Byblos stated that Hesiod presented as poetry what had been real events (for a complete list of Philo’s fragments, see Albert Baumgarten, The Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos: A Commentary, 1981). In other words, Hesiod had merely repeated matters he had heard without understanding them. Hesiod reshaped earlier works, including theogonies, into one larger work, which he called Theogony. If we hypothesize that these fights among the gods really represent the events leading to the eruption of Santorini, one can easily match the two sets. Thus, the earth goddess complaining about spousal abuse is a retelling of long lasting earthquakes before the eruption. Khronos castrating Ouranos is the first phase of the eruption when blood-like ash fell out of the sky. Khronos eating the gods, as well as Zeus’ cries covered by the noisy kouretes, can be linked to the earthquakes between the first and the second phase. Zeus beating his father and compelling him to vomit his brothers and sisters is an apt description of the second phase of the eruption. The castration episode of Ouranos deserves particular attention. Hesiod tells us that the severed member fell in and fertilized the sea, generating Aphrodite, the goddess—supposedly of love—born out of foam either on the island of Kythera or at Paphos on Cyprus. The “event” has been immortalized in the fantasy, also thanks to Botticelli’s painting now in custody of the Uffizi in Florence. This is the interpretation to which we have been accustomed. That to which we are not accustomed is that Aphrodite’s birth was not the only event that took place as a result of Ouranos’ loss. The Orphic Argonautica (lines 18-20) states that all Titans (Ouranos being one of them) had been mutilated, and were spilling blood over the whole world. Separately, we are told that Ouranos’ blood unleashed the Erinyes. Also known as Furies, the Erinyes were described as having wings like bats, hair like snakes, and tears made of blood. They tormented their victims until they went mad and died (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4.451 ff.; Dionysiaca, 38.88; Apollodurs, Library, 1.3). The figure is

CHAPTER 7 WHEN THE GODS MANIFESTED THEMSELVES…

75

consistent with the depiction of the poisonous (snakes) red (tears of blood) ashes dropping from the sky (bats). Aphrodite born out of the foam also fits within this scenario of destruction, describing something that had escaped Hesiod. However, it did not escape the Orphic mystics, nor Hesiod’s critics. In fact, Aphrodite, the so-called goddess of love, is merely a late-Greek invention. Aphrodite was first and foremost a goddess of the earth. In this case Aphrodite is to be understood as the goddess of the soil uncovered by the sea as it foamed while crashing ashore under conditions so spectacular that, in the minds of the people of the time, they warranted the intervention of the gods. A similar event took place along the coasts of western Thailand on December 26, 2004. A submarine earthquake off the northern tip of Sumatra sent devastating waves. Along the shallow Thai shores, the sea first retreated, uncovering hundreds of metres of sand otherwise lying below the water. Time apparently stood still, then the sea came back, reclaiming its territory, and crashing with high waves on anyone and anything along the coastline. At this point one can piece together an event of unbelievable violence that shook the world as the ancient Greeks knew it: a loud noise—such that only a god could emit under suffering only a god could endure—broke out across the sky. The event was followed by unusual droplets which resulted in disasters. At a site called Paphos tsunamis—prior to crashing ashore—unveiled the bottom of the sea. Now we have a coherent and realistic picture for what became impressed in the minds of the survivors of the first phase. In other words in their mýthoi, the ancient Aegeans were seeking to come to grips with real physical events, and not Freudian fantasies, or renderings of poets, later popularized by the Italian sense of aesthetics. This brings us to a separate version of a theogony which has survived in the fragments attributed to Pherekydes who was born around 600 BC and whose fragments were collected by Hermann Diels (Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903). This ancient Greek was said possibly to be of Phoenician origin and to hail from the Aegean island of Syros. He was credited with an essay in which he discussed the nature of the universe and the birth of the gods. Although his work has survived only in fragmentary form, much can be reconstructed. Pherekydes proposed that in the beginning the universe involved three gods: Zas/Zeus, which he identified with fire, Kronos/Khronos, which he identified with the becoming of things through time, and an earth goddess that changed name from Chtonie (“Underground”) to Rhe (“Ooze”) upon marrying Zas. Courted by the god, Chtonie was wed at a ceremony during which she underwent change. During the wedding a tree appeared while Zeus provided the goddess with a large mantle as a wedding gift. Later, the goddess became pregnant with Ophioneos (“New Snake”). Eventually, the snake battled Kronos for possession of the world. In the battle, Kronos produced his own fire, storm, and water. This battle—Pherekydes assures us—is at the root of all stories relating

76

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

battles between giants, Titans, and gods, thus relating the theogony to the Santorini eruption. The competition for Chtonie between Zas and Kronos can be identified with the earthquakes before the first phase of the eruption. Though Pherekydes’ theogony does not propose any castration, he does speak of blood. Chtonie’s (“Underground”) name was changed to Rhe (“Ooze”). Like a maiden that gets married, two things happened: she was deflorated and her name was changed. This is exactly what Pherekydes proposes: blood from the goddess’ hymen, and a change of name. Both are quite good mythico/theological descriptors for a volcanic eruption where the ashes were red in color. Pherekydes’ description of the wedding tells us that Zeus brought up a tree as a present and it became a mantle that shrouded the world. Of course today we would speak of a volcanic plume, as well as of a darkness cast over a wide area. The later birth of the snake makes sense in the context of subsequent earthquakes which led to the second phase of the eruption (depicted as battle between the armies of Ophioneos and Kronos) at which point Santorini spewed lava, vapor, and tephra. Finally, the author assures us that this tale relates exactly the same story encountered in the narratives involving battles among giants, Titans, and gods which would also depict the Santorini eruption. Briefly, there is yet another theogony, which was finalized only much later, at the time Augustus built the Roman Empire after the battle of Actium in 30 BC. The Latin poet Ovid wrote several works, the most famous of which is the Metamorphoses, thus called because the work tells of many changes in the appearances of the gods, heroes, and others presented by Ovid. This work however, appears to be based on an earlier—lost—work, which is a theogony, and to which Ovid appended further material (e.g., events related to Rome’s rulers). The beginning of the Metamorphoses reads exactly like a theogony, possibly influenced by Egyptian and/or Orphic cosmogonies: the world started as chaos, then started to organize itself (fire, air, earth, water, five zones, and four winds), going through a historical development. Then the giants started to fight against the gods, Zeus punished humankind, gods quarrelled endlessly, etc. Some of the stories, which will be examined later on, also carry striking resemblances to the Santorini eruption as it might have been remembered and described by Bronze Age cultures. Thus, the theogonies we have considered—implicitly (Hesiod, etc.) and explicitly (Pherekydes)—reveal that the Greek narratives speaking of battles involving giants (gigantomachies), Titans (titanomachies), and gods (theomachies), or combinations thereof, really reflected one real historical event. In other words, since the theogonies describe the Santorini eruption, so do the gigantomachies,

CHAPTER 7 WHEN THE GODS MANIFESTED THEMSELVES…

77

titanomachies, and theomachies. If this is true, the narratives for these battles should provide a pattern similar to the dynamics leading to the eruption of the volcano. Of all the battles involving these figures, the most famous is the clash between a group of gods led by Zeus and the giants of the earth. Among others, Hesiod (yet again in his Theogony) presents it, and structures it as an event inserted between the births of divinities. Briefly, Zeus takes over the court of the gods by defeating the giants. The earth-goddess unites with herself to produce Typhon, a monster with hissing voice and eyes of fire. Zeus and Typhon battle it out across the whole world (Apollodorus, Library, 1.6.3, 1.7.2-3, 1.49-51; Herodotus, Histories, 2.144, 3.5). The specifics for the sites are quite hard to determine. Apollodorus mentions Mount Kasium (placing it in Syria), Kilikia, Nysa, Mt. Haimos in Thrace, again through the Sikilian Sea, and then Mount Aitna (Apollodorus, Library, 1.39-44). The itinerary is fraught with problems. If we were to link up all the points mentioned on the basis of topography known fron classical Greek authors, we would be going from the Syrian coast to the southeastern Turkish coast, to the southwestern Turkish inland, to the Greek-Bulgarian border, to eastern Sicily. The journey is fragmentary, and omits areas that would need to be traveled through. Additionally, the author never mentions crossing the Sikilian Sea to begin with, so, how could he cross it a second time? A solution can be proposed by comparing Apollodorus’ itinerary with the one conserved in the Argonautica: Kholkia, Kaukasos, mountains and plain of Nysa, ending in the waters of the Serbonian Lake (Argonautica, 2.1206). The first striking thing is that one author mentions Kilikia and one mentions Kholkia. Today, on the basis of classical Greek sources, we place the former in southern Turkey and the latter in western Georgia, sites which are physically separated by hundreds of kilometers or miles. We are dealing, however, with preclassical toponyms. Kilikia and Kholkia ought to be understood in light of Bronze Age cultures. At that time, writing omitted vowels, or lumped them together with consonants. It stands to reason that we are really comparing Klk to Khlk, which would indicate the original homeland of the Cholcians rather than the land in which they dwelled by the 5th century BC. The Argonautica speaks of the Cholcians leaving their island for another one, then settling in hill country (Argonautica, 4.1220): this Kholkia does not fit present-day Georgia. The Kholkian homeland had also been readily accessible by Egyptians (Herodotus, Histories, 2.104-105) during the 12th dynasty, that is, roughly 1950-1775 BC. Given the naval technology of the time, the Kholkian homeland must have been much closer to Egypt than the Black Sea. To anyone who has been told and retold that the Argonautica is a story detailing Greek economic expansion into the Black Sea around 700 BC, this will come as news: the story of Jason and the Argonauts describes a reality which is much earlier, a reality grounded in the Aegean.

78

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Then there is the question of Mount Kasion. Syrians knew of at least two such mountains, one along the Syrian coast, and one along the marshes between the Sinai Peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea. In each case, they were understood as the dwelling place of their storm god Ba’al. In other words, any site on which the god was supposed to have lived qualified as a Mount Kasion. As far as the Sikilian Sea, the settlement of Sicily took place in waves, and Sicilians appear to have lived in what is now Turkey until 1200 BC. Thus, on the basis of the data we can only approximate the path of the volcanic plume for the second phase of the eruption. Before reaching Egypt, the plume would have gone across Anatolia. Further confirmation of the path and that Hesiod’s Theogony tells the story of Santorini comes from the fact that each of the two epics has survived separately. We have already seen that Hesiod’s tale of the castration of Ouranos and Hesiod’s tale of Zeus fighting the monster exist as separate tales in Apollodorus. Similar tales also exist in neighboring cultures which would have been affected by the plume. The Ouranos-Khronos-Zeus story also exists in one Anatolian (Hurrian-Hittite) and two Canaanite versions. The fight between Zeus and the monster was mentioned by several authors and placed at several sites across the Eastern Mediterranean. In Hurrian-Hittite culture in Central Anatolia, the Song of Kumarbi is akin to the tale of Ouranos-Khronos-Zeus and its follow up, the Song of Ullikummi, reflects the fight between Zeus and the giant. The Hurrian-Hittite two part story (presented and reviewed in O.R. Gurney, The Hittites, 1952) is slightly longer than the Greek version because it contains a prelude. Briefly, the tyrant god Alalu is unseated by its servant Anu, which takes over the home of the gods. Itself a tyrant, the god Anu is unseated by Kumarbi. In the process, Kumarbi castrates Anu, but is left pregnant with its own destiny. In order to face this destiny, Kumarbi impregnates a rock, turning it into the giant Ullikummi (= destroyer of the holy town Kummiya). The giant challenges Anu’s progeny, which is growing within Kumarbi’s own body. The rock giant, growing fast, emerges from the sea and reaches the heavens, threatening the gods. At this point appears the savior, the storm god Teshub born out of Kumarbi. Teshub challenges the giant and wins by sawing off its feet, making it collapse. The same story survived in Canaanite culture. Philo of Byblos presents a tale that—unlike Hesiod’s—presents a seamless account of the Ouranos-KhronosZeus tale and the fight of Zeus against the giant. The surviving fragments of Philo’s work have been collected and reviewed by Albert Baumgarten (The Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos: A Commentary, 1981). He stated that early Canaanite records indicate that the female earth goddess quarreled with the male god Epigeios Autochthon (= native from the soil). The god often raped the goddess and committed infanticides. One of his sons, El

CHAPTER 7 WHEN THE GODS MANIFESTED THEMSELVES…

79

(= God), made a sickle and a spear with which he faced his father, putting an end to his predation on his mother. His helping deed was not done with disinterest, as El ended up taking over the assembly of the gods. However, his action also resulted in agriculture being severely affected. Somehow, Epigeios Autochthon’s concubine had become pregnant at the last possible second, and gave birth to the storm god Demarus, which was asked to avenge the older god. A new fight took place in which El killed the god Demarus and buried the pillar of the world. A separate Canaanite account comes from the tablets found at Ugarit, near the Canaanite holy mountain Mount Zephon (also known as Mount Kasion). These texts—written before 1400-1300 BC and reviewed in Gibson’s Canaanite Myths and Legends, 1978—mention that the god Ba’al (= Lord) castrated the god El (= God) and took over the assembly of the gods. El, however, retaliated by proclaiming the sea-and-earthquake god Yam (= sea) his heir and therefore challenger to the usurper Ba’al. Eventually, Yam obtained the endorsement of the assembly of the gods. In the midst of Mount Lel (= night) he faced Ba’al, which rebuked the gods and refused to submit to Yam. Using weapons from the divine smith, Koshar-wa-Khasis, Ba’al defeated Yam in an epic battle. All these tales present a two-round fight between superior beings with heavy parallels in terms of theological description among the Greek, the Hurrian-Hittite, and the Canaanite versions. Initially the supreme lord of the gods is portrayed as tyrant, and its actions account for the earthquakes that preceded the eruption. The tyrant is castrated and dethroned by another deity. The castration of a god would have explained the noise linked to the first phase eruption. It would also have explained the “blood” of the god falling as red ash over land, streams, lakes, and sea. Finally, it would have explained both the night or darkness—that is, the volcanic cloud—in which these events took place. In the narratives there is then a lull during which a new challenge is produced to face the usurper. Noteworthy is the mention in one of the Canaanite versions that agriculture failed at this point in time. In fact, Santorini’s ash, as per the scientific reconstruction, generated both acid rains and a “nuclear winter”. The latter would have severely affected the weather and therefore—as a result—agriculture, for a longer time. Finally, the gods battle it out until a winner is declared in what amounts to a retelling of the second phase of Santorini’s eruption. Greek culture appears to have conserved stories about Santorini’s eruption. It is not clear whether these stories were borrowed from neighboring countries, though. In fact, cultures that described this fight were all in the path of the volcanic clouds. We will probe Greek culture further, seeking for truly Greek renderings of the Santorini-linked events.

80

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 1. Comparison of Eastern Mediterranean myths detailing Bronze Age Santorinilike events. Physical events Greek version Hurrian-Hittite Canaanite version version Earthquakes Earth goddess Anu unseats Alalu Epigeios complains about Autochthon Ouranos terrorizes the gods Eruption of pink ash Khronos castrates Alalu castrated by El castrates Ouranos Kumarbi Epigeios Zas deflorates Autochthon Chthonie and a Ba’al castrates El tree appears Disasters Zeus born Kumarbi gestates Demarus is being Pregnancy of Rhe its destiny born as agriculture fails Yam is endorsed by the gods Second explosion Zeus defeats Teshub defeats El kills Demarus Typhon Ullikummi Ba’al defeats Yam Armies fighting

CHAPTER 7 WHEN THE GODS MANIFESTED THEMSELVES…

81

FIGURE 1 Map of the cultures mentioning theogonies

Black Sea

HURRIANHITTITES

AEGEAN Ugarit o Kythera

Cyprus

Santorini

Byblos o

Mediterranean Sea CANAAN EGYPT

CHAPTER 8 … AND NEARLY OBLITERATED GREECE Santorini being located in Greece, it stands to reason that this country would have experienced more and worse plagues than Egypt, the coastline of which is located 800 kilometers away from the volcano. Combing ancient Greek tradition, we looked for material that may match the dynamics of the whole eruption or parts thereof. Additionally, Greeks—on the basis of the theogonies—appear to have kept the memory of older days, a time before the eruption, which in a way provided a historical watershed between two eras. We will start by building on the results from the previous chapter. We have already observed that the first phase, which was understood as the castration of one or more Titans, unleashed events described as the Erinyes over the land and the islands of the Minoans. These flying monsters dripped tears of blood and tormented their victims in a depiction consistent with the acidic red ash dropping from the sky. Two more sets of similar monsters are known in Greek tradition: the Sirens and the Harpies. The former were birds with heads of women and served Persephone (= destructive sound), the goddess of the underworld. The sirens were blown by the winds, bringing death to sailors, until they settled on some islets where they brought death to more sailors by luring them onto the nearby rocks (Argonautica, 4.892 ff). The latter (Harpies = snatchers) were also women-bird hybrids, ruling the winds and interacting with the Erinyes. The Harpies destroyed food supplies until they were either chased away or killed by the northern wind (Hyginus, Fabulae 14). Similar in action to the Erynies/Sirens/Harpies, yet not in the appearance given to it, and similar in action to the biblical plagues, Greek tradition holds the figure of Leto. A female giant, Leto had been seduced by the god Zeus and was impregnated. Unsuprisingly, once the story got out, Zeus’ divine spouse—and sister—Hera, became jealous and looked for a way to get back at Leto (Apollodorus, Library, 1.21).

83

84

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Being the wife of a god, Hera had ample means. Hera commissioned a giant snake to pursue and rape Leto, thus keeping her from giving birth to the twins the giant was carrying in its belly. Like the Harpies, Leto was said to have turned away (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.31.1) and gone elsewhere. Leto was observed in a variety of places, for example, above the Taygetus mountains in Central Peloponnesus (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 3.20.5) and across Greece, unable to rest and give birth. Like the Erynies, the Sirens, and the Harpies, wherever she went, she was to bring death and fear. Gods, more benevolent than Hera, gave Leto a place where to rest. There, helped by maidens from the north, she gave birth to two twins, first the moongoddess Artemis, and then the sun-god Apollon/Phoebos. At birth she soiled the whole Kenkhrios/Kaystros river which flows into the Aegean Sea at Ephesos from Anatolia’s mountains (Strabo, Geography, 14.1.20). After birth, either she or her children revisited places where she had not been allowed to give birth and punished the land and the people. Thus, in Lykia she was said to have asked for water from the local farmers. The Lykians refused and muddied the waters, making Leto refrain from drinking. The farmers were transformed into frogs leaping out of the ponds and streams (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 6.508-621). Leto’s children also chased after the inhabitants of the lands which had not given hospitality to their mother. For instance, they hit the Taygetus area with hunger and pushed the survivors to Crete (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 8.53.1-4). They also exterminated the sons and daughters of Niobe. Finally, Apollon sought out the giant snake that had threatened his mother, killed him, and took over its shrine (Hyginus, Fabulae 140). Leto is understood in the way Greek myths are being portrayed today in the media, books, and universities, as the mere fruit of the fantasy of ancient Greek writers. It is assumed that the stories dealing with her have no link to the real world. Our understanding is that Leto bears a striking resemblance to the volcanic cloud that would have emerged from the first phase of the eruption at Santorini. Leto hovering over the Aegean is a perfect match for the volcanic cloud over the area after the eruption of Santorini. Its change in direction would have been the result of a change in winds. The snake chasing the giantess is a match to the earth rumblings accompanying the volcanic event. The holy island on which she gives birth to the moon and sun should be understood as the site where the cloud first dissipated and the sky was again visible. It would have been night and the moon would have been visible before the sun a few hours later. This cloud must be identified with the plume from the first phase: Leto gave birth, which involves blood soiling, and was said to have reddened rivers in Anatolia.

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT

85

The punishment inflicted on the lands consisted in the ash that fell from the cloud. They would have caused the destruction of meadows, rivers, livestock, crops, and thus resulted in widespread and serious dearth. The example from Lycia is particularly interesting. The story goes that Leto was denied water by local farmers who muddied the ponds. The parallel with the first biblical plague is unmistakable. As a result frogs jumped out of the waters which is exactly what happened in Egypt (second plague) due to the acidified Nile. A last word on Lycia: the land lies just on the fringes of the path taken by the first volcanic cloud carried by winds toward Cyprus, the Nile Delta, and the Sinai Peninsula. The land of Lycia got a large share of the ash, thus accounting for the story of Leto. This tale brings to mind the fate of the Telchines who were said to have inhabited Rhodes, a large island just off Lycia. Exactly like Lycia, Rhodes ended up being in the path of the first volcanic cloud. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the island conserved a tale that actually matches the biblical plagues and the aftermath of the Santorini eruption. Long ago, according to Strabo, the Telchines ruled Rhodes. They were experts in metallurgy, and had migrated from Crete to Cyprus and then to Rhodes, and possibly also Kea, an island in the Cyclades (Strabo, Geography, 10.3.19). Then at some point in time, these mythical early inhabitants of the island were said to have mixed the sulfur of the infernal river Styx with the waters of the streams of the island. Rhodes was left devastated. The gods punished their crime by sending a flood which swept away the Telchines, their land, and cities. Some Telchines managed to survive both disasters and reached the Anatolian mainland where they built a temple to Apollon (Diodurus Siculus, History, 5.56.3-5; Nonnius, History, 14.44), which implies that this god either attempted to exterminate them and needed to be appeased, or was the god that saved the Telchines. This tale parallels the Faustian legend where man attempts to control powers that are not supposed to be his. It may even form the oldest known kernel of such a story: the moral undertone of the Telchines tale explains why the Telchines had been hit. At the same time, in this case, we are more interested in the event behind the disaster, rather than how the tale was generated in the shape it received. Contamination of waters with sulfurous compounds could not have come from a factory in this pre-industrial setting. This event is normal in springs near geysers or similar underground-derived waters. It does happen on islands not too far from Rhodes (e.g., Kos). Hence the original anonymous author of the tale knew about sulfurous waters when composing the saga of the Telchines. Such a phenomenon, however, is absent on Rhodes.

86

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Thus, the only possible source for sulfur is volcanic and is coherent with the eruption at Santorini including the rain of ash soiling the streams as well as tidal waves devastating the coast. The contamination thus offers another Greek parallel to the volcanic origin of the biblical plagues. Moreover, scientists have indeed identified volcanic ash from Santorini at archaeological sites, indicating that Rhodes was in the path of the volcanic cloud (C. Doumas & L. Papazoglu, Nature 287 (1980): 322-324). While Rhodes is just south of Lycia and has a biblical plague type of tale, it should come as no surprise that north of Lycia a similar tale is also found. There, across the ridge that borders Lycia to the north, runs the river Marsyas. There is a tale about this stream. The river god Marsyas (having the same name as the river) was said to have challenged Apollon, Leto’s son, to a contest to determine who was the best flute player. Apollon won and exacted as a prize the life of Marsyas by having the river god skinned alive. This torture bloodied the waters of the river (Strabo, Geography, 12.8.15; Herodotus, Histories, 2.26.3). This tale has always been portrayed as one of the many unbelievable things that gods did to each other. Scholars have therefore not spent much time in examining whether it was built on some actual fact. The fact is that the river was exactly along the path of the first volcanic cloud. The fact is that prior to the formation of the cloud, a strange noise would have taken place. This noise was at first understood as the flute competition, and then as the sound changed, as the skinning of Marsyas. Exactly as was the case with the castration of the god or Titan in the theogonies, a loud strange noise was followed by blood everywhere. Logically, one may have wondered from the very beginning why this tale contains such a gruesome punishment so minor a challenge to a god as a musical competition. In the eyes of a modern reader, in fact, Apollon’s action is meaningless. In the eyes of the people at the time of the eruption, however, Apollon’s skinning of Marsyas made sense: the god did what it wanted and that is what they observed: strange noises followed by blood. How else could they have explained it? Greece—needless to say—also preserved numerous examples from the second phase of the Santorini eruption. For instance, a carbonized swath of land was said to reflect the fight between the gods. Strabo, in his Geography (12.8.19), records that the territory comprised among the Maiandros River and Lydia hosted the fight between Zeus and Typhon and wondered whether that was the reason the lake between Laodikeia and Apameia emitted a rotten smell. Similarly, he also adds that the Katakekaumene country was shaped by the fight (13.4.11). The volcanic ash from Santorini found at the bottom of the local lake of Gölcük and other nearby lakes amply confirm these tidbits of western Anatolian

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT

87

lore (Donald G. Sullivan, “The Discovery of Santorini Minoan Tephra in Western Turkey,” Nature 333 (1988): 552-554). Other events also affected Greece. From archaeological digs throughout the Aegean, earthquakes earlier than the one that brought about the final collapse of the Minoan culture were observed near Santorini and at Hissarlik, the hill on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelle Straits. This site is over 300 kilometers (180 miles) northeast of Santorini. Since it was excavated at the end of the 19th century, it has been thought that the ruins of the town under the hill are the remnants of Ilion or Troy. At this site, towns were built atop one another as earlier ones were destroyed either by the hands of human beings, or an act of God. Archaeology shows that there was an important discontinuity between the Troy of the Middle Bronze Age (Troy VI a-c) and that of the Late Bronze Age (Troy VI d-h). This discontinuity is marked by signs of extensive earthquakes and roughly fits what we would expect from Santorini’s eruption. Since the Aegean, where Santorini and Hissarlik are found, is a body of water, earthquakes imply tidal waves. Thus, we should expect to identify tsunami tales in Greek tradition. One such story mentions the old couple of Philemon and his wife Baucis (Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.631-720). The two gods Zeus and Hermes were said to have been visiting what is today western Anatolia. Shunned by the rest of the population in the village, the gods were well received by the elderly Philemon and Baucis. As a result of the hospitality granted to them, the gods invited the couple outside for a walk over the hill, where they fell asleep. When the couple woke up, the gods were gone. They then looked from the hills, and realized that the valley where the village was had been turned into a lake. Through their piety, the couple had just survived a disaster that befell the whole area. Inland flooding is normal in times of heavy rain, but rain is absent in this story. Flooding can also be caused by a broken dam. Again, no dam breaking is mentioned. Thus, the explanation lies elsewhere. In the Canadian province of New Brunswick one inland area is flooded every day. As the tide—one of the highest in the world—comes in, the waters of the Bay of Fundy rise very quickly. The rivers along the bay cannot flow to the sea, and are pushed back. The phenomenon is particularly evident along the river Petitcodiac, where the waters “flow upstream” for more than 50 kilometers (30 miles). This phenomenon does not occur in Anatolia, though. The tides in the Mediterranean are not strong enough to push back rivers. A tsunami, however, would have been able to generate a mass of water large enough to push rivers back. In the absence of rain-generated floods, tsunamis are the only viable explanation.

88

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

There is another example of a tsunami in Greek tradition. Eastern Aegean lore speaks of a giant so big that he was called “As-Big-as-a-Mountain”: Orion (Apollodorus, Library, 1.4.2-5). Orion grew out of the earth goddess, sired by the god of earthquakes, Poseidon. Orion could walk over the sea. Orion had a consort, who—because she dared to resemble the goddess Hera—was thrown into the underworld. Looking for a new spouse, Orion went to an island—tradition calls that island Khios—where he courted Merope (= sweet eye), the daughter of the local king Oinopion (= wine maker). The king did not approve of the courtship and weakened and blinded Orion along the beach. Searching in the dark, Orion seized a young worker from the underworld workshop of the fire god Hephaistos and used him as a guide. As the sun was again visible, Orion was healed and went back, looking for Oinopion. The king of the island had fled and had found refuge with Hephaistos, the smith god. The story then goes on to tell that the goddess of dawn, Eos, departed with Orion and went to the holy island (tradition calls that island Delos), where Artemis killed him for courting the northern maiden Opis (= eye). Some of the gods then gave the name Orion to a group of stars. Usually, this tale is told in astronomy circles to give the background for the naming of the stars. Although the stars owe their name to Orion, the story describes a real event here on earth. More precisely, Orion was a tsunami. Walking over the sea is not exactly a normal feature, especially if you are as big as mountain. Pumice, fog, smoke, and a water mass from a tsunami can “walk” over a sea. Yet pumice stone is small, and Orion was big. Fog can cover huge areas, but it is unrelated to earthquakes, which we can link to the story because Poseidon, the god of earthquakes, was Orion’s father. The smoke is already accounted for: Orion travels blinded, implying he traveled enveloped by smoke. Hence Orion cannot have been smoke, and must have been something else. Thus, the only viable explanation left is the tsunami. Let us see whether Orion was indeed a tsunami or whether we have just being misleading ourselves. To understand why Greeks would have composed a tale about a tsunami we must suppose that that tidal wave was different from others. Geography provides the answer. The Santorini eruption would have generated colossal waves spreading 360 degrees from the center of the volcanic event. As the waves encountered coastlines, they would have flooded lower areas, losing speed. High ground (e.g., cliffs) would have either formed a barrier or a site against which the waves would have splashed and possibly bounced back. Any map of the Aegean shows that there is a strange funnel east of Santorini and Kos. On one side the islands of Ios, Amorgos, Cinarus, Lebinthus, and Kalymnos form a wall. On the other side are Anaphi, Aphidusa, and Astypalea. In this natural corridor, a tidal wave would have encountered no obstacles, traveled at a fast speed, and kept all its punch.

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT

89

The Orion story speaks of Khios, yet all the elements in the story form a unit if the island in question is Kos. The question is whether Orion’s island was really Khios or Kos. The story we have is from Apollodorus, who lived around 150 BC. Apollodorus collected Greece’s national tradition and sagas as they had been handed down, which included changes made through the times or the conservation of older names. Some must have been local stories that were included in the national epic. Yet, we do not know when, where, or how these stories were formed. One thing we do know: names ending in “-ope” were quite common in ancient Greek stories. Thus, we have the round-eyed, the Cyclopes. Athena was called the grey-eyed (glaukopis), while Hera was the cow-eyed (boopis). The first king of Athens was Cecrops; Ulysses’ wife was Penelope. Other examples abound. Some of these “-opes” stories are linked to Kos including the mythical king Triopas. Kos had been Greek since Mycenaean times, that is, before 1400 BC. Khios, however, only became Greek well after the year 1000 BC. In other words, it is difficult to explain a king with a name ending in “-ope” for an island that only became Greek so late. The two names Khios and Kos are also very similar. We know that when alphabetic writing first emerged among Semitic groups in Egypt around 18501800 BC, vowels were omitted. We also know that although the Aegans wrote out syllables rather than just consonants, they obtained their alphabet from the Phoenicians. Hence when we are comparing Khios and Kos, we are really comparing Khs and Ks. This can easily explain how Orion’s Khios might just as well have been present-day Kos. Khios can be seen as an old spelling for today’s Kos. In fact, matching the geographical details gleaned from the the story to an atlas, Orion’s Khios can only be today’s Kos. We have already seen that a funnel exists between Santorini and Kos. No such path for a tsunami exists between Santorini and Khios. In the story, Orion threatened the daughter of the king of the island, that is, his prized possessions. At the southwestern tip of the island of Kos is the old town of Astypalea. The town would barely have been protected from the tsunami. Orion lost strength along the beaches of the king’s island, and in fact, given the angle, the tsunami would have lost some strength on Kos’ beaches. Orion proceeded further in the dark, which makes sense for us, since the volcanic cloud would have enveloped the area. Proceeding on its course, Orion went east, exactly as per the geographical map. Then Orion went back, exactly as one would expect, as the wave would have entered a narrow gulf known as Sinus Ceramicus and bounced back. Having lost its impetus, the wall of water would have returned to Kos. In fact, the tale tells us that Orion searched the island for the king.

90

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

At this point the story changes: dawn came, directing Orion elsewhere. And that is exactly what we would expect: the volcanic cloud was gone elsewhere and the weaker wave passing by Kos directed toward the west would have been picked up by the currents, which at that point in the Aegean head north, that is, toward the islands of Leros and Patmos. Those two islands were holy to Artemis and Apollon, which were said to have killed Orion, that is, they were the place where the wave finally abated having smashed against the hills of the two islands. In fact, one should notice that local tales on Leros and Patmos state that both islands were under water and the twin gods Artemis and Apollon brought them back up. Traces of the Santorini eruption can also be found in indirect evidence in Greek tradition. The event had been so powerful that the ancient inhabitants of the Aegean saw it as the manifestation of the gods. Survivors kept a memory of the eruption and transmitted it to later generations, ensuring that the eruption would constitute a watershed between earlier times and subsequent ones. Just like we divide history in ages (antiquity, the middle ages, etc.) the ancient population would now be living in the post-Santorini age. For instance, the Greeks of what we call the classical times (900 BC-300 AD) understood that different ages had replaced each other. They considered themselves to be living in a period they called the Age of Iron or the Age of Humankind. Hesiod’s Works and Days produced a list of what had been the earlier periods (lines 106-201). The Greek poet spoke of ages that more or less fit what modern archaeologists and historians have been able to piece together from the data in the Aegean. Hesiod’s first era, the golden age, was described as an time during which spirits came into existence. Empedokles of Akragas confirms the Greek belief in a historical golden age (Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903, Empedocles fragment 128). This age was followed by a less glamorous age of silver in which spirits of the netherworld came into existence. Subsequently came an age of bronze starting, we can reckon, around 2500 BC. According to Hesiod, this age was characterized by people who came from ash trees, ate no bread, knew of bronze but not iron, and were accustomed to war. We may be dealing with waves of immigrants from the Danube, who lived off hunting, herds, and pillaging agricultural communities which they encountered along their migrations. These populations would have reached the Aegean and its local cultures and suffered the same fate as the societies affected by the eruption of Santorini. The next age that Hesiod mentions was of “heroes” who fought and died during “noble” wars. Hesiod’s description pretty well matches the poorly understood period of time between the Santorini eruption and the rebirth Greek culture around 900 BC. Lastly, Hesiod mentions the period of iron. This was the period of time in which Hesiod considered himself to be living.

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT

91

Other classical Greeks also held the view that geographical Greece held a history. Looking at that history from an perspective different from Hesiod’s is the historian Herodotus (484-425 BC) who called the earlier inhabitants of Greece Pelasgoi. Herodotus credited them for having introduced certain religious practices to the ancestors of the Athenians. These rites, Herodotus tells us, were linked to pillars (Histories, 2.50.1) and thus were akin to rites among Semitic nations where the masseboth played an important part. In fact, until roughly 1450 BC, Egyptians called the people of the Aegean by the name Keftjw, which apparently means “the land of the pillar”. Similarly the historian Thucydides thought that before the Greeks, Pelasgoi had inhabited the land, and built—for instance—a wall near Athens (Peloponnesian Wars, 2.17). More pillar-related matter comes from the classical Greek philosopher Plato (428-348 BC) who spoke of a very ancient pre-Greek society which existed side by side at a time when Greeks only lived on the mainland. Described in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, this society ruled the island of Atlantis, the island named for Atlas, the pillar god holding the sky separate from the rest of the world (Atlantis literally means: “of Atlas”). Its wealth was considerable and was reflected by vast amounts of copper, gold, tin, and silver spread throughout the buildings and accumulated through trading activities. Iron is not mentioned, though, thus indicating a time after the Stone Age, and before the Iron Age, singling out the Bronze Age, which fits the time frame of the Santorini eruption. The main god was an earth/sea god that ruled the seas and manifested his displeasure by sending earthquakes, shaking islands and seas alike. Just like the destruction of several Aegean settlements by the eruption at Santorini, this society disappeared in a cataclysm that affected the mainland (Attica) as well as the sea (Atlas’ island), turning the latter into mud that made travel for ships impossible. The reason is quite simple: ships used to hug the coasts as long as possible, only venturing into the open sea when necessary. This practice allowed ships to quickly find refuge along a coast in cases when the winds would fall or storms would suddenly form. Journeying through mud or mud-tainted waters along the shores would place ships at high risk of either running into sands or hitting rocks which could not longer be seen because of the mud. The word Pelasgoi also appears in many other writers (e.g., Apollodorus) who deal with ancient times or the gods. The identity of these people is still unclear. The word Pelasgoi is today understood (although by no means proven) to mean “the-people-of-the-sea” (pelagos = sea). Some stories link it to a mythical Pelasgus, son of a god. However, linking it to Peleus (Achilles’ father in the Homeric texts) would be as good: Pelasgoi would be the people on the land (ge) of Peleus. Attempts at identifying the exact nature of the Pelasgoi have yielded different results. In the idealized version of the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (summed up in her The Language of the Goddess, 1989) these populations would have

92

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

been pacific people of the culture termed “Old Europe” thus predating the arrivals of warlike Indo-Europeans. Links have been proposed between the Pelasgoi and the Etruscans who migrated from the Aegean to Italy, flourishing there from 800 BC onwards. It is not clear whether Herodotus’ Pelasgoi and the Minoan civilization on Crete are one and the same. The Odyssey mentions the presence of Pelasgoi on Crete as one of the many nations on that island (Odyssey, 19.177). Whoever they were, it is safe to assume that they ended up assimilating into a Greek melting pot.

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT FIGURE 1 The “corridor” in which the tsunami Orion formed.

Khios

Ios

Amorgos

Cinarus

Lebinthus

Kos

O RID COR

Calymnus

Sinus Ceramicus

R

Santorini Anaphi

Amphidus

Astypalea

FIGURE 2 Tsunami Orion moves within the “corridor” and enters the cul-de-sac.

Khios

Kos Santorini

Sinus Ceramicus

FIGURE 3 Tsunami Orion weakened bounces off the cul-de-sac, is picked up by the current, and crashes against Leros and Patmos.

Khios

Patmos Leros

Kos

Santorini Current

Sinus Ceramicus

93

94

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 1. Ancient Greek view of the world and historical events. Ages Age of SilverAge of Heroes Gold- Bronze / Gods Historical events Before Santorini’s Between eruption Santorini’s eruption and the collapse of Mycenaean Greece Populations Pelasgoi Achaeans/ Mycenaeans (i.e., Early Greeks) History of Lydia Tantalus Lydus’ dynasty Years Uncertain Uncertain - 1180 BC

Age of Iron / Humankind After the collapse of Mycenaean Greece Greeks (classical times) Heraclid dynasty After 1180 BC

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT As beautifully researched by Peter Warren (“Minoan Crete and Pharaonic Egypt,” in: Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant, 1995), early contacts between the Greek world and Ancient Egypt were rather frequent. Several clues in both countries indicate that the two nations traded with each other. This relationship, however, was brutally interrupted sometimes around 1625-1525 BC. It is within this context that we can place a statement by Apollodorus. In his Library, the ancient Greek writer mentions the flight of the Aegean élite. As Zeus was battling Typhon, the other Greek gods (and thus the royals, since the king and the royal family represented the gods on earth) set off for Egypt where they hid. The same tale reappears in other classical authors such as Ovid (Metamorphoses, 5.319), Antoninus Liberalis (28), and Hyginus (Fabulae, 196, and Astronomica, 2.28). Leaving Greece for Egypt may seem counterintuitive since the latter country was also being hit with the aftermath of the volcanic activity. Egypt , however, was famous for being able to provide food: it was the granary of the Eastern Mediterranean. Even in times of general dearth, Egypt still managed to be better off than its neighbors. Moreover, damages in Egypt had not been as extensive as in Greece which was littered with ash and had also been severely crippled by earthquakes, tsunamis, and in a limited area, lava. Finally, there was a sizeable Greek colony already established in Egypt and the refugees from the Aegean would find a temporary haven among their countrymen. For instance, the records of the ancient pre-Greek society described by the classical Greek philosopher Plato (428-348 BC) had been obtained in Egypt. More precisely, they came from the Sapi-Meht, the temple of the goddess Neith (in Egyptian: Nit) in the town of Sais (Sau) in the western part of the Nile Delta. One must infer that Aegean survivors made it to Egypt and had asked for assistance at a temple hosting a goddess with a similar profile to Athena’s in Greece. Additionally, a temple to Uat, an Egyptian goddess identified with Leto— which we have seen represented the volcanic cloud from the first phase of the Santorini eruption—existed in Buto (Tep) in the central part of the Nile Delta. The implication is that Greek survivors would have either built the temple 95

96

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

(along the lines of the Telchines who escaped from Rhodes) or made offerings at the site. From the digs directed by Prof. Manfred Bietak Avaris (Avaris, The Capital of the Hyksos, Recent Excavations at Tell el-Dab`a, 1996), we also know that Minoans had lived for a long time at Avaris (Hawaret) in the eastern Nile Delta from 1775 BC onwards. We know that they continued to live in the town for generations to come even after Ahmose retook the town from the Hyksos in 1567 BC. A palace in Aegean style was built around that time. A few decades later, an Egyptian scribe wrote on a piece of wood a list of foreign names that were in use in that part of Egypt. When discussing the biblical tenth plague, we also notice that the Greeks knew of a time when king Busiris consulted the oracle of a god to ward off some disaster that was affecting Egypt. Busiris is not exactly the name of a king, but a town in the central part of the Nile Delta. The town was holy to the Egyptian god Osiris. Therefore, the Busiris in Apollodorus’ tale (Apollodorus, Library, 2.5.11) simply means “representative of Osiris”, and hence “king (or warlord) of Egypt”. The oracle had asked for human sacrifices of foreigners. Yet the tale ends with the king himself and his son being put to death. Somehow the Greeks had conserved a version of the tenth plague of Egypt. Finally, the Greeks were well aware that the second phase of the Santorini disaster had reached Egypt. Pherekydes of Syros, the author of a theogony, kept a memory thereof. He stated that the battle between Ophioneos and Kronos was the model for the fight between Typhon and the gods in Egypt. His statement, echoed in Hesiod’s own Theogony, states that Typhon went as far as the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Herodotus (Histories, 2.6.1), Plutarch (Anthony, 3), and Suidas in his dictionary at the voice Osiris, all report that Egyptian lore stated that Typhon was buried under the marshes bordering the northern coastline of the Sinai. Possibly, the most compelling evidence for Santorini affecting both Greece and Egypt at the same time comes from the story of Phaethon and Epaphos (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.751-2.400). Phaethon means “shining”, as his name is built on the word phôôs (light, hence phaeínoo = I shine). The story claims he was one of the many sons of the sun god. However, his father had no interest in revealing his identity to mortals and thus Phaethon was left bragging about his lineage without being able to prove it. At the same time, Phaethon exposed himself to ridicule and his friend, the Egyptian Epaphos, mocked him. Pestering his father to let him show some divine attribute, Phaethon asked to drive the chariot of the sun and thus reveal his true divine nature to the whole world and leave Epaphos speechless. With great difficulty, Phaethon obtained the chariot of the sun from his divine father who told him exactly how to drive the vehicle, stopping at all the signs, how to make turns, and all the other advice parents give their children today when lending them the family car.

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT

97

No differently from today’s youth on the road, Phaethon then plowed away in the sky. No differently from most youths today, his lack of experience made him a poor driver, and he guided the sun unskillfully. As he steered away from the sun’s usual tracks, the earth chilled. As he came too close, woods, meadows, and cities were all reduced to piles of ashes. A thick smoke covered the sky and obliterated the sight of the very sun for one full day. Phaethon had wrecked the chariot and caused a disaster all around him. Rivers were seething, half of the world was getting smoked, explaining—the tale assures us—the darker complexion of many nations. Among the many consequences, all seven branches of the Nile Delta were clogged with dust. As a direct result of Phaethon’s action, and as an indirect result of Epaphos’ arrogance, the world was coming to an end. Since the sun god was not prepared to kill its own blood, Zeus took it upon itself to fix the mess. Before the world was totally reduced to ashes—the story goes—the god Zeus struck Phaethon dead to the ground with a thunderbolt. He then extinguished the fires by flooding the world with water. This part of the story contains some more juicy tidbits, which we will consider later on. Upset, the sun god did not have the will to attack the powerful Zeus, and thus looked for scapegoats. He sought the round-eyed giants, which had forged the thunderbolt, and annihilated them, turning the workshop of the smith god into an empty and an inactive shop. The gods banded together and exiled the sun god to punish its action. Classical Greeks either accepted the tale, or wondering what the root of the story was, guessed that a comet had hit the ground. Several such objects were said to have come from the sky, at times with heavy damage for the impacted area. Remnants of the comets had either been worshipped as divine messengers from the stars (e.g., at Emesa in Syria and Pessinus in Anatolia) or mined for the high content of native iron (e.g., in Egypt). The Greek philosopher Plato (428-348 BC), quoting a 6th century BC source, saw the myth as such (Timaeus, 22c-22d). His comments colored the view of future generations down to these days. We do not have any record, however, of a comet striking the earth and causing disasters affecting the whole Middle East in historical times. Neither geology, nor archaeological digs, nor historical sources attest to any disaster due to the impact of a huge comet in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea in historical times. Rather than the effects of a comet, the story of Phaethon bears a striking resemblance to the Santorini eruption. The anonymous author who crafted the original Phaethon story later transmitted by Apollodorus et al. provided an explanation for the end of the world: gods behaved like humans causing a disaster of unequaled proportions. Let us start by introducing the characters of the play. We have already seen that Phaethon means shining. His provocateur was Epaphos, which is understood to

98

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

be the Greek rendering of the Egyptian word Apopi (at times also present as Ipep, as in the tomb of Ahmose at Abydos). In ancient Egypt, Apopi was the god of the Nile Delta, but was understood in the rest of the country to be a demonic force. Kings from the Nile Delta or forces associated with storms and the like would all qualify as Apopi. One such king is known from historical and archaeological records: Apopi, ruler of the Hyksos occupiers of Egypt in the Middle Bronze Age. One should bear in mind that any king associated with the demonic force would be an Apopi, though. The other characters are the sun god, the storm god Zeus, the round-eyed workers of the smith god, etc. They all form the cast for the drama. Let us now look at this drama which happens to match the dynamics of the twophase eruption at Santorini. The early phase is described as Phaethon burning parts of the world and cooling other parts. The burning would appropriately describe the eruption, while the cold would appropriately describe the so-called “nuclear winter” associated with the large release of volcanic particles in the air. As we saw in the biblical texts, unusual storms and hail hit Egypt. Similarly, Canaanite texts indicate that agriculture failed after the castration of the god (red ash littering the soil and waters indicating the first phase of the eruption). “The Nile” that “hid its head, all seven branches, under the dust” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2.254-256) as Phaethon was driving erratically well describes the fallout over the Nile Delta. And then we have the sad ending of the whole affair. Phaethon did not pick up any exciting sky or star goddess and instead was sent to a crashing death. This part of the tale is consistent with the second phase of the eruption. The sound of that explosion could have been construed as Phaethon falling. The lava and other ejects from the volcano could be construed as the pieces of Phaethon’s body. And then we have the father, who finally takes notice of the son. Looking for revenge, the god does not pick on the killer, but on those who are smaller than itself, the one-eyed giants. The killing of the giants can be lumped in with the second phase of the eruption. The banishment is actually the most interesting part, as the god leaves the earth without sun for several years mimicking the “nuclear winter” that would have lasted over the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea after the eruption was over. The Phaethon story also has some additional interesting material. Going back to Zeus-the-fireman, the god sent tidal waves to extinguish the fire. We know from the scientific reconstruction that the second phase was by far more powerful than the earlier one and the earthquakes and tidal waves involved would have been greater and more numerous. It is therefore not strange to find that the Greeks preserved a tale that describes this flood in further details. As an appendix to the story of Phaethon,

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT

99

Greek lore mentions that the flood sent by Zeus was the same one on the waves of which Deucalion sailed, fleeing for his life. Informed by the gods of the incoming waves, Deucalion built a boat in which he found refuge with his wife, Pyrrha. The boat finally rested on Mount Parnassus, towering over the temple of Delphi. The local oracle told the couple to take stones and throw them over their heads. In tossing the stones, Deucalion begat males and Pyrrha females. Then the earth was regenerated and was restored to its normal course (Apollodorus, Library, 1.7.2-3 and 1.45-51). Exactly as anticipated, the tale of Deucalion describes a portion of the aftermath of Santorini. Starting with the names, the couple of Deucalion and Pyrrha indicate volcanism. The former name can be traced back to the Greek verbs deúein (to flood), and kaíein (to burn). Hence Deucalion would have been a burning flood, just like a flow of lava. The latter name can be traced back to the words pyros (fire) and rhein (to flow, a verb used for rivers). Thus, Pyrrha was flowing fire, making her the female counterpart of the male principle expressed in Deucalion. Deucalion’s tale goes on to state that the couple reached a holy mountain. Apollodorus calls it Parnassus, which is traditionally identified with a mountain west of Athens. There Deucalion and Pyrrha tossed stones behind their back, generating humankind anew. This part of the story fits again what one would expect from the Santorini eruption: survivors reached a site that from that time onwards became a shrine. Let us accept for argument’s sake that the site was the mountain now known as Parnassus. There the survivors of the eruption would have performed rites intended to ensure the help of the gods. Those who escaped the tossed stones were the survivors, that is, the founders of the new humanity in that part of the world. We have not finished milking the tale of Phaethon yet, for it has more to offer. Across from Santorini lies the western coast of Anatolia. Roughly midway along the coast is the town of Ephesos. We do not exactly know when the town was founded. It may have existed at the time Santorini erupted or it may have been built later, and thus by people who would have some more or less conscious memory of the eruption. In that town around the year 500 BC lived the philosopher Herakleitos. We understand that he came from a priestly caste, and may have had access to information not available to other people. His name means “glory of the goddess Hera”, yet can also be translated as “Heraclid”, that is, descendant of the warriors who took over Anatolia in a distant past (possibly in the aftermath of the Santorini eruption as a new political world order was emerging across the eastern basin of the Mediterranean). In either case, this thinker appears to have conserved a better understanding of the Theogony, than the one proposed by Hesiod himself. Herakleitos mocked the poet for repeating tales without understanding the meaning behind

100

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

them (Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903, Herakleitos fragments 40 and 57). Herakleitos was also well versed in Egyptian culture (Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903, Herakleitos fragments 6, 98, and 119) and his philosophy appears to bridge Greek thought and Egyptian theology. Many of his statements are quite similar to quotations from Egyptian works. For instance, he places souls smelling in the underworld (Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903, Herakleitos fragment 98). Herakleitos understands the world as continuously developing. As entities change, any snapshot of the universe becomes purely arbitrary. Hence even what may appear as most beautiful or most desirable order for the world, holds the same value as a heap of refuse (Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903, Herakleitos fragment 124). His example regarding the continuous becoming of entities has echoed through the centuries and is usually paraphrased in Greek as pánta rhei (everything flows). He likens the world to a river in which one cannot bathe twice because the waters have already changed. The world itself flows, states Herakleitos, and the way it does this is by exchanging fire which in his eyes is a common currency among the entities constituting the universe. In other words, fire ushers and ensures change. Fire also brings us to the point we want to make about Santorini. Herakleitos’ work has survived in quotations or paraphrases by other authors. In one such fragment we have a short sentence that might as well have been printed in a newspaper the day after Santorini erupted (if newspapers existed at the time, that is). Herakleitos stated that the thunderbolt rules the universe (Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903, Herakleitos fragment 64). His statement would be an apt title for an article on a daily paper. He also states that the fire could be equated with dearth and abundance (Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903, Herakleitos fragment 65) which indeed is what volcanoes bring: famine at the time of the eruption, yet a very fertile soil, that in later years will provide rich harvests. Another link between earth and fire is illustrated by fragments 31 and 76 in which Herakleitos states that earth becomes fire which becomes air which becomes water. Although it may sound like nonsense at first, we have here a very succinct retelling of the dynamics of the Santorini eruption as observable on the western coast of Anatolia: the island spat fire which generated airborne particles carried by winds which later contaminated the waters. Last but not least, Herakleitos also stated that if the sun were to run astray the Erinyes would hunt it down (Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903, Herakleitos fragment 94). Somehow Herakleitos had inherited earlier lore from his homeland, the area around Ephesos, which speaks of a time when the sun faltered and the Erinyes were called to reestablish the order. Presenting the Erinyes as servants of world order, Herakleitos’ statement is still compatible with a time when an event here understood as the sun faltering preceded the appearance of a second event, here represented as the intervention of the Erin-

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT

101

yes. In other words, Herakleitos presents the same story of Santorini erupting, and severe punishment meted out as a result, from a different angle. These data are confirmed by records conserved by yet another region. In fact, Anatolian documentation both describes the eruption of Santorini and its socioeconomical consequences, and enables a better definition of the path of the clouds from both the first (red ash) and the second (darkness) phase. In his De Dea Syria (= Book on the Syrian Goddess), Lucian of Samosata (2nd century AD) provides a lengthy account of rituals and sites linked to the Santorini eruption. People came from across the Levant (modern Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq) in pilgrimage to a town where the shrine was considered so holy that the Greeks called the town Hierapolis, that is, Town of the Holies. The shrine, Lucian tells us, had been built by the same Deucalion whom the Greeks credited with surviving the flood of the world. He was said to have identified at Hierapolis a hole through which most of the water was funneled down into the entrails of the earth. Although the shrine was linked to Deucalion, it was far from being Greek. The local earth goddess was represented between two lions, a common depiction in Phrygia. Next to her was a god sitting between two bulls, as was common among the Canaanites. A third golden statue, known as Semeion, was placed between the gods. Statues and altars (to Atlas, Hermes, Ilithya, Helen, Hekube, and others) abounded inside the temple and in the precincts around it. Apollon was represented clothed rather than naked as Greeks understood Apollon to be, and its statue shook when it intended to render an oracle. If the priests failed to lift the statue, it started to sweat. Porters then took it and the high priest asked questions. If the god approved, the statue would make the porters move forward, while if it disapproved, the porters would walk back. The statue also dictated the two times a year when the golden statue between the gods had to be brought to the sea. At the coast, people would take water and place it in jars that were sealed and then brought back to the shrine. The Semitic goddess Semiramis had a special place at the shrine. Following its request that the Syrians only revere Semiramis, the sky dumped diseases and disasters on the land. The goddess gave up, and asked the Syrians to pay homage to the earth goddess instead. At the shrine were priests and servants as well as women described as crazy and fanatic. The origin of the priests was attributed to a love story between a certain Queen Stratonike and her servant Kombabos. The priests cut themselves while dancing at a ceremony at which more priests would be consecrated. The priest-to-be, entering into frenzy, would lift his garments and castrate himself with a ritual knife. He would then run through the town and toss his member into a house which would then give him new clothes. Additional sacrifices were performed by hanging animals alive from stumps of trees. Only pigs, considered

102

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

unclean, could not be sacrificed. Even children, closed in bags, and then tossed down the entrance, which looks to the north, were so sacrificed. Finally, priests sat for a week on the tops of pillars and prayed. Finally, processions of the statues of the gods were made to the nearby lake. People took great care to be sure that the statue of the earth goddess arrived there before the statue of the god, lest the fish in the lake would die. Though the shrine may have been around for a long time, and though it may have incorporated different traditions over time (e.g., the Anatolian traditions exemplified by hermaphroditism and the goddess between the lions, as well as the Semitic traditions exemplified by the god between the bulls), Lucian provides data that bears a striking resemblance to the aftermath of the Santorini eruption. In the first place, Deucalion was said to have been linked to the shrine. The story of Semiramis may offer another parallel. The wrath of a divinity resulting in an airborne disaster is compatible with the ash from the first phase of the Santorini eruption. At the same time, the sacrifice of children to the northern side of the temple makes sense in light of the human sacrifices in Egypt (the tenth biblical plague). The sacrifice being performed at Hierapolis looking north must have been following the fact that, for that locality, the second volcanic plume, as we have determined, came exactly from that direction. Philo of Byblos, who compiled the records of the Canaanite nation, confirms the scenario already seen in the Canaanite retelling of the theogonies and the tradition at Hierapolis. Philo, in his work—which only survives through quotations by other authors—stated that there was a time when plagues and death hit the country of the Canaanites. As a result, the god El sacrificed his own son to Epigeios Autochthon. Soon afterwards he lost one more son, Mo-úth (i.e., death). Another fragment by Philo states that children, and more precisely the most loved ones, were being sacrificed according to precise mystic rites. The god El himself sacrificed his only child Ieoúd (i.e., only child) at a time of war and turmoil. This same time was also characterized by the god traveling to southern Egypt, entrusting the town of Byblos to the earth goddess Baaltis, as well as the town of Beirut to the sea god Yam and to minor gods protecting people from earthquakes. As a result of the journey, southern Egypt was given to Taautos, a ruler serving Thoth, the Egyptian god of sciences. The scenario that emerges from Philo’s fragments is that of a point in time when the Canaanite world was under the rule of a divided Egypt that was engulfed in a civil war. Thus, placing Byblos and Beirut under the protection of local earth divinities indicates that the Hyksos pulled out their troops from the cities and entrusted the cities to local warlords, who probably swore allegiance to the local gods. The move was probably the result of a reorganization of the Egyptian forces in order to conduct the campaign in southern Egypt.

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT

103

Elements that emerge from these fragments indicate that is was a time of disasters, a time of war, a time of sacrifices, and a time during which Canaan was closely linked to Egypt and possibly also to the Greeks. While we know that Santorini’s eruption resulted in disasters which had sociopolitical consequences, we find again a confirmation of human sacrifices performed to appease the gods. The chronological time frame for these events appears to indicate that they took place when Egypt was bloodied by a civil war in which northern Egypt pulled troops from Canaan in order to establish its power over southern Egypt. Of all the conflicts that ancient Egypt faced, this one would find a parallel only in the Hyksos years. Turning once more to the biblical texts, there are at least two additional passages from that would interlink the Hebrews, Greece, and Egypt. The first passage comes from the Hebrew prophet Amos (lived around 750 BC), who speaks of a time when God intervened and the earth melted, that is, a time when a volcanic eruption took place. Linked to those times are mass movements of people. The Hebrews left Egypt, the Greeks fled from Crete, and the Syrians were on the road. The Lord, God of hosts, he who touches the earth and it melts, and all who live in it mourn, and all of it rises like the Nile, and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt; who builds his upper chambers in the heavens, and founds his vault upon the earth; who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out upon the surface of the earth—the LORD is his name. “Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel?”, says the LORD. “Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?” Am. 9.5-7 The second passage is a letter from around 150 BC sent from the Spartan Greeks to the Jews. The text was included in the first book of the Maccabees. The Spartan leader claims that Greeks and Jews share a common blood bond, that is, a common origin. The text goes: King Arius of the Spartans, to the high priest Onias, greetings. It has been found in writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews that they are brothers and are of the family of Abraham. And now that we have learned this, please write us concerning your welfare; we on our part write to you that your livestock and your property belong to us, and ours belong to you. We therefore command that our envoys report to you accordingly. 1 Macc. 12.20-23 The statement sounds odd to the ears of historians: when did the Hebrews and the Greeks meet before Alexander the Great’s invasion around 335 BC? How

104

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

and when did the Greeks and the Hebrews live together? Some people think that the Philistines were Greeks, and thus the meeting would have taken place earlier. The relationship between the two cultures turned out to be rather confrontational. Alexander the Great invaded the Jewish land and installed his governor, who later became an official of the Seleucid state. That state started a genocidal war on the Jews with purges, riots, forced assimilation, desecration of sites, massacres, etc. Refusing to pay homage to the gods of the Seleucids, the Hebrews conducted guerrilla and traditional warfare until the Seleucids withdrew. This is not the brotherly relation described, which must have had roots elsewhere. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, the Jewish text reports a Greek letter stating the contrary: there was a time when the ancestors of the Spartans and the Jews lived together like brothers. When? Where? The reconstruction of the biblical plagues provides the answers: Hebrews and Aegeans—who later became Jews and Greeks—both lived in the Nile Delta at the time of the biblical plagues. At the time both nations lived in Egypt, Greek colonists had settled in the Nile Delta and Hebrews had settled on its eastern flank. Both populations went through the same tribulations on a foreign soil, tribulations stemming from the aftermath of the Santorini eruption. This shared past in a land foreign to both groups could be considered a brotherly bond. Now the biblical passage makes sense. Yet, what about the former passage in which the Greeks are said to have left at the time the Arameans took over Syria? The Santorini eruption would have disrupted all areas affected by the ash: first and foremost Greece, then Egypt, but also other areas such as Syria, which would have been weakened and therefore easily targeted by other populations. Apparently, all of the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean recorded the Santorini eruption. Greeks (or proto-Greeks, or paleo-Greeks) who survived kept a memory thereof, a memory that was going to fade away as the generations transmitting the records no longer recognized the facts behind the mythic expressions in which the eruption had been handed down. Hurrian-Hittites from Anatolia also had their own story based on the events, with Kumarbi usurping the throne of the gods and then generating Ullikummi to face Teshub. Across the Syrian-Canaanite world we have several tales of the volcanic event, for example, in the Ugarit tablets, in the account of Philo of Byblos, and in the tradition kept alive at Hierapolis. Egypt was also hit by the ash. Scientific data on this matter are unquestionable. Foreign communities in Egypt recorded the event. Greeks tell of a time when their élite went in exile there as Greece was being overrun by the fight among the gods. Greeks tell us that an Egyptian king had dared a quasi-god to prove his paternity, thus triggering the disaster, which the gods tried to fix by sending tsunamis and extinguishing the fire that Phaethon had spread throughout

CHAPTER 9 GREECE AND EGYPT IN THE SAME BOAT

105

the world. Greeks left traces at Sais, at Buto and at Avaris, three towns in northern Egypt. The Hebrews who were living there also kept a record of the eruption, even enshrining—as they maintain—that it was part of a divine plan. Does it stand to reason that Egyptians did not record the event? Is it possible that there are no Egyptian records of Santorini’s eruption and therefore of the biblical plagues?

106

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE FIGURE 1 Map of sites/cultures mentioning the aftermath of the Santorini eruptions

Black Sea

HURRIAN-HITTITES Hierapolis o

Ephesos o Marsyas River

AEGEAN Taygetus range

Leros Patmos

Lycia Ugarit o Kos

Santorini

Rhodes

Byblos o

Mediterranean Sea CANAAN EGYPT

Sais o

Buto o oAvaris GOSHEN

CHAPTER 10 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: THE DAY THE GODS VISITED THE NILE DELTA The research done so far has consistently indicated that the plagues that hit Egypt were the result of volcanic ash that spread southeast from Santorini. Canaanite, Greek, Hebrew, and Hurrian-Hittite records, as well as scientific data, all agree on this point. Two things, however, are still missing to complete the picture: Egyptian parallels (i.e., written by Egyptians rather than by foreigners living in Egypt) and a date (right now we only have a vague indication that the eruption happened sometime in the Bronze Age). Egyptian documents often stated the name of the scribe, the day, the month, and the year of the reign of the king ruling at the time. Thus, the identification of an Egyptian text paralleling the biblical narrative may also automatically provide the date! We will therefore look into the vast literature from Egypt’s Bronze Age. Given the enormity of the task, we will first probe the literature by using Egyptian documents that clearly spell out disasters. Hopefully, they will provide a shortcut to the answer we are looking for. Disasters have been routinely documented by Egyptian scribes. For instance, the Famine Stela at Sehel Island retells a drought that took place during the reign of Djoser (2650 BC). Additionally, the Pyramid Texts found in the pyramids of Unas and Teti in Saqqara (cataloged as Pyr. 273-274) and datable to 2350 BC speak of the dead king hunting the gods for food, and retell some events that took place in the sky and horrified the Egyptians (a large comet passing by? an unusual conjunction of planets? an unusual eclipse?). Another example for a separate drought comes from the Biography of Ankhtify (2150 BC or earlier). This warlord from the 3rd nome in Upper Egypt brags about the fact that, unlike the rest of the country, in his territory no one went hungry. He even exported barley at a time—so he says—that people across Egypt were committing acts of cannibalism in order to survive. Thus, it stands to reason that Egyptian records of the plagues would also exist. The hallmark of the catastrophes that would provide the desired parallels 107

108

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

must—as per the Greek records—reflect a time when Greece and Egypt traded heavily during Minoan times, that is, after 1775 BC and before 1450 BC. The first such document is the so-called storm stela. The text describes a serious disaster that took place in Egypt and hopefully constitutes an Egyptian parallel to the biblical plagues. The record was engraved on a slab of stone (in Greek: stela, hence the name of the document) and is today known as the storm stela. The royal name used in the text indicates Ahmose-who-is-to-unify-the-country, a name used prior to Ahmose’s victory over the Hyksos, and thus before 1567 BC. Additionally, the text indicates that Ahmose was going to the provincial (rather than the national) capital, Thebes, to be crowned, pointing either to the very beginning of his rule, that is, around 1581 BC, or to the time the Hyksos were faltering, and reunification was in sight, that is, a decade later. The beauty of this text, and the approximate date linked to it, is that—at first sight—they would fit early theories about a common flight from Egypt of two populations, the Hebrews and the Hyksos. We have already seen that the Hyksos had been expelled by Ahmose’s advancing armies. Although not attested archaeologically due to the lack of evidence along the road between the Nile Delta and Canaan, the flight of the Hyksos is attested historically by several Egyptian documents and by the collapse of the Hyksos power first in Egypt and then in Canaan. Many ancient writers had claimed that the two flights coincided. The Jewish historian Josephus (1st century AD) equated Avaris with the city from which the exodus took place (Against Apion, 1.14). This view was shared by Clement of Alexandria (2nd century AD), who stated that the exodus took place at the time Ahmose ruled Egypt (Stromata, 21). The same thought is found in Tatian (2nd century AD), who adds that Ahmose was a contemporary of the Greek ruler Inachos (To the Greeks, 38). Lending support to these ancient statements is recent archaeological evidence from Avaris. The town had been evacuated at the end of the anti-Hyksos uprising in 1567 BC. The Hyksos left their Egyptian capital en masse for their fortified towns in Canaan. In his book Avaris, The Capital of the Hyksos (1996), Austrian archaeologist Prof. Manfred Bietak, who excavated the ruins thereof, raised the question whether the Hebrew exodus may have been modeled on the Hyksos escape. Summarizing the findings of his teams, Prof. Bietak argues that the Hebrew exodus may preserve the memory of thousands of refugees leaving Avaris as Ahmose entered the city. In fact, the biblical text itself states that at the time the Hebrews left, many non-Hebrews also left with them (Ex. 12.38). The storm stela text was published and commented on by Karen Polinger Foster and Robert K. Ritner as part of “Texts, Storms, and the Thera Eruptions” in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies 55 (1996): 1-14. The two authors state that the storm mentioned on the stela could be linked back to the aftermath of the Santorini eruption, and thus ought to be part of the biblical plagues, albeit in

CHAPTER 10 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: THE DAY THE GODS VISITED THE NILE DELTA

109

an area where the Hebrews did not live. Other scholars, such as Malcolm H. Wiener and James P. Allen disagree. In “Separate Lives: The Ahmose Stela and the Thera Eruption”, also published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies (57 (1998): 1-28), it is pointed out that the storm took place in the southern part of the country and can be linked to standard monsoons, which at times also hit southern Egypt. The text on the stela mentions Ahmose as the king of the land and chosen by the sun god Ra. However, while the shrine of Amon was in Thebes, the king was living at Sedjefa-Tawy, an unknown site probably not too far from Dendera. The god appeared angry that the king’s court was not in the town hosting the shrine. Then the wrath of the god exploded, manifesting itself as a huge storm that came from the western horizon. The resulting downpour was massive, lasting a long time. The rain destroyed homes and people could not light torches because of the continuous rain. The king was astonished by the violence of the rain, and went on record stating that this outburst of the great god (i.e., Amon) was even stronger than what had been perceived as being the planned punishment of the gods. The king then went to Thebes to pay homage to the god and proceeded to fix the country. Not only did he fix the damage from the rain, but he also fixed earlier damage done to temples which had been caused either by neglect or by voluntary vandalism (or both). Thus, here we do have a real and huge disaster, which took place in Egypt and is attested in Egyptian records. More precisely, we have here a huge storm, which came from the west and devastated southern Egypt around Dendera and Thebes. We have already established that the plagues were a chain reaction of events started by a volcanic eruption. The storm in the storm stela may have been one of the many storms that were triggered by the volcanic dust over Egypt after the eruption. If this is the case, it is also quite easy to explain why the disaster recorded at Thebes-Dendera is not found in the biblical texts: the Hebrews lived in the eastern Nile Delta, over 500 kilometers (300 miles) away. The same way the biblical texts did not record the disasters in the Aegean and Lycia, they also did not report those in southern Egypt. Understandably so, the Torah reported what the Hebrews witnessed. The alternative explanation—that monsoons could have brought the rain— does not hold, for the monsoon would have come from the southeast, and the text speaks of a storm from the western sky. There is, therefore, the chance that this storm is part of the wider context of the aftermath of Santorini’s eruption. Thus, we must look carefully and see whether this text offers an Egyptian parallel to the disasters triggered by the Santorini ash, some of which have been recorded as the biblical plagues of Egypt.

110

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Thus, the question why Ahmose was not at the palace in Thebes and traveled across Egypt instead may shed some light on the whole document and determine the relationship between Ahmose and the plagues. We know that Ahmose had inherited the leadership position in the fight against the Hyksos. Ahmose had taken over the role of leading the uprising after his brother Khamose had been killed. For fourteen years (1581-1567 BC) Ahmose fought the Hyksos, finally taking their capital Avaris after a protracted siege. The war went on for three more years during which Ahmose’s army raided Canaan, destroying the Hyksos strongholds in that country, too. Khamose, Ahmose’s older brother, had himself fought the Hyksos. A record of this can be found in the Khamose stelae which provides an insight into the dynamics of the first three years of war between the Thebans and the Hyksos. We do not know for how long Khamose fought the Hyksos, but we do know that Khamose was killed and his “task” was then passed on to Ahmose. The “task” had been given to Khamose from his father, Seqenenre Tao, who himself had fought the Hyksos and had been killed in the process. In fact, Seqenenre Tao is credited—if starting the war is to be counted to anyone’s credit—with having risen against the Hyksos and started a war of liberation against their occupation. Papyrus Sallier I tells the story of how the uprising started, but we do not know the exact date when the riot took place. Neither do we know how many years Seqenenre Tao fought the Hyksos. As the saying goes, the one who lives by the sword, will die by the sword. Seqenenre Tao is one such case: the Theban leader was fatally wounded in combat. Going back to Ahmose, we can have a glimpse as to how—or why—he was traveling: either he was fighting the Hyksos or he was reorganizing the land after his victory. Since the text states that he ought to have been in Thebes rather than going across Egypt, we opt for the latter. In other words, the storm took place after the outcome of the war was clear, that is, toward 1567 BC or just before. Another indication that the war was over can be seen in the last lines of the storm stela. Ahmose rebuilds what had been destroyed by the rain and does something additional: he fixes temples that had been damaged by prior events, either through neglect or deliberate damage. Rebuilding damages from a war usually takes place after the war is over. Moreover, from other texts (e.g., Papyrus Sallier I) we know that the Hyksos were devout to a storm god, identified by the Egyptians with Seth. The Hyksos also appear to have conducted a religious war against the Egyptians, perhaps in an attempt to assimilate them into their own culture. Ahmose fixing the temples fits quite well, then, with a time after the war against the Hyksos. As per the text, king Ahmose did not live at Thebes, but at Sedjefa-Tawy, an encampment, possibly military, somewhere. In this case, the text specifies that

CHAPTER 10 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: THE DAY THE GODS VISITED THE NILE DELTA

111

he was south of Dendera at the time. One could understand the passage as indicating that the king, rather than staying in the capital and performing his royal duties was traveling across the country. The text does not state why the king was crisscrossing Egypt, but implies that there was no reason to do it, or at least no reason to do it any longer. His rightful place was now back at the ancestral capital, Thebes. The implication is that this storm was not part of a series of disasters, but rather a single, separate event that had no previous history. In fact, the author of the stela quotes the king stating that this storm was much more powerful than a planned punishment of the gods (Storm stela, line 12). In other words, the author and the king distinguish between this specific storm and some other event that unfolded according to a plan and was attributed to the whole Egyptian pantheon. This plan, this step-by-step unfolding of actions that gods, but not men, could bring, may well be a reference to the aftermath of Santorini’s eruption which in northern Egypt was recorded as the biblical plagues. One may ask how one storm could be more powerful than a whole series of disasters. In southern Egypt, where Thebes was located, the plagues would not have caused the same kind of disasters that took place in the Nile Delta. In the first place, Thebes is further away, roughly 1200 kilometers (725 miles) from Santorini (Fig. 2). Hence, its exposure to ash would have been less than the Nile Delta (800 kilometers or 500 miles from Santorini). Secondly, ash falling upstream of the Nile Delta would have been carried hither due to the flow of the river, unlike the Nile Delta, which also got exposed—through muds—to ash that fell elsewhere. Thirdly, the geographical distance would have mitigated the severity of the “nuclear winter” over Thebes. There are additional elements that tell us that the storm cannot be part of the plagues. If it was, it is not clear how Ahmose would have been able to repair the disasters in the part of the country under his control while at the same time wage a successful war against the Hyksos. Additionally, Ahmose even went on waging three more years of war in Canaan and securing Hyksos fortresses in that land. Confirmation of such a time frame comes from a slightly earlier text, the so-called Khamose stelae (plural, because the text was found written on two slabs of stone). On the stelae, Ahmose’s brother Khamose recorded his military achievements against the Hyksos. The Theban leader was battling on two fronts: Hyksos to the north and their Nubian allies to the south. In spite of this handicap, he had brought his troops all the way to the walls of Avaris. He had come so close that he could see the royal harem. He had also plundered the vineyard of the Hyksos king. This description of Avaris and the nearby countryside does not match the Avaris destroyed by the biblical plagues. Hail, storms, and locusts had devas-

112

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

tated the agriculture. Vineyeards, fig trees, and olive trees had been seriously damaged. The only way Khamose could have enjoyed the vineyards just outside Avaris would have been if they had been replanted after the plagues or if the plagues took place later, that is, in the very first years of a unified Egypt. The conclusion is that the storm stela speaks of a disaster that is distinct and took place later than the biblical plagues, although a more exact date for the storm (around 1570-1565 BC) cannot be provided at this point in time. However, the storm stela is known to to have been chiseled during the wars against the Hyksos, and before Ahmose took over the revolt. They also appear to have been written either well before or well after the plagues, but not around the time of the plagues, otherwise Avaris would have been weak and malnourished which is not the case in the stelae. Since Ahmose speaks of a planned punishment of the gods, that is, a sequence of disasters, the plagues would have taken place before the storm stela and before the Khamose stelae. By the time Khamose reached Avaris, the town and the countryside had been repaired. By the time Ahmose reached Avaris, the only traces of the plagues were the continuation of the human sacrifices at Iunu and the Egyptian memory of the planned divine punihsment. In other words, we can settle the matter of the storm stela: the plagues took place before the storm that was recorded in Ahmose’s days. They also took place before Khamose led his troops against the Hyksos. Thanks to the Khamose stelae we know that Ahmose’s older brother Khamose was certainly in power by 1584 BC (or earlier). The biblical plagues must have taken place before that year. Thus, besides being confident that the Egyptians were aware of the aftermath of Santorini’s eruption, we can also be confident that Santorini exploded before 1584 BC. By the same token, we can exclude the old theory that the Hebrews’ exodus coincided with the flight of the Hyksos from Egypt. Searching for meatier Egyptian documentation of the plagues, we now turn our attention to another disaster, a flood. Two stelae record inundations that took place in Thebes under two separate rulers. The Karnak stela of Ikhernofret mentions a king Nofrehotpe. The ruler is said to have helped Thebes at a time when the town was flooded. This ruler, however, is not known from other documents and most likely is one of the many short-lived kings of the 13th dynasty (1786-1567 BC) whose names were lost on the most complete list, which is known as the Turin Royal Canon. Similarly, the Karnak stela of Sobehotpe (VIII of the name, possibly) recorded that in his fourth year of rule, Sobehotpe came to visit the damage caused to the local shrine by a flood. This king is not attested in other documents, either. All known Sobehotpe rulers, however, are confined to the 13th

CHAPTER 10 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: THE DAY THE GODS VISITED THE NILE DELTA

113

dynasty and there is no reason to believe that this one would be any different. If so, this king would be one of the missing names in the Turin Royal Canon, too. The combination of recurring severe flooding within a possibly short span of time could be linked to the aftermath of the Santorini eruption and thus to the biblical plagues. Severe adverse weather did cause more precipitation in Egypt, as attested by the fifth and the seventh biblical plagues. In turn, the unusually high precipitation could also have caused unusual flooding of the Nile. True enough, the biblical texts do not mention any unusual overflowing of the Nile. Yet this detail cannot be used to simply dismiss the two Theban stelae. The flooding could have been local. If so, the flooding would have escaped the notice of the Hebrews in the Nile Delta and thus it would be omitted from the listing of the plagues in the Torah. It is known that the kings of the 13th dynasty lasted but a few years (at times months). Thus, it is conceivable that the disasters mentioned in these two documents could have happened only within months of each other. If so, we could have effects from Santorini’s eruption over the Theban area. Of course, this means that the flooding in the 4th year of Sobehotpe (VIII?) would have preceded the inundation that took place during the reign of Nofrehotpe. Unfortunately, we cannot really tell much more at this point in time: the floods may or may not be linked to Santorini’s eruption. Additional information on this matter is needed. A text linking floods to other promising elements (actions by gods) is contained in a text with the misleading name Magical Papyrus Harris, also known by the less exciting name Harris 501. The text is a collection of 26 spells (conveniently labelled A-Z by modern scholars) which have been written by separate hands and thus separate scribes. The manuscript was completed in the Ramesside Period, that is, around 13001067 BC. Only 14 (L-Y) of the 26 spells are more or less complete. Traditionally, LV have been understood as utterances providing protection against crocodiles: a person would say the spell, identify with a god, and receive divine protection from the animal. The last spells are different in the sense that the animals concerned are wild beasts, and the gods invoked are the Egyptian Horus and the Canaanite Hauron. Spell Z is even in Canaanite, and it is possible that the papyrus is based—at least in part—on a Canaanite original. Two of the spells, P and Q, are of special interest: they make sense in light of the biblical plagues. Both spells mention disasters, and the second spell specifies that the event happened at a time when Minoans lived in the land of Egypt. In the former spell, P, the Nile Delta is transformed into a giant mud field where fish were left to die and the earth goddess grieves and sheds tears. P speaks of the earth goddess Isis which flaps its wings and closes the mouths of the Nile River. As a result, the fish are left in the mud and are no longer amidst the

114

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

waves of the river. The goddess then cries over the situation. Rather than helping, the god Horus is described as raping its mother. The goddess sheds more tears while at the same time animals come and fetch the fish left to die on the mud. The text for this spell breaks at this point and it is not clear what the text would propose to solve the situation of the unhappy goddess. The text has so far been deemed ancient nonsense. The fact that it is found in a text labeled “magical” does not exactly help either. However, in a time when writing was reserved to the few and material for writing was scarce and precious, one really has to wonder whether the text was nonsense or whether we are too quickly dismissing a text because it appears to make no sense. In fact, in light of the reconstruction of the biblical plagues, the spell acquires a very clear meaning. It describes in detail what one would expect happened in Egypt at the onset of the biblical plagues. Strong winds would have been understood as Isis flapping its wings. Waves from tsunamis would have splattered against the marshes along the Nile Delta, pushing the streams from the Nile mouths upstream. As a result the whole area would have been transformed into a giant mud field. Fish would have been picked up from the branches of the river and tossed across the whole area, left to die in the mud. Interestingly, the text also states that wild animals started to fish which is exactly what one should expect in such a situation. As far as Horus raping its mother, the earth goddess, we have to think that the strange red fallout that affected the waters must have been understood by the ancient Egyptians in the context of the other elements they observed: the winds, the delta turned into mud, the fish left to die, etc. In a certain way, it is fair to say that the earth had been mistreated, raped. One could ask why Horus would have been mentioned in the tale rather than other gods (e.g., the malevolent Seth). Perhaps northern Egyptians would have preferred to attribute such vile action to Horus, rather than to Seth, which in northern Egypt was seen—unlike in the rest of the country—as a good god. In the latter spell, Q, the text starts with three words, which are not Egyptian, and are thought to be pre-Greek, that is, Minoan: “Paparuka! Paparka! Paparura!” Then the spell names the god Khnum, which presided over the primordial mud from which life was generated in Egyptian theology, as well as the goddess Tjkemet, goddess of the black soil of the land. The spell asks for help from the water and hopes that the god Horus, which represents the king, might do something about the water. The concomitance of a mud disaster at a time Minoan was in use in Egypt fits well with the time of the first plague, when—again—the Nile Delta would have been damaged by tsunamis, Minoans lived there, and other Minoans sought refuge there from a land that had been devastated even more than Egypt.

CHAPTER 10 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: THE DAY THE GODS VISITED THE NILE DELTA

115

As the ash started to fall and burn the land and acidify the waters, people would have perceived the earth goddess crying. The tears became stronger, and the locals hypothesized that a god was taking advantage of the goddess’ misfortune by raping Isis. In short, the P and Q spells from the Magical Papyrus Harris are a hit: we have a match between Egyptian documents and the aftermath of Santorini’s eruption. Moreover, the events in the papyrus can be traced back to a time which is compatible with the “window” (1775-1584 BC) in which Santorini must have erupted. There is one more document that speaks of a disaster in the middle of the Bronze Age. The British Museum hosts an Egyptian text better known to mathematicians than to historians or biblical scholars. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus is a peculiar work which is really made up of three different pieces of papyri attached together. Each piece contains a different text. The largest piece was falling apart due to the fragility of the papyrus used; two additional papyri were glued to it in order to ensure the conservation of the larger one. The attempt succeeded. The largest piece contains a text originally composed around 1850 BC and then copied in the 33rd year of reign of king Apopi. This ruler is both attested in historical sources and archeological findings which both place him as a ruler over Egypt in the 15th—that is, Hyksos—dynasty (1675-1567 BC). The larger mathematical text lists 85 problems (Rhind 1-85) dealing with geometry, algebra, etc. Examples thereof involve the calculation of the volume of granaries, areas of geometrical figures, fractions, and—possibly—the first known combinatorial calculation, involving a house, cats, mice, and wheat. It is a great text for mathematicians who are looking for documents that demonstrate how their subject was being taught and presented in earlier days. It is a great document for historians to peek into the sophistications and knowledge of ancient Egyptians. The two smaller papyri used to salvage the mathematical treatise contain texts unrelated to the mathematical problems. The text on one of the scraps is cataloged as Rhind 86 and lists food items for cattle as well as their price. The text on the other scrap is cataloged as Rhind 87, and is a short diary. It relates events that appear linked and started at the very end of the tenth year of the reign of an unnamed king. At first, two signs of the gods took place and later, chaos reigned, setting off a military intervention. The diary was written in three short sections. The first one mentions what happened on the first day and on the next day. The second section speaks of what happened on two separate days a few months later. The third section speaks of a later event. Each section is very laconic, omitting words that can be guessed and only providing facts. For those familiar with Latin, this is not like the verbose excerpts from the lawyer Cicero. On the contrary, it is similar to the conciseness

116

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

of Julius Caesar who sent a message back to Rome informing the state autorities how the war went: “I came, I saw, I conquered”. This short text turns out to be very important in establishing parallels between Egyptian and Hebrew narratives regarding the aftermath of the Santorini eruption. To best capture its depth, let us start by looking at the text based on the translation and notes found in A.B. Chace, L.S. Bull, H.P. Manning, and R.C. Archibald, The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (1927-29): Year 11, month 2 of season 3, Iunu was taken. Month 1 of season 1, day 23, army commander attacked Zaru. Day 2… it was said that Zaru had been entered. Year 11, month 1 of season 1, 3, day of birth of Seth, its voice was caused and heard. Birth of Isis, it made the sky rain. The text is fraught with problems. Let us begin by looking at when the diary was written. Experts state that the style appears typical of the Second Intermediary Period (1786-1567 BC). The material on which this scribe wrote his diary was glued to the mathematical text. This would imply, yet not prove, that the two papyri came from the same library. Since the mathematical portion of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus is from the 33rd year of Apopi’s rule, the diary could have been written during his reign or during the reign of another Hyksos ruler. Finally, the mention of internal war would also fit with such a dating. One thing that would make the text clearer would be to invert the order in which the entries have been written, and place the most recent event first. The problem is that the most recent event traces its roots to the earlier events. To fully grasp the development, we really need to rewrite the text. Before we do so, we have to address one odd detail: the author stated that the birthday of Seth was in the first season of the year. This, at least, is how experts read that “Year 11, month 1 of season 1, 3, day of birth of Seth”. According to the Egyptian calendar, however, such a day was three days before the new year. Moreover, the word for day is absent next to the word for three. Scholars have scrambled to explain such a mistake. It is possible that we have a unexperienced author, possibly because the writer was neither a scribe nor an Egyptian, but rather a Hyksos (and thus from the Second Intermediary Period). More likely is that the person was writing in some form of short-hand. Thus, in his mind, everything is clear and he points to the birthday of Seth next to the new year of the 11th year of rule. After all, it is not a literary text, it is not a legal transaction, it is not an address to a ruler, it is not anything formal: it’s a diary!

CHAPTER 10 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: THE DAY THE GODS VISITED THE NILE DELTA

117

Once one accepts this as a working hypothesis, all data fall into place: just before the 11th year, on the day of Seth, etc. Actually, almost all data. Let us now take the analysis one step further. Korean immigrants in North America use two calendars, the standard western calendar, and the traditional Korean calendar, which shares the same animals as the lunar/solar year used in China. Thus, the year 2000 was also the year of the dragon. A similar situation could have taken place in Egypt, especially during the Hyksos years, during which, apparently, the diary was written. We could have a person who uses two calendars and mentions both: the year of the ruler and the so-called Sothic year used by the Egyptians. The two calendars would be used because the year of rule would not provide the day during the year when the event took place. By the same token, the Egyptian calendar would not have been able to provide the year of the event. In fact, there would not have been any reason to repeat that it was still year 11 of the rule when Iunu was taken, unless it could have generated confusion for the circle of people around the author: we simply do not know when that ruler started his reign during the Sothic year. Most likely the ruler started to reign during that month, and thus—unless the year of reign is specified—the fall of Iunu could have taken place in year 11 or year 12 of the rule. We can now go back to the diary: Year 11 [of ruler …], month 1 of season 1, 3 [days before], [i.e., on the] birth of Seth, its voice was caused and heard. Birth of Isis, it made the sky rain. Month 1 of season 1, day 23 army commander attacked Zaru. Day 2… it was said that Zaru had been entered. Year 11 [of ruler], month 2 of season 3, Iunu was taken.” While we cannot tell with exactitude—yet—when the diary was written, everything points toward a document from the Hyksos years (1675-1567 BC) which fits rather nicely within the “window” that had been determined so far (1775-1581 BC). We can now turn to the content. The text provides information on five separate days. The first one is a so-called epagomenal day. The Egyptian calendar had 360 normal days to which five days had been added on. Each of these days was designated by the fancy Greek work epagomenal (= additional) during hellenistic times. These days had been added to reflect the fact that—according to Egyptian theology—a god had been born on each of the days. Thus, Osiris was said to have been born on the first epagomenal day, Horus on the second, Seth on the third, Isis on the fourth, and Nephtys on the fifth.

118

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

These days were supposed to take place just before Sirius rose over the horizon in the summer (mid-July) which also coincided with the flooding of the Nile banks. Since the Egyptian year was not identical to the solar year, however, as years went by a slippage took place. Litle by little, the epagomenal days (as well as the beginning of the year) were no longer in mid July. After 1460 years, the epagomenal days would return to their original place, only to start a new journey through the year. A loud noise documented by Rhind 87 was heard at the very end of the 10th year of the rule of a warlord or king whose name is not spelled out in the text. The second day proposes a different event, a rain. If it had been any plain rain, the author would not have written it down. Rain is rare in Egypt, but not that rare (unless there had been a dearth for some time and people were looking for rain). The question is then: what made this rain special? The author did not record other events for roughly three months then wrote that the town of Zaru was under attack by Spear-of-the-south. The town of Zaru is well known. Zaru was a fortified town near the mouth of the easternmost branch of the Nile Delta. It is also known by its later Roman name, Sile, and still exists under the name el-Qantara. The military commander nicknamed ‘Spear-of-the-south’ is unknown in other Egyptian texts. It is assumed by scholars that the military leader in question was either the southern Egyptian Khamose or his brother Ahmose. This identification would place the text around 1575-1550 BC and provide information on the military maneuvers of the Theban units while on the offensive. Taking Zaru would have cut off Hyksos Avaris from its supply routes based in Canaan. However, other explanations are also possible. For instance, the two towns could have been held by people (Egyptians or slaves) rioting against the Hyksos or by desert marauders. Thus, ‘Spear-of-the-south’ would be the nom de guerre of a Hyksos commander (rather than an Egyptian one) who had distinguished himself in southern Egypt. ‘Spear-of-the-south’ would have established or reestablished Hyksos order in the area. In fact, the movement of troops south toward Iunu after Zaru had fallen would indicate a Hyksos offensive rather than a movement of Egyptian troops bent on attacking Avaris: Egyptian troops would have already had to take Iunu to move toward Zaru (see map). Two days later the troops seized the town. The author of the diary does not record anything for eight to nine more months, and then briefly pens that troops also took Iunu, a town southeast of the Nile Delta and famous in ancient Egypt for its shrine and school of theology. As said earlier, the itinerary of the conquering army carries much more Hyksos than Egyptian allure.

CHAPTER 10 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: THE DAY THE GODS VISITED THE NILE DELTA

119

In turn, we can now compose a profile of the author of the diary. His mistake in omitting the word “before” in the text for the birthday of Seth appears quite odd for an Egyptian, even with little experience. A Hyksos, or another non-Egyptian (many immigrants lived in the Nile Delta) would be a better candidate. This person knew how to write and had access to good quality papyrus. In fact his piece was better than the one on which the mathematical problems were copied. This person was interested in the sociopolitical upheaval and is very brief. He does not give a lot of details. He limits himself to the signs of the gods and the resulting events performed by men and not gods as if the author is wondering how all these items fit together. Starting with the events in the eastern Nile Delta, deemed manifestations of a storm god and the earth goddess, the author focuses on human actions. Inserted into the puzzle that is coming together to provide a picture of the biblical plagues, the diary appears to describe the arrival of the volcanic cloud over the Nile Delta and some sociopolitical consequences thereof. It is almost as if the author of the diary points toward Seth and Isis to legitimize the military takeover. Seth, the supreme god of the Hyksos, started the whole thing. Then Isis, goddess of the soil and fertility, turned her back to the Egyptians, sending an odd rain. Then, one by one, the strongholds of Egypt fell: first Zaru along the Egypt-Mesopotamia highway, then Iunu, center of Egyptian theology. The wider context for the diary points in the direction of a war that happened as a result of the Santorini ash. The text suggests that—rather than at the end of the anti-Hyksos riots—the plagues either ushered in the uprising or revitalized it. What is far from clear is when the plagues took place. It is certain that they started at the very end of the 10th year of a reign. Whose?

120

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 1. Parallels involving records. Event A volcanic cloud reached the Nile Delta. The ash fallout acidified the waters.

the Santorini eruption, the biblical narratives, and Egyptian Biblical Darkness (Ps. 105.27-28) similar to a sky of bronze from which came down dust (Dt. 28.24,). The Nile turned red, fish were dead and people refused to drink the waters (Ex. 7.14-25, Ps. 78.43-44, Ps. 105.29).

Egyptian A loud and unusual noise is heard. The day after a strange rain falls over the Nile Delta (Rhind mathematical papyrus, 87). After the winds, waves transformed the Nile Delta into a mud field (Magical Papyrus Harris, spells P and Q)

CHAPTER 10 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: THE DAY THE GODS VISITED THE NILE DELTA Mediterranean Sea

o Zaru o Avaris o Iunu

Dendera o Thebes o

0

FIGURE 1 Egypt as per the storm stela, and the Rhind mathematical papyrus.

Red Sea

200 km NUBIA

FIGURE 2 Map of Egypt, with respect to Santorini, and its first phase volcanic cloud.

Dispersal area of the ashes

Aegean Sea

Mediterranean Sea Santorini Nile Delta o Zaru o Avaris

EGYPT o Thebes

121

CHAPTER 11 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: RECORDS OF A BATTERED LAND The results obtained so far show that the biblical plagues were real and describe events linked to the Santorini eruption. They also provide a window within which the plagues must have happened, that is, 1775-1584 BC. Finally, they appear to indicate that the subset of Hyksos years within the time frame would be even more appropriate, thus shaving off another century and restricting the real window to 1675-1584 BC. Those years marked Egyptian culture quite deeply. Egyptians were to remember the time of the occupation and made no bones about their distaste toward the occupying forces. On the other hand, documents that were written during the Hyksos period (we have already seen a few examples in the earlier chapter) did survive. The earliest such texts were written right after the war of liberation and detail the lives of two military leaders, Ahmose-son-of-Abana (text written around 1515 BC) and Ahmose Pen-nekhbet (text written around 1495 BC). Both biographies found in the tombs of these former members of Ahmose’s army retell episodes of the war. Egyptians promised to themselves that their country would never again be subjugated to foreigners. Queen Hatshepsut (1479-1457 BC) speaks of the occupation in a text engraved at Speos Artemidos. Unlike other lists of rulers which were censored (or “politically corrected”), the Turin Royal Canon, written at the time of Ramses II (1279-1213 BC), includes the Hyksos names. Ramses IV (1153-1147 BC) refers to the Hyksos. Parts of the Magical Papyrus Harris, also known as Harris 501, can be placed at the time of the plagues and therefore at the time of the Hyksos. Even in later times, when Egypt entered into the spheres of influence of foreigners (e.g., Libyans, Ethiopians, and Persians), Egyptians kept a memory of the earlier foreign domination. For instance, the Greek historian Herodotus collected information on the matter while visiting Egypt around 450 BC. The historian Manetho (around 300 BC) mentioned the Hyksos occupation in his Aigyptiaka, a compilation of Egyptian records. Finally, the el-Arish naos from Ptole123

124

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

maic times (332-30 BC) also provides a vast description of the times when the Egyptian government crumbled under the attack of the Hyksos. The end of the war against the Hyksos remained encapsulated in the biographies of Ahmose son of Abana, a brave ship commander who fought against the Hyksos, and of the slightly younger Ahmose Pen-nekhbet. The engravings describe the war in the canals around the Hyksos capital Avaris and provide some gruesome details as to the killing of enemies and the mutilation of their bodies, as well as the rewards for the soldiers. No biblical plague or any material that might be related to the plagues is mentioned, though. The text at Speos Artemidos glorifies the ruler Hatshepsut. Her work is introduced by an account of the state of Egypt in the years before her reign. The country had been destroyed and the temples left in ruin. She was now rebuilding the country. Remembering when Asiatics (aamu) and foreign hordes from the Nile Delta and Avaris attempted to rule without the permission of the Egyptian god Ra, Hatshepsut proclaimed that time forever over. This lack of collaboration by the god Ra can be presented in several ways. It could be construed that—the Hyksos being not favored by Ra—the god might have used a heavy hand against the whole country to show its displeasure. More information comes from the later Turin Royal Canon, a text that lists rulers who held sway over the whole country or parts thereof. A group of such rulers came from foreign countries and are listed in columns 10.14-21. The text is fragmentary, but we know that the total number of kings was six and their rule lasted 108 years. Unfortunately the details have been lost. We only have the years for three of the kings, the longest reign lasting 40 years. We only have the name of the last king who was known as Khamudi. The list does not mention events linked to any king and thus it is no surprise that the document does not present the plagues either. A slightly later text, conserved on the Harris Papyrus I, was commissioned by Ramses IV to record his father Ramses III’s benefactions to the Priesthood of Amun (e.g., gift of herds of cattle). The reader is at first invited to evaluate how great a king his father had been. The scribe then retold the history starting at a time of chaos when a Syrian called Yarsu was in power. He then proceeded to describe the work of Ramses III, possibly to stress how much Ramses III had accomplished. The chaotic times generated chaos themselves in Egypt’s chronology: no Syrian takeover is known from any other source, whether archaeological or historical. Scholars state that there had been a brief, very, very brief Syrian occupation of Egypt around the time of Ramses III. The brevity of the occupation made it so that history and historians overlooked it and the occupation only survived in one lonely text, the Harris Papyrus I. Such a feat would be pretty amazing.

CHAPTER 11 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: RECORDS OF A BATTERED LAND

125

It is much more likely that Yarsu refers to the Hyksos occupation. Why a different name? Because there is no standard name for that occupation. Hyksos is a convenient term, which modern historians use. Some ancient Egyptians used it, but not all of them. In fact, the word Hyksos existed before the Hyksos occupation. The Tale of Sinuhe (~1950 BC) speaks of Heka-Khasut, that is, foreign rulers, and refers to the rulers across Canaan where Sinuhe lived in exile for many years. As we will see below, Herodotus made use of a different word for the Hyksos occupants, Philitis. Manetho understood (or rather, misunderstood) “Hyksos” as a foreign word introduced into Egyptian and thought it meant “shepherd rulers”. Herodotus missed the mockery that had developed through the ages among Egyptians as the Hyksos were said to have had nomadic roots. Yarsu is just one more way to call the same occupiers. Why? The text speaks of Egypt being overtaken by outsiders and the social order being turned upside down. This is the signature of the Hyksos. Moreover, the Harris Papyrus I also mentions temples being left without proper offerings because of the foreigners, which is echoed in many other texts speaking of the Hyksos occupation. Finally, the text states that this was the time when the Syrian Yarsu ruled. This name Yarsu is known from the Levant. Stating that Yarsu had ruled Egypt is akin to say that Ra (and thus Egypt) had ruled Canaan. The Hyksos are described as being very devout toward a god (e.g., Papyrus Sallier I) which the Egyptians identified with their own demonic force, Seth/Apopi. However, both Apopi and Seth are Egyptians’ designations, and not the Hyksos’, who—unlike the Egyptians—were Semitic. Yarsu and other gods with similar characteristics are attested among Arabic tribes throughout ancient times. The Annals of Sennacherib (8th century BC) speak of an Arabic Ruldaiu. The Greek historian Herodotus (490-420 BC) presents the same god under the name Orotalt. Ancient Arabic—Thamudic and Safaitic—inscriptions attest the cult of Ruda among the Arabs on the Sinai peninsula in the immediate vicinity of Gaza. Traces of this god were to survive in the Hauran (Golan area) in Roman times and the god would be “westernized” as Lykurgos (wolf-demon). A similar god, Aktab-Kutbay is attested among Lihyanites and Nabataeans during the reign of Elagabal (218-222 AD). The cult of this god is then attested until the arrival of Islam. Making a long story short, it is safe to equate Yarsu with the Hyksos god and the time of chaos under Yarsu as the Hyksos era. However, the papyrus refrains from discussing the details of the chaos. Yet another reference to the same years comes from the Greek historian Herodotus, who compiled a large snapshot of the country and its past in the second book of his Histories. In a brief passage, he wrote down that for 106 years, Egypt saw its temples left in great misery because of the rulers. People—states

126

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Herodotus—hated these rulers, and only referred to them by the name of tombs, that is, the Egyptians cursed the name of these rulers. Over these tombs Philitis (Philistines) shepherds—which fits the shepherd rulers satire attested in later understandings of the name Hyksos—were later to bring their flocks (Histories, 2.128). Although we have a picture of the Hyksos times in Egypt, Herodotus’ lapidary statement did not transmit information on the plagues for the same years. The Egyptian historian Manetho offers a vast, yet fragmentary account of those Hyksos years. His work has only survived through quotations in the books of other authors, hence the information we have today from this historian is incomplete. Manetho informs us that the Hyksos were thus called because in their language they were known as the ‘king (hyk)-shepherds (sos)’. Unlike other sources, Manetho attributes to these kings a longer period of rule, 260 years. In this time, these foreign rulers burned Egyptian cities, destroyed the temples, enslaved the locals, and exacted tribute from the whole country from Avaris, their fortified capital on the eastern bank of the Bubastic branch of the Nile. They totally dominated the land until an act of God took place during the reign of Tutimaios. The gods were angry because the Hebrews had brought a curse on the land. They left the land at the time of the Hyksos, more or less when King Ahmose took Avaris (Josephus, Contra Apionem, 1.14). Manetho is not explicit, but states that plagues did take place and they took place during the time of the Hyksos. He also stated that the name of the legitimate monarch at the time the plagues started was Tutimaios, which in Egyptian is Dudimose, and is independently attested by the list of kings in the Turin Royal Canon. There is one more text preserved in the engravings on the internal part of the ruins of a temple which mention the Hyksos and the plagues. The part of the temple, the so-called naos, was moved to el-Arish (on the border between the Sinai peninsula and Canaan) from a nearby site. For the sake of convenience, we will call this text the el-Arish naos. This text relates a story of battles and gods fighting. The names of the gods are familiar from other sources, but their deeds, described on the el-Arish stone, are not. The text has given headaches to scholars, who—unable to place it within known Egyptian historical facts—labeled it either as fiction or as local theology. The location is itself very odd. The naos was situated “in the middle of nowhere”, in the middle of the desert, yet along the road linking Egypt to Mesopotamia through Canaan. The naos was at the el-Arish wadi, that is, the gulley that fills with water in times of rain and that marks the border between ancient Egypt and ancient Canaan. Understanding the engravings as local theology is certainly fairer to the author of the text. The fact that the lines were engraved on the central part of a

CHAPTER 11 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: RECORDS OF A BATTERED LAND

127

temple would imply—for the author—that the matters described were serious rather than frivolous. However, it is far from clear whose “local” theology would have been represented on the naos: soldiers of the forts along the road? bedouins? merchants using the road? The lines claim, however, that they speak of a country spanning from Elephantine Island in the south to Naucratis in the Nile Delta, that is, the whole of Egypt and not just a local area. The text mentions a military leader who was very devout to an unnamed god. He ruled from a palace and moved onward against the land of the god Shu, that is, Egypt. In those years Egypt was in great pain and the evil fell on the soil of the land, ushering in a time of chaos. The king was killed. For nine days a storm battered Egypt and the land was plunged in darkness. Finally, a new king was proclaimed and he moved toward the Nile Delta, against the rebels who had killed his father and stolen the royal insignia. Little by little the situation improved. Even the weather improved. So, in the light of the reconstruction of the plagues, is the el-Arish naos fiction? Is it local theology? Is it not perhaps an account of the Hyksos years? We have a religiously devout military leader who takes over Egypt at a time when natural disasters (evil falling on the Egyptian soil, then cold and darkness) devastated the country. Did we not see this elsewhere? The Greeks spoke of evil falling out of the air onto the soil, Ouranos’ blood, the Erynies, the sirens, … the ash from Santorini. Bad weather followed: we know it by analogy to today’s eruptions (e.g., Mount Saint Helens in 1980) and we know if from the biblical plagues in which more frequent and more violent storms shattered the skies and devastated Egypt. And then the darkness of the ninth plague appeared when Santorini entered its final eruptive phase. When did this evil fall on the soil, this cold weather take place, and this darkness envelop Egypt? All of these things occurred at the time bands of military forces devout to one sole god devastated the country and the legitimate king was killed. In other words, all of these things occurred in a time that, if the Hyksos were at hand, would fit perfectly into the years 1675-1567 BC in Egypt’s ancient history. This document closes the set of records about the Hyksos after the occupation, but there are other documents which are contemporary or quasi-contemporary with the time of the Hyksos occupation. The so-called Khamose stelae (before 1584 BC as per the calculations determined earlier) contain a text detailing the war against the Hyksos. Khamose scornfully describes the Hyksos ruler. He also tells how he is fighting on two fronts: to the north against the occupiers and to the south against the Nubians allied to the Hyksos. The text only reports war events and does not contain references to the plagues. The stelae already contain all the spite that Egyptians would keep for centuries about the Hyksos. It also contains an image that modern scholars may

128

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

have inadvertently absorbed about the Hyksos: brutal barbarians, intolerant, and bent on a cultural genocide of the Egyptians. That is the picture painted by the Egyptians, the picture presented—as always in history—by the winners of the war. Findings across Egypt tell a slightly different story. The Hyksos appear to have been cultivated or enlightened dictators. The Hyksos era was a time when older Egyptian manuscripts were transcribed for posterity. The very ruler Apopi left a palette in which he calls himself the scribe of the god Re, disciple of the god of knowledge Thoth, and a skilled reader of even the most difficult texts available. We—the Egyptians first, and the rest of the world second—owe the Westcar Papyrus to the Hyksos copyists. Also known as Berlin Papyrus 3033, the text deals with the older dynasties of Egyptian rulers and the introduction of a sun cult. One of the stories details the work of a magician, possibly a common pasttime at court. The text gives us precious insight into the early years of Egypt’s history. Scribes from the same time also transcribed mathematical material from the 12th dynasty, such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. As we have seen, this text is heterogeneous and the mathematical part makes up the vast majority (97%) of the text. Besides history, theology, and mathematics, the Hyksos also appear to have been interested in medical matters. In the Hyksos years scribes either compiled or copied a large number of medical documents. These documents may have been just the fruit of the interest of the Hyksos. However, it is also possible that they were dictated in part by pragmatic concerns: the biblical plagues. The Ebers Papyrus was found between the legs of a mummy in the Assassif district of the Theban necropolis. It is thought that the dead person may have been a medical doctor. The text is complete and is written over 30 centimeters x 20 m subdivided into 108 pages for a total of 879 paragraphs. A separate— later—scribe added a calendar and a date, the ninth year of the reign of Amenhotep I, that is, around 1550 BC. The text therefore can be comfortably attributed to the Hyksos times, although it is known that it incorporates earlier material as well. Thus, paragraphs 188-207 comprise a book on the stomach similar in style to the Edwin Smith Papyrus (a surgical manual also transcribed during Hyksos times). Additionally, paragraph 856 states that the material on driving wekhedu away from limbs comes from writings found under the statue of Anubis in the town of Letopolis (in Egyptian: Khem), and it was then brought to the attention of the ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt Den. The word Lower Den would place the material around the First Dynasty of Egyptian rulers, that is, before 3000 BC. Treatments for the same disease were grouped in chapters. Among the different ailments listed, some make sense within the context of the biblical

CHAPTER 11 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: RECORDS OF A BATTERED LAND

129

plagues as derived from a volcanic origin. There are remedies against cough and asthma (paragraphs 305-335), eye problems (paragraphs 336-431), boils on the head (paragraphs 437-450), as well as burns and wounds (paragraphs 482-542). These are illnesses that would be related to the plagues and comprise almost 25% of all the remedies. That is quite a large chunk for a general manual of medicine! It is tempting to speculate that the large amount of material related to illnesses that would have stemmed from the plagues (respiratory difficulties from the ash at first and the smoke later, burns from the ash and the rain, eye problems from either) reflects the fact that this was the time when the plagues were in the land. More information—as far as the biblical plagues go—emerges from the London Medical Papyrus, also known by its catalog number at the British Museum as BM 10059. Finalized around 1350 BC and written on a papyrus 17 centimeters x 210 centimeters, this text is incomplete and is missing both the beginning and the end. The existing portion contains 61 remedies divided among 19 pages. The first 26 remedies are on unrelated illnesses (e.g., loss of blood, uterus, …), although it is interesting to notice that L15-L21 form a block dealing with burns. Remedies L27-L33 are foreign exhortations, often understood as walking a fine line between real medicine and magic. There is another segment (L34-L45) dealing with diverse illnesses (eye diseases, impotence, gynecological issues, wounds, …) and then there is a set of remedies against burns (L46-61). Burns are—we have already seen—associated with both the first plague of acidic ash fallout as well as the sixth plague of boils from acid rain. The oddity is that there are two groups of remedies against burns. The two sets of remedies on burns indicate that the document has been written little by little: first one writer wrote down some remedies. Another scribe of another doctor, possibly the son or grandson, added a few more remedies and so on. Thus, over the generations, the medical family was writing its own manual. At a certain point, one scribe copied the whole text as is and did not create a section for burns only, but rather left the remedies as they had been incorporated into the original document which he was copying. It is actually possible to say something more precise about the time when separate remedies had been written down in the original document. The 26 remedies written before the foreign ones would indicate an Egyptian text to which a set of foreign-derived ones was later added. These foreign prescriptions can be safely assigned to the time 1850-1550 BC when Egypt was in open contact with Mediterranean countries to the north and the Nubians to the south. Trade prospered and many immigrants settled in Egypt. Remedy L32 (11.4-6) can be specifically linked to the typhus-like epidemic that hit the eastern Nile Delta around 1715 BC. The text claims it portrays

130

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

a disease from Asiatics. It is cured thanks to a formula stated in Minoan at the time urine and other liquids are administered to the patient. This means that we can restrict the time for the Egyptian L34-L61, which are written after the Asiatic disease epidemic, to after 1715 BC (and before 1550 BC). There is more. The L55 (lines 15.8-10) prescription, one of those referring to burns, appears to be related to the first, third, and fourth biblical plagues. The text is divided into three sections and can be rewritten as follows: 1. diagnosis, in this case a burn by red water; 2. incantation, in this case a request against blemishes on the skin and the appearance of vermine, confirming a skin condition; 3. therapy, in this case a prescription whereby mud from wells was mixed with gum, ocher, plant dye, cow fat, and wax. In other words, L55 refers to a burn derived from reddish water, which leaves white marks and can be infected with insects that would foster larvae. This is the same water that killed the fish; the same water from which people refrained from drinking; and the same water that was later to push the frogs onto the banks to die there. We also know that this remedy was written after 1715 BC and before the Hyksos rule crumbled, that is, around the time of the biblical plagues. Finally, this text is embedded within other therapies devised to treat burns. The whole set was—again—written after 1715 BC, at the time of the Hyksos rule, around the time of the plagues. Yet another coincidence? However, none of these texts provides the year of the plagues. Where else should we look? As luck would have it, there is one more text. The Ipuwer Papyrus, which has also already been described as a text mentioning the red waters of the first plague, sadly notes that the Aegeans no longer traded with Egypt (Ip. 3.8). Ipuwer’s statement is confirmed by archaeological digs: while Aegean/Minoan artifacts had been numerous from 1750 BC onwards, the number plummets close to nihil by 1600/1525 BC as detailed by Peter Warren (“Minoan Crete and Pharaonic Egypt”, in: Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant, 1995). From these later years we know of an axe belonging to king Ahmose and a dagger belonging to his mother, Ahhotep. These items were possibly looted from Avaris at the time the Hyksos rulers evacuated the town as they were losing the war against the Egyptians. One thing is sure: the trade that flourished between the pre-Santorini Greece and Egypt was over.

CHAPTER 11 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: RECORDS OF A BATTERED LAND

131

Another thing appears clear: the Ipuwer Papyrus with its story of disasters, chaotic times, and at least two matches to the time of the biblical plagues is definitely worth investigating.

132

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 1. Parallels for the Santorini eruption, the biblical narratives, and Egyptian records (and approximative date for extant documentation). Event Biblical narrative A volcanic cloud reached the Nile Delta. Darkness (Ps. 105.27-28) similar to a sky The ash fallout colored and acidified the of bronze dumps dust (Dt. 28.24,). The waters, killing the fish. Nile turned red, fish were dead and people refused to drink the waters (Ex. 7.14-25; Ps. 78.43-44; Ps. 105.29). Amphibians resist until they are exiled to Frogs invaded the banks (Ex. 7.26-8.11; the land where they die. Ps. 78.45; Ps. 105.30). Eggs from insects in dead animals hatch. Vermin (Ex. 8.12-15; Ps. 78.45; Ps. 105.31). Larvae from aforementioned eggs Swarms of flies (Ex. 8.16-20; Ps. 78.45; become adult insects. Ps. 105.31). Nuclear winter ushered in by volcanic ash Ruined countryside: dead cattle, causes severe weather disturbances such damaged fig trees and vines (Ex. 9.1-7; as storms, ... Dt. 28.16-18, 28-31, 39-40; Ps. 78.47-48; Ps. 105.32-33). … which bring down acid particles from Humans and animals are covered with the ash, burning humans and animals boils (Ex. 9.8-12; Dt. 28.27, 35). outside. More weather disturbances as the nuclear Hail cuts flax and barley (Ex. 9.13-35; winter goes on. Dt. 28.16-18, 28-31, 39-40). The high humidity fosters the presence of Locusts and worms in fields (Ex. 10.1pests such as worms, moulds, and locusts. 20; Dt. 28.38, 41; Ps. 78.46; Ps. 105.3435). The volcano enters its second eruptive Palpable suffocating cloud (Ex. 10.21-29; phase, spewing a plume that—yet Dt. 28.28-29; Ps. 18.7-20; Ps. 46.2-8; Ps. again—travels to Egypt. 68.8-9; Ps. 78.49; Ps. 97.1-5). The Egyptians sacrifice what is dearest to Firstborn of men and animals killed (Ex. placate what they perceive as the wrath of 11.1-13.16; Ps. 78.50-51; Ps. 105.36; Ps. the gods. 136.10).

CHAPTER 11 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: RECORDS OF A BATTERED LAND

Egyptian narrative Loud noise followed by strange rain over the Nile Delta. Evil fell on the earth. Winds and waves turn the Delta into mud. Gods angry as Tutimaios king. Remedies for sore eyes, … burns, … singling out burns from red waters. Vermin form in burns from red waters. Unusually cold weather. Remedies against burns. Unusually cold weather. Darkness. Remedies for cough and asthma, and eyes. Ahmose and Iunu human sacrifices Human sacrifices as tekenu to Seth god of the Hyksos

133

Egyptian records Rhind Mathematical P., 87 (Hyksos time, 1675-1567 BC, ?) el-Arish naos (Ptolemaic, 330-30 BC) Magical P. Harris, spells P and Q (~1300 BC) Manetho (~300 BC) in Contra Apionem, 1.14 (~ 75 AD) Ebers P., 336-431 (~1535 BC) Ebers P., 437-450, 482-542; London Medical P., 46-61 (~1350 BC) London Medical P., 55 London Medical P., 55 el-Arish naos (Ptolemaic, 330-30 BC) Ebers P., 437-450, 482-542; London Medical P., 46-61 el-Arish naos el-Arish naos Ebers P., 305-335, 336-431 De abstinentia, 2.55 (~275 AD) Tomb of Rekhmire (~1430 BC)

CHAPTER 12 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: TOWARD FREEDOM While digging for Egyptian documentation of the aftermath of the Santorini eruption, two narratives appeared to provide the two faces of the same coin and form a unit. Both texts have been known for a long time. Both are unfortunately—like most Egyptian documents—incomplete, missing a few lines here and there, a tribute paid by both papyri to the centuries of neglect. Both texts seem to have been deprived of the context within which they were written. Yet, by placing them next to each other, we get—in spite of the missing lines in each document—the full story. These two documents are the Ipuwer Papyrus and the Story of Apopis and Seqenenre Tao (Papyrus Sallier I). We will begin with the former because it appears to detail a time when Egypt was in a chaotic state. The Ipuwer Papyrus has already provided material that has turned out to be useful in the present investigation. On the one hand, it provided an overview of Egypt in a state of desolation, which matches the Egypt encountered in the biblical plagues. On the other hand, it also provided details that fit the time of the plagues and the reconstruction of the dynamics of the events: the Nile was said to have been red, like in the first plague, at a time when Aegeans were no longer trading with Egypt, just like when Santorini erupted. It is high time to mine this text further and see whether it provides additional information regarding the biblical plagues. Many researchers have often claimed that the Ipuwer Papyrus portrays the Egypt of the plagues. They have even correctly pointed out some of the parallels. Yet something was missing in their discussion: the reconstruction of the plagues in Egypt, the reconstruction of Hyksos Egypt, the reconstruction of the aftermath of the Santorini eruption across the eastern Mediterranean. The absence of these factors made it impossible to prove the physical and historical nature of the plagues. First there is the question of what exactly is the Ipuwer papyrus. This text has no real title and has been called by several different names. Sir Alan H. Gardiner, who first provided a detailed examination of the text in 1909, called it The 135

136

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden. The text is also known as The Admonitions of Ipuwer (or Ipu-wer), the Dialogue of Ipuur and the Lord of All, etc. For the sake of convenience, the present work calls the text the Ipuwer Papyrus. The document is hosted in the museum of Leiden in the Netherlands and is cataloged as Leiden Papyrus I 344. The text is on the front (recto) side of the papyrus, and is the only known copy of this particular text. The text poses issues both as to when it was written and its meaning. One thing is clear: Ipuwer speaks of a time when Egypt was bathed in disasters. The time is hard to define, though. The beginning of the text has been lost, and, presumably, the beginning would have carried information such as the name of the scribe who wrote the document, the year it was written, and whether it had been copied from another original manuscript. In this case, we do not have that luxury. To make matters worse, the existing text itself is missing a few lines here and there. One thing we can be sure of is the fact that the text is not original, but a copy of an older text. The text as it exists was written by a scribe around 12001075 BC. The scribe, however, left several spaces blank as if he could not read the original words from the manuscript he was copying. Had the scribe been the original writer of the text he would not have left the blanks, but would have written out whole sentences. Additionally, the text mentions Keftjw, a word known to designate the Minoan world. However, Greece at the time was going through a so-called dark age. To make things worse, earlier mentions for Keftjw in Egyptian documents stop with the city list of the funerary temple of Amenhotep III, that is, around 1350 BC. If the scribe had composed an original text, he would have used an anachronism, for Egyptian records had not used the word Keftjw for over 150 years. The date is rather unclear, too. Gardiner assumed that the chaotic state of the land described in the text was a historical event which he placed in the socalled First Intermediary Period (~2200-1950 BC) of ancient Egypt’s history. At first, most scholars agreed with Gardiner. But a second group of scholars looked at a later date. The choice of words, the continuous mention of oppressive foreigners, and the mention of Medjay in the text would place the narrative in the so-called Second Intermediary Period (1789-1567 BC). John Van Seters can be credited for providing the first serious attempt to place the text during this time period (The Hyksos, 1966). Then there is the question of the content of the Ipuwer Papyrus. While Gardiner saw the description of real events, other scholars dismiss the Ipuwer Papyrus as a piece of literature along the lines of a philosopher discussing the meaning of life. Adding a touch of complexity, the text was “hijacked” by Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979), who brought attention to the text, but at the same time made gratuitous and ludicrous statements that have unfortunately

CHAPTER 12 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: TOWARD FREEDOM

137

colored much of the debate concerning the Ipuwer Papyrus (e.g., the text being an Egyptian record of a time when the Earth nearly missed a collision with Venus). Yet, the text portrays Egypt in dire needs and lists several disasters which at a first glance are similar to those in the biblical narrative of the plagues. Whether a real individual or a literary invention, Ipuwer can be fairly portrayed as an Egyptian courtier, who had access to a powerful master called “Lord of All”. Ipuwer had been asked to present the state of the land or the state of humankind. His presentation is logically organized. In a step-by-step fashion, Ipuwer first introduced the state of the country in order ultimately to try to convince his master that action could be taken to rectify the situation. At first Ipuwer listed a series of disasters, total lawlessness, for example, and asked how it was possible that such events took place in Egypt. Then Ipuwer proceeded to describe the collapse of the social infrastructures which no longer sustained the country. Ipuwer later reminded the ruler of what Egypt used to look like: a country rich with food and material wealth and envied by all. Ipuwer then subtly suggested that his master could save Egypt, for instance, by relying on allies such as the Medjay. Finally, Ipuwer pinned the blame for a large chunk of the disasters on foreigners who were occupying the land. Ipuwer then told a tale to illustrate his point. Unfortunately, the text breaks off at this point and we do not have the details of the tale. Although many scholars consider the Ipuwer Papyrus as a piece of philosophical or allegorical literature, we must opt for a historical understanding of the work. After all, the examples mentioned in the text are anchored in Egyptian reality. Ipuwer talks about Egypt’s problems, not about humankind’s problems. There is no mention of suffering per se as is the case in works such as The Dialogue of a Man and his Soul in the Berlin Papyrus 3024. On the contrary, it is repeatedly mentioned that Egypt is being destroyed and foreign occupiers are to blame. If the work had been philosophical, the blame would have been put on “the force of Evil” fighting “the force of Good”. Given the Egyptian context in which the Ipuwer Papyrus was written, if the work had been philosophical, altercating gods would also have been mentioned. In fact, we know that at the time the Ipuwer Papyrus was being copied, retellings of fights among gods (e.g., Horus vs. Seth) were still being reworked, and thus were subjects of discussion and would not have constituted an anachronism. No such fight, however, is depicted in the Ipuwer Papyrus. The text is utterly pragmatic: it exposes the situation of the country, compares it to what it used to be thereby making the claim that a better state is possible, and it finally delineates some means to achieve this goal. Additionally, the tail part of the missing text, which would have contained a story told by Ipuwer to his master, is also very revealing. Telling a tale at this point of the text, which had evolved step-by-step from the beginning onwards, is fully coherent with a historical interpretation of the Ipuwer Papyrus. The court-

138

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

ier would have told some known events dealing with the re-birth of Egypt from the disorders of earlier chaotic years. Most likely the story would have dealt with the warlords who reassembled the country and proclaimed the 11th dynasty of Egyptian rulers (around 2100 BC). Alternatively, the story could have dealt with local warlords such as Ankhtify, who (around 2150 BC) brought prosperity to his district at a time the rest of Egypt was ravaged by chaos and famine. The state of the land—as Ipuwer presents it to his master—is a very dire portrait of Egypt. The country is in total turmoil. Thieves, murderers, kidnappers, cattle rustlers, and parvenus roam the country. The social stratification of the country is being brought to its knees and the lower social classes are enjoying benefits to which they were not entitled. Records of property are destroyed and people other than the rightful owners are laying claim to land and buildings. In spite of some wealth, hunger threatens the country. Trade is being brought to a halt. Refugee camps spring up across the country, which in addition faces serious threats from foreigners in the Nile Delta. The authorities are powerless and humiliated: even the tombs of the royal family are sacked. The situation is so bleak that many Egyptians commit suicide by entering the Nile at points where crocodiles are waiting. The scenario fits so well with the atmosphere depicted by the biblical plagues that many have drawn the obvious conclusion: the Ipuwer Papyrus is the (or an) Egyptian counterpart to the narrative in the biblical books. We have already seen that the Ipuwer Papyrus mentions a red Nile and people refusing to drink from it (Ip. 2.10). Ipuwer’s statement appears to be quite similar to the biblical text and thus constitute an exact parallel to the first plague. Both the Egyptian and the Hebrew texts mention a red river and the fact that the Egyptians refrained from drinking the water. Case closed? Not at all: we do not know what Ipuwer meant when he spoke of a red Nile. He may have been writing about a different red Nile than the one we know from the plagues. In the first place, the biblical red Nile was the onset of a series of disasters. Ipuwer, however, lists the red Nile as one among many disasters. From the present analysis we also know that the biblical red Nile was the result of the fallout of volcanic ash in the waters. However, Ipuwer does not appear to mention volcanic ash and we do not know at this point what made the river red during Ipuwer’s lifetime. Ipuwer could have used a metaphor to describe a dying Egypt or he may have indicated that the river had been defiled by the blood of the people killed along the banks and by the people who committed suicide in the river and whom are mentioned in the text. If Ipuwer intended the color to be a metaphor, it would be akin to a popular expression regarding the moon. It is common to hear that the moon blushes

CHAPTER 12 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: TOWARD FREEDOM

139

because of what it sees on earth. Of course the moon is not blushing and cannot see; we are describing a physical phenomenon in human terms. Likewise, Ipuwer may have meant that the river was ashamed of the actions of the people living along its banks. What we would have is an anthropomorphism whereby a physical phenomenon is explained in such a way as to reflect human nature. However, the suggestion that the red Nile is a metaphor is far flung. Ipuwer’s statement is quite concrete and is embedded among other statements which are also concrete and far from lofty. The courtier speaks of people killing each other, burglars entering the tombs of the kings, social outcasts running the estates, royal archives vandalized in order to destroy the titles of property of former owners, silos robbed, etc. Thus, if the red Nile were purely a metaphor, it would have been out of line with the rest of the text which described real events and not metaphors. These considerations bar us from accepting that the red color of the river is a poetic figure of speech. The question then becomes: what was the cause of the coloring of the waters? Was it red from the blood of the people killed and dumped in the Nile? Was it the volcanic ash which triggered the biblical plagues? Or what about other causes? The river was carrying dead bodies of people who had not died peacefully in their beds, but rather had been slain and dumped in the river. People even committed suicide by going to the river to drown (Ip. 2.5-7, 12). However, a tremendous amount of blood would be needed to color a small river, let alone a majestic river like the Nile! Thus, the blood cannot have been the cause of the color. Perhaps the cause lies in some other dye, which differs from the volcanic dust we have identified with the biblical texts. Algal blooms in Ipuwer’s times could have been a solution if it were not for the fact that these were pre-industrial times. Similarly, pollution by chemicals dumped by contemporary industries (e.g., beer brewing, linen workshops, purple dye, etc.) would not have caused a massive stain like the one that Ipuwer is describing. An infestation by Pfiesteria-like organisms cannot be excluded outright, though. Actually, of all possible explanations, volcanic ash offers the only viable explanation Just before mentioning the red Nile, Ipuwer makes an odd statement: men look like the dark colored ibis for their clothes are continually dirty (Ip. 2.8). The oddity of the statement has compelled scholars to look for a metaphorical explanation in spite of the fact that the statement is embedded among lines which—yet again—talk about raw reality. If we include the rain of ash that turned the waters of the Nile into acid, then everything falls into place. Besides tinting the waters, the pinkish watersoluble ash mixed with dark water-insoluble particles would have also stained the clothes. Fine particles would have remained in the air and slowly drizzled down. This ash would have been more minute in amount than that right after the eruption, and would not have colored the flowing Nile. However, white linen

140

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

clothes worn by Egyptian would have been sullied by the continual deposit of fine ash and warranted Ipuwer’s comparison to the somber bird. Additionally, Ipuwer provides further parallels to the biblical plagues which cannot be explained by any theory except volcanic ash. It is true that in the extant part of the papyrus there are no references to frogs (second plague), crawling vermin (third plague), insects (fourth plague), or boils (sixth plague). However, there are passages which could describe the fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth plagues. As a result, we can conclude that the red Nile seen by Ipuwer is one and same with the red Nile witnessed by the Hebrews in Egypt. The Egyptian text presents a countryside matching the Hebrew account of ravaged agriculture. Ipuwer speaks of trees cut down (Ip. 4.14) and lack of fruits, herbs, and grain (Ip. 5.14, 6.12). The cattle was either culled or unattended (Ip. 5.5, 8.10, 9.2-3). Adding a touch of realism, Ipuwer speaks of ubiquitous and serious hunger to the point that his fellow countrymen fought with pigs to get the animals’ food (Ip. 6.2). For Egyptians, pigs were unclean, and to steal the fodder of the pigs from the under the noses of the animals is equivalent today to eating excrement and drinking urine. The Egyptians would therefore have been in the same state of despair as the more recent—and better documented—disasters in Europe. Sewer rats were eaten in Venice during the Austrian siege of 1848-1849 and urine was the only drink among the French troops known as poilus, encircled by the Germans but determined not to surrender the forts of Verdun during World War I. Another plague appearing in the text is Ipuwer’s reference to the absence of light (Ip. 9.11). His statement may mirror the darkness over Egypt during either the ninth plague or the earlier volcanic cloud that dumped the ash in the Nile. It is impossible to make any firm conclusion as to which of the two volcanic plumes (perhaps both) Ipuwer was referring to. His statement comes from a part of the papyrus which is in a very poor state. Most of the lines have been lost and only a few scattered words have been conserved. Thus, we do not know in which context the lack of light is mentioned. What we can be sure of is that Ipuwer presents an Egypt coherent with the biblical narrative and the aftermath of the Santorini eruption (Ps. 105.28 and Ex. 10.21-23). The tenth and last plague in the biblical account is the massacre of the firstborn. There are massacres of children in the Ipuwer Papyrus (Ip. 4.3-4, 5.6, 6.12). The children are characterized as coming from rich families and being killed by smashing their heads against the wall. The bodies are left in the streets. Children are themselves shown lamenting and asking why they were born if this is what is awaiting them. The children are also called “desired”, or “prayed-for”. The savage killing of children by crushing their skulls is consistent with action which is still in use today. Bernardo Bertolucci’s movie 1900 shows such

CHAPTER 12 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: TOWARD FREEDOM

141

a scene where a fascist eliminates an unwelcome young witness. The recent civil war that took place in Algeria at the end of the 20th century is another unfortunate example of this reality. Exposure in the street may have been done for convenience, but more likely to ensure everyone would see the corpses. The practice can be explained either as intended to terrorize the population or—if sacrifices were involved—to show that the sacrifice had been performed. Children crying and asking “Why this? Why me?” is a perfectly natural reaction. Ipuwer only mentions the children of the powerful families. However, it is possible that other families were also affected. In either case the scenario is consistent with sacrifices. Finally, Ipuwer calls these killed children “desired” or “prayed-for”. The implication is not the one of parents desperately wanting a child because they have difficulties in conceiving or just because they want a child. The implication is that the children are being “requested”, that is, they are being killed for a purpose. The scenario is one in which human sacrifices were being performed and excludes the alternate explanations which would suggest that the children were being killed by murderers, rapists, or kidnappers. Thus, the Ipuwer Papyrus provides the description of sacrifices that would have constituted the tenth biblical plague. In other words, the Ipuwer Papyrus provides information consistent with the plagues otherwise known from the biblical texts. Does it also provide additional information regarding the eruption at Santorini? Actually, yes. For instance, we have already encountered the fact that the document laments the absence of Minoan traders. Moreover, the Egyptian text also describes a land turned like the wheel of a potter (Ip. 2.8) indicating a tremor of the soil. Towns were destroyed including some in southern Egypt (Ip. 2.11-12). The solid royal palaces were ravaged (Ip. 7.4) and the country was ruined (Ip. 3.13). As a consequence, people filled refugee camps (Ip. 10.2). Perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence for seismic activity comes from Ipuwer’s declaration—which occurs twice in the text—of a soil grumbling the whole year round (Ip. 4.2, 6.1). The scene of Egyptian survivors living in refugee camps conveys a particularly important detail. Egyptians prided themselves on living in houses and looked down on nomads who lived in tents. The fact that Egyptians established camps means that they had no alternative and thus indicates that a natural catastrophe had taken place. The question here is how much of the disaster can be attributed to the earthquakes that accompanied the volcanic eruption that affected the Nile Delta, and how much can be linked to other earthquakes which were independent of the eruption which caused the plagues.

142

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Egypt lies near a fault that runs under the Red Sea and earthquakes are common. However, they do not occur every day and earthquakes of serious magnitudes are rare. So are earthquakes that last a long time. The description in the Ipuwer Papyrus of continual rumbling fits very well with a powerful twophase volcanic eruption. There would have been earthquakes before, during, and after the first phase as well as between the first and the second phase. These earthquakes would have reoccurred over a long time, matching Ipuwer’s yearlong grumbling. Thus, linking the seismic-related events listed by Ipuwer to earthquakes independent of the two-phase eruption is extremely unlikely. The earthquakes in the Ipuwer Papyrus should therefore be related to the same source as the volcanic ash that colored stretches of the Nile red. Finally, Ipuwer directly mentions an active volcano: a very high fire was attacking the enemies of the country (Ip. 7.1). The wording “enemies of the country” reveals an opponent that posed a real threat to Egypt. This was the case of the Hittites around 1350-1275 BC, or the Sea People around 1210-1180 BC. Other opponents may have been unpleasant (e.g., marauders from Lybia), but constituted more of a nuisance than anything else. For instance, Ramses II (1279-1213 BC) stated that the Asiatics in Middle Canaan had dared to create confusion by taking up arms against Egypt. Although the guerrilla warriors in Canaan were particularly worrisome, the Egyptian king did not characterize them as a real enemy, but rather a nuisance. Thus, Ipuwer’s characterization of the enemy as a real enemy indicates that he was referring to a more powerful adversary than just marauders or small bands of armed warriors. The enemies mentioned must therefore be considered to be of the same caliber as the Hittites known to the copying scribe. Given the fact that the text was already crumbling by the time the original document was being transcribed by the scribe, and that Egypt had never been threatened for centuries prior to the copying, we have only one candidate left: the Hyksos, who invaded Egypt around 1675 BC and ruled it for roughly a century. In fact, the activities linked to these plunderers (Ip. 1.9, 2.2, 2.4, 3.9, 3.12, 3.14, 4.5-7, 9.6, 14.10-12) fit the profile of the Hyksos. The date for the text must therefore be restricted to the Second Intermediary Period and to the later part of the period at that: 1675-1567 BC. In other words, the Ipuwer Papyrus does provide an Egyptian picture compatible with the biblical plagues, and it even provides a time frame to work with, the Hyksos years. Last but not least, the present work unveils the proper content of the text: Ipuwer provided his ruler with a description of Egypt at the time of the Hyksos occupation and he suggested that there was a golden opportunity to get rid of the occupying forces.

CHAPTER 12 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: TOWARD FREEDOM

143

The story of Ipuwer does not end here, though. His speech nicely dovetails into a separate document hosted today at the British Museum, thus providing one more piece to make our puzzle more complete. Papyrus Sallier I, also known as BM 10185, is a text that deals with disasters and provides the background for the start of the great riot against the Hyksos. The existing copy of the text was written around 1225 BC and was a copy of an earlier work which described the events leading to the southern Egyptian riot against the Hykos ruler Apopi. The story opens on the note that Egypt and especially Avaris, the Hyksos capital in the Nile Delta, were afflicted by a great disaster. Apopi, ruler of the 15th dynasty, is described as being in power in Avaris and as being a devout follower of the god Seth. The text honors Apopi as “prince Apopi”. The standard Egyptian expression “life! prosperity! health!”, which accompanies the name or the title of a ruler, is also used for Apopi. According to the story, Apopi sent a message to Seqenenre Tao, a prince of the coexisting 17th dynasty, who ruled the southern Egyptian town of Thebes. The message appears to constitute a pretext for Apopi to interfere in the Seqenenre Tao’s affairs. In order to minimize the magnitude of Apopi’s intervention, the Theban prince gathered his council and asked for advice. The text, however, is incomplete and we do not have the answer to Apopi’s request. The first interesting element in this document is the mention of a great disaster in the Nile Delta. In fact, we may have yet another Egyptian indication for the biblical plagues. The second interesting element is that we are dealing with the time of the Hyksos occupation. The third interesting element in this document is the reverence with which Apopi is addressed. The Hyksos leader is addressed as royalty. This is in stark contrast with a slightly later text, the Khamose stelae, which was written during the time of the Egyptian war of liberation against the Hyksos. The stelae reports the words of Seqenere Tao’s older son Khamose, who took over the leadership of the revolt against the Hyksos after the murder of Seqenenre Tao. Khamose has no politically correct words for his enemy. He never calls Apopi by the name of prince and never uses the royal wish “Life! Prosperity! Health!”. Apopi is at best called “Chief in Avaris” or “Syrian prince”. He is also called “Asiatic”, “he”, “him”, and “vile Asiatic”. He is also plainly addressed by his name, “Apopy”. There is not a shred of reverence in the text. Hence the text of the Papyrus Sallier I must precede the revolt. It most likely preserves an official record made in Thebes on the occasion of Apopi’s request to Seqenenre Tao at a time during the Hyksos rule of Egypt when a natural disaster of great magnitude struck the country. Possibly the most important point—which has never been reported, to the best of our knowledge—is that Ipuwer’s statements dovetail with the Tale of Apopi

144

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

and Seqenenre Tao. Together they provide a coherent picture for an Egypt crippled by the biblical plagues during the Hyksos dynasty (1675-1567 BC). The dovetailing also answers questions regarding the development of the Egyptian riot against the occupiers. Splicing the two narratives together, we can see Apopi sending a message to the Theban ruler Seqenenre Tao at a time when Northern Egypt was in a state of great distress. The message was crafted with the intent of being confusing and held a trap. Apopi intended to probe Seqenenre Tao’s interests. If the Theban leader were to show signs of not submitting to the Hyksos, Apopi would have found a pretext to attack him. However, if Thebes’ submission could be achieved without a war, so much the better. Sensing the trap, Seqenenre Tao asked the opinion of his councilors. So much we know from the Papyrus Sallier I. What the text fails to provide is the answers of the councilors. Enters the Ipuwer Papyrus. The courtier Ipuwer provided his master, whom we identify as Seqenenre Tao, with the state of the land, including the state of the Hyksos, and the plagues unleashed by the volcano. Egypt was torn between foreign occupation and anarchy, while at the same time Mother Nature had declared war on Egypt, or perhaps the foreign occupiers, as Ipuwer points out. This was the time to seize the day and fight the occupiers. Ipuwer’s message—both implicit and explicit—was to weigh heavily on the ruler’s decision. Seqenenre Tao did declare the war in which he was killed, but enabled his son Ahmose to unify the country and become its new king. In appendix to Papyrus Sallier I and the Ipuwer Papyrus, we can add the subsequent events documented by the Khamose stelae and the storm stela. Khamose took over a few years later and was able to directly threaten Avaris, which by then had grown strong again. Upon his death, Khamose’s brother Ahmose took over. Toward the end of the war, or right after it, a severe storm damaged southern Egypt. The new ruler ordered the reconstruction of all damages, whether made by the war or by nature. There is one more piece we can start fitting into the puzzle: the diary in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. The anonymous ruler who was in power when at the end of his tenth year of rule the plagues started was Apopi. This information in turn allows us to define a narrow window during which the plagues must have occurred. Apopi’s rule took place sometime in the second half of the Hyksos years (1675-1567 BC), that is, after 1621 BC. Since the plagues took place at the end of the tenth year of rule, they must have taken place at or after 1611 BC. We also know that the plagues took place before the Khamose stelae were engraved, and that Khamose died around 1581 BC.

CHAPTER 12 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: TOWARD FREEDOM

145

The present analysis, based on historical, archaeological, and biblical data, has reached its limit and provided a narrow window for the plagues: 1611-1581 BC. We now have two choices: either we look at other data, which have not yet been tapped into, or we declare ourselves happy with the narrow window. We choose the latter.

146

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 1. Comparison of Santorini eruption, biblical and Egyptian data. Event Biblical narrative Santorini erupts, and its plume reaches Darkness similar to a sky of bronze the Nile Delta. dumps dust. The Nile turned red, fish were dead and people refused to drink the The ash fallout colored and acidified the waters, killing the fish. Amphibians resist waters. Then, frogs invaded the banks, until they are exiled to the land where followed by vermin, and swarms of flies they die. (Ex. 7.14-8.11-20; Dt. 28.24; Ps. 78.43Dead animals become fertile ground for 45; Ps. 105.27-31). the multiplication of insects. Eggs from insects in dead animals hatch, later becoming adult insects. Volcanic ash causes severe weather Ruined countryside: dead cattle, damaged disturbances—“nuclear winter”—such as fig trees and vines, while humans and storms, which bring down acid ash, animals are covered with boils, hail cuts burning humans and animals outside. flax and barley, and locusts and worms More weather disturbances as the eat the fields (Ex. 9.1-10.20; Dt. 28.16“nuclear winter” goes on. 18, 28.27-31, 35, 38-41; Ps. 78.46-48; Ps. The higher humidity fosters the presence 105.32-35). of pests such as worms, moulds, and locusts. The volcano enters its second eruptive Palpable suffocating cloud (Ex. 10.21-29; phase: the grumbling is replaced by a Dt. 28.28-29; Ps. 18.7-20; Ps. 46.2-8; Ps. new explosion, which sends a plume yet 68.8-9; Ps. 78.49; Ps. 97.1-5). again toward Egypt. People turn to their gods seeking Firstborn of men and animals killed (Ex. protection, and show their devotion by 11.1-13.16; Ps. 78.50-51; Ps. 105.36; Ps. sacrificing what is dearest to them: their 136.10), yet Hebrew firstborn are first born children. “bought back” by Yhwh (Ex. 11.14), and Levites are pledged to Yhwh from the tenth plague onwards (Ex. 30.11-16, 34.19-20; Nu. 3.11-13, 3.40-51, 8.14-19, 18.12-20; Dt. 15.19-20, 26.1.11). Furthermore, Hebrew children cannot be sacrificed (Lv. 2.5, 18.21; Dt. 12.29-31).

CHAPTER 12 EGYPTIAN PARALLELS: TOWARD FREEDOM

Egyptian narrative Loud noise followed by odd rain over the Nile Delta (Rhind). Evil over the earth (el-Arish naos). Winds and waves turn the Delta into mud (Magical P. Harris). Gods angry as Tutimaios king (Contra Apionem). Remedies for eyes (Ebers P.), burns (Ebers P., London Medical P.), single out burns from red water in which vermin forms (London Medical P.). Unusually cold weather (el-Arish naos). Remedies against burns (Ebers P., London Medical P.). Unusually cold weather (el-Arish naos). Darkness (el-Arish naos) Remedies for cough and asthma, and eyes (Ebers P.).

Ahmose and Iunu human sacrifices (De abstinentia) Human sacrifices as tekenu to Seth god of the Hyksos (Tomb of Rekhmire)

147

Ipuwer Clothes are dirty (Ip., 2.8) Red and undrinkable water (Ip., 2.10).

Culled or unattended cattle (Ip., 5.5, 8.10, 9.2-3) amidst a countryside of devastated trees (Ip., 4.14), … The countryside is devastated: herbs, fruits and grain (Ip., 5.14, 6.12). Land grumbles, and sites are destroyed as far as the south (Ip., 2.8, 2.11-12, 3.13, 4.2, 6.1, 7.4). A high fire attacks the enemy of the country (Ip., 7.1). Darkness across Egypt (Ip.9.11). Massacres of chosen children (Ip., 4.3-4, 5.6, 6.12).

CHAPTER 13 A DATE FOR THE ERUPTION AND THUS THE PLAGUES? Now that we know that the biblical plagues are records of the fallout from Santorini’s eruption over the Nile Delta, determining when the plagues happened appears straightforward: the year of the eruption provides the year of the plagues. There is a problem, however, for we do not know exactly when Santorini erupted. Scientists have investigated the event for decades without reaching a consensus. The present investigation has gone to great length to provide a date on the basis of historical, archaeological, and biblical data that referred to the plagues for this exact reason. Additionally, the present approach provides independent means from those already used by volcanologists. This independent approach is needed in light of the fact that many investigators have looked at the biblical plagues only to fall into the trap of pet theories somewhere along the journey. In the present investigation everything is checked and double-checked to ensure we are not taking fools’ gold for real gold. Yet the present approach is facing its own problem: it has reached—or so it seems—a cul-de-sac. The comparison involving historical documents, archaeological findings, and biblical verses brings us to 1611-1581 BC and we would like to have something more precise. Hence, we need to amalgamate scientific data to that derived from historical, archaeological, and biblical sources. Science tells us that Santorini erupted sometime during the Bronze Age. Initial investigation into the event indicated a date around 1300 BC by attempting to correlate the collapse of Minoan civilization in Greece, the destruction of Ugarit along Syria’s coastline, and the volcanic event at Santorini. However, as additional data emerged, it became clear that that the plundering and leveling of Ugarit took place well after the Minoans had disappeared from the surface of the earth and well after Santorini had gone back to rest. A newer evaluation proposed a 1400-1300 BC range for the Santorini event. As it became clear that Minoan civilization survived the eruption, the volcanic event was pushed back to 1470 BC, and then back to 1500 BC. Today, historians appear to prefer a date around 1550 BC, though. 149

150

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Such a date, however, does not accommodate volcanologists who insist that the date is much older. A date around 1700 BC is exaggerated, although a point in time toward the end of the 17th century BC (1700-1600 BC) is favored. Two dates within this century emerged as not only possible candidates, but as strong favorites: 1645 BC (or thereabouts) and 1627 BC (or thereabouts). The former date rests on sulfate data trapped in the ice fields of Greenland. The idea is that volcanic ash precipitates to the soil, and, in sites like Greenland, become trapped in the ice field. Once on the soil, additional materials will sediment above it, and so on. The volcanic content can be identified because it is highly acidic due to its sulfate residues. The latter date rests on the counting of tree rings or, as scientists prefer to call it, dendrochronology. The idea there is that trees grow one ring a year. The tree sleeps during the winter and as it awakens during the spring, sending out shoots and leaves, its trunk will grow. The tree’s growth will then stop as the it sheds its leaves during the fall. A line will form between the growth of one year and the growth of a different year. If a tree encounters a very poor spring-summer, its growth will be stunted and the ring will be very narrow. This is the signature of severe weather, weather that could be attributed to adverse effects such as an abundance of volcanic ash in the air. The 1645 BC date was recently shown to be erroneous by Keenan and his team, who have worked on the Santorini eruption and, notably, on the sediments thereof at the bottoms of lakes in southwestern Anatolia. The sulfate-rich slice of ice from 1645 BC in Greenland contains volcanic material, but from a volcano different from Santorini. Keenan compared volcanic material certified from the Santorini Bronze Age eruption to material obtained from the Greenland ice fields. Checking the mineral composition of the ash, his conclusion is that the Santorini material and the 1645 BC material from Greenland are very different. In fact, they are so different that they can only come from different eruption events: statistical fluctuations in the amounts of minerals in the ash cannot fully explain the large differences observed. Hammer, the scientist working on the Greenland ash, rebutted that the differences between Keenan’s ash from Santorini and his 1645 BC ash—claimed to be from Santorini—found in Greenland, could be accounted for by the fact that time in the air would have altered the composition of the ash because it would have acidified and some would have been dispersed elsewhere due to wind currents. Who is right? Keenan or Hammer? Beside the negative correlation between the 1645 BC material and Santorini on the basis of Keenan’s remarks, we have ample evidence that— indeed—1645 BC is an erroneous date.

CHAPTER 13 A DATE FOR THE ERUPTION AND THUS THE PLAGUES?

151

Such a year is only loosely supported by 14C data (read: carbon 14). The 1645 date fails to provide volcanic material over at least two years or more, as required by the length of time between the eruptive phases at Santorini. It falls outside the range determined on the basis of historical, archaeological, and biblical data. It is far too early for the end of Apopi’s 10th year of reign. It would require an almost 80 year war between Thebes and the Hyksos during which only two generations of rulers fought: Seqenenre Tao died fighting and was succeeded by his son Khamose and then by Ahmose, a few years younger than Khamose. Finally, other scientists cannot find acid data for the same year in the ice of Greenland. Early studies of the ice showed a very high acidity in the precipitations that occurred in 1645 BC (Nature 328 (1987):517-519). A more refined analysis showed that this peak was actually the result of the superimposition of two separate peaks. The first of the two peaks came from precipitations attributable to the year 1669 BC while the second came from precipitations attributable to 1623 BC. A 1645 BC date is untenable. This consideration brings us to the next strong candidate, as per the work of scientists regarding Santorini’s eruption. 1627 BC is the most commonly accepted date and was obtained very differently from the 1645 BC date. As pointed out earlier, tree rings were counted. This technique is relatively simple. The rationale for counting tree rings stems from the fact that fine particles of ash from volcanic eruptions litter the atmosphere and impact on the weather by triggering storms. These poor weather conditions in turn translate into poor growth for the trees, which grow one ring per year. Exceptionally poor years in which the environment is very harsh produce very small tree rings. Since trees grow by one ring each year, counting the rings can tell when the small rings were formed, and thus when the poor weather conditions took place. Theoretically, the method is quite simple and ingenious. If you cut a live tree and start counting the rings, you will determine that the tree is, let us say, 60 years old. If you take a very old tree you can go back centuries. At the former botanical garden of Paris, now a regular small park, Jardin des plantes, there is a section from a redwood tree donated to France by the United States of America. On its surface small plaques have been embedded. They indicate the ring formed by the tree at the time the French stormed the Bastille (1789), at the time Columbus landed in America (1492), and so forth. By counting the tree rings, we are going back in time. Let us say we have two slices of wood. The first slice is our unknown, which is 250 years old. The second slice comes from a similar tree and region, and is known to have come from a tree felled in 1950. Counting the rings of this second slice, we know the tree was 700 years old at the time of its felling and thus lived between the years 1250 and 1950.

152

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

By comparing the two slices, we notice that the last 50 rings of the former slice are very similar in shape to the first 50 rings of the latter slice. Thus, the former tree died in 1300 and was born 250 years earlier in 1050. Using these two slices we have now built a calendar for the growth of trees encompassing the years 1050-1950 for that specific geographical region. Comparing more slices we can establish a longer calendar. This kind of calendar is known as dendrochronology. A dendrochronology for which the year is certain is called absolute. In some cases one may have a sequence of years starting at an unknown time and ending at an unknown time as indicated above. These series of tree rings form a floating calendar which needs to be anchored to tree rings from known series. A problem emerges when we have a piece of tree for which we do not know the year when the plant was felled. Let us say that there are 250 rings. Was the tree cut in 1950 bringing us back to 1700? Or was it cut in 1800, bringing us back to 1550? Unless we can match some of those rings with a slice from a tree whose age is known, we cannot tap into the information contained in those 250 rings. To date such a piece of wood, we ideally need to compare it to a slice from a tree of the same species grown in the same geographical area and for which the date is known. These restrictions ensure that the rings reflect similar growth conditions. This is the problem which scientists faced when attempting to determine the year when Santorini erupted. Available to the scientists was an absolute dendrochronology developed on the basis of bristlecone pines from the White Mountain range in California and several sites across Colorado and New Mexico. This calendar shows that the western United States witnessed very severe bad weather in 1626 BC which was attributed to the Santorini eruption in the scientific journal Nature (307 (1984):121-126). Dendrochronologies from various parts of Europe (England, Germany, and Northern Ireland) which evidenced severe abnormal growth and for which the date was uncertain were dated to 1626 BC (Nature 312 (1984):150-152; Nature 332 (1988):344-346). A similar dendrochronology was built using wood from sites in Turkey (Nature 381 (1996):733, 780-783). Apparently these data from three different parts of the world tell the same story of a huge disaster that affected weather worldwide. We now have a tool to prove that Santorini erupted in 1626 or 1627 BC (to account for the season when the eruption took place). Or, do we? The Northern European and Turkish tree rings were dated by pegging their anomalies onto the American series and they fit within the large (almost two

CHAPTER 13 A DATE FOR THE ERUPTION AND THUS THE PLAGUES?

153

centuries) window for radiocarbon dating. However, we do not know whether the bad weather which is recorded in the tree rings in California for the year 1627/6 BC was due to a local event or caused by volcanic ash from Santorini. Phenomena closer to California, for example, El Niño or a volcano in Alaska, could well explain the abnormal weather in 1627/6 BC California. There is no reason whatsoever to invoke an eruption over 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) away at Santorini. Neither can anyone provide a link between the bad weather in California in 1627/6 BC and the bad weather in Europe for whenever the Northern European and Turkish trees were stunted in their growth. Therefore, it is totally illegitimate to conclude that the European trees experienced bad weather at the same time the Californian trees did. In other words: the very bad weather in 1627/6 BC in the United States provides no data as to when Santorini erupted. Thus, the 1627/6 BC date is not as solid as originally proclaimed. There are other indications that such a date is off the mark. In the first place, the sulfate data are off. According to the Greenland ice, there is a high amount of sulfates, but it points to 1623 BC, that is, a handful of years prior. The problem is that the dendrochronological determination is classified as absolute and cannot be wrong. However, there is no sulfate data for that time: the dendrochronology calendar indicates 1627/6 BC and not 1623 BC Moreover, neither very bad weather indicated by poor tree growth in 1627/6 BC, nor a high amount of sulfates in 1623 BC could represent the Santorini eruption which had a gigantic amount of ash spread over a period of time which lasted over a year and up to two. The first four plagues would have taken a minimum of two months to occur: one day for the volcanic cloud to get to Egypt, one week for the increased acidity that pushed the frogs onto the banks, time for insects to lay eggs, a couple of weeks for the eggs to hatch, larvae to crawl, and a few more weeks for the insects to become adults. The fifth plague, as per the evidence shown earlier, could only have taken place around July or August. The tenth plague took place around March or April. Thus, tree growth would have been hampered for two subsequent years rather than one, which is not the case with the Californian data. Similarly, the acid peak of 1623 BC should have been spread over two years. Additionally, the whole argument for 1626 BC is built on the assumption that the severe weather that affected the western United States in 1626 BC must have been caused by Santorini’s eruption. However, there is no proof for the assumption. No links have been shown between the trees in Europe (for which the date is still unknown).

154

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Moreover, a 1626 BC date is incompatible with the Egyptian diary (Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, 87) that indicates that Apopi had been in power for ten years at the time of the disaster. His reign certainly started well after 1625 BC. A 1626 BC date for the eruption would also imply that the southern Egyptian revolt would have lasted 60 years or so and would have been fought by only two generations of rulers, Seqenenre Tao and his two sons, Khamose and Ahmose. It is possible, but highly improbable. Furthermore, the reconstruction of the plagues provides 21-22 months between the two Santorini phases (from summer of “year 0” to spring of “year 2”), and thus the tree growth would have been stunted for at least three years (summer “year 0”, summer “year 1”, and summer “year 2”). The length of time is in full agreement with the scenario independently built by volcanologists on the basis of geological data alone from Santorini. According to volcanologists, Santorini erupted in a two-phase explosion in which the two phases were separated by a period of time from a minimum of 2 months to a maximum of 2 years. The first plague took place in late summer. The fifth plague (storm) signaled an early start for the rainy season, that is, around September-October. The seventh plague took place around February. The plague of locusts (eighth plague) would have taken place later that year in the fall. Finally, the tenth plague that occurred a few days after the ninth plague (the second phase of the eruption) is said to have taken place either at the end of March or the beginning of April. In other words, the plagues took place over roughly 21 months. Yet the tree rings speak of roughly only one event that either took place in 1627 BC or in 1626 BC. And then there is the aforementioned range provided by the combination of historical, archaeological and biblical data: 1611-1581 BC. An eruption in 1626 or 1627 BC cannot accommodate these data: it is too early, and must therefore be discarded in favor of a later date. The final nail in the coffin of the 1627/6 BC date is that it does not directly reflect a volcanic eruption. We actually do not know what caused bad weather in California in 1626 BC. Poor tree growth reflects bad weather, which in turn may reflect a variety of factors, and does not single out volcanic events. Chances are higher that the bad weather in California in 1626 BC was local rather than worldwide. We should really rely on a more direct method of dating than bad weather reflected in tree rings. We need a method that directly reflects volcanic activity. And as a matter of fact, such a method exists; it is the aforementioned acidity in ice trapped in Greenland. The trick is to match such data to the other data available.

CHAPTER 13 A DATE FOR THE ERUPTION AND THUS THE PLAGUES?

Santorini

Greenland

Europe Turkey Western USA

Nile Delta

Figure 1. Map of the world showing the positions of Santorini and Greenland

155

156

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 1. Dynamics of the biblical plagues: chronological assessment. Timing Biblical plague July-September Year 0 Red Nile, then frogs, then kînnîm, (volcanic fallout from Santorini at the time of then ‘ârôb (1-4). the annual flood onwards) September/October Year 0 (first rains, rains go to March) Storm that killed cattle and destroyed trees (5), and caused burns on the skin and hide (6). February Year 1 Hail storm (7). (first winter) November Year 1 Swarms of locusts coming from the (locust season, season goes to May) east (8). March Year 2 (second phase at Santorini) Palpable darkness: low altitude March-April Year 2 volcanic plume (9). (first full moon in Spring 1600 BC) Sacrifices of firstborn: death of Egyptians and their animals, while Hebrews forbid such a practice and Levites are offered to Yhwh as substitute (10).

CHAPTER 14 THE YEAR THE WORLD CHANGED The integration of scientific data into the puzzle has—paradoxically—ruled out the major candidates for when volcanologists thought Santorini erupted (1645 BC and 1627 BC). This is not an indication of the weakness of the science of volcanology, but rather, yet again, a sign of the complexity of the phenomena described by the biblical plagues. Additionally, we briefly referred to radiocarbon data available for this period of time and how they might contribute by being included in our window. The time frame during which the plagues must have taken place currently stands at 1611-1581 BC. The eleventh year Apopi was in power cannot have taken place before 1611 BC and we know from the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus that the first plague occurred at the very end of the Sothic year in that year of rule. We also know that the plagues took place before Khamose died, an event that can be traced back to 1581 BC. The central role played by radiocarbon may either narrow the window further or provide a crisper picture. Radioactive dating is a standard way to determine the time an object was made, a person lived, or an event took place. The method—as the name indicates— leverages radioactivity. Today radioactivity is commonly associated with atomic weapons. It is also associated with the production of electricity. The term often evokes the bombing of Hiroshima, the disaster at Chernobyl, and a nuclear holocaust predicted by many, but mercifully never materialized. From a more technical viewpoint, radioactivity consists in a change at the subatomic level of matter. The change frees large amounts of energy which can be harnessed to heat water and generate steam to make electricity. We can also take advantage of this energy to build bombs, perform scientific experiments, generate anticancer therapies, and irradiate food by killing unwanted microorganisms. Finally, radioactivity can also be used to study history. Although radioactivity is primarily connected in people’s minds to manmade activities, it does exist in nature. One such instance comes from cosmic rays, which turn “standard” nitrogen (7 neutrons and 7 protons) in the atmosphere into a heavy carbon. “Standard” carbon contains 6 neutrons and 6 protons, 157

158

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

and is also called 12C. The heavier carbon derived from the cosmic rays is called 14 C (or radiocarbon) and contains 8 neutrons and 6 protons. Unlike 12C which is stable, the heavier 14C is physically unstable, or radioactive. The chemical instability of radioactive elements means that atoms will be spontaneously modified in the attempt to stabilize the atom back to “standard” nitrogen. This process is known as radioactive decay. The time needed for any quantity of radioactive material to be halved is called its half-life. Radioactive phosphorus, or 32P, for instance, has a half-life of 2 weeks. Radioactive sulfur, 35 S, takes three months to get half its quantity. Radioactive hydrogen, 3H, needs 16 years. For 14C the half-life is quite long: 5770 years. Radiocarbon is particularly important because all living beings contain large amounts of carbon which is present in proteins, sugars, fats, and derivatives thereof. As we live, we incorporate the different forms of carbon existing in nature, including radioactive 14C. The way of entry into humans is through food. Plants fix radioactive carbon from the CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the air. Animals and humans incorporate the carbon of the plants into their own bodies when eating grasses, fruits, leaves, and other vegetal parts and products. Animals eating both plants and other animals will obtain radioactive carbon from both sources. At the time of death, the incorporation of carbon stops. As time goes by, a dead animal or plant will continuously lose radioactivity without being able to compensate for the loss. The amount of radiocarbon left will give an idea of when the specimen examined ceased to incorporate carbon, that is, when it died. Thus, radioactivity can be used to date events, objects, etc. In this case, since we are trying to date a volcanic eruption, two separate sets of samples were examined: organic matter that can be placed at Santorini at the time of the eruption and organic matter that can be placed in Egypt at the time of the eruption. The determination of the age of a sample can be calculated thanks to the following equation familiar from any physics or physical chemistry text or class (also see Figure 1). The date is based on the amount of extant radiocarbon vis-àvis the half-life of the radioactive atom species: ln[14C]/[14C0] = -(0.693/ t) x T The concentration of radiocarbon in the sample is indicated as [14C], while [ C0] is the concentration of radiocarbon in the air, t is the half-life (5770 years) for radiocarbon and T is the number of years since the sample no longer incorporated radiocarbon (i.e., since the organism providing the sample died). Thus, if an animal has a concentration of radiocarbon which is half of the concentration in the air, we would have 14

CHAPTER 14 THE YEAR THE WORLD CHANGED

159

ln(0.5) = -(0.693/ 5770) x T or T = 0.693 / (0.693 X 5770) = 5770 yielding a result of 5770 years, which is what we would expect since the ratio was 0.5. Yet, for a much younger sample where the ratio of radiocarbon is—for argument’s sake—0.8, we would have ln(0.8) = -(0.693/ 5770) x T or T = 0.223 / (0.693 X 5770) = 1858 indicating that the sample stopped incorporating carbon 1858 years ago. The beauty of the radiocarbon technique is that it theoretically provides a exact date for the material examined. There is one last twist in this business, namely that when the date is determined, the years obtained from the equation are not substracted from the year in which the analysis is performed, but from a “baseline” which is 1950, because it ushers in the beginning of the atomic era, and therefore the beginning of the contamination of the atmosphere by man-made radioactive pollutants. The organic material associated with the Santorini eruption consists of grains and other material found in jars covered by the ash of the eruption on Santorini Island. A first analysis was made on this organic material (grains, etc.). The amount of radioactivity was determined and the number of years was calculated back, placing the eruption sometime in 1630-1530 BC (G.W. Pearson & M. Stuiver, Radiocarbon 28 (1986): 839-862). A similar analysis yielded a 16951617 BC interval (M. Stuiver & B. Becker, Radiocarbon 28 (1986):863-910) and the revision thereof yielded a fragmented interval that was as old as 1685 BC or as young as 1539 BC (M. Stuiver & B Becker, Radiocarbon 35 (1993):35-65)! These results were then compared with data obtained from material found in Egypt which was traceable to the eruption: Santorini ash found at the bottom of lakes of the Nile Delta. Volcanic ash is not burnt wood, but rather pieces of glass. As such this ash cannot be dated using the radiocarbon technique, since it does not contain carbon. However, the ash was sandwiched between two layers of mud, which contained organic material such as decomposed leaves, reeds, animals, and plankton. The analysis of the—younger—top layer of mud revealed a date of 824 BC + 70 years. The bottom—older—layer provided a date of 2394 + 95 years.

160

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Extrapolation from the data put the sandwiched ash at 1609-1526 BC (Nature 363 (1993):610-612). Different analyses, different ranges at times excluding each other: what is happening? Radiocarbon dating, as shown above, can oscillate widely. Although it measures the decay of the material, often the material is very scarce and a precise quantification of the radioactivity is difficult if not impossible. Another technical problem comes from the fact that 14C is a weak radioactive compound (which explains why we are alive and well rather than dead from cancer at 20), and is quenched, or blocked, quite easily. This fact adds to the difficulty of a correct detection. Overall, radiocarbon data point to a total range of 1695-1526 BC (Figure 2). This time frame, however, is not continuous and there are gaps here and there stemming fom the different analyses. Thus, we still lack a precise date for the eruption: dendrochronology, counting tree rings, turns out to be pretty much useless in this case. The calendar for events in the Mediterranean Sea is unreliable. Moreover, tree rings reflect weather, and thus a combination of factors, rather than just volcanic events. Hence, we cannot incorporate such data into our analysis. Similarly, radiocarbon data do not offer a solution. We need to rely on a more direct method than bad weather; we need a method that directly reflects volcanic activity. We really need to find solid scientific data. And as a matter of fact, such a method exists and it is called acid precipitation. As already observed earlier when discussing the first and sixth biblical plagues, as well as from the aftermath of the 1991 Hudson eruption, volcanic events generate ash that either gravity or precipitation bring down to the soil. Eruptions do not take place every day and large eruptions are especially rare. Yet, today humankind is accustomed to acid rains because of a different source. Since the industrial revolution, more and more particles have been spewed in the air. Often these particles contain sulfates. As industrial activities grew, more sulfates were put into circulation in the air, which meant that more sulfates were being brought down by rain. Based on the source of the sulfates and the direction of winds, areas started to be hit with acid rain. For instance, Scandinavian lakes and ponds suffered greatly from sulfates raining in quantities well beyond what the Nordic countries were producing. The winds were carrying the acid fumes of other countries toward Sweden and its neighbors. When the German weekly Der Spiegel proclaimed in November 1981 that “Der Wald stirbt” (“The Forest is Dying”) there was a national outcry. The world was already familiar with the case in the Sudbury area in Northern Ontario where smelters for copper and nickel ore were spewing very high amounts of sulfates in the air. The resulting acid rain destroyed vegetation and

CHAPTER 14 THE YEAR THE WORLD CHANGED

161

made Sudbury look like a lunar landscape. The authorities intervened to bring vegetation back to the site and fish to the rivers and lakes. Similarly, German authorities fought hard for better gasoline to be used in vehicles, thus limiting the spewing of sulfates along highways and into the woods lining them. However, in pre-industrial times acid rain reflected volcanic particles (with minor exceptions such as heavy mining activities during the time of the Roman Empire, 30 BC-476 AD). Thus, acid precipitation prior to the industrial age can be attributed to volcanic eruptions. Ice accumulated throughout the centuries forms banks. The best example of such an ice bank for the northern hemisphere is the ice cap of Greenland. Its vault can be unlocked by drilling and removing long cylinders of material. A major study analyzed long ice cores in order to obtain the acid peaks for the last few millennia. The major peaks were duly reported in scientific literature (Science 264 (1994):913, 948-952). The question then becomes: which of the peaks represents the sulfates from Santorini’s eruption? One may be tempted to identify the largest eruption in the last 10,000 years with the largest deposit of acid residues in Greenland’s ice cap. The peak with the largest amount of sulfates for the Bronze Age, however, may not provide the year for the Santorini eruption. Although acidity directly reflects volcanic activity, a higher concentration of sulfates does not imply a more powerful eruption because of two factors: ● Geography ● Chemistry Volcanoes closer to Greenland will generate more sulfate ions in the air above Greenland (and thus in the precipitation over Greenland) than volcanoes further away. Moreover, not all volcanic material is created equal, but differs in chemical composition including, for instance, sulfate contents. Thus, more powerful eruptions can produce volcanic material with lower concentrations of sulfates than less powerful eruptions, leaving fewer deposits in the ice cap of Greenland. Two examples—one per issue—will clarify what is at stake. Let us take two eruptions with known Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI), dates, and sulfate deposits in Greenland (Table 2). The eruption of the Icelandic volcano Hekla in 1970 had a VEI of 3, and the sulfate content in the Greenland ice was 83 parts per billion (ppb). The eruption of the volcano in the Indonesian archipelago of Krakatoa in 1883 had a VEI of 6.1, that is, the latter eruption was 1000 times more powerful than the former. The ice in Greenland, however, shows that the sulfate content of the Krakatoa eruption (46 ppb) was approximately half of what the Hekla eruption generated. Geographical distance explains the difference in sulfates. Hekla is roughly 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the sampling site in Greenland, while Krakatoa is in the southern

162

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

hemisphere and is roughly 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) from the sampling site. More sulfates from the Icelandic eruption would have hovered over Greenland and precipitated there than from the Indonesian eruption further away. Let us now look at two eruptions similar in explosivity index and geographical site. The Hekla eruption of 1970 had a VEI of 3 and a sulfate content of 83 ppb in the Greenland ice. The 1727 eruption of the nearby Icelandic volcano of Öræfajökull had a VEI of 4 (i.e., was roughly 10 times more powerful), but resulted in a 25 ppb sulfate deposit in Greenland (i.e., three times less sulfates). In order to account for the difference in sulfates, the material ejected from the weaker eruption must have had a higher concentration of sulfates than the material derived from the 1727 Öræfajökull eruption. In other words, the data in the Greenland ice-sheet reflect eruptions of different sizes, which are not proportional to the sulfate contents. The amounts of sulfates offer an indication of the scale of the eruption, but two separate eruptions cannot be compared solely on the basis of the sulfate contents in the ice. For the sake of completeness, we will look at all the possible eruptions that left large amounts of acid residue in Greenland between 1700 BC and 1500 BC (Table 3). Starting with the oldest one, we notice that we have a very large deposit of ash in the Greenland ice field. That is, however, the only element that would fit the eruption: the timing does not fit the archaeological-historical-biblical data. Moreover, there is ash only in one year while the eruption would have spread ash twice over 21-22 months. Finally, the support from radiocarbon data is very weak. The subsequent eruption took place in 1669 BC. The sulfate content is quite high (78 ppb). The timing, however, does not fit the archaeological-historical-biblical data and ash is only manifest in one single year while the eruption would have spread ash twice over 21-22 months. As far as radiocarbon data is concerned, the evidence is weak. An eruption in 1643 BC was at first postulated, but turned out to be a mistaken conclusion, and hence is without any basis. The next eruption is from 1623 BC (145 ppb sulfates). Although radiocarbon data provide some support for such a date, the timing does not fit the archaeological-historical-biblical data and ash is only present within a one-year period rather than twice over 21-22 months. The next eruption took place in 1602 BC. The amount of sulfates is decent, yet not phenomenal. The timing fits with the archaeological-historical-biblical data. Yet, ash is only present within a one-year period rather than twice over 2122 months. Radiocarbon data provide strong support for such a date. The same story for the next date, 1600 BC: a decent amount of sulfates, yet not phenomenal, the timing fits with the archaeological-historical-biblical data,

CHAPTER 14 THE YEAR THE WORLD CHANGED

163

and there is strong support from radiocarbon data. The ash, however, is only present within a one-year period rather than twice over 21-22 months. Then in 1594 BC another eruption took place. The amount of sulfates is decent, the timing fits with the archaeological-historical-biblical data, and 14C evidence provides strong support for such a date. Yet again, ash is only present within a one-year period rather than twice over 21-22 months. Finally, there is one more candidate, an eruption in 1577 BC. There is some 14C support for such a date. However, the amount of sulfates is the lowest of all the candidates, and the volcanic event does not fit the archaeological-historical-biblical data, or the spread of ash over 21-22 months. Thus, it appears that there is no eruption that satisfies all our criteria. Unless we have overlooked something. Rather than taking the 1602 BC and 1600 BC eruptions separately, what would happen if we took them together? A 1602-1600 BC volcanic event provides a phenomenal amount of sulfates (98 ppb). The timing perfectly fits the archaeological-historical-biblical data. Radiocarbon data provide strong support for such a date. Last but not least, ash is spread twice over 21-22 months. A better match could not be possible. Now we can provide a date for the volcanic event and we can revisit the unfolding of the disasters. The first plague took place in mid-1602 BC, which was the end of the tenth year of reign of Apopi over the Hyksos. The second, third, and fourth plagues took place within weeks of the first plague, and before the end of that summer. The fifth plague (storm) ushered in an early start for the rainy season, around September or October of the year 1602 BC and was followed immediately by the sixth plague of burns on the bodies of people and animals. The seventh plague took place around February 1601 BC, destroying the fields. More damage to the countryside came as locusts came in the fall of 1601 BC. Then, in March 1600 BC Santorini entered its final eruptive phase. A colossal amount of smoke and ash exited the volcano and journeyed throughout the Middle East, eventually reaching—at a low altitude—northern Egypt. Fearing a new series of disasters, at the end of March or the beginning of April 1600 BC, the Hyksos, the Egyptians, and all other people living in the Nile Delta started serious sacrifices to their gods. The Hebrews saw the work of their God. The Hyksos saw—at first—a sign from their storm god giving them the opportunity to completely dominate Egypt as per the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus that records the arrival of the volcanic cloud and the Tale of Seqenenre Tao and Apopi in which the Hyksos ruler asks for submission from all the other warlords in the country. The Egyptians, as per the Ipuwer Papyrus and the el-Arish naos saw a curse, at first against themselves, but then against the Hyksos.

164

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Years

Figure 1. Radiocarbon dating

7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0

14C content

0

50

100

150

14C %

1700 BC

1500 BC

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Radiocarbon dating of organic material from: 1630-1530 BC

Santorini Santorini

1695-1617 BC 1685-1539 BC

Santorini 1609-1526 BC

Window as per historical, archaeological and biblical data

1611-1581 BC

1611-1581 BC Window as per historical, archaeological and biblical data, as well as radiocarbon dating

Figure 2. Derivation of window when Santorini must have erupted.

Nile Delta

CHAPTER 14 THE YEAR THE WORLD CHANGED

165

Table 1. Comparing distance and sulfates for several eruptions (data derived from Zielinski et al., Science 264: 948-952, 1994). Volcano VEI Sulfates (ppb) Year Distance (in km) Krakatoa

6.1

46

1883

16,000

Hekla

3

83

1970

1,600

Öræfajökull

4

25

1727

1,600

Santorini

6.9

?

?

5,000

Table 2. Sulfur values for 1700-1500 BC based on the findings in the Greenland ice fields (data derived from Zielinski et al., Science 264: 948-952, 1994). Year Sulfur (ppb) Volcano 1695 BC

213

Unknown eruption(s)

1669 BC

78

Attributed to Santorini by Zielinski et al., Science, 264: 9148-952

1623 BC

145

Attributed to Santorini by Zielinski et al., Science, 264: 9148-952

1602 BC

58

Unknown eruption(s)

1600 BC

40

Unknown eruption(s)

1594 BC

30

Unknown eruption(s)

1577 BC

29

Unknown eruption(s)

166

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Iceland Greenland

Santorini

Europe Turkey Western USA

Krakatoa

Nile Delta

Figure 3. Map of the world showing the positions of Santorini and Greenland

Tambora

CHAPTER 14 THE YEAR THE WORLD CHANGED

167

Table 3. Comparison of eruptions on the basis of sulfate content of slices of ice carots from Greenland, historical/ archaeological. Biblical data, dynamics of Santorini’s Bronze Age eruption, and radiocarbon data (see Zielinski et al., Science 264 (1994): 948-952). 14 Year of Sulfates Historical/ Dynamics of C data eruption (ppb) Archaeological/ eruption Biblical data 1695 BC 213 NO NO Very weak 1669 BC 78 NO NO Very weak 1623 BC 145 NO NO Weak 1602 BC 58 YES NO Very strong 1600 BC 40 YES NO Very strong 1594 BC 30 YES NO Very strong 1577 BC 29 NO NO Strong

Table 4. Chronological development of the biblical plagues. Timing Biblical plague Mid-1602 BC Red Nile, then frogs, then kînnîm, (volcanic fallout from Santorini before the then ‘ârôb (1-4). rain season) September/October 1602 BC Storm that killed cattle and destroyed (first rains, season going to March) trees (5), and caused burns on the February 1601 BC skin and hide (6). (first winter) Hail storm (7). November 1601 BC (locust season, season goes to May) Swarms of locusts coming from the March 1600 BC east (8). (second phase at Santorini) March-April 1600 BC Palpable darkness: low altitude (first full moon in Spring 1600 BC) volcanic plume (9). Sacrifices of firstborn: death of Egyptians and their animals, while Hebrews forbid such a practice and Levites are offered to Yhwh as substitute (10).

CONCLUSION At the onset of this journey, we wondered how the critical narrative of the biblical plagues of Egypt made sense (Table 1). Archaeological findings, scientific data, and historical records appeared to contradict each other. Some data made sense under one specific king, others made sense during another point in time. Some biblical passages pointed in one direction, others pointed in a different direction. It was as if a tornado had ripped through a jigsaw puzzle and thrown its pieces everywhere. We painstakingly tried to see where we could recompose such a puzzle which would prove that a single puzzle existed to begin with and that the pieces had not been derived from several unrelated puzzles. Others have tried to piece together the plagues and obtained mixed results, which ended up being similar to a description made by Empedokles. The Greek philosopher understood that chaos precedes order and, according to him, confusion reigned before human beings emerged: limbs and other parts of the body existed separately, recombining at random. Headless bodies and structures endowed with several feet encountered other interesting combinations of parts. Then, under proper guidance by a force, the parts assembled properly, resulting in the human body. This is exactly what was achieved here: archaeological, historical, scientific, and biblical data came together to form the sought unity. Having done so, we also know that the biblical plagues constituted a real event that unfolded at a specific point in time. The plagues and the order in which they are presented in the biblical texts are consistent with one volcanic eruption, the one that shook Santorini in the Bronze Age. The setting of the plagues also matched one specific point—and no other—in ancient Egypt’s history. Establishing a historical foundation for the narrative of the plagues and the exodus carries repercussions at several levels, most notably for history, theology, paleobiology, volcanology, and philology. Given the central role the eruption played in the development of the Eastern Mediterranean, it stands to reason that much could be gained by widening our knowledge of this point in time. First, we can now determine a quite precise date for the dynamics of the eruption of Santorini in the Bronze Age. The double peak of sulfate data provided the year 1602 BC for the first phase and 1600 BC for the second phase. The 169

170

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

biblical data provided the dynamics of the disasters as well as a point in time for the eruptive phase in the second of the two years (the end of March or early April). A more precise point in time within 1602 BC can be derived from the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, but in order to do so, we need to glance at a few additional calculations. In 1321 BC the helical rising of Sirus took place on July 21, which places the same observation of Sirius at dawn around June 20 in the year 1602 BC. Since the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus 87 mentions the birthday of Seth, the first plague would have taken place around June 17 of that year. The date is important because it indicates that this was a time when the Nile River was at a low point, and thus the volume the volcanic ash would have had a larger impact than during the flood season, when the ash would have been more diluted by the larger quantity of water. A more precise point in time within 1600 BC can be derived thanks to sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/phase/phasecat.html, a website of the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, which provides a catalog estimating the phases of the moon since 1999 BC, and previsions up to the year 3000 AD. For the year 1600 BC the new moon of interest is calculated to have taken place on March 13, placing the Pessaq event on March 27. That specific lunar phase became linked to the ninth and the tenth plagues. In other words, the lunar phase had already started before the darkness of the volcanic plume enveloped the Nile Delta. The biblical texts also indicate that the darkness lasted three days, and only thereafter the Hebrews prepared to leave. That preparation must have lasted at least one day. Thus the plume infested the Nile Delta on March 23 at the latest (allowing for the three days of darkness and one for prepation), and March 14 at the earliest (allowing for the observation of the new lunar phase). An interesting detail in the biblical text provides a plausibly even more precise date. The Pessaq festivity was to start not on the day of the escape, but rather four days earlier, on the 10th of that lunar month (Ex. 12.1-3). This detail, although not explicitly stated in the biblical text, is consistent with the appearance of the darkness, that is, the ninth plague, leaving a two-day gap to prepare for the escape. If we are to accept this hypothesis, we can go one step further: we know that the second phase of the eruption spat out a plume which traveled toward the Black Sea first. Only thereafter it turned southeast, crossing central Anatolia, and reaching the Egyptian coastline. Given the roughly 2,500 kilometer (1,500 mile) path, the plume would have reached Egypt only two days after the eruption. Thus, we can place the second phase of the eruption between March 14 and March 23, 1600 BC, and point out that it most likely happened on March 19 or 20 of that year (7th and 8th day of that lunar phase, respectively). Such a date allows for the firm establishment of the new moon, as the lunar disk would have been observed to grow for a few days. It also allows for a two-day journey of the

CONCLUSION

171

plume before reaching the Nile Delta, as well as three days of darkness over the area, and a two-day preparation time for the escape. Finally, we can also include the data from Philo of Byblos, and understand the 32 years of the god El abusing his family of gods with the rumblings that signaled that a large event was in the making. Thus, the Santorini eruption evolved with tremors observed in 1634 BC, then spewed red ash around June 17, 1602 BC. The volcano rested for several months—while tremors were still being detected—and erupted once again at the very end of March (or the very beginning of April) 1600 BC. These three decades changed the course of history, displacing untold numbers of people, causing damage, killing humans and animals, ruining crops, giving back freedom to the Hebrews and Egyptians, shaping the theology of the biblical texts … effectively constituting the end of the old world, and the beginning of a new one (see Table 2). Plato, using Egyptian records, speaks of the end of the most advanced civilization of the time, the one flourishing on Atlantis, the island of Atlas. Herakleitos and the tale of Phaethon speak of the sun being outside of its regular path. Gods were castrated, gods were born, and gods were killed. Giants swept away islands and were killed. The world was flooded. The land was cursed and evil fell from the sky. It was the end of the Hyksos empire. It was the time the Minoans started their inevitable decline. It was also the time Egyptians reunified their country. It was the time the Greek nation wrested the Aegean from its former powers. The Hittites emerged as the main power across Anatolia and the Amorites took over Syria. It was the time of the birth of the Hebrews as a nation with a state and a complex culture based in theology. A similar eruption with a similar magnitude at Santorini today would be described differently in the media, but would be commented on in much the same terms as our ancestors: some god is punishing us, what did we do wrong? The sociopolitical consequences would also be pretty similar: destruction, flight of the survivors, panic, famine. The dozens of documents identified by the present research help us in piecing together these events. In Egypt, this was the time of the so-called Second Intermediary Period, a time when the lands of Egypt were divided among many warlords. The war among the factions had been dominated by the foreign militia of the Hyksos, which took over Avaris, Egypt’s main harbor, in 1675 BC, founding a dynasty of rulers. Given their numerical inferiority, the power of the Hyksos rested on more advanced military technology as well as on pitting Egyptian social classes against each other. King Khayan, who ruled for roughly four decades, established contacts with the wider world around Egypt: the Hittites in Anatolia, the Aegeans, as well as the Syrians, whom he dominated. He was preparing his son Yansas to

172

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

succeed him. His reign was also marked by a strange phenomenon: the soil under the islands of Keftiu started to shake violently from 1634 BC onwards. In 1612 BC, Apopi became the new Hyksos ruler. He assumed the royal name of Auser-Re, that is, great and powerful like the sun god Re. He was said to be very devoted to the Hyksos storm god and a lover of culture. Among the many immigrants in Egypt was a distinctive group that had come from Canaan to take jobs the Egyptians preferred to avoid (farming). These immigrants had later been interned in labor camps, and were hoping that the new king would grant an amnesty, letting them freely relocate. The leader of the group, after a period of ascetic life in the desert, went to see the Hyksos authorities in order to inform them that he had been given a message from the Hebrew ancestral god Yhwh. The god was asking the Hyksos to let the Hebrew slaves go free. Apopi was a pragmatic man and did not listen to what he thought to be delusionary nonsense from a man gone mad in the desert. The request was denied. Apopi went on to reign, plunging himself into Egyptian culture in order to look like a real Egyptian leader although still linked to his own ancestral traditions. Apopi’s reign was relatively uneventful. However, in mid-June 1602 BC he was forever to enter into history. A strange loud noise was heard and was followed by a sky the color of bronze, which dumped dust rather than rain. This was quite unlike a sand storm, the dust was very acidic and it stung. It also stained the waters of the Nile and the canals, killing the fish, pushing frogs onto the banks, and burning upon contact. Doctors were busy devising apt treatments for the burns and the subsequent illnesses affecting throats, eyes, and other organs which would form large parts of the the Ebers Papyrus and the London Medical Papyrus. The fact that the disaster struck one month or so before the flooding of the Nile accentuated the effect of the ash, which was more concentrated than would have been the case if it had been dumped during the inundation time. To complete the picture of the initial effect of the Santorini eruption, we can look at the Magical Papyrus Harris which conserved a record of how the coastline had been devastated. The Nile Delta had witnessed strong winds and had been transformed into a large pool of mud from the waves crashing on shore, and pushing back the river. The dead fish in the waters and the dead frogs along the banks attracted insects that buried their eggs in large quantities in animals that had, until then, feasted on insects. The eggs hatched, letting millions of crawling larvae everywhere; in due time, these grubs were to turn into swarms of millions of insects. The winged ones, the parents of which had been able to reproduce by laying eggs both on frogs on the ground and fish floating on the water, were particularly irritating.

CONCLUSION

173

The whole event was understood by the Hyksos leadership as a message from their storm god, identified with the Egyptian Seth, who had declared war on the other gods in Egypt. The Hyksos ruler Apopi seized the day and attempted to take over Egypt which was, in effect, being run by warlords. Apopi launched a blitzkrieg, attacking the fortress of Zaru which lay between the Hyksos capital of Avaris and the Hyksos homeland in Asia. Zaru fell in mid-July 1602 BC, thus establishing a strong line for supplies. Then the Hyksos directed their attack south and west against the royal towns of Memphis and Itjawi and the holy town of Iunu. However, not all of the ash had precipitated to the ground. The air was still carrying residues from the eruption—actually, colossal amounts of fine volcanic particles—which had not precipitated yet. By filtering off the rays of the sun, these particles generated a so-called “nuclear winter”, where temperatures were lower than normal and the weather was worse than usual overall. These particles triggered a huge storm as the normal rain season was approaching around September 1602 BC. The violent storm caught Egypt by surprise. Many cows died as the result of lightning, while vineyards and fig trees were destroyed. By bringing volcanic particles which were suspended in the air down to earth the drops soaked animals and humans in strong acid rain. As a result, both humans and animals were marked with burns over their bodies; the Egyptian doctors scrambled to seek cures for this disaster of epidemic proportion. The bad weather was not over, though. The most noticeable event thereafter was yet another storm. Around February 1601 BC, the remaining suspended volcanic particles in the air promoted the formation of hail. The storm was particularly disastrous because it destroyed the barley and the flax crops on which the hungry Egyptians were counting. The destruction caused widespread hunger among the inhabitants. Many people were observed contending with pigs for food, animals considered unclean by the Egyptians. Weather, that is, the normally occurring inundation at the end of July 1602 BC, and the subsequent disasters related to the nuclear winter must have slowed down the Hyksos army. Nonetheless, as we know from Manetho’s Aigyptiaka, Dudimose, legitimate, albeit mostly powerless, king over the country, was deposed. As we calculated from the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus 87, Iunu fell around mid-March or mid-April 1601 BC. The Hyksos conquering spree was now directed southward. Meanwhile the soil continued to tremble. In the fall of 1601 BC, the higher humidity in the ground fostered the multiplication of pests, and attracted locusts that were particularly numerous because of the higher humidity in the breeding grounds of the Arabian Peninsula.

174

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

In just over a year, the volcanic ash had trashed Egypt, throwing the country into sociopolitical chaos. Plants, trees, and crops had been destroyed. In the countryside cattle were left roaming. People were hungry and desperate. The lucrative trade between the Aegean and Egypt, as well as from the deserts to the Nile Valley, had been brought to a halt. The law of the land could not be enforced, ties of blood became meaningless, and the law of hospitality was not observed. Thefts, murders, and burglaries plagued the country. Amidst the despair, and in spite of the continuous grumbling of the soil, Egypt was looking forward toward the new crops that would sprout in January and start to ripen in February. It appeared that the disasters, understood by the Egyptians as the wrath of the gods, by the Hyksos as a sign of the gods, and by the Hebrews as an indication their God intended to free them from the labor camps, had ceased. However, in Egypt, onlookers noticed a similarity between a new approaching darkness and the earlier cloud of smoke and ash. The darkness was no ordinary darkness: it could be felt, it suffocated the people, burning eyes, throats, and lungs. Fearing a renewal of the earlier disasters and famine, people thought that the gods were still angry. Following their religious convictions, Egyptians, Hyksos, Canaanite immigrants, and Aegean refugees believed they could appease the gods by offering sacrifices. Given the seriousness of the events, they were going to sacrifice their firstborn, that is, the first-in-line heirs. They also sacrificed the firstborn from their flocks and herds. In order to prevent the gods from renewing their anger, the sacrifices were instituted to take place on an annual basis. The site chosen for the sacrifices was the holiest shrine in the country, that is, the one to the sun god at Iunu, as testified by Porphiry. The sacrifices were also performed as far north as Hierapolis in Syria (according to the De Dea Syria), a town apparently controlled by the Hyksos. The Hebrews also appeared to be doing their share. They had—in the eyes of the Egyptians—sacrificed unblemished lambs and they were preparing to go to a site in the desert which was a three-day march away. There they held yearly conventions in makeshift tents and huts to celebrate an old tradition of theirs, Sukkoth. The celebration at the Sukkoth site was meant to indicate their commitment in performing human sacrifices to their god Yhwh. Other sites would have not met with the same favor from the god. Additionally, the Egyptians thought, the site also enabled the Hebrews to conduct sacrifices which were the norm among the Hebrews, but could have offended the Egyptians and/or their gods. The Hebrews received the blessings of the Hyksos king and of the population, who even gave gold to the Hebrews. As the Hebrews left for the Sukkoth site, many Canaanite immigrants were fleeing home on their own, afraid of more plagues coming to the Nile Delta. The

CONCLUSION

175

whole town of Tell el-Maskhutah in the fertile Wadi Tumilat was abandoned (just around 1600 BC as investigated by the archaeologist Holladay). The Hebrews congregated at the Sukkoth site in the countryside, assembling the largest possible number of their nation, as well as the bones of their ancestors. However, the Hebrews did not congregate in order to sacrifice human lives. In contrast to the Egyptians, Aegeans, and Hyksos, the Hebrews denounced the practice as a sacrifice to Moloch, that is, the Hyksos king and his religious beliefs. The Hebrews instead paid a ransom to their god for their own firstborn. They consecrated one of their twelve tribes, that of Levi, to Yhwh. From the Sukkoth site, the Hebrews went into the desert on a journey that was to take them to a holy mountain in thanksgiving and then to a land they could call their own. When the Hebrews did not come back from their alleged sacrifices, Apopi realized he had been tricked. He then sent his soldiers looking for the Hebrews. The soldiers drowned in quicksand and did not come back either. The Hebrews were on their way home. In Egypt they left a memory in some temple archives. In Egypt’s memory, the flight of the Hebrews was intertwined with the time the Hyksos had ruled the country. This was also a time of utter destruction and divine curse as per the disasters that plagued the country. Hence the Egyptians remembered the Hebrews in connection with the Hyksos and as time went by the line between the two got blurred (e.g., Osarseph was understood by Manetho to tell the Hebrew story of exodus from Egypt). Besides noticing the escape of the Hebrews, the Hyksos also noticed that the weather was improving. The better weather conditions enabled them to continue their military offensive. Having shown their muscle, the Hyksos tried to see which warlord would submit to Avaris without the need to resort to war. Apopi sent messengers asking the warlords to recognize Apopi as overlord and the Hyksos god as the supreme god of Thebes. One of the messengers reached the palace of the powerful warlord Seqenenre Tao, ruler of Thebes and “Lord of All”. The message was odd, and had been tailored to Seqenenre. He was no longer to offend the Hyksos god by molesting its sacred animal, the hippopotamus. So much we know: scribes provided an abridged form of the meeting in a document now known as Sallier Papyrus. Having gathered his team of councilors, Seqenenre Tao listened to their opinion. The presentation of one of the councilors survived through time, and is now known as the Ipuwer Papyrus. Ipuwer, possibly the most astute, or at least the most influential, of the Theban advisors depicted the state of the land. He added that Egypt used to be better and suggested that it could return to its former glory. Yet what was really in the way was the group of oppressive foreigners who were themselves experiencing problems. In spite of appearances they were not all powerful, and Egypt could count on allies, too.

176

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Seqenenre Tao called his people and, as recorded by Chairemon of Naucratis (ca. 25-75 AD), told them he had seen the goddess Isis in a nightmare. Such a theatrical trick was common—other kings such as Djoser had used it earlier, and other kings like Thutmosis III were going to use it later in the 15th century BC. The goddess had accused this king of allowing unclean people to be present throughout Egypt and its temples. As Lysimachus of Alexandria was to point out, the plagues were only going to stop if these unclean people were to leave: the unclean foreigners and their unclean gods had brought a curse on Egypt. Seqenenre’s message was now a divine message and as such motivated the Thebans. As a result, he waged war on Apopi, winning a string of battles. Thebes was now leading a war of liberation against the Hyksos. After initial victories, however, the war did not go well. The Hyksos had realized that they were under attack both in Egypt and in Syria, where first Alalakh had been lost in earlier conflicts, and then Ebla had later been razed in 1600 BC. Their troops would not be able to sustain the war, and Apopi made a decision. He preferred to pull troops from Syria and limit his sphere of influence to the Levantine coastline, which he would control through a system of protectorates, rather than imposing direct control. The new troops from Syria would then be put to use fighting the Egyptian rebellion. The gamble paid off: Seqenenre Tao was killed in combat and Thebes was occupied. Around this time, Egyptians disillusioned with disasters and foreign occupation found a meaning for their lives in the afterlife, giving rise to the genre of the “book of the dead” (reu nu pert em hru, literally, “the chapters of coming forth by day”). Spells placed in the tomb of the deceased would protect the soul of the dead and ensure a better afterlife for it. At a time of severe crisis, personal spiritual purification became important, just as it would be on other occasions (e.g., in Europe as the year 1000 was approaching, or when the Black Death was ravaging the same continent in the mid-14th century). Not unlike other dictators who claim to be enlightened and lovers of culture, Apopi sent his scribes to study all that could be gleaned or copied from the sites the Hyksos occupied. It appears that the Amon temple of Thebes and its holy records were studied. Apopi himself claimed to have respect for Egyptian culture. The Hyksos thought they were good Egyptians, but the Egyptians only saw a desecration of the temples, which were entered by foreign troops and were subordinated to the god of the Hyksos. Thebes rose again under the leadership of Khamose, son of Seqenenre Tao. Khamose’s campaign appeared to succeed: the Hyksos lines crumbled despite the pact Apopi had made with the Nubians to sandwich Thebes between two fronts. Khamose was even able to come within sight of Avaris and its palaces. But Theban fortunes soured yet again, and Khamose was killed. Thebes rose against the Hyksos yet again in 1581 BC, led this time by Ahmose, son of Seqenenre Tao and brother of Khamose. Fighting a more careful

CONCLUSION

177

war, probably paying close attention to spies and traitors, as well as developing an effective army, Ahmose took one town after another. He liberated Iunu and put a stop to the human sacrifices. He also placed Avaris under siege in 1569 BC. After a long siege by land and by water, Avaris was still standing. Ahmose perceived the declining forces of the Hyksos, yet also estimated the costs that a full attack against the town implied. He preferred to negotiate. The Hyksos, aware they would not be able to win this time, thought they could retreat to their fortified sites in Canaan. Probably by taking some Egyptian hostages, the Hyksos were able to leave Avaris while abandoning the town to Ahmose in 1567 BC. Once the Hyksos were out of Egypt, however, Ahmose attacked once more. He brought his troops to the border of Canaan, and crossed the “Rubicon”, in this case, a wadi, a channel dug by torrential rains, separating the Sinai Peninsula from Canaan. Ahmose took one fortress at a time, avenging his brother, his father, and the whole Egyptian nation. After three years of war, the Egyptians had destroyed the local Hyksos forts and shaken any allegiance the local warlords might have had toward the Hyksos. Additionally, Amorite foreigners from the east and Hittite foreigners from the north were entering the country and settling there, attracted by the vacuum that the collapse of the Hyksos had created. By 1564 BC Ahmose was returning home and upon passing the wadi in the opposite direction, he would have ordered a commemorative stone to be set up, retelling the story of the war. The stone was to frighten and remind foreigners what would happen when non-Egyptians would attempt to attack the land of the Nile. The stone would later be incorporated into a small shrine by Ptolemaic rulers around 300-100 BC and would come to be known as the el-Arish naos. Back home, Ahmose was to build even more. Actually, he was to rebuild the whole country devastated by war, chaos, disasters, and yet another calamity, a large flood in southern Egypt. Ahmose was to transform Thebes, the old capital of his family territory, into the new capital of the newly reunified Egypt. At the shrine of Amon he would have yet another stela (the storm stela) to preoclaim his will to rebuild the country from all destructions that had taken place. Egyptians were to remember the suffering of Egypt at the hands of the foreign occupiers. We know it from the Speos Artemidos inscription made 100 years after the war was over and the Papyrus Harris I, written over four hundred years after the war,. Canaan, or what was left of it, was now in the hands of local warlords who were no longer supported by the Hyksos and were not vassals of Egypt. The Hebrews, aware of the lost fortunes of the Amalekites (Hyksos) and the return of the Egyptians, came out of hiding and went toward Canaan. Some of the Egyptian texts encountered during this study deserve a few additional lines. In fact, it is only after having recomposed the whole scenario that some of these documents reveal hitherto overlooked facts.

178

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

One problem that has plagued the years of the Second Intermediary Period is the calculation of the cohabitation of five (13th-17th) dynasties over a period of just two centuries. The 13th dynasty started in 1786 BC and was characterized by a fragmentation of the country and very short reigns by monarchs who many times had more formal than real power. The 17th and last dynasty of the Second Intermediary Period ended in 1567 BC. A fragment by Manetho tells us that Dudimose, a king of the 13th dynasty, witnessed an act of God as well as a sudden attack by foreigners. Our understanding is that the act of God was the beginning of the plagues, that this event took place in 1602 BC, and that Dudimose was deposed by the Hyksos (either in 1602 BC or the year after). We also understand that the 13th dynasty went on, most likely as a puppet of the Hyksos warlords. In fact, the Turin Royal Canon lists 10 kings after Dudimose. This fact also enables us to give a more realistic space to the 36 kings of the 13th dynasty until Dudimose, which had unrealistically been squeezed into just 111 total years of reign. Now they have 183-184 years and the understanding that the dynasty went on for a few more years with ten kings controlled by the Hyksos. A separate problem is presented by the number of years of Hyksos rule. Manetho lists the Hyksos rulers and provides a tally of over 250 years—longer than the whole Second Intermediary period (1786-1567 BC)! In fact, the Turin Royal Canon indicated 108 years of reign while Herodotus speaks of 106 years. We understand that the years listed by Manetho for each ruler indicates how long they were rulers in principle, making a distinction for the first ruler, who was not born from a king, and the later ones, who turned out to be born from kings. Thus, for the first ruler, the years indicated added both the years when he was a simple warlord and the subsequent years during which he was a king. The remaining kings have been listed with the age at which they died: being born of royal blood, they qualified to become kings. The total tally of Hyksos years of real rule should therefore reflect the years listed in the Turin Royal Canon. The discrepancy of two years with Herodotus most likely reflects, as we understand, that Herodotus’ source stopped counting the years of Hyksos rule at the time Ahmose placed Avaris under siege: the Hyksos were only rulers imprisoned within the walls of their only town left in Egypt. One more problem for which we may have a solution is the sequence of the Hyksos rulers. Manetho provides six names, where the first three are constant, but the last three vary. The Turin Royal Canon offers another headache: seven names (of which only the last one survived the ravage of time), yet only six rulers. The first anonymous ruler was in power for 3 years, the second for 8 years and three months, the next one is unknown, the next one was in power for 40 years, the next one is unknown, the following one is unknown, and of the last one we know the name, Khamudy, but not the length of his rule. As detailed by Prof. Donald B. Redford (Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992),

CONCLUSION

179

archaeology has identified over a dozen Hyksos names. Redford tried to put together Manetho’s list, the information from the Turin Royal Canon, the information from statements engraved on archaeological findings and written on papyri. We understand the sequence of the Hyksos rulers as displayed in Table 3. The key point hinges on the fact that Apopi’s 11th year was in 1602 BC. All other information is then rebuilt around this point. Thus, we do not know how many years Apopi was in power, but we do know that the mathematical problems listed in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus were copied in his 33rd year of reign. Thus, he ruled at least until 1579 BC. As far as the earlier rulers, we keep the first three names that never vary in Manethos’ list. Salitis would have ruled for 16 years as a warlord, and 3 (as per the Turin Royal Canon) as king. His successor, Bnon, probably best spelled as B’n-On, that is, son of the sun god On, died at the age of 44, was also called Sheshi, and as indicated by the Turin Royal Canon ruled for 8 years. The third person was Apachnan, also known as Yakob-Har, who had an Egyptian name which contained the wording wser-re, strong and powerful as the sun god Re, and died at age 37. The next three all bear the name Apopi, which fits with the inscriptions from archaeological digs which also have three Apopi. The first Apopi is Khayan, who ruled for 40 years, and whose Egyptian name (also containing wser-re) is attested in countries around Egypt. His son Yansas was due to succeed him, but must have died, most likely explaining the additional line for the name of a ruler who, according to the Turin Royal Canon, never ruled. Khayan died at the age of 61. The next ruler would be the famous Apopi whose reign started in 1612 BC and who witnessed the plagues. In his 33rd year of rule, after crushing at least two rebellions, he had the mathematical texts copied and then died at the age of 50. The last ruler is yet another Apopi, Khamudy, who took over the collapsing Hyksos power, negotiated the exit from Avaris, and then was annihilated in Canaan by Ahmose’s army. Another point that ought to be made is the explanation of yet another fragment of Manetho, which speaks of Osarseph, who was a former priest at Heliopolis, but banded together lepers working in quarries, giving them carte blanche to do anything they pleased. An Egyptian ruler attacked him and after a long war, which at first favored Osarseph, the Egyptian ruler threw Osarseph out of the country. Some of his band settled in Canaan. Some people understand this tale to be mere nonsense, others think it describes the Hebrews’ exodus from Egypt, and that Osarseph is in fact Moses, the leader of the Hebrews. We have a different outlook.

180

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Manetho speaks of a former priest from Heliopolis, the holy town where the shrine to the sun god On was. Three of the Hyksos kings have the word wser-re in their name, thus professing allegiance to, and recognition of, the sun god Re. Yakob-Har is even known by the name B’n-On, son of the sun god On. The Hyksos chose to perform their annual human sacrifices at Iunu, which is the Egyptian name for Heliopolis. Moreover, there is no similarity in wording between Osarseph and Moses. However, Osar-Seph could well be a wser- name rendered in Greek by Manetho. If so, we can match the war between Osar-seph and the Egyptians, which at first favored the former, and then the latter. Osar-seph’s band was also said to have fled for Canaan, which is exactly what the Hyksos did. In fact, Osar-Seph would mean “great and powerful like [Baal]-Zephon” (the god of the Hyksos). We would here have a glimpse of the Hyksos’ use of class conflict to advance their cause, playing one social group against another in order to increase and maintain power. We know from the Ipuwer Papyrus that the less fortunate social classes were contributing to the chaos, and that the chaos was blamed on the foreigners who turned out to be the Hyksos. However, why would the god Re be changed in the wser- names? Re would have been changed to Seph to reflect the ruler’s real affiliation: after all, a person called “Great and powerful like Re” could not have suffered the humiliation that Osarseph did in being driven from Egypt, the land of Re. It would be an offense to the god which, in the eyes of the Egyptians, had already been offended by the Hyksos pretending to run the country. The sense of dislike the Egyptians felt for the Hyksos stands in contrast to the more complex picture that emerges from the Levant. A war had apparently been waged from at least 1650/1620 BC when Alalakh, a town near present-day Alep, was taken and destroyed. The shrine at Hierapolis (Town of Holies) holds several elements attesting that the plagues had been observed, the most important being devotion to Deucalion and human sacrifices. Then there is the discussion that the Semitic goddess Semiramis had dumped diseases and disasters from the sky following the request that she be the only divinity revered. This statement by Lucian in his De Dea Syria is coherent with Hyksos forcing their divinity on the Syrians (just as they did on the Egyptians) and the arrival of the volcanic ash from Santorini. Given the disasters inflicted on the soil, the Syrians—of course—would have paid closer attention to the divinities fostering agriculture. Another interesting detail that emerges from this study is the set of sources on which the Canaanite Sanchuniathon based his history of the Canaanite people. His work stems from at least two separate sources: the data from Hierombal,

CONCLUSION

181

a priest of the god Ieuó, checked and approved by Abibal, king of Beirut, and the holy writings by Taautos in the temple of Ammon in Thebes. The sources are fraught with difficulties, which find solutions in light of the present research. It stands to reason that a Canaanite compiling a history on his people could obtain access to Canaanite archives, and would get the work approved by the authorities. Beirut, however, did not play an important role until later and the names involved look suspicious: scholars have thought that Hierombal could be linked to a name appearing in the biblical texts: Jerubal. Moreover, the very god Ieuó served by Hierombal could have been the biblical Yhwh. Moreover, the Egyptian material is also odd: Tauutos is presented as the inventor of the writing, as the Egyptian god Thoth, and as the recipient of Kronos’ generosity after that god took over southern Egypt at a time of great distress. As far as Beirut is concerned, even in the biblical texts Jerubal is not a Yhwh worshipper, but is the Canaanite name (“Let the god Baal fight”) of a person who became a Yhwh worshipper under the name Gideon (Jg. 6.1-8.32). Thus, Hierombalos is a bona fide pagan name and not a Hebrew name. Moreover, the nationality of the name may betray a Greek-Canaanite hybrid: hieros (Greek: holy) Baal (Canaanite: Lord). Such hybrid names are not unheard of. Greek tradition has preserved the name of a certain Belos (Greek rendering of the Canaanite god Baal), whose children had the very Greek names Danaos and Aigyptos (which notwithstanding appearances is a Greek name: Egypt in ancient Egyptian was called Kemet). Similarly, Jerusalem can be derived from Hieros-Salaam, holy peace, where hieros is Greek and salaam is Semitic. Hierombalos can also be constructed on purely Greek roots, that is, hieros omphalos, which translates as holy navel, whereby the navel is the stone at the center of the world as per Greek theology. A pagan Hierombalos of mixed Greek-Canaanite or of pure Greek origin can be easily explained at this point in time. Minoan presence is attested along the Levantine coast, and even inland as per the Minoan palaces at Kabri, Qatna, Alalakh, and the frescoes at Mari. Greek sailors, traders, etc. (Myceneans working for the Minoans) would have traveled on the Minoan ships. Moreover, the name of the god served by Hierombalos also appears Aegean (Minoan or Mycenaean) in origin, rather than Hebrew. Io and all names linked to it (e.g., Iapetos, Io-the-father) are part of Aegean theology and culture. Now it stands to reason that Sanchuniathon’s sources were local archives, possibly of immigrants to the Levantine coast, in order to enrich his horizon of the history of his land which had contacts with several nations. As far as the Egyptian component, we have seen that Apopi counterattacked the Thebans and Seqenenre Tao was killed in the process. The history according to Philo indicates that the Hyksos army took the whole of southern Egypt and Taautos was in charge of it. Given the equation between Taautos and the god of Egyptian sciences and the known love Apopi had for knowledge, it

182

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

stands to reason that Taautos is Apopi. The Hyksos must have entered Thebes and perused the archives at the local Ammon temple. As a result, Sanchuniathon had access to the content of the Theban archives. There is one culture left to examine, that of the Aegeans. The biblical plagues turned out to be the aftermath of the Santorini eruption over Egypt. The volcano is in present-day Greece, and the disasters there were worse than those across the sea. The present reconstruction of the plagues casts new light on ancient Greece (pre-classical, that is), mining mýthoi for their historical worth. This volcanic event provided a landmark in Aegean culture. Classical Greeks calculated time from the first Olympiad (776 BC) onwards. The earlier inhabitants appear to have looked at things differently. The Santorini eruption was understood as an unparalleled manifestation of their gods. The information regarding the eruption was encoded in theological format, that is, as mýthos (plural: mýthoi) and was transmitted as such. As time went by, Greece went through radical changes. Minoans dominated what is today southern Greece in the 20th-15th centuries BC. Minoans were not were not exactly Greek. Their political systems were replaced by those of the Mycenaeans who were Greek-speaking people in the 15th-12th centuries BC. Mycenaeans modeled their palaces and other parts of their lives according to the former Minoan customs. Thus, they also inherited the history of the earlier Minoans who had witnessed the Santorini disaster and told of it in their mýthoi. Most likely, Mycenaeans had their own versions and the two sets cohabited side by side: a tale of the harpies was present at the same time as the tale of Leto’s pregnancy, and the tale of the castration of Ouranos, and the tale of the giants attempting to take over the world. One important question is: How clear was it to the Mycenaeans that those tales described real events that had taken place? Within a century the Aegean area had been shaken both by the most powerful volcanic eruption of the time and by the take over of the Minoan system by Mycenaeans who spoke a different language and had a less sophisticated culture. This shock may find a parallel in the collapse of the Roman Empire at the hands of non-Latin populations. In the latter example we know that a less sophisticated society in which culture was stifled for some time emerged. The loss of information would have been compounded by the fact that writing and instruction were rare. The Mycenaean take over would have resulted in similar effects. True, Mycenaeans used so-called Linear B script, which appears to have derived from Minoan Linear A script, yet this was the privilege of the few who could read and write. At the level of the masses, the mýthoi would have already started to take on a life of their own where combinations of the sacred retellings and the physical events would be filtered through the lenses of anthropomorphism: gods behaving like humans (e.g., being jealous or intolerant) produced disasters that affected gods and humans alike.

CONCLUSION

183

We know for sure that information was lost throughout the period because even around 500 BC, Herakleitos was stating that he was the depository of knowledge that other people had lost through their own sleep. This knowledge had a purely philosophical component (e.g., dialectics of contrasting entities), but also included aspects that betray Egyptian influence and that include references to the dynamics of the Santorini disaster. As Mycenaean culture collapsed around 1200-1175 BC, Greece was depopulated, entering the so-called Dark Age. These Greeks would have clung to their traditions as the only link to their ancestors, ensuring the transmission of the material. However, the original meaning of the mýthoi was lost by now. The presentation of gods fighting, flirting, and engaging in other activities was left, but the meaning of these actions was lost. The castration of Ouranos no longer referred to a physical phenomenon, but was only a poetic expression of how gods behaved. The Greeks were leaving a worldview based on the mýthos and entering one based on the lógos, a world based on a purely rational view. The original mýthos was becoming what we so derogatorily call a myth and was denied any value. This explains why around 850 BC Hesiod believed that the material existing in his days was an ancient description of the birth of the universe, yet did not realize that it described specific historical events that had been witnessed by people a few centuries earlier. To his credit, Hesiod must have thought that it was important to collect these mýthoi and string them together in what appeared an orderly fashion, hoping he would ensure a better transmission of Greece’s past. Similarly, various tales existed in Greek cultures. Some were written down at one time or another. Others were probably lost. Hesiod’s Works and Days, Apollodorus’ Library, Apollonius’ Argonautica, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and several other works contain references to the time Santorini erupted. This passage from mýthos (an outlook based on gods) to lógos (an outlook based on universal law) colored early Greek philosophy (the so-called pre-Socratics) and, therefore, all later thinkers. The ancient history of Greece was more and more ridiculed as nothing more than fairy tales. This process is akin to what would later take place with the siècle des lumières (Enlightenment) in 18th century France and Entmythologisierung (demythologization) movement in Germany in the 20th century. In both instances, the Christian texts would be mocked, leading to today’s mass disregard for the texts. The very introduction of Christianity in the Aegean by 50 AD (and its status as the region’s sole religion by 375 AD) furthered the ridicule of any possible theological content of the mythoi. What is interesting is that it was not recognized that the mýthoi in fact provided an alternative interpretation of the biblical plagues of Egypt, an alternative briefly mentioned in the book of 1 Maccabees.

184

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Correctly, the Christian writers perceived that behind the mýthoi was an understanding of the world based on the forces of nature being turned into gods rather than being seen as the creation of one god. However, the Christian writers did not know they were criticizing the same events that from their Christian perspective signaled a key point in history when God manifested itself and would provide the cultural background for the atonement from sin through the suffering, murder, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In spite of the progressive deterioration of the proper correlation between ancient Greek science and the physical events that affected the land, glimpses of the “ancient wisdom” were to emerge in the exploration of Greek philosophy. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) had inklings that the pre-Socratic philosophers were transmitting what he called a revelation of the Being which had faded away in later thinkers. Heidegger understood the question purely in philosophical terms without realizing that there was a historical event underlying what he perceived as a revelation by the Being. The historicity of the biblical plagues can now be asserted beyond a shadow of a doubt. The present work indicates that the biblical narrative on the subject reflects historical events. There was a time when the Hebrews lived in Egypt and had been interned in labor camps. Subsequently, there was a time when a series of disasters plagued Egypt. As a result of these disasters, the Hebrews were able to flee. It is too early to assess the full impact of the results of the present investigation. Rationalist/minimalist outlooks on the biblical texts have flourished on alleged discrepancies between historical facts and biblical statements. One thing is clear, however: some of the rationalist/mini-malist assumptions are hereby proved wrong. As per these rationalist/minimalist theories, Jewish priests in the 5th century BC concocted a “holy” past for the Hebrew nation which had never actually existed. It is quite unfortunate for such theories that the biblical plagues, and the order in which they are listed, fully match the physical aftermath of the Santorini eruption during the Bronze Age. It gets even better. Rationalist/minimalist theories rely on the Documentary Hypothesis which states that the biblical narratives in the Torah were pasted together from four different strands called J, E, P, and D to which comments (called R) were added. The story of the biblical plagues is not exempt from this in the eyes of the rationalist/minimalist outlook. That narrative was not originally a single unit, but was spliced together from at least two sources, glued together by the editor R, who would have added comments here and there. Thus, Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman (1987) assures us that the E and D strands are totally missing from the narrative of the ten plagues. Moreover, together with The Book of J by Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg

CONCLUSION

185

(1990), we are assured that some of the plagues appear in J only (kînnîm, and the deaths of animals) or P only (boils). If this were the case, how did the theoretical editor R know how to string the plagues together? The kînnîm make sense after the frogs in our reconstruction, but not anywhere else. Similarly, the death of the animals makes sense as it opens a season of bad weather due to the “nuclear winter”, and nowhere else. The boils make sense as the result of the rain that fell during the thunderstorms that killed the animals. Moreover, the plagues also dovetail with the sociopolitical situation existing in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Hyksos years, even describing what is most likely the retreat of the Hyksos from Egypt in 1567 BC (Dt. 28.25). The biblical narrative of the plagues must be eyewitness accounts, which, if derived from multiple sources (e.g., different scribes), were put together by eyewitnesses in front of eyewitnesses, guaranteeing the faithfulness of the statements. Whenever the Hebrew texts were written, they faithfully reported—and the stress is on the faithfully—events that had taken place. A full explanation of how this is possible—given the beliefs or assumptions on the part of the rationalist/minimalists—is imperative. The explanation must take into account the question as to when these narratives were committed to writing. It is most unlikely that the actual writing of the accounts follows the current Documentary Hypothesis of 4 strands (E, J, P, D) written sometime around 900-600 BC and cut and pasted around 450 BC by an editor dubbed R. The inscriptions of the Wadi el-Hol in Egypt, studied by Deborah and John Darnell and also reported in the mass media, show that Semitic inhabitants in Egypt were aware of alphabetic writing as far back as the late 12th dynasty, that is, around 1850 BC. It stands to reason, therefore, that the biblical texts, or some texts, regarding the plagues could have been written down shortly after the events took place in 1600 BC. This would explain both the exact description of the aftermath of the Santorini eruption and other events that question the Documentary Hypothesis. For instance, at the time of King Josiah, around 625 BC, it was claimed that the originals of the Torah had been discovered while restoring the House of God, the Temple in Jerusalem. Another example comes from the Samaritans, who had parted ways from the Hebrews well before the 5th century BC (possibly as early as 1100 BC), and who had copies of a complete Torah. At the end of this journey we can confidently state that we have obtained more than we had bargained for. In the words of the Greek Herakleitos, who kept a memory of the Santorini event in his philosophical work, we can say that the one seeking gold needs to dig large amounts of soil in order to find a little metal.

186

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

In our case the effort has been well worth it: the metal we have found has turned out to be worth more than its mere weight. The combination of scientific data, Egyptian records, biblical narrative, and Greek myths has enabled us to reconstruct the mosaic in which is detailed the Santorini eruption and its the sociopolitical consequences. We dug through layers of dirt deposited over documents and ruins. We dug through physical dirt accumulated over time and through dirt piled up by the ignorant and the spiteful. Across millennia, Greek memories of the Santorini eruption became the laughing-stock of Western culture. During that time, Hebrew records of the same event were mocked as self-delusions of 5th century BC priests of the god Yhwh. The Bronze Age eruption at Santorini changed the course of history. It ravaged the Eastern Mediterranean, killing many and causing incalculable destruction. It pushed people to move and resettle—Hebrews to Canaan through the Sinai and Transjordan, Amorites to Syria, Hittites across Anatolia, Hyksos to Canaan (and any survivors thereof into the deserts), Aegeans across the sea. It shaped the theology and history of those populations and—by inheritance—over half of today’s humankind, linked one way or another to such roots. The Santorini eruption and its aftermath made gods of some by creating mýthoi. Of others, the Santorini eruption and its aftermath made men, like Seqenenre Tao and his staff and family. The eruption and its aftermath enslaved some, yet liberated the Hebrews and the Egyptians. For centuries to come, the dynamics of the event also provided philosophers with a model to understand the world.

CONCLUSION

187

Table 1. List of the plagues as described in the biblical texts (Ps.77.12-21 and Ps.144.5-8 provide overviews of the plagues). Exodus Psalms 78 Psalms 105 Deuteronomy (Ex. 7.14-13.16) (Ps. 78.43-51) (Ps. 105.27-36) (Dt. 28.23-42) Darkness Sky of bronze (Ps. 105.27-28) (Dt. 28.23-24) Boils, blindness (Dt. 28.27-29) Red waters and Red and poisonous Red waters and dead fish waters dead fish (Ex. 7.14-25) (Ps. 78.43-44) (Ps. 105.29) Frogs Frogs Frogs (Ex. 7.26-8.11) (Ps. 78.45) (Ps. 105.30) Crawling Crawling Crawling invertebrates invertebrates invertebrates (Ex. 8.12-15) (Ps. 78.45) (Ps. 105.31) Insects Invertebrates Insects (Ex. 8.16-28) (Ps. 78.46) (Ps. 105.31) Dead animals Animals killed by Animals killed thunderstorms, hail and vines and cold ruin vines destroyed and fig trees (Ex. 9.1-7) (Ps. 78.47-48) (Dt. 28.30-31) Skin problems Boils (Ex. 9.8-12) (Dt. 28.35) Locusts (Dt. 28.38) Hail Hail and Vines and olive lightnings, vines trees damaged and fig trees destroyed (Ex. 9.13-35) (Ps. 105.32-33) (Dt. 28.39-40) Locusts Locusts, worms Locusts (Ex. 10.1-20) (Ps. 105.34-35) (Dt. 28.42) Darkness Rage, suffocation (Ex. 10.21-29) (Ps. 78.49) Death of firstborn Death of firstborn Death of firstborn (Ex. 11.1-13.16) (Ps. 78.50-51) (Ps. 105.36)

188

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 2. Eruption at Santorini: dynamics vs. historical/biblical data. Event Aegean data Anatolian data Tremors start around Ouranos tyrant Anu serves Alalu than 1634 BC, and last several Zas courts Chthonie takes over and is served by years Kumarbi Around June 17, 1602 Khronos castrates Alalu castrated by Kumarbi BC, Santorini spews pink Ouranos. Sun and Erynies ashes in the air, which Zas vs. Chthonie: a tree Kenkhrios/Kaystros turns move southeast and reach appears. red Egypt Myth of Leto. Marsyas turns red Telchines in Rhodes. Frogs in Lycia Myth of Phaethon. Two years interlude: Zeus born Kumarbi gestates its tremors and “nuclear Pregnancy of Rhe destiny winter” Mythos of Phaethon End March 1600 BC Fights: Zeus vs. Teshub defeats Ullikummi Santorini volcano erupts, Typhon/armies Myth of Baucis and pulverizing most of the Floods: Phaethon, Philemon island. Deucalion, Orion, and Atlas’ isle New volcanic cloud Myth of Busiris moves northeast, then south. People think the gods will only be placated by the “dearest” sacrifice: firstborn children (end March-early April 1600 BC).

CONCLUSION

Syrian data Epigeios Autochthon terrorizes the gods El castrates Epigeios Autochthon Ba’al castrates El Fish die at Hierapolis

Demarus is being born as agriculture fails. Yam is endorsed by the gods.

El kills Demarus. Ba’al defeats Yam. Flood.

Sacrifices of children to gods. Human sacrifices at Hierapolis.

189

Egyptian data

Biblical data

Gods angry when Tutimaios king: odd noise followed by rain, makes water undrinkable, dirties clothes, is “evil”, injures eyes and skin, which is also infected with vermin. Nile Delta turned into mud. Unusually cold weather, amidst a devastated land: cattle, trees, produce. People treated for burns. Soil shakes, with damages as far as Southern Egypt.

Darkness similar to a sky of bronze from which rains dust, generating boils and inability to see. The Nile is red, undrinkable, and deadly to fish and frogs. Vermin appears and is followed by swarms of flies. Countryside in ruin: dead cattle, storms damage fig trees and vines, and cover humans and animals with boils, while hail damages flax and barley, and locusts and worms eat the fields.

High fire attacks the enemy of the country. Darkness. People treated for cough and asthma, as well as eyes. Massacres of chosen children. Human sacrifices at Hyksos Iunu. Human sacrifices, tekenu, to Seth.

Death of firstborn. Yet, Hebrew children cannot be sacrificed, their firstborn are “bought back” by Yhwh, and Levites are pledged to Yhwh from the tenth plague onwards.

190

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Table 3. Sequence of Hyksos rulers. Information from Manetho Information form Turin Royal Canon Sa[l]itis x 19 years 3 years Bnon 44 years

x 8 years, 3 months

Apachnan 37 years

x x time

Apophis/Staan 61 years

x 40 years

Iannas/Archles 50 years

x x time x x time

Assis/Apopis 49 years

Khamudy x time

Resulting sequence of Kings Salitis Born: ? Warlord: 1694-1675 BC King: 1675-1672 BC B’n On, a.k.a. Sheshy Born: 1708 BC King: 1672-1664 BC Apachnan, a.k.a. YakobHar Born: 1689 BC King: 1664-1652 BC Apopi Khayan Born: 1673 BC King: 1652-1612 BC Iansas, successor Never ruled Apopi, a.k.a. Auserre Born: ? King: 1612-after 1579 BC Apopi, a.k.a. Assis, a.k.a. Khamudy Born: 1613 BC King: After 1579-1567 BC Died at Sharuhen 1564 BC

GLOSSARY 14

C. Chemical designation for the so-called “carbon fourteen”. This form of carbon is radioactive, and thus also known as radiocarbon. Over roughly 5770 years half of the radioactivity will be lost. The rate of decay enables researchers to obtain a time for the sample analyzed and containing radiocarbon. Aegean. Body of water between continental Greece and Anatolia. This area developed a sophisticated, independent—yet not homogenous—culture at the end of the Neolithic (around 3000 BC). This culture came under the influence of the Minoans after 2000 BC, and was assimilated by the Mycenaeans after 1500 BC.

Atlantis. Literally, of Atlas, it is said to have been a fabled island dominating the seas and from which oreikhalkos had been mined. The island would have disappeared under the waves following a giant earthquake. Interest in the tale resurfaced in the 19th century when it was assumed that the island was the mother of all civilizations and had sunk into the Atlantic Ocean. Archaeological work from the 20th century in the Aegean showed a very close resemblance between passages of the tale of Atlantis and the Minoan civilization. Currently, although the island has not been positively identified, Minoan culture is what comes closest to the description of the island. Avaris. Greek name of the Egyptian town of Hawaret, which appears to have been founded around 2000 BC. The economy turned the town into a magnet for immigrants from 1775 BC onwards. The town was severely proved by an epidemic around 1715 BC, and by a coup by mercenary militias a few years later. In 1675 BC the Hyksos established their capital in Avaris. The collapse of the Hyksos led to a decline in the town that slowly sunk into oblivion by 1550 BC. Near the ruins of the town the kings of the 19th dynasty first planned, then around 1275 BC built their new capital, Pi-Ramesse. As the dynasty ended, so did the fortunes of the Avaris/Pi-Ramesse area. Bronze Age. Danish archaeologist Christian J. Thomsen (1788-1865) established a system to study cultures on the basis of technologies used. Noticing that stone tools preceded metal ones, and that iron technology was mastered only relatively later, Thomsen devised a scheme of Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron 191

192

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

Age. For the Middle East, the Stone Age ended around 2200 BC and the Iron Age started around 1200 BC. Calendar, Egyptian. The Nile being the life of the country, Egyptian societies developed their calendar to mimic the apparent movement of the sun around the earth and the water levels of the river. Thus, the summer flooding of the Nile ushered in the new year. Since the flooding coincided more or less with the reappearance at dawn of Sirius on the horizon after months of absence, the Egyptians linked Sirius to the Nile. Chemostat. Vessel in which microorganisms can be kept in balance and grown by controlling the input of water and nutrients and a continual removal of the culture. Cyanophytes. (literally: blue plants) Microscopic algae also known as bluegreen algae. Dendrochronology. Determination of the age of a piece of wood on the basis of the number of visible tree rings on the object (e.g., a beam). Documentary Hypothesis. Similarities within parts of the Torah have been thought to reflect specific authors, who would have contributed these parts at different times. Four major strands were hypothesized by German scholars. One is characterized by the use of the word Yhwh to designate the divinity of the Hebrews (hence the strand J, as Yhwh in German is Jahve). Another is characterized by the name Elohim to designate the divinity of the Hebrews (hence the strand E). A third was attributed to a tradition stemming form the Temple in Jerusalem and thus to the local priests (strand P). The fourth one coincides almost completely with the book of Deuteronomy and was thus called D. These sources would have been generated around 900-600 BC. Around 450 BC, an editor would have glued the strands together, and added comments (German: Redaktor, hence strand R). Erg. Unit that measures energy and representing 1 dyne (1 gram x centimer/second2) over 1 centimer. Extrabiblical. (literally: outside of the Bible) Extrabiblical texts are used to compare the information in the Bible to events recorded through other means. Extrabiblical need not mean not Hebrew, Jewish, or Christian; for instance, there was a vast Hebrew literature which was not considered holy and thus was not included amidst the biblical texts. Hebrews. The ethnic group that produced and later identified its history and culture with the Torah. Briefly, the Hebrews claimed to originate from a patriarch who had received a divine revelation. After the patriarchal age, the Hebrews settled in Egypt were they were later interned in labor camps. Led by Moses, who was to become the model for the new “ruler” of the nation, the

GLOSSARY

193

Hebrews fled Egypt in the aftermath of a series of disasters. As the Hebrews were looking to give themselves a king, a schism occurred between a puritan movement (the “guardians”, better known by the later terminology of Samaritans) and the rest of the population. The experiment with a central royal power was short-lived as two states emerged within a few generations. The northern state was destroyed around 722 BC, and the southern state of Judaea was occupied around 587 BC. The Hebrew heritage was to survive in the Jewish nation. Hellenistic. After Alexander the Great seized Egypt at the end of the 4th century BC, the crosspollination of Greek and non-Greek cultures gave rise to Hellenism. This new zeitgeist spoke Greek and tried to understand the different cultures embedded in Hellenism. Hittites. Population of central Anatolia that spoke an Indo-European language and established an empire that from 1600 BC onwards expanded both toward the Aegean and along the Tigris and Euphrates, clashing with Egypt’s armies and vassals. The battle at Qadesh in Syria (1275 BC) stopped the advance of the Hittites. The end of their state around 1100 BC is still a mystery. Hyksos. Foreign occupiers of Egypt who ruled the country for just over a century, 1675-1567 BC. The name means “foreign kings” and their ethnic identity has been hotly debated. The present work indicates that the Hyksos are consistent with foreign mercenaries who, sensing the weaknesses in the central power, pushed their luck farther. A first attempt to establish a Hyksos state at Avaris around 1710 BC failed. Subsequent attempts succeeded in 1675 BC, and the Hyksos tried to completely take over a land in the hands of warlords in the aftermath of disasters unleashed by the Santorini eruption (identified in this book to have occurred in 1602-1600 BC). A war of liberation led by the warlord family of the southern town of Thebes reunified Egypt and drove the Hyksos out of the country. Isotopes. Chemical elements exist in several forms, or isotopes. Radioactive isotopes are the most famous, and are unstable, which means they tend to undergo changes by, for instance, shedding an electron, thus stabilizing the isotope. Jewish. Descendants of the Hebrews. Jews emerged from the earlier Hebrew culture existing in Judaea after the return of the exiles from Babylon around 540 BC. Lógos. This word is usually understood as the law ruling the universe, and thus as an overall physical explanation for the world. Some pre-Socratic philosophers such as Herakleitos of Ephesos portayed this word in a more metaphysical sense. Maccabees. Judean family that symbolized the struggle against Hellenistic occupation. Their actions were collected in four books, which were accepted as

194

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

part of the Old Testament by Christians, yet not as part of the holy texts by the Jewish authorities. The Protestant Reformers dropped the four books from their list of holy texts, while the Catholic Church revised the canon at the council of Trent (1545-1563) and only kept the first two books thereafter. The Greek Orthodox Church keeps the first three books, and appends the fourth one. Manetho. Egyptian historian known from quotations in works from other ancient writers. He is supposed to have composed a vast compendium on Egypt’s history, classifying the kings according to dynasties and establishing three times of glory, each ended by a time of misfortunes, and followed by a subsequent era (Late Period) which ushered in foreign occupation. Manetho himself lived duting the Ptolemaic Period (~330-30 BC) and his work was supposed to glorify the Greek rulers of Egypt. Maximalist. Person who attributes as much as possible (Latin: maximum) to the biblical texts and often regards any part of these texts as fact and/or revealed Truth. Merneptah stela. Record of king Merneptah’s campaigns in Asia and dated to his fifth year of rule (~1208/1207 BC). The stela is famous because it states that the people of Israel had been slaughtered. This is therefore an extrabiblical and historical document showing the presence of the Hebrews in Canaan at the time. Minimalist. Person who reduces the factual content of the biblical texts to the minimum, at times to nothingness (hence an overlap with nihilism). Minimalism also attributes to cultures other than biblical any historical data or parallel that might be found in the biblical texts. Thus, if a woman courts a man in the biblical tale of Joseph, it must have come independently from the Story of Two Brothers in Egyptian literature, whether or not the rest of Joseph’s and the Egyptian stories share other parallels. Mýthos (plural: mýthoi). Classical Greeks understood that their gods intervened in daily life and manifested themselves at their whim. A mýthos would capture the display of the gods and keep it for future generations, informing them of these earlier events. As Greek culture changed, the attitude toward the holy retellings also changed. Plato, in the 4th century BC, understood the mýthoi as tales that were designed to explain complex ideas to the populace. As Christianity replaced earlier religions, the mýthoi were understood as fairy tales or as selfillusions by the pagans. Nihilist. The word comes from the Latin nihil, meaning “nothing”. Nihilism is any ideology the goal of which is turning its target into nothingness. It is only recently that the word has been used to designate minimalist scholars of the biblical texts. The word was used in the 19th century to label the offshoot from Marxism which presented the destruction of existing society as the sole way to establish the paradise of the workers. This nihilism flourished for a few decades

GLOSSARY

195

and affected Czarist Russia most prominently. Nihilism was also used in philosophy by Nietzsche (1844-1900), who accused the enshrining of reality as a devaluation of reality, leading to its self-destruction. Nome. Greek name for the administrative districts in which Egypt had been subdivided. The use of Greek became prevalent in ancient Egypt during Hellenistic times, and perdured during the Roman time. The head of a nome was called a nomarch. Nuclear winter. A nuclear holocaust would, besides destroying life and objects through the explosion and the radiations, generate copious amounts of dust that would shield the earth from sun rays. As a result, the temperatures would drop considerably from their normal values, and a constant winter-like weather would persist for an abnormally long time. Large volcanic explosions also spew copious amounts of dust, which will affect weather patterns. Ockham’s razor. Logical argument that calls for parsimony when examining reality. It is akin to common sense that retains that between a simpler and a more complex explanation, the former is most likely correct. Papyrus. Plant growing along the banks of the Nile in Egypt; its fibers can be used to make pages of a material akin to paper (hence the name). Egyptian scribes wrote on papyrus that then formed a scroll and was set aside in personal, royal, or temple libraries. Radioactive decay. Unstable elements tend to stabilize by, for instance, shedding electrons. This internal rearrangement of the element often leads to a change in the nature of the element. For instance, rubidium (87Rb) turns into strontium (87Sr). Rationalist. From the Latin ratio, “reasoning”, rationalism stresses the use of logical thinking. Descartes (1596-1650) is credited with founding rationalism. Applied to biblical studies, rationalism is akin to minimalism, denying supernatural interventions captured in the biblical texts. Unlike minimalism, rationalism would be open to accept parts of the biblical narrative as being based on facts if such facts can be shown. Rubicon. In 49 BC Julius Caesar had reached the borders of the territory within which an army general could only enter with troops if such an arrangement had been approved by the Roman government. The boundary had been made in order to avoid blood baths resulting from generals attempting to stage coups. The border was marked by a small river, the Rubicon (20 kilometers north of present-day Rimini). By crossing the river with his troops, in the words of the historians, Caesar had cast the dice, and was ready to face the world. Santorini. Volcanic island in the Aegean Sea. Most of the island was blasted away during the eruption that took place in the Bronze Age. The name of the

196

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE LOOK AT THE BIBLE

island comes from the Venetian occupation that took place during the Middle Ages, and means Saint Irene (= peace). The island is also known by other names, for example, Thera (= beast). Second Intermediary Period (1786-1567 BC). Egypt’s history was classified by Hellenistic historians according to periods of greatness and times when the country had suffered. The Second Intermediary Period started at the end of the so-called Middle Kingdom and lasted two centuries until Ahmose unified the country in 1567 BC, transforming his family (17th dynasty, rulers of Thebes) into the ruling dynasty over the whole country (18th dynasty, rulers of Egypt). Sothic. Hellenistic appellation of the original Egyptian calendar, which was constituted of three seasons each having 4 months of 30 days. To these 360 days were added 5 days, each representing the birthday of a god. The new year was supposed to take place as the star Sothis (Sirius) became visible again at dawn in the summer. This event takes place around July 21. However, since the Egyptian year is slightly shorter than the actual run of the earth around the sun by roughly one day every four years, the observation of Sirius started to slip, and the new year started to migrate throughout the year. Every 1460 years, the new year and the real astronomical new year coincided. Tephra. Volcanoes eject different kinds of matter. When such material becomes airborne and is thus subject to winds and the like it is called tephra. Thera. Greek name for the island of Santorini. An older designation of the island appears to have been Kallisto (the most beautiful). Torah. All biblical material comprised by the books or scrolls of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These texts form the foundation for Hebrew, Jewish, and Samaritan theology, and are crucial to Christian theology. Islam claims to refer to these texts, too. Turin Royal Canon. Document finalized around 1250 BC, and listing the kings that ruled Egypt for a mythical time of gods and other non-human beings to the historical times. It is the most detailed ancient Egyptian document. Unfortunately, the papyrus did not come to us unscathed, and holes exist at several points in the document. VEI. Volcanic Explosive Index, which quantifies the energy freed by the eruption. The scale is logarithmic, and thus a difference of 1 on the index is a difference of 10 in terms of energy released by the eruption. Yhwh. Holy name, as it was allowed to be spelled, of the god of the Hebrews.