Paradise Found: Part Fifth: Chapter IV. The Navel of the Earth

He is the god who sits in the centre, on the Navel of the Earth; and he is the interpreter of religion to all mankind.—Plato.

But at the Navel of the Earth stands Agni, clothed in richest apparel.—Rig Veda.

To whom then will ye liken God? It is He that sitteth upon the Chug of the Earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.—Isaiah.

After proceeding some distance we paused to take breath where the crowd was more dense and obstinate than usual: and I was seriously informed that this was the exact Navel of the Earth, and that these obstinate pilgrims were bowing and kissing it.—The Land and the Book.

Students of antiquity must often have marveled that in nearly every ancient literature they should encounter the strange expression "the Navel of the Earth." Still more unaccountable would it have seemed to them had they noticed how many ancient mythologies connect the cradle of the human race with this earth-navel. The advocates of the different sites which have been assigned to Eden have seldom, if ever, recognized the fact that no hypothesis on this subject can be considered acceptable which cannot account for this peculiar association of man's first home with some sort of natural centre of the earth. Assuming, however, that the human race began its history at the Pole, and that

all traditional recollections of man's unfallen state were connected with a polar Eden, the mystery which otherwise envelops the subject immediately vanishes.

We have already seen that the term "navel" was anciently used in many languages for "centre," and that the Pole, or central point of the revolving constellations, was the "Navel of Heaven." But as to the celestial Pole there corresponds a terrestrial one, so it is only natural that to the term the "Navel of Heaven" there should be the corresponding expression the "Navel of the Earth."

Beginning with Christian traditions, let us make a pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. There, in the portion belonging to the Greek Christians, we shall discover a round pillar, some two feet high, projecting from the marble pavement, but supporting nothing. If we inquire as to its purpose, we shall be informed that it is designed to mark the exact centre or "Navel" of the Earth? 1 Early pilgrims and chroniclers refer to this

curious monument, but its antiquity no one knows. 1 As usually described, it is a monument of the geographical ignorance of those who placed it there, a proof that they supposed the edge of the "flat disk" of the earth to be everywhere equidistant from this stone. In reality, it is a monument of primeval astronomic and geographic science.

To find the true symbolical and commemorative character of this pillar, we need to remind ourselves of a tendency ever present and active among men. We have already alluded to the scores of "Calvaries" which have been set apart in Roman Catholic lands, and hallowed as memorial mounts. Up the side of each leads a Via dolorosa, with its different "stations," each recalling to the mind, by sculptured reliefs or otherwise, one of the immortal incidents of the Passion. On the summit is the full crucifixion tableau,—the Saviour hanging aloft upon the cross, between two crucified malefactors. The spear, the reed with the sponge, the hammer,—all are there, sometimes the ladder also; and near by, the tomb wherein never man was laid. In the minds of the worshipers it is a holy place.

Even in our Protestant republic, on the shore of Lake Chautauqua, we have seen successfully carried out, in our own day, a complete reproduction of Palestine. Thousands have visited it to take object-lessons in Sacred Geography. From it these thousands have gained clearer ideas of the relative positions and bearings of Hermon and Tabor and Olivet, of Kedron and Cherith and the Jordan, of Nazareth and Hebron and the Holy City, than else they ever would have had. What here has been done for purposes of instruction has elsewhere and often upon a greater or smaller scale, been done for purposes of direct religious edification, and for the gratification of religious sentiment.

own midst their "Holy Places," so the early nations of the world loved to create miniature reproductions of Eden, the fair and sacred country in which man dwelt in the holy morning hours of his existence. 1 The traditional temple architecture of many early religions was determined by this symbolical and commemorative motive. This was eminently true of the sacred architecture of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, and Chinese. 2 Koeppen assures us that "every orthodoxly constructed Buddhist temple either is, or contains, a symbolical representation of the divine regions of Meru, and of the heaven of the gods, saints, and Buddhas, rising above it." 3 Lillie says, "The thirteen pyramidal layers at the top of every temple in Nepâl represent the thirteen unchangeable heavens of Amitâbha." 4 With what

astonishing elaboration this idea has sometimes been carried out may be seen in the Senbyoo temple in Mengoon, near the capital of Burmah. 1 That the natural features of the landscape were often utilized in producing these symbolic shrines and holy places is only what we should expect. "The Buddhists of Ceylon," as Obry states, "have endeavored to transform their central mountain, Dêva-Kuta (Peak of the Gods), into Meru, and to find four streams descending from its sides to correspond with the rivers of their Paradise." 2

Again, in the "rock-cut" temples of Ellora, we have, in like manner, a complete representation of the Paradise of Siva. Faber develops the evidence of this practice among the ancients with great fullness, and with respect to the Hindus and Buddhists says, "Each pagoda, each pyramid, each montiform 'high-place,' is invariably esteemed to be a copy of the holy hill Meru," the Hindu's Paradise. 3

From "Records of the Past," vol. x., p. 50, we see that the Egyptians had the same custom of building temples in such a manner that they should be symbolical of the abode of the gods. So in Greece and

[paragraph continues] Rome the citadel mounts in their cities had quite as great religious as military significance. Lenormant, speaking of Rome and Olympia, remarks, "It is impossible not to note that the Capitoline was first of all the Mount of Saturn, and that the Roman archæologists established a complete affinity between the Capitoline and Mount Cronios in Olympia, from the standpoint of their traditions and religious origin (Dionysius Halicarn., i., 34). This Mount Cronios is, as it were, the Omphalos of the sacred city of Elis, the primitive centre of its worship. It sometimes receives the name Olympos." 1 Here is not only symbolism in general, but also a symbolism pointing to the Arctic Eden, already shown to be the primeval mount of Kronos, the Omphalos of the whole earth. 2

Now, as Jerusalem is one of the most ancient of the sacred cities of the world, and, at the same time, the one where the tradition of the primeval Paradise was preserved in its clearest and most historic form, it would be strange if, in all its long history, no king or priesthood had ever tried to enhance its attractiveness and sanctity by making it, or some part of it, symbolize Earth's earliest Holy Land, and commemorate man's earliest Theocracy. That the attempt

was made is beyond a doubt. To this day the visitor is shown the spot where, according to one tradition, Adam was created. 1 Not many feet away, under the custody of another religion, he finds the sacred rock-hewn grave in which at least the head of the first of men was buried. 2 In the little Gihon, the name of one of the Paradise rivers still lives. The miraculous virtue of the Pool of Bethsaida was ascribed in early Christian legend to its being in subterranean contact with the Tree of Life, which grew in the midst of Paradise. 3 Christ's cross was said to have been made of the wood of the same tree. The very name, Mount Sion, is a memorial one. The Talmudic account of "The Strength of the Hill of Sion" shows that the Palestinian mount was named after the heavenly one, and not vice versa, as commonly supposed. The true sacred name of the Holy City is, therefore, not Sion (though it is often called by the heavenly appellation also), but "Daughter of Sion." She is simply

a copy, a miniature likeness, of the true mount and city of God "in the sides of the North." 1

So confident is Lenormant that Solomon and Hezekiah intentionally conformed their capital to the Paradisaic mount, and intentionally introduced in their public works features which should symbolize and commemorate peculiarities of Eden, that he uses the fact as an unanswerable argument against those imaginative critics who would place the composition of the second chapter of Genesis subsequent to the Babylonian exile. He says,—

"Another proof, and a very decisive one in my opinion, of the high antiquity of the narrative of Genesis concerning Eden, and of the knowledge of it possessed by the Hebrews long before the Captivity, is the intention—so clearly proved by Ewald—to imitate 'the four rivers' which predominated in the works of Solomon and Hezekiah for the distribution of the waters of Jerusalem, which, in its turn, was considered as the Umbilicus of the Earth (Ezek. v. 5), in the double sense of centre of the inhabited regions and source of the rivers. The four streams which watered the town and the foot of its ramparts—one of which was named Gihon (1 Kings i. 33, 38; 2 Chron. xxxii. 30, xxxiii. 14), like one of the Paradisaic rivers—were, as Ewald has shown, reputed to issue through subterranean communications from the spring of fresh water situated beneath the Temple, the sacred source of life and purity to which the prophets (Joel iii. 18; Ezek. xlvii. 1-12; Zech. xiii. 1, xiv. 8; cf. Apoc. xxii. 1) attach a high symbolic value." 2

In this citation, in addition to a strong assertion of the symbolical character of the topography and waterworks of Jerusalem, we have the location itself included in this symbolism. The city is said to have been the Umbilicus or Navel of the Earth, for, two reasons: first, because of its relation to surrounding countries; 1 and, second, because of its containing the source of the rivers. In our next chapter, this last reason will become more significant than even the writer intended. At present we will only add that the true philosophy of this symbolical centrality of Jerusalem is found in two facts: first, the Hebrews had a tradition that primeval Eden was the Centre of the Earth: 2 and, second, by styling Jerusalem the Navel of the Earth, as they did, it was symbolically all the more assimilated to the primitive Paradise which in so many other ways it sacredly commemorated.

Passing to the field of Hellenic tradition, we are told by all modern interpreters that the Greeks shared the "narrow conceit and ignorance of all ancient nations," and supposed their own land to occupy the middle of the "flat earth-disk." And because of certain expressions in Pindar and a passage in Pausanias, it is affirmed as a first principle in the geography of the ancient Greeks that Delphi was believed to be the exact topographical centre-point of the whole earth.

Such a representation is far from satisfactory. For while the term "Omphalos of the Earth" was undoubtedly applied in a sense to Delphi, it belonged to it only as the name Athens belongs to many a town thus designated in America. It had other and older topographical connections and associations. We find traces of the same title in connection with Olympos, with Ida, with Parnassos, with Ogygia, with Nyssa, with Mount Meros, with Delos, with Athens, with Crete, and even with Meroë. In the multiplicity of these localizations, the people seem to have lost the clue to the original significance of the conception, and to have contrived crude etymological myths of their own for the explanation of what seemed to then a remarkable designation. 1

The moment we make the true original Omphalos of the Earth the North Pole, and invest it with sacred traditionary recollections of Eden life, all this confusion becomes clear. The "centre-stone" of Delphi, like the Omphalium of the Cretans, becomes merely a memorial shrine, an attempted copy of the great original. And if all the Olymps and Idas and Parnassos mounts were alike convenient reproductions and localizations of the one celestial mountain of the gods at the North Pole, what wonder if we find each of them in some way designated as the Centre of the Earth.

has in like manner all the marks of a mythico-traditional north polar Eden. Its name, Ogygia, connects it with a far-off antediluvian antiquity. 1 It is situated in the far North, and Odysseus needs the blast of Boreas to bring him away from its shores on the homeward journey. Its queen, Calypso, is the daughter of Atlas; and Atlas’ proper station in Greek mythology, as elsewhere shown, is at the terrestrial Pole. Its beauty is Paradisaic, it being adorned with groves and "soft meadows of violets,"—so beautiful, in fact, that "on beholding it even an Immortal would be seized with wonder and delight." 2 Finally, identifying the place beyond all question, we have the Eden "fountain," whose waters part into "four streams, flowing each in opposite directions." 3

In Mount Meros we have only the Greek form of Meru, as long ago shown by Creuzer. 4 The one is the Navel of the Earth for the same reason that the other is. Egyptian Meroë (in some Egyptian texts Mer, in Assyrian Mirukh, or Mirukha), the seat of the famous oracle of Jupiter Ammon, was possibly named from the same "World-mountain." This would explain the passage in Quintus Curtius, which has so troubled commentators, wherein the object which represented the divine being is described as resembling a "navel set in gems." 5

[paragraph continues] When the two doves of Zeus, flying from the two opposite ends of the world, determine the cosmic centralness of "Parnassos," it is of an antediluvian Parnassos that the myth is speaking. 1 It is that mount on whose polar top we have already found the "domicilium" of Zeus.

Nonnos, in describing the symbolical peplos which Harmonia wove on the loom of Athene, says, "First she represented the earth with its omphalos in the centre; around the earth she spread out the sphere of heaven varied with the figures of the stars. . . . Lastly, along the exterior edge of the well-woven vestment she represented the Ocean in a circle." 2 That Delphi or the Phocian Parnassos is the omphalos here mentioned is far enough from credible. It is the Pole, and the manner in which the term is introduced shows that it was perfectly understood by every reader, and needed no explanation. The true shrine of Apollo was not at Delphi, but in that older earth-centre of which Plato speaks in the motto prefixed to this section. His real home is among "the Hyperboreans," in a land of almost perpetual light; and it is only upon annual visits that he comes to Delphi. 3 The remembrance of this fact would have

helped the interpreters of Pindar out of more than one perplexity. 1 According to Hecatæus, Lêtô, the mother of Apollo and his sister Artemis, was born on an island in the Arctic Ocean, "beyond the North wind." Moreover, on this island inhabited by the Hyperboreans, Apollo is unceasingly worshiped in a huge round temple, in a city whose inhabitants are perpetually playing upon lyres and chanting to his praise. 2 So reports Diodorus (ii., 47); and herewith agrees the imaginary journey of Apollonius of Tyana,—a namesake of Apollo,—who tells of his journey far to the North of the Caucasus into the regions of the pious Hyperboreans, among whom he found a lofty sacred mountain, the Omphalos of the Earth. 3

In the Phædo we have a charming description of Plato's terrestrial Paradise. "In this fair region,"

[paragraph continues] Socrates is made to say, "all things that grow—trees and flowers and fruit—are fairer than any here; and there are hills and stones in them smoother and more transparent and fairer in color than our highly-valued emeralds and sardonyxes and jaspers and other gems, which are but minute fragments of them: for there all the stones are like our precious stones, and fairer still. The temperament of their seasons is such that the inhabitants have no disease, and live much longer than we do, and have sight and hearing and smell and all the other senses in much greater perfection. And they have temples and sacred places in which the gods really dwell, and they hear their voices, and receive their answers, and are conscious of them, and hold converse with them, and they see the sun, the moon, and the stars as they really are." 1

If we ask as to the location of this divinely beautiful abode, every indication of the text agrees with our hypothesis. It is right under the eye when the world is looked at from its summit, the Northern celestial pole. 2 Viewed from the standpoint of Greece and its neighbor lands it is "above,"—it is "the upper Earth," the dazzling top of the "round" world. In it, moreover, is the Navel of the Earth, μεσογαία, inhabited by happy men.

If anything is needed to disprove the common notion that geographical ignorance and national self-esteem first governed the ancient peoples in locating in their own countries "navels" of the earth, it is furnished by what is, in all probability, the oldest epic in the world, that of Izdhubar, fragments of

which have survived in the oldest literature of Babylonia. These fragments show that the earliest inhabitants of the Tigro-Euphrates basin located "the Centre of the Earth," not in their own midst, but in a far-off land, of sacred associations, where "the holy house of the gods" is situated,—a land "into the heart whereof man hath not penetrated;" a place underneath the "overshadowing world-tree," and beside the "full waters." 1 No description could more perfectly identify the spot with the Arctic Pole of ancient Asiatic mythology. Yet this testimony stands not alone; for in the fragment of another ancient text, translated by Sayce in "Records of the Past," we are told of a "dwelling" which "the gods created for "the first human beings,"—a dwelling in which they "became great" and "increased in numbers," and the location of which is described in words exactly corresponding to those of Iranian, Indian, Chinese, Eddaic, and Aztec literature; namely, "in the Centre of the Earth." 2

In the Hindu Puranas we are told over and over that the earth is a sphere, and that Mount Meru is its Navel or Pole. 3 But the expression nâbhi, or "Navel" of the earth, is older than the Puranas, though the very meaning of Purana is "ancient." Like the term "Navel of Heaven," it occurs in the

hymns of the earliest Veda. But where was the sacred shrine to which it was applied? It was no holy place in Bactria, or in the Punjâb. Nothing tends to locate it in India. On the other hand, the fifth verse of the one hundred and eighty-fifth hymn, mandala first, of the Rig Veda, seems most plainly to fix it at the North Pole. In this verse Night and Day are represented as twin sisters in the bosom of their parents Heaven and Earth; each bounding or limiting the other, but both kissing simultaneously the Nâbhi of the Earth. Now, everywhere upon earth, except in the polar regions, Night and Day seem ever to be pursuing and supplanting each other. They have no common ground. At the Pole—and only there—they may be said, with locked arms, to spin round and round a common point, and unitedly to kiss it from the opposite sides. 1 This plainly is the meaning of the poet; and remembering all the legendary splendors of the polar mountain around which sun and moon are ever moving, we must pronounce the figure as beautiful as it is instructive. 2

In perfect accord herewith, we find the bard asking, in another hymn, where the Navel of the Earth is; and in doing it he associates it as closely as possible, not with some central home-shrine in his own land, but with the extreme "End of the Earth,"—an expression used again and again, in ancient languages, for the Pole and its vicinity. 1

Again, in another Vedic passage, the Navel of the Earth is located upon "the mountains," and this association points us to the North. 2 Still stronger evidence of its polar location is found in other hymns, where the supporting column of heaven—the Atlas pillar of Vedic cosmology—is described as standing in or upon the Navel of the Earth. 3

Finally, so unmistakable is the Vedic teaching on this subject that a recent writer, after asserting with all his teachers that the cosmography of the Vedic bards was "embryonic," and their earth a "flat disk" overarched by a solid firmament, which was "soldered on to the edge of the disk at the horizon," nevertheless, later, in studying one of the cosmogonical hymns of Dīrghatamas, the son of Mamata, reaches the conclusion that the singer had knowledge both of the celestial and of the terrestrial Pole, and that, in seeking to answer the question as to the

birth place of humanity, he locates it precisely at the point of contact between the polar mountain and the Pole of the northern sky. 1

We have seen that, according to Old-Iranian tradition also, man was created in the "central" division of the earth. The primordial tree, which "kept the strength of all kinds of trees," was "in the vicinity of the Middle of the Earth." 2 The primeval ox, which stood by the Paradise river when the destroyer came, was "in the Middle of the Earth." 3 Mount Taêra (Pahl.: Têrak), the celestial Pole, and Kakâd-i-Dâîtîk, the mountain of the terrestrial Pole, are each described in similar terms: the one as "Centre of the World," the other as "Centre of the Earth." 4 The expression Apâm Nepât, the "Navel of the Waters," occurs in the Avestan writings again and again, and is always applied either to the world-fountain from which all waters proceed, or to the spirit presiding over it. 5 But as this world-fountain,

[paragraph continues] Ardvî Sûra, is located in the north polar sky (see next chapter), we have here also a recognition of a world-omphalos, inseparable from the ancient and sacred Paradise-mountain at the Pole. 1

The Chinese terrestrial Paradise is described not only as "at the Centre of the Earth," but also as directly under Shang-te's heavenly palace, which is declared to be in the North star, and which is sometimes styled "Palace of the Centre." 2 Very probably the historic designation, "The Middle Kingdom," was originally a sacred name, 3 commemorative of that primeval middle country which the Akkadian called Akkad, the Indian Ilâvrita, the Iranian Kvanîras, and the Northman Idavollr. In the funeral rites of China, this supposition finds a cogent confirmation. 4

Passing to Japan, it is curiously interesting to note that the Ainos, who are supposed to have been the first inhabitants, are believed to have come into the archipelago "from the North;" 1 that their heaven is on inaccessible mountain-tops in the same quarter; 2 and that their name, according to some authorities, etymologically signifies "Offspring of the Centre." 3 In burial, their dead are always so placed that when resurrected their faces will be set toward the lofty northern country from which their ancestors are believed to have come, and to which their spirits are believed to have returned. 4

Taking these facts in connection with those presented in chapter second of the preceding part, one can hardly evade the conclusion that, when Griffis informs us that the Japanese considered their country as lying at "the top of the world," and when others say that the Japanese once regarded their country as the "Centre of the World," 1 it is most probable that these writers have applied to the Japan of to-day ideas which originally belonged to a far-distant prehistoric polar Japan, the primitive seat of the race, as it has lived on in these most ancient traditions of the Ainos.

In Scandinavian mythology we meet with a similar idea. In the Eddas, both Asgard and Idavollr are represented as in "the Centre of the World;" and at least one author, in explaining the reason of it, has come within a hair's-breadth of the truth, though missing it. 2

The ancient Mexicans conceived of the cradle of the human race as situated in the farthest North, upon the highest of mountains, cloud-surrounded,

the residence of the god Tlaloc. Thence come the rains and all streams, for Tlaloc is the god of waters. The first man, Quetzalcoalt, after having ruled as king of the Golden Age in Mexico, returned by divine direction to the primeval Paradise in the North (Tlapallan), and partook of the draught of immortality. The stupendous terraced pyramid-temple in Cholula was a copy and symbol of the sacred Paradise-mountain of Aztec tradition, which was described as standing "in the Centre of the Middle-country." 1 Some of the Mexican myths represent the mountain as now "crooked," or turned partly over. For the true explanation of this see above, pp. 192-196.

found the same idea of a Navel of the Earth, and even among the Chickasaws of Mississippi. 1

Thus is all ancient thought full of this legendary idea of a mysterious, primeval, holy, Paradisaic Earth-centre,—a spot connected as is no other with the "Centre of Heaven," the Paradise of God. Why it should be so no one has ever told us; but the hypothesis which places the Biblical Eden at the Pole, and makes all later earth navels commemorative of that primal one, affords a perfect explanation. In the light of it, there is no difficulty in understanding that Earth-centre in Jerusalem with which we began. The inconspicuous pillar in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre symbolizes and commemorates far more than the geographical ignorance of mediæval ages. It stands for the Japanese pillar by which the first soul born upon earth mounted to the sky. It stands for the World-column of the East-Aryans and the Chinvat Bridge of Iran. It stands for the law-proclaiming pillar of orichalcum in Atlantis, placed in the centre of the most central land. It stands for that Talmudic pillar by means of which the tenants of the terrestrial Paradise mount to the celestial, and, having spent the Sabbath,

return to pass the week below. It symbolizes Cardo, Atlas, Meru, Harâ-berezaiti, Kharsak-Kurra,—every fabulous mountain on whose top the sky pivots itself, and around which all the heavenly bodies ceaselessly revolve. It perpetuates a religious symbolism which existed in its region before ever Jerusalem had been made the Hebrew capital,—recalling to our modern world the tabbur ha-aretz of a period anterior to the days of Samuel. 1 In tradition it is said to mark the precise spot "whence the clay was taken, out of which the body of Adam was modeled." It does so, but it does it in a language and method which were common to all the most ancient nations of the earth. It points not to the soil in which it stands, but to the holier soil of a far-away primitive Eden. 2

Footnotes

226:1 As my own inspection of this monument was nearly thirty years ago, I have thought it well to make inquiry as to its present state. The following, written under date of Oct. 28, 1884, by my obliging friend, Dr. Selah Merrill, the United States Consul at Jerusalem, and well known as an Oriental archæologist, will be read with much interest: "The stone to which you refer still stands in the middle of the Church (Greek) of the Holy Sepulchre, and is called the Centre or Navel of the Earth. It is called a 'pillar,' although it is not a pillar, but a vase, conforming in its general shape to a large, tall fruit dish. The top is in the form of a basin, with a raised portion in its centre; that is, in the bottom of the basin. I was told that at every feast bread was laid on this pillar. I am assured that it is called the Centre of the Earth only by the Arab or native Christians of Syria, and not by the Greeks proper; also, that every Greek church in Syria that is built after the form of this one has such a 'pillar' in the centre. Within two or three years past, an old church has been p. 227 excavated a little distance north of the Damascus gate. In the Palestine Fund Report for October, 1883, I wrote some account of this to supplement what had been written before by others. In the centre of that church there is a similar stone, but that is a real pillar. This church is no doubt very old, and is popularly spoken of as the 'Church of St. Stephen.' In my judgment it stands on the site of an older church.

"It seemed to me a little singular that this object should be called a 'pillar' (Amûd), when it is only a vase, or vase-shaped; but as the tradition connected with it is very old, the name may have come down from the time when the object used for this purpose was actually a pillar or column."

It is interesting to compare with the foregoing the description given by Bernard Surius, of Brussels, in the year 1646, particularly as at that time the "Oriental Greeks" seem to have had no scruple in calling the pillar the Centre of the Earth: "Omtrent het midden steckt eenen witten marmer-steen uyt, van twee voeten in syn vierkant, daer een rondt putteken in is, ’t welck soo de Oostsche Griecken seggen, het midden van den aerdt-bodem is." Reyse van Jerusalem. Antwerp, 1649: p. 664.

227:1 Bishop Argulf, in his pilgrimage, A.D. 700, "saw some other relics, and he observed a lofty column in the holy places to the north of the Church of Golgotha, in the middle of the city, which at midday at the summer solstice casts no shadow; which shows that this is the centre of the earth." Wright, Early Travels in Palestine, p. 4. As late as A.D. 1102, it still seems to have been outside the then existing Church. Bishop Sæwulf says, "At the head of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the wall outside, not far from the place of Calvary, is the place called Compas, which our Lord Jesus Christ himself signified and measured with his own hand as the middle of the world according to the words of the Psalmist, 'God is my king of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.'" Ibid., p. 38. In 1322, however, it is described by Sir John de Maundeville as "in the midst of the Church." Ibid., p. 167. At one time in the Middle Ages, the spot seems to have been marked by a letter or inscription. p. 228 Barclay, City of the Great King. Philadelphia, 1858: p. 370. See Michelant et Reynaud, Itinéraires à Jerusalem. Genève, 1882: pp, 36, 104⁴, 182, 230, etc.

229:1 "The Hindus generally represent Mount Meru of a conical figure, and kings were formerly fond of raising mounds of earth in that shape, which they venerated like the divine Meru, and the gods were called down by spells to come and dally upon them. They are called Meru-sringas, or the peaks of Meru. There are four of them either in or near Benares; the more modern, and of course the more perfect, is at a place called Sár-náth. It was raised in the year of Christ 1027. . . . This conical hill is about sixty feet high, with a small but handsome octagonal temple on the summit. It is said in the inscription that this artificial hill was intended as a representation of the worldly Meru, the hill of God, and the tower of Babel, with its seven steps or zones, was probably raised with a similar view and for the same purpose."—Wilford in Asiatic Researches, vol. viii., p. 291.

229:2 Miller, "The Pyramidal Temple," in the Oriental and Bib. Journal. Chicago, 1880: vol. i., pp. 169-178. Also, Boscawen, in the same, 1884, p. 118. Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Chaldæa and Assyria. London and New York, 1884: vol. i., pp. 364-398.

229:4 Buddha and Early Buddhism, p. 51. We find the same symbolism even among the civilized aborigines of America. Thus "the temple at Tezcuco was of nine stories, symbolizing the nine heavens." Bancroft, Native Races, vol. iii., p. 184. Compare pp. 186, 195, 197; also 532-537.

230:3 Origin of Pagan Idolatry. London, 1816: vol. i., p. 345. So an American writer says, "Akkad, Aram, and all the other 'highlands' of antiquity were but reproductions, traditionary inheritances from this primitive highland, this Olympus of all Asia. . . . Similar notions were associated at a later period with Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and with the Mohammedan Mecca and other sacred localities. Such ideas [as that they were respectively in the centre of the world] are no indication of the ignorance of the ancients: they were symbolical and traditionary conceptions inherited from the sacred mount of Paradise." The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal. Chicago, 1881: p. 312. Compare 1884, p. 118.

231:2 Among the Romans no city, or even camp, was rite established and founded without a sacred Umbilicus. It "fiel in den Schnittpunkt des Decumanus and Cardo Maximus, d. h., wohin die Via decumana, sich mit der Via principalis kreuzt; dieser Schnittpunkt befand sich vor dem introitus Praetorii; da stand auch die Ara castrorum, da war der Umbilicus des Systems. Diesen Umbilicus nun finden wir in Rom noch in Mauerresten vorhanden am nordöstlichen Anfang des Forum wieder, welche Stelle als Umbilicus bezeichnet wurde." J. H. Kuntze, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Roms.. Leipsic, 1882: p. 154. See notes below, on the cities of Cuzco and Mexico.

232:1 Murray's Handbook for Syria and Palestine. London, 1858: Pt. i., p. 164. Another account reads, "E de Iherusalem à Seint Habraham sunt. viii. liwes, e là fust Adam fourmé." Itinéraires à Jerusalem, et Descriptions de la Terre Sainte. Rédigés en français aux XI^e, XII^e, XIII^e siècles. Publiés par Michelant et Reynaud. Genève, 1882: p. 233.

232:2 See F. Piper, Adams Grab auf Golgotha. Evangelischer Kalender, 1861: p. 17 ff. (illustrated). Philippe Mousket (A.D. 1241), in his descriptive poem on the Holy Places, makes it the tomb of both Adam and Eve:—

"Et là tout droit ù li Iudeu
Crucifiiérent le fil Deu,
Fu Adam, li premiers om, mis
Et entierés et soupoulis,
Et Eve, sa feme, avoec lui," etc.
(Michelant et Reynaud, ut supra, p. 115.)

232:3 W. Henderson, Identity of the Scene of Man's Creation, Fall, and Redemption. London, 1864: p. 10.

233:2 "Ararat and Eden." The Contemporary Review, vol. iii., No. 27 (Am. ed., p. 46).

234:1 That this traditionally-given first reason for the appellation is not well founded is evident from the fact that the Hebrews had a "Navel of the Earth," farther to the North, before ever they had possessed themselves of the site of Jerusalem (Judg. ix. 37).

234:2 In Origen, Selectis ad Genesin, we read, "Tradunt Hebræi locum, in quo Paradisum plantavit Deus, Eden vocari, et ajunt ipsum mundi medium esse, ut pupillam oculi." Compare Hershon, Talmudic Miscellany, p. 300.

235:1 "À peine l’enfant [Zeus] venoit de naître, que les Curètes le portèrent sur l’Ida. Dans le trajet, le cordon ombilical se detacha et tomba au milieu d’une plaine qui prit de là le nom de ὀμφαλὸς, nombril (nom qu’elle devoit avoir auparavant)."—T. B. Eméric-David, Jupiter; Recherches sur ce Dieu, sur son Culte, etc., Paris, 1833, t. i., p. 248, referring to Callimachus, Hymnus in Jovem, y. 44; Diodorus Sic., v. 70.

236:5 "Id quod pro deo colitur, non eandem effigiam habet, quam vulgo diis accommodaverunt: umbilico maxime similis est habitus, smaragdo et gemmis coagmentatus." Quintus Curtius, De Reb. Ges., iv. 7, 23. See notes in Lemaire's ed., Paris, 1822; also Diodorus Siculus, iii. 3. Capt. Wilford notices another coincidence: "The p. 237 Pauranics say that . . . the first climate is that of Meru; among the Greeks and Romans the first climate was that of Meroë."—Wilford in Asiatic Researches, vol. viii., p. 289.

237:1 "Before this time"—the time of the deluge of Deucalion—"Zeus had once wanted to know where the middle of the earth was, and had let fly two doves at the same moment from the two ends of the world, to see where they would meet; they met on Mount Parnassos, and thus it was proved beyond a doubt that this mountain must be the centre of the earth."—C. Witt, Myths of Hellas. London, 1883: p. 140.

237:3 "Au début de l’hiver Apollon quitte Delphes pour le pays mystérieux des Hyperboréens, où règne une lumière constante, et qui p. 238 échappe aux rigueurs de l’hiver." Maxime Collignon, Mythologie Figurée de la Grèce. Paris, 1883: p. 96. See Alcæus' Hymn, referred to by Menzel, Unsterblichkeitslehre, i., p. 87. The present writer is not the first to be reminded here of polar Meru: "Bei ihnen (den Hyperboreern), wohnen beständig der Sonnengott Apollo und seine Schwester Artemis, wie auf dem indischen Meru ebenfalls Indra, der Lichtgeist und Sonnengott, wohnt." Dr. Heinrich Lüken, Die Traditionen des Menschengeschlechts, oder die Uroffenbarung unter den Heiden. Münster, 2d ed., 1869: p. 73.

238:1 See Olympian Odes, iv., 94; vi., 3; viii., 62; xi., 10. Nemean, vii., 33. Frag., i., 3, and passim; comp. Olymp., ii., iii.; Pyth., iv., etc.

238:2 "The Dorian worship of Apollo was primitively Boreal." Humboldt, Cosmos (Bohn's ed.), ii., 511. Compare Pindar's expression in second Olympian Ode: "the Hyperborean folk who serve Apollo."

238:3 "Cette montagne est sacrée; c’est l’ombilic du monde." Moreau de Jonnès, L’Océan des Anciens, p. 162. As to the Ægean Delos, the best explanation Keary can give is this: "Delos was afterward deemed to be the navel of the earth, because, being in special favor with Apollo, it might be thought to stand under the eye of the midday sun." (!) Primitive Belief, p. 183. Compare, on the other hand, Pindar's Fragment in honor of Delos, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and the Japanese myth of Onogorojima before described.

240:1 A. H. Sayce, Babylonian Literature. London, 1878: p. 39. The Sunis of Northwestern Africa, in our own day, fix the centre of the world outside their own territory, "between themselves and the Soudan." R. G. Haliburton, Notes on Mount Atlas and its Traditions. Salem, Mass., 1883: p. 8.

240:2 Records of the Past, xi., pp. 109 seq. George Smith, Chaldæan Account of Genesis, 2d ed., p. 92. Lenormant, Beginnings of History, app., pp. 508-510.

240:3 "The convexity in the centre is the navel of Vishnu."—Asiatic Researches, vol. viii., p. 273.

241:1 The following versions may be compared: "Zusammenkommend, die beiden Jungen, deren Enden zusammenstossen, die verbündeteten Schwestern in der beiden Aeltern Schosse, küssend den Nabel der Welt, schützt uns, Himmel and Erde, vor Gewalt."—Ludwig, i. 182.

"Going always together, equally young and of like termination, sisters and kindred, and scenting [sic] the navel of the world, placed on their lap as its parents; defend us, Heaven and Earth, from great danger."—Wilson, ii., 188.

"Die Beiden Jungfraun an einander grenzend,
"Die Zwillingsschwestern in dem Schoss der Eltern,
"Die im Verein der Welten Nabel küssen,—
"Beschirmt vor grauser Noth uns Erd’ and Himmel."
(Grassmann, ii., 197.)

"Around the fire in solemn rite they trod,
The lovely lady and the glorious god;
Like Day and starry Midnight when they meet
In the broad plains at lofty Meru's feet."

[paragraph continues] (Griffiths' Translation of Kumâra Sambhava, or The Birth of the War-God. London, .879.)

242:1 The following is Grassmann's translation: "Ich frage nach dem äussersten Ende der Erde, ich frage wo der Welt Nabel ist," etc Rig Veda, i., 164, 34; comp. 35.

243:1 The reader will no doubt be glad to see the exact language: "Le contact de la terre et du ciel, serait-il l’hymen mystérieux d’où l’humanité naquit? Le ciel, ce serait le père qui engendre; la mère, ce serait la grande terre, ayant sa matrice dans la partie la plus haute de sa surface, sur les hauts monts; et ce serait la que le père 'féconderait le sein de celle qui est en même temps, son épouse et sa fille.' On a cru voir ce point de contact dont parle Dīrghatamas,—Outtânâyah tchamwâh, 'endroit septentrional où les deux surfaces se touchent,'—au pôle nord, connu de l’auteur; l’étoile polaire se nommant outtanapada. Il est certain que la somme des connaissances positives collectionées par ce philosophe était relativement important."—Marius Fontane, Inde Védique. Paris, 188i: pp. 94, 200.

243:4 Ibid., pp. 22, 36. So, in consequence of the duality and opposite polarity alluded to in the context, "Hell is in the middle of the earth," at the South Pole, p. 19.

243:5 See Index to Darmesteter's Zend-Avesta. Compare the Vedic hymn (ii., 35), "An den Sohn der Wasser," Apâm napât, whose location p. 244 is "an dem höchsten Orte" (v., 13, Grassmann). Compare quotation from Ritter, in part iv., chapter first, supra.

244:1 "Dieser Albordj, der Lichtberg, der Nabel der Erde, wird von Sonne Mond und Sternen umgeben."—Carl Ritter, Erdkunde, Bd. viii., p. 46.

244:2 "In Kwen-lun is Shang-te's lower recreation-palace. . . . Shang-te's wife dwells in this region, immediately over which is Shang-te's heavenly palace, which is situated in the centre of the heavens, as his earthly one is in the centre of the earth. . . . The Queen mother dwells alone in its midst, in the place where the genii sport. At the summit there is a resplendent azure hall, with lakes inclosed by precious gems, and many temples. Above rules the clear ether of the ever-fixed, the polar, star."—Condensed from the Chinese Recorder, vol. iv., p. 95.

244:4 "Quand je vous ai parlé des libations en usage à la Chine, je vous ai dit, Monsieur, qu’on se tournait vers le pôle septentrional pour faire les libations en l’honneur des morts. En considérant la vénération de ce peuple pour ses ancêtres, on n’aperçoit qu’une explication naturelle de cet usage; c’est de dire que les Chinois se tournent vers le pays du monde, où ils ont pris naissance, et où leur ancêtres reposent."—Bailly, Lettres sur l’Origine des Sciences et sur celle des Peuples de l’Asie. Paris, 1777: p. 236.

245:2 "These [a mythological pair] were the ancestors of the Ainos. Their offspring, in turn, married; some among each other, others with the bears of the mountains [the Bear Tribe?]. The fruits of this latter union were men of extraordinary valor and nimble hunters, who, after a long life spent in the vicinity of their birth, departed to the far North, where they still live on the high and inaccessible tablelands above the mountains; and, being immortal, they direct, by their magical influences, the actions and the destiny of men; that is, the Ainos."—Ibid., p. 28.

245:4 "It may not be devoid of interest to mention here that the Ainos bury their dead with the head to the South. . . . The Aino, to-day, as he did in ancient times, buries his dead by covering the body with matting, and placing it with the head to the South in a grave which is about three feet deep." Notes on Japanese Archæology with especial reference to the Stone Age, by Henry von Siebold, Yokohama, 1879, p. 6. Let no reader imagine this a meaningless rite of undeveloped savages." From all these observations, as well as from the traditions of the Ainos, in which are ever-recurring laments for a better past; and from many peculiarities in their customs, we must conclude that the Ainos are to be classed with those peoples that have earlier been more richly supplied with the implements of civilization, but have become degraded through isolation. Prehistoric discoveries . . . favor this view. The pits found there for dwellings indicate that the Ainos came from the North to Yezo." Professor Brauns, of Halle. Translated from Memoirs of the Berlin Anthropological Society, in Science. Cambridge, 1884; p. 72.

246:1 "The Japanese in their earlier separation regarded their country as the centre and most important part of the world."—J. J. Rein, Japan, Travels and Researches, English translation. London, 1884: p. 6.

246:2 "Nos ancêtres scandinaves plaçaient la demeure de leurs dieux, Asgard, au milieu du monde, c’est-à-dire au centre de la surface de la terre d’alors. Il est assez remarquable qu’une telle idée n’est pas sans fondement, puisqu’il faut admettre, comme je crois l’avoir démontré, que l’Europe, l’Asie, et l’Amérique, unis vers le pôle nord, formaient avant le déluge un seul continent." Frédérik Klee, Le Déluge, Fr. ed. Paris, 1847: p. 188 n. But, by clinging to "the highest mountains of Asia," as the centre originally meant, M. Klee loses the chief advantage of his supposed union of the continents at the Pole.—The Teutonic omphalos of the world is preserved at Finzingen, near Altstädt, in Saxe-Weimar. See Kuhn and Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen. Leipsic, 1848: p. 215.

247:1 Im Centrum des Mittellands. Luken, Traditionen, p. 75; citing Clavigero, Storia del Messico, tom. ii., 13, 14. "Die Mexicaner opferten auf den höchsten Bergen weil sie glaubten, dass auf ihnen Tlaloc, der Herr des Paradieses wohne. Sie wurden einerseits als der Mittelpunkt der Erde betrachtet, andererseits aber als die Stätte, welche dem Himmel am nächsten ist, und ihm in näherer Berührung als die Erde selbst steht." Keerl, Die Schöpfungsgeschichte, p. 799. In like manner the national temple of Tlaloc and Vizilputzli, his brother, stood in the centre of the city of Mexico, whence four causeway roads conducted East, West, North, and South. In the centre of the temple was a richly ornamented Pillar of peculiar sanctity. Bancroft, Native Races, vol. iii., p. 292. The Quiché prayer to the "Heart of Heaven, Heart of Earth," would seem to rest upon similar conceptions of the true abode of God. Popol Vuh. Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop. New York, 1872: vol. i., p. 335.

247:2 "The centre and capital of this great territory was Cuzco (i.e., 'navel'), whence to the borders of the kingdom branched off four great highways, North and South and East and West, each traversing one of the four provinces or vice-royalties into which Peru was divided." The Land of the Incas, by W. H. Davenport Adams. London, 1883: p. 20. In the central temple here, too, there was a Pillar, placée dans le centre d’un cercle dans l’axe du grand temple et traversée par un diamètre de l’est à l’ouest. P. Dabry de Thiersant, p. 248 De l’Origine des Indiens du Nouveau-Monde et de leur Civilisation. Paris, 1883: p. 125. Still more interesting is it to note that the predecessors of the Peruvians are reported to have had an idea of the work of the creation of the world as proceeding from the North to the South. Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions. Philadelphia, 1881, p. 334.

248:1 "Some of the large mounds left in Mississippi were called 'navels' by the Chickasaws, although the Indians are said not to have had any idea whether these were natural mounds or artificial structures. They thought Mississippi was at the centre of the earth, and the mounds were as the navel in the middle of the human body."—Gerald Massey, referring to Schoolcraft, i. 311.

249:2 The genuinely scientific basis of this ancient symbolism is vividly shown in our above given sketch-map of the actual relations of all the continents to the North Pole.

CHAPTER IV.

THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 1

Footnotes