33

Appendix 33

The mere notion of the emperors sleeping makes it clear that they are expected to awake and to return one day; [1] be it Quetzalcouatl (in the heart of the sea), Ogygian Kronos himself, or Arthur, “ruler of the lower hemisphere,” who announces in a fictitious letter “that he has come, with a host of antipodean subjects” [2] — according to Étienne de Rouen (c. 1169; see R. S. Loomis [ed.], *Arthurian *Literature in the Middle Ages [1959], p. 69); that Geoffrey of Viterbo placed Arthur straightaway into the depth of the sea has been mentioned on p. 299, n. 35.

Few scholars only, among them Franz Kampers and Robert Eisler, have recognized the awe-inspiring age of such traditions, and even they have been incapable of calling the much-expected “redeemer” and “kosmokrator” by his very own name: Saturn. Says Kampers, concerning the apocryphal Apocalypsis of Daniel: [3]

Alexander wird hier . . . nicht mit seinem Namen genannt, sondern er wird als Johannes eingeführt. Nach all dem Gesagten wird es nicht mehr allzu kühn erscheinen, in dies em Namen Johannes eine prophetische Chiffre zu erkennen. Wenn Nimrod in einer altslawischen Sage auch Johannes heisst, wenn der erdichtete Erretterkönig der Kreuzfahrer, wie wir sehen werden, Johannes genannt (= Prester John) und auch in Beziehung gesetzt wird zu dem Weltenbaum, so dürfte die Annahme, dass hier fortlebende altorientalische Oannes-Erwartungen sich äussern, nicht von der Hand zu weisen sein.

And right here, he refers to Robert Eisler’s chapter, “John-Oannes?” which states: [4]:

We should not hesitate even to presuppose that the same syncretism of John and Oannes, which seems so natural with Neo-Babylonian Gnostics (the Mandaeans are meant), existed also among the more immediate Jewish followers of the Baptist, seeing that an influence of the Babylonian belief in ever new incarnations of the primeval Oannes — Berossos knows as many as six such reincarnations in past times — on the Messianic hopes ofvthe later Jews is far from credible. In ch. 12f. of IV Esra (temp. Domitian, 81-96 A.D.), the redeemer of the world, the celestial “Man” is expected to rise from the “heart of the Ocean” before his coming, as Daniel (7.13) says, with the clouds of the sky, for: “As no man can search or discover that which is in the depths of the Ocean, even so no mortal can see the Son of God nor his hosts except in the hours of His day.”

Accordingly, we find in 4 Ezra XIII.3 (in E. Kautzsch [ed.], *Pseudoepigraphen des *Alten Testaments [1900]) the sixth vision of the prophet: “Ich schaute, siehe da führte jener Sturm aus dem Herzen des Meeres etwas wie einen Mann hervor.” In a note (p. 395) the Latin translation of the Syriac version is quoted: “Et vidi et ecce ipse ventus ascend ere faciebat de corde maris tanquam similitudinis hominis.”

We know well enough that the Oannes of Berossos is Ea, i.e., Saturn, whose “town” is Eridu/ Canopus, the very depth of the sea. That Ogy gian Kronos is unmistakably the planet Saturn is not to be overlooked by anyone who reads Plutarch’s report (*De facie *quae in orbe lunae apparet 941) of the “servants” of Kronos who — every thirty years, when Saturn is standing in Taurus — sail to Ogygia to remain there in service for thirty years, after which they are free to go; but most of them prefer to stay, because there, in Saturn’s island, the Golden Age lasts on and on. The servants spend their whole time on mathematics, philosophy, and the like, and there is no reason to worry about food, it is all conveniently at hand.

The reluctance at recognizing the almost uncanny power of the oldest traditions is a very modern invention. Kampers still knew very well that the “type” of the medieval emperor was coined in the most ancient Near East, Alexander being a “repetition” of Gilgamesh, and the em peror repeating Alexander again and again. (Cf. Kampers, Vom Werdegange, pp. 2 If., 35, and passim.)

__________

1. See for the rich theme of “heroes inside hills,” J. Grimm, TM, pp. 951-62; Axel Olrik, Ragnarök (1922), pp. 38-62.

2. This role is otherwise ascribed to Beli (or Bilis), brother of Bran, “the dwarf King of the Antipodes” — later he had the name Pelles. “In Welsh poetry the sea is referred to as Beli’s liquor and the waves as Beli’s cattle” (R. S. Loomis, The Grail [1963], pp. 110-12). “Elsewhere he is implored as ‘victorious Beli . . . that will preserve the qualities of the honey-isle of Beli’ " (McCulloch, in ERE 3, p. 290).

3. F. Kampers,Vom Werdegange der abendländischen Kaisermystik (1924), p. 109; Kampers, Alexander der Grosse und die Idee des Weltimperiums in Prophetie und Sage (1901), pp. 145-48.

4. Orpheus the Fisher (1921), pp. 151-62, esp. p. 153.