Omphalos

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Omphalos

An omphalos is an ancient religious stone artifact

Artifact (archaeology)

In archaeology, an artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human archaeological culture, and often one later recovered by some archaeological endeavor....
, or baetylus

Baetylus

Baetylus or Bethel is a Semitic word denoting a sacred stone, which was supposedly endowed with life. These objects of worship were meteorites, which were dedicated to the gods or revered as symbols of the gods themselves The best known such object is the Black Stone in Mecca, and another one is mentioned as Bethel in Book of Genesis Ja...
. In Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
, the word omphalos means "navel

Navel

The navel is a scar on the abdomen, caused when the umbilical cord is removed from a newborn baby. All Placentalia mammals have a navel. It is fairly conspicuous in humans....
" (compare the name of Queen Omphale

Omphale

In Greek mythology, Omphale was a daughter of Iardanus, either a king of Lydia, or a river-god. Omphale was queen of the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor; according to Bibliotheke she was the wife of Tmolus, the oak-clad mountain king of Lydia; after he was gored to death by a bull, she continued to reign on her own....
).

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Encyclopedia

An omphalos is an ancient religious stone artifact

Artifact (archaeology)

In archaeology, an artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human archaeological culture, and often one later recovered by some archaeological endeavor....
, or baetylus

Baetylus

Greek language

Navel

Omphale

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at its center, the "navel" of the world. Omphalos stones used to denote this point were erected in several areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea or Ocean off the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Europe, on the south by Africa, and on the east by Asia....
; the most famous of those was at the oracle

Oracle

An oracle is a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophecy opinion; an infallible authority, usually Spirituality in nature....
in Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is an archaeology site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis. Delphi was the site of the Pythia, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, when it was a major site for the worship of the god Apollo after he slew the Python , a deity who lived there and protecte...
. The plant genus Omphalodes in the family Boraginaceae

Boraginaceae

Boraginaceae Juss. 1789, the Borage or Forget-me-not family, includes a variety of shrubs, trees, and herbs, totaling about 2,000 species in 100 genus found worldwide....
is commonly called navelwort. It is also the name of the stone given to Cronus

Cronus

Cronus or Kronos, , was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titan , divine descendants of Gaia , the earth, and Uranus , the sky....
in Zeus' place in Greek mythology.

Delphi

Most accounts locate the Omphalos in the temple adyton

Adyton

The adyton or adytum was a restricted area within the cella of a Greek temple or Roman temple. Its name meant "inaccessible" or "do not enter"....
near the Pythia

Pythia

The Pythia was the priestess presiding over the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Pythia was widely credited with giving prophecy inspired by Apollo, giving her a prominence unusual for a woman in male-dominated ancient Greece....
. The stone itself (which may have been a copy) has a carving of a knotted net covering its surface, and has a hollow centre, which widens towards its base (illustrated, to the right).

The Omphalos at Delphi came to be identified as the stone which Rhea

Rhea (mythology)

This page is about the Greek mythological figure. For the bird, see Rhea .Rhea was the Titan daughter of Ouranos , the sky, and Gaia , the earth, in Classical Greece mythology....
wrapped in swaddling clothes, pretending it was Zeus

Zeus

Cronus

Cronus or Kronos, , was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titan , divine descendants of Gaia , the earth, and Uranus , the sky....
, his father, who swallowed his children so they could not grow up and depose him as he had deposed his own father, Ouranos.

Omphalos stones were said to allow direct communication with the gods. Leicester Holland (1933) has suggested that the stone was hollow to channel intoxicating vapours breathed by the Oracle. Erwin Rohde

Erwin Rohde

Erwin Rohde was one of the great Germany classical scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries.Rohde was born in Hamburg and was the son of a doctor....
wrote that the Python

Python (mythology)

In Greek mythology Python, serpent, was the earth-dragon of Delphi, always represented in Ancient Greek sculpture and Pottery of ancient Greece s as a Serpent ....
at Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is an archaeology site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis. Delphi was the site of the Pythia, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, when it was a major site for the worship of the god Apollo after he slew the Python , a deity who lived there and protecte...
was an earth spirit, who was conquered by Apollo, and buried under the Omphalos, and that it is a case of one god setting up his temple on the grave of another.

Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism#Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament....
destruction of the site in the fourth century at the order of Emperors Theodosius I

Theodosius I

Flavius Theodosius , also called Theodosius I and Theodosius the Great , was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Reuniting the eastern and western portions of the empire, Theodosius was the last emperor of both the Eastern Roman Empire and Western Roman Empire....
and Arcadius

Arcadius

Flavius Arcadius was Roman Emperors in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire from 395 until his death.Arcadius was born in Spain, the elder son of Theodosius I and Aelia Flaccilla, and brother of Flavius Augustus Honorius, who would become a Western Roman Emperor....
makes all suggestions about its use tentative.

Jerusalem

In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre , also called the Church of the Resurrection, by Eastern Christianitys, is a Christianity Church within the walled Old City of Jerusalem....
in Jerusalem there is also an omphalos. The existence of this stone is based upon the medieval cosmology

Cosmology

Cosmology is study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanity's place in it. Though the word cosmology is recent , study of the Universe has a long history involving science, philosophy, esotericism, and religion....
which saw Jerusalem as the spiritual if not geographical center of the world (see T and O map

T and O map

A T and O map or O-T or T-O map , is a type of medieval world map, sometimes also called a Beatine map or a Beatus map because one of the earliest known representations of this sort is attributed to Beatus of Li?bana, an 8th-century Spanish monk....
). In fact, this tradition is likely based on an ancient Jewish tradition that saw Jerusalem as the navel of the world. In the Jewish tradition, the Ark in the Temple in Jerusalem, through which God revealed himself to His people, was located on a Foundation stone located on the Navel of the World

Navel of the World

Navel of the World is a term which may refer to:* Baboquivari Peak Wilderness in Arizona* Cusco, Peru, in Creation myth* Easter Island, a location in the south Pacific Ocean...
. (This Jewish tradition is known to have begun in Hellenistic times, when Jews were already quite familiar with Greek culture - and thus, might be a deliberate emulation of and competition with the above tradition regarding Delphi).

Literature

In chapter 1 of James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Ireland expatriate author of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ....
's Ulysses

Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris....
Buck Mulligan describes his home in Martello tower

Martello tower

Martello towers are small defensive Fortification built in several countries of the British Empire during the 19th century, from the time of the Napoleonic Wars onwards....
as an omphalos:

Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on the sea. But ours is the OMPHALOS.

In chapter 14, Mulligan proposes:

... to set up there a national fertilising farm to be named OMPHALOS with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her natural.

The first of the Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones

Dr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr. is a fictional character adventurer, soldier, professor of archaeology, and the main protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise....
Bantam Books

Bantam Books

Bantam Books is a major U.S. publishing house owned by Random House and is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B....
series, Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi, features the Omphalos as the MacGuffin

MacGuffin

A MacGuffin is a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise....
. In the novel, the omphalos is described as a small smooth black cone with a knotted net covering its surface. The netting is described as being petrified rather than carved as it is on the real world omphalos at Delphi. When one holds the omphalos they can see into the near and distant future.

Omphalos

Delphi

Jerusalem

Literature

See also

Further reading