Eerie Eri

An Unusual Source and Ten Tribes History (23 November, 2014, 1 Kislev, 5775)

A compilation of ancient Irish chronicles contains information confirming the identity of western peoples with the Ten Tribes of Israel.
Duration: 34.11 minutes. To Read Article Please Scroll Down!

Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Roger O' Connor and the Chronicles
3. A Summary of Points Pertinent to the History of the Ten Tribes According to the Chronicles of Eri.
4. An Evaluation of the Work. How Much Credence Should We Give to it?
5. Alex ("Eolus") Ferguson Validates O'Connor on Some Points
6. Some Historical Parallels between the Chronicles of Eri and Brit-Am Research Results
7. Conclusion
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1. Introduction
This article concerns the Chronicles of Eri. The Chronicles are a mixture of fantasy, mistaken scholarship, and genuine tradition of some value.
It contains information that may be of value in understanding the history of Europe in general, of Ireland in particular, and the Lost Ten Tribes.
An individual whose name may be (he does not appear to say so expressly) Alex ("Eolus") Ferguson has done some research on Roger O'Connor and the Chronicles. Ferguson seems to be an eccentric, like O'Connor probably was. This eccentricity should not be allowed to cloud over those valid points that both of them made. A few remarks of Ferguson are referred to below.
Our main interest in this matter is where it touches on our understanding of the history of the Ten Tribes and how they got to where they now are in western countries.
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2. Roger O' Connor and the Chronicles

Roger O' Connor (1762-1834), was an Irish nationalist from Cork in southwest Ireland. The Wikisource article says his family was of English origin though he claimed to be of Royal Irish blood.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/O'Connor,_Roger_(DNB00

At that time Ireland was ruled by Britain. The family of O'Connor included both loyalists to British rule and rebels against it.
In 1822 O'Connor published,
"THE CHRONICLES OF ERI, being the history of the Gaal Sciot Iber, or the Irish People, translated from the Phoenician dialect of the Scythian language", London. two volumes,1822.

Extracts were published in "ERI", by the Association of Covenant People, Vancouver, Canada, 1922, with an attached Dissertation by M.J.

At present the full text of this work is available on the web.

(a) Full text of Volume 1.
Chronicles of Eri: Or, the Irish People (1822)
https://archive.org/details/chronicleserior01ocogoog
(a) Full text of Volume 2.
Chronicles of Eri; being the history of the Gaal Sciot Iber: or, the Irish people; translated from the original manuscripts in the Phoenician dialect of the Scythian language (1822)
https://archive.org/details/chroniclesoferib02oconuoft

Roger O'Connor put together a work that he claimed to be an ancient chronicle but we think was a conflation of several other works along with insertions of his own.
Much of this work is incorrect mythology but some of his assertions appear to be correct.
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3. A Summary of Points Pertinent to the History of the Ten Tribes According to the Chronicles of Eri.

The narrative of O'Connor from our point of view was somewhat confused and confusing. Here is some of what we gleaned of interest to us:

The Chronicle speaks of the Gaeli Ancestors having been northeast of the Tigris River in the Middle East, moving towards the Euphrates and ruling over "that land". The Eisoir (i.e. Assyrians) drove them into Ard Mionn i.e. Armenia. They also settled in the Caucasus area and in Iberia. The Gaeli Ancestors were mine-workers, metallurgists, traders, and archers. Some of their brethren were captives in Aoimag, i.e. Hamath in northern Syria. A group of them intended to go to Sagadan (Sidon in Phoenicia) but found that their brethren had been taken away by way of the Mediterranean. With ships from Sagadan (Sidon) the Gaeli Ancestors sailed to Spain passing through the Strait of Gibraltar and came first to the Tagus River area (which was that of Tartessos). At that time all mining and shipping rights connected with Spain were controlled by the king of Hamath in northern Syria. The Gaeli Ancestors continued to journey northward and found others of their race who had come there from Iberia (in the Caucasus) 140 years earlier. They settled in southern Portugal and in Biscay and in Gael-ag (i.e. Galatia in northwest Spain). Calma from the Caucasian Kingdom of Iberia, had led the migration to Galicia in Spanish Iberia in search of his comrades taken into bondage by Phoenicians to work the mines. Eolus, one of their kings, learned to write in Sagadan (Sidon). The Gaeli Ancestors worshipped the Phoenician-Israelite god, Baal. They received instructors from Ramah king of Aiomag (Hamath). A group of them crossed the Pyrenee Mountains and settled in Eocaid-tan (Aquitaine) in southwest Gaul. The Gaeli Ancestors sent men to Dunmianac (Cornwall in Britain) to work the mines there under Phoenician direction but tension developed between them and the Phoenicians. The Gaeli Ancestors were known as the Gaal of Iber. At that time the Phoenicians ruled in Spain. Britain was known as Breotan. It was the custom to light fires on the hills of Britain. The Phoenicians brought Fillistim (i.e. Philistines) from Hamath to Esfeine (Spain). These strangers conspired with the Gaelic priests of baal and with the Phoenicians against the Gaal of Iber and a war was fought in which the Gaels were successful. Later a great host came from the east and took many captives and inflicted much damage. There followed a famine and so the people left en masse for Ireland. At that time Ireland was ruled by a minority of Danan over a majority of Firgneat i.e. natives. The subjugated Firgneat joined forces with the invading Gaali and the Danan were defeated. The Danan themselves had invaded Ireland 200 years before. Following the victory of the Gaali, the land was divided with the Danan receiving Oldanmact (Connaught) in the west, the Firgneat took Donegal and Fermanagh (both in Northern Ireland), and the rest was divided amongst leaders of the Gaali: Mumain (Munster in the south-west) to Iber; Gaelen (Leinster in the east) to Iolar; Ullad (Ulster in the north) to Er; Cork (in the south) to Lugad son of Ith.

Even the Greek version of the Phoenician name for Britain, O'Connor, implies derives from the same source, Prutanei or Prutanis Bri-tethgne, pronounced Britinni "the fire hill" Vol. 1 Demonstration p. ccxcciii

The Phoenicians employed Gaal of Sciot Iber in the mines of Galatia until they left for Ireland (Vol. 1 Demonstration p. cclxxi).
Sidonian Phoenicians settled in the south of Britain (Vol. 1 Demonstration p. cclxxii).
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4. An Evaluation of the Work. How Much Credence Should We Give to it?

In our opinion O'Connor did what many of other chroniclers did. He took all extant knowledge of academia known to him, assumed it was correct, and then combined that with Irish historical traditions writing everything down as one complete narrative.
We have been criticized for giving credence to this chronicle.
Let us make this matter clear: We do not accept what O'Connor wrote. For one thing he was a freethinker, and did not accept the Bible. O'Connor may have been influenced by European pagan ideology. He was also a rebel against the British and wrote part of the Chronicle while incarcerated. The British then ruled over Ireland. These factors must have had an influence on his understanding of history.

Let us compare O'Connor to the case of Pliny.

Gaius Plinius Secundus (23 CE - 79 CE), better known as Pliny the Elder , was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire. He was a personal friend of the emperor Vespasian who together with Titus destroyed the second Temple and exiled the Jews from their land. Pliny wrote The Natural History which was an early encyclopedia published circa 77-79 CE.
The Naturalis Historia is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day and purports to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available to Pliny. It encompasses the fields of botany, zoology, astronomy, geology and mineralogy as well as the exploitation of those resources.
This work includes blatant fantasies such as reporting the existence of a people with the heads of horses somewhere in Scandinavia and another tribe with the heads of dogs in Ethiopia.
Despite the obvious unreliability of Pliny in some areas this is what we have and very often in other cases he is correct.
Just because in some matters we cannot believe him does not mean that his work is not useful.
The same with O'Connor.
O'Connor may well confuse fantasy with fact and vice versa but so do our encyclopedias!
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5. Alex ("Eolus") Ferguson Validates O'Connor on Some Points

Alex ("Eolus") Ferguson has written a book and several website articles of interest concerning O'Connor and the Chronicles. He shows that on points concerning both ancient history and the history of Ireland O'Connor has been proved in the right and his detractors in error.

He has a Wikipedia article summarising many of his arguments as well as a web-site.

Chronicles of Eri
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronicles_of_Eri

It's history, Jim, but not as we know it
http://www.eolus.esy.es/

Extracts:

The loose concordance with manuscripts has led to various charges that the chronicle was fabricated off the back of them, however in those respects which the chronicle contradicts the manuscripts, subsequent evidence invariably aligns towards the chronicle. For example the manuscripts commonly speculate upon those lakes that appeared in a certain reign. The chronicle counters that only one lake was flooded in the pagan era around 250 BC:
as an arrow goeth from the bow, and water rushed in to the hollow of the land, and therein lay, and they are called the waters of Gurna, within Coriat.
Drainage works carried out after 1822 in the middle of the 19th century 'discovered' that Lough Gur had indeed flooded and that the flood helped preserve a rich archaeological record of its settlement before this time. Although this may appear persuasive evidence that in usual circumstances might elicit some to reconsider the chronicle, both it and its author had been so roundly calumniated (on spurious grounds) that there is no evidence of any public notice of this or any other point of hard evidence until this introduction here on wiki in midsummer 2014, (and earlier that year in a little visited related website).

O'Connor's book title describes his scrolls as being in the "Phoenician dialect of the Scythian language". Little of his chronicle may be read without it being apparent that the language he awkwardly alludes to is Gaelic. The chronicle claims that Gaelic was spoken throughout Celtic Europe, this is now recognised by linguists who use Gaelic to interpret Celtic era place-names which are quite homogeneous over a large area of Europe, in line with classical claims of regional dialects of an essentially single Celtic language, now sometimes recalled as common Celtic. The chronicle claims Phoenician traders were not only able to understand this language, but that in fact it was them behind its spread. The old Gaelic for Gaelic is Bearla Feine or the Phoenician tongue.

Ferguson quotes Barry Fell is quoted as saying the following concerning the Chronicles of Eri:

# Certain references in the document to wheel-money and to Etruscan coins and Tyrrhenian "Bulls" (i.e., coins of Italy and Sicily on which bulls are depicted) show that the document is itself a second-century copy of a much older document that must have been written in the third century B.C., when such coins were in circulation. Filmer suggests Galicia as the source of the original manuscript. #

Ferguson uses O'Connor to explain a DNA phenomenon and Haplogroup I-M253
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_I-M253
Haplogroup I-M253 is a branch of Y(male transmitted)DNA haplogroup I which is a twin of the "semitic" haplogroup J. Haplogroup I-M253 is very prominent in Scandinavia and is believed to have originated in Denmark. I-M253 is also found in England and in Connaught in Western Ireland. This is somewhat of a conundrum since Connaught should otherwise be considered the most Celtic of Irish areas whereas I-M253 is Nordic. While other parts of Ireland must have been influenced by Scandinavians and Englishmen Connaught was not.
As Ferguson notes,

# In the Viking era, Connaught was unique in having no Viking settlements which were numerous in all other provinces and which became the roots of most Irish cities. In the Norman era, Connaught was the only province to remain wholly Gaelic. In the Cromwellian era, major inflows of British immigrants seized land from the provinces east of the Shannon and famously directed the dispossessed Gaels 'to hell or Connaught'. #

Ferguson finds the answer in the Chronicles of Eri.
O'Connor relates how the Danaan were defeated by the Gaeli but as compensation allowed to rule over Connaught. Ferguson attributes the presence of I-M253 in Connaught to the Danaan and uses it to strengthen the case for O'Connor. Ferguson for some reason equates the Danaan with the Angles.

Quotes from Ferguson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronicles_of_Eri
The Bandon river described by the chronicle as the frontier between Danaan Ireland and Ib Lugad, a Gaelic copper mining enclave in the South west bounded by the Bandon, established centuries before the main Gaelic invasion. No other Irish MSS offers the slightest hint to this former enclave. Billy O'Brian 'discovered' the Bronze Age mines 170 years after the chronicle described them and outlined their background.[28]

A Barbary monkey skull found at Emain Macha appears wholly consistent with the chronicle's unique claim that Phoenician's helped build it, while being no less at odds with the subtext of every other account of history.

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6. Some Historical Parallels between the Chronicles of Eri and Brit-Am Research Results

We believe the peoples who settled in Ireland and Britain were mainly of Israelite origin whereas O'Connor does not.
O'Connor had access to sources that apparently are no longer available.
We tend to accept O'Connor were he says something pertinent to our researches that corresponds with impressions we have already received.
Here are a few correspondences between O'Connor and our own researches and insights:
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(a) Hamath

Cilicia


The ancient Gael were Israelites. The Assyrians took a portion of the Israelite exiles to the area that was later known as Armenia, as well as to the Caucasus area and Iberia.
The Chronicles says the same concerning the Gael. It says that Some of the Gael were captives in Hamath.
At that time all mining and shipping rights connected with Spain were controlled by the king of Hamath in northern Syria.
The Gael are depicted as captives in Hamath but relatively free in Armenia.
Gael from both Armenia and Hamath sail to Spain.
The Gael sailed to Spain in ships from Sidon of the Phoenicians. In Galatia, northwest Spain, the Phoenicians used captives from the Gael to work the mines. In Spain, Ramah king of Aiomag (Hamath) ruled over them and the Phoenicians. They were known as the Gaal of Iber i.e. as Hebrews. Like the Phoenicians they worshipped the baal. The Phoenicians induced Philistines to enter Spain alongside them.
The Gael fought against the Philistines and company and eventually moved to Ireland. Offshoots from their main body had already settled in Cornwall, England, and in southern France.

Hamath is included in a list of places from which the Ten Tribes shall return in the End times,

Isaiah 11:
11 On that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Mitsraeim [Egypt], from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the Isles of the Sea.
12 He will raise a signal for the nations,
and will assemble the outcasts of Israel,
and gather the dispersed of Judah
from the four corners of the earth.
13 The jealousy of Ephraim shall depart,
the hostility of Judah shall be cut off;
Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah,
and Judah shall not be hostile towards Ephraim.

The verse in Isaiah 11:11, as Aharon Menazzi pointed out, is referring to places the Israelites were exiled to, or went to shortly after their exile. They will not necessarily still be in those places before returning.
Amongst those places we find Hamath. This location in Biblical references is usually equated with the city of Hama in northern Syria. In Biblical terms however it has been noted that Hamath referred to a whole province and not just a city (Genesis 10:18; 2 Kings 23:33; 24:21).
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Hamath furnished non-Israelites colonists for Samaria after the Assyrian conquest (2 Kings 17:24). These together with numerous others became the Samaritans.
It was Assyrian practice on occasion to swap citizens around i.e. people from one place were settled in another whose evacuees were in turn taken tot he homes of those who were taking theirs.

King Jeroboam-2 (NOT Jeroboam son of Nebat who casued the Division but a later king of the same name) restored Hamath of Jidah.
2-Kings 14:
28 Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, and all that he did, and his might, how he fought, and how he recovered for Israel Damascus and Hamath to Judah, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel?
"Hamath to Judah" meant the Kingdom of Yadi which was an enclave of Judah north of Syria.

See:
The Clan of Yair in Israel, Ireland and Scotland.
http://www.britam.org/traditions9.html

Dan and the Serpent Way
http://hebrewnations.com/articles/tribes/dan/dan-and-the-serpent-way.html

Hamath in Biblical terms would have included the region of Carcamish in northern Syria which later became a region of Cimmerian presence.

Hamath in northern Syria is identifiable as Daphne of Antiochia.

Daphne of Antiochia was counted by the Sages as one of three areas to which the Ten Tribes were taken (Talmud Yerushalmi, Sanhedrin 10;4; Yalkut Shimeoni on Isaiah 49, 469). It is the equivalent of Hamath in Isiah 11;11. Daphne of Antiochia was a suburb of Antioch which had been rebuilt in about 320 BCE but in Biblical terms was in the region of Hamath.

There are those who say the the term Daphne of Antiochia is a mistake due to an interpolation and that it should be just Daphne. Dan in the Northern Galilee was also known as Daphne (Josephus).

See:
Dan and the Serpent Way
http://britam.org/dan3.html
There was a port named Daphne opposite Byzantium. Jerome quoted a Jewish tradition that the Lost Ten Tribes crossed the Bosporus near Byzantium (now Istanbul in the European section of Turkey) into Europe and continued northward. This equals Dephrobane opposite Byzantium of Welsh tradition hence Hu Gadarn led the Cymry across the sea to Wales and the region of Defene in southwest Britain from which we obtain the name Devon. These applications of the name Daphne as places of Exile may be considered offshoots from Daphne of Antiochia in the same way as we find the term Sambation firstly on the Zab River in Media and shortly afterwards as applied tot he Don and Donetz rivers in Scythia of southern Russia.

Accepting the term Daphne of Antiochia as Hamath as one of the third major centers of Israelite Exile consider the following:
We already know from the Bible that a portion of Israelites were taken overseas in ships.
They were resettled in Spain, Britain, and other areas.
They were used to work mines and develop mineral resources for the Assyrian Empire.
The Assyrians used Phoenicians and Philistines as their intermediaries in dealing with Israelite Exiles taken overseas.
Phoenicians and Phoenician ships were instrumental in transporting Israelite captives overseas as recalled in Amos 1 concerning Phoenician Tyre and the Cities of Philistia.
Amos also mentions the rule of Edom who may have had offshoots in the region of Hamath as well as in Europe.
There was a region known as Idumeretz i.e. Land of Edom in the area of Habor (Gozan) in northern Syria which in Biblical terms was also known as Damascus, apart from the city of Damascus to the south where the modern town of that name still exists.
Hamath in northern Syria fits in well with all this as indicated by the Chronicles.

Hamath would have been a center of administration of the Assyrians for concentrating the Exiles before shipping them out.
Israelite Exiles so transported included those taken directly from the Land of Israel as well as those who had already been taken elsewhere (e.g. to Armenia) but were once again uprooted and shipped off. The transportees were taken in Phoenician vessels with Philistine assistance. We know the Philistines had a base in northern Syria apart from their concentration to the south of Judah. The Assyrian Empire benefited from the overseas development of minerals whose products reached her through northern Syria i.e. Hamath.
The administration of transporting the exiles, coordinating with the Phoenician and Philistine go-betweens, working the overseas possessions and receiving the fruit of their labors could have been concentrated in Hamath.
We traced the exiled Israelites from archaeological and epigraphic evidence first to the south and then to the northwest of Spain and from there to southern France and the British Isles. They worshipped the baal as the Israelites had done before being exiled.

The Chronicles of Eri say the same adding that the priests of Baal in effect served as quisling agents of the Phoenician and Philistine oppressors and exploiters.
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(b) Fires in the Isles

O'Connor reports that:

All the headlands and promontories belonging to the Gaal of Sciot on the northwest coast of Spain were called in the Phoenician language Breoccean, that is, The Land of Flaming Fires, because of the blaze that was kept up and could be seen at a great distance out to sea. The same custom was observed on the coast of Cornwall and Devonshire after the Gaal of Sciot joined with the Phoenicians in their mining operations there, and that land was called Breotan, Breo meaning Flaming Fire" [cf. "BIAR" = burn in Hebrew].

Vol. 1 Demonstration p. ccxcciii

# Now it is a fact indisputable, that on all the head lands of Gael-ag [Galatia in northwest Spain] , that is Ard-Ib-er, Fir-ol, and Ard-na-gael, and all the promontories looking over that ocean, it was the custom to kindle fires, and keep them blazing during the darkness of the night, to be the means of directing the seafaring ones, and of protecting them from the perils of the vast deep, which particular kind of fire is called in the language of Phoenicia, Breo, for which reason all the head lands of Gael-ag were called Breo-ca, in like manner on the part of this island, opposite to Gael-ag, it being necessary to observe the same salutary custom, for the purpose of guiding the mariners of Phoenicia on their way from Breo-can to the land of their new and profitable acquisition, they gave it the name of Breo-tan, which in their tongue signifies "the land of flaming fires," that is the kind of fire of which they were directed in their passage between Breo-ccean and Breo-tan....

O'Connor continues to explain how the name Breotan became the Greek version which gave way to our name for Britain. He suggests that even one of the Greek versions, Prutan, implies in Greek "Land of Fire" (Vol. 1 Demonstration p. ccxcciii) and so captured not only a similar sound but also the same signification of the Phoenician original.

The British practice of lighting fires on the hilltops that could be seen out to sea has been used to explain a verse in Isaiah:

Isaiah 24:
14 They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty of the LORD. They shall cry aloud from the sea.
15 Wherefore, glorify the LORD in the fires [Hebrew: "BeUrim"], even the name of the LORD God of Israel in the isles of the sea."

Piotr Gasiorowski (historical linguist, Poland):

I think the tradition of erecting hilltop cairns and mounds as orientation marks, and of using beacon fires for long-distance communication was very strong in Celtic (also Roman) Britain; the landscape of much of the country is as suitable for this purpose as could be. One trace of that is the occurrence of the Brythonic element tan - 'fire' (Welsh tan) in hill names (there are many Tan Hills in England). -- not only in ancient times but all through history down to the invention of the telegraph. For example, a network of beacons set up on hilltops was used in England in 1588 to signal the approach of the Spanish Armada, and once it was spotted off the Scillies the news reached the English commanders in no time at all.

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(c) Plautus. Phoenician Hebrew Spoken in Ireland.

O'Connor quotes from Plautus, a Roman playwright who wrote in ca. 200 BCE. Plautus quotes a number of sentences spoken by a character from Carthage whose language was Punic meaning a dialect of Hebrew. The extracts from Plautus may be transliterated into Irish very closely. This proves that they once must have spoken the same language or something very close to it.

See: Plautus. Linguistic Evidence Comparing Irish to Punic Phoenician

Note: It has come to our attention that O'Connor may have been misled on the issue of Plautus. The article on Plautus will therefore be unavailable for the time being until we investigate the matter further.

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7. Conclusion
The Chronicles of Eri were published in 1832. They included information that only recently has come to light. Concerning the Israelite Exiles the Chronicles account about the Gaels corresponds with evidence we have from other sources.