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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for a Vault episode. This one originally aired on

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Speaker 1: January and it is about a fascinating artifact from ancient

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Speaker 1: Egypt and how it may interact with climate and geological history. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is This is a really fun one because of

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Speaker 1: course it concerns ancient Egypt. It concerns you know, attempts

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Speaker 1: to understand what what ancient people were thinking about and

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Speaker 1: and ultimately writing about. And it also gets to the

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Speaker 1: sort of the heart of like what is what is

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Speaker 1: a written um account of the past four what purpose

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Speaker 1: does it serve to those who who are in charge

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Speaker 1: of the inscriptions. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind,

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Speaker 1: the production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're gonna be talking about

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Speaker 1: an artifact. This is actually a topic that I was

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Speaker 1: originally reading about thinking about doing one of our new

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Speaker 1: short form episodes, the Artifact about but it kind of

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Speaker 1: ballooned in my mind and kept picking up. Weird little

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Speaker 1: tangents here and there, and I realized it was much

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Speaker 1: too big of a subject just to be like a

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Speaker 1: five to ten minute episode. So so now we're talking

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Speaker 1: about this today, and the subject is an artifact from

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Speaker 1: ancient Egypt known as the Almost Steela or the Tempest Steela.

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Speaker 1: And I already apologize because I know at some point

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Speaker 1: in this episode, I'm going to forget to pronounce steel

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Speaker 1: a with a long E and I'm gonna start saying stella.

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Speaker 1: It's that word, you know, it's st e l A

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Speaker 1: or st e l e, which I can never get

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Speaker 1: the get the sounds right in my brain. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: we were rehearsing it before the episode. It's steel a

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Speaker 1: as in steel uh, Steely Dan album from the records,

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Speaker 1: or uh, and there's some kind of uh. There's some

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Speaker 1: kind of other word that's also steel or steely ste

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Speaker 1: l e, which I can't figure out if it's totally

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Speaker 1: interchangeable with Steela or just mostly interchangeable. Anyway, we're not

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Speaker 1: gonna deal with that in this episode because we're only

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Speaker 1: concerned with one primary Steela here, and it's this almost

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Speaker 1: Steela or Tempest Steela. So this artifact is at its

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Speaker 1: heart a big stone block. It is a slab. It

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Speaker 1: is a big slab made of calcite that's currently in

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Speaker 1: multiple fragments. I think there are at least three major

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Speaker 1: fragments um and they were recovered from the temple complex

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Speaker 1: of Karnak, which is in the ancient Egyptian city of

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Speaker 1: Thebes near the modern Upper Egypt city of lux Or.

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Speaker 1: And this artifact was recovered by archaeologists I think in

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Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties or early nineteen fifties. Uh. Karnak,

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Speaker 1: of course, is this big, beautiful temple complex. You may

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Speaker 1: have seen it represented digitally and like Transformers movies where

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Speaker 1: they're big robots slugging around there, or as an actual

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Speaker 1: shooting location in the Spy Who Loved Me? Did the

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Speaker 1: Transformers really battle here? I think they did at some

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Speaker 1: point the transform It's part of the the raison dettor

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Speaker 1: of of Transformers to eventually just slam through and demolish

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Speaker 1: every work of human kind, like all artifacts and landscapes

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Speaker 1: must be ground into sand by the Transformers until only

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Speaker 1: Transformers remain. Right, just a barren, featureless earth that's completely smooth,

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Speaker 1: but with Transformers with with mac trucks and jeeps, and stuff.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, what's the deal with this slab, the tempestila.

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Speaker 1: It originally stood about one point eight meters talls about

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Speaker 1: six ft tall, and it bears an inscription text that

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Speaker 1: was copied on both sides and these horizontal lines. But

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Speaker 1: it also has some imagery at the top. So two

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Speaker 1: quote from one of the papers that we're going to

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Speaker 1: be referencing today. I think that this description comes from

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Speaker 1: this first paper that was published by Karen poland your Foster,

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Speaker 1: Robert K. Rittner, and Benjamin R. Foster in the Journal

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Speaker 1: of Near Eastern Studies in nineteen quote above. The horizontal

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Speaker 1: body of each text is a lunette with two addorsed

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Speaker 1: scenes and brief vertical labels. Unlike the parallel text, the

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Speaker 1: two lunette labels display minor variation in wording. Both faces

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Speaker 1: preserve dual scenes of the king followed by a female

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Speaker 1: deity of fecundity carrying offering trays. And these trays have

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Speaker 1: like fruits and vegetables on them. So you've got this

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Speaker 1: big old text that's on both sides and the image

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Speaker 1: of a king and a lady who represents fertility, uh

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Speaker 1: carrying up some nice food stuffs, fruits and vegetables, nice

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Speaker 1: plant matter, and so here I think maybe we should

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Speaker 1: actually just read the full text of the Tempest Steela

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Speaker 1: because it's not all that long. Uh. And this is

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Speaker 1: something that I personally really love. Maybe maybe other people

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Speaker 1: aren't as interested in it as I am, but it

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Speaker 1: just reading the text of of texts that are this old,

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Speaker 1: like these ancient Egyptian inscriptions, really does kind of put

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Speaker 1: me in an altered state of consciousness. You know. It's like, uh,

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Speaker 1: I feel like I'm inhabiting a mind that is so

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Speaker 1: separated from me by time and culture that it's a

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Speaker 1: little bit creepy. Yeah, I mean to to a certain extent.

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Speaker 1: That's that's exactly what's happening, right, the transfer of information

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Speaker 1: across the ages. Yeah. And and there's this like weird

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Speaker 1: tangling down at the bottom of my brain where I

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Speaker 1: just feel like there's a lot that's really important that

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Speaker 1: I'm not understanding, but I'm getting just the slightest hint

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Speaker 1: of what it is coming through in the translation. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's the tangler, you got that, that's the Offensive Price movie. Well,

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Speaker 1: but I know what you're talking about with this, Okay.

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Speaker 1: This English translation is by the American egyptologist Robert K. Rittener,

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Speaker 1: who is the one of the authors on a couple

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Speaker 1: of studies that we're going to be mentioning today. Now again,

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Speaker 1: the steel A text is damaged, so there are some gaps,

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Speaker 1: and some of these have been filled in with what

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Speaker 1: is very likely what their contents were. So there's just

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Speaker 1: some texts that we don't have, but we feel very confident,

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Speaker 1: you know, this is what it would have been. And

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Speaker 1: other parts are just left blank where there's less certainty.

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Speaker 1: And I guess when we get to one of those

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Speaker 1: blank spots will just sort of pause for a second

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Speaker 1: in the reading. So here it goes. Long Live the Horace,

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Speaker 1: great of manifestations, He of the two Ladies, pleasing of birth,

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Speaker 1: the golden Horace who binds the two lands. King of

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Speaker 1: the Upper and Lower Egypt, neb feti Ra, son of Raw,

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Speaker 1: almost living forever now. Then his Majesty came Raw himself

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Speaker 1: had appointed him to be king of Upper Egypt. Then

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Speaker 1: his Majesty dwelt at the town of said Yefa Tawi

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Speaker 1: in the district just to the south of Dendera. While

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Speaker 1: aman Ra, lord of the thrones of the two Lands,

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Speaker 1: was in the It was his Majesty who sailed south

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Speaker 1: to offer bread, beer, and everything good and pure. Now,

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Speaker 1: after the offering, then attention was given in this district. Now,

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Speaker 1: then the cold image of this God at his body

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Speaker 1: was installed in this temple while he was in joy. Now,

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Speaker 1: then this great God desired his majesty, while the gods

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Speaker 1: declared their discontent. The gods caused the sky to come

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Speaker 1: in a tempest of rain, with darkness in the western region,

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Speaker 1: and the sky being unleashed without cessation, louder than the

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Speaker 1: cries of the masses, more powerful than while the rain

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Speaker 1: raged on the mountains, louder than the noise of the cataract,

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Speaker 1: which is at Elephantine, every house, every quarter that they reached,

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Speaker 1: floating on the water like skiffs of papyrus opposite the

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Speaker 1: royal residence, for a period of days, while a torch

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Speaker 1: could not be lit in the two lands. Then his

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Speaker 1: Majesty said, how much greater this is than the wrath

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Speaker 1: of the Great God, than the plans of the gods.

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Speaker 1: Then his Majesty descended to his boat, with his counsel

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Speaker 1: following him. While the crowds on the east and west

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Speaker 1: had hidden faces, having no clothing on them after the

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Speaker 1: manifestation of the god's wrath. Then his Majesty reached the

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Speaker 1: interior of thebes with gold confronting gold for this statue,

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Speaker 1: so that he, meaning amun Rah, received that which he desired.

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Speaker 1: Then his Majesty began to re establish the two lands

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Speaker 1: to drain the flooded territories without his to provide them

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Speaker 1: with silver, with gold, with copper, with oil, and cloth

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Speaker 1: of every bolt that could be desired. Then his Majesty

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Speaker 1: made himself comfortable inside the palace life, prosperity, health. Then

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Speaker 1: his Majesty was informed that the mortuary concessions had been

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Speaker 1: into by water, with the tomb chambers collapsed, the funerary

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Speaker 1: mentions undermined, and the pyramids fallen, having been made into

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Speaker 1: that which was never made. Then his Majesty commanded to

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Speaker 1: restore the temples which had fallen into ruin in this

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Speaker 1: entire land, to refurbish the monuments of the gods, to

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Speaker 1: erect their enclosure walls, to provide the sacred objects in

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Speaker 1: the noble chamber, to mask the secret places, to introduce

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Speaker 1: into their shrines the cult statues which were cast to

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Speaker 1: the ground, to set up the braziers, to erect the

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Speaker 1: offering tables, to establish their bread offerings, to double the

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Speaker 1: income of the personnel, to put the land into its

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Speaker 1: former state. Then it was done in accordance with everything

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Speaker 1: that His Majesty had commanded. Oh so there are some

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Speaker 1: parts of that that really give me chills. The basic

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Speaker 1: outline of it being that it introduces this great king,

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Speaker 1: the Great Alma those who rises up and he answers

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Speaker 1: this problem of there's some kind of calamity being described.

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Speaker 1: There are rains and a tempest coming out of the sky,

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Speaker 1: with darkness in the western region, thundering in the sky,

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Speaker 1: the sky being unleashed without cessation, louder than the cries

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Speaker 1: of the masses. There's appear apparently some kind of flooding

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Speaker 1: with bodies human bodies floating in the nile like skiffs

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Speaker 1: of papyrus and uh, and a torch could not be

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Speaker 1: lit in the two lands. But then there is some

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Speaker 1: kind of offering made to the gods to fix this problem,

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Speaker 1: to make everything right, And it tells us basically that

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Speaker 1: almost this guy did a really good job and he

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Speaker 1: like got everything fixed and now it's under control. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so it's uh yeah, So it's so again, it's a

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Speaker 1: story of a disaster occurring and then government responding to

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Speaker 1: that disaster. But there's some We're not going to take

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Speaker 1: everything in that and explain it. I know there's some

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Speaker 1: some names and some obvious gods and some kings, but

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Speaker 1: just to run through a few things that I think

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Speaker 1: are are are important or at least halfway important to

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Speaker 1: understanding what's going on here. Um, I want to just

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Speaker 1: call it a few things. So, first of all, Horace

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Speaker 1: the Horace is the celestial falcon and the embodiment of

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Speaker 1: kingship caught in an enduring conflict with Seth. Horace likely

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Speaker 1: means the distant one, and there are two distinct versions.

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Speaker 1: There's Horace the Elder and Horace the Younger, not to

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Speaker 1: be confused with Horace the child. Right, So an important

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Speaker 1: god who's associated with the royal lineage of of Egypt

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Speaker 1: in this period. Right, and uh Now, one thing that

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Speaker 1: this makes reference to that is geographically confusing to modern

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Speaker 1: audiences is the concept of upper and lower Egypt, which

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Speaker 1: are unless you're familiar with how ancient Egyptians talked about

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Speaker 1: their geography, it's the opposite of what you would think, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's always worth remembering that the ancient Egyptians saw their

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Speaker 1: world uh, a little bit differently than we do today. Um.

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Speaker 1: And not to say they saw the world upside down,

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Speaker 1: They just saw it from their point of view. Uh.

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Speaker 1: So north and south are totally arbitrary, by the way,

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Speaker 1: there's no such thing as objective north and south. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So with the way they saw it is with the

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Speaker 1: Nile delta at the bottom of their kingdom. So Upper

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Speaker 1: Egypt is actually somewhat lower on the modern state of

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Speaker 1: Egypt that we memorize in school and look at on

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Speaker 1: a map. Basically the in the area of Thebes, Lower

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Speaker 1: Egypt is the delta region that entails Memphis. So Lower

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Speaker 1: Egypt is to the north and Upper Egypt is to

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Speaker 1: the south. Right. Now, what about the sun god Raw? Right,

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Speaker 1: there's reference to Raw yeah, Raw, the Sun god, source

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Speaker 1: of all light and life. Um, you know. And there's

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Speaker 1: a lot more to each of these gods, but this

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Speaker 1: is just the short and simple. Now, there's some references

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Speaker 1: in here to Amun Raw Yeah. And this, uh, if

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Speaker 1: I'm correct on this, this is this is also known

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Speaker 1: as Almond. This is the mysterious Creator God and his

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Speaker 1: name means the hidden one. Yeah. Now, the main character

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Speaker 1: of the almost Stela or the tempest Stela here is

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Speaker 1: almost himself, meaning almost the first who was a pharaoh,

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Speaker 1: and he's the guy who who does all the fix

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Speaker 1: in here. Yeah. He is the founder of the Eighteenth

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Speaker 1: dynasty who reigned well one of the day. The dates

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Speaker 1: I was looking at, we're fifteen forty nine through fifteen

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Speaker 1: twenty four b C. Right, So the dates of his

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Speaker 1: reign are actually somewhat disputed, and that will come into

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Speaker 1: that will be in some way the subject matter of

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Speaker 1: what we're talking about today. Though it does appear he

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Speaker 1: reigned sometime in the sixteenth century BC, so probably sometime

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Speaker 1: between sixteen hundred and fifteen hundred BC. The more conventional

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Speaker 1: Egyptology chronology dates put put him in the middle somewhere

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Speaker 1: in there, yeah, like a fifteen you know, the middle

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Speaker 1: of the century to sometime in the late three quarters. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But either way, he seems to have been a very

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Speaker 1: pivotal ruler at a very pivotal time. He was building

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Speaker 1: on his father's military harry success and paved the road

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Speaker 1: for the new Kingdom and the beginning of an age

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Speaker 1: of just Egyptian dominance. UM he reinvigorated and united Egypt.

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Speaker 1: And this is key to he completed the expulsion of

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Speaker 1: the Hicksos. So at this time Egypt, or part of

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Speaker 1: Egypt anyway, were were ruled by these outsiders, these foreigners

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Speaker 1: that invaded um perhaps you know, from Palestine or somewhere

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Speaker 1: in that region. Uh. In anyway, basically, what Amos did

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Speaker 1: is he finished driving them out. He finished a rebellion

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Speaker 1: against them that had begun by had been begun by

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Speaker 1: his predecessors, and re exerted Egypt's rule over northern Nubia

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Speaker 1: to the south. So it'll be important to think about

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Speaker 1: all this as we discussed the details of his rule.

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Speaker 1: But he was a pharaoh in an age of growth.

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Speaker 1: He brought about a new kingdom, a conquest king. He

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Speaker 1: was like, We're I'm going to conquer the areas to

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Speaker 1: the north and the south and bring Egypt together again

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Speaker 1: under one rule. Yeah. Now, as for the Hicks, they're

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Speaker 1: they're very, very interesting, and people have have written and

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Speaker 1: researched regarding them and made various uh hypotheses and theories

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Speaker 1: regarding their exact nature. There's a lot of very speculative

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Speaker 1: Bible stuff about that. Yeah, yeah, you. You may have

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Speaker 1: you're a Bible reader and a Bible student, you may

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Speaker 1: have seen them pop up, I'm sure, and like just

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Speaker 1: even the notes in a standard Bible. They were the

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Speaker 1: foreign Canaanite or Palestinian rulers of Egypt who took power

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Speaker 1: during the seventeenth century b c. They ruled lower in

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Speaker 1: Middle Egypt and established a capital at a Varis, which

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Speaker 1: was associated with the Egyptian god Seth or set or

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Speaker 1: su Tech, which was in turn equated with the Palestinian

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Speaker 1: god ball Uh. Hicksos called themselves theselves the sons of Raw,

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Speaker 1: but one of them actually bore the name of Ra's nemesis, Apopus,

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Speaker 1: the great crocodile or snake of Chaos, which is interesting.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know that, yeah. Um. In Geraldine pinches the

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Speaker 1: Egyptian mythology, she points out that the conflict of the

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Speaker 1: time seems to have taken on mythological trappings as well

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Speaker 1: as their stories related to a quarrel between the followers

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Speaker 1: of Horace, the Thebans and the followers of Seth. The Hixos,

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Speaker 1: and the words seems to be related to just foreign rulers. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I believe it's heckaal Kasuit rulers of foreign lands, and

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Speaker 1: Hicksos is derived from this via the Greek. Okay, right,

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Speaker 1: so hicksos would not have been what they called themselves

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Speaker 1: but a sort of ex and m applied by the

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Speaker 1: Egyptians or even maybe later Greek speaking Egyptians. Right. And

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Speaker 1: of course this is where it often gets interesting with

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Speaker 1: with ancient history, when you're dealing with outsiders, right, because

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Speaker 1: the outsiders are defined by those writing the history not

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Speaker 1: only in terms of what happened and you know, what transpired,

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Speaker 1: but but also like who they were, what were these people? Um?

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Speaker 1: And so at times you've had people of historians, I mean,

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Speaker 1: and and try and figure it out and and maybe

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Speaker 1: come in with a bit of an agenda. Uh. First

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Speaker 1: century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus translated this at the time.

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Speaker 1: Again this is first century Uh see um as as

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Speaker 1: hicksos meaning king shepherds or captive shepherds. And this was

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Speaker 1: an attempt to establish historical evidence for the Jewish people

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Speaker 1: in ancient Egypt. And this will come up again. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there there are a lot of um, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: historical religious apologetics where people try to invoke the Hicksos

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Speaker 1: as um somehow being descended from uh, say Joseph, like

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Speaker 1: the story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis coming

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Speaker 1: to Egypt and serving the pharaoh Um as someone who

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Speaker 1: you know, listeners know that I'm a big fan of

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Speaker 1: the Bible, especially at you know, I love the books

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Speaker 1: of the Torah and all that. So not to denigrate

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Speaker 1: the story at all as a as a wonderful uh myth,

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Speaker 1: but like, I don't think there's much historical evidence that

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Speaker 1: these tales are like actual history that would be linked

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Speaker 1: to Egyptian chronolog g. Yeah, I mean, very broadly speaking,

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Speaker 1: there seem to be like different levels of it. I

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Speaker 1: mean they're there are are There are certainly people who

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Speaker 1: look at history and look at things like the hicks

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Speaker 1: Sos and try to draw a direct line, uh and

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Speaker 1: say like these were the Jewish people, or say I've

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Speaker 1: seen it before in Bible notes, for instance, saying well, okay,

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Speaker 1: the Hicksos were foreign rulers in Egypt at the time,

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Speaker 1: which would have made it possible for someone like Moses

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Speaker 1: and outsider to rise up in the ranks enough to

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Speaker 1: have the role that he plays in the Exodus story.

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Speaker 1: And then you have other people who are like that,

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Speaker 1: that that that make kind of a middle ground argument saying, well, okay,

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Speaker 1: the the the the Egyptian captivity is um is is

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Speaker 1: a myth or or you know, it is a legend,

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Speaker 1: but it is based in things that were passed down orally,

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Speaker 1: and therefore there could be some connection between these two,

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Speaker 1: but the exact threads connecting them are uncertain. So, like

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Speaker 1: I said, there a whole there's a whole lot of

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Speaker 1: literature out there about, uh, this topic, and to what

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Speaker 1: degree there are any connections here. I would just say

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Speaker 1: that anything that tries to get too specific in tying

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Speaker 1: these things to specific stories in the Bible is probably

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Speaker 1: highly speculative. And we'll come back some of this later

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Speaker 1: on in the episode. Yeah, but what actually got me

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Speaker 1: interested in talking about the Tempest Steela, apart from just

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Speaker 1: being a very interesting text to read, is the question

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Speaker 1: of is this referring to something that actually happened in

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Speaker 1: Egyptian history? All this stuff about you know, the darkness

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Speaker 1: and the sky and the and the flooding of the

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Speaker 1: Nile and the bodies floating in the water and the

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Speaker 1: water entering all these temple complexes, and uh, I'm being

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Speaker 1: and the thundering and being unable to light a torch

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Speaker 1: in the two lands. What what is all this talking about?

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Speaker 1: Um and so this actually ties into a study from

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Speaker 1: fourteen actually a couple of studies, the most recent one

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Speaker 1: I think was from in the Journal of Near Eastern

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Speaker 1: Studies that I was reading about that that made an

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Speaker 1: interesting connection between the events described in this text and

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Speaker 1: a possible actual geological cause. Or is this text, as

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Speaker 1: it's been more traditionally interpreted, referring to either some kind

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Speaker 1: of natural event that is more I don't know, a

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Speaker 1: more regular and less extreme, or is it referring to

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Speaker 1: something in a in a metaphorical sense, or telling a

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Speaker 1: kind of fictional narrative to hype up this first ruler

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Speaker 1: of the eighteenth dynasty Yea. Some have have have have

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Speaker 1: made that argument that that it may be a metaphor

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Speaker 1: the storm it felt, they may be a metaphor for

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Speaker 1: hickso suppression. Um Ian Shaw writes about this in the

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Speaker 1: Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, suggesting that it might have

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Speaker 1: served as quote an official explanation for the impoverishment of

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Speaker 1: the Theban region and more importantly, ah MOS's role in

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Speaker 1: restoring the riches of the Karnak temple and it's God

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Speaker 1: in other words, a story to explain why other temple

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Speaker 1: riches were sold off to pay for to a certain extent,

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Speaker 1: to pay for the Thevens rebellion of the seventeenth dynasty.

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Speaker 1: So not to say that there wasn't also a real

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Speaker 1: storm of some sort, but that quote, these particular events

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Speaker 1: might have been recounted on the Steeler simply in order

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Speaker 1: to suit historical religious purposes. Yeah, and that's something that

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Speaker 1: we see all throughout ancient history, I think is sort

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Speaker 1: of creative re engineering of events and storytelling to make

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Speaker 1: certain leaders look good. Yeah. And I mean another thing

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Speaker 1: is if this were just describing the flooding, Like the

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Speaker 1: flooding is one of the major aspects of the calamity

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Speaker 1: described in on this slab. You know, nile flooding is

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Speaker 1: a regular occurrence that there's like there's like monsoonal seasonal

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Speaker 1: flooding of the Nile that occurs every year to varying degrees,

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Speaker 1: And so that that's something to keep in mind as

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Speaker 1: we go about this. Yeah, and I think I've mentioned

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Speaker 1: before I'd love to come back and just do an

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Speaker 1: episode on the Nile and it's flooding because it has

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Speaker 1: such an such an intrinsic role in the world view

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Speaker 1: of the ancient Egyptians and their entire cosmology. It's fascinating stuff.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Okay. But so to come into

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Speaker 1: this possible or at least the hypothetical geological connection that

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Speaker 1: we're exploring today, we need to travel north of Egypt.

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Speaker 1: We need to go up into the Mediterranean to a

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Speaker 1: place that's now known as Santorini, but has also gone

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Speaker 1: by the name of Theora. And now you may have

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Speaker 1: seen that spelled th h e r A, and I

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Speaker 1: have always said Terra when saying when saying that, but

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Speaker 1: it's actually apparently Theora and Theora or Santorini was the

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Speaker 1: site of a catastrophic volcanic eruption in the ancient world

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Speaker 1: that likely had a really powerful impact act on Bronze

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Speaker 1: Age history. Uh. This is also known as the Minoan

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Speaker 1: eruption or the eruption at Theora. Now, I actually found

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Speaker 1: a really great source on the theory eruption, which was

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Speaker 1: a chapter in a book by former show guest Clive Oppenheimer,

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Speaker 1: who was on the show with us when we interviewed

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Speaker 1: him and Werner Herzog about their documentary Fireball. Clive Oppenheimer

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Speaker 1: wrote a book that he published with Cambridge University Press

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Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven called Eruptions That Shook the World

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Speaker 1: that is about volcanic eruptions all throughout the past and

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Speaker 1: how they've shaped the course of human events in human evolution,

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Speaker 1: human history. So he's going to be one of my

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Speaker 1: main sources on on this eruption here. So uh Theora

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Speaker 1: or today Santorini is an island, I guess, really a

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Speaker 1: group of islands in the south of the Aegean c

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Speaker 1: so it's between Greece and Turkey and north of Crete.

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Speaker 1: It's one of the southern Nigian islands. And if you

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Speaker 1: look at a picture of Santorini taken from above, you

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Speaker 1: may immediately be able to guess something about its geological history.

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Speaker 1: It's got a kind of scary shape that immediately like

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Speaker 1: if you, if you're volcano minded, can kind of make

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Speaker 1: your gut sink because part of the island is this

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Speaker 1: long C shaped land mass sea as in the letter C,

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Speaker 1: like a capital c uh land mass that has steep

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Speaker 1: cliffs on the inner wall of the curve of that sea.

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Speaker 1: And then smoother tapering shores and slopes on the outside.

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Speaker 1: And then opposite the inner curve of that letter C shape,

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Speaker 1: there's another large land mass with similar characteristics facing inward.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, Oppenheimer mentions that if you look at the

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Speaker 1: inward facing cliffs, you can see alternating colors of rock

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Speaker 1: strata and yellow, white, and gray and red, and so

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Speaker 1: it should be probably kind of obvious what this is.

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Speaker 1: This island group is the partially submerged caldera of an

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Speaker 1: a scient gigantic volcano that is now half swallowed by

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Speaker 1: the ocean. Now, this island, of course is famous to

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Speaker 1: geologists and historians of the Bronze Age because this volcano

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Speaker 1: was the source of the catastrophic Minoan eruption, which the again,

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Speaker 1: the date of this eruption is going to be in

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Speaker 1: dispute and part of what we're talking about today, but

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Speaker 1: just to you know, be a very broad strokes, think

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Speaker 1: roughly in the area of six b C. Now is

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Speaker 1: in the twentieth century actually that archaeologists really came to

428
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 1: recognize the effects that this eruption had had on nearby

429
00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: human civilization. And one great example that Oppenheimer highlights is

430
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:46,119
Speaker 1: the work of an archaeologist named Spirodin Mirinatos who dug

431
00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:50,320
Speaker 1: up parts of what would have been a Minoan ports

432
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:54,560
Speaker 1: settlement on the southern part of Santorini that is now

433
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: known as Akrotirie. That this name is applied by modern scholars.

434
00:25:58,359 --> 00:26:01,120
Speaker 1: We don't know what the ancient and inhabitants of this

435
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:03,920
Speaker 1: town would have called it, but this would have been

436
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:08,679
Speaker 1: a relatively wealthy and well developed town until the volcano

437
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:13,720
Speaker 1: woke up. We talked actually some last October with Nicoletta

438
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 1: Momiliano about the Minoan civilization and it's it's palace power

439
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:21,720
Speaker 1: centers on Crete. Now this this island again would have

440
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 1: been north of Crete, so away from the real center

441
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:27,879
Speaker 1: of political power of the Minoan empire. But still it

442
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 1: was I think part of that civilization and shared in

443
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:34,280
Speaker 1: its wealth and its trade and its culture. Yeah. And

444
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: in her book In Search of the Labyrinth, the Cultural

445
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: Legacy of Minoan Creede, I mean she she does a

446
00:26:40,200 --> 00:26:44,119
Speaker 1: reference volcanoes several times. Yeah, and Uh, I think volcanoes

447
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 1: would have been highly relevant to the history of the

448
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: Minoan culture. And eventually the Minoan culture uh declined and

449
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:55,720
Speaker 1: was superseded and conquered by Mycenaean culture. But this kind

450
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:59,399
Speaker 1: of eruption would have been unprecedented in local human memory.

451
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:03,439
Speaker 1: The volcano had been calmed for approximately fifteen thousand years

452
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:07,440
Speaker 1: beforehand at least and UH, and so this late Bronze

453
00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:11,440
Speaker 1: Age eruption was one of the largest European volcano eruptions

454
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 1: of the past hundred thousand years. This was a huge,

455
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:20,600
Speaker 1: highly energetic, highly destructive event. UM. And it's interesting actually

456
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:25,399
Speaker 1: looking at what's left behind in this particular settlement on Santorini,

457
00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 1: the place now known as Acritiri. And I was reading

458
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:30,920
Speaker 1: about it a bit in UH. This UH one of

459
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:33,879
Speaker 1: the first of two papers involving Robert K. Written Er

460
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:36,040
Speaker 1: that we're going to be looking at today. This was

461
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 1: the one by Foster, written Er and Foster from nine

462
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies called Text Storms

463
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:47,320
Speaker 1: and the Theory Eruption and UH. The authors here they

464
00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:52,639
Speaker 1: talk about how archaeologists uncovered remnants of this ancient village

465
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:55,719
Speaker 1: on on the southern coast of the island group preserved

466
00:27:55,840 --> 00:28:00,159
Speaker 1: under this thick bed of volcanic ash. And because it

467
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 1: was an ancient settlement that was preserved under layers of tephra,

468
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:06,000
Speaker 1: it is similar in some ways to the ruins of

469
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 1: places like Pompeii and Herculaneum up on the Italian Peninsula,

470
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 1: which were themselves kind of frozen in time by the

471
00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:17,600
Speaker 1: eruption of Vesuvius in seventy nine. In a similar way,

472
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:21,400
Speaker 1: we see this settlement frozen in time. It was rapidly

473
00:28:21,440 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 1: buried by volcanic ash, and there are lots of artifacts

474
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:29,240
Speaker 1: and features that were very well preserved, including some extremely

475
00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:33,879
Speaker 1: beautiful original frescoes and paintings that I would really recommend

476
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 1: looking up. Looking up the paintings from theory Um and

477
00:28:37,560 --> 00:28:41,080
Speaker 1: and the frescoes there. There are some that are these

478
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 1: large sort of tableaus or landscape scenes that show like

479
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:48,480
Speaker 1: a port city with boats moving to and fro in

480
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 1: the background of these colorful, colorful buildings and hills full

481
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:55,480
Speaker 1: of wild animals and plants. And there was even, for

482
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:59,440
Speaker 1: a brief tangent, there was even this really interesting mystery

483
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 1: about the are there that I came across. That was

484
00:29:02,600 --> 00:29:09,320
Speaker 1: one painting at Acritiri showing monkeys, these blue monkeys that

485
00:29:09,440 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 1: appear to be similar to a species that would not

486
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: have been native to the Aegean, but would have been

487
00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 1: native either to h to Africa or to India, which

488
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:22,720
Speaker 1: is I think often taken as a sign of the

489
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 1: kind of often surprising level of trade and interconnectedness in

490
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:30,320
Speaker 1: the ancient world. That either live specimens of these monkeys

491
00:29:30,520 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: or artistic depictions of these monkeys were being taken back

492
00:29:34,960 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 1: and forth from far and wide around the world. That's impressive.

493
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:42,000
Speaker 1: I mean either way, once exposed to monkeys, one cannot

494
00:29:42,040 --> 00:29:45,719
Speaker 1: help but create art about monkeys. Yes, maybe one day

495
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 1: we should just come back and devote a whole thing

496
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:50,320
Speaker 1: to the blue monkeys. Controversy is that what kind of

497
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 1: monkeys are these? Where did these images come from? And

498
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 1: so forth. I I don't know. I found this very interesting,

499
00:29:57,280 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 1: but maybe we should just get back to the eruption

500
00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 1: for now. Okay. Now. Oppenheimer, in writing about the eruption

501
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:06,680
Speaker 1: of theory uh he he says that the eruption seems

502
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:09,840
Speaker 1: to have been preceded by an earthquake or maybe series

503
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:13,680
Speaker 1: of earthquakes, that the damage the local infrastructure. In fact,

504
00:30:13,720 --> 00:30:17,880
Speaker 1: it looks from the remains of this settlement like the

505
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 1: locals had not finished up cleaning the debris and the

506
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: damage from the earthquake at the time. The town was

507
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: buried under tephra from the eruption, so it seems very

508
00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 1: likely that these things are related. Uh and Oppenheimer writes

509
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:35,479
Speaker 1: quote the townsfolk appeared to have suspected impending doom. At

510
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 1: least no victims have been found, suggesting that Acritiris residents

511
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:43,120
Speaker 1: abandoned the town before it was buried by thick tephra

512
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 1: fall and pyroclastic current deposits. On the other hand, so

513
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 1: much tefra remained unexcavated that it's entirely possible that victims

514
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 1: will be located eventually. Uh. Now, I guess this book

515
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 1: was written in two thousand eleven. I haven't read about

516
00:30:57,320 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 1: any victims discovered since then, but that would be in

517
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 1: or seemed to come back to anyway. Oppenheimer goes on

518
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:06,560
Speaker 1: to say the clearing away of debris and reconstruction were

519
00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 1: unfinished when the first hydro volcanic blasts excavated a new

520
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: pathway for magma to reach the surface, probably through a

521
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: vent on one of the islands and towards the eastern

522
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:21,719
Speaker 1: wall of the present day caldera. Once the conduit was established,

523
00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 1: a sustained plenty and eruption ensued, gaining an intensity through time,

524
00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: evident from increasing size of pumice chunks upwards through the

525
00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 1: associated deposits, the eruption column reached an estimated maximum altitude

526
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 1: of thirty six kilometers, from which it would have descended

527
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:42,240
Speaker 1: to its level of neutral buoyancy in the lower stratosphere.

528
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:45,640
Speaker 1: The plume was then carried towards the east and southeast

529
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: by prevailing winds, so there would be this giant volcanic column,

530
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:53,040
Speaker 1: you know, visible from very far away, going up thirty

531
00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: six kilometers in the air, or at least up to

532
00:31:55,840 --> 00:31:58,320
Speaker 1: thirty six kilometers in the air. And then he says

533
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:00,479
Speaker 1: the parts of the island were covered it in up

534
00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: to six meters of white solicit pummice. And then the

535
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 1: geological evidence indicates that sea water repeatedly sloshed into the

536
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: volcanic vent, rapidly mixing together water and magma and uh

537
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:18,760
Speaker 1: and then through the surrounding sedimentary structures of the rock

538
00:32:18,840 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 1: layers that we can see left there now, it looks

539
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:25,720
Speaker 1: like that there was this enhanced fragmentation of magma that

540
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 1: you see when water and magma mixed together very quickly.

541
00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:35,200
Speaker 1: And Oppenheimer rights quote the resulting deposits which accumulated to

542
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: a depth of twelve meters, are punctuated by desk sized

543
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:43,520
Speaker 1: lava bombs that must have traced ballistic trajectories from the

544
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 1: vent to thwack into the soft and sticky pyroclastic beds.

545
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 1: These characteristics indicate formation by successive shattering blasts and associated

546
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:58,480
Speaker 1: with base surges similar to ground hugging currents apparent in

547
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: photographs of atmosphere nuclear weapons tests that would have readily

548
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 1: scaled the complex topography of the island um so So now,

549
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer rights that the event at this point in the

550
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 1: eruption would have been filled with this sort of red

551
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 1: hot salad of ash, water, steam and pummice, and you'd

552
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:22,080
Speaker 1: get these repeated blasts that would have kept widening the

553
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: vent as the energy released by the eruption just kept increasing,

554
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: and eventually you would get this climactic phase of the eruption,

555
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:33,000
Speaker 1: you know, as it reaches it's it's pinnacle, uh and

556
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:36,360
Speaker 1: what he calls a soaring phoenix cloud and a new

557
00:33:36,480 --> 00:33:39,840
Speaker 1: formation of a new caldera. So, in the end, this

558
00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:44,720
Speaker 1: this gargantuan event had implications reaching far beyond just this

559
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:47,880
Speaker 1: island here known as Santorini. There would have been weather

560
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 1: and climate effects far and wide, quite possibly major damage

561
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:57,120
Speaker 1: from tsunami's Oppenheimer rights that quote. The total size of

562
00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 1: the eruption, which probably lasted no more than a few days,

563
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:03,120
Speaker 1: is difficult to estimate since so much of the material

564
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: is beneath the waves, but it's thought to have been

565
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 1: around a magnitude of seven point two or sixty cubic

566
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:14,919
Speaker 1: kilometers of dense magma. Uh So, do you know people

567
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 1: can't picture sixty cubic kilometers? What is that? Imagine a

568
00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 1: solid cube that is about three point nine kilometers or

569
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:25,759
Speaker 1: about two point four miles on each edge, and it's

570
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 1: a cube that big. So we're talking about it. It's

571
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 1: a real cataclysmic eruption here. This was this, this was,

572
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: this was would have been horrifying to to witness from Afar. Yes,

573
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,480
Speaker 1: the local environment, the island itself would have been just

574
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:45,399
Speaker 1: completely entombed, as the word Oppenheimer uses, just buried. And

575
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:48,600
Speaker 1: then my no, and Tefra goes far far away, like

576
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:52,960
Speaker 1: it's been found as far away as the Black Sea, indicating, um,

577
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: you know, what Oppenheimer says is a fallout area bigger

578
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:00,760
Speaker 1: than two million square kilometers, which he's as is equivalent

579
00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:04,879
Speaker 1: to about the size of Mexico, so gigantic radius of

580
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 1: of effect if you're trying to picture on the map,

581
00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:11,279
Speaker 1: it affecting areas beyond in the Black Sea, the Black

582
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:14,360
Speaker 1: Seas on the other side of Turkey from the Aegean,

583
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:19,200
Speaker 1: so it is huge. But then, interestingly, Oppenheimer brings up

584
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 1: one of the issues that is most debated with respect

585
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 1: to the Minor interruption, which is what was its exact date?

586
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:28,800
Speaker 1: It seems like the kind of thing that you should

587
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:31,719
Speaker 1: be able to tell, right, You know, we know exactly

588
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:35,359
Speaker 1: what day this occurred, but it's harder than you might think.

589
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 1: We know it was roughly thirty years ago, but what

590
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:43,359
Speaker 1: year exactly? Um, Now, I guess the question would be like,

591
00:35:43,680 --> 00:35:46,800
Speaker 1: why would this be tricky to date? You know, shouldn't

592
00:35:46,880 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 1: shouldn't we have a record of it? Well, most of

593
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:54,040
Speaker 1: our chronology for the ancient Eastern Mediterranean is based on

594
00:35:54,200 --> 00:35:58,400
Speaker 1: the historical timeline of Pharaonic dynasties in Egypt. You know

595
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 1: that they kept pretty good records. They include the lengths

596
00:36:01,120 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 1: of rains. But even with these, uh these pharaoh chronologies,

597
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of uncertainty in the dating of

598
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:11,520
Speaker 1: these Pharaohs. When you go farther back, especially to the

599
00:36:11,600 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 1: kind of period we're talking about. You know, if you

600
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:17,719
Speaker 1: get into like the period of the Roman Empire or something, Uh,

601
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:20,359
Speaker 1: then dates are really solid. We just know what year

602
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:23,760
Speaker 1: things happened. But if you go a thousand years fifteen

603
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:28,319
Speaker 1: hundred years back before that, throughout much of the Eastern Mediterranean,

604
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 1: there's way more room for questioning and error because there

605
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 1: are fewer written records. Those records are less correlated with

606
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:39,239
Speaker 1: objectively dated other things, so there's just there there are

607
00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 1: a lot of question marks. Yeah, I like to drive

608
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:44,319
Speaker 1: on something we've We've mentioned in the past. We were

609
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:46,960
Speaker 1: in dealing with the with ancient Egypt. We're dealing with

610
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:51,040
Speaker 1: the ancient history of the Romans, like the Romans considered

611
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:53,800
Speaker 1: this ancient history. Yeah, what we're saying, so Julius Caesar,

612
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 1: if he's thinking about the events concurrent with the eruption

613
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:00,840
Speaker 1: of theory, that would have been like something like fifteen

614
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 1: hundred years ago for him. So us thinking back to,

615
00:37:04,120 --> 00:37:07,200
Speaker 1: you know, the collapse of the Roman Empire, and then

616
00:37:07,239 --> 00:37:09,839
Speaker 1: that's funny, that's just the new Kingdom of Egypt. Again,

617
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:11,799
Speaker 1: I've said this on the show before, but one of

618
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:13,880
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing things is to think about

619
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 1: how far back ancient history goes. Just in the written

620
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:19,960
Speaker 1: part of history, where we have some records and there

621
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:24,800
Speaker 1: are recognizable civilizations. That's the New Kingdom to the ancient Romans.

622
00:37:24,920 --> 00:37:28,400
Speaker 1: The old Kingdom of Egypt would have been more ancient

623
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:32,040
Speaker 1: to them than the Romans were to us. Yeah, and

624
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:34,440
Speaker 1: that that's just always a nine boggling to think about it.

625
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah. But anyway, so so we get

626
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:40,160
Speaker 1: to these dating issues. Um now, I'm gonna try to

627
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,480
Speaker 1: avoid getting too technical about the dating, because, like you know,

628
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:46,920
Speaker 1: are arguing about you know, how many decades in this

629
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:50,520
Speaker 1: direction or that direction, uh you date an event can

630
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:53,440
Speaker 1: get a little bit uh wearisome. I think if you

631
00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:56,480
Speaker 1: if you don't have a lot of other history knowledge

632
00:37:56,560 --> 00:37:58,920
Speaker 1: to sort of orient around that. But to give you

633
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 1: the short version, the standard view for some time, at

634
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:05,680
Speaker 1: least according to Oppenheimer, is that the Minor Interruption took

635
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: place sometime around fifty f hundred BC. But there has

636
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:17,319
Speaker 1: recently been radiocarbon dating and other types of evidence that,

637
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:20,800
Speaker 1: if correct, would place the eruption like a hundred years earlier.

638
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:23,520
Speaker 1: So just one example is a study that I was

639
00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 1: reading about from two thousand six published in the journal

640
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:30,040
Speaker 1: Science by Friedrich at All. That was radiocarbon dating of

641
00:38:30,080 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 1: a branch from an olive tree that was buried alive

642
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: in Tephra on Santorini. Uh. When so the branches would

643
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:41,319
Speaker 1: have been they were preserved in their life position. You know,

644
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:43,640
Speaker 1: this was not a dead tree. This was still living

645
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:47,240
Speaker 1: when it got put under the ash. And that evidence,

646
00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 1: the evidence from that radiocarbon dating would put the eruption

647
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:54,640
Speaker 1: in the late seventeenth century BC, so like sometime around

648
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 1: sixteen hundred to sixteen twenty seven or so. And of

649
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 1: course the authors of this radio car urbon dating say, uh, whoops.

650
00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 1: The one problem here is this is not consistent with

651
00:39:05,719 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 1: the eruption date as it uh, as it's assumed by

652
00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:14,160
Speaker 1: many archaeologists, especially based on the chronology of pharaohs in

653
00:39:14,239 --> 00:39:17,120
Speaker 1: the New Kingdom of Egypt. It doesn't really match up.

654
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:19,719
Speaker 1: So maybe there's something wrong with our date, or maybe

655
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with that chronology. Now, it certainly is

656
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:25,879
Speaker 1: possible that the radio carbon dates could be wrong. Oppenheimer

657
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:28,799
Speaker 1: in his book points out that there are uncertainties with

658
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:33,160
Speaker 1: the level of atmospheric carbon fourteen right around this period,

659
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: he says, between thirty five hundred and thirty seven hundred

660
00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:40,000
Speaker 1: years ago, for various atmospheric chemical reasons um that make

661
00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 1: it a little bit harder than it might usually be

662
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 1: to obtain accurate carbon dates for objects within this period.

663
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:48,200
Speaker 1: And there have been other attempts to date the eruption

664
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:50,759
Speaker 1: using In fact, he's got a long section in his

665
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:52,800
Speaker 1: chapter if you ever want to check out the book

666
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:56,600
Speaker 1: that's really interesting about using dendro chronology and the study

667
00:39:56,640 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: of ancient trees in Turkey, UH to try I to

668
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 1: understand what might have been happening with the theory eruption,

669
00:40:03,280 --> 00:40:06,440
Speaker 1: Like there are these trees that show these sudden spurts

670
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: of growth at a time that might be signaled by

671
00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:12,719
Speaker 1: the eruption of the volcano. And it's like, why would

672
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:16,160
Speaker 1: volcano erupting make trees grow more? But it has to

673
00:40:16,200 --> 00:40:18,759
Speaker 1: do with the local climate in Turkey that actually having

674
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:21,959
Speaker 1: a cooler summer. If you're a tree in a hot

675
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,959
Speaker 1: arid climate, a cooler summer could actually help you grow

676
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 1: more than you would normally. Oh. Fascinating, now to come

677
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:29,919
Speaker 1: back to something more parallel to what we were talking

678
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:33,399
Speaker 1: about with people trying to relate these events to the Bible. Uh.

679
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:35,600
Speaker 1: One thing that I think is funny is that a

680
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 1: n Oppenheimer goes into this bit. Many people have tried

681
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:43,560
Speaker 1: to link the Minoan eruption to the story of Atlantis

682
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:47,279
Speaker 1: told by Plato and the timmy Ist dialogue. There are

683
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: some obvious parallels, Like it does tell of an island

684
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:54,719
Speaker 1: civilization that achieved great prosperity but then sank into the

685
00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 1: sea amid earthquakes and fire and left behind a shoal

686
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:01,720
Speaker 1: of mud that made the see in that region impassable.

687
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 1: So you know, you can see some similarities. But I

688
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:08,759
Speaker 1: think it's it's important to keep in mind that this

689
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 1: is one of the places where it's really easy for

690
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 1: the pattern seeking brain to get over excited, because the

691
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 1: story of Atlantis was written more than a thousand years

692
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:21,600
Speaker 1: after the theory eruption, probably like the thirteen or fourteen

693
00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:25,719
Speaker 1: hundred years later, might not even have been intended to

694
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 1: be taken as anything more than like an allegorical story

695
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 1: to make a point. So I think any attempts to

696
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 1: say Aha, Atlantis was Santorini that seems entirely speculative based

697
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:39,799
Speaker 1: on pretty weak inference. I don't think we can even

698
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 1: be confident that that Atlantis was a place. Yes, but

699
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,440
Speaker 1: but Atlantis is one of those one of those things

700
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:50,799
Speaker 1: that people are always going to jump to conclusions with,

701
00:41:50,840 --> 00:41:53,319
Speaker 1: and they're gonna they're gonna bend over backwards to try

702
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:57,000
Speaker 1: and fit Atlantis in with with some sort of existing

703
00:41:57,080 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: evidence or tail. He's right up, there were the aliens,

704
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:02,759
Speaker 1: it though, I admit. I guess like if you're gonna

705
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:06,040
Speaker 1: say the Atlanta story, if you knew somehow that it

706
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:09,600
Speaker 1: was based on a real event in Mediterranean history, I

707
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:11,840
Speaker 1: guess maybe this wouldn't be a bad can todate? I

708
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:14,280
Speaker 1: just if you get more into that sort of middle

709
00:42:14,320 --> 00:42:17,479
Speaker 1: area of like, okay, a story and may even it's

710
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 1: just purely for allegorical purposes, based on a city vanishing

711
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:23,840
Speaker 1: into the sea and some sort of a cataclysm, it

712
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: could have connections to this, you know, just to some

713
00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:31,120
Speaker 1: uh you know, memories and accounts of this having happened

714
00:42:31,160 --> 00:42:34,359
Speaker 1: before uh, you know, because that's just that's how humans work.

715
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:36,880
Speaker 1: We we when we make things up, we tend to

716
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: make them make that base them on things that came

717
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:44,359
Speaker 1: before us, either historical events or other myth cycles. Other stories, etcetera. Right, So,

718
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: if we're trying to get come up with a good

719
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:50,839
Speaker 1: solid date for the theory eruption and and sort out

720
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 1: all these discrepancies, one thing that would be really useful

721
00:42:54,040 --> 00:42:56,880
Speaker 1: would be if there were a contemporary record that we

722
00:42:56,920 --> 00:42:59,919
Speaker 1: could did you know that we could date definitively which

723
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:05,280
Speaker 1: referred to the eruption. Unfortunately, we actually have shockingly few

724
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:09,880
Speaker 1: written records from this period in this region of any kind,

725
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:13,960
Speaker 1: and what we do have does not make explicit reference

726
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:18,120
Speaker 1: to the eruption, unless unless one of the papers we're

727
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 1: looking at today is correct, and it does in an

728
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:24,319
Speaker 1: abstracted form. And this, of course is what brings us

729
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 1: back to this hypothetical interpretation of the tempest Steela. Alright, Yes,

730
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:33,920
Speaker 1: the the intense rain, the darkening of the sky, the

731
00:43:33,960 --> 00:43:39,040
Speaker 1: flooding exactly so. So Oppenheimer actually makes reference in his

732
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:43,520
Speaker 1: chapter to this this possible connection. He says, quote in Egypt,

733
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:47,360
Speaker 1: depending on which it's eruption chronology you adhere to, the

734
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 1: time of the eruption coincided with the end of the

735
00:43:50,160 --> 00:43:53,840
Speaker 1: Second Intermediate Period and the rise of the brothers Commos

736
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 1: and Amos, who founded the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom. Meanwhile,

737
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:02,719
Speaker 1: in Mesopotamia, the Old Babylonian period was nearing its terminus

738
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:09,760
Speaker 1: with the hit Heights Sack of Babylon dated circa b C. Unfortunately,

739
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:14,000
Speaker 1: there are virtually no surviving historical texts from the period.

740
00:44:14,400 --> 00:44:16,239
Speaker 1: And here's where we get to the really relevant part.

741
00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 1: It has been suggested that hieroglyphs on a steela erected

742
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 1: by almost in the Karnak Temple bear witness to the

743
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:28,360
Speaker 1: Manuan eruptions climatic consequences in the guise of a great

744
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:32,919
Speaker 1: storm accompanied by flooding and destruction. But it seems more

745
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 1: likely the events recorded referred to severe monsoonal flooding in

746
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:40,719
Speaker 1: the Nile, as still occurs from time to time. So

747
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:43,560
Speaker 1: at the time Oppenheimer published this in two thousand eleven,

748
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:47,960
Speaker 1: he thought it unlikely that the Tempest steela was referring

749
00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: to the Manoan eruption because, first of all, it could

750
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:55,120
Speaker 1: have the steela could have other plausible interpretations, like some

751
00:44:55,200 --> 00:44:59,360
Speaker 1: of the interpretations we've talked about already. And also the dates,

752
00:44:59,440 --> 00:45:03,240
Speaker 1: though close, don't exactly line up right. Yeah, and again,

753
00:45:03,320 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 1: like you said, the Nile floods, it will it will

754
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: flood it will sink back down. And this sort of

755
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:14,560
Speaker 1: um fluctuation is in a crucial part of the Egyptian

756
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:17,279
Speaker 1: worldview and the way that they saw the world and

757
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:21,879
Speaker 1: the way that they formed their various interpretations of the gods. Right.

758
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:24,880
Speaker 1: But anyway, back to what originally got me interested in

759
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:27,200
Speaker 1: doing this episode was this paper that was published in

760
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 1: that um certainly does not make a conclusive case, but

761
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:35,920
Speaker 1: maybe makes the mind no interruption interpretation of the Tempes

762
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 1: Stela more plausible. And so this is a paper published

763
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 1: by Robert K. Rittner and Nadine muller Uh published in

764
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 1: the Journal of Near Eastern Studies called the Almost Tempest

765
00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 1: Stela Theory and Comparative Chronology. Now, just to quickly refresh

766
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 1: on the apocalyptic climatic lines from the Steela inscription, at

767
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:02,240
Speaker 1: least the translation we at earlier. It talks about quote

768
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 1: the gods caused the sky to come in a tempest

769
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 1: of rain, with darkness in the western region, and the

770
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:12,200
Speaker 1: sky being unleashed without cessation, louder than the cries of

771
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:17,240
Speaker 1: the masses, more powerful than something, while the rain raged

772
00:46:17,360 --> 00:46:20,160
Speaker 1: on the mountains, louder than the noise of the cataract,

773
00:46:20,200 --> 00:46:23,920
Speaker 1: which is at Elephantine, every house, every quarter that they

774
00:46:23,960 --> 00:46:27,800
Speaker 1: reached floating on the water like skiffs of papyrus opposite

775
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: the royal residence for a period of days while a

776
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:35,160
Speaker 1: torch could not be lit in the two lands. Now,

777
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 1: so so we've talked about the the sort of classic

778
00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:41,920
Speaker 1: or regular interpretations of what's being described here. Maybe this

779
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:47,120
Speaker 1: is describing real weather like events that were and it

780
00:46:47,360 --> 00:46:53,120
Speaker 1: maybe like a particularly bad monsoon season, you know, really

781
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 1: intense nile flooding season one summer or maybe these this

782
00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:01,640
Speaker 1: is a fictional account. Maybe it's somehow metaphorical as a

783
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:05,680
Speaker 1: statement about military invasions or movements of people. Yeah, and

784
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 1: and and it is also worth reminding ourselves that what

785
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:11,959
Speaker 1: we we see here, what has survived, Like, there's nothing

786
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:14,279
Speaker 1: in this account that couldn't have been said about just

787
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:18,680
Speaker 1: a really intense storm that was related to you know,

788
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:21,719
Speaker 1: to say, the monsoon, uh season or something you know,

789
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:24,279
Speaker 1: to that effect. You know that it's just it rained

790
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:26,800
Speaker 1: a whole lot. The sky was dark, the sky darkness

791
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:31,600
Speaker 1: when there are heavy storms and uh, and then flooding occurred. Um,

792
00:47:31,719 --> 00:47:35,560
Speaker 1: so you you don't need the volcano to explain what

793
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:39,320
Speaker 1: we're what we're reading here though if there were a

794
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 1: volcanic eruption, it's very possible that it could It could

795
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:46,920
Speaker 1: create this kind of intense weather that is being described.

796
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 1: Volcanic eruptions inject gases and ash particles way up into

797
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:55,880
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, which in some cases can cause extreme heavy rains, lightning, storms,

798
00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:58,440
Speaker 1: and things like that in the area surrounding the eruption,

799
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:00,799
Speaker 1: And of course we know the on on an even

800
00:48:00,840 --> 00:48:04,160
Speaker 1: broader scale. Big eruptions can have these huge climatic effects

801
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:07,080
Speaker 1: that can infect an entire hemisphere of the globe, like

802
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:11,520
Speaker 1: they bring cool summers, bad harvests and famine, etcetera. But

803
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 1: like we've said, you can have even earthquakes, you can

804
00:48:14,160 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 1: have dark skies, thunderstorms and flooding in Egypt without it

805
00:48:17,560 --> 00:48:21,880
Speaker 1: necessarily being the result of a volcano so wider. Writtener

806
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:25,359
Speaker 1: and Mueller further suggest the link in this paper. Just

807
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:28,319
Speaker 1: to briefly mention a few points. One thing is that

808
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:32,280
Speaker 1: this paper offers a new revised translation of the Steela,

809
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 1: which they argue, for one thing, makes it pretty clear

810
00:48:35,080 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 1: that the events described are not supposed to be some

811
00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:42,080
Speaker 1: kind of military or political metaphor. They really seem to

812
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:47,359
Speaker 1: be describing literal weather events, and these events are said

813
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:51,759
Speaker 1: to have been personally witnessed by almost himself. Another thing

814
00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:56,080
Speaker 1: is just some complicated interlocking date stuff like it looks

815
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:59,480
Speaker 1: like if you date the tempest Steela and the reign

816
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:04,440
Speaker 1: of something like fifty years earlier than the traditional uh

817
00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 1: Pharoah chronology, does that puts it closer to the date

818
00:49:09,200 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 1: for the theory eruption, at least the date that would

819
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:14,799
Speaker 1: be implied by the more recent radiocarbon dating. And we've

820
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:19,040
Speaker 1: discussed already the reasons that the theory eruption as different dates.

821
00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:22,640
Speaker 1: But you remember the olive branch and the radiocarbon dating

822
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:25,920
Speaker 1: putting it closer to like the late sixteen hundreds b

823
00:49:26,040 --> 00:49:30,040
Speaker 1: c uh. If you do that, allegedly, some other discrepancies

824
00:49:30,040 --> 00:49:33,600
Speaker 1: and discontinuities about dates in ancient regional history would at

825
00:49:33,680 --> 00:49:38,560
Speaker 1: least be partially resolved. Another interesting argument I came across

826
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:42,279
Speaker 1: was actually a point raised by a different professor, a

827
00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 1: University of Chicago archaeologist named David Schloan, which I saw

828
00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:50,200
Speaker 1: quoted in some news articles covering this paper. And this

829
00:49:50,360 --> 00:49:53,919
Speaker 1: was that if this link is true, it would make

830
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:57,440
Speaker 1: almost as military victories over the hicks Os make even

831
00:49:57,480 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 1: more sense. We know that the theory eruption caused catastrophic

832
00:50:02,520 --> 00:50:06,120
Speaker 1: tsunamis that affected places like the coast of Crete. If

833
00:50:06,120 --> 00:50:09,719
Speaker 1: these tsunamis also struck the coast of Egypt along the

834
00:50:09,840 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 1: Nile Delta, this potentially could have devastated Hickso supports and

835
00:50:14,160 --> 00:50:18,359
Speaker 1: weakened the Hicksos greatly by crushing their coastal settlements and

836
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:21,279
Speaker 1: crushing their ships and their sea power, which in turn

837
00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 1: would have weakened them, making it easier for almost to

838
00:50:24,080 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 1: get victory in the conquest of Lower Egypt. So, yeah, what,

839
00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:30,520
Speaker 1: While this is by no means conclusive, I think it

840
00:50:30,560 --> 00:50:35,400
Speaker 1: seems plausible that the phenomena described in the Tempestila could

841
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:38,319
Speaker 1: be the theory eruption and or the weather effects that

842
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 1: followed it, But of course it seems very hard to

843
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:44,040
Speaker 1: be certain about that. But in general, I do really

844
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 1: enjoy things like this, finding new possible connections between natural events,

845
00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:52,719
Speaker 1: geological and climate events, and artifacts from human history that

846
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 1: we didn't really know for sure how to interpret before. Yeah,

847
00:50:56,600 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 1: and and one of those situations to where you you

848
00:50:58,680 --> 00:51:01,759
Speaker 1: can't help but think, like, what is you know, what

849
00:51:01,880 --> 00:51:04,279
Speaker 1: is the closest we could come to being sure about this,

850
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 1: you know, um, and and there's you know, there may

851
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: always be this gap it and then again who knows,

852
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:11,240
Speaker 1: who knows what else might be discovered in the future

853
00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:14,680
Speaker 1: that uh, that could help line things up even better

854
00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:23,200
Speaker 1: than than now. I was poking around about this and

855
00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:26,279
Speaker 1: I figured it might be worth addressing something that I

856
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:29,520
Speaker 1: think is um even with this the study we're talking

857
00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:32,000
Speaker 1: about now, like we said, as far from conclusive, but

858
00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 1: it's like it makes some interesting arguments. There's some stuff

859
00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:39,359
Speaker 1: that I think is even more speculative and and goes

860
00:51:39,440 --> 00:51:42,799
Speaker 1: in directions that might be unsurprising if you're familiar with

861
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:47,480
Speaker 1: you know, popular writing in this subject matter, UM, which

862
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:51,000
Speaker 1: is links to biblical interpretation, as some people who take

863
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:55,000
Speaker 1: the Biblical stories of like the Exodus and surrounding events

864
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: as literal history have apparently tried to connect the events

865
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:03,920
Speaker 1: described the storm Steel as evidence that, for example, the

866
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:08,279
Speaker 1: plague of darkness described in the Bible actually literally happened

867
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:12,120
Speaker 1: in Egypt. UM. And I would just say, from my

868
00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:15,640
Speaker 1: point of view, this type of reading of religious texts

869
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:18,839
Speaker 1: seems kind of misguided in several ways, but I guess

870
00:52:18,840 --> 00:52:21,719
Speaker 1: it is not surprising. Yeah, and again We touched on

871
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:26,480
Speaker 1: a little bit already about this about the Hebrew Hicksos correlation.

872
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:29,680
Speaker 1: As I've seen it referred to. It's it's one of

873
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:32,840
Speaker 1: the usual suspects I've seen it referred to as in

874
00:52:32,920 --> 00:52:35,799
Speaker 1: attempts to establish an historic record for the great antiquity

875
00:52:35,840 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: of the Jewish people. And again, people have been writing

876
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:41,920
Speaker 1: about this possible connection for literally ages. Yeah, yeah, totally.

877
00:52:41,960 --> 00:52:45,080
Speaker 1: I mean as even before this new study. But for example,

878
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 1: it is not surprising that people would like take one

879
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:50,439
Speaker 1: of these studies and run with it and say, like, hey,

880
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:53,759
Speaker 1: proof of the Bible or something. I was just I

881
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:56,520
Speaker 1: didn't go deep on this, but for example, I found

882
00:52:56,520 --> 00:52:59,319
Speaker 1: an article by it was like a blog post on

883
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:01,920
Speaker 1: the Times of is Real by this guy named Simcha

884
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:07,160
Speaker 1: jacobo Vici, uh, saying essentially that you know, this is

885
00:53:07,200 --> 00:53:10,480
Speaker 1: somehow proof of the historicity of of the Exodus or

886
00:53:10,480 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 1: the biblical plagues. I think it goes without saying that

887
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:16,560
Speaker 1: this is not what the authors of the study or alleging. Yeah,

888
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:21,680
Speaker 1: this Jacobovici argument. Uh. This was referenced in a really

889
00:53:21,719 --> 00:53:25,080
Speaker 1: interesting blog post that I read from George Athos, who

890
00:53:25,120 --> 00:53:28,799
Speaker 1: teaches that More Theological College in Sydney, Australia, and an

891
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:33,160
Speaker 1: Athos points out that traditionally the the steela was interpreted

892
00:53:33,200 --> 00:53:35,719
Speaker 1: as either the description of a localized natural disaster or

893
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:37,839
Speaker 1: is the metaphor for the oppression of the Egyptians at

894
00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:40,640
Speaker 1: the hand of the hands of the the Hicksos rulers.

895
00:53:41,120 --> 00:53:44,759
Speaker 1: And he discusses uh, written Er and Mohler, but he

896
00:53:44,840 --> 00:53:50,120
Speaker 1: also talks about this Jacobovici argument. Now, Jacobovici is an

897
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:53,360
Speaker 1: Israeli Canadian filmmaker who busts out a lot of work

898
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:57,520
Speaker 1: on archaeological evidence for biblical events. Uh, work that often

899
00:53:57,520 --> 00:54:01,480
Speaker 1: clashes with accepted interpretations. So he's been all up on

900
00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:04,640
Speaker 1: the History Channel for example. Of course, Uh, this is

901
00:54:04,680 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 1: what Athens says, writes quote. Jacobovici asserts that this new

902
00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:13,600
Speaker 1: interpretation proves the Biblical Exodus because the natural disaster in

903
00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:17,080
Speaker 1: the tempest Stela describes matches up with the plague of

904
00:54:17,160 --> 00:54:21,719
Speaker 1: darkness described in the Exodus narrative. Jacobovici claimed back in

905
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:24,439
Speaker 1: two thousand and six that this stela was a key

906
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:28,000
Speaker 1: piece of evidence for finding the Exodus in the archaeological

907
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:30,880
Speaker 1: records of Egypt, and now he says, here is the

908
00:54:30,920 --> 00:54:33,920
Speaker 1: final proof now Athis goes on to say, no, in

909
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:37,000
Speaker 1: his opinion, there is no direct connection to be made here,

910
00:54:37,040 --> 00:54:39,600
Speaker 1: no matter how much he himself would like to see

911
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:42,640
Speaker 1: such firm connection. He's very uh. You know, he mentions

912
00:54:42,680 --> 00:54:44,680
Speaker 1: this several times, like he says, you know, I would

913
00:54:44,680 --> 00:54:46,880
Speaker 1: love to see this proven true. I would love to

914
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:49,360
Speaker 1: find this connection, you know, but this is not it.

915
00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:52,759
Speaker 1: We can't jump to conclusions and and you know announced

916
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 1: that it is that is done, you know. And he

917
00:54:55,200 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 1: presents several reasons why. First of all, uh, he said

918
00:54:58,880 --> 00:55:01,320
Speaker 1: this connection was not made by written Er and Moehler

919
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:04,560
Speaker 1: in their work. Also the Tempest, Steeler makes no mention

920
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:07,440
Speaker 1: of slaves, he Brews, or anything else that matches up

921
00:55:07,440 --> 00:55:11,600
Speaker 1: with Exodus. Also, Amos described it as something greater than

922
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:13,840
Speaker 1: the work of a god, not the work of a god.

923
00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:17,399
Speaker 1: Written or in Moelar stress that the emphasis is not

924
00:55:17,640 --> 00:55:21,680
Speaker 1: the darkness, but rather the abnormally harsh rain storm. Darkness

925
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:24,480
Speaker 1: is secondary to the rain. Uh. You know, think back

926
00:55:24,520 --> 00:55:26,319
Speaker 1: to what we read earlier, or even go back and

927
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:30,200
Speaker 1: listen to it where they're like, it rained crazy and

928
00:55:30,239 --> 00:55:32,040
Speaker 1: it was dark. It wasn't like and then there was

929
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:34,920
Speaker 1: darkness and also it was raining and then he writes,

930
00:55:35,440 --> 00:55:38,880
Speaker 1: jacobo Vici makes a direct link between the Hicks sos

931
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:41,680
Speaker 1: and the Israelite slaves of the Exodus narrative. He is

932
00:55:41,719 --> 00:55:43,840
Speaker 1: not the first to make this link, but it creates

933
00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 1: a series of other problems. For example, the Hicks has

934
00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:49,920
Speaker 1: ruled a portion of Egypt which contradicts the Exodus narrative

935
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:53,239
Speaker 1: and states the Israelites were slaves, not rulers. They are

936
00:55:53,239 --> 00:55:58,160
Speaker 1: also chronological difficulties, including seeming clashes with the archaeological record

937
00:55:58,440 --> 00:56:02,200
Speaker 1: of a settlement into came In. And then finally, Jacobovicci

938
00:56:02,280 --> 00:56:05,280
Speaker 1: apparently plays fast and loose with the term proof. According

939
00:56:05,640 --> 00:56:07,799
Speaker 1: to Avis, yeah, and that seems like one of the

940
00:56:07,800 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 1: biggest things obviously. I mean, as soon as you're saying

941
00:56:10,680 --> 00:56:13,880
Speaker 1: like proof, you're you're really setting a bar for yourself

942
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:16,960
Speaker 1: that you're almost never going to clear. Yeah. So, so

943
00:56:17,120 --> 00:56:19,359
Speaker 1: ath this finishes up by saying, quote, I'll be glad

944
00:56:19,400 --> 00:56:21,480
Speaker 1: of the day when we do find evidence for the

945
00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:24,560
Speaker 1: Exodus outside the Bible, but today is not that day.

946
00:56:24,800 --> 00:56:26,759
Speaker 1: So I thought that that was a rather interesting take

947
00:56:26,800 --> 00:56:29,480
Speaker 1: on it, you know, um uh, you know, again, somebody

948
00:56:29,760 --> 00:56:31,840
Speaker 1: coming from the point of view where they're not just

949
00:56:31,880 --> 00:56:35,480
Speaker 1: saying like, I'm here to to disprove all um, you know,

950
00:56:35,520 --> 00:56:38,120
Speaker 1: bits of legend and mythology. I'm here to disprove the Bible.

951
00:56:38,200 --> 00:56:39,560
Speaker 1: And he's saying, you know, I would I would love

952
00:56:39,600 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 1: for this to be proven true. And he really seems

953
00:56:42,160 --> 00:56:44,200
Speaker 1: to write from a standpoint where it sounds like he

954
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:48,520
Speaker 1: his faith is in that, that in the reality of it.

955
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:50,640
Speaker 1: But he was saying, you know, this is not the

956
00:56:50,640 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 1: proof you're looking for. This is not you know, we

957
00:56:53,080 --> 00:56:56,040
Speaker 1: cannot say that the job is done and that we

958
00:56:56,120 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 1: can you know that that it has been proven to

959
00:56:58,080 --> 00:57:01,440
Speaker 1: have existed via archaeological evidence. Yeah, don't, don't get sucked

960
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:05,120
Speaker 1: in by the checkmate mentality. Yeah, now, of course, you know,

961
00:57:05,239 --> 00:57:09,239
Speaker 1: could the Steeler refer to a cataclysm that remembered by

962
00:57:09,320 --> 00:57:13,000
Speaker 1: various people ends up influencing lighter tales and traditions, Uh,

963
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:15,520
Speaker 1: you know, of course, But that is a far cry

964
00:57:15,600 --> 00:57:19,040
Speaker 1: from a direct connection, you know. Right. Yeah, I'm finally

965
00:57:19,040 --> 00:57:21,120
Speaker 1: scrolling down and getting to see the blue monkeys. I

966
00:57:21,120 --> 00:57:23,520
Speaker 1: think maybe sometimes we should just come back and and

967
00:57:23,680 --> 00:57:26,000
Speaker 1: look more at the paintings of a criteria. They are

968
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:30,640
Speaker 1: weird and beautiful, like there are I don't know, I

969
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:36,400
Speaker 1: love the artistic style of them that give living beings

970
00:57:36,440 --> 00:57:42,120
Speaker 1: these strange curves, like they are these very elongated s

971
00:57:42,120 --> 00:57:45,120
Speaker 1: shaped gazelles that look almost like something out of a

972
00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:48,960
Speaker 1: I don't know, abstract or uh, I don't know what

973
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:50,880
Speaker 1: the term would be. I'm not good at my art history,

974
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:54,800
Speaker 1: the impressionist or something like. They're clearly representative, they are gazelles,

975
00:57:55,240 --> 00:58:00,000
Speaker 1: but they have these ridiculously elongated, sort of tubular curve

976
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:04,000
Speaker 1: irved bodies and also like humans, Like there's an image

977
00:58:04,000 --> 00:58:06,400
Speaker 1: of these these two guys that look like they're boxing

978
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:11,560
Speaker 1: each other but with these sort of curved s shaped torsos. Yeah, yeah,

979
00:58:11,560 --> 00:58:14,480
Speaker 1: it's um, it's fascinating to look at some of these images.

980
00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:16,080
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the blue monkeys right now that you

981
00:58:16,200 --> 00:58:19,480
Speaker 1: referenced earlier, and um, I mean, aside from looking very

982
00:58:19,520 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 1: much like monkeys, there's a fluidity to the way that

983
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:25,720
Speaker 1: their their bodies are illustrated here. You know that that

984
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:29,440
Speaker 1: certainly matches up with the actual movements the actual bodies

985
00:58:29,480 --> 00:58:31,120
Speaker 1: of these So you know, this isn't one of those

986
00:58:31,160 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 1: cases as fascinating as I find second and third hand

987
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:38,120
Speaker 1: reproductions of animals in art. You know where somebody's clearly

988
00:58:38,400 --> 00:58:41,600
Speaker 1: painting something based on a description, uh, second or third

989
00:58:41,600 --> 00:58:45,040
Speaker 1: hand description rather than than direct evidence like these these

990
00:58:45,080 --> 00:58:47,920
Speaker 1: seem to capture the essence of these animals as they

991
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:53,080
Speaker 1: are alive, perhaps even in the wild. Yeah, yeah, though exactly.

992
00:58:53,120 --> 00:58:55,400
Speaker 1: One of the questions that comes up as I was

993
00:58:55,440 --> 00:58:59,400
Speaker 1: reading this weird back and forth in the journal Primates,

994
00:58:59,480 --> 00:59:01,600
Speaker 1: or at least the again in the Journal Primates by

995
00:59:01,600 --> 00:59:06,160
Speaker 1: people arguing about what species the monkeys depicted in this

996
00:59:06,280 --> 00:59:09,920
Speaker 1: painting are supposed to be. And so there was a

997
00:59:10,040 --> 00:59:13,960
Speaker 1: paper and I think twenty nineteen saying, uh, they're actually

998
00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:17,640
Speaker 1: these monkeys from India, and then there was a reply saying, no,

999
00:59:17,880 --> 00:59:20,480
Speaker 1: there are these monkeys from Africa, and then there was

1000
00:59:20,520 --> 00:59:23,320
Speaker 1: another reply. But basically it came down to the question

1001
00:59:23,360 --> 00:59:27,440
Speaker 1: of were the people painting these monkeys painting a monkey

1002
00:59:27,560 --> 00:59:30,640
Speaker 1: that they had seen alive or were they painting a

1003
00:59:30,640 --> 00:59:33,920
Speaker 1: monkey as it had been portrayed in other art that

1004
00:59:33,960 --> 00:59:37,080
Speaker 1: they had seen. Oh that's true too, this is this

1005
00:59:37,120 --> 00:59:39,640
Speaker 1: could be yeah, that situation as well. Like, you know,

1006
00:59:39,840 --> 00:59:43,200
Speaker 1: they have this fluidity to their formed and they've caught

1007
00:59:43,200 --> 00:59:46,480
Speaker 1: in several poses that feel very appropriate and realistic for monkeys.

1008
00:59:46,640 --> 00:59:48,479
Speaker 1: But they could have been basing this on another work

1009
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:52,120
Speaker 1: that that someone else had done for sure. Yeah. Interesting,

1010
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 1: we'll have to come back to that. It is a

1011
00:59:53,640 --> 00:59:55,800
Speaker 1: whole mess of monkeys, though they look like they're up

1012
00:59:55,800 --> 00:59:58,960
Speaker 1: to no good there, there is also a sense of

1013
00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:01,640
Speaker 1: barrel of monkeys too it, you know, like I don't

1014
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:04,280
Speaker 1: want to to to reduce them to that, but there

1015
01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:06,440
Speaker 1: is kind of like a bunch of blue monkeys spilled

1016
01:00:06,480 --> 01:00:09,280
Speaker 1: on some tiles, you know. Um, because the barrel of

1017
01:00:09,320 --> 01:00:11,920
Speaker 1: monkeys are good representations of the fluidity of the monkey's

1018
01:00:12,040 --> 01:00:15,560
Speaker 1: form and movement as well, I think maybe we need

1019
01:00:15,640 --> 01:00:17,800
Speaker 1: to call it all right, Well, we're gonna go ahead

1020
01:00:17,800 --> 01:00:21,280
Speaker 1: and uh and and finish this uh steva right now

1021
01:00:21,360 --> 01:00:23,640
Speaker 1: and go ahead and uh and and and and put

1022
01:00:23,680 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 1: it into the archives. But we'd love for anybody out

1023
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:28,000
Speaker 1: there to uh touch base with us on this. Have

1024
01:00:28,080 --> 01:00:31,120
Speaker 1: you have you seen any of the places that we have,

1025
01:00:31,600 --> 01:00:33,840
Speaker 1: if you visited any of the places that we discussed here,

1026
01:00:34,000 --> 01:00:36,600
Speaker 1: do you have any thoughts on you know, the connections

1027
01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:42,000
Speaker 1: possible connections between the tempest Stela and uh and you

1028
01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:46,200
Speaker 1: know the the catacausmic eruptions and uh and and stories

1029
01:00:46,240 --> 01:00:49,840
Speaker 1: of of of of legend and mythology. Let us know

1030
01:00:49,960 --> 01:00:51,959
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. There are all kinds

1031
01:00:51,960 --> 01:00:54,520
Speaker 1: of other interesting effects of the minor interruption that people

1032
01:00:54,520 --> 01:00:57,200
Speaker 1: have done studies on all over the place about how

1033
01:00:57,240 --> 01:01:00,680
Speaker 1: they affected, how it affected civilizations, and and marks it

1034
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:03,600
Speaker 1: left on the planet. So yeah, if you've got anything

1035
01:01:03,640 --> 01:01:05,840
Speaker 1: interesting along those lines to share with us, please do

1036
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:08,400
Speaker 1: all right. In the meantime, if you want more stuff

1037
01:01:08,400 --> 01:01:09,720
Speaker 1: to blow your mind, you know where to find it.

1038
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:12,600
Speaker 1: The Stuff to Blow your Mind feed We have normal,

1039
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:14,800
Speaker 1: regular core episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind on

1040
01:01:14,800 --> 01:01:18,800
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursday's Little Listener Mail on Monday's Wednesday is

1041
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:21,920
Speaker 1: the short form artifact episode that we mentioned earlier, you know,

1042
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:25,640
Speaker 1: a little little uh you know, specific things, specific, specific

1043
01:01:25,720 --> 01:01:28,920
Speaker 1: moments in time, uh, specific ideas, that sort of thing.

1044
01:01:29,280 --> 01:01:32,120
Speaker 1: And then on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema, which

1045
01:01:32,200 --> 01:01:36,000
Speaker 1: is uh our less science e installment, our chance to

1046
01:01:36,040 --> 01:01:39,120
Speaker 1: just focus on a particular weird film and chat about it.

1047
01:01:39,720 --> 01:01:42,920
Speaker 1: Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth

1048
01:01:43,040 --> 01:01:45,560
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

1049
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:47,840
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other

1050
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:50,840
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future or just to say hello.

1051
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:53,720
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1052
01:01:53,760 --> 01:02:03,640
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1053
01:02:03,680 --> 01:02:06,400
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my

1054
01:02:06,440 --> 01:02:09,360
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

1055
01:02:09,440 --> 01:02:15,120
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.