Homer’s Phaeacia (or Scheria, its other name) indubitably lay in the Indian Ocean, which is referred to by Homer as “the winy red ocean”. This and other such epithets applied exclusively to the Indian Ocean, which was called Erythraean (“Red One”) by the Greeks. This people considered the Erythraean as the eastern extension of the Atlantic Ocean, and deemed it the veritable Ocean of the Atlanteans, as we argue elesewhere.
The description of Phaeacia by Homer (Od. VII: 80) with its lofty walls, spacious harbors, seaworthy ships and golden palaces closely parallels the ones of Atlantis as described by Plato. Homer mentions how the hero, spellbound by the magnificence of the royal palace, lingered for a long time before it, not daring to enter its golden threshold.
In Homer’s own words, “the splendor of the palace was like that of the sun and the moon”. Homer also affirms that the Phaeacians “are a sea-faring nation, and sail all seas by the grace of Poseidon, in ships fleet like thought or as a bird in the air”.
Actually, the very name of Scheria said to derive from the Phoenician word schera, meaning “market-place”. is telltale. It shows that Homer’s fabulous golden realm was, like its Atlantean counterpart, the emporium of a vast network of international naval commerce.
The name of Scheria can also be approached to the Greek word schedia meaning “ships” or, rather, “fleet ships”, like the ones of Atlantis. Indeed, Homer likens Phaeacia to a huge ship which was turned into stone and sunken by Poseidon, as a punishment for their disobedience in helping Ulysses. Coincidentally enough, Poseidon, the great god of the Phaeacians, is also the founder and supreme god of the Atlanteans, according to Plato.
Ship-like Phaeacia closely evokes the primordial Tyre of Ezequiel (ch. 26-28) which was likened to a ship by the prophet. Ezekiel’s “Tyre” later became “a place to spread fishing nets upon” after it was turned into stone and sunk underseas. Ezequiel describes this primordial Tyre as a “renowned city, inhabited by a seafaring nation of merchants, strong in the middle of the seas”. The great prophet also places this famous city among the other “islands of the Outer Ocean” rather than in Mediterranean Basin.
When we pause to think it over, we see that this primordial “Tyre” is indubitably the same as Homer’s Phaeacia and as Plato’s Atlantis. It was the model of the other Tyre in Lebanon, founded by the Phoenicians at about 1,500BC, after they removed from their primordial homeland beyond the ocean (Indian). Ezequiel tells how Tyre and the other islands “trembled in day of thy departure… in the midst of the waters”.
Ezekiel’s “Tyre” is also likened to “Eden, the Garden of the Lord”. It is sited, by the prophet, “in the middle of the seas” among the other islands of the Outer Ocean, as we said above. Ezekiel’s “Tyre” was, like Plato’s Atlantis, “full of a multitude of merchants” who traded in all sorts of goods such as metals, gemstones, precious stuff and spices in their “ships of Tarshish”. Tarshish was, as Ezequiel and others affirm, the supplier of metals such as silver, gold, iron, tin, copper and bronze to the ancient nations of the Bronze Age.
There can little doubt that Tarshish and, hence, the other isles of the ocean such as Ezekiel’s “Tyre”, lay in the Indian Ocean. In reality, the Phoenician sailors of King Solomon and of Hiram of Tyre reached these overseas region from the port of Ezion-Geber, in the Red Sea. Though the mysterious Tarshish the supplier of mineral ores and gemstones has been often confused with the Spanish Tartessos, the fact is that the Spanish Tartessos was, like the Lebanese Tyre, merely a replica of their pristine archetypes in the islands of Indonesia.
The pristine commerce with the Indies was perhaps the best kept secret of the ancients. The naval route to this remote supplier of metals, spices and other precious stuff such as perfumes, incenses, drugs of all sorts, dyes, ivory, amber, tissues, paper, etc.was carefully concealed from the possible competitors This commerce dates back from the remotest antiquity, and is attested not only in the detailed annals of the Egyptians, the Chinese and the Mesopotamians. It is also recorded in the myths and traditions of the Bible (as in Ezekiel and in Revelation), of the Greeks (the Odyssey, the Argonautica, etc.) and, indeed, of most nations of antiquity.
The “isles of the sea” of Ezekiel are no other than the “Atlantic Islands” that were invariably reproduced in the Medieval maps of the world as “newly discovered” (insulae de novo repertae). These mysterious islands were indeed those of Indonesia, the other “India” from which the spices and the metals were imported in antiquity.
The naval route to these distant islands were ardently sought out by all mariners down to the times of the great navigants such as Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan and Cabral. They were the islands of the East Indies so vainly soght by all mariners down to the times of these discoverers, who finally cleared the riddle of their true location and whereabouts.