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NEWS October 2024
October 2024 Hi to everyone I’m taking a break during the first two weeks of October, so there will be minimal activity on the site apart from the ongoing project of replacing broken links. Back Soon, Tony September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we […]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 »
Kings of Atlantis
Arcadia
Arcadia is a central region of the Peloponnese in Greece. It is one of a number of locations that have been proposed as inspiring elements of Plato’s Atlantis
story. One proponent is Oliver D. Smith who argues that “Plato based his king Atlas on a mythical Arcadian king of the same name and his main inspiration for Atlantis was the town Methydrium and nearby city Megalopolis, both in Arcadia.”
This, together with some other details, such as similarities between the ten kings of Atlantis and the ten kings of Arcadia led Smith to his conclusion(a).
Sumerians *
Sumeria was one of the earliest civilisations emerging between the 6th and 5th millennia BC and was situated in what is now central Iraq.
It was unknown in Europe until the middle of the 19th century. With the discovery and the decipherment of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets the sophistication of their culture prompted the idea that Sumer had been ‘the cradle of civilisation.’ Subsequent discoveries, such as those in the Indus Valley and more recently Göbekli Tepe have now somewhat diluted that idea.
Nevertheless, there is an acceptance that the Sumerians were very advanced in the field of mathematics and astronomy. The late Ernest McClain, a professor of music, was convinced that music theory could be traced back to the Sumerians as early as 3000 BC.
The origin of the Sumerians is still something of a mystery as is their language which seems to be an ‘isolate’, unrelated to any known language group(q). The Flem-Aths in an Atlantis Rising article (Issue 95) and Atlantis Beneath the Ice [981.70] claimed a cultural and genetic linkage between the Sumerians and the Haida of northwest America. The Flem-Aths also noted [062.54] that some have linked the languages of the two peoples!
Ronnie Gallagher has suggested that migrants from the Caucasus had provided the impetus that led to the development of the Sumerian civilisation. Gallagher’s theory is supported by Jerald Jack Starr on his Sumerian Shakespeare website, who emphatically attributes a Caucasian origin to the Sumerians(l).
Emilio Spedicato has controversially suggested that the Sumerians came from the Tibetan region!(m) Equally provocative were the views of Catherine Acholonu-Olumba, who as the author of Eden in Sumer on the Niger [1833], claimed that her book, “provides multidisciplinary evidence of the actual geographical location in West Africa of the Garden of Eden, Atlantis and the original homeland of the Sumerian people before their migration to the “Middle East”. By translating hitherto unknown pre-cuneiform inscriptions of the Sumerians, Catherine Acholonu and Sidney Davis have uncovered thousands of years of Africa’s lost pre-history and evidences of the West African origins of the earliest Pharaohs and Kings of Egypt and Sumer such as Menes and Sargon the Great.”(p)
Sumeria has now been proposed as a possible source of the Atlantis story. Dr Ashok Malhotra, a professor of Engineering, has suggested(a) that that ‘the likelihood of the Atlantis stories being of Sumerian origin is strengthened by the fact that the submergence of ancient cities was a strong part of the Sumerian mythology. It dominates their historical tradition. The destruction of the ancient city as a result of sin was also part of their beliefs.’ Malhotra then proposes that these Sumerian stories reflected actual flooding events in the Indus Valley region that were brought first to Sumeria and then were later transferred to Egypt and from thence via Solon to Plato to us.
George Michanowsky went much further and claimed that the Sumerians had known Atlantis under the name of NI-DUK-KI, known today as Dilmun[282.66]. The renowned Henry Rawlinson interpreted this name to mean ‘blessed hill’ or ‘blessed isle’. While Michanowsky’s suggestion is highly speculative, if correct, it would be the earliest known reference to Atlantis.
The Sumerian king list(e) from Larsa records eight kings (some versions note ten) before the Deluge, which may have been reflected, in a distorted fashion, in the ten patriarchs of Genesis and/or the ten kings of Atlantis! Another suggested link is with the eight generations between Adam and Noah recorded in Genesis chapter 5.
John Sassoon would seem to support Malhotra’s thesis in his book[566], which proposes a Sumerian origin for the Jews with possible earlier links with the Indus Valley. He is not concerned with Atlantis, just the ancestry of the Jewish people of whom Abraham was born in Sumeria around 2000-1800 BC. Sassoon’s views offer a possible transmission route for Eastern traditions and myths to have reached Egypt and subsequently through Solon to Athens.
More recently, Dr Willem McLoud, a South African researcher, commented that “we have good reason to think that Atlantis was not located beyond the pillars of Heracles in the Atlantic Ocean, as is so often propagated, but that it was actually none other than the ancient land of Sumer itself.” Mcloud is primarily concerned with the Sumerians and Akkadians, which he will expand on in a forthcoming book(n).
In 2001, a book by Radek Brychta was published in the Czech Republic in which he also advocates a Sumerian connection. He identifies Atlantis with the legendary Dilmun of Sumerian legend and locates it on the Indus civilisation island of Dholavira. Excerpts from this fascinating book are available on the Internet and are worth a read.
However, the most extreme claims came from Zechariah Sitchin who proposed that the Sumerians had been ‘influenced’ by ancient astronauts from the planet Nibiru, which information is to be found in their cuneiform tablets if Sitchin’s translation is to be believed. Similar daft ideas(g) have been put forward by Hermann Burgard[1316] but so far have only been foisted on a German-reading public.
As if that was not bad enough, we now (Oct 2016) have the Iraqi Transport Minister claiming, among other matters, that the Sumerians launched spaceships 8,000 years ago(h)!
The Sumerian texts also crop up in the wild theories of Dieter Bremer[1022] and Jakob Vorberger, who claim that Atlantis was a space station(I)!
Jim Allen, the leading advocate of ‘Atlantis in the Andes’ has also claimed(b) a Sumerian connection with South America citing Ruth & Alpheus Hyatt Verrill, who include in their book[838.293] three pages of Sumerian words compared with the language of ancient Peru as well as other cultural aspects there. They also believed that Sargon (2369-2314 BC) was known in Peru as the deity Viracocha! Their fanciful idea stems from an account of Sargon sailing to the West and spending three years there! Zhirov supported this claim[458.23] describing it as ”a seemingly semi-fantastic theory”. My reason for considering this claim to be nonsensical, is simply that Sargon was continually engaged in expanding his empire and constantly dealing with rebellions in the various city-states that he ruled over. The idea that he took three years out to visit America, 14,000 km away, is in no way credible.
Nevertheless, the idea of Sargon in South America persists with James Bailey repeating it in Sailing to Paradise[0150.66] and more recently by the Afrocentrist, Clyde Winters in an article on the Ancient Origins website(f) in which he quotes Bailey and the Verrills as supporting Lake Titicaca as the Lake Manu of Sumerian tradition. A further article(j) on the same website begins with the forceful claim that “it is becoming increasingly clear that the Sumerians had established a colony in South America called Kuga-Ki.” The paper is based on a series of questionable artefacts, the Fuente Magna Bowl, the Crespi Collection and the Pokoyia monument!
The Fuente Magna Bowl is frequently offered as evidence of a pre-Columbian link with the Sumerians in America(c), although its provenance is unclear and there are the inevitable suggestions of a hoax. A sceptical view of the ‘Bowl’ by Carl Feagans(k) is available.
Michel Leygues has published two papers in which he offers evidence that the Sumerian and Akkadian languages can be identified in the languages of many of the native America peoples including the Hopi, Navajo and Incas(s)(t). Leygues also “presents the hypothesis that a kinship exists between Yamato Kotoba ideographic values, and Sumerian and Akkadian values. This despite a great geographical distance between Mesopotamia and Japan, and at different historical periods of language use. “(u)
Other commentators have suggested that the Sumerians reached Spain. Dr Paul Haupt (1858-1926}, an early Assyriologist proposed that the ‘two rivers’ in the story of Utnapishtim, a Noachian equivalent, were the Guadalquivir and Guadiana of Andalusia(r). Mario Mas Fenollar is a modern advocate for Sumerians in Spain.
The very existence of Sumerians has recently been attacked in an appendix to The Three Ages of Atlantis[972] by Marin, Minella & Schievenin. They maintain that the Sumerian ‘language’ “could be an artificial construct created by Akkadian priests” to be used for liturgical purposes. These ideas were first expressed at the end of the 19th century by the respected Orientalist, Joseph Halévy. Andi Zeneli has expressed comparable ideas(d) regarding the Sumerian language.
Uwe Topper’s son Ilya has also put forward the idea that the Sumerians did not exist(o). His paper is a critique, originally in Spanish, of Gunnar Heinsohn’s Die Sumerer gab es nicht.
(a) In Search of Atlantis — Getting Closer (archive.org) (new link)
(c) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1551445/posts
(d) https://sumeriantestament.blogspot.ie/2012/08/what-is-sumerian.html
(i) Mesopotamische Überlieferungen | Atlantis Mythologie (archive.org)
(k) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2015/03/sumerians-in-bolivia-probably-not/
(l) https://sumerianshakespeare.com/734501.html
(m) https://www.academia.edu/6556879/AA_MER_MERU_rel_2
(n) Chapter summary – WhisperingTales (archive.org) *
(p) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262069423_Eden_In_Sumer_On_The_Niger
(q) The origin of the Sumerians and the great flood (archive.org)
(r) https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/528616.pdf
(s) Sumer, Akkad, And The Languages Of The Navajo, The Hopi, The Zuni (calameo.com)
(t) Akkad, Sumer, and Incas, Nazcas languages (calameo.com)
(u) Sumer, Akkad and Yamato Kotoba by michel leygues – Issuu
Lisbon (L)
Lisbon, capital of modern Portugal was previously called Olissipo, which is a modification of its Phoenician name ‘Alis Ubbo’ that some writers, such as Steven Sora, suggest that it means ‘the port of 
Ulysses’. Later, under the Romans, it was known as ‘Felicita Julia Olisipo’ and renamed by the Moors ‘Aschbouna’.
Lisbon has been identified by some with one of the first ten kings of Atlantis. One of whom was called Elasippos and it is claimed that he gave his name to that part of the Atlantean empire over which he ruled. The assumption is that over time Elasippos was corrupted to Lisbon. However, Plato pointed out that the names given by Solon had been Hellenised and consequently Elasippos would probably have been originally known by a totally dissimilar name and so any suggested connection with Lisbon would appear to have no real foundation.
Steven Sora, in The Triumph of the Sea Gods[0395.219] , maintains that the Lisbon area held the true location of both Troy AND Atlantis. He repeats this in his essay in Douglas Kenyon’s Forgotten Origins[1191].
Egyptian God-Kings
The Egyptian God–Kings have been equated with the original ten Kings of Atlantis by R. Cedric Leonard. He points out how Manetho, the Egyptian historian writing in the 2nd century BC, refers to the Egyptian god-kings having reigned “in a foreign land” thousands of years before Plato. Leonard has compared Manetho’s list with that of the Turin Papyrus and discovered a remarkable similarity between the two lists of god-kings. In addition, he points out(a) that the Turin Papyrus records the next series of kings in 9850 BC. It is important to note that both the Turin Papyrus and the writings of Manetho are the subject of some debate regarding their reliability.
Frank Joseph pointed out that ten kings ruled both Sumer and Babylonia before a great Flood, while Genesis refers to ten antediluvian ‘patriarchs’.
Joseph Robert Jochmans identified(b) similar parallels between the recorded dynasties of the ancient Middle East.
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20170615124221/http:/www.atlantisquest.com/Writings.html *
Murex
Murex is the name of a family of sea snails that led to the ![murex[1]](https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/murex1.jpg)
Phoenicians controlling the very lucrative trade in purple-dyed silk(b). Some have attributed the origin of the name ‘Phoenicia’ to a Greek word meaning ‘purple’.
The dye had been extracted from the Murex snails and the resulting cloth was considered highly desirable to such an extent that in later years the colour was reserved for members of the Roman imperial family. It took 10,000 snails to produce one gram of dye, making it extremely expensive. Unfortunately, the process involved putrefaction and the use of urine, contributing to an extremely melodious operation.
Demand for this exclusive dye persisted for nearly 3,000 years. Purple was also the preserve of cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church, equating them with kings, until the 15th century when red was decreed for them, a situation that still pertains. Professor Maria Michaela Sassi of Pisa University has written an interesting paper(k) on the ancient Greek perception of colour, in the course of which she refers to the processing of the murex snail, noting that “Various nuances from yellow to green, to blue, to red could be obtained depending on how much water was added and when the boiling process was stopped”
>The link with Atlantis stems from Plato’s reference (Critias 120b) to the convention for Atlantean rulers of when meeting to wear kuanon stolen. This phrase that has been variously translated into English as ‘sable vestments’ by Robert Bury and W.R.M. Lamb, while other translations on offer are ‘dark blue‘ (Lee), ‘steel blue‘ (Wells) and ‘purple‘ (David Horan). Anton Mifsud advised me that the Greek text more correctly translates as ‘dark-blue garments’ confirming both Jowett and Thomas Taylor who translate kuanos as ‘azure’. It is more commonly referred to nowadays as ‘Tyrian Purple‘.<
The ancient Greek identification of colour, particularly the absence of references to blue, is discussed by Ashley Cowie in a March 2021 article.(q) He notes that “The story of “blue being invisible in history” begins in 1858 when William Gladstone, who later became Chancellor of the Exchequer then Prime Minister of Great Britain, read Homer’s The Odyssey. Gladstone noticed that Homer described the sea color as “wine-dark” – leading him to ask the question; why not “deep blue?” Gladstone investigated this curiosity and counted the color references in The Odyssey finding that while black was mentioned almost 200 times, and white about 100, blue did not appear once. Broadening his research he then determined that “blue” didn’t exist anywhere in Greek writing. Nowhere.”
There is some suggestion that the Phoenicians were not the first to develop this process following the discovery of mounds of Murex shells on Crete dated to the early 2nd millennium BC. It is also claimed that the Italians of the same period also knew of the procedure(g).
Over a century ago James Baikie noted[142] that “the dyeing of robes with the renowned ‘Tyrian purple,’ must be denied to them and claimed for the Minoans. In 1903, Messrs. Bosanquet and Currelly found on the island of Kouphonisi (Leuke), off the south-east coast of Crete, a bank of the pounded shell of the murex from which the purple dye was obtained, associated with pottery of the Middle Minoan period; and in 1904 they discovered at Palaikastro two similar purple shell deposits, in either case, associated with pottery of the same date.”
It is difficult not to see a possible link between murex dye developed by the Phoenicians and the biblical injunction to Jews of the same region to wear blue (tekhelet) tassels (tzitziyots) from the corners of four-cornered garments. Recently, near the caves of the Dead Sea Scrolls a rare 2,000-year-old fragment of cloth was discovered(c) that had been treated with the Murex dye.
Michael Hübner pointed out that apart from Murex, Northwest Africa and the Canaries were home to the Indigo plant and the Orseille lichen, which both can be used to produce blue dyes(h).
Frank Joseph notes that Berber village elders even today wear special dark blue robes when meeting in council. This is seen as an echo of the custom of the kings of Atlantis as recorded by Plato Critias (120b-c).
A similar purple dyeing process was discovered in Central America(a) adding to the suggestion of pre-Columbian contacts between Europe and the Americas. In September 2016, it was announced(e) that “a George Washington University researcher has identified a 6,200-year-old indigo-blue fabric from Huaca, Peru, making it one of the oldest-known cotton textiles in the world and the oldest known textile decorated with indigo blue.” Unfortunately, the source of the dye was not identified. Even today, in Oaxaca, Mexico, shellfish dyeing is still carried on, but using the milky liquid from the purpura patula, a marine mollusc(f), unlike the murex mollusc which is killed in the process of obtaining the ink, the purpura have always been milked alive and left to replenish their dye fluid for harvesting at another time (See: video clip(m). A similar procedure is still employed by the Boruca people of Costa Rica (l). If there was a dyeing link between the Americas and the Mediterranean. in which direction did it initially travel?
In Appendix One of Andrew Collins‘ Gateway to Atlantis [072.357] the author offers further information on the extraction of purple dye from shellfish in parts of Central and South America. He thought that “Quite clearly, the presence of purple dye processes in Costa Rica, Mexico and Ecuador, as well as in Peru, could well constitute positive proof of transoceanic contact with ancient seafarers from the eastern Mediterranean.” Collins quotes two early 20th-century commentators, Wolfgang Born and Thomas Crawford Johnston, who also reached the same conclusion.
Pliny the Elder noted that Uba, a Numidian king, intended to establish Murex farming on the Hesperides located 12,000 km from Cadiz. This comment has been linked with a mention by Diodorus Siculus regarding a large island known to the Phoenicians outside the Pillars of Heracles. Advocates of an Atlantic location for Atlantis have seized upon these two references, although the linkage is somewhat tenuous.
There is an extensive online article(d) on the history and use of ‘Tyrian Purple’.
A few years ago the BBC published a short piece(i) on the chemistry behind the Tyrian Purple. In August 2018 they returned to the subject with a more extensive article(j) outlining the mythology and history associated with the dye.(i)
In 2020, it was reported(o) that a Tunisian man, Mohamed Ghassen Nouira, claimed to have rediscovered the secret of how to produce the famous purple dye and has developed a small business selling the dye.
A 2022 paper by Sarah Holz adds further background information.(p)
In November 2023, the BBC published another article on the subject of Tyrian Purple, recycling old material and adding a few additional titbits(r).
>A recent (April 2024) article has noted(s) that purple pigment was also highly prized in China 2,800 years ago which was “used in ancient artworks such as wall paintings, the famed terracotta warriors, ceramics, metalware and jewelry. A technological wonder, the pigment was made through a complex process of grinding up raw materials in precise proportions and heating to high temperatures.”<
(b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple
(f) https://www.clothroads.com/the-color-purple-purpura-shell-dyeing-in-oaxaca/
(h) https://web.archive.org/web/20190828035428/http://www.asalas.org:80/papers/Huebner_Atlantis_Circumstantial_Evidence_full.pdf (2.2.1.20 R120)
(i) https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3103354.stm
(j) https://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180801-tyrian-purple-the-regal-colour-taken-from-mollusc-mucus
(k) https://aeon.co/essays/can-we-hope-to-understand-how-the-greeks-saw-their-world
(l) https://web.archive.org/web/20150317164632/http://ballenatales.com/milking-of-the-murex-snail/
(m) https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p07xm31g/the-dangerous-pursuit-of-one-of-the-world-s-rarest-colours
(n) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/ancient-purple-dye-0014035
(o) In Tunisia, a purple enthusiast brings this ancient pigment back to life – France 24 – Teller Report
(p) Purple Reign: The Cross-Cultural History of Murex – Sarah Holz
(q) https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/color-blue-0010720
(r) Tyrian purple: The lost ancient pigment that was more valuable than gold – BBC Future
Mnemosyne
Mnemosyne the Greek goddess of the mind is suddenly invoked in Critias (108d) to assist with the 
recollection of the details of the Atlantis story. This has been seen by some, such as James Bramwell, as being in conflict with Plato’s explicit statement Critias (113b) that he was working from Solon’s written notes. Plato was advancing in years when he wrote Critias, so when he declares that as a child he memorised the names of the first kings of Atlantis it is quite natural that he expressed the hope that his memory was still reliable.
To my mind, if Plato had invented the Atlantis story he would have had no reason to depend on childhood memories. In fact, unless we are to attribute very great deviousness to Plato, his very reference to Mnemosyne reinforces the credibility of his narrative.
However, as Nicholas G. Carr (1959- ) has explained(a), in the early 4th century BC Greece, writing was something of a novelty and viewed negatively by some, including Socrates. Although he was a writer, Plato was familiar with the important place that oral transmission had in Athenian culture. In fact, Plato discusses the subject of oral versus written in Phaedrus, in which ‘Socrates’ discredits writing as inferior to memory because it cannot be probed by questioning and so offers “the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.”
(a) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3049/