Page 247 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

belongs to the stock-in-trade of ancient fable. It appears in the Odyssey as
Charybdis in the Straits of Messina, and again in other cultures in the Indian Ocean
and the Pacific. It is found there, too, curiously enough, with an overhanging fig-
tree to whose boughs the hero can cling as the ship goes down, whether it be
Satyavrata in India or Kae in Tonga ... The persistence of detail rules out free
invention. Such stories have belonged to the cosmographical literature since
antiquity.
18
The appearance of the whirlpool in Homer’s Odyssey (which is a
compilation of Greek myths more than 3000 years old), should not
surprise us, because the great Mill of Icelandic legend appears there also
(and does so, moreover, in familiar circumstances). It is the last night
before the decisive confrontation. Odysseus, bent on revenge, has landed
in Ithaca and is hiding under the magic spell of the goddess Athena,
which protects him from recognition. Odysseus prays to Zeus to send him
an encouraging sign before the great ordeal:

Straightaway Zeus thundered from shining Olympus ... and goodly Odysseus was
glad. Moreover, a woman, a grinder at the mill, uttered a voice of omen from
within the house hard by, where stood the mills of the shepherd of the people. At
these handmills twelve women in all plied their task, making meal of barley and of
wheat the marrow of men. Now all the others were asleep, for they had ground out
their task of grain, but this one alone rested not yet, being the weakest of all. She
now stayed her quern and spake the word ... ‘May the [enemies of Odysseus] on
this day, for the last time make their sweet feasting in his halls. They that have
loosened my knees with cruel toil to grind their barley meal, may they now sup
19
their last!’
Santillana and von Dechend argue that it is no accident that the allegory
of the ‘orb of heaven that turns around like a millstone and ever does
something bad’ also makes an appearance in the biblical tradition of
20
Samson, ‘eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves’. His merciless captors
21
unbind him so that he can ‘make sport’ for them in their temple; instead,
with his last strength, he takes hold of the middle pillars of that great
structure and brings the whole edifice crashing down, killing everybody.
22
Like Fenja and Menja, he gets his revenge.
The theme resurfaces in Japan, in Central America, among the Maoris
24
23

18 Ibid., p. 204.
Odyssey (Rouse translation), 20:103-19.
19
20 Trimalcho in Petronius, cited in Hamlet’s Mill, p. 137.
21 John Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1:41.
22 Judges, 16:25-30.
23 In Japanese myth the Samson character is named Susanowo. See Post Wheeler, The
Sacred Scriptures of the Japanese, New York, 1952, p. 44ff.
24 In slightly distorted form in the Popol Vuh’s account of the Twins and their 400
companions (see Chapter Nineteen). Zipcana, son of Vucub-Caquix sees the 400 youths
dragging a huge log they want as a ridgepole for their house. Zipcana carries the tree
without effort to the spot where a hole has been dug for the post to support the
ridgepole. The youths try to kill Zipcana by crushing him in the hole, but he escapes and
brings down the house on their heads, killing them all. Popol Vuh, pp. 99-101.

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