Contents I. IN SEARCH OF PARADISE, 1 II. THE IMMORTAL ANCESTORS, 18 III. THE PHARAOH'S JOURNEY TO THE AFTERLIFE, 35 IV. THE STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN, 47 V. THE GODS WHO CAME TO PLANET EARTH, 68 VI. IN THE DAYS BEFORE THE DELUGE, 97 VII. GILGAMESH: THE KING WHO REFUSED TO DIE, 118 VIII. RIDERS OF THE CLOUDS, 144 IX. THE LANDINC PLACE 168 X. TILMUN: LAND OF THE ROCKETSHIPS, 189 XI. THE ELUSIVE MOUNT, 208 XII. THE PYRAMIDS OF GODS AND KINGS, 228 XIII. FORCING THE PHARAOH'S NAME, 253 XIV. THE GAZE OF THE SPHINX, 283 SOURCES 309 INDEX 315 I In Search of Paradise There was a time—our ancient scriptures tell us—when Immortality was within the grasp of Mankind. A golden age it was, when Man lived with his Creator in the Garden of Eden—Man tending the wonderful orchard, God taking strolls in the afternoon breeze. "And the Lord God caused to grow from the ground every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for eating; and the Tree of Life was in the orchard, and the Tree of Knowing good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was parted and became four principal streams: the name of the first is Pishon . . . and of the second Gihon . . . and of the third Tigris . . . and the fourth river is the Euphrates." Of the fruit of every tree were Adam and Eve permitted to eat—except of the fruit of the Tree of Knowing. But once they did (tempted by the Serpent)—the Lord God grew concerned over the matter of Immortality: Then did the Lord Yahweh say: "Behold, the Adam has become as one of us to know good and evil; And now might he not put forth his hand and partake also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever?" And the Lord Yahweh expelled the Adam from the Garden of Eden . . . And He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the Flaming Sword which revolveth, to guard the way to the Tree of Life. So was Man cast out of the very place where eternal life was within his grasp. But though barred from it, he has never ceased to remember it, to yearn for it, and to try to reach it. Ever since that expulsion from Paradise, heroes have gone to the ends of Earth in search of Immortality; a selected few were given a glimpse of it; and simple folk claimed to have chanced upon it. Throughout the ages, the 1 2 The Stairway to Heaven Search for Paradise was the realm of the individual; but earlier in this millennium, it was launched as the national enterprise of mighty kingdoms. The New World was discovered—so have we been led to believe—when explorers went seeking a new, maritime route to India and her wealth. True—but not the whole truth: for what Ferdinand and Isabel, king and queen of Spain, had desired most to find was the Fountain of Eternal Youth: a magical fountain whose waters rejuvenate the old and keep one young forever, for it springs from a well in Paradise. No sooner had Columbus and his men set foot in what they all thought were the islands off India (the "West Indies"), than they combined the exploration of the new lands with a search for the legendary Fountain whose waters "made old men young again." Captured "Indians" were questioned, even tortured, by the Spaniards, so that they would reveal the secret location of the Fountain. One who excelled in such investigations was Ponce de Leon, a profes- sional soldier and adventurer, who rose through the ranks to become governor of the part of the island of Hispaniola now called Haiti, and of Puerto Rico. In 1511, he witnessed the interrogation of some captured Indians, Describing their island, they spoke of its pearls and other riches. They also extolled the marvelous virtues of its waters. A spring there is, they said, of which an islander "grievously oppressed with old age" had drunk. As a result, he "brought home manly strength and has practiced all manly performances, having taken a wife again and begotten children." Listening with mounting excitement, Ponce de Leon—himself an aging man—was convinced that the Indians were describing the miraculous Fountain of the rejuvenating waters. Their postscript, that the old man who drank of the waters regained his manly strength, could resume practicing "all manly performances," and even took again a young wife who bore him children—was the most conclusive aspect of their tale. For in the court of Spain, as throughout Europe, there hung numerous paintings by the greatest painters, and whenever they depicted love scenes or sexual allegories, they included in the scene a fountain. Perhaps the most famous of such paintings, Titian's Love Sacred and Love Profane, was created at about the time the Spaniards were on their quest in the Indies. As everyone well knew, the Fountain in the paintings hinted at the ultimate lovemaking; the Fountain whose waters make possible "all manly performances" through Eternal Youth. Ponce de Leon's report to King Ferdinand is reflected in the records kept by the official court historian, Peter Martyr de Angleria. As stated in his Decade de Orbe Novo [Decades of the New World], the Indians who had come from the islands of Lucayos or the Bahamas, had revealed that "there is an island ... in which there is a perennial spring of running water of such marvelous virtue, that the waters thereof being drunk, perhaps with some diet, make old men young again." Many researches, such as Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth: History of a Geographical Myth by Leonardo In Search of Paradise 3 Olschki, have established that "the Fountain of Youth was the most popular and characteristic expression of the emotions and expectations which agitated the conquerors of the New World." Undoubtedly, Ferdinand the king of Spain was one of those so agitated, so expectant for the definitive news. So, when word came from Ponce de Leon, Ferdinand lost little time. He at once granted Ponce de Leon a Patent of Discovery (dated February 23, 1512), authorizing an expedition from the island of Hispaniola northward. The admiralty was ordered to assist Ponce de Leon and make available to him the best ships and seamen, so that he might discover without delay the island of "Beininy" (Bimini). The king made one condition explicit: "that after having reached the island and learned what is in it, you shall send me a report of it." In March 1513, Ponce de Leon set out northward, to look for the island of Bimini. The public excuse for the expedition was a search for "gold and other metals"; the true aim was to find the Fountain of Eternal Youth. This the seamen soon learnt as they came upon not one island but hundreds of islands in the Bahamas. Anchoring at island after island, the landing parties were instructed to search not for gold but for some unusual fountain. The waters of each stream were tasted and drunk—but with no evident effects On Easter Sunday—Pasca de Flares by its Spanish name—a long coastline was sighted. Ponce de Leon called the "island" Florida. Sailing along the coast and landing again and again, he and his men searched the jungled forests and drank the waters of endless springs. But none seemed to work the expected miracle. The mission's failure appears to have hardly dampened the conviction that the Fountain was undoubtedly there: it only had to be discovered. More Indians were questioned. Some seemed unusually young for the old ages claimed by them. Others repeated legends that confirmed the existence of the Fountain. One such legend (as recounted in Creation Myths of Primitive America by J. Curtin) relates that when Olelbis, "He Who Sits Above," was about to create Mankind, he sent two emissaries to Earth to construct a ladder which would connect Earth and Heaven. Halfway up the ladder, they were to set up a resting place, with a pool of pure drinking waters. At the summit, they were to create two springs: one for drinking and the other for bathing. When a man or woman grows old, said Olelbis, let him or her climb up to this summit, and drink and bathe; whereupon his youth shall be restored. The conviction that the Fountain existed somewhere on the islands was so strong that in 1514—the year after Ponce de Leon's unfruitful mission— Peter Martyr (in his Second Decade) informed Pope Leo X as follows: At a distance of 325 leagues from Hispaniola, they tell, there is an island called Boyuca, alias Ananeo, which—according to those who 4 The Stairway to Heaven explored its interior—has such an extraordinary fountain that drinking of its waters rejuvenates the old. And let Your Holiness not think this to be said lightly or rashly; for they have spread word of this as the truth throughout the court, so formally that the whole people, not few of whom are from among those whom wisdom or fortune distinguished from the common people, hold it to be true. Ponce de Leon, undaunted, concluded after some additional research that what he had to look for was a spring in conjunction with a river, the two possibly connected by a hidden underground tunnel. If the Fountain was on an island, was its source a river in Florida? In 1521, the Spanish Crown sent Ponce de Leon on a renewed search, this time focusing on Florida. There can be no doubt regarding the true purpose of his mission: writing only a few decades later, the Spanish historian Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas stated thus in his Historia General de las Indias: "He (Ponce de Leon) went seeking that Sacred Fountain, so renowned among the Indians, as well as the river whose waters rejuvenated the aged." He was intent on finding the spring of Bimini and the river in Florida, of which the Indians of Cuba and Hispaniola "affirmed that old persons bathing themselves in them became young again." Instead of Eternal Youth, Ponce de Leon found death by an Indian arrow. And although the individual search for a potion or lotion that can postpone the Last Day may never end, the organized search, under a royal decree, did come to an end. Was the search futile to begin with? Were Ferdinand and Isabel and Ponce de Leon, and the men who sailed and died in search of the Fountain, all fools childishly believing in some primitive fairy tales? Not the way they saw it. The Holy Scriptures, pagan beliefs, and the documented tales of great travelers, all combined to affirm that there was indeed a place whose waters (or fruits' nectars) could bestow Immortality by keeping one forever young. There were still current olden tales—left from the times when the Celts were in the peninsula—of a secret place, a secret fountain, a secret fruit or herb whose finder shall be redeemed of death. There was the goddess Idunn, who lived by a sacred brook and who kept magical apples in her coffer. When the gods grew old, they would come to her to eat of the apples, whereupon they turned young again. Indeed, "Idunn" meant "Again Young"; and the apples that she guarded were called the "Elixir of the Gods." Was this an echo of the legend of Herakles (Hercules) and his twelve In Search of Paradise 5 labors? A priestess of the god Apollo, predicting his travails in an oracle, had also assured him: "When this shall be done, thou shalt become one of the Immortals." To achieve this, the last but one labor was to seize and bring back from the Hesperides the divine golden apples. The Hes- perides—"Daughters of the Evening Land"—resided at the Ends of Earth. Have not the Greeks, and then the Romans, left behind them tales of mortals immortalized? The god Apollo anointed the body of Sarpedon, so that he lived the life of several generations of men. The goddess Aphrodite granted to Phaon a magic potion; anointing himself with it, he turned into a beautiful youth "who wakened love in the hearts of all the women of Lesbos." And the child Demophon, anointed with ambrosia by the goddess Demeter, would surely have become immortal were not his mother— ignorant of Demeter's identity—to snatch him away from the goddess. There was the tale of Tantalus, who had become immortal by eating at the gods' table and stealing their nectar and ambrosia. But having killed his son to serve his flesh as food for the gods, he was punished by being banished to a land of luscious fruits and waters—eternally out of his reach. (The god Hermes restored the butchered son to life.) On the other hand, Odysseus, offered Immortality by the nymph Calypso if only he would stay with her forever, forsook Immortality for a chance to return to his home and wife. And was not there the tale of Glaukos, a mortal, an ordinary fisherman, who became a sea-god? One day he observed that a fish that he had caught, coming in touch with a herb, came back to life and leaped back into the water. Taking the herb into his mouth, Glaukos jumped into the water at the exact same spot; whereupon the sea-gods Okeanos and Tethys admitted him to their circle and transformed him into a deity. The year 1492, in which Columbus set sail from Spain, was also the year in which the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula ended with the surrender of the Moors at Granada. Throughout the nearly eight centuries of Muslim and Christian contention over the peninsula, the interaction of the two cultures was immense; and the tale in the Koran (the Muslim holy book) of the Fish and the Fountain of Life was known to Moor and Catholic alike. The fact that the tale was almost identical to the Greek legend of Glaukos the fisherman, was taken as confirmation of its authenticity. It was one of the reasons for seeking the legendary Fountain in India—the land which Columbus had set out to reach, and which he thought he had reached. The segment in the Koran which contains the tale is the eighteenth Sura. It relates the exploration of various mysteries by Moses, the biblical hero of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt. While Moses was being groomed for his new calling as a Messenger of God, he was to be instructed in such knowledge as he still lacked by a mysterious "Servant of God." Accom- panied by only one attendant, Moses was to go find this enigmatic teacher 6 The Stairway to Heaven with the aid of a single clue: he was to take with him a dried fish; the place where the fish would jump and disappear would be the place where he would meet the teacher. After much searching in vain, the attendant of Moses suggested that they stop and give up the search. But Moses persisted, saying that he would not give up until they reached "the junction of the two streams." Unnoticed by them, it was there that the miracle happened: But when they reached the Junction, they forgot about their fish, which took its course through the stream, as in a tunnel. After journeying further, Moses said to his attendant: "Bring us our early meal." But the attendant replied that the fish was gone: "When we betook ourselves to the rock, sawest thou what had happened? I did indeed forget about the fish— Satan made me forget to tell you about it: It took its course through the stream, in a marvelous way. And Moses said: "That was what we were seeking after." The tale in the Koran (Fig. 1) of the dried fish that came to life and swam back to the sea through a tunnel, went beyond the parallel Greek tale by relating itself not to a simple fisherman, but to the venerated Moses. Also, it presented the incident not as a chance discovery, but as an occurrence premediated by the Lord, who knew of the location of the Waters of Life— waters that could be recognized through the medium of the resurrection of a dead fish. As devout Christians, the king and queen of Spain must have accepted literally the vision described in the Book of Revelation, "of a pure river of Water of Life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God. ... In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the Tree of Life, with twelve manner of fruit." They must have believed in the Book's promises: "I will give unto him that is athirst of the Fountain of the Water of Life"—"I will give to eat of the Tree of Life which is the midst of the Paradise of God." And could they not be aware of the words of the biblical Psalmist: Thou givest them to drink of thy Stream of Eternities; For with thee is the Fountain of Life. 60. 'Behold, Moses said To his attendant, " I will not Give up until I reach The junction of the two Seas or (until) I spend Years and years in travel." 61. But when they reached The Junction, they forgot (About) their Fish, which took Its course through the sea (Straight) as in a tunnel. 62. When they had passed on (Some distance), Moses said To his attendant: " Bring us Our early meal; truly We have suffered much fatigue At this (stage of) our journey." 63. He replied : " Sawest thou (What happened) when we Betook ourselves to the rock ? I did indeed forget (About) the Fish : none but Satan made me forget To tell (you) about it: It took its course through The sea in a marvellous way! " 64. Moses said : " That was what We were seeking after: " So they went back On their footsteps, following (The path they had come). Fig. 1 There could thus be no doubt, as attested by the holiest Scriptures, that the Fountain of Life, or the Stream of Eternity, did exist, the only problem was—where, and how to find it. The eighteenth Sura of the Koran seemed to offer some important clues. It goes on to relate the three paradoxes of life that Moses was shown once he located the Servant of God. Then the same section of the Koran continues to describe three other episodes: first, about a visit to a land where the Sun sets; then to a land where the Sun rises—that is, in the east; and finally to a land beyond the second land, where the mythical people of 8 The Stairway to Heaven Gog and Magog (the biblical contenders at the End of Days) were causing untold mischief on Earth. To put an end to this trouble, the hero of the tale, here named Du-al'karnain ("Possessor of the Two Horns"), filled up the pass between two steep mountains with blocks of iron and poured over them molten lead, creating such an awesome barrier that even the mighty Gog and Magog were powerless to scale it. Separated, the two could cause no more hardship on Earth. The word Karnain, in Arabic as in Hebrew, means both Double Horns and Double Rays. The three additional episodes, following immediately after the tale of the Mysteries of Moses, thus appear to retain as their hero Moses, who could well have been nicknamed Du-al'karnain because his face "was with rays"—radiated—after he had come down from Mount Sinai, where he had met the Lord face to face. Yet popular medieval beliefs attributed the epithet and the journeys to the three lands to Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king who in the fourth century B.C. conquered most of the ancient world, reaching as far as India. This popular belief, interchanging Moses and Alexander, stemmed from traditions concerning the conquests and adventures of Alexander the Great. These included not only the feat in the land of Gog and Magog, but also an identical episode of a dry, dead fish that came back to life when Alexander and his cook had found the Fountain of Life! The reports concerning Alexander's adventures that were current in Europe and the Near East in medieval times were based upon the supposed writings of the Greek historian Callisthenes of Olynthus. He was appointed by Alexander to record the exploits, triumphs and adventures of his Asiastic expedition; but he died in prison, having offended Alexander, and his writings have mysteriously perished. Centuries later, however, there began to circulate in Europe a Latin text purporting to be a translation of the lost original writings of Callisthenes. Scholars speak of this text as "pseudo- Callisthenes." For many centuries it was believed that the many translations of the Exploits of Alexander that were current in Europe and the Middle East, all stemmed from this Latin pseudo-Callisthenes. But it was later discovered that other, parallel versions existed in many languages—including Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Armenian and Ethiopic—as well as at least three versions in Greek. The various versions, some tracing their origins to Alexandria of the second century B.C., differ here and there; but by and large, their overwhelming similarities do indicate a common source— perhaps the writings of Callisthenes after all, or—as is sometimes claimed— copies of Alexander's letters to his mother Olympias and to his teacher Aristotle. The miraculous adventures with which we are concerned began after Alexander completed the conquest of Egypt. From the texts it is neither clear in which direction Alexander set his course, nor is it certain that the episodes are arranged in an accurate chronological or geographical order.