Ancient Egyptian doctors and the nature of the biblical plagues

Abstract

Paragraph 55 of the London Medical Papyrus describes burns derived from red waters and which later became infected with larvae in the wounds. The prescribed treatment for the burn is unusual as it calls for no rinsing and requires bandaging with alkaline materials only. Refraining from washing in the Nile (the single most readily available source of water in ancient Egypt), and the use of alkali-neutralizing agents indicates that the red caustic waters came from the river, and were acid in nature. A red, acid Nile is consistent with the first biblical plague of Egypt, which killed fish, and kept people from drinking from the river. In turn, the sulfate-laced waters of the medical document also offer a plausible insight into the subsequent biblical plagues. Amphibians would have stayed away from the deadly river, left to die on the banks, just as described in the second biblical plague. Similarly, the larvae in the wounds mentioned by the medical document re-echo the third and fourth biblical plagues: the kînnîm invertebrates and the subsequent 'arob (varied insects) are consistent with larvae and the subsequent adults thereof. In pre-industrial Ancient Egypt, sulfates from a massive volcanic fall out provide the simplest and most exhaustive origin for such waters. A massive precipitation that would account for the waters in the medical document and the biblical texts is known from sediments at the bottom of lakes along the Nile Delta. The site is downwind from the island of Santorini, and the deposit of volcanic ashes took place during the Middle Bronze Age, i.e. at a time consistent with the eruption at the Greek volcanic island.