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Atlas: (1)King Atlas, a mythical King of Mauretania, according to legend, a wise philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who supposedly made the first celestial globe. It was this Atlas that Mercator was referring to when he first used the name 'Atlas'.
(2) Anointed one of divine God. He was the first to stand up to his father Anu and formed a rebel force against his father. This was after the first daughter manipulated and corrupted him.
(3) Azerian of the sapphire covenant and one of the 5 creator races.
(4) ATLAS ( In Greek tradition ) was one of the second-generation Titans. He personified the quality of endurance (atlaô). In one tradition, Atlas led the Titanes in a rebellion against Anu and was condemned to Kingu (Earth). In another, he was said to have been appointed guardian of the pillars which held earth and sky asunder. He was also the god who instructed mankind in the art of astronomy, a tool which was used by sailors in navigation and farmers in measuring the seasons. These roles were often combined and Atlas becomes the god who turns the Earth on tit's axis, causing a precession of the Earth.
In Dacia, the memory of the expedition and deeds of Osiris has been preserved in traditions and legends. But Osiris, the king of the Egyptians, did not have a particular cult with the Pelasgian population of Dacia. In the historical memories of this country, he has neither the role of Oetosyros from the north of the Black Sea, nor that of Ostara or Ostar .i.e..Oshar.
In Italic traditions the titan Atlas, the king of the Hyperboreans, appears also as ancestor of the Ausones, in particular of the Latins and the Romans. Eustathius, the archbishop of Thessalonika, wrote in the twelve century (Commentarii in Dionysium. v. 78) the following, based on older sources: “According to what some say, Auson, from whom Ausones draw their name, had been the first to reign in Rome, and this Auson had been the son of Atlas and Calypso, as Stephanos Byzanthinos, the author of the work about the names of the tribes, tells us. With Hesiod also, Auson (Nausinoos) was a son of Calypso (Theog. v. 1017), who though, according to Homer (Odyss. I. v. 50) had been the daughter, not the wife of the titan Atlas. (Hesiod claims though in his Theogony - 359, that Calypso was a daughter of the divine river Oceanos, but she hailed anyway from the same country in both versions). The Ausones had formed in prehistoric antiquity the preponderant population of Italy. They were characterized by the ancient authors as a strong and warlike race. Especially in poetic literature the name of Ausones was applied to all the inhabitants of Italy, “Ausonia” denoted the entire Italy (Virgil, Aen. IV. 349) and the word “Auson” was synonymous with Latin, Italian, Roman (Ovid, Pontica, Lib. II. 2. 72). A part of the population.
Italy still another tradition, which connected the beginnings of Rome with the settling there of a Pelasgian tribe coming from Atlas mountain. Evander, who had founded near the Tiber a town called Pallantium, from which Rome later developed, appears according to ancient genealogies, as a great grandson of Atlas (Virgil, Aen. VIII. 134-140); and the country of Evander had been, according to the same tradition, Arcadia, in which Atlas had dwelt and reigned, therefore Arcadia from the Peloponnesus (Dionysius Halik. I. c. 31-33). This Evander, as historical traditions said, had transported to Italy several pastoral divinities (Ovid, Fast. II. v. 279), had founded temples there, had introduced holy days, laws and various useful industries (Livy, Hist. lib. I. c. 5). So, Evander and his companions had settled in Italy coming from a country which enjoyed an old religious and political organization, and an advanced civilization.
The ancients, writes Evhemerus, had transmitted to posterity two different notions about the gods: that some had been and are eternal, not subjected to death, like the sun, moon and stars; and others who had been men, born of the earth, who had earned divine honors and a religious cult for the benefices brought to the human genus. Uranos had been the first king to rule; a man with high feelings of justice and a great benefactor for everybody. He had been at the same time a man highly learned in the course of the stars, and the first to introduce the sacrifices with victims for the celestial divinities; because of which he had been called “Ceriu” (ouranos – TN – sky). Uranos was then followed by Saturn, and after Saturn, Jove had reigned (Diodorus Siculus, lib. VI. 2; Cicero, De nat. Deor. II. 24). The same was said in antiquity about Saturn, that he had been a simple mortal; that he had been the first to gather in society, in villages and in cities, the people scattered through the high mountains, and to give them laws (Virgil, Aen. VIII. 321), Diodorus Siculus, lib. V. 66). Ianus, writes Macrobius, had been the first to erect altars to Saturn, as to a god, and had disposed to be considered as the highest religious authority, because he had been the founder of a better way of life (Saturn. Lib. I. 7).
According to the ancient ethnic genealogies, the territory of the titan Atlas from the country of the Hyperboreans appears as the original country of several tribes and a number of important princely families from Hellada, Asia Minor, Africa and Italy.
Atlas, writes Diodorus Siculus (lib. III. c. 60), had several daughters, who, by marrying the most distinguished heroes and even gods, had sons who for their virtues were called heroes and gods, and were at the same time the originators of several families. On a fragment of a vase discovered in Apulia, Atlas, the lord of the blessed country of the Hyperboreans, founder of several southern Pelasgian families, that Atlas in whose kingdom not only the fruit, but also the branches of the trees were of gold, is shown sitting on a throne, in complete regal paraphernalia (Roscher, Lexikon der gr. u.rom. Mythologie. I. p.710). Doubtless, this image had a genealogical character. The artist had wished to represent one of the most glorious ancestors of some Ausonic family of Apulia. As for the mythological representation of the titan Atlas, he is shown on another vase from Apulia supporting the sky, figured in the shape of a globe (Ibid. I. p.710). He appears in the same way also on an Etruscan mirror from Vulci.
. “Argea” means in Romanian language a rectangular room, half dug in the earth, in which the peasant women weave linen. The word is archaic. Ephor tells us that the Cimmerians (from the Tauric peninsula), had a sort of underground dwellings which they called argilla, which communicated to each other through a sort of low doors (Strabo, V.4.5). This same meaning, of semi-subterranean rooms with low doors, has the word “argea” in folk Romanian texts.
The Romanian legend attributes therefore a divine origin to the White Monastery. It was built by the sun god himself (or Apollo), as a memento, or monument, of his wedding with his sister Iana. This precious prehistoric legend about the foundation of the Apollinic temple of the Hyperboreans by the god of the Sun himself, or Apollo, was known and renowned in the Greek lands until late, in Roman times. The inhabitants of Delphi, according to Pausanias (lib.X.5.9), told that Apollo had sent to the Hyperboreans a church, which had been made by bees, from wax, and from the plant named poppy. (The bees were consecrated to Diana. The symbol of Diana of Ephesus was a bee (Pauly, Real-Encyclopadie, p.994). In an inscription found at Apulum, Diana bears the epithet “mellifica” (C I.L.III.No.1002).
So, this temple of the Hyperboreans was so ancient, that its beginnings had become mythical even in Greek times, and its magnificence and holiness were legendary even with the inhabitants of Delphi. This Romanian legend establishes with full certainty that the renowned temple of Apollo, or the Sun, of the Hyperboreans, which had shined with such glory in the prehistoric world.
. To this temple came from meridional cities the chiefs of the Apollinic cult, and other groups of the faithful, inspired by this religion, which is symbolically expressed in the old legends about Apollo’s journey to the Hyperboreans, and in the Romanian folk songs or carols about God who, accompanied by angels and saints, came by sea and boat, to the great celebrations of this Monastery.
This religious metropolis from the mouths of the Danube, was at the same time a center of theology and literary culture. From here came the prophets and poets Olen and Abaris, who, apart from spreading the Apollinic religion, have introduced to Greece the first beginnings of literary poetry, the pronouncements of the oracles, and the hexametric form.
transmitted by the Greek historian Herodorus of Heraclea, who had lived before Herodotus. This Herodorus had composed two important works, one about the deeds of Hercules and the other about the expedition of the Argonauts. According to the tradition found in his work (Fragm. 23 in Frag. Hist. Graec., Ed Didot, II. p. 34), Prometheus had been a king from Scythia. During his reign had happened that the river called Aetos had flooded and had covered the plains with water. And because Prometheus could not give his subjects what they needed in order to live, they had chained him, but Hercules had come, had diverted the river into the sea and had freed Prometheus [1].
In the Argonautic legends, Oceanos potamos is the same slowly flowing river like the Istru of later times. According to Hesiodus, Pindar, Antimachus and Orpheus, the Argonauts pass from the Euxine Pontos in the Mediterranean, sailing on Oceanos potamos (Hesiodus, Fragm. 57); and according to Apollonius Rhodius (Argon. IV. 288) and Valerius Flaccus (Argon. VIII. 185), they take the same way westwards, but navigating on the Istru, also called cheras ‘Ocheanoio. The great river called Oceanos potamos, came from remote regions (Eschyl, Prom. v. 284), flew towards the Pontos from west to east; it then crossed the narrow straits of the Riphei mountains or Carpathians (Orpheus, Argon. V. 1080. 1123; 1201), where it formed many deep whirlpools, very dangerous for navigation (Ibid. v. 1083). From the same Riphei mountains flew, according to Eschyl (fragm. 73), the Istru. Near Riphei and near the Istru dwelt the Agathyrsii (R. Avienus, Descr. Orb. v. 455).
Oceanos potamos, after leaving the precipitous straits of the Riphei mountains, flew through the valley or basin of these mountains (Orpheus, Argon. v. 1079), passed alongside plains with extensive pastures, where dwelt the most just of people (Ibid. v. 1136) and numerous pastoral tribes of Scythians, Hyperboreans, Getae, Sauromatae, Sindi, Arimaspians, etc (Ibid. v. 1062 seqq). The sailing boats navigated upriver on Oceanos potamos helped by the north wind Boreas (Homer, Odyss. X. 97). For Hesiodus, Oceanos potamos is a “sacred” river, ieros roos (Opera et dies, v. 566), or in other words it belonged to the religious history of primitive times. The same epithet is inherited later by the Istru (Dionysius, Descr. orb. v. 298).
The Danube Delta, as a land in close vicinity with Leuce Island, had in prehistoric times, and even until Alexander the Great’s epoch, the character of a sacred land. And here was the residence of Diana also, even according to the old Greek legends. The erudite poet Pindar tells us in one of his beautiful odes, that Hercules, being sent by king Eurystheus to catch and bring him the deer with golden horns, which the nymph Taygeta had dedicated to Diana, had chased this fast animal from Arcadia, up to the Hyperboreans’ lands, in the country called Istria. Here he had arrived to the residence of Diana, Latona’s daughter, who had received him kindly (Olymp. III. 26-28). This passage from Pindar’s work is of a particular importance to us, as he says, based on old religious traditions of antiquity, that Diana’s residence was in the Hyperborean country, in the land called Istria. This Istria must be understood especially as the region from the mouths of the Danube, which was known more to the Greek merchants, and where we later find an important city named Istria and Istros (Herodotus, II.33; Arrianus, 35).
In prehistoric antiquity, Delos was the sacred island of all the southern Pelasgian peoples, and later, of the Greeks. In a remote historic epoch, Delos Island was called Pelasgia, namely, land inhabited by Pelasgians. This island was also called Scythias (Stephanos Byzanthinos, v. Delos), which showed that those Pelasgians had originally migrated there from the Lower Danube. Even the name Del-os, which cannot be explained in Greek (Pliny, H.N.IV.22; Isidorus Hisp., Orig. XIV.6.21), is Pelasgian in origin. It means hill (TN – del) or a bare hill (TN – colina). At the centre of this island rose the mountain, or the hill, called Cynthos, not covered with trees (Strabo, Geogr. Lib. X.c.5.2), at the foot of which Latona gave birth to Lord Apollo (Homer, Hymn. in Apoll. v. 17). And on the plain, at the foot of the hill, there was the town of Delos, and the magnificent temples dedicated to Apollo and Latona. At the foot of this hill was shown in Graeco-Roman antiquity, the palm under which Latona, the outcast virgin of the Hyperboreans, or from the Lower Danube, gave birth to great Apollo. Apollo had a colossal statue here, at Delos, and it still existed around 1420, fallen to the ground. Bondelmonte, who had visited the island at that time, tells us that one thousand men had tried, but failed to raise it up (Bulletin de Correspondance hellenique, XVII, 1893, p.134). And near the temple, as Herodotus writes, there was a lake, called “the round lake”, with the edges beautifully finished with stone (lib.II.c.170). Apollo, the great divinity of the Pelasgian race from the islands of the Archipelagos, was celebrated here with a long series of feasts, parties, games, concerts and spectacles.
This big political and cultural transformation in the history of Europe was caused by the expedition of Osiris to the parts of the Istru, and his battles with Typhon in today Oltenia, a consequence of this war being that Egypt gained supremacy over Europe. Osiris, the king of the Egyptians, venerated after death as divinity, and identified with the Sun of the Pelasgo-Graeco religion, was one of the greatest heroes of prehistoric antiquity, whose memory is preserved until today in our countries.
The most important prehistoric events, tells that the authors of antiquity recounted the following, about the life and deeds of this ancient Egyptian king: Osiris, the king of Egypt, the son of Saturn, was a mortal man, but he did great things for the humans (I.c.13) during his life. The wife of Osiris, queen Isis, was the first to discover the importance of the wheat and barley, plants which until then grew wild on the plains, exactly like the other weeds, their usefulness being unknown to the humans. Osiris though was the one who invented the way to cultivate these cereals, meaning that he introduced the agriculture (I.c.14). Under the reign of Osiris, the first mining of copper and gold from the regions of Thebes started, and the art of metallurgy developed extensively (I.c.15). He was the first to acknowledge the usefulness of the grape vine, and introduced its cultivation (I.c.15). Then Osiris, wanting to introduce to the whole world these discoveries, gathered a big and powerful army, with the intention to travel to the entire world, and to teach the people, who at that time lived wild lives, to cultivate the wheat, the oats and the grape vine. King Osiris left his wife in charge with the civil administration of Egypt, and as military commander of the empire he named Hercules, a kinsman of his (I.c.17), distinguished not only for his courage, but also for his personal strength. After all the preparations for the expedition were finished, he took with him Apollo, his brother, and, after crossing Ethiopia and Arabia (I.c.18), he advanced through India right to the borders of the inhabited world. In India he founded several towns and erected everywhere markers in memory of his expedition (I.c.19). From India he turned towards the other barbarian peoples from Asia, after which he crossed the Hellespont to Europe. Young Macedon, who accompanied him in this expedition, was made king over the region of Macedonia, and everywhere he went, he taught the people the benefits of agriculture.
After the divinity and cult of Osiris were so established, the ancient Egyptian theology showed Typhon, the powerful enemy of Osiris, as the principle of evil, as a demonic spirit, as a dragon, from which all the physical and moral evils of the world were born, and in particular, all the venomous animals and plants.
Osiris had in antique traditions and legends various other names, out of which one of the most known was Bachos. In old Slavonic language bikz means bull (Romanian bica, young bull). In Egyptian papyri Osiris bears also the epithet “bull” (Pierret, Le livre des morts, ch. I.1). According to the doctrines of the Egyptian priests, Osiris and Apis, the sacred bull, formed the same idea. Apis was only the living image of Osiris, or in other words Osiris was the god-bull (fertilizing). This is enough for the time being regarding the history and primitive meaning of the name Bachus.
The highest peak, or the dome of Cehleu mountain, seen from the eastern terrace. On the northern part are “The towers”. (From Jahrbuch d. siebenb. Karpathenvereines, XVI Jahrg. p.10). This strong massif, which dominates with its height all the mountains around, presents a quite curious shape.
[1. According to Hesiod (Theog. v. 507 seq) Atlas and Prometheus had been the sons of Iapet and Clymene, a daughter of Oceanos (Istru), and in Theog. v. 543 he calls Prometheus “the most illustrious among all the kings”. We could suppose that the name ‘Aetos might refer to the river called today Oituz in Moldova, which springs in Transilvania and flows into Trotus. But the plain of Moldova where the river Oituz flows is too small for its flooding to have such destructive consequences. It is more probable that the name of this river of Scythia had been altered in order to get a Greek significance in relation to the legend of Prometheus (‘aetos, aquila) and that the original form of the name which this river had in the ancient Greek legends had been ‘Altos, meaning Oltul. In Romanian carols and folk songs the Olt is the river which, when in flood, covers the plains with water on vast areas; it is the river whose sources, according to the poetical ideas of the people, should be dried out (Tocilescu, Materialuri folkloristice, I. 387; Francu, Motii, p.231; Bibicescu, Poesii pop. din Transilvania, p.237; Alexici,Texte, I. 136)].
We find the following in a text written by a Jew from Egypt around 160bc about the Erythrean Sybil: “And there will be shown again to people tremendous and terrible omens, because the deep river Tanais (Don) will leave the Meotic lake, and in its deep bed will be seen the trace of the fruit furrow” (Friedlieb, Oracula Sibyllina, lib.III.v.337-340). Here the Sibyl mentions in a prophetic form an old folk belief, that a miraculous furrow passed through the deep bed of the river Tanais, tradition similar to the Romanian legend about this gigantic furrow of the ancient world, which crosses right through the bed of the river Olt, which even today makes big waves at the place where it hits this earth wave. When prince Cantemir tells us therefore in Descriptio Moldaviae, that the ancient and long trench stretched from the Romanian-country, Moldova and Basarabia, to the river Tanais, he is communicating exactly the folk tradition which existed in his times.
The manuscript of Solon about his conversations with the priests of Sais, addressed then the political, military and economic history of the country called Atlantis. From these notes we extract the following: In the beginning, the gods (kings of the divine dynasty of the Pelasgians), had divided among themselves the earth by drawing lots, and had governed the mortals according to their wisdom, exactly like the captains of ships. Neptune (Posidaon) had received the land called Atlantis, which he had divided among the ten sons of his. The best part of this country he gave to Atlas, his eldest son, whom he named king over the other brothers, and these he named army commanders (archontas), giving to each extensive domains and governing power over a great multitude of people.
From the name of Atlas, this entire region and that great water were called “Atlantis”. This region was rich in all sorts of minerals, extracted from the depth of the earth in solid or fluid form; but it was especially extracted from the mines a sort of yellow copper (aurichalcum), which in those times was considered as the most precious metal after gold. (In a Romanian carol from Constanta district the same metal is mentioned: “chair of chier galbin, on which God sits”). This region (Plato, Critias, Ed. Didot, II. 255 seqq) was also rich in all sort of timber needed for constructions, and the soil produced there abundant crops twice a year. This entire region was formed of a plain, the best of all plains, endowed with all the gifts of nature and encircled by a crown of mountains, which descended to the great water.
Herodotus mentions the Pelasgian colonies in Africa. In the western parts of the river Triton, or in the province called “Africa” at the time of the Romans, existed an agricultural population called Maxyes, who, as they said, were originated from the nation of the Trojans (lib. IV. c. 191). Carthage itself was Pelasgian in the beginning, later though this city fell under the rule of a commercial colony from Tyre (Silius Italicus, Punica, lib. XV. p.444). But the population from the territory subjected to Carthage was not Phoenician. It had remained Pelasgian, as can be ascertained from the big progress made by the Roman civilization in those parts, as well as from the particularities of the folk Latin language which has developed there. Other African tribes had European mores and traditions too. Getulii, the most numerous people of Libya (Mela, lib. I. c. 3;
Eustathius, Commentarii in Dionysium, v. 215), which began at the shores of the Atlantic ocean and stretched towards south of Mauritania, Numidia and Cyrenaica, appear by their name, as well as by their traditions and ethnic character, as a population migrated there from the south-east parts of Europe. The episcope Isidor of Sevilla writes about them: “It is said that Getulii were Getae, who departing from their places in very large numbers, with their ships, had occupied the Syrtes of Libya, and because they had come from the territory of the Getae, they were called Getuli” (Origines, lib. IX. 1. 118). Other pastoral tribes which had gone forth from the Carpathians and the Lower Danube, had settled in Ethiopia even in very remote times. Pliny the Old mentions in the upper parts of the Nile, in Ethiopia, a tribe with the name of Dochi, and near them another population with Pelasgian mores and beliefs, called by the Greek authors Macrobii (lib. VI. 35. 12), long lived. Under this name were known in Europe the Hyperboreans, about whom it was said that they lived longer and happier than any other people in the world (Mela, lib. III. 5). Among the Ethiopian kings some have until late the name of Ramhai, Letem, Rema and Armah (Drouin, Les listes royals Ethiopiennes, Paris 1882, p.50-53), names the origin of which goes back to ante-Roman times.
According to the traditions of antiquity, Prometheus was the representative of the entire state of culture in the Stone Age and the beginning of the epoch of metals. He was the man with the deepest understanding. Prometheus taught mankind to build dwellings in the light of the sun. He taught man how to use the power of animals. He made from the divine element of fire the most powerful agent of human civilization. He found the way to overcome the obstacles presented by waters, sending the sailing ships on the expansive surface of the seas. He introduced the knowledge and use of metals. He discovered many secrets of nature. He discovered the occult properties of plants, in order to combat the evils which attack man’s organism (Aeschyl, Prometheus vinctus, v. 447 seqq). He tried to know, by the art of divination, the secrets of the future and fate. Even more. Prometheus tried to influence even the spirit of man. He created new types of humans from earth and water, and even tried to give them life, which, as the sacred books of Pelasgian theology said, he succeeded (Apollodorus, Bibl. I. 7. 1). So that the Hebrew legend according to which Jehova had formed man from earth, gave him soul and wisdom, appears only as a copy of a much older legend about the creation of man by Prometheus. But what presents a positive value for science is that, according to all these sacred legends which form the Promethean cycle, the beginnings of the awakening of the human genus, the entire state of culture, anterior to the Trojan and Pharaonic times, are owed to this illustrious representative of the northern countries of Thrace.
But the Pelasgians of Egypt had played a special role in the civilization of Africa. Ammon was one of the most ancient kings of Libya and Egypt. This Ammon was, as traditions tell us, a great shepherd, a “man rich in sheep” (Tertullian, De pallio. 3), nephew of Atlas from the country of the Hyperboreans (according to some old traditions Ammon’s mother was Pasiphae, the daughter of Atlas – Plutarch, Agis, c. 9), that Atlas who appears at the same time as the ancestor of a number of famous dynasties and families of Hellada, Troy and Latium. In the sacred texts of the Egyptians, Ammon has also the name of Altaika (Pierret, Le livre d. morts, Ch. CLXV. 1-3), a form derived from Alutus, Greek ‘Atlas, which corresponds to the Romanian ethnic name of “Oltean”, from the region of Olt. He is also named Remrem (Ibid. Ch. LXXV. 1. 2), meaning Ramlen, Arim or Ariman and Harmakhis or Armakhis (Pierret, Le Pantheon egyptien, p. 95), which presents only an Egyptian form of the ethnic Greek work ‘Arimaspeios and ‘Arimaspos, which in turn was only a simple variant of the name ‘Arimaios and ‘Arimfaios. Suidas also mentions that ‘Arimanios was the god of the Egyptians (see ‘Arima).
Thebes, the oldest and biggest city of Egypt and of the whole world, the center of a prosperity without equal in history, the ancient seat of the Egyptian dynasty and the metropolis of the cult of Ammon, has a Pelasgian name. These Thebans, as Diodorus Siculus writes, said that they were the most ancient among all the mortals (lib. I. 50. 1; Ibid, I. 87. 9). One of their religious symbols was the bird par excellence of the high mountains, the vulture (aquila, aetos).
the Pelasgians of Egypt had played a special role in the civilization of Africa. Ammon was one of the most ancient kings of Libya and Egypt. This Ammon was, as traditions tell us, a great shepherd, a “man rich in sheep” (Tertullian, De pallio. 3), nephew of Atlas from the country of the Hyperboreans (according to some old traditions Ammon’s mother was Pasiphae, the daughter of Atlas – Plutarch, Agis, c. 9), that Atlas who appears at the same time as the ancestor of a number of famous dynasties and families of Hellada, Troy and Latium. In the sacred texts of the Egyptians, Ammon has also the name of Altaika (Pierret, Le livre d. morts, Ch. CLXV. 1-3), a form derived from Alutus, Greek ‘Atlas, which corresponds to the Romanian ethnic name of “Oltean”, from the region of Olt.
The first kings of the Pelasgian race had excelled especially in their personal virtues, in their political merits and for the blessings they bestowed on the human genus. They had been the first to gather in a society the families and tribes scattered through caves, mountains and woods, to found villages and cities, to form the first states, to give their subjects laws and to introduce gentler customs in their way of living; they had dedicated their entire activity towards a better existence, physical and intellectual, and in this way had opened a new way for the fate of humanity on this earth. In gratitude for these everlasting merits of theirs, these kings of the Pelasgian race had been deified and honored with religious cults, some after death, like Uranos and Saturn, and others while living, like for example Jove. The ancient Pelasgian theology had then considered these civilizing kings of the ancient world like the gods, even more, like true gods, descended on earth from the sky; in their honor it had erected temples and altars, had instituted sacrifices and feast days, had composed hymns, legends and rites, had founded colleges of priests and oracles, and finally, had eternized their names on the celestial vault, attributing them to certain constellations. In this way, these kings who had lived mortal lives, begin to be called gods; they become the heads of ancient religion and watch even after their death, as glorious ancestors, over their peoples. As soon as the divine nature of these kings – who had put the first foundations of human happiness – is proclaimed, their epoch begins to darken. Historical traditions, redacted by the priestly colleges, change in miraculous legends. Their beings are dogmatically brought in connection to the birth of the world more and more, and in this way their history becomes mythical.
Even during the Neolithic epoch, countless tribes of Pelasgians departed with their large flocks from the Carpathians towards Hellada and Asia Minor, and from Asia Minor continued little by little down, along the shores of Lebanon, and finally, together with other tribes from Hellada and the islands of the archipelago, they reached the expansive plains of the Nile. Disciplined people, religious, laborious and warlike at the same time, the Pelasgian shepherds and farmers were masters during those remote times, wherever they settled. They took with them their national institutions, an established ancestral religion, their divinities and priests, and they formed their political centers wherever they settled. But the sacred country of the Egyptian Pelasgian religion was still that particular one from the ends of the earth, from the Oceanos potamos or Istru. In that part of the world were for the ancient Pelasgians of Egypt “the divine region”, their ancient religious monuments, the images of their protective gods, the country of their ancestors, worshipped as gods. Their sacred mountains, the sky columns were there. According to ancient Egyptian beliefs the divine region of the wheat was there (Pierret, Le livre d. morts. Ch. CXI. 5), there was the place of abundance, where the wheat grew 7 ells high, the straw 4 ells and the ear 3 ells. There was the place of rebirth, the country of eternal life, the Hyperboreans.
But a particular historical significance has his epithet of Arimanius. On two inscriptions from Aquineum (Buda), Mithra is called DEVS ARIMANIVS (C. I. L. III, nr. 3414, 3415), meaning the god from the nation of the Arimii (Arimani) or the ancient Ramleni (TN – see Ch.VII). Also as DEVS ARIMANIVS appears Mithra on an inscription from Rome (C. I. L. VI, nr. 47) and it is important the fact that this appellation is given him by Pater patrum himself, the head of the Mithraic religion in the entire empire. Without doubt this glorification of Mithra as Arimanius had also the character of a religious propaganda. The inscriptions with Deus Arimanius from Rome and from Aquincum impressed on the Roman people and the colonies from Pannonia the idea that this was the ancestral god of the Arimii or of the ancient Ramleni. And in truth the god Mithra had strong national traditions in Pannonia, Dalmatia and Dacia.
En engraving on an Etruscan mirror shows Helen dressed in a rich Pelasgian costume, sitting on a throne and stretching her hand towards Agamemnon, whom she receives in her kingdom in Leuce island. Between these two persons is figured Menelaus as a young man, holding in his right hand a phial, and in his left hand a lance. In the traditions of the Pelasgians of the Peloponnesus, the places from the north of Istru (land if Oasis and Ishtar), from the country of the pious and blessed Hyperboreans, were considered as the original lands of their sacred history, as the country of residence of their protective divinities.
While in ante-Homeric religion Altea was considered the personification of the supreme being of the sky, Atlas and Rhea, his wife, represented in a newer form the divinity of the earth which gave birth to everything, Gaea, Tellus or Terra. Her honorific titles on the territory of ancient Hellada
were: Megale Mater ton theon (Diodorus Siculus, Mater ton theon (Ibid. pammator ‘Reie.
The Romans called Rhea in their public cult Magna deum Mater
Mater,Ovid, Opis and Maja (Macrobius), the last name having the meaning of grandmother or old woman (mosa). The name Rhea, in old Pelasgian language meaning of “regina”, queen (Ops Regina, In its masculine form, the word “Raiu” with the meaning of " emperess” has been still preserved in some heroic Romanian songs. The same word under the form of Ra (king) is found in the hieratical terminology of the Egyptians, inherited from the ancient Pelasgians, who had settled during the Neolithic epoch on the plains of the Nile.
Great Mother or Rhea were consecrated especially the heights of the mountains, the springs, the rivers. and the caves of Ibid. Her primitive simulacra existed on the peaks of the mountains even from immemorial times.
En engraving on an Etruscan mirror shows Helen dressed in a rich Pelasgian costume, sitting on a throne and stretching her hand towards Agamemnon, whom she receives in her kingdom in Leuce island. Between these two persons is figured Menelaus as a young man, holding in his right hand a phial, and in his left hand a lance. In the traditions of the Pelasgians of the Peloponnesus, the places from the north of Istru (land if Oasis and Ishtar), from the country of the pious and blessed Hyperboreans, were considered as the original lands of their sacred history, as the country of residence of their protective divinities.
There is an identity we can say absolute, to the smallest detail, between the exterior contours of these two monuments. On the column from the Carpathians can still be seen even the marks which seem to have once figured the arms lifted up in order to support on the back the shape of the globe which represents the vault of the sky.
Probably this memorable statue was sculpted during the time of the emperor Domitian, when the Roman legions had to sustain a long and tough war in order to conquer the holy mountain of the Dacians, called Gigantes and Hyperboreans, when the legends of Atlas had become once again popular in Italy, when the most distinguished poets of that epoch, Statius and Martial, wrote about the sky axle from the country of the Hyperboreans and with the torment of Prometheus on that rock (see above). “You go now, Marcelline, soldier”, says Martial, “to take on your shoulders the northern sky of the Hyperboreans and the stars of the Getic pole, which barely move. Behold the rock of Prometheus, behold also the famous mountain of legends, etc”. Apart from the historical traditions and apart from the mythological legends regarding the titan Atlas, there existed also in Italy an archaic religious belief regarding the sky column from the Carpathians. The Etruscans were considered during the Roman epoch, as the representatives of ancient Pelasgian theological doctrines. They had learned priests and a literature rich in rituals, to which the Roman people showed a particular respect. One of the oldest necropolis of Etruria was in the mountains of Axia (today Castel d’Asso), on the territory of the ancient city Tarquinia, the birth place of Tarquinius the Old and the metropolis of the 12 confederate cities of Etruria. The inhabitants of Tarquinia originated, as Hierocles tells us, in the lands of the Hyperboreans (Stephanus Byz. see Tarquinia), those Hyperboreans where the griffons guarded their great gold treasures. The tombs of the necropolis of Axia are dug in live rock, and the following religious symbol is figured on the frontispiece which decorates a number of these tombs.
Perseus, after severing the head of Medusa, whom he had found asleep, visits also Atlas, the king from the country of Hyperboreans (Pindar, Pyth. X. 50), tells him that he is a son of Jove, recounts for him all his miraculous deeds, and asks hospitality for one night. Atlas though, remembering the pronouncement of an ancient oracle from Parnas, which said “Atlas! The time will come when your trees will be despoiled of their gold and this glorious deed is reserved for a son of Jove”, refused to give Perseus hospitality. As Perseus insisted, he invited him to depart straight away, as otherwise neither the glory of his false deeds, nor even Jove, would save him from his hands. At these words Perseus, who could not match the strength of the titan Atlas, took out of his bag the head of Medusa, which had the magical attribute to turn to stone anybody who looked into her face, and in this way Atlas was turned on the spot into a huge mountain.
the doctrine of the Hyperboreans. It was the same belief, as expressed in the tablets sent by them to Delos, that the souls of the deceased went for the supreme judgment to a certain place of their country, from where those who had led virtuous lives passed into the region of the pious (Plato, Opera, Ed. Didot, Tom. II. p. 561). This same belief is expressed also by Hesiod when he says that the souls of the heroes fallen in the wars of Thebes and Troy had been taken to the blessed islands from the ends of the earth, near the Ocean with deep eddies (Opera et Dies, v. 161 seqq). One of these blessed islands was, as we know, Leuce island from the mouths of the Danube (Pliny, lib. IV. 27. 1: “eadem Leuce et Macaron appellata”). Here the legends and the ancient paintings show us Achilles, Ajax, Telamon, Patroclus, Antilochus, Menelaus, Helena and Agamemnon, leading a happy and eternal life (Pausanias, lib. III. 19. 11-13).
According to Eschyl (Frag. 73), Istru is the river which flows from the lands of the Hyperboreans and from the Rhipaei mountains. Finally we note here that the Danube figured under the name of Istru only from its cataracts downstream (Strabo,VII. 3. 13).
The first king who had ruled over the regions near Atlas mountain at north of the Istru, had been according to ancient historical traditions, Uranos (Munteanul – TN – from the mountain). The Atlantes (or inhabitants near Atlas mountain, near Oceanos potamos), writes Diodorus Siculus (lib. III. 56; VI. 2. 7), excel among all the neighboring peoples, for their particular piety and hospitality. They boast that the gods (the ancient deified kings) had been born there, and tell that Uranos had been the first to have ruled there; that he had gathered the people who lived scattered and had made them dwell in villages and cities; had forbidden them to further live without laws, by the way of the wild beasts; had taught them to cultivate the soil and keep the fruit good for eating, and many other useful things for their day-to-day life. His rule had extended over most of the world, especially in the western and northern regions. By observing and studying with special attention the course of the stars and the planets, Uranos had prophesied many phenomena which had to happen in the sky. He had taught the people to know the system of the year by the course of the sun, and had established the months of each year by the course of the moon and of certain hours of the year. Because of this, the simple people, who did not know the regular movements of the stars, admiring the exactness with which the things predicted by him took place, had formed the belief that really, this prophet had in him a part of a divine nature; and after he had died, he had been attributed divine honors, for his merits, as well as for his astronomical knowledge, and the name Ouranos (Munteanul) had been later applied to the sky, on the one hand because he had known very well the rising and setting of the stars, as well as other celestial phenomena, and on the other hand in order to elevate his merits and to be named king for eternity. It is said about Uranos that he had 45 children with a number of wives, 22 of whom with his wife Titaea (Titana), the mother of the Titans, who, for her merits and wisdom, had been placed after death among the gods, receiving the name Gaea (Diodorus Siculus, lib. III. 57).
At the time of Uranos, the Pelasgian state had, as it results from ancient legends and traditions, a powerful political and military organization. The first class of nobility was formed by the so-called Titans, with the epithet chthonioi, of the earth (Hesiodus, Theog. v. 697); agauoi, glorious (Ibid. v. 632); and theoi, divine (Ibid. v. 630), because by traditions, they belonged to the powerful and illustrious family of the royal dynasty. Another class of the Pelasgian society of those times was formed by the artisans, who were engaged in all sorts of industrial works (mechanai asan ep’ ergois), and who figure with Hesiodus under the name of Cyclops.
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