28 See for literature Frazer's note to Epitome II in his translation of Apollodorus; Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 506; Pearson, The Fragments of Sophocles, III, note to Fragment 738.
29 Solinus, Polyhistor, xxxii. 30 Bellamy, Moons, Myths and Man, p. 69. si Ibid.
32 C. Virolleaud, "La deesse Anat," Mission de Ras Shamra, Vol. IV (1938).
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tions.'" 33 These "four motions" refer "to four prehistoric suns" or "world ages," with shifting cardinal points.34
The sun that moves toward the east, contrary to the present sun, is called by the Indians Teotl Lixco.35 The people of Mexico symbolized the changing direction of the sun's movement as a heavenly ball game, accompanied by upheavals and earthquakes on the earth.36
The reversal of east and west, if combined with the reversal of north and south, would turn the constellations of the north into constellations of the south, and show them in reversed order, as in the chart of the southern sky on the ceiling of Senmut's tomb. The stars of the north would become stars of the south; this is what seems to be described by the Mexicans as the "driving away of the four hundred southern stars." 37
The Eskimos of Greenland told missionaries that in an ancient time the earth turned over and the people who lived then became antipodes.88
Hebrew sources on the present problem are numerous.39 In Tractate Sanhedrin of the Talmud it is said: "Seven days before the deluge, the Holy One changed the primeval order and the sun rose in the west and set in the east." 40
Tevel is the Hebrew name for the world in which the sun rose in
33 Humboldt, Researches, I, 351. See also by the same author, Examen critique de Vhistoire de la gSographie du nouveau continent (1836-1839), II, 355.
34 Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, II, 799.
35 Seler, perplexed by the statement of the old Mexican sources that the sun moved toward the east, writes: "The traveling toward the east and the disappearance in the east . . . must be understood literally. . . . However, one cannot imagine the sun as wandering eastward: the sun and the entire firmament of the fixed stars travel westward." "Einiges iiber die natiirlichen Gnindlagen mexicanischer Mythen" (1907) in Gesammelte Abhandlungen, Vol. III.
36 Ibid. Also Brasseur, Histoire des nations civilise'es du Mexique, I, 123.
37 Seler, "Ueber die natiirlichen Grundlagen," Gesammelte Abhandlungen, III, 320.
88 Olrik, Ragnarok, p. 407.
39 See M. Steinschneider, Hebrdische Bibliographie (1877), Vol. XVIII.
40 Tractate Sanhedrin 108b.
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the west.*1 Arabot is the name of the sky where the rising point was in the west.42
robin-bobin
Hai Gaon, the rabbinical authority who flourished between 939 and 1038, in his Responses refers to the cosmic changes in which the sun rose in the west and set in the east.43
The Koran speaks of the Lord "of two easts and of two wests," 44 a sentence which presented much difficulty to the exegetes. Aver-rhoes, the Arab philosopher of the twelfth century, wrote about the eastward and westward movements of the sun.45
References to the reversal of the movement of the sun that have been gathered here do not refer to one and the same time: the Deluge, the end of the Middle Kingdom, the days of the Argive tyrants, were separated by many centuries. The tradition heard by Herodotus in Egypt speaks of four reversals. Later in this book and again in the book that will deal with earlier catastrophes, I shall return to this subject. At this point, I leave historical and literary evidence on the reversal of earth's cardinal points for the testimony of the natural sciences on the reversal of the magnetic poles of the earth.
The Reversed Polarity of the Earth
A thunderbolt, on striking a magnet, reverses the poles of the magnet. The terrestrial globe is a huge magnet. A short circuit between it and another celestial body could result in the north and south magnetic poles of the earth exchanging places.
It is possible to detect in the geological records of the earth the orientation of the terrestrial magnetic field in past ages.
"When lava cools and freezes following a volcanic outburst, it takes up a permanent magnetization dependent upon the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field at the time. This, because of small capacity for magnetization in the Earth's magnetic field after freezing, may remain practically constant. If this assumption be correct, the
41 Steinschneider, Hebraische Bibliographie, Vol. XVIII, pp. 61 ff.
42 Ginzberg, Legends, I, 69. 43 Taam Zekenim 55b, 58b. 44 Koran, Sura LV.
48 Steinschneider, Hebraische Bibliographie, Vol. XVIII.
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direction of the originally acquired permanent magnetization can be determined by tests in the laboratory, provided that every detail of the orientation of the mass tested is carefully noted and marked when it is removed." 1
We would expect to find a full reversal of magnetic direction. Although repeated heating of lava and rocks can change the picture, there must have remained rocks with inverted polarity.
Another1 author writes:
"Examination of magnetization of some igneous rocks reveals that they are polarized oppositely from the prevailing present direction of the local magnetic field and many of the older rocks are less strongly magnetized than more recent ones. On the assumption that the magnetization of the rocks occurred when the magma cooled and that the rocks have held their present positions since that time, this would indicate that the polarity of the Earth has been completely reversed within recent geological times." 2
Because the physical facts seemed entirely inconsistent with every cosmological theory, the author of the above passage was cautious not to draw further conclusions from them.
The reversed polarity of lava indicates that in recent geological times the magnetic poles of the globe were reversed; when they had a very different orientation, abundant flows of lava took place.
Additional problems, and of a large scope, are: whether the position of the magnetic poles has anything to do with the direction of rotation of the globe, and whether there is an interdependence in the direction of the magnetic poles of the sun and of the planets.
The Quarters of the World Displaced
The traditions gathered in the section before last refer to various epochs; actually, Herodotus and Mela say that according to Egyp-1 J. A. Fleming, "The Earth's Magnetism and Magnetic Surveys" in Terrestrial Magnetism and Electricity, ed. by J. A. Fleming (1939), p. 32.
robin-bobin
2 A. McNish, "On Causes of the Earth's Magnetism and Its Changes" in Terrestrial Magnetism and Electricity, ed. by Fleming, p. 326.
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tian annals, the reversal of the west and east recurred: the sun rose in the west, then in the east, once more in the west, and again in the east.
Was the cosmic catastrophe that terminated a world age in the days of the fall of the Middle Kingdom and of the Exodus one of these occasions, and did the earth change the direction of its rotation at that time? If we cannot assert this much, we can at least maintain that the earth did not remain on the same orbit, nor did its poles stay in their places, nor was the direction of the axis the same as before. The position of the globe and its course were not settled when the earth first came into contact with the onrushing comet; in Plato's terms, already partly quoted, the motion of the earth was changed by "blocking of the course" and went through "shaking of the revolutions" with "disruptures of every possible kind," so that the position of the earth became
"at one time reversed, at another oblique, and again upside down," and it wandered "every way in all six directions."
The Talmud and other ancient rabbinical sources tell of great disturbances in the solar movement at the time of the Exodus and the Passage of the Sea and the Lawgiving.1 In old Midrashim it is repeatedly narrated that four times the sun was forced out of its course in the few weeks between the day of the Exodus and the day of the Lawgiving.2