The Ten Plagues of Egypt and the Swarm of Flies (Exodus 7–12)

experimentNo. 0078categoryRituals & ceremoniesrecordingpendingdataCC BY 4.0

The fly watches all ten plagues of Egypt, following the text of Exodus 7–12, from Pharaoh’s court to the border of Goshen; in the swarm of flies it lifts off the palace floor and circles among thousands of its own kind, and at the Passover it strikes a Goshen doorway with hyssop.

What the fly saw

Frames rendered from the fly’s eye camera at four points in the timeline, each with the 32-column retinal input the connectome model receives at that moment.

Timeline

14 steps, with their times in the experiment

1. 0:00
   Before Pharaoh

   Moses and Aaron stand before the throne in the painted court. “Let my people go” (5:1). Aaron casts down his rod and it becomes a serpent (7:10).

2. 0:10
   Water into blood

   At the river’s brink Aaron strikes the Nile with the rod. Red spreads across the water and fills the stone jars on the quay; dead fish rise. “All the waters that were in the river were turned to blood” (7:20).

3. 0:26
   Frogs

   Aaron stretches his hand over the water and frogs pour up the river steps, along the quay and into the palace, onto the jars and the throne dais. “The frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt” (8:6).

4. 0:42
   Lice

   The dead frogs lie in heaps. Aaron strikes the dust of the forecourt; it rises as a cloud and settles as lice on every fly, which scratch. The magicians: “This is the finger of God” (8:19).

5. 0:54
   The swarm of flies

   Thousands of flies pour over the pylon and fill Pharaoh’s court in a turning column around the throne. Specimen 237 lifts off and joins them. “There came a grievous swarm of flies into the house of Pharaoh” (8:24).

6. 1:16
   Goshen is severed

   The swarm streams east over the fields and halts in a wall at the border canal. Goshen beyond stays clear. “I will sever in that day the land of Goshen … that no swarms of flies shall be there” (8:22).

7. 1:30
   Murrain on the cattle

   On the Egyptian side of the canal the cattle stagger and fall one by one; across the water the cattle of Goshen keep grazing. “All the cattle of Egypt died: but of the cattle of the children of Israel died not one” (9:6).

8. 1:42
   Boils

   Beside the brick kiln Moses throws handfuls of ashes toward the sky. The ash drifts over the Egyptians; boils swell on their bodies and burst, and the magicians fall. “Ashes of the furnace” (9:10).

9. 1:56
   Hail and fire

   Black cloud over Egypt: lightning, heavy hail, and fire running along the ground through the fields while palms snap. Goshen stays in sunlight. “Fire mingled with the hail, very grievous” (9:24).

10. 2:12
    Locusts

    A dark cloud comes in on the east wind and settles on the fields; the green crops and fronds disappear under the insects. Then a strong west wind lifts them toward the Red Sea (10:13–19).

11. 2:28
    Darkness that may be felt

    Egypt goes black. Nobody moves. Across the canal Goshen is still lit. “They saw not one another … but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings” (10:23).

12. 2:42
    Blood on the doorposts

    Evening in Goshen. Specimen 237 dips a bunch of hyssop in the basin and strikes the lintel and the two side posts; inside, the household eats standing, staffs in hand (12:7, 12:11, 12:22).

13. 2:56
    Midnight

    A cold light crosses Egypt from the west and the lamps go out behind it; it lifts over the marked doors of Goshen. In the palace the firstborn of Pharaoh falls beside the throne. “When I see the blood, I will pass over you” (12:13).

14. 3:10
    Get you forth

    Torchlight in the court: Pharaoh kneels by his son and calls for Moses and Aaron by night. “Rise up, and get you forth from among my people” (12:31). In Goshen the households come out with their flocks.

Setup

• 14 seekable stages over 198 seconds: before Pharaoh, water into blood, frogs, lice, the swarm of flies, Goshen is severed, murrain on the cattle, boils, hail and fire, locusts, darkness that may be felt, blood on the doorposts, midnight, and “get you forth”.
• The set is in metres with fly figures about 1.25 m tall: the Nile with a stone quay and a fly-headed sphinx avenue to the west, a painted pylon and colonnaded court with a gilded throne under a starred baldachin, barley and flax fields to the east, and a reed-lined border canal with Goshen’s pasture, sheepfolds and village about 150 m from the palace.
• Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s firstborn are articulated fly figures; courtiers, guards, magicians and Israelites are instanced fly figures in New Kingdom and Levantine dress. Modeled creatures include 700 frogs, 2,400 lice, 2,600 locusts, falling hail and the cattle of Egypt and Goshen.
• Swarm size sets 800–6,000 plague flies (default 2,600); up to 600 flies within 11 m of the fly use a model of about 300 triangles. The fly joins the swarm is on by default; off, the fly stays on the court floor swatting and later watches from the east terrace.
• Gore (Low / Standard / Extreme, default Extreme) and Blood (cinematic red, default, or fly hemolymph) set the river strike, the bursting boils and the door marks; the eye camera sees the splatter.
• Eight cameras: a director that cuts per stage and follows the fly in flight, Pharaoh’s court, the river’s brink, the canal from above, a follow camera, the fly eye in first person, the marked door in Goshen and an Egypt-and-Goshen overview. A replay control restarts at the swarm of flies.

Measurement

• Retinal-only input: the eye camera’s 32 luminance columns reach the fixed connectome model, measured spikes drive the neural display, and no direct stimulation is sent.
• The swarm passing within metres of the eye, lightning flashes, the darkness and the midnight light are scene content and reach the eye image; darkness, storm and night are applied as per-region albedo changes, so the eye sees the same darkness as the viewport. Cue text, the hyssop held by the fly and the viewport’s extra light dimming and fog are excluded from it.
• Looming (LC4 + LPLC2) and escape (DNp01) readouts report the fixed model’s measured response to that image.
• The plagues, the fly’s flight and every cast movement follow a pre-programmed timeline; measured spikes do not move the fly.

Limitations

• The scene follows the text of Exodus 7–12 and makes no historical claim about the Exodus, its date or its Pharaoh, who is not identified.
• Geography is compressed: Goshen, placed in the eastern Delta by Genesis 47 and Exodus 8–9, is set about 150 m beyond the palace fields, and the pyramids on the western horizon and the river-side palace are layout conveniences. The architecture follows general New Kingdom forms without copying a specific temple or palace.
• The text gives no sizes, numbers or swarm colour; frogs, lice, locusts and hailstones are enlarged for legibility, and the text gives no image of the destroyer (12:23), so the cold light at midnight is a rendered stand-in.
• With Blood set to fly hemolymph, the Nile, the splatter and the door marks turn yellow-green, although the text says blood.
• Gestures, flight paths, swarm motion, hops, collapses and splatter are deterministic animation; nothing is simulated physically.

Sources

• Exodus 5:1 and 7–12, King James Version (Project Gutenberg eBook #10)
• Exodus 7–12, King James Version (Bible Gateway)