Thus the traditions of the Peruvians describe a time when the sun did not appear for five days. In the upheaval, the earth changed its profile, and the sea fell upon the land.11
East of Egypt, in Babylonia, the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh [Gilgamish] refers to the same events. From out the horizon rose a dark cloud and it rushed against the earth; the land was shriveled by the heat of the flames. "Desolation . . . stretched to heaven; all that was bright was turned into darkness. . . . Nor could a brother distinguish his brother. . . . Six days . . . the hurricane, deluge, and tempest continued sweeping the land . . . and all human back to its clay was returned." 12
The Iranian book Anugita reveals that a threefold day and three-
8 Kalevala (transl. J. M. Crawford, 1888), p. xiii.
* Caius Julius Solinus, Polyhistor. French transl. by M. A. Agnant, 1847, Chap, xi, reads: "a heavy night spread over the globe for nine consecutive days." Other translators render: "nine consecutive months."
10 Brasseur. Sources de Vhistoire primitive du Mexique, p. 40.
robin-bobin
11 Andree, Die Flutsagen, p. 115.
12 The Epic of Gilgamish (transl. R. C. Thompson, 1928).
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fold night concluded a world age,13 and the book Bundahis, in a context that I shall quote later and that shows a close relation to the events of the cataclysm I describe here, tells of the world being dark at midday as though it were in deepest night: it was caused, according to the Bundahis, by a war between the stars and the planets.14
A protracted night, deepened by the onrushing dust sweeping in from interplanetary space, enveloped Europe, Africa, and America, the valleys of the Euphrates and the Indus also. If the earth did not stop rotating but slowed down or was tilted, there must have been a longitude where a prolonged day was followed by a prolonged night. Iran is so situated that, if one is to believe the Iranian tradition, the sun was absent for a threefold day, and then it shone for a threefold day. Farther to the east there must have been a protracted day corresponding to the protracted night in the west.
According to "Bahman Yast," at the end of a world age in eastern Iran or in India the sun remained ten days visible in the sky.
In China, during the reign of the Emperor Yahou, a great catastrophe brought a world age to a close. For ten days the sun did not set.15 The events of the time of the Emperor Yahou deserve close examination; I shall return to the subject shortly.16
Earthquake
-- The earth, forced out of its regular motion, reacted to the close approach of the body of the comet: a major shock convulsed the lithosphere, and the area of the earthquake was the entire globe. -. Ipuwer witnessed and survived this earthquake. "The towns are destroyed. Upper Egypt has become waste. . . . All is ruin." "The
13 "The Anugita" (transl. K. T. Telang, 1882) in Vol. VIII of The Sacred Books of the East.
" "The Bundahis" in Pahlavi Texts (transl. E. W. West) (The Sacred Books of the East, V
[1880]), Pt. I, p. 17. is Cf. "Yao," Universal Lexicon (1732-1754), Vol. LX.
i6 The way the Egyptians estimated the time the sun was not in the sky must have been similar to the Chinese method of estimation. It is very probable that these peoples reckoned the disturbance as lasting five days and five nights (because a ninefold or tenfold period elapsed from one sunrise or sunset to the other).
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residence is overturned in a minute."1 Only an earthquake could have overturned the residence in a minute. The Egyptian word for "to overturn" is used in the sense of "to overthrow a wall." 2
This was the tenth plague. "And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead" (Exodus 12:30). Houses fell, smitten by one violent blow. "[The angel of the Lord] passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses" (Exodus 12:27). Nogaf, meaning "smote," is the word used for a very violent blow, as, for instance, goring by the horns of an ox. The Passover Haggadah says: "The firstborn of the Egyptians didst Thou crush at midnight."
. The reason why the Israelites were more fortunate in this plague than the Egyptians probably lies in the kind of material of which their dwellings were constructed. Occupying a marshy district and working on clay, the captives must have lived in huts made of clay and reeds, which are more resilient than brick or stone. "The Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come and smite your houses." 3 An example of the selective action of a natural agent upon various kinds of construction is narrated also in Mexican annals. During a catastrophe accompanied by hurricane and earthquake, only the people who lived in small log cabins remained uninjured; the larger buildings were swept away. "They found that those who lived in small houses had escaped, as well as the newly-married couples, whose custom it was to live for a few years in cabins in front of those of their fathers-in-law."4
robin-bobin
In Ages in Chaos (my reconstruction of ancient history), I shall show that "first-born" (bkhor) in the text of the plague is a corruption of "chosen" (bchor). All the flower of Egypt succumbed in the catastrophe.
1 Papyrus Ipuwer 2 : 11; 3 : 13.
2 Gardiner's commentary to Papyrus Ipuwer.
3 Exodus 12 : 23. The King James version, "will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you," is not correct.
4 Diego de Landa. Yucatan, before and after the Conquest (transl. W. Gates, 1937), p. 18.
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-VTorsooth: The children of princes are dashed against the walls . . . the children of princes are cast out in the streets"; "the prison is ruined," wrote Ipuwer,5 and this reminds us of princes in palaces and captives in dungeons who were victims in the disaster (Exodus 12:29).
To confirm my interpretation of the tenth plague as an earthquake, which should be obvious from the expression, "to smite the houses," I find a corroborating passage of Artapanus in which he describes the last night before the Exodus, and which is quoted by Eusebius: There was "hail and earthquake by night, so that those who fled from the earthquake were killed by the hail, and those who sought shelter from the hail were destroyed by the earthquake. And at that time all the houses fell in, and most of the temples." 6
Also, Hieronymus (St. Jerome) wrote in an epistle that "in the night in which Exodus took place, all the temples of Egypt were destroyed either by an earthshock or by the thunderbolt." 7
Similarly in the Midrashim: "The seventh plague, the plague of barad [meteorites] : earthquake, fire, meteorites." 8 It is also said that the structures which were erected by the Israelite slaves in Pithom and Ramses collapsed or were swallowed by the earth.9 An inscription which dates from the beginning of the New Kingdom refers to a temple of the Middle Kingdom that was
"swallowed by the ground" at the close of the Middle Kingdom.10
The head of the celestial body approached very close, breaking through the darkness of the gaseous envelope, and according to the Midrashim, the last night in Egypt was as bright as the noon on the day of the summer solstice.11
5 Papyrus Ipuwer 5:6; 6 : 12.