1.7 The crushing of the head of the serpent

The Old Testament expectation of a Messiah has its roots in Genesis 3:15, where the Serpent is addressed by God: "… he (the Messiah) will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." Christians believe that this promise by God was fulfilled by Jesus Christ when he defeated death by rising from the grave.

Given the background sketched above, it should be very clear why the Serpent was hated by the natives. Much like Africans yearned to evict whites from Africa during its colonization, the Arabs desired to rid themselves of the Serpents and their offspring (the 'Sons of God'). That the Serpent was in the end defeated by someone is suggested by several reliefs showing a serpent being slain by the cat goddess Bast / Bastet (Figure 61), the serpent in some cases shown coiled around the Tree of Life (Figure 62). Figure 62b actually shows two serpents being killed, the blue serpent obviously a 'sea-serpent', and the other a serpent (on land) being cut to pieces.



Figure 61. Bastet slays the Serpent [Hagen and Hagen, Egypt - People, Gods, Pharaohs]

Figure 62. Bastet slaying the Serpent coiled around the Tree of Life [Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt]

Figure 62b. Sea-serpent being killed, (land) serpent being cut to pieces [Luberto, The Great Mysteries of Archaeology - The Pyramids].

Could the native Arabs somehow have been portrayed as a cat goddess? This would be very unlikely.  As discussed above, there was however one major confrontation between a woman and the Serpents, the war between the 'gods' of Enlil and the Serpents (Giants, Titans, Watchers) of Enki (Ra). The woman who instigated and led the attack on 'Babylon' was Inanna, known as Isis in Egypt. Could she be linked to Bastet?

Indeed. The cat goddess Bastet is generally believed to be an incarnation of Isis, or 'the personification of the soul of Isis', who protected her father Ra against the serpent Apophis. This matches the story of Inanna / Isis, who had in fact been married to two Serpents, Osiris and Seth, the latter as Marduk also known as the Great Serpent. Ra was indeed her father, albeit her father-in-law. The belief that she protected him against the Serpent must be based on a misconstrued memory of Inanna 'defending' her biological father Enlil against the Serpents. She was actually the one who instigated the greatest war of ancient times.

The cat may have become her symbol for a very simple reason - she loved cats! Bastet is often associated with lions, suggesting that she had some tame lions as pets or in cages for display. One may wonder why the Egyptians would then not have recorded that the Serpent was in fact slain by Isis. The reason for this may be either that before Isis married Osiris, she was known as the Cat Lady from the neighbouring Enlilites, or that she developed a love of felines during her many years in Egypt, earning her that nickname.

A totally different origin of her name may be traced back to the clash between Inanna and Set. The Hebrew word be'â' (#1156) means to seek or ask, and sêt (#7847) means revolter, but was also the name of Seth (Set).  Put together the words yield Be'â' sêt, or Beaset, which evolved into Baset or Bast, meaning '(She-who)-sought-Set'.  The Hebrew word 'at (#328) means gently, softly or secret(ly). This would render Baset-at (Bastet), (She-who)-secretly-sought-Set. It would also imply that the indecision of Isis whether to marry Seth or Osiris was the favourite topic of debate among the Egyptians, and it was probably speculated that although she married Osiris in the end, she secretly desired Seth. Further affirmation of their suspicion would have been the very fact that she married Seth during Osiris' long absence.

From evidence presented earlier, it seems that although Seth was defeated, he, or at least many of the Serpent people, was allowed to stay on in Egypt. They were however expelled from the Tigris valley by the 'gods', whose elite no doubt quickly settled there themselves. This gave rise to the biblical story of the Adam and Eve (the 'first men' with the 'first women') being expelled from the Garden of Eden. The Serpents were no longer in control, and much like the current situation of blacks and whites in South Africa, they were expelled from high ranking positions and forced to become labourers. Many of the Serpents opted to leave and were 'scattered across the earth', resettling in other uncivilized parts of the world, including central and southern Africa.

With the Serpents still present in Egypt, they and later their offspring as well, appear to have continued with the practise of taking wives the natives. This assumption is potentially supported by the fact that one of the meanings of the Arabic word sarra is 'to take to wife a concubine-slave'. This may indeed be the origin of the name of the Sahara region, which steadily over thousands of years turned to desert as the climate of the earth adapted to the after-effects of the impact of the comet. The hatred of the native Arab men only grew with time, giving rise to the hope that one day the head of the Serpent would be crushed.

Although Genesis 3:15 suggests a future event, numerous other texts in the Bible actually suggest the opposite, namely that the slaying of the serpent had already taken place. Most of these, without doubt, refer to the defeat of the Serpents by the Enlilites, but as is shown below, some of these texts may also refer to the ultimate victory the Arabs had over the Sons of the Serpents thousands of years later.

An excellent summary of Old Testament texts referring to the killing of the Serpent can be found in Alan Alford's When The Gods Came Down:

Which interpretation fits the Hebrew legend? Consider the following quotation from the book of Job, which places Rahab in the context of the creation of the underworld, Heaven and Earth [Job 26:6-13]:

Sheol [the underworld] is naked before God [Elohim],
and the Place of destruction lieth uncovered.
He stretcheth out the North [Heaven] over the Empty Place,
and suspendeth the Earth upon nothing.
He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds,
and the cloud bursteth not under their weight.
He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it...

The pillars of Heaven quake, and are astonished at his rebuke.
He divideth the, Sea with his power, and by his wisdom he cutteth Rahab into pieces.
By his breath, the Heavens are cleared, His Hand pierceth the fleeing serpent.

The fact that the monster Rahab appears here in the midst of a creation story is significant, as is the vivid description of the dismemberment of Rahab - a motif which was, of course, central to the legends of the celestial battle in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Note, too, the description of Rahab as a 'fleeing serpent', which was somehow causing an obstruction in the Heavens. The idea that Rahab was a mundane creature like a crocodile is therefore absurd. Scholars indeed admit that Rahab was somehow responsible for a blockage in the Sky, which needed to be cleared by the breath of Yahweh, but they have not been able to embrace the uncomfortable thought that Rahab might actually have been a Sky-god. And yet this is what the book of Job says, quite unambiguously.

Further evidence concerning Rahab is found in Psalm 74, where he appears as a sea-monster called Leviathan:

(O God) thou didst divide the Sea by thy strength;
thou didst break the heads of the dragons in the waters.
Thou didst break the heads of Leviathan into pieces,
and gavest him to be nourishment to the people inhabiting the wilderness (NLT: "gave him as food to the creatures of the desert")?

Note that this monster Leviathan had multiple 'heads', like a Greek Titan, and could thus not have been a mundane creature such as a crocodile. As for 'the people inhabiting the wilderness', could they have been the mythical dwellers in the underworld? Such would certainly have been the destination of Leviathan's broken-up body-parts according to the pagan way of thinking.
    
Consider also another passage from the book of Job [Job 41:14-21], where Leviathan appears with only one head, but is nevertheless described in awesome terms:

Who can open the doors of its face? Its teeth are terrible round about...
Its snortings throw out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn.
Burning lamps go forth from its mouth, and sparks of fire leap out.
Smoke goes forth from its nostrils as from a boiling pot or cauldron.
Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames go forth from its mouth ...

Surely this Leviathan is identical to the serpent-like god Satan, who 'fell like lightning from Heaven' according to the New Testament gospel of Luke [Luke 10:18]. Hence the book of Job [Job 41:34] describes Leviathan as 'king over all the children of pride'. The book of Revelations [Rev. 12:7-9] indeed seems to allude to Rahab when it identifies Satan as 'that ancient serpent':

And there was war in Heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.
And the dragon and his angels fought back, but they did not prevail, and they lost their place in Heaven.
And the great dragon was cast down - that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan,
who deceived the whole world. He was cast down into the Earth,
and his angels were cast down with him.

Where is this casting down of Satan from Heaven in the books of the Old Testament? The answer must surely be in the various accounts of the battle between Yahweh and Rahab (alias Leviathan). Why, then, was this battle not included in the cosmogony of Genesis l? The obvious answer is that the violent and physical nature of this battle would have totally upset the Hebrew vision of a supernatural creation. In view of the pagan legends which linked the battle of the gods to the creation, it seems very likely that Yahweh's battle has indeed been occulted from the cosmogony in Genesis 1.1."

Alford did not notice another biblical reference to the Leviathan, which links it directly to the serpent [Is 27:1]:

"In that day the Lord will punish with his sword .. Leviathan, the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea."

Digressing for a moment, the following interesting description of Leviathan and Behemoth is given in the Book of Enoch [LX. Book of Noah - a Fragment]:

"And on that day were two monsters parted, a female monster named Leviathan, to dwell in the abysses of the ocean over fountains of the waters. But the male is named Behemoth, who occupied with his breast a waste wilderness named Dûidâin."

The translation seems to be forced, as if the translator could not determine the exact meaning of the text. Nevertheless, the reference to male and female creatures being parted seems to be yet another record of the predominantly male survivors of Atlantis who had to leave their women behind (see Section 1.2, Lilith), while the term 'a waste wilderness' seems to refer to the destruction of Atlantis (see Piri Reis map, Section 1.1.9 above). It very much seems that the translator of the Book of Enoch did not really know how to interpret the original text, but given to context presented above, a better translation may be derived.

The word Dûidâin may have its origins in the words dûwd (Strong's #1731, cauldron, seething pot) and 'ayin (#369, not to exist, be nothing, not), rendering the-boiling-place-that-no-longer-exists. As this refers to a waste(d) land, it would match the description of Tierra del Fuego as the 'land of fire', i.e. it was destroyed by fire or became a 'fire pot'. Incidentally, the rather peculiar names of Leviathan (#3882, lîvyâthân, a wreathed animal, i.e. a serpent, crocodile or some other large sea-monster) and Behemoth (#930, behêmôwth, hippopotamus or possibly extinct dinosaur) may also be considered as concatenations of shorter Hebrew words. Leviathan could be considered to mean the-wreathed-sea-serpent (i.e. the plumed serpent, a well-known title of Quetzalcoatl?) from livyâh (#3880, a wreath or something attached) and tan (#8565, sea-serpent). Likewise Behemoth may mean Oh-the-death-of-the-wealthy, from bîy (#994, Oh, Alas), hêm (#1991, abundance, wealth) and môwth (#4193, death). This would match the reputed wealth of the Atlanteans, of who the vast majority died in the catastrophe. Incidentally, Osiris was originally depicted as wearing the atef crown, an elaborate plumed headdress. Quetzalcoatl evidently also wore a plumed headdress or wreath of some kind and if these two were in fact one and the same person as argued by Hancock, it would suggest that Osiris was fond of wearing something feathery on his shoulders.



Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent [Levy, The Atlas of Atlantis and Other Lost Civilizations]


The Egyptian gods (the Serpents) were known to have come from the sea (called Nu or Nun by the Egyptians), very much in accordance with Noah and his ark. The Hebrew word nûwn (#5125) means to re-sprout (propagating by shoots), or figuratively to be perpetual.  Nun represented the primordial watery chaos and everything began ('re-sprouted') out of Nun.

The Old Testament texts quoted above confirm the Egyptian accounts of Bastet slaying the Serpent. The creatures Rahab, Leviathan, sea-monster and fire-breathing dragon all refer to the 'serpents' of Egypt, down to the epic battle of the gods. The Serpent being cut into pieces seem to confirm that the people of Seth were scattered.  

Upper and Lower Egypt were united in about 3000 BCE by Menes, the first of the dynastic pharaohs. Egyptian annals recorded the before him Egypt was ruled by semi-divine being called the Followers of Horus. These could only have been the offspring of those Serpents who remained in Egypt after there leaders were overthrown. Regardless of whether they continued to take wives and concubines from the native Arabs, they most definitely would have continued to dominate the natives and rule the area. This is suggested by the biblical story of Cain and Abel. Cain was the 'tiller of the lands', in other words a farmer who understood agriculture. Abel was a shepherd, implying that he either lived off the animals of the area (i.e. a nomadic hunter), or that he took care of the sheep for the Serpents. 'God' was displeased at Cain, who 'killed' his brother Abel. 'God' then chased him off to become a vagabond and a fugitive on earth. Cain complained that the punishment would be too severe to bear, upon which 'God' forbade them to be killed and 'marked' Cain for that reason.

This Cain and Abel story matches the expulsion of the Serpents from the Garden of Eden. Cain was also known to have built cities, like the Serpents, and the Serpents taught the natives about agriculture. The background to the story can be better understood by considering the broader meaning of the names and some other words recorded in the Bible.

The Hebrew version of the name Cain is Qayin (#7014), which means lance or spear. The name Abel in Hebrew is Hebel (#1893), which is the same as habêl (#1892), meaning emptiness or vanity. The biblical story relates that Cain rose up (qûwm, #6965, arise, raise, establish) in the field (sâdeh, #7704, field, often 'where wild animals roam') where he killed Abel. Keeping in mind that these myths were orally passed on over thousands of years, it is very likely that the ancient people used names to tell stories and that in this case the story had become muddled. The terms 'killed with a spear in the (wild open) field' suggests hunting, and given that the word for rise can also mean establish, this part of the story would simply mean The-hunter-who-established-vanity. This would be an apt description of Seth as Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter. Nimrod was also builder of cities. The Arabs must have adapted the story to reflect the manner in which the Serpents dominated them.

The 'mark' put on Cain remains a mystery, but the mystery may simply be a matter of misinterpretation of the Hebrew word 'ôwth (#226). The word can be interpreted either literally as a visible mark or sign, of figuratively as an omen or a warning. The name Cain may have been used as a reference to Seth specifically or to the Serpents in general. No doubt they would have been disarmed and vulnerable to attack outside their fortresses. The Enlilites ('God') must have issued a warning to all and sundry that they should be allowed to live free of harassment, evidently inland where the Sahara desert is today. Remnants of the Serpents therefore remained in the area, along with the Enlilites who now controlled Egypt.

As the Sahara turned to desert, the living conditions became unbearable and the fight for land and survival became more intense. The 'followers of Horus' still occupied Lower Egypt, the fertile Nile valley and surrounding area, but with the arrival of Menes they were finally driven from the area and resettled in Palestine.  Josephus likewise seems to hint at the serpents having been driven from Egypt.  In Whiston's Dissertation II on Josephus, he states that:

"Some say they [the Jews] were a people that were very numerous in Egypt, under the reign of Isis; and that the Egyptians got free from that burden, by sending them into the adjacent countries..."

The victorious Isis / Inanna most likely became the ruler of the people of who she once was the beloved queen, hence the clemency shown to the Serpents after their defeat.

The unification of Lower and Upper Egypt is believed to be depicted on the so-called Narmer palette, shown in Figure 63.



Figure 63. Narmer palette, reverse sides, believed to depict the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt [Jordan, Riddles of the Sphinx]

On the left-hand panel king Narmer, who could be Menes, is shown smiting the head of the enemy, while the right-hand panel shows beheaded enemy corpses as well as the capture of two 'beasts' with serpentine necks. This may indirectly refer to the Serpent having been captured and his head smitten. Menes, or Narmer, would then have fulfilled the desire expressed in Genesis 3:14.

One may wonder as to why the true history of the Hebrews had been lost, why they had forgotten who they were, that they were once the rulers of the world. The answer is simple. They did return to Egypt for a relatively short spell of 100 to 200 years as the Hyksos rulers of the Second Intermediate Period. One of their kings actually called himself Apophis, the Serpent. The name of these rulers is generally interpreted to mean 'foreign rulers', but as a combination of the Hebrew words hûwk (#1946, came or brought again) and sûws (#7797, cheerful, rejoice, joy), it may mean Joy Returned. This would have been an apt description of the Hebrews who as the exiled Serpents returned to the country which they had built up and lived in for literally thousands of years.

The Hyksos were however overpowered and enslaved, and during their 200 year long enslavement by the Egyptians all traces of their earlier history were eventually lost. The Egyptians would have understood the power that their true history and sense of belonging would instil among the slaves, so they would have suppressed such beliefs altogether. When they escaped this enslavement, Moses, along with his Egyptian priests that formed the Levite tribe, enforced Egyptian beliefs about the creation and their origins upon them.