Carol planned our latest trip to the Eastern Mediterranean on the assumption that this was the area that I had long hoped to visit.  She was right.  I hoped to visit but I really wanted more time to rummage around in the special area of Santorini (Thera) which many have long maintained was the volcanic eruption that erased the Minoan civilization on Crete and was also (if the timing was correct) the event which drained the Sea of Reeds.  This was the area in the Egyptian Delta through which Moses led the Hebrew Slaves to Freedom into an unforgiving desert where they stayed for 40 years. That story is the Passover story which has been retold for thousands of years as a beacon for all peoples who suffer under the yoke of repression. How can one doubt this recounting of such a stunning and compelling history that has persisted for so long?  The sticking point is the picture in every ones mind who has seen Charlton Heston as Moses stretching out his arm and the Red Sea obediently rising into a corridor through which the Hebrews passed into freedom.  This is exciting but hard to believe and we wish to believe.

So, the realists among us have long thought there must be a rational explanation for the waters to be so low at just the right time for the slaves to follow the directives of God and get out of Egypt – while there was time and Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his chariots to bring his “property” back.  Here is where rational thought and physical evidence came into being. 

For a long time now, the explanation for the Jews having the timing right to escape Egypt was quite similar to the notion that a great volcanic explosion in the Aegean that practically erased Thera, wiped Mycenae off the map and drained the Egyptian Delta.  Here is what I was quite willing to believe:  It just so happened as the explosion leaving the crater (visible to this day) blew a hole in the sea into which waters from a wide area in the Mediterranean poured draining the Delta and “coincidentally” allowed the Jews to leave Egypt.

Santorini is not very impressive today.  The crater’s outlines can still be seen and it WAS one huge volcanic eruption.  This is also, perhaps, the explanation for the erasing of the “Atlantis” civilization which was told to Plato by his grandfather, Solon, who got the information from Egyptian Priests.

I expected more.  Santorini is quite picturesque but I resisted the lure of a donkey ride to the top where I could appreciate the view much better.  I finally got to see this place and the size of the crater is what gives it rational believability to explain why a far off marshy Sea of Reeds was drained at just the right time.