Original subtitles

[narrator] The ten plagues of Egypt.

One of the most famous and terrifying episodes

recounted in the Bible.

Within the early chapters of the Book of Exodus,

the second book of the Hebrew Bible,

lies the description of the onslaught of curses

that assailed the kingdom of Egypt.

[narrator] Over time, the story of the ten plagues

and its conclusion with the Red Sea crossing

has become one of the most studied accounts

in the history of religion and the subject of

countless investigations and controversies.

[Tony] Is this a legend, a purely allegorical tale,

or could these events have their origins in a series of

actual natural disasters?

[Karen] What's fascinating about the description of

the plagues of Egypt is that

they can be compared to observable, natural phenomena.

[narrator] We'll dive deep into one of

the most sensational and mysterious episodes

recounted in the Bible, the ten plagues of Egypt.

[narrator] The ten plagues, among the most spectacular events described in

the Bible, are a series of devastating punishments that

befell the kingdom of Egypt over 3,500 years ago.

Men covered in ulcers,

the death of livestock,

and even the slaughter of all the kingdom's firstborn.

The list is chilling, so it's not surprising thats

popular culture has long been intrigued by them.

[Virginie speaking French]

[narrator] The events recounted in the episode of the ten plagues

are supposed to have taken place in Egypt.

[Virginie speaking French]

[narrator] The story of the ten plagues is told in the book of Exodus,

the second book of the Bible.

In the beginning, it is written

that some time after arriving in Egypt,

the Israelites find themselves enslaved

by a tyrannical pharaoh.

Their situation grows even more dire when, to reduce the number

of Hebrews who rivaled the population of Egyptians,

the pharaoh orders the death of all male Hebrew children.

"'Look, ' he said to his people, 'the Israelites have become

"far too numerous for us.'

"Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people,

'Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile.'"

To save their son, a family from the tribe of Levi,

one of the 12 tribes of Israel, places their newborn son

in a wooden basket near one of the banks of the Nile.

He was found by the pharaoh's daughter, who decides to raise

the newborn as her own son.

She called the child Moses.

[narrator] Moses is raised at Pharaoh's court, but he discovers

his true heritage and begins to understand the misery

of his people, shackled in slavery.

When he observes a slave being beaten by a foreman,

he kills him in a fit of suppressed rage.

[Virginie speaking French]

[narrator] At the age of 80, Moses returns to Egypt

to ask Pharaoh to free his people.

But Pharaoh refuses.

First and foremost is the question of whether

the facts are true.

There are those who don't believe they are,

and those who do,

but who seek to rationally explain these events.

Opinions differ even among the believers.

One area of contention is the dating of the 10 plagues

and of the exodus itself.

The problem is that despite numerous excavations throughout

the region, stretching from Egypt to present-day Syria,

no archaeological evidence has ever indicated the presence of

the Hebrews in Egypt or any kind of exodus into the desert.

[narrator] The lack of historical evidence extends beyond the exodus

to the plagues themselves.

The ancient Egyptians covered their temples and monuments

with hieroglyphics that recorded important events,

and ten horrific and deadly plagues

would certainly qualify.

But no mention of them had ever been found,

at least not until 2014.

Karnak Temple in Luxor was the largest religious complex

in ancient Egypt.

The temple's remains, with their hieroglyphic-covered walls,

tell the story of 2,000 years of human history.

It was here, between 1947 and 1951,

that French archaeologists discovered several fragments

of a 1.8-meter-high stele, a particularly imposing size.

[narrator] The upper part of the stele helped date the monument

to the time of Ahmose I, founder of the 18th dynasty.

It's estimated that he ruled around 3,500 years ago.

Ahmose I was a very important pharaoh.

He reunited Upper and Lower Egypt

by driving out the Hyksos,

invaders who had seized the Nile Delta

several decades prior.

This reconquest laid the foundations

for the New Kingdom, when Egyptian power reached its peak.

[horses neighing]

Scholars disagree on the exact dates of his reign,

except that he ruled sometime in the 16th century BCE.

Precisely dating events is very complicated in Egyptology.

[narrator] In the late 1960s,

Belgian Egyptologist Claude Vandersleyen,

a specialist in the Ahmose dynasty,

proposed a translation.

For the Belgian researcher, there could be no doubt that

this record referred to a very violent climatic event,

a subject that had never before

been found inscribed on a stele.

But not everyone was convinced

by Vandersleyen's interpretation.

[narrator] Karnak Temple in Luxor

was the largest religious complex in ancient Egypt.

Between 1947 and 1951,

French archaeologists discovered several fragments

of a 1.8-meter-high stele,

[narrator] In the late 1960s,

Belgian Egyptologist Claude Vandersleyen,

proposed a translation.

This record referred to a very violent climatic event,

a subject that had never before

been found inscribed on a stele.

No pharaoh before him had ever deemed a meteorological event

worthy of record.

Why?

Because no pharaoh would ever consider himself to be at

the whim of the gods who caused the storm in the first place.

[thunder crashing]

[Karen] Documenting such an event so publicly would be seen as

an admission of weakness.

[narrator] Other Egyptologists subscribe to a more

conventional interpretation,

seeing the text as a metaphorical tale of war

against invaders, probably the Hyksos,

a much more common subject at the time.

Without a compelling or conclusive case,

the controversial stele soon became yesterday's news.

But in 2014, two researchers from the University of Chicago,

Nadine Moeller and Robert Ritner,

decided to reopen the investigation,

and their discovery lent renewed credibility

to Claude Vandersleyen's stormy interpretation.

On line seven of the front of the stele,

an initial indication caught the eye of the two researchers.

It clearly states that the sky is raging.

But the smoking gun is in the middle of line eight on

the stele, which, according to Moeller and Ritner,

refers to a heavy rainstorm.

[thunder crashing]

[Karen] Hieroglyphics are extremely challenging to translate,

even for experts.

The meaning of the symbols varies according to the context

and their association with each other.

Complicating matters further

is the fact that the Egyptians' meteorological vocabulary

mirrors the vocabulary of human actions.

For example, the word used for rain is "strike,"

which must then be associated

with a hieroglyph symbolizing water.

In this case, we're no longer talking about

a clash between two armies, for example,

but rather about rain hitting the ground.

[narrator] The rest of the stele continues to support the case

and refers to darkness, rain, and winds so strong that,

quote, "torches could not be lit anywhere."

[heavy pattering]

[Tony] The entire lower part of the stele, meanwhile,

offers a detailed list of the damage, destruction,

and necessary reconstruction in the kingdom.

Nadine Moeller and Robert Ritner find far too precise

to be considered purely metaphorical.

It therefore appears to recount a very real event.

[narrator] Far more remarkable than the storm, the Tempest Stele

may well be the first weather report in history,

the extraordinary account of an unprecedented event,

and consistent with two of the ten plagues mentioned

in the Bible, the hailstorm and the darkness.

But this provocative evidence is just one data point.

Wouldn't such a historic storm deserve a mention in other

records of the time?

That's where the Rhind papyrus comes in.

[Virginie speaking French]

[narrator] On the face of it, the subject of the scholarly papyrus

has absolutely nothing to do with the weather.

But turn it over and there's some interesting text,

added after the main manuscript had been written,

that stands out from the rest.

The first column reads,

"Year 11, second month of the harvest season,

"Heliopolis was entered.

"The first month of the inundation season,

the 23rd day, he attacked Zaru."

The text relates to the progression of

a southern king into the Hyksos kingdom.

Now, the king who reunited the two Egypts by regaining

ground in the Hyksos-occupied Nile Delta was Ahmose,

the pharaoh who had the Tempest Stele engraved.

[narrator] The last two columns offer further details,

"Year 11, first month of the inundation season, third day.

"Birth of Set, the majesty of this god

"caused his voice to be heard.

"Birth of Isis, the heavens rained.

[thunder crashing]

[Tony] This information leads us to believe

that we are dealing with a storm.

The god Set is the god of storms,

so the fact that his voice is heard

could indicate a very strong blast

or particularly powerful thunder.

And the rain on the day of Isis' birth would indicate

a violent storm or torrential downpour.

[thunder crashing, water whooshing]

As with the Tempest Stele, the fact that weather phenomena

are mentioned is a strong indication of the exceptional

nature of these upheavals.

But in this particular case, we're undoubtedly talking about

a storm of uncommon duration or violence.

[narrator] The inscriptions on the papyrus and the stele

were both made during the reign of Pharaoh Ahmose I.

The argument that these are references to the great plagues

becomes ever more compelling.

[thunder crashing]

[narrator] The Tempest stele and the Rhind papyrus

seem to provide solid evidence between a dramatic weather event

and some biblical plagues.

Such a cataclysmic weather event

wouldn't have been confined solely to Egypt.

If it truly happened, it would have happened someplace else

as well, and something must have triggered it.

As early as 1967,

when a translation of the Tempest Stele was published,

Greek seismologist Angelo Galanopoulos

raised the possibility of a link

between the torrential rains described in the stele

and the ferocious eruption of Thera over 3,500 years ago.

With an explosivity score of almost seven

on a scale of eight,

the super colossal eruption of ancient Thera,

a volcano on the island of Santorini,

it's one of the most devastating in human history.

[booming blast]

[narrator] The mountain literally explodes,

ejecting a column of volcanic material

35 kilometers into the stratosphere.

After that came a bombardment of burning pumice stones

falling from the plume, accompanied by fiery clouds,

avalanches of gas, and incandescent ash

racing from the mountain flanks

at nearly 150 kilometers per hour.

Gigantic fractures ripped open the magma chamber.

Seawater rushed in and flooded the chamber,

triggering further explosions that pulverized the rocks.

[Mark] The Thera volcano released energy equal to 600 megatons of TNT.

That's 40 atomic bombs.

In two days, it spewed

27 times more than the eruption of Vesuvius

that buried Pompeii in 79 CE.

[narrator] After the eruption, the chaos continues.

[suspenseful music playing]

[narrator] The magma chamber, completely emptied,

collapses in on itself.

The sea rushes in to fill the massive crater,

generating a series of tsunamis

estimated between 30 and 150 meters high.

[people screaming]

[Mark] Traces of these tsunamis have been found

in archaeological sites along the shores of the eastern Mediterranean,

all the way to the Black Sea.

That's how monumental it was.

[suspenseful music playing]

[narrator] At the end of the cataclysm,

all that remains of a 900-meter-high volcano

is a gaping caldera, or crater,

eight kilometers in diameter.

The present-day islands of Therasia, Aspronisi,

Palea Kameni, Nea Kameni, and Thera,

better known as Santorini, are what remains.

The island and its people simply ceased to exist.

For centuries, it was completely forgotten

that Santorini had ever been populated,

until excavations begun in 1967

unearthed the remains of Akrotiri,

one of the island's once-flourishing cities,

beneath thick layers of ash and pumice stone.

[narrator] The explosion itself

went far beyond the borders of Santorini.

In 2010, the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull,

demonstrated the vast distances

covered by the airborne ash.

It reached Great Britain, more than 1,000 kilometers

from the Icelandic cloud,

despite being a relatively modest eruption.

Yet Egypt is only 700 kilometers southeast of Santorini

and would have felt the impacts

of such a massive geological event.

[volcano booms]

Before long, the ashes reached the Nile Delta

and thus darkened the skies for several years.

It cooled the climate, not only in the wider region,

but across the globe.

The rainstorms that plagued the pharaoh's land

could well have been triggered by this natural disaster.

Could this event have altered the climate

and led to the catastrophes described in the Bible,

and plunged the greatest civilization of antiquity

into chaos?

As early as 1967,

Greek seismologist Angelo Galanopoulos

raised the possibility of a link

between the torrential rains described in the stele

and the ferocious eruption of Thera over 3,500 years ago.

Once again, the idea wasn't taken seriously at first.

[Fern] As early as 1971,

the German geologist Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

proposed that the eruption of the Thera volcano

could explain the entire biblical story.

But his thesis failed to attract attention.

Once scientists confirmed that the ash from the eruption

had piled up in the Nile,

researchers dusted off van Bemmelen's thesis.

In the Old Testament, it is written,

"This is what the Lord says...

"with the staff that is in my hand,

"I will strike the water of the Nile,

"and it will be changed into blood.

"The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink.

The Egyptians will not be able to drink its water."

One hypothesis is that sulfuric acid in the volcanic ash

may have oxidized the ferrous rocks in the riverbed,

giving the water a rusty tint.

The chemical reaction then encouraged the growth

of cyanobacteria,

potentially harmful to humans and animals.

The same thing happened after the eruption of Mount Hudson

in Chile in 1991.

So it's entirely possible.

[Tony] Another theory is that a change in the climate

triggered a massive bloom of red algae.

In the Gulf of Mexico in 1978,

an algae bloom of Karenia brevis

reddened the water, making it toxic to both humans and fish.

[narrator] The algae bloom could then trigger a chain reaction.

As the water grows acidic, it poisons the fish,

which float to the surface and wash up on the Nile's banks

and create the conditions for the second biblical plague.

"The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards,

"and in the fields.

They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them."

[Virginie speaking French]

[narrator] The Egyptians' ordeal continues with the fifth plague...

"This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says,

"'Let my people go, so that they may worship me.'

"If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back,

"the hand of the Lord will bring a terrible plague

"on your livestock in the field

"on your horses, donkeys, and camels

"and on your cattle, sheep, and goats.'

"And the next day, the Lord did it.

All the livestock of the Egyptians died."

The sudden proliferation of insect pests can certainly

decimate livestock.

John Marr and Curtis Malloy, two epidemiologists

at the New York Department of Public Health,

studied a midge of the genus Culicoides.

It carries two viral diseases,

African horse sickness, which attacks horses,

and blue tongue disease, which mainly affects cattle.

Add to this the grass contaminated by volcanic ash,

and the polluted drinking water of the Nile,

and it's easy to see

why the animals are dying off one after the other.

In the Bible, it is written,

"Then the Lord said... 'Take handfuls of soot from

"a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air

"in the presence of Pharaoh.

"It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt

"and festering boils will break out on people and animals

throughout the land.'"

[Tony] Some researchers believe that these pustules are a product of

myiasis, a skin infection created by the larva

of certain fly species.

These develop under the skin,

resulting in boil-like lesions.

Insects can also transmit parasitic diseases

such as cutaneous leishmaniasis,

which cause severe skin lesions.

[narrator] There is another theory which implicates Thera

even more directly.

Microbiologist Siro Trevisanato found a plausible explanation

for the postulates in a remarkable papyrus

he recovered from the archives

of the British Museum in London.

The London Medical Papyrus is one of the earliest,

if not the earliest, medical documents in history.

It was completed around 1350 BCE,

but its contents are much older than that.

The surviving part lists 61 treatments and provides us with

invaluable information about the Egyptians' knowledge of

medicine and biology, as well as the remedies they used.

[narrator] Of these 61 treatments,

one caught the biologists' attention.

The papyrus refers to white lesions that appear on contact

with red water.

[Fern] This red water could refer to the first plague of Egypt,

and these lesions would be the ulcers or boils

spoken of in the Bible.

[narrator] The document doesn't mention anything about

the cause of these lesions,

but the treatment provides a compelling clue.

To heal these boils, a special ointment must be

applied to the skin,

made from alkaline ingredients such as soda, okra,

and animal fat.

[Fern] If the remedy is alkaline, there's only one conclusion,

the active agent is acidic.

These white lesions would therefore be acid burns

caused by contact with the red water.

And Trevisanato speculates that the Egyptians could only

have been exposed to one acidic compound,

sulfuric acid from the ashes of the Thera volcano.

[thunder crashing]

[narrator] One way or another,

the epic volcanic eruption on Thera

seems to be the culprit

behind the first six biblical plagues.

But what does science say about the next three?

Hail, locusts, and darkness.

The epic volcanic eruption on Thera seems to be the culprit

behind the first six biblical plagues,

but what does science say

about hail, locusts, and darkness?

"At this time tomorrow, I will send the worst hailstorm that

"has ever fallen on Egypt,

from the day it was founded till now."

It's a fact, a volcanic eruption

can significantly disrupt the weather.

It's happened in modern times.

On June 15, 1991, the Pinatubo volcano in

the Philippines erupted after 500 years of inactivity.

[speaking French]

[narrator] A volcano's ability to change the weather

lies in the composition of the volcanic cloud.

Besides tons of ash, it contains a high quantity of

sulfur dioxide, a gas that remains in the atmosphere

long after the ash has fallen.

[Mark] In the atmosphere, when sulfur dioxide mixes with water vapor,

it slowly transforms into sulfuric acid.

The tiny droplets remain suspended

in the upper atmosphere.

[narrator] Floating around the atmosphere,

the droplets surround the Earth.

When the sun's rays hit them, they act like a mirror,

reflecting part of the light back into space

and absorbing the rest.

As a result, the stratosphere warms

while the ground temperature falls.

[thunder crashing]

When the ground is cold and the atmosphere is hot,

the air mass changes, and storms are formed.

[narrator] The eruption of the Thera volcano

was as much as 10 times bigger than Pinatubo's.

So it only stands to reason

that it would impact the global climate

in addition to creating havoc locally.

In Egypt, it could also lead to unusual events,

such as heavy rain or hailstorms.

Hail, in particular, can be caused by the accumulation

of ice around suspended volcanic particles.

And this litany of bad weather

in a usually warm and stable climate

sets the stage for plague number eight.

"By morning, the wind had brought the locusts...

"They devoured all that was left after the hail,

"everything growing in the fields

"and the fruit on the trees.

"Nothing green remained on tree or plant

"in all the land of Egypt...

"Never before had there been such a plague of locusts,

nor will there ever be again."

Far from never happening again, locust invasions are actually

a well-known phenomenon in East Africa.

In January 2020, for example, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia

experienced heavy rains.

While rain is generally welcomed in these drought-prone areas,

in this case, the relief quickly faded at the arrival

of billions of locusts that invaded the Horn of Africa.

In a single day, a small swarm can devour enough crops to feed

2,500 people, threatening the food security

of the countries they pass through.

[Tony] The biblical locusts may have been disturbed

by atmospheric changes from the eruption.

Humidity encourages locusts to reproduce, so it's not hard

to imagine their numbers multiplying and reaching Egypt,

a country located very close to Sudan,

one of their main breeding grounds.

[narrator] Some scholars believe that this eighth plague of locusts

caused the ensuing ninth plague.

"And total darkness covered all Egypt for three days."

Others suggest that the darkness could also be

a result of the dust ejected from the eruption

of the Thera volcano.

We can tell what they must have experienced in Egypt

from a more recent super eruption.

In 1815, the Tambora volcano in Indonesia

triggered a worldwide volcanic winter,

which was followed by the year without summer.

[Fern] To build dramatic intensity,

the authors of this episode from the Bible

may have rearranged the chronology of events.

If darkness, the penultimate plague,

invaded the region,

it would have happened in the early days of the eruption,

when the dust cloud may have obscured the sky for days.

Or perhaps, given the power of the eruption, there could have

been a second ash cloud that came later.

But this theory is less plausible.

[suspenseful music playing]

[thunder crashing]

[narrator] Either way, the plague of darkness

does find support

from the provocative Tempest Stele found at Karnak,

which describes a cloud of sudden darkness

that swallowed Egypt, which is consistent with the effects

of a volcanic cloud.

That leaves one final plague,

the cruelest and by far the most difficult to explain

in terms of a volcanic eruption,

the death of the firstborn.

The merciless and personal final plague is the one that

will make Pharaoh capitulate.

[narrator] According to the Bible,

all the firstborn of the Egyptian families

are killed in a single night.

[dramatic chord strike]

"Every firstborn son in Egypt will die,

"from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne,

"to the firstborn son of the female slave,

"who is at her hand mill,

and all the firstborn of the cattle as well."

For a long time, researchers have been at a loss

to rationally explain this,

especially given that death reportedly spread

in a single night and how the plague

affected only the eldest members of the family.

For some, the culprit lay in the Egyptians' diet.

According to this theory, the persistent humidity

resulting from the explosion could have caused their grain

to spoil, either by a bacterium such as ergot,

or more likely by a fungus.

[Virginie speaking French]

[narrator] But contaminated grain doesn't explain why only the firstborn

in each household was affected.

[Karen] The reason is societal.

In ancient Egypt, it was customary for elders

to be the first to eat at mealtimes.

So it's plausible that they're the main victims.

The first to eat, so the first to be poisoned.

We shouldn't necessarily take this literally.

Trauma and memory can alter historical fact

as it's passed down through communities.

Poisoning may not have killed all of the firstborn,

but it's the most horrific and shocking version of what

could have happened.

And those versions tend to take the firmest hold

of our collective imagination.

[narrator] Whatever theory we follow, the result is the same.

The last plague of Egypt could also have an explanation

grounded in the historical reality,

however many steps removed of the Thera eruption.

History can be a slippery thing, with dates in particular

being a constant source of speculation.

Scholars all agree that the volcano on Thera

erupted cataclysmically,

but they can't agree on exactly when.

In 2002, a team of geologists led by Dane Walter Friedrich

made an extraordinary find...

An olive branch perfectly preserved under ash

at the eruption site.

An olive branch usually symbolizes peace,

but this one stirred up controversy.

Scientists used two techniques to date the sample.

[Mark] Carbon 14 is a radioactive element

present in all living organisms.

Once the organism dies, its carbon 14 content

decreases at a regular rate.

Scientists can use it as a chronometer to estimate

the age of once-living objects, such as wood or bone.

[narrator] The other technique is slightly more recent

and increasingly popular, dendrochronology,

or the study of tree rings.

Trees grow in a seasonal cycle.

In spring, they produce a lot of wood.

Then growth slows down in summer before coming to

a complete halt in autumn and winter.

This annual cycle creates rings in the trunk,

which can be seen when the tree is cut.

Counting these rings allows to determine the age of the tree,

but also to see the climatic conditions of

a particular year.

The rings will be narrower, for example, if the tree

has experienced a drought or a very cold spell.

So this method was employed for the Thera eruption,

since it still works for trees over 5,000 years old.

[narrator] The data suggested that the eruption would have taken

place between 1681 and 1542 BCE.

Except that this date, rather than creating consensus,

threw gasoline on the fire.

The first reason is that this date contradicts the findings

of archaeologists, who through the study of ceramics on site,

determined that the eruption occurred

several decades earlier, between 1570

to 1544 BCE.

[Mark] Several researchers found the dating

of the olive branch problematic.

Dendrochronology is most effective with oaks,

firs, or pines.

With olive trees, it's more complicated because

their tree rings are much harder to read

due to the arid climate.

Unfortunately, carbon-14 dating can also be affected by

atmospheric and other factors.

[narrator] A new twist came in 2018,

when an international team of researchers

led by Charlotte Pearson believed they had developed

a new method for reducing inaccuracies

when reading tree rings.

This time they studied the growth rings

of Bristlecone pines, North American trees

that can live as long as 5,000 years,

as well as the rings of very old Irish oaks.

Both these tree species

grow thousands of kilometers from Santorini.

Unlike the olive branch found at Santorini,

dendocrinologists consider

these pine and oak species reliable.

By proving that they had cooled at around the estimated time of

the Thera eruption,

scientists could propose a more accurate date.

[narrator] The pines and oaks study did in fact show signs

of experiencing cooler seasons, in the form of narrower rings.

That observation helped provide a more accurate estimate

of the date of Santorini's eruption.

It would have occurred between 1600 and 1525 BCE,

a period overlapping the 1570 to 1500 BCE dates

estimated from the ceramics.

Above all, these dates could coincide

with the reign of King Ahmose,

the pharaoh who witnessed the raging storm

described in the Tempest Stele.

Still, not everyone agrees.

It's worth remembering that the Hebrew Bible,

also known by Christians as the Old Testament,

is said to have been written around the 7th century BCE,

at least nine centuries after the presumed date

of the eruption of the Thera Volcano,

and probably by several authors.

[indistinct chatter]

[Virginie speaking French]

[Karen] By mastering the natural elements,

Yahweh strips the Egyptian deities of their power.

One by one, he discredits them

by demonstrating their weakness

in the face of the plagues.

And by demonstrating his superiority,

he's legitimizing those who choose to follow him.

[narrator] And the story of Moses

certainly succeeded in that task.

He is featured in the texts of Judaism,

but also in the later texts of Christianity and Islam,

all of which have inspired millions of people

around the world.

[group singing]

[narrator] A sequence of natural events triggered by a natural disaster

or a metaphorical tale that has captivated our imaginations

and inspired three world religions?

It's up to each of us to decide, according to our own beliefs,

but the mystery remains unresolved.