What does “omphalos” mean in Ulysses?
Omphalos is Greek for “navel”. The ancient Greeks used it for the stone at Delphi that marked the centre of the world. In Ulysses Mulligan calls the Martello tower the omphalos of a new paganism, and in Proteus Stephen imagines monks gazing at their navels.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Several episodes. Stephen, on Sandymount Strand, thinking about navels, birth and the first woman.
Gaze in your omphalos. Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville.
What it means in plain English
In Telemachus Mulligan dreams of making the tower a centre of Hellenism: “To ourselves... new paganism... omphalos.”
In Proteus Stephen pictures every navel cord linking back to Eve, like a telephone line to Eden. He jokingly calls it up: “Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville.”
Literary context
Navel-gazing monks were a real tradition, the omphaloskepsis of some Eastern Christian mystics.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 1 and 3
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
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Questions readers ask
What is the omphalos at Delphi?
A carved stone the Greeks believed marked the navel, or centre, of the world.
Why is Edenville in the quote?
Stephen imagines all navel cords linking back to Eve, so a call along them would reach Eden.
Related terms
Kinch
Kinch is Buck Mulligan's nickname for Stephen Dedalus. The name is usually read as the sound of a blade, something sharp and thin like Stephen's wit. It is the first name Mulligan shouts down the tower stairs.
Martello tower
The squat coastal defence tower at Sandycove where Stephen lodges in Episode 1. A real building, now a Joyce museum.
"Ineluctable modality of the visible"
"Ineluctable modality of the visible" opens "Proteus" (Episode 3). It means, roughly, "the unavoidable way things present themselves to the eye". Stephen Dedalus, walking alone on Sandymount Strand, is thinking about how we know the world through our senses, and testing it by closing his eyes.