The Omphalos Code

Duration: 6 minutes

Country: UK

Language: English

License: dotSUB Commercial

Genre: Documentary

Producer: Eli Hunt

Director: Eli Hunt

Views: 4,890 (3,320 embedded)

Posted by: ehunt on Feb 27, 2008

Imagine you’re wandering the countryside of Ancient Greece. Would you be able to find your way home?

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Imagine you're wandering the countryside of ancient Greece.
You're lost, and the only clue you have to your location
is a stone marker inscribed with the number 6-7-6 --
[onscreen] The Omphalos Code With Historian Eli Hunt
-- and a bow and arrow, the sign of the Olympian God Artemis.
Would you be able to find your way home?
In this podcast, I'm going to teach you an ancient code for navigation;
a secret orientation system that the Greeks used for centuries.
Their ingenious system of accurate coordinate mapping predates our modern GPS technology by thousands of years.
However, it was abandoned when the Romans came to power.
And today, it is all but forgotten.
I'm Eli Hunt, and this is the story of the Omphalos Code.
An omphalos is an ancient artifact
a hollow, dome-shaped stone, several feet tall, carved with a knotted netting around its entire surface.
The Greeks believed that during religious rituals
an omphalos could serve as a portal into the world of the Gods.
So they installed an omphalos at every major temple throughout the Hellenic world
in order for for their oracles to receive visions from the Gods.
What many people do not realize today,
is that besides this religious function,
the sacred stones served another important purpose in ancient Greek life.
The omphaloi also stood as secret way-points for travelers.
From any single omphalos, a person could easily plot a course
to anywhere else in the ancient world.
Of course, that person would have to know the code
used to inscribe the omphaloi with navigational instructions.
A code made of of a combination of astronomy, mythology, and earth science.
Here's how the Omphalos Code worked.
[zooms in on map of Greece] Instead of having an address or a GPS coordinate,
every major site in the Hellenic world was described as
being a particular distance and direction from its nearest omphalos.
At each omphalos
a plaque would list a series of possible places to go,
such as the city of Athens, of the city of Sparta.
For each of these potential destinations,
the plaque identified a specific distance and direction of travel.
Of course, the ancient Greeks didn't have compasses of GPS devices to point them in the right direction,
so the Omphalos Code used astronomy instead.
Its directions were based on a star-map
that shows the 12 constellations of the zodiac.
To picture this star-map, imagine a clock-face with the omphalos at the center.
The constellations appear on this map exactly where we would put the numbers on clock face;
with Virgo at 12, Libra at 1, Scorpio at 2, and so on.
These locations also correspond with directions on a compass -
so you can imagine Virgo as due North, Sagittarius as due East, and so on.
Each constellation was meant to mark off
a specific 30 degree angle of potential travel -
with 12 signs of the zodiac, they formed a complete circle of 360 degrees.
Today, we might say "you should travel 3 degrees East of due North," --
[onscreen] Leo, Virgo, Libra
-- but the ancient greeks would say to travel Virgo 3 degrees.
Adding another layer of complexity to the Omphalos Code, --
[onscreen] Greek letters
-- the Greeks frequently substituted visual symbols of the Olympic Gods
for their corresponding zodiac signs.
[onscreen] scrolling Greek letters
So, a traveler needed to remember which symbol was associated with which God
and which God was associated with each sign of the zodiac.
For instance, the bow and arrow was associated with the Goddess Artemis,
who was associated with the sign Sagittarius.
Instead of telling someone to travel Sagittarius 3 degrees,
the greeks might have written instead, "3 degrees"
next to a drawing of a bow and arrow.
Finally, you must remember, of course, that the ancient Greeks --
[onscreen] 1 stadion
-- didn't use miles or meters like we do today,
instead they measured distance in stadia,
the length of an ancient Olympic stadium.
In todays measurements, 1 stadion is 185 meters.
Each stadium is equal to 184.9 meters.
So for instance,
a traveler going from the omphalos at Delphi to the city of Thebes
would be told to travel 540 stadia, or nearly 100 kilometers,
in the direction of Sagittarius, or Artemis, on an angle of 0 degrees.
But if the traveler were heading instead to Thermopylae,
the address would be 162 stadia Virgo, or Demeter, on a 10 degree angle.
Curiously, by retracing these coded navigation routes,
historians have found something very unusual in the layout of the omphalos network.
Somehow, the Greeks managed to construct their omphaloi
of the center nodes of a system of perfectly equidistant destinations.
For every destination in one direction,
you could travel exactly the same distance in another direction,
and arrive at an important site.
How were the Greeks able to build their civilization according to such ideal mathematical structures?
This remains a much debated puzzle of ancient history.
This complex system of omphaloi, served the Greeks well for thousands of years.
In the 21st century, navigation with the Omphalos Code remains a lost science.
However, if the network of the omphaloi were still in existence,
the ancient coordinates would undoubtedly still hold their secret meaning for us today.
[onscreen] www.TheLostGames.com

The Omphalos Code

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