The Beautiful West America the Underworld in Afro-Eurasian antiquity Compilation and commentary by Rowan Campbell Millar 2022 Public Domain. Some typos and citation notes removed from some quotes. Cover photo: 5,500-year-old Egyptian map. 1 Evan Lansing Smith has described the descent to the Underworld as “the single most important myth for Modernist authors”.1 Jim Bailey writes: “In Greek tradition the Hesperides were islands far out across the Atlantic. In Welsh tradition the Atlantic Isles were known as Avalon of the Apples or Glas Innes. *** To Mesopotamians the land in mid-ocean was Kur”.2 Bailey: “Tradition claimed that Peru was the land where one does not die. Compare this Amerindian tradition with the identical tradition of Ireland, of Mesopotamia, of Japan about the land in the middle of Ocean.”3 Bailey: “It is significant that so many peoples put the abode of the dead beyond the ocean. I believe that they fashioned their heaven as they fashioned their gods, out of the materials of their ordinary working lives, and if the soul crossed the ocean to its ultimate destination in the Paradise Land, ‘going west,’ it was because sailing across the ocean was a major fact in the experience of the living. The sun worshippers naturally tended to see the soul as following the daily path of the sun from east to west, as they generally put the afterworld in the west.... As a symbol of this, the Valley of the Kings, where some of the pharaohs were buried, was in the desert on the west side of the Nile, and their bodies were carried westward across the river in the funeral barge. However, at an early period, when some voyaging was eastward across the Indian Ocean rather than westward across the Atlantic, the land of the dead was sometimes placed in the east, which can be seen as the resting place of the sun, where it is before it rises. In fact the sea peoples who exploited both the Pacific and the Atlantic routes referred to the Americas as the land where the sun set and where the sun rose—and little time was wasted between the two! We find Ireland, China, Japan, Egypt, and Mesopotamia agreeing that Paradise lay across a great ocean and that it was somehow associated with the possibility of eternal youth.”4 Liangzhu and Teotihuacano cosmological Deities 2 Bailey: “Chronos, the Phoenician god, is described as living in ‘the Isles of the Blest’ and living in ‘the Underworld’; these are of course the same place—and Chronos being much the same as El we can quote Ezekial 24:2: ‘I am El, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas.’ All this is consistent with ... the tradition of America as being ‘the Paradise Land.’”5 Western Zhou and Chavín situlas Bailey writes that “the Mesopotamian names Kur and Dilmun both stand for America, the latter not for Bahrain; that the Chinese Fu Sang was the Chinese name for America; that the Japanese Horaisan, the Eternal Land, the Abode of the Blessed, ten years’ sailing east of Japan, is the Americas, not Formosa; to the Egyptians’ Tuat, the Field of Reeds, means the Americas; ... that the Hesperides and Tartarus were Greek names referring to the Americas, that Hi Brazil was the old pre-Columbian Portuguese name for the Americas, Irish version Ui Breasail; that it was Armorica to the Bretons, Glan Innes or Avalon to the Welsh, Mag Mel or Tir na Og to the Irish, Vinland to the Scandinavians”.6 3 Jade dragon-pendants: Western Zhou Dynasty and Mesoamerica 4 The upcoming book, “Pyramidomania, a World of Pyramids”, by Ivan Petricevic, says that “ancient hieroglyphs from the Maya suggest the city of Teotihuacan was referred to as ‘The Place of Reeds’.”7 Bailey: “If we now notice that from the earliest times the Americas are referred to as islands, Paradise Islands, one can infer that the speakers knew their entire geography to be able to enter upon that accurate description of them from a very early date indeed. It was in association with immortality and with Paradise that the Americas were described worldwide, as well, of course, as being the place where the sun set and so the place of the dead.”8 Bailey: “As we have seen, America was known to many nations of the Old World by a variety of names. America was looked on then—as now—as the Paradise Land: God’s own country. Perhaps the biggest single source of confusion lies in this term, the underworld, which originally meant the Americas—where the sun was at midnight”.9 Tartaria and the sacred tablets says: “The ancient cultures believed that everything in the underworld is upside down, the dead walk there with the soles of their feet against ours. Growing downward was normal for trees.”10 Falling down to the Underworld: Lambayeque, and Saint Julien at Tours William Fairfield Warren, the first president of Boston University, wrote of “the mount of the rulers of the dead—exactly opposite, beneath the earth”: “Of the latter mount, Lenormant correctly says that, in ancient Chaldæan thought, it is ‘située dans les parties basses de la terre,’... he ... locates it in the West. In like manner the mountain of the gods—‘le point culminant de la convexité de la surface de la terre’—he places ... in the East or Northeast. Origines de l’Histoire, Paris, 1882, tom. ii, 1, p. 134. See also Tiele, Histoire Comparée des Anciennes Religions, Paris, 1882, p. 177, where he speaks of the entrance to Hades as at the Southwest.”11 Warren: “See Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion (English edition, 1882), p. 68, ‘the reversed world’; and the still more forcible expression in his Histoire Comparée (Paris, 1882), p. 47, ‘le monde opposé au monde actuel.’ Comp. Book of the Dead (Birch’s version), where it is styled ‘the inverted precinct’; and Thompson’s Egyptian Doctrine of the Future State, wherein Hades is described as ‘the inverted hemisphere of darkness,’ and where it is said to be ‘evident that 5 the leading features of the Greek Hades were borrowed from Egypt.’” (The Mountain of the Gods may be wherever one dwells, especially the local temple or mountain, with the Underworld Mountain being directly antipodal. Or the Mountain of the World may be Chomolungma in the Nepalese Himalayas, i.e. Mount Everest, and the Mountain of the Underworld may be Aconcagua in the Argentine Andes. These are the tallest mountains in their respective hemispheres, are relatively antipodal to each other, and both are near the edge of their respective landmasses.) Artifacts from Nimrud and Tenochtitlan Warren: “Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 67: ‘The heaven (at night) rests upon the earth, like a goose brooding over her egg.’ Chabas, Lieblein, and Lefèbure have each maintained that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted with the spherical figure of the earth; while Maspero, despite his language in Les Contes Populaires de l’Egypte Ancienne, in a private letter of still more recent date admits the possibility that the Egyptians held to such a view as long12 ago as eighteen centuries before the Christian era.”13 Warren: “At least one tribe of our American Indians at the time of their discovery had a myth of creation in which the earth was conceived of as a ball. H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. iii, p. 536. That the same idea underlay the Hades- conception of the New Zealanders is plain from various indications.”14 Warren: “The 6 universality of the ancient belief that disembodied souls must cross a body of water to reach their proper abode has attracted the attention of Mannhardt, and led him to remark, ‘Da auch die keltische, hellenische, iranische und indische Religion diese Vorstellung kennt, so ist es von vorn herein wahrscheinlich, dass dieselbe uber die Zeit der Trennung hinausgeht.’—Germanische Mythen, Berlin, 1858, p. 364.”15 The poet Lewis Morris wrote, in his Epic of Hades: The world of Life, The world of Death, are but opposing sides Of one great orb, and the Light shines on both.16 William Fairfield Warren’s illustration 7 Warren: ... if in ancient Hindu thought “the gods in heaven are beheld by the inhabitants of hell as they move with their heads inverted,” if in Roman thought— Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces Consurgit premitur Libyae devexus in austros: Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis, at illum Sub pedibus Styx atra videt, Manesque profundi”; if in Greek cosmology the tall Pillar of Atlas is, as Euripides makes it, simply the upright axis of earth and heaven—then the earth of the ancients is incontestably a SPHERE, and Hades its under-surface. The “flat disk” notion is itself a myth, and a myth without foundation.17 F. B. Jevons writes: “There is, however, one entrance to the nether world which is familiar to many different peoples; and it is known to many, because the facts which prove it to be a gate of the underworld are patent to all. Those facts are that the sun disappears below the surface of the earth in the west, and emerges again from it in the east; therefore in the night he must have travelled from west to east below the earth, i.e. through the realm of the dead. Among the natives of Encounter Bay the sun is feminine: ‘every night she descends among the dead, who stand in double lines to greet her and let her pass.’ Amongst the Magyars it is day in Kalunga, the land of the dead, when it is night on earth, because the sun passes through it by night, as it is also believed to do by the people of Mangaia, and was believed to do by the ancient Egyptians to the end. ‘The New Zealander who says “the sun has returned to Hades,” simply means that it has set’; and it was an Aztec saying that the sun goes at evening to lighten the dead. ... In Australia they travel for that purpose to Nynamnat, the sunset; in Torres Strait, to kibuka, the western world; in Polynesia, too, they go west; to the west, likewise, the spirits of the Iroquois, of the Fijians, and of the Brazilians; in Virginia the cave Popogusso lies west, west the Gulchinam of the Chilians. Odysseus found the entrance to18 Hades in the west. In Babylonia ‘the mountain of the west, where the sun set, was a pre-eminently funereal place,’ and ‘the entrance to Hades was near this mountain of the west.’”19 8 Art from Nimrud and Teotihuacán 9 Choga Zanbil and Tajín ziggurats whose stepped shapes likely represent the World and its sections 10 Warren writes that Hindu and Zoroastrian “Indo-Aryan” cosmologies include the World and the Underworld.20 He lists commonalities of the Babylonian and Indo-Aryan cosmologies: 1. Like the “Upper E-KUR” in that diagram, the Sumeru of the Indo-Aryans is a mons montium, a true “Weltberg.” 2. In both cosmological systems this Weltberg is at the same time par excellence the possession of the gods, a Götterberg. 3. In both this Götterberg is not only divinely vast and beautiful, but also, in shape, quadrangular. 4. In both the axis of the heavens and of the earth is perpendicular in position, and consequently the top of the quadrangular Götterberg is the true summit of the earth. 5. In both this crowning summit of the earth has an antipodal counterpart in a corresponding inverted Weltberg underneath the earth. In Chaldea this peculiar conception seems to have been of pre-Semitic antiquity. One of the first of Western scholars to recognize the parallelism and something of its significance for Comparative Cosmology was Lenormant, who a generation ago wrote as follows: “Dans les conceptions de la cosmologie21 mythique des Indiens on oppose au Sou-Merou, ‘le bon Merou’ du nord, un Kou-Merou mauvais et funest, qui y fait exactement un pendant et en est l’antithèse. De même les Chaldéens opposaient à la divine et bienheureuse montagne de l’Orient (accadien ‘garsag-babbarra = assyrien šad çit šamši) une montagne funeste et ténébreuse (accadien ‘garsag-gigga = assyrien šad erib šamši), située dans les parties basses de la terre.” — Origines de l’Histoire, tom, ii, 1, p. 134. 6. In the Babylonian cosmos the upper hemi-gæa has seven stages; in the Indo- Aryan it has seven varshas. 7. In the Babylonian system the lower or inverted hemi-gæa has seven stages; in the Indo-Aryan it has seven pātālas. 8. West of Babylonia is found the Hebrew conception of a quadrifurcate river of Paradise which flowed forth in opposite directions to water the four quarters of the pristine earth. East of Babylonia is found the Indo-Aryan conception of the Gan̄gā- stream which, descending from heaven to the top of Sumeru, there divides itself, according to the Vishnu Purana, into four world-rivers, and descending the several sides of the mountain from varsha to varsha, waters the whole earth. It is hardly possible to doubt that in both cases the conception was borrowed from the world-view of the people residing midway between the Hebrews on the one side and the Indo-Aryans on the other, or was at least common to the three. 9. In the Indo-Aryan, as in the Babylonian world-view, the seven divisions of the lower or inverted hemi-gæa22 can be described (as they are in the Mahā-Bhārata) as subterranean, and yet, at the same time, as capable of receiving light from the sun and moon. Our diagram clearly shows both the possibility and the entire naturalness of this. 10. In the Babylonian conception the upper ... planetary hemi-ouranoi were seven in number, and each of them, in receding order away from the Weltberg, was located at an increasing interval or distance; so is it also in the Indo-Aryan cosmos. 11. According to the Babylonians, the under ... planetary hemi-ouranoi were also seven in number, and these, numbering from their center, were located at ever wider distances asunder; so is it also with the dvīpas in the Indo-Aryan cosmos. 11 12. In Babylonian thought each of the celestial spheres was assigned to the guardianship and government of a particular divine being; so was also each dvīpa in Indo-Aryan thought. 13. In the Babylonian cosmos the lower hemi-ouranoi are, as a group, below the seven stages of the lower hemi-gæa; in like manner in the Indo-Aryan, the Narakas are, as a group, below the Pātālas.23 *** 15. In the Indo-Aryan as in the Babylonian system the lowest hells are antipodal to the highest heavens; hence the statement in the Vishnu Purana: “The gods in heaven are beheld by the inhabitants of hell as they move with their heads inverted.” In the Jain Sūtras also persons in hell are represented as moving about with their “heads downward.” Even in Plutarch the same ancient idea survives. 24 *** 17. In both systems a cross-section of the cosmos ... would show seven solid horizontal world-rings, one within another, and all of them inclosing their common center. Here, possibly, was the origin of the “world-rings of rock” separated by seven intervening seas in the common description of the Buddhist world-view. *** 18. In both systems the order of the seven planets is not that of the ... Greek teaching of Ptolemy, but is conformed to the older Babylonian view, according to which both sun and moon are nearer to the earth than the nearest of the remaining five. 19. Precisely as in Babylonian thought the sphere of the fixed stars is far above, beneath, and beyond the seven concentric planetary globes, so in the Indo-Aryan is found, far above, beneath, and beyond the earth and all the Deva-lokas, the all-including shell of Brahma’s cosmic egg. 20. Finally, as in the Babylonian, so in the Indo-Aryan cosmos, there is present and visible to every eye that most wonderful of all monuments of prehistoric astronomic science, the starry world-girdle of the twelve-signed Zodiac, attesting in both peoples a clear recognition of the great circles and the poles of the ecliptically defined celestial sphere.25 Warren: Again, if in the beginning the Indo-Aryan series consisted of seven concentric spheres, like the Babylonian, the second of them, Plaksha, would correspond to the Babylonian lunar sphere, the globe of the moon-god Sin. Like that it would be conceived of as perfectly transparent, and hence like the others invisible. The visible lunar disk would doubtless be thought of, as it was in Babylonia, as the moon-god’s “Ship of Light,” the vehicle in which in sacred state he made his nightly journeys round and round upon his spacious earth-inclosing sphere, lighting at the same time the central world of men within. In Babylonian thought the only natural passages into or out of this earth- inclosing lunar sphere were one through a north-polar gate on the “Way of Anu,” and one through a south-polar gate on the “Way of Ea.” Three items almost seem to imply that the original conception of Plaksha was in correspondence with this. First, while in the Vishnu Purana Vishnu is naturally represented as worshiped in all the dvīpas below Brahman’s, he is said to be worshiped in Plaksha in the form or person of Soma, the moon.26 12 13 Warren compares Babylonian and Homeric cosmology, writing that “we do find, in both systems, (1) the geocentric feature, (2) the plural heavens feature, (3) the perpendicular world-axis, (4) the earth-encompassing Ocean-stream, and (5) the outre mer Hades, under yet not within the earth. Taken together, the five correspondences are certainly striking evidence of a common origin of the two world-views.”27 Warren writes of Babylonians and Egyptians: “Each people applied to its under- earth—that far-off original of Dante’s pendent Purgatorio Mount—terms strikingly descriptive of the inverted pyramid of our diagram. Among the terms applied to the Egyptian Amenti are, ‘mountain,’ ‘pyramid,’ ‘hidden mountain,’ ‘inverted precinct.’ Nor should it be forgotten that, corresponding to the Semitic expression ‘heaven of heavens,’ Naville has found in a Litany of Ra the counterpart expression, ‘The Hades of Hades.’ 14 Furthermore, as in Mithraism, and in that survival of Babylonian lore which scholars call Sabeanism, so in the oldest Egyptian teaching, the ‘Ladder of heaven,’ according to St. Clair, had just seven steps. Corresponding hereto, in the Book of the Dead, chapter 144, we read of ‘seven halls’ in the28 underworld.”29 Also, the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt which is saltwater had a similar title to that given by Mesopotamians to the sea that surrounds the World and divides it from the Underworld, the Bitter River. Warren: “The Egyptian pictures of the nocturnal voyage of their sun-god, Ra, recall to the memory of every reader of the classics the corresponding Greek myth of the ‘cup,’ or coracle, in which Helios was represented as each night making the same semicircular passage on the surface of the Ocean-stream.”30 Warren lists commonalities of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, such as “the second heaven, that of Sakra (Indra). Third. In each the heaven of Yama is the third. Fourth. In the parent system the heaven of Brahma is the seventh and last, in the Buddhistic his are the seventh and all the superadded.”31 In the Mishkatu ‘l-Masbih, the Prophet Muhammad describes his travels through the cosmos: “Then I entered the seventh heaven, and, behold, I saw Abraham. And Gabriel said, ‘This is Abraham, your father; salute him.’ Which I did, and he returned it32 and said, ‘Welcome, good son and good Prophet.’”33 The third Hindu heaven, Svarga, is guarded by Airavatha, who is also called “Arkasodara”, meaning “brother of the sun”.34 Warren writes of Hinduism and Buddhism: “Finally, in each system the respective abodes of the gods and demons are antipodal”.35 Buddhists represent their cosmology in mandalas.36 Warren: “In the 15 foregoing chapters we have seen not a little evidence that in countries widely separated the earliest traceable teachers held and taught what was essentially one and the same world-concept. This included appropriate local abodes for gods and demons, for living men and for dead. It grouped these several abodes into one all-inclusive geocentric, upright-axled, poly-uranian cosmos. In the land in which we can study the system to the best advantage, it presents two earths adjusted base to base: the upper the abode of living men; the under, its inverted counterpart, the abode of the dead. To the seven planetary divinities it gives seven distinct concentric spheres, to Anu and Ea an eighth, outermost in position, all-including, the sidereal sphere.”37 Amitayus Mandala and Codex Fejérváry-Mayer Warren says Earth was known to be a sphere by Borneo’s Bataks.38 Astronomer Simon Newcomb writes: “Not enough credit has been39 given to the ancient astronomers. There is no time within the scope of history when it was not known that the earth is a 16 sphere, and that the direction down, at all points, is toward the same point at the earth’s center.”40 Jim Bailey compares the estimates by Columbus and Eratosthenes of the circumference of the planet: “What is most interesting about this is that, in emulation of the Egyptians, the Greek Eratosthenes had made a far more accurate measurement. *** And ... if Eratosthenes, seventeen centuries before Columbus, was so much better a geometer, why could not even earlier attempts to measure the earth have been as successful as Erastothenes’? Or perhaps even more so? The Greek Eratosthenes cross- checked measurements in Egypt.”41 Bailey: “The Greek-Sicilian geographer, Eratosthenes, is credited with having first measured the earth. He traveled to Egypt and took the distance of Alexandria from Syene, which lay on the north-south meridian. This distance is five thousand stadia. Working on the basis that the sun’s rays that strike the earth are parallel, Eratosthenes at the summer solstice took the difference in angle subtended by these rays at the two stations and from this calculated the curvature of the sphere of the earth and thus the length of its circumference to be 252,000 stadia or 39,690 kilometers, a figure that is almost precisely correct.”42 Bailey: Eratosthenes was reputed to be the first Greek of the Classical Age to measure the circumference of the earth. He was head of the library of Alexandria (c. 250 B.C.). I think it is likely that he would have made use of the sun dials, obelisks or shadow clocks, the giant gnomons that the Egyptians had already set up to obtain the greatest possible accuracy in this important affair, as well as the scaphe, or traveling sun dial, Eratosthenes is described as using. *** For by the First Dynasty, c. 3100 B.C., the Egyptians had measured the circumference of the earth, knew the value of π and had established their own measures of the remen and cubit as functions of this circumference.43 The following is quoted from https://bakcheion.wordpress.com/our-god/the- mystery-of-the-midnight-sun/: The evocative phrase Midnight Sun comes from Apuleius’ fictional account of initiation into the Isiac mysteries: I approached the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold of Proserpine, I returned therefrom, being borne through all the elements. At midnight I saw the Sun shining with its brilliant light; and I approached the presence of the Gods beneath, and the Gods of heaven, and stood near, and worshipped them.44 17 Warren wrote in his 1909 book, (a Scholar Select book for vital information to understand civilization) The Earliest Cosmologies: “Nearly every eminent Egyptologist except Maspero holds that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted with the true figure of the earth, and that they had all the astronomical knowledge necessary to enable them to orient pyramids and temples to a hair’s breadth, and to harmonize the solar and lunar years. Brugsch, Chabas, Lieblein, and Lefébure are of this opinion. Lieblein, in fact, confidently maintains that the texts show that the ancient Egyptians already understood and believed the heliocentric theory of the universe.”45 18 Georg Steindorff described ancient Egyptian texts: “Under the earth is supposed to lie a counter-earth, which is made exactly like the earth and the heavens, and which is peopled by the dead.” Describing Egyptian cosmology, Warren refers to “this conception of an underworld which is the perfect antipodal counterpart of our overworld”.46 Gerald Massey said that “in the making of Amenti the one earth was divided into upper and lower, with a firmament or sky to each, and thus the earth was duplicated.47 19 The God Bes at Philae, and the Aztec codex Borbonicus Bailey: “The Egyptian word Tuat for the underworld is clearly the underside of the earth, not the center of the earth.”48 Bailey: “It should be noted ... that Amenti lay to the remote west of Egypt, where the sun went at night.49 *** Amenti is the Coptic for Hades.”50 Bailey: “America was known to Egypt as Tuat”.51 20 Bailey writes of America: “That was in the Tuat, the place where the sun was at midnight,52 the Paradise Land.”53 Warren writes: “As the name of some region of the world, the word Tuat is found in the very oldest of Egyptian texts. As Budge correctly states, it is ordinarily translated ‘Underworld.’ *** Renouf ... expressly states that it was ‘below the earth.’ Steindorff says, ‘underneath the earth.’”54 It is described by Adolf Erman, who led in the decipherment of ancient Egyptian grammar, as: “A kingdom of light, the dwelling-place of the gods, who traveled with the happy dead, ‘on those beautiful ways where the glorified travel.’”55 Warren: “The nightly journey of the sun from the place of his setting to the place of his rising ... lies in this elusive land of Tuat. *** The sun-god does not enter the land of Tuat proper immediately on sinking below the horizon of Egypt, but only after making one hour’s journey and passing through the nearer of the two parallel semicircular mountain ranges. In like manner the twelfth hour of the voyage is not in Tuat proper, but is spent in passing from Tuat proper to the eastern horizon of Egypt.”56 George St. Clair writes: “Devéria says that the manuscripts of the Book of the Lower Hemisphere, found in the Egyptian tombs, are almost all retrograde, and certain illustrations depict the dead upside down. On the sarcophagus57 of Seti, the mountain at the entrance to Hades is upside down. Dr Birch, in his Book of the Dead, makes Amenta to be the ‘inverted precinct’; Tiele calls it the reversed world.”58 21 A satellite map of America and the Hierakonpolis Tomb 100 map The oldest map of America that I can confirm was in the oldest known Egyptian painted tomb, namely Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis, dating to around 3,500 BC. It was the centerpiece of the painted wall, on the tomb’s southwestern side, consistent with the antipodal Underworld tradition. 22 Hierakonpolis Tomb 100 with the painted inner wall on its southwestern side It was painted with east and west reversed, and with north and south reversed, similarly to the modern antipodes map shown on the next page. For this reason I have flipped the images of the Hierakonpolis map to show the more familiar bird’s-eye view of America, and I generally show it with north being “up” instead of west being “up” as it originally was, to be more easily recognizable to people who are familiar with north being “up” in modern maps. I have also restored the color to a faded portion of North America. 23 A modern antipodes map Warren writes of a most curious and instructive funeral-custom among the modern Karens of Burmah. This tribe ... have precisely this Homeric conception of an antipodal Hades. A most competent authority gives us the following account:59 “When the day of burial arrives, and the body is carried to the grave, four bamboo splints are taken, and one is thrown towards the West, saying, ‘That is the East;’ another is thrown to the East, saying, ‘That is the West;’ a third is thrown upwards towards the top of the tree, saying, ‘That is the foot of the tree;’ and a fourth is thrown downwards, saying, ‘That is the top of the 24 tree.’ The sources of the stream are pointed to, saying, ‘That is the mouth of the stream;’ and the mouth of the stream is pointed to, saying, ‘That is the head of the stream.’ This is done because in Hades everything is upside down in relation to the things of this world.” Warren writes of the Greeks and Karens: “Both simply inherited from their fathers the old pre-Hellenic Asiatic idea of an antipodal Underworld. Ages ago the notion which underlies the Karen’s rites was so prominent in the mind of the East Aryans that the sudden and inevitable reversal of the points of the compass, consequent upon entering the Underworld, became a poetic circumlocution to express the idea of dying: thus, ‘Before thou art carried away dead to the Ender by the royal command of Yama, ... before the four quarters of the sky whirl round, ... practice the most perfect60 contemplation.’”61 25 A modern antipodes map, and the Hierakonpolis map as it was on the tomb wall 26 The Hierakonpolis map was recently erased by archaeologists, who claimed it was a stain covering up the real painting. In the process of erasing the map, they also severely damaged the rest of the painting. That is a perfect example of modern institutional archaeology’s destruction of ancient sites and suppression of truth. The Hierakonpolis Tomb 100 painting before and after it was vandalized by archaeologists The Hierakonpolis map depicts the shape of Greenland more accurately than many modern maps, such as the satellite map on the next page. Unlike the celebrated Waldseemüller map of 1507 (also on the next page), the Hierakonpolis map includes Baja California and Hudson Bay and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, as well as the pointy tip of South America. The relative sizes of North and South America are much better depicted in the Hierakonpolis map than in the Waldseemüller map. 27 A satellite map of America, the Hierakonpolis map, and the Waldseemüller map of America The Waldseemüller map was the best European map of its time, and may have been partly based upon Pre-Columbian maps of America, since it includes many geographic details not thought to have been seen yet by Europeans in 1507. Its actual name is “The Universal Cosmography according to the Tradition of Ptolemy and the Discoveries of Amerigo Vespucci and others”. Ptolemy ordered the system of longitude in his world-map based upon degrees east of America, which he calls “the Islands of the Blest”. Ptolemy wrote in his Geography: “The western limit [is bounded by] the meridian drawn through the Islands of the Blest, which is 60 1/2°, or 4 equinoctial hours, from the most eastern meridian.”62 Waldseemüller reportedly interpreted the Islands of the Blest as the Canary Islands, which seems to have wreaked havoc on his map of Afro-Eurasia, using Ptolemy’s description of those lands. This designation of the Canaries as the Islands of the Blest is still the orthodoxy, which is why multiple books have been written about Ptolemy’s supposed longitudinal error, trying to find explanations for why he positioned Africa so far east of the Canary Islands. As circled below, five horned animals, each a different color, were arranged in a circle, and may have represented a compass. This portion has been destroyed by archaeologists. 28 The Hierakonpolis map and a 1553 European map of America The Hierakonpolis map shows not only America and Greenland but also the adjacent coasts of Antarctica, Africa, and Asia. America is the smallest compared to its actual relative size, likely indicating its distance from Egypt, or to allow room for the accompanying illustrations. Curiously, the map seems to show the shape of Antarctica beneath the ice. 29 The Hierakonpolis map and satellite maps of East Asia, America, West Africa, and Antarctica 30 A diagonally-tilted satellite map and the Hierakonpolis map It seemingly resembles Ptolemy’s Geography in the diagonal angle of southwestern Africa, and the way Africa seemingly connects to Antarctica. Like today’s haughty modernists who despise the genius of the ancients, Ptolemy rejected the sound wisdom of his forebears regarding the shape of the ocean: “Again, they made the Western Ocean turn away to the east [at its southern end] because [the edge of] the [planar] surface blocked them in the southern direction, and there too, neither the bottom of Inner Libye nor [that] of India had anything as they continued [southward beyond the known parts] that could be inscribed on the western coast [of Libye and India]. And it is for such reasons as these that the doctrine that the Ocean flows around the whole world has arisen out of errors of drawing, to be turned [subsequently] into a confused narrative.”63 He is saying the ancient Mesopotamians and Scandinavians and Celts were wrong about the World and Underworld being separated by water on every side. He is scoffing at Homer, and at the very concept of the ocean, Okeanos, whose World-encircling nature was among its most prominent and distinctive attributes. The multiple similarities with 31 Ptolemy’s Geography may mean he made use of the Hierakonpolis map or others of the same model. A satellite map with eastern Brazil circled, and a Ptolemaic map from the 1400s on which I have circled the label for the Americas (the Islands of the Blest) The Hierakonpolis map, and the AuthaGraph World Map, which won Japan’s biggest design accolade, the Good Design Award, in 2016, for being one of the most precisely proportional maps in existence 32 The map seems to show Florida and the Yucatán Peninsula as they were during the last ice age, before the sea level rose 400 feet, as those peninsulas are much wider on the map than they are in the current era. Baja California also seems wider, as it was during the ice age. The Hierakonpolis map and a map of America approximating the coastlines during the last ice age 33 The Hierakonpolis map and a modern map of America approximating the coastlines during the last ice age A modern bathymetry of the area around Baja California, and Baja California on the Hierakonpolis map 34 Two juxtaposed animals may be goats and may represent the Tropic of Capricorn, since goats symbolize Capricorn, and they are in the right place on the map. The Hierakonpolis map and a modern map showing the Tropic of Capricorn It also shows a bulbous peninsula emerging from the Andean region of South America. This may be Rapa Nui, Easter Island, connected to South America by the Nazca Ridge or by the Desventuradas archipelago. 35 The Hierakonpolis map and bathymetric maps of Pacific seamounts If Rapa Nui was part of a huge peninsula, that better fits the fact it had the only written language in South America: it may have been the power and culture center of the continent, like the Greek and Italian and Iberian peninsulas were at times for Europe. The Moai statues of Rapa Nui are similar to many Pre-Columbian statues and figurines in both South America and North America. 36 Braided beards in Egypt (Kemet), the Congo, and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) The map on the next page, from the 1400s, might include the peninsula in question. It is Ptolemaic, but I am unaware of whether this peninsula feature is from Ptolemy or another source. 37 A Ptolemaic map, the Hierakonpolis map, and a bathymetry of the Nazca Ridge 38 East Asia on a modern map and on the Hierakonpolis map Islands, including the Japanese Archipelago, seem to be depicted as ibexes on the Hierakonpolis map, as shown in the comparison above. 39 Ibexes Hans Barnard writes in “Maps and Mapmaking in Ancient Egypt” in the Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, 2016 Edition: Maps, plans, and models present a reduced version of the real world, either existing or anticipated, by incorporating selected properties of reality, while intentionally disregarding others. The selection process is governed by the purpose of the final result. Maps and plans are two-dimensional representations of a three-dimensional reality, usually drawn at a smaller scale. This scale need not be uniform for a map to be useful, as clearly shown by the map of the London Underground, and can in special cases be 1:1 or even larger than reality. Selected details are replaced by symbols (such as the circles representing cities on a modern map of the world) or ignored (like individual buildings on a city plan). Other features are given a distinctive appearance (such as the color of the highways on a modern roadmap) or size (like the exaggerated width of the roads on the same roadmap). *** These must have been as perplexing to members of another culture as the Ancient Egyptian maps of the Netherworld, depicting the geography encountered in the afterlife, are to us. Maps and plans from different periods or cultures may not only have an unexpected subject matter, but the scale, symbols and orientation are often very different from what we are used to. Likewise, our convention of having North at the top of the map would not have been understood in Ancient Egypt as that would have the water of the Nile flowing up. Maps were most likely used in Ancient Egypt since the beginning of the Old
Enter the password to open this PDF file:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-