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The World Turned Upside Down

-         Comyns Beaumont’s unique view of the past

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In a series of books published between 1946 and 1949, British journalist William Comyns Beaumont astonished the world with the following extraordinary revelations:

Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified just outside Edinburgh, Scotland – the site of the ancient city of Jerusalem.

Satan was a comet that collided with the earth and caused Noah’s Flood.

The ancient Egyptians were in fact Irishmen.

Hell is to be found in Western Scotland.

The Greek hero Achilles spent his childhood on the Isle of Skye.

Galilee, birthplace of Jesus, was Wales.

Ancient Athens was in reality Bath, England.

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Legacy of Atlantis

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Comyns Beaumont started his radical revision of history with the belief, innocuous enough, that the lost island of Atlantis might be Britain. According to the legend, Atlantis had vanished beneath the waves around 9000 B.C.

Comyns Beaumont claimed that the native Celts had colonized many countries of the world, notably in Europe, the Middle East, and South America. Then, he said, a comet had collided with the earth, destroying a huge landmass in northern Britain. The survivors spread the news of this calamity to the Celtic – or Atlantean – colonies and so today we find the legend of a cataclysmic flood in many widely scattered cultures.

So far Comyns Beaumont had done little more than add another eccentric book to the pile of speculation about the location of Atlantis.

The Old and the New

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But then he noticed the similarities between modern British place names and those in the ancient world, and concluded that many of these places had, in reality, been in Britain itself. Loch Carron in Scotland, for instance, and the nearby village of Erbusaig sounded to his ears strangely like Acheron, the Greek river of hell, and the mythical purgatory Erebus. Achilles, the Greek hero, grew up on the island of Skyros – which could be none other than the Isle of Skye. Bath had to be Athens; the names of the two cities were too similar for it to be otherwise.

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Then, reasoned Comyns Beaumont, if the Flood had occurred in northwestern Europe, it was surely likely that Noah – and every other biblical character – had lived there too. The British Isles were the true cradle of world civilization.

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Once inspired with that idea, Comyns Beaumont was not to be distracted by the facts. For his theory to be consistent, all the other peoples are places of the classical world had to be in or near Britain. With unending energy he redrew the map so that the ancient countries of the Mediterranean and North Africa fit neatly into the map of Britain. It was irrelevant that Athens or Jerusalem, Crete or Ethiopia, persisted in occupying their habitual sites in modern times.

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Reading between the Lines

The impeccable illogic of Comyns Beaumont insisted that historians had distorted the truth in order to glorify their own countries. It was clear from a “true reading” of the records that Ethiopia was Ireland, Sodom was Bristol, Crete was just another name for the Shetland Islands.

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As for Edinburgh and Jerusalem, the unique vision of Comyns Beaumont found many parallels. The Dung Gate in Edinburgh was the King’s Stables Gate in Jerusalem. Edinburgh Castle was King David’s citadel, and Edinburgh’s Nor’ Loch was the Pool of Bethesda. Both cities had streets called Water Gate. The Mount of Olives was the hill just outside Edinburgh, named Arthur’s Seat.

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All this was consistent with Comyns Beaumont’s lifelong belief in the innate superiority of all things British. His career as a journalist had been dogged by his frustration with newspaper owners and editors who, he believed, failed to represent British interests adequately. His new theory of history restored the balance, to his satisfaction at least – and to the amazement and entertainment of all those who read his books.