The Tragic End of The Bronze Age (The Screenplay)

THE TRAGIC END OF THE BRONZE AGE
(nonfiction screenplay for documentary on the initial

smallpox pandemic that brought an end to bronze-age
civilization)
By Tom Slattery
Book of same title by same author published by Writers Club Press

2001
Because of the unusual newness of theoretical material in this

screenplay, it is annotated to aid audiovisual professionals to
research details.
"THE TRAGIC END OF THE BRONZE AGE"
FADE IN:
INT. LIVING ROOM OR LIBRARY SET
Episode begins with a scholarly INTRODUCER. (He or she may

or may not be the same as the NARRATOR.)
INTRODUCER
Catastrophes shaped ancient history.
Ancient history that goes so far back
we generally think of it as archeology
and even anthropology.
SUPER, OR SPLIT-SCREEN: TIMELINE GRAPH.
CENTURY-CALIBRATED GRAPH SHOWS: beginning of last Ice Age

series circa 35,000 BC, end of Ice Age circa 8,000 BC,
climate change 2200 BC, Thera volcanic explosion circa 1500
BC, Population decimation - smallpox caused? - disaster
1200-1100 BC, followed by indication of dark age, 1100 BC
until circa 800 BC, then indicator of 0 AD, indicator of
present. (introduced "timeline graph" format is used
throughout)
INTRODUCER (continuing)
There was the onset and then the
retreat of the last Ice Age. The onset
may have contributed to the
disappearance of the Neanderthals. Its
comparatively sudden end came
coincidentally with, and thus may have
induced, the beginnings of agriculture
and the city-based human epoch we call
civilization.
Then there may have been a sudden

climate change four millennia ago. In
2200 BC, coincidentally about the time
Comet Hale-Bopp previously appeared in
2213 BC, fragile early civilizations in
Egypt and Mesopotamia collapsed into
chaos for at least a century.*
Science 20 August 1993, pg 995.
Pharaoh Pepi II followed by First Intermediate
Akkad and King Naram-Sin overrun by Guti, then Amorites.
INTODUCER
There was the explosion of the volcanic
Greek island of Thera, also called
Santorini, in the Aegean Sea about 1500
BC that sent tsunami or tidal wave
across the eastern Mediterranean Ä that
would have destroyed not only hundreds
of port towns and cities but much of
the this part of the ancient world's
boats, docks, warehouses.
And it undoubtedly would have killed

skilled personnel such as boatbuilders,
sailors, and experts in trade and
commerce.
But one of the worst catastrophes may

have been caused by a virus, the variola
virus, about four hundred years after
that. This may have been the world's
first smallpox epidemic, and it appears
to have struck not long after 1200 BC
and reached a peak around 1130 BC.
Egyptian, Mediterranean, and
Mesopotamian civilizations collapsed.
As far away as China, civilization
collapsed. By 1100 BC - across the
Eurasian and African continents - the
economic, social, political, and even
religious foundations of civilization
appear to have been demolished. A Dark
Age lasting hundreds of years began,
the longest and deepest Dark Age in the
history of civilization.
GRAPHICS, SPECIAL EFFECTS.
Slowly turning PLANET EARTH IN SPACE.
SUPER: TIMELINE GRAPH FROM ICE AGE TO PRESENT

(11th & 12th centuries BC highlighted)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
In the twelfth and eleventh centuries
BC, centered within a single generation
between 1150 and 1130 BC, an
unparalleled catastrophe struck.
HIGHLIGHT: CHINA, MESOPOTAMIA, EGYPT.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
There was an enormous decline in
population. Empires suddenly
collapsed. Whole nations and cultures
abruptly ceased to exist.
HOLD FOCUS ON MAP SHOWING EGYPT.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Throughout the Old World, governments
evaporated. Economies collapsed.
Mighty military machines vanished.
MUSEUM FOOTAGE, FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, OR STOCK: OBJECTS AND

PAINTINGS FROM THE PHARAOH TUTANKHAMON'S TOMB
SUPER: EGYPT BEFORE THE COLLAPSE
With music accompaniment we see not only the jewels and

gold, but beds, chairs, utensils, flasks, other everyday
implements.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Where arts and music had flourished,
skills and traditions died. Where
trade and commerce had prospered, the
legal and business structures virtually
concluded final transactions and fell
forever silent.
We see papyrus scripts.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Whole written languages simply
vanished, and literacy itself almost
disappeared.
From other New Kingdom Egypt tombs we see armies of "toy

soldier models," Nile ships, scale models showing restored
temples and structures.
MUSEUM FOOTAGE, FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, OR STOCK: SHANG DYNASTY
BRONZES
SUPER: CHINA BEFORE THE COLLAPSE
We see Shang bronzes, other Shang implements, with focus on

intricate detail.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Cherished religions slipped away and
were replaced by new ones with
different deities and different
concepts.
MUSEUM FOOTAGE, FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, OR STOCK: AEGEAN (CRETE

AND GREECE) MYCENAEAN GREEK AND MINOAN OBJECTS
SUPER: GREECE BEFORE THE COLLAPSE
We see not only Mycenaean Era and Minoan objects, but

frescos from Thera and Knossos in detail.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Civilized values came crashing to an
end, to be replaced by more brutal
survival standards.
SLOW MONTAGE WITH MAP LOCATIONS AND APPROPRIATE SUPERS: 1.

HITTITE (TURKEY) OBJECTS, 2. PRE-1200 BC MESOPOTAMIAN
OBJECTS, 3. ALLUSIONS TO OTHER (pre-epidemic)
CIVILIZATIONS, SUCH AS STONEHENGE IN ENGLAND.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
It sounds like the stuff of science
fiction - the familiar nuclear war
aftermath - and in a way it was. But
science fiction it was not.
INT. EGYPTIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM, CAIRO
NARRATOR walks amid ancient artifacts and mummies of

ancient pharaohs.
NARRATOR
Three thousand years ago it actually
happened to our remote ancestors, and
the world actually fell into its lon-
gest and deepest dark age lasting up to
seven or eight hundred years.
SUPER (along screen bottom): TIMELINE GRAPH

SHOWING 1150 BC AND 1050 BC.
NARRATOR
Between 1150 BC and 1050 BC, all the
great bronze-age civilizations of the
Western World came crashing to an end.
ANGLE ON MUMMY OF PHARAOH RAMESES V*

(or, from photograph in Mummies, Disease, and Ancient Cultures, edited by Aidan and Eve
Cockburn, Cambridge University Press, 1980)
Closer angle shows mummified smallpox pimples.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
And here may be the reason. In about
1141 BC, after a brief reign, the
pharaoh whose throne name was
Usermaetre-sekheperenre (Powerful is
the Justice of Re), more commonly known
as Rameses V, died and was properly
mummified. Fortunately his mummy still
exists, because on the mummified
epidermis is the "smoking gun" pointing
to the culprit of the great catas-
trophe. Rameses V's mummified body is
covered with what are almost certainly
mummified smallpox vesicles.*
"An Eruption Resembling That of Variola in the Skin of a Mummy of the Twentieth Dynasty (1200-1100
BC)", by M. Armand Ruffer and A. R. Ferguson, Journal of Pathological Bacteriology, 15: 1, 1911,
reprinted in Diseases in Antiquity, Charles C. Thomas Publisher, Springfield, Illinois, 1967)
RETURN TO MUSEUM SCENE
NARRATOR
He was succeeded by his brother, who
became the pharaoh Rameses VI, and a
suggestion of social breakdown and
chaos can be seen in the fact that the
two royal brothers were buried in the
same tomb.
SUPERIMPOSE MAP SHOWING EGYPT, EASTERN
MEDITERRANEAN, AND GREECE (area names labeled)
NARRATOR
Experts comparing ancient pottery in
the region between 1200 and 1100 BC
note two things. One: a change in style
accompanied by marked decline in
quality.*
Mycenaean Pottery II, Chronology, by Arne Furumark,
Skrifter Utgivna av Svenska Institute I Athen, 1972.
"Catastrophe Zone" quote is in a note at the bottom of page 115.
Inclusion of Philistine with Mycenaean pottery types
may be quickly found on page 120.
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS OR MUSEUM SHOTS
Comparing Mycenaean pottery samples before 1200 BC and

after 1100 BC, Canaanite pottery samples before same and
after.
NARRATOR (v.o.)(con't)
Two: a marked decline in quantity,
indicating a catastrophic drop in
population. Swedish pottery expert
centers a "catastrophe zone" around
1125 BC.
NARRATOR
An area-wide catastrophic drop in popu-
lation coincided with the time of
Rameses V's death. Estimates range up
to a sudden disappearance of three-
fourths of the population.*
estimate in the beginning of "The Dark Ages,"
the fourth chapter of a widely used textbook
The Archeology of Greece by William R. Biers,
Cornell Univ Press (pg 94, 1987 revised ed).
WOODCUTS OR OTHER IMAGES OF 14th CENTURY AD "BLACK DEATH."
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Which would make it three times as
devastating as the Black Death in
Europe in the fourteenth century AD.

NARRATOR
Devastation akin to our cold-war-era
hypothetical limited nuclear exchange.
We may grasp it through a glimpse at
records close to our own time. Two-
and-a-half millennia after Rameses V
died, the Spanish Conquest of Mexico
brought smallpox to a pyramid-building,
paper-using population lacking immunity
to the disease. A Spanish chronicler
of the Conquest, Motolinia, records
this, less than five hundred years ago,
in 1541 AD:
ILLUSTRATION TAKEN FROM THE MEXICAN FLORENTINE CODEX

(and/or others) SHOWING SMALLPOX
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Quote: "For as the Indians did not know
the remedy for the disease and were
very much in the habit of bathing
frequently, whether well or ill, and
continued to do so even when suffering
from smallpox, they died in heaps, like
bedbugs. Many others died of
starvation, because, as they were taken
sick at once, they could not care for
each other, nor was there anyone to
give them bread or anything else. In
many places it happened that everyone
in a house died, and, as it was
impossible to bury the great number of
dead, they pulled down the houses over
them in order to check the stench that
rose from the dead bodies so that their
homes became their tombs. This disease
was called by the Indians 'the great
leprosy' because victims were so
covered with pustules that they looked
like lepers."*
first pages of, History of the Indians of New Spain,
by Motolinia, various printings and editions.
NARRATOR
There are no known similar
illustrations of a smallpox epidemic
two-and-a-half millennia earlier.
PAN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ARTIFACTS ANS MUMMIES IN MUSEUM
NARRATOR (v.o.)
That may be, however, because ancient
civilization was totally devastated.
There was no immune European
civilization to restore order while
replacing culture and language, as
happened in the New World.
RETURN TO NARRATOR
NARRATOR
The Conquest of Mexico gives us an
index of disease mortality. Fifty
years after the Spaniards brought
smallpox to Mexico, the Native
population was one-half to one-third
its preconquest size.*
as Francis F. Berdan notes in his book, The Aztecs
ANIMATED MAP SHOWS: BLOT OF EPIDEMIC SPREADING ACROSS

EURASIA THROUGH CHINA
NARRATOR (v.o.)
This horribly concurs with what seems
to have happened in the Old World
between roughly 1200 and 1050 BC, even
apparently reaching China.
MAP SHOWS LOCATION OF DISCOVERY OF "CAUCASIAN" MUMMIES,

LOULAN, TARIM BASIN, XINJIANG, CHINA. DOTTED LINE SHOWS
"SILK ROAD" ACROSS CENTRAL ASIA.
SUPER: SILK ROAD IN HISTORICAL TIMES.
That there could have been ancient

trade routes between China and Western
civilizations four thousand years ago
was brought to light in the late 1970s
when Caucasian-appearing mummies were
discovered in the Tarim Basin of
China's Xinjiang province.*
"Mystery of the Mummies" symposium
at the University of Pennsylvania Museum,Spring 1996, under dir of Dr. Victor H. Mair.
also: Dr. Han Kangxin, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing .
PHOTO OF 4000-YEAR-OLD "CAUCASIAN" MUMMIES FOUND IN TARIM
BASIN, XINJIANG PROVINCE, CHINA
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The Jesuit missionary Cibot told of
seeing a Chinese book, Treatise from
the Heart of Smallpox, disclosing its
appearance at the beginning of the
Tsche-U Dynasty, which was said then to
begin in 1122 BC, or, at the end of the
Shang Dynasty.*
In Diseases in Antiquity, compiled and edited by
Don Brothwell and A.T. Sandison,
Charles C. Thomas Publisher,
Springfield, Illinois, c. 1967, pg 120
SUPER (BOTTOM SCREEN): TIMELINE GRAPH WITH TIME-

PERIOD 1141 BC TO 1122 BC HIGHLIGHTED; MARKED
WITH "DEATH OF RAMESES V"; "CATASTROPHE ZONE";
"SMALLPOX IN CHINA?"; FOLLOWED BY "DARK AGE."
NARRATOR
The evidence is shaky. There is:
Rameses V, mummified with apparent
smallpox vesicle indicating he may have
died from the disease; the "catastrophe
zone" of pottery styles along with an
indication of a significant decreases
in population; and a hearsay reference
to smallpox in China. But noting the
relationship in time, taking these
events together, and looking at the
known subsequent historical
devastation, there would seem to be
enough circumstantial evidence to
indict a culprit: an initial appearance
of the variola virus causing smallpox
as we know it.
STOCK: STILL AND/OR MOTION PICTURES OF SMALLPOX VICTIMS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Smallpox is not only one of the most
deadly of all diseases, it is easily
spread, and its variola virus is
tenacious.
NARRATOR
The virus can be spread by touch or by
an airborne cough or sneeze.
(touches, brushes: clothing,
wall)
It can remain alive and lethal on cloth
or other material for up to two months.
INTERCUT: ENACTMENT
EXT. ANCIENT DESERT-LIKE ROADSIDE - DAY
Anciently garbed individual lies dead on ground. Another

anciently garbed individual peels off dead person's usable
clothing.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Those who stole from the dead
contracted the horrible deadly disease.
INTERCUT: ENACTMENT
INT. ANCIENT LIVING QUARTERS
One person in ancient garb and showing smallpox seems dead

on primitive bed. Others, obviously ill, sneeze and cough.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Those who lived with the dying
contracted the disease.
INTERCUT: ENACTMENT
EXT. DESERT-LIKE AREA - DAY
People in ancient garb flee toward desert.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
One strategy may have been to flee to
the hills and desert and survive there
for at least a couple months.
NARRATOR
(holding, showing bronze
implement)
Whatever its cause, the enormous
population decimation human tragedy
clearly deconstructed delicate Bronze
Age structures of economy and trade.
One seems to have been the tin trade.
It was critical because roughly ten
percent tin is necessary to turn soft
copper into hard ductile military-grade
bronze.
MAP SHOWS KNOWN ANCIENT TIN ORE SOURCES
Highlighted tin ore sources: 1. Cornwall in England; 2. the

Erz Geberg (German-Czech border area); 3. Area centering on
the Afghanistan-Tajikistan-Uzbekistan border area, and
extending into Khyrgyzastan; 4. area centering near the
city of Sian (ancient Anyang) in China.*
Tin In Antiquity, by R.D. Penhallurick,
Institute of Metals (Press), London, 1986.
(especially note map #4)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
At the end of the Bronze Age only four
areas were known to be main sources
that could supply an enormous appetite
for tin ore: Cornwall in England,
possibly the Erz Geberg (literally Ore
Mountains) on the present German-Czech
Border, an area centering around the
Afghanistan-Tajikistan-Uzbekistan
borders, and an area in central China
around the Shang Dynasty capital of
Anyang. Only the Chinese were fortunate
enough to have both copper and tin ores
near their center of civilization.
Other ancient civilizations had to
bring tin long distances, using
carefully managed trade systems.
NARRATOR
(holding up another bronze
piece)
A form of bronze alloy had been made
with a similar percentage of arsenic,
but the product was brittle.
MONTAGE OF STOCK, MUSEUM, OR VIDEOTAPED: BRONZE OBJECTS,

ESPECIALLY BRONZE SWORDS, BRONZE DAGGERS, AND BRONZE
CHARIOT WHEELS.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Only tin could make quality bronze for
tools, household goods, and most
importantly, military weapons. Denied
tin, bronze-age nations faced a
military second-class status. Tin,
therefore, was the paramount strategic
mineral of the Late Bronze Age, similar
to petroleum in our time. The ancient
nations of the West must have fought
one another, formed barely palatable
alliances, and pampered suppliers to
assure a flow of strategic tin.
MAP SHOWING ANIMATED TRADE ROUTES FROM TIN AREAS TO EGYPT,

FIRST EXTENDING TO, THEN DRYING UP.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
When the catastrophe struck, all the
carefully constructed trade routes and
economic arrangements that brought tin
from great distances to satisfy an
enormous appetite for bronze goods in
civilized centers of the West would
have collapsed.

NARRATOR
(holding up bronze sword)
And that is what the historical record
shows. In the West, the Bronze Age
indeed came to an end.
(Narrator puts bronze sword
down and picks up ancient
iron weapon)
And was replaced by this: bronze goods
were gradually replaced by iron
implements. The Iron Age slowly
emerged during centuries of a long dark
age.*
Several essays in: The Coming Of the Age Of Iron,
edited by Theodore A. Wertime and James D. Muhly, 1980, Yale Univ Press, New Haven;
additionally somewhat corroborated by,
"Conquest or Settlement; The Early Iron Age In Palestine,"
in Biblical Archaeologist, June 1987, page 84.
STOCK, MUSEUM, AND VIDEOTAPED SLOW MONTAGE
We see Nile scenes, pyramids, ancient temples, tomb

paintings, jewelry, papyrus documents, musical instruments,
paintings of those instruments in use, etc.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
When the catastrophe struck and the
Bronze Age collapsed, Egypt - then in a
period historians call the New Kingdom
Empire which reached up into Canaan and
down through Nubia - seems to have
suffered terribly.
Narrator holds up three books, The Torah, the Bible, and

the Koran.
NARRATOR
And it is possible that fragments
pertaining to the catastrophe and
collapse may be found in the Judeo-
Christian Old Testament - which began
to be written as we know it four
hundred years after the great
catastrophe. The "Moses" in it would
have to have lived near the end of the
New Kingdom period of Egyptian history,
the time that events in the transition
from Genesis into Exodus appear to have
taken place.
Narrator puts those books down and picks up two others, the
Iliad and the Odyssey.
NARRATOR
In addition, the Fall of Troy - that
four hundred years later Homer
poetically chronicled in the Iliad and
its sequel the Odyssey - took place at
this time.
VIEW OF: HISSARLIK-RUINS OF TROY, MODERN TURKEY (perhaps

utilizing footage from the film "The Trojan Women")
SUPER: TROY TODAY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
A list of dates found on the Greek
island of Paros called the Parian
Chronicle Marble gives the equivalent
of a precise, but arguably incorrect,
date for the fall of Troy:
PHOTO OR SHOT: OF REMAINING "PARIAN CHRONICLE MARBLE" (now

among the Arundel Marbles at Oxford.* (Early dates are lost from damage in
the civil war between Cromwell and Royalists, but a copy of it was fortunately made by John Selden,
preserving dates back to the 14th century BC)
HIGHLIGHT: DATE FOR FALL OF TROY

SUPER: EQUALS JUNE 5, 1209 BC
NARRATOR (v.o.)
June 5, 1209 BC. Another date
traditionally used by scholars is 1194
BC, fifteen years later. It would seem
that a real historic event took place
plus or minus a few decades of those
times.

NARRATOR
And within a century, around that time,
something destroyed civilization so
thoroughly that literacy itself almost
vanished, and four centuries later
people began anew to record in writing
what had been preserved as precious
historical memory in bardic, religious,
and other oral traditions for four
hundred long years.
SLOW MONTAGE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ARTIFACTS, PAINTINGS,

MODELS, AND STATUES.
ANGLES ON: (among other implements)

1. modern-looking Ancient Egyptian chairs;
2. modern-appearing Ancient Egyptian beds.
3. Paintings, drawings, and statues WITH ANGLES SHOWING

women wearing sleek stylish clothes and jewelry.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
When the catastrophe struck, Egypt was
the greatest civilization in the world,
the focal point of wealth, power, the
arts, education, and technology.
4. Enactment: Woman in Ancient Egyptian attire dabs on

scents from Ancient Egyptian glass perfume bottles, and
puts on almost modern facial makeup.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
One only has to look at items found in
tombs to see that upper class Egyptians
lived as well as anyone would live
until virtually our own time.
5. Ancient Egyptian paintings of banquet scenes, showing

musicians playing in concert. (possibly add: Clip from PBS
Scientific American series showing modern music historian
playing Ancient Egyptian bamboo flute.)

NARRATOR
Modern research has shown that the
modern eight-tone Western scale was the
basis of their music.
SLOW MONTAGE SHOWING ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PAINTINGS,

SCULPTURES, AND MODELS OF MILITARY SCENES.
1. Models of "toy soldiers" marching.
2. Ancient Egyptian weapons and a war chariot.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The mighty, well organized, and highly
trained Egyptian army fought not only
with armored chariots and bronze swords
but had divisions of archers using
laminated bows that could shoot arrows
through metal armor.
3. Medenet Habu wall carvings of battles, ANGLES ON bows

and arrows, other weapons.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The Egyptian Empire could not only
field armies numbering in the tens of
thousands but logistically supply these
troops in distant foreign wars.
SLOW MONTAGE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN STRUCTURES AND MONUMENTS

AS SEEN AT PRESENT
1. Luxor or Karnak.
2. "Ozymandius" statue of Rameses II. Pyramids. Etc.

(director's choice)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The great ancient ruined Egyptian
structures speak across the millennia
for themselves. To construct them
required organized labor, engineering
knowledge, architectural plans, and
sound healthy economies, all of which
in turn betray extensive organized
educational institutions.
COMPARISON GRAPHS
Left graph shows twenty centuries of Ancient Egypt showing

area of pyramid construction about midway. Right graph
shows twenty centuries since beginning of Christian Era.
Comparison graph also indicates thousand-year gap between
the two.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
By the time ancient Egypt came suddenly
and grindingly to a halt with the
collapse of the New Kingdom at the end
of the twelfth century BC, educational
and religious institutions would
probably have been steadily growing and
developing for over twenty centuries.
Recall that our commonly used calendar
begins only twenty centuries ago.
Smaller graph indicates comparison between twenty centuries

of Ancient Egypt, five centuries of New Kingdom Egypt, and
two centuries of The United States of America's existence.
Graph of Egypt also marks off clear indication of 1225 BC.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
When it collapsed, the New Kingdom
Egyptian empire itself was entering its
fifth century. By comparison, the
United States as a nation goes back
only two centuries. A thousand years
before day one in our calendar, a great
tragedy struck. Two thousand years of
continuous ancient Egyptian national
history and over four centuries of New
Kingdom Egyptian history came to a
sudden end.
SCENES SHOWING KARNAK AND LUXOR TEMPLES
Dollies, pans, and tilts of the Great Ancient Egyptian

temples of Luxor and Karnak
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The great temples that amaze tourists
far up the Nile at Karnak and Luxor -
the latter still the largest and among
the most beautiful religious edifices
in the world - were last modified just
fifty years before the catastrophe
struck.
MASSIVE STATUES OF RAMESES II AT ABU SIMBL, EGYPT
Pan and tilt to indicate massive size of statuary.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
When the man who had ordered these last
modifications, the pharaoh Rameses II,
died in about 1212 BC, Egypt was
confidently the technological and
cultural center of the ancient world.
MAP SHOWS EXTENT OF EGYPTIAN EMPIRE UNDER RAMESES II,

NOTABLY INCLUDING CANAAN (with Hittite Empire indicated)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
An almost modern nation with a
military-backed political-economic
empire second to none and with a
government operating not unlike those
of large nations in very recent history.
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PAINTINGS AND CARVINGS SHOWING RAMESES II

IN CHARIOT, BATTLE GEAR FIGHTING HITTITES.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Early in the long reign of this last of
the truly great pre-catastrophe
pharaohs...
MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF KADESH IN SYRIA

NARRATOR (v.o.)
... a simmering power struggle with the
Hittite Empire over territorial
hegemony erupted into a real war that
culminated in a great battle between
the Hittite Empire and the Egyptian
Empire and all of their minor allies at
a place called Kadesh in what is now
Syria.
BATTLE MAP OF KADESH AND BATTLE ILLUSTRATION, (Hittite and

Egyptian positions and troop movements indicated.*
example in Chronicle of the Pharaohs, by Peter A. Clayton,
Thames & Hudson, 1994, pgs 150-51)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Two well organized and logistically
well supplied armies, perhaps totalling
between them a hundred thousand
soldiers, fought each other to a draw
with bronze weapons and military
chariots.
Narrator holds up copy (or illustration of copy) of the two

Peace Treaties, one in Hittite and one in Egyptian.
NARRATOR
While the great gory battle and several
other Hittite-Egyptian wars following
it produced no victor, the conflict did
eventually result in the world's first
known written peace treaty between
great empires in 1259 BC.
ORIG TEXTS: EGYPTIAN THEN HITTITE VERSIONS, PEACE TREATY*

{Egyptian version carved on walls of both Karnak and the Ramesseum; Hittite version on clay tablets
(in Berlin museum?); possibly followed by split-screen comparison excerpts of translations as seen in
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, by James D. Pritchard, Princeton Univ Press
1950, 1969, pages 199 (Egyptian) and 201 (Hittite).}
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Both of the virtually identical Hittite
and Egyptian texts have survived to our
time. The Battle of Kadesh in
particular and the war in general show
the level which sophistication in
military training, tactics, logistics,
and organization had reached.
NARRATOR
The peace treaty itself betrays a level
of sophistication in diplomacy, written
word usage, and translation services,
and it cannot help but conjure up
modern scenes of government
representatives sitting around
conference tables to hack out the
details of a treaty.
GRAPH OF LATE NEW KINGDOM PHARAOHS' REIGNS

HIGHLIGHT: LAST ON LIST, RAMESES V
Usermaetre Rameses II Ä c.1279-1212 BC
Baenre Merneptah Ä c.1212-1201 BC
Userkhephrure Seti II Ä c.1201-1195 BC
(turmoil 6 to 10 years)
Usermaetre Meryamon Rameses III Ä c.1185-1153 BC
Heqamaetre Rameses IV Ä c.1153-1146 BC
Usermaetre Rameses V (smallpox) c.1146-1141 BC
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Within a century, however, all this
civilized sophistication came crashing
to an end, and not many pharaohs later,
Egyptians and everyone else in the Old
World were groveling for survival.
About these last pre-catastrophe
pharaohs there may be some minor
disagreement concerning succession, but
the important thing to note is the span
of time.
SUPERIMPOSE: IMAGES OR MUMMIES OF PHARAOHS, AS NAMED
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Basically Merneptah succeeded Rameses
II and reigned about ten years, Seti II
reigned another ten years. For a few
years there was turmoil, and then came
the last significant ancient Egyptian
pharaoh, Rameses III, reigned thirty-
two years, followed by two more of
little note, Rameses IV, seven years,
and Rameses V, at best five years:
HIGHLIGHT AS INDICATED: ON GRAPH OF PHARAOHS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
A century and a quarter from a
sophisticated peace treaty between
empires to apparent epidemic-caused
collapse of civilization, and only
twelve years between the death of the
last great pharaoh, Rameses III, and
the apparent smallpox death of Rameses
V.
NARRATOR
Under Rameses III, in 1177 BC, the last
great battle of imperial Egypt took
place. The Sea Peoples had been raiding
Mediterranean coastal cities, spreading
havoc and disrupting trade.
SCENES OF LAND AND SEA BATTLES CARVED ON MEDENET HABU
NARRATOR (v.o.)
As scenes from his funeral temple at
Medenet Habu proudly show, the Sea
Peoples were defeated on both land and
sea as they attempted to enter the Nile
Delta and northern Egypt.
HIGHLIGHT TO FOLLOW NARRATION:
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Note the ships, uniforms,
nationalities, and weapons. These must
have been almost identical to those
seen in the Trojan war and by the
mythical Ulysses in his subsequent
adventures in "The Odyssey."

NARRATOR
It has been suggested that the real man
the mythical Ulysses represented was,
in fact, one of these Sea Peoples
raiders. Some archaeologists conjecture
that raiding Sea Peoples caused the
downfall of all these ancient empires.
MAP OF ANCIENT GREECE SHOWING: MYCENAE, TIRYNS, GLA
NARRATOR (v.o.)
But thoughtful questions sorely test
this hypothesis.
VIEWS (ESPECIALLY FROM BELOW) OF PRESENT MYCENAE, TIRYNS,

GLA
SUPERS: IDENTIFYING THESE AS: MYCENAE TODAY, TIRYNS

TODAY, GLA TODAY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Could the great Greek fortresses of
Mycenae, Tiryns, Gla and others have
fallen to Viking-like Sea Peoples?
VIEWS OF PRESENT TROY (ESPECIALLY FROM BELOW)

SUPER: TROY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Consider how long it took the well
organized naval expedition of a
thousand ships and the combined
military strength of Achaean Greek
nations to bring down the great
fortress of Troy - and then, as the
story goes, only by ruse.
NARRATOR
The Sea Peoples may have helped to
spread disease, but their raids seem
unlikely to have caused the sudden
collapse of bronze-age civilization.
MAP OF ANCIENT ASIA MINOR (TURKEY), WITH ANIMATED ROUTES TO
HITTITE CAPITAL, HATTUSHILASH (BOGHAZ KOI IN CENTRAL
TURKEY). DOTTED EXTENSIONS MAY GO TO MESOPOTAMIAN CAPITALS.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Moreover, could the Sea Peoples have
abandoned their ships and marched
inland to the Hittite capital and then
gone on for weeks to reach the Assyrian
and Babylonian empires after fighting
that battle?
MEDENET HABU TEMPLE, SEA BATTLE SCENES
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Even when the Sea Peoples had the
advantage of their warships, they were
soundly defeated in the Nile Delta by
the Egyptians - who did not have great
stone fortresses there and used a
simple trick of stretching nets across
rivers and canals to trap Sea Peoples'
ships.
SHOTS OF MYCENAE, TIRYNS
SUPERS: MYCENAE, GREECE, TODAY; TIRYNS, GREECE, TODAY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The same questions can be asked of
other, and likely related, great
migrations thought by some to have
occurred during this increasingly
chaotic time. Could Dorians or any
other nomadic or migrating peoples have
brought down great fortresses and
virtually all of the old empires? It
seems equally unlikely. It is more
likely that they were epidemic
survivors later drawn into a population
and power vacuum that may have been
caused by a smallpox catastrophe.
NARRATOR
If they had represented an organized
national or multi-national force, the
Sea Peoples would surely seem to have
suffered a disastrous and decisive
defeat in northern Egypt. And this
would have terminated their adventures
against organized civilized nations and
empires.
MAP SHOWING EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN THROUGH MESOPOTAMIA -

WITH 12th CENTURY BC EMPIRES AND COUNTRIES NAMED
Animation shows a darkening, as if by a cloud, creeping

across region.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
As the Sea Peoples were being defeated
in the Nile Delta, the tragic smallpox
epidemic may already have begun its
rapid furious spread through the
civilized nations of the late bronze
age.
NARRATOR
Thoughtful reflection and consideration
of the known tenacity and terrible
infectiousness of the variola virus
would single it out as the culprit.
The virus remains potentially active on
clothing and other materials for up to
two months, and over and above physical
contact with infected bodies and
material goods, it can be spread by a
breath or a sneeze from an infected
person.
ANIMATED ABOVE MAP SHOWING SEA AND LAND TRADE ROUTES

CONNECTING ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
That combined with the known widespread
interdependent trade networks of the
late bronze age and perhaps
opportunistic land and sea raids toward
the end of the era appears to have
brought the bronze age to a sudden
horrible end.
SHOTS OF: STATUARY OF EGYPTIAN SCRIBE, EGYPTIAN PAINTINGS

OF GOODS BEING BROUGHT BEFORE PHARAOHS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Even the careful government bureaucracy
of Egypt, which planned for natural
disasters and attempted to minimize
calamity in its empire and even in the
lands of its trading partners, could
have had little time to study and
counter the effects of the epidemic.
NARRATOR
While early in his reign, Rameses III
led the successful campaign against the
Sea Peoples, late in his reign he had
to deal with an assassination attempt
by his own high government officials
and may even have been assassinated.
Could this have been due to social
unrest caused by the havoc of a
spreading catastrophic smallpox
epidemic? About a decade later, his
grandson Rameses V died of smallpox.
GRAPH SHOWING PHARAOHS RAMESES III, IV, V*

Usermaetre Meryamon Rameses III - c.1185-1153 BC
Heqamaetre Rameses IV - c.1153-1146 BC
Usermaetre Rameses V (smallpox) c.1146-1141 BC
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The three pharaohs, Rameses III, IV,
and V, would have been better able to
isolate themselves than the average
Egyptian if an epidemic had been raging
through the land, and if they did, only
the first two of them managed to do it
successfully.
NARRATOR
Following the assassination of - or
assassination attempt on - Rameses III,
Egypt still retained the vestiges of
civilization.
SHOT OF PAPYRUS INVESTIGATING ASSASSINATION JUDICIAL

PAPYRUS OF TURIN (in the Turin Egyptian Museum, part of the
Harem Conspiracy Papyrus) - perhaps with bottom-screen
SUPER: TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH*
(found on page 214, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, by James B. Pritchard, Princeton Univ
Press)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The last half of a papyrus scroll
summarizing an inquiry into the crime
and conspiracy - that has to remind one
of the Warren Commission - exists. A
panel was appointed. Witnesses were
called. Judgments were handed down.
Some officials who had been appointed
to the panel were later found guilty
and suffered harsh ancient Egyptian
punishment.
SHOT OF PAINTING, STATUE, OR WALL CARVING OF RAMESES III
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Assassinated or not, when Rameses III
died c. 1153 BC, not only Egyptian
civilization, but civilization in
general was teetering on the edge of
its greatest disaster.
RETURN TO ANGLES ON ASSASSINATION PAPYRUS, plus perhaps

continuing translation in English.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Whether successful or not, the mere
assassination attempt on this pharaoh -
who was revered with deep religious
conviction as the living God on earth
and probably also admired for having
led the victory over the Sea Peoples -
shows a serious rent in the Egyptian
social fabric.
RETURN TO ANIMATED MAP OF EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND

MESOPOTAMIA SHOWING DARKENING CLOUD OF EPIDEMIC
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Rameses III's son may have isolated
himself from the epidemic, but his
grandson could not. In the few years
between the death of Rameses III circa
1153 BC, and the death of Rameses V
circa 1141 BC, there must have been
spreading social havoc and
institutional breakdown in the known
world. If anything near the 75 percent
drop in population estimated to have
happened in Greece also occurred in
Egypt, or even the one-half to two-
thirds drop that occurred in post-
Conquest Mexico two-and-a-half
millennia later, it would certainly
have meant total economic collapse and
complete social chaos.
ENACTMENT
EXT. EGYPTIAN VILLAGE
Bodies lie in street. A "survivor" stumbles by in an

agonized posture.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
And if not total, certainly
considerable social and economic
collapse did occur, and Egypt never
fully recovered.

NARRATOR
Apparently sometime within a few years
or a few decades of the collapse, the
biblical Moses led a small band of
persecuted people out of Egypt and into
the Sinai. A arguable word for these
people that has come down to us, even
from that ancient time, is: Hebrew -
ibri or apiru, etc., in several ancient
languages - but it seems to have
represented more a social class than an
ethnic group Ä perhaps an international
social class of skilled laborers or
materials haulers and traders. It may
also have been a word for a group of
condemned political-religious
dissidents, possibly a widely used
reference to those who had plotted
against the state or secretly spread
the subversive ideas of heretical
religions.
MONTAGE OF SEVERAL EGYPTIAN PAINTINGS AND WALL CARVINGS

SHOWING PHARAOH AKHNATEN WORSHIPING THE SUN
SUPER: GRAPH SHOWING TIMELINE, WITH AKHNATEN AT

1360 BC TO 1343 BC.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Two hundred years before the apparent
smallpox death of Rameses V, the
pharaoh Amenhotep IV had broken
dramatically with the polytheistic past
and had initiated a new monotheistic
state religion worshiping an aspect of
the sun called the Aten. To advance
his cause, he changed his royal name to
Akhnaten, meaning: He-in-whom-Aten-is-
satisfied.
NARRATOR
But the religion lasted less than a
decade after his death.
VIEW OF GOLD COFFIN MASK OF TUTANKHAMEN
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Akhnaten's son or nephew, the pharaoh
we know from the greatest Egyptian tomb
treasure ever found, found it expedient
to change his name from Tutankh-aten to
Tutankhamen, signifying a return to the
Old Time Religion of many gods around
the chief god Amen, "The Hidden One."
NARRATOR
After Tutankhamen's death, the
monotheistic religion of Akhnaten was
vigorously - perhaps brutally -
suppressed.
ENACTMENT
INT. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HOUSE
Male and Female characters in New Kingdom Egyptian attire

slip secretively into room, worship "The Aten" sun-and-rays
symbol.
SUPER: MAP OF THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE AT TIME OF RAMESES II
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Undoubtedly what had been the state
religion of the Egyptian Empire for a
generation would have continued to have
had adherents, but they would have been
forced to worship in secret and become
an underground religion.
Male characters in Egyptian police-military attire burst

into room, seize Aten worshippers.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
One can easily imagine that people
guilty of political and religious
heresy were regarded as criminals and
treated as such. This would, of
course, not only include the Aten
proto-monotheists but all other reli-
gious and political deviations
formerly, but no longer, tolerated in
imperial Egypt.
NARRATOR
If Atenists, subject foreigners, maybe
even remnants of the Hyksos, and
others, suddenly felt the heavy hand of
the restoration conservative religious
state, it could eventually have led to
a situation that would seem not much
different than the one related in
Exodus.
MAP OF NILE DELTA WITH AREA OF EASTERN DELTA CONFORMING TO

"GOSHEN" HIGHLIGHTED AROUND THE MODERN EGYPTIAN CITY OF
FAQUS. (possibly indicate the city of Pi-Rameses, other
relevant ancient cities, including Hyksos capital Avaris)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Writer and ancient Egypt expert Ahmed
Osman points out that gsm in ancient
Egyptian is a real, identifiable place
in the Nile Delta around the present
town of Faqus. Some suspect the
present town name retains a hint of one
of the two ancient syllables, "qus" has
survived from the Biblical Land of
Goshen. If so, possibly the name Faqus
tells us something more as a credible
corruption of "p gsm," or "The Goshen"
the Egyptian definite article
indicating that the place may have once
stood out as a center of a significant
place. The followers of Moses, who may
have been the ones giving ancient
significance to the Land of Goshen, may
have been made up of a number of
officially despised, oppressed groups.
SUPER: TIMELINE GRAPH 1650 BC TO 1100 BC - WITH
HIGHLIGHT OR ARROW CLEARLY GOING BACK IN TIME -
SHOWS HYKSOS, BATTLE OF AVARIS, THEN NEW KINGDOM,
WITH RAMESES II THROUGH RAMESES V NOTED.
MAP EXPANDS TO SHOW ALL OF EGYPT THROUGH THEBES. THEBES AND

AVARIS, ON MAP, HIGHLIGHTED
SUPER: HYKSOS CAPITAL OF AVARIS
ANIMATED ARROW ON MAP SHOWS CONQUEST ROUTE OF

PHARAOH AMOSE FROM SOUTH
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Let's go back in the timeline a few
hundred years: Three or four centuries
before the time most think Moses led
his people into the Sinai, the Hyksos,
who had been foreign rulers of northern
Egypt for hundreds of years and had
become thoroughly Egyptianized, were
overthrown by a southern Egyptian
pharaoh named Amose.
GRAPH OF HYKSOS PHARAOHS*

(from Egypt, Canaan, and Israel In Ancient Times, by Donald B. Redford, Princeton Univ
Press 1992, page 110)
The Historical Fifteenth Dynasty Manetho
M3e-ib-r‘ Sheshy Salitis
Mr-wsr-r‘ Ya‘kob-har Bnon/Pachan
Swsr.n-r‘ Khyan Iannas
[ Ä- ] Yansas-X Assis
Three names of Apophis Apophis
[ -- ] H3mwdi --
precise reign dates unknown: total equals a century between 1650 BC and 1549 BC
NARRATOR (v.o.)
One of the Hyksos pharaohs has a
strikingly Old Testament-like name,
Merwosere Ya'kob-har, or Yacob-el, like
the Biblical Jacob. If nothing else,
it shows the Biblical name being used
around the time of Jacob. Another
tempting personal name similarity is
that of Yakob-el's grandson or great
grandson, the Hyksos pharaoh Apophis,
which sounds much like the one-
millennium-later Classical Greek
dramatic character and legendary king
of Egypt, Epaphos.
AERIAL VIEW OF SITE OF ANCIENT AVARIS (TEL-ED-DAB'A), WITH
ANGLE TOWARD AND SHOWING MEDITERRANEAN IN DISTANCE
SUPER: SITE OF ANCIENT AVARIS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Like many dramatic and legendary
characters, the Greek word has a
meaning to fit the character's
attributes or personal history. Epaphos
means "touch" or "caress," but the
king's name could still hark back
through mispronunciations and
misapprehensions to the real Hyksos
pharaoh Apophis, like Epaphos an
Egyptian king.
GRAPH SHOWS TIMELINE, HYKSOS ERA 1650-1550 BC HIGHLIGHTED,

RAMESES V, c 1150 BC, INDICATED, CLASSICAL GREEK PERIOD, c
500-400 BC, INDICATED.
TIMELINE C 800 BC INDICATES BOTH "HOMER" AND "BEGINNING OF

WRITTEN FORM OF BIBLE AS WE KNOW IT."
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Epaphos was son of the goddess and
dramatic character Io and grandfather
of another Greek dramatic king of
Egypt, Busiris (possibly corrupted from
P Osiris, "The Osiris," conceivably
derived from a later Greek
misunderstanding of the title of the
pharaoh, "The God"). The legendary and
dramatic Greek hero Herakles fought
Busiris and brought an end to religious
human sacrifice. Might there be a
mixing of Greek, Jewish, and Egyptian
historical, dramatic, and religious
metaphors, all seeping out of the
Hyksos Dynasty here?
VIEW OF A CLASSICAL GREEK OUTDOOR THEATER (perhaps stock of

"The Suppliants" being performed?)
SUPER: TIMELINE INDICATES 490 BC.

NARRATOR (v.o.)
In the Classical drama by Aeschylus,
"The Suppliants" is through descent
from the goddess Io, their four-times
great grandmother, that the women
escaping Egyptian military forces claim
a right to reside in the Greek city of
Argos. Martin Bernal points out that
the choice of a title by Aeschylus may
have been a play on words, the Greek
hikes (ios), "suppliants," not too
unsubtly recalling Hyksos pharaohs of
Egypt, of which the pharaoh Apophis may
have been the most well known.*
Black Athena, Volume I, by Martin Bernal,
Rutgers Univ Press, 1987, pg 22
NARRATOR
The present accepted meaning of Hyksos
is that it comes from a Greek garbling
of the Egyptian words hka-ha-swt,
"people under foreign rulers," but
ancient Egyptian historian Manetho's
similar sounding term for "Shepherd
Kings" may not have been completely
wrong. Plays on words tickled ancient
fancies more than in our time, and
after their defeat, the Hyksos may well
have been ridiculed by word-play.
Narrator picks up two similar modern-cast (for this

program!) DAGGERS, one cast ARSENIC BRONZE, the other cast
TIN BRONZE.
NARRATOR
By accident or etiology, the beginning
of the Late Bronze Age coincides with
takeover of northern Egypt by the
Hyksos.
INT. MODERN METALSHOP STUDIO WITH VICE
Enactor clamps both arsenic-bronze and tin-bronze daggers

in VICE.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The Late Bronze Age essentially means
the Tin-Bronze Age. Mixing ten percent
tin with copper makes a superior alloy
to the ten percent arsenic mixed with
copper that had made the alloy of the
earlier Bronze Ages. Watch what
happens with the arsenic-bronze dagger.
Enactor bends Arsenic-Bronze Dagger until it snaps.

Narrator then bends the Tin-Bronze Dagger, and it bends,
perhaps 90 degrees.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Tin-bronze is a less brittle and more
ductile metal alloy, a decided military
advantage allowing for bronze chariot
wheel and bearing construction and
superior military swords, daggers,
spears, helmets, and body armor
MAP OF EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN, ANIMATED
HIGHLIGHT AS INDICATED
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The Hyksos appear to have arrived in
northern Egypt from, and were driven
back into, what we call Canaan. Canaan
appears to have been, linguistically
and culturally, closely tied to the
Minoan/Mycenaean Greek civilizations.
VIEW OF EXCAVATIONS AT TELL-EL-DAB'A
SUPER: EXCAVATIONS AT TELL-EL-DAB'A (ANCIENT

HYKSOS CAPITAL OF AVARIS)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Experts say fragments of wall paintings
found in a late Hyksos palace of Avaris
are unmistakably Minoan in character.*
"Minoan Painting and Egypt; the Case of Tell el-Dab'a,"
by Lyvia Morgan. Begins page 29 in:
Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant;
Interconnections in the Second Millennium BC,
British Museum Press, London, 1995
ANGLE ON FRAGMENTS FROM TELL-EL-DAB'A WALL PAINTINGS
(Contact: W. Vivian Davies, Department of Antiquities,
British Museum, London, and Professor Manfred Bietak,
Austrian Institute, Vienna)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
What this may suggest is that the
Hyksos were part of an Eastern
Mediterranean sea trading empire ...
RETURN TO MAP OF EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
NARRATOR (v.o.)
... that included Mycenaean-Minoan
Greece and Crete, the Levant, and
northern Egypt.
ANIMATED MAP SHOWS ARROW TO GREECE FROM CANAAN, WITH CLOSE-

UP ON ANCIENT GREEK THEBES (so labeled)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Later Greeks credited an ancient
legendary Greek king Cadmus as both
having founded the Greek city of Thebes
and having brought alphabetical writing
from Canaan. The legend may contain
fragmentary fact from distant
historical memory, and some of that
memory may be of a Greek-Canaanite
presence in Egypt, the Hyksos.
NARRATOR
It would appear that the Hyksos were at
least oriented toward Canaanite-Minoan-
Greek trading civilizations, and the
cite of Avaris, their capital, made it
a Mediterranean trading city by sea and
a trading city with Canaan and the rest
of Asia by land. For whatever reasons,
they could not hold onto this ideal
Egyptian foothold for more than a
century.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THERA ISLAND (SANTORINI) TODAY
SUPER: THERA OR SANTORINI ISLAND TODAY.
SUPER (DIFFERENT COLOR, ALONG BOTTOM): GRAPH OF

TIMELINE ZEROS-IN ON: 1650 BC ARRIVAL OF HYKSOS,
1550 BC FALL OF AVARIS AND DEFEAT OF THE HYKSOS,
AND BEGINNING OF NEW KINGDOM EGYPT
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The fall of the Hyksos capital of
Avaris - in Egyptian hwt waret,
"mansion of the desert tract" - and
defeat of the Hyksos began the New
Kingdom imperial phase of Egyptian
history.
SUPERIMPOSE OVER PHOTOGRAPH: DRAWING OF ESTIMATED ANCIENT

VOLCANO OF THERA
SUPER: ANCIENT THERA VOLCANO
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The conquest of the Hyksos by the
pharaoh Ahmose, suspiciously follows
ANIMATION (PERHAPS COMBINED WITH PINATUBO EXPLOSION

FOOTAGE, LABELED AS SUCH IN SUPER): DRAWING OF THERA
EXPLODES.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
... the destruction of Minoan and
coastal Canaanite civilization as a
result of the explosion of the volcanic
island of Thera in the Aegean Sea ...
MAP OF EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SHOWING ENLARGING TSUNAMI WAVE

EMANATING FROM THERA AND STRIKING MEDITERRANEAN SHORELINES
NARRATOR (v.o.)
... its resulting tidal wave, and
apparent global climate change from the
ash cloud. It is thought to have been
among the largest volcanic explosions
in human history.

NARRATOR
The Egyptian defeat of the Hyksos may
have been opportunistic, taking
advantage of the widespread destruction
and resulting political and economic
chaos.
Martin Bernal dates the Thera explosion

a century earlier, and so it may have
been the reverse: the Hyksos taking
advantage of the destruction-caused
chaos to take over northern Egypt. But
most feel Thera exploded close to 1500
BC, roughly coinciding with the demise
of the Hyksos.
ANIMATED MAP, EGYPT AND CANAAN SHOWS: EGYPTIAN ADVANCE FROM

SOUTH TO HELIOPOLIS (EGYPTIAN ANU, EDGE OF MODERN CAIRO).
SUPER: EARLY JULY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Whatever happened, a brief account
anciently scribbled on the back of the
Rhind Mathematical Papyrus shows a
rapid Egyptian advance through Hyksos-
controlled northern Egypt:
ANIMATED MAP SHOWS EGYPTIAN FORCES BYPASSING AVARIS TO TAKE

THE HYKSOS FORTRESS OF SILE (TJARU), EDGE OF THE SINAI.
SUPER: MID-OCTOBER
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The Egyptian forces moved as if
strategically to cut off overland
support from Canaan to the Hyksos
capital by capturing the fortress of
Sile, also called Tjaru, as if from
military intelligence that sea supply
lines Ä ships and docks - had been
destroyed by a catastrophe. Then began
the successful siege of Avaris itself,
at least in part a naval blockade.*
Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times,
by Donald B. Redford,
Princeton Univ Press, 1992, see chapter on Hyksos.
PHOTO OR SHOTS: BIOGRAPHY OF AHMOSE-SI-ABINA IN TOMB
(possibly showing paintings of battle?) OF AHMOSE-SI-ABINA
AT EL-KAB (just north of Aswan)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
It was recorded and preserved for us in
the biography on the tomb of one of the
Egyptian naval officers, Ahmose-si-
Abina who later became the equivalent
of an Egyptian admiral.
ANIMATED MAP SHOWS: SURROUNDING OF AVARIS, THEN PURSUIT OF

HYKSOS, AND BATTLE OF SHARUHEN (TEL-EL-AJJUL, NEAR GAZA).
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The Hyksos may have been driven out of
Egypt proper, but may not have been
entirely removed from subsequent
influence on Egyptian history.*
Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times,
by Donald B. Redford, Princeton Univ Press, 1992, pg 128
VIEW, PERHAPS AERIAL, OF SITE OF SHARUHEN TODAY
SUPER: SITE OF SHARUHEN TODAY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Egyptian forces failed in the first two
annual attempts to take the fortress of
Sharuhen, but succeeded in the third
and reduced it to ashes and rubble.
With that, the military Hyksos threat
came to an end. The several years it
took the Egyptians to defeat their
remnants at Sharuhen shows a Canaanite
economic and military base. They
ceased to be Hyksos per se, but
probably continued as Canaanites and
Mediterranean traders.
ANIMATED MAP OF NORTHERN EGYPT, SINAI, AND GAZA EXPANDS TO

SHOW EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND GREECE, WITH TRADE ROUTES
BETWEEN BYBLOS, UGARIT, KNOSSOS, CYPRUS, NORTHERN EGYPT.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The Hyksos had governed northern Egypt
for a century. Martin Bernal suggests
that they may have been more an ancient
equivalent of a modern multi-national
corporation executives than military
conquerors.*
Black Athena, Volume II, by Martin Bernal,
Rutgers Univ Press, 1991, pg 345
NARRATOR
And since the conquering Egyptians
clearly can be seen as a religion-ori-
ented centralized government
bureaucracy under a strong monarch, one
might suspect that trading and
technical class people formerly allied
with or led by the Hyksos may have
supplied needed skills and trading
contacts and as a result gradually
worked their way back into the
corridors of power in New Kingdom Egypt.
MAP: NILE DELTA AND SINAI SHOWS SITE: PI-RAMESES AND AVARIS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Curiously, hundreds of years after the
Hyksos had been overthrown, the pharaoh
Rameses II erected a stele celebrating
the 400th anniversary of the founding
of Avaris at his new capital of
Pi-Rameses, built on or very near the
site of the Hyksos capital of Avaris.
VIEW OF RAMESES 400TH ANNIVERSARY STELE (Museum in Cairo?)
SUPER (bottom): TIMELINE SHOWS: HYKSOS ERA, 1650-

1545 BC AND: REIGN OF RAMESES II, 1279-1212 BC.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
One is led to suspect either a strong
ancestral Hyksos link to the great
Egyptian pharaoh, or that this powerful
imperial monarch felt compelled to
placate remnant Hyksos economic and
political power in Canaan and Egypt.
MAP OF EGYPT AND EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SHOWING GREATEST
EXTENT OF NEW KINGDOM EMPIRE THROUGH CANAAN
HIGHLIGHT: CANAAN MAP, "SKMM" NEAR MODERN NABLUS
SUPER: KINAHHU IN HURRIAN; KI-NA-AH-HUM IN MARI

LANGUAGE; KI-NA-HI IN THE EGYPTIAN AMARNA
LETTERS, AND KAHNANAH IN EGYPTIAN ITSELF
NARRATOR (v.o.)
In Canaan Ä an ancient real place name
Ä Kinahhu in Hurrian; Ki-na-ah-num in
Mari; possibly Ki-na-hi in the Egyptian
Amarna letters; and Kahnanah in
Egyptian itself Ä the city of Shechem
of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, and the
Hivites (first syllable similar to the
first of Hyksos) had been known to the
Egyptians by that name, skmm.*
Canaanites and Their Land,
by Niels Peter Lemche (Univ of Copenhagen), Sheffield Academic Press, 1991
SUPER: TIMELINE SHOWING 1900 BC THROUGH 1000 BC
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Shechem may have been captured by the
pharaoh Sesostris II about 1900 BC,
possibly about the same time as the
events described in Genesis 14. From
that time on, Canaan was generally
under Egyptian guidance if not actual
colonial control.
NARRATOR
For seven centuries Canaan had been
considered subject to Egypt. Not long
after the demise of the Hyksos, Canaan
came under virtual direct Egyptian
control and even may have supplied
Egypt with leadership elements up to
the office of Vizier, or Prime
Minister. Yet the Biblical story has
Moses leading his people out of Egypt,
at this time, to settle, eventually, in
Canaan. A catastrophic smallpox
epidemic may offer a resolution to the
seeming paradox.
VIEW OF NILE RIVER
NARRATOR (v.o.)
There is little argument that Moses was
born in Egypt and raised as part of the
royal household.
VIEW OF EGYPTIAN WRITING EQUIPMENT AND A PAPYRUS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
We may assume therefore that he spoke Ä
possibly in addition to proto-Hebrew Ä
fluent New Kingdom Egyptian, had a good
Egyptian education, and therefore was
literate and wrote in Egyptian. He
could not have written in Hebrew
because that script had not yet been
invented.
VIEW OF BRITISH MUSEUM MESOPOTAMIAN CLAY TABLETS KK. 3401,

4470, "THE LEGEND OF THE BIRTH OF SARGON OF AGADE"*
(translated and published by Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge, in Babylonian Life
and History, "The Legend of the Birth of Sargon of Agade.")
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Doubters of the story of finding the
baby Moses in an ark by the river's
brink may be encouraged by clay tablets
from Mesopotamia telling a similar
story over a thousand years earlier.
FINGER FOLLOWS CLAY-TABLET TEXT
SUPER: TEXT AS READ BELOW
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Sargon, the mighty King of Agade, am I
My mother was of humble estate, I knew
not my father.
The brother of my father (or paternal
uncle) was a dweller in the mountains
(a forester?).
My city is Azupirani, which lies on the
banks of the Euphrates.
My humble mother conceived me, she
brought me forth in secret.
NARRATIOR (v.o.)(con't)
She laid me in a basket (made) of
reeds, she smeared my door with
bitumin, she committed me to the river
which did not submerge me. The river
carried me to Akki, a man who watered
the fields.
Akki, the man who watered the fields
..... lifted me out of the basket.
Akki, the man who watered the fields,
brought me up as his own son.
Akki, the man who watered the fields,
made me his gardener.
Whilst I was a gardener the goddess
Ishtar (Innini) fell in love with me.
And for . . . . . -four years I ruled
the kingdom.
NARRATOR
This story of Sargon remained popular
in Mesopotamia for two thousand years -
centuries after the death of Moses, and
was known during the Jewish exile
there. For our purposes here, though,
it is unimportant whether this part of
the Moses biography is taken literally
or not.
VIEW OF, AND IN, EGYPTIAN TEMPLE, SAY ABYDOS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The name Moses reveals a relic of an
Egyptian name.
SKETCHED DRAWINGS OF CARTOUCHES OF TUTMOSIS AND RAMESES* (as

drawn in Chronicle of the Pharaohs, by Peter A. Clayton, Thames and Hudson, NY and
London, 1994)
HIGHLIGHTS FOR EACH HIEROGLYPH.
SUPER: THOTH - MOSIS (followed by) RE - MESES

NARRATOR (v.o.)
You find it in names of New Kingdom
pharaohs, Tut-mosis, fashioned or
created by the god Thoth, and Re-meses
(Ramses), fashioned or created by the
god Re, an allusion to being the son of
the gods Thoth or Re, and thus in use
much the same meaning as the Irish and
Scotch Gaelic "Mc" or "Mac," son of.
NARRATOR
One is left wondering whether later
Hebrew speakers dropped parts of the
unfamiliar-sounding name, or whether
someone, from the baby found by the
river story on Ä perhaps Moses himself
Ä sought to create distance from
Egyptian royal background, "commonize"
the name - a just call me Mac sort of
thing - perhaps politically astute for
leadership of a new cult reaching out
across national, religious, class, and
ethnic boundaries.
ENACTMENT
SHADOWY EXT. EGYPTIAN APPEARING
Shadowy figure appears to kill another shadowy figure.

Shadowy figure buries body in sand.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Possibly educated for a good job in the
Egyptian civil service, Moses got into
serious trouble with the law. He
killed someone, tried to hide the body,
but was found out.
ANIMATED MAP SHOWS: EGYPT, HITTITE TURKEY, AND CANAAN PLUS

MIDIAN AND EDOM (SOUTHERN JORDAN, NORTHWEST CORNER OF
ARABIA)
HIGHLIGHT AND SUPER: HITTITE EMPIRE

NARRATOR (v.o.)
The famous peace treaty of Rameses II
between Egypt and the Hittite Empire
includes an extradition clause. A
young man with a good Egyptian
education could hardly have been
ignorant of it.
HIGHLIGHT AND SUPER: MIDIAN (roughly where modern

Saudi Arabia meets the Kingdom of Jordan, eastern
shore of the Red Sea)
ANIMATED DOTTED LINE FROM NILE DELTA TO MIDIAN
NARRATOR (v.o.)
To flee north would have risked
extradition under the treaty. Moses
headed for Midian. And it is within
the realm of possibility that reading
between the lines of the story here, we
find the first of several remnant
allusions to a smallpox epidemic.
Narrator holds up a hypodermic syringe and needle.
NARRATOR
Two hundred years ago an English doctor
named Edward Jenner heard stories that
milk maids infected with cowpox became
immune to smallpox. He inoculated
several people with scrapings from
cowpox, then later inoculated them with
smallpox. Cowpox absolutely prevented
smallpox, and we have had a vaccine
ever since.
EXT. (STOCK) VIEW OF MIDEAST BEDOUIN SHEPHERDS AND SHEEP AT

A WATERING HOLE
EXT. (STOCK) VIEW OF EGYPTIAN HERDERS WITH CATTLE AT

WATERING HOLE
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Moses aiding Zipporah at the watering
place demonstrates a knowledge with
dealing with livestock, and in the Nile
Delta those animals would have been
cattle. Either in the Delta or at his
father-in-law Jethro's ranch in Midian,
Moses might have contracted cowpox and
thus become immune to smallpox.
ENACTMENT
INT. EGYPTIAN PALACE
Pharaoh sits on Egyptian throne. Moses shows him his hand.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Later in the story there is an incident
where Moses Ä curiously no longer a
fugitive from Egyptian law and with
access to the highest levels of
Egyptian government Ä shows the pharaoh
a "leprosy" on his hand that is quickly
cured. The word for the disease,
"leprosy," is not leprosy as we know
it, but a mysterious ancient disease
that centuries later, after Hebrew
script had been invented, was written
as tsara 'at Ä for which no one has
found a modern equivalent, either the
word or the disease.*
see: Leviticus, Chapter 13,
English translation of the Torah,
the Jewish Publication Society (1962)
SCRIPT OF HEBREW WORD TSARA 'AT
SUPER: TSARA 'AT (in English)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Could the story fragment have
originally referred to a
smallpox-appearing rash or blistering
that prevents the potentially fatal
disease? If Moses had been immunized
by cowpox one could assume that his
brother Aaron - the name possibly a
corruption of the Egyptian Aanen, like
the high priest's of the sun temple at
Heliopolis - had also been.
NARRATOR
We are, of course, grasping at straws
here. Even at best, utilizing
religious metaphors for historical fact
is not good history. But we have scant
else, and we do have a document with
text elements going back to
approximately the time of the proposed
smallpox epidemic. In it are
suggestions supporting our hypothesis.
ANIMATED MAP OF NILE DELTA AND SINAI SHOWS ROUTE OF EXODUS

(Choose one consistent version, preferably from: Asimov's Guide to the Bible, by Isaac
Asimov)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Egypt suffers series of plagues -
interesting in itself, especially
Exodus 9:9 and 9:10 where Moses, Aaron,
cattle, and "dermatitis breaking out
into boils" are brought together as if
misconstrued or mistranslated centuries
later when Hebrew script was invented.
VIEW OF NILE DELTA NEAR CITY OF FAQUS
SUPER: LAND OF GOSHEN
Narrator (or actor) gets into LAND ROVER (or similar

vehicle), begins to drive east. (the Land Rover symbolism,
used continuously from here, conveys the present, yet
implies a time and place not so distant it cannot be
understood)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
In an act of freedom and defiance
against the most powerful nation on
earth, celebrated annually in the
Jewish Passover for over three thousand
years, Moses led his followers,
including his brother Aaron and sister
Miriam - a clearly Egyptian name,
Merit-amen, "Beloved of Amen" - out of
Egypt.
MODERN VIEWS OF THE KNOWN PORTION OF THE ROUTE
SUPERS: POSSIBLE PIHARIHOTH-BAALZEPHON, TODAY,

PITHOM TODAY, SEA OF MARAH, ETC.* (For route, see among
others: Asimov's Guide to the Bible, Old Testament, Doubleday NY 1969; or
Anchor Bible Series, or Biblical Atlases, etc.)
Land Rover drives route from Goshen to Sea of Reeds.

Utilize when possible modern Egyptian road signs, supers
giving Biblical names.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Place names still with us show some of
the route, including the Sea of Reeds,
mistranslated as the Red Sea. If one
is suspicious of miracles, the fleeing
Hebrews may well have crossed the Sea
of Reeds at low tide, and the Egyptian
army's chariots may have become mired
in mud as a tide came in. After a
battle with a possible marauding Sea
Peoples base, they headed out into the
desert.
VIEW OF KADESH BARNEA (AIN KADIS) TODAY, LAND ROVER

APPROACHES FROM DISTANCE, PULLS TO A HALT.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The traditional location where the band
of refugees is said to have stayed
forty years - meaning "quite a long
time, over a generation" - is here, but
no one knows for certain. In the story
of the stay in the desert are several
strong suggestions of a smallpox
epidemic.
PAN OF SINAI DESERT LOCATION OF KADESH BARNEA (AIN KADIS)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Whatever the exact location in the area
of the Sinai, it must have been a
miserable place for upper and middle
class Egyptians. Moses's sister Miriam
- or Merit-Amen - died there, whether
of smallpox there is no way to tell.
ANIMATED MAP SHOWING CANAAN AND THE SINAI, ARROW FROM AIN
KADIS TO HEBRON, OTHER AREAS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Amid the text of Numbers 13 relating
raids north, obviously for survival
foods, there is a prideful note that
Hebron was built seven years before
Zoan Ä Avaris, the Hyksos capital. We
can only wonder at this mysterious
linking.
VIEW OF PRESENT COUNTRYSIDE AROUND HEBRON
SUPER: COUNTRYSIDE AROUND HEBRON TODAY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
A more important question is, what may
have been the reasons for "spies" to be
sent into Canaan to "see if they be
strong or weak, few or many"? Was it
only to assess vulnerability to raids
for survival supplies. Or could it
have been to assess damage? Might we
be seeing here the moment of the onset
of the smallpox epidemic in Canaan?
ENACTMENT
EXT. SINAI NEAR AIN KADIS
"Joshua" and "Caleb" tear their period-Mideast clothes with

the aid of bronze daggers.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
What might have been meant and
preserved in Numbers 14 by: "Their (the
Canaanites) defense is departed from
them?" And, a little later God
promises to smite the Canaanites with
pestilence. And perhaps equally to the
point, did Caleb and Joshua return
alive but infected? Why did they tear
their clothes? The answer may be,
because hand-spun, hand-sewn clothes
were far more valuable than today and
clothes of the dead were claimed and
used by the living.
A measure to safeguard against
spreading smallpox - which stays
infectious on clothing for up to two
months - may have been ordering
infected persons to tear up their
clothing, both identifying it as
infected and rendering it non-reusable.
In Leviticus 13 we see it stated
clearly: "One who suffers from tsara 'at
shall wear his clothes torn and,
effectively, not breath toward anyone."
NARRATOR
We also see in a Jewish Publication
Society English translation from the
Torah, Leviticus 13: "When a person has
on the skin of his body a swelling, a
rash, or a discoloration, and it
develops into a scaly affection on the
skin of his body, it shall be reported
to Aaron the priest or to one of his
sons, the priests." Translator Baruch
A. Levine more closely examines some of
the words used.
STOCK, OR FROM MEDICAL ILLUSTRATIONS: SMALLPOX ON SKIN
SUPER: SMALLPOX
NARRATOR (v.o.)
"Swelling," he notes of the Hebrew word
se'et, is more a "local inflammation,
boil, mole," or a generic term for a
variety of inflammations or
protrusions. In addition, the word
"rash," the Hebrew word saphahat, is a
"breaking out" of the skin.*
JPS Torah Commentary to Jewish Publication Society Translation, by Baruch A. Levine, edited by Nahum
M. Saran, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia & NY, 1989, pgs 75 to 85
(note: pages go "backwards" to follow the Hebrew).
STOCK, OR FROM MEDICAL ILLUSTRATIONS: LEPROSY ON SKIN
SUPER: LEPROSY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Seems more like smallpox than leprosy.
RETURN TO STOCK OR MEDICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF SMALLPOX
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The symptomatology of tsara 'at,
described in the beginning of Leviticus
13, alludes to hair turning white as if
covered by pus, eruption beneath the
skin, how it might appear similar to
and behave like burned flesh, possibly
meaning first a redness then
blistering, and a unique word for
tearing that would seem to refer to
peeling of skin. Tsara-at's progress
is rapid, like smallpox, involving days
as opposed to years for leprosy.
NARRATOR
In Numbers 14:37 we see that: "Those
men that did bring up the evil report
upon the land, died by the plague."
Caleb and Joshua may have survived the
disease: "But Joshua, the son of Nun,
and Caleb, the son of Jephuneh, which
were of the men that went to search the
land, lived still." This may explain
later events. Many of the small band
in the desert, however, seem not to
have survived the epidemic they and
"the men who went to search the land"
seem to have brought back.
VIEW OF DESERT NEAR KADESH BARNEA (AIN KADIS)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Their "carcasses," as the King James
version puts it in Numbers 14, fell in
the wilderness - very much what one
might expect if smallpox suddenly
struck a non-immune population and only
half survived in disarray. It must
have been a bad time indeed, numbers
reduced by smallpox and war with
Canaanites and Amalekites, the harsh
desert offering survivors no comfort.
LAND ROVER-TYPE VEHICLE HEADS EAST ACROSS DESERT
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Probably sooner rather than later, they
headed east. And in the text here is
another tenuous suggestion of a
smallpox epidemic Ä and perhaps a
glimpse of desperate quarantine
measures taken by governments as it
struck.
ANIMATED MAP OF SINAI AND NORTHERN ARABIA
LABELED HIGHLIGHTED SHOWS: EDOM (area on east

side of rift valley extending from Dead Sea to
Gulf of Aqaba). DOTTED LINE SHOWS PATH FROM AIN
KADIS TO EDOM.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Edom stopped the band of Hebrews at the
border and refused permission for them
to pass through.
LAND ROVER NEAR WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN EASTERN BOUNDARY OF

EDOM, NEGEV, WADI-EL-ARABA (Israel-Jordan border post in
view?) PAN HILLSIDES IN BACKGROUND TO TOWN
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Possibly somewhere near here at the
present Israel-Jordan border. With an
epidemic raging all around, this would
have been reasonable Edom government
policy. Simply don't let anyone in,
thereby preventing not only carriers of
the disease, but goods that might have
the virus, which could remain
infectious on them for up to thirty
days. The band may have continued up
the rift valley toward the Dead Sea and
followed the Zered valley into the
desert highlands east of Moab.
ANIMATED MAP SHOWS DOTTED LINE BYPASSING EDOM, THEN HEADING

NORTH TO MOAB (labeled Moab. area east of Dead Sea)
HIGHLIGHT: MOAB
VIEW OF LAND ROVER IN DESERT BACKCOUNTRY IN KINGDOM OF
JORDAN, AWFUL RED SUNSET, ANIMATED MAP WITH DOTTED LINE
SUPERIMPOSED
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Struggling for survival, the band was
forced to bypass Edom, apparently
through the harsh desert mountains to
the east.
Many died. Aaron died. Perhaps

significantly, Aaron's son Eleazar is
given his clothes to wear. The
prevailing view is that this represents
a transfer of priestly authority, as
seen in our present root word for
disciple and discipline. But Aaron's
garment is not torn up. We have seen
tenuous hints that he may have been
immune to smallpox, and here would seem
a tangential allusion that he did not
die of smallpox - or, that none in the
band were any longer dying of smallpox
and quarantine strategies had been
abandoned. The epidemic was wreaking
its havoc, but elsewhere.
VIEW, FROM EAST, OF MOAB, SHOWING BETTER AGRICULTURAL LAND

AND IMPROVEMENT IN COUNTRYSIDE
NARRATOR (v.o.)
As they approached the next significant
location, Moab, from the east.
VIEW OF LAND ROVER DESCENDING THROUGH A VALLEY, IF KNOWN,

THE VALLEY, TOWARD PLAIN
NARRATOR (v.o.)
An apparent careful attempt to
precisely preserve the route down
through the valley appears in the text.
They met hill people, given general
ethnic identity of Amorites - perhaps
people who had fled to the desert hills
in fear of the epidemic - killed their
leader Sihon and defeated them.
NARRATOR
And here we may be glimpsing the onset
of post-epidemic chaos and the
beginning of the longest dark age in
human history. For then we see
something that stretches credibility
unless we postulate a natural disaster.
How could the disease-and-hardship-
decimated small band of Hebrews have
taken even these apparently small towns
from the Amorites - including Heshbon
of their recently slain leader Sihon -
who significantly was not safely behind
its walls when slain, but up in the
hills.
ANIMATED MAP OF AREA ON BOTH SIDES OF JORDAN RIVER, WITH

DOTTED LINES TO INDICATED TOWNS*
(see map, beginning of "Joshua" chapter in Asimov's Guide to the Bible, Doubleday, 1968,
plus other similar sources)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
It would appear that these towns had
been virtually abandoned.
STOCK OR MEDICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF LATE-STAGE SMALLPOX
NARRATOR (v.o.)
As if by people utterly terrified by
wholesale, ugly, and frightening deaths
from a disease they had never seen
before, a disease against which there
was no defense except flight: smallpox.
VIEW OF LAND ROVER AT JORDAN RIVER NEAR GILGAL, PREFERABLY

FROM JORDAN SIDE
NARRATOR (v.o)
As we cross the Jordan River to the
West Bank, here, where Joshua did, a
scenario consistent with a smallpox
epidemic continues.
VIEW "ZOOMS" ACROSS JORDAN RIVER TO WEST BANK SIDE (IF
POSSIBLE, ACTUALLY CROSS THE JORDAN RIVER, PERHAPS IN LAND
ROVER WITH INFLATABLE SUPPORTS)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
However long they stayed on the East
Bank of the Jordan - perhaps gathering
numbers from the stunned population of
devastated Egyptian colonial trans-
Canaan and expropriating useful goods
and war material that had once belonged
to the masses of dead - the epidemic
and its aftermath on the West Bank
appear to have reached a similar state
as they had found on arrival in Moab.
VIEW OF LAND ROVER DRIVING UP ROAD TO JERICHO. (Perhaps

past road sign that says: Jericho)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Jericho presents a puzzle to Biblical
archaeologists. It may be the oldest
city in the world, possibly existing as
a city from the end of the Ice Age.
ANIMATED MAP: JOSHUA CROSSING JORDAN TO JERICHO, TO AI
NARRATOR (v.o.)
But by the time of the Exodus and the
Joshua's conquest, it had been in ruins
for centuries, if not millennia. The
same is true of the next city to fall
to Joshua's forces, Ai. Ai literally
means "ruin." It was already a ruin
when Joshua got there.
VIEW OF RUINS OF JERICHO (perhaps site sign saying: Jericho)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Consistent with wholesale panic and
terror caused by a smallpox epidemic
would be people fleeing towns to
uninhabited ruins, which with a little
creativity and skill could be made to
offer some minimal shelter.
ANOTHER ANGLE ON JERICHO
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Those who fled presumably would be
people who had not been infected.
Joshua, as noted earlier, would appear
to have survived the disease and
therefore had immunity. Moreover, all
who survived the ravages that left
"carcasses" falling in the desert at
Kadesh Barnea would have been immune.
In general, then, one can guess that
the forces surrounding the ruins of
Jericho were immune and by then aware
of their immunity, and the people
holding out inside were not, but
represented a military obstacle to
occupation as the epidemic began to
subside.
ANOTHER ANGLE SHOWS POSSIBLE DOUBLE WALL IN RUINS OF JERICHO
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The incident with the spies and the
prostitute Rahab fetches speculation
back to the nature of the wooden horse
at Troy. In the case of Troy, a
mysterious "plague" had already set in
among the Greek forces. Might the real
purpose of the horse been to deliver
smallpox within the fortress, a
biological warfare ploy that had become
common by the time of Joshua and
Jericho, a ploy used by Homer in his
fictional version retrieved from bardic
oral tradition? What might the immune
spies of Joshua have taken into the
fortified ruins of Jericho?
ANOTHER, MORE DISTANT, ANGLE OF JERICHO RUINS AND AREA

AROUND THEM
NARRATOR (v.o.)
One can only wonder at the viciousness
that followed the fall of Jericho.
That kind of viciousness generally
stems from a root of fear. Perhaps new
followers were not immune and it was
feared that the dread disease was
returning. The terrible punishment of
Achan for looting goods that could have
had infectious virus may further
reflect that.
ANIMATED MAP SHOWS ROUTE FROM JORDAN RIVER TO JERICHO, TO

AI, AND THEN TO GIBEON*
(after Asimov's Guide to the Bible)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
From the ruins of Jericho the band went
on to capture Ai, evidently also
inhabited ruins, then went on to
negotiate an apparent mutual defense
pact with the strategic and fortified
city of Gibeon, a wine making city that
supplying upper-class tables of the
Egyptian Empire a few years earlier.
VIEW OF GIBEON (RUINS) TODAY
SUPER: GIBEON TODAY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
How long after that the leaders of
Gibeon called for aid under the pact is
not clear.
PAN GIBEON COUNTRYSIDE, THEN TILT TOWARD SUN
NARRATOR (v.o.)
But here we may, by stretching the text
and venturing a guess, be able to pin
down a definite date. If we admit a
solar eclipse to explain a possibly
mistranslated story of the sun standing
still in the midst of heaven during the
battle Ä possibly a brief night coming
and going while the sun was high, and
then going down again after a whole day
STOCK: SOLAR ECLIPSE (frames speeded up)
SUPER: SEPTEMBER 30, 1131 BC
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Ä that solar eclipse took place on
September 30, 1131 BC. This is very
much within the timeframe we might have
expected - fifteen years, in presently
used Egyptian chronologies, after the
death of Rameses V of apparent smallpox
and within a "catastrophe zone" of
pottery evidence.*
In note in Joshua, by Robert G. Boling,
Anchor Bible Series, in note on page 283.
VIEW OF GIBEON TODAY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
And if we have a precise date for an
event here, it comes some sixty-three
years after the traditional date for
the fall of Troy.
LAND ROVER BEGINS TO DRIVE NORTH
SUPERIMPOSE OR SPLIT SCREEN: SCENES OF SEA

PEOPLES BATTLE FROM MEDENET HABU
NARRATOR (v.o.)
And forty-six years after the last
great battle of the Egyptian New
Kingdom Empire, the battle with the Sea
Peoples, who compellingly resemble
fictitious characters in the Odyssey.
ANIMATED MAP OF LEVANT SHOWS SUBSEQUENT BATTLES AND EVENTS

RELATED IN JOSHUA
NARRATOR (v.o.)
How long the victory and consolidation
took after that is uncertain. Like the
Hyksos - and perhaps descended from
them - the Hebrews seem to have had
language and cultural ties to both
Egypt and the New Kingdom Egyptian
colony Canaan and apparently had little
difficulty communicating or being
accepted. Their new religion drew
adherents from the survivors and began
to prevail. In the wake of the
unparalleled catastrophe, the old gods
would have been seen as complete
failures. The new monotheistic God,
whose tetragrammaton name could mean,
among other things, a fatalistic "what
will be will be," would have suited the
new world meaning of the survivors.
LAND ROVER PULLS UP TO VIEW OF SHILOH, ESPECIALLY THE

AMPHITHEATER-LIKE VALLEY DEPRESSION
SUPER: SHILOH
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The phase of conquest and consolidation
essentially ends here, a site of
tribute or tax collecting in Egyptian
colonial Canaan not many years earlier,
and perhaps in that an entirely proper
place to officially appropriate
property. The spoils were divided up -
spoils, it would appear, largely from
an enormous depopulation - goods, land,
dwellings, even, probably, whole
uninhabited cities.
MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF APPORTIONMENT TO TRIBE OF DAN
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Among the tribes listed as receiving
land is that of Dan.
Narrator holds up bronze implement or weapon

NARRATOR
This is all simply compelling
speculation, of course. But it was the
twilight of the Bronze Age. The Bronze
Age did not abruptly come to an end.
For one thing, with half to three-
fourths of the population gone, there
was for a while a glut of bronze goods,
and as a result the Bronze Age
continued for at least another century.
ANIMATED MAP OF EURASIA AND NORTH AFRICA:
DOTTED LINES AND HIGHLIGHTS SHOWING: ROUTES FROM

CORNWALL AND THE ERZ GEBERG, AND FROM THE KYRGYZ,
UZBECK, TADJYK AREA, TO EGYPT, MESOPOTAMIA,
GREECE, AND THE LEVANT.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
But its days were numbered. To make
ductile bronze one needs tin, and there
were only a few major sources of tin
ore that could supply the consumer and
military quantities demanded by the
Late Bronze Age West. And these
obviously needed long, politically and
financially negotiated and protected
trade routes.
TOMB WALL PAINTINGS OF EGYPTIANS AND GOODS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
When the population decimation
catastrophe struck, those political and
financial arrangements would have
collapsed. The stock market crash of
1929 and resulting global economic
collapse was nothing compared to what
happened in the middle of the twelfth
century BC. Imperial Egyptian exports
like linen, agricultural products, and
related financing would have evaporated
into nothing, and demand clearly would
have fallen to zero. Overextended tin
commerce would have been an early and
lasting victim.
TOMB WALL PAINTING SHOWING MEN CARRYING TIN INGOTS
SUPER WITH INDICATING ARROWS OR HIGHLIGHTS: TIN

INGOTS
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The Egyptian word for "tin" seems to
have been d)m, "dan" or "din," and if
so, it is virtually our English word.*
in "Near Eastern alloying and some textual
evidence for the early use of arsenical copper,"
by Ethel R. Eaton and Hugh McKerrell,
World Archaeology, Volume 8, #2, (October) 1976,
pgs 169-189, note especially from page 182 on.
NARRATOR
It may be useful to at least speculate
on tin in the Late Bronze Age. It
would have been the vital strategic
mineral of the time - like petroleum is
for us today - and empires then, like
empires now, as we saw with the Gulf
War, would have gone out of their way
to secure supplies. And it follows
that there would have been trade
corporations and government bureaus set
up to supply demands and insure
supplies.
RETURN TO MAP OF LEVANT HIGHLIGHTING "DAN"
SUPER AND HIGHLIGHT (FOLLOWS DIALOGUE): DAN;

PHILISTINES (Egyptian: Peleset); TJEKER
NARRATOR (v.o.)
And that brings us back to the tribe of
Dan. Historian and linguist Martin
Bernal points out that: "The Danites
were described as living on ships, they
were admitted late into the Israelite
amphictyony or tribal league, they were
the last tribe to establish their own
territory and were originally settled
on the coast between two known Sea
Peoples, the Philistines and the
Tjeker.
VIEW OF AREA OF DAN TODAY
SUPER: DAN TODAY
NARRATOR (v.o.)
There is also the lack of any detailed
genealogy for Dan which reinforces the
hypothesis that the tribe was not an
original member of the Israelite
confederation."
NARRATOR
So what is Dan? Are they the "Dan" in
documents of Rameses III referring to
the raiding Sea Peoples as the Denyen?
Bernal rattles off a whole list from
the ancient Mideast and Mediterranean:
Tin3y, Tanaya, D3-in, Dene, Denyen,
Danuna, Danaan, Danaos, and Dan from
Egyptian, Akkadian (the international
diplomatic language), Canaanite, and
Greek during the Late Bronze Age.*
Black Athena, Volume II, The Afro-Asian Roots
of Classical Civilization, the Archaeological
and Documentary Evidence, by Martin Bernal,
Rutgers Univ Press, 1991, pgs 418-423.
MAP OF WESTERN EURASIA
SUPERS AND HIGHLIGHT WITH DIALOGUE
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Bernal also names rivers, suspecting an
Indo-European origin: "Dan" found in
the Danube and the Dnieper; "Don" found
in a Yorkshire Don and the Ukraine Don.
And Irish legendary people - from about
this time! - the Da Danaan, who arrived
in Ireland from the south.

NARRATOR
He admits being puzzled and concludes
that they may have been Mycenaeans.
But given the strategic value of tin
and postulating a lively trade in tin,
it is not unthinkable that the names
came from peoples and places having
something to do with that, especially
with voracious Imperial Egyptian tin
demand.
ANIMATED MAP OF SHOWING EURASIA BETWEEN TIEN SHAN MOUNTAINS

AND ATLANTIC OCEAN
HIGHLIGHT AND SUPER FROM DIALOGUE
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Heavy metallic tin, or heavy tin ore,
from the Asian source could well have
been brought by boat down the Syr Darya
River and across the Aral Sea. From
there would be an overland journey to
the Caspian Sea. Then up the Volga
River to around present Volgograd.
Then a short journey across to the Don,
a friendly river flowing west with the
heavy material, where the Mycenaean
Greeks may have picked it up and taken
it by way of the Sea of Azov into the
Black Sea, and from there into the
Mycenaean Greek trade zone to Egypt.
SHIFT HIGHLIGHT WEST ON MAP
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Bernal overlooked another river with
"Dan" in its name, the Dnestr, which
flows from near the tin ore of the Erz
Geberg (on the Czech-German border)
into the Black Sea. And the Danube
flows not only near the Erz Geberg, but
would serve as an artery, by way of a
portage near present Nuremberg, to the
Main, then Rhine, and on from there to
the rich tin fields of Cornwall.

NARRATOR
That could conceivably explain the
river names. There may be no way of
ever knowing. As for the peoples, in
the Bronze Age tribes could easily have
become specialized in trading and
shipping a commercial and strategic
commodity like tin.
Again, there is no way of knowing. But

when demand for their highly
specialized lifeblood commodity began
to evaporate and the world economy
began to crumble, they surely would
have turned to raiding and seizing
territory to survive. And that might
explain raiders called "Dan" from Egypt
and the Levant to Ireland.
Narrator picks up Early Iron Age iron implement.
NARRATOR
After a century of using abundant
bronze left in the wake of the
catastrophe, population outgrew
available supplies and the demand for
metal goods grew with it. By then the
delicate economy of tin was gone:
mining, smelting, alloying with copper,
shipping, trading, and financing. Tin
could be had, of course, and so could
copper, but at a price. But
experiments begun as the Bronze Age
empires were collapsing were beginning
to pay off. Unlike copper and tin ore,
iron ore was virtually everywhere and
easily available.*
"How the Iron Age Began" in
Hunters, Farmers, and Civilization,
Scientific American Books,
W.H. Freeman Company, San Francisco 1979,
reprinted from Scientific American, October 1977.
ENACTMENT OR STOCK
Men work a small primitive iron furnace.

NARRATOR (v.o.)
But iron requires a much higher
smelting temperature and is a tricky to
make into useful metal. It takes
specific knowledge, knowledge gained by
difficult trial and error.
ENACTMENT OR STOCK
Blacksmiths pound wrought iron at a forge.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Iron, for one thing, could not be cast
- at least not in the West - like
bronze. For another, unless done
properly, the resulting iron was too
brittle and filled with stony slag to
be much more useful than stone.
VIEW OF IRON "PIG" FROM A PRIMITIVE FURNACE.
A blow with a hammer shatters it.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Among other things, workable iron is
really an alloy of iron and carbon.
Ancients in the West never grasped
this. Progress was delayed by attempts
to make "pure" iron.*
The Coming of the Age of Iron,
edited by Theodore A. Wertime and James D. Muhly,
Yale Univ Press, New Haven, 1980.see especially sections by Muhly, Wertime,
Anthony M. Snodgrass, and Jane C. Waldbaum.
SUPERIMPOSE: GRAPH OF THREE STAGES FOR

DEVELOPMENT OF AN IRON TECHNOLOGY
(after Snodgrass, pg 336, The Coming of the Age of Iron)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
In an effort to discern the transition
from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age,
researcher Anthony Snodgrass defines
three stages. Stage one, during the
Bronze Age itself, iron implements were
used ceremonially, indicating a high
value, comparable to gold. In stage
two, working iron implements were used,
but not as much a bronze. And in stage
three, iron begins to replace bronze as
a working metal.
SHOT OR PHOTO OF IRON DAGGER AND GOLD DAGGER FOUND IN
TUTANKHAMON'S TOMB
SUPER: TIMELINE GRAPH SHOWING TUTANKHAMON'S

REIGN (1343-1333 BC) TO 1200 BC
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Iron was not unknown to the Bronze Age
empires, but until 1200 BC it was
treated as a precious metal and iron
goods were treated as if as valuable as
gold. There were two ceremonial
daggers buried with the pharaoh
Tutankhamon, one gold, the other iron,
as if of equal value. And the same is
true all over the ancient bronze-age
world. Inventories and burials treat
iron goods as if they were made of a
precious metal.
MAP OF EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SHOWING CYPRUS
SUPER: TIMELINE GRAPH FROM 1200 TO 1050 BC:

SHOWING TRADITIONAL DATE FOR FALL OF TROY (1194
BC) RAMESES III REIGN (1185-1153 BC) SEA PEOPLES
BATTLE (1177 BC), DEATH OF RAMESES V BY SMALLPOX
(1141 BC), SOLAR ECLIPSE IN CANAAN (1131 BC)
NARRATOR (v.o.)
On Cyprus, scientific study and
archeological discoveries show that
fairly intensive experimentation
leading to Stage Two began taking place
after 1200 BC, and Stage Three, working
iron beginning to replace bronze,
taking place no later than 1050 BC,
possibly the earliest in the ancient
world.
HIGHLIGHT GREECE AND LEVANT
SUPER: TIMELINE GRAPH FROM 1150 BC TO 600 BC

SHOWING DEATH OF RAMESES V, SOLAR ECLIPSE, A
DARKENED LINE INDICATING DARK AGES, BEGINNINGS OF
IRON AGE (C 1000 BC), HOMER AND HESIOD (AS
DARKENED LINE BEGINS TO LIGHTEN).
NARRATOR (v.o.)
The Iron Age per se - when iron finally
became the predominant material for
weapons and tools - began in about the
10th century BC. In Greece and the
Levant archaeological evidence shows it
happening around the 9th century BC,
and later in Europe and regions further
east.
CONTINUE SUPER OF ABOVE TIMELINE
NARRATOR
The Greek poet Hesiod, a contemporary
of Homer, found himself living solidly
in the Iron Age and said as much,
looking back at other more glorious
metals ages, an inference that iron was
by his time a banal work metal.
Educational levels and the art of
writing had recovered enough by then so
that we have writers like Homer and
Hesiod.*
Works and Days, 174-178
MAP OF EURASIA
HIGHLIGHT: CHINA
NARRATOR (v.o.)
In the west iron technology never got
beyond skills in making implements
derived from wrought iron - effectively
pounding the alloying carbon into it.
In China cast iron was being used for
consumer goods by the Han dynasty. The
technology never reached the West until
comparatively modern times.
HIGHLIGHT: NORTHERN EUROPE
NARRATOR (v.o)
The same kilning technology needed to
create high temperatures for smelting
iron also seem to have led to
technologies for making cheap glass and
cement.
This allowed construction of genuinely
winterized buildings with glass windows
in northern Europe - and along with
iron saws to thin out the forest cover
for farming, iron cartwheels and axles
to handle log roads, and iron moldboard
plows to cut the hard clay soils,
opened northern Europe to genuine
civilization.
NARRATOR
Now, only in our time, the dread
disease of smallpox has been totally
eradicated, due largely to a vigorous
vaccination campaign by the World
Health Organization. The last
remaining vials containing smallpox
virus have hopefully been destroyed, or
soon will be.
SUPERIMPOSE MONTAGE: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TEMPLES, HIGH QUALITY

SCULPTURES, PAINTINGS, PAPYRUSES, BEDS, CHAIRS, OTHER GOODS.
NARRATOR
If the Bronze Age was destroyed by a
smallpox epidemic, we can only wonder
where the human race might have gone if
smallpox had not hit. As we can see
suggested in the story of Abraham and
Isaac, and more certainly in the
sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter
Ephigenia to insure good sailing for
the Greek fleet heading for Troy, human
sacrifice was practiced just before
that time.
NARRATOR (v.o.)
Whatever may have caused the massive
decline in population, one of its
effects seems to have been to end this
sorry excuse for religion, possibly if
only because human beings could, for a
while, no longer be spared.
SUPERIMPOSE MONTAGE OF RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM AND PLACES OF

WORSHIP: JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, ISLAMIC, BUDDHIST,
CONFUCIANIST, AND HINDU
NARRATOR
Not only did a new and humanistic
monotheistic religion emerge in the
form of Judaism, with its offshoots of
Christianity and Islam, but Buddhism
and Confucianism followed the
catastrophe. Even Hinduism as we know
it grew out of the Iron Age.
END SUPERIMPOSED MONTAGE
NARRATOR
Following the Bronze Age catastrophe,
we see an apparent large drop in
standard of living to survival modes,
tribal organization, and crude
utilitarian goods. There is a sharp
historical dividing line and a long
dark age, from which we emerge what we
are, how we believe, how we think Ä and
even possibly what our genetic makeup
as descendants of survivors is. It is
impossible to see how bronze-age
governments could have met the
challenge of a new and such a vicious
and deadly virus. And it leads one to
ask how well we may be prepared for a
new vicious virus today, three
millennia later.
FADE OUT.
END
Tom Slattery
Bay Village, Ohio
June 4, 1997

The Tragic End of The Bronze Age (The Screenplay)

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The Tragic End of The Bronze Age (The Screenplay)

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THE TRAGIC END OF THE BRONZE AGE

(nonfiction screenplay for documentary on the initial

Book of same title by same author published by Writers Club Press

Because of the unusual newness of theoretical material in this

INT. LIVING ROOM OR LIBRARY SET

Episode begins with a scholarly INTRODUCER. (He or she may

SUPER, OR SPLIT-SCREEN: TIMELINE GRAPH.

CENTURY-CALIBRATED GRAPH SHOWS: beginning of last Ice Age

Then there may have been a sudden

And it undoubtedly would have killed

But one of the worst catastrophes may

GRAPHICS, SPECIAL EFFECTS.

Slowly turning PLANET EARTH IN SPACE.

SUPER: TIMELINE GRAPH FROM ICE AGE TO PRESENT

HOLD FOCUS ON MAP SHOWING EGYPT.

MUSEUM FOOTAGE, FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, OR STOCK: OBJECTS AND

SUPER: EGYPT BEFORE THE COLLAPSE

With music accompaniment we see not only the jewels and

We see papyrus scripts.

From other New Kingdom Egypt tombs we see armies of "toy

SUPER: CHINA BEFORE THE COLLAPSE

We see Shang bronzes, other Shang implements, with focus on

MUSEUM FOOTAGE, FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, OR STOCK: AEGEAN (CRETE

SUPER: GREECE BEFORE THE COLLAPSE

We see not only Mycenaean Era and Minoan objects, but

SLOW MONTAGE WITH MAP LOCATIONS AND APPROPRIATE SUPERS: 1.

INT. EGYPTIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM, CAIRO

NARRATOR walks amid ancient artifacts and mummies of

SUPER (along screen bottom): TIMELINE GRAPH

ANGLE ON MUMMY OF PHARAOH RAMESES V*

Closer angle shows mummified smallpox pimples.

RETURN TO MUSEUM SCENE

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS OR MUSEUM SHOTS

Comparing Mycenaean pottery samples before 1200 BC and

RETURN TO MUSEUM SCENE

WOODCUTS OR OTHER IMAGES OF 14th CENTURY AD "BLACK DEATH."

RETURN TO MUSEUM SCENE

ILLUSTRATION TAKEN FROM THE MEXICAN FLORENTINE CODEX

RETURN TO MUSEUM SCENE

ANIMATED MAP SHOWS: BLOT OF EPIDEMIC SPREADING ACROSS

MAP SHOWS LOCATION OF DISCOVERY OF "CAUCASIAN" MUMMIES,

SUPER: SILK ROAD IN HISTORICAL TIMES.

That there could have been ancient

RETURN TO MUSEUM SCENE

SUPER (BOTTOM SCREEN): TIMELINE GRAPH WITH TIME-

STOCK: STILL AND/OR MOTION PICTURES OF SMALLPOX VICTIMS

EXT. ANCIENT DESERT-LIKE ROADSIDE - DAY

Anciently garbed individual lies dead on ground. Another

INT. ANCIENT LIVING QUARTERS

One person in ancient garb and showing smallpox seems dead

EXT. DESERT-LIKE AREA - DAY

People in ancient garb flee toward desert.

MAP SHOWS KNOWN ANCIENT TIN ORE SOURCES

Highlighted tin ore sources: 1. Cornwall in England; 2. the

MONTAGE OF STOCK, MUSEUM, OR VIDEOTAPED: BRONZE OBJECTS,

MAP SHOWING ANIMATED TRADE ROUTES FROM TIN AREAS TO EGYPT,

RETURN TO MUSEUM SCENE

STOCK, MUSEUM, AND VIDEOTAPED SLOW MONTAGE

We see Nile scenes, pyramids, ancient temples, tomb

RETURN TO MUSEUM SCENE

Narrator holds up three books, The Torah, the Bible, and

VIEW OF: HISSARLIK-RUINS OF TROY, MODERN TURKEY (perhaps

SUPER: TROY TODAY