• Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel (transl. E. H. Gifford, 1903), Bk. IX, Chap, xxvii.
?Cf. S. Bochart, Hierozoicon (1675), I, 344.
8 The Mishna of Rabbi Eliezer, ed. H. G. Enelow (1933).
9 Ginzberg, Legends, II, 241. Pithom was excavated by E. Naville (The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus [1885]), but he did not dig beneath the layer of the New Kingdom.
10 The inscription of Queen Hatshepsut at Speos Artemidos, J. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. II, Sec. 300.
ii Zohar ii, 38a-38b.
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/XThe population fled. "Men flee. . . . Tents are what they make like the dwellers of hills," wrote Ipuwer.12 The population of a city destroyed by an earthquake usually spends the nights in the fields. The Book of Exodus describes a hurried flight from Egypt on the night of the tenth plague; a "mixed multitude" of non-Israelites left Egypt together with the Israelites, who spent their first night in Sukkoth (huts).13
^"The lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook. . . . Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." 14 They were brought out of Egypt by a portent which looked like a stretched arm—"by a stretched out arm and by great terrors," or "with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders." 15
"13"
"At midnight" all the houses of Egypt were smitten; "there was not a house where there was not one dead." This happened on the night of the fourteenth of the month Aviv (Exodus 12:6; 13:4).
robin-bobin
This is the night of Passover. It appears that the Israelites originally celebrated Passover on the eve of the fourteenth of Aviv.
The month Aviv is called "the first month" (Exodus 12:18). Thout was the name of the first month of the Egyptians. What, for the Israelites, became a feast, became a day of sadness and fasting for the Egyptians. "The thirteenth day of the month Thout [is] a very bad day. Thou shalt not do anything on this day. It is the day of the combat which Horus waged with Seth."1
The Hebrews counted (and still count) the beginning of the day from sunset; 2 the Egyptians reckoned from sunrise.3 As the catastrophe took place at midnight, for the Israelites it was the fourteenth day of the (first) month; for the Egyptians it was the thirteenth day.
12 Papyrus Ipuwer 10 : 2. 13 Exodus 12 : 37-38. " Psalms 77 : 18, 20. 15 Deuteronomy 4
: 34; 26 : 8.
!\V. Max Miiller, Egyptian Mythology (1918), p. 126. 2 Leviticus 23 : 32. 3 K. Sethe, "Die agyptische Zeitrechnung" (Gottingen Ges. d. Wiss., 1920), pp. 130 ff.
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An earthquake caused by contact or collision with a comet must be felt simultaneously all around the world. An earthquake is a phenomenon that occurs from time to time; but an earthquake accompanying an impact in the cosmos would stand out and be recalled as a memorable date by survivors.
In the calendar of the Western Hemisphere, on the thirteenth day of the month, called olin,
"motion" or "earthquake," 4 a new sun is said to have initiated another world age.5 The Aztecs, like the Egyptians, reckoned the day from sunrise.6
Here we have, en passant, the answer to the open question concerning the origin of the superstition which regards the number 13, and especially the thirteenth day, as unlucky and inauspicious. It is still the belief of many superstitious persons, unchanged through thousands of years and even expressed in the same terms: "The thirteenth day is a very bad day. You shall not do anything on this day."
I do not think that any record of this belief can be found dating from before the time of the Exodus. The Israelites did not share this superstition of the evil-working number thirteen (or fourteen).
* See Codex Vaticanus No. 3773 (B), elucidated by E. Seler (1902-1903). 5 Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, II, 798, 800.
8 L. Ideler, Historische Untersuchungen iiber die astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alien (1806), p. 26.
CHAPTER 3
The Hurricane
THE SWIFT shifting of the atmosphere under the impact of the gaseous parts of the comet, the drift of air attracted by the body of the comet, and the rush of the atmosphere resulting from inertia when the earth stopped rotating or shifted its poles, all contributed to produce hurricanes of enormous velocity and force and of worldwide dimensions.
Manuscript Troano and other documents of the Mayas describe a cosmic catastrophe during which the ocean fell on the continent, and a terrible hurricane swept the earth 1 The hurricane broke up and carried away all towns and all forests.2 Exploding volcanoes, tides sweeping over mountains, and impetuous winds threatened to annihilate humankind, and actually did annihilate many species of animals. The face of the earth changed, mountains collapsed, other mountains grew and rose over the onrushing cataract of water driven from oceanic spaces, numberless rivers lost their beds, and a wild tornado moved through the debris descending from the sky. The end of the world age was caused by Hurakan, the physical agent that brought darkness and swept away houses and trees and even rocks and mounds of earth. From this name is derived
"hurricane," the word we use for a strong wind. Hurakan destroyed the major part of the human race. In the darkness swept by wind, resinous stuff fell
1 Brasseur, Manuscrit Troano (1869), p. 141.
robin-bobin
2 In the documents of the collection of Kingsborough. the writings of G6mara, Mitolinia, Sahagun, Landa, Cogolludo, and other authors of the early postcon-quest time, the cataclysm of deluge, hurricane, and volcanoes is referred to ir numerous passages. See, e.g., Gomara, Conquista de Mexico, II, pp. 261 ff.
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68 WORLDS IN COLLISION
from the sky and participated with fire and water in the destruction of the world.3 For five days, save for the burning naphtha and burning volcanoes, the world was dark, since the sun did not appear.
The theme of a cosmic hurricane is reiterated time and again in the Hindu Vedasand in the Persian Avesta* and diluvium venti, the deluge of wind, is a term known from many ancient authors.5 In the Section, "The Darkness," I quoted rabbinical sources on the "exceedingly strong west wind" that endured for seven days when the land was enveloped in darkness, and the hieroglyphic inscription from el-Arish about "nine days of upheaval" when "there was such a tempest" that nobody could leave the palace or see the faces of those beside him, and the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh which says that "six days and a night . . . the hurricane, deluge, and tempest continued sweeping the land," and mankind perished almost altogether. In the battle of the planet-god Marduk with Tia-mat, "he [Marduk] created the evil wind, and the tempest, and the hurricane, and the fourfold wind, and the sevenfold wind, and the whirlwind, and the wind which had no equal." 6
The Maoris narrate7 that amid a stupendous catastrophe "the mighty winds, the fierce squalls, the clouds, dense, dark, fiery, wildly drifting, wildly bursting," rushed on creation, in their midst Tawhiri-ma-tea, father of winds and storms, and swept away giant forests and lashed the waters into billows whose crests rose high like mountains. The earth groaned terribly, and the ocean fled.
"The earth was submerged in the ocean but was drawn by Tefaafa-nau," relate the aborigines of Paumotu in Polynesia. The new isles "were bated by a star." In the month of March the Polynesians celebrate a god, Taafanua.8 "In Arabic, Tyfoon is a whirlwind and Tufan is the Deluge; and the same word occurs in Chinese as
3 Popol-Vuh, Chap. III. * Cf. A. J. Carnoy, Iranian Mythology (1917).
5 Cf. Eisler, Weltmantel und Himmelszelt, II, 453. The Talmud also occasionally uses the notion of "cosmic wind." The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot, 13.
6 Seven Tablets of Creation, the fourth tablet.
* E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (1929), I, 322 ff.