Meizon is the Greek word for ‘greater’ and has entered Atlantis debates in relation to its use in Timaeus 24e where it is frequently translated as ‘greater (in size)’, where Plato describes Atlantis as greater than Libya and Asia together. Many commentators have suggested that he intended to mean ‘greater (in power)’. Some commentators do not seem to be fully aware that ‘Libya’ and ‘Asia’ had completely different meanings at the time of Plato. ‘Libya’ referred to part of North Africa, west of Egypt, while ‘Asia’ was sometimes applied to Lydia, a small kingdom in what is today Turkey. In conjunction with that, Felice Vinci has explained that ancient mariners measured territory by the length of its coastal perimeter, a method that was in use up to the time of Columbus. This would imply that the island of Atlantis was relatively modest in extent – I would speculate somewhere between the size of Cyprus and Sardinia.
{23.05.2011}Previously, I have argued that meizon must have referred to the physical size of Atlantis rather than its military power. However, I have recently read a paper[750.173] by Thorwald C. Franke delivered to the 2008 Atlantis Conference which has persuaded me otherwise. His explanation is that “for Egyptians the world of their ‘traditional’ enemies divided in two: To the west there were the Libyans, to the east there were the Asians. If an Egyptian scribe wanted to say, that an enemy was more dangerous than the ‘usual’ enemies, which was the case with the Sea Peoples’ invasion, then he would have most probably said, that this enemy was “more powerful than Libya and Asia put together”.
I find this a far more elegant and credible explanation than any reference to physical size which forced researchers to seek lost continental sized land masses. Furthermore it reinforces the Egyptian origin of the Atlantis story, demolishing any claim that Plato concocted the whole tale. If it had been invented by Plato he would probably have compared Atlantis to enemy territories nearer to home, such as the Persians.
