In the middle of the second millennium before the present era (approximately 3,500 years ago), the earth underwent one of the greatest catastrophes in its history. A celestial body ... came very close to the earth. The account of this catastrophe can be reconstructed from evidence supplied by a large number of documents. The comet .. touched the earth first with it's gaseous tail. .. Servius wrote, "It was not of a flaming but of a bloody redness."
One of the first visible signs of this encounter was the reddening of the earth's surface by a fine dust of rusty pigment. In sea, lake, and river this pigment gave a bloody coloring to the water. Because of these particles of ferruginous or other soluble pigment, the world turned red.
The Manuscript Quiche of the Mayas tells that in the Western Hemisphere, in the days of a great cataclysm, when the earth quaked and the sun's motion was interrupted, the water in the rivers turned to blood.
Ipuwer, the Egyptian eyewitness to the catastrophe, wrote his lament on papyrus, "The river is blood", and this corresponds with the Book of Exodus 7:20: "All the waters that were in the river were turned to blood".
Sounds like a French Dark Ages recipe. Doesn't rise well, and tastes a bit musty.
Servius wrote, "It was not of a flaming but of a bloody redness."
The bloody 'ell, ye say! I guess ye could fork it forever, and it still wouldn't be done.
Was this the same comet's tail that filled the atmosphere with sugary granules, that eventually fell as mana? Or the one that created petroleum droplets?
the reddening of the earth's surface by a fine dust of rusty pigment.
Lucky it was soluble pigment; removes any need to explain why we don't find traces of it anywhere in the stratigraphic record.
Ipuwer, the Egyptian eyewitness to the catastrophe,
One entire Egyptian? I'm stuned that so many saw and wrote of it!