Merlin

"Merlin. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table Merlin. Was an Ancient?"

- Cameron Mitchell

Merlin (Merlyn, Myrddin, Merlinus) was an Ancient who created the Sangraal.

Biography
Originally an Atlantean known as Moros, he served as High Councillor of Atlantis and leader of the Atlantean Council during the War with the Wraith. He refused to allow Elizabeth Weir to return to her timeline, in fear of altering the timeline, and strongly chastized Janus for even conducting the experiments to begin with. He then ordered the Atlanteans to evacuate to Earth, in the hopes that they would eventually return.

Upon arriving at Earth, Moros secluded himself in meditation, and eventually ascended. While ascended, however, he came to the conclusion that the Ori were too great a threat to ignore. He descended himself, while retaining all the knowledge and many of his powers. The Others, however, feared his intentions, and sent Ganos Lal to watch over him. While on Earth, he entrusted his secrets to King Arthur and some of his noble men. They came to call him Myrddin, or Merlin

Vala Mal Doran stole a tablet written in Ancient code. The tablet told of an incredible treasure hidden on Earth and the man who carved the tablet was named Myrddin. This Myrddin was found in the list of names of the Ancients who returned from Atlantis to Earth more than 10,000 years ago to get away from the Wraith. Myrddin, Daniel Jackson discovers, is a name variant of Merlin from the legend of King Arthur.

They localised where the treasure might be located, at the Tor of Glastonbury and the Isle of Avalon. With help of the Asgard sensors on the Prometheus and the Ring transporter, Cameron Mitchell, Daniel, Teal'c and Vala came into a large cavern and were shortly thereafter faced with a sword in a stone and a holographic image of Merlin. The hologram gave his message, addressed to the Knights of the Round Table, telling them that they would have to prove they had truth of spirit and wealth of knowledge in order to obtain the treasures hidden in the underworld, the storehouse of riches of Ambrosius Aurelianus, the name attributed to King Arthur in some versions of Arthurian legend. (SG1: "Avalon, Part 1")

It was several months later that the SGC learned the purpose of the vault. Merlin was hiding his research on the Sangraal, the weapon designed to negate the power of an Ascended being. To hide his research from both the Ancients and the Ori, Merlin shifted himself into another dimesion, and continued his research on Camelot. Ganos managed to steal the device, and hid it on a planet whose Stargate address was composed of three other planet's addreeses: Castiana, Sahal, and Vagonbrei.

Later however, it was learned that Ganos had destroyed the Sangraal, and put Merlin in stasis. One thousand years later, Merlin was discovered by SG-1, who awoke him. He agreed to create another Sangraal, but his body had deteriorated too much while in stasis. Knowing that he didn't have enough time, Merlin downloaded his memories into one of the Ancients repository of knowledge, hoping one of them would use it. Thus Merlin passed, having lived four separate lifetimes&mdash;in Atlantis, on Earth, on the higher planes, and in Arthur's court&mdash;commenting that throughout his lifetimes, there had never been enough time.

However, Merlin lived on in Daniel's mind. After Daniel was captured with the Sangraal, Merlin was able to protect Daniel from Adria's influence. He and Daniel concocted a plan to send the Sangraal through the Supergate to the Ori galaxy, once SG-1 had deactivated the Supergate. Merlin sacrificed himself to give Daniel the strength to activate the Supergate.

Related
Ascension, Ancient-Wraith war, Others, Time travel, Knights of the Round Table