Christian
Churches of God
No. 46C
Sons of Japheth: Part III Magog
(Edition 1.0 20080207-20080207)
The descendants of Magog are the so-called Scythians and the numerous tribes, such as the Goths and part of the Swedes, that grew out of them. From both historical sources and recent genetic research, we are able to trace the movements of these people and determine where they are located today. The Magogites were long displaced by other tribes from the ancient land of Scythia. They also have a strong connection with the British Isles. A comprehensive history and genealogy of one particular group, the Irish, is given in the Appendix.
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Sons
of Japheth Part III: Magog
Introduction
In Genesis 10, Magog is given as the second son of the patriarch
Japheth, son of Noah.
Genesis 10:1-2 These
are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; sons were born
to them after the flood. 2 The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog,
Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. (RSV)
Apart from this text and its parallel in 1Chronicles 1:5, Magog is
mentioned in only three other verses, all of which have prophetic significance,
namely Ezekiel 38:2-3 and 39:6 (as those who dwell securely in the isles)
and Revelation 20:8.
No sons of Magog are recorded in the Bible, although the Book of
Jasher gives them as
Elichanaf and Lubal (Ch. 7, 4).
The
Milesian Ancestry or Genealogy records the son of Magog (who was twelfth in
line from Adam), from whom the Milesians are descended as being:
13. |
Boath, one of the sons of Magog; to whom
Scythia came as his lot, upon the division of the Earth by Noah amongst his
sons, and by Japhet of his part thereof amongst his sons. |
14. |
Phœniusa Farsaidh (or Fenius Farsa) was
King of Scythia, at the time when Ninus ruled the Assyrian Empire; and, being
a wise man and desirous to learn the languages that not long before
confounded the builders of the Tower of Babel, employed able and learned men
to go among the dispersed multitude to learn their several languages; who
sometime after returning well skilled in what they went for, Phœniusa
Farsaidh erected a school in the valley of Senaar, near the city of Æothena,
in the forty-second year of the reign of Ninus; whereupon, having continued
there with his younger son Niul for twenty years, he returned home to his
kingdom, which, at his death, he left to the oldest son Nenuall; leaving to
Niul no other patrimony than his learning and the benefit of the said school.
|
The record is
from the Lineage of the Geoghegans as recorded on Abraham’s Legacy at http://www.ccg.org/_domain/abrahams-legacy.org/geoghegans.html.
The stem of the Milesians from Adam to Milesius of Spain is also at Appendix A,
with cross-links to the Library of Ireland. From that text it is obvious that
the Milesians claim the Picts to be Scythians as well who followed them to
Ireland but could not remain there. However, they refer in actual fact to the
Scots. The Picts arrived earlier than the Scots in Alba or what became
Scotland. The histories indicate that it was in fact before the Milesians
entered Ireland, as we will later examine. The Scots went to Ireland from Gaul
in the 5th century CE and went onward into Scotland with the aid of
the Milesian Irish. It is these that are Magogites.
We may have
to face the possibility that the lineage commencing with Boath, Fenius Farsa,
and Niul was of the element of the sons of Magog from Scythia. The Milesians
claim descent from Niul the youngest son of Fenius Farsa, who married the
Egyptian princess Scota. The Milesian Genealogies place this in the time of
Moses. That was from the Ashmosid 18th Dynasty of Egypt. From that
time-frame Boath may not have been born earlier than the time of Abraham at
1995 BCE. However, the account sets the time of Fenius Farsa in his old age as
being in the forty-second year of Ninus, who is identified as Nimrod. Fenius is
recorded as going to the plain of Shinar and establishing a school to study the
linguistics that resulted from the destruction and scattering of Babel. He is
recorded as remaining there for twenty years and then returned to Scythia where
he died and left the kingdom to his eldest son Nenuall.
Nimrod or
Ninus constructed Nineveh, which itself is sometimes called Ninus.
Nimrod was a Cushite
from Cush, son of Ham, and the land there was called Khus from that fact.
Nineveh as capital of Assyria had to have come after Assyrian occupation and
the dispersal of the later Cushites that remained there with Nimrod. Most had
already gone into Asia and along the South Asian coast from India to Vietnam.
The spread is listed
in the paper Sons of Ham Part II: Cush (No. 45B)
and The Genetic Origin of the Nations (No. 265).
Greek mythology says
Ninus was king of Assyria and the eponymous founder of the city of Nineveh. He
was said to have been the son of Belos, or Bel, and to have conquered in
seventeen years all of western Asia with the help of Ariaeus, king of Arabia.
During the siege of Bactra he met Semiramis, the wife of one of his officers,
Onnes; he then took her from Onnes.
(cf. Encyc. Britannica
article ‘Ninus’ (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9055893/Ninus)
Bel simply means Lord and is a
way of attributing ancestor worship to Cush.
Semiramis
was the legendary wife of Nimrod and the origin of the ‘Queen of Heaven’
religious mythology.
The
explanation of the names can be seen from the ancient Babylonian religion and
the ancestor worship that came from them.
The gods of
Assyria actually came from the Babylonian system established by Nimrod and this
is seen from the later Assyrian and Babylonian religious system.
Bel (or
Lord) was carried throughout the Japhethite-language systems of both Gomer and
Magog. The Great- or High-king of Britain before the Romans was Beli Mawr,
meaning simply Great Lord.
The line of
the kings from the Trojan occupation of Britain records that the Magogites were
in Britain when they arrived in the 10th century BCE and the Trojan
British subjugated them. Both Geoffrey of Monmouth and Nennius are authorities
on this history.
The same
names appear in the religious pantheon of the Middle East.
The Assyrians had many
gods and goddesses (many carried over from the times of Ancient Sumeria) which
are listed below:
Adramelech |
Form of sun god |
Anasas |
God of medicine |
Anshar (Assur, Ashur) |
The national god of
Assyria (god of farming); consort of Belit |
Anu |
God of the heavens;
originally worshipped at the city of Erech before Ishtar[36]. |
Bel
(Merodach)(Induru)(Belis by Greeks)(Indara by Hittites***)[39] |
God of the visible
world; Beltis was the wife of Bel; Zirat-banit his consort[37]. |
Ea (Hea)(Oannes by
Greeks) |
God of humanity and
water; regarded to have come out of what we know as the Persian Gulf (half
man, half fish) and imparted the Babylonians with the arts of civilized life[34].
Davkina was the consort of Hea.[36] |
Gubaba |
Associated with Samnuha |
Ishtar (Nana, Ninmakh) |
The goddess of love |
Nabu (Nebo) |
God of wisdom and
writing; his consort was Tasmit[37]. |
Nimrod[13] |
Deified king who
founded the Babylonian Empire (who was the great-grandson of Noah[14]
(Note: Noah**, or Noah's lineage associated to Cush?)) |
Nina |
Goddess of fish |
Ninip |
God of war (similar to
Nergal) |
Nisroch |
God of agriculture |
Samnuha (shapsh) |
the god's torch; also
associated to Gubaba |
Shalla |
Goddess of grain |
cf. http://www.virtualsecrets.com/assyrian.html
Note that
the Greek mythology has Oannes as husband of Semiramis, but the later mythology
has Davkina as wife of Oannes or Hea and he is the god of civilisation. These
famous ancestors became gods and were not in fact all of the one genetic
structure.
This
conquest of Western Asia may well explain why Fenius Farsa of the Scythians
became interested in Ninus and the Tigris-Euphrates basin and Shinar itself.
Fenius
Farsa, son of Boath, was the great-great-grandson of Noah and one step further
removed than Ninus or Nimrod, his second cousin twice removed. Niul was his son
and not as distant as Abraham was from Noah. Thus it is very unlikely that his
son Goadhal was a young man at the time of Moses. The term “son” may refer to
the line of Niul that was summoned to Egypt by the King of Egypt from the
school in Shinar.
He was
given the land of Campus Cyrunt on the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s daughter Scota in
marriage.
The
descendant of Magog through Niul, named Gaodhal, presented to Moses for
snakebite was named after the linguist Gaodhal or Gael, son of Ethor, who
served Niul and from whom the Scythian and other Celtic and Cymmery or
Cimmerian languages were termed Gaodhilg or Gaelic. The Gaelic in Britain is in
two specific languages, which are in fact now termed P and Q Brythonic in the
UK.
The
Milesians record that they were persecuted and continually attacked under the
sons of Gaodhal, Asruth and his son Sruth by the Egyptians for their support of
the Israelites in the Exodus. They were reduced to a small number and
ultimately were forced to leave for the island of Creta (Candia), but after a
year and the death of Sruth they moved to Scythia and fought with the
descendents of Nenuall. The Milesians then ruled Scythia for a number of
generations but ultimately were forced out to the Black Sea and into Iberia and
on to the renamed Iberian Peninsula (now Spain). They moved ultimately into
Ireland and to Lancashire in England (as the tribe of the Brigantes) (see
Appendix A).
Nineveh
fell to the Medes and Babylonians in 612 BCE. The Assyrian Sennacharib retired
there as prophesied in Isaiah, and it was where he was murdered twenty years
later by his sons (see the paper Commentary on Isaiah Part IV:
Messianic Prophecy through Isaiah to Hezekiah (No. 157D).
The school
of Fenius was near the city of Æothena and was set up to systematise the languages that came from the
tower of Babel. The ancient cuneiform in Asia Minor was both ideographic and
syllabic. In the movement into Asia, the Chinese developed the monosyllabic,
ideographic language whereas the Japanese language became syllabic but used
some of the Chinese script, among others.
The Hittite
equivalent of Bel was Indara and this went into India with the Aryans as the
god Indra. The Aryan Sanskrit in India was related to the Chaldean language of
the Babylonians and the Hittites. We have to examine the possibility that the
Scythians that entered India were Hittites of Magogite origin or an alliance of
Gomer, Magog and Madai comprising the Hittite alliance. We will see that at one
stage the Hittites were comprised of Gomer, Magog, Madai and also of the
Tirasians at Troy and the later Phrygians in Anatolia. They were aided by the
Southern Hittites of Palestine and the Cushites of Ethiopia.
The
Haplogroups of the Irish and Scots contain a significant element of Hamitic
Haplogroups A, B and E as well as Phoenician Japhethite K2 found among the
Welsh. The probability is that they were from Phoenician traders from the
Formorian or later Feinean lines, who were Phoenicians from Carthage or
Getulia. However, some may have come from later Roman influence (see Appendix
A).
The
Milesian understanding was that the Parthians were descended from Magog but it
is more probable that the Parthians were composite, having Magogites and
Tirasians combined with other elements. The Parthians and Scythians shared some
common burial customs the further north from Persia they went. We will deal
with these aspects later.
The Irish
seem to have kept their records and are among the most ancient records.
In the
ancient historians, other than the Milesians, it is from Hesiod the Greek poet
in the 7th century BCE that we first hear of the possible connection
between Magog and a people known as the Scythians.
Herodotus
gives detailed accounts of the origins of the Scythians. The first is a fable
regarding their kings’ descent from Hercules. They themselves at the time of
Herodotus stated that they and their kingdom were no more than a thousand years
old from the time of their origin to the time of Darius Hystaspes. Thus their
kingdom in Asia was founded ca. 1500 BCE after they took it from the sons of
Gomer or the Cimmerians.
Herodotus
says:
[4.11] There is
also another different story, now to be related, in which I am more inclined to
put faith than in any other. It is that the wandering Scythians once dwelt in
Asia, and there warred with the Massagetae, but with ill success; they
therefore quitted their homes, crossed the Araxes, and entered the land of
Cimmeria. For the land which is now inhabited by the Scyths was formerly the country
of the Cimmerians. On their coming, the natives, who heard how numerous the
invading army was, held a council. At this meeting opinion was divided, and
both parties stiffly maintained their own view; but the counsel of the Royal
tribe was the braver. For the others urged that the best thing to be done was
to leave the country, and avoid a contest with so vast a host; but the Royal
tribe advised remaining and fighting for the soil to the last. As neither party
chose to give way, the one determined to retire without a blow and yield their
lands to the invaders; but the other, remembering the good things which they
had enjoyed in their homes, and picturing to themselves the evils which they
had to expect if they gave them up, resolved not to flee, but rather to die and
at least be buried in their fatherland. Having thus decided, they drew apart in
two bodies, the one as numerous as the other, and fought together. All of the
Royal tribe were slain, and the people buried them near the river Tyras, where
their grave is still to be seen. Then the rest of the Cimmerians departed, and
the Scythians, on their coming, took possession of a deserted land.
[4.12] Scythia
still retains traces of the Cimmerians; there are Cimmerian castles, and a
Cimmerian ferry, also a tract called Cimmeria, and a Cimmerian Bosphorus. It
appears likewise that the Cimmerians, when they fled into Asia to escape the
Scyths, made a settlement in the peninsula where the Greek city of Sinope was
afterwards built. The Scyths, it is plain, pursued them, and missing their
road, poured into Media. For the Cimmerians kept the line which led along the
sea-shore, but the Scyths in their pursuit held the Caucasus upon their right,
thus proceeding inland, and falling upon Media. This account is one which is
common both to Greeks and barbarians.
Philo, the
1st century BCE writer, identified Magog with the region we know
today as southern Russia/Ukraine. In the 1st century CE, Josephus
wrote in his Antiquities: “Magog founded those that from him were named
Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians” (I, vi, 1).
The Scythians or Scyths were among the most famous and feared of all
ancient peoples. It is a source of confusion, however, that the name Scythian
was often applied to many nomadic peoples, irrespective of tribal
affiliations and whether or not they were actually descendants of Magog. The
Elamites and the Persians called the Scyths closest to them, Sakâ or Sakka; and to the Greeks
they were the Skythai of Skythia. The Assyrians referred
to them as the Ashguzai or Ishguzai, although this name appears to be derived
from Ashkenaz, son of Gomer, who was a brother of Magog (see the paper Sons of Japheth Part II: Gomer
(No. 46B)). The Gomerites and the Magogites were often found in
close proximity, hence the understandable confusion with respective identities.
The confusion was compounded as the Parthian Empire and the Scythians waxed and
waned, and tribes of each formed sections of the one and then the other
dependent upon alliances and fortunes of war.
We see from Herodotus that the Scyths were pushed out of the north in
Asia by the Massagetae or Greater Goths. They crossed the Araxes river, now
called the Aras, which also happens to be the region to which the ‘Lost’ Ten
Tribes of Israel went after their release from Assyrian captivity (i.e. “beyond
the Araxes”).
The sons of Gomer were finally forced into Western Europe after this
invasion of the Scythians. We will deal with these movements of the Celts in
the text Sons of Japheth
Part II: Gomer (No. 46B).
After this event the Assyrians were sometime allies of the Scythians,
and perhaps as a guide to the importance and power of the latter, it is
recorded that one of the Scythian kings, Bartatua/Protothyes, married the
daughter of the famous Assyrian king, Asarhaddon, in ca. 674 BCE.
The Scythians were at the height of their power in Hesiod’s time, around
the mid-seventh century BCE (hence the poet’s more immediate and accurate
knowledge of them), although some modern authors speak of the fourth century
BCE as being a Scythian ‘golden age’.
An early history of the Scythians is provided by Diodorus (I, 55; II,
43).
Land and Peoples of Scythia
The Steppe occupied by the descendants of Magog is an enormous grass
belt, mostly treeless, that stretches for 4350 miles (~7000 km) from the foot
of the Carpathian Mountains to Mongolia.
Their mummified bodies have been found in graves in the Uygur Autonomous
Region of NW China and are dated to the first half of the second millennium
BCE. Their garments closely resemble the ancient hunting tartans and plaids of
the Scots.
The most easterly tribes were classed merely as the Eastern Scythians,
for want of a better title. In the mid-region of the Steppe, between the Aral
Sea and Lake Balkhash, were the Sakas/Sacae and Massagetae. A third major group
was located in the Pontic steppes to the north of the Black Sea, and it appears
that these were the ones known properly to the early historians as the
Scythians. From Herodotus’ record, they apparently displaced the Cimmerians
(sons of Gomer) from the South-western areas beginning as early as 1500-300 BCE
and then were pushed over the Araxes by the Massagetae.
In his Geography, Strabo says that in Homeric times the Black Sea
was called the Axenos Pontos, meaning inhospitable sea, “because
of its wintry storms and the ferocity of the tribes that lived around it, and
particularly the Scythians in that they sacrificed strangers … but later it was
called Euxeinos [friendly to strangers] when the Ionians [Greeks]
founded cities on the seaboard” (Bk. VII, iii, 6). Ovid called it the Scythian
Sea.
Herodotus gives the location of the Scyths and the physical size of
‘Scythia’.
[W]e find the Scythians again in possession of the country above the
Tauri and the parts bordering on the eastern sea, as also of the whole district
lying west of the Cimmerian Bosphorus and the Palus Maeotis, as far as the
river Tanais, which empties itself into that lake at its upper end. As for the
inland boundaries of Scythia, if we start from the Ister, we find it enclosed
by the following tribes, first the Agathyrsi, next the Neuri, then the
Androphagi, and last of all, the Melanchaeni.
Scythia then, which is square in shape, and has two of its sides
reaching down to the sea, extends inland to the same distance that it stretches
along the coast, and is equal every way. For it is a ten days' journey from the
Ister to the Borysthenes, and ten more from the Borysthenes to the Palus
Maeotis, while the distance from the coast inland to the country of the
Melanchaeni, who dwell above Scythia, is a journey of twenty days. I reckon the
day's journey at two hundred furlongs. Thus the two sides which run straight
inland are four thousand furlongs each, and the transverse sides at right
angles to these are also of the same length, which gives the full size of
Scythia (Bk. IV, 100-101).
In Histories IV, 17ff., Herodotus appears to separate the Scyths
into at least four distinct groups in his time. The Callipidae and Alazonians
were the agricultural Graeco-Scyths who lived in the lower Bug and Dnieper
river regions; north of them were the ‘Scythian cultivators’, who grew corn as
a commercial venture; east of them were the so-called Dnieper nomads, who
“neither plough nor sow”; while farther east still were the Royal Scyths, whom
Herodotus calls “the largest and bravest of the Scythian tribes, which look upon all the other tribes
in the light of slaves” (IV, 20).
Asgard/Kiev became the capital of the central Scythians. The
identification of the Aesar or Asens will prove to be important to this issue
and will be examined with that of the sons of Tiras. Kiev is now the capital of
the Ukraine.
Also in the Histories, Herodotus makes a clear distinction
between the Scythians and the Sauromatae by saying they are neighbours of the
Scyths, along with their allies the Tauri, Budini, Geloni et al; and
that their northern neighbours were the Androphagi, Melanchlaeni and
Arimaspians (IV, 102).
Polyhistor (62) said that the tribe of Assaei was “among the most
distinguished of Scythia”.
The Scythian territory adjoined that of the Thracians, descendants of
another son of Japheth (see the paper Sons of Japheth Part VIII: Tiras
(No. 46H)), with whom they intermarried, as noted below.
The late Prof. Vasile Pârvan, a Romanian historian and archaeologist, stated that the Scyths
needed at least three centuries to cover the distance from the Volga and the
Caspian Sea area to the Dniester-Carpathian zone.
In his work Scythians and Greeks, Ellis Minns states: “The
greater part of the information as to manners and customs given by Herodotus
and the physical details in Hippocrates evidently refer to the Royal Scyths”
(CUP, Cambridge, 1913, p. 36). Herodotus includes the Moesi amongst the Royal
Scyths. Minns confirms that the Scythians were allied to the Assyrians against
the Cimmerians, and they once attempted to lift the siege of Nineveh set by the
Medes. However, to highlight the temporary nature of alliances in those days,
it is also known that in 612 BCE ‘Scythian nomads’ materially assisted with the
destruction of Nineveh. The Scyths are also said to have overrun Media,
homeland of the sons of Madai, another son of Japheth. Thus there appeared to
be no love lost between the various cousins. Minns writes:
We find the Cimmerians, Gimirrai, first North
of Urartu (Ararat). Hence they are driven out by As-gu-za-ai (Asarhaddon) or
Is-ku-za-ai (Sun Oracle). … The Cimmerians driven south
from Urartu attacked Man a kingdom under Assyrian suzerainty. The Assyrians
supported their vassals and found allies in the Scythians who were already
enemies of the Cimmerians.
… Scyths also made their appearance further to the SW.,
apparently being sent by Assyria against Egypt, but bought off by Psammetichus.
Thus they are referred to by the Hebrew Prophets and engaged in the sack of
Ascalon where some contracted a disease ascribed by Herodotus (I. 105) to the
hostility of Aphrodite. A colony of them is said to have settled at Beth-shean
hence called Scythopolis [Jos. Ant. Jud. XII. viii. 5]. (ibid., p. 42)
The Cimmerians mentioned here were descendants of another son of
Japheth, Gomer, with the obvious link being the name Gimmirrai. They
were referred to as Gamirk in the older Armenian writings. In the Welsh,
the word Cymro means a Cymry, expressed as “un sy’n perthyn i
Gymru” meaning “a Welshman”. The Welsh language is Y Gymraeg, meaning in
effect the Gomerite (cf. Christopher Davies, Y Geiriadur Mawr,
A Gwasg Gomer, 1989).
Montgomerie of the French Norman
invasion means of the Mountain of Gomer. We will deal with these aspects
in the Sons of Japheth Part
II: Gomer (No. 46B).
A German archaeologist, Renate Rolle, also relates certain Scyths to the
modern-day Ossetes of Ossetia, while Klaproth and others state that the Ossetes
are descended from Caucasian Alans. If both are correct, then the Alans may
also be a Scythian tribe (see below under the heading ‘The Sarmatians’).
In European Scythia, including the Caucasus
regions, we are dealing with Europids [Caucasians] in Scythian times who betray
no Mongol characteristics but who do divide into long- and round-skulled types.
The physical characteristics of the Scythians correspond to their cultural
affiliation: their origins place them within the group of Iranian peoples. … The language of the Scythians is closely related to that of the ancient
Ossetes (the remainder of the Ossetes tribe today live in the Terek region of
the northern Caucasus).
Further east, the Mongol characteristics of the
skulls of the indigenous Sauromatian peoples become more apparent. Nevertheless
we must remember that we are dealing with a period in which huge areas of
Siberia far into Mongolia were still inhabited by ancient Europids. It was only
gradually -- in the first millennium BC -- that Mongol characteristics became
apparent in this area, characteristics which are today almost universal in that
region; at the same time the fifth or fourth century must have represented a
certain turning point (The World of the Scythians, Renate Rolle: orig.
publ. in German, 1980: trans. G. Walls, Batsford, London, 1989, p. 56).
Herodotus claimed that the headquarters of the ruling Scythians – the
Royal Scyths – was in the vicinity of Tanais and Maetis (Hist., IV, 20).
By the time Herodotus wrote, in the middle of
the fifth century B.C., the Scythians of the Black Sea area were grouped into a
large confederation of separate tribes. In its most precise form, the term “Scythians” refers to some tribes who lived on the northern
shores of the Black Sea, but the “Scythian culture” was shared by various tribes spread over a large territory, with
similar ways of life and close interrelations, promoted by nomadic
cattle-breeding (From the Lands of the Scythians, ibid., p. 21).
To add to the confusion of nomenclature, the Romans (cf. Pliny and
Strabo) called the Scythians Sarmatae and Germani (from germanus,
Lat. genuine). Interestingly, the Anglo-Saxons were also known as Germani.
Strabo further refers to a people known as the Keltoskythai or
Celtic-Scythians (XI, 6, 2), again suggesting intermarriage between the
different tribes as they were brought into contact through invasion or
migration.
There were also the Sakai, who Herodotus said were the Amurgioi Skuthai – the Scythians
from Ammyurgia, while Arrian referred to the Sakai as Skuthon, “a
Scythian people” (Amb. Alex., III, 8, 3). In her book The
Scythians, Tamara Talbot Rice gives one explanation as to how these people
became the Sacae or Saka.
Herodotus refers to a group of rebel Scyths who
had broken away from the main clan and migrated to the north-west of Lake
Balkash [directly east of Aral Sea], settling in an area which he called Sacae.
It seems probable that pockets of other equally independently-minded Scyths
existed elsewhere in the steppe, and it may even have been dissenters similar
to those who penetrated to Prussia, thus accounting for burials of what appear
to be single warriors such as that of Vettersfield (Thames & Hudson,
London, 1961, p. 55).
The historian Pliny claimed that Armenia’s most fertile region was
called Sacasina (vi, 11), with a probable link to the Sacae. There was
also a Saka kingdom located in the upper Indus valleys between Afghanistan and
Kashmir. Possibly even before 500 BCE, a tribe called the Sakyas inhabited
the region in which Buddha was supposedly born. Guatma or the Buddha was
also known as Sakyashina or Sakyamuni, meaning Sakya sage
or Sakya the teacher. He was a Kshatryan knight of the warrior class and
his teachings broke the stranglehold the Brahmins had on the priesthood from
the Aryan invasion of India ca. 1000 BCE. The majority of Aryan YDNA Haplogroup
in India is R1a and is not the dominant R1b Haplogroup of the Western-European
Magogites. These YDNA divisions into R1a and R1b therefore must have occurred
just prior to 1000 BCE from the original RxR1 basic found in India and Australia
and North Africa. The RxR1 YDNA is found among the Dravidians and the Northern
Aryans are predominantly R1a.
It is known that the Scythian Sakas also went east from the northern
Caucasus and reached the borders of China in ca. 175 BCE. They were referred to
by the indigenous Chinese as the Sai-wong or Sak-wong. The name
Wong in Chinese is a Hakka name. Hakka means visitor or sojourner
in Chinese. Hakka YDNA is a derivative of Hg O at O3. Thus it is part of the
Great Hun and Han split of N and O and would not be Magogite based on our known
YDNA groups. If Sak-wong means Saka princes, as has been
suggested by some, then we might assume that the name refers to the ruling clan
of the Saka.
Scythians and Sarmatians were later replaced by Slavs in the European
section of the Eurasian plain.
The only mention of the Scythians (SGD 4658) by name in the Bible is in
Colossians 3:11, where they are juxtaposed with barbarians, i.e. those who
spoke neither Greek nor Latin and therefore “babbled”.
Colossians 3:11 Here
there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian,
Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all. (RSV)
In this usage Scythian is of foreign origin and means by
implication a savage. The Greek Skotoo (SGD 4656) means to
obscure or blind, from Skotos (SGD 4655): to be in
darkness. Skotia (SGD 4653) simply means dark (from 4655).
Blinding was the principle practice of Scythians with captive slaves and
they were known for that practice by the Greeks. That may explain the origin of
the applications of the form of the word in Greek.
Scythian society and culture
Under the
heading The Scythian Culture regarding the treasures of the Scythian
burial mounds, the authors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Museum’s
lavishly illustrated publication, From the Lands of the Scythians, give
details on the cultures that developed systematically in the region later known
as Scythia.
In 1902 the archaeologist V.A. Gorodtzov, on
the basis of his excavations, suggested that the most ancient peoples of the
northern shores of the Black Sea could be divided into three cultures,
according to the strikingly different ways in which they built their tombs: the
pit-grave culture, the catacomb-grave culture, and the timber-grave culture.
This theory has been supported and made more precise by later archaeological
work. The tombs of the catacomb culture date from the beginning and middle of
the second millennium B.C.; they belonged to a Bronze Age people with a
developed bronze metallurgy, whose economy was based on semi-nomadic
cattle-breeding and agriculture. They had already established relations with
other cultures.
In the middle of the second millennium B.C., the
catacomb people were replaced on the north shore of the Black Sea by the timber-grave
people, whose tombs were built like log cabins. This culture had developed to
the east, in the region around the Volga river and the southern Urals, and had
spread over a vast territory, remaining in existence until the mid-eighth
century B.C. Again, its characteristics were a highly developed bronze
metallurgy and semi-nomadic cattle-breeding, but with special emphasis on
horse-breeding. Recent studies have convincingly suggested that the Cimmerians
represent tribes of a late stage of the timber-grave culture; they were
well-armed horsemen who could move easily over long distances.
The tribes of the Scythian culture developed on
the foundation of the late timber-grave culture of the eighth century B.C. This
could explain the two ancient ideas of Scythian origins, the one involving
migration and the local one, since the timber-grave culture had been spread by
peoples moving westward into the Black Sea region from Asia (op. cit., p. 17).
In The Scythians, Talbot Rice explains that these people, although
unquestionably warlike, also had a highly-developed appreciation of the
artistic.
The Scythians formed well-organized
communities, responding to their chiefs with ready discipline. But they were a
turbulent lot, delighting in warfare, predatory raids and the scalping of their
enemies. On more than one occasion their military prowess in battle caused real
concern to the infinitely more powerful kingdoms of Assyria, Media, Parthia and
Greece.
In the seventh century B.C. the Scythians were
feared throughout Asia Minor, but at the same time their wealth and love of
finery won them the good will of the great Hellenic merchants established along
the shores of the Black Sea, as well as of the Greek artists and craftsmen who
had settled in the Bosphoran kingdom, and more especially at Panticapaeum. Even
at this early date in their history, the Scythians already displayed an
extraordinary ability to appreciate and assimilate the best in the art of their
day, regardless of its origin, and they were quick to turn to the highly
skilled Greek artists working in the Pontic towns which had sprung up on their
southern border in the seventh century B.C., for objects of outstanding quality
(op. cit., p. 22).
As with most other ancient peoples, there appeared to be a great deal of
intermarriage for political and dynastic reasons among the Scyths.
Royal Scyths at times intermarried with Greeks
or Thracians from neighbouring regions in the west. The union of weak and
powerful tribes by marriage was often the only way of ensuring the security of
the smaller clan (ibid., p. 41).
This has been borne out by relatively recent archaeological finds which
suggest that the royal tombs of Brezovo, Panagyurishte (near Philippopolis),
Bedniacovo and Radyuvene (all in modern-day Bulgaria) were the final
resting-places of either Scythian, Thracian or mixed Thraco-Scythian princes of
the 4th century BCE.
Rather surprisingly perhaps, the historian Strabo had some very positive comments to make
about the Scyths.
Aeschylus, too, is clearly pleading
the cause of the poet when he says about the Scythians: "But the Scythians,
law-abiding, eaters of cheese made of mare's milk." And this
assumption even now still persists among the Greeks; for we regard the
Scythians the most straightforward of men and the least prone to mischief,
as also far more frugal and independent of others than we are (Geography, VII,
iii, 9).
A particularly famous Scythian was Anacharsis, a prince and philosopher
of the late-sixth century BCE, who was known as one of the Seven Sages of the
Greeks (see Hist., IV, 76).
Agriculture and trade
Scythia was an important grain-producing region of the ancient world,
just as it is today as the Ukraine. The Scyths involved with grain growing were
basically sedentary tribes, unlike the nomadic and ‘superior’ Royal Scyths.
Scythia served as one of Greece’s granaries, and in southern Russia the corn grown by the settlers was
transmitted by the nomadic overlords to the Greek colonists of the Pontus, who
in their turn acted as middlemen in selling it to Greece. The Scythians in the
Kuban, on the other hand, traded direct with the masters of vessels coming to
their ports from Ionia. In addition, the Scyths as a whole supplied the Pontic
Greeks with valuable consignments of salt, sturgeon and tunny-fish, with honey,
meat and milk, hides and furs, and not least important, with slaves. The
latter, though described by the Greeks as ‘Scythians’, were probably conquered enemies or local agriculturalists rather than
nomad freemen. In return for this merchandise the Scythians received Greek
jewellery, metalwork and pottery of the finest quality (The Scythians,
Tamara Talbot Rice, Thames & Hudson, London, 1961, p. 51).
When Darius the Persian came against Greece, the first thing he did was
to cut off her vital supplies, in particular, timber from the Balkans and
consignments of grain from Scythia.
The Royal Scyths were relatively few in number,
but they were such efficient rulers and such fearless fighters that they had no
difficulty in governing a large territory and controlling with ease a
population consisting of their own husbandmen and the indigenous
agriculturalists whom they had found established in the region, and who greatly
outnumbered them. Regardless of the disparity in numbers, by the sixth century
B.C., and possibly even as much as a hundred years earlier, the Royal Scyths
were already firmly established in the area bounded by the Don and the Dniepr,
and virtually controlled the steppe as far west as the Bug [a river south of
Kiev, Ukraine] and the productive lands in the neighbourhood of Poltava (ibid.
pp. 52-53).
In English, the word scythe is used for a two-handed implement
for reaping grain and linguistically appears to dreive from the agricultural
Scyths.
Language and art
To the Greeks most non-Greeks were ‘barbarians’, not necessarily because
they were considered less civilised but rather because of their unintelligible
speech, as one author explains.
The term ‘barbarian’ began as an onomatopoeic Greek word about foreign language: the ‘bar-bar babble’ sound of an incomprehensible
tongue. It occurs once in the Iliad, when the Carian army is described
as ‘barbarophonos’ -- barbar-speaking. … But it is fairly clear that at the time of the Iliad and for
long afterwards the Greeks did not lump all foreigners together under the
linguistic definition ‘barbarians’. Still less did they use the term as a catalogue of inferior ‘otherness’ comprising all that the Greeks were not. Victorian
scholars in the age of empire misread the Iliad as an account of the
triumph of civilisation over ‘barbarous’ and morally inferior Trojans But there is nothing remotely like that in
the text of the poem, in which the Greeks are if anything more cruel and
treacherous -- epithets later heaped into the tray of ‘barbarism’ -- than the Trojans. … But in the fifth century BC
Athens … constructed a single barbarian world, squeezing peoples as distinct as
Scythian nomads and Mesopotamian city-dwellers into a single new species, and
opposed it to the image of a single and united Hellenic world (Black Sea,
Neal Ascherson, Random House, London, 1996, pp. 60-61).
Talbot Rice is of the opinion that there was one (Iranian-based)
language spoken by all the so-called Scythian peoples.
The only indubitable fact which emerges is that
the tribes of the entire plain all spoke the same language, in much the same
way that many present-day nomads throughout Asia all speak the Turki dialect of
Turkish. The language spoken by the nomads was basically an Iranian tongue, but
it may have been more closely allied to Avestic than to ancient Persian. …
[S]ince all the mounted nomads of the Scythian
age spoke the same Iranian tongue, whether they came from the Dniestr or the
banks of the Oxus, there seems reason to think that at any rate the majority
were linked by some sort of racial tie. A definite affinity is indeed suggested
by the nature of their art, which shows well-nigh identical features over so
wide an area (The Scythians, op. cit., pp. 39, 42).
Art
The Director
of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art made the following comment in From
the Lands of the Scythians:
Herodotus’
portrait of the Scyth is not particularly complimentary: the Scyth was a nomad,
a fierce hunter and fighter, a tough, indomitable barbarian addicted to strong wine,
hashish, and violence, wandering, always wandering, uncivilized and rootless.
But one must be cautious. A Greek historian of the fifth century B.C. would
look upon any people who did not speak the mother tongue as barbarians, and
would judge any group of mankind without cities as beyond the pale. However, as
one examines the uniquely beautiful art made by and for the Scyths, one must
acknowledge that, stereotyped concepts of civilization aside, these anonymous
peoples were connoisseurs of supreme taste (Thomas Hoving, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. XXXII, New York, 1975, p. 1).
Having left no written records, the most significant legacy of the
Scythians is the golden treasures recovered from their numerous burial mounds.
Photographs of many of the pieces found are in the aforementioned book.
Between the fifth and third centuries B.C., the
Scythians not only were in contact with the civilizations of Greece, Egypt, and
the Near East, but shared a cultural unity with many other tribes living in the
steppe region of eastern Europe and Asia. In art, an indication of such unity
is the so-called animal style. Powerful, stylised, and decorative, this style
is characteristic of a wide territory stretching from Hungary to China. It
portrays animals and birds with their most important attribute … exaggerated or accentuated. … These images probably had
religious or magic significance: (ibid., p. 21).
As Talbot Rice suggested, the Scythians were linked by common artistic
designs.
The most characteristic single motif in
Scythian art is provided by the stag. Originally an object of worship among
Siberian tribesmen, it had probably lost much of its earlier religious
significance by Scythian times, but it is more than likely that the belief that
stags transported the souls of the dead to the world beyond was still generally
current in Eurasia throughout the first millennium. It persisted with the
Buriats until quite recently (op. cit., p. 158).
She makes another interesting observation that seems more than
coincidental and could indicate where the westward migration of some of the
Scyths finally ended: “A resemblance to Scythian art can often be recognized in
the sculptures and illuminations of the Celtic school in Britain” (ibid., p.
192).
The epitome of Scythian art is seen in the treasures of the ubiquitous
Royal Scyth burial mounds; however, the majority of objects were thought to
have been created by Greek craftsmen rather than the Scythians themselves.
Gold featured very heavily in the treasures. The archaeologist Renate
Rolle says that there were basically three areas from which Scythian gold came:
Transylvania in the west (where the Agathyrsi, relatives of the Scyths, were
found); the Caucasus, especially Colchis, the place from which the legend of
the Golden Fleece originated; and Kazakhstan and the Altai mountains. A comment
in From the Lands of the Scythians reads: “In Kazakhstan, as in the
Altaic immediately to the east, gold was mined from Bronze Age times (c. 1500
BC) at the very latest, in both opencast and underground mines” (op. cit., p.
52). The word Altai appropriately means mountains of gold. There
are no known gold deposits in the Ukraine, hence all Scythian gold must have
been imported.
Religious practices and burials
Talbot Rice provides an overview of Scythian religion.
Like all primitive peoples, the Scythians were
exceedingly superstitious. They believed in witchcraft, magic and the power of
amulets. Their soothsayers foretold the future by means of bundles of twigs and
by splitting bast fibres in much the same way as did certain groups of Germans
in the Middle Ages. The most highly honoured of the Scythian magicians came
from certain specific families. …
The Scythians worshipped the elements. Their
main devotions were paid to the Great Goddess, Tabiti-Vesta, the Goddess of
Fire and perhaps also of beasts. She alone figures in their art, presiding at
the taking of oaths, administering communion or anointing chieftains.
Rostovtzeff found that she had been worshipped in southern Russia long before
the Scythians appeared there. Pottery statuettes of her were common in the
Bronze Age in the country lying between the Urals and the Dniepr, even more
along the Bug and Donetz rivers. There is a marked resemblance between these
little figures and those representing the same deity in Elam, Babylonia and
Egypt made centuries earlier (The Scythians, op. cit., p. 85).
Among the various practices which the Slavs
inherited from the Scythians, the most important consisted in the worship of
their ancestors (ibid., p. 181).
This appeared to be a prevalent practice among many
diverse peoples at the time, as we noted earlier with Cush and Semiramis.
The Scythian gods were listed as: Tabiti/Tabitha; Papeaus (Zeus) and his
wife Api; Oetosyrus (Apollo); Argimpasa (Aphrodite); Thagimasadas (a ‘Poseidon’); Heracles, and an
unnamed god of war. The sacred emblems of the Scyths were: the serpent; the ox
(representing Nimrod/Taurus); Tho/Theo (Egyptian Pan); and fire
(representing the sun and knowledge).
Burials
Presumably as a result of belief in the immortality of the soul, the
Scythian dead were expected to ascend to another world in which they would
maintain their former wealth and social position. For an understanding of the
Immortal Soul doctrine see the paper The Soul (No. 92).
In general, and as an obvious means of differentiation between the
tribes, the Getic and Celtic tombs were flat, whereas those of the Scythians
were almost invariably raised tumuli known as kurgans. This factor alone
would tend to suggest that the Scyths and Getae were distinct peoples, or had
separated quite early. Also, from archaeological evidence, the remains of pigs,
chickens and wild boar as food dedicated to the dead were found in Gaulish
tombs, as well as in the Celtic ones in north-west Dacia. This is in direct
contrast to the Scythians, who Herodotus said never ate pig. It is now known
that the Gauls were in fact Gomerites. Another distinguishing feature of the
Celts was that, despite their close contact with the Scythians, they did not
generally use the bow as a weapon of war; they were noted swordsmen instead.
The Celts were believers in the afterlife and reincarnation. They often
wrote promissory notes payable in the next or afterlife.
From the Lands of the Scythians mentions
the important burial mounds that are found in specific areas of the Steppe, and
which are known as kurgans or kurgany in Eastern Europe and mogily
in the Ukraine.
The lower Dnieper was probably the religious
center for the Scythian tribes; some of the richest kurgans are found in this
area, which might explain Herodotus’ remark that the burials of
the nomad chieftains lay far from their own territories (op. cit., p. 20).
There are at least 100,000 burial mounds in the Ukraine alone and most
are concentrated along the Dnieper River in the realm of the Royal Scyths. The
largest of these is about 70 ft (21m) high, with a base diameter of 328 ft
(100m). It has also been noted that men of Scythian royalty were almost always
buried alongside their women, whether wives or concubines, who were apparently
ritually killed on the death of their husbands.
Progress of the Scythians through Eastern Europe towards the west can be
tracked to some degree by their burials.
In the fourth century B.C. the Royal Scyths of
southern Russia attempted to shift their headquarters from the lower Dniepr to
the north and west of their earlier centre. Shortly afterwards, the eastern
fringe of the Balkans became a Scythian outpost, and as a result, the region
contains quite a considerable number of Scythian burials. Bessarabia, Wallachia
and the Dobrudja in particular retain important traces of their sojourn …
Some Scythians also penetrated into Hungary
towards the year 500 B.C. They probably followed a route leading across
Moldavia and Transylvania, for both districts are rich in mounds. … The number of Scythian burials in Hungary is very considerable … As we move back across Russia the picture becomes fuller again. To the east
of the royal tombs, the tombs of the Kuban afford particularly rich and
interesting examples of Scythian burials of early date (Talbot Rice, op. cit.,
pp. 107-108).
The earliest known Scythian tombs are
contemporary in date with the Scythians’
military successes in the Middle East and in consequence the majority are
situated in the eastern extremity of the European section of the [Eurasian]
plain. Close to them in date are some of the Russian mounds. … The objects found in these … sites reflect Persian
influence. A sword sheath from Meguro [dated to second half of 6th
century BCE] shows the successful fusion of the native and Assyrian elements,
for the sword itself is Persian in shape, and the decorations on the sheath
also display strong Assyro-Persian trends. The main design thus consists of a
row of Persian-looking winged quadrupeds, alternately human- and lion-headed,
advancing with drawn bows. Their wings are, however, essentially Scythian … (ibid., pp. 153-154).
It is known that the Scyths had a special reverence for fire and used
flaming torches to purify graves. This veneration was also seen in their
refusal to extinguish a fire, which was always allowed to die naturally. This
practice stems from the worship of Tabitha Vesta, who was the goddess of the
hearth fire. This worship was transferred into Rome from the fall of the Trojan
system and the rise of the Roman successors of West Asian origin under the sons
of Aeneas.
Arrows were also emblematic of fire, and this leads into a not
insignificant part of Scythian character: their predilection for war.
Scythians at War
The two elements in combination that made the Scythians among the most
feared warriors of their age were the horse and the bow. As a result, the
Greeks referred to the Scyths as ‘horse-archers’. Although
war was not the original reason for domestication of the horse, it soon became
an intimate part of the warrior life of the Scythians, as Talbot Rice explains.
If the Scythians were not the first to
domesticate the horse, they were among the earliest, if not the first of the
central Asian people to learn to ride it. Both in China and in India, and
possibly also in Egypt, horses had been used in the second millennium as beasts
of burden for transporting loads … fighting steeds had also been
trained to pull light chariots in battle, and at the chase. But the Scythians’ success in war was largely due to the advantage which their mounted
soldiers enjoyed over their foot enemies, a superiority which the latter were
quick to appreciate. In consequence, almost immediately following upon the
Scythian penetration into Asia, the technique of riding was suddenly mastered
throughout the entire Middle Eastern area (op. cit., p. 70).
The Scyths used an assortment of weaponry, including iron swords, spears
and battle-axes (sagaris), however, the weapon most closely associated
with them was the bow. The bows they used were relatively short at 30-32 inches
(76-81 cm), as they were designed to be used from horseback, although there are
records of them being longer than 3 feet (~1m). They were initially made of
laminated strips of willow and alder joined by fish glue. The arrows were a
similar length and carried iron, bronze or bone arrowheads, which were
triangular or trilobar in cross-section.
Kiev archaeologist E.V. Cernenko showed that since the 6th
century BCE, there was at least a core of heavily-armed cavalrymen in the
Scythian army, with increasing numbers in subsequent centuries; this is
confirmed by the artefacts found in the princes’ burial mounds.
As mentioned earlier, Scythians warriors assisted with the final capture
and destruction of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh.
From archaeological data, from cuneiform
tablets, and from information supplied by Herodotus, we know the Cimmerians and
Scythians remained in the Near East many years, and participated in the
destruction of Assyria and other ancient Near Eastern centers. For instance,
Babylonian chronicles of 616-609 B.C., describing the fall of Assyria, tell
that nomadic tribes (referred to as “Umman manda”) joined the Babylonian and Median armies in the siege and capture of
Nineveh in 612 B.C. Herodotus, in describing their siege, mentions that a large
Scythian army appeared under the walls of Nineveh led by Madyes, son of
Protothyes (the Partatua of the cuneiform sources). (From the Lands of the Scythians, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. XXXII, New York, 1975, p. 16)
It is said that the militaristic qualities of the Scythians were also
put to good use as police troops in Athens during the 6th and 5th
centuries BCE.
An unpleasant custom of these people is recorded by Rolle: “In antiquity
scalping was considered so typically Scythian that the Greeks invented a
special verb to denote the process. The term aposkythizein was applied
to skinning the head” (op. cit.,
p. 82).
The Scythians were finally defeated by Philip II of Macedon, father of
Alexander the Great, in 339 BCE in the north Pontic area, although they
continued their reign over the forest-steppe zone further to the north for
another hundred years or so.
Invasions and Migrations
According to the historian Ye. I. Krupnov (The Ancient History Of The Northern Caucasus,
Moscow, 1960), there were three main invasion routes from the north into the Near
East (which the Scythians were said by Herodotus to control for 28 years):
staying close to the Black Sea coast while heading south-east towards the
Araxes river (the route used chiefly by the Cimmerians and the Scythians
pursuing them); moving down the western side of the Caspian Sea through the
so-called Derbent Gate in Daghestan, before heading south-west towards
the Araxes and Lake Urmia (as noted by Herodotus, Hist., I, 103); and,
through the middle of the Caucasus mountains via the famous Darial Pass (east
of Kazbek in modern Georgia) to the Kura river and then further south. The name Darial is said to
derive from Dār-e Alān, meaning Gate of the Alans in
Persian.
The various ‘gates’ through the Caucasus appear to have a connection
with Gog and Magog, as the Wikipedia article explains.
The Gates of Alexander were a legendary barrier supposedly built by Alexander the Great in the
Caucasus to keep the uncivilized
barbarians of the north (typically associated with Gog and Magog) from invading the land to
the south. … In the Alexander Romance, Alexander chases his enemies to a
pass between two peaks in the Caucasus known as the "Breasts of the
World". He decides to imprison the "unclean nations" of the
north, which include Gog and Magog,
behind a huge wall of steel or adamantine.
With the aid of God, Alexander and his men
closed the narrow pass, keeping the uncivilized Gog and Magog from pillaging
the peaceful southern lands. The nature of the pass is never very clear; some
sources say it is a pass between mountains, while others say it is a pass
between the peaks and the Caspian Sea.
A similar story appears in the Qur'an,
Surat al-Kahf
(The Cave) 83-98, where the great hero Dhul-Qarnayn ("The Two-horned
One") constructs a wall to protect the innocent people at the feet of the
mountains from Gog and Magog. That this story appeared in a fictional account
before the Qur'an was written has caused some controversy among Islamic scholars, though some would argue
that "Dhul-Qarnayn" is not supposed to be Alexander at all, but
rather some earlier or later conqueror, usually Cyrus the Great.
During the Middle Ages,
the Gates of Alexander story was included in travel literature such as the Travels of Marco Polo
and the Travels of
Sir John Mandeville. The identities of the nations trapped
behind the wall are not always consistent, however; Mandeville claims Gog and
Magog are really the Ten Lost
Tribes of Israel,
who will emerge from their prison during the End Times and unite with their fellow Jews to attack the Christians. Polo speaks of Alexander's Iron Gates, but
says the Comanians are the ones
trapped behind it. He does mention Gog and Magog, however, locating them north
of Cathay.
In his book We, the Thracians, J.C. Dragan gives Pârvan’s idea of several of
the many migration routes followed by the Scythians.
Vasile Pârvan considered that the Scyths spread beyond the
Oder after crossing the Polish plains, and in three waves penetrated West of
the Carpathians. After crossing Podolia and the North of Moldavia, they climbed
across the Carpathians and in the Pannonian plain [in modern Hungary] … The Scythians penetrated into Transylvania through the Oituz pass … A third branch crossed the Danube Plain and Banat and reached the river
Sava. The Scythians organized inroads South of the Danube as far as the shore
of the Aegean Sea, taking along Geto-Dacian tribes with them in this direction
(Vol. I, Nagard Publisher, Milan, 1976, p. 130).
Despite
their hegemony over a substantial part of the ancient world, the Scythians
gradually faded into obscurity, as Talbot Rice explains.
The Scythians indeed played as active a part in
commerce as in war and constituted so important an element in the life of their
age that Herodotus found it necessary to devote to them an entire book of his
great history. … Yet notwithstanding his account, the absence of
written documents among the Scythians themselves has proved a strong ally of
oblivion, for all memory of the Scythians rapidly faded with their passing from
the political scene. By the fourth century A.D. they had been completely
forgotten by the civilized world of their day, and some fifteen hundred years
were to elapse before their art was rediscovered (The Scythians, op.
cit., p. 23).
In his Origins and Deeds of the Goths, Jordanes says that the
Goths came to settle in Scythia, presumably after the original inhabitants had
left or been forced out.
We read that on their first migration the Goths dwelt in the land of
Scythia near Lake Maeotis. On the second migration they went to Moesia, Thrace
and Dacia, and after their third they dwelt again in Scythia, above the Sea of
Pontus (V, 38).
In section IV, 29 of the same work, Jordanes says that both the
Scythians and Goths were Magogites.
The Sarmatians
The
archaeologist Jeannine Davis-Kimball claims that the Sarmatians were a distinct
nomadic tribe possibly related to the Sauromatians, whereas the ancient
historian Pliny the Elder states that they are one and the same people (Bk. IV,
vii, 80). Another modern source gives their name as deriving from the Old
Iranian sarumatah, meaning archer (J. Harmatta).
The Sauromatae people were the result of intermarriage between Amazonian
women and Scythian men, as Herodotus records (Hist., IV, 110ff.). The
Amazons were thus not a mythical tribe but were women warriors known to the
Scyths as Oiorpata (meaning man-killer).
Others claim that the Sarmatians originated from Media, which would make
them descendants of the patriarch Madai (see the paper Sons of Japheth Part IV: Madai
(No. 46D)). Perhaps this could be seen in the name they were given,
as the Scythians applied the term Sar to any great person – hence, the
possibility that the Sar-Matian are the “great Madai” people.
Contemporary with the Scythians and, like them,
mounted herdsmen, were the Sauromatae, who lived in the steppes around the Ural
mountains and the Don and Volga rivers, and who seem to link the Scythian world
with that of the Sakas of Central Asia. In the third century B.C. the
Sarmatians developed from this ancient culture, and by the second and first
centuries B.C. they had conquered much of Scythia as well as the towns along
the north shores of the Black Sea. Later, in the third and fourth centuries
A.D., the Sarmatians were driven out by the other nomadic tribes, such as the
Huns (From the Lands of the Scythians, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bulletin, Vol. XXXII, New York, 1975, p. 25).
Talbot Rice claims that the Scyths and Sarmatians “shared the same
language and an almost identical way of life”, and further that: “Although the
Greeks associated their stories of the Amazons with the Scythians, it is far
more probable that they in fact referred to the Sarmatians” (op. cit., p. 48).
Hippocrates classes them unreservedly as Scythians (De Aere 24).
Nothing remains of the Scythians but their
tombs and the memory of their nomad ‘otherness’, indelibly written into European consciousness by Herodotus and his
successors. The Sarmatians, by contrast, survive unrecognised. … Physically, there is one place where the Sarmatians are still present;
the Ossetians of the Caucasus, descendants of the Alan group of Sarmatian
tribes, have kept their Indo-Iranian speech and traditions (Black Sea,
Neal Ascherson, Random House, London, 1996, p. 212).
There is an mtDNA I Haplogroup in Britain which is also found among the
descendants of the Medes, i.e. the Kurds in Kurdistan. If the Amazons are Medes
then the Sarmatians conscripted by the Romans would explain the Haplogroup. It
may, however, have come with the Trojans also.
The three main tribes of Sarmatians were the Alani, Iyazges and
Roxolani. Ascherson then shows where other Sarmatians ended up.
The village of Ribchester is in Lancashire
[England], not far from Preston … [and] is built on the site of
Bremetennacum Veteranorum, a Roman cavalry fortress on the road north to
Hadrian’s Wall. … Here, towards the end of the second century AD, a
large force of Sarmatian lancers arrived. They were Iazygians, the vanguard
of the slow Sarmatian migration from the Black Sea steppe towards the west,
who had crossed the Transylvanian mountains and entered the north-eastern
Hungarian plains. From there, they began to raid the Roman frontier on the
middle Danube until the emperor Marcus Aurelius led an army across the Danube
and defeated them. He had intended, it seems, to have them massacred. But
problems elsewhere in the Empire required his attention, and he offered them
the option of enlistment instead. The Iazygians accepted, and were drafted to
northern Britain. Some 5,500 cavalrymen, presumably accompanied by their horses
and families, made the journey across a continent and a sea. They may have
served initially on the Wall, where some of their horse-armour has been found,
but within a few decades, in the early third century, they had been transferred
to Ribchester, a powerful mobile reserve of cavalry watching the Ribble gap and
the passes through the Pennines.
But the Sarmatians never went home. … For two hundred more years, until the final Roman evacuation of Britain
in the fifth century, the descendants of Iranian-speaking nomads continued to
multiply and to be found land in the lower Ribble valley … By the time of the first Anglian or Saxon settlement in the region, the
Sarmatians must have formed a large and deeply rooted community in western
Lancashire. … a DNA survey in the Preston hinterland might well
reveal that the Sarmatians are in a sense still present (ibid., pp. 236-237).
Arthurian legend
As confirmation of the above, there exists a funeral stele from
the Roman camp at Chester, England, which depicts a Sarmatian warrior holding
aloft their distinctive dragon battle standard. The first commander of the
Sarmatians in Britain was Lucius Artorius [Arthur] Castus who led his troops to
Gaul in 184 CE to put down a rebellion. This has resonance with the legendary
King Arthur, the war leader who was said to have conducted military campaigns
in Europe and to have saved Britain from the Saxons in the late-5th
and early-6th centuries CE. Places associated with King Arthur are
in fact found all over Britain, from Edinburgh’s ‘King Arthur’s Seat’ to an
ancient hill fort near Kelso in the Scottish Borders; from Caerleon in Wales to
Cadbury Castle (a proposed site for Camelot) in Somerset, England; and from
Glastonbury (perhaps the mythical Avalon), also in Somerset, to Tintagel
Castle, the supposed birthplace of Arthur, in Cornwall. It is suggested that
the Sarmatians turned the name Artorius/Arthur into a title, much like Caesar
(which later became Kaiser and Tsar).
In an article entitled ‘Were the Sarmatians the source of Arthurian
legend?’ in Archaeology magazine, C. Scott Littleton states:
There are many parallels between Arthurian
legend and the folklore of the modern Ossetians, descendants of the Alans who
live in the Caucasus. A search for a magical cup or cauldron in Ossetic
folklore, for example, parallels the Arthurian quest for the Holy Grail, and
the Alans, who invaded western Europe in the fifth century A.D., brought
legends of a figure we know as Lancelot.
As with Rolle earlier, a connection has been made between the modern
Ossetes and, in this case, the Sarmatians, perhaps regarded loosely as a
‘Scythian’ tribe. Even an ancient Turkish epic features a hero named Targhyn,
whose name has the same root as Pendragon, Arthur’s surname.
In the book From the Lands of the Scythians previously mentioned,
there are further interesting connections with the Arthurian legend.
Finally, the story of the sword Excalibur … has
direct parallels in the epic of the death of Batradz, the tribal hero of the
Ossetians of the Caucasus, and in the episode of the death of Krabat, included
in a folk tale of the Sorbs of eastern Germany. The Ossetians are the last
surviving group of Sarmatian-speaking people, and the Sorbs, though now
speaking a Slavic language, are an isolated group still bearing a Sarmatian
tribal name. “Excalibur,” incidentally, in its earliest form “Caliburnus,” is
clearly derived from the Latin word for steel, chalybs, which comes from
a Greek word derived from the name of the Sarmatian Kalybes, a tribe of smiths
in the Caucasus (Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. XXXII, New York,
1975, p. 152).
Poles, Serbs and Croats
In his work Black Sea, Ascherson provides a migration route and
resting-place for certain of the Sarmatians who came out of the Black Sea
region, by noting the connection in distinctive tribal/individual signs and
works of art.
Early in the third century, a new ruling group,
heavily armed and wealthy, entered what is now southern Poland. When they
buried their dead, they equipped them with wheel-turned pottery made on the
northern Black Sea coasts, Sarmatian brooches and lances with iron heads inlaid
in silver. They were unmistakeably a Sarmatian people, possibly the Antae, and
their material culture showed that they had been in long and close contact with
the Bosporan Kingdom. But the surest evidence for that contact -- and the key
exhibit in the argument about the Sarmatian ancestry of the Poles -- is
the tamga.
Tamgas are a
family of signs. A tamga represents a graffito monogram, a simple
Chinese character or even a cattle-brand … Each
one appears to be individual, to stand alone. … What
is clear is that the Sarmatians adopted the tamga from the Bosporans … Almost all known tamga signs have been found on Bosporan
territory, most of them in the Greek cities.
Tamgas also
occur in the Sarmatian graves scattered across Poland … Their
spread reaches from Ukraine, including the Kiev region, westwards to what is
now Silesia, and the distribution and the dating of the graves makes this look
very much like the track of a Sarmatian-Alan migration.
The Polish tamgas do not show just that
Sarmatians arrived there. They can be read to suggest that the Sarmatians never
went away. Long before a Polish archaeologist, the late Tadeusz Sulimirski,
made this case, chroniclers and genealogists had noticed that the heraldic clan
symbols used by the old Polish nobility looked like tamgas. In fact, the
older these crests were, the more strikingly ‘Sarmatian’, or rather Bosporan, they looked.
… Polish aristocratic mores, Sulimirski
suggests, find many of their roots in Sarmatian custom. Ancient writers record
the solidarity and sense of equality among Sarmatians, much like the szlachta
motto that ‘the petty squire on his plot /Is as good as the duke’. And might not the special Polish attitude to women have its roots
among those Indo-Iranian nomads too? Sarmatian noblewomen were powerful and
respected, while the Polish system of aristocratic descent still shows traces
of matriliny (Black Sea, pp. 238-240).
Ascherson then concludes that both the so-called Serbs and
Croats, among many other peoples in Europe, may in fact be descended from the
Sarmatian Alans.
The Sarmatians … who
migrated west from the Black Sea ceased to be nomads and pastoralists. Some of
the first wave, like the Iazygians, were recruited by the Roman Empire and
resettled in various parts of Gaul or Britain. Others moved north-westward
until they came up against the strong and firmly settled Germanic peoples. Late
Roman writers, trying to describe this, fell into the habit of describing all
Europe east of the Germans as ‘Sarmatia’, a term which was gradually applied to all the Slav peoples of the
region whether or not they had a ruling class of Sarmatian origin.
The Alans, in particular, had many strange
fates. One group or war-party, setting out from the Balkans in the late fourth
century, rode right across the dying Roman Empire through Austria and the
Rhineland, and then, with Vandal and Suevian allies, into France, Spain and
Portugal, winding up in what is now Spanish Galicia. Other expeditions moved
more slowly across northern France, in some cases putting down roots and
forming small Alan kingdoms of their own. Over thirty French place-names,
including that of the town of Alençon, allude to their presence, and there is
some evidence of a long-lasting Sarmatian settlement near Orleans (Black Sea,
ibid., p. 241).
This is confirmed in the work referred to previously.
In 378 the Gothic-Alanic cavalry wiped out a
Roman army at Adrianople, a victory that heralded the dominance of heavy
armoured horsemen on the medieval battlefield. Groups of Alans set themselves
up as local aristocracies in northern Spain (Catalonia: Goth-Alania) and
northern France (Alençon). Chivalry developed into its final form when another
wave of Germanic warriors, the Normans, came to northern France and took up the
horsemanship of the Alanic gentry. (At the Battle of Hastings in 1066, part of
the Norman cavalry was commanded by Alan the Red, Count of Brittany.) (From
the Lands of the Scythians, p. 150)
Ascherson continues tracing the route of Sarmatian Alans into Eastern
Europe.
Partly overrun by the Hun offensive into
Europe, many Eastern Alans joined their armies and travelled west with them.
Some settled for a time on the Elbe, and -- like their predecessors the Antae
-- came to mobilise and dominate the larger and less warlike Slavonic
populations they found there. One of these conquests had a powerful impact on
later history. The words Choroatus and Chorouatos (Croat) occur
on inscriptions found at Tanais, on the Don. It looks as if the term was
originally the name of a group of Alan warriors who lived for a period in the
Azov steppes and then migrated again towards the north-west. There they
subjugated and then merged into Slavonic peoples living on the upper Vistula [river]
and in northern Bohemia.
Byzantine and Arab chronicles in the tenth
century describe a people called Belochrobati (White Croats) in that
region, whose kings drank mares’ milk and whose babies were
subjected to skull-binding. Migrating southwards across the Hungarian plain
towards the Adriatic, this group settled in that area which was to become
modern Croatia. The name ‘Serb’, too,
originally belonged to another Eastern Alan band which was recorded in the
Volga-Don steppe in the third century and which reappeared in the fifth century
on the east bank of the Elbe. In the same way as the Sarmatian ‘Croats’, they dominated and then melted into Slav populations
around them. Some remained there, ancestors of the Slav-speaking Serb minority
which still lives in Lusatia in modern Saxony. Others, like the Croats, moved
south across the Danube to a permanent home in the Balkans: the future land of
Serbia.
Fragments of Alan population survived in Asia
for many more centuries. …The Crimean coast between
Feodosia and Alushta was still known as ‘Alania’ in the Middle Ages … These last Sarmatians on the
Black Sea appear to have linked up with the Crimean Goths until ‘Gothia’ was overthrown by the Turks and Tatars. The final
mention of the Alans, as inhabitants of Crimea in the time of the Tatar
khanate, dates from the seventeenth century … (Black
Sea, pp. 241-242).
The Wikipedia entry on the Sarmatians has that, “the numerous Iranian personal names
in the Greek inscriptions from the Black Sea Coast indicate that the Sarmatians
spoke a North-Eastern Iranian dialect ancestral to Ossetic”. The entry on the
Alans explains that:
Modern genetic science's disclosure of the geographical distribution of
historical genetic markers has convinced
certain theorists of the connection between Sarmato-Alanic deep ancestral
heritage in Europe and the Y-DNA
paternal Haplogroup G
(Y-DNA), specifically G2.
The Croats, however, are R1a and I Haplogroups. G is Semitic Assyrian.
Other descendants of the Scythians
Goths
In the far west of Europe, the Spanish Visigoths (Western Goths) claimed
descent from the patriarch Magog, according to Isidore of Seville (ca.
560-636). The Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) were similarly descended from Magog or
Gog.
The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle of 891 CE relates that the Britons came from ‘Armenia’ and the
Picts (of Scotland) from ‘Scythia’. The Armenia here is not the area in the
Caucasus but rather a misnomer for Amorica, which is an earlier name for
modern-day Brittany in France. It is effectively saying that the Britons came
overland across Europe rather than via the Mediterranean, as we see with others
below.
The histories record that the Britons came from Troy via Spain to Britain and Amorica, later called Brittany (see also the Origin of the Christian Church in Britain (No. 266)). Others that came from Europe were Gomerites.
In about
551 CE, the historian Jordanes or Jornandes, who was of Gothic extraction
himself, wrote perhaps the definitive history of the Goths in The Origin and
Deeds of the Goths (trans. by C. Mierow, Princeton University Press, 1908),
often known simply as Getica. While the Goths had converted to Arianism,
Jordanes was apparently a committed Trinitarian.
Scots
One version of the Scots’ arrival in Scotland is found in the Declaration
of Arbroath written in “filial reverence” to Pope John in1320, as we see
here:
…we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that
among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with
widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the
Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time
in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any
race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the
people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they
still live today. The Britons they first drove out, the Picts they utterly
destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes
and the English, they took possession of that home with many victories and
untold efforts;
We note several things here. Firstly, the Scots are said to have come
from Greater Scythia via the Mediterranean and the ‘Straits of Gibraltar’ (or Pillars of Hercules) to the Britain, rather than from Lesser Scythia,
or Scandinavia, as did some other tribes. The second point is that they found
the Britons and Picts already in residence in the British Isles.
The Picts are the Caledonians in the North of Britain.
Up until the 10th century, the term Scotia applied to
the island of Ireland (or Eriu/Erin) rather than Scotland, which was
then known as Alba or Alban. And at that time there were four
kingdoms in Alba:
·
Picts in basically the whole of the country north of
the Forth estuary;
·
Scots of Dalriada, now Argyll;
·
Britons of Strathclyde; and
·
Angles of Bernicia, from the Forth in Scotland down to
the Humber river in England.
By the end of the 10th century the name Scotia was
applied to part of Alba, and it wasn’t until 1266 that Scotland was
adopted as the name of the united kingdom under Alexander III. Note also that
King Alfred in his translation of ‘Beda’ (an Anglo-Belgic poem) uses Scytise
for Scottish – although perhaps a purely coincidental association
with Scyth. There is still another suggestion that the name Scotti came
from the Old Irish Scothaim, meaning I cut down, destroy.
Sometimes called the ‘Christian Herodotus’, Eusebius (263-339 CE)
states:
… Meanwhile the holy apostles and disciples of
our Saviour were scattered over the whole world. Thomas, tradition tells us,
was chosen for Parthia, Andrew for Scythia, John for Asia, where he
remained till his death at Ephesus. … (Bk. III, 1: The History of the Church,
tr. G.A. Williamson, Penguin UK, 1965).
It is claimed that Andrew, brother of Peter, worked as an Apostle among
the Scythians before they began their migrations westward to Alba or Caledonia,
the land later known as Scotland (land of Skut/Scyth?). The connection
exists today with Andrew being the ‘patron saint’ of Scotland, and in the name
of St Andrews, once an important ecclesiastical centre in the Kingdom of Fife.
The area into Parthia and Scythia, including Armenia and Georgia, was covered by both Peter and Andrew, and not Andrew alone. This was a later fiction of Rome.
The Irish connection
The Wikipedia article on Gog and Magog gives the following:
Some legends of Hungarians
and certain Celtic peoples say they
are descendants of Magog. Poseidonius,
for example, mentions that the Cimmerians,
considered to be the original ancestors in Celtic traditions, were derived from
gug and guas. In Irish
tradition, Magog was supposed to have had a grandchild called Heber, who spread throughout the Mediterranean. The result is that Gog —
the land of the four corners of the world – has also been identified as lands
somewhere in the oceans surrounding the Old World,
i.e., the New World.
Works of Irish
mythology, including the Lebor Gabála
Érenn (the Book of Invasions), expand on the Genesis account of Magog
as the son of Japheth and make him the ancestor to the Irish. His three sons were Baath,
Jobhath, and Fathochta. Magog is regarded as the father of the Irish race, and
the progenitor of the Scythians,
as well as of numerous other races across Europe and Central Asia. Partholon, leader of the first group to
colonize Ireland after the Deluge, was a descendant of Magog. The Milesians, or people of
the 5th invasion of Ireland, were also descendants of Magog.
In the paper DNA Change Rates: Modern Science
vs. The Bible (No. 215), we see that: “The history of the Irish is
quite clear and well documented. The Milesians did not come into Ireland until
ca. 500 BCE, from Spain”. The sea journey from northern Spain would have been
relatively straightforward, as it is a recognised fact that the tides will
carry boats quite naturally in a few days from the Bay of Biscay directly to
Ireland.
The Celts were great seaman and in fact taught the Romans international seamanship. The ships of Tarshish were the greatest commercial navy of the world.
Continuing the quote from the above paper:
The most common clan in Ireland is what is termed clan Oisin,
and it is a Gaelic clan, being less common in areas where the Anglo-Norman
invasion occurred. In the South-east, where most of their influence was felt,
particularly in Leinster, Oisin is some 73%. In Ulster in the North-east
it is 81%, while in Munster in the South-west it is 95%, and in Connacht in
the West of Ireland it reaches 98% of all males (op. cit., p. 160). In
contrast, for the mtDNA, all seven of the major maternal European clans and
most of the minor ones were present in Ireland, and they were more or less
equally distributed over the four provinces.
The YDNA clan Oisin signature can be found also among the Basques in
Spain, and in Galicia and in Orkney. It is termed the Atlantic
Modal Haplotype (AMH) and has repeats as follows: 11-24-13-13-12-14-12-12-10-6
on the Oxford sequence.
[The AMH is found on the European coastline from Spain to Belgium.]
It exists in Scotland and in England and indicates Celtic influence
right across the Isles. Geoffrey of Monmouth records that the Trojan Celts
found the Magogites there and subjugated them when they invaded Britain.
The clan is found in effect where we would expect the Irish to
have travelled according to their history. These are the sons of Japheth
through Magog, and perhaps also Gomer.
As longstanding residents of the Iberian Peninsula, however, the Basques
will be looked at in the paper on Tubal (see Sons of Japheth Part VI: Tubal
(No. 46F)), the progenitor of the Iberi tribes.
It has also been recently shown that radiation affects the mtDNA change
rates and we have dealt with that in an updated paper DNA Change Rates (No. 215)
on the change rates.
Natural
radioactivity and human mitochondrial DNA mutations, by Lucy Forster, Peter
Forster, Sabine Lutz-Bonengel, Horst Willkomm, and Bernd Brinkmann:
The team tested
the effects of natural background radiations and found that radiation effects
the mutational change rates of mtDNA. Thus if you were born for example in
Kerala in the test area you would suffer rapid mutations in the mtDNA, which would
affect the YDNA structure also. Thus the DNA comparisons in these various
groups may well vary from one to the other over a much shorter period of time
than expected. The team said:
“The observation
that radiation accelerates point mutations at all is unexpected, at
first glance, because radiation was, until recently, thought to
generate primarily DNA lesions (1). A potential
explanation is provided by our additional observation that these
radiation-associated point mutations are also evolutionary hot
spots, indicating that the radiation indirectly increases the cell's
normal (evolutionary) mutation mechanism (5).”
... As demonstrated, our
mtDNA results strongly support an acceleration of the evolutionary
DNA mutation mechanism through radiation.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/21/13950)
Thus the mtDNA of Magogites, like all others, may change the female
lineages and, through the effects demonstrated by the Pasteur Institute teams,
affect the YDNA structures over areas, and hence Magogite and other DNA mutates
much faster than previously thought and can be Western R1b while others can be
Slavic R1a. We will examine this elsewhere.
In Ireland, the Norseman or Northmen were known as the Finn-gaill
or white strangers. The Danes, by contrast, were called Dubh-gaill or
black strangers. The Scandinavians thus provide another possible line of
descent from the patriarch Magog:
Another set of descendants of Magog is seen in the Swedish people. Johannes Magnus
(1488-1544) stated that Magog's sons were Sven and Gethar (also named Gog), who
became the ancestors of the Swedes and the Goths. Queen Christina of Sweden
reckoned herself as number 249 in a list of kings going back to Magog (Wikipedia).
Gog and Magog in prophecy
Strong’s definition of Gog (SHD 1463) is rather vague: “Of uncertain derivation; Gog,
the name of an Israelite, also of some northern nation”, while Thayer says that
the Greek version of Gog (SGD 1136) means mountain, and Magog (3098)
means overtopping or covering. Of greater significance, perhaps, the word Caucasian
is said to be a corruption of Gog-hasan, meaning Gog’s Fort (Gill’s
Commentary of the Old Testament, 1748).
Pliny, in Natural
History (I, v, 23), claims that the city of Hierapolis in Syria was known
as Magog to the Syrians. More recent Bible scholarship is of the opinion that
Gog was Gyges, king of Lydia, and hence Magog refers to the land of Lydia in
western Anatolia (now Turkey).
The Wikipedia article on Gog and Magog gives the following
information in several key extracts:
The Muslims called the Scythian tribes of
“Tartary Yajuj and Majuj” which is Gog and Magog (see Jones 1807 vol 1: 94). …
Marco Polo, Venetian traveler to the Orient, in the thirteenth century AD, knew
that Mungul or Mongol was part of the peoples of Magog. He further understood
“Gog and Magog” to be the names of “Ung and Mungu” in China (see Polo Travels:
87). … Arab writers confirm that in the Arabic language their name for the Great
Wall of China is “the wall of Al Magog.”
Gog and Magog appear in Qur'an sura Al-Kahf (The Cave), 18:83-98, as Yajuj
and Majuj (Ya-juj/Ya-jewj and Ma-juj/Ma-jewj or يأجوج
و مأجوج,
in Arabic). Some Muslim scholars contend that the Gog in Ezekiel verse 38:2
should be read Yajuj (there is a "Y" immediately before Gog in the
Hebrew version). The verses state that Dhul-Qarnayn (the one with two horns)
travelled the world in three directions, until he found a tribe threatened by
Gog and Magog, who were of an "evil and destructive nature" and
"caused great corruption on earth" [Qur’an 18:94]. The people offered
tribute in exchange for protection. Dhul-Qarnayn agreed to help them, but
refused the tribute; he constructed a great wall that the hostile nations were
unable to penetrate. They will be trapped there until doomsday, and their
escape will be a sign of the end:
But when Gog and Magog are let loose and they rush headlong down every
height (or advantage). Then will the True Promise draw near - (Qur'an
21:96-97).
The Wikipedia entry on Gog and Magog continues with yet another
theory of the identity of Gog and Magog:
The 14th century Sunni Muslim scholar Ibn Kathir also identified Gog and Magog
with the Khazars who lived between the Black
and Caspian Seas in his work Al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah
(The Beginning and the End) [Al-Bidayah wa'l-Nihayah and
"Stories of the Prophets", p. 54, Riyadh, SA Maktaba Dar-us-Salam,
2003]. A Georgian tradition, echoed
in a chronicle, also identifies the Khazars with Gog and Magog, stating they
are "wild men with hideous faces and the manners of wild beasts, eaters of
blood" [Schultze, p. 23, 1905]. Another author who has identified this
connection was the Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan.
In his travelogue regarding his diplomatic mission to iltäbär (vassal-king under
the Khazars), he noted the beliefs about Gog and Magog being the ancestors of
the Khazars [Collection of Geographical Works by Ibn al-Faqih, Ibn Fadlan,
Abu Dulaf Al-Khazraji, ed. Fuat Sezgin, Frankfurt am Main, 1987].
Ahmadiyya founder Mirza Ghulam
Ahmad linked Gog and Magog to the European nations, and his son and
second successor, Mirza
Basheerud Deen Mahmood further expounds the connection between
Europe and the accounts of Gog and Magog in the Bible, the Qur'an, and the
hadith in his work Tafseer e
Kabeer [32] and in his commentary on Surah Al-Kahaf (Urdu).[33] According to this interpretation, Gog
and Magog were descendents of Noah
who populated eastern and western Europe long ago; the Ahmadi cite the
folkloric British interpretation of Gog and Magog as giants (see below) as
support for their view. …
The Khazars
were converted to Judaism ca. 740 CE. They were pushed into the Pale of
Settlement by the Mongols ca. 1215. The Sorbians and many Eastern Europeans in
the Pale as well as 53% of the Ashkenazi Levites and many other Jews, are R1a
Khazars. Yiddish is a Sorbian language with German lexicography.
The YDNA of the Mongols is, however, Cushite C3, and the Chinese are Haplogroup O. They are not Magogites, hence these early writers were wrong. The Siberians to the north were R1b and R1a and some Q and it is these that were kept out by the wall.
Thus many
Magogite Khazars are in Israel today.
According
to the tradition, the giants Gog and Magog are guardians of the City of
London, and images of them have been carried in the Lord Mayor's Show since
the days of King Henry V.
The Lord Mayor's procession takes place each year on the second Saturday of
November.
The latter-day prophecies regarding Gog and Magog are found in Ezekiel
38 and 39.
Ezekiel 38:1-23 The
word of the LORD came to me: 2 "Son of man, set your face
toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and
Tubal, and prophesy against him 3 and say, Thus says the Lord GOD:
Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal; 4
and I will turn you about, and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring
you forth, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed in full
armor, a great company, all of them with buckler and shield, wielding swords; 5 Persia, Cush, and Put are with them,
all of them with shield and helmet; 6 Gomer and all his hordes;
Beth-togar'mah from the uttermost parts of the north with all his hordes--many
peoples are with you. 7 "Be ready and keep ready, you and all
the hosts that are assembled about you, and be a guard for them. 8 After
many days you will be ustered; in the latter years you will go against the land
that is restored from war, the land where people were gathered from many
nations upon the mountains of Israel, which had been a continual waste; its
people were brought out from the nations and now dwell securely, all of them. 9
You will advance, coming on like a storm, you will be like a cloud
covering the land you and all your hordes, and many peoples with you. 10 "Thus
says the Lord GOD: On that day thoughts will come into your mind, and you will
devise an evil scheme 11 and say, 'I will go up against the land of
unwalled villages; I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of
them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates'; 12 to
seize spoil and carry off plunder; to assail the waste places which are now
inhabited, and the people who were gathered from the nations, who have gotten
cattle and goods, who dwell at the center of the earth. 13 Sheba and
Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish and all its villages will say to you, 'Have
you come to seize spoil? Have you assembled your hosts to carry off plunder, to
carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to seize great
spoil?' 14 "Therefore, son of man, prophesy, and say to Gog,
Thus says the Lord GOD: On that day when my people Israel are dwelling
securely, you will bestir yourself 15 and come from your place out
of the uttermost parts of the north, you and many peoples with you, all of them
riding on horses, a great host, a mighty army; 16 you will come up
against my people Israel, like a cloud covering the land. In the latter days I
will bring you against my land, that the nations may know me, when through you,
O Gog, I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. 17 "Thus
says the Lord GOD: Are you he of whom I spoke in former days by my servants the
prophets of Israel, who in those days prophesied for years that I would bring
you against them? 18 But on that day, when Gog shall come
against the land of Israel, says the Lord GOD, my wrath will be roused. 19
For in my jealousy and in my blazing wrath I declare, On that day there
shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; 20 the fish of the
sea, and the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping
things that creep on the ground, and all the men that are upon the face of the
earth, shall quake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and
the cliffs shall fall, and every wall shall tumble to the ground. 21 I
will summon every kind of terror against Gog, says the Lord GOD; every
man's sword will be against his brother. 22 With pestilence and
bloodshed I will enter into judgment with him; and I will rain upon him and his
hordes and the many peoples that are with him, torrential rains and hailstone,
fire and brimstone. 23 So I will show my greatness and my holiness
and make myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they will know that I
am the LORD. (RSV)
In respect of Gog in Ezekiel 38:2, Bullinger says: Gog. A
symbolical name for the nations north and east of Palestine, or the nations as
a whole. … The name is connected with “Og” (Deut. 3.1-13), and “Agag” (Num.
24.7), where the Samaritan Pent. reads “Agog”, and the Sept. reads “Gog”. Here
the Arabic reads “Agag” (Companion Bible).
Ezekiel 39:1-29 "And
you, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus says the Lord GOD:
Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal; 2
and I will turn you about and drive you forward, and bring you up from
the uttermost parts of the north, and lead you against the mountains of Israel;
3 then I will strike your bow from your left hand, and will make
your arrows drop out of your right hand. 4 You shall fall upon the
mountains of Israel, you and all your hordes and the peoples that are with you;
I will give you to birds of prey of every sort and to the wild beasts to be
devoured. 5 You shall fall in the open field; for I have spoken,
says the Lord GOD. 6 I will send fire on Magog and on those
who dwell securely in the coastlands; and they shall know that I am the LORD. 7
"And my holy name I will make known in the midst of my people
Israel; and I will not let my holy name be profaned any more; and the nations
shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel. 8 Behold, it
is coming and it will be brought about, says the Lord GOD. That is the day of
which I have spoken. 9 "Then those who dwell in the cities of
Israel will go forth and make fires of the weapons and burn them, shields and
bucklers, bows and arrows, handpikes and spears, and they will make fires of
them for seven years; 10 so that they will not need to take wood out
of the field or cut down any out of the forests, for they will make their fires
of the weapons; they will despoil those who despoiled them, and plunder those
who plundered them, says the Lord GOD. 11 "On that day I will
give to Gog a place for burial in Israel, the Valley of the Travelers
east of the sea; it will block the travelers, for there Gog and all his
multitude will be buried; it will be called the Valley of Hamon-gog. 12
For seven months the house of Israel will be burying them, in order to
cleanse the land. 13 All the people of the land will bury them; and
it will redound to their honor on the day that I show my glory, says the Lord
GOD. 14 They will set apart men to pass through the land continually
and bury those remaining upon the face of the land, so as to cleanse it; at the
end of seven months they will make their search. 15 And when these
pass through the land and any one sees a man's bone, then he shall set up a
sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the Valley of Hamon-gog. 16
(A city Hamo'nah is there also.) Thus shall they cleanse the land. 17
"As for you, son of man, thus says the Lord GOD: Speak to the birds
of every sort and to all beasts of the field, 'Assemble and come, gather from
all sides to the sacrificial feast which I am preparing for you, a great
sacrificial fast upon the mountains of Israel, and you shall eat flesh and
drink blood. 18 You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the
blood of the princes of the earth--of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bulls,
all of them fatlings of Bashan. 19 And you shall eat fat till you
are filled, and drink blood till you are drunk, at the sacrificial feast which
I am preparing for you. 20 And you shall be filled at my table with
horses and riders, with mighty men and all kinds of warriors,' says the Lord
GOD. 21 "And I will set my glory among the nations; and all the
nations shall see my judgment which I have executed, and my hand which I have
laid on them. 22 The house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD
their God, from that day forward. 23 And the nations shall know that
the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they dealt
so treacherously with me that I hid my face from the and gave them into the
hand of their adversaries, and they all fell by the sword. 24 I
dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their transgressions, and
hid my face from them. 25 "Therefore thus says the Lord GOD:
Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house
of Israel; and I will be jealous for my holy name. 26 They shall
forget their shame, and all the treachery they have practiced against me, when
they dwell securely in their land with none to make them afraid, 27 when
I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them from their enemies'
lands, and through them have vindicated my holiness in the sight of many
nations. 28 Then they shall know that I am the LORD their God
because I sent them into exile among the nations, and then gathered them into
their own land. I will leave none of them remaining among the nations any more;
29 and I will not hide my face any more from them, when I pour out
my Spirit upon the house of Israel, says the Lord GOD." (RSV)
Revelation 20:7-9 And
when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison 8 and
will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the
earth, that is, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number
is like the sand of the sea. 9 And they marched up over the broad
earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city; but fire came
down from heaven and consumed them, (RSV).
Regarding
the prophecy in Revelation 20:8, Bullinger’s note reads: “Gog and Magog. Here,
apparently an inclusive term for all the Gentile nations; East (Gog) and
West (Magog). The destruction of Gog and Magog, Ezek. 39, is pre-millennial” (Comp.
Bible). We must assume then that the wars are fought both at the beginning
and the end of the Millennium. See also the paper War of Hamon-Gog (No. 294).
The use of Gog in the Last Days refers to the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal – which are in the Russian steppe area – and so we are using this term in the Last Days as a composite term for the system opposed to God, and not one of Magog.
q
"GOD THE
FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST, who was from all eternity, did, in the beginning
of Time, of nothing, create Red Earth; and of Red Earth framed ADAM; and of a
Rib out of the side of Adam fashioned Eve. After which Creation, Plasmation,
and Formation, succeeded Generations, as follows."--Four Masters.
1. ADAM.
2. Seth.
3. Enos.
4. Cainan.
5. Mahalaleel.
6. Jared.
7. Enoch.
8. Methuselah.
9. Lamech.
10. Noah [1] divided the world amongst his three sons, begotten of his
wife Titea: viz., to Shem he gave Asia, within the Euphrates, to the Indian
Ocean; to Ham he gave Syria, Arabia, and Africa; and to Japhet, the rest of
Asia beyond the Euphrates, together with Europe to Gades (or Cadiz).
11. Japhet was the
eldest son of Noah. He had fifteen sons, amongst whom he divided Europe and the
part of Asia which his father had allotted to him.
12. Magog: From
whom descended the Parthians, Bactrians, Amazons, etc.; Partholan, the first planter
of Ireland,[2] about three hundred years after
the Flood; and also the rest of the colonies [3] that planted there, viz., the Nemedians who planted
Ireland, Anno Mundi three thousand and forty six or three hundred and eighteen
years after the birth of Abraham, and two thousand one hundred and fifty-three
years before Christ. The Nemedians continued in Ireland for two hundred and
seventeen years; within which time a colony of theirs went into the northern
parts of Scotland, under the conduct of their leader Briottan Maol,[4] from whom Britain takes its name, and not from
"Brutus," as some persons believed. From Magog were also descended the
Belgarian, Belgian, Firbolgian or Firvolgian colony that succeeded the
Nemedians, Anno Mundi, three thousand two hundred and sixty-six, and who first
erected Ireland into a Monarchy.[5] [According to some writers, the Fomorians invaded Ireland
next after the Nemedians.] This Belgarian or Firvolgian colony continued in
Ireland for thirty-six years, under nine of their Kings; when they were
supplanted by the Tuatha-de-Danans (which means, according to some authorities,
"the people of the god Dan," whom they adored), who possessed Ireland
for one hundred and ninety-seven years, during the reigns of nine of their
kings; and who were then conquered by the Gaelic, Milesian, or Scotic Nation
(the three names by which the Irish people were known), Anno Mundi three
thousand five hundred. This Milesian or Scotic Irish Nation possessed and
enjoyed the Kingdom of Ireland for two thousand eight hundred and eighty-five
years, under one hundred and eighty-three Monarchs; until their submission to
King Henry the Second of England, Anno Domini one thousand one hundred and
eighty-six.[6]
13. Baoth, one of
the sons of Magog; to whom Scythia came as his lot, upon the division of the
Earth by Noah amongst his sons, and by Japhet of his part thereof amongst his
sons.
14. Phoeniusa
Farsaidh (or Fenius Farsa) was King of Scythia, at the time that Ninus ruled
the Assyrian Empire; and, being a wise man and desirous to learn the languages
that not long before confounded the builders of the Tower of Babel, employed
able and learned men to go among the dispersed multitude to learn their several
languages; who sometime after returning well skilled in what they went for,
Phoeniusa Farsaidh erected a school in the valley of Senaar, near the city of
Æothena, in the forty-second year of the reign of Ninus; whereupon, having
continued there with his younger son Niul for twenty years, he returned home to
his kingdom, which, at his death, he left to his eldest son Nenuall: leaving to
Niul no other patrimony than his learning and the benefit of the said school.
15. Niul, after
his father returned to Scythia, continued some time at Æothena, teaching the
languages and other laudable sciences, until upon report of his great learning
he was invited into Egypt by Pharaoh, the King; who gave him the land of Campus
Cyrunt, near the Red Sea to inhabit, and his daughter Scota in marriage: from
whom their posterity are ever since called Scots; but, according to some
annalists, the name "Scots" is derived from the word Scythia.
It was this Niul
that employed Gaodhal [Gael], son of Ethor, a learned and skilful man, to
compose or rather refine and adorn the language, called Bearla Tobbai,
which was common to all Niul's posterity, and afterwards called Gaodhilg
(or Gaelic), from the said Gaodhal who composed or refined it; and for his sake
also Niul called his own eldest son "Gaodhal." [The following is a
translation of an extract from the derivation of this proper name, as given in
Halliday's Vol. of Keating's Irish History, page 230:
"Antiquaries
assert that the name of Gaodhal is from the compound word formed of
'gaoith' and 'dil,' which means a lover of learning; for, 'gaoith' is
the same as wisdom or learning, and 'dil' is the same as loving
or fond."]
16. Gaodhal (or
Gathelus), the son of Niul, was the ancestor of the Clan-na-Gael, that
is, "the children or descendants of Gaodhal. In his youth this Gaodhal was
stung in the neck by a serpent, and was immediately brought to Moses, who,
laying his rod upon the wounded place, instantly cured him: whence followed the
word "Glas" to be added to his name, as Gaodhal Glas (glas:
Irish, green; Lat. glaucus; Gr. glaukos), on account of the green
scar which the word signifies and which during his life remained on his
neck after the wound was healed. And Gaodhal obtained a further blessing,
namely--that no venemous beast can live any time where his posterity should
inhabit; which is verified in Creta or Candia, Gothia or Getulia, Ireland, etc.
The Irish chroniclers affirm that from this time Gaodhal and his posterity did
paint the figures of Beasts, Birds, etc., on their banners and shields,[7] to distinguish their tribes and septs, in imitation of
the Israelites; and that a "Thunderbolt" was the cognizance in their
chief standard for many generations after this Gaodhal.
17. Asruth, after
his father's death, continued in Egypt, and governed his colony in peace during
his life.
18. Sruth, soon
after his father's death, was (see page 31) set upon by the Egyptians, on
account of their former animosities towards their predecessors for having taken
part with the Israelites against them; which animosities until then lay raked
up in the embers, and now broke out in a flame to that degree, that after many
battles and conflicts, wherein most of his colony lost their lives, Sruth was
forced with the few remaining to depart the country; and, after many traverses
at sea, arrived at the Island of Creta (now called Candia), where he paid his
last tribute to nature.
19. Heber Scut (scut:
Irish, a Scot), after his father's death and a year's stay in Creta, departed
thence, leaving some of his people to inhabit the Island, where some of their
posterity likely still remain; "because the Island breeds no venemous
serpent ever since." He and his people soon after arrived in Scythia;
where his cousins, the posterity of Nenuall (eldest son of Fenius Farsa, above
mentioned), refusing to allot a place of habitation for him and his colony,
they fought many battles wherein Heber (with the assistance of some of the
natives who were ill-affected towards their king), being always victor, he at
length forced the sovereignty from the other, and settled himself and his
colony in Scythia, who continued there for four generations. (Hence the epithet
Scut, "a Scot" or "a Scythian," was applied to this
Heber, who is accordingly called Heber Scot.) Heber Scot was afterwards slain
in battle by Noemus the former king's son.
20. Beouman; 21.
Ogaman; and 22. Tait, were each kings of Scythia, but in constant war with the
natives; so that after Tait's death his son,
23. Agnon and his
followers betook themselves to sea, wandering and coasting upon the Caspian Sea
for several (some say seven) years in which time he died.
24. Lamhfionn and
his fleet remained at sea for some time after his father's death, resting and
refreshing themselves upon such islands as they met with. It was then that
Cachear, their magician or Druid, foretold that there would be no end of their
peregrinations and travel until they should arrive at the Western Island of
Europe, now called Ireland, which was the place destined for their
future and lasting abode and settlement; and that not they but their posterity
after three hundred years should arrive there. After many traverses of fortune
at sea, this little fleet with their leader arrived at last and landed at
Gothia or Getulia --more recently called Lybia, where Carthage was afterwards
built; and, soon after, Lamhfionn died there.
25. Heber
Glunfionn was born in Getulia, where he died. His posterity continued there to
the eighth generation; and were kings or chief rulers there for one hundred and
fifty years--some say three hundred years.
26. Agnan Fionn;
27. Febric Glas; 28. Nenuall; 29. Nuadhad; 30. Alladh; 31. Arcadh; and 32.
Deag: of these nothing remarkable is mentioned, but that they lived and died
kings in Gothia or Getulia.
33. Brath was born
in Gothia. Remembering the Druid's prediction, and his people having
considerably multiplied during their abode in Getulia, he departed thence with
a numerous fleet to seek out the country destined for their final settlement,
by the prophecy of Cachear, the Druid above mentioned; and, after some time, he
landed upon the coast of Spain, and by strong hand settled himself and his
colony in Galicia, in the north of that country.
34. Breoghan (or
Brigus) was king of Galicia, Andalusia, Murcia, Castile, and Portugal--all
which he conquered. He built Breoghan's Tower or Brigantia in Galicia,
and the city of Brigansa or Braganza in Portugal--called after
him; and the kingdom of Castile was then also called after him Brigia.
It is considered that "Castile" itself was so called from the figure
of a castle which Brigus bore for his Arms on his banner. Brigus sent a colony
into Britain, who settled in that territory now known as the counties of York,
Lancaster, Durham, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, and, after him, were called Brigantes;
whose posterity gave formidable opposition to the Romans, at the time of the
Roman invasion of Britain.
35. Bilé was king
of those countries after his father's death; and his son Galamh [galav] or
Milesius succeeded him. This Bilé had a brother named Ithe.
36. Milesius, in
his youth and during his father's life-time, went into Scythia, where he was
kindly received by the king of that country, who gave him his daughter in
marriage, and appointed him General of his forces. In this capacity Milesius
defeated the king's enemies, gained much fame, and the love of all the king's
subjects. His growing greatness and popularity excited against him the jealousy
of the king; who, fearing the worst, resolved on privately despatching Milesius
out of the way, for, openly, he dare not attempt it. Admonished of the king's
intentions in his regard, Milesius slew him; and thereupon quitted Scythia and
retired into Egypt with a fleet of sixty sail. Pharaoh Nectonibus, then king of
Egypt, being informed of his arrival and of his great valour, wisdom, and
conduct in arms, made him General of all his forces against the king of
Ethiopia then invading his country. Here as in Scythia, Milesius was
victorious; he forced the enemy to submit to the conqueror's own terms of
peace. By these exploits Milesius found great favour with Pharaoh, who gave
him, being then a widower his daughter Scota in marriage; and kept him eight
years afterwards in Egypt.
During the sojourn
of Milesius in Egypt, he employed the most ingenious and able persons among his
people to be instructed in the several trades, arts, and sciences used in
Egypt; in order to have them taught to the rest of his people on his return to
Spain.
[The original name
of Milesius of Spain was, as already mentioned, "Galamh" (gall:
Irish, a stranger; amh, a negative affix), which means, no stranger:
meaning that he was no stranger in Egypt, where he was called "Milethea
Spaine," which was afterwards contracted to "Milé Spaine"
(meaning the Spanish Hero), and finally to "Milesius" (mileadh:
Irish, a hero; Lat. miles, a soldier).]
At length Milesius
took leave of his father-in-law, and steered towards Spain; where he arrived to
the great joy and comfort of his people, who were much harasssed by the
rebellion of the natives and by the intrusion of other foreign nations that
forced in after his father's death, and during his own long absence from Spain.
With these and those he often met; and, in fifty-four battles, victoriously
fought, he routed, destroyed, and totally extirpated them out of the country,
which he settled in peace and quietness.
In his reign a
great dearth and famine occurred in Spain, of twenty-six years' continuance,
occasioned, as well by reason of the former troubles which hindered the people
from cultivating and manuring the ground, as for want of rain to moisten the
earth; but Milesius superstitiously believed the famine to have fallen upon him
and his people as a judgment and punishment from their gods, for their
negligence in seeking out the country destined for their final abode, so long
before foretold by Cachear their Druid or magician, as already mentioned--the
time limited by the prophecy for the accomplishment thereof being now nearly,
if not fully, expired. To expiate his fault and to comply with the will of his
gods, Milesius, with the general approbation of his people, sent his uncle
Ithe, with his son Lughaidh [Luy], and one hundred and fifty stout men to bring
them an account of those western islands; who, accordingly, arriving at the
island since then called Ireland, and landing in that part of it now called
Munster, left his son with fifty of his men to guard the ship, and with the
rest travelled about the island. Informed, among other things, that the three
sons of Cearmad, called Mac-Cuill, MacCeacht, and MacGreine, did then and for
thirty years before rule and govern the island, each for one year, in his turn;
and that the country was called after the names of their three queens--Eire,
Fodhla, and Banbha, respectively: one year called "Eire," the next
"Fodhla," and the next "Banbha," as their husbands reigned
in their regular turns; by which names the island is ever since indifferently
called, but most commonly "Eire,"[8] because that MacCuill, the husband of Eire, ruled and
governed the country in his turn the year that the Clan-na-Milé (or the sons of
Milesius) arrived in and conquered Ireland. And being further informed that the
three brothers were then at their palace at Aileach Neid,[9] in the north part of the country, engaged in the
settlement of some disputes concerning their family jewels, Ithe directed his
course thither; sending orders to his son to sail about with his ship and the
rest of his men, and meet him there.
When Ithe arrived
where the (Danan) brothers were, he was honourably received and entertained by
them; and, finding him to be a man of great wisdom and knowledge, they referred
their disputes to him for decision. That decision having met their entire
satisfaction, Ithe exhorted them to mutual love, peace, and forbearance; adding
much in praise of their delightful, pleasant, and fruitful country; and then
took his leave, to return to his ship, and go back to Spain.
No sooner was he
gone than the brothers began to reflect on the high commendations which Ithe
gave of the Island; and, suspecting his design of bringing others to invade it,
resolved to prevent them, and therefore pursued him with a strong party,
overtook him, fought and routed his men and wounded himself to death (before
his son or the rest of his men left on ship-board could come to his rescue) at
a place called, from that fight and his name, Magh Ithe or "The
plain of Ithe" (an extensive plain in the barony of Raphoe, county
Donegal); whence his son, having found him in that condition, brought his dead
and mangled body back into Spain, and there exposed it to public view, thereby
to excite his friends and relations to avenge his murder.
And here I think
it not amiss to notify what the Irish chroniclers, observe upon this matter,
viz.--that all the invaders and planters of Ireland, namely, Partholan,
Neimhedh, the Firbolgs, Tuatha-de-Danans, and Clan-na-Milé, where originally
Scythians, of the line of Japhet, who had the language called Bearla-Tobbai
or Gaoidhilg [Gaelic] common amongst them all; and consequently not to
be wondered at, that Ithe and the Tuatha-de-Danans understood one another
without an Interpreter--both speaking the same language, though perhaps with
some difference in the accent.
The exposing of
the dead body of Ithe had the desired effect; for, thereupon, Milesius made
great preparations in order to invade Ireland--as well to avenge his uncle's
death, as also in obedience to the will of his gods, signified by the prophecy
of Cachear, aforesaid. But, before he could effect that object, he died,
leaving the care and charge of that expedition upon his eight legitimate sons
by his two wives before mentioned.
Milesius was a
very valiant champion, a great warrior, and fortunate and prosperous in all his
undertakings: witness his name of "Milesius," given him from the many
battles (some say a thousand, which the word "Milé" signifies
in Irish as well as in Latin) which he victoriously fought and won, as well in
Spain, as in all the other countries and kingdoms he traversed in his younger
days.
The eight brothers
were neither forgetful nor negligent in the execution of their father's command;
but, soon after his death, with a numerous fleet well manned and equipped, set
forth from Breoghan's Tower or Brigantia (now Corunna) in Galicia, in
Spain, and sailed prosperously to the coasts of Ireland or Inis-Fail [10] where they met many difficulties and various chances
before they could land: occasioned by the diabolical arts, sorceries, and
enchantments used by the Tuatha-de-Danans, to obstruct their landing; for, by
their magic art, they enchanted the island so as to appear to the Milesians or
Clan-na-Milé in the form of a Hog, and no way to come at it (whence the island,
among the many other names it had before, was called Muc-Inis or
"The Hog Island"); and withal raised so great a storm, that the
Milesian fleet was thereby totally dispersed and many of them cast away,
wherein five of the eight brothers, sons of Milesius, lost their lives. That
part of the fleet commanded by Heber, Heremon, and Amergin (the three surviving
brothers), and Heber Donn, son of Ir (one of the brothers lost in the storm),
overcame all opposition, landed safe, fought and routed the three Tuatha-de
Danan Kings at Slieve-Mis, and thence pursued and overtook them at Tailten,
where another bloody battle was fought; wherein the three (Tuatha-de-Danan)
Kings and their Queens were slain, and their army utterly routed and destroyed:
so that they could never after give any opposition to the Clan-na-Milé in their
new conquest; who, having thus sufficiently avenged the death of their great
uncle Ithe, gained the possession of the country foretold them by Cachear, some
ages past, as already mentioned.
Heber and Heremon,
the chief leading men remaining of the eight brothers, sons of Milesius
aforesaid, divided the kingdom between them (allotting a proportion of land to
their brother Amergin, who was their Arch-priest, Druid, or magician; and to
their nephew Heber Donn, and to the rest of their chief commanders), and became
jointly the first of one hundred and eighty-three [11] Kings or sole Monarchs of the Gaelic, Milesian, or
Scottish Race, that ruled and governed Ireland, successively, for two thousand
eight hundred and eighty-five years from the first year of their reign, Anno
Mundi three thousand five hundred, to their submission to the Crown of England
in the person of King Henry the Second; who, being also of the Milesian Race by
Maude, his mother, was lineally descended from Fergus Mor MacEarca,
first King of Scotland, who was descended from the said Heremon--so that the
succession may be truly said to continue in the Milesian Blood from before
Christ one thousand six hundred and ninety-nine years down to the present time.
Heber and Heremon
reigned jointly one year only, when, upon a difference between their ambitious
wives, they quarrelled and fought a battle at Ardcath or Geshill (Geashill,
near Tullamore in the King's County), where Heber was slain by Heremon; and,
soon after, Amergin, who claimed an equal share in the government, was, in
another battle fought between them, likewise slain by Heremon. Thus, Heremon
became sole Monarch, and made a new division of the land amongst his comrades
and friends, viz.: the south part, now called Munster, he gave to his brother
Heber's four sons, Er, Orba, Feron, and Fergna; the north part, now Ulster, he
gave to Ir's only son Heber Donn; the east part or Coigeadh Galian, now
called Leinster, he gave to Criomthann-sciath-bheil, one of his commanders; and
the west part, now called Connaught, Heremon gave to Un-Mac-Oigge, another of
his commanders; allotting a part of Munster to Lughaidh (the son of Ithe, the
first Milesian discoverer of Ireland), amongst his brother Heber's sons.
From these three
brothers, Heber, Ir, and Heremon (Amergin dying without issue), are descended
all the Milesian Irish of Ireland and Scotland, viz.: from Heber, the eldest
brother, the provincial Kings of Munster (of whom thirty-eight were sole
Monarchs of Ireland), and most of the nobility and gentry of Munster, and many
noble families in Scotland, are descended.
From Ir, the
second brother, all the provincial Kings of Ulster (of whom twenty-six were
sole Monarchs of Ireland), and all the ancient nobility and gentry of Ulster,
and many noble families in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, derive their
pedigrees; and, in Scotland, the Clan-na-Rory--the descendants of an eminent
man, named Ruadhri or Roderick, who was Monarch of Ireland for seventy years
(viz., from Before Christ 288 to 218).
From Heremon, the
youngest of the three brothers, were descended one hundred and fourteen sole
Monarchs of Ireland: the provincial Kings and Hermonian nobility and gentry of
Leinster, Connaught, Meath, Orgiall, Tirowen, Tirconnell, and Clan-na-boy; the
Kings of Dalriada; all the Kings of Scotland from Fergus, Mor MacEarca down to
the Stuarts; and the Kings and Queens of England from Henry the Second down to
the present time.
The issue of Ithe
is not accounted among the Milesian Irish or Clan-na-Milé as not being
descended from Milesius, but from his uncle Ithe; of whose posterity
there were also some Monarchs of Ireland (see Roll of the Irish Monarchs, infra),
and many provincial or half provincial Kings of Munster: that country upon its
first division, being allocated to the sons of Heber and to Lughaidh, son of
Ithe. whose posterity continued there accordingly.
This invasion,
conquest, or plantation of Ireland by the Milesian or Scottish Nation took
place in the Year of the World three thousand five hundred, or the next year
after Solomon began the foundation of the Temple of Jerusalem, and one thousand
six hundred and ninety-nine years before the Nativity of our Saviour Jesus
Christ; which, according to the Irish computation of Time, occurred Anno Mundi
five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine: therein agreeing with the Septuagint,
Roman Martyrologies, Eusebius, Orosius, and other ancient authors; which
computation the ancient Irish chroniclers exactly observed in their Books of
the Reigns of the Monarchs of Ireland, and other Antiquities of that Kingdom;
out of which the Roll of the Monarchs of Ireland, from the beginning of the
Milesian Monarchy to their submission to King Henry the Second of England, a
Prince of their own Blood, is exactly collected.
[As the Milesian
invasion of Ireland took place the next year after the laying of the foundation
of the Temple of Jerusalem by Solomon, King of Israel, we may infer that
Solomon was contemporary with Milesius of Spain; and that the Pharaoh King of
Egypt, who (1 Kings iii. 1,) gave his daughter in marriage to Solomon, was the
Pharaoh who conferred on Milesius of Spain the hand of another daughter Scota.]
Milesius of Spain
bore three Lions in his shield and standard, for the following reasons; namely,
that, in his travels in his younger days into foreign countries, passing
through Africa, he, by his cunning and valour, killed in one morning three
Lions; and that, in memory of so noble and valiant an exploit, he always
after bore three Lions on his shield, which his two surviving sons Heber and
Heremon, and his grandson Heber Donn, son of Ir, after their conquest of
Ireland, divided amongst them, as well as they did the country: each of them
bearing a Lion in his shield and banner, but of different colours; which
the Chiefs of their posterity continue to this day: some with additions and
differences; others plain and entire as they had it from their ancestors.
NOTES:--
[1] Noah: This allusion to his wife
"Titea" would imply that Noah had other children besides, Shem, Ham,
and Japhet. The Four Masters say that he had a son named Bith.--See Note,
"The Deluge," page 7.
[2] Ireland: According to the Four
Masters, "Ireland" is so called from Ir, the second son of Milesius
of Spain who left any issue. It was known to the ancients by the following
names: --
To the Irish
as--1. Inis Ealga, or the Noble Isle. 2. Fiodh-Inis, or the Woody
Island. 3. Crioch Fuinidh, the Final or most remote Country. 4. Inis-Fail,
or the Island of Destiny. 5. Fodhla, learned. 6. Banba (from the
Irish bandbh, a sucking pig.) 7. Eire, Eri, Eirin, and Erin,
supposed by some to signify the Western Isle. 8. Muig Inis, meaning the
Island of Mist or Melancholy.
To the Greeks and
Romans as--9. Ierne, Ierna, Iernis, Iris, and Irin. 10. Ivernia, Ibernia,
Hibernia, Juvernia, Jouvernia, Hiberia, Hiberione, and Verna. 11. Insula Sacra.
12. Ogy-gia, or the Most Ancient Land. (Plutarch, in the first century
of the Christian era, calls Ireland by the name Ogy-gia; and Camden says
that Ireland is justly called Ogy-gia, as the Irish, he says, can trace
their history from the most remote antiquity: Hence O'Flaherty has adopted
the name "Ogy-gia" for his celebrated work, in Latin, on Irish
history and antiquities.) 13. Scotia. 14. Insula Sanctorum.
To the Anglo-Saxon
as--15. Eire-land.
To the Danes
as--16. Irlandi, and Irar.
To the
Anglo-Normans as--17. Irelande.
[3] Colonies: According to some of the
ancient Irish Chroniclers, the following were the nations that colonized
Ireland:--
1. Partholan and
his followers, called in Irish Muintir Phartholain, meaning
"Partholan's People." 2. The Nemedians. 3. The Fomorians. 4. The
Firbolgs or Firvolgians, who were also called Belgae or Belgians. 5. The
Tuatha-de-Danans. 6. The Milesians or Gaels. 7. The Cruthneans or Picts. 8. The
Danes and Norwegians (or Scandinavians). 9. The Anglo-Normans. 10. The
Anglo-Saxons (or English). 11. The Scots from North Britain.
1. Partholan
and his followers came from Scythia, and were located chiefly in Ulster at Inis-Saimer,
in Donegal, and in Leinster at Ben Edair (now the Hill of Howth), in the
county Dublin. After they had been in Ireland some thirty years, nearly the
whole people perished by a plague; thousands of them were buried in a common
tomb, in Tallaght, a place near Dublin: the name "Tallaght" meaning Tam-Laght
or the Plague Sepulchre.
2. The
Nemedians came from Scythia in Europe, and were located chiefly in Ulster
at Ardmacha (or Armagh), and in Derry and Donegal; and in Leinster at the Hill
of Uisneach, which is situated a few miles from Mullingar, in the county
Westmeath.
3. Fomorians:
According to the Annals of Clonmacnoise, the Fomorians (fogh: Irish,
plundering; muir, the sea) were a "sept descended from Cham, son of
Noah, who lived by pyracie and spoile of other nations, and were in those days
very troublesome to the whole world;" and, according to O'Donovan's
"Four Masters," the name "Fomorians" was that given by the
ancient Irish to the inhabitants of Finland, Denmark, and Norway; but,
according to Connellan, those people are considered to have come from the north
of Africa, from a place called Lybia or Getulia, and to have been some of the
Feiné or Phoenicians, whose descendants afterwards there founded the city of
Carthage; and in Spain the cities of Gahdir or Gades (now Cadiz), and Kartabah
(now Cordova). As Sidon in Phoenicia was a maritime city in the time of Joshua,
and its people expert navigators; and as the Phoenicians, Sidonians, and
Tyrians, in those early ages, were celebrated for their commercial intercourse
with Greece, Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Britain, there is nothing whatever
improbable in a colony of them having sailed from Africa to Ireland: whose
coming from Africa may have led to the belief that they were
"descended from Cham (Ham); as their commercial intercourse with other
nations may have led to their being considered "pirates." Possibly,
then, the Fomorians here mentioned were the Erithneans, who were Phoenicians,
and a colony of whom settled in Ireland at a very early period in the world's
history. The Fomorians are represented as a race of giants, and were celebrated
as having been great builders in stone. They were located principally along the
coasts of Ulster and Connaught, mostly in Antrim, Derry, Donegal, Leitrim,
Sligo, and Mayo, and had their chief fortress (called Tor Conaing or
Conang's Tower) on Tor Inis or the Island of the Tower, now known as
"Tory Island," which is off the coast of Donegal; and another at the
Giants' Causeway, which in Irish was called Cloghan-na-Fomoraigh or the
Causeway of the Fomorians, as it was supposed to have been constructed by this
people, who, from their great strength and stature, were, as above mentioned,
called giants: hence the term "Giants' Causeway"--a stupendous
natural curiosity of volcanic origin, situated on the sea-coast of Antrim, and
consisting of a countless number of basaltic columns of immense height, which,
from the regularity of their formation and arrangement, have the appearance of
a vast work of art; and hence were supposed to have been constructed by giants.
After the
Fomorians became masters of the country, the Nemedians (neimhedh; Irish,
dirt, filth of any kind), were reduced to slavery, and compelled to pay a great
annual tribute on the first day of winter--consisting of corn, cattle, milk,
and other provisions; and the place where these tributes were received was
named Magh Ceitne, signifying the Plain of Compulsion, and so called
from these circumstances. This plain was situated between the rivers Erne and
Drabhois (drabhas: Irish, dirt, nastiness), between Ballyshannon and
Bundrowes, on the borders of Donegal, Leitrim, and Fermanagh, along the
sea-shore.--See Connellan's "Four Masters."
Three bands of the
Nemedians emigrated with their respective captains: one party wandered into the
north of Europe; others made their way to Greece, where they were enslaved, and
obtained the name of "Firbolgs" or bagmen, from the leathern
bags which they were compelled to carry; and the third section took refuge in
England, which obtained its name Britain, from their leader "Briottan
Maol."--See Miss CUSACK'S "History of Ireland."
4. The Firbolgs
or Firvolgians, who were also Scythians, divided Ireland amongst the
five sons of their leader Dela Mac Loich: "Slainge [slane] was he by whom
Teamor (or Tara) was first raised." (Four Masters). One hundred and fifty
Monarchs reigned in Tara from that period until its abandonment in the reign of
Diarmod, son of Fergus Cearrbheoil, who was the 133rd Monarch of Ireland, and
King of Meath. The Firvolgians ruled over Connaught down to the third century,
when King Cormac Mac Art, the 115th Monarch of Ireland, attacked and defeated
the forces of Aodh or Hugh, son of Garadh, King of Connaught, who was the last
King of the Firbolg race in Ireland; and the sovereignty of Connaught was then
transferred to the Milesians of the race of Heremon--descendants of King Cormac
Mac Art. The Firbolg race never after acquired any authority in Ireland, being
reduced to the ranks of farmers and peasants; but they were still very
numerous, and to this day a great many of the peasantry, particularly in
Connaught, are considered to be of Firbolg origin.
5. The Tuatha
de Danans, also of the Scythian family, invaded Ireland thirty-six years
after the plantation by the Firbolgs. According to some annalists, they came
originally from Persia, and to others, from Greece; and were located chiefly at
Tara in Meath, at Croaghan in Connaught, and at Aileach in Donegal. The Danans
being highly skilled in the arts, the Round Towers of Ireland are supposed to
have been built by them. The light, gay, joyous element of the Irish character
may be traced to them. They were a brave and high-spirited race, and famous for
their skill in what was then termed Magic: hence, in after ages, this
wonderful people were considered to have continued to live in hills or raths,
as the "good people" long so commonly believed in as fairies,
in Ireland. But their "magic" consisted in the exercise of the
mechanical arts, of which those who had previously invaded Ireland were then
ignorant. It is a remarkable fact, that weapons of warfare found in the carns
or gravemounds of the Firbolgs are of an inferior kind to those found in the
carns of the Tuatha-de-Danans: a proof of the superior intelligence of the
latter over the former people. The inventor of the Ogham [owam] Alphabet
(ogham: Irish, "an occult manner of writing used by the ancient
Irish") was Ogma, father of one of the Tuatha-de-Danan Kings. In
McCartin's Irish Grammar it is stated that there were no less than thirty-five
different modes of writing the Ogham, which has hitherto defied the power of
modern. science to unravel its mysteries. But the truth of our ancient history
is strangely confirmed by the fact that the letters of this Alphabet are all
denominated by the names of trees and shrubs indigenous to Ireland! According
to the "Book of Leinster," it was "Cet Cuimnig, King of Munster,
of the royal line of Heber, that was the first that inscribed Ozam [or Ogham]
memorials in Erinn." This extract gives a clue to the period when Ogham
stones were first erected, and why the most of them are to be found in the
Province of Munster; for, according to the Septuagint system of
chronology, that King of Munster reigned about the year 1257 before the birth
of Christ!
6. The Milesians
invaded Ireland one hundred and ninety-seven years later than the Tuatha de
Danans; and were called Clan-na-Mile [meel], signifying the descendants
of Milesius of Spain.
7. The Cruthneans
or Picts were also Scythians, and, according to our ancient historians,
came from Thrace soon after the arrival of the Milesians; but, not being
permitted by the Milesians to remain in Ireland, they sailed to Scotland and
became the possessors of that country, but tributary to the Monarchs of
Ireland. In after ages colonies of them came over and settled in Ulster; they
were located chiefly in the territories which now form the counties of Down,
Antrim, and Derry.
8. The Danes
and Norwegians (or Scandinavians), a Teutonic race of Scythian
origin, came to Ireland in great numbers, in the ninth and tenth centuries, and
were located chiefly in Leinster and Munster, in many places along the
sea-coast: their strongholds being the towns of Dublin, Wexford, Waterford,
Cork, and Limerick.
9. The Anglo-Normans
came to Ireland in the twelfth century, and possessed themselves of a great
part of the country, under their chief leader, Richard de Clare, who was also
named Strongbow. They were a Teutonic race, descended from the Normans of
France, who were a mixture of Norwegians, Danes, and French, and who conquered
England in the eleventh century. The English invasion of Ireland was
accomplished ostensibly through the agency of Dermod MacMorough, King of
Leinster; on account of his having been driven from his country by the Irish
Monarch for the abduction of the wife of Tiernan O'Ruarc, Prince of Breffni.
For that act, Roderick O'Connor, the Monarch of Ireland, invaded the territory
of Dermod, A.D. 1167, and put him to flight King Dermod was obliged, after many
defeats, to leave Ireland, in 1167; throw himself at the feet of King Henry the
Second, and crave his assistance, offering to become his liegeman. Henry, on
receiving Dermod's oath of allegiance, granted by letters patent a general
license to all his English subjects to aid King Dermod in the recovery of his
Kingdom. Dermod then engaged in his cause Richard de Clare or Strongbow, to
whom he afterwards gave his daughter Eva, in marriage; and through his
influence an army was raised, headed by Robert Fitzstephen, Myler Fitzhenry,
Harvey de Monte Marisco, Maurice Prendergast, Maurice Fitzgerald, and others;
with which, in May 1168, he landed in Bannow-bay, near Wexford, which they
reduced, together with the adjoining counties-- all in the kingdom of Leinster.
In 1171, Earl Strongbow landed at Waterford with a large body of followers and
took possession of that city. He then joined King Dermod's forces, marched for
Dublin, entered the city, and made himself master.
King Dermod died in his castle at Ferns, county Wexford, A.D. 1175, about the 65th year of his age. Of him Holingshed says--"He was a man of tall stature and of a large and great body, a valiant and bold warrior in his nation. From his continued shouting, his voice was hoarse; he rather chose to be feared than to be loved, and was a great oppressor of his nobility. To his own people he was rough and grievous and hateful unto strangers; his hand was against all men, and all men against him."
10. The Anglo-Saxons
or English, also a Tuetonic race, came from the twelfth to the
eighteenth century. The Britons or Welsh came in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. These English colonies were located chiefly in Leinster,
but also in great numbers in Munster and Connaught, and partly in Ulster.
11. The Scots,
who were chiefly Celts of Irish descent, came in great numbers from the tenth
to the sixteenth century, and settled in Ulster, mostly in Antrim, Down and
Derry; but, on the Plantation of Ulster with British colonies, in the
seventeenth century, the new settlers in that province were chiefly Scotch,
who were a mixture of Celts and Saxons. Thus the seven first colonies that
settled in Ireland were a mixture of Scythians, Gaels, and Phoenicians; but the
four last were mostly Teutons though mixed with Celts; and a compound of all
these races, in which Celtic blood is predominant, forms the present population
of Ireland.
[4] Briottan Maol: See No. 19 on
"The Pedigree of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland," Part I., c. vi.,
p. 43.
[5] Monarchy: Mac Firbis shows that
Ireland was a Monarchy, before and after Christ, for a period of 4,149 (four
thousand, one hundred and forty-nine) years!
[6] A.D. 1186: It was, no doubt, in
that year, that, weary of the world and its troubles, Roderick O'Connor, the
183rd Monarch of Ireland, retired to a Monastery, where he died A.D. 1198. But,
see No. 184 on the "Roll of the Monarchs of Ireland since the
Milesian Conquest, and the Note "Brian O'Neill," in
connection with that Number.
[7] Shields: This shows the great
antiquity of Gaelic Heraldry.
[8] Eire: Ancient Irish historians
assert that this Queen was granddaughter of Ogma, who (see ante, page
47, in Note No. 5, under "Tuatha de
Danans,") invented the Ogham Alphabet; and that it is after
that Queen, that Ireland is always personated by a Female figure!
[9] Aileach Neid: This name may be
derived from the Irish aileach, a stone horse or stallion, or aileachta,
jewels; and Neid, the Mars of the Pagan Irish. In its time it was one of
the most important fortresses in Ireland.
[10] Inis-Fail: Thomas Moore, in his Irish
Melodies, commemorates this circumstance in the "Song of
Inisfail":
They came from a land beyond the sea
And now o'er the western main
Set sail, in their good ships, gallantly,
From the sunny land of Spain.
"Oh, where's the isle we've seen in dreams,
Our destined home or grave?"
Thus sang they, as by the morning's beams,
They swept the Atlantic wave.
And lo! where afar o'er ocean shines
A spark of radiant green,
As though in that deep lay emerald mines,
Whose light through the wave was seen.
"'Tis Innisfail -- 'tis Innisfail!"
Rings o'er the echoing sea;
While, bending to heaven, the warriors hail
That home of the brave and free.
Then turned they unto the Eastern wave,
Where now their Day-god's eye
A look of such sunny omen gave
As lighted up sea and sky.
Nor frown was seen through sky or sea,
Nor tear o'er leaf or sod,
When first on their Isle of Destiny
Our great forefathers trod.
[11] Three: We make the number to be
184: see p. 62,infra.
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