Thérêse Ghembaza is a French researcher who has a website, in French and English, entitled The Great Enigmas of Antiquity^(a) in which she discusses matters such as the Hyksos, the identity of Moses and the Kushites. The site also deals with her theory that Atlantis had been situated in Meroë on the Upper Nile, a theory that she develops in two other papers^(b)(c), which are well worth a read.

While at first sight this might be seen as a wild claim, Ghembaza offers a well reasoned theory which was presented to the 2^nd Atlantis Conference held in Athens in 2008. She has imaginatively linked aspects of Meroitic geography and history with Plato’s story of Atlantis. For example, she identifies Tyrrhenia with Tyre in Lebanon and claims that Tyrrhenia in Italy was a later colony of Tyre! While some of her ideas are convincing I found others a little threadbare. Nevertheless Ghembaza must be applauded for her efforts to construct a scientific explanation for the Atlantis narrative.

Ghembaza has kindly drawn my attention to two quotations from Pliny the Elder and Ovid  that offer possible explanations for Plato’s orichalcum (see Document 091011). The former refers to a Cypriot copper mixed with gold which gave a fiery colour and called pyropus, while Ovid also refers to a cladding of pyropus. She also mentions auricupride(Cu₃Au), an alloy that may be connected with orichalcum.

^(a) http://www.antiqua91.fr/crbst_12_en.html

^(b) http://www.antiqua91.fr/cariboost_files/meroechapitre_20i_2021_20september_202009.pdf

^(c) http://www.antiqua91.fr/cariboost_files/article_20atlantia_201_20col_20english.pdf