Table of Contents
Helios is the Greek sun god who drives his chariot across the sky. In my research he matters because his family and his myths keep leading back to fire from heaven, sea voyages to the west and the oldest king lists. These are the pages where I wrote about him.
The sun and his family
On The sun Sol I set Helios beside the Norse Sol as personifications of the Sun, and note that in Greek mythology Helios, later Apollo, drives his chariot across the sky. The Olympian Gods makes him a son of the Titan Hyperion, with the moon goddess Selene and the dawn goddess Eos. On Aea, Mythical Land of Early Hellenic Lore King Aeëtes, who ruled the land of the Golden Fleece, is a son of Helios, and on Islands mentioned in the Bible I note that Rhodes is often associated with him.
The cup of Helios
Ignatius Donnelly, on The antiquity of some of our great inventions, reads the Greek story that Hercules borrowed the cup of Helios, in which the god sailed every night, when he set out for the island of Erythea in the Atlantic:
Here we seem to have a reference to the magnetic cup used in night sailing; and this is another proof that the use of the magnetic needle in sea-voyages was associated with the Atlantean gods.
Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
Phaëthon and the fire from heaven
On The Indentity of the Civilizations of the Old World and the New Donnelly recalls that the Egyptian priest of Sais told Solon that the myth of Phaëthon, the son of Helios who tried to drive the chariot of the sun and burned the earth, referred to a declination of bodies moving in the heavens that caused a great conflagration, which only those living near rivers and seas escaped. He sets it beside the Nahua record of a rain of fire in the third sun.
Helios in Egypt and in Plato
On The semi-mythical aspect of Manetho’s king list Ra, equated with Helios, is said to have ruled for 1,000 years. In Plato’s Laws by Plato the Athenian stranger proposes that every year after the summer solstice the whole city meet in the common precincts of Helios and Apollo to choose the examiners of the state, who are all to be priests of Apollo and Helios.
Related pages
- The sun Sol
- The Olympian Gods
- Aea, Mythical Land of Early Hellenic Lore
- Islands mentioned in the Bible
- The antiquity of some of our great inventions
- The Indentity of the Civilizations of the Old World and the New
- The semi-mythical aspect of Manetho’s king list
- Laws by Plato
For every page I tagged with Helios, see the Helios tag archive.
