Taautos came from Byblos, Phoenicia, that shows a continuous cultural tradition to 8,000 B.C.  He played his flute to the chief deity of Byblos, the moon-goddess Ba'alat Nikkal. Taautos was called Thoth by the Greeks and Djehuti by the Egyptians. The mythology of Taautos is echoed in the god Dionysios, or Njörth the snake priest who was the consort to the moon-goddess.  The snake priest was also represented by the symbol of a pillar, a wand or a caduceus.  The Greeks equated Thoth with the widely-traveled Hermes.  According to Egyptian tradition, Osiris traveled the world with Thoth. Asklepios a.k.a. as Eshmun is responsible for carrying on the teachings of Taautos on snake priesthood.

In the early ages of Christianity, some monks, such as Pachomius was a Serapic Priest before he became a monk. Similarly, Ormus is said to have been a Seraphic priest before being converted by Saint Mark. He fused those Mysteries with Christianity and establishing a school of Solomonic Wisdom.

Herewith, Phoenician mythology and Christian Theology are explored and analyzed through the pens of two major icons of both "faiths," Eusebius of Caesarea and Philo Byblius:

The Phoenician History is the oldest non-coded document of our historical archives. Furthermore it is particularly valuable because its author, Sanchuniathon was a free man who did not hesitate to denounce myths.

"Judging from the fragments of the Phoenician History, Sanchuniathon appears to have been a contemporary of Semiramis, two thousand years before Christ. If so, his book would go back into fabled antiquity. ...Sanchuniathon, like Vgasa in India, is said to have been a compiler of extremely ancient theogonic and historical documents that had been transmitted to him either by oral tradition or in writing."

In the writings of Eusebius there are no reproduced parts of Sanchuniathon's writing and that the essential element, that is, the beginning of historical times, is totally absent. Hence there is no indication whether Biblical Genesis is a copy of a more ancient source.

Phoenician History is a fundamental document of human culture, but the surviving fragments of it are hard to obtain; therefore, the only option is to study what one has access to them as they appear in Eusebius' Evangelical Preparation. Because of this fact and the presence of commentaries in several different chapters that separate them, they are rendered with a lack of coherence.

In the fourth chapter of his slanderous work directed against us, Porphyry mentions these things, testifying in favor of Sanchuniathon as follows:

"Sanchuniathon of Berytus relates with great truthfulness everything concerning the Jews because he alters neither places nor names, having had access to the writings of Jerombal, priest of the god Jeuo.

"Jerombal dedicated his history to Abibal, King of Berytus. It was accepted by him and by those he had instructed to examine it with respect to its veracity.

"The time when those men lived is earlier than the Trojan War and is very close to the time of Moses, as is shown by the successions of the Kings of Phoenicia.

"As for Sanchuniathon, whose name means 'Friend of Truth' in the Phoenician language, he gathered all the ancient history in the documents found in each city and formed it into a body of writings. He lived in the time of Semiramis, Queen of the Assyrians, whose reign is believed to have preceded or at least coincided with the events of Ilion.

"Philo Byblius translated Sanchuniathon's writings into Greek."

As he continues writing, he does not speak to us of the Supreme God, or even of the celestial gods, but of mortal men and women, and not even of those whose outstanding moral refinement makes them worthy of be.. being admired for their virtues or being taken as models because of their philosophical minds, but of persons guilty of all the perverse and shameful aspects of depravity. Yet he admits that it is these same persons who have been and still are regarded as gods by all men, in different cities and places. ...

Philo divided Sanchuniathon's entire collection into nine books. In his preface to the first book he writes as follows:

Taautos Was Thoth

"Things being thus, Sanchuniathon, a very studious and active man who desired above all else to know the principles of things and that of which all that exists is formed, diligently inquired into the writings of Taautos, having learned that of all the men who have ever appeared under the sun, Taautos was the first to conceive the invention of letters and open the way for written documents. He therefore made him the foundation of his entire discourse. It was Taautos whom the Egyptians called Toyt and the Alexandrians Thoth, which the Greeks translated as Hermes (Mercury)."

Having said these things, Philo denounces the new-comers who, after those writings, wrongly and untruthfully introduced allegories, theories and expositions of physics into fables concerning the gods.

He continues: "But more recent religious scholars destroyed all vestiges of events that occurred after the origin of things, inventing allegories within fables and combining them in such a way as to unite them with -the movements of the universe.

"That is how they instituted mysteries and spread such thick shadows over all those things that it was no longer easy to determine what had really occurred. But Sanchuniathon discovered the secret writings of the Ammonians, which were known to very few people, and studied everything they contained. He then achieved his goal by setting aside the fable based on allegories until in later times there appeared priests who wanted to dissimulate the truth and restore to honor that fable which was the origin of the mystery that had not yet penetrated among the Greeks."

After more observations, Philo continues in his preface:

"It must be stated at the outset, for greater clarity and partial knowledge of everything that follows, that the most ancient of the barbarians, notably the Phoenicians and Egyptians, who have served as guides for all other men, considered the greatest gods to be those who made discoveries to aid our existence, or who conferred benefits of any kind on various populations. They called them benefactors because of the many benefits they owed to them. They worshiped them as gods, and for that purpose they rededicated already existing temples to them. They erected pillars and branches to them, and worshiped those objects with great devotion. ⁴

"The Phoenicians dedicated their greatest festivals to them and gave the constellations the names of their kings, some of whom were already regarded as gods. They recognized as natural gods only the sun, the moon, the planets, the stars and other things in that general category, so that there were mortal gods and immortal gods."

Theology of the Phoenicians

"He supposes that a dark and windy air, or a breath of dark air and a muddy, infernal chaos, were infinite in both time and extension. When that wind, he says, fell in love with its own principles a conjunction resulted, and that coming together was called desire. Such was the principle of the creation of all things.

"That wind had no knowledge of what it had produced. "From that cohabitation of the wind came Mot.

"Such was the sole germ of the creation and origin of all things.

"Animals appeared, but they were lacking in sensibility. They gave birth to intelligent animals named Zophasemin, that is, observers of the sky .

"Mot had the shape of an egg when he was formed. He became luminous and produced the sun, the moon, the stars and the great constellations."

Such is the cosmogony of the Phoenicians, which openly introduces atheism.

Next comes the generation of animals: the male and the female were on the earth and in the sea.

"These things," writes Philo, "were found in the cosmogony and dissertations of Taautos, supported by the conjectures and convictions which Sanchuniathon conceived and made known by means of his insight."

After speaking of the winds Notus and Boreas, which were deified, Philo adds:

"Such were the inventions of religious worship that were in conformity with the weakness and cowardice of their inventors."

Birth of Mortal Men of a Divine Race

"The mortal men Aeon and Protogonos were born of the wind Kalpia and his wife Baau. Aeon discovered the food provided by trees. They were the parents of Genos and Genea, who lived in Phoenicia. Great droughts came and they reached up their hands toward the sky and the sun."

He says that they regarded the sun as the master god of the sky and named him Beelsamen, which in Phoenician means "master of the sky." He was the Zeus of the Greeks. Then Philo attacks the error of the Greeks:

"It is not without reason that we make this distinction known: it is in order to establish the true meaning, which has been misinterpreted, of these names applied to objects. Misled by the uncertainty of translation, the Greeks took them in another meaning.

"From Genos, son of Aeon and Protogonos, were born new mortal children named Phos, Pyr and Phlox ("light." "fire" and "flame"). They invented fire by rubbing pieces of wood against each other, and taught its use. They had children of great size and marked superiority who gave their names to the mountains of which they were the sovereigns."

It was from them that Mount Casios, the Lebanon Mountains and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains took their name. They gave birth to Samemrumos and Hepsurianos ("celestial height").

Sanchuniathon observes that men were named after their mothers, and that women shamelessly gave themselves to any man they saw. Then he says: "Hypsurianos lived in Tyre and invented huts made of reeds, rushes and papyrus. He had a dispute with his brother Usus, who was the first to think of taking the skins of animals he had killed and making them into a covering for his body.

"Torrential rains and violent winds devastated Tyre and broke the trees. The forest was swept by fire. Usus took a tree, stripped it of its branches and was the first to venture onto the sea. He consecrated two steles to fire and the wind, and worshiped them by spilling on them the blood of animals he had taken in his hunts. ...

"Many centuries had gone by since the age of Hypsurianos when Agreus and AIieus, inventors of fishing and hunting, were born. It was they who provided those arts with their implements. From them came two brothers who invented iron and the production of all things that make use of it. One of them, Chrysor, devoted himself to sorcery, prediction and the composition of discourses."

He was the same as Hephaestus, who invented the fish- hook and bait, the fishing line and the raft. He was the first of 'all men to sail on the sea, and that is why he was worshiped as a divinity after his death. He was called Zeus Michius.

Birth of Men of an Earthly Race

Next, he says that from this race came two young men: Technites ("artisan") and Autochton⁵ ("earthly"). They conceived the idea of mixing wet clay with hay, drying it in the sun and making bricks with it; they thus invented the construction of roofs.

Others came after them, including Agros, then Agrueros or Agrotes, whose statue and portable temple are highly venerated in Phoenicia. The inhabitants of Byblos regarded him as the greatest of the gods.

It was they who conceived the idea of placing courtyards in front of houses and forming enclosures and grottoes. From them are descended those who hunt with dogs; they are called wandering tribes and Titans.

They procreated Amunon and Magon, who invented market towns and sheepfolds, and from whom were born Misor ("dauntless") and Sydic ("just"); they discovered the use of salt.

From Misor was born Taautos, who discovered writing and formed the first letters. The Egyptians named him Thoor, the Alexandrians Tuth, the Greeks Hermes. ⁶

From Sydys were born the Dioscuri, or Cabiri, or Corybants, or Samothracians. They invented the ship. From them were born other men who found medicinal plants for curing venomous bites and invented magic words. In their time were born Elium Hypsistos ⁷ and his wife Beruth, who settled in the land of Byblos. From them were born Epigeios or Autochthon, later named Uranos.

Uranos married his sister Ge and had four children by her: Ilus, known as Cronus, ⁸ Betyle, Dagon, known as Siton ("fish") , and Atlas. ...

Cronus Was a Mortal

Cronus had two daughters, Proserpine and Minerva. Proserpine died while still a virgin. Following the ad- vice of Minerva and Hermes, Cronus used iron to make a scythe and a spear. ...

In this time the descendants of the Dioscuri combined all the parts of rafts and ships and began sailing the sea. When they were driven back to Mount Casios they consecrated a temple there. The allies of Hel (Cronus) were called Eloim, which corresponds to Cronians. It was they who were thus named after Cronus. ⁹

We learn from Philo's account that Uranos, a descendant of Hypsistos and his wife Beruth (the region of Byblos), was fought by Cronus and exiled. Where? It is not said.

In later times Uranos sent from the place of his exile his daughter Astarte and two of her sisters, Rhea and Dione, to kill Cronus.

The god Uranos invented and composed animated stones (abadir in Phoenician) .

After having discovered wheat and the plow, Dagon was surnamed Jupiter the Plowman.

Here, then, are the acts of Cronus and the venerable compacts of that life under Saturn, so celebrated by the Greeks that they declare it to have been the first age, the golden age of men endowed with the organ of the voice and the epoch of that felicity of the Ancients which is praised so highly.

The Coming of Astarte

The great Astarte, Jupiter Demarun and Adad, king of the gods, reigned over the earth with the consent of Cronus.¹⁰

As a sign of royalty, Astarte placed on her head the head of a bull.

Having traveled through the universe, she found a heavenly body that cut through the air and, having taken it, she consecrated it on the sacred island of Tyre.¹¹

She whom the Phoenicians name Astarte is for us Venus.

Traveling through the universe, Cronus gave Athens and the kingdom of Attica to his daughter Minerva.

When a plague and a great loss of life occurred, Cronus sacrificed his only son to his father Uranos. He circumcised himself and made all his allies do the same. A short time later, after the death of the son he had had with Rhea and Pluto, he consecrated him; the son's name was Muth, and it is thus that the Phoenicians name death and Pluto. .

After this, Cronus gave possession of Byblos to the goddess Baaltis, the same as Dione, and he gave Berytus to Poseidon and the Cabiri, plowmen and fishermen. It was they who consecrated the relics of Pontus in the city of Berytus.

Before these things, Taautos, having initiated Uranos, traced in relief the facial expressions of the gods Cronus and Dagon and the others who are the sacred characters of letters. He also conceived, in favor of Cronus, the emblem of royalty : four eyes distributed in the anterior and posterior parts of the body, two of them slowly closing, and on the shoulders four wings, two spread and two folded.

The meaning of this symbol is that Cronus saw while asleep and slept while awake; and for the wings, that he flew while resting and rested while flying.

As for the other gods, he placed two wings on their shoulders to show that they accompany Cronus in his flight. He also gave Cronus two wings on his head, one to indicate commanding intelligence, the other to indicate sensation.¹²

Cronus having come from the regions of the south, he gave all of Egypt to the god Taautos so that it would be his empire.

The seven Cabin, sons of Sydysc, were the first of all men to record these facts in order to preserve their memory, as did their eighth brother Asclepius following the order of the god Taautos.

History Has Been Altered

Then the son of Thabion was the first hierophant of Phoenicia. Having allegorically translated these facts, and having mingled them with the physical movements of the universe, he transmitted them to the directors of orgies and the prophets of mysteries.

The latter, wishing to increase the obscurity of all those traditions, added new inventions to them and taught them to their successors and those they initiated.

"The Greeks, who excel among all peoples by their brilliant imagination, first appropriated most of these things and added various embellishments to them in order to give them a dramatic form; then, intending to beguile by the charm of fables, they completely transformed them.

"Hence Hesiod and the vaunted cyclical poets fabricated their own stories of gods, giants and castrations and carried them from place to place until all truth was extinguished.

"Our ears, accustomed from early childhood to hearing their false stories, and our minds, imbued with those preconceptions for centuries, preserve those fantastic suppositions as if they were a sacred trust, as I said at the beginning. When time had corroborated their work it made that usurpation almost impregnable, so that truth seems incredible, and adulterated stories have the appearance of truth."

Let us end here our quotation from the work of Sanchuniathon interpreted by Philo Byblius and recognized as true after examination by the testimony of the philosopher Porphyry.

A little farther on, we read:

In his work on the Jewish people, Philo reports the following:

"The genius of Taautos, whom the Egyptians call Thoth, surpassed that of all the Phoenicians. He was the first to regulate religious worship among them. He drew it out of coarse inexperience and made it into an en- lightened experience."

The Mysterious Serpent

This same Philo, in speaking of Phoenician letters and interpreting Sanchuniathon, says:

"Consider venomous reptiles and animals which are of no benefit to mankind; they cause death and loss of limbs to those in whom they inject their terrible poison. ¹³

"Taautos, and after him the Phoenicians and Egyptians, deified the species of dragons and serpents as having the strongest breath of an crawling animals.

"He declares that the serpent belongs to igneous matter in that it has a speed that nothing can surpass, be- cause of its breath. ¹⁴ Without feet, hands or any of the external means that other animals have, it performs all movements and exemplifies the most varied shapes. It gives whatever speed it wishes to the helixes ¹⁵ it describes in its motion. That is what makes it an essential part of temples and mysteries. ...

"This animal does not die a natural death. ...The Phoenicians call it Agathodaemon, ¹⁶ the good spirit, and the Egyptians call it Kneph, giving it the head of a hawk because of the energy of that bird."

Epeis, the foremost Egyptian hierophant and temple scribe, who was translated into Greek by Areius of Heracleopolus, writes on the subject as follows:

"The first and most eminent divinity is the hawk- headed serpent which, when it opens its eyes, fills all the first-engendered earth with light; and when it closes them, light is succeeded by darkness."

Epeis used that grandiloquent language to convey the idea that, being brilliant, it illuminated everything, for the nature of light is to illurninate. ¹⁷

Pherecydes, who took all his fundamental ideas from the Phoenicians, celebrated in his theology the god Ophioneus ¹⁸ and the Ophionides, of whom we shall speak later.

The Egyptians, representing the universe in accordance with the same concept, drew an airy, flaming circle with a hawk-headed serpent stretched across it. The entire figure resembles the Greek letter theta. They interpret the world by a circle, and the serpent at the center of it by the good deity Agathodaemon. ¹⁹

In the sacred ritual of the Persians, Zoroaster says, "The hawk-headed god is the first, eternal, indivisible and peerless, the guide to all that is beautiful, never letting himself be won over by gifts."

Ostanes says the same things about him in a work entitled The Eight Prayers.

Taking this as their point of departure, philosophers built their system, as has been reported: in the sanctuaries of the temples they consecrated, they represented the first heavenly bodies in the form of serpents. They offered sacrifices to those reptiles, dedicated festivals and mysteries to them, and believed them to be the greatest gods and the moderators of all things.

Such are the traditions of Sanchuniathon concerning serpents.

Philo writes:

"Among the Ancients, in situations of grave danger, it was customary for the rulers of the city or the nation to ward off general destruction by sacrificing the most cherished of their children as an appeasement offering to the vengeful gods; their throats were cut in secret.

"When Cronus, whom the Phoenicians call Il ^{Hel, Bel}, and who after his death was consecrated in the heavenly body that bears his name, was ruling the country, he had an only son, Jeud. He adorned him with the emblems of royalty and sacrificed him on an altar he had erected for that purpose."

If Sanchuniathon was born during the reign of Semiramis and if, as is generally agreed, she lived long before the time of Troy, then he also lived before that time; but it is said that he received documents by writers earlier than himself, and those writers are said to have lived at approximately the same time as Moses. Porphyry writes as follows in the fourth book of his diatribe against us:

"Sanchuniathon of Berytus relates with great truthfulness everything concerning the Jews because he alters neither places nor names, having had access to the writings of Jerombal, priest of the god Jeuo.

"Jerombal dedicated his history to Abibal, King of Berytus. It was accepted by him and by those he had instructed to examine it with respect to its veracity.

"The time when those men lived is earlier than the Trojan War and is very close to the time of Moses, as is shown by the successions of the Kings of Phoenicia.

"As for Sanchuniathon, whose name means 'Friend of Truth' in the Phoenician language, he gathered all the ancient history in the documents found in each city and formed it into a body of writings. He lived in the time of Semiramis, Queen of the Assyrians."

Notes:

1. 4 This passage clearly implies that gods are human inventions. And the cosmology of the Hawaiian Island (see Chapter 6) states that men were born before the gods.
2. 5 This is highly significant. Technites was of an extrater restrial race, since only Autochthon was earthly! The problem of interbreeding with beings from another planet is posed here.
3. 6 It is obviously Thoth who is being referred to here. Cf. the Norse god Thor. ,
4. 7 Hypsistos: the Most High. He is Jupiter Hypsistos Hesychius (Melchizedek, according to Valckanaer).
5. 8 The Latin version of his name is Saturn and the Orientals called him Bel or Baal. In Phoenician his name is Hil or Hel, notes seguier de Saint-Brisson, who makes this important remark: "Hil, Hel or Saturn has no relation to the sun. It seems likely that the city of Heliolopolis was a Greek fabrication of the god Saturn Hilo, or Heliolopolis, just as the Algabal of Emesa was Saturn mountain, mountain god or god Saturn."
6. The Algabal of Emesa was a black stone whose relation to Saturn is mysterious but obvious. Why, if not for the pur- pose of deceiving, was that name falsified by changing it to Heliogabalus (from helios, "sun'.)? The same procedure was successfully used in Peru and Mexico to change the Venusian cults into solar cults.
7. The primordial sky, say the documents consulted by Sanchuniathon, had four children: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and Mercury. The fifth child, Astarte, or Venus, was born later. This is one more indication that the planet Venus did not exist in the solar system five thousand years ago.
8. 9 The Hebrews were initiated by the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, whose myths they borrowed and disguised. The creators of the world, the Elohim or gods, would seem to be the Phoenician heroes mentioned by Sanchuniathon.
9. 10 This seems to imply that they could have reigned else- where, and it evokes the question of intervention by beings from another planet, as in the Bible. Was it for this reason that Astarte wore the head of a bum Astarte is Venus, Sanchuniathon points out. Venus the planet and the queen who traveled through the universe in a spacecraft. We must not forget, as Sanchuniathon says quite specifically, that Astarte was not a goddess, but a mortal creature. She therefore needed a spacecraft to explore the sky.
10. 11 This "heavenly body" was a meteorite. The Temple of Tyre and most other Phoenician temples have a black or green stone, often conical in shape, representing a heavenly body (Venus) The goddess Ashtoreth (Astarte) originally had the form of a conical stone. The Algabal, the sacred stone of Emesa in Phoenicia, was the stone of Venus, fraudulently related to sun worship under the name of Heliogabalus.
11. 12 Sanchuniathon is quite explicit: two wings are symbols and he explains why. As for the other wings, they are used for flying, since these "gods" are mortal creatures, as has been said several times. They were deified after their death because they introduced inventions useful to mankind. That is what Sanchuniathon told us at the beginning. Thus Cronus flew and Astarte traveled through the universe.
12. 13 It is clear from this passage that, for Sanchuniathon and the Phoenicians, serpents, dragons and other reptiles were hateful and noxious creatures. Why is it, then, that the serpent was universally venerated in the ancient world? Sanchuniathon explains this : the venerated serpent was not a venomous snake, such as the viper, but a luminous "serpent" that moved through the air with the speed of lightning.
13. 14 Philo did not understand the meaning that Sanchuniathon gave to the "serpent" and to the powerful "breath" (the blast of an engine) that propelled it at "a speed that nothing can surpass."
14. 15 In Phoenician mythology, as in all others, the serpent is usually a flying serpent, sometimes with the head of a ram. It is thus represented in a number of steles, bas-reliefs and columns in Phoenicia, Babylon, Phrygia, Egypt, Greece, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and the United States. It is always shown as a major symbol, with a meaning that archaeologists are reluctant to accept.
15. When it is not flying, the serpent speaks. It is the initiator. Among the Egyptians, by a deterioration of the original meaning, it became a cave of initiation in the shape of an incurvated serpent It is Eve's adviser in the earthly paradise. It is Satan, the good angel, the friend of man, the initiate who came to earth in a flying serpent with propellers or a jet engine-or both, which is precisely represented by a turbo-propeller airplane!
16. 16 Agathodaemon (from agathos, "good," and daimon, "spirit") was a benevolent deity among the Greeks. It is also the Greek name of the Egyptian Kneph, god of fertility and beneficence, and symbol of the Nile. Kneph was repre sented in ancient Egypt in the form of a serpent whose head was crowned with a kind of diadem and whose tail ended with a lotus blossom or a sheaf of grain.
17. 17 How could this refer to an actual serpent? Is a serpent brilliant, luminous, capable of illuminating solely by its presence? Or is this a reference, instead, to the "vessel brighter than the sun" that Garcilaso de La Vega speaks of, the extraterrestrial spacecraft that brought the Venusian Orejona to Peru?
18. 18 Ophioneus was a Titan who reigned in the sky with his wife Eurynome, before Saturn and Rhea. Saturn vanquished him and cast him into Tartarus.
    In the religious song that Apollonius of Rhodes puts into the mouth of Orpheus (Argonautica, 1, 503), Ophion the serpent-king is hurled into the ocean by Cronos. This tradition was known to Pherecydes of Syros, Pythagoras' teacher. I see the image as a representation of the comet Venus hurtling through the celestial ocean.
19. 19 The Celts also placed the serpent in the middle of a circle, or on concentric circles, which signified the creation of the universe, or a stationary universe, by a vibratory wave.
20. Is the Agathodaemon a wave? Electricity? The Agathodaemon-serpent would seem to be something analogous to primordial energy-matter. It may be the nwyvre (serpent) of the Celts.