Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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28 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. Finally, as to the supposed difficulty of imagining a heaven-upholder so tall that it would take a brazen anvil nine days and nights to fall from his head to his feet, if Professor Paley had remembered Sandalfon, the Talmudic Atlas, he would hardly have thought it necessary to locate the I-Iesiodic one on the edge of the earth where the sky is low. Of Sandalfon, Rabbi Eliezer has said, 'f There is an angel who standeth on earth, and reacheth with his head to the door of heaven. It is taught in the Mishna that he is called Sandalfong he exceedeth his companions as much in height as one can walk in five hundred years, and that he stands behind the chariot fCharles's Wainj and twisteth or bindeth the garlands for his Creator. 1 Atlas's pillar, then, is the axis of the world. It is the same pillar apostrophized in the Egyptian document known as the great Harris Magic Papyrus, in these unmis- takable words: O long column, which commences in the upper and in the lower heavens! 2 It is, with scarce a doubt, what the same ancient people in their Book of the Dead so happily styled the spine of the earth. 3 It is the Rig-Veda's vieltragende Achse ales umzufhaltsam sich olrehenden, nie alternolen, nwmorschwerdemlen, durch den Laqf der Zeiten nicht abgenutzten Weltracls, auf 'welckem ALLE WESEN s'rEHEN.4 It is the umbrella-staff of Bur- mese cosmology, the churning-stick of India's gods and demons. It is the trunk of every cosmical tree.5 It is the Tai Kih of the Chinese universe, the tortoise-piercing Cearth-piercingj arrow of the Mongolian heaven-godg the spear of Izanagi. It is the cord which the ancient Vedic bard saw stretched from one side of the universe to the 1 Eisennnenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, Bd. II., p. 402 fEng. vol. ii., p. 071. In all ancient cosmologies the door of heaven is at the north pole. Sacred Books ofthe East, vol. i., pp. 36, 37. 9 Records ofthe Past, vol. x., p. 152. 3 Chap. cxlii. 4 Rig-Veda, I., 164. Grassman and Ludwig. 5 Ludwig, in his version of the Veda, finds repeated occasion for the use of the expression Stcngel der Welt.

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KEY T0 ANCIENT COSMOLGGY. 27 actually affords new confirmation, since Jlischylus, Phero- cydes, and the oldest traditions locate the 1-lesperides themselves, not in the west, but in the extreme north, beyond the Rhiphaean Mountains, in the wgicinity of the I-Iyperboreans.1 In fact, there are very strong reasons for believing that these Gardens of the Hesperides were noth- ing other than the starry gardens of the circumpolar sky 5 that, therefore, the Hesperides were called the Daugh- ters of Night, and that the great serpent which assisted the nymphs in watching the golden apples was none other than the constellation Draco, whose brilliant con- stituent rz, the ilSt1'0l1OlllG1 S Thuban, was, less than fifty centuries ago, the pole-star of our heaven. Once more, our interpretation perfectly harmonizes the passages which represent Atlas as a heaven-supporter with those which represent him as equally supporting earth. More than this, it reveals the curious fact, that l-loinc-r's description of the tall pillars of Atlas identifies them with the axes of earth and heaven so unmistakably., that, in order to blunder into the common mistranslation of it, it was first necessary to invent. and get the lexicographers to adopt, a span-new special meaning for the words daqnlg Sjgsnf, - a meaning necessitated by no other passagein the whole body of Homeric Greek. I-Ioiner's beautifully explicit lan- guage is, - Exsa JE 're rriovag abrbg lzafrpdg, ai' ynidv 're Kal oirpavbv dpgbig Exovznv. Who, of his own right, possesses the tall pillars which have around them ea,th and heaven. 2 Nowhere in Ho- meric, if, indeed, in any ancient Greek, does the expres- sion mean to prop asu1zder. 3 1 Preller, Gricchische Myihologie, vol. ii., p. 149. Viilcker, Nylhologischo Geographic, pp. 133,172 XVolfgang Menzel, Die Vorchrisllichc Unslerblivh- keilslvhre, vol. i., p. US. Accordingly lost Atlantis must he looked for, not between Europe and America, hut at the pole, whither all the oldest ethnic traditions point us for the cradle ol the human race. 2 Compare Odyssey, XV., 18-L. 9 Buttinann tLexilogus, English translation, 5th ed., pp. 94-1043 is no more successful in showing such a meaning than are the older dictionary- makers.

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KEY T0 ANCIENT COSMOLOGY. 29 other.1 Is it not the Psalmistfs H line of the heavens which is gone out through the very earth and on ff to the end of the world ? It is the Irminsul of the Germans, as expressly recognized by Grimm. It is the tower of Kronos. It is the Talmudic pillar which con- nects the Paradise celestial and the Paradise terrestrial. The fuller illustration and vindication of this key to ancient cosmology, its application to different systems of mythology and mythical geography, and the systematic exposition of said systems in accordance with this new interpretation, are tasks reserved for future and fuller treatises. The studies already completed render it certain that every existing systematic exposition of classic myth- ology is to be supplanted. Equally interesting is the question of the adaptation of this reconstruction of ancient cosmology to throw light on early Hebrew conceptions of the world and of Sheol. And, if the ancestors of the most ancient peoples had so correct a conception of the figure of the earth, our leading Historians of Culture have yet a good deal to learn respecting the mental state and capacity of prehistoric men. W. F. W. 1 Rig-Veda, X., 129, 5.