The ancient city; discovery of the city that Cain built and discovery of the most ancient site of the city of Thebes and the lost Europa

Front matter

OP

Class.

Book.

Chapter I. — The Cradle and the Grave 9 II. — The Slough of Despond and the Quagmire of Hell 11

III. — Marsh Building on the Moon and Emigration Legends 15

The Story of the Spendthrift 15

Legend of Cartmel Church and Aztec

Emigration '. . . . 17

IV.— The Marsh Reed— The New Moon Rod as the Sacred Reed — The Winter Omen 18

PART II.— THE ANCIENT CITY. Chapter I.— The Wall Builders 23

II. — Founding of the City of Thebes and Discovery of the Lost Europa — The Princess of Tyre 27

III. — The Founding of Jerusalem, the City of

Peace — Stories from the Rabbis 30

IV. — Founding of the City of Rome 31

V. — The Island City and the City of the Sand-

Bar 32

VI.— The Illusory City 35

VII. — Solomon's Temple 36

VIII. — Diana's Temple — Diana's Temple at

Ephesus 41

IX. — Stone Henge 43

X. — Origin of the Swiss Lake Dwellings .... 44

INDEX

Part Iii.— Foundation Sacrifice. Page

Chapter I. — Foundation Sacrifice 51

II. — Foundation Sacrifice 52

III.— The City Walls 54

IV. — The Building Sacrifice 56

V. — Sacrifice Propitiatory 59

VI. — Christian Sacrifice 60

VII. — Jewish Sacrifice 63

VIII. — Remarks on Sacrifice 63

PART IV.— THE SACRED ISLAND. Chapter I. — The Sacred Island 66

II. — The Sacred Island 68

III. — Island of Atlantis — Isles of the Genii — Island of St. Brandon and the Seven

Cities, and Enchanted Islands 70

IV. — Story of Alcmaeon, Latona and Delos . . 72 V. — The Azure Islands, or The Wandering

Rocks 15

VI. — Birth and Nuptial Islands — Birth Island . 11

Nuptial Island 79

VII. — Isle of the Oak Tree — A Finnish Tale . . 79 VIII. — The Island of Heligoland and the Frisian

Law 81

IX.— Battle Island 82

X. — The Isle of the Hereafter; or, The Island

of Souls 83

XI. — The Island of Eden 86

INDEX

Part V.— The Culture Hero And Original Civilization. Page

Chapter I. — Talisman, Charm-Protector, and Totem

Pole 88

II. — Auguries — The Pillar and Guide of the Exodus, Signs, and Portents Observed in Emigration, and the Founding of Cities 91

Founding of Longa Alba 93

Auguries 94

III. — Descent from the Gods 96

IV. — Eponymous Heroes 97

V. — Mountain Revelation ; or, The Wise Man

of the Mountain . 98

VI. — Guide and Leader of Civilization 1 02

The Aztec Emigration 1 05

VII. — The Culture Hero and Origin of Civilization 106

VIII. — Culture Hero — Agni, Prometheus, and

the Firestick Ill

IX. — Oannes, The Wisdom Fish God of Babylon 113

X. — Manibozho, or Michabo, the Culture Hero, and the "Great Hare" of the Al-

gonquins 115

XI. — Sume, the Culture Hero of Brazil 116

XII. — Leaders and Culture Heroes of Northern

Europe 117

Wali or Skeaf, the Foundling Ancestor of the Angles and Danes 118

Part Vi.— Cosmogony World Building

Cosmogony World Building and The Book of Beginnings 1 1 9 Egg Theory 1 30

Part First. The Moon Marsh The Cradle And The Grave

Chapter I.

In ancient belief creation and all life began upon the reedy shore of the moon — the moon marsh.

The Babylonian Eden was planted in the marsh in imitation of that little white island ring planted upon the shore of the moon sea.

In Japan legend the Creator Asi (the reed) arose from the marsh at the beginning and laid the foundation of the world in the deep.

Athene was the daughter of Poseidon and the Tritonian marsh. (Pausanias: Description of Greece, B. 1, Ch. 14.) Which means the new moon born on the shore of the moon sea or moon marsh.

According to Pindar man was born in the Cephisian marsh ; similar legends exist among the Libyans.

At the birth of Kuvad, the first of the Kushite kings of the Zend, he was found in the reeds of the Lake Kashava, which is the modern Zarah.

In the Popol Vuh of Quiche tradition, the first creation of man took place at Paxil or Cayala — "Land of divided or stagnant waters" (which is the moon marsh). (Bancroft: Pacific Coast Indians, Vol. 2, pp. 716-7.)

io THE ANCIENT CITY

Moses was born there in that reedy marsh; Apollo was born there in that little island of the moon marsh, for which Delos is substituted to gratify the vanity of the Greeks.

"He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters." (Psalms 18:16.)

Isis, the Egyptian Goddess, fled from the snares of her pursuer Typhon to the island of Chebi (the Greek Chemmis). There she brought forth her son Horus, surnamed Nub "the Golden," in the marshes of Buto in Lower Egypt.

That "berry child" born of Mary the Finland virgin, who fled from her and was found among the reeds and rushes. (Kalevala, Rune 50.)

According to Pausanias, Dionysus descended to Hades to bring up Semele by the way of the Alcyonian marsh, and that it was at a reed bed where Narcissus beheld his own image and died.

In the 157th chapter of the Book of the Dead, the chapter reads: "Isis has come, she has gone round about the towns; she has sought out the hidden places of Horus in his coming out from the swamp of papyrus reeds. He has stood against evil, he has come into the divine boat; he has commanded the princes of the world; he has made a great fight."

That marsh in winter was haunted by water demons and evil spirits. It was there Odysseus encountered the swine herd upon his return home, for there the swine wallowed in the moon marsh.

There dwelt the fen wolf, and were wolf and the marsb wolf Grendel in the epic of Beowulf.

It was there Sigurd dug the pit and slew the serpent Fafnir.

They were the slime pits of Sodom, where Sodom was swallowed up and only the little island of Zoar left, which is the island of the new moon on which is built the new city of Spring, for the lunar scene is brought down to the marshes of Sodom.

THE ANCIENT CITY n

"A most strange creature will come, From the sea marsh of Rhianedd, As a punishment of iniquity on Maelgwn Gwynedd, His hair and his teeth and his eyes being as gold." It is the wild boar coming from the marsh at midsummer to root up the summer garden — it is the first ring of the midsummer moon. (Guest's Mabinogion, p. 503.)

THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND AND THE QUAGMIRE OF HELL.

Chapter II

In the ancient Welsh song "The Pacification of Lludd" (Davies' Mythology of the British Druids) we read: "The King is not ensnared as inexpert; he directs with his speech that the quadrangular swamp should be set in order by wayfaring torches against the arrogant leader in whose presence there was a spreading flame."

That quadrangular inclosure is the square garden, the sacred garden, representing the square made by connecting the four cardinal points of the compass; that garden of Eden planted upon the moon and represented upon the earth as a sacred islet contiguous to the shore of a chosen bay or lake.

At the celebration of the May festival by the British Druids, the moon ark was represented as coming from her long sea voyage, or again as a sunken ship raised, and is about to enter the harbor of the new moon bay when was chanted:

"A holy sanctuary there is exalting itself on high; the small reeds with joined points declare its praise; fair in its borders the first points shoot forth."

It is the arrival of the new moon of Spring and the ark is called the avanc or beaver, for like the beaver it was amphibious and dwells part of the time below and part of the time above the waters.

At this festival the ark of the god Hu was drawn out of the swamp or marsh by the sacred bulls. It was the same ark of the Israelites drawn over by cows from the land of the Philistines, its place of winter bondage. It is the ark of Noah and the ark of Jason. In the Druidical account the car is drawn out of the marsh by bulls.

Songs of the British Bards of the Fifth and Sixth Century from Davies' Mythology of the British Druids. Song No. 14 Appendix. The scene is at the celebration of the Spring festival when the Easter moon or first new moon of Spring was pulled up from the marsh or shallow water on the shore by oxen in mimic representation.

"In the presence of the blessed ones before the great assembly, before the occupiers of the holm where the house was recovered from the swamp surrounded with crooked horns and crooked swords in honor of the mighty king of the plains."

It was the house of the beaver or avanc drawn up on a

little islet called a holm, for the moon was likened to an avanc

or amphibious beaver half the time submerged or in the water.

When the train was moving in circular dance and singing

in cadence with garlands upon their brows.

Loud was the clattering of shields, and frantic was the mirth round the ancient caldron, gashing their thighs, red with the blood of sacrifice; for the serpent's egg had been "snatched" over the ford that "involved ball resplendent with rays," which is the first ring of the Spring moon, the froth of the moon serpents.

It was there in the pit of conflict the raven in his wrath pierced the bull — this bull represented the god.

The sun and moon, or summer and winter, were represented as two bulls.

In the after summer the sun bull as a Sigurd the Volsung, is slain in the west. And at the end of winter the moon bull is slain in the eastern pit of conflict as Gunnar the Niblung — they are the two brothers — Sun and Moon.

Holm is an islet in the river or by the shore; the serpent's egg is the first new moon of Spring likened to froth produced by the friction of the black ball of the moon serpents; the same as the amrita produced by the churning of the moon waters by the Hindu serpent Vasuki, to produce the "immortal" water of life or Soma — the same Phallic blood of the wounded Saturn which produced Venus, the new moon ring.

The above froth of the serpent's spittle is the same spittle of the Norse gods and demons, who all spat in a jar and produced the elixir of wisdom personified as the god Kvaser.

In this moon marsh of the British Druids, stands the tall priest crane, which is the new moon, the priest of the moon altar, who is referred to in the Eddas. He is the Melchizedek or priest king who came out to meet Abraham on his return from the wars; he is the high priest of the moon altar, the first new moon of Spring after the winter war.

In New Zealand he is called Maui "the swamp hen," "long-legged one" and "Lord of the marsh." (Clark's Maori Tales, p. 54.)

And this is no corruption of the patriarchal religion at all, as both are different stages of growth and variation of the old lunar and sepent worship.

It was the same swamp filled with serpents that Siegfried burned and tried out a lake of fat, which is the little lake of the new moon on one rim of the black moon forest.

The same stymphalian marsh where Hercules shot the stymphalian birds, and the same Lernaen marsh where Hercules killed the Hydra, the water beast that abode in the marsh, and came out on the land and killed cattle and ravaged the country; it had nine heads, and one of them immortal, and as i 4 THE ANCIENT CITY

fast as one head was crushed, there grew two in its place. It is the head of the moon crushed, and the light or fire put out; then there springs up a new moon with two forks or heads, and one head is immortal — that immortal ring that can never die, but phoenix-like rises from the moon ashes and appears as the new moon ring on the bed of the cold slacked ashes.

The little sacred island of Avallen or apple orchard at Somerset, England, where stood the Tor of Glastonbury, was originally in a marsh which has since been drained.

It was an ancient seat of worship in prehistoric times, and in the neighboring banks are found the remains of lake dwellings; it was called by the old Britons "the island of apples" and the "Glassy Island." Celtic romance gathered around the old religious site, and there at Glastonbury Arthur was buried, and by tradition; there Joseph of Arimathea planted his staff made from Christ's crown of thorns which grew two trunks from a single root — which are the two prongs of the new moon.

In the British Mythology of Davies: Hell was a quagmire, and it was from this mire the avanc or sacred ark of the Britons was drawn by oxen, as the ark of Israel was drawn by cows every Spring.

"And lest I sink adhesive to the quagmire of that multitude which peoples the depths of hell, I will tremble before the covering stone with the sovereign of boundless dominion."

The black stone of the moon lay over the depths of the underworld as a trap door ; when one lifted that they entered the lower world and the dead were placed in a stone chest and a flat stone placed over them; they are still to be seen in the churchyards of a century ago; they are the covering stones of vaults.

In that marsh was the covering stone over the quagmire of Hell. (Davies' Mythology of British Druids, p. 571.)

In the Babylonian penitential Psalms, we find: "Lord, cast not down thy servant; He sinks in the waters of the swamp; Grasp thou his hand."

That may be the man of the Aztec exodus seen in a boat on the marsh with hands lifted up as in supplication.

MARSH BUILDING ON THE MOON AND EMIGRATION LEGENDS.

Chapter III

"Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over, that they turn not again to cover the earth." (Psalms: Ch. IV:3-9.)

(The beams are the pillars of the moon that restrain the waters and protect the earth from the flood.)

The oldest Athenian sanctuary of Dionysus stood in the marsh of Dimnai. (Anthon and Ency. Brit.)

Dodona, the most ancient shrine of the Greeks, was surrounded by marshes and produced oracles by the vibrations of a caldron when struck with a whip, the lash of which consisted of three chains; the walls were composed of many caldrons.

THE STORY OF THE SPENDTHRIFT.

As the spendthrift entered the gate of a city, a proclamation was being made that any one who would build a palace of gold with golden stairs in the middle of the sea in the course of one night, should have half the kingdom and the king's daughter in marriage, but failure would be punished with death. (Wide Awake Stories, p. 199.)

It is the shining palace of the new moon built in the black waters of the moon sea in one night, which is the first night of the new moon.

About 1325 the Aztecs settled on the marshy shore of the west side of the Lake of Mexico on the swamp Tlalcocomocco; here they came upon a stone upon which, according to tradition, a certain prince named Copil had been sacrificed by a Mexican priest forty years before, and from this stone had sprung a nopal tree. And at the time the advance guard of the Mexican settlers arrived in sight of the tree, an eagle was seen sitting in the top holding a serpent in his beak — which is the dark moon holding the new moon ring or serpent in his mouth.

A priest then divinely inspired dived into the pool near the stone and there had an interview with the god of the waters, who allowed the people to settle upon the spot by paying a yearly tax.

A priest had been previously told in a dream to search for a nopal tree growing out of a stone in the lake with an eagle in the top holding a serpent in his mouth, and there the City of Mexico was founded, and in the centre of a square having four sides and where four roads met at right angles, for in the ancient time cities were built around the temple, and the priesthood took auguries and omens and went before the people and marked out the site of the city according to astronomical observations, and the settlement was built around a central inclosure which was reserved for the seat of the gods.

In Lord Kingsboro's Antiquities of Mexico (Vol. 4) is shown a symbolical representation of the Mexican migration from Aztlan. It is a marshy lake, and from the water rises up a tree, and upon the tree stands a dove delivering tidings to a band of pilgrims standing fronting in file. A hand and part of a forearm stretches up from the water holding a plant. A bird's head also is seen emerging and two human heads, and nearby is a canoe afloat which contains a naked person lying upon his back, with arms stretched upward as if in supplication.

LEGEND OF CARTMEL CHURCH AND AZTEC EMIGRATION.

(See Lancashire Folk-Lore by Hartland for Legend of Cartmel Church.)

"Six hundred years ago some monks came over to Lancashire from another country, and finding all this part of the kingdom covered with wood resolved to build a monastery in some part of Cartmel Forest ; and in their rambles they found a hill of prospect and prepared to build a church on the summit, and a voice cried out upon the air and forbade them to build upon the summit, but to choose a valley between two rivers, where the one runs north and the other south. And after long search they came upon the two rivers and placed the church midway between the two streams, upon a little island of hard ground in the midst of a morass, which they dedicated to St. Mary, and then built a small chapel on the hill of the voice which they dedicated to St. Bernard.

The new moon ring is the voice that cried out, and the church is the brown hall of the moon built in the hollow between its forks or two golden streams.

And mind, a temple was built on an island in the Tiber, dedicated to the sacred serpent of Epidaurus, where the reptile had disappeared among the reeds. (See Aesculapius in Antrum's Dictionary.)

In the Chichimec period there occurred a division of the Aztecs into Mexicans and Tlatelulcas brought about by a quarrel between priests and nobles, and the nobles were driven out and their new location was miracuously pointed out by a whirlwind which directed them to a sandy point among the reeds of the lake where they found a shield, an arrow, and a coiled serpent, which was considered a most favorable augury, and a settlement was obtained from the Tepanec king on the i8 THE ANCIENT CITY

condition of a yearly tribute. (Bancroft: Pacific Coast Indians, Vol. 5, p. 357.)

When the church of Delve in North Ditmarschen was to be built, the people, being unable to decide on a site, caused an image of the virgin to be tied on a pied mare, which they let run whithersoever she would, and wherever the mare was found there the temple should be erected, and the next morning the mare was found in a marshy spot thickly overgrown with thorns and underwood, and the place was cleared and the church built. (Thorpe: Vol. 3, p. 3.)

The pied mare is the moon with the image of the new moon or virgin; the moon mare runs to the meeting place of sun and moon, and there at the stopping place the sun erects the tall church steeple on the marshy shore of the moon on the evening of the third day.

The moon is still called the mare, as the sun was the horse; her name comes from Mare (the sea), the origin of our name Mary, who was the ancient moon sea, the mother of all things, and begat all the solar children, the wise men and redeemers.

THE MARSH REED— THE NEW MOON ROD AS THE SACRED REED— THE WINTER OMEN.

Chapter IV

A reed was one of the four signs of the Aztec year, and ci bundle of reeds stood for a cycle of 52 years, the number of weeks in a year.

Tezcatlipoca, the evil enemy of Quetzalcoatl, let himself down by a rope twined from a spider's web to a place called Tulla, the land of the Tulas or reeds, where they played a game of ball for the kingdom. (Bancroft's Pacific Coast -Indians, Vol. 3, p. 239.)

The Peruvian Indians were found buried with reeds by their sides, and rush mats were found over mummies.

In that thicket of reeds the boar lay in ambush to slay Idmon the Seer and Adonis at the summer solstice. ( Argonautica : B. 2nd, p. 81.)

Ea, the God of the sea who provided a way of escape for the Babylonian Noah, confided his warning to a hedge of reeds. Shamashnapishtim heard the address from the field of reeds to flee for his life and take refuge upon the sea.

"Reed-bed, O reedbed; Frame, O frame; O man of Shurippak, son of Ubara-Tutu. Frame the house! Build a ship! Leave what thou canst — seek life."

It was the reed that whispered the secret of the long ears of Midas to the world, for it was the voice of wisdom from the deep, the prophet of winter.

The reed was the emblem of winter, and was put in the hand of Christ to show that the summer reign was over.. It was put in the hand of Prometheus in winter, but in Spring he brought down the fire from the sun in that hollow reed or horn of the moon.

The reed pipe belonged to the shepherd race of winter, who were of the lunar race, and their reed pipe was inferior to that of the golden lyre of summer; and that is how Pan, the god of shepherds, ventured to set his reed music in opposition to the summer lyre of Apollo and was overcome, and how Midas the moon was cursed with long ears for an adverse decision to Apollo; for Midas was the moon, and that was how the moon became cursed with his long ears, which is the long ring of the new moon turned up in two long ears which the monarch endeavored to conceal; but the secret was discovered by his valet or barber, who finding it difficult to conceal, dug a hole in the ground, in which he buried the secret; but the reeds grew up upon the spot and whispered the secret to the winds, for the words secreted in the dark hole of the moon at the conjunction with the sun, can only be kept for three days while the sun and moon cross tracks every month, for on the third evening the secret is revealed in the long ears of the ass, or first ring of the moon ; for the ass was the symbol of winter, and carried the winter god, as the horse was the beast of the summer sun.

That is why Christ rode on an ass, and why the winter ass carried the Holy Family to Egypt in winter exile; Midas as the winter satyr and reed god vied with Apollo the summer sun in the same way, and was flayed alive or lost his robe.

And the king's barber saw the ears of Midas; he it is who shaves the head of the sun, like the bald Elijah and Samson shorn of his strength in sheep-shearing time; and the barber buried the secret at the foot of a cluster of bullrushes in the moon marsh, but the moon cast it up on the third day as it did Jonah, for no secret can be held there for more than three days.

The rod of generation in Spring has become a hollow, barren reed, the same reed in which Prometheus will bring down fire again in Spring, and in these hollow reeds of the marsh the cradle of the water child Moses will be found afloat, and the land raised and the marsh drained by the sun god Hercules; the Hydra slain and the city rebuilt in the marsh of the moon waters — the Bulrush is under the dominion of Saturn.

In the judgment world of the Egyptians, Ani kneels before the god Horus upon a reed mat, and the throne upon which Osiris sits is placed upon reed mats. (British Museum Papyrus, No. 10,471.)

The first cemeteries of Busiris and of Mendes were called the "Meadow of Reeds" and the "Meadow of Rest;" they were secluded among the marshes of sandy islets where they were safe from inundation.

Very anciently in the Egyptian belief the souls of the dead Went to the other world by a ladder through a gap in the mountains of Abydos, and their destination was Sekhet Aaru — "the field of reed plants" and "field of peace" in the north of Egypt.

They had been born and cradled on the river among the reeds, and when life was done went back to the reedy land.

In Jewish sacrifice a hollow reed was cut for the ashes of the red heifer, and the red heifer was bound with a rope of bullrushes. (Barclay's Talmud.)

In Chaldaean magical texts and incantations, are found: "The huge reed of gold, the pure reed of the marsh"; "the pure dish of the gods"; "the reed of the double white cup which determines favor, the messenger of Merodach am I." (Sayce: Religion of Ancient Babylon, p. 466.)

Rushes in former times were strewed in banquet halls and churches in place of carpet and used ceremonially. The rushes were brought in a rush cart drawn by twenty or thirty men decked with ribbons ; then followed a religious ceremony, when hymns were sung.

Among the ancient Hindus the altar was spread with the Kusa or sacred rushes, and on this was poured the libation of soma, and the fire lighted while the priests chanted sacred hymns.

The pipe reeds which grew about Lake Orchomenus were cut at the rising of Arcturus. (Pliny: B. 16, Ch. 66.)

Quetzalcoatl, the culture god of the Toltecs, was born of a virgin in the reedy marsh of Tula, the land of reeds. (Lord Kingsboro's Antiquities: Vol. 6, pp. 175, 176.) Like the Egyptian Horus and the Hebrew Moses.

The word tula is common on the Pacific coast, California and Mexico, for reed, and the name tula found in Central Russia, and the sign of the solar month in Hindu, which corresponds to the sign of Libra, is Tula (a reed). Libra the Balance is the autumnal sign where the sun was weighed in the balance.

Put a reed in his right hand (Mark 15:19) ; Sponge on a reed (Mark 15:36).

"There was given me a reed like unto a rod." (Rev. 11:1).

That is the reed in which Prometheus brought fire.

According to the traditions of the Quiches, they came from Tulan; there were several by this name — one in the region of the setting sun, and over the sea by several migrations, and in their exodus complained of the extreme cold, the long dark night, and the barren country. ("America" Britannica, pp. 704, 705.)

According to traditions of Guatemala, they refer to a colony from Tulapan.

There is a river Tule of California; also a lake called Tulare, which may be allied to Tulle, a town in France.

See Tulisa, the name of the moon maiden in the Hindu tale of the Woodcutter's Daughter.

And all these tales of Marsh settlements hark back to the reedy shores of the moon lake, the imaginary home of their ancestors.

The Toltecs came from Tollam and entered the valley of Mexico in the Seventh Century, and built their capital, Tollam.

Aztec, Quiche, and Gautemalan emigrations and expeditions all speak of the country variously spelled as Tulan and Tollan — "Land of Reeds," and the coarse reeds growing around the lagoons of Mexico and California are still called Tulas.

Island of Thule, the ultima of Greek legend, which has various northern locations by Pytheas, who states that its climate was neither earth, air nor sea, but a chaotic confusion of these three elements; which would agree well with the ideas of the ancients in regard to the mysterious nature of the moon marsh likened to the reedy marsh of their own settlements.

Chapter I

The first building of the ancient city occurred in Gemini, the Zodiacal sign of the twins more than six thousand years ago, reckoning back by the precession of the equinoxes and the first city of Babylonia.

The sacred city of Eridu was built at the mouth of the Euphrates more than six thousand years ago, reckoning by the present rate of the river drift, and built in the sign of Gemini, called by the Chaldaeans "Sivan" or the month of "brick laying."

These twin builders are in substance sun and moon; they occur as Cain and Abel, and Romulus and Remus, and Simeon and Levi in Jacob's blessing. (Genesis 49:5, 6.)

The moon is fairyland, and the sun and moon are the castle builders of the sky.

The black giants build the black moon, but the royal arch mason alone, that god of light, can set the keystone of the arch, which is the ring of the new moon.