Lost Worlds
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Places · Quran and Arabian lore'Ad and Iram of the PillarsThe Quran speaks of a people of great stature and a city of pillars, "the like of which was not created in the lands," erased by a furious wind. Medieval writers turned it into a golden city. In the 1990s, NASA radar images were used to trace caravan tracks in the hunt for it under Oman's sands.Places · NorseBifrostThe Norse bridge to the gods is said to be partly made of burning fire, to keep giants out. Its guard can hear grass grow and see a hundred leagues at night. The poems say it will break when the enemy rides across at the end of the world. Who built it, and what is it really?Places · Sumer and BabylonEriduArchaeologists found eighteen temples stacked in the same spot at Eridu, each rebuilt on top of the last for roughly three thousand years, starting around 5400 BCE. The Sumerians said it was the oldest city in the world, where kingship first descended from heaven. How much of the legend does the digging support?Places · NorseGinnungagapBefore anything existed, the Norse sources describe a yawning void with fire at one end and ice at the other, and life began where they met. Later, Icelandic geographers reportedly reused the name for a real stretch of sea. What did the name actually mean, and why do scholars still argue about it?Places · Hebrew Bible; Enoch literatureMount HermonThe story says two hundred angels landed on this mountain and swore an oath, and that the peak got its name from that very oath. In Hebrew, Hermon sounds like a word for a ban or curse. It is a real snowy summit that feeds the Jordan River. Did the legend explain the name, or the name the legend?Places · Sumer and BabylonShuruppakA city that legend names as home of the Flood hero turned out to have a real flood deposit under it. Shuruppak also produced the Instructions of Shuruppak, among the oldest literary texts in the world, framed as a father's advice to his son Ziusudra. What does a flood layer actually prove?Places · EgyptThe Imperishable StarsThe Egyptians called the stars circling the north pole "the ones that do not know destruction," because from Egypt they never dip below the horizon. The Pyramid Texts send the dead king north to join them; some think the builders even used two of these stars to find true north. How would that work?
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