Hamlet's Mill
Encyclopedia
Hamlet's Mill by Giorgio de Santillana
(a professor of the history of science at MIT) and Hertha von Dechend (a scientist at
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität) is a nonfiction work of history and comparative mythology
, particularly the subfield of archaeoastronomy
.The book is thematically similar to Joseph Campbell
's The Masks of God.
The essential premise of the book is that much mythology and ancient literature has been badly misinterpreted and that they generally relate to a sort of monomyth
conveying significant scientific and specifically astronomical ideas and knowledge.
(Leach 1970 mentions particularly the 1900 Die Mathematik der Oceaner and the 1904 Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes).
The proposed interpretation is that:
Careful examination of the "relics, fragments and allusions that have survived the steep attrition of the ages" permit reconstruction. In particular, the book reconstructs a myth of a heavenly mill which rotates around the pole star
, and grinds out the world's salt
and soil
, and is associated with the maelstrom
. The millstone falling off its frame represents the passing of one age's pole star (symbolized by a ruler or king of some sort), and its restoration and the overthrow of the old king of authority and the empowering of the new one the establishment of a new order of the age (a new star moving into the position of pole star). The authors attempt to demonstrate the prevalence of influence of this hypothetical civilization's ideas by analysing the world's mythology (with an eye to revealing mill myths) using
(1970) concluded that
Writing in The New York Review of Books
, Edmund Leach
noted:
H. R. Ellis Davidson
referred to Hamlet’s Mill as
De Santillana and von Dechend state in the Introduction to Hamlet's Mill that they are well aware of modern interpretations of myth and folklore but they find them shallow and lacking insight: "...the experts now are benighted by the current folk fantasy, which is the belief that they are beyond all this - critics without nonsense and extremely wise". Consequently, de Santillana and Deschend prefer to rely on the work of "meticulous scholars such as Ideler
, Lepsius
, Chwolson, Boll
and, to go farther back, of Athanasius Kircher
and Petavius...". They give reasons throughout the book for preferring the work of older scholars (and the early mythologists themselves) as the proper way to interpret myth; but this viewpoint did not sit well with their modern critics schooled in the "current anthropology, which has built up its own idea of the primitive and what came after".
Barber (2006), itself a study aiming to "uncover seismic, geological, astrological, or other natural events" from mythology, appreciates the book for its pioneer work in mythography
, judging that "Although controversial,[Santillana and von Dechend] have usefully flagged and collected Herculean amounts of relevant data." Nevertheless, the conclusions the authors draw from their data have been "virtually ignored by the scientific and scholarly establishment.”
Giorgio de Santillana
Giorgio Diaz de Santillana was an Italian-American philosopher of science and historian of science, and professor at MIT....
(a professor of the history of science at MIT) and Hertha von Dechend (a scientist at
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität) is a nonfiction work of history and comparative mythology
Comparative mythology
Comparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes...
, particularly the subfield of archaeoastronomy
Archaeoastronomy
Archaeoastronomy is the study of how people in the past "have understood the phenomena in the sky how they used phenomena in the sky and what role the sky played in their cultures." Clive Ruggles argues it is misleading to consider archaeoastronomy to be the study of ancient astronomy, as modern...
.The book is thematically similar to Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
's The Masks of God.
The essential premise of the book is that much mythology and ancient literature has been badly misinterpreted and that they generally relate to a sort of monomyth
Monomyth
Joseph Campbell's term monomyth, also referred to as the hero's journey, is a basic pattern that its proponents argue is found in many narratives from around the world. This widely distributed pattern was described by Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces...
conveying significant scientific and specifically astronomical ideas and knowledge.
Background
Santillana had previously published, in 1961, The Origins of Scientific Thought which greatly influenced Hamlet's Mill - indeed, it could be considered a sequel or elaboration of the 1961 work; further influences can be found in the work of Leo FrobeniusLeo Frobenius
Leo Viktor Frobenius was an ethnologist and archaeologist and a major figure in German ethnography.-Life:He was born in Berlin as the son of a Prussian officer and died in Biganzolo, Lago Maggiore, Piedmont, Italy...
(Leach 1970 mentions particularly the 1900 Die Mathematik der Oceaner and the 1904 Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes).
The proposed interpretation is that:
- "Our ancestors of the high and far-off times were endowed with minds wholly comparable to ours, and were capable of rational processes-always given the means at hand"
- That they were particularly fascinated by astronomical observations, and that they made many discoveries, particularly:
- The precession of the axis was discovered long before the accepted date of the Greek discovery, and that this was discovered by an ancient (perhaps as late as 4000 BCE) civilization of unsuspected sophistication (per #1).
- This civilization believed that the world passed through cyclical & ZodiacZodiacIn astronomy, the zodiac is a circle of twelve 30° divisions of celestial longitude which are centred upon the ecliptic: the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year...
al stages based on the precession, and that myths which encode this astronomical knowledge symbolically transmit this belief, typically through a story relating to a millstoneMillstoneMillstones or mill stones are used in windmills and watermills, including tide mills, for grinding wheat or other grains.The type of stone most suitable for making millstones is a siliceous rock called burrstone , an open-textured, porous but tough, fine-grained sandstone, or a silicified,...
and a young protagonist - the title, "Hamlet's Mill", comes from a prototype of the ShakespeareanWilliam ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
Prince HamletPrince HamletPrince Hamlet is a fictional character, the protagonist in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius and son of the previous King of Denmark, Old Hamlet. Throughout the play he struggles with whether, and how, to avenge the murder of his father, and...
, the Scandinavian Amlodhi of Saxo GrammaticusSaxo GrammaticusSaxo Grammaticus also known as Saxo cognomine Longus was a Danish historian, thought to have been a secular clerk or secretary to Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, foremost advisor to Valdemar I of Denmark. He is the author of the first full history of Denmark.- Life :The Jutland Chronicle gives...
or Snorri SturlusonSnorri SturlusonSnorri Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was twice elected lawspeaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing...
. - And indeed, the majority of myths have to do with astronomy, and are not principally related to sex or the weather.
Careful examination of the "relics, fragments and allusions that have survived the steep attrition of the ages" permit reconstruction. In particular, the book reconstructs a myth of a heavenly mill which rotates around the pole star
Pole star
The term "Pole Star" usually refers to Polaris, which is the current northern pole star, also known as the North Star.In general, however, a pole star is a visible star, especially a prominent one, that is approximately aligned with the Earth's axis of rotation; that is, a star whose apparent...
, and grinds out the world's salt
Salt
In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...
and soil
Soil
Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...
, and is associated with the maelstrom
Maelstrom
A maelstrom is a very powerful whirlpool; a large, swirling body of water. A free vortex, it has considerable downdraft. The power of tidal whirlpools tends to be exaggerated by laymen. There are virtually no stories of large ships ever being sucked into a maelstrom, although smaller craft are in...
. The millstone falling off its frame represents the passing of one age's pole star (symbolized by a ruler or king of some sort), and its restoration and the overthrow of the old king of authority and the empowering of the new one the establishment of a new order of the age (a new star moving into the position of pole star). The authors attempt to demonstrate the prevalence of influence of this hypothetical civilization's ideas by analysing the world's mythology (with an eye to revealing mill myths) using
"cosmographic oddments from many eras and climes...a collection of yarns from Saxo Grammaticus, Snorri Sturluson ("Amlodhi's mill" as a kenningKenningA kenning is a type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry...
for the sea!), Firdausi, PlatoPlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, PlutarchPlutarchPlutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
, the KalevalaKalevalaThe Kalevala is a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.It is regarded as the national epic of Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature...
, MahabharataMahabharataThe Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
, and GilgameshGilgameshGilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq , placing his reign ca. 2500 BC. According to the Sumerian king list he reigned for 126 years. In the Tummal Inscription, Gilgamesh, and his son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, in Tummal, a sacred quarter in her city of...
, not to forget Africa, the Americas, and Oceania..."
Publishing history
The full hardcover title is Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth & The Frame of Time. Later softcover editions would use Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission Through Myth. The English edition was hastily assembled and published just prior to de Santillana's death. Hertha von Dechend (who is generally held to have written more of the book) prepared an expanded second edition several years later. The German translation, which appeared in 1993, is slightly longer than the original. The Italian edition of 1999 is reportedly greatly expanded.Reception
Hamlet's Mill was severely criticized by academic reviewers on a number of grounds: tenuous arguments based on incorrect or outdated linguistic information; lack of familiarity with modern sources; an over-reliance on coincidence or analogy; and the general implausibility of a far-flung and influential civilization existing and not leaving behind solid evidence. At most, it has been given a grudging sort of praise. Thus, Jaan PuhvelJaan Puhvel
Jaan Puhvel is an Estonian-American Indo-Europeanist. As a student of Georges Dumezil, he also specializes in comparative mythology....
(1970) concluded that
"This is not a serious scholarly work on the problem of myth in the closing decades of the twentieth century. There are frequent flashes of insight, for example, on the cyclical world views of the ancients and on the nature of mythical language, as well as genuinely eloquent, quasi-poetic homilies."
Writing in The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
, Edmund Leach
Edmund Leach
Sir Edmund Ronald Leach was a British social anthropologist of whom it has been said:"It is no exaggeration to say that in sheer versatility, originality, and range of writing he was and still is difficult to match among the anthropologists of the English speaking world".-Personal and academic...
noted:
“[The] authors' insistence that between about 4000 B.C. and 100 A.D. a single archaic system prevailed throughout most of the civilized and proto-civilized world is pure fantasy. Their attempt to delineate the details of this system by a worldwide scatter of random oddments of mythology is no more than an intellectual game. [...] Something like 60 percent of the text is made up of complex arguments about Indo-European etymologies which would have seemed old-fashioned as early as 1870.”
H. R. Ellis Davidson
H. R. Ellis Davidson
Dr. Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson was an English antiquarian and academic, writing in particular on Germanic paganism and Celtic paganism. Davidson used literary, historical and archaeological evidence to discuss the stories and customs of Northern Europe...
referred to Hamlet’s Mill as
"amateurish in the worst sense, jumping to wild conclusions without any knowledge of the historical value of the sources or of previous work done. On the Scandinavian side there is heavy dependence on the fantasies of Rydberg, writing in the last [19th] century, and apparent ignorance of progress made since his time."
De Santillana and von Dechend state in the Introduction to Hamlet's Mill that they are well aware of modern interpretations of myth and folklore but they find them shallow and lacking insight: "...the experts now are benighted by the current folk fantasy, which is the belief that they are beyond all this - critics without nonsense and extremely wise". Consequently, de Santillana and Deschend prefer to rely on the work of "meticulous scholars such as Ideler
Christian Ludwig Ideler
Christian Ludwig Ideler , German chronologist and astronomer, was born near Perleberg on the 21st of September 1766.-Life:...
, Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist and linguist and pioneer of modern archaeology.-Background:...
, Chwolson, Boll
Franz Boll
Franz Boll was a German scholar. He became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Heidelberg.He is known for his editorial and biographical work on Claudius Ptolemy. He also wrote on astrology. He is quoted as saying "Astrology wants to be religion and science at the same time; that...
and, to go farther back, of Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher was a 17th century German Jesuit scholar who published around 40 works, most notably in the fields of oriental studies, geology, and medicine...
and Petavius...". They give reasons throughout the book for preferring the work of older scholars (and the early mythologists themselves) as the proper way to interpret myth; but this viewpoint did not sit well with their modern critics schooled in the "current anthropology, which has built up its own idea of the primitive and what came after".
Barber (2006), itself a study aiming to "uncover seismic, geological, astrological, or other natural events" from mythology, appreciates the book for its pioneer work in mythography
Mythography
A mythographer, or a mythologist is a compiler of myths. The word derives from the Greek "μυθογραφία" , "writing of fables", from "μῦθος" , "speech, word, fact, story, narrative" + "γράφω" , "to write, to inscribe". Mythography is then the rendering of myths in the arts...
, judging that "Although controversial,