PART 2 – Ch.XIV.9

(KION OURANOU. The Sky Column on Atlas Mountain

in the country of the Hyperboreans)

PART 2

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XIV. 9. The Sky Column from the Carpathians on the funerary monuments of Carthage.

The ancient inhabitants of Carthage had the same religious doctrine about the immortality and the migration of the souls to another happier terrestrial region.

The city of Carthage had been a Pelasgian colony before falling into the hands of the Phoenicians (Silius Italicus, Punica, Ed. Nisard, lib. XV. p.444).

The ancient name of the citadel was Byrsa, and more correctly Byrsan [1].

[1. This name appears as Byrsan, in the accusative, with Strabo (lib. XVII. 3. 14), and in the analogous form of Byrsam with Virgil (Aen. I. v. 366-367) and Livy (lib. XXXIV. C. 62).

Even beginning with the times of Eschyl, the ancients tried to reproduce in their writings the personal and geographical names of the Barbarians, so that they would correspond to the original form on one hand and to the grammatical laws of the language in which they wrote on the other].

This name belongs to the Pelasgian idiom from the lower Istru.

Barsa or Birsa is the name of a significant river in the history of the Romanian people. It springs in the mountains near Bucegi, crosses a large part of the expansive plain of Brasov, which takes after this river the name of tera Barsei (TN – country of Barsa), and the inhabitants of this region are called Barsani.

Even the name of Carthage (Carthagena) belongs by its form to the ethnic Pelasgian group from the lower Danube.

Three village on the territory of Romania have even today the name of Cartojani or Cartogiani (in Vlasca district), and a town on the plains of Hungary on this side of Tisa is called Kardszag.

None of these localities is situated near any navigable river, so we have no reason to suppose that they could have once been commercial colonies founded by the Carthagenese.

Carthage though, Barsa or Byrsan, was not only an isolated Pelasgian settlement in North Africa.

The numerous population of Libya had been formed from very remote times by the Getuli, whose dwellings, according to the ancient geographers, were between Mauritania, Numidia, Cyrenaica and the northern edges of the great desert. They had migrated there from the lands of the Getae. So said the traditions about them (Isidorus Hispalensis, Originum, lib. IX. 2. 118).

The sky column as symbol of the future life is represented also on the funerary monuments of Carthage during the Punic times.

One of these old monuments is a funerary stela discovered in the ruins of the city destroyed by the Romans. On its upper part is shown a column in the shape of a stunted pyramid. (Other similar stelae can be seen at Perrot et Chipiez, Phenicie-Chypre, p.458, 460). In the middle is figured Prometheus holding at his chest the clay figure of the man created by him; and on both sides of the column are represented the rising sun and the setting sun, in the Pelasgian style from the Carpathians (Hampel, A bronzkor emlekei Magyarhonban, I, 1886, p. LXXIV, LXXXVIII).

This religious symbol of Carthage represented something real.

Funerary stela from Carthage,

showing on the upper part the Sky Column

in the shape of a stunted pyramid.

(From Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire de l’art, Tome III. p. 53)

This stunted pyramid presents in its forms a very characteristic similarity with the shape of the principal column from the Carpathians and also with the emblem of Mycenae.

Another funerary stela from Carthage shows the emblem of the divine region as follows:

Funerary stela from Carthage.

(From Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire de l’art, Tome III. p. 79)

We see here an ancient religious symbol and not a human shape rudimentary sculpted.

It is the shape of a Pelasgian column, of a stunted pyramid on which the sky is supported, symbolized by a horizontal line with bent ends, exactly as shown on the funerary monuments of Egypt and Axia. The only difference is that on the symbol of Carthage the handles of the sky are bent upwards, showing therefore the sky as a divine boat, on which is figured the disc of the sun as “dux et moderator luminum” [2].

[2. See also the sun boat figured in the Egyptian paintings and drawings at Maspero, Egypte et Chaldee, p. 161. 196. 197. 139, and the boat of the moon at p. 93. Similar versions of this symbol of the sky are represented on the rocks from Iasili-Kaia/Cappadocia and on the monument from Eflatunbunar/ Lycaonia, see Perrot et Chipiez, Hist. de l’art,T.IV. 639, 645, 731).

We find the globe as symbol of the universe also on the funerary columns of Etruria.

Varro wrote (Pliny, lib. XXXVI. 19. 7) that on the Mausoleum of Porsenna, near the town Clusium, were set five pyramids, four at the corners and one at the middle, each having on top a globe of copper. The Sky Column, as we have seen, was represented also on the Etruscan tombs from Axia, which indicates that these tribes had dwelt in the region of the Carpathians near the lower Danube before their migration to Italy. Even the name of Porsenna seems to be only a form corrupted by the ancient authors, of Barsan, Bursan or Borsan, meaning from the country of Barsa, a territory which around 1200ad had the name of terra Borza, Bursa, Burza, Bursza].

The principle of immortality dominated the religion of the Hyperboreans from Istru, the religion of the Pelasgians from Greece, Egypt, Etruria, Sicily, Carthage and we can say of the Pelasgian tribes of Asia Minor as well [3].

[3. The ancient Carthagenese venerated Saturn, as Diodorus Siculus tells us (IV. 66. 5; XIV. 77. 5), and sacrificed after the Greek rite, meaning of the Pelasgians from the eastern parts of Europe. We add that Hannibal, as presented by Silius Italicus (I. 118), swore on Mars, as on a national god.

The Sky Column in the shape of a slightly conical pillar, with a quasi-Doric capital, supported by a lion on both sides, is also figured on a rock tomb in the prehistoric necropolis of Ayazinn in ancient Phrygia (Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire de l’art, Tome V. p.111)].

The divine region, where the souls of the deceased migrated, in order to purify and renew themselves, was the mysterious region of the Hyperboreans from the Carpathians, and the symbol of immortality of all the Pelasgians was the one and the same column of the sky from near the Istru, from the heights which in Roman theology had the name of Cardines mundi.

Two grand columns mark the origins of the Romanian people. One is the Sky Column from the SE arch or the Carpathians and the other is the Column from the forum of Trajan.

Out of these two famous monuments of antiquity, the most glorious is without doubt the column which dominates even today the Carpathians, majestic symbol of the national and religious unity of all the Pelasgians.

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