There is one instance more in the Indian story of the sun being impeded on its path and the ensuing world conflagration. Before the catastrophe, "the sun used to go round close to the ground." The purpose of the attack on the sun was to make "the sun shine a little longer: The days are too short." After the catastrophe "the days became longer."
The ancestors of the Shoshonean Indians, a tribe of Utah, Colorado, and Nevada, appear to have lived in the days of Sennacherib and Hezekiah at such a longitude that the sun was just on the eastern horizon when it changed its direction and went back and then came up again.
CHAPTER 7
Poles Uprooted
WIAT CHANGES in the motion of earth, moon, and Mars resulted from the contacts in the eighth and seventh centuries?
The moon, being smaller than Mars, would have been greatly influenced by Mars if it came close enough to that planet. It could have been drawn nearer to the earth or pulled away to a more remote orbit. It is therefore of interest to investigate whether, in the time shortly after —687, reforms of the lunar calendar were undertaken.
robin-bobin
Also, the earth could have been "removed from her place," which would have meant a change in the orbital circumference and thus in the length of the year, or in the inclination of the terrestrial axis to the plane of the ecliptic and thus in the seasons, in the position of the poles on the terrestrial globe, in the velocity of axial rotation, and in the length of the day, and so on. Some of these changes could be traced if a chart of the sky, drawn in a period prior to —687, could be examined. Such a chart does exist; it is painted on the ceiling of the tomb of Senmut, the Egyptian vizier. As explained previously,1 the tomb dates from a time following the Exodus but before the days of Amos and Isaiah.
The charts of Senmut show the sky over Egypt at two different epochs: one of them depicts the sky of Egypt before the poles were interchanged probably in the catastrophe that terminated the Middle Kingdom; the other represents the sky of Egypt in the lifetime of Senmut. The first chart startled the investigators because in it
1 See the Section "East and West."
312
WORLDS IN COLLISION 313
west and east are reversed. Their judgment of the other chart, in which west and east are not reversed, is as follows:
"It is surprising to find that the celestial charts which have been preserved until our time did not correspond to direct observations, nor to the calculations made at the moment of erection of the monument on which these charts are pictured." 2
Modern astronomy does not admit, or even consider, the possibility that at some historical time east and west as well as south and north were reversed. Consequently, the first chart could not have been interpreted at all. The other chart, with its displaced constellations, suggested to the author of the above quotation that it depicted some more ancient tradition. The only change, according to modern astronomy, comes from the precession of the equinoxes or the slow movement of the polar axis which describes a circle in the course of about twenty-six thousand years. The computation of the precession is insufficient by far to explain the position of the constellations on the chart if we rely on the conventional chronology (and even more so if we follow the revised chronology, which brings the age of Senmut and Queen Hatshepsut closer to modern times).
The changes in the geographical position and cosmic direction of the poles caused by the catastrophes of the eighth and seventh centuries, as well as those brought about by the catastrophes of the fifteenth century, can be studied with the help of the astronomical charts of Senmut.
According to Seneca the Great Bear had been the polar constellation. After a cosmic upheaval shifted the sky, a star of the Little Bear became the polar star.
Hindu astronomical tablets composed by the Brahmans in the first half of the first millennium before the present era show a uniform deviation from the expected position of the stars at the time the observations were made (the precession of the equinoxes being taken 2 A. Pogo, "Astronomie Јgyptienne du tombeau de Senmout," Chronique d'Egypte, 1931.
314 WORLDS IN COLLISION
into consideration).3 Modern scholars wondered at this, in their opinion inexplicable, error. In view of the geometrical methods employed by Hindu astronomy and its detailed method of calculation, a mistake in observation equal to even a fraction of a degree would be difficult to account for.
In Jaiminiya-Upanisad-Brahmana it is written that the center of the sky, or the point around which the firmament revolves, is in the Great Bear.4 This is the same statement we found in Thyestes of Seneca.
In Egypt, too, "the Great Bear played the part of the Pole Star." 5 "The Great Bear never set."6
Could it be that the precession of equinoxes shifted the direction of the axis so that, three or four thousand years ago, the polar star was among the stars of the Great Bear? 7 No. If the earth moved all the time as it moves now, four thousand years ago the star nearest the North Pole must robin-bobin
have been a-Draconis.8 The change was sudden; the Great Bear "came bowing down."9 In the Hindu sources it is said that the earth receded from its wonted place by 100 yojanas,10 a yojana being five to nine miles. Thus the displacement was estimated at from 500 to 900 miles.
The origin of the polar star is told in many traditions all over the world. The Hindus of the Vedas worshiped the polar star, Dhrura, "the fixed" or "immovable." In the Puranas it is narrated how Dhrura became the polar star. The Lapps venerate the polar star and believe that if it should leave its place, the earth would be destroyed in a great conflagration.11 The same belief is found among the North American Indians.12
3 J. Bentley, A Historical View of the Hindu Astronomy (1825), p. 76.
4 Thibaut, "Astronomie. Astrologie und Mathematik," p. 6.
5 G. A. Wainwright, "Orion and the Great Star," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XXII (1936).
6 Wainwright, "Letopolis," I own. Egypt. Archaeol., XVIII (1932).
I Wainwright in the Studies presented to F. L. Griffith, pp. 379-380.
8 Cf. H. Jeffreys, "Earth," Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th ed.).
9 Wainwright, Journ. Egypt. Archaeol., XVIII, p. 164.
10 J. Hertel, Die Himmelstore im Veda und im Awesta (1924), p. 28.
II Kunike, "Stemmythologie," Welt und Mensch, IX-X; A. B. Keith, Indian Mythology (1917), p. 165.
M The Pawnee Mythology (collected by G. A. Dorsey; 1906), Pt. I, p. 135.
WORLDS IN COLLISION 315
The day on which the shortest shadow is cast at noon is the day of the summer solstice; the longest shadow at noon is cast on the day of the winter solstice. This method of determining the seasons by measuring the length of the shadows was applied in ancient China, as well as in other countries.
We possess the Chinese records of the longest and shortest shadows at noontime. These records are attributed to —1100. "But the shortest and the longest shadows recorded do not really represent the true lengths at present." 13 The old Chinese charts record the longest day with a duration which "does not represent the various geographical latitudes of their observatories," and therefore the figures are supposed to have been those of Babylonia, borrowed by ancient Chinese, a rather unusual conjecture.14
The length of the longest day in a year depends on the latitude, or the distance from the pole, and is different at different places. Gnomons or sundials can be built with great precision.15