Sunday, October 27, 2019

More to the Iliad and the Odyssey than meets the eye?


Homer: The Iliad And The Odyssey Box Set    -     Edited By: Robert Fagles
    By: Homer, Bernard Knox

 
by
 
Damien F. Mackey
  
 
 
 
Scholars variously find Homer’s classics to be replete with astronomical detail,
or bursting with biblical allusions, or serving as accurate navigational guides. 
Perhaps they encompass all of this and more.
 
 
 
 
 
I must admit to having been completely enthralled by Florence and Kenneth Wood’s:
 
Homer's Secret Iliad
 
The Epic of the Nights Skies Decoded.
 

 Homer's Secret Iliad: The Epic of the Night Skies Decoded: WOOD, Florence and Kenneth
 
According to one review of this book:
 
Not New Age Kookery
 
Homer's Secret Iliad is rich in the elaboration of its hypotheses, such as its discussion of the gods and goddesses as planets, able to wander throughout the ecliptic band of the skies and, thus, influence the fate of the mortals, who are the fixed stars, and hence fixed in their actions. The book provides dozens of examples to bolster each of its arguments, which are extensive. Florence and Kenneth Wood spent years, following the death of Edna Leigh in 1991, working through her hypothesis, and fitting [hundreds] …. of examples into the architecture which Leigh had created.
 
In the introduction to the book, Kenneth Wood describes the cold reception received by himself and his wife, when they presented their analysis to establishment academia. Fortunately, they came in contact with serious scholars, such as Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deschend, authors of the 1983 Hamlet's Mill, who are themselves investigating how the knowledge of precession shaped ancient civilizations; their studies have already pushed the calendar of civilization much farther back than the oligarchy would like.
 
Work of this sort is very different from the school of outright New Age kooks, who have many popular books currently in circulation, which present the evidence of ancient societies' knowledge of precession and astronomy, as magical, mysterious, or even coming from aliens from outer space. (One might call this the "Edgar Cayce" school of history, after the agent who claimed that his knowledge of the extreme antiquity of Egypt came from his ability to "channel" the knowledge directly from ancient Egyptians.) Instead, Homer's Secret Iliad joins the growing list of serious contributions in many disciplines piling up each year, which demonstrate that mankind has advanced, through his powers of cognition and discovery, throughout tens of millennium--rather than stumbling from one cultish civilization to the next over the last 2,500 years. ….
 
[End of quote]
 
One ought to acquire and read this terrific book.
 
My own little contribution has been of a biblical nature, regarding mainly The Odyssey:
 
 
 
 
 
this fortuitous apparent connection (Job and Tobit) seeming also to support my view that the prophet Job was Tobias, son of Tobit. See e.g. my article:
 
Job's Life and Times
 
 
Much earlier:
 
St Jerome saw resemblance of Tobit to Homer's 'The Odyssey'
 
 
Felice Vinci (in Athens Journal of Mediterranean Studies - Volume 3, Issue 2 – Pages 163-186) has, for his part, argued for:
 
The Nordic Origins of the Iliad and Odyssey: An Up-to-date Survey of the Theory
 
The Northern Features of Homer’s World
 
Northern Features of Climate, Clothes, Food, and Vessels
 
Homer’s world presents northern features. The climate is normally cold and unsettled, very different from what we expect in the traditional Mediterranean setting. The Iliad dwells upon violent storms (i.e., in Il. IV: 275-278, XI: 305-308, XIII: 795-799), torrential rain and disastrous floods (Il. V: 87-91, XI: 492-495, XIII: 37-141, XVI: 384-388), and often mentions snow (Il. XII, 156-158), even on lowlands (Il. XII: 278-286, X: 6-8, XV: 170-171; XIX: 357-358, III: 222). Fog is found everywhere, e.g., in the "misty sea" (Od. V, 281), and also in Troy (Il. XVII: 368), Scherie (Od. VII, 41-42), Ithaca (Od. XIII: 189), the Cyclopes’ land (Od. IX: 144), and so on.
 
As regards the sun, the Iliad hardly ever refers to its heat or rays; the Odyssey never mentions the sun warmth in Ithaca, though it refers to the sailing season. As to the seasons, there is a parallel between Homer, who mentions only three seasons: winter, spring and summer, and Tacitus’s Germans, for whom "winter, spring and summer have meaning and names, but they are unaware of the name and produce of autumn" (Germania, 26: 4). Vol. 3, No. 2 Vinci: The Nordic Origins of the Iliad and Odyssey... Clothes described in the two poems are consistent with a northern climate and the finds of the Nordic Bronze age. In the episode of the Odyssey in which Telemachus and Peisistratus are guests at Menelaus’s house in Sparta, the two young men get ready for lunch after a bath: "They wore thick cloaks and tunics" (Od. IV: 50–51). The same is said of Odysseus when he is a guest at Alcinous’s house (Od. VIII: 455-457). Similarly, Nestor’s cloak is "double and large; a thick fur stuck out" (Il. X: 134) and, when Achilles leaves for Troy, his mother thoughtfully prepares him a trunk "filled with tunics, wind-proof thick cloaks and blankets" (Il. XVI: 223-224). Those "thick cloaks and tunics" can be compared to the clothes of a man found in a Danish Bronze Age tomb: "The woolen tunic comes down to the knees and a belt ties it at the waist. He also wears a cloak, which a bronze buckle pins on his shoulder" (Bibby 1966: 245). Also Odysseus wears "a golden buckle" (Od. XIX: 226) on his cloak, and "a shining tunic around his body like the peel on a dry onion" (Od. XIX: 232-233); all of this fit what Tacitus says of Germanic clothes: "The suit for everyone is a cape with a buckle (…) The richest are distinguished by a suit (...) which is close-fitting and tight around each limb" (Germania 17: 1).
 
Regarding food, it’s remarkable that fruit, vegetables, olive oil, olives, figs never appear on the table of Homer’s heroes. Their diet was based on meat (beef, pork, goat, and game), much like that of the Vikings, who "ate meat in large quantities, so much so that they seemed to regard the pleasure of eating meat as one of the joys of life" (Pörtner 1996: 207). Homer’s characters had a hearty meal in the morning: "In the hut Odysseus and his faithful swineherd lit the fire and prepared a meal at sunrise" (Od. XVI: 1–2), like Tacitus’s Germans: "As soon as they wake up (…) they eat; everyone has his own chair and table" (Germania 22: 1). This individual table (trapeza) is typical of the Homeric world, too (Od. I: 138).
 
One should also note that, while pottery tableware was prevalent in Greece, the Nordic world was marked by "a stable and highly advanced bronze founding industry" (Fischer-Fabian 1985: 90), which squares with Homer’s poems, which mention only vessels made of metal: "A maid came to pour water from a beautiful golden jug into a silver basin" (Od. I, 136-137); wine was poured "into gold goblets" (III: 472) and "gold glasses" (I: 142). When a vessel felt to the ground in Odysseus’ palace, instead of breaking it "boomed" (bombēse, Od. XVIII: 397). Also lamps (XIX: 34), cruets (VI: 79), and urns (Il. XXIII: 253) were made of gold. As to the poor, Eumaeus the herdsman pours wine for his guests "into a wooden cup" (kissybion, Od. XVI: 52), like the cup Odysseus gives Polyphemus (Od. IX: 346). Wood, of course, is the cheapest material in the north (Estonia and Latvia have an ancient tradition of wooden beer tankards). Athens Journal of Mediterranean Studies April 2017
 
Nordic Customs and Archaism of Homer’s World
 
There are many remarkable parallels between the Homeric Achaeans and the Nordic world, in the fields of their social relations, interests, lifestyles, and so on, despite the time gap.
E.g., Homer’s habit of giving things and slaves a value in "oxen" – a new vase, decorated with flowers, was worth "the price of an ox" (Il. XXIII, 885); a big tripod was worth twelve oxen (Il. XXIII: 703); Ulysses’ nurse Eurycleia had cost twenty oxen (Od. I: 431), and so on – is comparable to the fact that, during the first Viking Age, cows were still used "as the current monetary unit" (Pörtner 1996: 199). A statement from Tacitus bridges these two distant epochs: "Cattle and oxen (...) are the Germans’ only and highly valued wealth" (Germania, 5, 1). Besides, the prominence of oxen in the economy of the Homeric world is another argument in favour of the Nordic setting, while in the Greek world other kinds of livestock are more important (one should also consider how important were beef and pork in Achaeans’ diet).
 
Still on Tacitus, Karol Modzelewski, by quoting a custom reported in Germania, 11, writes: "The mention of assembly decisions taken by a peculiar acclamation method, consisting in brandishing spears, is confirmed by the codifications, dating back to the 12th century, of the Norwegian juridical traditions, where this rite is called vapnaták" (Modzelewski 2008: 33). It is remarkable that the custom of going armed with spear to the assembly is found in Homer: Telemachus "went to the assembly, he held the bronze spear" (Od. II: 10). Thus a custom dating back to the Homeric world was still present in Viking Norway of the 12th century.
 
One should also note that Odysseus’ ship had a removable mast, a feature typical of all Homeric vessels: both the Iliad (I: 434, 480) and Odyssey (II: 424, VIII: 52) confirm that setting up and taking down the mast were customary at the beginning and the end of each mission. This feature was also typical of the Viking ships, which lowered the mast whenever there was the risk of sudden gusts or ice formation, which could cause the ship to capsize. Another structural feature typical of Viking ships, the flat keel, is found also in Homeric ones, as one can infer from the passage narrating Ulysses’ arrival in Ithaca, where the Phaeacian ship "mounted the beach by half the length" (Od. XIII: 114).
 
Another peculiar custom of the Homeric heroes is that they got off the chariots and left them aside during the duels: e.g., the Trojan hero Asius used to fight "on foot in front of his puffing horses, which the charioteer kept all the time behind him" (Il. XIII: 385–386). Scholars agree that this way of using the chariots seems to be absurd and senseless: "No one has ever fought like the heroes of Homer. They are led to battle in chariot, then they jump off to fight against the enemy. All that we know about the battle chariots in Eastern Mediterranean protests against this view of things" (Vidal-Naquet 2013: 573). However, what looks odd in the Mediterranean fits the Nordic world: according to Diodorus of Sicily, the Celts "employed two-horse chariots, each with his coachman and warrior, and, when they confronted each other in war, Vol. 3, No. 2 Vinci: The Nordic Origins of the Iliad and Odyssey... they used to throw the javelin, then they came down from the chariot and fought with the sword" (Historical Library 5: 29). Still Diodorus writes that "Brittany is said to be inhabited by native tribes conforming to their ancient way of life. In war they use chariots, like the ancient Greek heroes in the Trojan war" (Historical Library 5: 21). Julius Caesar adds other details upon the Britains: "When they have worked themselves in between the troops of horse, leap from their chariots and engage on foot. The charioteers in the mean time withdraw some little distance from the battle, and so place themselves with the chariots that, if their masters are overpowered by the number of the enemy, they may have a ready retreat to their own troops. Thus they display in battle the speed of horse, together with the firmness of infantry" (De bello Gallico IV: 33).
So, the chariot fightings narrated by the Iliad are not absurdities due to the supposed ignorance of the poet; instead, Homer must be considered the only extraordinary witness of the Nordic Bronze Age, whose archaic customs survived in Britain until Caesar’s age.
This confirms what Stuart Piggott writes: "The nobility of the [Homeric] hexameters should not deceive us into thinking that the Iliad and the Odyssey are other than the poems of a largely barbarian Bronze Age or Early Iron Age Europe. There is no Minoan or Asiatic blood in the veins of the Grecian Muses (...) They dwell remote from the Cretan-Mycenaean world and in touch with the European elements of Greek speech and culture (...) Behind Mycenaean Greece (...) lies Europe" (Piggott 1968: 126). Besides, according to Geoffrey Kirk, the Homeric poems "were created (...) by a poet, or poets, who were completely unaware of the techniques of writing," (Kirk 1989: 78) and "a recent linguistic argument suggests that the Homeric tmesis, i.e. the habit of separating adverbial and prepositional elements that were later combined into compound verbs belongs to a stage of language anterior to that represented in the Linear B tablets. If so, that would take elements of Homer’s language back more than five hundred years before his time" (Kirk 1989: 88-89).
 
That’s why "there is an absolute difference both in extension and quality between the Mycenaean society and Iliad’s" (Codino 1974: IX): Homer’s civilization appears more archaic than the Mycenaean one. There is also the odd case of Dionysus, who is an important god both in the Mycenaean period and in classical Greece, but is almost unknown in Homer: Homer’s world, therefore, probably preceded the Mycenaean civilisation, instead of following it. ….
 
 

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Fantastic Antikythera mechanism




 

 



Did the Greeks have contact with north America?

Gavin Menzies (in The Lost Empire of Atlantis) claims that the “Minoans” certainly did, travelling, as he tells us, as far as mineral rich Lake Superior.

 

I (Damien Mackey) think that the:

 

So-called "Minoans" were the Philistines

 

https://www.academia.edu/40663043/So-called_Minoans_were_the_Philistines

 

Gavin Menzies also discusses the amazing Antikythera device as evidence that the ancients had sophisticated astronomical and navigational knowledge.

 

Cretan Greek researcher Minas Tsikritsis “maintains that an object from the Minoan Age discovered in 1898 in the Paleokastro site on Crete, was in fact “a cast for building a mechanism that functioned as an analog computer to calculate solar and lunar eclipses”.”:

http://atlantipedia.ie/samples/tag/plimpton-322/

 

Minas Tsikritsis, a native of Crete, is a Professor of Computer Science and noted Researcher of Aegean Scripts. Included in his work is his claim to have deciphered Linear A and the Phaistos Disk, one side of which appears to be a form of sea shanty.

Gavin Menzies quotes[780.319] Tsikritsis’ belief that the Minoans had mathematical knowledge equal, if not superior, to that of the Babylonians and Egyptians.

However, this claim has been seriously challenged by a recent study of a 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet known as Plimpton 322. The tablet was discovered around a century ago in what is now southern Iraq. Australian scientists from the University of New South Wales, Sydney have now demonstrated that the tablet is the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table, predating the Greek astronomer Hipparchus by over a millennium(b). These claims have generated some considerable debate (c).

Additionally, based on an analysis of Plutarch’s “On the Apparent Face in the Orb of the Moon,” Tsikritsis believes that the Greeks had contact with North America, at least as far back as 86 AD!(a) *Some time later he expanded on the idea in a paper published on the Researchgate website(d).*

(a) http://canada.greekreporter.com/2012/04/21/researcher-claims-ancient-greeks-made-it-to-america-before-columbus/

(b) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/science/trigonometry-babylonian-tablet.html

(c) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/dont-fall-for-babylonian-trigonometry-hype/

*(d) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321319687/download*

 


Antikythera Mechanism


Published May 31, 2010

The Antikythera Mechanism is one of the most remarkable artefacts ever discovered. It was found by sponge divers off the coast of the Aegean island of Antikythera just over a century ago. The device consists of four fragments with a total of 30 bronze gears.

 

Very little intensive investigation was done until the early 1950’s when Derek J. de Solla Price (1922-1983) a professor at Yale University undertook a study of the Mechanism. His conclusions were published in a number of papers including Gears from the Greeks, now available as a pdf file(r).

 

It was originally dated to the 1st century BC and had been ascribed by some to the Greek astronomer Hipparchos, but recent research by Professor Alexander Jones of New York’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World has pushed this back to the 2nd century BC(b).

Jones dismissed as ‘desperate’ a suggestion by Dr. Jo Marchant, that the mechanism had been part of a timepiece that possibly controlled the sequential appearance of figures to indicate seasons. Marchant is the author of Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s First Computer[1460].

 

A report(n) published in November 2014 revised further the date of its creation back to 205 BC. This modification includes the suggestion that the mathematics upon which the Mechanism were based were Babylonian rather than Greek. The level of ancient Greek celestial knowledge is also being reappraised in the light of a recent study of a decorated cup of a type known as a skyphos(o).

 

The superiority of Babylonian mathematics was supported by a recent study of a 3,700-year-old tablet known as Plimpton 322. The tablet was discovered around a century ago in what is now southern Iraq. Australian scientists from the University of New South Wales, Sydney have now demonstrated that the tablet is the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table, predating the Greek astronomer Hipparchos by over a millennium(z).

The Mechanism is apparently a clockwork device for calculating astronomical events. A number of models have been built(c), based on the evidence of the fragments discovered and further study is continuing. Even Lego was used by designer Andrew Carol to build a replica of the mechanism(e)(d). Furthermore, in November 2011 Hublot, the Swiss watch manufacturer, revealed(h)  that they had designed a wristwatch based on the Antikythera Mechanism.

 

In 2008, it was announced that writing engraved on the housing indicated the locations of athletic games; “The Games dial shows six competitions, four Panhellenic (Olympics, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean) plus Naa (Dodona) and very probably Halieia (Rhodes)(w).”

 

At same time, a possible connection with the renowned Archimedes was being posited by some commentators(f). An even more remarkable feature was the clever use of two gears, one positioned slightly off-centre in relation to the other, allowing the mechanism to track the apparent speeding up and slowing down of the moon each month, resulting from its elliptical rather than circular orbit(g).

 

The question that has now arisen is whether “It is possible that the mechanism is based on heliocentric principles, rather than the then-dominant geocentric view espoused by Aristotle and others.”(ab)

 

Dr. Minas Tsikritsis, a Cretan researcher, maintains that an object from the Minoan Age discovered in 1898 in the Paleokastro site on Crete, was in fact “a cast for building a mechanism that functioned as an analog computer to calculate solar and lunar eclipses.”(i) This was nearly a millennium and a half before the Antikythera Mechanism was manufactured, which would make it Minoan.



.... 

Commentators such as David Hatcher Childress see the Antikythera device as just another piece of evidence of more complex scientific knowledge among early cultures than is usually accepted and that by extension the possibility of a technologically advanced Atlantis[620].

 

In his 2014 book, The Stonhenge Codes[977], Professor David P.Gregg, has devoted an appendix to the sophistication of the mechanism, in which he discusses the functions of individual shafts and gears. His objective is to show that its complexity is comparable to that of Stonehenge and that our view of early Greek mathematics and astronomy requires revision. His book can be read online(j).

 

*A January 2019 article elaborates further on the Mechanism’s function as a predictor of possible eclipses(ae). It may be worth recalling that in the 1960’s, Gerald Hawkins suggested that the 56 Aubrey Holes at Stonehenge were also eclipse predictors[1613], an idea endorsed by Fred Hoyle[1614].(af)*

 

Opus Gemini, a trilogy of novels by Andreas Möhn, based on the Antikythera Mechanism was published on Kindle format in September 2013 and is also available in other formats. Further information and updates are available on his website(m).

The following website(a), will keep you up to date on related developments.

New Scientist announced on June 4th 2014(k) that plans have been made to dive again to the Antikythera wreck in the hope of finding a second ‘mechanism’, using a ‘wearable submarine’. The Sept/Oct season of 2014 ended with evidence that the ship had been up to 50 metres long, making it thelargest ancient shipwreck ever discovered(l).

The February 2015 edition of Smithsonian Magazine gives an up-todate review of the scientific studies of the Mechanism(p). In June 2016 the Smithsonian returned to the subject with an article(u) devoted to the extensive writing, some less than a millimetre tall, revealed by CT scans on virtually every surface. This recent study indicates that the Mechanism also appears to have an astrological purpose! These investigations also pointed to the Aegean island of Rhodes as its place of manufacture. ….


Moses distorted by Greeks in Dionysus


Image result for murdock moses dionysus
 
 
by
 
Damien F. Mackey
 
 
 
So many mythological characters, deities, so-called founders of religion and philosophies, were based upon the immensely important Hebrew prophet and Lawgiver, Moses.
Even certain real historical kings were greatly influenced by Moses, and some had Moses-like legends building up around them in later centuries.
 
 
That is by no means the perspective on Moses, though, as adopted by independent scholar of comparative religion and mythology, Acharya S, aka D.M. Murdock, according to one of whose books on Moses he is based on the Greek god, Dionysus/Bacchus.
 
The Moses-Dionysus connection is a 15-page ebook/PDF highlighting the commonalities between the Hebrew lawgiver and the Greek god, also known as Bacchus. This ebook represents an adaptation of the forthcoming book Did Moses Exist? The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver.
 
Why have scholars since the early 17th century - many of them Christian theologians - composed studies of correspondences between Moses and Dionysus/Bacchus?
What are these parallels, and where do they come from? What are some of the primary sources?
Discover who was really drawn from the Nile and and tamed the Red Sea!
 


 
"The existence of Moses as well as the veracity of the Exodus story is disputed amongst archaeologists and Egyptologists, with experts in the field of biblical criticism citing logical inconsistencies, new archaeological evidence, historical evidence, and related origin myths in Canaanite culture."
"Moses," Wikipedia.org
 
"We cannot be sure that Moses ever lived because there are no traces of his earthly existence outside of tradition."
Dr. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian (2)
 
"On Moses as the putative 'founder of the Israelite religion,' …Susan Niditch, [in] Ancient Israelite Religion…, barely mentions the possibility of a historical Moses..."
Dr. William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Known & When Did They Know It? (99)
 
The Moses-Dionysus Connection includes commentary spanning the centuries from some of the best minds of Europe and America, such as Vossius, Bochart, Patrick, Huet, Voltaire, Edwards, Dupuis, Hort, Le Brun, Clarke, Higgins and Taylor.
Famed French philosopher Voltaire made the following astounding remarks way back in the 18th century - and he wasn't the first! Why don't we know these facts? Said Voltaire:
 
The ancient poets have placed the birth of Bacchus in Egypt; he is exposed on the Nile and it is from that event that he is named Mises by the first Orpheus, which, in Egyptian, signifies "saved from the waters"…
 
He is brought up near a mountain of Arabia called Nisa [Nysa], which is believed to be Mount Sinai. It is pretended that a goddess ordered him to go and destroy a barbarous nation and that he passed through the Red Sea on foot, with a multitude of men, women, and children. Another time the river Orontes suspended its waters right and left to let him pass, and the Hydaspes did the same. He commanded the sun to stand still; two luminous rays proceeded from his head.
He made a fountain of wine spout up by striking the ground with his thyrsus, and engraved his laws on two tables of marble. He wanted only to have afflicted Egypt with ten plagues, to be the perfect copy of Moses.
 
Find out more about this centuries-long scholarship that has been buried and hidden.
 
[End of quotes]
 
For my own Egyptian identifications of Moses as a legal official in Egypt, see e.g. my article:
 
Moses a Judge in Egypt
 
 
 
For Moses the Lawgiver appropriated by the Greeks (Spartans), see my article:
 
Moses and Lycurgus
 
 
 
Acharya S, aka D.M. Murdock has adopted the typical view according to which the Hebrews were inevitably the beneficiaries of the wisdom, literature, law, myth and folklore of the pagans – even if this means subordinating renowned Hebrew personages to fanciful gods and goddesses.
 
Thus I would have to share Hans-Georg Lundahl’s lack of enthusiasm for Murdock’s wild thesis: http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2012/11/so-dionysus-was-copy-of-moses-may-one.html
 
So, Dionysus was a Copy of Moses, may One Presume?

Acharya S (a k a D. M. Murdock) does it again. And so presumable she will be doing for some time, I do not want her to stand uncontradicted though.

Here she quotes Voltaire, so the following is my quote of Voltaire via Acharya:*
 
The ancient poets have placed the birth of Bacchus in Egypt; he is exposed on the Nile and it is from that event that he is named Mises by the first Orpheus, which, in Egyptian, signifies "saved from the waters"… He is brought up near a mountain of Arabia called Nisa [Nysa], which is believed to be Mount Sinai. It is pretended that a goddess ordered him to go and destroy a barbarous nation and that he passed through the Red Sea on foot, with a multitude of men, women, and children. Another time the river Orontes suspended its waters right and left to let him pass, and the Hydaspes did the same. He commanded the sun to stand still; two luminous rays proceeded from his head. He made a fountain of wine spout up by striking the ground with his thyrsus, and engraved his laws on two tables of marble. He wanted only to have afflicted Egypt with ten plagues, to be the perfect copy of Moses.


OK. Possible. Let us take chronology. Dionysus is a Greek divinity so recent that Homer (c. 800 BC he wrote Iliad and Odyssey) does not know him. That is well after Moses. Time enough for the old Hebrews to remember him correctly and for Pagans to remember him wrong.

I have previously reasoned or guessed that Deukalion and Pyrrha (the Flood surviving childless old couple in Greek Mythology) are based on:

1) Noah and Family (Flood survivors)
2) Abraham and Sarah (a so far childless old couple when visited by three angels who announced also the coming destruction of Sodom)
3) Lot and two daughters (hospitable survivors of a disaster similar to the Flood, though geographically limited, and faced after being saved with some conundrum about how to repeople the world (in Genesis it is only an imagined conundrum, imagined by the two daughters who thought the world had been destroyed but for them: when they soaked their father drunk he made them pregnant with Moab and Ammon).

If Orpheus (supposing Orpheus the husband of Eurydice to be the one to whom Voltaire referred as to "the first Orpheus") said such things about Dionysus, he might have similarily been getting the story of Moses in a distorted fashion.

I think Pagans had a reason to distort the stories. Step one, they leave out things they do not want to believe. Step two, they put in things, preferrably from stories already known and which may well be true ones too, to fill the gaps in the story.

What is left out in the Deukalion and Pyrrha story? The Miracle of Sarah's pregnancy and the fact that Sodomy was the third and final of the Sins leading God to decide the destruction.

The first of these woud to a Pagan, used to judging hopes and fears after how things usually go, as a foolhardy miracle to hope for and a stupidity to believe in.

As to the second, since the time of Hercules (reputed a lover of Iolaus), Greeks had more and more been lenient on sodomy, if not in legislation at least in talking about peopple outside their own jurisdiction.

Now, Voltaire analysed himself that the one thing left out from the story of Dionysus, if a copy from that of Moses, are the ten plagues. Not quite left out though. Pentheus would in such a case echo the Pharao. But in the main yes.

Reason? Well, Moses had argued that the Pharao insulted the law of the one God whose chosen people the Israelites were (as the Catholics are today, by the way, though with other duties to those outside, since that is indeed for all nations).

Would that not have struck a false note with people who believed in many gods and in equal or nicely graduated degrees of favour by the gods?

And furthermore, the Israelites were described as being held as slaves: those being the chosen people might very well have struck a Pagan who believed slaves were such by nature or divine decision as very awkward to believe or accept.
 

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Some Moses-like myths







 Albert Einstein: What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, ... | Citatis


by
 
Damien F. Mackey
 
 
 
 
Astour believes that Moses, a hero of the Hebrew scriptures, shares
"some cognate features" with Danaos (or Danaus), hero of Greek legend.
 
 
 
 
Law and Government
 
The great Lawgiver in the Bible, and hence in Hebrew history, was Moses, substantially the author of the Torah (Law). But the history books tell us that the Torah was probably dependent upon the ‘law code’ issued by the Babylonian king, Hammurabi (dated to the first half of the C18th BC).
I shall discuss this historical anomaly a little further on.
 
For Egyptian identifications of Moses as a legal official in Egypt, see e.g. my article:
 
Moses a Judge in Egypt
 
 
 
For Moses the Lawgiver appropriated by the Greeks (Spartans), see my article:
 
Moses and Lycurgus
 
 
 
The Egyptians may have corrupted the legend of the baby Moses in the bulrushes so that now it became the goddess Isis who drew the baby Horus from the Nile and had him suckled by Hathor (the goddess in the form of a cow - the Egyptian personification of wisdom). In the original story, of course, baby Moses was drawn from the water by an Egyptian princess, not a goddess, and was weaned by Moses' own mother (Exodus 2:5-9).
Anyway, Moses became for the Egyptians Hor-mes, meaning 'son of Hathor', which legendary person the Greeks eventually absorbed into their own pantheon as Hermes, the winged messenger god. [The Roman version of Hermes is Mercury]
 
Could both the account of the rescue of the baby Moses in the Book of Exodus, and the Egyptian version of it, be actually based upon a Mesopotamian original, as the textbooks say; based upon the story of King Sargon of Akkad in Mesopotamia? Sargon tells, "in terms reminiscent of Moses, Krishna and other great men", that [as quoted by G. Roux, Ancient Iraq, Penguin Books, 1964, p. 152]:
 
.… My changeling mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose not over me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me as his son and reared me ….
 
Given that Sargon is conventionally dated to the C24th BC, and Moses about a millennium later, it would seem inevitable that the Hebrew version, and the Egyptian one, must be imitations of the Mesopotamian one. Such is what the ‘history’ books say, at least, despite the fact that the extant Sargon legend is very late (C7th BC); thought, though, to have been based upon an earlier Mesopotamian original. See my article:
 
Did Sargon of Akkad influence the Exodus account of the baby Moses?
 
 
For Sargon of Akkad as a possible biblical character, see e.g. my article:
 
Nimrod a "mighty man"
 
 
 
 
What is more certain and accurate, I think, is Dean Hickman re-dating of King Hammurabi of Babylon to the time of Solomon (mid-C10th BC), re-identifying Hammurabi's older contemporary, Shamsi-Adad I, as king David's Syrian foe, Hadadazer (2 Samuel 10:16).
I have been able to take this further since in articles such as:
 
Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim as Contemporaries of Solomon
 
 
According to this new scenario, Hammurabi well post-dated Moses and could not possibly have influenced the Torah (Law).
 
(a) Greek and Phoenician 'Moses-like Myths'
 
M. Astour believes that Moses, a hero of the Hebrew scriptures, shares "some cognate features" with Danaos (or Danaus), hero of Greek legend. He gives his parallels as follows [Hellenosemitica, p. 99]:
 
Moses grows up at the court of the Egyptian king as a member of the royal family, and subsequently flees from Egypt after having slain an Egyptian - as Danaos, a member of the Egyptian ruling house, flees from the same country after the slaying of the Aigyptiads which he had arranged. The same number of generations separates Moses from Leah the "wild cow" and Danaos from the cow Io.
 
My comment: The above parallel might even account for how the Greeks managed to confuse the land of Ionia (Io) with the land of Israel in the case of the earliest philosophers:
 
Joseph as Thales: Not an "Hellenic Gotterdamerung" but Israelite Wisdom
 
 
Astour continues (op. cit., pp. 99-100):
 
Still more characteristic is that both Moses and Danaos find and create springs in a waterless region; the story of how Poseidon, on the request of the Danaide Amymona, struck out with his trident springs from the Lerna rock, particularly resembles Moses producing a spring from the rock by the stroke of his staff.
 
A ‘cow’ features also in the legend of Cadmus, son of Agenor, king of Tyre upon the disappearance of his sister Europa, who was sent by his father together with his brothers Cilix and Phoenix to seek her with instructions not to return without her. Seeking the advice of the oracle at Delphi, Cadmus was told to settle at the point where a cow, which he would meet leaving the temple, would lie down. The cow led him to the site of Thebes (Greek and Egyptian cities by that name).
There he built the citadel of Cadmeia.
 
Cadmus married Harmonia, the daughter of Ares, god of war, and Aphrodite and, according to the legend, was the founder of the House of Oedipus]
Astour believes that "even more similar features" may be discovered if one links these accounts to the Ugaritic (Phoenicio-Canaanite) poem of Dan’el, which he had previously identified as "the prototype of the Danaos myth" (p. 100):
 
The name of Aqht, the son of Danel, returns as Qehat, the grandfather of Moses. The name of the locality Mrrt, where Aqht was killed, figures in the gentilic form Merarî as the brother of Qehat in the Levite genealogy. The name of P?t, the daughter of Danel and the devoted sister of Aqht, is met in the Moses story as Pû'ã, a midwife who saved the life of the new-born Moses. The very name of Moses, in the feminine form Mšt, is, in the Ugaritic poem, the first half of Danel's wife's name, while the second half of her name, Dnty, corresponds to the name of Levi's sister Dinah.
 
Astour had already explained how the biblical story of the Rape of Dinah (Genesis 34) was "analogous to the myth of the bloody wedding of her namesakes, the Danaides".
He continues on here with his fascinating Greco-Israelite parallels:
 
Dân, the root of the names Dnel, Dnty (and also Dinah and Danaos), was the name of a tribe whose priests claimed to descend directly from Moses (Jud. 18:30); and compare the serpent emblem of the tribe of Dan with the serpent staff of Moses and the bronze serpent he erected. …Under the same name - Danaë - another Argive heroine of the Danaid stock is thrown into the sea in a chest with her new-born son - as Moses in his ark (tébã) - and lands on the serpent-island of Seriphos (Heb. šãrâph, applied i.a. to the bronze serpent made by Moses). Moses, like Danel, is a healer, a prophet, a miracle-worker - cf. Danel's staff (mt) which he extends while pronouncing curses against towns and localities, quite like Moses in Egypt; and especially, like Danel, he is a judge….
 
(b) Roman 'Moses-like Myth'
 
The Romans further corrupted the story of the infant Moses, following on probably from the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Phoenicians and Greeks. I refer to the account of Romulus (originally Rhomus) and Remus, thought to have founded the city of Rome in 753 BC. Both the founders and the date are quite mythical. The Romans may have taken an approximate form of the Egyptian name for Moses, (Sinuhe, or Sa-nu(mu) Musare), and turned it into Rhomus and Remus (MUSA-RE = RE-MUS), with the formerly one child (Moses) now being doubled into two babies (twins). According to this legend, the twins were put into a basket by some kind servants and floated in the Tiber River, from which they were eventually rescued by a she-wolf. Thus the Romans more pragmatically opted for a she-wolf as the suckler instead of a cow goddess, or a lion goddess, Sekhmet (the fierce alter ego of Hathor).
The Romans took yet another slice from the Pentateuch when they had the founder of the city of Rome, Romulus, involved in a fratricide (killing Remus); just as Cain, the founder of the world's first city, had killed his own brother, Abel (cf. Genesis 4:8 and 4:17).
 
 
 
(c) Mohammed: Arabian ‘Moses-like Myths'
 
An Islamic lecturer, Ahmed Deedat ["What the Bible Says About Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) the Prophet of Islam" (www.islamworld.net/Muhammad.in.Bible.html)], told of an interview he once had with a dominee of the Dutch Reformed Church in Transvaal, van Heerden, on the question: "What does the Bible say about Muhummed?" Deedat had in mind the Holy Qur'an verse 46:10, according to which "a witness among the children of Israel bore witness of one like him…". This was in turn a reference to Deuteronomy 18:18's "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him."
The Moslems of course interpret the "one like him [i.e. Moses]" as being Mohammed himself.
Faced with the dominee's emphatic response that the Bible has "nothing" to say about Mohammed - and that the Deuteronomic prophecy ultimately pertained to Jesus Christ, as did "thousands" of other prophecies - Deedat set out to prove him wrong.
For the gross historical anachronisms associated with ‘Mohammed’, see articles such as my:
 
Further argument for Prophet Mohammed's likely non-existence
 
 
In such articles the prophet Mohammed is shown to have been (at least in part) a composite biblical character and a non-historical entity.  
 
Some Conclusions regarding Mohammed (c. 570-632 AD, conventional dating)
 
It is not surprising that the biography of ‘Mohammed’, much of whose foundations were actually Israelite (biblical), as I have argued, borrowed in part from the Moses story, as is even more the case with the so-called ‘Buddha’. On the latter see e.g. my series:
 
Buddha just a re-working of Moses. Part One: The singular greatness of Moses
 
beginning with:
 
 
Mohammed especially resembles Moses in:
 
(i) the latter's visit to Mount Horeb (modern Har Karkom) with its cave atop, its Burning Bush, and angel (Exodus 3:1-2), possibly equating to Mohammed's "Mountain of Light" (Jabal-an-Nur), and 'cave of research' (‘Ghar-i-Hira'), and angel Gabriel;
(ii) at the very same age of forty (Acts 7:23-29), and
(iii) there receiving a divine revelation, leading to his
(iv) becoming a prophet of God and a Lawgiver.
 
 
Mohammed as a Lawgiver is a direct pinch, I believe, from the Hebrew Pentateuch – but also from the era of the prophet Jeremiah whom Mohammed also much resembles.
Consider the following [O'Hair, M., "Mohammed", A text of American Atheist Radio Series program No. 65, first broadcast on August 25, 1969. (www.atheists.org/Islam.Mohammed.html)]:
"Now the Kaaba or Holy Stone at Mecca was the scene of an annual pilgrimage, and during this pilgrimage in 621 Mohammed was able to get six persons from Medina to bind themselves to him. They did so by taking the following oath.
 
Not consider anyone equal to Allah;
Not to steal;
Not to be unchaste;
Not to kill their children;
Not willfully to calumniate".
 
This is simply the Mosaïc Decalogue, with the following Islamic addition [ibid.]:
"To obey the prophet's orders in equitable matters.
In return Mohammed assured these six novitiates of paradise. The place where these first vows were taken is now called the first Akaba".
 
"The mission of Mohammed", perfectly reminiscent of that of Moses (and of Jeremiah), was "to restore the worship of the One True God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, as taught by Prophet Ibrahim [Abraham] and all Prophets of God, and complete the laws of moral, ethical, legal, and social conduct and all other matters of significance for the humanity at large."
 
The above-mentioned Burning Bush incident occurred whilst Moses
 
(a)    was living in exile (Exodus 2:15)
(b)   amongst the Midianite tribe of Jethro, in the Paran desert.
(c)    Moses had married Jethro's daughter, Zipporah (v. 21).
 
Likewise Mohammed (also partly applicable to Jeremiah)
 
(a)    experienced exile;
(b)   to Medina, a name which may easily have become confused with the similar sounding, Midian, and
(c)    he had only the one wife at the time, Khadija. Also
(d)   Moses, like Mohammed, was terrified by what God had commanded of him, protesting that he was "slow of speech and slow of tongue" (Exodus 4:10). To which God replied: "Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be your mouth and teach you what you are to speak' (vv. 11-12).
 
Now this episode, seemingly coupled with Moses’s (with Jeremiah’s) call, has come distorted into the Koran as Mohammed's being terrified by what God was asking of him, protesting that he was not learned.
To which God supposedly replied that he had 'created man from a clot of congealed blood, and had taught man the use of the pen, and that which he knew not, and that man does not speak ought of his own desire but by inspiration sent down to him'.
Ironically, whilst Moses the writer complained about his lack of verbal eloquence, Mohammed, 'unlettered and unlearned', who therefore could not write, is supposed to have been told that God taught man to use the pen (?). But Mohammed apparently never learned to write, because he is supposed only to have spoken God's utterances. Though his words, like those of Moses (who however did write, e.g. Exodus 34:27), were written down in various formats by his secretary, Zaid (roughly equating to the biblical Joshua, a writer, Joshua 8:32, or to Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch).
 
This is generally how the Koran is said to have arisen.
 
But Mohammed also resembles Moses in his childhood in the fact that, after his infancy, he was raised by a foster-parent (Exodus 2:10).
And there is the inevitable weaning legend [Zahoor, A. and Haq, Z., "Biography of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)", (http://cyberistan.org/islamic/muhammad.html), 1998.]: "All biographers state that the infant prophet sucked only one breast of his foster-mother, leaving the other for the sustenance of his foster-brother".
 
There is even a kind of Islamic version of the Exodus. Compare the following account of the Qoreish persecution and subsequent pursuit of the fleeing Moslems with the persecution and later pursuit of the fleeing Israelites by Pharaoh (Exodus 1 and 4:5-7) [O’Hair, op. cit., ibid.]:
 
When the persecution became unbearable for most Muslims, the Prophet advised them in the fifth year of his mission (615 CE) to emigrate to Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia) where Ashabah (Negus, a Christian) was the ruler. Eighty people, not counting the small children, emigrated in small groups to avoid detection. No sooner had they left the Arabian coastline [substitute Egyptian borders], the leaders of Quraish discovered their flight. They decided to not leave these Muslims in peace, and immediately sent two of their envoys to Negus to bring all of them back.
 
The Koran of Islam is, to a great extent, an Arabic version of the Hebrew Bible with all its same famous patriarchs and leading characters.
That is apparent from what the Moslems themselves admit. For example [ibid.]:
 
The Qur'an also mentions four previously revealed Scriptures: Suhoof (Pages) of Ibrahim (Abraham), Taurat ('Torah') as revealed to Prophet Moses, Zuboor ('Psalms') as revealed to Prophet David, and Injeel ('Evangel') as revealed to Prophet Jesus (pbuh). Islam requires belief in all prophets and revealed scriptures (original, non-corrupted) as part of the Articles of Faith.
 
The reputation of Ibn Ishaq (ca 704-767), a main authority on the life and times of the Prophet varied considerably among the early Moslem critics: some found him very sound, while others regarded him as a liar in relation to Hadith (Mohammed's sayings and deeds). His Sira is not extant in its original form, but is present in two recensions done in 833 and 814-15, and these texts vary from one another. Fourteen others have recorded his lectures, but their versions differ [ibid.]:
 
It was the storytellers who created the tradition: the sound historical traditions to which they are supposed to have added their fables simply did not exist. . . . Nobody remembered anything to the contrary either. . . .
There was no continuous transmission. Ibn Ishaq, al-Waqidi, and others were cut off from the past: like the modern scholar, they could not get behind their sources.... Finally, it has to be realized that the tradition as a whole, not just parts of it as some have thought, is tendentious, and that that tendentiousness arises from allegiance to Islam itself. The complete unreliability of the Muslim tradition as far as dates are concerned has been demonstrated by Lawrence Conrad. After close examination of the sources in an effort to find the most likely birth date for Muhammad--traditionally `Am al-fil, the Year of the Elephant, 570 C.E.--Conrad remarks that ["What Historians have Deduced about the Historical Mohammed.

(d) Modern Myths about Moses
 
From the above it can now be seen that it was not only the Greeks and Romans who have been guilty of appropriation into their own folklore of famous figures of Israel. Even the Moslems have done it and are still doing it. A modern-day Islamic author from Cairo, Ahmed Osman, has - in line with psychiatrist Sigmund Freud's view that Moses was actually an Egyptian, whose Yahwism was derived from pharaoh Akhnaton's supposed monotheism [Out of Egypt. The Roots of Christianity Revealed (Century, 1998)] - identified all the major biblical Israelites, from the patriarch Joseph to the Holy Family of Nazareth, as 18th dynasty Egyptian characters. Thus Joseph = Yuya; Moses = Akhnaton; David = Thutmose III; Solomon = Amenhotep III; Jesus = Tutankhamun; St. Joseph = Ay; Mary = Nefertiti.
 
This is mass appropriation! Not to mention chronological madness!
 
I was asked by Dr. Norman Simms of the University of Waikato (N.Z.) to write a critique of Osman's book, a copy of which he had posted to me. This was a rather easy task as the book leaves itself wide open to criticism. Anyway, the result of Dr. Simms' request was my "Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses" article [The Glozel Newsletter, 5:1 (ns) 1999 (Hamilton, N.Z), pp. 1-17], in which I argued that, because Osman is using the faulty textbook history of Egypt, he is always obliged to give the chronological precedence to Egypt, when the influence has actually come from Israel over to Egypt.
A revised version of this article can now be read as:
 
Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses. Part One: The Chosen People
 
 
The way that the conventional Egyptian chronology is artificially structured at present, is thanks largely to Eduard Meyer's now approximately one century-old Ägyptische Chronologie, Philosophische und historische Abhandlungen der Königlich preussischen Akad. der Wissenschaften, Berlin (Akad. der Wiss., 1904).
 
For a refutation of this hopeless system, see e.g. my article:
 
The Fall of the Sothic Theory: Egyptian Chronology Revisited
 
 
Meyer’s erroneous thesis could easily give rise to Osman's precedence in favour of Egypt view (though this is no excuse for Osman's own chronological mish-mash). One finds, for example, in Hatshepsut's inscriptions such similarities to king David's Psalms that it is only natural to think that she, the woman-ruler - dated to the C15th BC, 500 years earlier than David - must have influenced the great king of Israel. Or that pharaoh Akhnaton's Hymn to the Sun, so like David's Psalm 104, had inspired David many centuries later.
Only a proper revision of Egyptian history brings forth the right perspective, and shows that the Israelites actually had the chronological precedence in these as in many other cases.
 
It gets worse from a conventional point of view.
 
The 'doyen of Israeli archaeologists', Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, frequently interviewed by Beirut hostage victim John McCarthy on the provocative TV program "It Ain't Necessarily So", is, together with his colleagues, virtually writing ancient Israel right off the historical map, along with all of its major biblical characters.
This horrible mess is an inevitable consequence of the faulty Sothic chronology with which these archaeologists seem to be mesmerized. With friends like Finkelstein and co., why would Israel need any enemies!





The Lawgiver Solon
 
Whilst the great Lawgiver for the Hebrews was Moses, and for the Babylonians, Hammurabi, and for the Spartans, Lycurgus, and for the Moslems, supposedly, Mohammed, the Lawgiver in Athenian Greek folklore was Solon of Athens, the wisest of the wise, greatest of the Seven Sages.
Though Solon is estimated to have lived in the C6th BC, his name and many of his activities are so close to king Solomon's (supposedly 4 centuries earlier) that we need once again to question whether the Greeks may have been involved in appropriation. And, if so, how did this come about? It may in some cases simply be a memory thing, just as according to Plato's Timaeus one of the very aged Egyptian priests supposedly told Solon [Plato's Timaeus, trans. B. Jowett (The Liberal Arts Press, NY, 1949), 6 (22) and /or Desmond Lee's translation, Penguin Classics, p. 34]:
 
'O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes [Greeks] are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. …’.
 
Perhaps what the author of the Timaeus really needed to have put into the mouth of the aged Egyptian priest was that the Greeks had largely forgotten who Solomon was, and had created their own fictional character, "Solon", from their vague recall of the great king Solomon who "excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom" (1 Kings 10:23).