New Research Topic - The Airships of King Solomon

[zorgon]

The reason was that certain Arab families, who had access to the inner chambers of successive rulers, had become rich because of their vast stud farms, where they bred hundreds of thousands of horses each year for the army, merchants and the proletariat. It was the same with camels. Certain Egyptian king-makers (listed by Ben Sherira as the Hatimis, the Zahidis and the progeny of Abu Hanifa II) owned camel farms, and enjoyed a total monopoly on the supply of camels in the whole of the Islamic empire. None of these old families wanted their privileges usurped by a small group of poor artisans who could potentially wreck their markets by making flying carpets popular. Thus they were undermined.

Thanks to the mullahs' propaganda, the Muslim middle class was beginning to shun flying carpets by the mid-eighth century. The market for Arabian horses flourished instead. Camels were also fetching high prices. Ben Sherira notes that a curious incident, which happened around this time, damaged the reputation of the flying carpet beyond salvation: On a bright Friday afternoon in Baghdad, when the white disc of the sun blazed in the third quarter of middle heaven, and the bazaar bustled with people buying fruits and cloth and watching an auction of fair-skinned slaves, there appeared across the sun the shimmering wraith of a turbaned man gliding towards the highest minaret of the Royal Palace.

The devil was no other than a poor soldier who had once served in the palace. He had been caught holding the youngest princess's hand, and was thrown out by the eunuchs, disgraced and defeated. When news about this affair reached the caliph, he was furious. He had the princess locked up in a tower, and to humiliate her, decided to marry her off to his royal executioner, a towering black slave from Zanzibar. The soldier, a Kurdish youth by the name of Mustafa, now returned. He glided up to the minaret and helped a girl climb out of the window. Then in full view of the public below, he glided away. The bazaaris cheered. As the young lovers eloped on their carpet, a battery of the elite guard, mounted on black Arabian stallions, charged out of the palace and gave chase. But the flying carpet disappeared in the clouds above.

The establishment retaliated by hunting down everyone even remotely involved with the business of flying carpets. Thirty artisans were rounded up with their families in a public square. A paid audience was assembled. The men were accused of being libertines, and their heads rolled in the dust, all chopped off by the black executioner from Zanzibar. Next, the caliph sent his spies to every corner of his empire ordering them to bring back every remaining flying carpet and artisan to Baghdad. The small community of artisans, who had lived near the Tigris for several centuries, packed their possessions and, with only three male survivors, fled. After wandering for many months through the moon-like wastes of Iranian marshlands, they reached, ragged and near death, the shining city of Bukhara, where the emir, who did not take orders from Baghdad, gave them refuge.

This exodus, Isaac notes, happened in AD 776, a decade before the celebrated reign of Harun ur Rashid, when The Thousand and One Nights was written. Isaac believes that the inspiration for at least one of the tales in the Arabian Nights comes from the incident of the eloping lovers on that bright Friday afternoon in Baghdad. Ben Sherira describes the genealogy of the artisans in great detail. Some of these families later migrated to Afghanistan and established themselves in the Kingdom of Ghor. The most renowned family of carpet weavers, the Halevis, settled in the town of Merv, where they began to introduce patterns into their carpets. The mandala in the centre was a trademark of the master, Jacob Yahud Halevi ? the same Jacob who appears in history as the teacher of Avicenna.

Artisans also wandered (or flew) into Europe, where their recipes were subsequently employed by a feminist secret society, that of the witches. Their persecution, meted out by the church, was equally swift. Ben Sherira claims that the witches' trademark, the broomstick, with its phallic symbolism, was developed because of their lack of male company. In Transoxiana, the flying carpet enjoyed a brief renaissance before being erased forever by the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan.

Two incidents are worthy of mention here. In 1213, Prince Behroz of the state of Khorasan in eastern Persia, took to heart a young Jewess, Ashirah. Her father was an accomplished carpet-maker. Behroz married Ashirah against the wishes of his family, and requested his father-in-law to weave two dozen flying carpets using the best wool and the best clay, specially wound on a bamboo frame to make them more robust. Next he had forty-eight of his handpicked archers trained by a Japanese master by the name of Ryu Taro Koike (1153-1240?).

When the archers were ready and the carpets delivered, he assembled his men and gave each man his weapons: twenty steel-pointed arrows tipped with rattlesnake venom, longbows made of layers of deodar and catgut, and Armenian daggers. Two men were assigned to each carpet: one fore, one aft. Some carried fireballs. Behroz thus conceived four squadrons of the first airborne cavalry of the world, which went into action when his father waged a war against the neighboring Khwarzem Shah.

The archers led the assault: they attacked the castle, dived in and flew out, felled the defenders and threw fireballs inside its compound, setting it ablaze. The Toranian military brass were awed. They sensed that the prince could become a threat to their oligarchy, and with his father's consent, blinded him. The prince's wife, heavy with child, and her ailing father were banished from the kingdom.

Around this time, the Abbasids no longer wielded the same power as in the days of Harun ur Rashid. Many local kings and emirs were taking matters into their own hands. As the grip of the empire on its states weakened, a cult of the flying carpet flourished. Young dissidents, political refugees, hermits and agnostics went airborne for their escapades. Merchants also began to see the advantages of the flying carpet. The flying carpet was not only a much speedier form of transport than the camel but also a safer one since bandits would not waylay a flying trade caravan ? unless they themselves were on a fleet of flying carpets.

Artisans began to weave bigger carpets, but with more people on board these became sluggish and lost height. But there is one episode, witnessed by many people on the ground, where a party of turbaned men flew from Samarkand to Isfahan at whirlwind speed. This incident is corroborated in the facsimile of another rare text, produced in the seventeenth century, in which one witness is quoted as saying 'We saw a strange whirling disc in the sky, which flew over our village [Nishapur], trailing fire and sulphur', and another: 'A band of djinn appeared over our caravan, heading towards the Straits of Ormuz.'[sup5] (The thirteenth-century original of this text is impossible to find.)

The next incident, before the terrible invasion from the steppes, was the last straw in the ill-fated history of the flying carpet. In 1223, a dragoman of Georgia arrived in Bukhara with his harem to shop for Chinese silk. Ben Sherira's source, the guardian of Minareh Kalyan, describes what eventuated: On a pleasant evening, when the suk was bustling with people, and the veiled ladies from Georgia had just disembarked from their litters and were being escorted to the silk merchant, a madman appeared from behind a dome and swooped down at them. The flier was a giant of a man with a magnificent black beard and long hair trailing in the wind behind him. He was wearing a loincloth, his eyes were a luminous green, an eagle was flying by his side, and he was laughing madly.

The women saw this apparition heading towards them and froze with terror as he tore away his loincloth and started urinating in their upturned faces. This man was the mathematician-royal of Samarkand, Karim Beg Isfahani. Betrayed by his Georgian mistress, he had drunk a goblet of fermented grapes and gone insane. The incident caused pandemonium. A spear was launched that caught him in the chest, and he fell, dead, into a palm tree. But the outrage caused in Bukhara was understandable.

Fearing another massacre, the artisans burnt their laboratories, left their possessions, and fled in all directions. Ben Sherira writes that on that fateful day they swore never again to weave together a flying carpet. The story almost ends here.

In 1226 Genghis Khan laid waste most of the cities in Central Asia. Their inhabitants were massacred; their treasures plundered. The towers of skulls outside Herat, Balkh and Bukhara ? so vast that the whole countryside reeked with their stench ? included the skulls of the artisans. In their loot, the Mongols found flying carpets. When a prisoner told them that these contraptions were more agile than the steppes pony (a blasphemy to Mongol ears, if ever there was one), the great Khan beheaded him and had his skull made into a drinking mug. He ordered all flying carpets in his vast empire confiscated.

To see more posts by Bryan Fields, check out his blog, Laughing Otter's Lair

http://thedragonsrocketship.com/the-secret-history-of-the-flying-carpet/

[spacemaverick]

Enjoying this thread, cheers Z.

ArMap, there's skeptics and then there's skep-dicks do you have to be debunking, or attempting to debunk like 110% of the time?  Haha

I myself am curious as to why ArMap is always trying to debunk most of the time.  Response ArMap?  Z has a very interesting subject going here.  I have often wondered about the various objects showing up in ancient paintings.  We don't have the answer but it sure is an interesting journey to try and find the answers.

[zorgon]

KEBRA NAGAST

700 Years of History

The Kebra Negast is the oldest text of linage in Africa and is at least seven hundred years old, and is revered by many Ethiopian Christians and Rastafarians.
Not only does it contain an account of how the Queen of Sheba met Solomon, and about how the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia with Menelik I, but contains an account of the conversion of the Ethiopians from the worship of celestial objects to the current Tewahedo Church (Ethiopian Orthodox Church)

http://www.kebranegast.com/kebranagast.html

Kebra Negast - Hogarth Blake Ltd   PDF

The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek (Këbra Negast)  PDF

The Kebra Nagast Index - Sacred Texts

[zorgon]

This is the origin of the OP Image

The Thrones Of Solomon
Xavier Séguin August 7, 2014

There is in the East a legend still tenacious which attributes the great biblical king the use of a flying machine called Solomon's aircraft.

According to the Kebra Nagast, King Solomon visited his son Menelik King of Ethiopia by flying in a "celestial car":

"The king and all who obeyed him flew on a cart without pain or suffering, without sweat or strain, and traversed in one day the distance than we do in three months (on foot)." On the other hand, "the entire Middle East, to Kashmir, is dotted with mountains called "thrones of Solomon", as the Takht-i-Suleiman (Throne of Solomon) that raises its flat top in the north-western Iran, which has been conjectured that they have been used as airstrips for Solomon's aircraft." (Technology of the Gods: The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients  By David Hatcher Childress)

Still today, in Central Asia, "people think that King Solomon continues to fly on its miraculous flying machine over the vast areas of Asia. In the mountains, it is not uncommon to find ruins or stones bearing, as a remnant of his long prayers, the mark of his foot or his knees.

These mountains are called thrones of Solomon. The great king went there by flying and reaching the heights, forgot the cares of government and refreshed his mind." (source: Nicholas Roerich Shambala  1930)

http://eden-saga.com/wp-content/uploads/trones-salomon-ville-volante-543.jpg

[zorgon]

Revelation of the Holy Grail
By Chevalier Emerys



Revelation of the Holy Grail  By Chevalier Emerys

Relevant Clipping from Google Books

[zorgon]

Solomon's Carpet.



With reference to Solomon's dominion over all the creatures of the world, including spirits, several stories are current, the best known of which is that of Solomon and the ant (Jellinek, l.c. v. 22 et seq.). It is narrated as follows: "When God appointed Solomon king over every created thing, He gave him a large carpet sixty miles long and sixty miles wide, made of green silk interwoven with pure gold, and ornamented with figured decorations. Surrounded by his four princes, Asaph b. Berechiah, prince of men, Ramirat, prince of the demons, a lion, prince of beasts, and an eagle, prince of birds, when Solomon sat upon the carpet he was caught up by the wind, and sailed through the air so quickly that he breakfasted at Damascus and supped in Media. One day Solomon was filled with pride at his own greatness and wisdom; and as a punishment therefor the wind shook the carpet, throwing down 40,000 men. Solomon chided the wind for the mischief it had done; but the latter rejoined that the king would do well to turn toward God and cease to be proud; whereupon Solomon felt greatly ashamed.

"On another day while sailing over a valley where there were many swarms of ants, Solomon heard one ant say to the others, 'Enter your houses; otherwise Solomon's legions will destroy you.' The king asked why she spoke thus, and she answered that she was afraid if the ants looked at Solomon's legions they might be turned from their duty of praising God, which would be disastrous to them. She added that, being the queen of the ants, she had in that capacity given them the order to retire. Solomon desired to ask her a question; but she told him that it was not becoming for the interrogator to be above and the interrogated below. Solomon thereupon brought her up out of the valley; but she then said it was not fitting that he should sit on a throne while she remained on the ground. Solomon now placed her upon his hand, and asked her whether there was any one in the world greater than he. The ant replied that she was much greater; otherwise God would not have sent him there to place her upon his hand. The king, greatly angered, threw her down, saying, 'Dost thou know who I am? I am Solomon, the son of David!' She answered: 'I know that thou art created of a corrupted drop [comp. Ab. iii. 1]; therefore thou oughtest not to be proud.' Solomon was filled with shame, and fell on his face.

"Flying further, Solomon noticed a magnificent palace to which there appeared to be no entrance. He ordered the demons to climb to the roof and see if they could discover any living being within the building. The demons found there only an eagle, which they took before Solomon. Being asked whether it knew of an entrance to the palace, the eagle said that it was 700 years old, but that it had never seen such an entrance. An elder brother of the eagle, 900 years old, was then found, but it also did not know the entrance. The eldest brother of these two birds, which was 1,300 years old, then declared it had been informed by its father that the door was on the west side, but that it had become hidden by sand drifted by the wind. Having discovered the entrance, Solomon found many inscriptions on the doors. In the interior of the palace was an idol having in its mouth a silver tablet which bore the following inscription in Greek: 'I, Shaddad, the son of 'Ad, reigned over a million cities, rode on a million horses, had under me a million vassals, and slew a million warriors, yet I could not resist the angel of death.'"

http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13842-solomon

[ArMaP]

What "Rules"?

The "rules" the painters followed to represent things related to religion.

people describe what they see in the sky based on what is popular at the time.

The painters were not the witnesses, they made the paintings according to what the people paying for the painting wanted, and they wanted things that could be easily understood by those looking at the painting, so the painters followed what I called "rules" (I can't remember the correct word) to represent such things.

So the rules are meaningless... you need to interpret sightings in the context of the meanings of the day

The rules are not meaningless when you look at the paintings instead of the "witnesses reports", as what we are looking at is the artistic representation of an event someone else witnessed.

I suggest, again, that you speak to someone that has studied art history.

[ArMaP]

It always amazes me that modern skeptics have so much difficulty seeing that these old images do represent Unidentified Flying Objects back in the day and were simply INTERPRETED as having Religious significance because at that time, Religion was the only option for ANY explanations. Galileo almost got burned at the stake, the Church apologized and said he was right  350 years AFTER

What amazes me (well, it doesn't amaze me any more, I'm already used to your way of thinking) is that you keep on talking about paintings from the 16th century (for example) as something that was made by the biblical witnesses.

So what do your "rules" say about THIS one?

I do not know the rules (I didn't study art history, I only know a few things about it because I wrote some of my sister's works on the computer while she was studying art), I am only saying that they did had rules and that if you ignore them you are going the wrong way about it.

[ArMaP]

So the "Glory" is a physical manifestation that is visible and blinding to look at

That's what I was saying, it's the light, not an object.

We call such apparitions in the sky today UFO's  we assume they are Alien in origin... back in those days they called them GLORIES and assumed they were Aline in origin (God, Angels, Demons, etc are NOT OF THIS EARTH so are true ET (if they exist))

The problem is the "those days" part, as "those days" where the ones when they wrote about it, not when the paintings were made.

So why is this so hard for skeptics to grasp?

This particular sceptic (me) grasps it, but it looks like most "believers" (as the best word I can find to use as opposite to sceptic) ignore, either by natural ignorance or on purpose, for whatever reasons they may have, that art in general is always a result of the time it was made and religious art is, besides that, affected by what that particular religion says.

The fact that most of the religious paintings presented as "evidence" of UFOs or whatever are from the Renaissance should be a sign that we are looking more at a way of representing the scene than at a faithful representation of what happened.

[ArMaP]

ArMap, there's skeptics and then there's skep-dicks do you have to be debunking, or attempting to debunk like 110% of the time?  Haha

It looks like a lost battle, as, apparently, everybody is seeing this as debunking when I am only trying to point that art (specially religious art and Renaissance art) is a result of the time it was made, it's not a journalistic representation of the events it depicts.

People should treat art in the same way they treat other things. When we are talking about an UFO being seen on a radar scope most people do not have any problem with understanding that the fact that an UFO appears or not on a radar scope is related to the technical part of the radar, so why are people against the technical part of religious art and act as if they were photos taken in the biblical times?

Specific areas have specific specific experts, so why treat art as if it was not a specific area? We just have to look at the different representations of Jesus to see that we are not looking at objective representations.

PS: all this should be the topic of a different thread, but I'm not a creative person, I'm more a problem solver, so I'm not thinking about creating it. 

[ArMaP]

I myself am curious as to why ArMap is always trying to debunk most of the time.  Response ArMap?

I hope my previous posts are enough. If they aren't just say it.

[astr0144]

A nicely put together thread "Z" to your usual high standard. I am often amazed how you seem to obtain and post some of the info you find so fast !.

I think that I have seen you post  images of the airship on a previous thread, but probably not the exact same initial image that you say you obtained from your Facebook friend.

[zorgon]

It looks like a lost battle, as, apparently, everybody is seeing this as debunking when I am only trying to point that art (specially religious art and Renaissance art) is a result of the time it was made, it's not a journalistic representation of the events it depicts.

You are forgetting the fact that Artists are very intuitive and have always drawn on outside sources, such as the Akashic Record, for inspiration. Any GOOD artist can take a story and do a very good representation of the event...

A good example is Jules Verne... he drew THIS sketch of what he 'saw' in his mind... in 1864



Then in 2005 REALITY shows us THIS...



A skeptic will say "Coincidence" but to discount the intuitive nature of artists and dismiss it is silly.  An artistic person also very quickly without prompting can see anomalies in photos... while skeptics see "only blurry rocks"

People should treat art in the same way they treat other things. When we are talking about an UFO being seen on a radar scope most people do not have any problem with understanding that the fact that an UFO appears or not on a radar scope is related to the technical part of the radar, so why are people against the technical part of religious art and act as if they were photos taken in the biblical times?

Because the DESCRIPTIONS used in Religious texts can easily be interpreted in modern times to mean UFO's fantastic beam weapons and Aliens...  and it is the description that artists use to interpret the image

Authors went to great lengths in Sci Fi books to describe the scenes so you can VISUALIZE what they are talking about... the only difference is the terminology used..

So a Flaming Chariot in the sky becomes a UFO... a flying shield is the same thing as a flying saucer

Here is a nice artists concept of a Flying Shield Saucer



In the case of the flying shield coins the DESCRIPTION is of a giant glowing shield sent by the God Jupiter...  it came from the Heavens... How can that NOT be interpreted to be a UFO in modern terms?

Here is another version on a coin... the flying shield is fighting off the army and saves the city.....



Flying shield... same shape as flying saucer   To think anything else is ludicrous

PS: all this should be the topic of a different thread, but I'm not a creative person, I'm more a problem solver, so I'm not thinking about creating it. 

Not really no... because it provides context and background and doesn't need to be split up all over the place. I tend to prefer to keep SIMILAR topics in one thread to show the big picture... not nit pick each individual case.

[ArMaP]

You are forgetting the fact that Artists are very intuitive and have always drawn on outside sources, such as the Akashic Record, for inspiration. Any GOOD artist can take a story and do a very good representation of the event...

I'm not forgetting that, I have two artists in the family.

Yes, a good artist needs only imagination and ability to create art, but we are talking about religious paintings that were mostly commissioned (I don't know if that's the right word) either by the Catholic Church or by powerful people that had connections with religion, we are not talking about art created just because the artist wanted to do something, most (if not all) of the famous painters from the Renaissance were half artist and half merchant, as they lived of their work for rich families or the Church.

A good example is Jules Verne... he drew THIS sketch of what he 'saw' in his mind... in 1864

Did he really? That drawing (looks more like an engraving) was made by Édouard Riou, and I thought Jules Verne was only a writer.

A skeptic will say "Coincidence" but to discount the intuitive nature of artists and dismiss it is silly.

No, a sceptic doesn't say that, at least not if he knows about Jules Verne.

An artistic person also very quickly without prompting can see anomalies in photos... while skeptics see "only blurry rocks"

No.

Because the DESCRIPTIONS used in Religious texts can easily be interpreted in modern times to mean UFO's fantastic beam weapons and Aliens...  and it is the description that artists use to interpret the image

The description and what the people paying for the painting wanted to see. And why do you think all the work done by the people that studied art and art history is meaningless?

In the case of the flying shield coins the DESCRIPTION is of a giant glowing shield sent by the God Jupiter...  it came from the Heavens... How can that NOT be interpreted to be a UFO in modern terms?

There you go mixing things again, I was talking about the paintings, not that coin.

Not really no... because it provides context and background and doesn't need to be split up all over the place. I tend to prefer to keep SIMILAR topics in one thread to show the big picture... not nit pick each individual case.

OK.
[/quote]

[zorgon]

There you go mixing things again, I was talking about the paintings, not that coin.

THAT is why I "mix things up"

The Shield in the coin example is hard to say it is NOT a UFO  "...a flying object came from the heavens sent by the God Jupiter to save the day" 

Now we look at a Religious Patron commissioning an artwork...

Patron says:  "Paint me a picture of an Angel in a glowing "Glory" sent from God to make an announcement to the shepherds and have the shepherds and their dogs gazing up into the heavens shielding their eyes from the brightness of the "Glory"

UFO researcher says: Paint me a picture of some Tall Whites with a glowing aura standing in front of a bright glowing UFO"

Funny... I don't see the difference