Gomara, the Spaniard who came to the Western Hemisphere in the middle of the sixteenth century, shortly after the conquest, wrote: 8 "After the destruction of the fourth sun, the world plunged in darkness during the space of twenty-five years. Amid this profound obscurity, ten years before the appearance of the fifth sun, mankind was regenerated."
In the years of this gloom, when the world was covered with clouds and shrouded in mist, the Quiche tribe migrated to Mexico, crossing a sea enveloped in a somber fog.9 In the so-called Manuscript Quiche it is also narrated that there was 'little light on the surface of the earth . . . the faces of the sun and of the moon were covered with clouds." 10
In the Ermitage Papyrus in Leningrad previously mentioned there are lamentations about a terrible catastrophe, when heaven and earth turned upside down ("I show thee the land upside down; it happened that which never had happened"). After this catastrophe, darkness covered the earth: "The sun is veiled and shines not in the sight of men. None can live when the sun is veiled by clouds. . . . None knoweth that midday is there; the shadow is not discerned. . . . Not dazzled is the sight when he [the sun] is beheld; he is in the sky like the moon." u In this description the light of the sun is compared to the light of the moon; but even in the light of the moon objects cast a shadow. If the midday could not be discerned, the disc of the sun was not clearly visible, and only its diffused light made the day different from the night. The gloom gradually lifted with the passing years as
» Ibid., pp. 28-29.
8 Gomara, Conquista de Mexico, II, 261. See Humboldt, Researches, II, 16.
9 Brasseur, Histoire des nations civilisSes du Mexique, I, 11. 10 Ibid., p. 113. 11 Papyrus 1116b recto, published by Gardiner, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, I (1914).
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the clouds became less thick; little by little the sky and the sun appeared less and less veiled.
~The years of darkness in Egypt are described in a number of other documents. The Papyrus Ipuwer, which contains the story of the plagues of Egypt, says that the land is without light
[dark].12 In the Papyrus Anastasi IV the years of misery are described, and it is said: "The sun, it hath come to pass that it riseth not." 13 ^ It was the time of the wandering of the Israelites in the desert.14 Is there any indication that the desert was dark? Jeremiah says (2 : 6): "Neither said they, Where is the Lord that brought vis up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt?"
v->The "shadow of death" is related to the time of the wanderings in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt. The sinister meaning of the words "shadow of death" corresponds with the description of the Ermitage Papyrus: "None can live when the sun is veiled by clouds."
At intervals the earth was lighted by conflagrations in the desert.15 S».The phenomenon of gloom enduring for years impressed itself on the memory of the Twelve Tribes and is mentioned in many passages of the Bible: "Thou hast . . . covered us with the shadow of death" (Psalms 44 : 19); "The people that walked in darkness ... in the land of the shadow of death" (Isaiah 9:2). The robin-bobin
Israelites "wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way . . . hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them," and the Lord "brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death" (Psalms 107);
"The terrors of the shadow of death" (Job 24 : 17).
In Job 38 the Lord speaks: "Who shut up the sea with doors [barriers], when it brake forth. . . .
When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it . . . and caused
12 Papyrus Ipuwer 9 : 8.
13 Erman, Egyptian Literature, p. 309.
" See the Section, "The Red World," note 2. 15 Numbers 11 : 3; 16 : 35.
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the dayspring to know his place; that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?" 16 ^The low and slowly drifting clouds enshrouded the wanderers in the desert. These clouds dimly glowed at night; their upper portion reflected the sunlight. The glow being pale during the day and red after sunset, the Israelites were able to distinguish between day and night.17 They were protected by the clouds from the sun during the wandering in the desert, and according to the Midrashic literature, they saw sun and moon for the first time only at the end of the wandering.18
^The clouds that covered the desert during the wandering of the Twelve Tribes were called a
"celestial garment" or "clouds of glory." "He spread a cloud for a covering; and fire to give light in the night." "And the cloud of the Lord was upon them by day." 19 For days or months the cloud tarried in one place, and the Israelites "journeyed not"; but when the cloud moved, the wanderers followed it, and revered it because of its celestial origin.20
In Arabic sources, too, we read that the Amalekites, who left Hedjaz because of plagues, followed the cloud in their wandering through the desert.21
JZ> On their way to Palestine and Egypt they met the Israelites, and in the battles between them the screen of clouds played an important part.22
Nihongi, a chronicle of Japan from the earliest period, refers to a time when there was
"continuous darkness" and "no difference of day and night." It describes in the name of the Emperor Kami Yamato an ancient time when "the world was given over to widespread desola-i« Cf. also Job 28 : 3 and 36 : 32.
17 Baraita d'Melekhet ha-Mishkan 14; Ginzberg, Legends, V, 439. Cf. also Job 37 : 15.
18 Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 114.
i» Psalms 105 : 39; Numbers 10 : 34.
20 Numbers 9 : 17-22; 10 : 11 ff. The names Bezalel and Rafael mean "in the shadow of God"
and "the shade of God."
21 Kitab-Alaghaniyy (French transl. F. Fresnel), lournal asiatique, 1838. Cf. El-Macoudi (Mas'udi), Les Prairies d'or, III, Chap. 39. In Ages in Chaos these events will be synchronized with the Exodus.
22 Sources in Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 24, n. 141.
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tion; it was an age of darkness and disorder. In this gloom Hiko-ho-no-ninigi-no-Mikoto fostered justice, and so governed this western border." 23
In China the annals telling of the time of the Emperor Yahou refer to the Valley of Obscurity and to the Sombre Residence as places of astronomical observations.24
The name "shadow of death" expresses the influence of the sunless gloom upon the life processes. The Chinese annals of Wong-shi-Shing, in the chapter dealing with the Ten Stems (the ten stages of the earth's primeval history), relate that "at Wu, the sixth stem . . . darkness destroys the growth of all things." 25
Buddhist scholars declare that with the beginning of the sixth world age or "sun," "the whole world becomes filled with smoke and saturated with greasiness of that smoke." There is "no distinction of day and night." The gloom is caused by a "cycle-destroying great cloud" of cosmic origin and dimensions.26
robin-bobin
On the Samoan islands the aborigines narrate: "Then arose smell . . . the smell became smoke, which again became clouds. . . . The sea too arose, and in a stupendous catastrophe of nature the land sank into the sea. . . . The new earth (the Samoan islands) arose out of the womb of the last earth." 27 In the darkness that enveloped the world, the islands of Tonga, Samoa, Rotuma, Fiji, and Uvea (Wallis Island), and Fotuna rose from the bottom of the ocean.28
Ancient rhymes of the inhabitants of Hawaii refer to a prolonged darkness:
The earth is dancing . . .
let darkness cease. . . .
The heavens are enclosing. . . .
Finished is the world of Hawaii.29