gobekli tepe - genesis of the gods (54 page)

THE PILLARS OF SETH

What intrigued me most about this tradition is that Seth apparently inscribed the secrets of Adam on pillars or wrote them down on stone tablets, called steles, which were then deposited somewhere in the ancient world, usually either on or within a mountain cave of some description. For instance, the Jewish writer Flavius Josephus (AD 37–100), in his book
The Antiquities of the Jews,
talks about Seth leaving behind children, who “inhabited the same country without dissensions, and in a happy condition.” They were “the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, and their order.” He goes on to write:

And that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam’s prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone: they inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind; and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them. Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day.
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Here the secrets of Adam are inscribed on pillars, one of brick, the other of stone, which are erected to preserve this knowledge beyond the coming cataclysm involving both a conflagration and deluge. So where exactly is Siriad (also written Seiris or Sirian), the named location of the inscribed pillars?

THE LAND OF SIRIAD

Because of the confusion between Seth, the son of Adam, and Seth, the brother of Osiris in Egyptian mythology, it has long been assumed that Siriad means Egypt. Here the inhabitants venerated the bright star Sirius, a similar sounding name to Siriad, while the pillars of Seth themselves were identified with the Great Pyramid and its neighbor, the Second Pyramid. This was a surmise assumed by the scholarly world following the publication in 1737 of a very popular translation of Josephus’s works by English theologian, historian, and mathematician William Whiston (1667–1752).
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Although Whiston did not believe that the pillars of Seth could have survived the conflagration and Flood, he did identify the land of Siriad as Egypt.
¹⁴

Yet this connection with Egypt is a misnomer, for even if Seth
did
somehow become associated with the Great Pyramid, we know that Adam’s son “lived,” as Pseudo-Methodius tells us, somewhere in Armenia, which, following the carving up of the Greek Empire after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, came under the control of the Syrian Seleucid Empire. Even with the dissolution of the empire in 190 BC, two Seleucid satraps, or governors, revolted and assumed control of Armenia Major and Armenia Minor (or Lesser Armenia), located west of the Euphrates River, and proclaimed themselves kings. Hellenic Greek practices and customs continued to thrive in Armenia and Northern Mesopotamia with all its Syrian influences. What is more, Edessa’s kings, who were mostly called Abgar or Manu, kept their links with Syriac culture and tradition, and retained Syrian as the main written language.

There is really nothing to link the pillars of Seth with Egypt, and all the indications are that Siriad is a straightforward reference to Syria. In fact, before William Whiston’s translation of Josephus’s works, earlier translators did not hesitate to link Siriad with Syria. D. Eduardi Bernardi, for instance, in a translation of Josephus published at Oxford in 1687, discusses whether Siriad means Syriac in origin or belonging to Syria.
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Elsewhere there is additional evidence that Seth was depositing the “secrets of Adam” closer to home. For instance, at the end of the Latin
Vita Adae et Evae,
the “Life of Adam and Eve,” following Adam’s death Eve instructs their children to write on tablets of stone and clay everything they have learned both from her and their father. During the coming cataclysm, that which is written on stone will survive the Flood, while that which is written on clay will survive the conflagration. The implication is that Seth then conceals the tablets in the same vicinity; in other words, somewhere close to the terrestrial Paradise.
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THE ROCK OF TRUTH

The
Apocalypse of Adam,
one of the Gnostic texts included in the Nag Hammadi library, contains the revelation that “Adam taught his son Seth in the seven hundredth year.” Here Adam tells Seth to record all of his and Eve’s experiences in the Garden of Paradise (see figure 37.1). This is to include the revelations conveyed to them by three angelic informants regarding the future adventures of the elect, that is, the seed of Seth, along with knowledge of the imminent cataclysm of fire and flood, and details of the coming savior, who is Seth himself. Collectively, this wisdom is described as the “hidden knowledge of Adam.” The reader is told also that a special revelation is to be written “on a high mountain, upon a rock of truth.”
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Figure 37.1.
Eve at the Fountain,
by English visionary painter John Martin (1789–1854), one of twenty illustrations done in mezzotint for the 1827 edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Even though the whereabouts of the land of Siriad, or Seiris, is nowhere given in the Gnostic gospels, Adam’s secret writings are repeatedly said to be hidden in a holy mountain. The work known as the
Allogenes,
for instance, proclaims: “Write down [the things that I Allogenes, a name of Seth] shall [tell] you and of which I shall remind you for the sake of those who will be worthy after you. And you will leave this book upon a mountain and you will adjure the guardian ‘Come, O Dreadful One.’”
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THE GOSPEL OF THE EGYPTIANS

Then in
The Gospel of the Egyptians,
also from the Nag Hammadi library, we read:

This is the book which the great Seth wrote, and placed in high mountains on which the sun has not risen, nor is it possible. And since the days of the prophets, and the apostles, and the preachers, the name has not at all risen upon their hearts, nor is it possible. And ear has not heard it.
    The great Seth wrote this book with letters in one hundred and thirty years. He placed it in the mountain that is called Charaxio, in order that, at the end of the times and the eras . . . it may come forth and reveal this incorruptible, holy race of the great savior, and those who dwell with them in love.
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These words are greatly enigmatic, for they speak of a book concealed “in” a mountain, the location of which, and even the name thereof, has not been uttered since the time of Seth. Yet then, as if pronounced as part of some magical spell, the name of the mountain is finally revealed:
Charaxio.
But where is Charaxio? Was this the true hiding place of the secrets of Adam?

THE SEARCH FOR CHARAXIO

Charaxio is said to be located “where the sun has not risen, nor is it possible,” a clear allusion to the Land of Darkness, the otherworldly realm in the extreme north associated with Alexander the Great’s quest to find the Fountain of Life and Gilgamesh’s search to find the plant of immortality. It was here too that the god El had his abode and the two hundred rebel Watchers made the decision to descend to the plains below and take mortal wives. As Belgium-based Near Eastern scholar Edward Lipinski determined, the Land of Darkness existed beyond the virtually impenetrable barrier created by the Eastern Taurus Mountains in Armenia Major.

Guy G. Stroumsa, a Gnostic scholar with the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Oxford University, England, has made a study of the mysterious mountain called Charaxio. He says that various attempts have been made to find its location. However, because Charaxio appears under this name only in
The Gospel of the Egyptians,
it has proved near impossible to trace. This said, the abbreviated form, Charax,
does
appear in antiquity.
²⁰
John Lemprière’s
Bibliotheca Classica: A Classical Dictionary,
published in 1788, reveals just one entry under this name, which is “a town in Armenia.”
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That Charaxio might have been situated in Armenia makes sense of the fact that it was said to exist where the sun doesn’t shine; that is, in the Land of Darkness, in the far north. Stroumsa himself took note of this, comparing Charaxio’s description with “the dark regions mentioned in 1
Enoch
78:3”
²²
; that is, the book of Enoch, which, as we have seen, can be linked with the Land of Darkness beyond the Tigris Tunnel. Realizing this, Stroumsa alludes to traditions regarding the prophet Enoch being handed books from his forefathers Adam and Seth, which he says were concealed on Mount Ararat in Armenia, so that they might remain safe during the coming deluge.
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MOUNT SIR

Pushing the matter still further, Stroumsa notes that “the link between Seiris (the land of the sons of Seth and the place of the Steles) and Mount Ararat” finds expression in another Gnostic text called
The Hypostatis of the Archons,
which is also found in the Nag Hammadi library. He continues: “Noah is asked by the demiurge (the creator of the physical world) to set the ark upon Mount Sir. . . . In some milieus, the mountain could have been given the name of the land in which the books were written Σειρ(ις)”
²⁴
; that is, Seir(is).

So Guy Stroumsa proposes that Charaxio, Seiris, and Mount Sir (Seir) are all one and the same or that they are conflated forms of an original mountain of Seth, which he identifies as Mount Ararat, since this would have been the safest place for something to have been hidden with foresight of the coming conflagration and deluge. This is, in my opinion, smart thinking, yet once again we are back to Mount Ararat sucking up every legend and tradition that comes along, simply because of the Christian fixation with its being the Place of Descent of Noah’s ark. Just one Gnostic work actually mentions Mount Ararat by name, this being the
Pistis Sophia
contained in the Askew Codex, a fifth-century parchment manuscript of Coptic origin now in the British Library. Yet it speaks only of Jesus in his spiritual form causing the patriarch Enoch to write the so-called Books of Yeu (or Jeu) when in Paradise, and then getting him to deposit them for safekeeping “in the rock Ararad,” where a heavenly ruler is appointed to watch over them during the coming flood.
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It does not mention Adam or Seth, and certainly makes no direct reference to Charaxio, Seiris, or Mount Sir.

So I looked again for any elucidation on the place-name Charaxio and found something very interesting indeed. I discovered that the Araxes River, which was also known by the abbreviated form of Arax, was itself once called the Charax,
²⁶
making sense of John Lemprière’s entry in his
Bibliotheca Classica
regarding a town called Charax in Armenia. Since we know that the Araxes takes its rise on Bingöl Mountain, the Abus Mons of antiquity, there has to be a good chance that it is also Charaxio, which with the
–io
suffix gives it the meaning “belonging to Charax”; that is, the Araxes River.

Charaxio’s identification with Bingöl Mountain is strengthened by the words of Stroumsa himself, who concludes for perfectly good reasons that Charaxio, Seiris, and Mount Sir are all synonymous with Bingöl’s main rival, Mount Ararat. Take Mount Ararat out of the picture and you are still left with his firm conviction that somewhere in Armenia Major is the real Charaxio. So was Bingöl Mountain really where Seth concealed the secrets of Adam on pillars or steles in order that they might be revealed in the final days? It is interesting that John Lemprière’s entry for Abus Mons reads “a mountain in Syria, where the Euphrates rises.”
²⁷
It confirms that in classical times this region of Armenia Major was still classed as Syria, the ancient land of Siriad or Seiris, where Josephus tells us that Seth concealed his pillars of knowledge and his descendants continued to live after this time. Yet what about Mount Sir—where was that located?

MONS VICTORIALIS

A tract entitled
Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum,
a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, which circulated among a Christian sect known as the Arians during the fifth century, alludes to a lost book or books of Seth. It states that once a year a group of twelve scholars would climb a mountain called Mons Victorialis, the “Victorious Mountain” or “Mountain of Victory,” on which were abundant “fountains” and beautiful trees, and here they would enter a cave and examine an original work written by Seth.
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