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The Sumerian City of Ur
6TH century Babylonian cosmological map
• City of Babylon
• The Tigress River running near a pillar of the Earth
• The Water of the Cosmos
• The Platform of the Earth
6TH century Babylonian cosmological map
• Sheol (Hell, jail for the dead, pit, grave, or the Underworld)
• The Firmament with stars, sun and moon
The universe is a closed dome, surrounded by a saltwater sea.
The Earth is a disk supporting the universe.
A freshwater ocean rolls beneath the Earth.
The Cosmology of the Ancient Near East: Assimilation and Accommodation
Saltwater Sea
The disk of the earth is supported at four corners by great pillars.
Sheol
In the ancient world, Jews conceived of death as a one-way trip into a sunless world from which one never returned.
Sheol
Sheol
God and Heaven were out beyond the Saltwater Sea.
GOD IN HEAVENS
COSMOLOGY OF ANCIENT EGYPT
• Egyptian civilization was primarily marked by a loose configuration of peopleswho were bound by a geographical and cultural construct.
• Egyptian civilization formed itself primarily around the shared experience of the Nile River and around ideas of a cycle and the natural order of things that repeated themselves the rising and setting of the sun god Ra every day the cycle of the birth and death of the divine ruler, or the pharaoh.
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One of the primary filters for understanding Egyptian art is Time – both Cyclical and Linear
Egyptian Book of the Dead
THE GREEK VIEW OF THE COSMOS
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The Aegean Sea
Crete
Cyclades
Troy
Knossos
Sparta
AthensMycenae
Mediterranean Sea
Ionean Sea
ASIA MINORANATOLIA
PELOPONNESUS
MACEDONIA
RHODES
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CHAPTER FOURART OF THE PREHISTORIC AEGEAN
LESVOS
The universe is a closed dome, surrounded by a saltwater sea.
The Earth is a sphere around which the planets and the sun revolve.
The Cosmology of the Greeks: Spherical Earth and Man in Image of Gods
Saltwater Sea
The Earth is a sphere around which the planets and the sun revolve.
The Cosmology of the Greeks: Spherical Earth and Man in Image of Gods
The deity called Chaos gives birth to several children. He creates them out of some kind of
matter.
The Earth is a sphere around which the planets and the sun revolve.
The Cosmology of the Greeks: Spherical Earth and Man in Image of Gods
The earth is made of four elements (earth/soil, air, water, fire) + a “soul” (the principle of eternal
motion)
The Earth is a sphere around which the planets and the sun revolve.
The Cosmology of the Greeks: Spherical Earth and Man in Image of Gods
The beginnings of man are cloaked in mystery but they are the creation of the deities and they
are in their image. They are good.
The Cosmology of the Greeks: Spherical Earth and Man in Image of Gods
At some point on the earth, there is an entrance of an ill-defined place inside the earth called Ellysium, where humans go to
reside infinitely.
The Cosmology of the Greeks: Spherical Earth and Man in Image of Gods
The gods, presided over by Zeus, live on earth atop Mount Olympus, the highest peak in Greece, where they watch and interfere in men’s lives, eat ambrosia and drink nectar.
The Cosmology of the Greeks: Spherical Earth and Man in Image of Gods
The entrance is guarded by a three-headed dog and presided over by Hades, brother of Zeus.
The Cosmology of the Greeks: Spherical Earth and Man in Image of Gods
One arrives at the fields of Ellysium by crossing the river Styx.
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