According to Exodus 10: 21–23:
And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand towards heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness that may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand towards heaven; and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days: but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.
Apart from the fact that the event is being attributed to divine intervention, the account might as well be a description of the effects of Thera. That just one of the ten plagues matched the likely effects of the Thera eruption would be interesting enough: the truth is, they all do. In Exodus 9:23–26, we are told that Egypt is afflicted by a terrible fiery hailstorm:
And Moses stretched forth his rod towards heaven: and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran along upon the ground; and the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. So there was hail and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. And the hail smote all throughout the land of Egypt, all that was in the field, both man and beast, and brake every tree in the field. Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail.
This would be an accurate description of the terrible ordeal suffered by the people on the Sumatran coast after the eruption of Krakatau – pellet-sized volcanic debris falling like hail; fiery pumice setting fires on the ground and destroying trees and houses; lightning flashing around, generated by the tremendous turbulence inside the volcanic cloud. Even after the lesser eruption of Mount St Helens, volcanic debris fell like hailstones, flattening crops hundreds of kilometres away. Remarkably, both this and the previous account tell of something which may specifically relate to the Thera eruption. Weare told that the children of Israel, in the land of Goshen, were not affected by these or any of the other plagues. Based on the ancient sea bed pumice samples taken during the Vema survey, the estimated destruction of the communities on Crete, and a comparison with the Mount St Helens devastation (see Chapter Nine), we can determine the approximate direction and swath – or width – of the fallout cloud. It seems that it may only have crossed over southern Egypt including Thebes, but may have missed part of the Delta region which included the land of Goshen around Avaris. Interestingly, northern Egypt, where the Aten cult seems to have persisted, is also in this unaffected area. In such circumstances, like the Hebrews, the cult of Re may have believed that their god had spared them from the carnage, and consequently concluded that he was punishing the Amun cult at Thebes. Here we may have another – and perhaps the original – link between the Israelites and the Atenists.
The Exodus account of another of the plagues could easily be a report given by someone living in the states of Washington, Idaho or Montana after the Mount St Helens eruption of 1980: 'And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast.' (Exodus 9:9.) Fine dust causing boils and blains! Hundreds of people were taken to hospital with skin rashes, sores and pustules after the Mount St Helens eruption, and many cattle, horses and other livestock perished, while as many again had to be destroyed due to prolonged inhalation of the acidic ash. According to Exodus 9:6: 'And all the cattle of Egypt died.'
After Mount St Helens fish also died and were found floating on the surface of hundreds of kilometres of waterways. The pungent odour of pumice permeated everything, and water supplies had to be cut off until the impurities could be filtered from reservoirs. According to Exodus 7:21: 'And the fish that was in the river died: and the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink of the river, and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt.'
As well as the grey pumice ash the volcano blasted skywards, Thera had another, more corrosive toxin in its bedrock – iron oxide. (This is the same red material that covers the surface of Mars.) Wilson pointed out that in the submarine eruptions that still occur at Thera, tons of iron oxide is discharged which kills fishes for miles around. As it oxidizes in contact with air, the consequent red-coloured rust stains might explain the reference to blood. It would certainly explain the mention in the preceding verse of the Nile turning to blood, as iron oxide would turn the river red. (And all the waters that were in the river turned to blood.' (Exodus 7:20.)
The remaining plagues do not immediately suggest themselves as having anything to do with a volcanic eruption – frogs, flies, lice and locusts. However, they can be just as linked to volcanic activity as the fallout cloud itself. Those who have not suffered the dreadful effects of a volcanic eruption might imagine that once the eruption has subsided, the dead have been buried, the injured tended, and the immediate damage repaired, the survivors can begin the task of putting their lives back together, free from further volcanic horrors. This is very often far from the truth, as the entire ecosystem has been affected. Most forms of life suffer from volcanic devastation, but some, remarkably, actually thrive on it.
Geologists estimate that the asteroid or comet collision that exterminated the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago also killed around 75 per cent of life on earth. The impact resulted in a cataclysmic event similar to a volcanic eruption – but on a global scale. Those that survived the holocaust were generally the smallest creatures, including insects, frogs and even our own direct ancestors – tiny rat-like mammals. Crawling invertebrates, and insects in their larval, pupal or egg stage would be safe underground, as would burrowing snakes and rodents; so also would frog-spawn, protected under submerged ledges. Exactly the same set of circumstances prevail over the countryside buried beneath the ash of volcanic eruptions. Insects have a very short life cycle and accordingly reproduce at a frightening rate. After such a cataclysm, therefore, they have plenty of time to establish a head start on their larger predators and competitors. Moreover, compared to bigger animals, they reproduce in vast numbers.
Swarming insects are therefore commonly associated with volcanic eruptions. Having survived the calamity, the ash-cover forces them to seek out new habitations and food supplies – and heaven help anyone who gets in the way! Ian Wilson cited the flesh-crawling aftermath of the Mount Pelee eruption on the island of Martinique in the West Indies in 1902. Volcanic debris covered the nearby port of St Pierre, killing over 30,000 people, but the horrors were not to end there. The survivors were exposed to a terrifying episode. Huge swarms of flying ants descended upon the sugar plantations and attacked the workers. As they fled for their lives, the vicious creatures seared their flesh with dreadful acidic stings. It was no fluke that the insect assaults had followed the eruption: the creatures had attacked before when Mount Pelee had erupted in 1851. On this occasion they not only drove away workers and devoured entire plantations; they were even reported to have attacked and killed defenceless babies while they were still in their cots. Three types of insect infested Egypt according to the Exodus account: lice, flies and locusts.
Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man, and in beast; all the dust of the land became lice throughout all of the land of Egypt. (Exodus 8:17.)
Behold I will send swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are. . . . And the Lord did so and there came a grievous swarm of flies . . . and the land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of flies. (Exodus 8:21–24.)
And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such. For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt. (Exodus 10: 14–15.)
Frogs are perhaps the most prepared of all the land-based vertebrates for such cataclysms: like insects, they produce vast numbers of offspring. Each frog lays literally thousands of eggs. Under normal circumstances this is a biological necessity, as the tiny tadpoles emerge from the eggs almost completely defenceless. The only chance the species has for survival is in numbers. When frog spawn hatches, the local fish are in for a banquet and only one or two of the tadpoles ever survive to become frogs. However, after Mount St Helens the predatory fish were decimated. The tiny would-be frogs, on the other hand, were kept safe inside their spawn. By the time they emerged, the hazardous chemicals had washed away down river, but the fish had not yet returned. The result was a plague of frogs throughout much of Washington State. In their thousands they littered the countryside – there were so many squashed on the roads that they made driving conditions hazardous: they clogged waterways, covered gardens, and infested houses.
According to Exodus 8:2–8, this is exactly what happened to the ancient Egyptians:
Behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs. And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall come up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs . . . And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt.
Over the years, various scholars have individually attributed these plagues to different natural phenomena. The darkness could have been due to a particularly violent sandstorm, the hail the result of freak weather conditions. The boils could have been caused by an epidemic, and the bloodied river may have been the result of some seismic activity far to the south in tropical Africa. Swarms of locusts, flies and infestation of lice would not have been that uncommon. However, the likelihood of them all happening at the same time seems just too remote. The only real problem with attributing the plagues of Egypt to Thera is that they do not appear in the order that they would have occurred after such an event. The darkness and fiery hail would come first, followed by the sores, the bloodied river, dead cattle and fish, and some time later the frogs and insects. In Exodus they appear in a different order: blood, fish, frogs, lice, flies, cattle deaths, boils, hail, locusts and darkness. However, as we have already seen, Exodus seems to have been written many centuries after the events being described. The account of the plagues would have been handed down orally for many generations and, as in examples already cited (see Chapter Eight), certain details would have been reinterpreted.
In the story of Moses it seems that many details had been forgotten entirely: the names of the pharaohs, the location of the court, Moses' time in the Egyptian royal household, to name but a few. Surviving details would no doubt have been modified somewhat during many retellings of the story. If we look at the order of the plagues again, we see that they appear to occur in ascending order of magnitude – getting progressively worse as the pharaoh continues to refuse the Lord's demands. This is precisely how we might expect a story to develop for dramatic effect as it was told and retold. From a purely historical, or even scientific, perspective, the only explanation for the plagues known at this time is the eruption of Thera. If the eruption was responsible for the plagues, then what must have happened is that the cataclysmic details were remembered accurately, while the order of events was altered for narrative purposes.
Today, few scholars – even the most religious ones – see anything blasphemous about suggesting that some of the biblical events were the result of natural phenomena. Concerning the life of Christ, for instance, the general consensus is that the star of Bethlehem, which heralded his birth, was a supernova or planetary alignment, while the daytime darkness during the Crucifixion was due to an eclipse. Equally, Old Testament scholars and biblical historians alike have suggested that an earthquake was responsible for the fall of Jericho. It is not the nature of the phenomena, they argue, but the remarkable timing involved which implies divine intervention. Time and time again, in the Bible, God uses nature's phenomena to fulfil His plans. He uses rain to cleanse the world and cause the great flood, for instance, rather than simply making mankind disappear in an instant. Then, on the positive side, he uses a rainbow as a sign of his promise to Noah not to do such a thing again. In fact God actually tells Noah that He will not use powers beyond His created forces of nature to harm mankind. In Genesis 8:22 he tells Noah: 'While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.'
From the theological perspective, God created the forces of nature, and they are His to use as He pleases. In conclusion, therefore, there is nothing unscientific or irreligious about attributing the plagues of Egypt to the eruption of Thera. On the contrary, it offers scientific evidence for a biblical episode that many now regard as nothing more than myth. Yet the plagues are not the only miraculous episodes from the Exodus story which Thera may have caused. Its eruption may well have made possible the Exodus itself, by helping the Israelites to escape.
Even if northern Egypt had not suffered the same fate as the south, there would certainly have been panic and confusion. Well before the fallout cloud reached the coast, they would have heard a colossal explosion, or series of explosions, and felt shock waves and earth tremors. Most frightening of all, within an hour of the explosion a tidal wave would have hit the Egyptian coast and made its way up the Nile Delta. Those living on the coast, on the river banks, or in ships on the Nile would have been in considerable peril. It is difficult to estimate how high the tidal wave would have been as too many variables are involved. However, a very much smaller seismic event, an earthquake in Japan in the 1940s, created a series of devastating ten-metre tsunami tidal waves the other side of the Pacific in California. We can be sure, therefore, that much of the Nile Delta experienced flooding, and that river-going vessels were overturned or sunk. North-east Egypt may not have been affected directly by the fallout, but they would have seen the awesome black cloud far away on the western horizon, drifting ominously towards Upper Egypt. The resultant panic may well have afforded many foreign slaves the opportunity to escape.
According to Exodus, once the plagues have finally persuaded the pharaoh to free the Israelites, they are led out of Egypt by following 'a pillar of cloud by day' and 'a pillar of fire by night' (Exodus 13:22). Could this be a reference to the Thera plume (the towering ash cloud over the volcano itself), which would have been visible for days – possibly weeks? It certainly matches the description of a British official in Java, over 900 kilometres from Krakatau, a week after the volcano erupted: 'a black cloud, which at night became a fiery glow above the sea'. This is about the same distance as Goshen is from Thera, and so the much larger Thera would have appeared even more spectacular for perhaps much longer. (Taking the earth's curvature into account, we can calculate that Thera's plume would have been visible from Lower Egypt if it rose more than 48 kilometres high. In fact, Thera's plume is estimated to have risen over a hundred kilometres into the sky.)
If the Israelites had attributed the phenomena to the intervention of their God, then they may well have made for the direction of the Thera plume in the belief that it was a beacon to lead them to safety. According to Exodus 13:18: 'God led the people round by the way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea.' We have already seen that the name 'Red Sea' comes from a mistranslation of the Hebrew words Yam Suph, which actually means 'Sea of Reeds'. At least a dozen different places have been put forward as possible locations of the Sea of Reeds along the line of the Suez Canal and the Bitter Lakes, but since the topography has changed much since biblical times there is no way of directly verifying any of them. In fact, there may have been a number of places described by the term 'Sea of Reeds'. In Kings 9:26, for instance, the term is used for part of the Gulf of Aqaba which, being some 300 kilometres south-east of Goshen, would make it an unlikely location for the Sea of Reeds referenced in Exodus.
The term Sea of Reeds probably applied to an expanse of water which looked exactly like it sounds: a large shallow lake or inlet covered by reeds. We find the Hebrews constantly describing lakes in terms of seas – what they called the Sea of Galilee or the Dead Sea others would call a lake. The Great Lakes of North America, for instance, could swallow both of them many times over, yet are still referred to as lakes. The Hebrew word Yam – 'Sea' – therefore, is probably just as misleading as the Hebrew word Suph was when it was mistranslated to mean 'Red'.
The first orthodox Egyptologist to propose a connection between the Thera eruption and the Exodus events was Dr Hans Goedicke, the Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He concluded that a tidal wave created by the eruption was responsible for the parting of the 'Sea of Reeds', and that it had happened somewhere in the Nile Delta. If so, where might this have been?
According to Exodus 13:17–21:
And it came to pass that when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt; But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea [Sea of Reeds]: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt . . . And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.
Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings Page 22