After the Floodby Bill Cooper
CONTENTS
Introduction: In the Beginning
Chapter 1 The Knowledge of God amongst the early Pagans
Chapter 2 Where to Begin
Chapter 3 Nennius and the Table of European Nations
Chapter 4 The Chronicles of the early Britons
Chapter 5 The History of the early British Kings
Chapter 6 The Descent of the Anglo-Saxon Kings
Chapter 7 The Descent of the Danish and Norwegian Kings
Chapter 8 The Descent of the Irish Celtic Kings
Chapter 9 Ancient Chronologies and the Age of the Earth
Chapter 10 Dinosaurs from Anglo-Saxon and other Records
Chapter 11 Beowulf and the Creatures of Denmark
Chapter 12 Conclusion
Chapter 13 What the CSM is all about
Appendices
Appendix I The Nations of Shem
Appendix 2 The Nations of Ham
Appendix 3 The Nations of Japheth
Appendix 4 Surviving MSS of the early Welsh Chronicles
Appendix 5 The Latin Text of Nennius 17 and 18
Appendix 6 The Molmutine Laws and Pagan Britain
Appendix 7 The Genealogy of the early British Kings
Appendix 8 The Descent of the East Saxon Kings
Appendix 9 The Historical Characters of Beowulf
Appendix 10 Zoologically applied terms in the Beowulf
Appendix 11 Epic From Japheth to Brutus
Appendix 12 The Descent from Japheth of the Miautso
Appendix 13 Britain's First Christian
Appendix 14 The Irish Chronicles and the end of the Ice Age
Bibliography

AFTER THE FLOOD
The Early post-Flood History of Europe
Introduction
In the Beginning
It is commonly thought in this present age that nothing is worthy of our belief unless first
it can be scientifically demonstrated and observed to be true. This idea, known today as1empiricism, has been around since the 1920s, and says basically that nothing is to betaken on trust, and that anything which lacks direct corroboration must be discarded frommankind's find of knowledge as simply not worth the knowing. Not surprisingly, a
special case was made by those who had thought of the idea for including the Bible inthis great process of deselection, and it was assumed without further enquiry that nothingin especially the earlier portions of the biblical record could be demonstrated to be trueand factual. This applied particularly to the book of Genesis. There all was relegated, bymodernist scholars at least, to the realms of myth and fiction, with very little of its
contents being said to bear any relevance at all for 20th-century man. Not even a moral
relevance was granted. In other words, we were solemnly assured in the light of modern
wisdom that, historically speaking, the book of Genesis was simply not worth the paper it
was written on.
When I first came across this problem some thirty years ago, I found it most perplexing.
On the one hand I had the Bible itself claiming to be the very Word of God, and on theother I was presented with numerous commentaries that spoke with one voice in tellingme that the Bible was nothing of the kind. It was merely a hotch-potch collection of
middle- eastern myths and fables that sought to explain the world in primitive terms,
whose parts had been patched together by a series of later editors. Modern scientific manneed have nothing whatever to do with it.
Now, it simply was not possible for both these claims to be valid. Only one of them could
be right, and I saw it as my duty, to myself at least, to find out which was the true accountand which was the false. So it was then that I decided to select a certain portion ofGenesis and submit it to a test which, if applied to any ordinary historical document,
would be considered a test of the most unreasonable severity. And I would continue thattest until either the book of Genesis revealed itself to be a false account, or it would beshown to be utterly reliable in its historical statements. Either way, I would discover once
and for all whether the biblical record was worthy of my trust or not. It seemed a little
irreverent to treat a book that claimed to be the very Word of God in such a fashion. But
if truth has any substance at all, then that book would surely be able to bear such a test. If
Genesis contained any falsehood, error or misleading statement of fact, then a severe
testing would reveal it and I would be the first to add my own voice to those of all theother scholars who declared the book of Genesis to be little more than fable.
With any ordinary historical document, of course, a simple error or even a small series oferrors, would not necessarily disqualify it from being regarded as an historical account, or
one that could at least be made use of by historians. But Genesis is no ordinary record.
No ordinary document would claim inerrancy in its statements, and any document which
did make such a claim for itself could expect a thorough and severe drubbing at the handsof scholars. But, if Genesis was indeed a true account of what had happened all those
years ago, if it was indeed everything that it claimed itself to be, then the truth that itproclaimed could not be destroyed by any amount of testing. It could only be vindicated.
In that regard at least, truth is indestructible.
What I had not expected at the time was the fact that the task was to engage my attention
and energies for more than twenty-five years. Nor had I expected the astonishing degree
to which Genesis, particularly the tenth and eleventh chapters, was to be vindicated.
These chapters are conveniently known to scholars as the Table of Nations, and the sheer
breadth and depth of the historical evidence that was available for their study astonished2

me. It bore very little relation indeed to what I had been led to expect. But that was not
the only surprise in store.
The test that I devised was a simple one. If the names of the individuals, families, peoples
and tribes listed in the Table of Nations were genuine, then those same names should
appear also in the records of other nations of the Middle East. Archaeology should also
reveal that those same families and peoples are listed in Genesis (or not as the case maybe) in their correct ethnological, geographical and linguistic relation-ships. I allowed forthe fact that a good proportion of these names would not appear. Either the records thatonce contained them had long since perished, or the diversity of language and dialect had
rendered them unrecognisable. Some would be lost in obscurity. It simply was notrealistic to expect that every name would have been recorded in the annals of the ancient
Middle East and would also have survived to the present day. I therefore would havebeen content to have found say 40% of the list vindicated. In fact that would have been avery high achievement given the sheer antiquity of the Table of Nations itself and thereported scarcity of the surviving extra-biblical records from those ancient times. But
when, over my twenty-five years of research, that confirmatory evidence grew past 40%
to 50%, and then 60% and beyond, it soon became apparent that modern wisdom in thismatter was wide of the mark. Very wide of the mark indeed. Today I can say that thenames so far vindicated in the Table of Nations make up over 99% of the list, and I shallmake no further comment on that other than to say that no other ancient historical
document of purely human authorship could be expected to yield such a level ofcorroboration as that! And I will add further that modern biblical commentators must
make of it what they will.
But the test didn't stop there. I had determined at the very beginning that the test was tobe one of unreasonable severity, so even the astonishing level of vindication so far
achieved did not fully satisfy the requirements of the test. The reason for this was simple.
The Table of Nations was written in the Middle East. But all the records consulted by me
in investigating that Table were also written in the Middle East. I therefore decided thatthe test should continue beyond those geographical bounds, and I carried the search into
the records of the early peoples of Europe. I wanted to see firstly whether the same
patriarchs mentioned in Genesis were evident in the most ancient genealogies andchronicles of the peoples of Europe, and I wanted also to assess the level at which theseearly peoples were aware of other events mentioned in Genesis. The important part ofthis test was that the documents and records consulted by me had to date from before thetime that any given European nation was converted to Christianity. That was because it is
too often alleged by certain scholars that the early Christian church, particularly themonastic community, was given to forgery and invention. So only documents that predated the coming of Christianity and its forging monks to a particular nation whose
records I was consulting would be considered. This part of the test was crucial and was toyield as great a level of vindication for the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis as thefirst part of the test.
What follows is a summary of all that evidence. I will not pretend that this book has been
easy to write. It hasn't. Although I have aimed for readability, most of the evidence that I
uncovered over the years consisted merely of lists of names, innumerable crossreferences, royal genealogies, king-lists and old chronicles. So if I have failed in any way
to make all that a rattling good read, then please blame all those skeletal documents thatancient officialdom has left us rather than the present writer, whose self-appointed and3

lonely task has been to make sense of them all! Any student who wishes to pursue
matters further will find copious references to help him or her in further study. The rest,as they say, is history.
Bill Cooper
Ashford
Middlesex
March 1995

Chapter 1
The Knowledge of God amongst the early Pagans
So that we may bring the subject we are about to study into its proper perspective, wemust first allow that many of our preconceptions regarding ancient man are mistaken. It
is commonly supposed, for example, that the nations if the world became aware of the
God of Genesis only after they were evangelised by Christian missionaries. Only since
the translation of the scriptures into their own language, it is assumed, did they become
conscious of the Creation and the God who created it. It is further supposed that early
pagan man can have had no concept of a divinity higher than that of an idol, because it is
impossible to come to a knowledge of the one true God without that knowledge being
given through the direct revelation of His Word, and so on. Popular thought seems neverto have considered the possibility that pagan man was indeed aware of God and of His
attributes and power, and that this awareness had existed and flourished for centuries
without any recourse at all to the scriptures. So it is with something of a surprise that wemeet with exactly that, a profound knowledge and appreciation of an eternal and almighty
Creator God, His fatherhood of the human race and His infinite attributes in the writingsof various historians in the ancient world and amongst the teachings of the earliest
philosophers. It is of the utmost importance that we familiarise ourselves with this truth
as we begin our investigations into the Table of Nations itself and the knowledge
amongst the pagan nations of those patriarchs and events that are so familiar to us fromthe Genesis record.
So profound was the concept and knowledge of God amongst certain pagan peoples in
the ancient world, and in particular the Greek and Roman worlds, that a controversy
eventually arose and was to rage for many centuries between those who propagated andpreserved that knowledge of God as the Creator, and those who sought to destroy it byattributing the creation of the universe to purely natural forces. The marked similarity
between that pagan controversy and the controversy that rages today between creationists
and evolutionists is surprising and we shall be examining that controversy in this chapter.
But first we must understand something of the sheer profundity of the pagan
philosophical concept of the one true God. We meet with it in places as distant from eachother as the world is wide, and among cultures as socially and politically diverse as thoseof ancient Greece and China. For example, it is from the writings of the Taoist Lao-tzu,
who flourished in the China of the 6th century BC, that the following profound statement
concerning the existence and some of the attributes of God is taken:'Before time, and throughout time, there has been a self-existing being,
eternal, infinite, complete, omnipresent Outside this being, before thebeginning, there was nothing.' (1)4It was clearly from no copy of Genesis that Lao-tzu could possibly have derived such anawareness of God. But then as other pagan philosophers from different cultures
altogether were to add their convictions to that of the Chinese sage Lao-tzu, (and thattakes no account of all those who lived before him), it becomes immediately obvious thatno such copy was necessary. It would seem that, contrary to most of the assumptions ofmodern psychology on the matter, the knowledge of God is in fact and indeed innate
within the human soul. It is a built-in awareness that may well be awakened and perfectedwith the reception of God's Word, but it is certainly something that exists quite
independently of a knowledge of scripture. That is not to say that it was admitted to or
proclaimed equally by all men in the ancient world. Many, of course, denied it just as
they deny it today, for alongside every Lao-tzu who proclaimed the existence of God in
the world of ancient China, there was a Kuo-Hsiang ready to dispute it:'I venture to ask whether the creator is or is not. If he is not, how can hecreate things? The creating of things has no Lord; everything creates
itself.' (2)But such exceptions gloriously prove the rule. For the existence of the Creator to bedenied by one philosopher, it first has to be expounded by another, and the question thatinterests us here is where did that knowledge come from? If not from scripture, which
was unknown to these peoples, then from where? If not from Christian missionary
teachers who did not yet exist, then from whom? For, imperfect as the concept of God
may have been among the early pagans, it was nevertheless very real, often profound, andcan only have been founded upon a body of knowledge that had been preserved amongst
the early races from a particular point in history. What that point in history was may
become evident as our study proceeds and as we meet with the families of humankind
dispersing from a single point around the globe. But that it was profound and in many
ways inspiring, can hardly be denied, as the following ancient text from Heliopolis in
Egypt testifies:'I am the creator of all things that exist...that came forth from my mouth.
Heaven and earth did not exist, nor had been created the herbs of theground nor the creeping things. I raised them out of the primeval abyss
from a state of non-being...' (3)It would not be overstating the case to say that the Egyptian concept of a divine creationof the universe was so strongly held that throughout Egypt it governed every sphere ofthought and action, political, educational, philosophical and so on. And it is also
noteworthy to consider that there is no record anywhere amongst the vast amount ofliterature to be recovered from ancient Egypt, that suggests that this view was everchallenged. Nowhere in all the long history of Egypt do we find that a philosopher arose
who was prepared to propagate the notion that the universe came into being through theagency of non-divine forces and processes. There were indeed other types of heretic anddissident, notably the pharaoh Akhnaten who sought to bring all Egypt under the
persuasion that there was but one god instead of the many that the Egyptians worshipped,
but this was hardly atheism or a materialist concept that denied the place and reality of
the Creator. (4) On the contrary, it was an effort, albeit an unsuccessful effort ultimately,on the part of Akhnaten to clear away much of the theological dross and debris that had
obscured by his day the purity of the concept of such a Creator.
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Curiously, we meet with the same lack of challenge to the creationist view almost
throughout the ancient literate world. For example, we encounter this same absence ofatheism or materialism in both Mesopotamia and early Israel, where records make nomention at all of any materialist thinker even by way of condemnation or refutation, saveperhaps the solitary biblical observation that, 'the fool hath said in his heart, there is noGod'. (5) This, of course, presupposes the existence of such fools at the time thestatement was written, ca 1000 BC, yet not a shadow of a controversy has come down to
us that so much as hints that the prevailing creationist view was ever challenged or evenquestioned in the ancient Middle East, so strongly was it held to in that region of the earth
at least. And that is a notable fact that no one, to my knowledge, has ever sought toexamine. (6) Indeed, in every major culture throughout the ancient world of which wehave any record, the overwhelming consensus was that the universe had been created byoften a single and usually supreme divine being (even in notoriously polytheistic
cultures). But more remarkably, each culture was capable of expressing a view of theCreator that was not always perverse even though it flourished in the midst of anaggressive and thoroughly perverse paganism. For example, amongst the early Greeks wehave in the Theogony of Hesiod (8th century BC) an account of the creation of the worldthat bears unmistakable and remarkably close similarities with the Genesis account:'First of all the Void came into being ...next Earth ...Out of the Void camedarkness ...and out of the Night came Light and Day...' (7)And yet it is immediately obvious upon reading the whole of the Theogony that Hesiod
did not get his information from the book of Genesis. This is evident from his debased
view of the Creator alone. But even though Hesiod's debased view may have been
typical, and indeed understandable, for one who lived in a thoroughly pagan society, it
was by no means a view that was shared by all his fellow pagans. Xenophanes, forexample, who lived some two centuries after Hesiod, held an altogether loftier view of
the Creator and in a most inspiring passage sought to redress the theological balance:'Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all the things which among men
are shameful and blameworthy--theft and adultery and mutual
deception...[But] there is one God, greatest among gods and men, similar
to mortals neither in shape nor in thought ...he sees as a whole, he thinks
as a whole, he hears as a whole ...Always he remains in the same state,changing not at all ...But far from toil he governs everything with his
mind.' (8)Xenophanes, typically, would have known the names of all the Greek gods as well as themultitude of functions that they were thought to serve. Yet, significantly, and it is a mostsignificant point, he did not attempt to name or identify the God of whom he now spoke
and whom he clearly admired. This God was not a Zeus or a Hermes. This God wasineffable, and His ineffability was a concept that was to persist in Greek thought for as
long as Greek philosophy itself was to persist. The concept of this ineffable Creator God
permeated the thought of Plato, for example, who sought to replace Hesiod's perverse
concepts of the Creation with a more reasonable one, based no doubt upon philosophicalconcepts far more ancient than Hesiod's and certainly far more profound:'Let us therefore state the reason why the framer of this universe of change
framed it at all. He was good, and what is good has no particle of envy in6it; being therefore without envy, he wished all things to be as like himself
as possible. This is as valid a principle for the origin of the world ofchange as we shall discover from the wisdom of men...' (9)Note the echo from Genesis: 'And God saw that it was good.' We may also note here that
Plato had discovered this concept from the wisdom of philosophers who had gone before
him, and that it was therefore not something that originated in Plato's thought alone. We
can say though that, with the advent of Plato's refined and carefully reasoned model of
the Creation together with his (and Xenophanes') higher concept of the Creator, it would
seem that the classical Greek model of origins was changed for all time. Never again was
it to revert to the divine capriciousness of the many Hesiodic gods for an explanation of
the universe. The creationist concept of the ancient world was rather to become, under
Plato's inspiration and that of his pupils, more 'scientifically' and logically based, with its
firm belief in a single and almighty Creator. However, in its wake, something far more
serious than the earlier Hesiodic misconception was to occur.
It is with some irony that whilst the philosophically nurtured concept of the Creator wasundergoing in ancient Greece such a profound shift towards a greater appreciation of His
nature and attributes, there was taking place at the same time and in the same land thebirth of another and hitherto unheard of concept amongst the Greeks, atheism. We simply
do not know how atheism came to be born in ancient Greece, for, as we have seen, it was
virtually an unheard of concept even in the most pagan cultures of the ancient world. But
given the timing of its advent along with that of a higher concept of the Creator, which isof an equally mysterious source historically speaking, it would seem that the atheism ofancient Greece was conceived to directly oppose the burgeoning concept amongst thephilosophers of a single supreme and omnipotent Deity. It is significant, no doubt, that nosuch concept as atheism arose earlier to deny the lesser pagan gods of Hesiod's
philosophy. But with its advent we see the first beginnings of the great controversy thatwas to rage for centuries between those who held to the now reasonably argued belief in a
Creator, and those who utterly denied it.
Thales of Miletus (ca 625-545 BC) is usually credited with having been the firstmaterialist philosopher among the Greeks. But it is very doubtful that Thales was amaterialist at all. All that we know of Thales comes to us through later writers, Aristotle
the most notable amongst them, and he simply described him as the 'founder of naturalphilosophy'. (10) It is upon little more than the strength of this one remark by Aristotle
that the case against Thales rests. But against that must be set the aphorisms that are
attributed by others to Thales, such as: 'Of existing things, God is the oldest--for he isungenerated.' The world is the most beautiful, for it is God's creation ...Mind is theswiftest, for it runs through everything..., and so on. All of which are classic creationist
sentiments.
But Thales did have a pupil named Anaximander (ca 610-540 BC), and it is to him that
we must look for the first recorded challenge to creationism from the materialist school.
We must be careful, though, in assuming Anaximander to have been the very firstmaterialist thinker amongst the Greeks, for the view held by Anaximander was nothing
less than a fully developed theory of evolution. From Plutarch's pen we hearAnaximander propounding that, '...originally, humans were born from animals of adifferent kind... ' (12) and so on, the creative principle that brought the universe into
existence being held to be entirely impersonal and 'natural'. This argument, of course, has
7

a somewhat familiar ring to it in our own century, but we must ask ourselves whether it islikely that such a fully fledged evolutionary model of origins can have sprung from asingle mind and in such a mature state, especially from a thinker who was an immediate
disciple of the creationist Thales. Or is it more likely that, for many years prior to
Anaximander, there was at least some kind of materialist challenge developing perhaps
even underground amongst certain thinkers in Greece, and that Anaximander simply
plucked the baton from an unknown predecessor's hand? The laws of the time suggest
strongly that such was the case, and our knowledge of just how the modern concept ofevolution was nurtured and developed by a succession of thinkers across several
centuries, virtually demands that we assume a similarly prolonged development in Greek
materialist thought.
The evidence, such as it is, that is contained in the laws of ancient Greece against
blasphemy and impiety, makes it certain that there were blasphemers and impious men to
be legislated against, and such laws invariably prescribed death as the penalty for such acrime, the famous Socrates himself having finally fallen foul of such laws. And Plato,
who was later to discuss in depth exactly how he thought the impious might be more
effectively legislated against in the ideal city-state, (13) paints for us a picture of thecondition of things in his own day, but speaks of the materialists as if they were an
unlikely new breed of thinkers who had only just arrived on the scene:'Some people, I believe, account for all things which have come to exist,
all things which are coming into existence now, and all things which will
do so in the future, by attributing them either to nature, art, or chance.'(14)...going on to tell us how these thinkers define the gods as 'artificial concepts' and 'legal
fictions'. He names the trend for what he thought it to be, a 'pernicious doctrine' that 'must
be the ruin of the younger generation, both in the state at large and in private families'.
(15) Unfortunately, Plato declines to name the thinkers who were responsible for thisstate of affairs and against whom he is contending. But this in turn only adds strength tothe suggestion that atheism as an idea was more generally and anciently held, and morewidespread amongst Plato's own contemporaries, than either the records of the time or
Plato himself would lead us to believe. But whoever they were, Plato was to offer them amightily effective challenge through his own refined creationist model of origins, forwhatever the materialists proposed, Plato's model was of a higher concept altogether. For
him, the Creator turned chaos into order simply because it was His good nature, and His
good pleasure, so to do. He loved order rather than chaos, and to ensure the maintenanceof that order everything He created was made according to an eternal and flawlesspattern, Plato's justly famous Theory of Forms. But the real importance of Plato's modelof origins for our enquiry is that it effectively silenced the materialist school for the next
fifty years or so, that is until the time when Epicurus was to lay down his own counterchallenge to the creationist model. Aristotle had evidently already attempted to find somemiddle ground between the idealist Plato and his materialist opponents, but this did little
or nothing to modify the scale of the philosophical provocation of what Plato had
proposed.
Epicurus felt bound to oppose it, and he laid down his challenge around the close of the
4th century BC with a cosmology whose effects were to reverberate throughout the8

coming Roman world for many centuries to come. Indeed, it still survives in the elementsof several modern philosophies.
The challenge issued by Plato's model of origins was met by Epicurus at every point,even on those more mundane matters that had merely to do with the city-state andjurisprudence. But in particular, Epicurus argued that it was insufficient to contend forthe divine creation of the universe, as Plato did, from the assumption of a well-ordered
cosmos, simply because the cosmos, in Epicurus' eyes, was not well-ordered. (16) It had
culminated from a long, perhaps infinite, series of accidents resulting from the random
jostling of atoms. But then, ever the sophist, Epicurus shrewdly shifted the ground a little
so that any rebuttal from the creationist camp would need to take on board an addedcomplication and consequently be more difficult to propound, for in spite of his
unabashed materialism, Epicurus was careful to acknowledge the existence of the gods!
He relegated them to a place of complete ineffectuality and disinterest in the cosmos, but
he avoided an outright denial of their existence. Apart from the fact that he had to bewareof the still-standing laws of the time against impiety and blasphemy, Epicurus knew that
outright atheism is easily refuted by any philosopher with an eye for controversy, and thefact that few men in any age are outright atheists anyway would ensure scant support for
his views. But, if the existence of the gods is acknowledged at the same time in which thedivine creation of the universe is denied, then the arguments against the Epicurean view
become infinitely more complex, affording the materialist with the subsequent ability tochange ground at will. Such sophistry, of course, was entirely in keeping with thecharacter of Epicurus who was roundly criticised for it on more than one occasion:'Epicurus himself used to do the same thing. For instance, he saw that if
those atoms of his were always falling downwards by their own weight,
their motion would be fixed and predetermined, and there would be noroom for free will in the world. So casting about for a way to avoid thisdeterminism, which Democritus had apparently overlooked, he said thatthe atoms, as they fell, just swerved a little!' (17)However, the acknowledgement of the existence of the gods did have the virtue of
imparting to Epicurus control of the field and the ability to state the terms under which
the ensuing controversy was to be fought. Or so he vainly hoped, for far from seeing
creationism off the proverbial field, Epicureanism merely served to rally the creationist
camp towards a better definition of its views, and the school of thought which raised
itself to meet the challenge of Epicurean materialism was the Stoic school, founded by
Zeno in ca 308 BC.
As events were to prove, Stoicism was to become a very effective challenge indeed in the
pagan world against materialism in any guise or form, and that challenge was brought
about by a most significant development. This development began with a far more
profound concept of the Creator than had hitherto prevailed in Greek thought, whether
that of Hesiod, of Xenophanes or even of Plato. Indeed, the incipient and lightly veiled
atheism of Epicurus' philosophy was now answered by the Stoics in the most compellingterms, with Chrysippus giving it perhaps its most persuasive voice:'If there is anything in nature which the human mind, which human
intelligence, energy and power could not create, then the creator of suchthings must be a being superior to man. But the heavenly bodies in their9eternal orbits could not be created by man. They must therefore be createdby a being greater than man ...Only an arrogant fool would imagine that
there was nothing in the whole world greater than himself. Therefore there
must be something greater than man. And that something must be God.'(18)
This may be a good place to briefly reflect upon the somewhat mysterious source of suchendearingly plain logic, a plainness of logic indeed that is quite uncharacteristic of Greek
philosophy. What processes of thought can conceivably have led from the grotesqueparodies of human corruption that one sees in the older Hesiodic creation model of the
Greeks amongst beings that passed for 'gods', to the majestic and undeniably sublime
concept of a supreme and omnipotent Deity that was now being voiced by Chrysippus
and his colleagues? (19) The Christian faith had yet to be born, its influence on Greek
thought still lying some centuries into the future. So could it perhaps have been throughthe agency of the recently Hellenized Jews who, albeit they horrified the orthodox oftheir faith by mingling much of Judaism with Greek thought and practices, unwittingly
carried with them into the Greek camp an inherent knowledge of the God of Genesis in akind of theological Trojan horse? The answer is no, for apart from the fact that one canhardly claim that Jewish philosophical thought was any less complex and sophistic thanthat of the Greeks, there are also strong historical and chronological grounds for denying
Jewish influence in the sphere of Greek philosophy at this particular point in history.
The Greeks, it appears, first made contact with Judaism as early as the year 587 BC,
when Greek mercenaries assisted the armies of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in theinvesting and destruction of Jerusalem. Along with the mercenaries, of course, would
have been a smaller army of civil servants, spies and so on, many of whom during thelong and enforced hours of leisure doubtless spent their time in philosophical discussion.
But to suggest that this would have included the taking on board of Jewish thought isquite beyond the realms of probability. The Jews were invariably viewed with a poorly
disguised contempt by the Greeks throughout their centuries of contact with one another,to the extent that many Jews found it politic to become Greek, or Hellenized, in order tosurvive at all. (20) The persecution of the Jews under Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-163
BC), and his determined attempt to expunge the Jewish faith altogether, is perhaps themost telling episode regarding the often mutual hostility that existed between theorthodox of either side. It has to be admitted, of course, that the Jewish Torah, which
naturally included the book of Genesis, was translated into Greek in the year 250 BC,
some seventeen years before Chrysippus became head of the Stoic school in 233 BC. But
even the remarkable translation of Genesis into Greek did not take place until fifty-eight
years after the foundation of the Stoic school by Zeno in 308 BC. So clearly Stoicism as aphilosophy owed nothing to the book of Genesis, and the philosophical path that the
Stoics trod in order to arrive at their conclusions must therefore remain a mystery to us.
However, apart from the new and lofty concept voiced by Xenophanes, Plato andChrysippus of the Creator of the universe, another concept was to follow which, in thehands of Chrysippus and his colleagues, was to lend the voice of the Stoic school analmost irresistible authority. It was the concept of 'evidence from design', an argument forthat divinely inspired intent and purpose which was observable throughout the universe
and which convinced the Stoic, as it convinces the creationist of today, of the scientificand philosophical correctness of his model. Refined and brilliantly expressed by Paley atthe beginning of the last century, the importance of evidence from design was not lost on
10earlier classical theorists who were quick to give it its permanent setting in the idea ofcreationism. A later Stoic, the Roman Cicero, was to give the concept perhaps its highest
expression in pre-Christian times, and his words are worth quoting at a little length:'When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time bydesign and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe asa whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence when it embraces
everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers? Our
friend Posidonius as you know has recently made a globe which in its
revolution shows the movements of the sun and stars and planets, by day
and night, just as they appear in the sky. Now if someone were to take thisglobe and show it to the people of Britain or Scythia would a single one ofthose barbarians fail to see that it was the product of a conscious
intelligence?' (21)With these beautifully simple words, Cicero gives voice to an idea which even today is
the most difficult for the materialist to refute, for it is nigh impossible to explain away
convincingly, say, the indescribable complexity of living organisms, or even merely parts
thereof, as the product of blind chance or accident. But Cicero was not just giving voice
to one of creationism's most forceful ideas for its own sake. He was doing so by way of
refuting the Epicurean notions of Lucretius, the Roman materialist poet and acontemporary of his, whose book (22) Cicero mentions in a letter to his brother Quintus
in February 54 BC, and which he says was written 'with many highlights of genius, butwith much art'. (23) Cicero's own dialogue, On the Nature of the Gods, was written someten years later in ca 44 BC specifically as a rebuttal of Lucretius, and it is between Ciceroand Lucretius that the controversy rages, with both sides using arguments which are still
very familiar to us today.
One of those arguments concerned the trustworthiness or otherwise of the senses when it
comes to deducing the validity of evidence from design. How, for example, can we be
sure that we interpret that evidence correctly through our senses? This, for the Stoic, wasthe fatal weakness in the Epicurean argument which, as Lucretius stated it, runs:
The nature of phenomena cannot be understood by the eyes. Lucretius said
this not because he believed the eyes themselves to be at fault, but because
it was a failing of the mind to perceive things correctly or accurately
through the senses. In fairness to Lucretius, he did go on to qualify thisstatement, recognising that this dictum, though it appeared to answer thecreationist on a philosophical level, could not usefully be translated into
everyday experience, for: (24) "This is to attack belief at its very roots--totear up the entire foundation on which the maintenance of life is built. If
you did not dare trust your senses so as to keep clear of precipices andother such things to be avoided and make for their opposites, there would
be a speedy end to life itself." (25)
But such sophistry was to cut no ice at all with the Stoic Cicero. It smacked too much ofthat special pleading for which Cicero, as an advocate in law, had little patience. For if
our reasoning powers could be trusted to interpret what our senses were telling us on a
day to day basis when it came to such vital matters as personal safety and survival, thenthey could surely be trusted to interpret less vital phenomena such as evidence from11

design in the universe around us, which spoke so eloquently and forcefully of theuniverse having been created by an infinite and omnipotent intelligence. As a creationist,
the Stoic Cicero simply could not appreciate the Epicurean viewpoint of Lucretius:'In the heavens there is nothing accidental, nothing arbitrary, nothing outof order, nothing erratic. Everywhere is order, truth, reason, constancy ...Icannot understand this regularity in the stars, this harmony of time andmotion in their various orbits through all eternity, except as the expressionof reason, mind and purpose ...Their constant and eternal motion,
wonderful and mysterious in its regularity, declares the indwelling powerof a divine intelligence. If any man cannot feel the power of God when helooks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling."(26)
To Cicero's mind, it was the greatest irony that a thinker like Lucretius who bleated mostabout his unshakeable faith in the innate powers of matter to create itself and arrange
itself into a meaningful and purposeful order without any outside aid or influence, foundhimself unable to trust that same matter when it came to perceiving or even explaining
this fact! It matters not, it seems, how eloquently one may fulminate against creationism,charging it with every superstition under the sun, if one then declares that the reasoning
powers of him who so fulminates cannot be trusted. Whether expressed in ancient times
or in modern, it is still a case of shooting oneself in the philosophical foot, and it has
effectively disarmed the materialist cause at every turn. It bedeviled the 18th century
Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, whose philosophy in a nutshell stated that it
was only reasonable to believe in God. But as we know that God does not exist, then our
reasoning powers cannot be trusted. What Hume, along with every other materialist
philosopher, was really trying to say, of course, was that no one's reasoning powers could
be trusted but his own, thus making himself the only sure point of reference in theuniverse. But such was the philosophical mess into which this led him, that Kant, theinheritor of Hume's mantle, once painfully lamented the fact that:..."it remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general thatthe existence of things outside us must be accepted merely on faith, andthat if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable tocounter his doubts by any satisfactory proof." (27)No creationist could have expressed the materialist's dilemma more concisely, and Kant
has highlighted a phenomenon that has not only ensured throughout history thatcreationism would always hold the higher ground when it came to the expression of
simple logic, but which also led out of sheer frustration to the birth and rigours of theempiricist school of thought in the 1920s. But there is another element in the controversy
that has also persisted down the ages concerning the part that chance might have playedin the successful arrangement of matter whether animate or inanimate. The pagan Greeks
had taken the argument down to the atomic level, and instead of the desperately soughtafter simplicity of arrangement that was so necessary to the materialist's cause, theyfound only a greater and more mind-boggling complexity, which again only added totheir difficulties in attempting to explain the allegedly accidental creation and mindless
existence of the universe. Again, we turn to Cicero for a judgment on the scene:

12

'Is it not a wonder that anyone can bring himself to believe that a numberof solid and separate particles by their chance collisions and moved onlyby the force of their own weight could bring into being so marvelous andbeautiful a world? If anybody thinks that this is possible, I do not see why
he should not think that if an infinite number of examples of the twentyone letters of the alphabet, made of gold or what you will, were shaken
together and poured out on the ground it would be possible for them to fallso as to spell out, say, the whole text of the Annals of Ennius. In fact I
doubt whether chance would permit them to spell out a single verse!' (28)Now where have we heard that analogy before? This argument, which was the Romanequivalent of today's monkeys and typewriters tapping out the works of Shakespeare, hasendured simply because it has always proved to be unanswerable by the materialist in any
but the most strained and unlikely terms. Though even this argument was hardly new in
Cicero's day, but seems to have been merely part and parcel of the already ancientcreationist armoury of vexing philosophical questions that the materialist could neversatisfactorily answer.
The Epicurean school, through Lucretius, did attempt' to wreak a vengeance of sorts, for
Lucretius went on to specify an idea that threatened to provide a stumbling-block toclassical (i.e. pagan) creationism. Conceding the fact that the materialist's perception of
the universe was marred somewhat by the alleged inability of human reason to perceive
correctly the nature of the physical universe, Lucretius claimed that creationism likewise
had a chink in its philosophical armour when it came to explaining the earth's place in theuniverse. The classical perception of the universe amongst the Greeks was that it was
geocentric, the stars, planets and everything else revolving around a fixed and immovableearth. And Lucretius assumed, wrongly, that this was crucial to the creationist view. It
gave a fixed point of reference to the universe, and it was a philosophical concept thatallowed the teaching of absolute values. Lucretius, therefore, attempted to introduce amore relativistic framework by claiming that the earth was not fixed at all, but moved in
an infinite space that possessed no centre. This was to counter the Stoic's view of a finite
universe whose outer bounds were equidistant from the earth:'It is a matter of observation that one thing is limited by another. The hills
are demarcated by air, and air by the hills. Land sets bound to sea, and sea
to every land. But the universe has nothing outside to limit it.' (29)shrewdly going on to make his point that:'There can be no centre in infinity.' (30)With these ludicrously simple statements, Lucretius had put forward an idea that was
truly revolutionary but for which he has received scant acknowledgement from historiansof any hue. He did not develop the idea into that of a strictly heliocentric universe, as
Copernicus was later to do, but he did depart radically even from the view of hismaterialist colleagues, for they too held that the earth was fixed and the universe revolved
around it. Lucretius had hoped to rob the creationist camp of the finest weapon in its
armoury, the argument for an ordered and hence designed universe, by introducing theconcept of randomness, aimlessness and sheer relativism. But he was disappointed, foreven his materialist peers were unable to follow him down that particular path. Ironically,13this had nothing to do with the fact that the Greeks and Romans of the time were ignorant
in any way. On the contrary, they were great observers, and the virtue of the geocentricmodel lay in the fact that it complied with all the observed facts of contemporary
science. Indeed, few theories in the history of science have ever enjoyed suchoverwhelming and indisputable proofs as those which once graced geocentrism. And that,in this present age that virtually worships the concept of empiricism, has to be one of thegreatest ironies of all.
To add to the irony, and contrary to all expectations from the materialist camp, when theCopernican revolution finally did arrive in the 16th century, it did not mean the end ofcreationism for a very good and simple reason. In creationist terms, it matters not a jot
whether the earth revolves around the sun or the sun around the earth. For whichevermodel of the universe is the correct one, the question still remains --Who created it? How
did it come into existence and whence came its astonishing degree of order andcomplexity? These are questions that have been asked by men since the beginning oftime. And one of them, named Lucilius, had worked out the answer for himself without
any help from either Christian or Jew, attributed the design, creation and maintenance of
the universe to that Creator who:'...is, as Ennius says, "the father both of gods and men", a present and amighty God. If anyone doubts this, then so far as I can see he might just as
well doubt the existence of the sun. For the one is as plain as the other.
And if this were not clearly known and manifest to our intelligence,
the faith of men would not have remained so constant, would not have
deepened with the lapse of time, and taken ever firmer root throughout
the ages and the generations of mankind.' (31) (Emphasis mine)
It is Lucilius's 'generations of mankind' that now must occupy our attention, for with his
profound statement this present chapter must draw to a close. But what Lucilius wasreferring to is the fact that alongside even the very worst aspects of paganism in theancient world, there was preserved a definite knowledge of God. The value of this lies in
the fact that this knowledge existed (and still exists) quite independently of Genesis
amidst cultures that were and are entirely antagonistic towards the concept of one God,
the Creator of all things. We shall now encounter this same knowledge in the early
genealogies and historical records of the early pagan nations, and note that their
testimony is unexpected to say the least when we consider what the modernist school has
been claiming all these years.
Notes:
1. Lao-tzu, Tao-te-ching, tr. Leon Wieger. English version by Derek Bryce. 1991.
Llanerch Publishers, Lampeter. p. 13.
2. Clarke, John. 1993. Nature in Question, Earthscan, p. 24.
3. My paraphrase of Wallace Budge's literal translation in The Gods of the Egyptians.
Vol. 1. Dover. New York. 1969. pp. 308-313.

14

4. There is a superb account of the Akhnaten heresy in: Eliade, Mircea. 1979. A History
of Religious Ideas: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries. Coffins. London.
Vol. 1. pp. 106-109.
5. Psalm 14:1.
6. Not that such a task would be easy. One scholar, David Berman (author of A History ofAtheism in Britain. Routledge. London. 1988), complains that atheism is hard enough todetect even when records, as for the last four centuries, are to be had in plenty. By thevery nature of things, the task would be nigh hopeless when it comes to the woefully
sparse, and doubtless sometimes heavily censored, records of the ancient world.
7. Hesiod, Theogony, (tr. Norman Brown, 1953). Bobbs-Merrill Co. New York. p. 15.
8. Barnes, Jonathan. 1987. Early Greek Philosophy. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth.
p. 95-97.
9. Plato. Timaeus and Criteas. (tr. Desmond Lee, 1965). Penguin Classics,
Harmondsworth. p. 42.
10. Barnes, p. 61.
11. ibid., p. 68.
12. ibid., p. 73.
13. Plato. The Laws, (tr. Trevor Saunders, 1970). Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth. pp.
408-447.
14. ibid., p. 416.
15. ibid., p. 417.
16. Lund, Erik. A History of European Ideas C. Hurst & Co. 1976?. pp. 61-62.
17. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, (tr. Horace McGregor, 1988). Penguin Classics.
Harmondsworth.
18. ibid., p. 130.
19. An excellent discussion of the development of (pagan) Greek theology is given in:
Murray, Gilbert. 1925. Five Stages in Greek Religion. Oxford.--Murray traces thedevelopment of the primitive, anthropomorphic gods of Greece up to the concept of theFirst Cause, or Creator of the Stoics. The last chapter of the book, pp. 241-267, contains aparticularly illuminating translation of Sallustius's On the Gods and the World.
20. This is very well documented in the apocryphal books of the Maccabees, andespecially in: Josephus. (tr. Whiston). Pickering & Inglis. London. 1960. pp. 250-289 and
607-636 (Against Apion).
1521. Cicero, p. 159.
22. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe. (tr. Ronald Latham.
1951). Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth. 23. ibid. p. 9.
24. ibid., p. 142.
25. ibid., p. 146.
26. Cicero, pp. 144-145.
27. Stroud, Barry. 1984, The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism. Oxford University
Press. p. 141.
28. Cicero. p. 161.
29. Lucretius. p. 56.
30. ibid., p. 58.
31. Cicero, p. 124.

Chapter 2
Where to Begin
History has never been so popular. The man in the street has never been so wellinformed about his past as he is today. And yet it is a sad and unhappy fact that for allthat has been said, written and broadcast about the early and more recent history of
mankind, there remains a very large body of historical evidence that is mostly passed
over in silence by today's scholars. And because it is passed over by today's scholars, itnever reaches today's general public. I say that this is sad because it is not as if this vast
fund of knowledge is hard to get at. On the contrary, every fact that you are about to readis available to anyone who takes the trouble to look. And each fact can be obtained
cheaply enough. It does not lie in obscure libraries about which no one has heard or towhich none can gain access. Nor is it written in languages or scripts that cannot be
deciphered. Indeed, scholars have been aware of the existence of this vast body of
information for many years. So why is it passed over in such silence?
Why is it, for example, that no modern book on the early history of Britain goes backbeyond the year 55 BC, the year when Julius Caesar made his first attempt to invade
these islands? We may read in such books of this culture or that people, this stone age orthat method of farming. But we will read of no particular individual or of any particular
event before the year 55 BC. This has the unfortunate effect of causing us to believe that
this is because there exists no written history for those pre-Roman times, and that when
they landed in Britain the Romans encountered only a bunch of illiterate savages who had
no recorded history of their own. But our conclusion would be wrong, for we will see as
our study progresses that the Britons whom the Romans encountered were, on the16admission of the Romans themselves, a people who could teach the Romans a thing or
two about the finer arts of warfare, and who left a clear and written record of themselves
dating back to the very earliest years of their existence as a nation. These records still
survive, and we shall be considering them in some detail. We shall also be examining
many other ancient records that various peoples have left behind them and we shall notewith interest the story that is told by each one of these documents. Far more can be
known about the early recorded history of mankind than is generally allowed, and what isrevealed by this history is a story that is very different indeed from the one that we areused to hearing. But where to begin?
We must begin our investigations with one of the oldest historical documents in theworld. This document comprises the tenth and eleventh chapters of the book of Genesis
and is known to scholars as The Table of Nations. However, when I use the word
'document', it must be understood that this in no way subscribes to the erroneous viewpropagated by Julius Wellhausen and his colleagues in the 19th century regarding the
much-vaunted but still fashionable 'documentary hypothesis' of biblical criticism. Thathypothesis was designed to be destructive of any impression that the Genesis record inparticular was a reliable source of historical information, whereas the objective of ourpresent study lies in entirely the opposite direction. But it does recognise the fact that thetenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis consist of a self-contained unit of information thatis complete even if read in isolation from the rest of the Genesis account. In that sense, atleast, it forms a document that we may study in isolation. But how accurate is that
document? Most scholars today would denounce it as unreliable, and some would dismiss
it from any further discussion by attaching to it labels of 'myth' and 'pious fiction',favourite terms among modernist scholars, thus assuring their readers that its study, andespecially faith in its accuracy, is a waste of time. These terms and labels will become
more familiar to us as we come across a great many extra-biblical records that
substantiate rather than undermine the Genesis account, but their over-use by certain
scholars has left the definite impression that the modernist protests too much, and whenapplied as often as they are to so many historical records, they become tired andmeaningless phrases that convey no information at all. There is doubtless method in thisacademic madness, given the question that if Genesis cannot be relied upon when it
comes to stating accurately simple historical facts, then how can it be relied upon when it
comes to stating higher truths? But the over-use of such labels becomes weansome andultimately meaningless, and is of no service whatever to healthy historical research.
When applied to the Table of Nations, this healthy historical research yields somesurprising facts, surprising that is, in the light of what most commentaries go to suchgreat lengths to assure us of, namely that Genesis is not to be trusted as accurate history.
This became very clear when I first began my researches into the Table of Nations, andthe nature of those researches is as follows.
Having constructed the Table of Nations into a simple genealogy, I wanted to see how
many of its names were attested in the records of other nations in the Middle East, which
included for my purposes all the nations of Mesopota-mia, Arabia, Egypt, Turkey andeven Greece. It was an obvious procedure, but one that had not, as far as I was aware,
been conducted before and the results published. I had already found certain individualnames that were mentioned in scattered works of varying merit, often Victorian, but thewhole had never been gathered together into one cohesive study. And so my researchbegan. Over the years, little by little, pieces of corroborative evidence came together and17

a picture began to build up that revealed the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis to be
an astonishingly accurate record of events. The Table of Nations had listed all thefamilies and tribes of mankind in their correct groupings, whether those groupings were
ethnological, linguistic or geographical. All the names, without exception, were accurate,and in more than twenty-five years of searching and analysing, I uncovered not one
mistake or false statement of fact in the Table of Nations.
It has to be said here that such a result could simply not be expected or obtained from any
comparable historical document, especially one as ancient as this. The Table of Nations
embraces a sweeping panorama of history that is not only truly vast in its content but
unique. Its like simply does not exist. But as a sample, we shall here consider some of thedescendants of Japheth as they are listed in the Table of Nations. For students who wish
to pursue the matter in greater depth, I have set out in full the three genealogies of Shem,
Ham and Japheth with accompanying historical notices and references in Appendices 1, 2
and 3 of this present study. But in this chapter, a summary of the corroborative evidence
that appears in the nations of the Middle East concerning the descendants of Japheth, will
suffice to show the trend of that evidence in vindicating the Genesis account. Moreover,
the Japhetic line is the briefest in the Table of Nations and therefore the least wearisome
for the general reader to follow, and it also forms the foundation for much else that comes
after in this study.
The Japhetic list in the Table of Nations looks like this when set out as a conventional
genealogy:18

By way of illustration as to how contemporary records vindicate this statement ofGenesis, the evidence for the historical reality of these peoples gleaned from the recordsof the surrounding nations is summarised as follows, although I have avoided wearying
the reader by providing copious references here. Such references are to be foundaccompanying the historical notices provided in Appendices 1, 2 and 3, and I see no goodreason for cluttering the text with footnotes at this particular stage.
19

Very briefly then, as we consider just a few of the names in the Japhetic list, we find thatin the mythology of the old world, Japheth was regarded as the father of many peoples,particularly the Indo-European nations. The pagan Greeks perpetuated his name as
Iapetos, the son of heaven and earth and again the father of many nations. We find his
name in the vedas of India where it appears in Sanskrit as Pra-Japati, Father Japheth, who
was deemed to be the sun and lord of creation, the source of life in other words for thosedescended from him. Later, the Romans were to perpetuate his name as that of Ju-Pater,
Father Jove, later standardised to Jupiter (see Appendix 11). We shall see also that theearly Irish Celts, the early Britons and other pagan European races traced the descent of
their royal houses from Japheth, including the Saxons who knew him as Sceaf (pr. sheaf
or shaif). And all these peoples, we must remember, were pagans whose knowledge oreven awareness of the book of Genesis was non-existent.
Gomer, the first son of Japheth according to Genesis, founded a people known to theearly Greeks as the Cimmerians who dwelt on the shores of the Caspian Sea. From here,
they were later driven away by the Elamites. The prophet Ezekiel, during the time of theCaptivity, referred to them as those who dwelt in the uppermost parts of the north. They
appear in Assyrian records as the Gimirraya whose defeat under king Esarhaddon is duly
noted. They appear also in the annals of the reign of Ashurbanipal of Assyria around 660
BC.
The people of Ashchenaz are found in earliest times in Armenia, and later Jewish writers
associate them with the Germanic races (Germanic Jews to this day are called
Ashkenazim). They appear also in the 6th century BC records of Assyria as the Askuza
who allied themselves with the Mannai in a revolt against Assyria, an event alsomentioned in Jeremiah (51:27) whose prophecy incidentally confirms the identity of the
Askuza with the Ashkenazim. This people were later known to the Greeks as the Scythai,the Scythians of Herodotus. They gave their name to the lake and harbour of Ascanius
and to the land of Ascania. Through Josephus we can later trace them to the Rheginians.
The descendants of Riphath gave their name to the Riphaean mountain range, which at
one time was marked by early cosmographers as the northernmost boundary of the earth.
The name appears in Pliny, Melo and Solinus as Riphaei, Riphaces and Piphlataei
respectively. The last of these were later called Paphlagonians, as attested by Josephus.
Togarmah's earliest descendants settled in Armenia. Fourteenth century BC Hittite
documents tell us of Tegarama, a region where they settled which lay between
Carchemish and Haran and which was overrun by the 'enemy from Isuwa', that is apeople from beyond the Euphrates. Sargon II and Sennacherib of Assyria both mention
their later city of Tilgari-manu. This lay some thirty miles east of present-day Gurun in
Turkey, and was destroyed in 695 BC. Josephus knew the descendants of Togarmah as
Thrugramma.
... and so on. Thus it comes about that, throughout the entire Table of Nations, whether
we talk about the descendants of Shem, Ham or Japheth, every one of their names isfound in the records of the early surrounding nations of the Middle East, even the many
obscure names of certain remote Arab tribes that are otherwise not evident in any modern
history book of the times, and enough is available for a detailed history to be written
about them. It is a phenomenon of immense implications. These records were mostly
written (and then lost until their rediscovery in modern times) during the Old Testament
20

period, during which time many of the peoples mentioned in them had vanishedaltogether from the historical scene or had been assimilated into other more powerfulnations and cultures. Even those who retained their national or tribal identities soon lost
all trace and memory of their own beginnings and went on to invent fantastic accounts of
how they came to be. Indeed, the very early emergence of such mythological invention
and the exceedingly rapid growth of paganism is a very telling point indeed against themodernist notion that Genesis is a late composition, for many of the names recorded withsuch astonishing accuracy in the Table of Nations, had disappeared from the historicalscene many centuries before the time in which modernism would say that the Table of
Nations was written. The Table of Nations, it thus seems, is a very ancient document
indeed.
In time, of course, the true histories of several of these early nations became obscured
beyond all recognition. Josephus was given good cause to complain that this had
happened to the Greeks of his own day, and he lamented the fact that by obscuring theirown history, they had obscured the histories of other nations also. (1) Yet by no means allof the early nations were to follow this path. We shall see that many kept an accurate
record down the centuries of their beginnings and wrote down the names of theirfounding patriarchs, bringing the records up to date with the advent of each new
generation, and it is these records that provide us with such a surprising link between theancient post-Flood era depicted in Genesis and the history of more modern times. Theselists, annals and chronicles have been preserved and transmitted from generation to
generation not by the nations of the Middle East this time, but by certain European
peoples from times that long pre-dated the coming of Christianity, and it is mostimportant that we remember the pre-Christian aspect of much of the following evidence,for it is too easily and too often alleged by modernist scholars that these records are theinventions of early Christian monks and are therefore worthless. Such claims of fraud
will be examined in detail, particularly with regard to the records that the early Britons
have left us and which are omitted in their entirety from modern history books, the media
and the classroom.
When we consider the truly vast body of evidence from the Middle East that isconveniently ignored in modernist commentaries on the book of Genesis, such wholesaleomission will appear as hardly surprising. Yet perhaps the reader is unaware of the sheer
scale of this omission, for the records of the early Britons, and that's not counting the
Irish Celtic, Saxon and continental records which we shall also be examining, cover notjust a particular phase of history, but span more than two thousand years of it. I cannot
think of any other literate nation on earth that has managed to obliterate from its own
history books two thousand years or more of recorded and documented history. Not eventhe censors of Stalinist Russia or Maoist China in their vigorous hey-day were thiseffective, or even needed to be this effective, in doctoring their own official accounts. So
how did this extraordinary circumstance come about, and who is responsible for it?
By way of a refreshing change, we cannot lay the blame entirely at the door of thoseevolutionary Victorian and later educationalists and philosophers who laid thefoundations of our modern curricula. They are surely to blame for much else that is
amiss, but this time the story begins long before their age and influence. It begins, in fact,with the closing years of the 6th century AD and the arrival on these shores of Augustine,
the Roman Catholic bishop whose job it was to bring the British Isles under the politicalsway of the Roman pontif. The story is well known from Bede et al how the British
21

Christians who were here to greet Augustine declined his demand that they place
themselves under the Roman authority, and were later massacred for their refusal at
Bangor, twelve hundred of the finest scholars and monks of their day being put to thesword. From that day on there existed an animosity between the Britons (Welsh) and thepapacy that was to ferment throughout the early to late Middle Ages, only to culminate in
the eventual expulsion of the papal authority from the realm of England under king Henry
VIII, who was significantly himself of Welsh Tudor stock. But the early ascendancy of
the Saxons meant that all recorded history of the Britons was consigned to oblivion as far
as historians and chroniclers were concerned, with only Roman, Saxon and, later,
Norman accounts of events being taught and promulgated in schools throughout the land.
The recorded history of the early Britons was to remain in oblivion for the five hundredyears that followed the massacre at Bangor. But then an incident occurred that ensured its
revival and survival to the present day, even though that revival was itself to last only amatter of a further five hundred years or so.
The incident, which occurred sometime in the 1130s, was the presentation of a certainbook to a British (i.e. Welsh) monk by an archdeacon of Oxford. The monk's name was
Geoffrey of Monmouth, the archdeacon was Walter of Oxford, and the book was a veryancient, possibly unique, copy of the recorded history of the early Britons, written inlanguage so archaic that it needed to be translated quickly into Latin before either thebook perished or the language was forgotten. Now, one would think that such a rare event
would generate great interest amongst scholars of all hues. Yet even today, in our
supposedly impartial and inquiring age, the mere mention of Geoffrey of Monmouth willusually bring an academic smirk to the face of scholars. Read any article today about him
and you will be sure to come across statements to the effect that his great work, Historia
Regism Britanniae, or History of the Kings of Britain, is at best unreliable fiction, andthat Geoffrey himself is an unscrupulous liar and forger. (2) We would do well to ask
ourselves what it is that could provoke such unscholarly language.
It is often claimed, in dismissing Geoffrey's work, that it contains errors. Yet, as any
historian worth his salt will tell you, if we rejected histories in general on that account,
we should soon be left without any history at all. But it is then claimed that Geoffrey's
supposed original book no longer exists and that therefore Geoffrey must have been lying
when he claimed to have translated such a book. However, it is exceedingly rare for theoriginal manuscript or source-material of any early historical work to have survived. In
fact, I personally am not aware of one instance where this has occurred. It is further
claimed, and this claim is significant inasmuch as it can at least be tested, that nothing
like Geoffrey's Historia is to be found amongst the surviving corpus of medieval Welsh
literature. (3) The surprising answer to this is that not only does the same historicalmaterial survive in Welsh from medieval times, it survives in no less than fifty-eight
manuscript copies. These are listed in Appendix 4, but we may note here that there are
not very many medieval Welsh manuscripts in existence and fifty eight of them does
constitute a rather large percentage of the surviving corpus. The claim is therefore
suspicious as it is hardly likely that scholars who have made this field their life's work
could have missed them or have remained for long in ignorance of their existence orcontents. Indeed, the manuscripts are freely available to any who care to study them, so
why is even the acknowledgement of their very existence such anathema to the modernist
mind?

22

The answer to this lies in what these early records tell us about our past. As we shall see,
it is an account that flies entirely in the face of everything that we are taught nowadays
about where we come from, and it makes fascinating reading. But Geoffrey of Monmouth
was not the only medieval Welsh scholar to transmit to us the historical records of theearly Britons. He was preceded by another, Nennius by name, and, because Nennius
passed down to us the contents of records more ancient even than Geoffrey's chronicle,
we shall begin our excursion into the history of the early Britons with him.
Notes
1. Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, (From Josephus's CompleteWorks. tr. William
Whiston, Pickering & Inglis. 1981. pp. 607- 636).
2. See for just one example amongst countless others, Marsh, H. 1987. Dark Age Britain,
Some Sources of History. Dorset Press, New York. pp. 175-190. And Marsh is amongst
the gentlest of Geoffrey's critics!
3. ".... no Welsh composition exists which can be reasonably looked upon as the original,
or even the groundwork, of the History of the Kings of Britain," (Lloyd, J.E. 1939). A
History of Wales from the earliest times to the Edwardian Conquest, London. 2nd ed. p.
526. (cit. also in Thorpe. p. 15. See bibliography).

Chapter 3
Nennius and the Table of European Nations'I, Nennius, pupil of the holy Elvodug, (1) have undertaken to write down some extracts
that the stupidity of the British cast out; for the scholars of the island of Britain had noskill ...I have therefore made a heap of all that I have found... ,' (2)With these words, Nennius opens his great book, Historia Brittonum--the History of the
Britons. It would be difficult to overstate the immensity of Nennius' achievement and his
contribution to our understanding of ancient history. And, were we not familiar with thefashions of today, it would be equally difficult to account for the disparagement that his
name has suffered amongst modernist scholars in ungrateful return for his labours. His
achievement was the gathering together of all the extant records touching on the originsof the Britons that he could find and which he then set down into one booklet was a timeof danger for the Britons as a nation and for the records themselves, and were it not for
his labours, the immensity of which we can only guess at, records that were irreplaceable
would have been lost to us forever. Morris' translation of Nennius, which opens thispresent chapter, implies that the British of the time were stupid in the sense of being
intellectually dull. But in this context, the word hebitudo which Nennius used, suggestingsomething that has been made blunt or dull and which Morris renders 'stupidity', would
perhaps better be translated as complacency or lethargy, the mood of the Britons that
followed in the wake of the massacre of the monks at Bangor. The profound cultural
shock of seeing their finest scholars and spiritual leaders massacred by supposedly fellow
Christians at the instigation of a Roman bishop no less, would have left a very deep
23

wound indeed, and it is this state of mind amongst the Britons or Welsh that Nennius
laments and which led to the neglect and loss of many records and books. They 'had noskill' (nullam peritiam habuerunt), because learning had practically ceased amongst
them. Hence Nennius' sudden and urgent gathering together of all that remained.
Nennius completed his work towards the very end of the 8th century AD and the sourcesthat he gathered were many and varied. They included certain items of history that had
been imparted to him by Irish scholars. Then come the 'Annals of the Romans', 'The Law;another explanation', and, lapsing into his native Welsh, he then tells us that a noble elder
named Cuana had compiled a British genealogy from a certain Roman (i.e. Latin)
chronicle. (3) He was happy to rely on oral history too, quite unashamedly describing one
such item as being 'in the writing of the writer's mind'. (4) But one of the really important
aspects of his contribution in all this, is that Nennius made no apparent attempt to edit his
sources or even correct some of their obvious discrepancies. Had he done so, then it
would have been difficult for us to assess the actual and original contents of the records
consulted by Nennius, and distinguish these from what was Nennius' own, perhaps
mistaken, ideas about them. Instead, Nennius merely copied down his sources and passed
them on to us, historical warts and all, so that we could make of them what we would.
A few, but only a very few, of the records preserved by Nennius, are admittedly of
doubtful quality and reliability. But amongst them is one of the most important
documents from the ancient world that could have come into our possession. It is set
down in chapters 17 and 18 of Historia Brittonum (for the Latin text of these chapters,with translation, see Appendix 5 of this book), and it records the descent of aconsiderable number of early European nations. It is laid out as a conventional genealogy
in what follows.
It is instructive to compare Nennius' Table of European Nations (as I like to call it) with
Appendix 3 of this book, the genealogy of the nations of Japheth as recorded in Genesis.
Nennius' source and Genesis are in remarkable agreement with one another, yet Nennius
adds details that are not included in Genesis, for the natural and obvious reason that theGenesis account is necessarily brief. Gomer (1), for example, is merely cited by Nennius
as being the ancestor of the Gauls, Nennius omitting entirely the names of Gomer's three
immediate descendants, Ashchenaz, Riphath and Togarmah that are included in Genesis.
(Would he have omitted these if he were merely copying straight from Genesis itself?)
He cites Magog (2) as the ancestor of both the Scythians and the Goths, and Madai (3) as
the founder of the Medes. So far so good. But it is from this point that the document fromwhich Nennius was working, shows one or two tell-tale signs of the (albeit remarkably
little) distortion that it has suffered in transmission, whether oral or written.
For example, and as we shall note in Appendix 3, Tubal (4) was the father of a people
known to the Assyrians as the Tabali, whose land, Tabal, (present-day Georgia in what
used to be the USSR, whose modern capital Tblisi perpetuates the name of Tubal), layadjacent to that of the biblical Togarmah, (Assyr. Tegarama). From Nennius, however,comes the added detail that from Tubal came the Iberian, the Spanish and the Italianraces. And this receives at least partial support from Josephus, who wrote some seven
hundred years before Nennius, that Tubal was the father of the Thobelites, known. as
Iberians in his own day. (5) And as Josephus makes no mention of either the Spanish or
Italian races, nor yet the: descent of the Goths from Magog, Nennius was clearly notcopying from him.
24

Likewise, Nennius' source cites Meshech (5) as the father of the Cappadocians (seeAppendix 1:10 and 2:18 -- the Caphtorim), an error that also appears in Josephus. It is
doubtful though that Josephus originated these errors, simply because he was himself
working from much older sources. The confusion, however, was easily brought about, for25

the name of the Semitic people of Mash in Genesis, is alternately rendered Meshech in 1
Chronicles. Clearly the two, the Semitic people of Meshech and the Japhetic people ofMeshech, were confused with one another even in classical times, and it was upon therecords of the classical world that both Josephus and Nennius relied rather than upon any
mere copying of the Genesis record.
Other examples of distortion (albeit still of a minor nature) are seen in that the Goths areshown to have been descended from both Magog (2), the biblical patriarch, and fromArmenon, the son of Alanus. Armenon himself is stated to have had five sons, yet only
four are named. (Five nations are later shown to have descended from him.) Similarly,
Negue is stated to have three sons, yet four nations derive from him. The significance of
all this is that Nennius could easily have edited out or corrected these points, thereby
enhancing his own credibility, yet he chose to simply leave them as they are. And it is
this that, almost paradoxically, enhances his standing as a trustworthy and reliable
historian, and it further assures us that we are reading these exceedingly ancient
documents exactly as Nennius read them.
From Alanus onwards appears a comprehensive table of the nations of Europe. One or
two of these names were archaic even in Nennius' time and would long have fallen into
disuse. They are all, however, familiar to any historian today whose studies have touched
upon the history of Europe at about the time of the Roman Empire. For several centuries,
it seems, Europe was a seething cauldron as nation vied with nation in a bewildering
array of migration, invasion and displacement. Yet not one of the names in this list ofnations is historically unattested, not even that of the unlikely-sounding Gepids.
However, there is one particular aspect of this table that should be drawn emphatically tothe reader's attention, because it is a matter of immense significance, a matter moreoverthat seems to have entirely escaped the notice of modernist scholars. It is the appearanceof just four names in the early section of the genealogy. But this is not the only occasion
on which we meet with them. They appear also in the patriarchal genealogy of the early
Irish-Celts, and their chronological significance is just as great as their ethnic
significance.
The names in the British account are: Iobaath, Baath, Izrau and Ezra.
But notice their position in the genealogy. They occupy the four generations immediately
following Javan, the son of Japheth. When we later come to consider the genealogy of the
Irish-Celts, which has been constructed from entirely different sources, we shall see thatthese same names occupy similar places, except that there they are descended from
Magog, not Javan, and Baath is depicted as the elder brother, and not the son, of Iobaath.
Their names take the early Irish forms of: Jobhath, Biath, Easru and Sru, recognizably thesame names as given in the British table.
However, it is the chronological position of those particular names in these ancientgenealogies that provides a striking confirmation of the Genesis account. In the book ofGenesis, we see that the dispersal of the nations from Babel took place during the fifth
generation after the Flood. And here we are presented with the names of four successive
generations of patriarchs who were common to the recorded ancestry of both the British
and Irish Celts. (6) After the fifth generation, the lines of the British and Irish Celts
26

diversify, exactly in accordance with the historical movement of the nations as depictedin Genesis. All of which is a strange occurrence in documents that are not only drawn
from entirely independent ancient sources, but which the modernist school, if they caredto mention them at all, would have us believe are fictitious.
Nennius tells us that he found the above record in 'the ancient books of our elders' (Aliud
experimentum inuern ...ex ueteri bus libris ueterum nostrorum), and we need now toestablish when this ancient document was written. It is crucial to establish this, because
leaving the question open would allow the familiar and by now wearisome charge to bemade that it was forged by Christian monks as an act of 'pious fraud'. To settle the matter
we will now examine the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth who, like Nennius, was a
Welsh monk and who lived some three hundred years after him. The importance ofGeoffrey's work lies in the fact that he carried the story forward from where Nennius leftoff, and it is the abundance of internal and external evidence from Geoffrey's book thatwill enable us to assess the age, and thus the authenticity, of Nennius' earlier material.
Notes
1. Elvodug, archbishop of Gwynnedd, (otherwise Elbod, Elbodogus, Elvodogus or
Elfoddw), is known to us from the Annales Cambriae. He was present, in AD 768, whenthe Britons changed their reckoning of Easter. Indeed, it was he who initially introduced
the change. (768 an. Pasca commutatur apud Brittones super dominicam diem
emendante Elbodugo homine Dei. Morris. p. 88). The second and last time he ismentioned is the entry for the year AD 809, which records his death (809 an. Elbodug
archiepiscopus Guenedotae regione migravit ad Dominum. Morris p. 88).
2. See Morris, p. 9.
3. Is amlaid sin tugasdair ar senoir-ne uasal, i. Guanach, geinilach Breatan a cronicib
na Romanach. 'This is how our noble elder Cuanu gathered the genealogy of the British
from the chronicles of the Romans.' (Morris. pp. 19 & 61).
4. Set haec genealogia non scripta in aliquo volumine Britanniae, set in scriptione mentis
scriptoris fuit. 'But this genealogy is not written in any book of Britain, but was in thewriting of the writer's mind.' (Morris. pp. 19 & 61).
5. Whiston, p. 31. See Bibliography.
6. In case some should think that the British and Irish influenced each other on a culturallevel to the extent that they were willing to tamper with and falsify their own royal
genealogies (and we shall ignore the inevitable death penalty that this would haveincurred), they need only ask themselves why that influence should have been confined
only to the four generations named, and why there should exist such discrepancies
between them both in source (Magog and Javan) and in succession of names (see chapter
9). Moreover, none of these names are those of famous figures of the past, nor yet thoseof mythical gods. So why should they have bothered?

Chapter 4
27

The Chronicles of the early Britons'Yf God will, at an other apter tyme and in more apt place, marveilous agreementof the historyes of Antiquity and great unlooked for light and credit will be restored
to the Originalls of Brutus...' (John Dee 1577. Cotton MS. Vitellius. c. vii. f 206v)
On Wednesday 7th November 1917, Flinders Petrie, a renowned archaeologist of the day,addressed the assembled members of the British Academy. He was to present a paper tothem entitled Neglected British History, (1) in which he drew attention to the fact that a
considerable body of historical documentary source-material was being overlooked if not
willfully ignored by modern historians. He drew fleeting attention to the work of
Geoffrey of Monmouth and then homed in on one particular record that shed much lightupon Geoffrey's too-disparaged history. The ancient book to which he drew attention was
known to him as the Tysilio Chronicle, which is listed today as Jesus College MS LXI and
is lodged in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It is written in medieval Welsh, and is, as its
colophon reveals, (2) a translation that was commissioned by the same Walter of Oxford
who commissioned Geoffrey of Monmouth to translate a certain very ancient British
book into Latin. It is, in fact, a translation from early British into medieval Welsh of thesame source-material used by Geoffrey, and is an answer to all those learned critics who
have stated with such emphasis over the years that Geoffrey of Monmouth was lying
when he claimed to have translated such a book.
However, this is not the only light that the Welsh chronicle was to shed, for it was toaddress matters of far greater import and relevance than the mere vindication of
Geoffrey's good name. (3) Indeed, it contains historically verifiable accounts that
overturn many modernist assumptions and teachings about our past. More importantly,
the material that it contains reveals an antiquity for itself that carries contemporarily
recorded history back to uncomfortably early times. Uncomfortable, that is, forevolutionary and modernistic philosophy. Flinders Petrie highlights some of these points,
and we shall consider these and others in this chapter.
Among the points he mentions is the account contained both in Geoffrey of Monmouth
and the Welsh chronicles of the attempted invasions of these islands by Julius Caesar in
55 and 54 BC. Caesar, of course, has left us his own account of this, and it is tempting tothink (and is often stated) that the Welsh chronicles (and hence Geoffrey of Monmouth)
contain nothing more than a rehashed version of Caesar's account. But close examination
reveals a different story. The account in Geoffrey and the Welsh chronicle turns out to benothing less than the Julian invasion as seen through the eyes of the early Britons
themselves. An eyewitness account in fact, which dates this part of the material to the
middle of the 1st century BC. This, of course, is far too early for most modern scholars toaccept for Celtic literacy, and it also sheds a somewhat unfavourable light upon Julius
Caesar, himself the hero of many a modern book on the history of early Britain. But how,exactly, do the British and Roman accounts compare?
Caesar tells us (4) that when he initially landed on the shore of Britain, the landing was
resisted in a most alarming way for the Roman troops. The British charioteers andcavalry rode into the very waves to attack the Roman soldiers as they tried to leap fromtheir ships into the sea, and the landing was almost aborted due the unusual nature andferocity of the attack. Moreover, Caesar had made some very serious miscalculations
about the tide and weather that had almost lost him his army. But what does the British
28

account say of all this? Nothing. Nothing whatever. There is no triumphant trumpeting
about the bravery of the Celtic warriors or the Romans' difficulties in making land.
Instead, we hear only how, on first receiving news of the Roman landing, the Britons
under Kasswallawn (Caesar's Cassivelaunus) gathered together at a certain fort in Kent.
Caesar had clearly been resisted merely by a band of local levies of whom the Britons'
intelligence reports had taken no account. But why should they? It was only to be
expected (by the Britons) that the locals would meet the assault, and the opposition to thelanding had been unsuccessful in any case. But perhaps the gathering of the Britons at theKentish fort is one of the more telling aspects of the affair. The Welsh chronicle names
the fort Doral, which Geoffrey of Monmouth transposes into Latin as Dorobellum. (5) It
was known to later Latin writers as Durolevum, and was a fortress that stood roughly
midway between Rochester and Canterbury. As Flinders Petrie points out, it would havebeen the ideal meeting place for an assembling army that was uncertain whether theinvading force would proceed directly across the river Medway towards London, or
would skirt along the coast towards Sussex and then head north to London, thus saving
itself the task of having to cross the Medway. And yet Caesar never mentions this fort,
for the natural reason that he would have been entirely unaware of its existence andname. A medieval monk rehashing Caesar's work would not have mentioned it either forthe same reasons. Of further significance is the fact that Nennius writes in his Historia
Brittonum:'Julius Caesar ... while he was fighting with Dolabella.' (6)... Dolabella being mistaken in Nennius's source-document for the personal name of a
British warrior rather than the fort where the warriors were gathered, thus revealing thatby the end of the 8th century AD at the very latest, a serious corruption of the account of
the British maneuvers from which Nennius drew his own information existed. The factthat no such corruption is evident in the Welsh chronicle (or Geoffrey's Latin version)
speaks volumes not only for the purity of the information contained in both the Welsh
chronicle and Geoffrey, but for the antiquity and undoubted authenticity of their common
source material.
Later in his account, (7) Caesar describes in detail how his cavalry came to grief when
they encountered the unusual fighting tactics of the Britons. He describes these tactics indetail, remarking on their effectiveness. And yet no such description appears in the
British account. One could reasonably expect that a later forger or compiler would
triumphantly have mentioned how his forebears terrified and almost defeated the Romans
with superior and ingenious fighting tactics, but not a contemporary Briton who wasrecording the same events as Caesar but from a different vantage point. But, again, whyshould a contemporary Briton mention tactics with which he and his intended readers
would have been all too familiar?
Three further specific items in both the Welsh chronicle and Geoffrey's Latin accountreveal the sometimes garbled nature of the British intelligence reports of the time thatwere sent over long distances, in two cases from the other side of the Channel, and thenatural confusion that arose over the debriefing of warriors that returned from the frontline of battle and the subsequent interviewing of eyewitnesses. The first concerns thedeath of a certain Roman officer. He was named as Laberius (Quintus Laberius Durus) in
Caesar's account, (8) according to which Laberius died in action during the second29campaign in Britain of the year 54 BC. The British account, however, states that Laberius
was killed during the first campaign, and, more tellingly, it identifies the soldier
concerned as Labienus (9) (Welsh Alibiens). Now, the name Labienus would earlier havebeen known to the Britons from reports reaching them of Caesar's second-in-command
who, at the time of Caesar's second invasion and quite unknown to the native Britons, hadbeen left behind in Gaul to administer matters there in Caesar's absence. Thus, learningfrom prisoners taken in battle that the dead officer's name was Laberius, they confused
the names and naturally assumed that this was the Labienus of whom they had heard. It
was a perfectly natural error made in wartime conditions, but not one that would havebeen made by a medieval forger who had Caesar's account in front of him.
Similarly, the second item concerns the garbled British report of a fortress that waserected at Caesar's command when he returned to Gaul. Caesar does not name the fort,
whereas the British account reports its name as Odina. (10) Flinders Petrie points out thatno such place is known, although he does mention that Caesar reports (11) the sending oftroops to Lexovii (today's Lisieux), and that the river there, which again Caesar does notname but which is called Olina, suggests the origins of the British report. Again, thename Odina (which Caesar does not give) could obviously not have been borrowed from
Caesar's account by any medieval hand.
The third incident concerns an inaccurate report by British scouts which led
Kasswallawn's intelligence gatherers to assume that Caesar had fled Britain at a time
when the Roman army was in fact firmly encamped on these shores. Caesar, having lost
valuable ships during a storm, ordered that the ships be taken out of the water anddragged inland to within the Roman camp. (12) This was a prodigious feat ofengineering. These ships were extremely heavy military transports, and yet the task waswell within the (to us well-known) capabilities and engineering skills of the Roman
sappers. However, it would not have occurred to the Britons that such a thing would becontemplated let alone possible, and so it is that when the advance scouting parties of the
Britons could no longer see Caesar's ships beached upon the strand, they naturally but
wrongly assumed that he had fled these shores.
There are later, touching, accounts in the early British chronicles (but on which Flinders
Petrie is silent) where mention is made of British warriors fighting in this country against
the armies of the kings of Syria and Lybia, (13) and which look initially like a mostunlikely collection of stories. Yet, what becomes of these accounts when we view them intheir correct historical perspective? The Britons were never ones to employ foreign
mercenaries to do their fighting for them. They knew the dangers involved in such a
policy, dangers that were unhappily demonstrated when one British king, Vortigern,
invited the Saxons over to chase away the Picts. As history records, and to Vortigern's
everlasting infamy as far as the Welsh are concerned, the Saxons stayed and eventuallybanished the Britons themselves to a rocky and inhospitable part of the island, Wales.
Rather, in times of war or emergency the Britons would band together as separate tribes
into one fighting force, and place their many kings under the authority of one overking
for the duration of the hostilities. Thus, when the Britons encountered the Roman army,
they were surprised to find not Romans only amongst the enemy's ranks (if there were
any Romans at all), but separate legions made up of Syrians, Lybians and every otherkind of nationality. (14) We know from the archaeological record that Syrians and others
did actually make up some of the occupying legions in this country, and it is therefore not
only natural that the Britons should refer to them by the names of their countries of30

origin, but that they should also assume that the Syrians and others were led into battle bytheir own petty kings as were the Britons themselves who fought them. It is anunsuspected and striking mark of authenticity that no medieval forger would havethought of.
But if this portion of the chronicle contains material that can be dated to the middle of the
1st century BC, then there is other material that goes back much further. One such item(on which again Flinders Petrie is surprisingly silent) is the account of two men named
Belinus and Brennius in Geoffrey's Latin version, and Beli and Bran in the Welsh. (15)One part of the story records how Bran led an invasion of Italy and sacked Rome. Certain
modernist scholars have been quick to point out that Rome has never been sacked by the
Britons, and that the story is a nonsensical fiction. However, a reading of Rome's
historians might have led them to a different conclusion, for the sack of Rome by the
Celts is told in considerable detail by an early historian of Rome, and the early British
account of the event is confirmed, and indeed expanded upon, in every point.
The Roman historian in question is Livy (Titus Livius , 59 BC-17 AD), whose History ofRome consisted of no less than 142 books, although only 35 of these have survived to thepresent day. However, it is Book 5 of Livy's history that contains the rather illuminating
account that follows. (16)
According to Livy, the sack of Rome by the Gallic Celts occurred around the year 390
BC, and we shall see precisely how closely this accords with the chronology of eventsand personages that is contained in the British chronicle. It matches it exactly. But of
more interest to us is the fact that Livy has preserved the names of those who wereinvolved in the planning and carrying out of the attack.
The first name is that of the king of the Bituriges, a Gallic (Celtic) people who were to
give their name to the modern city of Bourges. The king was Ambitgatus, and Livy tells
us that he had two nephews, one named Bellovesus, and the other Segovesus. These two
names also appear in the British account where they are given as Beli in the Welsh
chronicle and Belinus and Segnius (the king of the Allobroges or Burgundians) in
Geoffrey of Monmouth. The Welsh chronicle mentions Segnius as the prince of the
Burdundians (i.e. Byrgwin, another term for the Allobroges) but does not name him.
Each name, however, must have been given in the original British source-material forthem to appear in either Geoffrey or the Welsh chronicle.
It is here, however, that Livy sheds some interesting light upon the Celtic royal familiesof the early 4th century BC. According to both Geoffrey and the Welsh chronicle, thefather and mother of Belinus and Brennius were Dunvall Molmutius (Welsh Dyftial Moel
Myd) and Tonuuenna (Welsh Tonwen). We know from the genealogy around which both
Geoffrey's and the Welsh account are built (see Appendix 7), that Dunvallo was ofBritish descent. Which means that Tonuuenna, whose genealogy is not given, could
easily have been the sister of the Gaulish king, Ambitgatus, as is implied in Livy when hecalls Bellovesus (the British Belinus and son of Tonuuenna) the nephew of Ambitgatus.
There is nothing at all unlikely or improbable in such a relationship. Indeed, marriage
between the British and continental Celtic royal families would have been an entirely
natural and expected event.

31

Which brings us to the name of the leader of the Gallic sack of Rome, whom Livy names
as Brennus. (18) This is practically identical to the transposition into Latin of the British
name of Bran that Geoffrey gives (Brennius), and the fact that Geoffrey and Livy aresuch distinct and independent authorities reveals that neither of them were making up thenames of their characters as they went along. That neither Geoffrey nor the Welsh
chronicle are merely copies or rehashes of Livy's account is abundantly evident when one
compares the British account with that of Livy. There are far too many important andfundamental differences between them to suggest that one is dependent on the other. And
yet they are all clearly and independently referring to the same historical event, namely
the Celtic sack of Rome in ca 390 BC, but viewing that event from different camps.
We may carry the story back another generation by referring to the laws of Dunvallo, thefather of Belinus and Brennius, which were known as the Molmutine Laws and which
Geoffrey tells us were still held in high esteem by the Britons (Welsh) of Geoffrey's own
day. (19) However, not only were they held in high esteem in Geoffrey's day, they also
have survived to the present, and they clearly reveal their pagan origins. (20) The lightthat they shed upon the society in which the early Britons lived is set out in Appendix 6of this book, where Flinders Petrie tells us in his own words about the laws and theirapplication. But the history of the early Britons can be carried back further still, muchfurther back, to the 12th century BC in fact, the time of the very foundation of the British
nation.
The story is told of how a colony once landed on these shores, a colony led by one Brutus(Bryttys in the Welsh chronicle). It was from this Brutus that the British people derived
their name. The history of Brutus'descendants is set out in the following chapter, but what
interests us here is how, and by which route, the colony arrived on these shores in thefirst place. Again, we are indebted to Flinders Petrie for bringing to our attention thefollowing details:'After leaving Greece Brutus' [and his colony] 'sails to Africa, and thenpasses the Philenian altars, a place called Salinae, sails between Ruscicada
and the mountains of Azara in danger of pirates, passes the river Malua,arrives in Mauretania, and reaches the pillars of Hercules. On this passage
the ignorant editor notes: "It is probably impossible to discover whether
these names describe existing places, or are purely the invention of theauthor". Now all these places are known, and they are all in consecutive
order. The longitudes in Ptolemy are here added, for clearness. The
Philenian altars (46 degrees 45 minutes) were two great sand heaps, forthe story of which see Sallust; they would be well known as the boundary
between Carthage and Egypt, but of no importance in late Roman times.
Next, Salinae are the stretch of salt lagunes (33 to 34 degrees), which
would be important to mariners for salting fish. Next, Ruscicada (27degrees 40 minutes) is a headland to the south of Sardinia; Brutus sailed
between this and the mountains of Azara, and Ptolemy names a mountaintribe of Sardinia as the Aisaronesioi. The prevalence of pirates noted here
gives the reason for naming the Sardinian mountains, as mariners could
stand well off the African coast by sighting Sardinia, which lay 120 miles
north, and thus escape the pirate coast track without losing their bearings.
Next is the river Malua (11 degrees 10 minutes), which was important as
the boundary of early Mauretania. Lastly, the pillars of Hercules (632degrees 35 minutes - 7 degrees 30 minutes). The general character of thesenames selected is that of points well known to mariners, such as any
seaman might readily give as stages of a voyage. How then do they comeinto the Brut legend? They cannot have been stated by any seaman after
AD 700, as the Arab conquest wiped out the old names and old trade.
Did a medieval writer, then, extract the names from a Roman author? Nosingle author seems to contain all of them: Ptolemy omits Salinae, Plinyomits Salinae and Azara, Strabo only has the Philanae, the Antonine
itinerary only Rusiccade and Malua, the Peutingerian table only Rusicade,and the Philaeni in a wrong position. When we see the medieval maps,
from Cosmas on to the Mappamundi of Hereford, it is impossible tosuppose a medieval writer having enough geography at hand to compile
such a mariner's list of six minor places in the right order, as they stoodduring the Roman Empire. If this list was, then, written during the Empire,
there is no reason for preferring one date to another. There is, however,internal evidence that this was written before Claudius' (i.e. 10 BC-AD
54). 'It is after passing the Malua that Brutus arrives in Mauretania. Now
Mauretania was only west of the Malua originally; but in the, early
imperial changes the east of that river was included, and Claudius
constituted two Mauretanias, Tingitana and Caesariensis, divided by theriver. The geography of the Brut is, then, older than Claudius.' (21)There is much else that Flinders Petrie could have added had he been aware of it. For
example, before Brutus sailed with his colony to the African coast on their migrationfrom the mainland of Greece, they were said to have alighted upon an island whose nameis given as Legetta in the Welsh chronicle, as Leogetia in Geoffrey of Monmouth, andwhich was known as Leucadia amongst the classical authors of the Mediterranean world.
Today, we know it as the island of Levkås. But there are certain details, important details,
that the British accounts mention that could not have been gleaned by a medieval forger
simply hearing of the place or seeing it on a map, even one that happened to possess anunusual degree of accuracy for medieval times. For example, although the Welsh
chronicle omits the fact, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin version recounts the detail of theisland's woodlands, (22) and we note that even today one can still see on the island 'theremnants of the oak forests which were a feature of Levkås well into the nineteenth
century. (23)
For Geoffrey of Monmouth to be aware of these woods, they must have been mentioned
in the original and ancient source-material that he was translating, and we can only ask
ourselves whether the presence of oak forests on this sacred island which the Britons longremembered, and the fact that the early Druids of Britain ever afterwards held the oaktree to be particularly and peculiarly sacred, are entirely unconnected. As Pliny tells us:'The Druidae... esteeme nothing more sacred in the world, than Misselto,
and the tree whereupon it breedeth, so it be on Oke... they seem wellenough to be named thereupon Dryidae in Greeke, which signifieth ...
Oke-priests. (24)However, of added interest is the fact that both Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh
chronicle record the presence on the island of a ruined temple that was dedicated to the33

goddess Diana. There then follow the descriptions of a most complex ritual performed by
Brutus and the nature and attributes of the goddess Diana that could only have come froma pagan source. But there is an added aspect to all this. Diana was considered to be thepersonification of the moon, and although there is no apparent trace remaining today of
the temple of Diana on the island, there are the ruins of a temple to Diana's theologicalhusband, the sun god Apollo. These ruins lie on a prominence some 230 feet above thesea, and:'... it was from here that the priests of Apollo would hurl themselves into
space, buoyed up - so it was said - by live birds and feathered wings. The
relationship between the ritual and the god seems obscure, although there
was an early connection between Apollo and various birds. Ovid confirmsthat the virtues of the flight and the healing waters below the cliff had
been known since the time of Deucalion, the Greek Noah.' (25)
Now there are definite echoes of this curious and most ancient ritual in the story of one of
Brutus'not far removed descendants, king Bladud (Blaiddyd in the Welsh chronicle. See
next chapter). Bladud, it is recorded, made himself pinions and wings and learned how to
fly. He only had one lesson and the flight was predictably a short one, but the importantdetail is that Bladud was killed as he struck the temple of Apollo that once stood in thecity known today as London. (26)
Yet this is not the only curious detail to emerge out of the early British record. What, forexample, are we to make of the mention of Greek Fire in the story of Brutus? Thisappears as tan gwyllt in the Welsh chronicle, and as sulphureas tedas and greco igne in
Geoffrey of Monmouth's account. (27) As Flinders Petrie rightly points out, Greek Firewas entirely unheard of in Europe before the time of the Crusades. Did an early medieval
forger have a lucky guess? I doubt it. And what of the further detailed geographicalknowledge of the ancient Greek mainland that the British accounts reveal? The region
called Yssgaradings in the Welsh chronicle and Sparatinum in Geoffrey's version, wasanciently known as Thesprotia, an area on the west coast of Greece. Archaeology tells usthat the Thesprotians were the earliest inhabitants of the region, their name being
perpetuated today in the modern town of Thesprotikon. (28) Moreover, the river Ystalon
in the Welsh chronicle (Abalone in Geoffrey) is the Acheron that flows through theancient region of Epirus.
Further, there is the name of the king against whom Brutus fought in order to win thefreedom of his followers. His name is given as Pendrassys in the Welsh chronicle and as
Pandrasus in Geoffrey. (29) I have seen no attempt whatever to identify this king, andthere is now no possibility of tracing the name in the surviving records of ancient Greece,
although such tracing would itself be futile. Pandrasus is not, it seems, a proper name atall but a title - pan Doris - meaning king of all the Dorians. Again, archaeology tells usthat the Dorian Greeks overran this part of the Grecian mainland at just about the same
period (12th-11th centuries BC) in which the story of Brutus begins. (30) So it is clearthat the name Pandrasus belongs firmly and authentically to the times that are dealt within the opening portions of the British account.
All of which helps us in dating not only the fascinating and undoubtedly ancient material
in the Welsh chronicle and in Geoffrey's version, but also the material passed down to us
by Nennius that we noted in the previous chapter and from which we were able to34

construct the Table of European Nations. Clearly, none of all this is attributable to thenefarious work of early Christian monks who were seeking to foist upon the world acontrived but pious history, for all the material that we have considered in this chapter
pre-dates the coming of the Christian faith to the early Britons by at least a hundredyears, and certainly by up to a thousand years and more. In other words, the now
wearisome modernist charge of pious fraud falls flat. This will be further seen in thefollowing chapter which summarises the contents of both Geoffrey of Monouth and theWelsh chronicles, and Appendix 7 where the genealogy of the early British kings is set
out. The approximate dates of each king are also given as I have been able to calculatethem from the internal evidence contained in the Welsh chronicle and in Geoffrey's Latin
version, and external evidence derived from other sources.
Notes
1. Published by Humphrey Milford at the Oxford University Press as part of theProceedings of the British Academy, Vol. viii. pp. 1- 28.
2. 'I, Walter of Oxford, translated this book from Welsh (Kymraec) into Latin, and in myold age have translated it a second time from Latin into Welsh.'
3. Happily, two English translations of this particular Welsh chronicle already exist:
Roberts, Peter. Chronicle of the Kings. 1811. The sole surviving copy is at the Bodleianlibrary, shelfmark Douce T., 301. (A poorly edited 2nd edition of this was brought out byManley Pope under the title, A History of the Kings of Ancient Britain. Simpkin, Marshall& Co. London. 1862. As poor as his edition is, however, [Manley Pope interpolatedcomments of his own without marking them as such in the text, and he makes noacknowledgement whatever to Peter Roberts, whose translation he has clearly filched],
Manley Pope does provide some very informative notes from pp. 155-216). The second
translation is by Canon Robert Ellis Jones of New York. His untitled translation is a
literal rendering into English of the Welsh text, and forms part of Griscom's book (seebibliography). Canon Jones died in 1929, the year of his translation's publication.
4. Caesar, pp. 99-100. See bibliography.
5. Geoffrey of Monmouth, p. 108, and Manley Pope, p. 60. See bibliography.
6. Nennius, p. 23. See bibliography.
7. Caesar, pp. 102-3.
8. Caesar,. pp. 111-2.
9. Geoffrey, p. 110 and Manley Pope, p. 60. As Flinders Petrie points out, while the shift
in date may be due to tradition, it cannot agree with copying.
10. Geoffrey, (pp. 112-3) has Odnea. See Manley Pope, pp. 61 & 180-1.
11. Caesar, p. 87.
12. Caesar, p. 110 and Manley Pope, p. 61, 'Caesar was compelled to fly.'35

13. Geoffrey, pp. 236 & 245-6. See also Manley Pope, p. 122.
14. Cottrell, (pp. 63-4. See bibliography) lists Spaniards, Hungarians, Germans, Syrians,
Greeks, Africans, Gauls, and so on as some of the nationalities that made up the Roman
legions in Britain. Hadrian's Wall alone was manned by Spaniards, Germans, Africans
and Syrians.
15. Geoffrey, pp. 90-100 and Manley Pope, pp. 38-46.
16. Livy, pp. 378-395. See bibliography.
17. Livy, p. 379. Compare Geoffrey, pp. 97-9 and Manley Pope, pp. 44-5.
18. Livy, pp. 383 & 395.
19. Geoffrey, p. 89.
20. See Probert, William, Ancient Laws of Cambria. 1823.
21. Flinders Petrie, pp. 8-9.
22. Geoffrey,. p. 64. Thorpe, (p. 341. See bibliography. Aledges that the name is aninvention of Geoffrey's.
23. Bradford, Guide to the Greek Islands, Collins. London. p. 48.
24. cit. Hawkins, Prof. G. Stonehenge Decoded, Fontana. p. 34. Hawkins points out thatas the Greek word for oak was 'drus', then Pliny's etymology for the name would appear
to have been correct.
25. Bradford, p. 50.
26. Geoffrey,. p. 81 and Manley Pope, pp. 28 & 167-8.
27. Geoffrey, p. 58 and Manley Pope, p. 10.
28. Webster's New Geographical Dictionary, G & C Merriam, Massachusetts. 1977. p.
1203.
29. Geoffrey, pp. 55-64.
30. Webster's, p. 340.
31. For a technical appraisal of the chronology, see my article The Early History of Man Pt. 3. The Kings of the Ancient Britons: A Chronology, CEN Tech. J., Vol. 52 1991. pp.
139-142.

36

Chapter 5
History of the Early British Kings
What follows is a summary of the history of the early kings of the early Britons as it isgiven in both Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh chronicles. It is a recorded history
that was consigned to oblivion after the massacre, at the instigation of Augustine, of the
British monks at Bangor in AD 604 and was thus entirely unknown or ignored by thelater Saxon and Norman chroniclers of England. Consequently, it came to be generally
and unquestioningly assumed amongst English scholars by the 16th and 17th centuries
that no such record had ever existed, and that works such as Geoffrey of Monmouth's or
the Welsh chronicle were forgeries and fairy tales. That opinion persists today. We haveseen, however, in the previous chapter how these records enjoy a great deal of historicalvindication in spite of modernism's cursory and fashionable dismissal of them. But here,
plain and unadorned, is the story that the chronicles themselves tell, a story that no childwill have learnt at his desk in any school of this land. It spans over two thousand years,
and its survival to the present day, being little short of a miracle, is a tribute to those
Welsh scholars of old who recognised its importance and preserved it entire for our
reading.
Amongst the ancient records that the Britons themselves left behind, there is preserved(in Nennius at least) a list of the ancestors of the early British kings as they were counted
generation by generation back to Japheth, the son of Noah. But the history of the Britons
as a distinct nation had its beginnings with the fall of Troy, and it is at this point that
Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh chronicles take up the story.
Anchises, known to us from other histories, fled with his son, Aeneas, from the burning
ruins of Troy, and they made their way to the land that is nowadays called Italy, settlingwith their people on the banks of the river Tiber around what was later to become Rome.
The indigenous population was ruled over by Latinus who received Aeneas and his
people with kindness and hospitality, in return for which Aeneas defeated Latinus' foe,
Turnus, king of the Rutuli. He then married the daughter of Latinus, Lavinia, from which
union came Aeneas Silvius who later rose to rule over all the tribes of Italy. But it was
through the line of his brother Ascanius that the royal lineage was presently to beperpetuated, and of this line was born Ascanius' son Silvius. Silvius seduced an unnamed
niece of his grandfather's wife, Lavinia, and it was from their union that his son Brutus
was born. The mother of Brutus died whilst giving birth to him, and when he was a lad offifteen years, Brutus accidentally shot his father dead with an arrow whilst out hunting.
For having caused the deaths of both his parents, thus fulfilling a prophecy concerninghim, Brutus was exiled out of Italy, the royal line of Aeneas passing into the hands ofanother. And it is at this point that the history of the Britons as a distinct nation begins.
Brutus journeyed from Italy to Greece, and there he came into contact with certain slaves.
These were the descendants of the soldiers who had fought against Greece in the Trojan
Wars of the 13th century BC. They had been enslaved by Priam, son of Achilles, 'in
vengeance for his father's death', and were subsequently to continue their slavery under
Pandrasus, king of the Dorian Greeks. Learning that he was descended from their own
ancient kings, the Trojans accepted Brutus into their fellowship and elected him as theirleader, and under him they successfully rose against their captors. Defeating Pandrasus in37

battle, they set sail to look for a land in which to settle. Sailing their fleet out of theMediterranean between the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar), they came acrossanother group of Trojans led by Corineus, who were likewise escaping abroad from theircaptors. They combined forces and landed in Gaul with Brutus being acclaimed as theiroverall king. There they fought and defeated the Picts under king Goffar (Koffarffichti-Goffar the Pict--in the Welsh). The Trojans again set sail, and came ashore at Totnes in
Devon at some time in the 12th century BC. The land and its people were subsequently toderive their names from Brutus. Then Brutus founded the city of Trinovantum, or New
Troy, which was later to become the city of London. Brutus, the first king of the Britons,
reigned over his people in this island for twenty three years, i.e. from ca 1104-1081 BC.
Amongst the spoils that Brutus had taken from Greece was Ignoge, the daughter ofPandrasus, whom he wedded and who was to bear him three sons, Locrinus, Kamber andAlbanactus. Upon the death of Brutus, Kamber and Albanactus inherited Wales(Cambria) and Scotland (Albany) respectively, and Locrinus became king of Loegria, theland named after him, which consisted of present-day England minus Cornwall. (Themodern Welsh still know England as Loegria). Cornwall was ruled over by Corineus
whose daughter, Gwendolen, Locrinus had married. Locrinus, however, had also taken
another wife, Estrildis, whom he hid for fear of Corineus. But as soon as Corineus wasdead, he made Estrildis his queen and put away Gwendolen, his lawful wife. In
vengeance, Gwendolen raised an army in her father's kingdom of Cornwall, killing
Locrinus in the ensuing battle. Estrildis and her daughter Habren were drowned on
Gwendolen's orders, and Gwendolen herself went on to rule Loegria for the next fifteen
years. Then, in ca 1056 BC, she abdicated in favour of her son Maddan and retired to her
native Cornwall where she died.
Little is said of Maddan other than that he ruled the land for forty years, i.e. from ca
1056-1016 BC. His sons, on his death, contended for the throne, Main his younger son
being murdered by Mempricius, the elder. Mempricius (Meinbyr in the Welsh chronicle)
became a noted tyrant who abandoned his wife in pursuit of unnatural vices, and hegenerally misruled the kingdom. Then, in the twentieth year of his reign, in about 996
BC, he was separated from his companions in a hunting party and was eaten by wolves.
He was succeeded by Ebraucus (Welsh Efrawc) who reigned for the next thirty-nine
years from ca 996-957 BC. In an eventful and fondly remembered reign, Ebraucus sacked
Gaul and founded the city named after him, Kaerbrauc, which the later Romans were toLatinize as Eboracum, present-day York. On his death, he was succeeded by Brutus
Greenshield (Bryttys darian las in the Welsh chronicle) who reigned for the next twelve
years until ca 945 BC. Then Leil succeeded to the throne. He founded the city of Kaerleil
which still bears his name (Carlisle), but he was a weak and vacillating king whosetwenty-five year reign ended in ruin and civil-war.
His son Hudibras, (Run baladr bras in the Welsh), who came to the throne in ca 920 BC,
re-established peace in the realm and went on to rule Loegria for the next thirty-nine
years. A great builder, he founded the cities of Kaerreint (Canterbury), Kaerguenit(Winchester), and Paladur (Shaftesbury). He was succeeded by his son, Bladud, in ca 881
BC, who ruled the land for twenty years. During that time, he founded the city of
Kaerbadum (Bath), the hot springs of which were thought to cure leprosy. At his
commandment, necromancy, communicating with the dead, was practised throughout the
kingdom, and he was eventually killed in a misguided attempt to fly. At his death, Leir38

his son took the crown, and he was to enjoy a reign of sixty years, which lasted from ca
861-801 BC. He founded the city of Kaerleir (Leicester) and lost his kingdom when heattempted to divide it amongst his three daughters. Shakespeare tells the story in his
celebrated play, King Lear.
Leir's youngest daughter, Cordelia, inherited the crown on her father's death and ruled theland in peace for five years. She was then deposed by her sisters and committed suicidein prison. Marganus I (Morgan in the Welsh) then took the kingdom in the year 796 BC,
sharing the kingdom with his cousin Cunedagius (Kynedda). Marganus ruled the land
north of the Humber, and Cunedagius ruled the south. Marganus, during the fighting that
arose between them, was pursued into Wales by Cunedagius and slain at the place named
after him, Margam near present-day Port Talbot. Cunedagius then ruled the whole
kingdom for the next thirty-three years. He was succeeded in 761 BC by Rivallo(Rriallon), who reigned wisely and frugally. His reign was particularly remembered for arain of blood, a great swarm of flies and a plague that took a heavy toll of the population.
At his death in 743 BC, there followed the reigns of four kings of whom little is said savetheir names and their order of succession. And then, in the year 663 BC, Gorboduc(Gwrvyw in the Welsh) came to the throne. In old age he became senile, his dotage
giving rise to much quarrelling over the succession between his two sons, Ferrex andPorrex. In the event, Gorboduc was to become the last king of the royal line of Brutus toreign over the Britons.
Gorboduc's queen, Judon was caused much grief over her quarrelling sons. On learningthat Porrex had killed Ferrex, her favourite of the two, she became insane and later
murdered Porrex in his sleep by hacking him to pieces. (Other accounts tell how she wastied in a sack and thrown into the Thames for the murder of her son). The land was thenplunged into the political chaos of a two hundred year civil war. The outcome of the civil
war was decided by a final conflict between five kings altogether, and from it all, in ca
440 BC, emerged Pinner, the king of Loegria. He was later slain in a battle by his
successor but one, Dunvallo, in about the year 430 BC. Dunvallo's father, Cloten (Klydno
in the Welsh), who was the king of Cornwall, ruled for ten years and was finallysucceeded by his son, Dunvallo Molmutius (Dyfual moel myd). During a forty-year
reign, he codified the Molmutine Laws, a law-code which Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us
was still famed and revered in his own day, and which, surprisingly, still survives. (SeeProbert's Ancient Laws of Cambria. 1823). Crimes of violence were virtually unheard of
in his kingdom, such was the severity of punishment meted out to such criminals while hewas on the throne. Dunvallo's eldest son, Belinus (the Great), then ruled the kingdom
from ca 380-374 BC. He ruled Loegria, Cambria and Cornwall. His brother Brennius
held Northumbria and Albany, and eventually led the Celtic sack of Rome in ca 390 BC.
Belinus eventually defeated Brennius in battle, and so came to rule all Britain. Geoffrey
tells us that Belinus was a great road-builder, and that Billingsgate in London was built
by and named after him. In an eventful reign, Belinus subdued the then king of Denmark,exacting from him a great tribute.
He was succeeded by Gurguit (Gwrgant Varf Drwch), whose reign lasted from ca 374369 BC. The son and successor of Belinus, Gurguit was renowned as a man of peace andjustice. During Gurguit's reign, the king of Denmark withdrew the tribute that Belinus
had exacted of him, and Gurguit promptly invaded Denmark to assert his authority there.
It was during his return from Denmark that Gurguit is said to have intercepted the shipsof Partholan and his fellow exiles. He is then stated to have assigned to Partholan the39otherwise uninhabited land of Ireland. (This, however, leads us to a problem inchronology. A suggested solution to this is offered in a later chapter.) Gurguit diedpeacefully and he lies buried in the city of Caerleon-on-Usk. His son Guithelin (Kyhylyn)
then held the crown from ca 369-363 BC. Guithelin was a noted and benevolent ruler. He
married Marcia, a learned woman who codified the Marcian Laws, the Lex Martiana.
Alfred the Great was later to translate the code as the Mercian Laws, believing them tohave been named after the much later Saxon kingdom of Mercia.
Queen Marcia ruled Britain for about five years after Guithelin's death because of theirson's minority. But he, Sisillius (Saessyllt), came to the throne in ca 358 BC on her death,ruling for the next six years. His reign was followed by those of his sons Kinarius andDanius, and then Morvidus, his great nephew, inherited the crown. Morvidus (Morydd),
who ruled from ca 341-336 BC, was the illegitimate son of Danius and Tanguesteaia, but
he became king on his father's death. An otherwise heroic ruler, he was noted and feared
due to the merciless cruelty that he showed towards those whom he defeated in battle.
After one particular attempted invasion of his kingdom, Morvidus, against all the laws of
the Celtic Britons regarding warfare, personally put to death many prisoners of war.
'When he became so exhausted that he had to give up for a time, he ordered the remainder
to be skinned alive, and in this state he had them burnt'. During his reign, reports of amonstrous animal wreaking havoc in the west reached the king. (In Geoffrey of
Monmouth's original Latin, the creature is called a Belua.) With typical, if hasty, bravado
Morvidus fought the beast alone, but the monster killed him, and devoured his corpse 'as
if he had been a tiny fish.'Gorbonianus (Gwrviniaw) followed Morvidus in ca 336 BC. He was much renowned forhis goodness as a ruler, and was succeeded by Archgallo (Arthal) who reigned from ca
330 -326 BC. He was the very opposite of his elder brother Gorbonianus, and such was
his tyranny that he was eventually deposed by the nobility of the realm. His younger
brother, Elidurus, was elected king in his place. He was surnamed The Dutiful because of
the compassion that he showed towards his deposed elder brother. Elidurus exercised thiscompassion to the point of abdicating after about five years in favour of a now reformed
Archgallo, whose subsequent behaviour as king was a complete reversal of his former
reign. Archgallo died after about ten years, at which point Elidurus resumed the crown.
However, his reign was to be interrupted once again.
His two younger brothers, Ingenius and Peredurus, rebelled and incarcerated Elidurus in a
tower. Dividing the land between them, Ingenius ruled the south whilst Peredurus ruled
north of the Humber. Ingenius died seven years later, and Peredurus went on to reignover the whole island for a further three years, being known as a wise and beneficent
king. He died in ca 296 BC, and Elidurus came to the throne for a third time. At thispoint, the order of succession becomes rather complicated, with cousin succeedingcousin. Finally the succession seems to settle down to a father-son order, at least for the
next thirty-one reigns, the short length of the average reign (5-6 years) indicating politicalturmoil for that period of one hundred and seventy years or so, until the accession of Heli
(Beli Mawr in the Welsh) in about the year 113 BC. He ruled for forty years until 73 BC
when his son Lud became king. Lud rebuilt the city that Brutus had founded and had
named New Troy, and renamed it Kaerlud, the city of Lud, after his own name. The nameof the city was later corrupted to Kaerlundein, which the Romans took up as Londinium,
hence London. At his death, Lud was buried in an entrance to the city that still bears his
name, Ludgate. His youngest brother, Nennius (Nynnyaw), fought hand to hand with40

Julius Caesar on the latter's invasion of Britain in the year 55 BC. The Romans had been
trying to set up camp in the Thames estuary when the Britons fell upon them by surprise.
Although Nennius was forced away from Caesar by other soldiers, he did manage tocapture the emperor's sword. Escaping, Nennius died of his wounds fifteen days later andwas buried beside the northern entrance to Trinovantum (modern Bishopsgate in
London?). The sword that he took as spoils, and which he had named Yellow Death, wasburied with him. But the man who was actually king of the Britons when Caesar landed,
was Cassivelaunus (Kasswallawn) who reigned from ca 58-38 BC. Betrayed byAndrogeus, his brother Lud's eldest son, Cassivelaunus was eventually starved into
submission when the Romans laid siege to his fort.
He was succeeded by Tenvantius, known in other histories as Tasciovanus, who reigned
from ca 38-18 BC. And then he was followed by Cymbeline (Kynvelyn who reigned ca
18 BC-AD 12). Known to the Romans as Cunobelinus, he was the son and heir ofTenvantius. Cymbeline had received a Roman upbringing in the Imperial household, andon his succession to the British crown, he reigned for ten years. (His reign was.
immortalised in Shakespeare's play, Cymbeline.) The man who succeeded him was
Guiderius (Gwydr) who reigned from ca AD 12 - 43. On inheriting the crown, he
promptly refused toamp; pay tribute to Rome. The emperor Claudius, on his invasion of
Britain in the year AD 43, was attacked by Guiderius' forces at Portchester. During theattack, Guiderius was betrayed and killed. Arvirargus next took the crown reigning fromca AD 43-57. Taking command of the British forces on the death of his brother
Guiderius, Arvira emerged as victor from a major skirmish with Claudius' troops. He
eventually ruled Britain as the emperor's puppet-king. At his death, he was interred at
Gloucester. Marius (Mayric) came next, and ruled from ca AD 57-97. Inheriting thecrown from his father, Marius enjoyed friendly relations with Rome. During his reign, he
defeated and killed Soderic, king of the Picts, in a great battle. The present county ofWestmorland was so named in Marius' honour because of the battle, and Marius
accordingly had an inscribed stone set up in the county commemorating his victory.
Coilus, his son, then ruled. He had been raised and educated as a Roman. Coilus was torule his kingdom in peace and prosperity, being succeeded by his son Lucius. Taking up
the crown on his father Coilus' death, Lucius was to send to Rome for teachers of theChristian faith. He in turn passed on the crown to Geta, a son of the Roman Severus. He
was elected king of the Britons by the Roman Senate. He was eventually killed by his
half-brother Bassianus who reigned from ca AD 221-256. Like Geta, he was a son of
Severus, but by a British noblewoman. The Britons elected Bassianus king after he had
killed his half-brother. Carausius then took the crown. After raising a fleet of ships withthe blessing of the Roman Senate, Carausius invaded Britain. He compelled the Britons
to proclaim him king, and killed Bassianus in the ensuing battle. He was eventuallymurdered by the Roman legate, Allectus, and it was during Allectus' time that a Briton
once more held the throne.
Asclepiodotus (Alyssglapitwlws) reigned from ca AD 296-306. He had held the kingdomof Cornwall when he was elected overall king by the Britons. His election to the throne
an attempt by the Britons to break the tyranny of the Allectus. Under Allectus, Livius
Gallus held the city of London. In the ensuing siege, after he had killed Allectus outside
the city, Asclepiodotus promised the Romans that all the garrison would be spared if they
surrendered without further resistance. This was agreed to, although the Venedoti men of
Gwynedd in Wales decided to put the Romans to by beheading them all. The heads were41

thrown into the stream called Nantgallum in the British tongue after the name of Livius
Gallus. The later Saxons, still perpetuating the Roman leader's name, knew it as
Galabroc, and today this name has been further corrupted to Waibrook. As an aside, inthe 1860s a large number of skulls were excavated from the bed of the Waibrook before it
was built over, being the remnants no doubt of this massacre. It was during the reign ofAsclepiodotus that the Diocletian Persecution began in AD 303.
Asclepiodotus was finally defeated and killed by the king whose name has been
immortalised in the nursery rhyme, Coel (Old King Cole), who reigned from ca AD 306309. Known in other histories as Coel Hen Godhebog, Coel founded the city ofColchester that still bears his name (Kaercolim). His daughter, Helen, was married toConstantius, a Roman Senator, who was sent to Britain as legate. He became king on
Coel's death. He in turn was succeeded by his son Constantine (I), who ruled Britain fromca AD 312-37. He went on to become the famous emperor of Rome who legalised theChristian religion. Octavius (Eydaf) took the crown in Constantine's absence at Rome,ruling during the periods of ca AD 330-335 and 335-348. He revolted whilst Constantine
was in Rome, and assumed the British crown. In AD 348, he was succeeded by
Maximianus (Maxen Wledic), the nephew of Coel, who held the crown by virtue of thatdescent. He eventually left Britain to rule in Gaul and Germany, making Caradocus(Kradawc) king of the Britons in his stead in about the year AD 362. He was laterassassinated in Rome (AD 375) by one of the friends of his successor but one, Gracianus.
Dionotus (unnamed in the Welsh chronicle) of the kingdom of Cornwall took the crownof Britain and ruled from ca AD 375-389. Then Gracianus reigned from ca AD 389-402.
He was originally sent to Britain by Maximianus to fight off an invasion of the Picts andHuns. However, upon successfully repelling the invaders he assumed the crown andordered the murder of Maximianus. He was later himself to suffer death at the hands ofan assassin.
Constanine (II) (Kystennin) then ruled from ca AD 402 -420, having invaded Britain at
the request of Guithelinus, the Archbishop of London, and was crowned king at
Silchester. He was murdered by an unknown Pict. He was then succeeded by Constans(Konstant Vynarch), ca AD 420-437, Constantine II's eldest son, who had tried to avoid
the perils of the crown by becoming a monk at Winchester. He was forcibly removed
from the monastery and crowned by Vortigern who, however, later ordered his murder.
Vortigern himself (Gwrtheyrn Gwrthenav) ruled for two periods, ca AD 437-455 and460-480. It was Vortigern who invited the Saxon adventurers, Hengist and Horsa, toBritain to help fight the Picts. At this point, his son Vortimer took over the kingdom,
expelling the Saxons after four notable battles, one of them being the battle of Aylesford
in Kent where his brother Katigern was slain. Vortimer was eventually poisoned on theorders of his father's new wife, the daughter of Hengist, and Vortigern once again
resumed the crown. After a disastrous reign during which the Britons began to lose theirland irretrievably to the Saxons, Vortigern was burned alive in a tower by Aurelius
Ambrosius. This king (Emrys Wledic in the Welsh) reigned from ca AD 480-501.
Surnamed Ainbrosius, he was too young at the death of Constans in AD 437 to take up
the crown. He was therefore smuggled abroad, and was raised in the household of king
Budicius of Britanny. Eventually declared king of Britain, Ambrosius killed Vortigern
and forced the Saxons to retreat to Albany (Scotland), at the same time capturing andexecuting Hengist at Kaerconan, present-day Conisborough. He was eventually poisonedby Eoppa the Saxon on the orders of Paschent, the youngest son of Vortigern.
42Aurelius Ambrosius was succeeded in ca AD 501 by his brother, Uther Pendragon.
Named Uther at birth, he was king of the Silures. He assumed the surname pen-Dragon(son of the dragon) after the appearance of a dragon-like comet in the sky. Like his
brother Aurelius, he had been smuggled abroad on the murder of Constans. Once king,however, he consorted adulterously with Ygerna (Eigr) the wife of Gorlois, duke ofCornwall. Gorlois was killed by Uther Pendragon's soldiers at Dimiioc (Tinblot in the
Welsh chronicle) as Uther Pendragon was seducing Ygerna. But of their union was bornthe most famous of the British kings, Arthur, who reigned over the Britons from ca AD
521-542. Arthur succeeded his father as. king at only fifteen years of age. His sister Anna
married Budicius II of Britanny. The narrative is somewhat confused,. but she seems laterto have married Loth of Lodonesia who was later to become king of Norway.
At his death, Arthur passed the crown to Constantine (III), the son of the 'duke' ofCornwall. Constantine, whose reign lasted four years, crushed a revolt of the Saxons, but
was later struck down 'by God's vengeance'. He was succeeded in AD 546 by his nephew,
Aurelius Conanus (Kynan Wledic in the Welsh), who, however, only came to the throne
by imprisoning his unnamed uncle, the son of Constantine, the true heir. His reign was
followed in ca 549 very briefly by that of Vortiporius, who repelled an invasion from
Germany. His subsequent fate is unrecorded, although he can have reigned for only ayear or less. But he was followed by Malgo, whose reign lasted from ca AD 550-555.
According to a speech recorded for us by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Malgo had two sons,Ennianus and Run, neither of whom succeeded him. Malgo is elsewhere known as
Maelgwn Gwynedd, the king of Gwynedd who died from the Yellow Plague that was
ravaging Europe during the 550s. He was succeeded by Keredic, whose origin is
unrecorded, who retired into Wales after a battle, and whose reign was followed by thoseof three unnamed 'tyrants'.
Then, shortly after the year AD 600, came Cadvan. Known in the Welsh chronicles as
Cadfan ab lago, king of Gwynedd, he was of north Welsh descent. He began as king of
the Venedoti (men of Gwynedd) and succeeded to the kingship of all the Britons byengaging in battle Ethelfrith, the Saxon king of Northumbria, who, with Ethelbert ofKent, carried out the massacre of the British monks at Bangor in AD 604. Ethelfrith andCadvan divided the country between them, Cadvan ruling over the southern half. His
reign lasted until ca AD 625. He married a Saxon noblewoman of the Gewissae. He wasfollowed by Cadwallo who died of old age in the year AD 633. But he was succeeded by
Cadwallader (Kydwaladr vendigaid) whose reign was divided into two periods from ca
AD 633-643 and 654-664. Twelve years after he inherited the crown, Cadwallader was
struck down with an unspecified illness, and during his incapacity the Britons fell towarring amongst themselves. Due to the civil war and due no doubt to the consequent
neglect and destruction of the crops, the country was ravaged by a long-rememberedfamine that was followed by the plague. For safety's sake, Cadwallader sought refuge on
the continent, entering Brittany where he was received with much kindness by king Alan
II. Eleven years later, Alan persuaded Cadwallader to return to Britain and resume hisreign. His stay in Brittany would thus have fallen between the years AD 643-654. He wasthen followed by Yvor, who, with his cousin Yni, ruled over the remaining Britons who
had finally been driven into Wales. It was, indeed, during Yvor's reign that the British
came to be known disparagingly as the Welsh, from an ancient Saxon word meaning abarbaric foreigner. Between them, Yvor and Yni became a persistent nuisance to the
Saxons, harassing them for many years, ...but little good did it do them!
43And that, in a nutshell, is what the early chronicles tell us about the kings of the Britons.
The chronicles themselves, of course, tell a much fuller story, but there is little
extraordinary in any of it. Indeed, as we saw in the previous chapter, there is much of it
that can be historically verified. So we are presented with the simple question as to why a
two thousand year recorded history has been so pointedly ignored by modern scholars.
Why is it that the history of Britain is an entirely blank page before the year 55 BC in any
conventional modern history book when such an easily accessible and informative record
is at hand? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the Britons traced their ancestry
in these pre-Christian records back to patriarchs that are known to us from the Genesis
record but of whom the Britons should have known nothing in their pre-Christian culture
if what the modernists have always told us was true? This genealogy is laid out inAppendix 7 of this present book. But this is only part of the great matter that is omitted
from modern reckoning and of which the public is unaware. We shall see that there ismuch else besides regarding the histories and genealogies of other European peoples thatis also ignored but which likewise verifies the Genesis account.

Chapter 6
The Descent of the Anglo-Saxon Kings
It would not be difficult to go out and buy literally hundreds of books that deal with thehistory of the Saxons in England. It is a fascinating and popular subject, and the market
abounds with books ranging from the seriously academic to 'coffee-table' books filledwith pictures of Anglo-Saxon weaponry and other relics. Virtually all the popular works
on the subject begin with the middle of the 5th century AD when the Saxons began tomigrate to this country from their continental homes. Some books may even refer briefly
to those continental homes in order to demonstrate to the reader that the Anglo-Saxons
did not simply materialise but actually came from somewhere real. But that is virtually
the only mention that is given to the pre-migration history of the Saxons. All that came
before, we are left to assume, is lost in the mists of antiquity, and the pre-migration
history of the Saxons is simply left as a blank page. Now why should this be? Is it
because the Saxons themselves left no record of what came before? Or, as in the case of
the early Britons, is it because what the Saxons did have to say about their own past, runs
counter to the modernist creed?

44

45

46

To be fair, the Saxons do not seem to have brought over with them a detailed chronicled
history of their nation like that possessed by the Britons or, indeed, the Irish Celts which
we shall examine later. That is not to say that none existed, of course just that none has
survived to the present day from that pre-emigration period. What has survived, however,is a detailed genealogy of the pre-migration, and hence pre-Christian, kings of the
Saxons, and this enables us to take Saxon history back, generation by generation, to theearliest years after the Flood. But this is no new discovery. It was everyday knowledge tothe historians of previous centuries. On Thursday 6th July 1600, for example, a certain
Elizabethan tourist, Baron Waldstein, visited London's Lambeth Palace. His journal tells
us that in one of the rooms there he saw:'...a splendid genealogy of all the Kings of England, and anothergenealogy, a historical one, which covers the whole of time and is traced
down from the Beginning of the World.' (1)Later, arriving at Richmond Palace on 28th July, he saw in the library there:47

'... beautifully set out on parchment, a genealogy of the kings of England
which goes back to Adam.' (2)Such genealogies were immensely popular, and as fascinating to the general public asthey were to historians and other scholars. As tables of descent, they provided acontinuous record of human history from the Creation, through the post-Flood era, down
to modern times. But it was these very attributes that made these records unpalatable tocertain scholars who delighted to call themselves Rationalists, and who sought from the18th century onwards to replace such history with certain anti-biblical notions of theirown. (3) Such was their success in this, that today hardly a scholar can be found who
would dare to base his history on the truth and reliability of these records. So what is in
the early Saxon records that renders them so unpalatable to modernist taste, but whichmight interest us in our present enquiry?
The pre-migration records that have come down to us are in the form of genealogies andking-lists, and I have assembled the table of descent which opens this chapter from each
type. That table shows the (sometimes simplified) descent of six of the Anglo-Saxon
royal houses of England. The houses are those of Wessex (Occidentalium Saxonum); of
Lindsey (Lindis fearna); of Kent (Cantwariorum); of Mercia (Merciorum); of
Northumbria (Northa hymbrorum); and of East Anglia (Estanglorum). But it is thetreatment that these records have received from the hands of modernist scholars that is as
fascinating, and as telling, as the records themselves, and we shall here consider the veilof confusion and obscurity that modern scholarship has thrown over them.
We are commonly asked to believe that these six royal families concocted these lists, andthat the lists are thus rendered untrustworthy and false. We are asked to accept that, say,the House of Kent concocted a list of ancestral names that just happens to coincide in its
earlier portions with that of, say, the House of Northumbria, in spite of the fact that thetwo kingdoms lay hundreds of miles apart, spoke different dialects and whose people
hardly ever wandered beyond their own borders unless it was to fight. And, moreover,that this happened not between just two of the royal houses, but all six! To put it mildly,that is a lot to ask, and we shall take this opportunity to examine these records, whoseearlier portions can be dated back to well before the dawning of the Christian era
amongst the Saxons, so that they may speak for themselves.
During the summers of 1938 and 1939, there came to light one of the greatest
archaeological discoveries of the century. It was the Sutton Hoo burial ship of one of thegreat kings of East Anglia. It is commonly believed to be that of Raedwald (or Redwald)
who became Bretwalda in the year AD 616 (his name appears on the genealogy). The
royal title of Bretwalda appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (MS. C - British Museum
Cotton MS. Tiberius. B. i.) as Bretenanwealda, and means literally the one ruler ofBritain. In other words, Raedwald was the supreme king to whom all the other provincial
kings owed obeisance. Now Bede (4) tells us that Raedwald was born of the Wuffingas,
as were all the East Anglian kings, and it is this title that tells us something of theseriousness with which the Anglo-Saxons kept their pedigrees.
Indeed, such was the veneration shown to ancestors in general that some of thoseancestors who founded dynasties or who otherwise achieved distinction, were later
worshipped as gods. But even if a certain ancestor was not actually deified, if he simply48

founded a branch from the main stock, then that branch ever after bore his name. And one
such example is Raedwald's ancestor Wuffa.
Now Wuffa was not the first king of East Anglia. That honour normally goes to his father
Wehh, or Wehha, who reigned in the early 6th century, and for lack of record we are left
to wonder what otherwise distinguished Wuffa from his father for him to be regarded
with such distinction that all his descendants named themselves after him rather than after
his father, who was, after all, the very founder of the royal line of the East Anglian kings.
Wuffa, of course, was not the only Saxon to found a clan. Sceldwea, otherwise known as
Scyld (pronounced 'shield') founded the Scyldingas. Geat, (pronounced 'geet' or likewisefounded the Geatingas.0 Beowulf of epic fame (see chapter 12) was a Geating, and Geathimself was inevitably given a place in the Saxons' ancestral pantheon. Nennius tells usthat he was one of the false gods whom the pagan Saxons worshipped, and we read thesame in Assher and other sources. (5)Most of the characters in the later part of the genealogy are well known to us. Ethelbert,
for example, is famous as the king of Kent when Augustine landed here in AD 597 with
instructions to bring the English under the dominion of the papacy. His (Ethelbert's)
sister, Ricula, married into the East Saxon dynasty in the year AD 580 or thereabouts (seeAppendix 8), thus uniting two very powerful royal dynasties. Cerdic of Wessex, reigned
from AD 519. But of great interest to us is one of the pre-migration ancestors of Cerdic,
namely Gewis, who illustrates even more powerfully the veneration for ancestral names
and the purity of pedigree that was considered so important to the early Saxon settlers ofBritain.
Gewis founded the clan of the Gewissae who later settled in the west of England, and in
the charters that have survived, the kings of Wessex are each styled Rex Gewissorum.
However, when Alfred of Wessex translated into Old English Bede's Historia
Ecclesiasticae, he suppressed the title Rex Gewissorum, and his reason for doing this wasundoubtedly the blatantly pagan connotations of the name. Alfred himself, as asupposedly good and Christian king, wanted no such association of his name with that ofGewis. It would have had the same uncomfortable sound as styling himself king of thechildren of Woden, and this would have been anathema both to himself and to his
Christian clerical ministers. And yet, and here we come to the significant point, in his
own authorised biography (i.e. Asser's Life of Alfred), which Alfred himself undoubtedly
oversaw with great care, the name of Gewis is allowed to stand proud as one of Alfred's
ancestors! Alfred, whilst willing enough to drop for himself the hitherto royal but pagan
title of Rex Gewissorum, was clearly not prepared to expunge the name of Gewis fromthe royal line, simply because the royal genealogies were themselves sacrosanct andinviolable. And this should be carefully considered before any further assurance is giventhat these royal genealogies were freely tampered with, an allegation that has been madeand repeated in countless modernist works on the subject.
But it is not only alleged that these genealogies were tampered with. It is just as often
stated that they were freely invented, the motive for this extraordinary act supposedly
being to enhance the legal credibility of any upstart king's otherwise illegal claim to thecrown. And this has led on more than one occasion to a most questionable state of affairs.
Consider, for example, the case of Alfred's father, Aethelwulf, and the treatment that has
49been extended to his genealogy by certain scholars who should, perhaps, have known
better.
Magoun (6) treats the genealogy of Aethelwulf, which appears in Asser's Life of Alfred,in the following way. Asser gives the line from Woden back to Noah exactly as it appears
in our table, with the exception that the name Freawine is omitted. This is all well andgood, because such gaps do occur and must be expected. However, Asser goes on torecite the ancestors of Noah back to Adam, and the names he gives (in ascending order)
are exactly the same as those that appear in descending order in Genesis 5, the book of
the Generations of Adam. Now, these same names are given exactly (except that they
appear in ascending order) in Luke 3:36-38, and Magoun tries to make a case for arguingthat Asser borrowed his names not from Genesis 5, but from Luke. We look in vain forany solid reason why Magoun should favour Luke as the source rather than Genesis,
other than the fact that Luke, like Asser, lists his names in ascending order. And for wantof a good reason, we are left merely with Magoun's somewhat self-assured statement, '...I
am confident that...
But now we arrive at exactly why it is that Magoun wishes to assign a Lucan origin to thenames rather than an origin in Genesis. It is this:'By virtue of this association (what association?) with Luke's genealogy ofJesus the total effect is to make Aethelwulf by accident or design, but inany case in a pointed way, a collateral relative of Our Lord.'
In other words, Magoun is alleging that this genealogy is yet another 'pious fraud'concocted by Christian monks who sought to enhance Aethelwulf's standing amongst his
gullible subjects by somehow likening or relating him to Christ. But does the allegation
stand up to the evidence? No! After Noah, Asser's list bears no resemblance whatever tothat of Luke, and if Magoun is suggesting that by virtue of Aethelwulf's descent from
Noah, Aethelwulf is thus made a collateral relative of Our Lord, then Magoun has clearly
not considered the fact that as all men are descended from Noah, then the royal
Aethelwulf would have been no better than the common man! A regal contradiction ifever there was one. Surely, if, as Magoun suggests, Aethelwulf had truly wished to be
seen as a blood-relative of Christ, then he would have concocted a list that went back to
the royal house of David, from whom Jesus was descended through His mother. But
nothing of the kind is offered. Rather, Aethelwulf's line is traced through that of kings
who were notorious in the early annals for their paganism, and Magoun's charge, so often
quoted and so revered in modernist circles, falls flat on its proverbial face. The genealogy
runs counter to all that is alleged against it.
Yet that is not the end of the folly, for Keynes and Lapidge propose the most astonishingnotion of all, and it is one which draws our attention to the name of Sceaf on our
genealogy, (pronounced 'sheaf' or 'shaif'). Making the most of the fact that Asser
allegedly misspelt Sceaf's name as Seth in the royal genealogy, they blandly inform theirreaders that:'Towards the end of the genealogy, Asser's "Seth", son of Noah,corresponds to Sem (i.e. Shem) of Luke iii...' (7)50In other words, Keynes and Lapidge are attempting the same thing as Magoun, (and they
were aware of Magoun's paper for they cite it), by trying to tie in the Saxon genealogies
with those of the New Testament, namely the gospel of Luke, so that the wearisome
charge of 'pious fraud' could again be made. But they have merely succeeded in rendering
their own argument very doubtful, for in the attempt to link Asser's list with that of Luke,they are compelled to conclude that in this case the Saxons were fraudulently trying topass themselves off as Semites! Now, there are admittedly phases of Germanic history
that are vague. But to suggest that there ever was a time when the Germanic races of all
people wished to propagate the view that they were Semitic is truly extraordinary. AntiSemitism has been an inherent feature of Germanic cuhure since time immemorial (it wasby no means the invention of the Nazis), and to accept such a proposal we would have to
fly in the face of all that we know about Saxon and Germanic culture. We would,
moreover, have to ignore the fact that there exists not the slightest etymological link
between the names of Seth and Shem. But was Asser's alleged misspelling of Seth for
Sceaf truly an error on Asser's part? Or did Asser know something that modernist
scholars have missed?
The question, surprisingly enough, is answered in part by one of the more skepticalinvestigators of modem times, Sisam, who, when dealing with the identities of Seth andSceaf, is forced to admit that:'Iafeth [i.e. Japheth] was usually regarded as the ancestor of the European
peoples, and the possibility that the last four letters of his name havesomething to do with the error Seth cannot be excluded.' (8)To further the identity of Asser's Seth with the Sceaf of other chronicles, we have thetestimony of Florence of Worcester, who wrote in AD 1118 that, 'Seth Saxonice Sceaf,'-and in another of his manuscripts (9) the name of Sceaf--is written over an erasure of thename Seth by a later scribe. 'Which shows that confusion over the names had arisen by
the first half of the 12th century at the very latest, and needed to be sorted out.' (10)But after his eminently sensible observation, Sisam then went on to create problems of
his own, for having written an extremely involved and in-depth study of the Anglo-Saxon
royal genealogies, when it came to the lists of the various biblical patriarchs whosenames appear in the earliest parts of those same pedigrees, he dismissed them thus:'The Biblical names show the artificial character of this lengthened
pedigree and the crudeness of the connexions lacked muster. Otherwise
they need not detain us.' (11)This rather large assumption, however, merely led him into further difficulties, for he wasthen led to dismiss with equal abruptness everything else that he had previously writtenconcerning the lists of even non-biblical names!:'Beyond Cerdic, all is fiction or error, and if the names themselves are old,they were not attached to the ancestry of the West Saxon kings by old
tradition.' (12)51

We could ask what they were attached by if not by old tradition, although it is more to
our purpose to consider that Sisam recognised that one part of the Saxon genealogy
depends very much upon the other. If one section collapses, then so do the others.
However, there are more points to consider concerning the all-important identity ofSceaf. Sisam has already pointed out that Japheth was considered by the Saxons to be thefounder of the European nations. Significantly perhaps, he does not specify whether thiswas exclusively the belief of the later Christianized Saxons, or if it was shared by theirpagan forebears. However, the Saxons themselves had something to say concerning
Sceaf, and it was this:Se Sceaf waes Noes sunu and he waes innan theare earce geboren. i.e.
'This Sceaf was Noah's son, and he was born in the Ark.' (13 )(Mytranslation)
Clearly, the early Saxons identified Sceaf as a son of Noah, and not a distant descendantof his, and it is equally clear that Japheth is here being referred to. But, and here is thepoint of greatest significance, was Japheth known as Sceaf to the later Christianised
Saxons? The answer is no! The later Christianised Saxons always referred to Japheth as
Japheth. No later Saxon scholar knew him as Sceaf, as is witnessed in the following
extract from Aelfric of Eynsham's 10th century work, On The Beginning of Creation:'...ac ic wille gehealden the aenne and thine wif and thine thrie suna Sem
Cetam and Jafeth.' '...and I will save thee alone and thy wife and thy threesons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.' (My translation)
This rendering of Japheth's name, Iafeth, is absolutely typical of Christianised Saxon
usage, for the simple reason that it is the Latin-cum-Hebrew rendering that appears in the
Vulgate and Old Latin versions of the Bible, which were the only versions known to theChristianised Saxons and copied by them. Moreover, we have to consider the remark
connected with the older form of Sceaf, namely how Sceaf was not only Noah's son, butthat he was born in the Ark. Now, anyone who was familiar with the Genesis account,and the book of Genesis was very much the favourite book of the Christianised Saxons,(14) would have known that Japheth helped to build the Ark. He could not have beenborn in it. Which brings us to the following question, namely:
If it really had been a fact that certain unscrupulous Christian monks had fraudulently
invented the pre-migration Saxon genealogies, as modernists so often insist, and had it
really been in their own and their present king's interests to prove that Saxon kings wereroyally descended from Japheth, then is it at all conceivable that they would have used aform of Japheth's name that was utterly unfamiliar to those very readers whom they
hoped to convince? And surely, no educated monk would have made such a silly error
over Japheth being both in the Ark when every one of his readers would have known that
Japheth, far from being born in the Ark, had helped to build it! Saxon scholars were every
bit as contentious as are the scholars of any age, and there were plenty of rival schools
even in those days who were more than willing to bring down a scholar or two if they
made a faux pas of this magnitude. But then, we are not here considering merely theallegedly nefarious activities of just one Christian monk, for in an altogether separate
source we read:52

Beowi Sceafing, id estfihius Noe, se waes geboren on thaere Earce Noes.
i.e. 'Beaw [alias Bedwig] the son of Sceaf that is the son of Noah, who
was born on Noah's Ark.' (15) (My translation)
The pre-migration ancestral list of the Anglo-Saxon kings would be an astonishing record
even if it existed on its own. But in the next chapter we shall be considering corroborative
sources from other countries altogether, which confirm the earliest parts of the Saxon
genealogies in great and explicit detail. It will thus become increasingly obvious that, inspite of all modernist protests to the contrary, we are not dealing here with any attempted
fraud or piece of Christian fiction. What we are dealing with is something with which weare already familiar from the chronicles of the early Britons, namely, another historicalaccount that is quite independent of the Genesis record, but which it nevertheless verifies
to a considerable degree.
Notes
1. Groos, T.W., The Diary of Baron Waldstein, Thames & Hudson. London. p. 61.
2. Groos, p. 169.
3. For an invaluable introduction to this subject, see Bowden's Rise of the Evolution
Fraud, pp. 7-17. (See Bibliography).
4. Bede,. p. 130. See Bibliography.
5. .. flu Geta, quiJitit, ut aiunt, fihius Dei: non ipse est Deus deorum...sed unus est ab
idolis eorum, quod ipsi colebant. (Nennius §31); (i.e. 'the son of Geat), who was, theysay, the son of God. But he was not the God of gods...but one of their idols whom theyworshipped.' (My translation). Morris's translation of this sentence reads a little oddly-'...son of Geta, who said they were son of God...(sic!)' (Morris, p. 26. See Bibliography).
6. Magoun, (pp. 249-50. See Bibliography).
7. Keynes and Lapidge, (p. 229. See Bibliography).
8. ibid., p. 316. See Bibliography.
9. Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS XCII (Parker Library).
10. Sisam, p. 317. (See Bibliography).
11.ibid., p. 320.
12.ibid., p. 322.
13. Reliq. Antiq., p. 173. See Bibliography.
14. It was, for example, the sole subject of the illiterate Caedmon's songs and poetry. See
Bede p. 252.
53

15. MS. Cotton, Otho. B. XI., cit. Magoun p. 249.

Chapter 7
The Descent of the Danish and Norwegian Kings
In the previous chapter, we took note of the genealogies of six Anglo-Saxon royal houses
that traced their descent from Woden. Moreover, we noted that the lineage of Woden
himself had also been preserved, and that this was traced back to Noah and Japheth,
Japheth being known to the pagan Saxons as Sceaf. (1) We shall expand on this lineage
in this chapter by noting the recorded descent of the pagan Danish and Norwegian kings.
The royal ancestral list of Denmark and Norway is set out in the table that opens thischapter, which contains also five other ancestral lists. The source for each list is given
beneath the table, but it will be noticed that three of the lists are of Anglo-Saxon origin,
one early British, one Danish and the other Icelandic, i.e. six lists from four nations.
As we examine and compare the lists, we are struck by the astonishing points ofsimilarity, and yet obvious differences, between them. Each ancestral list contains gaps,
but never the same series of gaps, and each of their names is listed in at least one other ofthe lists (with the exceptions of Freawine and Fodepald). Moreover, we should also notethat the names always appear in exactly the same sequence. There is neither confusion
nor discrepancy over the chronological order of each successive generation. But one
thing that these lists clearly are not, and that is mere copies of the same (allegedly
fraudulent) Christian source.

54

55

It may be argued with conviction that Asser's list, for example, is merely a Latinised
version of that which appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, even though Asser includes
two patriarchs that the Chronicle omits. But that cannot be argued for Ethelweard's list,
since that omits no less than seven important patriarchal names. Moreover, one of thoseomissions concerns the name of Noah, so it cannot be argued that Ethelweard's sourcedocument was a pious forgery, for surely the object of such forgery would be to include
biblical names, and Ethelweard himself had the integrity not to add Noah's name inconformity with other lists and traditions of which he was undoubtedly aware. Unless, ofcourse, modernism is prepared to accept that Sceaf did rank as the name of the biblicalpatriarch, Japheth, amongst the pagan peoples of Europe. But that would only demolishthe case that modernism has built up so carefully over the years, for what knowledge
could pagan Saxons et al have had of supposedly non-existent biblical characters underthe modernist scheme of things?
Exactly the same goes for the Edda list. That too omits the name of Noah, yet accurately
passes down the names of most of the other patriarchs, Sceaf or Seskef included. Further56

to which is the consideration that the Edda list is an Icelandic, as opposed to English or
Danish, record of patriarchal descent. Allowing for obvious linguistic variations,however, each name is recognisably that of a patriarch whose name also appears in thelists of Denmark and England. The third list that omits the name of Noah, as well as other
patriarchs, is that preserved in Nennius, and we shall consider this shortly for what it tells
us concerning the age of his source-material.
The very diversity of the nations from which these lists emerge argues powerfully against
the charge of invention, for it is safe to assume that if these various peoples were
inventive enough to forge the records of their own descent, as we are assured has
occurred, then they were surely inventive enough to make up their own stories and nothave to copy those of other, rival, nations that were in any case difficult to get to. The
various poems, sagas and fictions that have come down to us from these countries show
diversity enough, and reveal in that diversity their particular national biases. That is only
to be expected. But these lists, these ancestral pedigrees, show no such diversity, savethat of linguistic variation and genealogical gaps, which again are only to be expected.
And if it is to be argued that these lists are virtually identical because the Norse peoples
shared a common heritage, then that only argues more forcefully against their invention
and for the extreme antiquity of the material contained within them, for that would haveto go back to the times before these nations diversified and went their separate ways, andthat point in history would long pre-date the coming of the Christian faith.
It is a sobering thought that under any other circumstances, the historicity of thesecommon patriarchs would be accepted unreservedly on the basis of such evidence.
Indeed, they would normally be accepted on much less evidence. And yet in this case,and over each one of these lists, the cry is invariably sent up of forgery, fraud andinvention, which in itself may tell us more about the real historicity of these documents
than a thousand learned works on the subject. For example, Keynes's and Lapidge's
assertion that the Seth in Asser's list is synonymous with the Shem of Luke's gospel (andtherefore the Sceaf of all the other lists--see previous chapter) becomes laughable when
seen in the context of these other lists, where it is revealed that if that is truly the case,then the Danes, Saxons and Icelanders must all have been claiming a Semitic descent forthemselves. For if that charge is good enough to lay against the Saxons, it is also goodenough to lay against the Danes and Icelanders, and few scholars, I think, would want torisk their reputations on that assertion!
But we should note that when charges similar to those made by Magoun, Keynes andLapidge et al, are set out before the reader, they are invariably made in isolation withlittle or no explanatory evidence to support them. Speculation is the sole argument, and it
is left merely for the uninformed reader to conclude, after a sometimes tortuous exercise
in word-play, that such tables of descent must be mythical, and that no serious scholar or
intelligent layman would accept these records (or the book of Genesis which they
corroborate) as serious history.
But what evidence is there for the true age of the material contained in these records? For
if that material, demonstrably rather than suspiciously, dates from after the time when the
Saxons, (and now the Danes and Icelanders), were converted to Christianity, then it
would admittedly be difficult to refute the modernist charge of Christian compilation andfraudulent use. So we will here note certain items of external and internal evidence57

concerning these Saxon, Icelandic and Danish patriarchs that will indicate the definitely
pre-Christian origin of these ancestral lists.
We will begin our considerations with the most fragmented of the lists, that of Nennius. It
is given in chapter 31 of Nennius' Historia Brittonum, and is a fragment from a now lost
record known to scholars as the Kentish Chronicle. It is a near-contemporary account of
the arrival of Hengist on the Isle of Thanet, and it notes the decidedly pagan ancestry thatthe newly-arrived Saxons claimed for themselves. But the date of this document is themost crucial point, for the landing of Hengist took place in the very middle of the 5th
century, and as Morris says:'There is no other sign that the text owed anything to English records; andthe British knowledge of Kent cannot have lasted long beyond the 6th
century, if so long.' (2)In other words, we can be certain that at least the Woden Geat line was in place amongst
the Saxons by the mid-5th century at the very latest, long before the Christianisation of
the Saxons. In fact, we would know from this that the ancestral list would itself date frommuch earlier times. (3) The list itself, as preserved in Nennius, displays certain internal
evidences of a more extreme antiquity. For example, there is the curious appearance ofthe name Fodepald in Nennius' original Latin list, which Morris translates into English as
Folcwald. (4) We meet with a curious corruption of this name in Henry of Huntingdon
where he renders the name Flocwald. (5) All of which more than strongly hints at anancient source that by Nennius' day was rendered illegible in places by damage and time.
(Folcwald does not appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. But it does appear in the Saxon
epic poem Widsith [1. 27: 'Finn Folcwalding'], and in the poem Beowulf [1. 1089]).
Of equal significance is the unabashed way in which it is so early stated in Nennius'
source that the Saxons worshipped Geat as a deified ancestor. It came across to the
British annalist who originally recorded the information as a shocking fact, and it clearly
horrified him. Indeed, as far as the Britons were concerned, it characterised the Saxons
even more than their rapacity and violence, for it was one of the first facts about the
Saxons of which the early Britons, who were certainly Christian long before the mid-5th
century, became aware. Thus it is clear that such idolatrous practices are not the
manufactured accusations of later Christian writers. It is equally clear that the Saxons
themselves would have revered their ancestral lists just as much as the ancestors whosenames were enshrined therein, making tampering and falsifying a most unlikely event,and certainly not one that would be knowingly tolerated by the Saxons.
Which brings us to the Icelandic list. There we encounter a much fuller pedigree thatcarries the lineage of Othin (i.e. Odin or Woden) back to Seskef. The name Seskef isitself merely a variant of the Saxon Sceaf, who we noticed in the previous chapter as thebiblical Japheth. But notice that the Icelandic list does not go back to Noah, an omissionthat places it right outside the pale of 'pious' forgeries. Iceland was first colonised by
Norwegian Vikings in the 870s, and it cannot be pretended by any stretch of theimagination that either the Norwegian or Danish Vikings were Christian by this time. As
in the case of the Saxon Sceaf, the Icelandic Seskef is a form of Japheth's name thatwould not have been used by any Christian forger who wished to falsify the records. For
the Christian Icelanders, like the Christian Saxons, would have known Japheth under the58

Latin-cum-Hebrew form of his name, Iafeth, and not under the more ancient form thatappears in the ancestral lists.
But the Icelandic list is practically identical to that of Norway and Denmark, and it isinteresting to examine some of the characters who would have owned this list as theirown ancestral tree. For example, just before the Norwegian settlement of Iceland in the870s there lived one famous Viking who went by the name of Ragnar Lothbrok, known
affectionately amongst his torture victims as 'Hairy Breeches'. His son, Ivor the Boneless(the Ingware of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles) committed the pagan Rite of the Bloodeagle upon the living bodies of kings Aelle of Northumbria and Edmund of East Anglia.
(6) This was a sacrificial rite to Odin, and it involved cutting out the lungs of a living
man and laying them out on his shoulders, so that they resembled the outspread wings ofan eagle. And it was such men as these who counted it an inestimable honour to be able
to trace their descent from such patriarchs as Odin (Woden), Geat, Seskef and, in the caseof the Norwegians and Danes, Noa. No friends of Christians these, and it is impossible tobelieve that they would have looked on as anyone, Christian or pagan, tampered with thesacred lists in which were enshrined the very ancestral gods of the nation, gods to whom
even kings were sacrificed. The allegation is easy enough to make, but passing difficult torealise from a purely historical perspective.
It is simply impossible to imagine that any form of tampering with the royal lists would
have been permitted in such an age and amongst such a people as these. And when we
consider the purity and strictness with which these records were kept amongst suchdiverse languages and cultures, and the almost non-existent corruption of the names overthe centuries, then such imaginings seem even more detached from reality. Indeed, it
must stand as a lasting tribute to the scholars who were entrusted with the keeping of theancient lists that those lists remained so pure and uncorrupted. They employed certain
ingenious methods, of course, for preventing interference and damage to the lists, and oneof these methods is demonstrated in Appendix 8, which deals with the descent of the East
Saxon kings. But we shall see in the following chapter how the records of another race
altogether were cherished and protected from age and interference, and how those same
records added their own pagan but independent testimony to the historical reliability ofthe book of Genesis.
Notes
1. The earliest instance in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of Woden's lineage (back to Geat)
appears under the year 547 (Parker Chronicle). An older instance by about a century
occurs in Nennius. See below. The Parker list and Nennius list differ in several points ofdetail, so it cannot be pretended that the later Parker list is merely a copy of Nennius.
2. Morris, p. 4.
3. The list could hardly have been the ad lib invention of Hengist and his men as theylanded. It was clearly a long-established and important part of their historical tradition
that they brought with them from the continent, making it already ancient by the mid-fifth
century.
4. Morris, p. 26.
59

5. Henry of Huntingdon, p. 39. See Bibliography. We see an interestingly similarcorruption in William of Malmesbury, (p. 97. See Bibliography), where he renders thename Sceaf as Strephius.
6. Campbell, J., The Anglo-Saxons, Penguin Books, 1982. p. 148.

Chapter 8
The Descent of the Irish Celtic Kings'The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland,
having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were
now Irish...and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind' (1)When Sellar and Yeatman penned these satirical words on the history of the Irish (andScots), they were not entirely joking. The early history of Ireland, any single clear fact ofwhich is virtually untaught in England's schools and colleges (and in Ireland's too, I
suspect), has lain under a cloak of almost inextricable confusion since Victorian times.
And on those rare occasions when the subject is broached at all, it is invariably broachedat that point in history that gave rise to the hilarious misunderstanding quoted above, theso-called Dark Ages. The student will be taught nothing concerning the chronicles andgenealogies that have survived from the very earliest times. Irish history before the Saxon
period, is given only in terms with which we are already familiar from the history of theearly Britons and the Saxons, where we hear of this culture or that method of farming,
this particular stone age or that particular glacial period, but where no attempt is made togive an account of the individuals of early Ireland whose names and deeds appear in suchgreat abundance in the early Irish chronicles. Nor is any account given of the surprisingly
detailed chronology that the pagan scholars of Ireland were careful to weave into their
histories. By this stage in our enquiry, it is perhaps superfluous to ask why this should be.
So we shall concentrate our attention on what exactly it is that the early Irish records
reveal.

60

61

The records in which early Irish history has been preserved have been masterfullysummarised by the scholar nun Cusack, (2) and for her history she drew upon an
extensive number of manuscripts, many of which were known to her under such
evocative names as The Book of Leinster (written ca AD 1130, and copied from the mucholder Saltair [Psalter] of Cashel); the Book of Ballymote (AD 1390); and the Annals of
the Four Masters. But there are two others that received special mention, and they are theChronicum Scotorum, and the even more important (because much earlier) Cin of Drom
Snechta.
The Cin of Drom Snechta, otherwise known as The Book of Invasions, is now lost by all
accounts, (3) but its contents were preserved by Keating, the Irish historian who wrote his
own History from this and many other early manuscripts in about AD 1630. (4) The
importance of the Cin of Drom Snechta, however, lies in the very early date of its
compilation, concerning which a note in the 12th century Book of Leinster tells us:'Ernîn, son of Duach, that is son of the King of Connacht...it was he thatcollected the Genealogies and Histories of the men of Erinn in one book,that is, the Cin of Drom Snechta.' (5)The importance of this passage lies in the fact that Duach is known to have died in theyear AD 365,6 which places Ernîn's gathering of the material well before the coming to
Ireland of St Patrick (whose mission to Ireland took place in ca AD 432) and the later
Christian monks whose sole business, some would have us believe, was to forge fakehistories for the early nations of western Europe. Cusack provides further informationfrom the Book of Leinster on another of these early chronicles inasmuch as the contentsof the Cuilmenn (see Note 3 at the end of the chapter) were almost forgotten by as earlyas AD 580, showing that by that year it was already of great antiquity. (7)Regarding the material of these early chronicles, however, whose contents were alreadyof great age by the time Ernîn copied them down, Keating writes:'We will set down here the branching off of the races of Magog, according
to the Book of Invasions (of Ireland), which was called the Cin of Drom
Snechta...' (8)There later follows a succession of strange and ancient names, of which the table ofdescent that opens this chapter is a somewhat simplified extract. The important thing for
us to notice in this table of descent, though, is the unequivocal statement that thedecidedly pagan Irish traced their origins back to the biblical patriarch, Magog, the son of
Japheth. This is in direct contrast to the claims of the Britons and other European nations,whose genealogies were traced back to Javan, another son of Japheth. Now, Magog, as
we shall see in Appendix 3, was considered, with Ashchenaz, the father of the Scythianpeoples, and the early Irish chroniclers were most emphatic in their insistence that the
Irish were of Scythian stock. And there is good etymological evidence for this. The Irish
were long referred to as Scots even before some of them migrated to the country thattoday bears their name, and as Brewer tells us:'Scot (is) the same as Scythian in etymology; the root of both is Sct. The
Greeks had no c, and would change t into th making the root skth, and byadding a phonetic vowel we get Skuthai (Scythians), and Skodiai
62

(Skoths). The Welsh disliked s at the beginning of a word, and wouldchange it to ys; they would also change c or k to g, and th to d; whence
the Welsh root would be Ysgd, and Skuth or Skoth would become ysgod.
Once more, the Saxons would cut off the Welsh y, and change the g backagain to c, and the d to t, converting the Ysgod to Scot.'
It would be no strange thing to find Scythian peoples as far west as Ireland. After all, theland in Asia Minor known of old as Galatia, was populated by a migrating colony of
Gallic Celts from whom the country got its name. St Paul wrote his famous epistle totheir descendants. Many other examples from history are known of nations seemingly
popping up in places where one would normally not expect to find them, so it requires nogreat stretch of the imagination to accept what the early Irish chroniclers so often insisted
upon, namely their descent from the Scythian races.
But it is at this stage that we must notice those four particular patriarchs whose names wehave already noted in the Table of European Nations passed down to us by Nennius.
There we encountered the names of Baath, Iobaath, Izrau and Esra. And we see
precisely the same names (allowing for linguistic variation) emerging from the early Irish
genealogy, where they are rendered Baath, Jobbath, Easru and Sru. Now, it is known
amongst archaeologists and ethnologists that the early Britons and many of the ancientpeoples of Europe were Celts as were the early Irish. (The Saxons were not Celts. Hencethe absence of these patriarchal names from the Saxon pedigree.) And this is known
purely from archaeological evidence, without any reference whatever to thesegenealogies. Indeed, most modern scholars within these disciplines would scorn such areference. So how do we account for the presence of these names in such diverse
genealogies as the early British and the Irish?
There is one discrepancy. Nennius' Table of European Nations traces the descent of thesefour patriarchs from Javan, whereas the Irish genealogy traces them from Magog. Whichis right? They both are. The discrepancy is explained by the fact that there was certainly amixing of the various patriarchal lines before Babel. It was only after Babel that thenations were separated. From this moment in time, the pedigrees branched away fromeach other in a markedly emphatic way. But previously the families of mankind wereuniting into a single people, which was their expressed intent of course, (10) and thedispersal of the nations as recorded in the Genesis account happened for the precise
purpose of preventing this process of unification. Interestingly, the dispersal is depictedin Genesis as having occurred in the fifth generation after the Flood, and we note in theseancient genealogies that after the fifth generation the Irish and continental pedigrees
diverge in a most pointed way in exact accordance with the Genesis account. The four
patriarchs noted, then, were clearly the pre-Babel founders of both the British and the
Irish Celts, which should give us some idea of the extreme antiquity of some of thematerial that is to be found in the early pagan Irish chronicles and Nennius' Table ofEuropean Nations.
The appearance of these names, however, may also go some way towards explaining
another historical mystery, namely the origins of royalty, and the concept of hereditaryroyal families. The fact that all the royal families of Europe were, and indeed still are,interrelated is something that is accepted and well known. But what was the origin of
these families (or rather this original family) who have always insisted that they were set
above the common herd and entitled to rule their fellow man by a sort of divine right, a63

claim that cost Charles I of England, and the royal families of France and Russia, theirvery lives. Clearly, it was not a concept that was just thought up one day. Indeed, theaforementioned royal families took it so seriously that they pursued their right to thedeath. Rather, it has its roots right back in the very dawn of history, and was such ananciently established concept that the early Israelites felt somehow excluded from the restof humanity because they did not have a royal family of their own. (11) So, were Baath,
Iobaath, Izrau and Ezra the original stock from which the later royal families of Europe
are descended? It would certainly seem to point in that direction. And what of Iobaath?
Did his name become enshrined elsewhere in early European thought as Father Jove? It isall very intriguing.
The very notion of kingship was itself a decidedly pagan concept, where in Assyria, forexample, the king was deemed to rule as a representative of the national god, the biblical
Asshur, Assyria's founder, and in Egypt where the king was deemed to actually be a god
himself, (12) as later were the Roman Caesars. This is what marked the Israelites' cry fora king to rule over them as a cry of apostasy. So it would seem that the concept of royalty
and of a privileged status of divinely ordered nations with royal family whose rule was toembrace many. This belief originated initially amongst the pre-Babel patriarchs such as
those noted above in the Irish and British genealogies, and was nurtured and developed asa unifying principle within and amongst the dispersed pagan societies. This would, ofcourse, have been an act of open defiance towards God, and an attempt to repair or
perhaps exploit the damage that was inflicted against a unifying of mankind at Babel.
Of further interest to us, however, is the pagan memory revealed in the early Irish
chronicles, of the Creation and the Flood. These were remembered by the Irish as
relatively recent and definitely historical events. Moreover, they reckoned the dates ofother subsequent and successive historical events by counting the years since theCreation, and this is examined more closely in the following chapter. But for the moment,
we need note only that, according to this chronology, the first colonisation of Ireland
seems to have taken place ca 1484 BC (the 2520th year after the Creation). (13)It was the colony led by one Partholan, which landed in the estuary of the river Kenmare.
Partholan himself was to die thirty years later in about 1454 BC or Anno Mundi [the yearof the world] 2550. Some three hundred years later, it is recorded that the colony was
wiped out by a plague, 9000 men, women and children dying in one week alone. The
name of the area in which they had settled was later called Tallaght, denoting a place
where plague victims lie buried, and it is interesting to note that it is still littered withancient burial mounds today. (14)
Of added interest are certain details that have been handed down to us by Geoffrey of
Monmouth. (15) We are told by him how Partholan's colony consisted of thirty ships.
Interestingly, Nennius makes no mention of the number of ships, but does tell us that thecolony consisted of 1000 souls, which indicates that he and Geoffrey were working fromdifferent sources. (16) However, Geoffrey also tells us that the colony had recently. been
expelled from the Spanish mainland, and moreover that they were called 'Basclenses', orBasques. Now, we know that the present-day Basques of northern Spain are of an entirely
mysterious origin, and we also know that they speak a language that is quite unrelated to
any known Indo-European tongue. In which context, it is interesting to note what
Professor Mackie has written concerning the language of the early Picts who had morethan a passing influence on both the early and later history of the Irish:
64

'The Picts certainly used a form of P-Celtic (the mother of Welsh, Cornish
and Breton), with traces of Gaulish forms. However, it is clear, from the
few scraps of evidence which survive, that the Picts also used anotherlanguage, probably unrelated to any "Indo-European" tongue and therefore
so different from modern European languages as to be incomprehensible
to us.' (17)Presumably, this information would not have been available to that allegedly incorrigible
forger, Geoffrey of Monmouth, but it is instinctive to compare Mackie's remarks with acomment by Cusack, when she says:'...those who have maintained the theory of a Gaulish colonisation of
Ireland, have been obliged to make Spain the point of embarkation.' (18)The next recorded invasion (or settlement) of Ireland took place, according to thechronicles, in Anno Mundi 2859, or ca 1145 BC in our terms. This colony was led by
Nemedius (see genealogy), or Nemedh, and it is recorded that the people of Nemedh
were credited with having built certain types of fort as well as clearing the land for aparticular method of cultivation. A later outbreak of plague took its toll on the population,
the remainder of whom are recorded as having fought off an invasion of Ireland by the
Formorians, who, according to the Annals of Clonmacnois:'...were a sept descended from Chain (i.e. Ham), the son of Noeh, ...(who)...lived by pyracie and spoile of other nations, and were in those days very
troublesome to the whole world.' (19)This is of particular interest to us, as we know from the chronicles of the early Britonsthat the British mainland was at this time being settled by Brutus and his people in ca
1104 BC according to the British chronology. Now, although Brutus is said to have been
the first coloniser of Britain, the chronicles do emphatically state that he had to displace
an indigenous race of 'giants'. (20) Whether physical giantism is here intended cannot becertainly resolved, as the early British word 'gawr' (like the Hebrew gibbor) could mean
simply a great warrior as well as a giant man. But we do know from the biblical recordthat giantism was a particular physical trait amongst certain of Ham's descendants,
Goliath of Gath being the best known example, (21) which lends both the British andIrish accounts a degree of hitherto unsuspected corroboration. The Formorians, it seems,
were the displaced natives of Britain who were trying to seek a foothold on the Irish
mainland only to be repelled by the Nemedians, thereafter having to live, like many otherdisplaced peoples, by scavenging and piracy.
After the repulsion of the Formorians, the few Nemedian survivors settled further inland,presumably for safety while they consolidated their numbers. They are then recorded as
subsequently dividing themselves into three 'bands', each with their respective leaders.
One of these groups migrated to northern Europe, where they founded a nation known
later to the Irish as the Tuatha de Danann. A second group settled, intriguingly, in thenorthernmost parts of Britain, apparently the first Pictish settlement of what is now
Scotland. This settlement of Picts from 'Scythia' (so states the British record--note
etymological derivation given above of Scot from Scythian) into Albany, is recalled in
the early British chronicles as having taken place under the Pictish king Soderic. The
65

British chronology seems to have slipped somewhat at this point, but the event is realenough and accurately portrayed. (22)The third group are named as the Firbolgs, who migrated to Greece and then returned to
Ireland which they subsequently divided up into five provinces. However, in Anno
Mundi 3303, or ca. 701 BC in our terms, the Firbolgs were subdued in their turn by the
returning colony of Tuatha de Danaun.
The last colonisation of Ireland is then recorded under Anno Mundi 3500 (i.e. ca 504
BC):'The fleet of the sons of Milidh came to Ireland at the end of this year, totake it from the Tuatha de Danann, and they fought the battle of Sliabh
Mis with them on the third day after landing.' (23)The children of Milidh, known to us as the Milesians, had landed unobserved in themouth of the river Slaney in what is today the county of Wexford, from where theymarched to Tara, the central seat of government. The word Milesian is still used (thoughwith increasing rarity) to denote the Irish people themselves, or things pertaining to
Ireland. And of further interest to our enquiry is the fact that the Milesians were newly
arrived (via the Spanish peninsula) from the city of Miletus, whose ruins still stand on the
Turkish mainland, and which was finally destroyed by the Persian army in the year 494
BC. Given that the Irish records state ca 504 BC for the landing of the Milesian colony in
Ireland, this is a spontaneous and unexpected chronological correlation that is closeenough to give us serious pause for thought. For there's many an Egyptologist who
wishes that he could get that close with Egyptian chronology!
The lives of the people of Miletus had been made precarious for decades prior to the fallof their city due to the increasingly threatening ambitions of the Persian army, andnothing would have been more natural than that a colony of Milesians should decide toflee in search of a safe haven. They would seek a land that was sufficiently far away to besafe, was fertile, and which was well known to the Phoenician mariners of the eastern
Mediterranean, as was Ireland. And that the city of Miletus should also be known to us asan Ionian outpost whose population consisted of, amongst other races, Scythians andPhoenicians, tells us that we should take the claims of the early Irish chroniclers very
seriously indeed.
Moreover, with regard to the equally often stated Phoenician element of Irish descent, weshould also note that the ancient Greeks once held that Phoenicia was founded by one
Phoenix, whose brother Cadmus had invented the alphabet. Likewise, the early Irish
recalled the time when they lived under a king named...Phenius, 'who devoted himself
especially to the study of languages, and composed an alphabet and the elements ofgrammar.' (24) So it is clear that at the very least, the early Irish chroniclers were passing
on an account, albeit garbled in places, of authentic historical events and personages, andof the equally historic descent of their own race from Phoenician and Scythian stock. And
on the subject of that descent, Cusack adds yet again to our store of knowledge:'As the Milesians were the last of the ancient colonists ... only their
genealogies, with a few exceptions, have been preserved. The genealogicaltree begins, therefore, with the brothers Eber and Eremon, the two66

surviving leaders of the expedition, whose ancestors are traced back to
Magog, the son of Japhet. The great southern chieftains, such as the
MacCarthys and O'Briens, claim descent from Eber; the northern familiesof O'Connor, O'Donnell, and O'Neill, claim Eremon as their head. There
are also other families claiming descent from Emer, the son of Ir, brotherto Eber and Eremon; as also from their cousin Lugaidh, the son of Ith.
From these four sources the principle Celtic families of Ireland havesprung...' (25)
As we see in the genealogy, Eber and Eremon were able to trace their own descent from
Gadelas, the father of the Gaels and the Gaelic languages, but just how seriously did theearly Irish take the question of pedigree? Were they serious enough to take the trouble tokeep accurate records over long periods of time? Once more, Cusack answers thequestion for us:'The Books of Genealogies and Pedigrees form a most important elementin Irish pagan history. For social and political reasons, the Irish Celt
preserved his genealogical tree with scrupulous precision. The rights ofproperty and the governing power were transmitted with patriarchal
exactitude on strict claims of primogeniture, which claims could only berefused under certain conditions defined by law ... and in obedience to anancient law, established long before the introduction of Christianity,
all the provincial records, as well as those of the various chieftains, wererequired to be furnished every third year to the convocation at Tara, where
they were compared and corrected.' (26) (Emphasis mine)
As in the case of the Norwegian and Danish Vikings (see previous chapter), it is easy tostate, as many modernist articles do on the subject, that these patriarchal genealogies
were hiked. But it is impossible to imagine this happening when we consider the natural
temperament of these various peoples and the gravity with which they viewed theimportance of the records that contained the detailed accounts of their own patriarchal
descent. It is impossible to see how anyone could have deliberately or even accidentallycontrived even a minor alteration to their pedigree without everyone else becoming
immediately aware of the fact, and to imagine an alteration on the scale of that required
to give substance to the modernist scenario of things, would bring us firmly into therealms of fantasy. Historically, the modernist view on this simply cannot be justified.
Such an attempt at fraud or forgery would have brought the full force of the law, or rather
the more immediate remedy of someone's sword, crashing down upon the culprit's head.
These records may be relied upon, therefore, to be as accurate as any record can be.
Notes
1. Sellar and Yeatman, 1066 And All That, Penguin, 1962. p. 13.
2. Cusack, M.F., The Illustrated History of Ireland, 1868. Published in facsimile byBracken Books, London. 1987.
3. Cusack tells us which Irish MSS were lost by her own day, and those which had
survived. Those lost are: The Cuilmenn; the Saltair of Tara; The Book of the
Uachongbhail; the Cin of Drom Snechta; and the Saltair of Cashel. Those surviving
67

include: The Annals of Tighernach; The Annals of Ulster; The Annals of Inis Mac
Nerinn; The Annals of Innisfallen; The Annals of Boyle; the Chronicum Scotorum; theAnnals of the Four Masters; The Book of Laws (the Brehon laws), and 'many books ofgenealogies and pedigrees' (pp. 39-40).
4. Keating, G., (1634). The History of Ireland, Dublin. 1902-14. The Guildhall Library of
London holds a copy of this intriguing work.
5. cit. Cusack, p. 43.
6. Cusack, p. 43n.
7. The Book of Leinster is kept in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, shelfmark
H.2.18.
8. Keating, p. 109 and cit. Cusack. p. 43.
9. Brewer E.C., enl. ed., 1894. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, p. 1112.
10. Genesis 11:6. ....Behold the people is one, and they have all one language, and thisthey begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they haveimagined to do.'11. 1 Samuel 8:7: 'And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people
in all that they say unto thee: for they have rejected Me, that I should not reign overthem.'
12. See, for example, the article 'King, Kingship,' The New Bible Dictionary, InterVarsity
Press, London, 1972. pp. 692-3.
13. This is according to the Annals of the Four Masters, See Cusack. p. 58.
14. Cusack, p. 59.
15. Thorpe, pp. 100-1.
16. Nennius §13.
17. Mackie, J.D., A History of Scotland, Penguin Books, p. 16.
18. Cusack, p. 71.
19. (Ir. Conell MacGeoghegan), cit. Cusack, p. 20.
20. See Geoffrey of Monmouth, pp. 72-3. Geoffrey's Gogmagog appears to be a
corruption of the name Gawr Madoc, the giant or great warrior Madog. Of these 'giants',
we read, ...though their stature is exaggerated, yet it will be remembered that the statureof the ancient Britons was thought gigantic by Romans.' Pope. p. 164.
21. 1 Samuel 17:4. See also New Bible Diet, pp. 466 & 481.
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22. Geoffrey of Monmouth, p. 123.
23. The Annals of the Four Masters, cit. Cusack, p. 75.
24. Cusack, p. 69.
25. Cusack, p. 85.
26.Cusack, p. 82.

Chapter 9
Ancient Chronologies and the Age of the Earth
That the earth might be millions or even billions of years old is a fairly recent idea which
did not really begin to be formed until the turn of the 18th and the 19th centuries, after
the works of Hutton and Lyle were first published. They introduced an idea known as theuniformitarian theory, stating in effect that the processes of nature had always been thesame slow processes that they are today, and that hence the earth's features formed
gradually over aeons of time. It was a notion in which there was no room given to either arecent six-day Creation or the Flood of Noah. The notion of uniformitarianism, as well aslaying the foundations for the theory of evolution which was to follow, was deemedsufficient in its own right to disprove the Genesis record, and the somewhat dubious
philosophical attractions of this idea have led to the near universal acceptance of thetheory. Indeed, the rejection of the Genesis account seems to have been the one objective
behind the formulation of the theory in the first place. (1) There have been many learned
and complex criticisms published of late against the uniformitarian theory by creationists
and others, and I will not repeat here what they have said. All that concerns us in thispresent study is what our ancient forebears thought of the age of the earth, and exactly
how old they reckoned it to be.
Particular interest was shown amongst the Anglo-Saxons and the early Britons inestablishing a firm chronology for their histories, and although there may be good reasons
today for questioning some of the dates provided by their systems of reckoning, we arenevertheless left with unequivocal evidence that shows them to have believed in a young
earth (a recent Creation) and the Flood. For example, the version of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle known as the Parker Chronicle (2) states that from the beginning of the world
until the year AD 6 were 5200 years. The Laud Chronicle (3) differs slightly from this,stating that the same period elapsed from the Creation to the year AD 11, indicating
either a simple scribal error or a derivation from two distinct sources. However, both
chronicles agree that from the Creation to the year AD 33, the year of the Crucifixion,
was a period of 5226 years. In other words, as far as the Saxons were concerned, theworld was created about 5200 BC.
Further to this, is the statement found elsewhere amongst the Anglo-Saxon records that:69

Fram Adame ...(to the) ...flod ... were) ...twa hund wintra & twa thusenda& twa &fiowertig. (From Adam to the Flood were 2242 winters.') (4) (Mytranslation)
It would be interesting to discover whence the Saxons got this figure of 2242 years forthe antediluvian period, for it does not appear in the Latin Vulgate which gives 1656
years for this period, thus agreeing with the Hebrew; and they were not familiar with the
Septuagint version which gives in any case a period of 2256 years for the antediluvianera. However, their figure does agree exactly with that of the Britons, as passed down to
us by Nennius: (5)'From the beginning of the world until the Flood (are) 2242 years.
From the Flood until Abraham (are) 942 years.
From Abraham to Moses (are) 640 years.
From Moses to David (are) 500 years.
From David to Nebuchadnezzar are 569 years.
From Adam until the migration to Babylonia (i.e. the Captivity of theJews) are 4879 years.
From the migration to Babylonia until Christ are 566 years.
From Adam therefore until the Passion of Christ are 5228 years.
From the Passion of Christ have been completed 796 years.
And from His Incarnation 831 years.'(Nennius, chapters 1-4; my translation)
We would say today that there are certain points on which this early British chronology ispatently wrong. For example, there were not 942 years between the Flood and Abraham,but only ca 427 until Abraham's entry into Canaan. (6) Again, adding the years given inlines 1-7, we have a period of 5459 years between Adam and Christ, whereas thechronology' states towards the end that from Adam until Christ's Passion was only 5228
years, an error of 231 years! Assuming that Nennius was himself quite capable of doing
simple arithmetic, we have to conclude that he passed down to us, characteristicallyunedited and uncorrected, a faulty (and therefore much older?) source. However, theearly Britons and the Saxons are seen by their records to have looked back to a Creationof about 5200 BC.
The Irish chronology, on the other hand, seems to have favoured a date for the Creationof about 4000 BC. Now, there are admittedly certain complex difficulties concerning
Irish chronology, but these have to do with events recorded for the period between the
Flood and the Milesian colony of ca 500 BC. For example, Partholan, if we accept the
Irish chronology, landed in Ireland in the 15th century BC, whereas the British chronicle
70

dates him to the reign of Gurguit (who, it is said, gave Ireland to him) in the 4th century
BC. These difficulties can be resolved however. It seems that it is the British chronologythat is in error here, but how did this error of over a thousand years come about?
There are various possibilities. Firstly, it could be that Gurguit was mistaken for a muchearlier British king. But when. we consider that Partholan began his reign some 380 years
before the British royal line was even founded (by Brutus in ca 1104 BC), then thispossibility is immediately discounted.{ Could Partholan have been confused with a muchlater Irish king of similar name and whose reign was contemporary with that of Gurguit?
That is just possible, although the Irish records are silent concerning such a king. Finally,
we can consider the possibility that there was some kind of political agreement between
the Irish and British monarchies during the 4th century BC (i.e. during the reign ofGurguit), and that Partholan's name, as the original founder of Irish kingship and inwhose name the present kingship of Ireland was held, simply became embroiled with thatof the king under whom the agreement was made. This way, the discrepancy becomes
one of name only rather than one of chronology.
However, the Creation date of ca 4000 BC favoured by the early Irish chroniclers brings
to mind the most famous of all proposed for the Creation, that of Ussher, who, in his 17th
century work, Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti, calculated a date of 4004 BC. Ussher
was himself an Irishman, of course, who was doubtless steeped in the lore of his
countrymen. But whether Ussher was influenced by this or not, we note that the favoured
dates for the Creation between the Britons, Saxons and Irish were somewhere between ca
4000 BC on the one hand, and ca 5200 BC on the other. Which brings us to the following
observation concerning the work of the 16th century chronologist, Scaliger.
Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609) was a scholar of immense ability who broke much new
ground in the study of classical literature. Yet his chief claim to fame (if the comparative
obscurity so far afforded him can be described as fame), lies in his work, De
Ernendatione Temporurn, which he published in 1583 and which paved the way for themodern science of chronology. (This was followed by the publication in 1606 of his
Thesaurus Ternporum, in which he reconstructed Eusebius's Chronicon.)
Scaliger turned his interest from classical literature and languages to chronology
primarily because chronology was a science that had degenerated into some disarray byhis own day. Indeed, it was so beset with difficulties that it was nigh 'unworkable, andScaliger set himself the task of either improving it or replacing it altogether. In his De
Ernendatione Temporurn, Scaliger rightly recognised that the calendar as it now stands,
i.e. the Gregorian Calendar which was introduced in Europe in 1582, and which heheavily criticised, was a somewhat cumbersome apparatus with which to reconstruct thechronology of past events. Its very complexity lent itself to mistakes, whilst its inherent
inaccuracies lent themselves to yet further inaccuracies. So he decided to solve theproblem, and his solution was as ingenious as it was simple. Instead of an event being
said to have occurred at such a date in such a year BC or AD, it would henceforth be said
to have occurred on a certain numbered day.
Now, although a day count was the answer, it raised a further question. From which point
in time should this day count begin? The answer was obvious. It should begin from Day 1of the Creation. But when did Day 1 occur? Well, Scaliger (partially) solved the problem
by turning his attention to the three basic units upon which virtually all workable
71calendars are based, namely, the Solar Cycle, the Metonic Cycle and the Roman
Indiction.
In simple terms, the Solar Cycle is completed every 28 years, the Metonic Cycle every 19
years, and the Roman Indiction every 15 years. Scaliger realised that there must
obviously be points in time when all three cycles begin and end together, so, noting
carefully the age of each cycle at the moment when he began his calculations, he counted
the years backwards until he came to that year when all three cycles began together. And
that was the year 4713 BC.
Simple arithmetic then told him that the three cycles would only meet together in time
every 7980 years (this figure being the product of 28 x 19 x 15), and given that they had
begun together in 4713 BC, the period, which he named the Julian Period in honour of his
father Julius, would not end until the close of the year AD 3267 (7).
This was an excellent and broad base upon which to build his system of chronology, andfor convenience's sake Scaliger counted 1st January 4713 BC as Day 1, building up his
chronology from there. However, the fact that the three cycles (Solar, Metonic andRoman Indiction) began in the year 4713 BC will hold a certain significance forcreationists, for Genesis is quite clear on the matter when it tells us that, apart from theirlight-giving properties, the solar system and its backdrop of stars were created so that we
could measure by them times and seasons, days and years. In other words, God had
created a gigantic clock, and what more natural than that the Creator should start thatclock ticking, as it were, at a setting that would measure the age of the universe as well as
the more mundane passing of the seasons here on earth?
But, before we recklessly assume that Scaliger had all unwittingly stumbled across thetrue date for the Creation, we must remember that Scaliger based his calculations on thepresent values of the Solar and Metonic Cycles, or at least the values of these cycles as
they stood in the year 1582/3. Creationists should be painfully aware by now that values
today may not necessarily be the values of the past. This is constantly argued bycreationists in refutation of the uniformitarian hypothesis. Much damage, disruption andmayhem has occurred which will undoubtedly have altered those values to an extent we
can only guess at. On a local (planet earth) level, we have had the global Flood of Noahand other geological disasters to alter the rotation of the earth and hence the lengths of the
day and year. The moon has suffered local catastrophes of its own affecting no doubt thelength of the lunar month, and the universe in general has degenerated noticeably in its
values during the past six thousand years or so simply through the inexorable workings of
the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
There is, moreover, much documentary evidence to suggest that calendar calculations
underwent several revisions both during the more immediate centuries of the post-Floodera and later. Why were these revisions necessary? The deteriorations in the motions of
the earth, moon and stars, and hence the calendar, seem to have occurred not gradually
over an immense period of time, as implied by most modernist writers on the subject, but
at certain points in history when one day the current calendar was workable and the next
when it was not. Studying the revisions that had to be made and of which we have any
record, intercalations were suddenly brought in to correct for suddenly observed
discrepancies.
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Now, if the deteriorations in the calendar, especially the lunar calendar, were indeed
gradual, as some would have us believe, then why were the reforms that corrected for thisdeterioration not brought in in equally gradual stages? It is simply not good enough toassume, as most modern writers on the subject assume, that the early calendar makers
were merely poor observers who possessed no theoretical astronomy and who could thus
only make poor calendars that had to be corrected from time to time. If the people of thetime had truly devised a calendar that was unworkably in error, then they would surely
have discovered this within only a year or two of its inauguration, and would not have
waited centuries to allegedly evolve sufficient acumen to notice that the seasons were
wildly at variance with their own calculated harvest time. With ignorance and stupidity ofthat order, it is difficult to see how they would have coped with some of life's morechallenging problems.
One such people who are said not to have possessed any mathematics of a particularlyhigh order, nor any theoretical astronomy, are the Maya of South America. Now, theMaya instituted a day count exactly like that which Scaliger devised in order to solve
certain chronological and genealogical problems that they had come across whilst
reconstructing their own ancient history. The unnerving aspect of this from the modernist
point of view, however, is the fact that the Maya perfected their day count some six
hundred years or more before Scaliger was even thought of. Scaliger, we are rightly told,
was a genius. The Maya, we are wrongly told, were not.
But why are we told that the Maya were not geniuses? Why do modernist authors insist
on telling us that the Maya had no theoretical astronomy and no system of theoreticalmathematics in spite of much concrete evidence to the contrary? At Chichen Itza in
Mexico stand the ruins of a gigantic observatory that the Maya built, whose passageways
are aligned with the sun, moon and stars. With this, and in conjunction with other aligned
observatories, the Maya were able to predict lunar and solar eclipses with great accuracy
as well as measuring the synodic cycle of Venus with a precision that has only beenmatched and realised in modern times. (8) But perhaps there is method in the modernist
madness.
If we correlate the Mayan day count with that of Scaliger, we find that the Mayan Day 1
began on Julian Day 584283, (9) which equals in our terms 10th August 3113 BC (Imake that a Thursday) for the start of the Mayan day count. Now, the significance of thislies in the fact that although the Mayan concept of time was cyclic, they neverthelessknew that the world-destroying catastrophe that had closed the previous age was brought
about by water, and that their own age had begun after that catastrophe. In other words,
they looked back to the Flood as the close of the old age and the beginning of the new.
And it is here that their day count takes on an immense significance. Scaliger's day count,
we remember, took him back to the year 4713 BC, and it is more than probable that thiscorresponds roughly to the year of the Creation. The Mayans, however, did not begin
their day count from the Creation, but from the Flood, and this event was set in theirchronology, not Scaliger's, in the year 3113 BC, and subtracting 3113 from 4713 leaves
us with a 1600 year period between the two dates for the Creation and the Flood, a periodof time which corresponds remarkably closely to the 1656 year period set out so precisely
in the Genesis record. Little wonder that this information is precluded these days by acursory dismissal of Mayan mathematics and astronomy. If I were a modernist, I'ddismiss it too!
73

But to briefly take stock of the situation, we may see by all the evidence noted above that
not only did our ancient forebears look back, in pre-Christian times, to their descent frompatriarchs that are named in the Table of Nations, but they also held that the earth was ofrecent creation and that it had once suffered a Flood. And they knew all this without any
recourse to the book of Genesis, of which they were entirely unaware. In all, their records
constitute a rather formidable body of evidence. But there is another subject that has abearing on our enquiry, and again it was something that our forebears accepted without
any problem at all. Indeed, they recorded its occurrence regularly in their annals andchronicles, blissfully unaware of the fact that today it would be a most controversial andsensitive subject. It is one that we deal with in the following chapter.
Notes
1. See Bowden's Rise of the Evolution Fraud.
2. Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 173. For an English translation see
Garmonsway. pp. 6-7.
3. Bodleian MS. Laud 636. See also Garmonsway. pp. 6-7.
4. MS. Cotton. Vespasian. D. IV. fol. 69v.
5. A principio mundi usque ad diluvium anni II CC XL II.
A diluvio usque ad Abraham anni D CCCC XL II.
Ab Abraham usque ad Moysen anni D C XL.
A Moyse usque ad David anni D.
A David usque .A/abuchodonosor anni sunt D LX ViIiI.
Ab Adam usque trausmigrationem Babyloniae anni sunt 1111 DCCC LXX VHII.
A transmigratione Babyloniae usque ad Christum D LX VI.
Ab Adam vero usque ad passionem Christi anni sunt V CC XX VIII.
A passione autem Christi peracti sunt anni D CC LXXXX VI.
Ab incarnatione autem eius anni sunt D CCC XXX I.
(Nennius 1-4; see also Morris. p. 59)
6. Osgood, John. The Times of Abraham. CEN Tech. J. Vol. 2. 1986. p. 79.
7. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1985 ed. Vol. 15. p. 463.

74

8. The Mayans calculated a 584 day cycle, against the modern value of 583.92 days. See
Ronan, C. The Cambridge Illustrated History of the World's Science. Newnes.
Cambridge. 1983. p. 55.
9. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1985 ed. Vol. 15. p. 474.

Chapter 10
Dinosaurs from Anglo-Saxon and other Records
I have spoken on the subject of the Table of Nations and the early post-Flood history ofEurope, in Germany, Belgium and at many places now in England, and what surprised
me at first was how, during question time, the subject turns so quickly to that ofdinosaurs. Do they appear in the early chronicles? Do descriptions of them exist? And soon. So here I have set out as many examples of the mention of dinosaurs in the earlyrecords as I could immediately find, although there are doubtless many other instances tobe noticed. Some of the examples mentioned here come from the very records that wehave just been considering concerning the descent of the nations.
The progression is only logical, for if the earth is as young as our forebears thought andas the creation model of origins predicts, then evidence will be found which tells us that,in the recent past, dinosaurs and man have co-existed. There is, in fact, good evidence tosuggest that they still co-exist, and this is directly contrary to the evolutionary model
which teaches that dinosaurs lived millions of years before man came along, and that no
man therefore can ever have seen a living dinosaur. And to test that assertion, we will
now examine the issue by considering the written evidence that has survived from therecords of various ancient peoples that describe, sometimes in the most graphic detail,human encounters with living giant reptiles that we would call dinosaurs. And as we shallsee, some of those records are not so ancient.
There are, of course, the famous descriptions of two such monsters from the Old
Testament, Behemoth and Leviathan (Job 40:15-41:34), Behemoth being a giant
vegetarian that lived on the fens, and Leviathan a somewhat more terrifying armour
plated amphibian whom only children and the most foolhardy would want as a pet. The
Egyptians knew Behemoth by the name p'ih mw, (1) which is the same name, of course.
Leviathan was similarly known as Lotan to the men of Ugarit. (2) Babylonian andSumerian literature has preserved details of similar creatures, as has the written andunwritten folklore of peoples around the world. But perhaps the most remarkabledescriptions of living dinosaurs are those that the Saxon and Celtic peoples of Europe
have passed down to us.
The early Britons, from whom the modern Welsh are descended, provide us with ourearliest surviving European accounts of reptilian monsters, one of whom killed anddevoured king Morvidus (Morydd) in ca 336 BC. We are told in the account translated
for us by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that the monster 'gulped down the body of Morvidus asa big fish swallows a little one.' Geoffrey described the animal as a Belua. (3)75Peredur, not the ancient king of that name (306-296 BC), but a much later son of Earl
Efrawg, had better luck than Morvidus, actually managing to slay his monster, an addanc(pr. athanc: var. afanc), at a place called Llyn Llion in Wales. (4) At other Welsh
locations the addanc is further spoken of along with another reptilian species known as
the carrog. The addanc survived until comparatively recent times at such places as Beddyr-Afanc near Brynberian, at Llyn-yr-Afanc above Bettws-y-Coed on the River Conwy(the killing of this monster was described in the year 1693), and Llyn Barfog. A carrog iscommemorated at Carrog near Corwen, and at Dol-y-Carrog in the Vale of Conwy. (5)Moreover, 'dinosaurs', in the form of flying reptiles, were a feature of Welsh life untilsurprisingly recent times. As late as the beginning of the present century, elderly folk at
Penllin in Glamorgan used to tell of a colony of winged serpents that lived in the woods
around Penllin Castle. As Marie Trevelyan tells us:'The woods around Penllin Castle, Glamorgan, had the reputation of being
frequented by winged serpents, and these were the terror of old and young
alike. An aged inhabitant of Penllyne, who died a few years ago, said thatin his boyhood the winged serpents were described as very beautiful. They
were coiled when in repose, and "looked as if they were covered withjewels of all sorts. Some of them had crests sparkling with all the coloursof the rainbow". When disturbed they glided swiftly, "sparkling all over,"to their hiding places. When angry, they "flew over people's heads, withoutspread wings, bright, and sometimes with eyes too, like the feathers ina peacock's tail". He said it was "no old story invented to frighten
children", but a real fact. His father and uncle had killed some of them, forthey were as bad as foxes for poultry. The old man attributed theextinction of the winged serpents to the fact that they were "terrors in the
farmyards and coverts".) (6)This account is intriguing in many respects, not the least being the fact that it is not atypical account of dragons. The creatures concerned were not solitary and monstrous
beasts, but small creatures that lived in colonies. Not at all like the larger species of
winged reptile that used to nest upon an ancient burial-mound, or tumulus, at Trellech-a'rBetws in the county of Dyfed, for example. But whilst we are in Wales, it is worth notingthat at Llanbardan-y-Garrag (is Garrag a corruption of carrog?), the church contains acarving of a local giant reptile whose features include large paddle-like flippers, a longneck and a small head. Glaslyn, in Snowdon, is a lake where an afanc was sighted asrecently as the 1930s. On this occasion two climbers on the side of a mountain looked
down onto the surface of Glaslyn and they saw the creature, which they described ashaving a long grey body, rise from the depths of the lake to the surface, raise its head andthen submerge again. (7)One could multiply such reports by the hundred. In England and Scotland, again until
comparatively recent times, other reptilian monsters were sighted and spoken of in many
places. The table at the end of this chapter lists eighty-one locations in the British Isles
alone in which dinosaur activity has been reported (there are, in fact, nearly 200 suchplaces in Britain), but perhaps the most relevant aspect of this as far as our present study
is concerned is the fact that some of these sightings and subsequent encounters withliving dinosaurs can be dated to the comparatively recent past. The giant reptile at Buresin Suffolk, for example, is known to us from a chronicle of 1405:
76

'Close to the town of Bures, near Sudbury, there has lately appeared, to thegreat hurt of the countryside, a dragon, vast in body, with a crested head,
teeth like a saw, and a tail extending to an enormous length. Havingslaughtered the shepherd of a flock, it devoured many sheep.'
After an unsuccessful attempt by local archers to kill the beast, due to its impenetrable
hide,'...in order to destroy him, all the country people around were summoned.
But when the dragon saw that he was again to be assailed with arrows, hefled into a marsh or mere and there hid himself among the long reeds, andwas no more seen.' (8)Later in the 15th century, according to a contemporary chronicle that still survives in
Canterbury Cathedral's library, the following incident was reported. On the afternoon of
Friday, 26th September, 1449, two giant reptiles were seen fighting on the banks of theRiver Stour (near the village of Little Cornard) which marked the English county bordersof Suffolk and Essex. One was black, and the other 'reddish and spotted'. After an hourlong struggle that took place 'to the admiration of many [of the locals] beholding them',
the black monster yielded and returned to its lair, the scene of the conflict being known
ever since as Sharpfight Meadow. (9)As late as August, 1614, the following sober account was given of a strange reptile thatwas encountered in St Leonard's Forest in Sussex. The sighting was near a village thatwas known as Dragon's Green long before this report was published:'This serpent (or dragon as some call it) is reputed to be nine feete, orrather more, in length, and shaped almost in the form of an axletree of acart: a quantitie of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at bothendes. The former part, which he shootes forth as a necke, is supposed to
be an elle [3 ft 9 ins or 1 l4 cms] long; with a white ring, as it were, of
scales about it. The scales along his back seem to be blackish, and somuch as is discovered under his belie, appeareth to be red... it is likewise
discovered to have large feete, but the eye may there be deceived, forsome suppose that serpents have no feete ... [The dragon] rids away (as wecall it) as fast as a man can run. His food [rabbits] is thought to be; for themost part, in a conie-warren, which he much frequents ...There are
likewise upon either side of him discovered two great bunches so big as alarge foote-ball, and (as some thinke) will in time grow to wings, but God,I hope, will (to defend the poor people in the neighbourhood) that he shallbe destroyed before he grows to fledge.' (10)This dragon was seen in various places within a circuit of three or four miles, and thepamphlet named some of the still-living witnesses who had seen him. These included
John Steele, Christopher Holder and a certain 'widow woman dwelling neare Faygate'.
Another witness was 'the carrier of Horsham, who lieth at the White Horse [inn] inSouthwark'. One of the locals set his two mastiffs onto the monster, and apart from losing
his dogs he was fortunate to escape alive from the encounter, for the dragon was alreadycredited with the deaths of a man and woman at whom it had spat and who consequently
77had been killed by its venom. When approached unwittingly, our pamphleteer tells us, themonster was...
'...of countenance very proud and at the sight or hearing of men or cattel
will raise his neck upright and seem to listen and looke about, with greatarrogancy.'
an eyewitness account of typically reptilian behaviour.
Again, as late as 27th and 28th May 1669, a large reptilian animal was sighted manytimes, as was reported in the pamphlet: A True Relation of a Monstrous Serpent seen at
Henham (Essex) on the Mount in Saffron Waldon. (11)
In 1867 was seen, for the last time, the monster that lived in the woods around Fittleworth
in Sussex. It would run up to people hissing and spitting if they happened to stumble
across it unawares, although it never harmed anyone. Several such cases could be cited,
but suffice it to say that too many incidents like these are reported down through thecenturies and from all sorts of locations for us to say that they are all fairy-tales. For
example, Scotland's famous Loch Ness Monster is too often thought to be a recent
product of the local Tourist Board's efforts to bring in some trade, yet Loch Ness is by nomeans the only Scottish loch where monsters have been reported. Loch Lomond, Loch
Awe, Loch Rannoch and the privately owned Loch Morar (over 1000 ft deep) also haverecords of monster activity in recent years. Indeed, there have been over forty sightings at
Loch Morar alone since the end of the last war, and over a thousand from Loch Ness inthe same period. However, as far as Loch Ness itself is concerned, few realise thatmonstrous reptiles, no doubt the same species, have been sighted in and around the lochsince the so-called Dark Ages, the most notable instance being that which is described in
Adamnan's famous 6th century Life of St Columba.
On hearing this, and with never a thought for his own safety, the brave saint immediatelyordered one of his followers to jump into the freezing water to see if the monster was stillin the vicinity. Adamnan relates how the thrashing about of the alarmed and unhappy
swimmer, Lugne Mocumin by name, attracted the monster's attention. Suddenly, on
breaking the surface, the monster was seen to speed towards the luckless chap with its
mouth wide open and screaming like a banshee. Columba, however, refused to panic, andfrom the safety of the dry land rebuked the beast. Whether the swimmer added any
rebukes of his own is not recorded, but the monster was seen to turn away, having
approached the swimmer so closely that not the length of a punt-pole lay between them.
Columba, naturally, claimed the credit for the swimmer's survival, although thereluctance of the monster to actually harm the man is the most notable thing in thisincident. The first swimmer had been savaged and killed, though not eaten, and thesecond swimmer was likewise treated to a display of the creature's wrath, though notfatally. Most likely, the two men had unwittingly entered the water close to where thecreature kept her young, and she was reacting in a way that is typical of most species.
Gorillas, bull elephants, ostriches, indeed all sorts of creature will charge at a man,hissing, screaming and trumpeting alarmingly, yet will rarely kill him or harm him solong as the man takes the hint and goes away. We can rely on it that Columba's follower,
utterly lacking his saintly master's fortitude, had begun the process of taking the hint inplenty of time for the monster to realise that killing him would not be necessary.
78

Yet not even Lugne Mocumin's expenence is that uncommon. As recently as the 18th
century, in a lake called Llyn-y-Gader in Snowdon, Wales, a certain man went
swimming. He reached the middle of the lake and was returning to the shore when his
friends who were watching him noticed that he was being followed by:'...a long, trailing object winding slowly behind him. They were afraid toraise an alarm, but went forward to meet him as soon as he reached theshore where they stood. Just as he was approaching, the trailing object
raised its head, and before anyone could render aid the man was envelopedin the coils of the monster...' (12)It seems that the man's body was never recovered.
At about the turn of this present century, the following incident took place. It was related
by a Lady Gregory of Ireland in 1920:'...old people told me that they were swimming there, [in an Irish lakecalled Lough Graney] and a man had gone out into the middle, and theysaw something like a great big eel making for him...' (13)Happily, on this occasion the man made it back to the shore, but the important thing for
us to notice is that these are only a few of a great many reports concerning the sightings
in recent times of lake-dwelling monsters which, if only their fossils had been found,would have been called dinosaurs.
But the British Isles are not the only place where one can find such reports. They occur,
quite literally, all over the world. (14) William Caxton, for example, England's firstprinter, recorded for us in 1484 the following account of a reptilian monster in medieval
Italy. I have modernised the spelling and punctuation:'There was found within a great river [i.e. the Po in Italy] a monster
marine, or of the sea, of the form or likeness which followeth. He had theform or making of a fish, the which part was in two halves, that is to wit
double. He had a great beard and he had two wonderfully great horns
above his ears. Also he had great paps and a wonderfully great andhorrible mouth. And at the both [of] his elbows he had wings right broadand great of fish's armour wherewith he swimmed and only he had but thehead out of the water. It happed then that many women laundered andwashed at the port or haven of the said river [where] that this horrible andfearful beast was, [who] for lack or default of meat came swimming
toward the said women. Of the which he took one by the hand andsupposed to have drawn her into the water. But she was strong and welladvised and resisted against the said monster. And as she defended herself,
she began to cry with an high voice, "Help, help!" To the which camerunning five women which by hurling and drawing of stones, killed andslew the said monster, for he was come too far within the sound,
wherefore he might not return to the deep water. And after, when herendered his spirit, he made a right little cry. He was of great corpulence
more than any man's body. And yet, saith Poge [Pogius Bracciolini of
Florence] in this manner, that he, being at Ferrara, he saw the said monster
79

and saith yet that the young children were accustomed for to go bathe andwash them within the said river, but they came not all again. Wherefore
the women [neither] washed nor laundered their clothes at the said port,
for the folk presumed and supposed that the monster killed the young
children which were drowned.' (15)Caxton also provided the following account of a 'serpent' which left a cow badly bruised
and frightened, although we should bear in mind that a serpent in Caxton's day was not
the snake that we would imagine today, for the word serpent has changed its meaningslightly since the Middle Ages. There are one or two intriguing woodcut illustrations ofthese serpents in Caxton's book, and they are all bipedal, scaled reptiles with large
mouths:'...about the marches of Italy, within a meadow, was sometime a serpent ofwonderful and right marvellous greatness, right hideous and fearful. For
first he had the head greater than the head of a calf. Secondly, he had aneck of the length of an ass, and his body made after the likeness of a dog.
And his tail was wonderfully great, thick and long, without comparison to
any other. A cow ... [seeing] ...so right horrible a beast, she was all fearfuland lift herself up and supposed to have fled away. But the serpent, withhis wonderfully long tail, enlaced her two hind legs. And the serpent thenbegan to suck the cow. And indeed so much and so long he sucked that hefound some milk. And when the cow might escape from him, she fled unto
the other cows. And her paps and her hind legs, and all that the serpent
touched, was all black a great space of time.' (16)These accounts are clearly factual and witnessed reports rather than fairy-tales, and are as
close to journalistic reporting as we shall ever see in works from the Middle Ages. But
for a more modern example of such journalistic reporting, let us consider the following
article that appeared recently in that most sober of British journals, The Times:'Japanese fishermen caught a dead monster, weighing two tons and 30 feetin length, off the coast of New Zealand in April, it was reported today.
Believed to be a survivor of a prehistoric species, the monster was caught
at a depth of 1000 feet off the South Island coast, near Christchurch.
Paleontologists from the Natural Science Museum near Tokyo haveconcluded that the beast belonged to the pleisiosaurus family - huge,small-headed reptiles with a long neck and four fins ... After a member ofthe crew had photographed and measured it, the trawler's captain ordered
the corpse to be thrown back into the sea for fear of contamination to his
fish.' (17)
It is thought provoking to consider that the Japanese have no problem with officiallyowning up to the present-day existence of dragons, sea-monsters or dinosaurs. Indeed,
they even issued a postage-stamp with a picture of a pleisiosaurus to commemorate theabove find. Only we in the West seem to have a problem with the present-day existenceof these creatures, for only nine days after the appearance of the Times article, it wassomberly announced on the 30th July 1977 by the BBC that the monster only looked likea pleisiosaurus. It in fact was a shark that had decomposed in such a way as to convey theimpression that it had a long neck, a small head and four large paddles. How they, or their80

informants at the Natural History Museum in Kensington, could tell this since thecreature was no longer available for examination, we can only guess at, especiallyconsidering that the marine biologist on board the vessel, the Zuiyo-maru, had sketched
the creatures skeletal structure and it is nothing like that of a shark (see Figure 10.1).
Marine biologists are highly trained scientists whose ability to detect disease andmutations in fish and marine mammals is crucial to the health of the consumer let alone
the profits of the fishing vessel concerned, so their knowledge of marine life isnecessarily very great. Yet the BBC would have us believe that Michihiko Yano, thegovernment-trained and highly qualified marine biologist who examined, photographedand measured the monster, wouldn't know a dead shark when he saw one!

But western officialdom has not always been as averse as this at acknowledging and evenmentioning in official reports the existence of creatures which are supposed by today's
establishment to have died out millions of years ago. The following, for example, waspenned only two hundred years ago in 1793 and describes creatures that soundsuspiciously like pterodactyls or similar. Remember, it is an official and very sober
government report that we are reading:'In the end of November and beginning of December last, many of thecountry people observed dragons appearing in the north and flying rapidly
towards the east; from which they concluded, and their conjectures wereright, that...boisterous weather would follow.'This report is intriguing for the fact that exactly one thousand years before an almost
identical report made its appearance in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 793.
The two accounts are nothing more than country people being able to predict the weather
by observing the behaviour of the animals, which is a skill that they have always
possessed and used, and these accounts, combined with later records of the years 1170,
1177, 1221 and 1222, of 1233 and of 1532, suggest that these creatures could tell theapproach of bad weather coming in off the Atlantic and simply migrated to calmer81

regions while the bad weather lasted. Considering the flimsiness and fragility of thewings of pterodactyls and similar creatures, the reports make eminent sense.
But now we come to the most notable records of all. They are written works that are
remarkable for the graphic detail with which they portray the giant reptiles that the early
Saxons, Danes and others encountered in Northern Europe and Scandinavia. In various
Nordic sagas the slaying of dragons is depicted in some detail, and this helps us toreconstruct the physical appearance of some of these creatures. In the Volsungassaga, forexample, the slaying of the monster Fafnir was accomplished by Sigurd digging a pit andwaiting, inside the pit, for the monster to crawl overhead on its way to the water. This
allowed Sigurd to attack the animal's soft under-belly. Clearly, Fafnir walked on all fours
with his belly close to the ground.
Likewise, the Voluspa tells us of a certain monster which the early Vikings called a
Nithhoggr, its name (corpse-tearer) revealing the fact that it lived off carrion. Saxo
Grammaticus, in his Gesta Danorum, tells us of the Danish king Frotho's fight with agiant reptile, and it is in the advice given by a local to the king, and recorded by Saxo,that the monster is described in great detail. It was, he says, a serpent:'...wreathed in coils, doubled in many a fold, and with a tail drawn out inwinding whorls, shaking his manifold spirals and shedding venom ... his
slaver [saliva] burns up what it bespattersyet [he tells the king in words
that were doubtless meant to encourage rather than dismay] ...remember tokeep the dauntless temper of thy mind; nor let the point of the jagged toothtrouble thee, nor the starkness of the beast, nor the venom there is a place
under his lowest belly whither thou mayst plunge the blade' (20)
The description of this reptilian monster closely resembles that of the monster seen at
Henham (see Note 11), and the two animals could well have belonged to the same orsimilar species. Notable, especially, is their defence mechanism of spitting corrosive
venom at their victims.
But it is the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf (21) that provides us with truly invaluable
descriptions of the huge reptilian animals which, only 1400 years ago, infested Denmarkand other parts of Europe, and we shall turn our attention now to a close and very detailed
examination of this most remarkable account.
Some Sites of 'Dinosaur' Activity Throughout Britain
Aller, Somerset; Anwick, Lincolnshire; Bamburgh, Northumberland; Beckhole, North
Yorkshire; Bedd-yr-Afanc, Wales; Ben Vair, Scotland; Bignor Hill, West Sussex; Bishop
Auckland, Durham; Bisterne, Hampshire; Brent Pelham, Hertfordshire; Brinsop,
Hereford and Worcester; Bures, Suffolk; Cadhury Castle, Devon; Carhampton, Somerset;
Castle Carlton, Lincoinshire; Castle Neroche, Somerset; Challacombe, Devon;
Churchstanton, Somerset; Cnoc-naCnoimh, Scotland; Crowcombe, Somerset; Dalry,
Scotland; Deerhurst, Gloucestershire; Dol-y-Carrog, Wales; Dragon-hoard (nrGarsington), Oxfordshire; Drake Howe, North Yorkshire; Drakelow, Derbyshire;
Drakelowe, Worcestershire; Filey Brigg, North Yorkshire; Handale Priory, North Yorkshire; Henham, Essex; Hornden, Essex; Kellington, North Yorkshire; Kilve, Somerset;
Kingston St Mary, Somerset; Lambton Castle,, Durham; Linton, Scotland; Little Cornard,82

Suffolk; Llandeilo Graban, Wales; Llanraeadr-ym-Mochnant, Wales; Llyn Barfog,
Wales; Llyn Cynwch (nr Dolgellau), Wales; Llyn Llion, Wales; Llyn-y-Gader, Wales;
Llyn-yr. Afanc, Wales; Loch Awe, Scotland; Loch Maree, Scotland; Loch Morar,
Scotland; Loch Ness, Scotland; Loch Rannoch, Scotland; Longwitton, Northumberland;
Ludham, Norfolk Lyminster, West Sussex; Manaton, Devon; Money Hill,
Northumberland; Moston, Cheshire; Newcastle Emlyn, Wales; Norton Fitzwarren,
Hereford and Worcester; Nunnington, North Yorkshire; Old Field Barrows (nrBromfield),. Shropshire; Penllin Castle, Wales; Penmark, Wales; Penmynydd, Wales; St
Albans, Hertfordshire; St Leonard's Forest, West Sussex; St Osyth, Essex; Saffron
Waldon, Essex; Sexhow, North Yorkshire; Shervage Wood, Hereford and Worcester;Slingsby, North Yorkshire; Sockburn, Durham; Stinchcombe, Gloucestershire;
Strathmartin, Scotland; Walmsgate, Lincolnshire; Wantley, South Yorkshire; Well, North
Yorkshire; Wherwell, Hampshire; Whitehorse Hill, Oxford- shire; Winkleigh, Devon;
Wiston, Wales; Wormelow Tump, Hereford and Worcester; Wormingford, Essex.
Notes
1. See e.g. 'Behemoth,' The New Bible Dictionary, InterVarsity Press. London. 1972. p.
138.
2. ibid., pp. 729-30. See also Pfeiffer, C.F. 'Lotan and Leviathan,' Evangelical Quarterly,
XXXII. 1960. pp. 208 if.
3. Thorpe, Lewis tr. The History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth. Guild
Publishing, London, 1982. Pp. 101-2.
4. Jones, G. and Jones, T. [tr.]. The Mabinogion. Revis, ed. Everyman's Library.
J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd. 1974. pp. 209-212 & 217.
5. See Westwood, J. Albion, Granada, London. 1985. pp. 270, 275, 289.
6. Trevelyan, M. 1909, Folk-Lore and Folk Stories of Wales, (cit. Simpson, J., British
Dragons, B.T. Batsford Ltd., London. 1980).
7. Whitlock, R., 1983. Here Be Dragons, Allen & Unwin, Boston. pp. 133-4.
8. This chronicle was begun by John de Trokelow and finished by Henry de Blaneford. It
was translated and reproduced in the Rolls Series. 1866. IV. ed. H.G. Riley. (cit.
Simpson, J., British Dragons., B.T. Batsford Ltd. 1980. p. 60).
9. ibid., p. 118. See also 'The Fighting Dragons of Little Cornard,' Folklore, Myths andLegends of Britain, Reader's Digest. 1973. p. 241.
10. True and Wonderful: A Discourse Relating a Strange and Monstrous Serpent (orDragon--lately discovered, and yet living, to the great Annoyance and divers Slaughtersof both Men and Cattell, by his strong and violent Poison: in Sussex, two Miles fromHorsham, in a Woode called St Leonard's Forrest, and thirtie Miles from London, thispresent month of August 1614. With the true Generation of Serpents. cited in Harlejan
Miscellany. 1745. III. pp. 106-9. (also cit. Simpson. p. 118).
83

11. ibid., p. 35.
12. ibid., p. 21.
13. Gregory, Lady, Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, 1920. (repr. 1976). (cit.
Simpson, pp. 42-3).
14. See Steiger, B., Worlds Before Our Own, W. & J. Mackay Ltd. Chatham, (England).
1980. pp. 41-66. (Steiger is by no means a creationist).
15. Caxton, Win, 1484. Aesop. folio 138. The only surviving copy of this book lies in theRoyal Library at Windsor Castle. This extract appears here by gracious permission of Her
Majesty the Queen.
16. ibid. This extract appears here by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen.
17. The Times, 2lst July 1977.
18. 'Flying Dragons at Aberdeen,' A Statistical Account of Scotland. 1793. Vol. VI. p.
467.
19. See Morris, W., Volsungassaga.
20. Elton's translation cited by Klaeber, p. 259.
21. The Anglo-Saxon text relied on in this study is that of Klaeber. See bibliography.

Chapter 11
Beowulf and the Creatures of Denmark
The Beowulf poem survives in a single manuscript copy that was made in ca AD 1000.
Moreover, this manuscript (1) is often stated by modern critics to be a copy of a mid-8th
century Anglo-Saxon (i.e. Old English) original, now lost. This original is in turndescribed as an essentially Christian poem. Yet, the continually repeated assertion of the
supposedly Christian origins of the poem not only contributes toward a serious
misunderstanding of the poem's nature and purpose, but notably fails to take into accountthe following facts.
Firstly, there are no allusions whatever in the poem to any event, person or teaching of
the New Testament. This is in sharp contrast to other Anglo-Saxon poems (The Dream of
the Rood, and so on) that certainly are Christian in sentiment. There are definite allusions
to certain facts and personages contained in the Old Testament, namely to God, theCreation, to Abel and to Cain, but these are no more than those same historical allusions
that are to be met with in the other preChristian Anglo-Saxon genealogies and records
84that we have already studied in chapter 7 of this book. Like those records, and whilst
likewise showing a most interesting historical knowledge of certain events andpersonages that also appear in the Genesis record, the Beowulf poem clearly pre-dates any
knowledge among the Anglo-Saxons of Christianity per se.
In view of this, it is hardly surprising to find that the sentiments of the poem are strongly
pagan, extolling the highly questionable virtues of vengeance, the accumulation ofplunder and the boasting of and reliance upon human strength and prowess. Allusions arealso made to blatantly pagan oaths, sacrifices, sentiments and forms of burial. But there
are certainly no exclusively Christian sentiments expressed anywhere in its 3182 lines oftext.
Nowhere in the poem is any reference made to the British Isles or to any British (orEnglish) king, personage or historical event. This is simply because this epic poem predates the migration of the Saxons to these isles. And what are we to make of thefollowing passage?:'fortham Offa waes geoflim ond guthum garcene man wide geweorthod
wisdome heold ethel sinne thonon Eomer woc haelethum to helpe... ' (2)(Emphases mine)
Which Alexander (see bibliography) translates thus:'So it was that Offa [i.e. king of the continental Angles], brave with thespear, was spoken of abroad for his wars and his gifts; he governed withwisdom the land of his birth. To him was born Eomer, helper of theheroes...' (3)The Offa who is mentioned here was the pre-migration ancestor of his 8th century
namesake, King Offa of Mercia (AD 757-796), whom we have already met (along withthis same ancestor), in the early Saxon genealogies. We have also met Eomer in the same
genealogies, where his name is rendered Eomer and where he is, strictly speaking, thegrandson, and not the son, of Offa. These ancient genealogies were clearly fresh in themind of the writer of Beowulf, which again tells us something of the times in which thepoem was composed. (4)There is, moreover, no sycophantic dedication of the poem to any Christian Anglo-Saxon
English king, not even to that King Offa whose ancestor is immortalised in the poem andunder whose auspices some modern scholars suggest the poem was written. Many other
scholars would plump for an even later date for the poem, yet the characters in the poem
can be historically dated to the late 5th and early 6th centuries, years that long preceded
the adoption of Christianity by the Saxons. In other words, the poem belongs very firmly
indeed to the pagan times which it describes.
A detailed study of the historical characters contained in the Beowulf epic and theirrelationships to each other, is set out in Appendix 9. But to briefly summarise here,
Beowulf, the character in whose honour the poem was written, was no mythical figure.
His place is firmly set in history. He was born the son of Ecgtheow in AD 495. At the ageof seven, in AD 502, he was brought to the court of Hrethel, his maternal grandfather(AD 445-503) who was then king of the Geatingas, a tribe who inhabited what is today85southern Sweden (and whose eponymous founder, Geat, also appears in the early
genealogies--see chapter 7). After an unpromising and feckless youth, during which years
were fought the Geatish/Swedish wars, in particular the Battle of Ravenswood[Hrefnawudu] in the year AD 510, Beowulf undertook his celebrated journey toDenmark, to visit Hrothgar, king of the Danes. This was in AD 515, Beowulf's twentiethyear. (This was also the year of his slaying the monster Grendel which we shall examine
shortly.) Six years later, in AD 521, Beowulf's uncle, King Hygelac, was slain.
Hygelac himself is known to have lived from AD 475 - 521, having come to the throne of
the Geatingas in AD 503, the year of his father Hrethel's death. He is independently
mentioned in Gregory of Tour's Historiae Francorum, where his name is rendered
Chlocbilaichus. (5)There, and in other Latin Frankish sources, (6) he is described as a Danish king(Chogilaicus Danorum rex), not a Geat, but this is the same mistake that our own
English chroniclers made when they included even the Norwegian Vikings under thegeneric name of Danes. The Liber Monstrorum, however, did correctly allude to him asrex Getarum, king of the Geats. Saxo also mentions him as the Hugletus who destroyed
the Swedish chief Homothus. Homothus, in turn, is the same as that Eanmund who isdepicted in line 2612 of the Beowulf poem.
On Hygelac's death, Beowulf declined the offer to succeed his uncle to the throne of theGeatingas, choosing instead to act as guardian to Hygelac's son, prince Heardred, during
the years of Heardred's minority. (Heardred lived from AD 511- 533. He was therefore in
his tenth year when he became king.) Heardred, however, was killed by the Swedes in
AD 533 (for giving shelter to the Swedish king's nephews--see Appendix 9), and it was inthis year that Beowulf took over the reins of kingship. Beowulf went on to rule his people
in peace for fifty years, dying at some 88 years of age in the year AD 583. The manner of
his death, though, is particularly relevant to our study, as we shall see.
But first, we must dispel one particular and erroneous notion that has bedeviled studies inthis field for years. Since the poem's rediscovery in the early 18th century (although it
was brought to the more general attention of scholars in the year 1815 when it was firstprinted), scholars have insisted on depicting the creatures in their translations of the poem
as 'trolls'. The monster Grendel, it is said, was a troll. And the older female who wasassumed by the Danes to have been his mother, is likewise called by modern translators atroll-wife.
The word 'troll' is of Nordic origin, and in the fairy-tales of Northern Europe it is
supposed to have been a human-like, mischievous and hairy dwarf who swaps troll
children for human children in the middle of the night. For good measure, trolls are
sometimes depicted as equally mischievous and hairy giants, some of whom lived underbridges or in caves. Which would be all well and good but for the singular observationthat the word 'troll' is entirely absent from the original Anglo-Saxon text of Beowulf! The
poem is full of expressions that we would call zoological terms, and these relate to allkinds of creatures, (see Appendix 10). But none of them have anything whatever to dowith dwarves, giants, trolls or fairies, mischievous or otherwise. And whilst we are on thesubject, the monster Grendel preyed on the Danes for twelve long years (AD 503-515).
Are we seriously to believe then that these Danish Vikings, whose berserker-warriors
struck such fear into the hearts of their neighbours, were themselves for twelve long years
86rendered helpless with terror by a hairy dwarf; even a 'giant' one? For that is what certainof today's mistranslations of the poem would have us believe.
By the time of his slaying the monster Grendel in AD 515, Beowulf himself had alreadybecome something of a seasoned hunter of large reptilian monsters. He was renowned
amongst the Danes at Hrothgar's court for having cleared the local sea lanes of monstrous
animals whose predatory natures had been making life hazardous for the open boats of
the Vikings. Fortunately, the Anglo-Saxon poem, written in pure celebration of his
heroism, has preserved for us not just the physical descriptions of some of the monsters
that Beowulf encountered, but even the names under which certain species of theseanimals were known to the Saxons and Danes.
However, in order to understand exactly what it is that we are reading when we examine
these names, we must appreciate the nature of the Anglo-Saxon language. The AngloSaxons (like the modern Germans and Dutch) had a very simple method of word
construction, and their names for everyday objects can sometimes sound amusing to ourmodern English ears when translated literally. A body, for example, was simply a bonehouse (banhus), and a joint a bone-lock (banloca). When Beowulf speaks to his Danishinterrogator, he is said quite literally to have unlocked his word-hoard (wordhord
onleoc). Beowulf's own name means bear, and it is constructed in the following way. The
Beo-element is the Saxon word for bee, and his name means literally a bee-wolf. The
bear has a dog-like face and was seen by those who wisely kept their distance toapparently be eating bees when it raided their hives for honey. So they simply called thebear a bee-wolf. Likewise, the sun was called woruldcandel, lit. the world-candle. It was
thus an intensely literal but at the same time highly poetic language, possessing great andunambiguous powers of description.
The slaying of Grendel is the most famous of Beowulf's encounters with monsters ofcourse, and we shall come to look closely at this animal's physical description as it isgiven in the Beowulf epic. But in Grendel's lair, a large swampy lake, there lived otherreptilian species that were collectively known by the Saxons as wyrmeynnes (lit.
wormkind, a race of monsters and serpents--the word serpent in those days meant
something rather more than a snake). Beowulf and his men came across them as they
were tracking the female of Grendel's species back to her lair after she had killed andeaten King Hrothgar's minister, Asshere, whose half-eaten head was found on the clifftop overlooking the lake.
Amongst them were creatures that were known to the Saxons and Danes as giant
saedracan (sea-drakes or sea-dragons), and these were seen from the cliff-top suddenly
swerving through the deep waters of the lake. Perhaps they were aware of the arrival of
humans. Other creatures were lying in the sun when Beowulf's men first saw them, but at
the sound of the battle-horn they scurried back to the water and slithered beneath thewaves.
These other creatures included one species known to the Saxons as a nicor (pl. niceras),
and the word has important connotations for our present study inasmuch as it later
developed into knucker, a Middle English word for a water-dwelling monster or dragon.
The monster at Lyminster in Sussex (see table of previous chapter) was a knucker as
were several of the other reported sightings of such creatures in this country. The poolwhere the Lyminster dragon lived is known to this day as the Knucker's Hole. The
87

Orkney Isles, whose inhabitants, significantly, are Viking, not Scots, likewise have their
Nuckelavee, as do also the Shetland Islanders. And on the Isle of Man, they have a
Nykir.
However, amongst the more generally named wyrmas (serpents) and wildeor (wildbeasts) that were present at the lake on this occasion, there was one species in particularthat was called an ythgewinnes, (9) evidently a surface-swimming monster if its name isanything to go by, rather than a creature that swam at depth like the saedracan. Intriguedby it, Beowulf shot an arrow into the creature, and the animal was then harpooned by
Beowulf's men using eoferspreotum, modified boar-spears. Once the monster was dead,Beowulf and his men then dragged the ythgewinnes out of the water and laid its body out
for examination. They had, after all, a somewhat professional interest in the animals thatthey were up against. Moreover, of the monstrous reptiles that they had encountered at
the lake, it was said that they were such creatures as would sally out at midmorning timeto create havoc amongst the ships in the sea lanes, and one particular success of
Beowulf's, as we have already seen, was clearing the narrow sea lanes between Denmarkand Sweden of certain monsters which he called merefixa and niceras. Following that
operation, the carcasses of nine such creatures (niceras nigene--Alexander mistakenly
translates nigene as seven) were laid out on the beaches for display and further
inspection.
The last monster to be destroyed by Beowulf (and from which encounter Beowulf also
died in the year AD 583) was a flying reptile which lived on a promontory overlooking
the sea at Hronesness on the southern coast of Sweden. Now, the Saxons (andpresumably the Danes) knew flying reptiles in general as lyftfloga (air-fliers), but thisparticular species of flying reptile, the specimen from Hronesness, was known to them asa widfloga, lit, a wide (or far-ranging) flyer, and the description that they have left us fitsthat of a giant Pteranodon. Interestingly, the Saxons also described this creature as aligdraca, or fire-dragon, and he is described as fifty feet in length (or perhaps wingspan?) and about 300 years of age. (Great age is a common feature even among today's
non-giant reptiles.) Moreover, and of particular interest to us, the name widfloga would
have distinguished this particular species of flying reptile from another similar species
which was capable of making only short flights. Such a creature is portrayed in Figure
11.1, a shield-boss from the Sutton Hoo burial which shows a flying dragon with its
wings folded along its sides. Its long tooth-filled jaws are readily seen, and the shieldboss can be seen to this day in its showcase at the British Museum. Modern
paleontologists, working from fossilized remains, have named such a creature
Pterodactyl.

88But our attention must now be drawn towards another reptilian monster which was surely
the most fiercesome of all the animals encountered by Beowulf, the monster called
Grendel.
It is too often and mistakenly thought that the name Grendel was merely a personal nameby which the Danes knew this particular animal. In much the same way as a horse isnicknamed Dobbin, or a dog Fido, this monster, it is assumed, was called Grendel. But, infact, Grendel was the name that our forebears gave to a particular species of animal. Thisis evidenced by the fact that in the year AD 931, King Athelstan of Wessex issued acharter in which a certain lake in Wiltshire (England) is called (as in Denmark) a grendles
mere. (10) The Grendel in Beowulf, we note with interest, also lived in a mere. Other
place-names mentioned in old charters, Grindles bee and Grendeles pyt, for example,
were likewise places that were (or had been) the habitats of this particular species ofanimal. Grindelwald, lit. Grendelwood, in Switzerland is another such place. But where
does the name Grendel itself come from?
There are several Anglo-Saxon words that share the same root as Grendel. The Old
English word grindan, for example, and from which we derive our word grind, used todenote a destroyer. But the most likely origin of the name is simply the fact that Grendel
is an onomatopoeic term derived from the Old Norse grindill, meaning a storm or
grenja, meaning to bellow. The word Grendel is strongly reminiscent of the deepthroated growl that would be emitted by a very large animal and it came into Middle
English usage as grindel, meaning angry.
To the hapless Danes who were the victims of his predatory raids, however, Grendel was
not just an animal. To them he was demon-like, one who was synnum beswenced(afflicted with sins). He was godes ansaca (God's adversary), the synscatha (evil-doer)
who was wonsaeli (damned), a very feond on helle (devil in hell)! He was one of thegrund-wyrgen, accursed and murderous monsters who were said by the Danes to bedescended from Cain himself. And it is descriptions such as these of Grendel's nature thatconvey something of the horror with which the men of those times anticipated his raids
on their homesteads.
But as for Grendel's far more interesting physical description, his habits and thegeography of his haunts, they are as follows:89At one point in the poem, Hrothgar, king of the Danes, relates to Beowulf the following
information when describing Grendel and one of the monster's companions:'Ic thaet londbuend leode mine seleraedende secgan hyde thaet hie
gesawon swylce 1-wegen micle mearcsta pan moras healdan ellorgaestas.
Thaera other waes thaes the hie gewislicost gewitan meahton idese
onlienes, other earmscea pen on weres waeslmum sraeclastas traednaefne he waes mara thonne aenig man other thone on geardagum
Grendel nemdon foldbuende...' (11) (Emphases mine)... the best translation of which is Alexander's:'I have heard it said by subjects of mine who live in the country,
counselors in this hall, that they have seen such a pair of huge wayfarers
haunting the moors, otherworldly ones; and one of them, so far as theymight make it out, was in woman's shape; but the shape of a man, though
twisted, trod also the tracks of exile - save that he was more huge than any
human being. The country people have called him from of old by the nameof Grendel." (12)The key words from this passage, and from which we gain important information
concerning the physical appearance of Grendel, are idese onlicnes when referring to thefemale monster, and weres waestmum when referring to the male. Those Danes who had
seen the monsters thought that the female was the older of the two and supposed that she
was Grendel's mother. She may have been. But what exactly do the descriptive terms tellus that is of such importance? Simply this: that the female was in the shape of a woman(idese onlicnes) and the male was in the shape of a man (weres waestmum), 'though
twisted'. In other words, they were both bipedal, but larger than any human.
Further important detail is added elsewhere in the poem concerning Grendel'sappearance, especially when the monster attacked the Danes for what was to prove thelast time. In lines 815-8, we are told, in the most graphic detail, how Beowulf inflicted afatal injury on the monster by holding the creature in an arm lock, which he then twisted'wrythan'(line 964). The poem then goes on to tell us that:'Licsar gebad atol aeglaeca him on eaxie wearth syndolh sweotol seonowe
onsprungon burston banlocan.'Which may be translated thus:'Searing pain seized the terrifying ugly one as a gaping wound appeared in
his shoulder. The sinews snapped and the (arm) joint burst asunder.' (Mytranslation)
For twelve years the Danes had themselves attempted to kill Grendel with conventional
weapons, knives, swords, arrows and the like. Yet his impenetrable hide had defied them
all and Grendel was able to attack the Danes with impunity Beowulf considered all thisand decided that the only way to tackle the monster was to get to grips with him at closequarters. The monster's forelimbs, which the Saxons called eorms (arms) and whichsome translate as claws, were small and comparatively puny. They were the monster's
90one weak spot, and Beowulf went straight for them. He was already renowned for his
prodigious strength of grip, and he used this to literally tear off one of Grendel's weak,small arms.
Grendel, however, is also described, in line 2079 of the poem, as a mutbbona, i.e. one
who slays with his mouth or jaws, and the speed with which he was able to devour hishuman prey tells us something of the size of his jaws and teeth (he swallowed the body of
one of his victims in large 'gobbets'). Yet, it is the very size of Grendel's jaws whichparadoxically would have aided Beowulf in his carefully thought out strategy of going forthe forelimbs, because pushing himself hard into the animals chest between thoseforelimbs would have placed Beowulf tightly underneath those jaws and would thus havesheltered him from Grendel's terrible teeth.
We are told that as soon as Beowulf gripped the monsters claws (and we must rememberthat Grendel was only a youngster, and not by all accounts a fully mature adult male ofhis species), the startled animal tried to pull away instead of attacking Beowulf. The
animal instinctively knew the danger he was now in and he wanted to escape the clutchesof the man who now posed such an unexpected threat and who was inflicting such
alarming pain. However, it was this action of trying to pull away that left Grendel wide
open to Beowulf's strategy. Thus, Beowulf was able in the ensuing struggle eventually towrench off one of the animal's arms as so graphically described in the poem. As a resultof this appalling injury, the young Grendel returned to his lair and simply bled to death.

But is Beowulf's method of slaying Grendel unknown elsewhere in the historical record?
Are there no depictions to be found of similar creatures being killed in a similar way? It
would seem that there are, the illustration below being one example (see Figure 11.2). It
is taken from an impression of an early Babylonian cylinder seal now in the British
Museum, and clearly shows a man about to amputate the forelimb of a bipedal monster
whose appearance, though stylistic, fits the descriptions of Grendel very closely. I knowof no scholar who would venture to suggest that the Old English author of Beowulf
filched his idea from his knowledge of Babylonian cylinder seals. So we may, I think,safely assume that Beowulf's method of slaying this particular kind of animal was notentirely unknown in the ancient world. Nor, indeed, was the Grendel itself entirely
unknown in the ancient world, as is evident from the following item depicted in Figure
11.3.

91

Here we are presented with a truly remarkable scene. The stone in which these strange
animals are carved, is preserved in the church of SS. Mary and Hardulph at Breedon-onthe-Hill in Leicestershire. This church used to belong to the Saxon kingdom of Mercia.
The stone itself is part of a larger frieze in which are depicted various birds and humans,
all of them readily recognisable. But what are these strange creatures represented here?
They are like nothing that survives today in England, yet they are depicted as vividly as
the other creatures. There are long-necked quadrupeds, one of whom on the right seems
to be biting (or 'necking' with) another. And in the middle of the scene appears a bipedal
animal who is clearly attacking one of the quadrupeds. He stands on two great hindlegs
and has two smaller forelimbs, and carries what appears to be armour plating on his back.
His victim seems to be turning to defend himself; but with his hindlegs buckled in fear.
Now it cannot be pretended that these are merely caricatures of ordinary animals that are
indigenous (these days) to the British Isles, for none of our present native species havelong necks or are bipedal. So how are we to satisfactorily account for them? Is there a
predatory animal from the fossil record known to us, who had two massive hindlegs andtwo comparatively puny forelimbs? There is indeed. In fact there are several suchspecies, but how was our Saxon artist to know about such creatures if he'd never seen
one? Are we looking here at a depiction in stone of the creature known to the Saxons andDanes as Grendel? Considering the close physical descriptions that we find in Beowulf, itwould seem that we are.
The Beowulf epic tells us that as for his haunts and habits, Grendel hunted alone, being
known by the understandably frightened locals who sometimes saw his moonlit shape
coming down from the mist-laden fens as the atol angengea, the terrifying solitary one.
He was a mearcstapa (lit. a marsh-stepper), one who stalked the marshes or outlying
regions, ('haunting the moors', as Alexander so powerfully renders it). He hunted bynight, approaching human settlements and waiting silently in the darkness for his prey tofall asleep before he descended on them as a sceadugenga (lit, a shadow-goer, a nightwalker). Gliding silently along the fenhlith (the waste and desolate tract of the marshes),
he would emerge from the dense black of night as the deathscua (death's shadow). The
92

Danes employed an eotanweard (lit. a giant-ward, a watcher for monsters), to warn ofGrendel's approach, but often in vain. For so silent was Grendel's approach when he was
hunting in the darkness of the night that sometimes an eotanweard himself was surprised
and eaten. On one particular and long-remembered night, no less than thirty Danish
warriors were killed by Grendel. Little wonder then Beowulf was rewarded so richly andwas so famed for having slain him.
In all, a comprehensive and somewhat horrifying picture of Grendel emerges from thepages of Beowulf, and I doubt that the reader needs to be guided by me as to which
particular species of predatory dinosaur the details of his physical description fit best.
Modern commentators who have been brought up on evolutionary ideas are compelled tosuggest that monsters like Grendel are primitive personifications of death or disease, andother such nonsense. (It had even once been suggested that he was a personification of
the North Sea!) But really, the evidence will not support such claims. One modern andrefreshingly honest publication on the poem makes a more telling comment:'In spite of allusions to the devil and abstract concepts of evil, themonsters are very tangible creatures in Beowulf. They have nosupernatural tricks, other than exceptional strength, and they arevulnerable and mortal. The early medieval audience would have accepted
these monsters as monsters, not as symbols of plague or war, for suchcreatures were a definite reality.' (13)Notes
1. Brit. Mus. Cotton. Vitellius. A. XV.
2. lines 1957-61 (Klaeber).
3. Alexander, M. Beowulf. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth. pp.ll2-3.
4. Which incidentally verifies the pre-Christian origins of the Mercian, and therefore
other pedigrees, proving that the early Saxon genealogies were in existence before theSaxons migrated to England.
5. Historae Franconim. Book III. chap. 3. See Thorpe, Lewis tr. Gregory of Tours: The
History of the Franks. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth. 1974. p. 163.
6. cit. Klaeber. p. xli.
7. ibid.
8. This is the one flaw that mars Michael Alexander's otherwise excellent translation of
Beowulf. Surprisingly, Klaeber also makes the same error, having actually edited theoriginal text of the poem.
9. Ythgewinnes. lit, a wave-thrasher. Its surface-swimming nature would explain theease with which the creature was harpooned from the shore of the mere. It is also
probably the ythgewinnes whose likeness was portrayed so often on the prow of Viking
93

ships. Rather than being merely a superstitious emblem, perhaps that likeness had thevery practical purpose of deterring other wave-thrashers from attacking the vessel.
10. Cartularium Saxonicum. (W. de Gray Birch ed.). ii. 363 if. (cit. also by Klaeber. p.
xxiv).
11. Beowulf lines 1345-1355 (Klaeber).
12. Alexander. p. 93.
13. Longman Literature Guides. (York Notes Series). Beowulf. p. 65.

Chapter 12Conclusion
It is astonishing how much information comes to the surface once a document has beenreleased from the veil of obscurity that modernism has thrown over it. Who would
believe, when reading a modernist commentary on the book of Genesis, that so muchevidence was available to prove, not its falsity, but its authenticity? Not its mythicalnature, but its truth and astonishing historical accuracy? Who would believe, whenreading a modern evolutionary book on dinosaurs, that so many records were available todemonstrate that these creatures did not die out millions of years before man came along,as the evolutionary scheme of things would have it, but have lived alongside man who
recorded their activities and physical appearance in records both ancient and modern?
And who would have believed, when reading a modern history book on the ancientworld, that so many peoples from such diverse cultures actually recorded their own
descent from the patriarchs of Genesis long before they could have heard of the Bible orhave been taught any of its contents? And who would have believed that thecreation/evolution controversy was such an ancient debate? It is a sobering matter, andone which presents us with a picture of our past that is quite unlike that which we areused to seeing.
It must certainly give us pause, and in the light of it all, we should surely now consider
adopting a more reasonable and constructive approach to the study of the early history of
mankind, and of the Genesis record in particular. Some, no doubt, will be quick to decrysuch an acceptance of the truth of the biblical record as an act of blind faith. But where
does blind faith come into it when that record is so fully endorsed by the writings of somany disinterested, not to say antagonistic, witnesses, many of whose voices we havelistened to both in the preceding chapters and the appendices which follow? When weread a book about king Henry VIII of England, we are not learning about him by way ofblind faith, for we know that there are many independent sources to which we can go inorder to verify what we have read. Rather, we believe the historical accounts of Henry
VIII by way of informed reason, not faith. And exactly the same thing applies when weread the history that is contained in the book of Genesis and other parts of the Bible. We
94accept that history as well because, in the face of so many disinterested witnesses andcorroborative statements, that is simply the reasonable thing to do. To discard such a vast
weight of independent testimony would be most unreasonable, and would itself be a mostirrational act of faith in the approach and highly questionable tenets of modernistic
philosophy.
Thus it is by our accepting the overwhelming testimony of so many witnesses that we
come to accept the Genesis record as a truly factual and historical account, surely a most
reasonable approach. And if this leads us on to a saving faith in the God of Whom
Genesis so eloquently testifies, then that faith too is seen to be a reasonable and informed
faith, whatever our critics might think.
The student who has read thus far and would like to pursue some or all of the mattersraised in this book, will find in the following appendices a great deal of information andsource-material that should point him or her in the right direction. The casual reader also
will find much of interest there which will expand his or her thought with profit. And onthat note, I now leave the reader to either browse or burrow, hopeful that this book has
shed a little light at least on a vast and complex subject, the early history of mankind.
Most of all, though, I hope that when the Christian reader turns once more to the pages ofGenesis, then he or she will do so with the added confidence that its contents are factualand accurate and that they have every sound reason for believing it, whatever modern
biblical commentators might tell them to the contrary.
Those who have been stimulated by what they have read in this book, and who would
like to join the Creation Science Movement in its work of restoring to beleaguered
Christians the world over a confidence in the Bible's historical and scientific accuracy,
may like to read carefully the following chapter which will tell them all about our workand aims. We are the oldest creationist organisation in the world and our workload isincreasing all the time. But we cannot work alone.
The CSM needs you.

Chapter 13
What the CSM is all about
The Creation Science Movement started in 1932 protesting about the influence ofDarwin's theory of evolution; in fact it was called the Evolution Protest Movement inthose days.
The prime movers were Mr. Douglas Dewar, barrister and Auditor General of the Indian
Civil Service, and Captain Bernard Acworth, DSO who developed the asdic sonar device(Who's Who). They called the first Creationist meeting (EPM) at 21 Essex Gardens, The
Strand, London, in 1932. The first public meeting was reported in The Times on February
12, 1935. Sir Ambrose Fleming presided and what he said then still stands for what theCreation Science Movement believes in today. He declared that95

'of late years the Darwinian anthropology had been forced on publicattention by numerous books in such a fashion as to create a belief that it
was a certainly settled scientific truth. The fact that many eminent
naturalists did not agree that Darwin's theory of species production had
been sufficiently established as a truth was generally repressed. If there
had been no creation, there was no need to assume any Creator; the chiefbasis for all religion was taken away and morality reduced to mere human
expediency. It had seemed to a large number of thoughtful persons that it
was of national importance to counteract the effects of reckless andindiscriminate popularisation of the theory of the wholly animal origin of
mankind, especially among the young, by the diffusion of a truly
scientificcause for all those altruistic, aesthetic, intellectual, spiritual andreligious faculties in man, of which not the very slightest trace was seen in
the animal species... they desired to oppose a one-sided materialisticpresentation of human origin which rejected altogether any suggestion ofcreation. They said that the arguments of the Darwinian anthropologists
were defective in logic and did not give the proof they assumed.'
This was reported over half a century ago! Today society witnesses to the effect ofatheistic humanism which belief in the theory of evolution has brought--fragmented
family units, abortion, child abuse etc. In fact in all these intervening years the evidence
has mounted up arguing that of course a Creator must have made this planet Earth and theheavens. There is a wealth of further scientific evidence supporting Creation which theseeminent men in the early 1930s did not then know. Advances in our knowledge ofgenetics, biochemistry and information theory are just some areas where progress in thelast sixty years has made belief in evolution even less logical.
The sense of high purpose expressed in The Times account is still what motivates CSM
today. We are concerned that people today are rarely confronted with a straight-forward
reading of the Bible starting at Genesis chapter one. In fact most people have been toldthat they cannot trust the beginning of God's Word. They rehearse Satan's own words,'Hath God said?'. CSM declares that the doctrine of original sin is not based on myth orfable but rather on the solid foundation of the 'lively oracles' of the Lord God. A blurringof this truth affects the wonder of the Atonement by the peerless Son of God which inturn can lead to a shallow commitment to Him. CSM ringingly declares that the
beginning of God's Word may be trusted as well as all that follows.
What else does CSM do? A pamphlet on different subjects giving evidence of Creation is
published every other month together with the Creation Journal which carries up-to-theminute news and comment. These pamphlets form an information resource on theCreation/evolution issue. One of our pamphlets shows how Creation is the foundation of
the Gospel (249) while others trace Creation in Genesis (260) and Isaiah (243). Others
are critical of aspects of evolution theory such as alleged vestigial organs (258) andsupposed intermediate forms such as Archaeopteryx (76) and ape-men (151, 234). Many
pamphlets consider particular creatures and show how they could not possibly have
evolved. These include whales (114) where the design of the mouth of the young whale
fitting into the mother enables it to be suckled while at sea. The Bombardier Beetle (233)
had to have a perfectly functioning explosive defence or it would have blown itself up!
The Palisade moth (248), birds' feathers (255), bats' sonar systems (247), the bee's
informative dance (264), and butterflies' metamorphoses (257) could not have evolved.
96Other pamphlets consider the so-called chemical evolution of life (267). Evidence is citedthat the universe is only thousands of years old (265). Measurements of salinity of theoceans (221) show they are young. The eruption of Mount St. Helens (252) in 1980
produced sediments which evolutionary geologists would normally interpret as taking
very long periods of time to form. Three distinct lines of experimental evidence fromscientists of repute in Australia, America and Russia strongly suggest that the speed atwhich light travels has diminished with time (262, 256). This affects the radiometricdating of rocks (207) and the time taken for light to reach us from distant galaxies. It
indicates that the universe is less than 10,000 years old. Scientific observations support
the genealogies (219) in the Bible, a book of amazingly accurate science (254), that life
was created and did not evolve and that Adam was created in the beginning.
CSM provides able speakers on Creation who major on the scientific evidence which isincreasingly weighty. Today many eminent scientists who do not even argue from theChristian standpoint, find this evidence against the theory of evolution sufficient toconvince them that there is no evolution at all.
This evidence is ignored in school textbooks and TV nature programmes. CSM lecturers
regularly address universities, colleges, sixth forms and Church groups throughout theUK. In the 1960s our Creationist speakers toured the Far East, Australia, New Zealandand North America, while in the 1990s we are beginning to meet the need in Eastern
Europe.
CSM has charitable status (Charity no: 801745). We are members of the Evangelical
Alliance. May we admit that we need you as a member? The hard-nosed humanism of
evolutionism has become entrenched in the British educational system and in society atlarge. We need your dedicated support to topple it! Your subscription will help; and if
you could arrange a meeting as well, even better!
At heart CSM wishes to give glory to the Lord Jesus Christ who created man in the imageof the Triune God and then stooped to redeem us.
The address of the CSM is:
Creation Science Movement
50 Brecon Avenue
Cosham, Portsmouth P06 2AW
England

APPENDICES
Note on Appendices 1, 2 and 3

It would be pointless giving references to the following historical notices that are either
obscure or difficult to get hold of (and there are plenty of them.) Therefore I have given
sources that are within the easy reach of anyone whose interest in the subject will prompt
them to investigate further any or all of the names given here. Four main sources are
given, namely:97

1. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible,. Four volumes with Supplementary.
Abingdon Press. New York. 1962.
2. The New Bible Dictionary, Intervarsity Press, London. 1972.
3. Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, Translated by William Whiston.
4. Poole, Matthew,. Commentary on the Holy Bible, Three vols. (1685). Facsimile
published by Banner of Truth Trust. London. 1962.
Reference 1 is abbreviated and followed by volume number and page thus: 1DB 3:247.
Reference 2 is simply abbreviated NBD followed by page number.
Reference 3, due to the many varied editions of Josephus' Antiquities, is abbreviatedfollowed by book number, chapter number and paragraph number thus: JA l.vi.2.
Reference 4 is abbreviated and followed by volume and page number thus: P 1:26.
All, with the exception of Josephus, provide valuable reference material of their own for
their sources. Josephus is valuable because he has preserved many of the names andspellings by which the names contained in the Table of Nations were known to theclassical world.

Appendix I
The Nations of Shem

98

1. Shem: The father of all the Semitic nations. (Refs: 1DB 4:321. NBD 1175. JA l.vi.4. P
1:28)
2. Elam: The founder of the Elamites, who were known to the Babylonians as the
Elamtu, to the Greeks as Elymais, and whom the Romans knew as the Elymaci. The
Elamites recorded their own name as the Haltamti. Subsequently, in the Old Persian
inscriptions their name is rendered (h)uju, and huz in the Middle Persian, which is thearchaic form of the modern Persian name of Khuzistan, which now covers what used tobe the land of Elam (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 2:70. NBD 355-6. JA 1.vi.3. P 1:28)
3. Asshur: The founder of the nation to whom he gave his name, Assyria. It may bepossible to identify Asshur in the early king-lists of Assyria as Puzur Asshur I. According
to these lists, Puzur Asshur I would have lived and reigned ca 1960 BC, which accords
rather well with the biblical chronology. Asshur was one of the earliest men to be deified
and worshipped by his descendants. Indeed, as long as Assyria lasted, that is until 612
BC, accounts of battles, diplomatic affairs and foreign bulletins were daily read out to his
image; and every Assyrian king held that he wore the crown only with the express
permission of Asshur's deified ghost (see Map 2) (Refs: 1DB 1:261. NBD 'Assyria' 1007. JA l.vi.3. P 1:2

99

4. Arphaxad: He was the progenitor of the Chaldeans, his name, apparently,
corresponding to that of arp-keshed, the border marches of Chaldea. That he was indeed
the forebear of the Chaldeans is confirmed by the Hurrian (Nuzi) tablets, which render
the name as Arip-hurra--the founder of Chaldea. The name was also known to the
Akkadians as Arraphu. Some scholars have endeavoured to treat his name as a
derivative of the Assyrian phrase arba-kishshatu, meaning the four corners of the world.
The Assyrians knew his descendants as the Kaldu, who were adept astrologers,
magicians and mathematicians. Ptolemy recorded the name of their land as Arrapichitis,
whilst it was known to others as Arphaxitis. Their very earliest settlement, however,would appear to be what is today a 2.5 acre ruin that still bears the name Arpachiya. It
lies some four miles to the east of ancient Nineveh, and is the remains of a very early
farming community (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 1:23 1. NBD 86. JA 1.vi.3. P1:28)
5. Lud: The early descendants of Lud, the Ludim, were known to both the Assyrians andBabylonians as the Ludu. Josephus tells us that their land was later known as Lydia (adirect Greek derivation of the name Lud) which lay in western Asia Minor. (Josephus
rendered the name Laud.) The Lydians were famed in the old world for the skill of theirarchers. They spoke an Indo-European (Japhetic) language, examples of which are to befound on certain Egyptian monuments. The land of Lydia was finally conquered byCyrus, king of Persia, in the year 546 BC (see Map 4.) (Refs: 1DB 3:178-9. NBD 755.JA
l.vi.3. P1:28)
6. Aram: He was the founder of the Aramaeans, known to the Akkadians as the Aramu,
but who were later known to the Greeks as the Syrians (from Serug? see 29.) In an
Assyrian inscription of Tiglath-pileser I, from ca 1100 BC, the Aramaeans are depicted asliving to the east of the river Tigris. By the time of Tiglath-pileser III, however, some
400j years later, they were living all over Mesopotamia. After they settled to the west,
occupying roughly the same area makes up modern Syria. A clay tablet from Ur bears theof Aramu, and it is of interest to note that Aramaic is still spoken today (see Map 2.)(Refs: 1DB 1:185. NBD 55-9.JA l.vi.3. P 1:28)
7. Uz: There is still considerable disagreement as to the precise area in which thedescendants of Uz settled, and given the somewhat nomadic nature of the Aramaeans(Aram was the father of Uz), this is hardly surprising. Northern Arabia, between Babylon
and Edom, seems the most likely area of settlement (see Map 2.) (Josephus, probably
correctly, identifies it as the classical Trachonitis.) (Refs: 1DB 4:741. NBD 1306-7.JA
l.vi.4. P1:28)
8. Hul: His descendants settled to the north of the sea of Galilee, where they gave theirname to the lake and vale of Huleh (the biblical Waters of Merom, which were known toJosephus as Ul.) The place was notorious amongst Victorian explorers of Palestine for its
tribes of Bedhouin robbers, and its far from healthy marshes and swamps which today
have been drained, the reclaimed land being farmed and settled. The modern Israelis havealso set up a nature reserve there, and know the place under its ancient name of the valeof Hula. The lake of Hula is formed by the accumulation of water from the two sources of
the Jordan before beginning their descent to Galilee (see Map 4.) (Refs: 1DB 2:658. JA
1.vi.3. P 1:28)
9. Gether: His descendants (known to Josephus as Gather) settled to the south ofDamascus. Josephus identifies them as the latter-day Bactrians, famous amongst other100

things for a breed of camel. Whether this identification is correct or not cannot now be
determined. It should, however, be noted that Bactria was populated by Aryan, orJaphetic, tribes in late Assyrian times, whereas the children of Gether were, of course,
Semites (see Map 4.) (Refs: 1DB 2:387.JA 1.vi.3. P 1:28)
10. Mash: The Akkadians rendered the name Mashu, which in turn was known to the
Egyptians as Msh'r. It was also rendered Mishal, all of which names referred to a people
that dwelt in Lebanon (see Map 4.) However, in 1 Chronicles 1:17, the name is rendered
Meshech, and this should not be confused with the Japhetic Meshech. Such confusion
arises in Josephus and later in the 9th century historian Nennius (see chapter 4.) (Refs:
1DB 3:294. P 1:28)
11. Shelah: I have not yet been able to find his name in secular sources, although
Josephus renders the name Sala. (Refs: 1DB 4:319. NBD 1175. JA 1.vi.4)
12. Eber: Known to Josephus as Heber, he gave his name to the Hebrew race. Somehave tried to identify him with Ebru, erstwhile king of Ebla, but this is unlikely on both
chronological and ethnic grounds. The attempt to identify the children of Eber with the
Habiru of the Egyptian chronicles may also be somewhat forced, although it is fair to
add that, although we tend today to think only of the Jewish nation as Hebrews, in fact allof Eber's descendants, technically speaking, would have been Hebrew also, the Joktanite
Arabs included. (Refs: 1DB 2:5. NBD 331.JA 1.vi.3 and 5. P 1:28)
13. Joktan: The progenitor of no less than thirteen southern Arabian tribes, he isremembered amongst modern Arabs as Yaqtan. Only the purest Arabs, it is still
maintained, are those Semitic Arabs descended from Joktan; whilst Hamitic Arabs arereferred to somewhat disdainfully as Musta 'rabs, pretended Arabs. Joktan's name ispreserved in that of the ancient town of Jectan near present-day Mecca (see Map 2.)
Josephus knew him as Joctan. (Refs: 1DB 2:963-4. NBD 652. JA 1.vi.3. P 1:28)
14. Almodad: Young gives Almodad's name as meaning 'The Agitator', which, if correct,
hides what is no doubt a most interesting background. The name is certainly Arabic, hisdescendants being known to early Arab historians as the al-Morad tribe, who are
seemingly to be identified with the Gebonites (the name is rendered Elmodad in
Josephus.) Their precise area of settlement cannot now be determined. (see Map 2.)(Refs: 1DB 1:86. JA 1.vi.3. P 1:28)
15. SheIeph: Rendered Saleph in Josephus, the name is of a southern Arabian tribe who
were known to the pre-Islamic Arabs as the Salif. They were a Yemeni tribe whose
capital, Sulaf, lay some sixty miles due north of present-day San'a (see 19 and Map 2.)(Refs: 1DB 4:320. JA 1.vi.4. P 1:28)
16. Hazarmaveth: Known as Asermoth in Josephus, his descendants populated the 200
mile long valley that runs parallel to the southern coast of Arabia. It is known to this day
as the Hadramaut, a direct transposition into Arabic of the name Hazarmaveth. In preIslamic inscriptions, the name is variously rendered hdrmt and hdrmwt. Strabo tells usthat the tribe of Hazarmaveth was one of the four main tribes of Arabs in his day. The
name seems to mean 'town of death'--Hadramaut means the same in Arabic--although we
can now only ponder the possible tragedy that lies behind it (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB
2:539. NBD 507. JA 1.vi.3. P 1:28)
101

17. Jerah: There lies, on the shores of Galilee, a ruined mound that is named BethYerah, the house of Jerah, although this may not refer to the subject here. It is more
likely that his descendants migrated into the southern regions of Arabia. Indeed, the Arabcity that bore Jerah's name, and which was rendered by Ptolemy as Jerakon Kome, layon the Mara coast close to the Hadramaut (see 16 and Map 2.) The name appears as Jerain Josephus and as Yarki in the inscriptions of Ashurbanipal. (Refs: 1DB 2:821-2. NBD
605-6.JA 1.vi.3. P 1:28)
18. Hadoram: Rendered Adoram in Josephus, it is that of a southern Arabian tribe, thename of whose town appears as Hurarina (Haroram) in the inscriptions ofAshurbanipal. It lay close to Yarki (see 17.) (Refs: 1DB 2:508. NBD 500. JA l.vi.3. P
1:27)
19. Uzal: Arab historians render the name of Uzal as Azal (Josephus gives Aizel), and itis the ancient, pre-Islamic name for the city of San'a, the modern capital of Yemen (see15.) Uzal's descendants are still doubtless thriving in the area. They knew the tribe ofUzal as the Azalla (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 4:741. NBD 1307. JA 1.vi.4. P 1:28)
20. Diklah: The name Diklah appears in Akkadian records as Diklat, the Aramaeansknew it as Diklath, and the Assyrians gave it as Idiklat, all of which transpose into
Greek as Tigris, the name of the valley and river that cuts through Mesopotamia.
(Josephus renders it Decla.) This would give a clear indication as their place ofsettlement--either north of the Persian Gulf or in the north-east extremity of the Arabianpeninsula (see Map 2.) Procopius gives it as Phoinikon, which lay at the southern end of
the Wadi Sirhan. (Refs: 1DB 1:843. JA l.vi.4. P 1:29)
21. Obal: A southern Arabian tribe whose name was rendered by Arab historians as
Ebal. (Josephus has the same rendering.) Ancient inscriptions from Yemen give it as
Abil, which elsewhere appears as Ubal. According to these sources the location of thistribe's place of settlement lies between the ancient Yemeni cities of Hadeida and San'a(see 19 and Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 3:579. NBD 'Ebal' 330. JA l.vi.4. P 1:29)
22. Abimael: His descendants settled in southern Arabia, where their existence is known
from ancient Sabean inscriptions (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 1:9. JA 1.vi.4. P 1:29)
23. Sheba: There are no less than three Shebas in the Table of Nations (see 48 and Ham7)! Due to the presence in Arabia of both the Cushite and Jokshanite tribes of Sheba, it is
impossible to determine where this particular patriarch's descendants settled. Josephus
may give a clue in rendering the name as Sabeus. (Refs: 1DB 4:311-2. NBD 1171.JA
1.vi.4. P 1:27)
24. Ophir: Its existence being duly noted in the pre Islamic Arabian inscriptions, thistribe's area of settlement is given by them as lying between Saba in Yemen and Hawlan(or Havilah, see 25.) The name has been preserved in that of the coastal town of Ma'afir
in south-west Arabia (see Map 2) (Refs: 1DB 3:605-6. NBD 911.JA 1.vi.4. P 129) ~25. Havilah: There were two Arabian tribes known under the name of Havilah. The firstwas of Hamitic descent (see Ham 4), which settled in the eastern regions of the Arabianpeninsula. Their land was known to Arabian cosmographers as Hawlan. Kautsch
identifies them as the Huwailah, a people who settled on the Arabian shore of the Persian102

Gulf. The Semitic tribe, however, with whom we are dealing here, remained distinct, andoccupied areas on the opposite side of the peninsula. In Strabo's day, they were still
occupying areas of northern Arabia, their name being recorded by him as the Khaulotaei.
Josephus knew them as the Euilat. The Arabian cosmographer Yakut, informs us that
their dialect, Hawil, was spoken by 'the descendants of Midian, the son of Abraham. 'This Semitic tribe of Havilah also occupied the southernmost tip of the Arabianpeninsula, crossing from there the Bab-el-Mandeb to the African coast. Here, bothPtolemy and Pliny refer to their city of Aualis on the Red Sea coast of Africa, which lay
next to the modern state of Djibouti. This city (Aualis) is known today as Zeila (see Map
2.) (Refs: 1DB 2:537. NBD 506. JA 1.vi.4. P 1:29)
26. Jobab: Jobab's descendants were known to the Akkadians as the Labibi. They settled
in the town that has long borne their founder's name, Juhaibab, which, according to
Sabean inscriptions, lay close to modern Mecca (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 2:925. NBD
637. JA l.vi.4. P 1:29)
27. Peleg: Genesis tells us that in his day the earth was divided. The meaning of his
name, as rendered in Hebrew, corresponds exactly with the Akkadian noun pulukku,
which means a dividing up of territory by means of boundaries and borders (theAkkadian verb for 'to divide' is palaku.) Likewise, the Assyrian word, palgu, refers to
the dividing up of land by canals and irrigation systems. It is in this sense that the Hebrew
word peleg is used in Job 29:6 and 38:5. The man named Peleg, (whose name appears as
Phaleg in Josephus), was so named, however, after the division and scattering of thenations from Babel. In fact, one of the ancient names of Babylon (Babel) is nowadays
translated as 'the place of canals', though surely a better translation would be 'the place ofdivision,' or even the place of Peleg. There is an ancient city that bore the name of Peleg,however, the Akkadian town of Phalgu, whose ruins lie at the junction of the Euphrates
and Chaboras rivers (Chebar, see Ezekiel 1:1.) Of further interest to us is the fact that thedivision of the nations is recorded in Genesis as occurring in the fifth generation after the
Flood. We will encounter striking confirmation of this when we study the descent ofcertain European kings later. (Refs: 1DB 3:709. NBD 957. JA 1.vi.4. P 1:28)
28. Reu: This name appears as a personal name in Akkadian records where it is rendered
Ra'u. The early Greeks knew it as Ragau, as did Josephus. Reu was to give his name toan island in the Euphrates that lies just below the city of Anat, and which the Akkadiansknew as Ra'ilu. It was known to the Greeks as Ragu (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 4:53. JA
l.vi.5. P 1:30)
29. Serug: He gave his name to the city and district that was known to the Akkadians as
Sarugi. This lay to the west of Haran (see 32.) It is normally assumed that the name of
the land of Syria came about because the Greeks confused it with Assyria. But surely it ismore likely that Syria is merely a transposition into Greek of the patriarchal name of
Serug who, after all, settled in that part of the world (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 4:29 1. JA
1.vi.5. P 1:30)
30. Nahor: There seems to be no secular record that mentions him as an individual (butsee 36.) (Refs: 1DB 3:497. NBD 860. JA 1.vi.5. P 1:30.)
31. Terah: The father of Abraham, he later settled in Haran (see 32), where he died. The
name Terah is associated in Jewish literature with the moon-god, and there seems to be a103

direct etymological link between his name and the teraphim, small idolatrous images
that were kept in most households. In this context, it is interesting to note that Joshua
24:2 describes Terah as an idolater. However, near to the city of Haran, there was a placethat bore Terah's name, known to Assyrians as Turahi and to the Akkadians as Turahu,
the ruins of which city were later known to them as Til-Sa-Turahi (see Map 2.) (Refs:
1DB 4:574. NBD 1252-3. JA 1.vi.5. P 1:30)
32. Haran: Haran was the youngest of his father's sons. He was born at Ur and died there
at a young age. To his father, Terah, is attributed the building of the city of Haran. Terah
named the place in his son's memory and honour. The city lay on the main highway to
Nineveh from Carchemish, and it is interesting to note in this context that the Assyrian
noun for main road is harranu. From its earliest days, Haran was one of the chief centresof moon-worship, and we frequently read of its temple being restored and embellished bysuccessive kings of Assyria. Its temple was, indeed, every bit as famous and wellsubscribed as that at Ur (where the family originated, of course.) Nimrod also wasworshipped here (see Ham 10), he being referred to in the inscriptions concerning him as
the 'prince of the men of Haran' (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 2:524. NBD 504. JA 1.vi.5. P
1:30)
33. Lot: I have not yet noticed any secular reference to him, save that the Dead Sea has
always been known to the Arabs as the Sea of Lot (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 3:162-3.
NBD 752)
34. Moab: He was the founder of the Moabite nation. This nation was known as Mu'abu
to the Akkadians, and as in the Egyptian inscriptions (see Map 4.) (Refs: 1DB 3:409.
NBD 834-5)
35. Benammi: He founded the Ammonite nation, and his name is still perpetuated in themodern city of Amman that lies some 25 miles to the north-east of the Dead Sea.
Present-day Amman. in fact, was once the capital city of the Ammonite nation, and was
known in the old world as Rabbath-ammon. We know from the first book of the
Maccabees that Judas Maccabaeus confronted the Ammonites, and hence that theAmmonites had survived as a distinct nation until at least the 2nd century BC. However,in the 1st century BC, their lands were occupied by the Nabataeans (see Nebaioth 54) and
it is here that the Ammonites disappear from the historical scene. The personal name of
Benammi is known from certain clan-lists of Ugarit. There also survives from Nimrud in
Assyria an inscription bearing the name of banu Ammanaja. The Assyrians generally
knew the Ammonites nation as bit-Amma-na-aia, or the House of Ammon (see Map 4.)(Refs: 1DB 1:381. NBD 140 and 'Ammonite' 30)
36. Nahor: The name Nahor is known from Babylonian inscriptions, and from the clay
tablets of Mari, which render the name Nahur. Nahor settled in Haran (see 32) which
was later to become known as the Town of Nahor. This appears in inscriptions from thereign of Ashurbanipal, as Nahuru, the city's later ruins being known to the Assyrians as
til-Nahiri, the mound or hill of Nahor (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 3:497. NBD 860. JA
1.vi.5. P 1:30)
37. Abraham: The well-known founder of the Jewish people. There exists from
Babylonia an early clay tablet that bears the name of a man called Abi-ramu, which isrendered Abarama in the Eblaite tablets. Another bears the name of Sarai. Josephus
104quotes the Babylonian historian, Berosus, as saying, 'In the tenth generation after the
Flood, there was a man among the Chaldeans who was righteous and great...' Josephus,rightly in my opinion, regarded this remark as a direct reference to Abraham, even though
Berosus didn't name him. Josephus tells us also that Hecataeus and Nicolaus ofDamascus both mention Abraham in their own histories. (Refs: 1DB 1:14-22. NBD 57.JA 1.vi.5. P 1:30)
38. Shuah: The founder of the biblical Shuites, one of whose descendants (Bildad)
counseled Job. The Assyrians knew Shuab's posterity as the Suhu, and describe their land
as lying adjacent to the Euphrates, south of Carchemish, between the Balikh and Khabur
rivers (the Khabur river was recorded as the Chaboras by Ptolemy, and as the Chebar by
Ezekiel. See Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 4:341. NBD 1183)
39. Ishbak: He was the progenitor of a tribe who seem to have settled to the east of
Canaan. Otherwise, secular records seem to be silent concerning them (see Map 2.) (Ref:
1DB 2:747)
40. Midian: The founder of the Midianite tribe of Arabs. The Arabian historian, Yakut,
tells us that they spoke the Hawil dialect of Arabic (see 25.) He also confirms the fact that
Midian was the son of Abraham. The tribes of Midian are also known from Egyptian andother sources, Ptolemy, for example, recording the name as Modiana, whilst the ancient
pre-Islamic Arab city of Madyan is today known as Magha'ir Shu'aib (see Map 2.)(Refs: 1DB 3:375-6. NBD 821)
41. Ephah: Ephah's descendants settled in what is now Ghuwafa, to the south-west of
Tebuk in the north-west Arabian peninsula. They are known to us in the annals of
Tiglath-pileser III, who refers to them as the Hayapa. They are last heard of in an
inscription of Sargon II that dates to the year 715 BC (see Map 2.) (Ref: 1DB 2:107)
42. Epher: Known to Arab cosmographers as 'ofr, Ashurbanipal of Assyria recorded thename of Epher's descendants as the Apparu. The city in which they settled still bears thename of their founder, Ghifar. It lies close to Medina (see Map 2.) (Ref: 1DB 2:107)
43. Henoch: He founded the famous Kenite tribe of Midianite Arabs. They werecoppersmiths who settled to the south-west of the Gulf of Aqaba (see Map 2.) (Ref: 1DB
2:523)
44. Abidah: Minean inscriptions from Yemen record the name of Abidah's posterity as
the Abiyadi'. Their precise area of settlement is unknown, although it must have been in
the south-west regions of the Arabian peninsula (see Map 2.) (Ref: 1DB 1:7)
45. Eldaah: The descendants of Eldaah are known to us from ancient Sabean
inscriptions, which refer to them as the Yada'il. We do not know their precise area ofsettlement, although it was certainly within Yemen (see Map 2.) (Ref: 1DB 2:72)
46. Medan: He founded various northern Arabian tribes, and his name is still preservedin the modern family name of Abd-al-Madan. His posterity settled in the town ofMadan, which is mentioned in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III that date to the year
732 BC. He renders the name as Badan, but the letters 'm' and 'b' are interchangeable in105Arabic. The town lay to the west of Tema (see 62 and Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 3:318. NBD
801)
47. Jokshan: Seemingly unknown outside the biblical records, he appears to have settledwith his descendants in northern Arabia (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 2:963. NBD 652)
48. Sheba: In the often unrecorded and sometimes complex turmoil of these times, thispeople seemingly made up the Semitic Arabs who were to supercede the earlier Hamitic
tribe, the original Sheba. (Refs: 1DB 4:311-2. NBD 1171.JA l.vi.4. P 1:27 and 29)
49. Dedan: Like Sheba, this Semitic tribe of Dedan seemingly superseded the Hamitic
tribe of the same name, and we notice here the derivation of the Hebrew word 'rab
(Arab) from ereb, which means a mixed multitude. The city of Dedan (modern Daidan)
is mentioned in the inscriptions of Nabonidus, king of Babylon, who spent his years of
exile at Tema. There are some ruins west of Tema called Daidan, that lies in an area
known in modern times as Medain Salih. (see 62 and Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 1:812. NBD
305. P 1:27)
50. The Sons of Dedan: These founded the three tribes of: Dedanite Arabs, of whomnothing further is learned from extra-biblical sources save for the fact that in later Jewish
literature the Asshurim (not to be confused with the Assyrians) were described astravelling merchants; the Letushim were those who sharpened weapons and cutlery; andthe Leummim were somewhat enigmatically described as the 'chief of those who inhabit
the isles', the significance of which phrase is now lost to us. From this information, it
would appear that the Asshurim and Letushim would travel the country selling andrepairing various items, rather like the numerous tribes of gypsies and tinkers who wereonce a common feature of the English and European scenes. (Ref: For Asshurim, 1DB
1:261) (Ref: For Letushim, 1DB 3:115) (Ref: For Leummim, 1DB 3:115)
51. Zimran: The chieftain and founder of an Arab tribe whose chief city lay to the westof Mecca. Ptolemy recorded its name as Zabram, the letters 'm' and 'b' being
interchangeable in Arabic (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 4:958. NBD 1360)
52. Isaac: I have so far found no mention of him in extra-biblical sources. (Refs: 1DB
2:728. NBD 568-9)
53. Ishmael: Among the Babylonian documents that have come down to us from thedays of Hammurabi, there is a list of witnesses to certain documents. One of thesewitnesses is registered as 'Abuha, son of Ishmael'. (Refs: 1DB 2:747-8. NBD 577-8)
54. Nebaioth: He settled with his descendants to the south of the Dead Sea, where they
were known to the Chaldeans as the Nabat, and to the Assyrians as the Nahaiate. Theirown inscriptions render the name as 'nbtw'. The Greek historian, Diodorus, mentions
them, and Ptolemy knew them as the Nabatei. The Nabataeans' final demise was brought
about by Augustus Caesar, who cut off the trade routes of Arabia. By the time of Tiberius
Caesar, all the land east of Judea was known as Nabataea. (Refs: 1DB 3:528. NBD 872)
55. Kedar: Known to the Hebrews as the Qedar, and the Assyrians as the Qidri, hisdescendants became the great tribe of Arabs who settled in the north-west Arabianpeninsula, and whose black tents were to become proverbial in the ancient world. We are106

informed in Babylonian sources that the armies Nebuchadnezzar confronted the tribe of
Kedar in a major skirmish of the year 599 BC, an incident that was foretold by Jeremiah(49:28 and 29.) The tribe of Kedar is also mentioned in the annals of Ashurbanipal, withwhom they clashed, and in various other Assyrian documents. In these, the men of Kedar
are mentioned in close association with the men of Nebaioth (see 54.) The founder ofIslam, Mohammed, was to trace his own direct descent from Kedar (see Map 2.) (Refs:
1DB 3:3-4. NBD 688)
56. Adbeel: He was the founder of a tribe who were known to the Akkadians as theIdibilu. This same people were subsequently mentioned in the annals of Tiglath-pileser
III, who tells us how he conquered the Idiba'leans and employed them to guard theapproaches to Egypt's borders. Their area of settlement was in north-west Arabia, close to
the lands of Kedar (see 55) and Nebaioth (see 54 and Map 2.) (Ref: 1DB 1:45)
57. Mibsam: An otherwise unknown Bedhouin chieftain. (Ref: 1DB 3:369)
58. Mishma: He settled with his descendants in what is known today as Jebel Mishma inthe vicinity of Tema (see 62 and Map 2.) (Ref: 1DB 3:404)
59. Dumah: The Assyrians and Babylonians knew Dumah's descendants as the
Adammatu. Nabonidus later tells us how he conquered the Adummu. Ptolemy referredto them as the Domatha; and Porphyry recorded their name as the Dumathii. We know
them today as the Idumaeans. The name of Dumah is still preserved in the modern Arabcity of Dumat-al-Jandal, the erstwhile capital of his tribe (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB
1:873-4. NBD 328)
60. Massa: The descendants of Massa were known to the Assyrians as the Mas'a, whowith the tribe of Tema (see were forced to pay tribute to Tiglath-pileser III. He tells how
he conquered them along with the peoples of Haiappa (see 41), the Idiba'leans (see 56)
and others. Ptolemy knew tribe as the Masanoi, who lived to the north-east of Dumah(see 59.) Josephus records their name as the Mesanaeans, and that in his day their lands
were known to the Romans as Charax Spasini (see Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 3:299. NBD
793. JA 1.vi.3)
61. Hadad: The name is rendered as Haddu in Akkadian inscriptions as the name of apagan god. Hadad himself, however, seems to be unknown in extra-biblical sources.
(Refs: 1DB 2:507. NBD 497)
62. Tema: Still known by today's Arabs as Taima', the city of Tema's descendants lies
some 70 miles north-east of Dedan (see 49.) Nabonidus, king of Babylon, (556-539 BC),
passed his years of exile in this city, which he also knew as Tema. The city of Tema, withthose of Dedan and Dumah (see 59) formed stages in the caravan route from Babylon to
Sheba (see 48 and Map 2.) (Refs: 1DB 4:533. NBD 1241)
63. Jetur: He was the progenitor of the Ituraeans, who were known to the Greeks as theItouraia. The Ituraeans are mentioned in the works of Dio Cassius, Josephus, Pliny,
Strabo and others; and were known to the Roman authorities as a tribe of robbers. The
descendants of Jetur perpetrated a massacre of Lebanese Christians in AD 1860 (see Map
4.) (Ref: 1DB 2:897)
107

64. Naphish: He and his lineage are variously known in the biblical records as Nephish,
the children of the Nephusim, and the Nephishesim. They are seemingly unknown fromextra-biblical sources. (Refs: 1DB 3:508. NBD 864)
65. Kedemah: He and his descendants settled in what was known as the Wilderness of
Kedemoth. The tribe dwelt in city that is known today as es-Za'feran (see Map 4.) (Refs:
1DB 3: 4 and 557. NBD 688)
Note: Maps are in Appendix 3.

Appendix 2
The Nations of Ham

1. Ham: 'Yt is observed that Cham, and his famely, were the only far Travellers, andStraglers into diverse unknowne countries, searching; exploring and sitting downe in thesame; as also yt is said of his famely that what country soever the children of Chamhappened to possesse, there beganne both the Ignoraunce of true godliness...and that no
inhabited countryes cast forth greater multytudes, to raunge and stray into diverse
remote Regions.' Thus far the comments of one William Strachey, who added to thesewords in 1612 the following damning indictment, accusing Ham's posterity of instigating:the ignoraunce of the true worship of God...the inventions of Heathenisme, and [the]adoration of falce godes and the Devill...' cit. Hogden, p. 262. See Bibliography. (Refs:
1DB 2:515. NBD 500. JA 1.vi.2. P 1:27)
108

2. Cush: Josephus writes: 'Time has not at all hurt the name of Cush; for the Ethiopians,
over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia,
called Cushites.' The name of Cush (originally rendered Chus in Josephus) is preservedin Egypt's hieroglyphic inscriptions as Kush, these records referring to the country thatlay between the second and third cataracts of the Nile. This same land was later known as
Nubia. Additional information on this location is gleaned from the records ofEsarhaddon, king of Assyria (681-668 BC), who tells us that he made himself king ofMusur (see 11), of Paturisi (see 16), and Cush. Some have claimed also that the name of
Cush was likewise perpetuated in that of the Babylonian city of Kish, one of the earliest
cities to be built after the Flood. (Refs: 1DB 1:751. NBD 284. JA 1, vi.2. P 1:27)
3. Sebah: He founded the nation that was known to later history as the Sabaeans. Strabo
writes of their city of Sabai along with its harbour of Saba (same spelling as in
Josephus), which lay on the west coast of the Arabian peninsula (see Map 2). (Refs: 1DB
4:260. JA 1.vi.2)
4. Havilah: The progenitor of the Hamitic tribe of Havilah. (There were two tribes ofHavilah, one of them Semitic in origin, see Shem 25.) His descendants settled on the east
coast of Arabia looking out onto the Persian Gulf. Their land was known to the preIslamic writers as Hawlan, and to Josephus as Evilas. Kautsch renders the name as
Huwailah, and confirms their settlement on the east coast of Arabia (see Map 2). (Refs:
1DB 2:537. NBD 506. JA 1.vi.2. P 1:29)
5. Sabta: Josephus records the name of his (Sabta's) descendants as the Sabateni or
Sabathes. Ptolemy knew them as the Saptha, and Pliny called them the Messabathi.
They settled on the eastern side of the Arabian peninsula. Sabta's name is also preservedin that of the ancient city of Shabwat (modern Sabota), the capital of the Hadramaut(Hazarmaveth. See Shem 16). (Refs: 1DB 4:146. NBD i112.JA 1.vi.2. P 1:27)
6. Raamah: We know from the inscriptions of ancient Sheba (see 7) that Raamah's
descendants settled near to the land of Havilah (see 4), and to the east of Ophir (see Shem
24). They are known from other sources to have traded with the children of Zidon (see22) in the city of Tyre. Ptolemy agreed with the LXX in the name Ragma, which
Josephus rendered Ragmas. There is still a place called Raamah near Ma'in in southwest Arabia (see Map 2). (Refs: 1DB 4:1. NBD 1072. JA 1.vi.2. P 1
7. Sheba: Minaean inscriptions from the north Yemen, and which date to the 9th century
BC, tell us that Sheba was that kingdom's southern neighbor. The land of Sheba is also
known to us from Assyrian inscriptions of the 8th century BC. Sheba was famous as theLand of Spices (there were four 'spice kingdoms'--Minaea, Kataban, and Hadramaut.)(See Shem 16), and we know from the vast archaeological ruins, some of whose walls
still stand some 60 feet above the desert sands, that the land was extremely fertile, being
watered by ingenious irrigation systems controlled by a great dam that once spanned theriver Adhanat. In the year 542 BC, the dam collapsed after more than a thousand years ofservice, an event that is recalled in the Koran and described there as a judgment of God
upon the people.(Refs: 1DB 4:311-2. NBD 1171.JA1, vi.4. P 1:27)
8. Dedan: His posterity are known to have traded with the Phoenicians. Identified fromvarious cuneiform inscriptions, their main place of settlement was the city that is known
109

today as Al-ula, and which lies some 70 miles south-west of modern Taima (see Shem 62
and Map 2). (Refs: 1DB 1:812. NBD 305)
9. Sabtecha: Identified by Josephus as the Sabactens or Sabactas, Sabtecha's
descendants appear to have settled in southern Arabia, the modern Yemen (see Map 2).
(Refs: 1DB 4:146. NBD 1112.JA 1.vi.2. P 1:27)
10. Nimrod: Writing in 1876, George Smith tells us that: 'Nearly thirteen hundred years
before the Christian era, one of the Egyptian poems likens a hero to the Assyrian chief
Kazartu, 'a great hunter... and it has already been suggested that the reference here is tothe fame of Nimrod. A little later, in the BC 1100 to 800, we have in Egypt many persons
named Nimrod, showing a knowledge of the mighty hunter there.' (Chaldean Genesis. p.
313). Nimrod was undoubtedly the most notorious man in the ancient world who iscredited with instigating the Great Rebellion at Babel, and of founding the vs, astrology
and even human sacrifice. Moreover, there is much evidence to suggest that he himself
was worshipped from the very earliest times. His name, for example, was perpetuated inthose of Nimurda, the Assyrian god of war; Marduk, the Babylonian king of the gods;
and the Sumerian deity Amar-utu. His image was likewise incorporated very early on in
the Chaldean zodiac as a child seated on his mother's lap, and both mother and child were
worshipped, she as the Queen of Heaven, and he as her erstwhile sacrificial son, theprecursor of today's worship of the Madonna and Child. Nimrod was also worshipped by
the Romans under the name of Bacchus, this name being derived from the Semitic barCush, meaning the son of Cush. A mountain not far from Ararat, has been called
Nimrud Dagh (Mount Nimrod) from the earliest times since the Flood, and the ruins ofBirs Nimrud bear the remains of what is commonly reputed to be the original Tower ofBabel. The Caspian Sea was once called the Mar de Bachu, or Sea of Bacchus, as iswitnessed by the map appearing in Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World, publishedin 1634. One of the chief cities of Assyria was named Nimrud, and the Plain of Shinar,
known to the Assyrians as Sen'ar and the site of the Great Rebellion, was itself known as
the Land of Nimrod. Iraqi and Iranian Arabs still speak his name with awe, and such was
the notoriety of the man that his historical reality is beyond dispute (see Map 2). (Refs:
1DB 3:551. NBD 888. JA 1.vi.2. P 1:27)
11. Mizraim: A collective name, these people settled in Egypt. Modern Israelis still use
the name for that country; it is preserved as Msrm in the Ugaritic inscriptions; as Misriin the Amarna tablets; and in the Assyrian and Babylonian 4 records as Musur andMusri respectively. Modern Arabs still know it as Misr. Josephus (rendering the nameMesraites) relates a curious episode that he called the Ethiopic War, incident that wasapparently well-known throughout ancient world. According to Josephus, some six or
sevev nations descended from the Mizraim were destroyed, clearly a major conflict thatwould have had profound far-reaching repercussions in the world of those times.
Josephus lists those nations as the Ludim (see 12); the Anamim (see 13); the Lehabim(see 14); the Naphtuhim (see 15); the Pathrusim (see 16); the Cashuhim (see 17); and the
Caphtorim (see 19). (Refs: 1DB 3:409. NBD 833. JA Lvi.2. P 1:27)
12. Ludim: Seemingly known in later records as the Lubim (which Josephus rendered
Ludicim) this people settled on the north coast of Africa and gave their name to the landof Lybia. They are known to have provided Egypt on more than one occasion withmercenary troops. The records that tell us this give the Ludim's name as Lebu. Otherwise,110

Josephus records their destruction, or rather defeat, in the Ethiopic War (see Map 3).
(Refs: 1DB 3:178-9. NBD 755.JA 1.vi.2. P 1:28)
13. Anamim: Few occurrences of this name can now be found in the surviving records.
This may be due to the devastations of the Ethiopic War. However, the Assyrian king,
Sargon II, does tell us in his inscriptions of the land of the A-na-mi which lay adjacent tothat of Kaptara (see 19). Josephus rendered the name Enemim. (Refs: 1DB 1:124. JA 1.
vi.2. P 1:28)
14. Lehabim: The Egyptians recorded this name as 'rbw', although it is uncertain where
they settled. Some authorities (including Josephus who renders the name Lybyos) give
Lybia (Libya) as their country. This people were, however, destroyed in the Ethiopic War(see Map 3). (Refs: 1DB 3:110. NBD 728. JA 1. vi.2. P 1:28)
15. Naphtuhim: This people are known to have settled in Nile delta and the westernparts of Egypt, where early cords refer to them as the p't'mhw--literally, 'they of themarshland.' Their name also appears as Na-patob-im in the same records. Josephus
records their destruction in the Ethiopic War (see Map 3). (Refs: 1DB 3:510. NBD 865. P
1:28)
16.Pathrusim: The people of this name migrated to Upper Egypt, where the Egyptians
recorded their name as the p't'r or Ptores. The district of Pathros thus bears their nameEsarhaddon, king of Assyria from 681-668 BC, records hi conquest of the Paturisi, thus
showing that this particular tribe at least were not totally destroyed in the Ethiopic War as
asserted by Josephus, who renders the name Phethrosim (see Map 3) (Refs. IDB 3:676.
NBD 938. JA I.vi.2)
17. Casluhim: The precise whereabouts of their country is uncertain, although the bookof Genesis does record that the Philistines came from this people. Some cite Crete as their
possible place of settlement, which, if true, would make the Ethiopic War of Josephus atruly international conflict, as he records the destruction of the Casluhim in that war.
This, however, only serves to make Crete a most unlikely place for their settlement, thenorthern areas of Egypt being a far more reasonable proposition (but see 18 and 19 and
Map 3). Josephus gives their name as the Chesloim. (Refs: 1DB 1:541. NBD 201. JA
1.vi.3. P 1:28)
18. Philistim: Better known to us as the Philistines, they were known to the Assyrians as
the Palashtu and the Pilisti, and to the Greeks as the Palastine--hence the later name ofPalestine. After the Assyrian conquests of the 8th century BC, the Philistines effectively
disappear as a coherent nation. It is currently but wrongly believed that the Philistines did
not appear until the 13th century BC, and that they are to be identified as the 'Sea
Peoples' of Egyptian literature. But this view is erroneous. The Genesis record statesemphatically that the Philistim occupied parts of Canaan as early as the time of Abraham,
and far from implying that their place of origin was Crete, as currently taught, it is much
more likely to have been northern Egypt (but see 19 and Map 3). (Refs: 1DB 3:791-5.
NBD 'Philistines' 988-991. JA 1.vi.2. P 1:28)
19. Caphtorim: Some confusion has reigned in recent years over the question of thegeographical location of Caphtorim. This is mainly due to modernist efforts to identify
Caphtor as Crete. This would allow the assertion that the Philistines (see 18) were the111Sea Peoples of the 13th century BC, and that the Genesis record therefore errs when it
speaks of the Philistines as the 19th century BC contemporaries of Abraham. In
opposition to this view, however, the Genesis record gives the common sense andverifiable place of the Caphtorim's settlement as Egypt, or Mizraim (see 11) where thename of the Caphtorim was rendered Keftiu in a record that is conventionally dated to ca
2200 BC. Genesis tells us that the Caphtorim were descended from the Mizraim, and,through the absence of any qualifying remarks, leaves us with the strong implication that
the Caphtorim therefore dwelt on the mainland of Egypt or North Africa either amongst,
or in close proximity to, their forebears the Mizraim. Only the descendants of Japheth aresaid to have occupied the isles of the sea, e.g. Cyprus or Crete et al, whereas thisqualification is entirely absent with either the Semitic or Hamitic race. The early Cretans,we know, were not a Hamitic people, but rather were Indo-European in race, language
and culture, which confirms their descent from Japheth (and not Ham) as provided in the
Genesis account. Furthermore, Josephus relates the involvement and subsequent defeat of
the Caphtorim (whom he names the Cephtorim) in the Ethiopic War, a conflagration thatwas confined to the borders of Egypt and Ethiopia, and which did not, as far as we know,
involve the isles of the sea. Moreover, Jeremiah 47:4 describes the Philistines as the'remnant of the country of Caphtor', thus implying that by his own day the Caphtorim
were a depleted nation. There is also strong evidence of a direct etymological link
between the ai-Kaphtor of the Old Testament and the Aiguptos of Greek literature,
Aiguptos being merely the archaic form of the western name for Egypt. That Caphtor's
descendants were mainland dwellers is also confirmed in the Assyrian inscriptions inwhich they are named as the Kaptara; and in the Ugaritic inscriptions as the 'kptr'.
Later, Egyptian records speak of the 'kftyw' or Kaphtur, a term that was used in relation
to Phoenicia, not Crete. Intriguingly, the Septuagint translates the name as Kaphtoriim
in Genesis 10:14; whereas in the book of Deuteronomy (2:23) the name is rendered
Kappadokes or Cappadocians. Likewise, the Latin Vulgate gives the rendering
Caphtorim in Genesis 10:14, thus following the original Hebrew; whereas inDeuteronomy 2:23 it follows the Greek Septuagint in the rendering Cappadoces andCappadocia--Cappadocia, of course, referring to mainland Asia Minor. Thus, to identify
the Caphtorim as early Cretans is clearly untenable. (Refs: 1DB 1:534. NBD 199. JA
1.vi.3. P 1:28)
20. Put: The country in which the descendants of Put settled is well known to us from
Egyptian records, which render the name Put or Punt. (Josephus calls it Phut.) It isalways spoken of as closely associated with Egypt, and its close geographical proximity
to Egypt is confirmed by an inscription from the archives of Darius the Great, king of
Persia from 522-486 BC. Here the land of Puta is shown as lying in the proximity ofCyrenaica, i.e. on the North African coast to the west of Egypt. This same land was
known as Puta to the Babylonians, and as Putiya in the Old Persian inscriptions (seeMap 3). (Refs: 1DB 3:971. NBD 1066. JA 1.vi.2. P 1:27)
21. Canaan: The posterity of Canaan settled in the land that was later to be given to
Israel. At the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan, the population consisted of all thetribes descended from Canaan (see 22-32). Both Sanchuniathon and Phylo of Byblos
confirm the fact that the Canaanites derived their name from their founder. The Greeksand Phoenicians rendered the name Kna'an; the Egyptians knew it as Kn'nw andKyn'nw; the Assyrians rendered the name Kinnahu; and the Hurrians described certain
dyed cloths as Kinahne or Canaanite cloth. In spite of their Hamitic descent, however,112the Canaanites spoke a Semitic language (see Map 4). (Refs: 1DB 1:494. NBD 183-6. JA
1.vi.2. P 1:27)
22. Zidon: He settled, with his descendants, on the Mediterranean coast of Canaan,
where his name is still perpetuated in the modern-day city of Sidon. Originally known as
Zidonians, his posterity were later known as Phoenicians. They are known to us frommany and various inscriptions of the old world, the Akkadians, for example, rendering
the name Sidunu, and the Armana tablets as Sa'idunu (see Map 4). Josephus adopted
this spelling when he rendered the name Sidonius. (Refs: 1DB 4:343-5. NBD 'Sidon'
1184-5. JA 1.vi.2. P 1:28)
23. Heth: Heth was the progenitor of the Hittite nation, whose name was known to the
Assyrians as the Khatti. The Hittites were apparently the first nation to smelt iron on any
appreciable scale. The Armana tablets contain letters that were sent between the Hittite
emperor Subbiluliuma and Amenhotep IV of Egypt. Rameses II tells us how he engaged
the Hittites in what was the earliest recorded battle involving massed battle chariots. This
was the famous battle of Kadesh, and it appears that the Hittites got the better of theEgyptian forces. Heth's name was perpetuated in the Hittite capital of Hattushash,modern Boghazkoy in Turkey (see Map 4). (Refs: 1DB 2:597. NBD 'Hittites' 528-9. P
1:28)
24. Jebusite: The posterity of Jebus (whom Josephus knew as Jebuseus) settled in themountainous regions of Judea where, due to their strong and natural fortifications they
were able to withstand the armies of Israel. The chief city of the Jebusites came later tobe known as Jerusalem, the Urusalimmu of the Armana tablets. (Refs: (1DB 2:807.
NBD 601-2. JA l.vi.2. P 1:28)
25. Amorite: Known to the Sumerians as the Martu, and to the Akkadians as the
Ammurru, this people settled in the land of Canaan. They appear to have initiallyadopted a nomadic way of life, although they were soon to organise themselves into avery powerul and aggressive nation. Indeed, the Amorites later came to conquer
Babylonia, subsequently producing one the most famous of Babylonian kings,
Hammurabi, whose name perpetuates the designation Annurru. Josephus the name as
Amorreus (see Map 4). (Refs: 1DB 1:115. NBD 31-2. JA l. vi.2. P 1:28)
26. Girgashite: The name of the Girgashites has been discovered in the Ugaritic
inscriptions as 'grgs' and 'bngrgs', in other words Girgash and the sons of Girgash.
They are also known to us in Hittite documents as the Karkisa or Qaraqisha; and in
Egyptian records as the Kirkash. They settled to the east of the river Jordan, between
Galilee and the Dead Sea, and their descendants are probably to be identified with the
Gadarenes of the NT. Josephus rendered the name Gergesus (see Map 4). (Refs: 1DB
2:399. NBD 471. JA 1.vi.2. P 1:28)
27. Hivite: Known to the ancient Greeks as the Heuaios, and to Josephus as Eueus, thispeople moved from Canaan to the foothills of Lebanon during the Israelite conquest
under Joshua. King Solomon was later to use Hivites as builders (see Map 4). (Refs: 1DB
2:615. NBD 529. JA l.vi.2. P 1:28)
28. Arkite: This people come to our notice in the inscriptions of Shalmaneser II and
Tiglath-pileser III, both kings of Assyria, and both of whom describe the Arkites as113

'rebellious'. The Arkites were known also to the Egyptians and are mentioned in the
Armana tablets as the Irkata. They were known for their worship of Astarte. Their city is
known to this day as Tell-Arqa, a place known to Thutmose III of Egypt as Arkantu.
Josephus calls it Arucas, and it was known to the Romans as Caesari Libani (see Map
4). (Refs: 1DB 1:226. NBD 82. JA 1.vi.2. P 1:28)
29. Sinite: The name of this people is still to be found in the modern-day towns of Nahras-Sinn and Sinn addarb, which are both in close proximity to Arqa (see 28). The
Phoenicians knew the Sinites as the Usnu; the Assyrians called them the Usana andSiannu; and the Ugaritic tablets refer to them as the 'sn'. Strabo called their town Sinna,and Heironymous rendered it civitas Sini (which Josephus gave as Sineus), (see Map
4).(Refs: 1DB 4:379. NBD 1194. JA l.vi.3. P 1:28)
30. Arvadite: This people settled on the island that bore their founder's name, Arvad.
Today it is called Ruad and lies north of the bay of Tripoli about two miles out to sea.
The Arvadites were famed in the old world for their skilful seamanship, drawing for thiseven the grudging admiration of the Assyrians. Later, the Arvadites were to play animportant part in the conquests of Alexander the Great. The Arvadites were known in the
Armana tablets as the Arwada, to the Akkadians as the Aruda, and the Armana tablets
as Aruadi. Josephus renders the name Arudeus (see Map 4). (Refs: 1DB 1:242. NBD 93.
JAl. vi.2. P 1:28)
31. Zemarite: The posterity of Zemar were known to the Assyrians as the Simirra, andto the Egyptians as the Sumur. The name is still perpetuated in the modern city of
Sumra, just north of Tripoli. (Refs: 1DB 4:950. NBD 1357-8. P 1:28)
32. Hamathite: The city where this people settled lay on the Orontes, and was named
after their forebear, Hamath. Sargon II of Assyria tells us how he conquered the city, andit was at Hamath that Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptian armies in 605 BC. The city
was known to the Akkadians as Amatu, to the Egyptians as Hmtu, and to the Arabs as
Hamat. The Greeks and Romans subsequently knew the city as Epiphaneia, although
today it has reverted to its ancient name, Hamah. In 853 BC the men of Hamath wereable to successfully defeat Assyrian advances in the west by mobilizing an army of noless than 63,000 foot soldiers, 2,000 light horsemen, 4,000 battle chariots and 1,000
camels. This is the Assyrian estimate of their forces, not an exaggerated Hamathite boast!
(see Map 4). (Refs: 1DB 2:516. NBD 501. P 1:28)
Note: Maps are in Apperndix 3.

Appendix 3
The Nations of Japheth114

1. Japheth: The father of all the Indo-European peoples, it would be surprising indeed if
his name had gone unremembered among them. As it is, we find that the early Greeks
worshipped him as Iapetos, or Iapetus, whom they regarded as the son of heaven andearth, the father of many nations. Likewise, in the ancient Sanskrit vedas of India he isremembered as Pra-Japati, the sun and ostensible Lord of Creation. As time went by, hisname was further corrupted, being assimilated into the Roman pantheon as Iupater, andeventually Jupiter (see Appendix 11). None of these names are of Greek, Indian or Latin
origin, but are merely corruptions of the original name of Japheth. Both the early Irish
Celts and the early Britons traced the descent of their royal houses from Japheth, as did
also the early Saxons who corrupted his name to Sceaf,--pr. 'sheaf' or 'shaif' (see chapter
7). (Refs: 1DB 2:802. NBD 599. JA 1.vi.1. P 1:26)
2. Gomer: He was the founder of the Cimmerians who settled originally on the shoresof the Caspian Sea. They were later driven away by the Elamites (see Shem 2). At thetime of the Babylonian Exile, the Jews knew them as the tribes that dwelt in the'uppermost parts of the north' (Ezekiel 38:6). The Assyrians referred to them as theGimirraya. Esarhaddon (681-668 BC) records his defeat of the Gimirrai; whilst King
Ashurbanipal tells us in his records of the Cimmerian invasion of Lydia (see Shem 5) inthe days of the Lydian king Gugu around the year 660 BC (see Map 1). (Refs: 1DB
2:440. NBD 481. JA 1.vi.1)
3. Ashchenaz: The descendants of Ashchenaz first settled in what is today Armenia,
although in later Jewish writings he was associated (with his father Gomer) with theGermanic races. Hence, Germanic Jews are still known as Ashkenazim. Moreimmediately, the Assyrians tell us in their inscriptions of the Askuza, a tribe who allied
themselves with the Mannai in a revolt of the 7th century BC, an event that is alsomentioned in the Old Testament (Jeremiah 51:27). Indeed, it is in this statement that
Jeremiah incidentally confirms the identity of the Ashkenazim with the Askuza. This
name, the Askuza of the Assyrian records, later became the Skythai (Scythians) of
Herodotus. Other early sources confirm their place of settlement to be the area later
known as Pontus and Bythinia, where the peoples of Ashchenaz gave their name to thelake and harbour of Ascanius, and to the land of Ascania. Josephus tells us that they were
subsequently known to the Greeks as the Rheginians (see Map 1). (Refs: 1DB 1:254.
NBD 96. JA 1.vi.1. P 1:26)

115

4. Riphath: His descendants gave their name to the Riphaean mountains, which early
cosmographers thought of as constituting the then northernmost boundary of the earth.
Pliny, Melo and Solinus record the name of Riphath as that of the Riphaci, Riphaces andPiphlataci who were later known to history as the Paphlagonians, the descent andidentification of which is confirmed by Josephus (see Map 1). (Refs: 1DB 4:100. JA
1.vi.1. P 1:26)
5. Togarmah: His earliest descendants settled in Armenia. We know from certain Hittite
documents that in the 14th century BC, the then region of Tegarama, which lay between
Carchemish and Haran, was sacked by the 'enemy from Isuwa', i.e. the enemy frombeyond the Euphrates. The records of both Sargon II and Sennacherib mention the city of
Til-gari-manu, the capital of Kammanu which lay on the border of Tabal (see 13). Tilgari-manu lay some thirty miles due east of present-day Malatya (it is known today as
Gürün, anciently Gauraena), and was not finally destroyed until the year 695 BC. It wasafter the destruction of Til-gari-manu that the descendants of Togarmah became lost in
obscurity. In line with the Assyrian policy of that time, the survivors were uprooted andtransported to other lands within the Assyrian empire (see Map 1). The name was given
as Thrugramma by Josephus. (Refs: 1DB 4:662. NBD 1285. JA 1.vi.1. P 1:26)
6. Magog: His immediate descendants were known as the Magogites, being later known
to the Greeks as the Scythians, according to the testimony of Josephus. However, given
the subsequent history of the peoples of Ashchenaz (see 3), who are far more certainly
identified as the later Scythians (Gk. Skythai, and Assyr. Askuza), it is more likely thatthe early Magogites were assimilated into the peoples of Ashchenaz, thus making up
merely a part of the Scythian hordes. The early Irish Celts traced their own lineage from
Japheth through the line of Magog (see chapter 9 and Map 1). (Refs: 1DB 3:226. NBD'Gog and Magog' 480-1 JA 1.vi.1. P 1:26)
7. Madai: His descendants were the Madaeans, who are better known to us as theMedes. The Assyrians recorded the name as Amada; the Greeks as the Medai; and the
Old Persian inscriptions speak of them as the Mada. The earliest surviving reference tothe Medes that is found in secular documents, appears in the inscriptions of Shalmaneser
III, king of Assyria from ca 858-824 BC, in which he tells us that he invaded the land of
the Medes to plunder them of their fine horses. Both Strabo and Herodotus confirm thefact that the Medes were of Indo-European (Japhetic) origin, and we know also that theirlanguage was of this group. After 631 BC, the Medes joined with the people of Askuza(or the Ashchenazim, see 3) and those of Gomer (the Cimmerians, see 2) in an attempt tothrow off the Assyrian yoke (see Map 1). (Refs: 1DB 3:220. NBD 'Medes' 801-2. JA
1.vi.1. P 1:26)
8. Javan: The name of Javan's descendants appears in Assyrian documents as the
Iamanu, where we are told that they engaged the Assyrians in a major sea battle during
the reign of King Sargon 11 (721-705 BC). The Archaemenian inscriptions refer to themas the Yauna. Homer tells us in the Iliad that Iawones (Hebrew Iawan) was theprogenitor of the Ionians (Gk. Iones), while the Hebrews knew the Greeks as theJevanim (Iewanim). Pre-Islamic Arab cosmographers gave the name as Yuban (see Map
1). (Refs: 1DB 2:805. NBD 600. JA 1.vi.1. P 1:26)
9. Elishah: He was the ancestor of the Aeolians, his name being frequently referred to in
Greek history and mythology. Two Greek cities were named after him, these being Elis
116

and Elissus. Likewise, an entire area was named Elias in his memory. His name lies
behind the origin of the term Hellenic, and there is every reason to believe that his nameis also perpetuated in the Greek paradise, the Elysian Fields. The Armana tablets referred
to his descendants as the Alashia, the Hittites knew them as the Alasiya, and the
Egyptians as A-ra-sa. Josephus rendered the name as Elisa. The name also appears in the
Ugaritic inscriptions (see Map 1). (Refs: 1DB 2:92. NBD 366, JA1. vi.l. P 1:26)
10. Tarshish: The father of the peoples of Tarshish, or Tartesis, who are thought by
most to have settled in Spain. The Mediterranean Sea was once known as the Sea of
Tarshish, and it is known that the Phoenicians built a class of vessel called a ship ofTarshish. (It was in one of these that Jonah tried to flee from Joppa in the 8th centuryBC.) Phoenician inscriptions found on Sardinia, and dating to the 9th century BC,
mention Tarshish without, unfortunately, providing us with a positive identification of its
geographical location. Josephus records the name as Tharsus, and tells that it used to be
the name under which Cilicia was known, the chief and noblest city of which was
Tarsus. However, for various reasons the identification is unlikely, and the matterremains unresolved. (Refs: 1DB 4:517. NBD 1239-40. JA 1.vi.1. P 1:26)
11. Kittim: This is a collective name of a people who are spoken of in the Old
Phoenician inscriptions as the kt or kty, and who settled on the island of Cyprus. They
were to give their name to the ancient Cypriot city of Kition (modern-day Larnaka). The
Romans preserved the name when they named the city Citium, and Josephus gave thename as Cethimus. (Refs: 1DB 3:40-1. JA 1.vi.1. P 1:26)
12. Dodanim: This also is a collective name of a people descended from Dodan, whowere known to the Greeks as the Dardani, the Dardanians of Asia Minor. They settledinitially around the area of Troy whose coastal regions are known to this day as theDardanelles. The founder of this people was deified by his descendants and worshipped
under the name of Jupiter Dodonaeus. (Here we have a mingling of the names of Japhethand Dodan.) The propagators of this cult built the city of Dodona as the chief seat of his
worship. Egyptian records refer to the drdny who were allied to the Hittites (see Ham 23)
at the battle of Kadesh. The early Britons were to trace their descent from Dardanus(Appendix 7). (Refs: 1DB 1:861. NBD 321. P 1:26)
13. Tubal: The descendants of Tubal first come to our notice in the inscriptions ofTiglath-pileser I, king of Assyria in about 1100 BC. He refers to them as the Tabali
whose original area of settlement (i.e. Tabal) was adjacent to that of Tegarama (see 5).
Subsequently, Josephus recorded the name of Tubal's descendants as the Thobelites, whowere later known as the Iberes. Their land, in Josephus' day, was called by the Romans
Iberia, and covered what is now the (former Soviet) state of Georgia whose capital tothis day bears the name Tubal as Tbilisi. From here, having crossed the Caucasus
mountains, this people migrated due north-east, giving their tribal name to the riverTobol, and hence to the famous city of Tobolsk. (Refs: 1DB 4:717. NBD 'Meshech' 811.
JA1. vi.1)
14. Meshech: The descendants of Meshech are often spoken of in close association withthose of Tubal, the Assyrians for example mentioning Tabal and Musku, whilst
Herodotus writes of the Tiberanoi and Moschoi. A very much earlier reference to thepeoples of Meshech, is an inscription of ca 1200 BC which tells us how they overran the
Hittite kingdom; and an inscription of Tiglath-pileser I of Assyria from ca 1100 BC, who
117

tells us that, in his own day, the Mus-ka-a-ia were able to put into the field an army of
20,000 men. The activities of this same people are also subsequently reported by Tukultininurta II, Ashurnasipal II, Sargon and Shalmaneserr III, the last of whom refers to themas the Mushki. Josephus knew them as the Mosocheni (LXX Mosoch), whom, he says,
were known in his own day as the Cappadocians. Some later writers have pointed outthat the name of Meshech is preserved in the old tribal name of the Muscovites of
Russia, after whom Moscow is named. Such an identification, it must be said, is not at all
unlikely, especially when we consider the subsequent history of their historically close
associates the people of Tubal, and the fact that the city is still known today in the
Russian tongue as Moskva, an exceedingly close, not to say identical relationship to the
Assyrian form, Musku. (Refs: 1DB 3:357. NBD 811. JAl. vi.l. P 1:26)
15. Tiras: Merenptah of Egypt, who reigned during the 13th century BC, provides us
with what is so far our earliest reference to the people of Tiras, recording their name as
the Tursha (or Turusha), and referring to them as invaders from the north. The Greeks
later knew them as the Tyrsenoi, a nation of marauding pirates. Josephus identifies themas the tribe who were known to the Romans as the Thirasians, and who we now know as
the Thracians. They were a 'ruddy and blue-eyed people', who spent most of their time instate of 'tipsy excess', as one authority put it! Tiras himself was worshipped by his
descendants as Thuras (i.e. Thor), the god of war. The river Athyras was named after
him, and it is not at all unlikely that the Etruscans, a nation of hitherto mysterious
provenance, owe to him both their name and descent. The ancient city of Troas (Troy)appears to perpetuate his name, as does also the Taurus mountain range. (Refs: 1DB
4:652. NBD 1283. JA 1.vi.1. P 1:26)

MAPS

118

119

Appendix 4
Surviving MSS of the early Welsh Chronicles(based on Griscom's list, pp. 586-599. See Bibliography)

The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
1. Dingestow Court Manuscript - early 13th cent.
2. Peniarth MS. 44 = Hen. 315 (prey. 21) - early 13th cent.
3. Peniarth MS. 45 = Hen. 536 (prey. 29) - late 13th cent.
4. Peniarth MS. 46 = Hen. 27 - early 14th cent.
5. Peniarth MS. 21 Hen. 50 (prey. 16) - early 14th cent.
120

6. Peniarth MS. 19 = Hen. 15 - c. 1400.
7. Peniarth MS. 22 = Hen. 318 - 1444.
8. Pemarth MS. 24 = Hen. 175 - 1477.
9. Peniarth MS. 23 = Hen. 313 - mid. 15th cent.
10. Peniarth MS. 25 = Hen. 305 - c. 1500.
11. Peniarth MS. 212 Hen. 319 - c. 1565.
12. Peniarth MS. 168 Hen. 437 - 1589-90.
13. Peniarth MS. 118 = Hen. 518 - late 16th cent.
14. Peniarth MS. 261 = Hen. 446 - 16th cent.
15. Peniarth MS. 260 = Hen. 442 - 16th cent.
16. Peniarth MS. 162 = Hen. 354 - late 16th cent.
17. Peniarth MS. 266 = Hen. 55 (prey. 3) - 1634.
18. Peniarth MS. 314 = Hen. 293 (prey. 87 and 21) - 1634-1641.
19. Peniarth MS. 264 = Hen. 272 (prey. 2, 55 and LX) -1635 - 6.
20. Peniarth MS. 265 = Hen. 439 (prey. i, 72 and LIV) -1641.
21. Peniarth MS. 270 = Hen. 530 22. Llanstephan MS. 1 = Shirburn Castle MS. 113 C. 18 -early 13th cent.
23. Llanstephan MS. S = Shirburn Castle MS. 34 - early 14th cent.
24. Llanstephan MS. 188 - mid. 16th cent.
25. Llanstephan MS. 195 - c. 1570.
26. Llanstephan MS. 59 = Shirburn Castle C. 7 - late 16th cent.
27. LianstePhan MS. 129 = Shirburu Castle D. 17 - early 17th cent.
28. Llanstephan MS. 137 = Shirburn Castle D. 12 - c. 1640.
29. Llanstephan MS. 149 = Shirburn Castle D. 15. - c. 1700
30. Mostyn MS. 117 - late 13th cent.
12131. Mostyn MS. 116 - early 14th cent.
32. Mostyn MS. 109 - 16th cent.
33. Mostyn MS. 159 - 1586-7.
34. Mostyn MS. 115 - 17th cent.
35. Mostyn MS. 211 - c. 1685.
36. Panton MS. 9 - c. 1760.
37. Panton MS. 68 - 18th cent.
38. The Book of Basingwerk MS. (alias The Black Book of Basingwerk Abbey) - 14thand 15th cents.
39. Additional MS. 13 - B = Williams MS. 216 - early 17th cent.
40. Additional MS. 11 - D Williams MS. 213 - 1694.
41. Additional MS. 312 Williams MS. 514 - early 18th cent.
42. Additional MS. 23 - B Williams MS. 227 - c. 1775.
Free Public Library, Cardiff, Wales
43. Cardiff (Havod) MS. 1 - early 14th cent.
44. Cardiff (Havod) MS. 2 - 15th cent 'or earlier'.
45. Cardiff (Havod) MS. 21 - 1641.
46. Cardiff MS. 21 = Phillipps 13720, part III - 1569.
47. Cardiff MS. 61 = (Tonn 21) - 1734.
48. Cardiff MS. 62 = (Tonn 22) - 1754.
Jesus College Library, Oxford
49. MS. CXI = 1, Hist. MSS. Coin., Report of MSS in the Welsh Lang - c. 1380.
50. MS. CXLI = 6, Hist. MSS. Corn., Report of MSS in the Welsh Lang - c. 1471.
51. MS. LXI = 8, Hist. MSS. Coin., Report of MSS in the Welsh Lang (aka the Tysilio
Chronicle) - late 15th cent.
52. MS. XXVIII = 19 Hist. MSS. Coin. - 1695.
122

British Museum, London
53. Additional MS. 19,709 = MS. 14, Hist. MSS. Corn. -early 14th cent.
54. Cotton, Cleopatra B. V., = MS. 15, Hist. MSS. Corn. -14th cent.
55. Additional MS. 14,903 = MS. 17, Hist. MSS. Corn. - early 16th cent.
56. Additional MS. 15,566 = MS. 16, Hist. MSS. Corn. - late 16th cent.
57. Additional MS. 14,872 = MS. 41, Hist. MSS. Corn. - post 1632.
58. Additional MS. 15,003 - 18th cent.
The above list of chronicles that give the history of the early Britons, constitutes a rather
large percentage of the total number of Welsh manuscripts that have come down to us
from medieval times. Given that they are all catalogued in easily accessible collections, it
is astonishing that even their very existence goes unmentioned by most scholars who areaware of them, and that British history prior to 55 BC remains a blank page. But perhaps
their acknowledgement would lead the recorded history of the early Britons
uncomfortably back to Genesis, and that is a concept that modernism simply could notaccommodate.

Appendix 5
The Latin Text (and translation) of Nenniun 17 and 18
Cap. XVII
Aliud experimenttini inueni de isto Bruto ex ueteribus libris ueterum nostrorum.
Tres fiji Noe diuiserunt orbem in tres partes post Diluuium. Sem in Asia; Chain in Africa;
lafeth in Europa dilitauerunt terminos suos. Primus homo uenit ad Europam de genere
lafeth Alanus cum tribus fihis suis quorum nomina sunt Hessitio, Armeno, Negue.
Hessitio autem habuit fihios quat-tuor hi sunt Francus, Romanus, Britto, Albanus.
Armenon autem habuit quinque fibs, Gothus, Valagothus, Gebidus, Burgundus. Negue
autem habuit tres fihios, Wandalus, Saxo, Boguarus. Ab Hisitione autem ortae suntquattuor gentes, Franci, Latini, Albani, et Britti. Ab Armenone autem qumque, Gothi,
Walagothi, Gebidi, Burgundi, Langobardi. A Neguio uero quattuor, Boguarii, Vandali,
Saxones, et Turingi. Lstae autem gentes subdiuisae sunt per totam Europam. Alanus
autem ut aiunt fihius fuit Fetebir, flu Ougomun, fihi Thoi, flu Boib, flu Simeon, fiji Mair,flu Ethach, flu Aurthach, filii Ecthet, flu 0th, fiji Abir, flu Rea, filii Ezra, fihi Izrau, fbi
Baath, flu Iobaath, flu lovan, flu lafeth, flu Noe, flu Lamech, flu Matusalem, flu Enoch,
flu lareth, fin Malaleel, fihi Cainan, flu Enos, fiji Seth, flu Adam, fiji Dei vivi. Hanc
peritiam inueni ex traditione ueterum.
Cap. XVIII123

Qui incolae in primo fuerunt Bnttanniae. Brittones a Bruto. Brutus filius Hisitionis,
Hisition Alanei. Alaneus filius Reae Silviac, Rea Silvia filia Numae Pampiii, flu Ascanu,
Ascanius filius Aeneae, flu Anchisae, fili Troi, fili Dardani, flu Else, fili Iuuani, flu
Jafeth. lafeth uero habuit septern fibs. Primus Corner, a quo Galli; secundus Magog, aquo Scythas et Gothos; tertius Madai, a quo Medos; quartus Iuuan, a quo Graeci; quintus
Tubal, a quo Hiberei et Hispani et Ital; sextus Mosoch, a quo Cappadoces; septimus
Tiras, a quo Traces. Hi sunt flu lafeth, fihi Noe, fbi Lamech.

Translation
Chapter Seventeen
I found another explanation concerning this Brutus in the ancient books of our elders:After the Flood, the three sons of Noah divided the earth into three parts. Shem (settled)
in Asia; Ham in Africa, (and) Japheth expanded his borders in Europe. Alanus, of the lineof Japheth, (was) the first man who came to Europe with his three sons, whose names
were Hessitio, Armenon and Negue. Now, Hessitio had four sons, Francus, Romanus,
Britto (and) Albanus. Then Armenon had five sons, Gothus, Walagothus, Gepidus,
Burgundus [note: the name Langobardus should have been given here]. (And) Negue had
three sons, Wandalus, Saxo (and) Boguarus. Four nations, then, are arisen from Hessitio:
the Franks, the Latins, the Albans and the Britons. Then, from Armenon (come) five(nations): the Goths, the Valagoths, the Gepids, the Burgundians (and) the Lombards.
(And) from Negue (come) four (nations): the Bavarians, the Vandals, the Saxons and theThuringians. (And) these nations are subdivided throughout all Europe. Alanus, it is said,
was the son of Fetebir, (who was) the son of Ougomun, (who was) the son of Thous,(who was) the son of Boib, the son of Simeon, (who was) the son of Mair, the son of
Ethach, (who was) the son of Aurthach, the son of Ecthet, (who was) the son of Oth, theson of Abir, (who was) the son of Rea, the son of Ezra, (who was) the son of Izrau, theson of Baath, (who was) the son of Iobaath, the son of Javan, (who was) the son of
Japheth, the son of Noah, (who was) the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, (whowas) the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, (who was) the son of Mahalaleel, the son of
Cainan, (who was) the son of Enos, the son of Seth, (who was) the son of Adam, the childof the living God. I found this teaching in the tradition of the elders.
Chapter Eighteen
The first inhabitants of Britain were the Britons (so named) from Brutus. Brutus was theson of Hessitio. Hessitio (was the son of) Alanus. Alanus (was) the son of Rhea Silvia,(who was) the daughter of Numa Pompilius, the son of Ascanius. Ascanius (was) the sonof Aeneas, the son of Anchises, (who was) the son of Trous, the son of Dardanus, (whowas) the son of Elishah, the son of Javan, (who was) the son of Japheth. Japheth, in fact,
had seven sons, the first (being) Gomer, from whom (came) the Gauls. The second was
Magog, from whom (came) the Scythians and the Goths. The third (son was) Madai,from whom (came) the Medes. The fourth (son was) Javan, from whom (came) the(Ionian) Greeks. (And) the fifth was Tubal, from whom (came) the Iberians, the Spanish
and the Italians. The sixth (was) Meshech, from whom (came) the Cappadocians. (And)the seventh (son was) Tiras, from whom (came) the Thracians. These are the sons of
Japheth, the son of Noah, (who was) the son of Lamech. (My translation)
124

Appendix 6
The Molmutine Laws and Pagan Britain
Introduction
The following is an account of the law and society as they stood in ancient Britain during
the centuries preceding the Roman invasion of 55 BC. It is based upon the surviving lawsof king Dyfnal Moel Myd (Dunvallo Molmutius), who reigned in the 5th-4th centuries
BC. The account, from pp. 20-24 of Flinders Petrie's paper, (1) bears repeated reading,for it reveals a level of culture and literacy amongst the early Britons that is quite unlike
the popular image that has been cultivated in recent years by the modernist treatment ofBritish history. It also speaks volumes for the existence of a king whom modernists havealways said was a mythical figure, and it reveals our ancestors to have been a highly
cultivated and civilised people, and not the illiterate painted savages of popular fame.

The Molmutine Laws and Pagan Britain
by Flinders Petrie
The condition of pagan Britain is remarkably preserved in the laws of Dyvnal Moelmud.
That these laws are certainly long before the tenth century is proved by the gulf thatexists between the state of society shown by them and that of the laws of Howel fixed to
AD 914. The laws of Howel show a highly complex and detailed condition of law, and an
elaborate royal court, with the rights of officials minutely fixed. In the laws of Moelmud
there is very simple law, always subject to proved custom and to adaptation to
circumstance; there is no royal court, and very few officials, with no defined claims.
Moreover, the laws of Howel refer back to Moelmud. What takes the laws of Moelmud atleast to Roman times is that they are purely Pagan, and the only Christian allusion is anaddition to the forms of legal oath, saying that 'In subsequent times the form of oath wasgiven by the Ten Commandments, the Gospel of St. John, and the blessed Cross' (no.
219). This stamps the previous oaths and the rest of the laws as of the pagan period, andtherefore at least of the third century, as British bishops attended the Council of Aries in
AD 314. How much farther back these laws may date, towards the traditional time ofMoelmud, the fourth or seventh century BC, we cannot now enquire. Probably they wereof gradual accretion, but apparently no part comes under the influence of Christian usage.
We can, then, at least accept the picture of society here shown as being that of the Britons
under the earlier part of the Roman dominion. Of the two series of legal triads, the shortfirst series, 1-34, is here marked A; (2) the long series is simply numbered L-248. (3)Skene agrees to the laws of Howel being of the tenth century, but never mentions those ofMoelmud. Stephens asserts that the laws of Moelmud were certainly not composed
earlier than the sixteenth century. What writer of that date would forge a consistent bodyof punitive tribal law, entirely pagan in character, and why any one should do so when
the laws of Howel were celebrated and prized, are questions ignored by the easy assertionof a late date for which no reason is given.

125

First we may note the laws referring to the state of society. Wherever little children, dogs,
and poultry are found, the place has a right to the privilege of the court and the sacredplace (87). The fields were private property, but cultivated in common tillage (A 5). The
wild land was tribal property, free for wood-cutting, hunting, and gathering acorns to feed
pigs (142); but it could not be taken into cultivation without consent of the lord and his
court (101). Iron mines were common property; but the ore dug out was private (49). A
permit was needed to shift the family wagon or booth; if done without permission, themover lost all rights, like a criminal or foreigner (A 33). The only general movement
allowed was that of the public shepherd of the township, or the chase of wild beasts by
the public horn, or of bards spreading knowledge. But bankrupt men who had no kin orland were free to travel (A 28). Thus the organized society was held together.
The idea of the bonds of society was very strong. The mutual bonds of a social state are
equal protection, tillage, arid law (45). The duties of public help, which every person
must render, are in invasion, the public cry of base deeds or murder, and fire (A 15).
Society is disorganized by oppressive privilege, unjust decision in law, and negligence
allowing regulations to be destroyed (31). The tribal bond is broken up by famine,earthquake, flood, or conquest, and the tribe must begin to form a new social state (A 32).
In more personal matters no arms might be shown in a convention of the country andlord, or convention of independence, or convention of the bards (58). The things
indispensable to a free man were his tunic, harp and kettle. The indispensables of a vassal
were his hearthstone, bill-hook and trough (239, 240). The property of which a man
might not be deprived were his wife, children, clothes, arms, and implements of theprivileged arts (53). The three ornaments of a tribe were a book, a harp, and a sword, andthey could not be distrained by law (54). The hereditary owner of land could always
reclaim it after sale by offering the value (93). This proves that strictly private ownershipco-existed with tillage in common.
Government was not despotic, and the chief or king was hardly more than a spokesman.
The chief was the oldest efficient man in the tribe (88, 165). The meeting of a country
could be called by public proclamation, not only by the king or lord of the district, or thechief of a tribe, but also by a family representative (171). There were three privileged
conventions--first, that of the bards for sound instruction on virtue, wisdom, andhospitality, to record events, actions, and pedigrees, and proclaim laws; second, that of
the country and lord for court of law; third, for independence, to establish harmony bymutual reason and agreement of country and country, prince and prince, vote and vote(59, 61). The reasons for taking the vote of the country were to enact or repeal a law, togive judgement when the law is insufficient, and by the privilege of the country to guard
against illegal measures by opposing the offenders (161). The consent of the country wasneeded to abrogate the king's law, to dethrone the sovereign, and to teach new sciences
and new regulations in the convention of the bards (63). The native rights of all freeborn
men and women were the gift and free use of five acres of land (eight English acres), thecarrying of arms, and a vote to a man at puberty, and to a woman when she marries (65).
A woman also had the privilege that if she had a son by a foreigner against her consent,
as when in the power of foreigners in any way, by tribal order or accident, her son
inherited as a free man, although a foreigner could not inherit privileges of free men for
nine generations (116). Each generation of bondmen or foreigners that married a freeborn
woman gained one degree of the nine necessary for freedom.
126

Law was but custom enforced. 'There are three pillars of the law: custom before record
and tradition; the king through legal authority; and the decision of the country by votewhere there has been neither custom nor law' (155). Three kinds of custom are to be
maintained: first, the custom that sets the law aside; second, custom that excels law, but
limited to local use; third, custom which excels law in the special circumstances, to be
confirmed by the verdict of the country (28). Three things might supersede law: acts of
the king to enforce truth or justice; privilege, which nothing can remove; and a contract
with witnesses. The judge was to use his discretion widely; he must know the law, know
the customs so that law may not injure them, and know the tendencies of his times andtheir consequences, leaving a wide opening for judge-made law (12).
The court consisted essentially of the king, or lord, to listen and declare what the sense of
the law and its application is, the judge to hear the evidence and decide on what is provedof the facts, the clerk to write the pleadings (204, 210) and to destroy the record after thecause is finished (130). This entirely prevented a growth of law by precedents as inEngland.
Learning was greatly respected. Privilege of support was given to rank, to bards orteachers, and to orphans (A 12). The free man must support a wife, also a fighting man if
he does not fight himself, and a family tutor (81). The family teacher was exempt from all
manual work, bearing arms, or cultivation, like infants and the aged (55). The privilegedarts, that give complete liberty, are bardism, metallurgy, and learning or literature. Those
who profess these have an extra five acres of land besides their five acres as free men (68,71). The smith, mason, and carpenter all had equal rights (73). No bondman was to learn
the arts of freemen; if he did so he was free (69), but his sons reverted to bondage (70).
Hereditary learning therefore kept the family free, before the nine generations of bondage
were over.
The most remarkable part of the law was the respect to foreigners. A foreigner under theprotection of the tribe must be assisted in travel (A 8). He was as a trader not to be
oppressed or injured though speaking a barbarous tongue (78). The foreigner practisingarts obtained the status of freeman in the third generation (70). He was to be allowed an
advocate in law courts (209), protection and support from the taxes (209), and to be
excused in case of capital crime, as ignorant (23). In case he was shipwrecked on the
coast he had free maintenance (198, 199).
These laws give a remarkable view of a community with the greatest respect for
weakness and misfortune, high rights for women, full consideration for foreigners, andgreat privilege for learning, for the arts, and the crafts. Social duty was strongly held, andthe full power rested on the vote of every free man and woman, even to deposing theking. Arms were prohibited civil assembly, and the harp was as necessary to a free man
his coat and his cooking-pot. The whole air is that of simple conditions and a free life,
with much personal cultivation and sympathy in general conduct. It would be impossible
to produce such a code from a savage or violent people, and this intimate view of theirlife is the best ground for judging of their qualities. That there was generally a wellorganized peace kept in the country is shown by Caesar's statement that 'the number ofthe people is countless, and their buildings exceedingly numerous.'
Notes
127

1. Flinders Petrie, W.M. Neglected British History. Proc. Brit. Academy. 1917. Vol. VIII.
pp. 1-28.
2. Probert, W. (trans). The Ancient Laws of Cambria. 1823. pp. 8-14.
3. ibid. pp. 15-87.

Appendix 7
The Genealogy of the early British Kings
The following genealogy shows the descent of the early British kings as it was traced
down from Japheth, the son of Noah. The sources for this are Nennius 17 and 18 (seeAppendix 5), covering from Japheth to Brutus; and Geoffrey of Monmouth who carries
the story on from Anchises. To gain an idea of the time-scale involved, I have included
the dates of each king's first year of reign as far as that can be calculated from internaland external sources. The Welsh chronicle agrees with Geoffrey of Monmouth almost
exactly, although the names are obviously closer in the Welsh to the original early British
forms than they are in Geoffrey. For ease, I have used here Geoffrey's latinised forms.

128

129

130

131

132

Appendix 8
133

The Descent of the East Saxon Kings
The genealogy of the East Saxon kings (from whom the English county of Essex derives
its name) was discovered comparatively recently. It was being used as part of the bindingof an old book. However, it was happily retrieved and published by Sweet in The Earliest
English Texts. (Oxford Univ. Press. 1885. p. 179). In the original document thegenealogy is set out as follows, the letters appearing here in parentheses belonging tothose small portions of the document that had been cut away when binding the book:de regibus orientalium seaxonum
Offa sighering, sighere sigberhting, sigberht s(aweard)ing, saweard saberhting,saberbt sledding, sle(dd) aescwining, aescwine offing, offa bedcing, bedca
sigefugling, sigefugi swaepping, swaeppa antsecging, ants(ecg) gesecging, gesecg
seaxileting.
item de regibus orientalium seaxonum
Swithred sigemunding, sigemund sigeharding, si(gehard) sebbing, sebbe seaxreding,seaxred sab(erhti)ng, saberht sledding.
item de regibus orientalium seoxo(num)Sigered sigericing, sigeric selereding, selered sigeberhting, sigeberht sigeb(aldi)ng,
sigebald selerferthing, selerferth sigeferthing, seaxing, seaxa sledding.

134

...all of which translates, in today's genealogical terms, into the above table of descent.
The point most worthy of consideration here, however, is the method used by the early
Saxons for safeguarding against omissions and accidental repeats (or 'scribal doublets' as
they are known), the very things, in fact, that modernist scholars assure us render theselists untrustworthy. Although the system was not one hundred per cent foolproof (whatsystem is?), it was nevertheless so simple, it was ingenious. As an exercise, try copyingout the list as it is laid out in the original. While spelling mistakes may well occur, youwill see that it is virtually impossible to omit a name or accidentally repeat it, for eachname is written twice, once with the suffix -ing (which simply means son of), and once
without it.
Indeed, not only the written record was secured against error by this method of recording,but oral transmission was made that much easier and more dependable by the poetic
rhythm that was set up by reciting the names thus.

Appendix 9
The Historical Characters of Beowulf
135Introduction
Virtually every edition of the Beowulf epic (and virtually every commentary on thepoem), will take pains to assure the reader that what he is reading is not a historicallyaccurate account of events or personages. Beowulf is described as a moral tale composedseveral centuries after the times of which it treats, a good yarn, and so on and so forth.
What it does not do is embody real history. However, the best test for historicity that canbe applied to any document from the past, be it chronicle, epic poem or prose narrative, isthe test of its genealogies and personal names. Are the men and women mentioned in thework characters who are known to us from other contemporary sources? Can thegenealogies be verified? If they can, then we are dealing with an account that we can rely
on as history. If their information is demonstrably wrong or fictitious, and if it is seen tocontradict other accepted historical sources, then clearly the rest of the matter can bedismissed as mere fiction. Thus, and in the light of the persistent modernist assertion that
Beowulf is merely fiction, we shall examine the complex genealogies that are embodied
within the poem in the sure knowledge that no compiler of fairy-stories ever went to suchenormous lengths to add such circumstantial verisimilitude to his tale as we find in the
Beowulf. The following evidence will speak for itself.
I have relied on Klaeber (3rd ed. see bibliography) for much of the information containedin the notes, and for the dates which, as he points out, are estimated as closely as thepoem and its external corroborative sources will allow. The pivotal date on which most of
the others depend, is AD 521, the year in which King Hygelac was slain by the Franks as
depicted in Gregory of Tour's Historiae Francorum. However, having verified
Beowulf's extraordinary historical accuracy on almost all points of the narrative, eventhose minor insignificant and insubstantial points that only an authentic historicalnarrative can yield, Klaeber still denies the essential and historical authenticity of thenarrative. It is a peculiar position in which many a modernist scholar has found himself.

Notes on the Descent of the Geatish Royal House136

1. Swerting: This is Hrethel's father-in-law's surname, not his forename. Swerting would
have flourished from c. AD 425 onwards. He was defeated by Frotho, whom we met
earlier killing a dragon (see chapter 11). Swerting planned to put Frotho to death, but inthe ensuing battle both men slew each other. Swerting's daughter, unnamed, married
Hrethel.
2. Hrethel: AD 445-503. Having reigned over the Geats of southern Sweden, Hretheldied of grief a year after his eldest son's tragic death (see 5 and 6).
3. ?: Unknown.
4. Waymunding: This is the surname of Beowulf's grandfather. He would have lived
during the latter half of the 5th century.
5. Herebeald: AD 470-502. He was killed by his younger brother Haethcyn in a hunting
accident.
6. Haethcyn: AD 472-510. Haethcyn came to the throne in AD 503. From that time war
broke out between the Geats and the neighbouring Swedes culminating in the famous
Battle of Ravenswood (Hrefnawudu) in the year AD 510. Just before this battle,
Haethcyn was killed by Ongentheow (see next table (1)) after having captured theSwedish queen.
7. Daughter: Unknown.
8. Ecgtheow: Beowulf's father, otherwise unknown.
9. Weoxstan: Paternal uncle to Beowulf, he surprisingly helped Onela gain the throne of
Sweden (see next table (4)). He and his son, Wiglaf (11), are henceforth known as
Scylfingas, or Swedes, to denote their treacherously aiding the Swedish king.
10. BEOWULF: AD 495-583. The subject of the epic that bears his name.
11. Wiglaf: Beowulf's cousin. Otherwise unknown from external sources, Beowulf
adopted him as his heir. (See also Weoxstan 9.)
12. Haereth: Father of Queen Hygd.
13. Wonred: Father of Eofor and Wulf.
14. ?: Unknown.
15. Hygelac: AD 475-521. The pivotal date, AD 521, and from which all other dates arehere calculated, is provided by Gregory of Tour's Historiae Francorum, where hementions Hygelac's raid on the Franks. During this raid, Hygelac was slain by
Theodebert, the son of Theoderic, the Merovingian king of the Franks.
16. Hygd: Hygelac's queen.
17. Hereric: Queen Hygd's brother, he was uncle to prince Heardred.
137

18. Wulf: Eofor's elder brother.
19. Eofor: In the year AD 510, Eofor slew Ongentheow, king of the Swedes (see nexttable (1)).
20. Daughter: Unknown.
21. Heardred: AD 511-533. In AD 532, diplomatic relations between the Geats and theSwedes were ruptured by Heardred's granting asylum to Onela of Sweden's rebellious
nephews. Heardred was killed the following year by Onela's forces.

Notes on the Descent of the Swedish and Danish Royal Houses
1. Ongentheow: AD 450-510. King of Sweden, he has been identified as the Angeltheowof the early (pre-migration) Mercian genealogies (see table to chapter 7). In other early
Nordic sources his name is also given as Angantyr and Egill. His queen was taken captive
by Haethcyn and Hygelac (see previous table (6) and (14)), and he was killed in theensuing battle of Ravenswood by Eofor and Wulf (see previous table (18) and (19)).
2. Healfdene: AD 445-498. Otherwise known as Halfdan, he is celebrated in othersources as the father of Hrothgar (Hrøarr) and Halga (Helgi). According to the
Skjoldungasaga, his mother was the daughter of Jomundus, king of Sweden. His seat ofpower, which Beowulf tells us was called Heorot, is today marked by the village of Lejreon the Danish island of Zealand.
3. Okthere: AD 478-532. His name is rendered Ottar in early West Nordic sources. The
burial mound containing his ashes is still known as Ottarshogen.
4. Onela: AD 480-535. Otherwise Ali in old West Nordic sources, namely theSkåldskaparmal; the Ynglingasaga; the Ynglingatal; and the Skjoldungasaga.
5. Ursula: Orig. Yrsa. In the Hrolfssaga and Skjoldungasaga, she is depicted as
Healfdene's eldest child, not his youngest as given in the Beowulf
138

6. Heorogar: AD 470-500. According to the Beowulf epic, he died within two years ofinheriting his father's crown at 28 years of age. His is one of only two names of theDanish royal house that are not attested in other records (see also 16).
7. Hrothgar: AD 473-525. Otherwise Hroarr; he was king Denmark.
8. Wealhtheow: She was a descendant of the Helmingas, was renowned for her tactfuland diplomatic ways. Intriguingly, her name means Celtic Servant.
9. Halga: AD 475-503. He is known as Helgi in other Scandinavian sources and as Halgi
Hundingsbani in the Eddic poems.
10. Heoroweard: Born AD 490. Heoroweard did not inherit the crown on his father
Heorogar's death. This may have been due to his minority, (he was 10 when his father
died), although other young lads have taken the crown at even earlier ages. Lines 2155 ff
of Beowulf may hold the clue to this. His father refused to pass on to him the royalstandard, helmet, sword and breastplate, an extraordinary act that normally denotes thatthe son has lost his father's respect. How he lost it we are left to imagine.
11. Hrothulf: AD 495 - 545. Renowned in other Scandina-vian records as the son of
Halga, he was, according to the Skjoldungasaga (cap. XII) and the Ynglingasaga (cap.
XXIX), orphaned as a boy of 8. But he was adopted by Hrothgar and his queen at theDanish royal court. He was counted as one of the suhtergefaederan (close relatives of
the king) and he occupied the seat of honour next to Hrothgar. However, he later
attempted (AD 525) to usurp the throne from his cousins Hrethric and Hrothmund (see 15
and 16).
12. Eanmund: AD 503-533. He was known as Eymundr in the Hyndluljoth (cap. XV)
and as Aun in the Ynglingasaga. Saxo latinised his name as Homothus. He was slain by
Weoxstan (see previous table (9)).
13. Eadgils: Born AD 510. He became king in AD 535, and was known as Athils in other
Nordic sources.
14. Froda: King of the Heathobard's (a Danish people), his lineage (not given in the
Beowulf) is of great interest to us. We have already seen how the pre-Christian Saxons,
Irish and early Britons all traced their royal descents through various lines from Japheth.
Froda's line is likewise given as beginning with Japhet (see chapter 8).
15. Hrethric: Born AD 499. Known in other records (the Bjarkamal and Saxo [ii]) as
Hroerekr and Roricus respectively, he was slain by Hrothulf (see 11) in AD 525.
16. Hrothmund: Born AD 500. His is one of only two names m this genealogy thatcannot be verified from other surviving sources (see also 6).
17. Freawaru: Born AD 501. She married Ingeld of Sweden in AD 518.
18. Ingeld: Identical with Ingjaldr illrathi of Ynglingasaga fame, his prowess was sungfor ages in the halls of Scandinavia. Indeed, his fame is referred to in a somewhat
indignant letter written in AD 797 by Alcuin to bishop Speratus of Lindisfarne: 'Quid139

enim Hinieldus cum Christo?' - What has Ingeld to do with Christ? This was written in
rebuke of the monks of Lindisfarne who loved to hear the old pagan sagas retold incloisters. Yet it is to such monks that we owe the often clandestine preservation of works
like the Beowulf and the old pagan genealogies, which have in turn yielded such vital
information concerning our pre-Christian forebears' unexpected knowledge of theGenesis patriarchs. Ingeld himself married Hrothgar's daughter, Freawaru, in the year AD
518. In the Langfethgatal (roll of ancestors) he is listed as Ingialdr Starkadar fostri.
Comment
It is very obvious indeed from the above information that in Beowulf we are not dealing
with a Christian-inspired fiction in spite of everything that has been said about the poemby the modernist school of thought. All the characters in the epic have their places setvery firmly indeed within the pagan pre-Christian framework of the recorded histories ofDenmark and Sweden, and we note an astonishing accuracy throughout the Beowulf epic
whenever it deals with these characters and their often very complex relationships with
one another. That is not the kind of thing that arises by chance or fiction. But further tothis, and crucial to our study, are the graphic zoological depictions that appear in thepoem of the creatures that these historical characters had to deal with. These depictions
are listed in the following Appendix.

Appendix 10
Zoologically applied terms in the Beowulf
Epic
Saxon term

Literal MeaningLine

Creature
denoted

1. aelwiht

alien monster

1500

Grendel(female)2. atol aglaeca

the terrifying ugly one

732

Grendel(male)

3. andsaca

adversary

1682

Grendel(male)

4. angenga

solitary walker

449

Grendel(male)

5. atol

terrible165

Grendel(male)

6. atelichorrible784

Grendel(male)

7.
attorsceatha

venomous foe

2839

Flying reptile140

8. brimwylf

she-wolf of the lake

1506

Grendel(female)9. cwealm
cuma

death visitor

792

Grendel(male)

10. daedfruma

evildoer

2090

Grendel(male)

11. deathscua death shadow

160

Grendel(male)

12. deofi

devil

2088

Grendel(male)

13. draca

dragon2290

Flying reptile

14. eacen
craeftig

exceedingly powerftil

3051

Flying reptile

15.
ealdorgewinna

life enemy

2903

Flying reptile

16. ellengaest

powerful demon

86

Grendel(male)

17. ellorgaest

alien spirit

807

Grendel(male)

18. ent

giant

2717

Flying reptile

19. feondfiend, enemy

101

Grendel(male)

20.
feondscatha

dire foe554

Grendel(male)

21. feorhbealu life destruction

2077

Grendel(male)

22.
ferhthgenithla

deadly foe

2881

Flying reptile

23. fifelcynrace of monsters

104

Grendel(species)

24. gastbona

soul slayer

177

Grendel(male)

25.
geoscafigast

demon sent by fate

1266

Grendel(male)

26. gesaca

adversary

1773

Grendel(male)

27. graedig

greedy, ravenous

121

Grendel(male)

28. grinilic

fierce, terrible

3041

Flying reptile

29. gromheort

hostile hearted

1682

Grendel(female)30.
grundwyrgen

hellish monster

1518

Grendel(male)
14131. gryrefahterr. variegatedcolouring

3041

Flying reptile

32.
guthsceatha

enemy, destroyer

2318

Flying reptile

33.
haethstapa

heath stalker

1368

Stag

34.
heorowearh

accursed outcast

1267

Grendel(male)

35. hordweard treasure guardian

2293

Flying reptile

36. hringboga

coiled (or wrapped)
creature

2561

Flying reptile

37. idese
inlicnessthe likeness of a
woman

1351

Grendel(female)38. inwitgaest

malicious foe

2670

Flying reptile

39.
lathgeteonaloathly spoiler

974

Grendel(male)

40. ligdraca

fire dragon

2333

Flying reptile

41. ligegesa

fire terror

2780

Flying reptile

42. lyfifloga

air flier

2315

Flying rep.
spec.

43.
manfordaedla

wicked destroyer

563

Sea monster

44.
manscatha

wicked ravager

712

Grendel(male)

45.
mearcstapa

march stalker

103

Grendel(male)

46. meredeorsea beast

558

Sea monster

47. mutlibona

mouth slayer

2079

Grendel(male)

48. nearofah

cruelly hostile2317

Flying reptile

49. nicor

water monster

845

Lake monster

50. nihtbealu

night evil

193

Grendel(male)

51. nithdraca

hostile dragon

2273

Flying reptile

52. nithgaest

malicious foe

2699

Flying reptile

53. orcneas

monsters

112

Monsters
general

54. saedeorsea beast

1510

Sea monster

55. saedracasea dragon

1426

Sea monster

142

56.
sceadugenga

walker in darkness703

Grendel(male)

57. scinna

demon

939

Grendel(male)

58. scucca

demon

939

Grendel(male)

59.
scynscatha

hostile demon

707

Grendel(male)

60. searogrim

fierce in battle

594

Grendel(male)

61.
theodsceatha

waster of peoples

2278

Flying reptile

62. thyrs

giant

426

Grendel(male)

63. wereswaestmumthe shape of a man

1352

Grendel(male)

64. widfloga

wide flyer

2346

Flying reptile

65. wihi
unhaelounholy monster

120

Grendel(male)

66. wildeor

wild beast

1430

Lake monster

67. wohbogan

coiled (or wrapped)
creature

2827

Flying reptile

68. wrecend

avenger

1256

Grendel(female)69. wyrm

serpent

1430

Lake monster

70. wyrmcynn

race of serpents

1425

Monster
species71.
ythgewinnes

wave-thrasher

1434

Lake monster

Appendix 11

143

Note
In the above table, I have brought together the genealogies contained in no less than five
diverse and ancient sources which show the descent of certain early patriarchs. Three of
those sources begin with the same original, namely Japheth, otherwise remembered as
Jupiter amongst the ancient and pagan Latin races, thus demonstrating beyond any
reasonable doubt that Japheth was synonymous with Jupiter. And two of them end with
Brutus, the eponymous founder of the early Britons. All of the sources differ from one
another in many and various points, which rules out inter-dependency or copying.
However, they also agree on many independent points, which demonstrates the historicityof the patriarchs listed. If it were at all possible to cite a comparable case where suchancient patriarchs are commonly listed amongst such diverse and independent sources,
there can be little doubt that their historicity would be accepted without question amongst
modern scholars. After all, the historicity of many other characters from the ancientworld is accepted on much less evidence than this. Indeed, their historicity is accepted,
more often than not, merely upon the single appearance of a name, without any othercorroborative evidence being required. And yet the above genealogies that present thehistorian with such uniquely comprehensive and corroborative evidence are commonly
listed as myth and fable. Perhaps the reason for this is better pondered upon than stated.

Appendix 12
The Descent from Japhethof the Miautso People of China
144

I have constructed the following patriarchal genealogy from the translation by Edgar
Truax (1) of the oral traditions of the Miautso people of China. They were yet anotherearly people who regarded themselves as being descended from Japheth, and who
remembered some of the other early patriarchs whose names likewise appear in the
Genesis record. They were found to already possess this knowledge in the form ofancient couplets when they were encountered for the first time by Christian missionaries.
Moreover, they were in possession of surprisingly accurate recollections of the Creationand the Flood, and some of the close detail of their accounts coincides almost identicallywith the Genesis record. Having originally settled in what is now the Kiangsi province ofChina, from where they were later driven out by the Chinese, they claim that they are notthemselves of Chinese stock, and this is borne out by their insistence that they aredescended from Japheth, i.e. of Indo-European descent. The oral traditions in which thedescent of the Miautso has been preserved, owe their purity to the fact that they havebeen recited faithfully and in fill at funerals, weddings and other public occasions since
time immemorial.

Notes on the Descent of the Miautso People of China
1. Dirt: This is Truax's English rendering of the original name, not a transposition. It isclearly meant to portray Adam, the version of whose name in the Miautso language (as in
Hebrew, Akkadian and so on), means earth or clay, the substance from which he wascreated.
145

2. Se-teh: The Biblical Seth.
3. Lusu: The names in the book of the Generations of Adam (Genesis 5) that
immediately follow that of Seth are: Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch andMethuselah. The name Lusu may conceivably be identified as a corruption of one of theelements of Mahalaleel. Otherwise, it is unidentifiable.
4. Gehlo: A corruption, perhaps, of the final element of Methuselah's name. Otherwise, it
is unidentifiable.
5. Lama: The Biblical Lamech.
6. Nuah: Noah. In the Miautso account, Nuah was a righteous man who was commanded
by God to build a great ark. The release of the dove from the ark is mentioned amidst agraphic and somewhat horrifying depiction of the Flood itself and the eventual drying outof the land.
7. Gaw Bo-lu-en: Apart from certain Jewish traditions, this is an interesting and rarenaming of Noah's wife. Genesis, of course, does not give her name.
8. Lo Han: The Biblical Ham. The descent of the following identifiable patriarchs isgiven along with a graphic account of Babel and the confusion of tongues. It is then told
how the nations spread out from Babel and encircled the globe. This is a surprisingpreservation of ancient knowledge, for the Miautso, at the time of their first encounter
with missionaries, had no concept of the earth being round.
9. Cusah: The Biblical Cush.
10. Mesay: The Biblical Mizraim.
11. Lo Shen: The Biblical Shem.
12. Elan: The Biblical Elam.
13. Nga-shur: The Biblical Asshur.
14. Jah-jbku: The Biblical Japheth.
15. Go-men: The Biblical Gomer.
16. ???: An unnamed patriarch.
17. Tutan: This was an adopted name.
18. The following list of patriarchs and matriarchs indicate the seriousness with which theMiautso kept their pedigrees in common with many other early peoples.
19. According to the Miautso themselves, of these eleven children or tribes, five formed
the Miautso nation, and six intermarried with the invading Chinese.
146

Note
1. Truax, E. Genesis According to the Miao People. Impact Article. April 1991. Institutefor Creation Research. P0 Box 2667. El Cajon. California 92021. USA.

Appendix 13
Britain's First Christian'The wars and persecutions which followed the first preaching of thegospel in Britain have destroyed all certain records of Christianity in theseearly times.' (Churton, E. The Early English Church. London. 1841. p. 3)
The above comment, made over 150 years ago, is typical of the mistaken assumption
under which scholars have laboured for centuries. The records of this island's earliest
Church, far from having been destroyed or lost, are in fact to be found in the Welsh
documents known as the Triads. The fact that no notice has been taken of them down the
centuries is due entirely to the prejudice that has been lain upon anything of Welsh origin
since the Augustine-inspired massacre of the Welsh clergy at Bangor in the early 7th
century. To read some books these days, one could easily be misled into thinking that
Augustine himself was practically the first Christian to land on these shores, the 'Lucius'
mission to Rome of the late 2nd century and the Celtic Church in general receiving
minimal notice.
Modern scholarship, when dealing with the earliest appearances of the Christian faith inBritain, will usually set up straw-men, personified in the late Saxon-cum-Norman legends
of Joseph of Arimathea and of St Paul's allegedly landing here, only to knock them down
again with the erroneous observation that nothing can be certainly known before
Augustine's day. Otherwise, all is legend and insubstantial myth. But is it? As is often thecase, the original records carry a somewhat different story. Flinders Petrie tells us aboutit:'The Lucius question next arises. To judge of this we must look at thewhole of the statements about the rise of the British Church. We must
carefully keep to the authorities, as confusion has arisen by modern
authors making arbitrary identifications of the east British or London
family of Casswallon with the west British or Silurian family of Caradog.
The actual statements of the triads name two generations before Caradog(Caratacus) and three after him - Llyr, Bran, Caradog, Cyllin, Coel,
Lleirwg. From triads 18 and 35, Bran was seven years a hostage in Romefor his son Caradog - implying that Caradog was sent back to rule in
Britain. The seven years, therefore, would be from AD 51 to 58. From
Rome he "brought the faith of Christ to the Cambrians". Looking at the
Epistle to the Romans, written AD 58, the obvious strength of Christianity
then, its hold in Caesar's household, where Bran was a hostage, and its
political position under Nero, there is nothing in the least improbable in a
British hostage in Rome being among converts by AD 58. In triad 62,147

Lleirwg, the great-grandson of Caradog, "first gave lands and the privilegeof the country (i.e. position of native free-men) to those who first
dedicated themselves to the faith of Christ", and he founded the firstarchbishopric, that of Llandav. This would be about AD 130 to 160. Three
generations for such a spread of influence from one of the royal family iscertainly not too short a time.
Next comes the account in Tysilio [i.e. Jesus College MS LXI] and theLiber Pontificalis, that Lies (Lucius) sent to Eleutherius, "soon after his
entrance upon the pontificate", or about AD 180, for missioners from
Rome. If the west British rulers had already started official Christianity ageneration or two earlier, there is nothing unlikely in this movement. That
Christianity was firmly established in even remote parts of Britain at theclose of the second century is shown by Tertullian stating that "the Britonsin parts inaccessible to the Romans, Christ has truly subdued". Collateralwith this is the great importance of the Gallic Church under Irenaeus AD
180. The later stage, of the British bishops in AD 314 attending theCouncil of Aries, brings the development into the full course of
ecclesiastical history. In this growth thus recorded there is not a single
stage that is historically inconsistent or improbable. Further agreeing withthis is the genealogy of Vortigern in Nennius (49), where, amid purely
British names, Paul occurs at about AD 175.'
Note
1. Adv. IUD., p. 189, edit. 1664.
Flinders Petrie made just one mistake here in that he misinterpreted the genealogy of
Vortigern as being given in descending order in the original Latin of Nennius, when infact it is given in ascending order. In other words, Paul did not live before Vortigern (whoflourished ca AD 450) but after him, probably around the year AD 600:

The mistake is surprising, for Nennius specifically states that this genealogy is 'traced
backwards to the beginning' (Haec est genealogia illius quae ad initium retro recurrit),
i.e. in ascending order, rather than forwards to the end in descending order. But ineverything else, Flinders Petrie is perfectly correct. It is unequivocally stated in the earlyrecords that the man who first brought the Christian faith to these shores was none otherthan Bran, the father of Caratacus (Caradog) who, with his family, was taken to Rome inchains and paraded before the Senate by the Emperor Claudius with the view to their
immediate and summary execution. Caratacus (or, more usually, Caractacus), however,gave his famous speech of defiance that earned him instead the Senate's applause, a state148pension and apartments in the Imperial Palace. And here conventional history loses sightof him. But the triads add to our knowledge. They tell us that, in perfect accord withprevious Roman practice, Caratacus was allowed home to rule as a puppet king, but his
family were kept behind as surety for his good behaviour. Whilst detained for seven years
in Caesar's household, his father Bran was converted to Christ, and when allowed toreturn to Britain in AD 58, the very year of Paul's epistle to the Romans, he brought theChristian faith with him. It is difficult to imagine a more straightforward, uncomplicatedand entirely feasible account, and we can only wonder why it has been ignored all theseyears.

Appendix 14
The Irish Chronicles and the end of the Ice Age
One of the questions often raised concerning the early post-Flood history of Europe, isthat of the Ice Age, the impression being no doubt that the Ice Age poses some kind of aproblem for the biblical model. Few creationists would question the historical reality ofthe so-called Ice Age, although we would certainly question the vast span of time allotted
to it under the evolutionary scheme of things. In other words, it is something that would
have lasted only a few centuries, perhaps even a thousand years or more, rather than thehundreds of thousands of years proposed by others. But of added interest to us in thispresent study is the fact that the receding of the ice sheets over northern Europe seems tohave been witnessed by some of its earliest colonists who have left intriguing records
behind them.
Nennius, for example, in the 13th chapter of his Historia Brittonum, has preserved afascinating account of an unexpected encounter with an iceberg by some early colonistsof Ireland. Having arrived from the warm Mediterranean basin via the Spanish peninsula
at an unspecified date, and being entirely unfamiliar with ice at sea, at the end of theirfirst year in Ireland they looked out at sea and saw what they described as a 'tower ofglass.'(...conspiciunt turrim uitream in medio mare). Moreover, upon the tower they
could see what they took to be men, but could get no reply from them when they shouted(...et homines cons piciebant et quaerebant loqui ad illos nun quam respondebant). They
therefore launched an attack upon the tower. Some of their boats were wrecked on theice, while some men who had managed to land upon it were washed off by the heavy seas
and drowned .(...et demersi sunt).
The creatures on the ice that had looked like 'men' at a distance, were probably seals. But
added to this intriguing account (icebergs have always been a rare sight off the coast of
Ireland since those early days), we have the following detail that can be dated with fair
precision. It appears in the Irish Annals of Ctonmacnoise, translated into English in theyear 1627 by Conell Mageoghagan, where firstly we are told that during Partholan's
coming to Ireland (15th century BC) he counted 'but three laughs [lochs or lakes] andnyne Rivers in the Kingdom'. (1) But then, during the later second colonisation of
Ireland, we are told that 'Many Laughs and Rivers broke out in their time'. (2)149

Lakes and rivers don't just suddenly 'break out' in a short period of time without a sourceof water that is truly vast. So it would seem, therefore, that we are given in the early Irish
records an intriguing glimpse into the melting of the north European ice-sheets which
occurred some short time after the 15th century BC. Given Ussher's chronology for theyear of the Flood, 2348 BC, and assuming that the ice covered Europe soon after thereceding of the Flood waters, that would allow about a thousand years for the Ice Age.
The Britons didn't settle under Brutus in these islands until some three hundred years
later (ca 1104 BC), which is doubtless why their records contain no allusions to ice or asudden burgeoning of rivers and lakes as do the earlier Irish accounts.
Notes:
1. Mageoghagan, C. 1627. The Annals of Clonmacnoise. Printed in Dublin at the
University Press. 1896. (Murphy ed.). p. 13.
2. ibid. p. 15.
END

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