Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Part 8: The Old Kingdom and the Flood of Noah.

[Table of Contents]

$Revision: 23.9 $
Contents of this chapter: [Horus on his Mountain] [The Palermo Stone] [The Pyramids of Egypt] [Barrows after 3100 BC] [Henges after 3100 BC] [The Midnight Sun] [Written Histories] [The Temple Cultures] [Something is Missing] [Developing Consciousness] [Bicameral Kingdoms] [The Flood of Noah] [A Second Strike] [Endnotes]

This chapter starts after the flood of 3147 BC. The first civilizations and the first kingdoms appear in Sumer and Egypt. Horus (Mars) makes regular visits over a period of 300 years. Humans start building pyramids when Horus fails to return. The era concludes with events resulting from electrical contacts with Venus -- the "Flood of Noah," the fall of Egypt's First Kingdom, and the demise of the Akkadian Empire.

Image: Bronze Age (ca 800 BC) petroglyph, Denmark. The 'Sun' is carried through the sky on its ship. Note the oars. The boatmen are holding celts aloft. A figure is falling in from above. The other two figures are thought to be elk or horses. The composite is based on Mars and its two satellites, but is thought by others to represent Jupiter as the Midnight Sun.

Horus on his Mountain

When the Gods leave after 3147 BC, the "Age of Kings" starts. It starts with the devastating flood which the "King List" tersely recounts as, "and then the flood swept over."

But recovery after the flood was quick -- less than two hundred years in northern Mesopotamia and much less time in Egypt -- and ushered in the seminal age of the civilizations of remote antiquity. In Mesopotamia and Egypt we see a development of agriculture, the scope of which goes beyond anything seen in the preceding centuries. Writing develops rapidly, and possibly independently, in the two regions. Work starts on larger and larger monumental structures, culminating (400 years later) in the giant pyramids of Giza. The expansion after about 3100 BC seem to be related to a sudden elaboration of certain graves -- those of selected individuals, which are generally thought of as rulers by archaeologists. The age of kingdoms has started. The graves of the first pharaohs of Egypt date from the century after the flood. Elaborate graves show up in Mesopotamia at about the same time. [note 1]

Loosened from the grip of Saturn in 3147 BC, Earth and Venus were cast off on nearly identical elliptical orbits, Earth with a year of 240 days and Venus following Saturn's old orbit with a year of somewhat more than 225 days (perhaps 230 to 240 days). In aphelion (the furthest location from the Sun) Venus extended past the orbital location of Earth, but it came closer to the Sun at perihelion (the closest location to the Sun) than the Earth did.

I originally used a date of 3114 BC as the end of the "Age of the Gods," but a more likely date is 3147 BC. The date of 3114 BC is the beginning of the current era (and the end of the previous era) as retrocalculated from the Maya Long Count chronology. The date of 3147 BC is based on the intent of the Olmecs in instituting the Long Count in 747 BC. See Chapter 15, "The Maya Calendar," for details on this.

Mars and Mercury were not released until 80 years after 3147 BC, if we can assume that the very late recollections of the Egyptians are correct. At this time Saturn had entered the first of the asteroid belt, and loosened its grip on Mars and Mercury. This late, far distant release might account for the very elliptical orbits which these two planets assumed, although almost nothing is known about the orbit of Mercury, except the inference that it swept past the Earth, and continued to do so until 686 BC.

Mercury shows up iconographically in ca 3050 BC, depicted as the sandal carrier of Horus on the Palette of Narmer. Mercury shows as a passing planet, alternating with Mars for a 300 year period after 3070 BC, or so it seems from an analysis of the first kings of Kish and the first two dynasties of Egypt (for which see Appendix A, "Notes on Chronology").

Mercury is of course Thoth, and Hermes of the Greeks. Subsequent to this time period Mercury shows up sporadically, suggesting that the second nodal point of its orbit may have rotated away from Earth's orbit, to return hundreds of years later. As Thoth he seems to assume a presence after 2350 BC (with the introduction of the cult of Osiris), and again during the second intermediate period (with the Exodus around 1492 BC), and then throughout the 7th century BC, when Mercury appears with Mars -- and the two almost universally become identified as celestial twins.

This defines an interval of about 750 years. It is the same interval as was experienced with destructive electrical contacts with Venus. If there is a relationship to be seen here it is probably that the orbit of Earth (and the other planets) precessed at a much greater rate than today.

It is perhaps easier to track the orbit of Mars, and, in fact, at a later time it is possible to make some guesses of the orbital parameters from scarce data incorporated into the calendars of Mesoamerica. Mars's orbit thus initially started much further from the Sun than today. At aphelion the orbit grazed the edge of the asteroid belt; at perihelion Mars rode over the orbit of Earth (until 747 BC. Mars first showed up close to Earth probably in ca 3070 BC (3147 BC minus 80 years). As I pointed out above, the curious thing about Mercury and Mars is that both in the period directly after 3147 BC and in the 8th and 7th century BC, they show up together. [note 2]

The evidence for the orbits of the inner planets after the event of 3147 BC consists of the fact that these orbits represent the conditions most likely to allow the series of approaches which will happen over the next few millennia. See Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics," for additional details. Year counts and dates are developed in Appendix A, "Chronology Notes."

The "King List" reads, for the first king after the flood, that "Kingship again descended from Heaven." This was likely to be the coincidental appearance of Mars close to and above the Earth ca 3070 BC. Mars would continue to 'visit' Earth at intervals averaging 30 years as long as the inclinations of the orbits of Earth and Mars were favorably aligned. Some of these 'visits' likely consisted of destructive close passes, resulting in traveling lightning strikes, hurricanes of burnt material, and severe seismic disturbances. We know these from the 8th and 7th century BC, and from sparse remarks on the early history of Egypt by Manetho. The orbital period of Mars would not have changed, and Mars, as Horus, would have crossed Earth's orbit, at times very close. Sightings of Mars when it crossed at a safe distance would occur at 1.5 year intervals (of 240 day years).

The Egyptian priesthood was suddenly vindicated in its belief in resurrection. The suddenness with which the concept of a life after death takes hold in Egypt after 3147 BC, is astounding, although is probably existed already, based on an assumed function of the southern plasmoids. Initially a further existence among the stars and planets (the home of the Gods) was limited to the pharaoh, but by the time of the first dynasty (ca 3050 BC) the privilege of participation had spread already to the elite of the court, and would eventually be extended to everyone.

Today, of course, the idea of a life after death is nearly universal among contemporary religions, with Theravada Budhism and Judaism being, for example, exceptions. The concepts had spread only slowly in Europe with the introduction of Christianity, although there were ideas about resurrection extant among the Celtic tribes at that time, but not among the Greeks and Romans.

The only tie to a more remote antiquity for these ideas would seem to be concepts derived from the parades of animals seen in the skies and recorded by the first Cromagnon in southwestern Europe, and, of course, seen and pondered upon by everyone else, and everywhere else, over the next 30,000 years. Plus, especially, the objects or beings seen traveling along the four overhead lines of electrons toward the south between 8300 and maybe 4200 BC.

Thus when, in about 3070 BC, Mars first approached Earth (nothing like that had ever been seen before), the temple priests of Egypt recognized what was happening. Jupiter and his green colored mantle, a plasma outpouring from its south pole, had been understood to be the mummified Osiris (Osiris is almost always depicted as colored green), and had been seen receding into the night sky. The mountainous lower coma of Jupiter had initially appeared in 3147 BC, but disappeared in about 2940 BC, when Jupiter entered the asteroid belt.

In about 3070 BC, Horus (Mars) first appeared from some location in the ecliptic of the south sky, looming larger and larger until it was obvious that it would reach the Earth's orbit. Horus was understood to be the resurrected Osiris, or (more logically) the son of Isis by Osiris, even though Osiric had been dead for some time. But he had been seen, after 3147 with an erect penis projecting through his mummy wrappings. He is depicted as such in statuary of the delta region as the God Min. When the worship of Osiris takes hold after the fifth dynasty, Osiris is also shown as a standing mummy and ithyphallic. [note 3]

Mars would have seemed to slow, since both planets were at that point about the same distance from the Sun and traveling at nearly the same speed. As Mars reached closer to Earth, standing above the Earth (toward the north), a plasma stream connected the two planets. Earth held the surplus charge, since it is a much larger globe, and it was Earth which now bolted Mars. Because Mars is much smaller than Earth (Mars is half the diameter of Earth, and is 1/10 the volume of Earth), the stream of plasma would have looked like a triangular mountain, leaving the Earth's ionosphere and converging to a much smaller truncated cone on reaching the southern half of Mars.

This was the sacred mountain so frequently referenced in ancient literature. Differing from the earlier plasma stream 'mountain' of Saturn, which had been seen in the northwest and on which was planted the 'tree to heaven,' the mountain of Mars was seen in the north, describing a circumpolar path, and was peaked or shaped as a truncated cone, not bell shaped. Over the course of the ten visits, the plasma stream arriving at Mars may have pockmarked the entire southern hemisphere of Mars with electrical burns, although the cratering of the lower surface of Mars may have been mostly accomplished well before 3147 BC, when Mars was located in the plasma stream between Saturn and Earth.

The mountainous lower coma of Jupiter, which probably lasted to about 2940 BC, might also qualify as a "sacred mountain," except that it was apparently not understood in this manner because it did not last. The concept of the sacred mountain would be transferred to Jupiter, as 'Re,' after the start of the Egyptian Fifth dynasty, ca 2600 BC (when Jupiter exited the asteroid belt and the mountain form returned). But the phrasing "coming to sit on his mountain" would seem to have reference only to the periodic approaches of Mars/Horus.

The cone of plasma in glow mode would be much steeper than it appeared to be as viewed from Earth, for the image would be severely foreshortened. In Appendix B, "Celestial Mechanics," I suggest that during the time of the "Age of the Gods," Mars came no closer than about 70,000 miles. After the "Age of the Gods" Mars would have a an unbalance of negative charge (because it came in from the region of the asteroid belt).

The mountain form of plasma did not start to glow at the horizon, but more likely some hundreds of miles above the ionosphere (which is located about 200 to 600 miles above the surface of the Earth). In Egypt, at 30 degrees latitude, the cone would appear as a squat mountain with sharp edges (where the plasma might have been backlighted by the Sun), and thus approaching the look of the typical later pyramids whose sides rise at an angle of near 60 degrees from the horizontal and are constructed in rectangular shapes. When backlighted by the Sun, the cone might easily have passed for a pyramidical structure. In the absence of pyramids, or any multi-story temples, it would be called a mountain. [note 4]

Mars might show up anywhere above and near Earth over the next 300 years and the effect would be nearly the same. During the visitations, Mars would sit above the Earth for a period on the conically shaped 'mountain' of plasma streaming from the Earth's ionosphere. The rotation of the Earth would make it look as if Mars rose and set, that is, moving from the east horizon and downward at the west horizon. The movement from the east to the west on a daily basis (perhaps lasting only a few days) would continue at night as the cone was lighted by the Sun from the daylight side of Earth. Temples were no longer oriented northwest to the apparent strike points of the arc of the previous era, but were aligned to the true geographic north, the center point of the traveling mountain of Horus. [note 5]

The plasma connection explains the strangely worded Egyptian appellation of Horus, "rising on your mountain" -- when there were no mountains to be seen from Egypt. This truly was Horus, as the resurrected Osiris, coming to sit on his Earthly throne and rule Egypt. The tale of Osiris, resurrected as Horus, will stand for more than 3000 years, but is only incorporated into Egyptian religious practice after the "flood of Noah" of 2349 BC. By the time of the first pyramid texts (after 2349 BC), which quote from what will eventually be known as the "Book of the Dead," the spells and prayers which invoke Osiris and Horus were already 700 years old and firmly established (with some dating to much earlier times). They change very little over the next 2500 years. Except for the very few pre-dynastic kings and one of the pharaohs of the second dynasty, all the kings or pharaohs have 'Horus names.' [note 6]

It can be assumed that Mars returned with some regularity, since the visits depended only on the regularity of planetary orbits and the precession of Mars' and Earth's elliptical orbits. The positioning of Mars over the Earth might last a few days, but the visits which came close enough to induce the plasma contact occured only at about thirty year intervals. [note 7]

I would suggest that these infrequent 'visits,' at thirty year intervals, were caused by the fact that the orbit of Mars came to within the orbit of Earth. Because Earth and Mars traveled on different orbits, both planets would only be in the same location at long intervals.

As Mars then approached Earth it would be gravitationally attracted. Since the mass of Mars is only 1/10th of the mass of Earth, it would be Mars that was moved significantly (and thus changing its orbit slightly). Earth would not relocate by any significant amount.

Approaching closer, the Earth's plasmasphere would contact and merge with Mars' plasmasphere (or its surface), producing a stream of plasma from Earth to Mars, and resulting additionally in a sudden (but temporary) electrical repulsive force, which would move Mars away from Earth (thus changing its orbit again), and breaking the plasmasphere connection as Mars gained some distance from Earth. The previous sequence might then repeat before Mars, moving faster than Earth, would pull away and the remaining gravitational attraction would reduce to an insignificant amount. [note 8]

Mars would be moved in its orbit much more than the Earth was. The forces would have been of sporadic values, since each gravitational attraction would be followed by an electrical repulsive impulse, followed by a repetition, but never operating from the exact same distance between the two planets during the repeated visits. However, Patten and Windsor suggest that, for the era directly before 747 BC, there would be two crossings by Mars of the earth's orbit, with the second crossing likely correcting for each change in the orbit of the first crossing. There is no reason to suggest that this might not also be applicable in this era.

Changes in the orbit or the period of Mars can be seen in the variation of the number of years between close approaches, as shown by the fact that the reigns of kings in Mesopotamia (at Kish) and Egypt (the first two dynasties) last for periods which only average 30 years, but are as short as 24 years and as long as 36 years. (The reign lengths are, at any rate, much too long to make sense for human kings.) The ten patriarchs of the Bible born after Noah (from Shem through Abraham) were each sired when their father was 29, 30, 32, or 35 years old.

The 'visits' by Horus, as seen from Earth, were thus seen as an approach of Mars, followed by a seating on the plasma mountain, a circumambulation of the Earth (visually caused by the Earth's rotation), during which Mars would be seen racing around the Earth, after which Mars heading for the deep reaches of space. [note 9]

It seems that the 'Sed festival,' which required the pharaoh to race along a course and to be twice recrowned as king, might have been suggested by this behaviour of Mars. Predynastic ceremonial objects, dated to before 3000 BC, already suggest the Sed festival. (Which consequently strongly suggests an older tradition, see following endnote.) The engraved images are recognized today because the iconography remained the same for the next 3000 years. By the third dynasty, ca 2639 BC, separate buildings and plazas were constructed for this purpose as part of the pharaoh's funeral temple, so the festival could also be performed after death. [note 10]

"One of the most important elements in the heb-sed [Sed festival] was a re-enactment of the coronation. In this ceremony a procession led by a priest would enter those of the chapels surrounding the heb-sed court in which were gathered the gods of the nomes of Upper Egypt. Having obtained from each god consent to renew his kingship, the king would be conducted to the more southern of the two thrones, placed on a dais beneath a canopy, in order to be crowned with the white crown of Upper Egypt."

"A similar ceremony would be repeated in the chapels of the gods of the Lower Egyptian nomes before the king ascended the northern throne to receive the red crown of Lower Egypt. The unification of the two kingdoms would be symbolized at a later stage by lacing lotus (or lily) and papyrus flowers around a stake driven in the ground."

"The significance of another ceremony in the heb-sed is not so apparent. The king, carrying a flail, would run a fixed course, accompanied by 'the priests of the souls of the Nekhen'."

-- I.E.S. Edwards "The Pyramids of Egypt" (1972).

The 'nomes' are the separate districts of Egypt, some 20 of them in Upper Egypt and an equal number in Lower Egypt, each with their own Gods, temples, and temple administration. The 'nekhen' are the previously deceased pharaohs. Notice the double enthroning, or as Edwards calls them, "coronations." I suspect the course was run between the coronations. As always, the ceremonies of the humans were those first performed by the Gods.

The previous kings -- the Nekhen -- were also Gods. They were known, into the 5th dynasty, as "the followers of Horus." More on this below.

Egyptian records (the Turin Papyrus, and the writings of Manetho) give Horus a total life span of 300 years, which would mean that Horus would have returned 10 times between 3070 and 2770 BC, if a 30 year interval held for all of that time period. The Sumerian list of the "Kings after the Flood" adds up to 300 years and includes 20 'long-lived' kings up to about 2700 BC. But, counted in sets of two, these reduce to some 10 distinct pairings of periodic crossings of earth's orbit or close approaches by entities in the sky, which average to 30 years, but vary by 4 to 5 years in both directions. My suspicion is that the other deity whose appearances was being recorded by the Sumerians was Mercury. [note 11]

The Palermo Stone

The orbital period of Mars as seen from Earth (its synodic period), was 360 days. I have developed this in a later chapter, "the Maya Calendar." The Olmecs, prededessors to the Maya, apparently kept track of the regular return of Mars to the same location in the sky, and codified this into their calendar. Mars would have shown up near Earth every year and a half (years of 240 days). This implies a different orbit for Mars that today, although even today Earth passes by Mars every two years. But in the period directly after 3147 BC, Earth was on considerably smaller orbit, and Mars on a larger orbit than today (and on a much more elliptical orbit) extending to the region of the asteroid belt.

Since Mars is about twice the diameter of the Moon, to appear the same size as the full Moon, Mars would have to approach within 500,000 miles of the Earth -- 250,000 miles beyond the Moon. To appear as twice the size of the full Moon, Mars would have to approach to within 125,000 miles of the Earth. Mars would show as a red disk in the south sky at night. At this distance Mars would be within the plasmasphere of Earth, and the 'mountain' would have formed. After Earth passed Mars, Mars would have disappeared from view for part of the next two years. A similar display would have happened when Mars periodically approached closer to the Earth's orbit and sat on his mountain seat.

Image: Palermo Stone, partial record of King Den of the first dynasty, ca 2950 BC. The text reads from right to left; each block is introduced with a 'year glyph,' the curved line at the right edge of each year's record. The lower register records the height of the Nile at flood time. A few hieroglyphs stand for whole words; the rest represent sounds. (1) Striking the bedouin. (2) Appearance of the power (king) of Upper and Lower Egypt; Sed festival. (3) Counting of the people (of the four directions). (4) Second feast of Djet. (5) Plan of a temple called "Thrones of the Gods," feast of Sokar.

The Palermo Stone records the yearly appearances and visits of Mars. The Palermo Stone is a carved basalt block from the Fifth Dynasty (ca 2550 BC) of the Old Kingdom, unfortunately shattered and badly worn, and reduced to seven small fragments. The Palermo Stone records the Gods, the "Followers of Horus," and the pharaohs of the first five dynasties, in that order. For each of the pharaohs (on the fragments we posses) there is a catalog of years, with each year named after an important event, for example, "The Year of the Cattle Count."

There are some six distinct events which are recorded repeatedly on the fragments we have -- plus military excursions into the region adjacent to the delta, the acquisition of desirable materials like honey or lumber, the building of ships, plans for new temples, and other mundane activities. The frequently recorded events (for which years are named) are..

• "The Appearance of the King of Upper Egypt"
• "The Appearance of the King of Lower Egypt"
• "The Followers of Horus"
• "Union of the Two Lands" followed by
  "The Circumambulation of the Wall"
• "The Counting of Cattle"

The "Counting of Cattle" at later dates is often recorded as "The 'nth' Counting of Cattle." The height of the Nile at flood time was also recorded for each year.

The year-names listed above should actually be translated somewhat differently, for archaeologists have rendered the original phrasing into terms more familiar to us. "The Appearance of the King of Upper Egypt" should read as "The Appearance of the King of the Upper Land" or even as "The Appearance of the Power of the Upper Land." The Egyptians called their country "The Land;" the Greeks called it "Egypt."

The "appearances" of the King of the Upper Land or the Lower Land happen regularly every two years, although not always at exactly two year intervals. At times we read of both events happening in the same year. Interspersed at two year intervals is the year-name "The Followers of Horus."

What exactly are these events? Archaeologists have suggested that the "appearances" were visitations of the pharaoh to the delta (Lower Egypt) and up-river (Upper Egypt), perhaps as celebrations or as gift giving opportunities. That is, "appearances" were made by the pharaoh to the two separate sections of the country. The pharaoh otherwise resided at Memphis, the city at the apex of the delta, and thus exactly between Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. Memphis had been founded by the first king of the First Dynasty. Memphis controlled traffic between Lower and Upper Egypt, and in effect constituted the 'unification' of Egypt.

Similarly the "Union of the Two Lands" was thought to be a celebration of peace (after another rebellion had been squashed), done with a walk (some original texts are translated to "race") around the outer walls of Memphis. Memphis had massive walls in antiquity to keep the Nile from flooding the city. Memphis was known as "White Walls."

The "Union of the Two Lands" with the "Circumambulation of the Wall" is always shown as the first year-label for a pharaoh. It might be suggested that the "circumambulation" is the Sed festival. It might also be suggested (and I suspect this) that the pharaoh was replaced when Mars again showed up near Earth.

Image: A cattle count of large and small animals, and other activities. Scene from the Narmer Macehead, ca 3050 BC.

A scene depicted on the Narmer Macehead (ca 3050 BC), shows Narmer's name tag on the upper left. On the top right is a depiction of the temple at Buto in the delta. Three running figures between triple lunates are suggested as representing a Sed Festival. The lunates are boundary markers.

Poles carried by four figures at the top are supposedly the standards of four of the nomes of Lower Egypt (actually, there are 20 nomes in the Delta region). From other sources these are thought to be the "Followers of Horus" instead, but they might more likely represent the four plasma plumes of the cardinal directions, discussed under "Horus the Hawk" in Chapter 6, "Creation and the Polar Sun." Two of the four standards carried before the pharaoh on the "Palette of Narmer" depict the hawk of the east and the hawk of the west. The third standard is a stomach shape (Sumerian "Lugal," "king"). I think this standard signified 'the south,' the original southern ball plasmoid, just as the fourth standard, a jackal on a plow, signified 'the north,' showing the constellation Ursa Minor.

Animal counts are shown at the bottom. The seated figure with his arms up in the air denotes a 'million.' The "The Cattle Count" has drawn archaeologists' remarks to the effect that this must have been a complete fiction, based on the actual numbers listed on some predynastic objects, like the macehead described above, showing, for example, 400,000 cattle, 1,422,000 goats, and 120,000 bound captives. One million eight hundred and twenty two thousand herd animals exceeds what the population of Egypt, estimated at well under a million people at this time (probably 500,000 to 800,000), could have managed or supported. One hundred and twenty thousand captives would have represents twenty percent of the estimated population of Egypt. The rounded numbers of the count also suggest estimates rather than actual counts. But I think we are not dealing with animals and captives here.

Lastly (on the Palermo Stone) we have the "Followers of Horus." Most texts simply avoid mention of the "Followers of Horus" for no one can even imagine what that year-name could mean.

Image: Mars and Earth on intersecting orbits with four or five follower asteroids in the same orbit as Mars. Six still exist today. The debris in the wake of Mars may represent the cattle.

What I suggest is that these entries record celestial displays of close passages of Mars. However, it is not the Mars we know today, but rather an assembly consisting of the planet Mars and other objects. I suggest that Mars was followed (and probably preceded) by a huge cloud of debris consisting of millions of rock fragments of asteroids, and followed, probably at a somewhat greater distance, by a number of larger asteroids. [note 13]

Later descriptions in the 8th century BC suggest that Mars was still accompanied by hundreds or thousands of asteroid-like bodies. We have only limited clues that these existed, and no indication of the number, the sizes, or the exact location with respect to the planet. And, located some distance away along the orbit of Mars, there followed some four or five larger asteroids. [note 14]

Gary Gilligan, in "An Ancient World in Chaos" (2008), demonstrates that with very few exceptions, the hundreds of battles that Egypt fought over a 3000 year period, always led by the Pharaoh and always won by the Egyptians, never happened on Earth, but were observed to have happen in the skies. He points out the complete lack of archaeological evidence for any battles. For example, at the Battle of Kadesh in ca 1287 BC, probably the most famous battle of antiquity, 20,000 Egyptians engaged 40,000 Hittites. Yet not one bone or war artifact has been found despite the inscriptions by Ramesses II telling of tens of thousands of dead soldiers (nor, for that matter, has Kadesh been found).

Similarly at Megiddo, where some 34 battles were supposedly fought, including 18 by Tuthmose III (1479 -- 1425 BC). "Yet," Gilligan writes, "no corroboratory archaeological evidence exists." The battles were fought entirely above the Earth. [note 16]

"To put this into some kind of context, Megiddo is a location where hundreds of thousands of soldiers engaged in numerous battles over a period of 3,000 years -- i.e. thousands of chariots, battle axes, spears, bows and arrows, the carnage, dead soldiers, etc, etc, and yet no archaeological evidence remains to corroborate them as ever taking place -- nothing. We have an abundance of written documentation but -- NO CRIME SCENE! This despite the fact that archaeologists have been digging there for decades."

-- Gary Gilligan [http://www.gks.uk.com]

When Mars and the asteroid swarm neared Earth, a parade of objects would move from west to east past Earth, but seen daily or nightly as moving east to west -- first the dead prisoners, followed by the cattle, large and small, then the Followers of Horus, and finally Horus himself, followed by his sandle-carrier, Mercury. This is the order depicted on the top register of the Palette of Narmer of ca 3050 BC (the cattle are not shown). If any action by the Gods would suggest processions to humans, it would have been this parade. The parade of animals (along with forms of the Followers of Horus) had been recorded before in Egypt, before the first kings, on cosmetic palettes, knife handles, and combs. [note 17]

Image: The Narmer Palette of 3050 BC, Egypt. This is a dedicatory cosmetic palette found buried beneath the floor of the temple of the Falcon at Heirakonpolis (Nekhen) in Upper Egypt. The front side is shown on the left. This was at one time thought to represent the unification of predynastic Egypt, since the pharaoh wears the Red Crown of the Lower Egypt on the obverse and the White Crown of the Upper Egypt on the reverse.

I became aware of Mercury while sorting out the details of the Maya "Chilam Balam," where it looked as if Mercury showed up near Earth at the same time as Mars in the 8th and 7th century BC. In the "Chilam Balam" Mercury is recorded as appearing 9 times during the period when Mars also showed 9 times, as indicated by the name prefix 'Bolon.' At the time I was doing an analysis of the "Chilam Balam" I had already surmised that Mercury would have been one of two planets seen close to Earth in the earlier period of 3000 to 2700 BC (the other being Mars, of course).

Of course we can't be certain about any of this, but it seems reasonable that Mars was not only accompanied by asteroids after 3070 BC, but this was still so in 800 -700 BC. The suggestion comes from predynastic Egyptian palettes and engraved objects, the record of the Palermo Stone, and from later descriptions of Mars, even though these date to after 800 BC -- 2000 years later. Immanuel Velikovsky, in "Worlds in Collision" (1950), collected many Vedic and Biblical recollections of the companions of Mars in the 8th century BC -- the "Maruts" of India, the "hosts of the Lord" of the Bible.

This Horus (Mars) is listed in the geneology of the Gods as the second Horus. The first Horus (also Mars, but before 3147 BC) is known as "Horus of the Gods." Mars would have been recognized at close quarters by its pockmarked lower surface and smooth upper half (the 5000 mile scar came much later), and certainly by its red face.

The cratered surface of Mars, which extends across the lower half and crosses its equator at an angle, may have been the model for the distinctive dress of priests, shamans, and kings in Asia, Egypt, Africa, and Mesoamerica. The wearing of spotted leopard or jaguar skins -- over the shoulder -- is certainly a feature of later history. Hercules of Greek mythology wore a lion's skin. The "distinctive dress" of the pharaohs depicted on predynastic ceremonial mace heads may represent animal skins worn over the shoulder, as does the pharaoh depicted in the Sed Festival sculpture at Djoser's pyramid complex, built in 2650 BC, and thus 100 years after Mars had last come close. At later dates in Egypt, however, only priests wore leopard skins. The African leopard was all but driven to extinction in antiquity

What is also suggestive of the imitation of Mars is the 'flail' carried by the pharaoh in running the course of the Sed Festival. Archaeologists call the hand-held object a 'flail' because that is what it looks like on close inspection. Why this needed to be carried while running is completely unknown.

But it seems possible that what we are seeing here is a representation of the two tiny satellites which circle Mars at very close distances -- but in plasma discharges, and, typically for plasma, with wildly flailing forms as they move throught the disturbing overlapping electrical fields of Earth and Mars. Much later descriptions of the satellites of Mars (from Egypt, India, Greece, the Americas) make them out to be snakes and scorpions, spears and spear throwers, feathered staffs, as well as chariot wheels (but this last was recorded 1500 years later, when chariots had been invented). There is a problem with this, however. There is only one flail. [note 18]

If Mars was released when Saturn had already entered the asteroid belt, as I have assumed, it probably could have swept innumerable asteroids with it into the new orbit around the Sun. Jupiter seems to have done this also, for there are thousands of asteroids in Jupiter's orbit, now displaced about 60 degrees in front of and behind Jupiter. The dispersal away from the proximity of Jupiter must have happened within the last 5000 years. These asteroids are known as the 'Greeks' and the 'Trojans.' The first 'Trojan' asteroid of Mars was discovered in 1994. Six are known today. [note 19]

It is unlikely that all the companion asteroids of Mars would have relocated to the same 60 degree nodal points of the orbit of Mars during the first 300 years. In fact, from the records of the near passes of Mars some 2000 years later (in the 8th century BC), it seems that at least some of the 'cattle' of Mars still remained close to the planet at that time. During the predynastic times of Egypt (and perhaps during the first and second dynasty) the count, as mentioned above, ran into numbers over a million.

The "Followers of Horus" are probably larger asteroids, the Trojans located 60 degrees away from Mars along its orbit. And it is possible that they are represented by the standards shown carried in the predynastic Palette of Narmer and the Macehead of Narmer. One later depiction adds one additional standard. N. B. Millett wrote in 1990, comparing predynastic macehead to much later fifth dynasty (after 2500 BC) inscriptions..

"From the fragments of a similar scene from the Abu Gurab sun-temple we know that the four standards [together] represent 'the followers of Horus, the gods, the souls [of the city of] Pe [Buto],' that is to say, the ancestral kings of Lower Egypt.

-- N. B. Millett, "The Narmer Macehead and Related Objects" Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt (1990). [note 20]

The heroics of Mars are recorded as the ten labors of Hercules by the Greeks, although reduced to narratives only after 600 BC. But in their origins these adventures certainly reflect the ten visits between 3070 and 2700 BC. Hercules is almost always herding cattle, stealing herds of cattle, retrieving stolen cattle or horses, or gathering armies to attack some region of Greece. Similar travel tales exist in India (Indra), and Mesopotamia (Inke and Gilgamesh). The travels of Mars become the literary model for the quest sagas of later ages. The dramatic travels of Hercules were repeated with the nine close contacts by Mars in the 8th and 7th century BC. It is probably these last appearances which form the core of the tales of Hercules dating from late antiquity. [note 21]

Whatever happened in the skies was duplicated on Earth. However, even after the celestial events no longer occurred (by around 2700 BC), the ceremonies continue on Earth. This makes it difficult to separate the celestial events from the ceremonies instituted by the priesthood and the pharaohs. In the meantime, Egypt had probably instituted earthly cattle counts, which start to appear every other year by the fourth or fifth dynasty. The Sed Ceremony remains celebrated at odd intervals far into the future.

The "Upper Land" becomes equated with the Nile river valley south of the delta (up river), just as the "Lower Land" becomes the land of the Nile delta. This reflects the flow of the river Nile. But another location of the "Upper Land" is revealed in a striking statement for year 2 of the Palmero Stone record for the pharaoh Djoser of the third dynasty (2667 to 2648 BC), which reads, "Passing of the Upper Egypt King by the two Pillars." The King of Upper Egypt (the Upper Land) is Mars on its orbit on the ecliptic at a time of year when the ecliptic dipped below the upper edges of the Absu. The pillars which are passed by the King of the Upper Land are the sides of the gates to the otherworld seen at night in the south, the left and right edges of the shadow of Earth cast upon the Absu -- at the time of the equinox.

Image: Rotation of the orbit of Earth and Mars after 2700 BC due to precession of the second nodal point.

Certainly by ca 2700 BC, it is over. Mars no longer visits Earth. This was perhaps predictable, since the orbit of Mars would have been adjusted with each repeated approach to Earth, so that the two planets would not remain in sync. Just as likely is that the normal precession of the orbits of Mars and Earth caused them to diverge from each other so that the inclination of the two orbits was no longer coincident. The precession of an orbit is the slow rotation of the second node of an elliptical orbit around the Sun.

Orbits are ellipses, and have two centerpoints, called nodes. One node of an orbit is always located at the Sun. The second node of an elliptical orbit is located away from the Sun, and slowly relocates in a circle around the Sun. That's orbital precession. Today the precession of the Earth's second node takes 40,000 years to revolve once around the Sun, so that the orbit today moves only a half minute of a degree per year. With both the Earth and Mars on considerably more elliptical orbits 5000 years ago, precession would have been greater than today.

The Pyramids of Egypt

After 2770 BC, when Mars no longer comes close to Earth, humans start attempts to induce the return of the God. The graves of the pharaohs change from mastabas to pyramids in the likeness of Horus' mountain. The first step pyramid is built by Djoser (3rd dynasty, ca 2667 -- 2648 BC) at Saqqara. The pyramid is surrounded by an astoundingly beautiful and complex set of out-buildings and courts. Half of the buildings are fake or present only façades, a good indication of the status of intent -- rather than action -- in the theology of Egypt at that time.

The pyramid of Djoser is totally different from the earlier mastabas. Djoser's pyramid is aligned north-south, facing the center of the travels of Mars/Horus about the north pole of Earth after 3070 BC, unlike the earlier mastabas which were aligned to the northwest -- the strike point of the plasma stream from Saturn before 3147 BC.

I should also note that this building is not an imitation of the mountain form of Jupiter (which at any rate was much steeper), for Jupiter is at this time in the asteroid belt (for a period of about 350 years, ca 2938 BC to 2589 BC), and the giant outpouring at the bottom has been replaced with a horizontal plasma -- the bottom line of the 'shen' symbol of later eras.

Image: Pyramid of Djoser, ca 2655 BC.

Two or three additional step pyramids are constructed before Seneferu (4th dynasty, ca 2613 -- 2589 BC) builds the first true pyramids, one at Meidum and two at Dahshur. The three Seneferu pyramids together exceed the immediately following pyramids of Giza in size.

Seneferu's direct successors build the three pyramids at the plateau of Giza (between ca 2590 and 2500 BC). This was the largest construction projects ever undertaken in the world, and reflect the extraordinary efforts by the pharaohs to restore previous conditions. The Giza pyramids have fascinated visitors for over 4500 years. The location at the apex of the Nile delta, the surrounding level plateau raised above the countryside with the river sliding past below, and the rectilinear placement of the three pyramids, together are a major design feat. The location and design speak of uncommon power and majesty, reiterated by the sheer size of the structures.

The Giza pyramids are cenotaphs, that is, empty 'fake' graves, and it is absolutely amazing to consider the astounding amount of effort which went into graves which were meant to remain empty from the first moment of their design. We need to look for a significance beyond the simple political pressure to have separate graves for the pharaohs in Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. [note 22]

The size of the three Giza pyramids and their relationship to each other have caused no end of speculation. Newton awaited measurements of the base of the main pyramid before publication of his theory of gravity -- on the assumption that the base would be a significant fraction of the Earth's diameter. This was based on a belief in 'the wisdom of the ancients,' still current in the 17th century AD. A contemporary theory equates the three pyramids with the three stars in the belt of Orion. Aside from the fact that Orion has no relationship to anything in Egypt, they do not correspond in placement. A more reasonable recent suggestion has been that they represent (in order) the planets Earth, Venus, and Mars. This was then 'proven' with inscribed circles, sight lines, and various geometrical manipulations. [note 23]

I think that the pyramids most likely represent, in order from north to south, the graves of Ra (or Re), Osiris, and Horus. That is, the planet Saturn (Ra) as originally seen as the creator God -- the egg -- at the north pole, Saturn as Osiris the son of Ra seen as the blazing globe which had sprung from the egg, and Mars as Horus, the reincarnated Osiris. Isis was not represented with a grave, for the planet Venus still stood in the skies at that time. The first two pyramids were faced in brilliant white limestone. The third pyramid is smaller and has the lower half faced in unpolished red granite -- all three appropriate for Saturn as Ra, Saturn as Osiris, and the red planet Mars as Horus, even to the point of duplicating the roughly cratered southern hemisphere of Mars. [note 24]

These pyramids are religious concepts about the death of the Gods expressed visually and brought within the provisional reponsibility of mankind. Egypt was providing the graves for the dead Gods.

The pyramids are staggered because each had to face north. The second pyramid is smaller than the first, but sits on a rise in the plateau, making it nearly the same height as the first, appropriate for Osiris as the son of Ra. The third pyramid is considerably smaller. This is the new youth, Horus, as the resurrected Osiris. The addition of a gold plated cap to the first pyramid, which archaeologists presumed existed, would likewise be befitting to the earlier fiery condition of Ra after Saturn went nova.

The whole of the elaborate grand passage rising within the first pyramid, rising at a slope of 26 degrees, and never duplicated in any other pyramid, represents the plasma stream connection, with the multiple roofs above the "King's Chamber" reproducing Saturn and the upper rings surrounding it. I cannot place the symbolism of the uncompleted "Queen's Chamber" although it might have been intended for Mars (or Mercury) in its earlier location below Saturn, although it is inexplicable how "below" could be visually differentiated. [note 25]

Thus all the construction at the Giza plateau comes together in the final product, based on an initial grand design, and not as three pharaohs competing for national resources and building progressively smaller pyramids as the original impetus faded over the course of 80 years. [note 26]

Colin Reader has suggested that the construction of the three Giza pyramids show a design which encompasses all three pyramids from the very start.

"Under the conventional chronological scheme 'Khafre's causeway' [leading to the second pyramid to be constructed] did not exist at the time of Khufu's [Cheops] quarrying [for the first pyramid]. If this had been the case, why was the extent of the quarrying limited by a feature (i.e. the causeway) which was only conceived in Khafre's reign? The conventional sequence of development requires us to accept that Khufu's workmen went to the trouble of opening up a second quarry, leaving an intact limestone ridge -- which we now know as Khafre's causeway -- between the two quarries. Why did they not simply extend the northern quarry southwards by removing the linear body of limestone which, at the time, served no apparent purpose?"

"The positioning of the two quarries clearly suggests that, like the excavation of the Sphinx and the construction of the Sphinx Temple, the alignment of 'Khafre's causeway' was established some time before Khufu's work at Giza. Under this revised sequence of development, interpretation of the spatial relationship between the causeway and Khufu's quarries becomes quite straightforward, with the existing causeway limiting the extent of the later quarrying work."

-- Colin Reader, "Giza Before the Fourth Dynasty" JACF (2002)

This may be the only hint at a complete plan, outside of the final results. The Giza pyramids are the only grouping of graves in Egypt with a unitary design. [note 27]

The significance of the giant Giza pyramids is easy to understand. The Gods of old now lie in state in Egypt at the apex of the Nile delta, the very entrance to Upper Egypt. Egypt had become the home of the Gods. This should not be seen as a symbolic representation. These structures were intended as the actual graves for the actual Gods. Nothing less could be so important. [note 28]

The pharaohs after Khufu added 'Re' to their names. At that time Re was Jupiter blazing as the midnight sun. Jupiter had exited from the asteroid belt in ca 2595 BC and again stood in the night skies with a coma three times the size of the Moon and a gigantic plasma mountain. It had happened shortly before Khufu took the throne. All subsequent pharaohs use 'Re' as part of their name also. This may have been understood as a religious crisis for Egypt. But as likely it would look like Re was giving his blessing to the construction efforts.

South of Giza are the three earlier attempts at giant pyramids at Meidum and Dahshur (60 and 30 miles south of Giza). These were started in 2600 BC by Seneferu, and in aggregate exceed the Giza pyramids in size. It is interesting that here we also have three pyramids -- all constructed by a single pharaoh, the father of Khufu. These are the first true pyramids (as opposed to two earlier step pyramids) and all three look like experiments in building techniques culminating in a final design at Giza. Like at Giza, the Seneferu pyramids also represent two large and one smaller pyramid. The supporting ground surface at Meidum and the construction methods and materials caused major faults and the partial collapse of one. They certainly do not match the majesty of the group at Giza. [note 29]

The start of pyramids after 2600 BC in Egypt is duplicated elsewhere in the world -- in China (undated), in the Andes on the Peruvian coast (2630 BC), and in Mesopotamia as high ziggurats (2600 BC or later).

"Silbury hill rises out of the landscape south and in view of Avebury henge. The hill has no content except a small dedicatory offering at the center at the bottom."

Silbury Hill near Avebury in England is interesting. It is the largest man-made hill of antiquity -- composed entirely of chalk with a sod covering, and without monuments or burials. It is 120 feet high, 520 feet at the base and surrounded with a ditch 20 feet deep. It looks like a somewhat later effort at inducing the return of Mars. Silbury hill was started in 2750 BC (the initial mound), with the third phase of construction completed in 2500 BC. (I have another starting date of 2660 BC.)

Expectations of the return of the Gods last for thousands of years. The much later 300 foot-high temple of Marduk at Babylon (built prior to 1800 BC, expanded in ca 700 BC, rebuilt in 680 BC) was called "Etemenanki" which transliterates as "The Temple [House] of the Receiving Platform between Heaven and Earth" (Jaynes). The living quarters of the God had been replaced with a landing pad.

A constant in all the construction (especially later in Mesoamerica) is the need to periodically enlarge existing monuments or build new ones, like Horus had rebuilt his mountain 10 times, and to be always ready for the next coming of the God, who never again appeared after ca 2700 BC.

Barrows after 3100 BC

After about 3000 BC the barrows and henges of Western Europe seem to take on a new meaning among the coastal tribes of Brittany, England, and Ireland. The barrows and henges start proliferating, with concentrations in Brittany and England completely out of proportion to any need for interments or meeting places. As an extreme example, there are single village locations in Brittany with hundreds of barrows.

As I have pointed out before, it may be an error to call these constructions 'grave barrows.' None of the early examples seem to have had anything to do with the dead. Only after 3000 BC are some converted to ossuaries. Even most of the late barrows are seldom used for interments.

The barrows, especially, are associated with a people who are thought to be newcomers to the region, as is demonstrated by new forms of pottery and tools which show up. The coastal lands had been scoured clear of life with the flood of 3147 BC, but repopulated within the next hundred years. The extant barrows, henges, and causeways must have been an amazing sight. These gigantic structures, some of which had already been in place for thousands of years, would certainly have represented an ancient order of power to the new tribes who had recently migrated into the region. I suspect that new constructions soon became the expression of status and power among individual clans.

Certainly the repeated overflights by Mars after 3000 BC must have been reason enough to reactivate the monuments which had stood idle for over a hundred years and to build new ones. And perhaps the regular visits of Mars were also seen as conferring authority on the local clan chiefs, similar to what occured in Mesopotamia and Egypt during this period.

What we are seeing after 3000 BC is the ability of leaders and chiefs to muster greater resources to accomplish the additional new constructions. This might be the result of an increase in population density due to a more settled way of life based on farming rather than hunting.

Seen as part of the aggrandizement of individual clans and their leaders, the profusion of these later barrows is more easily explained, even if there were also overt religious purposes. This would explain the later fake burrows which have a doorway but no interior. There was a shifting in alignments also, from a west-north-west direction (the earlier orientations to the strike point of the plasma) to a north-south direction (the center of the movements of Mars on his visits, and the center of the rotating sky).

Even into the first millennium AD, people were still transporting and setting up single standing rocks -- for forgotten commemorative purposes -- which adds to the confusion.

I would not suggest such mundane motives for these constructions were it not for the documented experience at Easter Island. Easter Islanders did not stop carving the 800 giant statues of their ancestors until they had cut down the last tree needed to move the statues. Nearly 400 were never completed or placed as a result. In Easter Island the 'form' remained fixed, like the form of the barrows and henges. [note 30]

There are many other examples of this type of repetitive construction. The Yucatan Maya stelae come to mind, as do the temple pyramids which start to appear in Mesoamerican villages with great frequency. Other examples are the mounds of the Ohio Hopewell culture and the gothic cathedral craze of 12th century Western Europe.

In some of these examples, the evidence for religious motivation is more obvious. Henry Adams attributes the construction of the gothic cathedrals to a desperate longing for hope in the face of a repressive religious atmosphere. Religious motives, like the guarantee of a leader's intercession with the Gods, were very likely the reason behind any of these obsessive constructions of the past which became region-wide cult practices. If religiously based, the design for the construction would have been mandated by sacred forms, which would have remained inviolate even if their original purposes were forgotten. The empty barrows and the passage graves, where the side rooms are no longer in pairs, both seem to be examples where the form has been retained after the original vision had been lost. [note 31]

Religious motivation most certainly underlies the building of barrows also. These late barrows were constructed during the 300 year period when Mars (Horus of the Egyptians) regularly overflew the Earth. Mars would have shook the northern hemisphere with earthquakes and whipped the coastal lands with hurricanes and high tides. It is possible that the Celts of this time period considered the barrows as a means of transport to the land -- paradise -- which had stood in the sky overhead only a few hundred years earlier. But it could also be suggested that perhaps the barrows were meant as shelters from the capricious God. [note 32]

Henges after 3000 BC

New henges were built after 3000 BC also, up to as late as 2000 BC. Many of the 100 henges of England are wood henges, all built after 3000 BC, involving hundreds of tree trunks, often replaced by standing stones at a later date. The circular form is retained and often expanded to many concentric circles.

I should highlight the giant Avebury henge, one of the largest in the world, which was started soon after 3000 BC (other dating suggests 2600 BC), and is located directly north of Silbury hill. Avebury henge clearly represented Saturn, complete with a causeway extending southeast (with a number of bends) and ending in a much smaller henge, known today as the "Sanctuary." The Sanctuary is reminiscent of the Egyptian valley temples (the mortuary) located at the southwest end of a pyramid's causeway. [note 33]

If the purpose of the original henges was to imitate, commemorate, or ward off the plasma column seen above the Earth, then, in the absence of the plasma stream after 3100 BC, a new purpose has to be assumed for their continued construction. It would not be unrealistic to assume a 'religious' purpose. These new constructions, in effect, are temples, although not in the manner of the eastern Mediterranean, where temples are understood as a 'house' of the God.

Image: Stonehenge, looking southwest (?).

Stonehenge might serve as an example of how the basic form is retained even if many aspects of the earlier design are changed or neglected. Stonehenge is the most studied henge of antiquity. It is also anomalous in being unlike the earlier forms of henges and in that no other henge had as much time and effort dedicated to it -- 1500 years of building and remodeling. [note 34]

In the final design, Stonehenge is aligned to the midsummer sunrise -- the summer solstice. But I seriously doubt that Stonehenge was ever intended as a celestial observatory for determining aspects of the calendar, as others have claimed. Farmers know when the soil is ready for planting and don't use calendars. They also do not need to be notified of eclipses and, even less, to know the location of stars. Neither of these have anything to do with plantings or harvests. The only thing that makes sense is for the site to have been used in religious festivals. A midsummer festival would fall in the lull between planting and harvest.

The earliest structure built at Stonehenge, dating from before 2900 BC (some claim 3100 BC), was a circle of 56 post holes (for wooden posts) with a surrounding ditch and embankment. The original 56 'postholes' are three feet in diameter. These are not posts, these are holes for full sized mature trees. It was thought at one time that these 'post holes' might have contained the blue stones, rather than wooden posts. This would make much more sense in terms of initiating the construction, especially if this was done after 2900 BC.

The embankment is built inside the ditch. Every previously built henge has the bank located outside the ditch. This already suggests a disconnection of the first builders from earlier forms and purposes, and suggests a late start, perhaps around 2900 BC. At this time there was also no causeway. The 56 posts were removed and the holes were backfilled with chalk in 2400 BC, when the stone construction started. Eighty 'blue stone' blocks were transported from 250 miles away, each weighing up to 4 tons. The construction was then delayed 200 years, and taken up again (involving additional remodeling) about 2100 BC, when most of the blue stone blocks were removed and replaced by much larger local sandstone blocks (weighing up to 50 tons). There was additional remodeling in about 1600 BC.

Stonehenge is the only henge using capped stones. This is the most impressive feature of the site. The capped stones were constructed with the later (larger) stones. These large stones were dressed, which has suggested a Mediterranean influence to some, but stones used for other projects in the same region were roughly dressed or carved as much as 2000 years earlier -- long before the first use of dressed stone construction in the eastern Mediterranean region. Stonehenge had a causeway added during one of the late reworking of the site when 19 of the blue stones were also returned or repositioned.

Stonehenge kept the form alive for over a thousand years, but the ideas were fractured. It is too small of a circle compared to earlier henges. The bank was built on the wrong side of the ditch. The ditch was never seriously excavated; it is shallow, and debris, left behind in the ditch, marks it as not being considered a serious part of the structure. The causeway was added late and, while the causeways of all earlier henges are on the southeast side of the circles, the causeway of Stonehenge leads off from the northeast opening in the circle. Appropriately, it includes a bend (actually, two bends) in the path. The idea is there, but the assembly directions are a little muddled. The causeway actually runs east for a much longer distance, then turns south to meet the Avon river. The effect is to suggest a processional, rather than a design to point to the midsummer sunrise. At the end of the causeway (at the river Avon) was a smaller henge ("Bluehenge") where the bluestones were at one time located.

In the end, after 1500 years of changes, Stonehenge might have functioned as a monument to the Sun -- but, over its long period of use, the dedication changes from the creator Sun, Saturn, to the Midnight Sun, Jupiter, and eventually to the new Sun, our Sun, and the newly arrived Moon. More on those topics below. However, since more and more interments are being found nearby, it is currently suggested that Stonehenge was simply a temple dedicated to the dead.

The Midnight Sun

Image: Jupiter with a banded head-dress on a throne of a temple glyph. From the stele of Hammurabi.

After the visits of Horus had ceased, and as the pyramids at Giza were under construction (about 2590 or 2550 BC), Jupiter again became the most spectacular object in the sky. The planet had at that time completed its movement through the asteroid belt in receding from the Sun, and again developed a coma, as comets do today when changing their distance from the Sun. It sported a gigantic coma, much larger than the diameter of the Moon, and a massive mountainous plasma plume from its south pole. Saturn, on the other hand, had probably distanced even further, and may already have become just a mere speck in the sky.

I suspect that Jupiter took about 890 years to finalize its orbit. The 'collision' between Saturn and Jupiter had slowed the orbital speed of both and as a result assigned them to orbits much further away from the Sun; in effect, the movement of Jupiter and Saturn were spirals. The location of Jupiter in the Solar System is detailed in the next chapter.

The title of "Sun" was transferred from Saturn to Jupiter virtually everywhere in the world. The Egyptians simply relocated their original creator God, Ra ("sun"), from the north pole to the ecliptic. The title "Sun" for Jupiter was deserved, for after Jupiter left the asteroid belt, it would have lit up the night sky brighter than the Moon and, as Plutarch suggested in ca AD 200 ("Isis and Osiris"), was seen as a globe three times the diameter of the Moon.

The tail of Jupiter, a plasma in glow mode, might have extended a half billion miles away from its south pole. Because Jupiter has a very strong, but reversed, magnetic field (unlike comets), most of the plasma expulsion would leave the planet at the location of its north magnetic pole -- at the south geographic pole, the bottom. This tail is the mountain that Marduk rose on, "in the center of the sky," or, as the Egyptians describe, "in the primordial waters," (the Duat). The few depictions we have show the plasma as a steep mountain.

A lesser portion of the plasma discharge would impinge at the south magnetic pole, located at the north geographic pole (and thus at the top), and would broaden like plumes away from the planet. This is shown in Mesopotamian images as rays eminating from the shoulders in depictions of Marduk (Jupiter). The identification of Jupiter in Akkadian depictions is certain from the banded headdress he wears, which represents the banded atmosphere of the planet.

Jupiter would indeed have blazed like a sun once it left the asteroid belt. In historic times the comas of comets have managed to light the night sky to the point of blotting out the stars. Comets are only a few miles in diameter; Jupiter is 89,000 miles in diameter. The Maya of classical times (AD 400 to AD 900) still called Jupiter "the Midnight Sun," as did many other peoples in historical times.

The coma surrounding the planet itself traveled on the ecliptic, where all planets travel. The mountain tail, however, would extend below the ecliptic and seem to rise seemingly out of the 'water' of the sea in the southern sky, the Duat. How much of the mountain tail would be seen would depend on the time of year, for during more than half the year the ecliptic rose above the upper limit of the Absu. It would also depend on how bright the tail was.

Where the ecliptic dipped below the limit of the Absu, the coma of Jupiter would illuminate the Absu from behind. The central coma certainly would be bright enough to be seen shining right through the Absu, for we have later graphical images of the large red disk of Ra placed between twin mountains. The twin mountains could be the Absu at the time of the equinox, but as likely the two rounded peaks adjacent to the coma of Jupiter (in later depictions) are the result of being back-lighted by Jupiter.

When Jupiter was seen in the sky, which happened for only a part of each year, it would first be seen in the northeast (or anywhere in the east, depending on the time of the year when it would first appear). It would initially be of diminished size and would move west during the course of the night. Over the following few months Jupiter would loom larger when first seen at night, and closer to the south. Eventually it would diminish in size again (toward the west) and then disappear for perhaps 5 or 7 months.

Jupiter became the reigning god of Heaven. How long the coma condition lasted we are not at all certain. I suspect that Jupiter continued to blaze in the night skies for only a few hundred years. In the following chapter, I will suggest that the display ended (after one interruption) in 2245 BC.

The descendants of the pharaoh Khufu, builder of the first giant pyramid at Giza, added "Re" to their names after ca 2550 BC, as did all the pharaohs of the following dynasties. "Re" is Jupiter, but "Re" is identified by modern archaeologists with the daytime Sun. ('Re' or 'Ra' translates as 'sun.') The first pharaohs of the following dynasty (the sixth dynasty, after 2490 BC) construct "Sun Temples" on the west bank of the Nile, in addition to their own burial pyramids. The 'Sun Temples' consisted of a squat obelisk mounted on a platform, looking like the outpouring of plasma from below Jupiter. The obelisk became the symbol for Re. Only six such temples were built by successive rulers of the 6th dynasty. The 'Sun Temples' stop being built after the display disappeared.

The 'Sun Temples' are an indication that, during this period of the sixth dynasty (2494 BC to ca 2445 BC), Jupiter stood in the sky as a large blazing globe. After some 50 years of these constructions, no additional Sun Temples were built. The coma surrounding Jupiter would have become smaller over time and the view of Jupiter would have diminished in size with increased distance. Eventually the blazing of Jupiter would, at any rate, have come to an end as the planet slowed its retreat from the Sun and its charge balance (electric potential) started to match the electrical field of the Sun at its remote distance. That did not happen until ca 2250 BC. By that time Jupiter had stood as the Midnight Sun, except for one interruption, for nearly 350 years.

In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, the planetary Gods (which still included Venus, Mars, and Mercury) were now understood to travel through the river of the ecliptic and across the ocean of the Absu (Duat) by ship. How else could one travel over a sea? Since the rings of the Absu consisted only of thin layers of dust and gasses, a bright object behind the Absu, like a planet, would cause a glare to spread from it in the horizontal direction. If not a ship, it would at least have looked as if the planet was being transported on a raft. After the fall of the Absu a single outer ring remained, so that planets would still be seen on a raft where the ecliptic crossed over (fell below) the ring. Even in Roman times, all the Gods of Egypt were still shown in ships. It had not only become the proper way to depict gods, but it is very likely that the last ring of the Absu remained in view through the Middle Ages of our era.

For 3000 years the Gods were depicted in ships in Egypt. There are pottery depictions of celestial ships from before 3147 BC, but these portray the ship seen in navigation around the globe of Saturn as its bright crescent(asTalbott suggested). During the time of the three Kingdoms of Egypt, statues of the Gods were ferried up and down the Nile to visit Gods at other temples and carried in processions in boats. The deceased also had to cross and navigate the sea of the southern sky, a concept already established before the first Egyptian dynasty. The later "Book of the Dead," which promises that the dead pharaoh will ride in the "barque of the Sun," is referring to the ship of Jupiter, Re, the Midnight Sun. [note 36]

"Virtually every mythical form of the sun god's dwelling -- be it mother-womb or world wheel, city, temple or kingdom, egg, throne, or circular serpent -- was declared to be a 'ship' sailing on the cosmic waters."

"It is not surprising, then, to find Scandinavian rock carvings showing the wheel of the sun resting in the cosmic boat, or to discover that -- from Assyria to Britain and from India to Polynesia -- images of cosmic ships either contained wheels or were set on wheels and conveyed around dry land in the rites. As symbols of the sun god's enclosure, ship and wheel merge as one."

-- David Talbott, "The Ship of Heaven" (1988) Aeon

Talbott here relates the disk (wheel) and ship to the crescent seen rotating along the edge of Saturn during the "Age of the Gods." But the ship with a disk or globe is also an image seen in the sky after the close of the "Age of the Gods." To the ancients the Absu or Duat was a "sea," and seeing the planet Gods traveling through this sea on flat skids or in boats was real. This explains the long persistence of the 'ship' imagery.

The 'disk' or 'wheel' representing the Sun God is always depicted as very large. Thousands of years of Egyptian illustrations never relinquishes in depicting the image of the 'sun-disk' of Re as disproportionately over-sized. We are not being shown an object with a diameter of the Moon or Sun, but something vastly and impressively larger. The same can be said for the depictions of the 'sun' in his boat in other lands in antiquity. This simply is not the Sun, but an immensely large globe. If seen as three times as large as the Moon before reaching its final orbit, the coma of Jupiter would have had a diameter of three million miles. No other planet ever showed so spectacularly. The inner planets, Venus, Mars, and Mercury, might have been brighter, but never as large, except when they infrequently cruised close to Earth. The inner planets are peanuts compared to the pumpkin size of Jupiter -- both in actual diameter and as seen with a coma from a far distance. [note 37]

It is tempting to suggest that the mountainous shape of the pyramids built after 2686 BC reflects the shape of the plasma tail seen eminating from Jupiter, and that the phrase "rising on your mountain" reflects the rising and setting of Jupiter in the night sky. But the Egyptians are too certain in their identity of Horus (Mars) to have confused this, or to have renamed Horus as "Re" at a later date. Additionally, the Egyptians did not add the name "Re" to the names of pharaohs until after the Giza pyramids construction was under way -- after the reign of Khufu -- as did all the following pharaohs.

The disk of Jupiter was red, as clearly seen in Egyptian depictions. All the renditions of the Egyptian God Re consist of a large red disk. Its redness is also asserted by the 'flood legends' from India, Canaan, and Egypt. The "Chilam Balam" books of the Maya also claim Jupiter was red...

"Red was the mat on which Bolon-ti-ku [Jupiter] sat. His buttock is rounded [shaped] like a hat, as he sits on his mat."

Other passages of the "Chilam Balam" claim that the whole world became red during the rulership of Bolon-ti-ku. [note 38]

After an annual disappearance of some months, Jupiter would first be seen again in the east. Many people watched for the appearance of the red star of the east.

The Saturnian researchers have had problems with the identity of a red Morning Star, and have all but suggested that Mars at one time might have had been on an orbit between the Earth and the Sun, similar to Venus. North American Indians paid tribute to a morning star which was red, for which neither Venus or Mars would qualify. (Venus is not red and Mars is not an inner planet.) Mayan sources also identify a brilliant red morning star.

The red morning star can be identified. The progress of Jupiter across the heavens is so slow that Earth catches up with a sighting of Jupiter in the sky. When first seen it is a morning star, appearing just before sunrise. Each following night brings Jupiter higher up into the sky, since the Earth traverses a zodiac house (30 degrees) in a month whereas Jupiter would require a year to do the same. Jupiter rides higher in the sky each night for five months, eventually disappearing in the west. Jupiter is then absent from the skies for a stretch of about seven months every year (on a 13 month cycle). Then it first appears again in the east, just before sunrise.

Jupiter had a calming influence. Over 3000 years he never lost his status as chief God. He also never showed unexpected behaviour, unlike the inner planets -- the other Gods. These secondary Gods visited Jupiter frequently, that is, they were seen in the same sector of the sky, but Jupiter only slowly moved from one zodiac house to the next over the course of the year. He remained on his mountain.

Written Histories

It is from Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indian, and early Greek and Roman sources that we can extract the most details about the celestial drama and the corresponding human activities. Egyptian sources are primarily from tombs, since texts on papyrus have not lasted (although we have some papyrus texts dating back to 2400 BC). Egyptian sources have a continuity over more than 3000 years, a continuity unequaled anywhere else. This was so because Egypt was the least affected by the world-wide floods accompanying the three major catastrophes, and its land retained productivity in the face of permanent climatic changes elsewhere.

Mesopotamian texts are inscribed on clay tables, more stable than papyrus (or bamboo slivers, as in China) and even more permanent when inadvertently fired to baked clay due to the burning of a palace or town. The clay tablets date back to 2700 BC and earlier.

The remaining sources are textual recollections made after 700 to 500 BC from earlier verbal retellings. Indian sources are plentiful but are poetic representations of past events, recorded for their exemplary religious value and not transcribed to texts until very late. For China almost identical conditions are true. Greek and Roman sources also date exclusively from the period well after 600 BC.

Inca sources in South America are silent. There is some evidence suggesting that literature may have been suppressed before the arrival of the Spanish.

Mesoamerican sources recount the birth of the Gods and their abandonment of Earth but the records are clouded by a displacement of over 2000 years, awaiting the invention of a script by the Olmecs and its full development by the Maya. Yet the Popol Vuh, written ca AD 1500 in Central America, and thus 5500 years after 'creation', recounts..

"Like a man was the sun when it showed itself. It showed itself when it was born and remained fixed in the sky like a mirror. Certainly it was not the same sun which we see, it is said in their old tales."

For the rest of the world, however, many of the specifics of the genesis of the Gods and their abandonment of Earth are forgotten and, five thousand years after the Gods leave, we are presented with a confused set of oral histories offered as creation myths and tales of the stupendous deeds of forebears from hundreds of separate and isolated societies throughout the world. The actors in these dramas are varied, and the actions seldom make sense and offer no lessons, but they all involve the same themes, and the consensus in the remaining details, even after the passage of thousands of years, is astounding.

The oldest written records we have are from Egypt and Mesopotamia where the first kingdoms show up after 3100 BC. The kingdoms are manifested in the sudden appearances of distinctly enriched graves for selected individuals, and in the naming of kings identified in later historical records. This is a change from the period before 3100 BC when there seems to have been no elite among people (as determined by grave goods) and the political structure was limited to individual cities in Sumer, or nomes (districts) in Egypt.

The Temple Culture

The "Age of Kings" started with a legacy from the immediately preceding "Age of the Gods" and we can assume that these times started with the initial expectations of the resumption of a good life, order and purpose, and a working economy. However, none of these were initially forthcoming because of the interruption of the flood followed by the absence of guidance by the Gods. Only the temple culture, which had been in charge of the economy in the previous age, provided unifying direction. The priests were called upon to explain what the Gods had done, why they had left, and what could be done in their absence.

The solution to the void left by the departure of the Gods was the installation of a king as the steward of God or as the God himself. This happens simultaneously in Egypt and Mesopotamia. It cannot be stressed enough what a radical change was made in 3100 BC when civilizations with no apparent leadership became kingdoms and theocracies. The need for authentication and authority must have been intense.

The solution in both locations was also to foster a civilization which attempted to recapture the past. The building of cities, city walls, temples, and graves, the construction of canals, production of grain, and the waging of wars, writing, the assignment of kings as the stewards of God, and a hundred other implementations were all believed to have been instituted by the Gods of the previous age. Simplistic as this might seem, all indications are that this was sincerely believed by the people and by the priesthood and the kings. Both Sumer and Egypt used languages with a grammatical structure which looked only to the past and which in effect held that the future was something one backed into. And with such a reversed sense of time and, one suspects, the inability to imagine alternatives, the mandates of the Gods and their earthly representatives were inarguable, and answered questions for the masses, at the same time providing justification for the governing elite. [note 39]

This mindset induced a strong conservativism. It also removed the possibility of mankind claiming for its own the advances made in the past. Despite the extensions in trade and commerce and the growth of cities, civilization remains but an imitation of the original 'Earth,' and virtually nothing new is introduced for the next 2000 years. Everything was, by design, a reflection of 'how things were at the beginning,' and was supported by the languages used throughout Mesopotamia and Egypt, which did not have a future tense. A slave-state mentality had been introduced which would control societies for the next three millennia. [note 40]

Something is Missing

Is this the legacy of the "Age of the Gods," during which humans had learned to manage large farming and trading concerns, and had invented the wheel, bronze metallurgy, irrigation, and writing? You would expect a continuation of new ideas and advances. And, in fact, there are some. For one thing, the politics of the city states continued to evolve. Larger and much more complex irrigation projects were instituted. In Sumer, trade was expanded to include the import of metals from the region beyond the Zagros mountains, wood, stone, and obsidian from Anatolia, and other products from India. Egypt expanded its territory to control copper mines in the Sinai, transport basalt blocks from as far south as Aswan, and import honey from Crete and lumber from Lebanon. There were changes and improvements in ceramics and in bronze metallurgy.

However, there were no changes which do not proceed directly from a previously known process. There was a lack of imagination compounded by the turn to conservatism in the solidification of social structures, reinforced by the rapid rise of a privileged elite and the ever-expanding religious rites and superstitions.

It is this last, the overwhelming obsession with the multiple Gods, spells, ceremonies, and religious practices, which remains foreign to us today. And, as Julian Jaynes notes in his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976), it is completely at odds with the expectation one would have for a people descended from Paleolithic hunters with their ever-expanding production of art and tools, or the ingenious farmer and villagers of the Neolithic who simultaneously developed fishing, herding, and farming. Yet, the preoccupation with the demands of the Gods remains the central issue of the later civilizations for over 3000 years.

Is Jaynes on track? Something certainly was missing in Mesopotamia.

"From its beginnings in Sumer before the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, Mesopotamian science was characterized by endless, meticulous enumeration and ordering into columns and series, with the ultimate ideal of including all things in the world but without the wish or ability to synthesize and reduce the material to a system. Not a single general scientific law has been found, and only rarely has the use of analogy been found."

-- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition

We do have a few examples of analogies. One is the Mesopotamian use of tokens since 8500 BC to represent products and the use of bottle seals as signatures. Both of these are metaphorical displacements. But what is astounding is that it took 5000 years to take the next step -- that is, to map these three-dimensional objects to a flat plane and produce a script. The first step was to pictorially inscribe the content on the outside of sealed jars containing the tokens. These were used as bills of lading by trade caravans and ships. The conversion of these pictorial inscriptions to a usable script took much less time, and its development was predictable as an extension of the first efforts. The tokens were eventually discontinued. [note 41]

Describing a similar lack of the ability to conceptualize, I.E. Edwards' book "The Pyramids of Egypt" reads like a comedy of errors when it comes to the details of the construction of the pyramids of the Old Kingdom (Dynasty 4 through 6, 2700 -- 2200 BC). One structure after another was obviously interrupted by changes in the plans. What the book describes, over and over again, and over a span of hundreds of years, are obvious changes in construction after considerable work has been completed. Subterranean tombs and access tunnels are frequently re-excavated or moved to a different location. This happened with the exterior buildings as well (the valley building and mortuary temple). Walls and building extensions were added and subtracted almost arbitrarily.

I am not talking about the inferior completion of a pyramid, or failure to complete the pyramid of a predecessor, or the theft of materials from an existing pyramid in order to complete a later structure. And it is not that the Egyptian could not measure accurately. The pharaohs oversaw the work on their graves closely, often relocating to the site of the construction. The crews could locate a tomb room exactly under the apex of a pyramid when required to do so. However, rarely are the first efforts at digging the subterranean structure correct. Everywhere we see changes in direction, blind corridors, abandoned rooms. Although inconceivable to us, it seems that the overseers lacked the imagination to incorporate the details of a structure into a single unit, and frequently could not coordinate the excavation crew with the pyramid crew (although, overall, an enourmous amount of work was completed).

This failure of a complete overview, the inability to simultaneously see the details and the complete picture, extends to art as well. It is apparent in the images of Sumer and also in the standardized Egyptian depiction of the human body on flat surfaces showing a frontal trunk but with the head and legs in profile. This was noted by Jaynes, who adds that this is also especially to be noted among early Greek two-dimensional figures, which are often shown as curiously disarticulated groupings of arms, legs, trunks, and heads. This does not extend to three dimensional art. Even the earliest Egyptian sculptures in the round were totally realistic, even if somewhat idealized. [note 42]

Developing Consciousness

The failure in imagination is a lack of subjective consciousness and this shows also in the languages of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Julian Jaynes notes that the Sumarian, Akkadian, and Egyptian languages were "concrete from first to last." The languages had no room for analogies or metaphors. The speakers could not imagine alternatives, perhaps could not imagine themselves. To imagine, one has to take a leap from the concrete. It requires the mental construction of imagined action beyond the exigency of the moment and the needs of the everyday. [note 43]

The method of overcoming this failure in imagination, Jaynes proposes, is through an extended use of metaphors. The primary trope is analogy, a space in the mind which is equivalent to the space in the real world. With the addition of an imagined self inhabiting this imagined space, we are suddenly presented with ever-expanding possibilities of imagined actions in these places, interpretations of the effects of the imagined actions, and even the design of tools imagined as solutions to problems. We, in our age, do this sort of mapping to a mental space with past, present, and future experiences, testing the efficacy of possible actions by stepping through them in our mind. We also lay out time and mathematical concepts as viewable 'spaces' in our mind. Jaynes' concept (in brief) of consciousness -- more precisely, subjective consciousness -- is exactly this placement of an imagined 'I' into imagined spaces in the mind. It is not actually 'you,' but a substitute, an analog. You can look through the 'eyes' of this substitute 'I' or even observe yourself from afar in your mind. If something in real space and time requires your attention, the 'I' will shift to be located directly behind your real eyes. Note that, as so defined, 'memories' (as we imagine recollections) and 'self-awareness' are not part of 'subjective consciousness.' These are biologically determined and are common to all animals. Jaynes suggests that historically, subjective consciousness was a late and learned acquisition for humans. Subjective consciousness is learned, and is culturally transmitted. Some people never learn it, yet they appear fully functional.

The stupendous advantage of subjective consciousness is the ability of the mind (actually the speech areas in the left rear brain) to be able to analyze the outcomes of multiple alternative actions, to guess what others might think and do, and to understand how others see us. Our subjective consciousness is responsible for our analytical abilities. We use this with such facility that it is almost impossible to recognize the part of us which does things without 'thinking' about them, which includes all rote activities. [note 44]

Just as language is learned by children from their parents, so is subjective consciousness. You can watch parents proposing 'what if' situations to small children. Learning subjective consciousness requires language as a base, the ability to use metaphors as a means, and the examples of others. Additionally, Jaynes places the development of subjective consciousness by individuals at about age 7 or 8. Subjective consciousness involves the ability to recognize yourself as seen by others -- an analog 'I' -- which is internalized and placed into the space of the imagination, and which enables you to vault through time. [note 46]

And, if not from parents, how is such subjective consciousness learned? It is also learned from meeting strangers (not friends and familiar faces), an experience which forces upon you the idea that others see you, and thus suggests a narratized space in the mind where you can see yourself being looked at by others. This analog 'I' becomes the first spark to light up the enormity of possible analogical mind-spaces which comprise subjective consciousness.

Subjective consciousness can be learned quickly. The same Inca army which, on November 16, 1532, walked into the trap set by 110 Spanish soldiers and lost 8000 men because there was no Divine Guidance on how to respond to the novelty of metal-clad men on horses, became engaged in guerilla warfare and laid ambushes for the Spanish within months after the death of the Emperor. [note 47]

Jaynes claims that in the Middle East subjective consciousness didn't develop until after 1500 BC. In the two thousand years after the "Age of the Gods," which had still looked with certainty towards the beginnings, subjective consciousness simply was not needed. As long as nothing changed, life was predictable and safe. It took a number of world-wide catastrophes, which Jaynes does not address and is not aware of, to force a change.

According to Jaynes, the Middle East started to wake up to consciousness with the arrival of 'strangers.' For Mesopotamia the strangers are the Indo-European invaders from the steppen of Russia and from India and Persia -- the Hittites (1600 to 1200 BC), who settled in Anatolia, but especially the later Medes and Persian invaders of Assyria in 500 BC, followed by Alexander's conquest of Persia somewhat later. Many of the Greeks, in fact, had already passed the consciousness horizon with their wide trade contacts with other peoples, and their near-wholesale rejection of the authority of kings. In contrast, Sparta, a Greek state which remained a kingdom through the Classical era, never produced anything of note except mindless warriers. [note 48]

Their constitution has stood them well for 400 years.

-- concerning Sparta, paraphrased from Herodotus, "The Histories" (ca 400 BC)

We also have to wonder at the myths and legends which have come down to us, since the lack of subjective consciousness precludes detailed memories. We can all verify this for ourselves, for we remember little or nothing from the first few years of life -- when we lack language -- and little from before the age of seven or eight -- when we lack the imagination to embroider remembered experiences. This suggests that mankind would not be able to recall its early history, and further suggests that the myths and legends are fabrications of a later age. But, just as we remember some events from childhood if they are retold to us (or to ourselves), so humans would have been able to recall studendous past events if these were retold or replayed. Retold as myths from generation to generation and acted out in rituals and ceremonies, these past events became concrete tribal memories. The accuracy of the retelling would have been carefully protected. Note how small children will correct you if you diverge from the telling of a story that they already know. Ancient festivals reenacted the events, preserved the memories, and, at the same time, fleshed out the stories to fill those memories with details. [note 49]

The stories ('myths' to us) and festivals spoke of the deeds of the Gods, copied their actions, and illustrated their appearance. Mexicans today still play a football game with a flaming ball called "Purepucha," recreating the creation events described in Michoacan myths. Through this dramatization everything displayed in the heavens becomes part of the earthly domain and localizes Gods to specific temples and cities. When mythologists today suggest that the Gods of mythology are only human heroes elevated to godly status, they have it backwards. We are seeing the celestial Gods made human. Which is also exactly how most of mythology reads today. [note 50]

Bicameral Kingdoms

The adoption of subjective consciousness seen in the Middle East beginning after 1500 BC is also accomplished in India and China at about the same time, and due to similar causes. Did anything like it happen in the Americas before AD 1500? The problem with finding an answer to that question is that we only know the story from the invaders.

On the one hand, for Mesoamerica, we have a record of the dialog between Aztec philosophers of the Valley of Mexico and Spanish theologians, recorded by the 16th century historian Sahagún, which certainly attests to a well developed subjective consciousness. These theological discussions are only now being published. [note 51]

On the other hand, Jaynes noted the striking similarities between the Middle East of 2000 or 1500 BC and the Incas of South America of AD 1500. The parallels between the Inca emperors of AD 1500 and the pharaohs of third millennium BC Egypt are astounding, despite a separation of 4000 years. For the Inca emperor, as for the pharaoh, the purpose of life was reunion with the Gods. When the Spanish threaten one of the Inca cities, the Incas flee, leaving behind their gold, belongings, and food, taking only the mummies of their past god-kings to hide them in the mountains. We see the same in Egypt where the priests frequently remove mummies and hide them elsewhere when threatened by grave robbers at times of unrest.

Julian Jaynes proposes a generalized model of theocratic city states and empires, and calls these civilizations 'bicameral kingdoms.' 'Bicameral' refers to the separation of volition and consciousness in the speech centers of the brain. The start of activities is initiated almost exclusively by the right rear brain. This area of the brain is also responsible for generating speech which was not consciously thought out beforehand. Because of this, the right rear brain seems to be the location of the will. [note 52]

Consciousness, on the other hand, is located almost entirely in the left rear brain, as are also the ability to understanding the speech of others and the ability to produce grammatically correct responses. The left brain is not aware of the right. This is, in fact, extensible to all right cerebral activities, most notable to mental failures, that is, dysfunctions. Oliver Sacks details this in case studies, in "The Man who Mistook his Wife for his Hat" (1970). We live in our consciousness, unaware of the input from the right hemisphere.

Bicameral kingdoms have a number of features in common, including the following.

First, there was either a city God, with the city and surrounding area operated as a theocracy, or a king, who was held to be the God or the Son of the God and was revered as such, even after his death. Theocracies included Sumer and, later, Akkad (in fact, all Mesopotamia remained as theocracies up to Persian times), India, China, and all of Mesoamerica. Societies under the direct rule of God or the Son of God included Egypt, Japan, and the Inca empire.

Second, the dead in these societies were considered alive in some way, and in need of material goods, especially foods, to accompany them in their graves. This practice actually extends far back into more remote antiquity, but becomes obsessive with the bicameral kingdoms. The new kingdoms initially buried their kings complete with their retinue. This practice seldom lasted more than a few generations in Egypt and Sumer, but continued for 700 years under the Shang dynasty of China (and was only prohibited by the Chou after ca 1000 BC). The 200 year old Inca kingdom still practiced it in AD 1532 when the Spanish arrived. In bicameral kingdoms throughout the world, people (and certainly the elite) were believed to become Gods on their death. The enormous ceremonial center of Teotihuacan in Mexico (200 BC -- AD 700), at one time supporting 200,000 inhabitants, was known as "the Place Where Men Become Gods." [note 53]

Third, the kingdoms of the 'God on Earth' were jealous of any competing Gods, including those which had come before, and would destroy all signs of the preceding Gods, just as the cities of Sumer and Akkad would readily attack their contemporaries and haul off the God statues from the temples of nearby cities. The destruction of all previous records by edict of the Emperor of China in 213 BC is a late example. The Aztecs destroyed all the manuscripts of their predecessors in the Valley of Mexico shortly after AD 1400. And, however subjectively conscious we may proudly think ourselves to be, it should be noted that the priests who followed the Spanish invaders into the Yucatan in the following century burned all the books of the Maya.

Fourth, the citizens were incapable of deceit, or more fundamentaly, incapable of imagining the deceit of others. Not that these people could not lie or steal, but they were incapable of mentally 'narratizing' a complex series of deceptive actions either by others or by themselves. This is vividly illustrated with the Inca empire, which had subdued half the South American continent, only to fall to the deceit of a handful of Spanish soldiers.

As a corollary it should also be noted that these people had no morals -- there was no such thing as good or bad. Actions were ordered and the humans responded like robots. The heroes of the "Iliad" (traditionally placed at 1200 BC) were motivated (if that is the right word) by glory and shame, without regard for their own life, as were the Spartans who held off the Persian army at Thermopylae in 480 BC. In the vacuum left by the departure of the Gods, religion had substituted prescribed duties for individual judgement and assumed the absolutist attitudes understood as the perogative of the earlier Gods. What is absolutely astounding is that these attitudes lasted over 4500 years -- as in the case of the Incas, for example.

What we have in these civilizations are people desparately holding on to the past. They considered themselves "slaves of the Gods," only now it was the local God in residence at each temple who needed to be housed, fed, and adorned. Everyone was employed in the service of the Gods, and surplus produce and products from the countryside surrounding a temple were collected (as a tax) for the upkeep of the temple Gods, for redistribution to temple craftsmen, and for long distance trade for building materials and more exotic needs. All humans were as deeply invested in their assigned tasks as the drones of a bee hive. [note 54]

Population explosions are certainly the mark of each of these empires, including those which did not appear until long after the departure of the Gods and Jaynes proposes that the elements of the bicameral kingdoms arise out of the need to control these large populations. But I question this. There is ample evidence that these kingdoms were voluntary societies where massive public works, whether draining swamps, digging irrigation canals, or monumental construction, were accomplished without coercion. This last becomes obvious with a closer look at the histories of Maya ceremonial centers. These were built with volunteer labor which depended only on the citizens' confidence in the leader's connection with the spirit world. [note 55]

Jaynes suggests that these early civilizations were pre-conscious -- that is, not subjectively conscious. He suggests societies in which control was effected through auditory commands from the 'Gods' -- actually the remembered admonitions of the governing class. This kept everyone to their task, and kept all things in order. Jaynes' use of "hearing the commands of the Gods" is a shorthand for the admonishing voice (which we still hear today) generated by the right hemisphere of the brain. In essence, these people, and perhaps especially the ruling class, were hallucinating. This description has turned some people away from a careful consideration of Jaynes' theories even though it is an accepted fact that the speech center of the right hemisphere acts as a separate but unconscious entity. [note 56]

But pre-subjective people are entirely functional humans. They can learn anything, including any skill, reading, and mathematics, they have the same sense of humor as the rest of us, they experience and express emotions, and they can converse with others in intricate details. It is difficult to distinguish bicameral humans from subjectively conscious humans. You will find yourself persuaded by each of the long soliloquies of the war chiefs of the "Iliad" when they meet in council -- yet no one among them takes action without receiving a command from a God. Bicameral humans seem normal. However, they rely heavily on the learned admonitions of parents and authority figures (blurting things out without any forethought, invariably in the context of 'ought' and 'should') and have difficulty with novel situations. New situations require the ability to imagine a number of alternative actions which might be taken and then to make a selection based on the imagined results. A pre-conscious human does not have the ability to imagine the thinking of others, especially reflectively, that is, how other might imagine them as thinking.

The Flood of Noah

There is a disturbance in 2349 BC, 750 years after the flood of 3147 BC. There are changes in climate, noted by many researchers, perhaps to a limited extent in the Middle East, but apparently also in China. This is followed about 150 years later by an extended period of drought and dust storms, starting in 2193 BC. From the interval of 156 years between these two climatic events, we would conclude that Earth was four times involved in an encounter with Venus, on a cycle of 52 year intervals. The interval of 52 years between disturbances becomes a clear hallmark of disturbances by Venus and both 52 year and 104 year intervals between certain events are remembered by other nations at a later date. The 52 year cycle is assured, even for remote antiquity and even though the Earth's orbit would be different. See Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics," for how this can be derived for various periods in the past. [note 57]

I would suggest, as others have also, that the planet Venus was the agent of the disturbances in 2349 and 2193 BC. In fact, we can be certain that Venus appeared a total of four times during this period. The first appearance of 2349 BC was absolutely spectacular and, at the same time, so psychologically disturbing to people the world over that this single event is frequently recorded as the very start of history -- often as a retelling of the flood of 3147 BC (as in the 'Flood of Noah'), coupled with the first appearance of the Moon. The most frightening aspect of 2349 BC was what looked like the collapse of the ocean in the south sky, the Absu. It was thought to have fallen onto the Earth, for the commotion in the sky was accompanied by endless rains and storms. But there were other disturbances, having nothing to do with rains or floods. [note 58]

Claude Schaeffer, in "Stratigraphie comparée et chronologie de l'Asie occidentale" (1948), wrote..

"The great perturbations which left their traces in the stratigraphy of the principal sites of the Bronze Age of Western Asia are six in number. The oldest among them shook, between 2400 and 2300, all of the land extending from the Caucasus in the north down to the valley of the Nile, where it became one of the causes, if not the principal cause, of the fall of the Egyptian Old Kingdom after the death of Pepi II."

Note that Schaeffer's estimate brackets 2349 BC, the first strike by Venus. The "traces" extended over a very wide area in the Middle East, from Persia to Greece, and included "violent earthquakes and tidal waves, and other signs of a natural disaster" (paraphrased by Velikovsky). But it becomes obvious that what we are seeing is a swath of destruction only extending over part of northern Iran, Anatolia, part of the Levant, and Greece, with little or no evidence in Mesopotamia or Egypt (despite what Schaeffer wrote about "the Nile valley").

It would seem that the event of 2349 BC caused a path of destruction through south central Asia (the source of Indian civilization), through the eastern Mediterranean, and could be continued through southern Europe and parts of north Africa, and then to cross the Atlantic to make contact with America, cross the Pacific, and land in Asia. The destruction caused by Venus seems to describes a path which would have followed a circle around the Earth at the latitude between about 30 or 40 degrees, at first angled down and then angled up again.

The crust of the Earth would have been subjected to a severe compressive force due to the electrical repulsion between Earth and Venus -- but only for the initial part of the path. The compressive forces would have been followed by lifting forces as a result of an induced voltage. (More on the sequence in Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics.") Areas adjacent to the 'impact area' would have experienced an uplift. Areas outside of the region of the initial 'contact' would have been subjected to lateral forces (earthquakes) as a shock wave spread around the Earth. The contact with the plasmasphere of Venus would have induced a series of lightning strikes following a path which wound around the Earth as it rotated. The massive lightning strikes would have been capable of melting mountain tops, ripping out and incinerating forests, and lifting boulders and hilltops into the vortex of a hurricane which moved west at over 500 miles per hour.

From the damage done in the eastern Mediterranean north of about 33 degrees latitude we know that the blow from Venus was delivered north of the equator, and the Earth's rotational axis would have undergone a gyroscopic reaction as the northern hemisphere was shoved away from the Sun. Thus the path of destruction would have traveled at an angle inclined to the equator, so that western North Africa could have fallen on the path, followed some time later by Central America or South America. By this time the gyroscopic reaction would have started to carry the equator back 'down' to where it belonged, so that the remaining path of destruction angled up again. I'll develop more details in the next chapter.

The second appearance of Venus (in 2297 BC) and the third (in 2245 BC) seem to have left no record that we are aware of. Yet it is certain that these happened. People took no note in myths and histories because the results were not spectacular or religiously significant. The last event (2193 BC) will be discussed separately below. Again, as with the previous two, the contact in 2193 BC was not noted in any records. But in this case we have substantial secondary data available.

The first event, of 2349 BC, marks the traditional Noachian Flood. It involved an electrical contact with Venus which increased the orbit of the Earth, bringing Earth close to the established location of the Moon. It also resulted in a sudden dispersal of the equatorial rings of the Earth, accompanied by storms, rains, and hurricanes, which became known in the Bible as the 'Flood of Noah,' or, as the Sumerians and Akkadians called it, the "flood after the flood." [note 60]

The story of Noah and the flood is well known from the Bible. But, as I pointed out in a previous chapter, flood stories are ubiquitous. People in all regions of the world have flood stories. Most of these stories show no signs of having been borrowed from other people, yet they all involve the same elements -- a world-wide inundation, survival of a few people with their animals in an ark, a boat, or a canoe, and anchorage at a mountain while waiting for the waters to subside.

When the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh" became available in translation in Europe in the 19th century, it astounded everyone -- for it contained a clear description of the events of the Flood of Noah, including the ark, the animals, and sending out birds to test for dry land. However, both the Flood of Gilgamesh and the Flood of Noah are the conflation of the Black Sea flood of 5600 BC and the worldwide flood in 3147 BC.

In 5600 BC, Noah didn't build an ark. As a Black Sea farmer and fisherman, he had one. He didn't collect all the animals in the world, only his family and farm animals, and as much seed and fodder as possible. He didn't moor at a mountain in northern Iran, but landed at the river Halys or rounded the Anatolian plateau to land in the depression between the Pontic Mountains (bordering the Black Sea in the south) and the Caucasus Mountains (to the east of the Black Sea). From there, his 'survival story' spread south into Iran and Anatolia, eventually to reach the plains of Mesopotamia and the Levant. At that point, after another flood and the passage of nearly two thousand years, the ark -- seen by all -- is the barque of the Sun, as represented by a crescent on Jupiter, and the mountaintop of the anchorage is the lower plasma tail of Jupiter.

But to the Hebrew priests who compiled the books of the Bible after 536 BC, the flood was an actual event experienced in 2349 BC. It was, for them, the only flood ever and the centerpoint of their people's history. However, the date, although widely accepted among Christians since Bible chronologies were established in the 17th century (Ussher and Newton), is backed up by very little physical evidence. (I will return to this in the next chapter.) It may have been a local event. We are not even certain where in the Middle East Noah was to be found in 2400 BC. It might have been Anatolia, Mesopotamia, or the Levant, or even Arabia (with some scholars suggesting India).

The chronology of Mesopotamia (Akkadia) is only firmly established directly after the putative "Flood of Noah," but there is no mention of a flood. The only strong coincidence is from China, where in 200 BC, long before Christian influences, the catastrophic flooding of China was dated to 2350 BC. The people of Mesoamerica also date one of the "creations of the world" to this time. I will return to this in a later chapter. [note 61]

The Jewish world history (the Bible) was compiled some time after 536 BC, when Cyrus allowed the Jews to leave their Babylonian captivity and return to their homeland with orders to rebuild the temple of their God. Cyrus financed the rebuilding and returned to them the "vessels of the temple." We could presume that their books and records were returned also. The earliest of these books, Genesis, which includes the story of the flood of Noah, was held by tradition to have been written by Moses after 1490 BC.

The priests subsequently edited and collated their books into a history of the world -- a creation epic. The editors must certainly have been familiar with the thousand year-old Babylonian "Enuma Elish" creation epic, which at that time constituted the only other recorded history of the world from creation onward. (The "Enuma Elish" retells the flood stories found in earlier Sumerian epics.) But the "Enuma Elish" dealt with multiple Gods, and the Hebrews were monotheistic and perhaps much more secular than their Babylonian hosts had been. I would also assume they knew the "King List" of Sumer, and the epic literature of Akkad. Their sacred book would certainly conform to these oldest known histories of the world, but would be populated with their own patriachs and informed by their own records.

It is generally assumed that the Bible is derived from Mesopotamian records and legends. I do not think this is likely. I think it is a parallel record, perhaps partially oral, which was brought into conformity to known records at this late date. The flood of Noah is, in fact, only one of the world's more than 500 parallel flood stories. We would have to assume that the Bible editors knew that the list of the "Kings before the Flood" was recorded in days, not years. And it would have been known by the editors that in a previous era the year was shorter (having all but witnessed the change in the year's length which happened in 747 BC), and that it was even shorter in earlier times -- or, in their way of understanding, that people lived longer lives. [note 62]

The history of the world as presented in the Bible, at any rate, is unique. It presents a record of creation which parallels the Mesopotamian creation epics (and those of many other people) but conceives of a God outside of the visible domain of this world. This last is the result of a change in humanity's point of view on the Gods seen throughout the world after 600 BC, which will be discussed in a later chapter.

It thus dispenses with the multiplicity of Gods of the other nearby cultures and remains consistently monotheistic. In itself, this is not unique. The Chinese were monotheistic, at least to the point of acknowledging a single supreme God, as were the Persians. But Genesis, for example, takes the signs in the sky, which the other cultures had equated to distinct Gods, and treats them as humans. One description especially, the creation of Eve, stands out, as follows:

Adam is the lonely globe of Saturn in the sky. God -- the God outside of creation -- takes pity on him and creates a woman for him by extracting a rib and subsequently healing the wound. This is clearly the image of the expulsion of Venus from the side of Saturn, still connected with a rib-like plasma appendage. The image was common to the experience of all the tribes of the eastern Mediterranean, but the interpretation by Moses was unique.

The Bible gives no date for the flood of Noah, but notes other events after the flood which can be matched to known dates. A correlation of Biblical events to known dates was attempted by James Bishop Ussher in AD 1650 and still stands as a classic work. Ussher dates the start of the Universal Flood of Noah at 2349 BC and the end at 2348 BC. [note 63]

The 'Flood of Noah' happened as the Earth's orbit increased and it joined the Moon in its previously established orbit. The Earth and the Moon started to 'fall past each other,' with the result that the Moon eventually ended up rotating about the Earth -- not on the Earth's equator, but in the plane of the ecliptic, tilted up about 0.01 degrees.

The appearance of the Moon probably marks the "sign in the heavens" after the flood of the Bible. It is the end of the "time before the Moon" noted by Plato and others in antiquity. "Sin" ("Moon") becomes popular as a personal name in Akkadian Mesopotamia after 2350 BC. Sargon of Akkad, who conquered Sumer shortly after 'Noah's Flood,' appoints his daughter as priestess of the Moon god ("Nanna" in Sumerian) of the Sumerian city of Ur. His granddaughter held the same position.

A Second Strike

The event of 2349 -- 2348 BC is followed by another world-wide disturbance in 2193 BC (three times 52 years, 156 years later). Again Venus made an approach to Earth, the fourth in this era. With this event climatic changes are recorded world-wide, with social upheavals and abandonments of settlements spanning two hundred years. With this second event the Old Kingdom in Egypt comes to a sudden end, not to recover for more than 185 years. [note 64]

At the same time the Mesopotamian empire of Akkad collapses. Sumer had been conquered by Sargon of Akkad in 2335 BC, part of an empire of conquest which stretched from Elam on the Persian gulf to the Mediterranean. But his dynasty's brief hold is lost in 2193, coincident with the second disturbance. The empire fails economically and the barbarian tribes of the Zagros mountain descend into the Akkadian plain. A hundred years later the land of Akkad laments...

"The large fields and acres produced no grain
The flooded fields produced no fish
The watered gardens produced no honey and wine
The heavy clouds did not rain"

-- City of Akkad, ca 2100 BC.

Some climatologists have assumed that Mesopotamia and Egypt lacked rains during this 200 year period following 2193 BC. But the laments from Akkad, quoted above, do not speak of a lack of water, but of a lack of growth. This speaks of a turndown in temperature and, more likely, a lack of sunlight. It is very similar to the darkness which enveloped the world 700 years later, after 1492 BC, when the Hebrews "walked in darkness" and Mesoamerican recollections claim that a generation of people grew up in darkness. An oceanic strike of an arc from Venus traveling partway around the world could certainly produce enough steam to cause a cloud cover lasting for years. And the increased charge of the Earth's ionosphere after the passage of Venus would ensure a much longer suspension of the clouds than we experience today.

There is other data from this 156 year era. The endless reconstructions of Stonehenge are interrupted for 200 years after ca 2400 BC. Malta, with its temples and worship of the Fat Lady, is vacant after 2200 BC. Two hundred years of wind-blown dust and volcanic ash show up in the eastern Mediterranean after 2200 BC. The Indus river fails to produce enough water for agriculture and the parallel Sarasvati river dries up. The Harappan culture along the Indus (of over 250 cities and villages) declines slowly and disappears by 1900 BC. The Indus river region (lower Pakistan) turns into a desert. China's culture nearly falters. European construction of grave barrows ends for the most part by ca 2000 BC. [note 65]

The strange specificity of the area of destruction in the Middle East has suggested an air blast to some researchers, perhaps a Tunguska meteoric event -- an exploding bolide arriving from space. But most likely the two disturbances of 2349 and 2193 BC, the Flood of Noah, the later demise of the Old Kingdom of Egypt along with the collapse of Akkad, were caused by the approaches (or, properly, the electrical interaction) of Venus. The restricted path of destruction, the damage caused by fires (also localized), the tilting (gyroscopic swing) of the axis (which is recorded in legend in China and as history in Mesoamerica), and then the blockage of sunlight for an extended period of time, are all the marks of an alignment with a large planet and its electrical interaction with Earth. I will offer some additional details in the next chapter.

The two disturbances were 156 years apart, three times 52 years. The period of 52 years will remain as the mark of Venus' interactions with Earth: a 700 year span where nothing significant happens, then two or more contacts at a 52 year intervals (or nearly 52 years). In both 2349 BC and in 2193 BC the orbit of Earth changed. The year changed to 260 days in 2349 BC, and (I suspect) to 273 days in 2193 BC. [note 66]

After a few hundred years, Egypt will reorganize as the Middle Kingdom and start in again to build pyramids as grave markers and will do so for another thousand years, spreading ever further south along the Nile. Akkad and China also recover. The Harappan cultivation of the Indus valley is abandoned as its people move into the Ganges region.

In the next era, Mercury will become a prominent God while Venus will continue to lurk in the background. In the next chapter I will turn to some reconsiderations of the events surrounding the 'flood of Noah' -- in effect, that the world-wide 'flood' never happened.

---

Endnotes

Note 1 --

The same intense agricultural practice appears in China, the Andes, Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia, and West Africa -- all at about the same time. It might be simplistic to note, but it was likely that in all of these cases it was the farmers who first recovered from the disaster of 3147 BC. Farming became the core for any further development of civilization and population expansion. About the sudden rise of these farming communities, William Mullen in 1994 noted..

"What these civilizations are all simultaneously emerging from, will ... be the largest question before historians of early mankind."

-- William Mullen "Cenocatastrophysm" Kronia Symposium (1994)

There are problems with the statement "the graves of kings." Egyptian graves are identified by labels on grave goods, and it is assumed that the names on the labels correspond to kings with the same names (almost not a single body and few goods have survived grave robbery in antiquity). Mesopotamian 'royal' graves, as, for example, those excavated by Sir Leonard Wooley at Ur in 1928-29, have no identification with known names from the Sumerian "King List." H. W. E. Saggs, in "Babylonians" (2000), writes..

"The richness of the contents of the tombs led Woolley to conclude that were royal. This assumption received a degree of support from names inscribed on some of the objects, a few of which can be linked to kings of Ur of the Early Dynastic period. [a broad range of 2900 - 2371 BC] No burial, however, is directly identified with a royal name, and in one case the name of a known king occurs in the burial chamber of a female corpse. It is therefore possible that the royal names did not identify the persons buried but were there because royal persons had made dedications at some ritual vital to Ur."

So where were the kings of Ur buried? I would assume that the burials were leaders and priests of Ur, but that the 'kings' of the "King List" were celestial. This probably holds for Egypt also.
[return to text]

Note 2 --

To have Horus (Mars) first appear in ca 3070 BC (that is, to take the "contendings of Horus and Seth" at face value) resolves a number of discrepancies in the list of the Kings of Kish, and matches the better dated archaeological records for the first dynasty of Egypt. See Appendix A, "Chronology Notes."
[return to text]

Note 3 --

The Egyptians recognized that this planet, Mars, had been seen before, and distinguish this incarnation from the previous appearances of Mars, before 3147 BC, by calling the previous Mars "Horus of the gods" or "this first Horus." The Maya "Chilam Balam" makes the same distinction.
[return to text]

Note 4 --

When pyramids start to be built, they are uniformly squat structures -- thoughout the world. If these had been meant to represent the 'mountain' seen underneath Jupiter, they would have been steep. But Jupiter dropped its steep mountain shape in about 2950, some 200 years before Mars no longer appeared near Earth. In fact, when Jupiter exits the asteroid belt in about 2550 BC and assumes a 'mountain' shape again, steep pyramidical structures start to be built. This happened during the initial years of the 6th Egyptian dynasty.
[return to text]

Note 5 --

The mastabas and first pyramids of Egypt continue to face northwest until shortly before the construction at Giza. Tradition dies slowly. With the pyramids of Seneferu and Giza (constructed after Mars no longer visited Earth), and all the following pyramids constructed over the next centuries, every structure is aligned with the geographic north, with the exception of a few that were built late during the 5th dynasty, when Egypt experienced a religious crisis, and which were built with thier long axis aligned northeast to southwest, probably reflecting the supposed location of the Underworld.
[return to text]

Note 6 --

David Talbott had considerable difficulty explaining these symbols, for he assumed the moving mountain to be part and parcel of the original display caused by Saturn. But it is not. Separated from the image in the sky before 3147 BC, and assigned to the 300 year period of the visits by Horus after 3070 BC, it is easily explained.

The cone of plasma extending to Mars could be seen with ease from below the equator and, in effect, become some of the first definitive celestial displays for people living in these regions (besides, that is, a view of the collapse of the Saturnian system in 3147 BC). This can be verified from their earliest 'mythical' symbols. One instance is the image of the "Staff God" which appears early in Peru. It consists of a globe-like face (or body) which carries a staff in each hand, held vertically. The two staffs would have been the edges of the conical plasma stream to Mars, where it appeared most dense. The Staff God was originally female. The image of this apparition as a God will be reinforced with the later appearances of Mars in the 8th and 7th century BC. Although most of the images of the Staff God are dated to 500 BC, some version has been found on a gourd dated to ca 2200 BC, at Norte Chico in Peru.

Egyptian images also show the pharaoh with two staffs, but these are thought to represent the two kingdoms: the shepherd's crook of Upper Egypt, the grain flail of the delta.

The identities of the Gods shift over time, and especially during the confusion of the end of the "Age of the Gods" in 3147 BC. Before 3147 BC, to the Egyptians, Saturn was Ra (the "Sun"), and late in the "Age of the Gods" Venus was possibly already identified as Isis. After 3147 BC, Saturn is identified as Osiris and Jupiter at first as Seth, and later as Osiris, to eventually be known as Ra ("the Sun"). After 3147 BC Venus becomes first Neith (the southern plasmoid at an earlier time) and later Isis, but is also identified as Hathor. Mars returns as Horus. After ca 2600 BC, however, Jupiter will become the main God, as the Midnight Sun, and called Re. His worship may have been instituted in Heliopolis (the city of On) soon after 3100 BC.

The first extensive "pyramid texts" date from 2345 BC. There are earlier snippets of casket markings.

The pharaohs with Horus names extend only to about 2680 BC, through the First and Second Dynasty.
[return to text]

Note 7 --

It can be assured that the precession of the orbits of the inner planets was much greater at a time where minor gravitational effects had not yet aligned the orbits into a resonant pattern which slowed the precessional rates to their current periods -- about 40,000 years for Earth, 26,000 years for Mercury, for a full rotation about the Sun. See Appendix B, "Celestial Mechanics."
[return to text]

Note 8 --

The initial electrical repulsion due to the electrical field of the primary planet would not last, for the field would induce a change in the charge of the hemisphere of the secondary planet which faced the primary.

The sequence described in the text is shown graphically in Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics."

Donald W. Patten and Samuel R. Windsor, in "The Mars-Earth Wars" (1996), have suggested a 720 day orbital and synodic period for Mars at the time when the Earth's year was 360 days (by coincidence the orbital period and the synodic period of Mars are the same for a 360 day Earth year). This places the orbit of Mars and Earth in a 2:1 harmonic relationship. It can be assumes that the period of Mars after 3100 BC remained the same until 747 BC. For an Earth orbital period of 240 days, this reduces to a 3:1 relationship. The synodical period of Mars would be (using a 240 day year): (720 * 240) / (720 - 240) = 360 days. Mars would show up near Earth every 720 / (720 - 240) = 1.5 years.
[return to text]

Note 9 --

This assumes an orbit for Mars with perihelion closer to the Sun, and Mars would have crossed Earth's orbit at a right or obtuse angle. If that was the case, then the apparent rotation of Mars around the pole would only be seen once in a passage, since the orbital speed of Mars would increase after crossing Earth's orbit, and chances are that the planet would be lost from sight as the Earth fell behind in its orbital travel.

Note also that under the condition of Mars overriding the orbit of Earth, there would be gravitational attraction, but, considering how much more massive the Earth is than Mars, the Earth would not likely be disturbed significantly. The cone of plasma extending to Mars, however, means that Mars had moved to within the plasmasphere of Earth, which can be estimated at 30 Earth diameters -- 240,000 miles, as far as the Moon stands today. The mass of Mars is twice the mass of the Moon. At a distance of 240,000 miles we could expect high tides, and an attraction of Mars to Earth. But if the plasmaspheres connected, Mars, because it is so much smaller than the Earth, would be forced away electrically. This may be the mechanism which eventually ended the interactions altogether.
[return to text]

Note 10 --

The Sed festival may have celebrated an investure of the pharaoh in the manner of the approach of Mars (Horus) with Earth, or it could have reflected a vastly more ancient tradition dating back to the white stripes in the sky after 8300 BC. The suggestion of the existence of the Sed festival prior to the date of the start of the first dynasty disagrees with my proposed dates for the first arrival of Mars, and thus, as I have proposed in another chapter, the Sed festival may date to the era of the southern ball plasmoid. There are Egyptian references to the effect that the festival was held at 30 year intervals, but nothing indicates this was strictly true.
[return to text]

Note 11 --

The Sumerian "King List" for the Kings of Kish seems to record both the travel of Mars and the sightings of Mercury, separated by 10 to 15 years. The period from one visit by Mars to the next varies between 35 and 25 years. See Appendix A, "Chronology," for details.

The indeterminate reigns of the pharaohs of the First and Second Dynasties of Egypt, which include very long reigns and very short reigns, and includes pharaohs only known by a very few inscriptions of serekhs (name tags), may reflect a similar process of naming chief priests or leaders after appearances of these two planets. The two dynasties extend over the same time span as the kings of Kish, and includes some 17 to 20 pharaohs, similar to the number of kings in Kish.

It is clear from later records that Mercury becomes prominent in the skies at some interval measured in hundreds of years. This could be suggested from the fact that 'Mercury' becomes a popular personal name at various times. This last happens in the 8th and seventh century BC. Because there is an interaction with Earth in 686 BC, I believe that until then Mercury remained on an orbit reaching far past the Earth's orbit to the edge of the asteroid belt, just like Mars.
[return to text]

Note 13 --

Although I have already proposed that the asteroids in the company of Mars could have been extracted from the edge of the asteroid belt, it remains mostly unexplained how this was accomplished. The cloud of debris could have preexisted, but it would be highly improbable that Mars would have gone into orbit at the center (or even near) such a cloud of rock fragments.

To accounted for why Mars would have been expelled away from Saturn in the asteroid belt, it can easily be suggested that, on entering the asteroid belt, Saturn would have significantly reduced its coma, as we will see Jupiter also do later. That would have abandoned Mars to the gravitational forces of the Sun, so that it would immediately start on an orbit with the Sun as one of its centers (focus).

Except for Trojan followers of Mars, of which six have been found to date, the 'cattle' seems to have have disappeared today. See the text for the Trojans.
[return to text]

Note 14 --

Image: Asteroids to the orbit of Jupiter, shown at an angle to the planetary orbits. Since these are rendered as dots, the asteroids look like they take up a considerable mass. This is not so, since the total mass of all the asteroids is less than three percent of the mass of our Moon. The clusters of asteroids preceding and following Jupiter (called the "Greeks" and "Trojans") are clearly seen to occupy a very wide section of interplanetary space. The same could be suggested for an asteroid clusters associated with Mars. The asteroids occupy a doughnut shaped space.
[return to text]

Note 16 --

Not that there were not some actual battles or, more likely, skirmishes, especially after about 750 BC, which the Egyptians consistently lost -- to the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks.

Following up on the suggestions by Gillian, a list of the proudly proclaimed sacred battles of the Egyptians could be used to determine when in the past Mars came within viewing distance of Earth. This might resolve the period around 1200 BC, for which there seems to be archaeological evidence of massive destructions of regions in the Middle East, but which I have discounted as probably representing the 8th century BC, on the basis of the established discrepancy in Egyptian dating. I followed de Grazia's suggestion on this.

The nearest fictional invaders in Mesopotamia would be the "Gutium hordes" which overran the Akkadian empire, although we have no clear dates or locations for the Gutium hordes, nor do we know where they came from, or what language they spoke.
[return to text]

Note 17 --

An earlier cosmetic palette, the "Two Dog Palette," shows a wild scattering of floating animals -- deer, antelope, cattle, giraffe, lion, a long-nosed jackel with human arms and legs, and a four-legged flying giffin, plus two large dogs. Only the dogs are matched left and right.

Another early palette, the partial "Vultures Palette," shows bound prisoners, birds, and dead men floating toward the right. A lion gnaws at a fallen prisoner while a human steps on the neck of another. Interestingly, two of the four standards which are being carried before the pharaoh on the Palette of Narmer, and were thought to represent four of the nomes of lower Egypt, are here shown on a fragment, not carried, but with arms extending from the poles to hold the bound arms of two prisoners. Prisoners are identified by the fact that their elbows are tied together behind their backs.

Because these herds of animals and prisoners occur before Horus first shows up, it would seem that the asteroid swarm (or some of these) were independent of Horus. This would account for the fact that the "cattle counts" are recorded separately from the passage of Horus.
[return to text]

Note 18 --

The earlier suggestion identifying Geb as the Peratt plasmoid of the south (Chapter 5, "Saturn and Archaeology") has additional consequences. Jane Sellers, in "The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt" (1992), describes the Sed Festival of the Egyptians, from Ptolemaic sources (300 to 40 BC). Sellers writes..

"When the king reappears [after exiting from a chapel] he is wearing a kilt; in his right hand is the usual flail scepter and in his left is an object resembling a small Scroll. ... The king runs with this and displays it [the scroll] to all, proclaiming it was given to him by Osiris in the presence of the god Geb."

She adds a quotation from texts of the temple of Edfu (from Henri Frankfort, "Ancient Egyptian Religion," 1948)..

"I have run holding the Secret of the Two Partners [the name of the scroll]. The Will [another title] that my father has given me before Geb. I have passed through the land and touched the four sides of it. I traverse it as I desire."

"Touching the four sides" is suggestive of the "survey of the world" as related in the "Chilam Balam," especially if this ceremony, almost inexplicably, involves the God Geb, who, as I have suggested, is likely to be the southern plasmoid. The institution of the Sed Festival would then date from remote antiquity. It might jokingly (or not) be suggested that the "Secret of the Two Partners," which is also called the "House Document," is a land deed.

The flail scepter is normally understood as a grain flail. A second matching scepter, which appears in association with the pharaohs at a later time, is the shepherd's crook. The obvious implication is that these are symbols representing the commerce of Upper and Lower Egypt, which were more or less divided into agriculture and animal husbandry. But it seems more appropriate to the grandeur of a pharaoh if the flail was the sweeping device (the bramble bushes or heteromacs) for the overhead lines of blazing electrons of the Peratt polar column of 8500 to 4200 BC, and that the crook is the polar plasma plume, which, although first seen in 3147 BC, was not added until much later. The shepherd's crook is the symbol for 'years,' as in the phrase "Osiris of a million years," found in the "Book of the Dead."

Extending the identification to the era of the southern polar column would also suggest that the four standards carried in front of the pharaoh (as, for example, on the Palette of Narmer), might represent the plumes of the four cardinal directions, not simply the "followers of Horus." The stomach or placenta would represent what was the ball plasmoid at the south pole (this is also the early Mesopotamian glyph for 'king'), the jackal on the plow would represent the north. At later times Ursa Minor is represented like that. The two hawks would represent the east and the west -- which defined the travel of Saturn as a hawk, from east to west every day as Saturn slowly moved higher up in the skies between 9000 BC and 5800 BC. The east and west standards each seem to have a vertical banner-like flag attached. This occurs also in Sumerian iconography: two standards with banners attached and animals on top, in the case of Mesopotamia these are small lions.
[return to text]

Note 19 --

The asteroids are located at 60 degrees in front of and behind Jupiter (an angle measured from the Sun) because at this location the forces due to the gravitational attraction of Jupiter and the Sun are minimized. Located anywhere else along Jupiter's arbit, the asteroids would be disturbed gravitationally, and move into an elliptical orbit away from the orbit of Jupiter. The stable orbital positions at 60 degrees apply to any planet.
[return to text]

Note 20 --

Despite the definitive statement by Millett, I still feel that it is more likely that the four standards represent the 'trees' of the cardinal directions -- the polar and equatorial plasma plumes.

But since the fifth standard apparently appears after 2490 BC, it is, like the fifth and green tree of the Maya "Chilam Balam," the appearance of Jupiter on a slimmed down lower plasma outpouring, and much longer than the earlier apparition. Jupiter at this time was much further away from Earth. The peaked shape of the sun-temples recalls this shape also.

Additionally, it could be suggested that the city of Pe in the delta is actually Saturn above the north pole before 3147 BC. Apparently Pe was occupied for 500 years in predynastic times, but was only a small village during the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom, even though the Egyptians during these times referred to Pe as if it was still a major religious site and capital of the delta region. The inscription quoted by Millett is dated to early in the fifth dynasty, 2490 to 2445 BC.
[return to text]

Note 21 --

Apollodorus (AD 100) makes the ten labors of Hercules into 12 labors matched to the signs of the zodiac, starting with Leo. Note that all of the labors involve travel. Hercules is constantly on the move. This more likely represents the doings of Mars in the era of 806 BC to 687 BC, when Mars made nine appearances.

Gilgamesh, in later renditions of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" (from Assurbanipal's library, thus before 612 BC), likewise travels through the signs of the zodiac in his adventures. But note that there are ten adventures originally, not nine.
[return to text]

Note 22 --

The mastaba graves of the Horus pharaohs of the first and second dynasty at Abydos are apparently cenotaphs (that is, empty graves), with the alternate (real) burials at Saqqara. Abydos was also the city of Osiris, and his 'grave' became a site of pilgimages in later 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 (or, in their thinking, "was").

It is thought today that there was political pressure for two graves, because the pharaoh was King of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, and thus needed to be buried once in the south and once in the north. But this has the ring of an inappropriate imposition of contemporary political philosophy.

Despite the design of the Giza pyramids as cenotaphs, the queen and officials of the court of Khufu were all assigned graves at carefully placed locations (as mastabas) surrounding the pyramid of Khufu. The real grave of Khufu has not been located.
[return to text]

Note 23 --

On the placement of the pyramids in the manner of the stars in the belt of Orion, see Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert "The Orion Mystery" (1994). This is a good theory gone wrong. Orion has nothing to do with Egyptian religion, and basing a whole book on the alignment of one air shaft seems ludicrous. Additionality, as I have pointed out in another chapter, the sky has changed since 2600 BC.

Here is a comment from J.A.R. Legon, originally one of the sources for Bauval and Gilbert..

"One of the generally-accepted theories of modern Egyptology has been that the ancient Egyptians identified their god Osiris with the constellation of Orion. This association has become so widely recognized that it would seem futile to dispute the conventional view, and yet a detailed study of the Pyramid Texts and some other primary sources for ancient Egyptian astronomy casts considerable doubt over the validity of the interpretation, and suggests that the equation between Osiris and the constellation of Orion has been merely a convenient make-shift adopted by scholars owing to the lack of more precise information."

-- J.A.R. Legon, 'The Orion Correlation and Air-Shaft Theories', Discussions in Egyptology Vol. 33 (1995), 45-56.

He continues...

"I have taken the view that his theory depends on a misunderstanding of the religious and funerary beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, as expressed in the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom. There is, after all, no evidence from the Pyramid Texts or elsewhere to support the idea that the successive pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty were supposed to be equated with different stars of the constellation of Orion; and I find the idea conceptually implausible in view of the fact that the successive kings of the Old Kingdom each wished to be identified with 'S3h' -- Osiris -- in the afterlife, in precisely the same terms from one reign to the next."

-- J.A.R. Legon, from his web page.

Additionally, as others have pointed out that, for a hundred years before Giza and for four hundred years after, the ceilings of tombs were decorated in nothing but rows on rows of star symbols, in an apparent complete disinterest in the actual stars and constellations. Stars were only seen as so many twinkling pin-points in the sky. Even in later ages, the Egyptians would reverse star maps at will to fit the decor of a tomb, and render constellations as they saw fit. See, for example, Anthony Sakovich (at http://www.megaliths.info).

H. W. E. Saggs, in "Civilization before Greece and Rome" (1989), also dismisses the astronomical acumen of the Egyptians, writing..

"In view of the low level of their mathematics, it is not surprising to find that the Egyptians made very little contribution to theoretical mathematical astronomy; as far as current evidence goes, they produced no texts which deserve this description until the final centuries before the Christian era, after they had become open to Babylonian and Hellenistic influences."

[return to text]

Note 24 --

Part of the red granite of the pyramid of Menkaure has been dressed. But it should be pointed out that only the bottom 16 courses are red granite. The top courses are of dressed white limestone.
[return to text]

Note 25 --

The multiple roof beams of granite blocks above the upper 'King's Chamber' have no structural advantage, despite the fact that this 'reason' has been repeatedly recopied from one source to another. The weight on the upper 'King's Chamber' (200 feet of stone) is much less than the weight bearing on the much lower 'Queen's Chamber' (300 feet of stone) which uses only a single set of two peaked slabs for its roof (thus shaped like a house roof). The use of peaked or corbelled roofs had been in use in the pyramid at Meidum, and in the two pyramids by Seneferu at Dashur (each supporting 300 to 400 feet of stone above the roof).

Peaked slabs or a corbelled roof would have made much more sense for the King's chamber. In fact, above the five flat blocks of the 'King's Chamber' is a set of peaked slabs, structurally unconnected to the flat slabs below them.

I would also argue against any idea of incorporating some grand mathematical constants, like pi or phi, despite what Herodotus was led to believe on the testimony of the priests of Sais. The mathematics of the Egyptians was crude at best. They never got pi (the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference) closer than about 3.2 -- with the use of a series of fractions. I used 22/7 in high school, which comes two orders closer to the correct value.

And what would the Egyptians use phi for? It has been suggested that the ratio of 1.6+ to 1 was used in architecture. Phi is approximated with the ratio of the long side to the short side of the 3-4-5 triangle. It is also the ratio of the orbital (as well as the synodic) periods of Earth and Venus (today, and possibly in the past). European thinking along the notion of 'the wisdom of the Ancients' has, even in this century, held that the Egyptians felt the need to pass mathematical constants on to future generations.

The deviation of the angle of the slope among pyramids as well as the angle of the access shaft speaks to rule-of-thumb construction, not mathematical constants and certainly not dead-on surveying practice. It is not at all easy to get the initial angle correct. But once it is set, it is relatively easy to excavate and finish the boring visually in an absolutely straight line over hundreds of feet. The fine details of surveying seemed not to have bothered the Egyptians, for the angles of these borings vary quite a bit, even if the actual shafts are absolutely straight.

They certainly could do surveying, for taxation depended on knowing the area of the cultivated land, and they seemed to have used the fact that the diagonal of a square area can be used as the side of a larger square which will cover twice the area. And they certainly knew the 3-4-5 triangle -- which is still used today by carpenters to square up building foundations and set walls perpendicular to each other.

It looks, in fact, as if the 3-4-5 triangle was used in the design of the slope of the Giza pyramids (and one of Seneferu's pyramids at Dashur). The Giza pyramids have a cross section of two 3-4-5 triangles set back to back with the '3' side as the base. It would be easy for stone masons to check accuracy, for if the '5' side is held against the slope, a plumb bob along the '4' side will determine the accuracy of the facing of the exterior blocks. Using the 3-4-5 triangle as the basis for design also makes the estimates for materials easier since all measures of materials are multiples of the sum of the three sides of the 3-4-5 triangle -- the base area, perimeter, volume, and area of the facing stone.

The angle between the '5' and '3' sides is 53.1 degrees. The slope of the Giza pyramids is measured or estimated variously from 50.7 degrees to 53.1 degrees. Perhaps an inverted isosceles triangle with a base of '4' and legs of '3' and a plumb bob (or a '2-3' triangle where '3' is the hypotenuse) was used at the Bent pyramid and the Stone pyramids at Dahshur to achieve the 43.5 (44) degree angle.

The access shaft angle of 26.5 degrees is found from a slope of 2:1. This angle has nothing to do with the elevation of the polar axis above the horizon, which is 30 degrees at the latitude of Giza. All pyramids since Seneferu used this angle, or a measure close to it.
[return to text]

Note 26 --

Egypt's 3000 year repugnance for foreigners, and antipathy especially to the Asiatic nations, has to be rooted in the accomplishments of the First Kingdom, especially the Giza pyramids. Egypt was the home of the dead Gods, and the pharaoh ruled upper and lower Egypt -- upper Heaven and lower Earth. The Sudanese were welcomed -- living in what was an extension of the Nile -- but not the Libyans.
[return to text]

Note 27 --

Reader also suggests that the Sphinx may date from the first or second dynasty, that is, it preexisted the building of Khafre causeway and his mortuary temple. The walls of the mortuary temple are wedged into the enclosing wall of the temple in front of the Sphinx. There is additional evidence also.
[return to text]

Note 28 --

Kurt Mendelssohn, in "The Riddle Of The Pyramids" (1974), addressed the three pyramids built by Seneferu, concluding from available evidence that at least two were under construction at the same time, a conclusion which goes against the thinking of Egyptiologists that individual pyramids were built one at a time by individual pharaohs. It confirms, however, the conclusion reached by Colin Reader that the three pyramids at Giza were planned as one unit. Mendelssohn writes..

"We have seen that the sudden decision to change the shape of the southern pyramid at Dahshur [the Bent pyramid with the rhomboid shape] resulted from the catastrophe at Meidum. The disaster, as could be proved conclusively, took place in the middle of the third construction phase at Meidum. On the other hand, the pyramid at Dahshur had reached about half of its projected height when the angle of elevation had been changed. This means that roughly 70 percent of the masonry of the Bent pyramid had already been placed in position when the previous pyramid at Meidum was still under construction. The inescapable conclusion is that the building periods of these two pyramids overlapped very considerably."

Likewise Ernest Moyers, in "Some Perspective on Pyramid Chronology" at http://www.gizapyramid.com/research.htm (2001?), notes,

".. all four Great Pyramids [he includes the two pyramids at Dahshur] were part of one vast construction project. That project was carried on linearly until the last Great pyramid was built, and could not have been associated in any way with reigning kings. If we are willing to swallow all the logistical and mechanical difficulties I outlined ... to make the construction cover 100 years of time according to traditional spans, then some person or some segment of the population was able to not only conceive of the project, but also to execute it. Either this meant that a continuity of concept was maintained between generations, with full knowledge of design and methods of execution, or the genius behind the design lived an extraordinarily long life."

[return to text]

Note 29 --

Seneferu's third pyramid is known as "the red pyramid." The core is a reddish limestone, although it was faced in white limestone from the Tura mountains on the east of the Nile. (Only the core shows today.) But in the magic of the Egyptians, 'intent' rather than 'fact' is often used to express some theological fine point -- like the fake buildings and the frequent false doors, through which spirits were expected to wander, even if the doors were of no use to live humans.
[return to text]

Note 30 --

For the obsessive construction of giant statues on Easter Island, Jared Diamond suggests a number of requirements. Foremost is the existence of an egalitarian elite -- petty clan chiefs -- where no one person or group had overall power. It also suggests a division of the population into separate classes -- stone masons, farmers, and chiefs or priests -- and the additional requirement of a substantial economic base, like farming, to allow for feeding those who did not farm.

Some 800 statues exist; 350 were erected. All the rest were in a state of being carved or readied for transport. The whole project was abandoned at about the time that the last trees were cut down. Before erecting the statues became the obsession, the Easter Island natives built giant platforms at the edge of the sea, which are also found at nearby islands (1200 miles away). There are prototypes for the statues on other islands also. See Jared Diamond, "Collapse" (2005).
[return to text]

Note 31 --

Henry Adams, "Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres" (1904).
[return to text]

Note 32 --

By Roman times the Celts of western Europe firmly believe in metempsychosis, hundreds of years before anything resembling the concept of 'life after death' is introduced in the Mediterranean by Christianity or its predecessor religions.

The western Celts also clearly recall conditions of the "Age of the Gods" in the myths first recorded in medieval times (4500 years after the events). But, surprisingly, we hear nothing of barrows or henges in their recorded myths.
[return to text]

Note 33 --

Image: Avebury henge and causeways, Silbury hill, the Sanctuary.

The purposeful rebuilding of the post structure at the "Sanctuary" is noted in "British Archeology" (February 2000). It was rebuilt up to five times, not to enlarge the structure, but to replace it with a structure of the same dimensions. With each rebuilding the posts were removed and the holes backfilled, except the last time, in ca 2300 BC.

There was a second causeway, of about equal length, leading off from the main circle toward the southwest. It ends in nothing but two unconnected long-barrows which were built in 3600 BC, used for over two thousand years, and apparently backfilled and sealed during the construction of Avebury henge.

The causeway to the southwest looks like a celestial path leading to the oval structure in the southwest skies. Note the 30 degree bend in the direction. West Kennet Long Barrow is a chambered barrow and located directly south of Avebury, south of the Kennet River. It was started in about 3700 BC. East Kennet Long Barrow, a little further south, has not been excavated.
[return to text]

Note 34 --

The willingness of generations after 3000 BC to constantly remodel Stonehenge and keep its use current may be due to its limited size and central location.

The long history of constant reconstruction over the 1500 year period after 3147 BC might suggest that the building and rebuilding of the monument might have been the most important function of all, even though the actual meaning of this eludes us. This is not different from Mesoamerican monumental building practices.
[return to text]

Note 36 --

In the central Valley of Mexico, as related by the Spanish historian Sahagún in the 16th century AD, and quoted by Javier Urcid in "Zapotec Writing, Knowledge, Power, and Memory in Ancient Oaxaca" (2005), as..

"And also they caused him [the deceased] to carry a little dog, a yellow one; they fixed about its neck a loose cotton cord. It was said that [the dog] bore [the dead one] across the place of the nine rivers in the land of the dead... And when the four years had ended, thereupon [the dead one] went to the nine lands of the dead, [where] lay a broad river. There the dogs carried one across."

As I have already pointed out in Chapter 2, "The Solar System and an Alternative Cosmology," and in Chapter 5, "Saturn and Archaeology," the "nine rivers" are the Mesoamerican equivalent of the Duat, called the "House of Nine Bushes" in the "Chilam Balam." The "broad river" is the ecliptic, which was noted as appearing about "2 or 3 degrees wide" in the early 19th century of the current era (see an endnote in the previous chapter on this). In the 16th century AD the broad river of the ecliptic was still visible.
[return to text]

Note 37 --

As I have pointed out earlier, at the eventual location at 5.2 AU from the Sun, for Jupiter to have looked the same diameter as the Moon (using the tangent of 1/2 degree, with the Earth at 1 AU from the Sun), the coma would have been nearly 3.5 million miles in diameter. The plasmasphere of Jupiter today is still 3.5 million miles wide.

A coma of this size would have encompassed the Earth if it had developed while Jupiter was still in the near part of the asteroid belt. Because the asteroid belt provided multiple targets for plasma discharges, I do not think a coma, or a large coma, developed before Jupiter reached the end of the belt at a distance of 3.5 AU from the Sun.

The 3.5 million mile diameter coma offers some idea of the scope of influence, and how plasmoid thunderbolts could be delivered over vast distances. Three and a half million miles is 16 times the distance from Earth to the Moon, which is only a quarter million miles.

If Plutarch's Mazdaism sources are correct, and Jupiter initially showed as three times the diameter of the Moon, then when Jupiter first exited the last clumps of asteroid belt at about 4.7 AU, the coma would have had a diameter of 10 million miles.
[return to text]

Note 38 --

"Rounded like a hat" can also be read as "sharply pointed" or could mean "shaped." The section of the 16th century AD "Chilam Balam" dealing with ancient celestial phenomena was apparently copied from illustrated glyphic bark books of great antiquity. We are here encountering a verbal description of an image for which the physical basis had been lost to memory. The "pointed hat buttocks" is probably a reasonable description of a depiction of the coma extending from the bottom of Jupiter.

"Sitting on his mat," however, is a metaphor for rulership. But it is tempting to consider the mat as a line below the red globe of Jupiter, so that we arrive at another example of the cartouche-like object of the Egyptians known as a 'shen,' and although it is used in these lines from the "Chilam Balam" as a metaphor, it might be based on an earlier image seen in the skies.
[return to text]

Note 39 --

City walls are not necessarily for defense. The first use of walls around compounds of buildings was probably to protect cattle or sheep from predators, like the 'kraal' of 19th century Zulu villages. Lions roamed Persia well into Roman times, and would probably make excursions into the Mesopotamian lowlands for a kill.

But it must have become obvious before long that walls would also keep people from neighboring cities out. The walls around Jericho are a curious exception if seen as protection, as is the Jericho tower, since they were built much too early (6000 BC).

One might question the genesis of the planned cities arising in Mesopotamia and the Indus valley which seem to spring into being with no previous examples. The beginnings of the Harappan culture has not been dated, since earliest levels are below ground water, but I would suspect they would also date to after 3000 or 2700 BC. This culture had examples of earlier cities -- in Iran and Baluchistan. The first cities in southern Mesopotamia appear after 2700 BC, maybe earlier. They follow earlier small villages and individual housing. Mesopotamian cities may have been derived from Iran, and certainly from the cities in Anatolia.

We should distinguish between villages and cities. Villages are a function of the availability of resources. If you live in a river valley where there is water, where you can plant, and surrounded by forests where you can hunt and cut lumber, it makes sense to settle a village near the water and farm land even if there are no more than a few families. People only live together when it makes sense to do so. Villages in forested Central Europe after 5600 BC are all located along river valleys.

Cities are by and large based at a central temple, which soon become the centers for the manufacture of goods and for trade. The temple compounds often precede the city, as for Uruk in Mesopotamia which is built adjacent to the earlier temple E-ana. Similarly in Egypt, and in Mesoamerica, it is the ceremonial centers which precede cities.

In Mesopotamia the cities were built by an immigrant people who had already lived in grouped houses in Iran for over a thousand years, or who may have come from Anatolia which boasts numerous cities much older than the Sumerian culture in southern Mesopotamia. They moved into the flatlands of the Euphrates and Tigris because of the potential productivity (discovered earlier by local people). Much the same happens with the Indus valley Harappan civilization. These people had moved out from Baluchistan and probably also from the Himalayan foothills near the source of the Indus and Ganges.

It looks like there was a sudden increase in population after 3100 BC in the agricultural centers of the world. As the climate became drier and colder, there were mass migrations of people from lands where the archaeology suggests more primitive conditions for housing, but not with respect to agriculture and animal husbandry. When groups strike out to new lands they are organized and naturally would plan their 'new' cities with some reasonable order.

Having lived elsewhere in cities which had grown in helter skelter fashion, it can be understood why the new cities were carefully planned in in grid fashion, and, as for example in the Indus valley, which were built from the start with sewers and running water.

This is not a case of foragers suddenly settling down. The foragers were probably decimated in 3147 BC when coastal regions flooded. Even if people survived, the game probably did not. The survivors of the flood are to be found in mountainous regions and far inland away from seas, coasts, and low areas. The farmers who suddenly appear after 3100 all come from the slopes and foothills of mountains. The survivors are those who had already learned to plant in addition to 'gathering'. In the lowlands of India or Pakistan there is no evidence of a prior foraging (hunter/ gatherer) population before 3100 BC.
[return to text]

Note 40 --

"...for nothing is older in human history than seeing the past as exemplary (the 'Golden Age'), the present as deficient, and then trying to restore conditions as they used to be. Few Egyptian Pharaohs came to the throne without undertaking to restore things 'as they were in the beginning.' That is, of course, the hallmark of the conservatism of traditional cultures. All traditional human societies justify their practices either by saying, 'that is the way things have always been,' or, if origins are in issue, by saying that the gods established things that way. Mythic accounts may or may not have been offered, briefly or elaborately, to explain how or why the gods did establish things in the proper way. Eventually the explanation becomes the thing itself, and the historical dimension is simply eliminated, as religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam directly present the founding commands of God in revelatory literature."

-- Kelley L. Ross, 1996 [http://www.friesian.com/conserv.htm]

[return to text]

Note 41 --

"The tokens were an entirely new medium for conveying information. Compared to the previous tallies, the conceptual leap was to endow each token shape, such as the cone, sphere, or disk, with a specific meaning.... The token system was, in fact, the first code -- the earliest system of signs used for transmitting information."

-- Denise Schmandt-Besserat "Before Writing, From Counting to Cuneiform" (1992)

The use of ideograms or pictograms, pictures which stood for short nouns and eventually sounds, was in use from ca 3200 BC in Mesopotamia. Cuneiform is a more rapid 'longhand' abbreviation of the 'pictures.' The cuneiform script eventually expanded to some 600 glyphs, representing short words or sounds, and was firmly established probably by ca 2800 BC in Mesopotamia. The use of pictograms, some identical to the original Mesopotamian, continued in Egypt, but were soon reduced to syllable-sounds.

It took 1500 years before an alphabetical script was introduced. Perhaps the reason the cuneiform never moved directly to an alphabet (the cuneiform was abandoned) is because the concept of an alphabet requires something entirely different. It requires sounds -- not words -- to be mapped to a flat space. This space, where sounds have a one-to-one (analogical) relationship to marks, has to be imagined and recognized. The alphabet probably derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphs sounds.

Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica all developed mixtures of phoneme-based syllabaries, but none developed alphabets. The syllabary scripts of China and Mesoamerica had an advantage in that they could be broadly read over a wide range of languages, since sounds were not strictly represented. The scripts were like magic.

On the other hand, it is not at all obvious that speech consists of finite units like consonants and vowels, as is easily demonstrated from the first writing efforts of the young. The leap to representative individual sounds first shows in the prefixes used with the signs of cuneiform, as it does in the word-sound signs added to both the Maya glyphs and the Chinese script -- but they did not move beyond the specific functional addition made to the syllabaries.

The first alphabet was a vowel-less set of signs introduced in Canaan ca 1500 BC, generally attributed to the Phoenicians, but probably based on the Egyptian demotic (longhand) which was already reduced to assigning sounds to glyphs. Once demonstrated, it spread like wildfire. It was quickly adopted by traders of the Levant (and by Moses). The Greeks added vowels needed for their vocalization in about 700 BC. Alphabets eventually spread even to barbarian northern Europe where one form, known as the 'Futhorc,' is obviously based on Roman letters. But the cyphers of many other European barbarian alphabets show no relationship to known letter forms at all, demonstrating that it was the idea that was transmitted rather than the letters.

See especially H. W. F. Saggs, "Civilization before Greece and Rome" (1989), who lucidly describes writing (plus other topics) in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan.
[return to text]

Note 42 --

Two-dimensional graphic depiction in antiquity is the result, as I have noted previously, of rendering recognizable features with no regard to physical relationships. This can probably be extended to the depiction on Greek vases, even though these date from quite late -- the 7th century BC. This might affirm that the people who established the Greek civilization of the 6th and 5th century BC were unschooled in graphic depiction. The existence of this tradition would invalidate the argument I have presented in the text.

Neither the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, or Greek traditions derived from the masters of the Upper Paleolithic who decorated the caves in Spain and France 10,000 years earlier.
[return to text]

Note 43 --

"Ideas such as objectified conceptions of a mind, or even the notion of something spiritual being manifested, are of much later development. It is generally agreed that the ancient Egyptian language, like the Sumerian, are concrete from first to last. To maintain that it is expressing abstract thoughts would seem to me an intrusion of the modern idea that men have always been the same."

-- Julian Jaynes "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976)

[return to text]

Note 44 --

There are disadvantages also. We are so easily convinced of the validity of our metaphorical thinking, that we end up fooling ourselves.

"It is one of the lessons of logic, dutifully repeated in its textbooks, that 'analogy is not proof.' But to ... humans of all times, analogy must be proof. The most marvelous sense of power, intellectually and behaviorally, comes from the association of the tiniest events and observations with the nature and conduct of the great universe."

-- Alfred de Grazia, "Homo Schizo, Human and Cultural Hologenesis" (1983?)

Another failing of speakers of Indo-European languages, and perhaps some other cultures who are similarly inclined, is to jump to conclusions about causal connections simply because two events follow each other in time.
[return to text]

Note 46 --

See Chapter 14, "Language and Subjective Consciousness," where this is more fully developed.
[return to text]

Note 47 --

I would suspect that the delay in subjective consciousness in the Americas might largely be due to the limited exposure to new people. The eastern Mediterranean, in contrast, was constantly overrun by foreign tribes seeking better environments, especially after both 1500 BC and 800 BC. The same is true of China.

Consciousness also insinuated itself for totally different reasons, dating from after 2000 BC, as writing came into greater use. Trade would have been an immense influence (meeting different people), as would the increased use of scripts for state administration. Jaynes, in fact, claims that the use of the scripts of the "talking tablets" displaced the voice of a person to an object, driving spoken commands into silence, and requiring the reader to listen to the tablet, rather than imagining a person dictating the text. The communications of Hammurabi (ca 1700 BC) to his distant government officials were addressed not to them, but to the tablets he wrote (in his own hand!). See Appendix A, "Chronology," for more details.
[return to text]

Note 48 --

I wonder how much of a lack of subjective consciousness existed among the world's foraging populations, or if it had already developed. Hunters are required to be smarter than farmers. They need to previsualize their quarry, understand their habits, walk their territory, and plot a catch. That requires a lot more mental space than the rote repetition of wielding a hoe. This would suggest, in turn, that the God-obsessed farming populations were more prone to remain pre-conscious. However, in a previous chapter I have applied a pre-conscious condition to the western European Cromagnon cave painters (and hunters) as a reasonable explanation of why nothing changed in their depiction technique for 30,000 years.
[return to text]

Note 49 --

We do remember the physical spaces we have to navigate as a child, the people we deal with, and thousands of other things which become assigned to near-automatic behaviour. This is mainly a right brain function.
[return to text]

Note 50 --

"This process by which the early gods reappear in later legends under human or semihuman form ... can be observed in many parts of the world, notably in India and Scandinavia. There is no question of historical characters being invested with divinity. A detailed examination of all ancient religions, not to mention new ones, ... shows that the Gods were originally more abstract and general forces which gradually degenerated and became anthropomorphic or zoomorphic"

-- Jean Markale "The Celts, Uncovering the Mythic and Historic Origins of western Culture" (1978)

I would argue against the "abstract and general forces" and insist that the gods were instantly recognized as giant supernatural beings (and thus in a manner anthropomorphized), and only assumed human dimensions at a later date after they disappeared from view.

It seems likely that the predilection of our ancestors (and 'primitives') for colorful decorations of bright bird feathers and oversized or outlandish headdresses reflects the colorful auroral plasma displays surrounding Saturn when he stood above the pole. The same would be true of the crowns of kings and the halos of saints.
[return to text]

Note 51 --

The note about Sahagún is from Charles Mann, "1491, New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" (2006). Mann uses this to demonstrate that the Aztec were hardly 'savages.' The Aztec philosophers, by the way, seem to have bested the Spanish in the discussions. Admittedly, a complex theology is not sufficient to suggest subjective consciousness, for we see the same in Egypt of the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom before 1500 BC. The status of consciousness ought to be sought in the accommodation of the Aztec to the religious environment of the central Mexican region, which they invaded 200 years before the Spanish arrived, and their subsequent relationship to the Spanish. This should be considered, despite the fact that their relationship to the Gods was one of control (which reflected also in their relationship with other tribes) rather than the Mediterranean concept of having to placate God.

Mesoamerica shows all the signs of having developed an intricate philosophical system which deals in metaphorical constructs after 600 BC. Linda Schele and David Freidel, in "Maya Cosmos" (1993) attribute the collapse of the Maya in AD 900 to internecine warfare, not on a religious collapse (which would be an index of the lack of subjective consciousness), as Jaynes suggested 30 years ago, based on information available to Jaynes at that time. Similarly the destruction of ceremonial sites in the Valley of Mexico were not always accomplished for religious reasons. Many centers were destroyed by marauding invaders.

However, it is important to emphasise that pre-conscious people are almost indistinguishable from subjectively conscious people, and the only real hint pointing to a lack of subjective consciousness is the inability to deal with new situations. This was not true of the Maya and the Mexicans at the time of the Spanish invasion, but I will go with Jaynes' opinion in the case of the Inca empire, although this is influenced by my lack of knowledge of the specifics of the change in South America from indigenous religions to Christianity. The Maya and Mexica, on the other hand seem to have integrated local traditions (or, more importantly, their philosophy) and Christianity.
[return to text]

Note 52 --

See Julian Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976), for additional details.
[return to text]

Note 53 --

The belief by Mesoamerican cultures in an afterlife at the time of the invasion is now disputed. See Charles Mann, "1491, New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" (2006). The ceremonial centers serviced the elite and the states. Instead of benefiting the population by supplying promises of an afterlife, the benefit was reaped in earthly terms -- good harvests, long life, many children -- through the intervention with the Gods by the ceremonial chiefs. When these were not forthcoming, the population abandoned the ceremonial centers at the drop of a hat.
[return to text]

Note 54 --

It is amazing that, in Mesopotamia, kingship and trade remained secular in many respects. The Kings are only infrequently promoted to the status of Gods, unlike Egypt, and the relationship of traders to the temple enterprises is not clear at all. The trade also supplied the elite with gems and exotic materials. This condition arose from the fact that Sumer has no natural resources outside of agricultural products.

We have no clear indication of 'temple economies' in China, since there are no accounting records on clay, like in Mesopotamia, or testimonials carved in stone as in Egypt. But there was an economy based on supplying the elite of the very large imperial court, the provincial governors and their staff, as well as the armies, with food and luxury goods.
[return to text]

Note 55 --

The Maya never supported standing armies, or a police force.

I disagree with Jaynes' contention that "authority" was needed to "control" groups of people through leadership, especially large groups. A look at the Plains Indians shows this is not so. See, for instance, Robert Utley, "The Lance and the Shield, The life and Times of Sitting Bull" (1993) or see Linda Schele and David Freidel "A Forest of Kings" (1990) on the Maya. The need for authority is necessary to gregarious species, like us humans. But it need not be a matter of imposed control, and all indications from graves and houses before 3100 BC in Egypt and the Near East is that there was no leadership elite.
[return to text]

Note 56 --

Jaynes admits that perhaps people whose role was closest to the upper levels of leadership would be most under the influence of the hallucinating voices of the Gods.

It should be remembered that the concept of "free will" does not develop philosophically until the Classical Age of Greece and the concept of "chance" remains forbidden well into the Middle Ages of Europe.

Even today we see, as an example, that 'moral development' -- a term designating the ability to make independent ethical judgements -- correlates inversely with religiosity, a belief in the importance of law, and in general with conservative beliefs. See Lee Wilkins "The Moral Media: How Journalists Reason About Ethics" (2005).
[return to text]

Note 57 --

Among the conditions for a plasma contact between Venus and Earth is the geometry of a transit of the Sun. Today the transits of Venus (when it moves across the face of the Sun) happen 4 times on a cycle of 243 years, in two sets of two transits, which are 8 years apart. The interval between the sets of pairs alternates between 121.5 and 105.5 years.

The 52 year period was, as I will show in Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics," in effect at this time, but not at a later date, even though invoked by Velikovsky and by some other catastrophists. This notion is largely derived from the continued observance in Mesoamerica of 52 year intervals, but these intervals are based on the Maya calendar.
[return to text]

Note 58 --

Book 10 of the Maya "Chilam Balam" infers seven approaches by Venus since 3147 BC. I can easily locate four of these to 2349 BC, 1492 BC, 1440 BC, and an appearance which looked like a 'close approach' in 685 BC. Considering the 156 year span of time between the 'Flood of Noah' and 2349 BC, and the 2193 BC agricultural failure of Akkad, Egypt, China, and probably Harappa, the remaining three approaches by Venus could then be placed in 2297, 2245, and 2193 BC with some confidence.

Venus would seem to approach Earth every 52 years, but unlikely to have looked all that large except for its coma. For an electrical interaction Venus would have to line up with the Sun on the day side of Earth, and likely never got closer than 20,000,000 miles. I'll provide estimates in the next chapter.
[return to text]

Note 60 --

More and more climatological and archaeological data has come forward over the years to establish a flood event, or some catastrophe, ca 2350 BC, as global in scope. This is influenced by western Christian traditions, which hold to "the flood" as dated in 2349 BC. The climatological decline after 2200 BC (2193 BC) is actually much better established, and the greater political consequences of this later event can be verified from Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources.

"...Most sites in Greece (ca. 260), Anatolia (ca. 350), the Levant (ca. 200), Mesopotamia (ca. 30), the Indian subcontinent (ca. 230), China (ca. 20), Persia/Afghanistan (ca. 50), Iberia (ca. 70) which collapsed at around 2200+-200 BC, exhibit unambiguous signs of natural calamities and/or rapid abandonment. The proxy data detected in the marine, terrestrial, biological and archaeological records point to sudden ecological, climatic and social upheavals which appear to coincide with simultaneous sea- and lake-level changes, increased levels of seismic activity and widespread flood/tsunami disasters. The main problem in interconnecting this vast amount of data chronologically is the application of incoherent and imprecise dating methods in different areas of geological and climatological research..."

-- Benny Peiser, SIS Cambridge Conference (1997).

Peiser is hedging his bets here to cover both 2349 BC and 2193 BC by suggesting a range of from 2400 to 2000 BC. A few others have been more courageous and defined separate events for 2349 BC and the event 156 years later which resulted in a 200 year world-wide hiatus in agricultural production and abandonment of sites, apparently due to a notable lack of light.

We don't really know what happened, but the clues point to an alignment with Venus. On the other hand, Timo Niroma, at [http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/tilmari/], seems to think that the first flood was very localized, suggesting that a bolide fell in the region of the Dead Sea in 2349 BC. That might have devastated lower Mesopotamia, leaving northern Mesopotamia intact, and allowing for the takeover of those lands by the Akkadians shortly after 2349 BC.

A book by Moe Mandelkehr, "The 2300 BC Event" (2006), in three volumes, similarly presents archaeological data spanning the continents, but, again, with a peculiar absences of a record from Egypt and Mesopotamia. Mandelkehr also lumps data to a single date, 2300 BC. Mandelkehr blames the destruction on a massive meteor strike.
[return to text]

Note 61 --

The first Chinese chronicles recall the efforts of two early Emperors (or gods), Yâo and Shun, in undoing the damage of a massive flood. This is the only flood reference in Chinese literature or later 'legends.' Chinese scholars ca 200 BC date these two legendary figures, which represent the last two in a series of ten 'legendary emperors' (or Gods) to ca 2350 to 2200 BC.

James Legge, in his introduction to "The Shu King" (1879), absolutely insists that "Tî," as in "Yâo Tî," be translated as "God," not as "Emperor." He also reviews the slim literary threads which place the start of the reigns of Yâo and Shun in ca 2350 BC.
[return to text]

Note 62 --

The parallels between the ten generations after Adam and the twenty early Sumerian and Egyptian kings and pharaohs (which can be equated with the ten appearances of Mars at approximate 30 year intervals) is a clear indication that we are not dealing with derivative sources. A notable parallel is that the 10 patriarchs born between Noah and Abraham, are all (except the first and last) sired when their father was 29, 30, 32, or 35 years old. See Appendix A, "Chronology," for further considerations.

Other Middle Eastern influences have been noted in the composition of the Bible, especially the literature of the Caananite city of Ugarit after 1500 BC. Additionally, there are clear Egyptian influences, especially in Genesis.
[return to text]

Note 63 --

The other notable compiler of ancient history is Isaac Newton. The Saturnian people have steadfastly avoided bringing the Bible into discussion. I find this a remarkable omission.
[return to text]

Note 64 --

The Egyptian "Intermediate Period" between the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom, is variously estimated at 185 years by Manetho (ca 300 BC), 315 years by Breasted (1905), 141 years by Clayton (1994), and 110 years by Lehner (1997). It is obvious from these disparate estimates that the dates are not well established. Today the start of the Intermediate Period is dated to 2160 BC with some confidence. This is 33 years after the event of 2193 BC.
[return to text]

Note 65 --

Mohenjo-Daro and hundreds of other cities in the Pakistan plain of the Indus river and the parallel dried-up river Sarasvati are totally abandoned after 1900 BC as the region had turned into a desert. It is suspected, however, that the Sarasvati river may be 'mythical,' that is, that it represented the 'river' descending from Saturn during the "Age of the Gods."

The Oera Linda, a medieval book claiming to be the history of the Fries people, calculates 2192 BC as the date of the sudden sinking of At-land -- the area between England and Holland. At the 7000 square miles of the Dogger Banks, off the coast of England, the stumps of trees are still dredged up from the ocean bottom at a depth of 50 to 100 feet, along with mammoth tusks. The sinking of the area probably resulted from the uplift of Norway as the Ice Age glaciers melted, resulting in a sinking of adjacent regions, including the North Sea, which had been lifted up as the ice had depressed Norway. Geologically this event is located late in the Upper Paleolitic, but a much later date is also plausable.

The Oera Linda is suspected of being a hoax in the service of Frisian nationalism, revisionist history of antiquity, and promoting a species of feminism. Arguments against its authenticity are primarily linguistically based, but at times are as arcane as the accusation that the year tallies ignore a "year zero" and thus the sinking of Atland is off by one year from 2193 BC. Of course "At-land" is readily equated by others with Plato's didactic exemplary land of "Atlantis."
[return to text]

Note 66 --

The Chinese "Annals of Shu" hold that Shun, the Moon, dies in 2205 BC, that is, he "goes on high." The date was estimated by chroniclers of the Han dynasty (200 BC) and should probably be 2193 BC. The action is an increase in the period of the Moon which would have accompanied an increase in the orbit of the Earth also. More details in Appendix A, "Notes on Chronology."
[return to text]

---

---

URL of this page: http://saturniancosmology.org/noah.php
This page last updated: Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Size of this page: 32386 words.

---

Feel free to email me with any comments or corrections. Find an email [address] here.

Copyright © 2010 Jno Cook

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms and licence of Creative Commons. A copy of the license is included on the page entitled
Creative Commons Deed 2.5