Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a Vault episode. This one originally aired on
Speaker 1: January and it is about a fascinating artifact from ancient
Speaker 1: Egypt and how it may interact with climate and geological history. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is This is a really fun one because of
Speaker 1: course it concerns ancient Egypt. It concerns you know, attempts
Speaker 1: to understand what what ancient people were thinking about and
Speaker 1: and ultimately writing about. And it also gets to the
Speaker 1: sort of the heart of like what is what is
Speaker 1: a written um account of the past four what purpose
Speaker 1: does it serve to those who who are in charge
Speaker 1: of the inscriptions. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: the production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: an artifact. This is actually a topic that I was
Speaker 1: originally reading about thinking about doing one of our new
Speaker 1: short form episodes, the Artifact about but it kind of
Speaker 1: ballooned in my mind and kept picking up. Weird little
Speaker 1: tangents here and there, and I realized it was much
Speaker 1: too big of a subject just to be like a
Speaker 1: five to ten minute episode. So so now we're talking
Speaker 1: about this today, and the subject is an artifact from
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt known as the Almost Steela or the Tempest Steela.
Speaker 1: And I already apologize because I know at some point
Speaker 1: in this episode, I'm going to forget to pronounce steel
Speaker 1: a with a long E and I'm gonna start saying stella.
Speaker 1: It's that word, you know, it's st e l A
Speaker 1: or st e l e, which I can never get
Speaker 1: the get the sounds right in my brain. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we were rehearsing it before the episode. It's steel a
Speaker 1: as in steel uh, Steely Dan album from the records,
Speaker 1: or uh, and there's some kind of uh. There's some
Speaker 1: kind of other word that's also steel or steely ste
Speaker 1: l e, which I can't figure out if it's totally
Speaker 1: interchangeable with Steela or just mostly interchangeable. Anyway, we're not
Speaker 1: gonna deal with that in this episode because we're only
Speaker 1: concerned with one primary Steela here, and it's this almost
Speaker 1: Steela or Tempest Steela. So this artifact is at its
Speaker 1: heart a big stone block. It is a slab. It
Speaker 1: is a big slab made of calcite that's currently in
Speaker 1: multiple fragments. I think there are at least three major
Speaker 1: fragments um and they were recovered from the temple complex
Speaker 1: of Karnak, which is in the ancient Egyptian city of
Speaker 1: Thebes near the modern Upper Egypt city of lux Or.
Speaker 1: And this artifact was recovered by archaeologists I think in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties or early nineteen fifties. Uh. Karnak,
Speaker 1: of course, is this big, beautiful temple complex. You may
Speaker 1: have seen it represented digitally and like Transformers movies where
Speaker 1: they're big robots slugging around there, or as an actual
Speaker 1: shooting location in the Spy Who Loved Me? Did the
Speaker 1: Transformers really battle here? I think they did at some
Speaker 1: point the transform It's part of the the raison dettor
Speaker 1: of of Transformers to eventually just slam through and demolish
Speaker 1: every work of human kind, like all artifacts and landscapes
Speaker 1: must be ground into sand by the Transformers until only
Speaker 1: Transformers remain. Right, just a barren, featureless earth that's completely smooth,
Speaker 1: but with Transformers with with mac trucks and jeeps, and stuff.
Speaker 1: But anyway, what's the deal with this slab, the tempestila.
Speaker 1: It originally stood about one point eight meters talls about
Speaker 1: six ft tall, and it bears an inscription text that
Speaker 1: was copied on both sides and these horizontal lines. But
Speaker 1: it also has some imagery at the top. So two
Speaker 1: quote from one of the papers that we're going to
Speaker 1: be referencing today. I think that this description comes from
Speaker 1: this first paper that was published by Karen poland your Foster,
Speaker 1: Robert K. Rittner, and Benjamin R. Foster in the Journal
Speaker 1: of Near Eastern Studies in nineteen quote above. The horizontal
Speaker 1: body of each text is a lunette with two addorsed
Speaker 1: scenes and brief vertical labels. Unlike the parallel text, the
Speaker 1: two lunette labels display minor variation in wording. Both faces
Speaker 1: preserve dual scenes of the king followed by a female
Speaker 1: deity of fecundity carrying offering trays. And these trays have
Speaker 1: like fruits and vegetables on them. So you've got this
Speaker 1: big old text that's on both sides and the image
Speaker 1: of a king and a lady who represents fertility, uh
Speaker 1: carrying up some nice food stuffs, fruits and vegetables, nice
Speaker 1: plant matter, and so here I think maybe we should
Speaker 1: actually just read the full text of the Tempest Steela
Speaker 1: because it's not all that long. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: something that I personally really love. Maybe maybe other people
Speaker 1: aren't as interested in it as I am, but it
Speaker 1: just reading the text of of texts that are this old,
Speaker 1: like these ancient Egyptian inscriptions, really does kind of put
Speaker 1: me in an altered state of consciousness. You know. It's like, uh,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm inhabiting a mind that is so
Speaker 1: separated from me by time and culture that it's a
Speaker 1: little bit creepy. Yeah, I mean to to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: That's that's exactly what's happening, right, the transfer of information
Speaker 1: across the ages. Yeah. And and there's this like weird
Speaker 1: tangling down at the bottom of my brain where I
Speaker 1: just feel like there's a lot that's really important that
Speaker 1: I'm not understanding, but I'm getting just the slightest hint
Speaker 1: of what it is coming through in the translation. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the tangler, you got that, that's the Offensive Price movie. Well,
Speaker 1: but I know what you're talking about with this, Okay.
Speaker 1: This English translation is by the American egyptologist Robert K. Rittener,
Speaker 1: who is the one of the authors on a couple
Speaker 1: of studies that we're going to be mentioning today. Now again,
Speaker 1: the steel A text is damaged, so there are some gaps,
Speaker 1: and some of these have been filled in with what
Speaker 1: is very likely what their contents were. So there's just
Speaker 1: some texts that we don't have, but we feel very confident,
Speaker 1: you know, this is what it would have been. And
Speaker 1: other parts are just left blank where there's less certainty.
Speaker 1: And I guess when we get to one of those
Speaker 1: blank spots will just sort of pause for a second
Speaker 1: in the reading. So here it goes. Long Live the Horace,
Speaker 1: great of manifestations, He of the two Ladies, pleasing of birth,
Speaker 1: the golden Horace who binds the two lands. King of
Speaker 1: the Upper and Lower Egypt, neb feti Ra, son of Raw,
Speaker 1: almost living forever now. Then his Majesty came Raw himself
Speaker 1: had appointed him to be king of Upper Egypt. Then
Speaker 1: his Majesty dwelt at the town of said Yefa Tawi
Speaker 1: in the district just to the south of Dendera. While
Speaker 1: aman Ra, lord of the thrones of the two Lands,
Speaker 1: was in the It was his Majesty who sailed south
Speaker 1: to offer bread, beer, and everything good and pure. Now,
Speaker 1: after the offering, then attention was given in this district. Now,
Speaker 1: then the cold image of this God at his body
Speaker 1: was installed in this temple while he was in joy. Now,
Speaker 1: then this great God desired his majesty, while the gods
Speaker 1: declared their discontent. The gods caused the sky to come
Speaker 1: in a tempest of rain, with darkness in the western region,
Speaker 1: and the sky being unleashed without cessation, louder than the
Speaker 1: cries of the masses, more powerful than while the rain
Speaker 1: raged on the mountains, louder than the noise of the cataract,
Speaker 1: which is at Elephantine, every house, every quarter that they reached,
Speaker 1: floating on the water like skiffs of papyrus opposite the
Speaker 1: royal residence, for a period of days, while a torch
Speaker 1: could not be lit in the two lands. Then his
Speaker 1: Majesty said, how much greater this is than the wrath
Speaker 1: of the Great God, than the plans of the gods.
Speaker 1: Then his Majesty descended to his boat, with his counsel
Speaker 1: following him. While the crowds on the east and west
Speaker 1: had hidden faces, having no clothing on them after the
Speaker 1: manifestation of the god's wrath. Then his Majesty reached the
Speaker 1: interior of thebes with gold confronting gold for this statue,
Speaker 1: so that he, meaning amun Rah, received that which he desired.
Speaker 1: Then his Majesty began to re establish the two lands
Speaker 1: to drain the flooded territories without his to provide them
Speaker 1: with silver, with gold, with copper, with oil, and cloth
Speaker 1: of every bolt that could be desired. Then his Majesty
Speaker 1: made himself comfortable inside the palace life, prosperity, health. Then
Speaker 1: his Majesty was informed that the mortuary concessions had been
Speaker 1: into by water, with the tomb chambers collapsed, the funerary
Speaker 1: mentions undermined, and the pyramids fallen, having been made into
Speaker 1: that which was never made. Then his Majesty commanded to
Speaker 1: restore the temples which had fallen into ruin in this
Speaker 1: entire land, to refurbish the monuments of the gods, to
Speaker 1: erect their enclosure walls, to provide the sacred objects in
Speaker 1: the noble chamber, to mask the secret places, to introduce
Speaker 1: into their shrines the cult statues which were cast to
Speaker 1: the ground, to set up the braziers, to erect the
Speaker 1: offering tables, to establish their bread offerings, to double the
Speaker 1: income of the personnel, to put the land into its
Speaker 1: former state. Then it was done in accordance with everything
Speaker 1: that His Majesty had commanded. Oh so there are some
Speaker 1: parts of that that really give me chills. The basic
Speaker 1: outline of it being that it introduces this great king,
Speaker 1: the Great Alma those who rises up and he answers
Speaker 1: this problem of there's some kind of calamity being described.
Speaker 1: There are rains and a tempest coming out of the sky,
Speaker 1: with darkness in the western region, thundering in the sky,
Speaker 1: the sky being unleashed without cessation, louder than the cries
Speaker 1: of the masses. There's appear apparently some kind of flooding
Speaker 1: with bodies human bodies floating in the nile like skiffs
Speaker 1: of papyrus and uh, and a torch could not be
Speaker 1: lit in the two lands. But then there is some
Speaker 1: kind of offering made to the gods to fix this problem,
Speaker 1: to make everything right, And it tells us basically that
Speaker 1: almost this guy did a really good job and he
Speaker 1: like got everything fixed and now it's under control. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's uh yeah, So it's so again, it's a
Speaker 1: story of a disaster occurring and then government responding to
Speaker 1: that disaster. But there's some We're not going to take
Speaker 1: everything in that and explain it. I know there's some
Speaker 1: some names and some obvious gods and some kings, but
Speaker 1: just to run through a few things that I think
Speaker 1: are are are important or at least halfway important to
Speaker 1: understanding what's going on here. Um, I want to just
Speaker 1: call it a few things. So, first of all, Horace
Speaker 1: the Horace is the celestial falcon and the embodiment of
Speaker 1: kingship caught in an enduring conflict with Seth. Horace likely
Speaker 1: means the distant one, and there are two distinct versions.
Speaker 1: There's Horace the Elder and Horace the Younger, not to
Speaker 1: be confused with Horace the child. Right, So an important
Speaker 1: god who's associated with the royal lineage of of Egypt
Speaker 1: in this period. Right, and uh Now, one thing that
Speaker 1: this makes reference to that is geographically confusing to modern
Speaker 1: audiences is the concept of upper and lower Egypt, which
Speaker 1: are unless you're familiar with how ancient Egyptians talked about
Speaker 1: their geography, it's the opposite of what you would think, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always worth remembering that the ancient Egyptians saw their
Speaker 1: world uh, a little bit differently than we do today. Um.
Speaker 1: And not to say they saw the world upside down,
Speaker 1: They just saw it from their point of view. Uh.
Speaker 1: So north and south are totally arbitrary, by the way,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as objective north and south. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So with the way they saw it is with the
Speaker 1: Nile delta at the bottom of their kingdom. So Upper
Speaker 1: Egypt is actually somewhat lower on the modern state of
Speaker 1: Egypt that we memorize in school and look at on
Speaker 1: a map. Basically the in the area of Thebes, Lower
Speaker 1: Egypt is the delta region that entails Memphis. So Lower
Speaker 1: Egypt is to the north and Upper Egypt is to
Speaker 1: the south. Right. Now, what about the sun god Raw? Right,
Speaker 1: there's reference to Raw yeah, Raw, the Sun god, source
Speaker 1: of all light and life. Um, you know. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot more to each of these gods, but this
Speaker 1: is just the short and simple. Now, there's some references
Speaker 1: in here to Amun Raw Yeah. And this, uh, if
Speaker 1: I'm correct on this, this is this is also known
Speaker 1: as Almond. This is the mysterious Creator God and his
Speaker 1: name means the hidden one. Yeah. Now, the main character
Speaker 1: of the almost Stela or the tempest Stela here is
Speaker 1: almost himself, meaning almost the first who was a pharaoh,
Speaker 1: and he's the guy who who does all the fix
Speaker 1: in here. Yeah. He is the founder of the Eighteenth
Speaker 1: dynasty who reigned well one of the day. The dates
Speaker 1: I was looking at, we're fifteen forty nine through fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty four b C. Right, So the dates of his
Speaker 1: reign are actually somewhat disputed, and that will come into
Speaker 1: that will be in some way the subject matter of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today. Though it does appear he
Speaker 1: reigned sometime in the sixteenth century BC, so probably sometime
Speaker 1: between sixteen hundred and fifteen hundred BC. The more conventional
Speaker 1: Egyptology chronology dates put put him in the middle somewhere
Speaker 1: in there, yeah, like a fifteen you know, the middle
Speaker 1: of the century to sometime in the late three quarters. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But either way, he seems to have been a very
Speaker 1: pivotal ruler at a very pivotal time. He was building
Speaker 1: on his father's military harry success and paved the road
Speaker 1: for the new Kingdom and the beginning of an age
Speaker 1: of just Egyptian dominance. UM he reinvigorated and united Egypt.
Speaker 1: And this is key to he completed the expulsion of
Speaker 1: the Hicksos. So at this time Egypt, or part of
Speaker 1: Egypt anyway, were were ruled by these outsiders, these foreigners
Speaker 1: that invaded um perhaps you know, from Palestine or somewhere
Speaker 1: in that region. Uh. In anyway, basically, what Amos did
Speaker 1: is he finished driving them out. He finished a rebellion
Speaker 1: against them that had begun by had been begun by
Speaker 1: his predecessors, and re exerted Egypt's rule over northern Nubia
Speaker 1: to the south. So it'll be important to think about
Speaker 1: all this as we discussed the details of his rule.
Speaker 1: But he was a pharaoh in an age of growth.
Speaker 1: He brought about a new kingdom, a conquest king. He
Speaker 1: was like, We're I'm going to conquer the areas to
Speaker 1: the north and the south and bring Egypt together again
Speaker 1: under one rule. Yeah. Now, as for the Hicks, they're
Speaker 1: they're very, very interesting, and people have have written and
Speaker 1: researched regarding them and made various uh hypotheses and theories
Speaker 1: regarding their exact nature. There's a lot of very speculative
Speaker 1: Bible stuff about that. Yeah, yeah, you. You may have
Speaker 1: you're a Bible reader and a Bible student, you may
Speaker 1: have seen them pop up, I'm sure, and like just
Speaker 1: even the notes in a standard Bible. They were the
Speaker 1: foreign Canaanite or Palestinian rulers of Egypt who took power
Speaker 1: during the seventeenth century b c. They ruled lower in
Speaker 1: Middle Egypt and established a capital at a Varis, which
Speaker 1: was associated with the Egyptian god Seth or set or
Speaker 1: su Tech, which was in turn equated with the Palestinian
Speaker 1: god ball Uh. Hicksos called themselves theselves the sons of Raw,
Speaker 1: but one of them actually bore the name of Ra's nemesis, Apopus,
Speaker 1: the great crocodile or snake of Chaos, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, yeah. Um. In Geraldine pinches the
Speaker 1: Egyptian mythology, she points out that the conflict of the
Speaker 1: time seems to have taken on mythological trappings as well
Speaker 1: as their stories related to a quarrel between the followers
Speaker 1: of Horace, the Thebans and the followers of Seth. The Hixos,
Speaker 1: and the words seems to be related to just foreign rulers. Uh.
Speaker 1: I believe it's heckaal Kasuit rulers of foreign lands, and
Speaker 1: Hicksos is derived from this via the Greek. Okay, right,
Speaker 1: so hicksos would not have been what they called themselves
Speaker 1: but a sort of ex and m applied by the
Speaker 1: Egyptians or even maybe later Greek speaking Egyptians. Right. And
Speaker 1: of course this is where it often gets interesting with
Speaker 1: with ancient history, when you're dealing with outsiders, right, because
Speaker 1: the outsiders are defined by those writing the history not
Speaker 1: only in terms of what happened and you know, what transpired,
Speaker 1: but but also like who they were, what were these people? Um?
Speaker 1: And so at times you've had people of historians, I mean,
Speaker 1: and and try and figure it out and and maybe
Speaker 1: come in with a bit of an agenda. Uh. First
Speaker 1: century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus translated this at the time.
Speaker 1: Again this is first century Uh see um as as
Speaker 1: hicksos meaning king shepherds or captive shepherds. And this was
Speaker 1: an attempt to establish historical evidence for the Jewish people
Speaker 1: in ancient Egypt. And this will come up again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are a lot of um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: historical religious apologetics where people try to invoke the Hicksos
Speaker 1: as um somehow being descended from uh, say Joseph, like
Speaker 1: the story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis coming
Speaker 1: to Egypt and serving the pharaoh Um as someone who
Speaker 1: you know, listeners know that I'm a big fan of
Speaker 1: the Bible, especially at you know, I love the books
Speaker 1: of the Torah and all that. So not to denigrate
Speaker 1: the story at all as a as a wonderful uh myth,
Speaker 1: but like, I don't think there's much historical evidence that
Speaker 1: these tales are like actual history that would be linked
Speaker 1: to Egyptian chronolog g. Yeah, I mean, very broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: there seem to be like different levels of it. I
Speaker 1: mean they're there are are There are certainly people who
Speaker 1: look at history and look at things like the hicks
Speaker 1: Sos and try to draw a direct line, uh and
Speaker 1: say like these were the Jewish people, or say I've
Speaker 1: seen it before in Bible notes, for instance, saying well, okay,
Speaker 1: the Hicksos were foreign rulers in Egypt at the time,
Speaker 1: which would have made it possible for someone like Moses
Speaker 1: and outsider to rise up in the ranks enough to
Speaker 1: have the role that he plays in the Exodus story.
Speaker 1: And then you have other people who are like that,
Speaker 1: that that that make kind of a middle ground argument saying, well, okay,
Speaker 1: the the the the Egyptian captivity is um is is
Speaker 1: a myth or or you know, it is a legend,
Speaker 1: but it is based in things that were passed down orally,
Speaker 1: and therefore there could be some connection between these two,
Speaker 1: but the exact threads connecting them are uncertain. So, like
Speaker 1: I said, there a whole there's a whole lot of
Speaker 1: literature out there about, uh, this topic, and to what
Speaker 1: degree there are any connections here. I would just say
Speaker 1: that anything that tries to get too specific in tying
Speaker 1: these things to specific stories in the Bible is probably
Speaker 1: highly speculative. And we'll come back some of this later
Speaker 1: on in the episode. Yeah, but what actually got me
Speaker 1: interested in talking about the Tempest Steela, apart from just
Speaker 1: being a very interesting text to read, is the question
Speaker 1: of is this referring to something that actually happened in
Speaker 1: Egyptian history? All this stuff about you know, the darkness
Speaker 1: and the sky and the and the flooding of the
Speaker 1: Nile and the bodies floating in the water and the
Speaker 1: water entering all these temple complexes, and uh, I'm being
Speaker 1: and the thundering and being unable to light a torch
Speaker 1: in the two lands. What what is all this talking about?
Speaker 1: Um and so this actually ties into a study from
Speaker 1: fourteen actually a couple of studies, the most recent one
Speaker 1: I think was from in the Journal of Near Eastern
Speaker 1: Studies that I was reading about that that made an
Speaker 1: interesting connection between the events described in this text and
Speaker 1: a possible actual geological cause. Or is this text, as
Speaker 1: it's been more traditionally interpreted, referring to either some kind
Speaker 1: of natural event that is more I don't know, a
Speaker 1: more regular and less extreme, or is it referring to
Speaker 1: something in a in a metaphorical sense, or telling a
Speaker 1: kind of fictional narrative to hype up this first ruler
Speaker 1: of the eighteenth dynasty Yea. Some have have have have
Speaker 1: made that argument that that it may be a metaphor
Speaker 1: the storm it felt, they may be a metaphor for
Speaker 1: hickso suppression. Um Ian Shaw writes about this in the
Speaker 1: Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, suggesting that it might have
Speaker 1: served as quote an official explanation for the impoverishment of
Speaker 1: the Theban region and more importantly, ah MOS's role in
Speaker 1: restoring the riches of the Karnak temple and it's God
Speaker 1: in other words, a story to explain why other temple
Speaker 1: riches were sold off to pay for to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: to pay for the Thevens rebellion of the seventeenth dynasty.
Speaker 1: So not to say that there wasn't also a real
Speaker 1: storm of some sort, but that quote, these particular events
Speaker 1: might have been recounted on the Steeler simply in order
Speaker 1: to suit historical religious purposes. Yeah, and that's something that
Speaker 1: we see all throughout ancient history, I think is sort
Speaker 1: of creative re engineering of events and storytelling to make
Speaker 1: certain leaders look good. Yeah. And I mean another thing
Speaker 1: is if this were just describing the flooding, Like the
Speaker 1: flooding is one of the major aspects of the calamity
Speaker 1: described in on this slab. You know, nile flooding is
Speaker 1: a regular occurrence that there's like there's like monsoonal seasonal
Speaker 1: flooding of the Nile that occurs every year to varying degrees,
Speaker 1: And so that that's something to keep in mind as
Speaker 1: we go about this. Yeah, and I think I've mentioned
Speaker 1: before I'd love to come back and just do an
Speaker 1: episode on the Nile and it's flooding because it has
Speaker 1: such an such an intrinsic role in the world view
Speaker 1: of the ancient Egyptians and their entire cosmology. It's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Okay. But so to come into
Speaker 1: this possible or at least the hypothetical geological connection that
Speaker 1: we're exploring today, we need to travel north of Egypt.
Speaker 1: We need to go up into the Mediterranean to a
Speaker 1: place that's now known as Santorini, but has also gone
Speaker 1: by the name of Theora. And now you may have
Speaker 1: seen that spelled th h e r A, and I
Speaker 1: have always said Terra when saying when saying that, but
Speaker 1: it's actually apparently Theora and Theora or Santorini was the
Speaker 1: site of a catastrophic volcanic eruption in the ancient world
Speaker 1: that likely had a really powerful impact act on Bronze
Speaker 1: Age history. Uh. This is also known as the Minoan
Speaker 1: eruption or the eruption at Theora. Now, I actually found
Speaker 1: a really great source on the theory eruption, which was
Speaker 1: a chapter in a book by former show guest Clive Oppenheimer,
Speaker 1: who was on the show with us when we interviewed
Speaker 1: him and Werner Herzog about their documentary Fireball. Clive Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: wrote a book that he published with Cambridge University Press
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven called Eruptions That Shook the World
Speaker 1: that is about volcanic eruptions all throughout the past and
Speaker 1: how they've shaped the course of human events in human evolution,
Speaker 1: human history. So he's going to be one of my
Speaker 1: main sources on on this eruption here. So uh Theora
Speaker 1: or today Santorini is an island, I guess, really a
Speaker 1: group of islands in the south of the Aegean c
Speaker 1: so it's between Greece and Turkey and north of Crete.
Speaker 1: It's one of the southern Nigian islands. And if you
Speaker 1: look at a picture of Santorini taken from above, you
Speaker 1: may immediately be able to guess something about its geological history.
Speaker 1: It's got a kind of scary shape that immediately like
Speaker 1: if you, if you're volcano minded, can kind of make
Speaker 1: your gut sink because part of the island is this
Speaker 1: long C shaped land mass sea as in the letter C,
Speaker 1: like a capital c uh land mass that has steep
Speaker 1: cliffs on the inner wall of the curve of that sea.
Speaker 1: And then smoother tapering shores and slopes on the outside.
Speaker 1: And then opposite the inner curve of that letter C shape,
Speaker 1: there's another large land mass with similar characteristics facing inward.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Oppenheimer mentions that if you look at the
Speaker 1: inward facing cliffs, you can see alternating colors of rock
Speaker 1: strata and yellow, white, and gray and red, and so
Speaker 1: it should be probably kind of obvious what this is.
Speaker 1: This island group is the partially submerged caldera of an
Speaker 1: a scient gigantic volcano that is now half swallowed by
Speaker 1: the ocean. Now, this island, of course is famous to
Speaker 1: geologists and historians of the Bronze Age because this volcano
Speaker 1: was the source of the catastrophic Minoan eruption, which the again,
Speaker 1: the date of this eruption is going to be in
Speaker 1: dispute and part of what we're talking about today, but
Speaker 1: just to you know, be a very broad strokes, think
Speaker 1: roughly in the area of six b C. Now is
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century actually that archaeologists really came to
Speaker 1: recognize the effects that this eruption had had on nearby
Speaker 1: human civilization. And one great example that Oppenheimer highlights is
Speaker 1: the work of an archaeologist named Spirodin Mirinatos who dug
Speaker 1: up parts of what would have been a Minoan ports
Speaker 1: settlement on the southern part of Santorini that is now
Speaker 1: known as Akrotirie. That this name is applied by modern scholars.
Speaker 1: We don't know what the ancient and inhabitants of this
Speaker 1: town would have called it, but this would have been
Speaker 1: a relatively wealthy and well developed town until the volcano
Speaker 1: woke up. We talked actually some last October with Nicoletta
Speaker 1: Momiliano about the Minoan civilization and it's it's palace power
Speaker 1: centers on Crete. Now this this island again would have
Speaker 1: been north of Crete, so away from the real center
Speaker 1: of political power of the Minoan empire. But still it
Speaker 1: was I think part of that civilization and shared in
Speaker 1: its wealth and its trade and its culture. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: in her book In Search of the Labyrinth, the Cultural
Speaker 1: Legacy of Minoan Creede, I mean she she does a
Speaker 1: reference volcanoes several times. Yeah, and Uh, I think volcanoes
Speaker 1: would have been highly relevant to the history of the
Speaker 1: Minoan culture. And eventually the Minoan culture uh declined and
Speaker 1: was superseded and conquered by Mycenaean culture. But this kind
Speaker 1: of eruption would have been unprecedented in local human memory.
Speaker 1: The volcano had been calmed for approximately fifteen thousand years
Speaker 1: beforehand at least and UH, and so this late Bronze
Speaker 1: Age eruption was one of the largest European volcano eruptions
Speaker 1: of the past hundred thousand years. This was a huge,
Speaker 1: highly energetic, highly destructive event. UM. And it's interesting actually
Speaker 1: looking at what's left behind in this particular settlement on Santorini,
Speaker 1: the place now known as Acritiri. And I was reading
Speaker 1: about it a bit in UH. This UH one of
Speaker 1: the first of two papers involving Robert K. Written Er
Speaker 1: that we're going to be looking at today. This was
Speaker 1: the one by Foster, written Er and Foster from nine
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies called Text Storms
Speaker 1: and the Theory Eruption and UH. The authors here they
Speaker 1: talk about how archaeologists uncovered remnants of this ancient village
Speaker 1: on on the southern coast of the island group preserved
Speaker 1: under this thick bed of volcanic ash. And because it
Speaker 1: was an ancient settlement that was preserved under layers of tephra,
Speaker 1: it is similar in some ways to the ruins of
Speaker 1: places like Pompeii and Herculaneum up on the Italian Peninsula,
Speaker 1: which were themselves kind of frozen in time by the
Speaker 1: eruption of Vesuvius in seventy nine. In a similar way,
Speaker 1: we see this settlement frozen in time. It was rapidly
Speaker 1: buried by volcanic ash, and there are lots of artifacts
Speaker 1: and features that were very well preserved, including some extremely
Speaker 1: beautiful original frescoes and paintings that I would really recommend
Speaker 1: looking up. Looking up the paintings from theory Um and
Speaker 1: and the frescoes there. There are some that are these
Speaker 1: large sort of tableaus or landscape scenes that show like
Speaker 1: a port city with boats moving to and fro in
Speaker 1: the background of these colorful, colorful buildings and hills full
Speaker 1: of wild animals and plants. And there was even, for
Speaker 1: a brief tangent, there was even this really interesting mystery
Speaker 1: about the are there that I came across. That was
Speaker 1: one painting at Acritiri showing monkeys, these blue monkeys that
Speaker 1: appear to be similar to a species that would not
Speaker 1: have been native to the Aegean, but would have been
Speaker 1: native either to h to Africa or to India, which
Speaker 1: is I think often taken as a sign of the
Speaker 1: kind of often surprising level of trade and interconnectedness in
Speaker 1: the ancient world. That either live specimens of these monkeys
Speaker 1: or artistic depictions of these monkeys were being taken back
Speaker 1: and forth from far and wide around the world. That's impressive.
Speaker 1: I mean either way, once exposed to monkeys, one cannot
Speaker 1: help but create art about monkeys. Yes, maybe one day
Speaker 1: we should just come back and devote a whole thing
Speaker 1: to the blue monkeys. Controversy is that what kind of
Speaker 1: monkeys are these? Where did these images come from? And
Speaker 1: so forth. I I don't know. I found this very interesting,
Speaker 1: but maybe we should just get back to the eruption
Speaker 1: for now. Okay. Now. Oppenheimer, in writing about the eruption
Speaker 1: of theory uh he he says that the eruption seems
Speaker 1: to have been preceded by an earthquake or maybe series
Speaker 1: of earthquakes, that the damage the local infrastructure. In fact,
Speaker 1: it looks from the remains of this settlement like the
Speaker 1: locals had not finished up cleaning the debris and the
Speaker 1: damage from the earthquake at the time. The town was
Speaker 1: buried under tephra from the eruption, so it seems very
Speaker 1: likely that these things are related. Uh and Oppenheimer writes
Speaker 1: quote the townsfolk appeared to have suspected impending doom. At
Speaker 1: least no victims have been found, suggesting that Acritiris residents
Speaker 1: abandoned the town before it was buried by thick tephra
Speaker 1: fall and pyroclastic current deposits. On the other hand, so
Speaker 1: much tefra remained unexcavated that it's entirely possible that victims
Speaker 1: will be located eventually. Uh. Now, I guess this book
Speaker 1: was written in two thousand eleven. I haven't read about
Speaker 1: any victims discovered since then, but that would be in
Speaker 1: or seemed to come back to anyway. Oppenheimer goes on
Speaker 1: to say the clearing away of debris and reconstruction were
Speaker 1: unfinished when the first hydro volcanic blasts excavated a new
Speaker 1: pathway for magma to reach the surface, probably through a
Speaker 1: vent on one of the islands and towards the eastern
Speaker 1: wall of the present day caldera. Once the conduit was established,
Speaker 1: a sustained plenty and eruption ensued, gaining an intensity through time,
Speaker 1: evident from increasing size of pumice chunks upwards through the
Speaker 1: associated deposits, the eruption column reached an estimated maximum altitude
Speaker 1: of thirty six kilometers, from which it would have descended
Speaker 1: to its level of neutral buoyancy in the lower stratosphere.
Speaker 1: The plume was then carried towards the east and southeast
Speaker 1: by prevailing winds, so there would be this giant volcanic column,
Speaker 1: you know, visible from very far away, going up thirty
Speaker 1: six kilometers in the air, or at least up to
Speaker 1: thirty six kilometers in the air. And then he says
Speaker 1: the parts of the island were covered it in up
Speaker 1: to six meters of white solicit pummice. And then the
Speaker 1: geological evidence indicates that sea water repeatedly sloshed into the
Speaker 1: volcanic vent, rapidly mixing together water and magma and uh
Speaker 1: and then through the surrounding sedimentary structures of the rock
Speaker 1: layers that we can see left there now, it looks
Speaker 1: like that there was this enhanced fragmentation of magma that
Speaker 1: you see when water and magma mixed together very quickly.
Speaker 1: And Oppenheimer rights quote the resulting deposits which accumulated to
Speaker 1: a depth of twelve meters, are punctuated by desk sized
Speaker 1: lava bombs that must have traced ballistic trajectories from the
Speaker 1: vent to thwack into the soft and sticky pyroclastic beds.
Speaker 1: These characteristics indicate formation by successive shattering blasts and associated
Speaker 1: with base surges similar to ground hugging currents apparent in
Speaker 1: photographs of atmosphere nuclear weapons tests that would have readily
Speaker 1: scaled the complex topography of the island um so So now,
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer rights that the event at this point in the
Speaker 1: eruption would have been filled with this sort of red
Speaker 1: hot salad of ash, water, steam and pummice, and you'd
Speaker 1: get these repeated blasts that would have kept widening the
Speaker 1: vent as the energy released by the eruption just kept increasing,
Speaker 1: and eventually you would get this climactic phase of the eruption,
Speaker 1: you know, as it reaches it's it's pinnacle, uh and
Speaker 1: what he calls a soaring phoenix cloud and a new
Speaker 1: formation of a new caldera. So, in the end, this
Speaker 1: this gargantuan event had implications reaching far beyond just this
Speaker 1: island here known as Santorini. There would have been weather
Speaker 1: and climate effects far and wide, quite possibly major damage
Speaker 1: from tsunami's Oppenheimer rights that quote. The total size of
Speaker 1: the eruption, which probably lasted no more than a few days,
Speaker 1: is difficult to estimate since so much of the material
Speaker 1: is beneath the waves, but it's thought to have been
Speaker 1: around a magnitude of seven point two or sixty cubic
Speaker 1: kilometers of dense magma. Uh So, do you know people
Speaker 1: can't picture sixty cubic kilometers? What is that? Imagine a
Speaker 1: solid cube that is about three point nine kilometers or
Speaker 1: about two point four miles on each edge, and it's
Speaker 1: a cube that big. So we're talking about it. It's
Speaker 1: a real cataclysmic eruption here. This was this, this was,
Speaker 1: this was would have been horrifying to to witness from Afar. Yes,
Speaker 1: the local environment, the island itself would have been just
Speaker 1: completely entombed, as the word Oppenheimer uses, just buried. And
Speaker 1: then my no, and Tefra goes far far away, like
Speaker 1: it's been found as far away as the Black Sea, indicating, um,
Speaker 1: you know, what Oppenheimer says is a fallout area bigger
Speaker 1: than two million square kilometers, which he's as is equivalent
Speaker 1: to about the size of Mexico, so gigantic radius of
Speaker 1: of effect if you're trying to picture on the map,
Speaker 1: it affecting areas beyond in the Black Sea, the Black
Speaker 1: Seas on the other side of Turkey from the Aegean,
Speaker 1: so it is huge. But then, interestingly, Oppenheimer brings up
Speaker 1: one of the issues that is most debated with respect
Speaker 1: to the Minor interruption, which is what was its exact date?
Speaker 1: It seems like the kind of thing that you should
Speaker 1: be able to tell, right, You know, we know exactly
Speaker 1: what day this occurred, but it's harder than you might think.
Speaker 1: We know it was roughly thirty years ago, but what
Speaker 1: year exactly? Um, Now, I guess the question would be like,
Speaker 1: why would this be tricky to date? You know, shouldn't
Speaker 1: shouldn't we have a record of it? Well, most of
Speaker 1: our chronology for the ancient Eastern Mediterranean is based on
Speaker 1: the historical timeline of Pharaonic dynasties in Egypt. You know
Speaker 1: that they kept pretty good records. They include the lengths
Speaker 1: of rains. But even with these, uh these pharaoh chronologies,
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of uncertainty in the dating of
Speaker 1: these Pharaohs. When you go farther back, especially to the
Speaker 1: kind of period we're talking about. You know, if you
Speaker 1: get into like the period of the Roman Empire or something, Uh,
Speaker 1: then dates are really solid. We just know what year
Speaker 1: things happened. But if you go a thousand years fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred years back before that, throughout much of the Eastern Mediterranean,
Speaker 1: there's way more room for questioning and error because there
Speaker 1: are fewer written records. Those records are less correlated with
Speaker 1: objectively dated other things, so there's just there there are
Speaker 1: a lot of question marks. Yeah, I like to drive
Speaker 1: on something we've We've mentioned in the past. We were
Speaker 1: in dealing with the with ancient Egypt. We're dealing with
Speaker 1: the ancient history of the Romans, like the Romans considered
Speaker 1: this ancient history. Yeah, what we're saying, so Julius Caesar,
Speaker 1: if he's thinking about the events concurrent with the eruption
Speaker 1: of theory, that would have been like something like fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred years ago for him. So us thinking back to,
Speaker 1: you know, the collapse of the Roman Empire, and then
Speaker 1: that's funny, that's just the new Kingdom of Egypt. Again,
Speaker 1: I've said this on the show before, but one of
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing things is to think about
Speaker 1: how far back ancient history goes. Just in the written
Speaker 1: part of history, where we have some records and there
Speaker 1: are recognizable civilizations. That's the New Kingdom to the ancient Romans.
Speaker 1: The old Kingdom of Egypt would have been more ancient
Speaker 1: to them than the Romans were to us. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that that's just always a nine boggling to think about it.
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah. But anyway, so so we get
Speaker 1: to these dating issues. Um now, I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: avoid getting too technical about the dating, because, like you know,
Speaker 1: are arguing about you know, how many decades in this
Speaker 1: direction or that direction, uh you date an event can
Speaker 1: get a little bit uh wearisome. I think if you
Speaker 1: if you don't have a lot of other history knowledge
Speaker 1: to sort of orient around that. But to give you
Speaker 1: the short version, the standard view for some time, at
Speaker 1: least according to Oppenheimer, is that the Minor Interruption took
Speaker 1: place sometime around fifty f hundred BC. But there has
Speaker 1: recently been radiocarbon dating and other types of evidence that,
Speaker 1: if correct, would place the eruption like a hundred years earlier.
Speaker 1: So just one example is a study that I was
Speaker 1: reading about from two thousand six published in the journal
Speaker 1: Science by Friedrich at All. That was radiocarbon dating of
Speaker 1: a branch from an olive tree that was buried alive
Speaker 1: in Tephra on Santorini. Uh. When so the branches would
Speaker 1: have been they were preserved in their life position. You know,
Speaker 1: this was not a dead tree. This was still living
Speaker 1: when it got put under the ash. And that evidence,
Speaker 1: the evidence from that radiocarbon dating would put the eruption
Speaker 1: in the late seventeenth century BC, so like sometime around
Speaker 1: sixteen hundred to sixteen twenty seven or so. And of
Speaker 1: course the authors of this radio car urbon dating say, uh, whoops.
Speaker 1: The one problem here is this is not consistent with
Speaker 1: the eruption date as it uh, as it's assumed by
Speaker 1: many archaeologists, especially based on the chronology of pharaohs in
Speaker 1: the New Kingdom of Egypt. It doesn't really match up.
Speaker 1: So maybe there's something wrong with our date, or maybe
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with that chronology. Now, it certainly is
Speaker 1: possible that the radio carbon dates could be wrong. Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: in his book points out that there are uncertainties with
Speaker 1: the level of atmospheric carbon fourteen right around this period,
Speaker 1: he says, between thirty five hundred and thirty seven hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, for various atmospheric chemical reasons um that make
Speaker 1: it a little bit harder than it might usually be
Speaker 1: to obtain accurate carbon dates for objects within this period.
Speaker 1: And there have been other attempts to date the eruption
Speaker 1: using In fact, he's got a long section in his
Speaker 1: chapter if you ever want to check out the book
Speaker 1: that's really interesting about using dendro chronology and the study
Speaker 1: of ancient trees in Turkey, UH to try I to
Speaker 1: understand what might have been happening with the theory eruption,
Speaker 1: Like there are these trees that show these sudden spurts
Speaker 1: of growth at a time that might be signaled by
Speaker 1: the eruption of the volcano. And it's like, why would
Speaker 1: volcano erupting make trees grow more? But it has to
Speaker 1: do with the local climate in Turkey that actually having
Speaker 1: a cooler summer. If you're a tree in a hot
Speaker 1: arid climate, a cooler summer could actually help you grow
Speaker 1: more than you would normally. Oh. Fascinating, now to come
Speaker 1: back to something more parallel to what we were talking
Speaker 1: about with people trying to relate these events to the Bible. Uh.
Speaker 1: One thing that I think is funny is that a
Speaker 1: n Oppenheimer goes into this bit. Many people have tried
Speaker 1: to link the Minoan eruption to the story of Atlantis
Speaker 1: told by Plato and the timmy Ist dialogue. There are
Speaker 1: some obvious parallels, Like it does tell of an island
Speaker 1: civilization that achieved great prosperity but then sank into the
Speaker 1: sea amid earthquakes and fire and left behind a shoal
Speaker 1: of mud that made the see in that region impassable.
Speaker 1: So you know, you can see some similarities. But I
Speaker 1: think it's it's important to keep in mind that this
Speaker 1: is one of the places where it's really easy for
Speaker 1: the pattern seeking brain to get over excited, because the
Speaker 1: story of Atlantis was written more than a thousand years
Speaker 1: after the theory eruption, probably like the thirteen or fourteen
Speaker 1: hundred years later, might not even have been intended to
Speaker 1: be taken as anything more than like an allegorical story
Speaker 1: to make a point. So I think any attempts to
Speaker 1: say Aha, Atlantis was Santorini that seems entirely speculative based
Speaker 1: on pretty weak inference. I don't think we can even
Speaker 1: be confident that that Atlantis was a place. Yes, but
Speaker 1: but Atlantis is one of those one of those things
Speaker 1: that people are always going to jump to conclusions with,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna they're gonna bend over backwards to try
Speaker 1: and fit Atlantis in with with some sort of existing
Speaker 1: evidence or tail. He's right up, there were the aliens,
Speaker 1: it though, I admit. I guess like if you're gonna
Speaker 1: say the Atlanta story, if you knew somehow that it
Speaker 1: was based on a real event in Mediterranean history, I
Speaker 1: guess maybe this wouldn't be a bad can todate? I
Speaker 1: just if you get more into that sort of middle
Speaker 1: area of like, okay, a story and may even it's
Speaker 1: just purely for allegorical purposes, based on a city vanishing
Speaker 1: into the sea and some sort of a cataclysm, it
Speaker 1: could have connections to this, you know, just to some
Speaker 1: uh you know, memories and accounts of this having happened
Speaker 1: before uh, you know, because that's just that's how humans work.
Speaker 1: We we when we make things up, we tend to
Speaker 1: make them make that base them on things that came
Speaker 1: before us, either historical events or other myth cycles. Other stories, etcetera. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if we're trying to get come up with a good
Speaker 1: solid date for the theory eruption and and sort out
Speaker 1: all these discrepancies, one thing that would be really useful
Speaker 1: would be if there were a contemporary record that we
Speaker 1: could did you know that we could date definitively which
Speaker 1: referred to the eruption. Unfortunately, we actually have shockingly few
Speaker 1: written records from this period in this region of any kind,
Speaker 1: and what we do have does not make explicit reference
Speaker 1: to the eruption, unless unless one of the papers we're
Speaker 1: looking at today is correct, and it does in an
Speaker 1: abstracted form. And this, of course is what brings us
Speaker 1: back to this hypothetical interpretation of the tempest Steela. Alright, Yes,
Speaker 1: the the intense rain, the darkening of the sky, the
Speaker 1: flooding exactly so. So Oppenheimer actually makes reference in his
Speaker 1: chapter to this this possible connection. He says, quote in Egypt,
Speaker 1: depending on which it's eruption chronology you adhere to, the
Speaker 1: time of the eruption coincided with the end of the
Speaker 1: Second Intermediate Period and the rise of the brothers Commos
Speaker 1: and Amos, who founded the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in Mesopotamia, the Old Babylonian period was nearing its terminus
Speaker 1: with the hit Heights Sack of Babylon dated circa b C. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there are virtually no surviving historical texts from the period.
Speaker 1: And here's where we get to the really relevant part.
Speaker 1: It has been suggested that hieroglyphs on a steela erected
Speaker 1: by almost in the Karnak Temple bear witness to the
Speaker 1: Manuan eruptions climatic consequences in the guise of a great
Speaker 1: storm accompanied by flooding and destruction. But it seems more
Speaker 1: likely the events recorded referred to severe monsoonal flooding in
Speaker 1: the Nile, as still occurs from time to time. So
Speaker 1: at the time Oppenheimer published this in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: he thought it unlikely that the Tempest steela was referring
Speaker 1: to the Manoan eruption because, first of all, it could
Speaker 1: have the steela could have other plausible interpretations, like some
Speaker 1: of the interpretations we've talked about already. And also the dates,
Speaker 1: though close, don't exactly line up right. Yeah, and again,
Speaker 1: like you said, the Nile floods, it will it will
Speaker 1: flood it will sink back down. And this sort of
Speaker 1: um fluctuation is in a crucial part of the Egyptian
Speaker 1: worldview and the way that they saw the world and
Speaker 1: the way that they formed their various interpretations of the gods. Right.
Speaker 1: But anyway, back to what originally got me interested in
Speaker 1: doing this episode was this paper that was published in
Speaker 1: that um certainly does not make a conclusive case, but
Speaker 1: maybe makes the mind no interruption interpretation of the Tempes
Speaker 1: Stela more plausible. And so this is a paper published
Speaker 1: by Robert K. Rittner and Nadine muller Uh published in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Near Eastern Studies called the Almost Tempest
Speaker 1: Stela Theory and Comparative Chronology. Now, just to quickly refresh
Speaker 1: on the apocalyptic climatic lines from the Steela inscription, at
Speaker 1: least the translation we at earlier. It talks about quote
Speaker 1: the gods caused the sky to come in a tempest
Speaker 1: of rain, with darkness in the western region, and the
Speaker 1: sky being unleashed without cessation, louder than the cries of
Speaker 1: the masses, more powerful than something, while the rain raged
Speaker 1: on the mountains, louder than the noise of the cataract,
Speaker 1: which is at Elephantine, every house, every quarter that they
Speaker 1: reached floating on the water like skiffs of papyrus opposite
Speaker 1: the royal residence for a period of days while a
Speaker 1: torch could not be lit in the two lands. Now,
Speaker 1: so so we've talked about the the sort of classic
Speaker 1: or regular interpretations of what's being described here. Maybe this
Speaker 1: is describing real weather like events that were and it
Speaker 1: maybe like a particularly bad monsoon season, you know, really
Speaker 1: intense nile flooding season one summer or maybe these this
Speaker 1: is a fictional account. Maybe it's somehow metaphorical as a
Speaker 1: statement about military invasions or movements of people. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and it is also worth reminding ourselves that what
Speaker 1: we we see here, what has survived, Like, there's nothing
Speaker 1: in this account that couldn't have been said about just
Speaker 1: a really intense storm that was related to you know,
Speaker 1: to say, the monsoon, uh season or something you know,
Speaker 1: to that effect. You know that it's just it rained
Speaker 1: a whole lot. The sky was dark, the sky darkness
Speaker 1: when there are heavy storms and uh, and then flooding occurred. Um,
Speaker 1: so you you don't need the volcano to explain what
Speaker 1: we're what we're reading here though if there were a
Speaker 1: volcanic eruption, it's very possible that it could It could
Speaker 1: create this kind of intense weather that is being described.
Speaker 1: Volcanic eruptions inject gases and ash particles way up into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, which in some cases can cause extreme heavy rains, lightning, storms,
Speaker 1: and things like that in the area surrounding the eruption,
Speaker 1: And of course we know the on on an even
Speaker 1: broader scale. Big eruptions can have these huge climatic effects
Speaker 1: that can infect an entire hemisphere of the globe, like
Speaker 1: they bring cool summers, bad harvests and famine, etcetera. But
Speaker 1: like we've said, you can have even earthquakes, you can
Speaker 1: have dark skies, thunderstorms and flooding in Egypt without it
Speaker 1: necessarily being the result of a volcano so wider. Writtener
Speaker 1: and Mueller further suggest the link in this paper. Just
Speaker 1: to briefly mention a few points. One thing is that
Speaker 1: this paper offers a new revised translation of the Steela,
Speaker 1: which they argue, for one thing, makes it pretty clear
Speaker 1: that the events described are not supposed to be some
Speaker 1: kind of military or political metaphor. They really seem to
Speaker 1: be describing literal weather events, and these events are said
Speaker 1: to have been personally witnessed by almost himself. Another thing
Speaker 1: is just some complicated interlocking date stuff like it looks
Speaker 1: like if you date the tempest Steela and the reign
Speaker 1: of something like fifty years earlier than the traditional uh
Speaker 1: Pharoah chronology, does that puts it closer to the date
Speaker 1: for the theory eruption, at least the date that would
Speaker 1: be implied by the more recent radiocarbon dating. And we've
Speaker 1: discussed already the reasons that the theory eruption as different dates.
Speaker 1: But you remember the olive branch and the radiocarbon dating
Speaker 1: putting it closer to like the late sixteen hundreds b
Speaker 1: c uh. If you do that, allegedly, some other discrepancies
Speaker 1: and discontinuities about dates in ancient regional history would at
Speaker 1: least be partially resolved. Another interesting argument I came across
Speaker 1: was actually a point raised by a different professor, a
Speaker 1: University of Chicago archaeologist named David Schloan, which I saw
Speaker 1: quoted in some news articles covering this paper. And this
Speaker 1: was that if this link is true, it would make
Speaker 1: almost as military victories over the hicks Os make even
Speaker 1: more sense. We know that the theory eruption caused catastrophic
Speaker 1: tsunamis that affected places like the coast of Crete. If
Speaker 1: these tsunamis also struck the coast of Egypt along the
Speaker 1: Nile Delta, this potentially could have devastated Hickso supports and
Speaker 1: weakened the Hicksos greatly by crushing their coastal settlements and
Speaker 1: crushing their ships and their sea power, which in turn
Speaker 1: would have weakened them, making it easier for almost to
Speaker 1: get victory in the conquest of Lower Egypt. So, yeah, what,
Speaker 1: While this is by no means conclusive, I think it
Speaker 1: seems plausible that the phenomena described in the Tempestila could
Speaker 1: be the theory eruption and or the weather effects that
Speaker 1: followed it, But of course it seems very hard to
Speaker 1: be certain about that. But in general, I do really
Speaker 1: enjoy things like this, finding new possible connections between natural events,
Speaker 1: geological and climate events, and artifacts from human history that
Speaker 1: we didn't really know for sure how to interpret before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and one of those situations to where you you
Speaker 1: can't help but think, like, what is you know, what
Speaker 1: is the closest we could come to being sure about this,
Speaker 1: you know, um, and and there's you know, there may
Speaker 1: always be this gap it and then again who knows,
Speaker 1: who knows what else might be discovered in the future
Speaker 1: that uh, that could help line things up even better
Speaker 1: than than now. I was poking around about this and
Speaker 1: I figured it might be worth addressing something that I
Speaker 1: think is um even with this the study we're talking
Speaker 1: about now, like we said, as far from conclusive, but
Speaker 1: it's like it makes some interesting arguments. There's some stuff
Speaker 1: that I think is even more speculative and and goes
Speaker 1: in directions that might be unsurprising if you're familiar with
Speaker 1: you know, popular writing in this subject matter, UM, which
Speaker 1: is links to biblical interpretation, as some people who take
Speaker 1: the Biblical stories of like the Exodus and surrounding events
Speaker 1: as literal history have apparently tried to connect the events
Speaker 1: described the storm Steel as evidence that, for example, the
Speaker 1: plague of darkness described in the Bible actually literally happened
Speaker 1: in Egypt. UM. And I would just say, from my
Speaker 1: point of view, this type of reading of religious texts
Speaker 1: seems kind of misguided in several ways, but I guess
Speaker 1: it is not surprising. Yeah, and again We touched on
Speaker 1: a little bit already about this about the Hebrew Hicksos correlation.
Speaker 1: As I've seen it referred to. It's it's one of
Speaker 1: the usual suspects I've seen it referred to as in
Speaker 1: attempts to establish an historic record for the great antiquity
Speaker 1: of the Jewish people. And again, people have been writing
Speaker 1: about this possible connection for literally ages. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean as even before this new study. But for example,
Speaker 1: it is not surprising that people would like take one
Speaker 1: of these studies and run with it and say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: proof of the Bible or something. I was just I
Speaker 1: didn't go deep on this, but for example, I found
Speaker 1: an article by it was like a blog post on
Speaker 1: the Times of is Real by this guy named Simcha
Speaker 1: jacobo Vici, uh, saying essentially that you know, this is
Speaker 1: somehow proof of the historicity of of the Exodus or
Speaker 1: the biblical plagues. I think it goes without saying that
Speaker 1: this is not what the authors of the study or alleging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this Jacobovici argument. Uh. This was referenced in a really
Speaker 1: interesting blog post that I read from George Athos, who
Speaker 1: teaches that More Theological College in Sydney, Australia, and an
Speaker 1: Athos points out that traditionally the the steela was interpreted
Speaker 1: as either the description of a localized natural disaster or
Speaker 1: is the metaphor for the oppression of the Egyptians at
Speaker 1: the hand of the hands of the the Hicksos rulers.
Speaker 1: And he discusses uh, written Er and Mohler, but he
Speaker 1: also talks about this Jacobovici argument. Now, Jacobovici is an
Speaker 1: Israeli Canadian filmmaker who busts out a lot of work
Speaker 1: on archaeological evidence for biblical events. Uh, work that often
Speaker 1: clashes with accepted interpretations. So he's been all up on
Speaker 1: the History Channel for example. Of course, Uh, this is
Speaker 1: what Athens says, writes quote. Jacobovici asserts that this new
Speaker 1: interpretation proves the Biblical Exodus because the natural disaster in
Speaker 1: the tempest Stela describes matches up with the plague of
Speaker 1: darkness described in the Exodus narrative. Jacobovici claimed back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six that this stela was a key
Speaker 1: piece of evidence for finding the Exodus in the archaeological
Speaker 1: records of Egypt, and now he says, here is the
Speaker 1: final proof now Athis goes on to say, no, in
Speaker 1: his opinion, there is no direct connection to be made here,
Speaker 1: no matter how much he himself would like to see
Speaker 1: such firm connection. He's very uh. You know, he mentions
Speaker 1: this several times, like he says, you know, I would
Speaker 1: love to see this proven true. I would love to
Speaker 1: find this connection, you know, but this is not it.
Speaker 1: We can't jump to conclusions and and you know announced
Speaker 1: that it is that is done, you know. And he
Speaker 1: presents several reasons why. First of all, uh, he said
Speaker 1: this connection was not made by written Er and Moehler
Speaker 1: in their work. Also the Tempest, Steeler makes no mention
Speaker 1: of slaves, he Brews, or anything else that matches up
Speaker 1: with Exodus. Also, Amos described it as something greater than
Speaker 1: the work of a god, not the work of a god.
Speaker 1: Written or in Moelar stress that the emphasis is not
Speaker 1: the darkness, but rather the abnormally harsh rain storm. Darkness
Speaker 1: is secondary to the rain. Uh. You know, think back
Speaker 1: to what we read earlier, or even go back and
Speaker 1: listen to it where they're like, it rained crazy and
Speaker 1: it was dark. It wasn't like and then there was
Speaker 1: darkness and also it was raining and then he writes,
Speaker 1: jacobo Vici makes a direct link between the Hicks sos
Speaker 1: and the Israelite slaves of the Exodus narrative. He is
Speaker 1: not the first to make this link, but it creates
Speaker 1: a series of other problems. For example, the Hicks has
Speaker 1: ruled a portion of Egypt which contradicts the Exodus narrative
Speaker 1: and states the Israelites were slaves, not rulers. They are
Speaker 1: also chronological difficulties, including seeming clashes with the archaeological record
Speaker 1: of a settlement into came In. And then finally, Jacobovicci
Speaker 1: apparently plays fast and loose with the term proof. According
Speaker 1: to Avis, yeah, and that seems like one of the
Speaker 1: biggest things obviously. I mean, as soon as you're saying
Speaker 1: like proof, you're you're really setting a bar for yourself
Speaker 1: that you're almost never going to clear. Yeah. So, so
Speaker 1: ath this finishes up by saying, quote, I'll be glad
Speaker 1: of the day when we do find evidence for the
Speaker 1: Exodus outside the Bible, but today is not that day.
Speaker 1: So I thought that that was a rather interesting take
Speaker 1: on it, you know, um uh, you know, again, somebody
Speaker 1: coming from the point of view where they're not just
Speaker 1: saying like, I'm here to to disprove all um, you know,
Speaker 1: bits of legend and mythology. I'm here to disprove the Bible.
Speaker 1: And he's saying, you know, I would I would love
Speaker 1: for this to be proven true. And he really seems
Speaker 1: to write from a standpoint where it sounds like he
Speaker 1: his faith is in that, that in the reality of it.
Speaker 1: But he was saying, you know, this is not the
Speaker 1: proof you're looking for. This is not you know, we
Speaker 1: cannot say that the job is done and that we
Speaker 1: can you know that that it has been proven to
Speaker 1: have existed via archaeological evidence. Yeah, don't, don't get sucked
Speaker 1: in by the checkmate mentality. Yeah, now, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: could the Steeler refer to a cataclysm that remembered by
Speaker 1: various people ends up influencing lighter tales and traditions, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, of course, But that is a far cry
Speaker 1: from a direct connection, you know. Right. Yeah, I'm finally
Speaker 1: scrolling down and getting to see the blue monkeys. I
Speaker 1: think maybe sometimes we should just come back and and
Speaker 1: look more at the paintings of a criteria. They are
Speaker 1: weird and beautiful, like there are I don't know, I
Speaker 1: love the artistic style of them that give living beings
Speaker 1: these strange curves, like they are these very elongated s
Speaker 1: shaped gazelles that look almost like something out of a
Speaker 1: I don't know, abstract or uh, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the term would be. I'm not good at my art history,
Speaker 1: the impressionist or something like. They're clearly representative, they are gazelles,
Speaker 1: but they have these ridiculously elongated, sort of tubular curve
Speaker 1: irved bodies and also like humans, Like there's an image
Speaker 1: of these these two guys that look like they're boxing
Speaker 1: each other but with these sort of curved s shaped torsos. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um, it's fascinating to look at some of these images.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the blue monkeys right now that you
Speaker 1: referenced earlier, and um, I mean, aside from looking very
Speaker 1: much like monkeys, there's a fluidity to the way that
Speaker 1: their their bodies are illustrated here. You know that that
Speaker 1: certainly matches up with the actual movements the actual bodies
Speaker 1: of these So you know, this isn't one of those
Speaker 1: cases as fascinating as I find second and third hand
Speaker 1: reproductions of animals in art. You know where somebody's clearly
Speaker 1: painting something based on a description, uh, second or third
Speaker 1: hand description rather than than direct evidence like these these
Speaker 1: seem to capture the essence of these animals as they
Speaker 1: are alive, perhaps even in the wild. Yeah, yeah, though exactly.
Speaker 1: One of the questions that comes up as I was
Speaker 1: reading this weird back and forth in the journal Primates,
Speaker 1: or at least the again in the Journal Primates by
Speaker 1: people arguing about what species the monkeys depicted in this
Speaker 1: painting are supposed to be. And so there was a
Speaker 1: paper and I think twenty nineteen saying, uh, they're actually
Speaker 1: these monkeys from India, and then there was a reply saying, no,
Speaker 1: there are these monkeys from Africa, and then there was
Speaker 1: another reply. But basically it came down to the question
Speaker 1: of were the people painting these monkeys painting a monkey
Speaker 1: that they had seen alive or were they painting a
Speaker 1: monkey as it had been portrayed in other art that
Speaker 1: they had seen. Oh that's true too, this is this
Speaker 1: could be yeah, that situation as well. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: they have this fluidity to their formed and they've caught
Speaker 1: in several poses that feel very appropriate and realistic for monkeys.
Speaker 1: But they could have been basing this on another work
Speaker 1: that that someone else had done for sure. Yeah. Interesting,
Speaker 1: we'll have to come back to that. It is a
Speaker 1: whole mess of monkeys, though they look like they're up
Speaker 1: to no good there, there is also a sense of
Speaker 1: barrel of monkeys too it, you know, like I don't
Speaker 1: want to to to reduce them to that, but there
Speaker 1: is kind of like a bunch of blue monkeys spilled
Speaker 1: on some tiles, you know. Um, because the barrel of
Speaker 1: monkeys are good representations of the fluidity of the monkey's
Speaker 1: form and movement as well, I think maybe we need
Speaker 1: to call it all right, Well, we're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and uh and and finish this uh steva right now
Speaker 1: and go ahead and uh and and and and put
Speaker 1: it into the archives. But we'd love for anybody out
Speaker 1: there to uh touch base with us on this. Have
Speaker 1: you have you seen any of the places that we have,
Speaker 1: if you visited any of the places that we discussed here,
Speaker 1: do you have any thoughts on you know, the connections
Speaker 1: possible connections between the tempest Stela and uh and you
Speaker 1: know the the catacausmic eruptions and uh and and stories
Speaker 1: of of of of legend and mythology. Let us know
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. There are all kinds
Speaker 1: of other interesting effects of the minor interruption that people
Speaker 1: have done studies on all over the place about how
Speaker 1: they affected, how it affected civilizations, and and marks it
Speaker 1: left on the planet. So yeah, if you've got anything
Speaker 1: interesting along those lines to share with us, please do
Speaker 1: all right. In the meantime, if you want more stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind, you know where to find it.
Speaker 1: The Stuff to Blow your Mind feed We have normal,
Speaker 1: regular core episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursday's Little Listener Mail on Monday's Wednesday is
Speaker 1: the short form artifact episode that we mentioned earlier, you know,
Speaker 1: a little little uh you know, specific things, specific, specific
Speaker 1: moments in time, uh, specific ideas, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And then on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema, which
Speaker 1: is uh our less science e installment, our chance to
Speaker 1: just focus on a particular weird film and chat about it.
Speaker 1: Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future or just to say hello.
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.