Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece and Rome (18 page)

The enraged Minos imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in the Labyrinth forgetting that genius like love will always find a way. Barred by land and sea Daedalus turned to the air; he carefully studied the flight of birds then laid down a row of feathers beginning with the small ones and gradually increasing their length, so that the edge seemed to slope upwards, these he fastened in the middle with thread and at the bottom with wax, then rounded them in a gentle curve to look like real birds' wings. After hovering in the air mastering the technique of flight, this mastermind made a pair of wings for Icarus and instructed him to follow a course midway between earth and heaven in case the sun should scorch his feathers, the water made them heavy, if he went too low; he was to pay no attention to the stars. Father and son soared in the air and to the amazement of sundry shepherds and fishermen flew out to sea, gliding beyond
Delos
and
Paros
between
Samos
on their left and Labinthus on their right over the
Aegean
. Icarus swooped and soared on air-streams attracted to the blazing sun, the wax melted, his wings fell off. By tragic oversight Daedalus had omitted to invent the parachute, his son suddenly discovered the laws of gravity and crashed into the sea and drowned. Daedalus flew on to
Italy
and landed at Cumac near the future
Naples
, abode of the prophetic Sibyl, where he built a temple to Apollo; later he found shelter in the Court of Cocalus, King of Sicily.

Still smarting at the escape of Daedalus, Minos thought of a clever ruse to find him; he offered a princely reward to anyone who could pass a thread through the intricate convolutions of a seashell, a problem to baffle even our bright boys today, knowing only one man in the world could solve it. Daedalus told the Sicilian King to fasten a thread around an ant to be introduced into a hole pierced in the shell; the ant finally found its way through the maze and duly emerged, instead of the prize he had promised Minos invaded
Sicily
with an army and demanded the surrender of Daedalus. By stratagems not vouchsafed to us, the daughters of Cocalus surprised Minos in his bath and heartlessly filled it up with boiling water, mighty Minos turned pink, scalded to death like a lobster. Zeus took compassion somewhat too late and made Minos a Judge of the Dead in Hades. No man knows how Daedalus died.

Even the great Leonardo and our technicians today have failed to solve the problem of man-powered flight; the alleged aeronautics of Daedalus so long ago are scoffed at as myth. Ancient Chinese records assert that about 2250 BC, the Emperor Shun escaped from captivity by making himself wings like a bird. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his 'History of the Kings of Britain' mentions that the Bronze Age King Bladud, 'a right cunning artificer', fashioned wings and tried to 'go upon the top of the air', when he fell upon the Temple of Apollo on Lud's Hill in the city of Trinaventum (London) leaving his throne to his son, Leir, the King Lear of Shakespeare.

The 'Koran' recalls Nimrod soaring to the skies on the back of an eagle whose wings were singed by the sun. A popular Babylonian tale tells how shortly after the Flood the childless King Etana ascended to heaven on an eagle to seek counsel from the Gods; some time after his return to Earth the Queen bore him a son. The man-bird, Garuda, is featured in the Classics of Ancient India.

It is natural for us today who believe flight started only this century to dismiss all tales of flying in Antiquity as childish fancy, poetic yearning of primitive man. Study of the literature of the Ancient East astounds us with the aerial chariots of India, flying-horses in Tibet, dragons over China, heavenly rocking-boats over Japan, solar-boats in Egypt, winged wheels in Babylon, the 'Power and Glory' of the 'Lord' inspiring Israel; we become suddenly conscious that flying machines did exist in ancient times. Surely, those craft must have flown over the
Mediterranean
to land in
Greece
and
Crete
?

Minos and Daedalus are shrouded in mystery yet for thousands of years their deeds are remembered. The human mind can imagine events only in terms of its own experience; the peoples of Antiquity conceived of flight in the likeness of birds. Does the story of Daedalus and Icarus preserve some memory of Spacemen?  The Minoans were a literate people;
Knossos
lasted for many hundred years. If only we might unearth some Library!

The sudden downfall of
Knossos
in about 1400 BC at the zenith of its glory, when that gay and brilliant civilisation dominated the
Mediterranean
, remains a mystery. Sir Arthur Evans attributed the smoke-stained ruins to earthquake followed by terrible conflagration consuming the city; a theory challenged by J. D. S. Pendlebury, who argued that in the absence of gas and electricity-mains earthquakes seldom cause fires, moreover the grand-staircase would have been split by earth-tremors; in fact it survived for a long time. Dr. Angelos G. Galanopoulos, Professor of Geophysics at the
University
of
Athens
, suggests that
Knossos
might have been destroyed by the explosion of
Santorin
Island
to the north, which he equates with Plato's Atlantis, which erupted in the fifteenth century BC dropping a thick layer-of ash over central and eastern
Crete
rendering these regions virtually uninhabitable for many centuries. Controversy still rages!

The intriguing suggestion has been made that the advanced technology of the Cretans possibly utilised petroleum, the famous Greek fire of future centuries, perhaps the oil-tanks exploded in flames. The obvious cause would appear to have been invaders from Greece, symbolised by the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur, who devastated Knossos and the neighbouring cities; however Thucydides stressed that Minos ruled the sea, it is difficult to imagine what coalition of the Aegean Powers could have launched an armada to smash the powerful Cretan fleet and lay Knossos waste, its splendour desolate. Centuries later the Romans tore
Carthage
to the ground and ploughed over its ruins but history does not record any country overwhelming
Crete
.

Today in our Nuclear Age the sudden destruction of a city at once evokes memories of
Hiroshima
and the annihilation of
Sodom
and
Gomorrah
possibly by Spacemen. The 'Mahabharata' is generally supposed to describe the Bharata War in
Northern India
about 1400 BC; this wonderful epic gives most fascinating descriptions of aerial warfare and annihilating-bombs. Extraterrestrials apparently interfered in world affairs throughout the Second Millennium BC, they would surely have taken special interest in
Crete
where Daedalus, Icarus and others were building flying machines. Archaeologists find that the ancient city of
Hattus
in
Asia Minor
appears to have been destroyed by some weapon generating terrific heat; its calcined walls resemble granite battlements of fortresses in
Ireland
apparently fused by aerial bombs. Every disaster in ancient times cannot be attributed to the activities of Extraterrestrials yet it is highly significant that the Babylonians, Britons, Hindus, Chinese, Mayas, all the peoples of Antiquity, kept radar-like watch on the heavens. Did they fear attack from the skies? Invasion by Spacemen? Destruction like
Knossos
?

Thueydides little dreamed that
Knossos
had been suddenly destroyed a thousand years before he was born; its brilliant civilisation probably began about 3400 BC. This home of the Minotaur had close links with Egypt, inscriptions from the 12th Dynasty, 2000 BC referred to Crete as 'Keftiu' or 'Caphtor’ legendary origin of the Philistines; the recent discovery of the drawings of a labrys or double-headed axe on a trilithon at Stonehenge associates Crete with the Britain of 1800 BC. In the 'Odyssey' Book XIX Homer marvelled at the rich and lovely land of Crete with ninety cities, great Knossos and King Minos, friend of Zeus; this vivid description was wonderfully confirmed by excavations of Sir Arthur Evans at the beginning of this century revealing the colourful, enchanting Minoan civilisation lost to history. In the
palace
of
Phaistos Sir Arthur Evans
discovered a terracotta disc, four inches in diameter, with spiral ideograms which seem identical to prehistoric symbols found in
South America
, suggesting world-wide communications promoting the Sun religion evocative of Spacemen. Scholars were long baffled by two strange scripts, Linear A and Linear B, on baked clay tablets found in the Palace at
Knossos
for which there was no bilingual key.

For decades archaeologists studied them in vain until in 1952 Michael Ventris with brilliant logic deciphered Linear B and announced to an incredulous world that this Minoan script was archaic Greek written many decades earlier than experts had imagined. Similar scripts were found on the mainland at
Mycenae
proving that the Dark Age of illiteracy taught by the historians must in actual fact have been a time of culture and learning; this revelation extended the civilisation of
Greece
back to 2000 BC.

The Greek myths are attributed to the Mycenaean period from 1600-1200 BC, although affinities with legends of the Ancient East suggest all sprang from some common source millennia before. After excavating Troy Heinrich Schliemann inspired by the plays of Aeschylus began to search for the tomb of Agamemnon and the treasures of Atreus in the cyclopean ruins of
Mycenae
which had staged the murder of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Electra in the greatest tragedies of
Greece
. According to Homer Troy was rich,
Mycenae
even richer. In 1876 Schliemann found five royal graves, later Stanistakis a sixth, and unearthed the skeletons of nineteen men and women and two small children surrounded by golden treasures unequalled in opulence until the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb. Over each man's face shimmered a golden mask modelled to his features, on his chest shone a breast-plate, the women wore golden frontlets, one a magnificent gold diadem, the children lay wrapped in sheets of gold. The wives had toilet-boxes of gold, superb necklaces, earrings, jewellery, even cosmetic adornments shaming our modern millionaires. In Ancient Greece 3,500 years ago!

Writing, cyclopean cities, goldware of exquisite artistry, alluring jewellery, coquettish cosmetics, all show a highly sophisticated society possessing great imaginative, technical skill. The invention of writing communicating ideas presupposes philosophy and logic of lofty intelligence maturing through vast millennia. Transcending all perhaps were the religious ideals, belief in an after-life, persuading the Mycenaeans to bury such golden treasures with their dead.

In 1901 some sponge-divers off the island of Antikithira, between Cythera and Crete, fished up a metal box covered with coral which was found to contain an assemblage of wheels, balances, cylinders and dials comprising an ancient astronomical clock dated by experts between 80 and 50 BC, which gave the signs of the Zodiac, the orbits of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the solar year, the months and the time of day. A fascinating, mechanical masterpiece!