After my recent interview on Coast to Coast on December 22, I have been inundated with requests to know more about my ideas concerning the biblical ten plagues of Egypt. According to the Old Testament account in the book of Exodus, when the pharaoh refused Moses’ demands to let the Israelite slaves leave Egypt, God inflicted the Egyptians with a series of what the Bible calls plagues, which included darkness over the land, the Nile turning to blood, fiery hail storms, cattle deaths and a plague of boils. In my book Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt I suggest that these events may have been the result of a natural catastrophe - a gigantic volcanic eruption on a Mediterranean island which also destroyed a civilization and gave rise to the legend of Atlantis. I have included here a brief outline of the relevant section of my book.

Thera and the Exodus
Many scholars have realized that the plagues of Egypt must have been caused by an eruption of the Aegean volcano Thera, today called Santorini. A particularly accurate description of the aftereffects of a volcanic eruption in this context is presented by Graham Phillips in his book Act of God, later reprinted under the title Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt. More significantly, though, Phillips seems to be the only person to have identified the biblical Moses as Prince Tuthmosis, the first-born of Amenhotep III of Egypt. He presents convincing evidence that the circumstances surrounding Prince Tuthmosis closely match those of Moses. Prince Tuthmosis mysteriously disappeared from record shortly before the religious revolution of Egypt's sun king Akhenaten.
Excerpts of additional proof of his postulation are presented below, together with a hypothesis of the actual events that followed the eruption of Thera.
Possibly the most significant of all the ancient descriptions of the eruption of Thera is again to be found in the Koran [XXIX, 39-40, Ali]: "(Remember also) Qarun, Pharaoh and Haman: there came to them Moses with clear signs, but they behaved with insolence on the earth; yet they could not overreach (Us). Each one of them we seized for his crime: of them, against some we sent a violent tornado (with showers of stones); some we caught by a (mighty) blast; some we caused the earth to swallow up; and some we drowned (in the waters): it was not Allah who injured (and oppressed) them: they injured (and oppressed) their own souls." From these descriptions it is clear that the first 'plague' to hit the Egyptians was a flood, which drowned a significant number of them. This 'flood' could only have been the tsunami caused by the eruption of Thera (the mighty blast), and it would have been this 'wall of water' which collapsed onto and washed away the chariots of the Pharaoh.

Originally posted by asIam

The link between the exodus and an eruption at Thera , Graham Philips weaves a credible theory together with a lot of research in his book Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt, a synopsis which of which you can read at his site here

Thera and the Exodus
Many scholars have realized that the plagues of Egypt must have been caused by an eruption of the Aegean volcano Thera, today called Santorini. A particularly accurate description of the aftereffects of a volcanic eruption in this context is presented by Graham Phillips in his book Act of God, later reprinted under the title Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt. More significantly, though, Phillips seems to be the only person to have identified the biblical Moses as Prince Tuthmosis, the first-born of Amenhotep III of Egypt. He presents convincing evidence that the circumstances surrounding Prince Tuthmosis closely match those of Moses. Prince Tuthmosis mysteriously disappeared from record shortly before the religious revolution of Egypt's sun king Akhenaten.

Originally posted by poet1b

This eruption must have had a massive impact on early Mediterranean civilizations. The Nile delta would have been pounded by waves, with a clear path going right to the delta. I am surprised that a great more study has not been done on the impact of a possible massive volcano in this region at this time on the early development of civilization.

Very informative thread.
Star and Flag!

For some reason the Myceneans abandoned their civilization between 1200 and 1100 BC. The populations of their once-mighty cities dwindled rapidly until there was no urbanized culture left on the Greek mainland. Most of the cities were eventually destroyed, and all the great craftsmen of the Mycenean cities faded away when society could no longer support them. How much of their culture they abandoned, we don't know. For the one key element of their culture that they did abandon was writing , and we don't know why. Without writing, they left us no history following the collapse of Mycenean civilization; we have, instead, only five centuries of mystery: the Greek Dark Ages. Also called, the Greek Middle Ages, this period may have been precipitated by migrations and invasions of a people speaking a dialect of Greek, the Dorians. Later Greeks believed this to be the case: in Greek history and legend, the Dorians were a barbaric northern tribe of Greeks who rushed down into Greece and wrested control over the area.

www.thefreelibrary.com...

Santorini volcanic ash found in Egypt.

Today towns of brilliantly white houses cling to the tranquil but steep cliffs of the partially collapsed volcano called Santorini in the southern Aegean Sea of Greece. But 3,500 years ago the volcano raged with a fury at least comparable to the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, whose blast was heard 1,500 kilometers away and whose ash cloud extended 50 km into the sky. Santorini's massive eruption may have given rise to the Atlantis legend and is thought to have destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete, 120 km to the south.

In spite of the 13 to 18 cubic km of material ejected by Santorini, until recently no traces of the ash had been found on land south of Crete. Last week, however, at the Geological Society of America The Geological Society of America (or GSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences. The society was founded in New York in 1888 by James Hall, James D.
meeting in Orlando, Fla., two researchers reported the southernmost find of Santorini volcanic ash grains--microscopic glass shards--along Egypt's northern coast, 800 km southeast of Santorini.

Explored by an Anglo-Greek team of archaeologists and marine geologists and known as Pavlopetri, the sunken settlement dates back some 5,000 years to the time of Homer's heroes and in terms of size and wealth of detail is unprecedented, experts say.

"There is now no doubt that this is the oldest submerged town in the world," said Dr Jon Henderson, associate professor of underwater archaeology at the University of Nottingham. "It has remains dating from 2800 to 1200 BC, long before the glory days of classical Greece. There are older sunken sites in the world but none can be considered to be planned towns such as this, which is why it is unique."

The radiocarbon dating evidence:

We conclude that if the 14C evidence is considered in isolation, one would deduce that the eruption
of Thera took place sometime between 1663 and 1599 BC with 95% confidence.

Analyses of charcoal used in Old Kingdom
pyramid construction (HAAS et al. 1987;
BONANI et al. 2001; NAKHLA et al. 1999) produced
some radiocarbon determinations with dates centuries
earlier than conventional dates...

L. DEPUYDT (2000) has analyzed a
papyrus from the Abusir mortuary temple of the
Fifth Dynasty king Neferefre as containing a Sothic
date which would place his reign more than
half a century earlier than conventional dating
(KITCHEN 2000, 47–48).

..the results obtained
purportedly produce somewhat uniform ranges
of dates 100–120 years earlier than generally
accepted New Kingdom, Second Intermediate
Period and Middle Kingdom dates...

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by Harte

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Not according to the map I am looking at. The gap between the islands leads straight to the Nile Delta. The wave would have went between Crete and Kassos straight to the Nile Delta.
Well, the link doesn't exactly work, but you can look it up yourself.

To Sinter Klaas and enemyofman: According to the evidence at hand, estimates about the time of the last Thera eruption place it between 1450 BC and as back as 1750 BC (not sure if there's evidence for two separate eruptions, the last being by far the stronger), so 3600 years ago seems about right. Minoan Crete was at its peek at that time and after the eruption it declined pretty quickly, around 1200 BC the Aegean was effectively controlled by the Myceneans.