An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

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    September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
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    Joining The Dots

    I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
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Hyksos

Amalekites

The Amalekites are usually described in encyclopedias as “a biblical people and enemy of the Israelites. They were reportedly wiped out almost entirely as the result of Israelite victories against them in wars beginning shortly after the Exodus and continuing into the period of the early Israelite monarchy(a).”

According to the Old Testament “God ordered Saul (1079-1007 BCE), King of Israel (1049-1007 BCE) to “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” (1 Samuel 15.2-10)

The Amalekites were responsible for attacking the Israelites after the Exodus from Egypt. There is no mention of the Amalakites ever being in Egypt.

However, I therefore find it strange that many scholars, including Velikovsky, identify the Amalekites with the Hyksos who invaded Egypt in the 2nd millennium BC and ruled it for over a hundred years until defeated by the Egyptian Pharaoh Amasis I.

>Donald Keith Mills considers Velkovsky’s identification of the Hyksos as Amalekites to be deeply flawed and outlines his reasons in his paper Velikovsky and the Amalekites(e).<

Damien Mackey has noted(b) that “Dr. I. Velikovsky’s identification of the Hyksos conquerors of Egypt with the biblical Amalekites has been widely accepted by revisionists – even those who have since rejected his Ages in Chaos.

 David Rohl, whose own biblico-historical revision is some centuries apart from Velikovsky’s, had nonetheless accepted the latter’s identification of the Hyksos conquerors of Egypt with the Amalekites of the Book of Exodus (Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest, 1997).

 Debbie Hurn, in 2003, wrote a solid article(c) in support of this Velikovskian thesis. I thoroughly recommend that one reads her insightful article written for Testimony Magazine.” 

Mackey continued with his own support for the Hyksos Amalakite identification, adding a further twist with his suggestion that the Amalakites were also known as the Amu, following the opinion of the 19th-century German Orientalist Johann Christian Friedrich Tuch and quoted by Velikovsky, endorsing it in Ages in Chaos [0039].

In March 2021, Diego Ratti published Atletenu [1821], in which he places Atlantis in Egypt, with its capital located at Avaris, better known as the capital of the Hyksos(d). He identifies Atlas as “Shamshi-Shu I: the Amorite Prince of Ugarit who in 1646 BC led a coalition of Foreign Kings to conquer Egypt starting the XV Dynasty of the ‘Hyksos’.”

So we now have the following mixture – Amalekites = Hyksos = Amu = Amorites = Atlanteans! Unfortunately, it is beyond my competence to unravel this tangle.  

 

(a) https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Amalekite

(b) https://mosesegyptianised.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/the-hyksos-as-amalekites/

(c) http://www.testimony-magazine.org/back/dec2003/hurn.pdf

(d) About | Atletenu (archive.org)

(e) https://www.academia.edu/97365447/VELIKOVSKY_AND_THE_AMALEKITES *

Courville, Matthew P.

Matthew P. Courville is the Canadian author of Ancient Navigators [1960] with the bold subtitle of Phoenician Colony of Atlantis. The author is not the first to associate the Phoenicians with Atlantis, but he is certainly the first to offer a reasoned argument rather than speculation to justify the suggestion. That is not to say that Courville has completely avoided conjecture.

He suggests that the ‘opposite continent’ referred to by Plato was Africa. Many have proposed America, while I offered Europe, specifically Southern Italy. One important point with which I agree with Courville on, is that the apparent date of 9600 BC offered by Plato for the time of the Atlantean War is blatantly wrong.

However, we disagree on a number of other issues. Courville arbitrarily decided that the unit of linear measure, the Greek stade, employed by Plato, should have been the ‘plethrum’, but offers little to support this contention. Also unexplained is when Plato does use the plethron are we also to assume that he meant something else? In Critias 116a & 118c the stade and the plethrum appear together but in contexts where, taken at face value, both appear to offer exaggerated dimensions!

I found Courville’s reinterpretation of Athanasius Kircher’s map of Atlantis particularly annoying. Kircher clearly marked Atlantis as situated in the Atlantic Ocean, with Spain and Africa on one side and America on the other. If, as proposed by Courville, Atlantis is Africa, how could it be between itself and America as shown on Kircher’s map? However, my view is that Atlantis was situated in the Mediterranean, where the only two locations unambiguously named as Atlantean were located, namely Southern Italy and North Africa along with some of the numerous Central Mediterranean islands.

I could continue on a nitpicking expedition, but it would seem pointless if we cannot agree on the basic question of the location of Atlantis. His idea that the Atlanteans were Phoenician must compete with the theories that they were connected with the Sea Peoples or the Hyksos, both of whom were active in the second millennium BC.

The author has obviously put a lot of work into this book, so it is a pity that we have a 400-page work without an index.

360-Day Year

A 360-Day Year literally means a year that is 5¼ days shorter than today and is a view usually favoured by people with a religious agenda, such as Christadelphians(a). The author of this paper, Dale W. Wong, has expanded his claim into a 2006 book [2065].

Donald W. Patten wrote several books and papers, two of which were with Samuel R. Windsor entitled The Recent Organisation of the Solar System, and The Mars-Earth Wars, which are also available online(h)(i). One of the consequences of this ‘reorganisation’ and encounters with our neighbouring planets was a lengthening of our solar year from 360 to 365+ days(j)!

In the 1950s, Immanuel Velikovsky, often accused of an overdependence on the Old Testament quoted a number of ancient sources to support his view that there was a calendrical change required as a consequence of a close encounter with an extraterrestrial body, which slowed the Earth’s rotation. He claimed that this took place in Egypt after the reign of the Hyksos.

Another unusual claim comes from Yair Davidiy, who wrote on the Brit-Am website – “Dolmens and Megalithic Monuments originated in Ancient Israel. Jeremiah 31:21 says that the Lost Ten Tribes will construct a trail of Megalithic Monuments from Israel to their places of exile and evidence of this path will enable them to return. Such a trail exists! It is the Trail of the Dolmens from the Middle East to the West.”(d) As far as I’m aware Davidiy has not explained the huge numbers of dolmens in places such as Korea and Japan! Professor W.A. Liebenberg has written a longer piece(e) on the ‘Lost Tribes’ as the builders of the megaliths. However, since the megalithic building period is generally accepted to have lasted from around 4000 BC until 1500 BC, this created a problem for Davidy and Liebenberg (D&L). The disappearance of the Lost Tribes is dated to around 700 BC leading to their dispersal and proposed megalith building as they travelled. D & L include Newgrange (3200 BC) among their monuments and that is where their difficulties begin. Like Velikovsky(c), both claim that before 700 BC the year was 360 days in length rather than our present 365 days. They argue that if Newgrange (among other monuments) had been built when we had a 360-day year the sun would not still light up the interior at the winter solstice. Therefore, they conclude that most megaliths were erected after 700 BC!

There is also a website actively concerned with the study of the 360-day year(b). This includes comments on ancient 360-day calendars.

Guy Cramer offers a very detailed review of the 360 vs 365 debate, citing among other sources, the Book of Enoch(f)(g).

See Ancient Chronology

(a) http://www.christadelphianbooks.org/agora/art_less/num17.html

(b) https://360dayyear.com

(c) Worlds in Collison [037], https://www.british-israel.us/413.html

(d) https://www.britam.org/Proof/Attributes/roleDolmen.html

(e) (99+) A Historical Research of the Ten Tribes Scattered Into the Nations Part 10 | Prof (Dr) WA Liebenberg – Academia.edu

(f) 360 vs. 365 (xwalk.ca) (part 1)

(g) Isaiah’s Sundial & Joshua’s Long Day (xwalk.ca) (part 2)

(h) https://creationism.org/patten/PattenRecOrgSolSys/PattenRootssCh00aTitle.html

(i) http://creationism.org/patten/PattenMarsEarthWars/

(j) https://creationism.org/patten/PattenRecOrgSolSys/PattenRootssCh01.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ratti, Diego *

Diego Ratti is a financial consultant by profession and the author of two related books, Wall Street Watchman [1390] and The Sky Watching Trader [1391]. However, his love of astronomy, archaeology and Lampedusa came together in the development of his website(b). On this small island of Lampedusa in the Strait of Sicily a ‘Stonehenge’ has been identified by Ratti and described in a well-illustrated paper and booklet(c).

In 2015, he published, in Italian, a book on the prehistory of Lampedusa, La preistoria di Lampedusa [1392].

In a 2016 paper(i) he identified the remains of a prehistoric village on the island as providing “evidence for a late fifth millenium BC colonisation of Lampedusa island by people from Sicily, chronologically around the same time of the Malta early colonisation.” A year later he published another paper(j),  La Preistoria di Lampedusa: nuove ipotesi ed interrogativi (The Prehistory of Lampedusa; New Hypotheses and Questions), unfortunately also in Italian only.

Around the same time, Ratti also discovered a “prehistoric underwater place of worship” off the eastern coast of the island(d), and later published a video of the site(e), describing it as a temple similar in layout to some of the Maltese temples.

In March 2021, Ratti published Atletenu [1821], in which he places Atlantis in Egypt, with its capital located at Avaris, better known as the capital of the Hyksos. He identifies Atlas as “Shamshi-Shu I: the Amorite Prince of Ugarit who in 1646 BC led a coalition of Foreign Kings to conquer Egypt starting the XV Dynasty of the ‘Hyksos'”. The book is carefully constructed and well-illustrated, but has no index.

He questions a number of the English translations of the Greek text, offering his own where he deemed it appropriate. One such instance concerns ‘meizon‘, normally translated as ‘greater’ in Tim. 24e & Crit.108e, which Ratti insists should be read as between Libya and Asia, which Avaris clearly is. I pressed Ratti on this interpretation and, after further study, he responded with a more detailed explanation for his conclusion(g). This is best read in conjunction with the book.

However, although he appears to match a number of Plato’s details with the Nile Delta, there was not enough to convince me. Where are the mountains described by Plato with a series of superlatives? Tim 25a-b, describes Atlantean territory as including part of southern Italy, so where is the evidence for the Hyksos occupying any part of Italy? Where is the evidence that Athens fought with the Hyksos?

However, I must acknowledge the extensive amount of research that has gone into this book, which is available as a  Kindle or paperback, excerpts from which can be read online(f)(h). It is certainly worth a look.

(b) http://www.megalithic-lampedusa.com/ (link broken)

(c) https://www.scribd.com/doc/64143595/lampedusa-stonehenge

(d) https://www.academia.edu/27713754/Lampedusa_possible_underwater_prehistoric_place_of_worship (link broken)

(e) lampedusa underwater temple – Search (bing.com)

(f) About | Atletenu (archive.org) 

(g) More on Atlantis between Asia and Libya (archive.org)

(h) https://www.academia.edu/45672470/Atletenu_Atlantis_Avaris_and_the_Hyksos (link broken)

(i) https://www.academia.edu/27700957/Lampedusa_prehistoric_village_of_Tabaccara_coast?email_work_card=view-paper&li=0 (Link broken) *

(j) https://www.academia.edu/36387354/La_Preistoria_di_Lampedusa_nuove_ipotesi_ed_interrogativi 

Meizon

Meizon is given the sole meaning of  ‘greater’  in the respected Greek Lexicon of Liddell & Scott. Furthermore, in Bury’s translation of sections 20e -26a of Timaeus there are eleven instances of Plato using megas (great) meizon (greater) or megistos (greatest). In all cases, great or greatest is employed except just one, 24e, which uses the comparative meizon, which Bury translated as ‘larger’! J.Warren Wells concluded that Bury’s translation in this single instance is inconsistent with his other treatments of the word and it does not fit comfortably with the context[787.85]. This inconsistency is difficult to accept, so although meizon can have a secondary meaning of ‘larger’ it is quite reasonable to assume that the primary meaning of ‘greater’ was intended.

Jürgen Spanuth addressed this problem in Atlantis-The Mystery Unravelled [017.109] noting that “In other parts of the Atlantis report misunderstandings easily arose. Plato asserts that Atlantis was ‘larger’, ‘more extensive’ (meizon),than Libya and Asia Minor. The Greek word ‘meizon’ can mean both ‘larger in size’ and ‘more powerful.’ As the size of the Atlantean kingdom is given between two hundred and three hundred miles, whereas Asia Minor is considerably bigger, in this context the word ‘meizon’ should be translated not by ‘larger in size’ but by ‘more powerful’, which corresponds much better to the actual facts.”

In 2006, on a now-defunct website of his, Wells noted that Greater can mean larger, but this meaning is by no means the only possible meaning here; his overall usage of the word may show he meant greater in some other way.”

It is also worth considering that Alexander the Great, (Aléxandros ho Mégas) was so-called, not because of his physical size, apparently, he was short of stature, but because he was a powerful leader. 

The word has entered Atlantis debates in relation to its use in Timaeus 24e ’, where Plato describes Atlantis as ‘greater’ than Libya and Asia together and until recently has been most frequently interpreted to mean greater ‘in size’, an idea that I previously endorsed. However, some researchers have suggested that he intended to mean greater ‘in power’.

Other 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 or all of North Africa, west of Egypt, while ‘Asia’ was sometimes applied to Lydia, a small kingdom in what is today Turkey. Incidentally, Plato’s  statement also demonstrates that Atlantis could not have existed in either of these territories as ‘a part cannot be greater than the whole.’

A more radical, but less credible, interpretation of Plato’s use of ‘meizon’ came from the historian P.B.S. Andrews suggested that the quotation has been the result of a misreading of Solon’s notes. He maintained that the text should be read as ’midway between Libya and Asia’ since in the original Greek there is only a difference on one letter between the words for midway (meson) and larger than (meizon). This suggestion was supported by the classical scholar J.V. Luce and more recently on Marilyn Luongo‘s website(a), which is now closed.

Luongo attempted to link Mesopotamia with Atlantis, beginning with locating the Pillars of Heracles at the Strait of Hormuz and then using the highly controversial interpretation of ‘meizon‘ meaning ‘between’ rather than ‘greater’ she proceeded to argue that Mesopotamia is ‘between’ Asia and Libya and therefore is the home of Atlantis! She cited a paper by Andreea Haktanir to justify this interpretation of meizon(a).

This interpretation is quite interesting, particularly if the Lydian explanation of ‘Asia’ mentioned above is correct. Viewed from either Athens or Egypt we find that Crete is located ‘midway’ between Lydia and Libya.

>Jacques R. Pauwels also supported Andrews’ controversial interpretation of Plato’s text (Tim.24d-e) in his 2010 book Beneath the Dust of Time [1656]. Therefore, he believes that the text should have described Atlantis as being between Libya and Asia rather than greater than Libya and Asia combined, arguably pointing to the Minoan Hypothesis.<

In 2021, Diego Ratti, proposed in his new book Atletenu [1821], an Egyptian location for Atlantis, centred on the Hyksos capital, Avaris. In that context, he found it expedient to interpret ‘meizon’ in Tim. 24e & Crit.108e as meaning between Libya and Asia, which Avaris clearly is. I pressed Ratti on this interpretation and, after further study, he responded with a more detailed explanation for his conclusion(d). This is best read in conjunction with the book.

In relation to all this, 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. An area of such an extent has never been known to have been destroyed by an earthquake.

Until the 21st century, it was thought by many that meizon must have referred to the physical size of Atlantis rather than its military power. However, having read a paper[750.173] delivered by Thorwald C. Franke at the 2008 Atlantis Conference, I was persuaded otherwise.  His explanation is that “for Egyptians, the world of their ‘traditional’ enemies was 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’”.

This is a far more elegant and credible explanation than any reference to physical size, which forced researchers to seek lost continental-sized land masses and apparently justified the negativity of sceptics. 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.

This interpretation of meizon has now been ‘adopted’ by Frank Joseph in The Destruction of Atlantis[102.82], but without giving any due credit to Franke(b). No surprise there.!

(a) History (archive.org) 

(b) https://lost-origins.com/atlantis-no-lost-continent/ (offline Jan. 2018) See: Archive 2349

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20070212101539/https://greekatlantis.com/

(d) More on Atlantis between Asia and Libya (archive.org) 

Ghembaza, Thérêse

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 developed in a number of  other papers(c), which are certainly 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 2nd 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.

>Although Ghembaza quotes Plato extensively to support her Meroë hypothesis, she fails to explain how an Atlantean Meroë situated on the Upper Nile had territory in Southern Italy and northeast Africa (Tim 25a-b & Crit 114c), a distance of around 4,000 km. Equally difficult to account for is the fact that Meroë did not exist until sometime early in the 1st millennium BC in contrast to the middle of the 2nd millennium, considered a reasonably late date for the destruction of Atlantis. Add to that, the fact that Meroë was never submerged or created ‘shoals of mud’ leaving the credibility of Ghembaza’s Atlantis claims in tatters.<

In April 2015, Ghembaza offered a short paper(d)  in support of identifying Bab-el-Mandeb as the location of the Pillars of Heracles.

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 is called pyropus, while Ovid also refers to a cladding of pyropus, a term often translated as bronze. She also mentions auricupride(Cu3Au), an alloy that may be connected with orichalcum.

>A lecture outline by Ghembaza with a slideshow can be accessed online(e).<

(a) http://antiqua91.fr/index_en.html

(b) Hecataeus of MiletusPeriegesis 550 – 480 “now lost, but probably the main source of Plato and Eratosthenes”

(c) http://antiqua91.fr/atlantis_en.html

(d) See: Archive 2526

(e) https://slideplayer.com/slide/3878434/ *

Neith

Neith_svg

Neith was an ancient Egyptian goddess and patron god of Sais, where Solon is said to have learned about Atlantis. Neith is often identified with the Greek goddess Athena as well as the Berber and Punic goddess Tanith (Tanit, Tanut), although this has been disputed(a). Tanith is said to be derived from the Phoenician lunar goddess and claims have been made that Tanit was also a Hyksos goddess.

>A paper(e) outlining the appearance of Tanit on Iberian coins of villages that had been in contact with the Phoenicians can be read on the Academia.edu website.

Some years ago Egerton Sykes noted in his Atlantis magazine “that the Egyptian goddess Neith (NTH) was the same as Tanith (TNH) and Athene (THN), the letters in brackets being the Egyptian consonants for the names.”(d)

<

The association of Greek with Egyptian deities was originally told to us by Herodotus(b). A similar connection between Greek and Hindu gods has also been identified(c).

(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170326111445/https://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Athena.html

(b) See: Archive 2574

(c) https://www.integralworld.net/augustine21.html

(d) Atlantis AT142 p47  *

(e) https://www.academia.edu/38716450/Cult_and_dedication_to_Tanit_in_the_Iberian_coins *

 

Sahara Desert

The Sahara Desert and in particular its northern regions have attracted its share of attention from Atlantis investigators. However unlikely it may appear as a possible location for Atlantis it must be kept in mind that the Sahara of prehistory was very different from what we see today. Not only was it wetter at various periods in the past, but also there is clear evidence for the existence of a large inland sea extending across the borders of modern Algeria and Tunisia. This evidence is in the form of the chotts or salt flats in both countries. This proposed sea is considered by some to have been the Lake Tritonis referred to by classical writers. It is suggested that some form of tectonic/seismic activity, common in the region, was responsible for isolating this body of seawater from the Mediterranean and eventually turning it into the salt flats we see today.

An even more extensive inland sea, further south, was proposed by Ali Bey el Abbassi and based on his theory a map was published in 1802 which can be viewed online(c).

More recently, Riaan Booysen has published an illustrated paper on the ancient inland Saharan seas as indicated on the 16th-century maps of Mercator and Ortelius(i). King’s College London runs The Sahara Megalakes Project which studies the Megalakes and the Saharan Palaeoclimate record(m).

A 2013 report in New Scientist magazine(d) revealed that 100,000 years ago the Sahara had been home to three large rivers that flowed northward, which probably provided migration routes for our ancestors. Depending on how long the African Humid Period lasted, this article may be read in conjunction with George Sarantitis‘ theory regarding the Voyage of Hanno that he claims took place in the interior of Africa.

Other studies(h) have shown the previous existence of a huge river system in the Western Sahara, which flowed into the Atlantic on the Mauritanian coast.

An article in the Sept. 2008 edition of National Geographic pointed out that the Saharan climate has been similar for the past 70,000 years except for a period beginning 12,000 years ago when a number of factors combined to alter this fact. A northerly shift by seasonal monsoons brought additional rain to an area the size of the contiguous USA. This period of a greener Sahara lasted until around 4,500 years ago.

More recent studies claim that there’s geologic evidence from ocean sediments that these orbitally-paced Green Sahara events occur as far back as the Miocene epoch (23 million to 5 million years ago), including during periods when atmospheric carbon dioxide was similar to and possibly higher than today’s levels. So, a future Green Sahara event is still highly likely in the distant future.” (p)

Henri Lhote contributed an article to Reader’s Digest‘s, The World’s Last Mysteries [1083], regarding the ‘green’ Sahara that existed prior to 2500 BC. Two German climatologists Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin have estimated that this last greening of the Sahara began around 8500 BC and ended sometime between 3500 BC and 1500 BC(r)(u)* .

Some have suggested a connection between the latest aridification of the Sahara and the migration of settlers to the Nile Valley, where, coincidentally, the ancient Egypt we know about was founded around 3100 BC.

Others have endeavoured to link the last aridification of the Sahara with the destruction of Atlantis! 

More recently, human activity has been blamed as a major contributory factor for the desertification of the Sahara region less than 10,000 years ago.(n)

Related to the above is a recent study of sediments off the west coast of Africa, which resulted in the discovery of what was “primarily a new “beat,” in which the Sahara vacillated between wet and dry climates every 20,000 years, in sync with the region’s monsoon activity and the periodic tilting of the Earth.” (o) 

In Mauritania, a huge natural feature known as the Richat Structure has been claimed as the remnant of Atlantis by George Sarantitis [1470as well as by Alexander & Rosen and others.

In 1868, it was proposed by D.A. Godron, the French botanist, that the Sahara was the location of Atlantis. In 2003, the non-existent archaeologist Dr.Carla Sage announced that she was hoping to lead an international expedition to the Sahara in search of Atlantis. Her contention was that “Atlantis was the capital of a vast North African empire with ports on the Gulf of Sidra”. This report is now confirmed to have been a hoax! I am indebted to Stel Pavlou for uncovering the origin of this story(e).

The idea of an African Atlantis was highlighted in 2021 with the publication of Atletenu [1821], in which the author, Diego Ratti, identified the Hyksos as Atlanteans with their capital at Avaris in the eastern Nile Delta. At the other end of North Africa, the chotts of Tunisia and Algeria were nominated by Holden Zhang as the location of Atlantis in a YouTube clip(q).

Gary Gilligan, the well-known catastrophist, wrote a thought-provoking article(k) on the origin of the Saharan sands, which he claims are extraterrestrial in origin and expands on the idea in his 2016 book Extraterrestrial Sands [1365].>A March 2024 report(t). on the BBC website has revealed that a particular type of sand dune has now been dated. They are known as ‘star’ or ‘pyramid’ dunes – “are named after their distinctive shapes and reach hundreds of metres in height.” They are found in Africa, Asia and North America, as well as on Mars – but experts had never before been able to put a date on when they were formed. Now scientists have discovered that a dune called Lala Lallia in Morocco formed 13,000 years ago.”<

David Mattingly, an archaeologist at Leicester University has found that an ancient people known as the Garamantes had an extensive civilisation in the Sahara(l). He has evidence of at least three cities and twenty other settlements. The Garamantes reached their peak around 100 BC and then gradually diminished in influence as fossil water supplies reduced until in the 7th century AD they were subjected to Islamic domination. Some researchers such as Frank Joseph have identified the Garamantes as being linked with the Sea Peoples. Bob Idjennaden has published short but informative Kindle books about both the Garamantes [1194] and the Sea Peoples [1195], without a suggestion of any connection between the two.

The discovery of megalithic structures discovered at Nabta Playa (Nabta Lake) in the Egyptian Sahara has provided evidence for the existence of a sophisticated society in that area around 5000 BC. In the same region, near the Dakhleh Oasis, archaeologists have produced data that supports the idea that pre-Pharaonic Egypt had Desert Origins rather than being an importation from Mesopotamia or elsewhere(a).

Nabta Playa is not unique, in fact, the largest megalithic ellipse in the world is to be found at Mzorah, 27 km from Lixus in Morocco(b). It appears that the construction methods employed at both Mezorah and Nabta Playa are both similar to that used in the British Isles. An even more impressive site is Adam’s Calendar in South Africa which has been claimed as 75,000-250,000 years old.

West of Cairo near the border with Libya is the Siwa Oasis, where it has now been demonstrated that “it is in fact home to one of Ancient Egypt’s astounding solar-calendar technologies– the solar equinox alignment between the Timasirayn Temple and the Temple of Amun Oracle in Aghurmi.”(j).

I think we can expect further exciting discoveries in the Sahara leading to a clearer picture of the prehistoric cultures of the region and what connections there are, if any, with Plato’s Atlantis. In the meanwhile in the Eastern Egyptian Desert, Douglas Brewer, a professor of archaeology at the University of Illinois, has discovered over 1,000 examples of rock art, including numerous depictions of boats although the sites, so far undisclosed, are remote from water.

Even more remarkable is the report(e) of March 2015 that a survey of the Messak Settafet escarpment in the central Sahara revealed that there were enough discarded stone tools in the region to build more than one Great Pyramid for every square kilometre of land on the continent”! Coincidentally, around the same time, it was reported that over a thousand stone tools had been found in the Northern Utah Desert(g). What the Utah discovery lacked in quantity was made up for in quality with the finding of the largest known Haskett point spearhead, measuring around nine inches in length.

(a) Saudi Aramco World (2006, Vol. 57, No.5 p.2-11)

(b) https://www.ancientpages.com/2015/09/05/was-megalithic-stone-circle-of-mzoura-the-tomb-of-giant-antaeus/

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20201019061756/http://catalog.afriterra.org/zoomMap.cmd?number=1036

(d) NewScientist.com, 16 September 2013, https://tinyurl.com/mg9vcoz

& https://zeenews.india.com/news/science/lost-river-helped-lead-early-ancestors-out-of-africa_877125.html 

(e) https://books.google.com/books?id=GvMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA46&dq=dr.+carla+sage+archaeologist&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GSENVKiaO9W0yASJgoIY&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=dr.%20carla%20sage%20archaeologist&f=false

(f) https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/saharan-carpet-of-tools-is-the-earliest-known-man-made-landscape

(g) Over 1,000 Ancient Stone Tools, Left by Great Basin Hunters, Found in Utah Desert – Western Digs (archive.org)  

(h) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/10/ancient-river-network-discoverd-buried-under-saharan-sand

(i) 7. The lakes in the middle of the Sahara desert – Page 8 (archive.org)

(j) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/astronomically-aligned-temple-siwa-oasis-ancient-calendar-device-006852?nopaging=1

(k) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170614023816/https://www.godkingscenario.com/articles/origin-sahara-desert

(l) See: Archive 3268

(m) https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=&oq=&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGHP_enIE665IE665&q=the+sahara+megalakes+project&gs_l=hp..0.41l52.0.0.0.2769………..0.&gws_rd=ssl

(n) https://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2017/article/did-humans-create-the-sahara-desert

(o) https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sahara-swung-lush-conditions-years.html#jCp

(p) https://www.livescience.com/will-sahara-desert-turn-green.html

(q) Revive Eden 3 Convincing Atlantis – YouTube 

(r) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/uncovering-secrets-of-the-sphinx-5053442/

(s) https://las.illinois.edu/news/2006-09-01/oasis-art-egyptian-desert *

(t) Star dune: Scientists solve mystery behind Earth’s largest desert sands – BBC News *

(u) Shift From Savannah to Sahara Was Gradual, Research Suggests – The New York Times (nytimes.com) *

Lampedusa

Lampedusa is the principal island of the Pelagian (Pelagie) archipelago off the coaDiego Rattist of Tunisia, between the African mainland and Malta, and is controlled by Italy.

Anton Mifsud and his co-authors offer evidence[209] that Atlantis was actually a large island that joined Malta to Lampedusa and contends that the famous archaeological sites on Malta are just remnants of the Atlantean civilisation. However, as can be seen from bathymetric maps, if Malta was joined to Lampedusa it may also have been connected with what is modern Tunisia, completing the Sicilian land bridge. The implications of this claim are that if true, it is quite probable that there was also a Gibraltar Dam and that during the last Ice Age, the Mediterranean was reduced to a number of relatively small freshwater lakes.

A website(a) published by Diego Ratti has now highlighted that tiny Lampedusa has an interesting collection of megalithic remains including a feature that has been Lampedusadubbed the ‘Lampedusa Stonehenge’.A 39-page booklet, by Ratti, which describes this feature in greater detail can now be downloaded(b). Ratti is a financial consultant by profession and the author of two books, Wall Street Watchman and The Skywatching Trader. However, his love of astronomy, archaeology and Lampedusa came together in the development of his website.

In 2015 he published, in Italian, a book on the prehistory of Lampedusa, La preistoria di Lampedusa. In 2016 Ratti also discovered a “prehistoric underwater place of worship” off the eastern coast of the island(c),  which he describes as a temple similar in layout to those found on Malta(d).

In the Introduction to a 2016 paper describing a prehistoric village on Lampedusa he wrote A prehistoric hut with Stentinello pottery found in Cala Pisana provided evidence for a late fifth millennium BC colonisation of Lampedusa island by people from Sicily, chronologically around the same time of the Malta early colonisation.”

In 2021, Ratti, controversially proposed in his new book Atletenu [1821], an Egyptian location for Atlantis, centred on the Hyksos capital, Avaris.>Around the same time he had some of his earlier postings removed from the internet!<

(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20181128232114/https://www.megalithic-lampedusa.com/

(b) lampedusa-stonehenge (archive.org) *

(c) Lampedusa: possible underwater prehistoric place of worship | Diego Ratti – Academia.edu (archive.org) *

(d) https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=lampedusa+underwater+temple&src=IE11TR&pc=HPDTDFJS&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dlampedusa%2bunderwater%2btemple%26form%3dIE11TR%26src%3dIE11TR%26pc%3dHPDTDFJS&view=detail&mmscn=vwrc&mid=CED11A1C5B01D9BDDA2FCED11A1C5B01D9BDDA2F&FORM=WRVORC (link broken) *

(e) About | Atletenu (archive.org)

(f) (99+) Lampedusa: prehistoric village of Tabaccara coast | Diego Ratti – Academia.edu 

Exodus

The Biblical Exodus has been linked by some with the time of the destruction of Atlantis. J. G. Bennett has firmly identified the 2nd millennium BC eruption of Thera with the destruction of Atlantis(f) and in turn, the effect of the volcanic fallout on the Egyptian nation generating the Plagues of Egypt recorded in Exodus.

The fixing of the date of the biblical Exodus is still debated, compounding the broader problem of synchronising the Bronze Age chronologies of the eastern Mediterranean. The early arguments were usually the preserve of biblical scholars(t). However, a wider audience became aware of some of the difficulties when Immanuel Velikovsky published Ages in Chaos [039] and offered some solutions. Since then further revisions have been proposed by Peter James and David Rohl, but the Exodus date is still not definitively fixed(m)(y)(z)*. On top of all that, other events that should provide reliable chronological ‘anchors’, such as the Trojan War or the eruption of Thera continue to generate dispute as well.

Dr Hans Goedicke, a leading Austrian Egyptologist, expressed a similar view regarding an Exodus link in a 1981 lecture, leading to quite a media stir(c). Ian Wilson, best known for The Turin Shroud, has calculated that the volcanic plume from the Theran eruption would have been clearly visible from the Nile Delta [979.112].

Riaan Booysen believes(b) that two Exodus events can be linked with three possible Theran eruptions and has identified the Israelites as the Hyksos. Ralph Ellis has also linked the biblical Exodus with the expulsion of the Hyksos and devoted a short book[0656] to the idea.

Russell Jacquet-Acea, an American researcher, has written a three-part paper on dating the biblical Exodus, that includes the radical suggestion that there were three exoduses from Egypt(m)(n)(o).

Immanuel Velikovsky and others believed that the controversial Ipuwer Papyrus provides evidence in support of the biblical Exodus as well as the ‘Plagues of Egypt’(d). In 2018, Anne Habermehl delivered a paper to a creationist conference in which she concluded: “that the Ipuwer Papyrus displays strong extra-biblical evidence for the historicity of the Exodus in its description of a chaotic Egypt that would have resulted from the biblical 10 plagues.”(i).

Emilio Spedicato links the biblical Exodus with the explosion of Phaëton in 1447 BC, without any reference to the destruction of Atlantis, which, based on his interpretation of Plato’s text, he associates with a much earlier catastrophe(a).>He also associates these events with the Flood of Deucalion as well as some people migrations that “took place essentially at the same time”(x).<

Alfred de Grazia offers a radical interpretation of the Exodus in God’s Fire [1538],  in which he saw the Exodus as a highly organised, rather than an opportunistic event. He also attributed some level of electrical knowledge to Moses, whom he credits with the construction of the Ark of the Covenant, if not the ‘invention’ of Yahweh himself!

Perhaps the most extreme Exodus theory has been presented by Finkelstein & Silberman, who have claimed that “the saga of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt is neither historical truth nor literary fiction” [280.70]. However, the same disbelieving Finkelstein is now going on a search for the Ark of the Covenant(e)!

Flavio Barbiero has now produced an extensive paper(g) in which he precisely dates the Exodus to the night between the 14th and 15th of July of 1208 B.C. (2/3 July of today).

It is important to point out that the historical reality of the Exodus is now being scrutinised as never before, generating growing scepticism. Both Jewish and Christian scholars have expressed serious doubts(s).

>Walter R. Mattfeld wrote in a 2021 paper My research on the Exodus has concluded that it is fiction, but a myth or fiction which has behind it real events which can be recovered via archaeological findings. My research endeavors are to identify the possible real events that came to be recast or reinterpreted as the Bible’s fictional Exodus. In other words, What’s behind these events that is recoverable via archaeological findings? Basically, I see two historical events, grounded in archaeological data, as behind the Exodus: (1) The Hyksos Expulsion of circa 1530 BC (2) The Iron Age I settlements that suddenly appear in Edom, Moab and Canaan 1200 BC to 1100 BC.These two events are separated in time by roughly 300 years. (w)<

William Austin is just one of many who have devoted years to a study of the Exodus dating controversy. The result of his labours is Before the Exodus, a 500-page offering and a condensed version of From Noah to Moses now available on the academia.edu website(u) together with a number of other papers.

“If and when the Exodus occurred is one of the most controversial topics in biblical scholarship. Religious fundamentalists believe it is absolutely true. Skeptics doubt it occurred at all, and neither has any means to prove their case! My approach to the problem has been to assume that much of the controversy is due to an erasure of factual Israelite history in the Old Testament account. It is very difficult to read the Old Testament, then to scroll through Egyptian history and say, “Aha! There’s the Exodus. Read the Bible here; read the papyrus there… See, it all matches. Case closed.” It is very difficult, or it would have been done. This is not to say that the Exodus didn’t occur, it just didn’t occur exactly as recorded in the Old Testament of Christian Bibles.”

Gérard Gertoux noted that estimates for the date of the Exodus ranged from 2150 to 650 BC and so to narrow such an extensive range, he embarked on a forensic study of the problem. In a book(p), The Pharaoh of the Exodus: Fairy tale or real history? [1890] and a 22-page paper(h)(h2) he identified Pharoah Seqenenre Taa, who died on 10 May 1533 BC, as the Pharoah of the Exodus.

Unfortunately, the biblical Exodus has generated several controversies; was it a historical reality, its precise date, the route taken and the identity of the pharaoh of the Exodus? Regarding the last, Rameses II is linked by many with the Exodus, while others have nominated Tutankhamun (Collins & Ogilvie-Herald [1898]), Dudimose (Velikovsky(j), Rohl [229]), Amenemhat IV (Habermehl(k)) Ramesess V (Aboulfotouh(l)) and to these, we may add many others who have been proposed(k). This debate has a long way to go yet.

A more recent (April 2022) article by Jonah Cohen highlights the range of individuals proposed as the pharaoh of the Exodus and suggests that the mystery may not be solvable!(q) Another 2022 article by Gerald Eising opted firmly for Amenhotep II(r).

As you can see the actual date of the Exodus is disputed, but the difficulties don’t end there. Moses the charismatic leader of the Israelites has generated a separate set of problems. Ahmed Osman is just one commentator who has has identified Moses as the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten [1849]. Graham Phillips, among others, claims that Moses was two different people, living at different times [0034]! Immanuel Velikovsky has linked Akhenaten with Oedipus in Greek mythology [2041]. D.M.Murdock concluded [2058] that Moses cannot be discovered in history, whether as Akhenaten or another historical personage. Compounding all this confusion is the idea that Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch and yet, in it,  he managed to describe his own death and burial!!

>(See: Red Sea)<

(a) https://interval.louisiana.edu/conferences/2007_Stenger/Slides_of_talks/mose8-6.pdf

(b) https://riaanbooysen.com/misc/167-book-announcement (link broken) See (v)

(c) Archive 2490 | (atlantipedia.ie) 

(d) https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/does-ipuwer-papyrus-provide-evidence-events-exodus-006951?utm_source=Ancient-Origins+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7295e85219-Top_Trending_Stories_Nov_No3_REAL_11_14_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2dcd13de15-7295e85219-85158329

(e) https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/02/new-search-begins-for-the-ark-of-the-covenant/

(f) https://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-2/geophysics/systematics-vol1-no2-127-156.htm

(g) https://www.q-mag.org/a-precise-chronology-of-exodus.html

(h) (99+) (PDF) Absolute chronology of Exodus | Gerard GERTOUX – Academia.edu 

(h2) https://www.academia.edu/30200722/The_Pharaoh_of_the_Exodus_Fairy_tale_or_real_history_Outcome_of_the_investigation 

(i) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329770320_The_Ipuwer_Papyrus_and_the_Exodus

(j) The True Story of Moses and the Pharaoh According to Velikovsky (hermetics.org) 

(k) Revising the Egyptian Chronology: Joseph as Imhotep, and Amenemhat IV as Pharaoh of the Exodus (cedarville.edu)

(l) (PDF) LOCATION OF PI-HAHIROTH OF MOSES’S EXODUS IN SUEZ GULF AND THE NEW KINGDOM’S SCENARIO: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH | Hossam Aboulfotouh – Academia.edu 

(m) (99+) Re-calculating the Historical Age of the Israelites in Egypt and the Date of the Exodus (Part One) | Russell Jacquet-Acea – Academia.edu 

(n) (99+) Re-calculating the Historical Age of the Israelites in Egypt and the Date of the Exodus PART TWO | Russell Jacquet-Acea – Academia.edu  

(o) (99+) Re-calculating the Historical Age of the Israelites in Egypt and the Date of the Exodus Part THREE | Russell Jacquet-Acea – Academia.edu 

(p) https://www.lulu.com/en/ie/shop/gerard-gertoux/the-pharaoh-of-the-exodus-fairy-tale-or-real-history/paperback/product-1vjrmky7.html?page=1&pageSize=4  

(q) Who was the Exodus Pharaoh? (jns.org) 

(r) Who was the Pharaoh of Exodus? – Tidings 

(s) https://aroyking.wordpress.com/2016/04/02/has-archaeology-proven-that-the-biblical-exodus-is-a-myth/ 

(t) https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_exodus_date.html

(u) https://www.academia.edu/20426570/The_Hebrew_chronology_from_Noah_to_Moses_corrected_for_half-years

(v) Microsoft Word – Addendum to Thera_and_the_Exodus -Nov_2020.docx (riaanbooysen.com)

(w) (99+) The Archaeological Evidence for the Exodus being a Myth | Walter R. Mattfeld – Academia.edu *

(x) The-Deucalion-catastrophe.pdf (atlantis.fyi) *

(y) bmh_exodusdate_kmtsummer94.pdf (biblemythhistory.com)*

(z) Talk Reason *