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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
These questions lead us inevitably into a reconsideration of world history, particularly the period from 2000-200 BC. This period began in the aftermath of the nuclear destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah and the Sinai space centre. It is a period which encompasses the Biblical figures of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses, where we have detailed textual accounts but little archaeological evidence.
Elsewhere, however, it is the opposite archaeological evidence but few textual accounts. A veil of darkness descends over an era of widespread chaos and warfare. By the time that era had ended, most of the cities of the ancient world had been razed to the ground. Prior to 2000 BC, the Sumerians wrote down everything, even the most trivial day-to-day events. However, in the period 2000-200 BC, few records were made, and even fewer survived.
Archaeology thus becomes our prime tool of knowledge, but it is a blunt tool - a laborious process of hard work and guess work, which is a long way from being an exact science. As a result, we have only the flimsiest understanding of events in this key period of mankind’s history. Whilst I am not a recognized historian, it quickly became apparent to me that, for this particular period, there are no experts.
On the contrary, empires rose and fell for no apparent reason, mysterious “Hyksos” people conquered Egypt, mysterious “Sea People” appeared from nowhere to ravage the Near East, and advanced civilizations arose in the New World of the Americas, as if out of thin air. As I attempted to peer through the veil of history to identify the continued presence (or otherwise) of the Gods, I found that many mysterious historic events began to make sense.
Unintentionally, I was putting the revised paradigm of Gods of the New MilIennium to the test - and it was scoring rather highly, to put it mildly. My main objective, however, was to search for the activities of the Gods, and that presented me with quite a challenge. How can one verify the presence of Gods in such a chaotic period? Surprisingly perhaps, there were numerous clues to follow. For instance, the name of a king or pharaoh would, more often than not, commemorate their allegiance to a specific God.
Similarly, a work of art would depict a recognizable symbol of a God, whether in the image of a serpent, a bull or even a bare-breasted Goddess. Finally, there were some useful inscriptions which directly evoked the names of particular Gods for particular nations. In this way, it was possible to construct a political overview of world events. But how could I verify the physical presence of these Gods? How could I be sure that kings did not call upon absent Gods?
The first reliable indicator was technological intervention. Sometimes this is described in texts, such as the Ark of the Covenant in the Bible. Sometimes it appears in a physical form, such as the pyramids which still exist at Teotihuacan. The second indicator was also a physical one - the sheer scale of destruction in the ancient cities. This scale of destruction stares archaeologists in the face every time they excavate. but how could so many cities have been razed to the ground using only fire, swords, bows and arrows?
The greatest problem I faced in writing this chapter was that of chronology. Following the publication of David Rohl’s A Test of Time in 1995, big question marks hang over the conventional chronology of the Egyptian pharaohs. Furthermore, Rohl’s new chronology proved to have knock-on effects elsewhere, particularly as a result of dating the Babylonian king Hammurabi more than two hundred years later than previously thought.
I personally find Rohl’s new chronology rather convincing and have
therefore chosen to use it throughout this chapter, indicated where
appropriate by the initials “NC". Nevertheless,
whilst this debate remains unsettled, some caution must be in order.
Our revision begins with the Flood, when three lines of mankind emerged from Noah’s Ark.
There was, however, one important exception. Prior to the war of the Gods c. 8700 BC, Canaan, a son of Ham, had illegally occupied the land of Lebanon.
Although his Canaanite tribe was allowed to stay, the Bible records that they were relegated to a servile status. Between 11000-4000 BC, man possessed the same latent intelligence he possesses today, but was generally confined to living a nomadic lifestyle. Human populations quickly spread throughout the world.
Then, from 3800 BC onwards, a series of developments created a new elite of civilized men.
It began with the cities of Sumer, which were rebuilt in their pre-Flood locations, coinciding with the return of the planet Nibiru and the royal visit of Anu. At the same time, the God Ishkur began a new phase of construction at Tiwanaku for the manufacture of bronze. In 3113 BC, civilization was extended to Egypt - a decision which was necessary to restore the chaos caused by the exile of Marduk and the ensuing power vacuum.
From its beginning, Egyptian civilization embraced the Minoan culture of nearby Crete, where archaeologists have found extensive evidence of close trading ties. The first Egyptian pharaohs, beginning with the legendary Menes, were in all likelihood Sumerians, imposed on Egypt with the consent of its highest God, Enki. It is surely no coincidence that the name Menes is mirrored by the legendary first ruler of Crete, named Minos.
These two mysterious characters are almost certainly the same person. The native people of Egypt were also closely related to those of Crete, the Cretan natives being one of the tribes descended from Ham’s son Mizraim, the father of the Egyptians. Some three hundred years later, c. 2800 BC, civilization was granted to the people of the Indus Valley, under the aegis of the Goddess Inanna.
The Indus region quickly became an important supplier of grain to Sumeria but suffered a serious setback when its main port city, Lethal, was engulfed by a flood c. 2400 BC. It may be no coincidence that, at the same time, the Akkadian empire arose under Inanna via the conquests of Sargon the Great.
Inanna’s move began a sequence of events that destroyed the Sumerian “golden age”, and which climaxed with the return of Marduk to Babylon in 2024 BC. Historians believe that Marduk’s supporters, who began a new dynasty of kings in Babylon, were the Amorites, a major tribe among the Canaanites and thus of Hamitic stock. It was then, as Marduk occupied Babylon and threatened to capture the space facilities, that Nergal and Ninurta unleashed nuclear weapons to destroy Sodom, Gomorrah and the space centre in Sinai.
As the nuclear fall-out cloud descended on Sumer,
man and his Gods stood at the brink of a new age of further death
and destruction.
The “Big Picture”, which the books do not identify, includes the fall of Sumer (the Third Dynasty of Ur) to the “evil wind” and the unprecedented wave of human migration which followed caused not so much by the nuclear fall-out per se, but by the political aftermath of the invasion of the Amorites and the consequent upheaval.
Prior to 2000 BC, civilization was restricted to those areas already mentioned. Then, after 2000 BC, agriculture, astronomy, metallurgy and most significantly, writing, suddenly appeared all over the world. First, however, we must deal with the exception. From around 2000 BC, the Indus Valley civilization entered what is described as a decadent phase. The reasons for this are identified by archaeologists as the widespread flooding of its major cities in 2000 BC and 1900 BC respectively.
For Lethal, it was the second such disaster, and its docks were completely silted up. Interestingly, one of the foremost experts on Indus archaeology, S. Rao, attributes the 2000 BC flood to “tectonic disturbances”, which are quite possibly a side-effect of the nuclear strike in Sinai.
The Indus disaster may well account for the appearance of the Aryans (“Noble Ones·’) who migrated into northern India at this time, bringing with them the sacred Sanskrit language. Meanwhile, the refugees from Sumer passed by the flooded Indus region and headed east toward Thailand and China.
The history books record the mysterious arrival of technology in those regions:
Writing, as highlighted earlier, is also a big clue to these migrations. Studies have proved conclusively that the earliest form of Chinese writing, which arose shortly after 2000 BC, was derived from Sumerian. The pictographic signs not only looked similar, but were pronounced the same way, whilst terms which had various meanings in Sumerian often had the same multiple meanings in Chinese.
Elsewhere in the Far East, the Tibetan language is one of many that have also been traced to Sumerian, whilst the Hsing Nu people of northern Tibet are reported to be of Mesopotamian origin, and claim to have fled from a fiery cataclysm. Migrations also took place to the west, as evidenced by massive changes on Crete dating to 2000 BC. The spectacular 5-acre, multi-storey palace at Knossos is dated to this time, together with the palace at Phaistos.
Even
further west, some historians believe that the earliest Mayan
settlement at Dzibilchaltun may have occurred around
Meanwhile, in Babylon, a quasi-monotheistic movement was set in motion by the God Marduk, to whom all of the other Gods officially became subordinate.
In order to signify his hero status, the name Marduk was substituted for that of Nibiru in the Enuma Elish, whilst the name of his spouse Sarpanit replaced Inanna/Ishtar, who was Marduk’s traditional enemy. Under Marduk’s guidance, Babylon rose to became a great city, its name meaning the “Gateway of the Gods”.
Its Amorite leaders built a huge 7-storey ziggurat in Marduk’s honour, naming it the E.TEMEN.AN.KI - “Temen’s House of Heaven and Earth”, which was also known rather intriguingly as the E-sagila - “The Temple that Raises its Head”.
The presence of Amorites at the key Mediterranean port of Byblos from 2000-1700 BC confirms the role of that city within a Babylonian Egyptian-Cretan trade axis. First, however, it was necessary for Marduk’s supporters to gain the upper hand in Egypt.
In the aftermath of a huge wave of migration, northern Egypt was being ruled by pharaohs of the 11th Dynasty, bearing foreign names such as Inyotef and Montuhotep. One of these pharaohs, Montuhotep II, had reunited the whole of Egypt in an enormously long reign of 51 years. Shortly after 1800 BC (NC), however, a new line of 12th Dynasty pharaohs was begun by Amenemhat I, his name signifying worship of the hidden God Amen/Marduk.
It was at this time that the Israelites were prospering in Egypt, having arrived during the reign of Montuhotep II. A later pharaoh, Senuseret I, saw these Israelites as a threat and thus enslaved them. The Bible records that they were forced to build the cities Pithom and Rameses.
Marduk’s 12th Dynasty marked a renaissance of Egyptian achievement, which included the conquering of Nubia, the region to the south which was famous for its gold and trade with the African interior. It was almost certainly this expansion that caused one group of Nubians to migrate permanently to Mali, West Africa, where they became known as the Dogon (see chapter 5).
As Marduk attempted to build his new world order from Babylon, other, rival kingdoms began to emerge elsewhere. One independent power arose at Mari, a city already established on the River Euphrates, where archaeologists have found an impressive palace, library and archives, and more significantly a series of shrines dedicated to Marduk’s great rival Inanna/Ishtar. At around the same time, another city, Ashur, was founded on the River Tigris, with Inanna once again being the major deity.
Mari and Ashur were both strategically positioned on two major trade routes, one from Babylon to the Mediterranean, the other from the Zagros Mountains to Anatolia bringing supplies of tin to the Hittites. From their initially peaceful beginnings, these people would eventually coalesce into the cruel and ruthless might of Assyria.
Another independent power emerged to the south of Babylon, where Ninurta re-gathered the Elamite forces which had been defeated by Marduk’s Amorites, and began to rebuild a military force centered on the cities of Larsa and Susa.
Last but not least, a long way to the
north, in Anatolia, the kings of the Hittites set down their roots
at Kanesh (modern day Kultepe) and fortified the city of Hattusas
(Boghaskoy) to become the new capital of a powerful kingdom that
would play a major role in the ancient Near East for around a
thousand years.
However, the Anatolians’ written language was a distinctive mixture of archaic Indo-European script and Sumerian loan-words, leading most scholars to believe that they were of Indo-European origin.
The name “Hittite” came only from their geographical association with the land of Hatti (Anatolia) and its capital city Hattusas. The Hittites became close neighbours to an equally intriguing and powerful people known as the Hurrians, who have been labelled the world’s first Indo-Europeans.
Both of these peoples are destined to play an important role in the history I am about to unfold.
But in order to understand the background to these two great powers, and hence their motivations, it is first necessary to make a quick detour into the science of linguistics. We must understand what the term “Indo-European” actually means!
The languages of mankind are divided by linguists into two distinct branches Indo-European and Non-Indo-European.
The homogeneous nature of the Indo-European languages is therefore regarded as an anomaly - a very important anomaly, which can shed light on the origins of the so-called “white Caucasian” people.
Scientists agree that, at some point in the past, a huge migratory wave must have brought the Indo-European language to most of northern Europe. Even more intriguing is the fact that the cradle of civilization - the first international city-state of Sumer - spoke a Semitic rather than an Indo-European language. So where did the latter come from?
It is a question which has caused deep confusion and bitter disagreement among scholars. Once again, it is a mystery which can be solved only by reference to the Gods. Linguistic scientists believe that an Indo-European mother-tongue must have existed c.3000 BC and began to break up around 2500 BC. This matches the date at which a new civilization was begun in the Indus Valley by the Goddess Inanna c. 2800 BC.
A long Sumerian text known as Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta describes how the God Enki was angered by this development and decided to change the language of the Indus people! It would seem that his plan was to sabotage communication between the Indus and Inanna’s city of Uruk in Sumer, an action undoubtedly motivated by the manner in which Inanna had stolen his precious ME’s (see chapter 6).
This intervention by Enki is remarkably consistent chronologically with the scientific theory. How did the Hittites manage to migrate from the Indus to Anatolia?
No-one knows for certain, but there are two important clues. One clue is the Hittites’ use of Sumerian loan words, suggesting a prior stay in Mesopotamia. The other clue is a connection with the Goddess Inanna, indicated by the oldest Hittite traditions in Anatolia. Inanna had two main cities in Mesopotamia, which are possible points of Hittite origin. One is Uruk, the other Agade, and both were founded before the Hittites first settled at Kanesh in Anatolia c. 2300 BC.
Uruk is thought to have had the closest links to the Indus civilization, and it is thus possible that the Hittites came from an Indo-European colony, established there to overcome the bilingual difficulties of the Indus-Sumerian agricultural trade. Alternatively, it is possible that the Hittites represent a remnant from Agade, the city of Inanna which the Gods wiped from the face of the Earth c. 2250 BC (see chapter 10).
The presence of the Indo-European Hittites in Agade might in turn be connected to the catastrophic flooding of the Indus port city of Lethal, which occurred very soon after the rise of Agade as a new power c. 2400 BC.
Did the Hurrians also originate from the Indus?
Studies of the Hurrians have highlighted the Indo-European names of their Gods and kings, whilst stressing that their language, like the Hittites, made extensive use of Sumerian/Akkadian loan words. All of the evidence suggests that the Hurrians were the great traders of the ancient world.
They were highly prominent in Ur, where they were associated with the garment industry, and they also controlled major trade routes through cities such as Harran. It would seem that, from the earliest times, the Hurrians plied the trade routes all the way from the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley.
How far did the Hurrians travel?
In chapter 14, we noted Indo-European racial features on the statues of Easter Island. An archaic Indo-European script has also been found there. It is possible that the Hurrians may have been the supervisors of Tiwanaku, based on my belief that the Easter Islanders were Negroes exiled from Tiwanaku.
This view is
strengthened by the fact that the main Hurrian deity was none other
than Teshub - the master of Tiwanaku and Nazca.
One of the most significant historic events in the period 2000-200 BC was undoubtedly the massive eruption of Santorini. When this volcanic Greek island exploded, 192 million tons of sulphuric ash fell as acid rain to the east - the biggest volcanic explosion in more than 4,000 years. Experts believe that the effects of Santorini would have included global climatic cooling and a famine in the east lasting at least seven years.
The affected lands included Egypt, Anatolia and the Levant -basically the whole of the ancient world with the exception of Mesopotamia. On what date did Santorini erupt? Improved scientific methods, correlating tree ring and radiocarbon dating, have now established that the explosion occurred c. 1628 BC, much earlier than previously thought.
This dating ties in well with events in the ancient Near East. The climatic change resulting from the Santorini eruption could help to explain why the Egyptians began to closely monitor the annual levels of the Nile inundation’s under Amenemhat III c. 1660-1615 BC (NC), as evidenced by the so called “High Nile Inscriptions”.
Santorini might also explain the claim by Herodotus that the same Amenemhat III was the legendary King Moeris, who constructed the Nile flood catchment hydraulic system in the Faiyum region. The High Nile Inscriptions demonstrate a concern that was soon justified by events, for the flood levels rose to almost double the ideal level for a period of twelve years.
The consequence was catastrophic damage and a long-lasting famine. It is not surprising that, under David Rohl’s new chronology, Egypt’s 12th Dynasty went into a decline, marked by the Second Intermediate Period of chaos.
It was at this time that Nubia, the land conquered three hundred years earlier, finally threw off the Egyptian yoke. Santorini also explains the mysterious rise c. 1600 BC of a new world power that of Mycenae just outside the affected zone. The Mycenaeans worshipped a bare-breasted mother-Goddess, identifiable without a doubt as Inanna.
Under her influence, the Mycenaeans suddenly enjoyed a powerful trading position, and were able to build a powerful military machine. Finally, the date of Santorini ties in to the era of Hammurabi, 1565-1522 BC under the new chronology. Under the old, established chronology, this renowned Babylonian king ruthlessly set about subjugating his former allies for no apparent reason. It has thus been assumed that his conquests must have signified the beginnings of the Babylonian empire.
Under the new chronology, tied in to Santorini, his actions were instead necessary to re-establish control during a time of great chaos, when famine was driving waves of migrants eastwards into Mesopotamia. The famous “Law Code’’ stele which Hammurabi erected at Sippar, just north of Babylon, may well have been a warning to these immigrants to watch their conduct. This scenario also sheds light on the Law Code’s reference to three classes of people - free men, slaves, and a category known as mushkenu.
The latter word, of uncertain meaning, is understood to imply a category of state-dependants, and would neatly describe the new group of immigrants. The huge influx of migrants placed an unbearable pressure on the established Babylonian infrastructure. Under these circumstances, the opportunity arose for several cities to make their bids for independence from the central authority at Babylon.
The threat to the status quo was so intense that Marduk decided to arm Hammurabi with a powerful weapon in order to reunify the empire:
An early target for Hammurabi was the city of Mari, which in 1531 BC (NC) was totally annihilated.
The scale of the destruction at Mari confirms the textual account of Marduk’s powerful weapon. It also provides a clue to the power behind the independence movement, for Mari was a city that had long been associated with Inanna.
The signs
therefore suggest that Marduk was faced by a renewed threat from
Inanna - not just from Mari, but also from her new kingdom of
Mycenae in the north.
The beautiful palaces at Knossos, Phaistos and Kato Zakro were utterly destroyed. The towns which had been powerful centers of international trade for five hundred years were burned to the ground.
The scale of destruction was so great and so widespread that archaeologists have searched in vain for a powerful natural phenomenon as a cause. The mystery is summed up by The Times Atlas of World History, which admits quite frankly: “the cause of this havoc is unknown”. Some experts, however, have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the fiery destruction of Crete was indeed the work of human hands.
The National Geographic Society admits that “the evidence now points to conquest by the warlike Mycenaeans of the Greek mainland”. This half-hearted attempt to pin the blame on Mycenae is a perfect demonstration of the uncertainty which surrounds this dark age of human history. Clearly it must have been the Mycenaeans, but no-one can explain why they carried out such a violent act of state vandalism.
Can the history of the Gods provide us with the missing
historical context? As mentioned earlier, the Mycenaeans
She was an Enlilite and a rival
of the Enkiite Gods. Could Crete have previously been an Enkiite
stronghold? The evidence in favour of such a hypothesis can be seen
in the new Cretan religion which portrayed a bare-breasted Goddess
holding two serpents. Figure 54, an example from Knossos,
graphically symbolizes Inanna’s victory on Crete against the Enkiite
serpent Gods.
However, if we recognize the symbol of the bull as that of an Enlilite God, then the tale may represent the imprisonment in a labyrinth, not of a Minotaur, but of an illegitimate flesh-and-blood God.
The Greek tale of Theseus and the Minotaur includes an account of the burning of the King’s palace, suggesting that this story may have originated with the destruction of the Minoan palaces c. 1450 BC.
Although the tale has been
embellished to describe a mythical creature, it may have its roots
in an assault by Inanna to rescue an imprisoned God.
Seventy years of archaeology have shed little light on the history of Mohenjodaro. It is widely agreed that this city, along with others in the Indus Valley, suffered a progressive decline after 2000 BC, due to a series of floods. Its final downfall, however, came suddenly.
According to the National Geographic Society:
The foremost authority on the Indus civilization, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, came to a similar conclusion:
Who carried out the “final massacre”?
Wheeler suggested it was the Aryans, but according to my reading of events the Indus were the people who became the Aryans! Furthermore, all of the archaeologists have confirmed the lack of any foreign occupation of Mohenjo-daro, together with the lack of any assault on the city of Harappa, 350 miles to the north. In 1979, David Davenport and Ettore Vincenti published a major clue to the Mohenjo-daro mystery.
Davenport and Vincenti were intrigued by the thousands of so-called “black stones” which littered the site. When they analyzed these “stones”, they turned out to be fragments of pottery, fused together by extreme heat. According to their updated calculations, these clay vessels had been briefly exposed to a blast of heat measuring between 1400-1600 degrees centigrade! Davenport and Vincenti then studied the site of Mohenjo-daro in some depth, and pinpointed three distinct waves of devastation which had spread out up to one mile from the epicenter of the explosion.
According to their conclusions, the only reason archaeologists did not find far more skeletons at Mohenjo-daro was the intense heat which had vaporized anyone standing near the epicenter. When did the destruction of Mohenjo-daro occur? Archaeologists’ best estimates suggest a date of around 1500 BC, the same time at which Harappa too was finally deserted. By then, the cities of the Indus were already in severe decline, so why would anyone bother to destroy Mohenjo-daro?
The only logical answer comes from the rivalry between Inanna and Marduk and the events on Crete. The singling out of Mohenjo-daro is highly suggestive of a limited tactical retaliatory strike. Just like two modern super-powers, a full exchange of weapons made no sense for the divine powers of ancient times.
All of these events coincided, c. 1500 BC, with the rescue of the Olmecs from Easter Island, the emergence of various cultures in the Andes, and possibly the first arrival of the Maya in Mesoamerica.
First, I would like to deal with the most straightforward migrations from Crete to the coast of the Levant. The Hebrew scriptures state that the Philistines - the avowed enemies of Israel - were the remnant from the coasts of Caphtor. Scholars generally identify Caphtor with Crete, and in particular with the name keftiou, given by the Egyptians to the Cretans. It was thus from Crete that the Philistines emigrated to the coastal plains of Canaan, and it is believed that this migration occurred c. 1500 BC, coinciding with the conflagration on Crete.
Who were these Philistines and what role did they play on Crete? Being from Caphtor makes them Caphtorim only in a geographical and not a racial sense. Similarly, being called Philistines may also indicate a geographical reference, since Genesis 10 records an earlier line of people called Philistines who gave their name to the land of Palestine. It is for these reasons that the Philistines are generally considered to have been from Indo-European rather than Hamitic stock. If so, then the Philistines were related to the Hurrians, and we can guess that their role on Crete was that of traders.
Archaeological and textual evidence indicates that the Philistine immigrants into Canaan were well-organized, militarily strong and commercially astute - all characteristics of an Indo-European elite. The Phoenicians too are thought to have originated from Crete. Their name comes from phoi-nix meaning “date palm”, and was applied by the Greeks to distinguish this great sea-faring people from the other Canaanites.
The Phoenicians settled to the north of the Philistines, along the coast of modern-day Lebanon, where they founded important trading cities such as Sidon and Tyre. Sidon was their first city, and indicates their Hamitic tribal origin from Sidon, the first-born son of Canaan. We shall now travel across the globe and examine the migrations which occurred into the Americas, also c. 1500 BC. All of these migrations occurred on the west coast, and we must therefore look to an origin from the Indus or Mesopotamian regions.
The former would have been fleeing the destruction from Mohenjo-daro, whilst the latter would have been either driven out by Hammurabi or voluntarily escaping the strains of over-population. Where did the migrants land in the Americas?
Archaeologists have highlighted 1500 BC as a crucial period in South America, when advanced settlements emerged as if from nowhere.
Alan Kolata has described an “explosion” in Titicacan culture at this time, whilst on the Peruvian coast a huge palace was built by a previously unknown culture at Sechin.
Archaeologists also date to this time the site of Chavin de Huantar in Peru and the appearance of the Olmecs in Mesoamerica.
The mystery of this sudden and widespread change was noted by Professor Waiter Krickeberg:
As I explained in the last chapter, the Olmecs and Chavin cultures were the result of a rescue from Easter Island, and were thus a by-product of the wave of migration.
Who were their mysterious rescuers? Of the many interesting South American legends, one happens to confirm Alan Kolata’s comment on the cultural explosion at Titicaca.
The legend concerns a King Atau, who arrived by sea with two hundred men and women, and marched from Rimac to Lake Titicaca. A related legend recalls that invaders arrived at Titicaca and slaughtered the white men whom they found there. And the Uru Indians who live at Lake Titicaca still maintain a tradition that their ancestors were seized by invaders and used for sacrifice; according to the Uru, this occurred some time “before the Sun was hidden”. i.e. before 1390 BC.
Finally, we should not ignore a
similar external impulse which affected Australasia c. 1500 BC.
Since this continent is situated on the easterly sea route to South
America (prior to crossing the Pacific Ocean), it can be no
coincidence that it experienced a wave of colonization by a
sophisticated group of people at this time.
Can a proper historical context of the Gods help us to understand why one God, named Yahweh, went to the assistance of the Hebrews?
The meaning of the name Yahweh (sometimes pronounced Jehovah) has puzzled theologians for thousands of years - so much so that the Jewish Publication Society now leaves the name untranslated, with the footnote “meaning of the Hebrew uncertain”. This is not a true statement, however, because the meaning of the Hebrew “ehyeh ashar ehyeh” is actually quite clear - it literally means “I am who I am”.
As Karen Armstrong has suggested, in common parlance it equates to mind your own business! Why was Yahweh so evasive about his identity, and what were his motives in leading the Israelites out of captivity into the Sinai desert! A review of Near East politics at 1433 BC can answer both of these questions.
Shortly after the destruction of Crete, severe over-crowding afflicted the Levant coast, following the immigration of Phoenicians and Philistines. Archaeological excavations at Byblos have confirmed a massive destruction of that city c. 1450 BC (NC), followed by severe over-population.
The Byblos experience was repeated all along the coast, and was to prompt the movement into Egypt of the mysterious “Hyksos” people, who would rule northern Egypt for two hundred years. The Israelites were about to become embroiled in an all-out war for the Nile delta. Yahweh therefore acted to urgently move the Israelites into the only available safe haven - the Sinai desert an area which was generally considered off-limits, due to the lingering fear of radioactive contamination.
Was this evacuation part of the earlier covenant with Abraham - a payback for his espionage activities - or was there more to it?
Yahweh’s plan certainly went far beyond saving the Israelites. It is possible to deduce, from his emphasis of the ten commandments and the detailed new laws set out in Exodus 20-23, that he was disaffected with mankind. In particular, it would seem that Yahweh was disgusted at the worship of idols and the widespread use of divination. His actions suggest a desire to return to the traditional values, from the earliest days of Sumer. But times had changed.
The earliest Sumerians had been quite innocent and trusting in the Gods who had always protected them. Now, after one thousand years of chaos and warfare, the people were confused, uncertain and superstitious. The only way forward for Yahweh was to create a new covenant of trust and a loyalty to one God alone. It was for that reason that he took the Israelites into a forty year isolation in the Sinai desert.
Only in that way could he bring forth a new generation that was untainted by the polytheism of the Egyptians. Only through monotheism could men recapture their long-lost golden age. Now let us return to the name Yahweh, with all its evasive connotations.
A close reading of the Book of Exodus indicates that Yahweh was following a carefully executed plan, which had three further objectives beyond the simple release of the Israelites. The first of these objectives was to weaken Egypt so fundamentally as a world power that it could not rise up and challenge the new monotheistic kingdom.
The second objective, by Yahweh’s own admission, was to build a reputation that would frighten Israel’s enemies. And the third objective was to win the sympathy and/or fear of the Egyptian people, in order to acquire silver and gold.
These precious metals were required to build the Ark and the Tabernacle, the essential means by which Yahweh would communicate to his chosen people. In order to achieve all of these objectives, it was necessary to gradually escalate the scale of the “plagues” on Egypt. And in order to play this psychological game successfully, it was essential that the Egyptian pharaoh did not recognize the name, and hence the reputation, of the God who opposed him.
Pharaoh’s ignorance of the divine name Yahweh caused him to dismiss the threats of the Israelites. If he had recognized his true enemy, the game would not have been played out to its conclusion. As it was, Pharaoh persistently ignored the increasing desolation that was being inflicted upon his country. By the time this psychological game was over, Egypt had lost most of its livestock, most of its crops and fruit trees and even most of its first-born children.
The Egyptians were then so incensed that they chased after the fleeing Israelites and lost six hundred of their finest chariots, which were swept away by the sea. There was another powerful reason why Yahweh did not disclose his real name. Let us suppose that Yahweh was indeed a major God, well-known in the Near East.
If that God wanted to make a fresh start by reintroducing traditional values via a monotheistic kingdom, then the worst thing he could do would be to retain his old name, especially if he was already worshipped under that name by the neighboring people. Imagine the reaction of the Israelites, upon entering Canaan, to find their special God being worshipped by their enemies, as one of many Gods!
And which of those enemies would fear the Israelites, if the Hebrew God was one of their own Gods! What was the name of the most commonly worshipped deity in the region of Canaan. Although Inanna was worshipped there as Astarte, and an unknown God was worshipped as Dagon, the most prominent God was certainly Hadad, who many believe to be identical with Baal.
The popularity of Hadad is evident from the common usage of his name by various kings - for example, Ben-Hadad of the Aramaeans, Hadad the Edomite and Hadadezer, the enemy of David, to name but a few. In addition, the main deity of the Hurrians, who held prominent positions in the Levant, was Hadad under the name Teshub.
And finally, the Hittites, who had a strong presence in Canaan, were also big devotees of Teshub. The most powerful deity in the Israelites’ promised land was definitely the Storm God.
Now let us follow the clues as to the real identity of Yahweh.
Our first port of call is Exodus 6, which states:
The above passage is confirmed by the Bible’s account of the earlier meeting with Abraham:
These passages leave no doubt that the name Yahweh was first used during the Exodus.
There is no basis whatsoever for religious claims that the name Yahweh existed at the time of the covenant with Abraham, the Flood, Adam and Eve, or even at the creation of heaven and Earth. These represent a rather predictable attempt at retrospective monotheistic editing. What is the meaning of Yahweh’s earlier name of El Shaddai?
The word shaddai is stated in the plural and is usually translated as “omnipotent” in the sense of a divine level of excellence, befitting of the plural Elohim. In recent years, however it has become apparent that its root is the Akkadian word shadu, which means mountains. Therefore El Shaddai should not be translated as God Almighty, but more accurately (and indeed literally) as “God of the Mountains”.
Does this provide a clue to Yahweh’s real identity?
There was indeed a God in the Sumerian pantheon who was known as a God of mountains. His name was ISH.KURI the youngest son of Enlil, and his name literally meant “He of the Far Mountain Lands." As we discussed in chapter 14, Ishkur was also known by the name Adad, or Hadad in Hebrew.
Since Hadad/Teshub was the pre-eminent God in Canaan, a new monotheistic religion under the name Ishkur or Adad would have been a non-starter. Ishkur is thus a perfect match for the mountain God El Shaddai, who by necessity became the anonymous God Yahweh. In the previous chapter, we identified Ishkur’s mountain lands as the Taurus and later the Andes Mountains, and noted that he returned from Tiwanaku to the Near East c. 2200 BC.
He was thus in the right place at the right time to appear as El Shaddai at Sodom and Gomorrah in 2024 BC. At that time, his elder brother Nannar/Sin was the God ruling over the Third Dynasty of Ur.
Does the Biblical character of Yahweh match that of Ishkur?
This absence explains why the Ark of the Covenant was built and used for communications in the Sinai desert from 1433-1393 BC.
It is time that we used our twentieth century eyes to
recognize
that Yahweh spoke to Moses through a radio transmitter. Unlike the
Omnipresent Spiritual God, flesh-and-blood Gods cannot be in two
places at the same time! Back to Jehovah - Yahweh - YHWH - Adonai
The cataclysmic destruction’s at Crete and Mohenjodaro can be dated to around 1450 BC, whilst Hammurabi’s earlier destruction of Mari (1531 BC NC) should perhaps also be included on this list of divinely inspired disasters.
Shortly thereafter, in 1433 BC, the Gods intervention becomes obvious once again, through the technological aspects of the Exodus. The reality of Yahweh’s intervention at that time is clear from references to the “pillar of fire” that led the Israelites, the smoke and fire of the landing on Mount Sinai, and the powerful communications device known as the Ark of the Covenant.
However, it is of crucial importance that Yahweh himself was not physically present during the Exodus and continued to be absent as the Israelites entered the “promised land” of Canaan. During this time, the fourteenth century BC, Yahweh always relayed any instructions via the Ark, and any physical interventions were carried out on his behalf by divine emissaries - the so-called “angels” of the Bible.
These angels were not mythical or ethereal entities but flesh-and-blood walking, talking beings of a subsidiary status to the higher Gods. The wings with which they were commonly depicted in later times represented artistic interpretations of their mode of transport. These “angels” assisted the Israelites, led by Joshua, in their partial conquest of the Canaanite lands, beginning with the defeat of Jericho c. 1390 BC.
The collapse of Jericho’s walls is an event now confirmed by archaeology, and may well be the result of another divine technology which was described in non-technological language as a “trumpet blast”. Yahweh’s instructions to the Israelites had been to mercilessly wipe out the inhabitants of the conquered lands, and the reasoning behind this can be seen from the problems which were encountered soon after Joshua’s death, when the Israelites began to inter-marry with their enemies.
This practice quickly led to the worship of other Gods, in blatant disregard of Yahweh’s first and second commandments, resulting in a premature end for Ishkur/Yahweh’s monotheistic experiment. The lands of the Philistines, Canaanites, Sidonians and Hivites all remained unconquered. During the time that Yahweh/Ishkur acted as the absent God of the Israelites, it is noticeable that other Gods, too, were absent from the affairs of mankind.
The promiscuous Goddess Inanna, for example, usually inspired a tell-tale legacy of bare-breasted statues wherever she went, bur after Crete the trail goes cold. Similarly, it would seem that her rival, Marduk, had also withdrawn from the scene. Marduk’s Egyptian homeland, once a mighty power, was left weak and vulnerable by Yahweh’s escalating series of “plagues”, and the northern delta was occupied soon afterwards by an invading force of “Hyksos”.
Conventionally, we know little about these Hyksos, the only clue being their name which literally means “chieftains of a foreign hill country”. According to my analysis, however, they were almost certainly Hurrians of Indo-European descent, driven south by over-population in the Levant. The fact that these Hyksos kings subjugated Egypt for around two hundred years is crucial, because it suggests that Marduk and his clan were not physically present to expel them. Meanwhile, Marduk’s city of Babylon, in Mesopotamia, was also left surprisingly defenseless.
At the same time that his Egyptian lands were being subjugated by the Hyksos, the vital city of Babylon, for which Marduk had fought so hard, was attacked in a surprise raid. The Hittite king Mursilis carried off its treasures, including the solid gold statues of Marduk and his spouse Sarpanit. The reaction to this sacrilegious act suggests an indirect intervention by Marduk, for Babylon was immediately repossessed by the Kassites, a mysterious people who suddenly swept down from the Zagros Mountains.
In the conventional chronology, this occurred in 1595 BC and the Kassites ruled the Near East for a long era of 438 years. This length of reign is in apparent contradiction to the negligible cultural impact of the Kassites.
Under David Rohl’s new chronology, however, the puzzlement of the scholars can be resolved, for the event occurred c. 1250 BC and the Kassites ruled for less than a century.
The origin and motivation of these Kassites has always perplexed the historians, for they made no changes to Babylonian culture (which they were supposed to have conquered), but simply maintained the status quo. As we have seen, however, these Kassites were almost certainly ex-miners from Tiwanaku, and the Negroid element were racially loyal to Marduk. These Kassites were not “invading” Babylon, but rather occupying it, presumably on the instructions of the absent Marduk.
The weakness of Babylon prompted a major change in the political balance of the eastern lands. A growing threat began to emerge from the Assyrians, who under Shalmeneser I established Nimrud as their new capital and set up a military post at the ruined site of Mari c. 1250 BC. The Elamites too were recovering from their annihilation by Hammurabi, as evidenced by the construction of a superb ziggurat at Choga Zanbil, dedicated to their God Inshushinak, also c. 1250 BC.
These Elamites began to make successful raids into Babylonia and c. 1170 BC sacked Babylon itself, together with the city of Aqar Quf, which the Kassites had built just to the north. Meanwhile, Egypt began to experience a renaissance, with the 18th Dynasty pharaohs successfully expelling the Hyksos c. 1183 BC (NC).
The first pharaoh of that dynasty was called Ahmose - a name which means “from the God Ahemanated”. Ahmose was followed by successors who bore the name Thutmose, meaning “from the God Thoth emanated”. These two Gods were one and the same since Ah signified the Moon God, which Thoth most certainly was. Whilst it is possible to read into this Egyptian renaissance a physical intervention by Thoth, there is no hard evidence to support such a conclusion.
Indeed, it should be recalled that Thoth was a pacifist God, a God of balance, who did not take sides in the disputes between the Gods. If Thoth had been allowed to intervene to redress the damage caused by Ishkur in 1433 BC, it would surely have happened much earlier than the twelfth century BC. It seems more likely that the 18th Dynasty pharaohs were calling upon an absent God and expelled the Hyksos by their own efforts.
The overall conclusion from the available evidence is that, during the period 1450-1000 BC, the Gods had withdrawn from the Near East (the Old World) and gone to the Americas (the New World) where there are signs of divine activity at Teotihuacan c. 1390 BC. The lack of direct intervention in the Old World suggests that Marduk, Inanna and Yahweh (Ishkur) were all side-lined by a deliberate policy of non-interference.
Could it be that, in the aftermath of the
escalating conflict which had destroyed the Cretan palaces and Mohenjo-daro, the olden Gods had brought the younger, warring Gods
to heel?
There is nothing, however, to suggest that Amen was physically present. On the contrary, in 1022 BC (NC) a remarkable thing happened. After three years on the throne, the pharaoh Amenhotep IV suddenly changed his name to Akhenaten and made a revolutionary conversion to monotheism.
During Akhenaten’s reign, all references to the God Amen ceased, and were replaced by “DINGIR.A", thought to represent the worship of Aten, the solar disc. Our understanding of this remarkable period in history is assisted by the so called “Amama Letters”, which were exchanged between Akhenaten and his allies in Gath, Ashkelon Gaza, Ashdod, Ekron, Jerusalem and the Kassite city Kar Duniash.
These were the cities of the Philistines - Indo-Europeans who were ruling the Levant from their confederacy of city states. The closeness of this alliance is demonstrated by Akhenaten taking among his wives both a Hurrian, named Tadu-Hepa, and a daughter of the Kassite king Burnaburiash II. This back-door attempt by the Philistines to conquer Egypt via Akhenaten would last only thirteen years. Tutankhamen then reversed the policies of Akhenaten and denounced him as a heretic. During this brief period, however, the power balance of the Levant was substantially changed.
Prior to Akhenaten, Egypt had embarked on a policy of defensive expansionism, and had forged a successful alliance with the Hurrians. Now, the Levant had become a battlefield between the Philistines and a roaming army of bandits known as the “Habiru’’. As David Rohl has so convincingly demonstrated, these well-organized Habiru of the Amarna Letters were led by David - the future king of the Israelites and, most significantly, the future conqueror of Jerusalem.
Who was occupying the site of Jerusalem prior to its conquest by David?
According to the Amarna Letters, the inhabitants were the Jebusites, and their king was allied to Akhenaten and the other Philistine rulers. This alliance can be explained by a common Indo-European origin, for the king of Jerusalem was named Abdiheba, meaning “servant of Heba”, who was a Hurrian Goddess.
Furthermore, it can be demonstrated that the Jebusites were one and the same people as the Hyksos! The Egyptian historian Manetho explains that the Hyksos, after they were expelled from Egypt, went and “built a city in a country now called Judaea... and gave it the name Jerusalem”.
According to the Amarna Letters, the Jebusite name for Jerusalem was “Tianna” - a giveaway to their partly Sumerian culture, for the name is so clearly rooted in the Sumerian TI and AN, meaning “Life’’ and “Heaven” - a fitting name for the sacred site of Jerusalem.
Amazingly, the name TI.ANNA echoes the name of Tiwanaku, suggesting that the Jebusites might have been the former supervisors of operations at that site. According to the new chronology, David captured Jerusalem during Akhenaten’s last year, when Egypt was impotent as a military power. Did the God Yahweh have a hand in this conquest? The ease with which David took the city via its water tunnel system does suggest that he had a source of inside information.
Furthermore, it may be significant that, whilst David’s rival King Saul never once called on Yahweh via the Ark of the Covenant, David himself apparently did. In the Book of Samuel I, verse 30, David used a special garment known as an ephod to call the Lord and successfully received a reply. Was the capture of Jerusalem a divinely orchestrated plot? With hindsight, it would seem that the main purpose of the capture of Jerusalem was to build a “temple” for Yahweh.
The detailed plans for that temple, described in Kings I verse 7, are quite mystifying, and suggest to me some obscure technical purpose far beyond a simple altar for the worship of an absent God. The plot thickens when we date the construction of the “temple”, by Solomon. to 953 BC. For in 952 BC (NC), Marduk/Ra reappeared in Egypt! After an absence which I have suggested lasted 450 years, a pharaoh suddenly adopted the name Ramesses, meaning “begotten by Ra”.
He was soon followed in 936 BC (NC) by the most
famous pharaoh that ever lived - Ramesses II
(Ramesses the Great). And Ramesses the Great’s first task,
having driven the Hittites back to Kadesh, was to sack Jerusalem!
It is evident from the Bible that the Ark of the
Covenant was being used to keep Yahweh up-to-date with
events, and it is possible that
David’s successful campaigns, facilitated by the political weakening
of Egypt under Akhenaten, provided a tantalizing opportunity for him
to reassert his authority in the Old World. What better target than
Jerusalem, which as the former site of the Gods’ mission control
centre, was arguably more sacred than Babylon itself.
At this time, the Assyrians were masters of the Old World. They had conquered the Babylonians and the Elamites. and had deported the Israelites from their northern kingdom of Samaria.
Meanwhile, the Hurrians had finally packed up and left the Levant for a hopefully more peaceful existence in the north-east, near Lake Van. It seemed as if no-one could withstand the onslaught of the Assyrians’ military might, which would soon come to its peak with a brutal invasion of Egypt under Esarheddon and later by his successor Ashurbanipal.
Who were the Assyrians and why did they suddenly pursue such a vicious programme of expansionism?
Originally they were migrants from Sumer, and mainly supporters of Inanna. However, that was more than a millennium previously, and their religion was now based on the first holy trinity - a composite God named Asshur, formed of a triad of Anar, Eel and Ea (the Sumerian Anu, Enlil and Enki).
Beneath this triad, the Assyrians worshipped a secondary triad of Sin, Shamash and either Ramman or Ishtar. The Assyrians’ belief in an ancient trinity of Gods from Sumer suggests that they were not being supported by the direct intervention of any specific God. The absence of the Gods in Assyrian affairs is confirmed by an attempted attack on Jerusalem by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 689 BC. It was then that Sennacherib made his infamous boast that no God was more powerful than the mighty Assyrian army!
But, no sooner had Sennacherib spoken these words, than the Gods did intervene...
Once again it was the emissaries of the Gods, rather than the Gods themselves, who carried out the divine mandate. Could the extermination of the Assyrians, as recorded in the Bible, have been an actual historic event, representing another example of the Gods’ awesome technology?
One important detail suggests that it may have been. Prior to the angel’s attack, the king of Jerusalem had approached the communications device known as the Ark of the Covenant (at this time safely installed inside the “temple” and referred to as “the Lord”), and said:
In the same year as his disastrous attack on Jerusalem, Sennacherib faced the latest in a long-running series of rebellions by his appointees in the city of Babylon. This time his soldiers brutally sacked Babylon in an unprecedented manner. However, even this ruthless act of suppression failed to prevent Babylon from bouncing back fifty years later.
It was then that the Assyrian empire suffered a mysterious demise:
Who was behind the fall of Assyria?
The names of the rebellious Babylonian kings provide a clue. The chief instigator of the rebellion was Nabopolassar, who was followed on the throne by his son Nebuchadnezzar, both names signifying the God Nabu, a son of Marduk. Did the Gods intervene to bring the tyranny of the arrogant and barbaric Assyrians to an end? Had the Assyrians pushed the tolerance of the Gods to the limit?
Significantly, one of their last acts, in 640 BC, was to crush the Elamite kingdom (worshippers of Ninurta), having earlier carried out a brutal assault on Egypt (664 BC NC). The Assyrians thus had few allies amongst the Gods.
Until the historians provide some alternative explanations, we must seriously consider the possibility that the divine hand of Nabu was directly or indirectly behind the Assyrians’ sudden demise.
In 597 BC, the kings of Jerusalem became Babylonian appointees and the Israelite elite were exiled. This was followed in 586 BC by a major Jewish revolt, which was ruthlessly suppressed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II.
He burned Jerusalem’s “temple”, demolished its buildings and city walls, and carried off its treasures. In the meantime, Nebuchadnezzar brought the city of Babylon to new heights of grandeur, including its famous hanging gardens. It is surprising that the rival Gods allowed Jerusalem and Babylon to experience such contrasting fates.
One of the Israelites deported from Jerusalem to Babylon in 597 BC was a priest named Ezekiel - the same priest whose “visions” of a spacecraft were described in chapter I. The highly technical descriptions provided by Ezekiel testify to the reality of his experiences. In 572 BC, Ezekiel was lifted up by the Lord’s “Spirit” and transported to a “temple”.
Biblical translations give the impression that he was taken to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, but that temple had of course been destroyed fourteen years earlier. In addition, several of the features described by Ezekiel, such as a river running from the temple towards the sea, clearly do not describe the geography of Jerusalem. In fact, a reading of the Biblical text in the original Hebrew makes it quite apparent that Ezekiel was totally unfamiliar with his new surroundings.
So where was the temple to which Ezekiel was taken?
A temple which does match Ezekiel’s description exists at Chavin de Huantar in the Andes! Several scholars have pointed out the amazing series of similarities between Chavin and the Biblical location, most obviously Chavin’s situation on a very high mountain at a height of 10,430 feet. The second similarity is that the temple at Chavin is precisely aligned to the cardinal points of the compass, with its main gate facing east, just as described by Ezekiel.
Finally, Ezekiel observed a river which ran “from under” the threshold of the temple from its south side towards the east, and ultimately onwards to a sea in the east. As described in chapter 3, excavations at Chavin have uncovered a subterranean network of tunnels that were used to divert water from the Wacheqsa river through the site and downwards towards the Mosna river, which closely skirts the sunken plaza on its southern side (see Figure 10).
The latter river then connects to the Puchka, which flows in turn to the Maranon and finally into the Amazon, taking it to a sea in the east, just as described by Ezekiel. The astounding conclusion is that Yahweh was attempting to build in Peru a replica of his “temple” which had been destroyed in Jerusalem fourteen years earlier.
Furthermore, his ambitious plan extended far beyond Chavin, otherwise why would he bring Ezekiel thousands of miles to give him hundreds of precise measurements from the Chavin temple?
Yahweh’s full intentions are quite clearly recorded in Ezekiel verse 43:
Unless we believe in coincidences, the picture which emerges from this analysis is a dramatic attempt by Ishkur/Yahweh to reassert his authority among the Gods, perhaps prompted by the contrasting fortunes of Jerusalem and Babylon. Did his attempt fail? As far as we know, Ezekiel’s compatriots never succeeded in following his instructions to build a Chavin replica.
As for Chavin itself, whatever might have once existed there may have been destroyed and built over by later constructions dating from the era 500-200 BC. It would be particularly interesting to excavate beneath its sunken plaza. What exactly was the so-called “temple” which Ishkur built at Chavin?
If the Biblical account of the temple of Jerusalem is a guide, then we are dealing not with a temple in any conventional sense, but with some kind of technical construction for a specific purpose. A possible clue is contained in the Raymondi Stele (Figure 45), which is thought to have been carved at Chavin c. 500 BC, when it emerged as a sacred centre not long after Ezekiel’s visit.
The stele shows Ishkur, symbolized by a bull-God, standing beneath what we might now interpret as a stylized rocket...
Figure 45
Day of the Jaguar
I will attempt to demonstrate that these traditions have their origins in the events at Chavin de Huantar in the sixth century BC. The most famous Aztec artifact is the great “Sun Stone”, found at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and now exhibited in the Museum at Mexico City (Plate 61).
The four rectangular panels which surround the central face are thought to represent the four great periods (or “suns”) of Aztec history.
Each sun is identified by the phenomenon that brought it to an end. According to the Aztec tradition, the first sun was destroyed by water, the second by strong winds, the third by quakes and storms, and the fourth by the jaguar.
The Aztecs considered themselves to be living in the fifth sun, at the beginning of which they had migrated to their present land, led by their God Huitzilpochtli. There have been many attempts to confirm the validity of the Aztec suns, all of which have suffered from conflicting data on the length of each period. Putting this data to one side, the solution to the first three suns strikes me as quite simple.
The first sun was ended by water, thus representing the great Flood in 10983 BC.
The second sun was ended by wind, representing the nuclear destruction in 2024 BC in the lands from which the first Americans came. And the third sun was ended by quakes and storms, representing the cosmic event in 1390 BC that halted the Earth’s rotation and caused massive “hailstones” to crash down from the sky. Aztec traditions maintained that the feathered serpent God, Quetzalcoatl, had arrived near the beginning of the fourth sun, i.e. around 1390 BC.
This is consistent with my hypothesis that the Gods had moved to the New World following the climactic events 1450 BC. Some time after 1390 BC, the fourth sun was ended by the “jaguar”. This tradition is commemorated throughout the Americas in the form of numerous religious cults involving various fanged animals.
Maya priests, for example, were depicted wearing jaguar skins, and one of the most famous priests was called Balam, literally meaning jaguar in the local language. Experts believe that this cult first began at Chavin de Huantar, where according to the National Geographic Society, “the Chavin venerated jaguars and other jungle predators as Gods”.
This cult is indeed depicted in the graphic Chavin representations of ferocious bull-like creatures with snarling teeth, as seen in Figures 9 and 45. The legend of the jaguar is connected chronologically to another legend according to which mankind was over-run by “wild animals” at a time of chaos and warfare between the Gods. This legend of the “wild animals” has been commemorated in numerous enigmatic stone carvings, which have always puzzled the experts.
A particularly good example can be found at El Baul in Guatemala. “Monument 27” at El Baul depicts a figure breathing fire and holding what appear to be grenades in each hand (Figure 55). Its human-like body is joined to a helmeted head, featuring goggles and the snarling face of a wild beast.
At its feet crouches a much smaller figure of a man, making an offering to the jaguar-like beast.
Figure 55
Close to El Baul, at Santa Lucia Cotzumalhuapa, a similar sacrificial scene has been found on a stele, now in the Berlin Museum.
This stele shows various races of men looking skywards and offering an unidentifiable sacrifice to a diving God. This image of a diving or descending God is commonplace in later Mesoamerican culture, with two Mayan examples being shown in Figure 56.
Although experts dismiss these images as “the setting Sun” or “bee Gods” (seriously!), it seems more likely to symbolize a menacing threat from the skies.
A similar threat from the skies was depicted at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, where archaeologists found two large statues guarding the Temple of the Eagles.
These imposing statues are of frightening bird-men (or Gods), their human faces peering out from inside the beaks of giant eagles. This artistic combination of man and animal (called zoomorphism) crops up again and again in the ancient American cultures. At Quirigua, a Mayan site in southern Guatemala, an outdoor museum contains one of the world’s weirdest collections of carved stones.
The zoomorphic images on these stones also present a third aspect - that of machines.
One visitor to the site has described his impressions.
At San Agustin. Columbia, several dozen related sites from an
unknown culture are dominated by 320 monolithic stone
These sculptures are so horrific that, in 1758, a Franciscan priest branded them “works of the devil”. Fortunately they have survived, and now comprise one of the world’s scariest open-air museums. Many of the statues are two-storeyed, such as Figure 57 which shows a 6-feet high jaguar-man surmounted by a jaguar-bird with fierce teeth.
Elsewhere a terrifying figure sits under a stone roof with a human skull dangling from its neck, whilst many other statues depict monsters feeding small human figures into their mouths!
One text book sums up the scholarly consensus on San Agustin as follows:
Another fantastic combination of machine and man was found on the
Peruvian coast. A small ceramic
The monster is shown in the act of decapitating a man, and is typical of numerous similar depictions in this region. The Olmecs of Mesoamerica also appear to have been involved in the attack by wild animals.
Archaeologists believe that
the Olmecs practiced a jaguar cult at the site of Teopantecuanitlan,
and some authorities refer to them as “the people of the jaguar”. A common aspect of
Olmec art was an infantile form with a cleft head
In short, was mankind caught up in a war between the Gods in the Americas?
There is no doubt that both South American and Mesoamerican cultures preserve the records of an Enlilite victory over Enkiite Gods in the relatively recent past.
The national emblem of modern-day Mexico is
an eagle grasping a snake with its beak and claw (Figure 60), the
snake being an Enkiite symbol. In Maya country, a mask was
discovered showing snakes firmly held by the teeth of a jaguar God
(Figure 61).
The pyramid at Chichen Itza (Plate 62) also reflects the same symbolism.
At 5 p.m. on the spring and autumn equinoxes, a shadow moves down the pyramid like the rippling body of a serpent.
Having reached the bottom, it then wriggles its way back to the top. This is thought to symbolize the serpent God descending to Earth and then departing. Meanwhile, inside the pyramid at the top of a flight of narrow stairs, the Toltecs built a small shrine to the jaguar.
A possible interpretation of this is, once again, the superiority of the jaguar over the serpents of the Enkiites.
Our first clue comes from Aztec legend.
The Aztec war God was known as Huitzilpochtli. He was usually shown holding a powerful weapon and he had, according to one legend, won a battle against four hundred lesser Gods.
Another legend, possibly referring to the same event and the same God, states that a God named “Smoking Mirror” fought the feathered serpent God, Quetzalcoatl, at Tula, just north of Teotihuacan, and thereby brought his reign to an end. Archaeologists excavating at Teotihuacan have found images of the Storm God, Ishkur, everywhere, indicating that he and Huitzilpochtli were one and the same victorious God.
The legend of the Smoking Mirror corresponds with another tale, according to which Quetzalcoatl left Mesoamerica following the outbreak of wars between the Gods. The serpent God set out with a band of followers from Tula towards Yucatan, from where he sailed eastward on a “serpent raft”.
This event is one of the most significant in the history of the Americas, since Quetzalcoatl left with a promise to return. The return date was fixed according to a sacred calendar of 260 days which combined with a 365-day calendar to produce a sacred round of 52 years. Thereafter, all of the Mesoamerican cultures counted the years and awaited the return of Quetzalcoatl every time the 52-year cycle was completed.
Since Quetzalcoatl’s promise is of central importance to the sacred round, it is highly likely that the 260-day sacred calendar (on which the sacred round depended) was set in motion at the date he left. It may therefore be highly significant that the earliest sacred round date yet found in Mexico equates to 500 BC, which suggests that Quetzalcoatl may have left Mesoamerica in 552 BC.
Can it be a coincidence that this date, marking the battle of the Gods, is a mere 18 years after Ezekiel’s trip to Chavin? Our other chronological evidence comes from archaeology.
Whilst the dates are admittedly rather vague, the established chronology for San Agustin and Chavin de Huantar are both entirely consistent with the period around 550 BC, which is the earliest established date for the jaguar cult. This period coincides exactly with a phenomenon known as “El Nine” which caused massive social and cultural changes in South America.
In particular, the Peruvian coastal settlements suddenly declined whilst Chavin, in stark contrast, suddenly arose as a powerful religious centre. Archaeologists are unsure exactly what was behind El Nine, but if we put all of the clues together, then the war of the Gods becomes the force behind El Nine and Chavin de Huantar emerges as the catalyst that started the war of the Gods. How did mankind get caught up in this conflict?
Whilst we cannot be certain, a possible clue appears within the later Chavin temple. As suggested in chapter 3, the EI Lanzon carving has been positioned at the heart of the temple to protect it from an unknown enemy. Furthermore, the walls of the temple are designed to obstruct access for men of large stature. Could this enemy have been a group of the Negroes who arrived at Chavin c. 1450 BC?
According to the pre-Incan legend cited in the previous chapter, “giants” had marched into the mountains, upset their God, and been destroyed. It is possible that these people, close relations of the Olmecs, were forced by Ishkur to build his “temple’, but then subsequently sabotaged it. If that act of sabotage was incited by a rival God, then we can understand why both men and Gods became involved in the ensuing conflict.
This analysis implies that it was Ishkur/Yahweh who unleashed the fury of the “wild animals” upon mankind, an attack which made a long-lasting impression on the survivors.
Among these survivors were almost certainly the ancestors of the Aztecs, the latter being renowned for their bloodthirsty sacrificial rites, which seem so alien to us. We can begin to empathize with the Aztecs, however, when we study one of their ceremonial daggers shown in Plate 60.
This dagger, which
was used for cutting out the hearts of their human sacrificial
victims, has a handle decorated with the image of the diving Storm God!
Amid signs of increasing disillusionment. no doubt caused by the continuing absence of the Gods, Nabonido’s declared Nannar/Sin to be the supreme God.
This, however, was no more than a desperate call on an absent God, for Nannar/Sin did not help Babylon to resist the invasion of the Persian army, commanded by Cyrus, in 539 BC. Nor, for that matter, did Marduk or Nabu. The handover of power was suspiciously smooth. Thus began a new phase in the history of mankind. The power of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians had waned.
Within fourteen years, the pharaonic dynasties in Egypt would also be ended by the Persians. For the first time in history, an empire arose which was neither Hamitic nor Shemitic in race, for both the Persians and the Medes (their subservient allies) were from the tribe of Noah’s third son, Japheth.
When the Persian empire gave way to Alexander the Great in 330 BC, it was again a Japhethite kingdom. And world power has been exercised in the name of Japheth ever since. The age of Cyrus also marked a turning point in world religion.
All of the
peoples subdued by Babylon, including the Jews, were allowed to
return to the worship of their former Gods and rebuild their
temples. Cyrus thus encouraged a new age of paganism, based on the
idols of Gods who had not been seen for a thousand years. All of
these Gods, however, were made subservient to AhuraMazda, the “God
of Truth and Light”. who was depicted as a deity of heaven rather
than of Earth.
The influence of Buddha in India and Confucius in China, during this period, cannot be understated.
It is noteworthy that Buddha regarded the Gods as mere flesh-and-blood beings who were not to be worshipped, since they were caught up in the same problems as mankind; he thus sought a spiritual enlightenment, or nirvana, that was higher than the Gods.
The evidence suggests that the serpent God was Enki and that he did indeed return to the continent of Asia.
Enki’s nickname Ea meant “He Whose Home is Water”. Scholars believe that he can also be identified with the mythical Oannes, an amphibious “fish-man” who emerged from the Erythrean Sea and taught civilization to the Sumerians.
The presence of Enki in Mesoamerica can be determined from the Mayan word “uaana”, which is virtually identical to Oannes and means “He Whose Home is Water". Just Off the Yucatan coast, from where Quetzalcoatl allegedly left Mesoamerica, there lies an island named Jaina. The Itzas, a people who occupied that region in later times (and gave their name to Chichen Itza), recognized Jaina as the final resting place of Itzamna, the God of the Itzas. The meaning of Itzamna was, once again, “He Whose Home is Water”.
According to legend, Quetzalcoatl (alias Ea/Enki) sailed away from Jaina and went eastwards on a “serpent raft”. The same serpent raft and the same God turn up in the east, c. 500 BC, at a sacred site called Budhanilkantha in Nepal! Plate 63 shows the statue of a God, known as “the Sleeping Vishnu”, lying on a bed of snakes inside a water tank.
This statue is a mystery, even to experts on Hindu religion, since it bears all the hallmarks of the God Vishnu, and yet the name Budhanilkantha means “Old Blue Throat”, a name signifying a different God, Shiva.
This presents the experts with a strange contradiction, since Vishnu is the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. Whatever this duality signifies, the statue on the raft of snakes is definitely Vishnu, and that God is also commonly known in Nepal as “Narayan”.
The name Narayan means “the one who looks after the people”, and one of his nicknames was, amazingly, “He Whose Home is Water”! It would thus seem that Enki (and possibly his clan) were forced to leave South America c. 550 BC and consequently returned to Asia.
In the light of this dramatic
relocation, it is quite possible that the Enkiite Gods decided to
rid the Near East of the rival Shemitic and Hamitic powers which had
fought so bitterly for 1,500 years, by bringing about a new world
order through a Japhethite empire.
|
2000 BC. The
starting point of the Mayan calendar in 3113 BC indicates that the
Maya were emigrants from somewhere in the Egyptian/Cretan sphere of
influence. 
sculptures.
figurine from the
Moche culture
depicts a monstrous looking animal on two legs, with a machine-like
chimney on its head (Figure 58). 
and fanged snarling mouth, such as the jade figurine shown in Figure
59. 
