B: Bacab to Byamspa 71
seafaring skills, in much the same way an outstanding swimmer is described as
“half fish.” Oannes came ashore daily to instruct the natives of Eridu in the
secrets of canal-building, irrigation, agriculture, literature, mathematics, civil
engineering, metallurgy, pottery, music, art, astrology-astronomy, city-planning,
temple-building—all the arts of civilization. He also exercised power over the souls
of the ocean, perhaps a reference to an Atlantean priest who conjured the spirits
of the dead in the submerged Atlantis.
In the Akkadian language, he was known as Nun-Amelu, a comparison Bailey
makes with the Egyptian Nun, a god of the primal sea, who carried men and gods
to the Nile Valley after a flood in the Distant West. A contemporary of Berosus,
the Greek writer, Orpheus, reported that “Egypt and Chaldea are twin sisters,
daughters of Poseidon,” the sea-god creator of Atlantis. Bailey also reproduces
the impression of a Sumerian cylinder seal portraying Oannes, known to the
Sumerians as Ea, paying homage to a bearded figure bent on one knee while
supporting the sky—the classic image of Atlas reproduced throughout the ancient
world—thereby associating the Mesopotamian culture-bearer with Atlantis.
In his second volume, Berosus described in some detail the Deluge itself,
characterizing it as a worldwide natural catastrophe that wiped out most of
humanity and obliterated a former kingdom of enormous power and wisdom.
He wrote that there were “ten kings before the flood,” some of whose surviving
descendants sailed to Mesopotamia, where they reestablished civilization be-
tween the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Since then, every Babylonian monarch
had to prove direct descent from these antediluvian regents before legitimately
assuming the throne. In Timaeus, Plato also said that there were 10 kings of the
Atlantis Empire previous to its destruction.
Berosus was almost certainly privy to the same kind of original Atlantean
documents Plato and/or Solon saw at the Temple of the Goddess Neith, in the
Egyptian city of Sais, in the Nile Delta.
(See Oannes)Bimini Road
Bimini is an island in the Bahamas, 55 miles east of Miami, Florida, approxi-
mately 7 miles long and 1/3 mile across at its widest point. Its modern inhabitants
are descendants of West African slaves imported by Spain and Britain beginning
in the mid-16th century. They replaced the resident Caribs, who arrived only a
few generations before and after whom the Caribbean Sea was named. Bellicose
cannibals from Middle America’s mainland, the Caribs feasted on the island’s
earliest known inhabitants, the Lucayans, a linguistic branch of Arawak Indians.
Before their extermination (consumption?), the Lucayans were described by Spanish
explorers as able craftsmen (surviving Lucayan celts and hammer-stones attest to
their refined skills), with noticeably lighter complexions and auburn hair, even
occasional blue eyes. These untypical traits may have been genetic traces of contacts
with pre-Columbian visitors from Europe, or even racial evidence for an Atlantis
pedigree, in view of the following information.