Worlds in Collision
by Immanuel Velikovsky
CHAPTER 3
[The Hurricane.]
The swift shifting of the atmosphere under the impact of the gaseous parts of the comet, the drift of air attracted by the body of the comet, and the rush of the atmosphere resulting from inertia when the earth stopped rotating or shifted its poles, all contributed to produce hurricanes of enormous velocity and force and of world-wide dimensions.
Manuscript Troano and other documents of the Mayas describe a cosmic catastrophe during which the ocean fell on the continent, and a terrible hurricane swept the earth.1 The hurricane broke up and carried away all towns and all forests.2 Exploding volcanoes, tides sweeping over mountains, and impetuous winds threatened to annihilate humankind, and actually did annihilate many species of animals. The face of the earth changed, mountains collapsed, other mountains grew and rose over the onrushing cataract of water driven from oceanic spaces, numberless rivers lost their beds, and a wild tornado moved through the debris descending from the sky. The end of the world age was caused by Hurakan, the physical agent that brought darkness and swept away houses and trees and even rocks and mounds of earth. From this name is derived "hurricane," the word we use for a strong wind. Hurakan destroyed the major part of the human race. In the darkness swept by wind, resinous stuff fell from the sky and participated with fire and water in the destruction of the world.3 For five days, save for the burning naphtha and burning volcanoes, the world was dark, since the sun did not appear.
The theme of a cosmic hurricane is reiterated time and again in the Hindu Vedas and in the Persian Avesta,4 and diluvium venti, the deluge of wind, is a term known from many ancient authors. 5 In the Section, "The Darkness," I quoted rabbinical sources on the "exceedingly strong west wind" that endured for seven days when the land was enveloped in darkness, and the hieroglyphic inscription from el-Arish about "nine days of upheaval'' when "there was such a tempest" that nobody could leave the palace or see the faces of those beside him, and the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh which says that "six days and a night • • . the hurricane, deluge, and tempest continued sweeping the land," and mankind perished almost altogether. In the battle of the planet-god Marduk with Tiamat, "he [Marduk] created the evil wind, and the tempest, and the hurricane, and the fourfold wind, and the sevenfold wind, and the whirlwind, and the wind which had no equal." 6
The Maoris narrate 7 that amid a stupendous catastrophe "the mighty winds, the fierce squalls, the clouds, dense, dark, fiery, wildly drifting, wildly bursting," rushed on creation, in their midst Tawhiri-ma-tea, father of winds and storms, and swept away giant forests and lashed the waters into billows whose crests rose high like mountains. The earth groaned terribly, and the ocean fled.
"The earth was submerged in the ocean but was drawn by Tefal Fanau," relate the aborigines of Paumotu in Polynesia. The new isles "were bated by a star." In the month. of March the Polynesians celebrate a god, Moafanua. 8 "In Arabic, Tyfoon is a whirlwind and Tufan is the Deluge; and the same word occurs in Chinese as Ty-fong." 9 It appears as though the noise of the hurricane was over toned by a sound not unlike the name Typhon, as if the storm. were calling him by name.
The cosmic upheaval proceeded with a "mighty strong west wind," 10 but before the climax, in the simple words of the Scriptures, "the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, arid the waters were divided." 11 ·
The Israelites were on the shore of the Sea of Passage at the climax of the cataclysm. The name Jam Suf is genera11y rendered as Red Sea; the Passage is supposed to have taken place either at the Gulf of Suez or at Aqaba Gulf of the Red Sea but sometimes the site of the Passage is identified as one of the inner takes on the route from Suez to the Mediterranean. It is argued that suf means "reed" (papyrus reed), and since papyrus reed does not grow in salt water, Jam Suf must have been a lagoon of fresh water.12 We will not enter here into a discussion where the Sea of the Passage was. The inscription on the shrine found in el-Arish may provide some indication where the Pharaoh was engulfed by the whirlpool; 13 in any event, the topographical distribution of sea and land did not remain the same as before the cataclysm of the days of the Exodus. But the name of the Sea of the Passage-Jam Sufis derived not from "reed," but from "hurricane," suf, sufa, in Hebrew. In Egyptian the Red Sea is called shari, which signifies the sea of percussion (mare percussionist) or the sea of the stroke or of the disaster.14
The Haggadah of Passover says: "Thou didst sweep the land of Moph and Noph ... on the Passover." 15
The hurricane that brought to an end the Middle Kingdom in Egypt-"the blast of heavenly displeasure" in the language of Manetho-swept through every comer of the world. In order to distinguish, in the traditions of the peoples, this diluvium venti of cosmic dimensions from local disastrous storms, other cosmic disturbances like disappearance of the sun or change of the sky must be found accompanying the hurricane.
In the Japanese cosmogonical myth, the sun goddess hid herself for a tong time in a heavenly cave in fear of the storm god. "The source of light disappeared, the whole world became dark," and the storm god caused monstrous destruction. Gods made terrible noise so that the sun should reappear, and .from their tumult the earth quaked.16 In Japan and in the vast extent of the ocean hurricanes and earthquakes are not rare occurrences; but they do not disturb the day-night succession, nor is there any resulting permanent change in the sky and its luminaries. "The sky was low," relate the Polynesians of Fakaofo Island, and "then the winds and waterspouts and the hurricanes came, and carried up the sky to its present height." 17 .
"When a world cycle is destroyed by "ind,'' says the Buddhist text on the "World Cycles," the wind also turns "the ground upside down, and throws it into the sky," and "areas of one hundred leagues in extent, two hundred, three hundred, five hundred leagues in extent, crack and are thrown upward by the force of the wind" and do not fall again but are "blown to powder in the sky and annihilated." "And the wind throws up also into the sky the mountains which encircle the eanb . . . they are ground to powder and _destroyed." The cosmic wind blows and destroys "a hundred thousand times ten million worlds." 18
[The Tide]
The ocean tides are produced by the action of the sun and to a larger extent by that of the moon. A body larger than the moon or one nearer to the earth would act with greater effect. A comet with a bead as large as the earth, passing sufficiently close, would raise the waters of the oceans miles high.19 The slowing down or stasis of the earth in its rotation would cause a tidal recession of water toward the poles,20 but the celestial body nearby would disturb this poleward recession, drawing the water toward itself.
The traditions of many peoples persist that seas were tom apart and their water heaped high and thrown upon the continents. In order to establish that these traditions refer to one and the same event, or at least to an event of the same order, we must keep to this guiding sequence: the great tide followed a disturbance in the motion of the earth.
The Chinese annals, which I have mentioned and which I intend to quote more extensively in a subsequent section, say that in the time of Emperor. Yahou the sun did not go down for ten days. The world was in flames, and "in their vast extent" the waters "over-topped the great heights, threatening the heavens with their floods." The water of the ocean was heaped up and cast upon the continent of Asia; a great tidal wave swept over the mountains and broke in the middle of the Chinese Empire. The water was caught in the valleys between the mountains, and the land was flooded for decades.
The traditions of the people of Peru tel1 that for a period . of time equal to five days and five nights the sun was not in the sky, and then the ocean left the shore and with a terrible din broke over the continent; the entire surface of the earth was changed in this catastrophe. 21
The Choctaw Indians of Oklahoma relate: "The earth was plunged in darkness for a long time." Finally a bright light appeared in the north, "but it was mountain-high waves, rapidly coming nearer." 22.
In these traditions there are two concurrent elements: a complete darkness that endured a number of days (in Asia, prolonged day) and, when the light broke through, a mountain-high wave that brought destruction.
The Hebrew story of. the passage of the sea contains the same elements. There was a prolonged and complete darkness (Exodus 10:21). The last day of the darkness was at the Red Sea. 23. When the world plunged out of darkness, the bottom of the sea was uncovered, the waters were driven apart and heaped up like walls in a double tide. 24 The Septuagint translation of the Bible says that the water stood "as a wall," and the Koran, referring to this event, says "like mountains." In the old rabbinical literature it is said
that the water was suspended as if it were "glass, solid and massive.25
The commentator Rashi, guided by the grammatical structure of the sentence in the Book of Exodus, explained in accordance with Mecbilta: .. The water of all oceans and seas was divided." 26
The Midrashim contain the following description: "The waters were piled up to the height of sixteen hundred miles, and they could be seen by all the nations of the earth." 27 The figure in this sentence intends to say that the heap of water was tremendous. According to the Scriptures, the waters climbed the mountains and stood above them, and they mounted to the heavens.28
A sea rent apart was a marvelous spectacle and could not have been forgotten. It is mentioned in numerous pass• ages in the Scriptures. "The pillars of heaven tremble • . . . He divideth the sea with his power:: 29 "Marvelous things did be in the sight of their fathers. . . . He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and be made the waters to stand as a heap." 30 "He gathereth the waters of the sea together as a heap .... let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him." 31
Then the Great Sea (the Mediterranean) broke into the Red Sea in an enormous tidal wave.32
It was an unusual event, and because it was unusual, it became the most impressive recollection in the very long history of this people. All peoples and nations were blasted by the same fire and shattered in the same fury. The tribes of Israel on the shore of a sea found in this annihilation their salvation from bondage. They escaped destruction but their oppressors perished before their eyes. They extolled the Creator, took upon themselves the burden of moral rules, and considered themselves chosen for a great destiny.
When the Spaniards conquered Yucatan, Indians versed in their ancient literature related to the conquerors the tradition handed down to them by their ancestors: their forefathers were delivered from pursuit by some other people when the Lord opened for them a way in the midst of the sea.33
This tradition is so similar to the Jewish tradition of the Passage that some of the friars who came to America believed that the Indians of America were of Jewish origin. Friar Diego de Landa wrote: "Some old men of Yucatan say that they have heard from . their ancestors that this country was peopled by a certain race who came from the east, whom God delivered by opening for them twelve roads through the sea. If this is true, all the inhabitants of the Indies must be of Jewish descent." 34
It may have been an echo of what happened at the Sea of Passage, or a description of a similar occurrence at the same time but in another place.
According to the Lapland cosmogonic story,35 "when the wickedness increased among the human beings," the midmost of the earth "trembled with terror so that the upper layers of the earth fell away and many of the people were hurled down into those caved-in places to perish." "And Jubal, the heaven-lord himself, came down .... His terrible anger flashed like red, blue, and green fire-serpents, and people bid their faces, and the-children screamed with fear. . . . The angry god spoke: 'I shall reverse the world. I shall bid the rivers flow upward; I shall cause the sea to gather together itself up into a huge towering waU which I shall hurl upon your wicked earth-children, and thus destroy them and all life.' "
Jubal set a storm-wind blowing,
and the wild air-spirits raging. . .
Foaming, dashing, rising sky-high
came the sea-wall, crushing all things.
Jubal, with one strong upheaval,
made the earth-lands all tum over;
then, the world again he righted.
Now the mountains and the highlands
could no more be seen by Beijke [sun].
Filled with groans of dying people,
was the fair earth, home of mankind.
No more Beijke shone in heaven.
According to the Lapland epic, the world was overwhelmed by the hurricane and the sea, and almost all human beings perished. After the sea-wall fell on the continent, gigantic waves continued to roll and dead bodies were dashed about in dark waters.
The great earthquake and the chasms that opened in the ground, the appearance of a celestial body with serpentlike flashes, rivers flowing upward, a sea-wall that crushed everything, mountains that became leveled or covered with water, the world that was turned over and then righted, the sun that no more shone in the sky-all these are motifs which we found in the description of the calamities of the time of the Exodus.
In many places of the world, and especially in the north, large boulders are found in a position which proves that a great force must have lifted them up and carried them long distances before depositing them where they are found to- . day. Sometimes these large loose rocks are of entirely different mineral compo~ition from the local rocks, but are akin to formations many miles away. Thus, occasionally an erratic boulder of granite perches on top of a high ridge of dolerite, whereas the nearest outcrops of granite lie far away. These erratic boulders may weigh as much as ten thousand tons, about as much as one hundred thirty thousand people.36
To explain these facts, the scholars of the first half of the nineteenth century assumed that enormous tides had swept over the continents and carried with them masses of stone. The transfer of the rocks was explained by the tides, but what could have caused those billows to rise high over the continents?
"It was conceived that somehow and somewhere in the far north a series of gigantic waves was mysteriously propagated; These waves were. supposed to have precipitated themselves upon the land, and then swept madly on over mountain and valley alike, carrying along with them a mighty burden of rocks and stones and rubbish. Such deluges were styled 'waves of translation'; and the till was believed to represent the materials which they hurried along with them in their wild course across the country." 37 The stones and boulders on the hilltops and the mounds of sand and gravel in the lowlands were explained by this theory. Critics, however, maintained that "it was unfortunate for this view that it violated at the very outset the first principles of science, by assuming the former existence of a cause which there was little in nature to warrant . . . spasmodic rushes of the sea across a whole country had fortunately ~ never been experienced within the memory of man."38 That the correctness of the last sentence is questionable is shown by references to the traditions of a number of peoples.
Wherever possible, the movement of stones was attributed to the progress of the ice sheet in the glacial ages and to glaciers on the mountain slopes.
Agassiz, in. 1840, assumed that just as the Alpine moraines were left behind by the retreating glaciers, so the moraines in the flatlands of northern Europe and America could have been caused by the movement of great continental ice sheets ( and thus introduced the theory of ice ages). Although this is correct to some extent, the analogy is not exact, as the glaciers of the Alps push the stones down, not up the s1ope. Meeting an upward motion of the ice, large boulders would probably sink into the ice.
The problem of the migration of the stones must be regarded as only partially connected with the progress and retreat of the ice sheet, if at all. Billows miles high traveled over the land, originating in causes described in this book.
It can be established by the extent of denudation of the rocks under the erratic boulders that the latter were deposited at their places during human history. So, for instance, in Wales and Yorkshire, where this effect was evaluated in terms of time, the "amount of denudation of limestone rocks on which boulders lie" is a "proof that period of no more than six thousand years bas elapsed I since the boulders were left in their positions." 39
The fact that accumulations of stones were transferred from the equator toward the higher latitudes, an enigmatic problem in the ice theory, can be explained by the poleward recession of the equatorial waters at the moment the velocity of rotation of the earth was reduced or its poles were shifted. In the Northern Hemisphere, in India, the moraines were carried from the equator not only toward higher latitudes, but also toward the Himalaya Mountains, and in the Southern Hemisphere from the equatorial regions of Africa toward the higher latitudes, across the prairies and deserts and forests of the black continent .
[ The Battle In the Sky ]
At the same time that the seas were heaped up in immense tides, a pageant went on in the sky which presented itself to the horrified onlookers on earth as a gigantic battle. Because this battle was seen from almost all parts of the world, and because it impressed itself very strongly upon the imagination of the peoples, it can be reconstructed in some detail.
When the earth passed through the gases, dust, and meteorites of the tail of the comet, disturbed in rotation, it proceeded on a distorted orbit. Emerging from the darkness, the Eastern Hemisphere faced the head of the comet. This head only shortly before had passed close to the sun and was in a state of candescence. The night the great earthquake shook the globe was, according to rabbinical literature, as bright as the day of the summer solstice. Because of the proximity of the earth, the comet left its own orbit and for a while followed the orbit of the earth. The great ball of the comet retreated, then again approached the earth, shrouded in a dark column of gases which looked like a pillar of smoke during the day and of fire at night, and the earth once more passed through the atmosphere of the comet, this time at its neck. This stage was accompanied by violent and incessant electrical discharges between the atmosphere of the tail and the terrestrial atmosphere. There was an interval of about six days between these two close approaches. Emerging from the gases of the comet, the
earth seems to have changed the direction of its rotation, and the pillar of smoke moved to the opposite horizon.40 The column looked like a gigantic moving serpent.
When the tidal waves rose to their highest point, and the seas were torn apart, a tremendous spark flew between the earth and the globe of the comet, which instantly pushed down the miles-high billows. Meanwhile, the tail of the comet and its head, having become entangled with each other by their close contact with the earth, exchanged violent discharges of electricity. It looked like a battle between the brilliant globe and the dark column of smoke. In the exchange of electrical potentials, the tail and the head were attracted one to the other and repelled one from the other. From the serpentlike tail extensions grew, and it lost the form of a column. It looked now like a furious animal with legs and with many heads. The discharges tore the column to pieces, a process that was accompanied by a rain of meteorites upon the earth. It appeared as though the monster were defeated by the brilliant globe and buried in the sea, or wherever the meteorites fell. The gases of the tail subsequently enveloped the earth.
The globe of the comet, which lost a large portion of its atmosphere as well as much of its electrical potential, withdrew from the earth but did not break away from its attraction. Apparently, after a six-week interval, the distance between the earth and the globe of the comet again diminished. This new approach of the globe could not be readily observed because the earth was shrouded in the clouds of dust left by the comet on its former approach as well as by dust ejected by the volcanoes. After renewed discharges, the comet and the earth parted.
This behavior of the comet is of great importance in problems of celestial mechanics. That a comet, encountering a planet, can become entangled and drawn away from its own path, forced into a new course, and finally liberated from the influence of the planet is proved by the case of Lexell's comet, which in 1767 was captured by Jupiter and its moons. Not until 1779 did it free itself from this entanglement. A phenomenon that bas not been observed in modern times is an electrical discharge between a planet and a comet and also between the head of a comet and its trailing part.
The events in the sky were viewed by the peoples of the world as a fight between an evil monster in the form of a serpent and the light-god who engaged the monster in battle and thus saved the world. The tail of the comet, leaping back and forth under the discharges of the flaming globe, was regarded as a separate body, inimical to the globe of the comet.
A full survey of the religious and folklore motifs which mirror this event would require more space than is at my disposal here; it is difficult to find a people or tribe on the earth that· does not have the same motif at the very focus of its religious beliefs.41
Since the descriptions of the battle between Marduk and Tiamat, the dragon, or Isis and Seth, or Vishnu and the serpent, or Krishna and. serpent, or Ormuzd and Ahriman follow an almost identical pattern and ·have many details in common with the battle of Zeus and Typhon, I shall give here Apollodorus' description of this battle.42
Typhon "out-topped all the mountains, and his head of ten brushed the stars. One of his bands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads. From the thighs downward be had huge coils of vipers which . . . emitted a long hissing. . . . His body was all winged . . . and fire flashed from his eyes. Such and so great was Typhon when, hurling kindled rocks, he made for the very heaven with hissing and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from bis mouth." To the sky of Egypt Zeus pursued Typhon "rushing at heaven." "Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle, and as he fled pursued him closely as far as Mount Casius, which overhangs Syria. There, seeing the monster sore wounded, be grappled with him. But Typhon twined about him and gripped him in his coils .••• " ''Having recovered his strength Zeus suddenly from heaven riding in a chariot of winged horses, pelted Typhon with thunderbolts. . . . So being again pursued he [Typhon] came to Thrace and in fighting at Mount Haemus he heaved whole mountains . . . a stream of blood gushed out on the mountain, and they say that from that circumstance the mountain was called Haemus [bloody]. And when he started to flee through the Sicilian sea, Zeus cast Mount Etna in Sicily upon him. That is a huge mountain, from which down to this day they say that blasts of fire issue from the thunderbolts that were thrown."
The struggle left deep marks on the entire ancient world . Some districts were especially associated. with the events of this cosmic fight. The Egyptian shore of the Red Sea was called Typhonia.43 Strabo narrates also that the Arimi (Aramaeans or Syrians) were terrified witnesses of the battle of Zeus with Typhon. And Typhon, "who, they add, was a dragon, when struck by the bolts of lightning, fled in search of a descent underground," 44 and not only did he cut furrows into the earth and form the beds of the rivers, but descending underground, he made fountains break forth.
Similar descriptions come from various places of the ancient world; in which the nations relate the experience of their ancestors who witnessed the great catastrophe of the middle of the second millennium.
At that time the Israelites had nor yet arrived at a clear monotheistic concept and, like other peoples, they saw in the great struggle a conflict between good and evil. The author of the Book of Exodus, suppressing this conception of the ancient Israelites, presented the portent of fire and smoke moving in a column as an angel or messenger of the Lord. However, many passages in other books of the Scriptures preserved the picture as it impressed itself upon eyewitnesses. Rahab is the Hebrew name for the contester with the Most High. "O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? . . . Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces .... The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. The north and the south. thou hast created them." 45. Deutero-Isaiah prayed: "Awake, awake~' put on strength, 0 arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that bath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it which bath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over? 46
From these passages it is clear that the battle of the Lord with Rahab was not a primeval battle before Creation; as I some scholars think.47
Isaiah prophesied for the future: "in that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent~ even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." 48
The "crooked serpent" is shown in many ancient pictures from China to India, to Persia, to Assyria, to Egypt, to Mexico. With the rise of the monotheistic concept, .the Israelites regarded this crooked serpent,-the contester with the Most High, as the Lord's own creation.
"He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and· hangeth the earth upon nothing. • • • The pillars of heaven tremble. • • • He divided the sea with his power • • . his hand hath formed the crooked serpent." 49
The Psalmist also says: 50 "God is my King of old. . -~ . Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength. . . . Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces. • • • Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: Thou dried up mighty rivers." The sea was cleft, the earth was cut with furrows, great rivers disappeared, others appeared. The earth rumbled for many years, and the peoples thought that the fiery dragon that had been struck down had descended underground and was groaning there.
[ The Comet of Typhon ]
Of all the mysterious phenomena which accompanied the Exodus, this mysterious Pillar seems the first to demand explanation.
-w. PHYmlAN-ADAMS The Call of Israel
One of the places of the heavenly combat between elementary forces of nature-as narrated by Apollodorus and Strabo-was on the way from Egypt to Syria.51 According to Herodotus, the final act of the fight between Zeus and Typhon took place at Lake Serbon on the coastal route from Egypt to Palestine.52 On the way from Egypt to Palestine the Israelites, after a night of terror and strong east wind, witnessed the upheaval of the day of the Passage. These parallel circumstances lead to a conclusion that will sound somewhat strange. Typhon (Typheus) lies on the bottom of the sea where the spellbound Israelites saw the upheaval of nature:. darkness, hurricane, mountain of water, fire and smoke, recorded in the Greek Legend as the circumstances in which the battle of Zeus with the dragon Typhon was fought. In the same pit of the sea lie the pharaoh and his hosts.53
Up to now I have identified Rahab-Typhon as a comet. But if Typhon lies on the bottom of the sea, is he not the pharaoh? This would mean that in the legend of Typhon two elements were welded together: the pharaoh, who perished in the catastrophe, and the outrageous rebel against Zeus, the Lord of the sky.54
In Pliny's Natural History, the ninety-first section of the second book reads: 55 "A terrible comet was seen by the people of Ethiopia and Egypt, to which Typhon, the king of that period, gave his name; it had a fiery appearance and was twisted like a coil, and it was very grim to behold: it was not really a star so much as what might be called a ball of fire."
The visit of a disastrous comet, so many times referred to in this book, is told in plain words, not in disguise. However, l must find support for my assumption that the comet of the days of King Typhon was the comet of the days of the Exodus.
I investigated the writings of the old chronographers, and in Cometographia of Hevelius (1668) I found references to the works of Calvisius, Helvicus, Herlicius, and Rockenbach, all of whom used manuscripts for the most part aod not printed sources, as they Jived only a little over one century after the invention of movable characters and the printing press.
Hevelius wrote (in Latin): "In the year of the world 2453 (1495 B.c.), according to certain authorities, a comet was seen in Syria, Babylonia, India, in the sign Jo, in the form of a disc, at the very time when the Israelites were on their march from Egypt to the Promised Land. So Rockenbach. The Exodus of the Israelites is placed by Calvisius in the year of the world 2453, or 1495 B.c." 56
I was fortunate enough to locate one copy of Rockeobach's De cometis tractatus novis methodicus in the United States.57 This book was published in Wittenberg in 1602. Its author was professor of Greek, mathematics, and law, and dean of philosophy at Frankfort. He wrote his book using old sources which he did not name: "ex probatissimis & antiquissimis vderum scriptoribus" (from the most trustworthy and the most ancient of the ear1y writers). As a result of his diligent gathering of ancient material, he made the following entry:
"In the year of the world two thousand four hundred and fifty-three-as many trustworthy authors, on the basis of many conjectures, have determined a comet appeared which Pliny also mentioned in bis second book. It was fiery, of irregular circular form, with a wrapped bead; it was in the shape of a globe and was of terrible aspect. It is said that King Typhon ruled at that time in Egypt. . . . Certain authorities assert that the comet was seen in Syria, Babylonia, India, in the sign of Capricorn, in the form of a disc, at the time when the children of Israel advanced from Egypt toward the Promised Land, led on their way by the pillar .of cloud during the day and by the pillar of fire at night." 58
Rockenbach did not draw any conclusion on the reaction of the comet of the days of Exodus to the natural phenomena of that time. His intent was only to fix the date of the comet of Typhon.
Among the early authors, Lydus, Servius {who quotes Avienus), Hephaestion, and Junctinus; in addition to Pliny, mention the Typhon comet.59 It is-depicted as an immense globe (globus immodicus) of fire, also as a sickle, which is a description of a globe illuminated by the sun, and close enough to be observed thus. Its movement was slow, its path was close to the sun. Its color was bloody: "It was not of fiery, but of bloody redness." It caused destruction "in rising and setting." Servius writes that this comet caused many plagues, evils, and hunger.
To discover what were the manuscript sources of Abraham Rockenbach that led him to the same conclusion at which we have arrived, namely, that the Typhon comet appeared in the time of the Exodus, is a task not yet accomplished. Servius says that more information about the calamities caused by this comet is to be found in the writings of the Roman astrologer Campester and in the works of the Egyptian astrologer Petosiris.60 It is possible that copies of works of some authors containing citations from the writings of these ancient astrologers, preserved in the libraries of Europe, were Rockenbacb's manuscript sources.
Campester, as quoted by Lydus, was certain that should the comet Typhon again meet the earth, a four day encounter would suffice to destroy the world 61 This implies also that the first encounter with the Comet Typhon brought the earth to the brink of destruction.
But even without this somber prognostication of Campester, we have a very imposing and quite inexhaustible array of references to Typhon and it's destructive action against the world. Almost every Greek author referred to it. The real nature of Typhon being that of a comet as explained by Pinay and others, all references to the disasters caused by Typhon must be understood as descriptions of natural catastrophes in which the earth and the comet were involved. As is known , Pallas of the Greeks was another name for Typhon, also Seth of the Egyptians was an equivalent to Typhon. 62 Thus the number of references to the comet Typhon can be enlarged by references to Pallus and Seth.
It was not only Abraham Rockenbach who synchronized the appearance of the comet Typhon with the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Looking for authors who might have done likewise. I found that Samuel Bochart, a scholarly writer of the seventeenth century, in his book Hierozolcon 63 has a passage in which he maintains that the plagues of the days of Exodus resemble the calamities that Typhon brought in lt's train, and that therefore " The flight of Typhon is the Exodus of Moses from Egypt."64 In this he actually follows the passage transmitted by Plutarch. 65 But since Typhon according to Pinay and others was a comet, Samuel Bochart was close to the conclusions at which we arrive, traveling along another route.
[ The Spark ]
A phenomenon of great significance took place. The head of the comet did not crash into the earth, but. exchanged major electrical discharges with it. A tremendous spark sprang forth at the moment of the nearest approach of the comet, when the waters were heaped at their highest above the surface of the . earth and before they fell down, followed by a rain of debris tom from the very body and tail of the comet. ·
"And the Angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face; and stood behind them . . . and it was a cloud and darkness but it gave light by night."
An exceedingly strong wind and lightnings rent the cloud. In the morning the waters rose as a wall and moved away.
"And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. And the Egyptians pursued. . . . And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, and took off their chariot wheels . . . and the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them."66
The immense tides were caused by the presence of a celestial body close by; they fell when a discharge occurred between the earth and the other body.
Artapanus, the author of the no longer extant De Judaeis, apparently knew that the words, "The Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud," refer to a great lightning. Eusebius quotes Artapanus: "But when the Egyptians ••• were pursuing them, a fire, it is said, shone out upon them from the front, and the sea overflowed the path again, and the Egyptians were all destroyed by the fire and the flood."67
The great discharges of interplanetary force are commemorated in the traditions, legends, and mythology of all the peoples of the world. The god-Zeus of the Greeks, Odin of the Icelanders, Ukko of the Finns, Perun of the Russian pagans, Wotan (Woden) of the Germans, Mazda of the Persians, Marduk of the Babylonians, Shiva of the Hindus-is pictured with lightning in his 'band and described as the god who threw his thunderbolt at the world overwhelmed with water and fire.
Similarly, many psalms of the Scriptures commemorate the great discharges. "Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken. . . . He bowed the heavens also, and came down . . . he did fly upon the wings of the wind. . . . At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed, hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hailstones and coals of fire . . . and he shot out lightnings. . . . Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered." 68 "The voice of the Lord is powerful. . . . The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars. . . . The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh." 69 "The kingdoms were moved; he uttered his voice, the earth melted." .70
"The waters saw thee; they were afraid: the depths also were troubled . • • the skies sent out a sound: thine arrows also went abroad. The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven; the lightnings lightened the universe: the earth trembled and shook." 71 "Clouds and darkness are round about him . . . a fire goeth before him and burneth up his enemies round about. ... His lightnings enlightened the world: the earth saw, and trembled." 72
Nothing is easier than to add to the number of such quotations from other parts of the Scriptµres--Job, the Song of Deborah, the Prophets.
With the fall of the double wall of water, the Egyptian host was swept away. The force of the impact threw the pharaoh's army into the air ... Come and see the works of God: he is terrible in his doing toward the children of men. He turned the sea into dry land: they went through the flood on foot. • . • Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water." 73
This tossing of the Egyptian host into the air by an avalanche of water is referred to also in the Egyptian source l quoted before: on the shrine found in el-Arish the story is told of a hurricane and of a prolonged darkness when nobody could leave the palace, and of the pursuit by the pharaoh Taoui-Thom of the fleeing slaves whom he followed to Pi-khiroti, which is the biblical Pi-ha-khiroth ·"His Majesty leapt into the place of the whirlpool." Then it is said that he was "lifted by a great force." 74
Although the larger part of the Israelite fugitives were already out of the reach of the falling tidal waves, a great number of them perished in this disaster, as in the previous ones of fire and hurricane of cinders. That Israelites perished at the Sea of Passage is implied in Psalm 68 where mention is made of "my -people" that remained in "the depths of the sea."
These tidal waves also overwhelmed entire tribes who inhabited Tehama, the thousand-mile-long coastal region of the Red Sea.
"God sent against the Djorhomites swift clouds, ants, and other signs of his rage, and many of them perished. • . . In the land of Johainah an impetuous torrent carried off all of them in a night. The scene of this catastrophe is known by the name of Idam (fury)." The author of this passage, Masudi, an Arab author of the tenth century, quotes an earlier author, Omeya, son of Abu-Salt: "In days of yore the Djorhomites settled in Tehama, and a violent flood carried all of them away." 75
Likewise the tradition related in Kitab Alaghani 76 is familiar with the plague of insects (ants of the smallest variety) that forced the tribe to migrate from Hedjaz to their native land, where they were destroyed by "Toufan", a I deluge; In my reconstruction of ancient history, I endeavor to establish the synchronism of these events and the Exodus,
[ The Collapsed Sky ]
The rain of meteorites and fire from the sky, the clouds of dust of exogenous origin that drifted low, and the displacement of the world quarters created the impression that the sky had collapsed.
The ancient peoples of Mexico referred to a world age that came to its end when the sky collapsed and darkness enshrouded the world.77
Strabo relates, in the name of Ptolemaeus, the son of Lagus, a general of Alexander and founder of the Egyptian dynasty called by his name, that the Celti who lived on the shores of the Adriatic were asked by Alexander what it was they most feared, to which they replied that they feared no one, but only that the sky might collapse.78
The Chinese refer to the collapse of the sky which took place when the mountains fell.79 Because mountains fell or were leveled at the same time when the sky was displaced, ancient peoples, not only the Chinese, thought that mountains support the sky.
"The earth trembled, and the heavens dropped • • • the mountains melted," says the Song of Deborah.80 "The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God: even Sinai itself was moved," says the psalmist.81
The tribes of Samoa in their legends refer to a catastrophe when "in days of old the heavens fell down." The heavens or the clouds were so low that the people could not stand erect without touching them. 82
The Finns tell io their Kalevala that the support of the sky gave way and then a spark of fire kindled a new sun and a new moon.83 The Lapps make offerings accompanied by the prayer that the sky should not lose its support and fall down. 84 The Eskimos of Greenland . are afraid that the support of the sky may fail and the sky fall down and kill all human beings; a darkening of the sun and the moon will precede such a catastrophe.85
The primitives of Africa, in eastern as well as western. provinces of the continent, tell about the collapse of the sky in the past. The Ovaherero tribesmen say that many years ago "the Greats of the sky" (Eyuru) let the sky fall . on the earth; almost all the people were killed, only a few remained alive. The tribes of Kanga and Loanga also have a tradition of the collapse of the sky which annihilated the human race. The Wanyoro in Runyoro likewise relate that the sky fell on the earth and killed everybody: the god Kagra threw the firmament upon the earth to destroy mankind.86
The tradition of the Cashinahua, the aborigines of western Brazil, is narrated as follows: .. The lightnings flashed and the thunders roared terribly and all were afraid. Then the heaven burst and the fragments fell down and killed everything and everybody. Heaven and earth changed · places. Nothing that bad life was left upon the earth." 87
In this tradition are included the same elements: the lightnings and thunderings, "the bursting of heaven," the fall of meteorites. About the change of places between heaven and earth there is more to say, and I shall not postpone the subject for long.
CHAPTER 4
[ Boiling Earth and Sea ]
Two celestial bodies were driven near to each other. The interior of the terrestrial globe pushed toward the exterior. The earth, disturbed in its rotation, developed heat. The land surface became hot. Various sources of many peoples describe the melting of the earth's surface and the boiling of the sea.
The earth burst and lava flowed. The Mexican sacred book, Popol-Vuh, the Manuscript Cakchiquel, the Manuscript Troano all record how the mountains in every part of the Western· Hemisphere simultaneously gushed lava. The volcanoes that opened along the entire chain of the Cordilleras and in other mountain ranges and on flat land vomited fire; vapor, and torrents of lava. These and other Mexican sources relate how, at the closing hours of the age that was brought to an end by the rain of fire, mountains swelled under the pressure of molten masses and new ridges rose; new volcanoes sprang out of the earth, and streams of lava flowed out of the cleft earth.1
Events underlying Greek and Mexican traditions are narrated in the Scriptures. ''The mountains shake with the swelling . • • the earth melted." 2 "Clouds and darkness • • . fire • • • the earth saw and trembled. The hills melted like wax." 3 "He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: be toucheth the hills, and they smoke." 4 "The earth trembled . , . the mountains melted : • • even that Sinai." 5 "He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers. • • • The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned • • • yea, the world, and all that dwell therein." 6
The rivers steamed, and even the bottom of the sea boiled here and there. "The sea boiled, all the shores of the· ocean boiled, all the middle of it boiled," says the Zend-Avesta. The star Tistrya made the sea boil.7
The traditions of the. Indians retain the memory of this boiling of the water in river and sea. The tribes of British Columbia teJl; "Great clouds appeared • • . · such a great heat came, that finally the water . boiled. People jumped into the streams and lakes to cool themselves, and· died." 8 On the North Pacific coast of America the tribes insist that the ocean boiled: "It grew very hot . . . many animals jumped into the water to save themselves, but the water began to boil." 9 The Indians of the Southern Ute tribe in Colorado record in their legends that the rivers boiled.10
Jewish tradition, as preserved in the rabbinical sources, declares that the mire at the bottom of the Sea of Passage was heated. "The Lord fought against the Egyptians with the pillar of cloud and fire. The mire was heated to the boiling point by the pillar of fire." 11 The rabbinical sources say also that the pillar of fire and of smoke leveled mountains.12
Hesiod in his Theogony, relating the upheaval caused by a celestial collision, says: ''1be huge earth groaned ..•• A great part of the huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by man's art • . . or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is softened by glowing fire in mountain glens." 13
According to the traditions of the New World, the profile of the land changed in a catastrophe, new valleys were formed, mountain ridges were tom apart, new gulfs were cut out, ancient heights were overturned and new ones sprang up. The few survivors of the ruined world were enveloped in darkness, "the sun in some way did not exist," and in intervals in the light of blazing fires they saw the silhouettes of new mountains.
The Mayan sacred book Popol-Vuh says that the god "rotted mountains" and "removed mountains," and .. great and small mountains moved and shaken." Mountains ·swelled with lava. Coniraya-Viracocha, the god of the Incas raised mountains from the flat land and flattened other mountains.14
And similarly, "When Israel went out of Egypt • . . the sea .saw and fled . . . the mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs. • • • Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord." 15
"Which removed the mountains ••• which overturned them in his anger; which shaketh the earth out of her place . . . which commandeth the sun and it riseth not •.. which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea." 16
[ Mount Sinai ]
Along the eastern shore of the Red Sea there stretches a mountainous crest with a number of volcanic craters, at present extinguished; some, however, were active not many centuries ago. One of these volcanoes is usually described as the Mount of the Lawgiving: In the seventies of the last century a scholar, Charles Beke, suggested that Mount Sinai was a volcano in the Arabian Desert.17 The Book of Deuteronomy ( 4: 11) says "the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness." Beke's idea was rejected by his contemporaries · and ultimately by himself.18 Modem scholars, however, agree with bis original theory, and for this reason they look for the Mount of the Lawgiving among the volcanoes of Mount Seir and not on the traditional Sinai Peninsula where there are no volcanoes. Thus the claims of the rival peaks of the Sinai Peninsula for the honor of being the Mount of the Lawgiving 19 are silenced by new contestants.
It is true that it is stated "the mountains melted , even that Sinai," but this melting of summits does not necessarily · mean an opening up of craters. Rocks turned into a flowing mass.
The plateau of the Sinai Peninsula is covered with formations of basalt lava 20 wide stretches of the Arabian Desert also glisten with lava. 21 Lava formations, interspersed with extinguished volcanoes, stretch from the vicinity of Palmyra southward into Arabia as far as Mecca. 22 Only a few thousand years ago the deserts glowed with the beacons of many volcanoes, mountains melted, and lava flowed over the ground from numerous fissures.
The celestial body that ·the great Architect of nature sent close to the earth, made contact with it in electrical · discharges, retreated, and approached again. If we are to be• lieve · the Scriptural data, there elapsed seven weeks, or by another computation, about two months 23 from the day of the Exodus to the day of the revelation at Mount Sinai.
"There were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. . . . And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke . • • and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice." 24
The Talmud and Midrashim describe the Mountain of the Lawgiving as quaking so greatly that it appeared as if it were lifted up and shaken above the heads of the people; and the people felt as if they were no longer standing securely on the ground, but were held up by some invisible force. 25 The presence of a heavenly body overhead caused this phenomenon and this feeling.
"Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also ·of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. . . . He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet. . . . At the brightness that was before him bis thick clouds passed, hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the heavens . . . hail stones and coals of fire. . . . He shot out lightnings. . . . Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered." 26
Earth and heaven participated in the cosmic convulsion. In the Fourth Book of Ezra the occurrences witnessed at Mount Sinai are described in these words: "Thou didst bow down the heavens, didst make the earthquake, and convulsed the world. Thou didst cause the deeps to tremble and didst alarm the spheres." 27
The approach of a star toward the earth in the days of the revelation at Sinai is implied by the text of the Tractate Shabbat: Although the ancestors of the later proselytes were not present at the Mountain of the Lawgiving, their star was there close by.28
An author of the first century of the present era, whose work on biblical antiquities has been ascribed to Philo, the Alexandrian philosopher, thus desc!'ibes the comf!10• tion on the earth below and in the sky above: "The mountain [Sinai] burned with fire and the earth shook and the hills were removed and the mountains overthrown; the· depths boiled, and all the inhabitable places were shaken . . . and flames of fire shone forth and thunderings and lightnings were multiplied, and winds and tempests made a roaring: the stars were gathered together [collided]." 29 Referring to the verse, "He bowed the heavens also, and came down" (Psalms 18), Pseudo-Philo describes the events of Mount Sinai and says that the Lord "impeded the course of the stars." 30 "The earth was stirred from her foundation, and the mountains and the rocks trembled in their fastenings, and the clouds lifted up their waves against the flame of the fire that it should not consume the world . • • and all the waves of the sea came together." 31
The Hindus depict the cosmic catastrophe at the end of a· world age: ''The whole world breaks into flames. So also a hundred thousand times ten million worlds. AU the peaks of Mount Sineru, even those which are hundreds of leagues in height, crumble and disappear in the sky. The flames of fire rise up and envelop the heaven." 32 The sixth sun or sun age ended. Similarly, in the Jewish tradition, with the revelation at Sinai the sixth world age was terminated and the seventh began.33
[ Theophany ]
Earthquakes are often• accompanied by a roaring· noise that comes from the bowels of the earth. This phenomenon was known to early geographers. Pliny 3434 wrote that earthquakes are "preceded or accompanied by a terrible sound." Vaults supporting the ground give way and it seems as though the earth heaves deep sighs. The sound was attributed to the gods and ca11ed theophany.
The eruptions of volcanoes are also accompanied by loud noises. The sound produced by Krakatoa in the East Indies, during the eruption of 1883, was so loud that it was heard as far as Japan, 3,000 miles away, the farthest distance traveled by sound recorded in modem annals.35
In the days of the Exodus, when the world was shaken and rocked, and all volcanoes vomited lava and all continents quaked, the earth groaned almost unceasingly. At an initial stage of the catastrophe, according to Hebrew tradition, Moses heard in the silence of the desert the sound which he interpreted to mean, "I am that I am." 36 "I am Yahweh," heard the people in the frightful night at the Mountain of the Lawgiving. 36 "The whole mount quaked greatly" and "the voice of the trumpet sounded long." 37 "And all the people saw the roars, and the torches, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off." 38
It was a perfect setting for hearing words in the voice of nature in an uproar. An inspired leader interpreted the voice he heard, ten Jong, trumpet like blasts. The earth groaned: for weeks now an its strata had been disarranged, its orbit distorted, its world quarters displaced, its oceans thrown upon its continents, its seas turned into deserts, its mountains upheaved, its islands submerged, its rivers running upstream-a world flowing with lava, shattered by meteorites, with yawning chasms, burning naphtha, vomiting volcanoes, shaking ground, a world enshrouded in an atmosphere filled with smoke and vapor. 39
Twisting of strata and building of mountains, earthquakes and rumbling of volcanoes joined in an infernal din. It was a voice not only in the desert of Sinai; the entire world must have heard it. "The sky and the earth resounded . . . mountains and hills were moved," says the Midrash. "Loud did the firmament roar, and earth with echo resounded" says the epic of Gilgamesh.40 In Hesiod "the huge earth groaned" when Zeus lashed Typhon with his tiolts-"the earth resounded terribly, and the wide heaven above." 41
The approach of two charged globes toward each other could also produce trumpet like sounds, varying as the distance between them increased or lessened. 42 It appears that this phenomenon is described by Pseudo-Philo as "testimony of the trumpets between the stars and their Lord." 43 Here we can trace the origin of the Pythagorean notion of the "music of the spheres" and the idea that stars make music. In Babylonia the spheres of the planets were called "voices" and they were supposed to produce music.44 According to Midrashic literature, the trumpet sounding at Mount Sinai had seven different pitches (or notes), and the rabbinical literature speaks of "the heavenly music" heard at the revelation. "At the first sound the sky and the earth moved, the seas and the rivers turned to flight mountains and hills were loosened in their foundations!' 45
Homer depicts a similar occurrence in these words:· "The wide earth rang, and round about great heaven pealed as with a trumpet." 46"The world all burns at the blast of the horn," is said in the Voluspa.47
According to the Hebrew tradition, all the nations heard the roaring of the lawgiving. It appears that at Mount Sinai the sound that "sounded Jong" rose ten times; in this roaring the Hebrews heard the Decalogue.
"Thou sha1t not kill" (Lo tirzah); "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Lo tin'a/); "Thou shalt not steal" (Lo tignov) . •.. "These words [of the Decalogue] ... were not heard by Israel alone, but by the inhabitants of all the earth. The Divine voice divided itself into the seventy tongues of men, so that all might understand it. . . • The souls of the heathens almost fled from them when they heard it.'' 48
The din caused by the groaning earth repeated itself again and again, but not ·so loud, as subterranean strata readjusted themselves after being dislocated; earthquakes incessantly shook the ground for years. The Papyrus Ipuwer calls these years "years of noise." "Years of noise. There is no end to noise," and again, "Oh, that the earth would cease from noise, and tumult (uproar) be no more." 49
The sound probably had the same pitch all over the world as it came from the deep interior of the earth, all of whose strata were dislocated when it was thrown from its orbit and forced from its axis.
The great king-lawgiver of China, in whose time a dreadful cataclysm took place and the order of nature was disturbed, bore the name Yahou.50 In the Preface to the Shu King, attributed to Confucius, it is written: "Examining into antiquity, we find that the Emperor Yaou was called charged clouds of the comet enveloped the globe and lay very close to the ground.
[ Emperor Yahoo ]
The history of China is commonly supposed to extend back to gray antiquity. But in reality the sources of the ancient period of the Chinese past are very scanty, for they were destroyed by the Emperor Tsin-chi-hoang (246-209 before the present era). He ordered all books on history and astronomy, as well as works of classic literature, ·to be burned. Search for these books was made throughout- the empire for this purpose. The story persists that a few remnants of the old literature were again put into writing from the memory of an old man; some were said to have been found hidden in the sepulcher of Confucius, and are ascribed to his pen.
Of these few remains of the old lore, the most cherished are those which tell of the Emperor Yahou and his times. His personality and his period are considered as "the most auspicious in the Chinese annals."51 The history of China preceding his reign is ascribed to the mythical period of the Chinese past. In the days of Yahou the event occurred which separates the almost obliterated and very dim past of China from the period that is considered historical: China was overwhelmed by an immense catastrophe.
"At that time the miracle is said to have happened that the sun during a span of ten days did not set, the forests were ignited, and a multitude of abominable vermin was brought forth." 52 ''In the lifetime of Yao [Yahou] the sun did not set for ten full days and the entire land was flooded." 53
An immense wave ''that reached the sky" fell down on the land of China. "The water was well up on the high mountains, and the foothills could not be seen at all. 54(This recalls Psalm 104: "The waters stood above the mountains • • • they go up by the mountains" and Psalm 107: "The waves mount up to the heaven.")
"Destructive in their overflow are the waters of the inundation," said the emperor. "In their vast extent they embrace the hilts and overtop the great heights, threatening the heavens with their floods." The emperor ordered that all efforts be made to open outlets for the waters that were caught in the va11eys between the mountains. For many years the population labored, trying to free the plains. and valleys of the waters of the flood by digging channels and draining the fields. For a considerable number of years all eff ons were in vain. The minister who was in charge Qf this urgent and immense work, Khwan, was sentenced to death because of his failure-"For nine years he labored, but the work was unaccomplished" 55, and only his son Yu succeeded in draining the land. This achievement was so highly rated that Yu became emperor of China after King Shun, first successor to Yahou. This Yu was the founder of the new and notable dynasty called by his name.
The chronicles of modem China preserve records of one million lives lost in a single overflow of the Yellow River.56 Another natural catastrophe-the earthquake-also caused great devastation in China at various times: it is estimated that in the year 1556 the quaking earth took 830,000 lives and 3,000,000 in 1662.57 Was not the catastrophe of the time of Yahou one of the major inundations of rivers, as modern scholars suppose it to have been? But the fact that this catastrophe has been vivid in traditions for thousands of years, while neither the overflow of the Yellow River, when a million people perished, nor the great earthquakes, play a conspicuous part in the recollections of the nation, is an argument against the established interpretation.
Rivers do not overflow in the form of a sky-high wave. The overflowing rivers of China subside in a few weeks, and the water does not remain in the plains until the following spring, but flows away, and the ground dries in a few more weeks. The flood of Yahou required draining for many years, and during all this period water covered the lower part of the country.
Yahou's reign is remembered for the following undertaking: This emperor sent scholars to different parts of China, and even to lndoChina, to find out the location of north, west, east, and south by observing the direction of the sun's rising and setting and the motion of the .stars. He also charged his astronomers to find out the duration of seasons, and to draw up a new calendar. The Shu King is called the oldest book of Chinese chronicles, rewritten from memory or from some hidden manuscript after the burning of books by Tsin-chi-hoang. In its oldest section, the canon of Yaou [Yahou], it is written:
"Thereupon Yaou [Yahou] commanded He and Ho, in reverent accordance with the wide heavens, to calculate and delineate the movements and appearances of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the zodiacal spaces; and to deliver respectfully the seasons to the people."58
The necessity, soon after the flood, of finding anew the four directions and learning anew the. movements of the sun and the moon, of delineating the zodiacal signs, of compiling the calendar, of informing the population of China of the sequence of the seasons, creates the impression that during the catastrophe the orbit of the earth and the year, the inclination of the axis and the seasons, the orbit of the moon and the month, changed. We are not told what caused the cataclysm, but it is written in ancient annals that during the reign of Y ahou "a brilliant star issued from the constellation Yin."59
According to the old Tibetan traditions, the highlands of Tibet, too, were flooded in a great cataclysm.60 The traditions of the Tibetans speak also of terrifying comets that caused great upheavals.61
Calculations were undertaken to establish the dates of the Emperor Yahou. On the basis of a remark that the constellation Niao, thought to be the constellation Hydra, culminated at sunset. on the day of the vernal equinox in the time of Yahou, it was reckoned that the flood occurred in the twenty-third century before the present era, but this date bas been questioned by many. Sometimes it has also been supposed that the "Flood of Yabou" was the Chinese story of the universal flood, but this point of view has been abandoned. The story of the deluge of Noah has its parallel in a Chinese tradition about a universal flood in prehistoric times, in the days of Fo-hi, who alone of all the country was saved. The flood of Yahou is sometimes regarded as simultaneous with the flood of Ogyges.
The flood of Ogyges did not· occur in the third millennium, but in the middle of the second millennium before this era. In the section entitled "The Floods of Deucalion and Ogyges," the synchronism of these devastations with the catastrophes of the days of Moses and Joshua will be demonstrated and supported by ancient and chronological sources.
When we summarize what has been told about the time of Yahou, we have the following data: the sun did not set for a number of days, the forests were set on fire, vermin filled the country~ a high wave "reaching the sky" poured over the face of the land and swept water over the mountain peaks and filled the valleys for many years; in the days of Yahou the four quarters of the heaven were established anew, and observations of the duration of the year and month and of the order of the seasons were made. The history of China in the period before this catastrophe is quite obliterated.
All these data are in accord with the traditions of the Jewish people about the events connected with the Exodus: the sun disappeared for a number of days; the land was tilled with vermin; gigantic sky-high tidal waves divided the sea; the world burned. As we shall see, the Hebrew sources, too, reveal that a new calendar was established reckoning from the days of the catastrophe and that the seasons and the four quarters of the heaven were no longer the same.
next East and West 120s
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chapter 3
1. Brasseur, Manuscrit Troano (1869), p. 141.
2. In the documents of the collection of Kingsborough, the writings of Gomara, Motolinia, SahagUn, Landa, Cogolludo, and other authors of the early postconquest time, the cataclysm of deluge, hurricane, and volcanoes is referred to in numerous passages. See, e.g., Gomara, Conqulsta de Mexico, II, pp. 261 ff.
3. Popol-Vuh, Chap. Ill.
4.Cf. A, J. Carnoy, Iranian Mythology (1917).
5. Cf. Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt, II, 453. The Talmud also occasionally uses the notion of "cosmic wind." The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot, 13.
6. Seven Tablets of Creation, the fourth tablet.
7. 'E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (1-929), I, 322 ff.
8. Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia, I, 36, 154,237.
9. G, Rawlinson, The History of Herodotus (1858-1862), II, 22S note.
10 Exodus 10:19
.11. Exodus 14:21.
12. Cf. Isaiah 19:6,
13. See p. 60.
14. Akerblad, Journal asiatique, XIII (1834), 349; F. Fresnel, ibid., 4• S6rie, XI (1848); cf. Peyron, lexicon linguae copticae (1835), p. 304.
15. Moph and Noph refer to Memphis.
16. Nihongi, "Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest .Times" (transl W. G. Aston), Transactions and Proceedings of the Japanese SocieQ', I (1896), 37 f., 47.
17. Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia, I, 44. ,.,.
18. Warren, "World Cycles," Buddhism, p. 328.
19. Cf. J. Lalande, Abg D'astronomie (1795), p. 340, who computed that a comet with a head as large as the earth, at a distance of. 13,290 lie11es, or about four diameters of the earth, would raise ocean tides 2,000 toises or about four kilometers high.
20. P. Kirchenberg, La Theorie de la relativite (1922), pp. 131-132.
21. Andree, Dk Flutsagen, p. 115,
22. H. S. Bellamy, Moons, Myths and Man (1938), p. 277.
23. "Exodus 14:20; Ginzberg, Legends, II, 359.
24. "The waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left." Exodus 14:22.
25.A. Calmet, Commentaire, l'Exode (1708), p. 159: "Les eaux demeurent suspendues, comme une glace solide et massive."
26. Rashi's Commentary to Pentateuch (English transl. by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silberman, 1930).
27.Ginzberg, Legends, III, 22; Targum Yerushalmi, Exodus 14:22.
28. Psalms 104:6-8; 107 :25-26,
29. Job 26:11-12.
30. Psalms 78:12-13.
31. Psalms 33 :7-8.
32. Mekhilta Bisballa 6, 33a; other sources in Ginzberg, Legends, • VI, 10.
33. Antonio de Herrera, Historia general de las indias Occidentales 1, Vol. IV, Bk.
34. De Landa, Yucatan, p, 8.
35. Leone de Cambrey, Lapland ugends (1926).
36.The Madison boulder near Conway, New Hampshire, measures 90 by 40 by 38 feet, and weighs almost 10,000 tons. "It is composed of granite, quite unlike the bedrock beneath it; hence the boulder is typically 'erratic;'" Daly, The Changing World of 1he Ice Age, p, 16.
37. J. Geils, The Great Ice Age and lls Relation to the Antiquity of Man (1894), pp. 25--26
38. Ibid.
39. Upham, The Glacial Lake Agassiz (1895), p. 239.
40. Cf. Exodus 14:19.
41. I intend to handle a portion of this material in an essay on The Dragon.
42. Apollodorus, The Library, Epitome II (transl. Frazer).
43. Strabo, The Geography (transl. H. L Jones, 1924), vii, 3, 8,
44. Ibid.
45. Psalms 89:10-12,
46.'Isaiah 51 :9-10.
47. See S. Reinach, Cults, Myths and Religion ( 1912), pp. 42 ff; H. Gunkel, Schop/ung und Chaos in Urz.eit und Endz.eit (189S); J. Pedersen, Israel, Its Life and Culture (1926), pp. 472 ff.
48.Isaiah 27:1,
49. 10 Job 26:7-13,
50.psalms 74:12.:.is.
51.Mount Casius, mentioned by Apollodorus, is the name of Mount Lebanon as well as of Mount Sinai. Cf. Pomponim Mela De situ orbis. -
52. Herodotus iii, 5. Also Apollonim Rhodius in the Argonaulica, Bk. ii, says that Typhon "smitten by the bolt of Zeus • • • lies whelmed beneath the waters of the Serbonian Jake."
53. In Ages in Chaos, evidence will be presented to identify the pharaoh of the Exodus as Taui Thom, the last king of the Middle Kingdom. He is Tau Timaeus (Tutimaeus) of Manetho, in whose days "a blast of God's displeasure" fell upon Egypt and terminated the period at present known as the Middle Kingdom. The name of his queen is given in the naos of el-Arish as Tephnut. Ra-uah-ab is a name met among the Egyptian kings of that period (W.M.F. Petrie, A History of Egypt, I, 227); it could have served as origin for the Hebrew word for dragon, Rahab. See note 4.
54.Actually, "dragon" became the appellation of Egyptian pharaohs in the prophetic literature. Cf. Ezekiel 32:2.
55. Pliny, Natural History, li, 91 (transl. Rackham, 1938).
56.J. Hevelius, Cometographia (1668), pp. 794 f.
57. In the library of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. 8
58. "Anno mundi, bis millesimo, quadriga centesimo quincuagesimo tertio, Cometa (ut multi probati autores, de tempore hoc "-2.tuunt, ex conjectures multis) cuius Plinius quoque lib. 2 cap. 2S mentio::iem facit, ignem, formam imperfecti circuli, & in se convolution:aputq; globi repracseotaru, aspect.u terribili apparuit, Typ bonq; a rcge, tune tempori! ex Aegypto imperium tenente, dictus est, qui rex, ut homincs fide digni asserunt, auxilio gigantum, reges Aegypti deficit. Visu.s quoq; est, ut aliqui volut, in Siria, Babylonia, India, in signo capricornio, sub forma ro12.e, co tempore, quando filii Israel ex Acgypto in terram promissam, duce ac vi2.e monstratore, per diem colu=anubis, noctu vcro columna ignis, ut cap. 7.8.9.10 legitur pro!ccti wnt."
59.Iohannis Laurcntii Lydi Liber de o.rtentis. et calerukzria Graeca omnia (ed. by C. Wachsmuth, 1897), p. 171. In this work Wachsmuth also printed excerpts from Hephaestion, Avienus apud Servium, and Junctinus.
60 The time when Campester flourished is not knov.-n, but it is assumed to have been in the third or fourth century of the presc:it era. Sec Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie der clawijchen Altertum,,wissenschaft, .r.v. The time of Petosiris is tentatively dated by the second pre-Christian era Pauly-Wissowa, s.v.). But he is mentioned in The Danaides of Aristophanes (-448 to-388). Sec also E. Rim, Nechepsonis'el Peto.riridis /ragmenta magica (1890).
61-65 file bad
66. Exodus 14:19 ff.
67. Busebius, Preparation for the Gospel (transl. Gifford), Bk. ix, Chap. xxvii. Calmet, Commentaire, l'Exode, p. 154, correctly under• stood the passage in Artapanus because he paraphrases it as follows: "Artapanus dans Eu~be dit que Jes Egyptiens furent frapp~ de la foudre, et abbatus par le feu du ciel dam le meme temps que l'eau do la mer vint tomber sur ewc. ]
68. Psalms 18:7-15.
69. Psalms 29 :4,8.
70. Psalms 46:6.
71.Psalms 77:16-19. Tevel is the universe, but the King James Version translates "world"; world is olam.
72. Psalms 97 :2-4,
73. Psalms 66:S-12." On cosmic discharges see infra the Sections, "'lgnis e Coelo" and "Synodos."
74. Griffith, The Antiquities of Tel-el-Yahudiyeh: Goyon, "Les travaux de Chou et les tribulations de Geb," Kemi (1936).
75. EI-Ma~oudi, us Prairies d'or (transl. C. Barbier and P. de Courteille, 1861), Ill, Chap. 39. An English translation is by A. Sprenger (1841): El-Mas'udi, Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems.
76. F. Fresnel, "Sur l'Historie des Arabcs avant l'lslamisme (K.itab alaghaniyy)," Journal asiatlque (1838).
77. Seier, Gesammelte A.bhandlungen, II, 798.
78. Strabo, The Geography, vii, 3, 8.
79. A. Forke, The World Conception of the Chinese (1925), p. 43.
80. Judges S:4-5.
81. Psalms 68:8. On periodic collapses of the firmament see also Rashl's commentary on Genesis 11 :1, referred to in the Section, ''World Ages," •
82. Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia. I. 41.
83. See Section, 'The Darkness," now 8.
84. Olrik, Ragnarok (Germ.an ed.), p. 446.
85. Ibid., p. 406. The tradition was told by the Eskimos to P. Egede (1734-1740).
86. L. Frobenius, Die Weltanschauung der NaturviJllur (1898), pp. 355-357. u
87.Bellamy, Moons, Myths and Man, p. 80.
CHAPTER 4
1. See Selcr, Gesammelte A.bhandlungen, II, 798.
2. Psalms 46:3-6.
3. Psalms 97 :2-S.
4. Psalms 104:32.
5.Song of Deborah, Judges 5:4-5,
6. Nahum 1 :4-5,
7. The Zend-Avesta (Pt. II, p. 95 of J. Darmesteter's translation, 1883); Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, p, 268.
8 "Kaska Tales" collected by J. A. Teit, Journal of Ammcan Folk,. lore, XXX (1917), 440.
9. S. Thompson, Tales of the North American Indians (1929); H.B. Alexander, North American Mythology (1916), p. 255.
10 R. H. Lowie, "Southern Ute," Journal of American Folk-lor,, XXXVII (1924).
11 Ginzberg, Legends, ill, 49.
12. Ibid., II, 375; m, 316; VI, 116. Tractate Berakhot, 59a-59b. 21
13. Hesiod. Theogony (transl. Evelyn-White), 11. 856 ff.
14. Brasseur, Sources de l'histoire primitive du Mexique, pp. 30, 3S, 37, 47.
15. Psalms 114:1-7.
16. Job 9:5-8. 1 Beke, Mo11nt Sinai, a Volcano (1873).
17. The Late Dr. Charles Beke's Discoveries of Si11al In Arabia and of Midia,1 (1878), pp. 436, 561.
18. Cf. Palmer, Sinai: From tire Fourth Egyptian Dynasty to the Present Day.
19. Song or Deborah, Judges 5:S.
20. W. M. Flinders Petrie, "The Metals in Egypt," Ancient Egypt (1915), refers to "the enormous eruption of ferruginous basalt ••• which probably burnt up forests in its outflow."
21. N. Glueck, The Other Side of lhe Jordan (]940), p. 34,
22.C. P. Grant, The Syrian Desert (1937), p. 9.
23. Exodus 19:1.
24. Exodus ,19:16-19. 1
25. Cf. Ginzberg, Legends, II, 92, 95,
26. Psalms 18:7-1S. An identical text is found in 2 Samuel 22. 12
27. Ezra (transl. Box), in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. R.H. Charles.
28. The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 146a. According to Midrash Shir (1Sa-1Sb) the pharaoh warned the Israelites not to leave Egypt, because they would meet the bloody star Ra (in Hebrew "Evil").
29.The Biblical Antiquitie, o/ Philo (transl. M, R. James, 1917), Chap. XI.
30.Ibid., Chap. XXIII.
31. Ibid., Chap. XXXII.
32. Warren, B11ddhism, p. 323.
33. Midrash Rabba, Bereshit.
34. Pliny Natural History, ii, 82.
35. G. J. Symons (ed.), The Eruption of Krakatoa: Report of the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society (of London) (1888).
36 Exodus 3:14.
37.Exodus 20:1.
38. Exodus 19:18-19.
9.Exodus 20:18; "the thunderings and the lightnings" of the King James Version is not an exact translation of Kolot and Lapidim.
40. Epic of Gilgamesh (transl. Thompson).
41.Theogony, ll. 820 ff., 852 ff.
42. This phenomenon of sound between two charged bodies changing with distance is utilized for musical effect by Theremin.
43. The Biblical Antiquities of Philo, Chap, XXXU.
44. E. F. Weidner, Ha,uJbuch der Bab-,,lonisclun A.stronomie (191S), I, 75.
45. Sefer Pirkei Rabbi Elieser.
46. The Iliad, xx.i, 385 ff. (transl. A. T. Murray, 1924).
47. Cf. W. Bousset, The Antichrist Legend (transl. A. H. Keane, 1896), p. 113.
48. Ginzberg, Legends, III, 97; the Babylonian Talmud, Tractato Shabbat 88b
49. Papyrus lpuwer 4:2, 4-S.
50. For the Chinese pronunciation of this name see R. van Bergen, Story o/ China (1902), p. 112: "At the time of the flood, the Emperor of China was named Yau (Yah-oo)."
51. H. Murray, J. Crawford, and others, An Bistorual and Descriptive Account of China.
52. "Yao," Universal Lexicon, Vol. LX (1749).
53. J. Hilbner, Kune Fragen aus der po/itischen Historle (1729),
54.The Shu King, the Canon of Yao (transl. Legge, 1879). See also C. L. J. de Guignes, u Chou-king (1770), Pt. 1, Chap. 1, aud J, Mocyniac, Histoire glnJrale de la Chine (1877), I, S3,
55.The Shu King.
56. Andree, Die Flutsacen, p. 36; C. Deckert, "Der Hoangho und seine Stromlaufiinderung," Globus, Zeitschri/t fur Lander- und Volkerkunde, LIII (1888), 129, concerning the flood of 1887.
57. Daly, Our Mobile Earth, p. 3.
58. The Shoo-king (Hong 'Kong edition).
59. The Annals of the Bamboo Books, Vol. 3, Pt. l of The Chinese Classic (transl. Legge), p. 112.
60. Andree, Die Flutsagen, quoting S. Turner, An Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet (1800).
61. Eckstein, Sw les Sources ck la cosmogonie du Sanchuniathon (1860), p. 227.
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