Swimming and Diving: Activities of Archaic Communities

This is the third in a series on daily life among archaic peoples. The first in the series is on threshing and the second is on keeping sheep.


Alice C. Linsley

There is very little mention of swimming in the Hebrew Bible. This has led to speculation that the Hebrews did not like water or that they were not skilled swimmers. The early Hebrew/Habiru/Abru lived along the Nile and would have developed a healthy respect for the currents, crocodiles, and other hazards of the region.

Jeremiah 16:16 suggests that diving was done to hunt for things under the water.

"Behold, I am going to send for many fishermen," declares the Lord, "and they will fish for them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them from every mountain and every hill and from the clefts of the rocks."

The fishermen are hunters, a reference to the successive invaders of Judea (Amos 4:2; Habbakuk 1:14,15). The Hebrew word to dive is לִצְלוֹל and although this word does not appear in the Jeremiah passage, diving to hunt is suggested (Dictionary of the Holy Bible, Augustin Calmet, p. 435).

An Egyptian clay seal dated between 9000 and 4000 BC shows four people swimming. Below is a photo of a 10,000-year-old rock painting of people swimming. This was found in the Cave of Swimmers near Wadi Sura in southwestern Egypt. These pictures show swimmers using the breaststroke or the doggy paddle. (The majority of Saharan rock images date to between about 6000 BC and 1000 AD.)

The Nilotic Hebrew would have been able to swim. They controlled commerce on the Nile where they built shrine cities such as Nekhen and Nekheb. Nekhen is the oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship.

Heroes among ancient peoples were expected to be fearless in combat and in river crossings. Stories were told of heroic warriors swimming across rivers. Horatius (named for Horus) was wounded in battle at a bridge over the Tiber. Hearing a shout from the other bank that the bridge was torn down, he "leaped with his arms into the river and swimming across ... he emerged upon the shore without having lost any of his arms." Livy records that Horatius committed himself to the Tiber, praying, "Tiberinus, holy father, I pray thee to receive into thy propitious stream these arms and this thy warrior." 

Nilotic peoples thought of the Nile in a similar way. Even today, Ethiopians living near the source of the Blue Nile call the place Abay, meaning "father." (Gish Abay is believed to be the Gihon mentioned in Genesis 2.)

Diving to hunt

Swimming and diving in the ancient world was a routine part of daily life for peoples who lived along the major water systems and the seacoasts. They were foragers and their way of life continues among sea dwellers in places like the Philippines, Australia and Borneo.

Diver in the Philippines

Badjao diver
Photo: Braidmade Films

The Badjao are sea dwellers who have lived off the northeast coast of Borneo for more than 200 years. They have no nationality. They are aquatic nomads who live in boats and earn their living as highly skilled divers. Badjao divers walk along the seafloor hunting for fish and pearls. They can descend as deep as 100 feet (30 meters). They train their children to swim and dive from an early age.

Related reading: The Land of WaWat; Boats and Cows of the Nilo-Saharans; Boat Petroglyphs in Egypt's Central Eastern Desert; Mysterious Nomads Who Survived the 2004 Tsunami

The Red Heifer

Alice C. Linsley

The Biblical priesthood appears to have originated among the peoples of the Nile Valley when the green Sahara was able to sustain herds of long horned cattle. Cattle were first domesticated in the Upper Nile Valley about 15,000 years ago. The term for cow nag (Wolog, Fulani), nagge (Hausa), ning (Angas, Ankwe) and ninge (Susu) corresponds to the Egyptian ng.

The words edom, odum and adam are derived from the same root dm and originally referred to the red clay that washed down to the Upper Nile from the Ethiopian highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic cambisols have a strong red brown color. Abraham's Horite people were known to have a distinctive red skin tone. Esau and David are described as red. As a descendant of these red ancestors, Jesus likely had a red skin tone.

Red and black Nubian cattle herders

This is the original context from which the priesthood spread into southern Europe, India, and the ancient Near East. The red Nubians, some of whom were Abraham's ancestors, believed that life is in the blood. In their creation stories, the first man was made from the red soil of the Upper Nile. He is Adam or Ha-dam, meaning "the Blood." Blood was not only the substance of life, it was also the substance by which the people received cleansing through the ministry of their priests. This is why the red calf was the preferred sacrifice for purity.

Aaron created the Golden Calf, a representation of Horus, the divine "son" of the Creator. The image incorporated the sun and would have been a representation of the divine overshadowing or appointment of the Calf of God. Below is picture of what it would have looked like.

The calf is suggestive of Horus as a child. Horus' anthropomorphic form is either as a adult male or more usually as a boy wearing the sidelock typical of royal Egyptian youth. Horus as a boy is often shown on cippi dominating crocodiles and serpents. Consider this in light of the Woman, the Child, and the Dragon in Revelation 12.

Consider the red heifer (Numbers 19:9) that stands as a perpetual sacrifice. The red heifer is sacrificed and burned outside the camp and the ashes used for "water of lustration."  Lustration means to purify by a propitiatory offering or other sacred ceremony. After the completion of the Second Temple, the ashes of the red heifer were available for people who came to the temple. At the entrance to the Women's Court, there was a stone vessel called the kelal which held ashes of the red heifer. The ashes were mixed with water and used for purification ceremonies.

The association of blood and purity

The Hebrew root meaning pure is thr and it corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm word for clean: toro, and to the Tamil word for holy: tiru. All are related to the proto-Dravidian word fro blood: tor. The sacrificing priesthood was found among all these peoples.

The color red represented blood and life among the ancient Nilotes. The Horite priests regarded the red heifer as a representation of Horus, the "son" of the Creator, born miraculously of Hathor. She is shown with cow horns cradling the sun. This indicates overshadowing by the Creator, whose emblem was the Sun. Hathor's totem was the cow and she is shown in Nilotic shrines holding her infant in a stable. Hathor and Horus are expressions of the earliest Messianic expectation among Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors.

The perpetual sacrifice of the red heifer is older than the Levitical priesthood. It pertains to Abraham's Nilo-Saharan cattle-herding ancestors and speaks of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews 9:11-14)

Unfortunately, there are Christians who fail to recognize that Jesus' crucifixion and glorious resurrection have fulfilled all the archetypes of the Old Testament. The Reverend Clyde Lott, a Pentecostal cattle breeder from Mississippi, is breeding red heifers to export to Israel to establish a breeding line of red heifers in the hope that this will prepare the way for the construction of the Third Temple and ultimately the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  

Related reading: The Red Heifer in Levitical Times; The Scarlet Cord Woven Through the Bible; Why Cows Were Sacred in the Ancient World; Blood and Water; The Edomites and the Color Red; The Red Heifer by Rabbi Chaim Richman

Sheep Cotes as Sacred Spaces

Jesus said, "I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me-- even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep." John 10:9-15

Alice C. Linsley

Stone sheep cote in Zanuta, West Bank
Photo: Emil Salman

In the ancient world, dry stack sheep cotes served as housing for the shepherd. This is reflected in the King James Version of Judges 5:16: "Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks? For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart." 2 Samuel 7:8 also describes the sheep cote as a dwelling place (naveh). Naveh also refers to a temple or a local shrine.

Sheep cotes similar to the one shown above are found in many parts of Europe and are called by different names: tholos, girna, caciara, and keyl. The last word, found in Wales, is provocatively similar to the Altaic kyr ayil, meaning a "sheep village," or "the get-away to which the ram (krios) leads the sheep."

The dry stack sheep cotes pictured below are common in Ireland, Wales, Serbia, and Croatia, all lands inhabited by Y-DNA Haplogroup R1b populations.

This dry stack tholos in Abruzzo, Italy serves as a home and a sheep cote.
Note that where the man is standing is where the shepherd often sleeps. 
He becomes the door that guards the way to the sheep.

Shepherds used sheep cotes as shelters for many centuries. In archaic times, these structures served as seasonal housing for the shepherd and his family as they moved their livestock between higher summer elevations and lower winter pastures (transhumant pastoralism). More recently, sheep herders maintain permanent homes in valleys and only a few men move with their flocks to the seasonal sheep cotes.

A girna in Mellieha, Malta

The Hebrew ruler-priests maintained sheep in Judah and Edom. They lived in the hill country and their flocks grazed in the valleys. David would have been familiar with this way of life. In 2 Samuel 7:8, we read about David's divine appointment: "This is what the LORD Almighty says: I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people Israel." 

David's life was one of contrasts. He knew the physical hardships of the shepherd and the luxurious life of the royal palace. However, the Bible does not present this contrast. Instead, we are told that David was taken from the sheep cote to the temple, and this is very instructive. Sheep cotes, like threshing floors, served as sacred places. 

This sheep cote in Anatolia served as a place of worship.

The traditional sheep cote had the shape of a bnbn. The term is a reduplication of the root bn, meaning to "swell forth" because the sacred pillar was regarded as a symbol of the Creator's power to give life. Benben have been found from Nigeria to India. Below is a photo of a benben in Lejja, Nigeria. It has the characteristic narrow opening of sheep cotes.

The shearing of sheep was surrounded by religious ceremony. Sheep shearing and shrines are associated in Genesis 38.

After a long time Judah's wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had recovered from his grief, he went up to Timnah, to the men who were shearing his sheep, and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went with him. It was told to Tamar, "Behold, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep."

Sheep shearing sometimes involved animal sacrifice and feasting on a large scale, as is evident in 2 Samuel 13:23-25.

Now it came about after two full years that Absalom had shearers in Baal-hazor, which is near Ephraim, and Absalom invited all the king's sons. Absalom came to the king and said, "Behold now, your servant has shearers; please let the king and his servants go with your servant." But the king said to Absalom, "No, my son, we should not all go, for we will be burdensome to you." Although he urged him, he would not go, but blessed him.

Related reading: Shepherd Priests; Stone Work of the Ancient World; Threshing Floors and Solar Symbols

Threshing Floors and Solar Symbols

Alice C. Linsley

This ancient sun circle was used as a threshing floor.

In the ancient world, daily activities like cooking, sowing, harvesting, and threshing grain had religious significance. The threshing floor was at a high elevation where the wind could carry away the chaff. 

Threshing floors were associated with the sun and with solar cycles. They were used to determine times and seasons. A center post served to cast a shadow, on the same principle as a sundial. Some threshing floors, such as the one shown above, resemble solar images.

The threshing floor ("guran") was a sacred place at a high elevation. High places such as these were places of worship in the ancient world. The Jebusite ruler Araunah sold David a threshing floor upon which David constructed an altar.

In the Bible, divine encounters (theophanies) often occur at high places such as mountain tops or in the hill country. The Horite Hebrew of Edom were known to prefer the "hill country" (Gen. 14:6; Gen. 36). They grew their grain in the valleys below, but their threshing floors and granaries were at higher elevations.

There is some evidence that threshing floors were the sites of the hieros gamos or sacred marriage, during harvest times. Judah's intercourse with a shrine qadesh took place at Timna, which had a temple dedicated to Hathor. Timna was directly north of Abdullum in Jebusite territory. Judah went to Timna to visit with his friend from Abdullum and to help with the harvest. 

Among the Canaanite populations the hieros gamos may have represented a hope or expectation concerning the Divine Son. However, among the Hebrew devotees of God Father, God Son, and Hathor, the conception of the Divine Son did not involve sexual intercourse. Instead, a virgin of their ruler-priest caste was expected to conceive by solar overshadowing (Luke 1).

Hathor is shown on ancient monuments wearing the solar cradle: long cow horns in which the Sun rests as a sign of divine appointment. She was the patroness of the Horite Hebrew metal workers of Edom.

Hebrews 4:2 states that the message concerning the risen Lord was preached to the Apostles' ancestors. From this we may assume that Abraham and Moses shared the faith of their ancestors to whom God first revealed the "Proto-Gospel" concerning the Seed of God who would be born of the Horite ruler-priest lines. He was expected to pass through death to life and lead his people from the grave to eternal life. He is often called "the Bread of Life."

There is a connection between the sowing and harvesting of grain and the making of bread in solar circles. The most common solar symbol was the 6-prong symbol which is found to this day on Irish Maslin bread (shown here). 

Some Maslin loaves are decorated with an oak leaf on top. Maslin bread is the oldest known bread eaten by the Celts. It was the bread of common folks, containing a blend of wheat and rye flours. The rosette is a solar symbol, and it is found wherever the early Hebrew dispersed. 

On this traditional Serbia cake (shown right) the solar rosette is surrounded by oak leaves. Hesus (fulfilling the primitive Horus archetype) was crucified on an oak tree. The hope of his third-day resurrection was enacted by the sowing of grain in the fields. In antiquity, this annual ritual was overseen by Horite Hebrew priests who led the people in procession to the fields, much as Anglican priests officiate at Rogation Day ceremonies in late May.

Anglican priest blessing the fields in Hever, Kent

Among the Horite Hebrew, the seed that was sown spoke of the long-expected Righteous Ruler who would trample the serpent under his feet (Gen. 3:15). Jesus referred to himself as the "Seed" when he foretold his death in Jerusalem. He explained to his disciples, "Unless a seed fall into the ground and die, it cannot give life." (John 12:24)

The Apostle Paul makes a reference to the Seed also. Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He saith not, and to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy Seed, which is Christ… And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:16, 29)

The rosette on the Maslin bread and the Serbian cake is identical to the solar symbol found on the tombs and ossuaries of Hebrew. The symbol is associated with the hope of life after death or bodily resurrection.

Tomb at Banais, Israel

Ossuary of Miriam, daughter of the priest Yeshua

Related reading: Is It Possible to Speak of the Proto-Gospel?; Solar Imagery and the Proto-Gospel; Goran Pavlovic on Oaks; Horite and Sethite Mounds; Threshing Floors in Ancient Israel: Their Ritual and Symbolic Significance, by Jaime L. Waters, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015)

Hanged on a Tree

In Genesis 2:9 the Tree of Life is described a being at the center of the garden. The tree marked the sacred center. The Church Fathers understood Genesis 2:9 to be an allusion to the Cross, which is called a “tree” in Scripture.

The New Testament uses the word "tree" five times in reference to Christ's death on a cross. The references are found in Acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29, Galatians 3:13 and 1 Peter 2:24.

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us," wrote Paul, "for it is written: `Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree" (Galatians 3:13).

Paul was quoting a phrase found in Deuteronomy 21:23: If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and you hang him on a tree, you must not leave the body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is a curse of God. You must not defile the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

Torah's prescribed form of execution by stoning for certain offenses, such as blasphemy and idolatry. After being stoned to death, the person's body was hung on a tree to show the individual was under God's curse. To the Jews, hanging on a tree had become a metaphor for an apostate, a blasphemer or a person deemed under God's curse. That's exactly how the Jews viewed Jesus (John 5:18; 10:33; Matthew 26:63-65).

But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.…" (Acts 5:29-31)

The Israeli scholar Yigal Yadin, who deciphered and published the Temple Scroll some years ago, found that the Temple Scroll gave a different interpretation of these verses from Deuteronomy:

If a man informs against his people, delivers his people up to a foreign nation and betrays his people, you shall hang him on the tree so that he dies. On the word of two and three witnesses shall he be put to death, and they shall hang him on the tree.

If a man commits a crime punishable by death, and he defects into the midst of the nations and curses his people, the children of Israel, you shall hang him also on the tree so that he dies. And their bodies shall not remain upon the tree, but you shall bury them the same day, for those who hang on the tree are accursed by God and men, you must not defile the land which I give you as an inheritance.(Temple Scroll 64:6-13).

Jesus' crucifixion and burial conformed to the laws of Israel. He became a curse for us that we might be freed from the curse of old. He became the Tree of Life for us that we might partake of Him and and not die the second death. He died and was buried on the same day. He was buried in the stone tomb of his kinsman, Joseph of Ar-Mathea, a high ranked member of the Sanhedrin and a priest. He rose on the third day, trampled down death by His death, leading captives to immortality. Blessed be His Name. Blessed be the tree marked by His precious blood.

Related reading: Curses in Genesis; Who is Jesus?; Trees in Genesis; Jesus in Genesis: God With Us; The Red Heifer