Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

ALL the cosmogonies begin with an Age of Darkness; a damp, cold, rainy, dismal time.

Hesiod tells us, speaking of the beginning of things

"In truth, then, foremost sprung Chaos. . . . But from Chaos were born Erebus and black Night; and from Night again sprang forth Æther and Day, whom she bare after having conceived by union with Erebus."

Aristophanes, in his "Aves," says:[1]

"Chaos and Night and black Erebus and wide Tartarus first existed."[2]

Orpheus says:

"From the beginning the gloomy night enveloped and obscured all things that were under the ether" (the clouds). "The earth was invisible on account of the darkness, but the light broke through the ether" (the clouds), "and illuminated the earth."

By this power were produced the sun, moon, and stars.[3]

It is from Sanchoniathon that we derive most of the little we know of that ancient and mysterious people, the Phœnicians. He lived before the Trojan War; and of his writings but fragments survive -- quotations in the writings of others.

He tells us that --

"The beginning of all things was a condensed, windy air, or a breeze of thick air, and a chaos turbid and black as Erebus.

"Out of this chaos was generated Môt, which some call Ilus," (mud,) "but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. And from this sprang all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the universe. . . . And, when the air began to send forth light, winds were produced and clouds, and very great defluxions and torrents of the heavenly waters."

Was this "thick air" the air thick with comet-dust, which afterward became the mud? Is this the meaning of the "turbid chaos"?