Chapter 11
Time

 


The Cult of the Head


Coming back to our Grail ensemble: We understand that the lance and the cup are two ark/grail symbols that “go together” in terms of being part of the ensemble of the Grail stories. As far back as we can track them, we find them as symbols of gender, penetration and planting the seed, and gestation followed by birth. Found in juxtaposition, the spear upright in the vase, their signification is admitted by all familiar with “life symbolism”.

 

They form part of a function that deals with the processes of life and vitality and, as we have said, we do not think that it is Tantra, but rather symbolic of a more basic reproductive concept, i.e. DNA. We also note the odd fact that the letters can be rearranged to form the name “DAN”. Green language and Time Loops?


Nevertheless, we wish to note that Perseus, who was the founder of the Perseid Dynasty, was said to have also founded and built the Citadel of Mycenae. For a very long time, the name of Mycenae puzzled me because it is translated to mean “Place of the Mushroom”. This, of course, has led to many expositions on the value of “magic mushrooms” in initiatory rites, and we do, indeed, realize that the use of drugs in many of the ancient rites can be documented.

 

But, when looking at the image of Melchizedek on Chartres cathedral, holding that funny cup with the cylindrical object inside, I couldn’t help but think of an upside down mushroom. And suddenly, it became clear what the connection might be: a mushroom is a natural symbol for sexual union with the female dominant. In other words, it may express the fecundity of Nature as the Goddess and giver of all gifts.

 

And in more specific terms, it may express the function of the mitochondrial DNA over of the paternal ancestry. In short, it may well be a symbol of DNA, not sex, and not drugs. In another sense, understanding the complex of “centers” as explicated by Mouravieff, another layer of explanation is the union of the lower centers of man with the higher centers, and thus gaining access to hyperdimensional states of being.

 

In other words, this little symbol expresses to us the Great Work of Alchemy which is often expressed in “sexual” terms which many “puffers” interpret as “Tantric”.


In the legends of the Grail, we discover by careful reading that there is a specific task that the hero must accomplish that is, somehow, not of a nature that would accrue benefits to himself, but it is rather a battle against evil forces to “free a ruler” and his land from disastrous consequences. The close relationship between the illness of the king and the condition of the wasteland is not a literary invention of the Middle Ages. It is, in fact, a deeply rooted element from immemorial antiquity. As we have seen, connected to the legends of the grail are a complex of “ceremonial practices” which hold to a certain form no matter what variation of the story one encounters.

 

But we also see that something happened to bring to an end the dances of Apollo and the lifestyle of the megalith people. Tied in to all of this is the ancient alchemical lore about the “philosopher’s stone”, the Holy Grail, the head of Bran the Blessed, the head called “Baphomet” of the disappearing Templars, and Noah’s Ark. All are connected to the idea of certain powers that have to do with the stopping or manipulating of time, a source of endless abundance (multiplying loaves and fishes), passage to a new life with a load of animals, eternal life or the “elixir of life”, and so forth.

 

And, most importantly, we perceive the idea of “cycles” and astronomical placements being necessary to the “work”. And it is not entirely out of the question that if such was the case, the megaliths could have just simply “translated” the Stone Movers into another Quantum Future at some point when astronomical alignments were right: the “Big Payoff of going home”, so to speak.


In general terms, it seems likely that they understood the utilization of cosmic energy - designated in the Bible as the “hosts of heaven” - and that these stone “machines” were designed to collect and focus this energy. Their careful record keeping in such funny ways (the 19 year moon cycle, for example; and the 19th day as a special day of rest for the Assyrians) had to do with the moments in space/time when certain activities were most easily accomplished. Maybe they weren’t a bunch of silly, superstitious savages hauling stones around and sweating like crazy just to dance around in the moonlight and discover when to plant the corn?


And this brings us to another kind of “stone”: The Cult of the Head.

 

Everywhere we look when we investigate these matters, we come across those ubiquitous talking heads, or heads of plenty, or heads that prophesy, or heads that turn people into stone. The most contemporary traces of the Cult of the Head are from the records of the trials of the Templars where they were accused of worshipping a head called “Baphomet”. We also find the interesting references to something called a “Merkaba”, or “celestial chariot”.


In ancient literature, something called a Merkaba is talked about, but the definition of this extremely mysterious thing has been lost down through the centuries. There have been many “explanations” from such sources as the Midrash - Jewish commentaries - but there is even argument there. It seems that, even then, nobody knew what it was. But now, we have all these New Age folks coming along who have decided that they know what it is, and it is described as “rotating double tetrahedrons”!


Well, it’s a curious word because it is composed of two words: mer kaba. Kaaba is Arabic for cube, and it is the square stone building in which the fabled Black Stone that fell from heaven is housed in Mecca. It was supposed to have been built by Ishmael and Abraham. So we have mer, which means sea and mother, combined with kaaba, which is stone, or cube, and we come to Soul stone? Mother stone? Magnetic center, indeed!


Baphomet has been variously identified as a “bisexual idol or talking head”. Several derivations of the name Baphomet have been suggested. Some say it was Arabic abu-fihamet, or “Father of Wisdom”. Some have said it is a corruption of the word Mohammed. There are several other ideas bruited about this Baphomet including that it was Pope Sylvester’s Armillary Sphere. Some say it is Baphe Meteos, or the baptism of Metis. Metis was a Gnostic Goddess of Wisdom. However, in thinking about it in terms of cabala, we come to a different idea.


Fulcanelli said it was a, “complete emblem of the secret traditions of the Order”. He then says that this is “fire enclosed in water”. That already refers us back to Merkaba, a “fiery stone in the sea”. Baphomet includes the syllable “pho”, which is derived from roots that mean “breath” or breathing, and from the movement of air, comes sound. In fact, a phoneme is a unit of distinctive sound in the description of any given language. In the end, we have a different idea of the “talking head” of Baphomet, and it doesn’t look like it is Pope Sylvester’s Armillary Sphere at all.


There is also the interesting connection of blood relationship of the Maruts. They were all of the “same parentage”, and this suggests that a certain genetic inheritance was necessary in order to be able to produce the necessary energies for this very important work on behalf of the tribe or civilization. But we would like to suggest that it is not necessarily a “family line” in terms of genetics (though we cannot exclude that), but rather that the reference points out to us that the Great Work is work on the DNA!

 

In this sense, the “Child of the King” was anyone who achieved the Alchemical Transformation!


So, we have a curious series of factors to contend with that all seem to point in the direction of DNA being far more interesting and mysterious than we might have supposed.

 

On the one hand we have such naturally transmitted “powers”, and on the other hand we have folks who can engage in some activity that either temporarily or permanently changes something in their physiology - and the apparent result is psi phenomena and/or “supernatural abilities” that may not be supernatural at all - they may be the accessing of hyperdimensional states of being via some change in the neurons of the brain as a result of turning on latent genes. After all, we note the similarity of the words “shaman” and “sarmoung” or “sarman”, and the latter has been traditionally translated as “those whose heads have been purified”.

 

A much later corruption of the idea of “purification of the head” may have come down as trephination. Once the real technology was lost, they attempted to do it by brute force.

 

 


Back to Atlantis


According to Plato’s story, Atlantis was the center of a country of extreme economic wealth and military power that sought to enslave all of Europe. The Atlanteans were quite successful in defeating many European countries; however, the great civilization of Athens repelled their attacks and eventually succeeded in driving them back out of Europe. Unfortunately, almost all records of this great achievement were lost due to a very powerful flood that wiped out most of Athens and the whole continent of Atlantis in one day and one night.

 

Let’s look at an even more interesting item from Frank Joseph’s book: The Lost Pyramids of Rock Lake.

While reading, keep in mind our dating problem that was identified since Joseph wrote his book, so we very likely will have to push the early dates way back.

Someone took an awful lot of raw copper from North America a very long time ago. Who was responsible for this and what they did with it represent an enigma of vast proportions that investigators have been puzzling over for more than a century, although most Americans are unaware of the story.


Beginning around 3,000 BC, in excess of 500,000 tons of copper were mined in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with most activity taking place at Isle Royale, an island in Lake Superior on the Canadian border. The mines abruptly and inexplicably shut down in 1200 BC, reopening no less mysteriously 2,300 years later . Until 1320 AD, some additional 2,000 tons were removed, destination unknown. As before, operations were suddenly suspended for no apparent cause. Tools - mauls, picks, hammers, shovels and levers - were left by their owners in place.

 

Octave Du’Temple, a foremost authority on early Michigan, asks,

“Why did these miners leave their operations and implements as though planning on taking up their labors the next day, and yet mysteriously never returned.”

William P.F. Ferguson writes,

“The work is of a colossal nature,” and “amounted to the turning over of the whole formation to their depth and moving many cubic acres - it would NOT be extravagant to say cubic MILES - of rock.”

The prehistoric mines were NOT crude holes in the ground, but incredibly efficacious operations to extract staggering masses of raw material as quickly as possible. An average of 1,000 to 1,200 tons of ore were excavated per pit, yielding about 100,000 pounds of copper each. […]


The ancient enterprise was a mind-boggling affair, including about 5,000 mines mostly along the Keweenaw Peninsula and the eastern end of Lake Superior above the St. Mary’s river. On the northern shore, the diggings extended 150 miles, varying in width from four to seven miles... The pits ran in practically a contiguous line for 30 miles through the Rockland regions...


Estimates of 10,000 men working the mines for 1,000 years seem credible, as does the conclusion that they were not slaves, because the miners carried away their dead. No ancient graves nor evidence of cremations have been found in the Upper Peninsula. Indeed, virtually all they left behind were their tools, literally millions of them. As far back as the 1840s, 10 wagonloads of stone hammers were taken from a single location near Rockland. The mauls appeared to be mass produced in various sizes and types to serve different tasks.


W.H. Holmes succinctly writes,

“It is unlikely, however, that any considerable amount of the shaping work was conducted on the island. It seems to me more likely that the pieces of metal obtained were carried away to distant centers of population to be worked by skilled artisans and we may justly assume that a considerable trade existed in the raw material.”

Those “distant centers of population” were Rock Lake and Aztalan, which were connected to the Great Lakes mining areas by a belt of similar mounds. One upper Peninsula temple-mound was 10 feet tall, 15 feet long at the sides and virtually identical to Aztalan’s Pyramid of the Moon. As we shall see, the ancient copper miners and the inhabitants of Rock Lake-Aztalan were one and the same people.


America’s ancient copper mines represent the key to unlocking Rock Lake’s deepest secrets. The grandiose mining enterprise began suddenly around 3,000 BC and terminated just as abruptly 1,800 years later.

[...] When prehistoric America’s copper mining ceased all at once in 1200 BC, the Michigan pits were abandoned for the next 21 centuries. They were suddenly opened in 900 AD, an event that can only mean that, despite the virtual abandonment of the Rock Lake area for thousands of years... [somebody KNEW about it - and came back].

 

[...] Alliance with another mound building people at Spiro, Oklahoma, near the Arkansas River, provided portage to Mesoamerica Trade Centers.

 

[...] Roy Ward Drier writes, “That the copper from which tools, scattered over such a vast area of country, were manufactured, came from the ancient mines of Lake Superior, does not admit of doubt. Although large and numerous deposits of copper ore are scattered through Arizona, New Mexico, Mexico and Central and South America, there is no evidence that the aborigines had sufficient metallurgical knowledge or skill to reduce the ores to refined copper. The shores of Lake Superior have the only known workable deposits of native copper in the world. The term virgin copper is well used to denote its purity. In this latter day, it outranks all others in the markets of the world.” [...]


Archaeological excavations in the 1930s at Aztalan discovered the remains of a large rectangular building containing an abundance of unworked copper, establishing the site’s identity as a mining town. [...]

Frank Joseph found some very strange pyramidal type structures in Rock Lake, Wisconsin. They were different from other pyramidal structures - being conical - and he was astounded some years later to see identical, unusual, pyramidal structures in the Canary Islands.

The original inhabitants of the Canary Islanders referred to themselves as “Canari” long before the Romans arrived. The name appears to have had a similar meaning in both Latin and the native speech, which was a mixed Indo-European language with at least several Latin cognates.


Previous to the 1st century AD, the Atlantic group was known throughout the Mediterranean World as the Blessed Isles, the Fortunate Isles, the Hesperides, or the Isles of the Blessed. Forgotten for all of classical civilization, they were isolated from outside contact for almost 1,000 years until their rediscovery by Portuguese sailors in the 14th century.

 

The Canari more commonly referred to themselves as Guanches (men) a once civilized race that had slowly degenerated over millennia of interbreeding, while their level of society slid back, quite literally, into the caves... Before their virtual elimination, some studies were made of the Guanches, a white people, fair complected and with red, auburn, and occasionally blond hair.

 

Despite their genetically debased condition, they preserved traditions from long gone ages of civilized greatness and still gathered at the ruined stone monuments of their ancestors for special events. Some of these cyclopean walls, called tagora, survive as crumbling rectangular enclosures, circles, and even pyramids. At Santa Cruz, capital of Tenerife, largest of the islands, I was surprised to learn that regular, ancient contacts between the Canaries and North America were generally acknowledged by the academic community.

 

Talk of possible pre-Columbian visitors from Europe is taboo throughout professional circles in the United States, but Tenerife’s leading historical scholar, Professor Lopez Herrera, writes:

“One fact about which we may be certain is that there existed a relation in ancient times between the people of Canarian origin and the inhabitants of America.” [...]

 

From Tenerife I took a ferry to Lanzarote, which is 125 miles closer to North Africa than any of the rest of the seven islands. After docking at the capital port of Arrecefe and checking into my hotel, I walked through the ocean-front park, intent only on some casual sightseeing, when I was thunderstruck to confront the very object that had been sought in the depths of Rock Lake for more than 50 years: a 20 foot conical pyramid. It exactly matched the sunken structure seen in the lake in 1937. [...]

In all my travels throughout Europe and studies of classical and preclassical societies, I had never found so much as a reference to a conical stone pyramid such as this one, and, as far as I knew, nothing of the kind existed anywhere else except under the waters of Rock Lake, Wisconsin.350

350 Joseph, Frank, The Lost Pyramids of Rock Lake (Lakeville, MN: Galde Press, Inc. 1992).

Are Rock Lake and the copper mines remnants of the civilization known by Plato as Atlantis?

 

Adding 10,000 years to Joseph’s dates, as suggested by Firestone and Topping, would put these sites into the timeframe indicated by Plato.


The evidence that Firestone and Topping discovered is puzzling for a lot of reasons. But, the fact is, there are reports of similar evidence of possible Nuclear War from such widely spread regions as India, Ireland, Scotland, France, and Turkey; ancient cities whose brick and stone walls have literally been vitrified - fused together like glass. There is also evidence of vitrification of stone forts and cities. It seems that the only reasonable explanation for such anomalies - taken in conjunction with the rest of the evidence - is an atomic blast.

 

This fits with Plato’s story of a war between the Atlanteans and “Athens”.


If the Americas were “Atlantis”, and if there was a war going on prior to the cataclysm, it seems that - fitting the descriptions together - North America was the hardest hit. There is not only the evidence of the nuclear activity, but the massive bombardments of exploding cometary bodies which blasted away nearly all traces of civilization.

 

We recall that the animal carcasses found in the ice seem to have been swept northward, and this may have been the result of a sudden seven degree shift of the terrestrial axis - from 16.5 degrees to the current 23.5 - initiating tectonic shifts that not only raised the mountains of South America, but changed the face of North America, raising parts of it from under water, submerging other parts under water, and destroying nearly every living thing. The evidence of the Bimini megalithic structures under water, as well as the recently discovered underwater city near Cuba, testify to this inundation.

 

Prior to the cataclysm, according to the information from the Gateway of the Sun at Tiahuanaco, the earth revolved about the sun in a period of 290 days.


The question is, of course, who was who? Who was on first?


We have looked at the Americas as the possible ancient empire of Atlantis. It is now time to reiterate certain observations. We have noted earlier that the practice of human sacrifice seems to have originated and spread in the Southern Hemisphere. We have also noted that human sacrifice was most closely associated with Solar deities.

 

The further north you go, the less importance the Sun had, the more importance the Moon was given, and the incidence of human sacrifice diminished.

 

At certain points, where the two “types” mingled, it was not uncommon to find Moon worship associated with human sacrifice, or Sun worship divorced from Human Sacrifice. But what is evident from tracking the myths and folktales and artifacts, is that Human Sacrifice was primarily a Southern Hemisphere production. It would be almost impossible to track the ancient peoples with firm accuracy, but the point is that there is evidence that the religion of the Jews came from South America via India to the Middle East, bringing its bloodthirsty, flesh flaying, genital mutilating God along.


At the same time, we find megalithic structures on Malta that predate the deluge, and the conical pyramids of Rock Lake, Wisconsin, connected to similar structures on the Canary Islands. We have tracked our long-legged Cro-magnon types across Europe to Central Asia and back again. And we most certainly suspect that they were inhabitants of North America as well. We have found the shamanic Goddess worshipping peoples of Central Asia, shepherds and horsemen and husbandmen of the land.


What happened to the peoples of North and South America? Where was “Athens”? How did the “Athenians” defeat the evil empire of Atlantis?

 

When we contemplate these questions, what comes to mind is that amazing, ancient tale of the Ark, represented in a hundred tales down through the millennia as any number of things from five smooth stones picked up from a stream flung by a young lad at a giant, after which he cut off his head, to the head of a Gorgon held up as a weapon to turn the wicked into stone.

 

We find a reflection of the idea of being “turned to stone” in the story of Lot’s escape from the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah where, when his wife hesitated and looked back, she was turned to a pillar of salt. In the legend of Perseus, just looking at Medusa would turn one to stone.


As we review the myths and legends, we find that strange story of the Sumerians about the theft of the “tablet of destinies”, which connects us to the golden tablets of the Aesir of Snorri Sturlson, and the Emerald tablets of Hermes, from which we move on to the tablets of the law in the Ark. Then we come in a circle to the idea of the “law bearer” or Ark, as the Thesmophoria of the Eleusinian mysteries celebrated only by women - and the woman was represented as a doorway, a delta - a cross even - from which the hanged man, Odin, hung for nine days to receive the secrets of the Goddess, the runes, and for which he sacrificed his eye to drink from the spring of wisdom. What a tangled web.


Speaking of webs, when we consider the possibility that all of our dating methods might be useless if the earth has been repeatedly subjected to cataclysmic - including nuclear - events, we are then free to consider Tiahuanaco as possibly being a surviving Atlantean city. We have only Plato’s discussions upon which to speculate about the Atlanteans, and we will come to that soon enough. For the moment, we certainly wish we could query the silent stones about the past.

 

The only thing we know about Tiahuanaco in a more direct way, is from the myths and legends of the Inca.

Chavín is claimed to be the Mother Civilization of the Andes.

 

The term Chavín has been applied to a developmental stage of Andean history, to an archaeological period, to an art style and to a hypothetical empire. Chavín has been interpreted as a culture, a civilization and a religion. The Chavín culture was one of agriculture and fishing and seafaring. It’s earliest manifestation is in the Ica area, and we have already noted the Ica stone artifacts which suggest far greater antiquity for this culture than mainstream science even considers.


The Moche culture developed in the same area which had previously belonged to the Chavín culture, so we may assume that it was formed of survivors. Expert opinions suggest that one can easily see the influence of the oldest civilization of Peru, the Chavín, on the Moche. Chavín was a well-developed class society, which was divided into nobility, farmers and slaves. The Moche people were developed in agriculture, fishing, handicraft, trade, sea-faring and metallurgy. The anthropomorphic pottery of the Mochicans is thought to express the mythological and social themes which were the peak of this art genre in the whole civilisation of Peru.


This raises an interesting issue because the human-shaped pottery shows that the typology of the Mochicans includes Mongoloid as well as Negroid features. The earliest “God” image, the one carved on the Gate of the Sun, is a Godlike creature holding staves or sticks in both of its hands. It is thought that the deity with staves was a celestial supreme being, a God of the heavens, who in the course of time was attributed the characteristic features of a thunder-God.

 

The worship of the deity with staves spread from Chavín all over Peru, more particularly so in the Tiahuanaco culture on the Altiplano Plateau in South-Peru, where he was called Viracocha.351

 

351 Berezkin, Juri 1983. Mochica. Tsivilizatsia indeitsev Severnogo poberzhia Peru v I-VII vv. Leningrad.

 

Several versions of Andean Genesis at Tiahuanaco were recorded by Juan de Betanzos in 1551, and Cristobal de Molina in 1553. In the early version preserved by Betanzos, the world creator is named Contiti Viracocha, and he emerges from Lake Titicaca to create, “the sun and the day, and the moon and the stars”. Viracocha orders “the sun to move in its path” and so the time of mankind begins. After calling the people out from caves, rivers, and springs scattered through the mythical landscape of creation time, Contiti Viracocha furiously turns some of them into stone for sacrilegious behavior. Then, he starts creation all over again!

 

Only this time, he creates the people from stone instead of turning them into stone.

  • Of course we wonder about the “staves” in the hands of Viracocha?

  • Were these the “tools” he used to “turn people into stone” or call flesh forth from stone?

  • Are they the origins of the pillars Jachin and Boaz?

  • How do these staves relate to the staves Jacob drove into the ground in the story about the magical increase of his flocks?

These questions bring us to consider the Semites and Sargon.

 

 


Sargon the Great


According to “experts”, Sargon of Akkad reigned approximately 2,334-2,279 BC, and was one of the earliest of the world’s great empire builders, conquering all of southern Mesopotamia as well as parts of Syria, Anatolia, and Elam (western Iran). He established the region’s first Semitic dynasty and was considered the founder of the Mesopotamian military tradition.


Sargon is known almost entirely from the legends and tales that followed his reputation through 2000 years of cuneiform Mesopotamian history, and not from any documents that were written during his lifetime. The lack of contemporary record is explained by the fact that the capital city of Agade, (note the homophonic similarity to Arcadia) which he built, has never been located and excavated. It was destroyed at the end of the dynasty that Sargon founded and was never again inhabited, at least under the name of Agade.


According to a folktale, Sargon was a self-made man of humble origins; a gardener (think “gardens of the Hesperides”), having found him as a baby floating in a basket on the river, brought him up in his own calling. His father is unknown; his mother is said to have been a priestess in a town on the middle Euphrates.

(Note all the similarities to the story of Moses as well as Perseus.) Rising, therefore, without the help of influential relations, he attained the post of cupbearer to the ruler of the city of Kish, in the north of the ancient land of Sumer. (Notice the clue of the cup here.)


The event that brought him to supremacy was the defeat of Lugalzaggisi of Uruk (biblical Erech, in central Sumer). Lugalzaggisi had already united the city-states of Sumer by defeating each in turn and claimed to rule the lands not only of the Sumerian city-states but also those as far west as the Mediterranean. Sargon became king over all of southern Mesopotamia, the first great ruler for whom the Semitic tongue known as Akkadian, rather than Sumerian, was natural from birth.

 

Sargon wished to secure favorable trade with Agade throughout the known world and this, along with what was obviously a very energetic temperament, led Sargon to conquer cities along the middle Euphrates to northern Syria and the silver-mining mountains of southern Anatolia. He also took Susa, capital city of the Elamites, in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, where the only truly contemporary record of his reign has been uncovered.


As the result of Sargon’s military prowess and ability to organize, as well as of the legacy of the Sumerian city-states that he had inherited by conquest, and of previously existing trade of the old Sumerian city-states with other countries, commercial connections flourished with the Indus Valley, the coast of Oman, the islands and shores of the Persian Gulf, the lapis lazuli mines of Badakhshan, the cedars of Lebanon, the silver-rich Taurus Mountains, Cappadocia, Crete, and perhaps even Greece.


During Sargon’s rule, his Akkadian language became adapted to the script that previously had been used in the Sumerian language, and there arose new spirit of writing evident in the clay tablets and cylinder seals of this dynasty. There are beautifully arranged and executed scenes of mythology and festive life. It could be suggested that this new artistic feeling is attributable directly to the Semitic influence of Sargon and his compatriots upon the rather dull Sumerians. In contrast to the Sumerian civilization, in Sargon’s new capital, military and economic values were not the only things that were important.


The latter part of his reign was troubled with rebellions, which later literature ascribes, predictably enough, to sacrilegious acts that he - like Solomon - is supposed to have committed; but this can be discounted as the standard cause assigned to all disasters by Sumerians and Akkadians alike. The troubles, in fact, were probably caused by the inability of one man, however energetic, to control so vast an empire. There is no evidence to suggest that he was particularly harsh, nor that the Sumerians disliked him for being a Semite.

 

What’s more, the empire did not collapse totally, for Sargon’s successors were able to control their legacy, and later generations thought of him as being perhaps the greatest name in their history. What is most interesting is that Sargon attributed his success to the patronage of the Goddess Ishtar, in whose honor Agade was erected. Sargon’s story sounds a lot like a combination of the Biblical stories of Moses, David and Solomon and certainly, there is evidence of infusion of Semitic traditions into the culture of the Sumerians.

 

We also wish to consider the the fact that Sargon was the first “semite”. Nowadays “Semitic peoples” are generally understood to be, more or less, individuals of Middle Eastern origins: Jews and Arabs predominantly. That is to say, to be an Arab or a Jew is to be “Semitic”. In recent years the idea has taken hold that the Ashkenazi Jews are really Turkish and not Jews at all. Recent genetic studies place the Ashkenazi as closest in kinship to Roman Jews on one side, who are just a small step away from Lebanese non-Jews, and Syrian non-Jews on the other. The Syrian non-Jews are very close to the Kurdish Jews and the Palestinian non-Jews - i.e. the “Palestinians”.


What actually seems to have happened is that when the Khazar kingdom “converted” to Judaism, they invited Jewish rabbis to come and teach them how to be proper Jews. These rabbis, being “proper Jews”, took Khazar wives, mixing with the Khazar population in this way. Additionally, after the fall of the Khazar kingdom, Yiddish-speaking “Jewish” immigrants from the west (especially Germany, Bohemia, and other areas of Central Europe) - which would include Roman Jewish lines - began to flood into Eastern Europe, and it is believed that these newer immigrants intermarried with the Khazars.

 

Thus, Eastern European Jews have a mix of ancestors who came from Central Europe and from the Khazar kingdom. The two groups (eastern and western Jews) intermarried over the centuries.


In this sense, the Ashkenazi Jews are, indeed, descendants of the Israelites through the male line.352

 

352 Jews are represented by triangles: Ashkenazim = Ash, Roman Jews = Rom, North African Jews = Naf; Near Eastern Jews = Nea; Kurdish Jews = Kur, Yemenite Jews = Yem; Ethiopian Jews = EtJ; non-Jewish Middle Easterners = Pal, non-Jewish Syrians = Syr, non-Jewish Lebanes = Leb, Israeli Druze = Dru, non-Jewish Saudi Arabians = Sar; Non-Jewish Europeans: Rus = Russians, Bri = British, Ger = Germans, Aus = Austrians, Ita = Italians, Spa = Spanish, Gre = Greeks, Tun = North Africans and Tunisians; Egy = Egyptians, Eth = Ethiopians, Gam = Gambians, Bia = Giaka, Bag = Bagandans, San = San, Zul = Zulu. Tur = non Jewish Turks, Lem = Lemba from south Africa.

Analysis of the Y chromosome has already yielded interesting results. Dr. Ariella Oppenheim of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem said she had found considerable similarity between Jews and Israeli and Palestinian Arabs, as if the Y chromosomes of both groups had been drawn from a common population that began to expand 7,800 years ago.353

 

About two-thirds of Israeli Arabs and Arabs in the territories and a similar proportion of Israeli Jews are the descendents of at least three common prehistoric ancestors who lived in the Middle East in the Neolithic period, about 8,000 years ago. This is the finding of a new study conducted by an international team of scholars headed by Prof. Ariella Oppenheim, a senior geneticist in the Hebrew University’s hematology department and at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. In the study, soon to be published in the scientific journal ‘Human Genetics,’ the researchers probed the history of Jewish and Arab men by analyzing the genetic changes in the Y chromosome.[…]


The results of the study, says Prof. Oppenheim, ‘support the historical documentation according to which the Arabs are descendents of an ancient population of the country and that a large proportion of them were Jews who converted to Islam after Islam reached Eretz Israel in the seventh century CE.’ […] They […] discovered that Jews and Arabs have common prehistoric ancestors who lived here until just the last few thousand years..[…] In view of the small geographical area of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the researchers were surprised to discover that some Palestinians on the West Bank have a unique genetic trait that is reflected in a relatively high frequency of certain genetic signs. This fact indicates that they are the descendents of people who have lived here for a few hundred years at least. […] Dr. Filon says that the unique genetic trait is characteristic of a population that has lived in the same place for many generations.” 354

 

353 Nicholas Wade. “Scientists Rough Out Humanity’s 50,000-Year-Old Story.” The New York Times (November 14, 2000)
354 Tamara Traubman. “A new study shows that the genetic makeup of Jews and Arabs is almost identical, and that both groups share common prehistoric ancestors.” Ha’aretz (2000). 355 Judy Siegel-Itzkovich. “Dad was out and about, while Mom stayed home.” Jerusalem Post (June 16, 2002).

Data on the Y chromosome indicates that the males originated in the Middle East, while the mothers’ mitochondrial DNA seems to indicate a local Diaspora origin in the female community founders.355 We have analyzed the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA from each of nine geographically separated Jewish groups, eight non-Jewish host populations, and an Israeli Arab/Palestinian population, and we have compared the differences found in Jews and non-Jews with those found using Y-chromosome data that were obtained, in most cases, from the same population samples.

 

The results suggest that most Jewish communities were founded by relatively few women, that the founding process was independent in different geographic areas, and that subsequent genetic input from surrounding populations was limited on the female side. In sharp contrast to this, the paternally inherited Y chromosome shows diversity similar to that of neighboring populations and shows no evidence of founder effects. These sex-specific differences demonstrate an important role for culture in shaping patterns of genetic variation and are likely to have significant epidemiological implications for studies involving these populations. We illustrate this by presenting data from a panel of X-chromosome microsatellites, which indicates that, in the case of the Georgian Jews, the female-specific founder event appears to have resulted in elevated levels of linkage disequilibrium.356

 

356 Mark G. Thomas, Michael E. Weale, Abigail L. Jones, Martin Richards, Alice Smith, Nicola Redhead, Antonio Torroni, Rosaria Scozzari, Fiona Gratrix, Ayele Tarekegn, James F. Wilson, Cristian Capelli, Neil Bradman, and David B. Goldstein. “Founding Mothers of Jewish Communities: Geographically Separated Jewish Groups Were Independently Founded by Very Few Female Ancestors.” The American Journal of Human Genetics 70:6 (June 2002): 1411-1420.

 

The emerging genetic picture is based largely on two studies, […] that together show that the men and women who founded the Jewish communities had surprisingly different genetic histories.[…]


A new study now shows that the women in nine Jewish communities from Georgia, the former Soviet republic, to Morocco have vastly different genetic histories from the men. […] The women’s identities, however, are a mystery, because, unlike the case with the men, their genetic signatures are not related to one another or to those of present-day Middle Eastern populations.[…]


The new study, by Dr. David Goldstein, Dr. Mark Thomas and Dr. Neil Bradman of University College in London and other colleagues, appears in The American Journal of Human Genetics this month.... His [Goldstein’s] own speculation, he said, is that most Jewish communities were formed by unions between Jewish men and local women, though he notes that the women’s origins cannot be genetically determined.[…]


Like the other Jewish communities in the study, the Ashkenazic community of Northern and Central Europe, from which most American Jews are descended, shows less diversity than expected in its mitochondrial DNA, perhaps reflecting the maternal definition of Jewishness. But unlike the other Jewish populations, it does not show signs of having had very few female founders. It is possible, Dr. Goldstein said, that the Ashkenazic community is a mosaic of separate populations formed the same way as the others.[…]


‘The authors are correct in saying the historical origins of most Jewish communities are unknown,’ Dr. [Shaye] Cohen [of Harvard University] said. ‘Not only the little ones like in India, but even the mainstream Ashkenazic culture from which most American Jews descend.’[…] If the founding mothers of most Jewish communities were local, that could explain why Jews in each country tend to resemble their host community physically while the origins of their Jewish founding fathers may explain the aspects the communities have in common, Dr. Cohen said.[…]

 

The Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA’s in today’s Jewish communities reflect the ancestry of their male and female founders but say little about the rest of the genome... Noting that the Y chromosome points to a Middle Eastern origin of Jewish communities and the mitochondrial DNA to a possibly local origin, Dr. Goldstein said that the composition of ordinary chromosomes, which carry most of the genes, was impossible to assess.357

357 Nicholas Wade. “DNA, New Clues to Jewish Roots.” The New York Times (May 14, 2002): F1 (col. 1)

 

These studies suggests the idea that some of the early ancestors of the ancient Levant and Mesopotamian civilizations originated in the region of Armenia and moved southwards - that they were “Semitic” the same way Sargon was. Further, the Tanach records extensive evidence of intermarriage between Jews and ancient peoples who originated in eastern Anatolia, such as the Hittites and Hurrians (including the Jebusites of Jerusalem). The Edomites who were of mixed Hebrew and Hurrian ancestry were also absorbed into the Jewish people.

 

The Armenians and Kurds are the descendants of people who remained in Eastern Anatolia, Armenia and Kurdistan, subsequently intermarrying with the Turks and neighboring peoples. So, we see the idea of the “Ten Lost Tribes”, or even the “Thirteenth Tribe” to be myths exploded by the science of genetics. The problem is, of course, that all existing studies fail to compare modern Jewish populations’ DNA to ancient Judean DNA.

 

The question remains: If Sargon was the “original Semitic ruler”, was he a Semite as we understand Semites today?

 

The next question that occurs to us is: Did Sargon, as a conqueror, impose a language and cultural expression on a genetically different people, the Sumerians, who had already imposed their own language and culture on the indigenous population of the Fertile Crescent?


What we notice most particularly is that Sargon was said to have come “from the North” and that he worshipped the Goddess Ishtar. Also, when we think of the word “Semitic” in terms of the Green language, we naturally wonder if it doesn’t imply something that was “half” of one thing and “half” of another? The question then becomes: Who were the Sumerians that absorbed and adopted the Semitic language and cultural expressions, adapting them to their own use?

 

The Sumerians were a non-Semitic people who, judging by archaeological remains, were generally short and stocky, with high, straight noses and downward sloping eyes. Many wore beards, but some were clean-shaven. These people apparently migrated to the Fertile Crescent - they suddenly appeared in the area - and immediately established what was, for a long time, considered to be the first real ‘Civilization’.

 

They built cities, step-pyramid-temples, large residences and economic facilities. They referred to themselves as the “black-headed people” as if to emphasize their difference from the indigenous population who, one might assume, were not black-headed.


The picture painted by the archaeological record of the Sumerian City-State civilization before Sargon is one of constant strife between these cities, especially the most prominent ones: Kish, Erech, Ur, Adab, and later Lagash and Umma.

 

Constant warring weakened the Sumerians until, “the kingship was carried away by foreigners”, such as the king of Awan, Sargon of Akkad, the Gutians, the Elamites, and eventually Hammurabi. Sargon of Akkad, the first Semite, was then, a “foreigner” to the Sumerians who had (as we will see) a rather “lengthy” history prior to the Semitic influence.


It is quite curious that despite their sense of nationalism and the sharing of a common identity, the “black-headed people” were unable to unite in order to resist the conquerors. What is even more ironic is the fact that, even though they were unable to resist being conquered and ruled - in fact - by foreigners, the Sumerian culture was, to a great extent, assimilated by the conquerors by the adoption of their customs, script, and literature, including many of their religious myths. The cultural “soul” of a people can be found in their stories, myths, and rituals.

 

The stories of Sumer, as inscribed on its clay tablets, allow us to reconstruct, at least partially, a process of dynamic development that took place over many centuries. Some experts propose that Sumerian storytelling was indebted to the wandering Semitic tribes, who, being allegedly “illiterate”, had the narrative memory capacity of “illiterate peoples”. It is suggested by such experts that these Semites often entertained their more “civilized” Sumerian hosts by “telling tales around the campfire” or in the market place. It is then suggested that these stories were then written down by Sumerian scribes, who attempted to categorize the material into orderly groups of continuous narrative.

 

Obviously, the “wandering, illiterate Semites” weren’t quite so backward since they conquered the Sumerians and their influence actually gave the Sumerian civilization a cultural boost. What is more likely is that the writing of the Sumerians was developed for economic and military purposes, which was the purview of the “God” and his priests. It was only after the incursions of the Semites that a literary tradition began, and the development of writing proceeded in such a way that it could be utilized for literature.


The experts tell us that the Sumerians themselves had no real “sense of history”, even though they had invented writing. This opinion is arrived at due to the fact that the Sumerians had recorded a sort of “history”, in the form of a King list that was, to understate the matter, astonishing.


The Sumerians’ relationship with their Gods was the driving force in the rise of their civilization. The very reason for the existence of Sumer and her people seemed to lie with these strange and mortal ‘deities’. The very reason for being was to serve the appropriate deity.


The Sumerian religion was more like a feudal covenantal relationship with an overlord than the mystical worship of a God as we would understand religion today. For the Sumerian, worship of the Gods meant complete servitude - the very purpose for which mankind was, (according to the Sumerians), created by the Sumerian Gods.


According to the Sumerians, the city-states had been founded by the Gods far back in time and it was the Gods who had given the Sumerians, “the black-headed people”, all the tools and weapons and marvelous inventions of their culture. For the Sumerians, everything that they had - cities, fields, herds, tools, institutions - had always existed because the Gods had created all of it before they had created the black headed people to run things as their slaves.

 

This immediately makes one think of the only people who claim an origin as slaves: the Jews.

 

This “slave-master” Religion was the central organizing principle of the city-states, each city belonging to a different deity who was worshipped in a large temple. According to the Sumerians, even if the Gods might prefer to be just and merciful, they had also created evil and misfortune and there was nothing that the black-headed people could do about it. Judging from the Sumerian Lamentation texts, the best one could do in times of trouble would be to, “plead, lament and wail, tearfully confessing his sins and failings”.

 

Their family God or city God might intervene on their behalf, but that would not necessarily happen even if the rules were carefully followed. After all, man was created as a broken, labor saving, tool for the use of the Gods and at the end of everyone’s life, lay the underworld, a dreary place like the Sheol of the early Hebrews.


According to the Sumerians, their Gods were very intelligent, extremely long-lived and yet, very mortal beings. This is evident in their king lists. According to the Sumerians, the time before the flood was said to be a period of 432,000 years. Two kings from after the flood that are listed were Gilgamesh and Tammuz. The legends of Tammuz were so well-liked that they were assimilated to the pantheon of Babylon and later became the model for Adonis to the Greeks. Gilgamesh became the hero of the Babylonian epic poem which bears his name, and which also contains an account of the flood.


Until recently, these king lists and the names in them were thought to be purely mythic, but in the 1930’s, Sir Leonard Woolley, while excavating a building at Ur on the Ubaid level, found an inscription indicating that the structure had been erected by the son of the founder of the First Dynasty of Ur, a person up till that time regarded as fiction. Gilgamesh, too, has inscriptions telling of the buildings he built.


The “King-List” is divided into dynastic periods that are city-state oriented as apparently regards the seat of central power. The most startling of these sections is the list dealing with the pre-deluge Kings . Eight Anunnaki Kings are listed, as are five city-states where centralized rule apparently was seated. Length of rule is given in what is known as a “sar”.

 

All of the remaining King-List sections have the length of rule measured by years. The “sar” was equivalent in length to 3,600 years.

 

 

And here ends the Kingship of the Annunaki.


Now it is important to note that during this astonishing length of time recorded as “history” by the Sumerians, only two Anunnaki held overall reign. First was Enki (later known as Ea) and the second was Enlil, a half-brother of Enki. The event that ended this first list was the legendary deluge. It was also during the latter part of this first period of the King-List that human beings appeared.

 

Calculating the length of time back to the arrival of these “Anunnaki”, brings us to about 450,000 years ago. That puts it well before the accepted date of the appearance of modern man.


The numbering system of the Sumerians is actually quite fascinating. The Sumerian civilization can be more or less divided into three periods of cultural manifestation. The first included the development of glyptics where cylinder seals were engraved with parades of animals or scenes of a religious nature. This was followed by the development of sculpture, and finally, the emergence of writing. During the first period of cultural manifestation, archaeology indicates that there were no palaces for such as what we would consider a real king. The “king” was actually a priest who lived in the temple.

 

The priest-king was titled “EN”, or “Lord”. It was only later, in the second cultural period that the title of king, or Lugal, came into use. At the same time, palaces became evident, witnessing a separation of the State - and its military forces - and the priesthood. At the beginning of the second millennium BC, the Sumerians came back to dominance for a period, but after Hammurabi, Sumer disappeared entirely as a political entity. Nevertheless, the Sumerian language remained a language of priests.


Around 3,200 BC, the Sumerians devised their numerical notation system, giving special graphical symbols to the units 1, 10, 60, 600, 3,600. That is to say, we find that the Sumerians did not count in tens, hundreds and thousands, but rather adopted base 60, grouping things into sixties, and multiplying by powers of sixty.


Our own civilization utilizes vestiges of base 60 in the ways we count time in hours, minutes and seconds, and in the degrees of the circle.


Sixty is a large number to use as a base for a numbering system. It is taxing to the memory because it necessitates knowing sixty different signs (words) that stand for the numbers from 1 to 60. The Sumerians handled this by using 10 as an intermediary between the different sexagesimal orders of magnitude: 1, 60, 602, 603, etc. The word for 60, ge#, is the same as the word for unity. The number 60 represented a certain level, above which, multiples of 60 up to 600 were expressed by using 60 as a new unit. When they reached 600, the next level was treated as still another unit, with multiples up to 3,000. The number 3,600, or sixty sixties, was given a new name: #àr, and this, in turn, became yet another new unit.

The Sumerian numbering system often required excessive repetitions of identical marks, placing symbols side by side to represent addition of their values. The number 3,599 required a total of twenty-six symbols. For this reason, the Sumerians would often use a “subtractive convention” with a little symbol that meant “take this number away from that number to get the number that is being indicated”.


In the pre-Sargon era, certain irregularities started to appear in the cuneiform representations of numbers. In addition to the subtractive convention, entirely new symbols were being created for multiples of 36,000. This means that instead of repeating 36,000 however many times it was to be indicated, the numbers 72,000, 108,000, 144,000, 180,000 and 216,000 had their own symbols assigned to them. In all of human history, the Sumerians are the only ones we know of who invented and used a sexagesimal system. This can be seen as a “triumph” of their civilization, and a great mystery as well.

 

Many people have tried to understand why they did this and numerous hypotheses were offered from Theon of Alexandria to Otto Neugebauer.

 

These hypotheses range from “It was the easiest to use” and the “lowest of numbers that had the greatest number of divisors”, to “it was natural” because the number of days in a Solar year rounded down to 360, and so on. Daniel Boorstin suggested that the Sumerians used base 60 because they multiplied the number of planets known to them (5) times the number of months in the year. It was pointed out by the Assyriologist, G. Kewitsch in 1904 that neither astronomy nor geometry can really explain the origin of a number system, presupposing that abstract considerations preceded concrete applications.

 

Kewitsch speculated that the sexagesimal system actually resulted from the fusion of two civilisations, one of which used a decimal number-system, and the other used base 6 derived from a special form of finger-counting. This was not easily accepted since there is no historical record of a base 6 numbering system anywhere in the world.


However, duodecimal systems, or base 12 numbering systems ARE widely attested, especially in Western Europe. It is still used for counting eggs and oysters. We regularly use the words “dozen” and “gross” and measurements based on 12 were used in France right up to the Revolution, and are still used in Britain and the U.S.


The Romans had a unit of weight, money and arithmetic called the as, divided into 12 ounces. One of the monetary units of pre-Revolutionary France was the sol, divided into 12 deniers. The Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians used base 12 and its multiples and divisors vary widely as well. The Mesopotamian day was divided into twelve equal parts, and they divided the circle, the ecliptic, and the zodiac into twelve equal sectors of 30 degrees.

 

This means that base 12 could very well have played a major part in shaping the Sumerian number system. The major role of 10 in the base 60 system is well attested as well, since it was used as an auxiliary unit to circumvent the main difficulty of the sexagesimal system. This leads us to an important clue: the Sumerian word for “ten” also means “fingers” suggesting an earlier counting system.


Taking this back to a variation on Kewitsch’s hypothesis, Georges Ifrah proposes that base 60 was a “learned solution” to the union between two peoples, one of which used a decimal system derived from a vigesimal system and the other a system using base 12. As it happens, 60 is the lowest common multiple of 10 and 12 as well as the lowest number of which all the first six integers are divisors and, 5 X 12 is 60.


What is interesting to note is that the French words for 80 and 90 (quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-dix) carry the traces of a vanished vigesimal arithemetic in Ancient Europe.


Ifrah’s hypothesis is that the Sumerian society had both decimal and duodecimal number systems, and its mathematicians subsequently devised a system that combined the two bases.


Of course, this hypothesis fails on the ground that it presupposes way too much intellectual sophistication. Unless, of course, we consider the disjecta membra of a vanished high civilization.


It is evident that the Mesopotamian basin had one or more indigenous populations prior to the arrival of the Sumerians. The Sumerians were “immigrants” who came from somewhere else about which we know nothing since they seem to have broken all ties with their previous environment.

 

Coming back to the question: “Who were the Semites?”, we understand that the term itself derives from the Old Testament where the tribes of Eber (the Hebrews), Elam, Asshur, Aram, Arphasad, and Lud are said to be the descendants of Shem, one of Noah’s three sons.

 

However, this claim makes the Elamites, who spoke an Asianic language, first cousins to the Hebrews, Assyrians, and Aramaeans, whose languages belong to the Semitic group.


“Asianic” is the term used for the earlier inhabitants of the Asian mainland whose languages, mostly of the agglutinative-kind, were neither Indo-European nor Semitic. It is generally believed that Mesopotamia was originally inhabited by Asianic peoples prior to the arrival of the Sumerians. It is thought that the Semiticspeaking population came in a later wave and that Sargon was the first Semitic king of a “Semitic nation”.

 

Of course, that still doesn’t explain the Sumerians and their language.


Significant Semitic elements are to be found in the cultures of Mari and Kis at the beginning of the third millennium BC, and it has even been proposed that the El Obeid peoples were the original Semites, though they were absorbed and assimilated by the Sumerians. The discovery of the Ebla tablets reveal the existence of a Semitic language in the mid-third millennium BC. When Sargon founded the first Semitic state by defeating the Sumerians, Akkadian became the language of Mesopotamia and pushed aside the unrelated language of Sumer. When the Sumerian cuneiform writing was adapted by the Akkadians, the writing system was already several centuries old.

 

The Akkadians found an ideographic writing system that was already drifting toward a phonetic system and accelerated this drift while still retaining some of the ideographic meanings. The Akkadian and Sumerian cultural heritages merged, creating a true literary tradition. When Akkadian speech and writing finally supplanted their Sumerian counterparts in Mesopotamia, a strictly decimal numbering became the norm in daily use. The ancient signs for 60, 600, 3,600 and so on, progressively disappeared. In the hands of the Semites, cuneiform numerals and Mesopotamian arithmetic were gradually adapted into a system with a different base working on different principles.

 

Nevertheless, base 60 did not disappear entirely, as we have already mentioned.


We should note, however, that it was with the sudden appearance of the Sumerian civilization - as early as the 5th millennium BC - that the long era of the tribal, egalitarian society of the Neolithic came to an end between 4,000 and 3,000 B.C. Archaeologists and anthropologists have documented that the early society of Mesopotamia had been guided by women and had a Goddess as deity.

 

The end of female leadership can be deducted from the following quote in “In the Wake of the Goddesses” by Frymer-Kenski:

The dynasty of Kish was founded by Enmebaragesi, a contemporary of Gilgamesh. The name breaks down as follows: enetik - eme - ebakin - aragikor - ageriko - ezi which can be transliterated to “from that time on - female - harvest - lustful - notorious - to domesticate” or “From that time on the lustful, notorious harvest female was domesticated.”

This “name” tells us in no uncertain terms that the time of the Goddess was on the decline, because male domination had arrived with the Sumerians. Sargon, conversely, attributed all of his successes to the Goddess.


Now, let’s come back to the clues that the French words for 80 and 90 (quatrevingts, quatre-vingt-dix) carry the traces of a vanished ancient European vigesimal arithmetic, put together with the fact that the first Semitic king came from the “North” and that the “Semitic influence” of the Goddess worshipping Sargon accelerated the development of the Sumerian culture toward something more than being economic slaves to the Gods. Considering these factors, we might wish to reconsider the term “Semitic”.


Indeed, the religion of the ancient Sumerians has left its mark on the entire Middle East. Not only are its temples and ziggurats scattered about the region, but the literature, cosmogony and rituals influenced their neighbors to such an extent that we can see echoes of Sumer in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition today. In other words, most of what we consider to be Semitic is actually Sumerian written in the Semitic Akkadian language. Undoubtedly, those peoples who today are called Semitic by virtue of having had a name assigned to them from the Bible, are actually descendants of the Sumerians, and their “Semitic language” was imposed on them by Sargon of Akkad who was clearly not one of the “black-headed people”.


The linguistic affinity of Sumerian has not yet been successfully established.


Ural-Altaic (which includes Turkish), Dravidian, Brahui, Bantu, and many other groups of languages have been compared with Sumerian, but no theory has gained
common acceptance. 358


358 Arno Poebel, Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik (1923), partly out of date, but still the only full grammar of Sumerian in all its stages; Adam Falkenstein, Grammatik der Sprache Gudeas von Lagas, 2 vol. (1949-50), a very thorough grammar of the New Sumerian dialect, and Das Sumerische (1959), a very brief but comprehensive survey of the Sumerian language; Cyril J. Gadd, Sumerian Reading Book (1924), outdated but the only grammatical tool in English; Samuel N. Kramer, The Sumerians (1963), provides a general introduction to Sumerian civilization.

 


Sargon Reprise


Sargon became king over all of southern Mesopotamia, the first great ruler for whom the Semitic tongue - not Sumerian - known as Akkadian was natural from birth. This suggests to us that Sargon was not Sumerian, but that he was the bringer of a new language to Mesopotamia, imposing it on the peoples there in the same way that Spanish was imposed on South and Central America, and English has been adopted all over the world as a result of American domination of trade.

 

The language issue is our clue as to who relates to whom. The Afro-Asiatic language phylum has six distinct branches including Ancient Egyptian, which was known in its last years as Coptic, and which became extinct in the seventeenth century. The other five branches are Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic. The Semitic language group is subdivided into an extinct Eastern branch, Akkadian, spoken by Sargon, and a Western branch with two sub-branches, Central and South. The Central group consists of Aramaic, Canaanite, and Arabic.

 

The Southern group consists of South Arabian and Ethiopic. And here is the curiosity:

one of the other branches of the Afro-Asiatic language tree is Berber, with sub-branches of Guanche - spoken by the original Canary Islanders; East Numidian, which is Old Libyan, and Berber proper.

Now, you ask, what is the oddity?

 

 


The Guanche language


Some experts tell us that the Guanches must have come from the neighboring African coast long ages before the Black and Arab “invaders” overran it. We are sagely informed that Mauritania was formerly inhabited by the,

“same ancient Iberian race which once covered all Western Europe: a people tall, fair and strong”.

Spain invaded, and most of the Guanches were wiped out by diseases to which they had no resistance due to their long isolation. It was over a hundred years before anyone attempted to record their language, customs, and what could be remembered of their history.

 

Friar Alonso de Espinosa of the Augustine Order of Preachers, writing in 1580, tells us:

…It is generally believed that these are the Elysian Fields of which Homer sings. The poet Virgil, in the 4th book of the Aeneid, mentions the great peak of this island, when he makes Mercury, sent by Jupiter, go to Carthage to undeceive Aeneas, and to encourage him so that he might not abandon the voyage to Italy which he had undertaken.

 

It has not been possible to ascertain the origin of the Guanches, or whence they came, for as the natives had no letters, they had no account of their origin or descent, although some tradition may have come down from father to son. […] The old Guanches say that they have an immemorial tradition that sixty people came to this island, but they know not whence they came. They gave their settlement the name, “The place of union of the son of the great one”.

 

Although they knew of God, and called Him by various names, they had no rites nor ceremonies nor words with which they might venerate Him. […] When the rains failed, they got together the sheep in certain places, where it was the custom to invoke the guardian of the sheep. Here they stuck a wand or lance in the ground, then they separated the lambs from the sheep, and placed the mothers round the lance, where they bleated. They believed that God was appeased by this ceremony, that he heard the bleating of the sheep and would send down the rain. …They knew that there was a hell, and they held that it was in the peak of Teyde [the volcanic mountain], and the devil was Guayota.


They were accustomed when a child was born, to call a woman whose duty it was, and she poured water over its head; and this woman thus contracted a relationship with the child’s parents, so that it was not lawful to marry her, or to treat her dishonestly. They know not whence they derived this custom or ceremony, only that it existed. It could not be a sacrament, for it was not performed as one, nor had the evangelic law been preached to them.[…]


The inviolable law was that if a warrior meeting a woman by chance in the road, or in any solitary place, who spoke to her or looked at her, unless she spoke first and asked for something, or who, in an inhabited place, used any dishonest words which could be proved, he should suffer death for it without appeal. Such was their discipline. […]


This people had very good and perfect features, and well-shaped bodies. They were of tall stature, with proportionate limbs. There were giants among them of incredible size… They only possessed and sowed barley and beans. … If they once had wheat, the seed had been lost… They also ate the flesh of sheep, goats, and pigs, and they fed on it by itself, without any other relish whatever… The flesh had to be half roasted because, as they said, it contained more substance in that way than if it was well roasted.


They counted the year by lunations… The lord did not marry with anyone of the lower orders, and if there was no one he could marry without staining the lineage, brothers were married to sisters.


They were wonderfully clever with counting. Although a flock was very numerous and came out of the yard or fold at a rush, they counted the sheep without opening their mouths or noting with their hands, and never made a mistake. 359

359 De Espinosa, Alonso, The Guanches of Tenerife, trans. by Sir Clements Markham (Nendeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus Repring 1972).

 

I’m sure that the reader can see that even though we have very little to go on, there are a couple of suggestive indicators recorded by the good friar. The first thing we note is the custom of driving a lance into the ground for the sheep to “call the God”. A memory of ante-diluvian technology, perhaps?


But more than this, the clues seem to indicate that what we call the “Semitic language” may actually have been a northern tongue, an Aryan language, adopted by peoples we think of as ethnically “Semitic” in modern terms but who, in ancient terms, were not Semitic at all.

 

 


The Rise of Sacrifice


Returning to Viracocha, what we learn about him was that he was a carver and shaper of humanity. He was a God of action, a creator and destroyer of worlds: the Shiva of the Andes. Before successfully creating the world of humans, Viracocha had annihilated previous worlds; first by fire and then again by flood. In short, for the Andeans, humanity emerged not from a utopian Garden of Eden - which is a Northern concept - but from the hard, living rock and water of the natural world: clay.

 

Viracocha had two faithful servants who he sent in opposite directions to generate a new race of humans.


In Cristobal de Molina’s version of the same myth, these two culture heroes are the Andean Adam and Eve: the primeval male-female pair who were the children of Viracocha. Unlike the theme of a prior Golden Age, the events of the myth begin only after a universal flood. The Spanish cleric Bernabe Cobo informs us that the original name for Tiahuanaco was Taypi Kala.

 

Taypi Kala meant “the stone in the center”; the natives ascribed this name to the site because they considered the city to be in,

“the center of the world, and that from there the world was repopulated after the flood”.

The peoples of the Andes had no known form of indigenous writing, so the evidence for their activities must come from other sources. The early Spanish chroniclers recorded what had been described to them about life in Inca times; their accounts include frequent references to “sacrifice” and “offering”. Some doubt has been expressed about these accounts, however, accusing the Europeans of a negative, Catholic point of view, suggesting that the chroniclers did not ask the right questions. However, pictorial evidence for sacrifice has long been known.

 

The Incas made little in the way of figurative art, but existing pre-Inca depictions give visual evidence for sacrifice. Examples of archaeological evidence are now accumulating in the data from recent excavations in a number of places. Most of the archaeological evidence for human sacrifice in the Andes - most clearly among the Inca and the Moche - has been discovered only recently.


For many people in the modern Western world, making a sacrifice means either giving without receiving or giving up something valuable for a cause that may benefit others. What seems to be evident about the process of sacrifice in primitive belief systems is that sacrifices of animals and humans were done for the greater good of the group - to appease the anger of the God and prevent disaster.

 

Blood was the symbol of life, of animation, of nourishment, the most important offering that could be given to the natural and supernatural beings. It was thought that the sacrificial nourishing of the “sacred beings” made life possible. It was also thought that the cosmos “ran” on this “nourishment”. It has been suggested that the number and violence of the sacrifices increased as the desperate Moche priests tried to appease the Gods. Unfortunately, such speculations do not fully answer the question as to why any human being ever thought that the death of another human being would satisfy the Gods in some way.


In artistic depictions, the Moche are seen to cut the throats of prisoners of war and then drink their blood. Afterwards, the bodies were dismembered. It’s hard to say what the purpose of these endless sacrifices might be. Perhaps the priests thought that they obtained power from drinking the blood. We are reminded of the Biblical injunction that “the blood is the life”, and the Hebrews were forbidden to drink it or to eat meat that had not been thoroughly bled. Perhaps this was because the blood - and the life in it - was supposed to be reserved for the God exclusively. Child sacrifice is a recurrent theme not only in the Andes but also in much of the world.


Returning now to our problem: Yahweh.

 

It seems that, like the Moche and the Aztecs, the Jewish priesthood began with terrifying cannibalistic rituals and sacrifices. Just picture the priest - kohane - standing before the worshippers spattered with dripping, stringy clots of blood, throwing basins of blood on the congregation to “cleanse” them, all the while the subliminal message being conveyed that, “if you don’t obey Yahweh, this is what he will do to you”!

 

This may have been what was taking place in the great Temple of Solomon which was very likely a displaced memory of a place so hated, the Temple of Hephaestus - the labyrinth - in Memphis, and was later transferred to the “labyrinth” at Crete. It was then brought to Palestine by the refugees from the eruption of Thera, and combined later with other tales of the cataclysm to produce some of the Old Testament and the rites of Judaism. We begin to understand why the labyrinth of Egypt was, according to Pliny, regarded with “extraordinary hatred” and why so many myths of a human eating Minotaur at the center circulated in the ancient world.


The idea of the ritual sacrifice of the king instead of thousands of virgins, children, or warriors, seems to be the result of the mingling of the Southern Sun God worship with the influence of the Northern Moon worshippers. This seems to be a distortion of the idea that the king was ruler by virtue of his “marriage” to the Goddess, or her representative, and that this “marriage” involved a shamanic death in order to be able to transduce the cosmic energies of benevolence and prosperity to the tribe or to defend the tribe against evil spirits.


The northern custom of a king who had lost his vigor voluntarily abdicating and being replaced by the “right heir” who could “marry the Goddess” was mixed with the sacrifice customs, and the result was that the priesthood had a weapon to wield over the monarch to keep him in line. Thus arose the idea of the “scape goat” king who was sacrificed in the labyrinth instead of maidens and warriors.

 

Herodotus tells us what seems to be an already garbled version of this mixing of the two ideas:

Being set free after the reign of the priest of Hephaistos, the Egyptians, since they could not live any time without a king, set up over them twelve kings, having divided all Egypt into twelve parts.

This may be the original story of Jacob and Esau and the 12 tribes.


This shift was also recorded in the myth of Theseus.


What seems to be so is that there was some sort of “object of power” at the center of the myth of the Sons of Aegyptus and the daughters of Danaus. It was a descendant of this “union” - Perseus - who “cleansed the temple” and restored the Goddess to her rightful place as depicted in the story of the slaying of Medusa, the freeing of Pegasus, and the rescue of Andromeda. But again, this is merely the assimilation of later events to the primal myth of Atlantis.
When we examine the evidence, we find many clues, but with the passage of time, the movements of people in migration and/or conquest, it is impossible to say with certainty just “who is on first”.

 

There is, of course, much more to this than the little bit I am able to include here. This will be dealt with in a future volume.


In the Bible the “wise king Solomon” is portrayed as “whoring after” the Tyrian fire and sun God Moloch/Molech. One has to wonder what this means considering the fact that there is no difference between Moloch and Yahweh when one digs beneath the surface.

 

Some “experts” suggest that the priest Melchizedek - who was the purported teacher of Abraham - was a priest of “Moloch”, and that the name means, “Righteous Moloch”.

 

However, that is a cross-conceptualization, and a somewhat sly way to trick the reader. If you are going to translate one word into English, you ought to translate the other. Malkiy, or Malak, means simply “king”. Tsedeq means “right” or “just” or benevolent. It carries the abstract suggestion of “prosperity”.


What seems to have happened, once again, is that a possible revelation of truth about our reality was co-opted and diverted by the denizens of hyperdimensional realities who do not wish their nature and agenda to be discerned.

 

In the standard method of disinformation, truth was mixed with lies in order to mislead and divert. Those who wish that everything was either clearly black or clearly white, do not take the time to patiently pick through the threads and separate them so as to discern the truth. My suggestion on this point is that the ancient Priesthood of Melchizedek was designated thus for the express purpose of distinguishing it from the worship of Moloch, the Fire God.


The apparent co-opting of names and terms and symbolism throughout the ages continues. In the present day, there are many who claim to be “of the Order of Melchizedek” who are in fact, not.


Some experts quote Paul’s remark from Hebrews 9:22 where it says:

“under the Law almost everything is purified by means of blood, and without the shedding of blood there is neith