posted
There are several examples of ancient cultural complexes, whereby kings, authoritative figures, revered or respected personalities proceed from mythical period or a some “dark” period into a relatively well documented historic period. For instance, cultures of antiquity like Kemet and those in Mesopotamia had characters/kings listed which proceeded from a mythical to a historical period, with the succession of true kings accurately recorded. The earliest kings belonged to a mythological period, often having extraordinary life spans of thousands of years. Historians were able to separate the lists into mythical and historical portions.
Lets take the earliest rulers of the land or pharaohs, like Ausar/Osiris; though Ausar started as a mortal ruler of the land, the saying goes that he was murdered by Set/Seth, his remains were then recovered by Aset/Isis. Ausar ultimately finds himself in the netherworld, where he was to be resurrected and become the embodiment of growth, fertility, rebirth or resurrection, and king of the dead. This marks Ausar’s transition from mortality to resurrection and immortality. Outside the netherworld, i.e. on earth - presumably the Nile Valley, Heru, Ausar's son with Aset, becomes heir to the throne - in his father’s place, as the crowned Pharaoh. Heru himself continued to be immortalized via his association with the reigning Pharaoh of the land; legitimization of the Pharaoh was such that the living Pharaoh represented Heru, i.e. the son of Ausar and the ruler of the land, while the Pharaoh who had passed away, came to represent the living Pharaoh’s father/ancestor via his association with Ausar in the netherworld, having been resurrected as a “soul and spirit of eternal life”, in manner like that of Ausar.
Similarily, in the Kebra Negast we see a trend whereby the earliest rulers are molded in a mythical character. Here, we are told about a local queen by the name Makeda who conceives a son by King Solomon of Israel, named Menelik, thereby starting a royal patrilineage from a Judaic-Ethiopian background. Elsewhere, it is stated that:
Ethiopian writers "MÂKĔDÂ"; but neither of these names is ancient, and it is very doubtful if either represents in any way the true name of the southern queen…The KEBRA NAGAST says that she was a very beautiful, bright, and intelligent woman, but tells us nothing about her family. A manuscript at OXFORD (see DILLMANN, p. xliii Catalogus Bibl. Bodl., p. 26), says that five kings reigned in ETHIOPIA before MÂKĔDÂ, viz. ARÂWÎ 400 years, ANGÂBÔ 200 years, GIEDUR 100 years, SIEBADÔ 50 years, and KAWNÂSYÂ 1 year. If these kings were indeed her ancestors she was probably a native of some country on the western shore of the RED SEA. http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/kn/kn000-5.htm
Just look at those extraordinary length of reigns, not to mention the implication of lengthy lifespans. And going further, we have…
Concerning the Division of the Earth
From the middle of JERUSALEM, and from the north thereof to the south-east is the portion of the Emperor of RÔM; and from the middle of JERUSALEM from the north thereof to the south and to WESTERN INDIA is the portion of the Emperor of ETHIOPIA. For both of them are of the seed of SHEM, the son of NOAH, the seed of ABRAHAM, the seed of DAVID, the children of SOLOMON. For God gave the seed of SHEM glory because of the blessing of their father NOAH. The Emperor of RÔM is the son of SOLOMON, and the Emperor of ETHIOPIA is the firstborn and eldest son of SOLOMON. http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/kn/kn020.htm
…hence, paving way to lending some legitimacy of rule by the monarchy, by way of appealing to divinity.
In another occasion, we see Israelite traditions from the “patriarchal history” encompassing the stories related to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, then “The Twelve Tribes” to the post-Exodus period. From author Gary Greenberg, we have:
“…we must account for the patriarchal history - stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These stories not only took place centuries before Akhenaten, they also place Hebrew ancestors in Canaan, not Egypt. These accounts present vivid portraits of colorful characters; they exhibit wide ranges of emotion and personality, display virtues and flaws, describe many highly interesting activities, and tell of exciting events. They seem to have few, if any, counterparts in Canaanite-Mesopotamian mythology…”
“…The book of Genesis ends with the death of Joseph, and the story picks up in the book of Exodus with the birth of Moses. This transition encompasses several generations and, allegedly, several centuries. In this time Israel grew from a handful of people to over 600,000 males and their families. All we are told about this transition is that the pharaoh feared the Israelites and reduced them to slavery in order to eliminate any potential threat. It is precisely this gap in history of Israel that is responsible for all the debates about the date Exodus. Why does the Bible have such a detailed history of Israel’s ancestors, from the birth of Moses to the end years of biblical history, and virtually no description of what occurred in the centuries in between?…at the end of the patriarchal history, Jacob set the stage for massive conflict and intrigue in this period of missing history. He denied the birthright to his three sons, accusing them of dastardly deeds, and appointed the tribe of Joseph, his eleventh son, as his heir. But, to Joseph’s dismay, the inheritance went to Joseph’s younger son, Ephraim, rather than his oldest son, Manasseh. To top it off, after giving the crown to Ephraim, Jacob then announced that the scepter would not depart from Judah, his forth oldest son. Who was supposed to rule Israel, Ephraim or Judah? How did these events affect the children of Israel and their descendants? How did the sons and the families handle these decisions? Was there anger, joy, resistance, rebellion, or acceptance? What went on in those centuries? Why would there be a biblical dark age in the eyes of the scribal redactors when everything before and after is so clearly illuminated?”
Note that the ‘patriarchal’ personalities such as Abraham, Noah et al. had extraordinarily lengthy lifespan. For instance, Noah was said to have been about 600 years old during the Flood, and then lived 350 years after that, giving him a total lifespan of 950. Shem lived for 600 years, Abraham lived for 175 years and Jacob about 180 years. These are just examples of the personalities mentioned in Jewish traditions.
This transition from the mythical era to historic period seems like a trend with cultures of antiquity, particularly when complex cultures were undergoing transformations under political and social chaos or else when they were undergoing another relatively new stage of socio-political development, i.e. after a relatively lean period of written-record keeping. What could be interesting about this phenomenon, is developing the enthusiasm for sorting out details of the bridge between the mythical period and the historical ones; it is usually in this transitional period between the mythical period and the historic one, that one may come across a relative “dark age” in accounts, where certain things just don’t add up; it goes without saying, that the purely mythical periods are usually blatantly evident, as are the historic timeframes. It is also in the relative “dark age” in historical events, that powers that be take advantage to conjure up stories possibly meant to lend hand in maintaining the socio-political structure most beneficial to the survival of their privileged social base.
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posted
^^Interesting topic, Supe. I too have always wondered about this common theme among the written histories of early civilizations and cultures.
Personally, I think the extraordinary long life-spans may be symbolic perhaps of those leaders' political or dynastic eras.
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Personally, I think the extraordinary long life-spans may be symbolic perhaps of those leaders' political or dynastic eras.
I think that you are implying here that the said leaders may have lived once, but then that years after their death, the stories that developed about them took these leaders to epic proportions, in which case, such would still be mythical.
You see, it isn’t just the question of whether a historic personality, be it a king, a prophet or something of the kind, had really lived once upon a time, but also about the stories that surround these personalities, i.e. how much they add up in terms of available concrete evidence, of which archeology usually plays a key role. Primary texts, while very crucial parts of archeology, don't necessarily have to be the only archeological corroborators of characterizations made in stories which were initially passed on through oral traditions, only to be later on be communicated on a written basis as well. A case by case basis in depth analysis of the questionable or seemingly epical characterizations of events and corresponding personalities should be key to separating myth from reality.
While it is certainly possible in some cases, that a personality might have actually lived, in others, these are fabricated characterizations of both personalities and events which are undoubtedly symbolic of something, usually utilized for political purposes in some form or another at some point in time. There are times when it is quite easy to recognize a mythical narrative and accept it as such, from the very instance one looks at its continents, while in others, it isn't as quite straightforward as separating the mythological portion from where real history begins. The consistent trait of mythical portions of a heritage, is that elements of that portion of the narrative just don't add up, particularly at the point where efforts are made to create a bridge from where the mythical characterizations end and from where the sufficiently recorded history begins. As an example, let’s take a look at this piece from Gary Greenberg:
“The Book of Genesis contains numerous genealogical trees tracing the histories and families of many nations and people. One of these contains some rather unusual information. While the other family trees just list the sequences of births, this particular tree, encompassing some twenty-six generations over several millennia, provides a chronological record of birth and death that begins with the birth of Adam at the dawn of Creation, continues past Noah’s Flood, and ends with the death of Joseph, the final event in Genesis.
The people mentioned in this chronology lived lives of extraordinary lengths. Adam, for example, lived for 930 years. And Joseph, the shortest life of all those listed, died at the age of 110. As a general rule, those born closer to Creation lived substantially longer lives than those born later.
The bulk of this chronology appears in Genesis 5 and 11. The former includes births and deaths that occurred before the Flood, and the latter, ending with the birth of Abraham, lists only births and deaths that occurred after the Flood. Other biblical passages permit us to extend the chronology from Abraham’s birth to the death of Josephs.
Because this chronology begins in the mythic period of Creation and continues through Noah’s Flood, scholars routinely dismissed it as a fabrication. Nevertheless, historians still accept that the chronology may be modeled after other Middle Eastern King lists.
Both the Egyptians and the Babylonians produced ancient king lists, and in both cultures the earliest kings belonged to a mythological period, with many of them each ruling for thousands of years. In both cultures, however, these lists proceeded from a mythological to a historical period, accurately recording a succession of true kings. Historians have had no trouble separating the lists into mythological and historical portions.
The biblical chronology, however, presents something of an anomaly. While it too begins in the mythological period, with several long-lived ancestors, it **continues well into the historical era, late into the second millennium B.C.**, but the **people named in this later time still seem to occupy a mythological status, living far longer than any believable human life span, often hundreds of years. Also, none of the people named have turned up in any records as actual rulers among the Hebrews or any other Semitic-speaking nation.**
While there is much speculation and writing about the meaning and origin of this chronology, other than the belief that it is modeled after Babylonian-style king lists, no answers have yet come forward that satisfy the scholarly community. Despite the fact that it crosses deeply into the historical era, from which there is much archeological data, scholars dismiss the entire chronology as fiction. **Still, while rejecting the credibility of this list,** many scholars still believe that the Genesis patriarchal history (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) derives from historical memories about real people, and that the timeframe associated with those memories coincides with the second millennium timeframe in Genesis.”
…therefore, the said narratives in this case, go well into the timeframe for which there is much literacy and record keeping, and yet archeological corroboration for such still falls short. Scholars take note of this and understand the inadequacies of the said stories, yet others out there are not prepared to wholeheartedly acknowledge this. Perhaps, this could have something to do with religious dogma, i.e. either from fear of the loosening of one’s personal connect with one’s faith, or of offending others?!
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