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NEWS October 2024
OCTOBER 2024 The recent cyber attack on the Internet Archive is deplorable and can be reasonably compared with the repeated burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. I have used the Wayback Machine extensively, but, until the full extent of the permanent damage is clear, I am unable to assess its effect on Atlantipedia. At […]Read More »
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 »
Diego Ratti
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 *
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.
As there are hundreds of islands ‘between’ Libya and Asia in the Aegean, this interpretation is very imprecise and useless as a geographical pointer.
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.
>>Some years ago, the late R. Cedric Leonard offered the following contribution to the meizon debate:
In Plato’s time (4th century B.C.) he would have written in large (all-capitals), continuous (no spaces between words), Athenian characters. The old Greek word meson would look like MESON in the Athenian script of Plato’s time. But mezon would look like MEION – the ancient Z closely resembled our modern capital letter I – the difference between the S and Z in the large Athenian script is obvious. (The Greek Z resembling our Roman Z is modern and does not apply to the older Attic scripts.)
But even in the later minuscule script the s and z in no wise resemble each other. A minuscule z (zeta) looks like ? while a medial s (sigma) looks like ? (absolutely nothing alike). The final backbreaker is that Plato included the same comparison in his Critias (108), in which his copyists would have to have made an identical mistake in that work as well. The odds are against the same identical mistake occuring in two separate works.(e) (see link for actual characters)<<
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.!
(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)
(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20170113130726/http://www.atlantisquest.com/Plato.html *
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).>>The largest of these was possibly Lake Chad which at its most extensive is estimated to have been greater than the combined Great Lakes of North America.<<
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)
>>However, in the Sept. 2024 edition of National Geographic an article Peter Gwin notes that “the Sahara hasn’t always been a desert. In fact, it transforms from desert to lush savanna about every 21,000 years. A quirk in Earth’s planetary mechanics periodically causes its axis to tilt slightly, increasing the amount of radiation directed to the Northern Hemisphere, which in turns pulls Africa’s seasonal rains northward.”<<
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) .
A team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research led by Professor Martin Claussen published a number of papers in the late 1990s following their production of a successful computer simulation of prehistorical North Africa(v). According to a report on the climateark website (now offline), one of their conclusions was “that the change to desert climate in the Sahara was triggered by changes in the Earth’s orbit and the tilt of Earth’s axis.”
Some, such as Kröpelin, have suggested a connection between the latest aridification of the Sahara and the migration of settlers to the Nile Valley(w), where, coincidentally, the ancient Egypt we know about was founded around 3100 BC.
Others have endeavoured to link the last drying 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 [1470] as well as by Alexander & Rosen and others. >>However, Ulf Richter has pointed out that it is too wide (35km), too elevated (400metres) and too far from the sea (500km) to be seriously considered as the location of Atlantis. Apart from which, a scientific study of the Structure reveals it to be a natural feature(x).<<
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.
A 2017 article on the Popular Archaeology website told us that “New research investigating the transition of the Sahara from a lush, green landscape 10,000 years ago to the arid conditions found today, suggests that humans may have played an active role in its desertification.” (n).
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)
(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
(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
(i) 7. The lakes in the middle of the Sahara desert – Page 8 (archive.org)
(l) See: Archive 3268
(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)
(x) Eye Of The Sahara or Richat Structure » Geology Science *
McQuillen, R(ich)
R(ich) McQuillen is an American investigator who has cogently argued for an Egyptian location for Atlantis. He has diligently gathered an impressive array of evidence from classical writers including Hellanicus, Solinus and Aeschylus to support his view and arranged the morass that is Greek mythology to construct a credible timeframe for the Atlantis narrative.
However, McQuillen is not the first to locate Atlantis in or near Egypt, in fact, the earliest I have found is in the late 19th century by A.N. Karnozhitsky, while the most recent was published by Diego Ratti in 2021.
McQuillen places the Pillars of Heracles at Canopus, which was formerly in the Western Nile delta but is now submerged about 6.5 km from the coast in the Bay of Aboukir. He is also of the opinion that the Egyptians used lunar ‘years’ rather than solar years bringing the backdrop to the Atlantis story into the 2nd millennium BC. However, he now seems to favour the ‘factor ten’ interpretation of Plato’s date.
McQuillen locates Atlantis at Pharos, which was near modern Alexandria. His website(a) is well worth a visit.
Extensive underwater excavations in the region have been undertaken in recent years by Franck Goddio and his team with remarkable results (b).
It is also worth noting that the late Ulf Richter reasoned that a river delta was the most likely topographical setting for Atlantis (c).
In March 2022 McQuillen added six papers(d-i) expanding on background details employed in his interpretation of the Atlantis story. All six are available on the Academia.edu website.
In 2020, McQuillen published A Simple Chronology of Greek Mythology(k) adding a further paper(j) in 2022 that offered a radical reappraisal of Biblical chronology that included the following.
1 People have been questioning Standard Biblical Chronology (the literal times), for 2000 years, and yet this still persists in modern Biblical Archaeology
2 I have thrown out the early dates entirely and introduced a different paradigm to try to find some of these elusive characters. This paper talks about the Pre-Noachian Kings, like Cainan, and links him to the real-world Syrian Hyksos King Khyan, and finds archaeological evidence of the existence of other Hyksos Kings.
3 It links the flood of Noah to the flood of Ahmose and Atrahasis, and shows it to be a real flood caused by Santorini.
4 It finds Jacob at the same time as the Israel stele of Merneptah. It finds Joseph as the Semitic Pharoah Siptah, whose mother has the same name as Jacob’s second wife. It finds Moses around the time of the Smallpox plague in Egypt (ranging from Ramses 4 to 9)(1182?1136BC).
In his paper ‘Perfecting Plato’ McQuillen is critical of some available translations available to us, of passages in Plato’s Atlantis texts. In his summary of the paper
“There are a bunch of controversial passages within the Timaeus. This has led to 50k books on the topic with a bunch of different interpretations of the same passages. These stem from mistranslations, intentional mistakes, wild speculation, etc… The purpose of this paper is to identify and correct the mistakes and add additional insight. The Timaeus is long and in most parts well-translated and irrelevant, so I’m selecting only interesting passages, where I can add insight. I’m using the Bury Translation, with a little bit of Calcidius thrown in.
Plato’s myth has been described as a fable and a description of an idealized society. Instead, it was intended as a story about 18th dynasty Egypt, and its interactions with the Haunebu (Aegaens). The past is often romanticized and idealized in the history books; History is written by the winners.” He then proceeded to comment on a number of specific passages in Timaeus(h).
In 2024, McQuillen published a new paper(l) focused on the work of Manetho. “This paper explores other Egyptan Sources to verify the veracity of Plato’s tale; specifically, intends a lot of the peculiarites in Plato’s text, that also exist in Manetho’s writngs. Plato says this tale comes from Solon in the days of Amasis; there are, in fact, Egyptan elements within this tale which were not invented by Plato, and can be confirmed to also exist in the Egyptan writngs from Manetho and others. Manetho specifically does menton 9000 years, and a war, and a flood, and a city, similar to Plato.”
In this more recent paper, he identifies Avaris as the City of Atlantis although as you can see above he previously(2007) named Pharos, near Alexandria. In the same paper he also identifies the Atlantean Gadir with Rhakotis, an ancient city near Alexandria.
In 2020, McQuillen published the first draft of A Simple Chronology of Greek Mythology, in which he was inspired by Herodotus to develop his own methodology and applied it to the histories of Athens, Crete and Egypt(m). He concluded “I have attempted to create a mythological timeframe for a majority of the Greek Mythological Kings in Greece. These timeframes have been tied to real world events like Troy. They have been synchronized with known timeframes of Egyptian Pharaohs. I list the kings of 20 different ancient cities and attempted to synchronize their history. I have created a framework to compare likes with likes and show when and where one might expect to find these names in Archaeology.”
(a) http://gizacalc.freehostia.com/Atlantis.html
(b) Franck Goddio: Homepage (archive.org)
(c) Archive 6142 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(d) https://www.academia.edu/43493561/A_Simple_Chronology_of_Greek_Mythology_First_Draft
(e) https://www.academia.edu/69049558/Dissecting_Diodorus_The_Legend_of_Myrina_and_Orus
(f) https://www.academia.edu/76436465/Finding_a_God_Phaethon_King_Tut_and_the_Amarna_Period
(g) https://www.academia.edu/76548637/Defining_Danaus_and_Egyptus
(h) https://www.academia.edu/76880053/Perfecting_Plato_A_colorful_commentary_on_the_Timaeus
(i) https://www.academia.edu/77235625/Perfecting_Plato_A_colorful_commentary_on_the_Critias_Part_1
(j) (99+) A Simple Chronology for Biblical Archaeology | Rich McQuillen – Academia.edu
(k) https://www.academia.edu/43493561/A_Simple_Chronology_of_Greek_Mythology_-First_Draft
(m) (99+) A Simple Chronology of Greek Mythology -First Draft | Rich McQuillen – Academia.edu *
Lampedusa
Lampedusa is the principal island of the Pelagian (Pelagie) archipelago off the coa
st 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 
dubbed 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) *
(e) About | Atletenu (archive.org)
(f) (99+) Lampedusa: prehistoric village of Tabaccara coast | Diego Ratti – Academia.edu
Avaris
Avaris (Tell el Dab’a) located in the Nile Delta, was the capital of the Hyksos rulers of northern Egypt during the second millennium BC. Recent excavations have unearthed Minoan-style frescoes, including bull leaping. At least one commemtator has remarked on the similarity of this ‘island’ city to Plato’s Atlantis (The Jerusalem Post, July 12th 2006).
Manfred Bietak (1940- ) the celebrated Austrian archaeologist spent many years excavating at two sites in the Nile Delta and identified Tell El-Dab’a as the location of Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos period; and Piramesse, which was the capital of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt(b). In 1991 he delivered an illustrated lecture at the British Museum on his most recent discoveries in Egypt(c).
In 2021, Diego Ratti published Atletenu(a), in which he identified the Hyksos as Atlanteans and situated their capital as Avaris! He claims to have matched Plato’s description of the city of Atlantis with the Egyptian location. I identified a number of discrepancies and was not convinced.
>In a recent (2024) paper(e), R(ich) McQuillen also identified Avaris as the City of Atlantis although you can see that he previously (2007) named Pharos, near Alexandria as Atlantis(d). In that earlier paper he also identified the Atlantean Gadir with Rhakotis, an ancient city near Alexandria.<
Also See: Meizon
(a) About | Atletenu (archive.org)
(b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Bietak
(c) (99+) Avaris: Capital of the Hyksos | Manfred Bietak – Academia.edu
(d) http://gizacalc.freehostia.com/Atlantis.html (See Summary) *
(e) (99+) Manifestin with Manetho: Finding commonality from Plato’s Atlantis and Egyptian Sources | Rich McQuillen – Academia.edu *
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Atlas
Atlas was the first king of Atlantis and was the son of Poseidon according to the story of Atlantis from Plato. However, in traditional
, Atlas was the son of the Titan, Iapetus, often identified with the biblical Japheth, and the nymph Clymene. This apparent contradiction can be explained by the fact that the name Atlas is applied to more than one figure in Greek legends.
Atlas is usually portrayed kneeling with the world on his shoulders. However, the earliest known statue of Atlas, the 2nd century Farnese Atlas(c), which is a Roman copy of an older Greek statue, has the sky is represented as a sphere with a map of the stars and constellations known to the Ancient Greeks, which they represented as objects, animals and mythological creatures and characters. 16th century cartographers assumed that the globe represented the Earth, not the sky and since then it has been depicted accordingly.
Edwin Björkman noted the opinion that the name Atlas does not have a Greek root but is generally thought to have a Semitic origin. He also suggested the possibility that the name may have been derived from one of the Greek words for sea, thalassa.
However, Peter James points out[047.190] the name has a clear etymology in the Greek root ‘tlaô’ which can mean ‘to bear’, ‘to endure’ or ‘to dare’.>Tantalis, the capital of ancient Lydia, was apparently named after the legendary King Tantalus, its first king, who shared remarkable similarities with Atlas, the first king of Atlantis; they were both Titans, supported the heavens and had mountains named after them(f).<
Atlas has also been identified with both the Egyptian god Shu and the biblical Enoch, the latter being a more controversial concept. Lewis Spence went further and identified the Meso-American deity, Quetzalcoatl, with Atlas!
A somewhat more conventional view was offered by Thorwald Franke who has written a convincing paper(a) identifying Atlas with king Italos of the Sicels, who gave their name to Sicily and were one of the earliest groups to inhabit the island.
A more radical view has been put forward by Brit-Am writer John R.Salverda, who claims that the biblical Adam is the Atlas of Plato’s Atlantis narrative. A similar theory was proposed by Roger M. Pearlman in a 2018 booklet [1596]. In this small, difficult to read, book the author suggests, a linkage between the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah and Atlantis, places Atlantis in the Jordan Valley and equates Abraham with Atlas – “ If Atlas as described in Plato’s work was based on a historic figure, Abraham alone meets key criteria.”In a more recent paper(d), Pearlman also suggested that Göbekli Tepe was founded by Noah (Noach) and his sons!
Moving further east, the Hittites had an equivalent if not an original version of Atlas in the form of Tantalus. The Hittites in turn may have developed the identity from the Hurrian god Ubelleris. It was this Anatolian figure that led Peter James to his conclusion that Atlantis had been located in Turkey. Tantalus had a son Pelops, whom some consider Phrygian and according to Herodotus the Phrygians were the oldest race on earth.
Diego Ratti claims “that Atlantis was Avaris, capital of the Hyksos Kingdom and that king Atlas was 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’.”(e)
An even more extreme idea has been proposed by Sean Griffin that the yogic concept of ‘Kundalini’ is contained within part of Plato’s Atlantis story(b). Griffin begins his explanation by pointing out that Atlas is the medical term for the 33rd vertebra of the human spine!
(a) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_italos.htm
(b) https://www.scribd.com/doc/211332861/Atlantis-and-Kundalini
(c) https://www.dioi.org/ggg.htm
(d) https://www.academia.edu/38664571/Gobekli_Tepe_founded_by_Noah_and_sons
(e) Atletenu | Atletenu (archive.org)
(f) https://www.jstor.org/stable/262536?seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents *
Andrews, P.B.S.
P.B.S. Andrews is an English historian who has been involved in a variety of controversial subjects including the dating of Pride and Prejudice, the Piltdown Hoax(a) and the location of Ithaca. In 1967 in a short article[056] in the journal Greece and Rome, he expressed the view the 2nd millennium BC explosion of Thera had inspired the Atlantis story. In addition, he suggested that Plato’s declaration that the island of Atlantis was larger than Libya and Asia combined, was the result of either a scribal error or a misreading of Solon’s notes. The alteration of a single letter would have rendered the translation as noting the island being located ‘between’ Libya and Asia. This explanation is somewhat suspect as the majority of Atlantis candidates, such as the Atlantic could not be described in those terms. In fact, the only place that is exactly between Libya and Asia is Egypt!
However, Andrews’ idea never gained any great support and in recent years the explanation offered by Thorwald C. Franke is that the Egyptian priest was describing the military power of Atlantis being greater than the combined might of Egypt’s traditional enemies, the Libyans and the Asians. This interpretation is more compatible with the Greek word used for ‘greater’, meizon.
>Nevertheless, in 2021 Diego Ratti in his book, Atletenu [1821] questioned 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, like Andrews, insists should be read as between Libya and Asia, where Avaris clearly is!<
(a) https://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/DAWSON/Dawson_Prosecution/historyislies.html
Amasis
Amasis II, was the Greek name of Ahmose who reigned from 570-526 BC. Amasis is given by Plato as the 
name of the Egyptian pharaoh at the time of Solon’s visit to Sais. However, Phyllis Young Forsyth[266.38] protests that Plato did not claim that Amasis was on the throne at the time of Solon’s visit, but merely identified Sais as the home of Amasis. The English translations of Tim.21e by Bury, Jowett and Lee are compatible with this, as is the German translation of Plato’s text by Franz Susemihl(a). John Michael Greer[0345], among others, supports this view.
Firm historical information for this period is often scanty and sometimes contradictory. However, it is thought that Solon left Athens for a number of years and some of that period may have overlapped with part of Amasis’ reign. Herodotus is our principal source of information regarding Amasis and he clearly mentions (Bk.1.30) that Solon was at the court of Amasis. Zhirov quotes the views of V.S. Struve, who believed that Herodotus’ 3rd century BC dates were out by 25 years.
Ivan Linforth strongly disputes[041.300] the idea of Solon meeting Amasis as “chronologically quite improbable”. He claims that Solon (c.630-560 BC) had returned to Athens before the reign of Amasis. John Michael Greer[0345.15], not very convincingly, attempts to counter this idea with the suggestion that at the time of Solon’s visit, Amasis had not yet ascended the throne.
>A more recent refutation of the claim that Plato’s reference to Amasis is an anachronism is offered Diego Ratti(b).<
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20180901011839/https://atlantis-schoppe.de/susemihl.pdf
(b) Solon and anachronism issue (archive.org) *