The Greek and Roman writers had mentioned this practice, but it was long totally forgotten by the civilized world, until it was discovered, as an unheard-of wonder, to be the usage among the Carib Islanders, and several Indian tribes in North America.
This age continued down to what we call the Historical Period, and embraces our present civilization; its more ancient remains are mixed with coins of the Gauls, Greeks, and Romans.
383.) He says, "It seems surprising that the nearest neighbors of the Phœnicians--the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Etruscans, and the Romans--should have manufactured plumbiferous bronzes, while the Phœnicians carried to the people of the North only pure bronzes without the alloy of lead.
And as this commerce could not, as we have seen, have been carried on by the Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, or Phœnicians, because their civilizations flourished during the Iron Age, to which this age of bronze was anterior, where then are we to look for a great maritime and commercial people, who carried vast quantities of copper, tin, and bronze (unalloyed by the lead of the south of Europe) to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, England, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy?
If the bronze implements of Europe had been derived from the Phœnicians, Greeks, Etruscans, or Romans, the nearer we approached the site of those nations the greater should be the number of bronze weapons we would find; but the reverse is the case.
What race was there, other than the people of Atlantis, that existed before the Iron Age-before the Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Phœnician--that was civilized, that worked in metals, that carried on a commerce with all parts of Europe?
The Greeks added to the ancient alphabet the upsilon, shaped like our V or Y, the two forms being used at first indifferently: they added the X sign; they converted the t of the Phœnicians into th, or theta; z and s into signs for double consonants; they turned the Phœnician y (yod) into i (iota).
The Greeks converted the Phœnician alphabet, which was partly consonantal, into one purely phonetic--"a perfect instrument for the expression of spoken language." The w was also added to the Phœnician alphabet.
We turn now to the archaic Greek and the old Hebrew, and we find the letter h indicated by this sign, , precisely the Maya letter h simplified.
In time the Greeks carried the work of simplification still farther, and eliminated the top lines, as we have supposed the Atlanteans to have eliminated the double strokes, and they left the letter as it has come down to us, H.
We find the precise Maya o a circle in a circle, or a dot within a circle, repeated in the Phœnician forms for o, thus, and , and by exactly the same forms in the Egyptian hieroglyphics; in the Runic we have the circle in the circle; in one form of the Greek o the dot was placed along-side of the circle instead of below it, as in the Maya.
The Samaritan makes it ; the old Hebrew ; the Moab stone inscription gives it ; the later Phœnicians simplified the archaic form still further, until it became ; then it passed into : the archaic Greek form is ; the later Greeks made , from which it passed into the present form, N.
Now suppose a busy people trying to give this sign: instead of drawing the serpent in all its details they would abbreviate it into something like this, ; now we turn to the ancient Ethiopian sign for k (ka), and we have , or the Himyaritic Arabian ; while in the Phœnician it becomes ; in the archaic Greek, ; and in the later Greek, when they changed the writing from left to right, .
In the archaic Phœnician the sign for t is and ; the oldest Greek form is or and the later Greeks gave it to the Romans , and modified this into ; the old Hebrew gave it as and ; the Moab stone as ; this became in time and .
The hieratic Egyptian a was ; the ancient Hebrew, which was or ; the ancient Greek was the foot reversed, ; the later Greek became our A.
[paragraph continues]; we turn to the Ethiopian q (khua), and we find it , as qua, ; while the Phœnician comes still nearer the supposed Maya form in ; the Moab stone was ; the Himyaritic Arabian form became ; the Greek form was , which graduated into the Roman Q.
The hieratic Egyptian figure for g was ; in the earlier Greek form the left limb of the figure was shortened, thus, ; the later Greeks reversed it, and wrote it ; the Romans, changed this into and it finally became C.
The Greek ph is Φ.
The archaic Phœnician form of l was , or ; the archaic Hebrew was and ; the hieratic Egyptian was ; the Greek form was --the Roman L.
Now, if we turn to the Phœnician, we find that b is represented by the same crescent-like figure which we find in the middle of this hieroglyph, but reversed in the direction of the writing, thus, ; while in the archaic Hebrew we have the same crescent figure as in the Maya, turned in the same direction, but accompanied by a line drawn downward, and to the left, thus, ; a similar form is also found in the Phœnician , and this in the earliest Greek changed into , and in the later Greek into Β.
The Maya e is ; this became in time ; then (we see this form on the Maya monuments); the dots in time were indicated by strokes, and we reach the hieratic Egyptian form, : we even find in some of the ancient Phœnician inscriptions the original Maya circles preserved in making the letter e, thus, ; then we find the old Greek form, ; the old Hebrew, ; and the later Phœnician, : when the direction of the writing was changed this became .
The Samaritan i was formed thus, ; the Egyptian letter i is : gradually in all these the left-hand line was dropped, and we come to the figure used on the stone of Moab, and ; this in time became the old Hebrew , or ; and this developed into the Greek .
We find one form of the Phœnician where the m is made thus, ; and in the Punic it appears thus, ; and this is not unlike the m on the stone of Moab, , or the ancient Phœnician forms , , and the old Greek , or the ancient Hebrew , .
The , x, of the Maya alphabet is a hand pointing downward , this, reduced to its elements, would be expressed some thing like this, or ; and this is very much like the x of the archaic Phœnician, ; or the Moab stone, ; or the later Phœnician or the Hebrew , , or the old Greek, : the later Greek form was Ξ.
The Phœnician s is ; in the Greek this becomes ; the Hebrew is ; the Samaritan, .
Maya, ; old Greek, ; old Hebrew, ; Phœnician, .
Maya, o; old Greek, o; old Hebrew, o; Phœnician, o.
Maya, ; old Greek, ; old Phœnician, and .
Maya, ; old Phœnician, and ; Greek, .
It thus appears that the very signs d and r, in the Phœnician, early Greek, and ancient Hebrew, which are lacking in the
3.) Suidas, a Greek lexicographer of the eleventh century, expresses tradition when he says, "Adam was the author of arts and letters." The Egyptians said that their god Anubis was an antediluvian, and it wrote annals before the Flood." The Chinese have traditions that the earliest race of their nation, prior to history, "taught all the arts of life and wrote books." "The Goths always had the use of letters;" and Le Grand affirms that before or soon after the Flood "there were found the acts of great men engraved in letters on large stones." (Fosbroke's "Encyclopædia of Antiquity," vol.
LENORMANT insists that the human race issued from Ups Merou, and adds that some Greek traditions point to "this locality--particularly the expression μέροπες ἄνθωποι, which can only mean 'the men sprung from Merou.'" ("Manual," p.21.)
They are not Greek, and cannot be referred to any known language of the Old World.
How comes it that the people of the Barbary States were known to the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians as the "Atlantes," this name being especially applied to the inhabitants of Fezzan and Bilma?
Long sea-voyages were necessary to establish that fact, and the Greeks, who kept close to the shores in their short journeys, did not make such voyages.
We have in the Greek mythology legends of the introduction of most of these by Atlantean kings or gods into Europe; but no European nation
That the Assyrians, the Ethiopians, the Persians, the Greeks, and even the Romans embalmed their dead.
We have seen the Pan and Maia of the Greeks reappearing in the Pan and Maya of the Mayas of Central America.
Among the early Greeks Pan was the ancient god; his wife was Maia.
The Oneidas claimed descent from a stone, as the Greeks from the stones of Deucalion.
"In the Greeks of Homer," says Volney, "I find the customs, discourse, and manners of the Iroquois, Delawares, and Miamis.
Herodotus, speaking of the wandering tribes of Northern Africa, says, "They bury their dead according to the fashion of the Greeks.
298.) The North American dog and bear dances, wherein the dancers acted the part of those animals, had their prototype in the Greek dances at the festivals of Dionysia.
Folk-lore.--Says Max Müller: "Not only do we find the same words and the same terminations in Sanscrit and Gothic; not only do we find the same name for Zeus in Sanscrit, Latin, and German; not only is the abstract Dame for God the same in India, Greece, and Italy; but these very stories, these 'Mährchen' which nurses still tell, with almost the same words, in the Thuringian forest and in the Norwegian villages, and to which crowds of children listen under the Pippal-trees of India--these stories, too, belonged to the common heirloom of the Indo-European race, and their origin carries us back to the same distant past, when no Greek had set foot in Europe, no Hindoo had bathed in the sacred waters of the Ganges."
And the same succession of destructions is referred to in the Greek legends, where a deluge of Ogyges--"the most ancient of the kings of Bœotia or Attica, a quite mythical person, lost in the night of ages"--preceded that of Deucalion.
We will see reason hereafter to conclude that Atlantis had a composite population, and that the rebellion of the Titans in Greek mythology was the rising up of a subject population.
This is a representation of the ark; the ancient Jews venerated a similar image, and some of the ancient Greek States followed in processions a model of the ark of Deucalion.
I have also heard the account given by the Greeks themselves of Deucalion; the myth runs thus: The actual race of men is not the first, for there was a previous one, all the members of which perished.
Such is the account given by the Greeks of Deucalion.
"The Greeks had two principal legends as to the cataclysm by which primitive humanity was destroyed.
We will see hereafter that the Greek god Zeus was one of the kings of Atlantis.
It is too much to ask us to believe that Biblical history, Chaldean, Iranian, and Greek legends signify nothing, and that even religious pilgrimages and national festivities were based upon a myth.
When the Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the Deluge of Deucalion, their reply was that they had been preserved from it as well as from the conflagration produced by Phaëthon; they even added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance to that event, as there had been several other local catastrophes resembling it.
The Egyptians had preserved in their annals the precise history of the destruction of Atlantis, out of which the Flood legends grew; and, as they told the Greeks, there had been no universal flood, but only local catastrophes.
The concept of henosis, an ancient Greek term meaning the merging of the soul with the One or the Divine.
Robert Sepehr begins by discussing the legendary city of Atlantis, as described by the Greek philosopher Plato.
Hermeticism is named after Hermes Trismegistus, which means "thrice-greatest Hermes." In Greek mythology, Hermes served as the messenger of the gods, associated with both the planet Mercury and the caduceus—a winged staff intertwined with two snakes.
Aye, like unto the Greek, perhaps, in measure, for the people of those isles but spake the tongue of their ancestry—all Atlantian as they were.
Aye, less Greek than Magyr were they, in their infancy but crude.
The name "Babylon" is the Greek form of this original Akkadian name, introduced later when the Greeks encountered the city during their conquests under Alexander the Great.
Therefore, the name Babylon came into broader use through Greek influence, though its roots lie in the Akkadian language.
Herodotus, the Greek historian from the 5th century BCE, provides one of the most detailed Greek descriptions of Babylon in his Histories.
Strabo, a Greek geographer and historian from the 1st century BCE, also refers to Babylon in his Geography.
Βαβυλών (Babylṓn) is used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) and other Greek texts to refer to the ancient city of Babylon.
This term is directly transliterated from the Hebrew בָּבֶל (Bavel), maintaining the name’s phonetic qualities while adapting it to the Greek language.
In Greek literature, Babylṓn is commonly used in references to the city, its empire, and its cultural and historical significance, just as in Hebrew texts.
Greek and Roman sources did mention the destruction of Babylon, though their accounts varied and often focused on different aspects of the city's decline.
Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian from the 1st century BCE, provides a more detailed narrative about the decline and destruction of Babylon.
From the time of the Greeks and the Romans onwards volumes have been written about every people who in their turn have filled the stage of history.
But the hundreds of thousands of years which elapsed from the time when the earliest Aryans left their home on the shores of the central Asian Sea to the time of the Greeks and Romans, bore witness to the rise and fall of innumerable civilizations.
It is only with the rise of the last family shoots of this Keltic stock, viz., the Greek and Roman peoples, that we come upon historic times.
Le Plongeon, the great authority on this subject, writes: "One-third of this tongue (the Maya) is pure Greek.
Greek is the off-spring of the Sanscrit.
Compare the Sanscrit "Dyaus" or "Dyaus-pitar," the Greek "Theos" and Zeus, the Latin "Deus" and "Jupiter," the Keltic "Dia" and "Ta," pronounced "Thyah" (seeming to bear affinity to the Egyptian Tau), the Jewish "Jah" or "Yah" and lastly the Mexican "Teo" or "Zeo."
The type was an improvement on the two previous sub-races, the features being straight and well marked, not unlike the ancient Greek.
No such system of water supply has ever been attempted in Greek, Roman or modern times—indeed it is very doubtful whether our ablest engineers, even at the expenditure of untold wealth, could produce such a result.
Greek historian from Sicily, wrote Library of History, a universal history in 40 books (15 fully surviving).
Diodorus Siculus: Greek historian from the 1st century B.C., author of the Library of History.
This marsh was near Okeanos (the Ocean) which surrounds the earth and received its name from a certain river Triton which emptied into it; and this marsh was also near Aithiopia [Africa] and that mountain by the shore of Okeanos which is the highest of those in the vicinity and impinges upon Okeanos and is called by the Greeks Atlas.
.The Amazones (Amazons), then, the account continues, being a race superior in valour and eager for war, first of all subdued all the cities on the island except one called Menê (Moon), which was considered to be sacred and was inhabited by Aithiopian Ikhthyophagoi (Fish-Eaters), and was also subject to great eruptions of fire and possessed a multitude of the precious stones which the Greeks call anthrax, sardion, and smaragdos; and after this they subdued many of the neighbouring Libyans and nomad tribes, and founded within the marsh Tritonis a great city which they named Kherronesos (Chersonese) (Peninsular) after its shape.Setting out from the city of Kherronesos, the account continues, the Amazones embarked upon great ventures, a longing having come over them to invade many parts of the inhabited world.
The first people against whom they advanced, according to the tale, was the Atlantioi (Atlanteans), the most civilized men among the inhabitants of those regions, who dwelt in a prosperous country and possessed great cities; it was among them, we are told, that mythology places the birth of the gods, in the regions which lie along the shore of Okeanos, in this respect agreeing with those among the Greeks who relate legends, and about this we shall speak in detail a little later.Now the queen of the Amazones, Myrina, collected, it is said, an army of thirty thousand foot-soldiers and three thousand cavalry, since they favoured to an unusual degree the use of cavalry in their wars.
The unusual combination of myths and legends is an Hellenistic Greek attempt to rationalize a variety of stories and present them as true history.]
"[Diodorus briefly discusses sources for the ancient Greek histories of Egypt, sub-Saharan Africa, Libya and the Atlas region--the last three are all referred to as Aithiopia (Ethiopia) :] Concerning the historians, we must distinguish among them, to the effect that many have composed works on both Aigyptos (Egypt) and Aithiopia (Ethiopia), of whom some have given credence to false report and others have invented many tales out of their own minds for the delectation of their readers, and so may justly be distrusted." [N.B.
Aithiopia is the ancient Greek term for the whole of Africa, not just the land of Ethiopia.]
Plato’s story, passed down through Egyptian priests and recorded by the Greek lawmaker Solon, depicts Atlantis as a powerful civilization that fell into decline after misusing its technological power.
Plato: Greek philosopher (4th century B.C.), author of Timaeus and Critias, who introduced the Atlantis story.
Athens: The Greek city-state that defeated Atlantis, led by its virtuous warriors.
Poseidon: Greek god who received Atlantis as his allotment, fathered its kings with a mortal woman, Kleito (Cleito).
Solon’s Role: Solon learned of Atlantis from Egyptian priests Psenophis and Sonkhis in Sais and Heliopolis, intending to share it poetically with Greeks (per Plutarch).
And the name of his younger twin-brother, who had for his portion the extremity of the island near the pillars of Herakles up to the part of the country now called Gadeira after the name of that region, was Eumelos in Greek, but in the native tongue Gadeiros,--which fact may have given its title to the country.
From these, as Plato says, he heard the story of the lost Atlantis, and tried to introduce it in a poetical form to the Greeks."
This ancient Atlantis predates the more well-known Atlantis described by the Greek philosopher Plato.
Yari also shared details about life in Atlantis, explaining that the name "Atlantis" was a later Greek derivative and that the civilization referred to itself as "Atlan." Contrary to popular belief, Atlantean life was not utopian; there was corruption, and the society was rediscovering ancient technologies.
The word "Bible" comes from the Greek term "biblos," meaning "books."
He warned that misconceptions about Atlantis persisted, particularly the Greek version of the story, which he claimed was incomplete and altered.
LaFlem traced the evolution of Atlantis' story through various periods, including Greek, Roman, and Dark Ages folklore.
The Greek islands are remnants of the original Atlantis, with Crete being connected to the continent.
He suggested that instead of imposing European culture, Europeans should respect and incorporate Asian traditions into their efforts, much like Alexander the Great had done by respecting local customs while introducing Greek culture.
Hermes Trismegistus, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, was both a Greek and Egyptian figure who had a significant influence on philosophy and, indirectly, on modern medicine.
The city's legend parallels other sacred places in different religious traditions, such as Valhalla in Norse mythology or Mount Olympus in Greek religion.
The forces beneath the floor—the primal forces of nature—are akin to the Titans from Greek mythology.
The speaker references the esoteric Greeks, who believed in a higher, singular divine force known as "the One" or "the Good."
Wallis discusses how Jesus separates his own understanding of God, referred to as Theos in the Greek scriptures, from Yahweh.
Greek Classical Period (5th–4th Century BCE)Flint touches on the Classical period in Greece, particularly in connection to Athens, as this period is relevant to much of the archaeological evidence found, and the discussions around Plato's writings.
Wallis notes that in his research for Escaping from Eden, Josephus’ approach to Greek mythology was surprising, as he treated myths like The Clash of the Titans as historical records.
Josephus’ interpretation links the Greek myth of Uranus and Earth producing Titans with Genesis 6 in the Bible.
Josephus treated the Greek Clash of the Titans and biblical Genesis as historical events, a perspective that aligns with ancient worldviews, including those of Pythagoras and Plato.
He finds it fascinating that Greek myths, which were taught in school as fiction, are perceived as historical records by figures like Josephus.
One unexpected discovery Wallis made was learning that Zeus, considered a god in Greek mythology, was mortal and died in battle.
He explores how the flaws and mortality of Greek gods present a different understanding of divinity and its connection to humanity.