Plagued by doubts
On 3 April Channel 4 rescreened “The Ten Plagues of Egypt” [first shown in “Equinox” on 18 August 1998]. I watched again to see whether the arguments put forward by “a dour American epidemiologist and his bright but groovy sidekick” [as a 1998 critic called them], convinced me a second time round! I shall discuss the Plagues where I differed with their claims.
Plague One: Exodus 7, vs. 14-25
“...all the rivers, canals and pools...will become blood...even in the wooden tubs and jars.”
The programme concentrated on vs. 17-18 and 20-21 where the Nile became tainted killing all the fish. Yet the above passage [v. 19], together with Moses’ “rod”, suggests that the cause was more than waterborne algae. Early maps [eg. the Hereford ‘Mappa Mundi’ (c.1300)], depict the Red Sea as being so.
Furthermore, a Babylonian world map calls the Persian Gulf “the bitter river”, while the Suez Canal flows through the “Bitter Lakes”. Remember, the putrid water was undrinkable [v. 21].
While the programme dated the Exodus to c.1260 BC, I favour David Rohl’s c.1447 BC, the traditional date, based on pottery, for the Thiran eruption. The fallout covered Crete, but could it also have reached Egypt?
Yet Velikovsky linked the Venusian “fly-by” and Exodus. In Worlds in Collision he said that “a fine dust of a rusty pigment” [pg. 60] descended when Earth passed through its tail. He used “a large number of documents” [Velikovsky], including those written by Ipuwer, Apollodorus and Servius, and global traditions and accounts, to reconstruct the catastrophe.
Plagues Six and Seven: Exodus 9, vs. 8-12, and 9, vs. 13-35
“...thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground ... and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as none like it in ... Egypt since it became a nation.”[Exodus 9, vs. 23-24]
“Moses caused hail and earthquakes by night, so that those who fled ... the earthquakes were killed by the hail, and those who sought shelter from the hail were destroyed by the earthquakes. And ... all the houses fell in and most of the temples.” [Manetho, Concerning the Jews]
“Gates, columns and walls are consumed by fire.”[Ipuwer].
By being selective, the programme read Plague Seven as being literally hail. However, Velikovsky said the “barad” was actually meteorites falling to Earth, as it entered the tail, causing “explosion-like noises” [the “thunder”]. As astronomers know, meteorite showers are associated with comets. The “fire” he identified as naphtha, a bitumen-like substance produced when hydrogen and carbon in the tail ignited in Earth’s atmosphere. Exodus describes how the “ashes of the furnace” caused “blains upon man and beast” [the Plague of Boils]. Both plagues are “recalled in the written and oral traditions of the inhabitants of both hemispheres.” [WIC, pg. 65].
Rohl, in A Test of Time, says that “mass graves at end of stratum G at Avaris” [pg. 284] were probably quake victims. The tremors were caused by the comet’s wake shaking the Earth’s axis.
Plague Nine: Exodus 10, vs. 21-29
When Moses raised his hand skyward “a darkness thick enough to be felt” fell over Egypt. The programme suggested a three day sandstorm similar to one that struck Cairo in 1997. But could Thira have been the culprit? Or was it the trembling, smoking and fiery Mount of the Lawgiving in Exodus 19 and Deuteronomy 5? But it may not been the traditional Mt. Sinai as scholars disagree on the route of the Exodus! The confusion, I suspect, as Rohl argued in A Test of Time, arises from the Hebrew “Yam-Suf” being mistranslated as Red Sea. Rohl said it was “reed sea” [the Bitter Lakes: see Plague One]. The location of the Pillars of Cloud and Fire seem to suggest Sinai, not Thira, which dendrochronology has dated to 1628 BC. Big eruptions, like Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, often “turn day into night”. Thus, the duration of the darkness varies in global accounts, as without the Sun [in a pre-clock era], marking time wasn’t easy.
For Velikovsky, though, it was the cometary “encounter” that shrouded the Earth with “protracted night, deepened by the onrushing dust in from interplanetary space.” [WIC, pg. 72].
Plague Ten: Exodus 11, vs. 1-10 and Exodus 12, vs. 1-36
The programme’s argument pivoted around
“Micro-toxins found in locust droppings [Plague 8] contaminating food were lethal; and in famine [caused by the “hail” and locusts] conditions the custom was to give the eldest double portions.”[Radio Times, 15-21 August 1998]
Here a mistranslation may creep in, as, in Hebrew, “first born” is similar to “the chosen ones”. Exodus 12, vs. 21-27 suggests the latter, as God tells the Israelites to mark their doors with blood as a sign to “the Angel of Death” not to kill them during its “Passover”. But Velikovsky cites sources illustrating that the “Angel” [the comet] affected the whole world. As the tortured Earth settled after the upheaval, Ipuwer wearily wrote “Years of noise ... Oh that the ... tumult be no more.”
To conclude, the programme, I feel, though credible in its arguments, came nowhere near to explaining the true nature of the Ten Plagues of Egypt ...
