The other day archeologists Cyril Gorbenko, Alexander Smirnov and me searched in the Cape Lagernoe Pole (Camp Field) to find the temple of Demetra but didn’t find anything yet. The fact is that I wrote that the temple of Demetra had been expected to be found at the present Nikolaev Observatory’s location in my book “The City of St. Nicholas”. Having re-read carefully the ancient Greek text of the fourth book of “History” by Herodotus, I discovered that he had seen the temple in the middle of the 5th century B.C. at theCapeofHypaniscoast (theSouthern Bugriver) near Borysthen village or city. My researches of Homer’s presence at that place (see my book “Homer. The immanent biography”, by “Atoll”, Nikolaev, 2001) showed it had been the first Olbia and should be found in the area between the Yacht Club and Lagernoe Pole. I think it was founded by Homer’s great-grandfather Targitaus in the middle of 8th century B.C. It was Olbia where Homer was born in September 14, 657 B.C. (Find more about this in the article “Homer – Myth or Reality?”). The second Olbia (near Parutino village) was founded by his twin brother Achilles and his half-sister Cleopatra in July, 20, 624 BC. At that time Homer was collecting facts about Atlantis in Egypt, where he spent 7 years.

Within the last 10 years I have been engaged in summarizing the evidence basis, collecting the facts for over 31 years, which I hope to publish as a three volume scientific monograph, entitled “Homer. Autobiography”. The difference in the first book’s title was due to the fact that in 2008 I was able to discover the hidden poetry in Homer’s plain texts. It made me entitle the book as “Autobiography”. That possibility was foreseen by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. When Nikolay Gnedich had been completing his translation of “Iliad”, he wrote to Pushkin in 1832: “You were the one who have talked with Homer for a long time, / We have been waited for you for a long time…”. So we have to wait until the end of my imaginative conversations with Homer and the monograph is published, where all the evidence will be indicated. Meanwhile, please, take it for granted and realize that this is anyhow a newspaper article where it is impossible to bring all the evidence. It is explained in the article “The Sphinx and the Scythians” why a real Homer biography was not published during his lifetime.

In “The Odyssey» (XXIV, 304) Homer wrote: “I was born in Alybas”, and Alybas is translated from Greek as “Phyla of the dead”. The name of Phyla is mentioned to define a generic name of the Fortress buildings (Phyla) located to the north of Athens, on the border with Beotia. And it quite meets the realities of “Wild Orchard”, where the citadel, surrounded by a deep moat, was found. Thus, in the days of Homer (VII-VI centuries B.C.), that town was already dead – it was confirmed by radiocarbon analysis of Wild Orchard (XIII-X centuries B.C.). You need not understand this phrase literally, because in fact Homer was born in the first Olbia, situated next to Alybas. It was just an expression of pride and significance of the city of the dead for Homer. Alybas  enormously respected by Royal Scythians and Cimmerians because it was the city of their ancestors, the Atlanteans, who had escaped three days before the cataclysm. Homer wrote that hierophants had predicted the date of Atlantis destruction, and ten families  first moved to the Kinburn Spit on ships, and later founded Alybas there. It was because of Alybas that Homer had placed the kingdom of the dead there, Hades, and pointed out that it was located where “the people and the city of Cimmerians were” (“Odyssey», XI, 14), with Asphodel Meadows on the Spit (Campos Elysian – Fields of blessed), and he placed Tartarus at the Kinburn Spit, i.e. Hell. The Southern Bug river in Homer times was Cocytus, i.e. the river of wailing (it is known that the water of the Southern Bug-Hypanis was salty in Herodotus time). The Ingul River, that flows into the Southern Bug exactly near Alybas- Hades, was named the Styx by Homer, i.e. the river of the dead. Homer and his ancestors believed they had been the descendants of Atlanteans, who were contemporaries of the Cretan-Mycenaean culture, and that was the reason they did not consider themselves barbarians! I have to note that the whole Homer’s family was the primary source of information about Atlantis, who had handed it down from generation to generation, but neither Plato nor his grandfather Solon had done that. Since the Greeks believed themselves barbarians, they could not publish information that Cimmerian Atlantis owned Greece. But Homer’s son, Telemachus-Anacharsis, who was declared a wiseman of ancient Greece, as well as Solon, managed to tell in his hidden poetry the fact that when transferring “Critias” and “Timaeus”(“Dialogues” of Plato) to his friend Solon he made him omit any reference to Homer as an author, and increase the term of Atlantis lifetime by 10 times, so it should not be looked for in Scythia. Actually, Atlantis was situated in Crimea in Evpatoria area. It was likely to be located at mud volcanoes – and it enabled easy digging annular channels, and for that very reason they were easily destroyed as well. The part of the coast between the Cape Tarhankut and Khersones was washed away by a huge wave that reached the height of Hercules’s pillars (volcano Scylla and volcano at Charybdis) in Bosphorus, in Homer words. Tsunami had occured due to a powerful explosion of Santorini volcano. The date of Atlantis destruction, had been given by Homer, coincided with the date determined by scientific radiocarbon analysis, in about 1450 B.C. (± 100).  The details of the Cretan-Mycenaean culture detereoration (except for the location of Atlantis in Crimea) are described in the popular science book by Rozanov I.A. “Atlantis: fantasy or reality?” (“Science”, Moscow, 1976). I believe that after my monograph publication, the searches of Atlantis will be focused near Evpatoria, where the city walls had been discovered recently at the bottom of the Black Sea.

During the breaks in the work I talked to archaeologists Cirill Gorbenko and Yuriy Grebennikov. K. Gorbenko told us about the program of museumfication of the ancient settlement up to 2015 adopted by the session of the City Council: fencing the area (120 m by the top and 200 m by the cliff line), cleaning of the whole territory, restoration of the premises that would be open for tours. But no one has allocated funds yet and it is not known when it would happen, and the problems have been looming for today: the residents of neighboring houses throw garbage there. The plan is to open 17 rooms in the Citadel and 3-5 rooms outside it in suburbs, beyond the first ditch of the settlement. There were totally excavated about 45 rooms. If the deputies of the City Council dedicate the land for the monument up to the boundaries of the second ditch of the settlement, this monument will be preserved for future in a holistic form.

Yu.Grebennikov thinks that the location of the monument is not unique, there are several monuments of that time, similar to the Wild Orchard, at the mouth of the rivers flowing into the Dnieper,Dniesterand others. As for the level of urbanization of the city it was rather high and really unique. There are four temples in their pure form, three of them are located on the ramp (on the river’s flowing up to the citadel). Moreover, one of the temples of the fire was solar-oriented (as for me, I can note that Helios together with Poseidon were among the main gods of Atlantis). There are several workshops found: foundry, rigging, etc. A number of artifacts indicates the presence of the harbor at the settlement and the active commodity exchange with Mediterranean region (ships went there like home – Yu.G.), enfilade way down to the harbor is situated in the northern part of the citadel. In winter archaeologists, supported by the Sadko club, searched the area and found some traces of the seaport town. If the harbor artifacts would be found and suburbs would entry the monument’s structure by deputies’ decision, the city Alybas as well as Troy will consist of: the citadel, suburbs and a harbor.

I could add that rapid escape of Atlanteans enabled to keep one of the most developed technologies of Atlantis – the shipbuilding, and it rescued Cimmerians for 800 years, up to Homer’s lifetime. Moreover, it appeared that all Homer’s ancestors, beginning with Targitaus, his sons Kolaxais and Arpoxais and to Lycus-Laertes, Homer and his sons, including Telemachus-Anacharsis and even Homer’s muse, Amazon Cleopatra-Laertida, had been helmsmen and sailed to Egypt, Athens, and other Mediterranean countries.

Homer’s teacher Aristeas Proconnesus (734-640 B.C.), also known as Olen, who taught the Greeks (by their own admission) to compose hexameters, and Arpoxais, – was one and the same person. He was Homer’s maternal great-grandfather, a sailor and a writer. So, the foundation of the European culture was laid by Homer’s Cimmerian family who had been living for over two centuries! Arpoxais described Cimmerian world in his three volumes of “Arimaspeia”, and it was the reason why the Greeks had not preserved it. Homer acted more wisely, he laid the foundations of Greek culture in plain texts, so his books were preserved, and so the Cimmerian-Scythian world was preserved within them, as it was hidden in verses. Homer was madly in love with our land, he thought it was his only motherland, and placed here in present Nikolaev land everything from Olympus to Parnassus and even Elysian, after the creation of the temple of Demetra by his muse at it in 607 B.C.

Abriged article concerning this subject was published in “Ridne Pribuzhzhya” newspaper in August 2, 2011.