FROM GODDESS TO KING
A History of Ancient Europe from the
OERA LINDA BOOK
By Anthony Radford
CHAPTER 22
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE - LEGENDARY SUPPORT
There are very few written accounts about Europe for the period dating before the first recordings of classical Greece. There are many writings from the Near East, the most prolific being Egyptian followed by the Hittite, Arcadian, Hebrew and Assyrian texts of the Fertile Crescent. But this is not our story. Are there any stories relating to old Europe that can support the surviving records of the ancient Frisians? The evidence is going to have to be from geological and archaeological findings with an interpretive approach to surviving historical accounts, which have taken the form of undated legends.
Of the period before our story that is referred to as the "good times before the bad" very little is known. It is referred to as the Age of Taurus the Bull, possibly indicating a religious connecting with bulls as is believed to be the case in Crete two thousand years later and still is a sport today in the Mediterranean. It is also depicted as the Megalith or Pillar Culture with Stonehenge being the best known of many hundred sites. Its construction has been attributed to Romans, Druids and Mycenaean’s. Archaeologists and historians could not conceive that such a structure could have been built without Middle-Eastern help so they dated megaliths as being older in the south from where the northern structures learned that skill. Carbon dating has now shown them to date from 2700 to 3500 BC with the stones being older, the farther north one goes, and with those on the Orcades (Orkneys or pig islands) being the oldest.
We are told that the sacred Tex was written on stone at Texland and reproduced in all citadels. Ancient Egyptians referred to the Pillars of Atlas (Hercules) as beyond Gibraltar in the North while later day Greeks put Atlas in North Africa, supporting the world, and moved the pillars to Gibraltar, the end of the known world, to where they are now commonly referred.
The origins of the Near East settlement of Phoenicia are told of a time that predates the Old Testament. One significant reference that lends support to the story is the description of the Philistines. We know that they could be tall like the giant of David but they were also a sophisticated, (compared to rural Israel) seacoast city people who did not speak a Hebrew related language. They are traditionally believed to have come out of the Hittite empire in 1100 BC but our book tells of the mixed Frisian, Finnish, and African racial mix of the Phoenicians; perhaps a much earlier origin of the Philistines. The Old Testament describes them as being descendants of Japhet or Japhetos of Greek mythology who not only came from the north but from the ends of the Earth. In those days the Earth ended with the great encircling ocean (Oceanos) that girdled the known world centered roundabout the Mediterranean. The Egyptians referred to the northern countries at the end of the world. They have numerous reproductions both wall illustrations and petroglyphs from 3000 to 1200 BC of battles with northern seafaring warriors, always being defeated of course. In these murals, the "peoples of the islands of the north", are depicted as white-skinned, blond-haired and blue-eyed. They are usually distinguished from other enemy soldiers by their round shields (like latter day Vikings) and by reed headdresses. The Oera Linda Book has so many missing centuries that little correlation can be made to them.
Herodotus dates the founding of Tyre at 2755 BC by mythical Hercules at a time when Sidon already existed. Our book dates the origin to approximately 2000 BC by Teunis. To Greek historians and also as shown in Caesar’s writings, the North Africans or Libyans were largely blond-haired and blue-eyed. They were referred to as Northerners or at least believed allied with those who lived beyond the Mediterranean in the West. The ancient Egyptians made the same references. Today we still have the blue-eyed Berbers in North Africa that have been linked to Ireland by some historians, no doubt unable to appreciate the distribution of blue eyes. They are very common in Sicily and have an ancient known tradition in the Holy Land.
Legends also support the sun cult of the northerners, a symbol of monotheism but most myths of unknown places also ascribe diabolical religious ritual worship to the embellished tales just as today’s archaeologists usually label anything unknown as a religious artifact. The origin of the name of the island of Helgoland is "Holy Land" and Frisian myths tell how it finally perished beneath the waves in 1216 AD. Very ancient circular fortifications have been discovered on the island and in the surrounding shallows that lend some credence to the concentric moats that surrounded the capital city of the Atlanteans. According to the writings of Plato we read that most citadels had a circular moat. Helgoland was not Fryasburgt on Texland but a neighboring state and possibly a remnant of the original Frya’s land before the first recorded disaster.
Archaeology is continually pushing back the clock on the achievements of mankind just as it is still verifying many of our ancient stories once considered to be only fables. Our history is much older than first assessed by the new historians that followed the rudimentary research of the early nineteenth century. These early modern attitudes have assumed that foreigners and especially native cultures that are closer to the earth were inherently inferior. We now know that this is not true, there is much to be learned from all activities of man but it is still surprising when evidence of ancient activity is unearthed that show how similar we still are.
The Kalevala is a Finnish national epic that dates from pre-Christian times. Its oldest form is on runes and depicts a time when the Magyars and Finns were one people, a fact mentioned in the Book. It describes a time of a great natural disaster when shadows covered the earth and the wise men of the North could not determine the dawn or the noon because the moon and the sun were not in season.
There are Western versions of the story of Noah and the Flood as well as Eastern and worldwide versions. Principal among these for our purpose is a collection of three ancient Welsh ballads that tell of disaster and destruction coming from the sky out of which only one family survived at sea. They sailed to the Crimea and hundreds of years later, having greatly increased their numbers returned home to Westland or the White Island of Britain. Even the word Britain and Brittany are explained as the name of one of the returning tribes. This tale does support the far ranging maritime capabilities of very long ago.
The next Western source for information of three thousand years ago is Homer and particularly the "Odyssey". Minerva, whom the Book describes as a Rhine maiden, is depicted as "blue eyed, white armed, fair haired Minerva". She is tall and strong as though these were desirable traits of the gods while Ulysses himself is described as being very large of thigh and very strong with a red beard, "much enduring, divine Jove born son of Laertes, much contriving, city sacker Ulysses." The date of the epics is generally construed to be older than the eighth century BC, but the Oera Linda Book specifically dates the encounter with Calypso as 1188 BC. This would put the ten year Trojan War at 1200BC with the fall of Troy at 1190 BC if the shipping information can be believed. The Book states that twelve years had elapsed without them seeing any Italians in Almanland, and then there came Ulysses, a king from the Ionian Islands, in the largest of three ships. The ancient Greeks believed the fall of Troy to be equivalent to 1183 BC and conventional archeology puts it as 1230 BC. Which is closer?
From Homer we can get an idea of the nature of the Mediterranean population of the time. This is not the unified political and social system described by the Book for the early period but definitely a later one of independent maritime city-states. They spoke a common tongue, were of mixed blood and had kings that were not necessarily regarded as royal. Some were still elected as, after all, Ulysses’ father, Laertes, who was still alive when he returned twenty years later was a simple farm worker, not a king. It is known that the assembly of older men or agora was the court of supreme authority and was able to overrule the king just as the Laws of Frya depict. Ulysses’ son, Telemachus did not have royal authority but was more concerned about his own property rights. Many Mediterranean kingdoms at that time used a maternal succession rule in which the son of the old king’s youngest daughter or his younger sister would inherit.
Homer does not support even the cherished concepts we have about the polytheistic religion of the time. Homer mentions the monotheistic word God on many occasions, which corresponds to the earlier concepts of the Frisians, and he makes reference to an underlying moral code or at least a sense of right and wrong. That the heroes of the time were of mixed heritage, having the superstitions of Finda’s people and also Libyan blood, is evident from their mixed coloring as well as from descriptions of Phoenician, Ionian and Cretan settlements in the Book.
Homer’s use of the word "Phaecians" (literally, black drivers) could have been referring to the Phocaeans, of an eighth century BC Ionian city in Asia Minor who are traditionally believed to have foundered the city of Marseilles in the days of the Ligurians, two centuries later. Egyptians believed them to be a colony of the North people and this could be so if the Ionians can be referred to, as being from the north as originally was the case. More likely it is a reference to the black ships and black sails described by Homer and his own word for them. Jurgen Spanuth (see bibliography) makes a case for the "black drivers" being a reference to the funeral customs of the ancient Northmen that are described in the visit to the souls of the dead companions of Ulysses by Homer. The Vikings in their funeral rituals continued these customs a thousand years ago.
Homer’s hero, Odysseus (Ulysses), reached the Phaecians by sailing northeast from his sojourn with Calypso on her island. He was impressed with their country, the land of the linen plant, he liked the fine woven cloak that they gave him and noted their sailing skills so they could have been Frya people from the mainland located at the mouth of a European river. This is particularly important because no Mediterranean rivers have the backwash or reverse tides as described by Homer.
These were independent states sharing a common heritage. They were in the Bronze Age but knew of steel as a precious commodity like gold. Although it was a period after the Golden Age of Frya’s peoples, perhaps there is enough evidence to suggest that Frisian principles prepared the way for the classical age to come, with all its frailty and humanness. The Greek concept of Agape, or brotherly love, began as an extension of legal rights to neighboring states, an exchange of convenience, and other abstractions developed in the centuries to come that are still valued in our present age. Some Frisian concepts were there, but self sacrifice for community and rights for all did not yet exist in this collection of slave states. Even in the lands at the mouth of the Rhine, long years of selfish struggle had so eroded memories of their origins that Atland had been reduced to a mythical country beyond the north wind.
In the centuries following Homer up to the recorded era of Greek philosophers and historians, Carthage gained in dominance of the western Mediterranean Sea. They were probably the seafarers referred to as Phoenician in the latter part of the Book and they strategically guarded the route to the Cassiterites, or tin islands, Cornwall in Britain and some of the Channel Islands that made them so wealthy. Anything west of the Pillars of Heracles was shrouded in mystery and deceit so that Ancient Greece knew little about the Atlantic. They did hear about Tartessos or Taphos which was the kingdom of Cadiz in southern Atlantic Spain, a Celtic spin-off where originally the burgtmaid had tried to keep a neutral path between the Mother and the Gauls in Kalta’s time. It became a very wealthy exporter of Spanish silver and maintained a regular trade with Ireland according to Irish history. It was a classical link to the Atlantic. Others have put Taphos, as one of the pirate islands of the Ionian Sea but Homer’s mention of Kernie is interesting. Could that have been the mysterious city of Kerenak (Keeren Herne)? These two very tenuous names could be construed to show that Ulysses made it to the Atlantic.
Ancient Europe and India were not strangers to each other as the Book interestingly notes but what is the evidence? Buddhists were known in Alexandria in the third century BC, and there is much evidence of Greek presence or at least their artifacts in India. The Ionians have even been credited with being the first to give the sage, Buddha, a human form in art or effigies. From Herodotus we have reference to the Red Sea or Erythæan as the name of the sea that extended all the way to India and included the Persian Gulf while the ancient Arabians referred to the Mediterranean as the White Sea.
Many French cities of the Mediterranean, have traditions, or early stories, of their founding by Greek or Ionian settlers from the sea just as Spanish towns give this credit to the Phoenicians or Carthaginians, the rivals of the Ionians. It is well known that the Romans did not like the sea, preferring land engagements, but hired both Greek and Phoenician seafarers to conquer the Mediterranean.
There are many terms in Latin for seasickness but only one in Greek, an indication of the limited Roman seafaring tradition. Romans invented a plank that plunged a huge spike into an enemy vessel as it was being rammed, locking them together so that Roman foot soldiers could board and fight as on land.
There is a romance to the sea that captures our imagination and has created legends of lost cities sunk beneath the waves with columns of marble, seaweed lined streets and statues of gold. Such a legend is that of Atlantis and also of the city of Ys. Faith in these enchanting tales has created four different locations or separate cities by the name of Ys on the Atlantic coast of Europe, but this has nothing to do with archaeology. An earthquake destroys the city and then it may submerge it, leaving a site that thousands of years later is nothing like what the imagination might construct.
Still, we are made of dreams and like to be entertained by them so not every conclusion has to be utilitarian and scientific or we would wonder if beauty had a purpose. Is not beauty as necessary as daydreaming and as essential for inspiring our creativity?
Other more reliable evidence can be found in the ancient land route to the north, the great north-south highway that ran up the Rhone and the Saône to the Seine valleys. This road carried yellow amber from the Frisian Islands and the Baltic to the south and Mediterranean (Red Sea) coral to the north. This ties in with the jutten trade mentioned in the Book and also the selling of the island of Marseilles to the Phoenicians for trade. Although the road existed since times ancient in the Roman era, the items of trade were more perishable than the relics which archaeologists can still find in the earth. A list of these commodities is given in the Book with respect to sea trade and includes paper (parchment) as a valuable export from the North long before the Classical age, but it is not something that would still be found. There is no question that amber was a valuable item of trade. It is found only in the north and was probably the "orichalc" mentioned by Homer and once thought to be a special alloy of gold. The original meaning of the word "glass" was amber, a translucent material that can generate an electric charge when rubbed on a dry cloth. Our word electricity is derived from the Greek word for amber.
That the ancient world was ignorant of the North is no more true than claiming that they knew nothing of India. When discoveries are made, they usually set back the date when man was first known to have achieved some prowess of civilization such as writing or seamanship and commerce. The North does not have dry deserts and undisturbed sites buried in the sands of time. Vegetation is continually growing there so a pristine discovery, like the city of the Persians, Persepolis that is mentioned by Greek historians does not excite the explorer in the busy North. The East does not have exclusive rights to the beginnings of civilization. Modern dating techniques now show, for example, that copper mines along the great rivers of Europe had been worked out and new ones opened in a west to east direction over time. This shows that very ancient occupants of the continent exploited the minerals long before the classical Bronze Age of southeastern Europe.
Julius Caesar wrote about his campaigns in the North and discovered a formidable enemy who would rather die, then become slaves of Rome. He killed a million of them and remarked how few rituals and sacrifices they observed in their religious life. He just didn’t understand them and as is typical of human judgments, he tended to denigrate what he did not understand or that which was simply different.
For those who support the forgery theory for the Oera Linda Book, one would have to ask why, and also question the choice of a language older than any known version. What was to be gained by keeping it unpublished for so long? Perhaps, more significantly, one could ask what ego construct is being challenged in the doubters.
With so much of national character being attributed to the challenges of a seafaring life, it is appropriate to examine the type of ships, which were used in ancient times. There is much historical literature on the Roman ships of a later time but really very little surviving physical evidence that even permits an understanding of their construction or manipulation of multiple banks of oars. Go back two thousand years before Rome and there is no evidence but it does not mean man was incapable of sailing the ocean. It does not mean that all man knew about boats were reed crafts found depicted on seals of the time in Sumer. It simply means that the evidence has not survived.
What were the ships of old like? From recorded history there were reed ships, sometimes coated with tar, in both Egypt and Sumeria before 3000 BC. They have been typically judged as not seaworthy enough for ocean voyages. This has been disproved in the case of Sumer for Sumerians carried on significant trade with Dilmun (Bahrain) from the mouth of the Tigris and even sailed to India, (the Indus River) and around the Arabian peninsular to the Egyptian Red Sea. From about 2900 BC there are some hieroglyphics that tell of forty armed ships that were dispatched from the Nile to Byblos, in Lebanon, to buy cedar-wood for ship building. These ships had both oars and a square sail supported by a double mast in the shape of an inverted "vee". They carried twenty oars per side and had two long steering oars thus there is evidence of ocean going ships in recorded history, hundreds of years before the Book records the early voyages of the sea-kings.
Both Egypt and Sumeria lacked forested areas so it is likely that other ancient civilizations were building wooden ships long before them. Then there is the story of Noah, which must date from an earlier time, and in some versions of the legend, considerable distances are described such as from Wales to Crimea. Noah had to have had a good-sized vessel but we cannot use myth to validate myth.
By 2000 BC Crete had an alliance with Egypt to use its navy to control the Eastern Mediterranean and keep the pirates in check so Jon’s followers did not invent piracy. By the sixteenth century BC, Crete had separate merchant and military designs for ships, both large and small. The Mediterranean had evolved beamy ships for trade, one hundred and twenty feet long and thirty-six feet wide long before the tale of Minerva. Later on in classical Greek times, a combination armed merchant craft was in use that was smaller and faster; were times getting more complicated for trade, with Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Ionian and Greek ships competing for profitable territories? The older times that described huge fleets of Frisian armed merchants had ended, as the might of numbers no longer commanded respect on the commercial front. The peace of Rome had not yet developed and whether it was ever a maritime peace is open to debate.
Early vessels usually lowered the whole sail and mast assembly when oars took over. They carried several anchors, sometimes a round stone with a hole in the middle but some of these that have been found could have been used to support the base of the mast. Twin steering oars gave way to a single one on a side and the central tiller was in use by Ionian settlers in Asia Minor in the forth century BC. The steering mechanism of the Frisians is not known, but Homer gives us a few clues for the time of the Odyssey. He tells of a single steering oar, the lowering of the mast when beached, and of rowers’ benches under which cargo or personal effects were stored. The high prow was colored for identification purposes, a custom that led to carvings and statue-like figureheads depicting gods or the like. While six men could manage his ship, Odysseus probably needed forty to fill the benches.
Later in the eighth century BC the Greeks used biremes, which, according to Herodotus were double the standard complement of twenty-five oars on a side; so a total of 100 rowers would be needed but some larger ships would have used two rowers for each oar. These eighty feet long by ten feet wide ships were built for speed and were equipped with a battering ram to sink the enemy. Triremes, triple size, rowed vessels, were in standard military use by the fifth century BC so that naval warfare mandated at least 150 rowers per vessel and slaves were the motoring forces. The ships all had single masts with square sails, which could be lowered in time of battle or foul weather.
There can be no question that Europeans have come out of a goddess culture. In the religious preoccupation, the Virgin Mary had taken the place of the Mother who for centuries was ranked above the male concept of God with Jesus being identified with a sacrificial young king. To extrapolate these concepts that were believed in countries influenced by the Mediterranean to all of Europe is as incorrect as doing that to all of Asia. This story is older than those beliefs and shows a simple version of from where some of these ideas have come and where the inevitable power struggle of priests, kings and politicians have taken us.
