Note: a ‘selfie’ carving of Rameses II depicting him with his pals: Ptah and Sekhmet.
Ancient Markers of Traumatic Events: The Era of Menophres, Sothis, Osiris, and Noah. © Nicholas Costa 2024
Censorinus ( fl. AD 230) a Roman grammarian and writer in his work De Die Natali (The Birthday Book) in 238 AD in Chapter XVIII entitled the Great Year, states that, “The 1461st year by some is called the Heliacal and by others the Year of God.” In Chapter XX he states that the current Annus Magnus had commenced a hundred years earlier in 139 AD. Working back from this date 1461 years produces a figure of c1322 BC. This is confirmed by an extant text written by the astronomer Theon of Alexandria (c335 AD- 405 AD). He refers to it as the Era of Menophres.
The latter has caused much debate as to who Menophres was, with some maintaining that the name is little more than a geographical reference to Memphis. The greater likelihood is that the name relates to a pharaoh, and a number of candidates clustered around that date have been proposed. The prime candidate in the author’s estimation would be Seti I (c.1294 or 1290 BCE to 1279 BC) His birth is currently dated as c1323 BC, within a year of the target date, and within 4 years of the c1327 BC date for the destruction of Ephesus/Atlantis. Tutankhamen’s demise is dated to the same year, 1327 BC. Is it coincidental or was there something else in the equation?
Tetraeteris
Notably there exists a problem in reckoning time known as the tetraeteris, the four-year phase during which the heliacal rising of Sirius was observed on the same day of the year. Every four years the phase moved backward one day and it is not possible to determine in which of the four years of the tetraeteris a given observation took place (W.A. Ward, The Present Status of Egyptian Chronology, 1992). Censorinus’ use of the year 139 has been questioned with 136 seeming to have been the start of the tetraëteris (Luft, Ulrich (2006), “Absolute Chronology in Egypt in the First Quarter of the Second Millennium BC”, Egypt and the Levant, Vol. XVI, Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, pp. 309–316.) If so then this would produce a date for the start of the cycle of c1325 BC a date within a year or two of the natural disaster which destroyed Ephesus!
Volcano
Seti I came to power in the aftermath of the momentous events surrounding the demise of Arzawa. He would have been considered as blessed by the gods when he came to rule, since the main beneficiary in the aftermath of the disaster proved to be Egypt. The details concerning the c1327 BC eruption can be found in the author’s book entitled Atlantis, the Amazons, and the Birth of Athene. It would also help explain why he adopted the name Seti/ Seth which in effect is a metaphor for an active volcano. The Greeks equated Seth with Typhon, one only has to read descriptions of Typhon for confirmation of this premise.
It is curious given all the debate about the volcanic eruption of Thera, that little if any attention seems to have been paid by modern scholarship as to why the Egyptian pharaohs suddenly adopted names linked to volcanic metaphors (Ptah depicting a quiescent volcano, and Seth depicting an eruption) centuries after the surmised date for the eruption of Thera. Interestingly modern researchers appear to be becoming increasingly aware of another potential source of volcanic eruption during this period. (Late Holocene terrestrial tephra record at western Anatolia, Turkey: Possible evidence of an explosive eruption outside Santorini in the eastern Mediterranean, N. Kazanci et al 2011).
Tellingly on his accession Seti embarked upon a series of successful military exploits (encouraged no doubt by the chaos in western Asia Minor). In Egypt he instituted a major building programme as well as engaging in the restoration and repair of older monuments which had been vandalized during Akhenaten’s reign. The work was continued in his father Rameses II reign.
(Notably a ‘selfie’ carving of Rameses II exists depicting him with his pals: Ptah and Sekhmet.)
Menophres
The name Menophres is considered by some scholars to be a slightly corrupted form of the epithet Mry-n-Pth ‘beloved of Ptah’ which is normally found at the beginning of Seth’s second cartouche.
In agreement with this premise Kurt Sethe published some remarkable Egyptian texts that seemed to support the idea of a new age that began under Seth I. These inscriptions mention a “beginning of eternity”; to a reader familiar also with Greek texts, such a wording evokes the Greek term ?eon which was used in connexion with the Sothic period. (See Menophres Reconsidered. Adam ?ukaszewicz, The Journal of Juristic Papyrology Vol. XXV, 1995.)
It would appear therefore that the record of Sothis in this specific instance was a marker for the traumatic events which had occurred at this time rather than as an indicator of a hypothesised much earlier calendrical cycle dating back to 2782 BC and 4677 BC.
Concerning this Damien Mackey wrote: “Current Egyptian chronology consists of 30 dynasties, as compiled by the 3rd century bc Egyptian priest Manetho, chronologically bound by the Sothic theory proposed by Eduard Meyer of the Berlin School of Egyptology in 1904 (Meyer, E., Ägyptische Chronologie, Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1904). But this Sothic theory, based on a 1,460 year cycle for the star Sirius (Greek Sothis), contradicts the dates found by Theon, an Alexandrian astronomer of the late 4th century ad; and the 3rd century ad Roman author, Censorinus, never connected the 1,460-year period with Sirius. The celebrated Claudius Ptolemy failed to mention this link, and more recently, Egyptologists like Maspero, von Bissing, Jéquier and the great Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie, also rejected Meyer’s mathematical system. Of Meyer’s four Sothic dates, the oldest has been abandoned and there is uncertainty about the second. As a result, Sir Alan Gardiner referred to Egyptian history as ‘merely a collection of rags and tatters’. The doors are open for the reconstruction of Egyptian chronology.” (Fall of the Sothic Theory: Egyptian Chronology Revisited, Damien Mackey, 2003)
Meyer’s dates are both historically (the First Egyptian dynasty dates back to c 2925 BC) and mythologically meaningless (even Adam was said to have been born c3992 BC some 685 years after the supposed first Sothis cycle!)
Wehem-Meswet- Signifier of Environmental Trauma
The other signifier is the rarely used phrase translated as Repeater of Births or Era of the Renaissance found in association with Seti’s name. This rare phrase is encountered in the reigns of Amenenhat I (c1991-1962), Rameses XI (c1107 BC- 1078/1077 BC), and Nepherites II (c380 BC). Its true nature is still unknown.
Amenenhat I
Amenenhat I having usurped the throne adopted as the first of the three names in his new titulary the epithet Wehem-Meswet (Repeater of Births), thereby, according to Aiden Dodson, identifying himself as the inaugurator of a new era in the history of Egypt.
It would appear that Amenemhat took power in Egypt at approximately the same time as the event recorded by the myth entitled the Destruction of Mankind occurred. The myth centres upon Sekhmet (an airburst from the eta Aquariids above Nubia) seeking to destroy humanity. It is geologically signified by ring-width minima in two or more regions (±2 yr) and corresponding ice-core volcanic signals within 10 yr of minima for the years 1997/1996 1994 and 1991 BC. (M.W. Salzer, M.K. Hughes / Quaternary Research 67, 2007)
Later, long after Seti I, the other time this phrase was used was by Rameses XI who from his year 18 onwards used it –and from that point began dating from ‘year 1’. (Sethy I, King of Egypt: His Life and Afterlife (Lives and Afterlives), Aiden Dodson 2018.)
(Notably Dodson’s own dating for Seti’s rule is 1276–1265 BC is adrift compared to other Egyptologists. He therefore totally misses out on the possible link between Seti I, the presumed Sothis start date for the Egyptian calendar of c1325 BC and to the destruction of Arzawa in c1327 BC due to volcanic eruption)
Rameses XI
Rameses XI (c1107 BC- 1078/1077 BC) for some hitherto unknown reason in his year 18 instituted a new counting system beginning with year 1 of the ‘Renissance’ c1089. This year appears in Salzer’s Table 2 indicating frost-ring signals for 1089 BC (M.W. Salzer, M.K. Hughes / Quaternary Research 67, 2007)
The period beginning c1300 BC, but centred upon c1200 BC is now delineated as the “3.2 ka BP event”. It signifies the occurrence of a mega-drought which lasted between 150 and 300 years in the Aegean and east Mediterranean. (Drought and societal collapse 3200 years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean: a review, David Kaniewskiet al, 2015). In Greek mythology this period c1300 onward is signified by the War of the Giants.
Nepherites II
The other little known pharaoh who used the phrase Wehem Mesut was Nepherites II. He ruled for only four months in 380 BC. Significantly his brief rule occurred when a very strong cooling occurred on the earth. V. Klimenko writes that,
“About 2500 years ago, a strong cooling happened on the Earth. The evidence to it is found not only in numerous climatic indicators (the position of glaciers and forests in mountains, the thickness of tree rings, spore-and-pollen spectra, the isotopic composition of ice, lacustrine and marine deposits) but in human memory as well. Papers by many ancient authors (Herodotus, Liviy Andronicus, Eratosthénés), as well as Chinese and Babylonian chronicles, describe a climatic pattern which differs greatly from the present day one not only in temperature but also in humidity.” (V. Klimenko Cold climate of the Early Subatlantic Age in the Northern Hemisphere, 2003)
It was exactly during the second part of this phase that Plato began his writing concerning Atlantis with its references to celestial cycles.
The term Wehem Mesut therefore seems to have been associated with the aftermath of natural trauma. The trauma of c1327 BC may itself have actually instigated the institution of the Censorinus’ Sothis count in Egypt.
Sothis itself it would appear was tied in with a distant environmental catastrophe linked to the constellation of Orion. The Egyptians identified with their god Osiris with Orion and their goddess Isis with the constellation of Scorpio.
The Rise of Osiris
Osiris curiously suddenly comes to the fore during the Fifth Dynasty when for some hitherto unknown reason several important changes occurred in Egyptian religion. The earliest known copies of funerary prayers inscribed on royal tombs (known as the Pyramid Texts) suddenly appear. The cult of the sun god Ra gained added importance and rulers from Userkaf through to Menkauhor built temples dedicated to the sun. Then suddenly late in this dynasty without apparent reason the cult of Osiris suddenly assumed great importance. This is evidenced most notably in the inscriptions found in the pyramid of Unas (c2375– 2345 BC).
This date coincides with the date associated with the mythical Noah’s flood. It is also exactly at this point in time that what has been termed the “mid-24th century BCE climate anomaly” occurred. Between 2354 and 2345 BCE consistently, reduced annual temperatures have been reconstructed from consecutive abnormally narrow, Irish oak tree rings. These tree rings are indicative of a period of catastrophically reduced growth in Irish trees during that period. This range of dates also matches the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in the British Isles and a period of widespread societal collapse in the Near East. It has been proposed by Mike Baillie and others that this anomalous downturn in the climate might have been the result of comet debris suspended in the atmosphere.(Tree-rings indicate global environmental downturns that could have been caused by comet debris. In Comet/asteroid impacts and human society (pp. 105–122). M Baillie, 2007. Why we shouldn’t ignore the mid-24th century BC when discussing the 2200-2000 BC climate anomaly, M Baille et al 2015)
4.2 Kiloyear Event
Ironically the date is also a signifier of what has become known as the 4.2 kiloyear event which occurred it is thought some 100 years later c2200 BC and whose primary marker was a worldwide drought following a period of increased precipitation. (The 4.2?ka?BP event in the Levant, David Kaniewski et al, 2018)
Anybody who claims that Egypt was unaffected at this time need only note scenes of famine and despair depicted in images of this period and read the Utterances.
The Utterances speak of fragmentation,
“O great strider Who sows greenstone, malachite, turquoise-stars As you are green so may Teti be green, Green as a living reed” Utterance 350 Sarcophagus Chamber, East Wall).
Note once more the colour green in association with things falling from the sky. Likewise they speak of a horned object appearing in the sky, and then speak clearly of traumatic events,
“The king feeds on the gods, Sky rains, stars darken, The vaults quiver, earth’s bones tremble, The planets stand still At seeing Unas rise as power, A god who lives on his fathers, Who feeds on his mothers!” Utterances 273·274 Antechamber, East Wall
Osiris is therefore a cometary metaphor. His colour is green. He is intimately associated with the constellation of Orion.
Orion and Osiris
“Look, he is come as Orion,“(they say). “Look, Osiris is come as Orion…”… (Allen, 2005: 107; PT Pepi I: 38)
Orion in Greek mythology was a giant who was killed by a Scorpion following his threat to kill humanity.
Jewish mythology knows of two stars falling to earth as the cause of Noah’s flood. They are said to have come from khima. Khima has generally been interpreted as the Pleiades, but as Ehud Bar Sinai demonstrates the constellation in question was most probably Scorpio. (What is Kima? An Astronomical perspective on the Talmudic passage in tractate Berachot 58b, 2016) Tellingly their initial identification as being the Pleiades dates back to when the Septuagint was translated into Greek in the middle of the third century BC and when the Jewish translators deliberately added errors to the text. The translation itself was certainly never accepted by subsequent generations of Jews.
Interestingly although the stories of Noah and Osiris appear to be totally unrelated there are parallels. The texts cryptically refer the passage of two boats. They also refer to the time when Osiris was “shut up in his coffin” and when that coffin was set afloat on the waters, as stated by Plutarch, agrees exactly with the period when Noah entered the ark. That time was “the 17th day of the month Athyr, when the overflowing of the Nile had ceased, when the nights were growing long and the days decreasing.” The period, too, that Osiris was believed to have been shut up in his coffin, was precisely the same as Noah was confined in the ark, a whole year. (Isis and Osiris, Plutarch)
Scorpio and Isis
Egyptian accounts speak of Isis giving birth to Osiris’s son Horus following Osiris’ murder by Seth who cut him into pieces and scattered them. The place of Horus’s birth is called Khemmis. Note the similarity of the name to khima the place where the two stars came from which caused Noah’s Flood.
Notably the 14 or 16 parts (Diodorus, I.21) Osiris is cut into is mirrored by the brightest stars of the Scorpio constellation, whilst elsewhere ther 7 scorpions are depicted as part of the myth involving Isis which mirror the number of stars in Orion. It is evident that the two constellations were linked to the trauma. Isis was notably depicted as a scorpion. As with Osiris the earliest references to her occur is at the same point in the 5th Dynasty, and like Osiris she is mentioned many times in the Pyramid Texts (c.2350–c.2100 BC)
In her scorpion guise she is called Iset Ta-Wahaet, Isis the Scorpion. In other texts, Isis is joined with Serket Hetyt as Isis-Serket.
It is evident on reading the Pyramid texts that at their core is the depiction of a natural disaster emanating from the sky. They were most certainly not the product of a scribe’s flight of fancy, with the pharaoh Unas (as the deity’s representative on earth) acting as a metaphor for Osiris. (The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Faulkner, R.O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Text, Translated by James P. Allen 2005)
Bond Events
The link to Osiris and the Flood of Noah taps directly into the concept of a primary1461 year traumatic cycle as expressed in Islam and Judaism, which in terms of modern research is ghosted by the key Bond Events. However nature is not perfect clockwork, subsidiary Bond events have since been revealed which seem to have undermined the original c1500 year theory. The reality is that the earth finds itself in the middle of a bowling alley. It is hit every day by extraterrestrial rocks. The period immediately prior to the destruction of Ephesus following Halley’s comet’s very close approach to earth in 1404 BC resulted in a surfeit of airbursts, and it was these as demonstrated in my book Atlantis, the Amazons, and the Birth of Athene, and my articles concerning Sekhmet and Seth that resulted in the destruction of Ephesus and the institution of a new 1461 year count in the west unrelated to the earlier cycle. (Holocene Bond Cycles: real or imaginary? H Wanner et al. 2008; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_event)
Interestingly, following the main cycle beyond Noah and Osiris in 2345 BC leads to c3805 BC and the start of the Naqada 1 period in Egypt. Mythology knows this as the period associated with the figure of Seth. In Egypt this early Seth was equated with Thoth, the god who evidently represents mankind and human intelligence. In Arabic folklore he is called Surid.
Josephus states that the patriarch Seth’s children “were the inventors of that…wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, and their order. And that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam’s prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone: they inscribed their discoveries on them… Now this remains in the land of Siriad [Egypt] to this day.” Josephus, Antiquities 2
Buy: Atlantis, the Amazons, and the Birth of Athene: https://www.amazon.com/Atlantis-Amazons-Birth-Athene-Story/dp/B0CHCX1D47
Bibliography:
Censorinus, De Die Natali
Josephus, Antiquities 2
Plutarch, Isis and Osiris
W.A. Ward, The Present Status of Egyptian Chronology, 1992
U. Luft, “Absolute Chronology in Egypt in the First Quarter of the Second Millennium BC”, Egypt and the Levant, Vol. XVI, Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, pp. 309–316. 2006
N Kazamci et al, Late Holocene terrestrial tephra record at western Anatolia, Turkey: Possible evidence of an explosive eruption outside Santorini in the eastern Mediterranean, 2011
A. ?ukaszewicz, Menophres Reconsidered. The Journal of Juristic Papyrology Vol. XXV, 1995.
D. Mackey, Fall of the Sothic Theory: Egyptian Chronology Revisited, 2003
M.W. Salzer, M.K. Hughes / Quaternary Research 67, 2007
A. Dodson, Sethy I, King of Egypt: His Life and Afterlife (Lives and Afterlives), 2018
D. Kaniewskiet al, Drought and societal collapse 3200 years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean: a review, 2015
V. Klimenko, Cold climate of the Early Subatlantic Age in the Northern Hemisphere, 2003
M.Baille, Tree-rings indicate global environmental downturns that could have been caused by comet debris. In Comet/asteroid impacts and human society (pp. 105–122). 2007
M Baille et al, Why we shouldn’t ignore the mid-24th century BC when discussing the 2200-2000 BC climate anomaly, 2015
D. Kaniewski et al, The 4.2?ka?BP event in the Levant, 2018
R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, 1969
J. P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, 2005
H Wanner et al, Holocene Bond Cycles: real or imaginary? 2008;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_event)