Actually, the Thera eruption may have had a direct, and far more dramatic, affect on the ancient Egyptians. It was such a enormous eruption that it seems to have decimated an entire civilization: the Minoans. The first evidence of this came to light in 1901, when the Boston archaeologist Harriet Boyd excavated Minoan remains at Gournia on the island of Crete. Crete had been the centre of the Minoan seafaring empire, and Gournia had been a thriving community in the late Minoan era. Ms Boyd was shocked by what she found: everywhere there was evidence that the last Minoans to have lived in the town had suddenly dropped everything and fled. Personal belongings and workmen's tools were found abandoned and cooking hearths still had their utensils in place as if in preparation for a meal. The cause of the panic was clear – a layer of charcoal revealed that the town had been razed by fire.
Gournia was not the only late Minoan community to suffer the same fate. In 1906, another American archaeologist, Richard Seager, excavated the Minoan port on the island of Mochlos, a couple of kilometres off the coast of Crete. He discovered that this community had also come to a sudden and violent end in the late Minoan period. As at Gournia, tools and other personal effects had been abandoned when fire swept the town. Here, however, the occupants seem to have been overwhelmed more quickly, as the charred remains of townsfolk had been found among the ruins.
Over the following decades many more Minoan sites discovered in eastern Crete revealed an almost identical picture of sudden catastrophe. For some time it was thought that the Minoan civilization had been overwhelmed by foreign invaders, who had sacked and plundered its cities: possibly the Greek Mycenaeans who had later established their own power base on Crete. However, in the 1920s, when the Greek archaeologist Stephanos Xanthoudidis uncovered the once magnificent villa of Nirou Khani, the invasion theory was discounted. Like the other sites, it had been destroyed by fire. However, at the time disaster struck it was crammed with valuable objects, such as jewellery and expensive ceramic ware, some of which had escaped the fire and lay exactly were they were left. Surely, if marauders had sacked the villa they would not have left such valuable items behind. Most indicative of all were the bronze battleaxes which had been left in the armoury, stacked neatly against the wall. The guards had clearly not attempted to repel a human foe.
The picture was rapidly emerging of a number of Minoan towns having been razed, simultaneously, by some type of natural disaster, and in the 1930s the respected Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos found evidence for what that might have been. Excavating the site of Amnisos, once the harbour town for the capital at Knossos, he uncovered a villa whose walls had been bulged outward in a curious way. Large upright stones seemed to have been prised out of position as if by some huge external force, suggesting that they had been hit by the backwash of an enormous tidal wave. It seemed that the harbour town had been drowned by a towering wall of water, evidently the result of some tremendous seismic event.
In the 1960s another Greek archaeologist, Professor Nicholas Platon, discovered the remains of Crete's easternmost Minoan palace at Kato Zakro. Once more it had been destroyed by fire, and again precious objects had been left behind – elephant tusks, bronze ingots and exquisitely made vases, together with tools and cooking utensils – all hurriedly abandoned. Professor Platon noticed something else that was even stranger: 'Huge stones, some dressed, some not, had been hurled to a distance or had fallen and shattered, blocking passages and filling open spaces. Whole sections of the upper storey had been thrown down . . .'
Just like the evidence for a tidal wave at Amnisos, this was a clear indication of seismic upheaval. However, the disaster seemed to have been more than simply an earthquake. Professor Platon also noticed that many storage jars had been compressed and squeezed as if by the enormous pressure of an explosion, and the walls seemed to have fallen from their foundations in one piece, as if toppled by some massive external force. Moreover, the ruins were full of volcanic pumice. There could be little doubt that Kato Zakro had suffered the effects of a volcanic eruption.
As Amnisos was on the north coast of Crete, then the tidal wave that pulverized the harbour must have come from the north of the island. As Thera lay only 112 kilometres north of Crete, Spyridon Marinatos was convinced that the Thera eruption had been responsible for the ancient devastation. He turned his attentions to the island of Thera, and in 1967 discovered there the remains of Akrotiri, a Minoan town that had been completely buried beneath molten lava in the same late period as the carnage on Crete. Marinatos excavated Akrotiri for seven years, until he was tragically killed by a falling wall while working on the site in 1974. He is actually buried were he fell, and his daughter Dr Nanno Marinatos continued his work.
Akrotiri must rank as one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century. It had escaped total obliteration by the fact that it was shielded by the lower slopes of the surviving volcano. However, molten debris had smothered the town, burying it 36 metres below solid lava rock. It was only discovered because local quarrying uncovered some of its buildings. The archaeology was an enormous task; the pumice layer was ten times deeper than that which Vesuvius spewed over Roman Pompeii. As the pumice was removed slowly and laboriously, an entire Minoan town gradually came to light. It was if it had been frozen in time for three and a half thousand years. Three-storey buildings of sophisticated construction and beautifully paved streets reflected a people who were surprisingly affluent. Indeed, the distribution of wealth among the common people exceeded anything found in other contemporary civilizations, such as Egypt and Babylon. Each house even had its own water closet, which a network of clay pipes connected to a communal sewage system. It would be many centuries before the ancient Greeks would match these achievements, and even then such amenities would only be available to the privileged elite. Fresco scenes actually showed daily life in Akrotiri: the mighty Minoan ships being steered into harbour, while women and children leant from balconies, happily welcoming their menfolk home.
At first, the findings at Akrotiri seemed to contradict Marinatos' theory that the Thera eruption had been responsible for the carnage on Crete. Pottery found at Akrotiri was of a slightly earlier period than that found at the other excavations. On Crete every one of the destroyed cities had pottery classified as Late Minoan 1B, which is uniquely decorated with marine life. At Akrotiri the latest pottery found was of the period immediately proceeding it – Late Minoan 1A. From examples found all around the Aegean, it is known that Late Minoan 1B designs had been fashionable for about thirty years before disaster struck the Minoan cities on Crete. Consequently, it appeared that the Thera eruption must have occurred at least this much earlier.
Ultimately, further excavations revealed that there had been a major earthquake, or series of earthquakes, on Thera which may have led to Akrotiri being abandoned some years before the actual eruption. Collapsed walls found without pumice beneath them showed that they must have fallen during violent earth tremors before the eruption occurred. As a layer of soil had had time to build up between the earthquake debris and the first layer of pumice, the city must have been empty for some years before it was smothered by the volcano.
There was additional evidence that Akrotiri had been abandoned well before the cataclysm. At Pompeii, hundreds of people were overcome in the streets, most of them asphyxiated by searing hot ash. They still lay were they had dropped, the molten debris solidifying around them and encasing their bodies. At Akrotiri, however, no human victims of the eruption were found. Also, as the excavated houses lacked gold, silver, jewellery or anything of intrinsic value, it seems certain that the inhabitants had evacuated the city at some point between the earthquake and the eventual eruption. In 1972 Marinatos concluded that following a build-up of volcanic activity, and the resultant earthquakes, Akrotiri was abandoned. Then, some thirty years later, the massive eruption finally buried the city. Luckily for the inhabitants, it seems, by the time the volcano exploded they had long since taken to their ships an
d left the island.
Support for Marinatos' theory had actually emerged back in the 1950s. At this time, the geologists Ninkovich and Heezen had already concluded that the Thera eruption was responsible for the carnage on Crete. From core samples taken from the seabed, it was discovered that the layer of volcanic sediment from the Thera eruption spread across the Aegean in a southeasterly direction, bisecting Crete at the eastern end of the island. This is precisely were the burned-out towns had been uncovered. A fiery ash cloud, similar to that which rained down on Sumatra after the Krakatau eruption, must have been responsible. The affected Sumatran coast had been forty kilometres from Krakatau, and the six-fold larger eruption of Thera may have created similar conditions up to 240 kilometres away. Crete is only 112 kilometres from Thera and so must have suffered far worse – just as the archaeological evidence revealed.
The fire storm may have ravaged part of Crete and a number of other Aegean islands, but the fallout was not the greatest danger. Based on the Krakatau event, it has been estimated that a tidal wave a staggering 90 metres high would have thrashed the coast of Crete. (The tsunami in the immediate vicinity of the eruption would have been huge, but then it would have settled down to be only a couple of metres high, all its force deep under water. Then, when it approached shallow water, it would again have built into a mighty wave.) The towering wall of water would have lashed the densely populated north coast, sweeping through the great ports, pulverizing towns and villages – claiming countless lives.
The Minoan empire had spread throughout the Aegean islands. It had absolute supremacy over the waters of the eastern Mediterranean and as a result had grown remarkably rich. Dozens of Minoan ports must have been effected by the calamity, and hundreds of Minoan ships must have been sunk. For a civilization based on sea power, the consequences would have been disastrous. Although there is still debate as to how severely the Minoan empire was hit, there can be little doubt that the Thera cataclysm was a decisive element in the collapse of the civilization by the mid-fourteenth century BC, a time when the entire area was taken over by the Mycenaeans from mainland Greece.
One of the most dramatic and emotive discoveries to portray the last moments before disaster overwhelmed Minoan Crete was uncovered in 1979 at excavations at a temple sanctuary on Mount Euptos. Here, a ritual had been taking place before a huge statue of the chief Minoan goddess when a massive quake had collapsed the building, burying the assembly for over three thousand years. Archaeologists uncovered the remains of a young boy lying prostrate on the altar: his throat had been cut and a priest lay on the floor beside him, the offending knife still by his side. Not only does this show the ferocity of the shock waves that must have been produced by Thera – in addition to the searing fire storm and deadly tsunami – but it reveals that when disaster struck, the Minoans may have been attempting to appease their goddess with a human sacrifice.
Minoan writing was far less sophisticated than Egyptian hieroglyphics, and what there is of it has never been translated. Whether or not the survivors of the cataclysm ever wrote of their terrible ordeal we may never know. However, it is believed by some scholars that the story was preserved in mythology. As the single most catastrophic natural disaster in the history of civilization, the Thera eruption may have been responsible for one of antiquity's most baffling mysteries: the legend of Atlantis.
Around 400 BC, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote of Atlantis as a rich and powerful island empire. His Dialogues describe an ideal city state where the citizens lived in peace, obeyed their laws and prospered. As they grew richer, however, they also grew arrogant, angering their gods. In a single day and night earthquakes and tidal waves rocked the island, completely destroying the once mighty people. Could Plato's Atlantis have been more than an instructive fable? Until only a century ago, historians believed that the Greek poet Homer had invented Troy. Then, in 1870, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann uncovered the city's remains at Hissarlik in Turkey. As Homer had not invented Troy, perhaps, some scholars began to speculate, Plato had not invented Atlantis?
On 19 February 1909 an article appeared in The Times which first suggested that there may be a connection between the Minoan civilization on Crete and the legend of Atlantis. The author, a young Belfast scholar named K.T. Frost, had based his idea on the degree of sophistication of the discoveries made by Arthur Evans at Knossos, and the apparent sudden destruction of the towns being excavated. Remarkably, this was thirty years before Marinatos' paper was published in the British archaeological journal, Antiquity, which first outlined his tidal-wave theory. It was the Greek seismologist Professor Angelos Galanopoulos, however, in a series of short articles published in the 1960s, who first proposed the theory that Minoan Akrotiri and the island of Thera had been the city and island of Atlantis.
According to Plato his account came from Solon, a famous Athenian statesman and philosopher of the sixth century BC. His notes had been handed down by the Critas family, relatives Plato shared with Solon. Solon, evidently, had in turn been told the Atlantis story by priests on a trip to Egypt, sometime around 565 BC. As we have seen, the Egyptians certainly had close commercial ties with the Minoans during the time Thera seems to have erupted, and it is quite possible for the survivors of the disaster to have given a full account to the Egyptians. On the negative side, Thera does not fall outside the Pillars of Hercules – that is, in the Atlantic – where Plato tells us Atlantis was situated, and eruption had not happened 9,000 years earlier than Solon's time, the period that Atlantis was said to have been destroyed. However, as the only island city that is known to have perished in a manner anything like Plato describes, Akrotiri is so far the only truly historical contender for Atlantis.
We return now to the possibility that the Thera eruption may have had considerable effects in Egypt at the time of Amonhotep III and Akhenaten. Ninkovich and Heezen's survey of the Mediterranean seabed showed that sediment from the Thera eruption spread across the sea floor and bisected Crete at the eastern end of the island. This positively demonstrates that the prevailing wind was in the direction of Egypt. After blowing over Crete the fallout would have continued on its way to cross central and southern Egypt. On land, evidence of the ash fall would now be difficult to detect as it breaks down to produce a highly fertile soil. Apart from larger pieces of pumice, which are unlikely to have made it as far as Egypt, there was no discernible layer of volcanic ash even on Crete. Moreover, erosion of the springtime khamsin winds (that create huge sandstorms) in Egypt, and the annual flooding of the Nile would long ago have obliterated all evidence.
Although the volcanic fallout must certainly have reached Egypt, how significant would have been its effects? The Egyptian coast is only about 800 kilometres from Thera. The much smaller Mount St Helens eruption resulted in thick falls of ash just as far away, and after Krakatau ash was falling on ships 2,000 miles from the volcano. Thera – six times bigger than Krakatau – would certainly have plunged much of Egypt into darkness, and covered the countryside with volcanic debris. It can be estimated that the effect on parts of Egypt would have been at least what it was on Washington State after Mount St Helens erupted. Few historians now doubt that something similar had occurred in Egypt. The question is: was this really during the reign of Amonhotep III?
The precise date of the Thera eruption has been difficult to determine by scientific techniques. It is a popular misconception that science can now fix the time of any historical event by radiocarbon dating. For a start, radiocarbon dating needs organic matter. Organic matter in whatever form, animal or vegetable, contains the radioactive isotope of carbon, Carbon 14, and once the living organism has died the Carbon 14 gradually decays until some 120,000 years later it disappears altogether. The amount of Carbon 14 in dead organic material can be measured by chemical analysis, thus enabling dating. Once thought to be the answer to archaeological dating, it has often proved more trouble than it's worth. Firstly, considerable quantities of organic material, such as wood or bon
e, are needed for the procedure – often more than is present among the remains in question. Secondly, radiocarbon dating often has to allow for a considerable margin of error. Indeed the further back we go, the more inaccurate it becomes.
In the early 1990s a team of geologists from The National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen attempted to date the Thera eruption by radiocarbon dating organic remains from within the ancient volcanic crater. Inside once-molten rock, they found charcoal deposits thought to be from trees that had perished in the eruption. Unfortunately, there was not enough for standard radiocarbon dating, so they tried a new approach using nuclear physics. The carbonated material was pressed into cartridges of an atomic accelerator and bombarded with electrically charged particles. On impact, the material was to shatter in such a way that a small amount of Carbon 14 could be dated. Using this procedure, the team arrived at a date two centuries earlier than anyone had previously considered Thera to have erupted – around 1650 BC. If the Danish team was right, then the archaeologists had been completely wrong.
Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings Page 20