The exterior measurements of the pyramids at Ligurio are as follows: north side 46 feet (14m); west side 41 feet (12.5m); south side 39.5 feet (12m); and east side 42 feet (12.75m). The height is about 33 feet (10m), but the apex is missing. Neither graves nor signs of them were found within, but rather a labyrinth of walls with smaller rooms and what were clearly water tanks. Whether these basins served as baths, and whether there had ever been water in them, could not be proved. The archaeologists of the 1940s dated both pyramids to about 400 BC,2 and came to the conclusion that they cannot have been either graves or signal towers. Perhaps they were a kind of guardhouse, from where a few soldiers could watch the street. But why did they need to have a pyramid shape? There would have been little point in that since soldiers would no doubt have preferred a platform from which to oversee the region.
In 1997, a Greek-British team once more tackled the pyramids of Argolis. This time they were dated by means of thermoluminescence. (Quartz, calcite, or feldspar radiates light when heated, which allows radioactive impurities in the crystal to be recorded and dated.) The result astonished the experts. The pyramids were at least 4,700 years old—and could have been even older.3 Even the lowest limit of 2700 BC would make these pyramids older than that of Sakkara.
In the meantime Greek archaeologists have found another, much larger pyramid, not far from Mycenae. This is thought to be millennia older than the Sakkara pyramid. Unfortunately the Ministry of Culture in Athens will not allow this pyramid to be examined more carefully, let alone be excavated. So all that one has is confidential information—from a highly reliable source—which one is not allowed to reveal.
Pausanius was on his way to Epidaurus, which had once been a magnificent shrine to Asclepius. Although Epidaurus is only a few miles from the Aegean Sea, one can see nothing from the shore because it is in the midst of wooded hills. The area of Epidaurus was honored as holy ground 4,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found the remains of temples dedicated to the god Maleatas, who is said to have healed people of their illnesses. The remains of ancient megalithic structures were also found there. Since the different Greek shrines and places of ancient worship which I want to discuss here all have something to do with each other, and because my detective work starts with the structure of the building stones, I would ask my readers to remember the following: the region where Epidaurus developed, in honor of Asclepius, was already a holy place in Stone Age times.
In about the 7th century BC, after more and more people had begun making pilgrimages to Epidaurus, it was dedicated to Asclepius. He was a son of Apollo, that offspring of the gods whose flying vessel had overtaken the Argo on its way to the land of the Hyperboreans. Asclepius was said to have been killed in the name of Zeus, by a bolt of lightning. What terrible thing had he done? Nevertheless, he was still a son of Apollo, who was in turn a son of Zeus, making Zeus his grandfather. The legend tells that after Asclepius had healed many thousands of people, he became overconfident and began bringing people back to life. This angered Zeus so much that he ordered Asclepius to be killed. There are other versions of Asclepius’ death, but the Greek authors all agree about one thing: that Asclepius was brought up by the centaur Chiron. This was the same “horse-man” with whom Jason of the Argonauts spent his youth.
The symbol of Asclepius was a snake winding itself around a staff, which still today is the sign of doctors and chemists (and is more commonly known as the Mercury staff).
Present-day Epidaurus is also worth a visit. It is true that most of the ruins date back to the 4th century BC, but the traveller can also find remains of megalithic buildings. The great slabs lie unobtrusively in the surrounding area, or have blended into the terrain. In the center of the site stand the remains of a round building, whose original purpose is unknown. In ancient times the circular hole and polished slabs of stone surrounding it was called the “grave of Asclepius.” Later on, it is said, the “holy snakes” of Asclepius were pampered here; and nowadays slightly desperate tour guides speak of a labyrinth, one thing it is certainly not. At the moment Epidaurus is being restored and renovated, and when such work has been completed it is always hard to detect what was there originally.
Image 6: The shrine at Epidaurus dates back to mythical times.
Image 7: This is how the Asclepius temple in Epidaurus is thought to have once looked.
Image 8: Parts of the temple of Epidaurus show megalithic stone work.
Image 9: The renovated amphitheatre of Epidaurus has perfect acoustics.
So what is supposed to have taken place in Epidaurus millennia ago? A procession of sick people, or victims of accident or war, made their pilgrimage week after week to this ancient place of healing. When they got there they found an inn with 1,150 rooms, as well as several temples, public baths, a sports field, and later a theatre too, with 20,000 seats. Today this theatre has been restored, and the acoustics are still so perfect that tourists sitting in the uppermost row can hear every word which their tour guide speaks (in a normal voice), as he stands below on the “stage.” The central site, where healings took place, was called Abaton (“the place that cannot be entered”).4 After the patients had handed their offerings to the priests and participated in a ceremony, they were commanded to go into the “healing sleep.” This took place in the Abaton, a hall 262 feet (80m) in length, where miraculous healings regularly occurred. And how do we know this 2,500 years later? The people who had been healed commissioned scribes to immortalize the event and their thanks to the gods in stone and marble tablets. Today many of these still hang in their original positions, while others can be seen in the little museum at Epidaurus. Several of them were found on the floor of the Abaton during excavations in 1882 and 1928. What kind of healing or miracle is supposed to have taken place here? Here are some excerpts from the inscriptions:
Ambrosia of Athens, one-eyed. Came to plead for help from the god. As she walked about the shrine she laughed and thought it impossible that lame and blind people could be cured. After sleeping in the room of healing she came forth with two good eyes.
Euhippos carried a spear point around in his knee for six years… when day came he was healed.
Hermodicos of Lampsacos, lame of body. Asclepius healed him as he slept in the room of healing. He commanded him, when he came out, to bring the largest stone he could find to the shrine. He brought the one which now lies before the shrine.
Alcetas of Halieis. He was blind and slept in the shrine. When day came he was cured.
Arates of Laconia, dropsy. On her behalf her mother slept while she herself was still in Lacedemon, and saw a dream…. When she returned to Lacedemon, her daughter was cured. She too had seen the same dream.
Euphanes, a child from Epidaurus, suffered from a stone. While he slept, the god asked in a dream: “What will you give me if I heal you?” The child replied: “Ten marbles.” The god laughed and promised to heal him. Next day Euphanes was cured.
Aishines climbed a tree to look through the window into the Abaton. He fell down upon a sharp stump and destroyed both his eyes. Blind, he ran into the Abaton and begged the god to help. He was healed.
Aristocritos from Halieis. His boy had swum out to sea, and could not get back. His father, who could not find the boy, slept in the healing room of Asclepius. When he came out, he found the boy unharmed.5
Roughly 70 supernatural healings are recorded on these tablets at Epidaurus. One might say there’s nothing special about that, for such healing also happens today—for instance at places of Catholic pilgrimage like Lourdes in France or Fatima in Portugal. The people healed by such miracles do not behave any differently nowadays than they did millennia ago. Their gratitude takes the same form and has the same quality, as is proved by the thousands of votive tablets to be found in all places of pilgrimage in the world.
But there is a difference between the miracle healings before Christ, and those of today. Anyone who is miraculously healed nowadays is convinced that Jesus, Mary, or at least a Christi
an saint has had something to do with it. In Epidaurus there were no Christian figures to whom one could turn for help. So who or what brought about the healing? It is clear that Christian belief is not necessary for a spontaneous and miraculous healing to occur. In Epidaurus, people believed in Apollo and Asclepius, and they were still cured.
So what remains is the belief, the deep inner conviction, which facilitates healing. In all the places of healing, in whatever age, auto-suggestion is paramount, but also mass-hypnosis. Nowadays people pray together, take part in a procession, participate in a religious service together. Formerly they carried out sacrificial rites together, inhaled scents (nowadays it is incense), played flutes (nowadays church organs), or took part in shared worship of some kind. What is important is for thoughts to become focused on a single point, so that consciousness no longer perceives its surroundings or its daily cares and worries. This is called autogenous training or meditation today, but such regulating of thoughts is very ancient and widespread, and is practiced in many religions.
In every place where such activity takes place today, the crowds of worshippers focus upon one single point—the altar or statue of the Madonna. The overall level of consciousness is lowered and people enter a kind of “hypnotic absence.” This group experience can be felt by everyone. The longing for a miracle makes people who are otherwise completely different relate to each other, even those wary of crying and howling out loud; all inhibitions disappear. I have often observed this: participants in the daily procession to Lourdes open themselves up to a deep feeling of trust. Here, at the end of their journey, the place they have been longing to reach, they wish to be rid of their suffering. In all religions these almost ecstatic emotions provide the seedbed upon which the unthinkable can take root and become possible.
In Epidaurus it became possible—this is proved by the votive tablets. The priest-doctors were familiar with the suggestive power of the subconscious. Yet it was not priests who first made the pilgrimage to Epidaurus, but human beings. Their increasing numbers made Epidaurus into a place of pilgrimage, and the priests only arrived after this influx had grown to large proportions. This is how I see it: something unbelievable happened at some point in the region of Epidaurus. A “god” descended from the heavens. Only a few people observed this event, and were afraid. But the “god” saw them nevertheless and, without frightening them further, laid small gifts at the edge of the clearing. After initially hesitating, the people fetched these gifts and returned the compliment with presents for the “god.” Later such gifts came to be known as “offerings.”
Some of the people were ill, and the “god” noticed this. Meanwhile the people had gained trust, and the “god” began to heal their sick. This quickly made the rounds, was spread by word of mouth, so that even long after the “god” had left again, sick people still kept streaming to this extraordinary place. Temples were built, and auto-suggestion played its part. It is not impossible that the “god” left behind some technical apparatus, or sank it into the ground, so as to be able to observe things from a distance and perhaps even influence what went on. It also seems as if this “god” knew how the human brain functions, and what consciousness is capable of.
Epidaurus is still a curious place today. Mobile phones don’t work there, or only with difficulty, and the state television company had to set up a good number of amplifiers in the area in order to guarantee a clear reception. Beyond the archaeological zone new hotels have been built for those wishing to be healed, and even the late French president Francois Mitterrand made a secret pilgrimage to Epidaurus to plead for his health. We do not know to which god he directed his prayers.
The next place of activity of the gods’ offspring which I would like to examine briefly is Crete. The history of this Mediterranean island has some connection with technology, and it was the site of various inventions. I have already described how the king’s daughter Europa is said to have fallen in love with a bull, who was really Zeus, and who swam with the princess straight for Crete. There Zeus had three sons with his beloved, one of whom was called Minos. He became king of Crete, and every nine years received new laws from his father Zeus—a rather good way of keeping up with the times, and being a model for other nations. Minos had a mighty palace built, greater than the world had ever seen before. And of course, being a son of the gods, he took a wife from the race of gods, the daughter of the sun god Helios.
One day Minos decided to make an offering, and the sea god Poseidon sent a beautiful young bull that was really meant for sacrifice. But Minos kept the bull and slaughtered another one. That made Poseidon furious, and he wanted revenge—for the gods’ offspring were not all bosom pals. Somehow or other, Poseidon got Minos’ wife to fall in love with the bull—an appalling thought.6 Understandably Minos’ wife had to keep quiet about her perverse love, which is why she commissioned a brilliant engineer who lived on Crete to manufacture an artificial cow. The engineer’s name was Daedalus, and he constructed such a perfect cow that the queen could place herself inside it, and the fine bull didn’t notice that she was there. The bull mated the cow, and soon afterwards the queen felt great pains inside her. She gave birth to a cross-breed, a creature with a human body and the head of a bull. And because the lady was the wife of King Minos, this creature was called the Minotaur (literally “Minos bull”).
Minos must have been extremely displeased, for he got Daedalus to construct a giant prison for the Minotaur, a labyrinth of such complexity that no one could get out of it. But this bull-human monster had dreadful desires. Every year seven youths and seven maidens were sent into the labyrinth so that the Minotaur could eat them. Eventually Theseus, the son of the king of Athens, decided to kill the monster and bring this human sacrifice to an end. He voluntarily offered himself as one of the seven youths and journeyed to Crete, where he fell in love with Ariadne, a daughter of Minos. She also asked Daedalus for help, so that her lover might find his way out of the labyrinth again after killing the Minotaur. Daedalus, who had a solution for every problem, showed the king’s daughter the labyrinth’s exit and gave her a ball of thread, the famous “Ariadne’s thread.” Her lover had to tie one end of this thread to the entrance when he went in, and unroll it as he went, so that he would then be able to find his way out again.
The rest of the story is quickly told. Theseus killed the Minotaur. King Minos naturally got wind of the role Daedalus had played in the matter, and so threw Daedalus and his son Icarus into jail. Daedalus built himself two winged contraptions out of wood, feathers, resin, and other materials. Daedalus and his son Icarus took flight and rose happily into the air above Crete, but unfortunately the son forgot his father’s warning not to fly too close to the sun, for then the resin would melt and the feathers would bum. This is exactly what happened—the young man plummeted down, and since then the sea where he fell has been called the Sea of Icarus. The island where his body was washed ashore is called Icaria.
Daedalus flew on to Sicily, where the king enthusiastically adopted this engineering genius. After all, every ruler wishes to have the technological edge over other countries. But Minos was in a rage because Daedalus had left. He went with his fleet to search the whole Mediterranean, and finally found Daedalus on Sicily; but the king of Sicily did not want to hand him over. Instead, the king’s daughters boiled Minos alive in a bathtub. There are Greek legends which say that the body of King Minos was brought back to Crete and buried there.
Of course, things never happened exactly as the myth tells. The Greek archaeologist Anna Michailidou believes she has dismissed any such idea: “The myth has absolutely no basis in historical reality.”7 All the famous poets and historians of ancient Greece have written about the Cretan myths: Homer, Hesiod, Thucydides, Pindar, Plutarch, Diodoros of Sicily, and of course Herodotus. Each of them gives different variations and angles, so that only the basic story remains the same.
No labyrinth has ever been found on Crete, unless the palace of King Minos was implied, for the �
��House of Minos” at Knossos was bigger than Buckingham Palace, and contained roughly 1,400 rooms on several floors. One could certainly have got lost there.
In the middle of the 19th century this giant complex was just an insignificant-looking hill. Not until 1878 did a Greek, Minos Kalokairinis, begin some modest excavations in Knossos. Then in 1894, the British archaeologist Arthur Evans (1851–1941) came to Crete. Just like Heinrich Schliemann, he believed in the reality of Homer’s writings. Homer had given very detailed accounts of the Cretan legends and provided clear descriptions of the palace of Knossos.
Arthur Evans first returned to England and was promoted to Director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Here he collected funds and patrons so as to be able to excavate on Crete. He finally started to dig with a team of 30 on March 23, 1900, and the excavators gradually revealed layer upon layer of King Minos’ legendary palace.
Image 10: Hundreds of clay vessels of Knossos were buried in the earth. Did they once contain fuel oil for the “flying tubs” of the gods’ offspring?
Image 11: Clay vessels of Knossos.
Image 12: Clay vessels of Knossos.
Image 13: The foundations of King Minos’ palace on Crete go back to megalithic times.
Image 14: The remains of the palace of Knossos on Crete.
Odyssey of the Gods Page 7
