Quantum Physics and the Matter of Time in Greek Mythology: Alcman

Alcman was a lyric poet of the 7th century BC, from the Sardis of Lydia and stay in Sparta until its depths old age. Pausanias in Laconian informs us that east of Sparta there was a monument to him. The discovery of the poem came after the publication by Edgar Lobel in 1957 of the papyrus with code number 2390 of Oxyrhynchus, a city in Egypt where a large number of papyri were found in excavations, mainly with Greek texts.

This papyrus brought to the surface excerpts from comments on

Alcman's poem that conveys cosmological views about the material that is arranged with the help of a craftsman!

The words: Thetis, Porus, Tekmor and Darkness are saved from the poem. The commentator of the papyrus conveys, in his own words, what Alcman talks about:

In the beginning, the matter was turbulent and disordered, (something like Hesiod's chaos in my opinion)

 Then, Thetis was born and as the metallurgist works with copper,

so she arranged this raw material, put it in order. She played the role of craftsman. And just as all things have a nature similar to that of copper, so Thetis has a nature similar to that of a craftsman.

Thetis is a Nereid, in fact the leader of the Nereids. Daughter of Nereus and granddaughter of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys and mother of Achilles! According to Pausanias in Laconian there was a statue from wood in Sparta, where Alkman lived, and no one but the priestess was allowed to see it.

The name comes from the root Τιθέναι, its indefinite verb tetheme: I put something somewhere.

Porus and Tekmor were born with her.

 These are Homeric words. We can find them in Iliad and Odyssey.

Porus is a passage as we can see in Iliad. In Iliad  as a passage in rivers and in Odyssey we see that it is a passage to the sea.

Tekmor:  end, limit, outcome.

Also Confirmation."as the strongest evidence". Document

Tekmereo, tekmereono τεκμηριώνω (I confirme). 

With their help, she put the raw material (or energy) in order.

The Sun and the Moon had no shape, their shape was set by Thetis with Porus and Tekmor. Immediately after Tekmor, the Hmera (light, day) was born,

then Skotus (Darkness) was born.

In my point of view, Porus is the passage from the level of energy to the 3dimencional world! In this video, I confirm my option with examples from Geometry and related myths. 

Areti Georgakopoulou


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(To watch the video you only need to activate the English subtitles)