Who knows what Columbus would have discovered if America hadn’t got in the way.

—Stanislaw J. Lec

In the 27 years since Columbus first reached the “Indies,” the Spanish had conquered their way through the Caribbean in search of the glorious empires described by Marco Polo. Finally, in November of 1519, a band of Spanish soldiers stepped through a mountain pass in central Mexico. Below them sprawled a great lake covered with cities and roads so magnificent that they later claimed to have doubted their own eyes: “Gazing on such wonderful sights, we did not know what to say, or whether what appeared before us was real, for on one side, on the land, there were great cities, and in the lake ever so many more.”[1]

They were accustomed to overpowering the small Taino villages of the Caribbean, yet here they were 400 soldiers against an empire with 19 million subjects and a capital city larger than any in Europe. The planned invasion would be suicide. But their leader, Hernan Cortés, had been so enticed by rumors of gold, that he had defied a direct order forbidding the voyage and, on arriving in Mexico, had set fire to the ships that brought them. Failure would bring him humiliation, imprisonment, and likely death. He ordered the men forward across a long causeway spanning the lake. Ahead in the waters, towering over a bustle of Aztec markets, temples, castles, and homes, twin pyramids glistened with fresh blood. The soldier Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote of this moment, “What men have there been in the world who have shown such daring?”[2]

Figure 1. The conquistadors' map of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which was built atop a lake. The city had over 200,000 residents and ruled an empire of some 19 million people.

To their relief, the Aztecs did not raise their drawbridges, volley arrows, or amass armies. Instead, a procession of royal dignitaries greeted the foreigners, and the great emperor Montezuma welcomed them into his own palace with a surprising speech (translated by La Malinche and extant in a letter from Cortés and in the memoir of del Castillo[3]

We have known for a long time, from the chronicles of our forefathers, that neither I, nor those who inhabit this country are descendants from the aborigines of it, but strangers who came to it from remote parts.[4]

Montezuma went on to claim that, like the Spanish, some of his own ancestors had come from across the ocean “where the sun rises.”[5] After many years in Mexico, their leader Quetzalcóatl[6] departed for their homeland across the ocean. But his men had already “married with the native women of the country, and had many descendants, and had built towns where they were living” and thus refused to accompany him.[7]

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

According to an ancient prophesy, Quetzalcóatl would return to Mexico in the year “One Reed.” When this year recurred, once every 52 years, the Aztecs undertook extensive preparations for his coming. The conquistadors had arrived in exactly this year, they were white and bearded just as Quetzalcóatl was said to have been, and they came from the east across the Atlantic Ocean.

Montezuma told Cortés “according to the direction from which you say you come, which is where the sun rises, and from what you tell us of your great lord, or king, who has sent you here, we believe and hold for certain, that he is our rightful sovereign.”[8] Concluding that the king across the ocean (Charles V) must be either Quetzalcóatl or his heir, Montezuma offered Cortés and his men unheard-of power and riches:

Throughout the whole country you may command at your will (I speak of what I possess in my dominions), because you will be obeyed and recognized, and all we possess is at your disposal. Since you are in your rightful place, and in your own houses, rejoice and rest, free from all the trouble of the journey.[9]

Unprecedented in history, a ruler with superior forces handed over one of the world’s greatest empires to 400 weary foreigners. And he did so because of a legend.

THE AFTERMATH

Cortés took full advantage of this offer, imprisoning the emperor and using him as a puppet ruler while looting Aztec gold. During an appearance before his people, Montezuma was murdered. The Spaniards and the Aztecs each blamed the other for his death.

With the aid of European disease, the Aztec civilization was soon decimated and her people enslaved. Stories of their gold brought thousands of fortune hunters, whose swords soon hacked through every corner of the new land. Behind them came bureaucracies. The encomienda system created wealth for the foreigners by requiring unpaid, unfed labor from the locals, who were often worked to death as a disposable labor force in plantations and mines. The Inquisition stamped out traditional beliefs with book burning, torture, and execution. And the military subjugated (and raped and pillaged) the myriad cultures of Mexico and Central and South America. The estimates of Bartolomeo de Las Casas (who arrived in the New World as a young sailor with Columbus and bore witness to its later conquest) put the total number of indigenous people killed at 20 million.[10] As the labor force thinned (to the brink of extinction in the Caribbean), they supplemented it by sending ships to Africa for slaves.

The strange case of mistaken identity that opened the Aztec Empire for its invaders has never been solved. The chronicles of the Maya, like those of the Aztecs, told of an ancient voyage to Mexico from a homeland across the Atlantic Ocean. Although Western scholars have tended to dismiss such non-Western histories, the use of books in these societies allowed their collective memories to bridge generations and centuries. The possibility that their chronicles have a basis in history is at least worth exploring and, if verified, has the potential to transform our knowledge of the ancient world.

The logical place to test these claims is against the archaeological record. In this field there is another gap in our knowledge, a mystery surrounding the abrupt appearance of ancient Mexico’s first civilization.

The disappearance of nations would impoverish us no less than if all people were made alike, with one character, one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, they are its generalized personalities: the smallest of them has its own particular colours, and embodies a particular facet of God’s design.

– Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize Speech[11]

In 1848, a worker clearing jungle in the Mexican state of Veracruz discovered the top of a large, deeply buried manmade object. Hoping for buried treasure, the hacienda owner sent men to unearth it. As they dug, a human head emerged, nearly 6 feet tall, 18 feet in circumference, and finely carved of solid stone.[12]

For decades, the find languished as the elements reburied it. Then, in 1938, the intrepid archaeologist Matthew W. Stirling hired horses, swam the Papaloapan River, and trekked into the jungle in search of the rumored head. On reaching it, Stirling became the first to recognize the outlines of an ancient city beneath the surrounding landscape:

Buried to its forehead, I found the object of my quest standing in a plaza formed by four mounds. . . . I found that somewhat to the east of this plaza was another group of very large mounds, one of which was almost 450 feet in length. Beyond these, on an elevated piece of land, was a third group of mounds.[13]

Realizing the significance of unearthing an unknown civilization, the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution sponsored eight joint excavations of this lost world from 1939 to 1946. While the rest of the world warred, they painstakingly peeled back the earth and vegetation to reveal massive stone monuments, enormous pyramids, and elegant art from nearly a thousand years before the Maya (long considered the region’s earliest civilization).

AN ABRUPT BEGINNING

In 1945, Stirling followed rumors of a giant stone eye staring up from a remote path. There he discovered the first city of this “Olmec” civilization. Excavations (especially those by Yale University from 1966 to 1968) uncovered Mesoamerica’s first aqueducts,[14] burial pyramids,[15] stone columns,[16] evidence of paper production,[17] and the world’s oldest magnetic compass[18] and rubber balls,[19] all in this same community, which Stirling named “San Lorenzo.”[20]

Instead of the expected incremental cultural evolution spread over centuries, these innovations appeared abruptly in a fully developed form. Their earliest sculpture, for example, was not a crude attempt but an intricately carved, multi-ton head.[21] This alone revealed several simultaneous technological leaps: the ability to quarry a multi-ton block of stone, transport it some 50 kilometers, ferry it across water (requiring substantial water craft), and carve it into a realistic representation. And this was rapidly followed by numerous multi-ton stone statues, columns, stairs, and thrones.

The beginning of this transformation (the Chicharras phase) is marked by a sharp transition in the site’s pottery, with completely new forms replacing the traditional ceramics. The leaders of the Yale excavations, Michael Coe and Richard Diehl, interpreted this cultural disjuncture as the arrival of the first Olmecs as “immigrants into the area.”[22] They sought the source of these immigrants among the other cultures of Mesoamerica, but none had preceded the San Lorenzo Olmecs in any of these arts and technologies.[23] Coe concluded:

Surely the use and transport of great stones, the Olmec iconography, the drainage system, and a host of other traits come from some other place as yet undiscovered. . . . But right now we do not know the answer to the great question of Olmec origins.[24]

Figure 2. Olmec colossal stone head from their first city, San Lorenzo. (Photo by author)

THE REVOLUTION SPREADS

The “sudden appearance of the Olmec civilization in full flower”[25] made for stark disparities with their neighbors. While the rulers of San José Mogote in the Valley of Oaxaca lived in wattle-and-daub huts, the ruler of San Lorenzo resided in the “Red Palace,” with walls, columns, stairs, and aqueducts meticulously carved of imported stone.[26]

Over time, the neighboring cultures began adopting the iconography, sculpture, architecture, ritual objects, attire, and eventually calendrics, astronomy, and literacy of San Lorenzo.[27] This “Early Olmec horizon”[28] spread their cultural influence hundreds of miles through what is now Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.[29]

Figure 3. Map and timeline of Mesoamerican civilization. Olmec dates are conventionally reported in uncalibrated radiocarbon years. (This has often been missed in comparisons with Old World timelines, which use normal calendar years for the same time period.) While complying with this convention, I have also calculated the actual calendar dates using OxCal (a program that compensates for historic variations in atmospheric carbon levels based on data from radiocarbon tests of tree rings of known age) and included them in parentheses. Art by Paul Ruane.

But around 1000 BC, San Lorenzo suddenly depopulated (another mystery that has yet to be solved), and La Venta became the new capital.[30] From there, the Olmecs spread their influence even further:

This [Late Olmec] horizon . . . transformed societies all over Chiapas and northern Central America. Social stratification, public art, architecture, and long-distance trade in exotic goods appeared for the first time in regions where they had never existed, as one group after another adopted Olmec symbols, beliefs, and practices.[31]

Some scholars interpret this as an Olmec Empire, since images of a single Olmec king (called the “Lord of the Double Scroll,” after a tattoo on his cheek) are found across a wide swath of Mesoamerica.[32]

THE MAYA EMERGE

While the San Lorenzo Olmecs had ignored the then sparsely populated Mayan lands, their successors at La Venta significantly influenced the subsequent rise of the Maya.[33] Olmec artifacts from La Venta have been found in the oldest layers of some of the earliest Mayan sites.[34] The oldest known Mayan mural depicts an Olmec deity. And some of the earliest images of Mayan kings are found on the backs of reused Olmec jade artifacts and show these Mayan kings wearing Olmec attire.[35]

CUM MORTUIS IN LINGUA MORTUA

Linguists Lyle Campbell and Terrence Kaufman discovered that the surrounding Mesoamerican languages had adopted words from the Olmecs that related to agriculture, commerce, rituals, mathematics, the calendar, and writing. They concluded that the Olmecs’ neighbors had adopted these words as they came into contact with new concepts, arts, and technologies for which their own languages lacked terminology.[36]

WRITING

This linguistic evidence was one of several clues that the Olmecs had even been literate. Numerous Olmec paper-making tools have also been found, and Olmec artifacts are often inscribed with glyphs. But it was not until 2002 that a team of archaeologists announced the discovery of plaque fragments and a cylinder seal containing the first undisputed Olmec writing.[37] In 2006, an inscribed stone tablet unearthed near San Lorenzo proved that the Olmecs had a fully developed writing system in their first city at the dawn of their civilization.[38] And Mayanist Tatiana Proskouriakoff argued that bas-reliefs on San Lorenzo’s very first monuments were at least a direct precursor of writing:

In Mesoamerica, the monumental arts apparently developed concurrently and in close association with writing. Monuments 41 and 42, the earliest sculptures we know . . . have a kind of symbol that bridges the gap between artistic representation and the written word.[39]

By comparison, in the ancient Near East, the world’s first writing system took millennia to develop.

THE SEARCH WIDENS

The failure to locate the source of these immigrants within Mesoamerica led some scholars to look farther afield. In 1975, Smithsonian archaeologist Betsy Meggers argued that the first Olmecs had come from Shang Dynasty China, basing her argument on similarities between their artistic styles.[40] The following year, Rutgers University Professor Ivan Van Sertima published They Came Before Columbus, in which he argued that the Olmec people looked African (Stirling and others had made the same observation of that first Olmec head[41]) and were the first in a series of African migrations to the New World. While each theory has been taken up by a handful of other scholars, neither has been widely accepted.

The sudden rise of Olmec civilization remains a profound mystery, as does the ancient Mesoamerican belief in an ancestral migration from across the Atlantic Ocean.

The art of the Olmec civilization . . . continues to astound and inspire us after fifty years of intense study. We still can’t quite believe that this convergence of brilliant conception and superb craft occurred at the very beginning of Mesoamerican civilization.[42]

– David A. Freidel, Professor of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University

Five centuries of scholars have sought the origin and identity of Quetzalcóatl. Some among Mexico’s first clergy believed he was the Apostle Thomas, who was said to have sailed for India as a missionary. Later theories saw Quetzalcóatl as Jesus Christ, a West African, an Irish missionary, or the Devil deluding the naïve “Indians.”

Intriguingly, not only do several Spanish chronicles mention that Quetzalcóatl wore a robe covered in crosses, but three extant Mesoamerican codices actually depict him in clothing emblazoned with crosses with arms of equal length (resembling “Greek crosses” or plus signs).[43]

THE LOST CITY

To begin to untangle this ancient mystery, one must find where the traditional narratives can be evaluated against the archaeological record. Specifically, Aztec and Maya chronicles tell of Tula, the region’s first city, where Quetzalcóatl ruled and introduced new arts and technologies, including writing. Locating this lost city is the key to unraveling a mystery that has defied solution for five centuries.

(Confusing the matter somewhat, a ninth-century king called himself Quetzalcóatl and named his own capital Tula. This site in the Mexican state of Hidalgo is what tourists are now shown as the city of Quetzalcóatl. However, early Mesoamerican texts distinguish this from the earlier original Tula, “the exact memory of which is said to be lost in the mists of time.”[44])

Academic detective work by Stanford professor Gordon Brotherston narrowed the location of this lost Tula to an area called Olman[45] on Mexico’s southern Gulf coast. The ancient descriptions of Tula’s flora, fauna, attire, and hairstyles match those of ancient Olman, and the names of the cities listed as Tula’s allies are located in this region on conquest-era maps.[46] Moreover, the Aztecs referred to Olman’s inhabitants as ipilhoa Quetzalcóatl, “sons of Quetzalcóatl.”[47]

This land of Quetzalcóatl is exactly the area in which the great cities that we call “Olmec” were later unearthed. However, this only narrows Tula’s location to a region. Can the remains of the actual city be located? The ancient chronicles contain an overlooked clue: Quetzalcóatl was associated with a specific river in Olman known as the Coatzacoalco, and the stories of his final departure from Tula have him sailing into the Atlantic from this same remote river.[48]

Although this river shifted course over time, a geomorphological study by Mario Arturo Ortiz shows that, at the time of the Olmecs, the city of San Lorenzo lay in the crux of two branches of the Coatzacoalco River. During the wet season, this city actually lay on an island within the river.[49] Perhaps then the city of Quetzalcóatl, the lost original Tula, was the ancient city on the Coatzacoalco River that Stirling dubbed San Lorenzo.

Indigenous histories list Tula as the first city in Mesoamerica,[50] and archaeologists have identified San Lorenzo as Mesoamerica’s earliest urban center. According to the Aztec accounts recorded in their own tongue in the Florentine Codex, Quetzalcóatl and his followers introduced “all the crafts work, the learning.”[51] And he departed Tula, leaving it transformed by new knowledge, arts, and skills, including “the craft of the lapidary, the carving of wood, sculpturing in stone, the art of the scribe . . . ”[52] From an archaeological standpoint these very innovations are the hallmarks of the Olmec revolution that began at San Lorenzo.

Aztec migration stories say that their earliest ancestors, the Toltecs[53] or “people of Tula,” long ago traveled from the southeast (from Olman), bringing civilization to Central Mexico.[54] This greatly resembles the archaeological evidence of culture and technology spreading out from San Lorenzo (including to Central Mexico) as part of the Early Olmec horizon.[55]

The literal meaning of the name or title Quetzalcóatl is “Feathered Serpent,” and a snake covered in feathers served as this ancient hero-king’s emblem throughout Mesoamerican history. This symbol of Quetzalcóatl appeared first among the Olmecs at the dawn of Mesoamerican civilization. Monument 19 from the Olmec city of La Venta depicts a large serpent with a crest of feathers. Beside the serpent are two quetzal birds, the exact species whose plumage is referenced in the name Quetzalcóatl.[56] And an Olmec painting found at Juxtlahuaca and dated to the reign of San Lorenzo shows a red serpent with green feathers, the earliest known depiction of the Feathered Serpent . . . at least in the Americas.[57]

Even the crosses on Quetzalcóatl’s robes first appeared among the Olmecs. This simple cross was such a common artistic motif at San Lorenzo that archaeologists used it as one of the markers for tracing the spread of Olmec culture out to the rest of the region.[58] And, in a beautiful sunlit room in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City sits an exquisite Olmec sculpture of a man wearing a cloak inscribed with these same crosses (see Fig. 4). Dated to between 1200 and 600 BC, this cross-covered cloak could not have been inspired by a Christian source. Rather, it further ties the legend of Quetzalcóatl to the Olmecs.

The two mysteries appear to coincide. The local histories of Quetzalcóatl and the archaeological evidence of the founding of San Lorenzo may record the same event. Yet the origin of these immigrants remains unknown.

Figure 4. Quetzalcóatl’s cloak covered in crosses has often been cited to identify him with various Christian figures. This clay sculpture, dated to between 1200 and 600 BC, is one of numerous Olmec artifacts to display the same motif centuries before the Christian era. As such, it further links Quetzalcóatl with the Olmecs. (Photo by author.)

My Quetzalcóatl!

– Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate physicist, an expression he used in the sense of “My God!”

The Aztecs called the homeland across the ocean Tlillan Tlapallan, “Black Land Red Land.”[59] Today, most scholars consider this land to be either purely mythical or perhaps a reference to the Yucatan. What has been missed is that there actually was a land of this name and it lay where they said it did, to the east across the Atlantic.

The ancient Egyptians knew their own country as Kemet Deshret, “the Black Land and the Red Land.”[60] Like the name of Quetzalcóatl’s distant homeland, this consists of two words meaning “black land” and “red land,” even occurring in the same order.

The Aztecs also called Quetzalcóatl’s homeland Xalac, “the Place of Sand,”[61] a reasonable description of Egyptian geography.

Before the conquest, Montezuma had sent 60 priests to rediscover their ancient homeland across the ocean. They returned with a fantastic story about how they had given to the gods in that land all of the riches and tribute that Montezuma had sent with them. They also included a moral lesson about Montezuma’s favorite vice: They told how an elderly man had guided them across the fine sands of that distant land. The old man walked easily, but their own feet sank into the sand. He yelled back at them to hurry, but they only sank more deeply. Frustrated, he called back to them, “What has made you so heavy? What do you eat in your land?” “We eat the foods that grow there, and . . . chocolate.”[62]

CLOSING IN

This land’s final name points not only to Egypt but to a specific region and its pharaoh. There was said to have been a place on the other side of the ocean named Tula, from which Quetzalcóatl’s city took its name. Thus, when Montezuma first heard of the arrival of the Spaniards, he is said to have exclaimed: “It is Quetzalcóatl, returned from Tula.”[63] And the Aztecs were not alone in this belief.

Although the Maya were extremely literate, Bishop Diego de Landa wrote: “We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they [the Maya] regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.” Only three Mayan books survived. (These also nearly perished, one having been retrieved from a wastebin in a Paris library and another being partially burned in the bombing of Dresden in WWII.)

With their native writing systems outlawed, indigenous scholars and sympathetic Spaniards attempted to preserve their histories in Latinate letters, some by transcribing the sounds of the Mayan and Nahuatl languages with Latinate characters, others by translating codices into Spanish. Many of these accounts are not available in English, a notable exception being the Mayan Popul Vuh, which tells how their ancestors crossed the eastern ocean from Tulán (a variation of Tula):

e nab'e winaq

xepe chila'

ch'aqa palo

chi releb'al q'ij

ojeroq ke'ul waral

They were the first people

who came from

across the sea

where the sun emerges.

Anciently they came here.[64]

The early Historia Quiche de Don Juan de Torres likewise tells how their ancestors came from the east “del otro lado del mar,” from the other side of the sea.[65] And Memorial de Sololá records, “Across the sea we came, from Tulan.”[66] The Annals of the Cakchiquels tell how in Tula their ancient ancestors “arrived at the shore of the sea and crossed it in seven ships.”[67] And the 1524 Historia de los Xpantzay de Tecpan Guatemala tells of their ancient homeland Tulán “on the other side of the sea.”[68] This name, Tula or Tulán, literally means “Place of Reeds” or “Place of Rushes,” referring to certain semi-aquatic plants.

The Egyptians divided their land into two halves. The southern half was represented by the lotus, while the marshy northern delta was called Ta Mehu “Land of Papyrus.” The papyrus reeds that filled northern Egypt’s vast delta are strikingly similar in appearance and habitat to the plants referenced in the name Tula. Their equivalence can also be seen in that each population used these plants to make mats, basketry, and even boats of bundled reeds. And, in both cases, the name of the land was written with an image of these plants.[69] Thus, Tula “The Place of Reeds (or Rushes)” is virtually identical in meaning to northern Egypt the “Land of Papyrus.”

THE SEVEN CANYONS

With more than one place named Tula, the Maya distinguished between them with additional appellations. Numerous Maya accounts of their own history (including the Popul Vuh, El Título de Totonicapán, Historia de los Xpantzay de Tecpan Guatemala, and a 1554 history by Alonso Pérez) include the full Maya title for this mythic homeland: Tulán Zuyua Wuqub' Pek, Wuqub' Siwan.[70] The term Zuyua “refers to riddles whose answers were demanded of pretenders to lordly positions.”[71] In other words, even in the most ancient times, the Tulan across the ocean was a mystery understood only by the initiated. The oft-repeated remainder of its name, Wuqub' Pek, Wuqub' Siwan means “Seven Caves, Seven Canyons.”[72] Note that a canyon is a channel formed by water erosion, through which water may or may not still flow.

In Egypt, the north and south were divided geographically with respect to the Nile. Southern Egypt occupied that portion of the river that ran through a single channel. Northern Egypt constituted the Nile’s delta where the river split into seven channels. In ancient texts, these seven distributaries and their seven mouths were iconic of the Nile, of northern Egypt, and of the entire country.

In the Bible, the prophet Isaiah (writing circa the 8th century BC) threatens Egypt and the Nile with divine retribution: “and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod.”[73]

The ancient historians Herodotus and Diodorus each listed the seven mouths of the Nile.[74] The 5th century BC Greek writer Aeschylus called it the “seven-channelled Neilos.”[75] The Greek poet Nonnus described “Nile, pouring his lifegiving stream through his seven mouths”[76] and called it “the water of Sevenstreams”[77] and “the seven-mouth water.”[78] And Statius tells of the divine Nile who “carries his tempests to the sea in seven wide channels.”[79]

Most prolific of all in his odes to the seven-branched delta was the Roman poet Ovid: “the stream seven mouthed of the papyrus bearing Nile,”[80] “sevenfold Nilus,”[81] “seven streamed Nile,”[82] “Nile of the seven horns,”[83] “seven-channeled mouth,”[84] and so on.

These seven mouths and channels continued to characterize Egypt for centuries, as when the great 17th century poet John Milton introduced this land in Paradise Lost:

Egypt, divided by the river Nile;

See where it flows, disgorging at seven mouths

Into the sea.[85]

These texts span some 2400 years. Surprisingly, through most of this time, the river possessed fewer than seven mouths. The Pelusiac branch had dwindled so much by 1000 BC that it was necessary to abandon the northern capital at Piramesse for a new site on the Tanitic branch.[86] By Roman times, when Ovid composed his odes, the mouth of the Tanitic branch had also silted in (this is thought to have been one of the reasons for Alexander the Great’s construction of his magnificent new capital on the Canopic branch, which itself silted in circa the 12th century).[87] By the time Milton was writing of the Nile’s seven mouths, diversion of water for irrigation, changes in topography, and accumulation of silt had left only two intact distributaries. That the Nile had continued to be celebrated as “seven-channeled” through two millennia of decline indicates that it was the historic channels that were counted, whether or not they continued to carry water. Like Isaiah, Ovid even imagines a scenario in which all seven channels of the Nile run dry: “seven mouths gaped dusty, seven vales [canyons] without a stream.”[88]

The seven channels that defined northern Egypt parallel the “Seven Canyons” that characterized the Mayan Tulán across the eastern ocean. Like the name Tulán (“Place of Reeds”), it specifically connects this homeland with Egypt’s northern delta. This repeated emphasis on northern Egypt reflects the political realities just prior to the rise of the Olmecs, when the two halves of Egypt were separate countries under very different regimes.

THE ROYAL EMBLEM

The royal emblem of northern Egypt’s pharaohs was Wadjet, a snake with feathery wings.[89] Likewise, Quetzalcóatl’s emblem was a feathered snake, and the name or title Quetzalcóatl literally means “Feathered Serpent.” (The Yucatec Maya called this ancient king Kukulcan, while the Quiche Maya called him Gucumatz, but both of these names simply mean “Feathered Snake” in their respective dialects.) In the earliest versions of this motif, those of the Olmecs, the snake even has feathery wings like its Egyptian counterpart.

Quetzalcóatl came from the east across the Atlantic Ocean, from Black Land Red Land, the Place of Sand, the Seven-Canyoned Land of Reeds, and his emblem was a feathered serpent. It is like having the country and state names, accurate geographical descriptions, the direction of travel, and even the flag of his country of origin, all of which point to northern Egypt.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

—Alice Walker

The royalty of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Media, Persia, Syria, Greece, and Rome all dressed in purple. The Greeks even dressed their gods in purple, and the Roman Emperors Julius and Augustus Caesar made it illegal for any non-royal to wear purple.[90]

The spoils from Alexander the Great’s conquest of Susa (in Persia in 331 BC) included 5,000 talents worth of purple robes.[91] A talent was 33 kg (73 lb) of gold. So, this stash of purple robes was considered to be worth the same as 365,000 lbs. of gold, about 5 billion dollars today.

The Egyptian Queen Cleopatra went so far as to outfit her royal yacht with purple sails.[92] But its grandest use was by a group of nomads. According to the Biblical book of Exodus, the Israelites fled Egypt with numerous borrowed valuables, which they used to create a spectacular portable temple. They made its tent-like walls of “blue, purple, and scarlet” cloth, a fact that the author emphasizes by repeating it 25 times.[93] (Royal purple was created by combining special blue and scarlet dyes which were also used separately.) Likewise, Jesus was dressed in royal purple before the crucifixion to mock his claim to be the king of the Jews.[94]

MEXICAN PURPLE

Although the source of this exclusive dye was long a Phoenician trade secret, by the time of the classical Greeks it was known to be manufactured from a gland of the murex sea snail. Surprisingly, while traveling in Mexico in the 1830s, Thomas Gage observed that traditional purple dye manufacture there used the same techniques to create dye from the same sea snails.[95]

In 1909, Harvard anthropologist Zelia Nuttall followed up with an intensive comparative study. Not only did the people of ancient Mexico use the same methods of production, they also valued murex-dyed cloth above all others, and it appeared in codices as the attire of nobility.[96] Intriguingly, the area where Nuttall observed murex dye still in traditional use was in the heart of what had been the Olmec lands.

OBSTACLES TO INDEPENDENT DEVELOPMENT

But couldn’t Mesoamericans have discovered murex dye and adopted it for royal use independent of any external influence? Perhaps. However, unlike more readily available sources of dye, such as berries, minerals, and insects, there are substantial barriers to its discovery and popularization. Even if one happened to fish up the right species of snail from the seafloor and squeeze the appropriate (hypobranchial) gland at the right time of year (spring), it would only yield a tiny pale yellow droplet. To transform it into a usable dye requires enormous quantities of snails and extensive labor:

Only the small mucous gland adjacent to the respiratory cavity contained dye, and it was a long and costly process to fish up enough shells, open them, extract the glands, salt the crushed mass for days, rinse, boil, skim and clear for weeks until the resulting liquid, one-sixteenth or less in volume, was of a satisfactory strength and brilliance.[97]

Figure 5. The shell of a carnivorous murex snail, source of the royal purple dye valued higher than gold in the ancient Near East and ancient Mexico.

Furthermore, Nuttall noted that the Mexican murex-dyed cloth bore a “disagreeable . . . strong fishy smell, which appears to be as lasting as the color itself.”[98] Likewise, the ancient Egyptian Papyrus of Anastasi laments: “The hands of the dyer reek like rotting fish.”[99] So pervasive was this stench, the Talmud granted women the right to divorce their husband if he became a dyer after they married. Thus, it is surprising that the nobility of both lands would each attach the greatest social value to clothing that smelled like rotting fish.

THE PURPLE PEOPLE

Nuttall concluded that the Phoenicians had reached ancient Mexico. After all, it was they who had supplied the purple needs of the classical Greeks.

Ancient Phoenician dye factories and high hills of processed murex shells mark the spread of this industry westward across the entire Mediterranean and out into the Atlantic, where Phoenician factories “have been found near vast piles of shells as far west as Spain and West Africa.”[100] This puts Phoenicians ships involved with the purple trade in the open Atlantic – opposite Mexico – as early as 1100 BC.

And they traveled even farther.

ROUND THE HORN OF AFRICA

Circa 600 BC, Pharaoh Necho II commissioned Phoenician sailors to circumnavigate Africa clockwise. The 5th century BC Greek historian Herodotus questioned the sailors’ claim that when they rounded the southern tip of Africa the noontime sun was not in the center of the sky but to their right.[101] Yet, we now know that this is exactly what they would have experienced, a detail that strongly supports Phoenician primacy in the circumnavigation of Africa. Modern Europeans did not manage the same feat until 1498, some two thousand years later.

PHOENICIANS IN AMERICA

Not only did the Phoenicians beat Vasco de Gama around Africa, but they may have also beaten Columbus to America. The ancient historian Diodorus Siculus recorded a Phoenician account of a large land across the Atlantic Ocean with mountains, plains, and navigable rivers.[102] This is not Britain, which Diodorus also describes in detail, but a large land “many days” sailing across the Atlantic.[103] The distance, direction, and size are all consistent with the Americas. And the spread of the purple dye industry across the Mediterranean forms a trail that leads directly toward Mexico, goes cold on the edge of the open Atlantic, then reappears on the opposite shore.

Just as the Mesoamerican expert Nuttall found evidence of Phoenicians in ancient Mexico, so a leading Phoenician expert, Cyrus Gordon, reached the same conclusion from within his own discipline.[104]

BEFORE THEY WERE PHOENICIANS

However, as one goes back before 1200 BC, the Phoenicians suddenly cease to be Phoenician. This is due to a collision of terminology between two academic fields. Classicists knew of the Phoenicians through the Greeks, while archaeologists and epigraphers knew of the Canaanites from cuneiform, Egyptian, Canaanite, and Phoenician texts and from the Bible.[105] Initially, the two groups of scholars did not realize that the Canaanites and Phoenicians were the same culture. The Semitic term Canaanite means “Purple People,” and Phoenician is just the literal Greek translation.[106] For convenience, scholars designated 1200 BC as the dividing line, using the term Canaanite for the culture prior to that date and Phoenician after.[107] (Due to further academic compartmentalization, their inscriptions and alphabet are considered Canaanite until 1050 BC and Phoenician afterwards. And Biblical scholars follow that text in using Canaanite even later.)

Ignoring the Greek translation of their name and blissfully unaware of academic debate yet to come, the Canaanites continued to refer to themselves as Canaanites throughout.

The key to understanding the Canaanites’ relationships with both northern Egypt and Mesoamerica lies in the roots of the alphabet . . .

Wise men speak; their words of wisdom

Perish in the ears that hear them

Do not reach the generations

—Life before the invention of writing evoked in Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha”

The A is for Ape. And the B is for Bear.

The C is for camel. The H is for Hare . . .

So now I know everything anyone knows

From beginning to end. From the start to the close.

Because Z is as far as the alphabet goes.

—Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

We are so accustomed to our alphabet that we decipher its code automatically. But these commonplace symbols harbor secrets and reveal designs from their first forging four millennia ago under an Egyptian sun. After relating what is known of that creation, this chapter seeks to recover what has been lost.

With its bustling international ports and porous borders, northern Egypt was more cosmopolitan and diverse than the south. From neighboring Canaan (modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and part of Syria) immigrants poured into the prosperous Nile Delta as traders, laborers, refugees, and slaves. Just as the mixing cultures of our Mississippi Delta birthed jazz, blues, and rock and roll, so the clashing and melding cultures of the Nile’s delta spawned phenomenal innovation, including the world’s first alphabet.

For centuries, these Canaanite immigrants lived amidst the countless scrolls and inscriptions of the proudly literate Egyptians without having a way to write their own language. Finally, some ingenious scribe, lost to history, created a simple code for recording the Canaanites’ spoken (Semitic) language. For each sound in their language, they chose an Egyptian hieroglyph such that the Canaanite name for the object that it depicted started with that sound. For example, an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting water  was called mem, the Semitic word for “water,” and was used to write the sound M. Its waves can still be seen in our modern Latinate letter M. (See Table 1 for the stages of its evolution.) Anyone who understood the principle could immediately sound out any inscription by simply pronouncing the initial sound of the name of each object depicted. This created instant literacy!

Whereas previous writing systems had hundreds or thousand of symbols requiring years of study that only elites could afford, this first alphabet brought literacy to the working classes and even to the poor and enslaved. Its modern name, the proto-Sinaitic[108] alphabet, comes from ancient mineshafts in Egypt’s barren Sinai Peninsula where poor (possibly enslaved) Canaanite immigrants scrawled alphabetic inscriptions on mine walls. Albright’s translation renders these as desperate pleas: “Oh my god, rescue [me] from the interior of the mine. [Swe]ar to bring [a sacrifice].”[109] Never before could people of such modest means record their thoughts.

The alphabet adapted readily to other languages, spawning the Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic, and (our own) Latin alphabets. It both democratized and spread literacy, allowing knowledge to accumulate and proliferate as never before. No single invention did more to create the intellectual revolution that, over time, transformed the ancient world into the modern one.

Surprisingly, none of the subsequent languages adapted that (acrophonic) principle from the first alphabet to create their own instantly readable codes. Instead, those same original letters were borrowed from one language to the next. The direct descendants of symbols scrawled by desperate miners millennia ago today represent the sounds of hundreds of languages and dominate most of the planet.

GAPS IN OUR KNOWLEDGE

Precious few proto-Sinaitic inscriptions survive, due to the perishable nature of most writing surfaces. Even those that were inscribed in the living stone were vulnerable to erosion and a tragic modern attempt to harvest the ancient mines with dynamite.[110] Thus, while it has been possible to fully trace the origin of most letters, this dearth of inscriptions has left gaps in our knowledge. (For example, it is not known which hieroglyph the letter waw originally derived from, because it resembles several similar hieroglyphs. In the other direction, while a pictograph of a fish is easily recognizable in the proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, what letter it became is not certain. Gardiner identified it as a variant for N, others as the precursor of the Hebrew letter samekh, and still others as the source of the letter D. I have set it aside at the bottom of Table 1.)

Finally, most treatments of the development of the alphabet follow only the 22 letters that carried on into the Phoenician, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets. However, the proto-Sinaitic alphabet had several additional letters that were dropped in the north before the development of these familiar alphabets. Here, they are included at the end of the Table 1.

Table 1. The hieroglyphic source and subsequent evolution of the letters of the alphabet. (Thanks to Dr. Kris J. Udd for the use of an unfinished, pre-release version of his proto-Sinaitic font. I have supplemented this from Gardiner and with the earliest known pictographic letter of the sun recently identified by the Darnells at Wadi el-Hol.)

BLATANT REDUNDANCY

Up to this point, the present chapter has summarized what is known of the alphabet’s origin. In its remainder, I propose a new theory that I believe offers fresh insights into the history and development of the alphabet and explains for the first time the origin and meaning of its letter order.

While studying the earliest alphabet, I happened to notice some odd redundancies. For example, kaph  (our letter K) came from a hieroglyph of a hand , while yodh (our I) showed a hand with part of its arm  (from ). And the word kaph literally meant “palm” (of the hand), while yodh meant “hand.” Why confuse readers by having two different letters that both depict hands? With only 28 letters to select symbols for and hundreds of Egyptian hieroglyphs at their disposal, the alphabet’s inventor(s) had no need for such redundancy and confusion.

The redundancies became more apparent in the alphabet’s earliest form. For example, our letter L comes from lamed, which has meant “ox-goad” (a cattle prod) since roughly 1000 BC. But Robert Good demonstrated that its earliest form  had depicted “rope,” and Darnell et al. recently confirmed this with their discovery of the oldest known alphabetic inscriptions (left by Canaanite soldiers under an Egyptian commander, circa 1800 BC).[111] This letter “rope” overlapped in a similar way with the meaning and depiction of the letter  harm, , meaning “loops of rope” or “netting.”[112] Why have one letter depict rope and another looped or knotted rope?

It will take another example for the pattern to emerge: The letter name zayin (our Z) means “weapon” in Hebrew,[113] but its original pictograph must have depicted a specific weapon. Numerous theories have attempted to interpret its simple parallel lines Z (arrows, a manacle, a scythe, a sword, an ingot, an olive tree, or a copper ax). In fact, the key to its origin is that its name is identical to the Egyptian word zyn, “arrow.”[114] (Vowels were not originally notated for either language.) There are many instances of Semitic loan words from Egyptian, and Egyptian texts often refer to the Canaanites as “people of the bow” and as bow-wielding mercenaries in the service of the Egyptians.[115] I suspect that zyn was adopted because it was a fun (especially for a “people of the bow”) onomatopoeic word, mimicking the Doppler-shifting sound of an arrow’s flight. (A similar use is the Hebrew word for a “fly,” zvuv, which mimics its buzzing sound and is the source of Satan’s name Ba’al-zvuv or Beelzebub, meaning “Lord of the Flies.”) The parallel lines used to write this letter likely depicted a pair of arrows in mid-flight, in the very act of making their namesake sound, zyn. Meanwhile, the proto-Sinaitic letter ṯann depicted a “bow.”[116] Together these letters formed another obvious pair, Bow and Arrow.

These were not accidental redundancies; the letters were in pairs such that the object of one letter lay within that of its pair: Palm within Hand. Rope within Knot. Arrow within Bow.

Six more letters depicted local animals in their habitats, almost like a children’s book: Our letter A began as an Ox (the Latin A is a simplified, upside-down version of the original pictograph ), the farm tractor of its day, while our H began as an overhead view of the “premises of a farm”  , showing the fenced-in fields where the oxen worked, grazed, and lived.[117]

Similarly, the letter Fish  dwells in Water . And the snake  dwells in the Sun  as per both their cold-blooded need to sun themselves and their role in Egyptian mythology and iconography. (This pair works in both directions, since it shows the sun on the horizon where it was believed to set into and rise from the serpent Mehen.) Monkeys  were non-native animals that the Egyptians considered sacred and imported to live in their temples, while the letter samekh depicted a row of the temple columns (seen from the end, one behind the next so that their capitals appear stacked as in the hieroglyph djed ) on and amidst which these sacred monkeys dwelt in the great hypostyle, “under pillars,” hall.

The remaining letters also occur within their unique habitats: the letter Tooth  within Mouth , Door in House , and Eye  in Head . Our letters C and G both came from the letter gaml, “Throwing-Stick.” Egyptian reliefs normally depict these boomerangs in use amidst the Reeds or Rushes (another proto-Sinaitic letter[118]) in the hunting of birds and small animals.[119] And this connection was made explicit in that, although this letter depicts Reeds, it was named tsade, “to hunt.”

Finally, the letter heh, our E, originally depicted a person standing excitedly with both arms raised  (the top half of this pictograph survives, rotated 90 degrees clockwise with the head and arms facing to the right in our E). The original hieroglyph could mean “rejoice,” “extol,” or “mourn,” indicating various intense expressions of emotion. Its pair  depicted a heart with a windpipe (which became the Hebrew letter teth and Greek theta but did not contribute to Latin), indicating the internal path of emotion into vocalization that animates this emotional man both figuratively and literally, providing the life-giving breath, which is vibrated to convey emotion and speech. (While, from a distance of four thousand years and as many miles, throwsticks and heart-windpipes have lost cultural relevance, the majority of the pairings are unambiguous and enduring: Arrow in Bow, Rope in Knot, Ox in Field, Fish in Water . . . )

THE LOST POEM

Ancient Semitic poetry did not rhyme. Instead it relied on parallelism. The ideas in one line were juxtaposed against those of the next in daisy chains of interrelated, similarly structured lines. This can be seen repeatedly in the Canaanite poetry from Ugarit and throughout the poetic books of the Bible: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon.

The parallel relationships between these paired letters are exemplary of this poetic style. It is as if the letter names all rhymed. “The Ox is in the Field, the Fish is in the Water, the Snake is in the Sun, the Arrow is in the Bow . . . ” It reads like a child’s alphabet book, except instead of rhyming it uses parallelism as a mnemonic device to teach the alphabet. Perhaps it was originally read with active verbs: “The Fish swims in the Water, the Ox works in the Field, the Arrow flies from the Bow . . . ” Such a poem would have made it easier for illiterate adults and children to memorize their first alphabet.

Moreover, ancient parallelistic poems were often set to music, most famously many of the Biblical Psalms. Still today we teach children to sing the alphabet in order to more easily memorize it, even though our own letter names now lack meaning. The presence of this poetic structure in the first alphabet may indicate a similar practice.

If this theory is correct, it would explain the origin of an entire genre of later Semitic poetry and song. The Bible contains a dozen poems that are alphabetically acrostic (consecutive lines begin with consecutive letters of the alphabet) and parallelistic, many of which were sung. They use the alphabet itself as a poetic device in conjunction with parallelism, much as this first alphabet appears to have done.

A MYSTERIOUS TRANSFORMATION

Unfortunately, none of the extant proto-Sinaitic inscriptions include an abecedary (a list of the letters in order.) Although the alphabet was likely invented circa 2000 BC, the earliest surviving abecedaries come from clay tablets from the Canaanite city of Ugarit circa 1500-1300 BC. These record a time of upheaval, when the alphabet was being split into northern and southern and long and short versions. Of these it was the 22-letter North Semitic alphabet that became the formative writing system of Western Civilization, the familiar A, B, C, D . . . letter order that has endured for more than 3,000 years through numerous languages and scripts. Its chief alternative, the South Semitic alphabet (of ancient Yemen and ancient and modern Ethiopia and Eritrea), appears to have been ordered graphically, by letter shape.[120] But no one knows why our A, B, C . . . order was chosen or what made it so immensely popular and resilient.

This new North Semitic version of the alphabet represents a substantial departure from the earlier proto-Sinaitic alphabet. Six letters have been removed. And many letter names have been radically altered. Throwing-stick was renamed Camel. Rope was changed to Ox-Goad. Some of the new letter names are even thought to have been meaningless. These many name changes are surprising, since each letter’s name had corresponded to both its sound and its graphic image. And this radical revision of the alphabet stands in sharp contrast to the next three millennia when the order, names, and meanings of the letters show remarkable consistency. Why would a mnemonically useful and even poetic ordering have been abandoned?

The discovery of parallelism in the earliest alphabet provides a new perspective on how that alphabet may have originally been read. As an intellectual exercise, what happens if its reworked successor alphabet is read in the same way? It seems to me that this new alphabet reads like a parody of its predecessor. This modification may have begun for cultural and religious reasons. The Semitic laborers in Egypt who first used the alphabet circa 2000 BC were partially assimilated into the culture and religion of their new homeland, and it shows in the proto-Sinaitic alphabet. Centuries later, their descendants, living in their own land with their own culture and religion, now confronted with Egypt as a foreign enemy, may have sought to purge or parody these references. Like most parodies, this rewritten alphabet is also fun, like the sort of silly songs and subversions of existing songs that children have composed on playgrounds for centuries[121] or that a teacher might have composed as a teaching aid.

Here I have broken the 22-letter alphabet into its 11 consecutive pairs using the Phoenician forms of the letters (which are essentially identical to the paleo-Hebrew letter forms):

•          Aleph , Beth : “Ox” is in the “House.” These first two letters (the source of our A and B as well as our word “alphabet”) fit the earlier pattern, except that the Ox has been moved from the Field to the House, a plausible scenario in an agrarian context but one that would have caused chaos and humor (cf. a similar incident recounted by Laura Ingalls Wilder[122]). Beth has also been changed from its square proto-Sinaitic form  to a shape  ￼that mirrors the lines of its new pair .

•          Gimel , Daleth : “Camel” is in the “Door.” The Camel trying to enter the Door perfectly parallels the mischief of the Ox. That the Door depicted is that of a tent  completes the symmetry; what the Ox was to settled House-dwelling farmers, the Camel was to the tent-dwelling nomads of the surrounding wilderness. This creative pairing explains for the first time why gaml “Throwing-stick” was changed to gimel “Camel.” And this verbal pun was matched with a visual one; the old image of a Throwing-Stick  was shifted to become the head and neck of its new name, Camel: , the portion of the animal capable of entering the tent Door. Notice that the letters are all properly oriented for this interpretation. Reading from right to left (as was done in the Phoenician script and in its immediate descendants including Hebrew and Arabic), the Ox head points into the House, then the Camel head pokes into the tent flap:

•          Heh , Waw : “Exclamation” is on the “Nail.” Heh is usually translated “Behold! Lo!”[123] In other words, it is an exclamation of surprise and a call for others to look, the natural responses to such animal hijinks. But its image of an excited man  is given a new reason to call out. He is now on the Nail, waw. It’s form specifically depicts a tent spike with protrusions atop it for securing guy ropes: , and it stands as if already staked and securing a tent. In the original proto-Sinaitic heh, the man with his arms aloft was stepping toward the left, in the direction of reading . In this new version, the Nail of waw has been placed in his path, and look what happens to his posture:  He has tripped over the tent spike. His lower body remains upright, but his entire upper body, including the upraised arms, is thrown forward in his direction of movement (and the direction of the spike). In the larger context, it may be that he was running to the rescue of the Ox and Camel fiascoes when he tripped over the large Nail anchoring the tent, thus increasing the physical comedy. Heh’s later horizontal flip to become our right-facing E accompanied the Greek change in reading direction. But no one had been able to explain why it’s upright man was bent sideways.

•          Zayin , Het : “Arrow” (sound) is in the Het (Field/Arrow). The name zayin “Arrow” has remained, and the hieroglyph for het continues to depict an overhead view of Fields  , as if, in tripping, our would-be hero also prematurely loosed his Arrow into the Field. The symbol for zayin has mysteriously changed to . which, given that its name refers to an Arrow and it is now located in the Field, I propose depicts a lost arrow. (When firing arrows, those that strike roughly parallel to the ground will skim under grass and vegetation. These are difficult to find; often nothing is exposed but a glimpse of shaft through a break in the groundcover, which looks like this letter.) This new letter form has maintained the original parallel lines that showed arrows in flight but cleverly transformed them to depict the Arrow lost in the Field. The shape of the Field was also modified slightly to  , which (with rotation) allows the Arrow  to be contained within it. A slightly later variant of zayin resembled and became our Z. The crossmember could be drawn at different angles because an arrow can pass through a gap at different angles, and this Z form could be drawn quickly without lifting the pen. (Other attempts to explain zayin’s shape include a scythe, a sword, an ingot, a tree, a male member, a manacle, or an ax. But there is little consensus, and they fail to explain the linguistics of its name, the evolution of its form, or its variable crossmember.) Meanwhile, the name of the letter  was changed from the proto-Sinaitic hzr “field” to het. This new letter name is often assumed to be meaningless. However, it must have been selected for a reason, and the closest word to it phonetically is hets, the Semitic word for “arrow.”[124] While zayin’s vivid onomatopoeia of a whizzing (our own Z-centered onomatopoeia) arrow was retained, likely because it was fun to say, it was an archaic Egyptian word for “arrow” that now had to be explained by pairing it with their own Semitic word for “arrow.” In terms of reading the names, this made the fun pair, “the zayin is in the Arrow,” while the graphics still showed the Arrow in the Field.

•          Teth , Yodh : “Wheel” is on the “Hand.” This pair reads like a morbidly humorous explanation for the strangely disembodied Hand ( from ) that was the letter yodh. The only local vehicle heavy enough to sever an arm was the ox-cart, suggesting a connection with the runaway animals of the first pairs. In terms of the graphics, the arm has been rotated, as if the wheel   pushing it down into the earth at the middle had forced the arm upward on either side: . In the larger context, our would-be hero has just tripped, discharging his arrow, and apparently landing with his  in the path of the ox-cart’s .

•          Kaph , Lamed : “Palm” (of the hand) is on the “Ox-goad.” A Palm  grasping an Ox-goad  is a normal response to try to sort out the trouble with the Ox, Camel, and cart. (Although, with the Hand pinned under the Wheel, its attempts to Goad the Ox may be comically impotent.) As it did with Camel and Arrow above, this theory provides the first explanation for the extreme change of letter name from Rope in Proto-Sinaitic to Ox-goad. And, read in order, the Palm is properly positioned to grip the Ox-goad.

•          Mem , Nun : “Water” is in the “Fish.” The order of these two has simply been reversed. When taken with the following two pairs of letters, it paints a darkly comical tale of a failed fishing trip. This same reversal (from the earlier “Fish is in the Water” to “Water is in the Fish”) is documented in ancient star maps. In the earliest sky maps, such as the seal of Adda from circa 2300 BC, the constellation “Fish” (Piscis Austrinus) is depicted swimming within the waters of Aquarius. But sometime before the Classical period, the roles were reversed. In subsequent versions, the Fish “mysteriously swallows the stream which [Aquarius] pours out.”[125] Although there was a letter Fish  in proto-Sinaitic, only its name has survived in the new alphabet, as this letter’s shape  is clearly based on the earlier proto-Sinaitic letter Snake  (from ) even though it is now called Fish. The reason may have to do with making the two letters in this pair mirror each other visually. Notice that a tail has also been added to mem (Water) to bring its form closer to nun (Fish):  .

•          Samekh , Ayin : “Props” are in the “Eyes.” The letter samekh  depicts a simplification of its earlier image of temple columns, while its name means Prop or Support. That this Prop is now in the Eye, suggests an extreme attempt at staying awake (in a dull class or while fishing). The presence of this Prop explains for the first time why the Phoenician letter Eye  was unnaturally forced up at the middle into a circle, unlike its earlier proto-Sinaitic form  (from ) and thus why our own O now has the shape it does.

•          Pe ,  Tsade : “Mouth” (of a human) is on the “Fishhook.” Another plausible, humorous scenario, the drowsy, bungling fisherman getting his Fishhook stuck in his Mouth, while the Fish (above) has missed the Hook and swallowed only Water. As with the sideways E, this is another case in which the new letter form has previously defied explanation. Why was the recognizable Mouth  changed to this shape  while still being called Mouth? In this new understanding of its context, we can see that it has been rotated sideways, so that the lips are seen in profile and it now faces its pair. The fishhook, in turn, is turned upside down  and hooked on the lower lip, pulling and stretching it far beyond the upper lip. Maintaining their order and position but rescaling them slightly illustrates this relationship: . In the earliest Greek scripts, most of the letters were borrowed from the Phoenicians with little change. Pe however became , perhaps depicting an upside down Greek-style fishhook hanging from the lip. Its two legs were later evened out, and it became the letter and mathematical symbol Pi: Π π.

•          Qoph , Resh : “Monkey” is on the (human) “Head.” This is another plausible occurrence that could be hilarious in real life, especially in an age not yet comedically desensitized by mass media. Adding insult to injury, the pictograph for qoph was changed from its earlier full-body image of a monkey (the proto-Sinaitic  simplified from the hieroglyph  ) to a posterior view of the animal’s rump and tail  (features that can still be seen in our Latinate Q), while resh depicted a man’s Head, positioned attempting to turn away . Thus, a more literal reading would be “The Monkey-butt is on his Head.” (Given that the temple monkeys were most commonly baboons, an animal known for swelling and displaying that portion of its anatomy, the gross factor and humor would have been amplified, for everyone except the afflicted.)

•          Shin , Tav : “Teeth” are on the “Mark.” The letter tav can mean “a mark” (the ancient Semitic equivalent of X marks the spot) or “a wound.” Given the relative position of the man’s head to the monkey, I’m not sure I want to know what Mark  his Teeth  are now on. But given this letter’s double meaning of “mark” and “wound,” it may indicate that he has clamped his Teeth on the monkey, in a desperate and unpleasant (but amusing to bystanders) attempt at freeing himself. Extreme imagery, humor, and strong emotions (even disgust) are highly effective memory aids, something that was far better known in a preliterate age when a strong memory was crucial for survival. This list seems designed to be entertaining and rapidly and easily committed to memory by those with minimal time for schooling.

This completes the entire alphabet in order. Try reading through it for yourself now from right to left:

AN EGYPTIAN PRECEDENT

Reading such humorous word play in the alphabet is not as unprecedented as it may seem. Certain Egyptian poems from this time (the 19th and 20th Dynasties) begin each line or section with a pun on a number name. The English equivalent would be to begin a poem with “won,” start the second line with “to,” the fourth with “for,” and the eighth with “ate.” In the hymn to Amon on Leiden Papyrus 1350, such a series survives for the numbers 5 through 800. The more concise Egyptian love poem “The Stroll” uses the same technique for seven numbers. These poems are based on number names rather than letter names, but the early alphabet also served as a numbering system and thus would have been equivalent. And Semitic poetry was often as rife with word play as the best Shakespeare.

Furthermore, this theory explains numerous aspects of the development of the alphabet that had previously defied explanation, such as the strange bend of heh ￼, the unusual shape of the Mouth ￼, and the renaming and reshaping of many letters. Nevertheless, for confirmation of the existence of this paired structure in the alphabet, we turn to a higher authority.

JESUS AND THE ALPHABET

Jesus seems to reference several of these alphabet pairs. Notice Matthew 7:3-5 (also repeated in Luke 6:41-42) from the Sermon on the Mount, the speech that gave us the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

A “mote” is a tiny speck. But it is the “beam” that interests me. The original Greek here is δοκός, which, according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance is based on δέχομαι “through the idea of holding up.” Thus, a more precise English translation would be “support” or “prop” (conveying this notion of an object that holds something up). But the Greek of the gospels is itself a translation, since Jesus most likely addressed the crowd in their native Aramaic (a language closely related to Canaanite, Phoenician, and Hebrew and which served as the lingua franca of the ancient Near East from circa 700 BC until the rise of Arabic circa 700 ad). The equivalent word in the original Aramaic would be semkath, the equivalent of the Hebrew samekh, with the same meaning of “support” or “prop” as well as being the Aramaic letter name corresponding to samekh. Similarly, the common word for Eye (in which this Prop resided) also served as a letter name (equivalent to ayin).  Jesus seems to be making an explicit reference to the unique alphabetic pair Prop in the Eye, using both the letter names and the activity that they depicted to teach a lesson. His focus on the Prop blocking vision may indicate what caused the fisherman's bungling; the Prop in his Eye obscured his sight so that he ended up losing the fish and hooking his own lip. For Jesus’s audience, many of whom lived off of fishing, this tale would have special resonance.

I see other possible alphabet allusions in the same speech, though these are more subtle: Jesus asks about how a man will respond to a request from his son: “Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?” This recalls the strange feature of the letter nun, which is named Fish but instead presents the reader with an image of a snake.

And there are hints of that severed Hand of yodh in Matthew 5:30: “And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” Yodh (Aramaic yudh) was the common word for “hand” as well as the letter name and is likely the word used here prior to the Greek translation. And the Greek word that is translated “offend thee,” σκανδαλίζω, literally means “to cause to stumble.” In the alphabet pair, stumbling resulted in the tragic loss of a hand. Here Jesus references that horror to say that there is something even worse, shockingly advocating: if your hand trips you, hack it off, because there are worse fates than a severed hand, namely hell.

Also, just before this sermon, Jesus called the apostles together for the first time with the unusual promise to make them “to fish for men.” The common word for “to fish” was tsade, the name of the letter that depicted the Fishhook and that was part of a three pair series that culminated with a man hooked by the Mouth on the Fishhook.

It's not just that the letter names are being accidentally name-dropped here. In each instance, the alphabet pairing depicts a very unique scene, and Jesus specifically uses the letter names and vividly references their unusual activity (a Prop in an Eye, a Snake masquerading as a Fish, a stumble resulting in a severed Hand, and Fishing for men), all in the service of bringing home larger points to an audience clearly familiar with these alphabetic references.

The final pair to consider takes it to another level:

THE JESUS CODE

While several of the alphabetically acrostic poems in the Bible retain the letter qoph, Psalm 25 omits the qoph and instead uses resh twice. This would have been very obvious to contemporary readers accustomed to this alphabet, and I don’t think it’s a mistake. Rather, I suspect that qoph’s depiction of a monkey’s anatomy was considered too crass to initiate a line of sacred scripture. However, a solution was eventually found. The circle and line of qoph that had depicted a monkey’s rump and tail  were given the more sanitized name and explanation, Eye-of-the-Needle. In this later, family-friendly version, the letter’s pairing with resh, “Head,” suggests a person trying to pass their Head through the Eye-of-the-Needle after the fashion of the Ox entering the House and Camel entering the Door.

This recalls Jesus’s statement to the rich young man, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of God.” He seems to have one-upped the alphabet by combining its largest animal with its smallest passage for emphasis and humor. But there is also something more here.

600 years earlier, in the Biblical book of Jeremiah, the prophet of the same name foretold destruction using the term Babel (for Babylon) interchangeably with Sheshakh, the Atbash cipher for Babel. This ancient Hebrew-language code worked by substituting the first letter of the alphabet for the last: aleph for tav, the second for the second-to-last: beth for shin (as happens twice in the Babel to Sheshakh conversion), and so on. (In English, it would be A for Z, B for Y, C for X, and you might name it the AZBaY cipher.) Consistent with a tendency to divide the alphabet into pairs, each of these letters was transposed reciprocally with its partner. That is, unlike most other ciphers, not only was every A written with a Z, but every Z was also written with an A.

I think Jesus made a very explicit Atbash substitution here, since gimel “Camel” exchanges with resh “Head” in the Atbash cipher and this is precisely the substitution made by Jesus in referring to a gimel passing through a qoph. Roman officials would have no idea what he was talking about. But the Semitic audience would know that these were letter names, would be struck by the surreal mention of a Camel through the Eye-of-the-Needle, and, if they were clever, would pick up on the Atbash substitution of gimel for resh, Camel for Head. Just in case they didn't get the wink, Jesus ends the passage with “But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first” (Matthew 19:30). That is an exact description of the way the ancient Atbash cipher worked, substituting the last letter for the first and the first for the last.

Jesus specifically makes this reference to the Atbash cipher as part of the shocking statement that the wealthy in this world can’t get into heaven. The cipher serves as a metaphor to illustrate this inversion of the established social and economic hierarchy. He then relates a parable that expounds on this theme and ends with the same conclusion: “So the last shall be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:16). He returns to this theme repeatedly, from preaching that the meek will inherit the Earth to:

Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant (Matthew 25:25-27).

Yet by using the Atbash cipher as the central metaphor, Jesus cloaked the message in what political strategists now call “a dog whistle,” in that it communicates to part of an audience but goes unnoticed by the rest. As such, the alphabet metaphors generally and the Atbash cipher in particular fit within a larger pattern of parables, the cryptic short stories that Jesus (and several of the Hebrew prophets including Jeremiah) used as extended metaphors with covert meanings. To quote Jesus:

Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive . . .

But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.

For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them (Matthew 13:13-16).

Finally, Jesus’s last alphabet metaphor is explicit even in translation: “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” (The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.)

THE TALMUD

I suspect that the secret to the next phase in this alphabet’s history lies in the Talmud (the early collection of rabbinical teachings known as the Oral Law written down beginning in 220 AD following the Roman destruction of the temple in 70 AD and of Jerusalem itself in 135 AD). In its commentary section, the Gemara, from circa 500 AD, we find the following recitation of the alphabet. (In this excerpt, the bracketed text was added by the translator for clarification and to show the original Hebrew text alongside its English translation in order to demonstrate its punning on the letter names that begin most lines.)

Alef Beth [means] learn wisdom [alef Binah];

Gimmel Daleth, show kindness to the Poor [Gemol Dallim] . . .

He, Waw, that is the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He. . . .

Samek, 'ayyin: support [Semak] the poor ['aniyyim]. Another interpretation: devise ['aseh] mnemonics [Simanin] in the Torah and [thus] acquire [memorize] it . . .

Kuf [stands for] Kadosh [holy]; Resh [for] Rasha' [wicked]: why is the face of the Kuf averted from, the Resh? The Holy One, blessed be He, said: I cannot look at the wicked. . . .

SHin [stands for] SHeker [falsehood]; Taw [for] emeTH [truth]

This provides further evidence that the alphabet was once read in consecutive pairs. It also shows the use of puns (sometimes complemented by the letter shapes) to create alphabetic mnemonics. And it indicates roughly when and why the irreverent mnemonic was finally lost. This passage is preceded by a single sentence:

The Rabbis told R. Joshua b. Levi: Children have come to the Beth Hamidrash and said things the like of which was not said even in the days of Joshua the son of Nun. [Thus:]

The kids are coming to the religious school (the Beth Hamidrash) saying something that surprises the rabbis enough that they report it. Based on the context (this passage is an aside within an intricate theological discourse on how many letters of the alphabet it is permissible to write on the Sabbath), it had to do with the alphabet. The translator added “[Thus:]” to imply that the pious alphabet punning that follows was the children’s work. But, reading it without this addition, it may simply be that the rabbis did not deem the alphabet recitation that the children brought from home worth repeating in a sacred scroll. Instead they skipped straight to their clever solution, countering the subversive mnemonic by displacing it with a solemn religious alternative. In any case, whether it was the children or the rabbis who invented this sanctified version, the use of consecutive pairs as units of meaning is evident. And the meta-reference within this text to the importance of devising mnemonics is equally telling.

It seems clear that the reason for the loss of the irreverent earlier mnemonic was religious. Over time, the esteem afforded the Hebrew letters grew to the point that they were considered sacred and eternal. Disrespecting them, as the levity of the earlier mnemonic had, was akin to sacrilege. This great esteem and a final hint of the paired structure can be seen in the opening of the Zohar, a foundational text of the Jewish mysticism of Kabbalah (first published by Moses de Leon in the 13th century AD but attributed by him to the 2nd century rabbi Shimon bar Yochai):

Rabbi Chananya spake, and said: “Before creation began, the alphabetical letters were in reversed order; thus, the two first words in the Book of Genesis, berashith, bara, begin with B; the next two, Alhim, ath, with A. Why did it not commence with A, the first letter? The reason of this inversion is as follows: For two thousand years before the creation of the world the letters were concealed and hidden, being objects of divine pleasure and delight. When the Divine Being, however, willed to create the world, all the letters appeared before his presence in their reverse order.”

This text confronts the theological mystery of why the first two words of the Bible begin with a B and the second two with an A. It answers that the alphabet was reversed before the creation of the world. But this cannot be a reversal as we think of it, for that would involve the first word of the Bible starting with tav (or in our alphabet Z). Instead, they are assuming a reversal akin to the Atbash cipher, in which each letter is swapped with its pair. So, in this reversal, the pair AB has still come first but with its two letters swapped just as happens within the pairs of the Atbash cipher. Only when looking at it from this perspective does the BA structure of the opening of the Bible look like “the alphabetical letters were in reversed order.”

Discovering this pattern in the alphabet’s design explained numerous letter names, shapes, and changes for the first time. The Gospels, the Talmud, and the Zohar further corroborated this discovery and, in the process, revealed secrets of their own, including lost metaphors and a cipher in the sermons of Jesus. These are significant finds in their own right and set the stage for what follows—evidence that the alphabet’s earliest form reached and played an important role in ancient Mexico.

I may illustrate my meaning by the names

of letters, which you know are not the same as the letters themselves . . .

—Socrates, from Plato’s “Cratylus”

You'll be sort of surprised what there is to be found

Once you go beyond ‘Z’ and start poking around!

—Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

In 1790, a crew digging a drainage system in Mexico City unearthed a 25-ton, 12-foot diameter wheel of solid stone engraved with esoteric symbols. In Aztec times, it occupied the premiere position atop the main pyramid, and today it has again become the most famous and iconic of Mexico’s monuments.

In English it is known as the “Aztec Calendar Stone” because of an encircling band of 20 calendar glyphs. This list of 20 symbols first appeared among the Olmecs and was widely adopted and highly valued by their successors, the Zapotecs, Mayans, Mixtecs, and Aztecs.

Figure 6. The Aztec Calendar Stone. Photo courtesy of Vincent Roux.

THE FIRST LETTERS

While still a graduate student at Harvard, the influential Mayanist David H. Kelley made an extraordinary observation. Three of these calendar glyphs were nearly identical to three letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets. The following table summarizes his findings:[126]

Table 2. Three consecutive letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabet compared with three consecutive Mayan day names based on the work of David H. Kelley.

At the time, the origin of the alphabet was still debated. In seeking further parallels, Kelley followed a theory that the shapes of the letters had originated from depictions of constellations. Since the actual invention of the alphabet by Canaanite immigrants in Egypt is now well-documented, I tested the same calendar glyphs against earlier incarnations of the alphabet. Remarkably, the earliest (proto-Sinaitic) alphabet included not only the same parallels that Kelley had found in the later alphabets, but also letters corresponding to each of the seventeen other Mesoamerican day signs. In an attempt to keep the comparisons concise and accessible, I have presented them in the table that follows. Unfortunately, two letters require  additional discussion.

TWO ODDITIES

In most cases, the day names directly match the earliest proto-Sinaitic letter forms (i.e., house, hand, snake, water, arrow, heart, monkey, head, knot, field, reed, tooth, sun . . . ). However, there are two unusual day names: “ripe” and “water drop.”

The fourth day in the Mayan and Zapotec lists is “ripe, ripeness, or maturity,”[127] referring to the readiness of both fruit and animals for consumption. This is a surprisingly abstract concept to convey with a pictograph, especially in a list of simple nouns like hand, snake, and arrow. And yet, this is also the literal meaning of gml, the Semitic root used to name the object that archaeologists dubbed a “throw-stick.” Gml means “to ripen, to wean” and was the source of the words for “ripeness” and “maturity,”[128] identical to the meanings of this day name. That this term was used as the word for throw-sticks may refer to their use in harvesting “ripe” or “mature” animals. Or perhaps it “matured” the young men who are often shown in the hunting scenes, getting them comfortable with killing small game with Throw-sticks before moving on to the Bow and Arrow, larger game, and even the human targets necessary for employment as Egyptian mercenaries.

Figure 7. The Aztec Calendar Stone with its 20 calendrical glyphs emphasized. Art by Paul Ruane.

The nineteenth day is “water drop.” Although our letter D comes from the Hebrew letter daleth meaning “door,” Gardiner failed to find the expected pictograph of a door in the proto-Sinaitic inscriptions.[129] Perhaps this letter was originally dalaph, “to drop, drip, to leak,” often used of a dripping ceiling, and was only later punned to daleth. The various early South Semitic versions of this letter show a small droplet hanging from a long line (note that in the creation of the proto-Sinaitic alphabet the original hieroglyphic symbols were often rotated 90º [130]): . The more familiar North Semitic versions show only the drop (or door) itself, , as does our D.[131] As “drop, drip, to leak,” its original pairing would still have been with House (our B), given its frequent textual connections to leaky houses. These two letter names are even paired in this context in the Bible: “through idleness of the hands the house dalaph.”[132] The Mayan glyph for this day shows a cave with water droplets trickling from the ceiling and forming a stalactite, while in Zapotec this day was simply called “water drop.”

THE TABLE

Since a full list of the original Olmec day names has not yet been found, it is necessary to work from the Zapotec and Mayan lists that descended from it. Note that where these two lists differ, the animal form is newer and thus less relevant to a study of the origins of this series. (Often there is a conceptual relationship between the original day glyph and its later animal version. For example, the early Zapotec day Loo “Eye” became the later Aztec Cozcacuauhtli “Owl” or “Vulture,” apparently due to the remarkable eyesight of these species.) While the Aztec version of this list is later than the other two and thus less relevant to the study of its origins, the more familiar Aztec iconography has been included in an additional column.

Table 3. A new comparison of the 20 Mayan and Zapotec day names with the letters of the proto-Sinaitic alphabet.

While these parallels are clearly significant, they also raise an important question: why would a discovery as great as the alphabet be relegated to numbering the days of a month? In fact, this use is consistent with the ancient Near East where the earliest alphabets served as both letters and numbers. (This shortened the learning curve for those new to literacy by removing the need to memorize separate lists of letters and numbers.) It has even been argued that the Ugaritic alphabet was deliberately extended to 29 letters with a redundant 30th in order to similarly number the days of the month.[133]  (Because a lunation takes 29½ days, accurately tracking them requires months that can vary between 29 and 30 days.) The Mesoamerican use of this same series for counting the days of the month is thus consistent with its use in the ancient Near East.

THE 260-DAY YEAR

Ancient Mesoamericans combined each of these 20 day names with 13 tallies to mark a 260-day calendar. How they came to track a 260-day year has been a longstanding problem, since it cannot have been useful for predicting seasonal variations.

Theories of the origin of this 260-day year include an approximation of the length of a human pregnancy, the time from planting to harvest, or a particular astronomical alignment. While these various phenomena may approach 260 days in duration, in each case (with the exception of pregnancy) the time from the start of one cycle (i.e. planting) to the start of the next is still 365 days. Should the continuously running 260-day Mesoamerican year be aligned with such an event, it will fall out of cycle from its second 260-day year onward. This calendar thus fails to coincide with or predict any of the phenomena that it has been hypothesized to follow.

However, notice the math here. While there are only 20 day glyphs in the above lists, the proto-Sinaitic alphabet contained at least 27 letters, and many scholars suspect that there was one (or at most two) additional letter.[134] All of the alphabets that descended directly from proto-Sinaitic had an even number of letters: 28 in the South Semitic alphabets, 22 in the shortened North Semitic alphabets, and 30 in the extended North Semitic variant, which is consistent with the use of mnemonic pairing and one of several indications that proto-Sinaitic had exactly 28 letters. If the Mesoamerican calendar had originally used all 28 symbols as day glyphs along with its same 13 tallies, it would have had a 364 day year (essentially 13 months of 28 days each), a better approximation of the solar year than many ancient calendars and a closer match to the lunar months than our own calendar. As many as 39 distinct calendrical glyphs have been identified in the earliest Zapotec inscriptions.[135] Twenty of these constitute the known day names, and several are variant forms for writing these, but many of the extra day glyphs remain a mystery. It is thus quite possible that the original series, like the alphabet, contained 28 symbols and thus tracked the solar year. The later reduction to 20 day names may have been intended to make the calendar conform to the traditional vigesimal (base 20) Mesoamerican mathematics with the unintended consequence of reducing the ritual year from 364 days to 260. Mesoamericans continued to track the solar year using a separate, slightly more accurate, Egyptian-style calendar of 360 days with five extra (epagomenal) days. It may have been this extra, more accurate calendar that caused the other to be displaced to its ceremonial role.

There was an additional motivation to remove the specific letters that the Mesoamerican day names lack. Some did not translate. For example, Aleph (our A) was the word for and image of an Ox, an animal that did not exist in Mesoamerica and thus was not represented among the 20 known day names. Others were egregiously redundant. Hand, for example, occurs in the Mesoamerican series only once, thus eliminating another letter.

Like the place names, this evidence points to northern Egypt. It specifically implicates literate Canaanite expatriates living in Egypt. By 1600 BC, these Canaanites had conquered northern Egypt, established a powerful kingdom, and begun sending hundreds of ships throughout the known world and beyond.

But their rise to power came in the shadow of the greatest natural disaster to befall our planet in the last 5,000 years . . .

Upon the Tsurian Sea the people live

Who style themselves Phoenicians...

These were the first great founders of the world –

Founders of cities and of mighty states

Who showed a path through seas before unknown….

And sent each wandering tribe far off to share

A different soil and climate.

– Dyonysius of Susiana

There was once a doughnut-shaped island in the Mediterranean that sheltered a perfect harbor. Excavations revealed a system of parallel pipes providing hot and cold water as early as 2000 BC throughout a modern-looking city of two- and three-story buildings.

However, its advantages, the geometric shape, protected harbor, and hot and cold springs, were because the island was the rim of an enormous suboceanic volcano. Known as Thera, its magnificent civilization likely inspired Plato’s story of Atlantis, whose futuristic hot and cold plumbing, unusual concentric circles of land and water, and sudden demise fit this island perfectly.

Figure 8. The island of Santorini, the modern remains of Thera, whose ancient eruption devastated the eastern Mediterranean. Its lagoon is roughly 12 by 7 km (8 by 4 miles). Satellite photo courtesy of NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team.

As in Plato, Theran civilization ended suddenly, violently, and completely. Thera’s is now considered to be the first or second largest eruption of the last 10,000 years, some 900 times more powerful than Mount St. Helens and more than four times the intensity of the Krakatoa eruption that killed 36,000 people in 1883. A NASA study calculated its force as equivalent to two million atomic bombs.[136] The subsequent mega-tsunami devastated coasts throughout the eastern Mediterranean, marking them with a layer of wave-borne pumice indicative of a wave 63 meters (207 feet) tall.

THE DATING GAME

Dating this eruption is one of the most complex and controversial debates in archaeology today. The stakes are extraordinary. When this Gordian knot is finally cut, it could make possible to-the-year accuracy in regional dating and global synchronization of numerous disparate chronologies. As the archaeologist Manfred Bietak put it, “A solution of this matter is the key to most of our present synchronization problems. Any scholar who is able to present cogent evidence of this eruption date—evidence that will stand the test of time—will deserve an archaeological Nobel Prize.”[137] In fact, as we will see, its ramifications extend even further and include new insights into the Bible, the fall of Egypt, and beyond.

In 1939, archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos dated the eruption to 1500 BC by linking local pottery to the Egyptian chronology. But in 1976, radiocarbon testing of material directly associated with the eruption dated the event a full century earlier. Yet, by this time, the 1500 BC date had already become so canonical that many (if not most) archaeologists rejected the radiocarbon dates.[138] The hundred-year discrepancy between the two camps created an intense, ongoing debate that has been characterized as pitting “science versus archaeology.”[139]

VOLCANIC WINTER

In 1984, a breakthrough paper in Nature showed that frost damage in ancient tree rings marked the dates of major volcanic eruptions.[140] (Large eruptions ejected so much particulate matter into the atmosphere that they blocked enough sunlight to cool the planet to the point that the trees had suffered visible frost damage.) The tree rings marked every major eruption except Thera. Although they checked the rings for a century to either side of 1500 BC, the dendrochronologists failed to find the signature frost damage.[141] However, extreme frost damage was found to have begun in 1627 BC. Given the magnitude of this event and its close fit with the radiocarbon dates for the Thera eruption, they concluded that Thera had erupted in 1627 BC.[142]

On reading this original study of California trees, Irish scientists checked their own 7,272 year long oak tree chronology. The 22 oaks that included the 1620s BC, all showed the extreme event. In some the rings were so narrow that they were unreadable after 1628 BC.[143] Germany’s oak tree sequence also showed severely diminished growth in the 1620s BC.[144] And the English oak ring chronology had a gap for this period, most of its oak forests having died out in the 17th century BC. When a few survivors were finally found in a bog near Sheffield, they too had extraordinarily narrow rings for the 1620s BC.[145] The findings of this discipline were in general agreement that this event had been one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human history and was likely Thera, though the European evidence shifted its date back to 1628 BC.

HISTORY’S LARGEST GROWTH SPURT

But then a team from the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory began to piece together the tree-ring chronology of the ancient Near East. To their surprise, the rings suddenly expanded to 250% of their normal size in the 17th century BC. All 61 wood samples from this time, regardless of species, show a dramatic growth spike reaching up to eight times normal ring width. This constitutes the largest dendrochronological anomaly of the last 9,000 years.[146]

In most tree-ring chronologies, the exact year of any past ring can be determined by simply counting back from the present year’s ring. However, a gap in the ancient Near Eastern chronology during Roman times currently makes this impossible for the earlier series of 1503 annual rings that includes the 17th century BC. The Cornell team tried to solve this by attributing the extremely wide rings to Thera and dating the first of them to 1628 BC. This was heralded as the first absolute (to-the-year) chronology of the ancient Near East.

In 2001, to confirm their historic achievement, they subjected the rings to high-precision radiocarbon dating. Instead, the results dated the first extremely wide ring to circa 1650 BC, 22 years earlier than expected.[147] Still attributing this growth surge to Thera, the Cornell team now correlated it with a layer of volcanic ash in the Greenland ice cap dated to 1645 BC.[148] There were now three major factions proposing three different dates for Thera (circa 1650-45 BC, 1628 BC, and circa 1500 BC). Then, in 2003, Douglas J. Keenan demonstrated that the chemical composition of the volcanic ash in the Greenland ice cores could not have come from Thera.[149] And in 2004, a group of geologists tracked down its actual source, Aniakchak Volcano in Alaska.[150]

In April 2006, a team of archaeologists led by Sturt Manning of Cornell published 127 new high-precision radiocarbon dates from three independent labs, which dated Thera’s eruption to betwen 1660 and 1613 BC.[151] A separate team radiocarbon-dated the final ring of an olive branch buried alive by Thera to circa 1627–1600 BC.[152] Although many archaeologists still date Thera to 1500 BC, there is a growing body of evidence in favor of 1628 BC.

Figure 9. Aniakchak volcano, Alaska, as seen from space. Courtesy Chelys. And its 6 mile (10 km) diameter caldera as seen from a plane. Courtesy M. Williams for the National Park Service.

We linger now on the verge of several of the greatest breakthroughs in the study of human history: an absolute chronology for the ancient Near East, a confirmed date for one of the largest and most influential eruptions in human history, and global cross-calibration of several major dating systems (including the ice cores, tree ring chronologies, radiocarbon dating, and even China’s Bamboo Annals). Progress is currently being made on several fronts. Hopefully, the data will soon reach the critical mass at which some or all of these questions can finally be answered.

Toward that end, I would like to propose that the effects of the Aniakchak and Thera eruptions were recorded in two ancient texts. Aligned with the archaeological (and climate proxy) data, these eye-witness perspectives can finally resolve an historical problem that has vexed scholars for centuries.

Familiarity can never entirely dissipate the feeling of mystery – the sense of vanished but haunting forces that cling to a tomb.

–Howard Carter, archaeologist

In a classic Bible story, Pharaoh was haunted by dreams of seven emaciated cows attacking and eating seven fat cows yet remaining gaunt and seven withered ears of grain consuming seven full ears. He called on his wisest sages, but none could explain the dreams. On the recommendation of his butler, Pharaoh summoned Joseph, a slave from Canaan with a reputation for interpreting dreams. Joseph told Pharaoh that his dreams foretold seven years of great agricultural abundance followed by seven years of horrific famine, both of which then came to pass.

Set aside for a moment that this is from the text that several prominent religions are based on. It is also a truly ancient document with at least the potential to complement (and be complemented by) the archaeological record.

There have been a number of attempts to connect Thera with the Biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt. This requires an extremely late date for Thera, circa 1450 BC, and an equally early date for the Exodus. There are also geographic problems, such as Thera being in the wrong location to have been the pillar of smoke and fire that led the Israelites east through the Sinai.

Instead, I propose correlating the seven years of agricultural abundance described in the Joseph story with the tree rings from the same region that record the most dramatic growth spike ever recorded. This growth surge likewise lasted exactly seven years, beginning at ring 854 and tapering off until it hit normal values at ring 861.[153] It likely resulted from the distant eruption of Aniakchak making the hot, arid Near East cooler (due to the dust veil) and wetter (by increasing the available cloud condensation nuclei in the atmosphere and by altering the temperature differentials that drive global wind and weather patterns). Something similar happened after the 1815 eruption of Tambora: Irish records show rain on 142 of the 153 days in the summer of 1816. These same dark, rainy days trapped Mary Shelley and John William Polidori indoors where they wrote Frankenstein and The Vampyre, respectively.

Roughly 12 years after the growth surge, came the larger 1628 BC event and its severe effects on many of the world’s forests.[154] Such trees are among the hardiest of vegetation; human food crops are far more vulnerable. Thus, the 1783 eruption of Laki in Iceland devastated crops across Europe, causing the famine and extreme poverty that ultimately fueled the French revolution of 1789. And from distant Indonesia, Tambora’s eruption caused extensive crop failures in North America and Europe, leading to famine, riots, violence, and the looting of stored grain in Britain, France, and Switzerland.

In 2007, a study of sediment cores from the Dead Sea measured variations in the quantity and species of pollen in successive sediment layers. At roughly the same time as the tree ring growth surge, the pollen levels of trees and shrubs spiked to the highest level ever reached.[155] (Although the authors of the pollen and tree ring studies do not seem to be aware of each other’s work, they appear to have measured the same unprecedented surge of growth in regional trees.) The pollen levels of plants that require plentiful water also spiked to unprecedented levels, indicating unusually wet and favorable growing conditions in this normally arid region.[156]

Immediately thereafter, pollen levels plummeted to almost unmeasurable scarcity, indicating an extreme drought. The pollen of food crops, including olives and grapes, likewise peaked and then completely disappeared, suggesting the “collapse of agriculture.”[157]

This pollen record comes from the Dead Sea, from the heart of ancient Canaan, the very land in which the Biblical patriarchs experienced a devastating famine after a period of unprecedented prosperity. And it adds additional drama to the Bible story, suggesting that Joseph had to wait a painstaking 12 years for the second half of his prediction to come true.

KILLER FOG

In Norway, on the 5th of June 1783, Johan Brun recorded falling ash that withered all the leaves and grass.[158] In England, on June 23 of that year, the Reverend Sir John Cullum was astonished to see the plants act “exactly as if a fire had been lighted near them, that had shriveled and discoloured their leaves.”[159] Accounts from throughout Europe tell of evil fogs and violent rainstorms, “scorching, burning, withering, drying” the plant life.[160]

Although most Europeans did not know why their vegetation suddenly withered, we now know that the cause was a June 3, 1783, eruption of Laki in Iceland. Throughout Iceland, the effects were so severe that vegetation did not begin to reappear “for 3 to 10 years after.”[161] This devastation resulted from volcanic fluorine and sulfur dioxide converting into hydrofluoric acid and sulfuric acid in the atmosphere and creating highly acidic ash, fog, and rain that poisoned the plants.

Just as Europe lay downwind of Laki, so Canaan and Egypt lay downwind (southeast) of Thera.[162] And the Bible’s description of crops “withered, thin, and scorched,”[163] recalls these European accounts. Even the seven years of this famine is commensurate with Iceland’s vegetation failing to regrow “for 3 to 10 years after the eruption.”[164]

ZOMBIE CATTLE

On Iceland, in the aftermath of Laki, the Lutheran priest Jon Steingrimsson described what happened to the animals:

The horses lost all their flesh, the skin began to rot off along the spines. The sheep were affected even more wretchedly. There was hardly a part of them free of swellings, especially their jaws, so large that they protruded through the skin . . . Both bones and gristle were as soft as if they had been chewed.[165]

Such bone deformation and softening is characteristic of fluorosis, caused by fluorine in the volcanic fall out. This recalls the story of Joseph, in which the narrator strains for adjectives to describe just how miserable the cattle were: “poor and very ill favoured and leanfleshed, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness.”[166] Between fluorosis and starvation, 80% of Iceland’s sheep and half of the cattle and horses died. Among humans, a quarter of Icelanders died, as did roughly 5% of the population of France.[167]

Laki was one of several historical volcanoes that caused famines in Egypt by weakening the African and Indian monsoon circulations and thus depriving the Nile watershed of rain. Crops could not be grown in Egypt in 1783 or 1784, and by 1785 one-sixth of Egypt’s population had starved or fled.[168]

Thus, Laki illustrates two mechanisms that could account for the collapse of vegetation following Thera: direct damage from highly acidic rain, fog, and fallout, and a drop in temperatures weakening the monsoon circulation that supplies rain to the Nile watershed.

While pollen from the Dead Sea records an extensive famine in Canaan at this time, it was not confined to this region. We have already seen the drastic effect on trees in Europe and North America. In 1985, Kevin Pang of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory argued that Thera’s dust veil had caused the collapse of China’s Xia Dynasty. The Bamboo Annals for 1618 BC record “yellow fog, a dim sun, then three suns, frost in July, famine, and the withering of all five cereals.”[169] Because the Bamboo Annals are not absolutely dated, this could well be a record of the effects of the severe dust-veil event that began in 1628 BC. If so, then the ancient Chinese chronology could be anchored and calibrated by this precise tree-ring date.

A BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY

Perhaps we can do the same with the Bible. For centuries scholars have attempted to turn the Biblical genealogies into an historical chronology. However, there is a long-standing problem of how to anchor this series of durations to actual dates. Here, for the first time, we have historical events that occur in the Bible and can be absolutely dated through dendrochronology and ice core dating.

Anchored to these dates, the Biblical chronology fits well with the archaeological record. According to Exodus 12:40, after Joseph brought his family to Egypt during the famine, they stayed in that country for 430 years. If they had arrived circa 1628 BC (in the post-Thera famine), the Exodus (their departure from Egypt) would have taken place circa 1198 BC. This dovetails precisely with the archaeological evidence from Canaan where the “shift from ‘Canaanite’ to ‘Israelite’ culture occurred at the end of the Bronze Age, circa 1250–1150 BC.”[170] This date also falls near the end of the reign of Ramses II (circa 1213 BC[171]), who is widely (though not universally) seen as the leading candidate for the pharaoh of the Exodus.

In Exodus 12:37 and Numbers 33:3, the Israelites depart for the Exodus from a city named “Rameses,” an obvious reference to the city that Ramses II built in the Delta and named after himself. In the Bible, the oldest son of the pharaoh dies in a plague. Historically, Ramses II’s first dozen sons preceded him in death, leaving the throne to the thirteenth, Merneptah. This pharaoh recorded his military endeavors in the “Merneptah Stela,” and included history’s earliest reference to Israel: “Israel is wasted, bare of seed.” Instead of a hieroglyphic determinative indicating that the name “Israel” refers to a country or even to a city-state like the other Canaanite peoples mentioned, “Israel” bears a determinative designating it as a nomadic tribe. This is consistent with the Biblical description of their situation immediately after the Exodus and prior to settling in Canaan, 40 years as nomads. That this nomadic period occurred during the reign of Merneptah further implicates his father Ramses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus.

Not only do these extraordinary climatic events offer new insights into the Bible and a precise anchor for its chronology, they also suggest a new explanation for how Canaanites were able to conquer Egypt “without striking a blow.”

Around 2000 BC, in a massive effort to keep out the neighboring Canaanites, the Egyptians erected a tall border wall 100 miles long, lined it with a moat, and, for good measure, added crocodiles. Yet still the Canaanites came, often at the behest of ambivalent Egyptians who relied on their labor. Over time, northern Egypt became a cosmopolitan mix of Egyptian, Canaanite, and Nubian culture. Toward the end of the 13th Dynasty, as Egypt’s central government weakened, an independent kingdom arose within this culturally distinct delta as Egypt’s 14th Dynasty. These simultaneous 13th and 14th dynasties then fell to the Hyksos, invaders from Canaan who ruled northern Egypt for the next 108 years as Egypt’s 15th Dynasty and reduced southern Egypt to a tribute-paying vassal state.

According to the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho, the Hyksos conquered Egypt “without striking a blow.”[172] The archaeological record, likewise, shows no evidence of a battle or large-scale looting.[173] Yet Egypt was arguably the most powerful nation in the world and had never been conquered in their 1500 year history. How could they now fall without a fight?

The invasion is dated to the 1630s BC[174] with a margin of error of more than a decade.[175] It thus occurs in the same place and time as the Joseph story, which can now be bracketed by the tree-ring dates of the two climatic events to 1647-1621 BC. Not only do the history and the story coincide in time and place, but the Joseph story makes a far more interesting claim than has previously been recognized, one that offers a new explanation for the bloodless conquest.

YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE

In the Bible, Joseph, having been promoted to the Pharaoh’s top administrator, stockpiled the excess grain of the prosperous years in silos. When the famine struck, he was able to sell the grain at such prices that he gained for Pharaoh all of the money in Egypt and Canaan. Yet the famine continued, and the Egyptians came to Joseph pleading for food to live. He gave them a year of food in exchange for Egypt’s livestock. When the year passed and the famine had not abated, the starving Egyptians offered first their land and finally even themselves as slaves in exchange for more food.

While the text describes severe famine in both Egypt and Canaan and has Joseph acquiring all of the money of both lands, he only negotiates for Egypt’s cattle, land, and population. Why would the pharaoh need to purchase Egypt’s land and people? And why did he not need those of Canaan?

Although the Hyksos were of Canaanite descent and retained political control over southern Canaan, they ruled as Egyptian pharaohs. The incongruities in the Joseph story suddenly make sense if his pharaoh was of Canaanite origin. This explains why he would appoint Joseph, an immigrant from Canaan and former slave, to a prominent position. And he would not need to purchase the land or people of Canaan; they were already his.

If such a pharaoh gave food to the starving Egyptians in exchange for their land and their freedom, he would have been purchasing and annexing their neighboring country. The tenor of the described negotiations is consistent with this. Joseph does not distribute or even sell food to individual Egyptians as a government would to its citizens. Rather, he conducts the transactions with leaders who speak on behalf of all of Egypt. For example, when their money had run out, the Egyptians are said to have traded all of their livestock for one year of food. Were this a series of individual purchases, it would only have fed the handful of people wealthy enough to still have cattle to trade in the midst of a massive famine. Rather, it is a negotiation that Joseph makes with “all of the Egyptians”[176] to provide one year of food for the entire nation in exchange for all of its livestock. “When that year was ended, they came unto him the second year,”[177] offering themselves and their land in a desperate plea for more food. In the end, the Bible says that Joseph allowed the Egyptians to keep their land so long as they agreed to a permanent tribute of one-fifth of its annual produce.

This reading of the ancient narrative is consistent with the archaeological and historical evidence, which have the Hyksos conquering Egypt “without striking a blow” but allowing Upper Egypt quasi-independence as a tribute-paying vassal state.

THE EGYPTIAN SIDE OF THE STORY

These events may be further illumined by an impassioned eyewitness account in the Egyptian Ipuwer Papyrus. (This text was previously believed to have been written during the earlier First Intermediate Period, until the Egyptologist John Van Seters demonstrated that the customs, institutions, and political realities it described, as well as its writing style and word choice, all point to its having been composed during the Second Intermediate Period, the time of the Hyksos.[178])

This papyrus records a massive famine. Given when it was written, and the “collapse of agriculture”[179] in the climate proxy records of this time, it may offer another perspective on the devastating famine that appears to have followed the eruption of Thera. In it, the Egyptian scribe Ipuwer bemoans starvation and death throughout the land:

There is no food . . . Forsooth, princes are hungry and in distress. . . . all animals, their hearts weep. Cattle moan because of the state of the land . . . Forsooth, men eat herbs, and wash them down with water. . . . is taken away from the mouth of the swine . . . grain has perished on every side.[180]

With the grain gone, people ate whatever wild plants they could find and (although the papyrus is damaged here) apparently stole slop from the pigs. Many died, and the survivors wished they had: “Forsooth, men are few. He who places his brother in the ground is everywhere . . . Forsooth, great and small say: I wish I might die. Little children say: he ought never to have caused me to live.”[181]

The devastation was focused to the south in Upper Egypt: “Forsooth, the ship of the Southerner has gone adrift. The towns are destroyed. Upper Egypt has become dry wastes.”[182] Meanwhile, the marshy delta region to the north (Lower Egypt) had been overrun by Canaanites (known in Egyptian as Amu but often translated as Asiatics because the border between Egypt and Canaan is also a continental border between Africa and Asia):

Forsooth, the Marshlands in their entirety are not hidden. Lower Egypt can boast trodden roads. What shall one do? . . . Behold it is in the hands of those who knew it not like those who knew it. The Asiatics are skilled in the crafts of the Marshlands.”[183]

Adding insult to injury, in Ipuwer’s view, the foreign Canaanites thrive in northern Egypt as the Egyptians themselves starve. Ipuwer blames his countrymen for having relied on the immigrants: “The troops which we recruited for ourselves are become a people of the Bow, and have come to destroy. What has happened . . . through it is to cause the Asiatics to know the condition of the land.”[184]

Finally, the Canaanites seized political control: “Behold, things are done, that have never happened for long time past: the king has been taken away by poor men.”[185] Egypt, never before conquered, had now been taken by poor Asiatics. The overthrow was rapid: “The Residence is overturned in a minute.”[186] And the Egyptians became strangers in their own land: “A foreign tribe from abroad has come to Egypt . . . Those who were Egyptians have become foreigners.”[187]

ECONOMIC REVOLUTION

The Canaanites, whom the Egyptians viewed as barbarian workmen and slaves, suddenly possessed all of Egypt’s wealth, and the Egyptian nobility were poor, homeless, and starving:

Behold, the possessor of wealth now passes the night thirsting. He who begged for himself his dregs is now the possessor of bowls full to overflowing. . . . Behold, the poor of the land have become rich, and the possessor of property has become one who has nothing . . . Behold, noble ladies, great ladies, mistresses of goodly things give their children for beds.[188]

As Egyptian noblewomen languished on the verge of starvation (even selling their children), their former slaves found sudden wealth:

Forsooth, gold and lapis lazuli, silver and malachite . . . are fastened on the necks of female slaves. Good things are in the land. Yet the mistress of houses say: would that we had something to eat. . . . Forsooth, the builders of Pyramids have become field-laborers.[189]

While the nobility begrudgingly took up manual labor, their slaves rose to positions of power. Egyptian census lists, such as the Brooklyn Papyrus, had listed the names of slaves. The Hyksos not only overturned the social order by freeing the slaves, they also destroyed these records of who had been a slave.[190] Thus Ipuwer laments: “Public offices are opened and the census-lists are taken away. Serfs become lords of serfs.”[191] These former slaves becoming lords recalls the story of Joseph being taken to Egypt as a slave and rising to the second highest position in the land.

In fact, Ipuwer’s complaint about slaves becoming lords is immediately followed by the complaint: “The corn of Egypt is common property.”[192] Van Seters notes in passing the unusual “intrusion of a remark regarding agriculture in this context.”[193] However, this incongruity makes sense if a slave who has become a lord is also responsible for the redistribution of the grain. Later, when Ipuwer again mentions the grain, he again throws in a statement similar to the previous “serfs become lords of serfs,” as if the distribution of grain and the lord who was once a slave were connected thoughts and the reader knows to whom Ipuwer refers:

Behold, he who had no grain is now the possessor of granaries. He who had to fetch for himself t3bt-corn now sends it forth. Behold, he who had not dependents is now a lord of serfs.[194]

This sending forth or distribution of grain by a former slave who is now a lord recalls the Biblical account of Joseph, a story that also takes place in Egypt during a severe famine and which the tree-ring evidence dates to this same time. Although not conclusive, these complaints offer the tantalizing possibility of being a heretofore overlooked, contemporary historical reference to the Biblical patriarch Joseph.

On a more general level, Ipuwer characterizes the Asiatic invaders as archers, complaining that the people “we recruited for ourselves are become a people of the Bow, and have come to destroy.”[195] In Genesis 49, Joseph (and his tribe) is characterized as an archer among archers whose “bow abode in strength.”[196]

AN AGRICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

The scenario described in these texts makes sense agriculturally. Upper Egypt’s arable land was confined to a narrow strip of the Nile Valley. Even with seven years of rain, agricultural expansion would be severely limited by the surrounding rocky, sandy desert terrain. However, the Nile Delta, where the Hyksos lived, formed a wide fan of river-deposited silt. Here regular precipitation would have opened up vast opportunities. Thus, a scenario in which northern Egypt was able to stockpile food but the south quickly exhausted its own supplies makes sense from an agricultural perspective.

Excavations at Avaris (the city in the eastern Nile Delta that the Hyksos made their capital) uncovered numerous grain silos, recalling Genesis 41:48, in which Joseph had the surplus grain of the bountiful years stockpiled in the cities. In addition, there is evidence at Avaris of an astonishing two million buried amphorae, large pots used to transport and store grain, wine, oil, and honey.

Large courtyards filled with round mud-brick silos were also discovered at Tell Hebua (east of the Delta on the main road to Canaan). Here too, they were found to date to the Second Intermediate Period. But perhaps most telling are the silos recently excavated at Edfu in southern Egypt and also found to date to the time of the Hyksos. A Middle Kingdom administrative building was leveled to make room for this new grain storage complex (recalling Ipuwer’s gripe about the destruction of records). Although this complex was built in southern Egypt, forty-one seal impressions with the cartouche of the Hyksos pharaoh Khayan and more from a top Hyksos official have been found in this granary complex. On the backs of these official impressions were the more mundane impressions of the bags, pots, and wooden boxes that they had once sealed for secure transport from Avaris. Apparently, this local grain storage center had been receiving numerous shipments from Avaris during the reign of the Hyksos Pharaoh Khayan. Moreover, within the debris excavated from Silo 393, “thirty hieratic ostraca have been found, including several ration lists . . . which date [to] the Second Intermediate Period according to the paleography.” This discovery of Hyksos-era ration lists within abandoned silos is consistent with the other accounts of excess grain having been stored prior to a lengthy famine. It is tempting (though not conclusive) to identify Khayan as the pharaoh of the Joseph narrative. Further, the seal impressions found with those of Khayan belonged to a top Hyksos official who seems to have been responsible for numerous shipments from Avaris to at least one regional granary. In the Biblical account, the official responsible for the distribution of grain was Joseph himself.

Excavations at Avaris found that, “while a living compound originally consisted of a house and an ample courtyard with silos, the compound was gradually filled completely with structures.”[197] This happened at the beginning of the Hyksos era and coincided with a dramatic increase in the population.[198] Bietak reports: “Avaris itself expanded rapidly to two or three times its previous size. This growth may be interpreted as an indication of a massive movement of population out of southern Canaan.”[199] So many refugees flooded into the city that not only the courtyards but even the cemetery was overbuilt with housing.[200]

In Genesis 47:21, after purchasing the money, people, and land of Egypt, Joseph launches a massive relocation campaign, bringing the starving rural populations into the cities: “And as for the people, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof.” The archaeology of the capital city Avaris—with its sudden doubling or tripling of the population and countless refugees crowding the courtyards and cemetery—is at least consistent with this scenario.

The parallels between the archaeological record and the geopolitical aspects of the Joseph story are surprisingly extensive. And it stands to reason that a series of events of this magnitude (the largest ever surge in the growth of vegetation, the largest volcanic eruption in several millennia, a devastating famine, mass starvation, and the collapse of governments) would have been recorded, especially in so literate a place as Egypt.

The Biblical patriarchs were part of a larger movement of Semitic immigrants into Egypt. It is in this same group that the disparate evidence of contact with Mesoamerica converges: The murex dye implicates the Canaanites. The Mesoamerican day names parallel the original alphabet, invented and used by Canaanites living in Egypt. And Aztec and Mayan chronicles specifically name and describe northern Egypt.

Yet even with all of the opportunities afforded by their control of Egypt, could these Hyksos have crossed the Atlantic three millennia before Columbus?

Into the west, unknown of man,

Ships have sailed since the world began.

. . . follow the ships through the wind-blown wrack–

Follow the ships that come not back.

– Robert E. Howard

How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,

What persecution, merciless and blind,

Drove o’er the sea—that desert desolate—

These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

—“The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1852.

Up until the late 1920s, scientists vigorously debated whether any people had been in the Americas before about the time of Jesus.

However, a seismic shift was set in motion by a 1908 flash flood that nearly destroyed Folsom, New Mexico. In the aftermath, George McJunkin, a cowboy who had been born in slavery, was inspecting damaged cattle fences when he noticed bones protruding 10 feet down the wall of a water-carved gulley. Having learned to read and educated himself, he recognized that such deeply buried bones were likely extremely old. They were also larger than those of known animals, and the spearheads embedded with them were nothing like the small arrowheads he sometimes found on the surface. He tried repeatedly to contact scientists about the find.

Finally, in 1926, one year after the “Scopes Monkey Trial” and four years after McJunkin’s death, the director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History set out to excavate it. The animal was identified as an enormous bison thought to have gone extinct 10,000 years ago. A flurry of excavations followed this initial discovery as newspaper headlines lauded “Evidence of Ancient Hunters Discovered 10,000 Years Old!”

THE DUST BOWL MAMMOTHS

Then, between 1931 and 1939, the severe drought of the “Dust Bowl” devastated the southern Great Plains of the United States. With the topsoil loosened each spring by the plows of hopeful farmers, the winds of the Great Plains swept away the dry earth in “black blizzards” that darkened the skies for days. Although the land became a brutal hell for the poor farmers and their families attempting to live off of it, it provided archaeologists and paleontologists with a strange paradise. Accustomed to the glacial pace of excavation by trowel, they suddenly found thousands of square miles stripped of their topsoil, exposing countless stone artifacts, skeletons, and mammoth tusks. The physical evidence of human coexistence with and hunting of the Ice Age megafauna (the mammoths, horses, camels, saber tooth tigers, dire wolves, and 17-foot tall sloths that roamed Ice Age America) forced a seismic shift in the understanding of America’s prehistory.

Mammoth tusks. (Photo by author.)

Scholars quickly coalesced around a theory: Since these first Americans were assumed to be too primitive to have arrived by boat, they must have walked to America when the lower sea levels of the last ice age exposed a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska. Then the great ice sheets melted, flooding the bridge, and isolating the Americas for the next 11,000 years until the arrival of Columbus in 1492. These first Americans were dubbed the Clovis people (after distinctive spear heads first found near Clovis, New Mexico) and considered the sole ancestors of all indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. This theory became so engrained in academia that the first archaeological finds to challenge it were vigorously opposed (such as the Meadowcroft radiocarbon dates[201] and Greenberg’s linguistic analysis[202]).

THE TIPPING POINT

The decisive breakthrough came when excavations under archaeologist Thomas Dillehay at Monte Verde, Chile, unearthed ancient human homes and associated artifacts radiocarbon-dated to 12,500 years old. Not only did they predate the Clovis people by 1000 years, but they used completely different tools and were at the wrong end of the world. The earliest human artifacts should have been in Alaska, with Chile being reached and populated last. In 1996, a group of leading archaeologists traveled to southern Chile and confirmed the site’s authenticity. With this, an American prehistory that had dominated textbooks for more than 60 years was shattered. How had the earliest Americans come to be in Chile?

Elsewhere in South America, Brazilian scientists discovered the New World’s oldest human skulls, again at the opposite end of the hemisphere from what the prevailing theory had predicted. And a forensic facial reconstruction of the first of these, dubbed “Luzia,” found that she had not resembled modern Native American populations or the Asian populations from which they apparently derived. On October 26, 1999, the New York Times heralded the results:

Even more startling, a reconstruction of her cranium undertaken in Britain this year indicates that her features appear to be Negroid rather than Mongoloid, suggesting that the Western Hemisphere may have initially been settled not only earlier than thought, but by a people distinct from the ancestors of today’s North and South American Indians . . . A finding that if confirmed, would rewrite history.[203]

In fact, Luzia and her clan most resemble the indigenous people of Australia and Melanesia.[204] Since no land bridge ever reached Australia or Melanesia, they can only have been populated by boat. Yet evidence of human occupation on Australia is dated to as early as 50,000 BP (before present) and on the islands of Melanesia to 30,000 BP. Walter Neves, the anthropologist leading this Brazilian study, concluded that the ancestors of Luzia and her clan had reached South America by boat as a later continuation of the oceanic migrations that peopled Australia and the islands of Melanesia.[205]

NORTH AMERICA

Meanwhile in North America, a skeleton was found protruding from a river back in Washington State in July of 1996. Suspecting foul play, the authorities called archaeologist and forensic investigator Dr. James Chatters. From the long, narrow shape of its skull, he concluded that the man had been of European descent. However, partially healed within its pelvic bone was a style of flint projectile point used until 7000 BP, and the skeleton radiocarbon dated to 8140 BP. How had a European-looking person come to be in North America 8000 years ago?

Physical anthropologists Douglas Owsley and Richard Jantz analyzed the six known North American skulls dated to before 8000 years BP and found that each had Caucasoid features. Among modern populations they most closely resemble the Ainu, an indigenous Japanese minority physically distinct from the modern Japanese population.[206] The Ainu and their ancient ancestors the Jomon (Japan’s earliest inhabitants) have “Caucasoid” traits but represent an earlier morphology that is neither Caucasian nor Mongoloid. One theory refers to them as proto-Mongoloid.

THE FOLSOM FRAUD

Even the long-standing belief that the Clovis people had entered North America through Alaska came under new scrutiny. No Clovis points have ever been found in Alaska. The only physical evidence to support their presence in this state had come from the archaeologist Frank Hibben, who claimed to have found Folsom points (smaller, later versions of the characteristic Clovis spearheads) in Alaska in 1933 and 1941. However, Hibben’s other major discovery, “Sandia Man,” was completely discredited, and no other Folsom points have ever been found in Alaska. A team of archaeologists and geologists recently reexamined the site of Hibben’s excavation and found no evidence of either human artifacts or of the mammoth remains he claimed to have found with them.[207]

The earliest confirmed Clovis site is on the other side of the country near Nashville, and all of the Clovis sites in the eastern half of the United States predate those in the western United States and Mexico.[208] In 1999, Dennis Stanford (of the Smithsonian) and Bruce Bradley (of Exeter) presented compelling evidence that the Clovis people had actually come by boat from Europe. Not only do they first appear on the East Coast, but the stone tools used by Clovis are nothing like those of Siberia at the time (small micro-blades embedded along the edge of a piece of antler or wood) yet are nearly identical to those of Europe’s Solutrean culture.[209] A flint point excavated in Virginia and dated to 16,000 year ago provided the missing link between Solutrean and Clovis, being indistinguishable from the former and the earliest known precursor of the latter.

A CLOVIS SKULL

Thus far, only two skeletons have been found in association with Clovis tools. One of these was too fragmentary for skull analysis. The other, an infant, was examined by renowned Smithsonian anthropologist Douglas Owsley. In Jeff Benedict’s recent biography of Owsley No Bone Unturned, he notes of this infant that Owsley “observed that it was very different from the scores of infant crania of Native Americans he had studied over the years. Rather than a short, round cranium, the Clovis infant had a long, narrow vault.”[210] Although too small a sampling to be conclusive, it is an intriguing discovery, especially in light of the other indications of a European origin of the Clovis people.

Figure 10. Clovis points, large spear heads used to kill mammoth and other megafauna in the ancient Americas. New evidence suggests that the “Clovis People” who used them did not come from Siberia, where the only stone tools were tiny micro-blades, but from Europe where Clovis-like points had a long history. (Photos by author.)

THE X FACTOR

Genetics provided further support for the Solutrean theory of Clovis origins. A small portion of ancient and modern Native Americans belong to mitochondrial haplogroup X. A 1998 study found that haplogroup X also occurs in ancient and modern Europeans but not in Asia, suggesting that the ancient North Americans of this haplogroup had come from Europe.[211] (In 2001, a few haplogroup X individuals were found among the Altaian people in southern Siberia,[212] but a 2003 study found that they could not have been the source of the North American X cluster and appeared to have only arrived in Siberia from Europe in modern times.[213])

THE TRANSITION

After about 7000 BC, people with northeast Asian characteristics (craniofacial morphology) replaced the earlier Jomon-like population in North America. This new population, resembling modern Asians, predominated in North America until the European invasion that followed Columbus.

In terms of the five known Native American mitochondrial DNA lineages, this last migration appears to have been haplogroup A. Although A is the most common haplogroup in modern Native North American populations, it has yet to be found in any American remains older than 6000 BC. Moreover, this haplogroup has only been found in individuals with “northeast Asian craniofacial morphology.”[214]

The South American record also changed at this time. Of his work in Brazil, Neves observed: “Before seven thousand B.C., I see only the Australian-like skulls resembling Luzia and Santana do Riacho, but within a thousand years, they were replaced in most places by the Mongoloids—the Indians.”[215] Since rising sea levels had flooded the land that once connected Siberia and Alaska, this migration (like those of the first Australians, the first South Americans, and North America’s Clovis people) must have been by boat, most likely across the Bering Strait.

Shortly before this book went to press, the first complete decipherment of an ancient human genome was announced in February of 2010. The intact DNA came from frozen Paleo-Eskimo hair found in Greenland. Its decipherment (by the University of Copenhagen) indicated that the man’s ancestors had separated from the Chukchi people of eastern Siberia roughly 5,500 years ago, evidence of “a hitherto unsuspected migration of people across the continent, from Siberia to Greenland, some 5,500 years ago.”[216]

And in January of 2010, excavations on Crete went deeper than the known levels of human habitation and uncovered some 2,000 stone tools whose dates were reported to be “at least 130,000 years old,” a major surprise on an island only accessible by sea-going watercraft and far from visible from the shore.[217]

Clearly, the world’s oceans did not fence in humanity the way it has so long been assumed. Australia, the South Pacific, and Crete can only have been settled by boat. And a growing body of evidence indicates that the earliest colonizers of the Americas also arrived by boat, in multiple waves, and across both bordering oceans. That the very foundations of American pre-history have so recently been overturned (albeit not without substantial resistance) demonstrates the limitations of our knowledge and the vulnerability of even the most entrenched theories to new discoveries.

Although our understanding of the initial settlement of the Americas has been revolutionized, the old paradigm of total pre-Columbian isolation still dominates a wide swath of history, from 7000 BC to 1000 AD. Yet it was precisely this era that saw nations and empires (Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Japan, Greece, Persia, the Roman Empire, etc.) arise and ply the oceans with fleets of ships engaged in trade, military conquest, and exploration.

Arguably history’s most nautical civilization was that of the Purple People. Following their conquest of Egypt, they established the largest maritime trading empire the world had ever seen, including a remarkable canal linking two oceans.

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.

—John Masefield, “Sea-fever”

The Suez Canal revolutionized modern trade and travel. With its completion in 1869, it linked the Mediterranean and Red Seas as well as the oceans beyond them. Yet this astonishing feat of Industrial Age engineering was preceded by an ancient canal that achieved the same result by connecting the Red Sea to the Nile River. Over the centuries, this Tumilat Canal repeatedly clogged with silt and wind-blown sand. Because the pharaohs and foreign rulers who re-dredged or extended it (including Darius I of Persia, Ptolemy II, and Trajan) often claimed to have constructed it, its ultimate origin has remained a mystery.

There is evidence that this canal was in use as early as the reign of Ramses II,[218] and the Abydos Decree of Seti I at Nauri confirms that it was in use during the 19th Dynasty.[219] That it also existed during the preceding 18th Dynasty can be seen in the record of a return voyage from the East Coast of Africa: “Sailing, returning in peace, putting to land at Karnak in joy.”[220] Putting to land at Karnak from the Red Sea requires a canal. This being the first dynasty after the Hyksos, the next logical question is whether they also made use of this canal.

The best archaeological insights into the Tumilat Canal have come from Tell el-Maskhuta. Built on the canal, this town thrived during periods of heavy canal use but withered when it ran dry. Recent excavations discovered that the first major occupation of this crucial canal town was by the Hyksos.[221] In fact, they had a substantial presence all along the Wadi Tumilat with some 21 sites discovered in archaeological surveys of the area, though most remain unexcavated.[222] Their other major sites, including their capital at Avaris, were on the Nile’s Pelusiac branch, the very distributary that linked the Tumilat Canal to the Mediterranean Sea. While the Hyksos also retained a presence in Canaan, their Egyptian holdings were built almost entirely along the two legs of this key water route between the oceans.

DIGGING TO CHINA

In 1870, the French engineer Linant de Bellefonds discovered an earlier, even larger canal, but it was not until the advent of modern aerial surveys that it was discovered that this canal had stretched all the way to the northern coast of Egypt, covering roughly the same route as the modern Suez Canal.[223] William H. Shea demonstrated that this was what the Egyptians had called the “Wall of the Ruler,” a combination canal and border wall first proposed as a barrier against Canaanite invasion and immigration circa 2100 BC by Pharaoh Akhtoy III and finally completed by Amenemhet I circa 1960 BC.[224]

Where this now dry canal still spans the desert it measures 230 feet (70 meters) wide, broader even than the modern Suez Canal. On either side, the fill from its excavation was heaped into defensive ramparts running its entire length, creating a double border wall with a central moat, in which they cultivated crocodiles. Moreover, in a papyrus from the time, Sinuhe describes spending the day crouched in a bush hiding from watchmen who patrolled atop this wall.[225]

THE EXODUS

In addition to what these canals reveal about the navigational opportunities of the Hyksos (whose maritime achievements will be the focus of the next chapter), they also provide a surprising new insight into one of the Bible’s most definitive moments, the bookend to the Joseph story that brought the Israelites into Egypt.

700 years after the Wall of the Ruler’s completion, a relief at Karnak shows Seti I returning victoriously to Egypt across its canal across a bridge within a fort as crocodiles swim in the waters below. This great wall would then almost certainly have been in use during the reign of his son Ramses II, the likely pharaoh of the Exodus.

TRAPPED

This provides a unique insight into the geography of the Eastern Nile Delta, the very region from which the Israelites are said to have fled Egypt. The great fortified canal-wall guarded the eastern boarder, a second canal lay to the south, and the Pelusiac branch of the Nile blocked the way to the west and north(see Fig. 12). With families in tow, no boats, and massive barriers on all sides, the Israelites escaping from the city of Pi-Ramesse would have been completely boxed in and bound to be cut down or re-enslaved. In Exodus 14:3, Pharaoh concludes: “They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in.”

Moses was told by God to avoid the northern route directly to Canaan (the heavily fortified road traveled by Seti I in the relief) but instead head southeast “toward the Red Sea” (Exodus 13:17-18). They traveled until they hit “the edge” or “border” “of the wilderness” (Exodus 13:20) at a site generally thought to be in the Wadi Tumilat. Upon hitting this border they changed course, turning again toward the Red Sea. The “border” that they hit in this area would have been the Tumilat Canal, which explains why they were forced to turn.

They were next told to camp before the sea at Pi-hahiroth, which Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance translates as “mouth of the gorges.” The word that is translated “gorges” here actually comes from a root meaning “to bore” (in the sense of making a hole) and was normally used for manmade excavations. So they camped before the sea at the “mouth of the (manmade) gorges.”

Figure 11. Seti I returns across the Egyptian border from a military campaign in Canaan with captives (and trophy heads). Awating him across the 230-foot wide border canal known as the “Wall of the Ruler,” the Egyptians cheer his victorious return. The labelled place markers filling the background make this one of the world’s oldest maps.

This a fitting description of the local geography at the time. For the mouth of the Tumilat Canal and that of the Wall of the Ruler both opened into what is now Lake Timsah, “Crocodile Lake.” And there is good reason to believe that this was part of the Red Sea at the time. The ancient geographers asserted that the Red Sea reached as far as Heroopolis, which puts it at Timsah.[226] The brilliant engineer Linant de Bellefonds explored the topography of the Isthmus of Suez and studied its ancient canals more thoroughly than perhaps any other person in history, not only first discovering the remains of the Wall of the Ruler, but becoming so inspired by it that he championed, engineered, and oversaw the construction of the modern Suez Canal. From his surveys of the geology of the isthmus, he reached the same conclusion as the Classical geographers, that the Red Sea had reached Lake Timsah.[227] (Linant also single-handedly saved Egypt’s Great Pyramids from the fate of many other monuments. For Muhammed Ali Pasha, the Ottoman viceroy over Egypt, ordered him to dismantle the Great Pyramids and use their pre-quarried stone blocks to build the Suez Canal. Linant only spared them by convincing the Pasha that quarrying fresh stone could be done less expensively.) This also explains why the original Wall of the Ruler only ran as far south as Timsah. Not until Darius circa 500 BC did the accumulation of silt and sand necessitate a southern extension of the canals from Timsah to the receding banks of the Red Sea.

On reaching the Red Sea, the Israelites could go no further and protested being led to die in this desert trap. But the Bible says that overnight the waters of the Red Sea receded, and they were able to walk across on dry land.

The Egyptians pursued in war chariots, but as they traversed the exposed sea bed in the night, their wheels sunk, stuck, and even broke off. Egyptian war chariots each carried a driver and an archer on only two narrow wooden wheels. This minimized contact surface area was ideal for reducing friction and increasing speed in dry conditions but would have been extremely ill suited to the crossing of a wet newly exposed seafloor.

18th Dynasty Egyptian chariot in the Museo Archeologico, Florence, Italy. Courtesy of Philip Rickerby.

PARTING THE RED SEA

The popular image of the sea rising into great cliffs on either side of Charlton Heston is based on Exodus 14:22, “and the Israelites went through the sea on the dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.” The novel behavior of this water has been variously attributed to an earthquake, a tsunami, hurricane-force winds, an extraordinary displacement of tectonic plates (as in James Cameron’s recent documentary on the subject), and even as the Red Sea suddenly freezing into great walls of ice. And, of course, many scholars dismiss any possibility of an historical basis for this narrative.

But this is where understanding the geography and terminology of the day revolutionizes the story. At that time, the “wall of water” on the one side was the 230-foot wide, crocodile filled, rampart-lined canal, known as the “Wall of the Ruler.” On the other side was the second “wall” that we now call the Tumilat Canal. (As in Egyptian, such aquatic boundaries could also be called “walls” in Biblical Hebrew, e.g., Nahum 3:8.) At the tip of the Red Sea, at the “mouths of the (manmade) gorges,” the Israelites passed through the sweet spot between the two walls of water, the only weak link in hundreds of miles of water walls, ramparts, and guards. Here on the active seashore, tides and waves came in and eroded the ramparts, then receded lowering their natural barrier (helped that night by a divine wind). Here the Israelites slipped the trap “with a wall of water on their right and on their left.”

NAPOLEON’S RHYME

As Twain put it, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.” When Napoleon Bonaparte passed through the Suez during his conquest of Egypt, he inadvertently reenacted this event, though farther south at the current tip of the Red Sea. Setting out from Suez for a day trip to the “Wells of Moses” (where the Israelites were said to have drunk following the Exodus) his expeditionary party easily crossed the Red Sea “on dry land” at low tide.

Figure 12. The eastern Nile Delta showing canals that linked the seas three thousand years before the the modern Suez Canal (the straight north-south line one third in from the right). Lined with defensive ramparts, they also served as border walls, trapping the Israelites in their flight from Pi-Ramesse on the Exodus.

Figure 13. The topography of Lake Timsah before the construction of the modern Suez Canal indicates the presence at low water levels of a broad path nearly spanning the width of the lake. At higher water levels, as in the previous map, this was covered, and it has remained so since the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

But on their return, the sun had set and the tide came in, briefly forcing their horses to swim as they clung to their necks. Fortunately, the French were not encumbered with chariots. The eye-witness Bourienne quoted Napoleon, “I nearly perished in the same manner as Pharaoh did. This would certainly have furnished all the Christian preachers with a magnificent test against me.”[228]

Circa 1800 BC, Sinuhe, fearing for his life following the mysterious murder of the pharaoh he served, fled Egypt by an escape route strikingly similar to that of the Israelites. After running into the Wall of the Ruler and hiding in a bush all day from the guards, he traveled by night to a body of salt water where he escaped to the east and made his way to Canaan. Naville identified the location of that body of water as what is now Lake Timsah.[229]

A later papyrus (Anastasi V) documents the flight of two slaves who escaped from Pi-Ramesse during the reign of Seti II (the successor of Merenptah) and made their way in a single day to Pithom and then out of the country to the east. This route, too, is nearly identical to that of the Israelites and suggests a crossing at or near Timsah some 600 years later, circa 1200 BC.[230] This tip of the Red Sea seems to have been the chief vulnerability in Egypt’s heavily fortified eastern border.

(I have been asked to address the theory that Yam Suph, the Biblical word traditionally translated “Red Sea,” actually referred to some other body of water. I Kings 9:26 makes clear that Yam Suph was the Hebrew name for the body of water that we call the “Red Sea.” However, I have appended a fuller discussion as an endnote.[231])

WHY IS THIS NIGHT DIFFERENT . . . ?

The date and time for the first Passover were said to have been dictated to Moses by God Himself. It was to begin at dusk on the 14th day of a month that began on the day of the first new moon after the barley ripened. So important was this month, that God commanded that it be the start of all future years (Exodus 12:2). For centuries afterward, Rabbis observed the barley and began the new year (and this month of Nisan) on the first new moon after it ripened. Depending on when this occurred, years could have 12 or 13 months. But why was this distinctive timing so important?

Prior to the construction of the two Aswan Dams, the Nile followed an annual cycle, rising from June through early October. It then returned to its banks, leaving behind the rich, damp soil in which the Egyptians planted their crops. As the crops grew, the Nile fell lower and lower until May.

In terms of this annual cycle, the timing of the first Passover falls near the Nile’s lowest level of the year. (The ripening grain signaled the end of the growing season, after which the Nile would rise and flood again.) Since the Tumilat Canal was fed from the Nile, its output into the northern tip of the Red Sea would have been drastically reduced at this time.

FULL MOON SYZYGY

Moses was then directed by God to begin Passover at dusk on the 14th day of this crucial month. And the Exodus was to launch urgently the following morning, the 15th day of the month. Since the month had begun on the new moon, its full moon would fall on the 14th or 15th day. The Exodus thus fell on (or within one day of) the full moon.

Low tides reach their lowest extent twice a month on the new and full moons when the gravitational pull of the earth, sun, and moon are all aligned (known as syzygy). Of these two times, full moon would clearly be the most advantageous in terms of visibility for a hazardous nocturnal escape across a temporarily exposed sea bed.

It was precisely on the unique intersection of the lowest points of the annual and monthly hydrological cycles, at the very lowest water level of the year, that the crossing of the Red Sea took place.

Not only are low tides at their lowest on the full moon, but the high tide is at its highest, and tidal currents are at their strongest. Thus, when the tide came back in, it did so with a vengeance. A battalion of charioteers strapped into heavy protective armor and already physically exhausted (from the day’s pursuit across the desert followed by the struggle to free mired and broken vehicles) would have had great difficulty swimming and, as working-class desert-dwellers, were unlikely to know how.

Although this event took place more than 4,000 years ago, it remains relevant today, still celebrated by millions of descendants of that ancient Exodus every year on the 14th day of the month Nisan, on the night of the full moon. Easter was originally celebrated on the same day (the Lord’s Supper having been a Passover Seder and the crucifixion having coincided with the Exodus) and is still called “Passover” in most European languages. Its timing was deliberately divorced from the Jewish calendar in 325 AD by the Council of Nicaea, but Easter still pivots on that same full moon, now falling on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

Midway between these events (400 years after the Wall of the Ruler was erected against them and 400 years before the Exodus) Canaanites seized Egypt and grew wealthy from these same canals.

It lay before us like a shattered bark in the midst of the ocean, her masts gone, her name effaced, her crew perished, and none to tell us whence she came, to whom she belonged, how long on her voyage, or what caused her destruction. All was mystery, dark, impenetrable mystery.

– John Lloyd Stephens on discovering Mayan ruins deep in the rainforest.

The Canaanites were renowned for their mastery of the seas. When Pharaoh Necho II hired Phoenicians to circumnavigate Africa, he was continuing an Egyptian reliance on Canaanite seafaring that dated to the Old Kingdom.[232] And Bietak found evidence that the Egyptians recruited sailors from the coast of Canaan and relocated them in northern Egypt.[233]

With the rise of the Hyksos, maritime trade became the central pillar of the economy. Among the greatest surprises in the excavation of their capital Avaris were two million buried amphorae (large pots used to transport oil, wine, honey, and grain).[234] Since amphorae were normally reused and since many objects of trade did not require such containers, the total volume of trade passing through Avaris must have been staggering.

So many Hyksos royal artifacts have been found in foreign capitals that archaeologists once concluded that they had held a “world empire” akin to that of ancient Rome.[235] They moved massive monuments to the Sudan, the Levant, and the Aegean.[236] And artifacts inscribed to the Hyksos pharaoh Khyan have been found in Mesopotamia (Iraq), among the Minoans on Crete, and at the Hittite city of Boghazköy in Turkey.[237] Yet, it is now generally believed that, rather than conquering a political empire, the Hyksos built an economic one through extensive trade and diplomacy.[238] These trade routes dominated the known world:

As a major port of trade, Avaris linked . . . Upper Egypt and farther Asia and South Arabia via inner African trading routes and the entire length of the Nile, from farther Nubia to the Nile Delta, with the rest of the trading Mediterranean, including the Levant, Byblos, Cyprus, the Aegean through to Crete, and, possibly, perhaps through intermediaries, points as far west as the silver mines of Spain.[239]

Of special relevance is whether they also sailed the Atlantic. Classical sources date the first Phoenician settlements on the Atlantic coast of Spain to 1100 BC.[240] Contact, exploration, and trade likely preceded the establishment of such colonies. At Almuñécar, Spain, the site of one ancient Phoenician port, the local archaeological museum has as its prize possession an exquisite stone vase found locally and inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs dedicating it to the Hyksos pharaoh Apophis and his sister/wife. Not only does this place the Hyksos in Spain, but its boastful inscription lauds Apophis “whose might has reached the limits of the foreign lands – there is not a country exempt from serving him.”[241] Similarly, an inscription on a scribal palette calls Apophis the “protector of strange lands who have never even had a glimpse of him.”[242] And the inscription titles Apophis “the son of Wadjet,”[243] that is, the son of the Feathered Serpent. In Mesoamerica, “Feathered Serpent” was the name of the king from across the Atlantic, as well as a royal title used by his successors. And the inhabitants of Olman were known as ipilhoa Quetzalcóatl, sons of the Feathered Serpent.[244]

SCIENTIA, AERE PERENNIUS

The Hyksos came to power during the Middle Bronze Age, when the copper weapons of an earlier era were being strengthened with the addition of tin. Yet tin was extremely rare. Where the Hyksos obtained it is not known, but the later Phoenicians sailed into the Atlantic and traded with the British.

There is evidence of substantial tin mining in Cornwall in southwest England by 2000 BC.[245] This tin trade brought great wealth to southern England and likely financed the more elaborate stages of Stonehenge. A clue to the identity of one of their early trading partners comes from distinctive blue beads found at Stonehenge and in local graves.

THE FIRST SYNTHETIC

Egyptian beliefs required blue stone for their ritual implements, leading them to mine turquoise in the Sinai Peninsula and even import lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. (The Olmecs, likewise, went to extreme lengths to import rare blue jade from Guatemala for their own ritual implements.[246]) When their need for blue stone exceeded these supplies, the Egyptians improvised by carving steatite (a soft, gray stone) and glazing it blue. Over time, they developed the world's first synthetic materials, an artificial blue stone called “Egyptian blue” (large quantities of which were found in the Hyksos workshop attached to Khayan’s palace at Avaris) and a related synthetic stone known as “faience,” whose manufacture thrived and was innovated under the Hyksos. These were formed by mixing wet sand, lime, and ground copper. When fired at extreme temperatures, the sand melted into glass, and the fired copper turned it a brilliant blue-green.

Numerous faience beads have been found in Bronze Age British sites from circa 1900 to 1500 BC, including two at Stonehenge. Their shape and distinctive composition are identical to Egyptian faience beads of the time, leading some archaeologists to conclude that they came from Egypt.[247] A recent joint study of these beads by Britain’s three national museums argued instead that they had been manufactured locally based on an art and technology that had developed in Egypt.[248] At the very least, the British were making use of an Egyptian technology and adopting an Egyptian fashion during the time of the Hyksos, indicating at least indirect contact.

Moreover, tin bronze first appeared in Egypt with the Hyksos.[249] We know that the British were trading large amounts of tin with someone at this time and that they suddenly came into possession of Egyptian-style faience beads. And the Hyksos traveled at least as far west as Spain and brought back tin from somewhere. We also know that subsequent Purple People, the Phoenicians, obtained their tin from Britain.

LOST SECRETS

The ancient geographer Strabo tells of a Roman attempt to tail a Phoenician ship to their lucrative tin source, the legendary Cassiterides or “Tin Islands.” Failing to evade his pursuer, the Phoenician captain led the enemy ship onto a shoal, wrecking both ships. Escaping with his life and returning home, the Phoenician captain was hailed as a hero and compensated for the losses incurred in preserving a state secret.[250]

By vigilantly concealing their discoveries, the Canaanites/Phoenicians retained their leads in geography, cartography, and navigation. If they had explored further into the Atlantic and discovered the Americas, they would not have launched waves of publicity and colonization, as happened after Columbus, but would have concealed the knowledge in the hope of obtaining commercial or military advantage.

According to Diodorus, the Phoenicians at Carthage guarded the knowledge of a large land across the Atlantic as a military secret “in order to have ready in it a place in which to seek refuge against an incalculable turn of fortune, in case some total disaster should overtake Carthage.”[251] In the event of such a disaster, they planned to flee en masse across the Atlantic and re-establish themselves there.

Unfortunately, any records that the Hyksos kept of their own maritime exploits would have been on papyrus and have not survived. The extensive reach of their artifacts, while covering a substantial geographical area, delineates only the minimum extent of their reach. We know from textual accounts that the Phoenicians, for example, explored well beyond the more trafficked routes marked by extant artifacts.

THE CHINA CONNECTION

A 1993 paper in Nature announced the discovery of silk cloth on an Egyptian mummy. A battery of tests confirmed that it was true silk and precluded the possibility of its having been added at a later date.[252] This put Egypt in at least indirect contact with China, the source of silk, by 1000 BC. Since the mummy was of a royal servant and the cloth had been cut into strips for use in her hair, this appears to have been a reuse of an earlier royal garment. How much earlier is not yet known.

Writing first appeared in China circa 1500 BC. Although it has generally been held that this writing developed in isolation, Dr. Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania believes that he has found evidence of a link between the early alphabet and the earliest Chinese writing and Julie Lee Wei has furthered this work.[253] The fact that the chariot and bronze metallurgy reached China from the West during the same time period lends credence to this claim.[254] At the time that these letters appeared in China, only the Canaanites and the Canaanite occupants of Egypt were in possession of the alphabet. And, for more than a century prior, Canaan and Egypt were dominated by the Hyksos.

UNDERESTIMATING THE HYKSOS

Although archaeologists once theorized a Hyksos world empire, they fell greatly in academic estimation and were for decades little more than a footnote of Egyptian history. However recent evidence indicates that the Hyksos have been grossly underestimated.

A major cultural and economic florescence in the Mediterranean has long been attributed to the influence of the Egyptian New Kingdom trading throughout the region and creating prosperity for its partners. However, new radiocarbon dates show that this peak of cultural and economic prosperity actually coincided with the reign of the Hyksos.[255] In April 2006, the journal Science heralded the new dates on its cover. Jeremy Rutter of Dartmouth noted: “The Hyksos have gotten lousy press,” and observed that the new dates “make the Hyksos world much more important and interesting.”[256] And Sturt Manning of Cornell noted that the new chronology creates “a different context for the genesis of Western civilization.”[257] It was the Hyksos, it now appears, that brought such prosperity to the Minoans and Mycenaeans, the ancestors of the classical Greeks. The Hyksos presided over one of the greatest economic and cultural booms in ancient history and played a much greater role in the history of Western civilization than has previously been recognized.

But were they also capable of crossing the Atlantic?

CROSSING THE POND

Traditionally, the biggest objection to the idea of pre-Columbian contact with the Americas has been the alleged infeasibility of any earlier people crossing the ocean. However, an Atlantic crossing does not require sophisticated technology or Titanic-sized ships. In 1952, Alain Bombard crossed the Atlantic in a small rubber raft, eating only what he could catch. John Fairfax crossed solo in a rowboat, arriving in Florida on July 19, 1969, where he received radioed congratulations from the Apollo 11 astronauts on the day before humanity’s first moon walk. More unusual crossings include two Frenchmen sharing a surfboard in 1985,[258] Jason Gilbert on a windsurfer in 1998, and Didier Bovard in a small pedal boat in 1999 and again in 2001.

A more relevant example may be the celebration in Chicago in 1892–1893 of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the New World. Spain built full-sized replicas of Columbus’ vessels and sailed them to Chicago for the exposition. But Norway challenged Spain with a surprise entry. To prove that the Vikings could have reached the Americas 500 years before Columbus as the Norse sagas claimed, Norwegian ship builders replicated a recently excavated Viking ship from 890 AD. A crew of 92 men sailed the 76-foot ship across the Atlantic Ocean, passing from Norway to Newfoundland, Canada, in 28 days. Continuing on to New York City, they raced modern sailing vessels and bested them. They then sailed through the Great Lakes to Chicago, where they confronted the global celebration of Columbus with the startling idea that he may not have been the first European to reach America. In the 1960s, they were finally vindicated by the discovery and excavation of a Viking settlement on the Canadian coast.

In 1970, another Norwegian, the archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl, sought to establish the feasibility of Egyptian contact with the New World by crossing the Atlantic in a boat made of bundles of reeds, an ancient form of watercraft used in ancient Egypt, Peru, and to a lesser extent in Mexico. Although using the earliest and most primitive form of Egyptian watercraft, Heyerdahl and his team succeeded in crossing the Atlantic.

THE CORIOLIS FORCE

All of these Atlantic crossings were from east to west, Old World to New, because the ocean currents favor such a crossing. The rotation of the earth causes ocean currents to rotate clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. Where these two circling currents abut, along the equator, both are heading west, creating a wide band of westward current (actually two, parallel westward currents, the North Equatorial Current and the South Equatorial Current, separated by the much smaller and weaker Equatorial Countercurrent). Should a ship become disabled in the region of the Phoenician colonies on the Atlantic coast, the currents would sweep it southwest and then west across the Atlantic. And, if the ship were not disabled but intentionally venturing into the unknown, both the ocean currents and the powerful trade winds would propel it west across the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico and significantly hinder retreat.

BRONZE AGE SEAGOING SHIPS

Though the smallest of vessels have crossed the Atlantic, the seagoing ships of the Bronze Age were far from tiny. The library of the Canaanite city of Ugarit describes a common form of Canaanite ship that was a minimum of 50 feet in length. One text mentions a single ship carrying a cargo of 2,000 measures of grain, roughly 450 tons.[259] And numerous half-ton anchors found off the coast of Ugarit and other Canaanite ports indicate “Late Bronze Age ships of considerable tonnage, particularly considering that these vessels normally carried quantities of these anchors.”[260]

Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty saw the throne taken by a series of pharaohs with strong cultural (and likely also ethnic) ties to the Hyksos. They revived the towns of the eastern delta and appear to have made extensive use of the Tumilat Canal. Inscriptions credit the second of these pharaohs, Seti I, with a fleet of 100-cubit long (52.4-meters or 171-feet) ships so numerous that they congested the mouths of the Nile. (He commissioned this fleet for a destination through the Red Sea via the Tumilat Canal.[261]) Such 100-cubit ships are documented from early in Egyptian history and appear to have been a standard size of seagoing vessel. Even larger ships were made for transporting enormous stone obelisks, the largest of which were erected during the 18th Dynasty just after the fall of the Hyksos.[262]

MISINFORMATION

Why did it take 2000 years for Western Civilization to repeat the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa? And why was the Tumilat Canal allowed to silt in for more than a millennium before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869?

Figure 14. Three Ages of Exploration. Top left: Replica of Columbus’s largest ship, the 75 ft. long Santa Maria, sent by Spain to Chicago in 1892 for the global celebration of the 400th anniversary of his “discovery” of America. Top right: Replica of the 76 ft. long 9th century Viking ship the Gokstad that was sailed across the Atlantic to Chicago as Norway’s challenge to the primacy of Columbus. Bottom: Ships on the Nile being loaded for a journey via canal and the Red Sea to the distant land of Punt 3,000 years before Columbus. Egyptian texts record fleets of 171 foot (100-cubit) ships.

Circa 600 BC, the Greeks sailed west, founded what is now Marseilles, France, and began to venture into the Atlantic Ocean. Their trade monopoly threatened, the Phoenicians drove the Greeks back and blockaded the Straits of Gibraltar from circa 573 to 190 BC.[263] Without access to the Atlantic, the Greeks of the classical period relied on Phoenician descriptions of it. During this time, the Greeks learned that the Atlantic Ocean was so windless and shallow that any ship that ventured there became stuck and its crew died a slow death. 200 years into the blockade, Aristotle (whose writings would serve for centuries as a sort of encyclopedia of all that was true) taught that the Atlantic Ocean was “shallow owing to the mud, but calm, for it lies in a hollow.”[264] Plato explained the shallowness of this ocean by making it the place where Atlantis had sunk and still lay just beneath the surface, the Atlantic Ocean being “impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.”[265]

All the while, the Phoenicians continued to enrich themselves by trading commodities from their colonies in the Atlantic, including tin, purple, and West African ivory and exotic hides.

WORLD WAR BC

In the third century BC, the young Republic of Rome challenged the Phoenicians for control of Sicily. In the ensuing war, the Romans lost badly at sea. But a single shipwreck changed the course of Western Civilization. Finding a wrecked Phoenician vessel, the Romans reverse-engineered it and built an entire fleet of exact copies. With this navy and their formidable legions, Rome ultimately triumphed.

Following this victory, Western Civilization became a more land-based, road-building, European world, instead of the ship-based, coast-lining Mediterranean (and Atlantic) world of the Phoenicians. Unfortunately, the peculiarities of this Roman culture came to be seen by many of its successors as the only definition of a civilization. Thus Fernand Braudel, one of the most influential European historians of the last half of the twentieth century, claimed that ancient Mexico and Peru did not produce true civilizations but were “underdeveloped cultures – peasants using hoes.”[266] His proof of their inferiority? They “had no knowledge of the wheel, arch, cart, or metallurgy in iron.”[267]

Mesoamerican architects actually made extensive use of arches, but they, like the Egyptians, used corbelled arches rather than Roman arches. By this standard our own culture also fails, since the Roman arch has long since fallen out of use and we again support our doorways through the most “primitive” method, lintels.

As to the “wheel” and “cart” (two of Braudel’s four grounds for disqualification), Mesoamericans also had knowledge of these technologies. Ancient Mesoamericans left behind many clay models with functioning wheels and axles. Contrary to Braudel’s assertions, they had the knowledge and technology. However, rather than focus on road construction, the Olmecs followed the Egyptian model of living on a river and making boats their vehicles of choice. Watercraft could carry more and larger cargo, travel greater distances than was possible by ancient roads, and could be easily and inexpensively propelled by sail, current, or oars. Had the Phoenicians triumphed over Rome and these historians been raised in that culture, Braudel and his ilk would likely be arguing the opposite, that any culture choosing carts over ships was inferior and not worthy of the title “civilization.” Aside from taking offense at the European deniers of American civilization, I add this to emphasize that the world can be viewed somewhat differently, and equally validly, from a maritime rather than a terrestrial perspective. This will be especially relevant when we get to the Panama Canal.

Hyksos ships moved millions of amphorae as they traded throughout the known world and well beyond. Hyksos activity in Spain and England indicates that they explored the waters of the Atlantic and fought across the westward conveyor belt of currents and trade winds sweeping toward the beaches of Mexico. And there is no question that their ships were capable of making the crossing.

Approaching this with the deductive reasoning of a detective story, we have here the opportunity and the means. But we have yet to answer the crucial question of motive.

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: “The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.” In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

—Bertrand Russell

After a century of Hyksos rule, the Egyptian Pharaoh Seqenenra Taa led a revolutionary army north to challenge them. His mummy displays the outcome:

His forehead bears a horizontal axe cut; his cheek bone is shattered and the back of his neck carries the mark of a dagger thrust. It has been argued that the shape of the forehead wound is consistent only with the use of an axe of Middle Bronze Age type, similar to those found at Tell el-Dab‘a [Avaris].[268]

His successor Kamose was likely his son, which would explain Kamose’s intense animosity toward the Hyksos.[269] He employed a scorched earth policy, even against the Egyptian town Nefrusy that had allied with the Hyksos.[270] And on two stelae (carved stone monuments), Kamose recorded his threats against the Hyksos pharaoh Apophis:

Your idea will fail indeed, o vile Asiatic! See, I will drink of the vine of your vineyard, as Asiatics of my spoil will press for me! I shall destroy your place of residence! I will cut down your tree plantation! After I have handed your wives over to the sailor-crew, I will take the chariot . . . unless 300 ships of fresh cedarwood are filled with gold, lapis lazuli, silver, turquoise, bronze, battle-axes without number . . . [271]

The tribute he demanded illustrates the vast armada of ships and great wealth of the Hyksos that Kamose so coveted. The inscription then describes his plan for a naval assault on Avaris. But the text does not say who won the battle, closing instead with a note from the scribe Neshi saying simply that Kamose had asked him to record these things. That nothing more is heard from Kamose after this event in only the third year of his reign suggests that he also died attacking the Hyksos.[272]

This left the throne to a small boy named Ahmose, who patiently built his army and navy for a decade before avenging his father and brother. According to the ancient historian Manetho, Ahmose routed the Hyksos everywhere but Avaris, which he besieged unsuccessfully. Finally, after an extensive stalemate, the two sides brokered a truce whereby the Hyksos would leave Egypt in exchange for safe passage out of Avaris.[273]

The archaeological evidence supports Manetho’s account. Excavations at Avaris uncovered a fortress from the late Hyksos period with a footprint of 50,000 square meters and 8.5 meter (28 feet) thick walls fortified with large battlements.[274] Consistent with Manetho’s history, the Hyksos disappear suddenly and completely from the archaeological record with no evidence of a battle or slaughter.[275] What became of them is not known.

The most popular theory is that they fled to Sharuhen, a Hyksos stronghold in Canaan. Indeed, Ahmose next turned his attentions to that city. However, since Sharuhen resisted his siege for three years, they cannot have been sharing their food with many refugees.

Nor do the Egyptians appear to have captured the Hyksos:

Some Asiatics will have been captured in engagements . . . but these were relatively few, and the absence in Egypt during the next fifty years of a servile community of aliens speaks against the postulate of a seizure of a large segment of the Hyksos population by the liberators.[276]

The majority of the Hyksos disappeared.[277] But how and to where?

THE THEATRE OF WAR

A first-hand account of the war on Avaris survives in an Egyptian soldiers’ tomb inscription. All of the fighting that he describes took place between ships. Likewise, the war plan on the Kamose stelae focuses on seizing the waterways around Avaris and forming a blockade.[278] Whoever controlled the waterways controlled the flow of food, reinforcements, and trade. Kamose’s failure strongly suggests that the Hyksos navy overpowered his own.

That Ahmose also failed to effectively besiege Avaris may indicate that he too failed to defeat the Hyksos navy and isolate the city. The task would have been nearly impossible since the Hyksos fleet had access to the Mediterranean for temporary retreat and to gain reinforcements and supplies from outposts abroad.

Given that their economic and military power were largely centered in their superior skill as shipwrights and sailors, it seems likely that, upon conclusion of the truce with Ahmose, the Hyksos evacuation would have been largely by ship.

But would Ahmose let them alone? They had killed his father and brother and held his nation captive for a century. In addition to his personal quest for vengeance, political expediency would dictate attempting to sate the bloodlust of the court and populace. Perhaps then, like the pharaoh of the Biblical Exodus, Ahmose reneged on his agreement to let the Hyksos depart in peace. After all, his next recorded action is an assault on another major Hyksos city, Sharuhen in Canaan.

If his navy pursued the fleeing Hyksos, they would not have abandoned their pursuit easily, given the three years that their comrades in the Egyptian army spent laying siege to Sharuhen. It took only a fraction of that time, 69 days, for Columbus to cross the Atlantic with technology little changed from the time of the Hyksos. And Diodorus records that the Purple People preserved the secret knowledge of a land across the Atlantic where they would flee should some great calamity befall them.[279]

If a single Hyksos ship made it across the Atlantic – whether fleeing the Egyptians, in deliberate exploration, or after being accidentally disabled in a storm – it would change history as we know it. And that is just the beginning.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of the colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

—A statue now known to be of Ramses II as described by Percy Bysshe Shelley in his 1818 poem “Ozymandias.”

The defeat of the Hyksos launched Egypt’s 18th Dynasty and “New Kingdom.” In most accounts of Egyptian history, the Hyksos are never heard from again.

This new dynasty brought some of Egypt’s most colorful and famous pharaohs: Hatshepsut (a renowned female pharaoh), Akhenaten (a religious zealot, often described as the first monotheist), the beautiful Queen Nefertiti, and Tutankhamun (the boy king known for his burial treasures).

After two centuries, this dynasty ended when Pharaoh Horemheb died without an heir. General Pramesse seized the throne, declared himself Pharaoh Ramses, and founded the 19th Dynasty.

Ramses was, in most respects, the antithesis of the typical Egyptian pharaoh. He worshipped Set – who was the chief deity of the Hyksos but loathed by the Egyptians – and even named his son Seti in his honor. Even more surprising, the “400-Year Stela” records Seti’s celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Avaris, the Hyksos capital.[280] In short, Ramses and his family appear to have had cultural, geographical, religious, and political ties to the Hyksos.

Seti’s son, the great Ramses II, went even further, rebuilding Avaris as Pi-Ramses “House of Ramses.” (This was the city called “Rameses” in Exodus 12:37 and Numbers 33:3, from which the Jews departed for the Exodus and which their labor helped build.) A statue, originally from this city, shows Ramses II as a child squatting before the Canaanite god Horon,[281] further evidence of his Canaanite cultural heritage. More compelling and unusual evidence comes from the corpse of this most powerful of pharaohs.

THE RED-HEADED HYKSOS

The single colossal human statue recovered in excavations at Avaris still had enough intact paint for the excavators to conclude that it had had red hair.[282] Since the only extant color image from Avaris showed a red-headed official, it seems likely that at least some of the Hyksos had red hair. Red hair was also common in Egyptian depictions of Canaanites.[283]

In 1979, during an intensive study of the mummy of Ramses II at the Museum of Mankind in Paris, researchers made the surprising discovery that he had been a natural redhead.[284] Four laboratories each analyzed samples of the pharaoh’s hair, and all reached the same conclusion, that he had had red hair.

Some of the leading characters in the Bible were also red-haired, including Esau (Genesis 25:25) and King David (I Samuel 16:12). And some traditions have it that the Prophet Muhammad had red hair, although others claim that he dyed it with henna. Both may have been true.

THE RED LAND RECONSIDERED

In the Egyptian name for Egypt, “Black Land” is thought to have referred to the black soil of the Nile Valley, while the “Red Land” is interpreted as “the desert, the waste and desolate country inhabited by foreigners, which is claimed by the pharaoh, but over which he does not actually rule.”[285]

Set, the god of the Hyksos and of the Ramses, was the god of the “Red Land” and was intimately associated with this color, allegedly because of the color of the desert:

The colour red became associated with . . . Seth because of his links with the desert. Hence, red-haired animals, and even red-haired people, were held in abhorrence by Greeks and Egyptians.[286]

However, it may be that the identification of Set with red did not derive from the desert, or at least not exclusively so, as the Egyptian prejudice was specifically focused against red hair. Set himself was said to be red-haired, and the Egyptians sacrificed red-haired animals because of their connection with this god and mistreated red-haired people for the same reason.[287] Might the notion of a red-haired Set and the loathing of red hair in general be due not to the desert, but rather to the fact that Egypt had been conquered and subjugated by Set-worshipping foreigners, some of whom had distinctive hair?

ETYMOLOGY OF THE HYKSOS

One of the key reasons that Set has been connected with the desert is the title commonly associated with him, “Ruler of the Desert” or “Lord of the Desert.” However, this is exactly the same phrase as the Egyptian term for the Hyksos. Hyksos is a Greek contraction of the Egyptian Heka Khaswt, the “Foreign Pharaohs.”[288] The root word here can mean either “desert” or “foreign land.” In reference to Set, this phrase is usually translated “Ruler of the Desert,” although at times it has been rendered “Lord of Foreign Lands.”[289] With regard to the Hyksos it is usually translated “Rulers of Foreign Lands,”[290] although it has occasionally been translated “Prince of Deserts.”[291]

Perhaps then Set’s “Red Land” did not only and always refer to the desert. At least during the Hyksos occupation, it seems to have designated the north, the land of Set-worshipping foreigners, many of whom had distinctive hair. The Black Land/Red Land dichotomy then would not have been between soil and sand (as is generally assumed) but between northern and southern Egypt, a division that we know to have been important to the Egyptians, especially at this time.

The Egyptians signaled this explicitly by depicting Set in the crown of northern Egypt, while Horus wore that of southern Egypt.[292] And in Egyptian texts, the land that Set is associated with is “sometimes the sedge country or the papyrus country, and sometimes the red land.”[293] This sedge or papyrus land was of course the swampy delta of northern Egypt, and these plants provided the Egyptians with their name and emblem for northern Egypt. The interchangeability of this land with the red land further indicates that the term red land could be associated with northern Egypt.

The Egyptians sometimes shortened the name of their country from “Black Land Red Land” to simply Kemet, “Black Land.” Mesoamerican texts also shorten this same name, but they always choose the other half, Tlapallan, “Red Land.” This Mesoamerican emphasis on the “Red Land” as their homeland may be due to an ancient connection with the Hyksos-ruled north that was so intimately connected with red, both literally and symbolically. That their other names for this land (“the seven-canyoned” “place of reeds or rushes”) also describe northern Egypt is consistent with this interpretation.

QUETZALCÓATL’S APPEARANCE

A contributing factor in Montezuma and his advisors mistaking the Europeans for Quetzalcóatl was that this god was frequently described as white and bearded. Diego Durán described Quetzalcóatl as “fair in complexion, with abundant hair and a full beard, bordering on the red.”[294] The Spanish text actually says “entre cana y roja,”[295] literally “between grey and red.” Thus, Quetzalcóatl’s appearance was consistent with what we know of that of the Hyksos.

RAMSES’S TOBACCO

Ramses II’s mummy concealed another surprise. The examining team at the Museum of Mankind in Paris found tobacco fragments in the mummy’s wrappings and tobacco leaves among the ancient herbs stuffed in the pharaoh's intestines. Their final report stated:

Even more striking was the discovery of traces of pepper and most of all, a plant of the genus Nicotiana. . . . a type of wild tobacco plant, and everything points to it having acted as a powerful insecticide.[296]

This caught everyone by surprise. Tobacco is native to the Americas and was thought to have been unknown in the Old World before Columbus. How had it come to be in the body of Ramses II?

Figure 15. The mummy of the great pharaoh Ramses II, a natural red head. His mummy was found to have been embalmed with herbs, including tobacco leaves, a plant native to the Americas.

THE PIPES

Ancient Mesoamericans used tobacco as a sacred incense, offering its smoke to their gods. Turning to Egyptian reliefs from the time, we find pharaohs, including the son of Ramses II, shown making ritual offerings by lifting a peace pipe-like censer to the mouth as smoke emanates from its bowl (see Fig. 16).

In Mesoamerica the use of tobacco dates back to the Olmecs, as their (Proto-Mixe-Zoquean) language included words for “tobacco” and “to smoke.”[297]

Figure 16. Pharaoh Merenptah (son of Ramses II) holds an incense burner resembling a pipe at the Osireion at Abydos.

DRUG TESTING MUMMIES

In 1992, German toxicologist Dr. Svetla Balabanova and two colleagues reported the results of the first drug tests conducted on Egyptian mummies: nine tested positive for the use of cocaine and eight for nicotine.[298] (Cocaine, like tobacco, is an indigenous American plant thought to have been unknown in the Old World before Columbus.)

Subsequent testing by Dr. Rosalie David of the mummies in England’s Manchester Museum found that many were positive for tobacco. And a 2001 study of 18 mummies from the Oasis of Dakhleh found that 14 tested positive for nicotine. However, this later study found that the levels were 0.7 to 2.1 ng/mg of hair.[299] In modern testing levels, below 2 ng/mg are generally attributed to passive exposure. Of course passive exposure to tobacco smoke in ancient Egypt is still problematic and is consistent with its ritual use as an incense. In order to explain this anomaly, the authors postulated a dietary source of nicotine. However, the find of actual tobacco plants inside the mummy of Ramses II is more difficult to dismiss.

It is noteworthy that these leaves were found in the body of Ramses II, a pharaoh connected with the Hyksos and Canaanites. Later, following Columbus’s rediscovery of America, Europeans rapidly adopted the use of tobacco from Native Americans. It is not inconceivable that the same thing happened in Egypt many centuries earlier. If so, this would indicate a successful return trip to Egypt.

THROUGH THE CARTOGRAPHIC LOOKING-GLASS

Another indication of a return trip appeared while I was studying antique maps. As the great historian Will Durant put it, “maps, like faces, are the signature of history.” If we step outside of our own Roman-empire infused heritage and look at the globe like a photographic negative with the focus on the waterways rather than the land, we see two major obstacles where the land divides the sea and blocks shipping. On one side, Eurasia and Africa meet, creating an enormous wall of land. This was punctured by the Tumilat Canal at or just before the time of the Hyksos, judging from the excavations at Tell el-Maskhuta.[300]

North and South America similarly join to divide the oceans. This barrier was finally penetrated in 1915 with the opening of the Panama Canal. However, the site originally chosen for this canal was Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrowest point between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Prior to 1915, this was a key shipping route between the oceans, the Tehuantepec Route. A railroad was even constructed to speed the transfer of large loads between ships on either coast.

The ancient Olmec city of San Lorenzo lies directly on this route, exactly at the narrowest constriction of land between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. It also lay far upstream on the Coatzacoalco, a river that would have made it possible to cover much of the distance between the oceans by boat. The original plans for a modern canal likewise involved using the Coatzacoalco River to cover much of the distance.[301]

Figure 17. An 1846 map of Mexico (stretching further north than at present) prematurely showing the planned canal between oceans. San Lorenzo, the earliest Olmec city, lay exactly on this narrowest point of the isthmus.

This offers the intriguing possibility that the site of San Lorenzo was selected, much like Avaris, as a potential (although perhaps underutilized) hub of maritime trade. In favor of this interpretation, on the opposite Pacific side of the isthmus, right on the train line that modern surveyors chose as the shortest and most ideal route from ocean to ocean, lie the remains of Laguna Zope, an ancient city with evidence of substantial cultural contact and exchange with San Lorenzo.

If the site of San Lorenzo was chosen for this reason, then the selection must have been preceded by sufficient exploration to determine that there was no water route through the continents and that this was the narrowest and most convenient place for portage. This process need not have taken long. In his day, Cortez sent men to explore the route to the Pacific shortly after arriving in Mexico in 1519. By 1521, they had discovered the port at Acapulco and by 1523 Juan Rodríguez Villafuerte had built a shipyard at Zihuatanejo and was constructing the first vessels for exploring the Pacific Ocean and sailing on to China and India.

Figure 18. The location of Olmec sites superimposed on a map of the local hydrology and topography. Natural waterways bridge most of the isthmus. Like those of the Hyksos, the earliest Olmec cities lined these waterways precisely along the narrowest and most direct route between oceans. (La Venta was the later Olmec capital after the demise of San Lorenzo.)

Although it lay beyond their empire, the Aztecs were well aware of the significance of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Montezuma even had a map made for Cortez, showing him that the distant Coatzacoalco River was the best location to construct a port.[302] Had Cortez listened, this would have made for a far shorter and less mountainous route than the one that the Spanish mule trains ended up using between Acapulco and Veracruz.

Figure 19. The modern distribution of Mixe-Zoquean languages marked in black. That they were centered on the isthmus can still be seen despite centuries of Aztec and Spanish linguistic domination. The outlier on the southern Pacific coast corresponds to archaeological evidence of Olmec outposts along that same coast. Based on Søren Wichmann, The Relationship Among the Mixe-Zoquean Languages of Mexico (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1995).

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

According to Montezuma, Quetzalcóatl made a round-trip visit from Mexico to their homeland prior to his final departure:

We also hold, that our race was brought to these parts by a lord, whose vassals they all were, and who returned to his native country. After a long time he came back, but it was so long, that those who remained here were married with the native women of the country, and had many descendants, and had built towns . . . when; therefore, he wished to take them away with him, they would not go nor still less receive him as their ruler, so he departed.[303]

This resembles the European strategy on first reaching the New World. On his first visit to the Americas, Columbus left 39 men to establish a colony on Hispaniola (Haiti) while he returned to Spain. John White famously did the same in attempting to establish an English colony at Roanoke, Viriginia, in 1587. His return to the colony was delayed until 1590, by which time the colony had disappeared, possibly having joined indigenous communities. What delayed White was the war between Spain and England, which need not have taken place except for a similar turn of events.

In 1581, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa led 24 vessels with 2500 men to set up a naval blockade on the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America to prevent access to the Pacific Ocean and the gold of Peru by pirates, privateers, and foreign navies. When Gamboa left the colony to get supplies in Rio de Janeiro, he was captured by Sir Walter Raleigh and taken to England. There he conversed in Latin with Queen Elizabeth, who sent Gamboa to the king of Spain with a letter of peace. However, he was again intercepted, this time by French Huguenots. Without the letter, the Spanish Armada attacked the English fleet, and without supplies all but two of Gamboa’s settlers starved or froze on their remote outpost, renamed Port Famine.

Perhaps then, one or more Hyksos ships crossed the Atlantic (either in exploration, as refugees, or storm-swept) and left a group of men in this new land, while the leader and a portion of the men returned home, taking with them some of their finds, including (like Columbus) tobacco. By the time they were able to return, they found that the men had acculturated, had families, and were learning the language. After this second voyage, the leader again departed for the homeland with the expectation of future visits and extended contact. As they waited, the colonists went about their lives, growing old, and telling their children of their homeland and of the men who would one day come in ships from across the Atlantic. What they did not know was that Ahmose had overthrown the Hyksos, and the distant colony had been forgotten.

In this scenario, the overthrow of the Hyksos interrupted a process much like the later Spanish discovery of America. Had it not been for the successful Egyptian rebellion, the Plumed Serpent King or his emissaries may have returned from Black Land Red Land in a year or two, continuing communication and exchange with the colony indefinitely.

Instead, a small, mixed colony became isolated from its homeland. The archaeological record at San Lorenzo shows that this village absorbed an immigrant population that brought significant cultural and technological innovations. For their part, the locals knew the terrain, flora, and fauna and had their own cultural and technological advantages, such as the world’s first rubber balls. Thus, the two populations each contributed to the resulting Olmec civilization. Suddenly, massive stone carving, writing, calendrics, aqueducts, pyramids, and familiar ancient Near Eastern ritual and mythology appear in the archaeological record, and Mesoamerican civilization is born. A closer look at each of the elements of this transformation will provide new insights into the birth of ancient Mexican civilization and also into the origin and development of many aspects of Western civilization.

Medieval traveler reaching the edge of the sky and peering through its dome into the machinery of the cosmos, from the Flammarion woodcut (color added by author).

A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed because, looked at through the myth, all evidence supports the myth.

—Edward De Bono

Mythology has often been seen as the key to understanding human nature. Freud famously took a single myth, the story of Oedipus, and extended its plot to explain the condition of all humanity. (Later Freudians extended his work and claimed to find evidence of this Oedipal complex in myths around the world.) Jung argued that common themes in myths from different places were due to a collective unconscious shared by all people and that myths thus provide a window into that deepest shared aspect of humanity. And Joseph Campbell proposed a “monomyth,” a single dominant myth that prevailed around the world under slightly different disguises.

In the scenario assumed by these theories, different people around the world independently came up with the same stories. These stories are thus thought to offer deep insights into what it means to be human at a basic level that transcends our cultural divisions. However, this requires the cultures in question to have been completely isolated, hermetically sealed from each other. Any historic trade, travel, or story-telling could have contaminated the data.

Here I wish to take the opposite approach and look instead at what myths can tell us when such pristine isolation did not exist, when people talked to each other and passed stories from place to place. Just as geneticists study the current distribution of DNA in an attempt to understand the history of human migrations, so we can look at stories from different places in which the parallels are so specific and extensive that they must be genetically related. In this way, we can trace intellectual migrations, the passage of stories and ideas, which will sometimes but not always overlap with the genetic evidence of major human migrations.

In genetics, the markers that are most useful for tracing human migration are those that change most slowly (mitochondrial DNA and the Y-chromosome). Historically, the stories that have changed most slowly have been stories imbued with religious significance and authority. Not only are they resistant to change, but they are often propagated over great distances by proselytizing missionaries, traders, or armies. Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all spread their sacred narratives over enormous geographical areas long before Columbus.

One of the reasons that Quetzalcóatl was so often mistaken for a Christian figure was because the local version of the history of the world so resembled what the Spanish clergy knew from the Bible, especially their story of the great flood. But let’s begin with the creation of our world.

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

Upon the slimy sea.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” 1798.

In the beginning, there was no land. The dragon-like mother-goddess Tiamat swam in the primordial waters, terrorizing all others. While the other gods cowered, the young wind god Marduk taunted the enormous, stony-hided goddess until she lunged forward, snapping open her jaws to devour the tiny nuisance. The wind god then blew into her mouth with such force that it was pinned open long enough for him to draw his bow and fire an arrow into her vulnerable interior, bursting her inflated body like a pricked balloon. Slicing the corpse into halves, Marduk erected one as heaven, and formed the other into the earth. In the words of the ancient epic: “He sliced her in half like a fish for drying: Half of her he put up to roof the sky.”[304] Thus did our world begin in the most popular ancient Near Eastern creation story of the second millennium BC, the Epic of Creation (also known as the Enuma Elish).

THE MEXICAN GENESIS

In the ancient Aztec creation myth recorded in the sixteenth century text Histoyre du Mechique, the world also begins with only water, until Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcóatl (who had come to be identified with the wind god Ehecatl) rend the great mother-goddess Tlaltecuhtli in two “and from the half towards the shoulders they made the earth and carried off the other half to heaven.”[305]

Although details vary, in both narratives the world begins with only water, in which a male wind god brutally splits the primal aquatic mother goddess in two, then erects one-half as heaven and forms the earth with the other. They also have unusual details in common, such as the creation of the sources of fresh water from the goddess’ eyes. Marduk “opened the Euphrates and Tigris from her [Tiamat’s] eyes,”[306] while in the Aztec versions the gods make “from her [Tlaltecuhtli’s] eyes wells and fountains.”[307]

In the version of this creation story depicted in the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, Tezcatlipoca (like Marduk) uses his own body as bait to lure the mother-goddess into opening her vulnerable mouth. He then tears her apart at the jaw and uses her body as the raw material for the creation of the world.[308]

The mother goddess Tiamat was depicted as a long, water-dwelling, reptilian dragon.[309] Likewise, in Mesoamerica, “Tlaltecuhtli, appears in the form of a monstrous creature with gaping jaws, inspired by the cipactli, or giant crocodile, that swims in the waters created by the gods at the beginning of the world.”[310]

OLMEC TIAMAT

This belief dates to the time of the Olmecs, whose art shows a Tiamat-like earth monster that is thought to have been the prototype of the later Meosamerican creation myths:

Iconographic investigations reveal that the Olmec Dragon, like later Mesoamerican primordial monsters, floated on the surface of the waters of creation. In some titanic struggle in the mythic past, the body of this great leviathan was broken apart to form the earth and sky realms.[311]

It is also of interest that, as in the Aztec depictions: “The [Olmec] dragon is usually depicted without a lower jaw and teeth.”[312] Apparently, this reptilian goddess too was specifically torn apart at the mouth. That this myth occurred among the Olmecs dates its use in Mexico back to a time when the myth was still current in the ancient Near East.

All the windstorms, exceedingly powerful, attacked as one,

The deluge raged over the surface of the earth.

–A Sumerian account of the great flood from a cuneiform tablet dated to the 17th century BC.[313]

Circa 2000 BC, the Mesopotamians erected a 175-mile-long border wall to keep out the people of Canaan, whom they called Amurru or “Amorites.” Yet the Amorites soon breached the wall, conquered Mesopotamia, and divided it amongst themselves into several kingdoms. Shortly after 1800 bc, the Amorite king Hammurabi conquered his neighbors and unified the land, creating the nation of Babylonia.

ABRAHAM

We have already encountered the Biblical figure Joseph and his seven years of great abundance followed by seven of dire famine. His great-grandfather, the legendary father of the Jewish people and of three world religions, lived among these Amorites. Abraham is said to have come from Ur in Mesopotamia before moving to Canaan, then to Egypt, then back to Canaan where he lived on the land of his ally “Mamre the Amorite.”[314] The Biblical account of Abraham’s experiences describes the divided Mesopotamia of the Amorite period. For example, a group of minor kings from Mesopotamia are said to have conducted a raid into Canaan whence Abraham and his men did battle with them.[315] And a legal document from the time of Hammurabi’s grandfather mentions an Amorite named Abi-ramu. At the very least this means that Abraham is an authentic name from this time and place.

BENJAMIN

The Amorite tribes were divided into two groups, the northern tribes or “Sons of the Left” and the Banu Yamin or “Sons of the Right” who dwelt to the south. It is the Banu Yamin who conquered Mesopotamia and created Babylon. Their name survives in that of the modern country of Yemen and is thought to be the source of the name Benjamin (via the Israeli tribe of this name and its eponymous patriarch).

That the Babylonians maintained cultural and political ties with their Amorite cousins back in Canaan can be seen in tablets recording special treaties with the Banu Yamin tribes from which they had originated.[316] Long after Hammurabi, the kings of Babylon continued to bear Canaanite names — further evidence of their close cultural ties to their homeland. However, Babylonia fell around 1600 BC, just after the Hyksos conquest of Egypt.

In his excavation of Avaris, Manfred Bietak identified the Hyksos as “Amorites, from the eastern Delta, who emigrated from Canaan and the Syrian coast.”[317] Noting that the name of a Banu Yamin tribe occurred on some Hyksos royal seals, William Albright argued that at least some of the Hyksos had come from this same group of Amorite tribes as had conquered Mesopotamia.[318]

Figure 20. King Hammurabi (left) receiving his famed “eye for an eye” law code from the sun god Shamash. (Photo by author.)

The few Hyksos personal names that are known also include at least one overlap with the Biblical patriarchs; the second Hyksos pharaoh was named Yaqub-Har, a version of Jacob, the name of the grandson of Abraham and father of Joseph. Versions of this and other Biblical names from the patriarchal period also occur in an Egyptian list of slaves from just before the Hyksos era.[319] The use of the same personal names further indicates a close cultural relationship between these populations.

THE LOST COSMOLOGY OF THE HYKSOS

We turn to Mesopotamia because of their extensive libraries inscribed on durable clay tablets. Although the Hyksos were among the most scholarly and literate of Egypt’s dynasties (having made the only surviving copies of the 18-foot long Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the world’s oldest surgical text), few of their fragile papyrus scrolls survived the wet conditions of the Delta and the vehemence of the Egyptian reconquest.

While we have no direct record of the Hyksos’ creation story, the narratives that their fellow Amorites carried into Babylon have survived, including the two most famous and influential cosmological narratives of the time, the Epic of Creation and the Atrahasis Epic. The first provided the story of Marduk and Tiamat discussed in the previous chapter and only appeared in Mesopotamia with the Amorite invasion. Likewise, linguistic evidence indicates that Atrahasis began as an oral tale among the tribal Amorites and was carried with them into Mesopotamia.[320] It also remained popular in its native Canaan, where a copy of Atrahasis was found in the Canaanite library at Ugarit.

Figure 21. At the center of the Aztec Calendar Stone, the face of our sun is surrounded by four squares containing the names of the suns that ruled the four previous epochs, each named for the means of its world’s destruction (read counterclockwise from the top right): “4 Jaguar,” “4 Wind,” “4 Rain,” and finally “4 Water,” the great flood. Art by Paul Ruane.

This text has been called “easily the most sophisticated of all known ancient Near-Eastern mythological epics – Sumerian, Accadian, Egyptian, Canaanite (Ugaritic), Horite (Hurrian), and Hittite.”[321] It organized history into a series of ages separated by calamities: 600 years after creating humanity, the gods grew tired of them and sent a disease to kill everyone. A few humans survived and repopulated. But after another 600 years, the gods tried again with a lengthy drought. The next 600th year cataclysm involved a plague and drought in unison, after which, the gods sent the fourth and final disaster, the great flood.[322]

Numerous ancient Mesoamerican narratives relate a strikingly similar cosmology. The gods send a major cataclysm, rest for some six centuries, then send another, repeating the cycle until it culminates in the fourth and last calamity, a world-destroying flood.[323]

THE UNITS

The world ages in the Atrahasis Epic each last exactly 600 years. Since 600 is a round number (the simple noun nēru in the sexagesimal number system of ancient Mesopotamia,[324] this was a natural, convenient selection, the equivalent of making them each a hundred years in the decimal system.

Precise details of the Mesoamerican world ages can be found in Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas (a Spanish record from the 1530s of the contents of an Aztec codex that contained the “official” version of Aztec cosmology[325]). Here the first two ages last 676 years each, the third is 364 years, and the fourth is 312 years.[326] (These latter two ages add up to 676 years.) Because the Aztec calendar used 52-year-long units, 676 years is a round number, exactly 13 of these units. But they included more than this approximation of the 600-year-long ages.

Historia de los Mexicanos states that exactly 600 years passed from the birth of the gods until the creation of the world.[327] While 600 years is neither round nor convenient in their calendar, they included it by placing it before the first sun and thus before the start of their human calendar. Historia de los Mexicanos explains that the Aztecs “commence to count time from this first sun, and their reckoning runs on from it continuously, leaving behind the 600 years, the period of the birth of the gods.”[328] This 600-year time of the gods stands out like a square peg in the round Mesoamerican calendar, and, given the significant parallels between the Atrahasis Epic and the Historia de los Mexicanos, presents the intriguing possibility of being a vestigial relic of this myth’s past.

Nor is there any possibility of contamination by the Spaniards, since the Atrahasis Epic went out of circulation some 2000 years before the 1530s when the Historia de los Mexicanos was copied from an ancient Aztec codex. And it would be three more centuries before archaeologists would unearth the clay tablets containing the Atrahasis Epic and epigraphers would decipher the cuneiform script in which they were written.

Two later Old World sources also employ a 600-year period in a narrative related to the Atrahasis Epic. In the ancient Persian text of the Avesta, the chief scripture of Zoroastrianism, the world ages are 300 years, 600 years, and 900 years, respectively.[329] And in the Hebrew Bible, Genesis 7:14 states that Noah was 600 years old when the flood began. However, the other details of both of these narratives differ substantially from both the Atrahasis Epic and the Historia de los Mexicanos. The Bible, for example, does not mention world ages or previous cataclysms, while in the Avesta the final cataclysm is an ice age rather than a flood. Although these narratives may be genetically related, they are clearly not intermediaries between the Atrahasis Epic and its Mesoamerican doppelgängers.

Although both regions have the same scheme of four previous world ages of approximately 600 years each, these are floating chronologies. When exactly were these ancient epochs thought to have occurred?

MAKING TIME

In the West today, we number our years based on the writings of a sixth century monk who lived in what is now Romania. While calculating the date on which Easter should fall, Dionysius Exiguus (also known as Dennis the Short) declared it to then be Anno Domini (the year of our Lord) 525. His idea of counting time from the Incarnation (whether he intended to count from the conception or birth is debated) of Jesus did not catch on until centuries after Dionysius’ death, becoming the standard for all of Western Europe with Portugal’s adoption of it in 1422.

In 1650, James Ussher, an Anglican Archbishop in Ireland, tried to calculate the date of the creation of the world. According to a widely held interpretation of 2 Peter 3:8, the six days of the Biblical creation were six millennia. From the creation to the birth of Jesus took up the first four thousand years, after which there would be exactly two more millennia until the end of the world. Creation could thus be dated to exactly 4000 BC. However, because King Herod had died in 4 BC, Ussher realized that Dionysius had been wrong and Jesus must have been born by 4 BC. Ussher thus asserted that the world had been created in 4004 BC, claiming even to know that it had happened at dusk on October 22 of that year. The dates of Ussher’s chronology were widely included in the margins of Bibles and continue to be extremely influential today. Most who still espouse them are unaware of their intellectual underpinnings, which also require the world to end in 1997 (consistent with the timeline of the film The Terminator).

Following Ussher’s numbers, the Biblical flood is generally stated to have occurred circa 2348 BC. However, ancient sources place this event considerably earlier.

DATING THE FLOOD

The Babylonians dated the start of the great flood to January 8, 3189 BC.[330]

Figure 22. Comparison of the mythic chronologies of Mesoamerica and the ancient Near East from creation to the great flood. The lines separating the ages in both cases mark four world cataclysms the last of which was the great flood in the 32nd century BC.

The ancient sacred texts of India (including the Satapatha Brahmana, the Mahābhārata, and several of the Puranas) also feature a story of a world flood incorporated into a series of world ages. In this case, each of the successive cataclysms are world floods, after the last of which, the current world age (the Kali Yuga) began on February 18, 3102 BC.[331]

Western scholars have long held that the Indian narratives and their entire civilization were isolated from Mesopotamia.[332] However, there were actually extensive trading relationships, evidenced by Indus Valley seals found in Mesopotamian archaeological sites.[333] And Mesopotamian seals found in India include scenes from the Epic of Gilgamesh,[334] a text that included the flood story. Since the Mesopotamian flood story thus reached ancient India, it may be more than coincidence that they both date the flood that destroyed the world for the fourth time to the 32nd century BC. These are, after all, pivotal dates that served as a fulcrum of history in much the same way as the date of the birth of Jesus does in Christendom.

The Mayan calendar counts time from the start of this age (following the great flood that ended the fourth age) on September 5, 3114 BC, astoundingly close to the other traditions.[335] Stanford professor Gordon Brotherston has argued convincingly that this 3114 BC date for the start of the present age also occurs in Mixtec and Aztec codices and even on the Aztec Calendar Stone.[336] (In the 12 o’clock position atop the Calendar Stone are the glyph and number for “13 Reed,” the name for the year 3114 BC, the first year of our current world age “Four Ollin,” the symbol for which dominates the center of the Calendar Stone.[337]) And this calendrical base date likely originated among the Olmecs, from whom the Mayans and Aztecs inherited their calendars.[338]

THE TIME GAP

The Babylonian, Indian, and Mayan chronologies are even closer than they appear. In the Aztec account in the Historia de los Mexicanos, there are at least 26 years of darkness following the great flood and before this age starts when our new sun finally dawns along with the new sun-god.[339] A Mayan pot portrays a scene from this interim time (the defeat of a false sun-god) with a date corresponding to May 28, 3149 BC, some 35 years prior to the beginning of the age in 3114 BC.[340] The Egyptian text of “The Destruction of Mankind” similarly describes a period of time following the flood when the world was in darkness until a god could be found to become the new sun (the exact problem that caused this time gap in the Mesoamerican version).

Taking this gap into account, the dates group even more closely. The Indian and Mayan dates both record the same event, the beginning of this age, and fall only 12 years apart, at 3102 BC and 3114 BC, respectively. The Babylonian date, however, records the beginning of the flood. Given the gap between this event and the beginning of the world age, its date of 3189 BC is commensurate with the other numbers. (For example, although the Mayan date for the flood is not known, their date of 3149 BC for an event midway between the flood and the start of the age in 3114 BC, indicates a similar time frame.)

The Indian and Mexican dates mark the same event (the beginning of this age) and fall only 12 years apart for an event 5,000 years ago. Had they, like clocks, once been synchronized at the exact same beginning date, it would take a difference of less than a day per year in their respective calendars to create this discrepancy.

Very few dates have been recorded anywhere in ancient documents for such an early time period. It is remarkable that from such a small handful, these should all group so closely. That they date the same events within the same framework of five world ages culminating in a similar world-destroying flood strongly indicates a genetic relationship.

Today a system of counting years from a standardized date for the birth of Jesus has been spread around the globe. Is it possible that the calendars of ancient Babylonia, India, and Mesoamerican also share a common source?

In both Mesoamerica and the ancient Near East, after the creation of the world from the split corpse of the reptilian mother goddess, there were four world ages of roughly 600 years each, punctuated by four cataclysms, the last of which was a world flood dated to the 32nd century BC. Things got really interesting when I started looking at the physical data from this time . . .

Because it is sometimes so unbelievable, the truth escapes becoming known.

—Heraclitus, 500 BC

In correlating the reams of data from different fields that provide proxy records of the history of our planet’s temperature, precipitation, received cosmic radiation, and atmospheric levels of methane, acid, and sulfur (from dendrochronology, ice cores, palynology, speleothems . . . ), one recurring peak stood out to me both because of the magnitude of the event and because the timing was familiar from some of humanity’s earliest attempts at keeping historical records.

The most extreme drop in global temperatures of the last 10,000 years occurred suddenly circa 3200 BC, as evidenced by the ratio of oxygen-18 in cores drilled from ice caps,[341] by the temperature sensitive chemical composition of ancient phytoplankton in sediment layers drilled from the sea floor,[342] in isotopic ratios sampled from the layers of cave formations,[343] and in the species of pollen trapped in ancient sediment layers.[344]

At this same point in time, the paleoclimate data show a brief but monumental surge of precipitation on a global scale. When the climate grows wetter, wetlands increase and create more methane. Conversely, during dry periods, atmospheric methane levels fall. A study of ancient air bubbles trapped in the Greenland ice cap found that the level of atmospheric methane had dropped for several thousand years until 3200 BC, when it suddenly and dramatically spiked.[345] Pollen profiles also show a sudden surge in precipitation levels at this time,[346] as do high-precision records of the water levels of ancient lakes.[347] In many of these paleoclimate records, this event is the most extreme increase in precipitation and drop in temperature in the more than 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age.[348] It was also nearly instantaneous.

FLASH FROZEN

In 2003, a Byrd Polar Research Center team ascended to the Quelccaya ice cap at 18,600 feet in the Peruvian Andes to core its ice for climate data. As this glacier recedes, due to global warming, it is exposing land that has not seen the light of day in 5000 years. To their astonishment, the researchers found well-preserved, soft-bodied wetland plants still rooted in this ancient earth. They concluded that an abrupt climate change had encased these plants in snow and ice and preserved them that way for more than 5000 years. The plants (and thus also the sudden onslaught of frozen precipitation that preserved their delicate tissues) radiocarbon-dated to 3188 ± 45 BC.[349] Not only does this date match the other evidence of rapid cooling and of a sudden increase in precipitation, but we can see for the first time ever that it correlates precisely with the Babylonian date for the great flood, 3189 BC.

Similarly, in Washington State, the receding South Cascade Glacier exposed an intact, unweathered tree still standing with its roots firmly planted in the earth and dated to this same time.[350]

And in 1991, hikers discovered a human body entombed in melting glacial ice in the Italian Alps. The corpse radiocarbon-dated to 3225 ± 125 BC, and “the exceptional state of preservation of the Iceman and of his artifacts requires that he was rapidly entombed at the time of his death and remained so until he was discovered.”[351] Italian scientists studying the remains concluded from the rapid burial and from the history of the surrounding glaciers: “Thus, the Iceman reveals that at about 5300–5050 cal yr BP, a rapid climatic change took place, producing a persistent snow cover on previously deglaciated areas . . . This deterioration in climate marks the beginning of Neoglaciation in the Alps, which induced a glacier expansion.”[352]

Excavations in the Czech Republic uncovered an entire town that had been buried by a mudslide at exactly this same time. The excavators observed that the gradient of the hill was so gradual that it would have taken extreme precipitation and an absence of anchoring vegetation to cause such an enormous mudslide.[353] Apparently, it was yet another victim of the sudden drop in temperatures and onslaught of precipitation.

CAUSE AND EFFECT

In the tree-ring records, one of the most extreme dust-veil events ever recorded began in the 3190s BC.[354] In some places, including Mesoamerica, vast swaths of forest completely died.[355] And in England, the oldest known trees of two regional oak chronologies all began their lives at this time.[356]

The primary mechanism by which volcanic dust-veils affect the climate is through the release of sulfur into the stratosphere, where it combines with water to form sulfuric acid, which is especially effective at reflecting incoming solar radiation. A study of acidity in ice cores from the Greenland ice sheet found that peaks in acid levels correspond with the dates of known volcanic eruptions. The largest spike in acid levels in at least the last 9000 years occurred in 3150 ± 90 BC.[357] However, there is no known volcanic eruption associated with this spike.

Likewise, the largest sulfate concentration in the Greenland ice cap began circa 3200 BC. It was so much larger and more extensive than the sulfate spikes associated with known volcanic eruptions that the authors sought a different source, speculating on a local anomaly.[358]

However, in 2005, a new technique (combining synchrotron radiation X-ray microfluorescence and absorption spectroscopy techniques) analyzed the sulfur content of the layers of Alpine stalagmites. A band centered on 3150 ± 130 BC contained an intense concentration of sulfur, far greater than seen anywhere else in the stalagmites.[359] Thus, the intense sulfur concentrations in the ice cap at this time were not a local anomaly but resulted from extreme levels of atmospheric sulphur. Here again, the intensity is far greater than anything seen from known volcanoes, and no major eruption is known from this time.

The only other major sources of atmospheric sulfur are polluting factories and meteors burning up in the atmosphere. The former can be ruled out for 3200 BC. But a meteor 300 meters across contains five times as much sulfur as the entire modern (well-polluted) stratosphere.[360]

In 2005, Dr. Dallas H. Abbott of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory discovered a crater 29 kilometers in diameter on the floor of the Indian Ocean. Core samples dated this Burckle Crater to less than 6000 years ago.[361] In terms of scale, timing, and effects it seems the perfect candidate for the 3200 BC (5200 years ago) dust-veil event.

Modeling of the impact necessary to create a 29 kilometer crater through 12,500 feet of water indicated an object more than 5 km (3.1 miles) in diameter, traveling at an astonishing speed (asteroids and comets typically strike at speeds of between 11 and 70 kilometers per second) and thus impacting with a force of 20,000,000 megatons.[362] This is roughly equivalent to 20,000,000 modern nuclear weapons or 1,330,000,000 Hiroshima-style atomic bombs.

Studies of nuclear explosions have found that for each megaton of energy an explosion injects between 200,000 and 500,000 tons of dust into the stratosphere (the layer of the atmosphere above 10 km).[363] In this case, several trillion tons of water would have been displaced into the atmosphere. The 40 days and 40 nights of intense rain of the Biblical account are entirely consistent with such an event. And this would explain the combination of extreme precipitation and sudden cooling that encased many ancient highlands in snow and ice and permanently altered our planet’s climate.

THE WAVE

At the December 2006 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, a team of scientists showed that the surrounding coastlines had large features known as chevrons composed of sediments thrown up from the deep ocean floor. These chevrons are miles long and more than 100 meters tall. In one group of four, each chevron stands as tall as the Chrysler building and covers twice the area of Manhattan. It would take a tsunami at least 600 feet high to create such deposits. They all point toward Burckle Crater, and, in October 2006, Dee Breger analyzed samples of their sediments with a scanning electron microscope and found deep-ocean microfossils (benthic foraminifera) that had been splashed with molten iron, nickel, and chrome in proportions consistent with a chondritic meteor.[364]

Some of the scientists involved in the discovery of Burckle Crater and the associated chevrons realized the possibility of a connection between its planetary-scale splash and ancient traditions of a great flood. However, they followed W. Bruce Masse’s date for the great flood, May 10, 2807 BC, which he based on a “cluster of astrological details” inferred from myths.[365]

Only Dr. Abbot’s dating of the crater as less than 6000 years old is based on physical evidence. And these data are entirely consistent with the 5200 BP (3200 BC) date proposed here. Moreover, by taking an interdisciplinary perspective, we can see for the first time that the sulfur makers, tree rings, climate proxy data, and global flood traditions are all uniquely consistent with this date (and conspicuously absent in 2807).

This is an historic development, but it is only the beginning of the story. Cross-referencing the ancient texts with the paleoclimate data, archaeology, and astrophysics proved far more fruitful than can be explored here without extensive digression, but I hope to return to them in another venue.

Of greater relevance to the present study is whether there is a genealogical relationship between the different versions of the flood story found in ancient Egypt, Canaan, and Mexico. Exploring this question yielded the first evidence of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs among the Olmecs . . .

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The Hyksos came from Canaan, the home of the Atrahasis Epic, but quickly acculturated in Egypt. After their expulsion, a unique flood story, “The Destruction of Mankind” began to appear on tomb walls, especially among those pharaohs with apparent cultural ties to the Hyksos. Seti I, Ramses II, Ramses III, Ramses VI, and King Tutankhamen each had it inscribed on their tomb walls.

This story begins with a celestial assault on humanity. Angered by humans ridiculing his age, the old god Ra sends forth his Eye to destroy humanity. This Eye of the sun-god is normally just the ball of sun that crosses the sky daily. Yet here it is sent on a different, destructive course such that it destroys much of humanity. (Not unlike a large meteor burning with sun-like intensity through the atmosphere.) Ra followed this with the great flood. Afterward, he ceased to fulfill his duties as the sun god, leaving the Earth dark and sunless (as under an extreme dust-veil.)[366]

The Egyptians ritually reenacted this story at their annual New Year’s celebration, which coincided with the annual Nile flood. Although an earlier version had the flood being of water,[367] in this account Ra forms the floodwaters in 7000 vats as a divine cocktail of blood, beer, and mandrake. Mayan texts also vary between the great flood being composed of blood or water. They were used interchangeably because the blood in question was that of the slain mother goddess and is one and the same with Earth’s fresh water.[368]

The Egyptian celebration of this flood involved brewing and imbibing 7000 vessels of (alcoholic) flood waters for New Year’s. At their own New Year’s festivals, the people of Canaan, Syria, and Babylonia celebrated the flood hero’s “outpouring of sweet new wine to the builders of the ark, in which (according to the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic) he and his family survived the Deluge.”[369] As in Egypt, they ritually reenacted the survival of the great flood at New Year’s with a festival of ritually mandated drinking.

This repeated synchronization of the first day of the year (New Year’s) with the great flood may be due to the use of this event as a starting point for eras and chronologies. The Bible similarly associates the New Year with the great flood, stating on “the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.”[370] And Noah celebrated with his own overindulgence of wine.

CREATION AND HUMAN SACRIFICE

In “The Destruction of Mankind,” a few humans survive both the Eye of Ra and the great flood. So Ra decides to inflict the coup de grâce and finish humanity.

To save our species, the righteous among the survivors hunt down and execute the enemies of Ra. Appeased, the sun god spares them and humanity. The text then states, “thus came into being the slaughter (of sacrifice).”[371] This myth claimed to record the first instance of human sacrifice and justified its perpetuation.[372]

Meanwhile, the elderly Ra had stopped performing his duties as sun god, leaving the world dark. Only after a long period of darkness did Ra finally assign the god “Shu to perform the work of Ra and to take the place of his Eye,”[373] making Shu the new sun and sun god.[374]

Likewise, in the ancient Mesoamerican traditions, the great flood was followed by a long period of darkness, until finally a new age dawned with a new sun god. This period was also said to have required the first human sacrifices, which were introduced to appease the sun god and perpetuated for the same reason.[375]

But the Olmecs did not call this sun god Ra . . .

SHAMASH THE SUN

The Olmecs are generally thought to have spoken a language ancestral to the related Mixean and Zoquean languages still spoken in their lands. In all of the Zoquean sources, the word for “sun” is hama (sometimes written jama using the Spanish pronunciation), while the different Mixe words for “sun” vary but all begin with sh. I propose a reconstruction of the original proto-Mixe-Zoquean (Olmec) word for sun as shama. And this I suspect derives from Shamash, the Semitic sun god who was the equivalent of the Egyptian Ra. The word for “sun” in most Semitic languages is related to this name, i.e., shemesh in Hebrew and shams in Arabic. A sculpture of the god Shamash can be seen in Figure 20 in the act of bestowing laws on Hammurabi, the great Babylonian king of Amorite (Canaanite) descent.

THE CELESTIAL OCEAN

In the Epic of Creation, when Marduk erected half the corpse of Tiamat as the heavens, the waters of that half of her body became an ocean atop the sky.[376] In Egyptian belief, the sky was a rectangular slab topped by these celestial waters. Rain storms occurred when this sky slipped on its four support pillars, splashing its waters down onto the earth. The determinative (a hieroglyph that illustrates the meaning of a word) for “rain” and “storm” was a profile view “of the sky falling and being pierced by the four pillars of heaven.”[377]

Something far worse happened with the great flood. The last half of “The Destruction of Mankind” tells how the gods struggled to re-erect the sky after the great flood and to brace it from falling again. That the aftermath of the flood was taken up with re-erecting the sky strongly implies a causational relationship between its collapse and the flood. The implication seems to be that, just as the sky slipping on its supports caused storms, the sky and its celestial ocean falling on the earth caused the great flood.

MEXICO

Ancient Mesoamericans also told of an ocean above the sky.[378] The Mesoamerican flood stories begin with the collapse of the sky and, like the Egyptian version, end with the gods’ lengthy efforts to re-erect and bolster it. For example, in the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas “it rained so hard and so abundantly that the heavens fell,” resulting in the great flood, after which the gods raised the sky.[379] Likewise, in the Aztec Leyenda de los Soles, the heavens came “crashing down,” causing the great flood that wiped out the world of the fourth sun.[380] And the Mixtec Codex Vindobonensis shows the god Nine Wind lifting the sky after the flood, with the celestial ocean and its stars shown sloshing atop it:

Figure 23. Nine Wind lifting the sky band and the celestial ocean that rested atop it after their collapse caused the great flood. Five planet symbols mark the sky band, while stars ride wave crests atop the celestial ocean. From the Codex Vindobonensis.

In the Mayan Chilam Balam de Chumayel, after the sky’s collapse and the great flood, four gods go to the four corners of the earth to uphold the sky.[381] According to Friar Diego de Landa’s 1566 chronicle of Mayan beliefs, these gods (called Bacabs) are “four brothers . . . and they mark the four points of the world where God placed them holding up the sky.”[382] And in Aztec tradition, “the heavens were raised by the four sons of the creator couple.”[383] Likewise, in Egyptian belief, the four sons of Horus supported the sky.[384] (In the Edfu version of the Egyptian creation myth, Horus is the creator.[385])

EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS IN MEXICO

The classic Mesoamerican image of the raising of the sky (Figure 23 above) shows the sky as a wide flat band with turned down edges, a motif known to scholars as a “sky band.” The oldest surviving sky band comes from a monument at San Lorenzo that depicts gods upholding the sky (Potrero Nuevo Monument 2).[386] Compare the symbol that marks this earliest Olmec image of the sky in Figure 24 with the Egyptian hieroglyph for “sky,” pet . (A pet carved in stone relief can be seen just above the head of Pharaoh Merenptah in Figure 16 above.)

Figure 24.  A monument from San Lorenzo (Potrero Nuevo Monument 2) depicting the sky held aloft on the heads of giant dwarfs. This earliest Mesoamerican depiction of the sky is marked with a symbol nearly identical to the Egyptian hieroglyph pet  “sky.” (Photo by author)

This is the earliest non-pictorial Olmec symbol whose meaning is known, [387] and it is nearly identical in form and meaning to an Egyptian hieroglyph. Moreover, although no one knows what the Olmec called this symbol, a later Mayan glyph depicting the sky was likewise called “pet.”[388]  identical to the pronunciation of , the Egyptian word for “sky.” (The fuller relationship between these writing systems will be explored shortly, as will the tendency toward a slight rounding of the edges in the Mesoamerican interpretation of hieroglyphs with right angles.)

This monument was originally paired with a twin (San Lorenzo Monument 18).[389] This made for a total of four figures upholding a flat rectangular slab of sky, exactly as in Egyptian and later Mesoamerican belief.[390]

THE BEARERS

Sculptures of “the dwarf as bearer,” a little person in the act of supporting a heavy object, were common in ancient Egypt, especially

during the 18th dynasty (the first post-Hyksos dynasty).[391] Like the Olmec dwarfs shown using their heads to support the sky, these Egyptian bearers are sculpted wearing only a loincloth and in the act of supporting impossible weights upon their heads.[392]

The Egyptians extended this motif to temples by using pillars in the form of the dwarf god Bes to hold the roof on his head, as in the temple of Mut at Jebel Barkal.[393] Although it is surprising that lofty pillars designed to impress by their sheer height should take the form of little people, the Olmecs employed the same paradox, using stone support pillars in the shape of little people to lift up the sky with their heads. And these early Olmec sky bearers likewise inspired larger anthropomorphic pillars used to uphold the roofs of Mesoamerican temples.[394]

Figure 25. 3/4 round sculptures of the giant Egyptian dwarf-god Bes using his head to uphold the temple roof. (An elongated pet  symbol can be seen across the top left. A shorter one can be seen above Pharaoh Merenptah in Figure 16.)

The ancient Egyptians and Mesoamericans both associated the great flood with the collapse of the sky, after which the gods re-erected the sky, and four divine brothers, the sons of the creator, upheld the flat, rectangular sky and the ocean atop it by its four corners. A long period of darkness followed, until human sacrifices were introduced and a new sun god inaugurated.

My dear fellow, life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

—Sherlock Holmes (from the mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The Atrahasis Epic tells how the gods killed one of their own, mixed his flesh and blood into clay, and molded it into the first people.[395] Likewise, in the Epic of Creation, the gods slaughtered the god Qingu and formed humanity in the same way with his blood.[396]

In Egyptian creation myths, however, the world begins as a watery void into which the sun god emerges (often from the sun-like yellow center of a blue lotus). Being alone and male, this sun god cannot reproduce by normal means. In the best-known version, the one god becomes three when Ra creates Shu and Tefnut by spitting out one and masturbating the other into existence.

But in the Egyptian Book of the Dead (the dominant Egyptian funerary text from the expulsion of the Hyksos on), the solitary Ra instead reproduces by penile bloodletting: “It is the drops of blood which fell from Ra when he went forth to cut himself. They sprang into being as the gods Hu and Sa.”[397] That is, Hu and Sa “sprang from the drops of blood which dripped from the phallus of Ra.”[398]

QUETZALCÓATL SELF-PIERCED

In the Aztec version, male gods pierce their penises and bleed them into a bowl containing the pulverized bone of a person of the antediluvian age. They then mold the bloody paste into male and female children, the ancestors of all of humanity.[399] This myth combines the principal elements of the Semitic and Egyptian versions. The gods form humanity by molding a paste imbued with divine blood as in the Semitic versions, but they obtain the divine blood by piercing their penises as in the Egyptian version.

BLOODLETTING

Mesoamerican priests and nobility actually practiced ritual penile bloodletting on their own bodies. Their icepick-shaped bloodletters are found in archaeological sites from the Olmec period on.[400] The Olmecs also favored hummingbirds and the spines of stingray tails for this purpose.[401] Mayan rulers left reliefs depicting their bloodletting rituals and were buried with stingray spines over their groins.[402] This instrument has a unique feature: “Because of the acute angle of the serrations, once a stingray spine has pierced the skin it cannot be removed without causing painful damage; it is easier in fact to pull the spine completely through a perforation.”[403] When the ritual was adopted in Central Mexico, they substituted the smooth spines of the maguey plant (whose sap was fermented into pulque and now tequila).[404]

Although the penis was the primary object of Mesoamerican bloodletting, they were also known to pierce tongues, arms, ears, and the calf of the leg.[405]

BLOODLETTING IN THE BIBLE

The Canaanites also undertook ritual bloodletting. In I Kings 18, for example, the priests of the Canaanite god Baal invoked their god, “cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.”[406] That both cultures practiced extreme, ritual, self-sacrificial bloodletting is intriguing, especially in light of the numerous other parallels between their religions.

Figure 26. Top: A Mayan noblewoman offers her blood by passing a thorny rope through her tongue. Bottom: Bloodletters of bone with obsidian knives, followed by Olmec jade models of bloodletters, including one of several such artifacts known to take the form of a hummingbird. (Photos by author)

AMPLIFICATION

In Mesoamerica, a number of these bloodletters have been found deep inside cave systems, apparently the location of certain rituals. In 1972-1973, Mayanist Barbara MacLeod undertook a fascinating series of experiments in which researchers were left in a deep cave environment without any light source or time-keeping device for 48 hours:

Although apprehension prevailed at the outset, within a few hours it was dissolving into wonderment at the rapid perceptual changes brought about by these particular conditions of sensory deprivation . . . Many-hued geometric patterns, mixed with a salad of memories from years ago, were being triggered by occasional sounds — a distant dripping stalactite, or the scrape of a foot on rock. This synesthesia gave way in time to states which are akin to meditation . . . Within less than a day a disposition developed toward supernatural interpretation of any unexplained phenomenon, be it sound or mood.[407]

Endorphins released during the bloodletting, light-headedness from blood loss, the possible inclusion of mind-altering substances, and fervent religious belief would have made the ritual experience even more mystical and overpowering.

CIRCUMCISION

Whenever Egyptian art shows men in the nude, they are circumcised, a practice that goes back to the Old Kingdom.[408] In the 5th century BC, Herodotus wrote of the Egyptians: “They practice circumcision, while men of other nations – except those who have learnt from Egypt – leave their private parts as nature made them.”[409] Specifically, he says that “the Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine” had adopted this practice from Egypt.[410] And literary evidence from Ugarit indicates that at least some of their Canaanite predecessors undertook circumcision.[411] This practice has also been characteristic of Judaism since the time of Abraham.

Although Olmec art seldom shows genitalia, the one figurine that does has “an exclamation point-shaped, circumcised penis.”[412] This is surprising because according to Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas, nowhere in North, Central, or South America did indigenous peoples practice circumcision.[413]

Yet, at the time of the conquest, Juan de Grijalva claimed that the Maya practiced circumcision. Diego de Landa observed something similar, but claimed that this rival chronicler had not been precise:

They cut away the superfluous part of the member, leaving the flesh in the form of ears. It was this custom which led the historian of the Indies to say that they practiced circumcision.[414]

In any case, the earlier Olmec example lacks “ears.” It is significant that the Olmecs and their cultural descendants undertook a practice otherwise unknown in the New World, especially as it was specifically associated with the Egyptians, Canaanites, and Phoenicians in the Old World.

THE EUNUCH-IN-CHIEF

Eunuchs held high positions in the courts of the ancient Near East (including Urartu, Persia, the Hittite empire, Assyria, and Babylonia).[415] Meticulous records from Mesopotamia include land allotments and tax exemptions for eunuchs and refer to a distinct corps of eunuchs, whose leader often led the entire army.[416]

In the Bible, the prophet Daniel and his comrades are taken as boys from the newly conquered Israel and groomed for the royal court in Babylon. It seems unlikely that privileged offices would have been given to the children of vanquished foes rather than to fellow countrymen, unless the preparation for the post included emasculation (without anesthetic or antiseptic). That Daniel and his comrades were made eunuchs is in keeping with contemporary customs. Herodotus, for example, records the annual shipment of 500 boys from Babylonia to Persia to become eunuchs of the Persian court.[417]

THE DIVINE CASTRATI

Less documentary evidence survives in Egypt, but clearly eunuchs played a prominent role there as well. The Egyptian Execration Texts (circa 1900–1800 BC) mention eunuchs.[418] Manetho’s history records the death of the twelfth dynasty pharaoh Ammanemes at the hands of his own eunuchs. And Frans Jonckheere identified numerous eunuchs in Egyptian art based on physical features and iconographic details.[419] In the Bible, Joseph is the slave of the Egyptian official Potiphar who is called the sārîs of Pharaoh. Although the meaning of this term is debated, the Midrash interprets it as “eunuch,” the Septuagint rendered it with the Greek spandon “eunuch,” and in the Vulgate it was translated into Latin as eunuchus.[420] (Upon graciously reading a manuscript of this book, the esteemed scholar Dr. Edwin Yamauchi informed me that he believes that “eunuch” was not the original meaning of the Semitic word but was acquired later, and I defer to his expertise on this matter.)

Given the widespread nature of this practice in the royal courts of Egypt and the ancient Near East, it seems likely that the Hyksos would also have created and employed eunuchs. In fact, the chief Hyksos deity was Set, the neutered Egyptian god whose testicles had been severed by Horus.[421] In Chapter 39 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Apophis, the evil serpent of the underworld, taunts Set by referencing this event, saying, “What was done to you was so terrible that you will suffer from it forever. You will never go a-wooing, you will never make love!”[422]

Olmec art includes numerous depictions of men shown naked but lacking genitalia.  Beardless and oddly plump they resemble eunuchs. Yale archaeologist Michael Coe alluded to this aspect of the appearance of the Olmec were-jaguars (figurines of humans with jaguar-like facials features): “Were-jaguars are always quite sexless, with the obesity of eunuchs.”  As we have seen, the Olmecs had no qualms about cutting or altering the male genitalia. In fact, such sacrificial acts played an important role in their religion and in that of later Mesoamerica, so the making of eunuchs would not be uncharacteristic.

That many of the genital-less Olmec figurines appear to be “Olmec lords,”  suggests a similar role of eunuchs holding official position. That the were-jaguar figures (thought by many to depict the chief Olmec deity) also have the appearance of eunuchs suggests that, like the Hyksos, the Olmecs worshipped a neutered god. From a global perspective this is extremely unusual, a complete inversion of most male deities with whom fertility is emphasized.

Thus, in both Egypt and Mesoamerica a male god created life by piercing and bleeding his own penis. Both practiced circumcision and were unique in their respective regions for it. In both regions priests practiced ritual, self-sacrificial bloodletting. And eunuchs appear to have played a key role in both cultures including as the chief god of the Hyksos and Olmecs. This further suggests that the two cultures in essence shared the same religion.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

—Inscription at the entrance to hell in Dante’s Inferno.

In this chapter, I contend that the most influential conception of the underworld in human history was derived from a 5000-year-old board game, went on to influence great works of Western literature and religion, and even reached ancient Mexico.

THE SUN UNDERGROUND

The ancient Egyptians believed that the sun set into the underworld and traversed it through the night to reemerge in the east at dawn. When a person died, they believed that their soul traveled west into the same underworld. Their only hope for escaping this underworld was to board the sun’s ship and be carried with it through the body of an enormous snake. Inside this serpent, the sun and the soul were transformed and from its mouth they exited at dawn.[423] This all-important serpent was called Mehen, literally “Coiled One.”[424]

The earliest surviving reference to this passage comes from the Egyptian Pyramid Texts (inscribed on pyramid walls of the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Dynasties, circa 2705–2213 BC). Here the deceased speaks:

I am this one who escaped from the coiled serpent, I have ascended in a blast of fire, having turned myself about. The two skies go to me, the two earths come to me.[425]

Here R. O. Faulkner translates the Egyptian word mehen as “the coiled serpent.” However, in the original Egyptian hieroglyphs of the Pyramid Texts, its determinative (a symbol clarifying the meaning of the word) is a picture of the ancient board game that featured this serpent and was also called mehen.[426] Thus, Kurt Sethe’s German translation of the Pyramid Texts captures the fuller meaning by translating mehen as Schlangentopf-Brettspiel,[427] “coiled-serpent board game.” In this oldest account of the underworld, the deceased escapes from a board game into life in a blast of fire!

Although the game mehen is more than 5000 years old, it worked like modern board games. Players raced their pieces along a path by rolling a type of dice and moving that number of spaces on a game board in the shape of the fire-serpent Mehen (see Fig. 27). The Egyptians appear to have conceived of the passage through the underworld as a large supernatural prototype of this game. Thus, other passages in the Pyramid Texts, including Utterances 626, 659, and 758, similarly describe the journey of the deceased through the underworld as a passage along a mehen game board with the deceased resurrected as he exits the serpent’s mouth.[428]

THE COFFIN TEXTS

Ancient Egyptian history is broadly divided into the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. What the Pyramid Texts were to the Old Kingdom, the Coffin Texts (inscribed on coffins rather than on pyramid walls) were to the subsequent Middle Kingdom. In spells 758-9, the Coffin Texts describe the deceased’s journey through nine concentric circles, known as “the nine roads of Mehen.” Dead souls who had been initiated in the rites of Mehen could travel these roads, spiraling inward through connecting gates to reach the god Ra and salvation.

Figure 27. The five thousand year old board game Mehen functioned much like a modern board game, except that it traced a dead soul’s passage through the underworld. A direct lineage is here traced from this game to the geography of the classical Greek Hades and Dante’s Inferno, as well as to the underworlds of ancient Mesoamerica. (Photo by author)

The number of game spaces varies between Mehen boards and is thus thought to be of no consequence. The number of coils has been thought to be arbitrary for the same reason. However, I suspect that the number of coils in the serpent’s spiral was actually quite significant. A few boards have nine or eight loops and thus likely correspond to the Egyptian textual mentions of the nine roads of Mehen. (The eight-looped examples have an open center that may have constituted a ninth and final level, safely outside the serpent.) However, I find that the vast majority of boards have exactly five coils, including the ones on display at the Louvre, the British Museum, University College London, the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, and the Oriental Institute in Chicago. Wear patterns in the ancient paint on the Oriental Institute’s game board show that an object was consistently rolled along the groove between adjacent coils of the serpent. Since the game pieces included both lions and marbles, the lions likely moved across the spaces on the serpent’s back while the marbles rolled along the groove.[429] This holds the key to understanding the five coils . . .

The Coffin Texts show the nine roads of Mehen as five concentric black circles alternating with four red circles of fire. Given the coincidence in number and form, I would argue that the five black roads represented the five loops of the body of Mehen, while the four roads of fire were the four loops formed by the groove between the coils, conceived of as on fire because they lay outside this fire-serpent’s body and exposed to its flames. Together they constituted the nine roads of Mehen.

Figure 28. The Coffin Texts feature the underworld’s nine roads of Mehen that must be navigated to reach Ra and life. In its original colors, five black roads alternate with four red roads of fire.

HYKSOS SPIRALS

After this Middle Kingdom and before the New Kingdom came the Second Intermediate Period, the time of the Hyksos. During this period, Mehen-like spirals became a popular decorative motif:

In Egypt during the Old Kingdom the spiral was an extremely rare element of decoration, and when it appeared in the First Intermediate period it was probably imported from Asia. It was used more often during the Middle Kingdom, but not until the time of the Hyksos rule did it become the dominant decorative design.[430]

The Hyksos and their related Canaanite neighbors emblazoned special ceramics with a single large spiral. Nearly all of the surviving examples of this motif have nine loops, while a related motif – consisting of distinct concentric circles instead of a spiral – employs nine circles frequently but not exclusively.[431] Unfortunately, there is no textual evidence to explain why the Hyksos favored this motif, but it is intriguing in light of the earlier connections of both nine-looped spirals and nine concentric circles with Mehen.

THE REPLACEMENT

The post-Hyksos 18th Dynasty brought a backlash. Mehen was no longer played, and the game senet usurped its roles. Hellish new markings on senet boards now transformed this game into a journey through the underworld. Square 16, for example, became the “House of Netting,” and the player who landed there was “entangled in executioners’ nets, tortured and annihilated in pits of fire,”[432] requiring the loss of a turn. Toward the end, the outcomes grew even more extreme. Square 30 brought resurrection from the underworld, deification, and the winning of the game, but only if one missed square 27, complete annihilation of the soul and loss of the game.[433] Although the game mehen had been abolished,[434] the connection of the god Mehen to the journey through the underworld survived, and Mehen became the patron deity of the game senet.

Yet, while forbidden in Egypt, the game mehen survived abroad . . .

THE HYKSOS AND GREEKS

Over 200 Bronze Age mehen and senet boards have been found on Cyprus. And the Hyksos are known to have traded extensively with Cyprus at this time.[435] A number of these game boards were carved into exposed bedrock adjacent to tombs, leading archaeologists to conclude: “Their proximity to the tombs also seems to establish a clear funerary association for gaming activity.”[436] These stone game boards provide concrete evidence that this Egyptian game and its funerary associations were adopted by at least some of the predecessors of the classical Greeks.

THE NINE LOOPS OF FIRE

I would argue that Greek texts also contain a relic of this cultural exchange. Specifically, the nine loops of Mehen are reminiscent of the “nine rings of Styx,”[437] the river of the Greek and Roman underworld. I had previously conceived of Styx’s nine loops as nine meanders spread about a plain, and this seems to be the common modern interpretation. However, while many of the Greek and Roman references to the nine loops or rings of Styx can be taken either way, Plato states explicitly that “the river passes underground and follows a spiral course.”[438]

Thus, like Mehen, Styx consisted of exactly nine subterranean loops in a spiral formation. Moreover, the nine loops of Mehen and the nine loops of the later river Styx both partitioned the underworld into nine regions that enclosed the dead. Thus, the poet Statius describes the underworld: “On this side Styx encircling its nine regions, on that a barrier of fiery torrents encloses his path.”[439] And Virgil describes how the “nine rings of Styx corral them [the dead] in.”[440] Likewise, the Egyptian Coffin Texts refer to Mehen as a warden of deceased criminals and make clear that the roads of Mehen are barriers that cannot be passed without certain secret spells.[441] Since Styx and Mehen were subterranean spirals, the nine regions that they divided apparently lay one beneath the next as the spiral wound into the ground.

The chief difference between Mehen and Styx is that Styx is described as a river. However, there are suggestions that the Egyptian spiral of fire was also thought of as a river. The Egyptians conceived of the underworld, the Tuat, as a parallel of Egypt. Since Egypt was a long strip of land along the banks of the Nile, they conceived of the underworld as a long river valley.[442] However, unlike the relatively straight Nile, the Egyptians depicted the outside of the underworld as a large circle, which is thought to have housed “a narrow circular valley,”[443] consistent with the spiraling body of Mehen, which the sun and the righteous deceased traveled through in a boat.

THE INFERNO

The renowned 13th–14th century writer Dante Alighieri hated a great many people and used his considerable literary skill to exact his revenge. His Inferno, Christendom’s most influential description of hell since the Book of Revelation, detailed Dante’s elaborate revenge fantasies. Structured as a personal tour of hell given to Dante by the Roman poet Virgil, the scenery includes real people of Dante’s acquaintance in an astounding array of colorful and humiliating eternal tortures.

Figure 29. Top: Sandro Botticelli's depiction of Dante's Inferno, circa 1480 AD.  Bottom: Giovanni Stradano’s 1587 painting of this hell in cross-section. An overhead view of their nine circles would correspond exactly to the earlier pre-perspective depictions of the nine spirals of Mehen and of the Greek river of the underworld, Styx.

The geographical structure of Dante’s underworld is famously divided into the nine circles of hell. These circles lay one beneath the next as Dante descends a great nine-looped spiral, with each circle growing smaller than the last. Thus an overhead view of this underworld would look like a Mehen board. This schematic also mirrors the nine-looped river Styx, which likewise cork-screwed downward and divided Hades into nine regions. Like much of academic thought in Christendom at the time, Dante relied heavily on classical sources. By having the Roman poet Virgil guide his tour through hell, Dante made his debt to the classical sources explicit, and he even included the river Styx in his hell.

ISLAM

Hell is not described in detail in the Qur’an, so there are some variations in Islamic notions of it:

In one version, hell seems to be a fantastic monster that God can summon at will; in another description, it is a crater of concentric circles on the underside of the world that all souls must cross in order to enter paradise by way of a bridge, narrow as a razor's edge.[444]

This may seem contradictory, hell being on the one hand a monster and on the other a crater of concentric circles. Yet both are consistent with a Mehen-like serpent. Some early Sufis explicitly described this underworld as having “the external aspect of a serpent.”[445] In general, its structure consists of “circular layers or strata, the diameter of which decreases with their depth, the whole seen from above in ground plan would provide a figure formed of concentric circles not unlike the spiral formed by the coils of a serpent.”[446]

The Spanish scholar Miguel Asín Palacios argued that Dante’s Inferno borrowed heavily from such Islamic sources. However, I suspect that both traditions perpetuate a more ancient paradigm dating back to Mehen. That Dante was not dependent on the Muslim underworld can be seen in his use of nine circles of hell rather than the seven that consistently define the Islamic hell, as well as in his explicit reliance on the earlier classical sources.

MEXICO’S NINE-STORIED HELL

Likewise, the peoples of ancient Mesoamerica believed that the underworld consisted of nine subterranean levels:

Both Maya and Aztecs conceived of a nine-layered underworld below the earth, a land of the dead called Mictlan by the Aztecs. . . . The Maya underworld, Xibalba (the place of fright) was also nine-layered, with each level associated with one of the nine lords of the night.[447]

Moreover, in Aztec belief, this underworld was dominated by a river called Chicunanhuapan, literally “Nine Waters.”[448] This river and the nine levels of this underworld parallel the topography of the ancient Egyptian and Greek underworlds.

MONSTER MOUTH

The opening to the Olmec underworld is repeatedly depicted as a monstrous reptilian mouth, “the Personified Earth Cave.”[449] This parallels the Egyptian underworld that opens into our world as the mouth of Mehen.

This motif also occurs in later Mesoamerican iconography. The best known example comes from the lid of the sarcophagus of the great Mayan King Pacal, which is thought to show this ruler falling “into the maw of the Earth Monster, leaving the realm of the living to continue his existence in another form.”[450]

But perhaps Pacal did not create this massive monument to show himself dead and falling into oblivion, but emerging from the underworld, gloriously reborn. The artist portrayed the great king in an unusual pose, which I suspect is that of an infant. He emerges from the maw of the underworld and is thus posed like a newborn in its mother’s arms – body bent as if cradled, head tilted back and supported, and hands in a position unusual for an adult but characteristic of an infant.

Figure 30. Pacal depicted atop the maw of the underworld on the lid of his sarcophagus. Art by Sophia Compton.

RIDING SHOTGUN WITH THE SUN

For the Egyptians, the soul of the deceased traveled the same route that the sun took each night, descending in the west and passing through the dark underworld to rise in the east. The soul’s only hope for surviving that land came in joining the sun in his ship to be ferried with him through the body of Mehen and out his mouth at dawn. Likewise, among the Aztecs, the most hopeful scenario in the afterlife involved journeying with the sun,[451] and Mesoamerican scholars Markman and Markman find evidence in the Popul Vuh that the Maya held a similar belief.[452]

In 1990, looters discovered a lost Mayan temple in the jungle near Balamkú, Mexico. Authorities arrived just in time to prevent them from hacking its reliefs from their invaluable context. On the west side of this temple, a king descends into the maw of the earth monster, while a relief on the east side shows him arising from the same. This illustrates the deceased’s eastward passage through a reptilian underworld just as in Egyptian belief. The INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History) signs at the site explain the relief. On the west side of the temple, “the ruler's death is seen as if it were a sunset, when he falls into the monster’s mouth.” To the east, “the king raises from the earth monster’s maw, just as the Sun emerges from the Earth’s mouth.”[453]

In Mayan ritual, “death,” “the dead,” and “the death ceremony” are all associated with the west.[454] The sun was believed to emerge from a cave in the east that took the form of a monstrous mouth.[455] “Rebirth, i.e., the ascent to the other world, comes about in the east.”[456] Heaven also lay to the east, and the “the soul of the child derives from the east.”[457]

The ancient Egyptians held much the same beliefs and likewise incorporated them into their architecture. On a grander scale, at Thebes (modern-day Karnak and Luxor) the living dwelt on the east side of the Nile, while the cities of the dead (the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens) lay to the west, readying the dead for their westward journey to the mouth of the underworld at the setting sun.

THE DOUBLE-HEADED SERPENT

Although the extant Olmec art only shows the earth monster’s head (its body being hidden within the earth), the Mayan frieze at Balamkú depicts this creature with two mouths, one to the east and one to the west, a head at each end of his serpentine body. Maintaining a symmetry to their cosmos, the Maya depicted the sky in the same way. For example, on the lid of Pacal’s sarcophagus, a two-headed serpent hangs on an axis mundi, its mouths open mirroring the stretched maw of the earth monster below.[458]

Likewise, in Egypt, the god Mehen was often depicted with a head at each end of his body.[459] (See, for example, the double-headed Mehen serpent on the headdress of Ra as he sits within the nine roads of Mehen in the Coffin Texts in Figure 28.)

CIRQUE DU SOLEIL

Egyptian art shows Osiris in a contortionist’s pose, his body bent backward until his feet touch the back of his own head. Often his body is shown stretched beyond what any human could physically achieve. Hieroglyphic captions tell us that this is the underworld god encircling the underworld.[460]

This same image of a man or god doubled over backward with their feet at the back of their own head was among the most popular motifs of Olmec art. A sculpture in this pose was originally thought to be an acrobat. However, art historian and Olmec expert Carolyn E. Tate noted that it had been found with burial goods that indicated that its owner had been a shaman or priest.[461] Additionally, numerous reliefs show this scene in contexts that indicate some great religious significance.[462] At times, in both Egyptian and Olmec art, the body is shown stretched far beyond what a human could survive. It is noteworthy that this same difficult and unusual pose was a key religious icon in both cultures, especially in light of the numerous other parallels between their conceptions of the underworld. On the Egyptian side, this image specifically occurs in the funerary art of those pharaohs who most closely connected with the Hyksos, from the sarcophagus of Seti I to the tomb of Ramses VI.

Figure 31. Osiris Encircling the Underworld, followed by the mysterious, ritually significant Olmec images of anthropomorphic bodies bent in this same extreme fashion.

THE AZTEC SUNSTONE

In Spanish, the Aztec Calendar Stone is known as La Piedra del Sol, the Sunstone. At its most basic, this monument is a portrait of the sun with the face of the sun god at its center and the sun’s rays forming V-shaped protrusions around its periphery. Encircling this sun is the Xiuhcóatl or “Fire Serpent,” which in Aztec belief carried the sun. The artist left some ambiguity about whether this is one snake with heads at opposing ends of its body, or two snakes fitted tail to tail.

Mehen, likewise, was a serpent of fire that wrapped around the sun and the sun god, and occurs in both single- and double-headed versions. Within each of its two heads, Mehen held a god: “Horus and Seth are conceived as playing within the two heads of Mehen, they are understood as being inside the body of the serpent.”[463] Likewise, on the Sunstone, anthropomorphic deities emerge from each of the open serpentine mouths. The creator of the Sunstone even divided Xiuhcóatl’s body into segments, like the body of Mehen on Egyptian gameboards.

Figure 32. The Aztec Calendar Stone showing Xiuhcóatl the “Fire Serpent” surrounding the sun as two divine heads appear in his mouths. Art by Paul Ruane.

The Mesoamerican conception of the underworld as nine-layered and dominated by the river “Nine Waters” parallels an Old World conception of the underworld that is well known from classical Greece but that has here been traced to its origin in an ancient Egyptian board game. Further parallels with Egyptian eschatology include a giant reptilian mouth as the opening of the underworld, the repeated, religiously significant motif of a man bent backward into a circle, and the depiction of the sun enclosed in a two-headed, fire-serpent with anthropomorphic gods in each of its heads. Finally, in the beliefs of both regions, the deceased traveled from west to east through the body of a subterranean serpent, and the most hopeful fate in the afterlife involved being granted passage with the sun.

Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne,

He travels the fastest who travels alone.

—Rudyard Kipling

Although it contains a zoo and a lake, the highlight of El Parque Museo de La Venta is a narrow path through the rain forest. Packs of wild coati, cousin to the raccoon, forage in the underbrush just as they did when the Olmec occupied this land. At points, the path suddenly broadens into small clearings, each confronting the visitor with a massive stone monument, often the face of an Olmec king staring across three millennia, its head taller than most visitors. No glass, ropes, or wires divide these priceless antiquities from the viewer, and only the verdant jungle shields them from the elements. On one towering stone column a man wrestles a shark. A life-size stone dolphin, worn with age, rests on the ground, while were-jaguar gods unsettle passersby with bizarre amalgams of feline and human elements.

But the most emotional moment comes from the thrones, intricately carved stone monoliths weighing up to 40 tons from which powerful rulers once commanded a nation, their likenesses still visible on the front of each monument. Surprisingly, many of these kings had themselves immortalized holding the limp body of a dead baby. One throne is so well preserved that the sorrow is visible in the king’s face. The guides say that he is crying, inferring that the baby is his own. And, indeed, it seems unlikely that the event would merit depiction on the front of his throne if the infant were not the king’s own.

But could such a thing really have happened? Could the people who created such magnificent works of art heartlessly kill their own children? Could the same minds that gave this part of the world its first writing, plumbing, calendar, murals, and monuments also rationalize infanticide?

Although, globally, child and infant sacrifice have been extremely rare throughout history, early Spanish chroniclers, including Sahagún and Durán, describe encountering infant sacrifice in conquest-era Mexico.[464] In modern times archaeologists have discovered the bones of sacrificed babies and young children in El Templo Mayor at the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán,[465] among the Maya in Actun Tunichil Muknal Cave and in the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá,[466] and at a site connected with Teotihuacán.[467]

In the 1980s at El Manatí near San Lorenzo archaeologists excavated a spring that contained Olmec ritual offerings and tiny bones initially thought to be monkey bones. However, analysis by Norma Valentín in 1989 proved them to be the remains of sacrificed human babies.[468]

INFANT SACRIFICE

The leading theory has it that the Olmecs sacrificed infants to invoke rain.[469] Yet the Olmecs lived in a rainforest and could certainly never have been so desperate for rain as to sacrifice their own babies to obtain it. Coe, for example, refers to an Olmec rain god as “a somewhat implausible hypothesis since the Olmec area is one of the rainiest in Mexico and could have had little need for such a supreme deity.”[470]

However, there is substantial evidence that the Olmec child sacrifices were offered to propitiate a rain god.[471] How does one reconcile this opposing evidence? How could people living in the steamy rain forests of Olman come to worship a rain god and sacrifice their babies to summon rain?

Figure 33. La Venta, Altar Five, one of several massive Olmec thrones whose central theme is the king holding a sacrificed baby, apparently his own. The guides say that the king is crying. (Photo by author)

We have already seen that the foundational beliefs and mythologies of the Olmecs parallel in remarkable detail those of the ancient Near East. Perhaps the rain god and sacrifices did not originate in Olman but were part of a religion adopted from a drier region. Among the Canaanites, who lived in a far more arid region, the chief deity was the storm or rain god, best known as Baal. The Hyksos assimilated the attributes of Baal with the Egyptian god Set and made him their primary deity. Perhaps the Olmecs simply perpetuated this older desert religion and rain god despite their much wetter surroundings.

GEHENNA

The sight of babies burning alive as religious offerings in Ge Hinnom, “the valley of Hinnom” to the southwest of Jerusalem, gave the name to an early Jewish conception of a fiery underworld for the souls of the wicked. In the Greek of the New Testament this became Gehenna, a term that Jesus used for hell,[472] and in the Arabic of the Qur’an it became the fiery underworld Jahannam.

This unspeakable ritual – so horrific that it gave name to our darkest notions of damnation – is best known from the Phoenician city of Carthage on the coast of what is now Tunisia in North Africa. Here archaeologists have excavated 20,000 urns containing the charred bones of sacrificed babies. Mesoamerica contains a similar site: “In Coxcatlan, in the Tehuacán Valley, a thousand urns were found, each containing the charred remains of children who had not died natural deaths.”[473]

CHILD OF THE KING

That a god would sacrifice his own son in this way parallels the Olmec thrones in which the king offers his own child. Such self-sacrifice by a ruler on behalf of his people has a long history in Mesoamerica. Mayan royalty commissioned elaborate reliefs advertising their sacrificial acts of bloodletting on behalf of their people, and the many Olmec images of the king with his sacrificed baby seem to have served a similar purpose. The king announces the magnitude of his sacrifice for his people. By comparison, anything he asked of them in terms of labor or taxation would seem a small request. And if he sent their children to war, well, he had already offered his own child for the greater good.

Figure 34. Left: Olmec sculpture of young man (father?) with sacrificed child iconographically deified. Right: Later Mesoamerican infant burial similar to those interred in pottery among the Canaanites, Hyksos, and Phoenicians. (Photos by author.)

One Mesoamerican myth has a god sacrificing his own son in a fire, whereupon the boy began to glow intensely and became the new sun. Another god did the same with his own child, who turned to ash and became the moon.[474] The inference seems to be that the human children thus offered became stars.

THE LEADER’S FIRST BORN

Textual evidence from the ancient Near East indicates a similar practice of a leader ritually killing his own child for the greater good. The Greek king Agamemnon, before setting out for the battle of Troy, sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to obtain favorable winds for the trip. The classical Greeks found this scandalous. Aeschylus and Euripides wrote plays exploring and explaining this event, while others went so far as to rewrite the legend so that Iphigenia did not really die after all. However, the stories of Troy were written early in Greek history, likely based on even earlier texts or oral traditions, and purported to record events from the Bronze Age when child sacrifice was less problematic.

In the Bible, in 2 Kings 3:27, the King of Moab, seeing his forces losing against Israel, “took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall.” An Ugaritic (Canaanite) tablet describes a similar event. And an Egyptian military relief from the time of Ramses II shows the desperate occupants of a besieged Canaanite town making a child sacrifice upon their city wall.[475]

The mighty Assyrian king Sennacherib beseeched a divine statue for military success, in exchange for which he promised to sacrifice his sons. His boys, hearing of the plan, bludgeoned Sennacherib to death with his statue.[476]

THE FILICIDE VOW

In other instances of filicide, the father escaped moral responsibility through the use of a peculiar vow. Thus, the Cretan leader Idomeneus promised Poseidon that he would sacrifice the first living thing he saw upon arriving home safely from Troy. This was his own son, whom he duly dispatched.

The Biblical leader Jephthah prepared for battle with a similar vow:

Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.[477]

Upon Jephthah’s victorious conquest of Ammon, his daughter, an only child, ran out to greet him. Jephthah informed her of his vow, whereupon she consented to be a burnt offering, only requesting two months reprieve to go to the mountains with her friends to bemoan her virginity.

Patrick Tierney argues that ancient Near Eastern leaders orchestrated these vows and homecomings with the end result of child sacrifice in mind.[478] At the very least, the fact that it was always the children who came out to greet the returning war heroes suggests that their wives knew to wait inside.

FOUNDATION SACRIFICES

Child sacrifice also aided construction projects. In I Kings 16:34, Hiel sacrificed his firstborn son and buried him in the foundations to ensure his success in rebuilding Jericho. For good measure, he sacrificed his youngest son and buried him beneath the city’s gates.

The remains of sacrificed children have been found within the foundations of major structures in ancient Canaan.[479] And excavations at Tell el Retabeh in the Egyptian delta unearthed the skeleton of a baby left as a foundation deposit by Canaanites living in Egypt.[480] This practice continued in Egypt for centuries: “Infants’ bodies were discovered in foundations laid as late as the Twenty-second Dynasty (950–720 B.C.).”[481]

Excavations at San Lorenzo, the site of the first Olmec capital, have likewise uncovered the remains of human infants in foundation deposits beneath major monuments.[482]

THEOLOGY

This barbaric ritual seems buried in remote antiquity, safely removed from and irrelevant to our lives. However . . .

In what has become one of the most problematic passages in the Bible, God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac. However, this story ends very differently from the typical child sacrifice of the time; God provides a ram as a substitute and Abraham releases Isaac. So important was this moment that Mount Moriah where Abraham built his altar and prepared Isaac for sacrifice (Genesis 22:2) became the Temple Mount (2 Chronicles 3:1), the holiest site in Judaism and the location of the altar for subsequent animal sacrifices.

Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard’s influential book-length interpretation of this event, introduced the concept of a “leap of faith” and laid the philosophical foundations for existentialism. However, I suspect that for this narrative’s initial audience, the real significance of this story lay not in Abraham’s internal existential deliberations (which the Bible does not even mention) but in the conceptual revolution of replacing the child sacrifice with a substitute. This substitution continued to be a central theme . . .

THE MATRIX OPENERS

Centuries after Joseph brought his family into Egypt, their descendants found themselves under a new and oppressive regime. Yahweh gained their release by sending the angel of death to kill all first-born children. Here again God offered a substitute; anyone who sacrificed a lamb and marked their doorpost with its blood would have their child spared from the slaughter. In the morning, the Egyptians, mourning their dead children and convinced of the power of Yahweh, freed the Jews, an event that is remembered every year at Passover.

After this, God tells Moses that every first-born male animal and human is His (Exodus 13:1–2), but allows the possibility of using a lamb as a substitute. Per Exodus 13:13:

And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem.

The next two verses then provide an explanation for this need to kill or redeem all firstborns:

And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage: And it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast: therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the matrix, being males; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem.

God still claims each firstborn male, but with the expectation that devotees will take advantage of the provided loophole and sacrifice lambs in place of their children. Likewise, in excavating the later Phoenician Tophet at Carthage, archaeologists found “the urns that held the ashes and charred bones of children and substitute lambs sacrificed to these deities.”[483]

In the Bible, a second substitute for the sacrifice of the first-born was the setting aside of the tribe of Levi for hereditary service as priests. Per Numbers 3:12–13:

And I, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the firstborn that openeth the matrix among the children of Israel: therefore the Levites shall be mine . . .

(Much the same is stated in Numbers 3:41–46 and 8:15–18).

CHRISTIANITY

The Last Supper was Jesus’s celebration of the Passover Seder (the remembrance of being spared from the slaughter of first-born children and freed from Egypt). On this night, Jesus was taken to be crucified, becoming the symbolic Passover lamb, a new sacrifice in place of the lamb, which had taken the place of child sacrifice. However, this was also child sacrifice but of a far higher order. The central theme of Christianity is often summed up with John 3:16:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Here on a macrocosmic scale is the ultimate manifestation of this ancient paradigm of the great king offering his child for sacrifice on behalf of his people.

The Olmecs and Canaanites not only shared the bizarre and gruesome practice of ritually murdering babies, but, among both, leaders sacrificed their own children for the greater good of their people, infants were used for dedicatory foundation burials, and the sacrifices were offered to a storm god. These two cultures seem almost to have shared the same religion. They certainly looked at the world the same way, held the same beliefs, and practiced the same rituals.

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Lest sacrificing babies not be sufficient to mar their historical reputation, the Canaanites and Hyksos also killed puppies, a practice that is well documented both archaeologically and textually.[484] Isaiah 66:3 mentions the sacrifice of dogs in a short list of local practices that were abhorrent to Judaism. And numerous archaeological examples have been found of dogs deliberately sacrificed to accompany Canaanite and Hyksos burials.[485]

GUIDE DOGS FOR THE DEAD

Sacrificed dogs also accompanied human burials in Mesoamerica (including at Tlatilco, among the Aztecs, at Teotihuacán, at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, at Xoxocotlan, Oaxaca, at Uaxactum, and in numerous graves at Chupícuaro[486]). The Maya sacrificed dogs as burial retainers in the Early and Middle Classic but began to phase out the practice in the Late Classic period.[487]

The Aztecs considered canine retainer sacrifices essential to a soul’s success in the afterlife. Without one a soul could not cross the underworld river Chicunanhuapan “Nine Waters.” Toward this end they raised dogs specifically to be sacrificed at the funeral and placed in the burial.[488]

Little skeletal matter has survived in the wet, acidic soils of Olman. However, the early pan-Mesoamerican nature of such dog burials suggests that its roots go back to the Olmecs, as does the use of this practice at the heavily Olmec-influenced site of Tlatilco.[489]

DOG GOD PSYCHOPOMPS

The skeletal masks and effigies of the modern Mexican Día de los Muertos “Day of the Dead” celebrations derive from Xolotl, the god of the dead. The Aztecs often depicted this god as a dog or a dog-headed man,[490] and Xolotl literally means “dog.”[491] Similarly, among the Maya, the guardian of the dead was the anthropomorphic dog-god Pek.[492]

Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, was also depicted as both a canine and as a man with a canine head. (The Anubis-animal contains both dog-like and jackal-like features and may have been a cross-breed.[493]) And both Anubis and Xolotl were psychopomps, guides who led souls through the underworld.

The Mesoamerican practice of sacrificing a dog and burying it with the deceased mirrors a Canaanite (and Hyksos) burial ritual, yet their anthropomorphized canine psychopomps parallel Egyptian funerary belief. In the Old World, these traditions overlap in only one place, Lower Egypt at the time of the Hyksos.

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

– Jesus, John 12:24

While it may seem like a small thing, a V-shaped notch in the top of the head of certain Olmec figures has spawned more theories than any other aspect of Olmec iconography. In 1929, two papers by Marshall Saville argued that this notch represented a wound, which he believed identified the god as Tezcatlipoca.[494] Others proposed identifying this notch with a depression in a jaguar’s skull or the fontanelle of a human newborn.[495] Peter Furst argued that this notch represents an indentation in the head of the Bufo toad, an animal that the Olmec appear to have employed for its psychoactive properties.[496] Another theory has it that the cleft heads represent “some congenital abnormality like spina bifida.”[497]

However, Mayanist Linda Schele drew attention to a number of two-dimensional depictions of this god in which a young plant grows up from the notch (see Fig. 35). This motif of a plant growing from the head of a god continued among the Maya[498] and other Mesoamerican groups[499] with a clear line of descent from this Olmec motif.

Schele argued that these plants represented a world tree, a mythic archetype (best known from Indo-European mythology) of an enormous tree that supports the heavens. However, what emerges from these notches is not a single, special, archetypal axis mundi, but a variety of young domesticated plants (most commonly corn) in various stages of sprouting.[500]

I would argue that the focus in these images on the action of sprouting suggests that the notch itself is resultant of and iconic of that activity. That is, the notch was forced open as the seed sprouted and symbolized the sprouting of seeds.

THE CORN-OSIRIS

In an important ancient Egyptian ritual, seeds were planted in a molded figure of Osiris and then allowed to sprout. To quote Egyptologist Barbara Watterson:

Annually, at the beginning of the fourth month of the Egyptian year, at the time when the Innundation waters were beginning to recede and the fields to re-emerge from the flood ready to receive seed, Egyptians made little clay figures shaped to look like Osiris, and pressed seeds into them. Within a short time, the seeds germinated.[501]

The resultant figure is referred to as a “corn-Osiris.” (The use of the term “corn” here may be distracting as Americans generally refer the term exclusively to the New World crop also known as “maize,” while the British use it to refer to grain generally, as in this term.)

The many Olmec depictions of a figure with a plant sprouting out of its head suggest a similar practice, and later Mesoamerican ritual supports this interpretation. For example, Sahagún observed that the Aztecs covered the face of their god Tlaloc with liquid rubber and then encrusted it with amaranth seeds. They believed that this god “caused the trees, the grasses, the maize to blossom, to sprout, to leaf out, to bloom, to grow.”[502] And the Mexican artist and anthropologist Miguel Covarrubias argued, on the basis of this god’s iconography, that Tlaloc derived from an earlier Olmec deity. The name Tlaloc means “Path Beneath the Earth” or “Long Cave”[503] and recalls Osiris’ personification of a similar underworld.

Figure 35. Olmec art arranged to show the progression of the sprouting of a seed embedded in the head of certain figurines. This explains the mysterious notch in its head and recalls the Egyptian ritual of the corn-Osiris. (Redrawn by author to make more visible the ancient etched lines.)

THE FUNERARY CORN-OSIRIS

The Egyptians created a second type of corn-Osiris for funerals. In this case, they created a flat bed of earth whose outline took the shape of the mummy of Osiris and sowed it like a field: “Within a short time, the seeds germinated and a miniature corn-field appeared, shaped like Osiris.”[504]

The indigenous people of the Olmec region observed nine days of mourning for their dead.[505] In the 1940s, Mesoamerican scholar Miguel Covarrubias, while visiting the village of Tlacotepec in the Olman region, observed the traditional ritual that occupied these nine days:

In Tlacotepec, a beautiful little village by a spring in the neighborhood of Ixtepec, it is customary to plant grains of corn all over the grave, which is watered every day, so that the corn sprouts, and by the ninth day it had become a miniature cornfield.[506]

Like the funerary corn-Osiris, this formed a miniature field in roughly the shape of a prone person. And, from a record of the corn-Osiris rituals performed at the ancient Egyptian city of Abydos, we know that this ritual also lasted exactly nine days.

THE METAPHOR

The funerary corn-Osiris, with its dead seeds springing to life, served as a metaphor for the hoped-for renewal of the body of the deceased. Per Watterson:

For king and commoner alike corn-Osirises were designed to show that just as grain, a seemingly dead substance, can sprout into life, so also could a dead body come to life again.[507]

This metaphor was equally central to ancient Mesoamerican belief, as Jill McKeever Furst noted in her definitive study of the Codex Vindobonensis:

Repeatedly in the preceding pages, skulls, skeletal jaws and skeletonization in general have emerged not, as might have been expected, as symbols of death but rather of generation and fertility. . . . skeletal remains were – and in fact, here and there continue to be – regarded as the seat of the essential life force and the metaphorical seed from which the individual, whether human, animal or plant, is reborn. . . . These beliefs may help to explain why to this day in Mexico and Guatemala the large hard seeds of such fruits as the avocado are called hueso – bone – rather than semilla, seed.[508]

An ancient Aztec song speaks from the perspective of the deceased, using this metaphor of germinating seeds to describe his entrance or birth into the heaven Tlalocan:

As white and yellow maize I am born,

The many-colored flower of living flesh rises up

and opens its glistening seeds before the face of our mother.

In the moisture of Tlalocan, the quetzal water-plants open their corollas.

I am the work of the only god, his creation.[509]

This verdant heaven was both an agrarian paradise and the embodiment of this metaphor of the dead sprouting again into life. Although the Aztecs cremated some of their dead (a late practice not present at the time of the Olmecs), those considered fortunate enough to be bound for Tlalocan had their bodies carefully protected and buried. Further ritualizing the metaphor, they placed seeds on the body’s face.

Tlaloc and Osiris have more in common than the rituals of pressing seeds into their figurines. Like Tlaloc, Osiris served seemingly incongruous roles as a god of vegetation, of the underworld, and of a unique agrarian heaven. The Egyptians believed that the righteous deceased went to Sekhet Aaru, the “Reed Fields,” an agricultural paradise of abundantly productive fields ruled over by Osiris. This inspired the Elysian Fields of the Greeks and Romans, which Horace described as “fields of Paradise . . . Where yearly the soil without tillage bestoweth the harvests unfailing,”[510] and where Hesiod, seven centuries earlier, envisioned the afterlife of “happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing thrice a year.”[511] The Hyksos called Osiris by the Semitic name Dhû ladêyu mar‘îtu, “He in Whose Charge is the Meadow,” referring to his command of this verdant paradise.[512]

Thus, the ancient Egyptians and Mesoamericans used the same religious symbolism, picturing the deceased as a dead seed and affirming a future renewal akin to germination. Both cultures gave ritual form to this metaphor by embedding seeds within a figurine, so that their sprouting illustrated the hoped-for emergence of life from death. Finally, the gods whose images were used in these rituals, Osiris and Tlaloc, played similar roles as gods of vegetation and the underworld and rulers of a verdant afterlife.

While numerous theories have been offered to explain the cleft foreheads of certain Olmec figures (a wound, the fontanelle of a human baby, the skull of a jaguar, the head of a Bufo toad, or a congenital abnormality), each of these fails to explain why a plant should be shown emerging from this crack. The world tree theory, on the other hand, acknowledges the plant but fails to explain why it should be portrayed as tiny sprouts nor why it consistently emerges from a figure’s head. Here again the hypothesis of Hyksos contact explains the evidence better than previously existing theories. That these figures depict a form of corn-Osiris explains the crack, the plant, and its purpose and is consistent with later Mesoamerican ritual and belief.

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

—Lucifer addressing his minions. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, line 261.

Say not a word in death's favour; I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead.

—The soul of Achilles addressing Odysseus during his journey to Hades. Homer, The Odyssey, Book XI, line 488.

At the beginning of the Hyksos period, Avaris “expanded rapidly to two or three times its previous size.”[513] Excavations revealed overcrowding so severe that even the cemeteries were covered with homes. With nowhere to bury their dead, the Hyksos began digging graves into the floors of their still-occupied homes.[514]

OLMEC BURIALS

Unfortunately, Olman’s acidic soil and frequent rain destroyed most skeletal remains. Unable to find any burials in their extensive excavations at San Lorenzo, Coe and Diehl looked to the contemporaneous site of Tlatilco for an example of Olmec burials.[515] Tlatilco lies beyond the acidic soils of Olman, yet is contemporaneous with San Lorenzo and contains numerous Olmec artifacts and artistic motifs, clear evidence of a strong cultural influence from the San Lorenzo Olmecs.[516] Here more than 500 Formative period graves have been discovered, each apparently “buried beneath the floor of their own house.”[517]

This practice became the norm in later Mesoamerica. The Maya, for example, “typically buried people in the floors of their houses, rather than in cemeteries,”[518] while the Aztecs continued house burials alongside other funerary practices.[519]

ROYAL BURIALS

No Hyksos royal burials have been found, likely having been destroyed by the conquering Egyptians. However, there is evidence that the Hyksos pharaohs adopted Egyptian funerary belief.[520] In Egyptian practice at the time, a royal body would be mummified, adorned with a burial mask and heart scarab, placed in a large sarcophagus carved of a single piece of stone, and placed in the stone-lined inner chamber of a pyramid.

Although no intact Olmec burials have been found, these elements are known to have been present. Similar monolithic stone sarcophagi have been found at Olmec sites.[521] Numerous Olmec burials masks are also known. (That they were intended to be worn by the dead is indicated by the lack of eyeholes and by the find of similar masks on human remains at later Mesoamerican sites.) And the Olmecs erected mortuary pyramids using the same methods and materials as were used in Egypt at the time of the Hyksos. (Pyramids will be discussed shortly under the rubric of architecture.)

Had the Olmecs also attempted to mummify their royal burials, the task would have been futile. Even the best Egyptian preservation techniques would have eventually failed in Olman’s wet climate and acidic soil. But did they try? Their elaborate sarcophagi, masks, and pyramids are certainly consistent with attempts at preserving the body for the afterlife. So are later Mesoamerican beliefs, in which the preservation of a person’s physical remains was considered crucial to their well-being in the afterlife. Even when they were only able to preserve the skeleton, they were zealous in protecting it.[522]

Figure 36. On unearthing the large ornate stone box at left (Tres Zapotes Monument C), Matthew Stirling speculated, “The receptacle was probably used for holding the sacrificial blood.”[523] However, additional examples such as La Venta, Monument 6 (center), indicate that these objects were monolithic stone sarcophagi with matching lids, much like those used in Egypt at the time (right) and among the Maya who succeeded the Olmecs.

Just as the later Maya continued the use of house burials for their commoners, so their royal burials also perpetuated these same elements. Thus, the great king Pacal was found wearing a burial mask within a monolithic stone sarcophagus inside a mortuary pyramid.

GREEN STONE HEART

In ancient Egypt, a small green rock was essential to one’s survival in the afterlife. Known as the “heart scarab,” it was placed over the mummy’s heart or within its body and was believed to open the deceased’s mouth in the afterlife, without which they could not eat, speak, or live in that world.[524] Moreover, this green stone was said to become the deceased’s ka, their “heart” or “spirit.”[525]

Likewise, the Florentine Codex described the traditional Aztec preparation of the dead: “And when the rulers and noblemen died, they put green stones in their mouths. And if they were commoners, [they used] only greenish stones or obsidian. It was said that they became their hearts.”[526]

Archaeologists occasionally find the green-stone hearts still in place:

In 1966 the archaeologist Eduardo Contreras found a clay ‘olla’ which had been used as an urn. It contained the skeleton of a child in a good state of preservation. A green stone had been placed in the mouth, which in Aztec mythology is taken to represent the soul of the deceased.[527]

Diego de Landa observed Mayan burial practices, and they also inserted certain stones into the mouths of the dead.[528] Although Landa does not mention their color, we know from other sources that the Maya also used “green stones or small jade beads” for this ritual.[529]

Without an intact Olmec burial or textual evidence of their funerary practices, it is impossible to know whether this practice also began among them, although it seems likely. Hopefully, one or more intact Olmec royal burials will soon be found, perhaps within the Great Pyramid at La Venta.

The Hyksos buried their dead beneath their houses, and common Mesoamerican burials at the time of the Olmecs followed this same pattern. Royal burials among the Egyptians and Olmecs also share a number of common elements, including the use of a burial mask and the placement of the body within a monolithic stone sarcophagus and inside a stone-lined chamber within a mortuary pyramid. Furthermore, both Egyptians and Mesoamericans considered it essential to bury the dead with a green stone that served as their heart in the afterlife.

In the elder days of Art,

Builders wrought with greatest care

Each minute and unseen part;

For the gods see everywhere.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We have seen that these cultures shared common beliefs (about creation, the flood, death, burial, and the afterlife) and also common rituals (including bloodletting, infant sacrifice, and the corn-Osiris). Together, these constitute the elements of a religion. But the most obvious archaeological marker of the spread of a religion is architecture. Religious buildings dominated ancient skylines and often continue to dominate archaeological sites. Religious requirements often resulted in a remarkable level of architectural consistency over vast distances and long periods of time. To this day, in most any country in the world, on spotting a religious building, one can usually deduce its builders’ religion at a glance, be it a synagogue in Chicago, a mosque in Sydney, or a church in Kenya. Ancient Egyptian architecture likewise followed its own canon of religious requirements and aesthetic expectations, and early Olmec architecture conformed to the same standards.

The Olmecs, mobilized by ambitious rulers and fortified by a pantheon of gods, moved a veritable mountain of earth to create a plateau above the plain, and there planted a city, the ruins of which are known today as San Lorenzo.

—John Noble Wilford[530]

The Olmecs could have built their communities on the coast or in the mountains nearer to the stone that they so valued for their monuments. Instead they built their first city on the banks of an annually flooding river and farmed its flood plains. This is an exact parallel of ancient Egyptian agriculture, as Coe observed in excavating San Lorenzo:

The natural river levees which are annually inundated now afford a dependable and tremendously productive corn agriculture, a situation almost paralleling that of the Nile Valley and one which must have prevailed in Olmec times as well.[531]

However, the Hyksos capital at Avaris differed from other Egyptian (and world) cities in that it lay not merely beside the river but within it, perched on a handful of islands. The same was true of its successor, Pi-Rameses, which Ramses II had constructed on and adjacent to ancient Avaris. (In addition to the islands within the river, it also occupied marginal islands that rejoined the mainland during the dry season. Thus, its inhabitants, including the Semitic laborers that built Pi-Rameses, were uniquely in tune with the local hydraulic cycles, which is relevant to the proposition put forward in Chapter 12.)

While from a global perspective such a precarious location is extremely rare, the Olmecs likewise built San Lorenzo on an island (within the Coatzacoalcos River).3 And Matthew Stirling summed up the unusual geography of their subsequent capital, La Venta, in a letter to the editor of the National Geographic, “The site of La Venta is very curious from a geographic standpoint as it consists of an island of high sandy ground in the midst of the great coastal plain swamp.” (La Venta lay between branches of the Palma River.)

On both sides of the Atlantic, these riverine-island cities were made even more precarious in that they each lay within a delta—land formed entirely of river deposited silt—where the lack of natural stone left each river free to erode its banks and alter its course. But both cultures appear to have relied on their remarkable engineering abilities for protection.

EARTH MOVERS

Canaanites of the Middle Bronze Age raised steep artificial mesas for their cities. Beginning with an existing mound, they piled enormous quantities of earth around it, extending and sculpting its sides into a unique, defensible plateau.

The system of fortifications used by the MB II culture of Syria-Palestine is one of the most characteristic aspects of this period. . . . The first step in the construction of the defenses was to add a large amount of fill to the outer slopes of the city tell to make its sides higher and steeper. It also had the effect of making the area of the city at the top larger.[532]

The Hyksos city of Sharuhen followed this Canaanite convention and included massive earthen ramparts.[533] (Avaris was originally an Egyptian city and thus was not built in this way.) The Olmecs took the exact same approach to the construction of their first city, San Lorenzo:

San Lorenzo’s inhabitants modified the natural shape of their plateau by constructing six outwardly projecting, artificial ridges on the north, south, and west sides. To date, only the Group D ridge . . . has been excavated extensively. However, these excavations reveal the magnitude of Olmec construction projects: human carriers transported an estimated 67,000 cubic meters of soil in baskets to create a platform approximately 200 meters long, 50 meters wide, and 6.5 meters high![534]

Thus, both cultures began with a pre-existing plateau, then expended countless man-hours adding fill to sculpt and extend its borders and increase its defensibility.

CONSTRUCTION AS CREATION

For the ancient Egyptians, building a temple reenacted the creation of the world. The pharaoh himself conducted the opening ceremony known as pedj-shes “stretching the cord,” described here by Egyptologist Barbara Watterson:

The first ritual, which was carried out at night, was entitled, ‘Stretching the Cord’, whereby the building was oriented by aligning two stakes on a star . . . In the second ritual, ‘Releasing the Cord’, the groundplan of the temple was marked out using four stakes and a length of gypsum-coated rope which was flicked so that traces of gypsum were left on the ground.[535]

This parallels the opening passage of the most important surviving Mayan book, the Popul Vuh. Recording beliefs that are believed to date to Olmec times, this “Mayan Bible” also begins with a ritual reenactment of the creation of the world:

It takes a long performance and account to complete the lighting of all the sky-earth:

the fourfold siding, fourfold cornering,

measuring, fourfold staking,

halving the cord, stretching the cord

in the sky, on the earth,

the four sides, the four corners, as it is said,

by the Maker, Modeler[536]

In both rituals, priests reenacted the creation of the world by stretching a cord around four stakes. The opening line of the Popul Vuh states that this ritual “is to complete the lighting of all the sky-earth,”[537] suggesting that this Mayan ceremony, like its Egyptian counterpart, took place at night. For the Egyptian ritual this was because the priests aligned the stretched cord and the future temple with a star.[538] The Mayan “stretching the cord in the sky, on the earth” suggests that this ritual also involved a celestial alignment, and archaeology confirms that such alignments took place. At the Olmec city of La Venta, for example, all of the major structures are oriented 8° west of north. Dr. Marion Popenoe de Hatch has interpreted this as an alignment with the star Eta Draconis in the constellation Draco.[539] The Egyptians likewise aligned their temples with “the stars of a northern circumpolar constellation.”[540] The exact star that the Egyptians used changed over the centuries because of precession. The most certain Egyptian alignments come from narrow shafts emanating from Khufu’s burial chamber in the Great Pyramid at Giza. One of these pointed to Orion’s Belt, while the other aimed at the star Thuban in the constellation Draco. This is the same constellation with which La Venta was aligned.[541]

This ability seems to have been lost over time, although it continued to be attempted. J. E. S. Thompson took extensive measurements in order to determine the orientation of Mayan buildings but found that, when surveyed, the angles of walls that appeared parallel or perpendicular actually varied significantly:

One suspects that . . . the Maya sought uniform orientation, and so variation arises from sloppiness, for such variability occurs all over the Maya area . . . Divergence of one wall from another presumably resulted from the inability of the Maya to lay out true right angles.[542]

The Aztecs also had trouble aligning their buildings. Motolinía records the construction of the great temple of Huitzilopochtli so that the rays of the sun would fall directly through its center on the equinox and signal the great feast. However, the dramatic spectacle fell flat because the temple “was a little twisted.”[543]

THE COLUMNAR FAÇADE

In Europe and America, older banks, museums, and government buildings often have façades dominated by large stone columns. By echoing the temples of the Roman Empire, this neoclassical architecture lent the structures gravitas. Ironically, the Romans themselves had sought a greater sense of history and gravitas for their buildings by copying directly from the earlier temples of the Greeks, whose own architects, in turn, had emulated the still earlier temples of ancient Egypt.

Although the pyramids are the best known of Egypt’s architectural achievements, their temples were similarly colossal and impressive. The bulk of an Egyptian temple consisted of the hypostyle hall, a large room formed by rows of enormous stone columns (some seven stories high) supporting a stone roof. Among the Hyksos, these rows of columns can be seen in both temples (including the colonnades of the  Ezbet Rushdi temple near Avaris) and royal dwellings, such as the “Southern Palace” at Avaris.

THE MESOAMERICAN HYPOSTYLE HALL

Similar temples colonnades adorn many ancient Mesoamerican cities. What is especially striking is that this use of stone columns began with the Olmecs. For here they can have had no practical architectural purpose since the bulk of their buildings were constructed of wood, thatch, and adobe brick.

Matthew Stirling uncovered a pair of 14-foot stone columns at San Lorenzo,[544] and several more large stone columns have been uncovered since, most recently with the excavation of the “Red Palace.”[545] Given the lack of local stone and the difficulties involved in obtaining and carving it, the Olmecs must have placed great value on stone columns. And it was one of their earliest priorities: stratigraphically, the oldest monument excavated at San Lorenzo is a basalt column.[546]

While the Egyptian columns were functional, supporting massive stone lintels and roofing beams, Olmec buildings are thought to have had thatched roofs. Thus, the Olmec use of stone columns seems to have been dictated by cultural or religious, rather than architectural, concerns. An exported notion of what was appropriate for the construction of a temple would explain the enormous lengths that they went to in order to quarry, transport, and carve large stone columns to support their thatch roofs.

TIME CAPSULES

During construction, the Hyksos also followed the Egyptian custom of burying time capsules under the corners of their temples and beneath paths used for ritual processions along an axis through the temple courtyard. Known as foundation deposits, these consist largely of ceremonial copies of construction tools but can also include pottery, basketry, and sample construction materials.[547]

Likewise at Olmec sites, archaeologists frequently find caches of tools and pottery deliberately buried beneath buildings and along an axis beneath ceremonial plazas.[548] Like the Hyksos foundation deposits, those of the Olmecs consist primarily of ceremonial models of construction tools but can also include pottery and ritual implements.[549] Both cultures also placed these caches beneath stone monuments.[550] And the discovery of both Hyksos and Olmec foundation deposits containing the remains of sacrificed infants was discussed in Chapter 22.

METAL

The Egyptian and Olmec caches differed in one regard: the Egyptians could include metal tools, while the Olmecs seem to have lacked metal altogether. However, this does not necessarily preclude contact and cultural exchange between the two societies. In the Old World at the time of the Hyksos, metallurgical skills were military secrets of the highest order. All else being equal, an army with bronze weapons and armor could decimate one outfitted with copper. Even today, when such knowledge is freely available, how many of us, if washed up on an isolated Mexican coast, could locate and mine the appropriate ores, fashion metal working tools, create a furnace of sufficient heat, and successfully smelt and forge metal?

Even knowledgeable metallurgists would have been hard-pressed to ply their trade amidst the Olmecs. For theirs was a land of deltas and flood plains, built up of river-deposited silt and sorely lacking in mineral resources, much like the delta home of the Hyksos, where metal was also rare in foundation deposits.

Figure 37. Left: Olmec column with reliefs in the Mexican Museum of Anthropology.  Middle: An Egyptian foundation deposit from the temple of Thutmose III at Deir el-Bahari, including axes, adzes, and two stakes from the temple’s stretching of the cord ceremony. Remarkably, the wood and lashings were preserved intact. Right: Olmec foundation deposit of axe and adze heads.

Each of these cultures located its capital city on a hill (artificially extended) on an island within a river in a marshy delta, and both aligned their major ceremonial buildings with the constellation Draco, ritually reenacted creation through a nocturnal ritual stretching a cord on four stakes, adorned their temples with worshipped in temples adorned with stone colonnades, and buried time capsules with models of construction tools beneath major architectural features prior to construction.

But, of course, the most famous of their architectural achievements are the pyramids . . .

You have come tonight to the most fabulous and celebrated place in the world. Here on the Plateau of Giza stands forever the mightiest of human achievements. No traveler, emperor, merchant, or poet has trodden on these sands and not gasped in awe.

—The Light and Sound Show at Giza.

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden

After more than a thousand years of building pyramids, the Egyptians suddenly stopped after the expulsion of the Hyksos, never to resume. The last Egyptian pyramid was that of Ahmose, the southern Egyptian pharaoh who finally defeated the Hyksos. What made them stop at this moment is not known.

Nor is it known where the Hyksos buried their pharaohs. Every indication is that they would have built pyramids, much like their contemporaries in southern Egypt and their own predecessors (such as Khendjer, a pre-Hyksos ruler of Canaanite origin). Yet not a single Hyksos pyramid has ever been found. Some argue, reasonably, that Ahmose leveled their pyramids or that their stone was quarried for other projects over time.[551] Yet it is peculiar that not even a trace of foundation has been found.

IPUWER

Once again, the textual evidence may shed some light on the darker corners of the archaeological record. In documenting the tragic decline of his country, the scribe Ipuwer lamented, “Behold, he who was buried as a hawk is . . . What the pyramid concealed is become empty.”[552] The ellipses here mark damage to the manuscript. Nevertheless, the meaning is clear. “He who was buried as a hawk” is the pharaoh. His tomb, the pyramid, has been emptied. We seem to have here a contemporary record of when at least some of the pyramids were violated and by whom, the Hyksos.

But this isn’t the whole story. The pyramids weren’t initially looted, as has always been assumed. They were usurped. The Hyksos did not see themselves as passing through. They were the new Egypt. And why should the pyramids not reflect the new order? Thus, Ipuwer continues:

He who could make for himself no sarcophagus is now possessor of a tomb. Behold, the possessors of tombs are driven out on the high ground. He who could make for himself no coffin is now possessor of a treasury.[553]

The invaders took over the Egyptian tombs and threw their old mummies out on the ground. They even claimed the deceased’s post-mortem treasury for their own journey into the afterlife. The Hyksos had become Egyptianized, and their rulers desired both the life and afterlife of a pharaoh. So they had themselves sent into the afterlife with all of the riches and wealth of the great pharaohs of the past, by tossing out old mummies and usurping their pyramids and treasuries.

This suggests that at least some of the pyramids had remained inviolate until this point. They had been constructed so as to be nearly impenetrable. And they would have been protected by royal guards whose lives were at stake should the pyramids be desecrated.

Having reached this conclusion from the textual evidence, I happened upon Danish Egyptologist Kim Ryholt’s impressive list of archaeological evidence for numerous Egyptian pyramids having been looted by the Hyksos.[554] However, it is noteworthy that this looting took place at the time of Apophis, the penultimate Hyksos king. It was Apophis who, over a 40-year reign, dealt with the first two Egyptian uprisings and lost the Hyksos suzerainty over southern Egypt. Before withdrawing from the south, he appears to have raided its pyramids and temples and had the bounty shipped north to Avaris.[555] (Fortunately, he did history the favor of adding his own inscriptions to many of the appropriated monuments, so it is clear exactly when this happened.)

That the Hyksos waited a century to loot the pyramids is consistent with their having initially adopted these tombs as their own. Moreover, an inscription at Bubastis indicates that the Hyksos Pharaoh Khayan (the predecessor of Apophis) had appropriated an existing Ka-temple for his own journey into the afterlife.[556] Thus, at least some of the Hyksos pharaohs had adopted the monuments of earlier pharaohs for their own journey into the afterlife. Did Khayan and others also adopt the pyramids and their treasuries, as Ipuwer indicates?

Hyksos ceramics were found inside the pyramid of Amenemhet III.[557] This suggests that they were actually making use of the pyramid. If they had only been sacking it for valuables, there would have been no reason to haul in their own ceramics and leave them there.

THE END OF PYRAMID BUILDING

This also reveals why, after more than a thousand years of building pyramids for their royal burials, the Egyptians suddenly stopped. These massive structures had been the bank vaults of the afterlife, promising eternal protection for the pharaoh’s body and wealth. With the Hyksos conquest, the Egyptians learned that these pyramids, while well built and well guarded against domestic elements, could not withstand a foreign invasion and, in fact, attracted far too much attention. Afterward, the pharaohs sought greater security for their mortal remains by tunneling tombs deep in the rock walls and floor of a secluded desert valley now known as the Valley of the Kings and covering each tomb’s entrance to obscure any evidence of its existence. The Hyksos had forced the eternity-obsessed Egyptians to confront the previously unthinkable possibility that Egypt could be conquered and her god-like pharaohs tossed from their pyramids to rot.

This may also explain why no Hyksos royal tombs or mummies have ever been found. They had usurped the greatest mausoleums in human history. Any mummies that the departing Hyksos did not take with them, the Egyptian insurgency would have removed with extreme prejudice.

This may even explain why most pyramids were found completely empty, not merely robbed of their valuables in the typical smash-and-grab approach of grave robbers. Instead of being stripped by thieves in the night, as has usually been assumed, the grave goods may have been systematically removed and relocated by the authorities. After all, grave robbers generally only take the portable, saleable valuables, leaving much material behind. A similar official relocation is known to have taken place later in the 21st Dynasty, when the priests of Amun systematically cleared out the tombs of the Valley of the Kings and relocated the bodies.

A PYRAMID CONNECTION?

In the past, the most common argument for a connection between ancient Mexico and Egypt pointed to their common use of enormous stone pyramids. However, the terms of this alleged parallel have generally been misguided, often consisting of a comparison between the great pyramids of Giza built circa 2700 BC and Mayan pyramids from circa 1000 AD. Although these are the best known pyramids from the two regions, they are not the only ones and, being nearly 4000 years apart, are not useful for exploring the question of whether contact took place between the two regions.

HYKSOS-ERA PYRAMIDS

The pyramid of Ahmose (Egypt’s last) and the pyramid of Khendjer (a pre-Hyksos ruler of Canaanite origin) each consisted of limestone facing over a cheaper core (rubble in the first instance and mud brick in the second). And in 2001, the German Institute of Archaeology discovered the tomb of Nub-Kheper-Ra Intef, another southern Egyptian ruler from the time of the Hyksos, beneath the remains of a mud-brick pyramid.

OLMEC PYRAMIDS

The Olmecs also left a number of mortuary pyramids. Many are now heavily eroded after three thousand years of tropical rain. But, in some cases, courses of unfired adobe bricks can still be distinguished within.[558] Moreover, a recent surprise came when the partial excavation of La Venta’s “Great Pyramid” (Mound C–1) by Rebecca Gonzaléz-Lauck revealed that this pyramid had originally been faced with white limestone slabs. Its construction thus closely parallels that of the pyramids of Ahmose and Khendjer.

While the pyramids at most Olmec sites were clearly built by the Olmecs, there has been some controversy about those of San Lorenzo. The most impressive pyramids at San Lorenzo are part of a complex of ritual buildings that lie beneath the modern village of Tenochtitlán.[559] Because modern structures and inhabitants limited access, the Yale team “did not conduct extensive excavations at the Tenochtitlán site. We investigated sufficiently to outline its occupational history, date one major structure . . . ”[560] Pottery sherds indicated a significant San Lorenzo Period occupation, but the site had been reoccupied and reworked during the later Villa Alta Period. The structures that they examined appeared to “belong to the Villa Alta phase or at least have substantial Villa Alta additions on top of earlier structures.”[561] On this basis, some have argued that San Lorenzo originally lacked pyramids. However, the find of San Lorenzo Period ceramics within the structures, and the fact that the pyramids were incorporated in a site plan strikingly similar to the distinctly Olmec layout known from La Venta and elsewhere, led the Yale team to conclude that the Villa Alta pyramids had been built over and “following an underlying Olmec pattern.”[562] It was common in ancient Mesoamerica for an existing pyramid to be built over and expanded into a larger, newer pyramid, sometimes repeatedly so, gifting archaeologists with a matryoshka-doll stack of anciently entombed pyramids.

The Olmec and Hyksos-era Egyptian pyramids were constructed of the same materials and served the same mortuary function. And leaders of both societies focused their largest discretionary expenditure of manpower on the construction of these tombs. The scale of Egypt’s pyramids is well known. Likewise, the Olmec “Great Pyramid” at La Venta, despite nearly three millennia of erosion and the misguided demolition of the top few meters by treasure hunters, stands 110 ft (34 meters or 11 stories) high and once gleamed with white limestone.

Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.

—Benjamin Franklin, “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America.”

Much as in Las Vegas today, ancient Egyptian building planners defied the desert by incorporating opulent displays of water in their architecture. Most temples had an impressive shi-netjer, a “divine lake” for ceremonial cleansing and elaborate rituals involving sacred boats. Tuthmosis III, for example, built a stone-lined sacred lake of 120 by 77 meters (393 by 252 feet).

Today’s San Lorenzo contains several pools. While some are borrow-pits from ancient construction projects, at least two have clear geometric outlines, suggesting that they were designed to be pools. The Yale team dug an exploratory test pit into one of these and found that it had been lined with waterproof stone blocks.[563] The Egyptian sacred pools were likewise stone-lined.[564] But it is the additional hydraulics that are especially interesting.

THE AQUEDUCTS

Archaeologists have unearthed a number of distinctive basin and drain complexes in ancient Egypt, Canaan, and Nubia. Early theories had it that the pools had been used for pressing wine or sluicing gold. However, they are not well suited to either purpose, and the best evidence now suggests that they served a ritual function:

Their extreme standardization (even to the two descending steps, always in the same corner) and ornamental features suggest a quasi-ritual rather than an industrial function, and the recurring elements of the lion’s head and the coloured plaster recall at once the celebrated baths at Meroe.[565]

In each, the aqueduct joins the basin through a carved stone lion’s head with a hole bored through it as a conduit for water. Likewise, an aqueduct at San Lorenzo terminated in Monument 52, a stone carved into the head of a jaguar deity and hollowed to allow water to pass through it.[566]

Like their Old World counterparts, the San Lorenzo pools and aqueducts appear to have been of a ritual nature, “ceremonial ponds or baths, not sources of potable water . . . ”[567] Clear evidence of their ritual nature comes from the later site of Teotihuacán, where a copy of these channels runs through a hidden cave deep beneath the magnificent Pyramid of the Sun. With no natural source of water in the cave, it must have been brought in specially to fill these aqueducts.[568] This clearly rules out a practical function and, since these aqueducts occupy the most exclusive and sacred location in the city, strongly suggests that they too served a religious function.

THE GREAT CACKLER

The Egyptian divine lakes housed geese sacred to the god Amun, the “Great Cackler.” At Karnak, one can still see the stone tunnel through which the sacred geese and ducks passed between the lake and the fowl yards to its south.

In addition to the jaguar-head spout already discussed, the only other image known to have adorned the Olmec drain system at San Lorenzo is a large monolithic stone basin in the shape of a huge duck or goose (Monument 9). Apparently, the Olmec sacred hydraulic system was also associated with water fowl.

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING

San Lorenzo’s aqueducts are surprisingly sophisticated, evidencing accurate long-distance surveying and an extensive knowledge of hydraulics – not what one would expect in a first attempt. To quote the excavation report:

The entire system, including the branch lines and lagunas for water storage, as well as any outfall works, was the result of a great deal of careful planning and good engineering. Whatever their experience may have been, the planners knew that a 2 percent grade was enough to carry water efficiently from one point to another, and they were able to determine the difference in elevation necessary between inlet and outlet.[569]

Here again, the Olmecs leap-frogged the expected stages of experimentation and the slow growth and development of technology, for no precursor to this sophisticated system has yet been found anywhere in the region.

By contrast, the hydraulic systems of the ancient Near East had been evolving for many centuries prior to this. In Canaan during the Middle Bronze Age II (circa 1950–1550 BC, the culture from which the Hyksos emerged), most cities had similar well-designed systems of covered drains.[570] Moreover, Manfred Bietak’s excavation of Avaris found an elaborate basin and drainage system in place as early as the 13th Dynasty (circa 1756–1630 BC).[571] The water lines excavated at Avaris look nearly identical to those unearthed at San Lorenzo. Each consists of a series of long stone conduits with U-shaped profiles fitted end-to-end and capped with a series of flat rectangular lintel stones.

Several San Lorenzo monuments have self-contained miniature hydraulic systems. In each, a reservoir fed a network of channels across the monument’s face. For example, a small stone rain god elegantly distributes water from a reservoir through a network of sculpted clouds. It has been argued that sacrificial blood (perhaps from babies) animated these sculptures to petition a rain deity.[572] Once again, the technology in place at the very beginning of Olmec civilization is astounding.

In the ancient Near East, as among the Olmecs, we find ritually significant drain and basin systems, associated with water fowl, and terminating in a large cat-shaped spout. However, whereas in the ancient Near East there is a long history of development, San Lorenzo’s aqueducts first appear in a fully developed form, along with numerous similar technological and cultural leaps. After his excavations at San Lorenzo, Coe observed: “Surely the use and transport of great stones, the Olmec iconography, the drainage system, and a host of other traits come from some other place as yet undiscovered.”[573] We have seen compelling evidence that Hyksos-occupied northern Egypt is that “other place.” Not only did all of these features exist among the Hyksos before they suddenly appeared at San Lorenzo, but the legend of Quetzalcóatl pointed us to this land by country name, region name, direction of travel, and royal emblem.

Olmec culture as far as we know seems to have had no antecedents, no material models remain for its monumental constructions and sculptures and the ritual acts captured in small objects.

—Carolyn E. Tate, Associate Professor of Art History, Texas Tech University, and a leading expert on Olmec art.

Each of these aspects of an Egyptian temple was peripheral to a tiny secluded room deep inside. Here lay a holy of holies admissible only to the pharaoh and the most elite priests and then only after ritual cleansing. At its center stood the most sacred of objects, known today by the Greek name naos.

Because it represented the deepest mysteries of Egyptian religion into which few were initiated, little is known of the use of the naos. The object resembled an altar, but the Egyptians did not use it as one. Rather, a separate altar for presenting offerings to the god often sat before the naos. The naos itself contained a recess in the lower front (called a cubiculum) that contained a statue or relief of the divinity. However, when Egyptian artists portrayed naoi in paintings, reliefs, and hieroglyphs (cf., E16 and I4 ), they showed the god atop the shrine. They appear to have believed that the god who was sculpted in the frontal niche actually dwelt atop the naos. That the divine presence rested atop the naos explains the enormous reverence and exclusivity reserved for these shrines.

Figure 38. Top: In Egyptian naoi (as at left and middle), a sculpture of the god occupied the frontal niche, while depictions of naoi (such as the papyrus at right) show that the god was believed to actually dwell atop the naos. Bottom: Atop a portable naos of gold-covered wood, a life-like depiction of the god of the dead guarded the entrance to Tutankhamun’s treasury room. ( Lower left photo courtesy of Dr. Gary Todd; lower right photo courtesy of José Augusto Hauer.)

THE LOST ARK

While a major temple usually had a large stone naos, the Egyptians also made smaller, portable versions of wood covered with gold. The Ark of the Covenant, built in the Egyptian desert during the Exodus, is analogous to the portable naos, being similarly constructed, serving a similar purpose, and being likewise secluded within a holy of holies (of the portable temple of purple cloth discussed in Chapter 5). Even the location of Yahweh above the Ark of the Covenant parallels the location of the deity above the Egyptian naos.[574]

However, there was a difference. The Ark contained no image of its Deity. This is not as minor a distinction as it may appear.

Although the standard analysis of what set Judaism apart from the surrounding religions has focused on the rise of monotheism, there were other examples of religious groups that espoused a single deity (Egypt’s Amarna period, Zoroastrianism, certain schools of Hinduism, and perhaps even the Hyksos at times). I would argue that at least as significant as monotheism and working powerfully in conjunction with it was this refusal to depict the Divine. The act of attempting to depict a god reduced it to a representational object, a human figure (Osiris), a canine (Anubis), an iconic sun (the Aten), or some combination (such as the hawk-headed man Horus). In addition to constricting the imagination, these objects aged, went out of fashion, broke, or tarnished. Without an image, the conceptualization of the Divine transcended all such limitations. Thus the Ten Commandments begin with the proclamation of monotheism, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” immediately followed by the second commandment, a prohibition against any attempt to depict God, “Though shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness . . . ”[575] However, the focus of this book is an exodus that appears to have preceded that of Moses and the Israelites by 300 years, taking place at a time when all naoi bore images.

THE OLMEC THRONES

A series of Olmec stone monuments were labeled as altars until anthropologist David Grove demonstrated that the Olmecs had actually used them as thrones. (Several Olmec stone figurines depict a ruler seated atop such a monument,[576] as does an Olmec painting from Oxtotitlán cave in Guerrero,[577] and this interpretation is now generally accepted.[578])

While most traditional thrones around the world look like fancy chairs, these are large cumbersome stone blocks (up to 40 tons), with no chair back and little comfort for the ruler. Yet, they bear a striking resemblance to the Egyptian naos. Both are monolithic, monumental stone rectangles (technically cuboids) with an overhanging upper edge and a niche in the lower front face. The Olmecs carved an image of the ruler in this niche, while the ruler himself actually sat atop the throne, much as the Egyptian shrines had an image of the deity in the frontal niche while believing him to dwell atop it. Furthermore, the Egyptians also created naoi featuring a pharaoh rather than a god in the frontal niche, greatly increasing the resemblance to the Olmec thrones.

Figure 39. Left two photos show (damaged) massive Olmec thrones. (See also “Altar Five,” Figure 33 above.) Third photo: a smaller Olmec sculpture of a king atop his throne. Like the Egyptian naoi, Olmec thrones were large blocks of stone with an overhanging top edge, a frontal niche containing a large three dimensional sculpture, flat sides carved with reliefs, and the figure depicted in the niche residing atop the object. Lower right: A similar Olmec object whose proportions preclude use as a throne, an example of a variant form apparently used as shrines just as in Egypt. (Photos by author)

PILLAGE

The Hyksos plundered Egypt’s ancient palaces and temples, shipped the best monuments back to Avaris, and exported others to the Levant, the Aegean, and the Sudan as diplomatic presents or trade commodities.[579] In this context it is easy to imagine a Hyksos pharaoh putting his sudden excess of monuments to new uses, perhaps even sitting in the place of a defeated Egyptian god atop a naos, rather as the Crusaders reveled in the fall of Constantinople by placing a French prostitute on the altar of its great cathedral.

Two fragments of a large naos were found at Avaris. Although the central image has not been recovered, a hieroglyphic caption names the Hyksos pharaoh Apophis and his sister/wife Tany. Bietak concluded that “it bore images of Apophis and Tany alone, as no god is mentioned in the inscriptions.”[580] In such a naos, with the royals depicted in the frontal niche, the logical location of the actual individuals would be atop the naos, the place where the depicted deity dwelt.

The Egyptians’ own pharaohs frequently appropriated divine symbols and portrayed themselves as gods. Thus, they did not clearly differentiate between the concepts of “throne” and “shrine.” The same word was used for the palanquin that carried the pharaoh as for a portable naos for carrying a god.[581] Thus, the Hyksos may have simply taken an equivalence that was implicit in Egyptian culture and made it explicit, the Hyksos Pharaoh sitting himself atop a divine naos.

Or perhaps only on Mexican soil did a leader have the hubris to create a throne that mimicked a naos. Whatever the origin of this practice, the resemblance in form and function between the Olmec thrones and the Egyptian naoi is impressive and would explain the sudden appearance at San Lorenzo of these enormous, intricately carved, naos-like monuments at the dawn of Olmec civilization.

Figure 40. Partial reconstruction of a badly damaged naoi of Ramses II.

Figure 41. Reliefs from the side of a damaged Egyptian naos showing gods atop naoi and thrones, illustrating the implicit equivalence between the two.

This is especially significant as part of a larger pattern of architectural parallels, including similar site selection, the extension of an existing mound into a large plateau, the reenactment of creation in the form of a nocturnal ritual stretching a cord on four stakes, the deliberate burial of pockets of ritual implements (and occasionally also sacrificed babies) beneath major architectural features, the use of rows of large stone columns to define a temple, and the creation of aqueducts that connect to sacred pools through a water conduit in the shape of the head of a large cat.

Finally, not only did they include so many similar elements in their sacred complexes, but the totality of these structures was also remarkably similar, being arrayed in long, symmetrical, ritual corridors aligned with the circumpolar stars.

The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past, perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.

— Pablo Picasso, 1923

Chapter seven focused on twenty symbols immortalized throughout Mesoamerica in a sacred calendar, on numerous monuments, and in most personal names, showing that they had first appeared together in the earliest alphabet. But why would Mesoamericans have adopted one of humanity’s greatest inventions without putting it to its intended purpose? This presents a riddle as great as their use of the wheel being limited to children’s toys.

Furthermore, Mesoamericans had been extraordinarily literate for more than 2500 years by the time the conquistadors arrived. What were the origins of their writing systems?

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

—James Russell Lowell

With the dawn of writing, the archaeological record of pots, tools, and bones blooms with names, stories, and personalities. This great conceptual breakthrough—the idea to create a writing system without any previous exposure to one—has taken place very few times, perhaps only once. And it took millennia.

The first writing system is thought to have developed from simple clay markers used for recording debts in Mesopotamia 8500 years ago. At first, they simply depicted items that had been borrowed (functioning like IOU notes). Over time, these developed into an increasingly sophisticated method of accounting. Scribes added more and more symbols until all aspects of the spoken language could be represented by circa 3300 BC. Just as this process reached its conclusion in Mesopotamia, writing systems also appeared in Egypt and the Indus Valley. Scholars differ on whether writing developed independently in each area, but many think that the people of Egypt and the Indus Valley borrowed the idea of creating a writing system from Mesopotamia—with whom both had contact at the time—but invented their own unique systems for their respective languages. Even in distant China, where writing first appeared circa 1500 BC in apparent isolation, there is evidence of external influence.[582]

OLMEC BOOKS?

Given the thousands of years that it took the Mesopotamians to develop writing, and the fact that every other place on the globe seems to have adapted the concept of writing from a predecessor, it would be remarkable if the Olmecs had independently invented a writing system. For this reason, many scholars argued that the Olmecs couldn’t possible have had a writing system.

It has long been known that the Olmecs had paper, based on the discovery of specialized tools used in its production. (Those who believed that the Olmecs lacked writing claimed that this paper was only used for magic and ritual.) Yet linguistic studies also strongly suggested that Mesoamerican writing began with the Olmecs, since the major words related to writing began with the Olmecs before being adopted as loan words throughout Mesoamerica.[583] However, not until 2002 did archaeologists excavate the first unequivocal evidence of Olmec writing: a cylinder seal and fragments of an engraved plaque. The seal contained familiar elements of later Mesoamerican writing, including “speech scrolls, cartouche encircling day signs, and paired glyphs composed of grouped elements, including affixes and dots as numerals.”[584]

Interestingly, the Olmec cylinder seal contained a royal name, much like the cylinder seals inscribed with royal names that the Egyptians created during the Second Intermediate Period (the time of the Hyksos).[585]

In publishing the plaque fragments and cylinder seal, the archaeologists Mary Pohl, Kevin Pope, and Christopher von Nagy also revisited inscribed Olmec artifacts in museum collections and showed that the symbols on them were part of this same writing system. And they demonstrated that the glyphs of this Olmec writing system were direct precursors of those of the later Mayan and Zapotec scripts.[586]

There are still too few Olmec inscriptions to fully understand this writing system. However, Maya writing survives in myriad inscriptions, has been deciphered, and descended directly from this Olmec script.[587] This makes it ideal for study and our best insight into the structure of its Olmec predecessor.

EGYPTIAN VERSUS MAYAN

Certain similarities between Mayan and Egyptian writing are immediately obvious. While many writing systems began with recognizable objects, most quickly stylized and abstracted them beyond easy recognition (i.e., cuneiform, Chinese, the alphabets . . . ). Egyptian, Olmec, and Mayan were unusual in their emphasis on pictorial representation at the expense of scribal convenience.

Some scripts use pictograms or ideograms to represent individual words, thus requiring thousands of symbols. Others use phonetic signs to represent the sounds of the spoken language, so fewer characters are required, as in our alphabet. Egyptian, Olmec, and Mayan were hybrids. They combined both pictographs and phonetic glyphs.

In Egyptian this was necessary. Because the phonetic component of Egyptian hieroglyphs notates only the consonants and not the vowels of their spoken language, pictographic determinatives were often needed to indicate which of several words (each composed of the same consonants but different vowels) was intended. By way of example, if the vowels were similarly removed from English, the word RM could refer to “arm,” “ram,” “Rome,” or “roam” and would thus require further clarification.

In Mayan, pictographic determinatives were not necessary, because they had solved the vowel problem. Nevertheless, they were still used.

In Mesoamerican writing, vowels were designated syllabically. In a syllabary, instead of having a single symbol for k as in an alphabet, there is one for each possible consonant vowel combination, thus separate symbols for ka, ke, ki, ko, and ku. This would seem to be where Mesoamerican scripts differ starkly from Egyptian. But there was a special circumstance in which hieroglyphs were used syllabically.

THE LOST SCRIPT

Lists and histories of the world’s writing systems always miss one of history’s most important scripts. It is literally the missing link in the history of writing, but its very existence is known only to a few specialists.

During the Middle Kingdom, Egyptian scribes created a way to record the foreign sounds of Northwest Semitic languages using Egyptian hieroglyphs. They mostly used it to record Canaanite names, as in administrative lists (the Brooklyn Papyrus) and ritual curses (the Execration texts). They took the simplest phonetic component of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the uniliteral (representing a single sound) signs, and assigned them to the sounds of the Canaanite language. The result was an alphabet. (It is not recognized as the first alphabet because it was subsidiary to hieroglyphs and because most scholars are simply unaware of it.)

Today, one occasionally encounters vendors or web sites that claim to translate one’s name into Egyptian hieroglyphs using a simple cipher that assigns one hieroglyph to each letter of our alphabet. This approach grossly oversimplifies the complexities of actual hieroglyphic writing. Ironically, though, it is almost identical to what Middle Kingdom scribes did four thousand years earlier for the same reason, writing the names of a foreign language in hieroglyphs in the simplest way possible, by creating a rough alphabet from the uniliteral signs.

This alphabetic system was how Canaanites in Egypt, including pharaohs of Canaanite descent, wrote their own names.[588] So this system would almost certainly have been known to whomever it was that invented the first recognized alphabet, proto-Sinaitic, during this same time. The inventor of the proto-Sinaitic alphabet simply took this existing model and created a new version with Semitic letter names.

SYLLABIC WRITING

By the New Kingdom, Egyptian scribes had switched to a new way of writing foreign words, syllabic orthography. This reflected a more international perspective and specifically the influence of cuneiform writing, which was syllabic. Instead of writing Semitic names alphabetically, they used a syllabary composed of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Once again, the Second Intermediate Period is the turning point, the fulcrum of change in Egyptian history. The alphabetic system for writing Semitic words in hieroglyphs was used through much of this period.[589] But by its end, the tomb inscription of Ahmose son of Ebana (who fought in the final war against the Hyksos) shows the syllabic script in full force. Thus, Albright infers “that the developed syllabic orthography may owe something to the chancelleries of the Hyksos Empire.”[590]

It should be noted that this syllabary was not a completely new system but an expansion of the earlier alphabetic approach. The Egyptian uniliteral hieroglyphs remained at its core but were now complemented by additional signs to complete the syllabary. This is exactly what we also find in Mayan.

THE MAYAN SYLLABARY

The following chart lists all of the Egyptian uniliteral signs and shows that in most cases one of the glyphs of the Mayan syllabary coincides with it in both meaning and sound. The exceptions occur when the spoken Mayan language lacks one of the sounds of Egyptian. This frequently happens in attempting to write the sounds of one language with a writing system developed for an unrelated language. At the time of the conquest, Bishop Diego de Landa encountered the same gaps when he tried to write the Mayan language with Latin letters, noting that “six of our letters, D, F, G, Q, R, S, were not used or needed at all. Others, however, they had to double, and some to add, in order to understand the many meanings of some words.”[591]

Also, a stylistic convention of Mayan (not present in the earliest Mesoamerican writing) is a strong tendency to round the silhouettes of their characters. In the case of those Egyptian hieroglyphs that have square corners, the equivalent Mayan glyphs look nearly identical but with the edges rounded.

I suspect that whoever created the Olmec forebearer of this Mayan syllabary used this same uniliteral spine and completed the syllabary using local acrophony, of which there is substantial evidence in Mesoamerican writing.

THE VULTURE ANNOUNCES THE KING

The Egyptians always preceded the pharaoh’s Nebti name with hieroglyphs of a vulture and a snake (representing the “two ladies,” the vulture goddess Nekbet and the feathered serpent Wadjet already discussed). The Maya likewise introduced royal names with the head of a vulture, known as the ajaw glyph.[592] The Maya adopted this practice from the Olmecs; the Olmec cylinder seal published in Science in 2002 included a name, preceded by a form of the ajaw glyph, indicating that the individual was a king.[593]

The Egyptians connected this vulture goddess with the sun and depicted her as a heraldic device surrounding the sun disc. Likewise, among the Maya, a variant glyph for writing ajaw designated the Sun God.[594]

THE BIRTH FROG

Croaking frogs accompany the Egyptian dawn. The Egyptians believed that these frogs assisted with the birth of the new sun and thus used frog amulets to aid with human births.[595]

Ancient Mesoamericans also left behind frog amulets and effigies, although their meaning and use are not known. However, the Mayan glyph for “to be born” or “was born,” is the upward facing head of a frog, known to Mayanists as the “upended frog glyph.” It is intriguing that, like the Egyptians, the Mayans associated human birth with a frog.

A SECOND SCRIPT?

September 2006 brought the announcement in the journal Science of the discovery of a new, never-before-seen Olmec writing system, the Cascajal script. Because the only evidence of this script is a single stone plaque of 62 glyphs discovered by construction workers rather than in proper excavations, it remains somewhat controversial. However, an analysis of its surface pitting and patina concluded that both the object and its inscription were indeed ancient. Moreover, the road construction debris from which it was removed contained numerous pottery sherds and other artifacts of the San Lorenzo phase Olmecs and the plaque contains artistic motifs consistent with this period, which ended by 1000 BC.

Although it is too early to make a definitive judgement, one interpretation is that the Olmecs had two writing systems. One of these (seen in the plaque fragments, on the cylinder seal, and on several figurines) was ancestral to Mayan, while the other, the Cascajal script, eventually died out. There is strong evidence in favor of the Olmecs having spoken proto-Mixe-Zoquean, and a reasonable case is also made for the use of a Mayan language in their lands. It may be that their region included members of both language groups and that two scripts served the two languages.

NUMBERS

The Egyptians and Mesoamericans both notated numbers with a tally system. For the number 10 the Egyptians introduced the symbol , representing a cattle hobble.[596] The Aztec symbol for 10 is .[597] That this symbol has been rotated 90º is noteworthy, for all of the characters of the proto-Sinaitic alphabet had also been rotated 90º from their original Egyptian hieroglyphs.[598] The Aztec version has also been clarified with the addition of ten tally dots, but the underlying symbols are identical.

The Phoenicians used a version of these Egyptian tallies, but they and other early Semitic people also used the alphabet as numbers. Each consecutive letter served as a number, A = 1, B = 2 . . . up to 10, then by tens up to 100, and by hundreds up to 400. However, since the Phoenician and early Hebrew alphabets had only 22 letters, the system only reached 400 (tav).[599] Lacking a place system, they counted by tallying these letters, with very large numbers being expressed by the extensive repetition of the highest unit, tav, for 400.

The number 400 was also the common unit for tallying large numbers in Mesoamerica. In addition to the aforementioned dot and cattle hobble, the Aztecs used three symbols for counting, a flag for 20, a feather for 400, and a bag of incense for 8,000. Likewise, Friar Diego de Landa reported of the Maya: “They count by five up to twenty, by twenties up to a hundred and by hundreds to four hundred; then by 400s up to 8000.”[600] The use of 400 to tally large numbers in both places is yet another peculiar commonality between Mesoamerica and the Purple People.

The word for “bundle of 400,” the term associated with tallying with units of 400, goes back to Proto-Mixe-Zoquean, the apparent language of the Olmecs.[601] Thus, this notion of counting by 400s appears to date to the Olmecs and was in use in ancient Mexico at the same time as in the ancient Near East. This may also explain the origin of the vigesimal system of mathematics that came to dominate in Mesoamerica.[602]

BLACK AND WHITE AND RED ALL OVER

While most modern scripts are written in only one color of ink, the Aztecs,[603] Mayans,[604] and Egyptians[605] all wrote in two tones, using the same two colors, black and red. Scribes from both regions also created full color manuscripts and paintings, but these same two tones were the norm for basic writing.

THE SCRIBAL POSE

The ancient Egyptians created numerous life-sized sculptures of scribes, each sitting cross-legged with a scroll on his lap. Mayan art normally depicted scribes in this exact same position, sitting cross-legged with a scroll on their lap, and an Olmec statue, San Lorenzo Monument 11, even uses the same medium as the Egyptian depictions, near life-sized stone sculpture. Coe and Diehl observed of this monument:

The figure, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the scribal effigies of ancient Egypt, is seated tailor-fashion; as . . . he grasps a bar or scroll across his knees.[606]

Scribes in both places also used similar palettes with dual ink receptacles for their two-tone writing.

THE DAY SIGNS IN CONTEXT

We can now answer the obvious question raised by Chapter 7’s discovery of the proto-Sinaitic alphabet in ancient Mexico: How could they be in possession of an invention as historic as the alphabet and relegate it to numbering the days of a calendar?

Here we have seen that they had multiple writing systems. Yet, even so, it seems strange (at least from a modern perspective) that they would not choose the alphabet for its efficiency, simplicity, and ease of access to literacy. However, their devaluing of the alphabet is consistent with cultural attitudes in Egypt at the time of the Hyksos. Pharaohs, priests, and the nobility wrote in hieroglyphs. Only undereducated, working-class Canaanite immigrants used the much simpler proto-Sinaitic alphabet. All official Hyksos inscriptions were in Egyptian hieroglyphs (with Semitic words and names written in uniliteral hieroglyphs, which eventually expanded into a full syllabary).

This choice of script had extensive consequences for the future of the world. A complex writing system favored hierarchy and the exclusivity of knowledge and power. An alphabet would have made for more widespread literacy, leading to more books, more education, a greater accumulation of knowledge and literature, and the empowering of a far greater segment of the population.

In tracing the proliferation of the alphabet through the Old World, it strikes me that a profound cultural transformation followed in its wake. The tribal Canaanites developed the first alphabet and soon conquered the most powerful nations on earth. An offshoot of their language and alphabet gave the world its most influential book, the Bible. The Phoenicians introduced the alphabet to the Greeks which then experienced the magnificent Classical period whose literature, philosophy, art, and architecture remain influential to this day. And on to the Roman Empire and the rest of Europe . . .

There was also a political dimension to this transformation. An uneducated, illiterate underclass was convenient for the political and religious hierarchies of the ancient world. But the alphabet and the spread of literacy empowered the populace and decentralized power. Greece illustrates this dramatically with its early invention of democracy.

(Today, of course, the proliferation of computers, the internet, and mobile communications are launching our accumulation and dispersion of knowledge to yet greater orbits and promise to be similarly transformative for the future of our civilization.)

The Mayan script, however, is a complex conglomerate whose layers betray its history. It retains the Egyptian uniliteral hieroglyphs (the complete system for writing Semitic words during the Middle Kingdom and much of the Hyksos reign) with supplementary glyphs forming it into a full syllabary (as were added to the uniliteral signs near the end of the Hyksos reign) and retains both fully pictorial hieroglyphs and determinatives (even though neither is necessary with a syllabary and both sacrifice speed and convenience). It is thus a unique and redundant amalgam that resembles no other writing system on the planet, save that of the Hyksos in the twilight of their reign over Egypt. More precisely, it is structured in exactly the way that their scribes approached the problem of adapting the Egyptian hieroglyphic script to render the sounds of a foreign language.

This complexity kept it inaccessible to the masses, resulting in an Egyptian-style literate upper class ruling over an illiterate subservient population. While this was easier to control from the top down, fewer educated people makes for slower cultural and technological progress. Had they instead chosen the alphabet (rather than relegating it to a calendar), the cumulative effect of this one difference over the next three and a half millennia would have been extraordinary. By 1492, Europeans may have found a very different civilization. Perhaps, the initial contact would even have taken place in the other direction. Imagine the surprise when a fleet of Americans (after millennia of widespread literacy) began exploring the coasts of medieval Europe.

DECIPHERMENT

Because of this redundant and misleading complexity, the Mayan script long evaded the attempts of the brightest Mayanists to decipher it, with some giving up and declaring it “unsolvable.” When it was finally cracked, it was not by a Mayanist, but by the Russian scholar Yuri Knorozov who had majored in Egyptology before being sent to fight in WWII and happening across a Mayan book in a library amidst the ruins of Berlin. I believe that his successful decipherment was aided by the fact that Mayan functioned so similarly to the Egyptian hieroglyphs he had been trained in. This made Knorozov well acquainted with scenarios that most Mayanists at the time thought impossible, that pictorial glyphs could be phonetic and that a script could be a hybrid of phonetic and pictographic elements. (Knorozov was also a friend of my remarkable great-aunt Helen Neuenswander and, when the Soviet union finally allowed him to travel, visited her in Guatemala, where, after serving as a nurse in WWII, she had founded and run a hospital, created an alphabet for the local spoken Mayan dialect, reintroduced literacy after a 500-year lapse, transcribed the local oral tales and traditions into new Mayan books, translated the Bible into Mayan, and published several academic papers and scholarly books abroad.)

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

—Mark Twain

Originally, the body of the book ended here. The case for Hyksos contact with the Olmecs now seems well established, on the basis of evidence that encompasses nearly every facet of both civilizations. However, there are a few loose ends that suggest the possibility of a third player in this narrative, an African ally of the Hyksos.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

More than a century before the Hyksos conquest of Egypt, immigration and trade were already making the eastern Delta region cosmopolitan, independent, and culturally distinct from the rest of Egypt. The Egyptian official administering the region boldly seceded from Egypt and established a small kingdom with its own dynasty of Pharaohs.

The second ruler of this kingdom was named Nehesy meaning “Nubian,”[607] apparently a reference to his ethnicity. (Nubia lay directly to the south of Egypt and its people resembled their descendants in today’s Sudan.) Likely, if the ruler was Nubian, at least some portion of the population of the delta was also Nubian, but that his ethnicity stood out enough for him to be known as “the Nubian” implies that this population was not in the majority.

At the time of the Hyksos, the kingdom of Kush ruled much of Nubia from its capital at the city of Kerma, while two smaller groups, known as the C-Group and the Pan Grave Nubians, also occupied portions of Nubia. When the Hyksos conquered northern Egypt, the Kushites attacked from the south and claimed a piece of Egypt for their own. After the conquest, the Hyksos built a series of fortresses up the Nile to control the waterway and to ensure the free passage of trade and diplomacy between Avaris and Kerma (the capital of Kush).[608] Excavations at Kerma uncovered relics of this ancient commerce, including seals emblazoned with the names of Hyksos pharaohs.[609]

THE NUBIAN NAVY

Burials at Kerma include model ships of wood, granite, and faience,[610] and paintings on the walls of their funerary temples include fleets of sailing ships, evidence that “Kush, like Egypt, was a riverine power with great military strength in its riverine fleets.”[611]

When the Egyptian pharaoh Kamose attacked Avaris, the Hyksos pharaoh sent to Nubia for help. We only know of this because the Egyptians intercepted the messenger and quoted the letter in the Kamose Stela. Likely the Hyksos also sought assistance from their Kushite allies when the Egyptians again invaded under Ahmose. We do know that, after chasing the Hyksos from Avaris and sacking Sharuhen, Ahmose turned south and invaded Nubia.

Given the extensive relations between Kush and the Hyksos, there were likely many Nubians in Avaris at any given time, including traders, soldiers, sailors, diplomats, and naturalized citizens. The archaeological evidence includes the “unexpected find” of numerous distinctive Nubian ceramics at Avaris (including at the palace of Khayan) and skeletal remains that “show negroid features and originated in all likelihood from Nubia.”[612]  The unique pottery styles are especially intriguing as they closely resemble those of San Lorenzo.

Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

– Romans 9:21

Archaeologist Bruce Williams unraveled this riddle when he noticed that these pots mimicked hollow gourds that had been used as vessels before the introduction of pottery. The use of fire to dry, sear, and harden the interior and rim of each gourd also blackened these portions. Since archaeologists discovered most of the extant Nubian pottery at burial sites, Williams argued that the Nubians had originally used the gourd vessels for their funerary offerings and, with the advent of pottery, had made the new medium conform to traditional funerary requirements by modeling them after the earlier receptacles. The conservative nature of local funerary tradition prevented any significant changes to this style for millennia.[613]

OLMEC POTTERY

Along with the new arts and technologies, completely new pottery styles mark the arrival of the first Olmecs at San Lorenzo at the beginning of the Chicharras phase. Per the Yale excavation report:

With the beginning of the Chicharras phase, it is as if the people who were to become the San Lorenzo Olmec had arrived. . . . the repertory of ceramic types is entirely new . . . there is evidence for Chicharras monumental sculpture. We feel that these are compelling reasons for believing that the bearers of Chicharras culture were in large part immigrants into the area . . . Unfortunately, there seems to be no counterpart of Chicharras elsewhere in Mesoamerica, either of earlier or of coeval date; if there had been, we might have been able to solve some of the mystery of Olmec origins.[614]

This new ceramic tradition was dominated by pots strikingly like those of ancient Nubia, their only decoration a blackened rim and interior. Known today as “differentially fired pots,” these vessels also occurred in an inverted version with the entire vessel blackened except the rim,[615] which later became more prevalent. Both Nubian and Olmec potters used this minimalist coloration in strict isolation from any other decorative techniques.

INCISION

In the other dominant style of Nubian pottery, the potter used a sharp object to etch patterns in the clay. This too lasted millennia. Once again, the distinctive designs pointed to a secret past. They included “geometric decorative patterns that are commonly produced in weaving.”[616] And around the rim of each vessel ran a “braidlike rim band.”[617] These features mimicked the other common form of preceramic vessel: “A light mat was woven and its corners stretched upward and trimmed to form an even, circular rim. It was then bound at its rim by a braided thong into the shape of a bowl.”[618]

The Chicharras phase Olmecs likewise used incision as their other means of decorating pottery and included a similar incised band around the rim. Both Nubian and Olmec potters alternated enclosed areas marked by incision with polished undecorated areas.

The Nubians had long favored a technique called rocker-stamping, in which a curved object such as a shell was rocked back and forth across the soft clay to create a zigzag pattern. In the pottery that he excavated at Kerma (the Nubian capital at the time of the Hyksos), George Reisner discovered an innovation, “another method of producing the pattern – that method in which the pattern was formed of continuous lines cut with a blade – came into use alongside the rocking method.”[619]

The incised Olmec pottery of the Chicharras phase used this same distinctive technique, in addition to its rim bands and enclosed areas. Coe and Diehl’s report describes this pottery:

Such incised lines encircle the vessel below the rim and enclose zones treated by two forms of surface manipulation. One is false rocker-stamping—incisions cut through the slip to imitate true rocker stamping . . . The other is cross-hatching, confined to curvilinear zones within incised lines.[620]

PIGMENT

The Nubians did not just incise this pottery, they also rubbed white pigment into the incisions, causing the pattern to stand out against the darker color of the body of the vessel.[621]

Coe and Diehl excavated a bowl from the San Lorenzo phase, with a design characteristic of the preceding Chicharras phase, leading the archaeologists to surmise that it may have been “redeposited from the Chicharras phase.”[622] Notably, it had incised “cross-hatching filled with white pigment.”[623] This was likely not the only Chicharras vessel to have its incisions filled with pigment. As Reisner observed at Kerma: “The polish was not permanent, nor could the white pigment have sustained any long usage.”[624] And preservation was notoriously bad in Olman:

The study of the archaeology of the lowland Olmec is made very difficult by the appallingly bad condition of ancient ceramics . . . it is often difficult to determine whether a vessel was slipped or not. . . . Everywhere in Olmec land, high acidity combined with high humidity have wrought havoc on archaeological deposits, destroying not only ancient bone remains but even ceramics.[625]

In the subsequent San Lorenzo phase, the wider distribution and larger quantity of pottery allowed for the survival of many incised vessels with intact pigment inlay. In fact, this pigment became a diagnostic feature of Olmec ceramics found exported throughout Mesoamerica during this phase.[626] These vessels normally contained red pigment rather than white. In Nubia, white pigment was favored for the incised pottery at Kerma, but white, red, and even yellow pigments were found infilling incisions in the similar pottery of the contemporaneous Nubian culture known as C-Group.[627] And, in the earliest surviving Olmec inlay, the pigment is white.

Finally, not only did both cultures rely on these same distinctive forms of decorated pottery, but both used each style of decoration exclusive of the other. Pots were either incised or blackened on the rim and interior, but not both.

The Chicharras phase pottery that marks the arrival of the first Olmecs at San Lorenzo directly parallels the two ancient and pervasive styles of Nubian pottery. Both decorated their ceramics by blackening the interior and rim of certain pots, while others they incised, enclosing certain zones to be decorated (often alternating with undecorated areas), using both true and false rocker-stamping, topping it with a prominent rim band, and filling the incisions with pigment. This pottery has been found at Avaris,[628] placing its Nubian makers among the Hyksos (the population that so much other evidence has pointed to) and in northern Egypt (the place implicated by name in indigenous Mesoamerican histories).

He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

In excavating Kerma, the capital of Kush at the time of the Hyksos, George Reisner found that elite graves contained numerous bodies that had been buried simultaneously.[629] Judging from their sex and age, Reisner concluded that wives and concubines had been forced to accompany each tomb’s chief occupant, occasionally accompanied by their young children. The positions of the naturally desiccated bodies suggested the cause of death: “many of these bodies are in attitudes which could only be the result of fear, resolution under pain or its anticipation, or of other movements which would naturally arise in the body of perfectly well persons suffering a conscious death by suffocation.”[630]

To the north at Avaris, Bietak’s excavations also found burials with extra bodies, “usually girls with strong bones.”[631] Yet he concluded that this practice, known as retainer sacrifice, had ceased by the time of the Hyksos conquest.[632]

Figure 42. The telling poses of the naturally desiccated wives and concubines included in royal burials at Kerma was the first indication that they had been buried alive. This distinctive practice also took place in ancient Mesoamerica.

However, Sir William Flinders Petrie described encountering a similar situation while excavating Hyksos burials near Sharuhen. He puzzled over how to interpret what he found, calling it a “difficult question.”[633] The tombs contained multiple bodies, yet there was a great deal of fill on top of each tomb so that “it would be an awkward matter to dig down and clear part of the side for additional loculi.”[634] Nor was there any evidence of such an operation. It thus appeared that all of the occupants of a given tomb had been buried simultaneously. Petrie posited a “pestilence.” However, he excavated at least two adult bodies with a child still in their arms. This recalls the remains of mothers at Kerma, sheltering their children as they were buried alive.

Whether or not the Hyksos perpetuated live burials, the Nubians continued to bury alive the wives and concubines of deceased men until the Egyptian conquest of Kerma and reinstituted the practice circa 300 BC as part of a revival of Nubian culture.[635]

AZTEC WIFE BURIAL

There is evidence that the Olmecs also used retainer sacrifices.[636] Beyond Olman this practice is well documented, including Maya burials with elite females (possibly wives) included as retainer sacrifices.[637] However, the poorer preservation of these tropical climes usually obscures the cause of death.

The really intriguing evidence comes from the historically observed burial practices of the Aztecs. The wives of deceased Aztec men were “buried alive in order to serve their husbands in the afterlife.”[638] Although the sacrifice of wives at the death of a husband unfortunately occurred in other ancient societies (most famously the usually voluntary Hindu practice of Sati), the live burial of wives in Mesoamerica and Nubia is unusual and the parallel is noteworthy.

ROYAL SUICIDE

Seldom does a king, dictator, or president voluntarily relinquish power. Yet the Anales de Cuauhtitlan record not only Quetzalcóatl’s resignation of the throne of Tula and departure from Mesoamerica but also what was believed to have happened upon his return to Black Land Red Land.

Then they departed in search of Tlillan, Tlapallan, Tlatlayan “The Black, the Red Land, Place of Burning.” . . . And when he found at last the place he sought, then once more he wept in sad contrition. . . .

And when he was fully adorned then with his own hand he set himself on fire, he offered himself up in flame.

So the place where Quetzalcóatl went to immolate himself came to be called Tlatlayan, “Place of the Burning.”[639]

How could such a myth have been perpetuated? One would expect royals to look unfavorably on a paradigm in which the ideal was for them to relinquish power and commit suicide.

THE NUBIAN TRADITION

According to the ancient historian Diodorus, Nubian kings committed suicide at a time determined by the priests. And there is some indication that this practice of royal suicide dates back to the Kerma period.[640] According to Diodorus, this custom ended when the Greek-educated king Ergamenes, upon receiving his notice, refused to kill himself and instead led his soldiers into the temple and slaughtered the priests.[641]

In spite of Ergamenes’ rebellion, this ritual survived in parts of the Sudan until recent times, and ethnographic records provide insights into the beliefs associated with this practice:

In the southern Sudan, the rulers often took their own lives or were killed by their families when they became infirm, since it was believed that their ill-health would be translated into misfortune for the group itself.[642]

According to the Florentine Codex, Quetzalcóatl’s decision to self-immolate was likewise made after he saw himself in a mirror and was shocked at how old and sickly he had become: “For his eyelids were swollen, his eyes sunken deep in their sockets, his face all heavily pockmarked and furrowed.”[643] When, in addition to growing old, he became sick, he decided to return to his homeland and take his own life.[644] This entire account directly parallels the Nubian custom of an aged or infirm ruler committing suicide for the greater good of his people.

The Maya left stone reliefs and painted ceramics commemorating numerous royal suicides. Here the suicides were undertaken as self-sacrificial, blood-letting rituals in which they severed their own carotid artery (the main artery in the neck) with a knife or axe. Often this was done voluntarily, but there are also records of kings being forced to undertake it. And there are rare instances of a king surviving his suicide (apparently due to a shallow cut) and achieving a sort of resurrection, which was then heralded in his royal title, as was the case with the King of Palenque, K'an Hok' Chitam II.[645]

Globally, like the accompanying burial of wives alive, this tradition of royal suicide was exclusive to these two cultures.

40 DAYS OF MOURNING

Archaeologists had long found upside-down pottery at the head of Kerma graves, but did not know the meaning of it until archaeologist Timothy Kendall compared this practice with ethnographic records of Sudanese funerary rituals. The Sudanese used similar pots to pour libations over the grave during a 40-day mourning period, after which they were left upside down at the head of the grave.[646]

This observance of 40 days after death may have begun in Egypt due to the time required to desiccate a corpse and transform it into a mummy. In Genesis 50:3, Joseph’s father Jacob dies in Egypt and is mummified, a process that takes exactly 40 days: “And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed.”

Not only were similar liquid libations traditionally offered to the dead in ancient Mexico,[647] but among the indigenous peoples of the Olmec region: “It is considered that the soul does not become actually detached from its earthly ties until forty days after death.”[648]

Once upon a time a man whose ax was missing suspected his neighbor's son. The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief. But the man found his ax while digging in the valley, and the next time he saw his neighbor's son, the boy walked, looked, and spoke like any other child.

–Lao-tzu, philosopher (6th century BC)

Once you label me you negate me.

–Soren Kierkegaard, philosopher (1813–1855)

The Olmecs’ appearance has attracted intense interest and controversy from the beginning. In 1882, Ignatius Donnelly, a U.S. Congressman and vice-presidential candidate published the popular book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, in which he included an engraving of the one Olmec head then known and argued that the person depicted looked African. From this he concluded that Africans must have reached Mexico and thus Atlantis must have provided the land bridge for them to walk across from Africa to Mexico.

It was the rumors and reports of this head and a few smaller artifacts in the same style that led Matthew Stirling to seek it out and discover the Olmec civilization. He reported the discovery in the August 1939 National Geographic Magazine: “The features are bold and amazingly Negroid in character.”[649]

Figure 43. Matthew Stirling following the re-excavation of the first Olmec head.

In the 1960s, Alexander von Wuthenau, a professor of Mexican art history at Mexico’s University of the Americas, revisited the issue when his study of Mesoamerican pottery confronted him with a diverse variety of faces. In the ancient portraiture, he saw some faces that he interpreted as Asian, others as African, and still others as Caucasian.[650]

In 1976, Professor Ivan Van Sertima of Rutgers University published They Came Before Columbus, an influential book arguing for repeated African contacts with the ancient Americas, beginning with the Olmec period.

Donnelly based his entire Africans-across-Atlantis theory on a drawing of the single statue seen in Figure 43. And Stirling’s comment was likewise based on this single “negroid” statue. However, notice how its ear is rendered in shallow relief rather than full sculpture. The sculptor hewed close to the existing contours of the rock, sacrificing accuracy for expediency. (Often the heads were made from a ruler’s throne following his death, thus sparing the immense effort involved in importing additional stone from the distant mountains.) The likeness is thus not reliable for the sort of morphological analysis that can be performed on a skull.

Also, many Olmec figures show an epicanthic fold (a fold of skin of the upper eyelid partially covering the inner corner of the eye), a feature that originated in East Asia. Thus, in 1975, Smithsonian archaeologist Betsy Meggers used their appearance as part of her claim that the Olmecs came from China.[651] However, most scholars see this feature as linking the Olmecs to indigenous Native American populations whose ancestors came from Asia.

Finally, several Olmec reliefs show bearded men who look distinctly different from the flat faces and broad noses of the colossal heads. Van Sertima interpreted these as “a trace of Mediterranean Caucasoids—some with Semitic noses (probably Phoenician).”[652] Thor Heyerdahl described them as “a strikingly Semitic type, with sharp profile, a prominent hooked nose, narrow face, thin lips, and a pronounced beard sometimes in the shape of a square or pointed goatee, but occasionally so long that this type has been jokingly referred to among archaeologists as “Uncle Sam.”[653]

Figure 45. From left: La Venta Monument 13 (Heyerdahl’s “Uncle Sam”); La Venta Stela 3, and La Venta Monument 63 showing different morphology from colossal heads, also both real and prosthetic beards, from El Parque Museo de La Venta, Villahermosa, Mexico. (Photos by author.)

THE MURALS

All of these theories have been based on colorless stone heads and reliefs. Perhaps we can extend the raw materials of this ossified debate. In 2001, the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology quietly uncrated mural fragments that had been neglected in storage for decades. Excavated from Las Higueras, Veracruz (to the north of the Olmec heartland) they may include descendants of the Olmecs, especially as some depict a number of Olmec features. They are built up of thick layers of plaster accumulated over the centuries as old murals were sealed beneath new layers of plaster and paint. Deep within, the archaeologists uncovered scenes of people groups differentiated by skin tone, attire, and facial morphology (see Fig. 44 below; larger copies and additional photos may be seen at ExodusLost.com/murals).

Figure 44. Top: Four mural fragments excavated on the Gulf coast (photographed by author at the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology). Bottom: Two of the very few Olmec sculptures to depict hair (Bottom left: Olmec head, photographed by author at the Carlos Pellicer Regional Museum of Anthropology, Villahermosa. Bottom right: Tres Zapotes Monument F in situ during excavation.)

Hopefully, future excavations will uncover well-preserved Olmec human remains (perhaps shielded within an undisturbed sarcophagus within the Olmec “Great Pyramid”), allowing direct morphological and genetic studies and shedding new light on the question of Olmec origins. When that happens, the archaeologists involved will do well to recall an observation of the eminent anthropologist Alice Kehoe. Addressing the 2010 conference of the Society for American Archaeology, she noted that archaeologists currently favor mitochondrial DNA (which passes unchanged from mother to daughter to granddaughter . . . ) for genetic studies of human remains, because the lab work is less expensive and budgets are tight. Yet, historically, the ancient sailors, soldiers, and explorers that ventured the farthest afield tended to be male. And mitochondrial DNA analysis is incapable of detecting any contribution from these wayfarers.[654] She thus called on the gathered archaeologists to also seek analysis of the Y-chromosome (which passes unchanged from father to son to grandson) of any human remains they may discover.[655]

LOST MURALS

The conquistadors had encountered vibrant murals throughout the cities of ancient Mexico, but vandalism, war, and the elements destroyed them all. However, in 1924, the archaeological team excavating the Temple of the Warriors at Chichén Itzá broke into an interior chamber lined with brilliant frescoes. These too were soon ill treated and largely destroyed. However, this time the archaeologists had copiously documented the excavation with black and white photographs and (since they lacked a color camera) full color paintings of the murals.

Although it has attracted surprisingly little attention, what these murals showed was completely unexpected: Mayans battle a group of foreign men with long blonde hair. The Mayan warriors triumph and celebrate with a sacrifice of blonde captives.

Figure 46. From a series of Mayan murals from the Temple of the Warriors, Chichen Itza, Mexico, that shows the capture and sacrifice of yellow-haired men.

These Mayan murals are extremely late, dated to roughly the twelfth century AD.[656] Although this is long after the fall of the Olmecs, they are interesting for another reason. This commemoration of the successful slaughter of a group of blonde foreigners was painted during the time that the Vikings were exploring and attempting to colonize the Americas.

Erik the Red (after exploring Greenland during a three year banishment from Iceland for a series of murders) organized the first permanent Viking settlement of that land in 985 AD. His son, Leif Erikson, then famously led the first expedition to America in 1000 AD.

This is all that is usually taught. However, looking at the Norse records, they were in at least occasional contact with mainland America for the next 350 years, longer than our own country has yet existed in this land. During that time, numerous ships and even entire colonies went missing in the New World. From the beginning, Erik the Red sailed for the southern tip of Greenland with 25 ships, but 11 never arrived. Had they overshot, the next landmass was America, which they would likely have taken for the marvelous land of Greenland that Erik had enticed them to.

ERIKSON'S SISTER

Leif Erikson’s sister Freydís gained renown on the later American expedition of Thorfinn Karlsefni. When the Vikings attempted to befriend the Americans with gifts of food, the latter became extremely sick (because they lacked the enzyme to digest dairy). Apparently believing themselves poisoned, the Native Americans attacked the Vikings. As the Norsemen began to flee, Freydís yelled at them to have courage and stand their ground, but they all fled into the woods. Freydís attempted to follow but, being pregnant, soon fell far behind her chivalrous comrades. As the Americans closed in, she grabbed a sword from the fallen body of Thorbrand and turned to fight, as the sagas record:

Then came the Skrælingar [Native Americans] upon her. She let down her sark [shirt] and struck her breast with the naked sword. At this they were frightened, rushed off to their boats, and fled away.[657]

Although she departed with that failed expedition, Freydís was not defeated. She organized a new settlement party in tandem with expeditions under Helgi and Finnbogi. In America, they established two colonies with 100 people. Freydís and her men eventually returned home to Iceland reporting that the other two expeditions were continuing on in the New World. The others never returned, and rumors eventually began to circulate that the fearsome Freydis had slaughtered the entire populations of both lost Viking expeditions.

A century later in 1121 ad, several documents record the departure of Bishop Erik Upse for Vinland (the southernmost of the three American lands known to the Norse). That the Church sent a bishop (rather than a priest), has been interpreted as evidence of a functioning Norse colony in Vinland with some prospects for the future.[658] After his departure, no further mention is made of this bishop, his expedition, or their fate in the New World.

A LOST POPULATION

Until now, I have been using the typical language employed in discussing the Norse discovery of the Americas. But there is a fundamental flaw in this terminology. Greenland, from whence these Norse expeditions departed, is itself America. It is physically part of the continent of North America, lies entirely within the Western Hemisphere, and was already populated by the Paleo-Eskimo Dorset Culture, a Native American population with whom the Norse shared the island and interacted extensively. Greenland was and is part of the Americas. And the Norse were well-established on this island for centuries, reaching a peak population of some 5,000 European-Americans long before Columbus.

On Greenland, the Vikings rapidly exhausted their island’s sparse, small willow tress and had to seek timber elsewhere. They were well aware of abundant forests far closer and less picked over than those of Europe, and the sagas mention voyages from Greenland to Vinland simply to obtain timber and grapes for wine. However, it is not known how much contact took place between Greenland and the mainland after the initial discoveries chronicled in the sagas. Their own written records have not survived, and many of the Greenlanders simply disappeared.

Circa 1350 ad, a member of Greenland’s Eastern Settlement traveled to Vestribyggð, the Western Settlement, and found only empty farms. What became of its thousand Norse settlers remains a mystery to this day. However, they were the most northerly and isolated settlement with the shortest growing season and were also closest to the mainland with its superior growing and living conditions. Perhaps, there were also less obvious economic and geo-political motivations for their sudden departure. Greenland had long been saddled with a heavy Crusade Tax denominated in seal pelts and whale teeth.

Beginning with election of Pope Clement VI in 1342, the papal court at Avignon, France, began spending lavishly and taxing exorbitantly. Other nations balked at the extreme financial burdens. In 1343, the English expelled two of the Pope’s agents. In 1345, the Provincial Council in Bergen, Norway, formally petitioned for a lightening of the taxes on themselves and for a complete exemption for Greenland. It was against this political and economic background that the thousand inhabitants of Western Greenland suddenly disappeared. Perhaps, like later American divorces from Europe, theirs was a flight from egregious taxes and foreign rule, a proto-Boston Tea Party.

The last record of Norse contact with America (and possibly the last record of the Western Greenlanders) comes from three Icelandic annals, which mention for 1347 ad the arrival of a ship from America (specifically the portion known to the Norse as Markland) that was bound for Greenland but blown off course. This indicates that the people of Greenland were still aware of and in at least sporadic contact with mainland America 347 years after first discovering it. Given its date and intended route, it is even possible that this ship was part of the relocation efforts of the lost population of Vestribyggð.

Figure 47. The last record of Greenland’s Eastern Settlement is of a marriage here at Hvalsey Church on September 16, 1408. Its unique 52 foot long, 4 foot thick stone walls survived as the surrounding buildings and the Eastern Settlement’s 15 other churches disintegrated. (Photo courtesy of Jakob Munksgaard.)

Chichén Itzá’s murals show blonde men captured at sea circa 1100-1200 ad. And we know that blonde Vikings were exploring the Eastern Seaboard by ship between 1000 and 1347 ad. While not definitive, this offers the intriguing possibility that these murals recorded the fate of a ship of these early Norse explorers.

Not every explorer survives to make the history books. Perhaps, had the Vikings arrived in the year One Reed, they would have been hailed as the returning Quetzalcóatl or Kukulcan and lived. Norwegian (technically Old Norse) may even have become the lingua franca of the Americas. Conversely, had Cortés not arrived in the year One Reed, he might have been forgotten to history, his only monument an anonymous pale man atop a sacrificial altar in a damaged and forgotten mural.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

–John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Historically, humanity has clothed itself in an astonishing array of attire, from the elaborate layers of kimonos to the minimalism of body paint and penis sheaths, from burkhas to bikinis to war feathers, shining armor, saffron robes, animal pelts, mulberry bark cloth, or nothing at all.

It is thus noteworthy that the Olmecs chose the same attire, hairstyle, and body modifications as the Nilotic civilizations of the time (the Egyptians, Hyksos, and Nubians), in spite of living in a completely different climate. Moreover, the emblems of authority used by Olmec royalty specifically parallel those of Nubian kings.

GENERAL ATTIRE

The basic attire of ancient Egyptians, Nubians, and Olmecs consisted of a loincloth with a long central flap, normally worn without an upper garment. Women in Egyptian and Nubian art typically wear a simple skirt with no top. The same is true of Olmec women, as in Stela 1 from La Venta, and Matthew Stirling observed that the local attire was the same when he was excavating there in the 1930s and 40s.[659]

The common word for “sandals” throughout Mesoamerica had been adopted from Proto-Mixe-Zoquean, believed to have been the language of the Olmecs, suggesting that they introduced a new form of footware.[660]

The Olmecs pierced their ears and stretched the holes to accommodate large circular earspools.[661] Charles Bonnet’s excavations at Kerma, the Nubian capital at the time of the Hyksos, turned up numerous large ear spools similar to those of the Olmecs.[662] And the Nubians at Kerma also wore labrets (pierced lip jewelry),[663] as did the Olmecs.[664]

THE SHAVED LOOK

During his travels in Egypt, the fifth century BC Greek historian Herodotus observed a difficult requirement of Egyptian religion: “Elsewhere priests grow their hair long; in Egypt they shave their heads. . . . The priests shave their bodies all over every other day.”[665]

Likewise, Olmec depictions of apparent priests, such as the ritual gathering depicted in La Venta Offering 4 (Fig. 47), show them with shaved heads and hairless faces.

Shaved heads were also the norm among Egyptian men generally, though they often covered them with wigs or headdresses. Herodotus asked the Egyptians why they shaved their heads. After telling him of the religious reasons, they added that this was also a military secret. They believed that the constant exposure of their heads to the sun made their skulls thicker and stronger, giving them an advantage in battle.[666] Although the Olmecs’ own rationalizations are not known, most depictions of Olmec men likewise show shaved heads.[667]

The ancient Egyptians wore beards for religious and ceremonial reasons in imitation of the bearded god Osiris. However, because of their ritual shaving, the Egyptians often wore stylized artificial beards. Even Queen Hatshepsut donned a prosthetic beard during her reign as pharaoh. Likewise, Olmec reliefs show men wearing fake beards, as in La Venta stela 3 (see Fig. 45 above).

SKULL DEFORMATION

Not only did the Olmecs tattoo, scar, circumcise, and pierce themselves, they even went so far as to forcibly reshape the skulls of their babies. By tightly binding their still malleable young heads, they achieved an elongation that lasted for life. Notice, for example, the skulls of the figures in La Venta Offering 4. However, other Olmec figurines display normal skull proportions, suggesting that the Olmecs may have restricted this practice to a subgroup such as priests or nobles (the likely participants in the ritual gathering depicted in Offering 4). The royalty of ancient Egypt also elongated the skulls of their infants during certain periods, including the dynasties closest to the Hyksos, the 18th and 19th.

Nineteenth century European Americans described the “Flatheads” that they encountered as “acute and intelligent . . . noted for very retentive memories: being capable of repeating passages of some length, with considerable accuracy, when recited in their hearing.”[668] The one indigenous man that I got to know who had had this procedure (whom I met as a boy while living with my grandparents in the jungles of Peru) was gregarious, extremely intelligent, and spoke several languages. Even then, the practice was nearly extinct. At the time, the town-dwelling “Peruvianos” were racist toward and abusive of the “Indians.” A shaped skull made it impossible to hide one’s indigenous roots in town. My grandmother told me of arguing with men who refused to ever speak to their mothers again for having bound their skulls as babies.

Today, as imaging equipment is providing incredible insights into the real-time functioning of the human brain, it would be fascinating to look into what effect this ancient practice has on the human brain, before it is completely extinct. Such an intersection of neuroscience and experimental archaeology could provide intriguing new possibilities for academic inquiry, shine fresh light on the archaeological and historical records, and further our understanding of the human brain.

SIDELOCK AND SWING SETS

Although Olmec art depicts infants and adults, the intermediate stages of childhood are absent. Yet later art from this area (such as Fig. 47) depicts children with an unusual hairstyle remarkably similar to the sidelock of youth, the typical hairstyle of Egyptian boys. Nubian children also wore this hairstyle in ancient times, and the practice survived in parts of the Sudan down to the present.[669]

This image also documents the use of a swing in ancient Mesoamerica. In the Old World, the earliest known use of the swing was on Crete circa 1600 BC.[670] Since the Hyksos traded extensively with Crete at this time, they were at least familiar this toy.[671]

Figure 47. Traditional Egyptian hairstyles: the sidelock of youth and shaved heads of adults, also revealing modified skulls. Ceramic figurine from Veracruz showing the similar childhood hairstyle. Offering 4, La Venta, in situ, depicting a ritual gathering whose members all display extreme skull deformation.

THE GOLDEN SECTION

Beatriz de la Fuente, the leading expert on Olmec statuary,[672] argued that the Olmecs employed the “golden section” in their sculpture.[673] The Greek philosopher Pythagoras introduced the concept of the golden section or  phi to his homeland in the 6th century BC. However, many scholars believe that Egyptian art and architecture show the earliest uses of phi and that Pythagoras adopted it when he visited and studied in Egypt in 535 BC.

LONG LEGS AND ALL

In composing a painting, Egyptian artists began with a grid, against which they sketched the outlines of their subject. This gave them precise control over proportions, which they made realistic in every detail save one:

The relative lengths of various parts of the body were regulated by a canon of proportions that deviated only slightly from reality. The major such deviation occurred in the length of the lower leg, which was always shown as longer than the upper leg, although the reverse is true in normal humans.[674]

The Olmecs followed the same unusual convention. Taking, for example, the numerous depictions of the human form in The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership (a significant contemporary catalog of Olmec art), the lower leg is almost universally depicted as significantly longer than the upper leg. Moreover, many Olmec figures dramatically exaggerate this distortion by portraying extremely short upper legs, knees falling not far below the thigh, and surprisingly long lower legs.[675]

Thus, men in both regions wore loincloths with a long narrow central sash, whereas women normally wore skirts without tops. Other commonalities include shaved heads, artificial skull deformation, the sidelock of youth, the use of phi, and the depiction of the human form with dramatically elongated lower legs. These Olmec features parallel the Nilotic civilizations generally (the Hyksos, Egyptians, and Kushites). However, as we turn to royal attire, the specific parallels with ancient Nubia become striking.

Art historian Esther Pasztory notes that the earliest manifestations of ancient Egyptian and other art styles in the Old World are stiff and rigid, and that naturalistic creations full of movement, like those of ancient Greece, only appear after a long history of development. However, Olmec art is different. It appears very suddenly, with no known predecessors, and the most naturalistic Olmec pieces are the earliest, with the tendency through time towards greater conventionalization rather than less.[676]

—Richard A. Diehl, Professor of Anthropology, University of Alabama, and a leading expert on the Olmecs

The walls of half-ruined temples deep in the Nubian desert display reliefs of ancient kings wielding the same bizarre emblems of authority as Olmec rulers while worshipping gods that are virtually identical to those of the Olmecs.

However, the Nubians erected these temples as the Olmec civilization was coming to an end. For these Nubian gods and royal implements to have influenced the Olmecs, they would have to have existed in the earlier Kerma period. As it turns out, this is not an unreasonable expectation.

These temples survive from the Meroitic period, a fourth century BC revival of traditional Nubian culture after a millennium of Egyptian cultural dominance.[677] Unfortunately, no inscriptions and little art survive from the earlier Kerma period (Kush at the time of the Hyksos). Much public art and architecture were likely obliterated in their wars with the Egyptians. However, those cultural markers that can be traced between the Kerma and Meroitic periods show remarkable continuity. Although the Egyptians are renowned for their cultural consistency over the three plus millennia of their civilization, the Nubians bested them.

CULTURAL STABILITY

In his classic paper on Nubian cultural continuity, archaeologist Timothy Kendall noted that even ancient Greek and Roman visitors to Nubia were surprised at the antiquity of long-extinct aspects of Egyptian culture still in common use in Nubia. And two thousand years later, nineteenth century European visitors continued to encounter practices and artifacts of Nubian life that seemed like living fossils:

Nubian dwellings . . . just as Strabo had described them eighteen centuries earlier . . . woven rush sandals and wooden stools, that seemed to him [Caillaud] to be identical to those he had seen removed from ancient Egyptian tombs. . . . hairdressing of Nubian women bore a striking resemblance to those of the ancient Egyptian women. . . . wooden pillows also exactly similar to ancient Egyptian types. . . . ”[678]

Figure 49. Nubian pyramids built long after the cessation of pyramid building to the north in Egypt.

Archaeological work confirmed the region’s remarkable cultural consistency: “Budge, noting many of the same obvious parallels as the earlier observers, saw other more subtle ones. The ancient pottery he found in Nubia, for example, seemed uncannily like the modern.”[679] Kendall himself added to the list, most notably observing that a traditional spiraling Nubian board game derived from the game mehen and is still in use more than three thousand years after the Egyptians abolished it.

Moreover, the parallels in question (the gods and royal attire) are elements that in most cultures tend to be conservatively maintained over long periods of time, due to priests and other cultural gatekeepers actively resisting change. Moreover, given the nationalistic revival in Nubia at that time, it seems likely that the gods that were then instated were not new inventions but traditional Nubian gods whose worship had been perpetuated unofficially and in outlying areas during the period of Egyptian cultural dominance.

BRASS KNUCKLES

The Meroitic reliefs show royals wearing an object resembling brass knuckles (see Fig. 50). Likewise, Olmec art frequently depicts individuals with their hands inserted in objects that Mesoamerican scholars refer to as “knuckle-dusters” (i.e., brass knuckles.) The Olmec versions have been variously interpreted as protective hand gear for ball games, conch shells formed into ritual bloodletters, or D-shaped adzes. Archaeologists have yet to find one, which may mean that they were perishable.[680] Whatever their original practical use, all agree that high-status individuals wore them “as implements of political and religious power.”[681] This is consistent with their portrayal in Nubian reliefs.

The Meroitic royalty created scepters from fresh palm-like branches.[682] Olmec rulers also carried perishable scepters of fresh foliage.[683]

The Olmec rulers depicted on the colossal stone heads each wear a tight-fitting skullcap, while, in Nubia: “The most characteristic and uniquely Kushite crown consisted of a skullcap, perhaps of metal or leather.”[684] Reliefs from both regions also show a variety of extremely elaborate headdresses.

Figure 50. Top: Nubian relief of royalty wearing a cloak covered in crosses, ceremonial knuckle-dusters, and fresh vegetation used as a scepter. (See also the chapter header above.) Bottom: Olmec art showing (slightly exaggerated versions of) the same distinctive royal implements.

AN AFRICAN CROSS

The ankh may be the best-known of ancient Egyptian symbols. Gardiner argued that it depicted the straps of an Egyptian sandal with its loop extending around the wearer’s ankle, the word for “sandal” being written with the same consonants as ankh the Egyptian word for “life.” Other views see it as a stylized womb, genitals, or an overhead view of the top vertebra of the spine.

Reliefs on the walls of Nubian temples show ankhs in which the top loop has been closed to form a single line, simplifying the symbol to form a cross, not unlike the crosses seen in Olmec art. But what I find especially interesting is that Nubian royalty are repeatedly shown in robes covered with these crosses.[685] The patterns on these robes resemble those on the cross-covered cloaks that led to Quetzalcóatl being identified as Christian and which appeared among the Olmec centuries before Christ.

The symbols of Olmec rulerships are strikingly like those of ancient Nubia: the skullcap, the knuckle-duster, the robe marked with crosses, and the leafy branch held as a scepter. The tradition of royal suicide and the live burial of wives with their deceased husbands are likewise traditions of Nubian royalty that occurred in ancient Mesoamerica. Thus, it is specifically among the Olmecs’ rulers that we find the closest cultural ties with Nubia.

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone . . . Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds . . .

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.

—A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean

Queen Elizabeth I (in honor of whose condition the state of Virginia was named) was advised by the eccentric scholar, mystic, and spy John Dee. From pirated treasure, Dee acquired the first Aztec stone mirror to reach Europe and attempted to use it as a crystal ball. Having limited success, he turned to the medium Edward Kelley to interpret it. On the advice of angels who spoke through the mirror, Dee left his life in England and followed Kelley to Poland. The two only parted company when the angels in the mirror told Dee to share his much younger wife with Kelley and he came to regret his acquiescence.

Figure 51. A damaged Olmec stone mirror from Offering 9, La Venta.

Kelley left him destitute. But Dee’s earlier life had inspired Shakespeare’s sorcerer Prospero. His way of signing intelligence reports “007” (resembling watchful eyes) would give James Bond his code name. And, in a legacy on which the sun has yet to set, he coined the term and concept of a “British Empire.”

The conquistadors had first encountered these mirrors when Montezuma led Cortés and his men into a private temple and proudly introduced them to the god Tezcatlipoca, “Smoking Mirror.” Although they soon destroyed the statue, Bernal Díaz del Castillo recorded that it had “eyes that shone, made of their mirrors which they call Tezcat.”[686]

These enigmatic mirrors date back to the Olmecs who carved them of rare, highly reflective, iron-rich minerals, and hollowed them into concave reflectors designed to focus light to a point. In their study of Olmec mirrors, Robert F. Heizer and Jonas E. Gullberg remarked on their distinctive optics:

One’s first impression is that the mirrors are spherical, but careful study of the curvatures proves them to have a changing radius of curvature from the center to the outer edge, the radius of curvature becoming progressively greater as the edge is approached. The effect is almost identical to the modern practice of parabolizing optical reflectors.[687]

This precise focus of light on a single point suggests a possible use in igniting fires, as does Tezcatlipoca’s name “Smoking Mirror.” Mayan artists made the mirror’s purpose explicit in depicting their equivalent deity, known to Mayanists as God K:

Sometimes a smoking torch emanates from the mirror, its smoke resembling cigar smoke or the smoke from fires. In other images, a smoking celt bearing markings similar to the sky glyph emanates from God K’s mirror.[688]

One theory has it that Olmec priests also employed these mirrors as camera obscuras to project images on flat surfaces. This may have been an impressive secondary use, but the iconography indicates that their primary purpose was creating smoke and fire. Gordon Ekholm, the late curator of Mesoamerican archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History, actually tested one of the museum’s Olmec mirrors in sunlight in 1972 and it started a fire.[689]

THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE

In his biography of Numa Pompilius, Plutarch tells how this king ascended the Roman throne in 715 BC and soon transformed the religion, building many of Rome’s key temples, reforming the calendar, founding the cults of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, and instituting the Vestal Virgins, several orders of priests, and the office of pontifex maximus now held by the Pope. Of special interest here is Plutarch’s description of the way these early priests lit the sacred fire:

In kindling this fire again, it was esteemed an impiety to light it from common sparks or flame, or from anything but the pure and unpolluted rays of the sun, which they usually effect by concave mirrors, of a figure formed by the revolution of an isosceles rectangular triangle, all the lines from the circumference of which meeting in a centre, by holding it in the light of the sun they can collect and concentrate all its rays . . . which here acquired the substance and active force of fire.[690]

Like the Olmecs, these earliest Romans used concave mirrors to focus sunlight in order to ignite a ritual fire. But the Romans came on the scene later than the Olmecs and are not said to have begun this ritual until 715 BC. However, Numa Pompilius was not a Roman but a Sabine, who claimed to have come to Italy from Lacedaemonia in Greece (the region whose economical use of language gave us the word “laconic”). The Romans saw the many religious reforms credited to him as imports rather than innovations. And, in fact, many of the Roman gods, myths, rituals, and even the alphabet are known to have been adopted from Greece around this time. (The origins of the Latin alphabet can be traced to the Cumae variant of the Greek alphabet at this same time.) It would thus not be at all surprising for this ritual to have also been imported. The Greeks, in turn, had adopted the alphabet, many myths, and certain gods from the Phoenicians. Moreover, the Greeks had inherited the bulk of their civilization from the Mycenaeans – their Bronze Age ancestors whose era is featured in the Homerian epics – who had benefitted economically and culturally from their extensive trade with the Hyksos.[691] Given the Greek cultural debt to the Purple People, we turn to a Bible story that may indicate the use of a burning mirror in the worship of the Canaanite god Baal.

BAAL BUSTER

In First Kings 18, the prophet Elijah challenges the priests of the Canaanite god Baal to a showdown over whose god can miraculously set fire to an altar. The Canaanite priests agreed and “called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon.” The text restates the time of day, “it came to pass at noon,” before describing their earnest attempts to elicit fire from their gods. Before noting that they failed, the text again makes note of the time, “And it came to pass, when midday was past . . . ” Thus, there appears to have been a preparatory morning ceremony until noon when the real business got underway. And it was significant that noon passed without success.

It seems unlikely that these powerful priests would risk their reputations in such a contest unless they believed themselves capable of lighting a fire miraculously. A burning mirror seems the most likely explanation for how they expected to accomplish this, especially given the repeated significance of noon as the time for this ritual, the time when the sun’s rays are most intense.

What the priests did during this ritual recalls Olmec bloodletting:

And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. (I Kings 18:28)

We know from the Florentine Codex that the Aztecs also required sacrificial bloodletting to kindle their sacred fire, and that once the priests had it lit, the entire population offered their blood to the flames:

Then all the people quickly cut their ears, and spattered the blood repeatedly toward the fire. Although [a child] still lay in the cradle, they also cut his ears, took his blood, and spattered it [toward] the fire. Thus, it was said, everyone performed a penance.[692]

Both cultures considered human blood essential to the miraculous lighting of the sacred flame and offered their own blood toward that end.

Olmec statuary shows figures wearing these mirrors mounted on a headdress or breastplate. This would have made the ritual more dramatic and seemingly miraculous than a priest holding a mirror in his hands and obviously positioning the beam against the tinder. Perhaps, kneeling and supplicating the deity provided cover while the priest discretely positioned his body to focus the beam on the tinder.

These mounted mirrors resemble the sun discs frequently shown on the headdresses of gods in Egyptian art. The Egyptians left behind numerous mirrors and are thought to have used arrays of mirrors to channel the brilliant desert sun into tombs during construction to provide smoke-free light for painters. Given their frequent use of mirrors, the centrality of the sun to Egyptian religion (as to that of Mesoamerica), and its intensity in the desert, it would not be surprising to find that the ritual of lighting a sacred fire by focusing sunlight had originated there. The 3rd century BC Greek inventor Archimedes studied and worked in Egypt before defending Syracuse from the Roman navy by using an array of mirrors to set their ships ablaze from a distance. (In 2005, an MIT “Product Engineering Processes” class demonstrated the feasibility of this legendary feat by using 127 one foot square mirrors to successfully set fire to an oak hull at a distance of 100 feet.)

Although numerous mirrors have been found in Egyptian and Canaanite sites,[693] no concave burning mirrors are known. Yet, even in Rome, where we have explicit textual evidence of their use, there is a similar lack of surviving concave mirrors. The need for priests to keep their special effects secret would have kept the quantity of these artifacts low. And, depending on the metal employed in their construction, they may have corroded or been recast. But another possibility intrigues me. Perhaps a burning mirror has been found but, because of its concave shape, was mistaken for an unremarkable bowl and packed away in museum storage.

THE WERE-JAGUAR

Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec god with the burning-mirror eyes, appears to have derived from the Olmec “were-jaguar,” a god with a man’s body but jaguar-like facial features. Tezcatlipoca is said to have transformed into a jaguar,[694]  and several codices portray him with mixed human and jaguar features.[695] The destroyed royal statue of Tezcatlipoca apparently had similar features, which Bernal Díaz del Castillo described as a “face like a bear.”[696] Also, like Tezcatlipoca, the Olmec were-jaguar appears to have been the central deity in its pantheon.

In Mesoamerica, mirrors commonly represented the sun,[697] and this would also seem to be the meaning of the smoking mirrors that formed the eyes and name of the god Tezcatlipoca, especially since he served as a sun god. However, only one eye can have been the sun, suggesting that the second mirror symbolized the moon.

HORUS-MAHES

The Egyptians believed that the right eye of Horus was the sun and the left eye was the moon.[698] They actually worshipped two different gods named Horus,[699] just as the Aztec pantheon included two Tezcatlipocas.[700] Iconographic evidence suggests that the Olmec were-jaguar was also separate deities. One manifestation of Horus was known as “the Red Horus,”[701] and the Aztecs distinguished their two Tezcatlipocas as the red and the black Tezcatlipoca.[702] As Horus-Mahes this god was lion-headed and human-bodied,[703] much like the original Olmec were-jaguars.

APEDEMAK

A god with the same appearance and characteristics as Horus-Mahes dominates the Meroitic-era Nubian reliefs. Yet, while the Egyptians included Horus-Mahes in a large and diverse pantheon, this Nubian were-lion, known as Apedemak, was the chief deity in a surprisingly small pantheon, much as the were-jaguar was among the Olmecs.

THE HAWK-HEADED ALLIGATOR

The other common Meroitic deity was a falcon-headed crocodile.[704] The Olmecs, likewise, worshipped a crocodile whose head bore the features of a bird of prey:

The Olmec Dragon is the principal zoomorphic supernatural in Olmec art. The features of the dragon are a composite of the crocodilian and harpy eagle, which endow it with the power to navigate the land, water, and air, the three levels of the cosmos.[705]

Figure 52. Nubian relief of the popular falcon-headed crocodile deity, from Lepsius.

Thus, in both ancient Nubia and among the Olmec, these same two, unusual deities predominate, a human-bodied, large-cat-headed, sun god (which at least in the Egyptian and later Mesoamerican traditions was also sun-eyed and had twin, color-coded manifestations) and a crocodile with the features of a hawk or eagle about its head.

DEATH BY CAT

Stirling saw two Olmec monuments as depicting jaguars having sex with human women. He concluded that the Olmecs saw their were-jaguar gods and ultimately themselves as the product of this union. Indeed, each statue shows a person on their back with a jaguar perched atop them. However, the statues contain no indication that sex is taking place, nor even any evidence that the humans involved are female. Moreover, in the first of these monuments, San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán Monument 1, the person’s ankles are crossed and bound in the typical position of Mesoamerican captives offered for sacrifice.[706] Since Stirling’s time, archaeologists have uncovered additional Olmec images – including Chalcatzingo Monuments 3 and 4 – which show a jaguar devouring a bound man, indicating that human sacrifice by large cat (and not bestiality) was a common Olmec motif.[707]

Figure 53. Bound captive sacrificed to a lion in a Nubian sculpture from Basa. A misinterpretation of similar Olmec sculptures led to the theory that the Olmecs believed themselves to be the descendants of human-jaguar copulation.

Likewise, a recurring theme in Meroitic art is “the motif of the lion devouring a captive.”[708] In fact, the Olmec monuments that inspired Stirling’s theory have doppelgängers in ancient Nubia. Life-size monuments from Basa (now in the courtyard of the Sudan National Museum) each depict a lion assaulting a bound captive. As in the Early Formative Olmec monuments, the same medium, monumental stone sculpture, is used to convey a large cat atop a bound human captive, in an unusual form of ritual human sacrifice.

Figure 54. Top: Nubian reliefs recorded by Lepsius of humans in the act of being sacrificed to lions and to mythic lions crossed with birds of prey. Bottom: An Olmec relief (Chalcatzingo Monument 31) showing a captive being sacrificed to a jaguar with the head of a bird of prey. Photo by Magnus Pharao Hansen.

DEATH BY GRIFFIN

The Olmecs also depicted a variation on this motif involving a mythic creature. A Middle Formative Olmec relief from Chalcatzingo depicts “an avian jaguar dismembering a human victim with its talons.”[709] Specifically, this creature has the body of a jaguar and the head of a bird of prey. Likewise, in Nubia, reliefs from the Lion-temple at Musawwarat Es-Sufra depict “a falcon-headed winged lion . . . standing on a prostrate captive with his right fore-paw.”[712]

Thus, the Nubians and Olmecs worshipped the same composite deities: a human-bodied, large-cat-headed, sun-eyed god with twin, color-coded manifestations and an eagle-headed crocodile. Both also practiced human sacrifice by means of a large cat and depicted a mythic version in which a large cat with the head of a bird of prey devoured the victim.

THE NUBIAN ROLE

The specific Olmec characteristics that parallel those of ancient Nubia tend to involve the king, including the emblems of rulership, the official gods, royal suicide, and the live burial of wives on the death of a ruler. Furthermore, the large stone heads that have so often been interpreted as of African appearance are believed to have depicted the Olmec rulers.

Given the intervening thousands of years and the dearth of contemporary textual evidence, it may be impossible to deduce the exact details of how this foreign influence came to be in ancient Mexico. The bulk of the evidence (including the northern Egyptian place names, the alphabet, purple dye, mythology, rituals, burial practices, writing system, architecture, etc.) points specifically to contact by the Hyksos. Yet these additional features may well indicate that a royal dynasty was established by Nubians among the group. Avaris was known to have had at least one Nubian ruler, Nehesy.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

—T.S. Eliot, Dry Salvages

I did not tell half of what I saw,

for I knew I would not be believed.

—Marco Polo, on his deathbed, 1324

Though frequently dismissed as myth, the traditional Aztec and Mayan histories of ancestors from across the ocean are here shown to have accurately named and described Egypt, northern Egypt, its geography, location, and royal emblem. And archaeology revealed that Mesoamerica’s first civilization indeed arose abruptly with the arrival of immigrants of unknown origin. Moreover, this sudden civilization paralleled in significant detail that of the occupiers of northern Egypt at the time, the Hyksos:

Both cultures’ beliefs began with a wind god splitting a goddess to create the world and sky from her halves, followed 600 years later by four global cataclysms, culminating with the great flood in the 32nd century bc. Additional parallels (too extensive to recount in detail) occur between their respective religious rituals, architectural traditions, burial practices, conceptions of the afterlife, and writing systems. Among the more peculiar commonalities are the placement of a green stone in a corpse to serve as its heart in the afterlife, ritual bloodletting (and the belief in a male god engendering life through penile bloodletting), the nine-layered reptilian underworlds, ritual time capsules of model construction tools, the corn-Osiris, a ruler ritually sacrificing his own child on behalf of his people, and the decision to locate their respective cities on a hill atop an island within a river in a marshy delta.

Along the way, an ancient board game proved to have spawned some of history’s most influential conceptions of hell. The earliest alphabet showed evidence of the parallelism characteristic of ancient Semitic poetry and opened lost metaphors and a cipher in the sermons of Jesus. A nautical view of the globe revealed that Hyksos and Olmec cities had both lined waterways bridging isthmuses between the oceans. Archaeology and the Ipuwer Papyrus illumined the forgotten circumstances behind Egypt’s abandonment of pyramid building. And Mayan murals offered possible insights into the Viking exploration of the Americas.

Since Judaism and the first books of the Bible emerged (at the Exodus) from the same Egypto-Semitic culture as the Hyksos, this study has also opened new insights into the Bible, such as the nature of the “walls of water” that the Israelites had to pass between in crossing the Red Sea, the unique timing of Passover and Easter, the odor and value of the tabernacle’s cloth, and the Canaanite attempt to light a fire miraculously precisely at noon. For the first time ever, historical climate proxy data have been used to identify and date biblical phenomena, including the great flood, Joseph’s seven years of plenty, and the subsequent drought that initiated the Jewish exile in Egypt. This provided the first precise date for an event from the Bible and a new anchor for its chronology.

A cross-comparison of archaeological, textual, and climate proxy data from multiple disciplines (dendrochnology, palynology, ice cores, sea floor sediments, speleothems…) resulted in a new model that explains numerous phenomena from circa 3189 BC: the abrupt and dramatic mid-Holocene climate shift, the sudden global methane surge, the unprecedented spike in atmospheric sulfur, the extreme tree ring event (and complete devastation of forests) unaccompanied by a causational eruption, the flash-frozen Andean plants, the rapidly frozen Iceman, and the ancient accounts of a global flood.

Together, these discoveries have intriguing implications for Mesoamerican history, paleo-climatology, Egyptology, Biblical studies, geography, glaciology, and epigraphy, and offer novel possibilities for interdisciplinary dialogue.

I hope that this journey has been thought-provoking and enjoyable. The research and writing have taken fourteen years, and I greatly appreciate your having taken the time to explore these forgotten corners of history with me.

So Quetzalcoatl looked at his people; and he embraced Jesus, the Son of Heaven… As he went, behind him rose a cry of people dying, and a flame of places burning. He said to himself: Surely those are Mexicans crying! Yet I must not hear, for Jesus has come to the land, and he will wipe the tears from all eyes… Surely that is Mexico burning. But I must not look, for all men will be brothers…

— D. H. Lawrence’s allegory of the conquest of Mexico from his 1926 novel The Plumed Serpent.

ENDNOTES

CHAPTER ONE: THE CONQUERING MYTH

[1]. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, trans. A.P. Maudslay (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Cudahy, 1956), 192.

[2]. Ibid., p. 192.

[3]. Cortez, His Five Letters, 234-235; Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 204.

[4]. Fernando Cortez, His Five Letters of Relation to the Emporer Charles V, trans. Francis Augustus MacNutt (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1908), 234-235.

[5]. Ibid., pp. 234-235.

[6]. Although Montezuma’s speech as recorded in Cortés’ letter to Charles V does not name this figure, other early accounts of this speech name Quetzalcóatl. See, e.g., Diego Durán, The History of the Indies of New Spain, trans. Doris Heyden, vol. 210 of Civilization of the American Indian (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), p. 530. Likely Cortés couldn’t be troubled with long Aztec names, but the Spaniards soon learned the name of the mysterious figure that Montezuma had described, and there is no question that he was referring to Quetzalcóatl.

[7]. Cortez, His Five Letters, 234-235.

[8]. Ibid., 234-235.

[9]. Ibid., 234-235.

[10]. Bartolomeo de las Casas, The tears of the Indians. Slaughter of over 20 million innocent people total destruction of countries. (Academic Reprints. P.O. Box 3003 Stanford, CA; Reprint of 1656 edition).

CHAPTER TWO: A LOST CIVILIZATION

[11]. . Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. “One Word of Truth…” The Nobel Speech on Literature 1970. (London: The Bodely Head, 1972), 15-16.

[12]. Matthew W. Stirling, “Discovering the New World’s Oldest Dated Work of Man,” National Geographic Magazine 76 (August 1939), 185.

[13]. Ibid., p. 185.

[14]. Michael D. Coe and Richard A. Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec: The Archaeology of San Lorenzo, Tenochtitlán (Austin: University of Texas Press: 1980), vol I, 121.

[15]. Ibid., vol I, 24, 388.

[16]. Matthew W. Stirling, “On the Trail of La Venta Man,” National Geographic Magazine 91, no. 2 (February 1947): 171; Ann Cyphers “Olmec Architecture at San Lorenzo,”in Olmec to Aztec: Settlement Patterns in the Ancient Gulf Lowlands, eds. Barbara L. Stark and Philip J. Arnold III (Tucson: Univ. Arizona Press, 1997), 101.

[17]. Gillett G. Griffin, Olmec forms and materials found in Central Guerrero, in The Olmec and Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1981), 212.

[18]. Coe and Diehl 1980, vol I, 245

[19]. Actually found at the sacred spring El Manatí outside of town where the people of San Lorenzo left offerings.

[20]. Coe and Diehl 1980, vol I, 245

[21]. Ibid, vol I, p. 294.

[22]. Ibid., vol I, p. 150.

[23]. Ibid., vol I, p. 151.

[24]. M. D. Coe, San Lorenzo and the Olmec civilization, in Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the Olmec, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1968), 64.

[25]. Ibid., p. 64.

[26]. Jeffrey P. Blomster, Hector Neff, and Michael D. Glascock, “Olmec Pottery Production and Export in Ancient Mesoamerica Determined Through Elemental Analysis,” Science 307 (18 February 2005): 1068-1072; Ann Cyphers “Olmec Architecture at San Lorenzo,”in Olmec to Aztec: Settlement Patterns in the Ancient Gulf Lowlands, eds. Barbara L. Stark and Philip J. Arnold III (Tucson: Univ. Arizona Press, 1997), 101.

[27]. Richard A. Diehl, The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004), 127.

[28]. In archaeology, a horizon is a brief period of intense interaction between societies.

[29]. Diehl, The Olmecs, p. 133.

[30]. This is often reported as an uncalibrated radiocarbon date of 900 BC.

[31]. Diehl, The Olmecs, p. 134.

[32]. Michael D. Coe, “The Olmec Heartland: Evolution of Ideology,” Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, ed. Robert Sharer and David Grove (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 78.

[33]. Michael D. Coe, The Maya, sixth edition. (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1999), 50.

[34]. Coe, The Maya, 54; Gordon Willey, A. Ledyard Smith, Gair Tourtellot III, and Ian Graham. Excavations at Seibal, Department of Peten, Guatemala: Introduction: The Site and Its Setting. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1975), vol. 13, no. 1, 44.

[35]. John Noble Wilford, “Mother Culture, or Only a Sister?” The New York Times. March 15, 2005, D1.

[36]. Lyle Campbell and Terrence Kaufman, “A Linguistic Look at the Olmecs,” American Antiquity, 41, no. 1 (Jan., 1976), 80-89.

[37]. Mary E. D. Pohl, Kevin O. Pope and Christopher von Nagy, “Olmec Origins of Mesoamerican Writing,” Science 298 (6 December 2002): 1984-1987.

[38]. Maria del Carmen Rodríguez Martínez, et al. 2006. Oldest writing in the New World. Science 313 (2006): 1610-1614.

[39]. Proskouriakoff 1971: 147-148; Justeson, et al. 1985, 36

[40]. Meggers, Betty J. “The Transpacific Origin of Mesoamerican Civilization: A Preliminary Review of the Evidence and Its Theoretical Implication.” American Anthropologist, 1975, vol. 77, no. 11, pp. 1-27.

[41]. Stirling, “Discovering the New World’s Oldest,” 207-209.

CHAPTER THREE: THE LOST CITY OF TULA

[42]. David A. Freidel, “Preparing the Way” The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, ed. Jill Guthrie (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996), 3.

[43]. Written accounts of Quetzalcóatl’s cross-adorned robe occur in Ixtlilxochitl and Cervantes de Salazar. Codex Borgia 73 depicts Quetzalcóatl with this insignia on his headdress. Codex Rios 36 (31r) shows Quetzalcóatl holding up a bag of incense marked with this symbol. And the Codex Telleriano-Remensis shows him wearing a robe covered in these crosses. See, for example, Mary Miller and Karl Taube, “Quetzalcoatl,” in An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (New York : Thames and Hudson, 1997 [1993]), 141.

[44]. Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World, 165.

[45]. For the sake of brevity I use Richard Diehl’s term for the southeastern portion of the Mexican state of Veracruz and the northeastern portion of Tabasco.

[46]. Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World, 168-169.

[47]. Ibid., p. 168.

[48]. Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Obras Historicas, ed. Alfredo Cavero (Mexico: Oficina Tip. de la Secretaria de Fomento, 1891), Tomo I, p 20; José López Portillo, They are Coming-- The Conquest of Mexico Trans. Beatrice Berler (Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 1992), 72-74; Miguel Covarrubias, Mexico South: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec (New York, A.A. Knopf, 1946), 38-39.

[49]. Ann Cyphers. “Reconstructing Olmec Life at San Lorenzo,” in Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico, eds. Elizabeth P. Benson and Beatriz de la Fuente (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1996), 62-63.

[50]. Ibid., p. 157.

[51]. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. The Florentine Codex, General history of the Things of New Spain. Book 3: The Origin of the Gods, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, No. 14, Part 4. of Monographs of The School of American Research and The Museum of New Mexico (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research and The University of Utah, 1978), 13.

[52]. Ibid., p. 35.

[53]. Confusingly, the term Toltec was adopted by subsequent people groups, including the Aztecs’ other primary ancestral population, the Tolteca-Chichimecas – who arrived much later from the nomadic “Chichimeca” tribes to the northwest.

[54]. Nigel Davies, The Toltecs: Until the Fall of Tula. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), 142-143.

[55]. Richard A. Diehl, The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004), 127, 133; Blomster, Neff, and Glascock, “Olmec Pottery Production,” 1068-1072.

[56]. Mary Miller and Karl Taube, “Quetzalcoatl,” in An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (New York : Thames and Hudson, 1997 [1993]), 141.

[57]. Diehl, The Olmecs, 170.

[58]. Paul Tolstoy, “Western Mesoamerica and the Olmec” in Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, eds. Robert Sharer and David Grove (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 285.

CHAPTER FOUR: BLACK LAND RED LAND

[59]. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. The Florentine Codex, General history of the Things of New Spain. Book 3: The Origin of the Gods, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, No. 14, Part 4. of Monographs of The School of American Research and The Museum of New Mexico (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research and The University of Utah, 1978), 35-36; Roberta H. Markman and Peter T. Markman, The Flayed God: The Mesoamerican Mythological Tradition (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992), 38, 365-366; Davies, The Toltecs, 143-144. This was often shortened to simply Tlapallan, “Red Land.”

[60]. J. M. Plumley, “The Cosmology of Ancient Egypt,” in Ancient Cosmologies, ed. Carmen Blacker and Michael Loewe (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1975), 20; Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 102.

[61]. Daniel G. Brinton, American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent (Phildadelphia: H. C. Watts & Company, 1882), 89.

[62]. Diego Durán, The History of the Indies of New Spain, Volume 210 in the Civilization of the American Indian Series, trans. Doris Heyden (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 217.

[63]. Brinton, American Hero-Myths, 86.

[64]. Popol Vuh, fol. 48r as excerpted in Frauke Sachse and Allen J. Christenson, “Tulan and the Other Side of the Sea: Unraveling a Metaphorical Concept from Colonial Guatemalan Highland Sources,” Mesoweb: (www.mesoweb.com/articles/tulan/Tulan.pdf), 2.

[65]. “Historia Quiché de Don Juan de Torres” in Crónicas Indígenas de Guatemala, trans. Adrián Recinos. (Guatemala: Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 1984), 25.

[66]. Frauke Sachse, “Over Distant Waters: Places of Origin and Creation in Colonial K'iche'an Sources,” in Pre-Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin, ed., John Edward Staller (New York: Springer, 2008), 125; Simón Otzoy, trans., Memorial de Sololá (Guatemala : Comisión Interuniversitaria Guatemalteca de Conmemoración del Quinto Centenario del Descubrimiento de América, 1999), 2, 155.

[67]. Adrián Recinos and Delia Goetz, trans. The Annals of the Cakchiquels (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953), 45, 54.

[68]. “Historia de los Xpantzay de Tecpan Guatemala,” in Crónicas Indígenas de Guatemala, trans. Adrián Recinos. (Guatemala: Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 1984), 123.

[69]. Gordon Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World: Reading the Native Americas Through their Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 157. Note that Tula, Tulan, and Tollan are variant spellings.

[70]. Allen J. Christenson, Popul Vuh: Literal Translation. Mesoweb Publications. Line 5450; Robert M. Carmack and James Mondloch, El Título de Totonicapán (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Centro de Estudios Mayas, 1983), 179; “Historia de los Xpantzay de Tecpan Guatemala,” in Crónicas Indígenas de Guatemala, trans. Adrián Recinos. (Guatemala: Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 1984), 123; “Yo, Alonso Pérez,” in Crónicas Indígenas de Guatemala, trans. Adrián Recinos. (Guatemala: Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 1984), 169.

[71]. Dennis Tedlock, trans., Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life (New York: A Touchstone Book, 1996), 362.

[72]. Allen J. Christenson, Popul Vuh: Literal Translation. Mesoweb Publications. Line 5450.

[73]. Isaiah 11:15.

[74]. Herodotus II:17; Diodorus, Bibliotheca Historica, I:33.

[75]. Aeschylus, Fragment 161, “On the Swelling of the Nile.”

[76]. Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6:339.

[77]. Ibid., 3:368.

[78]. Ibid., 3:193.

[79]. Statius, Thebaid 8. 359.

[80]. Ovid, Metamorphoses 15:745.

[81]. Ibid., 5:187.

[82]. Ibid., 1:240-429.

[83]. Ibid., 9:764.

[84]. Ibid., 5: 315.

[85]. Milton, Paradise Lost 12:157-159.

[86]. K.S.B. Ryholt, The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, c. 1800-1550 B.C. Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications Volume 20. (Copenhagen: K.S.B. Ryholt and Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997), 133.

[87]. Geoffrey Graham, "Tanis," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, ed. Donald B. Redford (New York: Oxford University Press. 2001) Vol 3: 348-350.

[88]. Ovid, Metamorphoses 2:254.

[89]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 129-131.

CHAPTER FIVE: ROYAL PURPLE

[90]. William F. Leggett, Ancient and Medieval Dyes (Brooklyn, NY: Chemical Publishing Co., 1944), 67-68.

[91]. Ibid., p. 68.

[92]. Ibid., p. 68.

[93]. Exodus 25:4; 26:1, 31, 36; 27:16; 28:5-6, 8, 15, 33; 35:6, 23, 25, 35; 36:8, 35, 37; 38: 18, 23, 39:1-3, 5, 8, 24, 29.

[94]. Mark 15:17; John 19:2.

[95]. Zelia Nuttall. “A Curious Survival in Mexico of the Use of the Purpura Shell-Fish for Dyeing,” in Putnam Anniversary Volume: Anthropological Essays Presented to Frederic Ward Putnam in Honor of his Seventieth Birthday, April 16, 1909, by his Friends and Associates, ed. F. Boas (New York: G. E. Stechert & Co., Publishers, 1909), 372.

[96]. Ibid., p. 368-384.

[97]. Stuart Robinson, A History of Dyed Textiles (London: Sudio Vista, 1969), 24.

[98]. Nuttall, “A Curious Survival in Mexico,” 370.

[99]. Robinson, A History of Dyed Textiles, 15. The standard interpretation of this passage is that the “smell was due to the common use of urine in the trade of all dyers…” (Ibid., p. 15). However, normal urine does not smell like “rotting fish,” while, given Nuttall’s first-hand experience, murex dye apparently did.

[100]. Robinson, A History of Dyed Textiles, 24.

[101]. Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 253. (Book 4: 42).

[102]. Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History Books IV.59-VIII, trans. C. H. Oldfather (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000 [1939]), 145-147. Book V: 19.

[103]. Ibid., pp. 149-151. Book V: 20.

[104]. Cyrus H. Gordon. Before Columbus. (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1971).

[105]. The earliest certain use of the term “Canaan” is on tablets from Mari on the Euphrates dated to the 18th century BC. However, the population of the Levant was continuous for many centuries before this, and many scholars believe that the term ga-na-na in the Ebla tablets of the third-millennium BC is an earlier form of the term “Canaanite.” See Jonathan N. Tubb, Canaanites. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 15.

[106]. Michael C. Astour, “The Origin of the Terms ‘Canaan,’ ‘Phoenician,’ and ‘Purple.’” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 24, no. 1 (1965): 346.

[107]. Frank Moore Cross. “The Invention and Development of the Alphabet,” in The Origins of Writing, ed. Wayne M. Senner (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 80. Biblical scholars are an exception, as that source continues to use the Semitic name Canaanite at a latter date. Historically, Phoenicia as a region also differs in that by 1200 BC, the geographical center of the Purple People had shifted northward toward what is now Lebanon as a result of a series of invasions and occupations of Palestine.

CHAPTER SIX: THE ALPHABET CODE

[108]. In 1999 John and Deborah Darnell discovered an earlier version of the early alphabet known as the Wadi el-Hol script. However, since only two short inscriptions have been found in this script, since the majority of the extant studies have focused on proto-Sinaitic, since Wadi el-Hol is essentially the same script as proto-Sinaitic, and for the sake of simplicity and brevity, I will simply refer to proto-Sinaitic.

[109]. William Fox Albright, The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 19. This translation is not definitive. While the sounds that the letters indicate are generally known, definitive translation is hampered by the lack of a notation system for the vowels, the lack of word breaks, and uncertainty about the dialect of West Semitic spoken here at this early date.

[110]. W. M. Flinders Petrie and C. T. Currelly, Researches in Sinai (London: John Murray, 1906), 46.

[111]. Robert Good argued that lamed derived from a hieroglyph of a “rope coil,” and connected the acrophony with an Ugaritic word meaning “to attach a guide rope” (Robert M. Good, “Lamed,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 262 (1986):89–90.). Darnell et al., found that the earliest version of this letter at Wadi el Hol indeed depicted rope (J. C. Darnell, F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Marilyn J. Lundberg, P. Kyle McCarter, and Bruce Zuckermanet, “Two early alphabetic inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hol: new evidence for the origin of the alphabet from the western desert of Egypt.” The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 59 (2005): 77.)

[112] Darnell et al., 2005, 82; Sass 1988, 118

[113]. Cross 1980, 10; Ernest David Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, ed. Baruch Sarel (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 197.

[114]. The ancient Egyptian word for “arrow” is transcribed zἰn (Gardiner 1979, 512). However, the middle ἰ has the same phonetic value in transcribing Egyptian as the Hebrew yodh. Using the same transcription for this Egyptian word as is used for Hebrew it would be written zyn. It is thus identical to the letter name zayin, which was likewise originally written without vowels as zyn. And the earliest proto-Sinaitic predecessor of zayin consists of two parallel diagonal lines, suggesting arrows in flight.

[115]. Alan H. Gardiner, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage From a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden (Pap. Leiden 344 Recto) (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich’sche Buchhandlung, 1909), 91.

[116]. Sass 1988, 132.

[117]. The proto-Sinaitic pictograph derives from the Egyptian hieroglyph O6, which depicts a “rectangular enclosure seen in plan” (Sir Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed (Oxford: Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum: 1979), 493). Brian Colless connects its acrophony with the Hebrew word hasir “enclosure, court” or “courtyard” (B. E. Colless, “The proto-alphabetic inscriptions of Canaan,” Abr-Nahrain 29 (1991): 21, 26-27; Klein, Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary, 229). An earlier form of this word from nearer the time of the invention of the proto-Sinaitic alphabet is the Ugaritic hzr which means “premises of a farm” (Klein, Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary, 229). The Arabic equivalent is hazara “he fenced in” and hazirah “enclosure for sheep, fence, hedge” (Klein, Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary, 229). Basically, it is a field or pasture “seen in plan,” much like the overhead perspective of a house seen in bet.

[118]. One of the proto-Sinaitic pictographs depicted a plant or plants (Gardiner 1916, table 1, letter 19). Sass proposed that this pictograph came from either the Egyptian hieroglyph M23 “rushes” or M16 “papyrus” (Sass 1988, 129; Gardiner 1979, 481-482). And Albright argued that this pictograph was the source of the letter tsadeh (Albright 1966, fig 1).

[119]. Timothy Kendall, “Ethnoarchaeology in Meroitic Studies” Studia Meroitica 1984, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference for Meroitic Studies. Rome 1984. Ed. Sergio Donadoni and Steffen Wenig. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag Berlin, 1989), 704. Throwing-sticks appear to have played a prominent role in Canaanite and Hyksos culture, as statuary at both Avaris and Ebla show dignitaries posed with a throw-stick against one shoulder (Manfred Bietak, Avaris: Capital of the Hyksos. Recent Excavations at Tell el-Dab'a. Sackler Lecture. (London: British Museum Press, 1996), 20). Likewise, in his analysis of Olmec material culture, Gareth W. Lowe concluded that one of the Olmecs’ chief weapons had been similar “boomerangs” (Gareth W. Lowe, “The Heartland Olmec: Evolution of Material Culture.” Regional Perspectives on the Olmec. Ed., Robert Sharer and David Grove. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 49).

[120]. Isaac Taylor, The Alphabet: An Account of the Origin and Development of Letters, Vol I: Semitic Alphabets (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1883) 355.

[121]. Cf. the incredible collection of 16th to 20th century nursery rhymes amassed by Iona and Peter Opie.

[122]. Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Banks of Plum Creek (New York: Harper Trophy, 1937), 50.

[123]. (Klein, Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary, 134; Davidson, 156).

[124]. Strong’s Number 2671.

[125]. J. H. Rogers, “Origins of the Ancient Constellations. I. The Mesopotamian Traditions,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 108, no. 1 (Feb. 1998), 25.

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE ALPHABET IN ANCIENT MEXICO

[126]. Based on Hugh A. Moran and David H. Kelley, The Alphabet and the Ancient Calendar Signs (Palo Alto, California: Daily Press, 1953; 1969 2nd ed.), figure 19.

[127]. This concept of “ripeness” was thus represented in Yucatec Mayan by an iguana, “a favorite article of food” (Brinton, “The Native Calendar,” 280, 307) and in Kaqchikel Mayan by “a net for carrying maize.” (Adrián Recinos and Delia Goetz, trans., The Annals of the Cakchiquels (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953), 29; Brinton, “The Native Calendar,” 280.). The Zapotec day name literally means “ripe, mature” (Cyrus Thomas, Day Symbols of the Maya Year, 50).

[128]. Ernest David Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, ed. Baruch Sarel (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 103.

[129]. Gardiner 1916.

[130]. Frank M. Cross, Jr., “The Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 134 (April 1954): 18.

[131]. See for example Gardiner 1916. Although he could not find the proto-Sinaitic prototype for D, his chart shows the earliest known forms of this letter.

[132]. Ecclesiastes 10:18

TABLE THREE

I. Zapotec day names and glyphs are from Javier Urcid, Zapotec Hieroglyphic Writing. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology 34 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001), 243 table 4.3, 249 table 4.5, 252 fig. 4.151.

II. Frank M. Cross, Jr., “The Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 134. (April 1954): 24, n 32.

III. Alan H. Gardiner, “The Egyptian Origin of the Semitic Alphabet,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 3 (1916): plate II, letter 18; A. H. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs. 3rd Ed., Rev. (Oxford: Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, 1979 [1927]), 480. This is usually referred to as a “lotus,” but the Egyptian “lotus” is actually a water lily of the same genus (Nymphaea) as the plant that constitutes this first Mayan day name.

IV. John Montgomery, Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs (New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc., 2002), 97.

V. Montgomery, Dictionary of Maya, 97.

VI. Marc-Alain Ouaknin. Mysteries of the Alphabet: The Origins of Writing. Trans from the French by Josephine Bacon. (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1999), 163.

VII. Joyce Marcus, “Archaeology and religion: A comparison of the Zapotec and Maya,” World Archaeology 10 (1978): 180. The Classical Mayan glyph for this day represents “wind,” “breath,” and the Wind God. Montgomery, Dictionary of Maya, 94.

VIII. Daniel G. Brinton, “The native calendar of Central America and Mexico. A study in linguistics and symbolism,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 31 (1893): 278.

IX. M. S. Edmonson, The Book of the Year: Middle American Calendrical Systems. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), fig 15c.

X. Mark. Urcid, Zapotec Hieroglyphic Writing, 243 table 4.3; Gordon Whittaker, “The structure of the Zapotec calendar,” in Calendars of Mesoamerica and Peru, ed. Anthony Aveni and Gordon Brotherston, (1983),119.

XI. Ernest David Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, ed. Baruch Sarel (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 103.

XII. This concept of “ripeness” was thus represented in Yucatec Mayan by an iguana, “a favorite article of food” (Brinton, “The Native Calendar,” 280, 307) and in Kaqchikel Mayan by “a net for carrying maize.” (Adrián Recinos and Delia Goetz, trans., The Annals of the Cakchiquels (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953), 29; Brinton, “The Native Calendar,” 280.)

XIII. Cyrus Thomas, Day Symbols of the Maya Year, 50.

XIV. Daniel G. Brinton, “The native calendar of Central America and Mexico. A study in linguistics and symbolism,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 31 (1893): 280.

XV. The ancient Egyptian word for “arrow” is zἰn (Gardiner 1979, 512). The middle ἰ has the same phonetic value in transcribing Egyptian as the Hebrew yodh. Using the same transcription for this Egyptian word as is used for Hebrew it would be written zyn. It is thus identical to the letter name zayin, which was likewise originally written without vowels as zyn.

XVI. Intermediary between this early arrow form and the later Aztec glyph of a skull is a glyph depicting a skull pierced by an arrow. (Urcid, Javier. 2004. Sacred landscapes and social memory: The Ñuiñe inscriptions in the Ndaxagua natural tunnel, Tepelmeme, Oaxaca. Report submitted to the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., fig 22).

XVII. John Justeson, William Norman, Lyle Campbell, and Terrance Kaufman, The Foreign Impact on Lowland Mayan Language and Script (New Orleans: Tulane University Press, 1985), 21.

XVIII. Kelley argued that the Greek letter mu represents an earlier form related to the Assyrian mu “water.” (David H. Kelley, “Calendar Animals and Deities,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 16 (1960), 328.)

XIX. The linguistic work of Justeson et al. observed that this day name “has no meaning in ordinary Lowland Mayan vocabulary and is unanalyzable morphologically; it too was probably borrowed from some language… The more likely possibility, assuming that the Zapotec word is borrowed, is that some third language was the ultimate source of the word in both Zapotec and Mayan (perhaps with intermediaries). We are unable to identify any specific source…” (Justeson et al., The Foreign Impact on Lowland Mayan, 22).

XX. Darnell et al., “Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions,” 82, Sass 1988, 118).

XXI. Cf I Kings 10:22 and II Chronicles 9:21 where it is used as such. Related words occur in Aramaic, Syriac, in the earlier Akkadian ukupu, and in the Egyptian gf or gyf “long-tailed monkey.” The origin of these words is thought to have been from the Old Indian kapih (Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary, 571). This word is also the source of the English “ape” via the Greek kebos or kepos.

XXII. Gardiner, “The Egyptian Origin,” plate 2, letter 14; Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary, 631, 668.

XXIII. One of the proto-Sinaitic pictographs depicted a plant or plants (Gardiner, “The Egyptian Origin,” table 1, letter 19). Sass identified the origin of this pictograph in either the Egyptian hieroglyph M23 “rushes” or M16 “papyrus” (Benjamin Sass, The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its Development in the Second Millennium B.C. Ägypten und Altes Testament, Band 13 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz: 1988), 129; Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 481-2). And Albright argued that this pictograph was the source of the letter tsade (William Foxwell Albright, The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and their Decipherment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), fig 1).

XXIV. On such sacrifices, see the reliefs on the Coatepantli (serpent wall) at Tula, Hidalgo (Nigel Davies, The Toltecs: Until the Fall of Tula. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), 243). The jaguar’s extended tongue in this calendrical glyph is often indicative of sacrifice in Mesoamerican iconography.

XXV. Brinton, “The native calendar,” 285.

XXVI. The proto-Sinaitic pictograph derives from the Egyptian hieroglyph O6, which depicts a “rectangular enclosure seen in plan” (Sir Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed (Oxford: Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum: 1979), 493). Brian Colless connects its acrophony with the Hebrew word hasir “enclosure, court” or “courtyard” (B. E. Colless, “The proto-alphabetic inscriptions of Canaan,” Abr-Nahrain 29 (1991): 21, 26-27; Klein, Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary, 229). An earlier form of this word from nearer the time of the invention of the proto-Sinaitic alphabet is the Ugaritic hzr which means “premises of a farm” (Klein, Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary, 229). The Arabic equivalent is hazara “he fenced in” and hazirah “enclosure for sheep, fence, hedge” (Klein, Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary, 229). In short, this letter is a field or pasture “seen in plan,” much like the overhead perspective of a house that is the letter bet.

[133]. Cyrus H. Gordon, “The Accidental Invention of the Phonemic Alphabet,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 29, no. 3 (July 1970): 193-197. Another explanation for the additional letters is that they were added to accommodate the linguistic needs of Hurrian expatriates living at Ugarit. A. R. Millard, “The Infancy of the Alphabet,” World Archaeology, 17, no. 3 (February 1986): 395.

[134]. Benjamin Sass, The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its Development in the Second Millennium B.C. Ägypten und Altes Testament, Band 13. (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1988), 106.

[135]. Javier Urcid, Zapotec Hieroglyphic Writing. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology 34 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001), 243 table 4.3. Not enough Olmec date inscriptions have been found to reconstruct their even earlier sign list.

CHAPTER EIGHT: VOLCANIC WINTER

[136]. The results of the study were presented at the December 5, 1989 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The Nasa press release is online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/80s/release_1989_1281.html

[137]. Manfred Bietak, “Review: Manning, W., A Test of Time,” Bibliotheca Orientalis LXI No 1-2 (January-April 2004), 200.

[138]. Peter Ian Kunniholm, “Overview and Assessment of the Evidence for the Date of the Eruption of Thera,” in Thera and the Aegean World: Proceedings of the Third International Congress, Santorini, Greece, 3-9 September 1989, Volume Three: Chronology, ed. D. A. Hardy with Colin Renfrew (London: The Thera Foundation, 1990), 13-18. The suspicion was not entirely unwarranted. In introducing radiocarbon dating in 1949 Willard Libby had assumed that the level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere was constant. Early attempts to radiocarbon date Egyptian artifacts yielded dates several hundred years older than their historical dates. However, this problem was resolved in the late 1960s with the introduction of a calibration curve based on radiocarbon dating bristlecone pine tree rings whose absolute dates were known dendrochronologically.

[139]. Manfred Bietak, “Science versus archaeology : Problems and consequences of High Aegean chronology,” in: The Synchronisation of Civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Millennium BC (vol. II), Proceedings of the SCIEM 2000-Euro Conference, Haindorf, 2nd of May – 7th of May 2001, in Contributions to the Chronology of the Eastern Mediterranean, ed. by M. Bietak & H. Hunger, vol. IV, Vienna 2003, 23-34; Sturt W. Manning, “Clarifying the ‘High’ v. ‘Low’ Aegean/Cypriot Chronology for the Mid Second Millenium BC: Assessing the Evidence, Interpretive Frameworks, and Current State of the Debate,” in The synchronisation of civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the second millennium B.C. III : proceedings of the SCIEM 2000-2nd EuroConference Vienna, 28th of May-1st of June 2003, eds. Manfred Bietak and Ernst Czerny, Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007) 101-2.

[140]. Valmore C. LaMarche, Jr. and Katherine K. Hirschboeck, “Frost Rings in Trees as Records of Major Volcanic Eruptions,” Nature 307 (12 January 1984): 121 – 126.

[141]. Kunniholm, “Overview and Assessment,” 13-18.

[142]. LaMarche and Hirschboeck, “Frost Rings,” 121 – 126. The first narrow ring was reported as 1626 BC but LaMarche’s computer placed a year zero between 1 BC and 1 AD, so this is actually 1627 BC. Since this year is already extremely narrow, it may be that the causational event actually occurred in 1628 BC, especially since many of the European rings are already quite narrow in 1628 BC.

[143]. M.G.L. Baillie, “Irish Tree Rings, Santorini and Volcanic Dust Veils,” Nature 332 (24 March 1988): 344-346; M.G.L. Baillie, “Irish Tree Rings and an Event in 1628 BC,” in Thera and the Aegean World: Proceedings of the Third International Congress, Santorini, Greece, 3-9 September 1989, Volume Three: Chronology, ed. D. A. Hardy with Colin Renfrew (London: The Thera Foundation, 1990), 160-6.

[144]. Baillie, “Irish Tree Rings and an Event,” 160-6.

[145]. Ibid., p. 160-6.

[146]. Peter I. Kuniholm, Maryanne W. Newton, Carol B. Griggs, and Pamela J. Sullivan, “Dendrochronological Dating in Anatolia: The Second Millenium BC,” Der Anschnitt, Anatolian Metal III, Beiheft 18 (2005): 41-47; Broad, “Scientists Revisit an Aegean Eruption,” D2.

[147]. S. W. Manning, B. Kromer, P. I. Kuniholm, and M. W. Newton, “Anatolian Tree Rings and a New Chronology for the East Mediterranean Bronze-Iron Ages,” Science 294 (December 2001): 2532-5.

[148]. C. U. Hammer, H. B. Clausen, W. L. Friedrich, and H. Tauber, “The Minoan eruption of Santorini in Greece dated to 1645 BC?” Nature, 328 (1987): 517–519; C. U. Hammer, G. Kurat, P. Hoppe, W. Grum, and H. B. Clausen, “Thera eruption date 1645 BC confirmed by new ice core data?” in The Synchronisation of Civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Millennium B.C. II, ed. M. Bietak (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Science, 2003): 87–94.

[149]. Douglas J. Keenan, “Volcanic ash retrieved from the GRIP ice core is not from Thera,” Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 4, issue 11 (November 2003): 1.

[150]. N. J. G. Pearce, J. A. Westgate, S. J. Preece, W. J. Eastwood, and W. T. Perkins, “Identification of Aniakchak (Alaska) tephra in Greenland ice core challenges the 1645 BC date for Minoan eruption of Santorini,” Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 5 (2004).

[151]. Sturt W. Manning, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Walter Kutschera, Thomas Higham, Bernd Kromer, Peter Steier, and Eva M. Wild, “Chronology for the Aegean Late Bronze Age 1700-1400 B.C.,” Science 312, no. 5773 (28 April 2006): 565-9.

[152]. Walter L. Friedrich, Bernd Kromer, Michael Friedrich, Jan Heinemeier, Tom Pfeiffer, and Sahra Talamo, “Santorini Eruption Radiocarbon Dated to 1627-1600 B.C.,” Science 312, no. 5773 (28 April 2006): 548.

CHAPTER NINE: GENESIS OF THE EXODUS

[153]. Peter Ian Kuniholm, Bernd Kromert, Sturt W. Manning, Maryanne Newton, Christine E. Latini, and Mary Jaye Bruce, “Anatolian tree rings and the absolute chronology of the eastern Mediterranean, 2220-718 BC,” Nature 381 (June 1996): 780-783, fig 3.

[154]. The Aniakchak eruption is currently dated by ash in the Greenland ice layers to 1645 BC, while the first of the seven wide ancient Near Eastern rings is dated to 1650 +4/-7 BC. The two are extremely close, but the exact year is not known. I used 1647 BC for this calculation both because it splits the difference and because the more precisely dated European data shows a significant growth surge beginning in 1647 BC. Provisionally calibrating the ancient Near Eastern chronology with this date (by dating ring 854 to 1647 BC) aligns 1628 BC with ring 873, and this year sees ancient Near Eastern tree growth stunted and the subsequent ring only reached 61% of normal width. (Peter I. Kuniholm, Maryanne W. Newton, Carol B. Griggs, and Pamel J. Sullivan, “Dendrochronological Dating in Anatolia: The Second Millenium BC,” Der Anschnitt, Anatolian Metal III, Beiheft 18 (2005): 42; Peter Ian Kuniholm, Bernd Kromert, Sturt W. Manning, Maryanne Newton, Christine E. Latini, and Mary Jaye Bruce, “Anatolian tree rings and the absolute chronology of the eastern Mediterranean, 2220-718 BC,” Nature 381 (June 1996): 782, fig 3.)

[155]. Frank Harald Neumann, et al., “Palynology, sedimentology and palaeoecology of the late Holocene Dead Sea,” Quaternary Science Reviews 26 (2007): 1488, fig. 6.

[156]. Ibid., p. 1488, fig. 6.

[157]. Ibid., p. 1487. Unfortunately, although several attempts have been made to obtain a palynological (pollen) record from the Nile delta, the extremely sparce pollen levels (due in part to the high rate of sediment deposition) have thus far blocked the efforts. Salah Y. El Beialy, Kevin J. Edwards, and Ahmed S. El-Mahmoudi, “Geophysical and palynological investigations of the Tell El Dabaa archaeological site, Nile Delta, Egypt,” Antiquity 75, no. 290 (December, 2001): 735–744; A. Sneh, T. Weissbrod, A. Ehrlich, A. Horowitz, S. Moshkovitz, and A. Rosenfeld, “Holocene Evolution of the Northeastern Corner of the Eastern Nile Delta,” Quaternary Research 26 (1986): 194-206.

[158]. “The Summer of Acid Rain,” The Economist, (22 December 2007): 132.

[159]. John Grattan and Mark Brayshay, “An Amazing and Portentous Summer: Environmental and Social Responses in Britain to the 1783 Eruption of an Iceland Volcano,” The Geographical Journal 161, no. 2 (July 1995): 128.

[160]. John Grattan, “Pollution and paradigms: lessons from Icelandic volcanism for continental flood basalt studies,” Lithos 79 (2005): 346.

[161]. Thorvaldur Thordarson and Stephen Self, “Atmospheric and environmental effects of the 1783–1784 Laki eruption: A review and reassessment,” Journal of Geophysical Research 108, no D1, 4011 (8 January 2003): 13.

[162]. Broad, “Scientists Revisit an Aegean,” D2.

[163]. Genesis 41: 23.

[164]. Thordarson and Self, “Atmospheric and environmental effects,” 13.

[165]. “The Summer of Acid Rain,” 133.

[166]. Genesis 41:19.

[167]. John Grattan, “Pollution and paradigms: lessons from Icelandic volcanism for continental flood basalt studies,” Lithos 79 (2005): 348; Luke Oman, et al., “Modeling the distribution of the volcanic aerosol cloud from the 1783–1784 Laki eruption,” Journal of Geophysical Research 111 (24 June 2006): 2.

[168]. Luke Oman, et al., “High-latitude Eruptions Cast Shadow Over the African Monsoon and the Flow of the Nile,” Geophysical Research Letters 33, (2006).

[169]. Kevin D. Pang, “Three Very Large Volcanic Eruptions in Antiquity and Their Effects on the Climate of the Ancient World,” EOS (American Geophysical Union) 66, no.46 (12 November 1985): 816.

[170]. William G. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 8.

[171]. Ian Shaw, ed. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 481-2.

CHAPTER TEN: EGYPT FALLS

[172]. Janine Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period,” in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, ed. Ian Shaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 195.

[173]. Ibid., p. 195.

[174]. The Egyptian conquest of Avaris is dated to 1532-1528 BC. (Janine Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period,” 185.) And, according to the Turin Canon, the total length of the Hyksos reign was 108 years, putting the conquest circa 1640 to 1636 BC.

[175]. Ian Shaw, ed., The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, 479.

[176]. Genesis 47:15.

[177]. Genesis 47:18.

[178]. John Van Seters, “A Date for the ‘Admonitions’ in the Second Intermediate Period,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 50 (1964):13-23.

[179]. Neumann, et al., “Palynology,” 1487. Unfortunately, although several attempts have been made to obtain a palynological (pollen) record from the Nile delta, the extremely sparce pollen levels (due in part to the high rate of sediment deposition) have thus far blocked the efforts. Salah Y. El Beialy, Kevin J. Edwards, and Ahmed S. El-Mahmoudi, “Geophysical and palynological investigations of the Tell El Dabaa archaeological site, Nile Delta, Egypt,” Antiquity 75, no. 290 (December, 2001): 735–744; A. Sneh, T. Weissbrod, A. Ehrlich, A. Horowitz, S. Moshkovitz, and A. Rosenfeld, “Holocene Evolution of the Northeastern Corner of the Eastern Nile Delta,” Quaternary Research 26 (1986): 194-206.

[180]. Alan H. Gardiner, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage From a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden (Pap. Leiden 344 Recto) (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich’sche Buchhandlung, 1909), 41-5.

[181]. Ibid., pp. 30, 36.

[182]. Ibid., p. 28.

[183]. Ibid., p. 38.

[184]. Ibid., p. 91.

[185]. Ibid., p. 53.

[186]. Ibid., p. 55.

[187]. Ibid., pp. 30, 35.

[188]. Ibid., p. 58, 61, 63.

[189]. Ibid., p. 31.

[190]. Van Seters, “A Date for the ‘Admonitions,’” 18.

[191]. Gardiner, The Admonitions, 48.

[192]. Ibid., p. 49.

[193]. Van Seters, “A Date for the ‘Admonitions,’” 18.

[194]. Gardiner, The Admonitions, 68.

[195]. Ibid., p. 91.

[196]. Genesis 49: 22-24, 28.

[197]. Manfred Bietak, Avaris: The Capital of the Hyksos. Recent Excavations at Tell el-Dab'a (London: British Museum Press, 1996), 49.

[198]. Bietak, Avaris, 49.

[199]. Manfred Bietak, “The Center of Hyksos Rule: Avaris (Tell el-Dab’a),” in The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Eliezer D. Oren (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), 113.

[200]. Bietak, Avaris, 49.

[201]. Meadowcroft rock shelter in Pennsylvania provided the first major challenge to Clovis-Beringia. While Clovis people appeared to have arrived in the Americas circa 13,500 BP (11,500 BC), excavations at Meadowcroft found human habitation below and earlier than the Clovis layers, with radiocarbon dates going back 19,000 years (J. M. Adovasio, J. D. Gunn, J. Donahue, and R. Stuckenrath, “Meadowcroft Rocksheler: Retrospective 1976,” Pennsylvania Archaeologist 47 (1977): 1-93; R. C. Carlisle and J. M. Adovasio, eds. Meadowcroft: Collected Papers on the Archaeology of Meadowcroft Rockshelter and the Cross Creek Drainage (Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, 1982)). Critics argued that the radiocarbon samples could have been contaminated with coal. (C. V. Haynes, “Paleoindian Charcoal from Meadowcroft Rockshelter: Is Contamination a Problem?” American Antiquity 45 (1980): 582-587; C. V. Haynes, “More on Meadowcroft Rockshelter Radiocarbon Chronology,” The Review of Archaeology 12, no. 1 (1992): 8-14; R.L. Kelly, “A Comment on Pre-Clovis Deposits at Meadowcroft Rockshelter,”Quaternary Research 27 (1987): 332-334; J. I. Mead, “Is It Really that Old? A Comment about the Meadowcroft Rockshelter,” American Antiquity 45 (1980): 579-582; K. B. Tankersley, and C. A. Munson, “Comments on the Meadowcroft Rockshelter Radiocarbon Chronology and the Recognition of Coal Contaminants,” American Antiquity 57 (1993): 321-326; K. B. Tankersley, C. A. Munson, and D. Smith, “Recognition of Bituminous Coal Contaminants in Radiocarbon Samples,” American Antiquity 52 (1987): 318-330). The excavators responded that the Smithsonian’s radiocarbon lab had specifically checked the samples for coal contamination (J. M. Adovasio, J. Donahue, and R.Stuckenrath, “The Meadowcroft Rockshelter Radiocarbon Chronology 1975-1990,” American Antiquity 55 (1990): 348-354; J. M. Adovasio, J. D. Gunn, J. Donahue, R. Stuckenrath, J. E. Guilday and K. Volman, “Yes Virginia, It Really is that Old: a Reply to Haynes and Mead,” American Antiquity 45 (1980): 588-595).

[202]. In 1987, renowned linguist Joseph Greenberg published an extensive comparative study of the languages of the Americas, which concluded that they could be divided into three families that entered the hemisphere at different times (Joseph H. Greenberg, Language in the Americas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987)). Although the Greenberg theory met with significant opposition, independent studies of Native American dental records and genetics both found a similar tripartite division (Christy Turner II, “Advances in the Dental Search for Native Americans,” Acta Anthropogenetica 8 (1984): 23-78; Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and Francesco L. K. Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Diaspora: A History of Diversity and Evolution, series Foundations of Human Behavior (Add-on-Wesley, 1995)).

CHAPTER ELEVEN: BACKGROUND THE FIRST AMERICANS

[203]. Larry Rohter, “An Ancient Skull Challenges Long-Held Theories,” The New York Times, Science Times, 26 October 1999, D1, D5.

[204]. Walter A. Neves, et al., “Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1: Morphological Affinities of the Earliest Known American,” Genetics and Molecular Biology 22, no. 4, (1999): 461-9.

[205]. Michael Parfit, “Hunt for the First Americans,” National Geographic 198 (December 2000): 46-7, 61.

[206]. D. W. Owsley and R. L. Jantz, “Craniofacial Morphology of the First Americans: Pattern and Process in the Peopling of the New World,” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 42 (1999): 153-188; R. L. Jantz and D. W. Owsley “Variation among Early North American Crania,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 114 (2001): 146-155.

[207]. Alice Beck Kehoe, Contraversies in Archaeology (Left Coast Press, 2008).

[208]. Jeff Benedict, No Bone Unturned: The Adventures of a Top Smithsonian Forensic Scientist and the Legal Battle for America's Oldest Skeletons (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003), 227.

[209]. Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford, “The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World,” World Archaeology 36, no. 4 (December 2004): 459 – 478.

[210]. Benedict, No Bone Unturned, 230.

[211]. Michael D. Brown, et al., “mtDNA Haplogroup X: An Ancient Link between Europe/Western Asia and North America?” American Journal of Human Genetics 63 (1998): 1852-1861.

[212]. Miroslava V. Derenko, et al., “The Presence of Mitochondrial Haplogroup X in Altaians from South Siberia,” American Journal of Human Genetics 69, no. 1 (2001): 237–241.

[213]. Maere Reidla et al, “Origin and Diffusion of mtDNA Haplogroup X,” American Journal of Human Genetics 73 (2003), 1188.

[214]. Chatters, Ancient Encounters, 236-7.

[215]. Ibid., p. 231.

[216]. Nicholas Wade, “Ancient Man in Greenland Has Genome Decoded,” The New York Times, (February 11, 2010), A12.

[217]. John Noble Wilford, “On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient Mariners,” The New York Times, (February 16, 2010): D1, D4.

CHAPTER TWELVE: ESCAPE FROM EGYPT

[218]. Carol A. Redmount, “The Wadi Tumilat and the ‘Canal of the Pharaohs,’” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 54, no. 2 (April 1995): 134.

[219]. William F. Edgerton, “Egyptian Seagoing(?) Ships of One Hundred Cubits,” The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 47, no. 1 (October 1930): 50.

[220]. Ibid., p. 50 note 8.

[221]. Carol A. Redmount, “Ethnicity, Pottery, and the Hyksos at Tell El-Maskhuta in the Egyptian Delta,” The Biblical Archaeologist 58, no. 4, (December 1995): 182-190; Burton MacDonald, “Excavations at Tell el-Maskhuta,” The Biblical Archaeologist, 43, no. 1 (Winter, 1980), 49-58.

[222]. K.S.B. Ryholt, The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, c. 1800-1550 B.C. Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications Volume 20. (Copenhagen: K.S.B. Ryholt and Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997), 117.

[223]. A. Sneh, T. Weissbrod, and I Perath, “Evidence for an Ancient Egyptian Frontier Canal,” American Scientist 63 (1975): 542-48.

[224]. William H. Shea, “A Date for the Recently Discovered Eastern Canal of Egypt,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 226 (April, 1977): 35.

[225]. Ibid., 37.

[226]. The Classical geographers describe the Red Sea as reaching as far north as Heroopolis (Pi-Atum or Pithom), indicating that it reached Lake Timsah (cf. Pliny Natural History 6.165, Strabo 16.769, Agathemeros). They even referred to the Gulf of Suez as the Heroopolitan Gulf. This would explain why the early canals terminated at this lake. And it explains why Darius found it necessary to add a new leg to the ancient canal system circa 500 BC, to rejoin Lake Timsah to the receding coast of the Red Sea.

[227]. Linant de Bellefonds, Mémoires sur les principaux travaux d'utilité publique exécutés en Egypte depuis les temps de la plus haute antiquité jusqu'à nos jours (Paris: Librairie Scientifique et Maritime, 1872-1873), 195-97.

[228]. Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, The Memoirs of Napoleon, 1799, Volume 3; (Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 20.

[229]. Edouard Naville, The store-city of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus (London: The Offices of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1903), 26.

[230]. Papyrus Anastasi V, 19:2-20:6; Kenneth Anderson Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated Notes and Comments (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 109: Sir Alan H. Gardiner, Late-Egyptian Miscellanies (Brussels, 1937), 66-7; Ricardo Augusto Caminos, Late- Egyptian Miscellanies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 254.

[231]. The word yam comes from a root meaning “to roar” and was used 278 times in the Bible to refer to the sea, most frequently the Mediterranean. Linguistically, Hebrew is classified as a Canaanite language, and within the other languages of that group it is also clear that Yam was the word for “sea,” and was even personified as Yam, the great god of the sea. It does not refer to a shallow marsh or inland lake as has been proposed. Suph may mean “reeds,” “seaweed” (as in Jonah 2:5), or “end” (Strong’s 5486). The latter meaning of “End Sea” parallels an Egyptian and Greek term for the Red Sea (Maurice Copisarow, “The Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Hebrew Concept of the Red Sea,” Vetus Testamentum XII (1962), 3.) Moreover, I Kings 9:26 explicitly confirms that Yam Suph is the Hebrew term for the body of water that we call the “Red Sea.” And, in translating the Bible from Hebrew into Greek in the 3rd century BC, 70 of the best Greek and Hebrew scholars of the ancient world recognized Yam Suph as the Hebrew term for this body of water and consistently translated it as such.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: BEDOUIN OF THE SEA

[232]. Bietak, “The Center of Hyksos Rule,” 104.

[233]. Ibid., p. 104.

[234]. Bietak, Avaris, 19-20.

[235]. Eliezer D. Oren, “The Hyksos Enigma—Introductory Overview,” in The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Eliezer D. Oren (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), xxii-xxiv.

[236]. Bietak. “The Center of Hyksos Rule,” 111-13.

[237]. Oren, “The Hyksos Enigma,” xxii-xxiii.

[238]. Bietak, “The Center of Hyksos Rule,” 111-13.

[239]. John S. Holladay, Jr., “The Eastern Nile Delta During the Hyksos and Pre-Hyksos Periods: Toward a Systemic/Socioeconomic Understanding,” in The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Eliezer D. Oren (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), 209.

[240]. Ricardo Olmos, “Warriors, Wolves, and Women: The Art of the Iberians.” Archaeology Odyssey, May/June 2003, 26.

[241]. Donald B. Redford, “Textual Sources for the Hyksos Period,” in The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Eliezer D. Oren (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), 7.

[242]. Ibid., p. 7.

[243]. K.S.B. Ryholt, The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, c. 1800-1550 B.C. Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications Volume 20. (Copenhagen: K.S.B. Ryholt and Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997), 149.

[244]. Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World, 168.

[245]. James D. Muhly, “Sources of Tin and the Beginnings of Bronze Metallurgy,” American Journal of Archaeology 89, no. 2 (April 1985): 275-291.

[246]. R. Seitz, G. E. Harlow, V. B. Sisson & K. A. Taube, “‘Olmec Blue’ and Formative jade sources: new discoveries in Guatemala,” Antiquity 75 (December 2001): 687-8.

[247]. Donald A. Mackenzie, Myths of Crete and pre-Hellenic Europe (London: Gresham publishing company, 1917), 325-7.

[248]. Alison Sheridan, “Supernatural power dressing,” British Archaeology, Issue 70, May 2003.

[249]. John E. Dayton, “Central Africa as a Source of Phonecian Tin,” Proceedings of the 33rd International Symposium on Archaeometry, 22-26 April 2002, Amsterdam, Geoarchaeological and Bioarchaeological Studies 3, ed. H. Kars and E. Burke (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Insitute for Geo- and Bioarchaeology, Vrije Universiteit, 2005).

[250]. Strabo 3:5:11.

[251]. Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, 149-151, book V: 20.

[252]. G. Lubec, J. Holaubek, C. Feldl, B. Lubec, and E. Strouhal, “Use of Silk In Ancient Egypt,” Nature 362 (4 March 1993): 25.

[253]. Victor H. Mair, “West Eurasian and North African Influences on the Origins of Chinese Writing,” in Contacts Between Cultures, vol 3: Eastern Asia: Literature and Humanities, ed. Bernard Hung-Kay Luk and Barry D. Steben (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992); John Noble Wilford, “When No One Read, Who Started to Write?” The New York Times (6 April 1999): D1-D2; Julie Lee Wei, “Correspondences Between the Chinese Calendar Signs and the Phoenician Alphabet,” Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 94 (March 1999): 1-65.

[254]. J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair, The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 14.

[255]. Michael Balter, “New Carbon Dates Support Revised History of Ancient Mediterranean,” Science 312, no. 5773 (28 April 2006): 508-509.

[256]. Ibid., pp. 508-509.

[257]. Ibid., p. 509.

[258]. Alice Beck Kehoe, The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology (New York: Routledge, 1998), 199. Kehoe includes additional accounts of crossings of the Atlantic and Pacific in small boats.

[259]. Shelley Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998), 41.

[260]. Ibid., p. 41.

[261]. William F. Edgerton, “Egyptian Seagoing(?) Ships of One Hundred Cubits” The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 47, no. 1 (October 1930): 50-1.

[262]. William F. Edgerton, “Dimensions of Ancient Egyptian Ships,” The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 46, no 3 (April 1930): 145-149.

[263]. Scott C. Truver, The Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, Vol 4 International Straits of the World, ed., Gerald J. Mangone (Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands: Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1980), 161.

[264]. Aristotle, Meteorology, ii, I, 14.

[265]. Plato, Timaeus.

[266]. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol I: The structure of Everyday Life, trans. Siân Reynolds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 57-58.

[267]. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol I: The structure of Everyday Life, trans. Siân Reynolds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 57-58.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: WAR

[268]. Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period,” 211.

[269]. Ibid., p. 211.

[270]. Frank J. Yurco. “Egypt and Nubia: Old, Middle, and New Kingdom Eras,” in Africa and Africans in Antiquity, ed. Edwin M. Yamauchi (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001), 74-5.

[271]. Hans Goedicke, Studies about Kamose and Ahmose (Baltimore, MD: HALGO, Inc., 1995), 72.

[272]. Ibid., p. 115.

[273]. Donald B. Redford, “Textual Sources for the Hyksos Period,” in The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Eliezer D. Oren (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), 20.

[274]. Eliezer D. Oren, “The Hyksos Enigma—Introductory Overview,” in The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Eliezer D. Oren (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), xxiii; Bietak, “The Center of Hyksos Rule,” 115.

[275]. Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period,” 214.

[276]. Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 129.

[277]. Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period,” 214.

[278]. Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period,” 211-2.

[279]. Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, 149-151 (book V. 20).

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: RED HAIR AND PEACE PIPES

[280]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 103.

[281]. Lorna Oakes and Lucia Gahlin, Ancient Egypt: An Illustrated Reference to the Myths, Religions, Pyramids and Temples or the Land of the Pharaohs (London: Hermes House, 2002), 225.

[282]. Bietak, Avaris: Capital of the Hyksos, 20.

[283]. Ibid., p. 20.

[284]. Lionel Balout and C. Roubet, eds., La Momie de Ramsès II (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilizations, 1985), 391.

[285]. Herman te Velde, Seth, God of Confusion: A Study of His Role in Egyptian Mythology and Religion, 2nd ed. Probleme der Ägyptologie 6 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), 62.

[286]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 105.

[287]. Plutarch, Moralia Vol. V: Isis and Osiris, 362-3.

[288]. By convention this term is usually translated “Rulers of Foreign Lands,” but the term is showing its age. With the way “of” is normally used today, the term seems to describe people ruling lands other than Egypt. At the least, I think it should be “Rulers from Foreign Lands,” but for clarity I prefer to translate it as the “Foreign Pharaohs,” because with “Pharaohs” the land being ruled is implicit.

[289]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 102.

[290]. David P. Silverman, ed., Ancient Egypt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 31; Carol A. Redmount, “Ethnicity, Pottery, and the Hyksos at Tell El-Maskhuta in the Egyptian Delta,” The Biblical Archaeologist 58, no. 4, (December 1995): 183.

[291]. Sir Ernest Wallis Budge, A General Introductory Guide to the Egyptian Collections in the British Museum (London: Printed by order of the Trustees, 1930), 331.

[292]. te Velde, Seth, 62.

[293]. Ibid., p. 63.

[294]. Brinton, American Hero-Myths, 65.

[295]. Fray Diego Duran, Ritos y fiestas de los antiguos mexicanos (México: editorial innovació, s.a.: 1980), 73.

[296]. Balout and Roubet, La Momie de Ramsès II, 382-3, 389.

[297]. Campbell and Kaufman, “A Linguistic Look at the Olmecs,” 88.

[298]. S. Balababova, F. Parsche, and W. Pirsig, “First identification of drugs in Egyptian mummies,” Naturwissenschaften 79 (1992): 358.

[299]. Larry W. Cartmell and Cheryl Weems, “Overview of Hair Analysis: A Report of Hair Analysis from Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt,” Chungará (Arica) 33, no. 2 (July 2001): 289-92.

[300]. Carol A. Redmount, “Ethnicity, Pottery, and the Hyksos at Tell El-Maskhuta in the Egyptian Delta,” The Biblical Archaeologist 58, no. 4, (December 1995): 182-190; Burton MacDonald, “Excavations at Tell el-Maskhuta,” The Biblical Archaeologist, 43, no. 1 (Winter, 1980), 49-58.

[301]. Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, A History of the United States Since the Civil War: 1868-72 (New York: MacMillan Company, 1922), 501.

[302]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol II, 11.

[303]. Cortez, His Five Letters of Relation, 234-5.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: IN THE BEGINNING

[304]. Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 255.

[305]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 213.

[306]. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 255.

[307]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 213.

[308]. Ibid., p. 75.

[309]. Piotr Bienkowski and Alan Millard, eds. “Creation legends and cosmologies,” Dictionary of the Ancient Near East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 81.

[310]. Mission archéologique et ethnologique française au Mexique (now CEMCA), “The Earth in Mesoamerican Religions,” American, African, and Old European Mythologies, compiled by Yves Bonnefoy; translated under the direction of Wendy Doniger by Gerald Honigsblum, et al.; article trans. Gerald Honigsblum (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 64.

[311]. F. Kent Reilly III, The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica: A Reader, eds. Michael E. Smith and Marilyn A. Masson (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 381.

[312]. Guthrie, ed. The Olmec World, 120.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: HELL AND HIGH WATER

[313]. Samuel Noah Kramer, Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1944), 97-8.

[314]. Genesis 14:13.

[315]. Genesis 14:1-17.

[316]. William F. Albright, “From the Patriarchs to Moses: From Abraham to Joseph,” The Biblical Archaeologist 36, no. 1 (February, 1973): 7.

[317]. Bietak, “The Center of Hyksos Rule,” 113.

[318]. Albright, “From the Patriarchs to Moses,” 30.

[319]. William F. Albright, “Northwest-Semitic Names in a List of Egyptian Slaves from the Eighteenth Century B. C.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 74, no. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1954), 231-3.

[320]. On the Epic of Creation first arriving in Mesopotamia with the Amorites see: William Hayes Ward, The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1910), 51, 63. On the Atrahasis Epic originating among the Amorites see: Albright, “From the Patriarchs to Moses,” 22.

[321]. William F. Albright, “From the Patriarchs to Moses: From Abraham to Joseph,” The Biblical Archaeologist 36, no. 1 (February, 1973): 22.

[322]. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 9-35.

[323]. Accounts of the five world ages and the four cataclysms culminating in the great flood occur in the 1530’s Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas, the 1558 text Leyenda de los Soles, “Legend of the Suns,” the Codex Ríos, and even on the Aztec calendar stone.

[324]. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 37, n 22.

[325]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 126.

[326]. Ibid., p. 127.

[327]. Ibid., pp. 127-129.

[328]. Henry Phillips Jr., trans. and ed., “History of the Mexicans as Told by Their Paintings,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society XXI (1883): 619.

[329]. The Avesta, trans. James Darmesteter, vol. 4 of Sacred Books of the East (American Edition, 1898), Vendidad, Fargard 2, verse 12.

[330]. Duncan MacNaughton, A Scheme of Babylonian Chronology: From the Flood to the Fall of Nineveh (London: Luzac and Company, 1930), 13.

[331]. “Calendar.” Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Deluxe Edition (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006).

[332]. For example, one of the most thorough studies of the flood myth, that of Sir James George Frazer, reached such a conclusion: Sir James George Frazer, Folk-lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law (London: MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1919), vol. I.

[333]. Dilip K. Chakrabarti, The External Trade of the Indus Civilization (New Dehli: Munshiram Manoharial Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1990), 20-23.

[334]. A. Ghosh, ed., An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology, vol. I (New Dehli: Munshiram Manoharial Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1989), 84.

[335]. Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens, The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 749.

[336]. Gordon Brotherston, “The Year 3113 BC and the Fifth Sun of Mesoamerica: And Orthodox Reading of the Tepexic Annals (Codex Vindobonensis Observe),” in Calendars in Mesoamerica and Peru: Native American Computations of Time, Proceedings of the International Congress of Americanists, Manchester, 1982, ed. Anthony F. Aveni and Gordon Brotherston (Oxford, England: B.A.R., 1983), 167, 201 plate 1; Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World, 116.

[337]. Many sources, including Brotherston, report the Mayan base date as 3113 BC. This is the astronomical date. While historians do not include a year 0 between 1 AD and 1 BC, astronomers do, measuring plus or minus (instead of AD and BC) from a 0 year that corresponds to 1 BC for historians.

[338]. Mary E. D. Pohl, Kevin O. Pope and Christopher von Nagy, “Olmec Origins of Mesoamerican Writing,” Science 298 (6 December 2002): 1986.

[339]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 130.

[340]. David Freidel, Linda Schele and Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path (New York: Quill, 1993), 70-71, 417 n. 15.

[341]. L. G. Thompson, et al., “Late Glacial Stage and Holocene Tropical Ice Core Records from Huascarán, Peru” Science 269, No. 5220 (July 7, 1995): 49, 50 fig 7; Lonnie G. Thompson, et al., “Kilimanjaro Ice Core Records: Evidence of Holocene Climate Change in Tropical Africa” Science 298 (18 October 2002), 589-93.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE SCIENCE OF THE FLOOD

[342]. Kay-Christian Emeis, et al., “Temperature and salinity variations of Mediterranean Sea surface waters over the last 16,000 years from records of planktonic stable oxygen isotopes and alkenone unsaturation ratios,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 158 (2000): 269, 4c. A drop of at least 9° F (5° C) can be seen in the Ionian Sea region.

[343]. Qikai Xia, Jian-xin Zhao, and K.D. Collerson, “Early-Mid Holocene climatic variations in Tasmania, Australia: multi-proxy records in a stalagmite from Lynds Cave” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 194 (2001): 181 fig 2; P.W. Williams, et. al, “Late Pleistocene to Holocene composite speleothem 18O and 13C chronologies from South Island, New Zealand—did a global Younger Dryas really exist?” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 230 (2005): 314; Miryam Bar-Matthews, et al., “The Eastern Mediterranean paleoclimate as a reflection of regional events: Soreq cave, Israel,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 166 (1999): 89, 90 fig 2; Lonnie Thompson, et al., “Abrupt Tropical Climate Change: Past and Present” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, no., 28 (July 11, 2006): 10541, fig 8.

[344]. G. Merna McKenzie and A. Peter Kershaw, “A Vegetation History and Quantitative Estimate of Holocene Climate from Chapple Vale, in the Otway Region of Victoria, Australia,” Australian Journal of Botany 45 (1997): 565–581.

[345]. T. Blunier, et al., “Variations in Atmospheric Methane Concentration during the Holocene Epoch,” Nature 374 (2 March 1995): 47 fig. 1.

[346]. Eric J. Steig, “Mid-Holocene Climate Change,” Science 286, No. 5444. (November 19, 1999): 1485.

[347]. Paul A. Baker, et al., “Tropical climate changes at millennial and orbital timescales on the Bolivian Altiplano,” Nature 409 (February 8, 2001): 698-701; Claudia Migowski et. al., “Holocene climate variability and cultural evolution in the Near East from the Dead Sea sedimentary record,” Quaternary Research 66 (2006): 426-7; C. J. Clausen, et al., “Little Salt Spring, Florida: A Unique Underwater Site” Science, 203, no. 4381 (Feb. 16, 1979): 609-614.

[348]. Miryam Bar-Matthews, et al., “The Eastern Mediterranean paleoclimate as a reflection of regional events: Soreq cave, Israel,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 166 (1999): 89, 90 fig 2; Lonnie Thompson, et al., “Abrupt Tropical Climate Change: Past and Present” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, no., 28 (July 11, 2006): 10541, fig 8; Lonnie G. Thompson, et al., “Kilimanjaro Ice Core Records: Evidence of Holocene Climate Change in Tropical Africa” Science 298 (18 October 2002), 589-93; Paul A. Baker, et al., “Tropical climate changes at millennial and orbital timescales on the Bolivian Altiplano,” Nature 409 (February 8, 2001): 698-701.

[349]. Lonnie Thompson, et al., “Abrupt Tropical Climate Change: Past and Present” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, no., 28 (July 11, 2006): 10541.

[350]. Ibid., p. 10542.

[351]. Carlo Baroni and Giuseppe Orombelli, “The Alpine ‘‘Iceman’’ and Holocene Climatic Change,” Quaternary Research 46 (1996): 81.

[352]. Ibid., p. 81.

[353]. Douglas S. Frink, “The OCR Carbon Dating Procedure and Its Application at the Rmiz Site, Czech Republic” Paper presented at the symposium: “Prehistoric Technology and its Social Implications: New Methods and Theories” at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archaeology, March 24-8, 1999, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

[354]. Baillie, M. G. L. & Brown, D. M. “Oak dendrochronology: some recent archaeological developments from an Irish perspective,” Antiquity 76 (2002): 503; M.G.L. Baillie, “Irish Tree Rings, Santorini and Volcanic Dust Veils,” Nature 332 (24 March 1988): 344-346; ; M.G.L. Baillie, “Irish Tree Rings and an Event in 1628 BC,” in Thera and the Aegean World: Proceedings of the Third International Congress, Santorini, Greece, 3-9 September 1989, Volume Three: Chronology, ed. D. A. Hardy with Colin Renfrew (London: The Thera Foundation, 1990), 160-6; Baillie, M. G. L. & Brown, D. M. “Oak dendrochronology: some recent archaeological developments from an Irish perspective,” Antiquity 76 (2002): 504.

[355]. Hector Neff, et al, “Climate change and population history in the Pacific Lowlands of Southern Mesoamerica,” Quaternary Research, 65 (2006): 394-96.

[356]. Baillie, M. G. L. & Brown, D. M. “Oak dendrochronology: some recent archaeological developments from an Irish perspective,” Antiquity 76 (2002): 503.

[357]. Hammer, C. U., Clausen, H. B. & Dansgaard, W., “Greenland ice sheet evidence of post-glacial volcanism and its climatic impact.” Nature 288 (1980): 230-235.

[358]. G. A. Zielinski, et al., “Record of volcanism since 7000 B.C. from GISP 2 Greenland ice core and implications for the volcano-climate system,” Science 264 (13 May 1994): 948 fig 1.

[359]. S. Frisia, et al., “Climate Forcings and their Influence on Alpine History as Reconstructed Through the Application of Synchrotron-based X-ray Microfluorescence on Layered Stalagmites,” Archaeometry 47, no. 2 (2005): 216.

[360]. David A. Kring , H. Jay Melosh, Donald M. Hunten, “Impact-induced perturbations of atmospheric sulfur,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 140 (1996): 201.

[361]. Dallas H. Abbott, “Burckle Abyssal Impact Crater: Did this Impact Produce a Global Deluge?” Fourth Black Forest Rock Research Symposium June 20, 2005.

[362]. W. Bruce Masse, “The archaeology and anthropology of Quaternary period cosmic impact,” in Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Peter T. Bobrowsky and Hans Rickman eds. (Berlin: Spring-Verlag, 2007), 56.

[363]. Duncan Steel, Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1995), 67.

[364]. Sandra Blakeslee, “Ancient Crash, Epic Wave,” The New York Times (November 14, 2006), D1.

[365]. W. Bruce Masse, “The archaeology and anthropology of Quaternary period cosmic impact,” in Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Peter T. Bobrowsky and Hans Rickman eds. (Berlin: Spring-Verlag, 2007), 54.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: CHICKEN LITTLE

[366]. Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Legends of the Egyptian Gods: Hieroglyphic Texts and Translations (New York: Dover Publications,1994 [1912]), 16.

[367]. Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 197-8.

[368]. Erik Velásquez García, “The Maya Flood Myth and the Decapitation of the Cosmic Caiman,” PARI Journal 7, no. 1 (2006): 8, n 23.

[369]. Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, vol. I (London: Penguin Books, 1960 [revised edition]), 141, note 3.

[370]. Genesis 8:13.

[371]. Budge, Legends of the Egyptian Gods, 25.

[372]. Ibid., p. xxviii.

[373]. Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians: Or Studies in Egyptian Mythology, vol. I (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969 [1904]), 367.

[374]. Budge, Legends of the Egyptian Gods, xxix.

[375]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 130.

[376]. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 255.

[377]. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. I, 156-157.

[378]. Mission archéologique et ethnologique française au Mexique (now CEMCA), “The Sky: Sun, Moon, Stars, and Meteorological Phenomena in Mesoamerican Religions” American, African, and Old European Mythologies, compiled by Yves Bonnefoy, translated under the direction of Wendy Doniger by Gerald Honigsblum, et al., article translated by Barry Friedman (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993 [1991]), 60.

[379]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 129.

[380]. Ibid., p. 133.

[381]. Fernando Horcasitas, “An Analysis of the Deluge Myth in Mesoamerica,” The Flood Myth, ed. Alan Dundes (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 191.

[382]. Friar Diego de Landa, Yucatan Before and After the Conquest, trans. William Gates (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1978 [1937]), 60.

[383]. Mary Miller and Karl Taube. An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (New York : Thames and Hudson, 1997), 154.

[384]. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. I, 157-159.

[385]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 91.

[386]. Miller and Taube, An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods, 154. Protrero Nuevo is, technically, a separate archaeological site from San Lorenzo. However both sites, along with a third known as Tenochtitlán, were part of the same ancient city, often referred to by the encompassing name San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán or simply San Lorenzo. In addition, Coe and Diehl concluded that Protrero Nuevo Monument 2 had originally been part of San Lorenzo proper.

[387]. Although this Olmec sky band is abstract, Mary Miller and Karl Taube have shown a clear line of descent from it to later Mesoamerican examples in which the connection to the sky is well established. Miller and Taube, An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods, 154.

[388]. Freidel, Schele, and Parker, Maya Cosmos, 420, n. 28.

[389]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol I, 327.

[390]. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. I, 156. The Egyptians also used this abstract hieroglyph for “sky” to create their hieroglyph for “rain” . The Olmec representations of “rain” (used repeatedly on Monument I, “El Rey,” at Chalcatzingo, Morelos) use the same elongated base with overhanging sides but have added some clever rounding on top to make this abstract symbol resemble clouds: .

[391]. Bernard V. Bothmer, “The Dwarf as Bearer,” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts XLVII, no. 267 (February 1949).

[392]. Ibid.

[393]. Timothy Kendall, “Kingdom of Kush,” National Geographic 178, no. 5 (November 1990), 124.

[394]. Jacques Soustelle, The Olmecs: The Oldest Civilization in Mexico, trans. Helen R. Lane (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1984), 50.

CHAPTER TWENTY: SWORD PLAY

[395]. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 15-6.

[396]. Ibid., p. 260-1.

[397]. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani (New York: Dover Books, 1967 [1895]), 285.

[398]. Budge, From Fetish to God, 150.

[399]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 77.

[400]. F. Kent Reilly III, The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica: A Reader, eds. Michael E. Smith and Marilyn A. Masson (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 380-1.

[401]. Although the spines themselves have not survived in the acidic soil, jade bloodletters carved to resemble stingray spines have survived.

[402]. Mary Miller and Karl Taube, “Bloodletting,” An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (New York : Thames and Hudson, 1997), 46.

[403]. Ibid., p. 46.

[404]. Miller and Taube, “Bloodletting,” An Illustrated Dictionary, 47.

[405]. Joyce Marcus, “Archaeology and religion: A Comparison of the Zapotec and Maya” World Archaeology 10, no. 2 (Oct., 1978): 185-6.

[406]. I Kings 18:28.

[407]. Barbara MacLeod and Dennis E. Puleston, “Pathways Into Darkness: The Search For The Road To Xibalbá” in Tercera Mesa Redonda de Palenque, eds., M. G. Robertson and D. C. Jeffers (Monterey, California: Pre-Columbian Art Research, Herald Printers, 1979) vol IV, 71-77.

[408]. Lynn Meskell, Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), 88.

[409]. Herodotus, The Histories, 109 (Book 2: 36).

[410]. Herodotus, The Histories, (Book 2: 104).

[411]. Nick Wyatt, “Circumcision and Circumstance: Male Genital Mutilation in Ancient Israel and Ugarit,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 3, no. 4 (June 2009): 405-431; Nick Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit (London: Continuum, 2002), 327.

[412]. David A. Freidel, “Preparing the Way” The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, ed., Jill Guthrie (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996), 6-7.

[413]. George Peter Murdock, Ethnographic Atlas (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967), column 37.

[414]. Landa, Yucatan Before, 47.

[415]. Piotr Bienkowski and Alan Millard, eds, “Eunuchs,” Dictionary of the Ancient Near East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.), 110.

[416]. Ibid., p. 110.

[417]. Ibid., p. 110.

[418]. Gerald E. Kadish, “Eunuchs in Ancient Egypt,” in Studies in Honor of John A. Wilson, no. 35 of Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), 61

[419]. Frans Jonckheere, “L’eunuque dan l’Égypte pharaonique,” Revue d’histoire des sciences et leur applications VII (1954): 139-50.

[420]. Gerald E. Kadish. “Eunuchs in Ancient Egypt” Studies in Honor of John A. Wilson, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 35. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 55.

[421]. Kadish, “Eunuchs in Ancient Egypt,” 60.

[422]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 106.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE GEOGRAPHY OF HELL

[423]. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. I, 257.

[424]. Peter A. Piccione, “Mehen, Mysteries, and Resurrection from the Coiled Serpent,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 27 (1990): 50.

[425]. R. O. Faulkner, trans. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998 [1969]), 107, Utterance 332.

[426]. Kurt Sethe, Die Altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte Pyramidentexte nach den Papierabdrucken und Photographien des Berliner Museums (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1908), 276; Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, 107, Utterance 332, note 2.

[427]. Sethe, Die Altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte, 276; Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, 107, Utterance 332, note 2.

[428]. Piccione, “Mehen, Mysteries, and Resurrection,” 48-9.

[429]. Ibid., p. 47. The board in the British Museum seems to have accomplished the same thing by alternating recessed and raised game spaces, the marbles likely resting in the recesses while the lion-shaped pieces moved across the raised spaces.

[430]. Emmanuel Anati, Palestine Before the Hebrews: A History, from the Earliest Arrival of Man to the Conquest of Canaan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), 397.

[431]. Samuel M. Paley and Yosef Porath, “Early Middle Bronze Age IIa Remains at Tel el-Ifshar, Israel: A Preliminary Report,” in The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, ed., Eliezer D. Oren (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), 376, figure 13.5; Anati, Palestine Before the Hebrews, 396.

[432]. Peter A. Piccione, “In Search of the Meaning of Senet,” Archaeology 33 (July/August 1980): 55-58.

[433]. Ibid., pp. 55-58.

[434]. Timothy Kendall, “Ethnoarchaeology in Meroitic Studies” in Studia Meroitica 1984, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference for Meroitic Studies. Rome 1984, ed. Sergio Donadoni and Steffen Wenig (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag Berlin, 1989), 714.

[435]. Janine Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period,” in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, ed. Ian Shaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 195; Balter, “New Carbon Dates,” 508-509.

[436]. Ellen Herscher, “Archaeology in Cyprus,” American Journal of Archaeology 102, no. 2 (April 1998): 309-354.

[437]. Virgil, The Aeneid, 6.439.

[438]. Phaedo 113. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series LXXI (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989 [1961]), 93.

[439]. Statius, Thebaid, Book II, in Statius with an English Translation, vol. 1, trans. J. H. Mozley, M.D. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982 [1928]), 395.

[440]. Virgil, The Aeneid, 6:439.

[441]. Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, Ltd., 2003), 223-4.

[442]. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. I, 170.

[443]. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 171-2.

[444]. “Jahannam,” Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Deluxe Edition (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006). (This is the only time that I will cite an Encyclopedia, but I wanted a neutral, authoritative summary of Jahannam.)

[445]. Miguel Asín Palacios, Islam and the Divine Comedy, trans. Harold Sunderland (London: John Murray, 1926), 93.

[446]. Ibid., 93.

[447]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 94-5.

[448]. David Iguaz, “Mortuary Practices among the Aztec in the Light of Ethnohistorical and Archaeological Sources,” Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, vol. 4 (1993), 69.

[449]. Mary Miller and Karl Taube, “Olmec gods,” An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (New York : Thames and Hudson, 1997 [1993]), 126.

[450]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 95.

[451]. Ibid., p. 94.

[452]. Ibid., p. 95.

[453]. While Pacal is shown emerging directly from the maw of the earth monster, at Balamkú a frog serves as an intermediary between the king and the giant mouth. This symbolizes birth; an image of a frog known as “the upended frog glyph” was used as the Mayan glyph for “to be born.”

[454]. Barbara Tedlock, Time and the Highland Maya, Revised Edition, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992 [1982]), 140-41.

[455]. Karen Bassie, “Maya Creator Gods” Mesoweb Articles (2002): 11-2, 15.

[456]. Frauke Sachse, “Over Distant Waters: Places of Origin and Creation in Colonial K'iche'an Sources,” in Pre-Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin ed., John Edward Staller (New York: Springer, 2008) 151.

[457]. Charles Wisdom The Chorti Indians of Guatemala, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), 427-28.

[458]. This double-headed, serpentine version of the sky band is called the “celestial monster” and occurs repeatedly in Mayan art, often marked with stars and planets. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 158-9.

[459]. Bunson, “Mehen,” 160.

[460]. Margaret Murray, The Osireion at Abydos (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1904), 21.

[461]. Carolyn E. Tate, “Art in Olmec Culture,” in The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, ed. Jill Guthrie (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996), 62.

[462]. Tate hypothesized that these figures were shaman who attained this pose after years of yoga-like practice, or alternatively, that people who attained this pose via epileptic seizures were selected as shaman.

[463]. Piccione, “Mehen, Mysteries, and Resurrection,” 51.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: GEHENNA’S CHILDREN

[464]. Ponciano Ortiz and María del Carmen Rodrígez, “The Sacred Hill of El Manatí: A Preliminary Discussion of the Site’s Ritual Paraphernalia,” Olmec Art and Archaeology in Mesoamerica, eds. John E. Clark and Mary E. Pye (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2000), 89.

[465]. Ibid., p. 89.

[466]. Mary Miller and Karl Taube, “cenote,” An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (New York : Thames and Hudson, 1997 [1993]), 58.

[467]. Excavating a Teotihuacán-related site in Chapultepec Park in the center of Mexico City in 2004, Maria de la Luz Moreno Cabrera uncovered six pairs of urns containing the remains of young children that had been sacrificed to the rain god.

[468]. Ortiz and Rodrígez, “The Sacred Hill of El Manatí,” 89.

[469]. Ibid., p. 89.

[470]. Coe, Mexico from the Olmecs, 63.

[471]. Ortiz and Rodrígez, “The Sacred Hill of El Manatí,” 89, Karl A. Taube, Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks, Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks, No. 2. (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research, 2004), 11.

[472]. Matthew 10:28.

[473]. Nigel Davies, Human Sacrifice in History and Today. (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1981), 201.

[474]. Phillips Jr., “History of the Mexicans,” 622.

[475]. G. Mattingly, “Moabite Religion and the Mesha Inscription,” in Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab, ed. A. Dearman (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 229-31.

[476]. Daniel David Luckenbill, trans., The Annals of Sennacherib (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1924), 161; Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1964), 267; Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, trans. Henrietta Szold (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publications Society of America, 1936 [1909]), vol iv, 269-270. Ginzberg cites “Sanhedrin 95b-96a; Tosefta-Targum 2 Kings 19.35-37; ps.-Jerome on 2 Chron. 32.21.”

[477]. Judges 11:31.

[478]. Patrick Tierney, The Highest Altar: The Story of Human Sacrifice (New York: Viking, 1989), 384.

[479]. Davies, Human Sacrifice in History, 61.

[480]. Sir William Flinders Petrie, Hyksos and Israelite Cities (London: Office of School of Archaeology, University College, 1906), 29.

[481]. Davies, Human Sacrifice in History, 37.

[482]. Diehl, The Olmecs, 37.

[483]. Edward Lipiński, “The Phoenicians,” Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, editor in chief, Jack M. Sasson, associate editors, Joha Barnes, Gary Beckman, and Karen S. Rubinson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995), vol. II, 1328.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE HOUNDS OF HELL

[484]. Eliezer D. Oren, “The ‘Kingdom of Sharuhen’ and the Hyksos Kingdom,” in The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Eliezer D. Oren (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), 264.

[485]. Paula Wapnish, “Middle Bronze Equid Burials at Tell Jemmeh and a Reexamination of a Purportedly ‘Hyksos’ Practice,” in The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Eliezer D. Oren (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), 356; Glenn M. Schwartz, “Hidden Tombs of Ancient Syria,” Natural History 116, no. 4 (May 2007): 42-7; Burton MacDonald, “Excavations at Tell el-Maskhuta,” The Biblical Archaeologist, 43, no. 1 (Winter, 1980), 54.

[486]. Alfred V. Kidder, Jesse D. Jennings, and Edwin M. Shook, Excavations at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala (Washington, D. C.: Carnegie Institute of Washingtion, 1946), 155; Coe, Mexico from the Olmecs, 52-3.

[487]. Stephan F. Borhegyi, “Pre-Columbian Contacts – The Dryland Approach: The Impact and Influence of Teotihuacán Culture on the Pre-Columbian Civilizations of Mesoamerica,” Man Across the Sea: Problems of Pre-Columbian Contacts, ed. Carroll L. Riley, J. Charles Kelley, Campbell W. Pennington, and Robert L. Rand (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1971), 101.

[488]. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 3: The Origin of the Gods, 43-4; Iguaz, “Mortuary Practices among the Aztec,” 67-69.

[489]. Kidder, et al., Excavations at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, 155.

[490]. Irene Nicholson, Mexican and Central American Mythology (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1967), 104; Bunson and Bunson, Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesoamerica, 281.

[491]. Nicholson, Mexican and Central American Mythology, 91.

[492]. Ibid., p. 40

[493]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 178.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: CHIA-GODS

[494]. Marshall Saville, “Votive Axes from Ancient Mexico,” Parts I and II. In: Indian Notes VI, no. 3, pp. 266-299 and no. 4, pp. 335-342, (New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1929); Michael D. Coe, “The Olmec Heartland: Evolution of Ideology,” Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, ed. Robert Sharer and David Grove (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 71.

[495]. Soustelle, The Olmecs, 152.

[496]. Peter T. Furst, “Jaguar Baby or Toad Mother: A New Look at an Old Problem in Olmec Iconography,” in The Olmec & Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1981), 158.

[497]. Coe, Mexico from the Olmecs, 62.

[498]. Landa, Yucatan Before, 38.

[499]. Linda Schele, “The Olmec Mountain and Tree of Creation in Mesoamerican Cosmology,” in The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, ed., Jill Guthrie (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996), 106.

[500]. Ibid., p. 106.

[501]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 56.

[502]. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. The Florentine Codex, General history of the Things of New Spain. Book 1: The Gods, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, No. 14, Part 2. of Monographs of The School of American Research and The Museum of New Mexico (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research and The University of Utah, 1970), 7.

[503]. Philip P. Arnold, Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation of Tlalocan (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1999), 35.

[504]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 56.

[505]. Miguel Covarrubias, Mexico South: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), 393.

[506]. Ibid., p. 393.

[507]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 56-57.

[508]. Jill Leslie Furst, Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I: A Commentary, No. 4 of Publications of the Institute for Mesoamerican Studies (Albany: State University of New York at Albany, 1978), 318.

[509]. Cantares mexicanos, fol. 27r-27v as excerpted in Gordon Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World: Reading the Native Americas Through their Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 160.

[510]. Horace, Epode XVI, Arthur Sanders Way, trans. The Epodes of Horace; (London: MacMillan and Co., Ltd., 1898), 52.

[511]. Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 168-173.

[512]. Albright, Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions, 12, 14.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: LIVING WITH THE DEAD

[513]. Bietak, “The Center of Hyksos Rule,” 113.

[514]. Bietak, Avaris, 49, 54.

[515]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol I, 392.

[516]. Coe, “The Olmec Heartland,” 70.

[517]. David C. Grove, “Mesoamerican Chronology: Formative (Preclassic) Period,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America, ed. Davíd Carrasco (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), vol. 2, 238-9.

[518]. Cynthia Robin, “Peopling the past: New perspectives on the ancient Maya,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98, no. 1 (January 2, 2001): 18.

[519]. Michael E. Smith, The Aztecs (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 142.

[520]. K.S.B. Ryholt, The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, c. 1800-1550 B.C. Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications Volume 20. (Copenhagen: K.S.B. Ryholt and Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997), 149.

[521]. Examples include La Venta Tomb B and Tres Zapotes Monument C.

[522]. Furst, Codex Vindobonensis, 318.

[523] Matthew W. Stirling, “Discovering the New World’s Oldest Dated Work of Man,” National Geographic Magazine, 76 (August, 1939), 195.

[524]. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. I, 358.

[525]. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chapter 30; Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 52.

[526]. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 3, 45.

[527]. Iguaz, “Mortuary Practices among the Aztec,” 71, citing N. Castillo Tejero and F. Solis Olguin, “Ofrendas Mexicas in el Museo Nacional de Anthopología,” Corpus Antiquitatum Americanensium 8 (1975): 52-53.

[528]. Landa, Yucatan Before, 57.

[529]. Joyce Marcus, “Archaeology and religion: A Comparison of the Zapotec and Maya” World Archaeology 10, no. 2 (Oct., 1978): 182.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: BEGINNINGS

[530]. John Noble Wilford, “Mother Culture, or Only a Sister?” The New York Times, 15 March 2005, D1.

[531]. Coe, “San Lorenzo and the Olmec Civilization,” 65.

[532]. Van Seters, The Hyksos, 27-28.

[533]. Keith N. Schoville, “Canaanites and Amorites,” People of the Old Testament World, ed., Alfred J. Hoerth, Gerald L. Mattingly and Edwin M. Yamauchi (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1994), 177.

[534]. Richard A. Diehl and Michael D. Coe, “Olmec Archaeology,” The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, ed., Jill Guthrie (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996), 14.

[535]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 87-8.

[536]. Dennis Tedlock, trans., Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life (New York: A Touchstone Book, 1996), 63-64.

[537]. Ibid., pp. 63-64.

[538]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 87-8.

[539]. Marion Popenoe de Hatch, “An Hypothesis on Olmec Astronomy, with Special Reference to the La Venta Site,” Contributions of the University of California Archaeological Research Facility, No. 13 (1971): 1-64.

[540]. Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 38.

[541]. Hatch, “An Hypothesis on Olmec Astronomy,” 1-64.

[542]. J. E. S. Thompson, “Maya Astronomy,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 276, no. 1257, “The Place of Astronomy in the Ancient World” (May 2, 1974): 94.

[543]. Ibid., p. 95.

[544]. Matthew W. Stirling, “On the Trail of La Venta Man,” National Geographic Magazine 91, no. 2 (February 1947): 171.

[545]. Ann Cyphers, “El arquitectura Olmeca en San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán,” in Población, Subsistencia y Medio Ambiente en San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, ed. Ann Cyphers (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1997), figure 4.6; Ann Cyphers “Olmec Architecture at San Lorenzo,”in Olmec to Aztec: Settlement Patterns in the Ancient Gulf Lowlands, editors Barbara L. Stark and Philip J. Arnold III (Tucson: Univ. Arizona Press, 1997), 101.

[546]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 351-52.

[547]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 90; Wilkinson, The Complete Temples, 38-9; Manfred Bietak, “The Palatial Precinct at the Nile Branch (Area H),” online at http://www.auaris.at/html/ez_helmi_en.html; and Irene Forster-Müller, “A palatial complex of the early 15th Dynasty (Stratum D/3),” online at http://www.auaris.at/html/areal_f2_en.html.

[548]. Garreth W. Lowe, “Olmec Horizons Defined in Mound 20, San Isidro, Chiapas,” in The Olmec & Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1981), 231-55.

[549]. In some Egyptian cases, as in the foundation deposit of Thutmosis III now at Chicago’s Oriental Institute, entire axes survive with wood handles and leather bindings intact. In the Olmec deposits only the axe and adze heads survive. However, preservation is much poorer in the Olmec region and some of these tools may have had handles when originally buried.

[550]. Diehl, The Olmecs, 37; Wilkinson, The Complete Temples, 38-9.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: THE PYRAMIDS

[551]. Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period,” 196.

[552]. Alan H. Gardiner, The Admonitions, 56.

[553]. Ibid., p. 54.

[554]. K.S.B. Ryholt, The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, c. 1800-1550 B.C. Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications Volume 20. (Copenhagen: K.S.B. Ryholt and Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997), 146-48.

[555]. Ibid., pp. 146-48.

[556]. Ibid., p. 149.

[557]. Ibid., pp. 146-47.

[558]. Philip Drucker, La Venta, Tabasco: A Study of Olmec Ceramics and Art. Smithsonian Institution, U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 153 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1951), 31.

[559]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 24.

[560]. Ibid., vol. I, p. 37.

[561]. Ibid., vol. I, p. 37.

[562]. Ibid., vol. I, p. 24.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: ANCIENT HYDRAULICS

[563]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 393.

[564]. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples, 72.

[565]. William Y. Adams, “Sudan Antiquities Service Excavations at Meinarti, 1963-64.” Kush: Journal of the Sudan Antiquities Service 13 (1965): 164.

[566]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 363.

[567]. Ibid., p. 393.

[568]. Coe, Mexico from the Olmecs, 95.

[569]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 121.

[570]. Van Seters, The Hyksos, 38; Schoville, “Canaanites and Amorites,” 177.

[571]. Bietak, Avaris, Plate 7 a-c.

[572]. Karl A. Taube, Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks, Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks, No. 2. (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research, 2004), 10-11.

[573]. Coe, “San Lorenzo and the Olmec Civilization,” 64.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: RAIDERS OF THE LOST NAOS

[574]. Exodus 25:22.

[575]. Exodus 20:3-5.

[576]. Jill Guthrie, ed., The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996), 242-3.

[577]. Ann Cyphers, “El contexto social de monumentos en San Lorenzo,” in Población, Subsistencia y Medio Ambiente en San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, ed. Ann Cyphers (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1997), 186.

[578]. Coe, Mexico from the Olmecs, 68. Jill Guthrie, ed., The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership. (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996), 242.

[579]. Bietak, “The Center of Hyksos Rule,” 111-113.

[580]. Bietak, Avaris, 67.

[581]. Budge, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, vol. II, 773b.

CHAPTER THIRTY: SPEECH MADE VISIBLE

[582]. John Noble Wilford, “When No One Read, Who Started to Write?” The New York Times, 6 April 1999, D1-D2.

[583]. Campbell and Kaufman, “A Linguistic Look at the Olmecs,” 80-9.

[584]. Pohl, Pope, and Nagy, “Olmec Origins,” 1985.

[585]. See for example: Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period,” 192-93. For a cylinder seal excavated at Avaris see: Bietak, Avaris, 26-9; plate 12.

[586]. Pohl, Pope, and Nagy, “Olmec Origins,” 1984-7.

[587]. Ibid., pp. 1984-7.

[588]. Benjamin Sass, Studia Alphabetica: On the Origin and Early History of the Northwest Semitic, South Semitic and Greek Alphabets, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 102 (Fribourg and Göttingen, 1991), 8-9.

[589]. Benjamin Sass, Studia Alphabetica: On the Origin and Early History of the Northwest Semitic, South Semitic and Greek Alphabets, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 102 (Fribourg and Göttingen, 1991), 8-9.

[590]. William F. Albright, The Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography (New Haven, Connecticut: American Oriental Society, 1934), 12; He makes a similar argument citing broader evidence in William F. Albright, “Northwest-Semitic ids in a List of Egyptian Slaves from the Eighteenth Century B. C.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 74, no. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1954), 233.

[591]. Landa, Yucatan Before, 29-30.

[592]. Landa, Yucatan Before, p. 28.

[593]. Rather than the vulture head, a variant form of the glyph was used on this seal. Pohl, Pope, and Nagy, “Olmec Origins,” 1986.

TABLE FOUR

i. Glyphs in table courtesy of Paul Ruane.

ii. John S. Justeson and Terrence Kaufman, “A Decipherment of Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing” Science 259 (1993): 1703-1711.

iii. Although there is no r sound in modern spoken Yucatec Maya (with the exception of the word urich “land snail” and loan words from Spanish), the Quiché Mayan dialect uses an r where Yucatec Mayan has an l. (Gary Bevington, Maya for Travelers and Students: A Guide to the Language and Culture of the Yucatan (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1995), 23; Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World, 217.) The Egyptians wrote the sound r with a hieroglyph that represents a mouth. The Mayans wrote la with a stylized and inverted head with its mouth up and prominent. As another example, the Egyptian hieroglyph of an eye is the biliteral sign for ir (Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 450), while in Mayan a glyph of an eye is used for il and is pronounced ir in Quiché Mayan. (Montgomery, Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs, 394). This same exchange occurred in Egyptian interactions with neighboring Semites. Since Egyptian lacked an l, Semitic words that contained a lamed were rendered with an r. A notable instance is the first use of the name Israel in the Merneptah stela, where it is written Isrir.

iv. John Montgomery, Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs (New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc., 2002), 144-46.

v. Ibid., 138.

vi. Ibid., 224

[594]. This is the form of the glyph used for writing ajaw as a day name. Montgomery, Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs, 27.

[595]. An Egyptian frog amulet accompanied by an explanation of their use as birth aides may be seen at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

[596]. Sir Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed (Oxford: Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum: 1979), 191.

[597]. Miller and Taube, An Illustrated Dictionary, 125.

[598]. Frank M. Cross, Jr., “The Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 134 (April 1954): 18.

[599]. Later on, variant Hebrew letter forms were created for use at the end of words, and these extended the numbering system.

[600]. Landa, Yucatan Before, 40.

[601]. Campbell and Kaufman, “A Linguistic Look at the Olmecs,” 85, 88.

[602]. In the ancient Near East the use of 400 as the primary unit for tallying large numbers resulted arbitrarily from the constraints of using the alphabet for numbers. However, this system required excessive repetition to render very large numbers. Perhaps an ingenious Olmec scribe realized a simple and logical extension of the system and added units of 8,000 (400 squared) and 20 (the square root of 400), thus creating a vigesimal or base twenty system. This may also be the reason that the number of day names was reduced to 20 from the slightly larger number of original proto-Sinatic letters.

[603]. Elizabeth Hill Boone, Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 21.

[604]. Davies, The Toltecs, 181.

[605]. Lorna Oakes and Lucia Gahlin. Ancient Egypt: An Illustrated Reference to the Myths, Religions, Pyramids and Temples or the Land of the Pharaohs (London: Hermes House, 2002), 374-75.

[606]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 317.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: NUBIA AND THE HYKSOS

[607]. Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period,” 190.

[608]. Bietak, “The Center of Hyksos Rule,” 113.

[609]. Yurco, “Egypt and Nubia,” 74.

[610]. O’Connor, David, Ancient Nubia. Egypt's Rival in Africa (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1993), 54.

[611]. Yurco, “Egypt and Nubia,” 65.

[612]. Perla Fuscaldo, “The Nubian Pottery from the Palace District of Avaris at cEzbet Helmi, Areas H/III and H/VI. Part II: The ‘Classic’ Kerma Pottery from the Second Intermediate Period and the 18th Dynasty.” Ägypten und Levante 14 (2004), 111-3; Manfred Bietak, “A Palace of the Hyksos Khayan at Avaris,” in Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Volume 2, ed. Paolo Matthiae (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010), 101; Manfred Bietak, “‘Rich beyond the Dreams of Avaris: Tell el-Dabʿa and the Aegean World: A Guide for the Perplexed’: A Response to Eric H. Cline” The Annual of the British School at Athens 95 (2000), 189.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: APPEARANCE

[613]. Bruce Williams, C-Group, Pan Grave, and Kerma Remains at Adindan Cemeteries T, K, U, and J, part 5 of Excavations between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, vol. 5 of The University of Chicago Oriental Institute Nubian Expedition (Chicago: The Oriental Institue of the University of Chicago, 1983), 47.

[614]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 150-51.

[615]. Ibid., p. 156.

[616]. Williams, C-Group, Pan Grave, and Kerma Remains, 43.

[617]. Ibid., p. 43.

[618]. Ibid., p. 43.

[619]. George A. Reisner, Excavations at Kerma, vol. II (Cambridge, Mass., Peabody Museum of Harvard University, 1923), 381-2.

[620]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 157.

[621]. Reisner, Excavations at Kerma, vol. II, 381-2.

[622]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 184, figure 156.

[623]. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 184-5.

[624]. Reisner, Excavations at Kerma, vol. II, 384.

[625] Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 131.

[626]. Paul Tolstoy, “Western Mesoamerica and the Olmec,” in Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, ed. Robert Sharer and David Grove (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 285.

[627]. Williams, C-Group, Pan Grave, and Kerma Remains, 39.

[628]. Perla Fuscaldo, “The Nubian Pottery from the Palace District of Avaris at cEzbet Helmi, Areas H/III and H/VI. Part II: The ‘Classic’ Kerma Pottery from the Second Intermediate Period and the 18th Dynasty.” Ägypten und Levante 14 (2004), 111-3.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: BURIED ALIVE

[629]. Reisner, Excavations at Kerma, vol. I, 68.

[630]. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 70-1.

[631]. Bietak, Avaris, 45.

[632]. Ibid., p. 45.

[633]. Flinder Petrie, Ancient Gaza I: Tell El Ajjūl (London: British School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1931), 4.

[634]. Ibid., p. 4.

[635]. Stanley M. Burstein, “The Kingdom of Meroe,” in Africa and Africans in Antiquity, ed. Edwin M. Yamauchi (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001), 138.

[636]. Diehl. The Olmecs, 70.

[637]. Robert J. Sharer, “The Olmec and the Southeast periphery of Mesoamerica,” Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, ed. Robert Sharer and David Grove (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 260; John Noble Wilford, “Maya Tomb Tells Tale of Two Women, Elite but Doomed,” The New York Times, 14 June 2005, D2.

[638]. Iguaz, “Mortuary Practices,” 64.

[639]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 376.

[640]. Kendall, “Ethnoarchaeology in Meroitic Studies,” 665.

[641]. Diodorus, Loeb translation by C. H. Oldfather as excerpted Burstein, “The Kingdom of Meroe,” 148.

[642]. Kendall, “Ethnoarchaeology in Meroitic Studies,” 665.

[643]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 372.

[644]. Ibid., p. 375.

[645]. Jürgen Kremer and Fausto Uc Flores, “The Ritual Suicide of Maya Rulers,” in Eighth Palenque Round Table, 1993, Vol. X, edited, Martha J. Macri and Jan McHargue (San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, 1996), 79-91.

[646]. Kendall, “Ethnoarchaeology in Meroitic Studies,” 663-4.

[647]. Sahagún. The Florentine Codex, Book 3, 43.

[648]. Covarrubias, Mexico South, 396.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: APPEARANCE

[649]. Stirling, “Discovering the New World’s Oldest,” 207-209.

[650]. Alexander von Wuthenau, Unexpected Faces in Ancient America (1500 B.C. – A. D. 1500) (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1975).

[651]. Meggers, Betty J. “The Transpacific Origin of Mesoamerican Civilization: A Preliminary Review of the Evidence and Its Theoretical Implication.” American Anthropologist, 1975, vol. 77, no. 11, pp. 1-27.

[652]. Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus (New York: Random House, 1976), 147.

[653]. Heyerdahl, Early Man and the Ocean, 119.

[654]. In its coverage of the symposium, the journal Science summarized a portion of Dr. Kehoe’s remarks but neglected to attribute them to her. (Andrew Lawler, “Beyond Kon-Tiki: Did Polynesians Sail to South America?” Science 328 (June 11, 2010): 1347.)

[655]. Initial Y-chromosomes analyses of modern representatives of indigenous populations have been more ambiguous than those of mitochondrial DNA (which divides neatly into five New World lineages, A, B, C, D, and X, of which A and X were specifically discussed in chapter 11). When results fail to conform to expectations, they are dismissed as post-conquest contamination. While this is often warranted, it has also been used to discount unexpected data that distribution patterns indicate is of genuinely indigenous origin. (Maria-Catira Bortolini, et al., “Y-Chromosome Evidence for Differing Ancient Demographic Histories in the Americas,” American Journal of Human Genetics 73 (2003), 534, 536). Despite this practice, a growing body of Y-chromosome evidence now indicates “ancient links between proto-Europeans and proto–Native Americans...” (Maria-Catira Bortolini, et al., “Y-Chromosome Evidence,” 536). And the genetic connections with Asia indicate “recurrent gene flow between Asia and America, after initial colonization” (N. Ray, et al., “A Statistical Evaluation of Models for the Initial Settlement of the American Continent Emphasizes the Importance of Gene Flow with Asia,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 27 (2010):337-345). The modern indigenous Y-chromosome study geographically closest to the Olmec heartland is that of the village of Filomeno Mata, which was traditionally believed to have been especially secluded from the European conquest. Mitochondrial studies found that 100% of the population was of indigenous heritage. But Y-chromosome studies found that 10% of the male heredity was of European origin. However, when their European ancestry was checked against Spanish and Portuguese haplotypes (the source populations of the conquest), it was found that they could not have come from either of these populations. (Katie H. Ritchie, et al., “Mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal Analysis of an Indigenous Mexican Population, the Filomeno Mata, to Investigate Admixture with the Spanish,” The American Society of Human Genetics 55th Annual Conference (2005) Salt Lake City, UT.) What will ultimately be most telling is what Dr. Kehoe has called for, genetic studies of undisturbed ancient DNA that include Y-chromosome analysis.

[656]. George Kubler, The Art and Architecture of Ancient America: the Mexican, Maya, and Andean Peoples (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 316.

[657]. Eiríks saga rauða, The Saga of Erik the Red, trans., J. Sephton, 1880.

[658]. A. M. Reeves, N. L. Beamish, and R. B. Anderson, The Norse Discovery of America: A Compilation in Extenso of all the Sagas, Manuscripts, and Inscriptive Memorials Relating to the Finding and Settlement of the New World in the Eleventh Century (London: Norroena Society, 1906), 323.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: ATTIRE

[659]. Stirling, “On the Trail of La Venta Man,” 157.

[660]. Campbell and Kaufman, “A Linguistic Look at the Olmecs,” 86-7.

[661]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 392.

[662]. Bonnet, Kerma, 150 fig. 15, 174 fig. 112, 178 fig. 125. Figs. 112 and 125.

[663]. Ibid., p. 166, figure 77.

[664]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 241.

[665]. Herodotus, The Histories, 109-110 (Book 2: 36-37).

[666]. Herodotus, The Histories, 174 (Book 3: 12).

[667]. Coe and Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec, vol. I, 392.

[668]. Daniel Wilson, LL.D. Prehistoric Man: Researches into the Origin of Civilization in the Old and the New World, Second Edition (London: McMillan and Co., 1865), 511.

[669]. Kendall, “Ethnoarchaeology in Meroitic Studies,” 628.

[670]. “Children's game.” Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Deluxe Edition (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006).

[671]. Balter, “New Carbon Dates,” 508-509; Oren, “The Hyksos Enigma,” xxii-xxiii.

[672].Diehl, The Olmecs, 109.

[673]. Beatriz de la Fuente, “Toward a Conception of Monumental Olmec Art,” in The Olmec & Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1981), 87-9; Diehl, The Olmecs, 109-111.

[674]. Bonnie M. Sampsell, “Ancient Egyptian Dwarfs,” KMT 12, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 63.

[675]. See, for example, figures 19, 21, 22, 26, 48, 88, 139, 146, 179, and 213 of Jill Guthrie, ed., The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996).

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: THE MEROITIC RELIEFS

[676]. Diehl, The Olmecs, 108.

[677]. Although this period of Egyptian cultural dominance was interrupted by a Nubian conquest of Egypt, the Nubians continued to emulate Egyptian culture and worship Egyptian gods until the Meriotic period.

[678]. Kendall, “Ethnoarchaeology in Meroitic Studies,” 626.

[679]. Ibid., p. 626.

[680]. Elizabeth P. Benson and Beatriz de la Fuente, eds., Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico (New York: National Gallery of Art, 1996), 168.

[681]. Schele, “The Olmec Mountain,” 107.

[682].. L. V. Žabkar, Apedemak: Lion God of Meroe (Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips Ltd., 1975), Plates XXX, XVI.

[683]. Schele, “The Olmec Mountain,” 106-7.

[684]. Derek A. Welsby, The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires (London: The British Museum Press, 1996), 31. On the evolution of these crowns see: László Török, The Royal Crowns of Kush. A Study in Middle Nile Valley Regalia and Iconography in the 1st Millennia BC and AD, Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 18 (Oxford, 1987).

[685]. Žabkar, Apedemak, Plate III-VII.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE

[686]. Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 220.

[687]. Robert F. Heizer and Jonas E. Gullberg, “Concave Mirrors from the Site of La Venta, Tabasco: Their Occurrence, Mineralogy, Optical Description, and Function,” in The Olmec & Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1981), 111.

[688]. Susan Milbrath, Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 231.

[689]. Heizer and Gullberg, “Concave Mirrors,” 115.

[690]. Plutarch, “The Life of Numa Pompilius,” trans. John Dryden, revised A. H. Clough, vol. I of Plutarch's Lives and Writings ( Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1909), 140.

[691]. Michael Balter, “New Carbon Dates Support Revised History of Ancient Mediterranean,” Science 312, no. 5773 (28 April 2006): 508-509.

[692]. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex, General History of the Things of New Spain. Book 7: The Sun, Moon, and Stars, and the Binding of the Years, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, no. 14, pt. 8 of Monographs of the School of American Research and The Museum of New Mexico (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research and The University of Utah, 1953), 28.

[693]. Schoville, “Canaanites and Amorites,” 178.

[694]. In Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas.

[695]. Rios 38 (32r).

[696]. Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 220.

[697]. John B. Carlson, “Olmec Concave Iron-Ore Mirrors: The Aesthetics of a Lithic Technology and the Lord of the Mirror,” in The Olmec & Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1981), 125.

[698]. Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 81.

[699]. Ibid., p. 85.

[700]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 127.

[701]. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. II, 302-3.

[702]. Markman and Markman, The Flayed God, 127.

[703]. Žabkar, Apedemak, 60.

[704]. Ibid., pp. 106-117.

[705]. Guthrie, ed., The Olmec World, 120.

[706]. Miller and Taube. An Illustrated Dictionary, 158.

[707]. Karl A. Taube, “The Rainmakers: The Olmec and Their Contribution to Mesoamerican Belief and Ritual,” in The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, ed. Jill Guthrie (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996), 100.

[708]. Žabkar, Apedemak, 66.

[709]. Taube, “The Rainmakers, 100.

[710].Žabkar, Apedemak, 65.

Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

—Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

Table of Contents

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

PART 2

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

PART 3

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

PART 4

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

PART 5

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

PART 6

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

PART 7

CHAPTER 30

PART 8

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

ENDNOTES

Table of Contents

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

PART 2

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

PART 3

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

PART 4

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

PART 5

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

PART 6

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

PART 7

CHAPTER 30

PART 8

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

ENDNOTES