El Dorado, the Golden King
Classical Stories · No. 66 — The king of gold at the bottom of a lake, and everyone who went looking.
- Classical Stories
- 27 min
- Ages 8–13
- 6 chapters
About this audiobook
High in the mountains of what is now Colombia, the Muisca people held a sacred rite: each new ruler was covered in sticky earth and blown over with gold dust until he gleamed, then rowed on a raft to the middle of the holy Lake Guatavita, where he cast offerings of gold and emeralds into the water and washed the gold from his own body as a gift to the gods. To the Muisca it was worship. But when the story reached outsiders as 'El Dorado — the gilded one,' it twisted into a rumor of a whole city of gold, and expedition after expedition set out to find it, draining the lake, crossing deadly jungles, ruining themselves in pursuit of a place that was never there — while the real treasure lay quietly at the bottom of a mountain lake.
Why it's worth a listen
There really was an El Dorado — not a lost city but a ceremony: a new Muisca king coated head to toe in gold dust, rowed to the center of a sacred lake to offer treasure to the gods, washing the gold from his body into the water. This is the true story behind the legend, and the tale of how a garbled rumor of 'the golden one' sent centuries of outsiders searching for a city that never existed.
A question to keep
What does a story of gold do to the people who hear it — the ones who lived it, and the ones who chase it?
Chapters
- The Lake at the Top of the World
- The Gilded King
- The Gift in the Water
- The Whispering Wind
- The Fever of the Seekers
- A Question to Keep