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

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    NEWS September 2023

    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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Euhemerus

Thayer Ojeda, Luis (L)

Luis_Thayer_OjedaLuis Thayer Ojeda (1874-1942) was a Chilean historian, linguist and keen euhemerist. He spent a long time studying Mediterranean mythologies and concluded that classical mythology is nothing more than a poetic form of a nation’s history. He believed that many of the peoples of Europe, conventionally assumed to have arrived from the east, had in fact come from the west – from Atlantis. Thayer Ojeda also supported the concept of an isthmus at Gibraltar and produced a hypothetical map of the Mediterranean before the breaching of the landbridge. Alexander Braghine wrote enthusiastically about Thayer Ojeda’s work[156.144/7], recommending two of his books, which unfortunately are only available in Spanish.

Euhemerus

Euhemerus (330-260 BC) was a Greek philosopher and was the best known of the classical writers to rationalise mythology as history and who gave his name to this method of rationalising. Comparable views have also been identified in the writings of a number of early authors including. Xenophanes, Herodotus, Hecataeus of Abdera and Ephorus.

Among his contentions was one that identified Zeus as a king who died on Crete(b). Euhemerism particularly saw the ‘gods’ in Greek mythology as glorified manifestations of early kings and cultural heroes from a distant past. Support for this idea has waxed and waned over the centuries, with fewer followers today. An interesting paper(a) by Professor William Harrison on this subject is worth reading.

>Another Greek writer about whom very little is known was Palaephatus, although there is evidence that he wrote in Athens in the late 4th century BC and was also famous for rationalising myths(c).<

(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20190501113737/https://wayback.archive-it.org/6670/20161201173100/http:/community.middlebury.edu/~harris/

(b) Zeus Is Dead: Euhemerus and Crete, S. Spyridakis, The Classical Journal, Vol. 63, No. 8, May, 1968, pp. 337-340.

>(c) https://www.academia.edu/35501801/The_reception_history_of_Palaephatus_1_On_the_Centaurs_in_Ancient_and_Byzantine_texts<

Myths

Myths along with legends and nursery thymes are part of a culture’s folklore. The word is given a primary meaning in dictionaries of  “a traditional story of unknown authorship, serving usually to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of man, or the customs, religious rites etc. of a people. Mythological ‘gods’ were frequently personifications of those natural phenomena.  A secondary meaning is ‘fictitious story’ which is the usual dismissive and derogatory application of the term to the Atlantis story. Time and time again, various ‘myths’ across a wide range of cultures have been shown to have a factual basis. These myths were generated to explain something that is important but incomprehensible. Sometimes myths are imported from other cultures and languages, leading to possible distortion of the original tale.

J. V. Luce, the Irish classics scholar, has highlighted[0120.14] how various Greek myths and legends have been proven to contain historical elements and that Plato’s Atlantis story should be studied with this in mind.

Alexander Braghine quotes the French historian, Gustave Glotz (1862-1935), who wrote in his History of Greece, that “it is a well-known fact that legend comes before history, but an attentive and rigorous analysis of any myth gives us the opportunity to detect historical data even in a myth. The comparative method is very useful in these cases.”

Luce has also pointed out that Plato also uses ‘logos’ or truth rather than ‘muthos’ or legend when referring to the Atlantis story.

Euhemerus (circa 300 BC) was one of the first to propose that the ‘gods’ of Greek myth were in fact ancient heroes that were, by convention, posthumously ‘deified’ by their bardic biographers.

It is perfectly reasonable to assume that the older a myth is the less specific detail it may retain regarding any underlying truth. I would suggest that Plato’s story has at least two elements; (i) an ancient and powerful civilisation was destroyed through inundation hundreds if not thousands of years earlier and (ii) the detailed description of an expansionist Bronze Age alliance that was also destroyed. The first, because of its antiquity, is of necessity vague; the second is incredibly detailed in the manner of an eyewitness account.

The ancient Greeks were apparently not conscious of the last Ice Age and the consequent effects of the melting of the retreating glaciers. Today we are aware of these events and find it interesting that Plato’s description of the flooding of Atlantis and its date appears compatible with real prehistoric facts, although the melting of the glaciers was a relatively slow process and is highly unlikely to have submerged Atlantis in ‘a day and a night’. The second element in Plato’s story is too detailed to be considered as fact but could be accepted as a reasonable embellishment by Plato who in order to emphasise the might of the earlier civilisation, ascribed to it all the trappings of contemporary imperial nations such as the Persians.

Robert Bowie Johnson, Jnr has promoted(c) the idea that the Adam and Eve in Genesis are the counterparts of Zeus and Hera in Greek mythology.

Before writing was developed our ancestors artfully used the rhyme and rhythm (meter) of poetry as a vehicle to ensure the faithful conveyance of their legends and traditions over countless generations. However, the details are often misunderstood or corrupted when such traditions are translated into different languages and the aide memoire value of the original poetry is lost. Even when writing was available but known only to an elite few, the value of verse as a transmission vehicle continued for thousands of years.

The value of traditional stories was highlighted by a recent paper presented at a conference in Japan which resulted from a study of Aboriginal stories from around the Australian coast(d). The details in those stories, relating to the rising sea levels at the end of the last Ice Age, coincide with remarkable accuracy to what has already been demonstrated scientifically. The conclusion is that these oral traditions can reliably span at least ten millennia and raise questions regarding the value  traditional tales in other parts of the globe.

The Internet provides useful access to various mythological resources. One of those is Mythopedia(a) which has a valuable collection of articles and images dealing with mythologies and religions and the possible influence of ancient celestial sights on some aspects of them.

A paper(b) available on the internet by R. Cedric Leonard discusses with his usual thoroughness, various traditions and mythologies that may have contained details of the Atlantis story before Plato wrote his Timaeus and Critias dialogues.

In 2009, a paper(e) on the reliability of orally transmitted myths by Rens Van der Sluijs was published on the thunderbolts website. The same is said of the accuracy of nursery rhymes and other folk tales(f) some of which were of a more secular and sometimes subversive nature(g).

A groundbreaking overview of mythology is on offer[1431] from E. J. Michael Witzel (1943- ) who has traced the origins of many our myths to origins in Africa 100.000 years ago with the understandable revisions and accretions as humans spread throughout our planet, producing both new and local variations of the same themes. His influence today is seen by some, but not all, as comparable to that of James Frazer (1854-1941) and Eliade Mircea (1907-1986).

(a) https://mythopedia.info/

(b) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170113172919/https://www.atlantisquest.com/Myth.html

>(c) https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/zeus-and-hera-0012944<

(d) https://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preserve-history-of-a-rise-in-sea-level-36010

(e) https://thunderbolts.info/tpod/2009/arch09/090127whispers.htm

(f) https://gesteofrobinhood.com/2015/01/03/how-the-people-ensured-their-heros-survival-transmitting-the-rymes-of-robyn-hode-through-time/

(g) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-myths-legends/english-nursery-rhymes-unexpected-and-sometimes-disturbing-historical-origins?nopaging=1

Panchaea

Panchaea was an island in the Indian Ocean first mentioned by the Greek philosopher Euhemerus in the 4th century BC. It is conventionally assumed to be fictional(b) as it shares many of the characteristics of Plato’s Atlantis.

>The excellent Theoi.com website(c) offers all the classical references to Panchaea.<

Nevertheless, Thérêse Ghembaza has boldly proposed(a) that Meroë on the Upper Nile, which can be loosely described as an island, was the Panchaea described by Diodorus Siculus and was, by extension, Plato’s Atlantis.

>The Third Atlantis Conference held on Santorini in 2011 saw a paper from geologist Mircea Ticleanou propose that Panchaea had been located on the Pannonian Plain, an idea supported in a 2018 posting(d).<

(a) http://www.antiqua91.fr/panchea_en.html

(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/panchaea-the-other-atlantis.html

(c) PANCHAEA (Pankhaia) – Fabulous Indian Ocean Island of Greek Legend (theoi.com) *

(d) THE ISLANDS OF THE RELICT PANNONIAN LAKE AFTER EUHEMERUS OF MESSENE (QUOTED BY DIODORUS SICULUS) – THE PANCHAEA LOCATION – Šareni portal (wordpress.com) *

Ogygia*

Ogygia is the home of Calypso, referred to by Homer in Book V of his Odyssey. It is accepted by some as an island in the Mediterranean that was destroyed by an earthquake before the Bronze Age. The Greek writers Euhemerus in the 4th  century BC and Callimachus who flourished in the 3rd century BC,  identified the Maltese archipelago as Ogygia. Others have more specifically named the Maltese island of Gozo as Ogygia. Anton Mifsud has pointed out[209] that Herodotus, Hesiod and Diodorus Siculus have all identified the Maltese Islands with Ogygia.

John Vella has added his support to the idea of a Maltese Ogygia in a paper published in the Athens Journal of History (Vol.3 Issue 1) in which he noted that “The conclusions that have emerged from this study are that Homer’s Ogygia is not an imaginary but a reference to and a record of ancient Gozo-Malta.”

Adding to the confusion, Aeschylus, the tragedian (523-456 BC) calls the Nile, Ogygian, and Eustathius, a Byzantine grammarian (1115-1195), claimed that Ogygia was the earliest name for Egypt(j).

Isaac Newton wrote a number of important works including The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended [1101]in which he discussed a range of mythological links to Atlantis, including a possible connection with Homer’s Ogygia. There is now evidence that he concurred(c) with the idea of a Maltese Ogygia in The Original of Monarchies(d).

Strabo referred to “Eleusis and Athens on the Triton River [in Boiotia]. These cities, it is said, were founded by Kekrops (Cecrops), when he ruled over Boiotia (Boeotia), then called Ogygia, but were later wiped out by inundations.”(i) However, Strabo also declared that Ogygia was to be found in the ‘World Ocean’ or Atlantic (j). To say the least, these two conflicting statements require explanation.

Richard Hennig opted for Madeira following the opinion of von Humboldt. Spanuth argued strongly against either Madeira or the Canaries[0017.149] and gave his support to the Azores as the most likely location of Calypso’s Island.. Not unexpectedly the Azores, in the mid-Atlantic, have also been nominated as Ogygia by other 20th century researchers such as Sykes(e) and Mertz[397]. In a 2019 paper(f), Gerard Janssen also placed Ogygia in the Azores, specifically naming the island of Saõ Miguel, which both Iman Wilkens [610.239] and Spanuth [015.226] also claimed. Spanuth added that until the 18th-century Saõ Miguel was known as umbilicus maris, which is equivalent to the Greek term, omphalos thallasses, used by Homer to describe Ogygia in chapter eight of the Odyssey!

Homer in his Odyssey identifies Ogygia as the home of Calypso. The Roman poet Catullus writing in the 1st century BC linked Ogygia with Calypso in Malta(g). However, Gozo’s claim is challenged by those supporting Gavdos in Crete(k). This opinion has been expounded more fully by Katerina Kopaka in a paper published in the journal Cretica Chronica(l), where her starting point is the claim that Gavdos had been previously known as Gozo! Another Greek claimant is Lipsi(o) in the Dodecanese. We must also add Mljet in Croatia to the list of contenders claiming(p) to have been the home of Calypso. Mljet is also competing with Malta as the place where St. Paul was shipwrecked!

>Further south is the beautiful Greek island of Othoni near Corfu where local tradition claims an association with Calypso. An article on the Greek Reporter website(r) suggests that Evidence confirming this legend appears in the writings of Homer, who described a strong scent of cypress on Ogygia. Many cypress trees are grown on Othonoi.

Shortly after departing the island on a raft, Odysseus is shipwrecked on Scheria, which we know of today as Corfu. This implies that the two islands Homer described were relatively close. Likewise, the islands of Othonoi and Corfu are separated by a relatively short distance. Due to this mythological connection, during the 16th century, many naval maps described Othonoi as ‘Calypso island.‘”

Mifsud quotes another Roman of the same period, Albius Tibullus, who also identified Atlantis with Calypso. Other Maltese writers have seen all this as strong evidence for the existence of Atlantis in their region. Delisle de Sales considered Ogygia to be between Italy and Carthage, but opted for Sardinia as the remains of Calypso’s island.

Other researchers such as Geoffrey Ashe and Andrew Collins have opted for the Caribbean as the home of Ogygia. Another site supports Mesoamerica as the location of Ogygia, which the author believes can be equated with Atlantis(h).  An even more extreme suggestion by Ed Ziomek places Ogygia in the Pacific(b)!

In the Calabria region of southern Italy lies Capo Collone (Cape of Columns). 18th-century maps(m) show two or more islands off the cape with one named Ogygia offering echoes of Homer’s tale.  Respected atlases as late as 1860 continued to show a non-existent island there. It seems that these were added originally by Ortelius, inspired by Pseudo-Skylax and Pliny(n) . Additionally, there is a temple to Hera Lacinia at Capo Colonne, which is reputed to have been founded by Hercules!

By way of complete contrast, both Felice Vinci and John Esse Larsen have proposed that the Faeroe Islands included Ogygia. In the same region, Iceland was nominated by Gilbert Pillot as the location of Ogygia and Calypso’s home[742]. Ilias D. Mariolakos, a Greek professor of Geology also makes a strong case(a) for identifying Iceland with Ogygia based primarily on the writings of Plutarch. He also supports the idea of Minoans in North America.

A more recent suggestion has come from Manolis Koutlis[1617], who, after a forensic examination of various versions of Plutarch’s work, in both Latin and Greek, also placed Ogygia in North America, specifically on what is now the tiny island of St. Paul at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, a gulf that has also been proposed as the location of Atlantis.

Jean-Silvain Bailly also used the writings of Plutarch to sustain his theory of Ogygia, which he equated with Atlantis having an Arctic location[0926.2.299],  specifically identifying Iceland as Ogygia/Atlantis with the islands of Greenland, Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen (Svalbard) as the three islands equally distant from it and each other.

The novelist Samuel Butler (1835-1902) identified Pantelleria as Calypso’s Island, but the idea received little support(q).

However, Ireland has been linked with Ogygia by mainly Irish writers. In the 17th century historian, Roderick O’Flaherty(1629-1718), wrote a history of Ireland entitled Ogygia[0495], while in the 19th century, Margaret Anne Cusack (1832-1899) also wrote a history in which she claimed[1342] a more explicit connection. This was followed in 1911 by a book[1343] by Marion McMurrough Mulhall in which she also quotes Plutarch to support the linking of Ireland and Ogygia. More recently, in The Origin of Culture[0217Thomas Dietrich promotes the same view, but offers little hard evidence to support it.

>In 2023, an article on the Greek Reporter website renewed speculation regarding the possible identification of Ireland with Ogygia(s).

This matter would appear to be far from a resolution.

[0495]+ http://archive.org/stream/ogygiaorchronolo02oflaiala/ogygiaorchronolo02oflaiala_djvu.txt

(a) https://greeceandworld.blogspot.ie/2013_08_01_archive.html

(b) https://www.flickr.com/photos/10749411@N03/5284413003/

(c) See: Archive 3439

(d) http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00040

(e) ‘Where Calypso may have Lived’ (Atlantis, 5, 1953, pp 136-137)

(f)https://www.academia.edu/38535990/AT LANTIC_OGUGIA_AND_KALUPSO (Eng)

https://www.homerusodyssee.nl/id26.htm (Dutch)

(g) Lib. iv, Eleg. 1

(h) See: Archive 3439

(i) Strabo, Geography 9. 2. 18

(j) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogygia

(k) https://gavdosgreece.page.tl

(l) https://www.academia.edu/24851908/Kopaka_K._2011_Gozo_of_Malta_Gozo_of_Crete_Gavdos_._Thoughts_on_a_twinned_Mediterranean_micro-insular_toponymy_and_epic_tradition_???????_???????_??_13-32

(m) https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/734438651719489108/

(n) See: Note 5 in Armin Wolf’s Wayback Machine (archive.org)

(o) http://www.wiw.gr/english/lipsi_niriedes/

(p) National Park The island of Mljet Croatia | Adriagate (archive.org) *

(q) https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/snap-shots-samuel-butler-esq-1893-94 

(r) https://greekreporter.com/2022/10/17/othonoi-island-westernmost-point-greece/ 

(s) https://greekreporter.com/2023/01/21/odysseus-travel-ireland/