Fhttp://www.ldolphin.org/cooper/contents.html
-->|P1|
After
the Flood |P2|
by
Bill Cooper|P3|
CONTENTS|P4|
Introduction:
In the Beginning|P5|
Chapter 1 The Knowledge of God amongst the
early Pagans|P6|
Chapter 2 Where to Begin|P7|
Chapter 3 Nennius and the Table of European
Nations|P8|
Chapter 4 The Chronicles of the early Britons|P9|
Chapter 5 The History of the early British
Kings|P10|
Chapter 6 The Descent of the Anglo-Saxon
Kings|P11|
Chapter 7 The Descent of the Danish and
Norwegian Kings|P12|
Chapter 8
The Descent of the Irish Celtic Kings|P13|
Chapter 9 Ancient Chronologies and the Age of
the Earth|P14|
Chapter 10 Dinosaurs from Anglo-Saxon and other
Records|P15|
Chapter
11 Beowulf and the Creatures of Denmark|P16|
Chapter
12 Conclusion|P17|
Chapter
13 What the CSM is all about|P18|
Appendices|P19|
Appendix I The Nations of Shem|P20|
Appendix 2 The Nations of Ham|P21|
Appendix
3 The Nations of Japheth|P22|
Appendix
4 Surviving MSS of the early Welsh Chronicles|P23|
Appendix
5 The Latin Text of Nennius 17 and 18|P24|
Appendix
6 The Molmutine Laws and Pagan Britain|P25|
Appendix
7 The Genealogy of the early British Kings|P26|
Appendix
8 The Descent of the East Saxon Kings|P27|
Appendix
9 The Historical Characters of Beowulf|P28|
Appendix
10 Zoologically applied terms in the Beowulf|P29|
Appendix 11 Epic From Japheth to Brutus|P30|
Appendix
12 The Descent from Japheth of the Miautso|P31|
Appendix
13 Britain's First Christian|P32|
Appendix
14 The Irish Chronicles and the end of the Ice Age|P33|
Bibliography|P34|
AFTER
THE FLOOD|P35|
Chapter 1 The Early post-Flood History of Europe|P36|
Introduction|P37|
In
the Beginning|P38|
It is
commonly thought in this present age that nothing is worthy of our belief
unless first it can be scientifically demonstrated and observed to be true.
This idea, known today as empiricism, has been around since the 1920s, and says
basically that nothing is to be taken on trust, and that anything which lacks
direct corroboration must be discarded from mankind's find of knowledge as
simply not worth the knowing. Not surprisingly, a special case was made by
those who had thought of the idea for including the Bible in this great process
of deselection, and it was assumed without further enquiry that nothing in
especially the earlier portions of the biblical record could be demonstrated to
be true and factual. This applied particularly to the book of Genesis. There
all was relegated, by modernist scholars at least, to the realms of myth and
fiction, with very little of its contents being said to bear any relevance at
all for 20th-century man. Not even a moral relevance was granted. In other
words, we were solemnly assured in the light of modern wisdom that,
historically speaking, the book of Genesis was simply not worth the paper it
was written on.|P39|
When
I first came across this problem some thirty years ago, I found it most
perplexing. On the one hand I had the Bible itself claiming to be the very Word
of God, and on the other I was presented with numerous commentaries that spoke
with one voice in telling me that the Bible was nothing of the kind. It was
merely a hotch-potch collection of middle- eastern myths and fables that sought
to explain the world in primitive terms, whose parts had been patched together
by a series of later editors. Modem scientific man need have nothing whatever
to do with it.|P40|
Now,
it simply was not possible for both these claims to be valid. Only one of them
could be right, and I saw it as my duty, to myself at least, to find out which
was the true account and which was the false. So it was then that I decided to
select a certain portion of Genesis and submit it to a test which, if applied
to any ordinary historical document, would be considered a test of the most
unreasonable severity. And I would continue that test until either the book of
Genesis revealed itself to be a false account, or it would be shown to be
utterly reliable in its historical statements. Either way, I would discover
once and for all whether the biblical record was worthy of my trust or not. It seemed
a little irreverent to treat a book that claimed to be the very Word of God in
such a fashion. But if truth has any substance at all, then that book would
surely be able to bear such a test. If Genesis contained any falsehood, error
or misleading statement of fact, then a severe testing would reveal it and I
would be the first to add my own voice to those of all the other scholars who
declared the book of Genesis to be little more than fable.|P41|
With
any ordinary historical document, of course, a simple error or even a small
series of errors, would not necessarily disqualify it from being regarded as an
historical account, or one that could at least be made use of by historians.
But Genesis is no ordinary record. No ordinary document would claim inerrancy
in its statements, and any document which did make such a claim for itself
could expect a thorough and severe drubbing at the hands of scholars. But, if
Genesis was indeed a true account of what had happened all those years ago, if
it was indeed everything that it claimed itself to be, then the truth that it
proclaimed could not be destroyed by any amount of testing. It could only be
vindicated. In that regard at least, truth is indestructible.|P42|
What
I had not expected at the time was the fact that the task was to engage my
attention and energies for more than twenty-five years. Nor had I expected the
astonishing degree to which Genesis, particularly the tenth and eleventh
chapters, was to be vindicated. These chapters are conveniently known to scholars
as the Table of Nations, and the sheer breadth and depth of the historical
evidence that was available for their study astonished me. It bore very little
relation indeed to what I had been led to expect. But that was not the only
surprise in store.|P43|
The
test that I devised was a simple one. If the names of the individuals, famiies,
peoples and tribes listed in the Table of Nations were genuine, then those same
names should appear also in the records of other nations of the
But
the test didn't stop there. I had determined at the very beginning that the
test was to be one of unreasonable severity, so even the astonishing level of
vindication so far achieved did not fully satisfy the requirements of the test.
The reason for this was simple. The Table of Nations was written in the
What
follows is a summary of all that evidence. I will not pretend that this book
has been easy to write. It hasn't. Although I have aimed for readability, most
of the evidence that I uncovered over the years consisted merely of lists of
names, innumerable cross-references, royal genealogies, king-lists and old
chronicles. So if I have failed in any way to make all that a rattling good
read, then please blame all those skeletal documents that ancient officialdom
has left us rather than the present writer, whose self-appointed and lonely
task has been to make sense of them all! Any student who wishes to pursue
matters further will find copious references to help him or her in further
study. The rest, as they say, is history.|P46|
Bill
Cooper|P47|
Ashford|P48|
Middlesex|P49|
March
1995|P50|
|P51|
History
has never been so popular. The man in the street has never been so well
informed about his past as he is today. And yet it is a sad and unhappy fact
that for all that has been said, written and broadcast about the early and more
recent history of mankind, there remains a very large body of historical
evidence that is mostly passed over in silence by today's scholars. And because
it is passed over by today's scholars, it never reaches today's general public.
I say that this is sad because it is not as if this vast fund of knowledge is
hard to get at. On the contrary, every fact that you are about to read is
available to anyone who takes the trouble to look. And each fact can be
obtained cheaply enough. It does not lie in obscure libraries about which no
one has heard or to which none can gain access. Nor is it written in languages
or scripts that cannot be deciphered. Indeed, scholars have been aware of the
existence of this vast body of information for many years. So why is it passed
over in such silence?|P53|
Why
is it, for example, that no modern book on the early history of Britain goes
back beyond the year 55 BC, the year when Julius Caesar made his first attempt
to invade these islands? We may read in such books of this culture or that
people, this stone age or that method of farming. But we will read of no
particular individual or of any particular event before the year 55 BC. This
has the unfortunate effect of causing us to believe that this is because there
exists no written history for those pre-Roman times, and that when they landed
in Britain the Romans encountered only a bunch of illiterate savages who had no
recorded history of their own. But our conclusion would be wrong, for we will
see as our study progresses that the Britons whom the Romans encountered were,
on the admission of the Romans themselves, a people who could teach the Romans
a thing or two about the finer arts of warfare, and who left a clear and
written record of themselves dating back to the very earliest years of their
existence as a nation. These records still survive, and we shall be considering
them in some detail. We shall also be examining many other ancient records that
various peoples have left behind them and we shall note with interest the story
that is told by each one of these documents. Far more can be known about the
early recorded history of mankind than is generally allowed, and what is
revealed by this history is a story that is very different indeed from the one
that we are used to hearing. But where to begin?|P54|
We
must begin our investigations with one of the oldest historical documents in
the world. This document comprises the tenth and eleventh chapters of the book
of Genesis and is known to scholars as The Table of Nations. However, when I
use the word 'document', it must be understood that this in no way subscribes
to the erroneous view propagated by Julius Wellhausen and his colleagues in the
19th century regarding the much-vaunted but still fashionable 'documentary
hypothesis' of biblical criticism. That hypothesis was designed to be
destructive of any impression that the Genesis record in particular was a
reliable source of historical information, whereas the objective of our present
study lies in entirely the opposite direction. But it does recognize the fact
that the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis consist of a self-contained
unit of information that is complete even if read in isolation from the rest of
the Genesis account. In that sense, at least, it forms a document that we may
study in isolation. But how accurate is that document? Most scholars today
would denounce it as unreliable, and some would dismiss it from any further
discussion by attaching to it labels of 'myth' and 'pious fiction', favorite terms
among modernist scholars, thus assuring their readers that its study, and
especially faith in its accuracy, is a waste of time. These terms and labels
will become more familiar to us as we come across a great many extra-biblical
records that substantiate rather than undermine the Genesis account, but their
over-use by certain scholars has left the definite impression that the
modernist protests too much, and when applied as often as they are to so many
historical records, they become tired and meaningless phrases that convey no
information at all. There is doubtless method in this academic madness, given
the question that if Genesis cannot be relied upon when it comes to stating
accurately simple historical facts, then how can it be relied upon when it comes
to stating higher truths? But the over-use of such labels becomes weansome and
ultimately meaningless, and is of no service whatever to healthy historical
research.|P55|
When
applied to the Table of Nations, this healthy historical research yields some
surprising facts, surprising that is, in the light of what most commentaries go
to such great lengths to assure us of, namely that Genesis is not to be trusted
as accurate history. This became very clear when I first began my researches
into the Table of Nations, and the nature of those researches is as
follows.|P56|
Having
constructed the Table of Nations into a simple genealogy, I wanted to see how
many of its names were attested in the records of other nations in the Middle
East, which included for my purposes all the nations of Mesopota-mia, Arabia,
Egypt, Turkey and even Greece. It was an obvious procedure, but one that had
not, as far as I was aware, been conducted before and the results published. I
had already found certain individual names that were mentioned in scattered
works of varying merit, often Victorian, but the whole had never been gathered
together into one cohesive study. And so my research began. Over the years,
little by little, pieces of corroborative evidence came together and a picture
began to build up that revealed the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis to
be an astonishingly accurate record of events. The Table of Nations had listed
all the families and tribes of mankind in their correct groupings, whether
those groupings were ethnological, linguistic or geographical. All the names,
without exception, were accurate, and in more than twenty-five years of
searching and analysing, I uncovered not one mistake or false statement of fact
in the Table of Nations.|P57|
It
has to be said here that such a result could simply not be expected or obtained
from any comparable historical document, especially one as ancient as this. The
Table of Nations embraces a sweeping panorama of history that is not only truly
vast in its content but unique. Its like simply does not exist. But as a
sample, we shall here consider some of the descendants of Japheth as they are
listed in the Table of Nations. For students who wish to pursue the matter in
greater depth, I have set out in full the three genealogies of Shem, Ham and
Japheth with accompanying historical notices and references in Appendices 1, 2
and 3 of this present study. But in this chapter, a summary of the
corroborative evidence that appears in the nations of the
The
Japhetic list in the Table of Nations looks like this when set out as a
conventional genealogy:|P59|
By way
of illustration as to how contemporary records vindicate this statement of
Genesis, the evidence for the historical reality of these peoples gleaned from
the records of the surrounding nations is summarised as follows, although I
have avoided wearying the reader by providing copious references here. Such
references are to be found accompanying the historical notices provided in
Appendices 1, 2 and 3, and I see no good reason for cluttering the text with
footnotes at this particular stage.|P60|
Very
briefly then, as we consider just a few of the names in the Japhetic list, we
find that in the mythology of the old world, Japheth was regarded as the father
of many peoples, particularly the Indo-European nations. The pagan Greeks
perpetuated his name as Iapetos, the son of heaven and earth and again the
father of many nations. We find his name in the vedas of India where it appears
in Sanskrit as Pra-Japati, Father Japheth, who was deemed to be the sun and
lord of creation, the source of life in other words for those descended from
him. Later, the Romans were to perpetuate his name as that of Ju-Pater, Father
Jove, later standardised to Jupiter (see Appendix 11). We shall see also that
the early Irish Celts, the early Britons and other pagan European races traced
the descent of their royal houses from Japheth, including the Saxons who knew
him as Sceaf (pr. sheaf or shaif) . And all these peoples, we must remember,
were pagans whose knowledge or even awareness of the book of Genesis was
non-existent.|P61|
|P62|
Gomer,
the first son of Japheth according to Genesis, founded a people known to the
early Greeks as the Cimmerians who dwelt on the shores of the
The
people of Ashchenaz are found in earliest times in
The
descendants of Riphath gave their name to the Riphaean mountain range, which at
one time was marked by early cosmographers as the northernmost boundary of the
earth. The name appears in Pliny, Melo and Solinus as Riphaei, Riphaces and
Piphlataei respectively. The last of these were later called Paphlagonians, as attested
by Josephus.|P65|
Togarmah's
earliest descendants settled in
...
and so on. Thus it comes about that, throughout the entire Table of Nations,
whether we talk about the descendants of Shem, Ham or Japheth, every one of
their names is found in the records of the early surrounding nations of the
Middle East, even the many obscure names of certain remote Arab tribes that are
otherwise not evident in any modern history book of the times, and enough is
available for a detailed history to be written about them. It is a phenomenon
of immense implications. These records were mostly written (and then lost until
their rediscovery in modern times) during the Old Testament period, during
which time many of the peoples mentioned in them had vanished altogether from
the historical scene or had been assimilated into other more powerful nations
and cultures. Even those who retained their national or tribal identities soon
lost all trace and memory of their own beginnings and went on to invent
fantastic accounts of how they came to be. Indeed, the very early emergence of
such mythological invention and the exceedingly rapid growth of paganism is a
very telling point indeed against the modernist notion that Genesis is a late
composition, for many of the names recorded with such astonishing accuracy in
the Table of Nations, had disappeared from the historical scene many centuries
before the time in which modernism would say that the Table of Nations was
written. The Table of Nations, it thus seems, is a very ancient document
indeed.|P67|
In
time, of course, the true histories of several of these early nations became
obscured beyond all recognition. Josephus was given good cause to complain that
this had happened to the Greeks of his own day, and he lamented the fact that
by obscuring their own history, they had obscured the histories of other
nations also. (1) Yet by no means all of the early nations were to follow this
path. We shall see that many kept an accurate record down the centuries of
their beginnings and wrote down the names of their founding patriarchs, bringing
the records up to date with the advent of each new generation, and it is these
records that provide us with such a surprising link between the ancient
post-Flood era depicted in Genesis and the history of more modern times. These
lists, annals and chronicles have been preserved and transmitted from
generation to generation not by the nations of the Middle East this time, but
by certain European peoples from times that long pre-dated the coming of
Christianity, and it is most important that we remember the pre-Christian
aspect of much of the following evidence, for it is too easily and too often
alleged by modernist scholars that these records are the inventions of early
Christianmonks and are therefore worthless. Such claims of fraud will be examined
in detail, particularly with regard to the records that the early Britons have
left us and which are omitted in their entirety from modern history books, the
media and the classroom.|P68|
When
we consider the truly vast body of evidence from the Middle East that is
conveniently ignored in modernist commentaries on the book of Genesis, such
wholesale omission will appear as hardly surprising. Yet perhaps the reader is
unaware of the sheer scale of this omission, for the records of the early
Britons, and that's not counting the Irish Celtic, Saxon and continental
records which we shall also be examining, cover not just a particular phase of
history, but span more than two thousand years of it. I cannot think of any
other literate nation on earth that has managed to obliterate from its own
history books two thousand years or more of recorded and documented history.
Not even the censors of Stalinist Russia or Maoist China in their vigorous
hey-day were this effective, or even needed to be this effective, in doctoring
their own official accounts. So how did this extraordinary circumstance come
about, and who is responsible for it?|P69|
By
way of a refreshing change, we cannot lay the blame entirely at the door of
those evolutionary Victorian and later educationalists and philosophers who
laid the foundations of our modern curricula. They are surely to blame for much
else that is amiss, but this time the story begins long before their age and
influence. It begins, in fact, with the closing years of the 6th century AD and
the arrival on these shores of Augustine, the Roman Catholic bishop whose job
it was to bring the British Isles under the political sway of the Roman pontif.
The story is well known from Bede et al how the British Christians who were
here to greet Augustine declined his demand that they place themselves under
the Roman authority, and were later massacred for their refusal at Bangor,
twelve hundred of the finest scholars and monks of their day being put to the
sword. From that day on there existed an animosity between the Britons (Welsh)
and the papacy that was to ferment throughout the early to late Middle Ages,
only to culminate in the eventual expulsion of the papal authority from the
realm of England under king Henry VIII, who was significantly himself of Welsh
Tudor stock. But the early ascendancy of the Saxons meant that all recorded
history of the Britons was consigned to oblivion as far as historians and
chroniclers were concerned, with only Roman, Saxon and, later, Norman accounts
of events being taught and promulgated in schools throughout the land. The
recorded history of the early Britons was to remain in oblivion for the five
hundred years that followed the massacre at Bangor. But then an incident
occurred that ensured its revival and survival to the present day, even though
that revival was itself to last only a matter of a further five hundred years
or so.|P70|
The
incident, which occurred sometime in the 1130s, was the presentation of a
certain book to a British (i.e. Welsh) monk by an archdeacon of Oxford. The
monk's name was Geoffrey of Monmouth, the archdeacon was Walter of Oxford, and
the book was a very ancient, possibly unique, copy of the recorded history of
the early Britons, written in language so archaic that it needed to be translated
quickly into Latin before either the book perished or the language was
forgotten. Now, one would think that such a rare event would generate great
interest amongst scholars of all hues. Yet even today, in our supposedly
impartial and inquiring age, the mere mention of Geoffrey of Monmouth will
usually bring an academic smirk to the face of scholars. Read any article today
about him and you will be sure to come across statements to the effect that his
great work, Historia Regism Britanniae, or History of the Kings of Britain, is
at best unreliable fiction, and that Geoffrey himself is an unscrupulous liar
and forger. (2) We would do well to ask ourselves what it is that could provoke
such unscholarly language.|P71|
It is
often claimed, in dismissing Geoffrey's work, that it contains errors. Yet, as
any historian worth his salt will tell you, if we rejected histories in general
on that account, we should soon be left without any history at all. But it is
then claimed that Geoffrey's supposed original book no longer exists and that
therefore Geoffrey must have been lying when he claimed to have translated such
a book. However, it is exceedingly rare for the original manuscript or
source-material of any early historical work to have survived. In fact, I personally
am not aware of one instance where this has occurred. It is further claimed,
and this claim is significant inasmuch as it can at least be tested, that
nothing like Geoffrey's Historia is to be found amongst the surviving corpus of
medieval Welsh literature. (3) The surprising answer to this is that not only
does the same historical material survive in Welsh from medieval times, it
survives in no less than fifty-eight manuscript copies. These are listed in
Appendix 4, but we may note here that there are not very many medieval Welsh
manuscripts in existence and fifty eight of them does constitute a rather large
percentage of the surviving corpus. The claim is therefore suspicious as it is
hardly likely that scholars who have made this field their life's work could
have missed them or have remained for long in ignorance of their existence or
contents. Indeed, the manuscripts are freely available to any who care to study
them, so why is even the acknowledgement of their very existence such anathema
to the modernist mind?|P72|
The
answer to this lies in what these early records tell us about our past. As we
shall see, it is an account that flies entirely in the face of everything that
we are taught nowadays about where we come from, and it makes fascinating reading.
But Geoffrey of Monmouth was not the only medieval Welsh scholar to transmit to
us the historical records of the early Britons. He was preceded by another,
Nennius by name, and, because Nennius passed down to us the contents of records
more ancient even than Geoffrey's chronicle, we shall begin our excursion into
the history of the early Britons with him.|P73|
Notes|P74|
1.
Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, (From Josephus's CompleteWorks. tr. William
Whiston, Pickering & Inglis. 1981. pp. 607- 636).|P75|
2.
See for just one example amongst countless others, Marsh, H. 1987. Dark Age
Britain, Some Sources of History. Dorset Press, New York. pp. 175-190. And
Marsh is amongst the gentlest of Geoffrey's critics!|P76|
3.
".... no Welsh composition exists which can be reasonably looked upon as
the original, or even the groundwork, of the History of the Kings of
Britain," (Lloyd, J.E. 1939). A History of Wales from the earliest times
to the Edwardian Conquest, London. 2nd ed. p. 526. (cit. also in Thorpe. p. 15.
See bibliography).|P77|
Chapter 3 Nennius and the Table of European Nations|P78|
'I,
Nennius, pupil of the holy Elvodug, (1) have undertaken to write down some
extracts that the stupidity of the British cast out; for the scholars of the
island of Britain had no skill ...I have therefore made a heap of all that I
have found... ,' (2)|P79|
With
these words, Nennius opens his great book, Historia Brittonum--the History of
the Britons . It would be difficult to overstate the immensity of Nennius'
achievement and his contribution to our understanding of ancient history. And,
were we not familiar with the fashions of today, it would be equally difficult
to account for the disparagement that his name has suffered amongst modernist
scholars in ungrateful return for his labours. His achievement was the
gathering together of all the extant records touching on the origins of the
Britons that he could find and which he then set down into one booklet was a
time of danger for the Britons as a nation and for the records themselves, and
were it not for his labours, the immensity of which we can only guess at,
records that were irreplaceable would have been lost to us forever. Morris'
translation of Nennius, which opens this present chapter, implies that the
British of the time were stupid in the sense of being intellectually dull. But
in this context, the word hebitudo which Nennius used, suggesting something
that has been made blunt or dull and which Morris renders 'stupidity', would
perhaps better be translated as complacency or lethargy, the mood of the
Britons that followed in the wake of the massacre of the monks at Bangor. The
profound cultural shock of seeing their finest scholars and spiritual leaders
massacred by supposedly fellow Christians at the instigation of a Roman bishop
no less, would have left a very deep wound indeed, and it is this state of mind
amongst the Britons or Welsh that Nennius laments and which led to the neglect
and loss of many records and books. They 'had no skill' (nullam peritiam
habuerunt), because learning had practically ceased amongst them. Hence
Nennius' sudden and urgent gathering together of all that remained.|P80|
Nennius
completed his work towards the very end of the 8th century AD and the sources
that he gathered were many and varied. They included certain items of history
that had been imparted to him by Irish scholars. Then come the 'Annals of the
Romans', The Law; another explanation', and, lapsing into his native Welsh, he
then tells us that a noble elder named Cuana had compiled a British genealogy
from a certain Roman (i.e. Latin) chronicle. (3) He was happy to rely on oral
history too, quite unashamedly describing one such item as being 'in the
writing of the writer's mind'. (4) But one of the really important aspects of
his contribution in all this, is that Nennius made no apparent attempt to edit
his sources or even correct some of their obvious discrepancies. Had he done so, then it would have been
difficult for us to assess the actual and original contents of the records consulted
by Nennius, and distinguish these from what was Nennius' own, perhaps mistaken,
ideas about them. Instead, Nennius merely copied down his sources and passed
them on to us, historical warts and all, so that we could make of them what we
would.|P81|
A
few, but only a very few, of the records preserved by Nennius, are admittedly
of doubtful quality and reliability. But amongst them is one of the most
important documents from the ancient world that could have come into our
possession. It is set down in chapters 17 and 18 of Historia Brittonum (for the
Latin text of these chapters, with translation, see Appendix of this book), and
it records the descent of a considerable number of early European nations. It
is laid out as a conventional genealogy in what follows.|P82|
It is
instructive to compare Nennius' Table of European Nations (as I like to call
it) with Appendix of this book, the genealogy of the nations of Japheth as
recorded in Genesis. Nennius' source and Genesis are in remarkable agreement
with one another, yet Nennius adds details that are not included in Genesis,
for the natural and obvious reason that the Genesis account is necessarily
brief. Gomer (1), for example, is merely cited by Nennius as being the ancestor
of the Gauls, Nennius omitting entirely the names of Gomer's three immediate
descendants, Ashchenaz, Riphath and Togarmah that are included in Genesis.
(Would he have omitted these if he were merely copying straight from Genesis
itself?) He cites Magog (2) as the ancestor of both the Scythians and the
Goths, and Madai (3) as the founder of the Medes. So far so good. But it is
from this point that the document from which Nennius was working, shows one or
two tell-tale signs of the (albeit remarkably little) distortion that it has
suffered in transmission, whether oral or written.|P83|
For
example, and as we shall note in Appendix 3, Tubal (4) was the father of a
people known to the Assyrians as the Tabali, whose land, Tabal, present-day
Georgia in what used to be the USSR, whose modern capital Tblisi perpetuates
the name of Tubal), lay adjacent to that of the biblical Togarmah, (Assyr.
Tegarama). From Nennius, however, comes the added detail that from Tubal came
the Iberian, the Spanish and the Italian races. And this receives at least partial
support from Josephus, who wrote some seven hundred years before Nennius, that
Tubal was the father of the Thobelites, known. as Iberians in his own day. (5)
And as Josephus makes no mention of either the Spanish or Italian races, nor
yet the: descent of the Goths from Magog, Nennius was clearly not copying from
him. |P84|
Likewise,
Nennius' source cites Meshech (5) as the father of the Cappadocians (see
Appendix 1:10 and 2:18 -- the Caphtorim), an error that also appears in
Josephus. It is doubtful though that Josephus originated these errors, simply
because he was himself working from much older sources. The confusion, however,
was easily brought about, for the name of the Semitic people of Mash in
Genesis, is alternately rendered Meshech in 1 Chronicles. Clearly the two, the
Semitic people of Meshech and the Japhetic people of Meshech, were confused
with one another even in classical times, and it was upon the records of the
classical world that both Josephus and Nennius relied rather than upon any mere
copying of the Genesis record.|P85|
Other
examples of distortion (albeit still of a minor nature) are seen in that the
Goths are shown to have been descended from both Magog (2), the biblical
patriarch, and from Armenon, the son of Alanus. Armenon himself is stated to
have had five sons, yet only four are named. (Five nations are later shown to
have descended from him.) Similarly, Negue is stated to have three sons, yet
four nations derive from him. The significance of all this is that Nennius
could easily have edited out or corrected these points, thereby enhancing his
own credibility, yet he chose to simply leave them as they are. And it is this
that, almost paradoxically, enhances his standing as a trustworthy and reliable
historian, and it further assures us that we are reading these exceedingly
ancient documents exactly as Nennius read them.|P86|
From
Alanus onwards appears a comprehensive table of the nations of Europe. One or
two of these names were archaic even in Nennius' time and would long have
fallen into disuse. They are all, however, familiar to any historian today
whose studies have touched upon the history of Europe at about the time of the
Roman Empire. For several centuries, it seems, Europe was a seething cauldron
as nation vied with nation in a bewildering array of migration, invasion and
displacement. Yet not one of the names in this list of nations is historically
unattested, not even that of the unlikely-sounding Gepids.|P87|
However,
there is one particular aspect of this table that should be drawn emphatically
to the reader's attention, because it is a matter of immense significance, a
matter moreover that seems to have entirely escaped the notice of modernist
scholars. It is the appearance of just four names in the early section of the
genealogy. But this is not the only occasion on which we meet with them. They
appear also in the patriarchal genealogy of the early Irish-Celts, and their
chronological significance is just as great as their ethnic significance.|P88|
The
names in the British account are: IoBaath, Baath, Izrau and Ezra.|P89|
But
notice their position in the genealogy. They occupy the four generations
immediately following Javan, the son of Japheth. When we later come to consider
the genealogy of the Irish-Celts , which has been constructed from entirely
different sources, we shall see that these same names occupy similar places,
except that there they are descended from Magog, not Javan, and Baath is
depicted as the elder brother, and not the son, of IoBaath.|P90|
Their
names take the early Irish forms of: Jobhath, Biath, Easru and Sru,
recognizably the same names as given in the British table.|P91|
However,
it is the chronological position of those particular names in these ancient
genealogies that provides a striking confirmation of the Genesis account. In
the book of Genesis, we see that the dispersal of the nations from Babel took
place during the fifth generation after the Flood. And here we are presented
with the names of four successive generations of patriarchs who were common to
the recorded ancestry of both the British and Irish Celts. (6) After the fifth
generation, the lines of the British and Irish Celts diversify, exactly in
accordance with the historical movement of the nations as depicted in Genesis.
All of which is a strange occurrence in documents that are not only drawn from
entirely independent ancient sources, but which the modernist school, if they
cared to mention them at all, would have us believe are fictitious.|P92|
Nennius
tells us that he found the above record in 'the ancient books of our elders'
(Aliud experimentum inuern ...ex ueteri bus libris ueterum nostrorum), and we
need now to establish when this ancient document was written. It is crucial to
establish this, because leaving the question open would allow the familiar and
by now wearisome charge to be made that it was forged by Christian monks as an
act of 'pious fraud'. To settle the matter we will now examine the work of
Geoffrey of Monmouth who, like Nennius, was a Welsh monk and who lived some
three hundred years after him. The importance of Geoffrey's work lies in the
fact that he carried the story forward from where Nennius left off, and it is
the abundance of internal and external evidence from Geoffrey's book that will
enable us to assess the age, and thus the authenticity, of Nennius' earlier
material.|P93|
Notes|P94|
1.
Elvodug, archbishop of Gwynnedd, (otherwise Elbod, Elbodogus, Elvodogus or
Elfoddw), is known to us from the Annales Cambriae. He was present, in AD 768,
when the Britons changed their reckoning of Easter. Indeed, it was he who
initially introduced the change. (768 an. Pasca commutatur apud Brittones super
dominicam diem emendante Elbodugo homine Dei. Morris. p. 88). The second and
last time he is mentioned is the entry for the year AD 809, which records his
death (809 an. Elbodug archiepiscopus Guenedotae regione migravit ad Dominum.
Morris p. 88).|P95|
2.
See Morris, p. 9.|P96|
3. Is
amlaid sin tugasdair ar senoir-ne uasal, i. Guanach, geinilach Breatan a
cronicib na Romanach. 'This is how our noble elder Cuanu gathered the genealogy
of the British from the chronicles of the Romans.' (Morris. pp. 19 &
61).|P97|
4.
Set haec genealogia non scripta in aliquo volumine Britanniae, set in
scriptione mentis scriptoris fuit. 'But this genealogy is not written in any
book of Britain, but was in the writing of the writer's mind.' (Morris. pp. 19
& 61).|P98|
5.
Whiston, p. 31. See Bibliography.|P99|
6. In
case some should think that the British and Irish influenced each other on a
cultural level to the extent that they were willing to tamper with and falsify
their own royal genealogies (and we shall ignore the inevitable death penalty
that this would have incurred), they need only ask themselves why that
influence should have been confined only to the four generations named, and why
there should exist such discrepancies between them both in source (Magog and
Javan) and in succession of names (see chapter 9). Moreover, none of these names
are those of famous figures of the past, nor yet those of mythical gods. So why
should they have bothered?|P100|
Chapter 4 The Chronicles of the early Britons|P101|
'Yf
God will, at an other apter tyme and in more apt place, marveilous agreement of
the historyes of Antiquity and great unlooked for light and credit will be
restored to the Originalls of Brutus...' (John Dee 1577. Cotton MS. Vitellius.
c. vii. f 206v)|P102|
On
Wednesday 7th November 1917, Flinders Petrie, a renowned archaeologist of the
day, addressed the assembled members of the British Academy. He was to present
a paper to them entitled Neglected British History, (1) in which he drew
attention to the fact that a considerable body of historical documentary
source-material was being overlooked if not willfully ignored by modern
historians. He drew fleeting attention to the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth and
then homed in on one particular record that shed much light upon Geoffrey's
too-disparaged history. The ancient book to which he drew attention was known
to him as the Tysilio Chronicle, which is listed today as Jesus College MS LXI
and is lodged in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It is written in medieval Welsh,
and is, as its colophon reveals, (2) a translation that was commissioned by the
same Walter of Oxford who commissioned Geoffrey of Monmouth to translate a
certain very ancient British book into Latin. It is, in fact, a translation
from early British into medieval Welsh of the same source-material used by
Geoffrey, and is an answer to all those learned critics who have stated with
such emphasis over the years that Geoffrey of Monmouth was lying when he
claimed to have translated such a book.|P103|
However,
this is not the only light that the Welsh chronicle was to shed, for it was to
address matters of far greater import and relevance than the mere vindication
of Geoffrey's good name. (3) Indeed, it contains historically verifiable
accounts that overturn many modernist assumptions and teachings about our past.
More importantly, the material that it contains reveals an antiquity for itself
that carries contemporarily recorded history back to uncomfortably early times.
Uncomfortable, that is, for evolutionary and modernistic philosophy. Flinders
Petrie highlights some of these points, and we shall consider these and others
in this chapter.|P104|
Among
the points he mentions is the account contained both in Geoffrey of Monmouth
and the Welsh chroniclesof the attempted invasions of these islands by Julius
Caesar in 55 and 54 BC. Caesar, of course, has left us his own account of this,
and it is tempting to think (and is often stated) that the Welsh chronicles(and
hence Geoffrey of Monmouth) contain nothing more than a rehashed version of
Caesar's account. But close examination reveals a different story. The account
in Geoffrey and the Welsh chronicle turns out to be nothing less than the
Julian invasion as seen through the eyes of the early Britons themselves. An
eyewitness account in fact, which dates this part of the material to the middle
of the 1st century BC. This, of course, is far too early for most modern
scholars to accept for Celtic literacy, and it also sheds a somewhat
unfavourable light upon Julius Caesar, himself the hero of many a modern book
on the history of early Britain. But how, exactly, do the British and Roman
accounts compare?|P105|
Caesar
tells us (4) that when he initially landed on the shore of Britain, the landing
was resisted in a most alarming way for the Roman troops. The British
charioteers and cavalry rode into the very waves to attack the Roman soldiers
as they tried to leap from their ships into the sea, and the landing was almost
aborted due the unusual nature and ferocity of the attack. Moreover, Caesar had
made some very serious miscalculations about the tide and weather that had
almost lost him his army. But what does the British account say of all this?
Nothing. Nothing whatever. There is no triumphant trumpeting about the bravery
of the Celtic warriors or the Romans' difficulties in making land.|P106|
Instead,
we hear only how, on first receiving news of the Roman landing, the Britons
under Kasswallawn (Caesar's Cassivelaunus) gathered together at a certain fort
in Kent. Caesar had clearly been resisted merely by a band of local levies of
whom the Britons' intelligence reports had taken no account. But why should
they? It was only to be expected (by the Britons) that the locals would meet
the assault, and the opposition to the landing had been unsuccessful in any
case. But perhaps the gathering of the Britons at the Kentish fort is one of
the more telling aspects of the affair. The Welsh chronicle names the fort
Doral, which Geoffrey of Monmouth transposes into Latin as Dorobellum. (5) It
was known to later Latin writers as Durolevum, and was a fortress that stood roughly
midway between Rochester and Canterbury. As Flinders Petrie points out, it
would have been the ideal meeting place for an assembling army that was
uncertain whether the invading force would proceed directly across the river
Medway towards London, or would skirt along the coast towards Sussex and then
head north to London, thus saving itself the task of having to cross the
Medway. And yet Caesar never mentions this fort, for the natural reason that he
would have been entirely unaware of its existence and name. A medieval monk
rehashing Caesar's work would not have mentioned it either for the same
reasons. Of further significance is the fact that Nennius writes in his
Historia Brittonum:|P107|
'Julius
Caesar ... while he was fighting with Dolabella.' (6)|P108|
...
Dolabella being mistaken in Nennius's source-document for the personal name of
a British warrior rather than the fort where the warriors were gathered, thus
revealing that by the end of the 8th century AD at the very latest, a serious
corruption of the account of the British maneuvers from which Nennius drew his
own information existed. The fact that no such corruption is evident in the
Welsh chronicle (or Geoffrey's Latin version) speaks volumes not only for the
purity of the information contained in both the Welsh chronicle and Geoffrey,
but for the antiquity and undoubted authenticity of their common source
material.|P109|
Later
in his account, (7) Caesar describes in detail how his cavalry came to grief
when they encountered the unusual fighting tactics of the Britons. He describes
these tactics in detail, remarking on their effectiveness. And yet no such
description appears in the British account. One could reasonably expect that a
later forger or compiler would triumphantly have mentioned how his forebears
terrified and almost defeated the Romans with superior and ingenious fighting
tactics, but not a contemporary Briton who was recording the same events as
Caesar but from a different vantage point. But, again, why should a
contemporary Briton mention tactics with which he and his intended readers
would have been all too familiar?|P110|
Three
further specific items in both the Welsh chronicle and Geoffrey's Latin account
reveal the sometimes garbled nature of the British intelligence reports of the
time that were sent over long distances, in two cases from the other side of
the Channel, and the natural confusion that arose over the debriefing of
warriors that returned from the front line of battle and the subsequent
interviewing of eyewitnesses. The first concerns the death of a certain Roman
officer. He was named as Laberius (Quintus Laberius Durus) in Caesar's account,
(8) according to which Laberius died in action during the second campaign in
Britain of the year 54 BC. The British account, however, states that Laberius
was killed during the first campaign, and, more tellingly, it identifies the
soldier concerned as Labienus (9) (Welsh Alibiens). Now, the name Labienus
would earlier have been known to the Britons from reports reaching them of
Caesar's second-in-command who, at the time of Caesar's second invasion and
quite unknown to the native Britons, had been left behind in Gaul to administer
matters there in Caesar's absence. Thus, learning from prisoners taken in
battle that the dead officer's name was Laberius, they confused the names and
naturally assumed that this was the Labienus of whom they had heard. It was a
perfectly natural error made in wartime conditions, but not one that would have
been made by a medieval forger who had Caesar's account in front of him.|P111|
Similarly,
the second item concerns the garbled British report of a fortress that was
erected at Caesar's command when he returned to Gaul. Caesar does not name the
fort, whereas the British account reports its name as Odina. (10) Flinders
Petrie points out that no such place is known, although he does mention that
Caesar reports (11) the sending of troops to Lexovii (today's Lisieux), and
that the river there, which again Caesar does not name but which is called
Olina, suggests the origins of the British report. Again, the name Odina (which
Caesar does not give) could obviously not have been borrowed from Caesar's
account by any medieval hand.|P112|
The
third incident concerns an inaccurate report by British scouts which led
Kasswallawn's intelligence gatherers to assume that Caesar had fled Britain at
a time when the Roman army was in fact firmly encamped on these shores. Caesar,
having lost valuable ships during a storm, ordered that the ships be taken out
of the water and dragged inland to within the Roman camp. (12) This was a
prodigious feat of engineering. These ships were extremely heavy military
transports, and yet the task was well within the (to us well-known)
capabilities and engineering skills of the Roman sappers. However, it would not
have occurred to the Britons that such a thing would be contemplated let alone
possible, and so it is that when the advance scouting parties of the Britons
could no longer see Caesar's ships beached upon the strand, they naturally but
wrongly assumed that he had fled these shores.|P113|
There
are later, touching, accounts in the early British chronicles (but on which
Flinders Petrie is silent) where mention is made of British warriors fighting
in this country against the armies of the kings of Syria and Lybia, (13) and
which look initially like a most unlikely collection of stories. Yet, what
becomes of these accounts when we view them in their correct historical
perspective? The Britons were never ones to employ foreign mercenaries to do
their fighting for them. They knew the dangers involved in such a policy,
dangers that were unhappily demonstrated when one British king, Vortigern,
invited the Saxons over to chase away the Picts. As history records, and to
Vortigern's everlasting infamy as far as the Welsh are concerned, the Saxons
stayed and eventually banished the Britons themselves to a rocky and
inhospitable part of the island, Wales. Rather, in times of war or emergency
the Britons would band together as separate tribes into one fighting force, and
place their many kings under the authority of one overking for the duration of
the hostilities. Thus, when the Britons encountered the Roman army, they were
surprised to find not Romans only amongst the enemy's ranks (if there were any
Romans at all), but separate legions made up of Syrians, Lybians and every
other kind of nationality. (14) We know from the archaeological record that
Syrians and others did actually make up some of the occupying legions in this
country, and it is therefore not only natural that the Britons should refer to
them by the names of their countries of origin, but that they should also
assume that the Syrians and others were led into battle by their own petty
kings as were the Britons themselves who fought them. It is an unsuspected and
striking mark of authenticity that no medieval forger would have thought
of.|P114|
But
if this portion of the chronicle contains material that can be dated to the
middle of the 1st century BC, then there is other material that goes back much
further. One such item (on which again Flinders Petrie is surprisingly silent)
is the account of two men named Belinus and Brennius in Geoffrey's Latin
version, and Beli and Bran in the Welsh. (15) One part of the story records how
Bran led an invasion of Italy and sacked Rome. Certain modernist scholars have
been quick to point out that Rome has never been sacked by the Britons, and
that the story is a nonsensical fiction. However, a reading of Rome's
historians might have led them to a different conclusion, for the sack of Rome
by the Celts is told in considerable detail by an early historian of Rome, and
the early British account of the event is confirmed, and indeed expanded upon,
in every point.|P115|
The Roman
historian in question is Livy (Titus Livius , 59 BC-17 AD), whose History of
Rome consisted of no less than 142 books, although only 35 of these have
survived to the present day. However, it is Book 5 of Livy's history that
contains the rather illuminating account that follows. (16)|P116|
According
to Livy, the sack of Rome by the Gallic Celts occurred around the year 390 BC,
and we shall see precisely how closely this accords with the chronology of
events and personages that is contained in the British chronicle. It matches it
exactly. But of more interest to us is the fact that Livy has preserved the
names of those who were involved in the planning and carrying out of the
attack.|P117|
The
first name is that of the king of the Bituriges, a Gallic (Celtic) people who
were to give their name to the modern city of Bourges. The king was Ambitgatus,
and Livy tells us that he had two nephews, one named Bellovesus, and the other
Segovesus. These two names also appear in the British account where they are given
as Beli in the Welsh chronicle and Belinus and Segnius (the king of the
Allobroges or Burgundians) in Geoffrey of Monmouth. The Welsh chronicle
mentions Segnius as the prince of the Burdundians (i.e. Byrgwin, another term
for the Allobroges) but does not name him. Each name, however, must have been
given in the original British source-material for them to appear in either
Geoffrey or the Welsh chronicle.|P118|
It is
here, however, that Livy sheds some interesting light upon the Celtic royal
families of the early 4th century BC. According to both Geoffrey and the Welsh
chronicle, the father and mother of Belinus and Brennius were Dunvall Molmutius
(Welsh Dyftial Moel Myd) and Tonuuenna (Welsh Tonwen). We know from the
genealogy around which both Geoffrey's and the Welsh account are built (see
Appendix 7), that Dunvallo was of British descent. Which means that Tonuuenna,
whose genealogy is not given, could easily have been the sister of the Gaulish
king, Ambitgatus, as is implied in Livy when he calls Bellovesus (the British
Belinus and son of Tonuuenna) the nephew of Ambitgatus. There is nothing at all
unlikely or improbable in such a relationship. Indeed, marriage between the
British and continental Celtic royal families would have been an entirely
natural and expected event.|P119|
Which
brings us to the name of the leader of the Gallic sack of Rome, whom Livy names
as Brennus. (18) This is practically identical to the transposition into Latin
of the British name of Bran that Geoffrey gives (Brennius), and the fact that
Geoffrey and Livy are such distinct and independent authorities reveals that
neither of them were making up the names of their characters as they went
along. That neither Geoffrey nor the Welsh chronicle are merely copies or
rehashes of Livy's account is abundantly evident when one compares the British
account with that of Livy. There are far too many important and fundamental
differences between them to suggest that one is dependent on the other. And yet
they are all clearly and independently referring to the same historical event,
namely the Celtic sack of Rome in ca 390 BC, but viewing that event from
different camps.|P120|
We
may carry the story back another generation by referring to the laws of
Dunvallo, the father of Belinus and Brennius, which were known as the Molmutine
Laws and which Geoffrey tells us were still held in high esteem by the Britons
(Welsh) of Geoffrey's own day. (19) However, not only were they held in high
esteem in Geoffrey's day, they also have survived to the present, and they
clearly reveal their pagan origins. (20) The light that they shed upon the
society in which the early Britons lived is set out in Appendix 6 of this book,
where Flinders Petrie tells us in his own words about the laws and their
application. But the history of the early Britons can be carried back further
still, much further back, to the 12th century BC in fact, the time of the very
foundation of the British nation.|P121|
The
story is told of how a colony once landed on these shores, a colony led by one Brutus (Bryttys in the Welsh chronicle). It was from this
Brutus that the British people derived their name. The history of Brutus'
descendants is set out in the following chapter, but what interests us here is
how, and by which route, the colony arrived on these shores in the first place.
Again, we are indebted to Flinders Petrie for bringing to our attention the
following details:|P122|
'After
leaving Greece Brutus' and his colony 'sails to Africa, and then passes the
Philenian altars, a place called Salinae, sails between Ruscicada and the
mountains of Azara in danger of pirates, passes the river Malua, arrives in
Mauretania, and reaches the pillars of Hercules. On this passage the ignorant
editor notes: "It is probably impossible to discover whether these names
describe existing places, or are purely the invention of the author". Now
all these places are known, and they are all in consecutive order. The
longitudes in Ptolemy are here added, for clearness. The Philenian altars (46
degrees 45 minutes) were two great sand heaps, for the story of which see
Sallust; they would be well known as the boundary between Carthage and Egypt,
but of no importance in late Roman times. Next, Salinae are the stretch of salt
lagunes (33 to 34 degrees), which would be important to mariners for salting
fish. Next, Ruscicada (27 degrees 40 minutes) is a headland to the south of
Sardinia; Brutus sailed between this and the mountains of Azara, and Ptolemy
names a mountain tribe of Sardinia as the Aisaronesioi. The prevalence of
pirates noted here gives the reason for naming the Sardinian mountains, as
mariners could stand well off the African coast by sighting Sardinia, which lay
120 miles north, and thus escape the pirate coast track without losing their
bearings. Next is the river Malua (11 degrees 10 minutes), which was important
as the boundary of early Mauretania. Lastly, the pillars of Hercules (6 degrees
35 minutes - 7 degrees 30 minutes). The general character of these names
selected is that of points well known to mariners, such as any seaman might
readily give as stages of a voyage. How then do they come into the Brut legend?
They cannot have been stated by any seaman after AD 700, as the Arab conquest
wiped out the old names and old trade.|P123|
Did a
medieval writer, then, extract the names from a Roman author? No single author
seems to contain all of them: Ptolemy omits Salinae, Pliny omits Salinae and
Azara, Strabo only has the Philanae, the Antonine itinerary only Rusiccade and
Malua, the Peutingerian table only Rusicade, and the Philaeni in a wrong
position. When we see the medieval maps, from Cosmas on to the Mappamundi of
Hereford, it is impossible to suppose a medieval writer having enough geography
at hand to compile such a mariner's list of six minor places in the right
order, as they stood during the Roman Empire. If this list was, then, written
during the Empire, there is no reason for preferring one date to another. There
is, however, internal evidence that this was written before Claudius' (i.e. 10
BC-AD 54). 'It is after passing the Malua that Brutus arrives in Mauretania.
Now Mauretania was only west of the Malua originally; but in the, early
imperial changes the east of that river was included, and Claudius constituted
two Mauretanias, Tingitana and Caesariensis, divided by the river. The
geography of the Brut is, then, older than Claudius.' (21)|P124|
There
is much else that Flinders Petrie could have added had he been aware of it. For
example, before Brutus sailed with his colony to the African coast on their
migration from the mainland of Greece, they were said to have alighted upon an
island whose name is given as Legetta in the Welsh chronicle, as Leogetia in
Geoffrey of Monmouth, and which was known as Leucadia amongst the classical
authors of the Mediterranean world. Today, we know it as the island of Levk†s.
But there are certain details, important details, that the British accounts
mention that could not have been gleaned by a medieval forger simply hearing of
the place or seeing it on a map, even one that happened to possess an unusual
degree of accuracy for medieval times. For example, although the Welsh
chronicle omits the fact, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin version recounts the
detail of the island's woodlands, (22) and we note that even today one can
still see on the island 'the remnants of the oak forests which were a feature
of Levk†s well into the nineteenth century. (23)|P125|
For
Geoffrey of Monmouth to be aware of these woods, they must have been mentioned
in the original and ancient source-material that he was translating, and we can
only ask ourselves whether the presence of oak forests on this sacred island
which the Britons long remembered, and the fact that the early Druids of
Britain ever afterwards held the oak tree to be particularly and peculiarly
sacred, are entirely unconnected. As Pliny tells us:|P126|
'The
Druidae... esteeme nothing more sacred in the world, than Misselto, and the
tree whereupon it breedeth, so it be on Oke... they seem well enough to be
named thereupon Dryidae in Greeke, which signifieth ... Oke-priests. (24)|P127|
However,
of added interest is the fact that both Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh
chronicle record the presence on the island of a ruined temple that was
dedicated to the goddess Diana. There then follow the descriptions of a most
complex ritual performed by Brutus and the nature and attributes of the goddess
Diana that could only have come from a pagan source. But there is an added
aspect to all this. Diana was considered to be the personification of the moon,
and although there is no apparent trace remaining today of the temple of Diana
on the island, there are the ruins of a temple to Diana's theological husband,
the sun god Apollo. These ruins lie on a prominence some 230 feet above the
sea, and:|P128|
'...
it was from here that the priests of Apollo would hurl themselves into space,
buoyed up - so it was said - by live birds and feathered wings. The
relationship between the ritual and the god seems obscure, although there was
an early connection between Apollo and various birds. Ovid confirms that the
virtues of the flight and the healing waters below the cliff had been known
since the time of Deucalion, the Greek Noah.' (25)|P129|
Now
there are definite echoes of this curious and most ancient ritual in the story
of one of Brutus'not far removed descendants, king Bladud (Blaiddyd in the
Welsh chronicle. See next chapter). Bladud, it is recorded, made himself
pinions and wings and learned how to fly. He only had one lesson and the flight
was predictably a short one, but the important detail is that Bladud was killed
as he struck the temple of Apollo that once stood in the city known today as
London. (26)|P130|
Yet
this is not the only curious detail to emerge out of the early British record.
What, for example, are we to make of the mention of Greek Fire in the story of
Brutus? This appears as tan gwyllt in the Welsh chronicle, and as sulphureas
tedas and greco igne in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account. (27) As Flinders Petrie
rightly points out, Greek Fire was entirely unheard of in Europe before the
time of the Crusades. Did an early medieval forger have a lucky guess? I doubt
it. And what of the further detailed geographical knowledge of the ancient
Greek mainland that the British accounts reveal? The region called Yssgaradings
in the Welsh chronicle and Sparatinum in Geoffrey's version, was anciently
known as Thesprotia, an area on the west coast of Greece. Archaeology tells us
that the Thesprotians were the earliest inhabitants of the region, their name
being perpetuated today in the modern town of Thesprotikon. (28) Moreover, the
river Ystalon in the Welsh chronicle (Abalone in Geoffrey) is the Acheron that
flows through the ancient region of Epirus.|P131|
Further,
there is the name of the king against whom Brutus fought in order to win the
freedom of his followers. His name is given as Pendrassys in the Welsh
chronicle and as Pandrasus in Geoffrey. (29) I have seen no attempt whatever to
identify this king, and there is now no possibility of tracing the name in the
surviving records of ancient Greece, although such tracing would itself be
futile. Pandrasus is not, it seems, a proper name at all but a title - pan
Doris - meaning king of all the Dorians. Again, archaeology tells us that the
Dorian Greeks overran this part of the Grecian mainland at just about the same
period (12th-11th centuries BC) in which the story of Brutus begins. (30) So it
is clear that the name Pandrasus belongs firmly and authentically to the times
that are dealt with in the opening portions of the British account.|P132|
All
of which helps us in dating not only the fascinating and undoubtedly ancient
material in the Welsh chronicle and in Geoffrey's version, but also the
material passed down to us by Nennius that we noted in the previous chapter and
from which we were able to construct the Table of European Nations. Clearly,
none of all this is attributable to the nefarious work of early Christianmonks
who were seeking to foist upon the world a contrived but pious history, for all
the material that we have considered in this chapter pre-dates the coming of
the Christianfaith to the early Britons by at least a hundred years, and
certainly by up to a thousand years and more. In other words, the now wearisome
modernist charge of pious fraud falls flat. This will be further seen in the
following chapter which summarises the contents of both Geoffrey of Monouth and
the Welsh chronicles, and Appendix 7 where the genealogy of the early British
kings is set out. The approximate dates of each king are also given as I have
been able to calculate them from the internal evidence contained in the Welsh
chronicle and in Geoffrey's Latin version, and external evidence derived from
other sources.|P133|
Notes|P134|
1.
Published by Humphrey Milford at the Oxford University Press as part of the
Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. viii. pp. 1- 28.|P135|
2.
'I, Walter of Oxford, translated this book from Welsh (Kymraec) into Latin, and
in my old age have translated it a second time from Latin into Welsh.'|P136|
3.
Happily, two English translations of this particular Welsh chronicle already
exist: Roberts, Peter. Chronicle of the Kings. 1811. The sole surviving copy is
at the Bodleian library, shelfmark Douce T., 301. (A poorly edited 2nd edition
of this was brought out by Manley Pope under the title, A History of the Kings
of Ancient Britain. Simpkin, Marshall & Co. London. 1862. As poor as his
edition is, however, Manley Pope interpolated comments of his own without
marking them as such in the text, and he makes no acknowledgement whatever to
Peter Roberts, whose translation he has clearly filched, Manley Pope does
provide some very informative notes from pp. 155-216). The second translation
is by Canon Robert Ellis Jones of New York. His untitled translation is a
literal rendering into English of the Welsh text, and forms part of Griscom's
book (see bibliography). Canon Jones died in 1929, the year of his
translation's publication.|P137|
4.
Caesar, pp. 99-100. See bibliography.|P138|
5.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, p. 108, and Manley Pope, p. 60. See bibliography.|P139|
6.
Nennius, p. 23. See bibliography.|P140|
7.
Caesar, pp. 102-3.|P141|
8.
Caesar,. pp. 111-2.|P142|
9.
Geoffrey, p. 110 and Manley Pope, p. 60. As Flinders Petrie points out, while
the shift in date may be due to tradition, it cannot agree with copying.|P143|
10.
Geoffrey, (pp. 112-3) has Odnea. See Manley Pope, pp. 61 & 180-1.|P144|
11.
Caesar, p. 87.|P145|
12.
Caesar, p. 110 and Manley Pope, p. 61, 'Caesar was compelled to fly.'|P146|
13.
Geoffrey, pp. 236 & 245-6. See also Manley Pope, p. 122.|P147|
14.
Cottrell, (pp. 63-4. See bibliography) lists Spaniards, Hungarians, Germans,
Syrians, Greeks, Africans, Gauls, and so on as some of the nationalities that
made up the Roman legions in Britain. Hadrian's Wall alone was manned by
Spaniards, Germans, Africans and Syrians.|P148|
15.
Geoffrey, pp. 90-100 and Manley Pope, pp. 38-46.|P149|
16.
Livy, pp. 378-395. See bibliography.|P150|
17.
Livy, p. 379. Compare Geoffrey, pp. 97-9 and Manley Pope, pp. 44-5.|P151|
18.
Livy, pp. 383 & 395.|P152|
19.
Geoffrey, p. 89.|P153|
20.
See Probert, William, Ancient Laws of Cambria. 1823.|P154|
21.
Flinders Petrie, pp. 8-9.|P155|
22.
Geoffrey,. p. 64. Thorpe, (p. 341. See bibliography. Aledges that the name is
an invention of Geoffrey's.|P156|
23.
Bradford, Guide to the Greek Islands, Collins. London. p. 48.|P157|
24.
cit. Hawkins, Prof. G. Stonehenge Decoded, Fontana. p. 34. Hawkins points out
that as the Greek word for oak was 'drus', then Pliny's etymology for the name
would appear to have been correct.|P158|
25.
Bradford, p. 50.|P159|
26.
Geoffrey,. p. 81 and Manley Pope, pp. 28 & 167-8.|P160|
27.
Geoffrey, p. 58 and Manley Pope, p. 10.|P161|
28.
Webster's New Geographical Dictionary, G & C Merriam, Massachusetts. 1977.
p. 1203.|P162|
29.
Geoffrey, pp. 55-64.|P163|
30.
Webster's, p. 340.|P164|
31.
For a technical appraisal of the chronology, see my article The Early History
of Man - Pt. 3. The Kings of the Ancient Britons: A Chronology, CEN Tech. J.,
Vol. 52 1991. pp. 139-142.|P165|
Chapter 5 History of the Early
British Kings |P166|
What
follows is a summary of the history of the early kings of the early Britons as
it is given in both Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh chronicles. It is a
recorded history that was consigned to oblivion after the massacre, at the
instigation of Augustine, of the British monks at Bangor in AD 604 and was thus
entirely unknown or ignored by the later Saxon and Norman chroniclers of
England. Consequently, it came to be generally and unquestioningly assumed
amongst English scholars by the 16th and 17th centuries that no such record had
ever existed, and that works such as Geoffrey of Monmouth's or the Welsh
chronicle were forgeries and fairy tales. That opinion persists today. We have
seen, however, in the previous chapter how these records enjoy a great deal of
historical vindication in spite of modernism's cursory and fashionable
dismissal of them. But here, plain and unadorned, is the story that the
chronicles themselves tell, a story that no child will have learnt at his desk
in any school of this land. It spans over two thousand years, and its survival
to the present day, being little short of a miracle, is a tribute to those
Welsh scholars of old who recognised its importance and preserved it entire for
our reading.|P167|
Amongst
the ancient records that the Britons themselves left behind, there is preserved
(in Nennius at least) a list of the ancestors of the early British kings as
they were counted generation by generation back to Japheth, the son of Noah.
But the history of the Britons as a distinct nation had its beginnings with the
fall of Troy, and it is at this point that Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh
chroniclestake up the story.|P168|
Anchises,
known to us from other histories, fled with his son, Aeneas, from the burning
ruins of Troy, and they made their way to the land that is nowadays called
Italy, settling with their people on the banks of the river Tiber around what
was later to become Rome. The indigenous population was ruled over by |P169|
Latinus
who received Aeneas and his people with kindness and hospitality, in return for
which Aeneas defeated Latinus' foe, Turnus, king of the Rutuli. He then married
the daughter of Latinus, Lavinia, from which union came Aeneas |P170|
Silvius
who later rose to rule over all the tribes of Italy. But it was through the
line of his brother Ascanius that the royal lineage was presently to be
perpetuated, and of this line was born Ascanius' son Silvius. Silvius seduced
an unnamed niece of his grandfather's wife, Lavinia, and it was from their
union that his son Brutus was born. The mother of Brutus died whilst giving
birth to him, and when he was a lad of fifteen years, Brutus accidentally shot
his father dead with an arrow whilst out hunting. For having caused the deaths
of both his parents, thus fulfilling a prophecy concerning him, Brutus was
exiled out of Italy, the royal line of Aeneas passing into the hands of
another. And it is at this point that the history of the Britons as a distinct
nation begins.|P171|
Brutus
journeyed from Italy to Greece, and there he came into contact with certain
slaves. These were the descendants of the soldiers who had fought against
Greece in the Trojan Wars of the 13th century BC. They had been enslaved by
Priam, son of Achilles, 'in vengeance for his father's death', and were
subsequently to continue their slavery under Pandrasus, king of the Dorian
Greeks. Learning that he was descended from their own ancient kings, the
Trojans accepted Brutus into their fellowship and elected him as their leader,
and under him they successfully rose against their captors. Defeating Pandrasus
in battle, they set sail to look for a land in which to settle. Sailing their
fleet out of the Mediterranean between the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of
Gibraltar), they came across another group of Trojans led by Corineus, who were
likewise escaping abroad from their captors. They combined forces and landed in
Gaul with Brutus being acclaimed as their overall king. There they fought and
defeated the Picts under king Goffar (Koffarffichti--Goffar the Pict--in the
Welsh). The Trojans again set sail, and came ashore at Totnes in Devon at some
time in the 12th century BC. The land and its people were subsequently to
derive their names from Brutus. Then Brutus founded the city of Trinovantum, or
New Troy, which was later to become the city of London. Brutus, the first king
of the Britons, reigned over his people in this island for twenty three years,
i.e. from ca 1104-1081 BC.|P172|
Amongst the spoils that Brutus had taken from Greece was Ignoge, the daughter of Pandrasus, whom he wedded and who was to bear him three sons, Locrinus, Kamber and Albanactus. Upon the death of Brutus, Kamber and Albanactus inherited Wales (Cambria) and Scotland (Albany) respectively, and Locrinus became king of Loegria, the land named after him, which consisted of present-day England minus Cornwall. (The modern Welsh still know England as Loegria). Cornwall was ruled over by Corineus whose daughter, Gwendolen, Locrinus had married. Locrinus, however, had also taken another wife, Estrildis, whom he hid for fear of Corineus. But as soon as Corineus was dead, he made Estrildis his queen and put away Gwendolen, his lawful wife. In vengeance, Gwendolen raised an army in her father's kingdom of Cornwall, killing Locrinus in the ensuing batt