Wandering And Wanderers Through The Ages

Wandering And Wanderers Through The Ages Part One by R.E. Prindle This essay will be about the concept of wandering and the wanderer. We will begin about the year -2000 and end up in nineteenth century England. Wandering excludes the nomad who migrates between summer and winter locations on an annual basis. The need to wander as such is a mental ailment, a compulsion, an effort to escape oneself. One leaves an unsatisfactory environment hoping to find satisfaction elsewhere, at least on a temporary basis but one is always drawn back to the home base. Our first example is the Egyptian Pharoah Sesostris I who flourished c. -2000. At some point in his reign he felt the need to wander, gathering up an army, quite an extensive entourage, he decided to wander through Asia toward the East end of the Black Sea in what is now called Georgia. Of course there is no agreement as to why he decided to wander. Why would the Pharoah of Egypt pull up stakes and wander away. Remember he and his army were on foot, walking over a thousand miles one way. This involves, one imagines, several thousand soldiers with animals and camp followers setting up camp at night and breaking camp every morning, marching perhaps only fifteen or twenty miles per day. Egypt would be missing its Pharoah for a minimum of two years, perhaps as much as five. A lot of water passes down the Nile in five years. As you can see this would be quite a story. Put yourself back in the time when the skies were crystal clear and you could see clearly. Mountains seventy miles away would appear would appear much nearer. Imagine Sistrostris amazement as he and his army reached the western end of Anatolia and there right before him was the gorgeous sight of Mount There a couple years before the revolution. Imagine the Aegean sea and blue and twinkling in the sun, dolphins hopping around everywhere. See the amazing hundreds of islands dotting the expanse. Four thousand years ago the sea levels were much lower creeping up to today’s level. Some speculate Sesostris wanted to conquer the world but he wouldn’t have known what the world was or even how extensive Asia was or how many troops he needed. No. My opinion is that the need to wander took over his mind. Sesostris was essentially an explorer. At the time saffron was a very desirable dye substance, the color of royalty only suitable for Pharaohs. No else was allowed to use it. The supply was irregular and uncertain back in Egypt. It was known that it came from far away at the end of an immense sea. As improbable as it may seem such a frivolous reason may very well have been the reason for his wander as well as his need to explore, to see for himself. In any event his trek ended in Colchis in whatis now Georgia. Hopefully he acquired an adequate supply of saffron. He then turned around and marched back the way he came. It is said that there are Egyptian genetic markers common in Georgia today. If so it is probably true that one day Sesostris and his army came marching into town. Having reached his goal it is likely Sesostris set up camp to recuperate for a few months. His soldiers would certainly have set about seducing the Colchian maidens dropping a few markers as they did. Saffron is derived from the stamens of the Saffron crocus. Two or three little reddish strands growing from the center. It takes a thousand three hundred strands to form an ounce, consequently a couple tens of thousands to make a pound. The Egyptians would have needed a little instruction on how to grow and harvest the plants. One assumes that Sesostris bargained for the plants and a few pounds of stamens preferable to stealing them as the Greeks did. Returning then to Egypt after perhaps five years one wonders what state of affairs Sesostris found. Remember what Agamemnon found when he returned to Sparta after being gone for ten years. .2. The Egyptian foray of Sesostris was performed at the beginning of Age of Aries . While the stuff of legend, his wandering must have been absorbed as the triumphs and disasters of Egypt pre-empted its memory. A series of invasions and conquests between Sesostris’ time and the conquest by Alexander, that greatest of wanderers, may have erased the legend from the minds of the Egyptians except for one scholar crawling around the shelves of the library of Alexander. As the empire of Alexander dissolved after his death and the Hellenic general Ptolemy took Egypt as his part of the spoils of Alexander’s wandering, about -300, the Ptolemaic reign that ended with Cleopatra and the coming of the Romans at the dawning of the Age of Pisces, the city of Alexandria on the Nile Delta was the academic capitol of the Age with its Library and scholars. Perhaps searching through the stacks a scholar name Apollodorus of Rhodes may have come upon a record of Sesostris and his journey. Perhaps he read the account or accounts with great interest and the idea of translating it into a Greek myth occurred to him. At any rate he did compose one of the more famous Greek myths, that Jason and the Argonauts in pursuit of the Golden Fleece. The myth was unknown before Apollonius while the myth lacks the genuine feel of Homer’s Iliad or the other Greek myths. It has more of a novelistic feel. Let us assume that the myth was an original creation of Apollodorus. Thus with the account of Sesostris before him he begins to write the story except with Greek heroes. Instead of the desire to obtain the Saffron crocus he changes the story to read that a Golden Fleece is involved. Gold for the color of saffron, a fleece for the wool that saffron would dye golden. Then he has the Fleece stolen from the Greeks by the Colchians. To retrieve the Fleece he concocts the story of the Argonauts and their talking ship, the Argo. He assembles a crew of mythological heroes including Heracles (Roman Hercules). We’re beyond a genuine myth here, this is now fiction. Jason then commands the Argonauts as they begin their perilous row to Colchis. On the way they endure a series of preposterous adventures that bear little or no relation to reality. Arriving at Colchis they learn that the Fleece is placed on the top of a tree heavily guarded as, apparently, there have been numerous attempts to steal it. They steal it while Jason seduces the king’s daughter Medea and takes her along too. Medea is a major figure in Greek mythology, he later story is terrifying. The Argonauts do not return directly home but trace a long geographic circle across the northern shore of the Black Sea, up the Danube to the land of Boreas, the North Wind, in the Alps, down the Adriatic to Libya and back to Greece. This journey represents the geographical claims of the Greeks. This is my idea of a story and not a myth. Apollonius was just an antiquarian scholar writing a novel. Thus Sesostris’ wander survived the two thousand years of the Arien Age and today as we are entering the Aquarian Age the story has survived the entire Piscean Age, not as a novel, but as a genuine myth with a large scholarly following. Endless editions of the novel have been published over he Piscean Age. .3. Keeping within the context of the Arien Age the following will take place mid-Age, that is thirty-six hundred years ago. Today the discussion is all about global warming. The mean temperature of the earth is controlled by the sun and the plane of the ecliptic, that is the tilt of the planet. The last ice age ended sometime in the Age of Leo as the planet turned from cooling to warming. While today the glaciers are all but melted thirty-six hundred years ago they were enormous compared to today’s remnants. Let us bear that in mind. The earth was cooler then. The winter’s were ferocious. At the same time today we believe that sea levels are rising because of the snow melt. If that be true then it is clear that sea levels were probably substantially lower thirty-six hundred years ago, perhaps by several feet or even a couple dozen or so. But, they were lower. It follows that shorelines extended further out to sea. Aries was the defining Age of the following millennia and centuries. The concept of history begins in the fifth century BC in the writings of the Greek historian, Herodotus. Of the time we will be discussing, mid-Age Aries there was no means to record history as history. There was only the human memory that turned memories into mythology. The only records are enshrined in mythology. Natural events can, of course, be historically dated. The major natural event in the Age of Aries is the eruption of the volcano Thera. The eruption is all important. At the transition from the Age of Taurus to Aries the Aryans began their move from Central Asia. From my understanding I place them living in the now Taklamakan Desert on the Northern slopes of the Himalayas. It is my understanding that that existence is enshrined in the myth, or memory trace, of Shambala. As the Aryans came West they passed the North Coast of the Black Sea then turned South into the Greek peninsula gradually making it and the prevailing Minoan Thalassocracy their own. Thus the ancients believed they came from the North rather than the East. By the -seventeen hundreds their occupation of Greece was well in progress while the Asians, or Semites, of the Mediterranean coast noted their intrusion. In myth then a Phoenician king by the name of Agenor decided to pre-empt their invasion while taking care of the competing Minoans at the same time. Naturally the cause of the war had to placed on the victims. So a story was invented that the Minoans envied their religion so that they appropriated it. Mythologically this was told as the Minoan god Zeus disguised as a bull swimming to Phoenicia and seducing the lovely woman Europa, representing the religion, luring her to take a ride on his back which when she did he plunged into the sea and carried her to Crete. This was Agenor’s casus belli. In mythology he had threes sons Sarpedon, Cadmus and Cilix. That is three armies. He sent Sarpedon to Crete, Cadmus to Greek Boeotia and Cilix north to what became Cilicia. Sarpedon was defeated by the Cretans fleeing to Cilicia to join his brother. Cadmus, by a ruse, set the Greeks and native Pelasgians to fighting. When they exhausted themselves in battle he picked up the pieces and ruled them in harmony according to the myth. The seduction of Europa by Zeus places the event sometime in early Aries, possibly in the early -nineteenth century, sometime in the -eighteenth century or late -seventeenth because Zeus was born at the cusp of Taurus and Aries but before the eruption Mount Thera c. -1640. As mentioned Cilix succeeded in placing Cilicia under his rule with the country named after hm. Cilicia was in Southern Anatolia, today’s Turkey as the coast bends sharply to the South. In close association with the Greeks the Cilician Semites adopted the structure of the Aryan religion while retaining a Northwest Semitic, or Hebrew, dialect. NB, note the Northwest Semitic or Hebrew dialect. Now, sometime close to the early part of the -seventeenth century, just to give it a date, say 1630, the volcano Thera blew. While we associate volcanic activity with lava flows, volcanoes differ. Mt. Etna, in Sicily for instance, emits lava flows. Mt. St. Helens in Washington State, USA, blew the top off in a northerly direction, then emitted gas and ash for several days. Thera s that type of volcano but its eruption is believed to have been of a much greater magnitude than St. Helens. St. Helens was somewhat over 9000 feet when it blew, the gases and ash emission wearing away three thousand feet of the mountain so that St. Helens is 6000 feet today. Thera may have been a 15,000 foot volcano. The eruption continued below sea level creating a lagoon surrounded by remants. Today the highest and largest remnant is at an elevation of approximately 2000 feet. At that age, mid-Aries Thera would have been snow capped year round, perhaps as much as the upper five thousand feet. The island which would have been relatively large would have been idyllic, tempering from the heat is summer while in the winter the South side would have been protected from the ferocious North wind, or Bodreas as the Greeks called it. The mountain would have luxuriated with streams and lakes, home to varied wild life as well as human cities, one of which has been excavated. As the southern most island in the Aegean Sea it would have dominated the entrance, a real monitor. The major island of Crete, home to the Minoan civilization. Lay only seventy miles to the South, with the Greek mainland and the Anatolian mainland about a hundred miles distant on either side. Thera would have been part of the Minoan thalassocracy. The island must have been a beautiful sight from Crete and the mainlands. Placed midway between the Greek mainland and Anatolia not to mention the various inhabited islands of the Aegean sea the day Thera blew would definitely have been a notable day. The explosion must have approximated a sonic boom calling everyone’s attention to the mountain. At the same time a huge black column of ash would have risen from the top of the mountain rising quickly out of sight in the stratosphere, with a deafening roar. Within seconds as the ash pushed up, ash would come pouring down. Let me point out that I do have some experience with an eruption of this sort. I lived, and live, in Portland Oregon about seventy miles from St. Helens so I witnessed that memorable event. Fortunately for Portland when the mountain blew the wind was due East thus heading out over Yakima toward Spokane and Idaho. A few days later the wind shifted bringing ash to Portland. The city of Yakima due East of the volcano received eighteen inches of ash while Spokane two hundred some miles further East received six inches. We waited for colorful sunsets but didn’t get them. The city of Portland had a mere dusting, a quarter of an inch yet it brought the city to a standstill and the ash was so fine that it remained in rain gutters, for instance, for years. In the case of Thera the ash fell to a thickness of two hundred feet. Places as distant as Cilicia may have had several feet. Of course, in the twentieth century we had accurate information about the eruption while in mid-Aries people must have been out of their minds with fear, especially as the ash rained down for as much as two weeks or more until the mountain was worn down below sea level. Naturally as the upward pressure of the subterranean gas was expended the land subsided somewhat. I have found no information on how deep the lagoon the eruption formed is but shortly after the gas was expended two little spires erupted. They may not have broken water at the time but later eruptions sent them above lagoon level. The same happened at St. Helens when a spire rose in the caldera. Another example is the caldera of Mount Mazama in Southern Oregon that contains the famous Crater Lake. It too has the afterthought spire. Herodotus had not yet put pen to paper so there was no history of the event. There was no paper. Writing had not yet penetrated Greece so that the only method of reporting the event was a through a myth. The myth could only have been preserved in the memories of bards. It would be interesting to know how it was first composed and imparted to the bards. The myth went something like this: The eruption was a war between the Earth Goddess Gaia and Zeus. As females are the weaker sex Gaia needed a male champion and she surely got one in the character of the fearsome dragon Typhon. It’s interesting that an anagram of Typhon is Python or, the great snake. Snakes being an attribute of the Earth goddess. As the volcano roared and blotted out the sky and sun so Typhon’s assault on Zeus blotted out the sun as it tried to destroy the sky god. Typhon was not someone you wanted after you. He succeeded in destroying Zeus, that is he dismembered Zeus and put the remains in a sack in a cave. This implies that the humans watching this great battle though they were goners. As the eruption diminished and it appeared that Zeus was defeating or had defeated Gaia and Typhon a happy ending was required so the gods Hermes (Mercury in Roman mythology) and Apollo searched out the cave, entered and put Zeus back together again. Things had returned to normal. .4. In order to understand the nature of the eruption of Thera let us take a time trip back three thousand six hundred years in the history of the planet. The time period of the event was formerly assigned to fifteen hundred years before the transition from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pisces. More recent analyses move the date back to about -1600. The more or less exact time can be determined from the history of the Hittites who were located in the middle of Anatolia. Having heard of the eruption of Thera and its obliterating ash the king of the Hittites announced that he wanted to go to the coast to see the damage. I imagine he was talking about Cilicia. This bit tells a couple things: one, the eruption had been going on long enough so that word got to Central Anatolia, probably by refugees, a journey of a week or two. More importantly the sky over Central Anatolia was clear so that the ash was not spreading North even though it was blowing East. Geographically Thera (today known as Santorin or Santorini) is midway between the Greek mainland and Anatolia (today known as Turkey.) The Southeasterly direction might have impacted Egypt but by then the heavier parts would have been deposited. I know nothing of the possible direction of the wind currents. Seventy miles to the South of Thera lay the major island of Crete; the irruption must have been an imposing sight with that amazing whirling column of ash rising nearly out of sight. Thera must have been a largish island rising in all probability to about fifteen thousand feet above sea level. The Aegean Sea is about ten thousand feet deep in the area so we are talking about an enormous foundation perhaps twenty-five thousand feet from foundation to the top. Today the eastern face of the island is a sheer cliff rising near two thousand feet. That can’t be the shape of the island mid-Aries. It must have sloped down to beaches perhaps several miles away. Some sudden submarine subsidence must have sheared from the cliff face probably causing a tidal wave. It must have seemed like the end of the world. Previous to this event the island would have abounded in streams and lakes with abundant flora and fauna. Bear in mind this is thirty-six hundred years ago. The ice age proper ended sometime in the Age of Leo six thousand years earlier. The South side of the island was shielded from the North wind coming down from the Alps while the ice cap of the island tempered the heat of the summers. The island must have been a paradise. As the ash blew East and South there was probably a Zephyr or southwest wind blowing as ash apparently fell on Palestine. Hence the eruption probably occurred in Summer. Standing on Crete, seventy miles away no lava was present as there was no flow. Cretans going about their business would have heard the equivalent of a sonic boom when she blew. Looking up they would have seen a massive black column growing in width that rose straight up into the stratosphere, if they knew what the stratosphere was, probably called it heaven. The eruption was on. The eruption of St. Helens in Washington State was big enough but relatively small compared to Thera. The subterranean gaseous pressure mut have been beyond comprehension. You have to see it to believe it. St. Helens only erupted for four days while Thera went of for at least two weeks. St. Helens only eroded three thousand feet of the mountain lowering its height from approx. nine thousand to six thousand feet. Thera eroded away fifteen thousand feet of mountain to below sea level. This is really astonishing. The whole mountain except for the Eastern slope and a few northern and western islets just disappeared. As the ash column reached the stratosphere it should have flattened out so that ash in lessened amounts would have fallen on the mainland of Greece and the island of Crete. Remember that eighteen inches fell on the city of Yakima from St. Helen’s with no special ill effects. The area mainly affected was the Anatolian mainland extending through Cilicia. Probably two or three feet or several feet may have fallen in the eastern direction but apparently on the coast as the Hittite areas were unaffected. The Cilicians may very well have thought it was the end of the world fleeing North and South. There was no historian in mid-Aries to record the eruption. Herodotus was in the distant future. Even Homer was down the road aways and he worked from traditional memory. But there must have been mythmakers around because an amazing myth exists. It is important to consider the set and setting as the people at this time were intellectually less evolved while being 99.9 per cent illiterate. They had the same intelligence but less knowledge, no geology, no meteorology, little geographical understanding, no psychology as we know it. That being the case the event had to be explained in religious, or mythological terms. Here is how they did it. Aries witnessed the transition from the Matriarchal religious system to the Patriarchal so the myth was cast into a war of the sexes. The Matriarchal was chthonic or earth based while the Patriarchal was astronomical or heavenly. The former was that of the Pelasgian or ‘native’ population and the latter the religion of the invading Aryans. Therefore, the gods must have been angry as they fought to the death. The earth, or chthonic, goddess, Gaia employed her agent Typhon, as physically weaker women need a champion, while the astronomical opponent was the great sky god, Zeus. The monster Typhon being of the earth was probably some great snakelike beast. Perhaps coincidentally Typhon is an anagram of Python. Typhon begins the attack when he and Gaia hurl great columns of earth into the sky attacking Zeus on his throne, that is, blotting out the sun and the beautiful cerulean sky. Zeus fights back valiantly but for a couple of weeks, at least, the sun and sky are obliterated. It looks really bad for Zeus. Zeus himself is said to have had the muscles and tendons disconnected and put In a sack and the sack hidden in a cave on the Anatolian mainland. Thus, the main ash fall was toward the East. All seemed lost until the sky gods Hermes (in Roman mythology, Mercury) and Apollo discovered the cave, emptied the sack and restored Zeus to virility again. By the time that was done the volcano had expended its energy, Zeus reigned again in a clear blue sky and a beaming benevolent sun. It was a close one though. Nor was the Matriarchal/Patriarchal situation resolved. The earth religion governed by the goddess Demeter continued as a secondary religion throughout ancient Greek history while Zeus was perpetually troubled by his consort Hera. At one time Hera led another revolt against Zeus but without a champion like Typhon, Zeus literally hung her out to dry. There must have been consequences to the Theran eruption, especially in Cilicia that took a major hit. Remember that the Cilicians spoke a Northwest Semitic or Hebrew dialect but had assumed the forms of the Aryan religion. In the terror of the eruption bands of them had packed up heading South for a breath of fresh air. While the Aryans externalized their religion emphasizing the outside world, that his developed a scientific mindset, the Semitic Cilicians internalized their religion adopting a magical subjective format. Just as some people were ready to flee Portland to escape the falling ash of St. Helens, at least one or more bands did flee Cilicia. As the Levant was then is a disturbed state there were other wandering bands styled Hebrews roaming about. One had fled Ur of the Chaldees according to Jewish mythology, put up in Padam-Aram for a couple hundred years, left, and were now wandering around trying to find a place. There were other bands about so that the tribes began to agglomerate until twelve bands came together in a loose confederation. This would have been a troublesome disruptive force in Palestine so that to rid themselves of these troublemakers the settled peoples drove them out, that is, there was a ‘famine’, so the tribes drifted South into Egypt which was in turmoil, probably from other peoples displaced by Thera, thus becoming wanderers. All of the proto-Jewish tribes didn’t have to arrive in Egypt at the same time. In fact, the Josephites are said to have arrived first, opening the door for the other tribes to enter Egypt. The Hebrews settled in and were apparently comfortable and happy for nearly four hundred years until an unhappy, troubled Egyptian noble gathered the tribes around him and suggested they head out for greener pastures. In their enthusiasm the tribes fled Egypt but, oh, how they regretted those fat times and the fleshpots of Egypt. The time is now about -1200 in Aries. Now began one of the most incredible stories in the history of the world. The wandering Jews in search of their destiny. .5. The story continues in part two following.