The Watch: Sky Ships, Armies in the Clouds and People Taken Up
Recorded history · c. 1000 BCE to 1054 CE
This series asks what history looks like if the old texts are records, not myths. Each claim rests on a quoted text. It is a reading, not an established fact.
After Babel, the sky is closed. The Quran says anyone who tries to listen in "findeth a flame in wait for him," and a challenge stands: jinn and humans may pass the regions of the heavens only with permission. Their time runs differently up there, a day that equals fifty thousand of our years.
But they still visit, and the historians write it down. Horsemen in gold run through the air over Jerusalem for forty days. Rome logs "ships gleaming in the sky" during the war with Hannibal and a burning shield crossing at sunset. A silver jar-shaped object falls between two armies and both sides go home. Josephus sees chariots in the clouds before Jerusalem falls. In China, a flying cart lands and the king has it taken apart. In Ireland, the Tuatha Dé Danann arrive in dark clouds. People are still taken up: Elijah in a chariot of fire, Paul to the third heaven, Muhammad through the seven heavens in one night.
What the texts say
But he who listeneth now findeth a flame in wait for him.
In a Day whereof the span is fifty thousand years.
There were seen horsemen running in the air, in cloth of gold.
In shape, it was most like a wine-jar, and in colour, like molten silver.
Chariots and troops of soldiers in their armour were seen running about among the clouds.
