Attos' Magazine

Volume #87, December/2009

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Immanuel Velikovsky

Worlds In Collision

By Immanuel Velikovsky

The Comet of Typhon

Of all the mysterious phenomena which accompanied the Exodus, this mysterious Pillar seems the first to demand explanation.
—W. Phytian-Adams
Tile Call of Israel

One of the places of the heavenly combat between elementary forces of nature—as narrated by Apollodorus and Strabo—was on the way from Egypt to Syria. According to Herodotus, the final act of the fight between Zeus and Typhon took place at Lake Serbon on the coastal route from Egypt to Palestine. On the way from Egypt to Palestine the Israelites, after a night of terror and strong east wind, witnessed the upheaval of the day of the Passage. These parallel circumstances lead to a conclusion that will sound somewhat strange. Typhon (Typheus) lies on the bottom of the sea where the spell-bound Israelites saw the upheaval of nature: darkness, hurricaine, mountains of water, fire and smoke, recorded in the Greek legend as the circumstances in which the battle of Zeus with the dragon Typho was fought. In the same pit of the sea lie the pharaoh and his hosts.

Up to now I have identified Rahab-Typhon as a comet. But if Typhon lies on the bottom of the sea, is he not the pharaoh? This would mean that in the legend of Typhon two elements were welded together: the pharaoh, who perished in the catastrophe, and the outrageous rebel against Zeus, the lord of the sky.

In Pliny’s Natural History, the ninety-first section of the secor book reads: “A terrible comet was seen by the people of Ethiop and Egypt, to which Typhon, the king of that period, gave his it had a fiery appearance and was twisted like a coil, and it was ver grim to behold: it was not really a star so much as what might b called a ball of fire.”

The visit of a disastrous comet, so many times referred to in thi book, is told in plain words, not in disguise. However, I must fin! support for my assumption that the comet of the days of King Typho was the comet of the days of the Exodus.

I investigated the writings of the old chronographers, and Cometographta of Hevelius (1668) I found references to the won of Calvisius, Helvicus, Herlicius, and Rockenbach, all of whom use manuscripts for the most part and not printed sources, as they live! only a little over one century after the invention of movable characters and the printing press.

Hevelius wrote (in Latin): “In the year of the world 2453 (1495 B.C.), according to certain authorities, a comet was seen in Syria, Babylonia, India, in the sign Jo, in the form of a disc, at the very line when the Israelites were on their march from Egypt to the Promised Land. So Rockenbach. The Exodus of the Israelites is placed by Calvisius in the year of the world 2453, or 1495 B.C.”

I was fortunate enough to locate one copy of Rockenbach’s De cometis tractatus novus methodicus in the United States. This book was published in Wittenberg in 1602. Its author was professor of Greek, mathematics, and law, and dean of philosophy at Frankfort. He wrote his book using old sources which he did not name: “ex probatissimis & antiquissimis veterum scriptoribus” (from the most trustworthy and the most ancient of the early writers). As a result of his di ligent gathering of ancient material, he made the following entry:

“In the year of the world two thousand four hundred and fiftythree—as many trustworthy authors, on the basis of many conjectures, have determined—a comet appeared which Pliny also mentioned in his second book. It was fiery, of irregular circular form, with a wrapped head; it was in the shape of a globe and was of terrible aspect. It is said that King Typhon ruled at that time in Egypt. . . .

Certain [authorities] assert that the comet was seen in Syria, Babylonia, India, in the sign of Capricorn, in the form of a disc, at the time when the children of Israel advanced from Egypt toward the Promiscd Land, led on their way by the pillar of cloud during the day and by the pillar of fire at night.”

Rockenbach did not draw any conclusion on the relation of the comet of the days of Exodus to the natural phenomena of that time; his intent was only to fix the date of the comet of Typhon.

Among the early authors, Lydus, Servius (who quotes Avienus), Hephaestion, and Junctinus, in addition to Pliny, mention the Typhon comet. It is depicted as an immense globe (globus immodicus) of fire, also as a sickle, which is a description of a globe illuminated by the sun, and close enough to be observed thus. its movement was slow, its path was close to the sun. Its color was bloody: “It was not of fiery, but of bloody redness.” It caused destruction “in rising and setting.” Servius writes that this comet caused many plagues, evils, and hunger.

To discover what were the manuscript sources of Abraham Rockenbach that led him to the same conclusion at which we have arrived, namely, that the Typhon comet appeared in the time of the Exodus, is a task not yet accomplished. Servius says that more information about the calamities caused by this comet is to be found in the writings of the Roman astrologer Campester and in the works of the Egyptian astrologer Petosiris. It is possible that copies of works some authors containing citations from the writings of these ancient astrologers, preserved in the libraries of Europe, were Rockenbach’s manuscript sources.

Campester, as quoted by Lydus, was certain that should the comet Typhon again meet the earth, a four-day encounter would suffice to destroy the world. This implies also that the first encounter wit the comet Typhon brought the earth to the brink of destruction.

But even without this somber prognostication of Campester, we have a very imposing and quite inexhaustible array of references to Typhon and its destructive action against the world: almost every Greek author referred to it. The real nature of Typhon being that of a comet, as explained by Pliny and others, all references to the disasters caused by Typhon must be understood as descriptions of natural catastrophes in which the earth and the comet were involved. As is known, Pallas of the Greeks was another name for Typhon; also Seth of the Egyptians was an equivalent of Typhon. Thus the number of references to the comet Typhon can be enlarged by references to Pallas and Seth.

It was not only Abraham Rockenbach who synchronized the appearance of the comet Typhon with the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Looking for authors who might have done likewise, I faund that Samuel Bochart, a scholarly writer of the seventeenth century, in his book Hierozoicon, has a passage in which he maintains that the plagues of the days of the Exodus resemble the calamities that Typhon brought in his train, and that therefore “the flight of Typhon is the Exodus of Moses from Egypt.” In this he actually follows the passage transmitted by Plutarch. But since Typhon, according to Pliny and others, was a comet, Samuel Bochart was close to the conclusions at which we arrive, traveling along another route.

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