A Storm in Egypt during the Reign of Ahmose [The Tempest Stele]

An inscribed stele erected at Thebes by Ahmose, the first Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, documents a destructive storm accompanied by flooding during his reign.

Fragments of the stele were found in the 3rd Pylon of the temple of Karnak at Thebes between 1947 and 1951 by the French Mission. A restoration of the stele and translation of the text was published by Claude Vandersleyen (1967). In the following year (1968), Vandersleyen added two more fragments, one from the top of the inscription and a small piece from line 10 of the restored text, which had been recovered by Egyptian archaeologists in the final cleaning of the foundations.

Each of the two sides of the stele bore the same inscription, allowing Vandersleyen to produce a restored text by collating them. The upper portion, after giving the King's titles and a recitation of religious ceremonies, describes the storm. It is unfortunately the most damaged part of the stele, with the result that there are many lacunae in the meteorological description. The description of the storm is followed by a virtually complete text that specifies the measures taken by the King to relieve the distress of the people and to repair the damages at Thebes.

An English version of Vandersleyen's translation, beginning with the description of the storm, is offered here for the convenient [sic] of Aegean specialists.

I have been following the issue of vulcanism and its effect on history and the human condition for some years. One eruption that has been given little attention is the 1500 BC + or - 50 years major eruption of Mt. Etna. I pulled up the rest of the article and saw that the Amose period has been suggested as 1550-1528 BC or 1539-1517 BC (Kitchen, 1987). This certainly falls within the appropriate period. I have also seen photos of an Etna ash plume blowing to north Africa to the west of the Nile in a recent eruption. I think it makes more sense to take a serious look at this possibility rather than making such an effort to disprove the relatively accepted date of Thera as 1626 BC.

I also do not think that the Exodus dates to the period of the great Ramases. He would have skunked those Jewish upstarts. My current theory is that it was in the period of Amenhotep II. I am playing with a historical novel idea in which I have Moses rescued as an infant by Queen Hatshepsut, and having a falling out with young Amenhotep II after the death of Tutmosis III. I see the pillar of smoke by day and of fire by night as being a volcano active to the east of Egypt and the waterways along the Red Sea rift. I posit that the land inflated from the build up of a magma pocket, causing the waters to part allowing the escape, and then as the magma was ejected the land sank again allowing the waters to rush back in. Then Moses wandered in the desert for the next 40 years while the 38 years remaining of Amenhoteps reign played out, and headed for the promised land once the word reached him that his sworn enemy was dead.

As to other storms, the First Intermediate Period as described by Ipuwer was probably much worse, and occurred around 2000 BC or earlier. There are some interesting impact craters in Argentina dating to that period. Then, of course, there is the 2 mile diameter crater recently discovered in the drained marshes of Iraq, which I first saw reported here. That also could have messed up the neighborhood a whole lot. Is there any more recent information on the date of this crater??

Catastrophism and history are so much fun!! So long as we are not living at the time, of course.

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