emmetsweeney.net

News that Woolley had discovered the Flood of Noah was flashed round the globe and caused great excitement at the time. In the years that followed, efforts were made to discover evidence of this Deluge in other parts of Mesopotamia and further afield. If this was indeed the event described so vividly in the Book of Genesis, then it should surely have left its mark throughout Mesopotamia and far beyond. But whilst clear signs of the flood of Ur could indeed be found throughout Iraq, no evidence of such an event, it was claimed, could be found beyond the Land of the Two Rivers. Eventually all talk of the Flood of Noah was discarded, and the Ur event was explained as a localized disaster caused by unusually heavy rainfall in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

There the matter rested for many years, though indeed one or two dissenting voices were heard from time to time. It was pointed out, for example, that a silt deposit of two and a half meters indicated flood waters of considerable depth, whilst the cultural discontinuity observed before and after the flood stratum hinted at a catastrophe of considerably greater magnitude than anything a river-flood could produce. (Actually, above the 2.5 meters of heavy clay there was a further five-meter layer of “debris”, a layer apparently not deposited by humans and showing every sign of being a stratified layer of lighter material left by the same flood, thus indicating a total flood deposit of seven and a half meters, or twenty-three feet). Nevertheless, in spite of such factors, the Flood of Ur was decreed to be local to Mesopotamia. No evidence of a contemporary event outside the area, it was claimed, could be found.

Yet evidence of great cataclysms, of both fire and water, existed in abundance in other regions. This material, had it been properly examined, would have solved the mystery of the Deluge once and for all.

Even as Leonard Woolley completed his excavations at Ur, archaeologists were discovering evidence of cataclysmic destruction in ancient times in site after site throughout the Near East. These destructions were often wrought by water, but also displayed the marks of earthquake and fire. Claude Schaeffer, for example, whose tireless work throughout the Near East made him one of the greatest authorities of his day on the archaeology of the early civilizations, made it quite plain that he regarded the demise of the Stone, Copper and Bronze epochs as being the direct consequence of great upheavals of nature. Schaeffer’s definitive work, Stratigraphie comparée et Chronologie de l’Asie occidentale, published in 1948, presented to the world the conclusions of a lifetime of excavation, cataloguing and research. Looking in detail at the a number of very ancient sites in Anatolia, Syria, Palestine and Iran, he noted that in all these places human habitation had been repeatedly disrupted throughout the Bronze Ages. In particular, he noted that the so-called Early Bronze (or more accurately Copper) Age settlements were always terminated by some form of catastrophic destruction, the agents of which were normally flood, earthquake and fire. This destruction was by far the most violent of those identified by Schaeffer, and we shall have occasion to return to it at a later point.

Schaeffer did perhaps his most memorable work at Ugarit, the famous port in northern Syria. Here he noted that “the most ancient tombs of settlement 2 or Middle Ugarit 1 rest on a bed of shattered bricks covering a great accumulation of ashes, witness to a vast fire which had ravaged Early Ugarit 2.” (Ibid., p. 33) He noted, however, that “The fire of Early Ugarit 2 is … more than an episode of local history.” (Ibid., p. 36) Ugarit’s fate, he observed, was shared by settlements throughout Anatolia. At Tarsus, for example, a “brilliant” third-millennium culture was “destroyed by fire”, whilst at Alaca Hüyük, Troy, and Alishar Hüyük, there were signs of a “general disturbance” which touched “vast areas”.

Schaeffer eventually came to the conclusion that in all, six great catastrophes had at different epochs struck the entire Near East. The first of these, and also by far the most violent, terminated the Early Bronze 2 epoch in Syria/Palestine.

Since the publication of Stratigraphie comparée the evidence for these repeated catastrophes has grown more and more comprehensive. Orthodox scholarship, as enshrined for example in The Cambridge Ancient History, has by and large been compelled to accept the reality of these events. Thus we find J. Mellaart noting that Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Troy 1 was destroyed in a “violent upheaval” ( J. Mellaart, “Anatolia: c.4000-2300 BC,” in CAH Vol.2 part 2 (3^rd ed.) p. 383) and that “the burning of Emporio, the destruction of Thermi, Bayrakli, Helvaciköy-Hüyücek, Bozköy-Hüyücek, and every other Troy 1 site on the Aegean coast between Edremit and the Karaburun peninsula, in the Caicus valley and the islands, suggests a catastrophe of some magnitude.” (Ibid.)

These cataclysms were apparently identical to those described so vividly in the biblical books of Genesis and Exodus, as well as in the traditions of virtually all ancient peoples. Of the latter, many volumes could be filled providing an overview, but suffice to note here that the Greeks spoke of such events, of catastrophic disturbances of nature accompanied by mighty tidal waves, and they showed marker-stones high on hillsides indicating the levels to which these ancient tides had reached. The peoples of western and northern Europe had similar traditions; and we need only point to the Irish and Welsh legends which spoke of vast inundations of the sea and of sunken lands and settlements. These traditions too have found their archaeological confirmation in the innumerable submerged Neolithic and Early Bronze Age settlements that have been discovered around the coasts of western Europe.

Could it be then that at some time in the Stone and Early Bronze Ages the earth suffered a catastrophe or series of catastrophes the likes of which modern man has no experience? The great majority of establishment academics continue to baulk at such a suggestion; yet at the end of Stratigraphie comparée (a volume for which he was professionally ostracized), Schaeffer considered all the evidence, including clear proof of similar disasters in areas much further afield than those he had personally visited and came to the conclusion that these upheavals were world-wide events, universal in the sense that they had simultaneously touched every part of the globe. But if such be the case, which of these cataclysms was contemporary with the Flood of Ur, and how is it that it was never recognized as such?

The answer to that question lies in the contradictory and inconsistent dating techniques and stratigraphic terminologies employed by archaeologists in the various regions of the Near East: details of nomenclature, of interest apparently only to professional archaeologists. Yet, as with everything else, the devil is in the detail. But what a devil, and what a detail!

We recall at this point how Schaeffer discovered evidence of what he described as a vast conflagration at Ugarit in northern Syria. The Ugarit catastrophe left a layer of what appeared to be calcined or hardened ash almost four meters in depth, and it destroyed a settlement identified by Schaeffer as belonging to the Syrian Early Bronze 2. Neither Schaeffer himself, nor anyone else for that matter, saw the fire of Ugarit as contemporary with the flood of Ur. Apart from the fact that the agents of destruction were apparently very different, the chronology also disagreed. After all, according to Woolley, the Flood of Ur had destroyed an early Chalcolithic (Copper Age) settlement dated to circa 3300 BC, whereas the fire of Ugarit had destroyed a settlement which had apparently already reached a fairly advanced state of the Early Bronze Age and was dated to circa 2300 BC.

Clearly then, the vast destruction observed by Schaeffer and others throughout Syria/Palestine and Anatolia could not be made to tie in with the great flood observed by Woolley in Mesopotamia. Such has remained the accepted wisdom for many years. However, there were always a great many clues that should have alerted scholars to the possibility that that view could be wrong. For in spite of the divergent terminologies, the pre-fire culture of Ugarit (Syrian E.B. 2) matches very closely the pre-flood culture of Ur (Mesopotamian Chalcolithic), whilst the post-catastrophe cultures of the two cities also match in detail. Most illuminating is the change in pottery styles. The pre-conflagration town of Ugarit employed ‘Ubaid-type pottery of almost exactly the same kind as that used in pre-flood Ur. Similarly the immediate aftermath of the Ugarit fire saw the introduction of a new culture employing distinctive wheel-made pottery named Khirbet-Kerak. But the Khirbet-Kerak culture closely parallels the Jamdat Na?r culture of post-flood Mesopotamia. Again, pre-conflagration Ugarit was entirely illiterate, with early hieroglyphs only appearing afterwards — a situation precisely reflecting that of pre- and post-Flood Mesopotamia.

We could go on and on almost ad infinitum comparing the two stratigraphies, but the table below should illustrate the main points.

UGARIT                                                                                    UR

Apart from showing why no evidence for Woolley’s Flood could be discovered outside of Mesopotamia, the above table also helps to illustrate the need for a radical redating of absolute chronology. As we see, the compared stratigraphies reveal an enormous chronological discrepancy. Because archaeologists still assume that the terms Early Bronze and Middle Bronze mean more or less the same thing in Syria and Mesopotamia, the Early Bronze 2 culture of Ugarit is dated to the same period (c. 2400 BC.) as the Sumerian Early Bronze 2 culture in Mesopotamia. Yet the table shows very clearly that the terms Early and Middle Bronze do not mean the same thing in the two regions. Entirely different systems of classification are followed, two systems out of synchronization by between seven hundred and a thousand years.

This misalignment of stratigraphies is reflected in the chronologies and written histories of the nations of these regions. So, for example, the history of Egypt (as I have shown in “Matching the Histories of Israel and Egypt”) is out of alignment with regard to that of Israel and placed about a thousand years earlier – thereby making a nonsense of both histories!

It is clear then that the Flood of Ur was an event of much greater magnitude than is now generally admitted, and that its effects were felt at least as far away as northern Syria — a region separated from Lower Mesopotamia by almost 1000 miles and a substantial mountain range. The true extent of this cataclysm was disguised by the conflicting dating-systems employed by the archaeologists in the various regions. However, these inconsistencies followed a definite pattern, and were themselves but a reflection of confused and conflicting historiographies which formed round the great nations of the area, the Egyptians and Mesopotamians.

The Genesis of Israel and Egypt (2008) is published by Algora, New York.