The Tribe of Dan
The Tribe of Dan were one of the 12 (or 13, depending on how you count)
tribes of Israel. Their banner displayed the symbol of a serpent
and they were a seafaring
tribe as adept and adventurous as the Phoenicians (and have been
accused of being part of what are referred to as the "Sea
Peoples"). It has been alleged (by the British-Israelism
movement,
internet movie 'Ring of Power', Brit-Am organization in Israel and
others) that Dan left their
mark wherever they went, resulting in place names from Denmark to
Britain and in the names of the four major rivers flowing into the
Black
Sea - the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper and Don.
To appreciate this alleged connection one has to consider that in
ancient Hebrew vowels were absent, hence names containing Din, Den, Dun
or Don such as Scan-DiN-avia and Sar-DoN-ia may be attributed to
Dan. Other exmples might include Mace-DoN-ia, E-DiN-burough,
DuN-kirk, Aber-DeeN, DoN-egal, Lon-DoN, the list of
potential "Dan" names goes on.
Additionally, Cornwall, the peninsula which juts out from southwestern
England, was once called Danmoni, which means literally the mines of
Dan. Danmoni was once the world's most plentiful source of tin, a
metal used in the smelting of bronze, and the Phoenicians traded in
this tin from Danmoni and the
Bronze made from it during the Bronze age. Also
interesting is the fact that Penzance, a town at the tip of Cornwall
was once
notorious for being a nest of pirates, a fact immortalized in the
musical 'the Pirates of Penzance'. (The Phoenician cities of
Sidon and Tyre were also once centers of
piracy, the
relevance of which will become apparent later as the closeness of the
Phoenicians and Tribe of Dan both geographically and culturally become
clear.)
We should be cautious however in jumping to the conclusion that the
biblical Tribe of
Dan is responsible for all of the "Dan" names found in Britain.
One of
the early invaders of Ireland described in Irish mythology were the
Tuatha dé Danann (who
arrived in Ireland around 1800 B.C. as per the Annals of the Four
Masters). It is sometimes assumed that the Tuatha
dé Danann and Tribe of Dan were one and the same, however Tuatha
dé Danann translates as the peoples of the goddess Danu and they
were said to be descended from Nemed, whose father was Agnoman king of
Scythia. This would make the Tuatha dé Danann
Scythians, not Israelites.
There were another "Dan" peoples in antiquity, the Danaans of Greece,
descended from Danaus of Greek mythology. Here it gets
interesting, for there are some correllations between the Greek
Danaus and the biblical Dan.
Danaus was an Egyptian, the brother of Aegyptus and the cousin of
Cadmus and Phoenix. Cadmus according to legend travelled from
Egypt to first
Phoenicia and then to Greece where he slayed the Ares dragon and
founded Thebes, and it is for his brother Phoenix that Phoenicia is
named. The biblical Dan could of course be said to be an
Egyptian as well, for he was one of the sons of Jacob.
Dan and Naphtali, two patriarchs of the 12 Tribes of Israel were full
brothers, the sons of Jacob by the handmaiden Bilhah. Danau
on the other hand was the son of an Egyptian king, Belus (or
Bela). Remembering that Hebrew was written
without vowels, could Bilhah somehow represent Belus/Bela? If one
allows for a certain amount of allegory in these stories, it's not
crazy at all to see a possible connection here. A Danaus/Dan
connection
seems even more likely in light of the
following account by the 4th century B.C. Greek historian Hecateus of
Abdera (as quoted by Diodorus Siculus):
“The most
distinguished of the expelled foreigners followed Danaus and Cadmus
from Egypt; but the greater number were led by Moses into Judæa.”
The "expelled foreigners" of
the above are in reference to the Hyksos. The Hyksos invaded
Egypt around the 11th-12th dynasties and rose to prominance, ruling
Egypt in the 15th dynasty.
Manetho the Egyptian historian described the Hyksos invasion:
Tutimaeus[0].
In his reign, for what cause I know not, a blast
of God smote us; and unexpectedly, from the regions of the East,
invaders of obscure race marched in confidence of victory against our
land. By main force they easily overpowered the rulers of the
land,
they then burned our cities ruthlessly, razed to the ground the temples
of the gods, and treated all the natives with a cruel hostility,
massacring some and leading into slavery the wives and children of
others... Aegyptiaca., frag.
42, 1.75-79.2
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/manetho_hyksos.htm
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The Hyksos had Canaanite names and are widely regarded to have been
foreign invaders from the northern Levant and/or northwestern
Mesopotamia, the very area I have been talking about with regard to the
ancient roots of the Vikings and Huns. They were expelled from
Egypt at the
beginning of the 18th dynasty by Ahmose I. The period of the
Hyksos in Egypt extended roughly from 2000 to 1500 B.C., and their
expulsion correlates roughly with the Exodus described in the
bible. The quote attributed to Hecateus above ("the expelled foreigners followed Danaus
and Cadmus
from Egypt; but the greater number were led by Moses into Judæa”)
adds further weight to the notion that the
expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt and the migration of the anscestors
of the Israelites from Egypt to Palestine were one and the same
event.
I mentioned in the previous post that Mt. Hazzi (biblical Mt.
Zephon,
modern Mt. Aqraa) near Ugarit was a major center of Ba'al worship in
the
northern Levant in antiquity. Henceforth I'll just refer to it as
Mt. Hazzi, which is what the people there of the period called it.
There was another big center of pagan Ba'al worship in the Levant of
the period, farther south in
Phoenicia, Mt. Hermon. This is where the Phoenicians and the
pagan Ba'al worshippers of the northern Israelite tribes went
to make sacrifices to the gods. Mt. Hermon went by another name
as
well, Mt. Sion - that's Sion
with an 'S'.
I want to smack my forehead sometimes when people freely interchange
Sion with Zion. The Priory of Sion was the topic of Brown's 'the
Da
Vinci Code' as well as a hoax perpetrated by Pierre Plantard in the
60's. Plantard's Les Dossier
which he offered as evidence of the Priory's existence turned out to be
fake. That doesn't necessarily mean the Prior of Sion never
existed, who knows. I don't care really, what amuses me is when
people declare their ignorance while supposedly debunking the existance
of, in this case a secretive organization. Associates for
Biblical Research say this about the Priory:
| REAL HISTORY:
When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem, the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount
Zion (my bolding) was
founded in 1099 in Jerusalem by Godefroy
de Bouillon, who
later became King of Jerusalem after the First Crusade. The Abbey (and
not “Priory”) continued to exist until 1291, when the advancing Muslims
destroyed it. The few surviving monks fled to Sicily, where their
community was extinguished in the 14th century... |
The writer of the above assumes that the 'Sion' in 'Priory of Sion'
refers to Mt. Zion near
Jerusalem. It doesn't. (Hello!???) It refers to Mt. Sion, Mt. Hermon.
|
In early Mesopotamian myths and in the (non-canonical) Book of Enoch
Mt.
Hermon is the place where angels fell to earth, subsequently mating
with
female mortals and giving rise to demi-gods, the Nephilim as described
in the Books of Enoch and Genesis, or the Watchers or Igigi of
Babylonian/Sumerian mythology. Mt. Hermon was the gateway,
as it were, between heaven and earth, and it became the center of Ba'al
worship in Phoenicia.
At the southwestern foot of Mt. Hermon lies the ancient city of
Dan. When the Israelites arrived in Palestine the Tribe of Dan
was given a small parcel of land farther south, or none at all as
is told in Judges. Whichever the case, they invaded the city of
Laish at the northernmost edge of Israel, killed or kicked out its
inhabitants and renamed the city Dan. I suspect they chose the
spot to be close to Mt. Hermon with like-thinking pagans, not the least
of whom were the
Tribe of
Naphtali whose territory Laish/Dan bordered.
Note -
I
should say I have never been accused of being
religious. Nor do I consider the bible or any religious
texts for that matter to be much more than a collection of myths.
But mythological story telling is how people wrote in those
days. Like the Greek myths, I highly suspect that the bible
is a record
of real events - but told in a special way ... both highly dramatized
for effect (people living hundreds of years, Noah packing 2 of
everything in an Ark, or in the case of the Greek myths sea-monsters
and goat-people roaming the earth), and written in code - so as to
maintain a
record of events while hiding privileged information from those not
familiar with the codes. All of the myth writers practiced this
technique, biblical and Grecian both, and once one factors this in (and
aquires a knack for decoding) both the bible and the Greek myths prove
to be valuable sources of information, IMO. (Coincidentally the
repeated reading of ancient texts searching for deeper
truths or hidden meanings is practiced in
Kaballah.)
A close association between the tribes of Naphtali and Dan has been
noted in many articles and books. Yair Davidy contends
that following the expulsion of the northern tribes from Israel the
tribes of Dan and Naphtali paired up, migrating at some point to
Scythia with many of them ultimately continuing on to
Scandinavia. Davidy's writings are a part of the literature
promoted by Brit-Am and I take his
conclusions
with a grain of salt ...
but he's a pretty smart guy and some of what he espouses seems
well-founded. For
example, the notion that the northern tribes found their way to Scythia
is both logical and
backed up by good evidence. During the centuries following the
supposed fall of Israel
northern Mesopotamia was the scene of endless conflict between
Assyrians, Persians, Parthians and Medes. The obvious choice for
anyone wanting to get clear of these power struggles would have been to
move north to Scythia, through the Caucasus. Some of the oldest
Jewish communities in the world are in the Caucasus, lending support
to the idea that refugees from northern Israel (who could possibly have
numbered in the
millions by biblical accounts) did just that. One does not
necessarily even
have to consider the land route between Israel and Scythia, the Tribe
of Dan were mariners and were highly mobile ... when the Assyrians
invaded northern Israel many Danites could have just taken off in
ships, and there is some indication that the tribes of Israel and
Scythia
enjoyed close ties at this time - there was an important city in
northern Israel (currently Beit She'an) which was called Scythopolis
beginning in the Hellenistic period.
Maybe the most obvious clue that some of the refugees of northern
Israel wound up in Scythia is the mere fact that not long after Scythia
became the Khazarian Empire in the 8th century, the kingdom converted
to
Judaism.
Some critics of Zionism latch on to the sudden conversion of Khazaria
to Judaism and the fact that the
overwhelming majority of Jews in Europe descend from Khazar immigrants
(figures as high as 90% are often quoted and may well be accurate) and
extrapolate from there, proclaiming that in light of their Khazarian
origins the Jews of Europe have no valid blood-claim to the land of
Israel. I'm no supporter of Zionism, and if blood-ancestry
were a valid argument for kicking the present inhabitants out of a
particular region there would be no end to the chaos - the Spanish
could legitimately take over Georgia (both once called Iberia).
That's crazy, as is a Jewish claim to the land of the
Palestinians.
But the contention that the Jews of Europe have no blood
relation to the Israelites of biblical times because they descend from
Khazarians is, well, bunk ... there were probably lots of Israelite
descendants living in Khazaria.
There's a twist however. The word Judaism derives from Judah -
the Tribe of Judah occupied the southernmost part of Israel -
actually, their lands weren't even in "Israel", they were in
"Judah". The tribes farther north were more pagan, those in the far north like
the tribes of Dan and Naphtali being decidedly so. (The whole
reason
cited in the bible for the destruction of Israel was the refusal of the
northern tribes to give up their pagan ways.) Judging from
various
passages in the bible Dan is
clearly the black sheep among the 12 tribes, noted for their having
"remained in ships" during conflict with the Canaanites. I have
even read that this passage is in reference to a pact of
neutrality between the Tribe of Dan and the Phoenicians/Canaanites who
previously had looked the other way while Dan took over
Laish.
A close bond between the tribes of Dan and Naphtali, their shared pagan
leanings, and a distinction between they and other tribes
is reflected I believe in the representation of Dan and Naphtali in the
bible as full brothers, the sons of the
handmaiden Bilhah. While it may be just happenstance, it's worth
noting that the name Naphtali resembles Nephilim, the offspring of the
fallen
angels in the Book of Enoch. As far as Dan goes, one of the
fallen angels was named
Daniel. Then you have the symbol of the serpent displayed on
the banner of the Tribe of Dan, as well as the following biblical
passage; “Dan shall be a
serpent by the way, an
adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall
fall backward” (Gen. 49:17). This to me is an indication
that the leaders of Dan understood and chose to advertise their
dragon roots.
Are there any "serpent-like" attributes connected with Naphtali?
I looked
up the origins of the name and here's what I found -
"The name Naphtali
is commonly understood to come from patal meaning to twist. Derivatives
are cord, thread; (petaltol 1857b), tortuous (Deut 32:5); (naptulim
1857c), wrestlings (Gen 30:8).
Some other
occurrences of the verb-plus-nun are: Job 5:13 ...the advice of he
cunning (; NAS); and Pr 8:8 ...crooked or perverted (; NAS)."
http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Naphtali.html
Then there's this about Belus/Bela, the father of the Egyptian Danau:
Diodorus
Siculus (1.27.28) claims that Belus founded a colony on the
river Euphrates and appointed the priests whom the Bablyonians call
Chaldeans...
|
(!!!) - Chaldea was near Sumer, known for its astonomers and
magi-priests
(magicians, "wise-men").
It was likely the birthplace of Kabbalah mysticism. Continuing
from above ...
This would make "Dan" the offspring of Ba'al, metaphorically speaking.
One day with nothing better to do I was glancing over a Sumerian
Language FAQ that I had stumbled on to.
http://www.sumerian.org/sumerfaq.htm
This guy is pretty smart, I mean, he speaks Sumerian for heaven's
sakes. Anyway, there was a question,
Q: "Why can't
I find the
word Beru? Can the word ever signify a "day" or a "double-day"?
A: "That is an Akkadian word. Look in the Sumerian Lexicon under
danna in the DAN section. Beru is the Akkadian equivalent, translated
'double-hour; league'." |
I was stunned when I read that. Not because of the meaning for
the
words
given, but because here an expert on Sumerian language, with no hidden
agenda, states in a FAQ that "danna" in Sumerian equates with
"Beru" in Akkadian. I live in Japan where "R"'s and "L"'s are
interchangeable ... when I see "beru", I read "Belu" or
"Bel".
A connection between "Dan" and
"Ba'al" is not unexpected. Dan in the bible is often said
to mean 'judge', however there are other Hebrew words which more
usually convey the meaning of "to judge". Dan is more correctly
translated "to govern", "to rule". Considering that Ba'al
was the primary god in the pantheons of the pagan cultures of the
northern Levant, that Danaus of Greek myth was the son of the Egyptian
Belus while
the biblical Dan was the son of the handmaiden Bilhah, and given
that
variations of "Dan" pop up as the names of gods and goddesses in the
mythologies of Ireland (Danu)
Wales (Don) and in India as
the Hindu
primordial goddess Dānu, I
suspect that the word 'Dan' holds special significance in ancient pagan
traditions (regarding which I am no expert), going far deeper than
simply being the name of one of the sons of Jacob.
So, were Denmark, or the Danube, Don, Dnieper and Dniester rivers
flowing into the Black Sea named for the Tribe of Dan?
Maybe. How about Scottish and Irish place names such as Aberdeen,
Edinburough, Dingle or Donegal? Probably not, I would guess that
if any "Dan" tribe were the source of those names it would be the
Tuatha dé Danann. Is there an
underlying connection between the Tuatha dé Danann and the Tribe
of Dan? Yes, I suspect so, but I
think you'd have
to go back to ancient Mesopotamia before the biblical era to find
it.
More to our purposes, what does it all mean?
This is where it
gets tricky, and I want to be careful that I am not
misunderstood.
First, I think I have shown, at least as far as one can determine the
cultural roots of a peoples going back thousands of years, the
likelihood
that the Vikings, Magyars/Huns and Israelites all three trace back to
the same general area, the northern Levant and northwestern Mesopotamia
where Ba'al worship was centered around Mt. Herman and Mt.
Hazzi. If you consider when the Xiongnu arrived in Mongolia
(circa 1200 B.C.) after a long trek, when the Hyksos appeared in
Egypt
(2000 B.C.?), and when the proto-Vikings had to have arrived in
Anatolia and/or Thrace (centuries before the
Trojan War dated circa 1300 B.C., possibly after sharing a Hyksos
heritage with the Israelites in Egypt!?), the ancestors of these
peoples all appear to have lived
in the same general area
at roughly the same time, and various clues support such a
conclusion. They may have even all been part of one
homogenous culture.
These three groups met again close to 3000 years later in Europe, and
the effects were world-changing. The interlocking of the hiers of
these three cultures literally wound up redefining the world power
structure (following a long power struggle with the Roman Catholic
Church). Did they all know each other when they met? I
would
think that a ridiculous assertion. Yet, the Jewish Kabars and
Hunnic
Magyars formed a close alliance in Khazaria, and the Arpad rulers
of the Magyar-Huns intermarried with royal Norse families almost as
soon as they arrived in Hungary. Seriously, it boggles my mind
sometimes - but there must be something to this.
I didn't start from a knowlege that the Israelites, Huns and Vikings
shared common roots - I worked backwards, from a knowlege that
Khazarian (Hun/Israelite) and Norman (Viking/Frank) blood-lines were
conspicuous in a variety of ways following their convergence in Europe
in the late 9th century. When I figured out that they all shared
this same heritage - not just Sumerian dragon-culture but north Levant
Ba'al culture, I about fell off my chair.
Is this "Ba'al" heritage expressed in average folks like you or me,
whether we be Jewish or Christian or have Vikings or Franks or Huns in
our family trees? No, no, 4000 years is a long time - apart
from vestiges like our calling the 2nd day of the week "Tiw's day"
after the Viking god of war, whatever
blood-connections some of us may have to pagan Mesopotamia have long
been
purged from our culture. The same is surely true for the
average Ashkanazi who immigrated from Khazaria to eastern Europe - who followed the teachings not of the polytheistic
paganism of the northern Levant, but of Judaism, the initial
revolutionary departure from that pagan culture.
The question is, can the same be said to be true for the ruling elite
of
the Vikings and Franks and their Norman descendents, was the same true
for the ruling elite of the Huns and the Magyars, the Kabbalists and Sabbateans of Khazaria?
... And if not, how does one explain this???
|
"Cremation
of Care", Bohemian Grove
|
Sources and further reading:
Kharsag Research Project; Extracts from the Kharsag Epics
http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/kharsagresearch_6.html
Tracing Dan
By Walter Baucum
http://www.originofnations.org/books,%20papers/dan/Tracing%20Dan%20-%20Introduction.htm
The Lost Tribe of Dan
by Janet Moser
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_tribeofdan.htm |
