Megiddo Mosaic II

This blog continues last week's blog on the Megiddo Mosaic. This time explaining everything around the two fish and the braids used around both of the larger panels. The designers of that floor showed us distinctive features of the 4 different 3d model systems. They also showed us exactly the number of 3d boxes in the 3d alphabet riddle and they showed us how many actual items are needed to make up the Tabernacle exhibit.

Last Week

In last week's blog I introduced the Megiddo Mosaic currently on display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. The mosaic is from an ancient floor found buried near Megiddo in modern Israel.

In that blog I explained most of the patterns on the floor, and how they are related to the alphabet systems of the inspired text. I did not go deep into the specific geometry around the two fish, nor the braided trims. Let me do that here.

But first, we should at least understand where this was found.

Google Map of Megiddo

At the risk of this link surviving through email, it is to the location on Google Maps where the Megiddo National Park is located. More on that below.

Once you find that visitor center, then slightly south you can see the gray colored mountain top. You can then see a housing development to the south, southwest. If you scroll down to the south of Megiddo itself, you can see the prison that marks the location where the Megiddo Mosaic was found. So in the plain of Megiddo.

If you zoom out you can see this is inland, north of the Nablus/Shechem area and southwest of the Sea of Galilee. It is located along ancient major roads.

Tour of the Hill of Megiddo

The link here is to a Youtube Video by David Hyman. In the video he gives a tour of the remains of Megiddo. This place is frequently mentioned in the text because it was a fortified hill from ancient times. It guarded the land based trade route that stretched from modern Turkey down into Egypt.

This video shows the interior of the visitor center. There are shots of many of the signs marking spots on the hill. He also walks down into the tunnel system that provided water to the fort even when it was surrounded by enemy armies. There was also a large grain silo that in ancient times would have had a roof.

Interesting to note is what was found in a 1920s era excavation. There are many layers of remains going down to the bedrock on which the city was built. The fort of Megiddo is the big city to the suburb where the Megiddo Mosaic was found.

Best Color

The link here is to the same video I linked in last week's blog, the short video with the best color rendering of the floor itself. Like last week, you can scroll to the 34 second mark for a drone shot over the floor. This time, we turn to the details that are found in that floor surrounding the 2 fish.

All of that artwork can be explained. It is related to and highlighting aspects of the 3d related models and their exhibits. Some of it answers open questions that have lingered around the entire set of 3d models, including the clock. Let me start with the clock.

Modern Clocks

Of course modern clocks divide the day in 24 hours. Sometimes with a 12 hour face, sometimes with a 24 hour face. In the text we have references that support a 24 hour calendar day, with the evening also divided into 4 watches.

The first step for a Paleo clock is to simply label the hours with paleo letters. Wa through Lu at the start of the hours 1 through 12 is a fine start.

But what are the inspired subdivisions of an hour? Is it 60 minutes? Or something else? The Megiddo Mosaic answers this question. Let me explain.

48 Divisions Around The Fish

The "shore line" of the pond where the fish are found breaks down with 48 small black squares encircling the fish.

There are 24 hours in a calendar day, but here we find twice that number of small blocks. Seeing these 48 divisions as an even multiple of 24 suggests we look at this as representing the face of the ancient clock.

Each division around those 2 fish represents 1/2 of an hour. In the Aramaic, the phrase "Son of an Hour" is used to call out this smallest of all recorded time in the text. In English we might use a term like "bottom of the hour" to mean the time at the half hour mark.

This number of divisions is giving evidence that 1/2 hour is the finest subdivision of hours around the face of an inspired clock. This would be the same, either for a sundial or for a water clock. Remember, the earliest known form of mechanical clocks used the flow of water to indicate time of day. Even early scientists in the modern era used flowing water to measure time. They did not have accurate mechanical clocks. Flowing water also works at night, unlike sundials.

Seeing this as a clock face then explains the red fish and the blue fish in the middle. The red fish is above the implied horizon, the blue fish is below the horizon. Red fish are like cod fish, the blue (maybe silver) fish are like other types of fish. Red for daylight, blue for night.

Uses of Clocks

Why put fish in the middle of a clock? I did some searching on fish and clocks to see if there is any good reason why these would be symbols that are tied together.

I have not fished, nor caught fish, since I was very young. So I could not even guess the relation between fishing and time of day. Readers here who know how to fish should immediately know the issue and see the relation.

Fish Finder

The link here is to a website that takes geographic location and time of the year and then indicates to visitors the TIME OF DAY when it is the best time to catch fish. Most varieties of fish can only be caught at certain times of the day.

Long before the modern industrial world, long before modern society, ancient fishermen needed to know the time when they were likely to catch fish. Fishermen were the first users of clocks. Many early disciples were fishermen, and would have a business reason to know how to measure time of day, even at night.

Parables about being called as fisher's of men thus imply there are only certain times in history when that type of fishing will be abundant. Thus the history of great revivals at only certain times. But more interesting, only certain historical times when the text is recovered and Joshua has a harvest of earth.

The fish on the face of the clock are swimming in the direction of the sun moving overhead with a south facing view. Viewing the movement of the sun from the north is later established using the Qu Map and the lamp tabernacle item.

I mentioned in last week's blog that the exhibit for the bronze items, the river case, also called the Cedars of Lebanon, is themed around water and wants a pond or model of a sea at the end of the river. Clocks, of course, were driven by flowing water. So time keeping goes with that case. That exhibit will have a staff for each tribe, which also picks up months of the year, again pointing at the theme of time as being related to flowing water.

Night Watches

The text also breaks down the night into 4 different watches. The 4th watch is mentioned in Matthew 14:25 and Mark 6:48. In both stories Joshua is found walking on the water at the 4th watch of the night.

If you look again at the fish pond on the Megiddo Mosaic, you can see the circle is surrounded by an 8 sided shape, with points at the cardinal compass directions.

These 8 sides are dividing the 24 hours of the day into 3 hour long subdivisions. The 4 watches of the night are the 4 flat facets on the bottom half of that circle. This is below darker, or the night time, fish.

Each watch is of course 3 hours long. Unused in the text, but this outer 8 sided shape allows for 4 watches in the day as well. The math has always wanted this. Presumably watches of the day are the times when guards are posted on castle walls.

The fish pond itself is part of the "Cedars of Lebanon" tabernacle item. I am expecting the design for that item to have a ladder like, or stair case like, design. Symbolically, we must walk on water to get to Eden.

Crown

There are references in the text to an item I generally call "The Crown." It is an 8 sided shape the size of a room and it hangs like crown molding around a room. It is also known as the flying scroll. Up in the sky, and like a piece of parchment hanging down around.

This is the inspired shape of the item that makes up the charts for the historical and prophetic time lines. So this is a time related item. This should obviously be both a 3d modeled item, and an app for use on phones.

My trouble with this item, and why I have been unable to even start design work, is working out the time divisions around that item. 8 sides does not divide well into any obvious time interval.

So the Megiddo Mosaic is putting 48 divisions around the day, and 48 divisions for the 8 watches of the day and night. This is likely also telling us to look for 48 divisions around 1 cycle of the calendar. Let me show possible math for this very unusual set of subdivisions.

There are 18,240 days in a Jubilee, where the 50 year Jubilee is the periodicity of the inspired calendar. In contrast, our modern Gregorian calendar has a 400 year periodicity.

So first step is see if 48 divisions go into 18,240 evenly. If they do, then 1 Jubilee will evenly wrap around both an 8 sided room, but also a clock.

18,240 / 48 = 380. Exactly 380 days for each of 48 divisions of a Jubilee.

A typical calendar year is 360 days, but Sabbath and Jubilee years are 390. These numbers create an irregular structure that does not wrap an 8 sided shape very well.

But if we break that Jubilee in 380 day intervals, so 6 of these on each of the 8 walls of the crown, then the Jubilee will encircle the room exactly.

Since this is a prime factors riddle, you can also see that 6 of these 380 unit intervals might be stacked up on each of the 8 walls. So 6 times around the room might be needed to completely cover a Jubilee.

There is much more work to see if the linear timeline we know from the Bible Time studies will wrap around a room like this. If it does, it will expose previously unknown patterns from the historical timeline. More on that later.

Crown Points

The other issue with crowns, in general, is that they have 12 points. Typically 1 for each tribe of Jacob, remembering of course that the tribe lists go as long as 14 and different tribes are removed to make 12 depending on the situation.

If we look at the outer square around the fish pond on the Megiddo Mosaic, we find 12 places were points reach the outer square. This happens at the 4 corners. It happens again at 2 places on each of the 4 sides. 4 + (2 * 4) = 12, the 12 points of the crown.

So 12 crown points can sit above the crown item, and will be spread out evenly using the units on each of the 8 sides.

Also interesting to note, Joshua's crown was a crown of thorns. It may be that this exhibit had something like small flags poking out that somehow mark events at those time locations around the room. 12 major banners for the tribes, then smaller banners for other things.

Notes

Long time readers here should note something interesting. I have explained most of the Megiddo Mosaic from aspects of the 3d and time systems I already know.

But I have just filled in missing issues relative to the Clock itself and to the long missing need for the inspired form of the Bible Time charts. These missing questions are coming directly from study of this artifact. This artifact is finishing off details of the system that don't have obvious first-principles answers. There is more. Let me keep going.

Navigating Around

There is much more art around the 2 fish that fills out that part of the floor. Let me use compass directions to identify and explain the details.

At the 4 compass directions of North, South, East and West there are small triangles with a single small dot within each triangle.

These are set at the same locations as the quad punctuation character that makes up the final character in the alphabet itself. The Qu Map of the throne room puts Joshua at that character. I take those 4 outer dots around the fish as a marker for Joshua.

Now we can break the floor into 4 quadrants. So Northwest, Southwest, Northeast, and Southeast. Each of these quadrants has more interesting details. Each quadrant contains a 2 dimensional drawing of an open 3 dimensional box. The box has been poured out and we are looking at the lid and a distinctive side, while the other side of each box has a dot.

Each of the 4 series of 3d models has at least 1 item were 1 side has a single dot for the 2d shape. This was the clue that made me think these 4 boxes are drawn to indicate something important about each series.

Let me deal with that set of boxes, and then go into the details of each.

4 Boxes

I began study of this part of the Mosaic by asking if these are boxes of 4 special individual 3d objects, or if they represent SETS of 3d objects. Do these drawings give us some sort of high level details about 4 different systems?

Once I started to look at those boxes as carrying systems, then it became obvious that these 4 boxes apply to the 4 different series of 3d models found in the alphabet system.

I often refer to them by their metal, so gold, silver, copper and bronze. These 4 metals come in the order found in geological deposits. Gold, the most rare, is on top, which is why prospectors usually first look for gold. Deeper down is then silver, then deeper still is copper. Finally, bronze is a copper alloy and at the bottom of mineral deposits, under water if you will.

The gold series is captured on the Megiddo Mosaic floor in the NW box. The silver series in the SW box. The copper series is in the NW box. The bronze series in the SE Box.

This is NOT following the time procession around the clock as I would have expected, but this difference is likely to show that there is no time relation to those otherwise metal sequenced series.

NW: Gold Series

The box sides in the NW quadrant include 2 designs. The WNW square is likely an ancient infinity symbol, which is abbreviated today as the lazy 8 used in modern math.

The very first object, the top most object, in the entire system is what some people would know of as a tiddly wink. A short 3d cross. That shape is infinitely repeating in that the sides of that object will infinitely recreate the same 3d shape, back through eternity. Thus this shape means infinity.

The NNW square is made up of a series of concentric mosaic diamonds. These diamonds are depicting the expansion out from the initial single item to the variety of items that make up later stages of 3d objects in the overall alphabet system.

But note, those diamonds are at a 45 degree pitch to the edge of the box itself.

When the gold series is laid out on a floor, it spreads out in a pattern like this, with the edges at 45 degrees to the expansion. The floor pattern north and south of the table in the room are for halves of this gold series, and there we see more precisely a rectangular shape at 45 degrees.

These floor patterns are likely called the Mount of Olives. It splits into 2 halves. References to olives and olive trees are likely pointing at the gold series. This series is reused in the fig tree so beware.

There is another feature of that same square in the Mosaic. There is a single dot in the middle, with 12 dots surrounding. Like Points on the crown. Then there are 20 more dots in the next ring out. This ring is missing dots at corners. The total so far is now 32 out from the middle.

The math of the cipher system, which is mostly driven by this gold series, looks able to generate 32 different ciphers, as counted here. There may be a few more 2nd order ciphers as hinted at in this box. We will see. It may also be that certain ciphered texts can be ciphered again, while others cannot. Again, we will see.

SW: Silver Series

This series generates the vine item in the exhibits. The best description of this item is Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a tree. The birds in the branches are the 3d items.

Nebuchadnezzar cut down and broke this tree with his invention of Hebrew characters. This tree and his destruction of it from popular memory is why Nebuchadnezzar suffered.

The WSW square in this SW quadrant is depicting most of the tiers up this tree. At each tier there are 2 sides, left and right from the student's side. On each side is a 3d item which itself has 2 letters from the alphabet. The 4 letters at that tier on the tree share the same vowel. This 4 way vowel sharing is important to understanding correct pronunciation. It later becomes important in the audit, and is what is being captured in this square.

The SSW square in this quadrant is depicting either 4 petals of a flower or 4 leaves or 4 branches at the most complex level in this tree. In the model of the vine, the leaves carry the 2d drawn letters, usually there are 4 different letters at each tier up the vine.

NE: Copper Series

The NNE square, so in the NE quadrant, is the standard 5x5 grid that forms the QU Map. In this slightly colored version of the square you can see there were 3 colors originally used, black, red and then natural. Perhaps red, green and blue before the colors faded.

This is the Table tabernacle item that holds the Bramble object. Copper is the medal, and most of the items are household tools that would have been commonly made out of copper.

The ENE square in this NE quadrant is a path across the Qu Map. It crosses, or converges, in the middle of the map.

I currently encode a path through the bramble in alphabetic order. This is the path that beginning students most need to learn, how to lay out the letters on the map.

What we find on this path, though, is something different. To crack this riddle it helps to remember the Disneyland Qu Map. Walt was fixated on the central square with 4 spokes in/out along the 4 compass directions. This is how this square on the Megiddo Mosaic should be viewed. 4 paths either diverging or converging in the middle.

But then, taken together these 4 paths visit all the letters on the map. Skipping punctuation, there seems to be an encoded message on that square. Likely some short kid length sentence that uses each of the 22 letters of the alphabet only 1 time. I cannot crack that riddle now, for want of a lexicon, but we will eventually be able to do that.

Orienting those paths with the two fish as below, here are those letters, read in towards the Quad from the exterior of the map.

SE: Ba, Ge, Ta, and Wa.

NE: Ve, Jo, Re, Fe, Du, and Sha.

NW: Yo, Ku, Ze, Th, Ha, and Qu.

SW: Ne, Sa, Oo, Mo, Lu, and Pe.

SE: Bronze Series

This series is called the Cedars of Lebanon, or river. It depicts a series of trees that grow along a river. All of the 3d items in this series are parts of the growth cycle of plants. Merged together they show models that depict each stage in the life cycle of plants.

There is a distinction in this series that is important to understand. All of the 3d models in the silver and copper series have drawn letters on their sides. Except for punctuation dots, those letters are full height, like capital letters in English.

So the silver and copper series have 3d models that fill their cubes. This is not so in the bronze set.

This bronze series has several shapes that are not punctuation derived and yet are still not full height. These are dwarf or 1/2 height 3d shapes. This is a how the series can depict the early life of plants, when they are but seedlings and sprouts.

Knowing this detail, the drawn shapes in this SE quadrant can be understood.

The ESE square in this SE quadrant is showing this strange feature by drawing a half size box inside the middle of the standard larger box. This smaller inside box is showing how this series contains many unusual smaller shapes.

The SSE square in this SE quadrant is picking off another aspect of this bronze series. This square uses the same half size box, but shows it moving or projecting from the left, back, bottom, to the right, front, top.

This is because these objects are rotationally symmetric around a line that moves from the left, back, bottom to the right, front top.

This is a very distinct feature that is being depicted in this SSE box. This is what gives each of these objects an organic feel. It makes the objects in this set rotationally symmetric on 3 sides when looked at along their diagonal line of rotation.

Single Braided Edge

This side of the floor also has a distinctive braided edge. That edge looks to have originally been in red tiles that have since faded.

If you count the dots in the center of that weave you will find 90 such dots. There are 25 top to bottom on each side, and then 20 more filling in across both the top and bottom.

There are also 90 different 3d cubes throughout the entire alphabet system. That total of 90 is NOT counting variations in 3d models where the cubes themselves have alternative 3d solutions.

For the gold series, there are 14 different designs starting at a single root. But then there is a second branch sharing again at that root item, with 13 more copies. So the gold series has a total of 27 cubes.

For the silver series there are 13 different cubes. This is the 25 letters of the alphabet folded in half, so 12, plus a lone object for the quad. Note that when building the sower and reaper there are 5 mirrored objects that are used to fill in the wheels, the back tooling, the front grill, and 2 eyes. Those mirrored objects are not counted in the base 13 for this series.

For the copper series there are 25 cubes. One cube for each letter of the alphabet.

For the bronze series there are 25 cubes. One cube for each letter of the alphabet.

(14 + 13) + 13 + 25 + 25 = 90.

The braid with 90 twist points is showing that there are 90 items that twist together across their designs.

Double Braided Edge

Over on the right side of the floor is the geometric pattern for the construction lines for the Qu Map. It too, has a braided edge. The braid here is different, with a double weave twist points as it goes around the floor.

By my count, there are 25 double points across the bottom, and 49 on the left, being careful to count symmetrically to handle corners and to fill in across damage to the floor itself on the top and right.

So there are (25 * 2) + (49 * 2) = 148 weaving points around this panel.

The difference between these panels is 148 - 90 = 58 points.

To explain this trim we need to explain 58 more items from the trim around the two fish. This is not hard, it comes from details of the vine and fig tree.

The fig tree itself needs 1 complete set of the gold series, or 27 items. Then the fig tree also needs 2 more sets of silver, so 26 items.

When building the sower and reaper, out of the parts found in the silver series, there are 5 places where symmetric, or mirror image copies are needed for solving the riddle needed to complete the sower and reaper models. These 5 fill in for required parts for the Sower and reaper objects.

These effectively expand the silver set by 5 more mirrored items. 1) mirrored Ge/Re, 2) mirrored Du/Qu, 3) mirrored Fe/Ze, 4) mirrored The/Ne and 5) mirrored Yo/Mo. These also sit on their own branches on the vine. The Ge/Re and The/Ne sit at the same level on the vine and force that layer of the vine to have branches facing 4 ways.

So above the 90 to start with, we need 27 + 26 + 5 = 58 more 3d items to complete the exhibit.

If we were using the Megiddo Mosaic floor to display each item, we could set the first 90 out around the left mosaic. This is the effective minimum set.

Then we could move them to the right side, and add the remaining items from the vine and then add all of the items from the fig tree and we would exactly fill in the 148 positions of the braid found around the right side mosaic.

I suspect this would have been done in this room to show off the complete set of items at 1 time.

Complete Coverage

In this blog I have finished explaining essentially every detail in all the various patterns and scenes across the Megiddo Mosaic. The builders of that floor knew what was going on.

The builders of that floor knew the overall system. They knew the exhibits. They knew what they meant. They knew how to apply them to find the inspired text. They knew all the places those exhibits are used in the inspired text.

Rooms like this are what the early disciples were going around and building when they went on missionary journeys. Paul would have been building copies of this room when he traveled around. His treasures in jars of clay are the treasures of the exhibits in this room.

The material encoded in this floor was probably more commonly woven or embroidered into pieces of cloth. These would be light weight and easy to carry. Cloth copies would be easy to copy as they traveled around.

The people who used this room did not practice the Christianity of today. There was no trinity. Joshua was god, not the son of god as they teach on Christian radio these days. Those people used a copy of the text that had not been edited by the villains. They also knew how to use the fig tree to multiply the text into the full canon of scripture. Some of those people never died.

Back to regular work next week.

More Later,

Phil