Aventinus 53

Johannes Turmayr's 1520 History of Bavaria, Chapter 53, 54 - translated and annotated by Ras Feqade, AD 2020.

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## 53. Of the eleventh king in Germany, king Alman, called the German Hercules.

The eleventh king in Germania, of whom Berosus a Chaldean priest born in Babylon, writes, is king **Alman**, the German Hercules, a hero and great warrior; he ruled sixty-four years; he is a father of the Bavarians. As our grandfathers sang about him in German rhymes, that still exist, he led a lively life around with him, that's why the common man called him Arcle and Argle for short, who is the lord and hero with the bad, evil life that the Romans made Hercules after their kind, and the Greeks made Heracles.

Saints Jerome and Eusebius the bishop put him in their chronicles for the first Hercules. Above I said more about it at the beginning, it is not necessary to tell it again here. The Altmül, the river and valley in old Bavaria, kept the name from him. The French generally call all Germans, especially the Uplanders, to this day Almannen.

At Nuremberg in the city on the old vest there are still old pictures carved out of stone; Chunradus Celtis, the imperial poet, in the book he wrote about the city of Nuremberg, writes that it was Hercules' picture.

And this hero traveled as far as Asia, everywhere wiped out the giants and even warriors, slaying the giant Teisch, who beyond the Danube and the Rhine drove many unwillingly. Our ancestors, the old Germans, raised him for a god of war and honored him vastly; when they met with the enemy waves, in shouting, sang a number of songs by him and had a special manner in his honors with the clamor and storm; they were called 'barrit', of which one still calls a game called 'running the bar'.

[King Alman 'Hercules' ruled in Germany from 1847 to 1783 BC, 64 years as stated here, although Anderson allows him only 60 years, from 1536-1476 BC according to him. This king has been confused, not only with the first, Egyptian Hercules or Nebtawyre, but with the later, third, Greek Hercules, or Alcaeus, a libertine character who lived from 1248 to 1196 BC, shortly before the Trojan War.]

## 54. How at this time a great chastisement happened over the world with water, fire and death.

With this King Alman happened the big water and third flood, that lasted three months. The Greeks call it from their king, Deucalion, who ruled at that time, the flood of Deucalion, it still has the name from then. Many old poets, Greek and Latin, write, sing and speak of him, thus it is also well known to the children in the school.

The waterflow, when it rained heavily and from time to time, flowed and grew and overflowed; moreover the soil swells and smoulders against it, clogging the outlets and falling water, so smoldering the rivers that they ran out over all the flat plains and fields above. Some think it was a special plague from God; others attribute it to nature, rough winds and coarse thick damps, so closed in the soil penetrated above them and so the soil, swelled and raised, provided that the water and enough of the water replaced and the rivers fell back into their old right, after such smoke and haze were incurred, the earth trimmed and out came such steam and a great earth hum.

After this water came a great fire, which caused much more damage than the flood: the soil burned and the forests melted.

Then there followed a great miserable death. So at the same time people were severely punished with water, fire, pestilence, and hunger. The poets call the it the fire of Phaëton, because they make a long adventure out of it.

[The flood of Deucalion struck Thessaly, Greece in 1766 BC, and there was a major fire in Thessaly, Greece in 1765 BC. It seems chronologically these happened in Greece some years after Alman's reign, during the Civil War in Germany among his heirs.]