Carolina López-Ruiz

Tartessos *

Published June 12, 2010

Tartessos or Tartessus is generally accepted to have existed along the valley of the Guadalquivir River where the rich deposits of copper and silver led to the development of a powerful native civilisation, which traded with the Phoenicians, who had colonies along the south coast of Spain^(k).

A continuing debate is whether Tartessos was developed by a pre-Phoenician indigenous society or was a joint venture by locals along with the Phoenicians.^(o) One of the few modern English-language books about Tartessos was written by Sebastian Celestino & Carolina López-Ruiz and entitled Tartessos and the Phoenicians in Iberia ^[1900].

A 2022 BBC article offers some additional up-to-date developments in the studies of Tartessos^(v).

It is assumed by most commentators that Tartessos was identical to the wealthy city of Tarshish that is mentioned in the Bible. There have been persistent attempts over the past century to link Tartessos with Atlantis. The last king of Tartessia, in what is now Southern Spain, is noted by Herodotus to have been Arganthonios, who is claimed to have ruled from 630 BC until 550 BC. Similarly, Ephorus a 4th century BC historian describes Tartessos as ‘a very prosperous market.’ However, if these dates are only approximately true, then Atlantis cannot be identified with Tartessos as they nearly coincide with the lifetime of Solon, who received the story of Atlantis as being very ancient.

However, the suggested linkage of Tartessos with Atlantis is disputed by some Spanish researchers, such as Mario Mas Fenollar ^[1802] and Ester Rodríguez González⁽ⁿ⁾. Mas Fennolar has claimed that at least a thousand years separated the two. Arysio dos Santos frequently claimed that Atlantis was Tartessos throughout his Atlantis and the Pillars of Hercules ^[^1378].

Rodrigo Caro

The existence of a ‘Tartessian’ empire is receiving gradual acceptance. Strabo writes of their system of canals running from the Guadalquivir River and a culture that had written records dating back 6,000 years. Their alphabet was slightly different to the ‘Iberian’. The Carthaginians were said to have been captured by Tartessos after the reign of Arganthonios and after that, contact with Tartessos seems to have ended abruptly!

The exact location of this city is not known apart from being near the mouth of the Guadalquivir River in Andalusia. The Guadalquivir was known as Baetis by the Romans and Tartessos to the Greeks. The present-day Gulf of Cadiz was known as Tartessius Sinus (Gulf of Tartessus) in Roman times. Cadiz is accepted to be a corruption of Gades that in turn is believed to have been named after Gaderius. This idea was proposed as early as 1634 by Rodrigo Caro (image left), the Spanish historian and poet, in his Antigüedades y principado de la Ilustrísima ciudad de Sevilla, now available as a free ebook⁽ⁱ⁾.

In 1849, the German researcher Gustav Moritz Redslob (1804-1882) carried out a study of everything available relating to Tartessos and concluded that the lost city had been the town of Tortosa on the River Ebro situated near Tarragona in Catalonia. The idea seems to have received little support until recently, when Carles Camp published a paper supporting this contention^(w⁾. It was written in Valenciano, which is related to Catalan and can be translated with Google Translate using the latter option.

A few years ago, Richard Cassaro endeavoured to link the megalithic walls of old Tarragona with the mythical one-eyed Cyclops and for good measure suggest a link with Atlantis^(l⁾. Concerning the giants, the images of doorways posted by Cassaro are too low to comfortably accommodate giants! Cassaro has previously made the same claim about megalithic structures in Italy^(m⁾

The German archaeologist Adolf Schulten spent many years searching unsuccessfully for Tartessos, in the region of the Guadalquivir. He believed that Tartessos had been founded by Lydians in 1150 BC, which became the centre of an ancient culture that was Atlantis or at least one of its colonies. Schulten also noted that Tartessos disappeared from historical records around 500 BC, which is after Solon’s visit to Egypt and so could not have been Atlantis.

Richard Hennig in the 1920s also supported the idea of Tartessos being Atlantis and situated in southern Spain. However, according to Atlantisforschung he later changed his opinion opting to adopt Spanuth’s Helgoland location instead^(x⁾.

Otto Jessen, a German geographer, also believed that there had been a connection between Atlantis and Tartessos. Jean Gattefosse was convinced that the Pillars of Heracles were at Tartessos, which he identifies as modern Seville. However, Mrs E. M. Whishaw, who studied in the area for 25 years at the beginning of the 20th century, believed that Tartessos was just a colony of Atlantis. The discovery of a ‘sun temple’ 8 meters under the streets of Seville led Mrs Whishaw to surmise^[⁰⁵³^] that Tartessos may be buried under that city. Edwin Björkman wrote a short book, The Search for Atlantis^[¹⁸¹^] in which he identified Atlantis with Tartessos and also Homer’s Scheria.

Steven A. Arts, the author of Mystery Airships in the Sky, also penned an article for Atlantis Rising in which he suggests that the Tarshish of the Old Testament is a reference to Tartessos and by extension to Atlantis^(r⁾!

More recently Karl Jürgen Hepke has written at length, on his website⁽^a⁾, about Tartessos. Dr Rainer W. Kühne, following the work of another German, Werner Wickboldt, had an article^[⁴²⁹^] published in Antiquity that highlighted satellite images of the Guadalquivir valley that he has identified as a possible location for Atlantis. Kühne published an article⁽^b⁾ outlining his reasons for identifying Tartessos as the model for Plato’s Atlantis.

Although there is a consensus that Tartessos was located in Iberia, there have been some refinements of the idea. One of these is the opinion of Peter Daughtrey, expressed in his book, Atlantis and the Silver City^[0893]in which he proposes that Tartessos was a state which extended from Gibraltar around the coast to include what is today Cadiz and on into Portugal’s Algarve having Silves as its ancient capital.

It was reported⁽^c⁾ in January 2010 that researchers were investigating the site in the Doñana National Park, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, identified by Dr Rainer Kühne as Atlantis in a 2011 paper^(s). In the same year, Professor Richard Freund of the University of Hartford garnered a lot of publicity when he visited the site and expressed the view that it was the location of Tartessos which he equates with Atlantis. The Jerusalem Post in seeking to give more balance to the discussion quoted archaeology professor Aren Maeir who commented that “Richard Freund is known as someone who makes ‘sensational’ finds. I would say that I am exceptionally skeptical about the thing, but I wouldn’t discount it 100% until I see the details, which haven’t been published as far as I know.”^(u⁾

A minority view is that Tarshish is related to Tarxien (Tarshin) in Malta, which, however, is located some miles inland with no connection to the sea. Another unusual theory is offered by Luana Monte, who has opted for Thera as Tartessos. She bases this view on a rather convoluted etymology^(e) which morphed its original name of Therasia into Therasios, which in Semitic languages having no vowels would read as ‘t.r.s.s’ and can be equated with Tarshish in the Bible, which in turn is generally accepted to refer to Tartessos.

Giorgio Valdés favours a Sardinian location for Tartessos^(f), an idea endorsed later by Giuseppe Mura in his 2018 book, published in Italian, Tartesso in Sardegna ^[^2068], the full title of which translates as Tartessos in Sardinia: Reasons, circumstances and methods used by ancient historians and geographers to remove Tartessos (the Tarshish of the Bible) from Caralis and place it in Spanish Andalusia. Caralis is an old name for Cagliari, the Sardinian capital.

Andis Kaulins has claimed that further south, in the same region, Carthage was possibly built on the remains of Tartessos, near the Pillars of Heracles^(j).

A more radical idea was put forward in 2012 by the Spanish researcher, José Angel Hernández, who proposed^(g)(h)that the Tarshish of the Bible was to be found in the coastal region of the Indus Valley, but that Tartessos was a colony of the Indus city of Lhotal and had been situated on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar!

A recent novel by C.E. Albertson^[¹³ ⁰^] uses the idea of an Atlantean Tartessos as a backdrop to the plot.

A relatively recent claim associating Tartessos with Atlantis came from Simcha Jacobovici in a promotional interview^(p⁾ for the 2017 National Geographic documentary, Atlantis Rising. In it, Jacobovici was joined by James Cameron as producer, but unfortunately, the documentary did not produce anything of any real substance despite a lot of pre-broadcast hype.

There is an extensive website⁽^d⁾ dealing with all aspects of Tartessos, including the full text of Schulten’s book on the city. Although this site is in Spanish, it is worthwhile using your Google translator to read an English version.

“Today, researchers consider Tartessos to be the Western Mediterranean’s first historical civilization. Now, at an excavation in Extremadura—a region of Spain that borders Portugal, just north of Seville—a new understanding of how that civilization may have ended is emerging from the orange and yellow soil. But the site, Casas del Turuñuelo, is also uncovering new questions.”^(q) First surveyed in 2014 it was in late 2021, a report emerged of exciting excavations there that may have a bearing on the demise of Tartessos. Work is currently on hold because of a dispute with landowners, with only a quarter of the site uncovered. The project director is Sebastian Celestino Perez. The Atlas Obscura website offers further background and details of discoveries at the site^(t).

^(a)http://web.archive.org/web/20170716221143/http://www.tolos.de/History%20E.htm

^(b) Meine Homepage (archive.org)

^(c)http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/7019522/Lost-city-of-Atlantis-could-be-buried-in-southern-Spain.html

^(d) TARTESSOS.INFO: LA IBERIA BEREBER (archive.org)

^(e) http://xmx.forumcommunity.net/?t=948627&st=105

^(f) http://gianfrancopintore.blogspot.ie/2010/09/atlantide-e-tartesso-tra-mito-e-realta.html

^(g) http://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/mito-y-religion/

^(h) http://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/arqueologia-e-historia/

⁽ⁱ⁾ http://books.google.ie/books/about/Antiguedades_y_Principado_de_la_ilustr%C3%AD.html?id=mIxBueFRuk0C&redir_esc=y

^(j) Pillars of Heracles – Alternative Location (archive.org)

^(k)Archive 3283 | (atlantipedia.ie)

^(l) https://www.richardcassaro.com/atlantis-ruins-europe-megalithic-master-masonry-cyclopean-colony-tarraco-spain/

^(m) https://www.richardcassaro.com/atlantis-ruins-europe-megalithic-master-masonry-cyclopean-colony-tarraco-spain/

⁽ⁿ⁾ (PDF) Tarteso vs la Atlántida: un debate que trasciende al mito (researchgate.net)

^(o) (PDF) Definiendo Tarteso: indígenas y fenicios (researchgate.net)

^(p) Lost City of Atlantis And Its Incredible Connection to Jewish Temple (israel365news.com)

^(q) The Ancient People Who Burned Their Culture to the Ground – Atlas Obscura

^(r) Atlantis Rising magazine #36 http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At

^(s)(PDF) The Archaeological Search for Tartessos-Tarshish-Atlantis and Other Human Settlements in the Donana National Park (researchgate.net) *

^(t) https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/tartessos-casas-del-turunuelo

^(u) https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-news/the-deepest-jewish-encampment

^(v) https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220727-the-iberian-civilisation-that-vanished

^(w) https://www.inh.cat/articles/La-localitzacio-de-Tartessos-es-desconeguda.-Pot-ser-Tartessos-Tortosa-

^(x) Richard Hennig – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)

Tagged Adolf Schulten, Andalusia, Arysio dos Santos, Baestis, C.E. Albertson, Carles Camp, Carolina López-Ruiz, Casas del Turuñuelo, Edwin Bjorkman, Ephorus, Ester Rodríguez González, Extramadura, Gades, Giorgio Valdes, Giuseppe Mura, Gustav Moritz Redslob, Helgoland, Indus Valley, Italy, James Cameron, Jean Gattefosse, José Angel Hernández, Karl Hepke, Luana Monte, Mario Mas Fenollar, Mrs Whishaw, National Geographic, Otto Jessen, Peter Daughtrey, Portugal, Rainer Kuhne, Richard Cassaro, Richard Freund, Richard Hennig, Rodrigo Caro, Sebastian Celestino, Sebastian Celestino Perez, Seville, Simcha Jacobovici, Tarshish, Tartessos, Thera, Tortosa, Valenciano

Franke, Thorwald C.

Published May 21, 2010

Thorwald C. Franke was born in 1971 in Konstanz in southwest Germany. He studied computer science at the University of Karlsruhe and now works as a software developer. Since 1999 he has been promoting the idea of Atlantis having been located in Sicily. He has written a paper, which makes the case for identifying Atlas with king Italos of the Sicels, who was one of the first tribes to inhabit Sicily and gave their name to the island.

In October 2010, Franke announced that a part of his theory has some elements in it that require further research^(f).

He believes that the war with the Atlanteans was recorded by the Egyptians as the conflict with the Sea Peoples of whom the Sicilians are generally accepted to have been part.

Franke has a well-presented website⁽^a⁾, in English and German, where he cogently outlines his views. He has also written a lengthy, 23-page paper on the need for a classification of Atlantis theories. Even though this item is in German, English readers may find it quite interesting using their browser’s translator. Franke has also compiled an extensive list of Atlantis-related websites^(d)that he expanded further in a new format in October 2011.

His paper for the 2^nd Atlantis Conference in Athens in 2008 is available on the Internet^(c) in which he expanded on his Sicilian location for Atlantis.

Franke has also published a book, in German^[³⁰⁰^] that focussed on Herodotus’ contribution to the Atlantis question^(p). In the same paper, he dealt with the true meaning of the word ‘meizon‘ in Timaeus 24e which tells us that Atlantis was ‘greater’ than Asia and Libya combined, which he clarified as actually referring to their combined power rather than size. However, Franke proposed that the Egyptian word ‘wr’, whose primary meaning is ‘big’ and is sometimes used in a metaphorical sense, may have influenced the wording of the Greek text

Then in a more recent (2010) book^[706]regarding Aristotle and Atlantis, he disputes the generally perceived view that Aristotle did not accept the existence of Atlantis. He builds his case on an 1816 misinterpretation by a French mathematician, Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre, of a 1587 commentary on Strabo’s Geographica by Isaac Casaubon. Combined with other evidence he has presented a case that removes the only prominent classical writer alleged to have dismissed the existence of Atlantis. In late 2012 Franke published an English translation with the title of Aristotle and Atlantis^[880]. Franke’s views regarding Aristotle have been well received and his book is frequently cited, most recently by Dhani Irwanto in his Atlantis: The Lost City is in the Java Sea^[1093.110].

Franke has now augmented his book on Aristotle with a YouTube video in English^(l) and German^(m). This important book can now be read on the Researchgate website.^(ae)

2012 also saw the publication, by Franke, of the first English translation of Gunnar Rudberg’s 1917 monograph Atlantis och Syrakusai, now Atlantis and Syracuse^[881]. This is a welcome addition to Atlantis literature in English. Students of the Atlantis mystery owe a debt of gratitude to Herr Franke.

In 2006, Franke published a paper outlining Wilhelm Brandenstein’s contribution to Atlantology which in 2013 he published in English^(g). This was followed by a translation^(h) of his overview of the work of Massimo Pallattino, who had adopted some of Brandenstein’s approaches to the Atlantis question.

On the 30th of May 2013, Franke announced⁽ⁱ⁾ that his Atlantis Newsletter, which until now was only available in German, in future will also be published in English. Today he discusses the antics of extremist Atlantis sceptics and the abuse of Wikipedia. I encourage everyone to register and congratulate Thorwald on this development.

There is also a video clip available of Franke showing his library of Atlantis-related books^(e). 2017 has seen Franke produce a number of 30-minute videos, which readers will find informative. They are available in both German and English, (Just Google Plato’s Atlantis – Thorwald C. Franke – YouTube).

Franke has now (July 2013) revamped his website (https://www.atlantis-scout.de/)

More recently, July 2016 saw the publication, in German, of Kritische Geschichte der Meinungen und Hypothesen zu Platons Atlantis^[¹²⁵⁵^] (Critical history of the hypotheses on Plato’s Atlantis). This tome of nearly 600 pages will undoubtedly be a valuable addition to any serious researcher’s library. There is a promotional video, in German, to go with it^(j). Hopefully, an English translation of the book will follow. However, Franke does provide an English summary of the book^(af). In June 2021, Franke announced the publication of the second edition of this remarkable book, but again, in German only. It is now in two volumes, totalling over 800 pages, which include hundreds of new references^(y). Two publications in one week is a record to be proud of.

In June 2018, Franke published a YouTube video in English^(r) and German^(s) highlighting how Plato’s 9,000 years have been alternatively accepted and then rejected many times over since the time of Plato. Franke proposes that the 9,000 years recorded by Plato were comparable with the accepted age of Egypt in his day, at 11,00 years. However, archaeology has demonstrated that Egypt was only 3,000 years old or less when Plato was alive, suggesting that the 9,000 should be reduced by a comparable amount to arrive at the real-time of Atlantis.

In his Newsletter No.90, Franke has highlighted that a small German right-wing group, ‘Pro Deutschland’, has cited on their website the ‘superior civilisation’ of Atlantis in support of their extremist views.

Franke’s Newsletter No. 103 has now provided us with five parallel versions of the Atlantis texts⁽ⁿ⁾, Two English; Jowett & Bury and Two German; Susemihl & Müller as well as a Greek text from the Scottish classicist John Burnet (1863 – 1928)^[1492].

Franke’s Newsletter No.104 offers an overview of the difficulties involved in accepting Plato’s writings too literally^(o). He gives particular attention to the 9,000 years claimed to have elapsed between the Atlantean War and Solon’s visit to Egypt.

In November 2017, Franke published an uncompromising critique^(q) of Stephen P. Kershaw’s recent book, A Brief History of Atlantis^[1410].

Franke has now published two new videos^(t⁾, in both German and English, in which he reviews a number of Atlantis-related books, both supportive and sceptical. He does so in his usual balanced manner and also exhorts students of Atlantology to learn German to have access to important works only available in that language.

The difficulty of independent researchers getting their work published in academic journals was highlighted by Franke some time ago⁽^a⁾. However, he has had some academic recognition⁽^a⁾ and has modified his view on the function of the academic press vis-á-vis independent writers⁽^a⁾.

>>An interesting paper by Franke entitled The Dark Side of Atlantis Scepticism⁽^aq⁾ was published in 2021, which outlines how scepticism has been used to promote such diverse subjects as false religious and political dogmas.<<

In June 2021, Franke announced the publication of his latest book^(x⁾. Platonische Mythen (Platonic Myths)^[1858], currently in German only. In May 2022 a favourable review, also in German, of Franke’s book was published on the atlantisforschung.de website^(ag). I have archived an English translation in atlantipedia.ie^(ah).

The following month, Franke published Newsletter No.175 in which he accuses the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR) of scientific bias and inconsistency^(z). The full Newsletter should be read but in particular his conclusions below.

“Let us sum up what we have: BMCR claims to accept no self-published books, but it did review such a book [mine-AO’C]. BMCR claims that it accepts only peer-reviewed books, but besides the question, of what this exactly means, they do indeed review books that were not peer-reviewed. BMCR claims to accept translations but did not accept the translation of Gunnar Rudberg [Franke’s]. BMCR claims to review bad Atlantis books of a certain intelligence in order to debunk them, but at the same time, they avoided a review of a bad book by an Atlantis sceptical Oxford scholar. They claim to treat every author with respect but failed to do so in my case, and not only once. And the same scholar who admits that his scientific view was impacted (!) by one of my books writes BMCR reviews about other Atlantis books, but my books are not reviewed. Long story short: BMCR acts in an arbitrary way and damages its credibility. They screwed up everything that can be screwed up. And it was not me who lead them up the garden path. They did that all by themselves.”

In Franke’s Newsletter No.158 published in early 2021, he reviewed a lecture, previously unknown to him, given by Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, in Bologna, a few years ago⁽^aa⁾ during which he apparently misrepresented Franke’s Atlantis theories. Shortly afterward Nesselrath issued a rather intemperate reply to Franke’s criticisms.⁽^ab⁾ A further document(ac) from Franke detailed his continuing annoyance with what he perceives as ‘a breach of trust’ on the part of Nesselrath. Now in August 2021, Nesselrath has reignited matters again with a further assault on Franke’s views⁽^ad⁾, many of which I share. In a further postscript dated 20.08.21⁽^ab⁾ Franke fired off a few more salvos. I think it’s time for an armistice?

However, in April 2023, Franke issued his Newsletter No. 212⁽^ao⁾, with the following introduction;

“Professor Heinz-Günther Nesselrath has once again written and published two PDF articles⁽^ak)(al⁾ to defend his Atlantis scepticism against the arguments brought up by me. One is directed against my internet article “The Dark Side of Atlantis Scepticism” from 2021, based on my book about the reception history of Plato’s Atlantis story from 2016/2021. The other one makes the attempt to undermine especially the literary arguments of Wilhelm Brandenstein, which I cultivated and will cultivate even more in my next publication.”

Franke responded with two papers⁽^am)(an⁾ that should be read in their entirety.

Franke’s Newsletter #193 reviews an interview with sceptic Flint Dibble⁽^ai⁾. He followed that in July 2022 (#194) with a critique of an article ‘Not Exactly Atlantis’ by Professor Carolina López-Ruiz that Franke identifies as over-dependent on the arguments of promoters of the ‘invention hypothesis’ particularly those of Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Diskin Clay. Franke then proceeded to offer a list of her many errors⁽^aj⁾.

>In January 2024, Franke published his Newsletter #215⁽^ao⁾ where he references a 2023 Graham Hancock lecture⁽^ap⁾ in which “He just takes the numbers in Plato’s text literally, and on this basis he makes his conclusions and calculations. He never asks the question, not for a second, that Plato’s numbers could be wrong. Wrong in a very typical and understandable way, when looking to the historical context. Because, all the ancient Greeks were wrong about the age of Egypt (where the Atlantis story allegedly, or really, had come from). They thought, Egypt was 10,000 years old, and older. But in fact, Egypt was founded only around 3,000 BC. Therefore, if an ancient Greek text points to an event 9,000 years before its time, of which it got to know from Egypt, this means in fact a time after 3,000 BC.

Once you realize this, the whole narrative of a prehistorical Ice Age civilization melts down to nothing, and a completely different picture of the Atlantis question appears.<

⁽^a⁾ http://www.thorwalds-internetseiten.de

^(c) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_sicily.htm

^(d)https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlanlinks.htm

^(e) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r2yDLEYfjA

^(f) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/index_engl.htm

^(g) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_brandenstein_engl.htm

^(h) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_pallottino_engl.htm

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_newsl_archive.htm

^(j) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1orj7aqdTo

^(k) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_newsl_archive.htm

^(l) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inWb6IVNWFQ (English)

^(m) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDG7a09xkZE (German)