Odyssey of the Gods

by Erich von Daniken

  Image 15: The restored hall of the palace of Knossos on Crete.

  One thing became immediately clear: there had been a bull cult here. Bull images were found on wall-paintings and clay fragments, and bull horns were depicted everywhere. Nothing of a technical nature was found—no workshop of the brilliant Daedalus, no bones of a Minotaur, and sadly no single metal piece of the Talos robot from the Argonautica. That’s probably rusting away under the water in one of Crete’s thousands of bays.

  The whole island lacked any defenses—no walled towns or castles, and no defensive walls against invaders from the sea. So did they rely on the Talos robot? Despite this, Arthur Evans was able to prove that Homer’s descriptions had been very accurate. What surprised the excavators most of all was the great age of their finds. The palace of Knossos had been destroyed and rebuilt several times, but even the earliest one had been the same size as the most recent. The oldest palace remains dated back to 3000 BC, and every new layer that was exposed led further and further back to the Stone Age. Finally, it became clear that people had lived on the site 8,000 years ago, before the palace of Knossos was ever built. What had been so special about this site? Megalithic remains were discovered too—not only in Knossos but scattered amongst diverse temple complexes.

  The buildings of the Knossos palace turned out to be an interconnected complex of inner courtyards, rooms, small chambers, and low doors. There were also bath-shaped vessels with waste-plug holes—but without any pipes leading away from them. Finally there was an astonishing number of steps and stairs: three sets lay only 33 feet (10m) distant from one another on the same wing, and led to a large roof terrace. Was there some reason why all the inhabitants might need to get up to the roof at the same time? Arthur Evans found many store and stockrooms, filled with clay vessels the size of two men. Professor Dr. H. G. Wunderlich wrote about this:

  Even with “normal size” storage vessels one has to wonder how they were ever emptied and cleaned from time to time, since one would hardly be able to reach the bottom of them even with very long ladles, and even if one stood on a chair or stool. The giant Pithoi [stone vessels] provide us with an insoluble problem in this regard: they can’t even be tipped on their side…. Storage jars of this size must have been brought and raised before the walls were built which surrounded them, and they could not have then been replaced at any later stage by other jars. Filling and emptying must have taken place by means of tubes, along “communicating tube” principles. Yet how impractical to wall in such vessels in a place so difficult of access! One turns away with some irritation….8

  Someone worked out that one of these monstrous clay jars contained an average 129 gallons (586 l): “The number of containers in the west wing of the Knossos palace alone comes to 420, which means a storage capacity of 54,180 gallons (246,120 l).”9

  As well as these clay vessels in the west wing, there were also “oil containers” throughout the whole complex, often called “cisterns” by the archaeologists. They amounted to an enormous storage capacity. And for what reason? One theory is that the Minoans had made provision for times of crisis, but this is unconvincing. Knossos does not appear to have feared any danger, for the whole island was without defenses. The ruler was the son of a god, and could deal with any eventuality; and then there was also the robot Talos who guarded the island. So why should they have wanted to store such absurd quantities of edible oil, which would have soon deteriorated in the Mediterranean heat?

  All that we can do is speculate, and try to find a possible solution. A few years ago, I turned my attention to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.10 It turned out that Solomon used a flying machine “which he had built in accordance with the wisdom bestowed upon him by God.”11 He also gave such a “chariot which flew through the air” to his queen.

  This was not an extraterrestrial vehicle of some kind, but probably a relatively simple construction in the form of a hot-air balloon. Let us not forget that in mythology the sons of the gods received all sorts of technological instruction from their fathers, which gave them the edge over ordinary human beings.

  In the accounts, several thousand years old, of Solomon’s flying chariot, we also hear that such vehicles required “fire and water.” And indeed, curious structures dedicated to Solomon have been found on top of various mountains. These mountain summits are called “Takht-I-Suleiman” or “Throne of Solomon,” and they can be found in present-day Kashmir, Iran, and Iraq, and on the Arab peninsula as far as the Yemen. All these structures, and the temples on the mountain summits, were dedicated to the worship of water and fire, and in all of them oil storage places have been found. If Solomon’s flying machine had been powered by a primitive steam engine, water and fire would have been needed. But how would Solomon have heated the water in his flying tub? By means of flammable oil, similar to the way the wick lights up in an oil lamp.

  So I have good grounds for asking the rather provocative question: Were the oil reserves in the Knossos palace fuel-oil stores? Did everyone rush out together on to the roofs because a flying vehicle was arriving? There is evidence to support this idea; in the sixth book of his Natural History, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, who lost his life in the eruption of Vesuvius in the year AD 79, recounts the following about the peoples living in Arabia: “However the [most] royal residence of all is Mariaba12…. In the interior of the country the Minaens border on the Atramites. The former are thought to descend from the Cretan king Minos.”13

  And in the twelfth book Pliny turns to the varieties of tree in Arabia, and in particular the “incense tree”:

  It is bordered by another region in which the Minaens live, through which people pass on a narrow road to carry away incense. This people began this trade, and still pursue it most intensively, which is why it is given the name of “Minaee.” Apart from the Minaens, no other Arab sees the incense tree, and not even all of them do. Their number is said to be no more than 3,000 families, who make sure that this right is passed on through the generations.14

  Things gradually become clearer. The palace of Knossos was continually destroyed and rebuilt over a long period; but around 1500 BC the “Minoans” vanish into thin air and their buildings on Crete are swallowed up in a catastrophe. Up to this point, there were giant stores of oil in the palace. At the same time, a branch of the Minoan people appears in far-off Yemen, and starts to trade in incense. Incense was treated like gold in those days—of which the gods’ offspring couldn’t get enough. Even in the early days of barter and exchange, artists and workers had to be paid, for no one could just live from hand to mouth. The Queen of Sheba had the largest and most technologically brilliant dam of antiquity built in Marib in the Yemen, and her relatives on Crete had to keep up a gigantic palace, which often collapsed because of earthquakes. Without financial stimulus, none of this could have happened. According to Pliny, the “Minaens” started by trading in incense, which is why this trade is called “Minaee.” Pliny doesn’t regard these Minaens as traders from Crete, but as Arabs, for he says: “Apart from the Minaens no other Arab sees the incense tree.”

  Image 16: The dam of Marib (Yemen) was constructed by the queen of Sheba.

  Image 17: The dam of Marib.

  The Queen of Sheba, for her part, was a successor to King Minos of Crete. He, in turn, was an offspring of the gods, with all the technical know-how his parents had passed on to him. Solomon belonged to the same elevated circle of the wise, which is why—and this is quite clear from Arabian literature—this Biblical ruler had a quite different order of technology at his disposal from that described elsewhere in the Old Testament.15, 16 After all, his mistress was the Queen of Sheba, whom he visited frequently on his flying machine. When all is said and done this means that the mythical King Minos was, as the legend says, the son of a “god,” married to the daughter of the sun-god Helios—the same who unwillingly handed the sun-chariot’s reins (or should we say controls?) to his son Phaethon.

  The family should be regarded
as having technical know-how. On Crete its members consolidated their power and allowed themselves to be pampered by human beings. They built the robot Talos, which guarded the island, and taught the inhabitants how to produce the large quantities of oil which were needed for royal flying machines. A descendant of Minos ruled Arabia and began trading in incense. In Sheba’s domain, too, more than average amounts of oil were produced. Thus it is quite feasible that over many generations large sums were shunted backward and forward between the Minoan relatives. They helped themselves to a royal lifestyle, until finally the Cretan branch of the family broke apart. The same happened in Sheba’s kingdom. Even the “royal blood” of the “gods” ultimately degenerated, and with it the secret knowledge about earlier technologies.

  When exactly all this began can no more be ascertained than the point at which people first started making pilgrimages to the god of healing at Epidaurus. The important thing as I see it is that the “gods” were indeed worshipped already 6,000 years ago, on the same geographical site where Knossos was later built, 3 miles (5 km) southeast of the present town of Iraklion on Crete. This links up with the riddles which I am trying to solve.

  North of Crete lies the Anticythera Channel, named after the islands of Cythera and Anticythera. In olden times, when sailors preferred, for safety’s sake, to hug the coastline rather than plough out into the midst of the ocean, there were frequent shipwrecks. Sometimes boats crashed into each other in the dark, sometimes fires broke out on board, sometimes pirates or warships took what they could plunder, or vessels sank without trace into the depths. One of these wrecks was discovered by chance by a ship-full of Greek sailors, who had taken refuge from a storm in a bay on the eastern side of Anticythera. They were actually diving for sponges, shells, and pearls at the time, and because they were camped for the night on Anticythera’s beach, they thought they might do a bit of diving there the next day. At low tide, at a depth of 100 feet (30m), Elias Stadiatis caught sight of a wooden mast and then the bulk of a ship. Excitedly he told his companions, and everyone leapt into the water to see it. This was two days before Easter, 1900. During the following days the men brought more and more objects to the surface, and finally told the authorities about their discovery.

  These were dangerous diving conditions, given the depth of water, which meant that no one could go down more than twice a day. The divers didn’t have oxygen cylinders, so it took all their effort just to reach the wreck, cram some object into a basket that was suspended on a rope, then get themselves pulled up quickly again. It is no surprise therefore that two people lost their lives during the diving, and two others became seriously ill.

  During several months, figurines, coins, two bronze arms, blue vases, and even small marble statues (later dated at 80 BC) came to light. Finally, one of the men glimpsed something like a square object in the dark water, covered in shells, limestone, and corroding lumps of metal. The diver had no idea what he had found. During the next few days other fragments of it were brought to the surface, but even the archaeologist on board did not at first recognize the significance of this unique find.

  In the Greek National Museum in Athens, the formless structure was chemically treated so as to reveal what lay underneath the layers of sediment. The curators were amazed to see three cog-wheels, joined together by two cross-shaped metal strips. Then a tiny cog-wheel just 2mm thick crumbled under the brush of one of the curators. They realized at this point that it was a technical apparatus of some kind, and that they needed specialist help.

  Valerio Stais was one of the students who handled the separate cogwheels with tweezers, laid them out to dry, and treated them with chemical cleaning agents. He later became an archaeologist, and was the first to begin to grasp what lay in front of him in the half-darkened rooms of the Greek National Museum. By that point more than 30 little cog-wheels of varying sizes had come to light, and also some letters in ancient Greek script. The apparatus quite clearly had something to do with astronomy. Valerio Stais said as much to a journalist, and was severely reprimanded by the specialists for doing so.

  Image 18: The Machine of Anticythera can now be seen in the Greek National Museum in Athens.

  Image 19: The Machine of Anticythera.

  Image 20: The Machine of Anticythera.

  In the following years several “specialists”—either genuine or self-appointed—turned their attention to the “Anticythera mechanism” as it had come to be known. As usual they all came up with differing results. In the summer of 1958, 58 years after its discovery, the young English mathematician Dr. Derek J. Solla Price was given permission to examine this disputed piece of antiquity. At last a mathematician who had studied astronomy was allowed to bring his knowledge to bear on it. Dr. Solla Price later became Professor of the History of Science at Yale University. He published the only thorough studies about this machine, and did not disguise his astonishment.17

  The metal parts consisted of pure bronze or copper-tin alloys in varying compositions. There were also small amounts of gold, nickel, arsenic, sodium, iron, and antimony. The engraved Greek letters, that were only partially decipherable, gave absolutely certain proof that this strange find had an astronomical purpose. There were phrases such as “at evening the Bull”; “Vega sinks at evening”; “the Pleiades appear in the morning.” There were also star names and constellations such as “Gemini, Altair, Arcturus.” The text was interspersed with single engraved numbers. Finally one could make out three circular measuring rules, with millimeter lines, similar to a slide-rule. More than 30 cogwheels of differing sizes interconnected with one another and were fastened to a copper plate by means of small axles. The mechanism even had differential wheels, which obviously allowed the relationships between different star positions to be read off on the scale. This sounds complicated, but is not necessarily—for example, when the Pleaides rise, where does the star Altair stand? The mechanism also allowed the moon’s positions in relation to the sun and the earth to be calculated, or the rising and setting of Sirius in comparison to Vega.

  The Anticythera mechanism had obviously been made a few hundred years BC. Yet it must have been built in a secret laboratory, for the knowledge which went into making it was quite unknown in those times. The same applies to the level of technology and fine mechanics invested in it. Professor Solla Price occupied himself with this machine for years, and once said in a lecture in Washington that the whole thing seemed as strange to him as if a can-opener had been found among the treasures of Tutankhamun. Yet Solla Price of course knew all about the achievements of the great ancient Greek mathematicians and philosophers, such as Aristotle (born 384 BC) or Archimedes (born 285 BC). It is also known that the Arabs had outstanding astronomers and built mechanically functioning calendars, so-called astrolabes, around about AD 1000. But none of this could explain the knowledge which went into making the Anticythera mechanism. Let me quote Solla Price:

  Either the Anticythera mechanism represents a cutting-edge sequence of scientific development which has never been written about, or it is the brain-child of an extraordinary, unknown genius. Even if one makes enormous allowances for the date of this machine, it must be clear that we have here something much more complicated than was ever mentioned in ancient literature.18

  Professor Solla Price was the only person to devote years of study to this extraordinary machine, and in the process he investigated all ancient writings about mechanics, mathematics and astronomy. At the end of his investigations he wrote, “The Anticythera mechanism confronts us with a phenomenon of a quite different order: it is High Technology, a term we use to describe special advances in science.”

  The Anticythera mechanism was kept out of the public eye for nearly 90 years. Recently several separate parts of it have been placed on view in a glass cabinet in the Greek National Museum. This apparatus, now illumined by spotlights, tells us how little we know about the wisdom which the gods whispered into the ears of their darlings. It also demonstrates the dull, lazy habits
of thought of the herd mentality in our society. Here we have a high-tech gadget with cogwheels, with up to 240 teeth, which can measure up to a hundredth of a millimeter. If the differentials were any greater, the scale of measurement would be imprecise or wrong. This technical miracle is not mentioned anywhere in ancient literature, although it must have been the talk of the town when it first appeared. Where are its forerunners? These must have existed, for even the greatest genius of fine mechanics could not have constructed such a thing “from cold.” And if earlier models existed, why are they not mentioned by any poets or historians of the time, who took such pains to record everything else? (There were later versions of this kind of machine, but with a much simpler mechanical construction—but that’s another story.) And where did the astronomical knowledge come from which underpins this miracle? People peer into the glass case in the Greek National Museum in Athens and think, “Oh well, those ancients must have done it somehow. Geniuses don’t just fall out of the sky.”

  The Anticythera mechanism was made in portable size, something like a typewriter. It could easily have been transported from one “god’s” palace to another. It could also have served useful purposes on board one of the flying machines of prehistory. The flying Solomon, like the Indian royal families who likewise mastered air travel,19 doubtless needed navigational instruments. So it is not surprising to find Arabian historians telling us that, in his “chariot which flew through the air,” Solomon used a “magic mirror which revealed to him all places on the earth.”20 This miraculous object was “composed of various substances,” and enabled the king on his flying carpet to “see into all seven climates.” And Abdul Al-Mas’udi (AD 895–956), the Arab world’s most important geographer and historian, wrote in his Histories21 that, on the mountaintops where Solomon clearly refueled, there were wonderful walls which showed Solomon the “heavenly bodies, the stars, the earth with its continents and seas, the inhabited regions, their plants and animals, and many astonishing things.”22 They were no doubt at least as astonishing as the Anticythera mechanism.