Star Realms of the Patriarchs, Ur and Ebla

At Lexiline http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi154.htm, I present the ages of the Biblical partriarchs as reigns which were calculated and recorded by astronomy, what I call star realms.

William Walker III calculated that the star data applies only at a location around 42.5°N, i.e. supporting the idea that the Biblical Patriarchs came from the Black Sea Flood submergence. Our cardinal date for that calculation was 3117 BC, using a location at 42.5°N.

We have since recalculated the starting location of the Biblical Patriarch stellar data with the Starry Night Pro software and have discovered that the start of the data at the rising and setting of the star Arcturus, given the starting date of the Hebrew Calendar at 3761 B.C., would be in a geographic area at about 37° to 38° N, and we now think that to be the more accurate location for the astronomical start of the reigns of the Biblical Patriarchs as calculated by astronomy.

Our previous position was that the Biblical data related to a starting date of ca. 3117 B.C. In that era at ca. 3117 BC, according to Starry Night Pro, at the latitude 42°30" N, as one can see in the graphic below, Arcturus, at which the reigns of the Biblical Patriarchs begin with Adam, is more or less right at the horizon and ready in a few years to lose its circumpolar status at that latitude.


42°30" N 3117 BC


Already one degree below that at 41°30" N in 3117 B.C., Arcturus is no longer a circumpolar star in that epoch and is definitely subject to description as a rising and setting star, as in our star realms of the Biblical Patriarchs.

In terms of chronological time, Arcturus also reaches this same position at 42°30" N in ca. 2950 BC.

We thought and still think Arcturus was used as the first star of this Biblical Patriarch series because at this time in history - at the right latitude (which still remains to be fixed) - Arcturus goes from being a circumpolar star to being a star that also dips below the horizon due to the 25920 year cycle of the wobble of the earth, which leads to precession and a change in the position of the celestial equator, which then of course changes the position of Arcturus in the sky. In this epoch, Arcturus was slowly dropping.


41°30" N 3117 BC
Arcturus at the horizon is also what one would see ca. 38°N to 37°N in 3761 B.C.

Accordingly, what we wrote previously at LexiLine at http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi154.htm was in the general ball park of accuracy as far as the rising and setting of Arcturus is concerned for 3117 B.C., using the reference point of 42°30" N, which William Walker calculated.

However, if our theory of the "star ages" or "star realms" of the Biblical Patriarchs is true, which we think it is, it only holds true if their reigns were recorded for posterity for a starting date of ca. 3117 BC, but using the positions of the stars at 42°30" N. But this is highly unlikely, since in 3117 BC the Black Sea was already submerged.

Accordingly, a change in the point of reference in terms of time and location is necessary.

We ourselves have never been happy with the 42°30" N latitude theory (but saw no choice but to adopt it due to the data given to us) and have always thought that the star eras of the Biblical Patriarchs must apply to a more southerly location, where the data was actually calculated and recorded by the Hebrew scholars in a later epoch.

Accordingly, instead of the 3117 B.C. cardinal date, we recently took the starting date of the Hebrew Calendar for our astronomical calculations.

We now assume that these star realms of the Biblical Patriarchs were in fact recorded taking a starting date as 3761 BC, which is the start of the Hebrew calendar.

At what latitude in that epoch would Arcturus then start its non-circumpolar status? i.e. at what latitude does Arcturus start to dip minimally below the horizon during the daily rotation of the stars in 3761 B.C.?

In the year 3761 B.C., according to Starry Night Pro, Arcturus begins its non-circumpolar status somewhere around latitude 38° N to 37°N. Above that latitude in that epoch it still remains circumpolar and would not and could not be used as a rising or setting star to calculate the star realms of the Biblical Pharaohs.

This brings us new observations. A location of 38° N to 37°N as the location for calculating the data with a starting reference date of 3761 B.C. is very interesting indeed.

According to the legends of the MIddle East, the city of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, is not the Babylonian Ur, but the city of Urfa (ca. 37° N.), ancient Anatolia, in today's southeastern Turkey, just above the Syrian border.

The Wikipedia writes:

"The city has been known by many names: Ուռհա, Urhai in Armenian, ܐܘܪܗܝ, Urhāy in Syriac, Riha in Kurdish, الروها, Ar-Ruha in Arabic, Ορρα, Orrha in Greek (also Ορροα, Orrhoa). For a while it was named Callirrhoe or Antiochia on the Callirhoe (Greek: Αντιόχεια η επί Καλλιρρόης). During Byzantine rule it was named Justinopolis. Although it is often best known by the name given it by the Seleucids, Εδεσσα, Edessa.

'Şanlı' means great, glorious, dignified in Turkish and Urfa was officially re-named Şanlıurfa (Urfa the Glorious) by the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 1984....

Urfa is a city in south-eastern Turkey, and the capital of Sanliurfa Province. Urfa is situated on a plain under big open skies, about eighty kilometres east of the Euphrates River. The climate features extremely hot, dry summers and cool, moist winters. The urban population of Urfa is mainly Kurdish while the outlying regions are mixed Turkish and to a lesser degree Arabian.... It was one of several cities in the Euphrates-Tigris basin, the cradle of the Mesopotamian civilization. According to Turkish Muslim traditions Urfa (its name since Byzantine days) is the biblical city of Ur, due to its proximity to the biblical village of Harran. However, the Iraqis also claim the city of Ur in southern Iraq, as do many historians and archaeologists. Urfa is also known as the birthplace of Abraham, commemorated by a mosque in the city and the birthplace of Job."

Burak Sansal writes:

"This is an Anatolian city which has figured in all the religions of the book. Old Testament prophets such as Jethro (Hz. Suayp), Job (Hz. Eyup), Elijah (Hz. Elyasa) and Abraham (Hz. Ibrahim) lived in this city, which in ancient times was known as Edessa, and Moses (Hz. Musa) lived in the region for seven years working as a shepherd before returning to Egypt with his staff. It was in Sanliurfa that early Christians were first permitted to worship freely, and where the first churches were constructed openly. Pagan temples were converted to synagogues, synagogues to churches and churches to mosques, resulting in a uniquely eclectic architecture."

As can be read at the site of the Sanliurfa Museum, the region is marked by numerous tumuli, many now destroýed by dams:

"A testament to the rich past of the region of Sanliurfa is the large number of tumuli and old settlements. Harran, located 44 kilometers south of Sanliurfa, is one of the most notable of these settlements and was continuously inhabited from 3000 BC to the 13th century. It was especially noted for its peculiar civilian architecture.

Salvage excavations are being conducted in the settlements threatened by the dams of Ataturk, Birecik and Kargamis. Starting from 1978, foreign teams conducted excavations in the Lidar and Hassek tumuli which were to be submerged under Ataturk Dam Lake, while the museum directorate was involved in the excavation of Cavi Field and Nevala Cori. Salvage excavations have been taking place since 1996 in Tilbes Tumulus which will disappear under the waters of Birecik Dam; Apamea, a Hellenistic city threatened by the same dam, has been excavated since 1998....

In Sanliurfa museum, pieces obtained from Harran and other cultural assets recovered from other tumuli and ancient settlements are exhibited in different cases in alphabetical order. Pieces from the time of the Assyrians, Babylonians and the Hittites are exhibited in the entrance hall.

The second and third halls of the archaeology section have cutting and piercing devices made of flintstone (8000-5000 BC), stone idols and vessels, plain and painted ceramics with geometric designs made of baked soil belonging to the period 5000-3000 BC, seals, pithoi, necklaces, pieces of imprinted cubes made of baked soil dating back to the Early Bronze Age (3000-2000 BC), animal figures, metal artifacts, and ornaments."

A good distance southwest of Urfa and Harran and 55 km SW of Aleppo in Syria we find the ancient city of Ebla (Tell Mardikh. In view of the name of Ebla's most illustrious king, Ebrium or Ibrium (in my opinion this could be a reference to Abraham), Ebla most certainly was Ebra and the "land of the Hebrews" at that time. Ebla has become increasingly important in archaeological assessments of the Ancient Near East (text misspellings corrected in the following quotations):

"c. 3.0 tya BCE :
Semitic people called the Canaanites inhabit ancient Palestine and Phoenicia. "Phoenicia" is the Greek translation of "Canaan--the land of purple merchants" referring to the dye they used to color cloth. Indeed, it is from the time of Canaan that Bethlehem is believed to have derived its name, Bethlehem - 'BeitLahem' in Arabic ("The house of Lahman" - a Canaanite God). The term 'Semitic' is generally synonymous with 'Jewish' but is said to include the related group of people who spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Amharic. These languages are all classified by linguists as a group of tongues constituting the Afro-Asiatic Language Family.

More recent archaeological discoveries which tend to promote the importance of the civilization centered in the city of Ebla...(as opposed to Mesopotamia)... indicate that it may be useful to name some of the levantine discoveries as "Pre-Eblaic, Elbaic or Post-Eblaic", ... the cause of the decline of this culture is not yet well elucidated."

The Eblaites, because of their writings, might be considered the descendants of the Sumerians, who were the Indo-European people of the Black Sea Flood:

"In 1964, Italian archaeologists from the University of Rome La Sapienza directed by Paolo Matthiae began excavating at Tell Mardikh. In 1968 they recovered a statue dedicated to the goddess Ishtar bearing the name of Ibbit-Lim, a king of Ebla [after whom Bethlehem was named?]. That identified the city, long known from Egyptian and Akkadian inscriptions. In the next decade the team discovered a palace dating approximately from 2500–2000 BC. About 15,000 well-preserved cuneiform tablets were discovered in the ruins. About 80% of the tablets are written in Sumerian, the others in a previously unknown Semitic language that is being called 'Eblaite.' Pettinato and Dahood believe the Eblaite language is West Semitic, however Gelb and others believe it is an East Semitic dialect, closer to Akkadian. Ebla's close link to southern Mesopotamia, where the script had developed, establishes further the links between the Sumerians and Semitic cultures that certainly already existed before the first texts appear in Sumer in 3000 BC. Vocabulary lists were found with the tablets, allowing them to be translated." [emphasis added]

Clifford Wilson writes about the many thousands of Ebla Tablets found at Ebla:

"When the first tablets were found, it was soon realized that this city used a very ancient language in the North West Semitic group which was previously unknown. Professor Pettinato labeled this "Paleo-Canaanite." In layman's terms, this means "ancient Canaanite." At the close of this article in Biblical Archaeologist Professor Pettinato tells us,

The pronominal and verbal systems, in particular, are so clearly defined that one can properly speak of a Paleo-Canaanite language closely akin to Hebrew and Phoenician.

These Ebla tablets are written in a Sumerian script, with Sumerian logograms adapted to represent Akkadian words and syllables. About 1,000 words were recovered initially (hundreds more later) in vocabulary lists. The words are written out in both Sumerian logograms and Eblaic syllable-type writing. These offered an invaluable key to the interpretation of many of the Ebla texts. The vocabularies at Ebla were distinctively Semitic: the word "to write" is k-t-b (as in Hebrew), while that for "king" is "malikum," and that for "man" is "adamu." The closeness to Hebrew is surprising.""

The Ebla tablets mention Ur (Urfa).

Yes, and there is a Pharaonic connection as well:

"Most of its trade seems to have been directed towards Mesopotamia (chiefly Kish), and contacts with Egypt are attested by gifts from pharaohs Khafra and Pepi I."

Now, why would the Pharaohs be giving gifts to Ebla unless there was a close blood relationship between them?

The Chronology of the Ancient World: The Chronology of the Ancient World Blog Begins

The Chronology of the Ancient World: The Chronology of the Ancient World Blog Begins

Gerum Cloak of Sweden is an Ancient Astronomical Sky Map

Bring on Sherlock Holmes . . .
and at least one lawyer, trained in evidence . . . pro bono publico.

THE GERUM CLOAK MYSTERY

The more than 2000-year old Cloak of Gerum (photos and info below) provides us - as we will show - with the greatest "real" (non-fiction) cloak and dagger mystery of all time, unsolved up to now, but - as we allege - for the most part solved (but not entirely) in this posting.

The technology that we use to solve this mystery is demonstrated in the following graphic - which contains a secret message - to which we give the simple and ultimately helpful clue:
42 (read further below to understand its significance in the context of this posting). Any change to this graphic by, e.g. compression, destroys the secret message:


The mainstream archaeologists recently determined,

via the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities
and the Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science
(which "performs laboratory analyses of samples collected from various scenes of suspected crimes" and uses the most modern investigatory criminal forensic techniques available to man - the Scandinavians are indeed top in many scientific and engineering fields)

(stated in our free translation from the Swedish using the assistance of Systran)
that:

"[T]he Gerum Cloak has five cuts made by knife or dagger and that these stabs [if the cloak had been worn at the time] would have struck the body in the chest, abdomen, spine and neck."

This is cloak and dagger at its best. You have an - alleged - ancient cloak and you also have - alleged - multiple dagger incisions, but - thus far - you have no dagger, and no corpse.

Worse, when the Gerum Cloak was subjected to follow-up tests for blood and DNA, none were found. No human remnants. None.

How is this to be explained?

ORIGIN OF THE GERUM CLOAK

The Gerum Cloak, neatly folded and almost perfectly preserved - a great rarity for archaeology - was found in the year 1920¹ by peat bog diggers in Gerumsberget, Sweden, along with three small stones (found sitting on top of the cloak) which from the photos appear to be about the same size as a super-oversized computer mouse, interpreted - questionably - by the mainstream archaeologists as weights to weigh down the cloak in the bog.

PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE GERUM CLOAK

[Please note: All photographs below are copyrighted by their owners. We use them here in reliance on the fair use copyright exception for non-profit research. See the original linked articles for more details about each photograph. For the analysis below, one of the photos used MUST be the original, and we do use it.]


Photograph left above by ATA - Photograph right above (3 small stones) by Falbygdens museum in Falköping, which is also a very important Swedish megalithic site

Photo left above by ATA of cloak 1920 - Photo middle (virtual cloak and stones) & photo right (cloak hung) by Falbygdens museum
Gerum Cloak Overhead View
(Original Photo Essential for Forensics)


ABOVE: Overhead photograph of the Gerum Cloak by Gabriel Hildebrandt / SHM
(The discussion below shows that it is important to use the original photograph for analysis)

Gerum Cloak "On the Table View"

ABOVE: Photograph of the Gerum Cloak investigation, photograph by Christer Åhlin / SHM

The white points on the cloak here played a role in our solution of the mystery.

PHOTOGRAPHS ARE THE KEYS TO SOLVE THE GERUM CLOAK MYSTERY

The lower two photographs above were the key photographs for the solution of this mystery:
1) the table photograph because we wondered what the white points were; and, 2) the overhead photograph because we looked for those white points, wondering where they had vanished.

HOW OLD IS THE GERUM CLOAK? IS IT REALLY A CLOAK SHAPE?

Modern chronological dating shows the Gerum Cloak to originate around several hundred years before the birth of Christ (ca. 360-100 BC). The cloak is thus at least 2000 years old and is the oldest intact piece of "clothing" (or what is alleged to be clothing) ever found in Sweden.

Given its oval nearly elliptical shape, the identification as a cloak (rather than, for example, as a tablecloth or wall tapestry) is however certainly susceptible to doubt. We have many cloaks but we have never seen one with an oval shape and with no cut or incision for the head. The peat bog finders, not knowing what else to do with their finding, threw it over their shoulders as if it were a cloak and it has been regarded as a cloak ever since, but it is most likely NOT a cloak. Indeed, if not a cloak, then the dagger marks of the archaeologists are not stab marks at all, which seems likely given their overly wide distribution on the cloak, mostly near the edges.

The shape of the cloak, as we shall see, as well as the dagger slashes on the cloak, are, however, important clues to the resolution of the real secret of the cloak.

WHAT ABOUT THE THREE STONES?

If someone had committed a murder and was trying to hide a bloodied cloak, they would not use three such unusually-shaped and differently weighted stones this small to sink the cloak in a bog, nor would they first fold the cloak neatly. The fact that the cloak was still neatly folded when found indicates additionally that the stones had no effect on sinking the cloak, which, if effective, would have destroyed the folding. Rather, it appears that the cloak and stones were intentionally and neatly hidden together - but possibly too near an inviting bog, probably by someone who thought that he or someone else might recover them soon. Perhaps they were hidden in the bog by someone thinking they could not be found there, would not sink too deeply and could be retrieved shortly. But no one came to retrieve them and so they sank slowly (retaining the folding) into the bog which preserved them for over 2000 years.

The bottom stone looks almost like an iron for ironing clothes or fabric, i.e. something to slide along a surface, and in my opinion the upper two smaller stones appear to be made to fit exactly on top of the larger stone. Each of these smaller stones has what appears to be a sculpted straight edge, suggesting a maneuverable usage intended for marking something, much like modern markers for lines or locations on a map, perhaps a kind of angle-setter? We leave this issue to the engineers out there in cyberspace.

WHAT IS THE REAL SECRET OF THE GERUM CLOAK?

Does the Gerum Cloak hide a different real secret, and if so, what is it?

We have discovered that all that is required to reveal the hidden secret of the Gerum Cloak are the right tools and the right detective work in using them.

With apologies to other forensic experts, but in the case of the Gerum Cloak, every internet user potentially possesses tools necessary for decipherment success in the instant case.

FORENSIC SCIENCE, STEP BACK : WE ONLY NEED ONE PHOTO PLUS PSP

All that one needs to decipher the Gerum Cloak are:

1) an otherwise unformatted original overhead photograph copy of the Gerum Cloak laid down flat, such as the original photograph of Gabriel Hildebrandt (who we do not know personally) reproduced above, and;

2) a graphics program such as Paint Shop Pro ("PSP", by Corel, formerly JASC) having a "threshold level" menu option for showing the most minimal color differences in any image. We use the German version of PSP 7.00, where the threshold value menu option is found under the colors menu as the option "Schwellenwert": [Farben/Farbeinstellungen/Schwellenwert]. Note that this menu is activated only after an image is loaded into PSP.

MENU OPTION FOR THRESHOLD VALUE PERMITS PRO SLEUTHING

The ability to depict very precisely the minutial differences in color of adjacent pixels on a photograph allows the identification of marks or etchings on surfaces which are as good as invisible to the human eye or which can otherwise only be found with great difficulty - or not at all - by more modern technologies. To our knowledge, we were the first ever to use precisely this graphics technology in archaeology, already applying it to the study of figures found on photographs of megaliths, megalithic sites and petroglyphs (see Stars Stones and Scholars).

GABRIEL HILDEBRANDT'S OVERHEAD PHOTOGRAPH OF THE GERUM CLOAK AND THE COLOR THRESHOLD METHOD OF FINDING HIDDEN FIGURES

Using Gabriel Hildebrandt's original photograph above and available at Gabriel Hildebrandt / SHM, anyone having the graphics program Paint Shop Pro (it may also work with other graphics programs having a comparable menu option) can duplicate our results by using the threshold settings that we provide below. The three rows below show the color blue (#0000ff) progressively differentiated by 1) brightness, 2) saturation and 3) hue.


Each of the 46 colors above (48 boxes but 3 are identical) is a different RGB blue color. The differences in blue in each color row above are very hard to discern with the human eye, though the eyes do "see" these colors, as shown by our comparison of the leftmost and rightmost elements of each row (you need true color on your monitor to see all of these colors).

However, such subtle color changes, when close to each other, are turned by the brain into flowing color schemes by a process called optical mixing. This facility of our brain was exploited in Neo-Impressionism, a school of art founded by Georges Seurat, whose computer-futuristic and greatly underestimated Pointillism (try it out here) consisted of painting by small dots too small to be seen individually, which gave his paintings a tremendous brilliance because of the miniscule white space surrounding those dots. Pointillism clearly anticipated pixel technology on television screens and computer monitors.

In a similar way, the PSP threshold value menu option permits us to isolate real but otherwise imperceptible color differences between pixels and to discover actual figures present in an image which we otherwise would not recognize as such.

In PSP the color threshold settings can be given a minimum value of 1 and a maximum of 255.

Below you see Hildebrandt's original photo viewed using the Paint Shop Pro color threshold settings of 81 in the first case, and 85, 86 and 87 in the second case. We presume these settings work identically on all computers running the same program. Run the threshold values on the original photograph first and not on a resized version of it, which gives less accurate results:

The Hildebrandt photograph shown at PSP threshold level 81
Look at the middle of the above 81-PSP-thresholded image. What do you see?
Lots of dots, right?
Do you see anything familiar in those dots?

The Hildebrandt photograph shown at threshold levels 85, 86 and 87
--We call your attention again to the center of those three Gerum Cloak images, using PSP threshold settings of 85, 86 and 87, and we ask you, what do you see? If you see nothing recognizable, we suggest you call in your resident astronomer for advice and assistance.

DECIPHERMENT OF THE GERUM CLOAK

Do not read further here
if you do not want us to tell you what you see
and/or if you want to decipher the Gerum Cloak on your own. Otherwise, read on.

What those images clearly show in the middle of the Gerum Cloak - thresholded at 81 by PSP - are the stars of Ursa Major (the Big Dipper, the Great Bear, the Wain), Virgo, Boötes, Hercules and Lyra - and they show those stars pretty exactly. Recall that we are seeing here just a tiny photographic image of a large piece of fabric. More sophisticated photo equipment taking OPTICAL close-ups of sections of the Gerum Cloak will give even better results.

Below are two digitally-made close-ups of the Gerum Cloak photo. In the first we compare the Gerum Cloak with the stars of Ursa Major, Virgo, Boötes, Hercules and Lyra as shown by Starry Night Pro. We have a clear match of stars.


In the second close-up we view the images representing the threshold values of 85, 86 and 87 as compared to the stars produced by Starry Night Pro. Opposite of Ursa Major we clearly find the stars of Draco marked on the Gerum Cloak (this is at the North Ecliptic Pole):


Some of the star groups in the course of life of the Gerum Cloak appear to have been painted over with an appropriate figure, for example, Cygnus, which is shown as a bird (head at the top middle) at threshold level 74, although the stars iota and kappa Cygnii are clearly identifiable:


Also important are the images which result for the stars Orion and Scorpio - which are across from each other in the heavens and build a traditional historic ancient celestial meridian. At the identical PSP threshold value of 54 for both of these groups of stars, a threshold identity which suggests that these stellar groups were both marked on the Gerum Cloak in the same manner at nearly the same time, the main stars of Orion and Scorpio can clearly be identified (see the close-ups in the final decipherment image below.

Knowing now the position of the above stellar groupings on the Gerum Cloak, we can possibly identify the knife or dagger marks on that cloak, as intentional dagger slashes acting as permanent edges for major astronomical lines of orientation, specifically the Equinoxes and Solstices and the 24° degree axis tilt of the Earth relative to ancient cardinal points at Orion and Scorpio. Perhaps the cloak was hung on an ancient wooden wall using sharp objects at the focal areas. Seasonally seen - the tilt of the Earth's axis is "equalized" at both the Autumn and Spring Equinoxes, when the days and nights are equally long everywhere, and when the ecliptic (angled 24° to the celestial equator) crosses the celestial equator at the two crossing nodes.


THE FINAL DECIPHERMENT GRAPHIC FOR THE GERUM CLOAK

Armed with the above knowledge, knowing that an oval viz. elliptical shape is the shape of the heavens, it is easy to see, using the threshold value of 81 as the basis for the graphic below, that the Gerum Cloak is a sky map of the heavens of the northern hemisphere. It is an ancient planisphere.



We have added the positions of the North Ecliptic Pole and the North Celestial Pole to our decipherment graphic for purposes of understanding, but these circles are not marked on the Gerum Cloak directly as far as we can tell, although the fact that the heaven's pole positions are centered in the middle of the cloak would seem clearly to demonstrate a knowledge of those positions on the part of the cloak's makers, as we have seen for Scandinavia in the rock drawings.

If the Gerum Cloak is a cloak at all, then it is similar in function to the heavenly cape found in e.g. Verse 33854 of the Latvian Dainas,² where the Moon is seen to ride his steed in the sky with a cape of stars on his back. It was surely an important motif in ancient astronomy. Indeed, Johann Bayer, a German lawyer and amateur astronomer, published his famous star atlas Uranometria in the year 1603 with Diana pictured on the front cover of the book as the Moon goddess wearing a cape of stars. When we view some smaller modern fabrics, such as "banners", for example, the flags of the United States of America or the European Union, then we see that the stars have not lost their importance as symbols of choice.

We hope that the archaeologists in Sweden, perhaps with the help of this posting, may elevate the Gerum Cloak to the noble position in ancient astronomy which it would seem to deserve.

42.
___________________
¹ Post, L.v., Waltersdorff, E.v. & Lindqvist, S., Bronsåldersmanteln från Gerumsberget i Västergötland. (Der bronzezeitliche Mantel von Gerumsberget in Västergötland.) 1924–25. Out of print.
² Latviešu tautas dziesmas, (Chansons populaires lettonnes), in 12 volumes, volumes I — XII, edited by Arveds Švābe, Kārlis Straubergs, Edīte Hauzenberga-Šturma, Copenhagen, Imanta (publishers), 1952-1956, Vol. XI, p. 375. In Latvian, Verse 33854 of the Latvian Dainas reads [with our translation next to it]:

[Daina number 33854]

Mēnesītis nakti brauca, [The Moon rides the heavens,]
Zvaigžņu deķis mugurā; [A blanket of stars on his back;]
Rīta zvaigzne, vakarāja, [The Morning Star, (and) Evening Star]
Tie Mēneša kumeliņi. [Are the steeds of the Moon.]

This electronically searchable text of the Latvian Dainas at the University of Virginia is one of the great book digitization achievements of historical literature in the modern era and we heartily congratulate all of those who made it possible, some of whom are listed here and here.

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 10, 2007

We were of two minds about our initial result for the astronomical lines on the Gerum Cloak, so that we have recalculated the entire thing by placing several layers of thresholded pictures on top of one another to give a composite photograph - which allows a more accurate placing of the lines, and give the somewhat amended results below.

The positions of the stars have not changed, but we do interpret the lines a bit differently. Theoretically, the angle between the vertical celestial meridian running between Scorpio and Orion and the dagger mark on the upper left edge of the cloak (presumably the Autumn Equinox) gives an angular separation by Starry Night Pro of about 30°, which would in fact correspond to around 300 BC, the date to which the Gerum Cloak is dated by the archaeologists.


As for the Spring Equinox (the right lower corner of the Gerum Cloak), this is a troublesome cloak region for interpretation. We previously calculated it as 24°, measured from Orion's bow viz. shield, which gave us a date of ca. 1750 BC, so that we were concerned about that date, as it did not mesh with the archaeology dating of the cloak at ca. 300 BC.

In the recalculation above we now have the alternatives of 15°, measured from Bellatrix, i.e. the right edge of Orion, which would measure to Aldebaran and the Hyades, whereas 30° would measure from Bellatrix to the Pleiades and it is about a 50° angular separation to the Spring Equinox in 300 BC. This corner of the decipherment one can best view as "unclear" and we have marked it so in the revised decipherment above. Perhaps the ancients marked Aldebaran and the Hyades and the Pleiades in that era, but we are sceptical.

What should happen now?

The first thing that must be done - based on the results of our work - is for the Gerum Cloak to be examined in Sweden by the forensics experts there to confirm or deny whether stars of the heavens are marked on that Gerum Cloak, as we allege they are.

The second thing to be done by the forensic experts in Sweden is to mark exactly the contours of the dagger incisions (i.e. the slits in the cloak made by some kind of a sharp object) and then to draw the various possible lines which can be drawn to and from these various slits (both from the back as well as the front of the slits) across the cloak to see what kinds of exact angle measurements one obtains.

Only then would one be in a position to determine exactly where the lines were originally intended to run and then one could measure the resulting angles exactly, thereby permitting a more dependable interpretation.

Even then, we have no assurance that the astronomy depicted on the cloak necessarily coincides with the era in which the cloak was made. The cloak could be a copy of an earlier cloak or some other planispheric object. (We have this problem, for example, with chronologies found on cuneiform tablets - which in part have simply been copied from much earlier predecessors - see our discussion of MUL.APIN ).

We think that our discovery of star representations on the Gerum Cloak can be reproduced and substantiated. We think it is less clear as to how the lines of astronomical orientation on the cloak may ultimately be interpreted.

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Tanum Rock Drawings Sweden Deciphered as Astronomy

This posting is not about modern law but about ancient law. It was the ancient ordering of the stars of the heavens, which, according to Bertrand Russell, gave men their first conceptions of natural law.

We have been successful - so we allege - in deciphering the entire complex of Scandinavian rock drawings at the World Heritage Site of Tanum, now in Sweden, and formerly in Norway (until the year 1658 - see the Treaty of Roskilde).

Our decipherment shows that the more than 1500 petroglyphs (rock drawings) at Tanum and its rock art affiliate locations form an enormous ca. 70 square kilometer planisphere (sky map of the heavens).

The graphic presentation of the decipherment is found below:

The Decipherment of the Tanum Petroglyphs by Andis Kaulins 2007

This sky map forms a shape of the stars along the Milky Way which was probably intended by its makers to represent a heavenly boat of the ancient Nordic seafarers. We have drawn in the line of the Milky Way to show this, but it is not, as far as we know, actually drawn on the ground.

As we shall be presenting a paper on this topic in May of this year in Horn / Bad Meinberg, Germany, at the Machalett Conference on Preshistory and Early History, this posting just contains the basics of our discovery.

It was 30 years ago in the year 1977 that this author first visited the petroglyphs (rock drawings) of Tanum, located in Tanumshede, Västra Götaland (historically Bohuslän), about a two-hour drive north of Göteborg (Gothenburg). Tanum was not well known internationally in 1977, in spite of over 1500, in part gigantic, rock drawings.

Tanum includes the following petroglyphic locations covering many square kilometers of countryside: Vitlycke (where the museum is located), Tanum, Tegneby, Aspeberget, Gerum, Ryland, Oppen, Slänge, Varlös, Fossum, Lycke, Hoghem, Västerby, Ljungby, Tuvene, Litsleby, Kyrkoryk, Orrekläpp, Rungstung, Satetorp, Ryk, Tyft, Hovtorp, Björneröd, Bergslycke, Kalleby and Trättelanda.

One key to our decipherment was the Tanum rock drawing location map found at the World Heritage Site for Tanum. Without such a complete overview of the area, such a decipherment as ours would be impossible, since it is the entire complex of petroglyphs which builds the secret to this enormous site. All of these petroglyphs as a whole represent the stars of the heavens, with multiple petroglyphs in clusters representing constellations of stars known to us today. Many of these along the ecliptic of course form our modern Zodiac.

One cannot escape the feeling at Tanum that we are witnessing the birth of modern astronomy among the ancient seafarers, whose need for a knowledge of star orientation in sea navigation is beyond dispute.

These ancient men formed these constellations primarily for practical purposes and not, as mainstream archaeology persists in advocating regarding these petroglyphs, for unproven rites and rituals, which may have been a part of the complex of the ancient world, but certainly not as its moving force.

It is in fact little wonder that there are so many boats (ancient ships) represented in the petroglyphic figures. To the seafaring ancients, the night sky was a sea of stars. We think it possible that this might be the location at which our modern stellar constellations were initially "grouped" by European man - for purposes of navigation in seafaring travel.

There are other proofs - beyond the evidence of the rock drawings themselves - that this astronomical decipherment is correct, e.g. the names of locations at which the rock drawings are found, but these proofs will first be discussed in a paper in German to be presented to the 41st Conference of the Machalett Study Group on Prehistory and Early History in May of this year.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Herodotus in his travels was the first to refer to the "wonders" of the world and Callimachus of Cyrene in the 3rd century BC as a scholar at the library of the Alexandria Mouseion wrote A Collection of Wonders around the World .

The original idea of identifying Seven Wonders of the Ancient World comes from a list originally compiled in the 2nd century BC by Antipater of Sidon, who, instead of the Lighthouse of Alexandria listed below, included the Ishtar Gate.

These wonders, however, were not wonders of the natural world, but were all man-made engineering and construction wonders which the ancient Greeks as travelers (tourists) could visit several thousand years ago.

Listed in their order of construction, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were:

1. The Great Pyramid of Giza
2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
3. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
4. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
5. The Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus
6. The Colossus of Rhodes
7. The Lighthouse of Alexandria

The Seven Wonders of the Medieval World

Various locations accessible to travelers in the Middle Ages - and some of these of course were totally unknown to the ancient Greeks - have been included by various sources among the much later Seven Wonders of the Medieval World. This is our selection from a longer list of alternatives:

• Stonehenge
• Colosseum of Rome
• Great Wall of China
• Porcelain Tower of Nanjing
• Hagia Sophia
• Leaning Tower of Pisa
• Taj Mahal

New Ancient Wonders of the World

Modern archaeological discoveries have also opened up our eyes to new, previously unknown wonders which fully qualify as Ancient Wonders of the World, of which this list, created by us, is only a limited example:

• The Tomb of Tutankhamun and other tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt (see National Geographic presentation) and the King Tut artifacts now found in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (see also an interpretation of these artifacts at Ark of the Covenant)
• Lascaux (also here), France, a cave featuring early human art (see decipherment)
• Chauvet-Pont-D'Arc, France, a cave featuring early human art
• Catal Huyuk, Anatolia (today Turkey), one of the most ancient Neolithic settlements
• The Temples of Malta and Gozo, early megalithic buildings
• Schliemann's Troy
• Evans' Knossos, Crete (see Phaistos Disc and the Lost Proof of Parallel Lines)
• Machu Picchu, Peru, lost city of the Incas
• Easter Island (see also Easter Island Script)
• Angkor Wat, Cambodia, a temple (see Sacred Sites)
• Val Camonica (see also here), ancient rock drawing site
• The Temple of Petra and the Nabateans in Jordan
• Yin Xu (Yin Ruins), Anyang, Henan, China, root of Chinese culture
• Emperor Qin's tomb and its terracotta army in China
• The Pyramids of Teotihuacan in Mexico
• Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Illinois, USA (see this interpretation)
• Qumran Caves, Israel (West Bank), where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found (see the Mishnayot and explanatory materials)
• Nazca Lines and Figures, Peru
• Pompeii, Italy, the buried, forgotten city
• Ur and the Great Ziggurat, Sumer in Mesopotamia, today Iraq
• Newgrange in Ireland (see alleged astronomical connection)
• Balnuaran of Clava, the Clava Cairns in Scotland (see alleged astronomical connection)
• Carnac, France (see alleged astronomical connection)
• Ancient World Megaliths and Megalithic Sites

The Seven Wonders of the Modern World

As world populations and technology have expanded, it has become more difficult to pick out just seven world wonders from the many now available. The Seven Wonders of the Modern World according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (in 1994) were:

• The 31-mile Channel Tunnel under the North Sea, linking Britain and Europe
• The CN Tower in Toronto, the world's tallest freestanding structure on land
• The Empire State Building in New York City
• The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay
• The Itaipu Dam between Brazil and Paraguay
• The Netherlands North Sea Protection Works
• The Panama Canal

World Wonders Built in Recent Years

In our view, a number of new building structures definitely fall into the category of world wonders:

• - The Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge on the Kobe-Naruto Route, Japan, is the world's longest suspension bridge.
• - The Oresund Bridge linking Denmark (Copenhagen) and Sweden (Malmö), is the world's longest single bridge for both road and railway traffic (see NASA photo)
• - The Viaduct de Millau in France, the world's highest road bridge, is higher even than the Eiffel Tower (beautiful opening page) (for the Viaduc de Millau see also the French sites here and here).
• - The Troll A Gas Platform is the world's largest offshore gas platform (Norway)
• - The Millennium Dome at Greenwich, United Kingdom, is the world's largest dome and was built on the Meridian Line in Greenwich (Longitude 0° 0' 0") from which world time is measured and world location is reckoned.
• - The Laerdal Road Tunnel, Norway, is the world's longest road tunnel, on the road connecting Oslo with Bergen.
• - The Falkirk Wheel, Scotland, is the world's first and only rotating boat lift.
• - The Three Gorges Dam in China is the largest dam in the world.

To those - as follows - we can add modern skyscrapers and similar tall structures which mark the modern age as mankind continues to reach for the stars.

The World's Tallest Man-Made Structures and Buildings

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat and Emporis have partnered recently and rank the world's tallest structures and buildings. As written at Emporis: "Taipei 101 is the world's tallest building, surpassing the height of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur in late August 2003."

See the Wikipedia for a current list of tallest buildings and structures in the world, ranked by category. Many of these man-made structures are true world wonders in our modern age. See also a list of the historical development of the world's tallest man-made freestanding structures on land.

Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century

The National Academy of Engineering has a list of their selection of the Greatest Engineering Achievements of the just past 20th century but none of these are architectural or archaeological tourist travel sites, even though they are world wonders in their own right:

• Electrification
• Automobile
• Airplane
• Water Supply and Distribution
• Electronics
• Radio and Television
• Agricultural Mechanization
• Computers
• Telephone
• Air Conditioning
• and Refrigeration
• Highways
• Spacecraft
• Internet
• Imaging
• Household Appliances
• Health Technologies
• Petroleum and
• Petrochemical Technologies
• Laser and Fiber Optics
• Nuclear Technologies
• High-performance Materials

As one can see from that list, in ancient times mankind's wonders of the world were confined to things that men built and constructed. In our modern age, the wonders of the world are rightly expanded to include the many new and wondrous things that man has created beyond architecture alone.

Happy Halloween 2006 : The Ancients Revered Cats

Happy Halloween 2006 : This is our "Ancients" Cat Pumpkin
The ancients revered cats

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2006.
The ancients revered cats
See The Role of Cats in Ancient Egypt

Cahokia Deciphered as a hermetic Sky Map

Cahokia Mounds (see photo gallery ) in Collinsville , (southwest) Illinois comprise a UNESCO World Heritage Site and as written there:

"Cahokia Mounds, some 13 km north-east of St. Louis, Missouri,
is the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. "

Cahokia Decipherment by Andis Kaulins



My decipherment of the Cahokia Mounds was made possible through the map recently sent to me by Steve Burdic.

My decipherment shows that the Cahokia Mounds were intended as hermetic representations of the stars of the heavens, including stars from the following modern constellations: those marking the four seasons in the heaven of stars - Aquila (Winter), Scorpio (Autumn) Perseus (Spring) and Leo (Summer).

In addition, Cahokia shows the Pole Star position as well as the position of the North Ecliptic Pole.

Lastly, stars of Ursa Major, Draco, Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Ophiuchus, Bootes, Virgo, Coma Berenices, and Leo Minor are shown.

There may be solar lines here, but that is not my interest at the moment. The major "architectural" features of Cahokia are intended to represent the starry constellations at night.

The correspondences are not always perfect, but the relationship is clear when one views the whole.

The Ursa Major equivalence, e.g. is very well represented. Cepheus and Cassiopeia are both excellently reproduced. Scorpio on the other hand is missing one star at the head, the left one - although this was the first group of stars identified nevertheless due to Antares. Some of the other alleged star positions show too few stars to be certain. Nevertheless, that the mounds represent the stellar heavens is clear, and the principle used is the same as we previously have found throughout the world, also e.g. at Tikal
(see http://www.megaliths.net/mesoamerica.htm).

Using the positions of the stars as obtained, the original plan of Cahokia must be substantially older than currently dated by the scholars - or - their builders relied on long outdated stellar parameters.

Some other sites of interest in this regard are:

Cahokia Mounds Topography - Maps of Cahokia - http://www.museum.state.il.us/vrmuseum/jshape/cahokia2.html

Cahokia Site Map and Virtual Tour - http://www.cahokiamounds.com/virtual_tour.html

Illinois Historic Preservation Agency - http://www.illinoishistory.gov/hs/cahokia_mounds.htm

Archaeological Sites - Cahokia - http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/northamerica/cahokia.html

Cahokia Mound 72 - http://lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-pages/2001augustmound72excavation1.htm

National Park Service - Cahokia - http://www.cr.nps.gov/worldheritage/cahokia.htm

Mississippian Civilization - http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/up/upi.html

Mississippi Artifacts - http://www.mississippian-artifacts.com/

Gottschall Site - http://www.tcinternet.net/users/cbailey/Gottsiteoverview.html

Indian Mounds of Mississippi - http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/mounds/

FAMSI - http://www.famsi.org/

Chinese Neolithic Stone Carving of Big Dipper (Ursa Major) Discovered

The Xinhua News Agency reported on August 16, 2006 that a Neolithic stone carving of the stellar constellation of the "Big Dipper" (Ursa Major) has been discovered in China on Baimiaozi Mountain near Chifeng City in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. They write as follows:

"Neolithic Stone Carving of Big Dipper Discovered
2006-08-17 11:16:01 Xinhua News Agency



A neolithic stone carving of the Big Dipper star formation has been found on Baimiaozi Mountain near Chifeng City in northwest China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to experts.

The stone carving was discovered by Wu Jiacai, a 50-year-old researcher in literature and history with Wongniute Banner of Inner Mongolia.

Wu found a large yam-shaped stone, 310 centimeters long, onto which 19 stars had been carved. The representation of the Big Dipper is on the north face of the stone.

The stars are represented by indentations in the stone. The biggest indentation is 6 centimeters in diameter and 5 centimeters deep, said Wu.

"The stone was carved by neolithic dwellers," said Gai Shanlin, researcher with the Inner Mongolia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology (IMICRA) and an expert in stone carving.

The carving style proves this, said Gai. Astronomers' conjectures about the shape of the Big Dipper some ten thousand years ago also match the carving.
　　


"Finding a stone carving in China‘s desert hinterland is a rare occurrence," said Tala, director of IMICRA, who said it might help prove how ancient celestial bodies evolved.

Apart from the Big Dipper, Wu also found some "unexplained images" on the stone. He thinks they may depict ancient gods, such as the god of the sun and the god of horses. Further study would be needed to determine when the pictures were painted.

Many neolithic jade articles from the Hongshan Culture -- such as a dragon with a pig's mouth and a cloud-shaped pendant -- have already been unearthed around Baimiaozi Mountain.

The Hongshan Culture was an aboriginal culture that existed in northern China about 6000 years ago.

Tala believes the discovery will contribute to knowledge about the origin and spread of Hongshan Culture.

(Xinhua News Agency August 16, 2006)"

This discovery fits in with the ancient hermetic system of land survey by astronomy discovered by Andis Kaulins in China (see Stars Stones and Scholars), according to which the Great Wall of China marks the Milky Way as the Dragon of Heaven and where e.g. Yumen marks Gemini at the West end of the Great Wall and Shanhaikuan and this region of China mark the Head of the Azure Dragon (Tang Shay) in the East.

Baimiaozi Mountain near Chifeng City in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is located near the area where the eastern part of the Great Wall of China ends and many other ancient artefacts have been found in this region.

Brazilian Stonehenge at Amapa - Survey Line by Astronomy to Nazca & Machupicchu

According to a May 13, 2006, BBC News article by Steve Kingstone out of Sao Paulo, Brazil, titled " 'Brazilian Stonehenge' discovered ", Brazilian archaeologists have found a large megalithic site in Amapa, Brazil. The site consists of 127 megaliths. Archaeologists see a relation to astronomy and the marking of the Winter Solstice, which is probably true.

In addition, however, I would like to call attention to the ancient survey lines that I have drawn for South America at
http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi228.htm

As one can see there clearly, the lowest left most southerly survey line in South America, which points NE, if extended, would hit Amapa. This line appears to run from Nazca to Machupicchu to Amapa.

Although I do not yet have the precise coordinates for the megaliths found, I would predict here that the Amapa megaliths are thus part of the survey by astronomy that I have discovered and that I describe in my book, Stars Stones and Scholars and about which I post here regularly at the LexiLine Newsletter.

Santorini Explosion on Thera Redated in Science Magazine - The Ancient History of the Aegean, Egypt and the Middle East must be Corrected

Santorini Explosion on Thera Redated in Science Magazine - The Ancient History of the Aegean, Egypt and the Middle East must be Corrected

For years, we have argued that the mainstream chronology of the Aegean, Pharaonic Egypt and the Middle East was wrong, based in part on our setting the explosion of Santorini on Thera at August 4, 1627 B.C. Now we can report that this is a fundamental pillar of the chronology of the ancient world on which we have been right for years and the mainstream very wrong.

See in this regard our postings on the dating of the explosion of Santorini to August 4, 1627 BC based on astronomical and dendrochronological considerations, plus Flinders Petrie, Santorini and Pottery Chronology , Chronology and Santorini and postings by others at The Eruption of Thera and Dendrochronology and Radiocarbon Dating.

Science magazine, 28 April 2006 issue, Vol. 312, no. 5773, pp. 508 - 509, DOI: 10.1126/science.312.5773.508, in its News of the Week for archaeology has a summary of "New Carbon Dates Support Revised History of Ancient Mediterranean" by Michael Balter, writing:

"Two new radiocarbon studies on pages 548 and 565 of this issue of Science claim to provide strong support for the earlier of the two sets of dates that have been proposed for the Late Bronze Age eruption of the Aegean volcanic island of Thera."

These very important studies can be accessed at the links below, which are taken straight out of Science magazine. As you can read there, the eruption of Santorini is now in fact dated to the time period of 1627-1600 B.C., with 1627 B.C. being a cardinal date that we have been using for years:

Brevia:
Santorini Eruption Radiocarbon Dated to 1627-1600 B.C. by Walter L. Friedrich, Bernd Kromer, Michael Friedrich, Jan Heinemeier, Tom Pfeiffer, and Sahra Talamo
Science, 28 April 2006: 548 Abstract Full Text PDF Supporting Online Material -->

Reports:
Chronology for the Aegean Late Bronze Age 1700-1400 B.C. by Sturt W. Manning, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Walter Kutschera, Thomas Higham, Bernd Kromer, Peter Steier, and Eva M. Wild
Science, 28 April 2006: 565-569 Abstract Full Text PDF Supporting Online Material

The significance of the new dating to our entire view of ancient history should not be underestimated. It is not merely significant to the dating of the Aegean civilizations, but applies directly to the chronology of Egypt and the Middle East.

Exodus and Moses are traditionally tied to the explosion of Santorini, but as we have argued for years, based on the biography of Moses by Artapanus, Moses was born ca. 1707 BC and Exodus took place ca. 1627 B.C and not several hundred years later, as alleged by the current totally erroneous mainstream view.

Also Egyptian and Biblical chronology are totally wrong, and there is no doubt now about this whatsoever. Here is what is written at the abstracts of the two Science articles:

1. Science 28 April 2006: Vol. 312. no. 5773, p. 548, DOI: 10.1126/science.1125087,
Santorini Eruption Radiocarbon Dated to 1627-1600:

"Precise and direct dating of the Minoan eruption of Santorini (Thera) in Greece, a global Bronze Age time marker, has been made possible by the unique find of an olive tree, buried alive in life position by the tephra (pumice and ashes) on Santorini. We applied so-called radiocarbon wiggle-matching to a carbon-14 sequence of tree-ring segments to constrain the eruption date to the range 1627-1600 B.C. with 95.4% probability. Our result is in the range of previous, less precise, and less direct results of several scientific dating methods, but it is a century earlier than the date derived from traditional Egyptian chronologies."

2. Science 28 April 2006: Vol. 312. no. 5773, pp. 565 - 569 DOI: 10.1126/science.1125682,

"Radiocarbon (carbon-14) data from the Aegean Bronze Age 1700-1400 B.C. show that the Santorini (Thera) eruption must have occurred in the late 17th century B.C. By using carbon-14 dates from the surrounding region, cultural phases, and Bayesian statistical analysis, we established a chronology for the initial Aegean Late Bronze Age cultural phases (Late Minoan IA, IB, and II). This chronology contrasts with conventional archaeological dates and cultural synthesis: stretching out the Late Minoan IA, IB, and II phases by 100 years and requiring reassessment of standard interpretations of associations between the Egyptian and Near Eastern historical dates and phases and those in the Aegean and Cyprus in the mid-second millennium B.C." [our addition of the color and emphasis]

The corrected Egyptian and Biblical chronology will accord with our chronology of the Ancient World, a chronology primarily derived from astronomy and solar eclipse data, plus dendrochronological studies such as those by Hollstein, which we were the first to comment positively on the internet and based on an identification of fundamental errors in chronology committed by Flinders Petrie at Tell el Hesy.

It is always remarkable for me to see that I, one person alone, working without funding or pay of any kind, am able to come up with better, earlier, more accurate work than literally thousands of professors working for substantial pay and with tremendous funding at the universities in these fields. These people are smart enough to see the light, but they are mostly too weak to go against establish schools of thought and to examine available evidence neutrally and independently, and that is the Achilles heel which keeps most of them in ignorance.

We thank those scholars involved in these studies, as published in Science, studies which we hope will make their academic colleagues to finally arise from their Rip van Winkle somnambulation and to encourage them to start to write history as it really was and not as it has been - thus far - erroneously written by them.

Moses, The Tomb and the History

Although not recognized as such by the Egyptologists, the Tomb of Moses was discovered by the team of Austrian archaeologist Manfred Bietak in the ancient Israelite city of Avaris (Tell el Dab'a) , which is found stratigraphically under the later Per Ramses, home of the Hebrews (Pi-Ramesse, which is the ancient land of Gath or Goshen, today called Giza).

Because of collossal errors in mainsteam chronology, this tomb is erroneously regarded by some scholars to be the tomb of Biblical Joseph, which is amusing, as the error in chronology is merely about 500 years.

In Avaris they found an extensive palace with an equally extensive garden in which they discovered a tomb which had been completely emptied in ancient days, which is a rarity, since graverobbers usually just take valuables, but leave the bodies untouched. Here the bodies had also been been removed.

What is unusual is that this particular graverobbery is documented in ancient Pharaonic records. This tomb at Avaris is none other than a tomb mentioned at the time of widespread grave plunderings during the reign of Ramses IX, a reign which marked the last death knells of Pharaonic civilization, when not even the ancient graves of kings were safe. It is in our opinion the tomb of Moses.

The robbing of the Tomb of Moses has come down to us in a papyrus which protocols the trial of certain "Amun-pnufer", who on the 22nd day of the winter month and in the 16th year of reign of Ramses IX confessed to robbing the grave of the king known erroneously to the Egyptologists as "Sobekemsaf II" and his wife "Nubchas". As written at gizapyramids.org :

"[T]]he 'Leopold-Amherst Papyrus' records the testimony of the thieves who plundered the tomb of King Sekhemre Shedtawy Sobekem-saf II and Queen Nubkhas of the Seventeenth Dynasty.... The thieves confessed that they had broken into this tomb and had:
'found the noble mummy of the sacred king... [and] numerous golden amulets and ornaments were on his breast and a golden mask was over his face. The noble mummy of the king was entirely bedecked with gold and his coffins were embellished with gold and silver, both inside and out, and inlaid with precious stones. We collected the gold, together with the amulets and jewels that were about him and the metal that was on his coffins. We found the queen in the same state and retrieved all that we found upon her. Then we set fire to their coffins. We took the furnishings that were found with them, comprising objects of gold, silver and bronze, and divided the spoils amongst us.' " [emphasis added]

Compare the royal pectoral found in the above cited article by Peter Lacovara, "An Ancient Egyptian Royal Pectoral" in the Journal of Fine Arts, Boston, Vol. 2, 1990, (dated to c. 1784-1570 B.C.) to the one found in the Tomb of Tuthankhamun. They are virtually identical.

As I have explained at the LexiLine website , Moses was the Pharaoh today transcribed by the Egyptologists as Sobek-emsaf II (also written Sebekemsaf). The statue of this king, which is the "Statue" of Moses - in black diorite - is in the Museum of Art History in Vienna but the base and feet are in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

It is the statue of a man whose hieroglyphic name is transcribed - erroneously - by Egyptologists as Sobek-em-s-af, whereas the hieroglyphs "em-s" actually clearly read MOSHE (Moses). This is the same as Sechemre Schedtaui - also erroneously transcribed , the 1st King of Thebes of the 17th Dynasty, a reign dated by current chronology to ca. 1650-1600 B.C.

MOSES and the tale of ARTAPANUS
(See David Rohl's book, A Test of Time, Random House, London, 1995)

MOSES WAS BORN - writes Artapanus - in the reign of Chaneferre (Khenephres), known as Sobekhotep IV, who, even by current chronology, ruled ca. 1700 B.C. The current date assigned to the life of Moses by mainstream scholarship is supported by nothing, no evidence whatsover, and is typical for the kind of sloppy scholarship in this field which is rampant at the universities of the world.

Clemens' Stromata summarizes the writings of Artapanus, a Jewish historian who wrote Peri Iodaion (About the Jews). Artapanus is named by Eusebius in his Evangelicae Preparationis and his detailed account of the life of Moses is reported in his Pamphilis, Book 9, Ch. 27, 1-37.

That life story of MOSES agrees with the Egyptian "SINUHE Story" - which originated in the Pharaonic 12th Dynasty (!) at the time of A-MEN-EM-HET III, who we have identified as the Pharaoh of Exodus.

The story of Sinuhe is about a young man who flees Egypt (as does Moses), goes to Palestine (as does Moses), where Sinuhe finds the support of Prince Retenju just as Moses finds the help of the similarly named "Raguel" in Artapanus, and the help of of "Reguel" viz. "Jitro" in the Biblical Exodus (2,18; 3,1;4,18; 18,1). The stories are the same and date to ca. 1700 BC.

The Pharaoh who first "enslaved" the Hebrews, says Artapanus, was called PAL-MEN-O-THES and had a city and temple built at "Kessan" (as Rohl correctly notes, "Kes" in the eastern Delta) called "Kessan" in the Septuagint and "Goshen" in the Masora, which is generally equated with On, Heliopolis or Egyptian Iunu.

The statue of Moses (Sebekemsaf) was found at Armant, (Ar-Mant is related to Iunu-Month) which was greatly developed in the 12th dynasty.

Pharaoh PAL-MEN-O-THIS is surely the same as A-MEN-E(M)-HET(is) III out of that very same 12th dynasty. The first syllable has simply been mistranscribed by Egyptologists or Greeks.

It was during the 12th dynasty that territorial expansion against Kush and Nubia reached its peak, and the story of Moses tells us that he also campaigned against Nubia and Ethiopia in his youth.

In the chapters 71 to 78 of the apocryphal Book of Jasher , which gives a detailed account of the life of Moses, we find the mention of several pharaohs. Their equivalence (our discovery) to hieroglyphically documented personages is as follows:

- King of Africa (Egypt, Thebes) ANGEAS = the king today transcribed by Egyptologists as ANTEF

- King of Africa (Egypt, Thebes) AZDRUBAL (son of Angeas) = the king today transcribed by Egyptologists as MENTUHOTEP

As far as we can tell, there was only one ANTEF and one MENTUHOTEP, with the varied cartouched hieroglpyhs (no cartouches for the three known name variants of Mentuhotep) referring to the birth, ascension and death of each pharaoh. That is why the Antefs have only one tomb location - at Dira Abu 'n-Naga - and why only the tomb of Mentuhotep I has been found, because there are were no other kings named Menuhotep, only this one.

- King of Africa (Egypt, Thebes) ANIBAL (son of Angeas) = the king today transcribed by Egyptologists as AMENEMHET I.
It was Amenemhet who first called the Delta Region "Itj-taui". The Egyptologists think that the word applies to a specific place there, which they have thus far been unable to find, whereas, of course, it applies to the entire region.

The Pharaoh of Exodus was Amenemhet III (transcribed Pal-men-othis according to Artapanus, i.e. rather than A-men-othis) during whose reign two pyramids of mud brick were built, and these are the last pyramids ever built in Egypt, because the Hebrews left and sojourned to Per-Ramses.

Please note that "Africa" or "Egypt" in those days applied to THEBES but NOT to the Nile Delta region, which was called Judah (Itj-taui) , Sut/Shut, Gath or Goshen, whence its name today, Giza.

We have written as follows about the chronology of Moses as related to other events, e.g. the Solar Eclipse of April 16, 1699 BC during the reign of Sobekhotep IV Chaneferre:

"[This was a] Solar Eclipse at the Pleiades and the crossing of the ecliptic and the celestial equator underneath the gate to Heaven between Auriga and Perseus. The heiroglyphs mark this as a partial sun followed by the swallowing windpipe symbol. According to Artapanus (writing about 300 BC), Chaneferre - i.e. the Pharaoh just noted above - was the Pharaoh during whose reign Moses was born. No contrary evidence gives us cause to doubt this historical record. Since Chaneferre apparently ruled only about 10 years, this puts the birth of Moses between maximally 10 years either side of 1699 BC, and we put it at 1707 BC due to the 80-year correlation to Exodus which we place as congruent with the explosion of Santorin ca. August 4, 1627 BC, based on astronomical considerations. Moses is later the first king of the 17th Dynasty of Thebes as Sobek-EMSAf II, a name actually written in the hieroglpyhs as "MO-SHE" (also known as Sobekhotep VIII or Sechem-re Schedtaui). Since we know that Moses flew from Thebes when he was around 40, this puts him in the Eastern Delta Region of Egypt ca. 1667 BC, where Moses's Biblical Midianites are none
other than the Hyksos, i.e. the Palestinians (nomadic desert dwellers), of whose king Moses takes one daughter as a wife. The 16th Dynasty King known as Anather is then Gideon (so also clearly readable according to the hieroglyphs as Hand-D-N i.e. GI-DI-N)."