Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

IX] The Omphalos at Delphi 397
we are not left to philology. We know what an omphalos actually
was, and we have traditions as to what it was believed to be.
These traditions seem at first to contradict the monumental
Fig. 108.
evidence, but, as we shall see immediately, both tradition and
monumental facts, are equally true and equally essential to any
right understanding. We begin with the monumental facts.
Few, Pausanias 1 tells us, ever entered the adyton ; few therefore
saw the real omphalos. Pausanias himself does not seem to have
seen it, for, in enumerating the contents of the adyton, he makes
no mention of the omphalos. But, outside the temple near the
altar of the Chians and the famous stand of the krater of Alyattes,
king of Lydia, there was another omphalos which Pausanias 2 did
see and thus describes :
What the people of Delphi call the omphalos is made of white stone and
is said by them to be at the centre of the whole earth, and Pindar in one of
his odes agrees with this.
Pausanias it would seem, before he entered the temple, saw
an omphalos and a propos of it gives the current tradition about
the omphalos which he did not see. On the vase-painting 3 in
Fig. 109 which represents the slaying of Neoptolemos, an egg-
shaped omphalos is seen in the open air under a palm tree.
1 x. 24. 5.
2 x. 16. 2 top 5e inro Ae\(pu>v KaXoij/J-evov 6jj.ak6v, \idov ireTroirifxivov XevKoO tovto
dual to iv fj.4cr yr)s irdaris k.t.A.
3 Annali d. Inst. 1868, Tav. d' Agg. E.