The Antediluvian World

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> The Antediluvian World

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Sanchoniathon claims that the learning of Egypt, Greece, and Judaea was
derived from the Phoenicians. It would appear probable that, while other
races represent the conquests or colonizations of Atlantis, the
Phoenicians succeeded to their arts, sciences, and especially their
commercial supremacy; and hence the close resemblances which we have
found to exist between the Hebrews, a branch of the Phoenician stock,
and the people of America.

Upon the Syrian sea the people live
Who style themselves Phoenicians. . . .
These were the first great founders of the world--
Founders of cities and of mighty states--
Who showed a path through seas before unknown.
In the first ages, when the sons of men
Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned
To each his first department; they bestowed
Of land a portion and of sea a lot,
And sent each wandering tribe far off to share
A different soil and climate. Hence arose
The great diversity, so plainly seen,
'Mid nations widely severed.

Dyonysius of Susiana, A.D. 3.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GOD ODIN, WODEN, OR WOTAN.

In the Scandinavian mythology the chief god was Odin, the Woden, Wotan,
or Wuotan of the Germans. He is represented with many of the attributes
of the Greek god Zeus, and is supposed by some to be identical with him.
He dwelt with the twelve AEsir, or gods, upon Asgard, the Norse Olympus,
which arose out of Midgard, a land half-way between the regions of frost
and fire (to wit, in a temperate climate). The Scandinavian Olympus was
probably Atlantis. Odin is represented as a grave-looking elderly man
with a long beard, carrying in his hand a spear, and accompanied by two
dogs and two ravens. He was the father of poetry, and the inventor of
Runic writing.

The Chiapenese of Central America (the people whose language we have
seen furnishing such remarkable resemblances to Hebrew) claim to have
been the first people of the New World. Clavigero tells us ("Hist.
Antiq. del Messico," Eng. trans., 1807, vol. i.) that according to the
traditions of the Chiapenese there was a Votan who was the grandson of
the man who built the ark to save himself and family from the Deluge; he
was one of those who undertook to build the tower that should reach to
heaven. The Lord ordered him to people America. "He came from the
East." He brought seven families with him. He had been preceded in
America by two others, Igh and Imox. He built a great city in America
called "Nachan," City of the Serpents (the serpent that tempted Eve was
Nahash), from his own race, which was named Chan, a serpent. This Nachan
is supposed to have been Palenque. The date of his journey is placed in
the legends in the year 3000 of the world, and in the tenth century B.C.
He also founded three tributary monarchies, whose capitals were Tulan,
Mayapan, and Chiquimala. He wrote a book containing a history of his
deeds, and proofs that he belonged to the tribe of Chanes (serpents). He
states that "he is the third of the Votans; that he conducted seven
families from Valum-Votan to this continent, and assigned lands to them;
that he determined to travel until he came to the root of heaven and
found his relations, the Culebres, and made himself known to them; that
he accordingly made four voyages to Chivim; that he arrived in Spain;
that he went to Rome; that he saw the house of God building; that he
went by the road which his brethren, the Culebres, had bored; that he
marked it, and that he passed by the houses of the thirteen Culebres. He
relates that, in returning from one of his voyages, he found seven other
families of the Tzequil nation who had joined the first inhabitants, and
recognized in them the same origin as his own, that is, of the Culebres;
he speaks of the place where they built the first town, which from its
founders received the name of Tzequil; he affirms that, having taught
them the refinement of manners in the use of the table, table-cloths,
dishes, basins, cups, and napkins, they taught him the knowledge of God
and his worship; his first ideas of a king, and obedience to him; that
he was chosen captain of all these united families."

It is probable that Spain and Rome are interpolations. Cabrera claims
that the Votanites were Carthaginians. He thinks the Chivim of Votan
were the Hivim, or Givim, who were descended of Heth, son of Canaan,
Phoenicians; they were the builders of Accaron, Azotus, Ascalon, and
Gaza. The Scriptures refer to them as Hivites (Givim) in Deuteronomy
(chap. ii., verse 32), and Joshua (chap. xiii., verse 4). He claims that
Cadmus and his wife Hermione were of this stock; and according to Ovid
they were metamorphosed into snakes (Culebres). The name Hivites in
Phoenician signifies a snake.

Votan may not, possibly, have passed into Europe; he may have travelled
altogether in Africa. His singular allusion to "a way which the Culebres
had bored" seems at first inexplicable; but Dr. Livingstone's last
letters, published 8th November, 1869, in the "Proceedings of the Royal
Geographical Society," mention that "tribes live in underground houses
in Rua. Some excavations are said to be thirty miles long, and have
running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them. The
'writings' therein, I have been told by some of the people, are drawings
of animals, and not letters; otherwise I should have gone to see them.
People very dark, well made, and outer angle of eyes slanting inward."

And Captain Grant, who accompanied Captain Speke in his famous
exploration of the sources of the Nile, tells of a tunnel or subway
under the river Kaoma, on the highway between Loowemba and Marunga, near
Lake Tanganyika. His guide Manua describes it to him:

"I asked Manua if he had ever seen any country resembling it. His reply
was, 'This country reminds me of what I saw in the country to the south
of the Lake Tanganyika, when travelling with an Arab's caravan from
Unjanyembeh. There is a river there called the Kaoma, running into the
lake, the sides of which are similar in precipitousness to the rocks
before us.' I then asked, 'Do the people cross this river in boats?'
'No; they have no boats; and even if they had, the people could not
land, as the sides are too steep: they pass underneath the river by a
natural tunnel, or subway.' He and all his party went through it on
their way from Loowemba to Ooroongoo, and returned by it. He described
its length as having taken them from sunrise till noon to pass through
it, and so high that, if mounted upon camels, they could not touch the
top. Tall reeds, the thickness of a walking-stick, grew inside, the road
was strewed with white pebbles, and so wide--four hundred yards--that
they could see their way tolerably well while passing through it. The
rocks looked as if they had been planed by artificial means. Water never
came through from the river overhead; it was procured by digging wells.
Manua added that the people of Wambweh take shelter in this tunnel, and
live there with their families and cattle, when molested by the Watuta,
a warlike race, descended from the Zooloo Kafirs.

But it is interesting to find in this book of Votan, however little
reliance we may place in its dates or details, evidence that there was
actual intercourse between the Old World and the New in remote ages.

Humboldt remarks:

"We have fixed the special attention of our readers upon this Votan, or
Wodan, an American who appears of the same family with the Wods or Odins
of the Goths and of the people of Celtic origin. Since, according to the
learned researches of Sir William Jones, Odin and Buddha are probably
the same person, it is curious to see the names of Bondvar, Wodansday,
and Votan designating in India, Scandinavia, and in Mexico the day of a
brief period." ("Vues des Cordilleras," p. 148, ed. 1810.)

There are many things to connect the mythology of the Gothic nations
with Atlantis; they had, as we have seen, flood legends; their gods
Krodo and Satar were the Chronos and Saturn of Atlantis; their Baal was
the Bel of the Phoenicians, who were closely connected with Poseidon and
Atlas; and, as we shall see hereafter, their language has a distinct
relationship with the tongues of the Arabians, Cushites, Chaldeans, and
Phoenicians.

CHAPTER V.

THE PYRAMID, THE CROSS, AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

No fact is better established than the reverence shown to the sign of
the Cross in all the ages prior to Christianity. We cannot do better
than quote from an able article in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1870,
upon this question:

"From the dawn of organized Paganism in the Eastern world to the final
establishment of Christianity in the Western, the Cross was undoubtedly
one of the commonest and most sacred of symbolical monuments; and, to a
remarkable extent, it is so still in almost every land where that of
Calvary is unrecognized or unknown. Apart from any distinctions of
social or intellectual superiority, of caste, color, nationality, or
location in either hemisphere, it appears to have been the aboriginal
possession of every people in antiquity--the elastic girdle, so to say,
which embraced the most widely separated heathen communities--the most
significant token of a universal brotherhood, to which all the families
of mankind were severally and irresistibly drawn, and by which their
common descent was emphatically expressed, or by means of which each and
all preserved, amid every vicissitude of fortune, a knowledge of the
primeval happiness and dignity of their species. Where authentic history
is silent on the subject, the material relics of past and long since
forgotten races are not wanting to confirm and strengthen this
supposition. Diversified forms of the symbol are delineated more or less
artistically, according to the progress achieved in civilization at the
period, on the ruined walls of temples and palaces, on natural rocks and
sepulchral galleries, on the hoariest monoliths and the rudest statuary;
on coins, medals, and vases of every description; and, in not a few
instances, are preserved in the architectural proportions of
subterranean as well as superterranean structures, of tumuli as well as
fanes. The extraordinary sanctity attaching to the symbol, in every age
and under every variety of circumstance, justified any expenditure
incurred in its fabrication or embellishment; hence the most persistent
labor, the most consummate ingenuity, were lavished upon it. Populations
of essentially different culture, tastes, and pursuits--the
highly-civilized and the demi-civilized, the settled and nomadic--vied
with each other in their efforts to extend the knowledge of its
exceptional import and virtue among their latest posterities. The
marvellous rock-hewn caves of Elephanta and Ellora, and the stately
temples of Mathura and Terputty, in the East, may be cited as
characteristic examples of one laborious method of exhibiting it; and
the megalithic structures of Callernish and Newgrange, in the West, of
another; while a third may be instanced in the great temple at Mitzla,
'the City of the Moon,' in Ojaaca, Central America, also excavated in
the living rock, and manifesting the same stupendous labor and ingenuity
as are observable in the cognate caverns of Salsette--of endeavors, we
repeat, made by peoples as intellectually as geographically distinct,
and followers withal of independent and unassociated deities, to magnify
and perpetuate some grand primeval symbol. . . .

"Of the several varieties of the Cross still in vogue, as national or
ecclesiastical emblems, in this and other European states, and
distinguished by the familiar appellations of St. George, St. Andrew,
the Maltese, the Greek, the Latin, etc., etc., there is not one among
them the existence of which may not be traced to the remotest antiquity.
They were the common property of the Eastern nations. No revolution or
other casualty has wrought any perceptible difference in their several
forms or delineations; they have passed from one hemisphere to the other
intact; have survived dynasties, empires, and races; have been borne on
the crest of each successive wave of Aryan population in its course
toward the West; and, having been reconsecrated in later times by their
lineal descendants, are still recognized as military and national badges
of distinction. . . .

Among the earliest known types is the crux ansata, vulgarly called 'the
key of the Nile,' because of its being found sculptured or otherwise
represented so frequently upon Egyptian and Coptic monuments. It has,
however, a very much older and more sacred signification than this. It
was the symbol of symbols, the mystical Tau, 'the bidden wisdom,' not
only of the ancient Egyptians but also of the Chaldeans, Phoenicians,
Mexicans, Peruvians, and of every other ancient people commemorated in
history, in either hemisphere, and is formed very similarly to our
letter T, with a roundlet, or oval, placed immediately above it. Thus it
was figured on the gigantic emerald or glass statue of Serapis, which
was transported (293 B.C.) by order of Ptolemy Soter from Sinope, on the
southern shores of the Black Sea, re-erected within that famous
labyrinth which encompassed the banks of Lake Moeris, and destroyed by
the victorious army of Theodosius (A.D. 389), despite the earnest
entreaties of the Egyptian priesthood to spare it, because it was the
emblem of their god and of 'the life to come.' Sometimes, as may be seen
on the breast of an Egyptian mummy in the museum of the London
University, the simple T only is planted on the frustum of a cone; and
sometimes it is represented as springing from a heart; in the first
instance signifying goodness; in the second, hope or expectation of
reward. As in the oldest temples and catacombs of Egypt, so this type
likewise abounds in the ruined cities of Mexico and Central America,
graven as well upon the most ancient cyclopean and polygonal walls as
upon the more modern and perfect examples of masonry; and is displayed
in an equally conspicuous manner upon the breasts of innumerable bronze
statuettes which have been recently disinterred from the cemetery of
Juigalpa (of unknown antiquity) in Nicaragua."

When the Spanish missionaries first set foot upon the soil of America,
in the fifteenth century, they were amazed to find the Cross was as
devoutly worshipped by the red Indians as by themselves, and were in
doubt whether to ascribe the fact to the pious labors of St. Thomas or
to the cunning device of the Evil One. The hallowed symbol challenged
their attention on every hand and in almost every variety of form. It
appeared on the bass-reliefs of ruined and deserted as well as on those
of inhabited palaces, and was the most conspicuous ornament in the great
temple of Gozumel, off the coast of Yucatan. According to the particular
locality, and the purpose which it served, it was formed of various
materials--of marble and gypsum in the open spaces of cities and by the
way-side; of wood in the teocallis or chapels on pyramidal summits and
in subterranean sanctuaries; and of emerald or jasper in the palaces of
kings and nobles.

When we ask the question how it comes that the sign of the Cross has
thus been reverenced from the highest antiquity by the races of the Old
and New Worlds, we learn that it is a reminiscence of the Garden of
Eden, in other words, of Atlantis.

Professor Hardwicke says:

"All these and similar traditions are but mocking satires of the old
Hebrew story--jarred and broken notes of the same strain; but with all
their exaggerations they intimate how in the background of man's vision
lay a paradise of holy joy--a paradise secured from every kind of
profanation, and made inaccessible to the guilty; a paradise full of
objects that were calculated to delight the senses and to elevate the
mind a paradise that granted to its tenant rich and rare immunities, and
that fed with its perennial streams the tree of life and immortality."

To quote again from the writer in the Edinburgh Review, already cited;

"Its undoubted antiquity, no less than its extraordinary diffusion,
evidences that it must have been, as it may be said to be still in
unchristianized lands, emblematical of some fundamental doctrine or
mystery. The reader will not have failed to observe that it is most
usually associated with water; it was 'the key of the Nile,' that
mystical instrument by means of which, in the popular judgment of his
Egyptian devotees, Osiris produced the annual revivifying inundations of
the sacred stream; it is discernible in that mysterious pitcher or vase
portrayed on the brazen table of Bembus, before-mentioned, with its four
lips discharging as many streams of water in opposite directions; it was
the emblem of the water-deities of the Babylonians in the East and of
the Gothic nations in the West, as well as that of the rain-deities
respectively of the mixed population in America. We have seen with what
peculiar rites the symbol was honored by those widely separated races in
the western hemisphere; and the monumental slabs of Nineveh, now in the
museums of London and Paris, show us how it was similarly honored by the
successors of the Chaldees in the eastern. . . .

ANCIENT IRISH CROSS--PRE-CHRISTIAN--KILNABOY.

"In Egypt, Assyria, and Britain it was emblematical of creative power
and eternity; in India, China, and Scandinavia, of heaven and
immortality; in the two Americas, of rejuvenescence and freedom from
physical suffering; while in both hemispheres it was the common symbol
of the resurrection, or 'the sign of the life to come;' and, finally, in
all heathen communities, without exception, it was the emphatic type,
the sole enduring evidence, of the Divine Unity. This circumstance alone
determines its extreme antiquity--an antiquity, in all likelihood, long
antecedent to the foundation of either of the three great systems of
religion in the East. And, lastly, we have seen how, as a rule, it is
found in conjunction with a stream or streams of water, with exuberant
vegetation, and with a bill or a mountainous region--in a word, with a
land of beauty, fertility, and joy. Thus it was expressed upon those
circular and sacred cakes of the Egyptians, composed of the richest
materials-of flour, of honey, of milk--and with which the serpent and
bull, as well as other reptiles and beasts consecrated to the service of
Isis and their higher divinities, were daily fed; and upon certain
festivals were eaten with extraordinary ceremony by the people and their
priests. 'The cross-cake,' says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 'was their
hieroglyph for civilized land;' obviously a land superior to their own,
as it was, indeed, to all other mundane territories; for it was that
distant, traditional country of sempiternal contentment and repose, of
exquisite delight and serenity, where Nature, unassisted by man,
produces all that is necessary for his sustentation."

And this land was the Garden of Eden of our race. This was the Olympus
of the Greeks, where

"This same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The buds to harden and the fruits to grow."

In the midst of it was a sacred and glorious eminence--the umbilicus
orbis terrarum--"toward which the heathen in all parts of the world, and
in all ages, turned a wistful gaze in every act of devotion, and to
which they hoped to be admitted, or, rather, to be restored, at the
close of this transitory scene."

In this "glorious eminence" do we not see Plato's mountain in the middle
of Atlantis, as he describes it:

"Near the plain and in the centre of the island there was a mountain,
not very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of the
earth-born primeval men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and he
had a wife named Leucippe, and they had an only daughter, who was named
Cleito. Poseidon married her. He enclosed the hill in which she dwelt
all around, making alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller,
encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water . . .
so that no man could get to the island. . . . He brought streams of
water under the earth to this mountain-island, and made all manner of
food to grow upon it. This island became the seat of Atlas, the
over-king of the whole island; upon it they built the great temple of
their nation; they continued to ornament it in successive generations,
every king surpassing the one who came before him to the utmost of his
power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size and
beauty. . . . And they had such an amount of wealth as was never before
possessed by kings and potentates--as is not likely ever to be again."

The gardens of Alcinous and Laertes, of which we read in Homeric song,
and those of Babylon, were probably transcripts of Atlantis. "The sacred
eminence in the midst of a 'superabundant, happy region figures more or
less distinctly in almost every mythology, ancient or modern. It was the
Mesomphalos of the earlier Greeks, and the Omphalium of the Cretans,
dominating the Elysian fields, upon whose tops, bathed in pure,
brilliant, incomparable light, the gods passed their days in ceaseless
joys."

"The Buddhists and Brahmans, who together constitute nearly half the
population of the world, tell us that the decussated figure (the cross),
whether in a simple or a complex form, symbolizes the traditional happy
abode of their primeval ancestors--that 'Paradise of Eden toward the
East,' as we find expressed in the Hebrew. And, let us ask, what better
picture, or more significant characters, in the complicated alphabet of
symbolism, could have been selected for the purpose than a circle and a
cross: the one to denote a region of absolute purity and perpetual
felicity; the other, those four perennial streams that divided and
watered the several quarters of it?" (Edinburgh Review, January, 1870.)

And when we turn to the mythology of the Greeks, we find that the origin
of the world was ascribed to Okeanos, the ocean. The world was at first
an island surrounded by the ocean, as by a great stream:

"It was a region of wonders of all kinds; Okeanos lived there with his
wife Tethys: these were the Islands of the Blessed, the gardens of the
gods, the sources of nectar and ambrosia, on which the gods lived.
Within this circle of water the earth lay spread out like a disk, with
mountains rising from it, and the vault of heaven appearing to rest upon
its outer edge all around." (Murray's "Manual of Mythology," pp. 23, 24,
et seq.)

On the mountains dwelt the gods; they had palaces on these mountains,
with store-rooms, stabling, etc.

"The Gardens of the Hesperides, with their golden apples, were believed
to exist in some island of the ocean, or, as it was sometimes thought,
in the islands off the north or west coast of Africa. They were far
famed in antiquity; for it was there that springs of nectar flowed by
the couch of Zeus, and there that the earth displayed the rarest
blessings of the gods; it was another Eden." (Ibid., p. 156.)

Homer described it in these words:

"Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime,
The fields are florid with unfading prime,
From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow.
Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow;
But from the breezy deep the blessed inhale
The fragrant murmurs of the western gale."

"It was the sacred Asgard of the Scandinavians, springing from the
centre of a fruitful land, which was watered by four primeval rivers of
milk, severally flowing in the direction of the cardinal points, 'the
abode of happiness, and the height of bliss.' It is the Tien-Chan, 'the
celestial mountain-land, . . . the enchanted gardens' of the Chinese and
Tartars, watered by the four perennial fountains of Tychin, or
Immortality; it is the hill-encompassed Ila of the Singhalese and
Thibetians, 'the everlasting dwelling-place of the wise and just.' It is
the Sineru of the Buddhist, on the summit of which is Tawrutisa, the
habitation of Sekra, the supreme god, from which proceed the four sacred
streams, running in as many contrary directions.

It is the Slavratta, 'the celestial earth,' of the Hindoo, the summit of
his golden mountain Meru, the city of Brahma, in the centre of
Jambadwipa, and from the four sides of which gush forth the four
primeval rivers, reflecting in their passage the colorific glories of
their source, and severally flowing northward, southward, eastward, and
westward."

It is the Garden of Eden of the Hebrews:

"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put
the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to
grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the
tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge
of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and
from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the
first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah,
where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is
bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon:
the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name
of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east
of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the Lord God took the
man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it."
(Gen. ii., 8-1-5.)

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