FOREWORD
THIS VOLUME is a companion work to The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain in which I endeavored to prove by evidence, gathered over a wide field from ancient and modern
sources, that the British Isles were highly civilized from the earliest times, and, indeed,
that Britain may be proudly enthroned as the true and original mother of civilization. I claimed
on evidence produced that the supposedly "lost island" or drowned "island-continent" given the
name of "Atlantis" by Plato, was not a mere romance or myth without substance, as is generally
believed, but, on the contrary, it was a serious epitome of the most stupendous natural catastrophe
which has ever afflicted the human race, both because of the magnitude and the severity of that
visitation. I sought, moreover, to prove that the Atlantean calamity was a variation in other words
of the Flood of Noah, or, as the Greeks termed it, the Deluge of Deucalion.
For this purpose evidence was derived from geographical, geological, astronomical, historical
and legendary sources to the effect that this major catastrophe afflicted northern and western
Europe, mainly the Scandinavian lands and beyond all the British Islands. I claimed, in fact, that
the Atlantis Island was no other than the British Isles, which bear the scars of that catastrophe
to this day, that Atlantis was not permanently submerged, or even much of it, tremendous though
the ultimate effects were. These islands, I showed, were the true Hesperides or Happy Islands
of yore, and are known to have been inhabited from the earliest Paleolithic (or Old Stone) Age
onward, and were the original domicile of the sons of Adam, who were the Titans or Giants of
classic fame, as well as being the Atlanteans of Plato.
My object, may I point out, was far greater than any mere academic effort, as some critics seemed
to imagine, to identify Atlantis. The disaster to Atlantis was only indirectly my theme, for what
matters is what lay and still lies behind these facts, as facts I claim they are, on the evidence. For
if it were the Flood of the Scriptures it thereby brings into the orbit of Northern Europe the nations
related to that event directly or indirectly, such as the Chaldean's, Egyptians,, Israelite's, Hellenes
or Greeks, and many others. It cannot be isolated as such, for it challenges the long accepted
beliefs and dogma that the Flood occurred in the Middle East the supposedly original Chaldea,
as to which incidentally, in spite of most careful investigations even within recent, years, there
exists not a tittle of solid geological or other evidence to support such a calamity in those regions. Inferential if correct, it must undermine the long-accepted claims in relation to the lands we
term Assyria, Egypt, and Palestine, and I fear necessarily disputes the accuracy of many modernist
interpretations from inscribed stones or papyri.
In other words we have been misled in these matters. My sole aim is to get to the truth regarding
the past as it bears in many striking ways upon the present.
But, let me say, if the further claims I advance in this work are sustained, it must logically signify
that the segregation of Bible history as a thing apart from equivalent classic peoples has piled
up completely false conceptions and valuations regarding the history of nations in past times.
For example, I produce evidence to show that the Uranids of Crete, which Crete was accepted
by the Greeks at least as the γετρις or motherland of the original race of mankind, were the
equivalent of the people called Ur-of-the Chaldea in the Book of Genesis, and that they dwelt
not in the Orient or Mediterranean, but in the British Isles.
If I prove correct in determining that such roads lead originally to that very ancient group of
islands, the Shetland-Orkneys, which straddle both Scandinavia and Britain, and that these were
largely shattered by a violent natural catastrophe, we begin to perceive that the Gnostic's and Curates of Crete, close kindred to the Chaldean's, were the sons of Seth or Sheth, the son of Adam
from whom apparently Shetland or .Sethland acquired its name, in the regions of Caledonia,
again only a variation of Chaldea, whose sons are probably the most ancient existing race of civilized man.
The account of the, last days of Atlantis is particularly valuable in research where we are told
by Plato of a great war between the Atlanteans and their blood relations who crossed the sea to
reach them, a. war lasting thirteen years, and in the fourteenth year, when the Atlanteans were
at the point of exhaustion, the city of Athens held out and defeated the enemy, but that all her
warriors, like those opposed to her, were drowned. Leaving aside the statement that the original
Athens held out and alone defeated the invaders it was, according to Plato, an Atlantean city,
situated on that island, and thus, we must assume, the mother city of the later Athens in the
Mediterranean Greece, like other early Hellenic sites. Can we, however, synchronize Plato with
the Bible references to the Flood? The actual events of these dramatic thirteen years, culminating
in the Great Catastrophe, is the main theme of this book.
The true arena of this veiled yet historic event, as I endeavor to show, was the clash between
nations known in the Scriptures, including Gog and Magog, in which the invasion and slavery
of other Bible peoples in the British Isles was the aim of the invaders. It culminated in
extraordinary events both in the celestial spaces and on this unhappy earth. The final celestial
disaster itself, as I described fully in my previous work, was on such an immense and concentrated
scale, and at the same time so irregular in its distribution, that certain parts were destroyed or
rendered uninhabitable for a long period, while yet others escaped with only comparative
sufferings. Among its permanent effects were a variation in the earth's axis, a lengthening of the
solar year and a consequent change in climate whereby many nations in the north were forced
to emigrate to obtain the means of subsistence.
The myth of Phaeton describes how the ill-fated son of Helios, having stolen his father's steeds,
tried to drive the chariot of the sun, but they bolted, whereby they threatened the earth's extinction,
and Zeus, seeing the whole world was thus in imminent danger of destruction, hurled Phaeton
into the river Eridanus in the country of the Cimmerians. The explanation of the myth, as Plato
himself records it, was the declination of celestial bodies, actually, it would seem, a twin or
tandem comet, which struck the earth in the Cimmerian lands. This disastrous event is recorded
on certain prehistoric Scottish zodiacs as I showed in my previous work, in which the "chariot"
of Phaeton is represented symbolically as wheels with a connecting axle, described by Scottish archaeologists as "spectacles," they being naturally innocent of the intention of these stones
probably erected -by the sons of Seth, or, say, Chaldean's, in the Caledonia lands.
The Cimmerians, in whose country this disaster happened, and where flowed the river Eridanus,
converts the mythological into reality. They agree with the Cymry of Britain, the Cimbri of
Scandinavian lands, the people known to classic poets as the Hyperboreans, dwellers beyond
the north wind, the- Galatai of Pausanias, the Gauls or Gaels, or Celts, always the tall, fair-haired
and blue-eyed Men of the north. So Phaeton must compel us to understand the myth by making
us look to the north of Europe, where he was thrown to earth. In a true revision of the prehistoric
past the Mediterranean becomes only a very secondary settlement of the ruling races of mankind
from the beginning.
Britain's remote ancestors through many centuries erected an advanced civilization, built walled
cities, with towns, villages, and ports, and sailed ocean-going ships, being a maritime people of
great fame. They erected also chains of powerful fortresses some of which have survived the
vicissitudes caused by man and the elements for well over three thousand years, laid long, straight
roads, and constructed canals which transported goods from one end of Britain to the other. Her
sons faced hazardous voyages, long before deep-sea soundings were undertaken, to the most
distant parts of the earth, and established trading centers and commerce while their main search
was ever for gold. They manufactured jewels employing gold, silver and bronze, besides precious
stones. At an early date they mastered the science of how to manufacture bronze, designed
weapons of warfare, and discovered the secret art of how to make and use fire-arms, otherwise
"black magic."
Solomon built up his wealth and made the Israelite's in his age the dominating people by his
knowledge of "magic," an art described by Josephus in these words, "God also enabled him to
learn that skill which expels demons, which is a skill useful and sanative to man." Incidentally,
Solomon was a Grand Master of prehistoric Freemasonry—a very ancient fraternity earlier known
as the Cabiri gods—its origin often attributed to him, and some of the mystic ceremonies used
in the Masonic cult are probably derived from his epoch, yet how many present-day Masons can
understand the inner meaning of the two hollow pillars Jachin. and. Boaz, which they are so fond
of symbolizing?
In the great migration, induced largely by pre-knowledge of what was about to happen owing to
celestial phenomena, judging from certain passages of Jeremiah, the Israelite's in their Exodus
were led through dark, arctic wastes, "where no man dwelt," the Siberian lands. Many emigrants
found their way to the shores of the Mediterranean, others went by the rivers Volga, Vistula,
Dneiper and Dneister to the Crimea, onward into Asia Minor and thence to the Middle East
where we find in Iraq what appear to be prehistoric Gothic inscriptions and occult designs as to
which much might be said. In a totally different direction, across the North' Atlantic, others made
hazardous voyages and endured terrible privations in search of the sun, and settled finally in
America, mostly in Mexico, ages before Columbus discovered that continent. Many again went
south-west into France, Spain and Portugal, hugging the Atlantic, or migrating into North Africa.
The land we now call Egypt was colonized then or not much earlier as shown by astronomical
evidence, and was originally peopled by fair Celts from the shores of Britain. This was the Exodus
of the Aryans, some of whom returned later to their primeval homes, and about a century after,
perhaps in some cases in less time, when earlier fears had been dissipated—for humanity rarely
learns from the past—and the fertile British lands invited newcomers, these islands were again
occupied by nations crossing the narrow seas, including especially those whom Geoffrey of
Monmouth names the Trojans, and, our modern anthropologists, the Goidels.
Panic and a change of climate in the northern lands were the main inspiration which sent these
peoples on their long and sad treks in search of new domiciles. The edifices and religion of Egypt
speak eloquently of the instinct of terror as their guiding motive, as I also showed in my previous
work. The famous Egyptian Book of the Dead, influenced completely by the epic of the Flood
and composed in the name of Thoth (Hermes), in its ritual caused the souls of the dead to undergo
a fanciful, final, gloomy pilgrimage to the sacred west, indeed, I contend, to the very scene of
the former shambles in Western Scotland, to the legendary Amenta, identified as the tiny island
of Staffa, near Iona, in the Hebrides, where the wandering spirits were supposed to be judged
by Osiris, and were rewarded or consumed according to their lives on earth. Staffa lay in the
very vortex of the greatest area of destruction at the time of the Flood—water being but one
element concerned—and later became the Underworld of the Celts as it was of the Hellenes. The
Flood, to the world generally a vague and nebulous tradition, really conceals the most appalling
visitation mankind has ever experienced, as he may experience again, and its ravages in the
British Isles and Scandinavian lands may be retraced to some considerable extent by the effects
of what geologists term the "Drift" Age. It was no mere ice drift It was sudden and terribly swift
and violent.
My present volume, as I mentioned, traces the course of the thirteen-years' war to its origin and
source and elucidates the main arena of that dramatic Conflict which stares us in the face in the
Scriptures if we know where to seek for it. To be enabled to accomplish this it has necessitated
the identification of the most important regions overrun by the invaders from the furthermost
north and from the direction of the Baltic and Low Countries. Much attention has been directed
to the lands of the west, mainly Somerset and Wiltshire, so important for various reasons, where
I have claimed to identify sites known to readers of the Scriptures, some of which survive and
flourish to this day. The complete annihilation of cities by man is not so easy as it may seem.
Jerusalem was said to be destroyed stone by stone by Hadrian and yet it still exists as a most
important capital!
In the arrangement I have found it advisable to devote the opening part to the consideration of
Crete—the original Crete of Homer—because of its former great importance in the world of
prehistory. The third section describes in detail the scene and action of the thirteen-years' war
and especially the part enacted in it by Jerusalem. When this is understood it will be apparent
how advanced, wealthy, and highly civilized Britain was up to the Roman occupation, and thereby
to reflect how sad it is that Roman ignorance, tyranny, and censorship have for long centuries
presented an utterly false impression of the courage, genius, and enterprise of the various states
of the island they so coveted, robbed and left in a condition of chaos.
One further important point needs to be emphasized. The history of the civilized world in the
past had little or nothing in common with Asia or Africa, and to get to the truth we must raise
the latitude of Europe to the lands mainly prominent, and even largely forget the Mediterranean
Sea. The Aryan or white race, with fair or red hair and blue eyes, never had any racial connection
with the Oriental peoples, the brown-skinned, dark-eyed, and dark-haired races. The law of
Latitude forbids it, just as the northern Aryans who invaded India and settled there as rulers and
princes, despite the rigid law of caste they formulated, in the course of a few generations became
absorbed in the native population, as also happened in Mexico. Indeed, the world's civilization owes less than nothing to the Asiatic peoples. Even the Persians, who tyrannized for centuries
over the West, through treachery and the use of "magic," can really be traced to Russia and the
Russians, their characteristics throughout the centuries scarcely if at all changed other than in
name, and who in their decadence were overthrown and driven back to their oriental bounds by
Alexander the Great.
Virile races do not die out without a trace. We are told by historians that the Thracians disappeared
from their lands by the Hellespont and yet Herodotus says that they were the most powerful
people in Europe who dissipated their strength by tribal quarrels. They did not disappear from
Balkan lands, for they were never there. Transfer Pontus or the Euxine Sea, or the Hellespont,
to where they really belonged geographically, namely the Baltic and Skagerrak, and you will
find the 'Thracians readily enough. They were the Scandinavians, and were apparently settled
from primeval times also in Northern Scotland, close kindred of the Caledonian's, who like them
held wives in common, tattooed themselves, buried wives alive with their husbands, adored
single combat, claimed descent from Hermes, worshiped Dionysus as their principal deity,
raised mounds over the graves of their great chiefs and held funeral games, all of which were
also the characteristics of Odin's followers. It suffices to add that the country beyond their
northern frontiers was uninhabitable by reason of the icy cold, for it lay under the Bear—the
North Pole.
Take again the Trojans of classic fame. They were a very brave and fine nation, advanced in civilization, who offered sacrifices to the dead of bowls of warm milk, goblets of wine, and also
raised funeral mounds. Where do you find such mounds or barrows? All over the Scandinavian
lands and in Denmark as in Britain, but never in the Near East. They shook hands with one
another, and anyone who knows the East is aware that such was never an Oriental custom. How
can we explain Virgil's statement of King Priam, slain and mutilated by Pyrrhus, as he sat on his
"sacred throne," that he had been "proud monarch over so many countries and nations"? But this
we can say. The Trojans, after the Great Catastrophe, settled in great numbers in Britain known
as the Brigantes, whose history I trace, showing incidentally that Rome was founded by men of
this very nation, and that they became the ruling people in Britain south of the Clyde and Forth.
They never originated in Asia Minor, but as will be seen from Ascania, Denmark and the Low
Countries, from the regions later known as Freesia.
The Macedonians? Well, Thracians, Cretans, Caledonians, and Macedonians were all of one
kindred, and they can be tracked down to their habitat in Scotland and Scandinavia, having many
areas in England as well. Illyria? Why does Jerusalem appear to have been regarded as in Illyria?
It was not originally by the Adriatic Sea in the Mediterranean area. Transfer the Greek or Latin
name to its British rendering, Siluria, and we begin to recognize how the history of the Hebrews—the Iberes of Britain—was so largely played out in this island. How few appreciate
the true history of the risings of the Silures against the Romans, and who fought with such fatal
gallantry in a succession of wars opposing them especially in the region south of the Forth, yet
thus shall we be getting nearer to the truth. It will be apparent, in short, that Armageddon was
the same event as the Great Catastrophe and that Jerusalem lay—and still stands a great and
noble city—in Britain. If this sounds a stupendous claim to make it nevertheless fits in with the
rest.
How many persons are aware that in A.D. 134, after Hadrian had defeated the Jews under Bar
Cocheba, their proclaimed Messiah, and had captured their stronghold of Bathars, he caused
Jerusalem to be utterly destroyed and the land devastated, with the result that it was full of graves,
the markets with slaves, and towns given over to wolves and wild beasts? How many more realize that the site of Jerusalem was completely forgotten for over two hundred years until Constantine
the Great caused it to be "discovered" for political motives in the present Palestine?
As I show in the following pages the Palestine of today fails to correspond in any way to the
Old Testament or, come to that, of the New. A writer, Mr. H. D. Daunt, several years ago in a
work entitled The Center of Ancient Civilization, denied that Palestine was the Biblical Holy
Land for definite reasons. He claimed that (a) the assumption is based on Hebrew documents
alone; (b) the account of the Israelite's being made slaves and fleeing from the Egyptian Pharaoh,
is not borne out by any other evidence, but the contrary (c) an exodus in the region of Sinai for
forty years with 600,000 warriors is an impossible story;(d) Palestine, despite the accounts of
its fertility and wealth, is perhaps the poorest land in West Asia apart from the deserts; (e) such
a civilization with its many cities must have left its traces in the records of the neighboring countries, but "Palestine yields only the evidence derived from names that have been scattered
industriously about the land in various later centuries"; (f) there is frequent mention by scribes,
archives, etc., so the art of writing must have been well known; and, moreover, princes and
scribes seem to have possessed strong literary proclivities, yet, "notwithstanding all this, not a
single inscription has been found in Palestine which can be identified with the Hebrew kingdom";
(g) Jerusalem has failed to, produce any trace of David and Solomon, any tablet or inscription
or even foundation memorial. It might be added that the city entirely fails to conform
topographically with its full descriptions given by Josephus and Nehemiah.
The name of "Europe" was originally limited to a part of western England, and continental Europe
was Asia. To study a map of Europe so late as at the height of the Roman Empire, as prepared
from the conventional acceptation of ancient geography, is a pathetic vision of emptiness. Except
for Southern Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, it contains Celtica, a vast and vague region stretching
from the Atlantic to Venetia, and above it, east of the Rhine, "Germania" stretches far to the east
with a few vague names. Dacia, Moesia, and Thrace occupy the Balkan lands, and the Ister is
interpreted as the Danube, whereas it should be the Rhine, similarly as the Halys River is placed
in Asia Minor but was the later Alvis or Albis, now the Elbe. These are a few names chosen at
haphazard.
If I am right in these statements the question may well be asked how it all came about. The
answer lies probably in the fact that the historians of the past on whom we have to rely were
mostly the Greeks, and more especially Herodotus. But these Greeks were themselves very
circumscribed in their knowledge of the world. They were unacquainted with geography because
foreign travel was not in their purview, and mostly they derived their knowledge from the
Phoenicians whose purpose was by no means necessarily served by widening Greek knowledge.
They wrote their history from records or traditions, but their geography was vague. I first realized such shortcomings when I attempted to trace the detailed march of Xerxes from Persia to Athens
along accepted lines, but before long I realized that his history simply could not possibly fit in
with modern conceptions, and compelled me to follow out fresh investigations with surprising
results.
As far as Bible geography is concerned it appears that the main person responsible for its
misinterpretation was Constantine the Great, who had definite motives for transferring the arena
of Jewish history and that of Christ to another region altogether. He used Christianity as a valuable
political asset, selected the East as his Empire, and with the aid of Eusebius, Jerome and others,
invented the present Palestine. I cannot explore this very important and fascinating theme now,
but hope to undertake it in the not very, distant future, in a life of that remarkable monarch who
was born in York, in the Bedern If this be correct the present-day Jews, who make a historical
claim to Palestine, are utterly wide of the mark.
My aim throughout, as I hope the reader will appreciate, is to reconstruct the past history of the
world in which it appears that Britain, or, more properly, the British Islands, played so prominent
a part. But one cannot correctly report history unless the geography is also accurate, and so the
position of countries and historic cities becomes of major importance. In my former book as in
this I have seemingly taken great liberties with geography and I have to confess that in a subject
so confusing and big, it is difficult to be always accurate. It means much research.
Plato's famous Atlantis, as a matter of fact, knocks conventional geography, and all the history
or traditions attached to it, sky-high. Ignatius Donnelly, in his work Atlantis, said truly that “the
history of Atlantis is the key to Greek mythology," as, indeed, is the case. Yet that mythology
all points unhesitatingly to the earliest civilization as occurring in the Atlantic regions and not
at all in the Mediterranean or in Asia Minor. Above all, the history o f' the Old Testament is the
history of Atlantis. That these truths will be accepted is more than I would dare to believe. The
world is misled to-day about the past and the truth lies at the bottom of a very deep well. I can
only presume to be a humble pioneer, but hope that I may be able to hew a rough track which
others may widen into a great artery for the enlightenment of future generations.
COMYNS BEAUMONT 1948.
PART ONE
CRETE,
MOTHERLAND OF MEN AND GODS
"A land called Crete, in the midst of the wine-dark sea, a fair land and rich,
and therein are men innumerable and ninety cities."
ODYSSEY XIX, 171-2
1.
THE SHETLAND ISLES
AND PREHISTORIC CRETE
THOSE WHO have studied the account of the fate of the island of Atlantis, as recounted by
Plato, may have been struck by the fact that whilst its heart or center of administration and
commerce is depicted as adjoining Mount Atlas, the words "Atlas," "Atlantic" and "Atlantis"
possess no derivation from any known language of the old world either Ancient or modern. Yet,
among the so-called "native races" of America, it is a living word.
The Abbè Brasseur de Bourbourg, a learned Americanist in his day, nearly a century ago, showed
in his translation of the Codex Chimalpopoca, of the Aztecs of Mexico, that the word ATL
signified water, and by extension the sea or ocean. This Codex describes the period of "Nahui-atl,"
or "four-water," when it states that "all mankind was lost or drowned and found themselves
turned into fishes. In a single day all was lost." It appears to relate definitely to the Flood of
Noah, for the text describes further how "Nata" and his spouse "Neva" built an ark, took refuge
in it, and were saved to re-people the earth. It agrees also with the Timacus of Plato, which says,
"In one day and one fatal night there came mighty earthquakes and inundations that engulfed
that warlike people"—the Atlanteans.
The association of Mount Atlas with water accords with classic Allusions to this famed, and to
many fabulous, mountain, which was placed by Herodotus and others in the vicinity of Lake
Triton, so-named after the merman son of the god Poseidon. Plato himself describes Atlas as "a
mountain not very high on any side," situated in the island of Atlantis. Herodotus, whose
knowledge of physical geography was, mainly confined to the Mediterranean, says, it was taper
and round and of immense height, thus contradicting Plato, and perhaps identifying it with the
Peak of Teneriffe, (12,200ft.) in the Canary Isles. Today the name is vaguely given to the long mountain range which traverses Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, an inland mountain chain which
in no possible manner conforms to the volcanic Mount Atlas, situated on an island, and of no
great height.
There is reason for believing that the celestial blow which so largely destroyed the island of
Atlantis also largely, if not entirely, devastated Mount Atlas, which, according to Homer, was
as a consequence of the war made by the Titans on Zeus—another rendering of the war made
by the Satans on God—compelled to bear heaven on his mighty head and hands, otherwise a
mountain enveloped largely in cloud or mist. Homer places Atlas in the Columnar or Pillar
region: "Atlas himself upbears the Pillars high which separate earth from heaven," he sings,[1]
and Hesiod situated him at the western extremity of the earth near the Hesperides, "holding the
broad heaven on his head and unwearied hands.[2] The Pillar region, in the western extremity
of the earth, near the Hesperides, can only refer to one region, and that is the Western Highlands
of Scotland and the Hebridean Islands off its coastline.
I have previously alluded to the fate of Mount Atlas as very much akin to that of Mount
Prometheus, described in mythology as a brother of Atlas, and which also suffered eclipse at the
same tremendous period when the elements waged war upon a helpless world.[3] If they were
adjacent, and in view of the situation of Prometheus identified with reasonable certainty as Ben
Mher, the once great volcanic mountain straddling the island of Mull, we should place Atlas as
the classic descriptions agree, amid the Hesperides Isles, among the Pillars, in the farthest west.
Connected with this myth of the sufferings of Atlas is that of the fate of his "daughters," the
seven Pleiades, who drowned themselves out of sorrow for their father's fate, or, as an alternative
myth represents it, because their sisters, the Hyades, also daughters of Atlas, were drowned on
the same occasion, which we may reasonably interpret as a poetical method of indicating that
they were submerged, perhaps some permanently the others temporarily, as happened to the
islands grouped around the isle of Iona, near Mull, and as shown by the effects of considerable
tidal waves which deposited detritus indicating their past fate. Only one of the Pleiades survived
the catastrophe, we are told, namely Meropé, "the Mortal," and perhaps it is straining possibilities
too heavily to recall that the same tradition is latent of Iona, that seven years before that "awful
day" when a flood shall drown the entire region, including Ireland, the "happy Isle" shall raise
her towers above the flood. Yet it is a strange coincidence.
The Pillars or Columnar formation, attributed to the core of a former planet hurled on the occasion
of the Great Catastrophe in the Northern seas, are found only in the basaltic-strewn isles of
Scotland, namely, the Hebrides and the Faroe Islands beyond, although they also exist in
Spitzbergen, while we find the Old Sandstone Pillars such as the Old Man of Orkney, but the
latter appear to have been deposited long before the basalt formation. To revert to the name of
Meropé, given to one of the Pleiades, it should be recalled that the most ancient race of men,
identified as generically Phoenicians, or Chaldean's, or Ethiopians—who were the "bronze"
men—and who dwelt according to tradition in the west near Mount Atlas, were also known as
Meropes, with their city of Meroë or Meru.
Another myth of the Deluge cycle tells of how Merops, King of Ethiopia, saved the remnant of
humanity from perishing in the Flood on the island of Cos, one of the Hellenic Sporades, and a
name very near to the Biblical Cush, the Biblical equivalent to the Ethiopians, who, for their
part, according to Diodorus, claimed to be the first men in the world. Does this suggest that the city of Meru or Meroë was identical with the capital of Atlantis? The implications from these
traditions and myths all appear to radiate from the direction of the Western Hebrides. At all
events we must proclaim the importance of Britain in this search. We are delving amid the most
ancient memories of the past in the Atlantic region and one which the world of to-morrow should recognize for what it represents in the civilization of humanity from the earliest ages.
In connection with all this we cannot overlook at the same time the importance of the Shetland
and Orkney Islands. If Crete were described by classic writers, such as Pliny, as a long and
narrow island, as, indeed, is the Mediterranean island so-called, so, too, is Shetland, and also
Orkney, which, if they originally formed one group, subsequently left in a tattered and torn
condition by the action of celestial powers, were nearly 170 miles in length with a narrow breadth.
Geologists have determined the existence of a former marine lake of considerable size and
shallow depth to which they accord the name of Lake Orcadie, stretching from off the coast of
Caithness to Shetland mainland. This former lagoon might approximate to the Lake Triton where
Poseidon had his Ocean Palace and dwelt with his consort Amphitrite and his son Triton, although
tradition perhaps points to the direction of Mull and Iona, where Poseidon certainly possessed
such a marine temple at Ægæ, on the island of Eubcea, which I have shown with fair certitude
was the present island of Mull, a temple probably still to be identified with that enormous
sea-cavern known as MacKinnon's Cave. Nevertheless, we find Thucydides referring strangely
to Lake Triton when he says that the Spartans, in obedience to an oracular declaration of Delphi,
colonised a small island in Lake Triton called Phla.[4] Lying off Shetland is the small island
named Foula, almost exactly the same as Phla pronounced phonetically. It is situated sixteen
miles off Shetland's west coast and is famed for its perpendicular cliff scenery, the highest cliffs
in the British Isles. If it answers to Phla then we must search for Lake Triton as answering perhaps
to Lake Orcadie.
Geologists claim that in the late Tertiary Age, or early Quaternary, land between Norway, Iceland,
and Scotland collapsed. This "comparatively recent submergence," as Mr. Edward Clodd states
in Primitive Man, was coincident with the opening up of the North Sea, formerly the estuary of
the river Rhine, the widening of the mouth of the English Channel and the sinking of lands
between Devon and Brittany, in addition to the tremendous break-up of territories and islands
in the Hebridean Sea, deposits in Northern Ireland establishing immense regions of bogs, the
piling up of mountains and the cutting out of enormous meteoric-formed fiords in Norway, and
last, but not least, the devastation suffered by the Shetland and Orkney Islands. In such
circumstances it is not surprising that Plato speaks of the submersion of Atlantis.
The Shetlands themselves are one of the oldest land surfaces in the world, composed almost
entirely of metamorphic, schistose rocks, porphyry and gneiss, with a certain amount of
sandstone, while in the neighborhood of St. Magnus Bay, in Fetlar and in Unst, are large surfaces
of granite and other igneous rocks. In fact, no similar region can excel Shetland in volcanic
energy of the past. Sir John Murray and Mr. Johann Hjört, in their authoritative work, The Depths
of the Ocean, a record of deep-sea soundings in the Atlantic, have recorded the existence of a
submarine ridge which formerly linked together Iceland, the Faroe Isles, and Shetland. Cutting
through this ridge the Gulf Stream, following a channel from the western coast, connects the
warm waters from the Atlantic with the Norwegian Sea.[5]
Professor Bröggar, cited by Murray and Hjört, regarded the Fames as related to the coast of
Norway.[6] A drowned crater lies off Faroe Bank in the south-west of this group, which stand
high, possessing rugged perpendicular cliffs and deep narrow fiords like those of Norway and
Shetland. They are composed largely of basalt, tufa, and also columnar basalt, with beds of
dolerite, like several of the Inner and Outer Hebrides, and like them are completely treeless,
although formerly they enjoyed a flourishing and semi-tropical flora, as did the Hebrides. When
first occupied by the Norsemen in the ninth century they bore evidence of former habitation
( Page 13 )
supposedly by Irish and Scottish monks. It is possible they were inhabited in prehistoric days
by priests or hermits associated with the Chaldee or Gnostic faiths.
The name Faroe, or more properly Faeroe, given to this group, lying 180 miles west of Shetland,
and possibly part and parcel of it at a period of homo sapiens, bears a close resemblance to the
name of the Pharaohs. There is also Fair Island, lying halfway between the Shetlands and
Orkneys, as to which it may be remembered that, according to the mythological tree of the
Uranids or Titans or Giants, Pheres (cp. Pharaoh) was a son of Cretheus (Crete), and grandson
of Eolus (or Æolus). Pheres migrated to Thessaly, which I have shown in detail in my previous
work was originally Argyllshire, founded there his city of Pharæ at a very early time, and started
a line of tyrants when tyrants offered the only form of stable government. Villanueva, in his
Phoenician Ireland, contends that the name of Pharaoh was no other than the Erse or Hebridean
word Farragh, signifying a chieftain, and used by the ancient Irish when they fought their enemies
in battle, shouting "Farragh! A Farragh!" as they charged them.
To the Hellenic peoples the island of Crete—perhaps related to Pretan or Pretanis as Rolleston
claims in Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race—was revered by the Pelasgi and Greeks as the
Metris or Motherland of the gods and mankind. It was the land where mankind was traditionally
first created, just as, according to Plato's Critias, man was first evolved by Poseidon, the
Earthquake deity, at Mount Atlas. Crete was the theatre of Uranid civilisation and among its
earliest gods was Poseidon, who, in the opinion of some scholars, was identical with Uranus,
father of the oldest pantheon, and whose habit it was to swallow his own progeny when born,
an earthquake-like operation! The Uranid pantheon of deities included Rhea-Cybele, the Great
Goddess, consort of her brother Cronus-Saturn, who mutilated and then succeeded his father
Uranus. Ge or Gaea, described as the first being that sprang from Chaos, namely the Earth,
became by Uranus (the Heavens, or, more properly, Celestial Phenomena), the mother of the
Titans or Giants, who were so detested by their progenitor that he swallowed them up in the first
instance. Ge, indignant at this treatment of her progeny, concealed the next lot in the bosom of
the earth and then prepared a large iron sickle wherewith Cronus-Saturn mutilated Uranus, whose
blood poured into the lakes and rivers, all of which allusions appear to relate to the action of
meteoric impacts, earthquakes, floods in the Old Red Sandstone areas, and the destruction of
many of the primeval race of man. At all events the gods of the Greeks admittedly emanated
from Crete where stood Mount Ida, a mountain of no very great height, but of volcanic origin.
The Titans (from Tit, the earth) were also known as the Pelasgi, the "divine Pelasgi" of Homer,
essentially a maritime people among whom arose the great deity Hermes, represented by the
supreme Hierarch of the State, to whom was accorded divine power, and who was the Teacher
of mankind, introduced forms of "divine knowledge," including the Cabiri Mysteries and "magic"
to other countries, including Tyre, Samothrace, and Troy or Ilium. As to these Hermetic secrets
Herodotus pulls aside the veil slightly when he describes certain peculiar "squat statues" of the
god which were placed in the prows of ships, and remarks of them, "whoever has been initiated
into the mysteries of the Cabiri will understand what I mean." These Mysteries, he says, were
taught by the Pelasgi to the Samothracians before they ever went to Attica, inferring thereby a
very early date. The squat "statues" (I judge from other like traces of "magic") can only have
been a veiled meaning to disguise their precise purpose, namely, a form of early ordnance as the
reference to the Cabiri implies, and consequently explains how it was the Cretans were able to
become masters of the seas and builders of the first overseas empire as Thucydides describes.
Cabiri science was almost entirely concerned with the uses of fire. Grotesque as a small piece
of prehistoric ordnance might seem to our eyes, shaped probably in the form of a dragon with
an enormous mouth which could belch forth fire and smoke and any at a distance, even at no
great distance, it must have presented a terrifying aspect to primitive peoples who perhaps
scarcely possessed bows and arrows, and would be a powerful incentive to induce them to hand
over their treasured possessions. Such “statues” must have gone far towards enabling Minos,
King of Crete, to put down piracy, as we are told was the case, thus opening up the seas to his merchant ships. Plutarch, in his Defectu Oraculorum, gives a broad hint of Cabiri activities when
he tells us that the "magic rites" attributed to the Idæan Zeus in Crete, to Demeter in Eleusis, to
the Cabiri in Samothrace, and Dionysus in Delphi and Thebes, related to the "worship of demons,
wholly had and intermediate between gods and man." The Cretans were in short the Titans or
Giants, the men of old, the men of renown, whose thoughts, says the Book of Genesis, became
"wholly evil." We may infer what those "demons" signified.
The Flood or Great Catastrophe occurred far later in the history of the past than is generally
believed. It occurred more than eight hundred years after Ab'Ram (Abraham) went south to the
land of Canaan and founded his Cabiri city of Hebron, which bore other names. Thucydides, in
his summary of the Hellenic lands before the Deucalion Deluge--the self-same flood as Noah's,
as I showed at great length in my former volume, and also where it took place—says that they
were called after their various tribes, and especially as Pelasgi, a famous maritime people.
In Crete's fabulous history we find such names as Cretheus (Crete), Tyro (Tyre), Sidero (Sidon),
and Eolus, founders of ides and districts in Hellas, including Corinth, Elis, Calydon, Ætolia, and
the Pheres or Pharæ, the Magnetes or Giants of Thessaly. "Old Eolus," as the eponymous hero
or patriarch of the Polasgi or Eolids, married his niece Tyro, daughter of the haughty Salmoneus,
whose presumption and arrogance were so great that Zeus smote him and his city with a
thunderbolt, and Tyro in turn became enamored of the river Enipeus and was accordingly
ill-treated by Sidero who tortured her because she had many children by the god Poseidon
(including the heroes Pelias and Noleus), who disguised himself as the river Enipeus. These
clearly bore a prehistoric reference to geography and events, and were a favorite theme of the
poets and bards, but whatever their implications it is certain that they were closely related to the
Phoenicians as Pelasgi. As George Grote, the historian of Greece, says, they merge into one. But
Aryan civilization apparently originated in the volcanic Shetland-Orkney Isles, and in the
neighborhood of Ben More in the Island of Mull. There arose the earliest known culture.
They were the men of old, the "Men of Renown." Josephus tells us that the Children of Seth (or
Sheth) were the inventors of astronomy and erected certain pillars to warn the world of future
events. He says that in process of time they became perverted, begat sons who made God their
enemy, were despisers of all that was good and were destroyed. He adds that Noah left the land
of Seth before the Flood.'[7]
If I claim that the Shetland-Orkneys were the original island of Crete what evidence have I to
offer? One clue is contained in Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus (Ulysses), as we know, sailing from
Troy after its downfall, hoping to return to his island of Ithaca, came to the coasts of the Cicones
of Thrace, who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Orcus, the Dark, Black Underworld, Orcus related
to our Orcades or Orkneys, but also applied to Caithness and Sutherlandshire. Escaping from
their unfriendly attentions, the hero reached the Lotophagi, or "Lotus Eaters," who dwelt, says
Herodotus, by the shores of Lake Triton, and applying it to this region were presumably the
waters embracing the Shetland-Orkney group.[8]
From the Lotophagi he continued his voyage to isles inhabited by the gigantic and cannibalistic
Cyclops, sons of Uranus, who dwelt as hermits in caves, but within near call of one another.
Besides their flocks and herds they were engaged in certain secret avocations, which produced,
to cite Homer, "superior power," and were near neighbours of Hypereia, a name inferring a land
"beyond" or "above" the mainland. These particular Cyclops, who mainly dwelt on small islands
where they were segregated from the rest of mankind, may be assigned to the small islets of the
Orkneys many of which were occupied by hermits in ancient days and are still termed locally
Papay, Pappay, or Pappa, signifying priest. If Lake Triton lay in this region Odysseus was sailing
towards "Hypereia"—the Shetlands.
After his dire experience with the Cyclop Polyphemus, the hero, much shaken, escaped to the
Eolid island where he received an almost royal reception and lavish hospitality from King Eolus, who gave him the inestimable gift of the four winds in a bag to ensure him a peaceful and safe
voyage to his native Ithaca:
Ev'ry rude blast which from its bottom turns the deep, That bag imprisoned held.[9]
Hence Ulysses turned his ship's prow towards the south-west where the island of Ithaca lay, but
the avarice of his crew, who suspected that the bag held other treasure, compelled him to open
it, the confined winds escaped and a resultant violent southwest gale blew him back to the Eolid
island. This time his reception was very different, for Eolus regarded him as one hated by the
gods and refused him and his crew even shelter. Thereupon, setting out afresh, the same
south-west gale carried the luckless hero in his storm-tossed boat to the north-east until at length
he reached the inhospitable shores of the Laestrygones. We can distinguish with considerable
certainty where they dwelt, for it was the land of the Midnight Sun, where in summer there is
no night, or, as Homer so exquisitely describes it, where herds could graze undeterred by nightfall:
The herdsman there, driving his cattle home,
Summons the shepherd with his flocks abroad.
The sleepless there might double wages earn,
Attending now the herds, now tending sheep,
For the night pastures. . . .[10]
The Laestrygones were also a giant people, kinsmen of the Cyclops, we are told, addicted like
them to cannibalism, who reared herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and were worshippers of
Poseidon like the Cyclops and Cretans. Can there be any serious doubt but that Homer, whose
geography may be said without hesitation to have been related to the regions of the Atlantic
Ocean and in no sense whatever to the Mediterranean, was describing the Norsemen, dwelling
in the northern parts of Norway to which Odysseus' ship was blown, to the land of the Midnight
Sun? Sir William Ridgeway, perhaps the foremost Greek scholar and archaeologist of our period,
found no hesitation in pronouncing them the Norwegians.[11] They were known also as the
Formiæ a giant people who formed settlements in "Libya," and were related probably to the
Formoraice or Fo'Mori of Irish legend, a cruel but civilised maritime race who tyrannised over
that island until they were ultimately defeated by the De Danaan. They were said in Hibernian
legends to have ruled Ireland before the Flood--a significant admission![12]
Norse traditions mention an ancient cannibalistic race of giants who lived in Norway in the
direction of the present Tromso, where dwelt, according to the Orphic Argonautica, Cimmerians,
west of the Rhipæi Mountains, If the Læstrygones lived in northern Norway the inference is that
in the view of Homer the Eolid island was no other than Shetland, and this is supported by the
whole incidence of Odysseus' voyage from Orcus, in the Orkney region, the Cyclops, and onward
to Old Eolus' island, all seemingly in the region of Lake Triton.
The Pelasgic Eolids, extremely maritime, formed colonies in many parts of "Asia," and their
connections show them to have been, as Uranids, Chaldæo-Phoenicians. Incidentally, probably
few lovers of Homer's works have considered seriously the reality of his immortal descriptions
as a geographical factor. Nor have many asked themselves what serious truth lay behind his
fabulous accounts and exaggerated characteristics such as the narcotic habits of the Lotophagi
or the cannibalistic tendencies of the Cyclops or the nightless day of the Læstrygones. True, he
employs pure fantasy as when he makes Eolus give Odysseus the four winds in a bag, but it was
allied to the idea that Boreas concealed the north wind in a cave, and behind it was the suggestion
that Eolus' island, part of Crete, was a region of varying and strong winds. In all these instances
let us remember that Homer was trimming his sails to appeal to the kinds of audience he had to
entertain and to instruct. If, as a motive to widen the knowledge of his own age, he used
mythology and extravagance to obtain his high lights suited to the mentality of his audience, his
system was surely legitimate.
It may be asked, what connection may there be between the name of Eolus and Shetland? In the
north of the mainland lies the island of Yell, and there we may even perhaps recover the reference
to the four winds, for the island of Yell is separated from the mainland by the Sound of Yell,
through which the tides race and the winds blow frequently with hurricane force along that rocky
channel with its precipitous cliffs in a region of the world peculiarly subject to unexpected and
furious squalls. That this dreaded stretch of sea was known and feared in prehistoric times is
indicated by the unusual number of cairns, ancient burial places, of victims to the seas here,
together with the remains of rude altars or shrines erected by those who escaped a watery grave
in these perilous waters. Here, indeed, it may be said that the unruly winds and seas meet, as
they did notably in 881, resulting in a grave disaster, and if there has not survived any stack
attributed to Old Eolus, like the Old Man of Hoy in Orkney, or the legendary Old Man Boreas
who held the north wind in fief in a cave below Mount Haemus in Thrace, there are in the Yell
area many caves in whose depths the winds may be said to lie captured and hushed.[13]
Examine this name Yell in conjunction with Eolus (Άϊοάος), for in pronunciation it is to all
intents and purposes the same. Drop the suffix "os" or "us," .when the Greek root Aiol, or the
Latin Æol or Eol becomes Yell or the slightest variation of it. Then recollect that Eolus was
traditionally king of the Magnes, which name Pheres, an Eolid, adopted when he founded
Magnesia in Thessaly, a strip of coast bordered by the Pagasean Bay and the river Peneus, and
situated opposite to Euboea, our island of Mull.[14] The name Magnes or Magnetes became a
term to indicate the giant race of Titans and we find it used nowhere else except in Shetland and
Norway, for Shetland's patron saint is St. Magnus, to whom St. Malthus Cathedral in Lerwick
is dedicated, a somewhat shadowy saint it is true, but the name suffices, and here is a bay of the
same name. Hence both Eolus and Magnes possess their name-places in Shetland, and while on
the subject of place-names I would add that it also preserves the unusual name of Ur (of the
Chaldees) in the Villians of Ure, the Ura Firth, and in the isle and strait of Urie, near Yell.
Ur . . Ura . . . Uranus! The last-mentioned being the earliest conception of divinity known to us
was succeeded under mysterious circumstances by his son Cronus-Saturn, otherwise Baal, who
was taken by Ab'Ram to the south country and became the chief deity of the Israelites until a far
later day. The suppression of Uranus by Cronus may be related in some manner with the dispute
among the Chaldeans of Ur when Ab'Ram revised his conception of the celestial deity, according
to Josephus in the following passage:
He determined to renew and to change the opinion all men happened then to have
concerning God; for he was the first that ventured to publish this notion that there
was but one God, the Creator of the Universe; and that, as to other gods each of
them only afforded it according to his appointment and not by their own power . .
. for which doctrines, when the Chaldeans and other people raised a tumult against
him, he thought fit to leave that country . . and came and lived in the land of
Canaan,[15]
It may be supposed from the foregoing that the Chaldeans had previously worshipped the "gods
that came newly up," comets and meteors, the Elohim of Genesis, or Eloeim of the Phoenicians,
until Ab'Ram taught that the Sun dominated the Universe. So arrived the Saturnian Age, called
the Golden Age, and in view of the ceaseless search for gold it was a true appellation, the Age
when Minos and Solomon were seeking gold in all parts. It was more scientifically named the
Bronze Age, which superseded the earlier Brass era, the Age when Crete, Atlas, Ur, the
Phoenicians or Meropes or Pelasgi, and, let me add, Solomon, dominated the world, with the
living Hermes the spiritual ruler above all monarchs. It preceded the Flood.
The Flood, or more justly the Great Catastrophe, destroyed the cult of Saturn, who became
discredited to many, including the Egyptians, depicted to them as a malignant devil in the shape
of an immense celestial serpent with a hundred voices who spat lightning. He is the Old Serpent
of Revelation who was cast into the bottomless pit of Hades for a thousand years. But superstition dies hard, and those who imagine this event was cast in the latitude of the Middle East may
explain how less than a couple of centuries ago in parts of the Scottish Highlands and in Ireland,
where Christianity penetrated slowly into the minds of a conservative folk, Beltain fires were
lighted to Saturn on May Day on every hill-top and persons "walked through the Fire of Bel.[16]
For this ancient survival Highland housewives baked special cakes with small lumps or cones
raised on their surface, like unleavened bread.[17] Possibly it was a folk memory of the dreadful
occasion when volcanic fires burned furiously in those regions, the original Hades or Underworld
of Britain, a memory believed in by many nations, the very region in which traditionally Saturn
or Satan was thrown under an island of Britain, according to Plutarch, with rocks and stones
hurled upon him, which region, I have strongly suggested in my previous volume, related to the
strange little island of Staffa.
That the same worship of Saturn or Molech was followed by the Hebrews long before they
embraced their monotheistic faith of the god Jehovah, is evidenced by many allusions to the
burning of victims in the fires to Baal, a practice which actually continued until the overthrow
of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans of Babylon. Nor is this similarity surprising when we grasp the
truth that the history of the Bible relates to the ancient inhabitants of the north and to the British
people in particular.
Thus we need find no incongruity in due course if it transpires that, not only was the island of
Crete, the motherland of men, regionally Ur-of-the-Chaldees, or, that Ur lay in the Uranid
territories, but that the patriarch Abraham or Ab'Ram in early days led his followers into the
"south" country from this same Crete, or from the adjoining Caledonian lands, and made his way
to the south-west of England, to Wessex, and erected his capital city of Hebron where now stands
Avebury in Wiltshire, and where he and his successors set up the immense serpentine temple to
their god Saturn, presided over by Hermes, the Chaldean Ram or Rama.
Thus may be understood how important is it that the reader Mould recognise the real situation
and prehistoric importance of Crete.
THE COLLAPSE OF
THE CRETAN EMPIRE
The Gnostics of Crete and their later disciples, the Orphics of Samothrace, were part and parcel
of the earliest known philosophical and religious hierarchy, presided over by the deity Hermes,
who later removed his seat of divinity from Gnossos to Samothrace. The Great Ram or Rama,
the Venerable Being, his sway embraced the Chaldeans (or usually Culdees of Britain.), who
were in fact the Orphios, which ancient sect survived until well into the Christian era and extended
into England as far south at least as York. Their sway embraced all Scotland, northern England,
a considerable part of Norway, as far north at least to Trömso.
This important aspect of the past deserves our passing attention. In continuity no religious cult
can approach the Chaldeans, who claimed descent from Seth—the original Hermes—and as early
as the time of Ab'Ram were the moral and spiritual and political guides of the civilised world.
It is true they changed their allegiance more than once and the persecutions they suffered under
the Romans as Druids remain almost a closed book, but they survived until a late day. As early
as ecclesiastical history can be traced that ancient city of York had become the head of the Culdee
or Colidei or Céli Dė church, Canon Raine states that its archbishops exercised jurisdiction over
all Scotland, including Iona and the Orkney Islands, and that they performed acts of visitation
and consecration throughout north Britain. They survived in York and Ripon as late as 1195.
Until that date they also claimed ecclesiastical supremacy in Norway as far north as Tromso,
says the same authority.[18] is it a strange coincidence that this territorial supremacy should
have included the regions which might be said to have been dominated or ruled by the Chaldeans
or Culdees from the earliest times? It is not, when the facts are appreciated.
The Curetes of Crete—who gave us our word "curate" to signify a priest—and who were the
teachers of the people, composed epic stories of gods and heroes. Another branch were the
Corybantes, the bards and singers of choruses and hymns, and this sect or caste included the
Galli, the special priests of the Cretan Mother-goddess Rhea-Cybele, also called Galatea, after
whom were named the Galatai, or Gauls, otherwise known later as the Cimmerians or
Hyperboreans.
The Romans had a tradition that the Cyclop Polyphemus had three sons by Galatea, named Celtus,
Illyrius, and Gallus. The Cretan cult of the "Great Mother," Rhea-Cybele, and later that of
Dionysus, assumed wild orgies, especially in Phrygia (originally colonised by Crete), Lydia, and
adjoining lands, in connection with certain sacred rites performed amid violent ecstasies,
doubtless assisted by strong liquor in the Dionvsiac orgies. The Corybantes, with drums, cymbals,
horns, and in armour, enthusiastically performed their orgiastic dances in the forests and
mountains. The Galli, inspired by fanaticism or example, since they comprised the singing priests,
were said to perform a voluntary act of castration in honour of the goddess; but it may have been
not entirely unrelated to the timbre of their voices.
Crete's acme of power was reached in the reign of Minos, as was that of the kingdom of Israel
under Solomon, both monarchs having many remarkable resemblances. Minos, designated "son
of Oceanus" by the poets, was an Eolid according to the historian Ephorus, but his origin remains
obscure, concealed in myth. Like Solomon, he became king in his very early youth, was a
law-giver, a cruel tyrant, sent his ships on long voyages, was avid for wealth, and introduced
strange goddesses into his country for political reasons. Thucydides describes how he established
a navy, made- himself master of the Hellenic seas, and to ensure trade without piracy expelled
the Carians or Careni from the Cyclades Isles. The Carians are an important clue in this
investigation.
The Hellenic Sea, upon which they dwelt, was also sometimes termed the Deucalion Sea because
here were felt the dire effects of the Deucalion Deluge. We find the old Scots' geographer, Lindsay
of Pitscottie, calling the Hebridean Sea, with its isles, the Oceanus Duecallidon, which may
present a survival of folklore in respect of those historic waters, The Carians, placed in Asia
Minor by our accepted method of geography, are described by Herodotus as subjects of Minos
at an early date, and known as Leleges, "dwelling among the Isles," says he, "and never, so far
is I have been able to push my inquiries, liable to give tribute to any man." He praises them
further in these words, "They served on board the ships of King Minos whenever he required;
and thus, as he was a great conqueror and prospered in his wars, the Careni in his day were the
most famous by far of all nations of the earth."[19]
For excellent reasons we should take note of this maritime people. They can be traced back to
Scotland.
Ptolemy, in his Geographia, places the Careni (Καρενοι) or Cerones :crones (Κέρωνεϛ) as
dwelling in the north-west of Scotland. The sea-loving Careni or Cerones are placed by him as
in the neighbourhood of Acharn, by Cape Wrath (cp. A-charn and Carian) and in the vicinity of
Loch Carron, opposite Skye (the Carron being the Acheron of the Underworld as shown in my
previous volume), adjacent to the many Hebridean Isles. Sir William Ridgeway claims that
Carians and Leleges were the same, and it may be recalled that the steersman or "skipper" of the
Argo was Ancæus, chief of the Leleges.
Carians or Leleges racially they were closely related to the Philistines. Herodotus describes how
they mutilated their faces with knives in honour of Osiris, also a Philistine religious custom, and
we find in the Scriptures how King David and his successors employed Philistines or Carians or
Cretans as their bodyguard. It is generally recognised by Bible authorities that the Leleges were
the same as the Philistines, the "remnant of Caphtor," usually interpreted as signifying Crete. If
in place of the letter "L" we employ "P"—a legitimate exchange seeing how the later Goidel invaders of Britain, it has been contended, apparently introduced or forced the "P" sound for
many words, especially those beginning with "B," "K," or "L"—the name Leleges becomes
Peleges, a variation of Peleshtim or Pelishim. We discover the name Peleg in the O.T. a little
mysteriously: "Unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg; for in his days
was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan."[20]
The "earth divided" suggests the Great Catastrophe, and inferentially that Peleg suffered worse
than others. Nor is that surprising if his habitat were as indicated, for, according to my
interpretation of Homer, the Hellenic Hades lay in these very parts, the Carron River (as stated)
having been the Acheron, river of Hell, which would explain the conundrum of the Philistines
as being the "remnant of Caphtor," for they were ostensibly a part of the Cretan Empire, and
those of them in the south became but a remnant after the Flood disaster. We have, in fact, another
clue in the River Pyri-Phlegethon, the "flaming Phlegethon," commemorated by Homer in the
heart of Hades.[21]It may further be identified with Phlegra, another legendary site of the "battle"
between the gods and giants.
The position of the Careni in this Hades region, as denoted by Ptolemy, helps considerably to
establish the true situation of Shetland as the original Crete. The isles of the Carians blocked the
passage of King Minos' ships on their voyages to distant shores, and he had to subject them,
which he did with much wisdom by making them the nucleus of his own mariners or ships' crews.
The passage in Genesis which describes Peleg as a "son of Eber" may be further corroborated
in the fact that all the islands off western Scotland are named the Hebrides, otherwise Isles of
Eber or the Hebrews, a name which has resisted all changes from a prehistoric past.
But to return to Crete herself.
Homer gives other clues to its situation beside that of Eolus. In one passage he describes Crete
in her zenith:
:
There is a land amid the sable flood
Called Crete; fair, fruitful, circled by the sea,
Num'rous are her inhabitants, a race
Not to be summ'd, and ninety towns she boasts . .
One city in extent the rest exceeds,
Gnossos; the city in which Minos reign'd,
Who ever at a nine years close,
conferr'd
With Jove himself . . .[22]
In another passage, Odysseus, disguising himself as a stranger to his wife Penelope, describes
how, when on his way to Troy, her husband was driven by stress of weather to seek shelter at
Gnossos, where he called on King Idomeneus, one of the heroes who fought on the side of
Agamemnon against Troy, to whose action was attributed Crete's later disasters. Here is the
passage in prose:
There I saw Odysseus . . for the might of the wind bare him too to Crete, as he was
making for the land of Troy, and had driven him wandering beyond Malaea. So he
stayed his ships in Amnisus, whereby is the cave of Ilithya in havens hard to gain
and scarce he escaped the tempest. Anon he reached the city and asked for
Idomencus.[23]
Cowper's rendering of the dangerous entrance to Gnossos is perhaps preferable: "The storm his
barques bore into the Amnisus, for the cave of Ilithya, a dangerous port and which with difficulty
he attained."
I suggest that this city may conjecturally be recognised in Shetland., very near to the present
capital Lerwick, where the Sound, though affording a fine anchorage, has a difficult entrance
for sailing ships. Odysseus, we are told, anchored in Amnisus off Gnossos, Amnisus being
mentioned only by Priscian in relation to the "Pole Islands," also called the Boreades, hence the
Northernmost Isles. Priscian also gives them the names of Nesides, or the Ivy Islands, ivy being
sacred to the god Dionysus. These isles, he says, were inhabited by the Amnites, whose women
performed Bacchic or Dionysiac rites and were crowned with ivy berries and leaves.[24]
Rufus Avienus, who possessed as well a remarkable knowledge of the British shores and probably
the Norwegian Sea as well, may allude to the same region when he mentions two isles of the
Britons in which the women danced in celebration of Bacchic orgies, when secret rites were
carried on far into the night, the air rang with shouts, and the worshippers carried their fanaticism
to greater excesses than even the Thracians.[25] The more north we explore the greater the
addiction to the Dionysiac cult in the past.
To return to Amnisus and the Amnites, opposite Lerwick and Bressay Sound is Bressay Island,
approachable from the south through a rock-bound and dangerous piece of water, which narrows
until it is reduced to half a mile in width opposite Lerwick Harbour. It faces Bressay Island, six
miles long by three in breadth, having many high caves, that best known being the Cave of the
Bard; and the Orkneyman's Cave, a vast cavern roofed with stalactites and paved with the restless
sea. It is a famous landmark to mariners, towering 264 feet on the most southerly point of the
island.
It can answer to the Cave of Ilithya, the name of the Hyperborean Artemis in her character as
patroness of women in childbirth. Other names hereabouts are curious. Bressay itself is said to
be a corruption of Bardsey, the Isle of the Bards, or Boreades, and is also known as the Giant's
Isle. Mr. Whatmore contends that Bard was a rendering of Boread or "Pole Man," and we know
from Diodorus that the Boreades, who were bards, had charge of the round temple of Apollo on
the Hyperborean Island in the north, where they sang hymns to the god from the Equinox to the
coming of the Pleiades. The island lay opposite to the Celts.[26] This may be a reference to the
Stones of Stennis in Orkney. In the Norse tongue the word "bardi" signifies a giant, and on
Bressay this interpretation is perhaps supported by the name of "Giant's Leg" given to the
extremity of the Bard to the outward bastion of beetling cliffs.
Another odd name occurs in this area. Separated only by a narrow chasm from Bressay Island
stands the Isle of Noss, which rises to an inclined plane on its southern side where it presents a
precipitous cliff rising to 600 feet at the Noup, the face of the cliff broken up by a remarkable
labyrinth of lofty caverns, honeycombed with sea-corridors into whose depths few care to venture
far such a web of sea-arcades needs little fancy in order to picture it as a marine temple devoted
to the Cretan deity Poseidon.
I beg to draw attention to this name NOSS, in conjunction with the Borcades and Bards, and the
likely identification of Bressay Sound with the Amnisus in close proximity to Gnossos (or
Knossos), according to Homer. This word NOSS may be related to the veiled and mysterious
prehistoric city of whose details we know so little except that it possessed a famous temple to
Poseidon and the Labyrinth where the man-eating Minotaur was rampant.
Yet we may gather from Homer that at the time of the Trojan War the streets were filled with
men of diverse speech creating a confusion of tongues: "Achæans some," he says, "and some
indigenous; Cydonians, plume-waving Dorians, and the divine Pelasgi." Note that adjective
"divine" of the Pelasgi! Here we may be sure arose the first most ancient priestly sect known as
Gnostics, the sons of Seth, astronomers, philosophers, and scientists, the men of "divine
knowledge." Their name was derived from the root γνοηο, signifying know, perceive,
understand; cognate with γνομον, divine knowledge or wisdom, hence Gnostics, those who
professed and taught knowledge, but implying divine knowledge. It was the probable explanation of the name of the city of NoAmmon, the word NO (γνο) in more derivative form signifying
the city of the Divine-in-Knowledge Ammon, otherwise Hermes, his sacred city. It is thus at
least possible that the name Noss preserves for posterity in that extraordinary method of
persistence which so many place-names possess, the site of the ancient Cretan capital, Gnoss-(os),
and that here stood the famous Mount Ida, the sacred and venerable city of Asgard of the followers
of Odin, the ward or city of the gods, which the Voluspa describes as where: [sounds like 2020 pride parade DC]
The Asar met--Raised on IdavIöl,
Altars and high temples . . .
They played chess on the grassplot;
Lacked nothing of gold.[29]
The Later Edda says that the sons of Bor raised altars and temples on the Idavöll, and there the
rulers met. It was no lofty mountain. "Bor" is the root of Boread and Boreades, the North, and
it may be also of "Ur," for it is also rendered "Bor" (i.e., Bur). In fact I have suspected for years
that the Cretan Gnossos was Ur-of-the-Chaldees.
The isle of Noss may have played its part in the long ago with its vast caverns which recall the
Labyrinth haunted by the Minotaur, for whom, according to mythology, Pasiphae, wife of Minos,
conceived a violent passion, whereby that monarch ordered Daedalus to build the labyrinthine
caves into which the victims of the sacrifice were hurled to indulge the appetite of the monster.
It makes no difference to the toll of tragedy enacted through the ages in the guise of religion, if,
in fact, the Minotaur were only a brass idol of a man with a bull's head, to whom human beings
were sacrificed, or if Pasiphae's "passion" meant no more than that she was a pious woman
according to her lights. But we may believe the Labyrinth itself existed.
Imagine, then, that here, in this now remote Isle of Noss, human life was sacrificed to Poseidon
and the labyrinthine caves were utilised for that purpose. The high light on this procedure is that
Minos imposed on the defeated city of Athens as tribute the sending of her most noble and
beautiful youths and maidens who were offered to the Minotaur for his delectation. Poseidon
was above all else a maritime deity, but one who sent earthquakes and who had to be propitiated.
In the case of the Labyrinth, set by the sea-shore, it is a likely inference that the impenetrable
caverns of Noss may have been utilised to sacrifice the victims to the god. It is not difficult to
conjecture the fate of those noble Athenian youths and maidens, who, after sailing to Gnossos,
were thrust into one or other of the entrances to the caves from above, and left in utter darkness
until they expired of hunger, thirst, exposure, or terror, clutched finally in the embrace of the
waves whose merciful release was kindlier than the human tyrants who exercise such cruelty.
They may have been fettered and thrown down the steep, slimy, and pitch-dark maze of arcades
into an eerie silence broken only by the lapping of the hungry waves below. To escape such a
death did Ariadne traditionally give Theseus a cord to spin out and thus enabled him to retrace
the pathway.
Homer made Minos a son of Zeus by Europe, daughter of Phoenix, King of Tyre, which goddess
was unceremoniously whisked away by Poseidon, who emerged from the sea in the form of a
bull when she was picking flowers on the sea-shore at Sidon, attended by her seven maidens,
and carried her on his back to Crete. Europe has been compared with the Cretan goddess
Britomartis or Dictynna, as well as to Artemis. Dictynna, an epithet of Artemis, was related to
diktyon, a fishing net, as she was especially the protectress of fishermen. Dicté was the name of
a height in Crete where Apollo and Artemis, his twin sister, were brought up, although born at
Delos, which famous small island I have claimed in my earlier volume was the present Iona.
They were both notably gods of Hyperborea, and their close relationship to Crete points to the
identity of the Hyperborean island beyond the North Wind."
Crete developed her own mines, but in using the name of Crete it should be recognised that her
territories undoubtedly incorporated much on the mainland. We hear of the Dactyli, who laboured on Mount Ida, where it was claimed they first discovered the uses of copper and iron, as also
rhythm and music, presumably the rhythmic music of the smith's hammer as he struck the metal
on the anvil.
In Rhodes, an island governed by Crete, were the Telchines, workers in brass and iron, who were
credited with founding the sickle of Cronus-Saturn and the trident of Poseidon. Minos himself
was a patron of science as witness his employment of Daedalus, who fled to him for protection
from Athens, although later, owing to his tyranny, Daedalus, with his son Icarus, escaped from
him by flying in the air, he having invented the means of flight. Apocryphal as such a tradition
may seem there was no reason to prevent Daedalus from having invented some air-flight
contrivance perhaps on the principle of the glider. Traditionally it was deposited by Daedalus in
a temple dedicated to this famous pioneer of flight on the island of Euboea, where he alighted,
although Icarus fell into the sea and was drowned. Such a possibility can be conceived by the
present generation, for we are now air-conscious and, in fact, much evidence exists to prove that
the ancients at the time of the Flood had mastered the secret of flight in Hyperborea.
Minos was stated by Herodotus to have lived three generations antecedent to the war with Troy,
but I consider in the revision of ancient chronology that his period was some three centuries
before the Flood. Homer makes Deucalion a "son" of Minos, a generalisation relating to origin
often, but at least as after Minos, mid it also links perhaps Noah and Deucalion, for Noah was
the son of Seth or Sheth, or Shetland, as on the above showing was Deucalion.[30] Minos, become
after death a judge or ruler of the Underworld of Orcus, is said by Herodotus to have been angry
when Crete took up arms on behalf of Agamemnon against Troy, a credible attitude since Troy
was a daughter of Crete, founded by Teucer and his son Tros, and that the Cretans, though
Pelasgic, were not of the race of the Argives of Agamemnon or of the Achæans of Achilles.
The day dawned when Crete suffered eclipse. Something dramatic took place. Ill-fortune dogged
her footsteps from the day when Minos wantonly attacked Sicania. Herodotus says that she lost
a great many of her sons as the result of Minos' invasion of that island, and in a subsequent war
with the same people, the survivors never returned to their homes, but settled in Iapygia.
"The Præsians say," recounts Herodotus, that after Minos' death, "men of various nations now
flocked to Crete which was stripped of its inhabitants,. but none came in such numbers as the
Hellenes,"[31] and there is reason to think that by Hellenes he referred mainly to Dorians. But
this invasion of a country which had lost its proud position suggests a considerable upheaval
politically or otherwise. Again, after the Trojan War, more disaster befell her and she was a
"second time stripped of her inhabitants, a remnant only being left." It is somewhat strange that
these vicissitudes seem to fit in with the events relating to the Israelites as told in the Scriptures,
for they were overrun after the death of Solomon, when there was a violent split between the
tribes, and later when Shalmaneser stripped her of her inhabitants and left only a mere remnant
behind. There is a much closer relationship between biblical and classic events than historians
appreciate
Not very much later, after the Trojan War, generally placed as at circa 1184 B.C., but
probably—for reasons to be explained subsequently—some 150 years earlier, Virgil, who derived
his information from sources we cannot now ascertain, paints a vivid picture of Crete's collapse.
He describes in the Æneid how Æneas sailed from Troy after its fall to Hellas or Greece, but that
a southwest wind blew the Trojans from the Cyclades to Crete, the isle described as the "ancient
seat of the Curetes," where plague and pestilence were now rife, and trees and corn had been
destroyed by the star Sirius. Zeus had forbidden the Trojan refugees to land on Crete's shores,
but they heard that its King Idomeneus had been deposed and banished, the land was deserted,
and the palaces and houses of Gnossos had been forsaken. Something phenomenal must have
taken place to account for this serious state of affairs, and it may have been related to the untoward
meteorological events after the sack of Troy, when Nemesis seems to have descended on the
Argive heroes. We learn of earthquakes and tempests, of mountainous seas, of ships being wrecked or driven headlong by storms to distant shores from whence the heroes never returned,
so that nearly all the except Agamemnon, who was murdered by his wife's paramour, and
Menelaus, who sought refuge in Egypt, either died or were dispersed.
The Orphic Argonautika offers us a certain solution. Therein the island of Crete is referred to
as Lyctonia, after Lyctus, the later capital mentioned by Homer.[32] The Argonautika speaks of
the "ancient Lyctonia," as divided or split into separate islands, and relates how Poseidon, in
anger with Father Cronus, struck Lyctonia with his golden trident, from which we may deduce
earthquakes smote the ancient island and broke it into many particles, as in the case of Shetland.
In more prosaic terms, Josephus describes the fate of the Sethites: "God turned the dry laud into
sea, and thus were all these men destroyed." Its fate recalls the words of the Scandinavian Voluspa
of such an event,
Surtur from the south wends
With seething fire,
The falchion of the Mighty One.
A sunlight flameth,
Mountains together dash,
Giants headlong rush,
Men tread the paths to Hell,
And Heaven is rent in twain.
Herein there lies a possible explanation of the deserted country-side, cities, towns, palaces, and
houses swept away, or left in utter ruin, their inhabitants either dead or led away previously by
their wise men to other climes before the final crisis. It is recorded that the astronomers were
advised beforehand—like Noah or Deucalion—of impending disaster, which is largely the theme
of the Book of Enoch concerned with the subject of the Flood and those who lived at the time.
It is not invidious to mention in this connection the Aztec or Toltec legends of Mexico, whence
they migrated from the east. One of these traditions describes in dramatic language the last days
of a great city named Tollan, or Tula, or Tulan—a name very near to Thule, the early name given
to Shetland as ultima terra—a city also described as "The City of Seven Caves," well able to
apply to the caverns of Bressay and Noss, where they taught that civilisation first began. It is
described as a very great city with streets, palaces, and ruled by a god-king. Its last days; speak
of a bloody war, of revolution, volcanic eruptions, extraordinary meteorological phenomena,
pestilence, starvation, the desperation of the populace, leading finally to wholesale flight and
then the catastrophe. When visited later by the people called Chichimecs, under their chief, named
Xolotl, they found the capital abandoned, its fortress, temples and palaces in ruins, and the streets
overgrown with vegetation.[33] Is it a Mexican memory of the last days of Crete, or Atlantis?
And while we are concerned with this aspect of the past, are we wise to ignore the contentions
of Tacitus, in his history of the Jews, when he states that Crete was their motherland? In view
of the very close relationship between Crete and the Chaldees, and the city of Ur, from whence
Ab'Ram led his followers to the south, such a claim has at least a right to our consideration, for
Chaldiea was the mother of the Israelite tribes or of most of them. In matters such as this we
should show respect to the character of our authority. Tacitus was one of the greatest of Roman
historians, honoured by the Emperors Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, the son-in-law of Agricola,
and the friend of Pliny the Younger. Moral dignity, consciousness of truth and integrity stamp
all his works, in addition to which he had a considerable knowledge of the northern countries,
including Britain. We have therefore no justification for ignoring his views because his history of the Jews—or those among whom some became known as Jews later—does not happen to
agree with the conventional acceptance of their history and settlements. Tacitus would have been
more accurate perhaps had he described them as Hebrews, or, as known in British prehistory,
Iberes or Iberi, which is only a variation of the same name.
Tacitus declares that traditionally the Jews ran away from the island of Crete and settled
themselves on the coast of Libya "at the time when Saturn was driven out of his kingdom by the
power of Jupiter." What he evidently signified was that these people fled at the time of the Great
Catastrophe or Flood, which, as I have sought to prove in my previous work, was c. 1330-1322
BC, no fabulous date at all, but based on astronomy. Tacitus is disposed to trace their name of
Judi from Mount Ida, in Crete, whose neighbouring inhabitants he says were called Mai. If this
were the case, the Judaeans could claim most illustrious descent. Their origin Tacitus explains
in this manner:
Some say they were a people that were very numerous in Egypt under the reign of
Isis; and that the Egyptians got free from that burden by sending them into the
adjacent countries under their captains Hierosolymus and Judas, The greatest part
say that they were those Ethiopians whom fear and hatred obliged to change their
habitations in the reign of King Cepheus. There are those who report that they were
Assyrians, who, wanting lands, got together, and obtained part of Egypt and soon
afterwards settled themselves in cities of their own in the land of the Hebrews and
the parts of Syria that lay nearest to them. Others pretend their origin to be more
eminent, and that the Solymi, a people celebrated in Homer's poems, were the
founders of this nation and gave their own name Hierosolyma to the city which
they built there.[34]
Although there are some garbled statements in the foregoing, on the whole Tacitus does not
appear to be very wide of the truth. It is largely a question of ancient geography. The Ethiopians,
for example, were the same as the Pelasgi, and they were Phoenicians or Israelites, whichever
word be preferred. In another chapter Tacitus correctly says that the "Idæi."—meaning Ab'Ratn
from Mount Ida or Ur—gave them their god Saturn and caused them to change their abode.
There was undoubtedly a very ancient relationship between the island of Crete, the Chaldeans,
and the Israelites, as also with King Solomon, who so closely compares in outstanding
characteristics with King Minos.
The subjects of Minos were even called "Solymi." Sarpedon, a relation of Minos, driven from
his kingdom by that tyrant, sailed with his followers to Lycia, and his following were designated
Solymi, speaking the Phoenician tongue. It gives point to Tacitus' assertion that the Solymi were
the founders of the Jews--or, more properly, of the Judaeans. There was certainly much closer
contact between Hiram of Tyre and Solomon than accords with even friendly relations between
monarchs, for Hiram furnished Solomon with all the gold he needed and sent him six score talents
of gold, an enormous sum for those times.[35]
There was the strange usurpation of the throne by the boy Solomon, covertly supported by Hiram,
the head—or Hierarchical Head --of a state of great antiquity, power and wealth, the city "which
dispensed crowns," says Isaiah, whereas the kingdom of Israel created really by David, after he
and his tribes had been driven away from Canaan by the Philistines, and compelled by defeat to
find a new home elsewhere, had succeeded in capturing the city of Jebus, re-named it Jerusalem,
where he established a new state, without a background, impoverished, and small in numbers,
but which was assisted from the first by lavish gifts from Hiram of Tyre, who emerged as patron
and supporter of David and Solomon.
The renowned Solomon's career, so far as the Bible is concerned, gives an elusive account, in
which little of his activities is related except for a few isolated outstanding events, so that how
much time he spent actually in Jerusalem in view of the wideness of his empire and his extensive interests, especially in the vicinity of Egypt and Tarshish, to say nothing of his intimate relations
with Hiram—the High Ram or Rama—is purely illusory. This intimacy between the two rulers
is most peculiar.
It may be stressed that the Cretan empire in its heyday stretched far beyond the bounds of the
island itself. This is shown in the sway of the Curetes who ruled in the districts called Eolis
(Æolis) and Curetis, later incorporated in Caledon (or Calydon) and Etolia (or Ætolia), where
among other traditional events took place the classic hunt of the Calydonian Boar. Crete's high
civilisation is proved by the fact that her laws and political system were accepted as the pattern
for such advanced ancient states as Athens and Sparta. Cities were ruled by Cosmoi or Mayors,
or Provosts, who held office for one year, and they were elected by magistrates formed of past
Cosmoi, thus forming the Senate or Elders, or, in modern parlance, Aldermen (or Elder Men).
In every town of size there was the Prytaneum, the city hall, centre of civic life, where burned
at all times the sacred flame of Hestia, goddess of the domestic hearth or home, daughter of
Cronus-Saturn and Rhea. In the Prytaneum were entertained distinguished visitors from other
states such as foreign embassies or citizens who had rendered outstanding service to the state,
others to whom were accorded the freedom of the city—no empty honour in those days—or
those who were feted before setting out to form a new colony in some distant region. Civic
hospitality took the form of public banquets at which the guests were honoured.[37]
Where did Britain obtain her almost exact counterpart of this admirable system other than that
as handed down by her Pelasgic ancestors? It is true that municipal institutions were not
discernible in England until the time of the Danish invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries,
but the Roman conquest and subsequently the disordered state of the country and much
internecine strife did not lend themselves to peaceful civic institutions, since leadership was that
of the sword. Probably these customs went underground or lay fallow, but it is a strange
coincidence to those who may not accept these contentions that practically all the names used
in regard to civic government bear a root relationship to the name of Britain in its Welsh
rendering, viz. Prytan or Prytan like the Prytaneum already referred to. Magistrates were called
Prytaneis, or, in Rhodes, Prytanes. The President of the Council in Athens was Prytanis, and
every high executive post Phylancia. Aristotle called the British Isles the nesoi Pretannikai.
Cretan civilisation, the further back we seek, is redolent of the Homeric age where warfare and
chivalry went hand in hand. The chiefs occupied their time apart from warfare in hunting,
swordsmanship, wrestling and boxing. They were addicted to athletic games, playing at ball,
chariot racing, and all outdoor exercises in which merit prevailed. Everything was, however,
based on warfare, and like the later Dorian Spartans, who owed much to Crete, the main aim
was to instruct the youth as well as the citizens of more mature years, to devote themselves to
the needs of the state before all else.
Monastic settlements existed from the most early ages, instituted by the Gnostics and later
Orphics, or, as they might be termed, the Chaldees. In conjunction with these were syssitia, or
public tables, where all persons were free to dine in common, a custom said to have been
originated by Minos himself, recalling what Herodotus says about the Meropes, where persons
were able to enjoy free meals at the Table of the Sun.[38] Open hospitality also prevailed with
the chieftains, where bards were made welcome, and after being entertained in the banqueting
hall, were invited to amuse or instruct those present with songs, epics or tales, mainly devoted
to the actions of the gods or the deeds of the heroes. Cretan institutions were greatly extolled by
writers of antiquity, although Aristotle accorded them qualified praise.[39]
Such then was prehistoric Crete, her people the "divine Pelasgi" of Homer, the only race perhaps
justly entitled to answer to the "men of old, men of renown," who were destroyed according to
precept because they fell away from their former high estate, or, like the Atlanteans, described
by Plato as the original race of the highest character and qualities who fell from grace for the like reasons and were similarly afflicted by the gods. The logical explanation of. their crowning
sin, as I suggest, was that the ruling peoples at the end of the Bronze, or in the Early Iron Age,
had employed the science of the "black art," otherwise known as "magic," signifying the
development and extended use of explosive weapons, including guns and gunpowder, the
"forbidden fruit" of the Garden of Eden. The outcome of it was the cruel and prolonged war of
conquest in the fourteenth year of which both allies and foes were destroyed in large part in the
ensuing Great Catastrophe
The idea behind the belief of the cause of that disaster may have been that the secrets of nature
are gradually probed by humanity through the various ages until each has travelled its allotted
span, evolving new inventions and discoveries, especially in scientific evolution, until, having
attained its zenith, a new world catastrophe strikes civilisation a blow of the first magnitude, and
its survivors painfully climb the paths anew. Plato hints at this in the Critics. Our own age, with
the discovery of the atom bomb, and other scientific and devilish devices, may be nearing its
allotted end.
Applying the lessons of Crete specifically to the British Isles, it appears that her earliest peoples,
Pelasgi, Eolids, Uranids, Hellenes, and Iberes can all be retraced to their first habitats. The
Hellenes, as I detailed in my former work, dwelt mainly in western Scotland and the Hebrides,
and were closely related to those earliest Egyptians, who stretched southwards and westwards
to Somerset and also had close contact with northern Ireland. In the western Highlands the Pelasgi
nevertheless occupied a goodly part of Argyllshire with their colonies, such as the Magnetes and
Pheres, and the Athenians, it is known, were partly of Pelasgian descent.
Yet, just as Scotland is racially divided lengthways by the modern Caledonians or Picts, and
later Scots, and the western by the Celts or Iberes, so in prehistoric days the same racial division
applied. The true Pelasgic or Cretan lands included Southerland, Ross and Cromarty, Inverness,
and all territories of the Grampians and Bredalbane ranges to the Firth of Forth. In this eastern
division Hellenic (extra-Peloponnesian) states existed, such as Calydon (or Kalydon), but they
were Pelasgian, and whilst the glamour of past civilisation radiates from the Ionians (who seem
to have been racially (Iberes), and especially from the Athenian world, the solid political and
commercial hegemony lay in those eastern territories which included Macedonia and part of
Thrace, from whom the Caledonians, such as the Cassi, or Khatti clan, are descended, but whose
past history is obscure as yet. Eventually it will emerge that they were the original Chaldeans
and Cimmerians.
In short, until the Flood epoch, Crete was the pivot of world affairs, and the Shetland and Orkney
Isles were its heart, straddling Scandinavia and Britain. Only by a recognition of this geography,
supported by pre-history, topography, and folklore, I suggest, can we retrace the past eras with
any accuracy.
Such a contention as I put forward is confronted with many years' study of the antiquities of
Crete in the Mediterranean by the late Sir Arthur Evans, which island, called Crete or Candia,
he asserted was the great motherland of antiquity, and proffered evidence in support of a claim
which to the general reader was merely a restatement of a dogma. Yet all the facts oppose his
theories. Although he dissected such antiquities as he could discover and published many learned
tomes on the subject, they weigh up to nothing concrete at all. Like so much else in classic and
Bible archaeology and legendary relics, etc., his finds have been distorted to fit in with
preconceived theories. Believing without any inquiry as to whether the Mediterranean Candia
of to-day was the real motherland Crete, he assumed it without question, and accordingly
exploited his ideas.
In his principal work, The Palace of Minos, he says, "For the first time there has come into view
a primitive European civilisation, the earliest phase of which goes back far beyond the First
Dynasty of Egypt." For all that, he cannot produce one relic which dates back earlier than merely the Neolithic Age! The topography of Candia alone should have made him hesitate. It is entirely
extremely mountainous and, except on the flanks of four ranges, rocky and unfertile, with few
productive tracts and without any minerals. Mount Psiloriti (7,670 feet) is identified as the ancient
Mount Ida, whose highest peaks are always snow-covered, and yet the traditional Mount Ida was
not a high mountain.
The Dactyli in far ancient days were said to have mined copper and iron at Mount Ida, but not
a sign of such ores has been discovered in Candia, although at its eastern extremity, at
Chrysocamino, copper ore was smelted in a cave as shown by the presence of scoriæ, cinders,
and fragments of crucibles, but the smelting of copper in a cave does not justify a claim that
copper was mined there, as another writer, Dr. Angelo Mosso, has contended.[39] Indeed, the
strata of calcareous dolomitic breccia refutes any such claim, and smelting is no more a proof
of the existence of copper than in the neighbouring islands of Gozzo and Sphakia, where traces
of smelting exist. As Candia, unlike Shetland, has never been torn apart, battered down and partly
submerged by celestial action, the absence of either copper or iron offers at least a negative proof
to Evans' claims.
When we come to its antiquities, nothing, I repeat, earlier than the Neolithic period can be
discovered despite immense excavations at great expense. Neolithic remains are numerous for
what they are worth, including objects from caves, rock-shelters, isolated buildings and
settlements, including stone axes and obsidian knives, as well as pottery. There is nothing of the
Paleolithic or Old Stone Age at all, quite incredible were it the island where mankind had
traditionally first evolved civilisation, nor is there a trace of megalithic monuments so frequent
in the British Isles as well as many examples of the Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages, and as are
also found in the Shetland-Orkney group. Sir Arthur Evans and his disciples have remained
discreet on this great obstruction to their claims because they are not in a position to explain it.
It makes his boast of a prior phase of civilisation
earlier than the First Egyptian Dynasty become
merely ludicrous.
A LABYRINTH OF LOFTY
CAVERNS ON THE ISLE OF Noss,
SHETLAND
Was it the origin of the myth of
the Cretan Minotaur ?
Candia possesses several examples of prepared
copper, particularly at Haghia Triada, near
Phaestus, including nineteen large ingots, also
double-headed axes, a design found on several
walls, an emblem by no means limited to the
present Crete but present in many prehistoric cave
engravings in the British Isles and Scandinavia. It
seems to be related to the double or two-headed
hammer or mallet of Thor, a symbol of Odin and
his cult, which is said by Count D'Alviella to have
been a variation of the thunderbolt of Zeus.[40]'
That connects the emblem with the north, if at all,
and is not aboriginal. Bronze was also found in
Candia, including knives, daggers and double headed axes, probably votive designs, and one from Haghia contains eighteen percent of tin,
which ore came from Britain. So Candia, proclaimed the original Crete, motherland of men, can
only reveal active occupation from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age! There is not a trace of the
Iron Age.
Evans claimed to have discovered the palace of Minos at his alleged city of Gnossos, and also
the Labyrinth. Archaeological examination of the palace revealed it rather as a temple than as a
residence. The west wing, Evans admits, was a sanctuary with frequent repetition of the double
axe and a number of small shrines of pillared crypts designed for ritual use, having corresponding
halls above.[41] The "Throne Room" had an elaborately carved seat in the centre, with stone
benches around it, while white griffins guarded an entrance to an inner shrine, also for religious
purposes, says Evans.[42] The sole clue to its builders is supplied by the symbol of the griffins
guarding the entrance to the inner shrine. The griffin was an emblem of the Hyperborean
Apollo.[43] If any inference may be drawn from it the builders of the palace were the
Hyperborean either from Britain or Scandinavia, and in the latter country helmets bearing the
griffin crest have been found in barrows.[44] So, whether it be the double-axe or the griffin, the
indications point to the probable occupation of Candia by a northern people possibly the Pelasgi
or Phoenicians. This in no way supports the claims made by Sir Arthur Evans.
The author seeks to prove that Avebury
Circle was the Biblical Mizpah,
"a heap of
Stones," and was also the Cadmeian Thebes,
or Abaris.
His alleged "Labyrinth" transpired to be no
more than a disused subterranean quarry. So
futile is this site to explain away the age-old
traditions of its size and complication that
Evans evidently decided instead to discredit the
legend of Theseus and Ariadne and the
Minotaur. Having discovered in the palace
bull-catching scenes in relief on its gates and
fresco panels of a bullring in which youths and
girls are taking part, he contended that the
Labyrinth tradition was an exaggerated fable.
He attributed the story to "Athenian
chauvinism," and concluded—or advanced the
view—that the pleasant and friendly bull catching by boys and girls went "far to explain the myth." In other words, he dismissed it because
his "Labyrinth" was as far apart from the legend as were the youths playing with an affable bull,
as depicted on frescoes, from those unhappy victims of the Minotaur who were sacrificed!
But Sir Arthur Evans thereby dismissed with contumely such a galaxy of famous names of the
past who recounted the Theseus and Minotaur legend as included Plato, Xenophon, Apollodorus,
Hellanicus, Sappho, Bacchylides, Euripides, and Homer in the Odyssey. We have greater support
than even such a galaxy of classic writers, in one historical fact. The feat of Theseus, who
destroyed the Minotaur and caused thereby abandonment of the Athenian victims in the future,
was celebrated annually by the ceremony of despatching his ancient, much-be-timbered old ship
to Delos to take part in the solemn thanksgiving, and during its absence from the Piræus on this
mission it was unlawful to put any person to death under sentence, and this is especially
memorable because the death of Socrates was thereby delayed for thirty days. [45] Therefore, we possess historical warranty for the reality of the event, even it seems to the ship
which originally brought back Theseus, and so when Sir Arthur Evans dismisses the whole
subject as "Athenian chauvinism," and talks of a myth, he invites scepticism as to the value of
his other claims. It would be surprising that serious attention were paid to such efforts except
that most persons who give the subject any thought merely hold a conventional acceptance that
the so-called Crete must have been the Crete of Minos, although, as all tradition and evidence
indicates, the original island was situated in Oceanus, namely, the Atlantic, and nowhere near
the Mediterranean.
As it is not my purpose to use more space than
essential to refute false ideas, all I need add is that
there is nothing of any antiquarian value in Candia
which supports in one iota the claim that it was the
motherland of the Pelasgi people, the pioneers of
the civilisation which has come down to us. Even
the pottery of Candia shows no indigenous origin
and resembles that of Mycene. The fact that it can
reveal no civilisation before the Neolithic Age
seems to show conclusively that it should be
dismissed from our minds as having had any part
or parcel in the claims made for it.
In my former volume a good deal of space was
accorded to denote the original Thessaly, scene of
the Deucalion Flood, as actually including the Inverlochy region of the present Caledonian Canal,
with the River Spean answering to the Thessalian Poneus, and instancing the elevated beaches
on the adjoining mountains as the residue of that tremendous deluge. In Greek geography beyond
Thessaly lay Calydon and Pleuron, highly mountainous and very inaccessible country, which
originally went by the name of Eoliis.[46] It was ruled in prehistoric times by the Curetes of
Crete and was sometimes called Curetis, these names suggesting its relationship to Crete, the
Metris or Motherland. It was the "rocky Calydon" of the poets, and was the scene of the epic
Hunt of the Calydonian Boar.
I venture to recall this epic briefly as it surely belongs to Scotland and not to our friends in the
Mediterranean Greece at all. The heroes concerned in it included Boreas, King of Thrace, Œneus,
King of Calydon, whose lands were ravaged by the monster because he was unwise enough to
omit the northern goddess Artemis from the sacrifices, and Meleager, his son, one of the crew
of the Argonaut in its epoch-making voyage, who loved the beautiful Atalanta. She first reached
and wounded the boar, and, in the division of the spoils, because Meleager gave her the head
and hide as trophies of the chase, it led to a savage feud in which the Curetes of Pleuron assailed
the walls and gates of Calydon, where Œneus ruled.
In the chain of the Grampians, east of the Lochaber Mountains, lies Atholl (Ætolia), formerly
one of the wildest parts of the Highlands, where there is yet a mountain spur named "The Duke
of Atholl's Boar," very possibly the scene of the slaying and where Meleager presented the main
trophies to the beautiful virgin huntress Atalanta. In the south of the Atholl country—all of which
was formerly part of the famous Caledonian Forest—lies the seat of the Dukes of Atholl close to the ancient town of Dunkeld, once an important centre of the Culdees and doubtless of the
Curetes or Gnostics in their day, containing the ruins of the fine cathedral built on the site of a
former pagan temple. Dunkeld signifies the dun or fortress of the Keld, otherwise Kaled or
Kalydon, and with every likelihood was the ancient city of Calydon.
In this Caledonian country engraved stones have
been found of a boar, perhaps emblematic of
Artemis, to whom the boar was sacred, as the
northern goddess of the chase. The names have
scarcely altered throughout the long centuries,
showing how invaluable place-names may be in
identifying sites. Calydon (or Kalydon) has
become Caledonia, and Ætolia is Atholl, a very
slight alteration in the Greek name, while, if we
want further confirmation of the site, the name of
Atalanta infers a goddess or nymph in the Atlantic
regions.
Throughout these parts of Scotland, beginning just
beyond Dunblane, another ancient Culdee centre,
stretched the vast Caledonian Forest, which spread
northwards beyond the Moray Firth, the haunt of
many savage wild beasts. At its zenith not only
were there wild boars, but lions, bears and wolves,
besides harbouring mammoths, deer, and many other fauna. It was especially noted for the
immense Caledonian white oxen or aurochs, which had a tremendous span of horns and was a
most formidable beast to meet face to face. Hector Boece, the old Scots historian, says that in
the "wood Celidon," these white oxen with "crisp and curling manes like fierce lions," and their
enormous length of horns, were imbued with such hatred of men that they avoided any forest
glades or depths if they could so much as scent a man's hand or footprint. They were so wild that
they died untamed in captivity, and if a man crossed their path they charged him with terrible
speed, taking no fear of hounds, sharp lances or other weapons. Robert Bruce was nearly killed
by one of these savage bulls.[47]
I may recall in connection with the foregoing that Herodotus describes the mountain regions of
Pæonia in Thrace, and Mygdonia, in Macedonia—both Pelasgic but not Hellene—through which
Xerxes led his army on the way to Athens, and who mentions there a forest region over a great
area full of lions and "wild beasts with gigantic horns," the lions being found in the tract between
the River Nessus (or Nestus), and the Achelous.[48] It seems to have been a memory or record
of this same region, and indeed, the voyage and march of Xerxes to Athens so graphically
portrayed by Herodotus can only be logically interpreted as culminating in Scotland in a
considerably earlier period than usually accorded to that Persian invader. The Nessus may be
readily identified with the river and Loch Ness, where I place Mygdonia, a part of the original
Macedonia, lying between the present Aviemore, Kingussie, and the Ness; while the River
Achelous answers to the Tay, with the bleak Cairngorm Mountains marking the ancient
Pæonia.[49]
Be that as it may, from this ancient centre of the earlier world, bearing copious witness of
habitation from the Early Palæolithic Age onward, flourished the Cretans or Sethites or Cushites,
all racially Pelasgi or Phoenicians or Chaldeans, Cimmerians or Hyperboreans. In their midst
arose the great Teacher Hermes, or I ram or Ammon, who had other names in addition. To the
genius of this race, as Dr. Waddell has demonstrated in his work, The Phoenician Origin of
Britons, Anglo-Saxons and Scots, should we attribute the original civilisation of the ancients,
the Gad or Cad tribe, whose emblem was the lion rampant, known later as the Cassi or Catti-land,
whose first Motherland was the Shetland-Orkney Island.
NEXT
PART TWO
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
I. AVEBURY, CITY OF HERCULES
Notes Chapter One
1) Odyssey, i, 52.
2) Theo;., 517,
3) The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain, p. 104
4) Peloponnesian War, i, 3.
5) Depths of the Ocean, pp. 122-3.
6) OP. cit., p. 513
7) Jos. Ant. I, ii, 3; I, iii, 1
8) Odyssey, ix, 104-14 (Cowper), The "lotus" plant was probably the tobacco plant, whose leaves
were chewed, yet clay pipes have been found in prehistoric raths in Ireland. (Vide Donnelly,
Atlantis, p. 64.)
9) Odyssey, x, 24--5.
10) Op. cit.,x,101-5.
11) Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece; p. 369
12) The Irish Book of Invasions.
13) In In 1881 the Shetland fishing fleet returning to Lerwick through Yell Sound met a sudden
and violent squall from the north-cast, and despite their seamanship and local knowledge of the
waters nearly all the trawlers capsized or ran on rocks, a disaster in which sixty-three experienced
seamen were drowned. The Lord Mayor of London raised a public fund for the relatives of the
brave fishermen then destroyed.
14) The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain, p. 142.
15) Jos., Antiq. of the Jews, I, vii, I.
16) Whatmore, Insulæ Britannicæ, p. 43.
17) Jamieson, Scottish Dic. p. 48.
18) Canon Jas. Raine, York, pp. 162-7. Mr. Lewis Spence, in his Mysteries of Britain (p. 62),
says that they flourished for centuries as Culdees and in England "were the direct descendants
of the Druidic caste,"
19) Her. i, 171.
20) Gen. x, 25.
21) Vide The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain, pp. 135-44
22) Odyssey, xix, 216-25 (Cowper),
23) Op. cit., xix, 185-190. 3)
24) Priscian, Periegesis, 584-6.
27) Avienus, Orbis Term, 751-7.
28) Diodorus, Hist., iii, 13.
29) The reference to Idavöll here may be to Mt. Ida in Troy, named after the Gretan Ida, Troy
the daughter of Gnossos, as Babylon was that of Ur.
30) Deucalion or Noah, variations of the same personage. Vide The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain,
pp. 36, 84, 89 et seq
31) Her. vii, t 71.
32) Iliad, ii, 731.
33) Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific, v, 262-93
34) Tac., Hist. gad., v, 2.
35) I Kings ix, I r, 14.
36) Seyffert, Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, p. 526.
( Page 32 )
37) It would seem. that a like practice was observed by Solomon. Vide I Kings iv, 22-23, also
viii, 65.
38) Aristotle, Polit., ii, 10.
39) Angelo Mosso, Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization, p. 292.
40) D'Alviella, Migration of Symbols, p. g8.
41) Mosso, CO. cit., p.318.
42) Evans, Palace of Minos, i, p.
43). Seyffert, Dic. of Class. Antiq., p. 581.5
44) P. du Chaillu, The Viking Age, i, p. 210.
45 Plato, Phædon, 2, 3.
46) Thucydides, Palo. War, iii, 102. Its original name indicates its origin from Crete. Chaldea
was a name derived from the Gaelic, Céli De, People of God, and Calydon may be traced to Celi
Don, People of Poseidon.
47) Boethius, Hist. Scot., i, to,
48) Her. vi, 123-6.
49) With regard to the Macedonians, see The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain, and the great tribe
of Catti, Chatti, or Cassi, whose present chief, The Mackintosh, head of the clan Chattan, claims
descent from the Macedonians, who were branch of the Chaldeans (pp. 95, 118).
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