Odyssey of the Gods: The Alien History of Ancient Greece

212 Pages·2002·38.944 MB·English

by  Erich von Daniken

The Classic Bestseller
Boston Public Library
Boston, MA 02118
Erich von Daniken came to prominence in the
1970s with his bestseller Chariots of the Gods?
and has since written many books on a similar
theme. He continues his research from his
home in Switzerland and remains a passionate
advocate of the reality of extraterrestrial visits.
by the same author
Arrival of the Gods
Chariots of the Gods?
Return of the Gods
ODYSSEY OF THE GODS
An Alien History of Ancient Greece
Erich von Daniken
Translated by Matthew Barton
ELEMENT
Shaftesbury, Dorset • Boston, Massachusetts • Melbourne, Victoria
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© Element Books Limited 2000
Text © Erich von Daniken 2000
Original edition © C Bertelsman Verlag 1999
First published in the UK in 2000 by
Element Books Limited
Shaftesbury', Dorset SP7 8BP
Published in the USA in 2000 by
Element Books, Inc.
160 North Washington Street,
Boston, MA02114
Published in Australia in 2000 by
Element Books and distributed
by Penguin Books Australia Ltd
487 Maroondah Highway, Ringwood,
Victoria 3 a 34
Erich von Daniken has asserted his right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
without prior permission in writing from the Publisher.
Cover design by Max Fairbrother
Designed and typeset by THE BRIDGEWATER BOOK COMPANY
Printed and bound in Great Britain
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data available
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data available
ISBN r 86204 749 9
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Picture Credits vi
1 Adventures of the Starship Enterprise in
Long-gone Millennia i
2 In the Name of Zeus 32
3 The Network of the Gods 49
4 The Trojan Tangle 90
5 Atlantis - The Millennia-old‘Whodunnit’ 100
6 Help for Plato 136
Dear Reader 151
Notes 152
Index 159
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PICTURE CREDITS
Giorgio Tsoukalos, Ithaca, USA: pictures 3, 38
Rudolf Eckhardt, Berlin: pictures 17,19, 20
Kilian Bohren, Interlaken: pictures 24, 31
Markus Pezold, Kempten: picture 36
Charles Hapgood, Keene, USA: pictures 40,41
All other pictures: Erich Von Daniken, Beatenberg
I would like to thank all the photographers for their support.
The copyright remains with each photographer.
vi
FOREWORD
D
o you know what an orgy is? Encyclopaedias give its original
definition as the celebration of religious rites in ancient Greece.'
Nowadays the word refers to a much less restrained kind of caper,
in which sex plays its fair share.
But in fact this is also what the word meant in ancient Greece. At that
time men used to meet together in the afternoon for philosophical
debate, followed a few hours later by a ‘symposium’ or drinking party -
which often ended in an orgy. Wives were not present, but boys and
youths were. Greece was taboo-free in this respect; people thought
and felt differently in ancient Hellas.
Everyone knows what a science-fiction story is. But you probably
don’t know that there were science-fiction stories circulating in ancient
Greece too, though much more fantastic ones than ours. The difference
between them is that the Greeks didn’t regard their science-fiction as
utopian fantasies; they believed that the stories related events which
had really taken place. And there was another difference. Our science-
fiction stories - such as the adventures of ‘Starship Enterprise’ - take
place in the future, while the ancient Greeks looked back to a dim,
distant past, to a time millennia before their own.
Just imagine that the island of Crete is continually circled by a metal
guardian, which has the phenomenal ability to monitor all ships
heading towards the island and to blow them out of the water. No
foreigner has a ch ance of landing there against the wishes of the island’s
rulers. If a boat does manage to slip through, the metal monster can
direct a fierce heat at it and burn the invader up. However, this guardian
robot does have a weak point: if a certain bolt on its metallic body is
undone, its thick blood flows out so that it is immobilized. Naturally
only those who constructed it, and their successors, know the precise
location of this vital spot.
This story7 was already in existence around 2,500 years ago, and the
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ODYSSEY OF THE GODS
Greeks were convinced that it told the truth about events long before
their time. The robot which patrolled Crete was called Talos, and
the engineers who knew the precise position of the place where the
hydraulic fluid had to be drained, so as to inactivate the monster, were
called ‘gods’.
This is not a (hi)story book of ancient Greece, but a book about its
stories. The Greece of ancient times is chock-a-block with extraordinary
tales. Did the wanderings of Odysseus ever happen? What was going on
in Delphi? Was there really a doom-and-gloom prophetess there who
foresaw all major political events? Are the powerful descriptions of Troy
based on truth? And what about Atlantis? All the information we have
about Atlantis, to which all authors on the subject refer, has come from
Greece. And who were the Argonauts who set out to steal the ‘Golden
Fleece’?
Greece is worth a dream-trip. I invite you to join me on a special kind
of adventure.
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