Also known as the Plagues of Egypt or the Ten Biblical Plagues, from the Old Testament describes an occurrence of ten different catastrophes generated that takes place around 1446BC.
First God causes the Pharoah to become determined not to let the Israelites leave Egypt and as a consequence Moses and Aaron, with God's assistance, generates the Ten Plagues in order to prove to the Israelites that the Egyptian gods were powerless against him. The plagues are written about in Exodus 7:21, 8:6, 8:17, 8:24, 9:6, 9:10, 9:23, 10:13, 10:22 and 11:5. They consist of all the fish dying in the rivers, frogs leaving the river, gnats and lice, flies, livestock dying, boils on skin, hail, locusts, darkness for three days and death of all first-born Egyptians.
During the reign of the Hyksos, from 1650 to
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1545BC, who were a Semitic culture that ruled over the northeastern part of the Nile Delta area. At a distance of 640 miles away from Egypt on a Greek island named Santorini, a volcano called Thera erupted, around 1602BC, becoming one of the largest ever recorded. Evidence of this eruption have been found in the tree rings of the Redwoods in northern California, Oak trees in Ireland and pine trees in Scotland. Within a short period of time there were a total of three major volcanic eruptions resulting with tons of dirt, ash, expulsion of gases going up into the atmosphere along with fiery hail, earthquakes and tsunamis causing catastrophic weather changes in the area of the Mediterranean Sea. According to Siro Igino Trevisanato, a molecular biologist, this event began a chain of events that created the Ten Plagues as written in the Old Testament. Beginning with the expulsion of toxic gases and warm air into the atmosphere that generated a warmer climate producing a toxic rainfall over the Nile Delta region, which resulted with the development of multicellular organisms known as Red Algae making the appearance of water to be red in color. Red Algae reduces the oxygen in the water and causes a bacteria that kills the fish. The dead fish then would contaminate the water making the toxic to the frogs, which would force the frogs to leave the water and eventually die on land. The carcasses of dead fish and frogs lying along the shorelines of the waterways would cause an increase in several types of insects such as gnats and flies, which then would bite livestock and humans transmitting several types of diseases causing a variety of skin irritations such as boils and death to both livestock and humans. Any part of northern Africa would be subjected to the hot ash, acid rains from the volcano causing any locust in the area to move elsewhere in search for food. The locusts would then feed on agriculture in northwestern Egypt leaving only dirt in their path. The air at higher altitudes would be altered by the hot air from the volcano eruptions, making strong winds that would carry ash along with the dust and sand from the devastated agriculture fields reducing the sunlight and causing darkness until the winds decreased. Unfortunately, sociologists claim that this chain of events forced the Egyptians to believe that their gods were angry at them and sacrificed many of their newborn infants in order to appease the gods. There are those that will argue that Red Algae only exists in salt water and cannot exist in fresh water, which is only true 95% of the time.
In the Nile Delta region, several miles of the waterways would be considered as brackish water due to the mixture of fresh water from the river and salt water from the Mediterranean Sea. One of the affects of the Thera Eruption was a earthquake followed by a tsunami, which would force brackish water to move further inland into the delta region and increase the chances of a Red Algae occurrence.
There have been several times within Egypt's history that the Nile River turned red due to torrential rainfalls in the Ethopian mountains causing floods that erode the red clay soil in Ethopia and turn the water into a red color. However, these rainstorms and floods only occur during the months of May to August, whereas, the Ten Plagues was followed by the first Passover that took place in March or April.
The punishment the Egyptians with the Ten Plagues occurred while the Israelites lived in a city named Pi-Ramesses or Rameses, from Exodus 12:37, which was constructed as the captial city for Ramesses II, who ruled from 1279 to
1213BC. At the time of the Thera Eruption, around 1602BC, the Hyksos ruled in northeastern Egypt, from 1650 to 1545BC, and lived primarily in their capital city named Avaris. Both of these ancient cities no longer exist, but their ruins have been discovered by archaeologists and are located within 1 1/4 mile from each other. The Ipuwer Papyrus, written between 1991 to 1962BC, describes an Egypt where the world is turned upside down, hardships and misfortunes occur to many and the water of the Nile River turns red. In the opinions of many contemporary Hebrews, such as Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky, it is a possibility that part or parts of the Ten Plagues were actually the results of natural disasters that took place over the course of several decades or even centuries.
A major flood on any river is both a long-term and a short-term event, particularly any river basin where human influence has exerted "control" over the ri...
Plagues and Peoples written by William H. McNeill follows the patterns of epidemics and endemics within human history. It is within this history that McNeill finds parallels between diseases and humans in the forms of microparasitism and macroparasitism. Merely from the title, McNeill gives equal importance to viruses and humankind. In several instances, humans behave the same way viruses, bacteria, and parasites do in order to survive and to compete. Surprisingly enough, McNeill’s overarching theme can be summarized using his last sentence, asserting that “Infectious disease which antedated the emergence of humankind will last as long as humanity itself, and will surely remain, as it has been hitherto, one of the fundamental parameters and
Was it a gift or a curse? The Nile is the world's longest river at 4,160 miles. Of that total, approximately 660 to 700 miles of the Nile are actually in Egypt. It is one of the four most important river civilizations in the world. Land in Egypt was called Black Land (representing life) and Red Land (representing danger). For Egyptians, the Nile meant the difference between life and death. Today, we know that the Nile influenced ancient Egypt in many areas of life such as providing food, shelter and faith to the people. Specific areas dealing with settlement location, agricultural cycle, jobs, trade, transportation and spiritual beliefs will prove the case.
Think of a North America without electricity, no running water, no government, almost no buildings left intact, and ravaged by a Chinese manufactured plague, even though it’s hard to imagine that's what happened in Jeff Hirsch’s The Eleventh Plague. In Jeff Hirsch’s Eleventh Plague a family made up of the Dad, Mom, Grandfather, and son are trying to survive in a North America ravaged by a Chinese Plague , But then the mom and grandpa die and dad and Stephen are left on their own, but when the dad gets injured running away from some slavers, A Town named Settlers Landing that seems too good to be true takes them in. Then Stephen befriends a girl named Jenny, and when they play a prank that sends Jenny, and when they play a prank that sends the town into chaos. A war is started and it is up to them to help stop it. I thought that The Eleventh Plague was a believable piece of Speculative Fiction because of Hirsch's use of elements of Conflict, Theme, and Red Herrings.
Is it little by surprise that the plague was the most dreaded disease in the Elizabethan era. Death is a terrible thing, especially when a person is getting executed. People died of many diseases in that era. Such as blood poisoning, and the bubonic plague which refers back to black death. It was a very violent disease to get, it was very contagious. The most dreadful punishments in this era were getting hung which lead into executions (Linda Alcin 1) .After you are half dead from getting hung they take you and cut you into squares and hang you up around the city of England .
Miracles are fore-facts of the future done on a small scale. There had been no appearance of God to anyone for more than four hundred years, so people probably thought the age of miracles was long gone. The people would not have accepted Moses as God’s spokesperson without some kind of proof. The miracle-plagues were just that. They are significant because of the number of them that were brought forth. There were ten. The number ten is significant to completeness. God said that he would execute judgment against all of the false gods of Egypt, and each plague was said to be directed toward a particular heavenly deity. So the ten plagues reveal the full wrath of God’s judgment on Egypt. The first nine Plagues were just God proving that he was more powerful than the Egyptian gods. They were simply tricks in comparison to the final one. The tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, was the most powerful of all. This final plague brought death to all Egyptian homes, even the home of the beloved pharaoh, and ensured Israel’s release from slavery. After this calamity, pharaoh had no choice but grant Israel their demands and he even pleaded for blessings from them. This plague destroyed idolatry and showed that life and death are in the hands of God.
The plague was one of the most devastating points in time for the Athenians and Thebans.They did not know who to turn to for help. The people in the cities of Athens and Thebes had different reactions when they were faced with the plague. In The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, during the plague speech by Pericles, the plague in Athens had made the Athenians lose their faith in the gods and let human nature take over. However, in Oedipus the King by Sophocles, everyone went to the leader for help and never stopped praying to the gods. In both cities their reactions differed in that the Athenians lost their faith while the Thebans continued their faith in the gods while going through the difficult time of the plague.
Even with the grueling pain that the dark swells and the large tumors brought with them, to the Jews, this pain was the not the worst. The Black Plague was a killer disease from 1348-1351 that spread all throughout Europe. At this time, the Jews were despised in their communities because most of them took the occupation of money-lending. This job was considered unholy and the people of Europe looked down upon the Jews because of it. The Black Plague created a more hostile environment for the Jewry of Europe because of the newly founded flagellants, the Jewish ghettos, and the increased attacks on Jews.
William H. McNeill makes a monumental contribution to the knowledge of humanity in his book Plagues and Peoples. He looks at the history of the world from an ecological point of view. From this viewpoint the history of human civilization is greatly impacted by changing patterns of epidemic infection. Plagues and Peoples suggests that "the time scale of world history...should [be] viewed [through] the "domestication" of epidemic disease that occurred between 1300 and 1700" (page 232). "Domestication" is perceived "as a fundamental breakthrough, directly resulting from the two great transportation revolutions of that age - one by land, initiated by the Mongols, and one by sea, initiated by Europeans" (page 232). This book illustrates how man's environment and its resident diseases have controlled human migration, as well as societal successes and failures. McNeill discusses the political, demographical, and psychological effects of disease on the human race. He informs his audience that epidemics are still a viable threat to society, and warns of potential future consequences.
The Bubonic Plague, known more commonly as the Black Death, was a fatal disease that ravaged Asia and Europe during the mid-14th century. Although the destruction the Plague brought upon Europe in terms of deaths was enormous, the Islamic world arguably suffered more due to the fact that plague epidemics continually returned to the Islamic world up until the 19th century. The recurrence of the disease caused Muslim populations to never recover from the losses suffered and a resulting demographic shift that arguably helped Europe to surpass the Islamic world's previous superiority in scholarship.
The Web. The Web. 24 Mar. 2011. The. http://liboc.tctc.edu:2058/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1420001374&v=2.1&u=tricotec_main&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w> The "Plague".
One of the groups that suffered the most was the Christian Church. It lasts prestige, spiritual authority, and leadership over the people. The church promised cures, treatment, and an explanation for the plague. They said it was God's will, but the reason for this awful punishment was unknown. People wanted answers, but the priests and bishops didn't have anything to say. The people abandoned their Christian duties and fled. People prayed to God and begged for forgiveness. After the plague ended, angry and frustrated villagers started to revolt against the church, this caused the churches to be abandoned.
The plague affected people not only on a physical level but a mental one as well. The mental health of the citizens of Oran was amongst the plague's many victims, it suffered of exhaustion as well as being forced to handle mental confrontations. When the citizens dealt with these issues, some people lost their capacity to love as intently, but overall the general capacity of people to uphold their devotion remained resilient to the challenges the plague provided.
Albert Camus was a French writer who was very well known all over the world for his different works but especially with the idea of “absurdism”. Camus believed that something that was absurd was not possible by humans or logically. It was beyond ridiculous and therefore impossible. This was the basis of one of his most famous works, The Plague. The Plague is a novel that explores aspects of human nature and condition, destiny, God, and fate. The novel is about a plague that takes place in Oran, Algeria that is fictional, but it’s believed to be relatively based on a cholera outbreak in the mid 1800’s in Oran that killed thousands of people. Dr. Bernard Rieux is the protagonist but also is the narrator. However, he doesn’t admit to being the narrator until the end of the novel. Camus writes in the beginning that the instances in Oran are being told by witnesses of the plague. In The Plague, Camus wants his audience to read the book unbiasedly not knowing the narrator in order to take sides with the characters that one wants to and not to be persuaded by the narrators telling of the events.
The Bubonic Plague, otherwise known as the Black Death, is a raging disease. Most people think of it as the physical Grim Reaper of their town or community. The disease lasted about six years, 1347 to 1352. The Bubonic Plague was a travesty that has traveled throughout Europe and has raged and decimated both large and small towns, putting Europe through a lot. The disease spreads through a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis.