KION OURANOU. The Sky Column on Atlas Mountain
Chronos:
PREHISTORIC DACIA
PART 2 – Ch.XIV
KION OURANOU. The Sky Column on Atlas Mountain
in the country of the Hyperboreans
PART 2
PREVIOUS
XIV. 1. The geographical position of Atlas Mountain according to the heroic legends.
Near the simulacrum of Zeus aigiochos from the highest peak of Bucegi Mountain (2508m), between Prahova district and the county of Brasov, rises a gigantic rock column, which dominates the entire south-eastern corner of the Carpathians, and near this column, two other rocky peaks, born from the womb of the earth in the shape of powerful monoliths, rise their tops into the sky. Exactly like the figure of Zeus aigiochos, this column had in prehistoric antiquity a particular religious celebrity with all the Pelasgian tribes which had emigrated from the Carpathians towards Hellada, Asia Minor and Egypt.
This column was considered in the southern legends as the miraculous column of the earth, which supported the starry vault of the sky, or the northern pole of the universe.
We will examine firstly the old Hellenic traditions regarding the geographical position of this column and we will present then the legends and the important role which this column had in the ante-Homeric religious beliefs.
According to the old Greek geographical traditions, this legendary column of the sky was located in the extreme parts, or northern, of the known world, on the high and vast mountain called Atlas, in the country of the Hyperboreans.
This Atlas is one of the great figures of the Saturnian times.
As the old historical sources used by Diodorus Siculus said (lib. III. 57. 60), Atlas was Saturn’s brother and both were the sons of Uranus and Gaea. The titan Atlas especially was a powerful and wealthy king who ruled over the people of the Atlantes, who were part of the big family of the Hyperboreans.
It was said about this Atlas that he had flocks of fine sheep, of a reddish golden color (Ibid,lib.IV.27). And the poet Ovid presents this shepherd king from the times of the theogony with the following words: ”Thousands of flocks and cattle herds wander on his plains. His country is not pressed on either side by his neighbors’ boundaries. On his trees leaves grow glowing with gold, the branches of the trees are of gold and of gold also are the fruit that covers them” (Metam. lib. IV. v. 634 seqq).
This Atlas, brother of Saturn, had taken part in the Titans’ war against Jove, from which cause, after the total victory of this new monarch, was condemned to one of the most difficult labors known in the legendary history of antiquity, namely to support the sky with his head and tireless arms (Hesiod, Theog. v. 517).
Chronos:
The Sky Column (chion ouranou) from ancient Atlas,
in the country of the Hyperboreans, today Omul Peak
in the south-eastern corner of the Carpathians.
View from E-NE
(From a 1899 photograph)
Chronos:
The grammarian Apollodorus of Athens, who had lived around 145bc, had written an important work about the traditions and legends of the heroic times, which he had extracted from the cyclic poets, the ancient logographers and historians. In this work of his, of a great value for the history of ante-Homeric times, we find the following geographical data regarding the region over which the titan Atlas had once ruled: Eurystheus, the king of Mycenae, Apollodorus tells us, had asked Hercules to accomplish also an eleventh labor and to bring him the golden apples from the Hesperides. But these apples, writes Apollodorus, were not in Libya (or the lands of Africa), as some say, but at the Atlas Mountain in the country of the Hyperboreans (Bibl. Lib. II. 5. 11).
Jove, on the occasion of his wedding, had presented these apples to Juno, and they were guarded there by an immortal dragon, who had one hundred heads, born from the union of Echidna and Typhon, and this dragon used many and different kinds of voices. Hercules, traveling across Libya, reached the External Sea, from there he crossed with his ship to the facing continent, and went to the Caucasus mountain, where he killed with his arrows the eagle (also born from Echidna and Typhon), who picked at Prometheus’ liver. So he freed Prometheus from his chains, and Prometheus advised him that, once arrived at Atlas, in the country of the Hyperboreans, he was not to go in person for the apples, but to send Atlas to bring them, while he, Hercules, supported on his shoulders, in Atlas’ stead, the pole of the sky (Apollodorus, II. 5. 11; Cicero, De nat. deor. II. 41) [1].
Chronos:
[1. The Greek writers had lost very early the exact knowledge about the geographical position of the Atlas mountain. Because of this, some placed it in Mauritania in Africa, others in Italy, and finally some in Arcadia in the Peloponnesus. But no other mountain with the name of Atlas ever existed in any part of the ancient world, except in the country of the Hyperboreans. To the indigenous populations of NW Africa the name Atlas was totally unknown. This name was given to that mountainous range only in the Greek literary writings (Pliny, V. 1.13; Strabo, XVI. 3. 2)].
Hercules obeyed Prometheus’ advice, took the pole of the sky on his shoulders in Atlas’ stead, and Atlas went to the gardens of the Hesperides, took three apples and returned to Hercules. (This scene is represented on a bas-relief from the temple of Jove at Olympia). But now Atlas did not want to take back on his shoulders the pole of the sky, saying that he himself will take to Eurystheus the apples, while Hercules will continue to support the sky in his place. Hercules promised firstly to do that, but using a ruse, taught him by Prometheus, he put again the sky on Atlas’ shoulders. Namely, Hercules asked Atlas to support the sky for only a few moments, so that he could put a cushion on his head. Atlas put down the apples and took the sky, while Hercules grabbed the apples and went away.
This is the oldest tradition, and the most accredited at the same time, about the country of the titan Atlas, a king from the country of the pious Hyperboreans.
The Hyperboreans, the inhabitants of a very fertile and blessed country, a pastoral and agricultural people, full of virtues, religious and just, contemporary with the gods of Olympus, who considered themselves born from the glorious race of the titans (Boeckhius, Pindari opera,II.96), were an extended Pelasgian population living at the north of Istru and the Black Sea (Pindar affirmed that the Hyperboreans lived near the sources, or cataracts, of the Istru –Olymp.III.14-17).
Chronos:
Later though, Atlas, this powerful ruler of the people of the Atlantes, was turned into a huge mountain, continuing to support on his head the northern pole or the axis of the sky.
This legend is the following:
Perseus, the mythical hero from Argos, the son of Jove and the nymph Danae, was sent by king Polydectes from the island of Seriphos to bring him the head of Gorgona Medusa, which had the magic power to turn mortals into stone. Perseus arrived to the sources of the river Okeanos (the cataracts of Istru), where the three legendary gorgons lived (Apollodorus, Bibl. II. 4.2.8; Hesiod, Theog. v. 274. 281; Preller, Gr. Myth. II, 1854, p.44), cut Medusa’s head, put it in his bag and went away. He stopped at king Atlas on his way back, in the country of the Hyperboreans, and asked for his hospitality for one night. But Atlas, remembering an old prediction that a son of Jove will steal his golden apples, told him harshly to be off immediately, as otherwise neither his false brave deeds, nor his father Jove, will protect him from his wrath.
Perseus took then out of the bag the ugly head of Medusa and Atlas, big as he was, was instantly transformed into a mountain, his head becoming the top of a high peak (Ovid, Metam. lib. IV. 627 seqq; Pindar, Pyth. X. 50), while his body an immense mountain range [2].
[2. A similar legend exists with the Romanian people: that the figure from “Omul” mountain represents a shepherd whom God punished for his lack of piety by changing him into a strong rock (Muller, Siebenburgische Sagen, p.174)].
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