There Were Giants Upon the Earth
Page 3
Astounding as this synchronism is, it is not merely coincidental. The Egyptians called their country "The Raised Land," because at one time, ancient lore said, it was inundated by an engulfing avalanche of water ^that completely flooded the land. The god Ptah, a great scientist, came to the rescue. On the Nile River's island Abu (also called Elephantine for its shape), near the river's first cataract in Upper Egypt, Ptah formed a cavern in the mighty rocks and installed in it sluices that controlled the river's flow, enabling the ground downstream to dry out—literally, in Egyptian eyes, raising the land from under the waters. The feat was depicted in Egyptian art (Fig. 12); the modern great dam at Aswan is located at the same site near the first cataract.
These events may well offer an explanation why the god who then assumed reign over Egypt was called Shu, whose name—'Dryness'— bespoke the end the watery catastrophe. His successor bore the name
Figure 12
Geb (meaning 'He who heaps up'), for he engaged in great earthworks to make the land even more habitable and productive. Like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, all of these diverse facts add up to an Egyptian record of a Deluge, a Great Flood, circa 10,970 B.C.
To these tidbits of Egyptian prehistory concerning the Deluge, one can add the fact that as a way to unify Egypt, Men emulated Ptah by creating an artificial island in the Nile, where it begins to branch out into a delta, and built there a new capital dedicated to the god Ptah; he named it Men-Nefer ('The Good Place of Men')—Memphis in Greek.
Like Greek history and art, the history and prehistory of ancient Egypt cannot be divorced from the active presence and physical existence of its gods. Wherever one looks or turns in Egypt, the statues, sculptures, depictions, temples, monuments, texts inscribed and illustrated inside pyramids or on coffin lids or on the walls of tombs—all speak of, name, and depict Egypt's gods and its leading pantheon (Fig. 13). Whatever had been recorded and depicted before Manetho's days, and discovered after his time, corroborates his lists of Pharaonic dynasties; why not also
9 10 11 12 13
THE CELESTIAL DISK AND THE GODS OF EGYPT
1. Ptah 2. Ra-Amen 3. Thoth 4. Seker
5. Osiris 6. Isis with Horus 7. Nephtys 8. Hathor
The gods with their attributes:
9. Ha/Falcon 10. Horus/Falcon II. Seth/Sinai Ass 12. Thoth/Ibis 13. Hathor/Cow
Figure 13
accept the reality of gods, followed by demigods, as rulers in Egypt preceding human Pharaohs?
* * *
In the Seleucid domains, the task of compiling the tale of the past was assigned to a Babylonian priest-historian named Berossus (Greek from Bel-Re'ushu = 'The Lord [Bel = Marduk] is his shepherd') who was born in Babylon when Alexander the Great was there. His task was much more complex than that of Manetho in Egypt, for his compilation was not limited to one land; it had to embrace many lands, different kingdoms, and diverse rulers who reigned not necessarily in succession but sometimes contemporaneously in different (and sometimes warring) capitals.
The three volumes he had composed (called Babyloniaca and dedicated to King Antiochus I, 279-261 B.C.) are no longer extant, but portions of them were retained, having been copied and extensively quoted in antiquity by contemporary Greek savants, and later on by other Greek and Roman historians (including Josephus). It is from those references and quotes, collectively known as "Fragments of Berossus," that we know that Berossus chose to 'globalize' the subject: He chose to write down not the history of one nation or one kingship, but of the whole Earth, not of one group of gods but of all the gods, of Mankind in general, of how it all—gods, demigods, kingship, kings, human beings, civilization—had come to be; a comprehensive history from The Beginning to Alexander's time. It is from those Fragments that we know that Berossus divided the past Into a time before a Great Flood and the eras after the Flood, and asserted that before there were men, gods alone ruled the Earth.
Alexander Polyhistor, a Greek-Roman historian-geographer in the 1st century B.C., reported in regard to the pre-Diluvial era that "in the second book [of Berossus] was the history of the ten kings of the Chaldeans, and the periods of each reign, which consisted collectively of a hundred and twenty Shars, or four hundred and thirty-two thousand years, reaching to the time of the Deluge." ('Chaldeans' was a term used to describe the astronomically savvy residents of ancient Mesopotamia.)
The grand total of 432,000 years comprised the combined reigns of the ten listed rulers, whose individual reigns lasted anywhere from 10,800 to 64,800 years. The Greek historians who quoted Berossus explained that the great lengths of those rulers' reigns were actually given in number units called Shar, each Shar—Saros in Greek—being equal to 3,600 years. The Greek historian Abydenus, a disciple of Aristotle, who quoted Berossus, made clear that these ten rulers and their cities were all in ancient Mesopotamia and explained how their reign periods were rendered:
It is said that the first king of the Earth was Aloros;
he reigned ten Shars. Now, a Shar is esteemed to be three
thousand six hundred years.
After him Alaprus reigned three Shars.
To him succeeded Amillarus from the city of panti-Biblon, who
reigned thirteen Shars.
After him Ammenon reigned twelve Shars; he was of the
city of panti-Biblon.
Then Megalurus of the same place, eighteen Shars.
Then Daos, the Shepherd, governed for the space of ten Shars.
Afterward reigned Anodaphus and Euedoreschus.
There were afterward other rulers, and the last of all Sisithrus;
so that in the whole their number amounted to ten kings, and
the term of their reigns to a hundred and twenty Shars.
Apollodorus of Athens (2nd century B.C.) also reported on the pre-Diluvial disclosures by Berossus in similar terms: Ten rulers reigned a total of 120 Shars (= 432,000 years), and the reign of each one of them was measured in the 3,600-year Shar units. Indeed, all those who had quoted Berossus affirmed that he listed ten divine rulers who had reigned from the beginning until the Great Flood, treating the Deluge as a decisive event. The names of the ten pre-Diluvial rulers (rendered as Greek names by those who quoted Berossus) and the lengths of their reigns, totaling 120 Shars, were as shown on page 29. (Though the sequences of succession varied, all quotings agree that an "Aloros" was the first and a "Xisuthros" the last.)
Aloros
reigned for
lOShars
(=
36,000 years)
Alaparos
reigned for
3 Shars
(=
10,800 years)
Amelon
reigned for
13 Shars
(=
46,800 years)
Ammenon
reigned for
12 Shars
(=
43,200 years)
Megalarus
reigned for
18 Shars
(=
64,800 years)
Daonos
reigned for
10 Shars
(=
36,000 years)
Euedoreschus
reigned for
18 Shars
(=
64,800 years)
Amempsinos
reigned for
10 Shars
(=
36,000 years)
Obartes
reigned for
8 Shars
(=
28,800 years)
Xisuthros
reigned for
18 Shars
(=
64,800 years)
Ten rulers
reigned for
120 Shars
(= 432,000 years)
The quotings from Berossus indictate that his writings dealt with several issues concerning Mankind itself—how it came to be, how it attained knowledge, how it spread and settled the Earth. In the beginning gods alone were upon the Earth. M
en appeared, according to the Berossus Fragments, when Deus ("god"), also called Belos (a name meaning 'Lord'), decided to create Man. He used for the purpose a "twofold principle," but the results were "hideous Beings." "Men appeared with two wings, some with four, and with two faces . . . Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats. . . Bulls likewise bred there with the heads of men . . . Of all these were-preserved delineations in the temple of Belus in Babylon." (Belus, Greek for Bel/Baal, "the Lord," was in Babylon an epithet for the god Marduk).
On the subject of how men attained intelligence and knowledge, Berossus wrote that it came about thus: A leader of those early divine rulers named Oannes waded ashore from the sea and taught Mankind all aspects of civilization. "He was a Being endowed with reason, a god who made his appearance from the Erythrean Sea that bordered on Babylonia." Berossus reported that although Oannes looked like a fish, he had a human head under the fish's head, and had feet like a man under the fish's tail. "His voice too and language were articulate and human." ("A representation of him," Alexander Polyhistor added, "is preserved even to this day.")
This Oannes "used to converse with men; he gave them insight into letters and sciences and every kind of art; he taught them to construct houses, to found temples, to compile laws; and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge." It was Oannes, according to the Fragments recorded by Polyhistor, who put in writing a tale that explained how Mankind came to be, Creation having been preceded by "a time in which there was nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters."
The Berossus Fragments then include details regarding the defining event, the Great Flood, that separated the era of the gods from the times of men. According to Abydenus, Berossus reported that the gods kept knowledge of the coming devastating Deluge a secret from Mankind; but the god Cronus (in Greek legends, a son of the god Uranus = Sky and the father of the god Zeus) revealed the secret to "Sisithros" (= the last-named Xisuthros of the ten pre-Diluvial rulers):
Cronus revealed to Sisithros that there would be a
Deluge on the fifteenth day of Daisios, and ordered
him to conceal in Sippar, the city of the god Shamash,
every available writing.
Sisithros accomplished all these things, and sailed
immediately to Armenia; and thereupon what the god
had announced did happen.
To find out whether the Deluge had ended, according to the Abydenus quotes, Sisithros released birds to see if they would find dry land. When the boat reached Armenia, Sisithros made sacrifices to the gods. He instructed the people who were with him in the boat to go back to Babylonia; as for himself, he was taken by the gods to spend the rest of his life with them.
Polyhistor's account was longer and more detailed. After reporting that "after the death of Ardates [or Obartes] his son Xisuthros ruled for eighteen Sars and in his time the Great Flood occurred," Polyhistor rendered the Chaldean account of it thus:
The deity, Cronus, appeared to him in a vision and
gave him notice that on the fifteenth day of the month
Daisos there would be a Flood by which Mankind
would be destroyed.
He enjoyned him to commit to writing a history of the
Beginnings, Middles, and Ends of all things, down to
the present term; and to bury those accounts securely in
the city of the Sun god, in Sippar;
And to build a vessel, and to take into it with him
his kinsfolk and his friends
He was to stow food and water and put birds and animals
on board, and sail away when he had everything ready.
Following these instructions Xisuthros built a boat, "five stades long and two stades wide." Anticipating some raised eyebrows from the other townspeople, Xisuthros was instructed by his god to just say he was "sailing to the gods, to pray for blessings on men." He then put on board his wife and children "and closest friends."
When the Flood subsided, "Xisuthros let out some of the birds, which finding no food came back to the vessel." On the third try, the birds did not return and Xisuthros inferred that land had appeared. After the boat ran aground, Xisuthros, his wife, his daughter, and his pilot went ashore, and were never seen again, "for they were taken to dwell with the gods." Those who were left behind on board were told by an unseen voice that they were in Armenia and were instructed to return to their land and "rescue the writings from Sippar and disseminate them to Mankind." This they did:
They came back to Babylon, they dug up the writings
from Sippar, founded many cities, set up shrines, and
once again established Babylon.
According to the Fragments, Berossus wrote that at first "all men spoke the same language." But then "some among them undertook to erect a large and lofty tower, that they might climb up to heaven." But
Belus, sending forth a whirlwind, "confounded their designs and gave each tribe a particular language of its own." "The place at which they built the tower is now called Babylon."
* * *
The similarities between the Berossus tales and those in the Bible's book of Genesis are readily obvious; they extend beyond the subject of the Deluge and match each other in many details.
The Deluge, according to Berossus, occurred in the reign of the 10th pre-Diluvial ruler, Sisithros, and began in the month Daisos, which was the second month of the year. The Bible (Genesis 7:12) likewise states that the Deluge occurred "in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month? Noah having been the 10th pre-Diluvial biblical Patriarch (starting with Adam).
Like Xisuthros/Sisithros, Noah was told by his god that a devastating avalanche of water is about to happen, and was instructed to build a waterproof vessel according to precise specifications. He was to take aboard his family, animals, and birds—as Xisuthros did. When the waters subsided, both released birds to see if dry land reappeared (Noah sent two birds, first a raven, then a dove). Sisisthros's boat came to rest "in Armenia"; Noah's ark came to rest in the "mountains of Ararat," which are in Armenia.
Another major event is similarly reported by both the Bible and Berossus: The incident of the Tower of Babel that resulted in the "Confusion of Languages. We have quoted above the Berossus version; like it, the Bible begins the tale (in Genesis 11) with the statement that at that time "The whole Earth was of one language and one kind of words." Then the people said, "let us build a city and a tower whose top can reach the heavens"; Berossus states the same thing: People set out "to erect a large and lofty tower, that they might climb up to heaven." In the Bible, God ("Yahweh") "came down to see the city and the tower that the Children of the Adam had built." He got concerned and "confused their language so that they may not understand each other" and "scattered the people over the face of the Earth." Berossus ascribes the Confounding of Languages to The Lord ("Belus") and attributes Mankind's scattering to the deity's use of a Whirlwind.
Do such similarities mean that the opening chapters of Genesis are one large 'Fragment of Berossus', that the compilers of the Hebrew Bible copied from Berossus? Not likely, for the whole Torah part of the Hebrew Bible, its first five books from Genesis to Deuteronomy, was already "sealed"—canonized in a final version unchanged since then— long before the time of Berossus.
It is a historical fact that the Hebrew Bible was already in its 'sealed' version when the five Torah books and the rest of the Bible were translated in Egypt into Greek by order of the same Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-244 B.C.) who had engaged Manetho to write Egypt's history. The translation, still extant and available, is known as the Septuagint ("Of the Seventy") because it was carried out by a group of seventy scholars. A comparison of its Greek text with the Hebrew Bible leaves no doubt that those savants had already in front of them the canonized version of the Hebrew Bible as we know it today—a Bible that was already in its final form before the time of Berossus (and Manetho).
Did then Berossus use the Hebrew
Bible as his source? That too is unlikely. Apart from his references to 'pagan' gods (Cronus, Belus, Oannes, Shamash) who are absent in the monotheistic Bible, many particulars in his writings are not found in the biblical version, so his sources had to be other than the Bible. A most significant difference occurs in the Creation of Man tale, with its terrifying mishaps in the Berossus version, in contrast to the smooth "Let us fashion the Adam" version in the Bible.
There are detail differences even where the two versions dovetail, as in the Deluge story in regard to the size of the ship and, more importantly, as to who was taken on board to be saved. Some of the differences are not insignificant: According to Berossus, there were on board, beside the immediate family of 'Noah', also several of his friends, as well as a skilled pilot; not so in the Bible that listed just Noah, his wife, and their three sons and their wives. This is not a minor matter: If true, then post-Diluvial Mankind, genetically and genealogically, does not stem solely from one Noah and his only three sons.
The whole tale of Oannes, the god dressed as a fish, wading ashore to grant civilization to Mankind, is nowhere in the Bible. Also absent in the Bible is the reference to a pre-Diluvial city named Sippar ("the city of the Sun-god Shamash") and the safekeeping there of "every available writing." By claiming that pre-Diluvial records of "Beginnings, Middles, and Ends" not only had once existed but were hidden for safekeeping and were retrieved after "Babylon" was resettled, Berossus could have sought legitimacy for his version of prehistoric events; but he also suggested that those Records of the Past contained clues to the Future—what the Bible, and we nowadays, call 'The End of Days'. Though the theme of linking the Future to the Past is part of biblical prophecy, in the Bible it is first mentioned in respect to Jacob—long after the Deluge.