THE DELUGED CIVILIZATION OF THE CAUCASUS ISTHMUS

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

 

CHAPTER XI

MASSACHUSETTS BIBLE SOCIETY

BROMFIELD STREET

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

 

COPYRIGHT, 1927

BY REGINALD A. FESSENDEN

All Rights Reserved

PRINTED AT CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A.

 

INTRODUCTION

This is chapter eleven of " The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus"; the first six chapters were published in 1928. Chapter seven, on the location of the pillars and underground record chambers of the Cabeiri, chapter eight on the home-land of Abraham, and chapter nine, on the land of the Gilgamesh and Creation legends of Mesopotamia have not been published. Chapter nine appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, March 18th, 1924 and chapter ten in that paper, March 8th, 1926, each accompanied by a map, here reproduced as maps 3 and 4.

The location of the pre-deluge subterranean record chambers is not a difficult task. Their approximate locality is known. The Sippara of the Deluge legend was not a city but a land, that of the Saspirati or Hisperati (Hesperides), and this is now certainly known, and the location of the City of the Sun in that land, where the chambers were. The author's acoustic sounder which has come into use for locating underground strata and sea depths (U. S. patents 1, 217, 585, August 2d, 1914; 1, 240, 328, August 2d 1914.) has been found to give accurate location of superimposed strata and hollows to depths of one mile underground, and indications of their nature. The rights to use the invention for archeological purposes have been reserved by the author, to prevent unscientific search and the looting of sites for treasure and objects of art. Any archeologist of repute may obtain the right to use the devices of the patents without payment or condition other than that the excavation shall be carried out in a scientific manner, such for example, as is the practice of Sir Flinders Petrie.

Authorities given are those selected as most generally accessible; references have been verified by comparison of the best existing texts of the original.

REGINALD A. FESSENDEN

46 Waban Hill Road
Chestnut Hill, Mass., U. S. A.
August 20, 1927

 

 

CHAPTER 11

THE EGYPTIAN AND ARYAN HOME-LANDS

EVIDENCE that the Caucasus Isthmus was the home-land of the Egyptians and Aryans, and that the Tamen Peninsula was the last part occupied before the migration, was presented in the writer's Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus, published in 1923; an additional chapter giving some score of the more important place names and a map appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, March 18, 1924; and a chapter dealing more especially with the Greek home-land, but giving some additional place names of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian homelands, appeared in that journal, March 8, 1926.

These are all out of print, though copies may be seen at the British Museum, Bodleian, and elsewhere, and quite a number of requests have been received for a brief summary of the evidence. This is given here under the headings, Place Names, Characteristics, Historical, Archeological.

Place Names. First the Egyptian or Aryan place name is given. Then the reference in the Book of the Dead (Budge's translation) or the Vedas. Then the Caucasian place name which it is believed to represent. Then the location on the map on which the name occurs, or the author (Strabo, Ptolemy, Pliny) who gives it. The map most referred to is the 5-verst map of the Caucasus published by the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton, as this is based on the Russian map of 1857, made before the Caucasus was occupied by Russia and while the old place names were substantially unchanged. (This last statement will be, it is believed conclusively, supported later; see Strabo, Rostovtzeff, and others for evidence that there was no effective penetration of the main Caucasus prior to the Russian occupation.) Other maps referred to are the Inter-

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national (1: 1, 000, 000), Stieler's Handatlas, Oswald's geological map, and the Admiralty charts. It will be understood that on account of space limitations only the most important and distinctive names are given, and only a part of these, for the number of place names identified is more than 100.

Where terminations such as -skaya, -pol, -us, -ana, etc., have been added by the geographers to the original place name, the name is given exactly as found on the map, but the termination is separated from the main place name by a hyphen. Note that " Gate, " like the Greek " pulai, " means a strait as well as a pass; that " Nesos" is never used by the early Greek writers to mean «island, but ait or «land» (compare " Peloponnesos, " " Nesos of Arabia, " " Nesos of Mesopotamia" ); that " Ta" means (roughly) " the land of"; " Ach" means " people"; " Su" and " Oche" mean " river"; " An" means the " pole" before the abode of the chief or the temple, and " lady" or " goddess"; " M" means " lord" or " domain" (compare Shakespeare's " France" for the king of France); " Aea" or " Aet" means " darkness" or " earth" or " extent"; " Kal" means a hollow, cave or walled place; " Pir" means " hearth" or " house"; " Sar" or " Shar" means " the upper end of the valley, " or " lord"; the digamma, Egyptian f, and b, p, ph, mean " of." Also that a river was considered as coming from the clouds or snow of a mountain, and hence took the name of the mountain, and that there might therefore be several rivers of the same name proceeding from one watershed, e. g. the two Aragvas (Greek Erebus), flowing from the watershed of the Darial Pass in opposite directions, two Alazans. Also that almost all the vowels were interchangeable (Kuron, Chron, Charon; Parthenon, Pir Athenon), with certain welldefined limitations, the consonants being the important part of the name. Initial a is very frequently elided (Talanta, Atlanta, etc.). That the gods were originally sexless, and frequently varied their gender, e. g. Nephthys (An Aphetys), Neptune, Japhetos; and even their number, the twin God of justice of Tiglath Pileser becomes the Rhadamanthus (judge of

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the Asiatics), of the Greeks. To proceed with the place name identifications:

1. Bakhau and Ta Manu. - " The most easterly and most westerly points of the sun's course, and the places where he rose and set." B. of D., p. 4, note.

Baku and Tamen peninsulas. - Eastern and western extremities of Caucasus range, projecting into the Caspian and Azof seas. - Any atlas. Mt. Bikni of Sayce, Prim. Ass., p. 57.

NOTE. The Caucasus range is inclined almost exactly 23½ degrees to the equator, so on the longest and shortest days of the year this is almost astronomically correct.

2. Pool of Maati. - Into which the setting sun sinks at night; B. of D., chap. 17 and p. 4.

Lake Maeotis. - Into which the sun (apparently) sinks at night. -Classical Atlas. Sea of Azov, west of Tamen peninsula.

3. Ket Seker. - The Funeral mountain or land; the land (house) of Seker, the coffined Osiris; B. of D., chap. 137, 151a, and hours 4 and 5 of the Am Tuat.

Ket Sekur range. - Probably the home-land burying place, in caves or chambers in the hills. Also probably containing oil sands. International and Ordnance maps. Tamen.

4. Gate of Neb-er-djer. -The secret doors in the land of Seker. B. of D., chap. 86 and hour 4 of the Am Tuat.

Pass of Neb-er-djai. - Pass entrance to Ket Sekur range. Ord. map. B3. Note arrows of hieroglyph of name Neber-djer, and Circetae land, Classical Atlas, and Lake Kirke in Tamen peninsula. Oswald and other maps.

5. Akert (Akur-aet). Akeru gods. - The domain of the twin Lion gods, one of whom is at Baku and the other at Tamen. The domain of which Osiris is lord. B. of D., chap. 18, 64, and note 2, chap. 64.

Akurt. Theoi Akraioi.-The whole crest of the Caucasus, from Apscheron (Malte Brun, Okoressa, p. 51), through the middle of the range (Ptolemy, Agoritae), to the Tamen

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peninsula (Puny; Acrae, 4, 27; Exretice, 6, 4; Epageritae, 6, 5; and others. Pliny says the Epagerite, i. e. F-Akuritae, were of Sarmatian descent and dwelt on the range of the Caucasus). The crest was called Ur (the ship of Horus) and the inhabitants Ach-ur. The Acheru, or Akraioi, were the mountain gods (Smith, Class. Dict.). As most of the mysteries of Greece were imported from Egypt, similarity in religious names is not surprising, and indeed 40 random sample pages in Liddell and Scott's dictionary shew 55 per cent of " Semitic" roots. But perhaps it may startle egyptologists to know, as I have been able to shew quite conclusively, that the much-discussed Egyptian term, " maa kheru, " is identical with the Greek " makeros, " i. e., " blessed" or, literally, " of the domain of the Great House, " or possibly, " of the Sun People."

These words, maa kheru are commonly rendered `triumphant, ' but their true meaning seems to be, `he whose word is right and true' - and as a result, whatsoever is ordered by the person who is declared in the Judgment Hall to be maa kheru is straightway performed. Thus before the person who possessed the `right word' the doors of the underworld were opened and the beings who had power therein became his servants." Budge, B. of D., p. lxvi.

" Makaros art thou, Simon Bar-jona - and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven: and whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven." Matthew, 17: 17-19.

The expression was I believe used by Christ in its strict technical sense. " Galilee... was inhabited generally... by Egyptians, " Strabo, 16; 2; 34. He had lived in Egypt, and in Galilee, Matthew, 2: 14, 15, 22. The Babylonian Talmud states that Christ performed the " burning of Maat, " which Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, vii, states was ritual peculiar to the priesthood. That he was acquainted with the Book of the Dead is evidenced by the

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fact that the Gospels contain more than twice as many quotations from it as they do from the Old Testament. Simon Peter also lived in Galilee, Matthew, 4: 18. That He who was to be the Light to lighten the Gentiles (and now, in our time, to be the Glory of Israel) should have quoted from Gentile scriptures is only what might have been expected.

6. Kemur. - The sacred city (" Kem ur" means sacred city) at the entrance to Akur, where the great fish (maat) Remu was. B. of D., chap. 64, 89, Prayer of Pepi II, chap. 123.

Kimmur. - The city of the Cimmerians (" quod ante, Cerberium vocantur, " Pliny, 6, 17, and Liddell and Scott, who are mistaken however in saying that it is a different form of Cimmerium) at the entrance to the Tamen peninsula. - Strabo, 11, 2, 4, and Smith, Class. Dict. See Cerber-Jakin at Mantsch entrance to Caspian.

7. Khemmenu. - The place where the setting sun enters into the pool of Maatis. B. of D., chap. 64.

Kamenni. - The most westerly projection of the Tamen peninsula into Lake Maeotis, and the western Pillars of Hercules, the Phoenician god of Fire and Wind (KurKal). See Phoenician dictionary, " Kaminim"; Sanchuniathon, quoted by Eusebius, p. 34c; Herodotus, 2, 44; Strabo, 3, 5, 5. For evidence that the Pillars were in the East and not far from the river Tanais (Don), see Strabo, 15, 1, 6; Diodorus Siculus, 2, 1; Steles of Shamshi Adad and Ninus, Olmstead's Assyria, p. 156, et al. The " sea of the Setting Sun" has been mistranslated as " Urmia, " but it was really " Sebanki, " i. e., Maeotis, as we know from the Chinese trade annals. (See Hirth and Rockhill's Chinese and Arab Trade.) One of the earliest Christian sees was that of the Pillars of Hercules (Psidach Herculi) in the north Caucasus isthmus. The archetype Pillars were the two sections of the Caucasus range, east and west of the Aragva pass (Dariel).

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8. Gates of Seb. - The strait (B. of D., chap. 38a), which was the entrance to the land of Akur. " The gates of Akur are the gates of Seb." Pepi I, text.

Straits of Seb-anki. - Hamilton and Falconer, in their notes to Strabo 7, 3, 18, spell this " the strait of Zabache or Ieni-Kale, " and the " Sea of Maeotis or Zabache, " but the Chinese and Arab trade records (Hirth and Rockhill, p. 153) spell it " Sevanga"; the " colony" lakes in Armenia, Bithynia, and Syria are spelled " Sevanga, " " Sabinga, " and " Sabaka." Sabakos is a synonym for Strabo's " Sapra, " 7, 4, 1 (see Liddell and Scott), and the Arabic geographers used the term " Sabache" or " Sabcha" for a shallow marshy lake (see Sprenger, AGArab, 133 and PRR, 66, quoted by Knox), such as Maeotis. The Book of the Dead, chap. 146, papyruses of Ani and Nu, spell the name of the door-keeper of the third pylon as " Sebanqa" and as " Sebaq" (ertat). In the papyrus of Ani (Budge, plate 17) " Saba" is the word used for " gate" and " Sebek" the word used for " door." Khemennu, at the entrance to the straits, was the " citadel of Sebak" - (Rameses' address to Ptah, quoted by St. Clair, Creation Records, p. 301). Note that " Kroni" was the older name for the Pillars of Hercules (Frazer, note to Apollodorus, 2, 5, 10); and that Mt. Kroni is on the opposite side of the entrance to the strait, across from Khemennu; and that Cronus is Seb, and has same hieroglyph for name (St. Clair, Creation Records, p. 208). The name of the straits seems to have been, first, " Seb-akku, " then " Seb-angi, " then " Sebka, " and lastly, at a much later date, appears to have been changed to " Zab-ache, " possibly in a mistaken attempt to Atticize the " Sa, " misunderstood as equivalent to " dia" (see Liddell and Scott, z and za), i. e., at the other end from Bakau, analogous to Zabaikal. For Sebek in L. Maati see Budge, Egyptian Heaven and Hell, p. 61.

9. Holy lake of Sek-hra. - B. of D., chap. 136B. In Kem-ur, chap. 88. See also chap. 113.

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Lake Tsokur. - In Cimmeria, Ordnance and International maps, Tamen peninsula.

10. Petra, Gates and Gate keeper. - Admits to the first temple, B. of D., chap. 68.

Straits of Patares. - Black Sea end of Straits of Yenikale or Kertch, Ammianus Marcellinus, 22, 8, 30. City at Black Sea entrance to straits, Patraeus, Strabo, 11, 2, 8. Patur appears to have been first the stone used for crushing, and possibly onomatopoetic, and then the " opener" or " splitter" (Pateidaon). Then the official opener, or priest (patesi), and the navigational openers or eggshaped, string suspended loadstones (with little arms and feet attached), which hung in the poops of the Phoenician vessels. The catechisms in the Book of the Dead begin with the words " Putra efer su, " which may not be accidental. See also Matthew, 16: 18.

11. Bata or Beta. - The city of the divine door, the wearer of the double red crown. B. of D., chap. 41, 4 and Book of Gates, Budge, Egyptian Heaven and Hell, Vol. ii, p. 248. Bata was the city of the bee. Also see Breasted's Egypt, p. 32.

City and Harbour of Bata. - Strabo, 11, 2, 14. City and harbour, now, of Novorossisk. Identified positively by distance given by Strabo from entrance to Lake Tsokur. It is the Black Sea harbour of Tamen, and gives access to the Gates of Neb-er-tcher and the Het Sekur range. Note the river Tsemmes, from which the Scythian iron was shipped.

12. The Serakh. - The peaked-roofed chamber in which the bodies of the dead were prepared before being buried. (The name originally meant a house for drying fish.)

Mt. Seracha, Ordnance B3 and Oswald. On opposite side of river Tsemmes from Gates of Neb-er-tscher, on way to Ket Sekur, or Burial mountains.

13. Naarutf and An-aaretf. - The land and the city where nothing grows, B. of D., chap. 17 and 125. North of Restau, at the head of the pool of Maati.

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Nauaris and land of Anaricae. - Nauaris is on the Don, east of Rostow, Ptolemy map and International map. The Anaricae were the wandering nomads who inhabited the north Caucasus isthmus, Strabo, 11, 7, 1. The whole northern coast of Lake Maeotis was a " desert, " Strabo, 7, 4, 5; is " quite bare of trees, " and " all Scythia is utterly barren of firewood, " Herodotus, 4, 19 and 4, 61; " where for hundreds of miles the eye sees in summer only a parched waste of steppe grass and in winter an ocean of snow, " Kennan, Nat. Geog. Mag., October, 1913. The district of Taganarog, northeast shore of Sea of Azov, is possibly Ta Ach Anaroche. Homer's land of Oneiros, Strabo, 11, 7, 1.14.

14. Restau. - The following is from the catechism of chap. 17, B. of D. Ani says that after the " Great Green Lake, " which we know from other records is the Mediterranean, and Lake " Heh" or " Hehi, " in which Ra dwells and into which he enters at Khemmenu, chap. 64 (also called Sam-. ket and Maaat), -

" I pass over the way, I know the head of the Pool of Maauti."

" What then is this? "

" It is Restau, that is to say, it is the underworld on the south of Na-arut-f, and it is the northern door of the tomb."

Rostow. Taurus. - At the head of the lake of Maeotis (Azov) and on the southern border of the desert steppes, is the city of Rostow (International and other maps). It is a northern gate to the Caucasus, in fact it was a main trade route from the Black Sea, i. e., via Lake Maeotis, Rostow, the Manytsch lake system, and up the Yegorlik to the Dariel Pass, i. e., pass of Aragva. Or, continuing on through the Manytsch lakes, and passing through the delta channels of Shar-Shuppi and Shar-Saradon (B. of D., chap. 163, and International map, L38), one reached the Caspian and the valley of the southern Nile (Sorus), south of the Caucasus. This was a regular route of in

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vasion, by the Scythians from south Caucasus valley to Cimmeria and again from there to Media, and there are other points of identification. For a description of the crown of Osiris found there, at Rostow, and illustration of same, see Zakharov, Ancient Egypt, September, 1926.

Rostow was, however, used in a wider sense, as the north Caucasus district and as the range itself. In the first place Ros-tau is a literal translation of E-kur or Akur, the great mountain or great house. Also Scythia was inhabited at a very early date by the Ros or Rosh tribes (Tzetzes), from whom the Thracians (Thras) and Etruscans (Ras) and Russians were possibly derived. There is a well-known idiom of the Caucasus according to which the mountain range of the Lesgi is called, e. g., " Lesgitau, " and the part of the tribe living in the mountains is called " Tau-Lesgi." See Abercromby Trip through the Eastern Caucasus, p. 28. The range of mountains possessed by the Ros people would therefore be called " Rostau, " or " Akur, " and the people dwelling in it would be called " Tau-ros, " from which the word Taurus (which has, of course, nothing to do with a bull except incidentally) is most probably derived. Rostow, in this wide sense, would therefore be Akur, or the entire range of the Caucasus and its environs. For paths of Restau, B. of D., chap. 117. Caspian was " Shat-Alont-ach, " see old Russian maps, also Pliny, 6, 15.

15. Aetia (old name of Egypt).-" Egypt is said to have been called originally `Aetia' and the Nile `Aetos' and `Siris, " ' Rawlinson, notes to Herodotus, 2, 15. See also Apollonius Rhodius, 4, 268, and Homer, Odyssey, 4, 1-4.

Aetia. - The western half of the Caucasus, the kingdom of Aeetes, stretching from Dariel Pass to Tamen. Smith, Class. Geog., and Diod. Sic., bk. 1, chap. 4.

16. Siris, Oceanus, Aetos. - Old names for Nile, Rawlinson, Herod., 2, 15; Diod. Sic., bk. 1, chap. 2; Pliny, 5, 9; Dionysius, De Situ, 5, 23.

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Siris, Aushet, Aeti-ope. - The Cyrus of the Greek geographers, modern Kur, originally Sor (Strabo, 9, 3, 2). Also its sister river (see supra), the present Kuban, whose main channel in the Tamen peninsula was formerly the Aushet (Ordnance map, B3.), i. e., Aust (Isis), and Oceanus (Diod. Sic., bk. 1, chap. 2). For Isis as Nile, as well as Osiris (Sar), see Diod. Sic., bk. 1, chap. 2, and old name of Nile, " Astopus" (Auset-ope, Isis River), Diod. Sic., bk. 1, chap. 3. For Aeti-ope see Diod. Sic., bk. 1, chap. 2, and Del. Civiliz. of Caucasus, p. 52. For a land Mitzra in S. Caucasus (Valley of Cyrus), see Isaiah, 41: 2, seq.17.

17. Nephthys, Isis, Osiris (Neptha, Aust, Sar). - Osiris and the two goddesses who are on each side of him, with large black plumes.

Nephthy-anaya, Otcherety-anaya, and oil wells between them. -For identification of Osiris with symbol oil, see B. of D., chap. 125. Egyptologists may note city " Bak-an" near pass of Neb-er-tchai and Mt. Seraki; " bak" is " olive tree, " and this district was famous for its olive yards, Smith, Class. Dict., art. Phanagoria, - so the initiate would " pass on by the city to the north of the olive tree" (B. of D., chap. 125). Nephthy-an-aya and Otcheretyanaya are two extremely remarkable hills, lying east and west of a close group of naphtha wells, in the northwest end of the Tamen peninsula, and the arrangement is so striking that it can hardly be otherwise than connected with the symbolism of Osiris and his two goddesses. A look at the map, Ordnance, A2, will be very convincing. I have shewn that the black plumes were smoke (1924 article). The form used for Isis, i. e., Otcherety, may be Ausare-ty, i. e., consort (tu or ty) of Ausar (Egyptian spelling of Osiris). Compare An, Antu, etc.

18. Horizon, Pillars of Shu, Gate of Ra. - The Horizon was the path of the sun, with its 12 Arits, over which he went each day (B. of D., chap. 144), with the sound of roaring thunder clouds (chap. 39). The Pillars of Shu were the

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Two Horizons, or the east and west sections of the Caucasus, the horizon or mountain (Hymn to Ra, p. 16) of Baku and that of Tamen (Hymn to Ra, p. 4 and Budge's note). The Kur-Gal of the Babylonians. The Horizon was the whole range, and the constellations, I have discovered, were named after the different tribes or nations of the Caucasus, i. e., the Ram, the Bull, etc. The Gate of Ra was the great defile, with cliffs 5, 000 feet high, which divides the Caucasus range into east and west sections, formerly called the Aragva (Erebus of Greeks, Erib of Babylonians), Telfer, Crimea and Trans-Cauc., Vol. I, p. 266, and Strabo, 11, 3, 5. See also plan of Egyptian temples.

1. Gate of Tchesert. Set Tchesert. - The gate of the Pillars of Shu, B. of D., chap. 17, and the Holy Mountain, B. of D., chap. 1B.

Valley of Tschert-the col of the Dariel pass. Mt. Tschert, down the valley. Ordnance map. F6. The Caucasus was the great boat, or Baris, of the Book of the Dead, chap. 99, etc.

19. Anpu, Aneph, Anubis. - The embalmer of the dead; he who is in the house of embalmment; the opener; the doorkeeper of the Tuat; who dwelleth in the city of embalment B. of D., p. cxxii; chap. 45; chap. 168, 7; funeral text of Ankh-f-en-hetemti, p. 692.

Anapa, Anaphe. -The city at the foot of Mt. Seraki, near the Bay of Bata, and the Het Seker range. Ordnance map, A3. Originally much closer to Seraki than now, on account of shoaling up of harbour. He would be the doorkeeper of the Nebertcha -late, between Serachi and the Ket Sekur range, and of the city of Beta.

20. Astira, Thoth. - Asti-Ra, representative or vicar of Ra. Lord of Khemennu and of the Balance. B. of D., chap. 30B, and Annals of Nubian Kings, Budge, p. 35.Asturi-achani. - N. W. Tamen peninsula, including Khe mennu. Ptolemy map.

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21. Thinis mouth of Nile, Pans and Satyrs, Chemmis. - The coffin of Osiris floated down the Thinitic branch of the Nile. The Pans and Satyrs round Chemmis were the first to find it. Petrie, Personal Religion in Ancient Egypt, p. 127. Mt. Ada is nearby.

Ach-Taniz-ovski mouth of Kuban, Panaghia, Satyrus. - One branch of the Kuban flows into Lake Ach-Taniz. Ordnance map. Panaghia and Panik are names of nearby cape and mountain, Ordnance map and Admiralty chart of Kertsch strait. Mt. Satyrus is next Panachi cape, Strabo, 11, 2, 7, and Satyrus was a common name for the kings of the Tauric Bosporus, ibid., and Smith, Class. Dict., Panaghia is the Panachea of Euhemerus.

The Kuban was formerly called Vardanus (Ptolemy), i. e., F-Aridanus, or Eridanus, which possibly accounts for the Phaethon form of the Osiris myth. Poplars and cedars grow on its banks, so amber should be found at its mouth.

22. Harmachis. - Lord of the Horizon, or Ra. B. of D., Hymn to Setting Sun, p. 84, and Hymn to Ra, p. 16. I. e., Lord of the Caucasus range. The double hermax, or pillars or mounds. L. and S.

Harmaktica. - Ptolemy map; Strabo, 11, 3, 5; " just opposite" to the pass of Aragva, or Gate of Ra. Pliny, Nat. Hist., bk. 6, chap. 11. Hereditary titles of the kings of Georgia were (a) David, i. e., " Ta-F-Aet, " i. e., Aeetes, Marco Polo, 1, 4; (b) Armazt (Pillars), Telfer, Crimea and Trans-Caucasia, Vol. I, p. 302. This was the Persian form of the title, ibid., and may possibly be connected with Hermes; see Liddell and Scott, Hermes: (c) The native form was " Pharnawar" (Pir-An-Awur, i. e., House of the Pole, i. e., king of Awur or Amuru, see Clay, Amurru, or of the domain of Ur or Aburia). Pharn, i. e., Pir-An, was a common title of kings in this neighbourhood, see Smith, Class. Dict., Pharnaces, Pharnabazis, Pharnaspes, Pharnuchus, etc., and suggests a connection with the Egyptian

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title, Pir-u, i. e., Pharaoh. It was approximately on site of present Mzcheti (Sun city).

23. Sekhet. Sekhet-Aaru. -The Egyptian " Elysian Fields, " or " Dvipa Sukhadara" B. of D., chap.110. It was profusely irrigated by canals, and grew luxuriant crops. Sekhet-Aaru was a city, with iron walls, i. e., wooden beams clamped by iron (B. of D., chap. 108), and was the first of fifteen sections of the Sekhet.

Sakatali. - A city in the Alizon (Elysian, Deluged Civilization, p. 55) valley, a few miles from Kemur. Ordnance map, G7, below Meru and near Nucha, where Bacchuswas born (Monitor article, March 8, 1926). Sekhet means " Morning land" and " Coming-up land, " and hence " Fields, " by which it is generally translated. " Morning land" was an old name for Egypt, see Apollonius Rhodius, Argonaut, 4, 268. Aeria was another old name for Egypt, which Liddell and Scott give as equivalent to " Kemia." So Sekhet-Aaru might be " Morning Land of the dark earth, " Kemia, i. e., dark soil, being still another name for Egypt. There are other place names containing " Sekhet" in the district, e. g., Sakatlis-serf, and the land is stillextensively irrigated and very fertile, and it is reached directly from Aragva pass, the Gates of Ra (Strabo, 11, 3, 5 and 11, 4, 5). The Egyptians made no distinction between l and r, and both ali and aari mean " walled city, " so there is some justification for taking Sakatali as Sekhetaaru. In any case we may be quite sure that this was the district.

Sir Flinders Petrie in his discussion (Ancient Egypt, June, 1926) of my second paper, suggests instead, " Sek­het-Jora." Philologically this is quite possible, but the Jora valley is not a city and " the Cambysene" (valley of the Jora), " a country without water and rocky" (Strabo, 11, 4, 5). The Jora was the sacred river Champsis of the Scythians before they went to the north Caucasus isthmus, via Caspian and Nlanytsch, and the presence on its north

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ern border, i. e., south Alizon district, of the Sakar range and the " warm saline lakes" of Patara and Didi, and the naphtha springs suggest rather the domain of Sekher, fifth division Tuat, Egyptian Heaven and Hell, Vol. iii. Champsis means " crocodile."

24. Kherakha is Coraxa Mts., i.e., west Caucasus range. Strabo, 3, 2, 6 and Class. Atlas.

25. Fenku. - A people met with near Lake Maatis. B. of D., chap. 125.

Panachi, Phanagoria. - Cape Panachi is at the entrance of the straits of Patares (Kertsch), and Sir Flinders Petrie has suggested, Ancient Egypt, June, 1926, that the city of Phanagoria, nearby, was the city of the Fenku. I am under obligation to Sir Flinders for having pointed this out.

Approximately 150 such identifications have been made, but the above will be sufficient for the present. The others will be published later, elsewhere.

Archeological Evidence. It appears that the reason why no archeological evidence was available at the time of the publication of the writer's papers is that it had been universally assumed that the Caucasus tribes were the remnants of other civilizations which had taken refuge there (Kennan, Nat. Geog. Mag., Oct., 1913; Childe, The Aryans, pp. 176 seq.; Enc. Brit. art. Georgia; et al.) and so no evidence was looked for. But shortly after the evidence presented in these papers that the Caucasus tribes were the originators of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, and Aryan civilizations, a very considerable amount of archeological support was forthcoming. Within a year of the appearance of the writer's second publication (Monitor, March 18, 1924), Sir Flinders Petrie chewed (Ancient Egypt, Dec., 1924) that the Badarian type of pottery which he had discovered in Egypt had probably travelled down from the Caucasus. The Osiris crown found at Rostow has been referred to above. In Ancient Egypt for June, 1927, so much further evidence is given, and by one so much better

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qualified than the writer to discuss this feature, that nothing more need be added here. See also discussion, British Ass. Ad. Science, 1926.

Historical Evidence, Customs, Natural Features. That there were Egyptians in the Tamen. peninsula at a very early date is shewn, aside from the evidence of the Book of the Dead and of the Wars of Osiris in the Annals of the Nubian Kings, by several of the early historians, e. g., by Diodorus Siculua, bk. 1, chap. 4. See also Strabo, 15, 1, 6, and Herodotus, 2, 104, and 3, 12. It was a common subject of discussion by the early geographers. Herodotus says, of the Colchis or later Kalacha Aea section:

" There can be no doubt that the Colchians are Egyptians. Before I heard any mention of the fact from others I had remarked it myself. After the thought struck me, I made inquiries on the subject both in Colchis and in Egypt, and I found that the Colchians had a more distinct recollection of the Egyptians than the Egyptians had of them."

Herodotus then goes on to chew the similarity or identity of the physical characteristics of the peoples; the peculiar religious rite common to both; the fact that they both wove their linen in the same way, and " that a way entirely unknown to the rest of the world, " and that " in their whole mode of life and in their language they resemble one another." For other evidence, see Deluged Civilization, chap. 9.

That the people of the west Caucasus were Egyptian was agreed, and that they were settled there by an Egyptian king, Sesostria, was stated by the Egyptians; see Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus, ibid. The Egyptian priests, confusing him with a later Sesostris, held that he came from Egypt. He may have been a third-dynasty king, but, as Breasted points out (Egypt, p. 189), " In Greek times Sesostris had long since become a legendary figure which cannot be identified with any particular king." We find, however, a hint in Megasthenes quoted by Strabo, supra, who says " Sesostris conducted an army from Iberia to Thrace and Pontus"; and Diodorus Sicu­

[15]

lus, supra, states that this was by way of the Tanais or Don River, i. e., he passed north over the Maeotis. Now Sesostris (Seseuthes) is a Scythian type name, and Iberia is just in front of the Gates of Tschert (sebat Tschert, B. of D., chap. 17) and a part of the Sekhet (see above, 18, 23). And we know that there were other invasions from this section to the Tamen peninsula, e. g., M the Scythians, who drove out the Cimmerians, Diod. Sic., bk. 2, chap. 3, and Herodotus, 4, 11. So the settlement of Tamen, and later of Colchis, may have been by an army of Egyptians from the old Aeria, or Alizon valley, led by a Scythian; similar to, as we now know, the settlements of the Hittites. But for our present purpose the detail is immaterial; we may be sure that no settlement was made in the Tamen peninsula, with its semi-arctic winters, by deserters from an African-Egyptian army; or that if such settlement was made, we may be sure that the settlers could never have driven out the mountain tribes of the west Caucasus and supplanted them. The settlers of Tamen must have come from the Alizon or Kur valley.

The natural features of the Book of the Dead are identical with those of the Caucasus isthmus. To mention a few of the more striking:

a. The Stinking Worms. - Species Julus, 4 in. long, " very offensive." Ossendowski, From President to Prison, p. 83.

b. Burning Lakes, Fields of Fire. - Reineggs, Top. de Caucasus, p. 59; Cunningham, Eastern Caucasus, p. 174; Ency. Brit., art. Caucasus.

a. Boiling Lakes. - Ordnance map, G7, et al.

b. Olive Trees and Papyrus. - Tamen was celebrated for its olive yards, Smith, Class. Dict., art. Phanagoria, Papyrus plumes were used for decorating the statues in the temples in Tamen, Arrian, Mithrid., 12, 16, 111.

c. Fertility of soil, and irrigation. - Ency. Brit., art. Georgia. Strabo, 11, 4, 3; Deluged Civilization, chap. 10.

[16]

f. Persea Tree (peach). - Narks the midsummer sunrise (St. Clair, Creation Records, p. 55), i. e., the northeast. The persea was brought to Egypt by Cambyses, the Persian king, from Aethiopia. This could not have been the Aethiopia of the upper Nile, because Cambyses never reached that Aethiopia. His army was turned back " before he had accomplished one fifth of the distance" (Herod. 3, 25).

The persea is mentioned in the Chinese writings centuries before the time of Cambyses. Ency. Brit., art. Peach.

Petrie's excavations of the " Foreigners' camp" of Cambyses disclose that Cambyses had Mongolian troops with him. Nature, June 4, 1927, p. 814. The Aethiopia from which the peach came must, therefore, have been that " Aethiopia which looks toward India to the southeast" (Euseb., Chron., p.12). See also Deluged Civilization, p. 52, and Bornemann's note to Xenophon, Cyropaed., 2, 4, 1.

For general description of the land of the Book of the Dead, as derived therefrom, see Budge, " Osiris, " Vol. ii, p. 155.

Note that the section of the Sekhet into which the col of the Pass of Dariel or the Set Tschert of Aragva, i. e., the Tschert valley (Ordnance map, F6), the " Sebat Tsert" or " Gates of Tschert" of B. of D., chap. 17, leads, and which contains, a little down the valley (see map), the " Set Tschert" or Holy Mountain of Osiris, is definitely fixed as an " Oase" or " Nesos of the Blessed" (see Herod., 3, 26), by Strabo, 11, 14, 9; Ptolemy Geography, Chabala; Xenophon, Anabasis, 8, 25; Herod., 1, 104; 1, 110; 4, 37; and Deluged Civilization, chaps. 5, 7, 10, 11. Note also the Sober Oashe of Tamen, Ordnance and International maps. The Bata shore is called " Holy strand" in the periplus.

The Customs are perhaps sufficiently covered by the statement of Herodotus, quoted above, that " in their whole mode of life and in their language they resemble one another, " and

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by what he says about their way of weaving, religious rites, etc. But a few others may be added.

Use of Mesquet. The " Mesquet was originally the skin of a bull in which the deceased was placed." Budge, B. of D., p. cxxxvii. Originally it was in the shape of a bull, and later, of a bag. Diod. Sic., 1, 3. and 1, 6. Sometimes resins and spices were used for preserving, otherwise drying, ibid. For use of silk bags at the Baku serachi, see Abercromby, Caucasus, p. 292. The Colchians placed the dead in mesquets and hung them on trees to dry (Appol. Rhod., Argonaut, bk. 3, lines 200 seq.). When dried, the mesquets were removed to the Ket Seker (see Abercromby, above).

Kabardi or Kapurti lock. The braided lock of hair originally used for fastening on the head-dress totem, Diod. Sic., 1, 5; and Sanchuniathon, Eusebius, Prep., p. 38; Chinese and Arab Trade Records (Hirth and Rickhill), p. 83; For use of these head dresses, by the Cimmerians, Plutarch, Marius, and Strabo, 7, 2, 2. The custom seems to have been introduced into Tamen at the time of the transfer, due to earthquakes and deluge and invasion, of the Kalacha from Iberia and the Alizon to Tame n; at which time all the gods except Zeus and Athena, the gods of the Kalaus (Achelous) river district were driven to the extreme west of the isthmus. (Smith, Class. Dict., art. Typhon.) It was this custom which gave origin to the story of Circe, the Sarmatian queen (Diod. Sic., bk. 4, 1), who lived in the nese of Anapa, now Novorossisk, from which Corinth and Syracuse were settled, and was queen of the Circetae or " Scorpion men, " near Lake Kirki (Ptolemy map, and Oswald map). Kirke is Egyptian for Isis and sorcerer. (Petrie's Palace Titles.) For Egyptian account Deluge, Diod. Sic., 1, 2.

Kurbeis. Map and sailing directions carved and painted on stone pillars or three-sided pyramids of stone. Kept in the business section of the temples. See Apoll. Rhod., Argonaut, bk. 4, lines 278 seq., and rubrics to B. of D., chap. 30B, 64, 148.

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ARYAN, GREEK, MESOPOTAMIAN, " SEMITIC, " HOME-LANDS

Vedic Place-Names. - A considerable number of the place names of the Greek, Mesopotamian, and " Semitic" homelands have peen identified in the isthmus in the writer's 1923, 1924, and 1926 papers, supra, the route of the Argonauts has been traced as down the Kuban, up the Tanais to the Caspian, and back by the Alontas; and the Ur of Abraham has been shewn as not in Mesopotamia, but far north; and a few Aryan place-names have been identified. These may be supplemented by the following river names from the Vedas, taken from the list of names given in Macdonell and Keith's Vedic Index of Names. The first of each triplet is the name as it occurs in the Vedas; the second is the identification proposed by Childe, The Aryans, p. 33; the third is that found by the writer.

Kubah.	Kabul.	Kuban.
Krumu.	Kurrum.	Krimi.
Gomati.	Gomal.	Gomatir.
Vipas.	Biyas.	Afips.
Parusni.	Ravi.	Parss.

These, and others, are all in the neighbourhood of the Sindi territory; the Gumatir, in fact, runs into the " Sindi harbour, " Tamen peninsula. See Strabo, 11, 2, 10? 14. The " Kapurti lock" of the Indian Gods, and the " Dvipa Sakhadara, " have been referred to above. Chemmis and Panachia mean the same thing, i. e. " Land of the Five (or, all the) Tribes. (Phoenician Dict. and Diod. Sic. 1, 1.) As the Sindi did not have to go to the Dvipa Sakhedara by sea, their dog was not the Gerber of the Greeks and Egyptians, but Cabala (Keith's Religion and Philosophy of the Veda, part 4, sect. 2), the city (Cabala means " Place of Entrance" ) at the head of the Alizon

R. which guards the pass, cut through the rocks of the Cambysene (Strabo, 11, 3, 5 and 11, 4, 5), to the Alizon valley. Cay? bala is the Havilah of Genesis 2: 11.

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POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF THE " BOOK OF THE DEAD"

There can be no reasonable doubt, in view of the astonishing coincidence of place-names, that the Caucasus isthmus was the land of the Book of the Dead. It was also, as I have shown in the 1923, 1924, and 1926 publications referred to, the homeland of the Greeks, Mesopotamians, " Semites, " and Aryans; and the " Bitter River" of the Mesopotamians was the Adjai-Tchai River, near Tabriz (formerly the Abur).

It appears that the Egyptians, like the Chinese, were very desirous of being buried in the home-land. " What is a greater thing than that I should be buried in the land where I was born? " (Story of Sinuhe); " Make me a burial place in Ament, the land of Iberia" (generally translated " place of rest of heart, " but Iberia can be supported); " He attaineth unto a happy funeral and burial in Ta Tchesert" (i. e., Tschert valley leading into Iberia), B. of D., chap. 183. See above for location of Gates of Tschert

To ship the bodies back from Egypt to the South Caucasus isthmus, they would have to be dried or embalmed. This is probably the origin of the Mesquet (see above), and the hanging of it on-trees, supra. " The Mesquet was originally the name of the bull's hide in which the deceased was wrapped in order to secure to him the new life" (Budge, Legends of the Gods, p. 164). There would be kurbeis in the Egyptian temples (see Kurbeis, above), giving the sailing directions and route through the tribes and the pass-words by which the tribal chieftains could recognize that the bearers were the duly authorized representatives specified by the treaties by which the transport was arranged. When communication between Egypt and Ament was finally broken off, by the closing of the straits of Bosporus or Manytsch by hostile nations, or other cause, these kurbeis would lie unused and forgotten and lost and buried. When they were rediscovered (see B. of D., chaps. 30B, 64, 148), they would be correctly read as directions whereby the corpse of the

[20]

dead man could reach the oases or neses of the blessed, the old home in Amentet. But, the location of the old home-land being forgotten in the thousands of years that had elapsed, it would be interpreted not as a burial land but as a land of the dead.

This is a possible explanation of the origin of the Book of the Dead, and the writer's work leads him to believe that it is in all probability the true one. It must be remembered that the above data are only a minute fraction of the two hundred thousand and more references which the writer has collected and tabulated relating to this district and the old empires of Egypt, Greece, Babylon, Phoenicia, India, Persia, and others.

DATE OF THE " BOOK OF THE DEAD"

Philologists will note that there are no consonant shifts in the identifications of the Hidden Land (Ament. Note that Tamen also means " Hidden Land, " see Hebrew Dict.), place names of the Book of the Deadwith places in the Caucasus isthmus, with the possible exception of my identification of Coraksa (western horizon or west Caucasus range, Strabo and Pliny) with Kheraka. This indicates a very early date for the Book of the Dead, and the accurate transmission of the names is in striking contrast with the loose transcription found in such later records as the Tel Amarna tablets. Even if there were no other evidence, we would know that it must be pre-dynastic. Incidentally this work has developed the fact that many, if not most, of the supposed consonant shifts are not changes in pronunciation but changes in words. I.e., rdoes not become l because of softening, but because ur in the one language meant the same thing as el in the other language, i.e., god or power. And so n becomes m, because " an" meant the staff placed before the tent to signify the chief, and " am" meant " power of."

REGINALD A. FESSENDEN

Note - The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus was published in three parts as separate volumes, with the latter two volume out of sequence:

Chapters 1-6 were published in 1923.

Chapter 11 was published in 1927.

Chapters 7-10 were published in 1933, posthumously, by Fessenden's son Reginald Kennelly Fessenden.

Every effort has been made to ensure accurate transcription of the original documents.

- Donald J. Holeman, January 7, 2001

 

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