Ancient Astronomy Around the World - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 37

rain (Genesis 7, 11). But the Sumerian account has a heat flash,
an incandescent rising cloud with ejecta (“the Annunaki lifted up
their torches”), a ground shock, an air blast, and only then the tsu-
nami and the deluge.
Further off, a Hittite legend says the flood was caused by
the Moon falling to Earth (descending fireball), and the Egyptian
account says it began with fire from the constellation Leo, while
divine personages stalked the land striking down the populace
with iron maces. The ancient Egyptians knew iron only from
meteorites, and the Leonid meteors still provide spectacu-
lar displays every 33 years. It's been suggested that parts of the
story of Samson are a confused account of a Leonid fire-storm,
although other writers associate him with Orion and its January
meteors (see below) [ 38 ]. Between 2354 and 2345 b.c. there was
an abrupt turndown in global climate, and there is now evidence
that the impact may instead have been in the Iraqi marshes, only
a century before the Gilgamesh text [ 39 ] . It's remarkable that one
nineteenth-century estimate put the date of Biblical deluge at 2349
b.c., though it's probably a coincidence because other Bible studies
then put it much further back [ 40 ].
There may be another impact event in the Bible. In Psalm 18,
after David calls to God for help: “Then the earth shook and trem-
bled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken,
because he was wroth. There went up a smoke out of his nostrils,
and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. He
bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under
his feet. And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly
upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place;
his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of
the skies. At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds
passed, hail stones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the
heavens, and the Highest gave his voice: hail stones and coals of
fire. Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot
out lightnings, and discomfited them. Then the channels of waters
were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy
rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath from thy nostrils.”
Professor Baillie suggests that similar imagery in Psalm 74 and
the topic of Isaiah relates to impacts, possibly the 2,350 BC event
[ 39 ] . But the same imagery is found in 2 Samuel 22 and is thought to