http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/myths.htm
Lamentations for the City of Ur
excerpt:
Enlil called the storm. The people mourn.
Winds of abundance he took from the land. The people mourn.
Bood winds he took away from Sumer. the people mourn.
Deputed evil winds. The people mourn.
Entrusted them to Kingaluda, tender of storms.
He called the storm that annihilates the land. The people mourn.
He called disastrous winds. The people mourn.
Enlil — choosing Gibil as his helper —
called the (great) hurricane of heaven. The people mourn.
The (blinding) hurricane howling across the skies — the people mourn —
the tempest unsubduable like breaks through levees,
beats down upon, devours the city’s ships,
(all these) he gathered at the base of heaven. The people mourn.
(Great) fires he lit that heralded the storm. The people mourn.
And lit on either flank of furious winds the searing heat of the desert.
Like flaming heat of noon this fire scorched.
The storm ordered by Enlil in hate, the storm which wears away the country,
covered Ur like a cloth, veiled it like a linen sheet.
http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/myths/texts/lamentations/lamentur.html
http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/myths/lamentations.htm
Lament for the Cities of Turin and Sumer
92...The dark time was roasted by hailstones and flames. The bright time was wiped out by a shadow. (2 mss. add 2 lines: On that bloody day, mouths were crushed, heads were crashed. The storm was a harrow coming from above, the city was struck by a hoe.) On that day, heaven rumbled, the earth trembled, the storm worked without respite. Heaven was darkened, it was covered by a shadow; the mountains roared. Utu lay down at the horizon, dust passed over the mountains. Nanna lay at the zenith, the people were afraid. The city ...... stepped outside. The foreigners in the city even chased away its dead. Large trees were uprooted, the forest growth was ripped out. The orchards were stripped of their fruit, they were cleaned of their offshoots. The crop drowned while it was still on the stalk, the yield of the grain diminished...
Thanks Fred Nerks!
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.