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Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Chapter 16: The World Flood.


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Contents of this chapter: [The Flood] [The Battle of the Gods] [The Absu and Duat] [Endnotes]

The Flood of 3147 BC

The World Flood, identified as the flood of Gilgamesh, was an extraordinary flood, consisting of a series of worldwide tsunamis. The apparent cause was the removal of Saturn from above the North Pole. The sea waters which had run off the pulled-up crust at the North Pole had collected at the South Pole where the crust was drawn into the interior of the Earth, were suddenly released. [note 1]

Those waters must have stood miles high in the south polar sea, and to a lesser height, but in much greater volume, in the South Atlantic, the South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean. At the same time, the sea level at mid-latitudes might have dropped hundreds of feet. No other flood in later times would approach the devastation of the World Flood of 3147 BC, and the retellings of all later floods would always refer back to the event of 3147 BC.

Many of the flood stories deal with rain. Certainly the Black Sea flood of 5600 BC, which burst forth at a rate of over 14 million gallons per second, would have stirred up a lot of mist and, on hitting the warmer atmosphere of the Black Sea region, would have resulted in continuous rains. To the victims it looked like rain caused the rising waters. But it is much more likely that the rains are associated with the later catastrophe of 2349 BC. The early Sumerian flood myth does not include rain.

A consideration of deposited layers of materials worldwide would make it look like the flood of 3147 BC might have had the following sequence:

Where was it safe for humans? Although the initial tsunamis overran coastal mountains and even land glaciers, inland away from the coasts and on higher ground would have provided safe places -- the east side of the Andes, and the central regions of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Coastal areas which run in a north-south direction were also safe, for the waves would not be forced inland. But any coastal areas which stood in the path of the waves would be overrun by water. In some regions, we can surmise, a wall of water ran for hundreds of miles across relatively flat land, building giant dunes, as in areas of Australia and the Western United States.

The Mediterranean regions, surrounding an inland sea, were little affected, as also the upper reaches of Mesopotamia and Anatolia. The waters headed north from the Indian Ocean for the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf would have battered Somalia and Oman respectively. But the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are additionally protected by their pinched southern necks. The Sumerians certainly had flood myths, but the Egyptians did not.

Recent tsunamis due to submarine earthquakes have been one hundred feet high on reaching a coastline. (And travel in excess of 400 miles per hour.) The damage (in that case) is mostly limited to coastal areas and the waters flow back to the oceans immediately. They certainly would not "cover the Earth." But simultaneous gigantic worldwide tsunamis miles high would be an extraordinary disaster. [note 4]

In a number of deluge tales the Gods felt remorse for the flood they had brought and set a sign in the sky as a promise not to do so again. In the Epic of Gilgamesh the Goddess Inanna (Venus) raises her necklace of lapis lazuli so as to never forget the flood. Noah receives the sign of the rainbow. I have never thought that God would set a rainbow as a sign in the sky. With the later flood of 2349 BC (the flood assigned to Noah), the sign in the sky was the Moon, but as likely it was the appearance of the south (and north) polar plasma plumes, which I will discuss below. In the Babylonian Enuma Elish (of about 1700 BC), Marduk (Jupiter) plants his war bow in the sky to commemorate the flood (the Noachian flood). This vertical "bow" is today confused with the horizontal "rainbow." [note 5]

It was Jupiter's approach which caused the flood -- by displacing Saturn away from the location of Earth. On the first instance after the flood, and as the flood was subsiding, the Earth was located at a considerable distance below Saturn as well as below the nearing Jupiter. The "mountain" of the flood stories, where Noah moored his ark after the waters subsided, is the lower plume of plasma of Jupiter, directed out from the region of Jupiter's south pole (which is the north magnetic pole). The mountain was colored green (as we know from Egyptian depictions of Osiris, as well as the Popol Vuh of the Quiche Maya). On top of the mountain of plasma was Jupiter enclosed in a coma, but lighted by the Sun. With the Earth located below the orbit of Jupiter, only the bottom crescent of this was seen. This was the mountain and the ship of Noah, recorded in hundreds of flood myths.

After his ship landed on this mountain, Noah released a raven to test the waters but the raven just flew back and forth and did not return. Noah next released a dove. The dove returned the first two times, but not the third. The details occur in the Bible, attributed to the flood of 2349 BC. Nearly the same events were recorded in the Sumerian flood epic, written a few hundred years earlier. The raven is the release of the darker Uranus into a larger orbit. Uranus was known as a bird from thousands of years earlier (and as a duck), and the peculiar tilt of its axis of rotation may have shaped its coma into a winged creature.

At this time the Earth was on an inner orbit, while Saturn, and Jupiter afterward, completely outside the orbit of Earth, were both receding from the Sun. Over the next few revolutions of the Earth around the Sun, Uranus would have been seen alternately on the east and the west of Jupiter, looking like a raven flying back and forth aimlessly, first approaching Jupiter (which still looked like a mountain) toward the east, and then moving away, but on the other side of Jupiter.

The light-colored Venus, the dove, was initially seen moving from behind Jupiter on an outer orbit, carrying a green olive branch to Noah (on the mountain of Jupiter). This is the plumage of Quetzalcoatl. The green olive branch, or quetzal plumage, is a plasma tail of ionized Hydrogen. Venus soon disappeared from view as it rounded the Sun.

In the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, on the seventh day after the flood, Utnapishtim sent out successively a dove, a swallow, and a raven; only the raven (Uranus) found a resting place and did not come back, that is, the raven soon (within two years) disappeared into deep space. He was not seen again. The dove (Venus) and the swallow (Mercury?) do return, for they start to orbit the Sun. However, my suspicion is that Mercury traveled with Saturn until Saturn reached the asteroid belt (about 80 years later). In that case it may be the Moon which exhibited the split tail of a swallow (since it has no magnetic field) and a sweeping bow shock. The Moon had an atmosphere until 2205 BC. The Moon orbited the Sun at some distance from Earth's orbit.

The Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh record that Noah and Utnapishtim, respectively, offered a sacrifice to God (or the Gods) after leaving the ark. This fire, located on the mountain, is probably the sight of the Sun-lit side of Jupiter, but now seen from a much greater distance and at a higher elevation than before. Jupiter continued to recede away from the Sun, seen in red, with the smoke from the fire seen as the much lesser wisps of plasma extending from the upper region of Jupiter -- the upper plasma chalice form.

The Gods, reads the Epic of Gilgamesh, crowded like flies around the smoke of the fire. These are the satellites of Jupiter buzzing around the planet. I do not know the disposition of Saturn, for nothing more is ever heard of this planet, although all peoples everywhere continued to be able to locate Saturn in the sky as a pinpoint of light.

In Egypt, almost unaffected by the flood (the Delta region flooded), and in Mesopotamia, the sight of the approaching Jupiter, seen initially in the north with horn-like plumes surrounding its coma and a massive mountain of plasma below, was understood as the "Bull of Heaven" who wrecked the city of the Gods. He is shown as bulldozing city walls (and people) on Egyptian cosmetic palettes between 3100 BC and 3050 BC.

Jupiter had been known since the clouds of chaos lifted thousands of years earlier. Because Earth was located far below Saturn, and thus below the ecliptic, Jupiter had been represented as a pair of up-pointing horns, a crescent, when traveling inside the orbit of Earth on the sun-side (and as an oval "egg" shape when located outside the orbit of Earth).

The event of 3147 BC appears to have been an all-encompassing disturbance. The stories only attest to the flood, but there is also a sudden change in the climate and the start of a cooler and dryer period. The mild and wet days of the "Era of the Gods" never return and further glaciation stopped suddenly. There certainly is evidence that the length of the year changed. Civilization -- cultivation of grains, trade among regions, and even the development of writing -- came to a sudden halt, and regressed. In Mesopotamia the sudden halt of civilization is known as the Jemdet Nasr period.

What caused the catastrophe of 3147 BC?

The Battle of the Gods

The catastrophe of 3147 BC involved more than the disappearance of Saturn from the north sky. It involved the near "collision" of the group of 7 planets with Jupiter. What most likely happened in 3147 BC is that Saturn, together with Earth, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Neptune, and Uranus, "ran into" Jupiter, which was then located probably at 0.7 AU from the Sun. (See Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics," where this information is derived.)

Possibly some 3 million years earlier, Saturn had assumed a closer orbit around the Sun as a result of a remote electric shock between Saturn and Jupiter -- which would have been attractive, thus bringing Saturn closer to the center of the Solar System. The resulting new orbit of Saturn was an ellipse, with aphelion (the furthest distance from the Sun) beyond the orbit of Jupiter. Saturn would annually return to cross Jupiter's orbit. In 3147 BC Saturn reached this location just as Jupiter also arrived.

What I have characterized as a "collision" above, should be understood as an intersection of the plasmasphere of these planets. It could readily be suggested that when the plasmaspheres of Jupiter and the Saturnian planets connected (at an estimated distance of perhaps 8 million miles), it instantly reformed to a different shape to include both giant planets, but in the process locked out the small planets Earth and Venus. Located far below the south pole of Saturn, Earth was not likely to have been within 3 million miles of Saturn when Jupiter closed in, and escaped easily. In Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics," the estimate that Earth at that time was located about 3 million miles below Saturn is derived.

We can also again perform an analysis in terms of the gravitational sphere of influence. Tom Van Flandern notes that a sphere of influence would be drastically reduced in size (for smaller objects) with a change in the mass to the primary (which doesn't happen), or the proximity of another large body (like the Sun). Under that condition a planet could lose its remote satellites in closing in on the Sun. This also doesn't normally happen, but had happened repeatedly for Saturn over the last 600 million years.

The gravitational sphere of influence of Jupiter, measured as 100 times the planet's diameter, would be about 8,700,000 miles. In the proximity of three other large planets (Saturn, Neptune, Uranus), the gravitational sphere of influence might have been reduced to under 3,000,000 miles. The same would have happened to Saturn and its companion planets (Saturn would have had an initial sphere of influence of 7,000,000 miles.) The change in the diameter of the gravitational spheres of influence of the large planets would seem to be the cause for the release of Earth and Venus from the Saturnian stack, and the avoidance of capture by Jupiter.

Earth would have changed its orbit as soon as it was released from the grip of Saturn, placing the Sun gravitationally at one of the two nodes of its orbit. This accounts for the change in perspective on Jupiter (and briefly on Saturn, as recorded in Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica). It also accounts for the fact that the plane of Earth's orbit today still has the largest divergence from the Sun's equatorial, because Earth was furthest below the orbits of the other planets.

Earth and Venus seemed to have escaped from the encounter easily. They were each cast off by the near collision into separate elliptical orbits of different elevation, with the greatest vertical separation between their orbits at aphelion. Both Earth and Venus would continue to return to the orbital location of the "collision" in the future.

It is uncertain how Venus managed to escape, but it is likely that Venus at the time of the collision was orbiting around the mass centroid of Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn, and was thus located far above Saturn, and most likely at the level of Neptune. It is possible that Venus orbited outside of the close fitting plasma sphere of Saturn. If, at the time of the collision, Venus was located on the side away from the downstream plasmasphere tail of Jupiter, it may have been locked out of the reformed plasmasphere of the two main planets.

Mars and Mercury remained in the contracted coma or plasmasphere of Saturn, since they were close to Saturn (probably within two million miles) and likely at a matching potential. Mars probably was part of the Saturnian system since about 30,000 years ago, Mercury had been there since 17,000 BC. Both remained with Saturn and were apparently only released 80 years later, when Saturn entered the asteroid belt and its coma shrank considerably (and Saturn's sphere of gravitational influence).

If we can trust the King List for the "kings before the flood," it looks like Mars had completed a descent to Earth some 80 solar years earlier, and was in the process of returning to Saturn. (The last descent is the only one in the King List which is not a whole interval of 32 years. See Appendix A, "Notes on Chronology.")

Titan, larger than our Moon or Mercury, remained in orbit around Saturn, as did the other satellites of Saturn and Jupiter, and probably the satellites of Uranus and Neptune. The counts of satellites of Saturn and Jupiter noted in antiquity (as, for example, from Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Mesoamerican sources) match the counts of satellites today -- barring tiny rocks and extremely distant satellites discovered only in the 20th century. In the last century it has become known that many primitive people knew the number of satellites of both Jupiter and Saturn. They are also depicted on Mesopotamian seals. Egyptian funeral practices identify seven large (visible) satellites of Saturn as the "Helpers of the King" or the "Sons of Osiris" known since before 3147 BC. Today Saturn still has seven large satellites which can be readily seen with binoculars. [note 6]

Neptune and Uranus, the two large planets above Saturn, were cast into much larger orbits. Uranus is reflected on briefly in the Sumerian flood epic and then never taken note of again. Uranus is one of the Titans "banished" by Zeus (Jupiter) in Greek mythology. "Banned" because they preceded Jupiter into the far reaches of space.

After 3147 BC we have a report of extended combat between two or more Gods. As Jupiter chased Saturn, and perhaps Neptune and Uranus also, the planets could be seen to battle over supremacy, resulting in a massive fireworks display as streams of plasma played across the sky. Jupiter had developed a plasma tail outpouring at the first moment of its removal from its normal orbit.

The image of Jupiter in the south skies would have been stupendous in size. A glowing round globe -- the coma surrounding Jupiter -- stood about halfway up into the sky from the south horizon, traveling on the ecliptic. Below the globe was a green mantle which extended all the way to the horizon below, and above were what looked like a head with a feather headdress, which might also be described as horns. The horns are formed from the upper flower shaped coma, where only the denser plasma at the edges was seen. But more noticeable was the equatorial toroid of glowing plasma within the coma of Jupiter. Of this the left and right cross section -- where the toroid was most dense -- stood out as two eyes staring back at the humans. More on this further below.

We do not know how large the coma of Jupiter was originally, but later estimates suggest a diameter of three million miles, more than three times the diameter of the Sun, but of course located much closer to Earth at first. The coma could initially have occupied 30 or 45 degrees of the sky (at distances of 4,000,000 or 6,000,000 miles). From later snippets of the Egyptian Book of the Dead we often get the feeling that the Gods of Egypt were absolutely huge in size, although far removed. This is an instance of the giant Gods. But the images in the south skies receded rapidly, diminishing in size steadily, and especially since Earth also continued away from the "impact" location much faster than the travels of the other planets, since Earth was on a much smaller and faster orbit.

The large outpouring representing the mantle was the plasma plume at Jupiter's north magnetic pole, which is located at its south (lower) geographic pole. From a number of sources it is clear that it was colored green -- which is how the mummified Osiris is nearly always depicted. (At a much later date, both the coma surrounding the planet and its lower mountain form were red instead.) Vedic sources of uncertain dates recall a green body for the God but wearing a red mantle.

A much smaller funnel-shaped plasma appeared above Jupiter, suggesting horns where the edges were most dense. In this form, this was the "Bull of Heaven" who had destroyed the home of the Gods. Colored green and mostly immobile (as an outer planet, Jupiter would have moved through the skies much slower than Earth), Jupiter was identified as the standing mummified body of Osiris. His worship, however, did not seriously start up until the end of the fifth dynasty (circa 2350 BC), following, in effect, shortly on a time span when "Re" (who is also Jupiter) was worshiped again -- actually, directly after the appearance of Jupiter at the fall of the Absu in 2349 BC. This sequencing of who and what were seen in the skies after 3147 BC will be addressed again in a later chapter.

Like the ithyphallic God Min, statues of which, dating to 3100 BC, have been found in the delta, Osiris is frequently depicted with an erect penis. It seems strange to have a plasma extrusion sticking out at right angles from the mantle (or what would later be known as a mummified form). Of course this would be along the direction of the plane of the ecliptic, so we can suggest the plasma tail of a comet or minor planet. I would elect "planet" for in order to be seen at right angles to Min's mantle, the tail would have to extend along the ecliptic. In 550 BC Herodotus, on the basis of what he learned from the priests at Sais, calls Menes, the founder of Memphis and the first king of the first dynasty, Min -- the name of the ithyphallic God current in the delta since circa 3100 BC. Menes is listed both as a God and as a human in the Turin Papyrus. This is Jupiter, and thus it the first mention of Abraham, who disappears when Jupiter enters the asteroid belt, and is forgotton as Abraham until much later.

Whatever it was that formed the erect penis of Min and Osiris, it could not have existed within the lower plasma plume of Jupiter and simultaneously penetrated it, since a plasma tail directed away from the Sun represents a shadowing of the Sun's electric field. What are we looking at?

I suspect it was Mercury. Mercury was the star form between Saturn and Mars in the previous era: a small planet with a magnetic field (even if minor), and an atmosphere (almost completely gone today), and also today covered only by fresh electric scars.

We are probably looking at a visual superposition of forms -- Jupiter's mantle with Mercury in front. The location is possible, since Mercury was an outer planet until 686 BC. Thus Mercury could have been seen against the background of Jupiter's mantle. They may have been seen 3 degrees separated from each other. The orbit of Jupiter is inclined 1.3 to the ecliptic; the early orbit of Mercury (before 686 BC) was likely inclined 2 to 2.5 degrees to the ecliptic (this is my estimate).

We do not know how long this lasted, or when Mercury disconnects from the image of Jupiter, but the planet obviously came to represent the lost genitals of Osiris. The details of all this are very obscure. The superposition might have happened repeatedly, as Jupiter and Mercury passed each other every two years. In this manner Osiris would have repeatedly shown an erection.

The battle between the receding planets likely occurred some safe distance from Earth, but close enough to have been clearly seen. Plato's Atlantis, the land held up by the giant Atlas, sank into the sea in one day and a night. That is an accurate description of the event as the toppling of the land in the north, which was seen sinking into the Absu (the sea) the following night. [note 7]

There are detailed Mesoamerican depictions of the globes of Jupiter and Saturn -- Jupiter shown with its bands and Saturn with its rings. The banded appearance of Jupiter was known in Polynesia also. The number of visible satellites of Saturn and Jupiter are accurately counted as families of Gods by many diverse peoples.

From Hesiod we have the account of Zeus (Jupiter) in a battle over supremacy with a generation of older gods, Kronos (Saturn) and the Titans, the giant trans-Saturnian planets Uranus and Neptune. When, in the 19th century AD, these two very large planets were discovered beyond Saturn, they were named according to Greek mythology. In Greek mythology Saturn and the Titans were banished to the outer reaches of the Underworld -- the zodiac in the south sky -- by the new Chief of the Gods. The losers in the battle could be seen diminishing in size, to eventually become mere pinpoints of light, and lost track of. Saturn, however, was tracked and accounted for during all of antiquity, on every continent, despite the fact that it is indistinguishable from a star and takes 30 years to circle around the zodiac. [note 8]

We should also not underestimate the extent of the battle, much of it "fought" with flung thunderbolts. Hesiod's description of Zeus is probably an understatement.

"Hurling his lightning:
The bolts flew thick and fast
From his strong hand
Together with thunder and lightning,
Whirling an awesome flame."

-- Hesiod, Theogony

Hesiod's writings are a recollection made 2300 years later. But even later than this there are Greek and Roman writers inquiring into the mechanics involved in these interplanetary lightning strikes. The last lightning strikes between planets (between Mars and Earth and between Venus and Mars and the Moon), were witnessed in the 8th century BC. This was followed by one more massive bolt (and additional lesser bolts) from Jupiter to the Sun in 685 BC. Planetary thunderbolts were still being discussed by Greek philosophers 300 years later. [note 9]

Hesiod describes two distinct battles, the first with the Titans, the second with assorted monsters. The first battle is frequently recast in mythology as a conflict between the chief God and a dragon or snake. Jupiter (Zeus, Marduk, or other primary God) hurls a spear (or trident) down the throat of the snake to kill it. The attacking snake might have been Saturn, but it is very unlikely. The lack of any display of a plasma tail, and as a result the lack of any mythological forms of this sort, can be attributed to the large positive charge of Saturn and its closely held coma.

I think this event, involving a snake or dragon, is probably misplaced. Mythology tends to fuse separate celestial experiences into singular events. (As do mythologists.) I think the battle with a snake or dragon should be placed in 2349 BC when Venus makes electric contact with Earth. The trident could be assigned to the era following directly on the end of the "Era of the Gods" when Jupiter hurls plasmoid thunderbolts (described below) at the Titans and obliterates objects in the asteroid belt. The trident thunderbolt per se clearly dates to 685 BC, and is reproduced in sculptures, murals, and coins after that date.

... monsters of the asteroid belt

A snake or dragon was seen at one time, however, and it was reputed to have had an enormous head. David Talbott summarized the curious worldwide fusion of a wildly maned lion and snake imagery as follows:

"Why did ancient symbolists so frequently combine serpent and leonine features in a single monster? We see this juxtaposition in the Greek Chimera, with the head of a lion and a tail in the form of a serpent. The Chinese 'lion' has the countenance of a dragon, while the Chinese 'dragon' possesses a distinctively leonine mane. The Egyptian Goddess Tefnut appears as the Uraeus serpent, but in her terrible aspect becomes a giant lion head, with 'smoking mane.' The Mesopotamian dragon Labbu was a snake, but its name means 'lion.' The Sumerian Goddess Inanna was the 'lioness' of heaven, but in her rage became a fire-spitting serpent or dragon devastating the land. In Orphic theology, the god Phanes was born from an egg as a winged snake, though he grew the head of lion. 'Snake of the Lion' was the name of a Mixtec creator god."

-- Thoth Newsletter (2002), [othergroup.net/thoth]

I think much of the descriptions here applies to events of 2349 BC, which will be described in following chapters. But just as the lion-serpent image is described as consisting simultaneously of water and fire, so any plasma discharge in arc and glow mode will take on solid-looking shapes and must have struck terror into the hearts of the humans watching the battle from the vantage point of Earth. The plasma thunderbolt exchanges, however, were diffuse enough to leave the rings and satellites of the planets intact through the confrontations.

These descriptions, such as the monsters listed above, may have their genesis in the movement of the four planets through the asteroid belt, and the further electric discharges from Jupiter to the asteroids, and thus represents the second battle with the misshapen monsters described by Hesiod. Evidence of the conflict is shown in the scars, burns, and "impact craters" covering every side of the thousands of remaining asteroids. Every asteroid (or comet) that has ever been inspected by a space satellite has been found to be pockmarked with these craters, sometimes nearly equal to the diameter of the target bodies. The same circular "impact craters" exist by the millions on the Moon, Mars, Mercury (but due to much later electric contacts), and virtually every satellite of every planet. The electric arcing must have launched billions of tons of dust into the surrounding space, making all of the ecliptic glow with light reflecting off dust (universally described as a yellow river or golden highway of the Gods), and causing many of the thousands of asteroids to start exhibiting cometary comas and tails in the suddenly altered electric conditions of the asteroid belt. [note 10]

It has been proposed by some that the asteroid belt is the remnant of the battle between Jupiter and Saturn. However, the breakup age of the asteroid belt dates from 3.2 million years ago with a spread of values dating to 40 million years ago. Some date to 300 million years ago, or more. Thus the belt existed long before 3147 BC when Jupiter and Saturn (and Neptune and Uranus) started to move through the asteroid belt en route to their present locations at 5.2 AU and 9.5 AU.

The "impact craters" are anode burn marks caused by plasma discharges and by interplanetary lightning bolts -- electric discharges in arc mode. With an increased level of dust in the ecliptic, due to the initial violent interaction between Saturn and Jupiter, plasmoid lightning bolts were hurled and traveled very long distances. The plasmoid bolts (which disconnect from the originating body, and then contract to look like a contained object hurtling through space) cause circular depressions of molten rock. The shapes of these plasmoid bolts are depicted in statuary and as models worldwide as late as the beginning of the current era. They are shown as twisted shafts with a ball and trident at both ends. [note 11]

Continuous plasma arcs, composed of rotating rope-like electric currents (Birkeland currents), on the other hand, leave flat bottomed round "craters" generally with raised centers and perforated edges. Nearly all the "impact craters" were created five thousand years ago by the "thunderbolts of the Gods" and by plasma discharges in arc mode.

... Mercury

In later Egyptian mythology the planetary interactions after 3147 BC are understood as the battle between Jupiter as Osiris and Saturn as Seth, or the reverse of this. The assigned names vary with the temples of different nomes (districts). One late Egyptian source off-handedly lists the battle (and periods of "negotiations" among the Gods) as lasting for 80 years. By one account the "pupil of the eye" was lost; by another Osiris lost his genitals at the end in the turmoil, reminiscent of a passage in Hesiod's Theogony. The "negotiations" are the sight from Earth of the known planets bunching together in the same location of the ecliptic, which would happen periodically and more frequently than today. [note 12]

Mercury (Thoth of the Egyptians) also was a survivor of the encounter between Saturn and Jupiter, and was (apparently) first noticed at this time. Mercury is somewhat larger than our Moon, represented in later Greek iconography as Hermes with winged sandals and a winged hat, carrying the Caduceus -- two snakes entwined on a staff below a winged disk. Mercury, because of its smaller size and weak magnetic field, would have had only a limited plasma tail -- certainly not the 30 million mile plasma tail identified as the hair of Isis (Venus). Mercury certainly was part of the stack of Saturnian planets, at least since late in the European Magdalenian (17,000 to 14,000 years ago), and occupied a position between Saturn and Mars. [note 13]

Mercury obviously also was on a very elliptical orbit, as it still is today -- a much different orbit than today, one which overrode the orbit of Earth. Mercury in remote antiquity was very busy.

... Jupiter

The coma outlining the equatorial plasma belt of Jupiter, seen at a distance, would have looked like an owl, with its immobile staring eyes and a plasma tail body extending below the planet. This is a motif which becomes the owl totem of Athena and shows up as petroglyphs throughout the world, as talismans in the design of horse bridles and pectorals, and even on coins (at a later date).

[Image: Inscribed Amulet, Anatolia, circa 3100 BC] [Image: Owl petroglyph, circa 3000 BC] [Image: Athenian coin, circa 500 BC]
[Image: Left, carved ivory Amulet, Anatolia, circa 3100 BC. Center, carved petroglyph, China, circa 3000 BC. Right, silver coin of the city of Athens, inscribed A-Th-E, "of Athens," circa 500 BC.]

The ivory "Eye mask" or "Eye Icon" amulets show up stored by the thousands in Northern Mesopotamian caches shortly after 3100 or 3000 BC, and appear also as engravings on the walls of barrows and as thousands of petroglyphs worldwide. Of the ivory amulet, three hundred complete and thousands of broken pieces have been found. The eyes likely represent the view of a toroidal plasma surrounding Jupiter. The body is the giant plasma tail extending from the south pole. The inscribed ibex and plow are symbols from the previous era.

"[Talbott] drew attention to what he called the 'eye mask.' ... He had collected a series of 'eye mask' images, ranging from Easter Island in the southern hemisphere to North America, Europe, ancient Mesopotamia, and elsewhere. From the global distribution he had deduced that the formation was seen from both hemispheres. [Anthony] Peratt immediately identified the eye mask as a 'low opacity torus' or thick ring, seen from a vantage point substantially off-axis, not too far from the plane of the torus. The most intense currents in a plasma torus are concentrated at the center and surrounded by a number of concentric 'shells.' Because the outer shells have a low opacity, an observer can see deeply inside the torus. The center of the toroid cross section becomes more visible at optical wavelengths as the outer plasma shells become less opaque. In addition, the toroid tends to flatten with increasing current, a characteristic revealed by innumerable instances of the eye mask globally and as seen in the ancient Sumerian symbols of the goddess Inanna."

-- David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill, Thunderbolts of the Gods (2004)

That "the formation was seen from both hemispheres" speaks to the fact that we are not seeing something in the north skies above the pole. Jupiter with his owl-eyes was seen anywhere the ecliptic could be seen -- at least during those months when Earth on its own orbit passed Jupiter in its slower travel on its orbit.

The eye masks might be "the ancient Sumerian symbol of the Goddess Inanna" but it dates to after 3147 BC, and should be associated with Jupiter -- at least, so I will claim. Of note is the permanence of symbols: 3000 years later the owl eyes show up on silver coins minted by Athens, as the symbol for Athena (as shown above). It is not Venus, however, unless it be suggested that Venus had a magnetic field. Only if Venus had a magnetic field, could it have developed a toroidal form at its equator, and flower forms at both poles.

The eye mask is Jupiter, in limited plasma discharge because it was still close to the Sun. As Jupiter moved into the asteroid belt, its coma became much smaller, and the view of the equatorial toroid vanished from view.

There is a Maya glyph, meaning "Venus rising," which looks identical to the face of the eye-icon in having two eyes under a single wavy shaped eyebrow. It is often used as a frieze in buildings. In some of the codexes it is used as a label to designate a celestial form -- a planet.

To most of the world Saturn is the loser and Jupiter is clearly the victor. He is a younger God, never seriously noticed before 3147 BC, but since that time held by many peoples to be a resurrection of the older God Kronos. Widely named "the younger," he replaces the older God of Time and Beginnings, Kronos or Saturn. He is Zeus, "youth" of the Greeks, or Jupiter, "father youth" (Jove Pater) of the Romans.

The Absu and Duat

This was the first time humans had seen anything of interest in the south sky in thousands of years (the original Peratt column had vanished in 8347 BC). The planet battle had started in the northern skies, but as the Earth spun away from Saturn and Jupiter, the battle scene would have shifted to the ecliptic in the southern skies.

At first it might have been the sight of two globes of equal size and a separation of a few diameters, surrounded with sheets of plasma and the massive outpouring of plasma below Jupiter. Egyptian "myths" suggest that the two planets at some point drifted away from each other. In effect the coffin of Osiris floated down the "river" of the ecliptic -- north toward Biblos (which is the correct direction).

From representations in Mesopotamia it appears as if the plasma in glow mode at the bottom of Jupiter was absolutely huge, and deserves to be called a "mountain." The Popol Vuh simply calls Jupiter "mountain." The coma of Jupiter may thus have completely obscured whatever changes Saturn was undergoing, and in fact we hear nothing of Saturn.

The rotation of the night sky would move the battle from east to west, the change of seasons would move it further up and down in the sky, and the rotation of the year would bring it closer in and move it further away. As the receding planets diminished in size, the battle had moved into the night sky to the region of the Absu or the Duat -- the ocean in the southern sky. [note 14]

The destruction wrought by Jupiter with plasma bolts in the asteroid belt (Hesiod's second battle) would have left dust and debris strewn along the ecliptic, causing the "path of the Gods" to be marked like a highway, defining the road of the Sun and the planets -- the zodiac. The lighted zodiac (the ecliptic) was last seen from Earth in AD 1840. [note 15]

Because of the disappearance of the planets into the far reaches of the Zodiac, the southern sky became known as "Lower Earth" (as opposed to "Middle Earth," where we live) and is eventually designated as the "Underworld" -- the graveyard for dead Gods and soon, by extension, as the place to which humans go at their death. By the time of the first editing of the "Iliad," in about 500 BC, the Underworld has moved below ground.

Some of the debris created by Jupiter might have reached the vicinity of Earth, and started to fall toward the planet. This would have been gases, ionized dust particles and particulate matter. There might have been a continuous infall of dust near Earth or it could have been periodic as the Earth swept through the clouds of this matter which may have orbited the Sun. The falls of material into the upper atmosphere would have caused patterns of concentric circles and spirals to appear during the nighttime, and, in fact, these were recorded in profusion on the boulders of megalithic barrows after 3100 BC. Similar spirals and concentric circles have been recorded in modern times in the night skies from disturbances of the upper atmosphere by high altitude rockets -- perhaps from the exhaust gases. [note 16]

Some of the debris would remain as part of a series of rings around all the larger planets. Earth also would have ended up with its share of dust and suspended rocks.

In Akkadian times (after 2345 BC), in Mesopotamia, the name for the village of Babylon was misunderstood by the invading Akkadians as "The Gate of the Gods" -- that is, the doorway through the Absu. Subsequently, Babylon became the most important ceremonial center in all of the lands of Akkad and Sumer, a position held for the next 2000 years.

The rings of the Absu disappeared, rained down upon Earth or drifted out to space, after 2349 BC, in what will later be known as the "flood of Noah," with the last and most distant ring remaining, I suspect, to perhaps AD 600 as the Ouroboros. More on this in the following chapters.

I should note again that once the reader knows of the Absu, many statements and descriptions from remote antiquity, which have reference to an ocean, a sea, a number of rivers, or a seven-headed snake, all of a sudden take on meaning and start to make sense. The concept of an ocean in the south skies remained even long after the Absu had disappeared.

I should add one note on the destruction of the northern polar configuration, and its effects on Earth. Humans certainly were aware of the cataclysm. On the Palette of Narmer, Jupiter is shown as the bull who destroys the walls of the city of the Gods. The flooding from the south would have devastated many coastal regions, and in many locations completely wiped out all of the human population. But many other regions were unaffected. Egypt was certainly one of them.

And overall there would have been no geological effects -- no earthquakes or shifting mountains, no forces applied from the exterior, impacting bolides, or explosive detonations of planetary thunderbolts. Any change in the orbit of the Earth would have been in translation -- that is, a left-right and up-down movement -- which cannot be felt, just as today we do not notice that the Earth is circling the Sun. The only catastrophe was the flood.

Endnotes

Note 1 --

The fact that the high tide stood at the South Pole, rather than the North Pole, is correct. The exterior planet pulls up the crust of the Earth, and has little effect on the ocean water. What happens, in fact, is that the ocean water runs off of the raised crust. Almost all textbooks which attempt to explain tidal action are in error to suggest that the Moon pulls up ocean water.

Details of information on a worldwide flood is taken partially from an article by Charles Ginenthal, "The Flood" in The Velikovskian (1994), and partially from other sources. The action of the oceans and translational waves rushing onto continents has been adjusted for the simple mechanism of the sudden release of an extremely high standing tide at the South Pole, the South Atlantic, the South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean. There is no need, as others, including Ginenthal, have suggested, of a polar relocation of the Earth and the translation of continents to different latitudes.

Saturn, with a mass 3000 times that of the Moon, would, even at a distance twice that of the Moon, exert a tidal pull (on the Earth's crust) 350 times stronger than the Moon does today. However, it would still be insignificant compared to Earth's gravity and the pull of Saturn would not suck water away from Earth, as was thought at one time. The calculations below compare the tidal pull (gravitational attraction) of the Moon, Saturn, and Earth. The formula below is Newton's F=(K m' m")/(r^2) using as the mass of Saturn 100 times the mass of Earth, and for the Moon 1/10th the mass of Earth. 


    Moon: 0.1/(243000^2) == 0.0169
    Saturn: 100/(409000^2) == 5.9
    Earth: 1/(4000^2) == 625

The units have no sensible measure (and 10 exp -10 is not shown), and are only shown for comparison. Normalized to the tidal pull of the Moon, the numbers would be: 


    Moon: 0.0169 == 1
    Saturn: 5.9 == 349
    Earth: 625 == 36982

The calculation above shows that if the Moon today can raise tides 10 to 20 feet (7 meters) high, then if we multiply by 350 we get a height of 0.5 to 1.5 miles for the Antarctic "tide." In reality the tides attributed to the Moon only represent the movement of ocean water, and thus the "10 to 20 feet" mentioned above cannot validly be used as a comparison.

The amount of an uplift of beaches in South America increases toward the south. It is on the order of 1000 to 1300 feet (430 meters) in Chile. But beaches raised by a thousand feet also occur elsewhere, as along the east coast of New Zealand (where the height also increases toward the south) and along the south shores of California.

Raised beaches throughout the world are impossible to use as an index of seismic activity. They vary from 30 feet to 1500 feet (500 meters), and might represent the raising of land as easily as the lowering of the sea levels. As an example: When the glacier covering Norway melted, the land under the glacier rose (rebounded) with the result that the region of the Baltic and North Sea, which had ballooned upward due to the pressure of the northern glaciers, and were for a long time free of sea water, lowered to be covered by water.

A high tide stood at the south polar regions for thousands of years. This would leave behind beaches at a higher elevation. Ocean water in the south would have stood higher from circa 10,500 BC until 3147 BC.

The lost beaches we are looking for would all be under water instead. Archaeologically these can be found off the coasts of India and Japan (both with submerged man-made structures), but also very interesting are the dolmens and henges at the Atlantic coast near Carnac, which are now under water. These last were certainly not built before the end of the last ice age, which is often suggested for sunken Neolithic ceremonial structures.

One of the related questions is how tidal organisms -- clams, sea anemones, oysters, crabs, and others -- could have adapted to tides in only 5000 years (that is, since 3147 BC). Rachel Carson, in The Edge of the Sea (1955), convincingly demonstrates the dependence of most of the seashore creatures on the high, low, and seasonal tides for reproduction and relocation.

There were no lunar tides before the Moon showed up after 2349 BC (as will be related later in this text), although there were solar tides, and daily tides due to the off-center presence of Saturn. In 7000 years below Saturn, as I have suggested, the rotational axes of Earth and Saturn never aligned, so that the Earth would have been subjected to daily tidal forces. Away from Saturn after 3147 BC, the Earth would still have been subjected to tidal forces due to the Sun (which is a major element today), and more so if it is considered that the Earth was on a smaller orbit.

The concept of the "tidal forces of the Moon" is frequently brought forward as an argument against the late appearance of the Moon. So are data which show that coral growth has always and forever been at a rate of 365.24 rings per year, although I have also seen much discrepant data.
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Note 2 --

There is no evidence of a hunter/gatherer population in most of India. These people may have been swept off the face of the Earth. The Siwalik hills include surface deposits of Acheulean hand axes and bi-faced cleavers, in addition to choppers made from broken pebbles. These are normally attributed to the Upper Paleolithic, and thus represent a pre-neolithic industry, with some archaeologists attributing the tools to Homo erectus. On this basis the dating of the Siwalik fossil assembly is placed at 125,000 years ago. The fossils of animals do not match these estimates.

"The Siwalik Hills on the southern edge of the Himalayas consist of sedimentary deposits 2,000 to 3,000 feet (1000 meters) high and extending for several hundred miles, abounding with fossil beds of so many and so varied species that the animal world of today looks impoverished by comparison."

-- James Hogan, Kicking The Sacred Cow (1999-2007)

A similar condition exists in Northern Burma. In both cases there is low-laying land providing a clear path of tsunami access from Antarctica via the Indian Ocean. The mounds of bones in Burma are interleaved with layers of mud, which would be expected when a wave comes to a standstill and suspended material starts to sink. Probably the mud layers were produced by secondary waves.

Along coastal India there are many architectural archaeological sites deep below oceanic waters. See, for example, Graham Hancock, in Underworld (2002), who lists many underwater sites in India and Japan. Hancock places the blame for the submerged sites to glacial melting before circa 10,000 BC. I would suggest the submersion was due to a leveling of the oceans in 3147 BC.
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Note 3 --

Although suspected of being windblown and the result of glaciers grinding rocks to a fine dust, the actual source of loess remains uncertain. Glaciers do not grind rocks to silt, as the pebbles of terminal moraines testify. Similarly, windblown dust does not remain unoxidized. Loess contains no organic material. The following is the "accepted understanding," which is mostly descriptive:

"Loess is mixture of silica and clay, with particle size ranging from 0.1 mm down to 0.005mm [small!]. Where loess is unoxidized, it has a greyish color, but may also be yellow, orange, or brown because of presence of ferric oxides. Deposits of loess occur in North America, Europe, Russia, Siberia, China, and also in Argentina and New Zealand." -- D. A. Cyr, Annular Space Dust (1968), paraphrased by A. de Grazia.

"Loess is an aeolian sediment which forms by the accumulation of wind-blown silt and lesser and variable amounts of either sand or clay. Glacial loess is derived from either glacial or glacial outwash deposits, where glacial activity has ground rocks very fine. After drying, these deposits are highly susceptible to wind erosion, winnowing of their silts and clays, transportation of these sediments, and deposition some distance downwind from glacial deposits. The loess deposits found along both sides of the Mississippi river Alluvial Valley are a classic example of glacial loess."

"The thick Chinese loess deposits are classic nonglacial (desert) loess with their sediments having been blown in from deserts in Northern China. The loess covering the Great Plains of Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado is nonglacial desert loess. Nonglacial desert loess is also found in Australia and Africa." -- Wikipedia

The reader may recall the wide spray of sand resulting from the lightning bolts which pulverized the depths of the great Lakes in 10,900 BC. Electric arcs look to be a more likely source for the loess, including China.
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Note 4 --

This text was written before the Indonesian tsunami event of 2004, or the Japanese tsunami of 2011.
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Note 5 --

I suspect that the Moon was seen in an orbit about 4 million miles farther from the Sun than Earth. At that distance, however, it would have looked more like a large bright star. Hesiod writes that the Moon showed up after the defeat of Uranus ("Father Sky"), but only after a very long time. It would also be easy to mistake the globe of Jupiter (when it was still orbiting the Sun at 0.7 AU) for the later image of the Moon. Mesoamerica seems to have done this as shown by the history engraved in monuments at Palenque. At Palenque, the Moon is the mother of all the planet gods.

I suspect that after the fall of the Absu in 2349 BC (covered in the following chapter), an amount of dust remained in orbit at a considerable distance from the Earth, located exactly above the equator of Earth. This might represent the necklace set as a sign in the skies by the Sumerian Goddess Inanna. This remnant of the Absu was red, however, and Inanna's necklace was the cyan of lapis lazuli.
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Note 6 --

As related by Robert W. Bass, in "The Titus-Bode Law from 1766 to 1996" Pensee (1996), "Zecharia Sitchin, in Divine Encounters (1996), ... displays the drawings on an Assyrian cylinder seal which shows an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and shows Saturn with rings!"

[Image: Jupiter on a throne with a planet and 11 satellites]
[Image: Cylinder seal: Jupiter on a throne with a planet and 11 satellites. After Sitchin. ]

The seal image above which shows Jupiter enthroned, with an adjacent pointed star form, which likely is Jupiter, ringed by 11 smaller round balls of different sizes. (On the web there is a portrait of Sitchin holding a greatly enlarged version of this seal.)

The below graphic is a reproduction of the star and its 11 satellites (by others). The table below relates all the satellites of Jupiter to the depicted diameters of the spheres, except the dozens of tiny satellites discovered by spacecraft in recent years. Additional established larger satellites are shown separately below.

The small balls are most likely meant to be the satellites of Jupiter, although there are two additional satellites in addition to the ones which are normally easily seen. Graphic traditions for two-dimensional surfaces in antiquity revolved on the depictions of recognizable detail without concern for actual dimensional relationships.

[Image: Satellites of Jupiter]
[Image: Jupiter with 11 satellites. Diagram after Sitchin] 


           Distance  Radius    Mass
Satellite     (km)   (km)     (kg)   Discoverer   Date    diagram
---------  --------  ------  -------  ----------  -----    -------
Ganymede   1,070,000    2631  1.48e23  Galileo      1610   9
Callisto   1,883,000    2400  1.08e23  Galileo      1610   8
Io           422,000    1815  8.94e22  Galileo      1610   7
Europa       671,000    1569  4.80e22  Galileo      1610   12
Amalthea     181,000      98  7.17e18  Barnard      1892   11
Himalia   11,480,000      93  9.56e18  Perrine      1904   4
Thebe        222,000      50  7.77e17  Synnott      1979   3 *
Elara     11,737,000      38  7.77e17  Perrine      1905   6
Metis        128,000      20  9.56e16  Synnott      1979   2 *
Lysithea  11,720,000      18  7.77e16  Nicholson    1938   10
Adrastea     129,000      10  1.91e16  Jewitt       1979   5 *
	* -- not likely part of the nine from antiquity
        Remaining satellites (mostly very large orbits)
Leda      11,094,000       8  5.68e15  Kowal        1974   smallest
Pasiphae  23,500,000      25  1.91e17  Melotte      1908   too far
Sinope    23,700,000      18  7.77e16  Nicholson    1914   too far
Carme     22,600,000      20  9.56e16  Nicholson    1938   too far
Ananke    21,200,000      15  3.82e16  Nicholson    1951   too far

The last column lists the numerical representation in the diagram above. There are some discrepancies, such as, for example, the fact that Io (number 7) should be much closer to Jupiter than Ganymede and Callisto. On the other hand, Amalthea (number 11) and Thebe (number 3) are appropriately shown as much closer to Jupiter. But, again, Metis (number 2) and Adrastea (number 5) are sized right, but located too far from the planet. But the graphical presentation is reproduced in about 2850 BC from records dating from shortly after 3147 BC, when these satellites would have been seen close up.

In circa 2860 BC Jupiter would have entered the asteroid belt at about 2 AU, obscuring the satellites for the next few hundred years. The satellites certainly could be seen up to about 2 AU. This distance is about one third of the distance to which Jupiter would eventually travel and so is equivalent to being seen at three power magnification with a telescope, as Galileo used in his discovery of the four larger satellites.

Amazingly, three of the listed satellites are at 11,000,000 kilometers. One of the surplus satellites is also at this distance, but it is very small. All the other additional satellites are at circa 22,000,000 kilometers and likely would never have been noticed.

As the Sumerian flood story has it (as retold in the Epic of Gilgamesh), "the gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer." These are the flies.

There are very obvious similar depictions of the atmospheric bands of Jupiter, shown as a turban headdress (not shown in this seal). The banded headdress of Marduk (who is Jupiter) shows up on later Babylonian era cylinder seals.

The depiction of an anthropomorphized Saturn (or Kronos) encircled by rings extends to Roman times. No other God is ever depicted as bound by rings.
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Note 7 --

Plato's Atlantis is the only instance of the "Atlantis legend" in antiquity. If the Atlantis legend was current in Greece or Egypt, we would have heard about it from many other sources, although Hamlet's Mill (1969) by Giorgio de Santillana and H. von Dechend recounts hundreds of versions of this legend worldwide -- of a land held up by a giant, a tree, or a river rising in the sky. The tree, river, snake, bridge, or giant at some time in the past was cut down, and the land sank into the sea. That can be placed at 3147 BC. The "sea," of course, is the Absu of the south into which all the planets, but especially Saturn ("the land"), disappeared.

Plato's date of 9600 BC is the weakest link in his story. An old man (Critias) has to go home to think over what it was that he might have heard his grandfather tell of what his father had heard tell by Solon when he was a little boy. Plato actually places Atlantis in the Gulf of Guinea, west of equatorial Africa. As seen from Greece, this is a sightline for the southern plasmoids, which rotated into view to stand over South America. Thus it could very well be suggested that Atlantis represents the ball plasmoids of the south. Atlantis was ruled by the water god Poseidon and his two queens.
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Note 8 --

Hesiod, in the Theogony (circa 650 BC). See the translation by Norman O. Brown, and especially the introduction by the translator, as published by The Library of Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merill Co (1953). The Theogony recapitulates the period with which these pages deal, from the creation through the end of the "Era of the Gods."

The planet Uranus ("Father Sky") is misnamed by Hesiod, for he is the cloud-shrouded sky or, more likely, the duck seen therein with the egg next to the duck. He is thus the father of Kronos (Saturn).
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Note 9 --

During the early years after 3147 BC, the Egyptians are uncertain to whom among the celestial apparitions they owe allegiance. The names of a number of "kings" come forward, of which King Narmer seems to have had some extended claims. His name-serekh is found throughout Egypt and the Levant as labels on wine jars and other products, destined for delivery to the temple at Nekhen. The name-serekh, Nar-mer, consists of the glyphs for "catfish" and "drill" (or "chisel").

The glyph for "catfish" has the shape of a toroidal thunderbolt (a plasmoid), in all the instances I have seen. See for example the illustrations of serekhs, accompanying the text "Dynasty 0" by Francesco Raffaele (2002) at [xoomer.virgilio.it/francescoraf/hesyra/dynasty0.htm]. In one instance this is depicted with a rope-like twisted body. The Nile catfish has only a two-pronged tail, but has the typical large feelers protruding from its head, making it look like a trident.

The "catfish" is the plasmoid thunderbolt which Jupiter explosively launches at the Titans and various objects in the asteroid belt. The "chisel" describes what the catfish shaped bolt does: it produces a spray of material like a chisel striking stone, something with which the Egyptians were familiar from their industry of stone jars and platters.
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Note 10 --

The main asteroid belt is located beyond the orbit of Mars and halfway to the orbit of Jupiter -- from about 2 AU to about 3.5 AU. Jupiter is at 5.2 AU. There are additional asteroids traveling within the space of the inner planets, as well as beyond Jupiter.

The orbits of the asteroids today are still very chaotic and many asteroids are on elliptical orbits. Frequently some of them will develop a cometary coma in moving from aphelion to perihelion. These objects are subsequently classified both as a comet and as an asteroid.

The belt is generally thought to be the remnants of a planet, sometimes called Krypton. A planet can blow up during a time of severe electric stress when electrons rushing outward from the interior disrupt the lattice of the structure. Similarly, bolides nearing Earth often explode and fragment on reaching the Earth's ionosphere -- not the atmosphere. They are seen to fracture but are not heard.
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Note 11 --

The largest piece of missing evidence in the "impact theory" presented to account for all the various craters on asteroids, satellites, and planets is the lack of the impactors. Not a single asteroid is moving at anything except a crawl with respect to any of the other asteroids. There is very little difference in the speed of travel of objects traveling at the same distance from the Sun.

Gravitational forces between the Earth and an approaching asteroid will increase the speed to a value on the order of 25,000 miles per hour. The Moon will accelerate an asteroid to about 5000 miles per hour. Two asteroids meeting under conditions of gravitational attraction, however, would just ding each other.
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Note 12 --

Osiris is probably Jupiter, looking like a draped figure, but Osiris may also be understood as Saturn. The "eye," which is lost, might be the whole Saturnian polar structure with the rings outlining the eye, in effect the "Eye of Ra." The eye might also be the pupil of the eye -- that is, Mercury and Mars.

The removed genitals are attributed by Hesiod to the castration of Uranus (the primordial "Father Sky") by Kronos (Saturn). They "floated for a long time," says Hesiod, spilling blood on the sea, from which eventually arose the Moon. The "sea" is the "waters above" -- the Absu, not the Earth's ocean. The Moon only arose (out of these waters) after all of the Absu had turned to blood in 2349 BC. See a later chapter for these details.
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Note 13 --

The Turin Papyrus of circa 1200 BC gives Mercury (Thoth) a "lifetime" of 3126 years. The extremely long life assigned to Mercury may be due to his changing responsibilities over time and certainly due to his constant visibility. The statement also needs to be understood as the lifetime up to that time, that is, up to circa 1200 BC.

In the second millennium BC, when in effect Mercury was the only remaining active planet, his duties (as Thoth) were extended to include creation, and thus his lifetime needed to be counted from the very beginnings. If the Turin Papyrus indeed dates from circa 1279 BC to 1213 BC (the reign of Rameses II), then, subtracting 3126 from 1279 BC places the birth of Mercury in circa 4400 to 4300 BC. This is roughly equal to my estimate (4077 BC) of when Saturn went nova and the coma dropped to reveal its satellites and companion planets.

Working backward instead we would date the Turin Papyrus in 951 BC (4077 - 3126 = 951).

The two small circles of stone within the large Avebury henge and a number of other henges (including Stonehenge), might suggest two planets below the south pole of Saturn. We have no idea of why these would have been offset from each other to give this particular depiction, or even if the depiction of two objects seen below was intended in the construction of Avebury, especially because the whole of the circular sets of standing stones apparently date to after 3100 or 3000 BC.

As a sub-polar Saturnian planet, Mercury (like Mars) would have remained with Saturn, not to be released until Saturn reached the asteroid belt, and Saturn's gravitational sphere of influence shrank in the presence of the asteroids. Both of these planets would have immediately started to "fall" toward the Sun, and thus establish orbits with the Sun as one center, and the edge of the asteroid belt as the aphelion of the orbit.

The word "released," as used above, is probably incorrect, but sort of sums up what might have happened. A change in the shape of the plasmasphere of Saturn (as it entered the asteroid belt) is certain -- the change in form will be seen and recorded for the planet Jupiter too.

Ev Cochrane, in "Martian Metamorphoses: The Planet Mars in Ancient Myth and Religion" (1997), identifies Apollo (which I claim to be the planet Mercury in antiquity) with the planet Mars (under various names like Aries or Nergal) in that they both are seen as the cause of plagues and have reputations for destructiveness. The cross-identification of attributes in antiquity is correct, although it has been difficult to establish the destructive nature of Mercury. Both Mars and Mercury apparently moved together from deep space into the region closer to the Sun, coming close to Earth in the process (as I will establish in later chapters). Homer still deals with Apollo as Mercury in the 7th century BC.

Velikovsky, in an unpublished document, "Mercury" (at varchive.org), notes in a footnote that Mercury was active in the second millennium BC, and quotes from the Bhagavatamrita that "Budha [Mercury] became visible the 1002nd year of the Cali yug." The Kali era (Cali yug) started in 3102 BC. The 1002nd year is 2100 BC, and thus likely represents the return of Mars and Mercury starting in 1936 BC (resulting in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah).

Mercury is made responsible for the Tower of Babel incident by Velikovsky. He quotes the writings of Abraham Rockenbach, who in "De Cometis Tractatus Novus Methodicus" (1602), places the Tower of Babel incident in 2060 BC. I have a somewhat earlier date of 2150 BC, which I will detail in a later chapter (and make Jupiter responsible for the incident).

In addition to a number of distinctive physical (or symbolic) differences between Mars and Mercury, Cochrane also identifies Mercury with the mythical Hyperborean people who lived in the far north. This is believable, since Mercury apparently wound a much tighter path around the Sun, such that on summer nights, on approach of morning, it could be seen to disappear at a low angle in the northeast (over a period of days), the same location from where the Sun would then rise.

Even if we currently have forgotten, the ancients knew that Mercury was the planet placed between Saturn and Mars, and as a result Mercury was depicted frequently as crowned with a star-shaped plasma seen before 3147 BC. Almost all later depictions of Mercury (as Apollo) show him with this star-shaped halo. After 686 BC, when its atmosphere burned up, the title of Apollo was transferred to the Sun. The participation in 685 BC in a spectacular display of arc mode plasma (the Phaethon event), was the convincing final twist to the transformation.
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Note 14 --

About the Duat, E. A. Budge wrote:

"In the XIXth Dynasty we know that the Tuat [Duat, the Underworld] was believed to be situated not below our earth, but away beyond the earth, probably in the sky."

-- E. A. Budge, quoted by Cardona, 1994.

In fact we can be certain that in antiquity the Underworld was held to be located in the south night sky below the equatorial, consisting initially of the circles of the equatorial rings around the Earth. The bright path of the ecliptic was considered a celestial river, congruent with the "waters above" of the earlier polar apparition. The ecliptic was located both above and below the equatorial, as a tilted hoop in the sky, so that part of the ecliptic dipped into the Absu or Duat (which stood to an altitude of less than 50 degrees in Mesopotamia and Egypt). The ecliptic is the later river Styx of the Greeks, "encircling the lower world." That the lower (southern) heavens would continue under the Earth probably must have seemed obvious.

At the latitude of Mexico City and the Yucatan (about 20 degrees north), the planets on the ecliptic rise out of the Caribbean and plunge into the Pacific oceans at a steep angle. Mesoamerica, as a result, always places the "Underworld" below ground.

In the tropics, closer to the Earth's equator, the Duat would have stood almost straight up in the sky. With the rings and spokes it would have looked like a spiderweb suspended above and stretching from horizon to horizon. It is little wonder, then, to hear that the creation God of Central African tribes is a spider.
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Note 15 --

The concept of a glowing zodiac occurs in Chinese and Mesoamerican sources. It is also identified as the river Styx of Greek mythology, which has to be navigated or crossed before entering the Underworld, and, in Egypt, as a similar river to be crossed by the dead Pharaoh.

In encyclopedias dating from the 19th century AD, the glowing ecliptic is still identified as a ribbon in the sky and called the "zodiacal light," and note was made that this was last seen extending across the sky in about AD 1840. Entries in encyclopedias with later publication dates identify the "zodiacal light" as the Sun's "afterglow" ("gegenschein"), a glow due to sunlight on dust particles in outer space, but seen only shortly before sunrise or after sunset.

In the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition (circa AD 1911), it is noted of the "Zodiacal Light ... until recent time was never observed except in or near the zodiac; hence its designation." The article notes that the zodiacal light was 2 to 3 degrees wide, and was not the "gegenschein" of the Sun at dawn or sunset. It further notes the investigation of "... George Jones, who spent eight months at Quito, Peru, at an elevation of 9000 feet (3000 meters) ... [and who] saw the zodiacal band at midnight as a complete arch spanning the sky ... sometimes so bright as to resemble the Milky Way." (Since I first wrote this, the content of the 11th Encyclopaedia Britannica became public domain. I initially copied this from a volume at a Newberry Library book sale. By the time of the 15th edition, in 1984, the Zodiacal light was equated with the "gegenschein.")

It would make sense to have the zodiac glowing, even if just from reflected sunlight, if millions of asteroids had been ground to dust -- as had happened when plasma arcs struck these rocks floating in space. The silicates split asunder as the electrons broke their bonds to rush through the material to the location of a plasma contact point. Neptune and Uranus had passed through the asteroid belt to start the process of electric arcing to these objects. Saturn would have followed to do the same. And last the gigantic planet Jupiter passed through. This last was especially noted by Hesiod.

The dust was ionized and repelled into space electrostatically. We saw this also when the space probe "Deep Impact" fired a projectile at Comet Tempel-1 in 2005.

Thornhill has identified this process as identical to electric arc machining. In vacuum tubes this process (minute particles breaking away from the cathode) is known as sputtering. Under plasma conditions these minute particles, when they find themselves in a plasma environment, will become encased in electrons at glow mode. This has been observed in plasma tubes and described since early in the 20th century. Basically, this is what made the ecliptic glow.
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Note 16 --

"Curious Manifestations of Ascending Rockets" from William R. Corliss's Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena (1977), quoted from Marine Observer (1964), AC Browne, et alii.

[Image: Rocket exhaust at night]
[Image: Rocket exhaust seen at night. After Corliss.]

All three ships were located off the coast of Africa, north of the equator, after sunset. The rocket mentioned above was fired during the daylight hours, 1400 hours EST, from Cape Kennedy, Florida. Rockets bound for outer space move in an easterly direction.

First report from "British Oak," Tenerife to Monrovia. Captain A. C. Browne. Observers, the Master and Mr. P. M. Edge, Chief Officer.

"27th November 1963. A point of light of about 2nd magnitude with an elliptical glow of approx. 3 degrees diameter and concentric circles of light was observed through binoculars at 1925 GMT. It was first seen bearing 230 degrees at 18 degrees altitude and disappeared 4 min. later bearing 190 degrees, altitude 8 degrees. The sky was cloudless and the atmosphere clear."

"Position of ship: 24 degrees 27' N, 17 degrees 14' W."

A second report from "Ripon." Captain Smith. On passage to Freetown. Observers, the Master and Mr. G. W. Brown, Chief Officer.

"27th November 1963. At 1926 GMT an illuminated body was observed bearing 270 degrees, altitude 30 degrees. It appeared at first to have a suffused glow around it, but as the object moved parallel with the ship's course, the glow assumed the definite form of a tight spiral of blue-white light. The spiral expanded to a maximum radius of about 5 degrees with about 12 turns visible at one time when bearing 200 degrees, altitude 20 degrees. The size afterwards diminished until the body faded from sight bearing 155 degrees, altitude 12 degrees, at 1931. As the object moved in azimuth, it also appeared to be gyrating about a centre in an anticlockwise direction and to vary in brilliance. At its brightest the object had a brilliance less than Venus and greater than Altair; its track passed between these two bodies."

"The whole phenomenon gave the impression of looking into a conically formed spring and was indeed a most sensational sight. We can only conjecture that it was an artificial satellite 'gone wrong' or passing through a cloud of meteoric dust."

"The accompanying sketches show how the phenomenon appeared to the observers. There was a cloudless sky and bright moonlight at the time."

"Position of vessel: 10 degrees 5' N, 15 degrees 59' W."

A third report from "Pennyworth." Captain I. Gault. Middlesbrough to Monrovia. Observers, Mr. J. H. Edwards, 2nd Radio Officer, the Master, Mr. J. Nielsen, Chief Officer, Mr. J. MacKenzie, 3rd Officer, Mr. T. Walker, 1st Radio Officer, and the Chief Engineer.

"27th November 1963. At 1900 GMT for approx. 5 min. a bright object having a magnitude greater than any other star or planet was seen in the sky. It appeared to be stationary in the west at an elevation of 40 degrees, for about 2 min. It then moved off rapidly in a SE'ly direction, disappearing about 2 min. later. The bright light from the object radiated outwards, like the ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond; at first in concentric circles, then in a spiral and finally in concentric half-circles. The general impressions of the phenomena seen are shown in the accompanying sketches. The object was definitely not a meteorite, and the course was too erratic for an earth satellite."

"Position of ship: 7 degrees 39' N, 14 degrees 13' W."

The Marine Observer comments on these reports as follows:

"What was seen by the ships was undoubtedly an American rocket, 'Centaur 2,' launched from Cape Kennedy at 1900 GMT on 27th November 1963. The times and positions indicated by the three ships agree very closely with calculated values. The odd appearance cannot be explained precisely but it is no doubt associated with the fact that the rocket when seen was still under power or had very recently been so."

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