CHAPTER ONE

THE WARS OF MAN
 

"In the spring of 1947, a shepherd boy searching for a lost sheep in the barren cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea, discovered a cave that contained Hebrew scrolls - had lain undisturbed for nearly two thousand years, carefully wrapped and hidden away during the turbulent years when Judea challenged the might of the Roman empire.

"....One of the longest and most complete scrolls, and perhaps the most dramatic, deals with a future war, a kind of Final War. Titled by scholars The Wars of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, it envisages spreading warfare - local battles that will first involve Judea’s immediate neighbors, which shall increase in ferocity and scope until the whole ancient world would be engulfed:

"The first engagement of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, that is against the army of Belial, shall be an attack upon the troops of Edom, Moab, the Ammonites and the Philistine area; then upon that of the Kittians of Assyria; and upon those violators of the Covenant who give them aid...."

And after those battles, "they shall advance upon the Kittians of Egypt" and "in due time.... against the kings of the north."

"In this War of Men, the scroll prophesied, the God of Israel shall take an active roll:

"On the day the Kittians fall, there shall be mighty combat and carnage, in the presence of the God of Israel; For that is the day which he appointed of old for the final battle against the Sons of Darkness.

Of this battle, (and going further than the Prophet Ezequiel) the Dead Sea Scroll says:

"On that day, the Company of the Divine and the Congregation of the Mortals shall engage side by side in combat and carnage.  The Sons of Light shall battle against the Sons of Darkness with a show of godlike might, amid uproarious tumult, amid the war cries of gods and men." "

"....One of the most romanticized wars, when "love had launched a thousand ships," was the War of Troy, between the Achaean Greeks and the Trojans. It was, know we not, launched by the Greeks to force the Trojans to return the beautiful Helen to her lawful spouse. Yet an epic Greek tale, the Kypria, represented the war as a premeditated scheme by the great god Zeus:

There was a time when thousands upon thousands of men encumbered the broad bosom of the Earth, and having pity on them, Zeus in his great wisdom resolved to lighten Earth’s burden. So he caused the strife of Ilion (Troy) to that end; that through death he might make a void in the race of men.

Mr. Sitchin explains more in his book, about the reasonings of the gods, and the interference of the demi-god Achilles, which caused the decision for Jove (Jupiter/Zeus) to take action.

Mr. Sitchin continues:

"....The Battle of Troy, indeed Troy itself, was long thought of as just part of the fascinating but incredible Greek legends, which scholars have tolerantly called mythology. Troy and the events pertaining to it were still considered to be pure mythological when Charles McLaren suggested, back in 1822, that a certain mound in eastern Turkey, called Hissarlik, was the site of the Homeric Troy. It was only when a businessman named Heinrich Schliemann, risking his own money, came up with spectacular discoveries as he dug up the mound in 1870, that scholars began to acknowledge the existence of Troy. It is now accepted that the Battle of Troy had actually taken place in the thirteenth century B.C. It was then, according to the Greek sources, that gods and men had fought side by side; in such beliefs the Greeks were not alone.

"For centuries prior to the war of Troy, the Hittites expanded their kingdom to imperial proportions, claiming to have done so upon the orders of their supreme god TESHUB ("The Stormer"). His olden title was "Storm God Whose Strength Makes Dead," and Hittite kings sometimes claimed that the god had actually taken a hand in the battle.... Also aiding the Hittites in the battle was the goddess ISHTAR, whose epithet was "Lady of the battlefield."

"....Hittite influence, as many references in the Old Testament indicate, extended south into Canaan; but they were there as settlers, not as conquerors. While they treated Canaan as a neutral zone, laying to it no claim, this was not the attitude of the Egyptians. Repeatedly the Pharaohs sought to extend their rule northward to Canaan and the Cedar Land (Lebanon); they succeeded in doing so, circa 1470 B.C., when they defeated a coalition of Canaanite kings at Megiddo.

"....the Hittite’s own inscriptions suggest that they went to war only when the gods gave the word, that the enemy was offered a chance to surrender peacefully before hostilities began, and that once a war was won, the Hittites were satisfied to receive tribute and take captives: the cities were not sacked; the populace was not massacred.

"....The vicious nature of Egyptian warfare and the pitiless destructiveness they inflicted upon a vanquished foe were subjects of boastful inscriptions. The Pharaoh Pepi I, for example, commemorated his victory over the Asiatic "sand-dwellers" in a poem which hailed the army which "hacked up the land of the sand-dwellers... cut down its fig trees and vines... cast fire into all its dwellings, killed its people by many tens of thousands." The commemorative inscriptions were accompanied by vivid depictions of the battle scenes.

The Pharaoh Pi-Ankhy adhered to this wanton tradition.

"The god Amon, to whose battle orders the Egyptians attributed their viciousness, found his match in the God of Israel. In the words of the Prophet Jeremiah,

"Thus sayeth the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: ’I will punish Amon, god of Thebes, and those who trust in him, and shall bring retribution upon Egypt and its gods, its Pharaohs and its kings.’"

This we learn from the Bible, was an ongoing confrontation; nearly a thousand years earlier, in the days of the Exodus, Yahweh, the God of Israel smote Egypt with a series of afflictions intended not only to soften the heart of its ruler but also as "judgments against all the gods of Egypt."

"....The biblical language is almost identical to the words of a later Pharaoh, Ramses II, used by him to describe the miraculous appearance of Amon-Ra at his side during a decisive battle fought with the Hittites in 1286 B.C.

".... The Hittite victory might have been more decisive, for they had almost captured the Pharaoh himself.... Ramses, on his return to Egypt saw fit to describe in detail the miracle of his escape:

"....As Ramses went on pleading with his god Amon to save him, for the god’s powers were greater than those of "millions of foot soldiers, of hundreds of thousands of chariot-soldiers," a miracle happened: the god showed up on the battlefield!

 

"....Thus unopposed , slaying the enemy left and right, Ramses managed to escape.

"After the death of Muwatallis, (Hittite king) Egypt and the Hittite kingdom signed a peace treaty, and the reigning Pharaoh took a Hittite princess to be his principal wife. The peace was needed because not only the Hittites but also the Egyptians were increasingly coming under attack by "Peoples of the Sea" - invaders from Crete and other Greek islands. They gained a foothold on the Mediterranean coast of Canaan to become the biblical Philistines; but their attacks on Egypt proper were beaten back by the Pharaoh Ramses III, who commemorated the battle scenes on temple walls. He attributed his victories to his strict adherence to "the plans of the All-Lord, my august divine father, the Lord of the Gods." It was to his god Amon-Ra, Ramses wrote, that the credit for the victories was due: for it was:

"Amon-Ra who was after them, destroying them."

"The bloody trail of man’s war against his fellow man in behalf of the gods now takes us back to Mesopotamia - the Land between the Rivers (Euphrates and Tigris) - the biblical Land of Shin’ar. There, as is related in Genesis 11, the first-ever cities arose, with buildings made with bricks and towers that scraped the skies. It was there that recorded history began; it was there that prehistory began with the settlements of the Olden Gods.

"It is a tale of long ago, which we will soon unfold. But right now let us return to a thousand years before the traumatic times of Ramses II in Egypt. Then, in faraway Mesopotamia, kingship was taken over by an ambitious young man. He was called Sharru-Kin - "Righteous Ruler"; our textbooks call him Sargon the First. He built a new capital city, calling it Agade, and established the kingdom of Akkad. The Akkadian language, written in wedge-like (cuneiform) script, was the mother tongue of all the Semitic languages, of which Hebrew and Arabic are still in use.

"Reigning for the better part of the twenty-fourth century B.C., Sargon attributed his long reign (fifty-four years) to the special status granted him by the Great Gods, who made him "Overseer of Ishtar, Annointed Priest of ANU, Great Righteous Shepherd of ENLIL." It was Enlil, Sargon wrote, "who did not let anybody oppose Sargon" and who gave Sargon "the region from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea" (from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf). It was therefore to "the gate of the House of Enlil" that Sargon brought the captive kings, ropes tied to the dog collars around their necks.

"....The Akkadian dynasty begun by Sargon reached its peak under his grandson Naram-Sin ("Whom the god Sin loves"). His conquests, Naram-Sin wrote on his monuments, were possible because his god had armed him with a unique weapon, the "Weapon of the God," and because the other gods granted him their explicit consent - or even invited him - to enter their regions.

"....Just as Naram-Sin could attribute his successful campaigns to his heeding the command of his gods, so was his downfall attributed to his going to war against the word of the gods. Scholars have put together from fragments of several versions a text that has been titled The Legend of Naram-Sin. Speaking in the first person, Naram-Sin explains in this tale of woe that his troubles began when the goddess Ishtar, "changed her plan" and the gods gave their blessing to "seven kings, brothers, glorious and noble; their troops numbered 360,000...." and they were threatening Akkad itself. Naram-Sin asked the gods what to do and was told to put aside his weapons and, instead of going to battle, to go sleep with his wife (but, for some deep reason, avoid making love).

"....But Naram-Sin, announcing that he would rely on his own weapons, decided to attack the enemy in spite of the god’s advice.

"....On the fourth anniversary of the unauthorized war, Naram-Sin appealed to the great god Ea to overrule Ishtar and put his case before the other gods. They advised him to desist from further fighting, promising that "in days to come, Enlil will summon perdition upon the "Sons of Evil," and Akkad would have respite.

"The promised era of peace lasted about three centuries, during which the olden part of Mesopotamia, Sumer, reemerged as the center of kingship, and the oldest urban centers of the ancient world - Ur, Nippur, Lagash, Isin, Larsa - flourished again. Sumer, under the kings of Ur, was the center of an empire that encompassed the whole of the ancient Near East. But toward the end of the third millennium B.C., the land became the arena for contending loyalties and opposing armies, and then that great civilization - succumbed to a major catastrophe of unprecedented proportions.... It was those Mesopotamian texts stated, a catastrophe that befell Sumer as a result of a decision of the great gods sitting in council.

"It took Mesopotamia almost a century to be resettled and another century to fully recover from the divine annihilation. By then, the center of Mesopotamian power had shifted northward, to Babylon. There, a new empire was to rise, proclaiming an ambitious god, MARDUK, as its supreme deity.

"Circa 1800 B.C., Hammurabi, the king renowned for his law code, ascended the throne in Babylon and began to extend his boundaries. According to his inscriptions the gods not only told him if and when to launch his military campaigns but were literally leading his armies....

"....But before long Babylon had to share its might with a new rival to its north - Assyria, where not Marduk but the bearded god ASHUR ("The All-Seeing") was proclaimed supreme. While Babylon tangled with the lands to its south and east, the Assyrians extended their rule northward and westward, as far as "the country of Lebanon, on the shores of the Great Sea." These were lands in the domains of the gods NINURTA and ADAD, and the Assyrian kings carefully noted that they launched their campaigns on the explicit commands of these great gods.

"....In assuming the title "king of the world, king of the four regions of the Earth," the Assyrian kings directly challenged Babylon, for Babylon encompassed the ancient region of Sumer and Akkad. To legitimize their claim the Assyrian kings had to take control of those olden cities where the Great Gods had their homes in olden times; but the way to these sites was blocked by Babylon. The feat was achieved in the ninth century B.C. by Shalmaneser III....

"....Describing his various military campaigns, Shalmaneser asserted that his victories were achieved with weapons provided by two gods:

"I fought with the Mighty Force which Ashur, my lord, had given me, and with the strong weapons which Nergal, my leader, had presented to me."

The weapon of Ashur was described as having a "terrifying brilliance." In a war with Adini the enemy fled on seeing "the terrifying Brilliance of Ashur; it overwhelmed them."

"When Babylon, after several acts of defiance, was sacked by the Assyrian king Sennacherib (in 689 B.C.), its demise was made possible because its own god, Marduk, became angry with its king and people, and decreed that "seventy years shall be the measure of its desolation" - exactly as the God of Israel had later decreed for Jerusalem. With the subjugation of the whole of Mesopotamia, Sennacherib was able to assume the cherished title "King of Sumer and Akkad...." He conquered.... with the aid of "the awe-inspiring Brilliance, the weapon of Ashur, my lord." Reliefs that illustrate his campaigns (as the one depicting the siege of Lachish), show the attackers using rocketlike missiles against their enemy. In the conquered cities Sennacherib "killed their officials and patricians ... and hung their bodies on poles surrounding the city; the common citizens I considered prisoners of war."

"An artifact known as the Prism of Sennacherib preserved an historical inscription in which he made mention of the subjugation of Judea and his attack to Jerusalem. The quarrel Sennacherib had with its king, Hezekiah, was the fact that he held Padi, the king of the Philistine city of Ekron, "who was loyal to his solemn oath to his god Ashur."

"....The siege of Jerusalem offers several interesting aspects. It had no direct cause but only an indirect one: the forced holding there of the loyal king of Ekron. The "awe-inspiring Brilliance, the weapon of Ashur," which was employed to "overwhelm the strong cities" of Phoenicia and Philistia, was not used against Jerusalem. And the customary inscriptional ending "I fought with them and inflicted defeat upon them" is missing in the case of Jerusalem; Sennacherib merely reduced the size of Judea by giving its outlying areas to neighbouring kings.

"More over, the usual claim that a land or a city was attacked upon the "trustworthy orders" of the god Ashur was also absent in the case of Jerusalem; one wonders whether all this meant that the attack on the city was an unauthorized attack - a whim of Sennacherib himself but not the wish of his god?

"This intriguing possibility becomes a convincing probability as we read the other side of the story - for such another side does exist in the Old Testament."

The story is told in II Kings, Chapters 18 and 19. In fact, one of Sennacherib’s generals bluff in front of the people of Jerusalem, in the Hebrew language so that all could understand. He pretended Yahweh had commanded him to fight against Jerusalem. The bluff was found and king Hezekiah was informed through the Prophet Isaiah that:

"’Concerning the king of Assyria ... the way that he came, he shall return; and unto this city he shall not come in ... for I shall defend this city to save it.’"

And it came to pass that night,
that the Angel of Yahweh went forth
and smote in the camp of the Assyrians
a hundred and eighty-five thousand;
and at sunrise, lo and behold,
they were all dead corpses.
So Sennacherib, the king of Assyria,
departed, and journeyed back and dwelt in Nineveh.

Sennacherib was assassinated by his sons Adrammelech and Sharezzer.... "And Esarhaddon, his son, reigned in his stead."

An inscription of Esarhaddon known as Prism B describes:

"....On the command of the great gods, Sennacherib had publicly proclaimed his younger son as successor. "He called together the people of Assyria, young and old, and he made my brothers, the male offspring of my father, take a solemn oath.... in order to secure my succession." The brothers then broke the oath, killing Sennacherib and seeking to kill Esarhaddon. But the gods snatched him away "and made me stay in a hiding place.... preserving me for kingship."

"After a period of turmoil Esarhaddon received "a trustworthy command from the gods: ’Go, do not delay! We will march with you!’"

"The deity who was delegated to accompany Esarhaddon was Ishtar. As his brother’s forces came out of Nineveh to beat off his attack on the capital, "Ishtar, The Lady of Battle, who wished me to be her high priest, stood at my side. She broke their bows, scattered their orderly battle array." Once the Ninevite troops were disorganized, Ishtar addressed them in behalf of Esarhaddon. "Upon her lofty command, they went over in masses to me and rallied behind me," Esarhaddon wrote, "and recognized me as their king."

"Both Esarhaddon and his son and successor Ashurbanipal attempted to advance against Egypt and both employed Weapons of Brilliance in the battles.

"....Other inscriptions of Ashurbanipal suggest that this weapon, which emitted an intense, blinding brightness, was worn by the gods as part of their headgear. In one instance an enemy "was blinded by the brightness from the god-head." In another, "Ishtar, who dwells in Arbela, clad in Divine Fire and sporting the Radiant Headwear, rained flames upon Arabia."

"The Old Testament, too, refers to such a Weapon of Brilliance that could blind. When the Angels (literally, emissaries) of the Lord came to Sodom prior to its destruction, the populace attempted to break down the door of the house in which they were resting. So the Angels "smote the people at the entrance of the house with blindness.... and they were unable to find the doorway."

"....The biblical prophecies predicting the downfall of Assyria indeed came true.... The disintegration of the Assyrian empire was seized by vassal kings in Egypt and Babylonia as an opportunity to attempt the restoration of their own hegemonies. The lands between them were once again the cherished prize, and the Egyptians, under the Pharaoh Necho, were quicker in invading these territories.

"In Babylonia, Nebuchadnezzar II - as recorded in his inscriptions - was ordered by the god Marduk to march his army westward. The expedition was made possible because "another god," the one who held the original sovereignty over the area, "has not desired the cedar land" anymore; and now "a foreign enemy was ruling and robbing it."

"In Jerusalem the word of the Lord Yahweh through his prophet Jeremiah was to side with Babylon, for the Lord Yahweh - calling Nebuchadnezzar "my servant" had decided to make the Babylonian king the instrument of his wrath against the gods of Egypt:

Thus sayeth Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, The God of Israel:
"Indeed will I send for and fetch Nebuchadnezzar, my servant ...
and he shall smite the land of Egypt,
and deliver such as are for death to death,
and such as are for captivity to captivity,
and such as are for the sword to the sword.
And I will kindle a fire in the house of Egypt’s gods, and he will burn them ...
And he will break the obelisks of Heliopolis,
the one which is in the land of Egypt;
The houses of the gods of Egypt shall he burn with fire."

"In the course of this campaign the Lord Yahweh announced that Jerusalem, too, shall be punished on account of its people’s sins, having taken up the worship of the "Queen of Heaven" and of the gods of Egypt:

"Mine anger and my fury shall be poured upon this place ... and it shall burn and shall not be quenched ... In the city on which my name has been called, the doom will I begin."

And so it was that in the year 586 B.C. "Nebuzaraddan, captain of the guard of the king of Babylon, came into Jerusalem, and he burned the House of Yahweh, and the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem ... and all the walls around Jerusalem were torn down by the armies of the Chaldeans." This desolation, Yahweh promised, however, would last only seventy years.

"The king who was to fulfill this promise and enable the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem was Cyrus. His ancestors, speaking an Indo-European language, are believed to have migrated south from the Caspian Sea area to the province of Anshan along the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf. There Hakham-Anish ("Wise Man"), the leader of the migrants, began a dynasty we call Achaemenid; his descendants - Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes - made history as rulers of what was to be the Persian empire.

"....Cyrus left his successors an empire that encompassed all the earlier empires and kingdoms but one. Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria in Mesopotamia; Elam and Media to the east; the lands of the north; the Hittite and Greek lands in Asia Minor; Phoenicia and Canaan and Philistia - all had come now under one sovereign king and one supreme god, Ahura-Mazda, god of Truth and Light. He was depicted in ancient Persia as a bearded deity roaming the skies within a Winged Disk - very much in the manner in which the Assyrians had depicted their supreme god, Ashur.

"When Cyrus died in 529 B.C., the only remaining independent land with its independent gods was Egypt. Four years later his son and successor, Cambyses, led his troops along the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai peninsula and defeated the Egyptians at Pelusium; a few months later he entered Memphis, the Egyptian royal capital, and proclaimed himself a Pharaoh.

Cambyses recognized Egypt did not come under his god Ahura-Mazda, therefore:

"In deference to the independent gods of Egypt, Cambyses prostrated himself before their statues, accepting their dominion. In return the Egyptian priests legitimized his rule over Egypt by granting him the title "Offspring of Ra."

"The ancient world was now united under one king, chosen by the "great god of truth and light" and accepted by the gods of Egypt. Neither men nor gods had cause left to war with each other. Peace on Earth!

"But peace failed to last. Across the Mediterranean Sea, the Greeks were increasing in wealth, power, and ambitions. Asia Minor, the Aegean Sea, and the eastern Mediterranean saw increasing clashes, both local and international. In 490 B.C., Darius I attempted to invade Greece and was defeated at Marathon; nine years later Xerxes I was defeated at Salamis. A century and a half later Alexander of Macedonia crossed over from Europe to launch a campaign of conquest that saw the blood of men flow in all the ancient lands as far as India.

"Was he carrying a "trustworthy command" of the gods?  On the contrary. Believing a legend that he was fathered by an Egyptian god, Alexander at first fought his way to Egypt to hear the god’s oracle confirm his semidivine origins. But the oracle also predicted his early death, and Alexander’s travels and conquests were thereafter motivated by a search for the Waters of Life, so that he might drink of them and evade his fate.

"He died, in spite of all the carnage, young and in his prime. And ever since, the Wars of Men have been the wars of men alone."

Return

Chapter Two
THE CONTENDING OF HORUS AND SETH
 

"Was it a sad commentary on the history of warfare that the messianic Essenes envisioned the Final War of Men as one in which the Company of the Divine would join the Congregation of the Mortals, and the "war cries of gods and men" would mingle on the battlefield?

"Not at all. What The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness had envisioned was simply that human warfare shall end just as it had begun: with gods and men fighting side by side.

"Incredible as it may sound, a document exists that describes the first war in which the gods involved mortal men. It is an inscription on the walls of the great temple at Edfu, an ancient Egyptian holy city that was dedicated to the god Horus.

"....The inscription, remarkable for its geographical accuracy, begins with an exact date - a date not in the affairs of men but of the gods. It deals with events when the gods themselves, long before the Pharaohs, reigned over Egypt:

"In the year 363 His Majesty, Ra, the Holy One, the Falcon of the Horizon, the Immortal Who For Ever Lives, was in the land of Khenn. He was accompanied by his warriors, for the enemies had conspired against their lord in the district which has been called Ua-Ua since that day...."

"....With a few words the ancient scribe succeeded in drawing the background as well as setting the stage for the unusual war that was about to unfold. We gather at once that the battle was brought on by a conspiracy by certain "enemies" of the gods Ra and Horus, to take away the "Luminous Crown of Lordship" unto themselves. This, obviously, could have been done only by some other god or gods. To forestall the conspiracy Ra - "accompanied by his warriors" - went in his boat to a district where Horus had set up his headquarters.

"The "boat" of Ra, as is known from many other texts, was a Celestial Boat in which Ra could soar to the farthest heavens. In this instance Ra used it to land far away from any waters, "in the western part" of the district of Ua-Ua. There he landed east of the "Throne Place" of Horus. And Horus came to greet his forefather and respond to him that "the enemy" was gathering its forces.

"Then Ra, the Holy One, the Falcon of the Horizon, said unto Horus, the Winged Measurer: "Lofty issue of Ra, my begotten: Go quickly, knock down the enemy whom you have seen."

"So instructed, Horus took off in the Winged Disk to search for the enemy from the skies.

"From the skies, flying in the Winged Disk, Horus spotted the enemy forces and unleashed upon them a "storm" that could neither be seen nor heard, yet it brought instantaneous death.

"Horus then flew back to the boat of Ra in the Winged Disk, "which shined in many colours."

"....And Thoth (the god of magical crafts) said:

"Oh Lord of the Gods! The Winged Measurer has returned in the great Winged Disk, shining with many colours...."

"Therefore he is named from that day on: "The Winged Measurer." And they named after Horus the Winged Measurer, the city of Hut "Behutet," from that day on.

"....Traditions held that Edfu was where Horus established a divine metal foundry, at which unique weapons made of "divine iron" were forged. It was there, too, that Horus trained an army of mesniu - "Metal People." They were depicted on the walls of the temple of Edfu as men with shaven heads, wearing a short tunic and a deep collar, carrying weapons in each hand. A depiction of an unidentified, harpoonlike weapon was included in the hieroglyphic words for "divine iron" and "metal people."

"The mesniu were, according to Egyptian traditions, the first men ever to have been armed by the gods with weapons made of metal. They also were, as we shall soon gather from the unfolding tale, the first men to have been enlisted by a god to fight in the wars between the gods.

"....The initial victories apparently also strengthened the alliance of the gods, for we are told that the Asiatic goddess Ishtar (the Egyptian texts call her by her Canaanite name Ashtoreth) had joined the group. Hovering in the sky, Horus called on Ra to scout the land below.

"....Since the enemies on the land were hidden, Ra had an idea: "And Ra said unto the gods accompanying him: ’Let us guide our vessel towards the water, for the enemy lies in the land.’ And they called the waters ’The Travelled Waters’ from that day on." While Ra could utilize the amphibious capabilities of his vehicle, Horus was in need of a waterborne vessel. So they gave him a boat, "and called it Mak-A (Great Protector) unto this day."

It was then that the first battle involving mortal men ensued.

"It was then that the Winged Disk was adopted as the emblem of Horus victorious:

"It is from that day that the metal emblems of Horus have existed. It was Horus who had fashioned as his emblem the Winged Disk, placing it upon the forepart of the boat of Ra.

The goddess of the north and the goddess of the south, represented as two serpents, he placed alongside.

"And Horus stood behind the emblem, upon the boat of Ra, the Divine Iron and the chain in his had.

"In spite of the proclamation of Horus by Thoth as a bringer of peace, peace was not yet in hand.

"....While the first aerial battle broke through the defenses separating Egypt from Nubia at Syene (Aswan), the ensuing battles on land and water secured for Horus the bend of the Nile, from Thebes to Dendera. There great temples and royal sites proliferated in days to come. Now the way was open into the heartland of Egypt.... A series of brief, but fierce, encounters then ensued; the place names - well established in ancient Egyptian geography - indicate that the attacking gods reached the area of lakes that had stretched in antiquity from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean (some of which still remain).

"....The Edfu temple inscription now shifts to a new panel, for indeed there began a new chapter in that War of the Gods. The enemies that had managed to escape "directed themselves by the Lake of the North, setting themselves toward the Mediterranean, which they desired to reach by sailing through the water district. But the god smote their hearts (with fear), and when they reached the middle of the waters as they fled, they directed themselves from the western lake to the waters which connect with the lakes of the district Mer, in order to join themselves there with the enemies who were the Land of Seth."

"These verses provide not only geographical information; they also identify "the enemies" for the first time.

It was when Horus, in hot pursuit, crossed the waters into the territory of Seth that:

"It was then, according to the inscription in the great temple of Edfu, that Seth was so enraged that he faced Horus for a series of battles - on the ground and in the air - for god-to-god combat. Of this combat there have been found several versions.... What is interesting at this point is the fact brought out by E.A. Wallis Budge in The Gods of the Egyptians: that in the first involvement of men in the Wars of the Gods, it was the arming of mankind with the Divine Iron that brought victory to Horus:

"It is pretty clear that he owed his success chiefly to the superiority of the weapons with which he and his men were armed, and to the material of which they were made."

"Thus according to Egyptian writings, did man learn to lift sword against man.

"When all the fighting was over, Ra expressed satisfaction with the works of "these Metal People of Horus," and he decreed that henceforth they "shall dwell in sanctuaries" and shall be served with libations and offerings "as their reward, because they have slain the enemies of the god Horus." They were settled at Edfu, the Upper Egypt capital of Horus, and in This (Tanis in Greek, the biblical Zo’an), the Lower Egypt capital of the god. In time they outgrew their purely military role and attained the title Shamsu-Hor ("Attendants of Horus"), serving as his human aides and emissaries.

"The inscriptions on the temple walls at Edfu, it has been established, was a copy of a text that was known to the Egyptian scribes from earlier sources but when and by whom the original text had been composed, no one can really tell....

"....As with all Egyptian historical texts, this one, too, begins with a date: "In the year 363." Such dates always indicate the year in the reign of the Pharaoh to whom the event pertains: each Pharaoh had his first year, second year, and so on. The text in question, however, deals not with the affair of kings but with divine matters - a war among the gods. The text thus relates events that had happened in the "year 363" in the reign of certain gods and takes us back to the early times when gods, not men, ruled over Egypt.

"Thus there indeed had been such a time, Egyptian traditions left no doubt. The Greek historian Herodotus (fifth century B.C.), on his extensive visit to Egypt, was given by the priests details of the Pharaonic dynasties and reigns. "The priests," he wrote, "said that Men was the first king of Egypt, and that it was he who raised the dyke which protects Memphis from the inundations of the Nile," diverted the river, and proceeded to build Memphis on the reclaimed land. "Besides these works he also, the priests said, built the temple of Vulcan, which stands within the city, a vast edifice, very worthy of mention.

"Next day read me from a papyrus the names of 330 monarchs who were his successors upon the throne. In this number of successors there were eighteen Ethiopian kings, and one queen who was a native, all the rest were kings and Egyptians."

"The priests then showed Herodotus rows of statues representing the successive Pharaohs and related to him various details pertaining to some of those kings and their claims to divine ancestry.

"The beings represented by these images were very far indeed from being gods," Herodotus commented; "however," he went on to say:

"In times preceding them it was otherwise: Then Egypt had gods for its rulers, who dwelt upon the Earth with men, one of them being always supreme above the rest. The last of this was Horus, the son of Osiris, whom the Greeks called Apollo. He deposed Typhon, and ruled over Egypt as its last god-king."

"....Manetho, (an Egyptian priest) (according to Flavius Josephus) was the first known historian to have divided the Egyptian rulers into dynasties - a practice continued to this day. His Kings List - names, lengths of reign, order of succession, and some other pertinent information - has been mainly preserved through the writings of Julius Africanus and Eusebius Caesarea (in the third and fourth centuries A.D.).
These and other versions based on Manetho agree that he listed as the first ruler of this first dynasty of Pharaohs the king Men (Menes in Greek) - the very same king that Herodotus reported, based on his own investigations in Egypt.

"This fact has since been confirmed by modern discoveries, such as the Tablets of Abydos in which the Pharaoh Seti I, accompanied by his son, Ramses II, listed the names of seventy-five of his predecessors. The first one to be named is Mena.

"If Herodotus is correct in regard to the dynasties of Egyptian Pharaohs, could he also have been right in regard to a "preceding time" when "Egypt had gods for its rulers"?

"Manetho, we find, had agreed with Herodotus also on that matter. The dynasties of the Pharaohs, he wrote, were preceded by four other dynasties - two of gods, one of demigods, and a transitional dynasty.

Seven gods completing 12,300 years as Manetho indicated:

"Ptah, Ra, Shu, Geb, Osiris, Seth, Horus" = 12,300 years.

Mr. Sitchin presents a table with different amount of years for each god.

"....A century and a half of archaeological discoveries and the deciphering of the hieroglyphic writing have convinced scholars that the Pharaonic dynasties probably began in Egypt circa 3100 B.C.; indeed, under a ruler whose hieroglyph, reads Men. He united Upper and Lower Egypt and established his capital at a new city called Men-Neter ("The Beauty of Men") - Memphis in Greek.

"....A major archaeological document dealing with Egyptian kingship, the so-called Turin Papyrus, begins with a dynasty of gods that list Ra, Geb, Osiris, Seth, and Horus, then Thoth, Maat, and others, and assigns to Horus - just as Manetho did - a reign of 300 years. This papyrus, which dates from the time of Ramses II, lists after the divine rulers thirty-eight semidivine rulers: Nineteen Chiefs of the White Wall and nineteen Venerables of the North." Between them and Menes, the Turin Payrus states, there ruled human kings under the patronage of Horus, their epithet was Shamsu-Hor!

"Addressing the Royal Society of Literature in London in 1843, the curator of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, Dr. Samuel Birch, announced that he had counted on the papyrus and its fragments a total of 330 names - a number that "coincided with the 300 kings mentioned by Herodotus."

"....The Egyptians believed that "a very great god who came forth in the earliest times" arrived in the land and found it lying under water and mud. He undertook great works of dyking and land reclamation, literally raising Egypt out of the waters - thus explaining Egypt’s nickname "The Raised Land." This olden god was named Ptah - a "God of Heaven and Earth." He was considered to be a great engineer and artificer.

"....Ptah and the other gods were called, in Egyptian, Ntr - "Guardian, Watcher." They had come to Egypt, the Egyptians wrote, from Ta-Ur, the "Far/Foreign Land," whose name Ur meant "olden" but could have also been the actual place name - a place well known from Mesopotamian and biblical records: the ancient city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia. And the straits of the Red Sea, which connected Mesopotamia and Egypt, were called Ta-Neter, the "Place of the Gods," the passage by which they had come to Egypt.

"....In time - after 9,000 years, according to Manetho - Ra, a son of Ptah, became the ruler over Egypt. His name, too, had no meaning in Egyptian, but because Ra was associated with a bright celestial body, scholars assumed that Ra meant "bright." We do know with greater certainty that one of his nicknames, Tem, had the Semitic connotation "the Complete, the Pure One."

"It was believed by the Egyptians that Ra, too, had come to Earth from the "Planet of Millions of Years" in a Celestial Barge, the conical upper part of which, called Ben-Ben ("Pyramidion Bird"), was later on preserved in a specially built shrine in the sacred city Anu (the biblical On, which is better known by its Greek name Heliopolis).

"....The first divine couple to rule when Ra tired of staying in Egypt were his own children, the male Shu ("Dryness") and the female Tefnut ("Moisture"), their main task, according to Egyptian tales, was to help Ra control the skies over the Earth.

"Shu and Tefnut set the example for mortal Pharaohs in later times: the king selected his own half-sister as his royal spouse. They were followed on the divine throne - as both legends and Manetho inform us - by their children, again a brother-sister couple: Geb ("Who piles up the Earth") and Nut ("The Stretched-out Firmament").

"....Geb and Nut turned over the direct rule of Egypt to their four children: Asar ("The All-Seeing"), whom the Greeks called Osiris, and his sister-wife Ast, better known as Isis; and Seth and his wife Nephtys (Nebt-Hat, "Lady of the House"), the sister of Isis. It was with these gods, who were truly gods of Egypt, that the Egyptian tales most concerned themselves, but in depicting them Seth was never shown without his animal disguise: his face was never seen, and the meaning of his name still defies Egyptologists, even if it is identical to the name given in the Bible to Adam and Eve’s third son.
 

"Osiris was given the northern lowlands (Lower Egypt), and Seth was given the southern, mountainous part (Upper Egypt). How long this arrangement lasted we can only guess from Manetho’s chronicles; but it is certain that Seth was not satisfied with the divisions of sovereignty and resorted to various schemes to gain control over the whole of Egypt.

Mr. Sitchin explains at this point in his book, the various hereditary rules for ascending to the throne having, it seems, the great Ra himself fathering some of Nut’s children instead of Geb, but Seth was definitely a son of Geb and Geb’s half sister Nut, so in fact he was the legitimate inheritor, even if Osiris was fathered by the great Ra. And this was Seth’s claim.

Mr. Sitchin also gives The Book of the Dead, as a reference where one may find all the legends of this period of time, when Seth killed Osiris, his brother.

"....Since all seemed to believe that Osiris had perished without leaving a heir, Seth saw this as his chance to obtain a legitimate heir by forcing Isis to espouse him. He kidnapped her and held her prisoner until she consented. But with the aid of the god Thoth, Isis managed to escape. A version recorded on the so-called Metternich Stela, composed as a tale by Isis in her own words, describes her escape in the night and her adventures until she reached the swamps where Horus was hidden. She found Horus dying from a scorpion’s sting. One can infer from the text that it was word of his son’s dying that prompted her escape. The people who lived in the swamps came out at her cries but were helpless to be of any aid. Then help came from a spacecraft:

"Then Isis sent forth a cry to heaven and addressed her appeal to the Boat of Millions of Years.

And the Celestial Disk stood still, and moved not from the place it was. And Thoth came down, and he was provided with magical powers, and possessed the great power which made the word become indeed. And he said:

"Oh Isis, thou goddess, thou glorious one, who has knowledge of the mouth; behold, no evil shall come upon the child Horus, for his protection cometh from the Boat of Ra.

"I have come this day in the Boat of the Celestial Disk, from the place where it was yesterday. When the night cometh, this Light shall drive away [the poison] for the healing of Horus. . .

"I have come from the skies to save the child for his mother."

"Revived from death by the artful Thoth, some texts say immunized forever as a result of Thoth’s treatment, Horus grew up as Netch-atef, "Avenger of his Father."

Eventually, Horus appeared before the Council of the Gods to claim the throne of Osiris.

"....According to the Edfu temple inscription, the first face-to-face battle between Horus and Seth took place a the "Lake of the Gods," thereafter known as the "Lake of Battle." Horus managed to hit Seth with his Divine Lance; when Seth fell down, Horus captured him and brought him before Ra.... who decided that Isis and Horus could do with Seth and the other captured "conspirators" as they pleased.

Although there are several versions of what ensued, the fact is that Seth managed to escape.

"....After his escape Seth at first hid in a subterranean tunnel. After a lull of six days, a series of aerial battle ensued. Horus took to the air in a Nar (a "Fiery Pillar"), which was depicted as an elongated, cylindrical vessel equipped with fins or short wings. Its bulkhead contained two "eyes," which kept changing color from blue to red and back to blue; from the rear, jetlike trails were shown; from the front, the contraption spewed out rays.

"(The Egyptian texts, all written by the followers of Horus, contain no descriptions of Seth’s aerial vehicle).

"The texts describe a battle that ranged far and wide, and the first to be hit was Horus - struck by a bolt of light from Seth’s vehicle. The Nar lost one of its "eyes," and Horus continued the fight from the Winged Disk of Ra. From out of this he shot a "harpoon" at Seth, now Seth was hit, and lost his testicles. . .

"Dwelling on the nature of the weapon, W. Max Muller wrote in Egyptian Mythology that it had "a strange, practically impossible head" and was nicknamed in the hieroglyphic texts "the weapon of thirty." As ancient depictions reveal, "the harpoon" was indeed an ingenious three-in-one rocket: as the first, larger missile was fired, the way was opened for the two smaller missiles to be launched.

"The nickname ("Weapon of Thirty") suggests that the missiles were what we nowadays call Multiple Warhead Missiles, each missile holding ten warheads.

"Through sheer coincidence, but probably because similar circumstance result in similar connotations, the McDonnell Douglas Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri, has named its newly developed naval guided missile "The Harpoon."

"The great gods called a truce and once again summoned the adversaries before the Council of the Gods. We glean details from the deliberations from a text inscribed on a stone column by the Pharaoh Shabako (eighth century B.C.), who stated that the text is a copy made from a very old leather scroll, "devoured by worms," which was found buried in the great temple of Ptah at Memphis. The Council, at first, redivided Egypt between Horus and Seth, along the lines of the divisions at the time of Osiris, but Geb had second thoughts and upset the decision, for he was concerned with the question of continuity: Who would, "open the body" to successive generations? Seth, having lost his testicles, could no longer have offspring.... And so Geb, "Lord Earth, gave as a heritage to Horus" the whole of Egypt. To Seth a dominion away from Egypt was to be given; henceforth, he was deemed by the Egyptians to have become an Asiatic deity.

"The Council of the Gods accepted the recommendations unanimously. Its final action is thus described in the Papyrus of Hunefer:

"Horus is triumphant in the presence of the whole company of the gods. The sovereignty over the world hath been given unto him, and his dominion is in the uttermost parts of Earth.

"The throne of the god Geb had been adjudged unto him, along with the rank which hath been founded by the god Shu.

"The legitimation, the Papyrus went to say:

""Hath been formalized by decrees [lodged] in the Chamber of Records; It hath been inscribed upon a metal tablet according to the commandments of thy father
Ptah....

Gods celestial and gods terrestrial transfer themselves to the services of thy son Horus. They follow him to the Hall of Decrees. He shall lord over them."

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Chapter Three

THE MISSILES OF ZEUS AND INDRA
 

"....The Greek sources from which Herodotus could have drawn are, fortunately, still available: various literary works, such as Homer’s Iliad; the Odes of Pindar of Thebes, written and well known just before Herodotus’ time; and first and foremost, the Theogony ("Divine Genealogy") by Hesiod, a native of Askara in central Greece who composed this work and another (Works and Days) in the eighth century B.C.

"....The tale of the gods as revealed to Hesiod was mostly one of passion, revolt, cunning, and mutilation; as well as of struggles and global wars. In spite of all the glorification to Zeus, there is no apparent attempt to cover the chain of bloody violence that had led to his supremacy. What ever the Muses sang on, Hesiod wrote down: "and these things did sing the Muses, nine daughters begotten of Zeus":

Verily, at first Chaos came to be,
and next the wide-bosomed Gaea . . .
And dim Tartarus, in the depths of wide-pathed Earth,
and Eros, fairest among the deathless gods . . .
From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Nyx,
And of Nyx were born Acher and Hemera.

"This first group of celestial gods was completed when Gaea ("Earth") brought forth Uranus ("Starry Heaven") and then espoused her firstborn son so that he might be included in the First Dynasty of the gods. Besides Uranus, and soon after he was born, Gaea also gave birth to his graceful sister, Uraea, and to "Pontus, the fruitless Deep with his raging swell."

"Then the next generation of gods were born - offspring of Gaea’s mating with Uranus:

Oceanus, Cocus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus. Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoche, Thetys, Cronos.

"....In spite of the fact that these twelve were offspring of the mating of a son with his own mother, the children - six males, six females - were worthy of their divine origins. But as Uranus got lustier and lustier the offspring that followed - though formidable in might - displayed various deformities. First of the "monsters" to be born were the three Cyclopes, Brontes ("The Thunderer"), Steropes ("The Maker of Lightning"), and Arges ("Who Makes Radiation"); in all else they were like the gods, but one eye only was set in the midst of their foreheads; and they were named ’Orbeyed’ (Cyclopes) because one orbed eye was set in their foreheads."

Three more sons were born to Gaea and Uranus, Cottus, Briareus and Gyes.... "Of giant size, the three were called Hekatoncheires ("The Hundred-Armed"): "From their shoulders sprang an hundred arms, not to be approached, and each had fifty heads, upon his shoulders."

"Cronos hated his lusty sire," Hesiod wrote; but "Uranus rejoiced in his evil doing."

Eventually Gaea and Cronos planned the castration of Uranus and they succeeded.

"....But the castration of Uranus did not completely terminate his line of offspring. As his blood gushed forth, some of the blood drops impregnated Gaea, and she conceived and bore "the strong Erinyes" (female Furies of vengeance) "and the great Gigantes with gleaming armor, holding long spears in their hands; and the Nymphs whom they call Meliae [’the Nymphs of the ash tree’]." Of the castrated genitals, leaving a trail of foam as the surging sea carried them to the island of Cyprus, "there came forth an awful and lovely goddess.... gods and men call her Aphrodite [’She of the Foam’]

"The incapacitated Uranus called out to the monster-gods for vengeance. His own children, he cried out, had become Titans, Strainers who had "strained and did presumptuously the dreadful deed...."

".... All along, while Uranus was busy bringing forth his own offspring, the other gods were also proliferating, their children bore names indicating their attributes.... Nyx responded to his call by bringing forth the deities of evil.... The call of Uranus has been answered: fighting, battles, and war came to be among the gods.

"It was into this dangerous world that the Titans were bringing forth their third generation of the gods. Fearful of retribution (Nemesis), they kept closely to each other, five of the six brothers espousing five of their own six sisters. Of this divine brother-sisters couples, most important was that of Cronos and Rhea, for it was Cronos, by reason of his bold deed, who had assumed the leadership among the gods. Of this union, Rhea gave birth to three daughters and three sons: Hestia, Demeter, and Hera; and Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus.

Mr. Sitchin at this stage delights the reader with several pages of the history and battles of Zeus, from the records of the Theogony, mainly the battle with Typhon, the youngest son of Gaea. Mentioned are also the involvement of all the other gods.

"....The similarity between the battles, the weapons used, the locations, as well as the tales of castration, mutilation, and resurrection - all in the course of the struggle for succession - convinced Herodotus (and other Greek classical historians) that the Greeks had borrowed their theogony from the Egyptians. Aegipan stood for the African Ram God of Egypt, and Hermes paralleled the god Thoth. Hesiod himself reported that when Zeus came unto the mortal beauty Alemena so that she might bear him the heroic Heracles, he slipped at night from Mount Olympus and went to the land of Typhaonion, resting there atop the Phikion (The Sphinx Mountain). "The deadly Sphinx that destroyed the Cadmeans" ("The Ancients"), which featured in the doings of Hera, the official spouse of Zeus, was also connected in these legends with Typhon and his domain. And Apollodorus reported that when Typhon was born and grew to an incredible size, the gods rushed to Egypt to take a look at the awesome monster.

"Most scholars have held that Mount Casius, the site of the final battle between Zeus and Typhon, was located near the mouth of the Orontes river in today’s Syria. But as Otto Eissfeldt has shown in a major study (Baal Zaphon, Zeus Kasios und der Durchgang der Israelitten durches Meer), there was another mount called by that name in antiquity - a promontory on the Serbonic Sealet that juts out of the Sinai peninsula into the Mediterranean Sea. He suggested that was the mount referred to in the legends.

"Once again, all one had to do was to trust the information given to Herodotus in Egypt. Describing the land route from Phoenicia to Egypt via Philistia (History, Book III, 5), he wrote that the Asian lands "extend to Lake Serbonis, near the place where Mount Casius juts out into the sea. Egypt begins at Lake Serbonis, where the tale goes that Typhon hid himself."

"Once again, Greek and Egyptian tales converged, with the Sinai peninsula as the climax.

HOMER,

some of the sources where Greek "gods" are found.

"Not withstanding the many connecting threads the ancient Greeks had found between their theogony and that of Egypt, it was much further away - in India - that nineteenth-century European scholars have found even more amazing parallels.

"No sooner had Sanskrit, the language of ancient India, been mastered at the end of the eighteenth century than Europe began to be enchanted by translations of hitherto unknown writings. At first a field dominated by the British, the study of Sanskrit literature, philosophy and mythology was by the mid-nineteenth century a favorite of German scholars, poets and intellectuals, for Sanskrit turned out to be a mother language of the Indo-European languages (to which German belonged), and its bearers to India were migrants from the shores of the Caspian Sea - "Aryans," as the Germans believed their ancestors, too, to have been.

"Central to this literature were the Vedas, sacred scriptures believed by Hindu tradition to be "not of human origin," having been composed by the gods themselves in a previous age. They were brought to the Indian subcontinent by the Aryan migrants sometime in the second millennium B.C., as oral traditions. But as time went on, more and more of the original 100,000 verses were lost; so, circa 200 B.C., a sage wrote the remaining verses, dividing them into four parts: the Rig-Veda (the "Veda of Verses"), which is made up of ten books;

• the Sama-Veda (the "Chanted Vedas")

• the Yajur-Veda (mostly sacrificial praises)

• the Atharva-Veda (spells and incantations

"In time, the various components of the Vedas and the auxiliary literature that stemmed from them (the Mantras, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upanishads) were augmented by the non-Vedic Puranas ("Ancient Writings"). Together with the great epic tales of the Mahabarata and Ramayana, they make up the sources of the Aryan and Hindu tales of Heaven and Earth, gods and heroes.

"Because of the long oral interval, the length and profusion of texts finally written down over many centuries, the many names, generic terms, and epithets employed for the deities interchangeably - and the fact that many of these original names and terms were non-Aryan after all - consistency and precision are not hallmarks of this Sanskrit literature. Yet some facts and events emerge as basic tenets of the Aryan-Hindu legacy.

At this stage Mr. Sitchin gives the nomenclature of the beginning "The Primeval Ones Who Flow," followed by the many gods, down to the prolific Kasyapa, who by his consort Aditi were born to him seven children at first, they were called the Adityas, they were seven at first: Vishnu, Varuna, Mitra, Rudra, Pushan, Tvashtri, and Indra. Then the Aditis were joined by Agni.

"....As in the Greek Olympian Circle, the number of the Aditis finally rose to twelve."

Among them were Bhaga.... and Surya.

"Tvashtri ("Fashioner"), in his role as "All Accomplishing," the artisan of the gods, provided them with aerial cars and magical weapons. From a blazing celestial metal he fashioned a discus for Vishnu, a trident for Rudra, a "fire weapon" for Agni, a "bolt-hurling Thunderer" for Indra, and a "flying mace" for Surya. In ancient Hindu depictions, all these weapons appeared as hand-held missiles of diverse shapes. In addition, the gods acquired other weapons from Tvashtri’ assistants; Indra, for example, obtained an, "aerial net" with which he could snare his foes during sky battles.

"The celestial chariots or "aerial cars" were invariably described as bright and radiant, made of or plated with gold. Indra’s Vimana (aerial car) had lights shining at its sides and moved "swifter than thought," traversing rapidly vast distances. Its unseen steeds were "Sun-eyed" emitting a reddish hue but also changing colors. In other instances the aerial cars of the gods were described as multitiered; sometimes they could not only fly in the air, but also travel under water.

"....The texts also speak of the Ashvins ("Drivers"), gods who specialized in piloting aerial chariots. "Swift as young falcons," they were "the best of charioteers who reach the heavens," always piloting their craft in pairs, accompanied by a navigator. Their vehicles, which sometimes appeared in groups, were golden-made, "bright and radiant . . .with easy seat and lightly rolling." They were constructed on a triple principle, having three levels, three seats, three supporting poles, and three rotating wheels.

"....The rotating wheels, it appears, served diverse functions: one to raise the craft, another to give it direction, the third to speed it along.

"As in the Greek tales, so did the gods of the Vedas display little morality or restraint in sexual matters - sometimes getting away with it, sometimes not, as when the indignant Adityas selected Rudra ("The Three-Eyed") to kill their grandfather Dyaus for having violated their sister Ushas. (Dyaus, wounded, saved his life by fleeing to a distant celestial body.) Also as in the Greek tales, so did the gods according to Hindu lore mingle, in later times, in the love and wars of mortal kings and heroes. In this instance the aerial vehicles of the gods played roles even greater than their weapons. Thus, when one hero drowned, the Ashvins appeared in a fleet of three aerial chariots, "self-activated watertight ships which traverse the air," dived into the ocean, retrieved the hero from the water depths, and "conveyed him over land, beyond the liquid ocean."

"....As in the Iliad, so did Hindu traditions tell of war of men and gods over beautiful heroines. Best known of these tales is the Ramayana, the long epic of Rama the prince whose beautiful wife was abducted by the king of Lanka (the island of Ceylon, off India).

"....But that was yet in times to come; in the olden days the gods battled among themselves for more important causes: supremacy and rule over the Earth and its resources. With so many offspring of Kasyapa by diverse wives and concubines, as well as the descendants of the other gods, conflict soon became inevitable. The dominance of the Adityas was especially resented by the Asuras, elder gods whose mothers bore them to Kasyapa before the Adityas were born. Bearing a non-Aryan name of a clear Near Eastern origin (being akin to names of the supreme gods of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt - Ashur, Asur, Osiris), they eventually assumed in the Hindu traditions the role of the evil gods, the "demons."

"Jealousy, rivalry, and other causes of friction finally led to war when the Earth, "which at first produced food without cultivation," succumbed to a global famine. The gods, the texts reveal, sustained their immortality by drinking Soma, an ambrosiac that was brought down to Earth from the Celestial Abode by an eagle and it was drunk mixed with milk. The "kine" ("cow-cattle") also provided the gods’ favored "sacrifices" of roasted meat. But the time came when all these necessities became scarcer and scarcer.

"....wars were fought on land, in the air, and beneath the seas."

"....One who excelled in these battles was Indra ("Storm"). On land he smote ninety-nine strongholds of the Asuras, killing great numbers of their followers. In the skies he fought from his aerial car the Asuras, who were hiding in their "cloud fortresses." Hymns in the Rig-Veda, list groups of gods as well as individual deities defeated by Indra.

"....Defeating the gods’ enemies in groups as well, as in single combat, and making them "flee to destruction," Indra turned his efforts to the freeing of the kine. The "demons" hid them inside a mountain, guarded by Vala ("Encircler"); Indra, aided by the Angirases, young gods who could emit divine flames, smashed into the fortified hideaway and freed the kine. (Some scholars, as J. Herbert in Hindu Mythology, hold that what Indra released or retrieved was a Divine Ray, not cows, for the Sanskrit word go has both meanings.)

"When these wars of the gods began, the Adityas named Agni ("Agile") as Hotri, their "Chief of Office." As the wars progressed - some texts suggest for well over a thousand years - Vishnu ("Active") was made the Chief. But when the fighting was over, Indra, having contributed so much to the victory, claimed the supremacy. As in the Greek Theogony, one of his first acts to establish his claim was to slay his own father. The Rig-Veda (Book iv: 18, 12) asks Indra rhetorically: "Indra, who made my mother a widow....?

"....For this crime Indra was excluded by the gods from the drinking of the Soma, therefore endangering his continued immortality. They "ascended up to Heaven," leaving Indra with the kine he had retrieved. But "he went up after them, with the raised Thunder-weapon," ascending from the northern place of the gods. Fearing his weapon, the gods shouted: "Do not hurl!" and agreed to let Indra share once again in the divine nourishments.

But more battles ensued, as Indra’ supremacy did not remained unchallenged. The reason was as usual: succession. But Indra once more achieved victory, this time over Tvashtri, although it was Vitra who took the battle in place of Tvashtri.

This time:

"....Indra’s victory was complete; but as Fate would have it, the fruits of victory were not his alone. As he was claiming the throne of Kasyapa, his father, old doubts surfaced concerning his true parenthood. It was a fact that upon his birth his mother had hid him from Kasyapa’s wrath. Why? Was there truth to the rumors that his true father was his own elder brother, Tvashtri?

"The Vedas lift the veil of mystery only partly. They tell, however, that Indra, great god that he was, did not rule alone: he had to share powers with Agni and Surya his brother - just as Zeus had to share dominions with his brothers Hades and Poseidon.

India

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