To be or not to be?

“Or” is the most significant part of this formula…

K. Kedroff

  At first glance it seems that the two things mentioned above don’t have anything  in common. The legend of the Sphinx  has been found in Egyptsince the  time of the old Kingdom (2707-2150 BC). The name the Sphinx itself sounds as “šepses Anh” in ancient Egyptian language and is translated as “a living image”. It is assumed that the image of the Egyptian Sphinx was borrowed by the ancient Greeks. In their mythology one can find the Sphinx (Σφίγξ-“a strangleress”) -a monster, who was born by the Echidna, a creature  with the face and breasts of a woman, a  haunches of a lion and the wings of a bird (Hesiod, Theogony, 326). Hera has cast her at Thebes as a punishment. The duty of  the Sphinx was to ask one and the same question  to  everyone, who was eager to enter the city. Everyone, who failed to give the correct answer, was killed. Oedipus was the only one who managed to reply to her question correctly. As a result she threw herself off the mountain top and died.

As far as the name of the Scythians is considered (Σκύθαι – “a  gloomy one, a sullen one”),  it was given by the ancient Greeks  to the number of Iranian-speaking peoples living in the territory of present-day Moldova, Ukraine, southern Russia, Kazakhstan, and a part of Siberia. It is considered, that this name was first mentioned in History by Herodotus (484-425 BC).

In fact, these two titles, the Sphinx and the Scythians  have one important thing in common – it is the fact that they were presumably created  by Homer.

Our life  resembles the Sphinx, because  during all the history of the mankind a great lot of issues has accumulated, some of them so terrible that for the solution of them many people have  sacrificed their lives, and their answers still have never been found.

These questions include the ones, belonging to the creator of the myth of the Thebesof the Seven Gates, the very person, who probably  invented  the name of the Sphinx. I would like to state immediately (and no discussion to follow, because it requires a separate essay) that Hesiod did not exist. It was a pseudonym for Homer and it’s Homer himself who owns all the works of Hesiod, including Theogony, which referred to the Sphinx.

This theory is based on  the evidence of the hidden verses the author of this essay had found in the well-known works of Hesiod. These verses describe the unknown details of the biography of Homer.

From the set of “ever-lasting” issues concerning Sphinx, let us consider here just three:

• why does biography of Homer still remain unknown?
• what does the name of Homer actually mean?
• why was none of the texts attributed to him nowadays signed by his name, and none of them mentions the name of the Scythians?

In the Iliad (XI, 572) there is the reference to a Scythian tribe boudines (Βουδέιω), in the Odyssey (XI, 14) the city and the people of the Cimmerian Bosporus (Κιμμερίων) are mentioned, the name of the Thracians (Θρήκιος) is being repeated 25 times in the Iliad and only once – in the Odyssey (VIII, 361). However, the name of the Scythians is not mentioned.

The question is: why?

The simplest answer is that during the life of Homer, the Scythians either did not exist or did not come to the fore in history. It is also possible that the name itself didn’t exist.  And since Homer didn’t use the name of the Scythians while he mentioned the Cimmerians, all of today’s world encyclopedia attributed his lifetime to the period of VIII-IX centuries. BC, i.e., to the era of the Cimmerians. But was it really so?

The Pentateuch of Moses gives us the evidence that the Cimmerians and the Scythians existed as early as the 15th century B.C. The Pentateuch  provides us with the following genealogy of Noah’s son Japheth, having escaped after the Flood (Genesis. X, 2): Gomer (the Cimmerians), Javan (the Greeks), Magog (the Scythians), Ma’dai (the Medes), Tubal (the Georgian), Meshech (moskhi) and Tiras (the Thracians). In the “Table of Nations”, first of all, not only the relationship but also the seniority of the peoples is recorded according to the time of their appearance, i.e. the Cimmerians are more ancient people than the Greeks and the Scythians.

Of course, it should not be taken literally, that all the peoples on earth have descended from Adam, and that until the 14th century BC (the time of the life of Moses)  it was the Flood. There was no flood as a global phenomenon in the XIX -XV centuries BC,  we presume, because there is no proper proof of this fact in science.

Generally speaking, we can find the mentions of the Flood  even in a more ancient epic of Gilgamesh. The flooding of the Mediterranean coast was observed after the devastating explosion of the volcano of Santorini (which occurred in the middle of the  XV century BC), leading to the loss of Crete-Mycenaean culture and Atlantis. From the hidden verses of Homer we can deduce that Atlantis was situated in theCrimea, somewhere near Yevpatoria. It turned out that the main source of information about Atlantis was not either Plato or Solon but the ancient ancestry of Homer and the evidence found by him in Egypt.

As we can see, this event was close in time to the moment of Moses creating his Pentateuch. The first Christian theologians warned us against a straight reading of the Sacred Letters. Origen (185-253/4) wrote: “the literal meaning is often incorrect, contradictory, fruitless, futile  and results in a number of the  errors“, and Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330-390) explicitly stated: “Do not be so shallow and understand the Scripture literally.”

So, in my opinion, the allegorical sense of the Flood was a tremendous development of the shipbuilding in the XX-XV centuries BC. It gave a powerful impetus to the development of civilization itself, and also stopped the degeneration of the peoples which was a result of the incest among the members of one family. From the Genesis of Moses  we can learn that 9 generations, starting with Adam and up to Noah,  lived reclusively, and  therefore there was a degeneration of the tribes due to the incest. So, you can reasonably assume that the Bible didn’t state the lifetime of one man,  but the time of the degeneration of the tribe, founded by one of the 9 Adam’s descendants. This degeneration lasted  within a period of 600-960 years. It was a punishment for the corrupted humankind (Genesis 6-8).

It can be said that Noah was the first seaman who was rescued by God as a righteous person, only for the very fact that his children were not born in incest. The evidence of this is the multi-ethnic names of the sons of Japheth.

From the genealogy, which is given in the Old Testament, it is seen that the duration of the life of Adam’s descendants went back to the really possible not immediately, but only in the 26^th generation after Adam, i.e. at the time of the life of Moses (1350 – 1230 BC). Thus, it took about 800 years after Noah to reduce degeneration.

Another important notion God made to Noah 7 days before the Flood, when he told Noah to pick up not a pair, but seven pairs of all living creatures with him (Genesis 7, 3). And it was allegorically indicating that the impact of the incest reduces not earlier than after 7 generations in one ancestry. That is why, in order to avoid the effects of the incest, the members of one Royal family inEurope might intermarry with others only if their families had no close relatives within seven generations.

Also, we should emphasize here the maximum length the ship could pass in Noah’s time in the period of the Flood, i.e. in 40 days. According the statements of Homer in the Odyssey (XIV, 257), within this time the ships could pass a distance from Egypt to the Strait of Gibraltar, which is equal to 4000-5000 km. Noah’s Ark, which is described in detail in the Pentateuch (Genesis 6, 15-17) in 40 days overcame a distance of no more than1500 km and that is why he ended up in  Mount Ararat.

In  my article Homer – myth or reality?, which was published in the Magazine of poets (No. 1, 2011, pp. 33-36), I have proved that Homer lived at 657-581 BC. The  Scythians at that time had just only come to the fore in history, but, in fact, they had forced the Cimmerians out of their homes and the most bellicose tribe was as a result diffused among the Scythians and other tribes, and then ceased to exist. The exact date of the eviction neither historians nor archaeologists could provide. In addition, this process lasted for one or two centuries. The fact is that there is no striking differences in cultures between the Cimmerians and the Scythians,  which usually helps archaeologists  to make their conclusions. It is the evidence, first of all,   of the kinship (Moses tells us that a Cimmerian Homer and  a Scythian Magog are brothers), and, secondly, of interpenetration of tribes.

The direct proof of this is the story of Herodotus (History, IV, 11) about the battle between the chiefs of the Cimmerians. One part of them did not want to leave their homes, while the other wanted to get away from the strong forces of the advancing Scythians toAsia Minor. So  the part of the tribe of the Cimmerian Chiefs, who decided to stay at home in Hylea (now it is a part of Mykolayiv region,Ukraine) became known as the Imperial Scythians. Homer was a descendant of them.

It should be emphasized that the 7-year period of Homer staying in Egypt from 629 to 621 BC and another year spent in Phoenicia at the place of his mother’s parents in the city of Sidon (Saida), played a crucial role in his spiritual growth (ref. to A. Zolotukhin, Homer. The Immanent biography, Nikolayev, 2001). While in the service of Psammetichus I, he had the opportunity to get acquainted with the most outstanding scholars and priests of Egypt. Of course, he could see Sphinx near the pyramids of Giza. But perhaps the most important fact was that he became acquainted with Sumerian-Akkadian, Egyptian and Hebrew literature, and also had an opportunity to gather the information about Atlantis, as well as knowledge of geography and astronomy. It’s after exploring the Pentateuch of Moses, he grabbed the name of Homer  after his distant ancestor of the Cimmerian origin. He was very proud of his ancestors – the Atlantean-Cimmerians  – and therefore considered himself  not a barbarian, comparing to Greeks.

From Hebrew language the name of Homer is translated as “completeness, perfection”. Of course, in his works Homer used only the ancient Greek interpretation of this name. However, it has two different translations: “a blind man” and “a hostage”. In order to get rid of the interpretation of his name as a “hostage”, Homer introduced  such blind singers-prophets in his myths and epics as Pheneas (the Argonautics), Demodocus, Tiresias (the Odyssey) and Tamir the  Thracian (the Iliad). All of this led to historians  portraying the poet as a blind. However, his work clearly shows that he was not blind. Homer in fact was held hostage by his barbaric origin, which complicated the recognition of his works inGreece.  It compelled him to publish  his works under the pseudonym of Hesiod  the Greek – making Homer the first writer to use the pseudonym  in the history of European literature.

Generally speaking, the paradoxical situation which appeared due to the absence of a biography of Homer, cannot be explained by anything other than his barbaric origins. If Homer had been Greek,  what could possibly have  hindered him from writing his biography – even if it would be much shorter than his epics?

The next point is that now, when the dates of Homer’s life are known for sure, an even more  weird question arises: why did none of the contemporaries of Homer leave any evidence about him? Thales, Anaximander, Nestor, Solon and Peisistratos did know him personally, and almost everyone knew where he lived. In fact, Calliopolys was named after the Greek Muse of epic because in Calliopolys Homer wrote the Odyssey. That is where  he was deported for 10 years after the killing of the Penelope’s suitors. Solon and Peisistratos established even a public readings  of the Iliad and the Odyssey during the Panathenaic games.

Considering the popularity of the works of Homer during his lifetime any, even the most modest biography, written either by himself or by his contemporaries, would cause enormous interest inGreece.

This leads to the third, quite a logical question: why were Homer and his contemporaries silent? Why were even their distant descendants silent, though they for sure knew some orally transferred information about Homer?

We will not mention the Scythians – they had no writing system, even though they knew and revered Homer.  In Borysthenidus  speech of Dion Chrysostomos (circa 40-120), which was recorded in Olbia in 95 AD, i.e. 700 years after the life of Homer (!), the author  noted with surprise that nearly all citizens of Olbia read Homer’s Iliad, knew it by heart and regarded  Achilles as a deity.

We now understand why Olbiopolites being compatriots of Homer treated him and his brother Achilles so zealously. But, the question is: why  didn’t Chrysostom mention that Homer was their countryman? I am sure that Olbiopolites told him about it. Still, he  didn’t regard the slightest possibility of it. The question is: why?

The paradox of  biography of Homer can be solved due to the one very important quotation of a contemporary of Homer, the first Greek philosopher, one of the seven wise men of ancient Greece, Thales of Miletian (624-546 BC), who said: “I am grateful to fate for the three things: first, for the fact that I am a human, not an animal; secondly, for the fact, that I am a man and not a woman; thirdly, for the fact, that I am not a vandal, and I am an Allyn”. So, as you can see, the paradox is explained simply and thoroughly – Homer in the eyes of the Greeks was a barbarian, i.e., by definition, cultureless, rude, incomprehensible and speaking   the strange and incomprehensible language. The founder of an ancient Greek culture being a barbarian?! – it was the  thing the Greeks did not like to accept! Homer understood this perfectly and tried to accept this, but internally he couldn’t agree with such an attitude, because he loved his motherland: «there is nothing dearer to a man than his own country and his parents “(the Odyssey, IX, 34).

And then the silent historic compromise appeared, which lasted for 2582 years, until in 2001, my book Homer. The Immanent biography was published. The essence of the compromise was the following: Homer didn’t openly describe barbaric world, he didn’t speak of his barbarian origin and didn’t sign works with his own name, and the Greeks, in turn, never called him a barbarian. So, with the tacit consent of both parties the myth of the Greek origin of Homer was created.

As we know seven cities argued for the honor to be regarded as the birthplace of Homer: Qom, Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Paphos, Argos, Athens. Actually the list of these cities was longer – there were more than 20 of them. However, even in this extended list many cities were not included, e.g. such Greek cities as Elay (now Seddulbakhir, Turkey) and Calliopolys (which is located near the village Kapakly of Gemlik district, province of Bursa, Turkey), where Homer  actually lived. It is no coincidence either, because these towns were founded by the barbarians, which would inevitably cast a shadow on Homer’s Greek origin. Thus, the historians know that originally, city of Elay(Antandr), which is described in the Odyssey asIthaca (allegorically the meaning of this name is “my city”), was called Cimmerida. The city was owned by the Cimmerians over 100 years. And it was Homer’s great-great-grandfather, Targitaios, who laid the city, as appears from hidden verses of Homer, in 749 BC. Targitaios also was a founder of the Scythians according to Herodotus. In this case, is there anything to say about the city ofOlbia located inScythia, where Homer was born and lived until the age of 11? A Scythian Tsar Pan at first drove the father out of here and then Homer with her sister Elena and her first husband Hephaestus also left the place. His twin brother Achilles with his mother remained  as a prisoner to Pan up to the age of 15. It was  the first Olbia founded by Targitaios in 753 BC, next to two other towns of Borysthenidus, and Neeson. The first Olbia was situated near Lagernoe Pole (Camp Field), inNikolayev (Ukraine). However, the city existed for short time only, no more than 3-4 centuries. Herodotus saw Olbia (Borysthenidians settlement) in 450 BC near theTemple ofDemeter. But the second Olbia (located near thevillage ofParutyno in Nykolayev region), was founded by Achilles  and Homer’s Muse, Cleopatra, in 621 BC. It  turned out to be really lucky, because it existed for  more than 1000 years.

But one may ask, what was the price of the evident deal-making of Homer with being considered exclusively a Greek rather than a barbaric? Firstly, it was not a complete betrayal, because Homer’s mother was considered to be a Greek. Secondly, and the most important, it is completely Greek origin and  regarding Greek world exclusively in his works that gave him hope that his works will be preserved by Greek culture for a long time, because the Scythians didn’t have written language. Many ancient works haven’t survived up to nowadays. Among them there are poem Arimaspea in 3 volumes, written by a teacher and a great-grandfather of Homer Arpoxais (Aristeas  of Proconessus),  800 poems of Anacharsis (Telemachus), a  son of Homer. There is one and only reason for that – both of them were considered barbarians by the  Greeks and both of them described a  barbaric world. And, thirdly, Homer, considering himself a descendant of the Cimmerians from Atlantis, who were the contemporaries of the Crete- Mycenean culture tried to prove to the Greeks that his family cannot be considered barbaric.

Homer found a way out of this tragic situation, which was quite worthy of a genius. In all of his writings  he introduced the hidden verses  the content of which described his biography. That is why he did not have either to sign them with his own name of Homer or to write his autobiography. In fact, with the invention of the hidden verses, the poet developed a secret way  of copyright protection.

As we can see, Homer,  regarding the question of Hamlet, i.e. “to be or not to be?”, chose the golden front of “or”, according to K. Kedroff. It was the most important, it was freedom itself – thus, the choice was correct.

As a result of this double-entry bookkeeping, the founder of the European culture was able to describe not only the history of Greek (openly – with the usage of “metametaphor”), but also (secretly, with the usage of “insideout”) of the Cimmerian-Scythian world.

In the center of the latter was the story of his own life, the life of the last Tsar of the Cimmerians. All of his ten sons of Laèrtida-Cleopatra (4), Penelope (1) and Calypso-Iphigenia (5) were already considered to be the Scythians. The son of Homer  and Penelope, Telemachus, under the name of the Scythian Tsar Anacharsis was in the age of 28  recognized as the Wise man of ancientGreece. However this kinship also remained a mystery, though Homer in hidden verses writes that his son Telemachus (Anacharsis) was recognized inGreeceas a wise man and loved eagerly. And it seemed that history has not preserved for us any evidence of this kinship.

The situation was made even more complex because Homer in the evident text of the Odyssey tried to make his own lifetime and the lifetime of Telemachus  as distant as possible from the known history of Anacharsis. In order to do that he made all the events of the epic more distant in time and hid with the mythological allegory all the geographic realities of his own Odyssey, which took place in a barbarian world of Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea – note by the author). So, placing Hades in the Scythia (now Nikolayev), Homer said that next to it there is a city and the people of the Cimmerian, who in reality by then had been already dead. The poet diligently removed any mentions of the Scythians (Σκύθαι), replacing them with the “noble Hippemolgi, who  live on milk”  (The Iliad, XIII, 6), the Thracians, or similar sounding names such as the Scaean (Σκαιαὶ) Gate of Troy, that actually were Scythian. He also invented  some allegorical  substitutes for the Scythians. One of them is Centaurs (Κεν-ταύροιο), consisting of Κεν – “stupid, ignorant”, and ταύροιο –” the taurians “, i.e. a Scythian tribe of Taurida (Crimea). So, the Centaurs are “the ignorant Scythians”. Homer pointed out that his mother Clymene who was a Greek, invented this name. She was the one who taught all her children and a daughter of her husband Cleopatra. Homer’s mother was highly educated, she could speak ancient Greek, Phoenician, Hebrew, and Scythian languages, but she was a tough teacher, and called herself Centaur Chiron (Brutal).

Despite all these tricks of Homer, Herodotus, visited Scythia 130 years later, honestly wrote down the stories about the origins of the Scythians and brought true ancestry of Anacharsis  in his History (IV, 76): “And as I heard from Tymnes the steward of Ariapeithes, he was the uncle on the father’s side of Idanthyrsos king of the Scythians, and the son of Gnuros, the son of Lycos, the son of Spargapeithes”. Thus, this ancestry looks as follows: Spargapeithes → Lycos → Gnuros → Anacharsis, Savlios → Idanthyrsos.

Homer’s father’s real name was Lycos, Homer keeps telling about it in the hidden verses. So, Gnuros appears to be Homer. It can be assumed that the name Gnuros – Γνούρου – is an abbreviated form of Γνῶριμος – meaning “well-know, famous”.

In the hidden verses Homer mentioned that his son, Telemachus,  born by Penelope  after the competition with 12 visionaries was recognized as one of the wise men of ancient Greecefor his aphorisms. It happened  in 592 BC. Herodotus in his History (IV, 46) highlighted that “…we can neither put forward any nation of those who dwell within the region of Pontus as eminent in ability, nor do we know of any man of learning having arisen there, apart from the Scythian nation and Anacharsis”. In numerous ancient Greek and Roman sources (approximately 300 of them survived, describing the customs of the Scythians) it is stated that the Tsar Anakharsis camr toGreece fromScythia. In fact, it turned out that he was born, raised and lived in a Greek city of  Elay (which was13 km fromTroy across theDardanellesStrait, nowSeddulbakhir,Turkey). So, we have every reason to equate these names: Anakharsis = Telemachus.

The myth of Heracles (immanently – Homer) tells us that he had three sons from an Amazon snakelike girl (actually it was his muse, his half sister Queen Cleopatra-Laèrtida). The youngest of the boys got the first name Hyllus (Iliad XX, 392). It was  the name of the land Hylaea (Woody). After he became a Tsar, he became known as the Scythian (Herodotus, History, IV, 8-10). Thanks to this Hylaea became known as the Scythia. So Homer could be called the creator of this name, unless it has appeared earlier. And the reasons  for this are provided by Herodotus (History, IV, 5), speaking on the origin of the Scythians, “Now the Scythians say that their nation is the youngest of all nations, and that this came to pass as follows:—The first man who ever existed in this region, which then was desert, was one named Targitaos: and of this Targitaos they say, though I do not believe it for my part, however they say the parents were Zeus and the daughter of the river Borysthenes. Targitaos, they report, was produced from some such origin as this, and of him were begotten three sons, Lipoxaïs and Arpoxaïs and the youngest Colaxaïs. In the reign of these there came down from heaven certain things wrought of gold, a plough, a yoke, a battle-axe, and a cup, and fell in the Scythian land: and first the eldest saw and came near them, desiring to take them, but the gold blazed with fire when he approached it: then when he had gone away from it, the second approached, and again it did the same thing. These then the gold repelled by blazing with fire; but when the third and youngest came up to it, the flame was quenched, and he carried them to his own house. The elder brothers then, acknowledging the significance of this thing, delivered the whole of the kingly power to the youngest “. Considering this story as well as the other stories by Herodotus,  and the information provided by the hidden verses it is possible to restore the Cimmerian-Scythian ancestry of Homer, which is as follows (the implied years are marked with italics):

Targitaios (776-697) → (Lipoxais, Aproxais) Colaxais (732-666) → Spargapeithes (715-646) → Lycos (676-596) → Gnuros -Homer (657-581) → Hyllus -Scythian (638-580), Savlius (607-551) → Idantirs (580-510) → Ariantis (540-460) → Ariapeithes (505-430) → Skeel (485-449), Octamasadas (480-410) → Athey (429-339).

The ancient Greeks themselves acknowledged that even before Homer they were taught  to compose the hexameters by a  hyperborean Olen. Herodotus called him a  man of Lykia who composed a number of ancient hymns for the people of Delosas well as  other Greeks (History, IV, 35). In fact it turned out that the Olen, Aristaeus of Proconesus and Aproxais (734-640 BC) are one and the same person, Homer’s relative, precisely a  great-grandfather on his father’s side and grandfather on his mother’s side (i.e an incest took place)! After  an 11-year-old Homer had to fly from Olbia, he settled in the city of Elay (Seddulbakhir),  which was at just one day and a half distance by sailing from the island of Prokonessa. In the hidden verse Homer wrote: For four years I was taught  by Hermes of Asia, who has seen three generations. And indeed, Aproxais lived for 95 years, was a sailor, visited many countries, was eager to learn, that is how his name is translated. His Arimaspea was published after his death in theAthens and Homer’s Muse  brought him to Elay 3 volumes of this  poem by sea in 630 BC. So, we can sonsider a Cimmerian  Olen -Aristaeus of Proconesus – Aproxais to be one of the founders of ancient Greek literature, who had worked almost a century earlier than Homer did!

Arimaspea  is a lost archaic poem but some fragments of it survived up to present day. One of the poems (sic!) is dedicated to the horse his brother Colaxais. The information came to us  due to a poet Alkmanus. Homer in the hidden verses noted that Alkmanus was of the same age as Telemachus. He was born and spent his life nearby in Elay, thus, they were friends since childhood and he was sure to get a touch of 3 volumes of Arimaspea. So, as we can see, due to the fact that Olen -Aristaeus of Proconessus – Aproxais  described the Cimmerian world in his poem, his work has not survived, and his contribution to the development of European culture wasn’t regarded as a valuable one. It is possible that this “barbarian” during his long life together with his father made efforts to create the ancient Greek alphabet, and then, having invented hexameter and hymns, paved the way to the glory of Homer. Generally speaking, Homer states that Olen confessed that he had inherited all his father’s (i.e. Targitaios’) passion for the navigation, the thirst for knowledge and creativity. So, the development of a European culture was started not only by Homer alone, but by his entire clan of the Uranians, the descendants of the Atlanteans (Targitaios, Aproxaios, Anacharsis, Gnuros)  during a period of three centuries: VIII-VI centuries BC.

The fact that the works of Aristaeus of Proconessus  are lost makes it impossible for us to determine whether or not he mentioned the Scythians. But, thanks to the discovery of the hidden verses,  it is possible to prove that Homer still mentioned the Scythians.

It turned out that the author of the Argonautica  is Homer, not Apollonius of Rhodes, who lived in the 3rd century BC, i.e. it is a pure plagiarism. Apollonius was the Director of the library ofAlexandria and an admirer of the poetry of Homer. Taking advantage of the fact that the poem is not signed, he decided to administer the place of it’s author to himself. We have nothing to odd but to thank him for preserving this myth. As well as the fact that  he didn’t add anything to the text, otherwise the hidden poems wouldn’t be readable. Apparently he knew that a myth belonged to the great Homer.

It turned out that the Argonautica  was written by Homer in Olbia (Nikolayev) in 591 BC, immediately after the burial of his concealed beloved, his sister by the father’s side Cleopatra. The poem was dedicated to the death of his Muse and Atlantis. It was Cleopatra who provoked his  interest  in Atlantis, that is why he  compares her with  the dead daughter of Atlant, Klejto (“Glorious”). In the Argonautica  she  is named Cleopatra (i.e., the one who made her native land glorious). She was a daughter of Homer’s father. She  was born in Colchis in 662 BC (probably in Èèe). Laèrtida felt hurt that she was not born in her beloved first Olbia. That is why,  while she was still alive, Homer tried to describe in the Odyssey the Kingdom  of Alcinous  and Arete in Scherir (Batumi), as an ideal state of high culture, in which the sailors travelling all over the world were in high regard.  The Queen Laèrtida herself was an experienced sailor. She rescued her and Homer’s sons from the anger of Pan. Along with the Golden Fleece, which has been a symbol of an imperial power of the Scythians, she took them on the board of the ship toColchis to Alkinous and Arete. Lycus was the one who had the power to own the Fleece, as he was born  in the first  Olbia and was the senior in age among the children of Maya, a daughter of Colaxais (an Atlant). Later, when the danger passed, Laèrtida brought her sons back to their homeland the Golden Fleece was brought on board of the ship to her father in Elay, in 629 BC. While travelling there she was the first to pass on the board of her ship  Scylla and Charybdis, sailing  against a strong current in theBosporus. It was during this time period in theStrait  ofBosporus the current turned opposite the direction it has now. This led to the creation of a giant whirlpool Charybdis whic was located just opposite the mud volcano Scylla. Not everyone was experienced enough to overcome these obstacles.  This situation continued for about 38 years, when any merchant  ship could enter theBlack Sea, still, it was is almost impossible to sail out of it. This is why the Black Sea at first was called Pontos Axeinos, (InhospitableSea), and then, when the current returned to the original direction in 591 BC, it was renamed to be Pontos Euxeinos (HospitableSea). Such were the realities behind Homer’s myth of Argonauts, which he transferred fromScythia to Greek land.

In the myth, Homer gave a number of autobiographical information allegorically. It is not a pure accident that Heracles (Homer) is accompanied by the young Hyllus (reference to his son). He called himself a blind Pheneus, whose wife was Cleopatra (Laèrtida), a daughter of the Thracian (Scythian) Tsar Boreus (Lyck-Laertes), whose brothers were Seeth (Homer) and Kalaid (Achilles). Perhaps it is in the Argonautica  Homer, after the death of his Muse, which exerted enormous assistance in promotion of his works in Athens, and in anticipation of the approaching death, decided to reveal the real names of himself and his beloved ones. The point is that  Homer in the hidden verses often calls Lyck “Boreas”. i.e., “Northwind “. That is how the city of  Boreas got it name (it was mentioned in the  Arimaspea). It was located approximately 1 km from Olbia, which was located on the River Cocytus (the Southern Bug) at the confluence of the river Styx (Ingul). Boreas  was later renamed into Borysthenes, probably in the memory of father Boreas (Lyck) and son Pheneus (Homer). Such a renaming might be due to the large popularity of the Homer’s myth of the Argonauts among the Scythians and the Greeks at that time. The title Borysthenes then passed to the Dniper, because  the city of Boreas was located on a bank of the  river Styx (the Ingul River) and Homer, as well as Olen, considered this river to be one of the distributaries of the Dniper and called it The Ocean. The Nikolaev Peninsula with  its two cities (Olbia and Boreas), washed by the Ocean, Hephaestus depicted on the shield of Achilles (Iliad, XVIII, 490-607).

So, in the Argonautica  (IV, 288; 320) the poet for the first time mentioned the name of the Scythians and indicated the location ofScythia, but did it anonymously and 10 years before his death. And what did the Scythians know of Homer?

Of course, the Imperial Scythians as the most powerful and advanced tribe, knew his works and were proud of Homer. We can deduce this by his Scythian nickname Gnuros, i.e. “Famous”. mentioned by Herodotus. Homer was even more glorified by his grandson Idanthyrsus (see the ancestry above), who defeated the greatest (700,000) at the time army of Darius in Scythia and essentially with this victory saved the ancient Greecefrom enslavement by the Persians. (For more details of the most ancient world war see my book Ekzampaeus, Nikolayev, Vozmozhnosti Kimmerii , 2005, pp. 36-63). Then the Greeks could defeat the weakened Persians by their own.

Recently,  a man from Discovery channel discussed with me the possibility of the creation of the film, dedicated to the victory of the Scythian Tsar Idanthyrsus, a grandson of Homer, over the mighty Darius. So, he asked: what would happen if Darius had defeatedScythia? I answered that the free antique culture as it was inEurope  wouldn’t have existed in this case. After some thoughts he responded: sure, there would not have been Alexander the Great and his victorious campaigns. My answer to that was that Alexander the Great  proved his wisdom, laying his way to the East through Asia Minor and not throughScythia. Perhaps he would have perished here, if not beside the walls of the small Olbia as his commander Zapirion, then in the new the new Ekzampaeus, as it happened to the huge army of Darius.

There is a direct evidence that the Scythians considered Achilles to be of their kin. It is the gold lining of the Scythian gorytos a case  for bow and arrows, which was found in Melitopol burial mound, dating back to the IV BC. The main plot of all the imagery on the gorytos is associated with Achilles.

But perhaps the most significant confirmation that the Scythians were proud of Homer is a golden Scythian pectoral dating back to the 4th century BC (see fig. 1), which was found in the burial mound “Tolstaya mohyla” by B.N Mozolevsky, a native of Nykolayev. I have few additions to the analysis of pectoral semiotics (see: Ekzampaeus, pp. 64-81), which was made earlier, by D.S. Raevsky and M. Rusiayeva, which revealed the following.

In the center of the composition (see fig. 2) there is the Golden Fleece, which has been a symbol of the Royal power inScythia. It is held by the Scythian Tsar Ateas on the right and Homer, the author of the myth of Argonauts, on the left. (For comparison, see coins of the 4th century BC with a picture of Homer and Ateas). Probably a pectoral was made by the order of  Ateas (429-339 BC) to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death of Homer in 381 BC. At the same time, Ateas celebrated his own birthday in 429 BC, coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the “expedition of the Argonauts” and in fact with the return in 629 BC of the Golden Fleece toColchis. The Fleece was brought there by Homer’s Muse, Laèrtida to her father, a  Scythian-Cimmerian Tsar, Lyck-Laertes, who was  in exile in Elay. Not stopping here for a detailed analysis of semiotics of all the figures, we may suggest it is a prove that the Scythian Tsar Ateas was a sixth generation descendant of a Cimmerian Homer (see family treea bove). In general, the whole composition of the pectoral is the ritual of Communion, or the transfer of power, with the Golden Fleece from famous ancestor, Cimmerian Tsar Gnuros-Homer, to the Scythian Tsar Ateas. As you can see, the Scythian Tsar Ateas, who conquered half ofEurope, not only knew the story of his ancestry and the works of his ancestor, but was also proud of his origins from Homer.

So, to paraphrase Shakespeare, Oedipus could say: There are more things in heaven and earth, my friends Scythians, than are dreamt of by Sphinx.

The essay published in The Magazine of POets, №6-7(30), “Ekho planety”.Moscow, 2011, pp. 38-40

Fig. The central segment of the golden  Pectoral and the coins depicting Homer on the left and Ateas on the right, dating back to the 4th century BC.