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	Memoirs of Moses Part 4 - I 'plague' Egypt
On the way to Egypt we met Aaron, who had been told by Yahweh to come and meet me. How he found me only Yahweh knows, because I took a roundabout route via Sinai, and Aaron met me there. He said God had told him to come. I explained all that had happened to me, and what my purpose was in returning to Egypt, then we went on together into Egypt. Our first task was to meet the leaders of the Israelites, and convince them that we were sent by God and they would soon be free. Aaron showed them the miracles which I had been given by God, and they were soon convinced. Later, when Pharaoh increased their work-load, they changed their minds! Then we went to see the Pharaoh, the recently enthroned Dudimose. He had not been born when I left Egypt, and had only hearsay information about me. When I explained that I had been brought up in the court as the son of the Princess and had been a general in the army he was quite impressed, but when I told him about my meeting with Yahweh, he was simply scornful. No doubt he thought the Gods of Egypt were too powerful for any tinpot god from elsewhere. So he responded by increasing the work-load on the Israelites. I will not repeat the long cycle of argument and plague which followed, all the detail is in my book Exodus, but one point I did not make in that book is that each plague was a challenge to one of the Egyptian Gods. The 'river turned to blood' challenged the great Osiris, God of the Nile. The 'frogs' challenged Hekt. The 'gnats' from the dust challenged Seb, the god of the earth. The 'flies' challenged Scarabus, whose emblem was the sacred scarab beetle. The 'death of the cattle' challenged Apis, the great bull god. The 'boils from the soot' challenged Neit, the god of health. The 'hail' challenged Shu, god of the atmosphere. The 'locusts' challenged Sorapia. The 'darkness' challenged Ra, the sun god. The 'death of the firstborn' challenged Pharaoh, who was also classed as a god. In each plague the priests prayed to the appropriate god to remove the plague, but nothing happened, though by trickery the priests appeared to reproduce the first three. After that, they had to admit defeat. Thus Yaweh proved He is the one supreme God and all these other so-called gods are but inventions of mankind. One thing I did not make clear in "Exodus" was that none of these plagues affected the land of Goshen where the Israelites lived, although we only evaded the last one because Yahweh gave us the Passover ceremony to protect us. Pharaoh was very stubborn. Each time he asked me to take away the plague, promising all sorts of liberties for the Israelites, and each time when Yahweh did remove, the plague, he changed his mind. After his son died however, he was so distraught that he let us go. The ordinary Egyptians by this time were so fed-up with the plagues that they were glad to be rid of us, and gave us many valuable gifts to hurry us away. Yahweh told me to take the long way across the desert because there was a war on in the land of the Philistines, which lay on the direct route to Canaan. Also it turned out that He wanted to meet us at Mount Sinai - but more of that later.... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *