Eventually, Hail and Fire falls from heaven ( Exodus 9: 13-35) followed by a swarm of Locusts ( Exodus 10: 1-20). Boils befall the Egyptians ( Exodus 9: 8-12). An epidemic kills Livestock en masse ( Exodus 9: 1-7). Then Lice envelop the land ( Exodus 8: 16-19). This is followed by a plague of Frogs ( Exodus 7: 25-8:11). Look at the ancient Egyptian papyrus recording the plagues of Exodus Chapters 7-12 (called the Ipuwer Papyrus), now in the National Archeological Museum in Leiden, Netherlands.įirst, there is the plague of Blood ( Exodus 7: 14-25) as water sources (including the Nile) are turned into blood. Ipuwer is often put forward in popular literature as confirmation of the Biblical Exodus story, but these arguments ignore the many points on which Ipuwer contradicts Exodus. The poem is considered the world’s earliest known treatise on political ethics, suggesting that a good king is one who controls unjust officials, thus carrying out the will of the gods. In the Admonitions a man named Ipuwer complains that the world has been turned upside-down, and demands that the “Lord of All” remember his religious duties and destroy his enemies. It contains the Admonitions of Ipuwer, an incomplete literary work whose original composition is dated no earlier than the late Twelfth Dynasty (c.1991-1803 BCE).

T he Ipuwer Papyrus (officially Papyrus Leiden I 344 recto) is an ancient Egyptian hieratic papyrus made during the Nineteenth Dynasty, and now held in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands.

Ipuwer papyrus account of plagues