Cydonia: Chapter Three: Cydonian Foundations of Rome

Archaeological evidence has shown that the Acropolis in Athens was built upon much earlier megalithic structures; cyclopean walls with slabs measuring 20 feet across are found exposed to the west of the [557] Parthenon. Plato's Critias described a war between the previous inhabitants of Athens and the Atlanteans 9,000 years before his time: Let me begin by observing first of all, that nine thousand was the sum of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken place between those who dwelt outside the Pillars of Heracles and all who dwelt within them; this war I am going to describe. Of the combatants on the one side, the city of Athens was reported to have been the leader and to have fought out the war; the combatants on the other side were commanded by the kings of Atlantis, which, as was saying, was an island greater in extent than Libya and Asia, and when afterwards sunk by an earthquake, became an [558] impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean. Plato's Critias described an earlier flood, pre-dating the deluge of Deucalion, which affected the Acropolis: In the first place the Acropolis was not as now. For the fact is that a single night of excessive rain washed away the earth and laid bare the rock; at the same time there were earthquakes, and then occurred the extraordinary inundation, which was the third before the great destruction of Deucalion. But in primitive times the hill of the Acropolis extended to the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side, and the Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite side to the Pnyx, and was all [559] well covered with soil, and level at the top, except in one or two places. Legend attributes the cyclopean walls of ancient Athens to the Pelasgians; Cyclopean architecture throughout the Mediterranean was the hallmark of the mystery schools and population centers of these ancestors of the Phoenicians--ancient Sidonians. The ruins of the Samothracian city Palaeopoli, first investigated in 1863 by the French consul M. Champoiseau, contained the temple of the Cabiri and other [560] edifices with distinctive Cyclopean architecture. Among the cities whose legends preserve a Pelasgian origin were Thebes, Athens, and Delphi: all these cities have famous founding city-gods and heroes. According to Greek myth, Troy was a settlement of Samothracians, as seen in a Papyri Fragment (c. 3 C A.D.): rd Electra… . was subject to the dark-clouded Son of Cronos and bare Dardanus… . and Eetion… . who once greatly loved rich-haired Demeter. And cloud-gathering Zeus was wroth and smote him, Eetion, and laid him low with a flaming thunderbolt, because he sought to lay hands upon rich- haired Demeter. But Dardanus came to the coast of the mainland--from him Erichthonius and thereafter Tros [Troy] were sprung, and Ilus, and Assaracus, and godlike Ganymede--when he had left holy Samothrace in his many- [561] benched ship. The ancient mystery schools--the repositories of knowledge from the earlier aions--originated on the Mediterranean islands Samothrace, Eleusis and Crete (7 C B.C.--4 C A.D. ff). Though there is considerable speculation about this religion, accounts exist from ancient historians who claim to have witnessed rites, and to have petitioned to be initiated into the mysteries themselves. The mystery schools preserved the knowledge of the ancient world, as Plato described, through those ancient cycles of cataclysms by fire and water that affected the advancement of civilization. Although that secret knowledge was never revealed to the common citizen, clues were left in the writings of initiates, philosophers and poets. Among those who underwent the rites of the mystery school, according to historical record, were Aristotle, Sophocles, Plato, Cicero and a number of Roman emperors, such as Hadrian, and Marcus [562] Aurelius. In Greece the rites and closely guarded secrets of the Pelasgian mysteries were called the "Eleusinian Mysteries." To reveal any Eleusinian secrets to the uninitiated was a crime punishable by death by the Athenian court, however the mysteries were available to upwards of three thousand initiates each year; any Greek-speaking person who had not committed a murder could present themselves once in [563] their lifetime. The mystery schools were founded by the Pelasgians, the ancestors of the Phoenicians (Sidonians), and the original inhabitants of Arcadia. According to Aristotle, the Pelasgians (sea peoples in Greek) were an ancient race that occupied parts of Greece from the time before there was a moon in the sky; for [564] this reason they were called Proselenes (literally "before the moon"). Hippolytus refers to a legend that "Arcadia brought forth Pelasgus [progenitor of the Pelasgians], of greater antiquity than the [565] moon." Plutarch wrote in The Roman Questions: "There were Arcadians of Evander's following, [566] the so-called pre-Lunar people." Apollonius of Rhodes mentioned the time "when not all the orbs were yet in the heavens, before the Danai and Deukalion races came into existence, and only the Arcadians lived, of whom it is said that they dwelt on mountains and fed on acorns, before there was a [567] moon." The Pelasgians existed long before the cataclysm of "Noah's Flood" (the aion alignment of 10,948 B.C.), as Apollonius suggested, before the flood of Deukalion and Pyrrha. Remnants of the Pelasgians survived the cataclysmic shifting of the aions, preserving that knowledge of the former aions (when knowledge descended to the earth from the heavens) by establishing mystery schools, under various names, throughout the Mediterranean. The Pelasgians revered a group of demi-gods--associated with fire and with building--called "Kabiroi," whose worship they spread through the Mediterranean. The CABIRI or KABIROI were worshipped as theoi megaloi (great gods). Nigidius Figulus (58 B.C. ff), an early Neopythagorean [reviving the philosophy of Pythagoras], a praetor and a friend of Cicero, was considered one of the most learned Romans of the 1 century BC. Figulus's Concerning the Gods was the earliest comprehensive st work on Roman religion. He described the Cabiri's descent to earth in much the same way as legend has preserved the fall of Athena, and the fall of the city-god of the Sidonians, Melkart: the fiery builder gods the Cabiri descended to earth as a falling star. The Great Ones (Cabiri) came to earth in a flaming star, which shattered the rocks when it crashed [568] into the island of Samothrace; there the Great Gods made their home. The Samothracian and Cretan mysteries were centered on the worship of sacred cosmic fire and a [569] mother goddess who watched over it. The sacred fire of the goddess formed on seven specific locations on of the island of Samothrace. Ceremonies of the Aegean Mysteries were held every seven [570] years to venerate the cosmic fire. A wooden statue of the goddess, a palladium (virgin statue), was carried seven times around her temple. The palladium, the statue of the goddess, held a lit torch [571] symbolizing the secret wisdom of her mysteries. The goddess disclosed the holy places. The proper location for building the city of Troy was indicated by a wooden statue that had fallen out of the sky. Troy was one of many Pelasgian settlements throughout the Mediterranean. The cultural and religious traditions of the Pelasgians were preserved in their colonies. The Greeks were so impressed by their Pelasgian predecessors that islands known to have Pelasgian settlements were revered as dwelling places of the gods. Anyone will know what I mean if he is familiar with the mysteries of the Kabiri--rites which the men of Samothrace learned from the Pelasgians, who lived in that island before they moved to Attica, and communicated the mysteries to the Athenians. This will show that the Athenians were the first Greeks to make statues of Hermes with the erect phallus, and that they learned the practice from the Pelasgians-- who explained it by a certain religious doctrine, the nature of which is made clear in the Samothracian [572] mysteries. The Roman historian Strabo said that the Cabeiri were "demon ministers to the gods," and were [573] gods themselves. Strabo also states that: The Cabeiri are most honored in Imbros and Lemnos, but they are also honored in separate cities of the Troad [Troy]; their names, however, are kept secret. Herodotus says that there were temples of the [574] Cabeiri in Memphis, as also of Hephaestus, but that Cambyses destroyed them." The legendary hero Cadmus was said to have introduced the Pelasgian mysteries to the Greeks (as [575] well as first alphabet) in the 8 century B.C. th The Greeks revered the Pelasgian hero Cadmus as the founder of the city Thebes, and preserved in legend how Cadmus defeated the dragon of Ares and created the race of the Spartans. Cadmus, or Kadmos, was the son of Agenor, king of Sidon and Tyre in [576] Phoenicia. Though the most popular foundation myth of Thebes attributes the building of the city to the Pelasgian--Sidonian--Cadmus, there is an alternate legend of the Amphisian brothers, Amphion & Zethus. The twin sons of Antiope and Zeus were abandoned on Mount Cithaeron and raised by a shepherd. The Amphisian twins built the walls of Thebes, and the god Hermes taught Amphion to move [577] the stones using nothing but the music of his lyre. This foundation myth is echoed in that of Rome: the twins Romulus and Remus, the sons of Mars, were abandoned by their mother and saved by a shepherd, and these twins grew up to build the walls of Rome. The twin brothers, or gods with twin aspects, are often associated with foundations in myth; like the mysterious Pelasgian Cabiri, the male gods and heroes of the city are associated with the goddess (or her palladium). The goddess discloses the knowledge of the "sacred places," the location to build temples and cities. Cydonian Gods Cadmus, meaning "from the east," was the son of Agenor, the king of Sidon. Cadmus was the grandson of Poseidon, the anthropomorphized Ouroborus, and embodiment of the Milky Way. According to myth, the Sidonian king sent Cadmus and his brothers to search for their sister Europa, who was abducted by Zeus in the form of a bull. Though they never did find their sister, as they searched, the Sidonian brothers founded cities and religious centers on Crete, Samothrace, Rhodes and the other islands. The cyclopean architecture and the mystery school religious systems found throughout the Mediterranean were [578] characteristic of the Pelasgian--Sidonian--influence. The Egyptian Nonnos of Panopolis (400-476 AD) attributed the Greek language to the Sidonian Cadmus: But [Kadmos], bringing gifts of voice and thought for all Greece, made tools that echoed the tongue, mingling vowels [azyga (things that exist in isolation)] and consonants [syzyga (things that connect)], all in a row [stoichedon] of integrated harmony. He rounded off a gravent [grapton] model of speaking [579] silence, having learned the ancestral mysteries of the divine art. Historian Pliny the Elder believed that Greek letters were of Assyrian origin; Dioderus Siculus claimed the Syrians invented letters, and from them the Phoenicians, having learned them transferred them [580] to the Greeks. Herodotus wrote in his Histories: The Greek people were taught their letters from the Phoenicians and adopted them with some alterations for their own speech. They refer to their letters as Phoenician-things [phoinikeia] because the Phoenicians introduced them. The people of Thebes were actually called by Pentheus, the grandson of Cadmus, "children of the [581] serpent, people of Mars." The Spartans (literally "earth born") were created from the teeth of a dragon defeated by Cadmus at the founding of Thebes. That Cadmus, grandson of the Ouroboros who was Poseidon, would contend in myth with a serpent is quite telling. The legend preserved a secret connection between the Poseidonic Ouroboros and Mars. Called the Cadmium dragon, the great serpent that guarded the sacred spring of Ares was beloved by that god of Mars. Then, behold, Pallas, the hero's guardian approaches, sinking down through the upper air, and orders him to turn the earth and sow the dragon's teeth, destined to generate a people. He obeys, and opening the furrows with a slice of his plough, sows the teeth in the ground, as human seed. Then, almost beyond belief, the cultivated earth begins to move, and first spear points appear among the furrows, next helmets nodding their painted crests, then chests and shoulders spring up, and arms weighed down with spears, and the field is thick with the round shields of warriors. Just as at festivals in the theatre, when the curtain is lifted at the end, designs rise in the air, first revealing faces and then gradually the rest, until, raised gently and steadily, they are seen whole, and at last their feet rest on the lower border. (Metamorphoses Bk III:95-114) The men born from the earth and the teeth of Ares's dragon were so warlike that they quickly turned on each other until only five remained: Five were still standing, one of whom was Echion. He, at a warning from Pallas, threw his weapons on the ground and sought assurances of peace from his brothers, and gave them in return. The Sidonian wanderer [Cadmus] had these men as companions in his task when he founded the city [Thebes]. (Metamorphoses Bk III:115-137) Similarities in the myths and the religious practices of the Greeks and the Romans confirm that both these cultures arose from the knowledge of the Pelasgian Sidonians. The ancient knowledge that came from heaven to the earth--from an earlier aion--was preserved in the foundation myths and the mystery schools of the Greeks and Romans. Legend records that the location for building Rome--the city built on seven hills--was made manifest when the Trojan hero Æneas transported a Palladium and a hearth of sacred fire to the site, after [582] the fall of Troy. Aeneas traced his lineage back through Dardanus, the founder of Troy, to Zeus and Electra--one of the seven Pleiades or "Hesperides," a daughter of Atlas (who bore the weight of the twin pillars of heaven and earth upon his shoulders). Aeneas was the actual founder of Rome, according to [583] Homer. Romulus, the famous founder of Roman legend, is sometimes made a descendant of Aeneas, but according to legend he was born with his twin Remus after Mars laid with the Rhea Sylvia in the form of a flame. Romulus consecrated an Eternal Flame and established the priestesses, the Vestal virgins of Rome. The six vestal virgins were charged with keeping the sacred flame of the goddess within the [584] Temple of Vesta (Hestia in Greek, meaning Hearth). Ovid in his "Celebration of Augustus" lists the primary gods in relation to both Romulus and Aeneas from Troy: You gods, the friends of Aeneas, to whom fire and sword gave way; you deities of Italy; and Romulus, founder of our city; and Mars, father of Romulus; Vesta, Diana, sacred among Caesar's ancestral gods, and you, Phoebus, sharing the temple with Caesar's Vesta; you, Jupiter who hold the high Tarpeian citadel; and all you other gods, whom it is fitting and holy for a poet to invoke, I beg that the day be slow to arrive, and beyond our own lifetime, when Augustus shall rise to heaven, [585] leaving the world he rules, and there, far off, shall listen, with favour, to our prayers! The sacred flame in Vesta's shrine would be renewed every year on March 1 , in the month named st after Mars, on the traditional birthday of the god so revered by the Romans that they began their new year on that day. The Eleusinian mysteries had moved west from Greece and taken a new form in Rome. The Romans were primarily products of religious beliefs inherited from the mysteries of the Aegean. The mysteries lasted even to later centuries in Rome, as Cicero wrote: For it appears to me that among the many exceptional and divine things your Athens has produced and contributed to human life, nothing is better than those mysteries. For by means of them we…have been civilized. (Cicero, On the Laws, 2.14.36) The knowledge preserved in the mysteries practiced in Athens influenced the civilization of the "sons of Mars," the Romans. It is interesting to note that while the Pelasgian Acropolis was sacred to the goddess Athena and the craftsman god who fell to earth, Hephaestus, the Greek god Ares had his own hill the Areopagus, used as an ancient sacred meeting place of the council of elders from the beginning of [586] Athens. The god Ares was incorporated and given primacy in the Roman pantheon, as Mars. The Penates publici were the gods who protected the Roman state and the imperial family; the original Penates had been housed in the Temple of Vesta. The poet Virgil traced the Roman Penates to the [587] Pelasgians of Samothrace, and to the Trojans. Aeneas encountered the ghost of Hector, who told him to take the Pelasgian Penates, the traditional gods of Troy with him to Italy: 1-8 With Troy destroyed by the gods, exile in a deserted land is decreed by auguries; so a fleet is built, men are gathered for an uncertain future. 8-12 As summer starts, at Anchises order, I set sail [588] from the area of Troy with my men, my son, the great gods, and the Penates of Troy. The foundation story of Rome and Aenaes preserved the ancient knowledge of the Pelasgians--the ancient Sidonians--and provided continuity between cultures. The legend of the fall of Troy refers to the time when knowledge came down from heaven at the ouroboral alignment of the previous aion. The famous wooden Trojan horse was the means by which the superior Greek archers penetrated the walls of the city and defeated the Trojans. The myth refers to humans disguised as a horse, presenting a dual aspect at the Trojan gates. This myth alludes to sign of the suntelia, when the dual-natured horse- man Sagittarius points his arrow at the "gate" of the ouroboros at sunrise, as one aion ends and the next begins. Because of the "Trojan horse-men" with their arrows, the Trojan population, and its Pelasgian religious system, moved from the walls of Troy to the walls of Rome. The Vestal flame was lit on the 1 of March, in honor of the goddess of the flame and at the behest of st the legendary son of Mars who founded Rome. On the 1st, 9th and 24th of the month of Mars (important dates in the Pelasgian Eleusinian rites as well), the priests of Mars would perform the Feriae Marti, an athletic jumping dance through the city of Rome. The Mars priests were called Salii, which means in Latin "leapers." The Salii priests of Mars proceeded through Rome in groups of twelve, stopping at certain points to perform the complicated ritual leaping dance. Salii wore an old style of military dress, a tunica picta (painted or colored tunic) and a bronze breastplate. Additionally, they wore a short military cloak with scarlet stripes and a purple border. On their heads they wore a conical helmet called an apex. The Salii were armed with swords in their left hands and spears in their right hands. An ancile (shield) shaped roughly like a figure-8 was worn on the left arm. The helmeted Salii would sing and beat their [589] shields in unison to flute music. By the late Republic, the average Roman viewing the ritual did not recognize its source and did not understand the words of the song that the priests sang. However, the practice was nearly identical in dress and movement to the ancient dance of the Pelasgian priests of Samothrace Island. According to the Roman historian Figulus, the Cabiri and the mysteries from Samothrace were the origin of the ritual and worship of Mars in Rome: …the Great Ones (Cabiri) came to earth in a flaming star, which shattered the rocks when it crashed into the island of Samothrace; there the Great Gods made Their home. They are Lords of the [590] Terrifying Tempest. Their dance is the bedlam of spears rattled against oxhide shields. The Greek historian Strabo (62 BC) provided a description of the dancers of the "sacred rites" from the islands of the Aegean, mirroring the dance of the priests of Mars: Some represent the Corybantes, the Cabeiri, the Idaean Dactyli, and the Telchines as identical with the Curetes, others represent them as all kinsmen of one another and differentiate only certain small matters in which they differ in respect to one another; but, roughly speaking and in general, they represent them, one and all, as a kind of inspired people and as subject to Bacchic frenzy, and, in the guise of ministers, as inspiring terror at the celebration of the sacred rites by means of war- dances, accompanied by uproar and noise and cymbals and drums and arms, and also by flute and outcry; and consequently these rites are in a way regarded as having a common relationship, I mean these and those of the Samothracians and those in Lemnos and in several other places, because the divine [591] ministers are called the same. Nonnos described a dance of the Mysteries by priests that he identified as the Kabiri: Already the bird of morning was cutting the air with loud cries [on Samothrace]; already the helmeted bands of desert-haunting Korybantes [Kabeiroi] were beating on their shields in the Knossian dance, and leaping with rhythmic steps, and the oxhides thudded under the blows of the iron as they whirled them about in rivalry, while the double pipe made music, and quickened the dancers with its rollicking tune in time to the bounding steps…The noisy Korybantes with their ringing din awoke Kadmos early in the morning; the Sidonian seamen also with one accord, hearing the never-silent oxhide at dawn, rose from their rattling pebbly pallets and left the brine-beaten back [592] of the shore. The ritual "Knossian dance" was named after Knossos, the site of the legendary labyrinth in the city founded by King Minos of Crete. Minos, like the Trojan Dardanus, was a son of Zeus. Minos was produced when Zeus as a bull-god abducted Europa, the Sidonian sister of Cadmus (who built the foundation for Thebes where a cow from the goddess rested). Minos caused the elaborate walls of the Knossian labyrinth to be built to hide the hybrid bull-man the Minotaur, said to be named Asteria (star). The astral secret hidden in the labyrinth, the hybrid Asteria, was the half-brother of Ariadne, Minos's daughter who provided the thread--the clue--for navigating to the center of the walls of the labyrinth and back again. After the walls of the labyrinth were mastered, and the secret hidden within was mastered, the Athenian youths--the seven men and seven maidens--celebrated their freedom by dancing the dance of the labyrinth. The Oriental historian Godfrey Higgins made a similar connection between the sacred dance of the Romans and the "Knossian dance" of Crete. Higgins's Anacalypsis (1836) described the dance: The Roman boys were also taught a mazy or complicated dance, called both the Pyrrhic wardance, and the dance of the city Troy… The Cloacæ Maximæ, under the city of Rome, have by some been thought to be a labyrinth… The sacred mazy dance was to imitate the complicated motions of the planets,--was in honour of the Gods--that is, of the disposers: in short, it had the same object as the labyrinth. The Roman circus was an allegory corresponding to the labyrinth, as the author of Nimrod supposes. […] The circuits were seven, saith Laurentius Lydus, because the planets are so many… In the isle of Lemnos there was a labyrinth of which some remains existed in the time of Pliny. There are also histories of labyrinths in Egypt, seen by Herodotus; in Andeira; at the Lake of Van; Præneste… The districts of Canaan appear to have been allotted or divided according to astronomical or astrological rules, in the same manner as was practised with the nomes of Egypt. [593] The Dionysiaca also recorded that the "leaping Samothrace dance" was performed to honor a fire [594] goddess who was "the divine friend of dogs." In ancient Rome the dog was considered a consort and [595] trusting companion of Mars and was depicted on coins of the Empire. In the Pelasgian city of Sparta, Ares was worshipped with nocturnal offerings of dogs in his guise as Enyalios or Theritas (the savage [596] one). The name "Enyalios" as an alternate for Ares occurs on a tablet at Knossos in Crete. This is the earliest reference to a god associated with the planet Mars, first introduced to Crete by migrant [597] peoples of Sidonia. The ancient war god Ares was in the beginning, a Sidonian god. In the late republic Romulus was called "Mars Quirinus" and worshipped as one of the chief gods [598] of Rome. Ovid describes the deification of Romulus: Mars, removing his helmet, addressed the father of gods and men in these words: "The time has come, lord, to grant the reward (that you promised to me and your deserving grandson), since the Roman state is strong, on firm foundations, and does not depend on a single champion: free his spirit, and raising him from earth set him in the heavens. You once said to me, in person, at a council of the gods (since I am mindful of the gracious words I noted in my retentive mind), 'There will be one who you will raise to azure heaven.' Let your words be ratified in full!" Omnipotent Jupiter nodded, and, veiling the sky with dark clouds, he terrified men on earth with thunder and lightning. Mars knew this as a sign that ratified the promised ascension, and leaning on his spear, he vaulted, fearlessly, into his chariot, the horses straining at the blood-wet pole, and cracked the loud whip. Dropping headlong through the air, he landed on the summit of the wooded Palatine. There he caught up Romulus, son of Ilia, as he was dealing royal justice to his people. The king's mortal body dissolved in the clear atmosphere, like the lead bullet, that often melts in mid-air, hurled by the broad thong of a catapult. Now he has beauty of form, and he is Quirinus, [599] clothed in ceremonial robes, such a form as is worthier of the sacred high seats of the gods. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek rhetorician and historian in the late1st century BC, wrote in his Antiquities of Rome: The Sabines, and the Romans (Latins)… give to Enyalios the name Quirinus… for some think that [600] both these names are used for one and the same god who presides over martial combats. The ancient Cretan reference to the Cydonian god of Mars "Enyalios" was commemorated in the Greek goddess Enyo who became the consort of Ares on the battlefield. The Roman goddess Salus was also a female consort of the god of Mars; the Roman Salii priests of Mars took their name, and their military salute, from her. The goddess Salus was the counterpart of the Greek Hugieia (health, wholeness) whose name adorns the pentagram of Pythagoras. Fellow members of the Pythagorean mystery schools would greet each other using the name of this Greek goddess, and initiates recognized each other when her symbol, the pentagram or pentagon, was invoked. Members of the mystery schools recognized each other through symbolic references in names and images, so mystery schools through the ages have retained meaningful "Martian" symbols. It is no coincidence that modern mystery schools have chosen to build a monument called the Pentagon as the symbol of America's warfare supremacy. Like his Greek counterpart Ares, the god Mars was worshipped with canine sacrifice. The quintessential Roman deity presided over Lupercalia , the festival of the Roman wolf and Mars, commencing in the cave of the She-Wolf--the wolf who had fed her milk to the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus. The rites of Lupercalia included a ceremonial sacrifice of a dog, and the clothing of two naked youths with its skin. Later the youths ran through the hills of Rome slapping bystanders with strips of the sacrificed animal. It was considered a sure sign of fertility if a woman happened to receive a blow from the bloody hide wielded by the naked priests. It is recorded that in the case of Lupercalia, as with the dance of the Salii priest, the ritual was so old that the Romans did not remember its origin or meaning. According to the Alexandrian Lycophron (3 C B.C.), dogs were sacrificed on the Pelasgian island rd [601] of Samothrace, in the cave of the goddess of that island. Diodorus described an Egyptian connection between canines and the worship of Osiris: the god Osiris traveled the earth educating mankind in matters of civilization--cultivation of crops, building of cities and temples--and was accompanied on his excursion by his two sons: Now Osiris was accompanied on his campaign, as the Egyptian account goes, by his two sons Anubis and Macedon, who were distinguished for their valour. Both of them carried the most notable accoutrements of war, taken from certain animals whose character was not unlike the boldness of the men, Anubis wearing a dog's skin and Macedon the fore-parts of a wolf; and it is for this reason that [602] these animals are held in honour among the Egyptians 18. The Romans considered Mars a god not only of war but also of civilization. The god Mars was worshipped under different aspects over which he was patron; most notably Mars was called Mars [603] Gradivus "he who precedes the army in battle" and Mars Quirinus (Lord of Fortresses). The name "Mars" was a Roman form of the Chaldean word Mar or Mavor meaning "the rebel." The Latin Kir or Quir means "wall"; kir-cum designates either an entire encompassing or surrounding of an object, and [604] encircling wall such as those around a city. The Sumerians associated Nergal, god of war and civilization, with the planet Mars. Nergal's knowledge and skills were bestowed upon his subjects after he was ejected from heaven and fell to the earth. Nergal's titles included "Lord of the great dwelling," "the Strong One," "the Giant King of War," [605] and "the Illuminator of the Great City." Nergal was worshipped under other names referring to Mars: MULNIN.SI (Bright Lord), NIN.DAR.A (Lord of Brightness), MUL-BABBAR (Bright Star). The words MUL Makrû and MUL Si.pa (Red Star) refer to the red planet. The Sumerian fire god Gibil was also connected to Mars. Gibil (Akkadian Girra/u ) was the fire god who, like his counterparts Hephaestus and Vulcan, was a craftsman, patron of magic and smithing. The name of the craftsman god of fire appears in Sumerian legend as [606] GIŠ.BAR, BIL.GI, GI.BIL, Giri, also MU.BAR.RA. The Martian god of Greek myth, Ares, was an ancient founder of civilization, before he became associated with warfare. Like the Romans, the Greeks considered Mars a god responsible for having introduced crop growing and domestication of animals, both necessary for community and cities. The worship of the god from the planet Mars as a builder was wide spread in the ancient world. The Egyptians referred to the planet Mars as Har detcher, Horus the Red, son and reincarnation of his father [607] Osiris. The name "Horus" is "face" in Egyptian; Har detcher was literally "the red face of Osiris." Osiris was considered the founder of Egypt's architecture and civilization: "Of Osiris they say that, being of a beneficent turn of mind, and eager for glory, he gathered together a great army, with the intention of visiting all the inhabited earth and teaching the race of men…after establishing Egypt, Osiris [608] traveled abroad teaching the skills of building and society to the men scattered across the earth." His consort and sister Isis remained in Egypt as a resource for the skills of society. Fratricide is repeated in myths associated with the building of walls, cities, and temples. Osiris, the builder-god and founder of Egyptian civilization, was murdered by his brother Set; Romulus, the builder- god (Mars Quirinus) and founder of Roman civilization murdered his brother Remus; Cain, the first cultivator of crops and the first builder of a city found in the Bible, murdered his brother Abel. Cain was the ancient ancestor of the Canaanites, according to the Bible; the Canaanites were Phoenicians, that is, Sidonians. Incarnations of the Sages such as: Osiris, Oannes, Uana-Adapa, the Shebtiw of the Edfu texts, the apkallu Abgal Sages (Planetary Elders) of Sumeria, the Hindu Manus, and also the craftsman gods Hephaestus, Vulcan and Deadulus, were all associated with providing technology for civilizing mankind. The beings that brought heavenly knowledge to the earth were described in myth as having fallen, and in addition the myths preserve a telling association with sparks, fire, flame, or the color red.