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Ancient
legends

Atlantis

The legend of the
city lost to the sea

Countless Atlantis "experts" have located the lost continent all around the world based on the same set of facts. Candidates — each accompanied by its own peculiar sets of evidence and arguments — include the Atlantic Ocean, Antarctica, Bolivia, Turkey, Germany, Malta and the Caribbean.

Legend of Atlantis

Atlantian

Pandoras Box Background — 02

Pandoras Box girl — 02

Pandoras Box

Little did she know what
the box would open

Today, Pandora’s box means a source of troubles. When we talk about opening Pandora’s box, we use it as a metaphor to mean that we may not know what we are getting ourselves into! Sometimes, that we do not always know how something we have started may end, that we do not know the consequences of our actions.

Medusa

The legend of the woman
with the rock hard stare

In Greek mythology, Medusa (Μέδουσα "guardian, protectress") was a monster, a Gorgon: Generally described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair, those who gazed upon her face would turn to stone.

Medusa Background

Statue holding head of Medusa

Ragnarok Ship — 04

Ragnarok viking — 04

Ragnarok

The great battle dooming
the fate of the Gods

Spain's empire began in the days of Columbus and lasted, in parts of Africa, until the latter 20th century. ragnarok is now the second most spoken language in the world.

Pyramidion

The missing golden top
of the ancient pyramids

During Egypt's Old Kingdom, pyramidia were generally made of diorite, granite, or fine limestone, then covered in gold or electrum. A pyramidion was "covered in gold leaf to reflect the rays of the sun".

Egypt Pyramidion

Egypt Tutankhamun

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Atlantis

Atlantis

Atlantis (Ancient Greek: Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, "island of Atlas") is a fictional island mentioned within an allegory[citation needed] on the hubris of nations in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias, where it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges "Ancient Athens", the pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato's ideal state in The Republic.

Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the known world,[1] supposedly giving testament to the superiority of Plato's concept of a state.[2][3] The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean.

Platos Work

Despite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers.

Athanasius Kircher's map of Atlantis, placing it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, from Mundus Subterraneus 1669, published in Amsterdam. The map is oriented with south at the top.

9000 years before

Plato's vague indications of the time of the events—more than 9,000 years before his time[6]—and the alleged location of Atlantis—"beyond the Pillars of Hercules"—has led to much pseudoscientific speculation.[7] As a consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films.

While present-day philologists and classicists agree on the story's fictional character,[8][9] there is still debate on what served as its inspiration. As for instance with the story of Gyges,[10] Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors.

ANCIENT LEGENDS Item 01 Atlantis

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Pandoras Box

Pandoras Box

Pandora's box is an artifact in Greek mythology connected with the myth of Pandora in Hesiod's Works and Days.[1] The container mentioned in the original story was actually a large storage jar but the word was later mistranslated as "box."

The word translated as "box" was actually a large jar (πίθος pithos) in Greek.[8] [9] It was used for storage of wine, oil, grain or other provisions, or, ritually, as a container for a human body for burying, from which it was believed souls escaped and necessarily returned.

From this story

From this story has grown the idiom "to open (a) Pandora's box", meaning to do or start something that will cause many unforeseen problems.[6] Its modern, more colloquial equivalent is "to open a can of worms".[7]

Lawrence Alma-Tadema's water-colour of an ambivalent Pandora, 1881

In modern times

In modern times an idiom has grown from it meaning "Any source of great and unexpected troubles",[2] or alternatively "A present which seems valuable but which in reality is a curse".[3] Later depictions of the fatal container have been varied, while some literary and artistic treatments have focused more on the contents of the idiomatic box than on Pandora herself. There is also an alternative tradition in which the divine gift of a jar was opened by a curious male.

According to Hesiod, when Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus, the king of the gods, took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. Pandora opened a jar left in his care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world.[4]

ANCIENT LEGENDS Item 02 Pandoras Box

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Medusa

Medusa

In Greek mythology, Medusa (/mɪˈdjuːzə, -sə/; Μέδουσα "guardian, protectress")[1] was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair.

Those who gazed upon her face would turn to stone. Most sources describe her as the daughter of Phorcys and Ceto,[2] though the author Hyginus makes her the daughter of Gorgon and Ceto.[3] According to Hesiod and Aeschylus, she lived and died on an island named Sarpedon, somewhere near Cisthene.

Dionysios Skytobrachion

The 2nd-century BCE novelist Dionysios Skytobrachion puts her somewhere in Libya, where Herodotus had said the Berbers originated her myth, as part of their religion.

Classical Greek depiction of Medusa from the fourth century BC

Perseus

Medusa was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head, which retained its ability to turn onlookers to stone, as a weapon[4] until he gave it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In classical antiquity the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the Gorgoneion.

While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her sisters as having monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the fifth century began to envisage her as being beautiful as well as terrifying. In an ode written in 490 BC Pindar already speaks of "fair-cheeked Medusa".[5]

ANCIENT LEGENDS Item 03 Medusa

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Ragnarok

Ragnarok

In Norse mythology, Ragnarök (/ˈræɡnəˌrɒk, ˈrɑːɡ-/ (About this soundlisten);[2][3][4] Old Norse: [ˈraɣnaˌrɔk])[5] is a series of future events, including a great battle, foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the Gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water.

Afterward, the world will resurface anew and fertile, the surviving and returning gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors.

Norse mythology

Ragnarök is an important event in Norse mythology and has been the subject of scholarly discourse and theory throughout the history of Germanic studies.

The north portal of the 12th-century Urnes stave church has been interpreted as containing depictions of snakes and dragons that represent Ragnarök.[1]

Poetic Edda

The event is attested primarily in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In the Prose Edda and in a single poem in the Poetic Edda,

Ragnarök or Ragnarøkkr (Old Norse; meaning Fate of the Gods and Twilight of the Gods, respectively), a usage popularised by 19th-century composer Richard Wagner with the title of the last of his Der Ring des Nibelungen operas, Götterdämmerung (1876), which is "Twilight of the Gods" in German.

ANCIENT LEGENDS Item 04 Ragnarok

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Pyramidion

Pyramidion

A pyramidion (plural: pyramidia) is the uppermost piece or capstone of an Egyptian pyramid or obelisk,[1] in archaeological parlance.[2] Speakers of the Ancient Egyptian language referred to pyramidia as benbenet[3] and associated the pyramid as a whole with the sacred benben stone.[2]

During Egypt's Old Kingdom, pyramidia were generally made of diorite, granite, or fine limestone, then covered in gold or electrum; during the Middle Kingdom and through the end of the pyramid-building era, they were built from granite.[4] A pyramidion was "covered in gold leaf to reflect the rays of the sun"; during Egypt's Middle Kingdom pyramidia were often "inscribed with royal titles and religious symbols".[2]

Pyramidia

Very few pyramidia have survived into modern times. Most of those that remain are made of polished black granite, inscribed with the name of the pyramid's owner. Four pyramidia – the world's largest collection – are housed in the main hall of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Among them are the pyramidia from the so-called Black Pyramid of Amenemhat III at Dahshur and of the Pyramid of Khendjer at Saqqara.[5]:115[6]

Close-up of the Pyramidion of the Pyramid of Amenemhet III at Dahshur

Tura limestone pyramidion

A badly damaged white Tura limestone pyramidion, thought to have been made for the Red Pyramid of Sneferu at Dahshur, has been reconstructed and is on open-air display beside that pyramid; it presents a minor mystery, however, as its angle of inclination is steeper than that of the edifice it was apparently built to surmount.

During the New Kingdom, some private underground tombs were marked on the surface by small brick pyramids that terminated in pyramidia. The four lateral sides included texts and scenes related to the cult of the Sun God (as the representation of Pharaoh).

ANCIENT LEGENDS Item 05 Pyramidion

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