The Days of Peleg (86 page)

Shem had moments of concern as he contemplated future generations who would hear the
Amar
, and believe it to be borrowed from “older” writings, such as the origin myths of other lands—not knowing that the
Amar
predated all of them.

He also received the sad news that his son, Arphaxad, and grandson, Salah (father of Eber) had also died, having succumbed to the ever-decreasing lifespans.

Shem knew that his time on earth was also drawing to a close. His eyes were going dim, and he now had difficulty breathing. He completed as many writings as he could, and then decided to visit the home of Melchiz'edek one last time.

When he reached the City of Peace, he was saddened to learn that Melchiz'edek had died just a few months before his arrival. The population of the city was also diminishing as people chose to move away, closer to the major cities where commerce was more profitable. Several long-time friends greeted him, and he remained there, until, one day, his failing eyes closed for the last time, and he departed his body; his Spirit already re-united with his Creator.

He was taken to the caves of Amud, where he was entombed with some of the original settlers of the City of Peace. It had been sealed for many decades, but was reopened as a tribute to Shem and all that he had given them. He was buried with nothing but the clothes he wore and his small leather bag which contained a collection of unusual stones and an old reed flute, dried and aged beyond usability.

Shem had bridged two worlds. And throughout his entire life, he had learned to receive the grace and wisdom of his Creator, and, in so doing, he had accomplished all that he had been meant to accomplish.

Before Time and Space, Nothing existed within Nothingness.

A fluctuation occurred in the Nothingness, creating vast quantities of heated energy compressed within a primordial point of time and space, which exploded into an expanding void, coalescing and cooling to form particles and gasses. Powerful shockwaves created ripples which forced the gasses together, forming stars and galaxies.

Some of these stars exploded, spewing large clouds of gas and dust—portions of which collapsed violently, igniting new stars. The remaining debris coalesced into asteroids, planets, and gas giants which fell into orbits around them.

On one of these planets, great lightning and winds, along with a vast ocean of vapors, mixed with randomly occurring amino acids, forming the first simple creatures, both visible and invisible, from which came more complex animals—first those without, and then those with sensation.

Eventually, they increased in variety as they emerged from the oceans, becoming male and female, and acquiring new abilities as they encountered varied and diverse environments. Many of these became self-aware—including humans who pondered the heavens—the sun, moon, stars, and planets—believing themselves to be conscious.

But their consciousness was just an illusion.

Late 20
^th
Century Origins Myth

Afterword

Fact Vs. Fiction

Every expert is accompanied by
an equal and opposite expert.

A
lthough
The Days of Peleg
is a work of fiction, many of the elements contained within its pages are based on actual historical events and characters, and correctly portray technologies and institutions of that time. I wish to present selected examples from those scattered throughout the book:
⁵

• Ur was, during the time of this story, a major seaport. Since that time, the sea has receded so that it is now many miles from the ocean.
  
• Inanna was a real person who was the daughter of Sargon and was given control of Ur, presiding over the rise of moon (
  Suen
  or
  Sĭn
  ) worship there.
  
• Uruk was a financial center which boasted functional stock and commodity markets.
  
• Gutian “savages” invaded the Mesopotamian plains from the northwest and tried for many decades to destroy their civilization before eventually being driven out.
  
• The mass suicide in the opening of Part IV was an historical event, and, in fact, was one of several such events.
  ⁶
  
• Escape of Tammuz from Erset la Tari
  (Hades) is an actual Sumerian Epic, depicting Tammuz’s death, Inanna’s elegy over him, his revival in the underworld where he is crowned as lord, and Inanna’s rescue—returning Tammuz and his light and love back to earth. (Read this at
  www.DaysOfPeleg.com
  )
  

As for more speculative or ambiguous historical events, I did my best to remain within the realm of possibility—if not plausibility. Inevitably, there will be different categories of readers who will be unsatisfied for one reason or another. Biblical traditionalists may be disconcerted to read that ancient man did more than simply wear robes and tend sheep. Hard-core “ancient astronaut” aficionados will be upset that I did not include an underground space command complex in Mt. Sinai, or magnetically propelled air-fighters raining down nuclear destruction over the Indus valley.

But most importantly, there are the Darwinists, who will be greatly offended by the notion that the earliest humans were every bit as intelligent and thoughtful as they themselves are (if not more so); and that all intellect (including theirs) is a product and gift of the Creator. I would be tempted to apologize, if it weren't for the fact that this was one of the primary motivations for writing this book.

History is not an exact science, and topics are invariably divided into multiple schools of thought. Two such schools must be acknowledged: First, there is a school of thought which believes that Sargon and Nimrod were one and the same person—which I have embraced for story-telling purposes within
The Days of Peleg
. For similar reasons, I have subscribed to a second (minority) school of thought which contends that Joktan and his descendants migrated eastward to what is now modern Afghanistan, and became the progenitor of the Chinese and other far-Eastern peoples.
⁷

Another area of contention may be found within Shem’s discourse on causality and thought, during which numerous readers were undoubtedly shouting (mentally) “Quantum Mechanics!” in an attempt to bring some chance and uncertainty into the equation. Events at the quantum level do indeed appear to provide pure randomness and degrees of probability, but there is an inherent “stochastic determinism”
⁸
which ultimately overrides the chaos and produces the inevitable outcomes upon which our classical scientific laws rely. Regardless of which quantum mechanics’ school one subscribes to, the end result (i.e. when the wave function collapses) is always predictable. Also, the Planck-sized scale at which quantum effects occur are much too small for even the tiniest of organic structures to be affected.
⁹
It must also be remembered that “Chaos Theory” does
not
propose that everything is chaos, but rather that everything is interconnected deterministically, creating the
illusion
of chaos. (If a butterfly flaps its wings in China…) Events
are
causal, yet, due to chaos, unpredictable.

Finally, for those who insist that timescales within
The Days of Peleg
are too restrictive, I have utilized the corrected timelines of Peter James, instead of the more conventional, faulty, Egyptian ones.
¹⁰
These have been used in conjunction with events and times written by the historian, James Ussher, in his
Annals of the World
.

For those who may be interested, I have compiled a chapter-by-chapter “Fact vs. Fiction” section at
DaysOfPeleg.com
, where additional archaeological and historical notes may be found, in addition to sources and commentaries on the various OOPARTS which appear liberally throughout the text.

Jon Saboe
December, 2006

Appendix A

What the Sumerians Knew

O
ne of the greatest enigmas in the studies of ancient history is the emergence of the Sumerians, who supposedly migrated from some unknown place and, with no apparent preliminary development, immediately began to build cities, observatories, libraries, and the civil infrastructures which accompany such undertakings. Only a fraction of the known Sumerian writing has been translated, and the translation efforts have been hampered by the fact that no known language has been found that relates to Sumerian. Bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian documents provided some of the initial keys, but linguistic comparisons are still difficult since Akkadian and other languages borrowed the cuneiform style of writing used by the Sumerians, and a great deal of confusion still exists. The amazing architecture of their cities and ziggurats is fairly well known, but there are many other accomplishments which are not so well known. They had a very advanced financial and economic system, complete with stock markets and commodities trading. (There were even complex accounting tables which reconciled lunar and solar calendars in the calculation of debt, annual percentages, and compound interest earnings.) It was not uncommon to find plumbing and indoor running water. There was thriving commerce along the Euphrates River, where large, pontoon barges carried goods from city to city. Advanced medicine, law, metallurgy and chemurgy were practiced, and sophisticated agriculture, with irrigation canals, crop rotation, and the utilization of grains for non-culinary use was abundant.

Finely crafted artwork such as pottery, sculptures, and paintings abounded, and there was even a large market for cosmetics. Special schools taught art, music, and theater, and graduates from these schools formed an important, professional class.

But perhaps the most amazing knowledge possessed by the Sumerians was in the field of astronomy. Their earliest writings show that they knew the three-dimensional arrangement and mechanics of the Solar System. They knew the Sun (
Utu
) was a sphere, and that all of the planets (
Mul-Apin
), including the Earth, traveled around it. They created accurate tables of lunar and solar eclipses, and knew of the phases of Venus. They claimed twelve celestial bodies inhabited the Solar System, (Sun, Moon, and ten planets) and correctly divided them into two categories: inner and outer planets.

They acknowledged that the outermost three could not be seen, but they correctly identified the colors of the first two—green and blue, respectively. The fact that we only recognize nine planets (until the recent demotion of Pluto) is potentially solved by a variety of conflicting Sumerian legends involving the destruction of one of the planets—often in conjunction with the time of the flood.

Supposedly a planet named Nibiru, traveling between the first and second outer worlds (Mars and Jupiter), once existed in the regions now occupied by the Asteroid Belt, but was either destroyed or somehow ‘went away’. Whatever the case, they were convinced it
should
be there. (For the sake of
The Days of Peleg
, it was assumed destroyed, and the object seen by astronomers in Chapter 5 was most likely Vesta, an asteroid orbiting in the same path—and the only one regularly visible to the naked eye).

However, the most remarkable item in the vast reservoir of Sumerian astronomical awareness is the accurate measurement of the Earth’s precession. This is the slight wobble in the Earth’s axis which causes a line from the North Pole to draw a slow circle in the sky as the years progress. As a result, the “North Star” can change over the course of several centuries. The Sumerians accurately knew that it takes 25,800 years for this circle to return to its original “North Star”, and made reference to it (calling it the “Great Year”) in some of their writings as a warning to future generations of navigators and astronomers.

Now it must be stated clearly that there is absolutely no indication that the Sumerians had any of the necessary equipment, or even the optical tools needed for making these observations or determining these measurements. They simply
knew
it. Many Sumerian legends claim that this knowledge came from ancient races, or gods from before the flood.

In the context of
The Days of Peleg
, it makes perfect sense that, although all monuments and manifestation of advanced science were destroyed during the flood, the
knowledge
of the various sciences would have survived.
Knowing
that something is possible (and perhaps once existed) makes it much easier and more likely to accomplish it—or replicate it.

It should also be noted that subsequent civilizations, such as Babylonia, Egypt, and Arabia also knew a great deal of astronomical knowledge, including precession and other planetary formulae, but were only able to use this information for calculation purposes such as eclipses and the development of astrological charts. There is no indication that these later civilizations understood the foundations of this knowledge. Indeed, they all freely admit their astronomical prowess was inherited from the Sumerians.

Strangely,
later
Sumerian (and Babylonian) writings indicate a
loss
of astronomical comprehension; referring to the sky as a bowl inverted upon a flat earth. By the time these regressive Sumerian astronomers were writing such things, Egyptian and Greek mathematician/astronomers were measuring the circumference of the Earth and the distance to the moon.

Rather than the steady, Darwinian progress of social and technological achievements, ancient history is, instead, a testimony to the rise and fall of numerous, co-existing civilizations and the many times that scientific knowledge has arisen, atrophied, and ultimately been buried by the passage of time.