The Earth and the Egg

The Earth regarded in old times

The Earth as an Egg (Fig. 42 - p.273)

[...] The Venerable Bede (672/673 - 735) says :

"The earth is an element placed in the middle of the world, as the yolk is in the middle of an egg ; around it is the water, like the white surrounding the yolk ; outside that is the air, like the membrane of the egg ; and round all is the fire, which closes it in as the shell does. The earth, being thus in the centre, receives every weight upon itself ; and, though by its nature it is cold and dry in its different parts, it acquires, accidentally, different qualities ; for the portion which is exposed to the torrid action of the air is burned by the sun, and is uninhabitable ; its two extremities are too cold to be inhabited; but the portion that lies in the temperate region of the atmosphere is habitable. The ocean, which surrounds it by its waves as far as the horizon, divides it into two parts, the upper of which is inhabited by us, while the lower is inhabited by our antipodes ; although not one of them can come to us, nor one of us to them." [...]

The Earth as a Floating Egg (Fig 43 - p. 274)

[...] A great number of maps of the world of the period followed this idea, and drew the world in the shape of an egg at rest. It was broached, however, in another form by Edrisi, an Arabian geographer of the eleventh century, who, with many others, considered the earth to be like an egg with one half plunged into the water. The regularity of the surface is only interrupet by valleys and mountains. He adopted the system of the ancients, who supposed that the torrid zone was uninhabited. According to him, the greater part of the water belonging of the surrounding ocean, in the midst of which earth floats like an egg in a basin. Several artists and map-makers adopted this theory in the geographical representations, and so, whether in this way or the last, the egg has had the privilege of representing the form of the earth for nearly a thousand years. [...]

In Astronomical myths : based on Flammarion's "History of the Heavens"

J. F. Blake (1839-1906) 

Ed. Macmillan and Co, London, 1877

"Not exactly a translation, but rather a book founded on the French author's work." Camille Flammarion (1842 - 1925)