The book “Jug of Honey”, Jewish legends and fairy tales. This is how the Shamir worm ended up in the hands of Solomon

There were many legends about the biblical King Solomon in the Ancient World. They all agreed that during the reign of the wise king, peace and prosperity came between Egypt, Israel and Mesopotamia.

During this period of prosperity, in 950 BC, Solomon began the construction of a temple, which later became famous for its splendor and beauty.

At the very beginning of construction, the tsarist engineers were faced with a difficult task: how to build a huge building without touching the stones with any iron tools?

The fact is that Solomon, remembering the words of Yahweh himself, once spoken to the prophet Moses on Mount Sinai (“And build there an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones, without lifting iron on them”), ordered the construction of the temple without touching it with iron, so as not to defile it.

Looking for a tool

Legend says that the wise men pointed out to Solomon the precious stones in the breastplates of the high priests. These gems were cut and polished by some tool even harder than themselves. Shamir - that's what he was called. Shamir was able to cut something that was beyond the reach of any iron.

Since the priests themselves knew nothing about the stones, Solomon called the spirits, and they opened the way for him to the shamir and declared that the shamir is... a worm, which is no larger than a barley grain, but has such strength that even the hardest stone.

The Hebrew dictionary explains the word "shamir" as being of Egyptian origin. In the Bible it means nothing more than a diamond, which seems quite natural. However, from archaeological materials it is known that only crystalline quartz (or rock crystal) was available to the ancient Egyptians as cutting tools. They didn't use the diamond because they didn't know anything about it.

Nevertheless, at the very beginning of the 20th century, in the town of Abusir on the left bank of the Nile, archaeologists unearthed the remains of the pyramid of Pharaoh Sahura, who ruled during the heyday of the Old Kingdom (approximately 25th century BC).

In the exceptionally hard rocks (granite, basalt, diorite, whose hardness on the Mohs scale is 8.5 out of 10) from which the pyramid was built, the researchers discovered precisely drilled holes made at one angle. In total there are over 30 similar drill holes.

Following the example of our ancestors

At the same time, the English archaeologist Flinders Petrie drew attention to the stone-cutting technique of the ancient Egyptians. “When drilling granite,” Petri wrote, “the drills were subjected to a load of at least 2 tons, since in a granite core the pitch of the spiral notch left by the cutting tool is 2.5 mm with a hole circumference of 15 cm... This geometry of the spiral notches cannot be explained by anything other than feeding the drill under a huge load...”

Thus, the drilling work in Abusir, that is, core drilling of rocks, can only be explained by the use of a technique similar to ours. But even the most skilled drillers of the times of the Old Kingdom could not have done this, because they used only the copper tools available to them - a hand drill and a chisel.

However, there is no doubt: to perform complex drilling operations, some equipment specially designed for this purpose was used.

Petrie had no explanation for this mystery. He also could not explain with what tool the hieroglyphs were carved on the diorite bowls of the IV dynasty (about 5 thousand years old), which he found in Giza.

Image of a shamir in the form of a worm eating stones

In Egyptian museums you can see a large number of vessels dating back to ancient times and carved from the hardest rocks. Over 30 thousand pieces of stone utensils were found under the step pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara (jugs, vases, plates and other utensils). The vessels found demonstrate the highest quality of workmanship.

But a tool has not yet been invented that could cut out vases of this shape, because it must be narrow enough to fit through the neck, and strong enough so that it could be used to process the inside of shoulders and radius surfaces.

Today, traces of the “divine instrument” have been found in other cultures, but it is unlikely that we will be able to understand what it actually was, because, having completed the work, as a rule, the master takes the instrument with him...

Not what you think, nature:
Not a cast, not a soulless face -
She has a soul, she has freedom,
It has love, it has language...

F. I. Tyutchev

Have you ever wondered why the concept of nature is completely absent from religions? So I began to philosophize not so long ago - the last 30 years of my worldly life. You might say it’s a waste of time. Don't tell me. As a Slavic author, a descendant of the Cathars of Languedoc, studying the heritage of our ancestors, I sometimes see such pictures of the Great Design that I am amazed at how far we have been rejected by religions from the understanding of God by our ancestors. Many people reproach me, saying that there are many questions of a religious nature in your works, Qatar, and sometimes you can be honored for preaching. I will answer this way: there is no other way to study the epics of Russia. Only after going through the turns of the epic of our people, having seen all the meanness of the authorities and the obscurantism of their religions, do you begin to understand that what is happening to Russia is not just an escape from circumstances, but punishment, a real and cruel punishment that has fallen on the Russian world because of the betrayal of its roots and the connivance of the people , his own authorities. Without dividing the princes of the church with the powers that be, I declare with complete confidence that the goals and objectives of both not only coincide, but there is also a rigid link between ministers of religion and the state, aimed at the merciless exploitation of their people.
Was there a state and a religion whose union treated its people with respect? Yes it was, and this was the empire of the Slavs, before the introduction of apostolic Christianity as a result of the victory of Dmitry Donskoy in the Battle of Kulikovo. It was from this moment that religion arose in the world, replacing Faith.
Of course, I am no longer studying the epic of the metropolis, but its outskirts, modern France, the country of the Cathars. But she, too, is part of the Russian epic, and therefore I simply have to be interested in what was happening in Rus' in those days, bringing into one life in the province-colony of Rus' and its capital - Lord Veliky Novgorod - the totality of cities of the Golden Ring of Russia, and not the modern child on Volkhov, now passed off as the imperial capital.
It’s simple, every new city in Rus' was called Novgorod during its construction, and only then, when its significance in the empire and tasks were determined, was it given a name.

The fact is that Solomon, remembering the words of Yahweh himself, once spoken to the prophet Moses on Mount Sinai (“And build there an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones, without lifting iron on them”), ordered the construction of the temple without touching it with iron, so as not to defile it. A strange thing, however, is happening. Yahweh speaks of an altar of stones, which must be made without iron, but not a word about the construction of a temple. But Solomon decides to build the entire temple in this way, obviously already on the pages of a later interpretation.

Legend says that the wise men pointed out to Solomon the precious stones in the breastplates of the high priests. I previously told you that the hoshen on the chest of the priests is the most common accounting abacus, a type of ancient abacus. I also talked about how these stones were processed, calling the technology of the ancients, which today is forgotten in industry, but is used by artisans and is not perceived as a miracle.
According to the priests, these gems were cut and polished by a certain tool even harder than themselves. Shamir - that's what he was called. Shamir was able to cut something that was beyond the reach of any iron.

And so, if you lightly hit the tuning fork, that is, the curved plates with any hard object, they begin to tremble or, in other words, vibrate, and we hear sound. This sound is the main tone for tuning an instrument or choir.

However, there is another type of tuning fork. It's a small tube that makes a sound when you blow into it. This look is considered not to be classic.

Usually a tuning fork is tuned to the sound “A of the first octave”, but, nevertheless, there is a tuning fork that is tuned to other sounds. But this does not change the essence.

Three Jews came to be baptized
Having a gesheft in his bosom.
Borukha the priest baptized Boris
Moishe the orphan became Mikhail
And Srul (watch out for the compromise!!!)
Akakiem went around the world.
It may not sound entirely transparent,
However, it’s true, definitely!

Let me remind you that the Lord, having given Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, commanded him to build an altar for Him: “If you make Me an altar of stones, do not build it with hewn stones, for as soon as you lay your adze on them, you will defile them." And then again: “And build there an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones, without lifting up iron on them.” Joshua built such an altar after crossing the Jordan (“... an altar of solid stones, on which no iron was lifted”).

When King Solomon built his famous temple, “...hewn stones were used for the building; neither a hammer, nor an adze, nor any other iron tool was heard in the temple during its construction.” The reason why the use of iron tools was prohibited is explained in the Mishnah as follows: iron shortens life, but the altar is designed to prolong it. According to Pliny, iron is the metal that men use in war; With the help of iron we do all the best things and at the same time all the worst things: we cultivate arable land, build a dwelling, hew stone, but at the same time we create bloodshed, strife, and robberies. The altar was a symbol of peace concluded between God and man, and therefore during its construction it was not allowed to use iron, which serves in war. Solomon transferred this idea to the construction of the entire temple. The Bible does not say that iron tools were not used for cutting stones; it is only said that during the construction of the temple they were not heard.

This temple symbolized the triumph of the Church in heaven. Pre-prepared stones were silently laid in rows, and so, stone by stone, the temple of the Lord grew.

Nowhere in Scripture is it implied that any miracle was involved in such a temple being built from stones hewn from distant quarries. Neither First nor Second Chronicles contains anything about the miracles that accompanied this process.

The Septuagint describes it as follows: ? ????? ?????? ?????????? ?????? ?????????. Word?????????? in LXX it is used three times, for a concept that means “rough, uncut stone.” In the place in Deuteronomy where it is said: “...who brought out for you a fountain of water out of a granite rock,” LXX uses ??????????. Where the Book of Psalms says: “He who turns a rock into a lake of water...” is used ?????????, just as in the Book of Job: “He lays his hand on granite, he overthrows mountains by the roots.” The Book of Wisdom of Solomon says: “...water was given to them out of a rocky rock” (?? ?????? ?????????), - which is identical to “solid stone” (????? ? ??????). In the Book of Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach, it is said about Hezekiah that he “pierced the rock with iron” (????? ?????? ?????????).

Thus, it means an uncut stone that has natural irregularities, that is, unhewn. That's why Suda uses the expression ?????? ??? ???????, and Theodotion calls the sharp stone with which Zipporah circumcised her son, ?????????. In LXX?????? also means a stone in its natural state. Thus, Pausanias speaks of gold and silver nuggets as ??????? ??? ?????? ?????. Then it turns out that LXX, reporting that the temple was built from ?????????? ??????, implies in fact that these stones were not processed at all and were in their natural state, and Solomon's skill was to combine boulders into one whole, which had never been touched by tools. Josephus Flavius ​​shares the same opinion, according to whom “the entire temple was assembled with great skill from uncut stones, ?? ????? ?????????, ideally fitted to each other without the visible participation of a hammer or other construction tool. The builders did without them, and the adjustment, apparently, was made not with the help of any mechanical action, but taking into account the natural shape of the stone.” This was the greatest art: the shapeless blocks were so cleverly matched to each other that it seemed as if they had been specially hewn for this purpose. Procopius of Caesarea also testifies that the temple was built from unprocessed boulders, since the Lord forbade the use of iron tools on them, but nevertheless, all together they looked like a single whole. These passages seem to suggest that there are still some signs of the miraculous in the construction of the temple, in which no supernatural forces were involved. But the legend doesn't end there. After the resettlement of the Jews to Babylon, a huge number of Iranian and Chaldean myths merged into their mythology.

Legends previously told about Dshemshid and other Persian heroes were associated with the name of Solomon. The Jews began to consider them their own heritage. It was clearly not enough that Solomon simply fit rough boulders together in the most skilful manner; no, they were processed using some magical means, without resorting to iron tools.

Legend tells that when Solomon was trying to figure out how to build a temple without touching the stones with any iron tools, the wise men pointed out to him the precious stones on the breastplates of the high priests. These stones were cut and polished by some tool even harder than themselves. Shamir – that’s what he was called. Shamir was able to cut something that was beyond the reach of any iron. Then Solomon called the spirits and began to ask them where they could find this wonderful instrument. The spirits revealed to him that the shamir is a worm. It is no larger than a grain of barley, but has such strength that even the hardest flint cannot resist it. The spirits advised him to turn to Asmodeus, the king of demons - he knows more about this. Solomon asked how he could find Asmodeus, and the spirits told him that far, far away, on a mountain, Asmodeus had dug himself a huge well, from which he drinks every day. Solomon called his servant Benaiah and handed him a chain on which was written the magic word “shem ammeforash” (“sheep’s wool and a wineskin”). Benaiah went to Asmodeus's well, dug into it and, having released all the water from it through a small hole, plugged it with sheep's wool. After this, he filled the well with wine. The evil spirit, as usual, flew to the well and smelled the wine. Suspecting some kind of trap, at first he did not drink and left, but soon thirst forced him to drink wine. When he became drunk, Benaiah chained him and hurried to Solomon. It cannot be said that he succeeded with ease - Asmodeus fought and struggled, crushing houses and trees. One poor widow, near whose house they found themselves, began to beg Asmodeus to spare her shack and not destroy it. He, feeling sorry for the widow, turned to the side, but was so unsuccessful that he broke his leg. “Truly they say, a soft tongue breaks bone,” said the demon, and since then he has been known as lame demon However, having been brought to Solomon, Asmodeus began to behave more decently. He told the king that the shamir belongs to the Prince of the Sea, and he does not trust the magic worm to anyone except the partridge, which swore allegiance to him. The partridge brings the shamir to the tops of the mountains, splits them and drops the seeds there so that they germinate and the bare rocks become covered with greenery. Therefore, this bird is called Naggar Tura (“mountain-cutting”). If Solomon wants to get a worm, then he must find a partridge's nest and cover it with a glass dish on top so that she cannot get to her chicks. She will have to resort to the help of the shamir to cut the glass, and the magic worm can be taken from her.

And so Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, found the bird's nest and covered it with a piece of glass. When the partridge arrived and could not reach her chicks, she brought a shamir and placed it on the glass. Then Benaya screamed terribly, the partridge, frightened, dropped the worm and ran away. So Benaiah took possession of the precious shamir and brought it to Solomon. And the partridge, tormented by her conscience for breaking her oath to the Prince of the Sea, killed herself.

According to another version, Solomon went to his well and, finding the demon Sakar there, caught him by cunning and chained him. When the king touched the chain with his ring, Sakar let out a scream so piercing that the earth shook.

“Do not be afraid,” said Solomon. “I will give you back your freedom if you tell me how to cut stones and metals without any noise.”

“I don’t know that,” replied the genie, “but the raven can give you the answer.” Cover the raven's nest with a crystal dish, and you will see how the bird breaks it."

The king did so and saw that the raven brought a stone in its beak, which split the crystal. “What kind of stone is this?” Solomon asked the raven.

“This is the Samur stone,” said the raven. “He is from the desert, which is far to the east of here.” Then the king sent several giants after the raven into that desert and received as many stones as he needed.

According to the third version, the Shamir was the Stone of Wisdom, and the bird that owned it was an eagle.

Having obtained this shamir, Solomon cut stones for his temple.

Rabbinic fantasy created other myths about this mystical power contained in a worm or stone. On the second day of creation, the well was created at which Jacob met Rebekah, the manna that fed the people of Israel in the wilderness, the magic staff of Moses, Balaam's talking donkey and the shamir, that non-iron tool with which Solomon was supposed to build the House of God. In early rabbinic tales, the shamir is not a worm. In Soth's treatise, for the first time, some hints appear that the shamir is something more than a stone; there it is called "creation"

“Our rabbis teach us that the shamir is a creature the size of a barley grain, created on one of the six days of creation, and nothing can withstand it. How is it stored? It is wrapped in wool and placed in a lead vessel filled with some small grain, such as barley.” After the temple was built, the shamir disappeared.

The legend passed on to the Greeks. Elian talks about a hoopoe who built a nest in a crack in one of the old walls.

The owner repaired this crack. The hoopoe, finding that it could not get close to its chicks, flew off in search of the forehead plant. Having brought it, he applied it to the sealed crack, and it immediately split again, and the hoopoe entered inside. Then the bird flew away for food, and the owner again repaired the wall. And again the hoopoe removed the obstacle that had arisen using the same means. The same thing happened a third time. Pliny in this tale replaces the hoopoe with a woodpecker. According to him, the woodpecker raises its offspring in the hollow of a tree; If the entrance to it is tightly plugged with something, the woodpecker will find a way to open it.

The following story is given in the English version of the Roman Deeds. There lived in Rome an outstanding emperor named Diocletian. Above all else, he valued the virtue of compassion. One day he wanted to know which bird was most attached to its chicks. Walking through the forest one day, the emperor noticed the nest of a large bird called an ostrich, where both the mother and chicks were located. Diocletian took the nest with the chicks with him to the palace and placed it in a glass vessel. The mother saw all this, and, unable to free her children, disappeared into the forest. After an absence of three days, she returned to the palace and brought a worm in her beak, which was called thumare. She dropped it on the glass, the vessel shattered, and the chicks flew away with their mother. The emperor could only marvel at the ostrich’s devotion and intelligence. To which we can, in turn, notice that this intelligence was sorely lacking in those who, in composing this legend, attributed the qualities that Diocletian so admired to the ostrich, a bird distinguished by a particularly noticeable absence of them. Similar stories are recounted by Vincent of Beauvais in his “Historical Mirror”, and by the delightful gossip and lover of fables Gervasius of Tilbury. The latter tells how Solomon resorted to the help of a little worm named Thamir, to cut stones for the temple. If you sprinkle his blood on marble, it will be very easy to process. And Solomon took possession of it in the following way. He took an ostrich chick and put it in a glass bottle. The ostrich, seeing this, ran into the desert and brought a worm. He splashed his blood onto the bottle and it broke. “And in modern times, during the reign of Pope Alexander III, when I was a boy, a vial was found in Rome filled with a milky liquid, which, if sprinkled with it on any stone, causes it to take the shape that pleases the carver. This bottle was discovered in a very ancient palace; the art with which it was built has always been a subject of wonder to the Romans.”

Gervasius borrowed this story from Peter Comestor.

“If anyone wants to be able to break chains,” says Albertus Magnus, “then let him go into the forest and find a woodpecker’s hollow with its chicks, climb a tree and block the entrance with anything. As soon as the bird sees what you have done, it will bring a plant, which it will attach to the object that prevents it from getting into the nest. Then it will burst and the plant will fall down. You should spread a piece of cloth under the tree in advance so that you can lift it.” But, Albert adds, this is nothing more than an invention of the Jews.

Conrad of Megenberg reports: “There is a bird, in Latin it is called merops, and in German Bomheckel, which builds nests in tall trees. If a nest with chicks is covered with something so that the bird cannot access it, it will bring a certain plant, apply it to the obstacle, and it will give way. This plant is called herba meropis, or woodpecker grass, and in magic books it is called chora.

In Normandy they believe that the swallow has the ability to find pebbles on the seashore that restore sight to the blind. To take possession of the magic stone, the peasants propose to do the following. You need to gouge out the eyes of the swallow chicks, and the mother will immediately go in search of a miracle cure. As soon as the chicks regain their sight, the swallow will try to get rid of the talisman so that no one finds out the secret. However, if you first spread a piece of scarlet fabric under the nest, the swallow, mistaking it for fire, will throw a stone there.

I found a similar story in Iceland. Local residents claim that there is a certain stone that gives its owner the most wonderful powers: he will be able to have as much dried fish and brandy as he wants, turn invisible, resurrect the dead, cure diseases and break any locks and bars. To become the owner of this magic stone, you need to take a raven's egg, boil it, throw it back into the nest and hide. When the mother sees that one of her eggs is dead and all attempts to warm it are in vain, she will fly away and return carrying a black stone in her beak. She will use it to touch the egg and breathe life into it again. Here you need to shoot the bird and take the stone.

In legends of this kind, the shamir has the power to restore life. In this respect, they are similar to the very common stories in the Middle Ages about birds and weasels who knew how to resurrect the dead with the help of a magic plant. Avicenna, in his eighth book, “On Animals,” says that one trustworthy elder told him the following. While watching the birds, he noticed that when two birds fought and one of them began to gain the upper hand, the other, weakened, found some kind of plant and pecked it, and having regained its strength, returned to the fight. This happened several times, and the elder decided to pick the plant. When the bird flew in and saw that he was gone, she screamed loudly and fell dead. The plant was called lactua agrestis.

In Fouquet's book Sir Elidoc, a little boy named Amyot and his companion were standing in the church courtyard and looking at the coffin of a deceased woman, when suddenly the child screamed loudly. Some small creature slid past them, the slingshot in the boy’s hands made a whistle, and now the creature was already lying on the ground, struck down by the blow. It was a weasel... After a while, another weasel appeared, as if looking for its comrade, and found him lifeless. A sad scene followed. The animal touched his friend with his paw, as if saying: “Get up! Wake up! Let's play!" But he remained motionless. Then the second one retreated from him in fear. Again and again he tried to wake up his friend, but it was all in vain. His small eyes sparkled as if with tears. Suddenly the animal seemed to remember something. He pricked up his ears, looked around and in the blink of an eye was out of sight. Before Amyot and his companion had time to exchange even a word, the animal appeared again. In his teeth he held a root on which a red flower blossomed. The girl had never seen such a plant before. She made a sign to Amyot not to move. The animal approached his friend and carefully put a root with a flower into his mouth. The body of the first, motionless until that moment, suddenly stretched out, and at the same instant he jumped to his feet, still with the root in his mouth. "Root! Root! Take it, just don’t kill them!” – his companion whispered to Amyot. He released another stone from his slingshot, but so carefully and accurately that not only did he not kill any of the weasels, but did not even harm them. The root of life with a red flower lay in front of the narrator and was in her complete power. Naturally, she immediately used it to bring the deceased back to life. "Sir Elidoc" is based on a Breton legend, the "Poem of Eliduc" by Mary of France. However, in another French tale, the flower is yellow; this is nothing more than calendula. She can grant the ability to understand the language of birds, but only if on one particular morning she is touched with the bare foot of a person with a pure soul. This story practically repeats the story of Polyidas and Glaucus. Polyid noticed a snake near the body of the deceased prince and killed it. A second snake appeared, saw that the first was dead, and brought a root that revived it. Polyides took possession of the root and managed to restore life to Glaucus. The Greek legend of Rodanthe and Dosicles has a similar plot. Rodanthe drinks a cup of poisoned wine and falls dead. At this time, Dosikl and Kratandr are hunting wild animals in the forest. They see a wounded bear who, having found some plant, begins to roll on it and instantly heals his wounds. The root of this plant was white, the flowers were pink, and the stem had a slight purple tint. Dosicles picked him up and returned home, where he found Rodanthe lying unconscious. With the help of a wonderful plant, he revives her. Similar tales are told in Germany and Lithuania; they are found both among modern Greek fairy tales and among ancient Scandinavian ones.

Germany is full of stories about the magical properties of the flower of good luck.

A person casually picks a beautiful flower, usually blue, and pins it on his hat or chest. Walking past the mountain, he suddenly notices that it opens up in front of him. He enters and sees a beautiful woman who invites him not to deny himself anything and to collect as much gold as he wants, which is scattered in abundance around. He fills his pockets with sparkling nuggets and is about to leave, but he hears a woman’s voice: “Don’t forget the most valuable!” Thinking that she is inviting him to take more gold, he feels his pockets, makes sure that he has done everything he could and has nothing to reproach himself with, and rushes to the exit. The priceless blue flower, which has the property of opening mountains, remains lying on the ground where he dropped it.

The moment he steps outside, the mountain closes behind him with a crash and leaves him without a heel. Now she is closed to him forever.

One shepherd was driving his flock through Ilsenstein. Weary from the long and exhausting journey, he leaned on his stick. Immediately the bowels of the mountain opened up before him, as there was spurge in his staff. Inside he met Princess Ilse, who invited him to fill his pockets with gold. He did so and was about to leave, but the princess exclaimed: “Don’t forget the most valuable thing!” She was referring to his stick leaning against the wall.

But the shepherd did not understand her and, taking more gold, went to the exit. The mountain closed in and tore the unfortunate man in half. In some versions it was a small blue flower:

An azure flower, as the Brahmins say,
In a paradise that is only growing.

("Lalla Rook")

He plaintively shouted: “Don’t forget me!” But his voice was so quiet that no one heard him.

This is where the name of this cute little flower comes from - forget-me-not. When this legend was forgotten, a beautiful romantic legend was invented to explain the unusual name.

In the fairy tale “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” the magic word “Sesame” opens the mountain, and whoever pronounces it gains access to the treasures that are inside. Misfortune befalls the unlucky villain who has forgotten the magic word. But sesame is the name of a famous oriental plant, sesamum orientale, or oriental sesame, so it is likely that initially in the Persian fairy tale, which was included in the Tales of the 1001 Nights, a flower acted as the key that opened the mountain. In ancient myths there is also a plant that split mountains, namely saxifraga, or saxifrage, whose thin roots, penetrating inside, could destroy the hardest rock - the ancient Greeks could not find an explanation for this force.

The word is never used independently; it is always combined with a word which in LXX is translated as?????? ??? ??????. The name of the plant in the seventh chapter is translated as ?????? ??????; in the fifth – ?????? and thus, ?????? means huh?????? means. In the ninth chapter, where “the fire... devours the thorns and thorn bushes,” the word ???????? ????, and in the tenth - “its thorns and thistles” - ???? ?????? ??? ????.

Regarding both of these names, translators do not have a common opinion. Further, Isaiah calls a certain plant by the word “smyris”, without combining it with any other words. "Smyris", as we have seen, is something that has the power to destroy stones. Accordingly, the same idea that is expressed by the Latin word saxifraga(saxifrage), in Hebrew it is expressed by the word “smiris”; so we can translate it as “saxifrage and thorn.”

The northern peoples have another talisman, which is credited with the same properties as shamir and milkweed. This is the Hand of Glory. It represents the hand of a hanged man, prepared in a special way. It was to be wrapped tightly in a piece of shroud, so as to squeeze out any remaining blood, and then placed in a clay vessel along with saltpeter, salt and pepper, mixed thoroughly. The hand should remain in this “marinade” for two weeks to dry properly. Then it needs to be dried further in the sun during Dog Days until it shrinks completely. If the sun's heat is not enough, the hand is heated in a furnace in which verbena and fern are burned. Then you need to make a candle from the fat of the hanged man, mixed with wax and Lapland sesame seeds. Pay attention to the use of this plant. This burning candle was inserted into the Hand of Glory. Duster Swivel adds: “You make a candle and insert it into the Hand of Glory at the appropriate hour and minute and with the appropriate rituals, and he who seeks treasure will find nothing!” Sauti has such a hand in the hands of the sorcerer Mohareb, who uses it to put Johak, the giant guarding the entrance to the caves, to sleep. From the bag he takes out a withered, wrinkled black human hand and inserts a candle into it. Next, the sorcerer tells how he acquired this hand - the hand of a murderer who died on the scaffold, the same one that committed a terrible crime. He explains the action of the hand: when burned, its dead ingredients spread deadness and lifelessness around.

Several stories about this terrible hand appear in Henderson's Folklore of the Northern Counties of England. I will give only one here; it was told to me by a laborer from the West Riding of Yorkshire. The same story is given by Martin Anthony Delrio in his Magical Researches of 1593, and is given as an appendix in Henderson's book.

In a certain rather remote area, in the middle of a moorland, there was an inn. One dark night, when all its inhabitants were already getting ready for bed, there was a knock on the door. On the threshold stood a beggar shivering from the cold, whose rags were thoroughly wet from the rain, and whose hands were completely blue. He asked for an overnight stay, which was mercifully provided to him. There was not a single free bed in the house, but the beggar was told that he could sit on the floor in front of the fire, where it would be warmer.

Soon everyone in the house fell asleep, except for one servant girl. Through the small window in the kitchen door she could see what was happening in the large room. When everyone had left and the beggar was left alone, he rose from the floor, sat down at the table, took a brown, wrinkled human hand from his pocket and inserted it into the candlestick. Then he lubricated her fingers with something and, holding a match to them, set them on fire. Seized with horror, the girl rushed to the back stairs and ran up to wake up her master and the other men; but in vain - they were all fast asleep, plunged into an enchanted sleep. Seeing that her efforts were fruitless, she rushed down again. Looking through the window, she saw that the fingers on her hand were still burning, only the thumb was not burning - this was a sign that someone was awake in the house. The beggar began to collect everything valuable in the house into a large bag; no castle could resist the burning hand. Having placed it on the ground, the thief went into the next room. As soon as he was out of sight, the maid rushed to her hand and tried to extinguish the yellow lights dancing on her fingertips. She blew on them, then poured some of the beer remaining in the jug onto her hand - but the lights only glowed brighter, then she tried the water - but again to no avail. Then, as a last resort, she grabbed a jug of milk and splashed it on her burning hand - and the four lights immediately went out.

Screaming shrilly, the girl ran to the door to the room into which the thief had entered and locked it. The whole house was raised to its feet, and the thief was captured and hanged.

Thomas Ingoldsby tells a similar legend. But we will not retell its plot, but rather try to bring the mythological shamir to the myth itself and see if the locks will not fall off all the doors, if the gates to the cave of miracles will open before us, if we will be able to penetrate into the very essence of this legend and understand , where this belief in a magical worm belonging to the Prince of the Sea, a stone of wisdom, sesame, forget-me-not or the Hand of Glory came from.

What properties does this magical item have?

He picks locks, crushes stones, opens the depths of the mountain, where treasures lie hitherto hidden from human eyes, paralyzes, plunges into a magical sleep, or, conversely, returns to life.

I think all these different tales are talking about the same thing, namely lightning.

But what kind of bird is this that brings in its beak a shamir, a worm, or a stone that destroys mountains? This is a thundercloud, which in ancient myths of different peoples often took the form of a mighty bird. In Greek iconography, Zeus, as defined by Euripides, “the sky holding the earth in its wet embrace,” is usually depicted holding lightning in his hands, with an eagle next to him, symbolizing a cloud. “The shining heaven above us, which everyone calls Jupiter,” as Cicero says, cannot do without clouds and lightning, and when the sky takes on human incarnation, a bird becomes its constant companion. This is the same thundercloud that, taking the form of an eagle, daily torments Prometheus’s liver. The same menacing, furious clouds represent the harpies. In ancient Indian mythology, a light fluffy white cloud floating in the sky was a white swan, as well as in Scandinavian mythology, while black clouds were identified with crows circling the earth, then returning to Odin and telling him everything that was happening in the world . The swirling fog is the roc bird from the fairy tales “1001 Nights,” hatching its huge shining egg, the sun, and living in a valley sparkling with gems, the starry sky. The comparison of a cloud with a bird quite easily comes to mind both for the modern poet and for the biblical David - it was not for nothing that he spoke of “wings of the wind.” So, if a cloud or cloud is a huge bird, then lightning is nothing more than writhing worms or snakes that it carries in its beak. Canadian Indians to this day consider lightning to be fire snakes and believe that thunder is their hiss. According to Druid legends, it was these celestial reptiles that gave birth to the sun. Lightning, which destroys everything it hits, was considered like a stone thrown by a cloud bird. The resemblance of lightning to a celestial flower, blue, yellow or red, is more distant; nevertheless, there is evidence, which I cannot present here, that this is exactly how lightning was viewed in a number of cases.

The cloud, illuminated by flashes of lightning, also symbolized the flaming hand. The Greeks placed a curved spear in the hand of Zeus, and among the Mexican Indians the blood-red hand depicted on the wall of the temple symbolized the sacrificial fire. Perhaps the same thought was present in the mind of the youth Elijah when he saw a cloud from the top of Mount Carmel and told his master about it. “Behold, a small cloud rises from the sea, the size of a man’s hand... Meanwhile, the sky became gloomy from clouds and from the wind, and a lot of rain began to fall.” In Finnish and Estonian mythology, a cloud is a small man with a copper hand who, rising from the water, grows and turns into a giant.

A black flaming cloud is where the image of the magical Hand of Glory was born.

The effects produced by lightning are expressed differently. Shamir crushing rocks is a fairly clear image. His other incarnation is less clear - the key to the treasures contained in the depths of the mountain. The ancient Aryans called both the cloud and the mountain the same word. The piles of clouds on the horizon reminded them so much of the Alps that there was no more suitable word to describe them. And these huge heavenly mountains were split by lightning. For a split second, dazzling gold behind the clouds opened up in front of the man, but then with a roar the rocks closed again. The belief that behind the vast clouds lay untold riches, which were momentarily revealed to mere mortals, led to the rapid formation of legends about people who managed to penetrate these treasuries. The root of life, which is brought by a weasel or a snake, brings life back to the dead. This myth was born in the East, where sometimes the earth seems to die from prolonged drought. Then a cloud comes. Lightning strikes the barren, cracked, dead earth, and after it, streams of water fall from the sky, bringing withered plants back to life, restoring their juices. Glaucus symbolizes dead, dried vegetation, and the dead woman in the “Poem of Eliduc” symbolizes lifeless, devoid of strength earth. This regenerative power is also attributed to rain in mythology. In Slavic myths, a dead land is revived by living water brought by a bird from the depths of a dark cave. A slain prince means a dead land; then an eagle flies with a bubble of living water - a cloud carrying rain, it sprinkles the corpse with precious moisture - and life returns.

The Hand of Glory has another very specific property. She immobilizes. In this respect, it resembles the head of Medusa, a gorgon or a basilisk. The head of Medusa with flying snake hair is, without any doubt, a rain cloud, just like the basilisk, from whose gaze all living things die. The paralyzing horror that thunderclaps inspired in people was reflected in the legends about the immobilizing gaze of the basilisk, the head of Medusa and the waving of the Hand of Glory.

Some of these explanations may seem far-fetched, but they are all true. We, with our knowledge of the causes causing various meteorological phenomena, can hardly imagine what incredible explanations ignorant people offered for them.

How the Finnish cosmogony could have given birth to the belief that the earth and sky represent an egg, in which the shell is the firmament, the yolk is the earth itself, and the transparent liquid surrounding it is the World Ocean, we cannot understand; and yet that is exactly what they thought, this is a fact. How the Scandinavians could come up with the idea that the mountains are the decaying bones of the powerful Jotun, and the earth is his rotting flesh, is incomprehensible to us, but they believed in this theory quite seriously and passed it on to others. Why the ancient Indians believed that rain clouds were cows with full udders being milked by the heavenly winds is beyond explanation, but the Vedas contain irrefutable evidence of this.

Nonnus in the Acts of Dionysus described the moon as a luminous white stone, and Democritus called the stars ???????. Lucretius considered the sun to be a wheel, and Ovid - a shield:

... then, when at dawn
The Palantiad turns the whole world red to present to Phoebus.
Even the divine shield, rising from the earth of the underworld,
Al, emerging, and Al, hiding in the underworld...

The restless human mind, constantly searching for the reasons for the miracles that appear before it, accepts one theory after another, and those explanations that it rejects remain in the memory of the nation as myths, the meaning of which is forgotten over time.

SHAMIR

And when the House was built, it was built from solid, hewn stones; neither a hammer, nor an ax, nor any other iron tool was heard during its construction. Solomon had a wonderful worm called "Shamir" . This worm had the properties of an adze and granite. S pwith the help of "Shamir"the building stone was hewn for the temple and the house of Solomon and produced cutting of precious stones for choshen was in progress. The worm was the size of a barley grain, and the hardest objectsyou could not resist its wonderful properties. WITHguarded himwrapped in wool wool in a lead vessel filled with cell- regular bran.

Solomon knew that the location of the Shamir worm was known only to Asmodeus, the prince of devils. Asmodeus lived in a cave under the mountain, and there was a well there, covered with a stone with the seal of Asmodeus on it. Day after day, Asmodeus ascended to heaven, where he studied heavenly wisdom, from there he returned to earth to study earthly wisdom, after which he came to his well and, having first made sure that the seal was intact, moved the stone away, drank water and, closing it again and having sealed the well, he left. Solomon called Benaiah, the son of Isgoias, gave him a chain and wall, on which Shem-Gamforash was inscribed, and gave him the fleece sheep and bottles of wine and sent it to Asmodeus.

Benaya came to the cave of Asmodseva, and this is what he did: below the place to which the well reached, he dug a hole and, lowering it there I caulked all the water and the hole with wool; Having then made a hole on top of the well, he poured wine from the skins into the mouth. Having finished with this, ran up the tree and waited for Asmodeus to arrive.

Asmodeus appeared, examined the seal, opened the well and saw; instead of water - wine.

Well, no, said Asmodeus: “Wine is mocking, strong drink is violent, and he who is carried away by them is foolish."

He walked away and didn’t drink. But thirst began to torment him unbearably. Asmodeus could not stand it, drank all the wine from the well, got drunk and fell asleep soundly. Benaya came down from the tree and tied him with a chain.

Asmodeus woke up and began to rage. Tame yourself! - Benaya said. - The name of your Lord is above you! The name of the Lord is above you!

He took him and led him. We reached a palm tree; Asmo scratched himself on it acted and knocked her down; They passed by one house, and Asmodeus knocked it down. They met a lost blind man, Asmodeus helped him find take to the road. Then they came across him, staggering without a way, drunk - and Asmodeus led him out onto the road. When meeting the wedding train, noisy and cheerful, Asmodeus began to cry. A certain man's sandals are I ordered the farmer, saying: “Sew me sandals like this so that I can wear them.” seven years was enough!" Asmodeus laughed. They passed by the sorcerer while he was performing his magic, - and then Asmodeus burst out laughing.

They brought Asmodeus to Solomon. Asmodeus took the reed and measured it four cubits and, throwing the reed in front of Solomon, said:

This is the space that will remain with you after death, and Now you have conquered the whole world, and you are not content with that, still me wanted to enslave!

“I don’t want anything from you,” Solomon answered, except one. I am going to build the temple of the Lord, and for this I need “Shamir” .

“Shamir,” answered Asmodeus, “is not with me, but with the spirit.” sea, and the spirit of the sea trusts him, under oath, only to the rooster Bar. What does the rooster Bar do with Shamir? Arriving in an uninhabited rocky area, they put the “Shamir” on a cliff, the cliff splits; Bar will throw seeds into the crevasse arboreal, a settlement will arise in that place. We found the nest of the rooster Bar. Covered the nest with frosted glass. The rooster Bar appeared. Seeing the impossibility of getting into the nest, he took “Shamir” and put it on the glass so that it would break. They threw a clod of earth at the rooster Bar, he dropped “Shamir”; They picked up the worm and took it away. The rooster Bar saw that he had not kept his oath, so he went and hanged himself.

HAGADA, tales, parables, sayings of the TALMUD and MIDRASH.

In the middle of the 13th century, the famous English philosopher, naturalist and monk of the Franciscan Order, Roger Bacon, in his “Message on the Secret Actions of Art and Nature and the Insignificance of Magic,” wrote that in ancient times many amazing technical devices were created, information about which has reached our time.

Among these devices Bacon named "large ships without oarsmen, which crossed rivers and seas, controlled by one man, and with greater speed than if they were filled with oarsmen"; “carts that moved without draft animals with unimaginable speed”; “instruments for flight: so that a person sits in the middle of the instrument, rotating some kind of invention”; “an instrument with which one person can forcibly attract a thousand people to himself against their will”; "bridges over rivers without pillars or any support."

Among other things, Roger Bacon describes “a small instrument that lifted and lowered incredible weights. For with the help of an instrument three fingers high and the same width, a person could free himself and his loved ones from any danger of imprisonment, both rise and descend.” Please note that Bacon talks about this instrument as if he had seen it with his own eyes or dealt with its exact description!

Where and under what circumstances the Franciscan monk got the opportunity to get acquainted with the description of the ancient technological heritage, we, unfortunately, do not know. But it is known that in various parts of our planet one can find traces of the use of high technologies, rooted in ancient times.

Old Testament high-tech

In the Jewish tradition, a unique description of one of the tools with the help of which ornamental work was carried out has been preserved. It is associated with the figure of the legendary ruler of the united Kingdom of Israel in 965-928. BC e. Solomon, during whose reign the main shrine of Judaism, the Jerusalem Temple, was built in Jerusalem.

In the Haggadah of Solomon we find: “Solomon had a wonderful worm called Shamir.” This worm had the properties of an adze and granite. With the help of “Shamir,” the building stone for the temple and Solomon’s house was cut and precious stones were cut for cochin. The worm was the size of a barley grain, and the hardest objects could not resist its wonderful properties. They kept it wrapped in wool wool in a lead vessel filled with barley bran.”

The fact is that to process the stones used in the construction of the Jerusalem Temple, God forbade Solomon to use iron tools: “And when this House was built, they built it from solid stones brought; no hammer, no ax, no iron tool was heard in the House when it was built” (Mlahim, 1:6,7).

Rabbi Zamir Cohen writes in his book “Torah and Science”: “Recently, the use of rays for cutting various materials has been increasingly expanding, which allows it to be done with greater precision and purity. Today, lasers are used in many industries, from diamond processing to operating rooms. Although radiation, like electricity, is common in nature, science learned about these phenomena only recently, and was able to use them only in our century. Lasers began to be made and used only a few decades ago. And now, it turns out, almost three thousand years ago, when King Shlomo (Solomon) was building the First Temple, the sages of the Torah knew about the possibility of using rays to cut hard materials.”

Several hundred years before the construction of the First Temple, the same device was used in the desert by Moses when it was necessary to carve the names of the twelve tribes of the Jewish people on the precious stones of the high priest (the two stones of the ephod and the twelve stones of the hoshen mishpat).

The Talmud (Gitin 28a) says that Solomon used the “power of sheidim” (the dark forces of destruction subordinate to the Creator) to reveal the location of the “worm of Shamir”: “Shlomo told the sages of the Torah how to [build the Temple without using for cutting and cutting stones no iron tools]? They answered him: There is a worm Shamir, which Moshe [Moses] brought for the stones of the ephod. He asked them: How will we find him? They said to him: Take the shed and the sheida [“demon and devil”] and make them open to you.”

Cohen emphasizes that Shamir cut the stones not with the strength of his body, but with the radiation that emanated from him: “you just had to hold Shamir in front of the desired place, and the radiation emanating from him would cut the stone.”

The unusual way of storing the “worm” (a lead vessel) may indicate the strong radioactive radiation that this amazing device emitted.

Egyptian trace

According to legend, the “worm” belonged to Moses before Solomon, which means that there is a distinct Egyptian trace in the matter. In this regard, we recall the story of Akhenaten’s unsuccessful “monotheistic” reform, the subsequent failure, the flight of the Jews from Egypt and the mysterious Ark of the Covenant, which is more reminiscent of some kind of technological device. Judging by the descriptions, the Ark was very dangerous to health, so those who, due to their duty, had to periodically approach it, had to take certain precautions and wear special clothing, reminiscent of a protective suit.

There is reason to believe that the Ark of the Covenant is still preserved in the bosom of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. According to the codex Kebra Nagast ("Greatness of Kings"), the Ark was given to Menelik, the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (identified with the unnamed queen of Sheba, a state in the south of the Arabian Peninsula), after his anointing as king. Menelik was accompanied back to Sheba by the offspring of all the nobles and Levites of Israel. The shrine was also taken away with them.

Who knows what other secrets the Ethiopian Church preserves, especially in light of the following passage: “You crushed the head of Leviathan, you gave him as food to the people of the desert” (Ps. 73:14). The fact is that the mythological motive of absorbing parts of a defeated monster is identical to joining the treasure (secret knowledge) that belonged to the defeated enemy.

Alexey KOMOGORTSEV