by Greig Beck
Another clue is that the ancient name for Africa was “Akebu-Lan” (mother of mankind) or “Garden of Eden”. The Moors, Nubians, Numidians, Carthaginians, and Ethiopians used this name. The name is an ancient one, many thousands of years old, and would have referred to northern Africa when it was lush and green, rather than its current dry Sub-Saharan manifestation.
Lake Chad now and before
Lake Chad was there before the country – in fact Lake Chad actually gave its name to the country of Chad with the name being a local word meaning “large expanse of water”.
Lake Chad today is a pale shadow of its former self, and is just the remnant of a former inland sea that archeo-geologists refer to as Paleolake Mega-Chad.
That part of Africa was much wetter than it is today due to climate cycles and the African rifts that created great watersheds or troughs. The lake was massive, and at its peak, sometime before 5000 BCE, Lake Mega-Chad was the largest of four Saharan paleolakes, and is estimated to have covered an area of nearly 400,000 square miles, larger than the Caspian Sea is today, and its depths reached down to 600 feet.
Sadly, today Lake Chad has a surface area of only 520 square miles, and average depth of just five feet, and a maximum depth anywhere of 30 feet. And for the most part, it is more marshland than lake.
Rock art from around Chad reflects the changing climate and environment. Much of the art there may date to up to 12000 years or more and depicts many animal species that either don’t inhabit the area anymore, or are long extinct. Like much of the Sahara at that time, the area was lush and fertile and experienced an influx of wildlife and humans from the Middle East. But around 4000 years ago, dramatic climate shifts forced the inhabitants to leave their lands and move to the Nile Valley or other areas with more water.
The Peutinger Map
The Peutinger Map, or Tabula Peutingeriana, is one of the first and largest, fully illustrated roadmaps in existence. It shows the cursus publicus – the road network – of the Roman Empire.
At this point in time it is kept at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. The original map was prepared by Agrippa during the reign of the emperor Augustus (27 BCE–AD 14). The present map is a 13th-century copy, of a 4th or 5th century copy, and covers Europe (without Spain or the British Isles), North Africa, and parts of Asia as the Middle East, Persia and India.
The map was discovered by Conrad Celtes hidden in a library in Worms. The man was unable to publish his find before his death and bequeathed the map in 1508 to Konrad Peutinger, a German 15–16th-century antiquarian, after whom it is named. It was kept in the Peutinger family until 1714, when it was sold. It was next purchased by Prince Eugene of Savoy for 100 ducats, and upon his death in 1737, it was obtained for the Habsburg Imperial Court Library in Vienna, where it is today.
In 1911 a sheet was added to show the missing sections of England and Spain, and then finally in 2007 the map was placed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. In recognition of this unique event, it was displayed to the public for just a single day on 26 November 2007. Because of its rarity and fragile condition, it is now not on display, and is unlikely to ever be again.
Nephilim – the fallen angels
The Nephilim were said to be the offspring of angels and young human women before the Great Deluge (according to Genesis 6:4). The name, Nephilim, was also the name of the giants who inhabited the area at the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan.
The word is a derivative of the Hebrew verbal root n-ph-l “fall”, and the general consensus is that it refers to “fallen apostles”, or angels that have fallen from “God’s light” (his grace).
However, the majority of ancient biblical versions interpret the word to mean “giants”. And more fearsomely, the Symmachus translates it to mean “the violent ones”, or even as per Aquila’s translation, to mean, “the violent ones who fall upon their enemies”.
The Nephilim were said to be banished to the Earthly plane to serve God’s will and be sentinels and servants, violently, if necessary. They would perform these tasks until the world ends, or until they managed to return to God’s light through their good deeds and actions.
Noah
Was Noah real? Many believe so. He was said to have lived between approximately 2490–2415 BCE, when the Sahara experienced a wet period. This is the period of the Old Kingdoms, and a time when the land was split by vast waterways all feeding into a massive inland sea (Chad).
Research is blurred here, but one story refers to Noah as a descendant of the Proto-Saharan ruler named in Genesis 4 and 5, and not a humble or simple man. Instead he was a local ruler, and like most of the local rulers named in Genesis he controlled the major water systems of Lake Chad, the Nile, and the Tigris and Euphrates. The interconnected waterways were their roads, and Noah would have known them like the back of his hand. He would have also been very familiar with boats and likely had a fleet. In addition, proto-Saharan rulers such as Noah kept menageries with male and female specimen animals for breeding purposes.
Noah likely lived in the region of Bor-No (called the Land of Noah) near Lake Chad. This is the only place on Earth that claims to be Noah’s homeland.
During Noah’s time, the water systems of Lake Chad, the Benue Trough and the Nile were connected and Noah controlled the waterways of the Lake Chad Basin. If Noah did exist, he would have easily been able to construct an Ark, stock it with animals, and keep his family safe from any flood. If the Ark existed, then that’s where its remains might just be.
Noah’s Ark and the flood
Noah’s Ark is the vessel from the Genesis flood (chapters 6–9) through which God saves Noah and his family, and also a portion of the world’s animals. The Ark story is repeated in the Quran, and it is also similar to numerous other flood legends from a variety of cultures. The earliest known written flood myth is the Sumerian reference found in the Epic of Ziusudra.
Despite many expeditions, no scientific evidence of the Ark has been found. There are several reasons suggested for this, the most likely being that the Ark never existed. But given the time period (4500 years ago), then as the Ark was made of gopher wood (cedar) and mostly of reeds, there’s little hope of finding remains after all this time.
But for dreamers like myself, I tend to think that people are looking in the wrong place. Noah’s Ark more likely came to rest on Mount Meru in East Africa, 230 miles from Lake Chad. The old Arabic text of Genesis 8:4 identifies the resting place as “har-meni”, which refers to the mountain of Meni or Menes, another name for Mount Meru.
The final resting place of Noah
There are many who claim to have the remains of Noah. Just a few are: the Imam Ali Mosque, Najaf, in Iraq; The Tomb of Noah, Jordan; The Karak Nuh, Lebanon; and also a vault in Cizre, Turkey.
But the one with the most support from scholars is in the southern part of Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan, where there is a mausoleum dated from the 8th century that is regarded as Noah’s Mausoleum or the Tomb of the prophet Noah. In the middle of that sunken vault there is a stone column and, according to legend, relics of Noah are buried there beneath it.
About Greig Beck
Greig Beck grew up across the road from Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. His early days were spent surfing, sunbaking and reading science fiction on the sand. He then went on to study computer science, immerse himself in the financial software industry and later received an MBA. Today, Greig spends his days writing, but still finds time to surf at his beloved Bondi Beach. He lives in Sydney, with his wife, son, and an enormous black German shepherd.
Also by Greig Beck
The Alex Hunter series
Arcadian Genesis
Beneath the Dark Ice
Dark Rising
This Green Hell
Black Mountain
Gorgon
Hammer of God
Kraken Rising
The Matt Kearns series
The First Bird
Book of the Dead
The Valkeryn Chronicles
Return of the Ancients
First published by Momentum in 2017
This edition published in 2017 by Momentum
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The Immortality Curse
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