Atlas -- Atlas Building, King Street, City of London, UK
N 51° 30.831 W 000° 05.532
30U E 701757 N 5710978
The Atlas Building in London features representations of Atlas, whose task was to carry the weight of the earth for all time
Waymark Code: WMTBQA
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 10/29/2016
Views: 1
The Atlas Building in the city of London features a large stone depiction of Atlas, and a small gilded Atlas adds an extra layer of marketing power to the clock affixed to the side of the Atlas Building along King Street.
In Greek Mythology Atlas was a strongman condemned to hold the weight of the Earth on his shoulders for all time after losing a war against the Greek Gods of Olympus.
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"In Greek mythology, Atlas (/'ætl?s/; Ancient Greek: ?t?a?) was a Titan condemned to hold up the sky for eternity after the Titanomachy. Although associated with various places, he became commonly identified with the Atlas Mountains in northwest Africa (modern-day Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia). Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia or Clymene. He had many children, mostly daughters, the Hesperides, the Hyades, the Pleiades, and the nymph Calypso who lived on the island Ogygia.According to the ancient Greek poet Hesiod Atlas stood at the ends of the earth towards the west.
Punishment
Atlas and his brother Menoetius sided with the Titans in their war against the Olympians, the Titanomachy. When the Titans were defeated, many of them (including Menoetius) were confined to Tartarus, but Zeus condemned Atlas to stand at the western edge of Gaia (the Earth) and hold up The Heavens on his shoulders, to prevent the two from resuming their primordial embrace. Thus, he was Atlas Telamon, "enduring Atlas," and became a doublet of Coeus, the embodiment of the celestial axis around which the heavens revolve.
A common misconception today is that Atlas was forced to hold the Earth on his shoulders, but Classical art shows Atlas holding the celestial spheres, not a globe; the solidity of the marble globe borne by the renowned Farnese Atlas may have aided the conflation, reinforced in the 16th century by the developing usage of atlas to describe a corpus of terrestrial maps."