In order to complete our consideration of the data on the most ancient voyages south of the Pillars of Hercules, it remains for us to say a few more words about the so-called "Isles of the Blessed", located to the west of Africa in the ocean.
Ancient writers, and among them primarily Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), give some details about them, referring to the stories of the Phoenicians. These descriptions, containing the praise of the climate of an island (or several islands) lying in the ocean, growing on them in abundance of fruits and their animal world, make us recall the corresponding poetic characteristics of the “Isles of the Blessed” by Homer and Hesiod, when it comes to a obviously otherworldly country inhabited by dead (or immortal) heroes. However, if Homer's description of the "Islands of the Blessed" is associated only with abstract, purely mythical ideas, then later descriptions acquire the features of a certain geographical specificity, at least in determining their location, which makes it possible to identify these islands with Fr. Madeira and the Canary Islands.
This is evidenced by the description of the "Islands of the Blessed" in the biography of Sertorius by Plutarch (ch. 9): "Two islands separated by a strait are a hundred thousand stadia away from Spain, they are called the Isles of the Blessed. Very moderate rain rarely falls there. Frequent, soft, bringing moisture the winds replace them and make the soil not only suitable for crops and planting, but also produce rich and tasty fruits that grow wild, which the inhabitants eat to a sufficient extent without labor and any effort. temperatures, since the north and northeast winds blowing from a great distance lose their strength in immeasurable intermediate spaces, and the west winds bring clouds from the sea or rain-producing clouds, or refresh them with moisture, so that the barbarians came to believe that here and there are the Champs-Elysées, and the abode of the blessed, sung by Homer.
To this may be added the curious strokes reported by Pseudo-Aristotle in his work "On the Miraculous Rumors" and obviously referring to Fr. Madeira: "They say that behind the Pillars of Hercules in the sea, the Carthaginians discovered an island rich in forests, navigable rivers and fruits in abundance. It is several days away from the mainland. After the Carthaginians began to visit it often and some of them, as a result of it fertility, moved there at all, the Carthaginian Sufetes [rulers] forbade, under pain of death, to sail to this island and exterminated its population, so that the fame of it would not spread and so that the people would not conspire against them in an effort to seize the island under their rule and deprive Carthage well-being".
Actually, these features of concreteness already appear in the Homeric epic, though only in relation not to the "Islands of the Blessed", but to the island of Syria - the birthplace of the mythical hero Eumeus, located in the Western Ocean and also being the "blessed land". The name of this island - Syria - cannot but be compared with the name of the country of Syria in the east of the Mediterranean Sea, from where the Phoenician ships sailed, heading to Tartessus, beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Actually, the very name "Islands of the Blessed" (in Greek "Makaron nesoi") can be regarded as a modification and adaptation for the Greek ear of the Phoenician name Melkart Islands, that is, the islands of the Syrian deity Melkart, the main god of the Phoenician city of Tyre, identified with Greek Hercules.
In the far west, and precisely in the Atlantic Ocean, the oldest legends, which found expression in epic poetry, were also placed the garden of the Hesperides, with its golden apples. In these fruits one can also see a reflection of real news about unprecedented golden fruits growing on the shores and islands of the Western Ocean. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, sailing along the western coast of Africa, could not have been unaware of the existence of Madeira and the Canary Islands, since the latter are visible from the coastal African waters (the peak of Teide on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands group is visible at a distance of 180 km).
That the Carthaginians visited Fr. Madeira and the Canary Islands and traded there, archaeological finds of ancient coins, fragments of Greek and Carthaginian ceramics produced on these islands testify.
In ancient reports, the story is repeated more than once that the Carthaginian government forbade not only foreigners, but also its inhabitants to visit the "Islands of the Blessed" for fear that, seduced by their climatic conditions, their wealth and the ease of life there, people who once got there will no longer want to return to their homeland. This legend (even if it is based on some news of real prohibitions caused by religious or trade-protectionist reasons, anyone visiting the "Isles of the Blessed") is associated with a very common idea in antiquity about the special social conditions of life in all kinds of "blissful", "happy", etc. countries and islands located in the ocean, where people obey the laws established in the ancient kingdom of the god and the mythical king Kronos, who did not know social inequality, slavery, wars, wrongful trial and etc.
We have yet to return to this very interesting topic, partly again connected with real data on overseas countries, after we have considered the last cycle of the most ancient oceanic voyages - along the North Atlantic and the North Ocean. In ancient times, the North Ocean was understood to be the North and Baltic Seas, and sometimes also the Caspian Sea (many ancient geographers considered it to be the bay of the North or Amalchi Ocean).

This concludes the 26th chapter of Plutarch's treatise. Further, the stranger from the West tells about the underground goddesses, about the posthumous fate of the soul, and Sulla, who recounts his speech, no longer returns to the overseas mainland and the island of Ogygia.

The myth of Plutarch has long attracted attention. Back in the 16th century, it was interpreted by Johannes Kepler and Abraham Ortelius, and the "Great Land" was considered a clear indication of the North American continent. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, an attempt was made to more clearly link to the geographical map of the lands referred to in the myth. V. Krist believed that Plutarch's message is evidence of a visit to the coast of North America by Greek traders through Iceland, Greenland and Baffin Island. In this case, Hudson Bay can be identified with "a bay no smaller than Meotida." A little later, G. Mayer argued that the reference to Carthage was not at all accidental. In his opinion, the "perilla" of the Carthaginian sailors who sailed to the Gulf of Mexico became the source for Plutarch. "Island of Kronos", according to Mayer, can be called Scandinavia, which on a number of ancient maps is really depicted as an island.

Both Krist and Mayer were heavily criticized. Indeed, their interpretations of Plutarch sinned with a common flaw - free treatment of the information given by the Greek author. Looking at a geographical map, we can easily see that the latitude of the Caspian Sea, on which lies the Gulf of the Great Land, is not the latitude of the Gulf of Mexico or the Hudson. Greenland and Iceland, with all the severity of their climate, can still claim the status of the islands described by Plutarch, but certainly not Baffin Land. In addition, none of the listed territories has the mild climate that is characteristic of the “Island of Kronos”.

However, after criticizing Krist and Mayer, historians threw the baby out of the tub along with the water. Modern science is convinced that Plutarch only created a variant of the "geographical novel", the source of which was the Celtic and German traditions about the sacred northern islands, as well as the Platonic "myth of Atlantis".

Let's look again at what Plutarch writes. Five days' sail from Britain to the west of her lies an archipelago of four islands. They are located at an equal distance from each other and are, as it were, a wide island bridge connecting the territory of Britain with the opposite land. A distance of five days of travel is from eight hundred to a thousand and a few kilometers (depending on the weather, wind direction, currents). If you add "five thousand stadia", then it turns out that about two thousand kilometers separate Britain from the "Great Land".

These islands are not located at the same latitude. Those of them that pilgrims come to first are somewhere in the Arctic Circle, and they are washed by one of the arms of the Gulf Stream, since Plutarch nowhere speaks of a cold climate. The South Island is located in the zone of moderately warm winds and currents.

The late Roman poet and geographer Avien also spoke about the unusualness of this island, “the island of Kronos”:

“And further in the sea lies an island; it is rich in herbs and dedicated to Saturn. So violent are his natural forces that if anyone, sailing by, approaches him, then the sea near the island will stir, he himself will shake, all the waters rise, deeply trembling, while the rest of the sea remains calm.

Plutarch, speaking of the distance to the islands and the "Great Land", clearly tells us that they available for the traveler. The obstacle is not distance, but the muddy waters of the seas washing the islands from the west, as well as the trials and adventures that the pilgrims who go there have to endure. It is interesting that the "European" should, in theory, be able to get to the islands without difficulty. But this seems only at the first glance at the map of the Atlantic. Don't forget the currents! Favorable for those sailing from the east, the current (the so-called North Equatorial) directs travelers towards more southern latitudes. That is why the transatlantic voyages of the 15th-16th centuries brought Europeans to the Caribbean and to the shores of South America. To the north, towards the British Isles, there is a flow of the Gulf Stream, which prevents direct sailing to the coast of the current US and Canada. These currents are a kind of ring (more precisely, an oval), and its center, which is also a "dead zone", is located in the west - southwest of the Azores.

Consequently, Plutarch speaks of a completely plausible situation, which has been observed in the Atlantic Ocean up to the present moment: it was easier to get from the island of Ogygia to Europe than from Europe to Ogygia.

More precisely, the following must be said: the path to the sacred islands, about which the stranger tells Plutarch, turned out to be circular. At first, the ancestors of the Greeks, together with Hercules, reached the "Great land" and only then - to the archipelago.

Another liberty of the "novelist" Plutarch?

Or is there a reality behind this message?

First of all, which of the journeys of Hercules can we talk about? The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that Hercules was the only one of the heroes who went around the whole world. If Plutarch belonged to the supporters of the "continental" geographical model, that is, if he believed that the ocean washing the ecumene was covered, in turn, by land, then "his" Hercules should have been there too.

The words of a stranger could correspond to the tenth journey of Hercules: the abduction by him of the famous cows of Gerion, the king of the semi-legendary kingdom of Tartess, located in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. The cows themselves grazed on the island of Erithia, located so far in the ocean that Hercules, according to Apollodorus, reached it only with the help of a golden boat presented to the hero by Helios, the god of the Sun.

Tartessus, a state founded around the 11th century BC. e., about the history of which we know practically nothing before the penetration of the Phoenician settlers there, for the Greeks it was the personification of the legendary lands lying somewhere far to the west. It is not surprising that many of the "atlantologists" identify Atlantis with Tartessus, although neither geographically, nor archaeologically, nor historically, this identification does not hold water.

In the case of the legend told by Apollodorus in his "Mythological Library", "Tartess" means - "somewhere far in the west." King Gerion, guarding his cows, had a more than strange appearance: he had three bodies fused at the waist, three heads and six arms. Thanks to this, he could cope with any of the people. Having challenged Hercules to a duel, Geryon nevertheless died, for the hero pierced all his torsos with one arrow.

Are the three torsos of Gerion a reminder of the three peaks of the mountains of Atlantis? Or is the number three directly related to the island on which the famous cows graze? Literally, its name (Erifia) means in Greek "red", which may be due to the location of the island - where the sun sets below the horizon, where we see the evening dawn (!). However, the same name, according to Apollodorus, one of three sisters - "Hesperides" ("evening" or, what is the same, "Western"), daughters of the ancient goddess Nikta (Night) - Aigla, Hesperetusa and Erithia. They live in a garden in the far west, guarding the apples of eternal youth. The aim of the next eleventh the wanderings of Hercules (and again to the west, to the ends of the earth!) became precisely these apples.

The ancient writer Pomponius Mela (1st century AD) spoke about the islands of the Hesperides, who in the 10th chapter of his work “On the Position of the Earth” mentions them as follows: “Against the part of the coast scorched by the sun lie the islands that belonged , Hesperides".

"Scorched part of the coast" - the coast south of Morocco, although, perhaps, Mela means all the western slopes of the Atlas (he did not particularly care about the accuracy of geographical descriptions). The Hesperides were also mentioned by Pliny the Elder.

Greek mythology, however, placed the “garden of the Hesperides” in northwestern Africa, at the foot of the Atlas, but the reason for this was probably a later legend that Hercules, in order to defeat Atlanta, showed him the head of the Gorgon and turned Atlas into Mount Atlas. If this legend is really not just a fairy tale about the origin of the name of the largest mountain in the part of Africa known to the Greeks, then the Hesperides could originally be associated with a wonderful archipelago (or land) located somewhere to the west, beyond the Strait of Gibraltar.

By the way, the Homeric island of Ogygia is also directly related to Atlas-Atlanta! Among the probable parents of the nymph Calypso, who lived on it, ancient mythologists call Atlanta!

It can be concluded that all these legends speak of one thing - about the lands lying in the Atlantic, visited by Hercules and, judging by Plutarch, his companions. Despite the fact that the story of Apollodorus refers to the hero's journey alone on the boat of Helios, we know that "after the fact" ancient mythologists always endowed him with companions. So behind the tenth and eleventh labors of Hercules could be the memory of wanderings to the opposite shores of the ocean.

According to Apollodorus, on the way to the island of Erifia, Hercules installed two stone steles on the shores of the Strait of Gibraltar - the "Pillars of Heracles", which are the borders of Africa and Europe. However, they are also the borders of the Mediterranean world - the "ecumene" of the early Greeks. Beyond them lies another world, in which only one hero could visit - Hercules ...

Or Melqart?

Recall that Sulla narrates on behalf of a stranger who stopped for a long time in Carthage, where he managed to unearth some parchments, etc. It is no coincidence that Carthage appears in Plutarch's story. We already know that it was the Phoenicians and their successors, the Carthaginians, who made regular voyages in the Atlantic. Melkart, the god-ruler of the famous city of Tyre, was also the patron of navigation and travel. The Greeks, with their usual ease, identified their demigod hero Hercules with the god Melkart, but later the Carthaginians accepted this identification too! The Pillars of Heracles were also called the Pillars of Melqart, and their creator was the very being who penetrated the west the furthest.

Let us pay attention to one more manifestation of the "Phoenician trace" in Plutarch's story. The name "Ogygia" apparently meant "Ancient". But Ogygom, according to one of the versions of the origin of Thebes (Greek, not Egyptian), was the name of the father of Cadmus, the founder of this city. Meanwhile, Thebes, despite its geographical location (in Central Greece), was considered the most "eastern" of all Greek cities. Cadmus came to Greece from Phoenicia, he was credited with the creation of the Greek alphabet (actually originating from the Phoenician letter), ancient ties with the Phoenician cities of this particular region of Greece are archaeologically recorded. Even during the Greco-Persian wars, Thebes acted in alliance with Xerxes and fought against the Hellenic militia. Is "Ogygia" a Phoenician name?

But then we can talk about the “prehistoric” (from the point of view of the Greeks, for whom everything that happened before the Trojan War was legendary) travels of the Phoenicians and about the “historical” travels of the Carthaginians to the west, during which, sailing on west, they, thanks to the North Equatorial Current, tended to southwest and reached the huge Gulf of Mexico! It is their descendants who may have left the "Semitic features" that are unexpectedly found in the images of some Mesoamerican cultures. The same settlers could also make reverse transatlantic journeys, being carried by the Gulf Stream to the islands of the archipelago depicted by Plutarch and which was the remnants of the lands of Atlantis. Their voyage was held back by shallow, muddy waters from the recently sunken land, and for this reason alone such pilgrimages were a test.

But from Ogygia, which, of course, was at a completely different latitude than the Gulf of Mexico, but to west from the British Isles, some of the pilgrims could return to their "historical homeland". Thus, Plutarch's reference to the "breadth of the Caspian Gulf" should not confuse us. I repeat: Hercules / Melkart or real Phoenician travelers ended up in the southwest (in Mesoamerica), sailing west. In the same way they ended up in the northeast (in Britain), sailing east. Plutarch is not engaged in clarifying the latitude of the lands he talks about, but he is accurate in terms of directions, in which transatlantic voyages could be made. An example of such an attitude to geography can be found in the Roman “road builders”, in particular, the famous Peutinger tables, where orientation to the cardinal points was sacrificed for the direction of movement (straight, right or left) and the duration of the journey.

There remains one "thin spot" - the distances indicated by Plutarch. The Gulf of Mexico is much further from Britain than Plutarch tells us. But, perhaps, in this case, one should not expect accurate information from Sulla? First, we are talking about the opportunity to make such a journey. Secondly, “five thousand stadia from Ogygia” in reality turn out to be an extremely long and difficult test for travelers from the Great Land - it is unlikely that pilgrims who found themselves in “muddy waters” could determine the exact length of the path ...

Evidence, recognized even by the critically minded scientific world, has survived that the Phoenician sailors sailed the Atlantic Ocean and did not at all experience complexes about its expanses. One of them is associated with the name of the Swedish scientist Johann Podolin, who reported on his conversation with the Spanish numismatist Enrique Flores. The latter told Podolin about how the rarest Carthaginian coins fell into his hands. Here is the text:

“In November 1749, after several days of a storm, part of the foundation of a ruined stone building, which stood on the coast of the island of Corvo, was washed away by the sea. At the same time, an earthen vessel was discovered, in which there were many coins. Together with the vessel, they were brought to the monastery, where the coins were distributed to the assembled curious inhabitants of the island. Some of these coins were sent to Lisbon, and from there later to Father Flores in Madrid.

What is the total number of coins found in the vessel, as well as how many of them were sent to Lisbon, is unknown. Nine pieces came to Madrid, namely, two Carthaginian gold coins, five Carthaginian copper coins, two Cyrenian coins of the same metal.

Pater Flores gave me these coins during my visit to Madrid in 1761 and told me that the whole find consisted of coins of the same grade as these nine, and that these coins were selected as the best preserved. That the coins are partly of Carthaginian origin, partly from Cyrenaica - this is unconditional. They are not particularly rare, with the exception of two gold ones.

Life-giving, however, is the place in which they were found. It is known that the Azores were first discovered by the Portuguese during the time of Alphonse V. There is no reason to believe that anyone buried these coins there at a later time. Therefore, they must have got there with some Punic ships. I hesitate, however, to assert that these ships got there deliberately. A storm might as well carry them there.

Carthage and some Moorish cities sent their ships through the Strait of Gibraltar. Hanno's expedition to the western coast of Africa is known. One of these ships could be carried by a constant east wind to the island of Corvo. Faria says in his "History of Portugal" that the Portuguese, who first arrived in this land, found an equestrian statue on the mountain, pointing with his right hand to the west. The statue allegedly stood on a stone pedestal, which was all covered with unknown letters. This monument was destroyed, which seems to be a great loss. The reason for the destruction was blind rage, for it was assumed that it was a statue of a pagan idol. The statue confirms my opinion that the islands were visited by the Carthaginians and Phoenicians not only by chance or as a result of the fact that a storm carried their ships there; Apparently, they are firmly established there. After all, it cannot be assumed that the ship sent for reconnaissance purposes had the mentioned monument on board. It should rather be concluded that the Phoenicians went there on one or more ships, made one or more journeys, that they liked this land and settled there, founding a colony ... It is also possible that the Carthaginians, known for their enterprise in trade and navigation, from this the islands organized an expedition to the west and that the west-pointing statue is associated with this expedition. It is possible that storms, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions caused great destruction on this island and caused the inhabitants to leave it ... "

The scientific world recognizes that the discovery of Carthaginian coins in the Azores is evidence of a visit to these places by the Punas (Carthaginians). However, modern researchers doubt the story of the statue and the prosperous colony on the islands.

However, in my opinion, the fact that the coins were found in earthen vessel,- undoubted evidence of regular visits by the Carthaginians to Azores! Let's reason sequentially. According to Podolin, they discovered a treasure in the foundation of some ancient building, that is, the pot was once buried in the place where the Portuguese then erected their buildings. However, travelers accidentally washed up on the shores of Corvo would hardly have made such hiding places. Their desire would be to return to their homeland or, in the event of a shipwreck, to settle on the island - but not to hide the coins!

It is known that coin hoards are found either in the burial places of leaders or simply significant people of antiquity, or at the intersections of trade routes (this is the reason for the abundance of silver Arab coins in such “wild” areas, even from the point of view of the Middle Ages, as the middle and upper reaches of the Volga: major trade routes). The reason for the appearance of treasures could be an external threat: robbers, conquerors. But, one way or another, coins in pots were buried only where people lived (or visited) regularly!

From this it cannot but follow that there was a Carthaginian colony in the Azores, or at least a parking lot for ships. But why did the Carthaginians need this outpost located in the middle of the Atlantic? The Azores, with their (at the moment) scarce natural resources and relatively harsh conditions, could hardly attract practical Punic sailors. There are three possible explanations for this hoard. Either in ancient times the situation in the Azores was different than it is now, or not far from Azores were the remains of Atlantis - those legendary islands of abundance, about which much will be said in the Middle Ages, or from Azores the Carthaginian ships went further - to Mesoamerica!

Special consideration requires a message about an equestrian statue destroyed by the Portuguese. Please note: neither Podolin, nor, probably, Flores doubted the story of the historian Faria. It was the story of the destruction of the statue that became the reason for the Swedish scientist to reason about the nature and fate of the Carthaginian colony. In general, in the Middle Ages, many geographical works and maps mention a similar statue, located somewhere in the west, at the turn of known lands. It was believed that it had the task of warning about the dangers of further sailing across the Atlantic (one Arabic manuscript, for example, states that the statue threatens the traveler with death in the sands, among which he finds himself swimming too far into the ocean). Such references are found up to the beginning of the era of great discoveries. Note, for example, the map of Pizzigano, compiled in 1367, where Hercules is depicted to the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula, raising his hand in warning. The discrepancy in the interpretation of this statue (warns travelers or, conversely, directs) should not be frightening. It all depends on the settings with which the creator of the map or geographical description mentioned it. Since so many in the Middle Ages were afraid of the Atlantic, Hercules became the guardian of the western side of the horizon.

As in a number of other cases, stories about the statue cause "healthy skepticism" among historians, reminding them of "tales" about the wall protecting the Eastern peoples from Gog and Magog, and the like. The proof that such a structure did not exist at all, for them, is the fact that later travelers did not find it.

Or maybe they did find it? And Faria's message is evidence of her bitter fate? The destruction of the colossal Buddha statue in Afghanistan, which we all witnessed, may also give rise to skeptical grins among the historians of the 25th century - if, for example, they become even more caustic about the media reports of the turn of the millennium than we are. One can even guess what will be the argumentation of hypercritical authors who will try to prove that credible evidence of The science of the 25th century cannot provide the existence of Buddhism in ancient Central Asia, which means that there was no statue!

The disappearance of the stories about the image of Hercules may not be due to the fact that the Europeans finally overcame the fear of the western ocean, realized that there was really nothing to be afraid of, and did not find the mystical colossus anywhere, but because the Portuguese simply destroyed it!

Confirmation of Podolin's hypothesis can be found in the fifth book of the extensive "Historical Library", written by the remarkable Greco-Roman historian of the 1st century BC. e. Diodorus Siculus:

“Closer to Africa in the vastness of the Ocean to the west of Libya lies a great island. The land on it is fertile, although mountainous. It is irrigated by navigable rivers. The groves there abound with various trees, and countless gardens are full of fruits ...

The mountainous part of the country is full of forests, in which there are a variety of fruit trees. There are a lot of springs on the island, the waters of which not only quench thirst, but also improve health. For hunting, there is an abundance of all kinds of animals, the presence of which makes the feasts cheerful and rich. The sea surrounding the island is full of fish... and the climate is very favorable.

Previously, this island was unknown because of its remoteness from the rest of the world. Opened it by accident. Phoenician merchants sailed the seas in ancient times. Therefore, they founded their settlements not only in Libya, but also in the west of Europe. Since luck accompanied them, they went beyond the Pillars of Heracles, into the sea, which they called the Ocean. And before that, near the Pillars, near the strait, on a peninsula in Europe, they built the city of Gades, in which they erected a magnificent temple in honor of Hercules (Melkrate), where, according to the Phoenician custom, sacrifices were made. This temple, as before, is considered a sacred place, so that even noble Romans, before starting important business, made vows here and, after the successful outcome of their enterprises, fulfilled them. Once the Phoenicians, already knowing the space beyond the Pillars and sailing past Africa, were carried by a storm far into the Ocean and landed on that island. Having found out about the well-being of this region, they told about it to others. Therefore, even the Tyrrhenians, being excellent sailors, were going to settle there. But they were prevented in this by the Carthaginians ... "

It is clear that we are not talking about Atlantis. However, the description of the island, discovered by the Phoenician sailors, does not in any way resemble the Azores - in their modern form. Perhaps Diodorus is referring to the Canary Islands? But even here the question arises: why does this historian write about island, not about islands?

The assumptions of Johann Podolin about the Carthaginian colony are also justified because the Carthaginians really were actively colonizing the Atlantic.

Here is what is told in the so-called "Periplus of Hanno":

“Having sailed and left the Pillars, we sailed for two days and then founded the first city, which we called Fimiatirium; he had a large plain. Then, heading west, they arrived at Soloent, a Libyan cape covered with dense forest. Here, having founded a temple to Poseidon, they again moved east for half a day's journey, until they came to a lake located near the sea and filled with numerous and tall reeds. There were also elephants and many other animals that were grazing. We sailed along the lake for a day's journey and inhabited the seaside towns called Karpkontikh, Gitta, Acre, Melitta and Aramviy. Having sailed from here, we arrived at the great river Liksu, which flows from Libya. She had Lixite nomads tending herds; we stayed with them for a while as friends. Behind these live the inhospitable Ethiopians, who inhabit a land full of beasts and cut by great mountains, from which, they say, the Lyke flows; near the mountains there live people of various types, called Troglodytes: the Lixites say that they run faster than horses. Taking interpreters from the Lixites, we sailed along the desert for two days to the south, and then for a day to the east. There we found, within the gulf, a small island, five stadia in circumference. We settled it, calling it Kerna. We concluded that it lies in accordance with Carthage: the path from Carthage to the Pillars is equal to the path from them to Kerna. From here, sailing past a large river called Hret, we arrived at a lake on which there were three islands, large Kerns. Departing from them for a day's journey, we arrived at the end of the lake, above which towered huge mountains, full of wild people dressed in animal skins; throwing stones, they drove us away, preventing us from landing. Sailing from here, we came to another river, large and wide, full of crocodiles and hippos. Returning from here, we again arrived in Kernu. From here we sailed south and after 12 days passed by the land, which was all inhabited by Ethiopians who fled from us and did not expect us. Their language turned out to be incomprehensible even to the Lixites who were with us. On the last day we moored at large wooded mountains. The tree trunks were varied and fragrant. Having sailed past them for two days, we found ourselves in an immeasurable sea bay, on both sides of which there was a plain. From here, at night, we noticed in all directions, at intervals, sparkling lights, now more, now less. Stocking up on water, they sailed on for five days along the land, until they arrived at a large bay, which, according to the translator, is called the South Horn. It turned out to be a large island, and on the island - a salt lake, and on the lake - another island. Here we moored, but the whole day we saw nothing but the forest, and at night there were many lit fires; heard the sound of flutes, cymbals, and timbrels, and loud cries. We were seized with fear, and the soothsayers ordered us to leave the island. Hastily sailing away, we passed by a sultry country full of incense. From it, huge fiery streams poured into the sea. The country is inaccessible due to the heat. We hurriedly sailed away from there in fear. We ran for four days and at night we saw the land full of flames. In the middle was a very high fire, larger than the others; it seemed to be touching the stars. During the day it turned out to be the highest mountain, called "Theon Ohema" (gr."Chariot of the Gods"). Three days later, having sailed through fiery torrents, we arrived at the bay called the South Horn. In the depths of the bay was an island full of wild people. More numerous were women, with bodies covered with wool; translators called them gorillas. We pursued the men, but could not catch them - they all ran away, clinging to the rocks and defending themselves with stones. We captured three women, but they, biting and scratching, did not want to follow those who led them. After killing the captives, we took off their skins and brought them to Carthage. We didn’t sail further: we didn’t have enough supplies.

The description of Hanno's journey - one of the brightest pages in the history of geographical discoveries of the ancient world - is known to us only thanks to a manuscript of the 10th century, but brief references to it can be found in such masters of ancient science as Arrian (in his "India") and Pliny the Elder ( "Natural history"). This journey was made during the heyday of the colonial Carthaginian power, centuries before the destructive wars with Rome and, apparently, even before the Greeks from Massilia (Marseilles) and Syracuse became serious commercial and military rivals of the Puns. In the 20th century, Hanno's journey began to be attributed to the decades before the battle near Himera (480 BC), when the Greek Syracusan tyrant Gelon managed to defeat the huge Carthaginian militia, killing several tens of thousands of puns (in ancient sources, a mind-boggling figure of 300,000 is called Human). Hanno traveled to an era when Carthage was still "bursting" with an excess population - nothing else can explain the figure of 30,000 men and women who participated in this expedition.

The purpose of Hanno's journey - the foundation of the colonies of Carthage beyond the Pillars of Hercules - shows that the Puns had a good idea about the Atlantic and about the economic prospects of such colonies. Neither the Greeks, the Phoenicians, nor the Carthaginians created new cities in regions completely unknown to them. “To go there, I don’t know where” could only be political emigrants, but there is no doubt that Hanno’s expedition was a project supported by the Carthaginian government.

Where has Hannon been?

Modern scholars believe that he sailed along the Libyan (that is, African) coast to the south, then, according to Arrian, turned east and entered the Gulf of Guinea. It was there that he met strange islands with salt lakes, a mountain called the "Chariot of the Gods", "gorilla people".

However, for us, the beginning of his journey is not without interest. Having founded several trading and agricultural settlements on the northwestern and western coast of modern Morocco, he wintered on about. Kern. Where was this island? They tried to look for him near the coast of Morocco, but Hanno gives a clear indication that he was at the same distance from the Pillars as Carthage lies from them. Therefore, we must look for it to the south - either near the coast of Western Sahara (this is where geographically there is a point remote from the Pillars at the same distance as Carthage), or much further south, since soon after sailing from Kern, the Carthaginians saw a large river called Khret, and after it a lake. This description can only fit the area where the Senegal River flows into the Atlantic Ocean, the sediments of which form a long spit stretching for tens of kilometers from north to south. Since the coastline changes over time, at the time of Hanno there may have been several large island massifs behind the scythe, which is why the Carthaginian navigator spoke of a lake with islands.

The next “candidate” for the role of the Hret River could be the full-flowing Gambia in the lower reaches, but it is not clear where then to look for a lake with vast islands on it.

But the most mysterious thing lies elsewhere: not one, not two, not five days' journey north of Senegal or the Gambia No an island that we might identify with Kern!

Scientists are trying to get out of another predicament, believing that Kern is one of the islets off the northwestern coast of Morocco (which contradicts its remoteness from the Pillars of Hercules), or by identifying it with any of the Canary Islands (and this is incredible, because how, before arriving at Cairn, Hanno did not move away from the coast; besides, the Carthaginians knew about the Canary Islands). Thus, Kern is a mysteriously disappeared island that left no trace in the waters off the African coast ...

Unless, of course, Gannon sailed along the African coast!

There are several things in his description that cast doubt on the "daring" hypothesis that the Carthaginian ships penetrated along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea to the volcanic Mount Kamerun ("Chariots of the Gods").

The "Immeasurable Gulf of the Sea" of which Gannon writes, another bay called the "Western Horn", and finally the "Southern Horn" - all this is not like the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. The latter is so vast that it could not be perceived as a bay by the ancient navigators at all. The bays, which are available here in large numbers, hardly reach the status of bays. On the other hand, the deltas of many full-flowing rivers between Senegal and Cameroon for some reason were not noted in Hannon's report - including the endless Niger Delta.

We will not identify with anything known to us, and the island that Hanno and his companions discovered in the Western Horn. In the region of the Gulf of Guinea, there are no islands at all, in the middle of which there would be salt lakes with their own islands. The sounds of flutes, cymbals, tympanums that the Carthaginians heard hint at some kind of sacred ceremony that took place in this place. It must also be taken into account that the same sounds for an ancient person could accompany the appearance of a god: for example, Dionysus or Pan. Something miraculous, and therefore mysterious and even terrible, happened on an island with salt lakes. The panic fear that seized the travelers, according to ancient ideas, was caused by the proximity of the deity, and not at all friendly.

The description of the volcanic eruption of Cameroon, which is seen in the phrases immediately following the story of the island with salt lakes, is also not entirely clear. What kind of land, full of incense, but inaccessible due to the heat, did the Carthaginians see? The description of the fiery streams flowing from it into the sea is clearly not applicable to a volcanic eruption. Only four days later, the travelers noticed the land "full of fire" (that is, fires caused by lava), and the "Chariot of the Gods". Could it be that Gannon saw the fires that people in some coastal areas of West Africa still set during hunting in order to drive animals out of the mangroves? But the story that the fire during these fires "flowed into the sea" would be excessive poetic license.

And who are the "gorillas" hunted by travelers on an island deep in the South Horn? Gorillas do not use stones for self-defense, and Gannon calls them "wild people." They look much more like yetis - at least the description in Periplus Gannon is very close to the descriptions given by eyewitnesses to Bigfoot.

The belief of scientists of the 19th-20th centuries that the main problem is to determine the extreme southern point on the coast of Africa, which travelers reached, is one of the manifestations of the scientific "ostrich position". Better head - in the sand than to cut off the scientific community.

The names of the bays - "Western Horn" and "South Horn" - may well imply the presence of "Northern Horn" and "East Horn". The four names associated with the four cardinal points would then point to an island whose coastline was fairly well known to the interpreters who accompanied Hanno.

But when could the Carthaginian ships move away from the African coast?

There is one curious passage in Hanno's text. After the settlement of the island of Kern, the Carthaginians committed two swimming. The first - along the coast, it was then that a lake with three islands was discovered (I spoke about it above), “another river”, etc. After that, Gannon returned to Kern and undertook another journey. This time - due south. However, if Kern was somewhere north of Senegal, then a twelve-day voyage to the south (with a distance of one hundred and fifty kilometers that ships could sail in a day) would lead the Carthaginians to the latitude of the Gulf of Guinea, but hundreds of kilometers from the African coast!

Atlantis in the Gulf of Guinea? Or traces of the vast Atlantic land, the last fragments of which descended on human memory? Why not! Five hundred kilometers west of present-day Liberia lies a vast underwater plateau that may be the remnant of one of these fragments. The eruption of the "Chariot of the Gods" was a manifestation of seismic activity that accompanied the flooding of this land. Moreover, the Carthaginians could well explore the eastern shores of the "Guinean Atlantis"; after Hanno's first return to Kern, the text nowhere says that he sailed east and that the newly discovered lands lay on the port side of his ships! But, as we have seen, we are talking about the way to the south.

The mention of the “Ethiopians” who inhabit the land discovered by the Carthaginians does not contradict this hypothesis. The Atlantic did not separate from its Atlantis, but connected the continents that formed its shores. There is nothing surprising in the fact that Negro tribes lived on some of its later fragments. At least, it was only through Atlantis that Africans could get into Mesoamerica, which caused the creation of the famous "Negroid" sculptures by the Olmecs.

The enterprise of the Phoenicians (whose heirs were the Carthaginians) is confirmed by their famous and unquestioned journey around Africa.

What is most striking is that the Phoenician navigators made their way around Africa in the opposite direction to that in which, two thousand years later, the Portuguese would move. Although the currents just favor the way from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, and not the opposite, however, the enterprise of the Phoenician navigators unknown to us by the names was never repeated in “historical” times either by the Arabs, who “came out” of most of the Indian Ocean, or by the Indonesians who settled Madagascar .

I give the floor to our sources - Herodotus and Strabo:

“Libya, it turns out, is surrounded by water, with the exception of the part where it borders on Asia; the first to prove this, as far as we know, was the Egyptian king Neko. Suspending the digging of a canal from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he sent the Phoenicians out to sea in ships with orders to sail back through the Pillars of Hercules until they entered the northern [Mediterranean] Sea and arrived in Egypt. The Phoenicians set sail from the Erythrean Sea and entered the South Sea. At the onset of autumn, they landed on the shore and, wherever they landed in Libya, they sowed the land and waited for the harvest; on harvesting bread sailed on. So two years passed in the voyage, and only in the third year they rounded the Pillars of Hercules and returned to Egypt. They also told me, which I do not believe, and someone else, perhaps, will believe that during the voyage around Libya, the Phoenicians had the sun on their right side. So for the first time it was proved that Libya is surrounded by the sea. Subsequently, the Carthaginians claimed that they also managed to go around Libya.

“Having mentioned those who are considered to have traveled around Libya, he [Posidonius] says that, according to Herodotus, some persons were sent by Darius to make this voyage.”

Strabo (or Posidonius), apparently, confused the Persian king Darius with the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II (in Greek pronunciation - Neko). Although we will see that under the closest successor of Darius, Xerxes, an attempt will be made to bypass Africa - but in the opposite direction.

Necho II, referred to in the message, ruled in Egypt in 609-595 BC. e. He led an active foreign policy, created a navy in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, tried to dig a canal between the Nile and the Red Sea. From such an energetic statesman it was quite possible to expect the organization of a voyage around Africa.

The question is whether it was royal curiosity that prompted Necho, or whether the Egyptians (and the Phoenicians) knew that Africa can be circumnavigated?

Any project of this kind is based at least on a geographical hypothesis. Columbus was looking in the west for a direct route to India, although he made a mistake in the calculations when determining the distance to it. Magellan discovered the strait, which was later named after him, because maps from the early 16th century suggested the presence of such a strait.

Egyptian civilization seems to us a prisoner, mothballed for several millennia by the narrow confines of the Nile Valley. Such a picture corresponds to the perception that has prevailed for more than a century of the inhabitants of ancient civilizations as incorrigible provincials who do not see anything further than their nose. However, the astronomical observations of the Egyptians or the Babylonians prove that this is not at all the case. Astronomy and geography are not disciplines opposed to each other. This is already evidenced by the ancient belief that what is in heaven is identical with what is on earth. One was brought by ancient man into agreement with the other.

Although we know from written sources only about a few travels of the Egyptians (for example, the famous voyage of Queen Hatshepsut to Punt), there is a lot of evidence that Egyptians made exploratory expeditions, especially along the coast of the Red Sea and East Africa, even during the reign of the first dynasties united state, and possibly even in the "dark" centuries (or millennia) of the unknown history of Egypt, which preceded its final unification at the turn of the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. Any study, however, is motivated by some information that, in this case, the Egyptians might have obtained from traders, those obscure discoverers of much of the globe, or from archives inherited through possible "prehistoric" contacts with the civilization of Atlantis.

In any case, the Phoenicians sailed, knowing about the possibility of getting to the Pillars of Hercules. To the west and southwest of the latter, well-known lands awaited them: the Phoenician possessions in Iberia had already existed for several centuries.

It remained to surrender to the fair (throughout the voyage!) currents and patiently wait until 25,000 km of the way (!) were left behind.

The method of travel used by the Phoenicians, who used only summer time for sailing, can be associated not only with the desire to protect their ships from winter storms, and also to get food for the next year, but also with the desire to explore the lands they sailed past - first of all from the point of view of studying their economic and trade opportunities.

To complete the theme of the travels of the Phoenicians, I will give one more evidence of their activity in the waters of the Atlantic.

“They say that on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules, the Carthaginians discovered in the ocean an uninhabited island, rich in many forests and navigable rivers, and possessing fruits in abundance. It is located several days away from the mainland. But when the Carthaginians began to visit it regularly and some of them settled there because of the fertility of the soil, the authorities of Carthage forbade swimming there under pain of death. They exterminated all the settlers so that the news of the island would not spread and the crowd could not plot against them, seize the island and deprive the [power] of the Carthaginians of the happiness of owning it.

Again, as in the fragments of Diodorus Siculus or Podolinus, it speaks of a colony (in this case, the Carthaginians) in the middle of the Atlantic. This message, more than any other, can be attributed to the Canaries or Madeira. Madeira is even preferable here, since there was a population in the Canaries, and Pseudo-Aristotle does not report about it. Only the mention of navigable rivers inspires doubts. Even with the modest requirements of ancient ships for river navigation, there are no streams suitable for it either in Madeira or in the Canaries. It remains only to assume that we are still talking about either a now non-existent island, or about the land, of which Madeira was a part at that time and which sank under water during the death of the remnants of Atlantis that stretched for centuries and even millennia.

Of particular note is the assertion that the Carthaginian authorities decided to keep the location of the island a secret. It seems that the point here is not only the desire to preserve their income or save the city from a sharp outflow of population. The Carthaginians were faced with something that forced them to impose the strictest censorship on visits to the newly discovered land. Perhaps these were traces of Atlantis, perhaps they were a source of information that turned out to be so important that the authorities of the city did not spare their own tribesmen ... One can make one assumption more fantastic than the other, while desperately regretting that the Carthaginian archives disappeared after the capture of the city by the Romans. The amount of information that we were deprived of is comparable to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. The persistence of Cato the Elder, who kept talking about the destruction of Carthage, led to the fact that the whole culture was lost to modern researchers. The seventeen days during which Carthage burned after the decision of the Roman Senate to curse and destroy the very memory of this city became something more than an act of revenge for three long wars, than a prudent deliverance from a stubborn commercial and political rival. In those seventeen days, an entire civilization perished.

The loss of the archives of Carthage is all the more painful because, a century and a half earlier, the archives of Tyre, one of the most famous Phoenician cities, taken after a heavy and bloody siege by Alexander the Great, were lost. The Phoenician "libraries" in general were often either on the verge of destruction or perished: after all, such cities as Tire, Byblos or Sidon, were repeatedly under attack by foreign conquerors.

I emphasize this primarily because the Phoenicians were undoubtedly first from the Mediterranean nations, which can be called marine. There is a strange delusion, born from the discovery of the civilization of Minoan Crete and wandering from one book to another - that it was the Cretans who first penetrated the Western Mediterranean and reached the Pillars of Hercules. Phoenician cities (Byblos, Berytus, Sidon) for at least millennium older than the Minoan civilization, and they conducted maritime trade already at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. For two and a half millennia, they were the sea "eyes" of Egypt. No wonder one of the most revered and ancient gods of the Phoenicians, Khusor-i-Khusas, was considered not only the creator of crafts and skills necessary for a civilized life, but, first of all, he was known as the discoverer of navigation! For this, the Cretan kings needed military armadas in order to oust competitors (Phoenician, and possibly Carian) from the trade routes.

So, with the loss of the archives of Tire and Carthage, evidence of those civilizations with which the Phoenician and then Punic sailors came into contact or traces of which they discovered were also lost. The "castle" on which they held the Strait of Gibraltar for a long time (if not millennia) led to the fact that the Greek and Roman cultures, which became the ancestors of modern Europe, were cut off from information about the lands in the west, and we - about the travels made by this enterprising people.

The point is that history is censorship itself! We believe that it reveals the past to us as much as possible, but we forget that the historian belongs to a certain culture that has taken the place of the previous one, which in its own way sees the meaning of what is happening and which - at least at first - is little interested in what was with her predecessor. Culture must mature before it can no longer be satisfied with the epic traditions with which the history of all the peoples known to us began (Homer among the Greeks, the Mahabharata among the Hindus, the Nibelungen Saga among the Germans, etc.). However, as time passes and a taste for exploring the past begins to form, evidence of lost civilizations is indicated as lost.

Each new civilization starts history anew. Not just rewriting, namely starts! So did the Romans in relation to Carthage. After 146 B.C. e. the very essence of what is happening has changed. The Phoenician-Carthaginian, or, in other words, Punic culture, which for thousands of years connected a huge geographical area as a trading force in the first place, was swept away by the “continental” empire of the Romans, who chose for themselves a different, Greek pattern of life.

As a result, the "maritime" period of the history of Mediterranean mankind has been erased from the annals, and modern man is faced with the strange "historical deafness" of the pre-Greek and Dorian states, which, it seems, did not pay attention to the passage of time and had little interest in the world around them.

However, the "historical deafness" of Egypt or Phoenicia is just as misleading as their "geographical myopia". It is caused by the events of the III-II centuries BC. which led to the fall of the Carthaginian Empire. Manuscripts are on fire. Knowledge is lost. And the allusions to the ancient knowledge of the Egyptians or Assyrians, which the ancient Greeks and Romans themselves give us, are perceived as myths and fantasies only for the reason that they do not fit into the modern image of world history!

This is almost an instinctive rejection, which is very difficult to deal with. Especially when it comes to "pure" or "high" science. After all, what we call "science" is the maximum embodiment of our vision of the world, where everything that contradicts this vision is understood as heresy or madness.

Paradoxically, mass culture, in this sense, is more resigned to the idea that there may be other histories of the world. After all, Atlantis, Lemuria, Shambhala are something alien (to us, to our image of history). And if alien, it means exciting, frightening, attracting attention. A person who is not sophisticated in scientific methodology and is not shackled by it is easier to shake and say: “Think!”

The “closeness” of information about possible sea voyages was, of course, not absolute. When the ancient Persian state became the hegemon in the entire Middle East, the Phoenicians, liberated together with the Jews by King Cyrus the Great from Babylonian captivity, became faithful assistants to the Persian sovereigns. Some of the descriptions of the land that we find in the Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrian Persians, must have been compiled on the basis of information reported by the Phoenicians.

But we also have another piece of evidence that the Persians tried to take advantage of the information of their new subjects:

“Satasp, the son of Theaspius, from the Achaemenid clan, sent to go around Libya, failed to do this ... he forcibly took possession of the daughter of Zopyrus, Megabyzov's son, a virgin, for which crime King Xerxes decided to crucify him; however, the mother of Satasp, the sister of Darius, asked him for pardon and promised herself to impose a punishment on him, more severe than the punishment of the king, namely: he would be obliged to go around Libya until he entered the Arabian Gulf on this way.

On this condition, Xerxes made a concession. Satasp arrived in Egypt, received a ship and Egyptian sailors here, and sailed to the Pillars of Hercules. Having sailed to the other side, he rounded the tip of Libya, called Soloent, and headed further south.

So for many months he sailed a considerable part of the sea, but since there was still more to sail, he turned back and arrived in Egypt. From there he went to King Xerxes and informed him that very far on the sea they had to sail past a country inhabited by small people dressed in palm clothes, and every time they approached the shore in a ship, the little people left their cities and fled to the mountains. For their part, when they entered their cities, they did not offend anyone, they only took cattle with them. Why they did not go around the whole of Libya, Satasp explained by the fact that his ship could not go further, as it was delayed by the shallows. However, Xerxes did not believe that he was telling the truth, and ordered him, as if he had not fulfilled the work assigned to him, to nail him to a stake, thus subjecting him to the previously announced punishment.

King Xerxes ruled from 486-465 BC. e.; under him, the most famous events of the Greco-Persian war took place: the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea, Mycale. Despite the victories won by the Greeks in this war, Xerxes was, and remains, the most powerful ruler in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. For the Persians, the struggle with the Greeks was, although painful, but a peripheral problem. Nevertheless, it was necessary to deal with it. Therefore, vague reports of contacts between Persia and the Carthaginian state, which was competing with the Sicilian Greeks at that time, have come down to us.

Such contacts are not surprising, not only because of the political and military situation that made them natural, but also because the Persians maintained excellent relations with the Phoenicians, who constituted the strike force of their fleet. Establishing relations between Xerxes and Carthage could be the work of the tribesmen of the Puns, the inhabitants of their metropolis - Tyre.

Surprisingly, critical scientists do not pay attention to this obvious fact. Hening, no doubt a classic author in the field of the history of geographical discoveries, literally says the following: “A very significant argument against the voyage of Sataspes to the Atlantic can be the fact of the blockade of the Strait of Gibraltar by the Carthaginians. This blockade was carried out very harshly already for 50 years before the reign of Xerxes and closed the strait for all non-Carthaginians ... Is it possible that, under these circumstances, an inexperienced Persian in navigation, who in no way possessed the qualities of a brave adventurer, passed through the blocked strait, and even not once, but twice - back and forth? It's absolutely incredible!"

There is nothing incredible in this. Firstly, during the blockade, in the IV century BC. e., the Greek traveler Euthymenes from Massilia visited the Atlantic - which means that in some cases the blockade was not so tough. The Carthaginians could well have missed the ship Satasp - at least as a sign of good relations between Carthage and Persia. Secondly, it was not at all "an inexperienced Persian" who was the helmsman of this ship. The helmsman was clearly either an Egyptian or a Phoenician.

In this case, the voyage of Satasp does not look fantastic at all. True, the story of the pygmies who met on the African coast is surprising: the Europeans discovered the pygmies only in 1867, and there was simply no talk of any “pygmy cities” on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea in the 19th century.

In my opinion, this is only an apparent difficulty. For two and a half thousand years, not only the ethnic composition of the population of equatorial Africa, but also the level of its culture could change. An example of this is the ruins left from the state of Monomotapa (X-XVI centuries) in modern Zimbabwe, a state that ceased to exist long before the advent of European colonizers. There is one passage in Herodotus' text which, as in the case of Periplus Hanno, makes it ambiguous. Satasp sailed south, and there is no mention that at some point the coast of Africa turns east. And then, I remind you, Herodotus says: "very far at sea they had to sail past the country ...". Did the Greek historian (and his informant) mean that Satasp was still sailing along the coast of Africa? Or, as in the case of Hanno, can we take the text literally, that is, assume that at the latitude of the Gulf of Guinea, Satasp discovered a land inhabited by "civilized pygmies"?

Satasp was not the only one who, after the feat of the Phoenicians, tried to travel around Africa.

“Posidonius tells how a certain Eudoxus from Cyzicus ... was introduced to the Egyptian king Euergetes II and his entourage, asking them mainly about the method of sailing up the Nile as a person interested in the local features of this country and not without knowledge in this subject. At the same time, it happened that a certain Indian was brought to the king by the guards of the Red Sea, who declared that they found this man half dead, alone on a ship, but did not know who he was or where he came from, because they did not understand his language. The king handed him over to some people who were supposed to teach him the Greek language. Having learned Greek, the Indian explained that he, sailing from India, got lost, that he alone escaped, having lost all the companions who died of starvation. At the same time, he promised, as if in gratitude for the care rendered, to indicate the waterway to the Indians, if the king instructed someone to go there; among the latter was Eudoxus. Having sailed from there with gifts, he, having returned, brought in return for them various objects and precious stones, of which some are brought by rivers along with pebbles, while others break out of the earth, were formed from a liquid, like our crystals. But Eudoxus was deceived in his hopes, because Euergetes took away all his goods from him.

After the death of Euergetes, his wife Cleopatra received royal power, and she sent Eudoxus again with great preparations. On the way back, Eudoxus was brought to a country above Ethiopia. Landing here in certain areas, he won over the population with gifts: bread, wine, figs, which were not there, for this he received water and guides from them, and he also wrote down some words of the native language. When he found the end of the front of the ship, which had survived the shipwreck, on which the horse was carved, he learned through inquiries that the shipwreck was sailing from the west, and took this fragment with him, setting off on the return journey. When he arrived in Egypt, where it was no longer Cleopatra who reigned, but her son, everything was taken away from him again, and even convicted of appropriating some items for himself. Having brought the end of the front of the ship to the market in the harbor, he showed it to the sailors and learned from them that it was a fragment of the Hadesian ship, that the rich inhabitants of Hades equip large ships, and the poor - small ones, which they call horses from the images on the bow of the ship, on them sail up the Lixa River within Maurusia to fish. Some of the sailors recognized the tip of the ship's prow; it belonged to one of the ships that sailed quite a distance from Lyx and never returned. Eudoxus concluded from this that a circular voyage past Libya was possible, and so, going home, he put all his fortune on the ship and left the harbor. First of all, he arrived in Dicearchia, then in Massilia, visited the further lying seashore as far as Gades. Wherever he went, he publicized his enterprise and, having collected enough money, he built a large ship and two boats, similar to pirate boats, put boys, musicians, doctors and various other craftsmen on them, finally sailed into the open Indian Sea, accompanied by a passing wind. When his comrades were tired of swimming, he involuntarily landed on land, fearing the tides. Indeed, what he feared happened: the ship ran aground, but gradually, so that it did not suddenly die, and the goods and most of the logs and boards were saved on land. Of these, Eudoxus made a third vessel, almost equal in strength to a fifty-oared ship, until he sailed to a people who spoke the same language, the words of which he had previously written down. At the same time, he learned that the people living here belonged to the same tribe as the Ethiopians, and that those who lived in the kingdom of Bogha were similar to them. After completing his journey to India, he returned home. On the way back, he saw a deserted island, well supplied with water, covered with trees, and noticed its position. Having safely landed in Maurusia and having sold his ships, he went on foot to Boghu and advised him to undertake a sea expedition. But the king's friends managed to convince him of the opposite. They made the king afraid that after that it would be easy for the enemy to attack the country, because the road would be opened for those who wished to invade the country from outside. When Eudoxus learned that he was being sent on a sea expedition only in words, but in fact they were going to be thrown onto a deserted island, he fled to Roman possessions, and from there to Iberia. Having again fitted out a round vessel and a long fifty-oared one, so that on the one to sail in the open sea, and on the other to keep the shores, putting agricultural implements, seeds, he also took skillful carpenters and set off on the same expedition with the intention that, if the navigation slows down, to carry out winter on the island mentioned before, and, having sown the seeds and harvested the fruits, make the voyage conceived at the beginning. “Until this moment,” says Posidonius, “I know the story of Eudoxus: what happened to him after, the inhabitants of Hades and Iberia probably know.”

We omit Strabo's highly acrimonious commentary on Posidonius' story. This ancient geographer, being an excellent geographer, nevertheless will quite fit the company of Aristotle or the modern "pure scientist". Meanwhile, we have before us the biography of a man who combined disinterested curiosity, enterprise, self-confidence, and, finally, that bit of arrogance, without which there was not a single great discoverer.

Since voyages around Africa are far from the main topic of this book, I will only briefly explain Strabo's message.

Aristotle is forced to agree with the strangeness of the Atlantic Ocean. Being in a depression, it should be calm - like any "outer sea". However, this depression is filled with silt - and therefore the sea behind the Pillars is "shallow".

But after all, the presence of a depression suggests that the Atlantic would have to have great depths! What made it shallow, if not some kind of natural disaster?

Aristotle leaves this question unaddressed.

With the story about the problematic navigation in those waters, we have met more than once. However, here are two more pieces of evidence to complete the picture.

Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle, one of the founders of botany and biology in the broad sense of the word, writes in his History of Plants:

“In the sea behind the Pillars of Heracles, they say, there is algae of amazing size and width more than a palm.”

Such a message could only appear if Theophrastus' "informants" actually saw the algae of the Sargasso Sea. Two thousand years ago, when the sinking of the land was still ongoing and the structure of the currents was somewhat different than now, the area of ​​distribution of Sargasso algae was much wider.

The late Roman poet Avien, echoing the story of Plutarch, says that sailing in some areas of the Atlantic almost impossible:

“No one has reached these waters, no one has sent their ships to these seas, because ... there are no currents of air blowing from the heights to drive the ship forward, and no breath of heaven helps the sails.”

While agreeing that Avien's words are a poetic metaphor, one cannot but admit that in the context of ancient evidence about the Atlantic, they sound quite understandable. There was something that prevented sailing to the west - at least in some areas of the ocean. And I am sure that this “something” is the traces of the cataclysm that swallowed up Atlantis.

Contrary to everything that ancient sources have said up to the present, Strabo writes at the very beginning of his Geography:

“That the inhabited world is an island can be inferred from the testimony of our senses and from experience ... For those who undertook a voyage around the world and then returned back without reaching the goal say that they did not return because they stumbled upon some the mainland, which prevented their further navigation, since the sea remained open, but due to lack of provisions and deserted places.

It is a pity that nowhere else do we meet with a story about people who tried to undertake a round-the-world trip in ancient times. Such an idea could well have occurred to a Greek or a Roman, for already from the 4th century BC. e. the idea of ​​the sphericity of the earth ceases to be the lot of a few intellectuals. A round-the-world trip would be the perfect proof of this theory, and in the Roman state of Strabo's time there could be rich madcaps who would invest in such an event.

But even if we believe Strabo, his message proves nothing! To repeat: several different people undertook expeditions across the Atlantic with the aim of circumnavigating the globe, but they returned unsalted. However, this only means that they sailed at their own peril and risk, having no Phoenician sailing directions or not knowing that such ones existed at all. Even assuming that the remains of Atlantis sank to the bottom as far back as the Roman and even the medieval era, the expanses of the Atlantic are vast enough that travelers did not find any signs of inhabited lands and returned back. Especially if they didn't know where to look for them at all.

Perhaps another thing proves the correctness of Strabo - that, apart from the story of Plutarch, we do not meet anywhere in "historical times" with evidence of reverse transatlantic voyages - from west to east.

But why don't we meet? Already familiar to us, Cornelius Nepos tells us that in 62 BC. e. “Quintus Metellus Celerus, a comrade of Lucius Aphranius in the consulate and at the same time proconsul of Gaul, was presented by the king of the Suebi with Indians who sailed from India for trading purposes and were washed up by a storm on the shores of Germany.”

Sueves - a Germanic tribe that lived in the region of the middle reaches of the Rhine. Apparently, their king received the Indians as a gift from the leaders of the coastal tribes: the exchange of such outlandish captives was commonplace. It is not surprising that, wanting to show respect to the Roman official in Gaul, the Suevian sovereign gave him exotic merchants.

Pomponius Mela deciphers this information, arguing that the king of the Suebi even communicated with them (in what language?!) and learned about how the Indians were carried away by a storm from their coast and how, “passing the intermediate spaces”, they finally reached Europe.

A similar message is contained in a source created one and a half thousand years after Nepos. The Venetian annalist Aeneas Silvius, in his History, published in 1477 (that is, before the voyages of Columbus), writes:

“There is evidence that during the time of the German emperors, an Indian ship with Indian merchants washed up on the German coast.”

The scatter in time between both events is significant, but they are united by the assertion that the arrivals were Indian merchants. What India did they come from? Those researchers who say that the Europeans called Indians all people who had an unusual appearance and unfamiliar speech are absolutely right. However, this thesis needs to be clarified. On no account did they call Ethiopians or northerners Indians; in the same way, people with a low level of culture were not called Indians. India has always been a mysterious country, attractive, including the level of its development.

In the Middle Ages, the Gulf Stream repeatedly carried Eskimo boats (kayaks) to the shores of Northern Europe; the surviving Eskimos were the subject of general curiosity - but they were not called Indians! First, the inhabitants of Norway and Denmark knew the Eskimos quite well. The Greenlandic Vikings traded with their settlements, and sometimes fought with them. Second, the Eskimos not alike on Indians neither in appearance nor in the level of development of their skills. In any case, we know nothing about the existence of Eskimo merchants. Thirdly, Eskimo kayaks cannot be mistaken for merchant ships.

It remains to be assumed that in the 1st century BC. e., and in the XII century A.D. e. other navigators arrived to the shores of Europe. And if they were Indians, then they clearly did not belong to those cultures that the Spanish conquistadors found in America, but to earlier ones. Only the Olmecs and some coastal Mayan cities could have built merchant ships that would have been able to reach Europe.

But the creation of merchant ships in Mesoamerica means developed trade, and the fact that some of them ended up in the Gulf Stream means that they have a goal of trading voyages east of the Gulf of Mexico! If regular communications with Europe had by then been interrupted, then what could be such a goal?

However, there is another possibility. The "Indians" could have sailed not from America, but from the islands that still existed on the site of Atlantis, like Ogygia, about which Plutarch wrote.

The way in which Strabo, this "Aristotle of Geography", processed the information preserved by previous authors is evidenced by his assessment of the famous Greek traveler Pytheas from Massilia as "the greatest liar." (But Strabo's "Geography" is considered almost the pinnacle of the ancient scientific approach to describing the earth.) Strabo says the following:

“Pytheas in the stories about Tula turns out to be the greatest liar, and those who have seen Britain and Ireland do not say anything about Tula, mentioning other small islands near Britain ... As for Etimiy and the areas lying on the other side of the Rhine to Scythia, all the news of Pytheas are false."

The ancient and medieval tradition dedicated to the island of Thule is huge and in our time can no longer be regarded as pure fantasy. Pytheas and Thule were "lucky", because at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, thanks to German and Norwegian scientists (Müllengorf, Nansen, Hening), it was proved that Pytheas' information was very accurate, and his travels to the Far North were real. The most important conclusion that modern science has come to is that at the time when Pytheas lived (end of the 4th century BC), Northern Europe was connected by permanent maritime trade routes. Pytheas traveled on the ships of the ancestors of the modern Britons, Germans, Norwegians and traveled around such significant territories that it causes legitimate surprise and admiration. So where has he been?

First of all, Pytheas set off from Massilia through Gaul (perhaps through the Garonne valley - which remained an important trade route in the Middle Ages, leading from Carbon through Toulouse to Bordeaux and the Bay of Biscay) and reached the Atlantic. Then he traveled to northern Spain, carefully studying its coast and the tin trade that took place through the ports of this territory. After that, Pytheas crossed over to Britain, which he bypassed completely, although he reported dimensions that were twice its real perimeter.

After that, the fun begins. On a barbarian ship, Pytheas visits a certain place, or places, lying to the north of Britannia. It is with this journey that the legendary story about "Ultima Tula" is connected, the land that for some became the personification of the End of the World, for others - the last mention of the Hyperborean Continent, this mystical ancestral home of human civilization as such.

The Greek astronomer Gemin (1st century BC) in his essay “Elements of Astronomy” cites the following passage from the “Periplus of Pytheas”:

“The barbarians showed us the place where the sun goes to rest. For this happened just when the night in these regions was very short and lasted in some places two, and in some places three hours, so that the sun rose again after a very short time after its sunset.

According to modern calculations, this duration of the night can be approximately 64-65 degrees north latitude. If Gemin's book contains Pytheas' message specifically about Tula, then we have at least three options: either the coast of Norway just north of Trondheim (the concept of Nansen and Hoening), or Iceland (Carey's theory), or the south of Greenland (V. Fedotov). However, Pytheas could get to the south of Greenland only under very favorable conditions, since the springs take only five days to sail.

However, from other descriptions, it turns out that Thule should be a few more degrees to the north - in the region of the Arctic Circle!

“The most remote of all known lands is Thule, where during the solstice, when the sun is in the sign of Cancer, as we have mentioned, there are no nights, but there is very little daylight in winter. Some think that this goes on for six months in a row ... Some mention other islands: Scandia, Dumna, Bergi and the greatest of all Berrique, from which they usually sail to Tula. At a distance of one day's sea route from Thule, there is a supposedly frozen sea, called by some people the Cronian.

These words of Pliny the Elder complicate the situation to the limit, since the Arctic Circle is the northern coast of Iceland and rather “extreme” territories in Norway and Greenland. At present, the living conditions here do not at all resemble what ancient authors talk about. And they say that Thule is fertile, that late-ripening crops grow richly on it. From the beginning of spring, the inhabitants feed on roots and milk; for the winter they store tree fruits. In some sources, agriculture is simply out of the question, while others state that, on the contrary, the inhabitants of Thule eat millet and honey, having almost no pets. Beekeeping is almost always mentioned, which, as you know, is now impossible even at a latitude of 64 degrees, and even more so - near the Arctic Circle.

However, much in Thule's descriptions is not similar to the images of the North familiar to us:

“Then [Pytheas] talks about Tula and about those areas where there is no more land, sea or air, and instead of them - a mixture of all this, similar to a sea lung, where earth, sea and everything in general hangs in the air, and this mass serves like a connection of the whole world, along which it is impossible to walk or sail on a ship. That it has the form of a lung, Pytheas himself saw him say; everything else he reports by hearsay.

They try to understand the "sea lung" as an image of fog and small ice, which, as it were, pass one into another, forming a thick, almost uniform mixture. However, nowhere in the messages is it said about the cold! Meanwhile, Pytheas made a trip to Tula in the summer, and in the summer months such a natural phenomenon is not typical for latitudes even in the region of the Arctic Circle. And it is hardly likely that a Greek traveler would call such a phenomenon "the connection of the whole world" - even in a fit of poetic obsession. Anyone who has been in similar weather conditions in the northern seas knows that they are not at all conducive to poetic liberties. If Pytheas meant fog, then not at sub-zero temperatures!

And another strange statement of Pytheas is cited by Pliny the Elder:

"Pytheas of Massilia states that north of Britain the height of the sea tide is 80 Roman cubits."

Such a huge tidal wave is formed only as a result of a natural disaster - a hurricane or punami. Perhaps - as most of Pliny's publishers believe - we have a trivial scribal error. However, the story of a wave of this kind evokes a curious association with a rampart flooding the perishing earth. Perhaps Pytheas - or his informants - witnessed a cataclysm associated with the submersion of some territory under water, which they perceived as a grandiose sea wave?

In order to save the "historical reality", some of the researchers seek to find Thule much further south than follows from the descriptions of Pytheas. For example, it is argued that this island could be the area of ​​​​the Hebrides or Shetland Islands, lying on underwater heights, which in the time of Pytheas could rise above sea level. They, of course, are too close to the British coast, but the climate on them is quite suitable for the descriptions of Pliny and Strabo.

However, in addition to an unambiguous indication of the length of day and night, Pytheas also left us an important astronomical observation about the North Pole. He described the location of the latter, which took place only at the end of the 4th century BC. e. and was visible only from the Arctic Circle:

“There is no star in the place of the celestial pole; it is empty, and near it are three luminaries, with which the pole forms an almost regular square.

I do not want to hypothesize about the places where the traveler from Massilia actually visited. We are talking about the Arctic Circle, but neither the conditions of life, nor its geography, it clearly does not coincide with what we know now. Are the inhabitants of Thule Atlanteans? Perhaps, yes, but, most likely, we are talking about the same people who inhabited the Ogygia archipelago in the story told by Plutarch. The mildness of the climate, the “lung of the sea” - all this is close to the stories about the mystical islands and about the trials of people from the “Great Land”, who went to serve Kronos. Actually, in the story of Pytheas, it is precisely the "Abyss of Kronos" that appears before us; once quite real, but now forgotten and inexplicable, based on the current level of knowledge.

Thule was perceived in ancient times as "the end of the earth." "Ultima Thule" became in Latin a combination of words meaning the limit beyond which the human foot is no longer able to step. Horace, for example, referring to the Emperor Octavian Augustus in the Georgics, says: “Will you become the god of the boundless seas and honor the sailors // Will you be alone, will you conquer the extreme Tula ...”

However, in the middle of the first century A.D. e. The Roman philosopher and playwright Seneca, in his tragedy Medea, writes lines that make us assume that he has knowledge similar to that shown to us by Plutarch:

Will come in centuries distant years,
When the Ocean will loosen the bonds of things.
Then a huge country will open,
Tethys will show a new world,
And Thule will not be the end of the earth ...

It is difficult to assume that we are talking here about something other than Plutarch's "Great land", that is, than the American continent.

The concept of a continent spanning the Atlantic Ocean is not limited to Plato and his students like Plutarch. The Greek historian Theopompus of Chios (377-315 BC) also spoke about him, who, although he was a younger contemporary of Plato, clearly did not depend on the writings of the latter. Theopompus' message has come down to us in the form of Elian, a late Roman collector of amusing stories. As the reader will see, Elian is rather ironic about the story of Theopompus, but he does not deny himself the pleasure of bringing it.

“Theopompus tells about the conversation of the Phrygian Midas with Silenus. (This one is strong - the son of a nymph; by nature he is lower than a deity, but higher than a man, since he is endowed with immortality.) They talked about various subjects; among other things, Silenus told Midas the following: Europe, Asia and Libya are islands washed on all sides by the ocean; the only inhabited continent lies outside the ecumene. He, according to Theopompus, is immeasurably huge, inhabited by large animals, and the people there are also giants, in two ordinary heights, and they live not as much as we do, but twice as much.

On this mainland there are many large cities with a peculiar way of life and laws that are opposite to those accepted in our country. Two cities, in no way resembling each other, surpass all others in size. One is called Mahim, the other is Evsebos. The inhabitants of Eusebos spend their days in peace and prosperity, receive the fruits of the earth without using a plow and bulls - they do not need to plow and sow - they are always healthy and cheerful and full of fun until death. They are so impeccably true that the gods often endow them with their visits. The inhabitants of Mahim are unusually warlike, they are born already in arms, they have been fighting all their lives, subjugating their neighbors and ruling over other peoples. The population of Mahim reaches no less than two hundred myriads. People there sometimes, but rarely, die of disease, but usually they die in battle, struck down by stones or clubs; for iron they are invulnerable. They have a lot of gold and silver, so that these metals are less valuable than our iron. They once, according to Silenus, made an attempt to cross over to our islands and crossed the ocean in the amount of a hundred myriads, reached the Hyperborean limits, but did not want to go further, because, having heard that the inhabitants there were considered the happiest among us, they found on the very In fact, their lives are miserable and wretched.

Silenus told Midas even more amazing things: some tribe of mortal people inhabits many large cities on the mainland; the border of their lands is a place called Anoston; it is like an abyss: there is neither day nor night, and the air is always filled with a reddish dusk. Two rivers flow through Anoston - Joyful and Sad, on the banks of which trees grow the size of a tall plane tree; the trees along the Sorrowful bear fruits endowed with such a property: whoever eats them, he begins to cry and will shed tears for the rest of his life, and will die that way; those that grow at Joyful, give completely different fruits: he who has tasted them renounces his former desires and, if he loved something, forgets about it, soon begins to grow younger and relives the long-gone years again. Having thrown off old age, he enters the heyday, then becomes a youth, turns into a youth, into a child, and, finally, completely ceases to exist. Anyone to believe Chios<т. е. Феопомпу>, let him believe, but it seems to me that he is here, and indeed often, tells fables.

The story told by Silenus, of course, looks like a fable. It makes us take it more seriously, firstly, the story of the invasion of the inhabitants of Mahim. After all, this story repeats Plato's message about the campaign of the Atlanteans in the Mediterranean, however, with other goals (it seems that the inhabitants of Mahim simply wanted to find people living in even happier conditions) and without catastrophic results. At the same time, the number of invaders is striking - such an abundance of inhabitants of another continent could not but leave a “genetic heritage”. Secondly, Theopompus, like Plato, proceeds from the "continental" geographical model, believing that the Atlantic is surrounded by land from the west. Both of them believe that the inhabitants of overseas lands are superior to the inhabitants of the Mediterranean - both in proximity to the gods and in their natural inclinations.

Theopompus' message also implies the presence in antiquity of connections between the various shores of the Atlantic.

The story of the Joyful and Sad Rivers is a retelling of the notion, widespread not only in antiquity, that some people are able to stop the passage of time and, unlike the majority (in tears and sorrows walking towards death), free themselves from aging and “grow back”. Plato has reasoning on the same topic, but I think that here, too, Plato was not the source of Theopompus, but legends that could originate from the mystical practices of the same Egyptians.

Theopompus was not the only one who supported the idea of ​​a "continental" structure of the earth. It is curious that its reflection can be found even in the texts of those cultures that were removed from the Atlantic. In the ideas about the world that the Jains adhered to, the description of the earth's surface as a whole resembled the image of Atlantis by Plato. At the same time, however, the scale was increased many times over, resulting in the following picture:

At the center of the world is the world mountain Mandara, which is surrounded by the Jambudvipa continent. This continent has the meaning of the middle earth and is divided into seven fabulous kingdoms; it is surrounded by a wall of precious stones, and analogies to it should be sought in the legends about the famous middle "country of Shambhala". Jambudvipa is girded by the Lavonda Ocean, beyond which lies the Dhatakikhanda mainland, encircling Lavonda!

It is Dhatakikhandu that should be considered the place where human civilizations are located. From the outside, it is covered by a new circular ocean of Kalod, filled with grandiose groups of islands and surrounded by another mainland - Pushkaradvipa. Although the circular arrangement of oceans and continents continues further, we must stop at the last continent.

The thing is that Pushkaradvipa is divided around the circle by the Manusottara mountain range. This ridge is the boundary beyond which mortals no longer live. Next are the territories belonging to the deities.

Manushottara is reminiscent of the Cordillera and Andes, which in the same way divide the American continent longitudinally. On their inner side live people known to the compilers of Jain cosmography. The opposite side remains unknown and mysterious - hence it follows that its masters are the gods. Perhaps, in Theopompus, the analogy of this ridge is the area of ​​\u200b\u200bAnoston, which limits the inhabited lands of the outer mainland.

The islands of the Blessed are one of the most enduring themes in ancient mythology and... geography.

The first ancient Greek text that mentions these islands is Homer's Odyssey. No matter how much modern historians would like to consider it exclusively as a mythological journey, as a fairy tale of the provincials about the world around them, the information contained in the famous poem requires close attention. The first snippet goes like this:

You will not die and meet fate in the multi-horse Argos,
You are beyond the bounds of the earth, you will be in the fields of Elysees
Sent by the gods - to where Rhadamanth the golden-haired lives
(Where the bright carefree days of man run,
Where there are no snowstorms, no downpours, no cold winters;
Where sweetly flying marshmallow blows, Ocean
With a slight coolness sent there to blessed people).

These words are spoken by a sea deity named Proteus, and they are addressed to Menelaus, the wife of Helen, who started the Trojan War, the famous hero and son-in-law of Zeus himself. (Beautiful Elena is the daughter of Zeus.)

Menelaus is promised that he will pass the lot of mortals, that he will go to those lands where immortal beings live. Rhadamanthus is the son of Zeus and Europe; in most ancient sources it is stated that he, along with Minos and Aeacus, is the judge of the dead. Plato also speaks of this in the Gorgias dialogue.

However, Homer, an older source, claims that Rhadamanthus has passed the lot of mortals and that he rules in Elysium (on the Champs Elysees). Here his partner is none other than Kronos. We know that Rhadamanthus had a cult in Boeotia, and this fact again points us to the "Phoenician" trace in the reports about the lands beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

But even more important is that these islands were called Happy, Blessed. Traditional science believes that the Greeks had ideas about Paradise associated with them, where only the heroes chosen by the gods or those who are initiated into the great mysteries fall.

I am convinced that another explanation of the legends about the islands of the Blessed is possible. The story of a happy life on them is a memory of a high, powerful civilization that once existed in the west and was far ahead of the Mediterranean region in terms of its level of development.

All this is quite understandable from the point of view of elementary psychology. The place where an advanced civilization was located always remains sacred for generations of people living centuries and millennia after it. An example is the books written in Britain and Ireland in the Middle Ages. These books claim that the ancestors of the British and Irish came from the Mediterranean and go back to the first generations of people about whom the Old Testament writes. Palestine, as the birthplace of the Christian religion, and Italy, as the source of Western civilization, become legendary countries, but it would not occur to any modern scholar to consider the Italy or Palestine of the Irish and British chroniclers as reflections of the belief in Paradise.

Here is what else Homer writes about overseas lands:

There is (probably you know) an island called Syrah,
Above Ortygia, where the sun makes its turn;
It is sparsely populated, but comfortable for life,
Fat, free to herds, rich in grapes and wheat;
There's never a deadly cold, people
There is no fear of infection; on the contrary, when there
Frail old age encompasses one generation of the living,
Taking his silver bow, Apollo and Artemis descend
Secretly, so that with a quiet arrow painlessly send them death.

Before us another "sacred island"? Another version of Paradise?

Perhaps, yes - but Paradise on earth. Such a Paradise, which, from the point of view of Plato, was Atlantis during the first generations of people who inhabited it, such a Paradise, which was the cradle of human civilization and culture.

Below, Homer speaks of the island of Syra as a very real place where the Phoenician merchants sailed, about the cities located there. The distance at which the island of Syra lies from the lands known to the Greeks is difficult to ascertain; although the author of the Odyssey is talking about a week of sailing on the high seas, it is clear from the context that a week is only part of the whole journey, perhaps not even half. They tried to derive the name "Syrah" from the "Syrians", that is, the Phoenician Semites who discovered this land.

However, such an etymology may be akin to incidents that occur in popular literature devoted to ancient civilizations. In one of the books, I had a chance to subtract that the "formors", the name of one of the oldest, legendary tribes that inhabited Ireland, is derived from the word ... "Pomors".

Ortigia, "Quail" is the land whose mistress was obviously Artemis (having the epithet "Ortigia"). This island should not be confused with the island of the same name, located opposite the city of Syracuse.

Where was Homer's Ortigia located? The place where the sun turns is the same direction that Plutarch speaks of when talking about Ogygia, that is, west - southwest. "Above" Ortigia can mean both north and south: it all depends on how the imaginary map that the author is orienting to is oriented. On many maps - up to the New Age - the south was located at the top, and the north was at the bottom.

Sira and Ogygia are united by a story about the unusual climatic conditions in which the people inhabiting them live. Undoubtedly, in both cases, we could talk about the same place. Thus, in the times preceding the classical era of Greek history, there was confidence in the presence in the west of lands with mild and fertile climatic conditions, which were repeatedly visited by Mediterranean traders from ancient times and which were not some kind of curiosity for them.

At the very beginning of the Odyssey, Homer also speaks of a fabulous place among the western seas. Calypso holding Odysseus

... on an island surrounded by waves,
The navel of the wide sea, wooded, where the nymph rules,
Daughter of Atlas, the thief who knows the seas
All the depths and which alone supports the bulk
Long huge pillars pushing the sky and the earth apart.

Back in the 19th century, it was argued that by "Atlant" one should understand the peak of Tenerife in the Canaries. But then what kind of “long-huge pillars” are spoken of that push apart heaven and earth? Perhaps these words do not point to Tenerife, but to the peaks of the Azores - the legendary peaks of Atlantis? Or we are talking about something else altogether - neither the Azores nor Tenerife. The image of Atlas, who knows "all the depths", resembles a crystal column, which the Irish saint Brendan will see much later in the Atlantic (see below). In any case, the "pillars" (plural!) are something more grandiose than any of the island mountains.

Let's give the floor to Plutarch again. In the biography of the famous Roman general-dissident Sertorius, he mentions two islands lying in the Atlantic Ocean:

“They are separated from one another by a very narrow strait, located ten thousand stadia from the African coast, and are called the Islands of the Blessed. From time to time they get light rains, but in most cases they are refreshed by gentle winds, bringing with them dew, as a result of which the beautiful, rich soil becomes not only possible for plowing and sowing, but even bears fruit of its own accord. There are a lot of them; they are tasty and can feed the idle population without labor and worries. The islands enjoy a pleasant climate due to their temperature and lack of drastic changes in seasons. The north and east winds blowing from us must sweep through a vast space, as a result of which, if I may say so, they disperse and lose their strength. On the contrary, sea winds, south and west, often bring light rains from the sea, slightly refresh the land with moisture in clear weather, and nourish almost all vegetation. That is why, even among the natives, the belief brought from outside managed to spread that the Champs Elysees, the seat of the righteous, glorified by Homer, should be here.

Ten thousand stadia is about two thousand kilometers: a figure obtained by adding the distances indicated by Plutarch in his myth of Ogygia. The coincidence is hardly accidental, especially since in that case we got this number by addition. The western and southern winds that our author writes about are humid and warm. Such air currents could determine the weather only in the zone of the Gulf Stream, moreover, the "that" Gulf Stream, which has not yet completely turned into the current known to us. To make it clearer what I mean, I will cite the famous

The North Equatorial Current, as we have repeatedly mentioned, directs travelers to the Caribbean. To the north, towards the British Isles, there is a flow of the Gulf Stream, which prevents direct navigation to the coast of the current United States and Canada.

These currents are a horseshoe-shaped oval, and its center, which is also a "dead zone", is located in the west - southwest of the Azores. On maps of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in this direction, a decrease in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is visible; however, the "channels" of sea currents should not be directly associated with the bottom topography.

And yet this circuit is curious, especially if we take into account the well-known Atlantological "argument from acne."

Many readers are no doubt aware of the strange migrations made by some of the species of migratory birds whose summer nests lie in the north of Siberia or Canada. At the same time, flocks of birds make inexplicable "voyages" to those regions of the Arctic where there are no lands. Supporters of the existence of the "Island of Hyperborea" or "Arktida" ("Sannikov's Land") consider the routes of their flight as proof of the existence in relatively recent times of the islands that served as havens for birds; the genetic memory of these islands until now causes anomalies in the direction of their migrations.

But not everyone knows about such anomalies in the migration of eels!

The birthplace of these fish is the Sargasso Sea. Here, nature has taken care of a real "nursery" for all heat-loving sea creatures. The waters in this area of ​​the Atlantic Ocean are so warm that they resemble the famous "shallow seas" of Gondwana, which, according to the assumptions of paleontologists, once became a hotbed of diverse life forms.

Acne grows slowly; only a year after birth, they reach a "growth" of five centimeters. Nevertheless, already in the second year of life, their journey begins. Teenage eels suddenly let themselves be carried away by the Gulf Stream and spend at least a year in its warm streams before being carried to the mouths of European rivers. Here they separate: only females enter the rivers, while males remain in coastal waters and spend at least five years there. Only after that, along with the North Equatorial Current, the eels go back to the west, in order to unite in marriage in the Sargasso Sea and give birth to a new generation of travelers.

Why did nature need all this epic wandering? Why don't eels use the rivers of the American continent, which is literally next to their "incubator" in the Sargasso Sea? For the journey of the eels is not only long, but extremely dangerous; nature is like water: it prefers to avoid obstacles, go around them, find the simplest ways to solve problems related to the continued existence of the species.

Following the logic of the supporters of Arctida, we can assume that we are not one of the tricks of the law of natural selection, but the result of the sinking of the land, which once served as a refuge for eels, and a change in the nature of the Gulf Stream. If east of what is now the Sargasso Sea was the land known to us as Atlantis, then it was in its rivers that female eels could find refuge during puberty. In this case, the Gulf Stream was "sandwiched" between America and Atlantis and, quite possibly, turned not to the north, but to the south near the shores of the latter. Such a movement of water masses in the presence of land in the center of the Atlantic is more likely than the run of the Gulf Stream along a much more difficult route to the north, towards Iceland and South Greenland.

Atlantis, "locking" the Gulf Stream, thus could (along with other factors) provoke an "Ice Age" in the north of Europe, since, along with the ocean current of the Old World, a significant amount of heat would not have reached. In the western half of the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream and the North Equatorial Current would be one stream, circulating in a circle centered somewhere near Bermuda.

Negatively affecting Europe, the Gulf Stream was supposed to add both heat and moisture to Mesoamerica, as well as to the south of the North American continent. In any case, there, on vast territories, there were ideal conditions for the life of elephants, horses, even camels (!), The remains of which are now discovered by paleontologists and which begin to disappear somewhere 12-10 thousand years before the birth of Christ. Maybe the reason for their disappearance was not only ancient hunters, but also a sharp change in climate?

After the death of Atlantis, a warm current was thrown into the expanses of the North Atlantic, and the redistribution of energy led to the fact that it had a relatively cold twin (a twin that is a mirror image of the Gulf Stream in everything), carrying the coolness of the Old World to the west - that is, the North Equatorial Current .

Together with the Gulf Stream, the eels began to travel to the shores of Europe: their growth cycle was flexible enough to withstand this test. But a number of species of marine animals probably never adapted to the new conditions, and their remains will someday be discovered by underwater archaeologists in the depths of the Sargasso Sea.

Returning to the story of Plutarch, we can conclude that in the biography of Sertorius, he is not talking about the two islands that are part of the Ogygia archipelago - and primarily because they are separated by a narrow strait. A similar strait can be found, for example, at about 24 degrees north latitude in the structures of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The distance to it, however, exceeds 2000 km, and the direction of navigation here would not be west - southwest, but southwest, however, traces of such underwater "gorges" can be found further north.

We hardly have before us an example of geographical confusion, when the same object, described by different travelers, is recorded by geographers as somewhat different. Plutarch speaks of others islands that had a fairly regular connection with the European mainland. The identification of these islands with the Canaries or Madeira is impossible due to the location of these groups of islands twice as close to Gibraltar as the lands referred to in the above fragment. Even the Azores are not suitable for this purpose: they lie no more than 1500 km away and have a more severe climate.

Another confirmation of the presence in the Atlantic in the ancient period of islands “lost” by our memory is the story of Pomponius Mela. He claims that opposite Atlas

“... the Isles of the Blessed are located. On them, the fruits grow by themselves, one after another, serving as food for the population of the islands. These people do not know worries and live better than the inhabitants of famous cities. One of the islands is remarkable for two amazing springs: after tasting the waters from one, a person begins to laugh and can die from laughter. But as soon as you drink from another, the laughter stops.”

Mela speaks of the islands of the Blessed after the story of the Hesperides (see Ogygia), so that we can say with confidence that different things are meant here.

Maybe it's not worth "multiplying essences" and before us is just a mention of the Canary Islands?

However, in antiquity, the Canaries were known very well and sailed there even after the death of the Carthaginian state. Pliny the Elder in his "Natural History" writes: "It is known that ... Yuyuba discovered the islands on which he set up a dye-works, where Getulian purple was used." Orsel, a lichen that grew precisely in the Canaries, was used to make purple paint. Because of the presence of this dye, the Canary Islands were called the Purple Islands for some time.

Yuba, according to the same Pliny, discovered the ruins of some buildings in the Canary Islands, and all modern scientists consider this message evidence in favor of visiting the islands by the Phoenicians, but he did not find inhabitants there, which is already a mystery! When the Canary Islands were rediscovered by Europeans (in 1341 - Florentine merchants in the service of the Portuguese king), they were inhabited by Guanches, and quite densely.

In any case, the Purple Islands and the Isles of the Blessed are different things. "Opposite the Atlas" does not mean - next to the African coast. "Opposite" may indicate the direction of navigation, latitude, and not distance. But just opposite the Moroccan coast lies that part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which (besides the Azores) most attracts the attention of atlantologists.

The case in this dialogue takes place at the beginning of June, during the feast of the washing of the statue of Athena, the Patroness of the City.

This holiday was held in autumn, at the beginning of November. During his time, boys and girls were accepted as members of the paternal clan (“phratries”).

Homer. Odyssey. VII. 244.

One of the three hundred-armed, born from the marriage of Gaia and Uranus; guardian of the underworld. Interestingly, according to Elian, “Aristotle said that the Pillars of Hercules were formerly called the Pillars of Briareus. But since Hercules cleansed both the earth and the sea of ​​monsters and provided many benefits to people, for his sake they forgot about Briareus and named the Pillars after Hercules ”(See Motley stories. V. 3).

Another mention of the dangers of sailing in some areas of the Atlantic after the sinking of Atlantis under water.

It is difficult to say how much this text influenced the reasoning of the Swedish scholar.

This refers to the Etruscans, whose maritime expansion falls at the beginning of the 5th century BC. BC e.

Even during the heyday of Athens, under Pericles, there were no more than 20,000 citizens (men who had the rights of a free-born person), while the total population of this ancient metropolis did not exceed 100,000 people.

In addition, the Gambia may be "another river full of crocodiles and hippos" that travelers discovered after the lake.

In this case, the West Horn would have a pair in the form of the East Horn on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea.

Arrian's testimony, which says that Hanno sailed east for thirty-five days, may refer to the first voyage from Kern, and Arrian's next phrase "When he turned south" to the journey after returning to Kern.

Pliny the Elder and Marcianus Capella, however, say that Hanno bypassed the African peninsula from the south and reached the borders of Arabia. However, we know from the report of the Carthaginian navigator himself that this is not so. Pliny and the Capella, who depended on him, attributed to Hanno an achievement that he simply did not aspire to. The task of the latter was not to travel around Africa, but to establish colonies and establish new trade relations. Since Pliny decided that Arabia was Hanno's goal, he naturally identified the direction of navigation of the Carthaginians during one of their expeditions with travel in general.

A city on the coast of the Marmara Sea, connected by a trade and military-political union with Egypt.

True, the Roman historian Cornelius Nepos, who lived at the beginning of the 1st century. BC e., that is, shortly after the travels of Eudoxus, he claimed that the latter did sail "around Libya", and not from west to east, but in the opposite direction - from the Red Sea to Hades! If Nepos did not confuse Eudoxus' desire to find a way around Africa with his voyage from Egypt to Spain in the Mediterranean, then the account of Posidonius (who wrote at the same time as Nepos) will need to be revised.

In another place, however, Aristotle will say that, based on the sphericity of the Earth, it is necessary to consider India as the other side of the Atlantic.

Avien. Sea shores. IV. 6.

Hipparchus. About Arata. 30. Hipparchus - a Greek astronomer who lived two hundred years after Pytheas and fixed the already outdated position of the pole when he formed a quadrangle with Alpha, Beta Ursa Minor, and also Alpha Draconis.

Cm.: Elian. Motley stories. III. 18. Translation by S. V. Polyakova.

Midas- the legendary and richest king of Phrygia (a state in Asia Minor that flourished in the 8th century BC). Perhaps the historical prototype of Midas was King Mita, mentioned in the Assyrian texts. There is a legend that he managed to get Silenus drunk and capture him, but in exchange for his release, Midas demanded secret, divine knowledge. Silenus' story is one element of this knowledge, while Midas's "alchemical" ability to turn everything he touched into gold was another.

In this case, not even divine, but simply diabolical ingenuity would have to be attributed to nature: only those eels who are really lucky return from many years of wandering.

It remains cold until about the fortieth meridian (west of Greenwich), although, let me remind you, it carries water masses south of the Gulf Stream.

This refers to Yuba II, the king of Numidia, who ruled this North African state already in the second half of the 1st century BC. BC e., after the actual subordination of his homeland to Rome.

Sumerian mythology

ancient mythology

The oldest representations

The mention of the reign of Kron (the co-ruler of the Islands is his son, the judge of the underworld Radamant) makes us correlate the Greek legend with the legend of the Golden Age, when Kron reigned over the whole earth. In that era, people did not know need, suffering and death, their life was built according to the laws of divine justice. The Islands of the Blessed remained the last "relic" of the Golden Age on earth, but it is impossible to reach them without the help of the gods.

The execution of death covered many in bloody battles;
Others to the borders of the earth were transferred by the thunderer Kronion,
Giving food and shelter to them separately from mortals.
Knowing neither thoughts nor worries in their hearts, they are serenely
Near the depths of the ocean, the islands inhabit the blessed.
Three times a year, grain-bearing soil for happy heroes
It brings fruit in abundance with sweetness equal to honey.

The development of the image in the Hellenistic and Roman era

Gradually, as the Greeks mastered the Mediterranean, the ideal islands moved further and further, to the extreme limits of the ecumene. In the description of these islands, literary and philosophical-utopian motifs increasingly appeared, which were layered on a mythological basis.

This tradition was picked up in the Roman era. Plutarch in his treatise "On the Visible Face of the Moon" and the biography of Sertorius writes about the mythical island of Ogygia, where, "according to the legendary stories of the barbarians, Jupiter holds Saturn captive". The presence of the god of fertility imparts a luxurious unfading character to the nature of the island, the flow of time there is imperceptible.

Light rains occasionally fall there, soft and damp winds constantly blow; on these islands it is not only possible to sow and plant on good and fat land - no, the people there, without burdening themselves with either labor or trouble, gather sweet fruits in abundance, which grow by themselves. The air on the islands is life-giving due to the mildness of the climate and the absence of a sharp difference between the seasons, because the northern and eastern whirlwinds born within our borders weaken due to the distance, dissipate in the vast expanses and lose power, and the southern and western winds blowing from the sea occasionally they bring light rain, but more often their moist and cool breath only softens the heat and nourishes the earth. Not without reason, even among the barbarians, a firm conviction was strengthened that there were the Champs Elysees and the abode of the blessed, sung by Homer.

Representations of other peoples

Celtic mythology

The sacred nature of this space is also evidenced by the fact that time does not move here:

“... those who are now in paradise in the flesh eat the fruit of paradise and do not grow old” .

The paradise surroundings are also amazing. Not far from them, the springs of immortality are beating and dog-headed men live (“The Tale of the Three Monks”).

The notion of "Islands of the Blessed" in traditional Russian culture is also associated with the legend of Buyan Island. Many Russian conspiracies begin with a mention of him. Buyan Island, like Eden, is the meeting point of earth and sky. There is not only the mysterious stone Alatyr, but also the powers of heaven with the saints:

“On the sea in the Ocean, on the island on Buyan, on the white-flammable stone Alatyr, on a brave horse sits Egor the Victorious, Michael the Archangel, Elijah the Prophet, Nicholas the Wonderworker”.

As in Eden, on Buyan Island there is the sacred center of the world - the world tree (oak) or Alatyr stone. Both of these images, one way or another, coincide in the Christian mythology of the Eastern Slavs with the image of Christ and the Mother of God. The utopian blessed Makary Islands (from the Greek µακάριος - blessed), where honey and milk rivers flow with jelly banks, according to the ancient Russian Cosmographies, are located in the "east of the sun, near the blissful paradise." They are called "blessed" because

Chinese mythology

In Chinese legends, there is an image of three sacred islands-mountains that served as the abode of celestials. (In total, according to Taoist beliefs, there are 36 heavenly caves and 72 happy countries, which are considered as a heavenly abode).

When people on earth learned about such beautiful and mysterious mountains, everyone wanted to visit them. Sometimes the wind drove the boats of fishermen and fisherwomen close to these sacred mountains, fishing near the shore. The immortals greeted the guests warmly. Then, using a fair wind, the fishermen returned home safely. And soon rumors began to spread among the people that the inhabitants of those mountains kept a medicine that gives people immortality.

Some emperors of ancient China equipped special expeditions in search of sacred islands. There was an idea that Penglai and the other two mountains looked like clouds from a distance. But when people approach them, the mountain-islands go under water.

Japanese mythology

In Japanese fairy tales there is a story about the Island of Eternal Youth, which is many days away, "in the country of unknown strangers." On it (as well as in the Novgorod legend) is the world tree.

Residents of the rocky coast of the Japanese East Sea say that at certain times you can see a strange tree that rises from the waves. This is the same tree that stood for several millennia on the highest peak of Fusano-o, the mountain of immortality. People become happy if they manage to see its branches even for a moment, although the sight is momentary, like a dream in the morning dawn. The never ending spring reigns on the island. Forever the air streams fragrance, forever the sky is open - pure blue; heavenly dew quietly falls on trees and flowers and reveals to them the secret of eternity. The delicate foliage of the trees never loses its freshness, and the bright scarlet lilies never wither. Rose flowers, like a spirit, gently surround the branches; the dangling fruits of the orange tree do not bear any imprint of approaching old age ... The chosen gods who inhabited this secluded coast spent their days in music, laughter and singing.

The island is visited at different times by the court physician of the Chinese emperor Io-fuku and the Japanese sage Vasobiove, who, having settled on the Island of Eternal Youth, “did not notice the flow of time, because time passes unnoticed when birth and death do not limit it.”

Attempts at geographic localization

The most ancient legends about the Isles of the Blessed do not give a clear idea of ​​which of the islands or archipelagos known to us corresponds to them. In many myths, the Islands of the Blessed are generally not on Earth, but in the other world. Many later authors, especially the creators of utopias, deliberately emphasized that we are talking about a fictional country.

Nevertheless, since ancient times, repeated attempts have been made to carry out a topographic identification of the Blissful Isles. In addition, the island of Ogygia, mentioned in the Odyssey, although close in description to the Isles of the Blessed, has never mixed with them.

Malta Island

Based on the text of the Odyssey, other scholars associate the island of Ogygia with modern Malta. The words "navel of the sea" in this interpretation refer to the Mediterranean Sea, in the central part of which Malta is located.

Faroe islands

In another treatise, Plutarch indicates the location of Ogygia in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean, "five days' voyage from Britain."

Some of the details indicated in Homer's Odyssey, where Ogygia is called the "navel of the sea", allowed some scientists to correlate with the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic.

Canary Islands

The ancient mythological tradition places the Isles of the Blessed in the extreme west, where the waters of the sea are connected to the course of the ocean world river. Plutarch talks about the islands of the Blessed in the biography of Sertorius, saying that there are two of them, they are 10,000 stadia from Africa and the people live there by picking fruits.

Serpent's Island

The Black Sea Island (now the territory of Ukraine) occupies a position atypical for the mythological tradition - in the east, not in the west. Nevertheless, it has long and fairly confidently been identified with the ancient Greek Isles of the Blessed. In ancient times, one of the names of the island was Levkos (Greek. Λευκός , white island). It was considered a sacred island

Islands of the Blessed

In my essay on the Earthly Paradise, I mentioned the main medieval legends relating to a certain beautiful place, which was located, according to popular belief, to the east of Asia. In ancient times, there was an idea of ​​Atlantis, a huge continent located far, far in the West, where Kronos sleeps and which is guarded by Briares. It was a land covered with forests, where rivers flowed and the air was fresh. In the view of ancient people, it occupied the same place as the Earthly Paradise among Christians. The Church Fathers fought against this popular belief, since the Holy Scriptures clearly indicated that the wonderful land was "in Eden in the east." However, despite their attempts to eradicate the idea of ​​the existence of a western paradise, it continued to live in the minds of people throughout the Middle Ages until Christopher Columbus began to search and found Atlantis and Paradise in the New World. It was a world where the ideas of ancient people and people of the Middle Ages coincided, since it was located east of Asia and west of Europe. “The holy theologians and philosophers were right when they placed the Earthly Paradise far in the East, since the climate is the most favorable there, and the land that I have just discovered is on the border of the East,” the admiral wrote in one of his letters. In 1498, he again repeated his thought in another letter: “I am sure that this is an Earthly Paradise”, the one that, according to Saints Ambrose, Isidore and Bede the Venerable, was located in the East.

The concept of the western lands, or group of islands, was common among the Celts, as well as among Greek and Roman geographers, they had religious significance for the ancients, and superstitions were associated with them, which survived after the introduction of Christianity.

This belief in a Western country may have arisen because the ocean brought strange alien objects to the shores of Europe. In the time of Columbus, Martin Vincent, one of the captains in the service of the King of Portugal, picked up a piece of wooden carving at Cape St. Vincent, a similar piece washed up on the shores of the island of Madeira, where it was discovered by Pedro Correa, a relative of the great navigator. The population of the Azores said that when the wind blew from the west, bamboo and sticks with inscriptions in an unknown language were thrown ashore. In the sands of the island of Flores, the remains of two people were once found with broad faces and features very different from Europeans. On another occasion, two canoes washed up on the shore, in which there were people of a strange appearance. In 1682, a canoe from Greenland appeared off the coast of Eday Island (Orkney), and an Eskimo boat was kept for a long time in the church of Burra, which was once washed ashore. On the coast of the Hebrides, nuts are often found, from which fishermen make snuff boxes or wear them as amulets. Martin, who wrote about the Western Isles in 1703, calls them molluca. This is the fruit Mimosa scandens that the Gulf Stream brings to our shores. Large, strangely shaped pieces of wood also wash up on these shores, and the islanders build their huts from them.

In 1508, a French ship encountered a boatload of American Indians off the English coast, as Bembo tells us in his history of Venice. Other examples are mentioned by the commentators of the amazing fragment of Cornelius Nepos, which contributed to the development in the Middle Ages of the idea of ​​​​the possibility of a northwestern route to India. Humboldt, in his notes on this fragment, writes: “Pomponius Mela, who lived at a time relatively close to the time of Cornelius Nepos, tells that Metellus Celer, being the proconsul of Gaul, received as a gift from the king of the Boii, or Boii, several people brought by a storm from the Indian seas to the shores of Germany. There is no need to discuss here whether this Metellus Celerus was the same praetor of Rome in the year of Cicero's consulship, and then joint consul with Africanus, or whether that German king was Ariovistus, defeated by Julius Caesar. We can only say with certainty that from the chain of ideas that led Pomponius Mela to mention this fact as indisputable, we can conclude that in his time in Rome they were sure that these swarthy people, sent from Germany to Gaul, crossed the ocean, which bathed East and North Asia.

Canoes, human remains, wooden fragments, and nuts washed up by the ocean on the western coast of Europe may have been the source of the belief that there is a land behind the setting sun, which has been designated as Meropida, the land of Kronos, the island of Ogygia, Atlantis, the Isles of the Blessed, or the Garden of the Hesperides. . Strabo clearly indicates that the only obstacle on the way west from Iberia to India is the width of the Atlantic Ocean, but that "in the temperate zone where we live, especially near the parallel passing through Athens and crossing the Atlantic Ocean, two inhabited worlds can exist , and perhaps even more than two.

This is a much clearer prediction of the existence of America than the vague words of Seneca. Aristotle accepted the idea of ​​the existence of a new continent in the West and described it, based on the stories of the Carthaginians, as a fertile land covered with forests and irrigated with water, which is located opposite the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar). Diodorus writes that the Phoenicians discovered it, and adds that there are high mountains in that country, and the climate is not very changeable. In doing so, he tries to distinguish between it and Homer's Elysium, the Isles of the Blessed Pindar and the Garden of the Hesperides. The Carthaginians began to establish colonies there, but this was forbidden by law, because there was a fear that the original territory of Carthage would become empty and the inhabitants would move to a new, better country. Plutarch places the Homeric island of Ogygia five days' voyage from Brittia, and adds that there is a large continent five thousand stades from it. It stretches far to the north, and the people who inhabit this vast country consider the old world to be a small island. Theopompus makes the same remark when setting forth his geographical myth of Meropides.

It is not worth discussing here the ancient theories about Atlantis, since they were detailed by Humboldt in his work on the geography of the New World. Therefore, we will move on to the Celts and to the place that America occupied in their mythology.

According to Procopius of Caesarea, Brittia lies 200 stadia from the coast, between Britannia and Fula, opposite the mouth of the Rhine, and is inhabited by Angles, Frissons, and Brittons.

By Britain he means present-day Brittany, and Brittia is England. Tzetz relates that on the ocean coast opposite Britannia there live fishermen, subjugated by the Franks, but exempted from the payment of tribute because of their occupation, which consists in transporting souls to the other shore. Procopius also recounts this story, and Sir Walter Scott relates it in his Count Robert of Paris. Agelast says: “I read in that wonderful mirror that reflects the times of the fathers, the works of the scientist Procopius that in the sea beyond Gaul, almost opposite it, there is a ghostly land, always hidden by clouds and storms, which is known to the peoples neighboring it as a place where souls go after death. On one side of the strait lives a few strange kind of people, fishermen, who are granted certain privileges because, being alive, they perform the duties of the pagan Charon and transport the souls of the dead to the island, which becomes the abode of the latter after death. At night these fishermen are called in turn to do their work, by which they have permission to live on this strange shore. At the door of the one whose turn it was this time to perform this one service there is a knock that is not made by the hand of a mortal, and a whisper, like a fading breeze, urges the fisherman to do his work. He hurries ashore to his boat and as soon as he gets into it, he feels that her body is visibly immersed in water - this means that a dead person is already sitting in it. No one is visible, and although voices are heard, it is impossible to make out what they are talking about - as if someone is talking in a dream. According to M. de la Villemarke, the place from which the boat with the ghostly cargo set sail was near Cape Raz, near the Bay of Souls in the extreme west of Finistère. The desolate plains of this promontory opposite the Isle of Saintes, with its Lake Cleden, around which the skeletons of drowned sailors dance every night, located near Plogof, and marshes dotted with monuments of the Druids, make this landscape suitable for souls to gather here before their ghostly journey. Also in these parts near Lannion are the ruins of an ancient city identified with ??????? Strabo.

“On the large island of Brittia,” continues Procopius, “people in ancient times built a long wall, separating a significant part of the land. To the east of this wall there is a good climate and abundant crops, but to the west of it, on the contrary, they are such that no one can live there for an hour; it is a haven for snakes and other reptiles. If someone gets on the other side, he immediately dies, poisoned by poisonous fumes. This superstition, as it were, served as a second, additional, wall of the land of the dead, preserving the absolute solitude of souls. Procopius notes that this idea was widespread, and many people told him about it.

Claudian also heard this legend, but confused it with the other world of Odysseus. “There is a place on the far coast of Gaul, protected from the ebb and flow of the Ocean, where Odysseus, having committed bloodshed, attracted ghosts. There were groans, and lights flickered among the shadows. The inhabitants of that place saw figures, pale as statues, and the wandering dead.” According to Pliny, Philemon called the Northern Ocean "the sea of ​​the dead."

In an ancient ballad about Lancelot the Lake, the Virgin of Astolat asks after death to put her body, dressed in a rich dress, in a boat and let it sail away after the wind. These are traces of that same ancient idea of ​​traveling across the sea to the world of the dead.

And let them put up my deathbed,
Where I died of love to Lancelot,
Decorated royally lavishly,
With my cold, lifeless body,
Dressed in the most luxurious clothes,
On the wagon that will take him to the river,
To lower him into the boat, covered in black.

The gravedigger in Hamlet sings about the dead man:

... transported by ship to the country,
Like I wasn't.

When King Arthur received his mortal wound, Sir Bedivere brought him ashore.

“And when they came to the water, they saw a small boat near the shore, in which beautiful ladies were sitting, and among them a queen, and all of them had black hoods on their heads. They began to weep and wail when they saw King Arthur.

“Put me in this boat,” the king said, and he did so carefully.

The three queens received him with deep sorrow. These three queens sat side by side, on the knees of one of them King Arthur laid his head.

And then the queen said:

“Ah, dear brother, why did you hesitate away from me? Alas! That wound on your head has gotten too cold.

They rowed away from the shore, and Sir Bedivere cried:

Oh my lord Arthur! What will become of me now that you leave me here alone among my enemies?

“Comfort yourself,” said Arthur, “and do everything you can, for there is nothing to rely on me anymore. I'm leaving for the Avalon Valley to heal my grievous wound. And if you never hear from me again, pray for my soul!

Queens and ladies wept and wailed so that it was sad to listen to them. And when the boat disappeared from the eyes of Sir Bedivere, he wept and entered the forest.

This wonderful Avalon,

Where there is no hail, snow and rain,
And the wind does not howl loudly
And there are happy valleys and gardens,
That they are suitable for the summer sea,

is the Celtic Isle of the Blessed. Tsets and Procopius try to determine its location and conclude that it is Britain. But in this they were mistaken, as were those who hoped to find Avalon at Glastonbury. Avalon is the Isle of Apples, a name reminiscent of the Garden of the Hesperides far in the western seas, in the center of which stands a tree with golden apples. Then we are told that on the distant island of Ogygia, Kronos sleeps peacefully, guarded by Briareus, until the time comes for him to wake up. This is the Greek form of the myth of Arthur being cured of his grievous wound in Avalon. It hardly needs to be said that the Arthur of the novel is in fact a demigod believed in long before the appearance of the historical Arthur. Plutarch states that Ogygia lies in the west behind the setting sun. According to an ancient poem published by Mr. Wilmark, this is a place of amazing beauty. Boys and girls dance there, hand in hand, on the dew-covered grass, the branches of green trees weigh down the apples, and the golden sun rises and falls behind the forests. A bubbling stream flows from a spring in the center of the island, souls drink from it and get new life with a sip of this water. Joy, poems and songs reign in that country. This is a land of abundance, where the golden age continues forever. Cows give so much milk that ponds are filled with it. There is also a glass palace floating in the air, which receives the souls of the blessed dead within its transparent walls. This is the same glass house where Merrdyn Emrys and his nine bards traveled. He is mentioned by Taliesin in his poem "Prey of the Abyss", where he says that Arthur's fearlessness cannot be kept in a glass building. There are only three kinds of people who do not get access there: tailors (it is said that one person of another profession is worth nine tailors), who spend their days sitting and whose hands, despite their work, remain white, sorcerers and usurers.

According to popular belief, this remote island is much more beautiful than paradise. Rumors of his splendor so excited the minds of the people of the Middle Ages that the western country turned into a subject of satire and witticisms. She was nicknamed "a country with milk rivers and jelly banks" ("Cokene").

In an English poem, "probably written at the end of the thirteenth century," which, as Mr. Wright (The Purgatory of St. far across the sea to the west of Spain. In modern terms, it is:

Although Paradise is beautiful
Cockaine is even better.
What is in Paradise?
Grass, flowers and green leaves,
Joy and pleasure.
There is no meat, but only fruits,
There is no hall, dwelling and even a bench,
And to quench your thirst - only water.

Only two people live in Paradise, Enoch and Elijah. But Cockayne is filled with happy men and women. There is no country like this anywhere else on earth. Day always reigns there and night never comes, there are no quarrels and strife, no one dies, hail, snow and rain never fall, thunder and roar of winds are not heard:

There is also a beautiful abbey,
Where different monks live
There are dwellings and halls,
Their walls are built of dough,
From meat are erected and from fish.
Of all the delicious things.
Pies cover the roofs
Churches, cloisters, dwellings and halls.
Nails are blood sausages.
Meat for princes and kings.

The monastery is built of buns and spices, and birds sing merrily over all this, ready to fly into hungry mouths fried.

A French poem about this country describes it as a culinary paradise, which is reflected in its name. Roast geese walk the streets, a river of wine flows, all the women there are beautiful, and every month a man gets a new dress. There is a source of eternal youth, which restores the strength and blooming appearance of everyone who bathes in it, even if before that it was old and ugly.

Although most of the burlesques of the Middle Ages might have laughed at this mysterious Western land of blissful souls, it has firmly taken its place in people's minds. Curiously enough, just as Procopius confuses Britain with Avalon, the German peasants have their own "land of the angels", which they consonantly identify with England, where they believe the souls of the dead are taken. According to Teutonic mythology, which is similar to the Celtic in this point, there is a glass mountain in this country. In a similar form, the Slavs represent a paradise for souls. It has a huge garden with apple trees, in the center of which rises a glass mountain with a golden hall on top. In ancient times, during burial, they placed bear claws next to the body to help the deceased climb this crystal mountain.

This mysterious western country in Ireland was called Tir-na-Og, that is, the Land of Youth, it was identified with the city of palaces and churches, flooded by the Atlantic Ocean or located at the bottom of a lake.

M. de Latoquenay, in his description of a trip through Ireland, quoted by Crofton Crocker, says: “The ancient Greek authors, and especially Plato, wrote down an ancient tradition. They say that a huge island, or even a large continent, located to the west of Europe, was swallowed up by the sea. It is more than probable that the inhabitants of Connemara have never heard of Plato or the Greeks in general, and yet they have the same ancient tradition. “Our land will reappear someday,” the old people say to the younger generation when they take them to the top of the mountain on a certain day of the year and point out to the sea. Fishermen on the coasts also refer to having seen towns and villages on the bottom underwater. The descriptions of this fictional country are as vivid and exaggerated as those of the promised land: there are streams of milk flowing, rivers splashing with wine, and, no doubt, there are streams of whiskey and porter.

The subject of underwater cities that appear above the waves at dawn on Easter Sunday, or that can be seen by moonlight in the silent depths, is too extensive to be considered here, it could be the subject of a separate work. Each of the myths of antiquity is associated with other legends, and it is very difficult to select only one for research without touching on the others associated with it and without trying to analyze them. So in Christianity, one symbol is inextricably linked with another, explaining all the others and logically continuing those that preceded it, so cutting out one dogma will destroy the integrity and unity of faith. It is the same with the myths of antiquity: one myth is connected with another and cannot be separated without destroying the harmony of the magical cycle.

However, we confine ourselves to two points - a ghostly country in the West and a trip to it.

Washington Irving writes: “Those who have read the history of the Canaries may recall the wonders that tell about this mysterious island. Sometimes it could be seen from the shore far to the west. Apparently, he was as real as the Canaries themselves, and even more beautiful. Expeditions set sail from the Canary Islands to explore this promised land. For some time its sun-gilded mountain peaks and long dark outlines of headlands were clearly visible, but as the travelers approached, both mountain peak and headland gradually dissolved into air, and only the blue sky remained above the blue water.

Therefore, this mysterious island was named by ancient geographers Aprositus , i.e. "unreachable". The inhabitants of the Canaries tell the following tale about this island, which they named after St. Brendan. At the beginning of the 15th century, an old captain appeared in Lisbon. A storm once brought him to no one knows where, and he managed to land on the shores of a distant island. There the captain saw beautiful cities where Christians lived. The inhabitants of the island told him that they were the descendants of that group of believers who sailed from Spain when the Muslims conquered the country. They asked how things were now in their homeland, and were deeply saddened when they learned that the Muslims still dominated Granada. On returning to the ship, the old captain was overtaken by a storm that circled him around the sea, and he never saw the unknown island again. This strange story caused quite a stir in Portugal and Spain. Those who were versed in history remembered reading that in the 8th century, at the time of the conquest of Spain, seven bishops, at the head of seven groups of exiles, crossed a vast ocean and sailed to distant shores, where they were able to found seven Christian cities and practice their faith. in safety. The fate of these wanderers until that time remained a mystery and was erased from memory, but the story of the old captain revived a forgotten story. Pious and enthusiastic people decided that this island, so accidentally found, was the very place of salvation where the wandering bishops brought their flock at the behest of Divine Providence. But no one took up the matter half as zealously as Don Fernando de Alma, a young, romantic nobleman who held a high position in the court of the Portuguese king and had a mild, sanguine optimistic character. The island of the Seven Cities is henceforth a constant subject of his thoughts during the day and his dreams at night, he decides to equip an expedition and go in search of the holy island. The king provided him with a document, according to which he became the governor of the country he would open, with the only condition - he would bear all the expenses and pay a tenth of the profit to the treasury. Don Fernando went with two ships to the Canary Islands - at that time it was the area of ​​\u200b\u200bmarine discovery and romance and the farthest point in the known world (Columbus had not yet crossed the ocean). No sooner had the ships reached this latitude than a terrible storm separated them. For many days, Don Fernando's caravel wandered at the mercy of the elements, and the crew was in despair. But one day the storm subsided, the ocean calmed down, the clouds that covered the sky parted, and the sailors, exhausted by the storm, saw a beautiful island covered with mountains, whose peaks appeared from the darkness, as if by magic. The caravel lay adrift opposite the mouth of the river, on the banks of which, at a distance of about a league, stretched a majestic city with high walls, towers and a fortified castle. After some time, a sixteen-oared boat appeared on the river and began to approach the ship. Under a silk canopy in the stern sat a richly dressed nobleman, over whose head a flag with the holy symbol of the cross fluttered. When the boat reached the caravel, the gentleman boarded and, in the old Castilian dialect, greeted the wanderers on the Island of the Seven Cities. Don Fernando could hardly believe that this was not a dream. He gave his name and purpose of travel. The Grand Chamberlain - such was the title of a nobleman - assured him that as soon as he presented his documents, he would immediately be recognized as the governor of the Seven Cities. The day was drawing to a close, the boat was ready to bring him to the ground and, of course, would bring him back. Don Fernando went down into it after the Great Chamberlain, and they went ashore. Everything bore the imprint of past times, as if the world had gone back a few centuries; and this was not surprising, since the Island of the Seven Cities had been cut off from the rest of the land for centuries. On the shore, Don Fernando spent a pleasant evening in the castle, and at night he reluctantly got back into the boat to return to the ship. The boat went out to sea, but the caravel was not visible. The rowers continued their work, their monotonous song made a lulling impression. A drowsiness seized Don Fernando: objects began to blur before his eyes, and he lost consciousness. When he came to, he found himself in a strange cabin surrounded by strangers. Where is he? On board a Portuguese ship from Lisbon. How did he get here? His unconscious body was found on a wreck floating in the ocean. The ship arrived in Tagus Bay and anchored in front of the famous capital. Happy Don Fernando went ashore and hurried to his father's house. The door was opened to him by an unfamiliar gatekeeper who knew nothing about him and his family: people with that name had not lived here for many years. Then he sought out the house of his fiancee, Donna Serafina. He saw her on the balcony and held out his hands to her with an exclamation of delight. She looked at him indignantly and hurried away. He rang at the door when the gatekeeper opened it, rushed to the well-known room and threw himself at Serafina's feet. She backed away in horror and found salvation in the arms of a young gentleman.

"What does that mean, señor?" cried the last one.

What right do you have to ask me this question? Don Fernando exclaimed furiously.

- The right of the groom!

Oh, Serafina! And is that your loyalty? he said with anguish in his voice.

- Serafina! Who are you calling Serafina, señor? This lady's name is Maria.

- How?! cried Don Fernando. “Isn’t that Serafina Alvarez, the one whose portrait smiles at me from the wall?”

- Holy Virgin! said the young lady, looking at the portrait. He's talking about my great-great-grandmother!

With the Portuguese legend, which was charmingly recounted by Washington Irving, we must compare the adventures of Porsenna, Tsar of Russia, recounted in the sixth volume of Dodsley's Poetry Collection. The west wind carried Porsenna to distant lands, where it was very beautiful and flowers always bloomed. There he met the princess, with whom he spent several weeks pleasantly. However, wanting to return to his kingdom, he said goodbye to her, promising to return in three months.

"Three months! Three months alone! – cried the maiden. -
Know that three centuries have passed,
While my beloved Phoenix is ​​at my feet.
Like an echo he repeated: "Three centuries...
Three hundred years have passed since I've been here?

When he returned to Russia, the all-conquering time overtook him and he died. Almost the same legend exists in Ireland.

In the same way, Ogier the Dane found himself spending a lot of time in Avalon. One day, his horse Papillon took him along the path of light to the mysterious Apple Valley, where he dismounted at a spring around which bushes grew, covered with fragrant flowers. Near him stood a beautiful maiden who handed Ogier a golden crown entwined with flowers. He put it on and at the same moment forgot about his past, about battles and love of glory. Charlemagne and his knights became just a dream in his memory. He saw only Morgana and wanted only one thing - to spend eternity at her feet. Once the crown slipped from his head and fell into the spring, his memory immediately returned, and thoughts of his friends, relatives and military prowess disturbed his serenity. Ogier asked Morgana to let him return to earth, and she agreed. He discovered that two hundred years had passed in the few hours he had spent in Avalon. Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver are no more, Hugh Capet sits on the throne of France, and the dynasty of Charlemagne has come to naught. Ogier did not find peace in France and returned to Avalon, so as not to leave the fairy Morgan anymore.

In Portuguese legend, the Island of the Seven Cities is undoubtedly the land of the souls of the ancient Celts who inhabited the Iberian Peninsula. It preserved such ancient symbols as the boat that brings souls to the shore, magnificent landscapes and a beautiful castle, but the meaning of the myth has been lost. Therefore, a story was made up about a Spanish colony, located far in the Western Seas, where the fugitives whom Don Fernando met on a ghostly island found salvation.

Belief in the existence of this country was very strong in Ireland in the 11th century. This is clear from the fact that she entered the folk mythology of the Scandinavians under the name of Greater Ireland. Until the destruction of the Scandinavian kingdom in the east of Erin at the great Battle of Clontarf (1114), the Scandinavians learned much from contact with the Irish, and for this reason they had Irish names, such as Niall and Cormac, and Irish superstitions. The name they used for the Isle of the Blessed, in the western seas, was either Greater Ireland, because the Goidelic language was spoken there (it was a colony of Celtic souls), or the Land of the White Men, because its inhabitants wore white clothes. In the medieval vision of the knight Owain, which is simply a fragment of Celtic mythology in Christian attire, paradise was surrounded by a light wall, "white and sparkling like glass", which recalls the glass palace in Avalon, and its inhabitants "wore bright clothes." Fifteen of them met him at the beginning of the journey, and they all wore white robes.

The following extract from the Icelandic chronicles mentions this mysterious land.

“Mar of Holum married Torkatla, their son was Ari. The storm brought him to the Land of the White People, which some call Greater Ireland. It is located in the Western Sea near Vinland. She is said to be six days' journey from Ireland, if we sail due west. Ari never got out of there. There he was baptized. Hrafn, who sailed to Limerick, was the first to report this. He spent a lot of time in Limerick, Ireland."

This is an excerpt from the Book of the Settlement of the Lands, a 12th-century work. A restless Icelander, Björn the Fighter of the Wide Bay, has left his home. A long time later, about the year 1000, a native of the same island named Goodleif, who traded between Iceland and Dublin, was taken by a terrible storm that came from the east, which carried him far into the Western Seas, where he had not been before. Here he found a land fairly densely populated, whose inhabitants spoke the Irish language. His team was brought before the court of the inhabitants of those places who were going to deal cruelly with them. However, a tall man drove up, surrounded by a detachment of warriors, before whom the entire population knelt. This man spoke to Goodleif in the northern language and asked where he had come from. When he learned that he was from Iceland, he asked him questions about the people living in the immediate vicinity of the Wide Bay, and then gave him a ring and a sword to pass on to friends at home. Then he asked him to immediately return to Iceland and warn his relatives not to look for him in this new country. Gudleif put to sea again and, having safely reached Iceland, recounted his adventures, concluding that the man he had met was Bjorn the Fighter of the Wide Bay.

Another Icelander brought two children from Vinland, who said that not far from their home is a country where people wear flowing white clothes and sing church psalms. Northern scholars have tried to identify this Land of the Whites with Florida, where they believe the Welsh colony founded by Madoc in 1169 was located. There is little doubt in my mind that this is just an Icelandic version of an Irish superstition about the Isle of Souls, which lies behind the setting sun.

... On his crystal ship,
Where did Merlin go with his bards,
The same old Merlin, the lord of secrets.
It is possible that his ark was full of life,
And he obeyed the master.
They reached the Land of the Dead in it,
Where, perhaps, they will find immortality,
Having drunk the air to the bottom of bliss,
That over Flathinnis carries an eternal spring,
All flavors mixing, so that
Create that wind that sometimes in the evening
Sings his melody to the wanderer.

Flat Innis is the Gaelic name for the western paradise. McPherson, in his introduction to the History of Great Britain, relates a legend that coincides with those that were common among the Celtic peoples. In ancient times, a famous druid lived in Skerra. He sat on the shore, facing west, his eyes following the setting sun, and he cursed the cruel waves that stood between him and the distant Green Isle. One day, when he was sitting on a rock, thinking, a storm arose in the sea. A cloud, under which foamy waves were raging, suddenly descended on the bay, and from its dark depths a boat appeared with white sails filled with wind, and rows of shiny oars, but without rowers. She seemed to be moving on her own. Horror seized the druid, and then he heard a voice: “Rise, and you will see the Green Isle, where those who have left live!” Then he got into the boat. At the same instant, the wind changed, a cloud enveloped it from all sides, and in this cloud the boat sailed away. Seven days flashed over him in the fog, and on the eighth wave they surged, the boat was enveloped in darkness, which thickened more and more around the druid, and then he heard a cry: “Island! Island!" The clouds dissipated, the waves calmed down, the wind died down, and a blinding light surrounded the boat. Before him lay the Isle of the Dead, emitting a golden glow. The slopes of its hills were covered with greenery and beautiful trees, the peaks of the mountains were enveloped in transparent bright clouds, from which flowed pure streams, whose murmur was like the lilt of a harp that disappeared into the blue bays. The valleys were open to the ocean, the leaves of the trees scattered on the green slopes barely swayed in the light breeze, everything was quiet and bright. The clear autumn sun shone from the skies over the fields. It did not hasten to the west to rest there, and did not rise in the east, but hung like a golden lamp, always illuminating the Isle of the Blessed.

Here in the sparkling halls lived the souls of the dead, always blooming and beautiful, laughing and cheerful.

It's amazing how ancient mythological ideas about death survive in people's memory. This Celtic legend of the "Land Beyond the Sea", where souls are transported after death, has entered the folk religion of England. A hymn from the collection of the Sunday School Union is based on this ancient Druidic doctrine:

Will we meet on the shore
Where the waves stop crashing
Where the soul will never be disturbed
Sadness, in that edge of eternity?
Reach after sailing through the storms
Blessed harbor that
Could anchor in it and see
Heavenly bliss of the shore?
And will we meet the ones we love
And who was torn from our arms,
Will we hear their voices again
And will we see their faces again with our own eyes?

Such is the hymn from the collection of the Countess of Huntington:

I will lower the ship into the water, leaving the land,
Where sin reigns, that lulls souls.
I will gladly leave everything for you,
To fly to heaven with you.
So come, wind, and carry
With me a storm of eternal grace,
To guide my ship from here
To heaven, where my place is from now on.
Where will I find that harbor in which
I will forget the world and all its sins forever.

I can quote the poem "The Last Journey", which is based on a Gaelic legend told by MacPherson:

Forward! There! Through the storm and the waves
Leaving all the anxieties of life
Leaving home and my deathbed,
I will sail to the land of the blessed.
Let the darkness confuse me
And the waves roll under me
But compassion, I know
Keep the soul afloat
In my painful confusion.
I'm drawn by the torrents of the downpour
In the gloomy dark ocean
Where is my lonely ship
It will glide through the dark waters.
Oh, how frightening the roar and roar!
But still forward, hurry towards
Blessings of the shore with radiance!
Oh, great captain, glorious,
Seated in a white robe
And conquered death and hell,
You are the Way, and the Truth, and the Light!
Talk to the terrible darkness
And ask the waves to calm down
'Cause you hear the angels are calling
Now to my soul from heaven.
Now all regrets will sink
Sadness will go away and I'm forever
I'll stay here and I'll sing
Sing about happiness with children.

It seems to me extremely interesting to trace the connections of modern Protestantism with the ancient mythologies from which it arose. In the early period, the Fathers of the Church were mistaken in considering the ancient heresies as "counterfeit" forms of Christianity, for they are independent religions, only slightly tinged with Christianity. I am sure we have made a mistake of the same kind in considering the religious schism in England in a Christian way, given the force with which it manifested itself in the outback areas of Cornwall, Wales, and the East Yorkshire marshes, where Celtic elements are strong. This is a completely different phenomenon: its basis and driving force are ancient British beliefs, gradually converted to Christianity.

In St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, there is a statue of Jupiter stripped of its lightning bolt and replaced by symbolic keys. In the same way, most of the religious beliefs of the lower classes, which we consider to be essentially Christian, are ancient pagan, only with Christian symbols replaced. This is a modified story about Jacob's cunning: the voice is the voice of the older brother, and the hands and clothes belong to the younger.

I have already cited the belief in angelic music that calls the soul to follow as an example of the surviving pagan ideas in Protestant folk mythology.

Another example is embodied in the doctrine that the souls of the dead are transformed into angels. In Judaism and Christianity, angels and people are completely different creatures, created from different materials. Both Jew and Catholic were as unlikely to confuse ideas about them as to believe in the transmigration of souls. But the religion of the dissenters is different. According to the Druids, the souls of the dead protect the living. The same idea was shared by the ancient Indians, who revered the ancestral spirits, the Pitris, because they watched over them and protected them. The hymn "I want to be an angel", so popular in the Dissenter schools, is based on an ancient Aryan myth and is therefore of great interest, but is by no means Christian.

Another principle that is contrary to Christian doctrine, although it has supplanted it in popular beliefs, is the transmigration of the soul to paradise immediately after it leaves the body.

The apostles teach us about the resurrection of the body. If we read the Acts of the Holy Apostles and their Epistles carefully, we will be surprised how much importance is attached to this doctrine. They dispersed throughout the earth to preach, firstly, the resurrection of Christ, and secondly, the subsequent resurrection of Christians. “For if the dead do not rise, then Christ has not risen; And if Christ has not risen, then your faith is in vain... But Christ has risen from the dead, the firstborn of those who have died... As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will come to life.” This is a key moment in the teaching of the apostles, it runs through the entire New Testament and is reflected in the writings of the Fathers of the Church. It has its rightful place in the creed, and the Church has never ceased to insist upon it very strongly.

But the idea of ​​a soul that ascends to heaven and its happy existence after death is not reflected in the Bible or in the worship of any branch of the church - Greek, Roman or Anglican. This was the belief of our Celtic ancestors, and it has been preserved in English Protestantism to deprive the doctrine of the resurrection of its power in the minds of the people. And again, among the Celts, the inclusion of the enlightened in the sacred inner cycle corresponded exactly to the doctrine of transition preached by the Dissenters. It includes, according to the bards, such terms as "rebirth" and "renewal," which the Methodists still use to this day to describe the mysterious process of transition.

However, back to the subject of this article. Just one fact: I heard that a certain man was buried in Cleveland two years ago with a candle, a penny, and a bottle of wine. The candle was to light his way, he was to give the penny to the ferryman, and the wine was to keep him going while he traveled to heaven. I was told about this by the villagers who attended the funeral. It looks as if the voyage to another world is not just a figure of speech, but a reality.

The Chinese, like the Aryans, from ancient times knew the holy, reserved places:

72 happy countries and 36 "heavenly caves", highlighting among them the five islands of the blessed: Daixu, Yuanjiao, Fangzhang, Yingzhou and Penglai. These island-mountains, drifting in the oceans, were of enormous size up to 10 thousand kilometers in circumference, about five thousand kilometers high, they were separated from each other at a distance of 35 thousand kilometers. Each island was crowned with a plateau, on which immortal righteous people and good spirits lived. According to legend, all the buildings there were made of gold and jade, and the animals and birds of the sacred white color. The trees ripened fruits that looked like pearls and white gems. The fruits exuded an amazing aroma, and those who had a chance to taste them did not grow old and did not die.

In ancient times, two mountains, Daiyu and Yuanjia, were swept into the northern ocean. The three Isles of the Blessed remained in the south. Perhaps these ancient Chinese legends capture the memories of once-existing continents that perished in geological cataclysms.

In search of Penglai, Fangzhang and Yingzhou, the Chinese rulers sent expeditions more than once, but the islands of the blessed, from a distance like clouds, when people approached, went under water and became unattainable. I would like to tell you more about one of these expeditions.

The founder of the Qin dynasty, the Chinese emperor Huang Di (his name literally means "great emperor") is in many ways similar to the Russian tsars Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. Just like them, he ascended the throne as a boy, survived the conspiracy of the courtiers, managed to unite the country torn by strife into a single strong state, performed many glorious deeds for the benefit of the motherland, acting sometimes quite harshly, even cruelly. The period before his reign was called Zhangguo - "the era of warring kingdoms", comparable to our Time of Troubles. Countless wars of petty kings ended in 221 BC. e, when Qin Shi Huang, later called Huang Di, created a single Chinese empire Qin.

By his order, all bronze weapons were confiscated and, according to historical sources, melted down into 12 statues of 30 tons each, under Qin Shi Huang, gold and bronze coins were introduced uniform for the whole country, the same measure of weight was established, and a writing system was introduced. For defense against the Huns, the Great Wall of China was erected in three years, which currently stretches from west to east for 2700 kilometers, but, according to experts, in the 3rd century. BC e. it was much longer. In 212 BC. e. the construction of the colossal Epan Palace began, the size of which can be judged by the fact that only one front hall measured 170 X 800 meters and could simultaneously accommodate up to 10,000 people.

The imperial road connecting Epan with the capital was considered a special attraction, repeating the shape of the constellation Gedao near the Polar Star: just as the Polar Star occupies the center of the starry sky, so the palace of the Son of Heaven, the Emperor of the Celestial Empire, is the center of the inhabited Universe. By order of Qin Shi Huang, an entire army of warriors was created from clay, which was supposed to accompany their master in the afterlife.

But the all-powerful lord was worried about something else: from all sides he heard rumors about the monastery of the blessed. In 215 BC. e. the emperor sent the court magician Lu-shen to the northern borders of the state, ordering him to find and escort to the capital with honor the famous sage Xianmen Gao, a Tungus shaman who knew a lot about Penglai, the mountain where the immortals lived. But the shaman avoided the meeting with the magician: he disappeared into the air, like a light smoke from a fire. Then the emperor himself went to the coast of the Eastern Sea, where he met with another legendary sage An Qisheng, who at that time was already at least a thousand years old. Vladyka spent three nights in conversations with the sage and finally wanted to give him gold, but he, saying: “Look for me in a thousand years at the foot of Mount Penglai,” disappeared.

A powerful but not immortal emperor could not wait a thousand years. He acted differently: he carefully studied the ancient Chinese treatise “Le Tzu”, which describes Mount Penglai in detail: “There are all towers and terraces made of gold and jade ... All the immortal, wise lived there. How many of them there for a day and a night flew to each other, it is impossible to count. It was there that Qin Shi Huang sent an expedition, which is recorded in the palace chronicle: celestials. He asked to be allowed to cleanse himself with a fast and, taking boys and girls with him, go in search of these mountains. The emperor sent Xu Fu to gather several thousand boys and girls and then sent them all to the sea in search of the celestials.”

The expedition returned with nothing, and its leader said: “It is possible to get a drug from Penglai, but we are constantly hindered by large sharks, and we are not able to reach the islands. We ask you to send skilful shooters with us, who, when fish appear, will shoot at them from twin crossbows.

With arrows on boats, the emperor himself set off. Qin Shi Huang shot one of the monstrous fish, more like evil demons of the deep. It is possible that the sharks did not allow the emperor's immortal envoys to the island because they were waiting for him and waited. In the midst of the battle, Qin Shi Huang left his physical body and ascended in spirit to the much-desired peak of the mountain-island. Probably the only way to enter the land of the immortals, and only there, if you want, get a new body. In general, many amazing things were told about the celestials. Each of their movements causes certain phenomena of nature: as soon as the blessed one sits down, the wind will rise with rain, he will get up - clouds with fog will fly in. If he draws a line on the earth, it will turn into a full-flowing river; throw a handful of earth - a hill or mountain will immediately grow.

Immortals can split into two and become invisible; if desired, they can darken a clear day. It is possible for them, riding the clouds, to swim in the heavenly heights, to walk on water, as if on land, to turn into any creature: an animal, a bird, a tree - for them the shape of the physical body does not matter.

The righteous could grant immortality to any person they liked, perhaps this is exactly what happened to the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang. For his own subjects, he simply died.

Sima Qian, the father of Chinese historiography, described the structure of the emperor’s tomb: “On the ninth moon, the ashes of Shi Huang were buried in Lishan Mountain ... The crypt was filled with copies of palaces transported and lowered there, figures of officials of all ranks, rare things and extraordinary jewelry. The masters were ordered to make crossbows, so that, installed there, they would shoot at those who would try to dig a passage and get into the tomb. Large and small rivers and seas were made of mercury, and mercury spontaneously overflowed into them. On the ceiling they depicted a picture of the sky, on the floor - the outlines of the earth. The lamps were filled with jenyu (a special type of fish) fat, in the expectation that the fire would not go out for a long time.

All mortal rivers made of mercury, models of palaces, terracotta statues of warriors and lamps filled with fish oil remain on the earth, and only a pure spirit rushes up to the abode of the blessed on the top of Mount Penglai.