Hermes

"A faceless prophet," writes the Islamicist Piere Lory "Hermes possesses no concrete or salient characteristics, differing in this regard from most of the major figures of the Bible and the Quran." (Faivre 1995 pp.19-20). One element of the medical approach is a specific chelating agent called deferoxamine, used to bind and expel excess iron from the body in case of iron toxicity. The third Hermes was the first teacher of Alchemy. The medical management of iron toxicity is complex. The second Hermes, in Babylon, was the initiator of Pythagoras. Blood donors are at special risk of low iron levels and are often recommended to supplement their iron intake. Indris/Hermes is called "Thrice Wise,"( Hermes Trismegistus) because he was threefold: the first of the name, comparable to Thoth, was a "civilizing hero," an initiator into the mysteries of the divine science and wisdom that animate the world; he carved the principles of this sacred science in hieroglyphs. For this reason, people should not take iron supplements unless they suffer from iron deficiency and have consulted a doctor.

Genesis 5.18-24). Iron overload disorders require a genetic inability to regulate iron uptake; however, many people have a genetic susceptibility to iron overload without realizing it and without knowing a family history of the problem. Hagiographers and chroniclers of the first centuries of the Islamic Hegira quickly identified Hermes with Idris, the nabi of surahs 19.57; 21.85, whom the Arabs also identify with Enoch (cf. If iron intake is excessive iron overload disorders can sometimes result, such as hemochromatosis. Antoine Faivre, in The Eternal Hermes has pointed out that Hermes has a place in the Islamic tradition, though his name does not appear in the Qur'an. For children under fourteen years old the UL is 40 mg/day. Consorts/Children. The DRI lists the Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) for adults as 45 mg/day.

. Humans experience iron toxicity above 20 milligrams of iron for every kilogram of weight, and 60 milligrams per kilogram is a lethal dose.[3] Over-consumption of iron, often the result of children eating large quantitities of ferrous sulfate tablets intended for adult consumption, is the most common toxicological cause of death in children under six. Atreus retook the throne and banished Thyestes. This can cause serious problems, including the potential of death from overdose, and long-term organ damage in survivors. Thyestes agreed to give the kingdom back when the sun moved backwards in the sky, a feat that Zeus accomplished. Once there, it causes damage to cells in the heart, liver and elsewhere. King Atreus of Mycenae retook the throne from his brother, Thyestes using advice he received from the wise trickster Hermes. However, too much ingested iron can damage the cells of the gastrointestinal tract directly, and may enter the bloodstream by damaging the cells that would otherwise regulate its entry.

Artemis helped him as well by lending him her polished shield. Iron uptake is tightly regulated by the human body, which has no physiologic means of excreting iron and regulates iron solely by regulating uptake. He borrowed Hades' helmet of invisbility and told him to use it so that her immortal sisters cannot see him when he gets away. In excess, uncontrollable quantities of free radicals are produced. Hermes aided Persus in killing the gorgon Medusa by giving him Zeus' sickle and winged boots. Iron becomes toxic when it exceeds the amount of transferrin needed to bind free iron. He taught the Thriae the arts of fortune-telling and divination. Excessive iron is toxic to humans, because excess ferrous iron reacts with peroxides in the body, producing free radicals.

He also changed the Minyades into bats. Also note the section below on precautions. In addition, Hermés brought Eurydice back to Hades after Orpheus looked back towards his wife for a second time. The RDA for iron varies considerably based on the age, gender, and source of dietary iron (heme-based iron has higher bioavailability)[2]. Hermés saved Odysseus from both Calypso and Circe, by convincing the first to let Odysseus go and then protecting him from the latter by bestowing upon him an herb that would protect him from Circe's spell. Iron provided by dietary supplements is often found as Iron (II) fumarate. Zeus eventually changed her back to human form, and she became—through Epaphus, her son with Zeus—the ancestress of Heracles. Good sources of dietary iron include meat, fish, poultry, lentils, beans, leaf vegetables, tofu, chickpeas, black-eyed pea, strawberries and farina.

Hermés, at the request of Zeus, lulled Argus to sleep and rescued Io but Hera sent a gadfly to sting her as she wandered the earth in cow form. A lengthier article on the system of human iron regulation can be found in the article on human iron metabolism. Zeus was unable to refuse and she placed the watchman Argus to guard the cow. [1]. Hera suspected his deception and asked for the cow as a present. There it gets by an as yet unknown mechanism incorporated into target proteins. Zeus loved the Argive princess Io and changed her into a cow to protect her from Hera. The iron absorbed from the duodenum binds to transferrin, and is carried by blood to different cells.

With Aglaulus, Hermés was the father of Eumolpus. Iron distribution is heavily regulated in mammals, both as a defense against bacterial infection as well as the potential biological toxicity of iron. Hermés also had a son, Ceryx, with Herse's other sister, Pandrosus. When the body is fighting a bacterial infection, the body sequesters iron inside of cells (mostly stored in the storage molecule ferritin) so that it cannot be used by bacteria. Cephalus was the son of Hermes and Herse. A class of non-heme iron proteins is responsible for a wide range of functions within several life forms, such as enzymes methane monooxygenase (oxidizes methane to methanol), ribonucleotide reductase (reduces ribose to deoxyribose; DNA biosynthesis), hemerythrins (oxygen transport and fixation in marine invertebrates) and purple acid phosphatase (hydrolysis of phosphate esters). Hermés changed her to stone. Inorganic iron involved in redox reactions is also found in the iron-sulfur clusters of many enzymes, such as nitrogenase (involved in the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen) and hydrogenase.

When Hermés loved Herse, a jealous Aglaulus stood between them and refused to move. Many animals incorporate iron into the heme complex, an essential component of cytochromes, which are proteins involved in redox reactions (including but not limited to cellular respiration), and of oxygen carrying proteins hemoglobin and myoglobin. In Priapus, Hermes' phallic origins survived. Iron binds avidly to virtually all biomolecules so it will adhere nonspecifically to cell membranes, nucleic acids, proteins etc. He was changed into a hermaphrodite by the gods, responding to the pleas of Salmacis, whose love Hermaphroditus spurned. To say that iron is free doesn't mean that it is free floating in the bodily fluids. Hermaphroditus was the third son of Hermēs, with Aphrodite. It is mostly stably incorporated in the inside of metalloproteins, because in exposed or in free form it causes production of free radicals that are generally toxic to cells.

Autolycus, the Prince of Thieves, was a son of Hermes and grandfather of Odysseus. Iron is essential to all organisms, except for a few bacteria. He had gone to the Mares with his friend, Heracles. For this reason, ⁵⁷Fe has application as a spin isotope in chemistry and biochemistry. Abderus was a son of Hermes who was devoured by the Mares of Diomedes. Of the stable isotopes, only ⁵⁷Fe has a nuclear spin (−1/2). From then on, travelers put large piles of rocks at crossroads as a small shrine to Hermes. The abundance of ⁶⁰Ni present in extraterrestrial material may also provide further insight into the origin of the solar system and its early history.

At the end of the trial, Hermes had stones up to his head. Possibly the energy released by the decay of ⁶⁰Fe contributed, together with the energy released by decay of the radionuclide ²⁶Al, to the remelting and differentiation of asteroids after their formation 4.6 billion years ago. If they found Hermes innocent, they cast their stone at Hermes's feet. In phases of the meteorites Semarkona and Chervony Kut a correlation between the concentration of ⁶⁰Ni, the daughter product of ⁶⁰Fe, and the abundance of the stable iron isotopes could be found which is evidence for the existence of ⁶⁰Fe at time formation of solar system. If the god/goddess found Hermes guilty, they cast their stone at Hera's feet. This is not true, as both ⁶²Ni and ⁵⁸Fe are more stable. Each god or goddess was given a stone with their name on it. A common misconception is that this isotope represents the most stable nucleus possible, and that it thus would be impossible to perform fission or fusion on ⁵⁶Fe and still liberate energy.

When Hera found out Hermes had killed her servant, Argus, she called an Olympian trial. The isotope ⁵⁶Fe is of particular interest to nuclear scientists. Argus's eyes were then put on the peacock. Much of the past work on measuring the isotopic composition of Fe has centered on determining ⁶⁰Fe variations due to processes accompanying nucleosynthesis (i.e., meteorite studies) and ore formation. Putting Argos to sleep, Hermes used a spell to permanently close all of Argus's eyes. ⁶⁰Fe is an extinct radionuclide of long half-life (1.5 million years). His epithet Argeiphontes, or Argus-slayer, recalls his slaying of the many-eyed giant Argus who was watching over the heifer-nymph Io in the sanctuary of Lady Hera herself in Argos. Naturally occurring iron consists of four isotopes: 5.845% of radioactive ⁵⁴Fe (half-life: >3.1E22 years), 91.754% of stable ⁵⁶Fe, 2.119% of stable ⁵⁷Fe and 0.282% of stable ⁵⁸Fe.

For the first Olympian sacrifice, the taboos surrounding the sacred kine of Apollo had to be transgressed, and the trickster god of boundaries was the one to do it. Iron carbide Fe₃C is known as cementite. The god was precocious: on the day of his birth, by midday he had invented the lyre, using the shell of a tortoise, and by nightfall he had rustled the immortal cattle of Apollo. Note that despite the chemical formula, the iron in the common pyrite is not in the +4 oxidation state; the sulfur is in the -1 oxidation state. As the story is told in the Homeric Hymn, the Hymn to Hermes, Maia was a nymph, but Greeks generally applied the name to a midwife or a wise and gentle old woman, so the nymph appears to have been an ancient one, one of the Pleiades taking refuge in a cave of Arcadia. Common oxidation states of iron include:. Hermes was born on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia to Maia. The 1100Mt of iron ore was used to produce approximately 572Mt of pig iron.

He was represented by purses, roosters (illustration, left) and tortoises. While ore production occurs in 48 countries, the five largest producers were China, Brazil, Australia, Russia and India, accounting for 70% of world iron ore production. He wore the garments of a traveler, worker or shepherd. Approximately 1100Mt (million tons) of iron ore was produced in the world in 2000, with a gross market value of approximately 25 billion US dollars. Hermés was usually portrayed wearing a broad-brimmed traveller's hat or a winged cap (petasos or more commonly petasus), wearing winged sandals (talaria) and carrying his Near Eastern herald's staff, entwined by copulating serpents, called the kerykeion, more familiar in its Latinized form, the caduceus. The iron, once cooled, is called pig iron, while the slag can be used as a material in road construction or to improve mineral-poor soils for agriculture. Socrates' pupil Alcibiades was suspected to have been involved, and Socrates indirectly paid for the impiety with his life. In the bottom of the furnace, the molten slag floats on top of the more dense liquid iron, and spouts in the side of the furnace may be opened to drain off either the iron or the slag.

The Athenians at the time believed it was the work of saboteurs, either from Syracuse or the anti-war faction within Athens itself. The slag melts in the heat of the furnace, which silicon dioxide would not have. In 415 BCE, when the Athenian fleet was about to set sail for Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, all of the Athenian hermai were vandalized. Then calcium oxide combines with silicon dioxide to form a slag. "That a monument of this kind could be transformed into an Olympian god is astounding," Walter Burkert remarked (Burkert 1985). In the heat of the furnace the limestone flux decomposes to calcium oxide (quicklime):. In Athens, they were placed outside houses for good luck. Other fluxes may be used depending on the impurities that need to be removed from the ore.

The hermai were used to mark roads and boundaries. Common fluxes include limestone (principally calcium carbonate) and dolomite (magnesium carbonate). In the more primitive "Cyllenian" herms, the standing stone or wooden pillar was simply a phallus. The flux is present to melt impurities in the ore, principally silicon dioxide sand and other silicates. In the 6th century, Hipparchos, the son of Pisistratus replaced the cairns that marked the midway point between each village deme at the central agora of Athens with a square or rectangular pillar of stone or bronze topped by a bust of Hermés usually with a beard; an erect phallus rose from the base. The carbon monoxide reduces the iron ore (in the chemical equation below, hematite) to molten iron, becoming carbon dioxide in the process:. His name in the form herma referred to a wayside marker pile of stones; each traveller added a stone to the pile. In the furnace, the coke reacts with oxygen in the air blast to produce carbon monoxide:.

In very ancient Greece, Hermés was a phallic god of boundaries. In a blast furnace, iron ore, carbon in the form of coke, and a flux such as limestone are fed into the top of the furnace, while a blast of heated air is forced into the furnace at the bottom. In the 6th century the traditional bearded phallic Hermes was reimagined as an athletic youth (illustration, top right); statues of the new type of Hermés stood at stadia and gymnasiums throughout Greece. Industrially, iron is extracted from its ores, principally hematite (nominally Fe₂O₃) and magnetite (Fe₃O₄) by a carbothermic reaction (reduction with carbon) in a blast furnace at temperatures of about 2000°C. In addition to the syrinx and the lyre, Hermes invented many types of racing and the sport of boxing. Iron is also one of the least reactive metals, and therefore, it is sometimes found pure in nature. Hermes as an inventor of fire is a parallel of the Titan, Prometheus. Although rare, these are the major form of natural metallic iron on the earth's surface.

He also brought dreams to living mortals. About 5% of the meteorites similarly consist of iron-nickel alloy. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hermes conducts the Kore safely back to Demeter. The earth's core is believed to consist largely of a metallic iron-nickel alloy. As a crosser of boundaries, Hermés Psychopompos' ("conductor of the soul") was a psychopomp, meaning he brought newly-dead souls to the underworld, Hades. Most of this iron is found in various iron oxides, such as the minerals hematite, magnetite, and taconite. Though temples to Hermés existed throughout Greece, a center of his cult was at Pheneos in Arcadia, where festivals in his honor were called Hermoea. Iron is one of the most common elements on Earth, making up about 5% of the Earth's crust.

General article: Cult (religion).. This innovation by Abraham Darby supplied the energy for the Industrial Revolution. Some say that is representative of killing the disapproving eyes of the community, always policing good conduct in a shame-based society through their disapproving gaze. In 18th century England, wood supplies ran down and coke, a fossil fuel, was used as an alternative. Hermes was very loyal to his father Zeus, when Zeus fell in love with the nymph Io, Hermes saved her from the many-eyed Argus by lulling him to sleep with stories and songs, decapitating him with a crescent-shaped sword. Early iron smelting (as the process is called) used charcoal as both the heat source and the reducing agent. Hermes was the herald to the gods (messenger of the gods) so he had to guide the souls of the dead to the underworld, the person who does this is called a psychopomp. In any event, by the late fourteenth century, a market for cast iron goods began to form, as a demand developed for cast iron cannonballs.

The instrument enchanted Apollo and he agreed to let Hermes keep the cattle in exchange for the lyre. There are suggestions by scholars that the practice may have followed the Mongols across Russia to these sites, but there is no clear proof of this hypothesis. While arguing with Apollo, Hermes began to play his lyre. Some of the earliest casting of iron in Europe occurred in Sweden, in two sites, Lapphyttan and Vinarhyttan, between 1150 and 1350 AD. When Apollo accused Hermes, Maia said that it could not be him because he was with her the whole night, however Zeus entered into the argument and said that Hermes did steal the cattle and they should be returned. Through a good portion of the Middle Ages, in Western Europe, iron was still being made by the working of sponge iron into wrought iron. He drove the cattle back to Greece and hid them and covered their tracks. Cast iron development lagged in Europe, as the smelters could only achieve temperatures of about 1000 K.

The night Hermes was born he snuck away from his mother and ran away to steal his Brother Apollo's cattle. Iron, however, remained a pedestrian product, used by farmers for hundreds of years, and did not really affect the nobility of China until the Qin dynasty (ca 221 BC). Hermes was the god of thieves because he was very cunning and shrewd and was a thief himself from the night he was born. The vast majority of Chinese iron manufacture, from the Zhou dynasty onward, was of cast iron. His symbols were the cock, tortoise, purse or pouch, winged sandals, winged cap, and the heralds staff. This product is strong, can be cast into intricate shapes, but is too brittle to be worked, unless the product is decarburized to remove most of the carbon. He was also the god of shepherds, merchants, weights and measurements, oratory, literature, athletics, and thieves. If iron ores are heated with carbon to 1420–1470 K, a molten liquid is formed, an alloy of about 96.5% iron and 3.5% carbon.

From the subsequent association of these cairns — which were used in Athens to ward off evil and also as road and boundary markers all over Greece — Hermes acquired patronage over land travel. The famous iron pillar in the Qutb complex in Delhi is made of very pure iron (98%) and has not rusted or eroded till this day. The name Hermes has been thought to be derived from the Greek word herma (ἕρμα), which denotes a square or rectangular pillar with the head of Hermes (usually with a beard) adorning the top of the pillar, and male genitals below; however, due to the god's attestation in the Mycenaean pantheon, as 'Hermes Araoia ("Ram Hermes") in Linear B inscriptions at Pylos and Mycenaean Knossos [1], the connection is more likely to have moved the opposite way, from deity to pillar representations. Iron was used in India as early as 250 BCE. In the fully-developed Olympian pantheon, Hermes is the son of Zeus and Maia. Producing blast furnaces capable of temperatures exceeding 1300 K, the Chinese developed the manufacture of cast, or pig iron. . In the later years of the Zhou Dynasty (ca 550 BC), a new iron manufacturing capability began because of a highly developed kiln technology.

This explains his connection with transitions in one’s fortunes, with the interchanges of goods, words and information involved in trade, interpreting, oratory, writing, with the way in which the wind may transfer objects from one place to another, and with the transition to the afterlife. These items were made of wrought iron, created by the same processes used in the Middle East and Europe, and were thought to be imported by non-Chinese people. Among the Hellenes, as the related word herma "a boundary stone, crossing point" would suggest, Hermes embodies the spirit of crossing-over: he was seen to be manifest in any kind of interchange, transfer, transgressions, transcendence, transition, transit or traversal, all of which activities involve some form of crossing in some sense. In China the first irons used were also meteoric iron, with archeological evidence for items made of wrought iron appearing in the northwest, near Xinjiang, in the 8th century BC. This figure should not be confused with Greek Hermes. The resulting product, which had a surface of steel, was harder and less brittle than the bronze it began to replace. The writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were edited and published in the Italian Renaissance. The people of the Middle East found that a much harder product could be created by the long term heating of a wrought iron object in a bed of charcoal, which was then quenched in water or oil.

In the Hellenistic and then Greco-Roman culture of Alexandria, syncretic conflation of Hermes with the Egyptian god of wisdom Thoth produced the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, to whom a body of arcane lore was attributed. Wrought iron was very low in carbon content and was not easily hardened by quenching. In the Roman adaptation of the Greek religion, Hermes was identified with the Roman God Mercury, who had many similar characteristics, such as both being gods of commerce. Iron was recovered as sponge iron, a mix of iron and slag with some carbon and/or carbide, which was then repeatedly hammered and folded over to free the mass of slag and oxidise out carbon content, so creating the product wrought iron. An interpreter who bridges the boundaries with strangers is a hermeneus. Hermes gives us our word "hermeneutics" for the art of interpreting hidden meaning. Concurrent with the transition from bronze to iron was the discovery of carburization, which was the process of adding carbon to the irons of the time. A lucky find was a hermaion. A common alchemical symbol for iron, the metal of weapons, was that of Mars, the god of war.

As a translator, he is the messenger from the gods to humans. This period of transition, which occurred at different times in different parts of the world, is the ushering in of an age of civilization called the Iron Age. Hermes (Greek ʽἙρμῆς IPA [her'me:s]), in Greek mythology, is the god of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of orators, literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures and invention and commerce in general, of liars, and of the cunning of thieves. The critical factor in this transition does not appear to be the sudden onset of a superior ironworking technology, but instead the disruption of the supply of tin. Krokus. In the period from the 12th to 10th century BC, there was a rapid transition in the Middle East from bronze to iron tools and weapons. Persephone. By 1600 BC to 1200 BC, iron was used increasingly in the Middle East, but did not supplant the dominant use of bronze.

Daphnis. Some resources (see the reference What Caused the Iron Age? below) suggest that iron was being created then as a by-product of copper refining, as sponge iron, and was not reproducible by the metallurgy of the time. Unknown Sicilian nymph