North of the islands of Anticythera and Cythera lies the Peloponnese, at 8,266 square miles (21,410 sq km), the largest Greek peninsula. Here are the towns of Argos, Epidaurus, and Nemea, and between them the very ancient Mycenae. As everywhere else in Greece, Mycenae is inseparable from mythology. The place is said to have been founded by Perseus, whose mother claimed he was the son of Zeus—who seems to have been responsible for every unusual child. Perseus’ huge fame is based on his defeat of the Gorgons, horrible monsters with several heads. They were supposed to have had hands of brass and wings of gold, and anyone who looked at their face was immediately turned to stone. One of these Gorgons was Medusa, who still embodies the feminine’s most nightmarish aspect, and she was the one on whom Perseus used a divine trick or two to in order to kill her. From the nymphs he received a special pouch, which he threw over his shoulder, a pair of flying sandals, and a helmet which made him invisible. Then the god Hermes turned up and handed Perseus the ultimate weapon: a diamond sickle. Thus armed, Perseus flew to the Gorgons’ stronghold, making sure to stare only at his polished shield, which shone like a mirror. By doing so, he avoided all direct eye-contact, and escaped being turned to stone. Since he was invisible, the dreadful monsters did not notice him, and our brave hero struck off Medusa’s head.
Taking the head of this horror with him, Perseus first flew to Egypt, where two of his elders lived, then on to Ethiopia. A king there had been forced to sacrifice his own lovely daughter Andromeda to a sea monster. Naturally, Perseus soon dealt with this underwater beast and, after an intrigue or two, finally got his Andromeda. In the meantime, his friends in Ethiopia were facing attack from a great power. “I’ll soon sort this out,” said Perseus to himself, and, telling his friends to cover their eyes, he fetched Medusa’s head from his special rucksack and turned it on his enemies, at which they all turned to stone. Perseus used this secret weapon again on another occasion. (It might be of interest to compare this with the account in the Kebra Negest, the story of Ethiopia’s royal family, in which thousands of soldiers die in a mysterious fashion because they gaze upon the Ark of the Covenant, which Solomon’s son had stolen in Jerusalem and transported to Ethiopia.) Later Perseus returned with Andromeda to his home territory of Argolis, and eventually founded the town of Mycenae. But of course there are other stories about Perseus as well.
No one knows exactly when Mycenae was first inhabited, but we are sure of one thing: that it was at some point in the Stone Age. The surrounding landscape is mountainous, and the Argolis Mountains soon started to be mined for copper ore. We will never know whether copper was the reason for people coming to live there, or whether there was another, “holy” reason. What has been proven archaeologically is that megalithic structures were built here already 2,500 years BC, and that 1,000 years later Mycenae had mighty defenses of great, 20-foot (6m) thick walls.
Mycenae also plays an important role in Homer’s tale of Troy, although we still do not know where the poet drew his information from. According to Homer, the heroes of the Trojan War, Agamemnon and his companions, are supposed to be buried in Mycenae. This is why Heinrich Schliemann dug in Mycenae. In five grave chambers he found the skeletons of 12 men, three women, and two children. And because the graves were richly endowed with gold, Schliemann immediately sent a telegram to the Greek king in Athens and claimed that these treasures alone would be enough to fill a large museum. That was overly optimistic: his finds can today be admired in one room of the Greek National Museum.
Image 21: The megalithic walls of Mycenae.
Image 22: The megalithic walls of Mycenae.
Image 23 and 24: It seems as if the stone blocks of Mycenae were molded from various different materials.
Image 25: The entrance and dome of the Treasure House of Atreus at Mycenae. No one knows what was once stored there.
Mycenae is also worth a visit for the tourist. One can see the Cyclops Wall, so-called because according to legend it was built by the one-eyed monsters. Midway along the wall, resting on three monoliths, is the Lion Gate. And every visitor who sits and eats his sandwiches in the shadow of the walls ought really to notice something strange: many of the stones of which the Cyclops Wall is built cannot be purely natural stone, because they consist of a variety of materials. It is just as if coarse concrete had once been mixed here. This Cyclops wall is about 985 yards (900m) long, and above and below it are smaller walls dating from a later period.
A few hundred yards lower down lies the so-called Treasure House of Atreus, a truly impressive building that is once supposed to have served as a monument, although I have my doubts whether this was its original purpose. The mighty domed structure, which lies underneath a hill, has a diameter of 49 feet (15m) and a height of 43 feet (13.3m). The arch of the dome has been constructed in 33 overlapping layers, each succeeding one projecting a little farther than the one beneath, until finally a huge block of stone closes the hole at the top of the dome. The entrance stone weighs all of 120,000 kilos, and statisticians have worked out that the cupola could easily bear a weight of 140 tons. Unfortunately, no one knows what may originally have lain inside this huge hall; robbers had done their work long before the archaeologists arrived.
Mycenae was strongly linked with Crete at a very early stage. This is proved by Minoan paintings and jewelry found in Mycenae. The gods’ descendants from Crete had a hand in the affairs of Mycenae; I am not talking about the later Minoan influences, through cultural exchange, but rather of the original Mycenae settlement. This played a particular role in the network whose threads I am slowly drawing together.
The Greek cult sites are all part of a single, astonishing framework. To make this absolutely clear, I would have to describe many of these sites in detail and assign them to their gods, but this would go beyond the scope of this book. We have so far dealt with four major places: Knossos, Epidauros, Mycenae, and Olympia. The last has not yet been ascribed its god. We still need to mention at least two holy places to fill out the picture: Athens and Delphi.
I did briefly mention that competitions took place in Olympia before the first Olympic games were ever held. Like all the other sites, the region of Olympia was already settled in the Stone Age. The ruins of the temples and sports arenas as one sees them today have largely been restored—yet relics of a former megalithic building style can still be found. This is a point which I cannot repeat often enough: the further back into the past we go, the larger are the building stones which people used—megalithos means “large stone”—as if it wasn’t easier to build with smaller stones. This is true all over the world. Clearly, Stone Age people particularly enjoyed heaving giant blocks about, though it does not seem that they had the technology to do so. In later epochs people had humbler aspirations and did not feel the need to exert themselves so much.
Zeus himself was the chief god of Olympia. Whole volumes have been written about him, and so I will limit myself to a lightning survey. The word Zeus—Jupiter to the Romans, Thor to the Germanic tribes—contains the Indo-European root of “dei” or “shining.”23 Even Zeus was not considered by the Greeks to have arisen from nothing, but was a son of Chronus. Hesiod tells us that Chaos originally reigned, an ur-condition out of which the earth, or Gaia, was formed. The earth gave birth to Uranus, the heavens, and from the union between Gaia and Uranus the Titans came forth, as well as Chronos. The latter got his sister pregnant, and one of the offspring of this remarkable pair was Zeus.
The older Zeus became, the more he hated his father Chronus, and finally he fought both him and the Titans. This battle of the gods led Zeus down from Olympus—down from the heights in other words. Zeus won the battle, killed the Titans, but left his father Chronus—who was immortal—alive. Three of Chronus’ sons remained: Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. They divided up their territory between them: Zeus got the heavens, Poseidon the seas and Hades the underworld.
These are the essentials of Zeus’ origin, although they don’t really tell us very much. The animal symbol
of Zeus is the eagle. People gave him names such as the “Thunderer,” the “Bolt Hurler,” the “Far Sighted,” or the “Shape Changer.” This last referred to his gift for assuming the guise of different creatures, which he practiced extensively so as to have his way with a whole series of lovely ladies. To Leda he appeared in the shape of a swan, to Europa as a bull, to Calisto as the young Apollo, or—even more exotic—to Danae as golden rain. However, he was also very attracted to beautiful young men, and fell in love with Prince Ganymedes, whom he straightaway abducted to his heavenly kingdom of Olympus. Not the most delicate of divine behavior!
These attributes are the endowments of a mystical superbeing who could do everything, was allowed to do anything, and whom no one understood. Particularly puzzling and incomprehensible is the birth of Athene, a daughter of Zeus. She did not appear via the normal route of a mother’s body, but sprang, fully armed, directly from Zeus’ forehead. (There are also other versions of her birth.) In mythology she also bears the name of Parthenos, the virgin. Long before the Christian virgin birth, Athene was said to have been born in a similar fashion. Athene, as the name tells us, is the patron goddess of Athens.
She is the very same goddess who helped in building the Argo, and equipped it with a speaking beam. She also helped Perseus in his efforts to strike off the terrible head of the Medusa. Greek legend tells of the famous flying horse Pegasus, who, like Phaethon’s sun-chariot, had to be steered, or piloted one might say. Athene also sorted this out by giving the driver “magic reins.” She was a most helpful goddess, and was soon promoted to protectress of the arts, wisdom, rhetoric, peace, and also poetry. Maybe I should invoke her! It was also Athene who gave farmers the plough to make their work easier, the loom to women, and the alphabet to the studious.
At some point or other Hephaestus, the god of fire, took great delight in the virginal Athene, and tried by all possible means to get her into his power. Eventually the two fought one another, and the excited Hephaestus lost sperm which dripped on to the soil of a hill at Athens. This was a sufficiently important event for human beings to regard this place as holy ground and build a huge temple site there: the Acropolis.
The present ruins of the Acropolis come from the 6th to the 4th century BC, but in Stone Age times—whenever that was—people already worshipped their gods here. This has been proved by archaeology, for megalithic structures existed on the cliffs above Athens long before the temple buildings arose. Both on the north as well as the south slope, remains of buildings from the Neolithic period have been located. Two of these ancient cult sites were integrated into the later temples. The mightiest monument of the Acropolis is the Parthenon, built on the foundations of an earlier structure. Even today, tourists get their breath literally taken away by the time they reach this temple with its 39-foot (12m) high white marble columns, after an exhausting climb up seemingly endless steps. Parthenon means “virgin chamber,” for the temple was dedicated to the virginal Athene. The building is 220 feet (67m) long, 77 feet (23.5m) wide and a full 39 feet (12m) high. On the restored pediment, one can see depicted the birth of Athene, as well as her quarrel with Poseidon, who once wished to take the Acropolis cliffs for himself. Finally there are reliefs of the battles of the gods with the Titans, the battles against the centaurs, the battle of Troy and—astonishingly enough—the battle of the Athenians and the Amazons.
The whole world nowadays complains about the Athens smog corroding the magnificent temple on the Acropolis. And that is quite right. But who knows why the Parthenon was destroyed back in the 17th century? After the reign of Emperor Justinian (AD 527–565), Christianity spread through Greece, and the old temples on the Acropolis were transformed into churches. Later the Turks arrived to wage war on the Christians, and stored their gunpowder in the Parthenon. On September 26, 1687, a Utineburg lieutenant serving in the Venetian forces blew this powder-store into the air. The explosion tore apart the friezes and columns. Surely even the last remaining gods must have fled at this barbaric treatment.
Image 26: The Acropolis at Athens.
Image 27: One can also find prehistoric structures at the Acropolis.
Image 28: The Acropolis at Athens.
Image 29: The Acropolis at Athens.
Knossos, Epidaurus, Mycenae, Olympia, the Acropolis—they were all regarded as holy places long before there was a “classical Greece,” and millennia before Greek history was written down. We are still missing the “central station” in this network though, and this is more connected with the gods and the history of Greece than all other cult sites. And naturally this nodal point in the network didn’t arise by chance, for in myth everything has a cause and reason.
Zeus one day sent two eagles flying around the earth in order to measure it. Wherever the eagles met after their circumnavigation would be the earth’s midpoint. Zeus’ symbolic creatures met one another again on the steep slopes of a mountain—which was the “omphalos,” the navel of the world. And beside the slopes of the mountain later called Parnassus, the mysterious center of the Greek world, Delphi, arose. The etymology of the word “Delphi” is disputed. It may be derived from Delphinios because the god Apollo is said to have come there in the shape of a dolphin; or from Delphys, which means “womb.”
Image 30: The plinth of a former pillar at Delphi demonstrates the scale of construction.
Image 31: More massive still is the so-called Polygonal Wall at Delphi, from an unknown epoch.
Delphi is well known for its notorious “oracles,” prophecies uttered by a priestess called the Pythia. Even the little word “Pythia” is no accident. In prehistoric times a dragon-snake—another one!—was said to live in the Delphi caves, and was finished off by Apollo, who also journeyed to Delphi in a “heavenly vessel.” The terrible dragon was later called “Python,” derived from the verb pythein which means to decompose and dissolve. Apollo killed this monster and pushed it back into a cave in the rockface. There it rotted away, and over this spot the “Pythia” was said to have thought up her inspired oracular sayings.
This is no more than folk legend, and is told in many different versions. Every Greek poet and historian wrote about Delphi. The place was, for a long time, the religious center for all Greeks, and it was here that princes and kings came for advice.
In the first book of his Histories, Herodotus tells how a certain “Glaucos from Chios, known as the only artist on earth to have found a method of welding iron,”24 had given Delphi the first welded iron stand. Later things heated up in Delphi. The king of the Lydians, Croisos (now known as Croesus), didn’t want to trust the oracle, and therefore sent several different delegations to different oracle sites in Greece. Each oracle was asked the same question: “What am I doing at this moment?” He had made a prior agreement with his messengers about the precise time they would ask this question. When they came back from consulting the different oracles, the only correct answer was the one from Delphi. At the time in question, Croesus had cut up a tortoise, slaughtered a lamb, and cooked both together in an iron pot that was closed by an iron lid. The answer from Delphi went: “Into my senses comes the smell of the armored toad, as it is being cooked together with lamb flesh in an iron pan. Metal holds them below, and metal also shuts them in above.”25
Image 32: The cone-like stones in Delphi prove the exact measurements.
Image 33: The Treasure House of the Athenians at Delphi.
Image 34: Sports were also practiced at Delphi. This stadium once held 4,000 people.
Image 35: The foundations of the Apollo Temple at Delphi are proof of its monumental significance.
King Croesus was so impressed that he heaped presents on Delphi. He is said to have sacrificed no less than 3,000 head of cattle there, and to have “melted down unending quantities of gold, and had tiles made from it.” All were a hand’s breadth high and six hands’ breadth long, altogether 117 such tiles. This did not seem to be enough though, for he also delivered to Delphi a lion figure of pure gold, as well as two giant
mixing pitchers of silver and gold, and jewelry and huge quantities of clothes. Herodotus, who visited Delphi several times, tells us that the golden pitcher stood on the right-hand side of the temple entrance, and the silver one on the left. Later on, he says, two holy water basins which also came from Croesus were engraved with a false inscription. The travelling historian was annoyed about this, 2,500 years ago: “That is not right,” he wrote, “for it was really Croesus who donated these [basins]. The inscription was engraved by a man from Delphi. I know the man, but I will not name him.”26
I have recounted this story to remind you why we speak of someone as “rich as Croesus,” and also to demonstrate how wealthy Delphi became. Although King Croesus virtually bought up Delphi wholesale, and ensured that he always had the right to call up the Pythia, the oracle was no help to him at the critical moment. Croesus was unsure whether he should wage war against the Persians. The Delphian oracle told him that if he crossed the river Halys he would destroy a great kingdom. Such a phrase, open to dual interpretation, could have come from a modem horoscope. In the year 546 BC, King Croesus crossed the Halys, certain of victory—and was wiped out by the Persians. The “great kingdom” which he destroyed was his own.
In the center of Delphi stood the temple of Apollo, which is still an impressive structure today. Apollo, a son of Zeus, had a whole range of abilities. He functioned as god of light and god of medicine. It was not for nothing that Asclepius of Epidaurus was his son. Apollo was in charge of prophecy too, and was also god of youth, music, and shooting with the bow. Apollo’s little brother was called Hermes. In ancient Egyptian texts, it says that Hermes was the same as the one whom the Egyptians named Idris or Saurid, but also the one whom the Hebrew people called “Enoch, the son of Jared.”27 (Even if this is only remotely true, we would be back in the times before the Great Flood. Saurid is said to have erected the Great Pyramid before that catastrophe, and Enoch is a Biblical, antediluvian patriarch.)
Odyssey of the Gods Page 9
