The Bible's Ten Plagues (or pestilences) were all due to natural disasters. The ancient Egyptians lived in fear of floods, pus filled sores, mosquitoes, famine, days of blanketing darkness and hailstones which smelt of rotten eggs.

So what were the ten plagues and pestilences described in the Book of Exodus (7.1 - 10.29) and what caused them?

1) The Nile turns to blood. This was the flooding of the River Nile which stirred up the river's muddy red silt thereby creating a favourable environment for a toxic red algal bloom. This bloom starved the river of oxygen causing the death of fish. The result a stinking toxic liquid red mess.

2)The second disaster was the plague of frogs onto the land and into the villages. The smelly, toxic red river saw a mass exodus of frogs, the natural predators of flying biting insects.

3 & 4) The flying biting insects included flies, mosquitoes and lice (gnats). Since the Nile was empty of frogs the population of flies, mosquitoes and gnats swarmed and soared. These were the third and fourth plagues.

5) Uncontrolled they attacked and spread diseases such as scabies and Bluetongue and therefore the fifth pestilence, dead animals.

6) The unchecked, adventurous flies carried bacteria which caused scabies and glanders. Glanders causes weeping, pus filled sores. It is a highly infectious disease which attacks horses and mules but can also infect other animals and humans. Thus the sixth pestilence sores.

7) The ferocious clash of desert hot and cold winds occasionally caused storms with large hailstones. These balls of ice damaged crops, livestock and mud homes. Sometimes these hailstones were mixed with sulphur (brimstone) which smelt of rotten eggs. These foul yellow hailstones came from airborne volcanic ash which swept over from volcanoes in the Aegean and Mediterranean. These hailstones were the seventh pestilence.

8) The ancient Egyptians also fell victim to roaring, dark clouds of locusts. Up to 80 million locusts per square kilometre would swarm through fruit and grain farms, devouring all plant life. The weight of tens of thousands of perching locusts caused trees to topple over. Then when they had finished eating every plant, the locusts poohed all over the ground; leaving the fields covered with up two centimetres of excrement. Locusts were the eighth plague.

9) Saharan sandstorms, clouds of locusts and the violent rain storms caused by volcanoes plunged the region into periods of darkness. The sandstorms (or khamsin) sometimes lasted for three days. During this time villages were shrouded in sand stinging haze. Such darkness was the ninth pestilence.

10) The final or tenth pestilence was the death of a newborn caused by the other pestilences and plagues. Babies were still born or died as infants due to starvation or disease. (No wonder)

see http://www.publications.steveplatt.net/tenplagues.htm

Books/Articles: The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientists's Discovery of the Extraordinary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories. Colin J Humphries. Harper Collins, 2004

An Epidemiological Analysis of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Marr JS and Malloy CD, Caduceus 1996 Spring; 12(1)7-24