"The Band of Holes also known in Spanish as Monte Sierpe (serpent mountain) or Cerro Viruela (smallpox hill), is a series of about 5,000-6,000 man-sized holes found in the Pisco Valley on the Nazca Plateau in Peru. Local people have no idea who made them or how they were used. Over the years, it has been speculated that they were graves, defensive positions, or storage places. Recent thought is that they were storage pits built during the time of the Inca Empire (1438-1533)." (Wikipedia)
Note: As far as I can tell, these holes are a true archaeological mystery. It doesn't sound like the site has been studied very much and nobody knows what the holes were used for.
"In 2015, archaeologists from UCLA made a brief visit to the site, using photography from drone aircraft to create a detailed map. They speculate that the holes could have been used to measure produce given to the Inca state as tribute; the measurements might have been recorded on Incan khipus and reported to government officials. The archaeologists hope to do further studies to detect pollen or phytoliths [silica structures left by decaying plants] that could tend to confirm this hypothesis." (Wikipedia)
Was Nero the victim of an ancient smear campaign? Of course he was. Just to take one example, the famous story that he set fire to Rome and then played the lyre while watching the city burn is an obvious fabrication.
Here's the Roman historian Suetonius's description of what happened:
"Pretending to be disgusted by the drab old buildings and narrow, winding streets of Rome, he brazenly set fire to the city; and though a group of ex-consuls caught his attendants, armed with tow and blazing torches, trespassing on their property, they dared not interfere. He also coveted the sites of several granaries, solidly built in stone, near the Golden House; having knocked down their walls with siege-engines, he set the interiors ablaze. This terror lasted for six days and seven nights, causing many people to take shelter in monuments and tombs. Nero's men destroyed not only a vast number of apartment blocks, but mansions which had belonged to famous generals and were still decorated with their triumphal trophies; temples, too, vowed and dedicated by the kings, and others during the Punic and Gallic wars -- in fact, every ancient monument of historical interest that had hitherto survived. Nero watched the conflagration from the Tower of Maecenas, enraptured by what he called 'the beauty of the flames'; then put on his tragedian's costume and sang The Sack of Ilium from beginning to end." -- from "Nero", paragraph 38, Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars.
This is an entertaining story, but it's pure fiction. In fact, this account of Nero's crime is so outlandish that it's almost comical.
Just think about it. According to Suetonius and other sources, Nero sent his flunkies out to burn the city because he wanted to clear land to build his Golden Palace, aka the Domus Aurea, a "vast landscaped palace ... in the heart of Rome." (Wikipedia) This would be like an American president sending out his personal staff to burn down the neighborhoods around the White House so he could build a gigantic complex of mansions and pleasure gardens.
Nero's men weren't subtle about their arson, either. If Suetonius is to be believed, they ran completely amok for six days and seven nights, using siege engines to knock down walls and torching apartment blocks and other buildings that were presumably swarming with people. The chaos and panic this would have caused can easily be imagined. That would be bad enough, of course, but Nero also destroyed monuments and tombs and temples and "mansions which had belonged to famous generals."
This wholesale destruction would have attracted some attention, to say the least.
Rome was a big city at the time, but it wasn't that big and Nero's orgy of destruction supposedly went on for an entire week, right out in the open. Everybody would have known what was happening and who was responsible. According to Suetonius, a group of ex-consuls, no less, caught Nero's men setting fires but were afraid to do anything about it. In other words, they knew who the arsonists worked for.
The point is that none of this was a secret. When it was all over, everyone from the patricians in the Roman government to the ordinary plebs on the street would have known that Nero was responsible. He would have been universally condemned, but that isn't what happened:
"The Great Fire of Rome was an urban fire in July of the year AD 64. It caused widespread devastation in the city on 19 July, before being brought under control after six days. Differing accounts [emphasis added] either blame Emperor Nero for initiating the fire or credit him with organizing measures to contain it and provide relief for refugees." Wikipedia.
Why would there be differing accounts of what happened if Suetonius's version of events is correct? Remember, some of Nero's arsonists were supposedly caught in the act. This wasn't a covert operation. If Nero really did order his people to "brazenly" attack and burn his own city, it wasn't exactly deniable.
Nero himself was in Antium when the fire started. According to Wikipedia, "[h]e returned to the city and took measures to bring in food supplies and open gardens and public buildings to accommodate refugees." Curiously, he wasn't lynched on the spot after committing such an atrocity. On the contrary, he was given credit, at least in some sources, for his relief efforts.
Nero, like Caligula, was the victim of an ancient smear campaign, but that doesn't mean he was a particularly good emperor. He wasn't, but even though Rome apparently rejoiced at his death (according to Suetonius), he was still popular with part of the population when he was finally overthrown and murdered during the revolt of Vindex and Galba in 68 AD. Even Seutonius concedes as much:
"...there were people who used to lay spring and summer flowers on his grave for a long time, and had statues made of him, wearing his fringed toga, which they put up on the Rostra; they even continued to circulate his edicts, pretending he was still alive and would soon return to confound his enemies. What is more, King Vologaesus of Parthia, on sending ambassadors to ratify his alliance with Rome, particularly requested the Senate to honor Nero's memory. In fact, twenty years later, when I was a young man, a mysterious individual came forward claiming to be Nero; and so magical was the sound of his name in the Parthians' ears that they supported him to the best of their ability, and only handed him over with great reluctance." -- "Nero," from paragraph 57.
People don't usually put up statues to honor deranged lunatics who attack and burn their own capital cities. For the real story, at least as far as it can be reconstructed, check out The Great Fire of Rome by Stephen Dando-Collins. Highly recommended.
"Seventeen decapitated skeletons dating back about 1,700 years have been discovered in three Roman cemeteries at Knobb's Farm in Cambridgeshire, in the U.K." Source: Live Science.
"Archaeologists who excavated the site think that the people were executed for violating Roman laws. However, scholars not affiliated with the research expressed mixed views about this explanation.
"The cemeteries hold the burials of 52 people, and the 17 decapitated bodies include those of nine men and eight women and all over 25 years of age at time of death, a team of researchers reported in a paper published online May 19 in the journal Britannia. In many cases, the heads of the decapitated individuals were buried beside their feet and pottery was placed where their head normally would have been. Some of the bodies were also placed prone (stomach down) in their graves."
Note: There's a fair amount of confusion in the sources about why these people might have been killed. According to the Daily Mail, they were probably farm slaves executed by Roman overseers "practicing extreme discipline." On the other hand, one of the archaeologists involved with the dig speculated that "the most likely explanation is executions for crimes, with another possibility being ritual practice." According to the Britannia paper, "the decapitations at Knobb's Farm are considered the result of judicial execution. After execution, the bodies were probably interred by friends or family, and their burials included variations of several funeral rites used locally." But other experts interviewed by Live Science "expressed skepticism that Roman law had much to do with the execution of these individuals."
"Lying on the northern outskirts of the city of Cusco in Peru, lies the walled complex of Saksaywaman (Sacsayhuaman). The site is famed for its remarkable large dry stone walls with boulders carefully cut to fit together tightly without mortar ... This precision, combined with the rounded corners of the blocks, the variety of their interlocking shapes, and the way the walls lean inward have puzzled scientists for decades." Source: Ancient Origins (2014).
Note: According to Wikipedia, Saksaywaman was built by the Incas in the 15th century. This seems to be the mainstream consensus.
Saksaywaman is a masterpiece of ancient engineering. According to Wikipedia, "The stones used in the construction of these terraces are among the largest used in any building in pre-Hispanic America. They display a precision of cutting and fitting that is unmatched in the Americas. The stones are so closely spaced that a single piece of paper will not fit between many of the stones." The Ancient Origins article quoted above goes into some detail about how the complex's walls could have been built and how their massive stones might have been transported. The next video describes one theory about how the walls were engineered.
Did the Inca build the intricately fitted stone walls of Sacsayhuaman or were they the work of some earlier "lost civilization?" Both possibilities might be true. The walls show clear signs that they were constructed in different stages over the years, perhaps by different cultures building on top of each other. And there is some reason to believe that the complex was already in existence, at least in some form, when the Incas took over the site. According to Megalith Builders, for instance, sections of the walls were first built by the Killke culture (900 -1200 AD) which lived in the area before the arrival of the Incas in the 13th century.
According to Wikipedia, "Killke culture flourished in highland Peru in the Late Intermediate Period around what is now Cusco. They built the massive fortress, Saksaywaman, during the 12th century [next video]. Later, the fortress was used by the Inca, following their occupation of the region."
Note: the Wikipedia article on the Killke culture contradicts its article on Sacsayhuaman, which says that the complex was built by the Incas. There's a lot of confusion about who the builders actually were in the sources I've seen.
This whole subject is very confusing. For example, Sacsayhuaman was first occupied around 900 AD, according to History Things, four centuries before the Incas conquered the area. The Killke culture, according to Wikipedia, existed between 900 and 1200 AD. If these dates are reliable, they seem to imply that the complex was already in existence in some form when the Killke culture appeared. If that's believable, then it's possible that a civilization even older than the Killke built the first walls. This is pure conjecture, naturally, but it's not completely implausible:
"Sacsayhuamán may still be hundreds or even thousands of years older than the Killke culture. There seems to be no reason why building in the Cuzco and Sacsayhuamán area would have only begun in 1100 AD when megalithic building had begun much earlier in other areas…" -- D.H. Childress, quoted in Ancient Pages.
I like rogue archaeologists like Childress -- they're entertaining, if nothing else -- but after sifting through all these various sources of unknown reliability, I'm guessing that the megalithic walls of Peru were probably built in stages by the Killke culture and the Incas. Like the Mayans and Aztecs, they were master stone-workers and perfectly capable of constructing these spectacular sites. How they did it, though, remains a mystery.
"Sappho of Lesbos (c. 620-570 BCE) was a lyric poet whose work was so popular in ancient Greece, and beyond, that she was honored in statuary and praised by figures such as Solon and Plato. Very little is known of her life and of the nine volumes of her work which were widely read in antiquity only fragments survive. Contrary to popular opinion on the subject, her works were not destroyed by closed-minded Christians seeking to suppress lesbian love poetry but were lost simply through time and circumstance." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
The popular image of Sappho as the "original lesbian" is relatively modern. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (2rd ed. revised), "Her sexual inclinations have occasioned much speculation from antiquity to the present. From Attic comedy onward she was credited with an implausible selection of male lovers. [Emphasis added] She is described as a lover of women only in post-Classical times, and in later European tradition was often regarded as heterosexual." The truth is that hardly anything is known about her personal life or her work other than the fact that she was highly regarded during her time. As for her supposed lesbianism, the truth may have been far different:
"Even Sappho’s sexuality, which for modern readers is the most famous thing about her, has been controversial from the start. However exalted her reputation among the ancient literati, in Greek popular culture of the Classical period and afterward Sappho was known primarily as an oversexed predator — of men. This, in fact, was the ancient cliché about 'Lesbians': when we hear the word today we think of love between women, but when the ancient Greeks heard the word they thought of blow jobs [1]. In classical Greek, the verb lesbiazein — 'to act like someone from Lesbos' — meant performing fellatio, an activity for which inhabitants of the island were thought to have a particular penchant." Source: "Girl, Interrupted," Daniel Mendelsohn, The New Yorker.
[1] "In antiquity ... at least from the 5th century B.C., 'Lesbian' sex referred to fellatio and Sappho figured as a prostitute; the earliest association of Lesbos with female homoeroticism dates to the 2nd century AD." -- Oxford Classical Dictionary.
The strong possibility that Sappho, "the most iconic lesbian poet in history," may have actually been a notorious heterosexual man-eater famous for her blow jobs is absolutely hilarious. If true, it's all too typical of the way real history so often turns out to be the exact opposite of what everybody thinks they know.
"It seems that there was a war leader, whose name we do not know, who defeated the Saxons, checking their advance temporarily ... Eventually the name Arthur adhered to this folk memory, and his list of accomplishments grew. Arthur is in many ways greater because we do not know the truth ..." Source: Britain Express.
"The real Arthur may have been a man named Ambrosius Aurelianus, or perhaps his war leader, who defeated the Saxons in a major battle we know as Mount Badon ... halting their advance for as long as forty years. In the end, however, the superior might and numbers of the Saxons and their allies were too much for the islanders, and Arthur's efforts became little more than a historical footnote. A terrifically romantic and exciting footnote though, for Arthur and his deeds were woven like a silk thread into the fabric of myth and legend in which Celtic storytellers delight."
Did a King Arthur actually exist? As mentioned above, various attempts have been made to connect the legendary king with actual historical figures. For instance, according to a 1998 Archaeology story, "possible evidence of the existence of Arthur, the legendary warrior king, has been found at Tintagel in Cornwall. A Cornish slate with sixth-century engravings was found in July on the eastern terraces of Tintagel on the edge of a cliff overlooking the place traditionally known as Merlin's Cave [see next video for more on Merlin]. It was discovered under broken pottery and glass from the late sixth or seventh centuries during the re-excavations of an area last dug in the 1930s." The evidence here consists of a Latin inscription which may refer to Arthur.
Tintagel is only one of the Arthurian locations proposed over the years. Historic UK has a list of places that have been associated with Camelot, though the consensus is that the legends are entirely fictional. That could be true, but these stories must have come from somewhere. "The King Arthur we know is one of romance, ephemera and myth," according to the Independent (2010). "But is he real? Arthur has been in and out of fashion more than denim: one year his veracity is being argued by every archaeologist in Britain, the next he's ignored or derided."
Video from 2016.
Maybe I'm just a hopeless Romantic, but I like to think that King Arthur actually existed. Despite its implausibility there's a fair amount of documentary evidence to support the idea:
"One school of thought, citing entries in the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) and Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), sees Arthur as a genuine historical figure, a Romano-British leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons some time in the late 5th to early 6th century." (Wikipedia)
"The Historia Brittonum, a 9th-century Latin historical compilation attributed in some late manuscripts to a Welsh cleric called Nennius, contains the first datable mention of King Arthur, listing twelve battles that Arthur fought. These culminate in the Battle of Badon, where he is said to have single-handedly killed 960 men. Recent studies, however, question the reliability of the Historia Brittonum."
Note: I really doubt if King Arthur killed 960 men in battle, but it would be interesting to know how Nennius came up with that specific number, assuming, that is, that the 9th century Welsh monk actually wrote the Historia Brittonum. Some authorities believe he compiled the book from various older sources.
"The other text that seems to support the case for Arthur's historical existence is the 10th-century Annales Cambriae, which also link Arthur with the Battle of Badon. The Annales date this battle to 516–518, and also mention the Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) were both killed, dated to 537–539. These details have often been used to bolster confidence in the Historia's account and to confirm that Arthur really did fight at Badon."
The most well-known account of the Arthurian legend is Le Morte d'Arthur, first published in 1485 and written by Sir Thomas Malory, whoever he was. Several candidates with the same name exist, but he was most likely Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, a soldier, former MP and possible "thief, bandit, kidnapper, and rapist," said to have written the book using French and English sources while he was being held prisoner during the Wars of the Roses.
"'Yahweh came from Sinai' (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalms 68:18). It is in Sinai that Moses first encounters Yahweh; it is back to Sinai that Moses leads Yahweh’s people from Egypt; and it is from Sinai that, two years later, on Yahweh’s order again, Moses sets off with them to conquer a piece of the Fertile Crescent.
"But where is Sinai, with its Mount Horeb [the mountain where God gave Moses the 10 commandments]? Exodus unequivocally places it in the land of Midian ...
"And where is Midian? Greek authors unanimously place it in northwestern Arabia, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba [see map]. Even Paul the Apostle, who spent three years in Arabia, knew that 'Sinai is a mountain in Arabia' (Galatians 4:25). It was not before the 4th century that the biblical Sinai was misplaced in the Egyptian peninsula, probably for geopolitical reasons (Egypt was within the control of the Roman Empire, unlike Arabia, under Persian influence). But placing the biblical Sinai west of the Gulf of Aqaba didn’t make any sense, since that region had always belonged to Egypt (archeology has confirmed it). Why would the Israelites have settled there when chased by the Egyptian army?" Source: "The Arabian Cradle of Zion," by French historian Laurent Guyenot, The Unz Review. Map from World Atlas.
Comment: Whether you agree with Laurent Guyenot in general, he's right about one thing at least. The idea that the biblical Mount Sinai / Mount Horeb is located on the Sinai peninsula doesn't make any sense at all. If the Jews were fleeing Egypt, why would they settle on Egyptian territory? Assuming this is actual history we're talking about here -- a very big assumption -- they would have left Egypt altogether and crossing the Gulf of Aqaba into Arabia would have been a good way to put some distance between them and the pharaoh. If that's what actually happened -- if the real Mount Sinai is in Arabia and not on the Sinai peninsula -- it would overturn centuries of accepted religious doctrine:
"The biblical Mount Sinai is one of the most important sacred places in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. The summit [in Egypt] has a mosque that is still used by Muslims, and a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is 'Moses' cave', where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments." (Wikipedia)
The supposed Mount Sinai in Egypt. Is this just a pile of rocks in the middle of the desert?
I'm not sure how many Christians, Jews and Muslims still accept the idea that Mount Sinai is in Egypt. Some Christians, at least, have come around to the belief that the mountain is in Saudi Arabia and the idea seems to be gaining in popularity. The UNZ Review article quoted above points out the effect this is having on Middle Eastern politics:
"The growing popularization of the Arabian Sinai cannot be unrelated to the NEOM project announced in October 2017 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: a high-tech, ultra-connected, transnational mega city and economic zone, covering 10,230 square-miles (about the size of Massachusetts), which happens to correspond roughly to ancient Midian."
There's a lot that could be said about the Saudis, the NEOM project and the war in Yemen, among other things, but never mind all that. The UNZ Review article is as much about the current politics of the region as it is about the location of the mountain where Moses talked to YHWH, but I'm just interested in the ancient history here. I'm not going to comment one way or another about the political stuff, but I will say that there is something deeply sinister about the Orwellian NEOM smart-city project.
Getting back to where Mount Sinai is actually located, it would be interesting to know if the conventional wisdom has been wrong all these years, but I'm not sure how anybody could prove that this or that pile of granite in the desert is the biblical mountain where Moses received the ten commandments. You would need an ancient map or some kind of non-biblical documentary evidence to do that and nothing of the sort has been discovered as far as I know. But even if the question could be settled conclusively, what difference would it make?
Scholarly interest aside, the importance of all this depends on whether you believe that the Old Testament stories are true. Call me a skeptic, but I don't believe that YHWH appeared on a mountaintop in the form of a burning bush and gave Moses a list of commandments. I don't believe that YHWH exists in the first place and Moses himself is probably a mythological character:
"The modern scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is a mythical figure, and while, as William G. Dever writes, 'a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C.', archaeology cannot confirm his existence. Certainly no Egyptian sources mention Moses or the events of Exodus–Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure." (Wikipedia)
The Exodus itself, the founding myth of the Israelites, probably never happened as well:
"The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel, which formed as an entity in the southern Transjordan region by the 13th century BCE from the indigenous Canaanite culture. There is no evidence that the Israelites were ever enslaved in ancient Egypt or even lived there and scholars broadly agree that the Exodus has no historical basis. There is a widespread agreement that the composition of the Torah or Pentateuch, the biblical books which contain the Exodus narrative, took place in the Middle Persian Period (5th century BCE), although the traditions behind it are older and can be found in the writings of the 8th-century BCE prophets." (Wikipedia)
In light of all this, the question of where Mount Sinai was located seems pretty much irrelevant.
"Researchers have discovered the world's first-known pregnant mummy, dating from the first century in Egypt. The find was unexpected, as inscriptions on the mummy's coffin suggested the remains inside belonged to a male priest, according to a new study." Source: Live Science.
"... The mummy turned out to be the remains of a female who died when she was between 20 and 30 years of age and was about 6.5 to 7.5 months pregnant, based on the circumference of the fetus's head."
Note: Nobody knows how this female mummy ended up in a male priest's coffin, but "it's thought that up to 10% of mummies are found in the 'wrong' coffins, due to illegal excavations and looting, according to the study. What's more, there was damage to the wrappings on the mummy's neck, likely caused by robbers who may have stolen some amulets ..."
I have no idea why tomb robbers would take a mummy out of one coffin and place it another, which is presumably what happened if the looting theory is correct.
"The book relates the development of language to the development of myths, religions, and cultic practices in world cultures. Allegro argues, through etymology, that the roots of Christianity, and many other religions, lay in fertility cults, and that cult practices, such as ingesting visionary plants to perceive the mind of God, persisted into the early Christian era, and to some unspecified extent into the 13th century with reoccurrences in the 18th century and mid-20th century, as he interprets the fresco of the Plaincourault Chapel to be an accurate depiction of the ritual ingestion of Amanita muscaria as the Eucharist. Allegro argued that Jesus never existed as a historical figure and was a mythological creation of early Christians under the influence of psychoactive mushroom extracts such as psilocybin." (Wikipedia)
Fresco showing mushrooms in Plaincourault Chapel, France.
I've made several attempts to read The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross, but it's a difficult book for a layman to understand because it focuses almost exclusively on the etymology of words in ancient languages:
"As a philologist, Allegro analysed the derivations of language. He traced biblical words and phrases back to their roots in Sumerian, and showed how Sumerian phonemes recur in varying but related contexts in many Semitic, classical and other Indo-European languages. Although meanings changed to some extent, Allegro found some basic religious ideas passing on through the genealogy of words. His book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross relates the development of language on our continent to the development of myths, religions and cultic practices in many cultures. Allegro believed he could prove through etymology that the roots of Christianity, as of many other religions, lay in fertility cults; and that cultic practices, such as ingesting hallucinogenic drugs to perceive the mind of god, persisted into Christian times." Source: JohnAllegro.org.
Often referred to as a maverick, Allegro was actually a diligent scholar whose book The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth is a brilliant piece of work on the beliefs of the Essenes and the possible origins of the early Christian communities which seemed to appear so suddenly in the ancient Mediterranean world. Highly recommended. I don't claim to be able to follow his linguistic arguments in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, but the idea that the origins of Christianity and Judaism can be traced back to prehistoric fertility cults doesn't seem all that outlandish to me. In fact, it seems pretty likely.
Allegro sometimes said, in interviews, that Jesus was a mushroom and that Christianity was originally a cover for a secret mushroom cult. He apparently meant that literally, but I think the real message of his book is that Christianity evolved via Judaism from much more ancient shamanistic practices and that the mushroom symbolism of these old cults still survives in church artwork and theology to a certain extent. The basic idea is that the fundamental beliefs of Christianity and other religions originated in ancient fertility cults which used psychedelic mushrooms to make contact with God.
There's nothing inherently unreasonable about any of this. Religions, like ancient cultures, don't just appear fully formed; they all have deep roots in the prehistoric world. The same thing can be said for a lot of our modern holidays. Halloween and Christmas, for example, were originally pagan festivals and their ancient roots can still be seen in things like the Christmas tree and trick-or-treating. Many Christian symbols, beliefs and rituals have also been traced back to the pagan world and it seems to me that all John Allegro was doing was tracing them back even farther, perhaps to the very beginning.
Fertility religions go all the way back to the rise of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution. They could be even older than that and traces of these ancient beliefs can still be seen today:
"Many ancient fertility rites have persisted in modified forms into modern times," according to Infoplease. For instance, "The Maypole dance derives from spring rituals glorifying the phallus." The Easter bunny and eggs are another example of this kind of survival from a pre-Christian past still found in the Christian church. The Easter egg in particular is a fertility symbol. So is the Ichthys, the Christian fish symbol. And it's quite possible that modern religions still contain elements that can be traced back to really ancient shamanistic rites that involved the use of psychotropic plants.
Mushrooms in Christian art. Unfortunately the artworks themselves aren't identified in this video.
The presence of mushrooms on very old church walls and stained-glass windows is undeniable. Perhaps they're a kind of vestigial symbolism, traces left behind by a primordial religion that had already faded into the unconscious minds of the artists who created them. That could be. If Christianity did evolve from an ancient mushroom cult, the question of whether the cult was still in existence when the church first came into being is a different matter altogether. Allegro's idea that the church was created as a cover for a secret and still active fertility cult is what I like to call a Jesus Cult Conspiracy Theory. If he meant that literally it's no wonder that his reputation went into decline after his book appeared. I'm not saying he was wrong; after all, how would I know? It's an entertaining idea, but I'd have to see a lot more evidence before I'll believe it's true.
"A handful of Arabian silver coins found in New England may be the last surviving relics of history's most notorious act of piracy — and perhaps one of the most famous pirates who ever lived." Source: Live Science.
"Evidence suggests the distinctive coins were spent as common silver in the American colonies in the late 1690s by the fugitive pirate crew of Henry Every, also known as John Avery, who had fled there after plundering the Mughal treasure ship Ganj-i-sawai as it was returning pilgrims from the Muslim Hajj.
"Researchers aren't certain that the coins are from the Ganj-i-sawai, but their origin, their dates and their discovery in such a distant region suggest they were seized by the pirates and spent in the Americas."
According to the Muslim historian Khafi Khan, Every and his cronies inflicted "an orgy of horrors" on the people aboard the Mughal ships they captured. Some dispute this, but Kahn's account was backed up, at least in part, by the British governor of Bombay, Sir John Gayer:
"It is certain the Pyrates, which these People affirm were all English, did do very barbarously by the People of the Ganj-i-sawai and Abdul Gofor's Ship, to make them confess where their Money was, and there happened to be a great Umbraws Wife (as Wee hear) related to the King, returning from her Pilgrimage to Mecha, in her old age. She they abused very much, and forced severall other Women, which Caused one person of Quality, his Wife and Nurse, to kill themselves to prevent the Husbands seing them (and their being) ravished." (Wikipedia)
Every was supposedly the target of the first worldwide manhunt in history. After the spectacular heist several of his crew were captured, but Every himself vanished, perhaps living out the rest of his life in England or on some tropical island. The treasure was never recovered.
Is The Real Mount Sinai In Saudi Arabia?
"'Yahweh came from Sinai' (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalms 68:18). It is in Sinai that Moses first encounters Yahweh; it is back to Sinai that Moses leads Yahweh’s people from Egypt; and it is from Sinai that, two years later, on Yahweh’s order again, Moses sets off with them to conquer a piece of the Fertile Crescent.
"But where is Sinai, with its Mount Horeb [the mountain where God gave Moses the 10 commandments]? Exodus unequivocally places it in the land of Midian ...
"And where is Midian? Greek authors unanimously place it in northwestern Arabia, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba [see map]. Even Paul the Apostle, who spent three years in Arabia, knew that 'Sinai is a mountain in Arabia' (Galatians 4:25). It was not before the 4th century that the biblical Sinai was misplaced in the
Egyptian peninsula, probably for geopolitical reasons (Egypt was within the control of the Roman Empire, unlike Arabia, under Persian influence). But placing the biblical Sinai west of the Gulf of Aqaba didn’t make any sense, since that region had always belonged to Egypt (archeology has confirmed it). Why would the Israelites have settled there when chased by the Egyptian army?" Source: "The Arabian Cradle of Zion," by French historian Laurent Guyenot, The Unz Review. Map from World Atlas.
Comment: Whether you agree with Laurent Guyenot in general, he's right about one thing at least. The idea that the biblical Mount Sinai / Mount Horeb is located on the Sinai peninsula doesn't make any sense at all. If the Jews were fleeing Egypt, why would they settle on Egyptian territory? Assuming this is actual history we're talking about here -- a very big assumption -- they would have left Egypt altogether and crossing the Gulf of Aqaba into Arabia would have been a good way to put some distance between them and the pharaoh. If that's what actually happened -- if the real Mount Sinai is in Arabia and not on the Sinai peninsula -- it would overturn centuries of accepted religious doctrine:
"The biblical Mount Sinai is one of the most important sacred places in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. The summit [in Egypt] has a mosque that is still used by Muslims, and a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is 'Moses' cave', where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments." (Wikipedia)
The supposed Mount Sinai in Egypt. Is this just a pile of rocks in the middle of the desert?
I'm not sure how many Christians, Jews and Muslims still accept the idea that Mount Sinai is in Egypt. Some Christians, at least, have come around to the belief that the mountain is in Saudi Arabia and the idea seems to be gaining in popularity. The UNZ Review article quoted above points out the effect this is having on Middle Eastern politics:
"The growing popularization of the Arabian Sinai cannot be unrelated to the NEOM project announced in October 2017 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: a high-tech, ultra-connected, transnational mega city and economic zone, covering 10,230 square-miles (about the size of Massachusetts), which happens to correspond roughly to ancient Midian."
There's a lot that could be said about the Saudis, the NEOM project and the war in Yemen, among other things, but never mind all that. The UNZ Review article is as much about the current politics of the region as it is about the location of the mountain where Moses talked to YHWH, but I'm just interested in the ancient history here. I'm not going to comment one way or another about the political stuff, but I will say that there is something deeply sinister about the Orwellian NEOM smart-city project.
Getting back to where Mount Sinai is actually located, it would be interesting to know if the conventional wisdom has been wrong all these years, but I'm not sure how anybody could prove that this or that pile of granite in the desert is the biblical mountain where Moses received the ten commandments. You would need an ancient map or some kind of non-biblical documentary evidence to do that and nothing of the sort has been discovered as far as I know. But even if the question could be settled conclusively, what difference would it make?
Scholarly interest aside, the importance of all this depends on whether you believe that the Old Testament stories are true. Call me a skeptic, but I don't believe that YHWH appeared on a mountaintop in the form of a burning bush and gave Moses a list of commandments. I don't believe that YHWH exists in the first place and Moses himself is probably a mythological character:
"The modern scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is a mythical figure, and while, as William G. Dever writes, 'a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C.', archaeology cannot confirm his existence. Certainly no Egyptian sources mention Moses or the events of Exodus–Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure." (Wikipedia)
The Exodus itself, the founding myth of the Israelites, probably never happened as well:
"The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel, which formed as an entity in the southern Transjordan region by the 13th century BCE from the indigenous Canaanite culture. There is no evidence that the Israelites were ever enslaved in ancient Egypt or even lived there and scholars broadly agree that the Exodus has no historical basis. There is a widespread agreement that the composition of the Torah or Pentateuch, the biblical books which contain the Exodus narrative, took place in the Middle Persian Period (5th century BCE), although the traditions behind it are older and can be found in the writings of the 8th-century BCE prophets." (Wikipedia)
In light of all this, the question of where Mount Sinai was located seems pretty much irrelevant.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Ancient Africa, Ancient Israel, Ancient Literature, Ancient Middle East, Arabia, Commentary, Culture, Current Affairs, Egypt, Hidden History, Religion, Videos | Permalink