The Rotation of the Rhombus: A Modern “Egg of Columbus” in the Service of Solving a Complex Homeric Riddle

Text & Copyright: Hettie Putman Cramer & Makis Metaxas

Dedicated to the memory of two dear friends and collaborators who recently passed through the gates of the Sun: Dr. Andre Gerolymatos, Director of the Stavros Niarchos Chair of Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University in Canada, and Dr. Klavs Randsborg, the Danish archaeologist of world archaeology at the University of Copenhagen.

Photograph from AI.

By interpreting the topography of the epic, its mythological substratum, and the traces left upon the land by our distant ancestors, we shall attempt, through this post and through those that will follow, to offer, as far as possible, a series of accessible answers for the wider public to the most frequently asked questions. These questions quite naturally arose after the first conclusions drawn from the excavations carried out in recent years in southeastern Kefalonia, and especially in the “Herakleion Plain”, the enclosed and irrigated valley of the ancient city-state of Pronnoi.

Aerial photograph of the town of Poros and of the concrete-lined mouth of the Vochinas torrent, where the ancient harbour of Pronnoi was still in use until the beginning of the last century. In the background lies the valley of the Herakleion Plain, dominated by fir-covered Mount Ainos. At the very end of the gorge, in a commanding position, stands the hill of Bortzi/Katsivelata, belonging to the settlement of Riza–Tzannata. In this geographically ideal location, in every respect, a powerful Mycenaean centre developed in the age of Odysseus. According to archaeologists, this centre held under its authority the four Ionian islands — Kefalonia, Ithaca, Lefkada and Zakynthos — as well as the opposite mainland coasts. Photograph: Kostas Koklanos.

             Τhe ancient harbor of the Pronnoi—Homer’s “harbor of Rheithron”(Odyssey 1. 186–187)

(A photorealistic approach by AI.) 

“My ship lies moored in the fields outside the city

in the harbor of Rheithron, at the forest-covered dockyard"  (Odyssey 1. 186–187)

(See: Dr. Lazaros Kolonas, “Ancient Installations of Southeastern Kefalonia: Positions of Strategic Control over the Maritime and Terrestrial Space of the Region”, Proceedings of the 7th Panionian Congress, vol. B, pp. 37–46; and Dr. Antonis Vasilakis, Mycenaean Seminar, “Alki Argyriadi” Amphitheatre, 20/12/2012, on the subject: “Late Helladic Apsidal / Ellipsoidal / Ovoid Megaron at Tzannata, Poros, Kefalonia”).

In this area, as is well known, the archaeologist’s spade was fortunate enough to encounter - after a continuous and wandering search lasting more than two hundred years across all the islands of western insular Greece - the first impressive finds which indicate that we are very close to a sufficiently documented confirmation that a powerful Mycenaean centre of the age of Odysseus has at last been located. Owing to its position and to the references that accompany it, this centre is clearly connected with the sought-after centre of the kingdom of Homeric, that is Mycenaean, Ithaca - at least for those who believe in its historical existence.

See the information bulletin of TAPA, with text by the former General Director of Antiquities of the Ministry of Culture, Dr. Lazaros Kolonas.

But what was it that delayed the archaeologist’s spade for so many years from turning to southeastern Kefalonia, and especially to the Herakleion Plain? Was it the lack, until recently, of knowledge about the archaeological data of the region? Or did our inability to see clearly, and to translate as objectively -  indeed as literally - as possible the contested verses describing the homeland of Odysseus play an even greater role? Under different circumstances, those verses would have led us, almost with our eyes closed, to the disputed area.

The answer is that both are equally true.

One cannot imagine how little we knew about the archaeological data of this region before the princely Mycenaean tholos tomb of Tzannata was identified in 1991 - and how little we still know even today. Only when the time comes for the archaeological map of Kefalonia, and particularly its southeastern part, to be redrawn will it be possible to understand what we thought we knew until recently, and what in fact exists there.

From this point of view, it is understandable why the partial ignorance of the overall archaeological picture, and the inability of archaeology until recently to bring objective evidence to light, turned the search for Homeric Ithaca more toward the philological field, producing an overabundance of “translation essays” adapted to every taste and every location.

The basic questions which until yesterday were seeking answers could today be approached from an entirely different starting point.

In the case of the search for the Homeric, or Mycenaean, Ithaca of the age of Odysseus - whose precise geographical position seems to have been lost amid the general upheaval and the movements of populations and place-names that appear to have occurred immediately after the collapse of the Mycenaean world in western insular Greece, during the so-called Dark Ages - the matter may involve more than the familiar and prevailing view that seeks to excuse the poet for the partial ignorance of western Greek island topography attributed to him because of his Ionian origin.

It may also involve a combination of several additional parameters: the true period in which the final version of the epic was composed; the correct interpretation, or proper reconstruction, of the contested verses describing Ithaca’s topographical position; or perhaps even the gradual, sliding adaptation of the original texts so that they would fit the topography and toponymic environment of historical times.

The path opened by the late Dr. Vangelis Pantazis in his work Maps and Ideologies compels us to consider seriously yet another possibility: whether, after all, this strange “coordinated” rearrangement of names, as we shall see later in this post, may have been the result of a mistaken copying - or of the reverse reading of some kind of map - which recorded the islands according to the way the Mycenaeans perceived them. This perception, as is well known, differed in reverse proportion from the perception that prevailed in historical times.

The oldest map in the western world dates from around 500 BC and was found in southern Italy. It is a depiction of the Apulian peninsula on a polished fragment of a clay vase, little larger than a postage stamp. Source: Internet.

Although this hypothesis may perhaps never be proven - unless some drawing, that is, some kind of map, is found, as happened in Lower Italy - it will always leave us with an enormous question mark, because the following strange coincidence arises.

If we look at the geographical map of the region and search upon it for the present geographical positions of the four Homeric toponyms that once named the islands - Ithaca, Zakynthos, Samos and Doulichion - we see the following picture:

The Homeric toponym Ithaca is found in the east, on today’s island of Ithaca.

The Homeric toponym Samos or Same is found in the west, in the name of one of the four ancient city-states on today’s island of Kefalonia.

The Homeric toponym Zakynthos is found in the south, on today’s island of Zakynthos.

The Homeric toponym Doulichion is found in historical times naming, in the north, the present-day islet of Makri/Dolicha, in the northern Echinades.

On the basis of these findings, and in the manner of a memorial tribute, we invite you to take part in another exercise in rational thought, based on the “Pantazis Theorem”, which that great Homerist left to us as an intellectual legacy.

All that is required is to draw a rhombus along the axes north–south and east–west, and to place upon it these four toponyms exactly as we encounter them in historical times: at the northern point, the toponym Doulichion; at its opposite, in the south, the toponym Zakynthos; in the east, the toponym Ithaca; and in the west, the toponym Samos.

Once we have made sure that this recording has been done correctly in terms of direction and orientation - east–west and north–south - exactly as we encounter them today on the geophysical map, we then make the following move: we rotate either the map or the rhombus by 180 degrees. In this case, we rotate the rhombus with the toponyms, bringing it into an orientation of recording compatible with the prehistoric worldview regarding “above” and “below”.

Having therefore taken the rhombus of the toponyms, we place it directly beside and parallel to the geophysical map of the four islands, and we now reread which islands this rhombus names in its new position. There we see the following almost magical image:

The toponym Ithaca, from the position it occupies today in the east, will take its place in the exact opposite direction, in the west, where we today find the island of Kefalonia.

The toponym Same or Samos, from the position it occupies today in the west, on today’s island of Kefalonia, will take its place in the east, where we today find the island of Ithaca.

The toponym Zakynthos, from the position it occupies today in the south, will take its place in the exact opposite direction, in the north, where we today find the island of Lefkada.

And the toponym Doulichion, from the position it occupies today in the north, will take its place in the exact opposite direction, in the south, where we today find the island of Zakynthos.

Let us now look at the complete picture with the rhombus of the toponyms: on our left, the map according to the worldview of historical times, where north is above and south is below; and on our right, the map according to the worldview in which south is above and north is below, a worldview that prevailed during the Mycenaean–Homeric age (following the ancient Egyptian worldview ). Each island is assigned a number.

This image, once again, records with absolute fidelity everything we have tried to reveal through our previous posts in thousands of words, invoking many texts, drawings, maps and toponyms.

So what is happening here?

Was it ultimately so simple?

This hypothesis, in a certain sense, reminds us of the so-called “Egg of Columbus”.

The rhombus and the “Egg of Columbus” in the service of solving a complex Homeric riddle.

The fact that all the toponyms survived into historical times in an entirely opposite direction - both in position and in orientation - in a completely coordinated way, without any random rearrangement, and in accordance with the prehistoric worldview regarding “above” and “below”, compels us to ask: how accidental could this really be?

Accidental it could perhaps be; yet the truth is that one cannot easily call it so. One can, however, wonder what may truly have happened in western insular Greece at the dawn of early historical times, when the Greek world was emerging from the mist of the so-called Dark Ages.

Had we lost all contact with that era?

And if we had lost that contact, why is everything corrected simply by one movement that restores the data to the environment of the worldview that prevailed during the Mycenaean–Homeric period? And why, for example - speaking here as devil’s advocates - were these data not lost in the Aegean world as well?

Could it be that our distant ancestors, at the dawn of the first historical times, made a mistaken copy by reading or understanding some hypothetical map, or descriptive text, in reverse, according to the new worldview of north-above as beginning and south-below as end, as this perception was formed in historical times?

If this could hypothetically be the case, even as an extreme version of events, then we may be faced with perhaps the most tragic copying error in world geography.

According to these findings, however, this seems to be the only purely rational approach that may offer us a logical - or at least plausible - answer to this emerging geographical riddle, which is solved through the “Pantazis Theorem”, unless, in the course of time, something else is found that allows us to approach the solution from another angle.

Dr. Vangelis Pantazis, 1947–2017.

One of the leading Homerists of modern Greece, who tried to change the way we think about the open questions of prehistoric topography.

But what was it, in the end, that imposed the new geography upon the Ionian region? Was it a mistaken reading, interpretation and ultimately depiction on the map of historical times of the positions and names of the islands by the custodians of that era - the priesthood or librarians - who still maintained contact with, and interpreted, the “hidden” texts that came from what we today call the prehistoric period? Or was it the complete ignorance of later generations, after the collapse of the Mycenaean world, regarding the topography of that earlier age? Or are we today the recipients of the final corrected editions of the long course and evolution of the Homeric texts through the centuries - especially in the post-Alexandrian period, when these epics were placed upon the Procrustean bed of the dozens of named and anonymous commentators and correctors of that era?

Logically, one might say that, based on the present result and on what we can know today, the answer could have been, more or less, all of the above. Whatever the case may be, however, we must accept that, at least from the fifth century BC onward, the names of the islands were to a great extent accepted -despite any disputes - as they have since been recorded on the map of historical times.

To the reasonable question of whether, in the surviving texts of ancient Greek literature, there exists any sense of a record of the older, primordial relationship that the islands had with their Homeric and even pre-Homeric identity, the answer - for those who are alert to the issue - is that in several texts there is indeed recorded a strong and curious relationship of concealed identity between Homeric Ithaca and today’s island of Kefalonia, as well as between Lefkada and Homeric Zakynthos.

This important chapter will be presented in a separate post in due course.

Yet we must not fail to notice that, in a curious way, today’s Kefalonia - a name entirely unknown to Homer - appears to be both the direct ancestor and the direct descendant of Homeric, that is Mycenaean, Ithaca, whatever name that island may once have borne. For there was evidently a condition prior to the so-called Homeric Ithaca, just as there was a later condition after the departure, perhaps, of the lineage of Odysseus, following the collapse of the Mycenaean world.

The paradox is that both the earlier condition and the later one - as will be seen from the evidence we shall present in a future post - seem to point toward the island which, at least from the fifth century BC onward, has borne the name Kefalonia.

With all these open questions of Homeric topography in western Greece - questions involving both its decoding and its updating - it is certain that, with the progress of studies and archaeological research over the last twenty-five years, and with the works already published as well as those still to be published, the picture will become ever more comprehensible and legible.

For this progress, we must say that we owe much to the archaeologist’s spade and to the research work of all the archaeologists and their collaborators who, over time, excavated or studied the prehistoric installations on the island. We had the great fortune to collaborate with many of them over all these years, and the truth is that we owe them a great deal.

Beyond the archaeologists with whom we were fortunate enough to work, special mention must also be made, from our side and with regard to the thematic fields we ourselves examine, of Professor and historian Dr. Petros Petratos; the former Dean of Simon Fraser University and professor of historical geography, Dr. John Pierce; the late Homerist Dr. Vangelis Pantazis; the archaeologist Odysseas Metaxas; and a host of distinguished friends and collaborators who have been, for us, a constant source of inspiration and creation.

With this publication, and with several more that will appear before the day of the thematic conference to be organized by the Society for the Study of Prehistoric Kefalonia on related subjects, our view is that only now is a new, great cycle beginning: a cycle of studies, archaeological announcements and complex interdisciplinary research that will nourish and revive the dialogue surrounding the world of Homer.

A new and hopeful road has opened, passing, both metaphorically and literally, through the poros, the passage, into another age.