* Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar, p. 24.
» W. M. Mtiller, Egyptian Mythology, p. 56.
10 ]. Bidez and F. Cumont, Les Mages hellenises (1938), II, 116.
robin-bobin
11 C. Bezold in F. Ball, Sternglauhe und Sterndeutung (1926), p. 9. 1 See the Section, "The Shadow of Death." 2 Isaiah 9 : 2.
s Tractate Shabbat 156a; Midrash Rabba, Numbers 21,245a; J. Levy, Worterbuch tiber die Talmudim und Midraschim (2nd ed. 1924), s.v. In the Hindu pantheon Naga or snake gods are apparently the comets. Cf. J. Hewitt, "Notes on the Early History of Northern India," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1827), p. 325.
176
WORLDS IN COLLISION
>>Amos says that during the forty years in the wilderness the Israelites did not sacrifice to the Lord, but carried "the star of your god, which you made to yourselves." 4 St. Jerome interprets this "star of your god" as Lucifer (the Morning Star).5 ^> What image of the star was carried in the wilderness? Was it the bull (calf) of Aaron or the brazen serpent of Moses? "And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole." 6 Of this serpent it is said that it was made with the purpose of providing a cure for those bitten by snakes.7 Seven and a half centuries later this brazen serpent of Moses was broken by King Hezekiah, guided in his monotheistic zeal by the prophet Isaiah, "for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it." 8
The brazen serpent was most probably the image of the pillar of cloud and fire which appeared as a moving serpent to all peoples of the world. St. Jerome apparently had this image in view when he interpreted the star mentioned by Amos as Lucifer. Or was it the "star of David," the six-pointed star?
The Egyptian Venus-Isis, the Babylonian Venus-Ishtar, the Greek Venus-Athene were goddesses pictured with serpents, and sometimes
* Amos 5 : 26.
5 Cf. Vulgate (Latin) version of the Prophet Amos and Jerome's Commentary on the Prophets.
6 Numbers 21 : 9.
7 Those who were bitten by serpents looked at the brazen serpent for cure. Can a psychosomatic relationship go such a long way? The practices of the snake worshipers lend some credence to the physiological background of Numbers 21 : 9. But it is outside the scope of the present research to go into these details.
The fact that Moses made an image—in violation of the second commandment of the Decalogue—is not necessarily inconsistent with his being monotheist: there are many churches today where symbolic and even human figures are deified by people who profess to be monotheists. But as time passed, the presence of the serpent of Moses in the Temple of Jerusalem became so objectionable to the spirit of the prophets that in the days of Isaiah the serpent was broken into pieces. Even though its original purpose may have been curative, it being the image of the angel who was sent in the pillar of fire and cloud to save the people of Israel from slavery, the brazen serpent with the lapse of time became an object of worship.
8 II Kings 18 : 4. An astrological opinion is found in die rabbinical literature that the brazen serpent was a magic image, which obtained its power from the star under the protection of which Moses made it.
WORLDS IN COLLISION 177
represented as dragons. "Ishtar, the fearful dragon," wrote Assur-banipal.9
The Morning Star of the Toltecs, Quetzal-cohuatl (Quetzal-coatl), also is represented as a great dragon or serpent: "cohuatl" in Nahuatl is "serpent," and the name means "a feathered serpent."10 The Morning Star of the Indians of the Chichimec tribe in Mexico is called "Serpent cloud," n a remarkable name because of its relation to the pillar of cloud and the clouds that covered the globe after the contact of the earth with Venus.
When Quetzal-cohuatl, the lawgiver of the Toltecs, disappeared on the approach of a great catastrophe and the Morning Star that bore the same name rose for the first time in the sky, the Toltecs "regulated the reckoning of the days, the nights, and the hours according to the difference in the time."12
robin-bobin
The people of Ugarit (Ras-Shamra) in Syria addressed Anat, their planet Venus: "You reverse the position of the dawn in the sky." 13 In the Mexican Codex Borgia, the Evening Star is represented with the solar disc on its back.14
In the Babylonian psalms Ishtar says: 15
By causing the heavens to tremble and the earth to quake,
By the gleam which lightens in the sky,
By the blazing fire which rains upon the hostile land,
I am Ishtar.
Ishtar am I by the light that arises in heaven,
Ishtar the queen of heaven am I by the light that arises in heavep
I am Ishtar; on high I journey . . .
The heavens I cause to quake, the earth I cause to shake,
That is my fame. . . .
9 Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar, p. 67.
10 Brasseur, Sources de I'histoire primitive du Mexique, pp. 81, 87.
11 Alexander, Latin American Mythology, p. 87.
12 Brasseur, Histoire des nations civilisees du Mexique, I, 120.
13 Virolleaud, "La deesse Anat," Mission de Ras Shamra, IV.
14 Seler, Wandmalereien von Mitla (1895), p. 45.
15 Langdon, Sumerian and Rabylonian Psalms (1909), pp. 188, 194.
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WORLDS IN COLLISION
She that lightens in the horizon of heaven,
Whose name is honored in the habitations of men,
That is my fame.
"Queen of heaven above and beneath" let be spoken,
That is my fame.
The mountains I overwhelm altogether,
That is my fame.
The Morning-Evening Star Ishtar was called also "the star of lamentation." 16
The Persian Mithra, the same as Tistrya, descended from the heavens and "let a stream of fire flow toward the earth," "signifying that a blazing star, becoming in some way present here below, filled our world with its devouring heat." 17
In Aphaca in Syria fire fell from the sky, and it was asserted that it fell from Venus: "by which one would think of fire that had fallen from the planet Venus."18 The place became holy and was visited each year by pilgrims.
The festivals of the planet Venus were held in the spring. "Our ancestors dedicated the month of April to Venus," wrote Macrobius.1*
Baal of the Canaanites and of the Northern Kingdom of Israel was worshiped in Dan, the city of the cult of the calf, and throngs visited there during the week of Passover. The cult of Venus spread to Judea also. According to II Kings (23 : 5), King Josiah in the seventh century "put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven."
Baal, the sun, the moon, and the planets, is the division used also by Democritus: Venus, the sun, the moon, and the planets.
In Babylonia the planet Venus was distinguished from other
16 Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar, p. 86.
17 F. Cumont, "La Fin du monde selon les mages occidentaux," Revue de Vhistoire des religions (1931), p. 41.
18 F. K. Movers, Die Phonizier (1841-1856), I, 640. Sources: Sozomen, The Ecclesiastical History ii. 5; Zosimus i. 58.
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19 Macrobe, Oeuvres (ed. Panckoncke, 1845), I, 253.
WORLDS IN COLLISION 179
planets and worshiped as a member of a trinity: Venus, Moon, and Sun.20 This triad became the Babylonian holy trinity in the fourteenth century before the present era.21
In the Vedas the planet Venus is compared to a bull: "As a bull thou hurlest thy fire upon earth and heaven." 22 The Morning Star of the Phoenicians and Syrians was Ashteroth-Karnaim, Astarte of the Horns. Belith of Sidon was likewise Venus, and Izebel, wife of Ahab, made her the chief deity of the Northern Kingdom.23 The "queen of heaven," referred to repeatedly by Jeremiah, was Venus. The women of Jerusalem made cakes for the queen of heaven and worshiped her from the roofs of their houses.24
On Cyprus it was neither Jupiter nor any other god but "Kypris Queen whom they with holy gifts were wont to appease . . . pouring libations out upon the ground of yellow honey." 25 Such libation, as already mentioned, was made in Athens in commemoration of the Flood of Deucalion.
Not long ago, in Polynesia, human sacrifices were offered to the Morning Star, Venus.26 To the Arabian Morning Star, queen of the heaven—al-Uzza—boys and girls were sacrificed down to modern times.27 Likewise, human sacrifices were brought to the Morning Star in Mexico; this was described by early Spanish authors,28 and was still practiced by Indians only a generation ago.29 Quetzal-cohuatl "was called the god of winds" and of "flames of fire";30 the Greek Athene, too, was not only the planet, but also the goddess of storm
20 H. Winckler, Die babylonische Geisteskultur (1919). p. 71.
21 C. Bezold in F. Boll, Sternglaube und Stemdeutung (1926), p. 12.
22 Hymns of the Atharva-Veda (transl. Bloomfield), Hymn ix.
231 Kings 18; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, VIII, xiii, 1; Philo of Byblos, Fragment 2. 25; D.
Chwolson, Die Ssahier und der Ssabismus (1856), II, 660.
24 Jeremiah 7 : 18; 44 : 17-25. Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 41.
25 The Fragments of Empedocles (transl. W. E. Leonard, 1908), Fragment 128, p. 59.
26 Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Reliefs of Central Polynesia, II, 242,
27 Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, pp. 40-44, 115.
28 Manuscrit Ramirez.
29 G. A. Dorsey. The Sacrifice to the Morning Star by the Skidi Pawnee. This ceremony is described later in the present book.
30 De Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espaiia, I, Chap. V.
180 WORLDS IN COLLISION
and fire. The planet Venus was Lux Divina, the Divine Light, in the worship of the Roman imperial colonies.31
In Babylonia, Venus was pictured as a six-pointed star—which is also the shape of David's shield—or as a pentagram—a five-pointed star (seal of Solomon)—and sometimes as a cross; as a cross it was pictured in Mexico, too.
The attributes and deeds of the Morning Star were not invented by the peoples of the world: this star shattered mountains, shook the globe with such a violence that it looked as if the heavens were shaking, was a storm, a cloud, a fire, a heavenly dragon, a torch, and a blazing star, and it rained naphtha on the earth.
Assurbanipal speaks of Ishtar-Venus, "who is clothed with fire and bears aloft a crown of awful splendor, [and who] rained fire over Arabia." 32 It has been shown previously that the comet of the days of the Exodus rained naphtha over Arabia.
In the attributes and in the deeds ascribed to the planet Venus— Isis, Ishtar, Athene—we recognize the attributes and deeds of the comet described in the earlier sections of this book.
The Sacred Cow
The comet Venus, of which it is said that "horns grew out of her head," or Astarte of the horns, Venus cornuta, looked like the head of a horned animal; and since it moved the earth out of its place, like a bull with its horns, the planet Venus was pictured as a bull. i> The worship of a robin-bobin
bullock was introduced by Aaron at the foot of Mount Sinai. The cult of Apis originated in Egypt in the days of the Hyksos, after the end of the Middle Kingdom,1 shortly after the Exodus. Apis, or the sacred bull, was very much venerated in Egypt; when a sacred bull died, its body was mummified and placed in a sarcophagus with royal honors, and memorial services were held.
31 Movers, Die Phonizier, II, 652.
32 Luckenbill, Records of Assyria, II, Sec. 829.
1 "The Book of Sothis" in Manetho (transl. W. G. Waddell, Loeb Classical Library, 1940) says that in the days of the Hyksos king Aseth, "the bull-calf was deified and called Apis."
WORLDS IN COLLISION 181
"All the coffins and everything excellent and profitable for this august god (the bull Apis)" were prepared by the Pharaoh,2 when "this god was conducted in peace to the necropolis, to let him assume his place in his temple."
The worship of a cow or bull was widespread in Minoan Crete and in Mycenaean Greece, for golden images of this animal with large horns were found in excavations.
Isis, the planet Venus,3 was represented as a human figure with two horns, like Astarte (Ishtar) of the horns; and sometimes it was fashioned in the likeness of a cow. In time, Ishtar changed from male to female, and in many places worship of the bull changed to worship of the cow. The main reason for this seems to have been the fall of manna which turned the rivers into streams of honey and milk. A horned planet that produced milk most closely resembled a cow. In the Hymns of the Aiharva-Veda, in which the ambrosia that falls from the sky is glorified, the god is exalted as the "great cow" which "drips with streams of milk" and as "a bull" that "hurlest thy fire upon earth and heaven."4 A passage of the Ramayana about the "celestial cow" says: "Honey she gave, and roasted grain . . . and curled milk, and soup in lakes with sugared milk,"5 which is the Hindu version of "rivers of milk and honey."
The "celestial cow" or "the heavenly Surabhi" ("the fragrant") was the daughter of the Creator: she "sprung from his mouth"; at the same time nectar and "excellent perfume" were spread, according to the Indian epic.6 This description of the birth of the daughter from the mouth of the Creator is a Hindu parallel of Athene springing from the head of Zeus. Fragrance and nectar are mentioned in connection with the birth of the celestial cow, a combination that can be understood if we recall what we learned in the Sections "Ambrosia" and "Birth of the Planet Venus."
2 The Apis inscription of Necho-Wahibre in Breasted, Records of Egypt, TV,
976 ff.
s Pliny, Natural History, ii. 37.
4 Hymn to the honey-lash in Hymns of the Aiharva-Veda, IX.
5 L. L. Sundara Ram, Cow-protection in India (1927), p. 56.
6 Mahabharata, XIII.
182 WORLDS IN COLLISION
Down to the present day, the Brahmans worship the cow. Cows are regarded as daughters of the
"heavenly cow." In India, as in other places, the worship of cows began in some period of recorded history. "We find in early Hindu literature sufficient information to establish the thesis that cows were once victimised at sacrifices and used at times as articles of food."7 Then came the change. Cows became sacred animals, and ever since the religious law has forbidden the use of their meat for food. The Atharva-Veda repeatedly deprecates cow-killing as "the most heinous of crimes." "All that kill, eat or permit the slaughter of cows rot in hell for as many years as there are hairs on the body of the cow slain." 8 Capital punishment was prescribed for those who either stole, hurt, or killed a cow. "Whoever hurts or causes another to hurt, or steals or causes another to steal, a cow, should be slain." Even cows' urine and dung are sacred to the Brahmans. "All its excreta are hallowed. Not a particle ought to be thrown away as impure. On the contrary, the water it ejects ought to be preserved as the best of holy waters. . . . Any spot which a cow has condescended to honour with the sacred deposit of her excrement is forever afterwards consecrated ground." 9 Sprinkled on a sinner, it "converts him into a saint."
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The bull is sacred to Shiva, "the god of destruction in the Hindu Trinity." "The consecration of the bulls and letting them loose as privileged beings to roam at their will and draw respect from all people is to be noted with particular interest. . . . The freedom and privileges of the Brahman bull are inviolate." Even when it is destructive, the bull must not be restrained.10
These quotations show the Apis cult preserved until our times. The "celestial cow" that gored the earth with its horns and turned rivers and lakes into honey and milk is still revered in the common cow and bull by hundreds of millions of the people of India.
7 Ram, Cow-Protection in India, p. 43.
8 "Visistha Dharmasastra." See Ram. Cow-Protection in India, p. 40.
• M. Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism (1891), pp. 317-319. 10 Ram, Cow-Protection in India, p. 58.
WORLDS IN COLLISION 183
Baal Zevuv (Beelzebub)
The beautiful Morning Star was related to Ahriman, Seth, Lucifer, name equivalents of Satan. It was also Baal of the Canaanites and of the Northern Kingdom of the Ten Tribes, the god hated by the biblical prophets, also Beelzebub or Baal Zevuv, or Baal of the fly.
In the Pahlavi text of the Iranian book, the Bundahis, describing the catastrophes caused by celestial bodies, it is written that at the close of one of the world ages "the evil spirit [Ahriman]
went toward the luminaries." "He stood upon one-third of the inside of the sky, and he sprang, like a snake, out of the sky down to the earth." It was the day of the vernal equinox. "He rushed in at noon," and "the sky was shattered and frightened." "Like a fly, he rushed out upon the whole creation, and he injured the world and made it dark at midday as though it were in dark night. And noxious creatures were diffused by him over the earth, biting and venomous, such as the snake, scorpion, frog, and lizard, so that not so much as the point of a needle remained free from noxious creatures." *
Then the Bundahis proceeds: "The planets, with many demons [comets], dashed against the celestial sphere, and they mixed the constellations; and the whole creation was as disfigured as though fire disfigured every place and smoke arose over it."
similar plague of vermin is described in the Scriptures, in Exodus, Chapters 8 to 10, and also in Psalm 78 where it is told that there were sent "divers sorts of flies among them [the people of Egypt], which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them." Their labor was given to the caterpillar and the locust. "The dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt."2
"And there came a grievous swarm of flies . . . into all the land of Egypt." 3 The second, third, fourth, and eighth plagues were caused by vermin. The plague of eruv, "swarms of flies" of the King James Version, is translated in the Septuagint, "a stinging fly," and Philo calls it "the dog-fly," a ferocious insect; 4 it is also called "gnat" by the rabbis. Psalm 105 narrates that i Bundahis (in the Pahlavi Texts, transl. West), Chap. III.
2 Exodus 8 : 17. s Exodus 8 : 24. * Philo Vita Mosis i. 23.
>*
184 WORLDS IN COLLISION
darkness was sent upon the country and 'locusts came, and caterpillars, and that without number, and did eat up all the herbs." "Their land brought forth frogs in abundance, in the chambers of their kings," and "there came divers sorts of flies, and lice in all their coasts."
The Amalekites left Arabia because of "ants of the smallest kind" and wandered toward Canaan and Egypt at the same time that the Israelites went from Egypt toward the desert and Canaan.
In the Chinese annals describing the time of Yahou, from which I quoted previously, it is said that when the sun did not set for ten days and the forests of China were destroyed by fire, multitudes of loathsome vermin were bred in the entire land. N. During their wanderings in the desert, the Israelites were plagued by serpents.5 A generation later, hornets preceded the Israelites under Joshua, plaguing the land of Canaan and driving entire nations from their domiciles.6
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The inhabitants of the islands in the South Seas relate that when the clouds lay only a few feet from the ground and "the sky was so close to the earth that men could not walk," "myriads of dragonflies with their wings severed the clouds confining the heavens to the earth." 7
After the close of the Middle Kingdom, the Egyptian standard bore the emblem of a fly.
^ When Venus sprang out of Jupiter as a comet and flew very close to the earth, it became entangled in the embrace of the earth. The internal heat developed by the earth and the scorching gases of the comet were in themselves sufficient to make the vermin of the earth propagate at a very feverish rate. Some of the plagues, like the plague of the frogs ("the land brought forth frogs") or of the locusts, must be ascribed to such causes. Anyone who has experienced a khamsin (sirocco), an electrically charged wind blowing from the desert,
B Numbers 21 : 6, 7; Deuteronomy 8 : 15.
• Exodus 23 : 28; Deuteronomy 7 : 20.
7 Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia, I, 45.
WORLDS IN COLLISION 185
knows how, during the few days that the wind blows, the ground around the villages begins to teem with vermin.8
The question arises here whether or not the comet Venus infested the earth with vermin which it may have carried in its trailing atmosphere in the form of larvae together with stones and gases.
It is significant that all around the world peoples have associated the planet Venus with flies.
In Ekron, in the land of the Philistines, there was erected a magnificent temple to Baal Zevuv, the god of the fly. In the ninth century King Ahaziah of Jezreel, after he was injured in an accident, sent his emissaries to ask advice of this god at Ekron and not of the oracle at Jerusalem.9 This Baal Zevuv is Beelzebub of the Gospels.10
Ahriman, the god of darkness who battled with Ormuzd, the god of light, is compared in the Bundahis to a fly. Of the flies that filled the earth buried in gloom it is said: "His multitudes of flies scatter themselves over the world that is poisoned through and through." u Ares (Mars) in the Iliad calls Athene "dog-fly." "The gods clashed with a mighty din, and the wide earth rang, and round about great heaven pealed as with a trumpet." And Ares spoke to Athene: "Wherefore now again, thou dog-fly, art making gods to clash with gods in strife?" 12
The people of Bororo in central Brazil call the planet Venus "the sand fly," 13 an appellation similar to that which Homer used for Athene. The Bantu tribes of central Africa relate that the
"sand fly brought fire from the sky," 14 which appears to be a reference to the Promethean role of Beelzebub, the planet Venus.
The Zend-Avesta, describing the battle of Tistrya, "the leader of
8 A change in atmospheric conditions can cause galloping germination among insects.
9 II Kings 1 : 2 ff.
i» Matthew 10 : 25; 12 : 24, 27; Mark 7 : 22; Luke 11 : 15 ff.
11 Bundahis, Chap. Ill, Sec. 12. Cf. H. S. Nyberg, "Die Religionen des alten Iran," Mitteil. d.
Vorderasiat.-agypt. Ges., Vol. 43 (1938), pp. 28 ff.
12 Iliad xxi. 385 ff. In Greek mythology, Metis, pregnant with Pallas, took the shape of a fly.
13 See Kunike, "Sternmythologie," Welt und Mensch, IX-X. "A. Werner, African Mythology (1925), p. 135.
186 WORLDS IN COLLISION
the stars against the planets" (Darmesteter), refers to worm-stars that "fly between the earth and heaven," and that supposedly signify the meteorites.15 Possibly it is a reference to their infesting property.
This idea of contaminating comets is found in a belief of the Mexicans described by Sahagun:
"The Mexicans called the comet citlalin popoca which means a smoking star. . . . These natives called the tail of such a star citlalin tlamina, exhalation of the comet; or, literally, 'the star shoots a dart.' They believed that when such a dart fell on a living organism, a hare, a rabbit, or any other animal, worms suddenly formed in the wound and made the animal unfit to serve as food.
robin-bobin
It was for this reason that they took great care to cover themselves during the night so as to protect themselves from this inflaming emanation." 16
The Mexicans thus thought that larvae from the emanation of the comet fell on all living things.
As I have already mentioned, they called Venus a "smoking star." Sahagun says also that at the rising of the Morning Star, the Mexicans used to shut the chimneys and other apertures in order to prevent mishap from penetrating into the house together with the light of the star.17
"^/The persistence with which the planet Venus is associated with a fly in the traditions of the peoples of both hemispheres, also the emblems carried by the Egyptian priests and the temple services conducted in honor of the planet-god "of the fly," create the impression that the flies in the tail of Venus were not merely the earthly brood, swarming in heat like other vermin, but guests from another planet.
The old question, whether there is life on other planets, has been debated time and again without much progress.18 Atmospheric and thermal conditions are so different on other planets that it seems incredible that the same forms of life exist there as on the earth; on is Zend-Avesta, Pt. II, p. 95.
16 Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Espana, Bk. VIII, Chap. 3.
«Ibid.
18 See H. Spencer Jones, Life on Other Worlds (1940) and Sir James Jeans,
"Is There Life on Other Worlds?" Science, June 12, 1942.
WORLDS IN COLLISION 187
the other hand, it is wrong to conclude that there is no life on them at all.
Modern biologists toy with the idea that microorganisms arrive on the earth from interstellar spaces, carried by the pressure of light. Hence, the idea of the arrival of living organisms from interplanetary spaces is not new. Whether there is truth in this supposition of larval contamination of the earth is anyone's guess. The ability of many small insects and their larvae to endure great cold and heat and to live in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen renders not entirely improbable the hypothesis that Venus (and also Jupiter, from which Venus sprang) may be populated by vermin.
Venus in the Folklore of the Indians
Primitive peoples often are bound by inflexible customs and beliefs that date back hundreds of generations. The traditions of many primitive races speak of a "lower sky" in the past, a 'larger sun," a swifter movement of the sun across the firmament, a shorter day that became longer after the sun was arrested on its path.
World conflagration is a frequent motif in folklore. According to the Indians of the Pacific coast of North America the "shooting star" and the "fire drill" set the world aflame. In the burning world one "could see nothing but waves of flames; rocks were burning, the ground was burning, everything was burning. Great rolls and piles of smoke were rising; fire flew up toward the sky in flames, in great sparks and brands. . . . The great fire was blazing, roaring all over the earth, burning rocks, earth, trees, people, burning everything. . . . Water rushed in ... it rushed in like a crowd of rivers, covered the earth, and put out the fire as it rolled on toward the south. . . . Water rose mountain high." A celestial monster flew with "a whistle in his mouth; as he moved forward he blew it with all his might, and made a terrible noise. . . . He came flowing and blowing; he looked like an enormous bat with wings spread . . . [his] feathers waved up and down, [and]
grew till they could touch the sky on both sides." * 1 Alexander. North American Mythology, p.
223.
188 WORLDS IN COLLISION
The shooting star that made the earth into a sea of flames, the terrible noise, the water that rose mountain high, and the appearance of a monster in the sky, like Typhon or a dragon, all these elements were not brought together in this Indian narrative by sheer invention; they belong together.
The Wichita, an Indian tribe of Oklahoma, tell the following story of "The Deluge and the Repeopling of the Earth": 2 "There came to the people some signs, which showed that there was robin-bobin
something in the north that looked like clouds; and the fowl of the air came, and the animals of the plains and woods were seen. All of this indicated that something was to happen. The clouds that were seen in the north were a deluge. The deluge was all over the face of the earth."
The water monsters succumbed. Only four giants remained, but they fell, too, each on his face.
"The one in the south as he was falling said that the direction he fell should be called south." The other giant said that "the direction in which he was falling should be called west—Where-the-sun-goes." The third fell and named the direction of his fall north; the last called his direction
"east—Where-the-sun-rises."
Only a few men survived. The wind also survived on the face of the earth; everything else was destroyed. A child was born to a woman (from the wind), a Dream-girl. The girl grew rapidly. A boy child was born to her. "He told his people that he would go in the direction of the east, and he was to become the Morning Star."
This tale sounds like an incoherent story, but let us note its various elements: "something in the north that looked like clouds" which made people and animals huddle together in apprehension of an approaching catastrophe; wild beasts emerging from the forests and coming to human abodes; an engulfing tide that destroyed everything, even the monster animals; the determination of the new four quarters of the horizon; a generation later the birth of the Morning Star.
This combination of elements cannot be accidental; all these
2G. A. Dorsey, The Mythology of the Wichita (1904).
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events, and in the same sequence, were found to have occurred in the middle of the second millennium before the present era.
The Indians of the Chewkee tribe on the Gulf Coast tell: "It was too hot. The sun was put 'a handbreadth' higher in the air, but it was still too hot. Seven times the sun was lifted higher and higher under the sky arch, until it became cooler." 3
In eastern Africa we can trace the same tradition. "In very old times the sky was very close to the earth." 4
The Kaska tribe in the interior of British Columbia relate: "Once a long time ago the sky was very close to the earth." s The sky was pushed up and the weather changed.
The sun, after being stopped on its way across the firmament, "became small, and small it has remained since then." •
Here is a story, told to Shelton by the Snohomish tribe on Puget Sound, about the origin of the exclamation "Yahu," 7 to which I have already referred briefly. "A long time ago, when all the animals were still human beings, the sky was very low. It was so low that the people could not stand erect. . . . They called a meeting together and discussed how they could raise the sky. But they were at a loss to know how to do so. No one was strong enough to lift the sky. Finally the idea occurred to them that possibly the sky might be moved by the combined efforts of the people, if all of them pushed against it at the same time. But then the question arose of how it would be possible to make all the people exert their efforts at exactly the same moment. For the different peoples would be far away from one another, some would be in this part of the world, others in another part. What signal could be given that all people would lift at precisely the same time? Finally, the word 'Yahu!' was invented for this purpose. It was decided that all the people should shout Tahu!'
3 Alexander, North American Mythology, p. 60.
4 L. Frobenius, Dichten und Denken in Sudan (1925).
5 J. A. Teit, "Kaska Tales," Journal of American Folk-Lore, XXX (1917).
6 Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, pp. 205 ff.
7 Shelton, "Mythology of Puget Sound," Journal of American Folk-Lore, XXXVII (1924).
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together, and then exert their whole strength in lifting the sky. In accordance with this, the people equipped themselves with poles, braced them against the sky, and then all shouted 'Yahu!' in unison. Under their combined efforts the sky rose a little. Again the people shouted 'Yahu!' and robin-bobin
lifted the heavy weight. They repeated this until the sky was sufficiently high." Shelton says that the word "Yahu" is used today when some heavy object like a large canoe is being lifted.
It is easy to recognize the origin of this legend. Clouds of dust and gases enveloped the earth for a long time; it seemed that the sky had descended low. The earth groaned repeatedly because of the severe twisting and dislocation it had experienced. Only slowly and gradually did the clouds lift themselves from the ground.
The clouds that enveloped the Israelites in the desert, the trumpetlike sounds that they heard at Mount Sinai, and the gradual lifting of the clouds in the years of the Shadow of Death are the same elements that we find in this Indian legend.
Because the same elements can be recognized in very different settings, we can affirm that there was no borrowing from one people by another. A common experience created the stories, so dissimilar at first, and so much alike on second thought.
The story of the end of the world, as related by the Pawnee Indians, has an important content. It was written down8 from the mouth of an old Indian:
"We are told by the old people that the Morning Star ruled over all the minor gods in the heavens. . . . The old people told us that the Morning Star said that when the time came for the world to end, the Moon would turn red . . . that when the Moon should turn red, the people would know that the world was coming to an end.
"The Morning Star said further that in the beginning of all things they placed the North Star in the north, so that it should not move. . . . The Morning Star also said that in the beginning of all things they gave power to the South Star for it to move up close, once in a while, to look at the North Star to see if it were still standing in the north. If it were still standing there, it was to move back to its
8 Dorsey, ed., The Pawnee Mythology (1906), Pt. I, v>. 35.
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place. . . . When the time approached for the world to end, the South Star would come higher. . . .
The North Star would then disappear and move away and the South Star would take possession of the earth and of the people. . . . The old people knew also that when the world was to come to an end, there were to be many signs. Among the stars would be many signs. Meteors would fly through the sky. The Moon would change its color once in a while. The Sun would also show different colors.
"My grandchild, some of the signs have come to pass. The stars have fallen among the people, but the Morning Star is still good to us, for we continue to live. . . . The command for the ending of all things will be given by the North Star, and the South Star will carry out the command. . . .
When the time comes for the ending of the world, the stars will again fall to the earth."
In this narrative of the Pawnee Indians, elements are brought together which, as we know now, actually belong together. The planet Venus established the present order on the earth and placed the north and south polar stars in their places. The Pawnees believe that the future destruction of the world depends on the planet Venus. When the end of the world will come, the North and South poles will change places. In the past the South Star left its place a few times and came up higher, bringing about a shifting of the poles, but on these occasions the polar stars did not reverse their positions.
The change in the color of the sun and the moon was conditioned by the presence of cometary gases between the earth and these bodies; it is referred to in the Prophets of the Scriptures.
Stones falling from the sky belong to the same complex of phenomena.
The Pawnee Indians are not versed in astronomy. For one hundred and twenty generations father has transmitted to son and grandfather to grandchild the story of the past and the signs of future destruction.
The belief that the world is endangered by the planet Venus plays an important role in the ritual of the Skidi Pawnee Indians of Nebraska.
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robin-bobin
Next in rank to Tirawa (Jupiter) stands the Morning Star. "Tirawa gave most of his power to the Morning Star." 9 "Through her four assistants, Wind, Cloud, Lightning, and Thunder, she transmitted the mandates of Tirawa to the people upon earth." Next in rank to the Morning Star
"were the gods of four world-quarters, who stood in the northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest and supported the heavens. Next in rank was the North Star. Below these in turn were the Sun and Moon." "The greater part of the heavenly gods were identified with stars. The sacred bundle of each village was believed to have been given to its ancestors by one of these heavenly beings."
The ceremony of sacrifice to the Morning Star is the main ritual of the Pawnee Indians. It is a
"dramatization of the acts performed by the Morning Star." A human offering was sacrificed when Venus "appeared especially bright or in years when there was a comet in the sky." The act of appeasing Venus when a comet was seen in the sky takes on clearer meaning in the light of the present research.10
The sacrificial procedure took the following form. A captive girl was turned over by her captor to a man who would howl like a wolf. She was kept by the guardian until the day of the sacrifice.
"Her guardian then painted her whole body red and dressed her in a black skirt and robe. His face and hair were painted red, and a fan-shaped headdress of twelve eagle feathers was attached to his hair." "This was the costume in which the Morning Star usually appeared in visions."
The scaffold was erected between four poles that pointed to the four quarters (northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest). A few words were pronounced about the darkness that threatened to endure forever, and in the name of the Morning Star a command was addressed to the poles to keep upright "so that you will always hold up the heavens."
The chief priest then "painted the right half of her body red and
9 This and the following quotations are from The Thunder Ceremony of the Pawnee and The Sacrifice to the Morning Star, compiled by R. Linton from unpublished notes of G. A. Dorsey, Field Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology, Chicago (1922). io See the Section, "The Fifty-two Year Period."
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the left half black. A headdress of twelve black-tipped eagle feathers, arranged like a fan, was fastened on her head."
"At the moment the Morning Star appeared, two men came forward bearing firebrands." The breast of the girl was cut open and the heart taken out, and "the guardian thrust his hand into the thoracic cavity and painted his face with the blood." The people around shot arrows into the body of the victim. "Boys too young to draw a bow were helped by their fathers or mothers."
Four bundles were laid northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest of the scaffold and were ignited.
"There seem to have been astronomical beliefs connected with the sacrifices."
These human sacrifices, as described by Dorsey, were executed by the Indians only a few decades ago. They recall the Mexican sacrifices to the Morning Star described by the authors of the sixteenth century.
The meaning of these ceremonies and their relation to the planet Venus, especially in the years of a comet, the references to the cardinal points and to prolonged darkness, the anxiety that the sky should not fall, and even such details as the black and red colors so important in the ceremonies, become understandable now that we know the role Venus played in world upheavals.
CHAPTER 10
The Synodical Year of Venus
THE PLANET Venus, at the present time, revolves around the sun in 288 days, which is the siderial year of the planet. However, seen from the earth, which revolves around the sun on a larger orbit and at a lower speed, Venus returns to the same position with respect to the earth after 584 days, which is its synodical year. It rises before the sun, earlier every day for seventy-one days, until it reaches the western elongation or its westernmost point away from the rising sun. Each morning thereafter the Morning Star rises lower and lower and for 221 days robin-bobin
approaches the superior conjunction. About a month before the end of this period, it is eclipsed by the rays of the sun, and for over sixty days it is not seen because of the sun's rays: it is behind the sun or in superior conjunction. Then it appears for a moment after the setting sun, being now the Evening Star and east of the western sun. For 221 nights it retreats from the middle point of the superior conjunction, and beginning with the evening on which it first appears as an Evening Star, each night it appears farther from the setting sun until it reaches the eastern elongation.
Then for seventy-one nights it approaches the sun. Finally it enters the inferior conjunction, when it is between the earth and the sun. It is usually invisible for one or two days, and thereafter appears west of the rising sun and is again the Morning Star.
These movements of Venus and their exact duration have been known to the people of the Orient and the Occident for over two thousand years. Actually a "Venus year," which follows the synodical
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revolution of Venus, was employed in calendars of the Old and New World alike. Five synodical years of Venus equal 2919.6 days, whereas eight years of 365 days equal 2920 days, and eight Julian years of 365/4 days equal 2922 days. In other words, in four years there is a difference of approximately one day between the Venus and the Julian calendars.
As I shall show in more detail in my reconstruction of ancient history, the Egyptians of the second part of the first pre-Christian millennium observed the Venus year. A decree published in Egyptian and in Greek by the conclave of priests which took place in Canopus in the reign of Ptolemy III (Euergetes) in —239 was intended to reform the calendar "according to the present arrangement of the world" and "an amendment of the faults of the heaven," replacing the year regulated by the rising of the star Isis—and Pliny says that Isis is the planet Venus x—with a year regulated by the rising of the fixed star Sothis (Sirius); this would make a difference of one day in four years, so that, as the decree says, "the festivals of the winter should not arrive in the summer because of the change of a day every four years in the rising of the star Isis." 2
The reform intended by the Canopus Decree did not take root because the people and the conservatives among the priests kept faith with Venus and observed the New Year and other festivals on the days regulated by it. As a matter of fact, we know that the Ptolemaic pharaohs were obliged to swear in the temple of Isis (Venus) that they would not reform the calendar, nor add a day every four years. Julius Caesar actually followed the Canopus Decree by fixing a calendar of 365/4 days. In —26 Augustus introduced the Julian year in Alexandria, but the Egyptians outside Alexandria still continued to observe the Venus year of 365 days, and Claudius Ptolemy, the Alexandrian astronomer of the second Christian century, wrote in his Almagest: "Eight Egyptian years without a sensible error equal five circlings of Venus." 3
As this period of eight years can be divided in two, each part being
1 Pliny, Natural History, ii. 37.
2 S. Scharpe, The Decree of Canopus in Hieroglyphics and Greek (1870).
3 Bk. X. Chan. iv.
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equal to two and a half synodical periods, the dividing point being alternately at a heliacal (simultaneous with the sun) rising or setting of Venus, the Egyptians of the second half of the last millennium before the present era observed a four-year cycle. This is the meaning of Horapollo's information that the Egyptian year is equal to four years.4 In like manner the Greeks counted by four-year cycles dedicated to Athene: the Olympic games took place every fourth year (in the beginning, every eighth year5), and time was reckoned by the Olympiads. The Olympic games were started in the eighth century. At the Parthenon in Athens every fourth year was celebrated by the Pan-athenaic processions in honor of Athene.
The Incas of Peru in South America and the Mayas and Toltecs in Central America observed the synodical revolution of Venus and the Venus year in addition to the solar year.6 They also calculated by groups of five Venus years equal to eight years of 365 days. Like the Egyptians robin-bobin
and the Greeks, the Mayas observed the four-year cycles,7 from the inferior to the superior and from the superior to the inferior conjunctions of Venus. The Incas correctly marked the Venus calendar by tying knots in their quipus,8 and the Mayas, in the Dresden Codex, correctly gave the length of the Venus synodical cycle as 584 days.9 The astronomical observations of the Mayas were so precise that in computing the solar year, they arrived at figures not only more accurate than the Julian year, but also more accurate than the Gregorian year, introduced in Europe in 1582, ninety years after the discovery of America, which is our calendar year today.10
All this proves that the Venus calendar preserved its religious significance for a long time, down to the end of the Middle Ages and
4 A. T. Cory, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo Nilous (1840), II, Ixxxix. See also Wilkinson in G. Rawlinson, The History of Herodotus, II, 285. 8 E. N. Gardiner, Olympia (1925), p. 71; Farnell. The Cults of the Greek States, IV, 293; Frazer, The Dying God (1911), p. 78.
6 Brasseur, Sources de I'histoire primitive du Mexique, p. 27.
7 J. E. Thompson, "A Correlation of the Mayan and European Calendars," Field Museum of Natural History Anthropological Series, Vol. XVII.
8 Nordenskiold, The Secret of the Peruvian Quipus, II, 35.
• W. Gates, The Dresden Codex, Maya Society Publication No. 2 (1932). 10 Gates in De Landa, Yucatan, p. 60.
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the discovery of America, and even thereafter, but that already in the eighth century before the present era an eight or double four-year cycle of Venus was observed in time reckoning and therefore must have been established in the celestial sphere.
A few decades after the discovery of America, the Augustinian friar Ramon y Zamora wrote that the Mexican tribes held the Morning Star in great veneration and kept a precise record of its appearance: "So exact was the book-record of the day when it appeared and when it concealed itself, that they never made mistakes." u
This was a very old custom originating in a past when Venus moved on an elongated orbit.
The movements of Venus were carefully watched by the ancient astronomers of Mexico, India, Iran, and Babylonia. Temple observatories for the cult of the planets were built in both hemispheres. The bamot or "high places" so often mentioned in the Scriptures were observatories as well as places for offerings to the planet-gods, chiefly Venus (Baal). On these high places idolatrous priests, ordained by the erring kings of Judah, burned incense to Baal, to the sun, and the moon, and to the planets.12
In the second half of the second millennium and in the beginning of the first millennium, Venus was still a comet; and though a comet can have a circular orbit—there is such a comet in the solar system 13 —Venus was not then moving on a circular orbit as it does now; its orbit crossed the orbit of the earth and endangered it every fifty years. Since, by the second half of the eighth century before the present era, Venus' cycle was similar to what it is today, it follows that some time before then Venus must have changed its orbit and achieved its present circular path between Mercury and the earth and become the Morning and Evening Star.
The irregularities in the movements of Venus must have been observed by the ancients; the data in the ancient records must differ
11 Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, I, 624. 12 II Kings 23 : 5.
13 The Schwassmann-Wachmann comet, the orbit of which is between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn.
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very much from the figures on Venus' movements given at the head of this section.
Venus Moves Irregularly
In the library of Assurbanipal in Nineveh were stored astronomical books of his and of previous ages; in the ruins of this library Sir Henry Layard found the Venus tablets.1
robin-bobin
There arose the question: From what period do the observations of these tablets date?
Schiaparelli investigated this problem and "as an example of method his work is excellent." 2 He decided that "the inquiry could be limited to the seventh and eighth centuries."
The year-formula of an early king, Ammizaduga, was discovered on one of the tablets, and since then the tablets are usually ascribed to the first Babylonian dynasty; however, a scholar has offered evidence to the effect that the year-formula of Ammizaduga was inserted by a scribe in the seventh century.3 (If the tablets originated in the beginning of the second millennium, they would prove only that Venus was even then an errant comet.)
Following are a few excerpts from the Venus tablets:
"On the 11th of Sivan, Venus disappeared in the west, remaining absent in the sky for 9 months and 4 days, and on the 15th of Adar she was seen in the east."
The next year, "on the 10th of Arahsamna, Venus disappeared in the east, remaining absent 2
months and 6 days in the sky, and was seen on the 16th of Tebit in the west."
The following year Venus disappeared in the west on the 26th of
1 Published by H. C. Rawlinson and G. Smith, Table of the Movements of tht Planet Venus and Their Influences. Sayce's translation was printed in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1874; a more recent translation by S. Langdon and J. K. Fotheringham was published as The Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga (1928).
2 Fotheringham in Langdon and Fotheringham, The Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga, p. 32. See Schiaparelli, "Venusbeobachtungen und Berechnungen der Babylonier," Das Weltall, Vols. VI, VII.
3 Kugler ascribed the Venus tablets to the first Babylonian Dynasty, because he read a year-formula of Ammizaduga in one of them. In 1920, F. Hommel (Assyriologische Bibliothek, XXV, 197-199) declared that the year-formula of Ammizaduga was inserted into the Venus tablets by a scribe in the reign of Assurbanipal, in the seventh century.
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Ulul (Elul), remaining absent from the sky for eleven days, and was seen on the 7th of intercalary Ulul in the east.
The year thereafter Venus disappeared in the east on the 9th of Nisan, remaining absent for 5
months and 16 days, and was seen on the 25th of Ulul in the west.
In the fifth year of the observations, Venus disappeared in the west on the 5th of Ayar (Ijar), remaining absent from the sky for seven days, and reappeared in the east on the 12th of Ayar; the same year it disappeared on the 20th of Tebit in the east, remaining absent from the sky one month, and on the 21st day of Sabat (Shevat) it appeared in the west, and so on.
How explain these observations of the ancient astronomers, modern astronomers and historians have asked. Were they written in a conditional form ("If Venus disappeared on the 11th of Sivan
. . .") ? No, they were expressed categorically.
The observations were "inaccurately" registered, decided some authors. However, inaccuracy may account for a few days' difference but not for a difference of months.
"The invisibility of Venus at superior conjunction is given as 5 months 16 days instead of the correct difference of 2 months 6 days," noted the translators of the text, wonderingly.4
"The period between the heliacal setting of Venus and its rise is 72 days. But in the Babylonian-Assyrian astrological texts, the period varies from one month to five months—too long and too short: the observations were defective," wrote another scholar.5
"The impossible interval shows that the data are not trustworthy." "Obviously, the days of the month have been mixed up. As the impossible intervals show, the months are also wrong," wrote still another author.8
It is difficult to imagine how such obvious errors could have been committed. The dates are written in a contemporary document; they are not a poetical composition but a dry record, and each item in the
4 Langdon-Fotheringham, The Venus Tablets, p. 106.
robin-bobin
5 M. Jastrow, Religious Relief in Rabylonia and Assyria, p. 220.
6 A. Ungnad, "Die Venustafeln und das neunte Jahr Samsuilunas," Mitteilungen der altorientalischen Gesellschaft (1940), p. 12.
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record is stated in dates as well as in the number of days between the dates.
Similar difficulties are encountered by the scholars who try to understand the Hindu tables of the movements of the planets. The only explanation proposed is: "All the manuscripts are completely corrupted. . . . The details referring to Venus . . . are very difficult to unriddle."7 "No attention at all was paid to the actual movements in the sky." 8
The Babylonians did not note these irregular movements merely as matters of factual interest; they were dismayed by them. In their prayers they expressed this dismay.
O Ishtar, queen of all peoples . . .
Thou art the light of heaven and earth. . . .
At the thought of thy name the heaven and the earth quake . . .
And the spirits of the earth falter.
Mankind payeth homage unto thy mighty name,
for thou art great, and thou art exalted.
All mankind, the whole human race,
boweth down before thy power. . . .
How long wilt thou tarry, O lady of heaven and earth . . . ?
How long wilt thou tarry, O lady of all fights and of the battle?
O thou glorious one, that ... art raised on high, that art
firmly established, O valiant Ishtar, great in thy might! Bright torch of heaven and earth, light of all dwellings, Terrible in the fight, one who cannot be opposed, strong in the battle! O whirlwind, that roarest against the foe and cuttest off the
mighty! O furious Ishtar, summoner of armies! 9
As long as Venus returned at regular intervals, fear of the planet was kept in bounds; when the star passed without causing harm, as it had already done for a few centuries, the peoples were calmed
7Thibaut, "Astronomie, Astroloeie und Mathematik," Vol. 3, Pt. 9 (1899) of Grundriss der indo-arisch. Philol. und Altertumskunde, p. 27.
«Ibid., p. 15.
' A "Prayer of the Raising of the Hand" to Ishtar (transl. L. W. King) in The Seven Tablets of Creation.
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and felt themselves out of danger for another period. But when Venus, for some reason, began to move irregularly, fear grew intense. The priests of Iran prayed: 10
We sacrifice to Tistrya, the bright and glorious star, for whom long flocks and herds and men, looking forward for him and deceived in their hope: When shall we see him rise up, the bright and glorious star Tistrya?
The Zend-Avesta answered for the star:
If men would worship me with a sacrifice in which I were invoked by my own name . . . then I should come to the faithful at the appointed time.
The priests responded:
The next ten nights, O Spitama Zarathustra!
the bright and glorious Tistrya mingles his shape with light,
moving in the shape of a golden-horned bull.
They glorified the star that made "all the shores of the ocean boiling over, all the middle of it boiling over." They heaped up sacrifices to the star, imploring it not to change its course.
We sacrifice unto Tistrya, the bright and glorious star
who from the shining east moves along his long winding course,
robin-bobin
along the path made by the gods. . . .
We sacrifice unto Tistrya the bright and glorious star,
whose rising is watched by the chiefs of deep understanding.
The star of Venus did not appear in the prescribed seasons. In the Book of Job the Lord asks him: "Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season . . . ? Knowest thou the changes of heaven?" n
10 Zend-Avesta (transl. Darmesteter), Pt. II, pp. 94 ff. The belief sometimes expressed, that Tistrya is Sirius, is an obvious error: Sirius does not travel in a winding course. The star in the shape of a golden-horned bull was Venus. Also, inaccurate movements of Sirius could not occur without similar irregularity on the part of all the stars.
11 Job 38 : 32-33. The King James translation has, "Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?"
The Septuagint has "the changes of heaven."
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There exists an extensive exegetic literature on this Mazzaroth,12 from which it can be concluded only that "the meaning of Mazzaroth is uncertain."13 But the Vulgate (Latin) translation of the Bible has Lucifer for Mazzaroth. The (Greek) translation of the Seventy (Septuagint) reads: "Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season and guide the Evening Star by his long hair?" These words of the Septuagint seem very strange. I have already mentioned that the Greek word komet means "the long-haired one," or a star with hair, a comet. In Latin, coma is "hair."
Mazzaroth means a comet, wrote an exegete, and therefore, he argued, it cannot mean Venus.14
But in any case it is said that the Evening Star has hair. Actually, Mazzaroth means Venus and a hairy star.
Venus ceased to appear in its seasons. What had happened?
Venus Becomes trie Morning Star
Since the latter part of the eighth century before the present era, Venus has followed an orbit between Mercury and earth, which it has maintained ever since. It became the Morning and Evening Star. Seen from the earth, it is never removed more than 48 degrees (when at its eastern and western elongation) or three hours and a few minutes east or west of the sun. The dreaded comet became a tame planet. It has the most nearly circular orbit among the planets.
The end of the terror which Venus kept alive for eight centuries after the days of the Exodus was the inspiration for Isaiah when he said: 1
"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God."
12 See Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 74.
13 Cambridge Bible, Book of Job, by A. B. Davidson and H. C. Lanchester.
14 J. S. Suschken, Unvorgreifliche Kometen-Gedanken: Ob der Kometen in der heiligen Schrift gedacht werde? (1744).
l Isaiah 14 : 12-13. See also infra, p. 259.
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Septuagint and Vulgate both translate Morning Star or Lucifer. What does it mean, that the Morning Star was assailing the heavens and rising high, and that it was cut down low to the horizon, and would weaken no more the nations?
More than a hundred generations of commentators have occupied themselves with this passage, but have met with failure.
Why, it is also asked, should the beautiful Morning Star, called Lucifer, the Light Bearer, live in the imagination of peoples as an evil power, a fallen star? What is in this lovely planet that makes her name an equivalent of Satan, or Seth of the Egyptians, the dark power? In his confusion, Origen wrote this question to the quoted verses of Isaiah: "Most evidently by these words is he shown to have fallen from heaven, who formerly was Lucifer, and who used to arise in the morning. For if, as some think, he was a nature of darkness, how is Lucifer said to have robin-bobin
existed before? Or how could he arise in the morning, who had in himself nothing of the light?"
2
Lucifer was a feared prodigy in the sky, and its origin, as illuminated in this book, explains how it came to be regarded as a dark power and a fallen star.
After a great struggle, Venus achieved a circular orbit and a permanent place in the family of planets. During the perturbations which brought about this metamorphosis, Venus also lost its cometary tail.
In the valley of the Euphrates, "Venus then gives up her position as a great stellar divinity, equal with sun and moon, and joins the ranks of the other planets." 3
A comet became a planet.
Venus was born as a comet in the second millennium before the present era. In the middle of that millennium it twice made contact with the earth and changed its cometary orbit. In the tenth to eighth centuries of the first millennium, it was still a comet. What caused such further changes in the motion of Venus in the first millennium that it became a planet on a circular orbit?
2 The Writings of Origen, "De principiis" (transl. F. Crombie, 1869), p. 51. * A. Jeremias, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East (1911), I, 18.
PART II
Mars
•-¦
CHAPTER 1
Amos
ABOUT seven hundred fifty years passed after the great catastrophe of the days of the Exodus, or seven centuries after the cosmic disturbance in the days of Joshua. During all this time the world was afraid of the recurrence of the catastrophe at the end of every jubilee period. Then, starting about the middle of the eighth century before the present era, a new series of cosmic upheavals took place at intervals of short duration.
It was the time of the Hebrew prophets whose books are preserved in writing, of Assyrian kings whose annals are excavated and deciphered, and of Egyptian pharaohs of the Libyan and Ethiopian dynasties; in short, the catastrophes which we are now about to describe did not take place in a mist-shrouded past: the period is part of the well authenticated history of the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. The eighth century also saw the beginning of the nations of Greece and Rome.
The seers who prophesied in Judea were versed in the lore of heavenly motion; they observed the ways of the planetary and comet-ary bodies and, like the stargazers of Assyria and Babylonia, they were aware of future changes.
In the eighth century, in the days of Uzziah, king of Jerusalem, there occurred a devastating catastrophe called raash or "commotion." 1 Amos, who lived at the time of Uzziah, began to predict a
1 Raash is translated "earthquake," which is incorrect here; cf. Jeremiah 10 : 22: "a great commotion [raash] out of the north." "Earthquake" is rendered in the Scriptures by words derived from the roots road, hul, regoz, hared, palez, ruf, and raash (commotion).
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cosmic upheaval before the raash took place, and after the catastrophe, Isaiah, Joel, Hosea, and Micah insisted unanimously and with great emphasis on the inevitability of another encounter of the earth with some cosmic body.
The prophecy of Amos was made two years before the raash (1:1). He declared that fire sent by the Lord would devour Syria, Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Philistia, as well as the far-off countries, "with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind" (1:14). The land of Israel would not be robin-bobin
exempted; "great tumult" would be on its mountains, and "great houses shall have an end" (3 : 15). "He will smite the great house with breaches, and the little house with clefts" (6 : ll).2
Amos warned those who invited the day of the Lord and waited for it: "Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light . . .
even very dark, and no brightness in it" (5 : 18-20).
Amos, the earliest among the prophets of Judah and Israel whose speeches are preserved in writing,3 reveals the concept of Yahweh in that remote period of history. Yahweh orders the planets. "He who maketh [ordains] Khima and Khesil,4 and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night, and calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth, the Lord [Yahweh] is his name: He strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong" (5 : 8-9).
Amos prophesied: The land "shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day" (8:8-9).
The "flood of Egypt" mentioned by Amos may be a reference to the catastrophe of the day of the Passage of the Sea; but more proba-2 Rsisim, translated as "breaches," is not strong enough; it would be better to say, "smite great houses into pieces." Hebrew words translated as "breach" in the King James Version are bedek, bkia, peretz, shever.
3 Some rabbinical authorities regard Hosea as the oldest among the prophets of that time (Hosea, Amos, Isaiah).
4 The material for the identification of Khima as Saturn and Khesil as Mars will be presented in a subsequent part of this work.
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bly it refers to an event within the memory of the generation to which Amos spoke.
In the reign of Osorkon II of the Libyan Dynasty in Egypt, in the third year, the first month of the second season, on the twelfth day, according to a damaged inscription," the flood came on, in this whole land . . . this land was in its power like the sea; there was no dyke of the people to withstand its fury. All the people were like birds upon it . . . the tempest . . . suspended . . . like the heavens. All the temples of Thebes were like marshes." 5
That it was not a seasonal inundation of the Nile is clear from the date. "This calendar date for the high level of inundation does not at all correspond to the place of the calendar in the seasons." 8
On the day of the approaching catastrophe, Amos says, there will be no place of escape, not even on Mount Carmel, rich in caves. "Though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence" (9 : 2-3).
Earth will melt and the sea will be heaped up and thrown upon inhabited land. "And the Lord God of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it shall melt. . . . He that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth" (9 : 5-6).
Amos was persecuted and killed. The catastrophe did not fail to come at the appointed time. In anticipation and in fear of it, King Uzziah went to the Temple to burn incense.7 The priests opposed his appropriating their functions. "Suddenly the earth started to quake so violently that a great breach was torn in the Temple. On the west side of Jerusalem, half of a mountain was split off and hurled to the east."8 Flaming seraphim leaped in the air.9
Earthquakes act suddenly, and the population has no means of knowing about them in advance in order to flee. But before the raash
5 Breasted, Records of Egypt, IV, Sec. 743. Cf. J. Vandier, La Famine dans I'Egypte ancienne (1936), p. 123. "The water reduced the land to the same state as when it was still covered with the primeval water of creation."
6 Breasted, Records of Egypt, IV, Sees. 742-743. * II Chronicles 26 : 16 ff. 8 Ginzberg, Legends, IV, 262. »Ibid., VI, 358.
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of Uzziah the population escaped from the cities and fled into caves and clefts between the rocks.
Many generations later, in the post-Exilic period, it was remembered how the population "fled from before the raash in the days of Uzziah king of Judah." 10
The Year -747
If the commotion of the days of Uzziah was of global character and was brought about by an extraterrestrial agent, it must have caused some disturbance in the motion of the earth on its axis and along its orbit. Such a disturbance would have made the old calendar obsolete and would have required the introduction of a new calendar.
In —747 a new calendar was introduced in the Middle East, and that year is known as "the beginning of the era of Nabonassar." It is asserted that some astronomical event gave birth to this new calendar, but the nature of the event is not known. The beginning of the era of Nabonassar, otherwise an obscure Babylonian king, was an astronomical date used as late as the second Christian century by the great mathematician and astronomer of the Alexandrian school, Ptolemy, and also by other scholars. It was employed as a point of departure of ancient astronomical tables.
"This was not a political or religious era. . . . Farther back there was no certainty in regard to the calculation of time. It is from that moment that the records of eclipses begin which Ptolemy used."J What was the astronomical event that closed the previous era and gave birth to a new era?
According to retrospective calculations, there was no eclipse of the sun in the region of Assyro-Babylonia between the years —762 and — 701,2 if the earth has revolved and rotated uniformly since then, which is taken for granted.
!» Zechariah 14 : 5.
1 F. Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (1912),
pp. 8-9. To be correct, the earliest eclipse Ptolemy calculated is dated March 21, -721.
2T. von Oppolzer, Canon der Finsternisse (1887).
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Uzziah reigned from about -789 to about -740.3 The last few years of his reign, beginning with the day of the "commotion," he spent in seclusion, having been pronounced a leper. It was apparently the upheaval in the days of Uzziah that separated the two ages. Time was counted
"from the commotion in the days of Uzziah." *
If this conclusion is correct, the upheaval took place in —747. The computation, according to which the era started on the twenty-sixth day of February, must be re-examined in the light of the fact that further cosmic disturbances occurred during the decades that followed —747. It is worth noting, however, that the ancient inhabitants of Mexico celebrated their New Year on the day which corresponds, in the Julian calendar, to the same date: "The first day of their yeere was the sixe and twentie day of February." 5
The chronographer and Byzantine monk, Georgius Syncellus, one of the chief sources of ancient chronology, synchronized the forty-eighth year of Uzziah and the first year of the first Olympiad.6 But according to modern calculations, the first year of the first Olympiad was —
776.7 The Olympiads most probably were inaugurated by some cosmic event. The text of the ancient Chinese book of Shiking refers to some celestial phenomenon in the days of the king Yen-Yang, in —776: the sun was obscured.8 If the occurrence of —776 was of the same nature as that of —747, then Amos' prophecy was a prognostication based on an earlier experience.
3 K. Marti, "Chronology," Encyclopaedia Biblica, ed. by Cheyne and Black.
4 Cf. Amos 1:1; Zechariah 14 : 5.
5 J. de Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies (transl. E. Grimston, 1604; re-edited, 1880).
6 Georgius Syncellus (ed. G. Dindorf, 1829), II, 203.
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7 S. Newcomb, The American Nautical Almanac, 1891 (1890).
8 A. Gaubil, Traits de I'astronomie chinoise, Vol. Ill of Observations mathSma-tiques, astronomiques, geographiques, chronologiques, et physiques . . . aux Indes et a la Chine, ed. E.
Souciet (1729-1732); J. B. du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China (1741), II, 128-129.
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Isaiah
According to Hebrew sources,1 Isaiah began to prophesy immediately after the "commotion" of the days of Uzziah, even on the same day. The destruction in the land was very great. "Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire. . . . Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah" (1 : 7 ff.). The very horizon of Jerusalem was disfigured by the splitting of the mountain on the west; and the cities were filled with debris and mutilated bodies. "The hills did tremble, and . . . carcasses were torn in the midst of the streets" (5 : 25).
This was the event that kindled in Isaiah the prophetic spirit. During his long life—he prophesied in "the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah"—he did not cease to foretell the return of the catastrophes. Isaiah was skilled in the observation of the stars, and he apparently knew that at periodic intervals—every fifteen years—a catastrophe occurred, caused, he believed, by the messenger of God. "His anger is not turned away, but his hand [sign 2] is stretched out still. And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from afar" (5:25-26).
Isaiah drew an apocalyptic picture of swiftly moving hostile troops. Was he prophesying a cruel and mighty people of warriors, or a host of missiles hurled from afar when he spoke of the army that would come swiftly from the end of the world, called by the Lord? Their horses' hoofs would be like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind. "If one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow; and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof" (5 : 30).
It is not the Assyrians on horses and in chariots that are compared to the flint and the whirlwind, but the flint and the whirlwind that are likened to warriors.3 The darkness at the end of the picture discloses that which is the object of comparison and that to which it is compared.
1 Seder Olam 20. 2 Yad is "hand" as well as "sign." 3 See infra the Section, "The Terrible Ones."
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The catastrophe of the days of Uzziah was only a prelude: the day of wrath will return and will destroy the population "until the cities be wasted without inhabitant" (6 : 11). "Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust" (2 : 10)—all over the world caves in the rocks were regarded as the best places of refuge. "And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth" (2 : 19).
Isaiah appeared before King Ahaz and offered him a sign, on the earth or "in the height above."
Ahaz refused: "I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord" (7 : 12).
Then Isaiah faced the people. "And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish" (8 : 22). Nevertheless, he said, the dimness will not be as great as on two former occasions when "at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations" (9:1). He calculated that the next catastrophe would cause less harm than had been caused on previous occasions. But soon thereafter he changed his prognostication and became utterly pessimistic.
"Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire" (9 : 19). His rod will lift the sea up "after the manner of Egypt," as on the day of the crossing of the Red Sea (10 : 26). "And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand [sign] over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams" (11 : 15). Nor will Palestine be spared. "He shall shake his hand [sign] against
. . . the hill of Jerusalem" (10 : 32).
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Thus, a war of the heavenly host, commanded by the Lord, was proclaimed against the nations of the earth. And the nations of the earth were aroused by the expectation of Doomsday. "The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together: the Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle" (13 : 4). This multitude comes
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"from the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land" (13 : 5).
The world will be darkened. "The stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth [in the forenoon], and the moon shall not cause her light to shine" (13 : 10).
The world will be thrown off its axis: the heavenly host "will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger" (13 : 13).
The nations "shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind" (17 : 13).
Isaiah, on his vigils, watched the firmament, and in "appointed times" expected "from the north a smoke" (14 : 31).
"All ye inhabitants of the world . . . see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye" (18 : 3). The eyes of all "dwellers of the earth" were directed toward the sky, and they listened to the bowels of the earth.
Inquiries were sent to Jerusalem from Seir in Arabia: "Watchman, what of the night?" From his watchtower ("Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower") Isaiah gave his forecasts to inquirers (21:5; 21:11).
Nervous tension grew with the approach of the "appointed time," and a rumor sufficed to drive the population of the cities to the housetops. "What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops?" (22 : 1).
Much of the city of David was damaged and many structures had fissures from almost continuous earth tremors (22 : 9). The seer frightened the population with his constant warnings of "a day of trouble . . . and of perplexity by the Lord God of hosts," with "breaking down the walls, and of crying to the mountains" (22 : 5). But many among the population took the attitude of those who before Doomsday say: "Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we shall die" (22: 13).
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Joel, who prophesied at the same time, also spoke of "wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come" (Joel 2 : 30-31).
Micah, another seer "in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah," warned that the day was close when "the mountains shall be molten . . . and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire" (Micah 1:4). "Marvelous things" will be shown, as in the days when Israel left Egypt: "The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might . . . their ears shall be deaf . . .
they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth" (7 : 15-17).
Joel, Micah, and Amos warned in similar terms of "a day of thick darkness" and "the day dark with night." Astronomers, who thought that all this refers to a common eclipse of the sun, wondered: "From —763 down to the destruction of the First Temple in —586 no total eclipse of the sun was visible in Palestine." * They took it for granted that the earth revolves along exactly the same orbit and on a slowly rotating axis, and so they questioned: Why did the prophets speak of eclipses when there were none? However, other descriptions of the world catastrophe in these prophets do not accord with the effects of an ordinary eclipse, either.
The word shaog, used by Amos and Joel, is explained by the Talmud5 as an earthshock, the field of action of which is the entire world, whereas a regular earthquake is of local character. Such a shaking of the earth, disturbed in its rotation, is visualized also as a "shaking of the sky," an expression found in the Prophets, in Babylonian texts, and in other literary sources.
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Then the prophecy was fulfilled. Amid the catastrophe Isaiah raised his voice: "Fear, and the pit, and the snare [pitch 6] are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth . . . for the windows from on high 4 Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 43. Oppolzer and Ginzel arranged canons of the solar eclipses in antiquity on the premise that there was no change in the movement of the earth or the moon.
5 The Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 13b.
6 Pah in Hebrew originally meant "bitumen" or "pitch," as can be inferred from Psalms 11: 6.
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are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly" (24 : 17-19).
The catastrophe came on the day on which King Ahaz was buried. There was a "commotion": the terrestrial axis shifted or was tilted, and the sunset was hastened by several hours. This cosmic disturbance is described in the Talmud, in the Midrashim, and referred to by the Fathers of the Church.' It is related also in the records and told in the traditions of many peoples. It appears that a heavenly body passed very close to the earth, moving, as it seems, in the same direction as the earth on its nocturnal side.
"Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down. . . .
The inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left" (Isaiah 24 : 1, 6).
The Argive Tyrants
In Ages in Chaos I shall present proof that the large, raw stone structures of Mycenae and Tiryns on the Argive plain in Greece are the ruins of the palaces of the Argive tyrants, well remembered by the Greeks of subsequent centuries, and date from the eighth century before the present era. If the material remains of the palaces of Mycenae and Tiryns are ascribed to the second millennium, then nothing has been found on the Argive plain that can be ascribed to the Argive tyrants, although they are known to have built spacious palaces.
Thyestes and his brother Atreus were of these Argive tyrants. Living in the eighth century, they must have witnessed the cosmic catastrophes of the days of Isaiah. Greek tradition persists that a cosmic catastrophe occurred in the time of these tyrants: the sun changed its course and the night arrived before its proper time.
Men should be prepared for everything and not wonder at anything, wrote Archilochus, since the day that Zeus "turned midday into
'Tractate Sanhedrin 96a; Pirkei Rabbi Elieser 52; Hippolytus on Isaiah. Cf. Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 367, n. 81.
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night, hiding the light of the dazzling sun; and sore fear came upon men. 1
Many classical authors referred to the occurrence. I give here Seneca's description. In his drama, Thyestes, the chorus asks the sun:
"Whither, O father of the lands and skies, before whose rising thick night with all her glories flees, whither dost turn thy course and why dost blot out the day in mid-Olympus [midday]? Not yet does Vesper, twilight's messenger, summon the fires of night; not yet does thy wheel, turning its western goal, bid free thy steeds from their completed task; not yet as day fades into night has the third trump sounded; the ploughman with oxen yet unwearied stands amazed at his supper hour's quick coming. What has driven thee from thy heavenly course? . . . Has Typhoeus
[Typhon] thrown off the mountainous mass and set his body free?" 2
This picture reminds us of the description of the day of Ahaz' burial.
Seneca relates the fear of world destruction experienced by those who lived at the time of Atreus and Thyestes, the tyrants of the Argive plain. The hearts of men were oppressed with terror at the sight of the untimely sunset. "The shadows arise, though the night is not yet ready. No stars come out; the heavens gleam not with any fires: no moon dispels the darkness' heavy pall. . . .
Trembling, trembling are our hearts, sore smit with fear, lest all things fall shattered in fatal ruin and once more gods and men be overwhelmed by formless chaos; lest the lands, the encircling sea, and the stars that wander in the spangled sky, nature blot out once more."
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Will the seasons be ended and the moon carried away? "No more" shall the stars "mark off the summer and the winter times; no more shall Luna, reflecting Phoebus' rays, dispel night's terrors."
After the catastrophe of the days of Atreus and Thyestes, the luminaries crossed their former paths obliquely; the poles were shifted; the year lengthened—the orbit of the earth became wider. "The Zodiac, which, making passage through the sacred stars, crosses 1 Archilochus, Fragment 74. 2 Translated by F. J. Miller (1917).
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the zones obliquely, guide and sign-bearer for the slow moving years, falling itself, shall see the fallen constellations."
Seneca describes the change in position of each constellation—the Ram, the Bull, the Twins, the Lion, the Virgin, the Scales, the Scorpion, the Goat, and the Wain (the Great Bear). "And the Wain, which was never bathed in the sea, shall be plunged beneath the all-engulfing waves." A commentator who wondered about this description of the position of the Great Bear wrote:
"There was no mythological reason why the Wain—otherwise known as the Great Bear—should not be bathed in the Ocean." 3 But Seneca said precisely this strange thing: the Great Bear—or one of its stars—never set beneath the horizon, and thus the polar star was among its stars during the age that came to its end in the time of the Argive tyrants.
Seneca also says explicitly that the poles were torn up in this cataclysm. The polar axis now is turned toward one of the stars, the North Star, of the Little Bear.
In the face of the cataclysm, when humanity was overwhelmed with awe, the heartbroken Thyestes, longing for death, called upon the universe to go down in utter confusion. The picture was not invented by Seneca: it was familiar because of what had happened in earlier ages.
"O thou, exalted ruler of the sky, who sittest in majesty upon the throne of heaven, enwrap the whole universe in awful clouds, set the winds warring on every hand, and from every quarter of the sky let the loud thunder roll; not with what hand thou seekest houses and undeserving homes, using thy lesser bolts, but with that hand by which the threefold mass of mountains fell . . . these arms let loose and hurl thy fires."
Again Isaiah
Time passed after the death of Ahaz, and the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah approached.
Again the frightened world anxiously anticipated a catastrophe. On its two previous approaches, the celestial missile had come very close, indeed. This time the end of the 3 A note by F. J. Miller to his translation of Thyestes.
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219
world was feared. After the cataclysms of the days of Uzziah and of the funeral day of Ahaz, one did not have to be a prophet to foretell a new cosmic catastrophe. The earth will move out of its place, a scorching flame will devour the air, hot stones will fall from the sky, and the waters of the sea will mount and descend upon the continents.
"Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest [cataract] of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand" (Isaiah 28 : 2).
"The mighty and strong one" was a heavenly body, a missile of the Lord. Once more it was destined to scourge the earth. "The overflowing scourge shall pass through" (28 : 18), was Isaiah's new prognostication. Although the people of Jerusalem hoped that "when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us" (28 : 15), Jerusalem had no covenant with death.1
There will be no safe place of refuge. "The waters shall overflow the hiding place" (28 : 17). "A consumption even determined upon the whole earth" (28 : 22).
"For the Lord . . , shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act" (28 : 21).
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What was the "strange act" in the valley of Gibeon? In that valley the host of Joshua witnessed a rain of bolides and saw the sun and the moon disturbed in their movement across the firmament.
"At an instant suddenly" the land will be invaded with "small dust" and with "the multitude of terrible ones," and it will be visited "with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire" (29 : 5-6).
"A devouring fire" and "an overflowing stream" shall "sift the nations" with "tempest and hailstones" (30 : 27-30).
The prophet, reading the signs of the sky, took upon himself the role of sentinel of the universe, and from his watchtower in Jerusalem he spread the alarm:
1 Cf. Psalms 46 : 5: "God is in the midst of her [Jerusalem]; she shall not be moved: God shall help her."
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"Let the earth hear. . . . For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations . . . He hath delivered them to the slaughter" (34 : 1 ff.).
Then follows the desolate picture of the destroyed earth and dissolved sky (34: 4 ft): And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved,
and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll:
and all their host shall fall down. . . .
For my sword shall be bathed in heaven. . . .
And the streams . . . shall be turned into pitch,
and the dust into brimstone,
and the land shall become burning pitch.
It shall not be quenched night nor day;
the smoke shall go up for ever.
Isaiah referred his readers to the "Book of the Lord": "Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read: no one of these shall fail" (34 : 16). This book probably belonged to the same series as the Book of Jasher, in which the records of the days of Joshua at Gibeon were preserved; old traditions and astronomical observations must have been written down in the Book of the Lord, no longer extant.
Maimonides and Spinoza, the Exegetes
Ego sum Dominus, faciens om-nia, extendens caelos solus, sta-biliens terrain, et nullus mecum.
Irrita faciens signa divinorum, et ariolos in furorem vertens. Convertens sapientes retrorsum: et scientiam eorum stultam faciens.
—Prophetiae Isaiae 44 : 24-25 (Vulgate)
Here, before I go on to the description of the day on which the prophecies of Isaiah, pronounced after the death of Ahaz, were fulfilled, I should like to present the common view of generations of commentators. The books of the Mayas have come into the hands of only a few scholars; likewise the papyri of Egypt and the clay
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tablets of the Assyrians. But the Book of Isaiah and other books of the Scriptures have been read by millions during many centuries in hundreds of languages. Is the way in which Isaiah expressed himself obscure? It is a kind of collective psychological blind spot which prevents the understanding of the clearly revealed and scores-of-times-repeated description of astronomical, geological, and meteorological phenomena. The description was thought to be a peculiar kind of poetic metaphor, a flowery manner of expression.
Even a modest attempt to review the various commentaries on Isaiah would burst the frame of a book larger than this one. Therefore it should satisfy the orthodox and the liberal reader alike if the opinions presented by two great authorities in the world of thought are given here, and the thousands of commentators not quoted at all.
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Moses ben Maimon, called Rambam, also Maimonides (1135-1204), in his The Guide for the Perplexed,1 expressed the opinion that a belief in the Creation is a fundamental principle of Jewish religion, "but we do not consider it a principle of our faith that the Universe will again be reduced to nothing"; "it depends on His will," and "it is therefore possible that He will preserve the Universe for ever"; "the belief in the destruction is not necessarily implied in the belief in the Creation." "We agree with Aristotle in one half of his theory. . . . The opinion of Aristotle is that the Universe being permanent and indestructible, is also eternal and without beginning."
With this theophilosophic approach to the problem at large, Maimonides was averse to finding any word or sentence in the Prophets or elsewhere in the Bible that would suggest a destruction of the world or even a change in its order.2 Each and every such expression he explained as a poetical substitute for an exposition of political ideas and acts.
Maimonides says: " 'The stars have fallen,' 'The heavens are overthrown,' 'The sun is darkened,'
'The earth is waste and trembles,'
1 English translation by M. Friedlander (1928).
2 Maimonides apparently follows Philo, the Greek-writing Jewish philosopher of the first century, who in his The Eternity of the World was of the opinion that the world was created but that it is indestructible; however, Philo admitted changes in nature caused by periodic floods and conflagrations on a large scale and of cosmic origin.
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and similar metaphors" are "frequently employed by Isaiah, and less frequently by other prophets, when they describe the ruin of a kingdom." In these phrases the term "mankind" is used occasionally; this is also a metaphor, says Maimonides. "Sometimes the prophets use the term 'mankind' instead of 'the people of a certain place,' whose destruction they predict; e.g., Isaiah, speaking of the destruction of Israel, says: 'And the Lord will remove man far away' (6 : 12). So also Zephaniah (1 : 3-4), 'And I will cut off man from off the earth.'"
He maintains that Isaiah and other seers of Israel, when examined by the realistic method of Aristotelianism, were persons inclined to exaggerated forms of speech, and instead of saying,
"Babylon will fall," or "fell," they spoke in terms of some fantastic perturbation in the cosmos above and beneath.
"When Isaiah received the divine mission to prophesy the destruction of the Babylonian empire, the death of Sennacherib and that of Nebuchadnezzar, who rose after the overthrow of Sennacherib,3 he commences in the following manner to describe their fall . . . : 'For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof, shall not give their light' (13 : 10); again, 'Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger' (13 : 13). I do not think that any person is so foolish and blind, and so much in favour of the literal sense of figurative and oratorical phrases, as to assume that at the fall of the Babylonian kingdom a change took place in the nature of the stars of heaven, or in the light of the sun and moon, or that the earth moved away from its center. For all this is merely the description of a country that has been defeated; the inhabitants undoubtedly find all light dark, and all sweet things bitter: the whole earth appears too narrow for them, and the heavens are changed in their eyes."
"He speaks in a similar manner when he describes . . . the loss of the entire land of Israel when it came into the possession of Sennacherib. He says (24 : 18-20): '. . . for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is
3 Nebuchadnezzar lived a century after Sennacherib.
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utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard.'"
The subjugation of Judah by Assyria was joyless, but what was so bad, from Isaiah's point of view, in the destruction of Babylon that the stars should not give their light?
A reading of the literature indicates that no exegete has ever been "so foolish and blind" as to read sky for sky, stars for stars, brimstone for brimstone, fire for fire, blast for blast.4 Referring robin-bobin
to the quoted verses—Isaiah 34 : 4-5—Maimonides writes: "Will any person who has eyes to see find in these verses any expression that is obscure, or that might lead him to think that they contain an account of what will befall the heavens? . . . The prophet means to say that the individuals, who were like stars as regards their permanent, high, and undisturbed position, will quickly come down."
Maimonides quotes Ezekiel, Joel, Amos, Micah, Haggai, Habak-kuk, and Psalms, and in verses similar to those cited from Isaiah, he finds incidentally a description of "a multitude of locusts,"
or a speech appropriate for the destruction of Samaria or the "destruction of Medes and Persians," spoken "in metaphors which are intelligible to those who understand the context."
In a settled world nothing alters the given order. To sustain this doctrine, the prophecies were translated into metaphors, for, in the opinion of Maimonides, if the world does not change its regimented harmony, true prophets would not declare that it does. "Our opinion, in support of which we have quoted these passages," writes Maimonides, "is clearly established, namely, that no prophet or sage has ever announced the destruction of the Universe, or a change of its present condition, or a permanent change of any of its properties." This standpoint of Maimonides, as far as a change of conditions in the Universe is concerned, is a deduction, not from the texts he interprets, but from a philosophical a priori approach. Prophets might err
4 But for what they were taken may be illustrated by the exegesis of Augustine. He writes: "Hail and coals of fire (Psalm 18): Reproofs are figured, whereby as by hail, the hard hearts are bruised." To the words, "And He sent out His arrows, and scattered them (Psalm 15)," Augustine writes: "And He sent out Evangelists traversing straight paths on the wines of strength." St.
Augustine, Expositions on the Book of Psalms, ed. Ph. Schaff (1905).
224 WORLDS IN COLLISION
in their prophecies, but it could hardly be that in saying "stars" they meant "persons." The reading of subsequent chapters in Isaiah (36-39) and parallel chapters in Kings and Chronicles, as well as the Talmudic and Midrashic fragments (concerning the time of Sennacherib's invasion), makes it apparent that this time the prophets did not err, and that a change in harmonious conditions did occur in the lifetime of these very prophets, in the days of Hezekiah.
Maimonides asserts that Joel's prophecies referred to Sennacherib, but he is puzzled: "You may perhaps object—how can the day of the fall of Sennacherib, according to our explanation, be called 'the great and the terrible day of the Lord'?"
In the following pages it will be shown that on the very day which preceded the night when Sennacherib's army was destroyed, the order of nature was upset. The speeches of the seers must be interpreted not apart from, but in the light of, the description of these changes as they are preserved in the Scriptures and in the Talmud. There was keener insight during the times prior to Maimonides, and to these more ancient interpreters he referred when he wrote:
"The Universe [ever] since continues its regular course. This is my opinion; this should be our belief. Our Sages, however, said very strange things as regards miracles; they are found in Bereshith Rabba, and in Midrash Koheleth, namely, that the miracles are to some extent also natural."
Baruch Spinoza proceeds from the premise that "Nature always observes laws and rules . . .
although they may not all be known to us, and therefore she keeps a fixed and immutable order."
"Miracles" merely mean events of which the natural cause cannot be explained. "In so far as a miracle is supposed to destroy or interrupt the order of Nature or her laws, it not only gives us no knowledge of God, but, contrariwise . . . makes us doubt of God and everything else." "What is meant in Scripture by a miracle can only be a work of Nature."5
All these premises are philosophically true and no objection can be
sTractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), Chap. VII. The quoted sentences are translated by J.
Ratner in his The Philosophy of Spinoza.
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raised against them. Of course, they are true only as long as the philosopher does not insist that the laws of nature as known to him are the real and only laws.
robin-bobin
Discussing instances in the Scriptures to which the quoted principles should be applied, Spinoza insists that the subjective apperception and the peculiar manner of expression of the ancient Hebrews are the only reasons for the accounts of unnatural events.
"I will content myself with one instance from Scripture, and leave the reader to judge of the rest.
In the time of Joshua the Hebrews held the ordinary opinion that the sun moves with a daily motion, and that the earth remains at rest; to this preconceived opinion they adapted the miracle which occurred during their battle with the five kings. They did not simply relate that the day was longer than usual, but asserted that the sun and moon stood still, or ceased from their motion."
The deduction made is: "Partly through religious motives, partly through preconceived opinions, they conceived of and related the occurrence as something quite different from what really happened." "It is necessary to know the opinions of those who first related them . . . and to distinguish such opinions from the actual impression made upon our senses, otherwise we shall confound opinions and judgments with the actual miracle as it really occurred; nay, further, we shall confound actual events with symbolical and imaginary ones."
The Book of Isaiah is offered by Spinoza as another example, and the chapter on Babylon's doomed destruction is quoted: "The stars of heaven . . . shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine." The philosopher writes: "Now I suppose no one imagines that at the destruction of Babylon these phenomena actually occurred any more than that which the prophet adds: 'For I will make the heavens to tremble, and remove the earth out of her place.'" "Many occurrences in the Bible are to be regarded as Jewish expressions." "The Scripture narrates in order and style which has most power to move men and especially uneducated men . . . and therefore it speaks inaccurately of God and of events."
Asserting a subjective apperception on the part of the witnesses,
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a deliberate intention to impress the reader or listener with exciting descriptions, a peculiarity in the mode of expression of Hebrew penmen, Spinoza nevertheless arrives at a non sequitur: "Now all these texts teach most distinctly that Nature preserves a fixed and unchangeable order. . . .
Nowhere does Scripture assert that anything happens which contradicts, or cannot follow from the laws of Nature," and he supports his view with a theological argument: in the Book of Ecclesiastes it is written: "I know what God does, it shall be for ever."
The events were called miracles and were explained as subjective apperceptions or as symbolic descriptions because they could not be otherwise accounted for. But apart from the events themselves, which this study endeavors to establish as historical, the words of Isaiah and of other seers and penmen of the Old Testament do not leave any room for doubt that by "stones falling from the sky" were meant meteorites; by brimstone and pitch were meant brimstone and pitch; by scorching blast of fire was meant scorching blast of fire; by storm and tempest, storm and tempest; by a darkened sun, by the earth removed from its place, by change of time and seasons, were meant just these changes in the regular processes of nature. Where is the basis for the "sure knowledge" that the earth must move without perturbation at a time when every body in the solar system more or less perturbs every other one? Until the fall of meteorites in 1803, science was sure that stones falling from the sky occurred only in legends.
The "no one imagines" of Spinoza is no longer true. The author of this book does so imagine.
CHAPTER 2
The Year -687
IN ABOUT —722, after three years of siege, Samaria, the capital of the Ten Tribes, was captured by Sargon II, and the population of the Northern Kingdom, or Israel, was removed into captivity from which it never returned.
In about —701, Sennacherib, son of Sargon, undertook the third campaign of his reign; he directed it to the south, into Palestine. The record of this and other campaigns of his is written robin-bobin
and preserved in cuneiform signs worked on the sides of prisms of baked clay. The so-called
"Taylor prism" contains the narrative of eight campaigns of Sennacherib. He wrote about his road to victory: "The wheels of my war chariot were bespattered with filth and blood."
The record of the third campaign on the prism corresponds to the record preserved in II Kings 18
: 13-16. According to both sources, Sennacherib took many cities; "the proud Hezekiah, the Judean," was "closed like a bird in a cage" in his capital, Jerusalem, but Sennacherib did not capture Jerusalem; he satisfied himself with a tribute of gold and silverx sent to him at Lachish in southern Palestine. After that he departed with his booty.
Hezekiah had no choice but to submit; the defenses of the land were inadequate. Now he used the time, which he recognized as only a respite, to build walled strongholds and to garrison them, and to prepare the brooks and the wells of the land to be stopped and destroyed at the first signal.
This is described in II Chronicles (32 : 1-6).
l Thirty talents of gold in both sources; 300 talents of silver according to the Book of Kings; 800
talents of silver according to the prism.
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228 WORLDS IN COLLISION
Sennacherib, alarmed by the revolt of Hezekiah, who aligned himself with the king of Ethiopia and Egypt, Tirhakah, came again with his army and once more set up his headquarters near Lachish. One of Sennacherib's generals, Rab-sha-keh, came to Jerusalem and spoke with the emissaries of Hezekiah, loudly and in Hebrew, so that the warriors on the wall could hear him, too (Isaiah 36 : 18 ff.): "Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The Lord will deliver us.
Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?" He also told them to consider the fate of Samaria, whose gods did not save it when it was stormed by the Assyrians. He informed them that Sennacherib required pledges of submission and promised that they would be exiled to a land as good as their own. Hezekiah's emissaries were ordered not to enter into any dispute. Receiving no reply, Rab-sha-keh departed for Libna where King Sennacherib had gone from Lachish. The Ethiopian king Tirhakah came against Sennacherib out of the borders of Egypt and prepared to meet him in battle. Rab-sha-keh sent again a demand to Hezekiah to submit: "Let not thy God deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria."
It was the prophecy of Isaiah that Jerusalem would not fall into the hands of the king of Assyria and that the king who blasphemed the Lord would be destroyed by "a blast" sent by the Lord.
The story is described in detail three times in the Scriptures—in II Kings 18-20, II Chronicles 32, and Isaiah, Chapters 36-38. The first version alone contains the first part of the story about Sennacherib, who conquered all the fenced cities of Judah, and Hezekiah, king of Judah, who submitted to the Assyrian king and paid tribute to him. All three scriptural sources tell about Hezekiah's rebelling against Sennacherib and refusing to submit or to pay tribute. It is obvious that, despite the repeated mention of Lachish, there must have been two different campaigns: in the first, Hezekiah submitted and agreed to pay tribute; the second campaign was a number of years later. In the meantime, Hezekiah had built up "all the wall that was broken, and raised it up to the towers, and another wall without, and repaired Milo in the city of David, and made darts and shields in abundance. And he set captains of war over the peo-WORLDS IN COLLISION 229
pie. And when Sennacherib came and entered Judah, Hezekiah ordered to stop all the fountains without Jerusalem, and spoke to the people in the city to be strong and courageous." And then came the miraculous destruction of the Assyrian host.
The annals of Sennacherib tell only the first part of the story: the capture of the cities of the land, the submission of Hezekiah, and the tribute he paid. The siege of Lachish is not mentioned on the prism, but an Assyrian relief of this siege is preserved. Nothing is told in the Assyrian sources about defeat in Judea, and only the epilogue, the killing of Sennacherib by his own sons, is described identically in the Scriptures and in a cuneiform inscription of Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib.
robin-bobin
The destruction of Sennacherib's army having taken place in a later—evidently the last—
campaign of Sennacherib before his assassination, it was not inserted on the eight-campaign prism; this must have been his ninth, or possibly his tenth, campaign. Its disastrous outcome would not have inspired the king to order a new prism which should include this campaign, too.
In the last century it was realized that the first part of the story in the Book of Kings is the counterpart of the record on the prism, and that the second part of the story in the Book of Kings, as well as the whole story in Chronicles and in the Book of Isaiah, is a separate record of a separate campaign in Palestine.2
2 H. Rawlinson was the first to assume two campaigns of Sennacherib against Palestine. G.
Rawlinson was of the same opinion. The Taylor Cylinder covers the time down to the 20th of Adar —691. H. Winckler supported this view with the argument that Tirhakah the Ethiopian became king of Ethiopia and Egypt after —691: "It can signify only a new campaign of Sennacherib which must have taken place after the destruction of Babylon (689 b. c. ) and of which we have no record by Sennacherib himself."
The reference, "in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah," in the beginning of the record in the Book of Kings, explains why the obvious fact that there were two campaigns escaped earlier commentators. Also, the mention of Lachish in both campaigns was a stumbling block. In this connection K. Fullerton remarked ("The Invasion of Sennacherib" in Biblioteca Sacra, 1906) that Richard Cceur de Lion also made Lachish a base of operations on two different crusades.
Modern historians support the view that Tirhakah did not become king before -689.
See also J. V. Prasek, "Sanheribs Feldziige gegen Juda," Mitt. d. Vorderasiat. Ges. (1903), and R. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (1926), p. 259.
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The first campaign against Judah took place in —702 or —701. The date of the second campaign is established as —687, or less probably, -686.
"Of the remaining eight years of his reign [after the conclusion of the prism records] we have no information from his own annals, which now cease. Sennacherib once more arrived in the West (687 or 686?)."3
Ignis e Coelo
The destruction of the army of Sennacherib is described laconically in the Book of Kings: "And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when the people arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt in Nineveh." It is similarly described in the Book of Chronicles: "And the prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz, prayed and cried to heaven. And the Lord sent an angel which cut off all the mighty men of valor, and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he [Sennacherib] returned with shame of face to his own land."
What kind of destruction was this? Malach, translated as "angel," means in Hebrew "one who is sent to execute an order," supposed to be an order of the Lord. It is explained in the texts of the Books of Kings and Isaiah that it was a "blast" sent upon the army of Sennacherib.1 "I will send a blast upon him . . . and [he] shall return to his own land," was the prophecy immediately preceding the catastrophe. The simultaneous death of tens of thousands of warriors could not be due to a plague, as it is usually supposed, because a plague does not strike so suddenly; it develops through contagion, if rapidly, in a few days, and may infect a large camp, but it does not
SH. R. Hall, Ancient History of the Near East (1913), p. 490. "The Jewish account seems to be confused, as it stands, with that of the earlier invasion of 701 b. c. In the story of II Kings, Tirhakah is spoken of as king, which he was not till 689 b.c. at the earliest." (Ibid.) See also D.
D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (1924), p. 12. 1II Kings 19 : 7; Isaiah 37 : 7.
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affect great multitudes without showing a curve of cases mounting from day to day.
robin-bobin
The Talmud and Midrash sources, which are numerous, all agree on the manner in which the Assyrian host was destroyed: a blast fell from the sky on the camp of Sennacherib. It was not a flame, but a consuming blast: "Their souls were burnt, though their garments remained intact."
The phenomenon was accompanied by a terrific noise.2
Arad ftbil is the Babylonian designation of ignis e coelo (fire from the sky).3
Another version of the destruction of the army of Sennacherib is given by Herodotus. During his visit in Egypt, he heard from the Egyptian priests or guides to the antiquities that the army of Sennacherib, while threatening the borders of Egypt, was destroyed in a single night. According to this story, an image of a deity holding in his palm the figure of a mouse was erected in an Egyptian temple to commemorate the miraculous event. In explanation of the symbolic figure, Herodotus was told that myriads of mice descended upon the Assyrian camp and gnawed away the cords of their bows and other weapons; deprived of their arms, the troops fled in panic.
Josephus Flavius repeated the version of Herodotus, and added that there is another version by the Chaldeo-Hellenistic historian Berosus. Josephus wrote introductory words to a quotation of Bero-sus, but the quotation itself is missing in the present text of the Jewish Antiquities.
Obviously, it was an explanation different from that of Herodotus. Josephus' own account, somewhat rationalistic as usual, says a (bubonic) plague was the cause of the sudden death of one hundred and eighty-five thousand warriors in the camp of the Assyrians before the walls of Jerusalem on the very first night of the siege.
Herodotus recounts that he saw the statue of the god with a mouse in the palm of his hand, which was erected in memory of the event.
2 Tractate Shabbat 113b; Sanhedrin 94a; Jerome on Isaiah 10: 16; Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 363.
3Cf. Winckler, Babylonische Kultur (1902), p. 53; Eisler, Welt mantel und Himmelszeti, II, 451
ff.
232 WORLDS IN COLLISION
Two cities in Egypt claimed the same sacred animal, the shrew-mouse: Panopolis (Akhmim) in the south and Letopolis in the north. Herodotus did not travel to the south of Egypt; thus, he must have seen the statue in Letopolis. Even today many bronze mice, sometimes inscribed with the prayers of pilgrims, are found in the ground of Letopolis.
Both cities with the cult of the sacred mouse were "sacred cities of thunderbolt and meteorites."
* The Egyptian name for Letopolis is indicated by the same hieroglyphic as "thunderbolt."
In a text dating from the New Kingdom and originating in Letopolis, it is said that a festival was established in this city in memory of "the night of fire for the adversaries." This fire was like "the flame before the wind to the end of heaven and the end of earth." ' "I come forth and go in the devouring fire on the day of the repelling of the adversaries," says the text in the name of the god. Thus tha god with the sacred mouse was a god of devouring fire.
However, interpreting the mouse as a symbol of bubonic plague,* the commentators agreed with Josephus that Sennacherib's army must have been destroyed by a plague.
It is peculiar that the numerous commentators of Herodotus and the no less numerous commentators of the Bible did not draw attention to a certain coincidence in these descriptions of the calamity. Hezekiah became gravely ill of some bubonic affection and was near death. Isaiah was called. He told the king that he would die, but soon he returned and offered a remedy—a lump of figs for the boil —and told the king that the Lord would deliver him from immediate death and would also deliver "this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria."
"And this shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord . . . Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in
4 G. A. Wainwright, "Letopolis," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XVIII (1932).
5 "The devouring fire of Letopolis is reminiscent of 'the flame before the wind to the end of heaven and the end of earth' which is connected with *—>, tho primitive form of the thunderbolt sign such as that of Letopolis." Ibid.
6 Cf. I Samuel 6 : 4.
WORLDS IN COLLISION 233
robin-bobin
the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down." 7
An optical illusion is the common explanation of the meaning of this passage.8 The sundial mentioned together with the name of Ahaz is supposed to have been a dial built by Ahaz, father of Heze-kiah. But the Talmudic tradition explains that the day was shortened by ten degrees on the day when Ahaz was buried, and the day was prolonged by ten degrees when Hezekiah was ill and recovered, and this is the meaning of the "shadow of the degrees which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz." 9
The rabbinical sources state in a definite manner that the disturbance in the movement of the sun happened on the evening of the destruction of Sennacherib's army by a devouring blast.10
Returning to Herodotus, we shall give our attention to the following important fact neglected by the commentators. The famous paragraph of Herodotus which records, in the name of the Egyptian priests, that since Egypt became a kingdom, the sun had repeatedly changed its direction, is inserted in no other place of Herodotus' history, but directly following the story of the destruction of Sennacherib's army.
The destruction of Sennacherib's army and the disturbance in the movement of the sun are also described in two subsequent passages of the Scriptures. Now the two records seem to be in better accord.
7 Isaiah 38 : 6-8; similarly in II Kings 20 : 9 ff.
8 Schiaparelli in Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 99, points to a whole literature of "curious and eccentric ideas" written on the subject of die "steps of Ahaz" and refers to Winer's Bibl.
Realworterbuch, I, 498-499, where "most remarkable gnomics are reviewed." "None of die explanations can be regarded as well-founded," wrote Winer, "and it will never be possible to establish die factual element that is the basis of this narrative."
9 See the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 96a; Pirkei Rabbi Elieser 52. Other sources are mentioned by Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 367. M. Gaster, The Exempla of the Rabbis (1924), in the Chapter, 'Merodach and the Sun," lists Talmudic references to the described phenomenon.
10 Seder Olam 23. Cf. Eusebius and Jerome on Isaiah 34 : 1. See Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 366.
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March 23rd
It was apparently some cosmic cause that was responsible for the sudden destruction of the army of Sennacherib and brought about the perturbation in the rotating movement of the earth.
Gaseous masses reaching the atmosphere could asphyxiate all breath in certain areas.
This explanation requires supporting statements from other sources; disturbances in the movement of the sun could not be confined to the sun over Palestine and Egypt. Also, other circumstances of this catastrophe, like the gaseous masses covering the sky, should have been noticed in other regions of the earth, too.
First, a more exact date for the night of the annihilation of Sennacherib's army should be established. From modern research we know that it was in the year —687 (less probably in the year —686). The Talmud and Midrash give another valuable clue: the destruction occurred during the first night of Passover. The giant host was destroyed when the people began to sing the Hallel prayer of the Passover service.1 Passover was observed about the time of the vernal equinox.2
In the book of Edouard Biot, Catalogue general des etoiles filantes et des autres meteores observes en Chine apres le VIP siicle avant J.C.,3 the register begins with this statement:
"The year 687 B.C., in the summer, in the fourth moon, in the day sin mao (23rd of March) during the night, the fixed stars did not appear, though the night was clear [cloudless]. In the middle of the night stars fell like a rain."
The date, 23rd of March, is Biot's calculation. The statement is based on old Chinese sources ascribed to Confucius. In another
i The Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Pesahim; Seder Olam 23; Tosefta Targum
robin-bobin
II Kings 19 : 35-37; Midrash Rabba, III, 221 (English ed. by H. Freedman and M. Simon).
2 In the last two thousand years or so, the Feast of Passover, bound to the lunar calendar, has been observed between the middle of March and the latter part of April.
* Paris, 1846.
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translation of the text, by Remusat,4 the last part of the passage is rendered as follows: "Though the night was clear, a star fell in the form of rain" (il tomba une etoile en forme de pluie).
The annals of the Bamboo Books obviously refer to the same event when they inform us that in the tenth year of the Emperor Kwei (the seventeenth emperor of the Dynasty Yu, or the eighteenth monarch since Yahou) "the five planets went out of their courses. In the night, stars fell like rain. The earth shook." 5
The words in the annals, "in the night, stars fell like rain," are the same as in the record of Confucius dealing with the cosmic event on the 23rd of March, —687. The annals supply the information that the cause of this phenomenon was a disturbance among the planets. The record of Confucius is a precious entry, because the time of the phenomenon—the day, the month, and the year—is given.
The sky was cloudless, so that the stars should have been visible —but they were not, and this reminds us of the words of the prophets.6
The Biot Catalogue, which begins with this description of the year —687, subsequently notes only solitary meteors falling from the sky during all the following centuries up to the beginning of this era; the prodigy of the year —687 was not a pageant such as we may find again in the Chinese annals of later centuries.
The rare phenomenon occurred in that year and in that part of the year—23rd of March, —687—
when, as explained above, according to modern calculations and the Talmudic data, the destruction of Sennacherib's army took place. In the Chinese record we have a short but precise account of the night, which we have recognized as the night of annihilation.
We also expect to find in Chinese sources a record of the disturbance in the movement of the sun. China is forty-five to ninety degrees longitude east of Palestine, the difference in time being three to six hours.
4 Abel Remusat, Catalogue des bolides et des aerolithes observes a la Chine, et dans les pays voisins (1819): "On a beaucoup discute sur ce texte de Confucius" (p. 7).
¦ The Chinese Classics (transl. and annot. by J. Legge, Hong Kong ed.), III, Pt. 1, 125.
6 Joel 2 : 10; 3 : 15.
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Huai-nan-tse,7 who lived in the second century before the present era, tells us that "when the Duke of Lu-yang was at war against Han, during the battle the sun went down. The Duke, swinging his spear, beckoned to the sun, whereupon the sun, for his sake, came back and passed through three solar mansions."
The subjective-mythological part reminds us of the primitive-subjective approach of the author of the Book of Joshua, and probably also of the contemporaries of Joshua; it is the primitive way of interpreting natural phenomena. However, it differs from what is described in the Book of Joshua in that it was not a phenomenon of a long pause by the sun, but of a short retrograde motion; in this the Chinese description corresponds with the twentieth chapter of II Kings.
The exact date of the reign of Han is not known; it is sometimes supposed, on the basis of astronomical computation, to have been in the fifth century before this era, or even later.8 If this is true, then the event described refers to a period before the dynasty of Han became dominant in China.
robin-bobin
The land of China is large; it was divided into many princedoms. Probably the story of Prince Tau of Yin is another description of the same event in a different part of China. Lu-Heng9
records that Prince Tau of Yin was an involuntary guest of the king of China when the sun returned to the meridian; it was interpreted as a sign to allow the prince to return home.
The story of the Argive tyrants tells of the sun going speedily to its setting and the evening coming before its proper time; and we recognized in this the phenomenon described in the rabbinical sources as having occurred on the day of the burial of Ahaz, father of Hezekiah. The prodigy of the day of Hezekiah or of the Duke of
7 Huai-nan-tse VI. iv. See Forke, The World Conception of the Chinese, p. 86.
8 Moyriac de Mailla (1679-1748), Histoire general de la Chine: T' ong-Kien-Kang-Mou (1877), Vol. I, has the Han Dynasty coming to power in the last quarter of the fifth century; Forke, The World Conception of the Chinese, thinks that the war of the Duke of Lu-yang against Han took place in the fifth century. But these calculations are based upon an astronomical computation which may be erroneous.
8 Lu-Heng II, 176. See Forke, The World Conception of the Chinese, p. 87.
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Lu-yang and Prince Tau of Yin took place at the time of the same tyrants, or was so ascribed.
"Atreus," says Apollodorus,10 "stipulated with Thyestes that Atreus should be king if the sun should go backward; and when Thyestes agreed, the sun set in the east."
Ovid describes this phenomenon of the days of the Argive tyrants: Phoebus broke off "in mid-career, and wresting his car about turned round his steeds to face the dawn." u Also in Tristia Ovid refers to this literary tradition12 about "the horses of the sun turning aside."13
A Mayan inscription says that a planet brushed close to the earth.14
Three solar mansions of the Chinese must have been equal to ten degrees on the dial at the palace in Jerusalem.
According to Talmudic sources,15 an equal perturbation, but in the opposite direction, occurred on the day Ahaz was carried to his grave: at that time the day was quickened. A case of two consecutive perturbations of a celestial body, where the second perturbation corrected the effect of the first, is recorded in the annals of modern observations. In 1875 Wolfs comet passed near the large planet Jupiter and was disturbed on its way. In 1922, when it again passed near Jupiter, it was once more disturbed, but with an effect which corrected that of the first disturbance. No perturbation was noticed in the revolution of Jupiter; its rotation probably proceeded normally, too—there was a great difference in the masses of these two bodies.
10 Apollodorus, The Library, Epitome II.
" Ovid, The Art of Love (transl. J. H. Mosley, 1929), i. 328 ff.
12 Ovid, Tristia (transl. A. L. Wheeler, 1924), ii. 391 ff.
13 More about the movement of the sun toward the east instead of the west in the time of the Argive tyrants was said in the Section "East and West," and several Greek authors were quoted.
More will be said when we examine oral traditions of primitive peoples in a later section on folklore.
14 Published by Ronald Strath. I could not locate the publication. It is referred to in Bellamy's Moons, Myths and Man (1938), p. 258. The only other reference to the work by Strath I found in Jean Gattefosse and Claudius Roux, Bibliographie de I'Atlantide et des questions connexes (Lyon, 1926), under No. 1184, but these authors also were unable to trace the publication. Cf. P.
Jensen, Kosmologie, III, R561, 5a: "A great star fell." Jupiter was known to the Babylonians as the "great star." How large was the star? Jensen asked.
is Tractate Sanhedrin 96a.
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The Worship of Mars
The body which periodically—once in fourteen to sixteen years—approached the orbit of the earth must have been of considerable mass, for it was able to influence the rotation of the earth.
robin-bobin
Apparently, however, it was much smaller than Venus, or it did not approach so closely, because the catastrophes of the days of the Exodus and the Conquest were greater than those of the time of Uzziah, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Nevertheless, for the peoples who lived at that time, they must have been impressive experiences and must have been incorporated in their cosmogonic mythologies.
Shall we be able, when inquiring into this matter, to find guiding hints to help us obtain some data about the body which periodically approached the earth?
It would probably be the Latin people, at that time very young, just appearing on the historical scene and not loaded down with science, who would give the prodigy a prominent place in their mythology. Roman mythology was appropriated from the Greeks. Only one god of Roman mythology plays a role not comparable to that attributed to him on the Greek Olympus. It is the god Mars, whose counterpart is Ares of the Greeks.1 Mars, the lord of war, was second to Jupiter-Zeus. He personified the planet Mars, to him was dedicated the month of March (Mars), and as a god he was supposed to be the father of Romulus, the founder of Rome. He was the national god of the Romans. Livy wrote in the preface to his history of Rome, "the mightiest of empires, next after that of Heaven": "The Roman people . . . profess that their Father and the Father of their Empire was none other than Mars."
Placing the time of Mars' activity as late as the foundation of Rome indicates that the Romans had a tradition that the city on the Tiber came into existence during a generation which witnessed some great exploit of their god-planet.
1 Besides Ares, Hercules also represents the planet Mars. Eratosthenes (Era-tosthenis catasterismorum reliquiae, ed. C. Robert, 1878): "Tertia est Stella Martis quam alii Herculis dixerunt" (Mars is the third star, which others say is Hercules). Similarly, Macrobius (Saturnalia iii. 12. 5-6), whose authority is Varro.
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The founding of Rome took place close in time to the great perturbations of nature in the days of Amos and Isaiah. According to the calculation of Fabius Pictor, Rome was founded in the latter half of the first year of the eighth Olympiad, or the year —747; other Roman authorities differ by a few years only.2 The year —747 is the beginning of an astronomical era in the Middle East; and the "commotion of Uzziah" took place, apparently, in the same year.
According to a persistent Roman tradition, the conception of Romulus by his mother, the foundation of Rome, and the death of Romulus occurred in years of great commotions accompanied by celestial phenomena and disturbances in solar movement. These changes were connected in some way with the planet Mars. Plutarch wrote: "To the surname of Quirinus bestowed on Romulus some give the meaning of Mars." 3 The legend says that Romulus was conceived in the first year of the second Olympiad (—772) when the sun was totally eclipsed.
According to Latin historians, on the very day of Rome's foundation, the sun was disrupted in its movement and the world was darkened.4 In Romulus' time "a plague fell upon the land, bringing sudden death without previous sickness," and "a rain of blood" and other calamities. Earthquakes convulsed the earth for a long period. Jewish tradition knows that "the first settlers of Rome found that the huts collapsed as soon as built." 5
The death of Romulus occurred when, according to Plutarch, "suddenly strange and unaccountable disorders with incredible changes filled the air; the light of the sun failed, and night came down upon them, not with peace and quiet, but with awful peals of thunder and furious blasts," and amidst this storm Romulus disappeared.6
2 Polybius dated the foundation of Rome in the second year of the seventh Olympiad (—750); Porcius Cato, in the first year of the seventh Olympiad (—751); Verrius Flaccus, in the fourth year of the sixth Olympiad (—752); Terentius Varro, in the third year of the sixth Olympiad (—
753); Censorinus followed Varro.
3 Plutarch, Lives, "The Life of Romulus" (transl. B. Perrin, 1914).
4 Cf. F. K. Ginzel, Spezieller Kanon der Sonnen- und Mondfinsternisse (1899), and T. von Oppolzer, Kanon der Finsternisse (1887).
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5 Literature in Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 280.
6 Plutarch, Lives, "The Life of Romulus."
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Ovid's description of the phenomena on the day of Romulus' death is this: "Both the poles shook, and Atlas shifted the burden of the sky. . . . The sun vanished and rising clouds obscured the heaven . . . the sky was riven by shooting flames. The people fled and the king [Romulus] upon his father's [Mars'] steeds soared to the stars." 7
Hezekiah was a contemporary of Romulus and Numa; this was known to Augustine: "Now these days extend . . . down to Romulus king of Romans, or even to the beginning of the reign of his successor Numa Pompilius. Hezekiah king of Judah certainly reigned till then." 8
If Mars really was the deified cosmic visitor of the days of Hezekiah and Sennacherib, then one might expect not only that the activities of Mars would have been ascribed to the generation of Romulus and the foundation of Rome, but that the very date of the perturbation would have been a celebrated date in the cult of Mars.
The year of the second campaign of Sennacherib against Palestine is established by modern research as —687. The Talmud helps to set the time of the year: it was the night of the feast of spring, Passover. Chinese sources give the exact date, midnight of the 23rd of March, —687, as the date of a great cosmic activity.
The main festival in the cult of Mars took place in the month dedicated to this god-planet. "The ancilia, or sacred shields . . . were carried in procession by the Salii, or dancing warrior-priests of Man on several occasions during the month of March up to the 23rd (tubilustrium), when the military trumpets (tubae) were lustrated; and again in October to the 19th (armilustrium), when both the ancilia and the arms of the exercitus were purified and put away for the winter. ... It is only at the end of February that we find indications of the coming Mars-cult." 9 "The most important role in the
7 Ovid Fasti (transl. Frazer, 1931), II 11. 489 ff.
s Augustine, The City of God, Bk. XVIII, Chap. 27.
9 Quoted from W. W. Fowler, "Mars," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed.
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cult of Mars appears to be played by the festival of tubilustrium on the twenty-third day of March." 10
The date, the 23rd of March, taken with all the other circumstances mentioned above, must impress us. The fact that Mars had festivals on two dates (the other date, the 19th of October, is almost a month after the autumnal equinox) is easily understandable if one remembers that there was more than one perturbation connected with the same cosmic cause.
The disturbance in the movement of the sun a few hours before the Assyrian host perished occurred on the first day of Passover. The cataclysm of the days of the Exodus was caused by the planet Venus. Therefore, about the time of the vernal equinox there were two festivals, one for the planet Mars, the other for the planet Venus, which coincided in time. The festival of Minerva lasted from the nineteenth to the twenty-third of March, and on March 23rd, Mars, and also Minerva-Athene, were the honored deities.11
Mars Moves the Earth from Its Pivot
Venus was a comet, and in historical times it became a planet. Was Mars a comet in the eighth century before this era? There is evidence that long before the eighth century Mars was a planet in the solar system. A four-planet system was known to Chaldean astronomy, in which Venus was absent but Mars was present.
There does not exist, at least in the extant material, any mention of the first appearance of Mars, whereas expressions referring to the birth of the planet Venus have been found in literary sources of the peoples of both hemispheres.
The Babylonian name of the planet Mars is Nergal.1 This name is referred to in early times, many centuries prior to the eighth century. But it was in that latter century that this planet robin-bobin
became a most important deity. Many prayers to it were composed. "Radiant abode, that beams over the land . . . who is thy equal?" Temples were
10 Roscher, "Mars," in Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und rom. Mythologie.
« Ibid., Col. 2402.
1 J. Bollenriicher, Gebete und Hymnen an Nergal (1904), p. 3.
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built to this planet and statues erected. When Samaria was conquered by Sargon, father of Sennacherib, and new settlers were brought to live there, they erected in Samaria a shrine to the planet Mars.2
The planet Mars was feared for its violence. "Nergal, the almighty among the gods, fear, terror, awe-inspiring splendor," 3 wrote Esar-haddon, son of Sennacherib. Shamash-shum-ukin, king of Babylonia and grandson of Sennacherib, wrote: "Nergal, the most violent among the gods."
It is characteristic that Nergal was regarded by the people of Assyria as a god who brought defeat. Another grandson of Sennacherib, Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, wrote: "Nergal, the perfect warrior, the most powerful one among the gods, the pre-eminent hero, the mighty lord, king of battle, lord of power and might, lord of the storm, who brings defeat." 4
It is also a conspicuous fact that the name of Nergal became very common as a component of personal names in the seventh and sixth centuries. Two generals, both by the name of Nergalsharezer, were among Nebuchadnezzar's marshals; 5 a king by the name of Nergilissar ruled in Babylon.6 Priests, warriors, traders in cattle, criminals bearing the name of Nergalsharezer, are familiar figures in the documents of the seventh century.
In the eighth century in Babylonia, the planet Mars was called "the unpredictable planet." 7
Historical inscriptions of the eighth century speak of the oppositions of the star Mars (Nergal).
These together with conjunctions were carefully watched. "The movements of Mars were extremely important in Babylonian astrology—its rise and setting, its disappearance and return ...
its position in relation to the equator, the change in its illuminating power, its relation to Venus, Jupiter and
2 II Kings 17 : 30. » Luckenbill, Records of Assyria, II, Sec. 508.
* Ibid., Sec. 922. B Jeremiah 39 : 3.
6 The order of succession of the kings of the Neo-Babylonian Empire will be discussed in Ages in Chaos.
1 Schaumberger, in Kugler, Sternkunde und Stemdienst in Babel, 3rd supp.,
p. 307.
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Mercury."8 In India, also, "the various phases of the retrograde motion of the planets and especially of Mars seem to have been objects of great attention."9
Prayers were addressed to Nergal with the lifting of hands toward the star Mars.10 "Thou who walkest in the sky . . . with splendor and terror . . . king of battle, the raging fire-god, god Nergal." Nergal-Mars was called by the Babylonians the "fire-star." u Nergal, the fire-star, comes like a raging storm. He is also called Sharappu, "the burner," and "light that flames from heaven," and "lord of destruction." 12 Mars was generally regarded by other peoples, too, as a
"fire-star." 13 Ying-Huo, or the fire planet, is the name of Mars in Cninese astronomical charts.14 Saigon (—724 to —705), father of Sennacherib, wrote on one occasion: "In the month of Abu, the month of descent of the fire-god."15
But we ask for a direct statement that the planet Mars-Nergal was the immediate cause of the cataclysms in the eighth and seventh centuries, when the world, in the language of Isaiah, was
"moved exceedingly" and "became removed from its place." This very action is ascribed to the planet Mars-Nergal: "The heaven he makes dark, he moves the Earth off its hinges." 16 And again: "Nergal ... on high stills the heavens . . . causes the earth to shudder."1T
8 Bezold, in Boll's Stemglaube und Sterndeutung, p. 6.
9 Thibaut, "Astronomie, Astrologie und Mathematik," Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Alterthumskunde, HI (1899).
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10 Bollenriicher, Gebete und Hymnen an Nergal, pp. 9, 19 ("Zauberspruch mit Handerhebung an den Mars-Stern").
11 Schaumberger in Kugler's Sternkunde, p. 304; Bollenriicher, Gebete und Hymnen an Nergal, pp. 21 ff.
12 Langdon. Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms (1909), p. 85.
13 Apuleius, Tractate of the World; literature in Chwolson, Die Ssabier und Ssabismus, II, 188.
14 Rufus and Hsing-chih-tien, The Soochow Astronomical Chart.
15 Luckenbill, Records of Assyria, II, Sec. 121.
18 Bollenriicher, Gebete und Hymnen an Nergal, p. 9. 17 Langdon, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, p. 79.
CHAPTER 3
What Caused Venus and Mars to Shift Their Orbits?
WHEN VENUS became a new member of the solar system, it moved on a stretched ellipse, and for centuries imperiled the other planets. Because of its dangerous circling, Venus was diligently observed in both hemispheres, and records were kept of its movement.
In the last centuries before this era, the 288-day year of Venus, and apparently also its orbit, were practically the same as in modem times. As early as the second half of the seventh century before this era, Venus, watched until then with anxiety, had already ceased to be a cause of dreadful expectation; it probably reached then the orbital stage in which it was found in the last centuries before this era, and where we still find it today. What caused the change in the orbit of Venus?
I shall pose another problem besides the first. Mars did not arouse any fears in the hearts of the ancient astrologers, and its name was seldom mentioned in the second millennium. In Assyro-Babylonia, in inscriptions made before the ninth century, the name of Nergal is found only on rare occasions. On the astronomical ceiling of Senmut Mars does not appear among the planets.
It did not play any conspicuous part in the early mythology of the celestial gods.
But in the ninth or eighth century before this era, the situation changed radically. Mars became the dreaded planet. Accordingly, Mars-Nergal rose to the position of the frightful storm and war god. The question must then present itself: Why, previous to that time,
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did Mars signify no danger to the earth, and what caused Mars to shift its orbit nearer to the earth?
The planets of the solar system move in nearly the same plane, and if one planet were to revolve along a stretched ellipse, it would endanger the other planets. The two problems—what caused Venus to change its orbit, and what caused Mars to change its orbit—may have a common explanation. The common cause may have been some comet which changed the orbits of Venus and Mars; but it is simpler to suppose that two planets, one of which had a greatly elongated orbit, collided, and that no third agent was necessary to bring about that result.
A conflict between Venus and Mars, if it occurred, might well have been a spectacle observable from the earth. It is not impossible that the two planets came repeatedly into contact, each time with different results.
If a contact between Venus and Mars really occurred and was observed from the earth, it must have been commemorated in traditions or literary monuments.
When Was the Iliad Created?
A mighty strife had waxen great Within the members of the sphere. —Empedocles '
To this day it has not been established at what date the Iliad and Odyssey were composed. Even ancient authors differed greatly in reckoning the time when Homer lived. It was estimated to be as late as —685 (the historian Theopompus) and as early as —1159 (certain authorities quoted by Philistratus). Herodotus wrote that "Homer and Hesiod" created the Greek pantheon "not more than 400 years before me," which would mean not prior to —884, —484 being regarded as the year of Herodotus' birth. The question is still debated. Some authors argue that there was a robin-bobin
long interval between the time when the epic works of Homer were composed and the time when 1 The Fragments of Empedocles (transl. W. E. Leonard, 1908), p. 30.
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they were put into writing; others think that these works must have been created not long before the Greeks acquired the art of writing, about —700.2 It is also argued that the Greeks must have known this art long before —700 on the assumption that the Homeric works were created much before that date. It is generally assumed that the fall of Troy antedated Homer by several generations, and also that the great epic works were the creation of generations. The fall of Troy is sometimes thought to have taken place in the twelfth century.3
On the other hand, it has been shown that the cultural background of the Homeric epos is that of the eighth or even the seventh century; the age of iron was well under way, and many other details would preclude an earlier scene.4 It is highly probable that the Homeric works were created at that time or shortly thereafter. Whether these poems were first sung by a bard who lived centuries after the destruction of Troy depends on the time when Troy was destroyed. The tradition about Aeneas who, saved when Troy was captured, went to Carthage (a city built in the ninth century) and from there to Italy, where he founded Rome (a city first built in the middle of the eighth century), implies that Troy was destroyed in the eighth or late in the ninth century.
But for what purpose do I burden my present work with this question? It may seem that the two problems—how Venus changed its orbit to a circle, and how Mars changed its orbit so as to come in contact with the earth—are weighted with a third problem from a far-removed field and in itself complicated. And even if these matters have something in common, how can a problem with three unknowns be solved?
We shall come closer to a solution of the astronomical problem
2 See R. Carpenter, "The Antiquity of the Greek Alphabet" and B. Ullman, "How Old Is the Greek Alphabet?" in American Journal of Archaeology, XXXVII (1933) and XXXVIII (1934), respectively.
3 When the ancient site was discovered, Schliemann identified the ruins of the second city (from the bottom) as those of the Ilium of the Iliad; but later explorers disagreed and pronounced the ruins of the sixth city as those of Homeric Troy.
* G. Karo, "Homer" in Ebert's Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte, Vol. V.
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with which we are concerned and the problem of the epics of Troy if we recognize the cosmic scene of these epics.
A simple test can be made. If Ares, the Mars of the Greeks, is not mentioned in the creations of Homer, this would support the view that the Iliad and Odyssey were created in the tenth century or earlier, or at least that the drama they describe had taken place not later than this time. But if Ares is presented as a war god in these epics, it would indicate that they were composed in the eighth century or thereafter. It was in the eighth century that Mars-Nergal, an obscure deity, became a prominent god. Epic poems, rich in mythology, that originated in the eighth or seventh century, would not be silent about Mars-Ares, who became "outrageous" at that time.
With this yardstick at hand, the epic poems of Homer must be re-examined. The task will not be difficult; the Iliad is full of descriptions of the violent deeds of Ares.
In this epic the story is told of the battles which the Greeks, besieging Troy, waged against the people of Priam, king of Troy. Deities took a prominent part in these battles and skirmishes. Two of them— Athene and Ares—were by far the most active. Athene was the protectress of the Greeks; Ares was on the side of the Trojans. They were the chief antagonists throughout the epopee.
At first Athene removed Ares from the battlefield:
And flashing-eyed Athene took furious Ares by the hand and spake to him, saying: "Ares, Ares, thou bane of mortals, thou blood-stained stormer of walls, shall we not now leave the Trojans and Achaeans to fight?" . . . [She] led furious Ares forth from the battle.5
But they met together again in the field; "furious Ares" was "abiding on the left of the battle."
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Aphrodite, the goddess of the moon, wished to participate in the war also, but Zeus, presiding in heavenly Olympus, told her:
"Not unto thee, my child, are given works of war; nay, follow thou after the lovely works of marriage, and all these things shall be the business of swift Ares and Athene."
5 The Iliad, Bk. V (transl. A. T. Murray; Loeb Classical Library, 1924-1925).
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Thus the god of the planet Jupiter admonished the goddess of the moon to leave the combat that it might be fought out by the god of the planet Mars and the goddess of the planet Venus.
Phoebus Apollo, the god of the sun, spoke to the god of the planet Mars:
Then unto furious Ares spake Phoebus Apollo: "Ares, Ares, thou bane of mortals, thou bloodstained stormer of walls, wilt thou not now enter into the battle?" . . .
And baneful Ares entered amid the Trojans'ranks. . . . He called: . . . "How long will ye still suffer your host to be slain by the Achaeans?"
The battlefield was darkened by Ares:
And about the battle furious Ares drew a veil of night to aid the Trojans ... he saw that Pallas Athene was departed, for she it was that bare aid to the Danaans.
Hera, the goddess of the earth, "stepped upon the flaming car" and "self-bidden groaned upon their hinges the gates of heaven which the Hours had in their keeping, to whom are entrusted great heaven and Olympus." She spoke to Zeus:
"Zeus, hast thou no indignation with Ares for these violent deeds, that he hath destroyed so great and so goodly a host of the Achaeans recklessly? . . . Wilt thou in any wise be wroth with me if I smite Ares?"
And Zeus replied:
"Nay, come now, rouse against him Athene . . . who has ever been wont above others to bring sore pain upon him."
So came the hour of the battle.
Then Pallas Athene grasped the lash and the reins, and against Ares first she speedily drave. . . .
Athene put on the cap of Hades, to the end that mighty Ares should not see her.
Ares, "the bane of mortals," was attacked by Pallas Athene, who sped the spear "mightily against his nethermost belly."
"Then brazen Ares bellowed loud as nine thousand warriors or ten thousand cry in battle, when they join in the strife of the War-god."
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Even as a black darkness appeareth from the clouds when after heat a blustering wind ariseth, even in such wise . . . did brazen Ares appear, as he fared amid the clouds unto broad heaven.
In heaven he appealed to Zeus with bitter words of complaint against Athene:
"With thee are we all at strife, for thou art father to that mad and baneful maid, whose mind is ever set on deeds of lawlessness. For all the other gods that are in Olympus are obedient unto thee . . . but to her thou payest no heed ... for that this pestilent maiden is thine own child."
And Zeus answered:
"Most hateful to me art thou of all gods that hold Olympus, for ever is strife dear to thee and wars and fightings."
The first round was lost by Ares. "Hera and Athene . . . made Ares, the bane of mortals, to cease from his manslaying."
In this vein the poem proceeds, its allegorical features being only too readily overlooked. In the fifth book of the Iliad Ares is called by name more than thirty times, and throughout the poem he never disappears from the scene, whether in the sky or on the battleground. The twentieth and twenty-first books describe the climax of the battle of the gods at the walls of Troy.
[Athene] would utter her loud cry. And over against her spouted Ares, dread as a dark whirlwind, calling with shrill tones to the Trojans.
robin-bobin
Thus did the blessed gods urge on the two hosts to clash in battle, and amid them made grievous strife to burst forth. Then terribly thundered the father of gods and men from on high; and from beneath did Poseidon cause the vast earth to quake, and the steep crests of the mountains. All the roots of many-fountained Ida were shaken, and all her peaks, and the city of the Trojans, and the ships of the Achaeans. And seized with fear in the world below was Ai'doneus, lord of the shades
. . . lest above him the earth be cloven by Poseidon, the Shaker of Earth, and his abode be made plain to view for mortals and immortals ... so great was the din that arose when the gods clashed in strife.
In this battle of gods above and beneath, Trojans and Achaeans clashed together and the whole universe roared and shivered. The
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battle was fought in gloom; Hera spread a thick mist. The river "rushed with surging flood, and roused all his streams tumultuously." Even the ocean was inspired with "fear of the lightning of great Zeus and his dread thunder, whenso it crasheth from heaven." Then rushed into the battle a
"wondrous blazing fire. First on the plain was the fire kindled, and burned the dead . . . and all the plain was parched." Then to the river turned the gleaming flame. "Tormented were the eels and the fish in the eddies, and in the fair streams they plunged this way and that. . . . The fair streams seethed and boiled." Nor had the river "any mind to flow onward, but was stayed,"
unable to protect Troy.
Upon the gods "fell strife heavy and grievous." "Together then they clashed with a mighty din, and the wide earth rang, and round about great heaven pealed as with a trumpet. . . . Zeus—the heart within him laughed aloud in joy as he beheld the gods joining in strife."
Ares . . . began the fray, and first leapt upon Athene, brazen spear in hand, and spake a word of reviling: "Wherefore now again, thou dog-fly, art thou making gods to clash with gods in strife .
. . ? Rememberest thou not what time . . . thyself in sight of all didst grasp the spear and let drive straight at me, and didst rend my fair flesh?"
This second encounter between Ares and Athene was also lost by Ares.
He [Ares] smote upon her tasselled aegis. . . . Thereon bloodstained Ares smote with his long spear. But she gave ground, and seized with her stout hand a stone that lay upon the plain, black and jagged and great. . . . Therewith she smote furious Ares on the neck, and loosed his limbs. . .
.
Pallas Athene broke into a laugh. . . . "Fool, not even yet hast thou learned how much mightier than thou I avow me to be, that thou matchest thy strength with mine."
Aphrodite came to wounded Ares, "took [him] by the hand, and sought to lead [him] away." But
"Athene sped in pursuit. . . . She smote Aphrodite on the breast with her stout hand . . . and her heart melted."
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These excerpts from the Iliad show that some cosmic drama was projected upon the fields of Troy. The commentators were aware that originally Ares was not merely the god of war, and that this quality is a deduced and secondary one. The Greek Ares is the Latin planet Mars; it is so stated in classic literature a multitude of times. In the so-called Homeric poems, too, it is said that Ares is a planet. The Homeric hymn to Ares reads:
Most mighty Ares . . . chieftain of valor, revolving thy fiery circle in ether among the seven wandering stars [planets], where thy flaming steeds ever uplift thee above the third chariot.6
But what might it mean, that the planet Mars destroys cities, or that the planet Mars is ascending the sky in a darkened cloud, or that it engages Athene (the planet Venus) in battle? Ares must have represented some element in nature, guessed the commentators. Ares must have been the personification of the raging storm, or the god of the sky, or the god of light, or a sun-god, and so on.7 These explanations are futile. Ares-Mars is what his name says—the planet Mars.
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I find in Lucian a statement which corroborates my interpretation of the cosmic drama in the Iliad. This author of the second century of the present era writes in his work On Astrology this most significant and most neglected commentary on the Homeric epics:
"All that he [Homer] hath said of Venus and of Mars his passion, is also manifestly composed from no other source than this science [astrology]. Indeed, it is the conjuncture of Venus and Mars that creates the poetry of Homer." 8
Lucian is unaware that Athene is the goddess of the planet Venus,9
6 The Odyssey of Homer with the Hymns (transl. Buckley), p. 399. The translation by H.
Evelyn-White (Hesiod volume in the Loeb Classical Library) is: "Who whirl your fiery sphere among the planets in their sevenfold courses through the ether wherein your blazing steeds ever bear you above the third firmament of heaven." Allen, Holliday, and Sikes, The Homeric Hymns (1936), p. 385, regard the hymn to Ares as post-Homeric.
7 These divergent views are offered by L. Preller (Griechische Myihologie [1894]), G. F. Lauer
{System der griechischen Myihologie [1853], p. 224), F. G. Welcker (Griechische Gotterlehre, I
[1857], 415), and H. W. Stoll (Die urspriingliche Bedeutung des Ares [1855]).
8 Lucian. Astrology (transl. A. M. Harmon, 1936), Sec. 22.
9 In the same sentence Lucian identifies Venus with Aphrodite of the Iliad.
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and yet he knows the real meaning of the cosmic plot of the Homeric epic, which shows that the sources of his instruction in astrology were cognizant of the facts of the celestial drama.
My interpretation of the Homeric poem, I find, has been anticipated by still others. Who they were, it is impossible to say. However, Heraclitus, a little known author of the first century, who should not be confused with the philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus, wrote a work on Homeric allegories.10 In his opinion, Homer and Plato were the two greatest spirits of Greece, and he tried to reconcile the anthropomorphic and satiric description of gods by Homer with the idealistic and metaphysical approach of Plato. In Paragraph 53 of his Allegories, Heraclitus confutes those who think that the battles of the gods in the Iliad signify collisions of the planets.
Thus I find that some of the ancient philosophers must have held the same opinion at which I arrived independently after a series of deductions.
The problem of the date when the Homeric epics originated was raised here, to be solved with the help of this criterion: If the cosmic battle between the planets Venus and Mars is mentioned there, then the epics could not have originated much before the year —800. If the earth and the moon are involved in this struggle, the time of the birth of the Iliad must be lowered to —747 at least and probably to an even later date. The first earthshaking contact with our planet had already taken place, and for this reason Ares is repeatedly called "bane of mortals, blood-stained stormer of walls."
Homer was thus, at the earliest, a contemporary of the prophets Amos and Isaiah, or more likely he lived shortly after them. The Trojan War and the cosmic conflict were synchronous; the time of Homer was not separated from the time of the Trojan war by several centuries, possibly not even by a single one.
The statement by Lucian regarding the inspiring drama of the Homeric epics—the conjunction of the planets Venus and Mars—can be refined. There was more than one fateful conjunction between Venus and Mars—at least two are described in the Iliad, in the fifth i° Heracliti questiones Homericae (Teubner's ed. 1910). Cf. F. Boll, Stemglaube und Sterndienst (ed. W. Gundel, 1926), p. 201.
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and the twenty-first books. The conjunctions were near contacts; the mere passage of one planet in front of another could not have provided material for a cosmic drama.
Huitzilopochtli
The Greeks chose Athene, the goddess of the planet Venus, as their patron, but the people of Troy looked to Ares-Mars as their protector. A similar situation existed in ancient Mexico.
Quetzal-cohuatl, known as the planet Venus, was the patron of the Toltecs. But the Aztecs, who robin-bobin
later came to Mexico and supplanted the Toltecs, revered Huitzilopochtli (Vitchilupuchtli) as their protector-god.1
Sahagun says that Huitzilopochtli was "a great destroyer of towns and killer of people." The epithet "blood-stained stormer of walls" is familiar to us from the Iliad, where it is regularly applied to Mars. "In warfare he [Huitzilopochtli] was like live-fire, greatly feared by his enemies," writes Sahagun.2
In his large work on the Indians of America, H. H. Bancroft writes:
"Huitzilopochtli had, like Mars and Odin, the spear or a bow in his right hand, and in the left, sometimes a bundle of arrows, sometimes a round white shield. . . . On these weapons depended the welfare of the state, just as on the ancile of the Roman Mars, which had fallen from the sky, or on the palladium of the warlike Pallas Athene. Bynames also point out Huitzilopochtli as war god; so he is called the terrible god Tetzateotl, or the raging Tetzahuitl."3 Bancroft proceeds:
"One niight be led to compare the capital of the Aztecs with ancient Rome, on account of its warlike spirit, and therefore it was right to make the national god of Aztecs a war god like the Roman Mars." 4
But Huitzilopochtli was not like Mars, he was Mars. The identity of their appearance, character, and action is dictated by the fact that Mars and Huitzilopochtli were one and the same planet-god.
1 J. G. Miiller, Der mexikanische Nationalgott Huitzilopochtli (1847).
2 Sahagun, A History of Ancient Mexico (transl. F. R. Bandelier, 1932), p. 25.
3 H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States (1874-1876), III, 302.
4 Ibid., p. 301.
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The conflict between Venus and Mars was also symbolized in religious ceremonies of the ancient Mexicans. In one of these ceremonies the priest of Quetzal-cohuatl shot an arrow into an effigy of Huitzilo-pochtli, which penetrated the god, who was then considered dead.5 This appears to have been a symbolic repetition of the electrical discharge that Venus ejected toward Mars.
But the Aztecs would not concede the death of Mars, the bellicose destroyer of towns, the god of sword and pestilence, and carried on their wars against the Toltecs, the people who looked to the planet Venus. These wars between the Toltecs and the Aztecs must have taken place earlier than is generally supposed; they might have occurred before the present era, when there was rivalry between the peoples devoted to Venus and those devoted to Mars, and when the memory of the cosmic conflict was still vivid.
Tao
What is it that we call the Tao? There is the Tao, or Way of Heaven; and there is the Tao, or Way of Man.
—KWANG-TZE
Planets of the solar system were disturbed by the contacts of Venus, Mars, and the earth. We have already referred to the annals of the Bamboo Books, where it is written that in the tenth year of the Emperor Kwei, the eighteenth monarch since Yahou, "the five planets went out of their courses. In the night, stars fell like rain. The earth shook."J The disturbances in the family of planets were caused by collisions between Venus and Mars. The battles of two stars appearing as bright as suns are mentioned in another Chinese chronicle as having occurred in the days of the same Emperor Kwei (Koei-Kie):
"At this time the two suns were seen to battle in the sky. The five
6 Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Espana, III, Chap. I, Sec. 2. 1 James Legge (ed), The Chinese Classics, III, Pt. 1, 125.
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planets were agitated by unusual movements. A part of Mount Tai-chan fell down." 2
The two battling stars are recognized by us as Venus and Mars. In the language of Eratosthenes, the Alexandrian librarian of the third century before this era: "In the third place is the star [stella]
robin-bobin
of Mars. ... It was pursued by the star [sidus] Venus; then Venus took hold of him and inflamed him with an ardent passion." 3
In an astronomical chart dating from the Middle Ages (1193), used in the education of emperors and known as the Soochow Astronomical Chart,4 it is asserted on the authority of the ancients that it happened that planets went off their courses. It is said that once Venus ran far off the zodiac and attacked the "Wolf-Star." A change in the course of the planets was regarded as a sign of heavenly wrath, since it occurred when the emperor or his ministers sinned.
In the old Chinese cosmology "Earth is represented as a body suspended in air, moving eastward,"5 and thus was understood as one of the planets.
The following passage from the Taoist text of Wen-Tze 6 contains a description of calamities which, as we have found, belong together:
"When the sky, hostile to living beings, wishes to destroy them, it burns them; the sun and the moon lose their form and are eclipsed; the five planets leave their paths; the four seasons encroach one upon another; daylight is obscured; glowing mountains collapse; rivers are dried up; it thunders then in winter, hoarfrost falls in summer; the atmosphere is thick and human beings are choked; the state perishes; the aspect and the order of the sky are altered; the customs of the age are disturbed [thrown into disorder] ... all living beings harass one another."
Hoei-nan-tze, a Taoist author of the third century of this era, speaks of the sun and the earth leaving their paths; he transmits the tradi-2L. Wieger, Textes historiques (2nd ed., 1922-1923), I, 50.
3 Eratosthenes, ed. Robert, p. 195.
4 The Soochow Astronomical Chart (transl. and ed. by Rufus and Hsing-chih tien).
5 J. C. Ferguson, Chinese Mythology (1928), p. 29.
6 Wen-Tze in Textes Tadistes, transl. C. de Harlez (1891).
256 WORLDS IN COLLISION
tion that "if the five planets err on their routes," the State and the provinces are overcome by a flood.7
Taoism is the dominant religion of China. "The term Tao originally meant the revolution of the way of the heavens about the earth. This movement of the heavens was regarded as the cause of the phenomena on earth. The Tao was located about the celestial pole which was considered to be the seat of power because all revolves about it. In the course of time Tao was viewed as the universal cosmic energy behind the visible order of nature." 8
Yuddha
In an old textbook on Hindu astronomy, the Surya-Siddhanta, there is a chapter, "Of planetary conjunctions." Modern astronomy knows only one kind of conjunction between planets, when one planet (or sun) stands between the earth and another planet (differentiated only as superior and inferior conjunction and opposition). But ancient Hindu astronomy distinguished between many different conjunctions, translated as follows: samyoga (conjunction), sama-gama (coming together), yoga (junction), melaka (uniting), yuti (union), yuddha (encounter, in the meaning of conflict, fight).1
The first paragraph of this chapter, "Of planetary conjunctions," of the Surya-Siddhanta tells us that between planets there occur encounters in battle (yuddha) and simple conjunction (samyoga samagama). The force of the planets, which manifests itself in conjunctions, is called hala. A planet can be vanquished (jita) in an "apasvya encounter," struck down (vidhvasta), utterly vanquished (vijita). A powerful planet is called balin, and the victor-planet in an encounter, jayin. "Venus is generally victor."
To the last sentence the translator of Surya-Siddhanta wrote: "In this passage we quit the proper domain of astronomy, and trench upon that of astrology." Aside from the introductory lines in which the work is presented as a revelation of the sun (a common introduc-7 Hoei-nan-tze in Textes Taoistes.
8 L. Hodous, "Taoism," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed. 1 Surya-Siddhanta, Chap. VII (transl. Burgess).
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tion in many astronomical works of the Hindus), it is written in very sober terms. It makes use of square roots and geometrical figures, and speaks in algebraic terms; every sentence of the work is in scientific language, very precious, indeed.2
This manual of the Surya contains also the correct notion of the earth as a "sphere" or "globe in the ether," showing that the Hindus of early times knew that the earth is one of the planets, though they thought it to be situated in the center of the universe.3 Aryabhatta held the opinion that the earth revolves on its axis.4 Like the author of the Book of Job, who wrote that the earth hangs "upon nothing" (26 : 7), the Surya knew that "above" and "beneath" are only relative:
"And everywhere upon the globe of the earth, men think their own place to be uppermost—but since it is a globe in the ether, where should there be an upper, or where an under side of it?" 5
The strange chapter of Surya-Siddhanta dealing with the conjunctions of planets and with their conflicts when in close proximity made modern scholars think that this portion did not have the scientific value of the rest of the work, and was a product of astrological invention, or even an interpolation. We know now that this chapter has equal scientific value with other chapters of the work and that encounters between planets actually took place a number of times in the solar system.
In Hindu astronomy a junction of the planets is called yoga [yuga]. Very revealing is the fact that the world ages are also called yogas, planetary conjunctions 6 (or more precisely, junctions).
The Bundahis
Theomachy, the battle of the gods, described in the Homeric epics, in the Edda, and in the Huitzilopochtli epos, is related also in the
2 The following formula may serve as an example of the Surya method: "Multiply the earth's circumference by the sun's declination in degrees, and divide by the number of degrees in a circle; the result, in yojanas, is the distance from the place of no latitude where the sun is passing overhead." (Chap. xii.)
3 Tycho Brahe, in post-Copernican times, still adhered to this view. * Surya-Siddhanta, note to p. 13. 5 Ibid., p. 248.
6 Bentley, A Historical View of the Hindu Astronomy (1825), p. 75: "The periods themselves were named Yugas, or conjunctions."
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Indo-Iranian text of the Bundahis.1 "The planets ran against the sky
and created confusion" in the entire cosmos.2
In the long battle of the celestial bodies, one of them made the world entirely dark, disfigured creation, and filled it with vermin. This act of the cosmic drama was recognized by us as the first contact of the earth with the comet Typhon, the same as Pallas Athene. Other acts of the drama followed. The planetary disturbances lasted for a long time. "The celestial sphere was in revolution. . . . The planets, with many demons, dashed against the celestial sphere, and mixed the constellations; and the whole creation was as disfigured as though fire disfigured every place and smoke arose over it." 3
The planet named Gokihar or "Wolf-progeny" and "special disturber of the moon,"4 and a celestial body called Mievish-Muspar, "provided with tails," or a comet,5 brought confusion to the sun, moon, and stars. But in the end "the sun has attached Muspar to its own radiance by mutual agreement, so that he may be less able to do harm." 6
In this description of "the battle of the planets," we recognize the wolf-progeny and disturber of the moon, the planet Gokihar, as Mars; Muspar with tails apparently is Venus, called also Tistrya, or "the leader of the stars against the planets." As the final result of these battles, the sun made Venus into an evening-morning star or put Lucifer lower down so that it could do no harm.
In the Bundahis the conflicting forces are called, not "gods," but merely "planets."
Lucifer Cut Down
robin-bobin
It can be said that the planet Mars saved the terrestrial globe from a major catastrophe by colliding with Venus. Since the days of Exodus and Joshua, Venus was dreaded by the peoples of the earth.
1 The Bundahis, Pahlavi Texts (transl. West).
2 "Die Planeten rarmten, Vervvirrung stiftend, gegen den Himmel an." J. Hertel, "Der Planet Venus in Avesta," Berichte der Sachsischen Akademie det Wissenschaften, Phil. hist. Klasse, LXXXVII (1935).
3 Bundahis, Chap. 3, Sees. 19-25. 4 See infra the Section "Fenris-Wolf," note 5. 5 Olrik, Ragnarok, p. 339. « Bundahis, Chap. V, Sec. 1.
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For about seven hundred years this terror hung over mankind like the sword of Damocles.
Human sacrifices were made to Venus in both hemispheres in order to propitiate her.
After centuries of terror, one sword of Damocles was removed from above the heads of mankind, only to be replaced by another. Mars became the dread of the peoples, and its return was feared every fifteen years. Before this, Mars had absorbed the blow, even the repeated blows of Venus, and had saved the earth.
Venus, which collided with the earth in the fifteenth century before the present era, collided with Mars in the eighth century. At that time Venus was moving at a lower elliptical velocity than when it first encountered the earth; but Mars, being only about one-eighth the mass of Venus, was no match for her. It was therefore a notable achievement that Mars, though thrown out of the ring, nevertheless was instrumental in bringing Venus from an elliptical to a nearly circular 1
orbit. Looked at from the earth, Venus was removed from a path that ran high to the zenith and over the zenith to its present path 2 in which it never retreats from the sun more than 48 degrees, thus becoming a morning or an evening star that precedes the rising sun or follows the setting sun. The awe of the world for many centuries, Venus became a tame planet.
Isaiah, referring figuratively to the king of Babylon who destroyed cities and made the land into a wilderness, uttered his remarkable words about Lucifer that fell from heaven and was cut down to the ground. The commentators recognized that behind these words applied to the king of Babylon must have been some legend about the Morning Star. The metaphor regarding the king of Babylon implied that his fate and the fate of the Morning Star were not dissimilar; both of them fell from on high. But what could it mean that the Morning Star fell from the heights?
asked the commentators.
Significant are the words of Isaiah about the Morning Star, that it "weakened the nations" before it was cut down to the ground. It weakened the nations in two collisions with the earth, and it weak-1 Eccentricity of Venus' orbit is .007.
2 Inclined 3° 4' to the plane of the ecliptic (Duncan, 1945).
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ened the nations by keeping them in constant fear for centuries. The Book of Isaiah, in every chapter, provides abundant evidence that with the removal of Venus, so that it no longer crossed the orbit of the earth, danger was not eliminated, but became even more threatening.
CHAPTER 4
Sword-God
IN BABYLON of the eighth century the planet Mars became a great and feared god, to whom many prayers were composed and hymns and invocations were sung and magic formulas were whispered. Such formulas are referred to as "magic words with raising the hand to the planet Nergal [Mars]." These prayers were addressed directly to the planet Mars.1 Like the Greek Ares, Nergal is called "king of battle, who brings the defeat, who brings the victory." Nergal could not be regarded as favoring the people of the Double Streams; on a most fateful night he inflicted a defeat on Sennacherib.
Shine of horror, god Nergal, prince of battle, Thy face is glare, thy mouth is fire, Raging Flame-god, god Nergal.
robin-bobin
Thou art Anguish and Terror, Great Sword-god, Lord who wanderest in the night, Horrible, raging Flame-god . . . Whose storming is a storm flood.
In one of its great conjunctions, Mars' atmosphere was stretched so that it appeared like a sword.
Often before and later, too, celestial prodigies assumed the shape of swords. Thus, in the days of David a
1 Bollenrticher, Gebete und Hymnen an Nergal, p. 19. Bezold in Boll, Sternglaube und Sterndeutung, p. 13: "Gebete der Handerhebung: von denen eine Anzahl an Planetengotter andere dagegen ausdrucklich an die Gestirne selbst (Mars) gerichtet sind" (prayers with the lifting of the hand: some of them are directed to the planetary gods and others expressly to the planets themselves).
261
262 WORLDS IN COLLISION
comet appeared in the form of a human being "between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem." 2
The Roman god Mars was pictured with a sword; he became the god of war. The Chaldean Nergal is called "Sword-god." Of this sword Isaiah spoke when he predicted the repetition of the catastrophe, a stream of brimstone, flame, storm, and reeling of the sky. "Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him . . .
and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign." 3 "And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved . . .
for my sword shall be bathed in heaven." *
The ancients classified the comets according to their appearance. In old astrological texts, as in the book of Prophecies of Daniel, comets that took the form of a sword were originally related to the planet Mars.5
Besides the swordlike appearance of the atmosphere of Mars, elongated on its approach to the earth, there was also another reason to make of the planet Mars the god of war. A bellicose or martial character was ascribed to the planet because of the great excitement it caused, excitement that brought anxiety to peoples, that led to migrations and to wars. Since early times celestial prodigies have been regarded as portents that forecast great commotions and great wars.
A planet that collided with other planets in the sky and rushed against the earth as if with a fire-sword became the god of battle, wresting this title from the hands of Athene-Ishtar.
"The gods of heaven put themselves in war against thee," the hymns to the planet Nergal say, and this is the war that was recounted in the Iliad.
Nergal was named quarradu rabu, "the great warrior"; he waged war against gods and the earth.
The most frequent ideogram for Nergal in Semitic cuneiform is read namsaru, which means
"sword"; 6
2 I Chronicles 21 : 16. 3 Isaiah 31 : 8-9. * Isaiah 34 : 4-5.
s Gundel, "Kometen," in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie, XI, Col. 1177, with reference to Cat. cod. astr., VIII, 3, p. 175.
6 Bollenriicher, Gebete und Hymnen an Nergal, p. 8.
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the planet Mars, in the Babylonian inscriptions of the seventh century, was called "the most violent among the gods."
Herodotus said that the Scythians worshiped Ares (Mars), and that a scimitar of iron was their image of him; to him they made human sacrifices and poured the blood on the scimitar.7 Solinus wrote of the people of Scythia: "The god of this people is Mars; instead of images they worship swords." 8
War in heaven among the colliding planets, war on earth among the nations wandering in unrest, a planet running toward the earth with an outstretched flaming sword, attacking land and sea, participating in the wars among the nations—all these made Mars the god of war.
The sword of the god of battle was not like the sword "of a mighty man"; it was not thrust into the belly, and yet it caused sickness and death. The god of war scattered pestilence. In a prayer to the planet Mars (Nergal) it is said: 9
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Radiant abode, that beams over the land . . .
Who is thy equal?
When thou ridest in the battle,
When thou throwest down,
Who can escape thy look?
Who can run away from thy storming?
Thy word is a mighty catch net,
Stretched over Sky and Earth. . . .
His word makes human beings sick, It enfeebles them.
His word—when he makes his way above-Makes the country sick.
The outbreak of pestilence that appears to have accompanied the first contact with the planet Mars was repeated on each subsequent contact. Amos uttered these words: "I have smitten you with blasting and mildew. ... I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt."
7 Herodotus iv. 62.
8 Solinus Polyhistor (transl. A. Golding, 1587), Chap, xxiii.
9 Bollenriicher, Gebete und Hymnen an Nergal, p. 36.
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The planet Nergal was regarded by the Babylonians as the god of war and pestilence; thus, too, did the Greeks regard the planet Ares and the Romans the planet Mars.
Fenris-Wolf
In the Babylonian astrological texts it is said that "a star takes the shape of divers animals: lion, jackal, dog, pig, fish."1 This, in our opinion, explains the worship of animals by ancient peoples, notably by the Egyptians.
The planet Mars, its atmosphere distorted by its approaches to other celestial bodies—Venus, earth, moon—took on different shapes. The Mexicans narrated that Huitzilopochtli, the bellicose destroyer of cities, took the form of various birds and beasts.2 On one occasion Mars very characteristically resembled a wolf or a jackal. In Babylonia Mars had seven names—Jackal was one of them.3 Also, the god with the head of a jackal or wolf in the Egyptian pantheon was apparently Mars. Of him it is said that he is a "prowling wolf circling this land." *
In the Chinese Chart of Soochow, in which it is related on the authority of more ancient sources that "Once Venus suddenly ran into the Wolf-Star," Wolf-Star apparently means Mars.5
Wolf or Lupus Martius was the animal symbol for Mars of the Roman religion.6 It gave rise to the legend about Romulus, son of Mars, who was fed by a she-wolf. According to the tradition, the conception of Romulus took place during a prolonged eclipse.
1 Kugler, Babylonische Zeitordnung, Vol. II of Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel, 91.
2 Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espana, Vol. I. s Bezold, in Boll's Sternglaube und Sterndeutung, p. 9.
4 Breasted, Records of Egypt, III, Sec. 144.
' The translators of the chart surmised that by Wolf-Star Sirius is meant. 6 Cf. Virgil Aeneid iv.
566; Livy, History of Rome, Bk. XXII. i. 12. A statue of Mars on the Appian Way stood between figures of wolves. "Among the animal symbols of Mars, the wolf holds first place. . . . The wolf belonged so definitely to Mars that Lupus Martius or Martialis became its usual name. As to the meaning of this symbol, it is difficult to understand it." Roscher in Roscher's Lexikon d.
griech.und rom. Myth., s. v. "Mars," Col. 2430.
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The Slavic Vukadlak, who followed the clouds and devoured the sun or the moon, had the shape of a wolf.7 The North-Germanic tribes, too, spoke of the wolf Skoll that pursued the sun.8 In the Edda, the planetary god that darkened the sun is called Fenris-Wolf. "Whence comes the sun to the smooth sky back, when Fenris has swallowed it forth?" The battle of Mars and Venus is presented, in the Icelandic epos, as a fight between the wolf Fenris and the serpent Midgard.
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"The bright snake gaping in the heaven above" and "the foaming wolf" battle in the sky. Storms come in summer. Then comes the day, and "dark grows the sun"; in a great upheaval "the heaven is cloven." "In anger smites the warden of earth, forth from their homes must all men flee. . . .
The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea, the hot stars down from the heaven are whirled, fierce grows the stream ... till fire leaps high above heaven itself."9
Sword-Time, Wolf-Time
Quaking of places, tumult of peoples, scheming of nations, confusion of leaders. -IV Ezra 9
The fear of the Judgment Day not only did not pacify the nations, but on the contrary, uprooted them, impelling them to migration and war.
The Scythians came down from the plains of the Dnieper and Volga and moved southward. The Greeks left their home in Mycenae and on the islands of the Aegean and carried on the siege of Troy through years of cosmic disturbances. Assyrian kings waged war in Elam, Palestine, Egypt, and beyond the Caucasus.
Civil war in the nations, tribal strife, and strife between members of households became so widespread that the same complaint was
1 J. Machal, Slavic Mythology (1918), p. 229.
8L. Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes (1904), I, 198.
9 The Poetic Edda: Vbluspa (transl. Bellows, 1923).
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heard in many parts of the world. As I have already said, Mars was named the war god not only because of his swordlike appearance, but also because of these conflicts.
". . . The land [is] darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother," said Isaiah (9 : 19). In Egypt an inscription of the eighth century that refers to the moon disturbed in its movement, mentions incessant fighting in the land: "While years passed in hostility, each one seizing upon his neighbor, not remembering his son to protect."1 Isaiah, speaking of the Day of Wrath, says: "And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom." 2 It was no different seven hundred years earlier, in the days of the catastrophes caused by Venus. At that time an Egyptian sage complained: "I show thee the land upside down; the sun is veiled and shines not in the sight of men. I show thee the son as enemy, the brother as foe, a man slaying his father." 3
The Icelandic Voluspa says: "Dark grows the sun. . . . Brothers shall fight and fell each other. . . .
Axe-time, sword-time, shields are sundered, wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls; nor ever shall men each other spare." *
The wars of Shalmaneser IV, Sargon II, and Sennacherib were carried on in the intervals between the catastrophes and at the very time of their occurrence. The campaigns were repeatedly interrupted by the forces of nature. Of his second campaign Sennacherib wrote: "The month of rain set in with extreme cold and the heavy storms sent down rain upon rain and snow.
I was afraid of the swollen mountain streams; the front of my yoke I turned and took the road to Nineveh."5 Before Sennacherib set out on his last campaign to Palestine, his astrologers told him that he had to hurry if he would
1 Breasted, Records of Egypt, IV, Sec. 764. 2 Isaiah 19 : 2.
3 Gardiner, "New Literary Works from Ancient Egypt," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, I (1914).
4 The Poetic Edda: Voluspa (transl. Bellows). 6 Luckenbill, Records of Assyria, II, Sec. 250.
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267
escape calamity; 6 as we know, he did not escape it. At the same time Isaiah, who encouraged Hezekiah to resist Sennacherib, reckoned with the possibility of a disaster in the year of the opposition of Mars, and thus built his hope on the intervention of the forces of nature.
The Babylonians called the year of the close opposition of Mars "the year of the fire-god," and the month "the month of descent of the fire-god," as, for instance, in an inscription of Sargon.7
robin-bobin
In The Birth of the War-God, the Hindu poet Kalidasa gives a vivid picture of the wars above and on the earth, weaving them into one great battle.
"Foul birds came, a horrid flock to see . . . and dimmed the sun. . . . And monstrous snakes, as black as powdered soot, spitting hot poison high into the air, brought terror to the army underfoot. . . . The sun a sickly halo round him had; coiling within it frightened eyes could see great, writhing serpents . . . and in the very circle of the sun were phantom jackals."
There fell, with darting flame and blinding flash Lighting the farthest heavens, from on high A thunderbolt whose agonising crash Brought fear and shuddering from a cloudless sky.
There came a pelting rain of blazing coals With blood and bones of dead men mingled in; Smoke and weird flashes horrified their souls; The sky was dusty grey like asses' skin.
The elephants stumbled and the horses fell, The footmen jostled, leaving each his post, The ground beneath them trembled at the swell Of ocean, when an earthquake shook the host.8
Lightning is usually discharged between two clouds or a cloud and the ground. But if for some reason the charge of the ionosphere, the electrified layer of the upper atmosphere, should be sufficiently increased, a discharge would occur between the upper atmosphere 6 Ginzberg, Legends, IV, 267, n. 53.
7 LuckenbilL Records of Assyria, II, Sec. 121.
8 Translated by A. W. Ryder (1912).
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and the ground, and a thunderbolt would crash from a cloudless sky.
The planet-god Shiva, Kalidasa says, "deposited his seed in fire" and gave birth to Kumara who battled the great demon named Taraka that "troubled the world."
The Babylonian astrologers ascribed to their planet-gods the ability to emit the sounds of different animals—lion, pig, jackal, horse, ass—and of two species of birds.9 The ancient Chinese likewise asserted that planets emit animal sounds when they approach the earth with a rain of stones.10 It is fairly probable that on some occasion the crash of the discharge "from the cloudless sky" sounded like Ta-ra-ka, the name of the demon who battled the planets.
The Ethiopian king who went up against Sennacherib called himself Taharka or Tirhakah.11 In many places in the Near and Middle East this or similar names suddenly became very popular at the close of the eighth century before the present era; before that time it was unknown.
Taraka troubled the world so that
The seasons have forgotten how to follow one another now; they simultaneously bring flowers of autumn, summer, spring.
The night when Sennacherib's army was destroyed, he survived, but according to rabbinical sources, was badly burned. Some time after his inglorious return from Palestine without his army, he was killed by two of his sons as he knelt in a temple; Esarhaddon pursued his brother-patricides, killed them, and became king. On one of his campaigns against Egypt, his armies became so panicky at some natural phenomenon that they scattered and fled from Palestine where Sennacherib had lost his army to the storm-god Nergal. The laconic cuneiform chronicles, composed in the days of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king, who lived in the sixth century, record the main events of Esarhaddon's war: "In the sixth year the troops of 9 Kugler, Babylonische Zeitordnung, p. 91.
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