Recovering the Lost World --Jno Cook
The Tower of Babel.
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Contents of this file:
[The Tower of Babel]
[Endnotes]
The Tower of Babel
The extinction of Jupiter, after a last flareup, is possibly the same event as the Burning Tower attributed to Mercury, which I will describe below, except that the date of the extinction of Jupiter is 200 year earlier than the date suggested (by others) for a flare-up of Mercury.
Velikovsky, in an unpublished document, attributed the loss of memory to an incident related to the planet Mercury. He places the event after the "Age of Saturn" and after a flood. Velikovsky has the flood of Noah of 2349 BC in mind. In a quote from Rockenbach (below) the event is dated to 1944 AM (Anno Mundi) which is 2060 BC.
"In the year of the world one thousand nine hundred and forty-four [2060 BC], two hundred and eighty-eight years after the Deluge, a comet was seen in Egypt of the nature of Saturn, in the vicinity of Cairo, in the constellation of Capricorn, and within the space of sixty-five days it traversed three signs in the sky. Confusions of languages and dispersals of peoples followed. On this the text of the eleventh chapter of Genesis speaks in more detail."-- Abraham Rockenbach "De Cometis Tractatus Novus Methodicus" (1602), in Velokovsky, unpublished documents, at [http://www.varchive.com]
The date of 2060 BC does not match Ussher's estimate of 2247 BC (actually, "after 2247 BC") for the Tower of Babel incident, nor a Mesoamerican date for the "fire on high" in the period of 2224.4 -- 2204.7 BC noted in the "Chilam Balam," nor the parallel record from China concerning the death of Yao in 2257 BC (which should probably be 2247 BC). [note 1]
Of the four records of the Xia dynasty in China (2205 to 1767 BC) listed in the "Book of the Shu," there is one, the last, dated to 2155 BC, which mentions a "celestial phenomenon." This is the only coincidence with Rockenbach's date of 2060 BC for the "Tower of Babel" event, but 95 years early. We should ask why, from among the hundreds of eclipses which (may have) happened in China during this long period of history, only this single event, "a celestial phenomenon," was deemed noteworthy enough to record and transmit to the future. The earlier demise of the coma of Jupiter (the death of Yao) had already been assigned to prehistory by the Xia. [note 2]
Although Mesoamerican and Chinese sources speak to a crisis of Jupiter, almost all sources on the 'burning tower' speak of an incident involving the planet Mercury. There are dozens of documents in antiquity, in Mesopotamia, Greece, and Egypt, and later tales and legends spanning four continents, which all relate the loss of memory or changes in languages to Mercury -- the Gods Hermes, Thoth, Nebo, Odin. In fact, the status of Mercury as an important God dates from remote antiquity. Some sources place the event "after the flood which ends the age of Jupiter" -- which will turn out to be the Noachian Flood. In the late legends of Egypt, which recall the flood of Noah as the bloodbath (and beer bath) of Hathor, the God Ra abdicates and turns his duties over to Thoth. That would have been, as best I would guess, after 2247 BC (Ussher), 2287-2267 BC ("fire on high," from the "Chilam Balam"), or in 2257 BC (Annals of Shu: Yao dies). The quotation of Rockenbach places this in 2060 BC -- about 200 years later.
Although somewhat larger in diameter compared with the Moon, it has 4.5 times the mass. Mercury is half the mass of Mars. We know that Mars in 747 BC budged the Earth to a larger orbit, by 930 thousand miles, 5.24 days. It is quite possible that Mercury, with half that mass, never 'hit' the Earth with a repulsive electrical shock serious enough to move Earth in its orbit. I have only identified a plasmasphere contact in 686 BC, but it is possible that Mercury made electrical contact with Earth any number of other times. If so, I would primarily suspect 2193 BC and also 1440 BC.
For now I will turn to Mercury, and introduce some facets of this planet.
For Mercury to have made an electrical (plasma) contact with Earth implies that Mercury (because it is a small planet with a limited plasmasphere) came close to the orbit of Earth in the 21st century BC (or it would have had little effect) and must have been on an exceedingly eccentric orbit, and is seems certain that Mercury overran the orbit of Earth. That Mercury was seen on a wildly eccentric course is almost certain for several reasons. First of all, Mercury still has the most eccentric of all planetary orbits. Mercury is the one planet which nearly doubles its distance from the Sun over the course of its 88 day orbit. No other planet comes close to having such an eccentric orbit, and we could be assured that, if Mercury had been seen in both the northern and the southern skies 3000 years ago, when the orbit of Earth was still 30 percent less than it is today, Mercury might have regularly reached beyond the orbit of Earth. This corresponds to the fact that Mercury was assigned in antiquity, almost universally, the duty of messenger of the distant Gods -- the planets seen coming from the southern reaches of the ecliptic.
Secondly, Mercury (the God) had the 'wings' and 'snake tail' of the 'caduceus,' indicating that, as a planet, it moved on a highly elliptical path, behaving like a comet which loses and regains a surplus of electrical charge with each turn around the Sun. The disk with wings and the extrusion at the end was a glow mode plasma discharge generated as Mercury traversed the electric field of the Sun. But, whereas Venus sported an immense tail (30 million miles today, in dark mode discharge), Mercury, which is much smaller (only the size of the Earth's Moon), would most likely have had a relatively short plasma tail and much shorter wings as a version of a bow-shock plasma display.
The 'disk' of the caduceus is likely to be a spherical coma, which could be supported by Mercury since it had a thin atmosphere (as it does today). Mercury has only a very weak magnetic field, but apparently enough to allow the part of its plasmasphere facing the Sun to light up in glow mode. It looked like a musical instrument, and music is attributed to Mercury. It also looked like a bow strung with an arrow. Mercury was identified by the Greeks as Apollo, "the archer God who shoots from afar." The name Apollo was transferred to the Sun after Classical times.
And lastly, we have the many descriptions from antiquity that Mercury was the messenger of the Gods -- swinging from aphelion beyond Earth's orbit to perihelion with the Sun after passing by Earth. If Mercury were on an orbit which reached from the Sun to a location beyond the Earth, it would look as if he were visiting the departed Gods in the far reaches of space. It would have been logical to assign Mercury the role of messenger. As I have suggested in Chapter 10, "Exodus and the fall of the Middle Kingdom," when it was certain that all the Gods had left (perhaps after 2000 BC), a new caretaker God was acknowledged as the intermediary between the distant Gods and mankind, a God who was charged with all the arcana of magic, special materials, writing, and language. That God was the Egyptian Thoth, Sumerian Enlil, Greek Hermes (originally Apollo), Roman Mercury, and the Norse Odin -- each of which can be identified with the planet Mercury. In Roman times, some northern European tribes declare Odin as their primary God. That is really strange if Mercury had always behaved as today -- only seen a few degrees above the east or west horizon near the rising or setting Sun. Mercury was the last planetary God, except for Venus, who still visited long after all the other Gods had retreated. But, unlike Venus, he seemed immensely busy, crossing Earth's orbit two or three times a year.
Where does the "burning tower" enter into the picture? This was probably a plasma discharge between Earth and Mercury. I would assume that a charge imbalance induced a stream of plasma in glow mode to reach from the ionosphere of Earth to Mercury after the plasmaspheres made contact. If this happened as Mercury passed over Earth's orbit, the distance between the planets might have been as little as 20 Earth diameters (a likely figure for the radius of the Earth's plasmasphere), and thus 160,000 miles. [note 3]
There would have been physical effects, an Earth shock and earthquakes, but not near what was experienced when Venus made an electrical contact in 2349 and 1492 BC. Since the mass of the Earth is 20 times the mass of Mercury, the Earth's path would also not likely to have been effected. Mercury, however, might likely have received a shock which could have trust it away from Earth. [note 4]
The plasma contact (exchange of charge) would have assumed the shape of a steep triangular mountain -- similar to the pyramid-shaped 'mountain' of plasma between Earth and Mars at the time of Horus after 3100 BC -- but at this time the mountain was understood as a man-made tower that could be seen as being constructed over a period of time as it extended upward. The tower would seem to grow from Earth as the plasma stream changed from dark mode to glow mode, but possibly in the reverse direction (that is, 'constructed' from Mercury to earth). The stream of plasma would increase in density on approaching Mercury -- an increase in electrical current -- so that the mode changed to arc mode on reaching the surface.
During the earlier visits of Horus, no man-made pyramids or ziggurats had been built yet, and the very similar phenomenon at that time was described as the mountain built by the god Horus -- "Who rises on his mountain." But towers or pyramids and ziggurats had already been erected by the time of the approach of Mercury and the idea that this was a tower constructed by humans was well within the imagination of those who were watching. In Mesopotamia the destruction of the tower had precedents in ziggurats which had been destroyed by massive lightning strikes.
The tower burned and collapsed. The tenuous atmosphere of Mercury still holds vast amounts of hydrogen and helium, as well as oxygen and sodium (which, because of its small size, would not be the case if Mercury were billions of years old). Hydrogen gasses might have burned when the plasma stream connection from Earth turned to arc mode at the strike points on Mercury. The burning would have extended past the time of the plasma contact.
The burning tower legends world-wide hold that people everywhere lost their memory or changed their language or both. The ubiquity of this detail suggests that it was fact. If we take this universal story at face value, it would suggest a short-term amnesia, perhaps some sort of electro-shock, due to a sudden change in the electrical potential of the Earth's crust. It looked like the plasma contact with Mercury fried our brains.
Mercury also is the only planet with a magnetic field to have made a close approach with Earth (even though its magnetic field is weak, and should not exist at all). This fact may explain why this incident was physiologically different from earlier and later approaches and plasma contacts with Venus and Mars, neither of which have a magnetic field. The effect of an imposed planetary magnetic field will not be felt, because planetary magnetic fields are weak. But the flow of electricity toward the Earth's crust creates a magnetic field also. Of course, the same phenomenon would have been experienced at the fall of the Absu, nearly 300 years earlier, but nothing is noted of it in the legends and records. It is perhaps also likely, however, that during the plasma contact with Mercury, a time-varying electric or magnetic field was experienced. A varying magnetic field is known to have physiological effects. (See the endnotes to Chapter 6 "Creation.")
I would also suggest another possibility for the "loss of memory" or "loss of speech." The plasma contact with Earth in 2060 BC may not have been an event which took away memory, but which instead caused speech and memory to falter, thus bringing these to awareness in people world-wide. Perhaps this also brought an awareness that other people speak differently.
The experience with the failure of speech may have forced people to write down their stories which previously had been passed along by word of mouth. The stories could thus be rendered correctly with future retellings. They might have also become aware that 'old stories' could be 'placed' in an imagined 'earlier time.' With books of recounted stories we immediately jump to the matter of primacy -- there are earlier and later versions of events. That forces a new consideration of historical time. This period may have been not only the start of 'literature,' but also the time which engendered an historical awareness which had never really existed before.
The dispersal of people in the Tower of Babel stories may or may not have happened. Certainly in Europe and Asia one of the Kurgan migrations starts at this time. But a few stories (as with some from North American Indians) do not include the details of a dispersal. It may have been that, instead of a dispersal, people were suddenly able, for the first time, to imagine the whereabouts of others.
The date of 2060 BC for the Tower of Babel event may or may not be correct. We cannot trace Rockenbach's sources today. Ussher places the building of the Tower of Babel of the Bible (as a ziggurat at Babylon) "after 2247 BC," thus two hundred years earlier.
But suddenly, after 2200 BC, the script of Akkad and Sumer is used to record old extant stories like the "Epic of Gilgamesh," to compose the "Enuma Elish," and generate the Code of Hammurabi (this last in ca 1700 BC).
Endnotes
I have estimated the demise of Jupiter at 2250 BC on the basis of a linear recession from its initial location, detailed in Chapter 9, "The Career of Jupiter." This matches Ussher's record, and comes close to other sources. One divergent record is Cylinder B of Gudea, which might be dated to the mid 22nd century BC (thus ca 2150 BC), which describes the "overwhelming splendor" of Ningirsu -- "he changes darkness into light." If Ningirsu is Jupiter, which is likely, then he was still seen blazing in the sky 100 years after 2250 BC.
The centuries of 2349 BC through 2050 BC are crowded with four
appearances of Venus, 2349, 2297, 2245, and 2193 BC, the flare up of
Jupiter in 2248 BC, a "celestial event" of 2155 BC, and Rockenbach's event
of 2060 BC.
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See Book 2 of the Shu and the introduction by James Legge to "The Sacred Books of the East, Volume 3, The Shu" (1879).
Of the Books of the Xia, Legge notes..
"Of the still earlier dynasty of Hsiâ [Xia], there are only four documents, and we have no evidence that there were any more when the collection of the Shû [Shu] was made in the times of Kâu. ... In the last of them a celestial phenomenon is mentioned, which has always been understood to have been an eclipse of the sun in Fang, a space of about 5 1/2 degrees from pi to sigma of Scorpio, on the first day of the last month of autumn. P. Gaubil thought he had determined by calculation that such an eclipse really took place in the fifth year of Kung Khang, B.C. 2155. Doubts, however, have been cast ... on the accuracy of his calculation...."
Others have demonstrated that the eclipse could not have been seen in
China. Scorpio, however, is two houses over from Capricorn, although
retrograde of normal planet travel in the ecliptic, where Rockenbach
places it, "in the constellation of Capricorn, and within the space of
sixty-five days it traversed three signs in the sky." This suggests a
planet outside the orbit of Earth, fairly close by, and seen in
retrograde motion, as would happen since Earth would be traveling at a
faster orbital speed.
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Apparently Mercury was not effected (or we simply do not know), since
it continued to be seen near Earth still in the 8th and 7th century BC,
when in 686 BC its orbit apparently was reduced to fall inside the orbit
of Venus.
[return to text]
Although I have used the current measure for the diameter of the
Earth's plasmasphere of 20 Earth diameters, there are good reasons to
suggest that the diameter was much larger before 685 BC -- at least equal
to the Moon's orbit, 250,000 miles or 30 Earth diameters.
[return to text]
Calculations are in Unix bc notation, where ^ denotes
exponentiation; the functions (a)rctangent, (s)ine, and (c)osine use
radians; angle conversions to radians or degrees by the divisors rad=.017+
and deg=57.2+; other functions are shown as f( );
units: million == 1,000,000; billion == 1,000,000,000;
one AU == 93,000,000 miles.
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