Omphalos

Omphalos means Greek Nombril in .

According to the Cosmogony of the ancient Greek Religion, Zeus would have released two eagles of the extreme points Eastern and Westerner of the world. At the point where they met, Zeus would have dropped the omphalos , thus marking the center, the “navel of the world”. Several omphalos was set up during antiquity through the Mediterranean basin but most famous is that of the oracle of Delphes, stone of form conical, directly placed in the Adyton of the temple oracular of Apollon, surrounded by fabric and surmounted by two gold eagles. The tradition located fall it from the Python overcome by Apollon under the omphalos.

The omphalos would be a stone substituted for Zeus new-born and swallowed by Cronos. It thus symbolizes the birth of Zeus and its power. The legend wants that Cronos, having learned that one day one of its sons détrônerait it, required his woman Rhéa that it delivers each new born to him, that it absorbed at once. It succeeded in avoiding this fate with its sixth child in him substituent a wrapped stone of a linen. Later, become adult, Zeus, helped of his/her grandmother Gaïa, forced his/her father to discharge the stone and the children previously swallowed, who became the gods of the Olympe.

Quotation

“What the inhabitants of Delphes call omphalos is in fact out of stone white and considered as being in the center of the ground, and Pindare, in one of its odes, confirms this opinion. ”
(, X, 16,2)

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