Encyclopedia > Omphalos

  Article Content

Omphalos

An omphalos is a religious stone artefact in the ancient world. In Greek, the word omphalos means "navel".

According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at its center, the "navel" of the world. Omphalos stones to denote this point were erected in several areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, the most famous of those at the oracle in Delphi. Omphalos stones were said to allow direct communication with the gods.

See also: Omphale



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Sanskrit language

... and the vrdhii grade vowel as V + aa. One other notable feature of the nominal system is the very common use of nominal compounds, which may be huge (10+ words) like ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 35.5 ms