Vanishing Gods

The ancient folklores of the Indus Valley and Sumer speak of their culture-bearing
ancestors arriving from out of the Indian Ocean [or ‘Samundra’ as it is called in
ancient Brahaman Sanscrit], at the dawn of history. India’s sacred book, the Rig
Veda, written between 5000-4000 BC, speaks of these culture-bearers as having
arrived from a great land far across the [Indian] Ocean called Aryanam Veijo.
‘Veijo’ means ‘Seed’ and ‘Aryanam’ ‘Aryans’, thus “Seed of the Aryans”. It was to
them the land of origin of the Aryans. Similarly the Persians called it “Azer-Baijan”,
or the “seed place of the Azar people”, the people who worship fire; locating it in
the southern hemisphere. Azer-Baijan survives as the name of modern Armenia.
Sarina "Phoenician Wharf"

 S
20 Metre Long Galley tone Ship’s Anchor

 A
Smelted Slag ncient Smelter

The massive Sarina “Phoenician Wharf” constructed

from discarded ores
from Bronze Age open-cut mines, found by the Gilroys
at  C
Egyptian Ship
nearby shoreline sites. Photo © Rex Gilroy 2004. arved Heads

Carved Head of "Nim" - God of the Sun

 

Vanishing Gods [continued]

And according to Babylonian mythology, the deity Ea, the god of fertilising and creative waters produced a son,
Marduk, who created the [southern] Paradise by laying a reed upon the face of the waters, then formed dust and
poured it out beside the reed to create the first humans. The water-worshippers of Eridu believed that the Sun
and Moon, which rose from the primordial deep, had their origins in the everlasting fire in Ea’s domain at the
bottom of the sea; ie the ‘Underworld’ Paradise of Uru.

Berosus of Caldea [270-230 BC] described a race of monster beings, half-men and half-fish which, led by a
great culture-bearer Oannes, arrived on the shores of the Persian Gulf, to introduce the arts of agriculture,
writing and metalworking to Mesopotamia. In other words, they were skilled mariners; gods who introduced
civilisation to Mesopotamia and the rest of mankind.

The spread of Uruan culture by watercraft to Mesopotamia and India could be called the first great maritime
 expansion. If so, then the rise of Sumer around 3800 BC saw another which spread Sumerian/Uruan influence
to the Indus Valley and Persia; to Egypt and Greece; their vessels eventually penetrating beyond Southeast Asia
into the West Pacific to ‘re-discover’ their “land of origin”, the mysterious land of Uru. Learning of its vast natural
wealth, the god-kings of Sumer dispatched large fleets of ships, loaded with settlers and supplies, to establish
mining colonies here of long duration.

Historians credit the Sumerians with the invention of bronze and metallurgy, yet this may have been developed
in south-east Asia at an earlier period by megalithic people who claimed a southern origin for their culture. To
date, no evidence has been found in Australia to show the Uru had created this art here, although at a few
megalithic sites in New England and central western NSW, regions rich in gold, copper, silver, tin and other
precious metals, fragments of flattened copper have been found, possibly the remains of crude cutting tools,
made by having been beaten cold prior to sharpening around the edges; suggesting the Uru were on the
threshold of metallurgy, as the age of smelting was dawning in the Old World.

It would be left to the arrival of Old World mineral-seeking colonists to instruct them in these techniques as the
age of Uru faded. Metal became important to ancient industry during the early stages of the third millennium BC.
Prior to this copper tools had been in general use for several thousand years throughout the Old World. Yet
copper was too soft. Sumerian metallurgists eventually discovered through experiment that, alloyed with varying
amounts of tin [about ten per cent] tools of this mixture were more rigid and sharper, and weapons and armour
were stronger.

However, as no minerals were to be found in the flood plains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, from the 4th
millennium BC, to their destruction by the Amorites in 1930 BC, the rulers of Sumer, followed by those of India,
dispatched large fleets into the world’s oceans in search of them, especially into Australasian waters.

Traces of ancient mining activity shows they found good quantities of tin in island Southeast Asia. There is also
evidence that they mined tin, copper and gold in West Irian and also the North-West Kimberley region of
Western Australia, which would come to be known as ‘Arali’, meaning “basement” of the earth, the ‘Underworld’,
and “place of the shining lodes” in reference to the great amount of silver mined there. It also became known as
“the land from which the metal ores come”.

Ancient Sumerian traditions speak of their colonists having overpowered the local [Uru and Aboriginal]
inhabitants, and enslaving them to work in the mining operations. My book, “Pyramids in the Pacific” gives a full
account of Bronze-Age Sumerian presence in Australia, and its eventual demise due to the collapse of their
civilisation at home. However, other sails were appearing on the horizon as the Bronze Age [2000-1400 BC]
began, and soon Phoenicians, Celts, Libyans and Egyptians would have an even greater impact upon the Uruan
civilisation.

A number of important archaeological sites in Australia and New Zealand demonstrate the longterm nature of
these colonies and the influence they had upon the
indigenous Uruan culture, and they certainly left their influence upon the culture of our Aboriginal people over a
wide area of the continent.

The Gympie Pyramid

Note the causeway that extends from left of picture.
A stone wharf once stood at the southern base [in from the road],
the pyramid being on the edge of the former harbour.
Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2004.
At Gympie, north of Brisbane, in October 1975 I identified a crumbling, tree-covered, terraced 60 m tall by 125 m
square, four-sided stone structure as a step pyramid, reminiscent of those built in Egypt during the 3rd dynasty
period, from about 2650 BC to the 4th dynasty about 2720 BC, when the step formation was superceded by the
true pyramid design. The late Mrs Ethel Loughman, then 73 years old, informed us that 19th century settlers had
found a shaft that dropped down deep into the ground, and from which a stone-lined tunnel continued on deep
into the structure from the western side.

Some locals tried to penetrate it without success. The shaft was eventually filled in to prevent children or
livestock falling into it. The “Gympie Pyramid” as I named it, faced the four points of the compass. In March
1976, near the structure’s western base, I unearthed a 34cm long by 15.5cm wide crude ironstone idol. It
resembled others from Egypt of the god Thoth in ape form clutching the Tau, of “Cross of Life”. It was not the
first Thoth ‘ape’ idol to be found hereabouts. Ten years earlier, in 1966, farmer Dal K Berry [since deceased],
while ploughing his field, one day unearthed a 72cm tall by 120cm circumference ironstone idol within sight of
the pyramid.

The “Gympie Ape” idol [Egyptian God Thoth in ape form], unearthed
by the late Dal K. Berry in 1966.
Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy
The idol was later identified by me as the god Thoth [inventor of writing] in ape form. Carved between the legs
was the papyrus flower symbol, denoting Thoth as the god of writing and knowledge. Thoth was depicted as an
ape prior to around 1000 BC, when he became an Ibis-headed, human-bodied deity, who recorded the
judgement of the dead in Amenti, the afterworld.

As long ago as the mid-19th century European settlers and miners, who had entered the district after 1867,
when James Nash discovered gold here, began turning up mystery rock inscriptions and remains of ancient
pottery of middle-east design, and many other relics of apparent Phoenician and Egyptian origin. The
early settlers and miners discovered ancient open-cut gold and copper mining operations and crumbling large
stone structures in the nearby mountains, which showed the district had been settled and mined in the dim past.

Geological evidence shows that, at the time the pyramid was constructed, a great harbour extended from Tin
Can Bay, 36 miles [approx 24km] to the east, through Gympie and far out into now open farmland. The pyramid
stood on the northern shoreline of this wide, deep harbour. Aboriginal traditions of the area state that, in the
long-ago“Dreamtime”, a race of fair-skinned“culture-heroes” sailed into Gympie in big ships shaped like birds -
suggestive of the old Phoenician triremes, which often possessed bird-headed prows among other figureheads.

These culture-heroes spent a considerable period of time in the area, during which they built the “sacred
mountain” in which a great chieftain lived, and from which they worshipped the Sun and Stars. They also dug
holes in the hills and removed the rocks which they transported out to sea. Eventually they sailed away,
promising to return. How else could primitive Aborigines have described ancient mining operations? The
evidence suggests Gympie was once the scene of a joint Egyptian-Phoenician mining colony.The local
tribespeople regarded the pyramid with awe, believing it to be a very sacred place, for their Supreme Being, the
Sun-God Biame, lived on the summit.

The sad fate of the Gympie Pyramid at the hands of ‘treasurehunters’, religious fanatics and other vandals is
related in my book“Pyramids in the Pacific”. There had once stood a crude stone altar and libation bowl upon the
flat summit, [smashed, I was told years later, by a sledge-hammer wielding‘Christian’]. I had not seen the
pyramid for many years following the vandalism, when in August 1993, while passing through the city, I paid a
visit to the pyramid, now a virtual hill of rubble

The Gympie Pyramid

Large Boulders On The Summit
Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2004.
However, atop the structure, beside where the altar and libation bowl had formerly rested, partly exposed on the
surface, I noticed a stone bearing a carved symbol. Digging what turned out to be a large, heavy oblong
ironstone slab from the ground, I found it bore a message in Egyptian hieratic script, later translated to
read:“Leave offerings of fruit at this stone for the god.”

The vandals had also missed another relic. Returning here in May 1995, about half way up the southern face of
the pyramid I found a large, ironstone phallic image, inscribed upon all sides, with a mixture of Egyptian, Libyan
and Phoenician symbols, later translated
to read:“Na-ta-wah, Pharaoh of this land, commands you to assemble here to worship Ra.”

Who was Pharaoh Na-ta-wah? Was it for him that the Gympie Pyramid was built? And what of the tunnel? Did it
lead to a burial chamber? We may never learn all the answers to this mystery, for not only was a railway line
allowed to be constructed along the western base of the pyramid, but a housing development now covers its
northern, eastern and southern sides!

The evidence is that, the Gympie colony and its population became so large that it warranted the establishment
of a local ruling class. This was the case with other large colonies established at Sarina, North Queensland, in
the New England district and also at Brisbane Waters on the Central Coast of NSW, north of Sydney near the
Hawkesbury River.

Our researches around Sarina harbour, near Mackay, North Queensland, have identified extensive megalithic
ruins, including a stone wharf and nearby pre-European age open-cut gold, copper, tin, silver, iron and other
mining operations, as the work of Phoenician colonists, who settled the district in biblical times.
The fact that iron was mined hereabouts places the colony’s age as late as the Iron Age, around 1400 BC.

There are also the wel lpreserved remains of a small temple, an ancient cemetery, and the apparent remains of
an ancient 4 -5 square acres barley field, with grid patterns still visible amid its dense rainforest covering.
Heather and I commenced a preliminary inspection of the district in September 2000, beginning with a massive
wharf composed of rocks and minerals of considerable variety, many of which had been transported to the site
from beyond the Sarina district, including offshore Great Barrier Reef Islands, which had been mined for their
deposits of copper, gold and other precious metals.

The wharf, which is 6 m in height by 800 m in length by 30 m width, parallels surviving Phoenician examples in
Lebanon, the stones having been set in slag cement. Here triremes would have brought ores from the offshore
islands and other mainland mining sites to the north and south of Sarina, which after sorting were processed in
at least two large stone smelters, whose remains now lie partially submerged on the harbour foreshores. The
precious metals would then have been loaded into triremes for the voyage back to the Red Sea, from where, we
assume, overland caravans carried them to Egypt and other fabled Mediterranean lands.

View of the far end of the Sarina “Phoenician Wharf”.

Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2004.
 The wharf is covered in ore chips and minerals, identified as Copper, Tin, Silver, Gold, Quartz, Calcite,
Cinnabar, Lapis Lazuli and others. Hereabouts I found fragments of thin bronze sheeting turned green with age,
and which had been produced from tin and copper smelted locally. Heather and I inspected three open-cut
mines excavated through solid basalt by unknown means, from which mercury and gold were extracted. Fine
gold dust coating the cliffsides sparkled in the morning sunlight.

Upon a huge basalt slab facing the harbour at another location where gold had been mined, I found a number of
large, weathered
Phoenician glyphs, stating:“Guard the land on which this mine stands, for it contains
an ever-increasing amount of gold. The gold of Baal the Sun who is above all.”

Stretching out beyond the shore was a man-made headland leading to a rocky outcrop showing signs of ancient
mining. Hereabouts lay ore fragments and samples of Lapis Lazuli. At the temple, mentioned previously I found
two small Phoenician glyphs stating, “Guard this enclosure”. Possibly it was built for the worship of either the
Celtic Bel or Phoenician Baal Sun-Gods, but a further identifying inscription is needed for a positive
identification. The ancient cemetery contains at least 60 graves, but like the barley field, there must have been
many more, due to the enormous population that had to have occupied this colony.

So just how many people were involved in these operations and how long ago? It can be safely estimated that at
least 3,000 people lived hereabouts at the height of the colony’s existence [the Gympie colony population was
about the same figure]. As tin and copper was mined here to produce bronze, the colony must date back to
Bronze-Age times [2000-1400 BC], and as iron was also mined this implies the colony continued on into the
Iron- Age, which began around 1400 BC
when this precious metal was discovered by the Hittites. Thus the colony surely existed for a considerable
period of time. We suggest up to 2,000 years.

Just prior to our Sarina investigation, Heather and I visited Bowen, further north up the coast, in search of similar
evidence. At one particular beach, half buried in sandy soil high up on the shoreline, I uncovered a curiously
shaped slab of yellowish sandstone, which turned out to be the carved profile of a human head, with left ear,
eye, nose and mouth. Above the eye and nose ridge were five unmistakable Phoenician glyphs. Nearby on the
waterfront I also found a rock shoal bearing further large, deeply cut Phoenician glyphs.

Heather Gilroy examining one of the Sarina Bronze Age waterfront gold mines.
The open-cut operation was made through solid basalt.
How did the ancient miners do it?
Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2004.