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In-Depth Information
owing to the movements of the wounded giant' (Semple, 1932, p. 52). Far across
the Mediterranean, Atlas was sentenced by the President of the Immortals to stand
in endless anguish to support the weight of the sky on his shoulders and, according
to the Romans, turned into the Atlas range in North Africa, rising to 4167m asl
above the Strait of Gibraltar, the westernmost limit of the inhabited world of antiq-
uity. Mount Athos, the most remarkable summit in the north Aegean and home to a
famous Apollo sanctuary, is ascribed similar origins. According to ancient mythol-
ogy, Athos was a Thracian titan who hurled that whole rocky mass at Poseidon
in a clash between giants and gods (Kadas, 1998, p. 9). Due to its dramatic mor-
phology, Athos endured as a privileged site of titanic visions as late as the first
century BC. According to the Roman architectural writer Vitruvius the peak cap-
tured the imagination of Dinocrates, Alexander the Great's architect, who proposed
to carve it into a colossal human figure - by implication that of his mighty patron
(
De Architectura,
2: 1-2) (Figure 7.1b). Widely debated in Renaissance Europe, the
Dinocratic myth inspired (similarly unrealized) bold projects across the Mediter-
ranean: from young Michelangelo's plan to carve a colossus into the marble cliffs of
Carrara to Greek-American sculptor Papadopoulos's contemporary plan to convert
Mount Kerdyllion, a craggy hill in the Macedonian countryside, into a huge head
of Alexander the Great - the ultimate irony for the king who declined Dinocrates'
vision, and the ultimate testimony to the enduring power of rock on human imag-
ination (Schama, 1995, p. 404; della Dora, 2005). The physical distinctiveness of
Mediterranean mountains as 'landmarks', however, did not only capture the imag-
ination of ancient visionaries; as the following section will show, it was destined
to become central to the three great monotheistic religions that shaped the spiritual
history of the Basin.
7.3 Theophanic mountains
The mountain occurs among the images that express the connection between
heaven and earth;
hence [it] marks the highest point in the world.
Eliade (1959, pp. 37-38)
...
Judaic, Christian and Muslim traditions are signposted by mountain revelations -
most of them occurring on peaks around the Mediterranean. Old Testament prophets
all encountered God in high places: Ararat, Moriah, Horeb, Carmel, Sinai and Zion.
Peter, James and Jacob were blessed with the vision of the transfigured Christ on the
top of Tabor. Muhammad received his first revelation from the archangel Gabriel
in a cave on Jabal al-Nur ('the Mountain of Light'), near Mecca, and ascended
to heaven from Mount Zion in Jerusalem (where the Dome of the Rock stands
today). In earliest Hebrew cosmology mountain tops were the closest spots to the
Upper Chambers above the firmament, where God was believed to reside and come
down to meet with the faithful (Psalm 104: 13). As such, they endured in the three
