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Velikovskian debates and finding a date for Moses and the Exodus - part 1

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By Dan Byrnes LW Story 6, Issue 1

THIS article aims to point out that while-ever the views of Immanuel Velikovsky remain controversial, this is partly due to methodological problems that remain unresolved. Worse, these unresolved problems bear on many different disciplines, which is a good reason to ask multi-disciplinarians to suggest a useful multi-discipline. The genius does not yet seem to exist, allowing us to resolve disparate information usefully.

Nevertheless, interesting questions arise: especially, what sort of methodological approaches could be used to ease controversy? One requirement would seem to be a reliable set of dates for the period 3000BC to about 500BC, and not just for Egypt and the Middle east. No such reliable set of dates exists, as far as one can find. The problem becomes worse if one imagines that whatever evidence is to hand, is actually crucial.

Some cultural and some psychological points might be helpful. It seems that the Velikovsky debate is very much shrouded in the mythologies which help form the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and heavily reliant on the Mosaic Chronology. It might be helpful if efforts were made to compile data which makes arguments less reliant on the Mosaic Chronology, that is, to mount argument using data which is cross-cultural. One way to do this, in the sense of cultural history, might be to pay renewed attention to the Seven Great Wonders of the Ancient World, which might distract attention from a current major focus in the Velikovskian debate - Egypt.

I want to begin otherwise by making some psychological points, then to broach some historical situations relevant to the original or post-publication Velikovskian controversy, and later to outline a method I use for research in history, which I call "simultaneity".

Firstly, the psychological points... At least to the mid-1970s (I first noticed the Velikovsky controversy in the early 1970s) there was one approach given in the psychology of human creativity, which emphasised convergent versus divergent thinking. Creative people - inventors, artists and so on - were taken to be divergent thinkers, while more conformist or non-creative people were taken to be convergent thinkers. The convergent thinkers, of course, are more interested in consensus than in controversy, in fanciful notions, or in new ways of looking at things; while divergent thinkers have a hard time convincing others their new-found outlook is useful.

To say the least, Velikovsky remained a divergent thinker. As a psychiatrist/psychologist, Velikovsky diverged greatly from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung (who also diverged markedly from each other). As a scholar concerned with the history of the Jewish religion, as an Egyptologist, Velikovsky was divergent in attitude and approach. As a aficionado of myths in religion, mythology in general, as a commentator on celestial mechanics, or planetology, cosmology, (or whatever we call it), Velikovsky remained divergent.

That may be well and good for an independent thinker, which Velikovsky certainly was. But what to do next? It seems to me that it remains a problem that both the critics and defenders of "Velikovskian positions" have achieved little by way of consensus in finding ways to disagree usefully. More particularly, the defenders of Velikovskian positions could have - and I believe should have - conducted their research with a view to making their information - their vindications of Velikovskian positions - more convergent.

By that I mean, the defenders of Velikovskian positions could have taken some relatively simple steps to codify various information they believe vindicates the basic theses outlined by Velikovsky. What seems to have happened is that positions, theories, contributing information have all become, and remained, more fruitlessly divergent since the 1950s - doing little good to any position one might adopt.

* * * * *

I'll illustrate some problems resulting from poor methodology with material found in some allegedly unexceptional histories, providing a fairly simple, straightforward set of examples. As the reader will find, what goes here as history - basic Egyptology, Jewish history, Bible history, some Mediterranean history and so on - should perhaps be rendered as "history". Now, please consider the following ...

One of Velikovsky's original points of departure was the problem of finding an historical date for the Exodus of Moses from Egypt. Perhaps, Velikovsky felt exercised by Sigmund Freud's proposition, that the "heretic monotheist" pharaoh of Egypt, Akhenaten, had influenced Moses' views on the deity. (Some scholars take Moses to have been a henotheist, rather than a monotheist). In 1996 was published a book with the alarming proposition that Akhenaten WAS Moses! [Laurence Gardner, The Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed. Shaftesbury, Dorset, Element, 1996., or Brisbane, Jacaranda Wiley, 1996. See also, Graham Phillips, Act of God: Tutankhamun, Moses and the Myth of Atlantis. London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1998.]

Here, one need not believe Gardner, or Phillips (an ingenious theorist), who make various provocative propositions... Including, that Jesus Christ had progeny, and that as earlier claimed in a now notorious book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, the descendants of Jesus, his siblings, and his own children, mingled their blood in what became the royal families of Europe. Gardner claims that such descendants live today, and genealogically, his argument would seem to carry much weight, certainly from around 800AD.

In particular, the histories of the aristocracies of the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Austria would be greatly involved in proving such claims. Not only that, but a great deal of legend ranged around the histories of more orthodox Judaism, Christianity, Freemasonry (and the history of the Templars), plus the Arthurian-Camelot legend, has been produced by apologists for this bloodline, and a great deal of other cultural material would also need to be discussed.

The religious aspects of the Velikovskian debate would become entangled in the kinds of arguments that Gardner would provoke. Velikovsky was, perhaps, an old style catastrophist, wondering about the Biblical legend of a Great Flood. As such, he tried to take on the "modern" geological gradualists. That resembles a mostly scientific argument, but as we know, Velikovsky finally invoked a wide range of mythic and quasi-religious material as he searched for "proof". The problem that Gardner causes - if we believe him, as historians - is that he brings into reasonably accessible timeframes, and within the body we presently have of Jewish history, the entire genealogy (to the present day) of the notable figures whose views, or editorial interventions in sacred writings, would be called into question if one were to become involved in discussing such issues. Plus a great deal of cultural commentary.

Gardner's work (if we believe it) does a great deal to collapse Western history from Year One (when BC or BCE changed to AD [Anno Domini, The Year of Our Lord] in Western history) into a kind of underground conspiracy theory. The Velikovsky debate seems helpless before the terms of this conspiracy theory, because Velikovsky's original departure points were created from his curiosity about Jewish reports on a great flood, Moses' Exodus and various strange happenings - and the rest we know about if we have read Velikovsky. And so, if we believe Gardner's book, and/or, if we believe Velikovsky, and even worse, if we also believe that Gardner is correct in saying that Moses was Akhenaten - an Akhenaten escaping harrassment in Egypt - then the present-day scientific arguments about Velikovskian propositions falls into a revised disposition, because the cultural dimension has also changed dramatically, across nearly three thousand years of recorded history. The number of methodological questions which might arise are enormous. (And in fact, matters remain far simpler if we assume that Jesus Christ had no progeny, because then his non-existent progeny and their non-existent descendants cannot have had the kinds of problems and political interests that Gardner claims they had.)

Some of what Velikovsky challenged was beliefs about cosmology, and how one might think about linkages between the cosmos, the role of the deity, the life of human beings and the management of human society. Today, we cannot think about such issues without also thinking of the theory of evolution, Big Bang theory, and a great deal of material the ancients could not have begun to imagine with any efficiency. So having said that the methodological problems are enormous, and that participants in the Velikovskian debate prefer not to recognise this, I now want to return to a consideration of one of Velikovsky's original problems - when on earth did Moses depart Egypt?

Not why did Moses escape Egypt, not how, with no questions about how the Egyptian pyramids were built, or why - or the dating of the Sphinx - but a simple historical-type question about just one man - Moses - when?

* * * * *

Imagine that between the years 1250BC and 1230BC (roughly), you have a satellite view of events occurring around the eastern Mediterranean, around the mouth of the Nile, present-day Israel or Palestine, the Fertile Crescent, and down the coast of the red Sea, with an eye kept on Mecca. This is what many books - including Velikovsky's - might tell us... Personally, I find the resulting scenario, or, scenarios, largely unbelievable.

As Velikovsky himself found, there is little agreement found in dates often given for Egyptian history vis-a-vis Jewish history. It is difficult to find an acceptable date for the Exodus of Moses and the Jews from Egypt, but matters fall basically into timeframes for two basic dates, an earlier date (around 1450BC), and a later date (about 1250BC). (The date sought overall, I'll refer to from now on as, the Exodus date). Basically, dates given in books for Exodus cross a timeframe of four centuries or longer. The generally preferred date (the later date) seems to be circa 1250BC. Various sets of dates, provided by different methodological approaches, can be laced in various ways over this ladder of two-four centuries, although, very unsatisfyingly, as follows (and I'll assume that all readers feel they already know their basic "Bible history")...

1440BC - Encyclopedia Britannica suggests an early date of Exodus, based on 480 years elapsing from Exodus to Solomon building his temple. This might make Exodus about 1440BC, in the time of Tuthmosis III. Then, the petty kingdoms of Moab and Edom were not yet settled. The destruction of the cities that Bible history might claim were captured by the Jews might have occurred about 1250BC, not 1400BC.

And for example, 1413BC, Prince Tuthmosis is promised he will be king (as Tuthmosis IV) if he frees sand from the Great Sphinx at Giza. [Mellersh] By 1394BC-1384BC [Aldred] Tuthmosis IV reigned in Egypt with Queen Mutemwiya. He made efforts to uncover the giant image of the god Re-Herakhte, the god of Lower Egypt, from the sands that engulfed his great Sphinx at Giza.

But for an unsatisfying unspecified time, Egypt was occupied by a little-known invader people known as the Hyksos. The Hyksos among other affronts offended the Egyptians since they worshipped Set, who in the Egyptian pantheon was a figure of evil. It appears that after the expulsion of the Hyksos, the Egyptians were further affronted by their heretic, monotheist pharaoh, Akhenaten. Amenhotep III is dated about 1402BC. [The date is from Tapsell]. Amenhotep IV or Akhenaten was influential about 1364BC-1347BC. [Tapsell]. By about 1355BC, it is possible that Akhenaten puts his wife Nefertiti away in disgrace. [Mellersh]. However, dates simply will not behave themselves - for in ranging around even in Egyptology, we find that Tutankhamun, reigning somewhat after Akhenaten, died in 1350BC. (And in one of Velikovsky's own redatings of Egyptian history, Tutankhamun died in 835BC!). As we find from material on Velikovsky's own career, he had earlier on become preoccupied in redating Egyptian history - later on he became interested in cosmology (or, Catastrophism). Even in the context of ordinary Bible history, Exodus dates spread around 1450BC or 1250BC, with no adequate explanation for events in the misbehaving 200-year period.

*****

For the next part of this article, see page 7 of this site. Issue two of Lost Worlds will contain the next two parts. (A select bibliography is given at the end of part four.)

By Dan Byrnes

IN 1486BC, Thutmose III of Egypt defeated the Hyksos in the famous battle of the Megiddo Pass. [Packer et al]. But we note that Packer says the people known as the Habiru were not the Hebrew, as the Hebrew did not call themselves the Hebrew. Meanwhile, writings by Cyril Aldred and others suggest that, perhaps, the Egyptians expelled the Hyksos by about 1530BC? (Here, with the Egyptians under the command of Pharaoh Amosis (Ahmose), who had begun his reign about 1552BC, this Ahmose being a nephew of Kamose). To expel the Hyksos, it was necessary to ruin Avaris (such ruination ought to produce an archaeologically verifiable date?).

By the time they ousted the Hyksos, the Egyptians had adopted and probably improved the Hyksos' military technology, the earlier superiority of which was one reason the Hyksos had overrun Egypt. With this success, Ahmose (Amosis) then went for Palestine. Ahmose also took areas from the Nubians (Kushites) and shored up his southern borders near the Second Cataract of the Nile. Ahmose' Queen was Ahmose-Nefertiti.

Whether the above information about the mysterious Hyksos is accurate or inaccurate, it gives us some dates, reliable or not. If we move down the ladder of a timeframe, we might, depending on whom we read, find that the Hyksos were pacified by Egypt in Canaan between 1550BC and 1450BC. If any suggestion is made in this part of the timeframe, for an Exodus date, it may have been that prior to escaping, Moses took advantage of widespread instability? It would then follow that the Pharaohs of the Oppression and the Exodus will be found within this timeframe, which gives us the earlier Exodus date, around 1450BC.

But does it have to do with anything at all, that one date provided for the explosion of the island of Thera [a date given by Friedrich] is 1500BC-1470BC? (Here, see also, Phillips, Act of God.) And that the explosion of Thera (also known as, Kalliste, also, Santorini) devastated civilisation on Crete? So, one might wonder if the events referred to above happened in coincidental timeframes? (The Greeks are thought by some writers to have come to Crete about 1450BC).

The Great Flood:
Thera: now called Santorini, 60 miles north of Crete, called Thera after the first Greek commander to set foot on her after the disaster. It had earlier been called Kalliste, "the most beautiful island". It was circular, had a 5000 feet high peak, now a lagoon eight miles wide, 200 fathoms deep, so deep, no ship can now anchor there. Thera's people used eye make-up, and had indoor plumbing, 1000 years before the birth of Rome. About 30,000 people lived on the island, which had a town called Akrotire. According to Freidrich, about 1500BC, Thera suffered probably the most violent explosion in all human history, which destroyed 32 square miles of Thera, four times the area blown away by Krakatoa. Debris covered 115,000 square miles, and a tidal wave some 200-300 feet high hit Crete "at 100 miles per hour"

1450BC: Thera blows up. [Mellersh, Friedrich]. Thera's tidal wave hit Crete about 1500BC-1470BC. (?)

But the second collapse of the Minoan palaces was in 1450BC, and only Knossos on Crete survived that catastrophe. [Friedrich]. Mainland Greeks came to Knossos about 1450BC [Friedrich].

Ian Wilson thinks Tuthmosis III was the Pharaoh resident on the delta at the times Moses departed. His throne had been usurped by Hatshepsut due to the youth of Tuthmosis III. [Ian Wilson, Exodus]. Wilson says Hatshepsut's reign began well but ended "in mysterious disgrace for her and her first minister Senenmut". About 1494BC-1482, Tuthmosis I reigns in Egypt. Tuthmosis II reigned from 1494BC. [Tapsell, Aldred]. Queen Hatshepsut (Ma'kare Hashepsowe), 1490BC-1468BC. 1488BC, Hatshepsut establishes herself as a Pharaoh (Mellersh]. 1488BC-1469BC, Hatshepsut decides on internal progress, not foreign adventures; her favourite is Senenmut. [Mellersh].

The supposition arises that once Thera had erupted, and after fire from earthquakes or volcanoes, there arose a tsunami or tidal wave which may have had something to do with the drowning of an Egyptian army bogged in the Reed Sea?

But did any explosion of Thera account for destruction on Crete? This is unsure. Did Theran activity help arouse the plagues of Egypt? And all this 25 years either side of 1450BC? The Theran explosion was perhaps the biggest natural upheaval in the known history of the day. Wilson cites an inscription from Hatshepsut's time, about an allowing of some immigrants (abomination of the gods) to depart, whence the earth swallowed their footsteps. Goedicke has translated a reference to a directive of Nun, the primeval water, father of fathers. Was the collapse of Thera the fall of Atlantis? Was the tsunami was reason for the Deucalion or Ogyges floods on Greece?
(The Mediterranean is tideless, and the early Church fathers believed that the Greek floods occurred at the time of Moses' Exodus).

Wilson continues, Hatshepsut's reign began well but ended "in mysterious disgrace for her and her first minister Senenmut". Wilson continues, possibly, Senenmut was blamed for chaos on the delta, and halfway through his own reign, Tuthmosis III ordered an obliteration of Hatshepsut's memory.

Friedrich mentions Velikovsky and cataclysms of about 1500BC, with an idea that a destruction of a sinful world became represented as the end of a golden age during which man and animal spoke to each other and helped each other in the needs of survival. [Here, perhaps man and animal spoke to each other in ways suggested in Joseph Campbell's book, The Way of the Animal Powers? But one doubts it].

Within this earlier-date timeframe, the figure emerges of the only female Pharaoh (although a co-regent), Hatshepsut (1437BC-1458BC) [Ian Wilson's dating], possibly as a Pharaoh of the Oppression? Or possibly, Thuthmose III, bearing in mind that Hatshepsut had usurped the throne of Tuthmosis III due to his youth. But none of this is entirely satisfactory, either, as considered history, or even as a set of dates.

Packer et al, editors perhaps to be seen as Protestant Christian fundamentalists, date Moses from about 1526BC to 1406BC, with an Exodus date about 1446BC, or, in the time of Tuthmosis III (plus Hatshepsut?). This might make Moses aged about age 80 when confronting Pharaoh in 1446BC? This might make Moses aged five in 1521BC? Packer has Moses born at the time when the Egyptians drove out the Hyksos, 1486BC. A suggested date for Moses fleeing into the wilderness after killing an Egyptian slave driver is about 1446BC.

But according to Packer et al, 1235BC was about the time of writing of the book of Joshua, which scarcely computes well. According to Encyclopedia Judaica, Joshua became a Jewish leader in 1190BC.

* * * * *

Moving along .. to the later date for the Exodus, around 1250BC-1230BC. If the earlier date becomes complicated by mention of Hatshepsut, and after her, mention of the heretic Akhenaten, the later date is vexed by an incoherent history of the Sea Peoples, whom Velikovsky also wrote about as he searched for coherence amid Chaos and Catastrophism.

1280BC: The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, with the same editor as the Encyclopaedia Judaica, gives Merneptah (1224BC-1204BC) as a possible Pharaoh of Exodus. The Israelites had been slaves for 430 years. Here, an Exodus date might be 1280BC? Encyclopedia Britannica suggests 1290BC might be a useful Exodus date, but admits this date conflicts with some archaeological evidence. This would make the oppressive Pharaoh, Seti I (1318BC-1304BC) and the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Ramses II (1304BC-1237BC). By such dates, Moses might have demanded his people be let go sometime between 1308BC and 1216BC, which is hardly useful as a date. But say, 1290BC-1224BC? Hence, the Oppression of the Jews might have begun about 1350BC (which of course, by virtue of the earlier dates given above, is well after the Exodus!).

Merneptah (1212BC- 1202BC), son of Ramses II, made ruthless raids on Palestine, and desolated Israel. He was perhaps the Pharaoh of Exodus, making Ramses II the Pharaoh of Oppression. The Britannica sees the Sea Peoples as active, bothering Egypt, in the reign of Merneptah (1236BC-1223BC); he was a 13th son of Ramses II. In about 1177BC, Ramses III defeated the Sea Peoples. [Mellersh]. Merneptah (reigned 1224BC-1214BC) boasted, "Israel lies desolate, its seed is no more.... All the lands in their entirety are at peace, Everyone who was a nomad has been curbed by King Merneptah". [Josephine Bacon and Martin Gilbert, The Illustrated Atlas of Jewish Civilization. Australia. Houghton Mifflin. 1990; Tapsell - Ramses II 1289BC and Merneptah in 1224BC]. This information might provide an Exodus date of 1280BC-1250BC?

Mercea Eliade [The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York, Macmillan, 1987] suggests that Moses lived in the C13th BC, dates uncertain, noting that a quest for the historical Moses is futile. This book has no date for Joshua either, but that has apparently not stopped archaeological research on the supposed site of Jericho.

(Meanwhile, as an example, in early 1997, of how bad dating systems can be, we can quote (from 1997 email) a Californian named Sanders, who claims that Merneptah, fourth king of the Nineteenth Dynasty (and the only Egyptian king known to have captured Gezer, according to Sanders) was the father-in-law of Solomon. This is interesting, since the Jewish writings comprising the Old Testament mention only two or three Pharaohs, in neither case mentioning the name of the Pharaoh in question. It is said, that Solomon married "a daughter of Pharaoh". So if Sanders believes that Merneptah was Solomon's father-in-law, how can he account for the internal consistency of other dating systems which might make Merneptah the Pharaoh of the Exodus? Sanders does little more than provide a case of a USA-style Christian doing battle with Egyptologists - but less than entertainingly, and less than convincingly. Sanders' means of giving "proof" for assertions relies on little more, finally, than a feeling based on faith, that one was won a game of snakes and ladders on unreliable timelines created by insecure historians.

And as some historians might have it, the Sea Peoples invaded Egypt in Merneptah's 5th regnal year, about 1231BC. He was first invaded by Libyans and Sea Peoples from Anatolia who had gone to Libya in search of homes. But there is apparently no reliable, specific Egyptian tradition on which king it was, who composed in his fifth year a stele associating Israelite people with the people of Canaan. Such a dating would give little time for 40 years wandering in the desert [Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible].

Now, by some available dates, the Hyksos afflicted the Egyptians around 1700BC-1500BC. Some American Protestant Bible scholars prefer a birthdate for Moses around 1526BC. If we are to believe biblical genealogies, one can range forward or backward in time to find approximate dates for Abraham (socio-political upheavals around Ur about 2100BC?). Abraham and Terah probably left Ur after an invasion of Mesopotamia from the West by the Amorites. Were these possibly Amorites from Canaan, Amorites who invaded about 2000BC? [Bacon, Atlas]. The Hebrews settled in Egypt about 1800BC, possibly.

Some historians feel the Hebrews fled into Egypt before the Hyksos arrived. The Hyksos conquered Egypt about 1650BC, and remained in power there for 200 years. [Bacon, Atlas]. Bacon suggests Ramses II as a Pharaoh of Oppression or Exodus, and Josephus the Jewish historian who died about 100AD, dated the Egyptian revolt against the Hyksos at 1550BC. [But Bacon's Atlas deems Josephus' view unlikely].

Perhaps, the problem of the dating of Moses begins with Joseph? If we assume that Joseph went into Egypt in about 1850BC-1800BC (by Bimson's redating as noted in Wilson] or, 1650BC and the Jews were enslaved for 430 years after that, then their enslavement ceased about 1420BC, 1395BC or 1220BC?

Dr John Bimson has dated Joseph's time in Egypt about the time of Sesostris III (1878BC-1841BC), near a time when there was an erratic flooding of the Nile. Joseph was possibly an administrator at Avaris/Pi-Ramesses, and so then the Israelites would have been on the Nile delta for 430 years. This might give an Exodus date about 1420BC? [Wilson].

* * * * *

There is, of course, a great deal of other historical or archaeological information which provides dates for events in other cultures besides the Egyptian - or in what became, Hebrew or Jewish culture. It is possible to find that things become worse, instead of better, more so with the dates around 1250BC. Here is various information which could easily surround an Exodus date of about 1250BC, not from Egypt, but from Greece, or, Troy.

We find in Wood's book on Troy, that Iphigenia was sacrificed about 1250BC as part of the prelude to the Greek expedition against Troy. By or after 1300BC, the Egyptians had been bothered by the largely unspecified "Sea People", or, the Sea Raiders, on whom Velikovsky wrote as he searched for coherent dates.

Was there, around 1300BC, a rebuilding of Pylos? When was the first destruction of Thebes? When was the greatest period of Mycenaean building - 1300BC-1250BC? Wood says that after 1300BC, Mycenaean society was under stress. Wood tends to date the fall of Troy about 1260BC, which fits with some chronology gained from Hittite letters. And possibly with information on the reign of Hattusilis III, when Hittite relations with the kingdom of Ahhiyawa (Greeks) were becoming hostile. One date for the Trojan War is 1250BC-1240BC [Mellersh].

Archaeologically, the Troy that the Greek poet Homer wrote about was Troy VI, which had its phase of life around 1375BC to 1250BC. The island of Lesbos was close, and Lesbos was sacked around 1250BC (Homer suggests, by Achilles). One god-figure for Lesbos was the Bronze-Age god, Smintheus, a powerful inflictor and averter of plague: the Greeks at Troy had prayed to him for relief.

About a date, 1250BC. The Encyclopedia Britannica says an early date of Exodus could be based on 480 years elapsing from Exodus to Solomon's building his temple. Such dating could make Exodus about 1440BC, in the time of Tuthmosis III. But would such a dating give the destruction of the cities the Jews claimed to have captured as occurring about 1250BC, not 1400BC?

About 1250BC: The Greeks sought commercial advantage at the entrance of the Black Sea. [Mellersh]. Wood suggests that from 3600BC, Troy had been established by Neolithic settlers, from Kum Tepe by the Dardenelles. Troy was destined to be sacked at least nine times. By 2200BC, Troy was a royal citadel. When did the Greeks lay it to siege? Some 164 places settled by Greeks sent troops to wage war on Troy, according to listings given by the Greek poet, Homer. About 1300BC, Hittite tablets clearly refer to the Achaeans and their King, Agamemnon; some writers suggest that the pattern of Greek places that sent ships to Troy corresponds closely to then-settled areas now rediscovered by archaeology.

By 1250BC, large scale grain cargoes were sent from Ugarit to Hittite country, due to a famine. About 1250BC, Hittites were in danger of being swept away by the Sea People. The Philistines were one of the Sea Peoples invading Palestine and they gave areas of Palestine their name. The Philistines settled on the coast, and then spread inland, using iron weapons, but new pottery, as they adopted Canaanite culture. About 1250BC poste, the Philistines settled at Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, in one small strip [Bacon, Atlas]. About 1250BC, there was an actual earthquake at Troy. [Wood].

Problems continue. Mosaic Law was revealed in about 1350BC (an early date?) but this conflicts with the history of the Sea Peoples. [Bacon, Atlas]. The Sea People apparently had many different origins and were on the move around 1250BC, due to unclear economic and social pressures. It appears that Dorians, Aeolians and Ionians moved into Greece and the Aegean Islands. They probably destroyed the Mycenaeans and drove them east. Thraco-Phrygians were driven into Anatolia, later to bring down the Hittites. Some homeless peoples swept south to the coasts of Asia Minor and Syria, burning and looting as they went, until they were stopped by Ramses III, in 1174BC on the borders of Egypt.

By 1250BC, we find from a rock relief, a god of a Mesopotamian area, Sharruma, holds his steward-king, Tudhaliys in his embrace; this relief also has ideograms. We find in his book on The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, that a psychologist, Jaynes, has the Trojan War in actuality about 1230 BC, and that by then, the disaster of the eruption destroying Atlantis had destroyed the civilisations supported by "bicameralism". One result: neighbour was to invade neighbour. Migrations went into Ionia and further south. Was there a dramatic change in religious sensibility, from benign to something more fearsome, and what caused it?

Jaynes in 1230 BC has Tukulti-Ninurta I, tyrant of Assyria, with a stone altar dramatically different, for he kneels in supplication before his god - who is represented by an empty throne. The old god has gone; the bicameral tradition has broken down. Tukulti is Nimrod in the Old Testament and King Ninos in Greek Myths. Nimrod had contact with some of the descendants of Noah's sons (?); and in the Bible, Nimrod or Nimrod's father was the first "mighty man" after the great flood.

Modern scholars feel that the Iliad had been transmitted in the oral tradition by Greek bards by about 1230BC, when contemporary Hittite tablets allow inferences to be made about cross-correspondences. (But it remains difficult to follow the history of Greek literacy-illiteracy, and I have read one recently-publishing English classics scholar who skips over about seven centuries of Greek illiteracy prior to Homer in just one unsatisfying sentence).

* * * * *

1275BC is near one "late date" for Exodus, and this give the conquest of Canaan about 1235BC. Some evidence exists here concerning some destruction of Canaanite cities. Here, one could dwell on books attempting to give a track for the Jews' progress from Egypt to Jericho. However, patterns of any interest are rather disturbed here, of course, by Salibi's controversial view that Moses and the Jews quite simply forgot their way home, and ended in an area foreign to them, when they had originally come from areas south of Mecca, on the south-west coasts of the Arabian Red Sea. [Salibi, The Bible Came From Arabia].

1400BC: One date for Joshua conquering Canaan is about 1400BC, while Joshua dies in 1380BC. [Packer et al]. But how did the newly-arriving Israelites continue to avoid the armies of Tuthmosis III and his son, Amenhopis II, who also was warlike? Or, did it happen that the Israelites prevailed while the unwarlike Akhenaten (1353BC-1335BC) was preoccupied with heresies, and Armarna? *

* * * *

What about the timeframe 1250BC-1200BC elsewhere in the world?

1300BC: Choga Zambil, near Susa, in Iran, remnants of Elamite city of Dur-Untash, founded 13thC BC. Vast scale but never completed. Several palaces and a ziggurat. Use of glass and glazes.

1200BC: Dar Tichitt, earliest evidence for farming on southern fringes of Sahara Desert, Neolithic sites here. Southern Muritania. Fishing, cattle, goats, hunting, wild grasses gathered. Pottery in use, stone axes. From about 1000BC, decrease in rain dried the lakes, so fishing impossible. More climatic deterioration in 700BC.

1200BC to 1100BC, An-Yang, site in China of last capital of the Shang Dynasty. Palaces, mudbricks, workshops, immense tombs. Oracle bones and ritual vessels. Jade objects.

By 1200BC, a general move east into Anatolia by the tribes known as Sea People, who brought the downfall of the Hittites. There was a succeeding Dark Ages. (Does this have anything to do with the so-called illiteracy of the Greeks about the same time?).

By 1200BC, Jaynes has Shang Chinese royal tombs with slaughtered retinues and animals, rather as in Mesopotamia. Tuchman dates the fall of Priam's Troy as near the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200BC. Greece at this time had mercantile and maritime ambitions. By 1200BC were Mycenaean times in Greece, when Agamemnon, son of Atreus, was King of Mycenae in the citadel with the Lion gate, just south of Corinth. Tuchman says some violent cause at about the time of the fall of Troy, but probably over a longer period, ended the primacy of Mycenae and the literate polities of Knossos at Crete, with which it was linked, and there followed a 200-year shadowy void called "the Greek Dark Ages", when written language seems to have vanished completely, although the oral tradition kept the stories of the heroes alive (there was some recovery of civilisation when the Dorians arrived). The Iliad had 16,000 lines and the Odyssey had 12,000 lines.

By 1200BC, Jaynes has fragments of the later Epic of Gilgamesh on some Hittite and Hurrian fragments, although a more usual date for these fragments is about 1700BC. Jaynes notes the "de-bicameralised" changes as including the injection of subjectivity. There arose questions such as: what arises in the human heart? It would be some time before history was invented as a matter of inquiring, independently of the actions of the Gods: what does the human agency accomplish? (Herodotus, the father of history).

By about 1200BC: destruction of Troy VIh. The Sea People invasions were active between 1210BC to 1180 BC. According to yet another book, the Sea Peoples were from Crete, and were repulsed by Ramses III by about 1190BC.

1120BC: Greece was overrun by the Dorians, who settled the Peloponnese and Crete.

1000BC: The Medes, the Indo-Aryans, settled in the west and north of the Iranian plateau, with a capital at Hamadan.

1000BC: Much of Iran emerged into history with the advent of the Mannaeans and the Indo-Aryan Medes and Persians, who then played a dominant role in the Near East.

Jaynes has the voyages of Odysseus (Ulysses) about 1000BC to 800 BC, a journey of deviousness, following the breakdown of the bicameral mind after the loss of Atlantis. Following this, subjective consciousness took root in Greece. Of course, asking what happened to Atlantis, or where it was, by this time is exhausting.

* * * * *

Parts three and four of this article appear below
Lost Worlds

Velikovskian debates and finding a date for Moses and the Exodus - part 2

By Dan Byrnes

1450BC: Thera blows up. [Mellersh, Friedrich]. Thera's tidal wave hit Crete about 1500BC-1470BC. (?)

But the second collapse of the Minoan palaces was in 1450BC, and only Knossos on Crete survived that catastrophe. [Friedrich]. Mainland Greeks came to Knossos about 1450BC [Friedrich].

* * * * *

Mercea Eliade [The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York, Macmillan, 1987] suggests that Moses lived in the C13thBC, dates uncertain, noting that a quest for the historical Moses is futile. This book has no date for Joshua either, but that has apparently not stopped archaeological research on the supposed site of Jericho.

* * * * *

* * * *

What about the timeframe 1250BC-1200BC elsewhere in the world?

1300BC: Choga Zambil, near Susa, in Iran, remnants of Elamite city of Dur-Untash, founded 13thC BC. Vast scale but never completed. Several palaces and a ziggurat. Use of glass and glazes.

1200BC to 1100BC, An-Yang, site in China of last capital of the Shang Dynasty. Palaces, mudbricks, workshops, immense tombs. Oracle bones and ritual vessels. Jade objects.

By about 1200BC: destruction of Troy VIh. The Sea People invasions were active between 1210Bc to 1180 BC. According to yet another book, the Sea Peoples were from Crete, and were repulsed by Ramses III by about 1190BC.

1120BC: Greece was overrun by the Dorians, who settled the Peloponnese and Crete.

1000BC: The Medes, the Indo-Aryans, settled in the west and north of the Iranian plateau, with a capital at Hamadan.

1000BC: Much of Iran emerged into history with the advent of the Mannaeans and the Indo-Aryan Medes and Persians, who then played a dominant role in the Near East.

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The Holy Bloodlines

Does the Gardner theory hold up?

By Dan Byrnes and Tod Moore
Story 2 Issue 1

"Hereditary honours are, certainly, the most rational of human devices. It was an excellent idea to suppose that a man propagated his virtues to the most distant posterity." Sydney Gazette, 16 October, 1832.

GARDNER, we suspect, was prompted to publish his Holy Bloodline after the success of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail. One of his motives is to rehabilitate the defunct line of Scottish kings, the Stuarts. However, his argument is lacking in realisation of the realpolitik problems posed for England by Scottish Jacobitism, regarding fears of France, and there are far more families needing treatment than occurs to Gardner to treat.

Holy Grail confronted full-tilt the proposition that Jesus Christ had at least one male child by Mary Magdalen. That after Jesus' death, Mary took her child/children to France. This male child had progeny whose descendants became rulers. Gardner has followed this up closely.

Presumably, at least one of Jesus' male children (one child only?) had progeny. The resulting genealogical lines became impossible to disentangle from the ongoing rulership of Europe to the present day. The rest is history - albeit, both contorted and controversial. Gardner is an apologist for the defunct Royal House of Scotland, the Stuarts, who were finally, violently, rendered null and void after the 1745 rising in Scotland.

Christians will be affronted by Gardner�s basic, heretical propositions. Non-believers, even the truly disinterested, might be more prone to ask, is it true?

Is it true as a question is too hard. But I (Byrnes), became interested anyway in the genealogical questions involved. One of Lost World's assets is a large genealogical database filled with the names, dates and family lines of notable figures in the English and Scottish aristocracy, plus many lesser figures. The English attached themselves to Europeans, or, vice versa.

William the Conqueror, of course, had an immense, an almost unreasonable number of descendants who retained power over populations.

On this database, which holds no more than 65,500 individual names, William the Conqueror has at least 13,827 descendants, about 21 per cent of 65,500. He would of course have many more descendants in fact! If we inspected a progenitor earlier than William the Conquer, which can be easily done using Gardner�s or other easily available genealogical information on influential family lines, those progenitors would have a much greater number of descendants than William had.

What becomes rather bemusing is not wondering how so few progenitors became so "famous", but, rather, how their descendants clung to power through so many centuries!

It becomes obvious, also, from such genealogical databasing, that where feminists object that women have been ignored in history, they are quite correct. With such genealogical listings, any doubt about the origin of a particular mother can cause severe distortion in an otherwise reasonable-sounding genealogical presentation (as in a history of the Crusades, and/or the kingship of Jerusalem).

So what happens if we accept Gardner's theory at face value, key the family lines into a database, and print out? What happens with, simply, information? After all, Gardner presents an extraordinary number of genealogical tables, including tables on the early Welsh and Wessex kings that go back further than anything we had ever seen before.

For example, the sons, William and Harry, of the recently-deceased Diana Spencer (1961-1997), Princess of Wales, will number among their ancestors, the following...
William will have here, 5321 ancestors, at least. (Amongst his Nineteenth and Twentieth Century forebears are members of the Baring family, the notable British banking family). According to Gardner�s and other available data, William will have amongst his ancestors many early English and Scottish nobles, some of the Medici family, and:

No 1: Mary (born about 26BC), the mother of Jesus by Joseph, who was of the Royal House of David of Israel (Gardner, Bloodline, pp. 34ff).

No 1a: Ancestor William the Conqueror, by Matilda of Flanders

No 2: Pharamund of Burgundy, died 430AD, who married Argotta of the Sicambrian Franks. Pharamund was Lord of the West Franks, or, the Sicambrian Franks. (Gardner, Bloodline, p. 165 and various tables, p. 236).

No 3: Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony, lover of Cleopatra. Marcus married Octavia Caesar, daughter of the emperor Octavius Augustus. The mother of Octavia was Atia Balbus, daughter of a Roman senator named Atius Balbus (according to Gardner, Bloodline, p. 409).

No 4: Otto Hohenstaufer, Otto the Great, died 973AD. He married Edith of Wessex, daughter of Edward the Elder of Wessex, (died 925AD), a son of Alfred The Great. (Gardner, Bloodline, p. 416 and p. 432, and Jack Lindsay, The Normans and their World.)

No 5: Charles II, King of Naples, died 1309. No 6: Pepin II, The Fat, died 714AD, of the Carolingians. (Gardner, Bloodline, p. 169).

No. 6: A Viking ancestor, Ivar Upplendgajarl, or, Ivan, Jarl of the Uplanders, surnamed Thorfinn, was son of Halfdan The White (Old and Stingy) and an unknown woman. Halfdan was ancestor of the Earls of Orkney. (It is useful to apply the surname Thorfinn to these tempestuous Vikings.) One of Halfdan's descendants was Rolf (or Rollo) The Ganger (died circa 932AD, Outlaw of the Hebrides, conqueror of Brittany and Normandy, first Duke of Normandy, otherwise Rolf De Conteville. (Gardner, Bloodline, p. 427.)

No. 7: Albert I Habsburg, died 1308, Holy Roman Emperor, married to Cimbarca of Masovia, the woman who it is claimed contributed the notorious "Habsburg lip and prominent lower jaw" to the looks of a remarkably long-ruling family.

No. 8: Sir Henry Sinclair, a Crusader with Godfrey De Bouillon, Henry was son of Baron Roslin (Rosslyn, probably the first Baron), Sir William Sinclair, died 1057AD, who married Dorothy Raby (of which wife I am not sure at all). This Sir William was son of Walderne De Conteville (of the family of William the Conqueror) and Helena of Normandy. (Gardner, Bloodline, p. 429, Andrew Sinclair, The Sword and the Grail. London, Arrow, 1994).

No. 8a: However, serious genealogical problems arise here if one compares assertions about genealogy in Gardner, Sinclair, Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, generally on the Scottish aristocracy of the day, and in Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, The Second Messiah: Templars, The Turin Shroud and The Great Secret of Freemasonry. London, Century, 1997.

In short, the genealogical information is a mess, of course, involving more families than just De Conteville, and St Clair (Sinclair). More so, as Knight and Lomas say that the first leader of the Templars, Hughes De Payens, married a niece, Catherine, of the First Crusader of the St Clair line, Sir William de St Clair, William the Seemly, who married Helena, daughter of the fifth Duke of Normandy. This Hughes de Payen was a cousin of the noted First Crusader, Saint Bernard, Abbott of Clairvaux, whose family also had links to the de Montbards. Few genealogical assertions in this zone can be supported by agreement amongst researchers

This is the Sinclair family which, it is said, brought the legacy of The Templars after the destruction of the Templars to Scotland, and preserved it at the intriguing Rosslyn Chapel. (See A. Sinclair). This legend invades some discussion of the origins of Freemasonry, and the Sinclair legend also claims that a family member "discovered" North America, and made a fort there (Nova Scotia?).

This Sinclair family, Crusaders, had various connections with the Vikings mentioned above, due to the influence of the Norwegian kings on the eastern Scottish coast. But available genealogical evidence from various sources here is not yet entirely clear on the Sinclairs, Earls of Orkney, Lords of Roslin (Rosslyn). (Gardner, Bloodline, p. 398, p. 430.)

At this point, I (Tod Moore), point out the great problem, of discovering what happened BCE, then between 0AD-1000AD?

Objection 1: Various data indicate that from the links between Octavia Caesar and Mark Antony (a daughter), there arose connections with the Silurian kings, which later gave rise to Pharamund of Burgundy; which links in turn entered the ranks of the Carolingians, producing, for example, the impressive name, Charlemagne. Here, one would like to know more of both the Roman and Silurian connections.

(1a) The "Silurians". On which I (Byrnes) had heard or read little till I read Gardner. The "Silurians" are less known than the Vikings, the descendants of Rolf the Ganger and his forebears, who gave rise to the Sinclairs/Earls of Orkney.

Objections: More should be known about the Silurians, as they may have been influential in ways unclear in history, at least, genealogically considered.

Objection 2: With respect to the early Vikings noted above (surname Thorfinn, becoming De Conteville, the name for the family of William the Conqueror), it is not entirely clear in history how they influenced Scottish Crusaders, especially the Sinclairs of Rosslyn Chapel, whilst at roughly the same time participating in the Crusades from seats they held around Brittany and Normandy, not including consideration of the views taken at powerbases in southern England or in Germany as the Crusades succeeded each other. Where else these Viking intermarried tends to be buried in information not-yet-sought.

Objection 3: The name Berenger/Beranger becomes evident in the history of the Crusades, but the family's origins are unclear.

The name Berenger from 1150AD or later intermarried with nobles names from Hungary, Kiev in Russia, Castile, or Leon-Castile, and houses such as Anjou, Capet, Hohenstaufer, Plantagenet and Savoy. Some of the Counts of Anjou seem to hark back to Rolf the Ganger (Count of Rouen) in their origin. One wife of Rolf was Poppa Beranger, daughter of Count Beranger of Bayeux, but connections with other families Berenger are also unclear. There seem to be three families Berenger: the Beranger, the Berengers of Aragon and Castile, Spain and Portugal (including Borell of Barcelona before 1000AD, with a later King of Aragon noted), and Berengers tangled in the Crusades. The name Berenger appears also as sometime Counts of Provence, around 1162AD. (Slocombe on William the Conqueror, pp. 11-23 and A. Sinclair, pp. 27-28.)

Whereas I (Byrnes), using the database, became interested in the following: all the genealogical lines except that of Jesus, or, The Royal House of David, should have descendants who can be traced with reasonable accuracy. How does the evidence/information stand up? Amongst the most interesting lines here, part of the Gardner-esque Holy Bloodline, are:

(1) The "sister of Julius Caesar": Objection: Here we need to know more of Rome's senatorial families, as well as of the Imperial/dynastic families.

(2) The Vikings: Objections: The Vikings and their descendants are fascinating, since their exploits stretch from Norway to Iceland, and south and east to the Holy Land via participation in the Crusades. If information on their descendants via the Earls of Orkney (Scotland), and/or, the descendants of William the Conqueror remains cloudy, it is hardly likely that information will be improved by emphasis on the formerly unknown progeny of Jesus!

While the conduct of the three major Crusades was largely orchestrated by members of acknowledged royal houses in Europe, nominal Christians at least, we can find that some participating minor names remain problematical or unexplained, to an extent that is tantalising, because, we don't yet know... Lusignan on Cyprus...? Berenger, with three possible families with facts not well established.

The name Berenger (died 1410AD appears in early histories of Crete. Tracing the genealogical impact of the Berengers (influential between about 1000AD and 1350AD is alone a difficult area to work on. The name Bouillon, appearing as a first King of Jerusalem. Objections: The first King of Jerusalem was Baldwin I, also Count Edessa. He reigned 1100-1118. His mother's people were from Provence; he was descended from Dagobert II. One would like to know more on a ruling name from, or of, Byzantium, Comnena.

The final possession of the Kingship of Jerusalem (and/or rulership of other areas, such as Cyprus? (the name Lusignan) Malta? and Crete?, went in part to the genealogical lines of near-nobodies, or at least, people we seldom hear of, such as the rulers of Armenia. It would be interesting to see fuller treatments of many of the "names" of Crusaders. Knight and Lomas Knight and Lomas list members of the following families participating in the first Crusade, including: the Counts of Champagne, the Lords of Gisors, the Lords of Payen, the Counts of Fontaine, the Counts of Anjou, de Bouillon, St Clairs of Roslin, Brienne, Joinville, Chaumont, St Clair de Gisor, St Clair de Neg, and the Hapsburgs. It would be hardly surprising if these families, which may have been part of a larger "clan", were not confronted by clans of Moslems! The family histories of the winners of the Crusades, or course, are not treated by writers of western histories!

It is very complicated, genealogically, to treat the "family behaviour" of Crusader figures or names such as...

Lusignan: which name has later but rather unclear links to the early English Earls of Pembroke.

Robert, Count Flanders: a First Crusader.

Reynald De Chatillon, Crusader, fourth Prince of Antioch, married to Constance de Hauteville, daughter of Alice of Jerusalem. Reynald, died 1237, was a rather unconvincing thirteenth king of Jerusalem! Under the Crusaders, the kingship of Jerusalem tended to rotate like a top covered in blood, that moved more sloppily when still wet.

Much of the history of the Crusades is an object lesson in greed, untrustworthiness, venality, violence, and a great deal that goes against the spirit of Christianity. Meantime, any historian could become freshly interested in the role of The Templars in the history of banking in Western Europe!

So where do we - or could we - end up?

Conclusions? Inadequate data. The Gardner argument possibly relies more on the influence on the reader of the mystique of dynastic rulership in European history, plus the sacred reputation of Jesus, than on useful impressions arising from hard historical fact. However, this doesn�t mean Gardner has a boring book. In fact, his book could possibly inspire the writing of dozens more books, of the "sorting it out" variety. Meantime, his case is by no means fully proven.

In fact, Gardner�s arguments rely on data on worryingly few progenitors, one of whom is Joseph, the step-father, if no other kind of father, of Jesus. (Here, of course, according to Christian doctrine Joseph cannot possibly be considered a progenitor at all).

So what Gardner has pointed out most clearly of all, really, is how few progenitors certain kinds of European history can rely on! And if the collection of progenitors is relatively small, the origins of all of them are still not by any means clear. However, probably due partly to missionary Christianity, there was certainly a stirring of peoples and squabbling over a good deal of territory between about 700AD and 1200AD.

If it was ever thought the Crusades were orchestrated by people who thought that they were descended "from Jesus", it might also be thought they were merely reclaiming land from "the Infidel" over which their "ancestor" had once been sovereign. This might also read like a massive conspiracy theory which relies on genealogical evidence. Genealogical evidence, a la Gardner, could not support such a notion. It may remain a problem that genealogical evidence has not yet been fully gathered by traditionalist historians.

Metaphors of "a small light in the darkness", however, seem appropriate to mention. What surprised me (Byrnes) most of all was news that after the American Revolution, certain parties in the new United States offered the kingship of American to the Stuart line!

Dan Byrnes and Tod Moore, November, 1998

<Finis>

Select Bibliography

Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. London, Corgi, 1982-1983.

T. N. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986.

Peter W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374. Sydney, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Theodore Evergates, Louis VII and the Counts of Champagne, pp. 109-118 in Michael Gervers, The Second Crusade and the Cistercians. New York, St Martin's Press, 1992.

Sir George Hill, A History of Cyprus. Vol. 1. Cambridge at the University Press, 1949.

Stephen Howarth, The Knights Templar. London, Collins, 1982. [With citations from Jonathan Riley-Smith, Family Traditions and Participation in the Second Crusade, pp. 101-108].

T. E. B. Howarth, Citizen-King, The Life of Louis-Philippe, King of the French. London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961.

Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, The Second Messiah: Templars, The Turin Shroud and The Great Secret of Freemasonry. London, Century, 1997.

Jack Lindsay, The Normans and Their World. London, Hart-Davis and MacGibbon, 1974.

Sir Harry Luke, Cyprus: A Portrait and an Appreciation. London, Harrap, 1957.

Charles Mills, The History of the Crusades for the Recovery and Possession of the Holy Land. Two Vols. London, Longman, 1821.

C. H. Petit-Dutaillis, The Feudal Monarchy in France and England from the Tenth to the Thirteenth Century. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949.

Martyn Rady, The Emperor Charles V. London, Longman, 1988.

Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174-1277. London, Archon Books, 1977.

Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades. Especially, Vol. III, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades. Cambridge University Press, 1955.

George Slocombe, William the Conqueror. London, Hutchinson, 1959.

A. A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, 324-1453. Madison, US, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1952.

These books are relisted inLost Worlds Book Lover's Guide to Mysteries

************************************************

King Arthur lives on in history, myth and popular culture

Major Grail Quest conference set for Sydney University 10-14 June, 1999 LW Story 3, Issue 1

AUSTRALIAN and international devotees of the Arthurian Legend are gathering in force during the Queen's Birthday long weekend for four days following suggestions from fantasy author Sophie Masson.

And as the first conference newsletter says, "The tragic love triangle of Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot is almost an icon for adulterous love, as tragic and inevitable as Arthur's death at the Battle of Camlann at the hands of his son Mordred."

New archaeology also has something to do with fresh excitement and enthusiasm. A stone has lately been discovered at Tintagel, Arthur's traditional birth place, with a name inscription, ART, making headlines around the world.

Grail Quest arose due simply as complaints were made about Australian lack of access to conferences held around the world on King Arthur and "the Matter of Britain". Sophie Masson simply suggested that Australia mounts such a conference.

Soon, the Grail Quest organising committee consisted of convenor Cathy Simpson (games stream), Sophie Masson (literary stream), Cath Filmer-Davies (academic stream, Celtic Studies) of the University of Queensland, Barbara Posten-Anderson (arts stream) of the Centre for Research in Education and Arts, University of Technology Sydney, staff at the Helen Fulton Centre for Celtic Studies, University of Sydney, and computer guru Phil Wallach at Base Information Systems.

The Grail Quest conference will be divided into four streams: academic, literary, arts and games. Academic papers and games plans submitted in full prior to 30 April, 1999 will appear in conference proceedings. Education packs are to be prepared for use in schools. The closing date for submissions by email or snail mail is 31 November, 1998.

The conference's broad themes will be (1) The historical figures behind the myths, and; (2) Arthur in popular culture. Sessions will be one and a half or three hours, and games should be about two and a half hours. There will be workshops and panel groups aplenty.

Some esoteric conference entertainments will include: demonstrations, a trade fair (at Aust$500 per stand for merchandisers of clothes, games, arts, crafts and themic merchandise), music performances, an exhibition of Celtic and medieval arts and crafts, role playing, board and computer games, tarot readings, a battle re-enactment and Pendragon.

The arts and crafts exhibition will feature work by harpist, writer and artist, Caiseal Mor, plus fantasy art and medieval and Celtic craftwork by Australian and overseas workers. Musicians should contact Barbara Posten-Anderson email to: Barbara.Poston-Anderson@uts.edu.au

Writers early-interested in the conference include: Paul Collins (sci-fi and fantasy), Caiseal Mor, Jack Dann (short stories, novels, editor), novelist and poet Kate Forsyth and bestseller Ian Irvine. Plus author of Pagan books, Catherine Jinks, Sean MacMullen (sci-fi and fantasy), novelist and game scenario writer, Garth Nix and critic Janeen Webb.

Six games designers are already (November 1998) involved in conference planning.

Arthurian legend devotees questing on the Net for Grail Quest should email to: grailq@healey.com.au or, check Website:
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~phil/

Or to Sophie Masson, email: smasson@northnet.com.au

Sophie Masson's new adult fantasy trilogy, The Lay Lines Trilogy, is published by Bantam/Transworld in 1998-1999.

JOHN DEE (1527-1607-08) is already well-known as a "mystic figure", even, a magus, easily-found and much-discussed on the Internet. But Website treatments of his career mostly fail to outline his interests in navigation and his influences on the development of English sea power...

English sea power... which by 1654, only 46 years after Dee's death in 1608, meant that Cromwell's England took Jamaica from the Spanish, with all the misery later entailed for black slaves coerced to labour on Caribbean islands. Jamaica. Here, DAN BYRNES explores some of the implications of John Dee's "speculations" on navigation. LW story4, Issue 1

AMONG the retinue of Elizabeth I was her "oldest attendant", Blanche Parry, who possibly taught Elizabeth to speak Welsh. Blanche claimed to have seen Elizabeth rocked in the cradle as a baby. Blanche may perhaps have been influential politically, as she was a "connection" of Lord Burghley, William Cecil, whose background also was Welsh.

Also with a Welsh background was a cousin of Blanche, the mathematician, astrologer and mystic, John Dee. (See Elizabeth Jenkins, Arthurian Legend, pp. 158ff.)

Dee's (rather inaccurate) Dictionary of National Biography entry indicates that his father was a physician in ordinary to Charles I, he was a friend of Sir Thomas Browne, a contact of Elias Ashmole, and Dee knew geographer Gerard Mercator. Sir John Cheke promoted Dee and his interests to Secretary Cecil and Edward VI. Dee was once introduced into royal presence by William Herbert Earl Pembroke, and Earl Leicester, Lord Robert Dudley.

By 1567 Dee knew Sir William Cecil, Burghley. Dee lived in Thames banks at Mortlake, Surrey. He was once sent on a mission to Germany by Walsingham.

John Dee (1527-1607), Mariner and Cartographer, Magus, was son of Roland Dee and Joanna Wild.

Dee is given strangely in my copy of Columbia Encyclopedia [1960], as "British astrologer", with a remarkable career as a magician and scientist. He was a clergyman, a scholar who was a fellow of Cambridge University. He also helped popularise the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar. Dee's more occult interests brought him to the attention of the Habsburg Emperor, Rudolph II.

(Dee's diary was edited in 1842 by J. O. Halliwell-Phillips.)

Dee was a polymath of his day, historian and antiquarian, scientist, and also a clairvoyant, and he often moved at politically high levels. In English politics, Dee was consulted by Lord Leicester, Elizabeth's secretary of state (and spymaster) Sir Francis Walsingham, the "republican-minded" author of Arcadia, Sir Philip Sydney.

Over time, Dee for one reason for another had concluded that Elizabeth was a lineal descendant of King Arthur, and he was "ardent" that England should have an Empire. This however would have been an empire with a particular background, as it would have been comprised of various territories thought to once be held of taken by King Arthur, circa 550AD or later?

Dee was eager that Elizabeth should take certain territories by armed force, whilst the Queen was happy to pursue a policy of pursuing prosperity at home, although not without an eye to that prosperity being turned to funding any unavoidable or interesting wars. Amongst the territories Dee thought were applicable were Scandinavia, and parts of Russia; also, some unspecified parts of "America". [Here, it is not specified if Dee meant the Caribbean, parts of South America as held by the Spanish or Portuguese, or any known parts of North America.]

Expansionary matters here were discussed with some seriousness by October, 1580. Cecil, Lord Burghley, agreed with Dee. The Queen was taken to be averse to such adventures.

Jenkins, commenting here, is only a little outside the confines of the context of the development of the Arthurian legends... she writes that succeeding centuries saw aspects of Dee's vision fulfilled. Jenkins (page 167) also notes disapprovingly that the promoters of the Stuarts, Queen Mary, or James I of England, also claimed some descent from King Arthur. (This is interesting, as this claim seems to be upheld by Gardner, author of The Holy Bloodline, a book discussed in another section of this issue of Lost Worlds.)

James I of course promoted The (or, his) Divine Right to Rule, whereas many of his subjects had something more parliamentary, more democratic in mind. James I's views were such that he declared disbanded the recently-formed Society of Antiquarians (a society which John Dee would presumably have approved of).

James' reason for this was that while he claimed descent from King Arthur, the view of the antiquarians was that Arthur and his legend represented something democratic. Arthur was an "elected" king. In the idealistic sense, his court had a semi-democratic view of equality, as with the Knights of the Round Table.

This outlook was also regarded widely by devotees of the Arthurian legend as equivalent to respect for the legal legacy of the Anglo-Saxons in the life of Island Britain. In 1572, the archbishop of Canterbury for Elizabeth, Dr Matthew Parker, had founded the Society of Antiquarians, which devoted itself to the study of Anglo-Saxon law and language.

One of the antiquarians' associates was Sir Edward Coke, who upheld the authority of English common law, and he disputed with James I on points about whether the claims of the Anglican Church of the day were exempt, or not, from the claims of common law. James I felt the church here was exempt from such claims. And so the argument also hinged partly on views on the general roles that could or should be taken by parliament - or not.

Dr Matthew Parker was a good friend of Cecil, Lord Burghley, and so it can be seen that a dispersal of opinion by 1610 or so, about the Arthurian Legend, could have its political subtleties. Sometimes these subtleties operated within rather limited circles of knowledgeable or interested parties.

Where Dee was a "mathematician", he was also interested in navigation (that is, the astronomy of the day), as well as in astrology. And if Dee was interested in navigation, whom did he discuss it with? (With or without the territorial aspects of the legend of King Arthur being involved?).

Views of John Dee's career, then, if he is referred to as a magus, or, astrologer, can be misleading. He gave some impetus to the movements leading to the establishment of the first English colonies, he aided England's anti-Spanish maritime activity, and his influence aided the expansion of English trade generally.

Dee was a friend of Hakluyt the Older and Younger. He instructed the English mariners, Chancellor, the Boroughs, Jenkinson, Frobisher, Gilbert, Raleigh, and probably Drake, in navigation. He was educated by Frisius, Mercator, Pedro Nunez, Ortelius, Finaeus, all geographers.

There has also been a view that as a noted cartographer and student of navigation, Dee was a promoter of finding terra australis (Australia, or, The Great Southland), but he is not mentioned as such in MacIntyre's Secret Discovery of Australia.

- Finis -

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984., pp. 168ff.

Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653. Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Richard Cavendish, King Arthur and the Grail: The Arthurian Legends and their Meaning. London, Book Club Associates, 1978.

Elizabeth Jenkins, The Mystery of King Arthur. London, Michael O'Mara Books Ltd., 1973. , pp. 158ff

C. R. N. Routh, Who's Who in History, Vol. II, England, 1485-1603. London, Basil Blackwood, 1964., pp. 440ff.

Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.

An article, 'Renaissance Philosophers in Elizabethan England: John Dee and Giordano Bruno', by Frances Yates, in Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Valerie Pearl and Blair Worden, (Eds.), History and Imagination. London, Duckworth, 1981., Ch. 9, pp. 104-115.

A. E. W. Mason, The Life of Francis Drake. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1941.

Burke's Extinct Baronetcies, for Sydenham of Brimpton, p. 516.

Michael J. G. Stanford, 'The Raleghs take to the sea', Mariner's Mirror, Vol. 48, No. 1, February 1962., pp. 18-35.

Philip Edwards, Sir Walter Ralegh. 1953.

M. Oppenheim, A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy. 1896.

Julian Corbet, The Success of Drake. 1900.

R. G. Marsden, 'The Vice-Admirals of the Coast', English Historical Review, Vol. xxiii, p. 475, 1907.

A. L. Rowse, Raleigh and the Throckmortons. London, Macmillan, 1962.

Who's Who of the World of Shakespeare, p. 132.

M. S. Anderson, Britain's Discovery of Russia. 1958.

J. A. Doyle, The English in America.
W. G. Gosling, The Life of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. London, 1911, was superseded by Quinn's work for Hakluyt Society series 2, Vols. LXXXIII and LXXXIV; noted in Rabb, Enterprise, p. 220.

A. E. W. Mason, The Life of Francis Drake. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1941.

Burke's Extinct Baronetcies, for Sydenham of Brimpton, p. 516.

Kenneth Gordon McIntyre, The Secret Discovery of Australia: Portuguese Ventures 250 Years Before Captain Cook. London, Pan, 1982.

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