The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 05 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 05 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
(M113) Nothing yet found at Olba throws light on the nature of the god who
was worshipped there under the Greek name of Zeus. But at two places near
the coast, distant only some fourteen or fifteen miles from Olba, a deity
also called Zeus by the Greeks was revered in natural surroundings of a
remarkable kind, which must have stood in close relation with the worship,
and are therefore fitted to illustrate it. In both places the features of
the landscape are of the same general cast, and at one of them the god was
definitely identified with the Zeus of Olba. The country here consists of
a tableland of calcareous rock rent at intervals by those great chasms
which are characteristic of a limestone formation. Similar fissures, with
the accompaniment of streams or rivers which pour into them and vanish
under ground, are frequent in Greece, and may be observed in our own
country near Ingleborough in Yorkshire. Fossil bones of extinct animals
are often found embedded in the stalagmite or breccia of limestone caves.
For example, the famous Kent’s Hole near Torquay contained bones of the
mammoth, rhinoceros, lion, hyaena, and bear; and red osseous breccias,
charged with the bones of quadrupeds which have long disappeared from
Europe, are common in almost all the countries bordering on the
Mediterranean.(449) Western Cilicia is richer in Miocene deposits than any
other part of Anatolia, and the limestone gorges of the coast near Olba
are crowded with fossil oysters, corals, and other shells.(450) Here, too,
within the space of five miles the limestone plateau is rent by three
great chasms, which Greek religion associated with Zeus and Typhon. One of
these fissures is the celebrated Corycian cave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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