Worlds in Collision
by Immanuel Velikovsky
Part 1: Venus
CHAPTER ONE
[The Most incredible Story]
The most incredible story of miracles is told about Joshua ben Nun who, when pursuing the Canaanite kings at Beth Horon, implored the sun and the moon to stand still. "And he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day" (Joshua 10: 12-13).
This story is beyond the belief of even the most imaginative or the most pious person. Waves of stormy sea may have drowned one host and been merciful to another. The earth could crack asunder and swallow up human beings. The Jordan could be blocked by a slice of its bank falling into the bed of the river. Jericho's walls, not by the blast of trumpets, but by an incidental earthquake, could have been breached.
But that the sun and the moon should halt in their movement across the firmament, this could be only the product of fancy, a poetic image, a metaphor;1 a hideous implausibility when imposed as a subject for belief;2 a matter for scorn, it manifests even a want of reverence for the Supreme Being.
According to the knowledge of our age, not of the age , when the Book of Joshua or of Jasher was written, this could have happened if the earth had ceased for a time to roll along its prescribed oath. Is such a disturbance conceivable? No record of the slightest confusion is registered in the present annals of the earth. Each year consists of 36S days, 5 hours, and 49 minutes. ·
A departure of the earth from its regular rotation is thinkable, but only in the very improbable event that our planet should meet another heavenly body of sufficient mass to disrupt the eternal path of our world.
It is true that aerolites or meteorites reach our earth continually, sometimes by the thousands and tens of thousands. But no dislocation of our precise turning round and round has ever been perceived.
This does not mean that a larger body, or a larger number of bodies, could not strike the terrestrial sphere. The large number of asteroids between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter suggests that at some unknown time another planet revolved there; now only these meteorites follow approximately the path along which the destroyed planet circled the sun. Possibly a comet ran into it and shattered it.
That a comet may strike our planet" is not very probable, but the idea is not absurd. The heavenly mechanism works with almost absolute precision; but unstable, their way lost, comets by the thousands, by the millions, revolve in the sky, and their interference may disturb the harmony. Some of these comets belong to our system. Periodically they return, but not at very exact intervals, owing to the perturbations caused by gravitation toward the larger planets when they fly too close to them. But innumerable other comets, often seen only through the telescope, come flying in from immeasurable spaces of the universe at very great speed, and disappear-possibly forever. Some comets are visible only for hours, some for days or weeks or even months .
Might it happen that our earth, the earth under our feet, would roll toward perilous collision with a huge mass of meteorites, a trail of stones flying at enormous speed around and across our solar system?
This probability was analyzed with fervor during the last century. From the time of Aristotle, who asserted that a meteorite, which fell at Aegospotami when a comet was glowing in the sky had been lifted from the ground by the wind and carried in the air and dropped over that place, . until the year 1803 when, on April 26, a shower of meteorites fell at l'Aigle in France and was investigated by Biot for the French Academy of Sciences, the scholarly world-and in the meantime there lived Copernicus, Galileo Galilei. Kepler, Newton, and Huygens--did not believe that such a thing as a stone falling from the sky was possible at all. And this despite many occasions when stones fell before the eyes of a crowd, as did the aerolite in the presence of Emperor Maximilian and his court in Ensisheim, Alsace, on November 7, 1492.3
Only shortly before 1803, the Academy of Sciences of Paris refused to believe that, on another occasion, stones had fallen from the sky. The fall of meteorites on July 24, I 790 in southwest France was pronounced "un phenomene physiquement" impossible. 4 Since the year 1803, however, scholars have believed that stones fall from the sky. If a stone can collide with the earth, and occasionally a shower of stones, too, cannot a full-sized comet fly into the face of the earth. It was calculated that such a possibility exists but that it is very unlikely to occur.5
lf the head of a comet should pass very close to our . path, so as to effect a distortion· in the career of the earth, another phenomenon besides the disturbed movement of the planet would protiabty occur: .a rain of meteorites would strike the earth and would increase to a torrent. Stones scorched by flying through the atmosphere would be hurled on home and head.
In the Book of Joshua, two verses before the passage about the sun that was suspended on high for a number of hours without moving to the occident, we find this passage:
"As they [the Canaanite kings] fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Betha.boron ... the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: there were more which died with hailstones [stones of barad] than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword."6
The author of the Book of Joshua was surely ignorant of any connection between the two phenomena. He could not be expected to have had any knowledge about the nature of aerolites, about the forces of attraction between celestial bodies, and the like. As these phenomena were recorded to have occurred together, it is improbable that the records were invented.
The meteorites fell on the earth in a torrent. They must have fa11en in very great numbers for they struck down more warriors than the swords of the adversaries. To have killed persons by the hundreds or thousands in the field, a cataract of stones must have fallen. Such a torrent of great stones would mean that a train of meteorites or a comet bad struck our planet.
The quotation in the Bible from the Book of Jasher is laconic and may give the impression that the phenomenon of the motionless sun and moon was local, seen only in Palestine between the valley of Ajalon and Gibeon. But the cosmic character .of the prodigy is pictured in a thanksgiving prayer ascribed to Joshua:
Sun and moon stood still in heaven, . and Thou didst stand in Thy wrath against our oppressors ••••
Alt the princes of the earth stood up, the kings of the nations bad. gathered themselves together .•••
Thou didst destroy them in Thy fury, and Thou didst ruin them in Thy rage. . . .
Nations raged from fear of Thee, kingdoms tottered because of Thy wrath. . . .
Thou didst pour out Thy fury upon them. Thou didst terrify them in Thy wrath. • • •
The earth quaked and trembled from the noise of Thy thunders. · · ·
Thou didst pursue them in Thy storm, Thou didst consume them in the whirlwind .•••
Their carcasses were like rubbish.7
The wide radius over which the heavenly wrath swept is emphasized in the prayer: "All the kingdoms tottered ••.. "
A torrent of large stones coming from the sky, an. earthquake, a whirlwind, a disturbance in the movement of the earth-these four phenomena belong together. It appears that a large comet must have passed very near to our planet and disrupted its movement; a part of the stones dispersed in the neck and tail of the comet smote the surface of our earth a shattering blow.
Are we entitled, on the basis of the Book of Joshua, to assume that at some date in the middle of the second millennium before the present era the earth was interrupted in its regular rotation by a comet? Such a statement has so many implications that it should not be made thoughtlessly. To this I say that though the implications are great and many, the present research in its entirety is an interlinked sequence of documents and other evidence, all of which in common carry the weight of this and other statements in this book.
The problem before us is one of mechanics. Points on the outer layers of the rotating globe ( especially near the equator) move at a higher linear velocity than points on the inner layers, but at the same angular velocity. Consequently, if the earth were suddenly stopped (or slowed down) in its rotation, the inner layers might coi:ne to rest ( or their rotational velocity might be slowed) while the outer layers would still tend to go on rotating. This would cause friction between the various · liquid or semi fluid layers, creating heat; on the outermost periphery the solid layers would be tom apart, causing mountains and even continents to fall or rise.
As I shall show later, mountains fell and others rose from level ground; the earth with its oceans and continents became heated; the sea boiled in many places, and rock liquefied; volcanoes ignited and forests burned. Would not a sudden stop by the earth, rotating at a little over one thousand miles an hour at its equator, mean a complete destruction of the world? Since the world survived, there must have been a mechanism to cushion the slowing down of terrestrial rotation, if it really occurred, or another escape for the energy of motion besides transformation into heat, or both. Or if rotation persisted undisturbed the terrestrial axis may have tilted in the presence of a strong magnetic field, so that the sun appeared to lose for hours its diurnal movement.8 These problems are kept in sight and are faced in the Epilogue of this volume.
[On the Other Side of the Ocean ]
The Book of Joshua, compiled from the more ancient Book of Jasher, relates the order of events. "Joshua .•• went up from Gilgal all night." In the early morning he fell upon his enemies unawares at Gibeon, and .."chased I them along the way that goes up to Beth-boron." As they fled, great stones were cast from the sky. That same day (in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites") the sun stood still over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Aijalon. It has been noted that this description of the position of the luminaries implies that the sun was in the forenoon position.9 The Book of Joshua says that the luminaries stood in the midst of the sky.
Allowing for the difference in longitude, it must have been early morning or night in the Western Hemisphere.
We go to the shelf where stand books with the historical traditions of the aborigines of Central America.
The sailors of Columbus and Cortes, arriving in America, found there literate peoples who had books of their own. Most of these books were burned in the sixteenth century by the Dominican monks. Very few of the ancient manuscripts survived, and these are preserved in the libraries of Paris, the Vatican, the Prado, and Dresden; they are called codici, and their texts have been studied and partly read. However, among the Indians of the days of the conquest and also of the following century there were literary men who had access to the knowledge written iri"· pictographic script by their forefathers. 10
In the Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan 11, the history of the empire of Culhuacan and Mexico, written in Nahua Indian in the sixteenth century, it is related that during a cosmic catastrophe that· occurred in the remote past, the night did not end for a long time.
The biblical narrative describes the sun as remaining in the sky for an additional day ("about a whole day"). The Midrashim, the books of ancient traditions not embodied in the Scriptures, relate that the sun and the moon
stood still for thirty-six itim, or eighteen hours,12 and thus from sunrise to sunset the day lasted about thirty hours.
In the Mexican annals it is stated that the world was deprived of light and the sun did not appear for a fourfold night. In a prolonged day or night time could not be measured by the usual means at the disposal of the ancients.13
Sahagun, the Spanish savant who came to America a generation after Columbus and gathered the traditions of the aborigines, wrote that at the time of one cosmic catastrophe the sun rose only a little way over the horizon and remained there without moving; the moon also stood still.14
I am dealing with the Western Hemisphere first, because the biblical stories were not known to its aborigines when it was discovered. Also, the tradition preserved by Sahagun bears no trace of having been introduced by the missionaries: in his version there is nothing to suggest Joshua ben Nun and his war against the Canaanite kings; and the position of the sun, only a very little above the eastern horizon, differs from the biblical text, though it does not contradict it.
We could follow a path around the earth and inquire into the various traditions concerning the prolonged night and prolonged day, with sun and moon absent or tarrying at different points along the zodiac, while the earth underwent a bombardment of stones in a world ablaze. But we must postpone this journey. There was more than one catastrophe when, according to the memory of mankind, the earth refused to play the chronometer by undisturbed rotation on its axis. First, we must differentiate the single occurrences of cosmic catastrophes, some of which took place before the one described here, some after it; some of which were of greater extent, and some of lesser.
CHAPTER 2
[Fifty-two Years Earlier]
The Pre-Columbian written traditions of Central America tell us that fifty-two years before the catastrophe that closely resembles that of the time of Joshua, another catastrophe of world dimensions had occurred.1 It is therefore only natural to go back to the old Israelite traditions, as narrated in the Scriptures, to determine whether they contain evidence of a corresponding catastrophe.
The time of the Wandering in the Desert is given by the Scriptures as forty years. Then, for a number of years before the day of the disturbed movement of the earth, the protracted conquest of Palestine went on.2 It seems reasonable, therefore, to ask whether a date fifty-two years before this event would coincide with the time of the Exodus.
In the work Ages in Chaos, I describe at some length the catastrophe that visited Egypt and Arabia. In that work it is explained that the Exodus took place amid a great natural upheaval that terminated the period of Egyptian history known as the Middle Kingdom. There I endeavor to show that contemporary Egyptian documents describe the same disaster accompanied by "the plagues of Egypt," and that the traditions of the Arabian Peninsula relate similar occurrences in this land and on the shores of the Red Sea. In that work I refer also to Beke's idea that Mt. Sinai was a smoking volcano. However, I reveal that "the scope of the catastrophe must have exceeded by far the measure of the disturbance which could be caused by one active volcano," and I promise to answer the question: "Of what nature and dimension was this catastrophe, or this series of catastrophes, accompanied by plagues?" and to publish an investigation into the nature of great catastrophes of the past. Both works-the reconstruction of history and the reconstruction of natural history-were conceived within the short interval of ha1f a year; the desire to establish a correct historical chronology before fitting the acts of nature into the periods of human history impelled me to complete Ages in Chaos first.3
I shall employ some of the historical material from the first chapters of Ages in Chaos. There I use it for the purpose of synchronizing events in the histories of the countries around the eastern Mediterranean; here I shall use it to show that the same events took place all around the world, and to explain the nature of these events.
[The Red World]
In. the middle of the second millennium before the present era, as I intend to show, the earth underwent one of the greatest catastrophes in its history. A celestial body that only shortly before had become a member of the solar system-a new comet-came very close to the earth. The account of this catastrophe can be reconstructed from evidence supplied by a large number of documents.
The comet was on its way from its perihelion and touched the earth first with its gaseous tail. Later in this book I shall show that it was about this comet that Servius wrote: "Non igneo sed sanguineo rubore fuisse" (It was not of a flaming but of a bloody redness).
One of the first visible signs of this encounter was the reddening of the earth's surface by a fine dust of rusty pigment. In sea, lake, and river this pigment gave a bloody · coloring to the water. Because of these particles of ferruginous or other soluble pigment, the world turned red.
The Manuscript Quiche of the Mayas tens that in the Western Hemisphere, in the days of a great cataclysm, when the earth quaked and the sun's motion was interrupted, the water in the rivers turned to blood.4
Ipuwer, the Egyptian eyewitness of the catastrophe, wrote his lament on papyrus: 5 "The river is blood," and this corresponds with the Book of Exodus (7:20): "All the waters that were in the river were turned to blood." The author of the papyrus also· wrote: "Plague is throughout the land. Blood is everywhere,'' and this, too, corresponds with the Book of Exodus (7:21) : "There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt."
The presence of the hematoid pigment in the rivers caused the death of fish followed by decomposition and smell. "And the river stank" (Exodus 7:21). "And all the Egyptians digged round about the river for water to drink; for they could not drink of the water of the river" (Exodus 7:24). The papyrus relates: "Men shrink from . tasting; human beings thirst after water," and "That is our water! That is our happiness! What shall we do in respect thereof? AIJ is ruin."
The skin of men and of animals was irritated by the dust, which caused boils, sickness, and the death· of cattle- "a very grievous murrain." 6 Wild animals, frightened by the portents in the sky, came close to the villages and cities.7
The summit of mountainous Thrace received the name "Haemus," and Apollodorus related the tradition of the Thracians that the summit was so named because of the "stream of blood which gushed out of the mountain" when the heavenly battle was fought between Zeus and Typhon, and Typhon was struck by a thunderbolt. 8 It is said that a a city in Egypt received· the same name for the same reason.9
The mythology which personified the forces of the cosmic drama described the world as colored red. In one Egyptian myth the bloody hue of the world is ascribed to the blood of Osiris, the mortally wounded planet god; in another myth it is the blood of Seth or Apopi; in the Babylonian myth the world was colored red by the blood of the slain Tiamat, the heavenly monster.10
The Finnish epos of Kalevala describes how, in the days of the cosmic upheaval, the world was sprinkled with red milk.11 The Altai Tatars tell of a catastrophe when "blood turns the whole world red," and a world conflagration follows.12 The Orphic hymns refer to the time when the heavenly vault, "mighty Olympus, trembled fearfully ..• and the earth around shrieked fearfully, and the sea was stirred [heaped], troubled with its purple waves." 13
An old subject for debate is: Why is the Red Sea so named? If a sea is called Black or White, that may be due to the dark coloring of the water or to the brightness of the ice and snow. The Red Sea has a deep blue color. As no better reason was found, a few coral formations or some red birds on its shores were proposed as explanations of its name.14
Like all the water in Egypt, the water on the surface of the Sea of the Passage was of a red tint. It appears that Raphael was not mistaken when, in painting the scene of the passage, he colored the water red.
It was, of course, not this mountain or that river on that sea exclusively that was reddened, thus earning the name Red or Bloody, as distinguished from other mountains and seas. But crowds of men, wherever they were, who witnessed the cosmic upheaval and escaped with their lives, ascribed the name Haemus or Red to particular places.
The phenomenon of "blood" raining from the sky has also been observed in limited areas and on a small scale in more recent times. One of these occasions, according to Pliny, was during the consulship of Manius Acilius and Gaius Porcius.15 Babylonians, too, recorded red dust and rain falling from the sky; 16 instances of "bloody rain" have been recorded in divers countries.17 The red dust, soluble in water, falling from the sky in water drops, does not originate in clouds, but must come from volcanic eruptions or from cosmic spaces. The fall of meteorite dust is a phenomenon generally known to take place mainly afte:r: the passage of meteorites; this dust is found on the snow of mountains and in polar regions.18
[The Hail of Stones]
Following the red dust, a "small dust,'' like "ashes of the furnace," fell "in all the land of Egypt" (Exodus 9 : 8), and then a shower of meteorites flew toward the earth. Our planet entered deeper into the tail of the comet. The dust was a forerunner of the gravel. There fell "a very grievous hail, such as has not been in Egypt since its foundations" (Exodus 9 : 18). Stones of "barad," here translated "hail," is, as in most places where mentioned in the Scriptures, the term for meteorite. We are also informed by Midrashic and Talmudic sources that the stones which fell on Egypt were hot; 19 this fits only meteorites, not a hail of ice.20 In the Scriptures it is said that these stones fell "mingled with fire" (Exodus 9 : 24), the meaning of which I shall discuss in the following section, and that their fall was accompanied by "loud noises" (kolot), rendered as "thunderings," a translation which is only figurative, and not literally correct, because the word for "thunder" is raam, which is not used here. The fall of meteorites is accompanied by crashes· or explosion-like noises, and in this case they were so "mighty," that, according to the Scriptural · narrative, the people in the palace were terrified as much by the din of the falling stones as by the destruction they caused ( Exodus 9 : 28).
The red dust had frightened the people, and a warning to keep men and cattle under shelter had been issued: "Gather thy cattle and all that thou hast in the field; fot upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field, and shall not be brought home, the hailstones shall come down upon them, and they shall die" (Exodus 9 : 19). "And he that regarded not the word of the Lord left his servants and his cattle in the field" ( Exodus 9 : 21 ) .
Similarly, the Egyptian eyewitness: "Cattle are left to stray, and there is none to gather them together. Each man fetches for himself those that are branded with his name"21 Falling stones and fire made the frightened cattle flee.
Ipuwer also wrote: "Trees are destroyed," "No fruits, no herbs are found," "Grain has perished on every side," "That has perished which yesterday was seen. The land is left to its weariness like the cutting of flax" 22 In one day fields were turned to· wasteland. In the Book of Exodus (9 : 25) it is written: "And the hail stones of barad smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field."
The description of such a catastrophe is found in the Visuddhimagga, a Buddhist text on the world cycles. "When a world cycle is destroyed by wind . . . there arises in the beginning a cycle-destroying great cloud. . . . There arises a wind to destroy the world cycle, and first it raises a fine dust, and then coarse dust. and then fine sand, and then coarse sand, and then grit, stones, up to boulders as large ... as mighty trees on the bill tops." The wind "turns the ground upside down," large areas "crack and are thrown upwards," "all the mansions on earth" are destroyed in a catastrophe when "worlds clash with worlds." 23
The Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan describe how a cosmic catastrophe was accompanied by a hail of stones; in the oral tradition of the Indians, too, the motif is repeated time and again: In some ancient epoch the sky "rained, not water, but fire and red-hot stones," 24 which is not different from the Hebrew tradition.
[Naphtha]
Crude petroleum is composed of two elements, carbon and hydrogen. The main theories of the origin of petroleum are:
1. The inorganic theory: Hydrogen and carbon were brought together in the rock formations of the earth under great heat and pressure.
2. The organic theory: Both the hydrogen and carbon which compose petroleum come from the remains of plant and animal life, in the main from microscopic marine and swamp life.
The organic theory implies that the process started after life was already abundant, at least at the bottom of the ocean.25
The tails of comets are composed mainly of carbon and hydrogen gases. Lacking oxygen, they do not bum in flight, but the inflammable gases, passing through an atmosphere containing oxygen, will be set on fire. If carbon and hydrogen gases, or vapor of a composition of these two elements, enter the atmosphere in huge masses, a part of them will burn, binding all the oxygen available at the moment; the rest will escape combustion, but in swift transition will become liquid. Falling on the ground, the substance, if liquid, would sink into the' pores of the sand and into clefts between the rocks; falling on water, it would remain floating if the fire in the air is extinguished before new supplies of oxygen arrive from other regions.
The descent of a sticky fluid which came earthward and blazed with heavy smoke is recalled in the oral and written traditions of the inhabitants of both hemispheres.
Popol-Vuh, the sacred book of the Mayas, narrates: 26 "It was ruin and destruction . • • the sea was piled up • . . it was a great inundation • • • people were drowned in a sticky substance raining from the sky. . . The face of the earth grew dark and the gloomy rain endured days and nights. . . . And then there was a great din of fire above their heads," The entire population of the land was annihilated.
The Manuscript Quiche perpetuated the picture of the population of Mexico perishing in a downpour of bitumen: 27 "There descended from the sky a rain of bitumen and of a sticky substance. .. . . The earth was obscured and it rained day and night. And men ran hither and thither and were as if seized by' madness; they tried to climb to the roofs, and the houses crashed down; they tried to climb the trees, and the trees cast them far away; and when they tried to escape in caves and caverns, these were suddenly closed."
A similar account is preserved in the Annals of Cuauhtitlan.28 The age which ended in the rain of fire was called Quiauh-tonatiuh, which means "the sun of the fire rain." 29
And far away, in the other hemisphere, in Siberia. the Voguls carried down through the centuries and millennia this memory: "God sent a sea of fire upon the earth. • • • The cause of the fire they call 'the fire-water.'" 30
Half a meridian to the south, in the East Indies, the aboriginal tribes relate that in the remote past Sengle-Das or "water of fire" rained from the sky; with very few exceptions, all men died.31
The eighth plague as described in the Book of Exodus was "barad [meteorites] and fire mingled with the barad, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation" (Exodus 9:24). There were "thunder [correct: loud noises) and barad, and the fire ran along upon the ground" (Exodus 9:23).
The Papyrus Ipuwer describes this consuming fire: "Gates, columns, and walls are consumed by fire. The sky is in confusion." 32 The papyrus says that this fire almost "exterminated mankind."
The Midrashim, in a number of texts, state that naphtha, together with hot stones, poured down upon Egypt. "The Egyptians refused to let the Israelites go, and He poured out naphtha over them, burning blains [blisters]." It was "a stream of hot naphtha." 33 Naphtha is petroleum in Aramaic and Hebrew.
The population of Egypt was "pursued with strange rains and bails and showers inexorable, and utterly consumed with fire: for what was most marvelous of all, in the water which quencheth all things the fire wrought yet more mightily," 34 which is the nature of burning petroleum; in the register of the plagues in Psalms 105 it is referred to as "flaming fire," and in Daniel (7: 10) as "river of fire" or "fiery stream."
ln the Passover Haggadah it is said that "mighty men of Pul and Lud [Lydia in Asia Minor] were destroyed with consuming conflagration on the Passover."
In the valley of the Euphrates the Babylonians often referred to "the rain of fire," vivid in their memory.35
All the countries whose traditions of fire-rain I have cited actually have deposits of oil: Mexico, the East Indies, Siberia, Iraq, and Egypt.
For a span of time after the combustive fluid poured down, it may well have floated upon the surface of the seas. soaked the surface of the ground, and caught fire again and again. "For seven winters and summers the fire has raged • .. it has burnt up the earth," narrate the Voguls of Siberia.36
The story of the wandering in the desert contains a number of references to fire springing out of the earth. The Israelites traveled three days' journey away from the Mountain of the Lawgiving, and it happened that "the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp" (Numbers 11: 1). The Israelites continued on their way. Then came-the revolt of Korab and his confederates. "And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up. . . . And an Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them. . . . And there came out a fire from the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense." 37 When they kindled the fire of incense, the vapors which rose out of the cleft in the rock caught the flame and exploded.
Unaccustomed to handling this oil, rich in volatile derivatives, the Israelite priests fell victims to the .fire. The two elder sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, "died before the Lord, when they offered strange fire before the Lord, in the wilderness of Sinai." 38 The fire was called strange because it had not been known before a,od because it was of foreign origin.
If oil fell on the desert of Arabia and on the land of Egypt and burned there, vestiges of conflagration must be found in some of the tombs built before the end of the Middle Kingdom, into which the oil or some of its derivatives might have seeped.
We read in the description of the tomb of Antefoker, vizier of Sesostris I, a pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom: "A problem is set us by a conflagration, clearly deliberate, which has raged in the tomb, as in many another. • • • The combustible material must not only have been abundant, but of a light nature; for a fierce fire which speedily spent itself seems alone able to account for the fact that tombs so burnt remain absolutely free from blackening, except in the lowest parts; nor are charred remains found as a rule. The conditions are puzzling." 39
"And what does natural history tell us?" asked Philo in his On the Eternity of the World, 40 and answered: "'Destructions of things on Earth, destructions not of all at once but of a very large number, are attributed by it to two principal causes, the tremendous onslaughts of fire and water. These two visitations, we are told, descend in turns after very long cycles of years. When the agent is the conflagration, a stream of heaven-sent fire pours out from above and spreads over many places and overruns great regions of the inhabited earth."
The rain of fire-water contributed to the earth's supply of petroleum; rock oil in the ground appears to be, partly at least, "star oil" brought down at the close of world ages, notably the age that came to its end in the middle of the second millennium before the present era.
The priests of Iran worshiped the fire that came out of the ground. The followers of Zoroastrianism or Mazdaism are also called fire worshipers. The fire of the Caucasus was held in great esteem by all the inhabitants of the adjacent lands. Connected with the Caucasus and originating there is the legend of_ Prometheus. 41 He was chained to a rock for bringing fire to man. The allegorical character of this legend gains meaning when we consider Augustine's words that Prometheus was a contemporary of Moses.42
Torrents of petroleum poured down upon the Caucasus and were consumed. The smoke of the Caucasus fire was still in the imaginative sight of Ovid, fifteen centuries later, when he described the burning of the world.
The continuing fires in Siberia, the Caucasus, in the Arabian desert, and everywhere else were blazes that followed the great conflagration of the days when the earth was caught in vapors of carbon and hydrogen.
In the centuries that followed, petroleum was worshiped, burned in holy places; it was also used for domestic purposes. Then many ages passed when it was out of use. Only in the middle of the last century did man begin to exploit this oil, partly contributed by the comet of the time of the Exodus. He utilized its gifts and today his highways are crowded with vehicles propelled by oil. Into the · heights rose man, and he accompLished the age-old dream of flying like a bird; for this, too, he uses the remnants of the intruding star that poured fire and sticky vapor upon his ancestors.
[The Darkness]
The earth entered deeper into the tail of the onrushing comet and approached .its body. This approach, if one is.to believe the sources, was followed by a disturbance in the rotation of the earth. Terrific hurricanes swept the earth be;. cause of the change or reversal of the angular velocity of rotation and because of the sweeping gases, dust, and ·cinders of the comet.
Numerous rabbinical sources describe the calamity of darkness; the material is collated as fo11ows: 43
An exceedingly strong wind endured seven days. All the time the land was shrouded in darkness. "On. the fourth, fifth, and sixth days, the darkness was so dense that they [the people of Egypt] could not stir from their place;'' "The darkness was of such a nature that it could not be dispelled by artificial means. :The light of the fire was either extinguished by the violence of storm, or else it was made invisible and swallowed up in the density of the darkness. • . . Nothing could be discerned. • . . None was able to speak or to hear, nor could anyone venture to take food, but they lay themselves down . • • their outward senses in a trance. Thus they remained, overwhelmed by the affliction."
The darkness was of such kind that · "their eyes were blinded by it and their breath choked";44 it was "not of ordinary earthy kind." 45 The rabbinical tradition, contradicting the spirit of the Scriptural narrative, states that during the plague of darkness the vast majority of the Israelites perished and that only a small fraction of the original Israelite population of Egypt was spared to leave Egypt. Forty-nine out of every fifty Israelites are said to have perished in this plague.46
A shrine of black granite found at el-Arish on the border of Egypt and Palestine bears a long inscription in hieroglyphics. It reads: "The· land was in great affliction. Evil fell on this earth. . . . There was a great upheaval in the residence. . . . Nobody could leave the palace [there was no exit from the palace) during nine days, and during these nine days of upheaval there was such a tempest· that neither men nor gods [the royal family] could see the faces of those beside them." 47
This record employs the same description of the darkness as Exodus 10:22; "And there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three.days."
The difference in the number of the days (three and· nine) of the darkness is reduced in the rabbinical sources, where the time is given as seven days. The difference between seven and nine days is negligible if one considers the subjectivity of the time estimation under such conditions. Appraisal of the darkness with respect to its impenetrability is also subjective; rabbinical sources say that for part of the time there was a very slight visibility, but for the rest (three days) there was no visibility .at all.
It should be kept in mind that, as in the case I have already discussed, a day and a night of darkness or light can be described as one day or as two days.
That both sources, the Hebrew and the Egyptian, refer to the same event can be established by another means also. Following the prolonged darkness and the hurricane, the pharaoh, according to the hieroglyphic text of the shrine, pursued the "evil-doers" to "the place called PiKhiroti." The same place is mentioned in Exodus 14:9: "But the Egyptian· pursued after them, all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh . . . and overtook them encamping by the sea, beside Pi-ha-khiroth." 48
The inscription on the shrine also narrates the death of the pharaoh during this pursuit under exceptional circumstances: "Now when the Majesty fought with the evil-doers in this pool, the place of· the whirlpool, the evil-doers prevailed not over his Majesty. His Majesty leapt into the place of the whirlpool." This is the same apotheosis described in Exodus 15: 19: "For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them."
If "the Egyptian darkness" was caused by the earth's stasis or tilting of its axis, and was aggravated by a thin cinder dust from the comet;-then the entire globe must have suffered from the effect of these two concurring phenomena; in either the eastern or the western parts of the world there must have been a very extended, gloomy day.
Nations and tribes in many places of the globe, to the south, to the north, and to the west of Egypt, have old traditions about a cosmic catastrophe during which the sun did not shine; but in some parts of the world the traditions maintain that the sun did not set for a period of time equal to a few days.
Tribes of the Sudan to the south of Egypt refer in their tales to a time when the night would not come to an end.49
Kalevala, the epos of the Finns, tells of a time when hailstones of iron fell from the sky, and the sun and the moon disappeared (were stolen from the sky) and did not appear again; in their stead, after a period of darkness, a new sun and a new moon were placed in the sky.50 Caius Julius Solinus writes that "following the deluge which is reported to have occurred in the days of Ogyges, a heavy night spread over the globe." 51
In the manuscripts of Avila and MoJina, who collected the traditions of the Indians of the New World, it is related that the sun did not appear for five days; a cosmic collision of stars preceded the cataclysm; people and animals tried to escape to mountain caves. "Scarcely had they reached there when the sea, breaking out of bounds following a terrifying shock, began to rise on the Pacific coast. But as the sea rose, filling the valleys and the plains around, the mountain of Ancasmarca rose, too, like a ship on the waves. During the five days that this cataclysm lasted, the sun did not show its face and the earth remained in darkness." 52
Thus the traditions of the Peruvians describe a time. when the sun did not appear for five days. In the upheaval, the earth changed its profile, and the sea fell upon the land.53
East of Egypt, in Babylonia, the eleventh tablet of ,the Epic of Gilgamesh [Gilgamesh] refers· to the same events. From out the horizon rose a dark cloud and it rushed against the earth; the land was shriveled by the heat of the flames. "Desolation . . . stretched to heaven; all that was bright was turned into darkness. . . . Nor could a brother distinguish his broth1.r .... Six days ... the hurricane, deluge, and tempest continued sweeping the land • • • and all human back to its clay was returned."54
The. Iranian book Anugita reveals that. a threefold day and threefold night concluded a world age, 55 and the book Bundahis, in a context that I shall quote later and that shows a close relation to the events of the cataclysm I describe here, tells of the world being dark at midday as though it were in deepest night: it was caused, according to the Bundahis, by a war between the stars and the planets.56
A protracted night, deepened by the onrushing dust sweeping in from interplanetary space, enveloped Europe, Africa, and America, the valleys of the Euphrates and the Indus also. If the earth did not stop rotating but slowed down or was tilted, there must have been a longitude where a prolonged day was followed by a prolonged night. Iran is so situated that, if one is to believe the Iranian tradition, the sun was absent for a threefold day, and then it shone for a threefold day. Farther to the east there must have been a protracted day corresponding to the protracted night in the west.
According to "Dahman Yast," at the end of a world age in eastern Iran or in India the sun remained ten days visible in the sky.
In China, during the-reign of the Emperor Yahou, a great catastrophe brought a world age to a close. For ten days the sun did not set.57 The events of the time of the Emperor Yabou deserve close examination; I shall return to the subject shortly.58
[ Earthquake ]
The earth, forced out of its regular motion, reacted to the close approach of the body of the comet: a major shock convulsed the lithosphere, and the area of the earthquake was the entire globe.
Ipuwer witnessed and survived this earthquake. "The towns are destroyed. Upper Egypt has become waste. . . All is ruin." "The residence is overturned in a minute." 59 Only an earthquake could have overturned the residence in a minute. The Egyptian word for "to overturn" is used in the sense of "to overthrow a wall." 60
This was the tenth plague. "And Pharaoh rose up in the night, be, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead" (Exodus 12:30). Houses fell, smitten by one violet blow. "[The angel of the Lord] passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses" (Exodus 12:27). Noga/, meaning "smote," is the word used for a very violent blow, as, for instance, goring by the horns of an ox. The Passover Haggadah says: "The firstborn of the Egyptians didst Thou crush at midnight."
The reason why the Israelites were more fortunate in this plague than the Egyptians probably lies in the kind of material of which their dwellings were constructed. Occupying a marshy district and working on clay, the captives must have lived in huts made of clay and reeds, which are I more resilient than brick or stone. "The Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come and smite your. houses." 61 An example of the selective action of a natural agent upon various kinds of construction is narrated also in Mexican annals. During a catastrophe accompanied by hurricane and earthquake, only the people who lived in small log cabins remained uninjured; the larger buildings were swept away. "They found that those who lived in small houses had escaped, as well as the newly married couples, whose custom it was to live for a few years in cabins in front of those of their fathers-in-law."62
In Ages in Chaos (my reconstruction of ancient history), I shall show that "first-born" (bkhor) in the text of the plague is a corruption of "chosen" (bchor). All the flower of Egypt succumbed in the catastrophe. .
"Forsooth: The children. of princes are dashed against the walls . . . the children of princes are cast out in the streets"; "the prison is ruined," wrote Ipuwer,63 and this reminds us of princes in palaces and captives in dungeons who were victims in the disaster (Exodus 12:29).
To confirm my interpretation of the tenth plague as an earthquake, which should be obvious from the expression, "to smite the houses," I find a corroborating passage of Artapanus in which he describes the last night before the Exodus, and which is quoted by Eusebius: There was "hail and earthquake by night, so that those who fled from the earthquake were killed by the bail, and those who sought shelter from the hail were destroyed by the earthquake. And at that time all the houses fell in, and most of the temples." 64
Also, Hieronymus (St. Jerome) wrote in an epistle that "in the night in which Exodus took place, all the temples of Egypt were destroyed either by an earthshock or by the thunderbolt." 65 Similarly in the Midrashim: "The seventh plague, the plague of barad [meteorites]: earthquake, fire, meteorites." 66 It is also said that the structures which were erected by the Israelite slaves in Pithom and Ramses collapsed or were swallowed by the earth. 67 An inscription which dates from the beginning of the New Kingdom refers to a temple of the Middle Kingdom that was "swallowed by the ground" at the close of the Middle Kingdom.68
The head of the celestial body approached very close, breaking through the darkness of the gaseous envelope, and according to the Midrashim, the last night in Egypt was as bright as the noon on the day of the summer solstice.69
The population fled. "Men flee. . Tents are what 'they make like the dwellers of hills," wrote Ipuwer.70 The population of a city destroyed by an earthquake usually spends the nights in the fields. The Book of Exodus describes a hurried flight from Egypt on the night of the tenth plague; a "mixed multitude" of non-Israelites. left Egypt together with the Israelites, who spent their first night in Sukkot (huts).71
"The lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook. . . . Thou lettest thy people like a flock by the band of Moses and Aaron." 72 They were brought out of Egypt by a portent which looked like a stretched arm- "by a stretched out arm and by great terrors," or "with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders." 73
["13"]
"At midnight" all the houses of Egypt were smitten; "there was not a house where there was not one dead." This happened on the night of the fourteenth of the month Aviv (Exodus 12:6; 13:4). This is the night of Passover. It appears that the Israelites originally celebrated Passover on the eve of the fourteenth of Aviv.[March D.C]
The. month Aviv is called "the first month" (Exodus 12: 18). Thout was the name of the first month of the Egyptians. What, for the Israelites, became a feast, became a day of sadness and fasting for the Egyptians. "The thirteenth day of the month Thou is a very bad day. Thou shalt not do anything on this day. It is the day of the combat which Horus waged with Seth." 74
The Hebrews counted (and still count) the beginning of the day from sunset; 75 the Egyptians reckoned from sunrise. 76 As the catastrophe took place at midnight, for ·the Israelites it was the fourteenth day of the (first) month; for the Egyptians it was the thirteenth day.
An earthquake caused by. contact or collision with a comet must be felt simultaneously all around the world. An earthquake is a phenomenon that occurs from time to time; but an earthquake accompanying an impact in the cosmos would stand out and be recalled as a memorable date by survivors.
In the calendar of the Western Hemisphere, on the thirteenth day of the month, called olin, "motion" or "earthquake,"77 a new sun is said to have initiated another world age. 78 The Aztecs, like the Egyptians, reckoned the day from sunrise. 79
Here we have, en passant, the answer to the open question concerning the origin of the superstition which regards the number 13, and especially the thirteenth day, as unlucky and inauspicious. It is still the belief of many superstitious persons, unchanged through thousands of years and even expressed in the same terms: "The thirteenth day is a very bad day. You shall not do anything on this day."
I do not think that any record of this belief can be found dating from before the time of the Exodus. The Israelites did not share this superstition of the evil-working number thirteen (or fourteen).
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The Hurricane-84s
notes
chapter 1
1 "Certainly one could not conceive a more effective flight of fancy, or one more fitted for the heights of one heroic and lyrical composition." G. Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament (1905), p. 40.
2. W. Whiston wrote in his New Theory of the Earth (6th ed., 1755), pp. 19-21, concerning the wonder of the sun standing still: "The Scripture did not intend to teach men philosophy, or accommodate itself to the true and Pythagorean system of the world." And again: ''The prophets and holy penmen themselves ••. being seldom or never philosophers, were not capable of representing these things otherwise than they, with the wlgar, understood them."
3.C. P. Olivier, Meteors (1925), p.
4. P. Bertholon, Pubblicazi6nl della specola astronomica Vaticana (1913).
5 D. F. Arago computed on some occasion that there is one chance , in 280 million that a comet will hit the earth, Nevertheless, a hole one mile in diameter in Arizona is a sign of an actual headlong collision of the earth with a smaU comet or asteroid. On June 30, 1908, a calculated forty-thousand-ton mass of iron fell in Siberia at 60° 56' north latitude and 101° 57' east longitude. In 1946 the small Giacobini-Zinner comet passed within 131,000 miles of the point where the earth was eight days later. While investigating whether an encounter between the earth and a comet had been the subject of a previous discussion, I found that. W. Whiston, Newton's successor at Cambridge and a contemporary of Halley, in his New Theory of the Earth (the first edition of which appeared in 1696) tried to prove that the comet of 1680, to which he (erroneously) ascribed a period of 575½ years, caused the biblical Deluge on an early encounter. G. Cuvier, who was unable to offer his own explanation of the causes of great cataclysms, refers to the theory of Whiston in the following terms: "Whiston fancied that the earth was created from the atmosphere of one comet, and that it was deluged by the tail of another. The heat which remained from its first origin, in his opinion, excited the whole antediluvian population, men and animals, to sin, for which they were all drowned in the deluge, excepting the fish, whose passions were apparently less violent." I. Donnelly, author, reformer, and member of the United State., House of Representatives, tried in his book Ragnarok (1883) to explain the presence of till and gravel on the rock substratum in America and Europe by hypothesizing an encounter with a comet, which rained till on the terrestrial hemisphere facing it at that moment. Ho placed the event in an indefinite period, but at a time when man already populated the earth. Donnelly did not show any awareness that Whiston was his predecessor. His assumption that there .is till only in one half of tho earth .is arbitrary and wrong.
6. Joshua 10 : 11.
7.Ginzberg, Legends, IV, 11-12.
8 This explanation was suggested to me by M. Abramovich of Tel Aviv,
9.H. Holzinger, losua (1901 ), p. 40, in "Handkommentar zum Alten Testament," ed. K. Marti. R, Eisler, "Joshua and the Sun," American Journal of Semitic l.Angllages and Literature, XLII (1926), 83: "It would have had no sense early in the morning of a battle, with a whole day ahead, to have prayed for the lengthening of the sunlight even into the night time."
10. The Mayan tongue is stUI spoken by about 300,000 people, but of the Mayan hieroglyphics only the characters employed in the calendar are known for certain.
11. Known also as Codex Chimalpopoca. "This manuscript contains a series of annals of very ancient date, many of which go back to more than a thousand years before the Christian era" (Brasseur).
12.Sefer Ha-Yashar, ed. L. Goldschmidt (1923); Pirkei Rabbi Elieser (Hebrew sources differ as to how long the s1m stood still); the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Aboda Zara 2Sa; Targum Habakkuk 3: 11.
13.With the exception of the water clock.
14. Bernardino de Sahagun (1499?-1590), Historia general de la., cosas de Nueva España, new ed. 1938 (S vols.) and 1946 (3 vols.). French transl. D. Jourdanet and R Simeon (1880), p. 481.
1 These sources will be cited on subsequent pages.
2.According to rabbinical sources, the war of conquest in Palestine lasted fourteen years.
3. In order of publication it will follow the present volume.
4. Brasseur, Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique, I, 130.
5.A. H. Gardiner, Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a hieratic papyrus In Leiden (1909). Its author was an Egyptian_ named lpuwer. Hereafter the text will be cited as "Papyrus Ipuwer." In Ages in Chaos I shall develop evidence to show that this papy. rus describes events contemporaneous with the end of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt and the Exodus. It must have been composed shortly following the catastrophe.
6. Exodus 9 : 3; cf. Papyrus Ipuwer 5 : 5
7.Ginzberg, Legends, V, 430.
8. Apollodorus, The Library (transl. J. G. Frazer, 1921), VI.
9. Frazer's comment to Apollodorus' Library, I, 50.
10.The Seven Tablets of Creation, ed. L. W. King (1902).
11.Kalevala, Rune 9.
12. U. Holmberg, Finno-Ugric, Siberian Mythology (1927), p. 370.
13. "To Minerya" in Orphic Hymns (transl. A. Buckley), ed. with the Odyssey of-'Homer (1861).
14. H. S. Palmer, Sinai (1892). Probably at that time the mountainous land of Seir, upon which the Israelites wandered, received the name Edom (Red),. and Erythrea (erythraeus-red in Greek) jts name; Erythrean Sea was in antiquity the name of the Arabian Gulf of the Indian Ocean, applied also to the Red Sea.
15.pliny, Natural History, ii, 57. Another instance, according to Plutarch, occurred in the reign of Romulus.
16. F. X. Kugler, "Babylonische Zeitordnung" (Vol. II of bis Stern• k1mde und Sterndiensl in Babel) (1909-1910), p. 114,
17. D. F. Arago, Astronomie populaire (1854-1857), IV, 209 f.; Abel-Remusat, Catalogue des bolides et des aérolithes observes d la Chine el dans les pays voisins (1819), p. 6.
18. It is estimated that approximately one ton of meteorite dust falls daily on the globe.
19. The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 54b; other sources jn Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 178.
20. In the Book of Joshua it is said that "great stones" fell from tho sky, and then they are referred to as "stones of barad." "The ancient Egyptian word for 'hail,' ar, is also applied to a driving shower of sand and stones; in the contest between Horus and Set, Isis is described as sending upon the latter ar n sa, 'a hail of sand.' " A. Macalister, "Hail," in Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible (1901-1904).
21. Papyrus Ipuwer 9 : 2-3.
22."Ibid., 4 : 14; 6 : I; 6 : 3; S : 12. .
23. "World Cycles," Vishuddhi-Magga, in Warren, Buddhism In Trarulatiolls, p. 328.
24. Alexander, Latin American Mythology, p, 72.
25. Even before Plutarch the problem of the origin of petroleum was much discussed. Speaking of the visit of Alexander to the petroleum sources of Iraq, Plutarch said: "There has been much discussion about the origin of [this naphtha]." But in the extant text of Plutarch a sentence containing one of two rival views is missing. The remaining text reads: ", " or whether rather the liquid substance that feeds the flame flows out from the soil which is rich and productive of fire." Plutarch, Liver (transl. B. Perrin, 1919), ''The Life of Alexander," xxv.
26.Popol-Vuh, le livre sacre, ed. Brasseur (1861), Chap. III, p. 2S.
27.Brasseur, Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique, I, 55
28.Brasseur, Sources de la hlstolre primitive du Mexique, p. 28.
29.E. Seier, Gesammelte Abhandlungen iur amerikanischen Sprach• und Altertumsgeschichte (1902-1923), II, 798.
30.Holmberg, Finno-Ugric, Siberian Mythology, p. 368.
31.Ibid., p. 369. Also A. Nottrott, Die Gegnerische Mission unter den Kohls (18?4), p. 2S. Seo R. Andree, Die Flutsagen (1891).
32. Papyrus Ipuwer 2 : 10; 7 : l; 11 : 11; 12 : 6.
33. Midrash Tanhuma, Midrash Pesikta Raboti, and Midrash WaYosha, For other sources see Oinzberg, Legend.,, ll, 342-343, and v. 426.
34.The Wisdom of Solomon (transl. Holmes, 1913) in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. R. H. Charles.
35.See A. Schott. "Die Vergleiche in den Akkadischen Königsinschriften," Mitt. d. Vorderaslat. Ges., XXX (192S), 89, 106.
36.Holmberg, Finno-Ugric, Siberian Mythology, p. 369.
37.Numbers 16 : 32-3S. Cf. Psalms 106 : 17-18.
38. Numbers 3 : 4; cf. numbers 26 : 61.
39. N. de Garis Davies, The Tomb of Amefoker, Viii of Sesostris I (1920), p. 5.
40.On the Eternity of the World, Vol. IX of Philo (transl. F. H. Colson, 1941), Sect. 146-147.
41. See A. Olrik, Ragnarok (German ed., 1922).
42.The City of God, Bk. XVIII, Chap. 8. (transl. M. Dods, ed. P. Schaff, 1907).
43.Ginzberg, Legends, II, 360.
44. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities (transl. H. St. J. Thackeray, 1930), Bk. 11, xiv. S.
45.Ginzberg, Legends, II, 359.
46.Targum Yerushalmi, Exodus 10 : 23; Mekhilta d'rabbl Simon oen lokhal (190S), p. 38.
47. F. L. Griffith, The Antiquities of Tel-el-Yahudiyeh and Miscellaneous Work in Lower Egypt in 1887-88 (1890): G. Goyon, "Les Travaux de Chouet les tribulations de Geb d'apres Le Naos 2248 Ismailia," Keml, Revue de Philo/. et d'arch. Egypt. (1936).
48.The syllable ha is the definite article in Hebrew and in this case belongs between "Pi" and "Khirotb."
49.L. Frobenius, Dichten und Den ken im Sudan (1925), p. 38.
50. Kalevala (transl. J. M. Crawford, 1888), p. xiii.
51.Caius Julius Solinus, Polyhistor. French transl. by M. A. Agnant, 1847, Chap. xi, reads: "a heavy night spread over the globe for nine consecutive days." Other translators render: "nine consecutive months."
52. Brasseur, Sources de l'histoire primitive du Mexique, p, 40.
53. Andree, Die Flutsagen, p. 115.
54. The Epic of Gilgamesh (transl. R. C. Thompson, 1928).
55. "The Anugita" (transl. K. T. Telang, 1882) in VoL Vlll of TM Sacred Books of the East.
56. "The Bundahis" in Pahlavi Texts (transl. E. W. West) (TM Sacred Books of the East, V [1880]), Pt. I, p. 17.
57. Cf. "Yao," Universal Lexicon (1732-1754), Vol. LX.
58. The way the Egyptians estimated the time the sun was not in the sky must have been similar to the Chinese method of estimation. It is very probable that these peoples reckoned the disturbance as lasting five days and five nights (because a· ninefold or tenfold period elapsed from one sunrise or sunset to the other).
59. Papyrus Ipuwer 2 : 11; 3 : 13.
60. Gardiner's commentary to Papyrus Ipuwer.
61. Exodus 12 : 23. The King James version, ''will not suffer the destroyer to come In unto your houses to smite you," is not correct.
62. Diego de Landa. Yucatan, be/ore and after the Conquest (transl. W. Gates, 1937), p. 18.
63. Papyrus Ipuwer 5 : 6; 6 : 12.
64. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel (transl. E. H. Gifford, 1903), Bk. IX, Chap. xxvii.
65. Cf. S. Bochart. Hlerozolcon (1675), I, 344.
66. The Misbna of Rabbi Eliezer, ed. H. G. Enelow (1933).
67.Ginzberg, Legends, II, 241. Pithom was excavated by E. Naville (The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus (188S]), but he did not dig beneath the layer of the New Kingdom.
68. The inscription of Queen Hatshepsut at Speos Artemidos, J. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. II, Sec. 300.
69. Zohar ii, 38a-38b.
70. Papyrus Ipuwer 10:2,
71. Exodus 12:37-38.
72. Psalms 77:18,
73. Deuteronomy 4:34; 26:8.
74. W. Max Millier, Egyptian Mythology (1918), p. 126.
75. Leviticus 23 : 32.
76. K. Sethe, "Die ägyptische Zeitrechnung" (Gottingen Ges. d. Wiss., 1920), pp. 130
77. See Codex Yaticanus No. 3773 (B), elucidated by E. Seler (1902- 1903),
78. Seier, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, II, 798, 800.
79. L. Idler, Historische Untersuchungen fiber die astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alten (1806), p. 26,
1 comment:
I have studied Velikovsky and many others and have written an article http://www.scripturescholar.com/JoshuasLongDay.pdf The reason for the volcanoes and mountains is the difference of the circumference between the equator and the poles so the moving pole cause the crust to stretch in some areas and compress in others.
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