Baalbek: Celestial Wanderings

The Ancient Mystery of Baalbek

The Hand of the Cyclopes Part III 

Celestial Wanderings
When lacking firm dating evidence, as with the Grand Terrace at Baalbek, some of the most ancient constructions in the world have been associated with certain epochs by calculating their alignment to the position of celestial bodies which move around the heavens in immense regular cycles over a vast period of time.

Sir Norman Lockyer devoted much of his career to studying the sun, focussing on the astronomical connections of ancient monuments. Lockyer found that many Egyptian monuments were orientated to celestial bodies. He was of the opinion that the Egyptians were aware that the heavens were anything but constant and slowly changed position. Lockyer noticed that the temple of Amen-Ra at Karnak was orientated toward the summer solstice so that on the longest day of the year the sun's rays entered the temple at sunset, travelled along the building's axis and finally penetrated the sanctuary. Allowing for the slowly changing tilt if the earth's axis, Lockyer calculated that the temple at Karnak, or at least the original foundation, must have been constructed c.3700 BC as opposed to the widely accepted dating of c.2000 to 300 BC.

Amen-Ra Temple at Karnak

Lockyer noticed other temples were orientated to the points where certain astral bodies rise just before sunrise, the 'helical rising', on the vernal equinox. The star's position would change over time due to a natural phenomenon known as 'precession'. Consequently over time the temple would become misaligned to the selected astronomical object, causing the Egyptians to re-orientate there temples every few hundred years. Lockyer discovered that the temple at Luxor had undergone four distinct changes of orientation as it was rebuilt over the centuries. Using the regularity of precession Lockyer calculated the dates of temple construction from their earlier orientations and found the structures were considerably older than the accepted Egyptian chronology, as with Karnak.

The Earth is not a true sphere; it bulges at the equator and flattens at the Poles so that the radius is some 14 miles greater at the equator. Additionally, the Earth's axis around rotation tips relative to the plane (or ecliptic) of its orbit around the sun. The sun, moon and other planets to a lesser degree, exert a gravitational pull on the greater mass of the Earth's bulging equator, slowly moving the axis of rotation. Owing to these forces, the Earth tends to spin and wobble like a top, rather than a uniform motion like a wheel on an axle. This slow wobble of the Earth is called precession, the effects of which determine what we see in the heavens. The stars slowly shift in long but regular cycles relative to the celestial north and south poles over an immense period of time. One such cycle is known as the 'Great Year', a cycle of  25,920 years owing to this phenomenon known as the 'Precession of the Equinoxes'. 

The reality of this movement is very slow and not perceptible to the naked eye; knowledge of this cycle is amassed from celestial observations over an immense period of time and indicates a very ancient culture. Evidently Greek astronomers had sufficient instrumentation and data to detect the immensely slow motion of the effects of precession and consequently the  phenomenon was 'rediscovered' by Hipparchus in 127BC. However, despite Lockyer's claims it is not generally accepted that the Egyptians possessed this knowledge.

The Processional Code
The celestial bodies appear to move through one degree of their cycle over a period of 72 years with each sign, or house, of the zodiac occupying 30 degrees in the sky. Consequently, the number 72 is significant in terms of astronomy. The vernal equinox is the constellation that rises in the east just before the sun appears above the horizon. This is known as the helical rising. The vernal equinox is recognized as the first degree of the sun's yearly circle; the first day of the year or the vernal point. 

The effect of precession is to cause the ‘vernal point’ to be reached fractionally earlier in the orbit each year with the result that it very gradually shifts through all 12 houses of the zodiac, spending 2,160 years in each house, completing the cycle and returning to the same point in 25,920 years.

During the course of each year the earth’s movement along its orbit causes the zodiacal background against which the sun is seen to rise to change from month to month: Aquarius – Pisces – Aries – Taurus – Gemini – Cancer - Leo, and so on.  Currently, on the vernal equinox, the sun is seen to rise due east between the zodiac constellations of Pisces and Aquarius as we move towards the Age of Aquarius.

The movement of this ‘processional drift’ is in a retrograde direction, that is in opposition to the annual 'path of the sun': Leo -  Cancer – Gemini – Taurus – Aries – Pisces – Aquarius. Therefore, by possessing knowledge of the effects of precession, it is possible to back-calculate a particular zodiacal age, for example, the ‘Age of Leo’, that is the 2,160 years during which the sun on the vernal equinox rose against the stellar background of the constellation of Leo, lasted from 10,970 until 8,810 BC.

Thus, the equinoctial sun occupies each zodiacal constellation for about 2,160  years, the age of Pisces for example would last 2,160 years (72 x 30 = 2,160). When we multiply the 72 years by the 360 (12 x 30) degrees of a complete cycle, 'The Great Year', we arrive at the number 25,920 years for each cycle to be completed and the constellations returning to the  point they started.

We often find that when ancient texts start to reel off numbers 12, 30, and 72 and 2160, multiplies and divisions there of, such as 5 x 6 (30), the figures add up to numbers in the precessional sequence. The numbers were then attached to gods and encoded in myths to ensure transmission through the ages and often to disguise the sacred system from the uninitiated. 

According to Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, in their seminal book Hamlet's Mill there are over 200 myths or folk stories from over thirty ancient cultures that refer to a Great Year tied to the movement of the equinox or the motion of the heavens. Their argument predominantly concerns the recurrent and persistent transmission of a ‘precessional message’ in a wide range of ancient myths.

de Santillana and von Dechend state that the 'precessional message' encoded in these myths provides a sequence of numbers, preceded by the appearance by, what they call a morphological marker, such as the appearance of a canine, 'The Opener of the Way', intended to alert the target audience that a piece of important data was next in the story. They cite the Norse traditions of the Poetic Edda that speak of the monstrous wolf Fenrir:

500 doors and 40 there are
I ween, in Valhalla’s walls;
800 fighters through each door fare,
When to war with the Wolf they go.

To the uninitiated these numbers seem innocent enough but on calculating the quoted numbers we derive at 540 x 800 = 432,000, an important number in the precessional code which we will come to shortly. We find  a similar sequence in the Osiris myth from The Egyptian Book of the Dead, which highlights the processional numbers of 360, 72, 30 and 12. Essentially these numbers are ‘excess baggage’ and not essential to the story but again they convey the processional code.

Archaeo-astronomer and Egyptologist Jane B. Sellers is one of the few serious scholars to have tested the theory advanced by de Santillana and von Dechend in Hamlet’s Mill, and argues that the Osiris myth appears to have been deliberately encoded with a selection of key numbers by which exact processional values can be calculated:

• 12 - the number of months in the year equal to the number of constellations in the zodiac,
  
• 30 - the number of days in the month, equates to the number of degrees allocated along the ecliptic to each zodiacal constellation,
  
• 12 x 30 = 360 - the number of months multiplied by the number of days, which equals the total number of degrees in the ecliptic,
  
• 72 - the number of conspirators in the group led by the deity Set in the plot to kill Osiris. This number is equal to the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to move one degree along the ecliptic,
  
• 72 x 30 = 2,160 - the number of years required for the sun to complete a passage of 30 degrees along the ecliptic and pass through any one of the 12 zodiacal constellations,
  
• 2,160 x 12 (or 360 x 72) = 25,920 - the number of years in one complete precessional cycle or ‘Great Year’, and for the cycle to return to the beginning, the ‘Great Return’.

72 is the most significant number in the code. To this is frequently added its half, 36, making 108. This is often divided by 2 to give 54. Typically with esoteric numerology it is permissible to employ almost any conceivable permutations by using multiplications or divisions of the essential numbers, for example 108 x 4 x 60 = 25,920 years, and so on. The highly significant number 2,160 can be multiplied by 10 (= 21,600) or by 2 to give 4,320, or 43,200, or 432,000, the number of fighters calculated from the Poetic Edda, above.  All of these numbers, and their derivatives, relate precisely to the rate of precession of the equinoxes.

At Baalbek the traces of processional numbers are faint but can be found in the columns. The columns are considered part of the Roman structure at Baalbek as they sit upon the Roman masonry placed upon the ancient Grand Terrace; significantly, there were originally 54 columns which is a division of 72, the significant number of the processional code. However, this gives us no indication of a date for the original construction at Baalbek. Ancient monuments aligned to the position of a certain constellation on a certain date does not prove it was constructed at that time. Of course anyone possessing a knowledge of precession could have constructed these monuments to point to a certain epoch, for whatever reason.

An example of this is the lay out of the Giza periods which Robert Bauval, with Adrian Gilbert, proposes appear to have been laid out in a pattern similar to Orion's belt. During Orion's travels through the skies in the precessional cycle, the constellation we know in the northern hemisphere as The Hunter, appears to move up and down through the sky. To this end, Bauval determined that the layout of the Giza pyramids reflected the position of Orion, calculated through the processional cycle, at 10,450 BC, at its lowest point in the sky. However, carbon dating from the mortar of the Great Pyramid suggests construction fits with accepted 4th Dynasty chronology, c. 2560 BC. This dating also concurs with the astronomical alignment of the so called 'star shafts' emerging from the King and Queen Chambers.

Bauval, along with Graham Hancock argue that these constructions were designed to point to a specific epoch by the use of precession; perhaps the date of a catastrophe as a warning to mankind. They go on to propose that the Great Sphinx pointed to the equinoctial rising of the constellation Leo on the horizon; the Age of Leo being from 10,970 to 8,810 BC.  Hancock and Bauval argue for a an original lion-headed sphinx, corresponding with Leo, before being re-carved at a later date. They calculated that the alignment of the Great Sphinx gazing toward the equinoctial rising of Leo on the horizon would have been around the same date of 10,450 BC.

The Great Sphinx

The geologist Professor Robert Schoch's attention was drawn to the weathering on the Great Sphinx by John Anthony West. Schoch had written an article, 'Re-dating the Sphinx', in which he argued for an old sphinx. Schoch claims the precipitation-induced weathering on the sphinx is of a distinctly different nature from the wind-induced weathering evident on various Old Kingdom tombs and structures found in the vicinity carved from the same limestone sequence.

Schoch argues that the Great Sphinx of Giza was weathered heavily at an early period in its existence by precipitation, suggesting that it must have been carved prior to the last great period of major precipitation in this part of the Nile Valley, known as the "Nabtian Pluvial", a period of relatively heavy rainfall, from 12,000 - 10,000 to about 5,000 years ago.

Schoch concludes that the Sphinx complex, the sculpture and its associated stone temples, is considerably older than its traditional attribution of c.2,500 BC and would not have been a totally isolated phenomenon in the Neolithic world: other massive stone structures were being built around the Mediterranean as early as 10,000 years ago. The standard chronology is clearly flawed.

The Oldest City in the World?
Tiahuanaco (Tiwanku) has been described as the “Baalbek of the New World”. Known to the ancients as Taypikala, an aymara word meaning "Stone of the Centre", the ceremonial centre of Tiahuanaco high in the Bolivian mountains, is surrounded on three sides by the Andes and Lake Titicaca on the fourth. Remembered as the “City of the Sun", every 21st June, winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, the local people celebrate Machaj Mara, the Aymara New Year, just outside the temple.

Tiahuanaco Temple complex

First impressions are that the ground-plan of the temple complex at Tiahuanaco is similar to that at Baalbek and Karnak. Situated on the immense plain of the Altiplano, two and a half miles (12,500 feet) above sea-level, now several miles from the shores of Lake Titicaca. But something is wrong here; huge megalithic blocks weighing several hundred tons are scattered like nine pins and marine creatures, sea horses for example, inhabit the lake. Evidently, Tiahuanaco was once a port on the shore of Lake Titicaca and once at sea level. The structure known as the Puma Punka, or 'Door of the Puma', appears to be the remains of a massive port once located on the shore of the lake but is now some 12 miles inland from the water's edge.

Geologists argue that this massive land upheaval occurred millions of years ago in Earth's distant history. Orthodox archaeology dates Tiahuanaco to c.200 AD, reaching its peak around 500 AD and then went into steady decline until c.1000 AD. Yet there are no record of a major cataclysm occurring here during that time to have instigated the downturn in Tiahuanaco's fortunes.

Puma Punku, the port of Tiahuanaco, is an area filled with enormous stone blocks weighing typically between 100 and 150 tons, but one block still in place weighs an estimated 450 tons.  Some of these massive stone blocks have incisions as if cut by a diamond-tipped saw blade and placed with such precision that a razor blade could not be placed between them. One of the construction blocks used for the pier weighs an estimated 450 tons, yet the quarry for these giant blocks was on the western shore of Titicaca, over 12 miles distant. As with Baalbek and other massive stone constructions archaeologists simply fail to answer how these massive stones were quarried, and transported to the building site, or how the construction engineers managed to manoeuvre them so skilfully to form a massive complex of megalithic buildings.

Many of the stone blocks at the complex weigh typically in excess of 200 tons, and in some cases are held together by large metallic, I-shaped couplers, rather than individual inter-locking shaped blocks found at Sacsahuaman or at Cuzco, typical Cyclopean masonry. Researchers believe that molten metal was actually poured into I-shaped slots carved into the rock in situ; the construction engineers must have possessed a mobile furnace of some sort. A similar technique was used in Egyptian constructions and at Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

In his final and most important book, the four volume Tihuanacu, the Cradle of American Man, Arthur Posnansky, an engineer who dedicated fifty years to its study, argued that Tiahuanaco was constructed approximately 17,000 years ago. He observed enormous blocks of stone used in massive structures all over the site that no known pre-Columbian culture had the technology to fashion or transport. Posnansky found the astronomical arrangement of these structures relative to one another indicated that the original construction engineers possessed a highly sophisticated knowledge of astronomy and mathematics. Posnansky's dating techniques are based on astronomical phenomenon and controversial to say the least and not surprisingly rejected by orthodox accounts. Posnansky is often said to have used precession, as described above, for deriving his dating evidence, but this is not correct as he based his findings on the phenomenon  known as the 'obliqueness of the ecliptic'. 

In the solar system, the Earth's orbital plane is known as the ecliptic plane; the axial tilt of the Earth's is called the obliquity of the ecliptic. Unlike the long term regularity of the slow clock of precession, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the Earth's tilt, is constantly changing over a 41,000 year cycle. This angle oscillates slowly between a minimum of 22 degrees and 1 minute to a maximum of 24 degrees and 5 minutes; it is currently tilted at an angle of around 23 degrees and 17 minutes.

Tiahuanaco has four surviving primary structures; the Akapana pyramid, the Kalasasaya platform, the Subterranean Temple, and the Puma Punku.  Utilizing his measurements of the lines of sight along the stone pillars of the Kalasasaya, noting the orientation and the deviations from the cardinal points, Posnansky was able to show that the alignment of the structure was based upon the astronomical principle of the obliquity of the ecliptic.

It is now generally accepted that the Kalasasaya functioned as a sophisticated celestial observatory, its purpose to fix the equinoxes and the solstices and to predict, with mathematical precision, the various seasons of the year. Certain structures within the Kalasasaya seem to have been deliberately aligned to particular star groups and designed to facilitate accurate measurement of of the sun in summer, winter, autumn and spring. The famous ‘Gateway of the Sun’, which stood in the north-west corner of the enclosure, is thought to be a complex and accurate calendar carved in stone. Animals depicted on it have been extinct for millennia. The Gateway of the Sun is carved from a single block of andesite and today displays a crack  running through the lintel to the doorway. Yet photographs in Posnansky's Tihuanacu, the Cradle of American Man show that prior to the 20th century it was literally torn in two as if by some convulsion of the Earth.

Gateway of the Sun, 1877

Posnansky observed that the solar alignments of certain key structures at Tiahuanaco now looked ‘out of true’. These astronomical and solar alignments, or more correctly 'mis-alignments', made it possible to calculate the approximate period when the Kalasasaya had originally been laid out. He was able to date the Kalasasaya because the obliquity cycle gradually alters the azimuth position of sunrise and sunset over the centuries. Posnansky calculated that the obliquity of the ecliptic at the time of the building of the Kalasasaya had been 23° 8’ 48”. Plotting this angle on the graph drawn up by the International Conference of Ephemerids it was found to correspond to a date of 15,000 BC.

Between 1927 and 1930 Posnansky's conclusions were scrutinised by a team of four leading German astronomers who verified the accuracy of his calculations; the Kalasasaya alignments did indeed indicate a date of 17,000 years ago. The academic furore led them to revise their estimate downwards to 9,300 BC. This struck historians and archaeologists as being some 9,000 years too early but this date has persisted with studies during the mid-1990's confirming Tiahuanaco was indeed built  almost 12,000 years ago.

Yet decades of intensive excavations and archaeological research has drawn a total absence of prehistoric tools and midden deposits for any occupation of the Tiahuanaco complex anywhere near these ancient dates.  However, it must be noted that much of the site is in a very poor state of preservation, having been subjected to looting and amateur excavations over the centuries. The destruction of the site continued during the Spanish conquest and beyond.

From it's construction 12,000 years ago Tiahuanaco's ending certainly seems linked to some catastrophe in the distant past. This date corresponds with the same epoch that the ground plan of the Giza pyramids was laid out, 10,450 BC, and the Great Sphinx was carved from the bedrock, staring at his celestial counterpart, the constellation of Leo, rising on the horizon, 10,970 to 8,810 BC. Conventional wisdom argues that there is no known civilisation from this period capable of such achievement. Any evidence that does not fit the accepted dogma is rejected. Yet new discoveries continually move the clock back.

The original foundations of the Jupiter temple at Baalbek, that do not fit any known culture, is aligned eastward, facing the equinox sunrise but any celestial markers were lost long ago during the construction of the Roman temple on top, making it now impossible to date these immense stones of the Trilithon. Yet it seems likely that these colossal stones of the Grand Terrace at Baalbek were also erected during the same period as Tiahuanaco, but the mystery of who built the massive foundations and how are just as mysterious.

*

Bibliography
Norman Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy
Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill
E. A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead,
Jane B Sellers, The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt,
Robert Bauval, with Adrian Gilbert, The Orion Mystery
Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods
Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock, Keeper of Genesis
Robert Schoch, 'Re-dating the Sphinx', KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt
Robert Schoch, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders

* * *

Druids Loose Appeal for Return of Stonehenge Ancestors

Fighting a Ministry of Justice decision permitting scientists at Sheffield University to retain the human remains exhumed in 2008, King Arthur Pendragon of the Stonehenge Druids took his appeal to the High Court requesting the remains be reburied immediately.

His bid was rejected at a hearing in London today by Mr Justice Wyn Williams who refused to award King Arthur permission to launch a judicial review action, ruling that there was insufficient evidence to show that the Ministry of Justice might have acted unreasonably.

The remains were removed from the Aubrey Hole burial site at Stonehenge in 2008 with ministers granting permission for the bones of more than 40 bodies, thought to be at least 5,000 years old, to be examined at Sheffield University until 2015.

Arthur stated that he did not believe the bones would ever be returned to the site, and that his views were not being taken into account. His allegations were denied by the Ministry of Justice.

Talking before the hearing, Arthur said: "If we don't  force them to put them back, they're going to end up in Salisbury museum.  I know that for a fact, and I'm not prepared to stand around and wait for them to come up with other excuses."

Arthur vowed to continue his fight to have the remains reburied. He called for a "day of action" at Stonehenge on Monday, which he said would be three years to the day since the remains were removed.


Sources:
BBC News Wiltshire 23 August 2011
The Guardian Online 23 August 2011

* * *

The Ancient Mystery of Baalbek

The Hand of the Cyclopes Part II

The Trilithon
The quest for the largest megaliths moved by man has brought us to the ancient land of Lebannon and the temple remains at Baalbek, City of the Sun. Archaeology reveals that settlement in the area of Baalbek dates back over 7,000 years, with the ruins we see today are largely dominated by the Roman temples but an ancient mystery lies beneath.

The Temple of Jupiter

The Temple of Jupiter, the largest of the Roman complex at Baalbek, completely dwarfs the Temple of Bacchus and the other structures at Baalbek; the most notable sight as one approaches, even from some distance, are the gigantic Corinthian columns, the largest in the ancient world. Today just six of the original 54 columns are still standing, at 72 feet high they dwarf the 24 foot-high columns of Rome’s Acropolis.

The six remaining columns were built on a podium 22 feet above the ground, possibly an un-roofed construction open to the elements. These massive six columns provide a glimpse of the vast scale of the original structure, measuring 157.5 feet in width and 288.7 feet in length. It has been suggested that the great columns, constructed of Aswan granite, appear to have been reworked from an earlier possibly Hellenistic style.

The Temple Podium supporting these massive columns was built of some of the most gigantic stones ever crafted and moved by man. At the side of the podium, incorporated into the west wall, known as the Grand Terrace, is the 'Trilithon', consisting of three enormous stones, raised 20 feet above the ground, each approximately 63 feet long, 13 feet wide, 13 feet high, weighing an estimated 800 – 1000 tons each, mounted on lower courses of blocks weighing around 350 - 400 tons each.

Today we marvel at the achievement of the Neolithic construction of Stonehenge, many visitors to the site on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, simply gape in awe at these stones, the heaviest estimated at 50 tons. Yet, the largest stones at Baalbek are some 20 times greater in weight than the largest stones used at Stonehenge. To date, the 'trilithon' stones are the largest megaliths known to have been moved by man found anywhere in the world.

Classic picture of Baalek showing the immense size of the Trilithon
as compared to the two figures above it

These giant stones were precisely placed side-by-side with such accuracy that even today a thin blade cannot be inserted between them. Yet the original structure of the Grand Terrace remains a mystery: modern construction engineers agree that there are no known lifting technologies even in current times that could raise and position the Baalbek stones given the amount of working space available as there is simply no conceivable place where huge pulley apparatus could have been positioned to move the massive Trilithon stones. The massive stones of Baalbek are simply beyond the engineering abilities of any known ancient or contemporary builders.

Certainly, there are no legends or folk tales from Roman times that link the Romans with the mammoth stones. There are absolutely no records in any Roman or other literary sources concerning the construction methods, dates or names of the designers, architects, or engineers who built of the Grand Terrace. No Emperor claims them.

The megalithic stones of the Trilithon bear no structural or ornamental resemblance to any of the Roman-era constructions above them, such as the previously described Temples of Jupiter, Bacchus or Venus. The limestone rocks of the Trilithon show extensive evidence of wind and sand erosion that is absent from the Roman temples, indicating that the megalithic Trilthon construction dates from a far earlier age.

Indeed, the great stones of Baalbek display evidence of erosion even older than the pre-Roman stone walls found throughout the ancient world, such as the Acropolis foundation in Athens, the foundations of Myceneae,  and Tiryns, Delphi. These walls were seemingly in place prior to the rise of the great Greek civilisations, not knowing who built them their historians attributed the constructions to the mythical Cyclopes subsequently providing the term 'cyclopean masonry'; a seemingly jumbled arrangement of interlocking large stone blocks in perfect placement without mortar.

Cyclopean masonry is often associated with colonies of the Phoenicians. Significantly, the coastal strip of Lebannon was the Phoenician homeland, perhaps the earliest seafaring nation, who built up an immense maritime trade network over a thousand years that at its peak, from 1550BC to 300BC, spread across the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians were known to the Greeks and Romans as 'traders in purple', referring to their monopoly on the precious purple dye extracted from the Murex snail, used, among other things, for colouring royal clothing.

The original name 'phoinix' was a Greek invention and appears for the first time in the period of Homer and Hesiod, during the 9th - 7th centuries. The name, and it's derivatives, was used exclusively by the Greeks to describe these eastern people, but its root is neither Phoenician or Semitic and the etymological problem of the origin of the Greek word persists. Indeed, the Phoenicians are known from the 14th century BC as people who called themselves Canaanites. However, one of the meanings of the word 'phoinix' is 'red', no doubt an allusion to the purple textile industry; it has been suggested that Phoenicia could mean 'the country of purple cloth'.

Ancient Copper Trade
The  Phoenicians are known to have ventured beyond the Pillars of Hercules, (the Straits of Gibraltar), and circumnavigated the African continent. Tin has been produced and traded in Cornwall since ancient times but from this period little is known. There are legends of the Phoenicians trading with the Cornish for tin. There are strong claims they ventured as far as Britain for Cornish tin, allied with copper an essential element in the Mediterranean Bronze Age. The 17th century writer Samuel Bochart suggested in his Geographic Sacra (1646) that the name of Britannia was first applied by the Phoenicians, in whose language 'Bartanac' signified 'the land of tin'.

Ox hide ingot

Writing in the 5th century BC, the ancient historian Herodutus was the first to mention the islands where the Greeks obtained their tin, but he failed to reveal the exact location. The location of the tin islands was confirmed in the 1st century by the Greek writer Diodorus Sicculus who provided an important description of the mining and trade of Cornish tin. Diodorus' account is thought to derive from the lost work of Pytheas of Massalia, a Greek who circumnavigated the British Isles in the 4th century. Diodorus' account refers to Belerion (Cornwall) as the promontory of Britain where they got the tin, from where it was moved to an island called Ictis, signifying 'tin port', where merchants could purchase it. The location of Ictis has been the cause of much debate between historians, many preferring the Isle of Wight which was known as Vectis by the Romans. Others have claimed St Michael's Mount off Penzance in Cornwall a more likely location as 'ictis' means 'joined to the mainland at low tide'.

The coast around the south west peninsula of Britain is littered with shipwrecks, many bearing evidence of the tin trade. In 1992, 42 tin ingots, were found in a wreck of a Roman context at Bigbury Bay, South Devon and the Royal Cornwall Museum houses a copper and tin ingot found off Looe Island (Lammana), Cornwall, authenticated as 2000 years old.

In 2009, a wreck was found in just eight metres of water on part of the seabed called Wash Gully, only 300 metres from the shore, in a bay near Salcombe, south Devon, by a team of amateur marine archaeologists from the South West Maritime Archaeological Group. Archaeologists have described the vessel, which is thought to date back to around 1200 - 900BC, the Phoenician period, as being a "bulk carrier" of its age. The recovered cargo included 259 copper ingots and 27 tin ingots, weighing a total of more than 84kg, in almost the exact proportion of tin ingots to copper ingots found to make bronze, with a composition of 10% tin and 90% copper. Further analysis on the provenance of the materials is required but initial thoughts amongst archaeologists is that the copper could have come from afar afield as the Iberian peninsular, Alpine Europe, especially modern day Switzerland, and possibly other locations in France, such as the Massif Central, and possibly Austria. It seems likely that the ship was collecting Cornish tin to deliver a complete bronze making package to its ultimate destination that it never reached due to the notorious currents off the Cornwall-Devon coast.

How far the Phoenicians ventured for raw materials is not known. Debate continues as to whether they crossed the Atlantic and ventured into the New World: evidence of a Phoenician presence in the Americas is vigorously denied by conventional historians as fakes and forgeries because it fails to fit with the accepted chronology of the peopling of the New World. Surely we should exercise caution here and not be too hasty in dismissing the possibility of early Atlantic crossings in prehistory. Recent studies have shown North American copper may have been used to supply the Mediterranean Bronze Age.

With the exception of a small amount of pre-Columbian bronze made in Peru, the New World never entered the Bronze Age. Copper was used for tools and ornaments sourced from the area of the Great Lakes in North America. Sites near Lake Superior are dotted with small pits, typically 15 to 20 feet in diameter but only 6 to 7 feet deep. About 5,000 of these copper mines have been identified,  believed to have started between 7th to 5th millennium BC, with the major period of extraction between 3,000 and 1,200 BC. Therefore, North American copper mining was active during the peak of the Phoenician maritime trade network, from 1550BC to 300BC.

It has been claimed that up to 1 billion pounds of copper was extracted in the New World. This figure is seen as extremely high, the most conservative estimates suggesting somewhere in the region of 20 million pounds. Given the volume of ore removed and the likely concentration of metal it contained more recent estimates suggest a maximum of some 80 million pounds of copper.

Yet conventional wisdom asserts that the copper extracted from the Lake Superior mines was used to make artefacts from the so-called Old Copper culture, from which a total of some 20,000 objects are known to exist in museums and private collections, estimated to weigh around 10,000 pounds, a mere fraction of the total amount mined even if we accept the most conservative estimate of 20 million pounds. Where did all the copper go?

Ancient people across the world spent huge time and resources manufacturing tools and ornaments to be used in funerary rituals. Such was their belief in the afterlife, yet less than 10 per cent of Old Copper artefacts has been recovered from burials.

It has been suggested that the majority was shipped to the Old World to feed the Mediterranean Bronze Age. There may be some merit in this notion as copper was melted in the Mediterranean area into ingots shaped like a cured ox hide. Oddly, similar shaped copper ingots have been found in North American burial mounds.

Shipwrecks found in the Mediterranean have revealed evidence of trade in these ox hide ingots. In the early 1950s, divers found the remains of a shipwreck in Cape Gelidonya, off the coast of Turkey. Radiocarbon dating of brushwood from the ship provided a date c.1200 BC.

In 1982, a diver discovered a shipwreck off the shore of Uluburun, Turkey. Tree-ring dating of firewood from the ship yielded a date c.1300 BC. The ship contained 317 copper ingots in the normal oxhide shape, 36 with only two corner protrusions, 121 shaped like buns, and five shaped like pillows. After being cleaned of their corrosion the oxhide ingots were found to range in weight from 20.1 to 29.5 kg. The ship's cargo included tin oxhide ingots, and  ivory, metal jewellery, and Canaanite pottery containing resin. The ship's load of ten tons of copper ingots, one ton of tin ingots, again in the correct proportions for the composition of bronze as with the wreck found near Salcombe, south Devon, and the resin stored in the Canaanite jars appear to be a complete package as all these materials were used for bronze casting through the lost-wax technique. It would seem these maritime metal merchants delivered all the sources required to order.

Analysis of the ingots from the two shipwrecks has revealed ore sources with a Middle East or Central Asian provenance; the destination of North American copper remains elusive.

Baalbek of the New World
Cyclopean walls are also found in the New World, such as at Cusco in Peru, attributed to the Incas, and megalithic constructions at Tiahuanaco has given the Bolivian ruins the name of the “Baalbek of the New World” for good reason. We find many similarities between the Old and New Worlds in ancient times.

The Twelve Angle Stone, Cusco

However, the first constructions at Baalbek are not typically 'cyclopean' masonry in the style of the walls constructed at Phoenician sites around the  Mediterranean and the New World. The massive stones of the Grand Terrace at Baalbek are usually referred to as 'cyclopean' simply due to their immense size and a legend attached to the site that records that the first temple at Baalbek was the construction of Cain before the Deluge and rebuilt by a race of giants under the command of Nimrod after the flood; the work of the Cyclopes.

The Phoenicians were famous for building coastal ports for extending their maritime trade network, why they should build an immense platform at an altitude of 1,170 metres (3,840 ft) in the mountains of Lebannon is baffling and does not fit with the concept of seaborne traders who's interests were in the opposite direction. The foundations at Baalbek would appear to be pre-Phoenician in design and purpose. It has been suggested that the Grand Terrace supported an un-roofed platform for ancient stargazers long before the Romans built their temple upon the site.

We have seen that a copper trade network established by the Phoenicians could certainly have reached the New World and is a distinct possibility. However, the megalithic constructions at Tiahuanaco have been dated to a much earlier age, long before the Phoenicians; a civilisation seems to have appeared in the New World 17,000 years ago with no apparent predecessors or evolution. Then disappeared again without trace.

Hand of the Cyclopes Part III: Celestial Wanderings

* * *