[home page]

Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology --Jno Cook
Part 13: Notes on the chronology.

[Table of Contents]

$Revision: 19.30 $
Contents of this chapter: [Kings Before the Flood] [Kings After the Flood] [The city of Kish] [The city of Uruk] [Parallel Histories] [The Palette of Narmer] [The Calendar] [C14 Radiometric dating] [Saturn in the Precambrian] [Endnotes]

(July 2007) NOTE: I have removed the "Long Range Chronology," and the "The Maya Calendar," to separate files or chapters in order to conserve space.

The information below is a collection of various observations related to chronology developed in more detail than would have been appropriate as endnotes in the main text pages. Hopefully you will be able to make sense of them. You may safely skip this chapter and go on to the next.

"I decided to believe, as you might decided to take an aspirin: It can't hurt, and you might get better." -- Umberto Eco "Foucault's Pendulum" (1988)

I should note that I rather indiscriminately mix historic and astronomical dates for antiquity and almost always list astronomical dates in BC notation. Astronomical dates are normally shown as, for example, "-747," which is the historical year "748 BC" but I often list this as "747 BC." At times I quote dates from antiquity in the Julian Calendar, at other times the dates refer to a backward extension of the Gregorian calendar. In a few cases, where more exactness might be called for, I have differentiated these. In all cases the dates before 747 BC are in solar years rather than an actual count of days on the Julian or Gregorian calendar.

Additionally it should be noted that years in antiquity for the eastern Mediterranean region differ by 4 years from actual years and thus also differ from calculated years for China and Mesoamerica. This has been known since the 19th century, but has been neglected by historians as too difficult to correct. For ephemeris calculations I therefore have to select dates 4 years earlier, and sometimes five, to compensate for this error and additionally for the lack of a 'year zero' among historians. Additionally, dates are often at varience because different nations start the year at different seasons.

Dates from Chinese antiquity calculated in the 19th century AD by others are correct to actual 'historical' solar years (and dates) if based on ephemeris information.

Dates based on the Maya Long Count are also correct to the Gregorian calendar, except for dates in remote antiquity when retrocalculated by the Maya. But this last is easy to correct, since the error is an obvious incorrect assumption about the length of the year in the past. This is discussed in Chapter 17, "The Maya Calendar."

Exact dates, to the day of a year, are confusing in Mesoamerican chronology because of the notion that a day does not 'exist' until it is completed, and because there were obviously two chronologies in use, with a difference of two days in the Long Count. This is generally not a problem, except when attempting to correlate dates of the Long Count with dates reported by the Spanish, who were using the Julian calendar, especially when recent translations of these accounts attempt to be helpful by converting to Gregorian dates instead, but without notifying the reader. [note b]

I have kept a number of "exact" dates alive in the text, even though they are inaccurate or are only estimates. Dates are hard to remember and recognize while reading unless they have a certain charm to them. Therefore I have continued to use 3114 BC as the date for the end of the "Age of the Gods" because it is a well known date derived from the Maya Long Count calendar -- even though it is incorrect by 35 years. It is, in fact, even more incorrect because the length of the year has changed repeatedly in the past. Thus 3114 BC, or a value 34 years less, is only 'correct' in terms of solar years, certainly not in terms of actual elapsed days.

Three other dates which I have retained at a specific value, even though they may not be accurate, are 2349 BC for the fall of the Absu (the flood of Noah), 1492 BC for the Exodus of Moses (because it is numerically equal to the year when Columbus discovered America), and 747 BC for the change of Earth's orbit in the 8th century BC (because it is numerically the same as a well known passenger airplane model).

The Kings Before the Flood

The earliest portions of the Sumerian "King List" probably date from shortly after 2700 BC, but our copies were transcribed from these earlier sources some time after 2000 BC and did not come to light until after AD 1900. However, a conforming copy of the "King List" was extant in Greece ca 280 BC, having been brought from Babylon to Greece and has been quoted subsequently by Greek authors. The record was at that time already 2500 years old. The Sumerian "King List" has clear parallels in the Bible and in Egyptian records, and less so in Chinese and Vedic mythology, all of which are addressed in the section "Parallel Histories," below.

The first section of the "King List" deals with the "kings before the flood" and is the oldest historical document in the world. Despite its peculiarities, it should not be neglected. The main question has always been, why the long rule periods? The large numbers for the rule lengths of the "kings before the flood" are derived from the Sumerian use of the symbol 'sar' which has steadfastly been reported since Greek times as representing '3600' -- supposedly 3600 years. A 'sar' does have the value of 3600 in Sumerian enumeration, but it does not necessarily mean a 'year.' As noted elsewhere, a 'sar' also means 'turn' or 'day.' [note a]

In Assyrian times (800 BC), the calendar of 360 days uses a "sarus" to represent a decade (what we would call 10 years), where a "sarus" is identified as 3600 days. The fact that a "sarus" was still in use in Assyria in the 8th century BC, and meant 3600 days, not years, is good reason to suggest that the list of the "kings before the flood" is recorded in days, not years.

The 'turns' of the list for the "kings before the flood" are probably tallies in days, possibly retrocalculated from 'years' by the original chronicler. If the first recorded tabulation dates from shortly after 3100 BC, the chronicler would have been aware of the change in the length of the Solar year, and might have sought accuracy by converting the tallies from years to days. Except for the use of whole numbers, the record is also consistent with the Sumerian practice of enumerating lists of products for taxation or trade in the smallest quantities even if these amounts ran into the tens of thousands, suggesting that the 'sars' are the smallest unit available, days. Only the sub-totals and totals were calculated in larger units -- in units of 10, 60, 100, 360, 600, and 3600. [note 2]

The whole idea of even suggesting that the year could have changed in the past comes from the solidly established changes seen in the 8th century BC, when worldwide calendars of 365.25 days superceded calendars of 360 days. Earlier changes in the calendar are noted from Egyptian sources (during the Hyksos period), and in Exodus, and this would suggest that the orbit of Earth had changed incrementally a number of times. Earlier yet we have it from the 'mythological' records of Yao (in China) and Marduk (in Babylon) who both established the calendar after 2349 BC.

There are only a limited number of days-per-year which can be used to resolve the large whole numbers of the turn counts. These have to represent orbits closer to the Sun than our present orbit of one AU. A 225 day year makes the counts come out even. This is almost exactly the present orbit of Venus -- 0.72 AU. In Chapter 14, "Celestial Mechanics," I will suggest that 0.72 AU is an average for an elliptical orbit with perihelion at 0.54 AU and aphelion at 0.9 AU.

Lastly, I am using solar years -- revolutions of Earth around the Sun. Time spans in years of our current 365.25 days per year are of no interest, and inappropriate, since we are dealing with much shorter years. The solar year dates we are dealing with here will actually correspond closely to any corrected radio-carbon dates, which are inadvertently adjusted to solar years with the calibration from tree-ring series (details further below).

Kings Before the Flood from the "King List" rule in years intervals King City sars 'turns' 225d/y of 32 Alorus Heaven 45 162,000 720 y 1 Alulim Eridug 8 28,800 128 4 2 Alaljar Eridug 10 36,000 160 5 3 Enmenluana Bad-Tibira 12 43,200 192 6 4 Enmengalana Bad-Tibira 8 28,800 128 4 5 Dumuzid Bad-Tibira 10 36,000 160 5 6 Ensipadzidana Larag 8 28,800 128 4 7 Ermendurana Zimbir 6 21,600* 96 3 8 UbaraTutu Curuppag 5 18,000* 80 2.5 on earth 241,200 1072 33.5 grand total 403,200 1792 * - corrected for a transpositional error of 600 (noted by others). -- L.C. Geerts, [http://www.earth-history.com]

The record of the "kings before the flood" may reflect relocations in the strike point of the arc -- the relocations of kingship to different cities. None of the five 'cities' listed for the "kings before the flood" have ever been located. Each of the named 'cities' looked from afar like a walled city, although in reality consisting of an immense dome of plasma (or water vapor) rising some thousand miles or more above the Earth. This is also identified as the 'world mountain' as far away as China. China (actually, Mongolia) is only slightly further than Mesopotamia from the actual location of the plasma dome in the north Atlantic. Some Mesopotamian sources identify the walls of the 'cities' as a "cloud bank lowered from Heaven." Why new kings take up a reign at the same cities is unclear. Just as curious are the extended spans of time which run to over a hundred years, although to take a long time for Mars to be slowely pushed from Saturn would be expected . That the lowering of Mars was the result of an angled orbit is unlikely, for in that event Mars would have lowered a thousand times. Even the Vedas do not suggest "a thousand times," but propose that Mars lowered "100 times," where "100 times" likely means "frequently." [note 3]

Interestingly, the 225 day year counts (see the tabulation above) are multiples of 32 years, except the first ("Alorus in Heaven"), and the last (which is 2 1/2 multiples). There are other indications that '32' was of some importance. I will get back to this further below.

It should be noted that if we look at the city names and the associated Gods, the list starts to look like an element by element description of the Saturnian polar sun. Eridug is the "good city" -- the cloud bank at the horizon. The remaining names describe the rest of the apparition: the plasma stalk, its tree-like connection at the top, the sun god Utu, the field of grain within the disk.
[note 4]

In summary, what I have used from the list of "the kings before the flood" is, first of all, the total period when Saturn stood in the sky -- 1792 years, which spans the era from ca 4906 BC to 3114 BC. Secondly, I have used the start of the eight kings as the date when Saturn went nova, 4186 BC. These are the only hints from remote antiquity that we have for these important dates. However, since the eight kings show up in the mythology of other nations (in the case of the Bible with a nearly identical proportional span of time), I am assuming that there is validity to the analysis performed here.

Kings After the Flood

The list of "kings after the flood" is a composite of lists at various cities of Sumer, at times overlapping each other. It starts with the city of Kish, followed by Uruk (Erech). The first complete "King List" was (apparently) compiled during the Isin Dynasty (2017-1794 BC). Some 18 additional fragments and copies have been found at Nippur, Larsa, and other locations.

Copies are at times divergent, but the sum of the reign lengths given at the end of each city always add up to the same number. An exception is the grand total for the first list -- the kings of Kish -- which exceeds any possible combination of reign lengths by some 6500 'years.' More on this below. Literary analysis has shown that both the "kings before the flood" and the last part of the "kings after the flood" were added to other extant lists, and that the presumption of the passage of kingship from one city to another was retained dispite a contemporary knowledge in antiquity of the overlap of dynasties.

The reason for looking at the "kings after the flood" is to verify through yet another source that 3114 BC is a valid (or reasonable) terminal date for the "Age of the Gods" and a starting date for subsequent history. Thus if the sum total of reigns of the "kings after the flood" can be fit between 3114 BC and some archaeologically determined dates, then the "King List" could be trusted to represent 3114 BC as a valid starting point. The starting date of 3114 BC is from the 'zero date' of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, but it is not entirely correct. See Chapter 17, "The Maya Calendar," for additional information and for estimates of how reasonable the date of 3114 BC is.

The Long Count of Mesoamerica was started in 747 BC, on February 28, by the Olmecs. This is two days after (or at the completion of) the Earth shock of 747 BC from which the era of Nabonasser was dated in Babylon (February 26), and coincides with the end of the Roman calendar year (February 28) introduced in the same year.

The Olmecs retrocalculated backwards from this date on the basis of their records of the past by adding six Baktuns -- measures of 400 tuns, where a 'tun' is a 'year.' Apparently the records of the past were in Baktuns (400 Tuns), Katuns (20 Tuns), and Tuns. It is possible that two days were added to February 26 simply to finish a Katun time period (Katun 11-Ahau). The records thus reflected 'years,' which can readily be equated with solar years. How accurate their records of the past were can be gleaned from Book 10 of the Mayan "Chilam Balam" books, which correctly date every catastrophic event of the past to the correct Katun period, (except one). See the Chapter 18, "The Chilam Balam," for details.

Considering that the "Chilam Balam" records were recopied in the 16th century AD from bark books dating back perhaps as far as 2300 years, it it remarkable how accurate they are and astounding that the Maya had inherited from the Olmecs the world's most accurate and extensive chronology of the remote past. (Any similar records in the Valley of Mexico were destroyed by the Aztecs.) If a 'tun' is a year, held to be 360 days before 747 BC, then the difference between our chronology based on extending the current Gregorian years back in time and the Olmec representation, is only a matter of a difference of 5.25 days per year for the period before 747 BC. This amounts to a difference of 34 years. The correct date for the end of the "Age of the Gods" is thus 3080 BC. I will, however, continue to use 3114 BC, unless it really makes a difference in the narrative.

As a later date to check against the "kings after the flood," I will use Gilgamesh, the fifth king of Uruk, who is confidently dated to 2700 BC, even if his actual existence is somewhat in doubt because his doings have been expanded to legendary heroics. It can be shown that the sequence of kings for the cities of Kish and Uruk, if correctly read, spans the time period of approximately 400 years from 3114 BC to 2700 BC, or alternately a time period of about 300 years from 3000 BC to 2700 BC.

Similarly, this test can be done in reverse. If the date for Gilgamesh is held to be accurate, does the "King List" extend backwards from the time of Gilgamesh to reach 3114 BC as a starting point? As presented below, the sum of the individual reign lengths actually does not, missing 3114 BC by about 100 years. But there are clear reasons for that. However, the grand total for the first dynasty of Kish, which seems unrelated to the sum of the individual reign lengths, does reach back to 3114 BC. More on this further below.

Another element I am looking to verify is the Egyptian claim that the lifetime of Horus was 300 years (from the Turin Papyrus and some temple records). If Horus (Mars) appeared at 30 year intervals for 300 years, then 10 visits would have been made by 2800 BC, unless the visits started later (as I will actually suggest below).

A number of things will strike you in looking at the "King List." First, the length of reigns at the start of the lists (Kish and early Uruk) are again extravagant -- reigns of 300 to 1500 "years" -- but mixed in are somewhat shorter reigns. Immediately after Gilgamesh (fifth king of Uruk) the reign lengths become reasonable. The later Second Dynasty at Kish again shows a few extravagant numbers.

Second, there is a lot of overlap, even though the lists in all instances read (to us) as if the dynasties at various cities follow each other chronologically. For the later dynasties, archaeological dating has both shown the existence of such overlap and sorted out much of it. An overlap is also true for the listings of the first two cities, Kish and Uruk. A summary for all the cities follows below.

Kings After the Flood by Cities from the "King List" city kings reign yrs date and notes ---- ----- --------- ------------------------------ 3114 BC - starting date Kish 23 24,510 ends ca 2700 BC (long reigns) Uruk 12 2,310 Gilgamesh at 2700 BC (some long reigns) Urim 4 177 Awan 3 356 Kish 2 8 3,195 includes some long reigns Hamazi 1 360 Uruk 2 3 187 Urim 2 3 582 Adab 1 90 Mari 6 136 Akcak 6 99 Kish 3,4 8 212 2365 BC (?) (one 100 yr reign) Uruk 3 1 25 2335 BC Sargon of Akkad defeats Kish Akkad 12 197 2193 Fall of Akkad (dynasties after the fall of Akkad...) Uruk 4 5 30 Gutium 21 95 Uruk 5 1 27 Urim 3 5 108 Isin 14 kings 203 yrs 2004 BC end date (The last kings of Isin are under Babylonian control)

The complete list of the "kings after the flood" has held up archaeologically, but the early portion is often held to be 'legendary' by archaeologists, like the list of "kings before the flood." But even for Kish, the 13th, 14th, and 23rd kings have been dated archaeologically. After Gilgamesh of Uruk it is easy to arrive at a second date of certainty, for example, the conquest after 2335 BC of all of Sumer by Sargon of Akkad. All five generations of the Akkadian kings are archaeologically dated with confidence.

The City of Kish

It is difficult to conceive that a collation of records from a dozen locations, dating back over a thousand years, was first attempted as late as 2000 BC. My sense is that the first attempt to extend the records from before 3114 BC was made in Uruk after 2700 BC -- after the reign of Gilgamesh. This early attempt to tabulate the historical records of the cities of Kish and Uruk had to account for 400 years.

The record of the kings the first city, Kish in northern Mesopotamia, is the longest record of reigns of any of the cities, both in the raw information as presented to us, and in terms of 'adjusted' years -- which I will detail below. Because of the extremely long reigns, the record for Kish becomes suspect of being a record of celestial beings -- in effect, the ten visits of Mars after 3114 BC -- conformed to actual kings who may have reigned in Kish, or the acceptance of a celestial God as the ruler.

Below is a verbatim rendition of the "King List" for the city of Kish. (See the endnote for mss sources.) I will follow with more detail and some notes.

Kings of Kish After the flood had swept over, and the kingship had descended from heaven, the kingship was in Kish. 1 In Kish, Jucur became king; he ruled for 1200 years. 2 Kullassina-bel ruled for 960 (ms. P2+L2 has instead: 900) years. 3 Nanjiclicma ruled for (ms. P2+L2 has:) 670 (?) years. 4 En-tarah-ana ruled for (ms. P2+L2 has:) 420 years ......, 3 months, and 3 1/2 days. 5 Babum ...... ruled for (ms. P2+L2 has:) 300 years. 6 Puannum ruled for 840 (ms. P2+L2 has instead: 240) years. 7 Kalibum ruled for 960 (ms. P2+L2 has instead: 900) years. 8 Kalumum ruled for 840 (mss. P3+BT14, Su1 have instead: 900) years. 9 Zuqaqip ruled for 900 (ms. Su1 has instead: 600) years. (In mss. P2+L2, P3+BT14, P5, the 10th and 11th rulers of the dynasty precede the 8th and 9th.) 10 Atab (mss. P2+L2, P3+BT14, P5 have instead: Aba) ruled for 600 years. 11 Macda, the son of Atab, ruled for 840 (ms. Su1 has instead: 720) years. 12 Arwium, the son of Macda, ruled for 720 years. 13 Etana, the shepherd, who ascended to heaven and consolidated all the foreign countries, became king; he ruled for 1500 (ms. P2+L2 has instead: 635) years. 14 Balih, the son of Etana, ruled for 400 (mss. P2+L2, Su1 have instead: 410) years. 15 En-me-nuna ruled for 660 (ms. P2+L2 has instead: 621) years. 16 Melem-Kish, the son of En-me-nuna, ruled for 900 years. (ms. P3+BT14 adds:) 1560 are the years of the dynasty of En-me-nuna. 17 Barsal-nuna, the son of En-me-nuna, (mss. P5, P3+BT14 have instead: Barsal-nuna) ruled for 1200 years. 18 Zamug, the son of Barsal-nuna, ruled for 140 years. 19 Tizqar, the son of Zamug, ruled for 305 years. (ms. P3+BT14 adds:) 1620 + X ....... 20 Ilku ruled for 900 years. 21 Iltasadum ruled for 1200 years. 22 En-men-barage-si, who made the land of Elam submit, became king; he ruled for 900 years. 23 Aga, the son of En-men-barage-si, ruled for 625 years. (ms. P3+BT14 adds:) 1525 are the years of the dynasty of En-men-barage-si. 23 kings; they ruled for 24510 years, 3 months, and 3 1/2 days. Then Kish was defeated and the kingship was taken to E-ana. [note 5]

E-ana, where kingship is taken at the end of this dynasty, is the temple of An at (near) Uruk. As you can read above, the 23 kings rule for 24,510 years, 3 months, and 3 1/2 days. This total would have been inscribed, in typical Sumerian accounting practice, on the back side of the tablet.

But the reign lengths do not add up to 24,510 years. Something is wrong with the list, even though this version is a standard and a reliable translation. All the variant versions claim 24,510 as a grand total. As shown above, the total comes to 17,980 years. Some 6,500 years would have to be added to make up the difference, and this cannot be done by any stretch of the imagination. I will propose a number of causes for the discrepancy, and a solution.

It has been suggested by others that the reigns for Kish do not add up because there are some numbers missing and there were copying errors. In fact, many of the tablets have some damage and also show divergent reign lengths. The reason the grand total remains the same is from the practice used with the accounting tablets since before 2000 BC which show tallies and subtotals on one face and the grand total on the obverse. Thus the scribes who copied one tablet to another did so without ever checking if the numbers added up. It seems archaeologists also never checked.

All the lists of "kings after the flood" differ from the list of "kings before the flood." The 'saros' is never used again, nor the literary style used to describe each city. But the lists for the first dynasties of Kish and Uruk also differ from any of the following lists, not only because of the long reign lengths, but also because these two list include short descriptive phrases for a number of kings, something not found anywhere else, with one exception (Kish, Dynasty 3) and the obvious editorial comments after the fall of the Akkadian empire, "After the Gutium Hordes seized kingship, everyone was his own king for 3 years." The descriptive phrases of the first two lists read very similar to those found among the geneologies of Genesis, and include the following. [note 6]

• Kish: "Etana, the shepherd who ascended to Heaven and made firm all the lands ..." (the ascension was "on the wings of an eagle")

• Kish: "Enmebaraggesi, the king who smote the Land of Elam ..."

• Uruk: "Meskiaggasher, the son of the Sun God, Utu (Shamash), ruled as both lord and king for 324 years during which time he entered the sea and climbed the mountains;"

• Uruk: "Enmerkar, the son of Meskiaggasher, the king of Uruk who had founded Uruk ..."

• Uruk: "Dumuzi, the fisherman who came from the city of Kuara ..."

• and the note for Gilgamesh: "Gilgamesh, whose father was a spirit, ..."

This is a mix of attributes which can be assigned to outstanding (human) kings and feats only to be accomplished by a God. This makes it look as if attributes of the visiting Mars were assigned to various actual kings.

The note about Meskiaggasher (2740 BC at Uruk), who "entered the sea and climbed the mountains", is interesting. This could be taken as the expansion of the trade of Sumer by Uruk at a location better served for contact via the Persian Gulf than northern Kish was -- ascending the Zagros mountains to reach the Iranian plateau, and entering the Gulf to reach Pakistan and the Arabian peninsula -- as well as East Africa. But it can also be understood as Horus climbing his mountain, followed by a disappearance into the sea of the south skies, the Absu.

Additionally, the various symbols used for large numeric quantities had not stabilized during the early period, despite the fact that the tallies of tokens had been in use for nearly 5000 years in northern Mesopotamia. It is possible that the scribes of Uruk who first inspected the stolen temple records of Kish just misread the data. Once this happened, the erroneous data just carried forward, for if nothing else, the records we have show that very little editing was done. A case in point is the reign of En-tarah-ana, the 4th king of Kish, who "ruled for 420 years, 3 months, and 3 1/2 days." Despite the fact that the 3 months and 3 1/2 days could have been dropped long ago, it was carried forward for a thousand years, and always included in the grand total. There were no months at this time, in that there was no Moon as yet. [note 7]

Lastly, our Indo-European concepts of sequential time will have us completely misread the intentions of the scribes of early Sumer by making assumptions about relationships from the texts which were never intended. The obvious example is that the lists were assumed to be consecutive when first read. This has proven to be completely false; the scribes had no such intention. When a list reads, "and then kingship transfered to so-and-so city," it could happen any time in the chronology of the so-and-so city. For example, at the end of the First Dynasty of Kish, kingship is transfered to Uruk, but it is after the time of the fifth king of Uruk, not at the time of the first king of Uruk. The later scribes of Sumer were aware of these discontinuities also, but the practice of assigning kingship to various cities on a rotating basis, which had started with Kish and Uruk, was continued as a 'method' into the future.

Even within the list for any city it would be our expectation to find the reigns closely consecutive, that is, without gaps of time where there is no king, and without periods where two kings might rule simultaneously. But this might not have been the case, and ought to be allowed for as a possibility. It has also been noted by others that some 'reigns' might represent the length of life of a king rather than the years spent on the throne. These two 'solutions' have already been adopted by archaeologists.

But none of the caveats and conditions listed above properly explain the discrepant long reigns of Kish and Uruk, or the mismatched grand total for Kish. A misreading of cyphers has to be kept in mind, though, and a complete misreading of the first records of Kish by the scribes of Uruk comes closest to a rescue of the situation. This also applies to the early record of Uruk.

Finding and applying a corrective factor to the discrepant reign lengths which makes all of the lists coherent is perhaps easier than finding the cause of the misreadings. What I propose is that the early records either overstate or were misread by a factor of 60. Dividing all the listed reigns by 60 yields reasonable year lengths, and brings the whole series to the time of Gilgamesh, although we still end up with spans of 15 to 20 years, which are generally too long as the reign lengths for normal human kings. Thus I suspect that the list of kings for Kish concerns itself with celestial beings, perhaps along with real people. More on this below.

In the listing below, I have reduced all the reign lengths of the kings of Kish from the extravagant periods of 900 'years' or more to something more realistic by dividing all the entries by 60. (The first kings of Uruk are listed further below.)

The summary below uses a starting date of 3000 BC. If I had started at 3114 BC, the 299 year list of the kings of Kish would have terminated with Aga in 2815 BC. But Aga is a contemporary of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is dated to ca 2700 BC. The reasons for starting at 3000 BC is explained below.

Kings of Kish After the Flood tallies in '60s' adds up correctly notes () are listed below Name Length /60 end year notes -------------- ------ --- -------- ------------ 3000 starting date 1 Jucur 1,200 20 2980 2 Kullassina-bel 960 16 2964 3 Nanjiclicma 670 11.1 2953 rounded 4 En-tarah-ana 420 7 2946 (plus 3 mo, 3.5 d) 5 Babum 300 5 2941 6 Puannum 840 14 2927 7 Kalibum 960 16 2911 8 Kalumum 840 14 2897 9 Zuqaqip 900 15 2882 10 Atab 600 10 2872 11 Macda 840 14 2858 12 Arwium 720 12 2846 13 Etana 1,500 25 2821 ca 2800 BC 14 Balih 400 6.7 2814 rounded (1) 15 En-me-nuna 660 11 2803 16 Melem-Kic 900 15 2788 17 Barsal-nuna 1,200 20 2768 (2) 18 Zamug 140 2.3 2766 rounded 19 Tizqar 305 5.1 2761 rounded 20 Ilku 900 15 2746 21 Iltasadum 1,200 20 2726 22 En-men-barage-si 900 15 2711 (3) ca 2750 BC 23 Aga 625 10.4 2701 rounded (4) Total: 23 kings 17,980 299.6 total of reign entries 23 kings; 24,510 408.5 original document total Notes: Note (1): coincidence of Kish 14 and Uruk 1. Note (2): dup of Gish 17 and Uruk 3 (?) Note (3): coincident reign with Uruk's Lugabanda. Note (4): meets Gilgamesh, ~2700 (lit source)

The difference between a starting date of 3114 BC and 3000 BC is justified as follows:

The orbit of Mars is too large for Mars to have been released from Saturn at the same location as Earth and Venus. We could assume that Mars remained entwined with Saturn until the asteroid belt was reached, some 50 to 60 million miles beyond Earth's orbit. Certain descriptive details in the records of Egypt, which are associated with Horus, would demand as much. We could assume that Mars did not come close to Earth until 3000 BC -- 80 years after 3080 BC. [note 8a]

Mars (Horus) is involved in the 80 years of 'negotiation' among the Gods (recorded ca 700 BC in the "Chester Beatty" papyrus at Dublin), before showing up (in Egypt) to claim rulership of the land. At that point in time Mars must have gone into an elliptical orbit around the Sun with a aphelion near the asteroid belt, and an perihelion close to the orbit of Earth, and likely above Earth. We do not know this exactly, but it can be surmised from the list of the kings of Kish, the first two pharaoic dynasties of Egypt, and even the current orbit of Mars, which still closes in on Earth every 30 years.

It seems quite possible that the close approaches between Mars and Earth would only last for a short period of time (300 years), for the orbits of Mars would change with each rotation about the Sun. Earth would not be significantly effected.

Possibly Mars only once came close enough to Earth to produce the mountain plasma effect, or a few times. It is thus possible that the Sed festival of the Egyptian pharaohs was established on the basis of a single early incident, or perhaps a few, before the return of Mars began to be measured differently. That is not uncharacteristic Egyptian behaviour.

The advantage of starting in 3000 BC rather than 3114 BC (or 3080 BC) is that the 300 year record of the kings of Kish ends correctly at the time of Gilgamesh, who is solidly dated at 2700 BC. Aga, the last king of Kish, is confronted by Gilgamesh, and is captured by him. The Sumerian legend "Gilgamesh and Aga" recounts this, although the information of the capture (and release) of Aga is only appended as an afterthought. The main theme of "Gilgamesh and Aga" is of how Gilgamesh stood up against the demands of the city of Kish, an event which forever changed the politics of Sumer. How important the primacy of Kish had been is shown by the titles taken by many later kings of other Sumerian and Akkadian cities, as "King of Kish and so and so city."

Ending a 300 year period at about 2700 BC makes a better fit also to the end of the Egyptian list of Horus pharaohs (the first two dynasties), and the start of pyramid building worldwide. Additionally, the 300 year period equals the life span of Horus, listed as 300 years in the Turin Papyrus, and other records. Other literary sources suggest that the Sed festival was celebrated at 30 year intervals (there is also at least one mention of 20 years). I am convinced that the Sed festival celebrated the visitations of Horus, and thus over a 300 year period there should have been some 10 visits and 10 Sed festivals.

But what is the meaning of the grand total of 24,510 years (408.5 real years) for the kings of Kish, when the total of the reigns add up to only 17,980 years (299.6 real years)? I think the 24,510 'years' represents the interval between the date when the "flood swept over," which is the opening statement of the tally, and the date of the end of the listing of the kings of Kish. It thus represents a span of 408 years ending in about 2700 BC, but only during the last 300 years were there any kings assigned to Kish, ending ca 2700 BC (actually 2672 BC).

The scribes were correct; it was only us who had understood the 24,510 'years' as the mathematical total of the individual reign lengths. The last line of the tablets, which reads "23 kings ruled for 24,510 years" should really read "23 kings ruled during 24,510 years" to conform to our notions of time.

There is one more problem to be resolved. If at this point we were to look for celestial kings in the list of kings of Kish -- visits by Mars/Horus -- the first suggestion would be to assign them to the anomalously long reigns, of which five are on the order of 1200 and 1560 'years' in the original texts (equal to 20 'adjusted' years), and another 15 instances at 10 to 16 'adjusted' years. There are altogether some 20 of these 'long' reigns. This differs from what has been assumed from later Egyptian sources, which suggests ten visitations at 30 year intervals (although there are also some 17 to 19 pharaohs in the first two Egyptian dynasties between 3000 BC and 2705 BC).

In fact, what I think we are looking at is the records of the close approaches of two planets -- Mars and Mercury. It is certain that Mercury was seen in the skies from very early times (but not in its present position close to the Sun) for the Turin Papyrus lists Thoth (Mercury) with a life span of 3126 years, the longest life span by far of any of the Gods. What we are looking at, therefore, is a set of two repeating appearances, Mars on a 30 year cycle and Mercury on some shorter cycle. [note 8]

In either case we would need to recognize repeating cycles by combining the kings into groups of two (or more) -- one accounting for a crossing of Mars, followed some years later by a crossing of Mercury, or the return crossing by Mars coming from superior conjunction. If this is done, the list above reduces to a series of 10 time spans, as follows...

36, 23+, 30, 29, 24, 37, 33-, 27+, 35, 24+

But this can also be arranged as follows...

36, 37, 30, 25, 26, 32-, 26, 27, 35, 24+

Obviously other combinations can be found. The above data is shown in the table below, along with another group of 11. Obviously what this grouping by two's does is to swallow the visits of one of the planets.

Table of the First Dynasty of Kish Name Length /60 possible groupings (10) (10) (11) -------------- ------ --- -------------------------- 1 Jucur 1,200 20 20 2 Kullassina-bel 960 16 36 36 3 Nanjiclicma 670 11.1 27 4 En-tarah-ana 420 7 5 Babum 300 5 23.1 6 Puannum 840 14 37 26 7 Kalibum 960 16 30 8 Kalumum 840 14 30 30 9 Zuqaqip 900 15 29 10 Atab 600 10 25 25 11 Macda 840 14 24 12 Arwium 720 12 26 26 13 Etana 1,500 25 37 14 Balih 400 6.7 31.7 31.7 15 En-me-nuna 660 11 16 Melem-Kic 900 15 32.7 26 26 17 Barsal-nuna 1,200 20 18 Zamug 140 2.3 19 Tizqar 305 5.1 27.4 27.4 27.4 20 Ilku 900 15 21 Iltasadum 1,200 20 35 35 35 22 En-men-barage-si 900 15 23 Aga 625 10.4 25.4 25.4 25.4 Total: 23 kings 17,980 299.6

For an alternate list (the alternative dates shown in the verbose transcription above), I get a series of 10 time spans as follows... [note 9]

35, 27+, 30, 32, 29+, 25+, 22+, 27, 35, 25+

As shown above, there are not 10 visits at 30 year intervals as guessed from Egyptian sources, but 10 visits at various spans of time between 35 and 25 years apart. They average to 29.8 years, or to 30.4 if the last value of 25.4 is removed.

The orbit of Mars would be constantly adjusted by the periodic plasma contacts with Earth, although the two intervals making up the combined span of time of approximately 30 years is very regular throughout much of the list. We are not looking at synodic periods which might have been noticed. Synodic periods are small in comparison the 34 to 20 year intervals. We are looking at the close approaches or overpasses of two planets.

The planet God Saturn had ruled humanity for a thousand years. Then after 3114 BC (3080 BC) came a period of uncertainty. But after 3000 BC Mars showed up again and was welcomed as the God and ruler. The repeated returns constitute the 'kings' of Kish. The pharaohs of the first and second dynasty of Egypt form a parallel record.

It is quite possible that we should not be looking for 30 year intervals, but for 32 year intervals. As I mentioned above, all the reigns of the "kings before the flood" are multiples of 32.

In western Europe there are a number of early megalithic grave sites with 32 or 34 distinct markers. The numbers 32 and 34 appear all too frequently as markers among the megalithic grave barrows to be mere coincidence. Even the Malta Hypogeum has 34 chambers.

The "34" might likely represents a counting system which counted the endpoints of a time span which we would identify as an interval, and is seen in use elsewhere in antiquity, as late as Imperial Roman times. The Roman day-of-the-month count was numbered in such an absurd system. This is not an uncommon antique counting system. [note 10]

The only other countable elements of the megalithic chambers are the serpentine twinings used as decorations. But these make no sense. They appear in groups of 4, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 29, and 30. Some people would equate the groups of 29 and 30 with the orbit of the Moon. But there was no Moon yet.

There are 34 standing stones at a number of barrows locations in Ireland. Perhaps these people were counting 34 year intervals between times when the God would come to gather the dead, but counting the first and the last year twice. I would suggest that the various sets of 34 stones represent a span of 32 years, where the very beginning and the completion of an interval are also counted. But inclusive counting adds up to 33, not 34, if the markers are counted. However, the interstitial spaces between 34 markers yields the number 33, which is an 'inclusive' count of 32. [note 32]

The later New Grange barrow does better. Of the 96 curb stones at the base, 32 are decorated -- incised with whorls -- the last, a very large decorated stone, lies in front of the entrance. New Grange was certainly built after 3114 BC, and thus may have been designed around the 32 year interval between visits by Mars after 3000 BC.

If Mars actually showed up near Earth at regular 32 year intervals, then there might have been a need for the early chroniclers of the "King List" to make sure that the visits of Mars prior to the flood were also recorded in 32 year intervals. That, to me, seems the only solution to the reign lengths of the "kings before the flood." That also reduces the confidence that the reign lengths are exact tallies of the time intervals.

Mars/Horus fails to show up after ca 2700 BC. Perhaps some undetermined celestial event terminated the visits of Mars, although it is more likely that the inclination of the orbits of Earth and Mars no longer allowed the two planets to come close to each other, or that the orbits of the two planets had revolved away from each other.

The City of Uruk

The midpoint of the career of Gilgamesh is estimated at 2700 BC, C14 dated from the reconstruction of the walls of Uruk, attributed to him in legend. Following Gilgamesh the reign lengths become reasonable, and it looks like actual solar years are used.

Table of the First Dynasty of Uruk Name Length /60 end year notes archaeological ---------------- ------ --- -------- ----- ------------- 1 Mec-ki-aj-gacir 324 5.4 (1) 2740 BC ? 2 Enmerkar 420 7 (2) 2750 BC ? 3 Lugalbanda 1,200 20 (3) 4 Dumuzid 100 1.6 (4) 5 Gilgamesh 126 126* 2650 (5) ca 2700 BC 6 Ur-lungal 30 30* 2620 7 Udul-kalama 15 15* 2605 8 La-ba'cum 9 9* 2596 9 En-nun-tarah-ana 8 8* 2588 10 Mec-he (the smith) 36 36* 2552 11 Melem-anna 6 6* 2546 12 Lugal-kitun 36 36* 2510 ca 2550 BC * -- actual years used ::::: totals (Uruk) 2,310 300 years Notes: Note (1): coincidence of Kish 14 and Uruk 1, dated 2720 or 2740 BC. Note (2): literary ~2750. Note (3): coincidence of Kish 17 and Uruk 3 (?), father of Gilgamesh. Note (4): Dumuzid captures second to last king of Kish, 22. Note (5): Gilgamesh (in one of the the Gilgamesh sagas) meets the last king of Kish, Aga.

From internal considerations, it would seem that the initial "King List" was probably first compiled after the time of Gilgamesh. A predecessor (Meskiaggasher, first king of Uruk) was "the first to write on tablets" -- probably true for southern Mesopotamia. It is to Meskiaggasher also that the expansion of trade was attributed. After Gilgamesh there is a sudden change in listing the reign lengths. Gilgamesh, located at the very end of the series of visits by Mars, becomes the Hercules of Sumer in the epics which follow.

From the last king of the first dynasty of Uruk, archaeologically dated to about 2550 BC, there is a clear path to dates for the Akkadian empire of 2335 BC, and onward to dates for the rule of Isin in 2207 BC.

Parallel Histories

The purpose of the following section is to list the parallel mythologies (histories) of different people -- as a supplement to the analysis of the "King List" above. The purpose thus is to highlight the following..

• A record of eight lowerings of Mars before 3114 BC, that is, before the end of the "Age of the Gods," recognized as kings or godly rulers.

• A terminal date for the "Age of the Gods" when the polar configuration came apart. Details would include mention of the polar flood of 3114 BC.

• A continuation of the chronology from this point in a record of the ten overflights -- close calls -- of Mars after about 3000 BC and ending in about 2700 BC, and a transition at that time to more solidly founded archaeological and chronological record.

Lastly, and although not forthcoming from all sources, a record of the apparition which stood above the north horizon for perhaps a thousand years. This would involve changes in how this looked, going from a shrouded sphere to a fireball, the stream of plasma in arc mode, followed by a continued plasma stream in glow mode. Details would include Venus connected to Saturn with a swirl of plasma and Uranus with his (or her) long hair hovering nearby. Some of these details have been noted in the text pages already, but I have here added a few other sources.

Maya Parallels

There are no Maya parallels, for they disappear archaeologically, as do the Olmecs, before about 1500 BC. But there were, apparently, among the bark book codexes which are now lost to us, records clearly dating back to the end of the "Age of the Gods" and earlier, which were recopied to a European script by the Maya in the 16th century AD. These are found in Book 10 (and Book 11) of the Maya "Chilan Balam" books, which correctly date almost every catastrophic event of the past, but in Katun periods -- representing periods of 20 years. There is a full analysis of Book 10 of the "Chilam Balan" in Chapter 18, "The Chilam Balam," of this text.

The Books of the "Chilam Balam" are books of prophesy, and as a result list events in a repeating cycle of 13 Katuns, although virtually every one of these can be identified with dates developed on these pages. One exception is the events prior to the start of creation, 3114 BC, which are all placed in a Katun-11 period. Katun-11 always, and philosophically, represents the 'start of history' in the thinking of the Maya, and is presented as such throughout the other chapters of the "Chilam Balam" also. [note 11b]

The only reference to the eight 'kings before the flood' is the description of the ascension of Nine-Lives. He is known as Nine-Lives because he ascends nine times, or is seen closer to Saturn than Earth nine times. Mesoamerican languages emphasize the completion of actions rather than the start. Similarly, Nine-Lives is only mentioned once since repetitions of the activity are not needed in a book of prophesies. Nine-Lives is known to be Mars. He is called "this first Bolob Drazcab," very similar to Egyptian nomenclature for the early Horus as "Horus of the Gods."

During the following period of Katun 9-Ahau (nominally 3055 BC to 3033 BC, but corrected to 3021.8 BC to 3000.1 BC), "Ten-Sky" first appears, which are the close calls of Mars after 3114 BC. Again, the repetitions are not noted. The name 'Ten-Sky' is sufficient to indicate this. The same is done later for two series of repeating close calls by Venus. Thus we do not know the actual date of the first appearance, only a 20 year range.

Biblical Parallels

The editors of the Old Testament recopied old books, collated manuscripts, and obviously reviewed the "King List" some 2400 years ago. As the oldest extant historical document, the "King List" could not be neglected, although as likely many Bible sources were Egyptian. The editors were also 1500 years closer to the Sumerian sources of 2000 BC than we are today, and not only took the information seriously, but most likely read the Sumerian texts correctly, for there is close agreement on the time spans between the Bible and the "King List," -- not the 'unmodified' long reign spans, but as modified above.

There have been attempts by Bible scholars to justify the time spans in years of the Sumerian "kings before the flood" with the Bible account of the time span from creation to the Flood, and especially to somehow account for the long lives of the patriarchs. In both texts eight kings or patriarchs are listed. Nine patriarchs if Adam is included as equivalent to Alorus. Noah, since his life spans the flood, should probably not be included.

There is a relationship between the "King List" and the Bible, but it is hardly as simple as assuming that the Sumerian account just multiplied the account of Genesis by some large number, as many have suggested. [note 11]

I think it is more likely that the editors read the list of the "kings before the flood" as 403,200 days (including Adam as Alorus) and not as years. Using the earliest short-day year probably known to them -- the year with 240 days per year in the period before the 'flood' of 2349 BC -- the editors calculated a span of 1680 years between creation and "The Flood." This is absolutely correct within the constraints of two erroneous assumptions: first, the number of days in the year are wrong, and second, the dating of "The Flood" is wrong. Ussher, using births and life spans from the Bible, calculates 1656 years. [note 14b]

The time from 3114 BC to Gilgamesh can similarly be compared to the narrative of the Bible. The period from the biblical flood to the midpoint of Abraham's life (427 years) is nearly equal to the time between the Mesopotamian flood of 3114 and the midpoint of Gilgamesh's reign (approximately 408 years). Both Gilgamesh and Abraham were heroes to their people, and 'mythologically' located at the midpoints of two analogical world histories. Both may represent the last apparition of Mars and embody all the previous appearances, as Hercules does for the Greeks at a later date. I am using Ussher's date of 2348 BC for the end of the Bible flood and 1921 BC for Abraham's arrival in Canaan. That means, again, that the list for the kings of Kish was read correctly in 600 BC.

Additionally, just as the list of the kings of Kish list 10 kings (although in groups of two) and Egypt seems to claim ten visits of Horus, between the Flood of 3114 and the time of Gilgamesh, so the Bible lists 10 patriarchs between the flood of 2349 and Abraham. Abraham is the 10th generation born after Noah (I am counting Shem, son of Noah, actually born before the Flood). All except the first and last of these 10 generations were sired when their father was 29, 30, 32, or 35 years old. After Abraham, as with Gilgamesh, the life spans become normal.

I do not think that the Bible used the "King List" as a source. What we are seeing a record in parallel to the Sumerian sources, or Egyptian sources, since by tradition Moses was the original author of Genesis. I only want to point out that there is close agreement.

Egyptian Parallels

Egyptian parallels can be found from four sources: (1) the list of kings of the first and second dynasties, (2) the Palermo stone list of kings (about 2550 BC), (3) the Turin Papyrus list of kings (ca 1200 BC), and (4) the written list of kings by Manetho (about 300 to 200 BC). The last three, although spanning 2200 years, are congruent for all practical purposes, and mostly validate each other. I will discuss the predynastic archaeological record separately further below.

The First Pharaohs

The pharaohs from the First through the Second Dynasty use 'Horus names.' There is one exception in the middle of this list, a pharaoh who takes a 'Seth name.' After this one use, no pharaoh ever takes a Seth name again (excepting in the 19th Dynasty after 1300 BC). The second dynasty ends in 2705. It is the first and second dynasty which ought to be compared to the list of "kings after the flood" and the Bible patriarchs.

The dynasty groupings may have been selected by Manetho, perhaps arbitrarily, although these could represent family groups, or represent blocks of a unified political or religious climate. It has also been suggested that some dynasties may have been grouped by the location (city) which held political power for a length of time. Thus the separation of the early kings in Egypt into the first, second, and third dynasty may not mean anything at not. But it is significant that the second dynasty ends in 2705 -- coinciding with what I have assumed to be the last apparition of Horus. [note 14]

Significantly, the use of pyramids as grave markers starts with the third dynasty of Egypt after 2650 BC -- fifty years after Mars/Horus is no longer seen in the skies close to Earth. The first ziggurat (the Eanna at Uruk) appears in Mesopotamia at the same date. The construction of pyramids starts in the Andes at the same time (ca 2650 BC), and the effort at constructing a giant conical mountain happens in England around 2500 BC. Again, I have to invoke van der Sluijs' comment that the Gods (and their activities and symbols) are localized after they are no longer present in the skies. [note 15]

The graves of the Horus pharaohs at Abydos (central to Upper Egypt) are apparently cenotaphs, with the alternate (real) burials at Saqqara (or, as currently understood, the reverse of this). Abydos is also the city of Osiris, and his 'grave' had become a site of pilgimages in antiquity. If then the graves at Abydos start with the grave of Osiris, followed by a dozen graves of Horus, it might be suggested that the Egyptians pro forma provided graves for the deity which the pharaoh represented. The alternate (and accepted) explanation is that the cenotaphs were politically significant -- in representing separate graves as "King of Lower Egypt" and as "King of Upper Egypt", although this seems like a modern political interpretation. It might be much more meaningful to suggest that the terms "upper land" and "lower land" mean "heaven" and "earth" rather than "Upper Egypt" and "Lower Egypt."

There are, as there are in Mesopotamia, some 20 pharaohs, but possibly 17. The reign lengths for most are way too long as earthly kings, and the series does not follow the obvious progression of a series of 30 years intervals. The reign lengths of the first and second dynasty pharaohs depend on archaeological findings, and are not as concrete as the Mesopotamian written record. The Turin papyrus gives dates which are much too long, and the Palermo stone is complete.

Chinese Parallels

There are ten 'Legendary Emperors of China' as listed by Joseph Campbell, but only eight in number from Taoist sources, a set of three nobles, followed by a set of five 'Tîs' -- a word clearly meaning 'Gods' but usually translated as 'Emperors.' Considering that the dates assigned to these eight or ten 'Legendary Emperors' falls after 3114 BC, at first glance it looks similar to the Mesopotamian list of the "kings after the Flood."

"Prior to the dynasty of Hsiâ [Xia], with the exception of the period of Yâo and Shun, the accounts which we have of the history of China have been, and ought to be, pronounced 'fabulous' and 'legendary.' The oldest documents that purport to be historical are the books in the Shû about Yâo and Shun, and even they do not profess to be contemporaneous with those personages."

-- James Legge, introduction to "The Sacred Books of the East, The Shu King" (volume 3) (1879).

Legendary Emperors of China Ruler Reign Length years notes Period of the three nobles "San-huang" 1 Fu Shi 115 years 2953-2838 BC 2 Shen Nung 120 years 2838-2718 BC or 17 generations 3 Yen Ti 21 years 2718-2598 BC Period of the 5 emperors "Wû Tî" 1 Huang Ti 100 years 2698-2598 BC "Yellow Emperor" 2 Shao Hao 84 years 2598-2514 BC Kin-Tien 3 Chuan Hsi 78 years 2514-2436 BC Kao-Yang ? Ti Kao 70 years 2436-2366 BC (K'u? -- Gu) 4 Yao 102 years 2357-2255 BC 5 Shun 50 years 2255-2205 BC Yu 2205-2197 BC Xia first king

Fu Shi, wrote Cambell, is equated with Adam. Following him, Shen Nung, who must represent the egg in the sky, lived 17 generations (from some sources), thus about 820 years, not far off my estimate of 720 solar years.

We know nothing about Yen Ti except that he is the brother of Huang Ti. This may be Uranus.

Huang Ti, the "Yellow Emperor," has long been identified as Saturn. The life time of Huang Ti is only listed as 100 years, even though he brought all the gifts of civilization to China. Other information lists his reign as 300 years (Confucius).

"He consulted with his sages while deliberating on the "Bright Terrace;" ... he assembled the spirits on the holy mount T'ai-shan."

-- http://www.world-destiny.org/

The Taoist groupings reflect philosophical concerns. There are five Legendary Emperors to match the five elements. But later Taoist writings also define eight 'immortals' as exemplary figures of the past. Legge notes that..

"in the fourth Book of the Li Kî is called Yüeh Ling, 'the Monthly Record of the Proceedings of Government.' In it certain sacrificial observances paid to the five Tîs are distributed through the four seasons. The Tîs are Fû-hsî, Shan-nang, Yû-hsiung or Hsien-yüan, Kin-thien, and Kâo-yang, who are styled the Greatly Resplendent, the Blazing, the Yellow, the Less Resplendent, and the Solely Correct."

This listing is a description of manifestations of Saturn, before the end of the "Age of the Gods," and, the last, Jupiter after 3114 BC, as the titles clearly indicate. If listed in the correct order above, the Gods can be assigned to a chronological series as follows. I have including the reign lengths as listed further above.

• Fû-hsî -- "the Greatly Resplendent" -- Saturn as a globe (the egg) standing above the north pole after ca 5800 BC. 115 years, but elsewhere listed as "17 generations."

• Shan-nang -- "the Blazing" -- Saturn after going nova in 4186 BC. 120 years.

• Hsien-yüan -- "the Yellow" -- Saturn still in arc mode discharge, but at a much reduced level, so that only the surface is still encompassed in flares. This is Huang-Ti in the list above. 100 years.

• Kin-thien --"the Less Resplendent" -- Saturn in a late, less active mode, perhaps completely reduced to glow mode plasma discharge. 78 years.

• Kâo-yang -- "the Solely Correct" -- I suspect this to be Jupiter as the Midnight Sun after 3114 BC through perhaps 2300 BC. 70 years. However, see below.

The total time span of the first four (Saturn) is only 413 years. This certainly falls far short of my estimates based on the Sumerian King List. But it is close to the time span between 3114 BC and the last visit by Mars/Horus (the transfer of power from Kish to Uruk). The assigned dates (years) may thus have come from a later period.

There is also a late tradition of five Tîs which includes two or three of the three nobles, two names from among the 'legendary emperors' as listed above (plus one additional name?), and excludes Yâo or Shun. James Legge additionally notes that ..

"The earlier accounts open with a Phan-kû, in whose time 'heaven and earth were first separated.' To him succeeded the period of the San Hwang, or Three August Lines, consisting of twelve Celestial, eleven Terrestrial, and nine Human Sovereigns, who ruled together about 50,000 years. After them come a host of different Lines, till we arrive at the Wû Tî, or Five Emperors."

The date for when "heaven and earth were first separated" is likely to be the end of the "Age of the Gods," 3114 BC, but it certainly is not followed by a 50,000 year period of rulers. Egyption 'mythological history' interestingly includes the same excessive time span for a large number of unnamed rulers, the "Followers of Horus." In both cases these may be the asteroids activated to glow mode by the passage of Saturn and Jupiter. The 50,000 year period is likely the sum total of all their simultaneous appearances.

The dates (in the table above) were arrived at in the 100 year period after the book burning of 213 BC, probably by Taoist scholars working from uncertain sources, and often by simply assigning reign lengths to lists of emperors of the various dynasties. The chronology which was determined at that time has the following time spans and dates for the dynasties preceding the Chin (quoting Legge)..

• Hsiâ [Xia] lasted for 439 years, from B.C. 2205 to 1767.

• Shang or Yin endured for 644 years, from B.C. 1766 to 1123.

• The Kâu [Chou] continued for 867 years, from B.C. 1122 to 256.

• founding of Khin [Chin] dynasty in B.C. 221.

Legge suggests a minimum of 500 years for each of the dynasties, based on Mencius, as the Taoists writers might initially also have used. Either calculation places Yâo in ca 2300 BC, at the time of the flood of Noah of 2349 BC and has Shun end his activities shortly before the world-wide climatic turndown of 2193 BC. Yâo is Jupiter; Shun is the Moon. That much is certain.

The similarity to the list of the "kings after the flood" ends here. The complete time span of the three Dukes and five Emperors, from the accession of Fu Shi in 2953 BC (already one hundred years late) to the accession of Yü in 2205 BC, amounts to 748 years. This is much too long to represent the comings and goings of Mars/Horus between 3000 and 2700 BC. The celestial nature of these 'Legendary Emperors' is assured, however, in the information supplied for them.

• "Fu Xi is represented as a human being with the body of a snake."

• "San-huang is sometimes portrayed with the head of an ox."

• "Huang-di is credited with the creation of mankind; a dragon descended from heaven and carried him aloft."

• "After the death of Yao, Shun seated himself on the throne. Ten suns appeared in the sky, threatening to scorch the earth to a cinder. The heavenly archer Shen Yi managed to shoot nine out of the sky with his magic bow."

The Tîs bestow the gifts of civilization to mankind -- the ordering of tribes, giving of family names, agriculture, irrigation, fishing nets, music, medicine, writing, pottery, silk worm breeding, and, amazingly, the creation of mankind itself. This is the same set of gifts received from the Gods in Mesopotamia during the "Age of the Gods."

What I think we are looking at is a recollection from the "Age of the Gods," not the celestial kings (or Gods) after 3114 BC. The period of the 'Legendary Emperors' (and the three Dukes) is 748 years. My estimates from the Sumerian "King List" is that the "Age of the Gods" lasted 1072 years. I have no problem with the differences in these time spans, since it seems obvious that the Chinese records where displaced by a thousand years to mark the beginning of creation.

This involves not only a confusion of the descents of Mars during the "Age of the Gods" with the similar visits by Mars during the period after 3114 BC, but, as many people had done, a confusion of the flood of 3114 BC and the flood of 2349 BC. In effect the record, which originally ended in the flood of 3114 BC, was moved to an era also ending in a flood -- the 'Noachian flood' of 2349 BC and the world-wide climatic disturbances of 2193 BC.

In the Chinese "Annals of Shu," in about 2350 BC, Yâo sends his astronomers to the four borders of China to observe the stars and determine the calendar. But, as Chinese scholars have noted, Yâo already knew the answers, and states them. He also proclaims that "a round year consists of three hundred, sixty, and six days" and that the year and the seasons are to be completed by the use of an "the intercalary month."

It is fairly certain that the "Shu" existed already in 700 BC. The chapter, however, which tells of Yâo's calendar efforts, is noted, in its introduction, as not representing a document contemporary with the events recorded. This reads as "Examining into antiquity, ... etc."

In fact, the text about a year of 366 days and the intercalary month proves that the documents were amended or corrected after 747 BC when the year changed to a value close to 366 days and an intercalary month would be needed to bring the months in tune with the length of the year. It certainly was not contemporaneous with Yâo, when the year would have been 260 days long. The only thing I would feel confident about is that a calendar revision was made ca 2350 BC.

The first Chinese historical records were written after ca 2200 BC (the first contemporaneous statement of the Shû is in 2197 BC by the son of Yü), but woven in are a confused recollection of a series of earlier Gods.

Yâo and Shun can be identified with some certainty. Yâo is Jupiter as the Midnight Sun, the later Re of the Egyptians. He appears before the 'Flood' of 2350 BC (which is mentioned twice in the "Annals of Shu"), which matches my assumption that Jupiter did not develop a coma until after passing through the asteroid belt, perhaps at about the time of the 5th Egyptian dynasty (2550 to 2500 BC) when the Egyptian pharaohs add "Re" to their names, and came to a sudden end after 2350 BC.

The recreated chronology by Chinese scholars between 200 BC and AD 200 hold that Yâo died in 2257 BC, 30 years after having shared his throne with his follower, Shun. Shun first shows (is born) in about 2310 BC.

Shun is the Moon, which by my estimates first showed perhaps at the time of the 'Flood,' that is, the fall of the Absu, which the "Annals of Shu" describes as waters "standing up to the heavens." The "Annals of Shu" also record the activities of Shun, each one of which takes exactly a month, and frequently start on the first day of the month. Shun spends a great deal of time traveling and on inspection trips. We could not be told more plainly who Shun is. Both Yâo and Shun are referred to as 'Tîs,' that is, 'Gods.' The next emperor, Yu, is a human selected by Shun. Actually, Yu is listed as a 'king' (a potentate over an Earthly region) and not as an 'emperor' (the sovereign over all of the world). An 'emperor' does not again appear in China until 2000 years later.

Hindu Parallels

Hindu sources are overwhelmingly vast, encompasing thousands on thousands of pages of poetry, often in competing and contradictory tracts. Additionally, all the doings of the earlier Gods have been heavily anthropomorphized, so that much of the texts read as if events actually happened in recent antiquity and took place in the lands of India. In the poem "Mahabharata" the Bharata battle is essentially the War of the Gods, as I have noted elsewhere, and is by some dated as starting in 3037 BC.

Others, for example S.B. Roy and K.C. Varma in "Mahabharata and Astronomy," a chapter of "Mahabharata, Myth and Reality" (1976), attempt to place the Bharata battle by calculating when the Pleiades would have stood at the horizon at the equinox heliacally with the Sun. They arrive at a date of ca 1432 BC by calculating backwards. This suggested date has led to extensive attempt to validate the battle through archaeological finds, with no results.

Other revealing information occurs in the "Bhagavad Gita." Kelley Ross writes..

"The most important feature of the cult of Vis.n.u is the belief that he periodically causes himself to be born as a being in the world. He does this out of compassion, and this is probably responsible for his epithet as the 'Preserver.'"

"In the cycle of time within which we live, called a Mahâyuga (either 12 thousand or 4.3 million years), there are supposed to be ten Incarnations (or Avatars) of Vis.n.u. Nine have come already: (1) as the Fish, (2) the Tortoise, (3) the Boar, (4) the Man-Lion, (5) the Dwarf, (6) Parashurâma, (7) Râma (of the Râmâyâna), (8) Kr.s.n.a (Krishna, of the Mahâbhârata), and (9) the Buddha. As the Buddha, however, Vis.n.u is supposed to have taught a deliberately false doctrine (which is how Hinduism always sees Buddhism), to destroy demons. The tenth Avatar, Kalkin, will usher in the end of the world (or the end of the Mahâyuga)."

-- Kelley Ross at [http://www.friesian.com/gods.htm]

Neglecting the long time spans (which Hindu texts are especially given to, often to correct for lapsed predictions of periods from older sources), you will note again the eight appearances of Visnu, with Buddha added at a much later date, and the promise of a tenth appearances. This looks like a conflation (as with many other people) of the eight visits of Mars before 3114 BC, and the ten visits afterwards.

The Palette of Narmer
and the Predynastic kings of Egypt

Predynastic Egypt includes the time from perhaps 5000 BC to about 3050 BC, or at least before the first dynasties. Egypt has been better studied than other areas of the world because of the continued fascination with Egypt, but also because Egypt presents a long continuity of culture within a limited geography, and, by good fortune, a desert soil which preserves archaeological remains well. Perhaps this era could tell us something about the time before 3114 BC

I have stated that there was no civil leadership during the "Age of the Gods," something claimed by many archaeologists and based on the absence of graves endowed with surplus 'grave goods.' But this is not entirely certain, for archaeologists frequently date some elaborate graves to before 3114 BC, both in Mesopotamia and Egypt. These finds may suffer from difficulties in dating, but also cannot of necessity be ascribed to 'kings' or 'pharaohs.'

Since the temple cultures in Egypt, as elsewhere, certainly predates the end of the "Age of the Gods," there would have been priests and, as the temple culture expanded, assistants to priests and, as a result, a hierarchy. This might have been enough to honor those in charge upon their death, and might explain the companions which followed them to the grave. In actuality we know next to nothing of the circumstances for elaborated graves -- especially since almost all were robbed in antiquity. Archaeologists, however, have identified a series of 'kings' who preceded the First Dynasty of Egypt. But let's first see what the Egyptians themselves say.

Manetho (300 BC) identifies the first king of the first Dynasty as 'Menes' in his list of kings of Egypt. Menes, says Manetho, unified Egypt, that is, he forged it into a single state stretching from Nubia to the Mediterranean. The unification has always been held as the unification of Upper Egypt, south of the Nile delta, and Lower Egypt, the delta region. Herodotus, 100 years earlier, wrote the same, based on information gathered from the priests of Sais.

What is important in the parallel information supplied by Herodotus and Manetho, is that there clearly were temple records dating back some 3000 years to the First Dynasty. These seemed to have been cannonical, for the records change almost not at all over this long period of time. The first instances of a consecutive listing of kings are one or two lists of the serekhs of the kings of the First Dynasty, found in First Dynasty graves (3050 to 2857 BC) at Abydos.

A second instance is 300 years later. It is a carved basalt block from the Fifth Dynasty (ca 2550 BC) of the Old Kingdom, the Palmero Stone, unfortunately shattered and badly worn. The Palermo Stone lists the Gods, the "Followers of Horus," and presents a partial list of the pharaohs of the first five dynasties. For each of the pharaoh there is a catalog of important events, year by year, although most of these events are as mundane as a "national cattle census."

A last significant listing is a papyrus dating from 1200 BC, the Turin Cannon, which also lists the Gods, some three groups of mythical spirits and kings (with "lifetimes" spanning many thousands of years), and then, in the same order, the pharaohs and their reign lengths, starting with Menes, who is listed twice in succession, once with the glyph for a God and the second time as a mere human. 'Menes' means "he who remains." [note 12]

The listed reign lengths of the Turin papyrus are much longer than archaeological evidence indicates. Manetho has much more realistic reign lengths available to him, but also lists the Gods and the demi-gods. There are additionally temple inscriptions of later dates which also largely follow the same sequence.

What came before Menes, in are a series of persons or spirits, called the "Followers of Horus," and before that time lived the Gods. Nine of them, all easily identifyable both from ancient records (the Palermo Stone) and from much later records (like the Turin Papyrus). There are no records of kings before Menes of the first dynasty. There are, in fact, no records of Menes besides mention of being the first king.

Archaeologists have been concerned with the social and political history of Egypt, and have traced cultural development from 4500 BC. By 3100 or 3000 BC the culture of Egypt is uniform from Aswan to the delta. Unification of Egypt was claimed for Menes (ca 3050 BC), and obviously was an expansion of the cultural elements of Upper Egypt into the delta. Since the theme of 'unification' is repeated over and over again in Egyptian history, it suggested that the conquest of the delta by forces from Upper Egypt must have been a monumental event. We know absolutely nothing about Menes, other than an indication that his names means "he who remains." The name of the founding king of the first dynasty is missing from the Palermo Stone, and is recorded different from 'Menes' in other records. Since there is also no evidence of battles or conquests during this time, that is, at the time of the beginning of the First Dynasty, archaeologists were determined to find a date for this event at an earlier time.

Image: The Palette of Narmer, ca 3050 BC; left: front face.

The palette of Narmer

The outstanding example for a suggestion of an early unification of Egypt is attributed to a predynastic king named 'Narmer' who has even been equated with Manetho's first pharaoh, 'Menes.' The suggestion for a king named 'Narmer' comes from the 'Palette of Narmer' found buried below the floor of the temple at Heirakonpolis (Nehken, the City of the Falcon), in central Upper Egypt, and dated to 3000 or 3050 BC by inference from other known cosmetic palettes.

On the 'Palette of Narmer' a king, dressed as a later pharaoh, is showing smiting an enemy with a mace. The dress and paraphenalia of the king is Egyptian, and the regalia remains the same for the next few thousand years, yet much of the rest is decidedly Mesopotamian, including the script used and the 'serekh' used to indicate the status of the name of the king, "catfish-drill," which has the sound of "Nar-Mer." The pronounciation of this rhebus portion of the script is Egyptian. But the remaining script is claimed by some to be from the syllabary of northern Mesopotamia or Anatolia, dated to the Jemdet Nasr period (3100 to 3000 BC). The sign of the 'serekh' is the facade of a temple, enclosed in a rectangle, a symbol the Egyptians will retain, whereas it will be abandoned in Mesopotamia. The 'temple' is a round roofed thatched hut, still in use today in the region between the Euphrates and Tigris south of Bagdad.

Image: Sumerian Temple Hut.

Narmer is especially favored by archaeologists because the Palette of Narmer shows him on one side with the Red Crown of Lower Egypt (the delta), and on the obverse with the White Crown of Upper Egypt (the river valley south of the delta). On the two sides he is slaying enemies or inspecting decapatated bodies, and trampelling (as a bull) the fortification of a named city. It was thus suggested that this palette represents a victory commemoration for the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. Narmer was thought to be Menes, who left no other record. Unification became such an important 'theme' for all the later pharaohs, that archaeologists could not help but suggest that this happened in a pre-dynastic era, for there is no mention or evidence of warfare during the First Dynasty.

I think the Palette of Narmer depicts not a person, but the God Ra of creation, Saturn, or more likely Jupiter -- he who remained -- shown in the last celestial battle. The dress and insignias make him Horus of the Egyptians, but other theories abound. One is that the person depicted may have represented an Egyptian warlord known as Nar, or Nar-am in the Middle East, who conquered parts of the Levant and Syria, leaving his name inscribed on wine jars everywhere. The serekh and the name "Nar" or "Nar-mer" is found throughout Syria, coastal Levant, and the Sinai. It has thus been suggested that if the Narmer Palette uses a mesopotamian script, then "Narmer" may be a name imported from outside of Egypt, and is meant to read as "Nar-am" rather than "Nar-mer" since there was no word "am" in Egyptian to complete the rhebus, so "mer" was used. [note 14a]

I have looked at the progression of palettes from Naqada through pre-dynastic times. The question of serpopards and giraffes and matched palm trees are adequately answered by the images in the sky during the period up to 3114 BC. But the palette of Narmer is distinctly different. I would presume that the battle scene of the Narmer Palette happened in the sky -- not on land -- but whereas the image of the pharaoh represent many combined elements of the whole Saturnian configuration from the period before 3114 BC, but clearly identifying the pharaoh as Horus/Mars, the remaining elements, the standard bearers and the decapitated bodies, represent an interpretation of what was seen in the skies after 3114 BC.

The palette represents the earlier Saturn (actually Horus, as shown by the Horus crown) wielding Venus as a club and about to brain Uranus who has been grabbed by his long hair. It is used here to name the winner of the last battle, waged between Jupiter and Saturn and the Titans. It does not depict the battle, for it is a static image from remote antiquity. If a battle is suggested, it would be between Upper Earth and Lower Earth, a battle between Jupiter and Saturn and the Titans, or a battle waged within the asteroid belt. The two regions of Heaven (Upper Earth) and Earth (Lower Earth) were equated with Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt by dynastic times, or, I suspect, certainly by the time of the third dynasty, after about 2686 BC.

The bull devastating a walled city, below the serpopards (on the front side), is more likely the attack of Jupiter -- the "Bull of Heaven" -- on the home or land of the Gods. The raised standards are not defeated nomes, as suggested by some archaeologists, but more likely are the previous incarnation of Horus (the "Followers of Horus"), during the approximately 100 year period before the first dynasty. If so, and if the pharaoh depicted here is meant to be Horus instead of Jupiter, then the palette would date to after 2980 BC.

The palette can be read, front face first, obverse next. It is read from the bottom to the top, and generally from the left to the right. The front face is the side with the circular depression used for grinding cosmetic powders. Reading from left to right is based on later inscriptions which are always meant to be read in the direction which the animal or people glyphs face.

On the front face, from the bottom, we see the Bull of Heaven smashing the City of the Gods. Egypt was uneffected by the flood of 3114 BC, so that instead of seeing Noah's ship landed on a mountain, the Egyptians saw the crescent on top of the mountainous outpouring of Jupiter as the approach of a horned bull, which resulted in the destruction of combined set of planets around Saturn, and their dispersal. The seropards, an image of the polar plasma stream and the adjacent auroras, are separated or removed. What remains (on the top, from right to left) are Horus followed by and his sandle bearer Mercury, the followers of Horus (or the dead kings of the city of Pe), and decapitated captives of Horus. Horus is shown with his night-time crown -- the insignia of Lower Earth. The front of the palette seems to record the event of 3114 BC -- as history.

On the back Saturn is depicted, with dead men and captives, shown as papyrus buds, and thus in a swamp -- which last probably represents the Absu, not the delta region of Egypt. The figure wears his day-time crown, which will become the ensignia for Upper Egypt -- at variance certainly with the papyrus buds, which archaeologists have associated with Lower Egypt (the delta). It is from this image that the suggestion comes that Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt.

But of course the palette is about Narmer the conquering catfish chisel, the Bull of Heaven, and (as we know) represents Jupiter, although on one side (the back) in the garb of Saturn and on the other dressed as Horus.

The standards are depicted again later, still four of them (one later depiction uses five). But there are some 20 nomes in the delta region and another 20 in Upper Egypt. Later descriptions also refer to the standards as the souls of the previous kings, kings of Pe (the city of Buto, in the delta) of Lower Egypt.

I seriously doubt if the palette of Narmer has anything to do with local warfare. We think in terms of action and causal relationships. The meanings of Egyptian images are, I suspect, mostly beyond our ken.

Egypt united culturally, at the time of Menes (Jupiter), with the establishment of the city of Memphis at the neck of the Nile delta (attributed to Menes). The Upper Egyptian falcon Horus became the name of the God to be serviced, and the pharaohs became Horus. The temples of Upper Egypt needed to secure the trade routes into the Levant and Sinai for temple services and grave goods for the Gods -- copper ore from the Sinai, jars of wine from Palestine, and lumber from Lebanon. The predynastic temple at Heirakonpolis in central Upper Egypt (where the palette of Narmer was found) had used four-foot diameter pine trunks from Lebanon in its construction -- before 3000 BC -- floated over the Mediterranean and hauled 400 miles up the Nile.

Having a single king recognized as God himself, perhaps in his function as chief priest, or having someone assigned to play the role of God, must have solved a lot of administrative problems in the acquisition and distribution of temple products. After the time of Menes, the names of the earlier "Followers of Horus" are no longer mentioned, except for a few instances as late as the 5th dynasty, 500 years later. The Followers of Horus also never enter the funeral ceremonies. I have suggested in a previous chapter that the the four standard bearers, the "Followers of Horus," represent Trojan asteroids in the same orbit as Mars, while the decapitated bodies represent thousands of smaller asteroids in the wake of Mars. Both would be seen as preceding Mars as the sky rotated toward the east and the objects moved to the west across the sky.

That suggestion would identify both the standard bearers and the decapitated bodies on the front side of the Palette of Narmer as a parade of the view at night, traveling to the west, and thus the view of the Lower Earth. Confusing as this might seem, and opposite to the later designation of Upper and Lower Egypt, it is Lower Earth which is in the south skies. Which is why the pharaoh wears the crown of Lower Egypt. Upper Earth was located in the north skies where the original Saturnian grouping had stood. Which is why, on the obverse of the palette, where the figure clearly represents the original Saturn, the pharaoh wears the crown of Upper Egypt.

The falcon Horus becomes the God in charge of the administration of Egypt, and the king becomes Horus, although this apparently happened after 3000 BC. The serekh is kept as a hieroglyphic sign -- meaning house, temple, seat, and soon the name-sign for a God or a pharaoh. Except for continued trade, the outside influences from Sumer and the Levant also stop. Sumerian cylinder seals are no longer to be found in the delta after 3000 BC. Menes may have some identity with Narmer, if there was a Narmer, or may have been a mythical first exemplary God-King, modeled on Jupiter. Herodotus calls him "Min" -- which is also the name of one of the earliest Gods, of which a statue has been found in the delta, carved in the round and ithyphallic, and dated to ca 3100 BC.

"No God has walked on Earth as a man since the first pharaoh," the priests told Herodotus (paraphrased). The "Followers of Horus" are thereby dismissed. It is only the pharaohs who counted. The First Dynasty is based on the theology of a "unification" of Upper and Lower Earth, applied to the land of Egypt, where a pharaohic "unification" of the country continues to be celebrated, appropriately so, for the pharaoh was the God Horus. Whenever celestial events threated a disruption -- as with the regular overflights by Mars from 3000 BC to ca 2700 BC -- it is the pharaoh who settles the matter with the 'Upper Land' and announces that the "two lands are at peace" again. Manetho mentions some large disasters during the First Dynasty ("there were many portends and a great calamity") and again during the second ("a chasm opened at Bubastis"). Archaeologists have noted that many early monuments and graves were destroyed by intense fires.

Celestial Apparitions

What we think of as pre-dynastic kings -- Narmer, Scorpion, and Crocodile -- are celestial apparitions, certainly the disturbed dust and objects in plasma discharge in the asteroid belt (material which had been there in some cases as long as 40 million years) as Jupiter and Saturn moved through them. They were the last of the battle between Heaven and Earth. As recorded by the later Ennead of Heliopolis, Osiris was stung by a scorpion during the battle. The Egyptians never once again mentioned Narmer, or the names of other predynastic kings, despite the fact that Narmer's serekh has been inscribed from Anatolia to the Sinai. It was a theology in flux, which settled out a new narrative shortly before the first dynasty.

I have in an endnote to another chapter pointed out that the "catfish" of Narmer's name is the depiction of a plasmoid interplanetary lightning bolt, with triple tined ends, and, in one engraving, depicted even with the twisted middle section. There might have been a person or leader named "catfish-drill" but it is more likely that we are seeing the celestial "catfish" being honored. The catfish-drill is the plasmoid bolt with which Jupiter spears Saturn and other near objects.

What makes the Narmer Palette interesting is that there is a clear identification of Horus with Mars as seen engulfed by the plasma stream from before 3114 BC. The Red Crown is Horus of Lower Earth, at night time, shaped by the shadow of Mars and the edge of the plasma stream caused by the Sun lighting the opposite side (before 3114 BC). The color of Mars shows through the stream.

During the day time only the enclosing plasma stream was lighted. This is the White Crown of Upper Earth. A number of archaeologists have suggested that the Red Crown of Lower Egypt originated in Upper Egypt. That makes perfect sense, since the crowns in my estimate had nothing to do with the land, only with the heavens. That would also make more sense of the Narmer Palette.

In addition to Horus (Mars), Mercury is the other small falcon that flies overhead, at times seen simultaneously during this era. Both might have had wings (bow shocks) and tails, although more likely for Mercury, since it had some remnant atmosphere. The 'sandal bearer' following the 'pharaoh' on both sides of the Narmer Palette is bald, and smaller, and is assumed by some to be his son. More likely he is Thoth, the planet Mercury, who as Hermes still has the winged sandals much later. He is bald to designate him as a God. He is also identified with a star, the Sumerian sign of a deity, and with a stick (or boomerang) which then reads as "running forth" but as likely depicts the bow shock of Mercury. On the obverse the sandal bearer is shown as coming from a place named "guard." I am not sure what most of this means, but we are not looking at the pharaoh's young son.

To suggest, as others have done, that the sandal bearer and the pharaoh are the only 'Egyptians' shown on the palette because they are shaven, is to move the practice of Egyptians in shaving themselves back hundreds of years. Contemperaneous palettes from this period all show bearded and often wooly haired Egyptians at the hunt or tending cattle.

The strongest argument against Narmer, or Catfish, Scorpion, Crocodile, and the other, being human kings, is that not a single mention of any of these is forthcoming from all of later Egyptian records, legends, and histories.

Francesco Raffaele, in "Ancient Egypt: Dynasty Zero" (2002), writes..

"Narmer palette, once considered one of the key sources attesting the 'Unification' of Upper and Lower Egypt by this king, is now almost completely dismissed as a proof for such an event, and tendencially removed from discussions about Unification. Scholars now tend to look at this important object as a memorial of a military victory or as a ritual object reinforcing the role of the king through the depiction of a scene (not necessarily happened in Narmer's reign) which was part of an already well formed iconography and ideology of kingship."

But of course Raffaele continues to hold Narmer as a person. The Palette of Narmer is a complete depiction of the Saturnian polar apparition on the back side, and its destruction on the front side. The pharaoh is Saturn on the back, Jupiter or Mars on the front. His crown is Mars as Horus, his club is Venus attached with a plasma stream, and the captive is the long-haired planet Uranus, visually seen 'below' the disk of Saturn from the Earth located below the south pole of Saturn.

Already before the first dynasty, there are ownership markers which identify grave goods with what will later become the standard titles of the pharaohs. The appelations will be the identification of the pharaoh as "he of the bee and the sedge," and a "two ladies title." The bee is Venus, the sedge is Uranus. Likewise, of the two ladies, the cobra is Venus, and the vulture is Uranus. It is significant that these titles are established long before the first dynasty, for it suggests that these animals and plants have nothing to do with the geographic properties of Upper and Lower Egypt. They are aspects of the polar apparition, interpreted differently in different nomes, but brought together politically by the priests in the person of the single true God, the pharaoh.

The Calendar

The following table is a summary restatement of the days in the year during various periods, and the estimates of the days in a month (a lunar rotation), if there was a Moon.

The text will explain how calendars varied over the ages, and how different people made adjustments to old calendars to meet new conditions. This information brings together data distributed over the texts of previous chapters and endnotes, and adds some additional. Hopefully, you will be able to make sense of the many calendars in use throughout the world, and why these changed.

The radius of the Earth's orbit varied over time since 3114 BC. Additionally, the orbit was certainly more eccentric in earlier periods. During most eras (except the last two) the orbit of Earth probably swung out to as much as 0.9 AU at aphelion. At perihelion Earth would have had to travel to well within one half AU in order to have the short average solar years listed below. Thus the 'days per year' shown below cannot be translated exactly into an equivalent distance from the Sun based on a nearly circular orbit, as we have today. It would only be an average.

Solar Year Variables period days days months orbit (BC) per year per month per year (AU) era and notes 4906 - 4186 300? -- -- ? before Creation 4186 - 3114 225 -- -- 0.72 Age of the Gods 3114 - 2349 240 -- -- 0.75 Old Kingdom 2349 - 2193 260 26 10 0.79 Fall of the Absu 2193 - 1492 273 28 10- 0.83 Middle Kingdom 1492 - 747 360 30 12 0.99 New Kingdom 747 - 686 365.24? 29.5? 12+ 1.00+ Era of Nabonasser 686 - today 365.24 29.5 12+ 1.00 Current Era The "Kingdoms" refer to well-known Egyptian eras.

4906 - 4186 BC, the era before creation

In the thousands of years before 3114 BC the Earth's orbit was determined by the path Saturn took around the Sun. But apparently the Sumerians kept a count of days during this period, or at least years. It is doubtful if either they or anyone else kept a calendar, or even felt the need to. The Sumerians (actually, their predecessors in northern Mesopotamia) had been keeping accounts of agricultural products since 8000 BC, and would have been perfectly capable of a tabulation of this sort, even though it ran to a numerical value of 162,000.

An isolated page of the "Chilam Balam" mentions conditions before 9000 BC, possibly reaching back to 17,000 to 14,000 years ago, equivalent to the European Magdalenian period. But nothing is identified by years.

4186 - 3114 BC, the Age of the Gods

The 225 day year is obvious from the "kings before the flood." It is the only close orbit that fits the data. It is in effect from about 4200 BC to 3100 BC, during all of the "Age of the Gods." The equivalent orbital distance from the Sun would have averaged 67.5 million miles (0.72 AU).

The Sumerian record was either recorded in days, or retroconverted from years to days after 3114 BC. Again, except for this record we no data on any sort of calendar system in use anywhere, although the Egyptians have a record of the "lifetimes of the Gods." The Maya "Chilam Balam" books record the interactions of planets for this period, but provide no tallies of year counts.

3114 - 2349 BC, the Old Kingdom

The 240 day year was found by inspecting of the "kings after the flood" (something I haven't shown yet), but can also be inferred from the remnants of calendars in use in the following era. The 240 day year was is in effect from 3080 BC through 2349 BC. The equivalent orbital distance from the Sun would have averaged 70.3 million miles (0.75 AU).

This period starts with the massive flood from the north pole. This was the most monumentally disruptive event in history. All the previous celestial displays had been well away from Earth, and could be neglected. The flood changed that. Here was a separation between 'before' and 'after,' and it is little wonder that many people now show a concern with the passage of time, and start tallies of years.

Within fifty years the Egyptians start an annual record of Gods or God-pharaohs. The calendar is annual, and years are named after religious festivals or other accomplishments. The years are without notation of seasons or months (there was no Moon yet).

The city of Kish in Mesopotamia similarly keeps track of Gods or God-kings by "years" (or some indeterminate measure of time). In only one instance a "month" is indicated in the record, and it seems in error, or may have been meant to signify a fraction of a year and was added at a much latter date.

The prececessors of the Maya were counting in Tuns ("stones"), which are years, and in Katuns, which are twenty years periods, and soon in a larger measure of 400 Tuns, called a Baktun. Certainly a record of years, and the larger blocks of 20 years and 400 years, was kept (but not before this period), for in the 16th century AD Maya "Chilam Balam" will be able to correctly specify the Katun of all celestial events since 3114 BC.

The Classical Maya sculptures at Palenque (ca AD 700) correctly date planetary incidents in the past -- 3000 years earlier -- from a record which must have been known as familiar history to the sponsor of the sculpture as well as the leaders of neighboring ceremonial centers. Similarly, when the Olmecs instituted the Long Count in 747 BC, they are aware that six Baktuns (2400 solar years) had already lapsed since the beginning of the current creation. See Chapter 17, "The Maya Calendar," for more details.

The Olmecs, Maya, and their predecessors, kept a running calendar longer than any other people on Earth. Despite the Eqyptian records of regal years dating from shortly after ca 3000 BC, we are not sure today how closely the "years" of the pharaohs matched actual solar years, since the count of years was restarted with the accession of each pharaoh, and it is not clear when a new pharaoh was invested after the death of the previous one. Later Chinese kings (in the next era) similarly did not count the first three years of a reign, at the start of accession, until later in history.

The calendar of the Mesoamerican people was divorced from the personalities of leaders, had a solid base 5 and base 20 counting system, and was built around a modern conception of what an 'interval' constituted, unlike the Sumerians whose early chronologies do not add up (and overlap) or even the much later Romans who still counted the passage of time as if it were a set of objects.

The initial Mesoamerican calendar divided the year into 12 seasons of 20 days. This may have constituted an argricultural calender, allowing 20 days for seeding, weeding (a number of times), the breaking of corn stalks, and the eventual reaping. Each of the 20 days received a name, which continued in use for the next 5000 years. This is uncertain, however, especially in face of the fact that the "Chilam Balam" specifically mentions the addition of "days of the year" only after 2349 BC.

China may have had the earliest calendar based on dividing the 240 day year into four seasons of 60 days each. China, unlike Mesoamerica, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, had distinct seasons. This division of the year into 60 day periods will remain a standard for 5000 years. Even after the Moon arrives in 2349 BC, the months are associated with the 60 day seasonal divisions.

2349 - 2193 BC, after the fall of the Absu

This period starts with the 'flood' of Noah, and the first appearance of the Moon. The Moon soon stabilized, and it is at this time that we see the first indications of calendars in widely separated regions of the world. The Earth is now 74 million miles from the Sun (.797 AU), and the year had extended to 260 days.

The regular appearance of the Moon became the calendar, signalling to everyone the days for religious festivities. There were, during this first period after the fall of the Absu, ten months of 26 days each. At the end of ten months, the year and the cycle of religious observances started over.

The 260 day year is an acknowledged number which shows up in Mesoamerican sources as the Tzolkin calendar. The "Chilam Balam" makes specific mention of the addition of "days of the year" at this time.

If there were an earlier Mesoamerican calendar, it was now altered to increase the count of 12 rotations through the 20 names to 13. The counting of days certainly started in this period. By adding one additional rotation, the 12 x 20 calendar would exactly equal the number of days in the year, consisting now of 20 half-months of 13 days each. This is the Olmec Tzolkin calendar. A complete rotation through 20 and 13 also distinctly named each day of the 260 day year. The Mesoamerican Tzolkin calendar is still in use today in parts of Guatemala, the Yucatan, and southern Mexico.

In China one of the last of the mythological emperors (Gods), and the first to enter recorded history, Yao (who is Jupiter), establishes the calendar which was used by the Xia and Shang dynasties. So says the historical record, the "Annals of Shu." But the Annals, gathered together in the 8th century BC, speak of Yao establish a 366 day year. This emendations to the historical record was thus made after 747 BC, but before 685 BC, since Yao also tells his astronomers that the Pleiades mark the equinox.

The new Chinese calendar continued the 60 day periods, but added the day of the lunar month to specify actual dates.

In the Babylonian creation epic, the "Enuma Elish," the God Marduk (Jupiter) also establishes the calendar after the demise of the Absu.

2193 - 1492 BC, the Middle Kingdom

A second change in the Earth's orbit happened in 2193 BC, when the Akkadian empire fails and the Old Kingdom of Egypt comes to a close. Worldwide there is a lack of rain, or a lack of light, lasting years. Mesopotamia and Egypt (and other locations) take up to 200 years to recover. This suggests a plasma contact by Venus -- an arc which circled the globe.

The Earth is now 77 million miles from the Sun (0.83 AU). The year goes to 270 or 280 days (probably 273 days), but I suspect that the number of months in the year stays at 10, each approximately 27 or 28 days long. Mesoamerican culture accommodated this easily by extending their 20 by 13 Tzolkin calendar by 13 days, and just ignoring the fact that their calendar was now 13 days short. Other people apparently adopted the 10 months of 28 days to fill the year.

Mesoamerica divides the visible south sky into 13 'zodiac' divisions of 21 days each. The 13 divisions will remain and will surface again in Classical Maya times (as the Paris Codex shows), but the periods of each of the 13 constellations will lengthen to 28 days by the time we reach our era, adding up to 364 days.

During the Shang dynasty (1700 to 1100 BC) there are oracle bone which record a 27 and 28 day lunar period. The Shang (apparently) also start a calendar based on multiples of 60 and 10. It seems to be a holdover from a previous era, when there were 240 days in the year, but not 10 months yet.

The Chinese also established 28 'lunar mansions' across the dome of the stars to track the Moon. It may be be an amazing coincidence (although it should not be) that the Vedic Indians (who had no contact with China during this period) do the same. The Indian notion of 28 'lunar mansions' has lasted in Indian astrology to today.

1492 - 747 BC, the New Kingdom

After 1492 BC the Earth's orbit increases significantly -- to 92.1 million miles (0.99 AU). The 360 day year is a clear certainty from many records, and in effect up to 747 BC. The equivalent orbital distance from the Sun would have averaged 92.1 million miles. There were 12 months of 30 days.

The 360 day year is so well established from so many documents, that some researchers today just take it for granted, although students of antiquity have to apologetically add, "plus the five days," or make excuses for the people of this era with statements like, "they used an idealized 360 day year" or "they could not count."

The Egyptians had apparently established a calendar after 2349 BC, and in this era divide the dome of the stars into 36 segments to mark time (at night), which later became known as "decans" by the Greeks, because they are 10 degrees apart across a 360 degree sky. These are first shown in the tomb of Senmut, 1493 BC, the Calendar Registrar and Visier to Queen Hatshepsut. Senmut's tomb, however, still depicts the months as having 24 days -- in accord with a much older tradition. [note 32a]

Babylonians establish 18 divisions of the ecliptic, of 20 degrees each, thus also 360 degrees. China apparently also divide the ecliptic into 360 degrees. These divisions of the sky reflect the fact that the year was 360 days, not 365.25 days. China changes its division of the sky to 365.25 'degrees' some time after 747 BC, when the year becomes longer, and keeps this in effect until about AD 1500.

"During the Shang Dynasty [1700 to 1125 BC], the Chinese had in place interlocking cycles of 10 days and 12 days; together, these made a cycle of 60 days. This 60 day cycle was kept, apparently continuously, for thousands of years. Astronomical events recorded by the Shang Dynasty people were noted by the place in the 60 cycle, as well as the lunar month and reign year. With this information on several lunar eclipses, there have been attempts to correlate the Shang calendar with our Christian calendar, but these attempts have not been successful."
-- http://www.astro.virginia.edu/class/chevalier/astr341

The Shang calendar and calendar records, mentioned above, dates to after 1400 BC. The 60 day periods cannot be squared against the day count and month count of the previous period (the 260 day year), but it elegantly suits the configuration of the heavens which took effect after 1492 BC. It is likely that the Shang '60 day period' now reflected a double lunar month period, however. It is also likely that this represents a month-like division of the synodic period of Venus.

We cannot neglect Venus as a 'marker' for calendar use, especially when it is noticed that many nations adopt an akward 'Venus calendar' as a means or resolving the new length of the month and the new length of the year after 747 BC. Venus would represent a studendous sight at its helical rising or setting. Unlike any other planet or star, which all but disappears in the glare of the Sun or the haze of the horizon at helical rising or setting, Venus, at its helical rising (and in reverse order at the helical setting), would show the tail of its coma initially directed toward Earth, and thus as a bright light, and then, as soon as it cleared the Sun, the tail would expand along the horizon, to sweep straight up into the sky over the next few days. The "going up of Sothis," as described by Egyptian records, is not simply the appearance of Venus, but describes the spectacular levitation of its tail. It is a marker much easier to determine and much more visible than the day of the solstice or equinox of the Sun.

During the period of 1492 to 747 BC, the synodic period of Venus would have been exactly 600 days. The rising and setting of Venus would only fall back into sync every eight Earth years (225*5 - 360*8 = 0). Six hundred days is ten 60 day periods, equal to two lunar months. But it is unlikely that the start of, for example, the helical rising of Venus would have coincided with the lunar month. For this reason the Shang kept track of months and 60 day periods separately.

Calendars are very conservative, and they are not easily changed. Thus, although the number of months in the year during this era expand from 10 to 12, numerous people throughout the world steadfastly maintain a year of ten months into the 20th century AD, making adjustments to the solar year by, for example, expanding the last month to 90 days or repeating it twice.

Saner people adopted the lunar month as the calendar, although in some instances at the value of the previous era, 28 days, resulting in the need to intercalate additional months periodically. The Babylonians elect, additionally, to start the year with the spring equinox of the Sun. I would suggest, in fact, that this coincided with a new Moon. The new Moon would be a lot easier to spot than the rising of the Sun at the equinox. The implication of this is that lunar and solar eclipses were not seen on Earth, except for the tropics, until after 747 BC, when the period of the Moon and Earth fell away from this synchronism.

The predecessors of the Romans, however, not only maintained the 10 month calendar, but probably rotated through the ten months twice to match half of the synodic period of Venus. The month count was not rectified until some time before the end of the era. Roman historians relate that one of the first kings of Rome shortly after its founding (ca 750 BC) added two months to the calendar of 10 months. The two added months, January and February, were added after the last month of the year, December ("Ten") and, like all the other months, were set at 30 days. This happened before the length of the year changed again in 747 BC.

747 BC - 686 BC, The Era of Nabonasser

After 747 the Earth assumed today's orbit of a little over 93.2 million miles (1.0+ AU), and a year of 365.24 days. But it may have been slightly longer than that. There is indication of this in the late annotations to the Chinese "Annals of Shu," which lists 366 days as the 'corrected' calendar, a figure not altered again at a later date. Additionally, we have the remark from Plutarch, that "Hermes ... playing at draughts with the moon, won from her the seventieth part of each of her periods of illumination." As I explained in an endnote, it was probably the later askance jolt by Mercury in 686 BC which reduced the year to its present value.

The Moon changed its period probably to 29 1/2 days, but there are now slightly more than 12 1/3 lunar months in the year. This would cause no end of problems, for the lunar months no longer coincided comfortably with dates in the solar year.

As a comment on cooperative calendaric efforts in the Middle East, it should be noted that Babylon, which had apparently celebrated the new year at the spring equinox based solely on the fact that this would coincide with a new Moon, was at a loss to figure out the date of the equinox, now that the phases of the Moon showed up rather arbitrarily throughout the year.

Babylon sent observers to Jerusalem, for the Israelites knew the day of the equinox, since Passover was celebrated on the Sabath following the first full Moon after the spring equinox. Jerusalem knew how to exactly find the day of the equinox, by counting days, or lunar months, or by measuring the shadow of a gnomen. The visit by the Babylonians is recorded in the Bible. We have to recognize that the prophets of Israel were competent astronomers.

In other endnotes I have shown how the extra days of the year were elegantly distributed to the months of the year by the Romans. Also, in Chapter 17, "The Maya Calendar," I have detailed the start of the Long Count of the Olmecs.

686 BC- present, The Current Era

The jolt by Mercury in 686 BC changed the year to 365.24 days, the present value, and an orbit of 93.2 million miles (1.00 AU).

In about AD 200 the Greek writer Plutarch, in "Concerning the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris," in order to explain why the Egyptians had five intercalated days after the year (which celebrated the birthdays of the Gods), sets forth..

"Hermes ... playing at draughts with the moon, won from her the seventieth part of each of her periods of illumination, and from all the winnings he composed five days, and intercalated them as an addition to the 360 days".

This cannot be calculated by any method to produce 5.25 days. As one translator, G.R.S. Mead, notes, "This is an exceedingly puzzling statement." Patten and Winsor, in "The Mars-Earth Wars" (2003), however, calculating backwards rather than forwards, offer the following..

"In that celestial crap shoot, the Moon lost 1/70th of her holdings, or its period, while the winner, the Earth gained a similar 1/70th of its day count per orbit, an addition to its former orbit period."

"The Moon's modern period is 29.53 days. 30 days minus one part in 70 is 29.57. Plutarch was within .04 day of being exactly correct for the new lunar period."

"The Earth's new period, 365.256 days, less one part in 70, results in an earlier period of 360.038 days. Here again Plutarch's explanation was within .04 of a day of being exactly correct. Plutarch's ancient Greek sources were solid, and his explanation for the new conditions satisfied his Roman audiences."

There is no confusion of Hermes (Mercury) and Ares (Mars), however. It was Mercury who made the last adjustment in the Earth's orbit. I am also not sure if the ancients dealt with orbital periods to third decimal place. 1/70th seems like an akward fraction of 360. But in that we do not really know what change in the orbit was made in 747 BC, it is difficult to judge how the 1/70th should really be applied.

I have no idea of the value for the length of the year during this 60 year period, except to suggest that it was perhaps longer than 365.24 days. This is based only on curious statement in the "Annals of Shu" which tells of Yâo's calendar efforts, which involved the declaration that the year consists of 366 days. I'm sure the statement (which has nothing to do with the length of the year in 2349 BC), was meant to bring ancient documents up to date. This was also done with regard to the location of the equinoxes. What this suggests is that these 'corrections' were made after 747 BC and before 686 BC. With the change in the heavens in 685 BC, the 'corrections' were not again corrected. It was clear at that time that they would have to stand as the record of remote antiquity.

With the Moon on an odd interval of the year, religious festivals which had been signaled by visible aspects of the Moon, like the new Moon or the full Moon, now drifted around the year. Religious feast days fell 9 or 10 days behind with every following year. Calendars were changed again worldwide. The solutions varied immensely. I have detailed some of these changes in Chapter 11, "Quetzalcoatl."

C14 Radiometric Dating

A comparison is made below of real time (solar years) and C14 elapsed time (years of 365.25 days), after correction. The table below is from the standard "date correction" tabulation currently in use. Of interest is the table's "difference" between actual and C14 dates, compared with "calculated" dates based on what I presume to be the actual number of days in a Solar year.

Raw C14 dates are based on the exponential decline of residual radioactive C14 in samples of plant carbon (composed mostly of C12). The raw data thus generates 'time' as '365.25 day' years. It had been assumed initially that there was a direct relationship between lapsed time as determined by the C14 measurements and real time measured in current solar years. This assumed both that the amount of radioactive carbon produced in the atmosphere was constant over time, and that the year has always been of the same length.

This relationship was shown to be in error in the 1950s. The uncorrected C14 results always gave dates later in time (that is, younger) than the actual dates for some well known samples. It was concluded that there were periodic fluctuations in the C14/C12 mix of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The raw C14 results at first were corrected for a small percentage for dates prior to 700 BC when certain well-dated artifacts did not yield the correct C14 dates. Ultimately corrections were made on the basis of the C14 analysis of tree rings. That solved a lot of problems, for trees do not lie about their age. For dates before about 8000 BC (the oldest tree ring data available) the C14 tables are based on data from coral cores at the Barbados.

The tree rings constitute an absolute and indisputable measure of time as a count of solar years, although it says nothing about the length of the year in days. C14 can be measured for tree rings, but varies with locations and local climatic conditions, of course, and thus yields a range of C14 measurements for any actual year. As a result we end up with a table where the 'actual date' is the independent variable, as shown below, rather than the dependent variable.

In the past before 700 BC, all the C14 derived dates are earlier than chronological dates, that is, younger than the actual dates. This is attributed, as I have pointed out, to variations in atmospheric C14 levels. But it could also be because the years at various times were shorter.

The tabulation below compare my estimates of the number of days in the solar year with the corrected C14 data. The calculated dates are on the same order as the corrected C14 dates for the time span of 4200 BC to 750 BC. That is, my calculated date corrections are in line with the fluctuations of the C14 dating technique. I am comparing my "calculated difference," which represents the complete shortfall in years, against the "C14 difference," which is only the difference in years between the uncorrected C14 time and the specific calendar year. The two columns are thus not exactly comparable.

For the time before 4200 BC, the calculated dates do not match the corrected C14 dates, if it is assumed that a 225 day year continues in use. I would have to conclude that for this prior period the year could not have been 225 days, but was perhaps twice as long.

The tabulation below is annotated with the changes in the length of the year; the first few from the assumption that the C14 date corrections are correct for the period up to about 4200 BC.

The full "INTCAL98" C14 correction table lists data at 50 year intervals from AD 1955. I have only shown some selected years which coincide with changes in the length of the year. The original table also includes measures of the standard deviation, which I have neglected in the tabulation below.

1998 Atmospheric delta 14C and radiocarbon ages !! from: M. Stuiver, P. J. Reimer, E. Bard, J. W. Beck, G. S. Burr, !! K. A. Hughen, B. Kromer, F. G. McCormac, J. v. d. Plicht and !! M. Spurk. INTCAL98 Radiocarbon Age Calibration, 24,000-0 cal BP. !! Radiocarbon 40, 1041-1083 (1998). !! !! YR AD/BC 14C age !! YR BP solar solar 14C year C14 length of calculated BC/AD BP BP difference solar year days short difference 1955 0 0.0 0 365.25 days 0 1705 250 104.6 145.4 " . 405 1555 1663.6 -113.6 " . 5 1950 1985.3 -35.3 " . -745 2700 2455.4 244.6 " 0 -1495 3450 3215.0 235.0 360 days 5.25 10.8 * -2195 4150 3752.7 397.3 273 days 92.25 187.6 * -2345 4300 3875.8 424.2 260 days 105.25 230.8 * -3085 5040 4433.6 606.4 240 days 125.25 484.5 * -4205 6160 5271.4 888.6 225 days 140.25 914.5 * -5805 7760 6945.0 815.0 395 ? -9505 11460 10067.7 1432.3 305 ? -10505 12460 10532.4 1927.6 175 ? -20050 22005 18527.1 3477.9 300 ? * -- indicates estimates based on this chronology The calculated difference, for example for 4205 BC = ( (1495 - 745) * 5.25 + (2195 - 1495)* 92.25 + (2345 - 2195)*105.25 + (3085 - 2345)*125.25 + (4205 - 3085)*140.25 ) / 365.25 = 916

A few observations follow:

• The tables use AD 1955 as a base date, so that a conversion of "BP" (Before the Present) to AD/BC requires subtracting 1955 from the BP date. This is shown in the table above.

• I have shown the INTCAL98 table in reversed order.

• Note that for two selected dates, AD 1705 and AD 405, the error correction is plus and minus some 100 to 150 years. This type of variation is not unusual for most of the table up to about the 8th century BC.

• My calculated dates for the period during which I have postulated differences in the length of the year are mostly in agreement with the corrections of the table, until 4200 BC.

• We know of periods during which massive forest fires rages over parts of Europe. The table would account for these, so some of the variation could well be attributed to C14 variations. The table similarly shows the effects of the Industrial Revolution.

Saturn in the Precambrian

I will assume that Earth orbited about Saturn, rather than the Sun, during all of the Precambrian (3.8 billion to 560 million years ago) and through the Permian (ending 250 million years ago), after which time Earth was captured by the Sun.

It is the chronology of the Precambrian I want to discuss here. Simply stated, it looks as if both the geological changes and the biological changes occurred at 600 million to 700 million year intervals. Assuming the biological advances (increases in complexity) require the catalyst of a massive plasma contact, I'll assume that Saturn went nova at approximately 700 million year intervals. The first of these might have created the Earth in a mass expulsion 3.8 or 3.9 billion years ago (bya). A table follows. I am using dates for the Canadian Shield because it is the most studied.

Geological Dates for the Canadian Shield (dates vary somewhat for Australian and African records) age of the Earth geological biological in billion years events events ---------------- ------------- ------------- 3.8 (3.9) (mass expulsion) earliest dated rocks 3.1