Armageddon

In Revelation 16:16, the battlefield designated where blasphemers, unclean spirits, and devils join forces for the final great battle of the ages between their evil hordes and Christ and his faithful angelic army is Armageddon, “the mound of Megiddo.” The inspiration for such a choice of battlegrounds was quite likely an obvious one for John the Revelator, for it has been said that more blood has been shed around the hill of Megiddo than any other single spot on Earth. Located 10 miles southwest of Nazareth at the entrance to a pass across the Carmel mountain range, it stands on the main highway between Asia and Africa and in a key position between the Euphrates and the Nile rivers, thus providing a traditional meeting place of armies from the East and from the West. For thousands of years, the Valley of Mageddon, now known as the Jezreel Valley, had been the site where great battles had been waged and the fate of empires decided. Thothmes III, whose military strategies made Egypt a world empire, proclaimed the taking of Megiddo to be worth the conquering of a thousand cities. During World War I in 1918, the British general Allenby broke the power of the Turkish army at Megiddo.

Most scholars agree that the word “Armageddon” is a Greek corruption of the Hebrew Har-Megiddo, “the mound of Megiddo,” but they debate exactly when the designation of Armageddon was first used. The city of Megiddo was abandoned sometime during the Persian period (539 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.), and the small villages established to the south were known by other names. It could well have been that John the Revelator, writing in the Jewish apocalyptic tradition of a final conflict between the forces of light and darkness, was well aware of the bloody tradition of the hill of Megiddo and was inspired by the ruins of the city on its edge; but by the Middle Ages, theologians appeared to employ Armageddon as a spiritual concept without any conscious association with the Valley of Megiddo. Armageddon simply stood for the promised time when the returning Christ and his legions of angels would gather to defeat the assembled armies of darkness. During that same period, those church scholars who persisted in naming an actual geographical location for the final battle between good and evil theorized that it might occur at places in the Holy Land as widely separated as Mount Tabor, Mount Zion, Mount Carmel, or Mount Hermon.

In the fourteenth century, the Jewish geographer Estori Ha-Farchi suggested that the roadside village of Lejjun might be the location of the biblical Megiddo. Ha-Farchi pointed out that Lejjun was the Arabic form of Legio, the old Roman name for the place. In the early nineteenth century, American biblical scholar Edwin Robinson traveled to the area of Palestine that was held at that time by the Ottoman Empire and became convinced that Ha-Farchi was correct in his designation of the site as the biblical Megiddo. Later explorers and archaeologists determined that the ruins of the ancient city lay about a mile north of Lejjun at what had been renamed by the Ottoman government as the mound of Tell el-Mutasellim, “the hill of the governor.”

Today, tourists visit Tel Megiddo in great numbers, attracted by the site’s apocalyptic mystique and the old battleground’s significance as the place where the fate of ancient empires was decided with the might of sword and spear. The Israel National Parks Authority works in close coordination with the Megiddo Expedition and the Ename Center for Public Archaeology of Belgium in offering visitors a dramatic perspective of the history of Armageddon.

Delving Deeper

Bloomfield, Arthur E. Before the Last Battle—Armageddon. Minneapolis: Dimension Books, Bethany Fellowship, 1971.

Goetz, William R. Apocalypse Next. Camp Hill, Penn.: Horizon Books, 1996.

Shaw, Eva. Eve of Destruction: Prophecies, Theories and Preparations for the End of the World. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1995.

Silberman, Neil Asher, Israel Finkelstein, David Ussishkin, and Baruch Halpern. “Digging at Armageddon.” Archaeology, November/December 1999, pp. 32–39.

Unterman, Alan. Dictionary of Jewish Lore and Legend. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991.

Antique M2

Antique M1

TERRA AUSTRALIS (SOUTH LAND).

The concept of a great southern continent surrounding the South Pole derived from the ancient Greek view that the landmass of Europe and Asia and North Africa (their known world) must be balanced by a large continent in the southern hemisphere in order to provide the required equilibrium and so prevent the Earth hurtling into space. This theory was consolidated by Ptolemy in his treatise Geographica, a manuscript copy of which came to light in early-15th-century Italy. Subsequent maps, based on the Geographica, depicted the southern tip of Africa stretching as far as latitude 20º South where it joined a west-to-east coastline extending to the Asian continent, thus enclosing the Indian Ocean. Across the bottom of the map, behind this long coastline, was a vast continent known to contemporary cartographers as Terra Incognita (the unknown land).

The Portuguese maritime expansion at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, during which they pioneered a route round the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean in 1488, dispelled the Ptolemaic theory of a landlocked ocean, but the concept of a southern continent was to remain for almost 300 years. Speculation that it extended to the South Atlantic region was seemingly given substance by Amerigo Vespucci’s claim to have reached 52º South latitude and to have sighted an unknown land on his 1501–1502 voyage down the coast of South America. When Ferdinand Magellan penetrated even further south to pass through the strait that now bears his name and reported seeing campfires on a land to the south, which he appropriately named Tierra del Fuego, a vast southern continent became even more imprinted on the minds and maps of European cartographers.

Following Magellan’s voyage across the Pacific, the southern continent’s configuration was amended to an irregular and roughly circular landmass, surrounded by a continuous southern ocean, which appears on the 1531 map drawn by Oronce Finé, Nova Et Integra Universi Orbis Descriptio (A New and Complete Description of the World) on which the continent is designated “Terra Australis Recenter inventa sed nondum plene cognita” (The South Land recently discovered but not yet well known).

Gerard Mercator’s famous 1569 world map outlined Terra Australis’s coastline running continuously and diagonally from Tierra del Fuego to New Guinea. On the promontory closest to New Guinea is the legend “Haec continentem Australem nonnulli Magellanicum regionem ab eius inventore non cupant” (this southern continent some call Magellanica after its discoverer). The name Magellanica continued to appear on maps in tandem with Terra Australis until the 17th century when Terra Australis Incognita (The Unknown Southern Land) was favored by the leading Dutch cartographers.

Mercator’s continental coastline descended into a wide gulf (Gulf of Carpentaria?) containing two islands (Groote Eylandt?) whose western shore was formed by another promontory reaching almost to Java. This was the furthest extent of the imaginary continent in the Pacific region; the coastline now dropped away to the southwest until it completed the circle back to Tierra del Fuego. Abraham Ortelius’s 1571 atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the Lands of the World) included a map showing a southern continent similar to Mercator’s.

By the beginning of the 17th century, not only was Terra Australis believed to be a geographical certainty just waiting to be discovered but also, because of its location in the tropics, a vast, untapped source of gold, precious stones, grain, and spices. It was even linked to the distant biblical land of Ophir, which had sent its riches to King Solomon. Not for nothing were the islands discovered by Alvaro de Mendaña and Pedro Fernandez de Quirós named after the Old Testament king.

Brief details of Terra Australis occur in Cornelis Wytfliet’s Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum (Supplement to Ptolemy’s Descriptions) published in an English-language edition in Louvain in 1598: “The terra Australis is therefore the southernmost of all other lands, directly beneath the Antarctic circle; extending beyond the tropic of Capricorn to the West, it ends almost at the equator itself, and separated by a narrow strait lies on the East opposite to New Guinea, only known so far by a few shores because after one voyage and another that route has been given up and unless sailors are forced and driven by stress of winds it is seldom visited. The terra Australis begins at two or three degrees below the equator and it is said by some to be of such magnitude that if at any time it is fully discovered they think it will be the fifth part of the world.” Vague though this description might be, the passage possesses an intrinsic interest insofar as it mentions a narrow strait separating New Guinea from Terra Australis, eight years before Luis Vaez de Torres sailed through it, giving rise to further speculation regarding a prior discovery by the Portuguese.

Terra Australis continued to bewitch and bewilder cartographers until the latter half of the 18th century when men like Charles de Brosses and Alexander Dalrymple still urged its merits as a source of immense wealth, as a colony, and as a strategic base dominating the Indian and Pacific Ocean sea routes. For a time Abel Tasman’s discovery of New Zealand seemed to confirm Mercator’s northwest-tending Pacific shoreline but, eventually, the voyages of Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville and James Cook crisscrossed the ocean, finding deep waters where Terra Australis was to be found. Eventually this rich and mythical continent shrank into the reality that was Australia, but the one bore virtually no relation to the other.

EGYPTIANS DISCOVER AUSTRALIA

Have chisel will chip!

Before recoiling in absolute incredulity that, deep in antiquity, oceangoing mariners from ancient Egypt landed on Australian shores, the evidence unearthed by Michael Terry, the veteran explorer of the Australian interior, should be investigated.

In 1961, on a mining exploration west of Alice Springs, near the Western Australian border, he spotted a carving of a rhinoceros-type animal, with short stumpy legs, a long upswept tail, and a curved back and horn. A short distance away, further search “revealed a horizontal human figure about seven feet long on a cliff face. . . . It seemed to have some kind of headdress, or helmet. There was a proper outline of anatomy. Whereas Aborigines are content to represent legs and arms by straight lines, this figure possessed ankles, calves, thighs and so on” (“Did Ptolemy Know of Australia?” Walkabout, August 1965). Six examples of a “ram’s head” symbol were also found nearby. Both the “rhinoceros” and the horizontal figure were 30 feet above the present ground level, suggesting that the platform used by the carver had eroded away, testifying to their great age. Intrigued by this discovery, Terry embarked on further research into the whole question of pre-16th-century sightings and even landings on the southern continent. He reported that in 1891, Joseph Bradshaw found rock paintings in a cave near the Prince Regent River in Western Australia and quoted him as stating: “the most remarkable fact is that wherever a profile face in shown the features are of a most pronounced aquiline type, quite different from those of the natives we encountered. One might imagine himself viewing the painted walls of an ancient Egyptian temple.”

Terry also documents the finding of a 2,200-year-old coin of Pharaoh Ptolemy IV (221–204 B.C.) by Andy Henderson in 1910, discovered while he was sinking a line of post holes across an Aboriginal track. The coin was two feet below the surface of a gravel ridge in a rain forest, inland from Taylor’s Bay, 10 miles north of Cairns, a location that positively invites enticing speculation because the bay “is an obvious shelter from the south-east monsoon. I hazard that ancient mariners anchored there, and that some of the crew went ashore to explore the tableland, by way of the sole access, the Aboriginal walking-track. Possibly one carried a bag of coins which broke, or in some other way dropped the coin that Henderson retrieved” (“Australia’s Unwritten History.” Walkabout, August 1967).

Of course, it is always pleasant and diverting to indulge in flights of fancy but the impartial observer might conclude that Terry offers a sufficient core of hard facts to warrant further academic research.

CHINESE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA

A reproduction of a 1566 world map by Nicolas Desliens. With south orientated at the top, the top left corner has a large land mass that is claimed to be Australia, charted from Chinese voyages.

Speculation that Chinese seamen discovered a south land at the beginning of the 15th century is based on the large-scale military and trading expeditions into the Indian Ocean, commanded by Zheng-He, which extended to Sri Lanka in 1406; to Calicut, on the Malabar Coast, in 1407; to Hormuz and Aden 1413 through 1415; and to the east coast of Africa in 1417. These voyages are well documented in Chinese records and confirm that Chinese fleets possessed an oceangoing capacity. Significantly, the records relate that of 700 ships that sailed for Sri Lanka in 1406, only 620 reached port there. Some ships were lost in a storm, others are reported to have broken away from the fleet and sailed southward.

The discovery in Beijing in 1932 of an early map, dated 1426, including a representation of the south land, which bears little apparent resemblance to Australia but that was remarkably similar to European maps of this early period, suggests that the Chinese had certain knowledge of the configuration of Australia and the Pacific Ocean.

Early-14th-century Chinese coins and pottery, uncovered in Western Australia, Tasmania, and New South Wales, have also been cited as evidence of early Chinese contact with Australia, possibly by the ships that had been diverted south on the 1406 voyage and that had reached Western Australia, sailed to Tasmania, and then continued up the east coast of the continent. Additionally, the name of the township, Nimbin, in northern New South Wales, occurs in Chinese records. Opposing theories consider Nimbin to derive from either a legendary Aborigine hero or to translate from an Aborigine term denoting a little hairy man.

A figurine of a man clothed in a long flowing robe, sitting astride an antelope, found lodged in the roots of a banyan tree near Darwin in 1879, seemingly provided further evidence of an early Chinese presence in Australia. Almost 50 years later, this was identified as a medieval jade figure of Shou Lao, a Taoist divine. From its position when found, it was deemed unlikely that it had been dropped or planted in modern times and had, in fact, been deliberately placed there. Moreover, Taoism had always remained a distinctively Chinese religion confined to China. So, the argument ran, it was probably conveyed to Australia in a Chinese ship.

Alas, late-20th-century opinion was that the figurine belonged not to the medieval period but to the early 19th century and was thus discredited as supporting evidence of a Chinese discovery of Australia a good century before the earliest European contact. But that was not the end of the story. Principally based on the author’s detailed scrutiny and interpretation of early Portuguese maritime cartography, and also on his own knowledge and experience of navigation, Gavin Menzies’s 1421: The Year China Discovered the World (2002) threatens to revolutionize the study of overseas discovery and exploration.

Early in March 1421, so the story runs, a huge armada set off from Beijing. Comprising 250 gigantic, 9-masted junks, each divided into 16 internal watertight compartments, accompanied by 400 grain-transporting freighters and escorted by squadrons of fast and maneuverable warships, this unprecedentedly powerful armada had two main aims. First, to return the kings and envoys who had attended the inauguration of China’s new capital, The Walled City, in Beijing and, second, to create a vast maritime trading empire widening across the oceans of the world.

In recognition of his long service to China’s overseas trade, the supreme command of this imposing manifestation of Chinese maritime power was given to Zheng-He. At sea, anchored off Sumatra, his command was divided into four separate fleets. Two, under Hong Bao and Zhou Man, Menzies contends, discovered Australia.

Western China XVI-XVIII Centuries maps

The map of Chinese Kingdom from the «Drawing book of Siberia», 1699-1703

For more than three hundred years Russian travelers, merchants, diplomats, military agents and geographers created geographical descriptions and maps of the various regions of China. All their data was highly required by the government. As the Russian settlements moved far to the East from Ural in XVI – XVII centuries, government striven to extend the sphere of its influence to the Asia, promote Russian trade and oppose similar efforts from other European states. Several regions were subjects of the military interest, several – as potential trade and transport corridors. The pure academic interest to the nature, inhabitants, economy and natural resources was also great.

In Medieval time all maps of China came to Russia from Europe. First original and reliable data on China was received during the colonization of Siberia in XVI-XVII. It is considered that they came from Cossacks, sent by Ioann IV in 1567 «in order to find out new countries» (Popov, I.I., 1862). Only in the middle of the XVII century 9 diplomatic missions to the Jungarian khanate in Western Mongolia. were sent. The mission of Baikov started from Tobolsk to Pekin in 1654-1658 (Postnikov, 2001). Government sent expeditions to the Inner China to check rumors about gold sands, find short route

To India, collect strategic military information about Northern and Western China. Military reconnaissance data became of great interest especially after the Qinq Empire conquered the Eastern Turkestan and Jungaria in the mid-XVIII century. At this time historical sources do not contain exact and detailed information about places and geographical objects, but mainly unverified geographical narratives. One of the most interesting sources of the end of XVII is the geographical atlas of Siberia known as “Book of charts for Siberia (1699-1703)” by S.U. Remezov, studied in details by L.A. Goldenberg (1965, 1990). It is based on the medieval Siberian land cadastre.

Early maps and charts. 

This detailed and accurate data describing geography and demography of Siberia was not available for the European cartographers. The book includes several charts of Central Asia and China (as far as Tibet). The most interesting is the combination of the Russian data on Siberia unknown for the West and data on China borrowed from the Western sources. It shows the zone where Russian and Chinese cultures met. This atlas was considered so much valuable for border demarcation, that even in 1980s during the Soviet-Chinese boundary disputes the Soviet Foreign Ministry restricted access to it, and till now it still remains unpublished for this reason.