The Biblical Plagues: Duel On the Nile | Full Documentary

[Applause] Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs a rich and powerful Empire but the people of Israel live in slavery oppressed by a tyrannical Pharaoh to win their freedom Moses sends ten plagues on Pharaohs land [Music] as God's fury they sweep over Egypt the plagues bring desolation disease and death at least according to the Bible are they just legends or did these events really happen [Music] the waters of the Nile turned to blood fish died frogs invade the land insects attack man and beast disease follows at these biblical plagues real disasters from the past held in the memory of the peoples who lived through them scientists excavating an ancient Egyptian city have remarkable evidence that climate change could have been the cause of the Bible plagues [Music] biologists see evidence of a natural chain reaction what did happen on the Nile 3,000 years ago Jerusalem 700 years before Christ in the thriving capital city of the Israelites there's a spirit of religious renewal in the new writing schools and script Oriya of the temples Hebrew scholars are combining ancient texts and folk memories to form an epoch-making work it is the birth of the holy scriptures this is where the scholars author the story of the ten plagues a central event in a great epic a radical new account of Revelation and creation a new God appears on the stage of faith [Music] he reveals himself to Moses in the shape of a burning bush 1 and Almighty for God Yahweh he chooses Moses as his prophet and the people of Israel as his people in Egypt the Israelites live as slaves in the service of the Pharaoh God has promised them freedom and a homeland and gives Moses the task of leading them from slavery into the land of Israel it's an arduous and wondrous journey that the Bible describes the book of Exodus captured this story in words we don't know what ancient accounts inspired the scribes they themselves dated the original stories far before their own time at their center is the heroic figure of Moses as God's prophet he demands that the Pharaoh release his people signs and miracles are to demonstrate God's power at his command Aaron's rod turns into a snake before the Egyptian ruler the duel the test of strength is opened [Music] the godlike Ferrer is not impressed his own magicians are just as powerful [Music] when the two snakes do battle and Moses snake wins Pharaoh does not admit defeat the Bible says he hardens his heart and refuses to let the people of Israel go it's not possible to confirm the Bible stories historically because Moses opponent the Pharaoh is never given a name but there is a hint to the location of the action in the mention of two ancient Egyptian cities P Tom and Ramesses lanta Resaca De La Casita it's interesting that in the biblical account of the Exodus the Pharaoh has no name but the first chapter of Exodus names 2 cities P Tom and Ramesses so it's quite possible the authors were thinking of P Ramesses once the capital of Egypt when they wrote this account course an audit [Music] PM says was a great metropolis on the Nile Delta but this city the biblical city of Ramses suddenly disappeared off the map in ancient times and was only rediscovered at the end of the 20th century [Music] it's downfall has long puzzled archaeologists and historians was it caused by natural disasters Egypt the Nile Delta while excavating the area around can tear in the 1990s archaeologist Edgar push found the foundations of the city of Ramses his insane had said Unger tweet we came here to find out whether our theories were right that this is the location of Ramesses City we were sure they were correct but there was no proof sign on the city gates an entry sign you are entering the city of Ramesses that simply doesn't exist dust keeps you can tear in the Nile Delta 1996 a gas team scan the surface with a cesium magnetometer one strip at a time this technique can trace the remains of ancient buildings five meters underground it provides a kind of x-ray of long vanished constructions when the pictures were analyzed the results were sensational they discovered an entire unknown city with broad avenues and narrow alleyways wealthy villa districts crowded workers quarters temples and palaces and it was seriously big research document on this city extends over an area of 30 square kilometers several branches of the pollution arm of the Nile once flowed through it it was without doubt a fabulously wealthy city the anastacio papyrus tells us in its hymn of splendas that everyone wanted to live there here in these are starkly volatile the great pharaoh ramses ii has given his own name to the legendary city of ramses it's prime position on the nile makes it a powerful attraction to merchants and travelers a tourist reports enthusiastically to a friend back home this is a wonderful place to stay the countryside hereabouts is full of good things there are onions lettuce pomegranates olives figs and sweet wine [Music] everyone is happy and no one says if I could only have the common people are doing just as well as the rich people [Music] theorem says seems to be a paradise there are no records of a crisis here or a series of plagues and yet this city would experience a disaster that would change everything [Music] here beside the sacred River P Ramesses was built for eternity the Nile guaranteed the city's future all along its length the ancient Egyptians worshipped the river its waters made the desert blue all life was connected with it [Music] the Bible tells how Moses summons the first plague with one stroke of his rod on the waters [Music] this first plague strikes the Egyptians of their most vulnerable point their current of life transformed into a tide of death the Nile turns red begins to stink and becomes undrinkable just as the God Yahweh had predicted all the waters of Egypt turned to blood the drinking water is contaminated the fish die the largest the plague stories plagues one tonight reflect knowledge gained through experience we'd call it experiential scientific knowledge combined with expert guesswork at the jerusalem temple school they were taking phenomena they knew happened and then you happened rarely and we're trying to explain that sometimes very young the Nile turning murky or red was nothing new for the people of Egypt deserts and storms would deposit red dust on the water's surface and with each annual flood read earth from the highlands of Ethiopia was swept into the river these were hardly catastrophes but if the river should ever be contaminated that would spell disaster for an entire way of life at Berlin's live knits Institute for water ecology and inland fisheries they study the complex interaction of ecological systems the hydrologists here believed that the first plague the contamination of the Nile may have been caused by an infestation of poisonous blue algae they even have a prime suspect they're investigating the properties of Burgundy blood algae actually a bacteria and it fits the bill better than any other algae it thrives in freshwater we know it existed 3,000 years ago it's highly toxic and it's red biologist Stefan fluke maja is intrigued by the chance to solve an ancient mystery ina milky Heraklion the warfare longest one possible explanation for the red coloring of the Nile is the appearance of burgundy blood algae oscillatory Lube essence a beautiful raspberry colored species of cyanobacteria it multiplies massively in slow-moving warm waters with high levels of nutrition and as it dies it stains the water red give us a would felt of the coast of western Florida they encounter a similar phenomenon they regularly see dangerous algae blooms with disastrous effects this toxic display is known as the red tide [Music] the algae isn't always read in deeper waters it's colorless so the scientists have to take samples at different levels and in different locations to check how widely the deadly bacteria has spread Allen Chen Bella is one of the world's leading toxic algae researchers in some cases the algae form a superficial layer on top of the water that's a so-called classic red tide where you can actually see a water discoloration but much more often the bloom is in fact subsurface you can't see anything from looking with your naked eye into the water color these algae are called Karenia brevis they're hundredths of a millimeter long aggressive toxic algae that give off a nerve gas the scientists have found more than a million per liter in their samples a Karenia bloom can last for weeks or months even up to a year today more than 60 species of toxic algae had been identified in our oceans lakes and rivers and there's nothing we can do about them the algae evolved presumably hundreds of millions of years ago they're not new they occurred before human beings were here and and probably will be there long after human beings are gone from the face of the earth [Applause] a plague of algae could have occurred at any time in the past and certainly on the ancient Egyptian Nile the first biblical plague ends after seven days the god Yahweh's first triumph over Pharaoh and all his gods like happy the river god in whom the egyptians worshipped the sacred nile this great statue sunk in the mid Turanian off the coast of alexandria is proof of his importance happy mighty ruler of the nile one of the greatest of the Egyptian deities but in the first plague the Bible makes it clear that he too is powerless you could say that the story of the plagues is a struggle between the gods because the Pharaoh represents the gods of Egypt the whole pantheon and by attacking the Pharaoh Yahweh is attacking Egypt's gods so the idea behind the plagues is to show that Yahweh is superior to Egypt superior to the Pharaoh and also to the gods he represents the miracle of the first plague does not win the Israelites their freedom Pharaoh the Bible says hardens his heart then God instructs Moses go unto Pharaoh and say unto Him thus saith the Lord let my people go that they may serve me and if thou refuse to let them go behold I will smite all thy borders with frogs the afar Alma demos estar is Sutra Ferrer that Moses has to deal with is stubborn he has a boundlessly exaggerated opinion of himself he's a desperate oppressing people in a totally arbitrary way this is that's a malicious misrepresentation a polemical view of Egypt because of course the Pharaoh had the gods above him and he was responsible to them being there fine Fort Lee the Bible chooses not to mention that of course the Egyptians had their own concept of justice and the Pharaoh knew perfectly well that the gods were above him got are you British my son Anna Kent the Pharaoh of the Bible hardened his heart after the red tide the misery of the second plague followed frogs left the water in their Millions the size of a frog population experiences natural variations at the Leibniz Institute in Berlin scientists are trying to find out what can cause a plague of frogs what environmental changes lead to abnormal development and mass metamorphosis the transformation of a tadpole into a frog is governed by hormones the process usually takes 8 to 10 weeks the scientists discover that environmental stress causes frog metamorphosis to accelerate in this experiment the tadpoles are artificially stressed they've been fed extra hormones their rate of metamorphosis is measured under the microscope [Music] it turns out that negative environmental conditions can nearly double their rate of development professor Vanek Lewis explains what kind of environmental stimuli are most to blame when co-op mundo stress but when tadpoles come under stress especially due to drought but also when there's a lack of oxygen then this environmental stress accelerates their transformation into frogs a thyroid gland releases extra hormones and the result can be a certain massive appearance of frogs Russian common frogs overrun the land in their minions invading the houses of the Egyptians they even reach Pharaoh's Palace but Pharaoh refuses to met the Israelites go the broad Plains of can tear hide thousands of years of history a great city of priam sees a historical setting for the biblical city of Ramses ramesses ii the greatest pharaoh of them all no other ruler of Egypt one such prestige was he also the inspiration for the nameless Ferrer of the Bible we know he made P ramesses his capital and the symbol of his power [Music] in a plan of the ancient metropolis the impressive scale of his city is clear to see this syndrome the center of Ramses is an island surrounded by the branches of the pollution arm of the Nile the alarmists own game that in business commissioner in the west of the city is a sprawling villa district separated from the illusion arm of the nile by this dark line an embankment along the rivers deduce Darwin you can see it's a villa district because the streets are arranged in a rectangular grid containing plots of land with individual houses with a floor area of up to several thousand square meters own flesh off Eisen in Austin in the east of our city plan is the workers district us our beta filter do you want reconstituted you can see here that the workers and artisans lived in small houses with very few rooms just a few square meters can screen for admittin Covanta [Music] [Music] ramesses ii turned egypt into a building site creating temples and giant statues on a scale never seen before monuments forever associated with his name he needed a cheap and plentiful source of labor prisoners of war became slaves for the construction of the city others claim over their own accord Egypt's wealth attracted immigrants many of them fleeing poverty in their own homeland could these be the people the Bible means when it says and they built for pharaoh treasure cities Patong and Ramesses [Music] and yet there are no historical documents that tell of the presence of Israelites in Egypt all we know for sure about the people who gathered around Moses is that they were nomadic tribes from Palestine [Music] the era of ramesses ii was known as the golden age in the chronicles of egypt there was no shadow over the period no biblical disasters to dull its splendor [Music] but within a hundred years of Ramsey's death his once mighty city would be a byword for downfall and decay pi-ramesses is abandoned what happened the disappearance of this mighty metropolis has remained the mystery the heidelburgh Academy of Sciences and Humanities paleoclimatologists Augusto Mangini and Nicole for violin are researching climate changes thousands of years ago they've discovered remarkable links between climate and the rise and fall of civilizations now they're searching for the reason for the mysterious demise of the city of Ramses [Music] this stalagmites is many thousands of years old its inner life will give Mangini the data he needs to recreate the historical climatic curve starik mitten saying dozens of a45 stalagmites show that our ancestors were confronted with climate change again and again in fact they can provide a very precise record of variations in temperature and of wet and dry periods in the ancient past either Fergana a potent oskins cubed stalagmite caves are created when rainwater trickles through from the surface above descending through layers of earth and stone it picks up calcium carbonate that solidifies on the floor of the cave as limestone countless evaporated water drops thus build up these columns of stone [Music] every climatic wet and dry period can be traced in the growth history of the stalagmites their age can be calculated through the composition of their isotopes first the samples are soaked in acid to separate them into their constituent parts [Music] as they grow the limestone of the stalagmites absorbs traces of radioactive elements the concentration of these elements provides the data to calculate their age they use a mass spectrometer to measure the isotopes and date the stalagmites precisely it takes two long weeks to find out whether these stalagmites can throw light on the fate of pierre MCs finally the scientists turn all this data into a climatic curve [Music] Mangini and fall availa correlate the climatic curve to the eras of the Egyptian dynasties they're sure that each rise and fall of a culture has its counterpart in climatic peaks and troughs the period of Ramesses reign is highlighted in color after the peak of a warm wet climate there's a climate collapse final answer satisfy Pharaoh Ramesses a second reigned in a very favorable climatic period there was plenty of rain and his country flourished however this wet period only lasted a few decades after Ramses reign the climate curve goes sharply downwards this concert a dry period which would certainly have had serious consequences [Music] did climate change bring about the sudden collapse of P ramesses for some reason the inhabitants of the city had to leave archeologists found the first possible clues to the reason 30 kilometers away from Ramses City at a much older excavation that of the city of Tanis Langly optimum does tannaz for a long time we thought tarnish was P ramzes because a huge amount of the most wonderful architectural objects were found their granite obelisks and quartz statues all sorts of other things all bearing the name of ramses ii i'm swaggin talk and first failed told the same story of the growing power and splendor of the city a story we know both from the hymns and from other egyptian accounts throughout the ruins of tarnis they found a royal cartouche of ramses ii the unmistakable symbol of the great Pharaoh but the pedestal and the feet of all the statues were missing only one explanation was possible all these statues had been transferred to Tanis so this couldn't be the original site of Ramses City but why had they all been moved in the Bible story the disasters in the land of the Nile get worse to force the Pharaoh to yield and free the people of Israel from their bondage the god yahweh punished the egyptians with the third and fourth plagues swarms of mosquitoes and flies invaded the land all the dust the Bible says turned into insects perhaps Ramses City was devastated by a series of real plagues and found their way as a folk memory into the story in the book of Exodus when archeologists realized Tanis couldn't be the city of Ramses they began to look elsewhere they only knew Ramesses had built his capital on the eastern pollution arm of the Nile via frequency on the water here we are at the northern edge of P Ramesses these are the last traces of the pollution arm of the Nile you have to imagine that this was the main highway for commerce in those days about 200 metres wide now it's a pretty narrow but deep ditch it's still used for drainage today do you know how it seemed to a song so I'm in notes to be it over the millennia the River Nile has continuously altered its route sand from deserts storms and mud from the annual flooding filled up one course and another opened in order to identify the location of P Ramesses first you had to find the ancient eastern arm of the Nile for years manfred bietak reconstructed all the old courses of the Nile he discovered what the Delta had looked like in the age of the Pharaohs by comparing archaeological maps with the contour lines on a topographical map that revealed abrupt changes in the landscape you can actually follow the protrusions of the land from one contour line to the next and from our reconstruction of the Niles East and Delta it's very clear where the eastern arm of the Nile lay and so the focus on where P Ramesses could have been was narrowed down to one place and that was can tear the county and in the excavations at can tear they found conclusive proof thousands of shards of pottery from the time of Ramses but no pottery from later periods the only possible conclusion was that the inhabitants abandoned their city 3,000 years ago and turned their back on an entire region there would have to be a very good reason to give up a city with a fantastic strategic position like this the most likely explanation is that the pollution arm of the Nile silted up downstream from here emesis for some disease and so P Ramesses had to be abandoned Piranesi must've Piranesi off the given the climate had changed a long period of drought and high women's ravaged the landscape of the Nile we still don't know what causes such natural climate changes and the often dramatic consequences that follow the climate graph of the ancient world reveals sudden changes over the millennia for paleoclimatologists they explain radical changes in those early societies an equal to alpha less of a village only no culture willingly gives up its homeland along with its splendid cities unless there's a pretty dramatic reason then bada give music if we know that the results of our research into the settlement behavior of our ancestors it quickly becomes clear that climate has always played an extremely important role for a meteorologist and that long periods of drought have been a reason to move away Azen ain't gone through the abandon van PMC's turned into a ghost town slowly the Nile the lifeblood of the city turned into lakes of Stillwater and silted up were algae blooms fish deaths and insect swarms the result is this the source of the plague stories of the Bible when the river stops flowing there are biological consequences runoff water overloads it with nutrients the result is algae growth and oxygen depletion hydrologists in Berlin are mimicking this scenario by growing algae in experimental tanks they pour nitrate and phosphate nutrients into water containing burgundy blood algae in nature the water would turn red in two to three weeks indicating a massive presence of toxic organisms the laboratory test shows why burgundy blood algae can destroy a natural water habitat the measurements show oxygen levels in the water dropping further and further as the algae concentration increases on da Genova schnoz Vulcano men outside these are the biological consequences when flowing water turns into still water the waters get muddy up the current slows down and the water temperature rises once the increase in nutrients that follows can lead to the spread of blue algae and these blue algae can be very toxic when he's they can unleash a biological chain reaction of the kind described in the first plague in modern sense the river turned red fish died frogs left the water and then perished now the insects could multiply unhindered in a self-regulating ecology insect members on the river are kept in check by the frogs and fish but without this natural regulator the numbers of insects reproduce explosively you can imagine a chain reaction like this a massive increase in the number of frogs would be followed by massive Frog deaths so they would no longer be there to eat the insects without fish and frogs the insects would multiply exponentially we know insects often carry diseases like malaria oft so the next step in the chain reaction is the outbreak of epidemics causing the human population to fall ill epidemia no special unit each dimension also meat can Heidenheim soon [Music] the authors of the Bible that plague after plague rained down as acts of God were these the folk memories of people's who had experienced similar natural disasters after the insect plagues diseases spread among the Egyptians the flies and mosquitoes departed but still Pharaoh would not let the Israelites go and then Yahweh announced the next plagues to Moses in the trial of strength with Egypt's godlike ruler plagues five and six would now strike man and beast without mercy it happens early in the morning as the Sun rises God sends a pox upon the Egyptians livestock and soon after as the next sign from God smallpox breaks out among the people what the first six plagues of the Bible described could indeed have taken place at the location of ancient Pyramus mid demamp named is fascism pollution as the water sank in the pollution arm of the nile before they disappeared completely and it silted up the still waters led to a plague of mosquitoes you can plug in fatima malaria broke out and other plagues and diseases appeared conch I think they affected the population so badly that without a proper supply of fresh water life in this area astonishing as it may seem became impossible Staz kindly me and so the people here had to migrate to healthier regions to beat us fighting mustard [Music] this gradual process of decay must have deeply affected life in the dying city we have a copy of an ancient document from this time that shows astonishing parallels to the Bible story of the plagues the eople ver papyrus the Rijksmuseum Fanwood hayden in leiden holds this mysterious egyptian document the warnings of a poohbear this puzzling text four meters long was written hundreds of years before the Old Testament was compiled in the approver papyrus the author just imagines the total chaos of a society where people rebelled against their former masters so servants at the richest and those who wear it lost everything there was a famine people were hungry the Nile didn't inundate properly the gods were angry with the Egyptians and he contrasts that with the happy life that Egypt could lead under its king when it sticks to the traditions of the ancestors that's what he wants to say it over we assume this is the name of the wise man who wrote this text in a poetic style he describes disasters on a colossal scale water turns to blood society falls into chaos nature turns against mankind hail and darkness fall on the country animals and humans die the biblical plagues will later tell almost exactly the same story the biblical text was not written down as something independent of everything that happened elsewhere in the Near East it is part of a literary tradition part of the tradition is already a thousand years or more old so it's not surprising that we find elements like descriptions of natural disasters that that sounds familiar when you know that the text of ypres where you find something similar in the Bible we don't know exactly when the text was written the original has never been found the copy that we have here in Leiden is the only copy that has exists and it is a copy made by an Egyptian around the period of the famous Pharaoh Ramesses two seconds why should a copy of a disaster poem be commissioned at the time of the decline of P Ramses more than a coincidence in Pierre APS's the silting up of the river seals the people's fate Ramsey's capital is condemned to destruction citizens carry away whole buildings break off the statues from their pediments they move everything to Tanis hoping for a new beginning the monuments of tarnis are Testaments to human willpower but also to the overwhelming power of nature [Music] P Ramses was reclaimed by Nature in can tear in a cornfield the find of an unspectacular stone pedestal closes the circle of history nankatsu in a huge effort almost the whole city of Pyramus was dismantled at least the parts made out of stone and was taken to other locations to build new homes and palaces the demolition and reconstruction can be seen very clearly via the great statues of Ramses the second here are the feet in can tear [Music] is this the place the Bible was referring to is this the city of Moses the hero of the struggle against the Pharaoh [Music] the city of the plagues and God sent miracles in the story of Moses and the plagues the Pharaoh has no name he simply represents the tyrannical power oppressing the people of Israel by the time the biblical texts are written Pharaoh Ramses the second is a figure of legend comes us is too few de Gupta for the Egyptians and at the time the Bible was written and scram this was the personification of a pharaoh he was virtually synonymous with a title Pharaoh you didn't even have to say his name inin India and from the name this city was given the old testament simply calls it Rameses it was clear that they saw this Pharaoh as the Pharaoh didn't travel or as Pharaoh or 15 and gazania the name ramzes they wanted to evoke the great power of Egypt he is the symbol of Egypt as superpower stepha traded ago smart again [Music] pharaoh ramses ii did not live to see the downfall of his capital he died of old age at 85 in 1881 his mummy was discovered in an anonymous to [Music] when his remains were transported to Cairo thousands of people lined the shores of the Nile no one remembered the disasters of ancient times only the splendor of a golden era [Music] it all began with a Red River fish die frogs invade the land swarms of mosquitoes and other insects follow diseases attack man and beast and thus we have the first six plagues of the Old Testament the silting up of the river is the end for the city of pyramids environmental disasters such as those described in the first plagues would be an entirely realistic scenario after the sixth plague God said to Moses say unto Pharaoh let my people go or I will send all my plagues upon thine heart upon thy servants and upon thy people but Pharaoh would not let his heart be softened by the three the plagues continued and the magnitude of the disasters increased [Music] [Music] Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs a rich and powerful Empire but the people of Israel live in slavery oppressed by a tyrannical Pharaoh to win their freedom Moses sends ten plagues on Pharaohs land [Music] as God's fury they sweep over Egypt the plagues bring desolation disease and death at least according to the Bible are they just legends or did these events really happen [Music] the first six plagues had struck Egypt in the Old Testament one place name indicates a possible location for these events and Rameses they call it they certainly meant P Ramses an ecological disaster destroyed this city archaeologists now know the cause the arm of the Nile that guaranteed its survival dried up and for that reason the Ramesses had to be abandoned view when the river ran dry there were serious consequences it could have triggered an ecological chain reaction one explanation of the Nile turning red is the accumulation of Burgundy blood algae what the first six plagues described red water fish deaths plagues of frogs and insects and illnesses could all have occurred in the downfall of P Ramesses but 500 years before something far worse happened the greatest natural disaster the ancient world had ever known the eruption of Santorini it caused climate collapse over the whole region for the peoples of the entire Mediterranean the world must have descended into chaos plagues seven eight and nine tell of hail locusts and darkness can these be explained scientifically via the eruption of Santorini [Music] [Music] in Jerusalem's temple schools the account of the ten plagues is being compiled as the story continues Moses summons the next play [Music] and Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven and the Lord sent thunder and hail and the fire ran along upon the ground [Music] and Pharaoh was powerless in the face of gods plagues but the Bible says he hardened his heart and he would not let the people of Israel go and with the seventh plague the hailstones crashed down upon Egypt but how a massive hail storms caused and what could link them with a volcano [Music] at the National Center of Atmospheric Research in Colorado there on the track of powerful natural forces hailstones from throughout the world have found their way to their deep frozen archive evidence of bad weather on a biblical scale now this hailstone fell in in Coffeyville Kansas in 1972 and it did weighs about 700 grams and a hailstone this size falls about 40 meters per second when a hail storm of this kind occurs they can kill quite a few people out in the open fields there was a storm in Bangladesh in 1986 that killed almost a hundred people in this in this way the size of a hail stone and its destructive force cannot be predicted in hail storms normality gives way to danger and destructive power mere humans are helpless the events at Coffeyville have been immortalized as the hailstorm of the century in the Bible it says that Egypt endured the worst hail storms in its history the harvest was destroyed man and beast struck down in the fields the authors of the Bible set these events long before their own time could their stories be based on folk memories of natural disasters passed down through the generations Ramon did seem shocking it a B position X if you reduced the ten plagues of the biblical Exodus to their basic elements you find natural disasters in the form of darkness and hail and from for instance and harder storm iana in from this story is fictional when taken as a home but it certainly refers to experience to historical experience the earth the candidate is the first candidate is the eruption of Thera this eruption of the volcano of Thera of santorini must have triggered a global climate disaster a global climate Alice Hoffa Oskaloosa in the Mediterranean Sea north of Crete is the island group of santorini with Thera at its center about three and a half thousand years ago it was the site of the greatest natural disaster of the ancient world no one could have recognized the warning signs the last eruption lay fifteen thousand years in the past this mostly mentioned it must have hit the people's around the Mediterranean extremely hard an island and of people well known in the region suddenly and completely disappeared nothing was left on Santorini between bandit Smith the great eruption announced itself slowly at first as the Black Mountain the volcano came to life foul-smelling sulfurous vapors emerged and spread the first tremors shook the island boiling fountains of steam burst from the sea see quakes caused giant waves to build these are the heralds of the coming disaster a few months ahead a Minoan wall painting from the island is this a portrayal of the events before the eruption it shows a giant wave on Santorini today professor Wouter friedrich and his team are studying the site of the disaster together with botanists physicists and archaeologists he has reconstructed it's different stages [Music] for the islands inhabitants it became a race against time after the first tremors it's clear they tried to save what they could the sister fourth session the first time was that the house is in Akrotiri would destroy walls tumbled down rooms felling's deloitte the people were terrified they were afraid something worse was coming for schlimm was not see how beautiful they gathered up food supplies they even piled their beds up ready to take them away transport eel on and they collected all their valuables being standard but then they came another sign Bank am I invited - abandoned food jars a staircase destroyed by the earthquake the excavation that Akrotiri shows the houses were almost completely emptied before the eruption the beds tied together ready to go had to be left behind the population ran out of time the mountain belched hot volcanic ash for the minoan islanders it was time to leave experts believe the population got off the island in time no traces of valuables or human remains have ever been found but no one knows where they sailed to to take refuge [Music] 700 kilometers southeast of Santorini lies Egypt the location of the biblical plagues is there any trace of the disaster here at a virus in the Nile Delta archaeologist manfred bietak has been excavating different ages and layers of Egyptian history for more than forty years one of his greatest finds was the discovery of Minoan frescoes in a palace complex of the 18th dynasty long after at the time of the disaster have a look at this is a bull jumper the quality of the painting is fantastic weary feet tomorrow is as the Bulls tail is its coach most Israelis and here's the bull jumping up [Music] a computer reconstruction shows pictures of another world they must have been painted by Minoan artists living and working in a virus generations after their island had been destroyed the paintings themselves give no hint of the way Minoan civilization must have been shaken to it's very foundations Caritas why not in it see I really miss I think it was a kind of new beginning for us we know an artist's decorating a palace with me knowin paintings and it's interesting that at the same time the influence of Minoan art on Egyptian art becomes noticeable tomorrow that's further evidence that at that time there was close contact between the Minoan world and the Egyptian world resulted in contact sufficient Amin oceanvale it'll take a petition 50 colonists [Music] the excavation store holds another unusual find from the palace complex about a hundred and forty pumice stones porous chunks of cooled lava of a perhaps from the eruption of Santorini [Music] we know that after months of warnings the island burst open in a series of gigantic explosions [Applause] thus far I know their cost and velocity coaster X people was one of the biggest perhaps the biggest explosion ever recorded it must have been a colossal bang we can only compare it with Krakatoa in 1883 but the sound of the explosion could be heard in Australia 5,000 kilometers away and the shock wave was recorded in Potsdam in Europe by baleen agamous before collapsing into itself the volcano expelled 20 billion cubic meters of molten lava the atomic Institute in Vienna gyeo scientists and chemists max B Fleur is an international expert in the study of pumice stone he establishes the origins of unidentified pieces of pumice via the unique chemical fingerprint left by every volcano we ask him to examine the pumice from a virus there are no volcanoes in Egypt so where does the pumice in a virus come from is it from Santorini the sample for analysis is prepared from a tiny amount of powdered pumice the individual chemical makeup of the stone will provide information about its origins to get it the stone is bombarded with neutrons in the Institute's reactor this turns the chemical elements in the pumice into radioactive isotopes then a gamma spectrometer will measure their concentration this defines the chemical makeup of the stone [Music] max B Sheila analyzes the data on his computer based on the resulting profile the sample can be precisely attributed to one particular volcano for B Sheila there is no doubt about its source these are finished an AWS this sample of hummus from a virus can be quite clearly assigned to the Minoan eruption via its chemical fingerprint and that is true of a majority of pumice samples that we have so far received from this locations it's become an hub but the pumice found in a virus doesn't necessarily prove that the santorini eruption had a catastrophic effect on Egypt pumice was a valuable commodity in ancient times we know pumice from santorini floated ashore in the Mediterranean it was gathered up by local people and taken to the towns where it was adapted for many different purposes in the workshops it would be ground to a fine powder and then used for sharpening or polishing scribes also used the powder to smooth out their papyri [Music] after the great eruption the sea rosa and giant waves tsunamis destroyed entire coastal settlements throughout the Mediterranean region [Applause] this got me related tsunamis there were several tsunamis there must have been several as a result of the earthquake and then more in the different phases of the eruption and probably the greatest tsunami came when the roof of the magma chamber collapsed today we know that tsunamis must have reached a height of 30 meters the pumice could have been carried far inland by the waves but it was the ash from the volcano that would have led to climate collapse lightning and hailstones the seventh biblical plague but how is hail caused dust and ashes in the atmosphere caused a temperature drop but by itself cold isn't enough in this experiment snow crystals are injected into drops of water at minus 20 degrees a hailstone is suddenly four [Music] at the Institute for atmospheric physics in mites nadine font bloom is searching for other elements around which a hailstone can form hail needs solid particles in the air like dust in order to grow by adjusting the wind speed and temperature and the atmosphere chamber Nadine can mimic the conditions of a storm at an altitude of 2,000 metres silver iodide particles are injected into the air the hailstone appears as though out of nowhere the longer it dances in the currents of the wind tunnel the bigger it gets [Music] hailstones occur when rain clouds collide with a mass of icy air at that moment the humidity will attach itself to any foreign body aerosols grains of sand or ash particles a classic binders of hail even this giant hail stone from Kansas is the result of a collision with tiny ice and dust particles before it impacted on the ground it passed through many layers of colder and warmer air growing to a terrifying size this cross-section and a polarized light shows it's stages of growth the eruption of Santorini released millions of tons of ash hail could easily have followed and the Lord thundered in the heavens he gave his voice hailstones and fire he looks on the earth and it trembles he touches the hills and they smoke volcanic eruptions appear again and again in the Old Testament as a metaphor for God's power molecular biologist dr. Ciro Trevisan otto was investigating ancient papyri for evidence of the biblical plagues at first he was skeptical about a direct connection between the volcano at Santorini and the plagues of Egypt as described in the Bible geographically the two events seemed much too far apart the Aegean of the biblical plagues were related to the Santorini eruption is not new and I myself didn't relieve in it in fact I was wandering the volcanoes roughly 800 kilometers away from the Nile Delta how's it possible that the volcano can have an effect so far away but now Sara Travis annatto believes he has found a remarkable connection between the biblical plagues and the santorini volcano in an ancient egyptian papyrus one that even suggests the santorini eruption could have caused all the plagues for him the hailstones are only one consequence of the volcanic eruption he believes he has found the key in a medical papyrus that describes ancient illnesses and their treatment there is a correlation when the Santorini eruption and what is described in the medical papyrus called the London medical papyrus paragraph 55 describes some burns that were caused by acids the only source for such a burn would have come from volcanic source the best part though in this specific paragraph is that we have associated with burns a red water from the Nile in paragraph 55 of the London medical papyrus it says that burns caused by red acidic water should be treated with alkaline mixtures but the waters of the Nile should on no account be used to prepare this remedy could this be a reference to the first plague when the Niles waters turned red and were undrinkable a volcanic eruption explains all biblical plagues and it explains them in the order provided by the biblical text [Music] acid rain and acidic ash could have contaminated the Nile after the eruption and according to this theory it could have set in motion the entire sequence of plagues described in the Bible [Music] in the laboratory cero Trevisan otto and his colleagues put his theory to the test volcanoes hurled tons of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere poisonous sulfuric acid compounds that can be carried hundreds of kilometers by the wind Trevisan Otto uses the volcanic sulfates to make a series of different solutions [Music] yeah their acidity levels are tested using litmus paper and recorded [Music] next they need to find out how acid rain caused by volcanic eruptions can damage organic material plants are sprayed with sulphate solutions the earth around them is contaminated too they don't hold out for long after just six hours the effects of the poison are visible Ashville out is able to explain the plot plagues because the fall out of the first of all have colored and acidified the nile king the fish moreover with a push the frogs out of the nile now the flesh would have attracted insects moreover the persistence of the ash that didn't fall out would of course weather anomalies by posing for example the grass all herbivores died and then we have the boils then we get another weather normally ie the air hail and then we get the locusts in the Bible the Egyptians are helpless against the plagues but did the historical Egyptians actually have advanced medical knowledge to cope with the effects of the eruption in the same papyrus there are detailed instructions for making medicines in six medical texts there's advice on how to treat corrosive wounds to the skin and eyes caused by acidic substances and there's even a formula for a cream to treat burns caused by red water clay oil ochre resin beef fat and wax must be finely ground and mixed together that's paragraph 55 of the London medical papyrus then the doctor also the chief magician must appeal to the gods with magic words to help in the work of healing in the Bible story the Pharaoh's most senior magicians were powerless in the face of the plagues and yet the Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go and the God Yahweh sent the next play and Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night and when it was morning the east wind brought the locusts they fell upon the land in their millions and devoured all that was left behind by the hailstones they destroyed the crops in the fields and stripped the trees of fruits and leaves many consider the locusts to be the plague Pike salons and yes we can explain it in light of the ash fall out why because the ash fall out had caused weather anomalies which translates into higher precipitations higher humidity and that's exactly what fosters the presence of the locusts every day locusts consume their own weight in vegetation they're found on every continent scientists at the University of Halle in Germany are researching how and why swarms of locusts develop they breed their own locusts at the Institute to find out [Music] Hance yog herons esteem have discovered something crucial the creation of a swarm and the direction it takes depend above all on the weather locusts like to aim for wet and rainy regions it's the locusts simply make use of the fact that wind usually moves from a high-pressure area to a low pressure area and low pressure almost always means an area where it's raining or where it has rained so it makes a lot of sense to move with these currents of air because you get to a place where you can lay eggs and where your offspring will probably have favorable conditions to develop because it is rained and plants will grow which can then be fussing be uncommon as they search for food locusts migrate between the weather fronts a swarm on the move can cover up to 40 kilometers a day in the labs the scientists are keen to find out how locusts can reproduce so successfully locusts are real breeding machines when conditions are favorable when they get enough to eat and when the environmental conditions are right they can produce enormous numbers of offspring in a very short time before laying its eggs the Female Vocalist fills the egg hole with a special foamy secretion to stop it drying out this way the eggs can survive a long time even in dry powdery or sandy ground the 70 eggs she's laid are simply waiting for the next rainfall then the baby locusts emerge in their masses a locust swarm contains up to 2 billion insects if a swarm like this descends on the farmer's fields it will strip them bare consuming up to 40,000 tons of vegetation in a day [Music] the Bible says the plague of locusts destroyed all the crops of the land of the Nile until the west wind blew them away but then the series of disasters continued with the ninth plague and all-encompassing darkness covered Egypt in the middle of the day it became as dark as the darkest night a terrifying phenomenon that has made humans in all eras fearful of the end of the world a total eclipse of the Sun caused terror in the ancient world but it can be ruled out as a historical explanation of the ninth plague in an eclipse the phase of absolute darkness lasts only a few minutes the Bible describes a darkness that settled on the land for three days sand storms that extinguish all daylight can lead to long periods of darkness over wide areas in China they're known as yellow dragons year after year they transform Beijing into an impenetrable chaos but volcanoes are the cause of the blackest darkness and the biblical darkness could find its explanation in the ash fall out from the Santorini eruption the evidence to link the Santorini disaster with the Bible plagues is very tempting the search for more answers about the effect of Santorini on Egypt takes us to Charu and the dig led by archaeologist Abdel Mack suit [Music] for years now he's been researching the eastern frontier posts of the ancient Egyptian Empire as he uncovered the foundations of fortifications he discovered unexpected signs of a great volcanic eruption in the Bronze Age when I started excavation he I cannot expect that I will find them said something Buddha site of jarl in contact and direct contact with the volcano of santorini but then he found pumice stones just like in near by a virus unlike the scientists there Maqsood believes that the effects of the eruption hit Egypt unexpectedly hard when we discovered lava of this volcano here and they discovered in a valleys we understand that Egypt affected from the volcano of Santoni the water of the Mediterranean arrives through the paluszek branch which did bus here in this area and through the pollution branch until Everest the waves of the sea about 20 meter it was very high and the only but very low this area and the branch of the night we will understand does the effect cover the very big area very political [Music] when the volcano collapsed in on itself the massive displaced water built up into tsunamis traveling at speeds of hundreds of kilometers an hour by racing up the arms of the Nile they would have caused untold damage [Music] the eruption of Santorini has been dated to somewhere between 1550 and 1500 BC but where are the records of the event in the Egyptian chronicles in Egyptian records these are boom titles from the mid 16th century BC the boundaries of the Egyptian Empire are extended as never before in a series of military campaigns the Pharaohs of the 18th dynasty conquered all of Asia Minor in the temple of karnak the triumphs of the victorious pharaohs are carved in stone [Music] with pictures of the crushing of their enemies the Pharaohs celebrate their own glory and their power there is no sign of any effects of the Santorini eruption in the illustrations of this period the caldera of santorini today for years now doubts have been growing among scientists about the exact date of the eruption the critical evidence is buried here under layers of lava geologists have discovered an olive branch covered by lava three thousand years ago this branch preserved in volcanic rock is a sensational find this is organic material so it can be carbon dated the moment the olive branch died will be the exact date of the volcanic eruption after dating a previous find Valtor Friedrich is convinced that the once accepted date for the eruption will have to be pushed back a hundred years if that result is confirmed with this branch the new timing will be unchallengeable this lava wall shows what must have happened in the eruption the brown earth is the original level of the landscape this is where the olive trees stood that perished in the inferno before the storm of hot ash stripped the leaves of the trees and before the lava flows that followed buried them under 60 meters of pumice [Music] he and Estella ham via there was a route here at this I say was because the root is no longer there we only have the dust of the root but we have the holes and then we see that this white layer starts quite abruptly it's about four centimeters thick here quite clear thick guns claw on tightly that's nice time that's volcanic dust pumice dust time stop here and here at this point we see olive leaves in this layer and here and there we find the remains of twigs and olive stones and so we are quite sure that there were all of Treves growing here - Taylor give accent yes the first olive branch that was measured split the scientific world some experts doubted the new dating of 1613 BC it was based on just one sample with no chance to make a comparative test the new find is taken from a different tree will this branch confirm the new dating yes a sheet of tin foil protects the wood as it's sawn through to gather test samples none of the valuable material must be lost at Germany's Hohenheim University they keep samples from trees thousands of years old this wooden archive contains unlimited data from past ages stored in the memory of the trees [Music] paleobotanist michelle friedrich is an expert in dendrochronological dating he will prepare the sample from santorini for carbon-14 testing the surface is made smooth and marked for microscopic analysis to enable the identification and counting of the annual rings michelle friedrich must look for places where the outside ring just beneath the bark is still present only then will the precise dating be possible and there it is at carefully measured intervals between the outside ring and the center of the tree he prepares the samples for carbon-14 analysis [Music] the prepared samples arrived at Heidelberg University's Institute for radiometric age assessment now the final preparations for carbon dating can go ahead the wood is broken into smaller sections and cleaned then it's enclosed in an airtight quartz file all organic elements are now burnt off to reduce the test sample to pure carbon the first santorini olive branch was dated by radiation physicist dant Cromer this is his chance to carry out a comparative test on the second branch article 5 via radiocarbon dating we can identify the time when the tree was alive because it absorbs carbon out of the atmosphere the tree could have died a long time before the eruption and remains standing in the landscape as a dead tree in that case carbon-14 testing would still establish the date of the tree's death but not the date of the eruption but we can rule out that situation because beneath the tree we found leaves and that shows that the tree was alive at the time of the eruption by the measurement of the radioactive carbon-14 content takes place in the mass spectrometer the result is 95% accurate this complex procedure takes three weeks finally the age of the branch is indicated on this calibrated graph Mohamed's and then we measured two separate samples of the second olive branch as we did of the first and these measurements confirm that the volcanic eruption took place in the 17th century BC and not the 16th century the two fines from Santorini tally perfectly they confirm a new date for the eruption Santorini exploded sometime between 1620 and 1600 BC three thousand six hundred and thirty years ago the Olive Branch was covered by lava the now confirmed date of its death will have huge consequences for future research and for our understanding of ancient history armed with the new date we can return to the excavation of Charu in the Egyptian Sinai to see whether historical events did leave their mark in the wake of this great disaster to see how it could have affected the social and political climate of the times the remains of these fortifications tell of Egypt's darkest period they were used by the Hyksos foreign rulers from Asia Minor who seized power in Egypt's northern Empire the Empire of the Pharaohs was split in two for the first time part of Egypt was under foreign control the years that followed were times of economic decline and serious unrest [Music] [Music] the era of the Hyksos Kings long remained a trauma in the Egyptian imagination did the after-effects of this great natural volcanic catastrophe lead to a time of struggle and chaos and did it also trigger the plagues the Bible tells us about [Music] the fury of the gods was the only possible explanation in those days for this terrifying rampage of natural forces the first nine plagues tell us about contaminated rivers fish deaths plagues of frogs and vicious insects about epidemics of disease hail storms and plagues of locusts followed by a deep darkness were the Hebrew scholars recording folk memories passed down through the generations everywhere in history our counters with inexplicable events have a profound cultural impact disasters and their consequences remain alive immortalized in stories and fables yeah got to have a session people in was the god of the Hebrew Bible had to be able to control natural forces or he would have been of no interest to the believers only a God who can cause earthquakes and epidemics and starvation and droughts is also a God and can protect his people from such phenomena disdain a construct that is a basic thought that lasted far into the Christian period that it was far worse for pre-modern man to have no God at all than to have a God who was sometimes evil cruel angry or unpleasant but offers the cow some hornish hoonigan Amos in the biblical duel between Moses and the Pharaoh the plague of darkness is a mortal challenge to the greatest of the Egyptian deities the sun-god rao who guarantees the rhythm of day and night and the continuation of life is proved powerless but even after the ninth clay Pharaoh does not let the Israelites go and the Lord said unto Moses yet I will bring one plague more upon the Pharaoh and upon Egypt afterwards he will let you go hence with the 10th plague all the firstborn of the land of Egypt will die [Music] [Music] Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs a rich and powerful Empire but the people of Israel live in slavery oppressed by a tyrannical Pharaoh to win their freedom Moses sends ten plagues on Pharaohs land [Music] as God's fury they sweep over Egypt the plagues bring desolation disease and death at least according to the Bible are they just legends or did these events really happen [Music] the evidence led to the city of Ramesses the downfall of this great city came in a period of drought nature was out of balance the river that guaranteed the survival of the city Grider Rainwater's frogs insects and diseases all the phenomena of the first six plagues could have followed the eruption of Santorini helped scientists decipher the seventh eighth and ninth plagues the colossal amounts of volcanic ash led to climate collapse and terrible storms [Music] Hale darkness and a plague of locusts our realistic scenarios the death of the firstborn is the tenth and most mysterious of the plagues it leads to the exodus of the Israelites into the Promised Land the archaeological fragments filled into a complicated puzzle recent excavations have begun to unravel the mystery of the legendary Hyksos were they the historical people of the Bible there is no proof the Israelites were ever in Egypt yet the name of Israel and the name of the biblical God appear for the first time in Egypt archaeologists are sifting through information from across the centuries to find the key to the story of the Bible plagues and the Exodus in the Old Testament the account of the 10th plague is more detailed than all the others it tells of the garlic weighs final blow the one that would free the Israelites from bondage in Egypt [Music] God transmits his plan to Moses in precise detail every Israelite must borrow gold and silver jewelry from his Egyptian neighbors God will make them agree and then the Israelites must prepare the first paisa ceremony Moses is to go to Pharaoh one last time and announce the terrible tenth plague that is to come that very night and Moses said thus saith the Lord about midnight I will go out into the midst of Egypt and all the firstborn of Egypt shall die from the firstborn of the Pharaoh even unto the firstborn of the maidservant and all the firstborn of beasts towards evening the Israelites mark their doors with the blood of the sacrifice of man a sign for God to spare them the horrors to come [Music] it happens that night the destroyer the Angel of Death passes through the land of Egypt ladonia play sadist anger trick the last plague is very different from the others linked to natural phenomena you could say it's a theological plague it seems very cruel to us because Yahweh will Massacre all the firstborn of Egypt - Aviva math what does that mean it means the total extermination of Egypt because in the ancient Middle East the firstborn symbolized the future the future of a peoples and bullies love in year 11 losing the firstborn is losing the future behind their bolted doors the Israelites share the Pesach meal according to the instructions they'd been given the lamb must be roasted on the fire and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs the Israelites have to sit at their table dressed for departure and anything that isn't eaten must be burned as promised the God Yahweh does not harm his chosen people death passes over their houses in the Jewish faith this covenant for God's protection finds it's ritual expression in the Passover ceremony the second book of Moses says and it shall come to pass when your children shall say unto you what mean you by this service you shall say it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt where he smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses silently God's punishment is carried out while the Israelites wait in their houses death strikes down all the Egyptian firstborn man and beast alike [Music] there was not a house where there was not one dead the great killing of the firstborn strikes every family without exception and without respect for a rank even the firstborn son of the Pharaoh must die with the 10th plague the series of biblical disasters reaches its mysterious Zenith and leaves behind a puzzle the first nine plagues the Hebrew scholars describe a comprehensible natural phenomena poisoned rivers frogs and insects disease hail and darkness all these could actually have happened in Egypt [Music] but the tenth plague dealing with the unimaginable the death of the firstborn remains an enigma [Music] attempts to explain it scientifically have looked at the possibility of an illness or an infectious disease poisoned wheat is one explanation the Egyptians had stores of food and when the harvest was poor this was the only way to feed the people but after the previous plagues of hail and locusts supplies of grain could have been contaminated by humidity and the excreta of the insects a lethal fungal mold could have been the result try cata seen the poisoned of the Fusarium fungus can kill both humans and animals the male firstborn would have had first pickings of the limited food reserves and would have been the first to fall victim to the poison [Music] some 78 of the Old Testament has another explanation for the 10th plague he spared not their soul from death but gave their life over to the pestilence and smote all the firstborn in Egypt real plagues claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the Middle East in ancient times but that wouldn't explain why only the male firstborn died like the Pesa offering and God's sparing of the Israelites this is religious symbolism ladies in play lap Lila the 10th plague has the longest description because it is combined with a blood ritual which was almost certainly a ritual of protection it originated with the nomads and with the shepherds who used the blood to protect themselves against the desert demons who attacked their flocks or attacked the Shepherd's themselves the Bible's authors are taking an ancient ritual and connecting it to the events of the exodus up or evict Liz even more delivered the ritual of blood and the Pesach meal which the Bible links inextricably with the 10th plague and the exodus of the Israelites actually go back to an archaic festival in the ancient agrarian culture of the land of Canaan GLaDOS protection blood as a blessing in the human struggle to survive in the rhythm of the seasons it was the young men's job to move out of the settlements with the herds every year in springtime this was the only way to protect the young stalks of corn in the fields from being eaten by the livestock before the young men left the community there was a ceremony with a ritual of blood and a sacrificial meal of the protection in the pesach of the Bible the blood on the doors symbolizes this magical protection in union with the One God this mark becomes a sign that will ward off all dangers it is a blue treatise by mouth sook to him until his blood right linked to the departure of the shepherds and shepherdesses also helps protect the parents and children who have been left behind Yahoo sadly boy Elisha alito's via the story of the night when Yahweh's smoked the firstborn of Egypt this seasonal agricultural ritual became a part of the collective memory of the Israelites some element just quality from Kadesh misses he sires the tenth plague in the bible story has a single purpose it demonstrates the superiority of God over a God like Pharaoh and shows his power to lead his people from slavery to freedom in the religious legend the exodus symbolizes the birth of the people of Israel 600,000 men and untold numbers of women and children the Bible tells us follow Moses into the Holy Land [Music] archaeologists have found no trace of a human migration on this scale and outside the Bible there is no reference to her people enslaved in Egypt is there any historical evidence of the biblical Israelites and their story [Music] in the first century AD the Jewish historian josephus flavius quotes a source that recounts the biblical exodus from an Egyptian perspective the passages he quotes by the Egyptian priests Manetho offer tantalizing hints about the identity of the people of the Bible monito gives a grim account of Egypt's darkest times under the rule of the legendary Hyksos mysterious foreigners he identifies with the people of the Bible they are said to have founded the city of Jerusalem after being expelled from Egypt [Music] Manito is said to have written people of an unknown race suddenly attacked Egypt from the east they conquered the land easily without a battle and once they have taken control they burned the cities to the ground and destroyed the temples of the gods they treated the people monstrously massacring many of them and dragging the women and children into slavery finally one of their number named salutis became king this account does not describe the people of the Bible as slaves it tells of Victorious lords and conquerors salutis was the first king of the Hyksos who were they are they the historical key to the Bible story [Music] at the excavations of tell el-daba ecologist manfred bietak has been studying the Hyksos for many years here in the Nile Delta is the site of the city of a virus where the story of the Hyksos began in the 17th century BC very little is known of them and there are few foundations and archaeological remains in these layers of earth to tell us about their times with this single exception this excavation of a great palace and administrative complex is a huge archaeological importance it promises to reveal more about these mysterious foreigners who made themselves kings in Egypt and made a virus the center of their power their metropolis [Music] a virus had existed for centuries here in northern Egypt where several trade routes come together immigrants from Canaan and the whole of Asia Minor made this city an expanding center of trade by the 17th century BC a virus is home to merchants artisans and farmers among them the people who would soon call themselves pixels Manetho would later identify them as the people of the Bible [Music] soon they controlled the economy of the Nile Delta and filled the top positions in the administration a success story that seems to conflict with the fate of the people of the Bible to the Egyptians the Hyksos like all the peoples from the north were quite simply easy attics but as successful merchants shipbuilders and warriors they formed an elite group that brought advanced technology to Egypt they introduced horse-drawn chariots and other unknown weaponry to the country while an offender Hicks's is the name of a foreign dynasty in Egypt and not the name of a people's copra but we know they came from Asia Minor and when the Egyptian Kingdom fell apart in the 18th century BC that his during the 13th dynasty it was easy for them to set up a vassal system they took over the status of Pharaohs quite officially one whole month council Fitzhugh the remains of a funerary statue found in a virus can tell us what these AZ attics may have looked like notice especially the mushroom shaped hairstyle and the colorful striped coat the man's skin seems yellowish in color the wooden sceptre in his hand marks him out as an official the search for these foreigners leads to the burial chambers of Beni Hasan some distance from a virus in middle Egypt these immigrants from the Near East are depicted on the walls as the Egyptians solder they can be recognized by their sharp profiles their beards and their hairstyles and by the yellow hue of their skin and the colorful patterns of their clothes they're clearly different from the Egyptians also depicted here unlike the high officials at Avaris these people belong to the ordinary population thus the statue in a virus is evidence of a remarkable social ascent for this immigrant people as Osmond assists Sol to see here in my view what we see here is a city aristocrat hold a very high officer who portrays himself in a costume from Asia Minor present it can also be just like the rest of the Asiatic population he is not assimilated Egyptian style but he has kept his identity this suggests at the Asiatics in Egypt were extremely self confidence and Asiata need to keep Steven K but it's interesting that the Egyptians used the same word for Asiatics as they used for slaves scarfie these slaves became rulers their rise to power took place over centuries until the Hyksos turned the old hierarchy on its head we don't know exactly what happened in a virus around 1650 BC but it seemed likely that this group of immigrants from Asia Minor took over power they made one of their number King and claimed the status of Pharaohs [Music] this inscription engraved on a doorpost records the name of the new rulers Hyksos which means rulers of foreign lands it's written in hieroglyphics so that every Egyptian can read it the song holluschickie Shardas thought this was something unbelievable for the first time foreigners ruled in Egypt these Asiatics had been known for a long time they had settled in a virus in the Eastern Iowa when the central power weakened they took their chance to grab power here the Empire was split into two parts one in the Eastern Iowa and the other in Thebes today's Luxor the Hyksos could extend their power in the nile delta without opposition the wealthy trading center of a virus became their capital the palace complex that manfred bietak has been excavating since 2006 may have been their headquarters these seem to be the foundations of a huge administrative wing a geophysical projection shows the impressive scale of the Hyksos city Huaraz such big nukes are set towards the end of the time of the Hyksos a virus reached a size of 250 hectares and we estimate that 25 to 30 thousand people lived in this city that is a huge city for those times perhaps one of the greatest and the entire eastern Mediterranean [Music] the foreigners confidently continued to practice their own culture their rights and traditions spread in a virus the nature God bowel merged with the Egyptian god Seth to form a new cult the cult of Seth bomb a new God is born and under the Hyksos king Apophis this God becomes the central deity the worship of a single God was a concept entirely foreign to Egypt when commit Allah for z-star one can tentatively say that this was a first step to monotheistic thinking in the broadest sense think the expulsion of the Hyksos would then be connected to the idea that the Egyptians did not want to be forced to worship one single guys you can go to pose a high mission we have in Lesson Volta long after the Hyksos were banished the Egyptian ruler had shipped suit proclaimed I have restored what was destroyed when the Asiatics were in a virus and scoundrels among them overturned what was created for they ruled without the God rain [Music] when the pharaohs reconquered a virus in the middle of the 16th century BC they destroyed all traces of the Hyksos the time of foreign rule was to be forgotten but by suppressing the memory of the Hyksos the Egyptians created a puzzle today scientists face the challenge of reconstructing the truth about this legendary people from the smallest archaeological fragments are there as Manito claimed parallels between the Hyksos and the people of the Bible or is his account an early example of spin and myth making tiny traces of seals provide an answer here not the vast remains of temples and statues who say no Santis strictest most of the arch on [Music] in the ruins of a virus manfred betta has found several seals with human and animal motifs and six seals with names one is a biblical name Jacob [Music] this is Seoul thus memories of the time of the Hyksos may well live on in the old testament leaped through Abraham Sarah and above all Jacob and Isaac one of the exes Kings is called Jacob and several have Jacob as part of their names these names are from Semitic languages and they're later found in the Old Testament the mountain Testament vitally does the discovery of the biblical name Jacob on a seal from the time of the Hyksos mean they could have been the people of the Bible the archaeologists have found a pit that may hold some answers more and more clay vessels animal bones shards and ashes are coming to light here in the middle of the palace complex in a courtyard two meters beneath the foundations the scientists believe these are the remains of a sacrificial meal perhaps part of a ritual of departure and farewell [Music] the Bible describes Pesa as a sacrificial meal after which all the leftovers had to be burned before the Israelites departed from Egypt the sacrificial pit at Avaris suggests a comparable cultural ritual in which the inhabitants destroyed the remains of their meal together with their pottery plates and vessels from their analysis of the pottery shards archaeologists have concluded that the palace was then abandoned we don't know what could have cost the people and the palace to take this step where the Hicks are some danger in their own capital they only ruled another 50 years in a virus before they were expelled by 4th [Music] mid 16th century BC for decades the Egyptian pharaohs have tried and failed to regain power from the Hyksos and rule over all Egypt once more now Pharaoh are most the first retakes the city of a virus and puts an end to a century of foreign domination but the expulsion of the Hyksos remains a mystery - in a virus there are no traces of a battle yet 30 kilometers away archaeologists of the excavation site of charm are working on a reconstruction of events they found remains of the original fortifications this was the crucial defensive outpost of the Hicks's in the Sinai desert during the time of a Moses the military action was taken against Charu before avarice because travel here as a military position to protect police the Egyptian was intelligent enough to sing before attacking Everest to cut between avenues and the East to see a Javanese from the east because this is the only entrance for avarice and I think that the battle again as the XO's was here the fall of the fortress of Charu is a decisive victory for Pharaoh ACMA's the first it believed the expulsion of the Hyksos and there is an eyewitness to his triumph this unique account of the conquest of a virus can be found at ELQ up in middle Egypt in an excavated cave some way apart from the main dig it's a report by a soldier ammos Urbana who fought with Pharaoh Armos the first in a virus the inscriptions in his tomb tell of his wartime adventures how he followed the Pharaohs chariot and fought at his side at a virus against the Hyksos and then plundered the conquered city I was with the king when the city of Avaris was besieged and I took my booty from there one man and three women in total four people His Majesty gave them to me as slaves [Applause] Ferro opposed the first and his army drove the Hicks's out of a virus and pursued them to their fortress at share ruin in southern Canaan we've received Shirou hunt for three years then his majesty took the fortress I receive gold for my bravery d hooks us a rule of the Hyksos was traumatic for the egyptians wouldn't and remain so for a long time afterwards at the yatin it was a Hicks us Asiatics miserable san dwellers were considered culturally inferior by the egyptians mention actually they weren't seen as really human at all calm this rabble had come to Egypt and rest and power from the Pharaohs from the some use of the Sun that simply wasn't possible distaff design by defending itself against the Hyksos Egypt became an imperial power invaded and occupied Canaan and made it a colony only a Gibbon smarter the Egyptian priests Manito wrote over people who departed from Egypt and then were said to have founded the city of Jerusalem in Canaan this led some to look for traces of a Canaanite people in Egypt and to turn their attention to the Hicks us and their period of power their names their rituals and their expulsion from Egypt are the main parallels with the Bible story of the Exodus did the history of the Hyksos influence the story of the Israelites in the Bible did the religious legend then give a new meaning to their expulsion one in which the exodus was no longer a defeat by the Pharaoh but a victory over him yet the Hicks's were a ruling dynasty not truly a people and the existence of the Israelites at that time has not been historically proved manitos account is just the first piece of this great historical puzzle you study source the story of the Hyksos may have influenced the memory of the writers of the account of the Exodus the XO's were indeed Kings from Asia Minor so they were very probably Semitic like the later Israelites no agency me and we know that the Hyksos left a lasting memory because the Greeks are still referring to them in the 3rd century BC so it's perfectly possible that the people who wrote the story of the exodus were thinking of the Hyksos before that they turned the situation round because the Hyksos were Kings who were expelled while the Bible story tells of slaves who were expelled or who were chased away by the Pharaoh so expensive it okay so she's a powerful the Bible texts were written a thousand years after the time of the Hyksos was another people enslaved in Egypt during this time and the way the Hebrew scholars describe [Music] after the Hicks's leave a new era begins for the Egyptians the Pharaohs take control of Asia Minor Canaan becomes an Egyptian province war and more prisoners of war from canaan are taken to Egypt as slaves among them a group the Egyptians called the a Peru and whom they describe as crooks and bandits they appear in Egyptian sources as mercenaries and slaves a papyrus from the time of Ramses reports that they dragged the stones for the construction of the great pile on some scholars believed that thieves were among the first israelites the named at Peru later became he be Theo Emil Hacha when you start looking for the origins of the Hebrews you soon come across an Egyptian term a Peru which can be linked to the term Hebrew for the Egyptians appear OU's were on the edge of society whether in Egypt or in Canaan sometimes they worked as serfs for the Pharaoh and sometimes they fought against him it's perfectly possible that the word Hebrew comes from this term the reef do sit down at the end of the thirteenth century BC the name of Israel appears for the very first time on the victory stairway of the Pharaoh merenptah in a list of the people's conquered in the campaign in Canaan Israel is devastated and has no more seeds the inscription says the exact words leave no doubt they refer to a people not a country [Music] Faramir emptor had advanced into the wild mountainous regions of canaan here he encountered not soldiers but simple farmers settled nomads who had begun to join with other small communities since the 13th century BC they scraped together a living growing corn and looking after animals they were the beginnings of a new independent society which would become the kingdoms of Israel and Judah [Music] today scholars know how the early Israelites lived [Music] this reconstruction shows the typical four-roomed house that became a new architectural standard at the beginning of the iron age in the mountains of Cana two parallel storerooms or stalls were located at right angles to the living area for people archaeologists found four-room houses like this that demonstrate the spread of a new social way of living in the whole mountainous region the architecture of these houses helps us in the search for evidence of the early Israelites in Egypt it takes us to the temple district of medinet habu in Luxor generations of pharaohs built their funerary temples here [Music] in the 1930s archaeologists excavating the temple area of Ramses the third found traces of the people who built the temple [Music] prisoners of war brought to Egypt a slave work they found the remains of their dwellings next to the ruins of the temple the ground plans and the unusual method of construction were not Egyptian [Music] manfred bietak went back to his predecessors records in the ground plan of the building workers houses he recognized typical elements of the Canaanite four-roomed house and from that he could draw conclusions about the origins of the people who had built them later arte and in phases the third had launched a military campaign in the Sayre desert we believe that his prisoners of war was sent to work on the different temples of the Empire in this case their job was to tear down the temples of a year and hora map in order to build a temple for Ramesses the fourth that would have been in the 12th century BC that was exactly the time in which the four-roomed houses were being built in Canaan and Palestine and it's no coincidence that this type of house appears in Egypt at the same time King set off Dahl the discovery of these houses in medinet habu is an indication that people from canaan were in Egypt as slaves among the list of names that defeated peoples on the temple walls there's an inconspicuous inscription that refers to the people of the Bible engraved in stone is the name Yahoo which will one day become Yahweh the God of the Old Testament the people who worship Yahweh were nomads they called themselves the sha tsui bed winds of the oven [Music] illustrations of their capture by the forces of Pharaoh Merneptah in the temple of karnak offer a picture of the SAS the people who would one day unite with the growing community of israel the nama yahoo state BB harder today we can say the name of yahoo stands for this nomadic grouping as well as for the region where they may have settled off design content site Eliezer and for the God they worship Yahoo was the name of their God and this form Yahoo is also the basis for the name of God in the Bible these groups of early nomads have left traces in the Sinai desert puzzling science in early Hebrew letters a carved in a wall in a mine near Sarah bit nearby a relief shows prisoners or slaves being flogged by an Egyptian overseer at these references to the people who found their way into the Bible stories in the copper mines of Timna foreign workers like the sha tsui mined ore for smelting in the pharaoh's workshops an inscription here provides further clues to the origins of the Bible story it names a leader who experts believe could even be the historical model for Moses this man's Egyptian name is Ramesses Emperor a he's from Asia Minor and has the rank of a court official as an inspector at the copper mines it's his job to mediate between the Mine Workers the sha tsui and the pharaoh's administration Ramdas and Perry had enzyme him the name ramesses Emperor a reminds us a little of Moses just I mean he was a diplomat who served under a number of Pharaohs from ramses ii to Ramses the third his services could be used in contacts with the Palestinian people's dim policy national arm to shuffle in the Bible story Moses will lead his people to freedom the earliest texts of the story of Moses and the Exodus are from the seventh century BC a time of new beginnings under a young king the disparate groups of the early Israelites have long since become a nation living in the two separate empires of Israel and Judah King Josiah of Judah dreams of an empire that will unite all Israelites Jerusalem will be its capital and it will serve only one God Yahweh [Music] there are still plenty of gods in this land Yahweh is not without competition at the time the Bible is written archaeological finds show that until Josiah's rain yahoo i even had a woman at his side a Shira the great goddess of fertility there are many nature goddesses who are worshiped in religious rituals but a Shearer's cult is widespread in the temple of jerusalem her statue is on equal footing with that of Yahweh King Josiah reforms will break with a thousand years old tradition mankind's belief in a multiplicity of gods come Scoobies harbin dealer for mass norman this King Josiah reform certainly led to a situation where monotheism was slowly imposed itself in the worship of a Shira as a companion God sitting at the right hand of Yahoo as it were could no longer be sustained over a border in a radical religious reform Josiah elevates the cult of Yahweh to the state religion the Temple of Jerusalem is the only place where Yahweh may be prayed to other religious cults are ruthlessly suppressed altars and cult sites are torn down statues and graven images destroyed and Yahweh's empire must be extended the situation in the 7th century BC seems to favor expansion a serious domination is breaking down the small Jewish Kingdom sees its chance to gain more land and greater freedom but the dream of this ambitious King comes to a sudden end in the year 609 BC Josiah has reckoned without Egypt the old great power will be the doom of the young pretender in Megiddo a strange event takes place that puts the emerging biblical story in a new light Pharaoh Necho ii marches north with his troops josiah rides out with a small delegation to meet the Egyptian ruler we still don't know what he hoped to achieve a Fafi of a home that is a tourist area it looks rather stupid of Josiah why did he set himself up against new in their subject even von but it may have made perfect sense to Josiah the monotheism the unquestioning servant of his Lord stands up to the arrogant Pharaoh and fights for freedom at once 135 Hyatts started we don't know if Josiah wanted to assert national and religious independence by fighting the Pharaoh or if he simply wanted to negotiate but we're told that may show ii killed him in front of his followers [Music] police clip Judea for the Jewish scribes even then writing the Old Testament Josiah's death must have come as a terrible shock the king in whom they had put their trust had been killed by the Pharaoh if you read the story of the plagues against that background you can't help wondering if a duel between Moses and the Pharaoh takes up this story but in Reverse that's to say now it's the representative of Yahweh who defeats the Pharaoh and not the other way around this is the time when the Bible texts were being written the fateful encounter with neo recalls the confrontation between Moses and the nameless Pharaoh of the Bible the political present of the Hebrew scholars and the folk memories of the past flow together in the Bible account and merge into a single great epic the 10 biblical plagues are formed out of experiences and stories from different periods in the legend that finally emerges they have changed from natural events into the signs and miracles of God all the waters turned blood-red frogs and insects infested the land diseases ravaged man and beast hailstorms locust swarms and sudden darkness followed [Music] India for India's II the plague certainly did not happen within the space of a few days as they're described in the Bible about every one of the first nine plagues can be traced back to natural phenomena that existed in Egypt in Amin and to an extent his knee still exists there today al Horton or keeped there's no scientific explanation for the death of the firstborn and the religious creation myth that the people of Israel the tenth plague together with the Exodus stands for the future and the freedom promised by God [Music] scientists have found no proof of the Bible story but they have found traces of people's who suffered expulsion and natural disasters and whose experiences were taken up when folk memories were rewritten as history [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: hazards and catastrophes

Views: 2,089,083

Rating: 4.4542637 out of 5

Keywords: Biblical Plagues science documentary, Biblical Plagues full documentary, Biblical Plagues documentary, Biblical Plagues earth documentary, Biblical Plagues, Biblical Plagues Bible, Biblical Plagues Bible Documentary, Biblical Plagues 10 Plagues, Biblical Plagues Humankind Documentary, Biblical Plagues History Documentary, Biblical Plagues Short Episode, Biblical Plagues coronavirus, Biblical Plagues Hazards & Catastrophes, Biblical Plagues Report, Biblical Plagues Sandstorms

Id: Vy1hbx1f-GQ

Length: 149min 33sec (8973 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020