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THE
SEA PEOPLES *
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Introduction
All at once, they were on the move, scattered
in war. They laid their hands upon the lands to the very circuit of the
earth, their hearts confident and trusting; our plans will succeed... " (Ramesses III).
The name "Peoples of the Sea" comes
directly from the Egyptian records, describing the Sea Peoples' exploits. As
their collective name tells us, they were tribes who had developed a life
style almost totally dependent upon the sea. They perfected boats, sailing
and navigational techniques for fishing offshore as well as long distance
travel and explored much of the Atlantic ocean. They invented or improved the
easily constructed leather boats (coracle) by discovering that oak-tanned hides would keep
their shape and usefulness when used in contact with salt water and to keep
their boats sea-worthy, even after many days at sea. It appears that all the
Sea Peoples adhered to the ancient religion of the one Great Goddess.
Close contact was maintained by boat between these tribes trading goods and
to standardize their religion, universal language, traditions and oral
history. As all the Sea Peoples were actively involved in exploring the
Mediterranean, Black Sea and Atlantic, the people keeping up the contacts
must have heard fascinating tales of daring deeds, strange discoveries,
amazing experiences and also of enormous hardships and loss of life. All
these legendary tales are now irretrievably lost. (See Nyland (2001) for more
details) It appears that,
as a result of the conquering of Crete by the aggressive Achaian pirates from
the Greek mainland in about 1,400 bce., the Sea Peoples realized that their
way of life, religion and their very existence was threatened by the new cult
of the cruel sky gods of the Near East. The tribes of the Goddess then bonded
closer together and formed the league of the Sea Peoples, the religious
leadership of which was centered on the islands of Malta(1) and Gozo(2).
It must have been a heart-wrenching decision to organize and arm for war,
because most of these traditionally non-aggressive, fun- and life-loving
people had rarely been at odds with other people. They had been too busy
exploring and settling the empty parts of the earth, which had earlier been
inaccessible or made unlivable by the ice and unfavable climate of the last
ice age. There was no war mentality among them. Many written
references exist in Egypt documenting the activities of the Sea Peoples. Here
in brief are a few of those mentioned in historical documents and elaborated
on elsewhere: 1341 bce.,
ambassadors of the Sea Peoples, possibly from the British Isles and Ireland,
brought special gifts for Pharaoh Akhenaten and his Queen Nefertiti, indicating a good
relationship between their countries. The pharaoh and his queen had tried to
break the hold of the polytheistic, male-dominated religion of Egypt and had
returned to the old ways of the Great Goddess. 1290 bce., a
major attack by Sea Peoples on Egypt. Ramesses II appears to have had trouble
warding off the attack because in 1,278 bce., a source reported: "the
Delta now lies safe in its slumbers now that the King has destroyed the
warriors of the Great Green Sea". This may have been the end of the
hostilities started in 1290. 1274 bce.,
Sherden auxiliaries, probably from Cyrenaica or Libya, fight alongside the
Egyptian troops in the Battle
of Kadesh. These may have been mercenaries who had been taken
prisoners in the fighting of the past years. 1231 bce., In
the fifth year of Pharaoh
Merenptah's reign, the Libyans attacked the western Nile delta
over land, supported by a group of Sea Peoples who had come from Anatolia by
boat to Libya (probably Kirrukaska from the north coast of Anatolia). The
attack was defeated, many were captured and settled in camps and trained as
Egyptian mercenaries. 1210 bce.,
Pharaoh Merenptah wins a decisive victory over the Libyans in the western
desert. The allies of the Libyans had been the Aqaiwasha
people of the "foreign lands of the sea" probably the
British. 1193 bce., In
the fifth year of Ramesses III's reign, the Sea Peoples attacked Egypt by
land and sea but few details are available. 1190 bce., In
the eighth year of Ramesses III the attackers came back, again on both land
and sea. The sea forces were driven off and sailed away in westward
direction. Those who came by land were captured, branded with the Pharaoh's
name and settled in military camps in the southern Palestinian coastal
district, where the overland trade route to Syria was threatened by Bedouin
attackers. These people were also used later as mercenaries against their own
kinfolk who came back in 1,180 bce., and were called the Meshwesh people by the Egyptians. 1,180 bce..,
some books say 1186, a truly massive attack by the League of the Sea Peoples
started in the north of the eastern Mediterranean with the destruction of the
Greek pirate states (except Athens), and continued on along the Turkish coast
where all the harb cities were ransacked and burned and the Hittite empire
was totally eliminated. This attack was followed immediately by the
destruction of all the city states on the east shore of the Mediterranean.
Correspondence has been found which shows that all these disasters had been
reported to the Egyptians so that, when the Sea Peoples eventually sailed up
the Nile river, Ramesses III was ready and waiting for them with his newly
built fleet of oar-driven war galleys. A fierce battle followed during which
the large, poorly maneuverable sailing ships were either capsized or
captured and large numbers of fighters killed in the fighting or later
executed. This action finally ended the efforts of the Sea Peoples to defeat
the aggressively advancing patriarchal forces of the sky gods. A detailed
description of these events may be found in Nancy K. Sandar's book "The Sea Peoples" (1987), chapters
5 to 8. THE SEA PEOPLES IDENTITY Originally the
Sea Peoples had been those tribes which had developed boat building, sailing,
oak tanning of leather and star navigation and who led a life style almost
entirely dependent on the sea. They may have started their experimentation on
the ocean as early as 38,000 bce. and had learned that the sea could provide
a reliable food supply at all times of the year and as a result had developed
highly advanced sea-food harvesting methods. They coined the name 'ocean', Greek 'okeano',
oke-ano, okegin (fulness, plentiful) ano (food supply): "plentiful food supply". When the
central Sahara became unlivable because of fast advancing desertification
(See Climate), which forced them to flee to the coast,
the Sea Peoples were ready and available to ferry the displaced tribes and
their livestock north to Europe. The Sea Peoples included the following three main tribes: 1) The dark
featured, Rh-negative Berbers, originally from
Morocco, Algiers and Senegal, who had discovered and populated the Canary and
Cape Verde islands, all of the Atlantic islands off Europe, the Basque
country and had established reindeer hunting camps in Finnmark in Arctic Norway and leather
tanning stations on the southern tip of Sweden and the west coast of Ireland.
They controlled all Atlantic traffic and the far western part of the
Mediterranean. The Berbers from Morocco likely were the Shekelesh (3) of the Egyptian records, while the people of Britain may have
been called the Aqaiwasha.
It appears that the people of the Hebrides and Scotland were known to the
Egyptians as the Tyrrhenoi(4),
the people of Odysseus' tribe, later known to the Romans as the Picts. Their
migration was a simple one and covered an area that was within easy reach of
the homeland. 2) The blond, blue eyed, Rh-positive Shardana(5), also known as the Sherden or
the Sherdein, she-erdein
The geographical name Cyrenaica
(Kirunaika) is an agglutination of three words: kir-unai-ika Very early on
they had concentrated their efforts on exploring the lands around the Black
Sea and must have been impressed with the potential for settlement. In
northern Anatolia,
on the shore of the Black Sea, they were known to the Hittites as the Kaska or Kirrukaska(6),
and their descendants still live in the north east of Turkey under the name
of Circaskian Turks. In their extremely wide ranging migration they sailed to
the north shore of the Black Sea, and pulled, portaged and rowed up the
almost endless Dnepr river and in time populated the Ukraine as far north as
modern Lithuania. They then went on to settle the islands in, and the lands
surrounding, the Baltic Sea. After settling the mainland of Norway and the
Friesian islands they ended their migration in Iceland. In the Odyssey, the
people who settled Norway are known by the name of Phaiakians or Phaikians,
now called Vikings.
3) The people we call Cretans or Minoans were known to the 18th Dynasty Egyptians as Keftiu. Keftiu(7) from the
beautiful island of Kaphtor. They were in control of all sea traffic and
trade in the eastern Mediterranean. When the very large volcano on the Isle of Thera erupted in about 1,420 bce., it
devastated Crete with terrible earthquakes, a thick layer of volcanic ash and
the north coast was savaged by terrible tsunamis, which destroyed the ships
and towns on the north coast and drowned most of the people living there.
After that disastrous time, the Philistines of Cyprus and Lebanon, known to the Egyptians(8) as Pulisati(9), filled the sea
commerce void left by the demise of the Keftiu. They may have been refugees
from Crete. Other ocean
sailing Sea Peoples lived on the shores of the Indian ocean, one of them
being the Yemeni from southern Arabia, who traveled
regularly to India, Ceylon and Indonesia, but we are not concerned with them
here. SEA PEOPLES EARLY HISTORY During the Ice
Age, enormous amounts of water had been stored as ice on the northern
continents, which had lowered the world's ocean level some 100 meters and
probably even more. The peak of glaciations and the lowest ocean level came
about around 16,000 bce. (See Climate) and was
followed 4,000 years later by a very warm period which sent so much water
cascading down the mountains and rivers, that during several years in a row
the ocean level jumped up by an incredible 10 cm each year. Associated with
violent storms, it caused enormous flooding and disastrous conditions in the
low-lying coastal areas all over the world. Memories of this most destructive
time are still told around the earth as legends of The Great Flood. The warm period
ended about 9,000 bce. Then a Mini Ice Age followed lasting some centuries,
during which the still present glaciers recovered some of the lost ground.
The famous Irish archaeologist Michael O'Kelly wrote: "In the Post-glacial Stage, which commenced about 10,300 years
ago [= 8,300 bce.] the climate again began to improve and thus began the present
warm stage' in which we now live".(10) It is likely
that the first settlers arrived in Ireland at this time. Imagine the Atlantic
coast of Ireland around 8,000 bce. The glaciers and ice fields on the
continents were again melting fast and the ocean level at that time had risen
to about 25 meters below what it is today, still leaving part of the
continental shelf exposed. Low lying, often-flat areas, such as what later
became the North Sea and
the Irish Sea,
which had connected Ireland and Britain with the continent, were now being
flooded. The people who were living on these low-lying shores, close to the
sea must have known that the sea level was rising relatively fast. They had
to live near the sea for at least part of the year because they were
dependent on fish, small whales, squid, shellfish etc. for sustenance. The
first people to settle on the west coasts of the islands were likely the
support crews for the reindeer hunters of Finnmark in Arctic Norway, who
needed safe harbs, resting places, supply and repair services for their ocean
transport ships. The first and most important of these bases established was
likely on Orkney,
which has the longest record of continuous settlement of the British Isles
and has rich archaeological sites to prove it. The traditional view of the
origin of the Picts is that they started out settling the other islands from
Orkney as is written by Bede in "The Eclesiastical History of the
English People" (731 A.D.) which may well be true. It was also roughly
the halfway point between the Basque country and Finnmark. The people sent
there had brought any needed tools, livestock, and nets along with them from
the Bay of Biscay(11), or even farther,
from Morocco. It is sure that they imported goats and pigs, because these
animals could survive with little care in the coastal forests and were an
essential part of their food supply. Many of the dwelling sites these people
had been living in are now well below sea level, it is not likely that much
they left behind in these low areas would be recognizable today because of
the incessant wave action. The weather appears to have been considerably
better than it is today as O'Kelly wrote: "In
circa 9,600 BP [= 7,600 bce], the Boreal Phase, birch was still present but hazel began to
expand greatly. The lowlands and lower mountain slopes became covered in
woodland and the heath lands seem to have disappeared. Pine also became
prominent and while hazel continued to increase at the expense of birch, the
oak and the elm made their appearance. The climate was relatively dry and not
unlike that of the present day, although perhaps less stormy because the
forest was able to spread right down to the western coastline. It is known
that man was in Ireland at this time..." Sailors from
Morocco and the Basque(12) country had
explored the entire west coast of Europe(13)
at a very early date, possibly as early as 9,000 bce. Already at that early
stage, these intrepid sailors had perfected boat building and star
navigation, and explored as far north as Arctic Norway and in the process
they discovered the immense migrating herd of reindeer, which moved between
present day Russia and Norway. Reindeer hide was an essential material
because their sails were made out of leather. Up to that time they had
obtained the needed sail skins from another large herd on the high plateau in
southern France and the highlands of the Pyrenees, where they had hunting
camps. However, by 8,000 bce, the glaciers had retreated into the Alps and
the reindeer followed until they were out of reach of the hunters, so a new
source was urgently needed, which they knew existed in Finnmark, Norway. THE Rh-NEGATIVE BLOOD FACTOR The people of
the first ocean-born migration, which populated the northwest coast of
Europe, had a very special blood peculiarity that their descendants are still
living with today. This was the only tribe in the world with many of its
members having Rh-negative blood. Dr. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza published a map of
the populations with the highest percentage of their members with Rh-negative blood. He wrote:
"Rh-negative genes are frequent in Europe, infrequent in Africa
and West Asia, and virtually absent in East Asia and among the aboriginal
populations of America and Australia. One can estimate degrees of relatedness
by subtracting the percentage of Rh-negative individuals among, say, the
English (16%) from that among the Basques (25%) to find a difference of nine
percentage points. But between the English and East Asians it becomes 16
points, a greater distance that perhaps implies a more ancient
separation".(14) The highest
percentage is found among some of the tribes still living in the Atlas Mountains of
Morocco (40%). The next highest are the Basques, reported in different
publications as having 25 and 32%, depending on location. The people of
northwest Ireland, the Highland Scots and the western islanders of Norway all
have between 16 and 25%, while the Lapps of Norway and Finland have between 5
and 7%. In addition, Cavalli-Sforza reports two small isolated populations of
the same tribe, one in Chad and another in Senegal, each with about 25%. On
his map, he shows an Rh-negative population in Chad, still living near the
formerly enormous Chad lake. Only part of this lake still exists on the spot
where the boundaries of Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon meet. These people
may originally have been the sailors on Chad lake. Could it be that this is
the original location of the Rh-negative population that then moved to
Morocco and Algiers to become the Berbers? Or would it be the other way
around? When the
Rh-negative people, we now call Berbers, first came to what is today Euskadi (pronounced:
oos-ká-di), the Basque country, they found there a small but most creative
population which, according to the archaeologists, may have lived there
already for some 20,000 years before the Rh-negative peoples arrived. The two
peoples were quite different genetically. The endemic population had
brachycephalic (round) skulls. The Berbers had dolichocephalic (long) skulls,
wedge-shaped heads, wide at the temples and narrowing to a pointed chin and
they were Rh-negative. The most amazing features of the area are the many
beautifully painted cathedral caves of enormous antiquity, decorated with
great difficulty and personal sacrifice by artists, in honor of the
"Great Goddess". In southern India, such cave paintings are still
being made, and all the artists are women, which may have been the case also
in the Basque country. To this day, the Rh-negative people live mainly
in the coastal areas. They were
without doubt, the most experienced sailors of the Atlantic. They probably
arrived in the Bay of Biscay about 10,000 bce. to hunt reindeer for
sails, which were greatly coveted by mariners because of their durability and
light weight. The original round-headed people do not appear to have belonged
to the tribes of the Sea Peoples and even today, their type is not common
among the Basque fishermen. The people,
jokingly called the "Black Irish", have dark hair and eyes,
wedge-shaped faces and look like Berbers and Basques. Their blood type proves
that Berbers and Basques were originally closely related people, as many of
them have Rh-negative blood. They are likely the descendants of the first
settlers to Ireland and Scotland. This type of people is especially common in
Conamara and Donegal of Ireland and on the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Today in many
publications, the presence of these dark-eyed people is explained as them
being castaways of the huge Spanish armada that was defeated in 1588 by a
coalition of British and Dutch sailors in the North Sea. They were wrecked on the islands by storms
when the remnants of the fleet tried to sail around Ireland to struggle back
home. Many of the sailors had indeed been Basques and several of those that
made it safely to land, liked it there and stayed. However, the existence of
these dark featured people had already been documented long before the armada
was ever thought of. There is little doubt that the Black Irish are the
descendants of the oldest population of the British Isles and Ireland. Compared to the rather simple and
restricted migration of the Berbers, the blond Tribe covered a huge area in
Europe and Asia. They are easy to spot because they look quite different from
the other tribes, with their blue eyes, fine and straight, straw-colored
hair, and tall stature; especially the tallness of the women is notable.
Wherever they went they built a reputation for being superb handlers and
breeders of domestic animals, mostly horses and cattle. The word "blond"
comes from. bel-ond., abel-onda, abelgorri (cattle) ondasuntsu (owning lots of): "Owning lots of cattle".
What is rarely mentioned is that they were, and still are, superb sailors and
navigators; in fact they were the "Shardana", one of the tribes
that the Egyptians called "The Sea Peoples". Shardana comes from xar-dana, xarmagarri (attractive, good
looking) dana (all of them): "All of them are good looking". They
are also known for their independence of mind; "if you hire a Friesian,
you hire a reliable worker and an argument" is the saying in Canada.
They don't seem to be able (or willing) to change that. The blond people
are well known in NE Turkey as the Circaskian Turks, who are considered to
be among the best horsemen on earth. The blond peoples' migration to the
fertile and safe Ukraine increased their numbers enormously and allowed them
to live longer lives. From there they spread over large areas, so that we now
call them Ukrainians, White Russians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Danes,
Friesians, Vikings and Icelanders. The Friesians are known around the world
for their "Friesian
cattle", the best milk cows anywhere (often today called Holstein cattle).
In the Dnepr Valley they appear to have greatly improved on the strain of
wheat, so it was adapted to the new climatic and edaphic conditions. They
also improved on harvesting techniques and the storing of grain. The
unbelievably fertile loess soils of the Ukraine provided abundant and
reliable crops and they multiplied there exponentially, so after many
centuries of healthy living even the enormous Ukraine became crowded.
Academics agree that the blond tribe fanned out to northern and western
Europe. Similar migrations took place from the Caucasus but archaeologists
also tell us that they cannot have been in the Caucasus or the Ukraine for
more than 8,000 years. So where did they come from if they were not Caucasians? There
was another population of blond people, located on the north east coast of
Libya in North Africa, especially in Cyrenaica, which is wedged between Libya
and Egypt. Nyland (2001) suggested that this could be
the place where the original blond mutation originated.
However, Fell’s (1982) idea
that they rather descended from Norsemen immigrants around the time of the
Sea Peoples' invasions is also a plausible explanation. MIGRATION ROUTES OF THE BLOND SHARDANA Being located in
between the other powerful Sea Peoples, the Cretans and the Berbers, and
controlling only a limited section of the central Mediterranean, the
ambitious blond people from Cyrenaica looked for an area that was still
unoccupied, and found the pristine Black Sea. The problem was that the
Bosporus, giving access to and draining the Black Sea, was difficult to enter
because of the extremely fast and locally turbulent flow of the water,
considerably more so at that time than today. The Cretan seamen may have
tried and given up, because their people were of much slighter build and
unable to overcome the fierce current with muscle power. The Shardana
experimented with the current and found that some parts of the flow were
faster than in other places and learned how to bypass the most difficult
stretches. They eventually became masters of the Black Sea, possibly as early
as 6,000 bce. they brought their first migrants to the north coast of Turkey
where these settlers later became known to the Hittites as the Kirrukaska or Kaska for short, kirru (blond) kaska (head): "The
blond heads", today known as the Circaskian Turks. (The
"s" in Kaska is pronounced as "sh"). From there, they
sailed across the Black Sea to populate the delta and the valley of the
navigable Dnepr. They didn't get very far north up the river when nature
provided a major challenge to them in the form of 40 km of wild rapids where
the river squeezes through the mountains east of the Carpathians, about 72 km
south of Dnjepropetrovsk. In that stretch, the river drops 48 meters and no
muscle power could overcome that. But these indomitable explorers were not
the be defeated, after all, had they not overcome the great obstacle of the
Bosporus? A long portage road was built around the rapids and on they went.
Long stretches of navigable river were provided with a road suitable for
draft animals to trek the loaded boats slowly upstream, an exhausting task
which required many workers and took years to complete. Over time they
explored and occupied the entire valley of this long river as far north as
the second and last big obstacle, the Valdai Hills, (located west of Moscow)
where they stopped for some time to consolidate their enormous holdings. Valdai(15) means, "Let's celebrate";
the very hard work of trekking boats upstream deserved a big celebration in
the hills. The experiences involved in exploring, building the difficult
portages and improving the long river for boat travel had been a very major
accomplishment and would be worth a movie. There are two
navigable rivers running from the Valdai Hills to the Baltic. The easiest portage is to the
headwaters of the Dvina River that flows west into the Gulf of Riga through
what is today the city of Riga. Dvina(16)
means: "Depart in the spring when the river is turbulent". Riga(17) comes from .ri-iga, ari-iga, arin (light) igaro (to travel):
"Travel light", which is always good advise. The Volkov river runs
north to Lake Ladoga, which drains via the short Neva river, running through
the city of St. Petersburg, into the Gulf of Finland. Volkov(18) means: Crew singing a boat song". Neva(19) means: "Bring the evangelist
here". Thousands of years later, the Swedish Vikings would use this
long-established river-route to trade with the Near East. From the Baltic
States some families moved west over land along the shores of what is now
northern Poland; but the main exploration thrust continued by sail to the
cluster of islands which is now Denmark. From here their path split into
south-west and northerly directions. Those who went southwest became the
Friesians, occupying the long string of Friesian islands and the adjoining
mainland of NW Germany and northern Holland, while those moving north settled
the Norwegian mainland and became the Vikings, or as Homer called them, the
Phaiakians (Odyssey V: 35). Here they met the dark-haired Rh-negative Berber
type people who had come north from the Basque country by sailing the Atlantic
around 8,000 bce. (before Christian Era) and were firmly established on all
the western Norwegian islands, Finnmark and also on the southern tip of
Sweden. The long migration of the blond tribe would reach its farthest points
west when the Vikings invaded Iceland that had long been settled by the
Irish. They established a small population on the west coast of Greenland and
explored the east coast of North America. Any future expansion west would be
done by individuals, rather than in tribal format. It had been a very long
"road" from Cyrenaica. THE
CYRENAICA - FRIESLAND ASSOCIATION Cyrenaica lies
in northeastern Libya, adjoining Egypt. Friesland lies along the North Sea
and is divided by the three national administrations of Holland, Germany and
Denmark. The Friesians may be far from Cyrenaica, but the two regions have
much in common, geographically and population-wise. 1) The Wadi/Wad.
Both regions have large flat areas that are intermittently wet and dry. In
Cyrenaica it is rainwater that floods the "wadi" while in Friesland
the "wad" is covered by the salt water of the ocean tides. Maps of
Friesland some 300 years old still mark the tidal flats as "wadi";
today it is written as "wad". The Saharan word adi means watch out! The huge mudflats of
both wadis are well known to be treacherous, if not deadly, to be on when the
water comes back. As a matter of interest, the modern Friesian word 'ardi'
means watch out! 2) TheAterpe/Terp. Since time immemorial, people have managed
to live in the Libyan wadi by building aterpe, artificial hills
or refuges. The Friesians did the same only they call such a refuge now a
"terp", same difference. It was as if Friesland was made to order for
the Shardana. Today in Friesland many of these ancient refuges/terps are
still used by farmhouses. The former flooding around these "terpen"
no longer occurs because dikes have been built which keep the storm floods
and the tides out. The word 'dike' originates from the pre-Christian word daike, meaning "you
may have it", which refers to the land protected from flooding by a
dike. It was the convention that anyone acquiring new land in this way, was
allowed to keep it. These parts of the mud flats therefore became part of the
Friesian mainland. 3) The people
were fearless. The name: Cyrenaica;(20)
comes from Kirrunaika, kirru-unai-ika, meaning: The fearless blond
herdsmen". The Friesians still call themselves Frysk(21),
meaning: "The happy risk takers" or freely translated: "The
daring ones", which appears to have been the name by which they were
known in antiquity. The English words frisky (lively, frolicsome) and frisk
(a caper, wild escapade) are derived from Frysk. The Shardana fought as
mercenaries for the Egyptians and formed a renowned elite fighting
unit. The people of the Goddess were all firm believers in
re-incarnation and death to them was an inseparable part of life. Death was
more an inconvenience than a disaster because re-birth would soon follow in a
newborn body, and life would go on. The Frisians no longer believe in
reincarnation but courage is still a characteristic of all of them, now
especially when speaking their mind. Sea faring appears to be in their blood,
because both the Vikings and the Frisians remembered their ancient sea
peoples' traditions and navigational skills, even after their long sojourn in
the Ukraine and today many of their young people still take to the sea
like baby ducks to water. HITTITES AND KIRRUKASKA As the
population in northern Turkey expanded, they and other newcomers from the
Sahara migrated to the east coast of the Black Sea and populated the area
today called Georgia. Almost the entire north coast of the Black Sea was
under control of the blond tribe. Only the west coast, on both sides of the
mouth of the Danube, was under the control of the redheaded Celts, but they
were landlubbers, having never lived in contact with the sea. They had been
the southern neighbs of the blond tribe in the Sahara and had been ferried by
the Shardana to the mouth of the Danube river, the valley of which they
occupied in time, and then took possession of the Alps. The blond-headed
sailors controlled the entire Black sea, much to the annoyance of the later
Hittites. The clay-tablet
library of the Hittites, found in their capital of Hattusas, records many
years of troubles with the Kaska. They were no well-organized rivals like
Arzawa in the west, which irritated the patriarchal Hittites. The problem was
that the tribal Kirrukaska had no organized central government with which a
treaty could be made. O.R.Gurney writes in his book "The Hittites"
: "The
northern border was a perpetual cause of anxiety. Hittite garrisons were
stationed in the main centers, but they do not seem to have been strong
enough to hold down the turbulent Kaska folk who inhabited these remote
valleys. There is no hint whatever that the tribesmen were receiving help
from beyond the borders of the Hittite world, yet the king was obliged every
few years to lead his imperial army up into the northern hills to pacify the
country. King Mursilis records such campaigns (in great detail) for years 1,
2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 19, 24, 25 and 26 of his reign. Each campaign seems to have
been successful, yet no finality was achieved; the tribes were always ready
to break out afresh at the slightest sign of weakness. It is difficult to
avoid the suspicion that the causes of unrest lay deeper than the Hittites
themselves knew." (p.33) King Muwatallis was
on an extended campaign with his army in Syria, so, to be closer to the
action, he moved his capital from Hattusas to Dattassa, leaving the old
capital only lightly defended. The Kaska didn't pass up such an opportunity
and about 1,270 bce. they sacked and devastated Hattusas. When Hattusilis III
succeeded his brother Muwatallis as king, he rebuilt the wrecked city,
re-copied the archives and moved the capital back. The Hittites may
not have known about any support given to the Kaska from elsewhere, but it
was of the greatest importance for the blond tribes to keep the Hittites out
of the Black Sea, so all of them worked together to keep them from the north
coast of Anatolia and to block the entrance to the Bosporus. No wonder the
Kaska were able to come back year after year, because many of their fighters
must have been drawn from the Ukraine and Georgia, if not from the far-away
Baltic settlements. Today, the
deeply impoverished Kirrukaskan/Circaskian tribe still lives in NE Turkey;
their capital is the seaport of Sukhumi. For over one century their most
beautiful women were in demand by the Arabian sheiks for their harems, who
paid well for them. The people were so poor that they could not refuse. The
result is that today there are quite a few blond and/or blue-eyed people
among the ruling families of Arabia. The Circaskian/Kirrukaska men have
always been known as the finest equestrians and horse trainers in the world.
It is tempting to say that it was these courageous people who trained the
first horses for riding, an event which probably took place between 4,000 and
4,500 bce. It is likely that, many years before, they had also been involved
in the domestication of the camel of the Sahara. Most early words associated
with horse trainings appear to have come from them. The legend of the
ultimate horse-trainer, Kikkuli, is known to everyone. Kikkuli
comes from kik-uli, kikildu (to intimidate, to train a horse) uli (shy): "He trained the
shy horse". The name for barn is ikuilu, while ukuiluratu means to put in a
stable. Touching a horse is called ikuitu; a frightened horse is called kikil. The act of
"breaking" a horse for saddling is called kikiltze. The variety of
words in their language associated with horse training is greater than in
"Indo-European". There is no other tribe anywhere which can claim
closer association with the horse than the Circaskians/Kirrukaska. A large group of
horsemen known as the Kirrugizon
(blond-men) split off from this population and moved east to
populate the huge grasslands north of the Aral Sea, which area today is known
as the Kirghiz steppe; kir-giz, kirru (blond) gizon (man). From there they moved south-east into what is today
Kirghiztan, located north of Afganistan. There still are fair numbers of
blond and/or blue-eyed people among this population. The migration went
farther east and today there are still blue eyed and blond individuals among
the Punjabi people. It is interesting to note that the modern Basque
wordorder of noun-adjective is reversed in Kirrugizon and Kirrukaska, which
today would be written as Gizonkirru and Kaskakirru. CIR, CYR, CYRIL,
CYRUS - KIR, KIRRU, KIRRUZTA, RUS According to
Herodotus (Hero I: 108), King Astyages of the Medes had a dream about his
daughter Mandane, who was pregnant from her Persian husband Cambyses. The
Magi interpreted his dream to mean that his daughter would produce a son who
would usurp his throne for the Persians (I: 108). When the child was born,
King Astyages ordered his property steward Harpagus to kill the baby.
Harpagus took the baby but couldn't get himself to commit so foul a deed, so
he assigned the dirty task to the slave Mitradates, who lived in the
mountains. Mitradates' wife had just given birth to a dead baby and, you
guessed it, Cyrus had found a new family. When Cyrus was
ten years old, he and some boys were playing "king" in the streets
of the village and Cyrus was elected to play the role of king. He organized
his boys into builders, the king's eyes, the king's bodyguard etc. However,
one of the boys, the son of a highly placed official, refused to take orders
from the slave boy, so the king had him arrested and severely whipped. The
father, when shown what was done to his son, was furious with the cowman's
brat. He took Cyrus to King Astyages and reported what had happened. Cyrus
openly explained to the King that he had been fairly and honestly chosen to
be king and he had nothing to be ashamed of. Almost before Cyrus had finished
speaking, the King had guessed who the boy was, because "the
cast of the boy's features seemed to resemble his own" (I:
117). Mitradates was called in and under torture admitted that this was the
King's own grandson. The story goes on to say that Cyrus did overthrow his
grandfather to become Cyrus
the Great, possibly the most famous king of antiquity. The
question is, how did King Astyages know right away that this was his own
grandson? The answer lies in the name Cyrus, kirru-uz, kirru
uzta, kirru (blond) uzta (harvest, straw) straw blond. The members of
the royal family of the Medes were all blond, ruling over dark-haired people.
The interesting thing is that in Russia the Cyrus name is still pronounced
"Kirrus" which, abbreviated, became Rus and then Russia. According to
archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, the Lithuanians were the last people in Europe
to be converted to Christianity, which happened some time around 1600 A.D. A
rich treasure of pre-Christian lore has been collected over the years which
helps us to better understand this very different and ancient society of our
ancestors. The Lithuanians call their country Litauen(22),
meaning: "They always harvest an abundant crop". Lithuania was not
always the small country it is today. At one time the entire watershed of the
Dnepr and Pripet rivers, settled so many millennia ago by their
forebears, was called Lithuania. It ran from the Black Sea all the
way, to where the Dvina River runs into the Baltic. In
1569, when the Muscovy nation started to expand westward, Lithuania united
with Poland to better be able to resist the eastern threat. At the end of the
18th century, Lithuania was partitioned and it became part of the Russian
Empire. During their first years on the shore of
the Baltic they saw a huge herd of Beluga whales, which arrived in the spring
to give birth to their young ones in the Gulf of Riga. These relatively small
whales could be harpooned from boats, just like the Eskimos still do it in
the Beaufort Sea of Canada. The name Baltic(23) meaning
"Birthplace of the whales". The name Beluga(24),
means "Abundant snow white animal". Many Lithuanians today are
unaware of their early whaling tradition but their own names tell the story: Balciunas, balki-una-as, bal(ea)ki (whale meat) una (bored, tired of) -z (eternal): "Sick and tired of the
eternal whale meat".
They must have
overdone the catch, because today there are no belugas left in the Baltic,
not even a memory of them. Even when the waters of the Baltic have been
cleaned up, it is doubtful that the herd can be re-established. The migration
continued west and, finding the Danish Islands unpopulated, they quickly
established their agricultural pursuits on the fertile soils of the main
islands. Sheep grazing was practiced on the sandy soils of Jutland, the
mainland part of Denmark. From here the long string of Friesian islands was
occupied which Apollonius of Rhodes called the Liburnian Islands; a liburnus
much later was a Roman galley, therefore the name of the islands probably
refers to the oar-driven boats of the inhabitants, similar to the boats the
Vikings had. Then drivers who sat on the backs of the horses turned the
horses back towards the shore. This
resulted in the wagons being turned around and the sailors, already in their
places, would row into the wild surf to save the lives of the castaways. It
was a risky undertaking but the men did it without complaining. It is likely
that such oar driven boats had not changed much from the time of Apollonius. Most of the
islands are made up of dunes and sandy meadows that permitted grazing of
sheep, goats and cattle, and the growing of poor quality grains such as
barley and oats, but peas and beans also did very well. Fish became their
main food supply until the people settled the adjoining mainland where, on
the rich clay soils, the traditional wheat could again be grown. A priestess
was installed on the isle of Griend, from grinadun (passionate), in
the middle of the "wadi". As usual, the Benedictine monks came,
replaced the religious site and built a large monastery on the island.
However, nothing is left of either establishment because the island has
changed location, moving east, and the original site of the buildings was
washed away. Around 1400 AD, after a violent storm that flooded the island,
the monastery and school were moved to the Hallum monastery on the Friesian
mainland. When more
settlers arrived from the Ukraine, the only place to send them was to
southern Norway, where they again found fertile soils suitable for grain
growing. With healthy living conditions, plentiful fish in the fiords and
abundant grain in the fields, the population of the Norwegian mainland exploded.
Homer called them Phaiakians(25)
(V: 35). The Homeric name "Faikians" was later
altered to become "Vikings". On the southern
tip of Sweden the blond newcomers met a well established population of the
Rh-negative leather tanners and boat builders, called Hilleans by Apollonius of Rhodes. They
got along fine with them because the newcomers needed their products also.
They were cutting and managing the oak forests of that area, removing the
bark for tanning the boatloads of reindeer skins that their compatriots at
Mount Komsa in Finnmark, Arctic Norway were sending south. From here the
oak-tanned leather was sent to the Basque country and the Mediterranean to be
used as sails. The oak wood was used for building boats. It probably was a
very lucrative trade and the population lived well until a mini-ice age
forced them out of the area and they fled south into Poland, where their many
descendants can still be recognized by their blood peculiarity. On the Norwegian
islands of the west coast was another population of the dark featured
Berbers, called the Vanir
in legends, all related to and in regular contact with the Black Irish and
Scots. The distance from Orkney to Finnmark had proven to be too long, and
intermediate support stations were required. These groups of people at first
appear to have resented the intrusion by the blond tribe of Sea Peoples,
which gave birth to the legend of the enmity between the Vanir (the
dark-haired islanders) and the Aesir (the blond tribe). Both these tribes
spoke the same Saharan language, even though some dialectal differences had
developed over the centuries. They all had long known about each other, because
the chief priestess, located on Barra, had come from the blond tribe and
trade with the Baltic had long been active. Both practiced different forms of
the same Goddess religion. All these people
described above belonged to the Sea Peoples, speaking one language and
believing in one Goddess in many manifestations. But trouble was brewing and
their traditional system of communicating became the vehicle for the
organization of, what the pharaoh called, "the League of the Sea
Peoples". Nancy Sanders, in her book "The Sea Peoples,
wonders where such an overpowering force could have come from: ".... we have to ask who was in a position to raise a fleet
large enough, well enough organized and, most important, having sufficient
incentive to carry out the massive devastation on land, as well as the action
on the sea? No northern power would have been likely to do it". (p.181) With
"northern power" she meant the countries on the north side of the
eastern Mediterranean, not north-western Europe. That is exactly where this
enormous fleet came from, manned with people intent on reversing the changes,
which had come to the Near East. MAJOR CHANGE COMES
TO THE EAST The unity and
strength shown by the League of the Sea Peoples soon developed into a most
serious threat to the new patriarchy. In northern Greece the Dorians, who still adhered to the
Goddess religion and did not belong to the Sea Peoples, revolted, informed
the Sea Peoples what was going on and assisted the repeated Sea Peoples
attacks on the pirate kingdoms by fighting the Achaians from the land side.
The combined attacks were devastating and brought in what we now call the “Greek Dark Age",
which lasted for some 650-700 years. In northern Anatolia, the Kaska, who
controlled the Black Sea, had fought long and hard to stop the Hittites from
gaining access to the shores of the Black Sea. They were now being reinforced
with fighters and ships from the Ukraine. They slowly pushed the Hittite army
back towards their capital of Hattusas in central Anatolia. They were
prepared for the big push south when that was called for. King Mursilis'
vassals in the area were becoming more and more restless, hence his move
south to restore order in Ugarit and Syria. The City States of present day Lebanon
and Israel were well-defended but even they felt the pressure building, as
their kings' correspondence with the Pharaohs confirms. The stage was set for
a massive upheaval in the Near East because the Goddess religion was making a
strong come-back. The peoples living along the east shore of the
Mediterranean, such as the Syrians and Canaanites, for centuries had a long
history of reverting back, being very dissatisfied with the new regime, to
the Goddess religion, a struggle well documented in the Bible: "But
we will do everything that we have vowed, burn incense to the queen of heaven
and pour out libations to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings
and our princes, in the cities if Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for
then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no evil. But since we left
off burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her,
we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by
famine." (Jeremiah 44: 17-19).and was elaborated on in great
detail by Dr. Raphael Patai in Chapter 1 of his book "The Hebrew
Goddess". "...
the worship of Ashera was introduced into the Jerusalem Temple by King Rehoboam,
the son of Solomon, in or about 928 BCE.E. Her statue was worshiped in the
Temple for 35 years, until King Asa removed it in 893 BCE.E. It was restored
to the Temple by King Joash in 825 BCE.E. and remained there for a full
century, until King Hezekiah removed it in 725 BCE.E. After an absence of 27
years, however, Ashera was back again in the Temple: This time it was King
Manasseh who replaced her in 698 BCE.E. She remained in the Temple for 78
years, until the great reformer King Josiah removed her in 620 BCE.E. Upon
Josiah's death eleven years later (609 BCE.E.) she was again brought back
into the Temple, where she remained until its destruction 23 years later, in
586 BCE.E. Thus it appears that, of the 370 years during which the Solomonic
Temple stood in Jerusalem, for no less than 236 years (or almost two-thirds
of the time) the statue of Ashera was present in the Temple, and her worship
was a part of the legitimate religion approved and led by the king, the court
and the priesthood....". (p.50) EGYPT’S
TEMPORARY RETURN TO THE MOTHER GODDESS RELIGION In Egypt, the Pharaohs had been very
much in control and to build such a revolt was out of the question. Those
people who still practiced the Goddess religion were too oppressed to assist,
however, even here change had come some centuries earlier from a most
unexpected side, from the highest possible level of the Pharaoh himself. The
new Pharaoh Akhenaten had married a most remarkable
woman by the name of Nefertiti who was to promote a
world-shaking revolution. Nefertiti is known as the beautiful wife of Pharaoh
Akhenaten, who was Amenhotep III's son. During the reigns of Amenhotep III
and his father Thutmose IV, the Egyptian empire's military might was at its
zenith, extending south deep into Nubia and east into Asia. Akhenaten became
pharaoh ca 1353 bce. and shortly after he assumed the throne it became clear
that he and his wife Nefertiti were not interested in the huge and confusing
pantheon of gods and goddesses of the male dominated Egyptian religion. Male
domination had taken root and altered the ancient Goddess based religion of
Egypt. This change had degraded the position of the goddesses and placed the
gods in commanding positions. In an astonishing effort of evangelical
renewal, Nefertiti and Akhenaten decided to go back to the ancient monotheistic
Goddess religion of their early ancestors. This probably meant that Nefertiti
became the Chief Priestess and Akhenaten the prince. Her name tells us what
she set out to do; it breaks down into (the f equals b): .ne - efe - er. - .ti
- iti That is exactly
what she and her husband set out to do. Akhenaten came from a long line of
strong rulers, so why did he break with the established male domination
tradition? The answer may be that he married a headstrong woman, who had been
trained as a priestess, but where she came from or where she trained is not
clear. Her looks were different from the Egyptian women, with her very long
and elegant neck and fine features. She was more the type of the blond people
of Cyrenaica, on Egypt's northwestern border, known as the Shardana, all of
whom still adhered to the Goddess religion. Whoever she may have been, it is
a fact that Akhenaten took the courageous step to go back to
the Goddess religion of old Egypt. His name tells of his faith; it breaks
down into: ake - ena - ate - en. Akhenaten was
not so much a religious reformer as an ultra conservative returning to the
days of the Queen of Heaven. In the fifth year of his reign, he shocked the
Egyptian priesthood by forbidding the worship of the entire Egyptian pantheon
and ordered the closure of the Amen temples in the country. He also changed
his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten. Only one of the former gods survived
his purge; it was Apis, the sacred bull who had been worshiped as the
"living sun-god Ra" in Heliopolis. He was returned to his original
position as the universal symbol of male fertility. The formerly powerful and
rich priests, afraid of losing their exalted and respected positions, were
horrified but the people may have quietly applauded the pharaoh’s courageous
action. On the wall of one of his new temples at Thebes Akhenaten listed the
failings and folly of the old deities and tried to convince the people to go
back to the caring Goddess of the heavens and of the living earth. The
priesthood resisted but the pharaoh was the god-king, he had to be obeyed and
they did, biding their time. NEFERTITI‘S
ROLE To worship his
Goddess, Akhenaten built shrines at Thebes, beside the large Amen temple. In
a complex that may have been more than one half mile long, the walls shone
with brilliant relief carvings of the royal family, who were communicating
directly with the deity. Nefertiti
played a prominent role in the celebration ... A tally of the reliefs in the
remains of a temple built for her use reveals that her name and image
appeared at least twice as often as those of the king. Inscriptions found at
Karnak and elsewhere honor her with a list of fulsome epithets: Great of
Favour, Mistress of Sweetness, Beloved One, Mistress of Upper and Lower
Egypt, Great King's Wife whom He Loves, Lady of the Two Lands.(26) (p.90) These epithets
are exactly in line with the position of Chief Priestess, especially during
the annual festivity of the Sacred Marriage. The walls of her palace must
have been a splendor to behold, with colored glass, stone and ceramic inlays.
Glazed tiles depicted art very much like the nature paintings, showing
gardens of plants and flowers, swimming fish and dolphins, realistic farming
and fishing scenes, reeds waving in the wind etc. What is not clear is who
performed the duties of Tammuz, the volunteer human sacrifice that was required
to bring back spring and fertility. If such a sacrifice had been dispensed
with, the royal couple had taken the first step towards creating basic
Christianity. In the 12h year
of Akhenaten's reign, 1341 bce., an elaborate ceremony was held during which
delegations of envoys from many countries came bearing tribute. The tomb of
Huya, the high steward of ex-Queen Tiy, has reliefs showing ambassadors of
countries friendly to Egypt bringing fine offerings. Among them are "Syria
and Kush, the West and the East, all lands united at the one time, and the
isles in the Midst of the Great Green Sea." (D. O'Connor,
p.102). The fact that
the "Peoples from the Midst of the Great Green Sea", i.e. from
Britain and Ireland, were present and bringing presents indicates good
relations between their countries, which would not have been possible had
Egypt still been dominated by the old militaristic patriarchy. The stylized
art of the Egyptians underwent a total renewal towards more natural and
living artistry. The decorations on the walls of Nefertiti's temples were
almost identical to the art in the palace of the Chief Priestess in Knossos,
Crete. It is proof that the royal couple was making a serious attempt to
return to the peaceful and happy days of the Queen of Heaven when there were
no standing armies or fortifications, no boundaries and a world that was wide
open for everyone. It was a serious effort to put a stop to further expansion
of the warlike promoters of the sky-gods and return to the original religion.
It also must have been like a red flag waving before the charging bull of the
new and aggressive proto-Judaic sky gods of the Near East. Such a return to
peace and sanity could not be tolerated and plans were made accordingly to
reverse the trend. Despite the best
efforts of the royal couple, the return to the theology of the Great Goddess
did not succeed. After Akhenaten died at young age, Nefertiti may have
reigned for three more years as regent for the young Smenkhkare, but the
return to militarism under pharaoh Horemheb brought back the previous pantheon of dominant
gods and submissive goddesses and started a systematic eradication of the
memory and works of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and even their immediate successors.
Dr. David O'Connor writes: Presumably
as a punishment for his heresy, the priestly scribes omitted Akhenaten's name
from their chronological list of Egypt's kings. When some allusion to his
lifetime was unavoidable, chroniclers made enigmatic references to 'the reign
of that damned one', or the time of 'the rebel' (p.83) A similar
cunning action to wipe out part of history had been taken years before by the
proto-Judaic priesthood when they decided to bury the memory of the beautiful
Minoan civilization of Crete forever. They almost succeeded there. In time
the same history-burying action would be taken against the memory of the huge
effort by all the Sea Peoples of the Great Green Sea who had made such a
valiant attempt to destroy male domination at its sources. Even the Odyssey
was purged of any references to the peoples from the Atlantic and the true
activities of Odysseus. Akhenaten's serious effort to restore the Goddess religion
to Egypt had come too early. Had it been timed with the Sea Peoples attack of
1,180 bce. this world would have been a very different place for us to live
in. SEA PEOPLES' ATTACK OF 1,180 B.C.E. Even though it
was a huge military operation involving all of Europe and North Africa, the
amount of descriptive detail available to us is quite limited. Except for the
large Medinet Habu temple inscription, it is confined to Egyptian, Syrian and
Lebanese correspondence, some clay tablets found in Pylos and Byblos, a
single paragraph in the Odyssey and massive evidence of destruction caused by
war, uncovered by archaeologists. The attack was certainly not unexpected,
because the people of southern Greece had prepared by building large
fortifications out of cyclopean size rocks, clearly aimed at a threat
expected to come from the sea. At Mycenae, Athens and Tiryns immense
fortifications were built, and large underground cisterns for storing water
were hacked out of solid rock. In many isolated places along the coast
promontory forts were built, obviously aimed at an enemy expected from the
sea. The clay tablets of Pylos document the deployment of ships and troops to
the various positions along the west coast. Michael Wood in his book "In
Search of the Trojan War" wrote: "One
of the most important tablets is entitled: 'Thus the watchers are guarding
the coast': command of Maleus at Owitono ... 50 men of Owitono to go to
Oikhalia, command of Nedwatas ... 20 men of Kyparssia at Aruwote, 10 Kyparissia
men at Aithalewes ... command of Tros at Ro'owa: Kadasijo a shareholder,
performing feudal service ... 110 men from Oikhalia to Aratuwa. Some of the
last tablets written at Pylos speak of rowers being drawn from five places to
go to Pleuron on the coast. A second list, incomplete, numbers 443 rowers,
crews for at least 15 ships. A much larger list speaks of 700 men as
defensive troops; gaps in the tablet suggest that when complete, around 1000
men were marked down, the equivalent of a force of 30 ships". (p.
216) It was all to no
avail. It is not clear if all these fortifications were destroyed in one
large attack because there may have been many, but the result was that almost
all strongholds were taken and devastated during the big attack of 1,180 bce.
The first wave of attackers appears to have been so large that it totally
overwhelmed the defenses. Strangely enough, the palace of Pylos had not been
fortified, apparently because the king relied on the strength of his forces
to repel any attack. Some of the tablets mention that Pylos had a place where
many priests-linguists were working on the new Greek language, who appear to
have been the target of the first wave of attackers (author's translation): "The
enemy grabbed all the priests from everywhere and without reason murdered
them secretly by simple drowning. I am calling out to my descendants (for the
sake of) history. I am told that the northern strangers continued their
terrible attack, terrorizing and plundering until a short time ago."
(Pylos tablet PY Fr 1184) The priests
apparently were there to preach the new religion and to create and teach a
new language to the people and introduce the newly invented Linear-B script.
They must have been proto-Judean priests because the Egyptians tell us that
the Achaiwoi were circumcised, a practice promoted by the new patriarchy.
They must have been the main target of the first attackers. When the second wave of attackers arrived
soon after, more than priests appear to have been massacred (author's
translation): "I
fell back in fear from the huge massacre afflicted on us during this
nightmare of suffering. They decided then to burn our refuge and to beat us.
All were dragged from the stable and done evil with hammer blows". (Pylos
tablet PY Ta722). After the attackers had left,
whoever was still able to function had to pick up the pieces: "While
remembering the terror, we had to recover from the defeat by gently giving
the afflicted very good care and performing surgery" (Pylos
tablet PY Sa794). Carl Blegen, the
archaeologist who found these tablets stressed that they were obviously
written under severe duress of war. Tablets were not normally fired when kept
as permanent records, however, these had been fired by the heat of the
burning palace. Yet, when Michael Ventris translated them, the meaning he
came up with, inexplicably, had nothing to do with war and destruction. For
instance, the last one (Sa 794) was translated by him as: "One pair of
wheels, bound with bronze, unfit for service". That is not the type of
thing to write about when your priests are being drowned and the town is set
on fire. Ta 722, according to Ventris translates to: "One footstool inlaid
with a man and a horse and an octopus and a griffin in ivory". The
difference is that Ventris used Greek to translate the inscriptions while Nyland (2001) used Basque, the universal
language of the Sea Peoples. Ventris' contribution in decoding the Linear B
script was tremendous but his translations need to be redone by a Basque
scholar. The academics
have always been puzzled by the history preserved in Egypt. For some strange
reason, few researchers have been willing to consider the islands in the Great Green Sea to
be Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia (which at that time was thought to be an
island). Yet the enormous and impressive stone structures on those islands
indicated a civilization which had its roots in North Africa and was known in
Egypt. The Egyptians
knew very well what was coming and took firm steps to counter the threat. On
the temple of Medinet Habu is written: "...
the foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the
lands were on the move, scattered in war. No country could stand before their
arms. Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa and Alashiya. They were cut off. A camp
was set up in one place in Amor, they devastated its people and its land was
like that which had never come into being. They were advancing on Egypt while
the flame was being prepared for them. Their league was Puliset, Tjeker,
Shekelesh, Denyen, and Weshesh, united lands. They laid their hand upon the
lands to the very circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting
"Our pland will succeed". .... I (Ramses III) organized my
frontier, in Djahi ... I caused the Nile river mouth to be prepared like a
strong wall with warships, transports and merchantmen, entirely manned from
stem to stern with brave fighting men...." (Michael Wood,
p.220) In the Harris papyrus in the
British Museum, Ramses III says: "I
overthrew all those who transgressed the boundaries of Egypt, coming from
their lands. I slew the Danuna from their isles, the Tjekkeru and Philistines
... the Sherden and Weshesh of the sea were made as if non-existent". The overwhelming
force these islands of the Great Green Sea could muster, complete with large
fleets of sea worthy ships, each capable of carrying from 50 to 150 men,
could not have come from places like Corsica, Sicily or Sardinia. These
islands were well-known to the Egyptians through their trade and they
certainly were not called by pharaoh Ramses III "the foreign
lands, the isles who sailed over against his lands". No, it was the
Odyssey which hinted that the "homecoming" of Odysseus was not from
Troy to Ithaki in Greece, but from Egyptian captivity back home to the
Hebrides. Carl Blegen, the archaeologist
excavating at Troy, wrote: "We
believe that Troy VIIa has yielded actual evidence showing that the town was
subjected to siege, capture, and destruction by hostile forces at some time
in the general period assigned by Greek tradition to the Trojan War, and that
it may safely be identified as the Troy of Priam and of Homer". (Troy,
Vol. IV, 1958). The destruction
by violence and fire was identical to what was described by Homer in the
Odyssey. The pottery evidence indicated that it was likely destroyed in 1,180
bce. Blegen could not have known that Homer had bundled two attacks on Troy
into one story, the first one was the Achaian attack, the second the Sea
Peoples' attack with Odysseus. Did Odysseus sail from there directly to Egypt
or did he first participate in the destruction of the Syrian and Lebanese
harbours? We don't know, but Homer used Odysseus' words to describe his trip
south: "On
the seventh day we went aboard and from wide Crete sailed on a North Wind
that was favourable and fair. On the fifth day we reached the abundant stream
Aigyptos, and I stayed my oar-swept ships inside the Aigyptos river. Then I
urged my eager companions to stay where they were, there close to the fleet,
and to guard the ships, and was urgent with them to send lookouts to the
watching places; but they, following their own impulse, and giving way to
marauding violence, suddenly began plundering the Egyptians' beautiful
fields, and carried off the women and innocent children, and killed the men,
and soon the outcry came to the city. They heard the shouting, and at the
time when dawn shows, they came on us, and all the plain was filled with
horses and infantry and the glare of bronze, and ... none was so hardy as to
stand and fight, for the evils stood in a circle around them. There they
killed many of us with the sharp bronze and others they led away alive, to
work for them in forced labor. I wish I had died and met my destiny there in
Egypt, for there was still more sorrow awaiting me". (XIV:
252-275) Homer, who knew
a good story when he saw it, obviously couldn't resist repeating this story
in his Odyssey. He tuned it down as much as possible and hid it in the text
as a "lying story" but it is clear that it was a highlight in the
original travelogue which he worked from. Confirming this history is exactly
what Ramses III had done on his funerary temple at Medinet Habu. Ramses
explains how prepared he was for the attack: "As
for those who came on the sea, the full flame was in front of them at the
river mouths, while a stockade of lances surrounded them on the riverbank.
They were dragged ashore, hemmed in and flung down on the beach, grappled,
capsized and laid out on the shore dead, their ships made heaps from stern to
prow, and their goods...." (Wood p.220). The "full
flame" at the river mouth is mentioned a few times in the inscriptions
but no satisfactory explanation of it has been given. Large numbers of the
attackers lost their lives, many were captured and put to work as slave
labourers and mercenaries. Odysseus also managed to survive. He tells us that
he saw the Pharaoh approach and made the best of a bad situation: "At
once I put the well-wrought helm from my head, the great shield off my
shoulders, and from my hand I let the spear drop, and went out into the way
of the king and up to his chariot, and kissed his knees and clasped them: he
rescued me and took pity and seated me in his chariot and took me, weeping, homeward
with him; and indeed many swept in on me with ash spears straining to kill
me, for they were all too angered, but the king held them off from me". (XIV:
276-283). The terror
experienced by the people from the Atlantic islands was also described on the
Medinet Habu monument. When the battle turned against them: "They
penetrated the channels of the river mouths (Nile Delta). They struggle for
breath, their nostrils cease. His Majesty is gone out like a whirlwind
against them fighting in the battle field like a runner, the dread of him and
the terror have entered in their bodies, they are capsized and overwhelmed
where they are. Their heart is taken away and their soul is flown away, their
weapons are scattered upon the sea. His arrow pierces whom he wishes, and the
fugitive is a drowned man........" The life of
Odysseus had been saved by the lucky presence of the Pharaoh but he was now a
prisoner. Knowing that the Sea Peoples were reliable people with a cause and
good fighters, the Egyptians had traditionally made mercenaries out of them
in a special unit of the Egyptian army. Again they were given a choice, to
either become slave labourers working on the temples, or swear an oath to
fight a certain number of years as mercenaries for the Pharaoh and, upon
completion of satisfactory service, to earn their freedom. "There
for seven years I stayed and gathered together much substance from the men of
Egypt, for all gave to me". (XIV: 285-6). Odysseus would
not have been given much substance as a slave labourer. It is clear that he
took the mercenary option and became a soldier for the Pharaoh, probably on
the eastern border of the empire. Plundering of conquered peoples was
permitted and this was probably the source of his "gathered
substance". He and his men must have performed well and after the
contracted time, the Pharaoh, true to his word, released them, gave them back
some of their ships and the famous Nostoi or Homecoming had started. Ramses had the
final defeat of the Sea Peoples commemorated in the extraordinary relief
carvings on the walls of his temple in Medinet Habu. Many years later a
similarly convincing victory over the last army of the Goddess, this time in
Scotland, was memorialized in 842 A.D. on a somewhat less magnificent, but
still very impressive, seven ton slab of rock. It was the victory of King Kenneth MacAlpin of
the Christian Scots, over the "pagan" Picts. It looks almost as if
King Kenneth knew about the huge inscription in Egypt and he wanted to do
something similarly impressive to advertise the defeat of the last resistance
of the people of the Goddess. The last recorded king of the Picts, Eoganan or Uuen, son of Oengus had
been defeated and killed in battle in 839, and after that the Pictish forces
were too much weakened to resist both the attacking Norsemen and King
Kenneth' army. "It
is clear that this stone commemorates the victory of the southerners and the
corresponding defeat and execution of the northerners. If we divide the
contending parties into two factions into left and right, then there are a
total of 42 to the left, losing side, and a total of 56 for the winners. The
grand total is thus 98, including the 14 executed prisoners." (Anthony
Jackson, 1993, p. 112). The huge, almost
seven-meter high stone, on which Kenneth recorded the demise of the last
pre-Christian kingdom stands near Forres in Morayshire. In the 18th
century, the monument was named Sueno's stone, after the Danish King Sueno (Sven) who
lived ca 1000 A.D. and had absolutely nothing to do with it, but the name has
stuck. The carvings depict the execution of the 14 leaders of the 14 main
Pictish lineages; the inscription was intended to be a most appropriate
epitaph to the final defeat of the Picts. In 842 A.D. the last true
civilization of the Great Goddess succumbed to the attacks by Christians, but
it has never been forgotten. Homer could not acknowledge the role of the Atlantic Sea Peoples in Egypt or Scotland; his task was to bury that history for ever, but he must have had trouble explaining the seven years of mercenary service. Instead, he decided to add the seven years to Odysseus' recuperating time in the Orkneys, after he had been rescued from his ordeal in Charybdis (Corryvreckan) by Kalypso. Homer did not make any effort to explain what Odysseus did in those seven years, except to hint that he was kept as a love-slave, which was something that never had existed in a Goddess society, where free love always was available, especially for a hero like Odysseus. Appendix
1. Malta, ama-alta, Ama (Priestess/Goddess) altara (altar): "The altar of the
Priestess/Goddess". 2. Gozo, from gozo (calming, peaceful): "The peaceful
isle". 3. Shekelesh, a sheke is a young bull, ele is a story and esh may come from exzepziozko (exceptional): "The
story of the exceptional young bulls"; could this refer to the bull fights which still are practiced
in Spain, a leftover from the Moorish occupation of Spain? 4. Tyrrhenoi, again a name which the Egyptians
must have given them in captivity. The name translates to: tirr.-.he-eno-o.i,
tirri-ihe-eno-ohi, tirria (burning desire) ihesegin (to escape) enoratsu (to be covered in
warts) ohil (savage): "The wart-covered savages have a burning desire to escape". That sounds
like something Odysseus would have done. The names Thyrrenia, Tyrrhenian Sea
and the modern Isle of Tiree must have all come from this name. Serious wart
problems are also mentioned in the Ogam writings on standing stones in
Ireland. 5. Shardana, xar-dana, xarmaz (attractive,
good looking) dana (everybody, all of them): "They are all
good-looking". 6. Kirrukaska, from kirru (blond) kaska (head): "the
blond heads". 7. Keftiu, the people of Kaphtor or Kaftor, from
.ka-af.-.to-or., eka-afa-ato-oro, ekarri (to bring) afa (joy) atondu (to beautify) oroegile (Goddess): "It brings joy to beautify for the
Goddess". 8. Egypt, from egi-ip.-.t., egi-ipu-uto, egin (to create) ipuin (legend) utopia (utopia): "They
created the legend of utopia". 9. Pulisati, from .pu-uli-isa-ati,
ipu-uli-iza-ati, ipurterre (bad-tempered) uli (coward) izate (nature, character) atxikiezin (unreliable): "Bad-tempered cowards of unreliable
character". 10. M.J.O'Kelly, "Early Ireland", page
7. 11. Biscay, bizkai, from .bi-iz.-.kai,
ibi-ize-ekai, ibilkera (behaviour) izentxar (bad reputation) ekaizpera (stormy): "It has a bad reputation of stormy behaviour".
12. Basque, from bask, .ba-ask., eba-aska, ebatzi (to decide) askatu (to free):
"We decided to be free". 13. Europa, eur.-.opa, euri-opa, euri (rain) opa (longing for rain): "Longing
for rain" This name was coined by the people fleeing the
burning Sahara. The names Europe and
Africa must be explained together because "Africa" tells of the
terrible drought that happened there: af.-.ri- ika, afa-ari-ika, afa (happy) arinari eman (to escape) ikara (tragedy): "Happy to have escaped the tragedy".
14. Scientific American, November
1991, pages 104-105. 15. Valdai, from bal-dai, balaku (happiness) daigun (let's have ...): "Let's
have happiness" or "Let's celebrate". 16. Dvina, .d.-.bi-ina, uda-abi-ina, udaberri (spring) abiatu (to depart) inarrosi (agitated,
turbulent): "Depart in the spring when the river is
turbulent". 17. Riga, from ari-iga, arin (light) igaro (to travel): "Travel
light". 18. Volkov, bol-kob, bolada (group of people,
crew) kobla (boat song): "Crew singing a boat song".
19. Neva, one-eba, oneratu (to bring here) ebanjelari (evangelist): "Bring
the evangelist here". 20. Cyrenaika, from kirru-unai-ika, kirru (blond) unai (herdsman) ikaraezin (fearless): "The
fearless blond herdsmen". 21. Frysk, fa-arrisk, afa (happy) arriskatu (to take risks): "The
happy risk takers" or "The daring ones".
22. Litauen, from.l-ita-au-en., eli-ita-au-ene, elikatu (food supply, crop) itaitu (to harvest) aukera (abundant) enetan (always): "They
always harvest an abundant crop". 23. Baltic, bal-tik, bale (whale) -tiko (originating,
birthplace of): "Birth place of the whales". 24. Beluga, .be-elu-uga, abe-elu-uga, abere (animal) elurzuri (snowwhite) ugari (abundant):
"Abundant snowwhite animal". 25. Phaiakian, .fa-aia-aki-an., aba-aia-aki-ana, abantari
(rowers) aja (ha, ha, ha, happy) akigabe (untiring) anaitu (united, in unison): "Happy rowers, untiring in
unison". 26. Egypt: Land of the Pharaohs, by Dr. David
O'Connor, professor of Egyptology, University of Pennsylvania. Publ:
Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia. |