In the same essay, I noted that the practice of naming mountains as Olympus survived well into the first millennium, though many earlier examples could easily have disappeared by then. In one of my essays (Nagy 2019.07.06), I have put together an inventory of examples. To start with the mountains, I highlight the fact that there were many different mountains bearing the same name Olympus in many different locales in the second millennium BCE. If I reconstruct the myths about this hero all the way back to the second millennium BCE, what I find is that there was more than one hero named Herakles-just as there was more than one mountain that was linked with his birth-or perhaps with his rebirth. Over the past few years, I have written many essays on Herakles, but I can sum up in only a few paragraphs, linked with a few bibliographical references, the essence of my answer to my own question. Estimated dating of the original ring: Late Minoan I (1600–1450 BCE the impression, however, is probably of a later date). The impression, known to archaeologists as “The Master Impression,” was stamped by a signet ring that has not survived. Sketch, by Jill Robbins, based on a drawing of an impression (= imprint) made on a clay sealing found on the acropolis of Kastelli Hill in Chanià, Crete (Archaeological Museum of Chania, museum number KH 1563). And I ask myself a question: was this Herakles who was born on Mount Ida in Crete the same Herakles who died on top of another mountain, named Oitē, and who was then reborn after death on top of yet another mountain, named Olympus? In the essay I present here, I attempt an answer to this question, and the illustration that I show to lead off my essay is relevant, as we will see, to my attempted answer. My thoughts now turn back to those myths about the native son of that mountain, Herakles the ‘Dactyl’. Mount Ida, according to local myths, was the birthplace of Herakles, whose epithet there was Dáktulos, which means ‘finger’ in Greek. I see looming, ahead of me, the near-heavenly heights of Mount Ida, a vast mountain-range that is better known to speakers of Greek today as Psilorítis, which means ‘land of the towering mountains’. So, what did I see? In my memory, it is a timeless vision. To say it more accurately, it was named in memory of a seaport, now lost, named Heracleum, which had once dominated the region in the era of the Roman Empire and which, perhaps more significantly, had been named after the hero Herakles. Relevant, I now think, to what I saw then is the name of Iráklio, capital city of Crete -a city renamed in relatively modern times after the hero Herakles. I am nearing the proud old city of Réthymno along a road leading there from Iráklio, when I see something. My memory takes me back to a timeless moment I once experienced on the island of Crete.
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