The Real History of the End of the World Read online

  A word on footnotes. As I have said in my earlier books, I believe in using them. I know that seeing lots of footnotes can be intimidating. You don’t have to read them. There will not be a test. But, if you want to check my facts or find out more about something, the information is there so you can find it. Also footnotes keep writers honest. It is all too tempting just to write down what you want to be true without being certain that it is. Several of the books that I looked at, both ones that stated a theory and ones that debunked it, have suffered from this problem. I don’t want to add to the confusion.

  Anyway, research is fun. Many of the things I found surprised me and fascinated me. I hope you agree.

  PART ONE:

  Before the Common Era

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nothing but Humankind and the Stars

  The idea that the world will end some day makes a lot of sense. People are born and die, plants grow and wither, floods and volcanoes change the landscape with terrifying suddenness. The people living thousands of years ago must have been brilliant to take the uncertainties of life and create systems that would make sense of why they were on this planet.

  With fire, flood, drought, predatory animals, and disease to contend with, it must have been a comfort to look at the stars and realize that they formed a constant pattern that could be used to signal the coming of spring and times to plant and harvest. It’s no wonder that early cultures like the Vedic Hindus, Maya, and Egyptians got a bit carried away, measuring the stars, sun, and moon from every conceivable angle throughout the years. The belief that stars could predict the future must have begun shortly after the patterns were recognized.

  Theories about the beginning of the world must have been an amusing speculation for an evening around the campfire or during those three-thousand-mile migrations our ancestors made as they spread across the world. Imagining the end seems to have come later.

  The earliest known stories of the end of the world come from the Indo-European tradition. Many of these cultures use the same image of the cyclical ages of the world, from a Golden Age, in which people are happy and live almost forever, down (in the case of Daniel, literally) to an Iron Age, the present, in which humanity has declined. In the Mediterranean world the influence of the Greek author Hesiod, writing in the eighth century B.C.E., was strong. He was decidedly pessimistic, feeling that his age would be the last. The signs of the end include a shortening of lifespan, until babies are born with gray hair.c Hesiod believed that humanity can stave off the end, though. All we need to do is live just and moral lives.d Hesiod’s ideas are part of an intertwined tradition of very similar stories from all over the Mesopotamian, Indian, and Egyptian worlds. The similarity among them indicates that they may have come from even older traditions that were passed on only orally.

  In this first section I look at some of the earliest end stories I could find. Often they are part of an epic cycle of stories of gods and heroes. For the most part, the end is not the main thrust of the story. To use a cliché, it’s the journey that matters. But in those stories are the seeds of our current obsession with the end of all things.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Akkadians, Babylonians, and Hittites, Oh My!

  Has some living soul escaped? No man

  was to survive the destruction!

  —Epic of Gilgamesh (the God Enlil on learning that Atrahasis

  and his household have escaped the Great Flood)

  The name of the original Noah started out as Atrahasis, which in later versions became Utanapishtim. One can see how a mouthful like that would be changed. In Hebrew, he is called Noach, meaning “rest” or “comfort.” But it is as Atrahasis, Utanapishtim, or sometimes Ziusuddu (which is almost as bad) that the leader of the sole survivors of the first destruction of the world appears. The fact that he has so many names indicates that there probably was a flood once and that similar stories were told of it in several traditions.e

  There are many versions of the story of the Great Flood in Mesopotamia. They almost certainly predate written history, which began in Babylonia (now Iraq and bits of adjoining countries) about 4000 B.C.E. Evidence of a complex society there has been dated by archaeologists to around 5000 B.C.E. The area was inhabited by two different groups, which joined eventually to become the Babylonians. In the north were the Akkadians, who were Semitic. In the south were the Sumerians. Their language has been deciphered, but it doesn’t seem to be related to any other known language, so where they came from is uncertain. However, their invention of cuneiform writing was revolutionary and acclaimed from the start, especially by merchants who needed to keep track of inventory. Cuneiform was adapted for other languages and used for nearly two thousand years.f The language was lost well before the Common Era and deciphered again only in the nineteenth century. It came as a major shock to linguists and an even bigger one to theologians when one translation turned out to be a flood story that paralleled Noah’s, down to the measuring of the Ark, but which predated the Bible by two thousand years.g

  The story of the flood is first found in the “Myth of Atrahasis,” which was discovered in its entirety by Iraqi archaeologists when they unearthed a library at Ninevah in 1986. It is around 1800 years older than the earliest known rendition of the Epic of Gilgamesh in which it was incorporated.h In it, the reason for the flood is not the wickedness of humankind but the noise made by so many people carrying on with their lives. According to the Atrahasis, there were once two levels of divinity. The lesser gods had to do all the work for the higher gods. So some lesser god had the bright idea of inventing people to take over the hard jobs. But the gods didn’t take into account how quickly people procreate. The god Enlil, who was one of the upper echelon, couldn’t get to sleep for all the nighttime activity. He decided that creating a humanity eager to reproduce had been a mistake. When plague and famine didn’t work in slowing them down, he sent the flood.i

  This theme is also found in Sumerian poems of lamentation. One grieves over the devastation Enlil’s storm caused:. . . no tears could change the baleful storm’s nature,

  The reaping storm was gathering in the country

  The storm was ravaging floodlike the city

  The storm that annihilates countries stunned the city

  The Flood Tablet. Neo-Assyrian, 7th BCE. From the palace library of King Ashurbanipal (r.669-631 BCE), Nineveh, northern Iraq. 15.24 x 13.33 cm. Inv.:K.3375. © The Trustees of the British Museum / Art Resource, New York

  The storm ordered by Enlil in hate, the storm gnawing away at the country

  Covered Ur like a cloth, veiled in like a linen sheet.j

  Gilgamesh is the oldest known epic saga of a hero’s journey. It is a story of battles, friendship, and a man’s search for the meaning of life. There are several versions, all found on pieces of clay that are rarely in one piece (Figure 1). It is estimated that about 40 percent of the Gilgamesh story is still missing. However, the section about the flood is almost an interlude in the narrative because it was already a folk tale and was used in the epic to emphasize Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality.

  In it Utanapishtim (Noah) tells Gilgamesh how he and his wife became immortal. When Utanapishtim was warned of the coming inundation, he took his family, retainers, and the people who built his ark into it with him, thereby establishing a good base for repopulating the earth. For this forethought, the gods allowed him to live forever.

  There is also an element of bargaining in the story. When the gods realized that they had done away with all their workers, they promised Utanapishtim and humanity that they would never destroy them by a flood again. But they insisted on some changes. People’s lives would have to be shorter. Clans would fight rather than care for each other and live in peace. There would be more dangers from nature: snakes, scorpions, lions, and wolves, for instance. The gods weren’t going to put up with overpopulation again just because they had sworn not to destroy the world.k

  The only exceptions to these conditions were Utanapishtim a
nd his wife. After the flood, a repentant Enlil boarded the ship and touched their foreheads, saying, “Hitherto Utanapishtim has been but human, Henceforth Utanapishtim and his wife shall be like unto us gods.”l Gilgamesh, hearing the story, realized that he wasn’t likely to be granted immortality in that way and resumed his quest.

  So, if one asked a Sumerian or Akkadian about the end of the world, they would probably say that it had already happened. There was a Golden Age, then the flood, and that was it.m While they were intensely interested in the future and studied astrology in the hope of predicting it, the prophecies were focused on concrete things. Would the king be a just ruler? Would the crops fail? One group of Akkadian prophecies cycles through a series of kings. Under some there will be abundance, under others “revolution calamity and chaos.”n

  But, whatever happens to Akkadians, Sumerians, or Babylonions, the world doesn’t end. They have the gods’ word on that.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ancient Egypt

  Keeping the World in Balance

  It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands

  Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,

  And times and things, as in the vision seem

  Keeping along it their eternal stands.

  —James Henry Leigh Hunt, “The Nile”

  There are two ways of looking at the Egyptian view of the end of the world. Either it must not have been of much importance, for there are no descriptions of the end, or it must have been of vital concern because the rites performed by the kings and priests were all that kept the Egyptian world from total collapse.

  “The state religion was primarily established to secure, through ritual offerings, the continuation of the universe, the prosperity of Egypt, and the gods’ acceptance of the king.”o This seems to have been the reason for the temples of the kings in every part of Egypt from at least 3000 B.C.E. At some point in prehistory it was recognized that the king was the only one who could actively interact with the gods. He took on aspects of the hero god Horus, and so the symbols of Horus, the sun and the falcon, became part of the regalia of kingship.p

  To the Egyptians the world was originally balanced and in harmony but when the god Seth killed his brother Osiris, the balance, which the Egyptians called ma’at, was disrupted. In order for the universe to remain together, a just king, one who “caused Right to exist,” had to constantly tend to the gods. It was essential that this king and his representatives, the priests, offer up the Right to the sun god, Ra, every day to prevent the disintegration of the universe.q “Because of the continual vulnerability of order to fall into chaos, Egyptians needed to conceive of creation not as a single past event but as a series of ‘first times,’ of sacred regener ative moments.”r

  For the Egyptians, the gods were not independent of humanity; they couldn’t regenerate alone. They had to be fed and washed and given wine or beer each day. The gods seem to have preferred concrete evidence of the fidelity of their people rather than emotional commitment. However, there is a line in the “Instructions to Mekerre,” written about 2000 B.C.E., in which the god says, “More acceptable is the character of the straightforward one than the ox of the evil-doer.”s While this indicates that it’s better to come empty-handed than with a wicked heart, the instructions continue, “Act for God, that he may do the like for you, with offerings for replenishing the altars and with carving.”t

  These instructions were first written after an impious king had ordered the sack of a cemetery in which gods were buried. The king responsible for the desecration, Akhtoy, composed them as a remembrance to his son of all that Ra has given them and of all that they owe Ra in return.u

  The continuation of the universe was a burden that likely affected average people as well as rulers and priests. It would also be easy, I think, for people to interpret disasters of any sort to the failure of the leaders to perform their duties properly. The pressure of constant observance of ritual could also encourage the cult of the king because, ultimately, it was he and not his subordinate priests who dealt with heaven. Putting all the stress on the king allowed people to get on with daily life. The cult was “part of a cosmic pact in which the king offered up to heaven the fruits of the earth, in exchange for channeling down to earth the blessings of heaven.”v “Offerings were more than gift giving; they were reciprocal creation.”w

  Many religions have a clear or cloaked system of giving something to the gods or God in return for prosperity, health, or victory in battle. But if the Egyptians failed, the gods themselves might die. The ancient Mayans also believed that the only way to keep doom away was to make offerings to the gods; they were much more dramatic about it and seemed to fear that the world might be destroyed but never the gods. At least the Egyptians were able to maintain cosmic order with bread and beer instead of a constant flow of blood.

  The only other religion I know of that put the onus of continued existence on humankind was that of the Zoroastrians, whose god created them in order to swing the balance in favor of goodness against the dark god.

  The cult of each Egyptian king generally lasted only as long as the king lived. Although there seems to have been some belief in the power of dead rulers to intercede on behalf of their descendants, the one with the real power, the one who continued the necessary rituals, was the living king.

  There are some ancient warning and prophecy poems in Egyptian literature that promise the eventual coming of a new king who will restore ma’at to a world out of balance. The Admonitions of Ipuwer from about 1300 B.C.E. is typical of these.x

  The preservation of the universe is not the same as the preservation of individual souls. The Egyptians were extremely concerned about the solitary journey after death, as the Book of the Dead demonstrates. The book gives step-by-step directions for passing the tests of the gods so the soul can ascend into a paradisiacal afterlife. There are numerous versions of this book, and other guides, such as The Book of Two Ways, and texts from various sources found written on coffins of people from all levels of society. The care taken to preserve the body with grave goods also speaks to a rich tradition of a full afterlife.

  It seems like a contradiction that a people so seemingly obsessed with the next world have no tales of the end times for the earth. But there appears to be no Apocalypse, no collective final judgment. Perhaps the ancient Egyptians had faith that their descendants would continue to keep the world stable. So far, they have been right.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thus Spoke Zoroaster

  The Ancient Persian Cosmos

  This, too, it says, that this earth becometh an iceless, slopeless

  plain; even the mountain whose summit is the support of the

  Kinvad Bridge, they press down, and it will not exist.

  —Bundahis, c. XXX, 33

  Zoroaster was a mysterious prophet who appeared in what is now northern Iran in the sixth century B.C.E. He may have been an exile from the area around Tehran. In a civilization that worshipped many gods, all of whom needed to be propitiated, Zoroaster preached a stark religion in which there was only one decision: Be on the side of good or the side of evil. In his books, the Gatha, written in an early form of Persian, the nature of the struggle is explained.

  In the beginning, according to the books, there was nothing in the universe but the god Ohrmazd, all-good and all-knowing. Then he slowly became aware that there was also another god, Ahiram, who was Ohrmazd’s evil opposite.y Ohrmazd realized that he needed to destroy Ahiram but could not do it in the unchanging timeless universe in which they existed. So Ohrmazd created seven divine helpers to fight Ahiram. He also created the earth, like an island in the ocean. “On it stood one bull, one plant and a single human.”z

  Ahiram saw this and, in response, created his own set of demons to aid him in battling Ohrmazd.

  At first Ahiram seemed to be winning the battle. He polluted the water; brought darkness to the earth; and destroyed the first plant, bull, and man. But from their seed, all ot
her living things arose, and since Ohrmazd could create nothing evil, his creations were good and began to fight back against Ahiram’s evil.aa

  But Ohrmazd knew that the struggle would never be over if the good and evil were always evenly matched so the eternal souls of human beings, the fravashi, were invited to enter the world and were given moral choice. Thus good and evil became mixed, and humans must choose between them. The Zoroastrian texts indicate that good can’t triumph without the active participation of humanity.ab

  This is the foundation of the Zoroastrian religion, begun three thousand years ago and still in existence today. Many of the beliefs that are basic to the teachings of Zoroaster infiltrated later religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and affected the development of nontraditional forms of Buddhism and Taoism in China.

  The god Ohrmazd was not imagined as a human form, like the deities of the Greeks, Hindus, and Egyptians. He was a spirit that could not be represented by an image, but he was sometimes compared to a flame, which led to the idea among outside groups that the Zoroastrians were fire worshipers.ac They did see the sun as something worthy of reverence and even worship but did not, apparently, consider it a god. It was more like an avatar of Ohrmazd.