Phoenician Myths by Zeljko Prodanovic (great reads .txt) 📕

Herodotus from Halicarnassus. In his lifetime he toured the whole world, from the Baltic (Baal-tik or the blue-eyed nymph) in the north, to the source of the Nile in the south, and from the Bactrian desert in the east to the Pillars of Hercules in the west. He then travelled through Greece as a rhapsode and told the bedouins what he had seen and heard, but they did not believe a word he said and called him ‘the liar from Halicarnassus’.
‘And, as you know, the Romans named him later ‘the father of history’.’
‘Yes, I know,’ the poet said.
‘But, I must tell you something,’ the satyr added. ‘He does not like Romans.’
‘Oh, oh!’ the poet exclaimed. ‘How come?’
‘It’s a long story,’ the satyr replied. ‘But in short, he thinks that they knew no boundaries, they were cruel, haughty and mean.’
‘Oh, oh!’ the poet cried again. ‘But how is that possible? He should know, better than anybody else, that the truth is different and that the very Romans had, for centuries, led the world towards progress and glory.’
‘Dear Alighieri,’ said Baalzebub, ‘let me tell you something – the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Besides, you must acknowledge that the Romans did many things unworthy of men. Especially of those who, as you say, led the world towards progress and glory.
‘I hope you will not misunderstand me, but it was myself who so many times witnessed terrible crimes committed by Romans. I saw, with my own eyes, drunken Roman soldiers kill Archimedes from Syracuse, the greatest mathematician the world had ever seen, and only because he told them not to disturb his circles!
‘I watched Roman legions kill and burn everything before them in Gaul, Syria, Iberia, Egypt, everywhere else they went – always under the excuse that others were barbar- ians and that they only wanted to lead them towards progress and glory!
‘And I saw, with my own eyes, how they unfairly crucified the unfortunate Aramean from Nazareth.’
‘Oh, oh!’ cried the poet. ‘But, please, what are you talking about?’
‘What do you mean, what am I talking about? Well, come then and see him. Ask him why did they crucify him?’
‘My Lord!’ whispered the poet and crossed himself.
‘But, as I said,’ the satyr went on, ‘the trouble was not that they crucified him. They had, after all, crucified many an innocent and weak. The trouble was that they later proclaimed him their only god and themselves the angels and guardians of his shade. And that they in his name committed so many crimes that even poor Herodotus could not count them. But you know all of this very well. You have experienced it all.’
The poet made a deep sigh and said, ‘Unfortunately, you are right.’
‘Yes, my friend,’ the satyr said. ‘While you were writing the Divine Comedy, while you roamed the wilderness of their hell and paradise and wrote your most beautiful verses in the chambers of their heavenly labyrinth, they were preparing a noose for you. And when you uncovered it, that wretch of a Pope, Boniface VIII, banished you from your native Florence and you never saw her again.’
‘But, my Divine Comedy is an allegory,’ the poet said.
‘I know it’s an allegory,’ the satyr said. ‘After all, what isn’t? A stone, the spring, the cypress tree, a bird, the stars, they are all allegories. Even you and I are allegories. And yet… You wrote them your most beautiful poem and they drove you away like a scoundrel and a robber!
‘You see, my friend,’ Baalzebub continued, ‘I don‘t hate anybody. I just want to call things by their real names. After all, it was not only the Romans who did evil in the world. You have seen poor Abu’l-Walid and heard how he barely saved his skin. You will see Pythagoras from Samos whom the tyrant Polycrates exiled from Greece, only because he said that the earth was round. You will also see Zarathustra from Bactria, who was killed by the Persians because he told them that they were ignorant, and the most beautiful of all women – Nefertiti – whose eyes the Egyptians took out, only because she was beautiful.
‘You see, dear Alighieri… The vanquished, the banished and the humiliated have come to Phoenicia. The most gifted among people took refuge here, and out there remain the caliph from Cordoba, Polycrates, Boniface VIII and their drunken soldiers. And they are looking for a new Archi- medes and Pythagoras, a new Abu’l-Walid, Zarathustra and Dante, to show them who the master is! Do you understand me, my friend? The problem is that the world is ruled by fools!’
‘Oh, oh,’ said the poet confusedly, ‘but everything is exactly so!’
‘Unfortunately, my friend, everything is exactly so!’
‘But tell me, please,’ the poet remembered suddenly, ‘which book are you reading?’
‘Oh, yes, I did not tell you this… I am Baalzebub, the lord of the shades. As you can see, I am a satyr, and I am the only one under the sun who can converse with both the living and the dead. Some time ago I went to the 18th century and the great adventurer Casanova, your countryman from Venice, gave me his Memoirs. A very exciting book indeed. He had also run away his whole life, ended up in prison, then ran away again. And do you know what he was looking for all that time? Love.
‘But, dear Alighieri,’ the satyr said, ‘I really have talked too much! And you, my friend, have travelled a long way and surely must be tired. So, come over here, find a nice place to lie down and have a rest. Stretch out under the old cedar and sleep as long as you like. Or climb onto one of the pillars of Jupiter’s temple and enjoy the Phoenician sun. Or sneak into the crown of the cypress tree and listen to the crickets. Now, my friend, you are finally free. Now you are a shade.’

Death of the Great Master

On the first day of May 1519, Leonardo da Vinci felt that his role in the universe had come to an end and that his beautiful Phoenician soul was about to leave for Baalbek. So, he decided to paint his last painting.
He was sitting in the purple rooms of the castle of Cloux near the Loire, painting, when Pablo Fuentes came along, the young Spaniard appointed by Francis the First as the painter’s ‘right hand’. Leonardo, as you know, was left-handed.
‘May I ask,’ Pablo said, ‘what the master is painting?’
Leonardo smiled and said, ‘The cranes carrying my soul to Phoenicia.’
‘You mean – to Florence?’
‘No, I didn't mean that,’ Leonardo replied. ‘It’s true that my body is from Florence, but my soul is from Phoenicia.’
Pablo was absorbed in his thoughts for a moment, then he said, ‘I must admit, master, that I don’t understand you.’
‘I don’t expect you to understand me, Pablo,’ the painter said. ‘But if you like, I could picture for you, in a few words, the exciting fate of my soul.’
‘I will listen to you with pleasure,’ Pablo said politely.
‘You have certainly noticed,’ Leonardo began, ‘that I write from right to left and not from left to right, like you and other people do.’
‘Certainly, master, I did notice that. And I have always wanted to ask you why it is that you do so.’
‘It is because I am a Phoenician.’
‘I apologize, but who are Phoenicians?’
‘Phoenicians were an ancient people who invented the alphabet. As they worshiped the sun, they believed that the alphabet should be written from right to left, that is, from east to west, as the sun travels.
‘However, a few centuries later, they sold the alphabet to the Greeks, who by mistake began to write it in the opposite direction. Therefore you write with your right hand and from the west to the east, in other words – backwards, and I am left-handed and write as the sun travels.’
‘True,’ Pablo said confusedly and thought to himself, ‘Who would have thought that!’ He then remembered that a few days ago some merchants from Italy arrived and told that Leonardo’s famous fresco, the Last Supper, in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, had begun to ‘fade and vanish’.
‘I would like to ask you something, master,’ Pablo said. ‘Some people from Italy arrived, saying that your Last Supper is slowly fading and disappearing.’
‘Is it true?’ Leonardo asked.
‘Unfortunately, master, it is. According to those people, very strange things are happening. The monks noticed that it was happening only at night, so they concluded that it was the doing of nobody else but the devil himself. Therefore, they decided to keep candles alight, but unfortunately this didn’t help. The painting is still fading away.’
Leonardo laughed. ‘Pablo, my son,’ he said, ‘those monks are fools. First of all, there is no devil. There is, though, Baalzebub, the famous satyr from Phoenicia, whom they call Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan and the Devil, and to whom they ascribe all sorts of silly things. But he, of course, has nothing to do with this.
‘You know what happened? I painted their Savior and all those angels and apostles only because I had to. I was paid to paint them and therefore I painted them. But deep in my heart I despised them.
‘That is why, while working on the Last Supper – the work of my life, as they said – I deliberately let the plaster dry before I painted, instead of painting on the wet plaster, as I should have done.
‘As I knew that the fresco would not last for long, I painted those fools of monks as the apostles and they were joyful like little children. In the end, I painted myself as Judas from Iscariot.’
Pablo looked around confusedly, as if he wanted to say, ‘Oh, master, what on earth have you just told me?’ but only whispered, ‘Who would have thought that!’
‘Now I will show you the real work of my life,’ said Leonardo and from a nearby room brought out a painting, later to be mistakenly called the Mona Lisa.
‘Oh master,’ Pablo exclaimed, ‘I have always wanted to ask you, who is this lady with the mysterious smile.’
‘This is my Phoenician lady,‘ Leonardo said, ‘or if you like, the beauty with a tear in her eye.‘
Pablo looked at him in wonder.
‘Many centuries ago,‘ the painter went on, ‘this woman was a priestess in a temple in Phoenicia. The Phoenicians called her Nefertiti, the beauty with a tear in her eye. One day she told me that I would be born again, that I would have a purple soul and that I would become a great painter. She got it right,