Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1)

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  The purpose was not to distance the story from its Genesis roots, but to simulate those roots in a forgotten world with a language predating even the earliest Semitic language (Akkadian), much less the later Hebrew with which we are familiar. The feel of the story is like a reverse-engineering of the layers of Sumero-Akkadian polytheistic revisionism back to a people and worldview who knew their Maker, or who, at least, were not so far removed from their own origins that they had lost historic memory of them.

  Given the vast unknowns of such a world to us, the novels have many fanciful elements. It seemed the best way to reintroduce the story to the 21st century as an epic.

  Of course, the level of technology my novels attribute to the pre-Diluvians is purely fictional. They were not cave men, but they need not have had flight, electricity, and other more exotic technologies I have given some of them for this story. We thoughtlessly make the error today of imagining “advancement” only in technological terms, completely forgetting our own history; that it was usually the most technologically advanced civilizations that were both capable and guilty of the most savage atrocities. The idea that a civilization “must be enlightened if it has a high level of technical achievement” is an 18th through 21st century myth that any serious look at 20th century history should cure us of.

  That myth is dying in the self-evident outworking of history in our own generation. Sophistication of thought and ethics comes through the medium of reasoning with ideas expressed in words, if it comes at all.

  I have tried to present English usage equivalents for this society according to the age of the speakers, since I assume that the dialects of the single language spoken in the World-that-Was differed not only according to geography, but also across many layers of contemporaneous generations. For example, the ancient Archon Iyared speaks an almost semi-Shakespearean English, while older but not quite so ancient characters like Muhet’Usalaq talk in a kind of erudite British 19th century style with no contractions. This tries to give readers a feel for High and Low Archaic.

  A’Nu-Ahki, on the other hand, uses a conservative “mid-twentieth century” American English with plenty of contractions, while the younger generations in the following books of this series will use more invented slang and less “proper English.” Contrary to evolutionary expectations, observed historical languages usually move from the complex and refined to the simple and coarse. I have tried to reflect this in the way my characters speak across the generations, while preserving good dialogue in the story.

  In developing the names and terminology of the characters, I combined words and concepts from many ancient civilizations, using mostly Semitic, Sumerian, and Egyptian roots for theological terms, while most animal names are a blend of Anglo-Saxon and old Celtic forms. Indo-European languages like Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and even some Meso-American also influenced names and terms, though not always consistently. There are themes from prehistory that are very consistent.

  Early man’s fascination with the heavens and the nearly global fixation on culturally similar zodiac stellar chart systems, show a strong mytho-historic signature of something significant that happened in humanity’s infancy that turned man’s eyes skyward.

  In A’Nu-Ahki’s culture, the relationship of cosmology to theology is far closer than in ours. This is not astrology. That would be a later corruption of this hypothetical system. A’Nu-Ahki’s cosmology includes a fictional divinely-inspired message system that one could learn to interpret according to hermeneutical principles. The stars did not control or influence people’s lives in it, nor were they objects of worship. This system stems from Josephus’ mention in his Antiquities of the Jews (written circa 95 AD) that the sons of Seth “were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, and their order.”

  To shape an advanced cosmology in the story, I used the work of Physicist D. Russell Humphreys, whose “White Hole Cosmology” helped enable me to take ancient creation accounts, particularly Genesis, seriously. Humphreys theorizes that God expanded the universe out of a quantum singularity during creation, which involved the rapid stretching of space and severe gravitationally induced time dilation at the singularity’s event horizon.

  Space and time are created things in this model, not mere emptiness and duration. Humphreys’ theory explains a wide range of observed physical phenomena like microwave background radiation, red-shifts of light from distant stellar objects, more-or-less equal distribution of galactic clusters observed in every direction, discreetly measurable quantized red-shifting of distant galactic clusters at distance-related intervals, starlight travel time, and many other cosmological issues.

  I briefly tried to give the reader a glimpse of cosmic creation using theories developed by Dr. Humphreys and Dr. John Hartnett in the epilogue, and probably got many of the details wrong. I attempted to translate a highly technical concept into a sequence observable through the eyes of Q’Enukki in non-technical language and likely failed. We fiction writers often have to fudge a little to keep the pace of the story moving.

  My use of the term Abyssu for the Genesis abyss or waters connects our word abyss back to its Sumero-Akkadian root absu by literary design.

  For those who want to learn more about this exciting new (or perhaps very old) look at the heavens, I urge you to read Dr. Humphreys’ book Starlight and Time, from Master Books.

  Glossary of People and Terms

  The definitions are in relation to the story—some are fictional, others connect with either real biblical history or ancient mythology, and will be identified so as needed.

  A’Nu-Ahki – Seer-Prince of Salaam-Surupag and later Akh’Uzan; the biblical Noah.

  A’Nu – The person of the Creator God E’Yahavah residing in the Heavens; which describes God in his most vast, beyond human ability-to-know sense. The contraction A’Nu loosely translates as heaven, and so the name of A’Nu-Ahki (in the story) means Heaven-sent Comfort. The biblical name Noah means simply rest or comfort. My attempt to fictionally counter-revise Sumerian theo-historic revisionism (their “sky-god” was called Anu or An) may prove incorrect—though it is not unreasonable, as scholars with far more qualification than I have suggested it as a hypothesis. Nor is it an attempt at mix paganism with Judeo-Christian theology, since the Sumerian version of Anu appears as revisionism, and my story clearly defines its own terms on this matter. Since I view Genesis as history, and the implications of Babel are that we all come from common stock, it is not unreasonable to expect the earliest Sumerian priests to have revised the meaning of earlier names to misuse them in their polytheistic mythology. History is full of such examples. Ugaritic Canaanite inscriptions depicted the dignified El Elyon of Melchizedec and Abraham 500 years after Abraham in less-than-flattering terms. The Canaanite tablets still presented El Elyon as the in-name-only head of their pantheon even in redefined form, nevertheless. In no way do my novels imply that the Sumerian Anu and the Hebrew YHWH are the same divinity. Rather they suggest that maybe the polytheistic Sumerians (or perhaps their immediate predecessors) corrupted earlier names and terms from an entirely different Noahic theological tradition. It would have been easier than trying to use divinity names that people found foreign.

  Abyssu – The original massive water sphere from which all other elements and compounds were formed through gravity compaction-induced nucleosynthesis on creation days 1 and 2. The etymology of the English word traces back through Greek (abusso) to the Sumero-Akkadian word Absu. In Sumero-Akkadian myth, the absu was the subterranean fresh water abyss that housed their earth god Enki. The Sumero-Akkadians personified Absu as the consort of the ocean-water abyss monster goddess Tiamat.

  aerodrone – A fixed-wing aircraft that functions by the same aerodynamic principles as modern airplanes. At first fueled by alcohol burning air-cooled internal combustion engines, later models used a more efficient turpentine-like distillate of an extinct conifer.

  amomun – A tea lotus with medicinal pr
operties.

  amphiptere – A non-crested winged dragon that fed on carrion. Fossils of this creature are called Dimorphodon today.

  Archronos – The unique title of the Divinely-created first man and Archon. Later corrupted to Chronos, an early Greek god (father of Zeus) who devoured his children, and was overthrown along with the titans.

  Assuri and Assurim – The pre-Flood Assyria mentioned in Genesis 2, and the people who lived there. The similarity with the post-Flood Assyria is only in name.

  Atum-Ra – The biblical Adam, which devolved much later into an early version of the Egyptian creator/sun god Ra, who was the eldest of the gods that ruled during the idyllic “First Time” of Egyptian myth. Although connecting Adam with Atum-Ra is a fictional device, the ancient god-kings of most pagan mythologies have too many commonalities to be coincidental and may be faded deified memories of our much longer-lived early fathers.

  Basilisk, the – The oldest and chief of the heavenly rebels of the First Insurrection; the biblical serpent of Eden.

  behemoth – The superlative form of behema – the biggest and most magnificent of all grazing animals. The description of this creature in Job 40:15-24 resembles most a sauropod dinosaur. (Hippos, elephants, and all other large modern herbivores do not have large “cedar-like” tails but little dinky things—see the Bible passage.)

  cockatrice – A chameleon pack-hunting wurm, the fossils of which are today classified in the Velociraptor, Utahraptor, and Deinonychus family.

  Comforter from A’Nu, the – A semi-messianic prophetic figure predicted to arise among the Seer Clan that would comfort the faithful concerning the depredations of the Curse and preserve them through World-end. We find a glimmer of this preserved in Genesis 5:28-29, where the biblical Lemech of Seth’s line prophesies over his son Noah.

  Cosmic Dynasty Stele – The account of creation given by E’Yahavah in written form to the first created man and woman, a version of which survives today as a redaction by Moses in Genesis 1 and part of chapter 2.

  creation codes – Genetic codes expressed on the DNA molecule.

  Desired One, the – A minor constellation under Virgo that depicts a woman with her small son.

  Divine Name – Describes the proper name of the Creator God.

  Divine Wind – A spiritual persona of the Creator God that uses natural phenomena to reveal the Divine presence, and which breathes life into prophecy. Called El-N’Lil, or God-as-Air, this name distorted later into the Sumerian storm god Enlil. In this story, it is an early and incomplete understanding of what Christians would later call the Holy Spirit.

  Dragon Breaker, the – The constellation today called Perseus.

  Dragon, the – The constellation of Draco. Synonym for the Basilisk, Dragon-Prince, and Leviathan as spiritual agents of evil.

  Dragon-prince – In Setiim theology, one of the chief vassals of the Basilisk. Because early man, at first, struggled for survival against large and pack-hunting wurms, their mythology and theology came to use this form of dragon as one of its chief archetypes for evil, along with the serpent.

  E’Yahavah – The proper name of the Creator God (in the story), which was lost but restored in history as the Tetragrammaton YHWH during the Mosaic revelation of God to the Hebrews. In this novel series, E’Yahavah has three aspects: E’Yahavah A’Nu—the vast “God of the Heavens and Eternity,” E’Yahavah El-N’Lil—the “Divine Wind” of prophecy that uses natural forces to express himself, and “The Messenger of E’Yahavah” who comes in a human form to interact with men when he sees fit. Together they preside over a council of created lesser gods who are beings analogous to the highest level of angels. A’Nu-Ahki’s clan and Seti in general do not view this council in a polytheistic sense or in a henotheistic one where a lesser god could actually unseat E’Yahavah’s preeminence. (That was a later Sumerian corruption.) Evidence in the Old Testament (Psalm 82, Job 1-2, for example) demonstrates that the early Hebrews had a “divine council” concept in their theology that did not violate the Creator’s unique Deity as a monotheistic God, nor the later Trinitarian revelations of Christianity.

  Eluhar – The masculine high majestic plural (a fictional extinct language form) used with a singular verb to describe generically the Creator God, usually as a judge. It is linguistically related to the Hebrew elohim (which also uses a singular verb form), which is the generic term for God.

  El-N’Lil – See Divine Wind, and E’Yahavah.

  Fire River, the – The stream of stars today called Eridanus. It is associated with the Greek mythical figure Phaethon, who tried to drive Apollo’s sun chariot and was burned.

  firedrake – A river dragon with a crested head that contained two glands that manufactured hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide, which combined in the creature’s saliva with an inhibiting agent. When spit at a predator (the firedrake was largely herbivorous) the mixture exploded on contact with oxygen and produced a brief flash of intense heat. A similar mechanism exists in today’s bombardier beetle. Fossil remains of this creature are today called Parasaurolophus.

  Fire-sphinx, the – The bearer of the flaming sword that guards the east gate of Aeden. See Genesis 3:24.

  First Heaven, the and the Ten Heavens – The ancient Hebrews believed that there were many heavens, 10 by some accounts, 7 in others. The First Heaven was that which held the stars and planets (the atmospheric sky is just the “face of the first heaven” in this view). The other 9 heavens were inhabited by various angelic majesties on up to the “heaven of heavens” where God alone had access. This view, though not taught directly in Scripture, is reflected in ancient Hebrew literature such as the Enoch manuscripts, originally believed to be written circa 200 to 150 BC. An allusion to the 3rd Heaven is made in one of the New Testament Corinthian letters, and the view of 10 heavens was a part of Jewish tradition well into the Middle Ages. In certain parts of the story, like the advanced physics of Q’Enukki, the 10 heavens are used analogously to the modern physics theory of 10 dimensions. Although this association is interesting, it should not be taken too seriously. Further study in both physics and in ancient manuscripts must be done by qualified people before we can call it a real theory.

  First Time, the – Iyared’s reference to the age between creation and the coming World-end; later synonymous to the World-that-Was. Many historic ancient civilizations saw the history of earth as having previous ages that each ended in a world-destroying cataclysm. The Egyptians looked back to the zep tepi or “First Time” as the idyllic age in which their gods ruled. Another version referred to the gods as having come from Etelante, which has interesting etymological relationship to the Greek Atlantis. The elaborate Egyptian funeral rites were designed to guide the dying pharaoh along the river of Under-world to the stars as they were aligned in this mythic First Time. This is but a dim memory of the paradise lost before the cataclysm.

  Gihunu – The biblical pre-Flood river Gihon of Genesis 2.

  gryndel – One of the largest of the carnivorous wurm-kin, fossils of which are today called Tyrannosaurus Rex or by the name of other large therapod dinosaurs like Allosaurus in other locations.

  gryphon – A flying dragon known for its talons and sharp bill. Fossils of this creature fall into the Pteranodon family.

  Heh’Bul – The biblical Abel.

  Hiddekhel – The biblical pre-Flood river Hiddekel of Genesis 2, which was associated with the post-Flood river Tigris. It is possible that the post-Flood river was named in early times after the pre-Flood one, though the earth was so radically changed in the cataclysm that it has no geographic correlation.

  High Archaic – The dialect of the uppermost tiers of the Seti clans, that is, the oldest generations among them. Because humans back then lived to such great ages, the most profound modifying factor of language was age, not distance, as it is today. Imagine if Shakespeare were alive today, or Chaucer—how much would they have resisted the innovations and corruptions of speech made by younger men like H.G. Wells or John
Grisham. Imagine also how much more forcefully the young would want to express their own ideas, and the alienation that would have existed between the young and old.

  Hunt, the – The idyllic warfare of Good and Evil described in the mythic terms of a dragon hunt. This was overly stylized by A’Nu-Ahki’s culture, where too much emphasis was placed on the physical hunting of wurms (a dwindling menace), and not enough on the deeper spiritual problems the mythology really spoke of.

  Ish’Hakka and Khuva – Ish’Hakka is the fictional root word for the real Hebrew word for woman, isha. At first, the proper name of the created woman, until her husband changed it to Khuva—the fictional root word for the Semitic Chevah, the real root for uva, ova, ava, ave, ovary, which all linguistically relate to motherhood and to the name of the biblical Eve.

  Iya’Baalu and Iyu’Buuli – The biblical Jabal and Jubal, sons of the Lemech from Cain’s line in Genesis 4.

  Iyared – The biblical Jared of Genesis 5.

  kapar – A watertight cement made from distilled pine bitumens, pumice and other fine ground stones set with natron; also developed as an artificial rock and pavement by the ancients. It is transliterated into the “gopher” of the gopher-wood ark mentioned in Genesis 6, and used by the Sumerians, where it was signified by the cuneiform letters for KPR. The kapar process (in the story) was used in conjunction with conventional wood-hardening methods by the technology of this novel. Hence, “gopher-wood” is not a type of tree but a specially processed and hardened wood. This is also the Semitic root of the Hebrew kippur, as in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The word came to mean covering as in a covering over sin.