Editing Omphalos (section)

== Literature ==
[[File:SaDuMuangChiangRai.jpg|right|upright|thumb|Omphalos of [[Chiang Rai]], [[Thailand]].]]

In literature, the word ''omphalos'' has held various meanings but usually refers to the stone at Delphi. Authors who have used the term include: [[Homer]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0012,002:1:50&lang=original|title=Homer, Odyssey, Book 1, line 50|website=www.perseus.tufts.edu|access-date=2017-03-04}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0136:book=1:card=44|title=Homer, Odyssey, Book 1, line 50 ("navel")|website=www.perseus.tufts.edu|access-date=2017-03-04}}</ref> [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]], [[D.H. Lawrence]], [[James Joyce]], [[Philip K. Dick]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Peake |first1=Anthony |title=A Life of Philip K. Dick The Man Who Remembered the Future |date=2013 |publisher=Arcturus Publishing}}</ref> [[Jacques Derrida]], [[Ted Chiang]], Sandy Hingston and [[Seamus Heaney]]. For example, Joyce uses the term in the novel, [[Ulysses (novel)|''Ulysses'']]:

{{Blockquote|multiline=y|text="Billy Pitt had them built," Buck Mulligan said, "when the French were on the sea but our's is the omphalos." [Chapter 1]

One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. [Chapter 3]

[...] to set up there a national fertilising farm to be named Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful [[yeoman]] services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her natural. [Chapter 14]}}In [[Ted Chiang]]'s short story "Omphalos" (2019), the protagonist is forced to question her belief about where the center of the world is located.

In “The Toome Road”, a [[Seamus Heaney]] poem from the 1979 anthology [[Field Work (poetry collection)|Field Work]], Heaney writes about an encounter with a convoy of armoured cars in Northern Ireland, “… O charioteers, above your dormant guns, 
It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass, 
The invisible, untoppable omphalos.”