Odyssey of the Gods

by Erich von Daniken

  Many authors and brilliant historians have told tales of the Argonauts, and the historians and exegetes of today have tried to understand the journey of the Argo. Where did the ship go? Where did the adventures take place? On which coasts, on which islands and mountains might one find the many altars and memorials which the Argonauts raised? Apollonius often gives us very precise geographical locations in his Argonautica, with many accompanying descriptions. My emphases in the following examples show how detailed Apollonius’ account is, and how seriously he takes his geography:

  At Pytho, in the fields of Ortigern…they sailed with the wind behind them past the outermost horn, the Capes Tisae…behind them vanished the dark land of the Pelasges.

  From there they sailed to Meliboa, and saw the wild waves breaking upon its rocky coast. And with the new day saw Homola which is built beside the sea. They left it behind them, and also soon passed the river mouth leading from the water of Amyrus. Then they caught sight of the plains of Eurymenas, and the deep folds of Olympus. Also Canastra…. In the twilight of evening, they glimpsed the peak of Mount Atho, whose shadow covers the island of Lemnos.

  Until they came once more to the coasts of the Dolions…where they saw the Macriades rocks, and in front of them the land of Thrace. Also the airy mouth of the Bosphorus, the hill of Mysen, and in the other direction the Aesaps and Nepeia River.

  To the welcome mouth of the Calichor river. It was here that Bacchus once celebrated his orgies, when the hero returned to Thebes from the peoples of India.

  Then they came to the land of Assyria…the early rays of dawn caressed the snowy peaks of the Caucasus.

  In those days the Deucalides ruled the land of the Pelasges. But Egypt, the mother of the oldest race of men, was already growing in notoriety and fame…

  They sailed further and dawn found them in the Land of the Hyllers. A large number of islands lay before them, and it is dangerous for ships to pass through them.

  Iris descended from Olympus, ploughing through the air with outstretched wings, and alighting at the Aegean Sea.

  Here rose Scylla from the waters…there roared Charybdis.57

  These are only a few examples, which show that Apollonius knew very well in what part of the world the heroes of the Argo were conducting their adventures. Not only rivers, islands or specific regions are mentioned, but also seas or mountain ranges like the Caucasus. Ought it not to be very easy to plot the Argonauts’ journey?

  Of course, this has been done—with very variable results. The two French professors Emile Delage and Francis Vian drew up clear maps,58, 59according to which Jason and his crew journeyed from the Caucasus at the eastern end of the Black Sea along the river Istros (the Danube) to the Adriatic, passing other tributaries on their way. In the Fo valley there were many small and larger rivers, which the Argonauts somehow managed to use to sail round the Alps, and to reach the Rhine and the Rhōne. In the region of present-day Marseilles they arrived at the Mediterranean again, and passed through the straits of Messina—the supposed Scylla and Charybdis. Finally they turned east in the direction of the (present) Ionian islands, then turned south and headed straight for the Great Syrtis of Libya. From there they sailed home via Crete. And where is the place where Phaethoe’s heavenly chariot crashed to earth? Not far from the western edge of Switzerland, in the Marais de Phaýton (Marsh of Phaethon)!

  Reinhold and Stephanie Glei60, 61 provided still more exact maps. But I have problems with these; how does one get from the river Istros or Danube to the Adriatic, and from there via the Eridanos River in the Po valley to the “Celtic seas” of present-day France? After all, the Argo was not some rubber dinghy, but the greatest vessel of the age, with a crew of 50. It cannot be denied that there may have been waterways in those days which no longer exist—which would once more throw up the question of the date of the original Argonautica. At which geological epochs did navigable waterways exist where now there is only dry land?

  A consul general of France, Monsieur R. Roux, compares the wanderings of Odysseus, described in great detail by the Greek poet Homer, with the Argonautica: “One must never forget the great precision and differentiation of Strabo: the Odyssey takes place in the western ocean, the Argosy in the eastern.”62

  Christine Pellech has a quite different view. Her very thorough study also compares Odysseus’ wanderings with the Argonautica, concluding that “the Odyssey partly overlaps with the journey of the Argonauts.” She says that Odysseus actually sailed right round the world—millennia before Columbus—and puts forward the view that the Egyptians had drawn on Phoenician sources, and it was this “Phoenician-Egyptian mixture that was taken over wholesale by the Greeks.” The content of both the Argonautica and the Odyssey derives from Egypt, according to Pellech, and she substantiates this by the fact that Apollonius of Rhodes grew up in Alexandria, visited the library there, and only left Egypt after falling out with his teacher.63

  Christine Pellech’s arguments read like well-documented research, and she also succeeds in identifying many points on the journey with actual places on the globe. Many questions still remain, however.

  If what she says is true, then most of the geographical indications given by Apollonius must be wrong, and many scholars would have been wasting their time. What could the explanation be? Let us assume that Apollonius really brought the core of the Argonaut story from Egypt to Greece. Then, to conjure up a fuller picture for himself, he might well have adorned it with geographical details from his own experience. To do this, though, he would have to have had an extensive knowledge of the wide realms of the Greek world in those days, and also many rivers, coasts, and mountains beyond Greece. But even then we are left with difficulties; how, for instance, can one explain passages by Apollonius such as the following:

  In the evening they came ashore on the Atlantides Island. Orpheus begged them not to spurn the solemnities of the island, nor the secrets, the laws, customs, the religious rites and works. If they observed these they would be assured of the love of heaven on their further voyage over the dangerous ocean. But to speak further of these things I do not dare.64

  Let’s not forget that Atlantis was the island of the god Poseidon, that two of Poseidon’s sons were said to have travelled on the Argo, and that the amphibious vehicles which had surfaced from the sea had been the work of Poseidon. But how does Apollonius know about Atlantis—if that is what the word “Atlantides” refers to? He writes at least of solemnities which one should not spurn, but also of secrets, laws, and customs. And, though everywhere else he gives each little geographic detail, he now refrains from saying anything further about such things. Something doesn’t quite fit here, and I will return to the Atlantis story later.

  Did the Argo journey ever actually take place? As long as we have no older sources to draw on than the ones cited here, we will probably never know. But I have been chasing the trail of the gods for the past 40 years, convinced that many elements of the Argonautica cannot have simply been invented. Imagination is a fine thing, and even millennia ago people enjoyed their flights of fancy. But fantasy is always based on something; it takes its starting point from events which once occurred, from circumstances which cannot be understood, from riddles which our reason cannot neatly pigeon-hole. Nowadays we try hard to put a psychological slant on the “imagination” of the ancients, using the old, worn-out schema of natural phenomena such as lightning and thunder, stars, silence and infinity, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. But as the history of exegesis or commentary demonstrates, every scholar just thinks in terms of his own experience, conditioned by the time in which he lives. Our so-called “zeitgeist” narrows our perspective and dictates what is “reasonable” or “scientific.” My diligent secretary hauled 92 books on the Argonautica theme from Bern University library to my study. As usual, one nearly drowns in the miles of commentary written by high-powered academics at different periods—but no one really knows the truth. And every one puts forward a different argument.

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bsp; I still stand by my basic conviction—on which I have elaborated in 32 books since 1968. All that I try to do is relate new arguments to my original theory, in the process of which the gaps in the mosaic get smaller and smaller, and the overall picture becomes increasingly more convincing. However, I admit that my theory has its blemishes, and that some of what I propose could be explained differently. But at the end of the day, what is the truth? Are the analyses by commentators in the past 100 years correct? Their conclusions convincing? Do they provide—as the scientific community simply assumes—a proven body of knowledge? Or is what they view as scientifically sound just an interpretation dictated by contemporary perspectives?

  Here of course I lay myself right open to attack. What, people will say, is Erich von Däniken doing other than interpreting things from his contemporary perspective? That is true. But shouldn’t we have learned by now that we are only one living speck of dust in the depths of the universe? That the world and the cosmos are far more fantastic than our school learning tells us. Isn’t it time that, given the wealth of material, we admit that something is not quite right with our view of the early history of mankind? And that received views are wrong because they sweep thousands of pointers and hints under the carpet, and refuse even to contemplate them? I do have one advantage over the commentators: I know their arguments, but they don’t (care to) know mine.

  New readers need to hear my old theories briefly. Sometime or other, many millennia ago, an alien crew landed upon earth. Our forefathers didn’t have a clue what was going on; they didn’t know anything about technology, let alone space travel. Their simple minds must have regarded the aliens as “gods”—although we all know that there aren’t any gods. The aliens first studied small groups and tribes of human beings, just as ethnologists do today. Here and there they gave advice for creating an ordered civilization. There was no language problem between people and “gods,” both because our civilization has always managed to pick up totally foreign languages, and because the first Homo sapiens sapiens probably learned their language from the “gods” in the first place.

  Finally a rift and even mutiny occurred amongst the aliens. They broke the laws of their world of origin and their space commanders, and had sex with pretty daughters of men. Mutants resulted from these unions: huge monsters, the Titans of olden times. Another group of ETs undertook genetic engineering, and created mutants of all kinds. It must have been a real Frankenstein horror scenario. Then the mother spaceship departed with the “good” aliens, back into the depths of the cosmos—though not without having first promised to return at some point in the future.

  The “gods” remaining behind on the earth squabbled amongst themselves. They still had bits and pieces of their original technology, and doubtless retained their original knowledge. They knew, for instance, how to work iron, make alloys, create dreadful weapons or robots. But they also knew how to make a hot-air balloon fly, or charge up a sun-powered battery. These “gods” produced children and naturally taught their offspring some of their technological knowledge.

  These offspring spread over the earth, inhabiting different regions, which were ruled over in each case either by a single ruler or a family dynasty. They misused their subjects, the human beings, as work-horses, as food-producers, as serviceable idiots. But they also taught them a good deal, and set up the best of them as administrators, so-called kings.

  The “gods” basically watched their subjects jealously: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” was one of their laws. And when it came to battles and blows, the “gods” often supported their subjects with terrible weapons. The sons of the gods and their descendants from third and fourth generations often did battle with another.

  So that is my theory, which I backed up from so many sources that the cross references alone turned into a whole book,65 and all my books together grew not only into an encyclopedia,66 but also into a CD-ROM. 67, 68 Not to mention the hundreds of books which other authors across the globe have published on the same theme. It is therefore quite natural that I am familiar with all the counter-arguments imaginable, and that I have long since dealt with them to my satisfaction.

  What can the Argonautica have to do with extraterrestrials? What are the constituent elements which can hardly have just leapt out of the imagination of a group of people who lived X millennia ago? And let me be quite clear on this point: we’re not talking about the imagination of some Apollonius, or any other Greek poet, who wrote down their accounts 2,500 years ago. No, the core of the Argonautica story comes from a time about which we have no historical records—and this is simply because all the really ancient libraries were destroyed. Unless, of course, some unexpected treasure chamber is about to be opened in Egypt.

  So what is it about the Argonautica which makes us sit up and take notice?

  1. Quite a few of the voyagers are offspring of the gods, from the third and fourth generation. They possess superhuman characteristics.

  2. “Mixed beings” are described, such as centaurs, giants with six arms, or the “winged dogs” of Zeus.

  3. A goddess makes the Argo unsinkable.

  4. The same goddess furnishes the ship with a “speaking beam.” This talkative piece of wood must have some hotline to someone, for it warns of approaching dangers.

  5. A being called Glaucus surfaces from the waves like a submarine, and brings a message from one of the gods.

  6. Cliff walls open and shut as in the tale of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves (“open sesame”).

  7. King Phineus knows all about the dangers which will be encountered along the route. How?

  8. Aietes’ tower near the town of Aia.

  9. A god (Apollo) flies with noise and commotion over the ship. He is on the way to the land of the “Hyperboreans,” and visits “people of another race.”

  10. Birds shoot deadly arrows, but are irritated by noise.

  11. A goddess uses “mist” to make the men invisible.

  12. An ointment gives superhuman powers and creates a heat-resistant shield.

  13. A dragon which never sleeps, observes everything, has no physical needs, can spit fire, and never dies.

  14. Fire-spitting bulls with metal legs.

  15. A vehicle of the gods, which needs great experience to drive and control. As it crashes it sets fire to whole stretches of land, and the “pilot” must get out because of the unbearable heat inside it.

  16. Various talking amphibious beings.

  17. A god who lights up the night by means of “arrows of light.”

  18. A metallic robot who circles an island. His eyes see ships coming, and he hurls missiles, bums up assailants, and has blood like molten lead.

  19. A woman from the race of gods who manages to confuse this robot with “dream images.”

  Even if we assume that the whole thing is just a tall tale engendered in the head of a dreamer, and later expanded and added to by poets of each succeeding age, does this mean that all questions must fall silent? Is there then no mystery to solve?

  Even a tall tale has content. Its original inventor would have had to tell at least a halfway feasible story, for things have to have some cohesion and sense. The basic framework of the story is simple: One or several people set off to seek a unique and extremely valuable object. This object is guarded by an incomprehensible monster, and this all has something to do with the gods.

  It doesn’t matter much whether the poet also puts in a love story somewhere, which ends happily. But where does the metal monster come from, which attacks ships, shoots things down, radiates heat, and had lead for blood? And where on earth did they get the idea of the fire-spitting dragon? Such creatures never existed in the whole evolution of this planet. No one could have just dreamed it up. There are therefore neither “archetypal” explanations, nor any dim, ancient “memories” at work here. And why does this race of dragons appear time and again in the tales of ancient peoples? The oldest Chinese stories tell of the dragon kings who descended from h
eaven to earth at the dawn of time. These are no products of fantasy or silly tales, for the dragon kings founded the first Chinese dynasty. No human weapon was able to harm them, and with their fire-spitting dragons they ruled the skies. The dragon kings’ flying machines made a terrible noise, and the founder of the first dynasty bore the name “Son of the Red Dragon.”69

  None of this is mythology for, after all, the motif of the fire-spitting dragon influenced all of Chinese art for thousands of years, right up to our own times. And whoever still complains that such things cannot have been true, and that the dragon must be understood in psychological terms, should perhaps take a trip to Beijing and take a look at the great Red Square. What can be seen all along one side of it? The temple of the heavenly emperor!

  Doesn’t it gradually occur to you that something is odd here? That all the accounts from antiquity are not just legends, myths, or imaginary fairy-tales, but a former reality? This far-off reality, however, can be proven in another way too: by following the trail of time itself.

  Chapter 2

  In the Name of Zeus

  The Ten Commandments are so clear and definite because

  they weren’t decided by conference.

  —Konrad Adenauer, 1876–1967

  The region which we call Olympia was already inhabited in the 3rd millennium BC. The first holy place in that part of western Peloponnesia was dedicated to the goddess Ge. Much later, Olympia developed into the temple city of Zeus. In the year 776 BC, the first competitions were held at Olympia, and we have a written record of the name of the victor— “Coroibos from Elis.” Athletic competitions took place here every four years, over a total span of 1,168 years, from 776 BC to AD 393. Strict rules were drawn up, both for the competitors and the audience. The athletes had to have trained for at least 10 months; they also had to be free Greeks, who had not committed a murder nor behaved indecently in a holy place. Thirty days before the games began, the athletes gathered in the training camp at Elis, 35 miles (57km) from Olympia, where they lived together in simple dwellings, all receiving the same food.