8 But cf. Frazer, "Ancient Stories of a Great Flood," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, XLVI (1916). However, Eusebius placed Deucalion before Ogyges.
9 Cf. Pausanias, Description of Greece, I, xviii, 7. Pauly-Wissowa, ReaUEncyclo-padie, s. v.
"Anthesterion"; also Andree, Die Flutsagen, p. 41.
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it is not known.10 For the name and the person of Ogyges we have some concrete information.
Although Ogyges was a king, the Greek annalists who wrote of the "flood of Ogyges" as one of the outstanding events of the past of their country, at the same time did not know anything about a king of that name in Greece.11 Who was Ogyges?
> We can solve this problem. When the Israelites under Moses approached the border of Moab, Balaam in his blessing of Israel used these words: "His king shall be higher than Agag [Agog]."
12 Agog must have been the most important king of that time in the area around the eastern Mediterranean.
In my reconstruction of ancient history, I shall put forward proofs that the Amalekite king, Agog I, was identical with the Hyksos king whose name the Egyptologists tentatively read Apop I, and who, a few decades after the invasion of Egypt by the Amu (Hyksos), laid the foundation of Thebes, the future capital of the New Kingdom in Egypt.
In conformity with this assertion, I can point to the fact that Greek tradition, which does not know of any activities of King Ogyges in Attica, occasionally places the domicile of Ogyges in Egyptian Thebes, and Aeschylus calls Thebes of Egypt "the Ogygian Thebes," to differentiate it from the Greek Thebes in Boeotia. Ogyges is also credited with founding Thebes in Egypt.13
¦^Agog was a contemporary of the aging Moses; he was a ruler who, in his time, had no equal in the region bordering the eastern Medi-10 "While the meaning of the legend is clear, the meaning of the name Deucalion is enigmatic."
Roscher, "Deukalion," Lexikon d. griech. und romisch. Mythologie.
According to Homer, Deucalion was a son of Minos, king of Crete, and a grandson of Zeus and Europa (The Iliad, xiv, 321 ff; xiii, 450 f.). According to Apollodoms (The Library, I, vii), Deucalion was a son of Prometheus.
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11 Julius Africanus wrote: "After Ogygus [Ogyges], by reason of the vast destruction caused by the flood, the present land of Attica remained without a king up to Cecrops, a period of 189
years." Fragment of the Chronography in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, VI.
12 Numbers 24 : 7. Cf. the vowels in the name in the Hebrew text of I Samuel 15.
13 Aeschylus, The Persians, 1. 37. See also Scholium to Aristides. Cf. Roscher, "Ogyges, als Konig des agyptischen Thebes," Lexikon d. griech. und romisch Mythologie, Vol. 31, Col. 689.
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terranean;14 the catastrophe in the time of Joshua, successor to Moses, was called by his, Agog's, name.
The assertion of Solinus, the author of Polyhistor, that the flood of Ogyges was followed by a night of nine months' duration does not necessarily signify a confusion with the darkness that ensued after the cataclysm of the Exodus; as the causes were similar, similar results must have followed. The eruption of thousands of volcanoes would suffice to produce this darkness, of a shorter duration than that which followed the cataclysm of the Exodus.15
Thus, the Greek traditions of the floods of Ogyges and Deucalion contain elements which, though interchanged, can be traced to two great upheavals in the middle of the second millennium before the present era.16
14 The rabbinical sources say that Amalek went to conquer "the entire world." Seals of the Hyksos kings were found on Crete, in Palestine, in Mesopotamia, and in other places outside Egypt.
15 Cf. Polyhistor, translated by A. Golding (London, 1587), Chap, xvi, and the translation by Agnant (Paris, 1847), Chap. xi.
16 It seems that the legend of Deucalion contains also elements of the story of the universal Deluge (of Noah).
CHAPTER 8
The Fifty-two Year Period
THE WORKS of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, the early Mexican scholar (circa 1568-1648) who was able to read old Mexican texts, preserve the ancient tradition according to which the multiple of fifty-two-year periods played an important role in the recurrence of world catastrophes.1 He asserts also that only fifty-two years elapsed between two great catastrophes, each of which terminated a world age.
s I have already pointed out, the Israelite tradition counts forty years of wandering in the desert; between the time when the Israelites left the desert and started the difficult task of the conquest, and the time of the battle at Beth-horon twelve years may well have passed. The conquest of Canaan took fourteen years, and the entire duration of Joshua's leadership amounted to twenty-eight years.2 ¦ -Now there exists a remarkable fact: the natives of pre-Columbian Mexico expected a new catastrophe at the end of every period of
1 Ixtlilxochitl, Obras historicas (ed. 1891-1892 in 2 vols.). French translation of his annals is Histoire des Chichimdques (1840).
In the Codex Vaticanus the world ages are reckoned in multiples of fifty-two years with a changing number of years as an addition to these figures. A. Hum-boldt (Researches, II, 28) contraposed the lengths of the world ages in the Vatican manuscript (No. 3738) and their lengths in the system of the tradition preserved by Ixtlilxochid.
Four ages of 105 years are referred to by Censorinus (Liber de die natali) as having taken place, according to the belief of the Etruscans, between world catastrophes presaged by celestial portents.
2 Seder Olam 12. Augustine speaks of 27 years of Joshua's leadership (The City of God, Bk.
XVIII, Chap. 11).
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fifty-two years and congregated to await the event. "When the night of this ceremony arrived, all the people were seized with fear and waited in anxiety for what might take place." They were afraid that "it will be the end of the human race and that the darkness of the night may become permanent: the sun may not rise anymore."3 They watched for the appearance of the planet Venus, and when, on the feared day, no catastrophe occurred, the people of Maya rejoiced. They brought human sacrifices and offered the hearts of prisoners whose chests they opened with knives of flint. On that night, when the fifty-two-year period ended, a great bonfire announced to the fearful crowds that a new period of grace had been granted and a new Venus cycle started.4
"•'The period of fifty-two years, regarded by the ancient Mexicans as the interval between two world catastrophes, was definitely related by them to the planet Venus; and this period of Venus was observed by both the Mayas and the Aztecs.5
The old Mexican custom of sacrificing to the Morning Star survived in human sacrifices by the Skidi Pawnee of Nebraska in years when the Morning Star "appeared especially bright, or in years when there was a comet in the sky."8
What had Venus to do with the catastrophes that brought the world to the brink of destruction?
Here is a question that will carry us very far, indeed.
Jubilee
I shall postpone only a little giving the answer to the question just posed. First, I should like to find an explanation for the institution of the jubilee year of the Israelites.
,.->Every seventh year, according to the law, was a sabbatical year during which the land had to be left fallow and Jewish slaves set free. The fiftieth year was a jubilee year, when the land not only had
3 B. de Sahagun, Historia general de la cosas de Nueva Espafia (French transl. by D. Jourdanet and R. Simeon, 1880), Bk. VII, Chaps. X-XIII.
4 Cf. Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlvngen, I, 618 ff.
5 W. Gates in De Landa, Yucatan, note to p. 60.
8 This ceremony was described by G. A. Dorsey. See infra, the Section, "Venus in the Folklore of the Indians."