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When people go looking for hell, they go underground. Dante, Aeneas, and Odysseus all journeyed beneath the earth to find the underworld, a place where the dead are tortured according to their sins. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had to deal with a huge underground pit infested with demons below her high school called the Hellmouth. And when Homer Simpson ate the forbidden donut for which he’d sold his soul to the devil, he was sucked through a fiery hole in the ground. Though humans actually haven’t gone more than 7.5 miles into the earth, we associate this mysterious underground realm with darkness and death, and the depths of the earth’s interior remain an inspiration for writers and artists trying to imagine hell. Why Hell Stinks of Sulfur uses subterranean mythology as a point of departure to explore the vast world that lies beneath our feet. Geologist Salomon Kroonenberg takes us on an expedition that begins in Dante’s Inferno and continues through Virgil, Da Vinci, Descartes, and Jules Verne. He investigates the nine circles of hell, searches a lake near Naples for the gates of hell used by Aeneas, and turns a scientific spotlight on the many myths of the underworld. He uncovers the layers of the earth’s interior one by one, describing the variety of gasses, ores, liquids, and metals that add to the immense variety of color that can be found below us. Kroonenberg views the inside of the earth as a living ecosystem whose riches we are only beginning to discover, and he warns against our thirst for natural resources exhausting the earth. From the underground rivers and lakes that have never seen the light of day to the story of Saint Barbara—the patron saint of mineworkers—Kroonenberg’s pursuit of the geological foundations of hell is a fascinating journey to the center of the earth.
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F why hell stinks of sulfur H Why Hell Stinks of Sulfur Mythology and Geology of the Underworld Salomon Kroonenberg Translated by Andy Brown reaktion books For my grandchildren Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 33 Great Sutton Street London ec1v 0dx, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk Waarom de hel naar zwavel stinkt © 2011 by Salomon Kroonenberg Originally published by Uitgeverij Atlas, Amsterdam English-language translation © Reaktion Books 2013 Translated by Andy Brown This publication has been made possible with financial support from the Dutch Foundation for Literature All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Printed and bound in China by C&C Offset Printing Co., Ltd British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kroonenberg, Salomon Bernard. Why hell stinks of sulfur: mythology and geology of the underworld. 1. Earth – Internal structure – Popular works. 2. Earth – Mythology. 3. Hell in literature. I. Title 551.1’1-dc23 ISBN 978 1 78023 045 0 F contents H one The Gobstopper 7 two Jerusalem 12 three The Wanderings of Odysseus 22 four The Entrance to Hell 30 five The Vestibule 58 six Charon’s Ferry 74 seven Limbo 109 eight The City of Dis 132 nine Avarice 149 ten The Conflagration 185 eleven The Monster Geryon 194 twelve The River of Tar 206 thirteen Collapses 226 fourteen The Lead Cloak 236 fifteen To the Centre of the Earth 253 sixteen With Lucifer in the Ice 267 seventeen The Way Ba 274 sources 280 acknowledgements 296 photo acknowledgements 297 index 300 F one H The Gobstopper So dark and deep and nebulous it was, try as I might to force my sight below I could not see the shape of anything . . . Dante Alighieri, Inferno, iv:10-12 hy did astronome