I read an interesting story in the New York Times this morning, Killer Tsunamis. We’ve all seen on TV how terrifying tsunamis can be. How much worse must it have been for Bronze Age peoples who had no idea such things existed let alone any sort of warning system.

James Cameron (of whom you’d expect better) and Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, in their recent television special, The Exodus Decoded, argued that the volcanic eruption of Santorini (ancient Thera) was responsible, that it was a tsunami that destroyed the Pharaoh’s army.[1] The producers assure the viewer that “Exodus Decoded solves the mystery of the events of the Biblical Exodus for the first time ever,” a claim that has been made before (reminds me of those PC vs. Mac commercials), and in any event, the assertions made by Cameron do not fit the chronology, as the Exodus is traditionally supposed to date from the reign of Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE) while Thera erupted, according to radiocarbon dating, c. 1720 BCE (for some reason this most recent article gives 1630 and 1550 B.C., which would still exclude Cameron’s hypothesis from consideration). As Manfred Bietak points out in his recent review of the special, the eruption could have occurred anywhere between that date and 1500, or even later, and that “Jacobovici’s contention holds water, so to speak, only if 1500 B.C.E. proves correct.” Jacobovici and Cameron jettison Ramesses by resorting to the old argument that the Hyksos were, in fact, the Israelites,[2] which then allows the Ten Plagues to be blamed on the eruption as well.

But here other flaws appear in the Cameron/Jacobovici’s thesis: the biblical account refers to the “Way of the Philistines,” yet there were no Philistines in the Hyksos period. And the first attestation of Israel itself comes only in the 12th century with the Merneptah stela. [3] The Philistines would come only with the “Sea Peoples” – again in the 12th century – three hundred years too late, and the argument for the biblical plagues, Bietak asserts, is way off base as analyses show that sediment from the eruption did not enter Egypt at all, but was blown northwestward across Asia Minor. “The dark clouds never reached Syria, Palestine, or Egypt.” [4] In the final analysis, as Robin Lane Fox points out, “we still do not know if biblical stories happened at the places in question.”

Indeed, we do not know if they happened at all, but that’s another story altogether.

Notes:

[1] Tony Allen-Mills, “Volcanic Eruption ‘Triggered Biblical parting of Red Sea’,” The Sunday Times, August 6, 2006. See also The Exodus Decoded website at http://theexodusdecoded.com/index1.jsp The special aired on September 7, 2006. See for a discussion of the dating of the Thera eruption a study from Cornell University, “Overview and Assessment of the Evidence for the Date of the Eruption of Thera” at http://www.arts.cornell.edu/dendro/thera.html

[2] Albright argues that Jacob came to Egypt in Hyksos times and speaks of the “bitter years of state slavery which followed the triumph of Amosis over the Hyksos in the third quarter of the sixteenth century BC.” See idem, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, A Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1994 [1968]), 153-154.

[3] The Merneptah stela is variously dated. Michael Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 296 (1994), 45-61, discusses the various views held of the inscription’s mention of Israel. Following K.A. Kitchen (1987; 1992) Hasel dates the stela to 1207 (Low Chronology). Hasel’s own findings are that the inscription “places Israel within Canaan, indicating its existence within that region as a people and not as a city-state or territory” and that the use of prt (seed) gives “additional support to the understanding that Israel functioned as an agriculturally-based/sedentary socioethnic entity in the late 13th century B.C., one that is significant enough to be included in the military campaign against the political powers in Canaan.”

[4] Manfred Bietak, “The Volcano Explains Everything – Or Does It?” BAR November/December 2006, 60-65. Bietak is currently Professor of Egyptology at the University of Vienna and Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo and has led Austrian expeditions at two critical sites, Avaris (modern Tell el-Daba), the capital of the Hyksos period; and of neighboring Piramesse, the Nineteenth Dynasty capital of Egypt. The Hyksos Era closes with the Egyptian capture of Avaris, an event Bietak says can be dated to between 1532 and 1512 BCE. See idem, “Egypt and Canaan During the Middle Bronze Age,” BASOR 281 (1991), 48. Egypt and Canaan During the Middle Bronze Age,”