Abstract
The paper is part of a ‘work in progress’ on the influence of oriental cultures and religions on Western ancient literature ( The Seven Gates ). After a short history of use and symbolic role of the “planetary ladder” from Sumerians to Islamic literatures and cultures via Greece, Rome and Jewish mysticism, the essai tries to show that the early Christians writers preferred to avoid employing the planetary ladder as a cipher of an itinerary to God. It was only Dante, in his Divina Commedia , who resumed to use with high perfection the planetary ladder: he re-elaboreted the circular Islamic hell in the Inferno , the Islamic heaven in the Paradiso and the Islamic paradise in the Purgatorio (his source was the Latin translation of The book of the ladder of Mahomet ) .
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