The Seventh Plague

NOTES FROM THE HISTORICAL RECORD

Few stories in the Bible are as harrowing or as often retold — both in print and on screen — as the story of Moses. Starting with his fateful salvation as a baby, when he was floated in a reed basket into the arms of Pharaoh’s daughter, to his later confrontation with that same Pharaoh’s son, Moses became a figure of legend. To free the Jewish tribes from slavery, he afflicted Egypt with ten plagues and eventually parted the seas and led his people through the desert for forty years, delivering the Ten Commandments as a template for a new system of laws.

But did any of this truly happen? Most historians, even many religious leaders, have discounted the story of Exodus as a myth, a moral lesson rather than a historical reality. As support for this stance, skeptical archaeologists point to the lack of Egyptian sources in documenting any series of plagues or a mass exodus of slaves, especially within the time frame indicated in the Bible.

Yet now, recent discoveries along the Nile suggest that such naysayers may be wrong. Could there truly be evidence supporting the story of Moses, of a great exodus from Egypt, of miracles and curses? Could the ten plagues of Egypt have truly occurred? The startling answers found within these pages are based on facts as solid as the name Israel found carved into the stela of Ramesses the Great’s son.

And if the plagues of Egypt could have truly happened — could they happen again, only on a global scale?

The answer to that is a frightening… yes.