Thursday, December 30, 2021

Part 7 : Magicians of the Gods...And Then Came the Deluge

Magicians of the Gods
By Graham Hancock
Chapter 13
And Then Came the Deluge
I’d hoped, I’d expected, I was almost sure, that the course I’d charted through the ruins would lead me to the Trilithon, but still I feel a minor sense of triumph that my wanderings in the labyrinth have actually brought me to this very special place! 

It’s a good moment to take stock. That single course of outer-fortification masonry to my west barely covers a quarter of the Trilithon’s immense width. There’s part of the drum of a fallen column lying just by the gap in the fortifications that overlooks the grassy border within the perimeter fence surrounding the ruins. Pressed against the fortification wall this column covers approximately half the width of the huge megalith it rests on, the southernmost of the three in the Trilithon. All in all this is a sheltered spot, a quiet space, a little courtyard almost. Conveniently there’s a loose block about the height of a stool for me to perch on, and what’s more, since it’s afternoon now, there’s a patch of shade. 

With a sigh of relief I sit down, haul out my notebook and compose my thoughts. I’m aware, as I do so, that my feet are placed not only on the Trilithon block, but also on something inscribed into it that effectively proves it is older than the Temple of Jupiter, though not how much older. The shade is working against me, the fifty years since it was first brought to light have not been kind to it, and honestly I can’t see it. However, Professor Haroutune Kalayan, the engineer placed in charge of the restorations of Baalbek by the Lebanese Department of Antiquities, explains that back in the mid1960s, “In view of the scientific interest, Emir Maurice Chehab, Director General of the Antiquity Department, decided to have the top of the Trilithon cleared…” 

When this was done: The south block … exposed a full-scale orthographic drawing of the pediment of the Temple of Jupiter. The drawing partly extends under Roman construction and partly it is hidden under an early period Arabic construction … This … discovery suggests that the Trilithon was already in place to serve as a trestle board for the dimensioning and ordering of the pediment blocks; that is, in the beginning of the second half of the first century AD. Further, it can be concluded that after the construction of the pediment, after the drawing had served its purpose, the constructional scheme above the level of the Trilithon [was] executed; this is why part of the drawings extend under the Roman constructions. 1 

So right here, at my feet, unfortunately invisible now without special lighting, is a convincing piece of evidence that a real mystery, not just one made up by alternative historians, surrounds the Trilithon. Obviously, since it was used for an architectural drawing of part of the Temple of Jupiter, as Kalayan admits, and particularly so since it was afterward partially covered by Roman construction, the only logical deduction is that it must be older than the temple. 

We’ll look further into the implications of this, but it should be noted right at the outset that Daniel Lohmann doesn’t agree. Presenting a paper for the Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Constructional History, held in the German city of Cottbus, in May 2009, he argued: 

Kalayan suggested that this drawing proves the Trilithon to be older and already in place when the temple was built. Today, new indications show that this assumption is outdated, and that the Trilithon and temple were built synchronous. The upper surface of this block [the southernmost Trilithon block with the drawing on it] was practically used for a simultaneous construction, later simply to be covered by the next stone course. 2 

And in a follow-up paper in 2010, Lohmann expanded on his reasoning: 

The unfinished pre-Roman sanctuary construction [Podium 1] was incorporated into a master plan of monumentalization. Apparently challenged by the already huge pre-Roman construction, the early imperial Jupiter sanctuary shows both an architectural megalomaniac design and construction technique in the first half of the first century AD. The most famous example may be the Trilithon forming the middle layer of the western temple podium … The podium can be considered as an attempt to hide the older, inconveniently shaped temple terrace behind a podium in fashionable Roman manner …3 

I understand Lohmann’s logic but I have a number of problems with it. First and foremost there is the very concept of a “podium” that is being bandied around here. The dictionary defines “podium” as: 

the masonry supporting a classical temple.

Or, alternatively: 

a stereobate for a classical temple, especially one with perpendicular sides. 5 

A “stereobate” in turn is defined as: 

the foundation or base upon which a building or the like is erected.

Or, alternatively: 

the solid foundation forming the floor and substructure of a classical temple; crepidoma; podium.

A “crepidoma,” likewise, is “the platform on which the superstructure of the building is erected.” 8 

What all these definitions hold in common is the notion that a podium is a structure on top of which a temple is built. But this is not the case with Lohmann’s Podium 2. It is not the “foundation or base” upon which the Temple of Jupiter is erected, it is not the “solid foundation forming the floor” of the Temple of Jupiter, and it is not “the masonry supporting” the Temple of Jupiter. What the Temple of Jupiter in fact stands on, and is “supported” by, as Lohmann himself makes clear, is the Herodian Podium 1. Lohmann’s Podium 2, it turns out, does not “support” any part of the Temple of Jupiter. It surrounds Podium 1 on three sides but it does not support it. It is, in other words, as I described it several times in Chapter Twelve, a U-shaped megalithic wall; but it is not a podium. If the Romans built it, as Lohmann believes, then they did not build it to serve any structural, load-bearing, podiumlike purposes but purely for cosmetic reasons—“as an attempt,” to repeat his own words, “to hide the older, inconveniently shaped temple terrace behind a podium in fashionable Roman manner.” 

In response I can only repeat that “podium” continues to be a misleading term, which does not describe what we actually see on the ground. If Lohmann’s analysis of the pre-existing Herodian works is right, then we don’t see evidence of the Romans hiding “the older, inconveniently shaped temple terrace” behind a fashionable Roman “podium.” Whatever plans they may have had for extension and development, which we cannot know and which there are no records of whatsoever, the evidence on the ground is limited to that massive U-shaped enclosure wall surrounding Podium 1 on three sides but not supporting it—a profoundly megalithic wall, larger in every dimension than any other that the Romans are known to have built anywhere in the world. 

A wall that doesn’t even look Roman, incorporating blocks weighing more than 800 tons—the Trilithon—that would have required truly spectacular efforts to move and put into place. 

I’m not saying that the Romans weren’t equal to such efforts, or that 800-ton blocks were beyond the limits of their building technology. I don’t know, and don’t claim to know, the limits of their technology. What I’m saying is that it is quite unlike the practical, phlegmatic cast of mind of the Romans, which Lohmann recognizes, 9 to go to such extreme lengths for purely cosmetic purposes. Surely, therefore, there is room to consider an alternative possibility, namely that the megalithic U shaped wall was already in place long before—perhaps even thousands of years before—Podium 1 was built? 

But in the very paper in which Kalayan asserts that the Trilithon predates the Temple of Jupiter he goes on to give another crucial piece of information that seems to pour cold water on speculation of this sort. Yes, the Trilithon is older than the superstructure of the Temple of Jupiter, but not much older, because: 

A part of a drum of a column similar in dimension to the columns of the Temple of Jupiter is used as a block in the foundation under the Trilithon. In the absence (to our knowledge) of a second monument with similar dimensions of columns in Baalbek, one can conclude that the drum was a discarded one and that the columns were already cut, or were in process of shaping when the foundations of the Trilithon had started. 10 

Is this the “ugly little fact that destroys a beautiful theory?” Is my quest for a lost civilization at Baalbek fatally compromised by Kalayan’s column drum? Might I just as well pack up and go home? You would think so from the skeptical literature on this subject, which endlessly regurgitates the paragraph quoted above as though it settles the matter once and for all, as though it proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Trilithon is the work of the Romans—as though any further thought and questioning on the matter is spurious, pseudo-scientific hogwash. 

Skeptical author and self-styled “debunker of fringe science and revisionist history” Jason Colavito, for example, claims that “archaeology and engineering can explain all the individual aspects of the Trilithon” and that there is therefore no need for an alternative perspective. 11 Rather than do the work to back up this assertion himself, however, he refers us to the “wonderful” writings of another self-styled “skeptic,” physicist Aaron Adair. 12 Adair in turn simply rehashes Kalayan’s arguments, placing heavy reliance on the column drum in the foundations, and on the architectural drawing on top of the southernmost Trilithon block, to conclude: 

we can be reasonably certain that the Trilithon stones were put into place contemporaneously with the construction of the Temple of Jupiter. So already, by having the Trilithon stones contemporaneous with the temple we have established the Roman provenance of the structure. 13 

It all sounds reasonable, wholesome and convincing. But actually, like so much else in the skeptical literature that is passed off as fact, it turns out, on close scrutiny, to be speculation, opinion and bias masquerading as objectivity. That column drum, that Kalayan mentioned in passing, and that so many others have relied upon absolutely to reinforce established ideas about the chronology of the site, is much—much!—less than it seems. 

Ironically, the central problem that I’m coming to here is illustrated by Adair himself in a black and white photograph of the western wall of the sanctuary (apparently taken from a very old postcard) that he reproduces with his article to support his argument—namely that there are blocks below the Trilithon, and that below these blocks, out of sight in the photo, is Kalayan’s column drum. But what the photograph shows in the wall above the Trilithon is a section of a different Roman column drum that was redeployed by the Arabs during one of the many occasions when we know they repaired fortress Baalbek, after it had been attacked and pounded by enemy catapults. 14 Moreover, as though to underline the impermanence of every redeployable feature in the walls of Baalbek, even that bit of column drum (which can also be seen in a photograph “taken before the First World War” and reproduced in 1980 by Friedrich Ragette 15 ) was removed in more recent restorations—as Santha Faiia’s images from 2014 in the plates section show. 
194s
Indeed the Arabs regularly and routinely cannibalized, reused and repurposed Roman column drums and parts of column drums. 16 Moreover, as we saw in Chapter Twelve, and as Michael Alouf, a man who knew the ruins intimately for more than fifty years, confirms, the foundations of Baalbek were repeatedly undermined during the numerous sieges that the sanctuary suffered while it served as a fortress. 17 After the sieges the foundations were naturally repaired (otherwise whole sections of wall would have collapsed) and it is my view that this, rather than original Roman construction, is the most plausible explanation for the column drum found in the foundations beneath the Trilithon. Why, after all, if the Romans made these foundations, as the orthodox theory requires us to accept, would they have suddenly used a column drum at this point, when they would surely have had plenty of regular blocks, specifically cut and dressed for the purpose, at their disposal? 

It simply doesn’t make sense. But Arab masons repairing an undermined foundation would have used whatever lay at hand and the centuries of warfare, earthquakes and other disasters that Baalbek suffered meant that there were enormous quantities of broken columns lying around, as there still are to this day. There is also another possibility, which is that the Romans did, in fact, put the column drum into the wall—but again as a repair, rather than as an act of original construction. If the megalithic wall was already very ancient when the Romans came on the scene, and if it was their intention to use it as a base for further construction, they would undoubtedly have surveyed the foundations and repaired any sectors that the years had not been kind to. 

I scrawl “FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THAT COLUMN DRUM” across a page of my notebook. The matter isn’t closed yet—one way or the other—but the hypothesis that the Romans were not the original builders of the U-shaped megalithic wall of which the Trilithon is an integral part, continues to look viable to me, and worthy of further investigation. 

It’s time to see the Trilithon from the outside. I leave my welcome patch of shade, poke around a little longer on the top of the giant blocks and then retrace my steps eastward through the Temple of Jupiter complex. Eventually—it’s a long walk—I find my way back to the main entrance of the site, pass through the propylaea and down the main stairs, turn right and follow the path that runs parallel to the southern exterior wall of the fortress the Arabs made of this place. The Temple of Venus comes into view a few hundred yards southeast of the main ruins. It’s beautiful, but irrelevant to my purposes, so I ignore it and press on toward the southwest, passing two more Arab towers built into the fortification walls and eventually coming to a gateway in the fence through which I can see the Trilithon in the distance.

A guard is there. He makes a great show of keeping me out, but money changes hands, the gate is opened with a flourish, and I’m on my way through an orchard of shriveled trees to get a better look at the three largest blocks ever used in any construction anywhere in the world … 

“The highest pinnacle of power and science…” 

In the nineteenth century David Urquhart, a learned Scotsman, traveled widely in Lebanon, eventually publishing his History and Diary in 1860. He never explained where he got the hint from, but it was his belief that Baalbek had played an important part in the secretive maritime empire of the Phoenicians, whose exploits started to be remarked upon by other cultures in the second millenium BC and who were descended from the original Canaanite people of this region. Indeed the Phoenicians usually referred to themselves as Canaanites. 18 Renowned for their seafaring abilities, and especially for their uncanny—or perhaps one should say instead, precise and scientific—navigational skills, they established ports all around the coasts of the Mediterranean as far afield as Tunisia, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus and Malta. Their heartland was in Lebanon, however, and their first city was Byblos, to the north of modern Beirut, with other important centers at Tire and Sidon. 

There is much that is mysterious about the Phoenicians, and they have often been reproached by frustrated researchers “for having been so persistently silent about themselves and for having left no written history of their own. Everything we know about them comes from the annals of other races; they have only foreign advocates to plead their cause to posterity.” 19 

One of those foreign advocates was the Greek scholar Philo, who lived in Byblos in the first and second centuries AD—hence he is known as Philo of Byblos. His Phoenician History purported to be a translation of a book written by one Sanchuniathon, a Phoenician sage who had supposedly lived more than a thousand years earlier. 20 Sanchuniathon’s writings have not come down to us in any other source. Moreover, like the works of the Babylonian priest Berossos, whom the reader will recall from earlier chapters, Philo’s own Phoenician History has also been lost. All that is left of it are fragments preserved as quotations and summaries by other authors—notably the fourth century Church Father Eusebius. 21 

In these fragments we read of the exploits of a “god” identified with the Greek deity Ouranos, whose name means “sky” or “heaven” and who: 

invented betyls by devising stones endowed with life. 22 

There are a couple of points of interest here. First of all, obviously, we are back in the realm of betyls, those meteoritic “stones fallen from heaven” that are so often part of the debris stream of fragmenting comets and that were treated as cult objects throughout the ancient Near East. If we look into the etymology of the word betyl we find that it means “home of the god,” 23 and the home of Ouranos is, of course, the sky, the right place for objects of meteoritic origin. Secondly, there is this curious reference to “stones endowed with life” which, significantly, is given in some translations as “stones that moved as having life.” 24 In this I couldn’t help but be reminded of traditions from Ancient Egypt that spoke of huge stones being effortlessly moved around by “magicians” using “words of power.” For example, there is an account preserved on British Museum Papyrus No. 604 of the deeds of the magician Horus the Nubian, who: made a vault of stone 200 cubits [300 feet] long and 50 cubits [75 feet] wide rise above the head of Pharaoh and his nobles … 

When Pharaoh looked up at the sky he opened his mouth in a great cry, together with the people who were in the court. 25 

Since 200 cubits by 50 cubits equates to approximately 100 meters by 25 meters (328 feet by 82 feet) it is obvious that any magician who could raise such a massive block would have no difficulty raising the megaliths of the Trilithon, which are less than a quarter of that size. At any rate, this thought of the magicians of the gods brings us back, by a circuitous route, to David Urquhart who tells us in his History and Diary what it was that led him to Baalbek in the mid-nineteenth century: 

I was drawn thither by the Betylia [i.e. betyls], that mystery of the ancient writers … which I [believe] to have been Magnets used in the Phoenician vessels engaged in distant traffic, and which on the return of their fleets were conveyed in religious procession to the temple at Baalbek, to remain there until the fleets were again sent forth 26 

Unfortunately Urquhart found no hints of the lost technology, “the magical, magnetic stones” 27 he was looking for in Baalbek. “Where is the temple that held the Betylia?” he asked. “It has disappeared.” He deduced that “it must have stood upon the platform and was probably pulled down,” to make way for the Roman temples. 28 He therefore contented himself with an inquiry into the mysteries of the Trilithon and of an even larger cut-stone block that his local informants showed him lying abandoned in the quarry half a mile to the south of the ruins. These ruins, he noted, when you imagined them without the later temples “now stuck on the top,” were “nothing but a quadrangular enclosure”: 29 

One can conceive the hewing out of enormous blocks for the statue of a king, the ornament of a palace, or the pomp of a temple, but here there is no such object; there is no conceivable object by which such an effort can be explained. 30 

This was one of a series of questions to which Urquhart could propose no answers of his own: first, why build with such huge blocks (beside which “Stonehenge is a nursery toy”); second, why build here, since Baalbek was not a great capital or a great port, but stood far inland; third, why was the work suddenly stopped, as evidenced by the block in the quarry and by the unfinished state of the U shaped wall in which the Trilithon is set; and fourth, why was Baalbek unique? 31 

This structure is alone; there is nothing upon earth in the remotest degree resembling it. 32 

That night Urquhart dined with the Emir of Baalbek and asked him whom the huge U-shaped enclosure had been built by. The Emir replied in rather matter-of-fact tones that there had been three phases of construction. The megalithic work had been done at the command of two different rulers in the primeval period before the Flood: 

And then came the Deluge. After that it was repaired by Solomon. 33 

When he was on his way back to Beirut, Urquhart reflected on what the Emir had told him, concluding that it touched on a fundamental truth and that “the stones of Baalbek had to be considered as some of those sturdy fellows who the Deluge could not sweep away.” 34 More than that, it seemed to him that: 

Before the Deluge the whole course of human society had been run … The builders of Baalbek must have been a people who had attained to the highest pinnacle of power and science; and this region must have been the center of their domain. 35 

Noah, after all, had mastered the science to build the Ark: A vessel 450 feet long, 75 broad, and 45 deep … He therefore shared in the knowledge of these men of renown, and navigation must have attained in these antediluvian times to an extraordinary degree of perfection. For the building of the Ark we have only the authority of the Bible … The skeptic, on the other hand, who visits Baalbek, will cease to doubt that the men who could build into its walls stones of the weight of a three-decker with its guns on board, could construct a vessel of [such immense] dimensions. I assume that the Antediluvian origin of the one can no more be contested by the critic than that of the other by the believer. 36 

Today, and rightly so, skeptics question everything that smacks of credulous superstition and easy belief. The traditions that so excited Urqhuart, however, are pervasive. Noah himself is said to be buried in the area, having returned there after the Flood to live out the remainder of his days. 37 And according to Estfan El Douaihy, Maronite Patriarch of Lebanon from 1670 to 1704: 

Baalbek is the most ancient building in the world … It was … peopled with giants who were punished for their iniquities by the Flood. 38 

Other traditions implicate demons in the placing of the megaliths, 39 and an Arabic manuscript echoes the story Urquhart was told about an attempt to rebuild Baalbek after the Flood. In this account it was not Solomon but Nimrod, the great grandson of Noah, who sent giants to repair the damaged walls. 40 

Demons, giants, rollers, capstans, cranes … or aliens? 
Looking up at the three massive blocks of the Trilithon, their bases more than 6 meters (20 feet) above ground level in Baalbek’s western wall, I can understand why they were believed to be the work of demons or giants. There is, indeed, something supernatural—something seemingly impossible—about them. Their lengths are respectively 19.60 meters (64 feet 3 inches), 19.30 meters (63 feet 3 inches) and 19.10 meters (62 feet 8 inches) and they’re all 4.34 meters (14 feet 3 inches) high and 3.65 meters (just a shade under 12 feet) wide. 41 They are fitted in place so precisely that it is impossible to insert even the edge of a razor blade into the joints. 

“Go figure” is all I can say! 

But if you want the orthodox take on the subject read Jean-Pierre Adam’s 1977 paper, A propos du trilithon de Baalbek: Le transport et la mise en oeuvre des megaliths. 42 It’s still the standard work of reference cited by all skeptics as though it proves their case, and it sets out a proposal deploying rollers of cedar wood, on which we are to envisage the blocks being placed. 43 To pull the blocks over the rollers Adam first considers, then (for logistical reasons) rejects, the use of a herd of 800 oxen. 44 

Finally, reasoning that weakness of human muscle power can be overcome by technical ingenuity, he settles on multiple arrays of pulleys rigged up to six capstans, each worked by a team of 24 men making a total of just 144 men to transport the blocks of the Trilithon, one by one, from the quarry half a mile (800 meters away) to the construction site. 45 At the end of the journey, he calculates that 16 larger capstans, each worked by a team of 32 men (i.e. 512 men in total) would have been required to maneuver the blocks into their final position. 46 The reason for the increased number of capstans and men at the end of the operation is that the wooden rollers would have to be removed, since obviously they could not be left in place in the wall. This would greatly increase the friction between the block and the surface over which it had to be dragged, but the deployment of some kind of lubricant would theoretically reduce the friction enough to avoid any need to lift the blocks—a problem that Adam believes the Romans would have preferred not to confront with blocks of this size. 47 

Friedrich Ragette has a slightly different orthodox solution to the challenge of moving and placing the megaliths of the Trilithon. 48 In his case it does involve lifting the blocks at the end of the procedure, which he suggests would have been done using multiple “Lewis” devices (metal pieces fitted into specially cut holes in the stones above their center of mass, attached to chains or ropes and lifted by cranes or winches): 

The 800-ton block of the Trilithon must have been moved into position by rollers. Then it had to be lifted slightly to allow the removal of the rollers before the tremendous load was lowered inch by inch. If we figure five tons lifting capacity per Lewis hole we would need 160 attachments to the stone. 49 

It is not my intention to offer a detailed critique here. I simply note in passing that there are some difficulties with Adam’s and Ragette’s proposals. Both, for example, rely on wooden rollers but calculations indicate that the stress of supporting the huge blocks would very quickly have crushed such rollers, even if they were cut from the strongest Lebanon cedar. 50 Likewise, capstans are all very well and certainly multiply the “muscle power” that each man is able to exert, but there is a danger, which Adam recognizes, that unless massively anchored to the ground, it would be the capstans rather than the blocks that moved. 51 Finally, every mason understands the principle of Lewis devices and how they work, but there is no sign on the Trilithon blocks of even a single Lewis hole, let alone of 160 on each of them. 52 

Both Adam and Ragette, and others who want to reassure us how unremarkable and unmysterious the whole achievement of the Trilithon is, like to preface their accounts with reference to large megaliths that were moved using known technologies in historical times. For example a 25 meter (82 feet) tall Egyptian obelisk, weighing 320 tons, was brought to Rome in the first century AD by the Emperor Caligula. Transporting it from Egypt and across the Mediterranean in a specially built ship was, itself, an incredible feat of engineering, logistics and heavy lifting. Then, much later—in the sixteenth century—the same obelisk was moved from where it had stood since Caligula’s time and re-erected in St. Peter’s Square on the orders of Pope Sixtus V. 53 Likewise in Russia in the late eighteenth century the “Thunderstone,” a 1,250-ton block of granite, the base for an equestrian statue of Peter the Great that still stands in the city of Saint Petersburg, was hauled seven kilometers (4.3 miles) overland on a special moveable track of bronze spheres. 54 

Mind you, it’s one thing to drag a supersized megalith in a straight line over bronze ball-bearings, or to stand one up in the middle of a huge empty square, but it’s quite another to build a series of such megaliths into a wall that looks like a titan’s Lego project. 

Still … let’s accept that it can be done, that similar things have been done, and of course—for the evidence is before our eyes—that it was done at Baalbek. The only question that matters, therefore, is whether it was the Romans who did it, or whether they, and the cultures that preceded them here going back 10,000 years or more, found the U-shaped megalithic wall already in place and fitted their own structures into its embrace. 

That’s what it looks like to me. 

The solid foundation rising above the plain at Baalbek that Daniel Lohmann identifies as pre-Roman and calls Podium 1, and on top of which the Temple of Jupiter was built, sits nicely inside the U-shaped wall which embraces it on its south, west and northern sides. At no point does the wall support the Temple of Jupiter. It is an entirely separate, exterior, structure. 

I walk several times along the western wall, gazing up in stupefaction at the awesome megaliths of the Trilithon, trying to get to grips with what they mean. Regardless of whether it was the Romans or some unknown, antediluvian culture who put them here, what I’d like to know is why they put them 20 feet up? Why did they stack them on top of courses of smaller blocks, when surely the logic would have been to put the largest, heaviest blocks at ground level and add the smaller, lighter blocks above them. Why create the huge additional engineering and lifting challenge of doing it the other way round? 

I walk along the wall. I’m counting blocks and courses. First of all, working upward from ground level, there are three courses of really quite small—let’s say 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) high, quarter ton—ashlars. On top of these are six much bigger blocks, very nicely finished (although also very heavily eroded) with the upper half trimmed in to be narrower than the base. These six blocks, which are more or less identical to blocks in the south wall that I described earlier (see Chapter Twelve), weigh about 400 tons each. Finally on top of them, come the three monster, 800-ton, blocks of the Trilithon. 

I walk north now, to the corner of the west and the north walls. The northernmost block of the Trilithon doesn’t extend right to the end of the west wall. There’s a gap, filled up by an Arab defensive tower extending out from Podium 1 and built over the corner. But if I remove that tower in my mind’s eye, then I can see what’s going on, because on the other side of it is another huge row of megaliths forming the northern arm of the “U”-shaped wall—the row that I’d looked down on earlier from above (see Chapter Twelve); indeed the Arab defensive tower was the very one I stepped out on to get a proper view of this part of the megalithic wall, which is separated by a grassy gap 35 feet wide from the north wall of Podium 1. 

I know archaeologists see the U-shaped wall as the base of the Temple of Jupiter’s grandiose but unfinished Podium 2. Lohmann makes a very good case for it being exactly that. But I’m still bothered by its non-load-bearing, purely cosmetic function, if that’s the case, and I can’t shake the feeling that it was a feature the Romans inherited from a much earlier time. 

Where I do agree with the archaeologists, however, is that the even larger megaliths that I know are still in the quarry half a mile away, and that I’m going to take a look at as soon as I’m finished here, were definitely intended to sit on the top of the northern and southern arms of the U-shaped wall, thus raising them to the height that the western wall attained with the placement of the Trilithon. True, they are a bit longer and wider than the Trilithon blocks, but after trimming off the “boss” left to protect them on their journey from the quarry they would match exactly, fitting like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This remains the case, whether the Romans made the U-shaped wall as part of Podium 2 or whether it was the work of the architects and masons of a lost civilization of prehistoric antiquity. 

And there’s something else I agree with the archaeologists on. 

Ideas put into circulation decades ago by “ancient astronaut” enthusiasts, notably Zecharia Sitchin in his book Stairway to Heaven, first published in 1980 (and in other later volumes of his Earth Chronicles series), cannot possibly be right. Whatever Baalbek is, and for whatever reason megaliths of 800 tons and more were used here, and whoever it was who put those megaliths in place, they definitely did not do so in order to create “a landing place for the aircraft of the gods.” 55 Sitchin’s claim that the raised platform of Baalbek was “intended to support some extremely heavy weight” and that the heavy weight in question was a “rocket-like Flying Chamber,” 56 could only have been made by a man who had no idea of the real appearance and layout of Baalbek itself, and could only be believed by others with no direct knowledge of the site. 

The giant megalithic blocks of the Trilithon that seem to have convinced Sitchin the entire platform of Baalbek was megalithic all turn out to be parts of the U-shaped wall that embraces the (only modestly sized) Podium 1. And while an alien might conceivably land his spacecraft on even so modest a podium (if there were no other structure there) he certainly would not want to land it on top of a wall. It follows, therefore, that to use the megalithic character of the U-shaped wall to claim that a podium—which it is not even connected to, and does not support—was an alien “landing platform,” designed to bear extremely heavy weights, where “all landings and take offs of the Shuttlecraft had to be conducted” 57 is either ignorant, or disingenuous or both. 

Besides, even if the whole of the Baalbek complex was megalithic—which is not at all the case— we must ask ourselves why technologically advanced aliens capable of crossing the solar system in their spaceships would need such a platform to land on in the first place? If they could hop from planet to planet as Sitchin asks us to believe, wouldn’t their science be up to constructing something a little more high-tech and fit for purpose than that? In short, isn’t it obvious that Sitchin simply took 1970s NASA space technology as his template and projected it onto his imagined ancient astronauts? 

I knew Zecharia Sitchin personally, had a few dinners with him in New York and once drove him from Stonehenge to London when he was on a visit to England. I liked him well enough, and I think he did some good research, but on Baalbek at least I have no doubt now—after exploring the site myself —that his whole “landing platform” thesis is fundamentally flawed. This is not to say, however, that every idea set out in his books was equally compromised. The Mesopotamian cuneiform texts, which he could not read and translate as he claimed (his “translations” were adapted and to some extent “fictionalized” from the work of mainstream scholars) do in fact contain material of the greatest interest, and I think he was right to notice hints of high technology in them. 

But were those technologies “alien” or human? This is a question we’ll return to in Chapter Sixteen, when we’ll consider what is known about certain powerful beings referred to in Biblical and other ancient texts as “the Nephilim” and “the Watchers.” 

The biggest cut stone block in the world 
“I have found that archaeologists are seldom receptive to the notion of ancient astronauts,” wrote Elif Batuman in an article about Baalbek in the New Yorker on December 18, 2014, “although one could argue that, when the archaeologists went looking for answers, all they managed to find was an even bigger and more mysterious block.” 58 

Indeed so! In June 2014, just a month before I arrived in Baalbek, the German Archaeological Institute made a stunning discovery in the quarries half a mile south of the Temple of Jupiter. There, it had long been known, lay two giant megaliths that are heavier, by a significant margin, than any of the stones in the Trilithon. What no one had suspected, however, despite a century of rather intensive investigations around Baalbek, was that a third immense block lay buried and hidden from view under the sediment that has accumulated in the quarry over the millennia. The archaeologists chose not to announce their discovery to the world until late November 2014, but since they had excavated it in June, it lay there in full view when I first visited the quarry on July 10 and a local shopkeeper— who claimed that the discovery was in fact his and that the Germans had merely appropriated it— made a point of drawing it to my attention. 

The quarry is in two parts, divided by a road, and in the first area you come to as you approach from the direction of the temples lies the famous “Stone of the Pregnant Woman,” also known as the “Stone of the South,” which has been decorating postcards from Baalbek for a hundred years and was known to travelers like David Urquhart long before that. It measures 21.5 meters (almost 71 feet) in length, 4.2 meters (just under 14 feet) in height, and 4.3 meters (just over 14 feet) in width. It weighs 970 tons. 59 Across the road a second even bigger megalith, which had lain undiscovered since time immemorial, was unearthed in the 1990s. It measures 20.5 meters (just over 67 feet) in length, 4.56 meters wide (almost 15 feet) and 4.5 (14 feet 9 inches) meters high; its weight has been calculated to be 1,242 tons. 60 But the megalith that was discovered in June 2014 has a mass greater than either of these, measuring 19.6 meters (64 feet 4 inches) long, 6 meters (19 feet 9 inches) wide, and 5.5 meters (18 feet) high, with an estimated weight of 1,650 tons. 61 

It was this newly excavated megalith, the single largest block of stone ever quarried in the ancient world, that the excited shopkeeper proudly pointed out to me during my visit. Its upper surface is less than two meters (6 feet 7 inches) below the lower edge of the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, which it lies immediately beside and parallel to. And, like the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, it is beautifully cut and shaped, ready, after removal of the “boss,” to go straight into the U-shaped wall for which all three giant blocks were undoubtedly intended. 

I spend some hours clambering around these weird, otherworldly blocks. I feel as though I’m mountaineering. The scale is so immense, and in a way so “alien,” that a curious detachment from everyday reality sets in and I lose all track of time. I note that the Stone of the Pregnant Woman appears to have been sliced through at the base, where it emerges from the bedrock, with a clean straight cut. How was that done? And no matter where I stand—above, below, beside—I am dwarfed by this monstrous product of ancient and unknowable minds. The very thought that someone, in some distant epoch, could conceive of this, could cut it out and shape it entire and then, at the end, just leave it here, abandon it, forget about it, is incomprehensible to me. The closer I examine it, the more details I observe of the precision of the workmanship, of the scale of the enterprise, and of the will and imagination that went into its creation, the more certain I become that it and its fellows here in the quarries, and the Trilithon, and the other giant megaliths of Baalbek, were not the work of the Romans. 

I know how profoundly Daniel Lohmann disagrees! A few months later, in February 2015, he and I will correspond at some length over several days. He will graciously answer many questions and help me to understand some of the complexities of Baalbek that escaped me when I was there. He’ll make an excellent case for the Roman provenance of the whole vast scheme. He will even send me a photograph of the column drum built into the foundations of the Trilithon wall and he’ll write: 

In my recent work I located this column drum fragment, excavated it anew, and measured it millimeter precise to determine the drum diameter. I looked at the surface structure and masons dressing in comparison with the Jupiter temple columns and the lithology. All indications are exactly the same as the column drums of the Roman Jupiter temple. The fragment was neatly dressed at the edges to make a masonry ashlar out of it, and it received the beautifully sharply cut edges that all ashlars of the Roman Jupiter Temple phase have (including the megaliths). 62 

My reply: 

First of all, to be absolutely clear, I don’t dispute that this fragment is from a column drum of the Roman Jupiter Temple. Clearly it is. And I don’t dispute the generally agreed dating of the columns of the Roman Jupiter Temple. But this fragment is a very important part of the (formidable!) edifice of logic you and your colleagues use to establish the chronology of the Trilithon, and that many others have relied upon when reporting that chronology. What I’d like to interrogate a little further, therefore, is your level of certainty that this column drum fragment was put there at the same time as the original construction of the western wall. It’s nicely cut and shaped, I agree, but still it sticks out like a sore thumb (especially now I see it cleared in the photo you kindly sent me). It looks intrusive, odd and awkward—very different from the rest of the blocks in this course. In short I think the argument can be made that it is more likely to be a later repair of the wall than it is to be an integral part of the original wall. Lending some support to this argument is that we know the Arabs were constantly repairing the walls around the whole site, and sometimes using column drums to do so, so why shouldn’t this be just one more of those repairs? What is the absolutely compelling archaeological evidence that completely, effectively and once and for all rules this possibility out? I’d be most grateful if you could address that specific point in your reply. 63 

Lohmann comes right back at me on this: 

The fragment is just one of the indications that shows the synchronicity of the megalith podium and the temple, which was not our result, but known to science for over one hundred years— and at latest since the excavations by the German team of 1900–1904. Yes, it sticks out. But no —not unlike the others. The builders of the temple were rather pragmatic: once the structure was to be hidden underneath the soil or behind something else, they didn’t bother to flatten the surfaces or make it look nice … What was important first when building is that the ashlar was perfectly flattened on the top and bottom, and then the two sides, in order to create a solid and stable wall—and that was done on the column drum exactly in the same Roman manner as it was done on the blocks around it. If you look at the length of the fragment, and imagine a hole in the wall instead, the two smaller ashlars in the course above would fall, causing further instability for the structures above. Here, frictional connection/force closure (translations of kraftschluss from my dictionary—language barriers!) is needed, you can’t just replace an ashlar in a row of “stretchers.” Secondly, Arab repairs of Roman walls look a lot different: they used smaller blocks instead, and would never have been able to squeeze a block in so tightly … Medieval repairs never have such tight joints. It’s a comparison of precision that makes an engineer like me 100% certain. 64

After examining our own photographs of the Trilithon wall—Santha took a great many while we were there—I find myself unpersuaded by Lohmann’s argument. First of all (see Plate 40), this column drum is not “hidden underneath soil or behind something else.” It’s in plain view in the lowest visible course of the wall, and it does stick out like a sore thumb. It’s made of a distinctively different, much darker, stone and it has a very different “look” from any neighboring block. It is quite unique in fact. Secondly, as to the precision, I don’t agree with Lohmann that the column drum cannot be an Arab repair. In Plates 42 and 43 the reader will find an example of another column drum which is certainly part of an Arab repair to the walls of Baalbek and its precision is as good as that on the column drum in the foundations. Another possibility I’ve considered—that it could be a Roman repair to a pre-Roman wall—also remains very much in play. If the lower block which this improvised block replaced had been badly damaged, and a decision had been made to remove it, the two small rectangular blocks above it (the ones Lohmann said “would fall, causing further instability for the structures above”) would have had to be removed at the same time. 

But the next course up is so set that none of the other blocks in it would have fallen, nor would any instability have been caused to the huge megalith in the course above that, which is supported on no less than five large horizontal blocks, three of which would be entirely unaffected by the removal of the two smaller blocks below, while the other two would have been held in place by “frictional connection.” Once the column drum had been cut to shape and put in place at ground level, the two smaller blocks could have been slid back into the wall above it, completing a very neat and effective repair. 

There’s something else, a fundamental area of disagreement, concerning what I see as a U-shaped megalithic wall surrounding Podium 1, but that Lohmann sees as the first courses of Podium 2. He tells me that “aside from the size of the ashlars” what I call a U-shaped megalithic wall is “the bottom of a standard shape of a Roman temple podium after Augustus times.” He asks me to take a look at the podium of the Maison Carée in Nimes, 65 and suggests that the Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek itself also has a similar podium. 66 He sends me links to photographs. “If you zoom in,” he writes, “you can see the stones of the second layer above the bottom layer, corresponding to the Trilithon.” 

My reply: 

You write that the megalithic podium for the Temple of Jupiter, though obviously on a very different scale, is the “standard shape of a Roman temple podium” but I’m not sure I see that from the pix you linked to. I attach here one of ours from the Temple of Bacchus … (same angle as the one you sent 67 ). It shows a podium with a single straight side (apart from the lip at top and bottom), whereas the podium of the Temple of Jupiter gives more of a stepped effect with the row of huge megalithic blocks, that according to our correspondence form part of the lowest layer of the Julio-Claudian Temple podium, stepped out very far from the sheer wall above them, on top of which stood the peristalsis. I suppose the resemblance would be better if the megalithic layer had been completed and extended all the way up to the top of the wall, but the peristalsis would still have been set back a few meters from the top, instead of pretty much flush with the top as it is in the Temple of Bacchus. In short, when I zoom in to the Temple of Bacchus podium I don’t really see blocks, regardless of scale, that correspond with the Trilithon blocks. Am I missing something obvious here? 68 

I also ask: 

“Have you found organic materials with good provenance anywhere in ‘Podium 2’ and have you done carbon dating on these?” 69 

On the carbon dating Lohmann replies that “unfortunately” none had been done: 

The history of constant change in the building, as well as deep excavation levels of the past 100 years have left no archaeological or organic material at all that would help us with this. 70 

In its own way this is quite a revelation to me, since it means—to deploy an appropriate metaphor— that the entire edifice of archaeological chronology for the so-called “Julio-Claudian podium”— Podium 2—of the Temple of Jupiter, rests on foundations in which there is no scientific dating evidence whatsoever. This is not to say that radiocarbon dates for archaeological sites are unproblematic! As we’ve seen in earlier chapters, they are often very problematic indeed—unless it can be demonstrated, as is the case at Göbekli Tepe, that the dated organic remains have been “sealed” at a particular moment and there is no possibility of subsequent intrusion of later materials that might give a falsely young date. 

But there are simply no carbon dates, problematic or not, for Podium 2. It follows, therefore, that the orthodox chronology of this incredibly interesting and peculiar structure is based entirely on stylistic factors—that certain styles of building can be associated with specific cultures and specific periods and that the “style” seen in Podium 2 is entirely appropriate to the “Julio-Claudian” epoch of Roman construction. 

It’s my view that the stylistic argument at Baalbek is nowhere near as clear-cut as it should be, given how much of our understanding of the site depends on it. And in response to my question about the positioning of the peristalsis (i.e. of the four-sided porch or hall of columns surrounding the cella —the inner building—of the temple), Lohmann admits there is a stylistic anomaly: 

yes, normally the peristalsis would rest on the edge of the podium, as it does at the Bacchus temple. That would be following the Roman examples. (Mars-Ultor at the Roman Forum was a milestone building for that 71 ). It is one of the oddities of Jupiter. 72 

On the other hand, Lohmann points out, temples do exist where the peristalsis is set back in the way he envisages it would ultimately have been at Baalbek if Podium 2 had ever been completed—for example, the Bel temple in Palmyra, the temple of Zeus in Aizanoi, Turkey, and the colossal temple in Tarsos, Turkey. “In my opinion,” he writes: 

this is due to the fact that both Bel temple, and Jupiter in Baalbek, were built onto older podia (Herodian in Baalbek, Hellenistic in Palmyra), and had to find a solution how to squeeze a first-century, latest-fashion Roman podium underneath the (even only slightly) older temple building. Baalbek’s terrace was immensely high, so the podium needed to be colossal, and in Palmyra the peristalsis was already standing, so the podium was erected at a distance. 73 

Further, Lohmann stands his ground on the issue of the shape of Podium 2 which, despite its incompleteness, he sees as being quite normal: 

a standard podium consists of a bottom profile (lip, as you call it), the “shaft” or the vertical part (that’s the trilithon layer in Baalbek…) and a top lip layer …74 

He attaches an architectural diagram of the podium of Hosn Niha, another Roman temple in Lebanon, to make his point. 75 To my eye, however, it looks astonishingly unlike Podium 2 at Baalbek and the layer in it that he wants me to compare to the Trilithon is just 1.58 meters (5 feet 3 inches) high, whereas the Trilithon, as we’ve seen, is 4.34 meters (14 feet 3 inches) high. 

As I’ve already noted, I think Daniel Lohmann makes a strong case, but nothing in our correspondence proves to me that the U-shaped megalithic wall (that surrounds, but that does not support, Podium 1 on which the Temple of Jupiter in fact stands) is the work of the Romans. He could be right. But he could also be wrong and, in context of all the other indications from around the world of a lost civilization, I think it wise to keep an open mind on Baalbek. 

Finally, however, it’s what I see in the quarry that convinces me of this, because we have to ask ourselves why three huge blocks in the range of 1,000 to 1,650 tons were left there at all. 

The conventional answer is that the Romans, having quarried these exceptionally large blocks, found that they could not move them and simply abandoned them. But that explanation makes very little sense. If the argument that the Romans were responsible for the U-shaped megalithic wall is correct, then we know that they went on to build an extensive temple complex dedicated to Jupiter using smaller blocks of stone. Surely their first source for the multiple smaller blocks they needed would have been the huge megaliths that, according to the argument of mainstream archaeology, they had discovered they could not move from the quarry? The Romans were practical people, who would not allow work that they had already so painstakingly done to go to waste. Rather than opening up fresh quarry faces, wouldn’t they have used those massive, already almost completely quarried 1,000-ton-plus blocks and simply sliced them up into smaller, more moveable megaliths for the construction of the rest of the temple? 

It’s really puzzling that they didn’t do so and therefore the fact that these gigantic, almost finished blocks remain in the quarry, and were never sliced up into smaller blocks and used in the general construction of the Temple of Jupiter, suggests to me very strongly that the Romans did not even know they were there—just as the German Archaeological Institute, despite a hundred years of excavations, didn’t know until 2014 that a third massive block was there. In due course, I’m told, “good new information about the dating and practicalities of the quarry megaliths” may be forthcoming, but that information was not available at the time of writing. 76 I await it with interest, but also with some doubt as to whether it will settle anything or simply raise further questions. 

We are a species with amnesia. The devastating comet impacts that set the Younger Dryas in train 12,800 years ago and that caused two episodes of global flooding, one at the beginning and one at the end of the Younger Dryas, made us forget so much. The recovery of memory from the fragments that remain is logistically difficult and psychologically painful—as the complexities and decades of disputes around Baalbek show. But messages still reach us from the deep and distant past in the words of the Sages, in the deeds of the magicians, and in the mighty memorials that they left behind to awaken us at the time of the Great Return. 

next
The Gates of the Sun
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Part 5 : Global Crime Syndicate...Cesarini to Borghese

 Global Crime Syndicate
by Izreal Zeus


Prince Bosio Sforza-Cesarini is a part owner of the Trafficante crime family, Seattle crime family, and Fertitta crime family and also an owner of the Italian Stidda mafia clans which have operations in Milan. Milan was ruled by the Sforza and Visconti families and that is why Milan uses the serpent eating a child for its coat of arms the same image used by the Sforzas and Viscontis on their coat of arms. The Sforzas are also managers of Borsa Italiana the stock exchange of Italy based in Milan.

Silvio Berlusconi is the former four term Prime Minister of Italy who is worth about 7 billion as the owner of Mediaset an Italian mass media monopoly. Berlusconi is a criminal associate of the Sicilian Mafia and he is an agent of the House of Savoy and Black Nobility and specifically the Viscontis and Sforzas.

Countess Madina Visconti di Modrone is a high level witch overseeing the music and entertainment industry in the United States.

Tau Ruspoli with his ex wife Olivia Wilde (Cockburn) who is a major child murderer and cannibal. Tau Ruspoli's father Prince "Dado" Alessandro was also in the movie Godfather III. The Ruspoli's have a portion of ownership over the Tijuana Cartel which have a child trafficking operation into Hollywood.

Count Luchino Visconti di Modrone is an owner of the Seattle crime family and he also manages banking agents in Southern Switzerland which is populated mostly of Italians. Italian is an official language in Southern, Switzerland and the Viscontis previously ruled in the Ticino region. Bellinzona, Biasca, Switzerland uses the Milanese Biscione.

Princess Giacinta Ruspoli is a top overseer of Wiccan-Amazon cults and she is involved directly with child sacrifices. Princess Giacinta is a noble of Rome, Holy Roman Empire, and Spain.

Prince Muzio Sforza-Cesarini is an owner of Stidda Mafia clans, Casamonica Mafia clan of Rome, and a part owner of the Trafficante crime family and Galveston crime family now headed up by the Fertittas. Prince Muzio also oversees Hollywood and the music industry as well as media. The Sforzas ruled in Milan which is today a major international headquarters for news media. Milan was originally called Mediolanum. Medio like Media. Muzio refers to Muse like music. The Sforzas and Viscontis which are basically the same clan are heavily involved with the music and entertainment industries in Italy and the United States.

Kirsty Bertarelli and her husband Ernesto Bertarelli with Eva Herzigova. The Bertorelli are Italian-Swiss billionaires that work with the Corsini's and Savoys. The Bertorelli are involved with the pharmaceutical industry, chemical warfare, and also financing child trafficking networks.

Count Giangaleazzo Visconti di Modrone is a part owner of the Trafficante crime family and Seattle crime family which specialize in human trafficking and sex trafficking.

Jeff Bezos is worth over 100 billion as the founder and owner of the company Amazon. The word Amazon refers to the ancient tribes of violent war like feminists called Amazons that lived around the Mediterranean. Amazon tribes gave the name to the Amazon jungle in South America where large constrictor snakes are common. Female snakes in the constrictor species like Boas are larger and more dominant than the male snakes just as Amazons were ancient violent feminists. The Seattle crime family are heavily involved with prostitution and running strip clubs and they are owned by the Gonzaga, Valenti, and Visconti di Modrone noble families of northern Italy. The Viscontis have a serpent eating a child on their coat of arms. Jeff Bezos finances child trafficking networks and especially child trafficking networks with females as the customers. Bezos also finances bribes and he works closely with Bill Gates. Both Bezos and Gates live Medina, Washington near Seattle. Employees in Seattle from both Microsoft and Amazon were caught in a sex trafficking sting while at work and while using company computers. Bezos was educated at Princeton which was co-founded by the Dutch royals and he is also an agent of the Dutch royals which have covert ancestry from Venice and from the Tron family of Venice. Tron like Elec-Tronic. Amazon is an electronic and tech company also involved with artificial intelligence and cloud computing where they covertly and criminally store information on people used for their covert warfare.

Marina Berlusconi the elder daughter of Silvio Berlusconi is a high level Amazon and Wiccan cult leader involved with child sacrifice. The Berlusconi family work closely with organized crime and they are directly involved with sex trafficking. Silvio Berlusconi was convicted of paying for an underage prostitute and also convicted for corruption with trying to cover it up. Silvio was convicted of tax evasion yet he avoided prison time even with a four year sentence. Silvio Berlusconi has extensive connections with the Sicilian Mafia.

Count Ascanio Sforza-Cesarini with his wife Countess Monica Sforza-Cesarini. They are part owners of the Stidda mafia clans as well as part owners of the Trafficante crime family.

Leonardo Del Vecchio is mafia money launderer and criminal financier worth 25 billion and he is also an agent of the Sforza-Cesarini and Viscountis. The Sforzas ruled the old commune of Vecchio where he takes his name and they also ruled Milan where Leonardo Del Vecchio is from. 

Don Benigno Melzi d'Eril the Duke of Lodi and Count of Magenta is an overseer of Las Vegas and of Druid and Magi cults. The Melzi d'Erils have residences in Bellagio, Italy. The Bellagio in Vegas is named after Bellagio, Italy. Bellagio is also where the Rockefellers founded their global vaccination agenda.

Prince Prospero Colonna di Paliano the current Prince Assistant to the Papal Throne with his wife Princess Jeanne Colonna di Paliano and they oversee pedophilia networks within the Vatican and they also oversee the Knights of Columbus which have deeply infiltrated police agencies in the United States. The Colonna di Paliano family are owners of the Chicago Outfit, Colombo crime family, and Colombian drug cartels. The Colonna's have a column on their coat of arms and one of their early founders was named Peter de Columna. Colonna means Column in Italian. Christopher Columbus was also really a Colonna and possibly the illegitimate child of Pope Martin V. Christopher Columbus was directly financed by the Doria banking family of Genoa which merged two different branches with the Colonna's creating two families called the Doria-Colonna's. 

Carl Anderson is the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus and he has authority over tens of thousands of knights many which are Vatican agents that infiltrate military, police, fire departments, politics, law, and business. The Knights of Columbus is a military organization that serves the Vatican and Roman Catholic Church and they use their insurance racket as their front. Knights are soldiers and members of a military by definition. Catholic priests often pay cash to these knights for targeting people the Vatican has declared heretics. The Vatican is a sovereign nation and the smallest nation on the planet. American Knights of Columbus are military agents serving a foreign nation. The Knights of Columbus are a major terrorist organization heavily involved with gang stalking. 

Prince Filippo Colonna di Paliano works as an Associate Consultant for Bain & Company in London and he is the son of Prince Prospero the Prince Assistant to the Papal Throne. Mitt Romney was the CEO of Bain & Company and he also co-founded Bain Capital which was financed with start up money from Puerto Rican and South American criminals using offshore accounts in Panama. Bain finances the Puerto Rican Mafia and Latin Kings which are partly owned by the Dukes of Alba bloodlines including the FitzJames-Stuarts, Alvarez's, Toledos, and Martinez's. The Colonna's are married with these Spanish bloodlines that are the Dukes of Alba in Alba de Tormes which takes its name from Alban Hills in Rome where the Colonna's originated. Alba de Tormes is located in Salamanca province which uses the Colonna pillar and Barberini bees on its coat of arms. The name Romney means Roman and he is their modern day Romulus. The Colonna family claim to descend from the Julio-Claudian Dynasty that ruled ancient Rome as emperors. The Colonna family are merged with the Barberini family which use Bees on their coat of arms. The Romneys are high level Mormons. The primary symbol for Mormonism is the Beehive. Freemasons from New York founded Mormonism and the Colonna's use the column or pillar on their coat of arms which is a primary Masonic symbol. 

Count Manfredi Mancinelli-Scotti is an Italian noble that oversees Freemasonry. The Grand Orient of Italy is Italian Freemasonry and it is no longer officially connected with the Grand Lodges of England and Scotland for its connections with organized crime. Stefano Bisi is the current Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy. The Scotti family are ancient Scottish nobles that migrated to Italy hundreds of years ago. The Mancinelli-Scottis work closely with the Colonna's and Ruspoli's who merged their family with the Scotti relatives the Scottish Marescottis.  

Prince Carlo of Bourbon-Two Sicilies the Duke of Castro with Princess Camilla of Bourbon-Two Sicilies and Prince Carlo is a top owner of the New England crime family, Ndrangheta clans in Canada, Cuban Mafia, and the Cuntrera-Caruana mafia clan which operate out of Aruba and Montreal. Prince Carlo's relative Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma now deceased resided in Florida where the Cuban Mafia operate and he also was Jesuit educated in Montreal. The Duke of Castro also oversees the Castro family of Cuba which are Jesuit educated and they are part owners of the Cuban Mafia. The Bourbon-Two Sicilies ancestors the Farnese family officially established the Jesuits.

Jaime Caruana was the former General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements and he was also the Governor of the Bank of Spain. Jaime Caruana is a criminal agent of the Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia clan which are known as Cosa Nostra's bankers and money launderers. Caruana has also worked with the International Monetary Fund and he is a member of the Group of Thirty. The Spanish royal family ruled Sicily for centuries and Caruana is an agent for the Italian and Spanish Bourbon families.

John Viola is the United States Delegate for the Two Sicilies Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George and he manages Italian-Bourbon knights in the United States that have infiltrated governments, military, policy enforcement, and the judicial system. John Viola was Jesuit educated at Fordham and his father Vincent Viola is a billionaire and associate of the Gambino crime syndicate. The Bourbon-Two Sicilies are the primary managers of Fordham University in New York City.

Prince Charles-Emanuel of Bourbon-Parma is a part owner and manager of the New England crime family and an owner of mafias operating in Canada and Montreal. Prince Charles-Emanuel of Bourbon-Parma is an Italian noble who resides in France. France heavily colonized Canada.

Prince Charles-Henri de Lobkowicz with Baroness Gerald de Waldner. Prince Charles'Henri's mother is from the House of Bourbon-Parma and his father was a banker who worked for Chase Manhattan in New York City. His father was also a Vatican knight and Knight of Malta who established the Lebanese Association of the Order of Malta. The Waldners are involved with developing Artificial Intelligence systems with Jean-Baptiste Waldner a French engineer. 

Baron Edouard de Rothschild a French banker who owns a wine company and he is also involved with blood and adrenochrome trafficking. 

Martin Maurel is a French banker and part owner of the private bank Rothschild Martin Maurel after selling his company to the Rothschilds. The Maurel family are also in contract with the Italian Sella family and together they have a private bank in Monaco. 

Jacques Emmanuel de Crussol the Duke of Uzes with his wife Alessandra Passerin d'Entreves and Courmayeur. 

Prince Joan Enric Vives Sicilia of Andorra with Prince Emmanuel Macron of Andorra. Emmanuel Macron is Jesuit educated and he was employed by the Rothschilds. Andorra appears to be a hideout for European criminals.

Baron Jean-Philippe Hottinguer whose family owns banks in France and Switzerland. The Hottinguer are one of the most powerful banking families in Europe. They own numerous banks in France and Switzerland and they often do business in London. The Hottinguers or Hottingers are noble barons of France and Switzerland. 

Prince Charles-Henri de la Rochefoucauld and his wife. Prince Charles-Henri is a high level gang stalking commander and a propagandist that specializes in Nazism.

Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg and Cecila Hottinguer with Jean-Conrad Hottinguer and Alessandro Berlingieri. Both the royals of Luxembourg and the Hottingers are major international private bankers. 

Duke Pierre Louis de La Rochefoucauld with his wife Duchess Sabine de la Rochefoucauld. The Rochefoucauld are an old Roman Catholic French nobility that are loyal to the Orleans and French Bourbons. 

Prince Amaury of Bourbon-Parma and Marquis Giorgio of Sanjust di Teulada are managers of MS13 and some Italian and French crime syndicates. They also work closely with their friend Prince Giacomo Massimo-Brancaccio. 

Prince Giacomo Leone Massimo-Brancaccio is an owner of MS13 and he is a top manager of Kabbalah and also a top manager of gang stalking as well as the Gay Mafia and an overseer of faggot initiation within gangs. The Brancaccio family of Sicily married with the Saluzzo family which were Kings of Jerusalem. The Massimo's often take the name Leo or Leone because they are related to the Astur-Leonese dynasty of Leone, Spain. Kabbalah was founded in Leone, Spain several hundred years after the Astur-Leonese reign. Prince Giacomo also manages some Italian gangsters in the Gambino crime syndicate as well as the African American Mafia. The Massimo's are also heavily connected with France and they work with the Balkany family of politicians and bankers. Prince Giacomo also worked as a banker for Banca Finnat in Rome. Banca Finnat was involved with an Italian investigation of tax evasion and money laundering in collusion with the Vatican bank. 

Prince Rafael of Orleans-Braganza is a Brazilian royal and he works at Anheuser-Busch Ambev a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch Inbev. Inbev is located in Belgium. Prince Rafael's mother is from the Belgian Ligne family. The Lignes are covert part owners of Inbev and the Brazilian royals are covert part owners of Ambev. 

Prince Louis-Alphonse the Duke of Anjou is an owner of various South American and Mexican drug cartels and he is both a French and Spanish noble. Prince Louis-Alphonse is also closely related to the Franco family with Francisco Franco the Fascist dictator of Spain who reinstalled the House of Bourbon as the monarchs of Spain. Fascism uses faggotry which is bisexual men raping other men for dominance. Prince Louis-Alphonse manages cults of faggots which often operate in prisons, gangs, sports, and military. 

Viktor Vargas is the father in law of Prince Louis-Alphonse and Vargas is worth over a half of billion and owns a major bank in Venezuela. Vargas is involved with money laundering and criminal financing like financing child trafficking networks.

Prince Betrand of Orleans-Braganza is an owner of Brazilian gangs and cartels. 

Prince Charles Philippe of Orleans the Duke of Anjou is an owner of the New Orleans crime family. The Orleans family are completely insane and they are obsessed with murder and death. The House of Orleans manage the Catacombs in Paris and they use and have used the massive underground cemeteries for mafia operations, human trafficking, human sacrifices, and death rituals.

Joseph Safra is a Lebanese-Brazilian billionaire worth about 22 billion and he operates in Switzerland and finances human trafficking networks in South America into Europe.

Prince Nicholas of Montenegro

Prince Alexander Karadordevic of Yugoslavia with Prince Philip Karadordevic of Yugoslavia and they are owners of the Serbian Mafia and top managers of gang stalking.

Prince Antonio of Orleans-Braganza with Princess Christine of Orleans-Braganza and they are owners of Brazilian cartels and gangs.

Prince Jaime of Bourbon-Two Sicilies is a high level knight who manages Hermeticists and Wiccans.

Prince Eudes of Orleans with Princess Marie-Liesse of Orleans are part owners of the New Orleans crime family. The House of Orleans are a French royalty established as a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. They have also married with the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies and these French princes owned the Palazzo Orleans in Palermo, Sicily. The New Orleans crime syndicate oversee black street gangs which have infiltrated the New Orleans Port Authority. The New Orleans crime family also dispose of bodies and evidence in the swamps and bayous. The Marcello family are currently top members of the New Orleans crime syndicate and they have drug and human trafficking contracts with the Gulf Cartel which is primarily owned by their relatives the Spanish House of Bourbon. 

Josselin de Rohan-Chabot the Duke of Rohan is a top manager of Kabbalah and Chabad. The Rohans were Princes of Leon in France. Kabbalah was developed in Leone, Spain. 
Prince Jean of Orleans the Count of Paris is an owner of the New Orleans crime family and French gangs called the Milieu. The French Orleans family are a branch of the French Bourbon family and they ruled in parts of Sicily. The New Orleans crime family in Louisiana are a mixture of criminals with French and Sicilian ancestry.
Prince Jean Christophe Napoleon Bonaparte with his wife Princess Olympia Bonaparte. Prince Jean Christophe works as a banker for buyout firms and for the Blackstone division in England. Prince Jean Christophe is a major blood and adrenochrome trafficker and he also works closely with Zionists. The House of Bonaparte were the original modern Zionists.
Baron Alexandre de Rothschild is the Executive Chairman of Rothschild & Co bank and he is with his wife Olivia de Rothschild. Baron Alexandre's mother is an Italian princess from the Aldobrandini family which are technically the Aldobrandini-Borghese family. The head of the Rothschild bank is half Jewish and half Italian Roman Catholic.
Baron Eric de Rothschild with Princess Alessandra Borghese. The French Rothschilds have a close alliance with the Black Nobility and Italian nobles. The French Rothschilds are currently married with the Roman Aldobrandino which previously merged their current branch with the Borghese's.
Duke Helie de Noailles with his wife the Duchess of Noailles and they are French nobles who work with the Bonapartes and the Rothschilds. 

Prince Scipione Borghese with his wife Princess Barbara Massimo. Prince Scipione is a top manager of the Vatican and a part owner of various mafias including the Magliana Mafia in Rome, Sicilian Mafia, Bonanno crime family, Castellano faction of the Gambinos, Pittsburgh crime family, factions of Camorra and the African American Mafia. The Borghese married with the Castello-Paterno family of Sicily and now own their palazzo in Sicily. The Borghese's are also owners of Banca del Fucino and part owners of UniCredit through its merger with Capitalia which merged with Banco di Roma which merged with the Borghese's Bank of the Holy Spirit.[holy spirit does not own any bank in this world dc]
Prince Giovanni Aldobrandini is an owner of the DeCavalcante crime family and he is a major architect of serial killers and gang stalking. Serial killers often work as hitmen for the mafia and they organize within prisons. An example of a convicted serial killer who worked with both the FBI and Cosa Nostra was Edward Wayne Edwards who was initiated by the unknown serial killer who was behind the Texarkana Moonlight Murders and then Ed Edwards initiated and handled the Zodiac Killer or killers. All of these serial killers murdered couples. The FBI often use serial killers for psychological warfare on society. The Bonapartes created the FBI and they married with the Borghese-Aldobrandini. 
Prince Filippo Massimo-Lancellotti with Pamela Allvin. Prince Filippo is a top manager of the Druid Orders and he also manages DARPA and its Q Anon psyop. Q Anon is a DARPA program that uses mimicry and reverse psychology tactics in support of Donald Trump who was Jesuit educated from Fordham, is heavily connected with Cosa Nostra, is close friends with the Gaetani family of Rome, and an associate of Zionists and Arab criminals. Anonymous is also a FBI COINTELPRO hacker organization that censors people who genuinely speak out against the NWO while they push propaganda. The Massimo-Lancellotti are also part owners of the Lanza crime family and they currently own a large castle in Campania, Italy. 
David Miscavige is the head of Scientology and he is an agent of the Roman-Papal House of Colonna and a major terrorist and tormentor. The Colonna's established a Colonna-Walewski branch in Poland. David Miscavige is of Italian-Polish ancestry and he is Roman Catholic. Scientologists serve the Vatican and Colonna family and they use electronic weapons to terrorize people in society especially people who speak out against child trafficking and sadism. The primary initiation for top Scientologists is murdering children and drinking human blood. Tom Cruise is a top Scientologist and he was married in Rome at the Castello Odescalchi. 
Jeb Bush is the former Governor of Florida and he is a high level Knight of Columbus loyal to the Vatican. Jeb Bush converted to Roman Catholicism. Jeb Bush also oversees and enables Mexican and Cuban criminal operations in Florida. The Bush family have close alliances with the Vatican, British Crown, Spanish Crown and various royals and nobles of the Holy Roman Empire. Jeb Bush serves the Colonna family which own the Knights of Columbus. Jeb's brother George Bush who is not a Roman Catholic can be seen visiting the Vatican and bowing down to the Pope and also working with Carl Anderson the head of the Knights of Columbus. 
Princess Vittoria Odescalchi and Princess Maria Pace Odescalchi are high level witches and members of the Roman-Papal nobility.
Prince Piero Colonna is a Knight of the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies and he manages Jesuits. The various reformed Templar orders oversee Jesuits and Freemasons. The Sacred Constantinian Military Order of Saint George is a continuation of the Italian Templars with both knighthoods using the Red Cross of Saint George.
Prince Alessandro Jacopo Boncompagni-Ludovisi is an owner of the Bonanno crime family and he also owns a wine company used for trafficking blood and adrenochrome.
Prince Francesco Borghese with Princess Amanda Borghese and they are owners of Castellano faction of the Gambinos, Pittsburgh crime family, and part owners of the Sicilian Mafia and they operate in Italy and the United States. Two different Borghese branches established residences in the United States. Their relatives own a vineyard in Long Island.
Jean Baptiste de Franssu is the President of the Vatican Bank and a French noble who works with the Tourlonias and Borghese's. 
Prince Bante Boncompagni-Ludovisi is a top owner of the Bonanno crime family and an owner of the Fertitta crime syndicate which operates in Texas and also Las Vegas. Prince Bante's deceased father Prince Nicolo married the Texan Rita Jenrette. The name Bon-Compagni translates to Good Fella a term for Italian mobsters. Bon translates to good and Compagni means Companion a synonym for Fellow. 
Lorenzo Fertitta who is an owner of Red Rock Resorts casinos and he is worth about 2 billion. The Fertittas are former majority owners and currently part owners of the UFC which is used for recruiting mafia enforcers and rigging fights for mafia bets. The Fertittas are worth between 7-9 billion and they are married with the Maceo family who were the documented bosses of the Galveston crime family of Texas. 
Prince Fabio Borghese the Prince of Leonforte is a top overseer of the Sicilian Mafia. Leonforte is a commune in Sicily. The Leones are also high level Sicilian nobles and mafia owners who are connected with Rome and Hollywood. 
to be continued...
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Part 1 Windswept House A VATICAN NOVEL....History as Prologue: End Signs

Windswept House A VATICAN NOVEL  by Malachi Martin History as Prologue: End Signs  1957   DIPLOMATS schooled in harsh times and in the tough...