THE DELUGED CIVILIZATION OF THE CAUCASUS ISTHMUS. REGINALD AUBREY FESSENDEN

by

REGINALD AUBREY FESSENDEN

 

FORMERLY

HEAD CHEMIST TO THOMAS A. EDISON;

PROFESSOR OF POST‑ GRADUATE MATHEMATICS AND

ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH;

ENGINEERING COMMISSIONER ONTARIO POWER COMMISSION

Copyright, 1933

By REGINALD A. FESSENDEN

All Rights Reserved

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS
MAPS	PAGE
INTRODUCTION
THE RECORDS OF THE PRE-DELUGE CIVILIZATION OF THE CAUCASUS ISTHMUS	1
THE HOME OF ABRAHAM	10
HOW IT WAS DISCOVERED THAT THE SO-CALLED MYTH LANDS WERE THE CAUCASUS ISTHMUS	16
FINDING A KEY TO THE SACRED WRITINGS OF THE EGYPTIANS	25
CAUCASIA, MOTHER OF THE GREAT CIVILIZATIONS	33
THE MORNING LAND OF THE CAUCASUS	35
THE ZENITH OF THE BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMERS	38
PLATO’S ATLANTIS WORD PUZZLE	40
THE EGYPTIAN TEN PRE-DELUGE KINGS OF SOLON AND PLATO	43
AN APPARENTLY DEFINITE IDENTIFICATION OF MASONS WITH THE EGYPTIAN M-S-N	45
SYNOPSIS OF SOME UNPUBLISHED CHAPTERS OF THE DELUGED CIVILIZATION	48

 

INTRODUCTION

 

In 1923 the late Professor Reginald A. Fessenden published the first six chapters of " The Deluged Civilization o f the Caucasus Isthmus" and in 1927 published one additional chapter.

 

The present posthumous volume contains four additional chapters and seven articles on related subjects. Since its interest will be primarily for scholars, only one hundred copies have been printed for private distribution.

 

In reading it, two points should be kept in mind. First, that Professor Fessenden never considered these articles as constituting a final, definitive and documented work; but intended rather to draw the attention of other scholars to certain remarkable facts and to stimulate them to further research. Second, that Professor Fessenden's theories, while revolutionary, are nevertheless worthy of serious consideration for several reasons.

 

Educated men unanimously hold that, no matter what field of knowledge is explored, there is just one universal scientific technique for finding the truth in any field. And Professor Fessenden was a master of that technique. His reputation as one of the outstanding physicists of his day was due entirely to his meticulous application of scientific methods to every problem he attacked. With him, nothing was left to chance. His study of apparently anomalous phenomena, classed by others as " freaks", led to his discovery of hitherto unsuspected laws, which were later fully verified by other scientists.

 

Obviously a mind of this type will apply the same scientific methods to any problem, whether it be of mythology, archaeology or physics. And Fessenden did just that. In preparation for a more comprehensive and fully documented work, he had assembled over 1000 pages of typewritten notes, containing over 13, 000 references drawn from at least 400 unquestioned authorities. Therefore his announcement of any hypothesis indicates that he had checked and evaluated this mass of data, and that the facts supported his hypothesis.

 

It may perhaps be objected that Professor Fessenden was not a professional archaeologist. This is true. But Heinrich Schliemann, an army contractor, enriched our civilization by the treasures of Mycenae, despite the jeers of professional archaeologists. Friederich Grotefend, an amateur, discovered the correct method of translating cuniform inscriptions twenty‑ seven years before the Academy of Gottingen could bring itself to admit that he was right. Peter Dobson, a cotton manufacturer, published the correct theory of glacial movements in 1825 and then waited seventeen years for the professionals to catch up with him.

 

Fortunately the trade‑ guild type of mentality is rapidly disappearing among our scientists. And it is for that reason that Professor Fessenden's theories have met with approval from such eminent authorities as Sir Flinders Petrie, the late Professor A. T. Clay, Mr. W. E. D. Allen, Professor Meschaninov and many others.

 

Finally it should be considered that Professor Fessenden's theories furnish the one existing logical explanation of a vast number of discoveries in mythology, history, ethnology, archaeology and geology which are otherwise totally inconsistent. It is to be hoped, therefore, that this volume will be read in the same spirit in which it was written: with the humility of the true scholar, to whom all truth is welcome.

 

Unfortunately Professor Fessenden's long illness prevented his undertaking the definitive and fully documented work for which he had assembled the data. However, all of his typewritten notes and maps have been preserved for the use of other scholars. And, should any reader of this volume feel sufficiently interested and qualified to carry on Professor Fessenden's unfinished work, it will be a pleasure to place all the available data at his service.

R. K. Fessenden

Old Saybrook

Connecticut

U. S. A

 

CHAPTER 7

THE RECORDS OF THE PRE-DELUGE CIVILIZATION OF THE CAUCASUS ISTHMUS

IN the " Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus" the writer recently submitted evidence that the Caucasus Isthmus may have been the seat of a great civilization antedating those of Babylon and of Egypt by many thousands of years; that this civilization had recorded its history; and that the records were to be found on the eyot between the Terek and Sunsha rivers and in the upper Alizon valley.

FIELD EXPEDITIONS

The results of the investigation have been so favorably received by archaeologists and ethnologists that the writer is encouraged to indicate more definitely exactly where these records may be found; in the hope that one or more field expeditions may be formed to undertake their exhumation during the coming summer.

DATA

In addition to the data given in " The Deluged Civilization", we have the following traditions:

Mantho. " It remains therefore to make certain extracts concerning the dynasties of the Egyptians from the writings of Manetho the Sebennyte, the high priest of the idolatrous temples of Egypt in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus. These, according to his own account, he copied from the inscriptions which were engraved in the sacred dialect and hierographic characters upon the columns set up in the Seriadic Land by Thoth, the first Hermes; and after the Flood were translated from the sacred dialect into the Greek tongue in hieroglyphic characters, and committed in writing in books and deposited by Agathodaemon the son of the second Hermes, the father of Taut, in the hidden chambers of the temples of Egypt" (from Syncellus, Chron. 40).

Sanchuniathon. " And Usous... was the first man who dared to venture on the sea. And he consecrated two stelae or pillars to Fire and Wind" (Ur and Al, hence pillars of Khur-Khal, or Hercules)... " These things the Cabiri, the seven sons of Sydyk and their eighth brother Esmun first of all set down in memoirs as the god Taautus commanded them." (From Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, Book 1, Chapter 6.) I do not know if it has been pointed out that Taautus of Egyptian and Phoenician mythology is the same as Taaus of the Babylonian mythology. The name means " The One Who Does Things for the Spirits". He is also the Theos of the Thracians. He was the private secretary and executive of the Gods.

Ammianus Marcellinus. " There are certain underground galleries and passages full of windings which it is said that the adepts in the ancient rites (knowing that the Flood was coming and fearing that the memory of the sacred ceremonies would be obliterated) constructed in various places and distributed beneath the temples; which were mined with great labor. And, smoothing the walls, they engraved on them numerous kinds of birds and animals and countless varieties of creatures of another world, which they called hieroglyphics."

Josephus. " The sons of Seth, being naturally of a good disposition, lived happily in the land without apostatizing and free from any evils whatsoever and they studiously turned their attention to the knowledge of the heavenly bodies and their configurations. And lest their science should at any time be lost among men, inasmuch as Adam had acquainted them that a universal aphanism or destruction of all things would take place alternately by the force of fire and the overwhelming powers of water, they erected two columns, the one of brick and the other of stone, and engraved upon each of them their discoveries; so that in case the brick pillar should be destroyed by the waters the stone one might survive to teach men the things engraved upon it, and at the same time inform them that a brick one had formerly been also erected by them. It remains even to the present day in the land of the Siriad." (Antiquities, Book 1, Chapter 2.)

POINTS IN REGARD TO WHICH TRADITIONS ARE AGREED

The traditions handed down by the Egyptian priest Manetho, the Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, and the Jewish historian Josephus.are in better agreement than most tradition groups and are consistent that:

1. The records made before the Flood were on pillars.
2. They were written in hieroglyphics.
3. The pillars were in the Seriadic country.
4. They were made by the sons of Sydyk or Seth (the Cabiri).
5. That either after or before the Deluge copies were made in hieroglyphics on the walls of, or in books deposited in, extensive systems of underground chambers.

These traditions will be found translated in Cory's " Ancient Fragments" or in Mead's " Thrice Greatest Hermes".

WARNING OF DELUGE IN TIME TO MAKE RECORDS

As pointed out in " The Deluged Civilization", there was ample warning of the Deluge. For example, Noah of the Pentateuch and Atra-Hasis of the Babylonian tradition had time to build the immense Ark and the Telchines had tie to colonize Cos. So there would have been time to erect the monuments. From the history of Berossus, quoted by Syncellus and Eusebius, it is clear that seals began to appear in increasing numbers as the Deluge drew near; which may be significant as indicating a breaking through of the Arctic Ocean into the Asiatic Mediterranean on the east of the Caucasus. The connection between the Arctic and the Asiatic Mediterranean is shown on Strabo's map but had probably ceased to exist by his time. The Caspian, Aral and Balkasch Seas are all that are now left of the Asiatic Mediterranean.

There is one interesting point about the Noah or Atra-Hasis traditions. In one tradition he left the Ark with his wife and the pilot and disappeared. The others thought he had been taken to heaven and make no further reference to him in their tradition. But in another tradition Gilgamesh goes to see him at his old home, to learn the story of the Deluge. It rather appears as if he and his wife and the pilot had gone back home immediately they got on dry ground. In the Pentateuch one of the versions states that Noah walked with God, an expression used also of Enoch; so there is some indication that some of the survivors of the Deluge did not know what had become of the others, because they separated as soon as dry land appeared.

LOCATION OF THE SERIADIC LAND

The monuments were not in Egypt for two reasons; Seirios until a comparatively late date always meant the sun itself and not the star; if Josephus had meant Egypt he would have said so. I have also a Phoenician reference which shows that Siriadic land cannot mean Egypt.

The word Siriadic might mean one of three things, in view of the form " -iadic":

1. The country of the sun (Seirios).
2. The country of the lasso users (seira).
3. The country of the Seres.

These are all the same land, that is the North Caucasus Isthmus, Asiatic Sarmatia. For it was the land of Ur or Apollo where, according to a fragment of the Phaethon of Euripides, he stabled his horses. The Seira was, according to Liddell and Scott, Greek Dictionary, " a line with a noose used by the ancient Sagartians and Samartians to entangle their enemies. Herod. 7.85 and Paus. 1.21.8". And the Seres lived there, according to Strabo 11.5.8 and Muller's Ptolemy, page 905. The latter states that their kingdom was near the mouth of the Hypanis (now Kuban), but from other writers it extended across the whole isthmus and this agrees with the fact that they were the first to establish caravan routes from there to Babylon. See Strabo, ibid.

MEANING OF SYDYK

That the steles were built by the sons of Sydyk is significant because sydyk means " pointing up to the sky" and was the name given to an ithyphallic monument. The root is found in this meaning in the Greek word " sideunes".

LOCATION OF THE SYDYKS

Stieler's Hand Atlas of 1905, Plate 49, P. 19, shows right in the center of the eyot where the long mounds define the position of the city of Ur or Apollo, a village called Pssydache (Sydach). I believe this to be the position of one of the steles.

PSSYDACHE THE BRICK OR THE STONE STELE

This was probably the brick stele. The city of Ur, that is Urach, was the Erech of the Gilgamesh epic of the Babylonian inscriptions. The name survives in Terek. " Sevenfold Erech of the wide plazas" was sevenfold Tartarus of the wide ring-shaped plazas with their race tracks, etc., between the encircling canals. Erech, we are told, had brick walls, which would be natural on account of the convenient clay and bitumen. So it is rather more than. probable that the stele of Pssidache was built of brick; and for other reasons (Erythria, etc.) it was probably red brick.

The stone stele would be built where stone was convenient and to the south, for the north was the plain which was to be inundated and there was no convenient stone or good foundation. Going south, about thirty miles we come to the pass of Arabus or Erebus, and the stone stele might have been placed there.

But at the further end of the pass where it debouches into the Alizon valley, which we know was the other home of the Cabiri, is a town called Achmuti or Eshmuti. As Eshmun or Achmun was the eighth Cabiri we might reasonably look for the stele in this neighborhood.

About ten miles down the Alizon valley is another place called Semochada Scheni, which means " Sun City of the Scheni." (The Phoeni or Phoenicians, the Fenku of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.)

ITINERARY OF THE BOOK OF THE DEAD

The Egyptian Book of the Dead gives the itinerary of the dead exactly as Homer gives it (see Chapter 125 et seq.). But the transportation is in the hands of the Phoeni. A ritual (burying a lamp with a glass chimney and digging it up again) is gone through at the " city north of the olive tree", that is, Phanagoria (for olive yards of Phanagoria see Smith, Classical Dictionary) at the mouth of the Kuban. The shade sees Tartarus at a distance, goes through the pass of Erebus, and comes out into the Alizon valley at Tioneti (To-neter, the " Holy Land" ). About ten miles down the shade comes to Eshmuti (Eshmun city); a little further down, to the " City of the Sun of the Phoeni" (or possibly of the Overseers, Shemochada-Scheni). Still further down the valley is " Sekhet-Eli", the fields of the sun or Osirus (Sakately). And finally to the mountain of Bakhu, the " Mountain of Sunrise", projecting easterly into the Caspian Sea (now Baku), and the Sek-het-sasi or " flaming fields" common to the Egyptian, Greek and Parsee mythologies.

THE RIDDLE OF THE BOOK OF THE DEAD

To-neter (the " land of the Aet-Ur) was south of the Caucasus, on the other side of Erebus from the Siriadic Land, i.e. Asiatic Sarmatia. When one remembers the great olive yards of Phanagoria and the mineral oil of the Baku district, the riddle of the 125th Chapter of the Book of the Dead (" What is thy name? " " I am he who is assembled under the flowers and who dwelleth in the olive-tree" ) is easily answered. It is oil, mineral and vegetable, i.e. Fire, Hermes.

The Book of the Dead, chapters 147 and 149 is a most valuable guide book to the Caucasus region, as it gives the names of the tribes, places, etc. in considerable detail. In Chapter 147 the doorkeepers of the seven Arits or earths or countries are mentioned by title and are not the names of individuals, of which a place name sometimes forms a part. But the Watchers are in all cases the different tribes or nations, beginning with the Cimmerians, the Seres, etc. And the Heralds are the marks or boundaries which indicate to the shade when he is passing from one nation's territory into that of another. The route above the head of Oceanus seems to have been more southerly than that of Homer, for we find " Teb-hra-ha-Keft" (Tiber or Keft) given as one of the Heralds.

It will be noted that the entrance was between pylons (the Bo-az pillars). In Chapter 149 the fourteen aats are different regions beyond Erebus. The first is Asmuti, then Hercules (now Melikarth), etc.

Most of the identifications are direct, the names being unchanged. For example, " the two sycamore trees of turquoise, from between which the God Ra doth emerge when he setteth out upon his journey over the Pillars of Shu towards the door of the lord of the East, wherefrom Ra cometh forth" is unmistakably the gap at Shu-mash of Mar-ash.

But one would not immediately identify Sekhet-Aaru, literally " The Field of Reeds", the name of the land of paradise or heaven, with Sakat-ali unless one knew that El was the other name of Shem, the sun-god; and that Ta Shema meant " reed land" in Egyptian; and so Sekhet-Aaru was merely the name used to the uninitiated for the hidden or secret name, Sekhet-Shem or Sekhet-Eli.

Another instance of this is the use of the name " Heru-khuti", i.e. Hercules, for the Phoenician title (Melikarth) of Hercules.

EXACT LOCATION DETERMINED BY OVERLAPPING OF TRADITIONS

We have seen how the Greek, Phoenician and Egyptian traditions overlap, starting from the entrance to the sea of Azov and extending through the pass of Dariel, as far east as Baku and the " Flaming Fields" at the extremity of the peninsula of Apsuron.

Analogously the Babylonian traditions start at the eastern extremity of the peninsula of Apsuron at Shamasha and Marash and extend west, past Sabuje and Napare-uli or Sapare-uli, through the pass of Dariel to Terek (Tartarus) on the north, Tamischiera on the west, and Bit-Jakin on the east. Overlapping, therefore, the other three traditions, Greek, Phoenician and Egyptian.

This overlapping enables us to determine quite exactly the location of the chambers where the records were stored after transcription and translation from the steles.

For Berossus' record of the Deluge, which he took from the cuniform records in the temples at Babylon, states that Cronus bade Atra-Hasis " setting down in writing the beginning, middle and end of all things, to bury them in Sippara, the City of the Sun; to build a boat and go aboard it with his family" and that " after the Flood some of those saved went to Babylonia, dug up the writings from Sippara, founded many cities, built temples, and so repopulated Babylonia".

The original Babylonia (Bab-al-on, " Gate to the Land of the Sun", Havilah, Pshaveli) was, we know from other evidence (see " The Deluged Civilization" pp. 49, 50, 75, 76) substantially the same as the land of Dilmun, i.e. the-Alizon valley where are now the Plain of Adschinour, Chaldan, Lagodeschi, etc.

And Napare-Uli of the Stieler Atlas (Papare-Uli of the Times Atlas) is Sippara-Eli, i.e. " Sippara of the Sun". It was there that the records were stored. And we may be sure that, even if the records were removed for consultation, they were replaced because there would be no better way of keeping them.

THE RECORD STELES NOT THE PILLARS OF HERCULES

The brick and stone steles were not, we may be fairly sure, the Pillars of Hercules. The Pillars of Hercules were erected to Ur the Fire God and to Al the Storm God. These two gods were amalgamated into one twin god, possibly from some incident as that described in the life of Elijah (1 Kings, 18), the god of fire. Fires were kept burning on top of the twin pillars. Later these fires were shielded by glass, so that one gave a green, the other a yellow, light. Herodotus describes those at Tyre as " Two pillars, one of pure gold, the other of emerald, shining with great brilliancy at night." The pillars were called Jakin and Boaz. See 1 Kings, 7; 15.

LOCATION OF THE PILLARS OF HERCULES

The fact that Nebuchadnezzar, after reaching them in his northern expedition, next went to the north shore of the Black Sea and to Thrace; and that Hercules, coming back from the pillars with the cattle of Geryon, traversed the north shore of the Black Sea (see Megasthenes, quoted by Strabo and Herodotus, 4.8), puzzled the ancient geographers because they thought that the Pillars were at the straits of Gibraltar. And because they had overlooked the fact that the Phoenicians of Sidon had known that the Pillars had been lost and that the Phoenicians had sent out four expeditions to look for them but had reached no conclusion from these expeditions except that the straits of Gibraltar were not the true Pillars of Hercules. See Strabo, 2.5.

Of course the fact that the true Pillars of Hercules were in the north Caucasus isthmus explains why both Nebuchadnezzar and Hercules, after leaving the Pillars, came next to the shores of the Black Sea.

THE PILLARS OF HERCULES ON THE MAP UNDER THEIR RIGHT NAMES

Perhaps the most astonishing thing is that the eastern Pillars of Hercules are to be found on the map, under their right name, i.e. Stavka Terekli (Stave of Hercules) on the Times Atlas 71, L, 2; or Kurtkeuli-Juk-Jewe (Jak beacon of Hercules) on the Stieler Atlas, 49, 0, 19.

This village is, as shown by the old shell deposits, on the former shore of the Caspian or Asiatic Mediterranean; and at the old mouth of the Kuma. It marked the spot where ships from the Asiatic Mediterranean must enter the Manytsch Lake system in order to go through to the Black Sea.

It is now, owing to the recedence of the Caspian, about fifty miles inland; and this, together with the fact that no one looked for the Pillars in this locality until the writer was forced to the conclusion that they must be in the vicinity, must be the reason why they were not discovered by others long ago.

LOCATION GIVEN BY PTOLEMY

Ptolemy in his Geography gives the location of certain pillars which he calls " Pillars of Alexander". As Alexander never got that far north, that excited my suspicions. Ptolemy gives the position of his pillars as (after correction) 46.00 East, 45.00 North. Looking at the Times and Stieler Atlases in 45.40 East and 44.40 North, I found this village " Stake of Hercules" or " Jak beacon of Hercules."

The extent of the movement of the shore line between the time of the AL-Ur civilization and Alexander's time is shown by the fact that Khurtkeuli Juk Jewe, on the old shell beach at the old mouth of the Kuma or Alontas is now sixty miles inland from the pillars of Alexander, i.e. Schandr Juk Owsk and Schandr Juk Owak (Alexander's Jak beacon) though still on the shore, is thirty miles away from any mouth of the Ta-lonta. The site of Alexander's pillars is not very far, it will be noted, from the position given by Ptolemy.

ISLAND OF BIT-JAKIN

About sixty miles north east is an island called Birjus-Jaksh or " Fire Mound of Jak". This must have been about fifty miles from shore at the time we are considering and may have been the island Bit-Jakin referred to in one of the cuniform inscriptions. I have forgotten just how far the cuniform inscription puts Bit-Jakin from shore, and Bit-Jakin may have been Ust-Urt. In any case it cannot have been the pillars.

EPISCOPATE

There was, about 200 A.D., an episcopate of Herculea Pidachthoe. The location has been lost, but I take it to be Herculea Sydach-thoe, i.e. Hercules Shore Stele. It is known to have been in this neighborhood.

WESTERN SET OF PILLARS

The western set of pillars, Bo-az, i.e. water-gate or harbor of Az, were at the entrance to the Sea of Az-ov.

There is nothing to fix their exact position except possibly a statement of Strabo who gives the position of a very high mound which he says was a monument to some king.

WHY THE SITE OF TARTARUS WAS OVERLOOKED

When Nebuchadnezzar came back from his northern expedition (with which, incidentally, Pythagoras may have been a soldier; see Eusebius, Arm. Chron. 53) he built the walls of Babylon which were 335 feet high and 85 feet thick. This is stupendous but there is good reason for believing that the walls of Tartarus or Erech were still more monstrous. The civilization of Erech may be called a Dinosaur civilization.

It is probable that the walls of Erech have been mistaken for natural hills, because of this great size.

CONCLUSION

We may therefore feel fairly sure that:

1. The Pillars of Hercules were not the steles on which the records were made.
2. The brick stele was at Psidache.
3. The stone stele was at Napare-uli..
4. The immense underground storage rooms of the records were, the one at Pssidache, the other at Napare-uli.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPEDITIONS

As these are the only monuments and records, of whose existence we know, which antedate the Deluge, it is much to be desired that these sites should be investigated by competent archaeologists, equipped with core drills. Such drills may be easily obtained from the near-by oil fields of the Baku district.

December 30, 1923.

CHAPTER 8

THE HOME OF ABRAHAM

IN 1882 the writer, in the course of some work for honours in Classics, became convinced that the geography of the so called " myth lands" of the ancients was deserving of more attention than had been given it and undertook the problem of solving the apparent discrepancies. It involved the collection, tabulation, comparison, and in many cases the critical examination in the original languages, of several hundred thousand myth references and nearly resulted in loss of sight, but in 1923, after a year's delay through failure to find a publisher, the results were printed at the writer's own expense, under the title " The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus."

The solution therein given has met with the approval of the most eminent authorities in the various fields of archaeology, see for example Flinders Petrie, " Ancient Egypt", Dec. 1924; Clay, " Origin of Biblical Traditions", p. 159; and many private letters; and supplementary chapters, amplifying certain conclusions, have been published, in full or in abstract, as opportunity was afforded; e.g. on the route of the Egyptian " Book of the Dead" and on the Greek, Babylonian, Semitic and Chinese so called " myth lands" in the Christian Science Monitor for March 18th, 1924, and March 8th, 1926; on the location of the pillars of the Cabiri and their subterranean record chambers in " Nature", March 1st, 1924; and an article shewing that the names of the ten predeluge kings given by Plato in his " Critias", when translated in the method indicated there, are classical Egyptian and correspond, six at least of them, to the ten predeluge names of the lists of Berossus and of the Old Testament, has been forwarded for publication in one of the English periodicals.

AID OF JEWISH SCHOLARS SOUGHT

The present article is a fuller treatment of the problem of the birth place of Abraham, and is a submission of the data on which the conclusions were reached for the purpose of obtaining searching criticism from those most competent to give it. In his search the writer has covered many literatures, and has some knowledge, in part minute, of a number of Semitic languages, including Hebrew and its various forms and allied tongues, as will perhaps be evident later, but as Jewish scholars will know, there is a great mass of Jewish literature supplementary and explanatory to the Pentateuch and other books of the Old Testament which very few men have been able to know completely, and very few even in part. Of these the writer knows but a very small part, but enough to know that they probably contain matter which would throw light on the problem now under discussion. It is to scholars of this great Jewish literature that this article is addressed, in the desire that they may criticise and it is hoped confirm and extend, the conclusions given below.

THE CAUCASIAN TRUE HOME OF ABRAHAM

As will be seen more fully later, the importance of this investigation is not to Jews alone but to all humanity; and the conclusions reached and the evidence on which they are based will it is believed be accepted by competent archeological authority. Their absolute establishment must be through and after most severe criticism and support from other sources of evidence, to be derived, I feel, most surely from those very learned in the Hebrew Scriptures. who else, for one example, can tell us if there is not some where in the commentaries an explanation why the Babylonian Talmud appears to associate the name Erech with Ur-Kasdim. For this reason I address myself to and ask the critical assistance of such scholars, and give references for all statements made.

The article is divided into these sections:

1. Why the Babylonian Ur (modern Mugheir), is at present supposed to be Ur-Kasdim.
2. Why it is certain that it is not.
3. Quotation of all references in the Hebrew and other scriptures which appear to bear on the location of the home of Abraham. Peculiarities of Old Hebrew records.
4. Demonstration that the references are all consistent with each other, and can indicate one place only, a district in the Caucasus isthmus.
5. Discussion and corroboratory evidence.
6. Conclusions.
7. The new prayer and the new life of Israel.

WHY UR (MUGHEIR) IS AT PRESENT SUPPOSED TO BE UR-KASDIM

It will be best to quote direct from Dr. Albert T. Clay, Professor of Semitic Philology and Archeology at the University of Pennsylvania and later of Yale, one of the very great authorities on Semitic and Babylonian matters, and who had been in charge of the excavation work of the Bagdad School in Mesopotamia. The extracts are from works of his, published under the memorial fund of Alexander Kohut, another great oriental scholar and the author of Aruch Completum, the Talmudic Encyclopedia. As follows:

" The almost general acceptance of this identification is due to the fact that no attractive reasons have been given for any other site." Amurru, p. 167.

" The identity of Mugheir in Southern Babylonia with Ur of the Chaldees, although possible, is by no means certain, and especially as the Jews who lived in Babylonia did not know the site." Origin of Biblical Traditions, p. 43.

The identification has been opposed by many scholars; Dillman, Genesis, Ed. 6, p. 213; Kittel, Geschichte der Hebraer, sect. 17; Albright, Jour. Bib. Lit. XXXVII, 134.; etc. NOTE. For reasons of space, references are restricted to those most authoritative or most illustrative.

WHY IT IS CERTAIN THAT MUGHEIR IS NOT UR-KASDIM

1. Mugheir was never called Ur. The mistaken idea that it had once been called Ur arose from a mis-translation. To quote Clay, Amurru, p. 167: " Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1885 found bricks at Muqayyar (Mugheir) in Southern Babylonia from which he gathered that the ancient name of the city was Hur. Subsequently it was found that the reading of the name was Urummu, and in late Babylonian, Uru, i.e. with a final vowel (long u)".

See also " Lamentation on the Destruction of Ur", Univ. of Pennsylvania " Sumerian Liturgies and Psalms" lines 10-11 and 16-17.

2. Ur was a country, not a city. See " Sacred Geography", Wells, Vol. 5, p. 216. For proof of this, see infra.

3. There' were no Chaldeans in Urummu until many centuries after Abraham's time. See Clay, " Antiquity of Amorite Civilization", p. 3 for date Abraham lived, i.e. circa 2100 B.C.; and Budge, " Babylonian Life and History", p. 44; Sayce, " Races of the Old Testament", p. 98; Olmstead, " History of Assyria", p. 123; for the date at which the Chaldeans first appear in Babylonian history, i.e. circa 950 B.C.

4. The position of Mugheir is such that if it were Ur it would be impossible to reconcile it with the statements made in regard to Abraham's actions;

a. Abraham left Ur Kasdim to go to Canaan " and came unto Haran". Genesis 11: 31. If Ur Kasdim were Mugheir this would be like going from New York to Cleveland, to get to Montreal. Canaan is nearer to Mugheir than Haran is, and the territory between Mugheir and Canaan is easy travelling. Even today, with conditions much worse than in Abraham's time, more than 20, 000 Arabs with their wives and children and 30, 000 sheep and 50, 000 camels trek annually from Central Arabia to the Kurdish hills and back. E. A. Powell, " By Camel and Car", p. 118. From Mugheir to Canaan would be about an 8 day trip with camels loaded each with 500 lbs. ibid, p. 121.

b. Abraham " fled." Judith, 5: 6. But Haran was on the main commercial route between Babylonia and the Mediterranean, and only about 8 days travel away. Powell, " By Camel and Car", p. 121. The priests of Mugheir would have known where Abraham was within the month, and the two places were closely allied.

c. Abraham fled because he " would not follow the gods of his fathers". Judith, 5; 6. But Mugheir and Haran both worshipped the same god, the moon god. Clay, " Amurru", p. 169. And if it be objected that the moon was worshipped as feminine in Mugheir and as masculine in Haran, this was a trivial matter to the Mesopotamians, who in those times made hardly any or no distinction of sex in their gods; the sex was frequently changed. " When the Goddess Ashirta was carried into Arabia, she became the God Athar; and the God Shamash became a Goddess." Clay, Empire of Amorites, p. 164; and Barton and others, " Semitic Origins", pp. 120, 191.

The Talmud tells us that Terah, Abraham's father, worshipped 12 gods. The excavations at Mugheir do not shew that any such number of gods was worshipped there. See reports of Bagdad School. But twelve gods was the number worshipped by the fire worshipping Chaldees. See Diodorus Siculus, Book 2, chap. 21.

5. The Jews who lived in Babylonia never believed that Mugheir was Abraham's home. Such a learned archaeologist as Ezra the scribe would have been sure to have known of it if it were so. Evidently it was not in Babylonia at all or he would have known of it.

6. Mugheir is not in Metzara, but more than 1, 000 miles south of it.

7. The Babylonians made a practice of naming cities in Babylonia after prominent cities of other lands. For example, in Babylonia we have such city names as Ashkelon, Gaza, Heshbon, in the vicinity of Nippur in the 5th century B.C. See " Business Documents of the Murashu Sons of Nippur." Nippur was a few miles from Babylon. There were at least three Urs. Clay, " Amurru", p. 174; " Biblical Trad.", p. 43.

And there are many other reasons, but the above will be sufficient.

REFERENCES TO LOCATION OF HOME OF ABRAHAM

The principal references are:

1. " And Haran died in the presence of his father Terah, In the land of his nativity, Ur-Kasdim." Genesis, 11: 28.

2. And Terah took Abram his son, And Lot the son of Haran, ­ and they went forth with them from Ur-Kasdim, to go unto the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.. And the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country and 4 from thy kindred and from thy father's house, unto the land that -~y I will shew thee." Genesis, 11; 31 and 12; 1.

3. " This people are descended of the Chaldeans, and they sojourned heretofore in Mesopotamia, because they were not minded to follow the gods of their fathers, which were in the land of '` Chaldea, and worshipped the God of heaven, so they cast them; ` out from the face of their gods and they fled into Mesopotamia,
and sojourned there many days." Judith, 5; 6-9.

4. Abram was the eighth in descent from Ar-f-Chesed, the son of Shem. Genesis, 11; 10 seq.

5. " Abram the Aberite" Genesis 14; 13. Not Abram the Hebrew, as generally translated, for the first letter is He and not Ayin. No. where is descent from Heber emphasized. The Septuagint, a trans. lation into colloquial Greek, made about 250 B.C. and adopted as official by the Alexandrian synagogue, recognises that the term cannot mean " The Hebrew" and translates it as " perates", the
" passer-over". The word Aber is sometimes spelled " Ober" or " Eber" or " Uber". See fuller discussion below.

6. Abram came from " Aber a naher". Joshua, 14; 2. i.e. " Aber the river". This is generally translated " the other side of the flood", which cannot be correct; see discussion below.

7. Haran was in Padan Aram-in Mesopotamia. It was Abraham's country. Genesis 24; 4. 24; 10. 25; 20. 27; 43. 28; 2, 5, 10.29; 1, 4. It was the land of the people of the East. Genesis 29; 1. Laban and Bethuel were Syrians. Genesis, 25; 20. The language of Mitanni, in which district Haran was, is called that of Suri in the Assyrian lexical texts. Zeitschr. fur Assyr. Aug. 1890. v. 2, 3. (note Su-ri; Su-tu; Seuthes; etc.). Syrian is " Arimi" in Hebrew.

8. Abraham was " an Arimi ready to perish" Deuteronomy, 26; 5.

9. Abraham was " of the Chaldean race", Eusebius.

10. The Chaldean wise men spoke to Nebuchadnezzar in " Aramith". Daniel, 2; 4. Note Ezra, 5; 12.

11. Torah worshipped twelve gods. The Talmud.

12. The Chaldeans " reckon twelve superior gods", Diodorus Siculus, Bk. 2, chap. 21.

13. The hieroglyphs on the Egyptian obelisks were Chaldean signs for words. Cassiodorus, Bk. 3, chap. 2, 21.

14. The cuniform letters corresponding to Ur in " Ur-Kasdim" also mean Burbur, Amurru, Uru, Uri, Ari, Accad. Clay, " Bib. Trad.", p. 22; and " Amurru", pp. 102, 104, 140.

15. The old name of (the country of) Babylon was Iraqa. Olmstead, " Assyria", p. 60. In the Septuagint, Accad is " Archad".
17. Chaldeans were descended from Ar-f-Chesed. Josephus, Antiquities, 1; 4.

May 1, 1926.

EDITORS NOTE: The preceding article is incomplete, sections 4, 5, 6 and 7, never having been finished.

CHAPTER 9

HOW IT WAS DISCOVERED THAT THE SO-CALLED MYTH LANDS WERE THE CAUCASUS ISTHMUS

^{[see note 2, below]}

(Published in the Christian Science Monitor, March 8, 1926.)

[This forward was published in the CSM article but was not included in the 1933 volume: This is the third (and must for some time be the last) of the supplementary chapters of " The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus." The first, giving the location of the pillars of the Cabeiri and of their subterranean record chambers, appeared, in abstract, in Nature, March 1, 1924. The second, disclosing the secret of the " Book of the Dead, " that the mysterious routes to and in the Land of Sekhet Auru were actual routes to and in the Caucasus Isthmus by which the embalmed bodies of the Egyptians were to be carried to and deposited in a certain sacred valley in that isthmus, was published in full in The Christian Science Monitor, March 18, 1924; and in abstract with valuable additions by Sir Flinders Petrie, in Ancient Egypt, December, 1924. - D. J. Holeman, January, 2002]

THE discovery that the supposed " myth lands" of the Greeks, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Semites, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Chinese were all of them an actual and an identically same locality, the Caucasus Isthmus, resulted from:

a. Observation of the curious gap in myth geography between the shores of Sicily and of the Atlantic Ocean;

b. Deduction from the fact that the old myth makers did not know the existence of the present Atlantic Ocean, and from the fact that the Phoenicians had sent out four expeditions to discover the Pillars of Hercules and had reported, as the result of their investigations, that the Straits of Gibraltar were not the true Pillars of Hercules;

c. Discovery of the fact that the old Mid-Asiatic Mediterranean of geologists, which had extended from the Caucasus to Mongolia, but which had dried up with the exception of certain portions (the Caspian, Aral and Balkash Seas, though as late as 250 B.C., goods might still be shipped by boat from Constantinople direct to Faizabad, less than 100 miles from Chitral, the valley of the Kyber Pass), had been originally known as the Atlantic Ocean, or to use the spelling given in Stielers Atlas, 1905, for the far eastern remnant near Lake Balkash, as the " Dschalanaschtsch See." And that it had had water communication with the Black Sea by two passages, i.e., the Manytch Lakes route, now being reopened by the Soviet Government and a southern route, now blocked.

And that the Pillars of Hercules, the Kemmenu, were at the entrance where these two water routes branched off. These, are the Bo-Az pillars; the Jakin or Aberiar pillars were located later.

d. The fact that Russia, before its invasion of the Caucasus, had had the entire district surveyed secretly by its emissaries and had published a large scale staff map in 1848, giving very fully the old place names. A copy of this was obtained through the kindness of the British War Office. On this map will be found almost all of the old myth names; the Het Seker hills, the Neb-er-tschai tsars. Nephtbys Baku Ta-Manu etc., of the Egyptians; Cronus
Japhetus, Elysion, Tartarus, Gadiri, etc., of the Greeks; Kemmenu, Gori, etc., of the Phoenicians; Erech, Aralu, Arakanna, Maru, Karassachal, etc., of the Babylonians and Assyrians; Uri, Metsara, Adshinour, Chaldan, etc., of the Semites; in almost every case the names absolutely unchanged.

e. The collection and tabulation of all references which it was possible to find in the various literatures concerned. These number now somewhat more than 200, 000, and have enabled the geography of the district to be fairly well filled in though the exact limits of a few elements will be better defined by additional work.

SUGGESTIONS

As the writer's knowledge of the various languages concerned is incomplete, except perhaps in certain limited aspects, the most desirable thing possible would be for scholars in those languages to send copies of all myth references to some central organization where they could be collected and tabulated, and be available for workers. The Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain suggests itself; if they are willing they should be endowed with funds, at least $500, 000. Their name is mentioned because in my experience they are by far the most efficient and careful and thorough and helpful of all the societies with which I have had dealings; but no doubt there may be others qualified.

In the meantime, any worker may have the benefit of my own collection of data by simply inclosing a postal card addressed to himself, and numbering his questions. For example:

1. Where is the reference giving the Symplegades as blue and at the Feni Kale, and opposite the temple of Iphigenia?

2. Where is reference giving Taurus as the mountain of the Ros tribe?

In answer to which the return postal card would give:

1. Euripides, " Iphigenia in Tauris, " lines 242; 262; 420; (and others);

2. Bochart p. Josephus Ben Gorion, p. Abercromby, " Trip through Eastern Caucasus, " p. 28.

It will of course be understood that inquiries made merely from curiosity cannot be answered, only those from workers in the field.

ROOTS OF PROTO-CAUCASIAN LANGUAGE

To avoid possible bias, the roots were first built up from study of the place names, as was done for example by Clay with the Amuraic personal names? and were then verified and extended by comparison with known languages. It was found of course to be agglutinate, and to some extent onomatopoetic, and of comparatively few sounds, i.e.:

1. The short vowel, sounded like any of the short vowels. So far as it has a meaning it means " thing."

2. The long E sound followed by the short vowel, as ea, means " blackness, " emptiness, like the darkness of a cave, or night, or the expanse of sea, or earth or land.

3. The U or Oo sound means " water" or something labile.

4. The labial sound, B, F, P, Ph, means " of, " i.e. possessive case, as in Egyptian " F" and Greek Digamma.

5. The dental sound, D, T, Th, later sometimes interchanged with S or Sh, means " place." So Aet is the " place of Ea."

6. The guttural sound, G, K, Ch, means " like." So Gi or Ki means " earth." Ach means " tribe" or " people." Later sometimes interchanged with S.
7. The L sound means " Storm" and later " Power" or " God."

8. The M and N sounds mean " dominion" or " power." M generally used for masculine and N for feminine. An meant the mast or pillar showing the location of the chief or god.

9. The R sound means " fire." A flame is Ur. Sam-ur means " Holy Fire" and the Cimmerians were the people of the Holy Fire, sometimes called " Gimri."

10. The S sound, the Sh sound, the Z sound have similar meanings. S means " going" in some way. Su means " River." Sh means coming up, so Ash is " rising." Z means " going down" or " going away" and so Az is " the West" or " Darkness."

The place names are compounds of these. For example, Pir is " belonging to fire" or hearth or home. Perival is " home of the wind" or mountain pass. Kemmenu is " Holy Pillars" which were erected in pairs, with fires on top, one to Ur, the other to Al or El, and hence they were called the Pillars of Kur-Kal or Hercules. The Cocytus or Acheten Su (or Ope or Oche) was the river " from" Aeten or Eden. The Pyriphlegethon or Perival Achaeten was the " Pass river from Aeten (or Eden).

In the mountainous parts a guttural or dental is often prefixed apparently for use in shouting over long distances. Xenophon speaks of communicating in this way over distances of 12 miles, which seems incredible but I am told it is possible in the mountains. The effect on a near-by listener is described in " The Peaks of Shala." So while we find Eden and Acheten in the older maps for the mountain districts, we find Kacheten in the Stieler's atlas. As the prefixed guttural or dental is only found in the later place names, it may be the article " the, " as the Egyptian Ta, or a shortened form of Ki, " land."

It will be noticed that in some cases the Greek names are not quite the same as the native Proto-Caucasian ones. This is explained by Strabo, 11; 11; 5. When they found a name they did not know they changed it slightly so as to have the same meaning if possible, or some meaning by which it could be identified. Strabo gives instances, and we may take for example the Perival Acheten R. This was the Terek or Ur oche, i.e. " Fire River" because it is in the center of the Baku oil district. So the Greeks called it the Pyri Phlegethon or Fire flaming river. Similarly they called the Kachaeten the Cocytus. The other kachaeten rivers they did not know, i.e., the Pirikets kachaeten, Kafr Aeten, Fi Acheten, but the At Aeten they changed to Eridan or Eridanus. All these rivers flow from the neighborhood of Mt. Eden or Edena Pass.

The Greek term " hekaton cheira" really is, not " hundred handed, " but " acheten cheira, " i.e., " of the tribe. of Mt. Eden."

One Greek term must be mentioned because it has given rise to much confusion. The word " Nesos" is still translated as meaning " island" but it does not mean this at all, except perhaps in late Greek. The Peloponnesus is a peninsula. Arabia was called a " nesos" and so was Mesopotamia. It comes from the roots " an" " aea" and " s's" and means a " sprout of the land." It must be remembered that every word was, and had to be, originally a little poem, and many of them are very interesting; for example, " wine" would seem to be " Queen of the Dark Waters." So " nesos" meant something that sprouted from the land like a twig or a fruit does, in the one case a promontory, in the other an island. It really means a district which is bounded by water, rivers or sea, to a considerable extent, but it does not mean an island, except in occasional instances. Ait does not quite fit, so I would propose the following definition for our English dictionaries: " Nesus. A district largely bounded by salt or fresh water." Circe's nesos for example was, as we shall see, a promontory with a very narrow isthmus, like the Peloponnesus.

DISTRICTS AND PLACES ON MAP

Caucasus Range. Good photographs of this will be found in George Kennan's article in the National Geographic Magazine for Oct., 1913. He describes it as " A huge natural barrier, 700 miles in length and 10, 000 feet in average height, across which in the course of unnumbered generations man has not been able to find more than two practicable passes-the Gorge of Dariel and the Iron Gate of Derbent." There is really only one pass, for the Iron Gate of Derbent is not in the range, but is a narrow space between the end of the range and the Caspian Sea. Kennan describes the different climates on the north and south of the range.

" On the northern side of the range lie the treeless wandering grounds of the Nogai Tatars-illimitable wastes where for hundreds of miles the eye sees in summer only'. a parched waste of dry steppe grass and in winter an ocean of snow dotted here and there with the herds and the black tents of the Nomadic Mongols.

" But cross the great range from north to south and the whole face of Nature is changed. From a boundless steppe you come suddenly into a series of shallow fertile valleys, blossoming with flowers, green with vine-tangled forests, sunny and warm as the south of France.

" Sheltered by a rampart of mountains from the cold northern winds, vegetation here assumes an almost tropical luxuriance. Prunes, figs, olives, oranges and pomegranates grow, almost without cultivation, in the open air; the magnificent forests of elm, oak, maple, Colchian poplar and walnut are festooned with blossoming vines, and in autumn the sunny hillsides of Georgia, Kachaetia and Mingrelia are fairly purple with the vinyards of ripening grapes.'

See also description in " The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus" and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Wheat and other grains grew wild in the southern part, Hypiberea, but since the northern steppes (the anaaruf of the Egyptians) had no grain at first, the inhabitants of the Tartar district lived on cattle and by hunting. They had no fire at first, but later got it from the tribes living in the oil districts of the northern slope, and the smuggling of this oil was a constant cause of friction until Pir Mithras showed how the cattle themselves could be used for fuel (Herodotus, 4; 6^1). This is the probable cause of the punishment of Prometheus and of the description of his division of the sacrifice. The only wood was in Amalthea's Horn, where the Greek temples, built out of wood, were (Herodotus 4; 108).

The best map of the geology of the isthmus is that by Felix Oswald, the Probate Register of Nottingham, England, who has specialized on the subject.

The Caucasus range is much older than the Himalayas and many of its peaks are more than half a mile higher than Mt. Blanc. Mt. Elbrus can be seen for more than 200 miles. The Dariel Pass, at the center of the range, is very narrow, barely space for a traveler beside the Terek River, and the cliffs run up to 5000 feet. It was closed by iron gates, and was the Erebus of the Greeks and the Erib of the Babylonians and Assyrians and Semites. It was the great highway for the traffic in foodstuffs from south to north and of oil from north to south. In one place the canyon splits, enclosing a mountain mesa, on the side of which was the cave in which Pir Mithra was believed to have been imprisoned, and on the top of which was the fort or castle of the monarch of the region; it is sometimes called Tamyra's Castle. Oil is so plentiful at the northern foot of the pass that the first concessionnaires were ruined by the damage to the farms. The great oily swamp of Acheron was here, into which the Kacheten or Cocytus and the Perivlegaten or Pyriphlegethon flowed. The fountain of the Styx or Ast-ach-su is higher up, and flows into, or is the head waters of, the Kacheteri. No silver mine is shown on the map at the spring, but some are shown a few miles to the west of it. Near here too was the nesus of Bacchus, near Tamish and Nacha on the Ardon. See Staff Map.

NAMES OF DIFFERENT PARTS OF RANGE

The most eastern part of the range where it runs into the Caspian Sea was Mt. Baku, or the " Mountain of Sunrise" of the Egyptians. Here also are Serachi and Kalachany or Telachany. The most westerly part of the range was the peninsula of Tamen, the Ta Manu, the Mountain of Sunset of the Egyptians, and it runs into Lake Maeotis, the Pool of Maatis of the -Egyptians, and the Sea of Az-ov, the " Western Water Gate" or Western Harbor of the Phoenicians. The whole range was the " White Wall" of the Egyptians. The middle and eastern part was the mountain of Maru of the Babylonians, formerly known as Mar-to until Langdon gave the correct reading; the Maru or Meru, i.e. " Thigh, " of the Greeks and Egyptians, below which Nysa or Nucha was (there are two places of this name, one seeming to be connected with the vine, the other with wheat).

The eastern end, near Backu, was the Apsu of the Babylonians. This has been taken as the sea, but as Clay has shown, it means " the end." This is what is meant by saying that the dwelling of Nudimmud, i.e'. Ea or Seb, i.e. Seb-En-Gi, was opposite to the Apsu. All the old temples had a ring-like lake, from the stone border of which water spouted. The apsu was originally the stone wall but came later to be applied to the whole lake. Here also are Azarakanna, and Perek-Eshkul; and the great mountains of the range were Kingu (Mt. Elbrus), Lachamu, An, An Schar, Gaga (near Arebus and Astarti Barzun), and below, on the south, were Karassachal and Adshinar and Chaldan.

The principal rivers were the Oceanus or Auschet or Aeti Ope or Aradanus, now the Kuban. In former times the whole district north of it was a swamp, where the few inhabitants lived on the Urmanu or Arimu, i.e., hillocks. It originally ran through the Marsh of Trithonis, communicating by canals with the Alontas, but the marsh slipped down into the river, deluging the whole region and closing that passage but leaving the Manytch Lake passage. The end of the deep part of the river, after this landslide, was at the present Kemmenobrodsk, or Kemmenu-Aboruri as it was known to those who wished to go southwest to Dariel Pass; or Kemmenu Jakin or Eachon, as it was known to those who wished to go northwest to the Graikus and Achelous Rivers an, -.1 to Amalthea's Horn, or through by the Cerberus-Jakin delta mouths, the Sharisharadon and Shar Shuppi of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, at Olonchuduk, into the sea of Salentchuk, i.e., the old and original Atlantic Sea.

The Achelous, now Kalaus, was the original home of the Graiae-ach or Greeks, at the junction of the Graikus River with the Achelous. The adjoining river, the Aegi River, was originally a pass of the Achelous delta, but Herakles (not the Phoenician god, whose name was Hercules or Kur-Kai, but the Greek adventurer, Herakles) at the request of the Caledonians or Chaldi i.e. Chaldeans, dammed it, and so turned all the overflowed portion into fertile land. Am-Althea means " plain of Aletheia or Alytta."

East of the Achelous were the Arimi and west of it the Arim-Az-Fi or western Arimi. This is why the Graiae (which name means " old women, '' probably because the Graiae wore long black dresses, both men and women) were said to have one eye, for as Herodotus (4; 26) points out, " Arima spu" means " One eye" in the Scythian language. Incidentally this is proof that the Greeks who built the Greek temples and had the Greek customs and language would not have been late colonizers, but were the original Greeks, for they were there before Perseus, in his wars against the licentious practices of the Tammuz worshippers, (the Tammuzons who came from Mt. Thammuzeira, near Mt. Elbrus; the Amazons of the Greeks) left the Crimea to found, after conquering the Amazons, the Persi nation.

At the foot of Mt. Thammuzeira or Tammuz Schar flowed the AramUdon down which the Amazons came in their conquering passage after defeating the nations at the foot of Mt. Elbrus (the El Baris and Huburis of the Deluge traditions) and at the junction of which with the Tammuz-Alontas they founded the city of Chersonese.

Another famous river was the Kur, whose eastern valley was known (and possibly the whole eastern district) as Metsara, the Metsara of Abraham and of Cyrus. It will be noted that the old name of the Jora was Kem-bu-su (Holy Water River; the Champsis of the Scythians) in its upper part, and as Abaran in its lower part, before joining the Kur and Alizon, and that it is near the plains-.of Ad Shinour and Chaldan, and Pirata, and was the winter home of the Urie of the Koissu or " Calling" rivers, the " Kissu" district of the Babylonians, .from one of which, the Kazikimik Koissu, came the first dynasty Egyptians; and that the Avar Koissu and the Ach-Su tribes had the city of Psiddach (Sutech or Typhon), in what was probably then Sar-Veden, where one of the great Cabiri pillars was; the other and the chambers being at Achmed on the south side of the pass. The Alizon was, as I have shown elsewhere, the Elysion of the Greeks, and Makaria the Kur-Dilumn of the Babylonians. Its inhabitants were also called Alaed or Kelti, and those to the west were called Iberi.

PENINSULA OF TAMEN

The rest of the map needs little explanation, except perhaps the peninsula of Tamen. Tamen, or Ta manu meant " the domain of the god." Compare Greek temenos. The history of how the gods came to be in the west is a long one. It is sufficient to say that the Greek mystery traditions about Uranus, (Urie) in the East, Cronus in the west and Zeus, near Amalthea's Horn, appear to represent actual facts in history-wars and settlements of the isthmus. The small negrito race was very superstitious, troglodytic, and had many gods, but the large Scythian (Thini) race, the masters and the metal workers, worshipped the Taauti or mountain-top proclaimers or directors, the Theoi. The relation was somewhat like that formerly between the Arabs and the Negroes on the east coast of Africa. The peninsula of Anapa was the nesus of Circe, and the Circetae of that district (the Scorpion people of Gilgamesh) were the archers of Tamen. The kabardi was a long lock of hair on the left side of the head, by which the nobles used to fasten on their crests i.e. deer's heads, wolf's heads, etc., by twisting it round them. It is the symbol of the gods of the Sindi or Indi in India today and was used in Egypt. The story of Circe, the Kirke or sorcerer and her animals, came from this practice. Colchis, the Kalacha Aea, was originally in the Tamen Peninsula. The dead were tied up in red ox skins, called " meschet"; or silk bags, in the eastern or Baku Serach; or in earthern jars made to look like ox hides, in Susa. Hence the term Phoinix and the legend of the bird. Why all of the gods were driven out of the isthmus except Zeus and Athena; the history of the wars of Osiris, of the Mesen, etc.; of the use of the reflecting telescope in the Caucasus; of Ramman-Anthu, the eastern Caucasus god of justice; of Feni-Kale and Anyalius, and the white land of Achilles, the sun lions of Gilgamesk and Israel and Medea, and hundreds of other matters must be left till another time.

It will encourage archaeologists to know that, as stated in the previous articles, all public buildings, including temples, were originally underground and many can be located.

I have found that for many thousands of years all important civil and religious assemblages (even that of the Greek Areopagos), were held deep underground, and have been for years urging the use of electrically driven core drills in archaeological work. And this not only in the Caucasus, where Alexander's treasure probably lies hidden with the old records of Achmeti, but in Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Italy and Spain. The old records are not lost forever, they are merely hidden in the old underground chambers.

MYTHARCHEOLOGY

This new method of working, by the tabulation of myth references, and by place names, has a certain analogy to geology, the names and references being, as it were, historical fossils. And as the science of geology was built up from the study of its fossils, so we have a new science built up from these fossilized traditions and names, which may perhaps be called " mytharcheology." It has certainly been fruitful in results and we may expect that for many centuries the Caucasus isthmus will be very intensively studied by archaeologists.

RACES OF ISTHMUS

An interesting point has developed in the work, i.e., that there apparently was but one original race, a small brown negritic one, which developed under troglodyte conditions, in the western isthmus, into a Negro race, and under life in the marshes in the northern isthmus into a large white race. Sufficient evidence has not yet been obtained to state this definitely, but it seems probable. Incidentally the blue mask of Osiris shows that he was originally a Negro god.

INDEBTEDNESS

The writer is of course indebted to hundreds of other workers. More especially to Petrie, Sayce, Clay, Chiera, Budge, Breasted, Olmstead, Jansen, Peters, Rawlinson, and the other great masters of archaeology. And I am also most grateful to E. Gilchrist of Brookline, one of Sir Robert Hart's men, for his help in problems relating 'to Chinese records, and to Mr. R. E. Briggs of Boston for his assistance in connection with Negrito and other questions.

 

CHAPTER 10

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