Ancestral knowledges. The Minoan legacy of ancient Greek science E-Book

Nicola Bizzi

• Herausgeber: Edizioni Aurora Boreale
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Around 276 B.C. a poet from Cilicia had the great honor of coming into the favor of Macedonia’s King Antigonus II Gonatas, who firmly wanted him at his court. His name was Aratus (Ἄρατος), and he is also known as Aratus of Soli. Described as a «cosmic philosopher and Homeric poet», Aratus was born in Tarsos around 315 B.C. and completed his studies in Athens, where he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries and was a student of the Stoic philosopher Perseus of Cytium. He is mostly remembered today for a didactic poem entitled Phainòmena, made of a total of 1154 verses and divided into two parts: the first one, the actual Phainòmena, made of 732 verses, and the second one entitled Diosemeîa (whose meaning is “Predictions” or, better, “Signs from Heaven”). But Aratus’ Phainòmena was nothing more than the transposition into poetic verses of an astronomical treatise, now lost, by the great astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus, who lived almost two centuries before Aratus. A treatise that hid ancestral knowledges transmitted by secret initiatory schools, knowledges dating back to the ancient Minoan civilization.
This new essay by the historian Nicola Bizzi is a journey into the secrets and mysteries of an ancient forgotten science, which over the centuries has become the exclusive heritage of secret initiatory orders.

Leseprobe

Τεληστήριον

NICOLA BIZZI

ANCESTRAL

KNOWLEDGES

THE MINOAN LEGACY

OF ANCIENT GREEK SCIENCE

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Title: Ancestral knowledges.

The Minoan legacy of ancient Greek science

Author: Nicola Bizzi

Publishing series: Telestérion

Editing and illustrations by Nicola Bizzi

English translation by Umberto Visani

ISBN: 979-12-5504-280-8

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

© 2023 Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Via del Fiordaliso 14 - 59100 Prato - Italia

[email protected]

www.auroraboreale-edizioni.com

All rights reserved

CHAPTER I

THE KEY OF A LOST ANCESTRAL KNOWLEDGE

Those ancient scholars and researchers that modern culture aseptically refers to as “scientists” – no matter if they were astronomers, mathematicians, geometers, geographers, engineers, physicians, or enthusiasts of the natural sciences – not only belonged to the educated elite to whom they usually addressed their teachings and for whom they wrote their treatises, but were also, and above all, great initiates. In ancient times, indeed, there was no such thing that could be even remotely compared to that “secular science” that characterizes our age and has its roots in the 18th-century Enlightenment. There was a Knowledge, even in the field of science, largely held, guarded and handed down by initiatory orders and mystery schools, and it was by no means apart from the sphere of the Sacred, since human beings lived much more in symbiosis with the forces of nature. Those were times when, as I will explain more thoroughly in one of the next chapters, man was closer to the Gods and, at the same time – in a real exchange and union – the gods were closer to man.

As I have repeatedly explained in some of my essays, including Da Eleusi a Firenze: la trasmissione di una conoscenza segreta1 and La Via di Eleusi2, one of the main limitations suffered by modern historians and scientists in understanding the ancient world is merely cultural. Two thousand years of Christianity and the prevailing monotheistic culture on the one hand, and the cultural ravages of the Enlightenment on the other, have indeed shaped the consciences and formamentis of Western man to such an extent that he, in dealing with topics like spirituality, religiosity and science of the ancients, fails to fully comprehend how the Greeks and Romans conceived and lived the relationship with the Transcendent and often falls into the trap of the supposed moral superiority of Christianity, of the worst Christianized Aristotelianism, of the lucubrations of Immanuel Kant and René Descartes, of both Positivism and Materialism. A trap that, precisely because of the cultural training acquired, both at the school and family levels, leads him to mistakenly consider monotheism as a natural evolution of Western spirituality and an overcoming, in a positive and qualitative way, of ancient “myths” and ancient “superstitions” based on ignorance and materialism as the only possible basis of “science”. A trap that both scholars with a “secular” approach and those with a Catholic, or at least Judeo-Christian, background inexorably fall into. After all, both base their studies, research and interpretations on the denial of the existence of the Gods and on the consequent assumption that, in the context of the ancient rites, They did not really manifest themselves in the eyes of the faithful and initiates. And, consequently, on the denial of the assumption that it was precisely from the Gods that men of the past had received precise teachings, rules and doctrines and the answers to the greatest questions that mankind, since its emergence from the caves, had begun to ask: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?

Modern historians and scientists (including religious historians and anthropologists) have always given little weight to the myths and legends of the ancient peoples, failing to consider how much such narratives, far from springing from the irrational sphere of man, often conceal – in addition to the description of historical facts and events that actually happened – important scientific knowledge and truths. Myth has thus been relegated by modern culture, like disciplines such as Magic and Astrology (which, however, are still secretly practiced at a high level by certain power elites), to the dark and poetic side of humanity. Ironically, people still study Greek and Latin philosophy and literature, but deliberately ignore what is often precisely one of their foundations. So you blatantly forget one of the fundamental keys to reading and understanding the texts of classical authors.

A great politician and philosopher of late Roman times, Saturninus Secundus Salustius, a personal friend and collaborator of Emperor Julian, left us these keen remarks: «Why did the ancients ever express themselves in myths? It is worth asking ourselves this question and drawing from myths already a first advantage: to foster the attitude of inquiry and prevent laziness of mind»3. And, more than two centuries earlier, the great initiate Plutarch of Chaeronea expressed a similar concept: «Myth is nothing but a reflection of a transcendent reality, which forces our intelligence to turn towards other objects»4.

The Egyptian Goddess Maat

Not only did all ancient cultures express themselves in myths, but fundamental studies, such as those carried out by Jean Richer5, Giorgio De Santillana and Herta Von Dechend6, showed how most of such ancient myths display deep astronomical connotations derived from an ancestral knowledge of the sky and the motion of the stars.

The greatest civilizations of the past, from the Mediterranean to the Near East, from America to Asia, have always placed Astronomy at the center of their knowledge, and almost all of the ancient temples, shrines and buildings of worship were built according to very precise criteria, both astronomical and of sacred Geography, which took into account the solstices, precessional motion and the positions of the stars, according to a mirroring logic: Gods, indeed, (though not all) resided in Heaven, and their “homes” on Earth were to be faithful mirrors of their celestial abodes.

It was from the observation of the sky that ancient peoples derived their metrics, the laws of Mathematics and Geometry, and knowledge of both the Geography of the Earth and the motions of the stars and planets, acquiring and consolidating a scientific interpretation of the cosmos. Certain knowledge, which had always been the prerogative of the priestly castes and initiatic schools, was skillfully translated into the language of myth so that it was not understandable to all, but only to those who held the correct keys to reading and interpretation and was transmitted according to strict and selective initiatory rules. At the same time, a “secular” and popular key to reading the myths, meant for the masses, was also spread and nurtured. And it is precisely the latter that modern philologists and historians of religions attempt to understand and interpret – to no avail –, often grasping at straws.

In ancient Egypt it was the Goddess Maat who oversaw measuring. Indeed, it was She herself, as the personification of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality and justice, and being responsible for the natural arrangement of constellations, seasons, human as well as divine actions, who was the measure and measurer, but also the separator. Seen as the order of nature and society, both in the earthly world and in the afterlife, Maat is well described in the Unis pyramid texts, dating back to the Old Kingdom. Later, she was considered the female counterpart or bride of the God Thot, the Great Scribe, Lord of Wisdom and overseer of Arithmetic and the measurements of Heaven and Earth, the visible and the invisible, and thus assimilated with the Goddess Seshat, who presided over writing, measurements and Architecture. Sent into the world by her father, the Solar God Rha, so that she would banish chaos forever, she was depicted with a feather on her head and was believed to weigh souls in the Judgment Chamber by placing a feather on one of the two plates of her scales to measure the faults committed in life by the deceased.

Maat in the land irrigated by the River Nile was also the personification of the craftsman’s cubit, on the basis of which everything was measured correctly and, according to some interpretations, it is from its very name that the word “Mathematics” is derived. Which, as I will explain, is perfectly plausible. Mathematics in fact comes from the word μάθημα (máthema), which can be translated as “science”, “knowledge”, “learning” (so much so that in ancient Greek μαθηματικός [mathematikós] means “inclined to learn”) and in the Greek language the root ma, math, met enters the composition of words containing the ideas of reason, discipline, science, instruction, right measure. Even in Latin, after all, the term materia denotes what can be measured. And in the hieroglyphic composition of the name Maat appears the symbol of the cubit, an instrument of linear measurement, an obvious juxtaposition to the mathematical concept. A geometric symbol of this order is a rectangle, from which rises the feathered head of the Goddess, personification – as we have seen – of the concepts of order, truth, balance and justice, and at the beginning of the famous and fundamental Rhind Papyrus, in association with the Goddess you can find this statement, «Accurate calculation is the gateway to the knowledge of all things and to the dark mysteries»7.

Paris Nogari: Allegory of Silence, fresco dating to 1582 (Vatican City, Sala degli Svizzeri). The work recalls the danger of the word and the risk of committing sins. The stork with an egg in its mouth next to the man strengthens this concept. Since it has to carry a precious cargo (the shell contains a secret) it cannot emit any noise otherwise it will break the egg.

CHAPTER II

THE KNOWLEWDGE OF THE HEAVENS

AND THE EARTH AND THEIR

MEASUREMENT: THE “WAY OF AN”

AND THE AXIAL PRECESSION

The sphericity of the earth, its exact dimensions, the tilt of its axis, its motion of revolution around the sun and its relationship to the other planets were known from earliest antiquity, and such knowledge most likely constituted the objective inheritance and legacy of some earlier evolved civilizations. We should not be surprised, therefore, if authoritative figures such as Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, Hipparchus, Posidonius, Marinus of Tyre, Claudius Ptolemy, Cicero and Seneca – and, before them, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle – spoke clearly and without hesitation of a spherical Earth. After all, as the Italian writer and journalist Elio Cadelo8 points out, Greek scientists themselves admitted that their science came from very remote knowledge, and Spherical Astronomy is a very complex conceptualization of the visible and observable universe with the naked eye that, as we know, was perfected in the West by Eratosthenes and Claudius Ptolemy, but originally (at least as far as the so-called “official” History is concerned) had already been fully elaborated by the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Phoenicians and the ancient peoples of the Indus Valley and the Indian subcontinent, who were among the first to produce a scientific model of the visible universe, functional not only for rituals, but also for trade and navigation.

In my essay I Minoici in America e le memorie di una civiltà perduta (The Minoans in America and the legacy of a lost civilization)9 I elaborated the mysteries and secrets of ancient navigation, a subject that represents, along with ancient geographical knowledge, the underlying theme of that book of mine. Instead, let us now make some due reflections on how high the level of scientific knowledge of the ancients actually was.

Anaximander of Miletus, a disciple of Thales who lived in the VI century B.C., was not only a great pre-Socratic philosopher, but also a skilled cartographer, geographer and astronomer. He is remembered by the “official” History as the one who, in classical times, first sensed the sphericity of the Earth, but in reality he was probably only the first one whose mention is made to explicitly talk about it in his treatises. Suida attributes to him some fundamental scientific works, unfortunately lost, the most important entitled On Nature, The Turn of the Earth, On the Fixed Stars and TheSphere. Classical sources confirm that he had full knowledge of the equinoxes and solstices and built sophisticated gnomonic clocks to calculate the Sun’s revolutions. Similarly, Aristarchus of Samos, who lived between 310 and 230 B.C., is remembered for being the first to formulate a theory demonstrating the Earth’s tilt with respect to the plane of the orbit, but in reality he was probably only the first in the Greek world to expound it publicly and write about it in his treatises. He was indeed accused of impiety by the philosopher Cleanthes, and this was certainly not because his conceptions were to be considered “ungodly” as being factually wrong, but simply because he had broken his vow of silence and made known such initiatory secrets. Indeed, Plutarch of Chaeronea, in his work De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet, tells us that it would be Cleanthes and not Aristarchus who would be the repository of the secrets of the Earth’s motion. Although we owe to Aristarchus the first (officially known) formulation of heliocentrism, i.e., the centrality of the Sun, which predates that of Nikolaus Kopernikus (who, coincidentally, like Aristarchus, was a Pythagorean initiate!) by two thousand years. But already a century earlier Plato, being the great initiate that he too was, demonstrated a clear idea of the sphericity of the Earth, writing in his important philosophical dialogue Phaedo: «I have convinced myself that the Earth (...),with its sphere-like form, does not need air or any other necessary force in order not to precipitate. The homogeneity spread throughout the sky in every direction more or less than in another is enough to hold it up, and it will remain well balanced, without becoming unbalanced».And, later, in the same dialogue, he surprisingly added: «The Earth, should you contemplate it from above, would appear to the eye more or less like those twelve-square leather balls, rainbowed, distinct in colors, of which the hues used down here by painters are only a reflection”10.

Bernardo Strozzi: Eratosthenes teaching in Alexandria, 1635

(Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts)

Eratosthenes, born in Cyrene around 276 B.C., was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant and multifaceted minds of the Hellenistic age. A mathematician, astronomer, geographer, poet, philologist and philosopher, he studied in Athens, where he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, and it was from the priesthood of Eleusis that he was recommended to Ptolemy III Evergetes, who summoned him to Alexandria, entrusting him with the education of his son (the future Lord of Egypt Ptolemy IV Philopator) and entrusting him with the direction of the prestigious Library. A role he performed admirably, succeeding Apollonius Rhodius, throughout the rest of his long life.

He used to call himself philologos, meaning that he was interested in many fields of study; he was the first to conceive Geography as a systematic discipline (he himself coined the terms γεωγραφία (geography) and γεωγράφος (geographer), wrote a treatise entitled Geographika and produced a map of the entire Earth’s surface based on the concepts of latitude and longitude), and went down in History for being – officially – the first to measured (with an error of a few kilometers) the circumference of the Earth.

Most likely Eratosthenes carried out his calculations at the request of Ptolemy III, and his was not really a “discovery”, but rather a field verification of what was contained in some ancient papyri preserved in the same Library. Indeed, it was upon consulting one of these papyri that he learned a revealing piece of news: in the Egyptian city of Syene (today’s Aswan), on the day of the Summer Solstice, vertical objects cast no shadows and the Sun could illuminate the bottom of wells. He deduced, based on his knowledge, that that city must be located exactly on the line of the tropic and that its latitude corresponded to that of the ecliptic, that is, the curved line of the sky along which, from Earth, we see the Sun move.

The Summer Solstice, as we know, coincides with the longest day of the year, and this is due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis. In the Northern Hemisphere, the Sun reaches its zenith at noon above the Tropic of Cancer; that is to say, in places crossed by the Tropic on June 21, the Sun’s rays fall vertically, without bodies casting shadows, while, because of the Earth’s curvature, the farther you move away from the Tropic, the more the Sun’s rays fall at an angle (casting shadows). And Eratosthenes, on the assumption that Alexandria was on the same meridian as Syene (thus on the same longitude), based on the difference in the angle of the shadows in the two cities, realized that he could measure the arc of the circumference between them and – starting from that result – could calculate the total length of the meridian (i.e., the circumference of the Earth itself).

At noon on June 21, in Alexandria, he thus took a pole and measured the angle of the shadow it cast, obtaining the result of the fiftieth part of a circle (7.2 degrees, according to modern calculation parameters). He deduced that, in order to calculate the complete circumference, he should have multiplied by 50 the distance separating Alexandria from Syene. A distance which, according to the knowledge of the time, was estimated at 5,000 stadia and which, multiplied by 50, gave him the sum of 250,000 stadia.

There is no full agreement among historians on the type of stadion used as a parameter by Eratosthenes, since although it is a unit of measurement always corresponding to 600 feet (traditionally established by Hercules when he measured the Stadium of Pisa in the Peloponnese), it could vary from region to region precisely because of the use of feet of different lengths. If Eratosthenes had used the Attic-Italian stadion, also called the “Hellenistic” (184.98 meters), the use of which is attested in Ptolemaic Egypt, the estimate of the earth’s circumference he obtained would have been 46,200 kilometers. If he had instead relied on the Roman stadion in use at that time (184.98 meters), also used in Alexandria, the estimate of the circumference would have been 39,682 kilometers, a deviation of only 326 kilometers from the actual measurement of the earth’s circumference, obtained from modern satellites. A result that would still be either way outstanding, if we take into account the manual technique used and some actual (albeit slight) errors in estimating coordinates and distances.

Eratosthenes’ experiment

Indeed, Eratosthenes assumed that the Earth was perfectly spherical (he did not take into account the flattening at the poles) and, based on the geographic knowledge of the time, he assumed that Syene was located exactly on the line of the tropic of Cancer and on the same exact longitude as Alexandria (in reality, as the image on the previous page points out, there is a discrepancy, though not excessive, both in the longitude between the two cities and in the distance of Syene from the tropic).

The measure of the Earth’s circumference today has been accurately calculated as 40,008 kilometers. If we were to remake in our day Eratosthenes’ calculation with his own instruments, refining the numbers and comparing Alexandria with the exact geographical point that, on its own meridian, intersects the Tropic of Cancer (what the great Greek scholar intended precisely to do, despite being wrong by a few kilometers), we would obtain a value, in the Attic-Italian stadion, of 40,074 kilometers, with a difference of only sixty-six kilometers from the measurements given us by satellites. The margin of error would thus be only 0.16%!

Anyway, it should be mentioned that we do not know for sure what was the exact method used by Eratosthenes to calculate the earth’s circumference, since his texts have been lost. If we know about his experiments and calculations today, we owe it to the astronomer Cleomedes, who lived at the turn of the 1st century B.C. and the 1st century A.D. and wrote about it in his treatise Coelestia11. However, by his own admission, Cleomedes reported a “popularized” and “simplified” version, for the use and consumption of the people. A version that we might therefore call “profane”. Did Cleomedes (most likely an initiate) therefore mean to omit from his writings certain techniques and knowledge that were not to be divulged since they were covered by initiatory secrecy? I deem this quite plausible. After all, this was precisely the practice in ancient times, and I could report many other similar examples in this regard.