Worlds In
Collision
Chapter Five
EAST AND WEST
Our planet rotates from west to east. Has it always done so? In this
rotation from west to east, the sun is seen to rise in the east and
set in the west. Was the east the primeval and only place of the
sunrise?
There is testimony from all parts of the world that the side which
is now turned toward the evening once faced the morning.
In the second book of his history, Herodotus relates his
conversations with Egyptian priests on his visit to Egypt some time
during the second half of the fifth century before the present era.
Concluding the history of their people, the priests told him that
the period following their first king covered three hundred and
forty-one generations, and Herodotus calculated that, three
generations being equal to a century, the whole period was over
eleven thousand years. The priests asserted that within historical
ages and since Egypt became a kingdom, "four times in this period
(so they told me) the run rose contrary to his wont; twice he rose
where he now sets, and twice he set where he now rises."
This passage has been the subject of exhaustive commentaries, the
authors of which tried to invent every possible explanation of the
phenomenon, but failed to consider the meaning which was plainly
stated by the priests of Egypt, and their efforts through the
centuries have remained fruitless.
[COMMENT: This mystery can now be
solved. Herodotus wrote in the 400s BCE. Add to that eleven
thousand years, and you arrive at a date of approximately 11,450
BCE. If the arrival of the Planet Nibiru consistently results in
a shift of the Polar Axis, as it did in 1587 BCE (more
accurately, as has been shown by the Book of Joshua, in 1535
BCE, or 52 years later), then previous Polar Axis Shifts would
have occurred in approximately 5187 BCE, 8787 BCE and 12,387
BCE, the last date of which is less than a thousand years
previous to 11,450 BCE. Thus, these priests must have been
referring to the four times prior to Herodotus' visit that there
had been arrivals of the Planet Nibiru. RS]
The famous chronologist of the sixteenth
century, Joseph Scaliger, weighed the question whether the Sothis
period, or time reckoning by years of 365 days which, when compared
with the Julian calendar, accumulated an error of a full year in
1,461 years, was hinted at by this passage in Herodotus, and
remarked: "Sed hoc non fuerit occasum et orientem mutare" (No
reversal of sunrise and sunset takes place in a Sothis period).
[COMMENT: For a complete
mathematical analysis of the Egyptian Sothis Period, please see
my accompanying essay AN INTRODUCTION TO GALACTIC MATHEMATICS.
RS]
Did the words of the priests to
Herodotus refer to the slow change in the direction of the
terrestrial axis during a period of approximately 25,800 years,
which is brought about by its spinning or by the slow movement of
the equinoctial points of terrestrial orbit (precession of the
equinoxes)? So thought Alexander von Humboldt of "the famous passage
of the second book of Herodotus which so strained the sagacity of
the commentators". But this is also a violation of the meaning of
the words of the priests, for during the period of spinning, orient
and occident do not exchange places.
One may doubt the trustworthiness of the priests' statements, or of
Egyptian tradition in general, or attack Herodotus for ignorance of
the natural sciences, but there is no way to reconcile the passage
with present-day natural science. It remains"a very remarkable
passage of Herodotus, that has become the despair of commentators".
Pomponius Mela, a Latin author of the first century, wrote: "The
Egyptians pride themselves on being the most ancient people in the
world. In their authentic annals ... one may read that since they
have been in existence, the course of the stars has changed
directions four times, and that the sun has set twice in that part
of the sky where it rises today."
It should not be deduced that Mela's only source for this statement
was Herodotus. Mela refers explicitly to Egyptian written sources.
He mentions the reversal in the movement of the stars as well as of
the sun; if he had copied Herodotus, he would probably not have
mentioned the reversal in the movement of the stars (sidera). At a
time when the movement of the sun, planets, and stars was not yet
regarded as the result of the movement of the earth, the change in
the direction of the sun was not necessarily connected in Mela's
mind with a similar change in the movement of all heavenly bodies.
If, in Mela's time, there were Egyptian historical records which
referred to the rising of the sun in the west, we ought to
investigate the old Egyptian literary sources extant today.
The Magical Papyrus Harris speaks of a cosmic upheaval of fire and
water when "the south becomes north, and the Earth turns over".
In the Papyrus Ipuwer it is similarly stated that "the land turns
round [over] as does a potter's wheel" and the "Earth turned upside
down". This papyrus bewails the terrible devastation wrought by the
upheaval of nature. In the Ermitage Papyrus (Leningrad, 1116b recto)
also, reference is made to a catastrophe that turned the "land
upside down; happens that which never (yet) had happened". It is
assumed that at that time -- in the second millennium -- people were
not aware of the daily rotation of the earth, and believed that the
firmament with its luminaries turned around the earth; therefore,
the expression, "the earth turned over", does not refer to the daily
rotation of the globe.
Nor do these descriptions in the papyri of Leiden and Leningrad
leave room for a figurative explanation of the sentence, especially
if we consider the text of the Papyrus Harris -- the turning over of
the earth is accompanied by the interchange of the south and north
poles.
Harakhte is the Egyptian name for the western sun. As there is but
one sun in the sky, it is supposed that Harakhte means the sun at
its setting. But why should the sun at its setting be regarded as a
deity different from the morning sun? The identity of the rising and
setting sun is seen by everyone. The inscriptions do not leave any
room for misunderstanding: "Harakhte, he riseth in the west."
The texts found in the pyramids say that the luminary "ceased to
live in the occident, and shines, a new one, in the orient".
After the reversal of direction, whenever it may have occurred, the
words "west" and "sunrise" were no longer synonyms, and it was
necessary to clarify references by adding: "the west which is at the
sun-setting". It was not mere tautology, as the translator of this
text thought.
Inasmuch as the hieroglyphics were deciphered in the nineteenth
century, it would be only reasonable to expect that since then the
commentaries on Herodotus and Mela would have been written after
consulting the Egyptian texts.
In the tomb of Senmut, the architect of Queen Hatshepsut, a panel on
the ceiling shows the celestial sphere with the signs of the zodiac
and other constellations in "a reversed orientation" of the southern
sky.
The end of the Middle Kingdom antedated the time of Queen Hatshepsut
by several centuries. The astronomical ceiling presenting a reversed
orientation must have been a venerated chart, made obsolete a number
of centuries earlier.
"A characteristic feature of the
Senmut ceiling is the astronomically objectionable orientation
of the southern panel." The center of this panel is occupied by
the Orion-Sirius group, in which Orion appears west of Sirius
instead of east. "The orientation of the southern panel is such
that the person in the tomb looking at it has to lift his head
and face north, not south." "With the reversed orientation of
the south panel, Orion, the most conspicuous constellation of
southern sky, appeared to be moving eastward, i.e., in the wrong
direction."
The real meaning of "the irrational
orientation of the southern panel" and the "reversed position of
Orion" appears to be this: the southern panel shows the sky of Egypt
as it was before the celestial sphere interchanged north and south,
east and west. The northern panel shows the sky of Egypt as it was
on some night of the year in the time of Senmut.
Was there no autochthonous tradition in Greece about the reversals
of the revolution of the sun and stars?
Plato wrote in his dialogue, "The Statesman" (POLITICUS): "I mean
the change in the rising and setting of the sun and the other
heavenly bodies, how in those times they used to set in the quarter
where they now rise, and used to rise where they now set ... the god
at the time of the quarrel, you recall, changed all that to the
present system as a testimony in favor of Atreus." Then he
proceeded: "At certain periods the universe has its present circular
motion, and at other periods it revolves in the reverse direction.
... Of all the changes which take place in the heavens, this
reversal is the greatest and most complete."
Plato continued his dialogue, using the above passage as the
introduction to a fantastic philosophical essay on the reversal of
time. This minimizes the value of the quoted passage despite the
categorical form of his statement.
The reversal of the movement of the sun in the sky was not a
peaceful event; it was an act of wrath and destruction. Plato wrote
in POLITICUS: "There is at that time great destruction of animals in
general, and only a small part of the human race survives."
The reversal of the movement of the sun was referred to by many
Greek authors before and after Plato. According to a short fragment
of a historical drama by Sophocles (ATREUS), the sun rises in the
east only since its course was reversed.
"Zeus ... changed the course of the
sun, causing it to rise in the east and not in the west."
Euripides wrote in ELECTRA: "Then in his
anger arose Zeus, turning the stars' feet back on the fire-fretted
way; yea, and the sun's car splendour-burning, and the misty eyes of
the morning grey. And the flash of his chariot-wheels back-flying
flushed crimson the face of the fading day. ... The sun ... turned
backward ... with the scourge of his wrath in affliction repaying
mortals."
Many authors in later centuries realized that the story of Atreus
described some event in nature. But it could not have been an
eclipse. Strabo was mistaken when he tried to rationalize the story
by saying that Atreus was an early astronomer who "discovered that
the sun revolves in a direction opposite to the movement of the
heavens". During the night the stars move from east to west two
minutes faster than the sun which moves in the same direction during
the day.
[Every night stars rise four minutes
earlier: the earth rotates 366.25 times in a year in relation to
the stars, but 365.25 times in relation to the sun.]
Even in poetical language such a
phenomenon would not have been described as follows: "And the
sun-car's winged speed from the ghastly strife turned back, changing
his westering track through the heavens unto where blush-burning
dawn rose," as Euripides wrote in another work of his.
[ORESTES, II. 1001ff.]
Seneca knew more than his older
contemporary Strabo. In his drama THYESTES, he gave a powerful
description of what happened when the sun turned backward in the
morning sky, which reveals much profound knowledge of natural
phenomena. When the sun reversed its course and blotted out the day
in mid-Olympus (noon), and the sinking sun beheld Aurora, the
people, smitten with fear, asked: "Have we of all mankind been
deemed deserving that heaven, its poles uptorn, should overwhelm us?
In our time has the last day come?"
[COMMENT: The above quote from
Seneca contains a hidden meaning. If "mid-Olympus" refers to the
noontime position of the Sun directly overhead, then "Olympus"
must have meant "the sky" as well as a mythical mountain of the
gods. If Mount Olympus is merely a Greek designation for The
Cosmic Tree Hyperborea, then "Mount Olympus" would indicate a
"sky mountain" of some sort, such as the legendary "Mount Of The
North Pole". RS]
The early Greek philosophers, and
especially Pythagoras, would have known about the reversal of the
revolution of the sky, if it actually occurred, but as Pythagoras
and his school kept their knowledge secret, we must depend upon the
authors who wrote about the Pythagoreans. Aristotle says that the
Pythagoreans differed between the right- and left-hand motion of the
sky ("the side from which the stars rise" is heaven's right, "and
where they set ... its left"), and in Plato we find: "A direction
from left to right -- and that will be from west to east." The
present sun moves in the opposite direction.
In the language of a symbolic and philosophical astronomy, probably
of Pythagorean origin, Plato describes in TIMAEUS the effects of a
collision of the earth "overtaken by a tempest of winds" with "alien
fire from without, or a solid lump of earth", or waters of "the
immense flood which foamed in and streamed out": the terrestrial
globe engages in all motions, "forwards and backwards, and again to
right and to left, and upwards and downwards, wandering every way in
all the six directions".
[COMMENT: SIX DIRECTIONS! Six
North-South Polar Alignment Possibilities, along the Polar
Pivotal Belts. See also the accompanying essay on THE POLAR
PIVOTAL AXIS. RS]
As the result of such a collision,
described in a not easily understandable text which represents the
earth as possessing a soul, there was a "violent shaking of the
revolutions of the Soul", "a total blocking of the course of the
same", "shaking of the course of the other", which "produced all
manner of twistings, and caused in their circles fractures and
disruptures of every possible kind, with the result that, as they
[the earth and the 'perpetually flowing stream'?] barely held
together one with another, they moved indeed but more irrationally,
being at one time reversed, at another oblique, and again upside
down". In Plato's terminology, "revolution of the same" is from east
to west, and "revolution of the other" is from west to east. In THE
STATESMAN, Plato put this symbolic language into very simple terms,
speaking of the reversal of the quarters in which the sun rises and
sets.
[COMMENT: These are the sorts of
choice nuggets of information that fire the mind. For those who
are familiar with Dario Salas' "Archon Y", that Archon who made
the "bad deal" with Moses at the time of the Exodus, and thus --
automatically! -- was a "player" in the events surrounding 1587
BCE, here we find Plato discussing the "Soul" of the Earth; and
Dario Salas said that "Archon Y" attacked the "other Archon" who
was already in charge of the "Soul" of the Earth, in the very
heart of the planet, the "entity" who had outgrown the
capabilities of a mere human brain and needed a "planetary
brain" and thus reincarnated in our Earth. Archon Y fought this
resident Archon to a tie, so to speak, the classic battle of
Evil against Good. Now they supposedly jointly inhabit, control,
incarnate within our Planet; hence, all the conflicts and wars
and injustices that have bedeviled Sapiens for almost four
millennia can be explained as a result of this on-going battle
for conquest of Earth's Soul. Dr. Velikovsky, who was certainly
not familiar with Dario Salas because Dr. Velikovsky died before
Dario Salas wrote any books, can be excused for saying that this
passage from Plato was "a not easily understandable text which
represents the earth as possessing a soul". This idea is not
exclusive to either Plato or Dario Salas, however. That Archon Y
(who is undoubtedly YAHWEH, the Jewish/Christian God of "Evil",
the Nibiruan Crown-Prince Enlil) battled the resident Archon
(whose identity is not specified by Dario Salas) is reminiscent
of the earlier passage above that "The Lord" of the Jews battled
"Rahab", the "invader" or "usurper" at the moment in time when
all of the other celestial events and catastrophes were
occurring.]
[ALSO, what exactly would be the "right" and "left" sides of the
sky? From the above we are told that west is the left side and
east, the right. If one were standing and looking due-north at
Polaris/Hyperborea, west would be to one's left and east would
be to one's right; but if one's back were to Hyperborea
(Heaven), as if one were looking down from "up there", then west
would be to the right and east, to the left. And note this
sentence above : In Plato's terminology, "revolution of the
same" is from east to west, and "revolution of the other" is
from west to east. If "same" refers to the regular Sun that we
see today, and if OTHER refers to the tethered Planet Nibiru,
The Night Sun, The Demon Sun, then it could be inferred that
although our planet rotates from west to east (left to right),
Nibiru might rotate from east to west (right to left)! The
ancient peoples could have simply noted its direction one way or
the other by looking at it in the northern sky and watching it
turn on its axis, in a motion opposite to the one here at
ground-level, regardless of which Polar Axis this planet might
be rotating around during any particular "world age". RS]
I shall return later to some other Greek
references to the sun setting in the east.
Caius Julius Solinus, a Latin author of the third century of the
present era, wrote of the people living on the southern borders of
Egypt:
"The inhabitants of this country say
that they have it from their ancestors that the sun now sets
where it formerly rose."
The traditions of peoples agree in
synchronizing the changes in the movement of the sun with great
catastrophes which terminated world ages. The changes in the
movement of the sun in each successive age make the use by many
peoples of the term "sun" for "age" understandable.
"The Chinese say that it is only
since a new order of things has come about that the stars move
from east to west."
"The signs of the Chinese zodiac
have the strange peculiarity of proceeding in a retrograde
direction, that is, against the course of the sun."
In the Syrian city Ugarit (Ras Shamra)
was found a poem dedicated to the planet-goddess Anat, who
"massacred the population of the Levant" and who "exchanged the two
dawns and the position of the stars".
The hieroglyphics of the Mexicans describe four movements of the
sun, NAHUI OLLIN TONATIUH. "The Indian authors translate OLLIN by
'motions of the sun'. When they find the number NAHUI added, they
render NAHUI OLLIN by the words 'sun (tonatiuh) in his four
motions'." These "four motions" refer "to four prehistoric suns" or
"world ages", with shifting cardinal points.
[COMMENT: Note the similarity here
between the early Mexicans and the ancient Egyptians, as
mentioned above, who told Herodotus that "four times" the Sun
had changed its motion in their recorded history since the
founding of Egypt. RS]
The sun that moves toward the east,
contrary to the present sun, is called by the Indians Teotl Lixco.
The people of Mexico symbolized the changing direction of the sun's
movement as a heavenly ball game, accompanied by upheavals and
earthquakes on the earth.
The reversal of east and west, if combined with the reversal of
north and south, would turn the constellations of the north into
constellations of the south, and show them in reversed order, as in
the chart of the southern sky on the ceiling of Senmut's tomb. The
stars of the north would become stars of the south; this is what
seems to be described by the Mexicans as the "driving away of the
four hundred southern stars".
The Eskimos of Greenland told missionaries that in an ancient time
the earth turned over and the people who lived then became
antipodes.
Hebrew sources on the present problem are numerous. In Tractate
Sanhedrin of the Talmud it is said: "Seven days before the deluge,
the Holy One changed the primeval order and the sun rose in the west
and set in the east."
[COMMENT: In the event of a Polar
Axis Shift along the Polar Pivotal Belts, with each shift to
"the six directions", the former frozen Poles would melt as the
new Poles were freezing over. If all Polar Ice were to melt, all
land up to an altitude of 250 feet (about 80 meters) would be
flooded. Thus, after seven days in the heat of a non-polar
environment, it is quite conceivable that by that point the
former Poles would have melted significantly enough to cause
enormous coastal deluges, or periodic "destructions by water".
RS]
TEVEL is the Hebrew name for the world
in which the sun rose in the west. ARABOT is the name of the sky
where the rising point was in the west.
Hai Gaon, the rabbinical authority who flourished between 939 and
1038, in his RESPONSES refers to the cosmic changes in which the sun
rose in the west and set in the east.
The Koran speaks of the Lord "of two easts and of two wests", a
sentence which presented much difficulty to the exegetes. Averrhoes,
the Arab philosopher of the twelfth century, wrote about the
eastward and westward movements of the sun.
References to the reversal of the movement of the sun that have been
gathered here do not refer to one and the same time: the Deluge, the
end of the Middle Kingdom, the days of the Argive tyrants, were
separated by many centuries. The tradition heard by Herodotus in
Egypt speaks of four reversals. Later in this book and again in the
book that will deal with earlier catastrophes, I shall return to
this subject. At this point, I leave historical and literary
evidence on the reversal of earth's cardinal points for the
testimony of the natural sciences on the reversal of the magnetic
poles of the earth.
[COMMENT: Unfortunately, Dr.
Velikovsky died before he was able to publish this much
anticipated material. Bits and pieces of it filtered out during
the late 1970s in the KRONOS Journal. After his death in 1979,
many of his unpublished notes eventually appeared in KRONOS, but
they were never collected together in any organized format. When
Dr. Velikovsky died, he was tormented by the fact that he had
not as yet totally completed the AGES IN CHAOS series, which
lacked the promised middle volume (of five) on ASSYRIAN
CONQUEST. My "Mathematical Analysis Of Ancient History"
subsequently published in THE VELIKOVSKIAN Journal was an
attempt to "assist" Dr. Velikovsky by demonstrating that his
stubborn adherence of a second cosmic cataclysm year of 747 was
inaccurate, that it should have been moved backwards to 762. He
received a xerox copy of my treatise a couple of months prior to
his death. If he read it, and I never heard from him about it,
then he must have realized that I, at least, had figured it out
-- mathematically. At any rate, one of the ideas left
unpublished by Dr. Velikovsky was his postulation of The Night
Sun, anchored or tethered above our North Pole. And he was aware
of the book HAMLET'S MILL by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha
von Dechend. The fact is that he was simply old, 85 when he
died, and did not have the time to complete and publish all of
his enormous research. I have tried to take up where he left
off. RS]
THE REVERSED
POLARITY OF THE EARTH
A thunderbolt, on striking a magnet, reverses the poles of the
magnet. The terrestrial globe is a huge magnet. A short circuit
between it and another celestial body could result in the north and
south magnetic poles of the earth exchanging places.
It is possible to detect in the geological records of the earth the
orientation of the terrestrial magnetic field in past ages.
"When lava cools and freezes
following a volcanic outburst, it takes up a permanent
magnetization dependent upon the orientation of the Earth's
magnetic field at the time. This, because of small capacity for
magnetization in the Earth's magnetic field after freezing, may
remain practically constant. If this assumption be correct, the
direction of the originally acquired permanent magnetization can
be determined by tests in the laboratory, provided that every
detail of the orientation of the mass tested is carefully noted
and marked when it is removed."
[J.A. Fleming, "The Earth's Magnetism and Magnetic Surveys" in
TERRESTRIAL MAGNETISM AND ELECTRICITY, ed. by J.A. Fleming
(1939), p. 32.]
We would expect to find a full reversal
of magnetic direction. Although repeated heating of lava and rocks
can change the picture, there must have remained rocks with inverted
polarity. Another author writes:
"Examination of magnetization of
some igneous rocks reveals that they are polarized oppositely
from the prevailing present direction of the local magnetic
field and many of the older rocks are less strongly magnetized
than more recent ones. On the assumption that the magnetization
of the rocks occurred when the magma cooled and that the rocks
have held their present positions since that time, this would
indicate that the polarity of the Earth has been completely
reversed within recent geological times."
[A. McNish, "On Causes of the Earth's Magnetism and Its Changes"
in TERRESTRIAL MAGNETISM AND ELECTRICITY, ed. by Fleming, p.
326.]
Because the physical facts seemed
entirely inconsistent with every cosmological theory, the author of
the above passage was cautious not to draw further conclusions from
them.
The reversed polarity of lava indicates that in recent geological
times the magnetic poles of the globe were reversed; when they had a
very different orientation, abundant flows of lava took place.
Additional problems, and of a large scope, are: whether the position
of the magnetic poles has anything to do with the direction of
rotation of the globe, and whether there is an interdependence in
the direction of the magnetic poles of the sun and of the planets.
THE QUARTERS
OF THE WORLD DISPLACED
The traditions gathered in the section before last refer to various
epochs; actually, Herodotus and Mela say that according to Egyptian
annals, the reversal of the west and east recurred: the sun rose in
the west, then in the east, once more in the west, and again in the
east.
Was the cosmic catastrophe that terminated a world age in the days
of the fall of the Middle Kingdom and of the Exodus one of these
occasions, and did the earth change the direction of its rotation at
that time? If we cannot assert this much, we can at least maintain
that the earth did not remain on the same orbit, nor did its poles
stay in their places, nor was the direction of the axis the same as
before.
The position of the globe and its course
were not settled when the earth first came into contact with the
onrushing comet; in Plato's terms, already partly quoted, the motion
of the earth was changed by "blocking of the course" and went
through "shaking of the revolutions" with "disruptures of every
possible kind", so that the position of the earth became "at one
time reversed, at another oblique, and again upside down", and it
wandered "every way in all six directions".
The Talmud and other ancient rabbinical sources tell of great
disturbances in the solar movement at the time of the Exodus and the
Passage of the Sea and the Lawgiving. In old Midrashim it is
repeatedly narrated that four times the sun was forced out of its
course in the few weeks between the day of the Exodus and the day of
the Lawgiving.
The prolonged darkness (and prolonged day in the Far East) and the
earthshock (i.e., the ninth and the tenth plagues) and the world
conflagration were the result of one of these disturbances in the
motion of the earth. A few days later, if we follow the biblical
narration, immediately before the hurricane changed its direction,
"the pillar of cloud went from before their faces and stood behind
them"; this means that the column of fire and smoke turned about and
appeared from the opposite direction. Mountainous tides uncovered
the bottom of the sea; a spark sprang between two celestial bodies;
and "at the turning of the morning", the tides fell in a cataclysmic
avalanche.
The Midrashim speak of a disturbance in the solar movement on the
day of the Passage: the sun did not proceed on its course. On that
day, according to the Psalms (70:8), "the earth feared and was
still". It is possible that Amos (8:8-9) is reviving the memory of
this event when he mentions the "flood of Egypt", at the time "the
earth was cast out of the sea, and dry land was swallowed by the
sea", and "the sun was brought down at noon", although, as I show
later on, Amos might have referred to a cosmic catastrophe of a more
recent date.
[COMMENT: This "more recent date",
of course, encompasses the events that occurred between the
years 762-687 BCE when there was a second series of cosmic
catastrophes. This second period of time historically describes
the departure sequence of the Hyperborea Planet Nibiru after 900
years during which it was tethered to our North Pole as The
North Mountain, The Celestial Ship Of The North, The Cosmic
Tree. If you would wish to read about this departure event, you
are urged to get a copy of WORLDS IN COLLISION. None of this
next section of Dr. Velikovsky's book will be transcribed at
present, since I personally am more fascinated at the moment by
Nibiru's impending return than its future departure 900 years
following 2012. Once the "chaos" of 2012 passes into oblivion,
we shall have ample time to contemplate Nibiru's next departure
for "Deep Space", to either the Oort Cloud or the Sirius System.
RS]
Also, the day of the Lawgiving, when the
worlds collided again, was, according to numerous rabbinical
sources, a day of unusual length: the motion of the sun was
disturbed.
On this occasion, and generally in the days and months following the
Passage, the gloom, the heavy and charged clouds, the lightning, and
the hurricanes, aside from the devastation by earthquake and flood,
made observation very difficult, if not impossible. "They walk on in
darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course"
(Psalms 82:5) is a metaphor used by the Psalmist.
The Papyrus Ipuwer, which says that "the earth turned over like a
potter's wheel" and "the earth is upside down", was written by an
eyewitness of the plagues and the Exodus. The change is described
also in the words of another papyrus (Harris) which I have quoted
once before: "The south becomes north, and the earth turns over."
Whether there was a complete reversal of the cardinal points as a
result of the cosmic catastrophe of the days of the Exodus, or only
a substantial shift, is a problem not solved here. The answer was
not apparent even to contemporaries, at least for a number of
decades. In the gloom that endured for a generation, observations
were impossible, and very difficult when the light began to break
through.
The KALEVALA relates that "dreaded shades" enveloped the earth, and
"the sun occasionally steps from his accustomed path". Then Ukko-Jupiter
struck fire from the sun to light a new sun and a new moon, and a
new world age began.
In VÖLUSPA (Poetic Edda) of the Icelanders we read: "No knowledge
she [the sun] had where her home should be, the moon knew not what
was his. The stars knew not where their stations were."
Then the gods set order among the heavenly bodies.
The Aztecs related: "There had been no sun in existence for many
years. ... [The chiefs] began to peer through the gloom in all
directions for the expected light, and to make bets as to what part
of heaven he [the sun] should first appear in. Some said 'Here', and
some said 'There'; but when the sun rose, they were all proved
wrong, for not one of them had fixed upon the east".
Similarly, the Mayan legend tells that "it was not known from where
the new sun would appear". "They looked in all directions, but they
were unable to say where the sun would rise. Some thought it would
take place in the north and their glances were turned in that
direction. Others thought it would be in the south. Actually, their
guesses included all directions because the dawn shone all around.
Some, however, fixed their attention on the orient, and maintained
that the sun would come from there. It was their opinion that proved
to be correct."
According to the COMPENDIUM of Wong-shi-Shing (1526-1590), it was in
the "age after the chaos, when heaven and earth had just separated,
that is, when the great mass of cloud just lifted from the earth",
that the heaven showed its face.
In the Midrashim it is said that during the wandering in the desert
the Israelites did not see the face of the sun because of the
clouds. They were also unable to orient themselves on their march.
The expression repeatedly used in the Books of Numbers and Joshua,
"the east, to the sunrising", is not tautology, but a definition,
which, by the way, testifies to the ancient origin of the literary
materials that served as sources for these books; it is an
expression that has its counterpart in the Egyptian "the west which
is at the sun-setting".
The cosmological allegory of the Greeks has Zeus, rushing on his way
to engage Typhon in combat, steal Europa (Erev, the evening land)
and carry her to the west. Arabia (also Erev) kept its name, "the
evening land", though it lies to the east of the centers of
civilization -- Egypt, Palestine, Greece. Eusebius, one of the
Fathers of the Church, assigned the Zeus-Europa episode to the time
of Moses and the Deucalion Flood, and Augustine wrote that Europa
was carried by the king of Crete to his island in the west, "betwixt
the departure of Israel out of Egypt and the death of Joshua".
The Greeks, like other peoples, spoke of the reversal of the
quarters of the earth and not merely in allegories but in literal
terms.
The reversal of the earth's rotation, referred to in the written and
oral sources of many peoples, suggests the relation of one of these
events to the cataclysm of the day of the Exodus. Like the quoted
passage from VISUDDHI-MAGGA, the Buddhist text, and the cited
tradition of the Cashinaua tribe in western Brazil, the versions of
the tribes and peoples of all five continents include the same
elements, familiar to us from the Book of Exodus: lightning and "the
bursting of heaven", which caused the earth to be turned "upside
down", or "heaven and earth to change places". On the Andaman
Islands the natives are afraid that a natural catastrophe will cause
the world to turn over. In Greenland also the Eskimos fear that the
earth will turn over.
Curiously enough, the cause of such perturbation is revealed in
beliefs like that of the people of Flanders in Belgium. Thus we
read: "In Menin (Flanders) the peasants say, on seeing a comet: 'The
sky is going to fall; the earth is turning over!'"
[COMMENT: Compare the old European
"fable", transported by emigrant settlers to America, of Chicken
Little who warned that "the sky is falling, the sky is falling!"
RS]
CHANGES IN THE TIMES
AND THE SEASONS
Many agents collaborated to change the climate. Insolation was
impaired by heavy clouds of dust, and the radiation of heat from the
earth was equally hindered. Heat was generated by the earth's
contact with another celestial body; the earth was removed to an
orbit farther from the sun; the polar regions were displaced; oceans
and seas evaporated and the vapors precipitated as snow on new polar
regions and in the higher latitudes in a long Fimbul-winter and
formed new ice sheets; the axis on which the earth rotated pointed
in a different direction, and the order of the seasons was
disturbed.
Spring follows winter and fall follows summer because the earth
rotates on an axis inclined toward the plane of its revolution
around the sun. Should this axis become perpendicular to that plane,
there would be no seasons on the earth. Should it change its
direction, the seasons would change their intensity and their order.
The Egyptian papyrus known as Papyrus Anastasi IV contains a
complaint about gloom and the absence of solar light; it says also:
"The winter is come as (instead of)
summer, the months are reversed the the hours are disordered."
"The breath of heaven is out of harmony. ... The four seasons do
not observe their proper times," we read in the TEXTS OF TAOISM.
In the historical memoirs of Se-Ma
Ta'ien, as in the annals of the Shu King which we have already
quoted, it is said that Emperor Yahou sent astronomers to the Valley
of Obscurity and to the Sombre Residence to observe the new
movements of the sun and of the moon and the syzygies or the orbital
points of the conjunctions, also "to investigate and to inform the
people of the order of the seasons". It is also said that Yahou
introduced a calendar reform: he brought the seasons into accord
with the observations; he did the same with the months; and he
"corrected the days".
Plutarch gives the following description of a derangement of
seasons: "The thickened air concealed the heaven from view, and the
stars were confused with a disorderly huddle of fire and moisture
and violent fluxions of winds. The sun was not fixed to an
unwandering and certain course, so as to distinguish orient and
occident, nor did he bring back the seasons in order."
In another work of his, Plutarch ascribes these changes to Typhon,
"the destructive, diseased and disorderly", who caused "abnormal
seasons and temperatures".
It is characteristic that in the written traditions of the peoples
of antiquity the disorder of the seasons is directly connected with
the derangement in the motion of the heavenly bodies.
The oral traditions of primitive peoples in various parts of the
world also retain memories of this change in the movement of the
heavenly bodies, the seasons, the flow of time, during a period when
darkness enveloped the world. As an example I quote the tradition of
the Oraibi in Arizona. They say that the firmament hung low and the
world was dark, and no sun, no moon, nor stars were seen. "The
people murmured because of the darkness and the cold." Then the
planet god Machito "appointed times, and seasons, and ways for the
heavenly bodies".
[COMMENT: The "planet god" Machito
and the following Uira-cocha both obviously refer to the newly
re-tethered Hyperborea Planet Nibiru. RS]
Among the Incas the "guiding power in
regulating the seasons and the courses of the heavenly bodies" was
Uira-cocha. "The sun, the moon, the day, the night, spring, winter,
are not ordained in vain by thee, O Uira-cocha."
The American sources, which speak of a world colored red, of a rain
of fire, of world conflagration, of new rising mountains, of
frightening portents in the sky, of a twenty-five-year gloom, imply
also that "the order of the seasons was altered at that epoch". "The
astronomers and geologists whose concern is all this ... should
judge of the causes which could effect the derangement of the day
and could cover the earth with tenebrosity," wrote a clergyman who
spent many years in Mexico and in the libraries of the Old World
which store ancient manuscripts of the Mayas and works of early
Indian and Spanish authors about them. It did not occur to him that
the biblical narrative of the time of the Exodus contains the same
elements.
With the end of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt, when the Israelites
left that country, the old order of seasons came to an end and a new
world age began. The Fourth Book of Ezra, which borrows from some
earlier sources, refers to the "end of the seasons" in these words:
"I sent him [Moses] and led my people out of Egypt, and brought them
to Mount Sinai, and held him by me for many days. I told him many
wondrous things, showed him the secrets of the times, declared to
him the end of the seasons."
Because of various simultaneous changes in the movement of the earth
and the moon, and because observation of the sky was hindered when
it was hidden in smoke and clouds, the calendar could not be
correctly computed; the changed lengths of the year, the month, and
the day required prolonged, unobstructed observation. The words of
the Midrashim, that Moses was unable to understand the new calendar,
refer to this situation; "the secrets of the calendar" (sod ha-avour),
or more precisely, "the secret of the transition" from one
time-reckoning to another, was revealed to Moses, but he had
difficulty in comprehending it. Moreover, it is said in rabbinical
sources that in the time of Moses the course of the heavenly bodies
became confounded.
The month of the Exodus, which occurred in the spring, became the
first month of the year: "This month shall be unto you the beginning
of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you." Thus,
the strange situation was created in the Jewish calendar that the
New Year is observed in the seventh month of the year: the beginning
of the calendar year was moved to a point about half a year away
from the New Year in the autumn.
[COMMENT: The ancient Abyssinian
tradition, still practiced today and originally based upon the
old Jewish method of time-keeping, still retains this New Year
in the early autumn of the year. RS]
With the fall of the Middle Kingdom and
the Exodus, one of the great world ages came to its end. The four
quarters of the world were displaced, and neither the orbit nor the
poles nor, probably, the direction of rotation remained the same.
The calendar had to be adjusted anew. The astronomical values of the
year and the day could not be the same before and after an upheaval
in which, as the quoted Papyrus Anastasi IV says, the months were
reversed and "the hours disordered".
The length of the year during the Middle Kingdom is not known from
any contemporaneous document. Because in the Pyramid texts dating
from the Old Kingdom there is mention of "five days", it was
erroneously concluded that in that period a year of 365 days was
already known. But no inscription of the Old or Middle Kingdom has
been found in which mention is made of a year of 365 days or even
360 days. Neither is any reference to a year of 365 days or to "five
days" found in the very numerous inscriptions of the New Kingdom
prior to the dynasties of the seventh century. Thus, the inference
that "the five days" of the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom signify
the five days over 360 is not well founded.
There exists a direct statement found as a gloss on a manuscript of
TIMAEUS that a calendar of a solar year of three hundred and sixty
days was introduced by the Hyksos after the fall of the Middle
Kingdom; the calendar of the Middle Kingdom apparently had fewer
days.
The fact I hope to be able to establish is that from the fifteenth
century to the eighth century before the present era the
astronomical year was equal to 360 days; neither before the
fifteenth century, nor after the eighth century was the year of this
length. In a later chapter of this work extensive material will be
presented to demonstrate this point.
The number of days in a year during the Middle Kingdom was less than
360; the earth then revolved on an orbit somewhat closer to the
present orbit of Venus. An investigation into the length of the
astronomical year during the periods of the Old and Middle Kingdoms
is reserved for that part of this work which will deal with the
cosmic catastrophes that occurred before the beginning of the Middle
Kingdom of Egypt.
[COMMENT: As I mentioned earlier,
Dr. Velikovsky died before being able to complete these portions
of his theory that related to earlier cosmic catastrophes. RS]
Here I give space to an old Midrashic
source which, taking issue with a contradiction in the scriptural
texts, referring to the length of time the Israelites sojourned in
Egypt, maintains that "God hastened the course of the planets during
Israel's stay in Egypt", so that the sun completed 400 revolutions
during the space of 210 regular years. These figures must not be
taken as correct, since the intention was to reconcile two biblical
texts, but the reference to the different motion of the planets in
the period of the Israelites' stay in Egypt during the Middle
Kingdom is worth mentioning.
In Midrash Rabba, it is said on the authority of Rabbi Simon that a
new world order came into being with the end of the sixth world age
at the revelation on Mount Sinai. "There was a weakening (metash) of
the creation. Hitherto world time was counted, but henceforth we
count it by a different reckoning." Midrash Rabba refers also to
"the greater length of time taken by some planets".
Back to Contents
|