As the World licks its collective wounds after the Financial Meltdown and we all watch the storm clouds gather, consider the Egyptians suffering under the Plagues of Moses way back in c.1500 BC (1300 BC?) Usually written off as fiction, the perfervid imaginings of a pious scribe or two, a recent analysis by Colin J. Humphreys lends the account some credibility when the details are matched against the internal calendar of the account…
| The Plagues of Egypt | ||
| Plague | Cause | Time of Year |
| Nile turned to Blood and fish died | Red soil particles and red algal blooms | September |
| Frogs/Toads | Pollution forces frogs ashore where starvation and dehydration cause mass die-off | September-October |
| Gnats | Biting Midge, Culicoides carnithorix. Predators all died causing population boom. | October-November |
| Flies | Stable Fly, Stomoxys calcitrans. Population explosion as above (slower life-cycle.) | November |
| Livestock mass-deaths | Culicoides spread Bluetongue and African Horse Sickness viruses. | November-December |
| Boils | Stomoxys spread skin infection. | December-January |
| Hail | Exceptionally severe hailstorm. | February-March |
| Locusts | Damp sand from hail attracts the Desert Locust to lay eggs. | February-March |
| Darkness for 3 days | First annual khamsin produces a dark, dense dust-storm. | March |
| Death of Firstborn (males) | Mycotoxin on grains, due to grain being contaminated and damp after hail and locusts, and stores being sealed by sand from sandstorms. | late March-early April |
All these events occurred at the correct time of year and follow logically one after the other. Thus it’s a coherent whole account, not a pastiche of scribal bits and pieces as several venerable compositional theories hold. Either the scribes who wrote it were keen observers of Egyptian natural disasters, and they pieced them together correctly, or the account is describing an actual historical catastrophe. But was it caused by the God of Moses? Or did Moses somehow see it coming and skilfully used the opportunity to march his people into the land of Midian to found a new nation? Is there a difference?
For more on Colin Humphreys’ ideas check out his book The Miracles of Exodus. He’s a physicist by training who became keen on the historicity of the Exodus tale after a trip to the Levant. Not initially a believer in the accuracy of the account his research eventually produced a convincingly coherent reconstruction of Moses’ tale. Annoyingly, direct evidence for Moses remains elusive.
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