Omphalos
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An omphalos is a religious stone artifact in the ancient world. In Greek, the word omphalos means "navel". Most accounts locate the Omphalos in the temple adyton near the Pythia. The stone itself (which may have been a copy) has a carving of a knotted net covering its surface, and has a hollow centre, which widens towards its base.
According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at its center, the "navel" of the world. Omphalos stones used to denote this point were erected in several areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, the most famous of those was at the oracle in Delphi.
Erwin Rohde wrote that the Python at Delphi was an earth spirit, who was conquered by Apollo, and buried under the Omphalos, and that it is a case of one god setting up his temple on the grave of another. [1]
The Omphalos at Delphi came to be identified as the stone which Rhea wrapped in swaddling clothes, pretending it was Zeus. This was to deceive Cronus, his father, who swallowed his children so they could not grow up and depose him as he had deposed his own father, Uranus.
Omphalos stones were said to allow direct communication with the gods. Leicester Holland (1933) has suggested that the stone was hollow to channel intoxicating vapours breathed by the Oracle.
Christian destruction of the site in the 4th century at the order of Emperors Theodosius and Arcadius makes all suggestions about its use tentative.
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[edit] Trivia
After an unofficial poll conducted via his blog, John Tierney of the New York Times announced that the hexagonal polar cloud formation seen on Saturn by the space probe Cassini-Huygens, would be known as Omphalos.
[edit] See also
- Omphale, name of a mythological queen of Lydia
- Linga
- Axis mundi
[edit] Notes
- ^ cf. Rohde, Psyche, p.97
[edit] References
- Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion 1985.
- Farnell, Lewis Richard, The Cults of the Greek States, 1896.
- Goodrich, Norma Lorre, Priestesses, 1990.
- Guthrie, William Keith Chambers, The Greeks and their Gods, 1955.
- Holland, Leicester B. "The Mantic Mechanism at Delphi" in American Journal of Archaeology, 37, 1933, pp.204 - 214.
- Manly Palmer Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, 1928. Ch. 14 cf. Greek Oracles,www, PRS
- Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912. cf. p.396 and after for a discussion on the Omphalos. [1][2]
- Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo
- Rohde, Erwin, Psyche, 1925.
