Homer's Phaeacia
(or Scheria, its other name) indubitably lay in the Indian Ocean, which
is referred to by Homer as "the winy red ocean". This and other such epithets applied exclusively to the Indian Ocean, which was called Erythraean ("Red One") by the Greeks. This people considered the Erythraean as the eastern extension of the Atlantic Ocean, and deemed it the veritable Ocean of the Atlanteans, as we argue elesewhere.
The description of Phaeacia by Homer (Od.
VII: 80) with its lofty walls, spacious harbors, seaworthy ships
and golden palaces closely parallels the ones of Atlantis as described
by Plato. Homer mentions how the hero, spellbound by the magnificence of
the royal palace, lingered for a long time before it, not daring to enter
its golden threshold.
In Homer's own words, "the splendor of
the palace was like that of the sun and the moon". Homer also affirms that
the Phaeacians "are a sea-faring nation, and sail all seas by the grace
of Poseidon, in ships fleet like thought or as a bird in the air".
Actually, the very name of Scheria said
to derive from the Phoenician word
schera, meaning "market-place".
is telltale. It shows that Homer's fabulous golden realm was, like
its Atlantean counterpart, the emporium of a vast network of international
naval commerce.
The name of Scheria can also be approached to the Greek word
schedia meaning "ships" or, rather, "fleet ships", like the ones of Atlantis.
Indeed, Homer likens Phaeacia to a huge
ship which was turned into stone and sunken by Poseidon, as a punishment
for their disobedience in helping Ulysses. Coincidentally enough, Poseidon,
the great god of the Phaeacians, is also the founder and supreme god of
the Atlanteans, according to Plato.
Ship-like Phaeacia closely evokes the primordial
Tyre of
Ezequiel (ch. 26-28) which was likened to a ship by the
prophet. Ezekiel's "Tyre" later became "a place to spread fishing nets
upon" after it was turned into stone and sunk underseas. Ezequiel describes
this primordial Tyre as a "renowned city, inhabited by a seafaring nation
of merchants, strong in the middle of the seas". The great prophet
also places this famous city among the other "islands of the Outer Ocean"
rather than in Mediterranean Basin.
When we pause to think it over, we see
that this primordial "Tyre" is indubitably the same as Homer's Phaeacia
and as Plato's Atlantis. It was the model of the other Tyre in Lebanon,
founded by the Phoenicians at about 1,500BC, after they removed from their
primordial homeland beyond the ocean (Indian). Ezequiel tells how Tyre
and the other islands "trembled in day of thy departure... in the midst
of the waters".
Ezekiel's "Tyre" is also likened to "Eden,
the Garden of the Lord". It is sited, by the prophet, "in the middle of the seas" among
the other islands of the Outer Ocean, as we said above. Ezekiel's "Tyre" was, like Plato's
Atlantis, "full of a multitude of merchants" who traded in all sorts of
goods such as metals, gemstones, precious stuff and spices in their "ships
of Tarshish". Tarshish was, as Ezequiel and others affirm, the supplier
of metals such as silver, gold, iron, tin, copper and bronze to the ancient
nations of the Bronze Age.
There can little doubt that Tarshish and,
hence, the other isles of the ocean such as Ezekiel's "Tyre", lay in the
Indian Ocean. In reality, the Phoenician sailors of King Solomon and of
Hiram of Tyre reached these overseas region from the port of Ezion-Geber,
in the Red Sea. Though the mysterious Tarshish the supplier of mineral
ores and gemstones has been often confused with the Spanish Tartessos,
the fact is that the Spanish Tartessos was, like the Lebanese Tyre, merely
a replica of their pristine archetypes in the islands of Indonesia.
The pristine commerce with the Indies was perhaps the best kept secret of the ancients. The naval route to this remote supplier of metals, spices and other precious
stuff such as perfumes, incenses, drugs of all sorts, dyes, ivory, amber, tissues, paper, etc.was carefully concealed from the possible competitors
This commerce dates back
from the remotest antiquity, and is attested not only in the detailed annals
of the Egyptians, the Chinese and the Mesopotamians. It is also recorded in the myths
and traditions of the Bible (as in
Ezekiel and in
Revelation),
of the Greeks (the
Odyssey, the
Argonautica, etc.) and, indeed,
of most nations of antiquity.
The "isles of the sea" of Ezekiel are no
other than the "Atlantic Islands" that were invariably reproduced in the
Medieval maps of the world as "newly discovered" (insulae de novo repertae).
These mysterious islands were indeed those of Indonesia, the other "India"
from which the spices and the metals were imported in antiquity.
The naval route to these distant islands
were ardently sought out by all mariners down to the times of the great navigants
such as Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan and Cabral. They were the islands
of the East Indies so vainly soght by all mariners down to the times
of these discoverers, who finally cleared the riddle of their true location
and whereabouts.
