Airdate: Plagues of Egypt

Next in the Treasures Decoded series, SBS screens the doco Plagues of Egypt.

The 10 plagues in the Bible’s book of Exodus is one of the greatest and strangest stories ever told. A tyrannical pharaoh holds an army of Israelites captive. God orders Moses to warn that 10 plagues will sweep across Egypt unless the slaves are released. Pharaoh refuses, until the cruellest plague of all: the death of all first born.

With its bizarre and bloody catalogue of horrors, the tale of the 10 plagues has long been interpreted as a metaphorical story of triumph over tyranny, not an account of historical events. Now new evidence suggests these supernatural events were real natural phenomena, with one single, catastrophic cause.

The hunt for the truth behind the 10 plagues takes archaeologists and scientists to the ruins of ancient Egypt’s greatest temple and the crater of a colossal volcano; from cutting edge laboratories to a lost city in the desert, as they uncover evidence of an apocalyptic natural disaster, that rocked the ancient world and may be the true cause of the 10 plagues.

Sunday, 16 July at 7.30pm on SBS.