The Great Race

It is a near-universal belief among the various species of Teleleli and the lands around that there was once a mightly civilisation, now lost to history, but from whom all invention derives.

This accord breaks down, however, when one moves on to the details. Were they human? If not, are their descendents one of the other intelligent species? Beasts? Are a given race slaves of the Great Race who rebelled, or perhaps animals given intelligence by their art? Did the Great Race fall in a magical disaster, the wrath of the gods, war, a gradual decline? Or did they simply leave, and if so where - over the sea, another planet, under the earth, a mist-shrouded valley or secret rooms under the city, from where they still control the world's governments? Were they rulers of a great empire, the world, or many worlds?

One may find wise sages who will attest to all of the above. One may find others equally learned, and equally certain that the Great Race is merely the name given a succession of different civilisations, or entirely a myth. The sage Hiram Abiff states that the Great Race were not material creatures at all, but numbers. He claimed to have travelled to the Heaven of Perfect Forms, from whence they came.

However certain myths and folk-beliefs suggest to me that the Great Race may have been the Lost Tribes of Israel. If so, perhaps they travelled here using knowledge now lost, learned from the Ancient Egyptians. This would explain how the Israelites could have spent 40 years travelling from Egypt to Palestine via Mount Sinai - which works out to just over 50 yards a day. It may be that they went via these lands, leaving a portion behind who became the Great Race.

This theory, I submit, is also likely to shed light on the mysterious land of Sheba spoken of in the Bible. The reader will no doubt be aware that the black queen of that country, one of the "daughters of Jerusalem", travelled to ancient Israel to bless King Solomon, and to give gifts of spices, precious stones, and rare wood (note that gold, virtually unknown in Teleleli and nearby lands, is not mentioned). She then returned to her own country. The location of Sheba has never been determined.

Solomon is said to have considered her as beautiful as "a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots", with lips "like a thread of scarlet", and teeth "like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them." Tradition holds that they had a child together. A child of the revered king in Jerusalem (or one believed to be such), would have had no difficulty being accepted as a ruler.