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

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Medinet Habu

Horned Helmets *

Horned Helmets have been worn by various warrior groups from ancient times but, despite popular belief, not by the Vikings. Jürgen Spanuth, the leading proponent of a North Sea Atlantis, has identified the Sea Peoples who attacked the Egyptians as North Sea Peoples. The attack was recorded by the Egyptians on the walls of Medinet Habu and where they depicted some of the invaders with horned helmets. Spanuth claimed that “The only known Bronze Age horned helmets come from north Europe”[0015.55]. The illustrations from the Viscø helmets in the Danish National Museum used by Spanuth[0015.31] were more likely to have been for ceremonial use and show no signs of having been used in battle.

An early 2022 report confirmed that recent radiocarbon dating pushed these helmets back to long before the Vikings – “For many years in popular culture, people associated the Viksø helmets with the Vikings,” said Helle Vandkilde, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark. “But actually, it’s nonsense. The horned theme is from the Bronze Age and is traceable back to the ancient Near East.”(g)

A January 2018 article highlights a horned figure on the so-called Oseberg Tapestry, who appears to be leading a religious procession, contributing to the theory that the few horned helmets found so far were probably used for ceremonial purposes(e). Another textile fragment found at the same site also depicts a horned person, which to my mind is more reminiscent of a nordic shaman than a warrior.

Baruch Halpern in a footnote in his paper(f) on the Sea Peoples informed us that “Sherden-like horned helmets have also been found along the northern shore of the Black Sea and on statuettes in Sardinia, but that these lack the central disks, and may reflect coincidence, appropriation, trade or migration rather than indicate a place of origin. The iconographic connections of the horns and disk would suggest devotion to a lunar god; see Bernett and Keel (1998).”

It is noteworthy that the ‘Gjermundbu Helmet’, discovered in 1943 in Nazi-occupied Norway, is the only helmet documented to have existed during the Viking period and is hornless(d).

Furthermore, he was incorrect in claiming that horned helmets were only used in northern Europe during the Bronze Age. Archaeologist Roger Grosjean (1920-1975) has demonstrated(a) that the Torreans of Corsica did use such helmets during that period. The Sherden/Shardana, considered to be one of the Sea Peoples depicted at Medinet Habu are shown as wearing horned helmets and in every instance, except three, they include a round additional piece on the crest. The Shardana are generally accepted to be from Sardinia and are possibly related to the Torreans on neighbouring Corsica. However, the Sardinian examples do not appear to have the accoutrement at the helmets’ crest depicted at Medinet Habu.

Andrea Salimbeti’s website(b) devoted to the Greek Bronze Age has a section on the helmets used in the Aegean during that period, which depicts some horned helmets used by the Mycenaeans(c).

In conclusion, I think Spanuth’s horned helmet evidence is flawed but also that the Sardinian theory is not watertight. Furthermore, his core claim of an invasion from the North Sea into the Eastern Mediterranean is equally untenable. Bronze Age territorial expansion was always into adjacent or nearby territory. A journey of over 4,000 miles from Heligoland to attack Egypt makes no sense.

 

 

(a) https://medium.com/the-bronze-age/the-mysterious-horned-warrior-torreans-of-the-isle-of-corsica-853b5e98c677

(b)  http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/index.htm

(c) http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/helmets1.htm   (Also see helmets2 & helmets3)

(d)  Why Is This the Only Existing Viking Age Helmet? (archive.org)

(e) Mary Ann Bernal: The Confusing Horned Helmets Depicted in the Oseberg Viking Age Tapestries *

(f) SCRIPTA MEDITERRANEA, Vol. XXVII-XXVIII, 2006-2007, 15-32

(g) Horned ‘Viking’ helmets were actually from a different civilization, archaeologists say | Live Science

Kahlhofer, Eckart

Eckart Kahlhofer (1936- ) is a German entertainer(a) and Atlantis researcher who has recently added his support to the concept of Atlantis in North-West Europe echoing some of the ideas of Jürgen Spanuth. He identifies the invasions of the  Sea Peoples with that of the Atlanteans during the 12th century BC. Like Spanuth he also equates orichalcum with amber. Among his more creative ideas is to identify the Shardana as coming from Sweden and similarly argue that the Philistines came from northwest Europe.

Additionally, he contends that the elephants referred to by Plato were in fact deer, claiming that a scribal error resulted in the Greek word elaphos (deer) being transcribed as elephas (elephant).

He strongly rejects the commonly accepted interpretation of Caphtor, contending that the term refers to the ‘pillar of heaven’ in the North Sea holding up the sky and personified by Atlas.(See: Archive 2809)

Kahlhofer also attacks the views of, Rudolf Steiner, Lewis SpenceEberhard Zangger, the Schoppes and Aristotle.

Publication of his book[715], Atlantis in the Third Millennium, was imminent and due to have been available in English and German.  However, he has now published an ebook with the title of Mit Atlantis–die andere Dimension (Atlantis: The Other Dimension) in German.

In October 2013, Kahlhofer published an English translation of a sample of his work. His latest book Der Atlantis Codex is now available as a free pdf file(b).

>Khalhofer has identified the ‘Nine Bows’ people referred to by Merenpth “as the coalition of Lebu, Turscha, Sekeles, Peleset, Theker, Denen, Sardana, Wasasa and Meschwesch coming from the north”, whom he had conquered. We would come to know them as the Sea Peoples(f).

Khalhofer notes that later Ramses III (Year 8) in the year 1175 BC, defeated the Sea Peoples whom he knew as the Nine Bow peoples from the North(g).<

He updated his website(c) and the English translation of Der Atlantis Codex in December 2019. Further amendments were added in January 2021(d).

>Kahlhofer continued to work on the text leading to a point where it is now (August 2021) a trilogy(e). It was no great surprise when Atlantis Codex 2022 was published. This is a 275-page book originally in German, but if you contact the author, he will send you an English translation(g).<

(a) https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0434764/

(b) DER ATLANTIS CODEX (archive.org) (English & German)

(c) http://www.atlantis-atlantis.de/

(d) Mail – Tony O’Connell – Outlook (live.com)

(f) THE ATLANTEANS ALIAS NINEBOWS  |  Meine Webseite (atlantis-atlantis.de) *

(g) ATLANTIS 2022  |  Meine Webseite (atlantis-atlantis.de) *

 

Spanuth, Dr Jürgen

Spanuth-1Dr Jürgen Spanuth (1907-1998) was born in Austria and studied theology and archaeology at university. He became the pastor of Bordelum in Northern Germany.

According to Life magazine of Sept. 8, 1952(g), after twenty years of research, he organised a dive around Heligoland and found extensive underwater structures. These explorations led to his book Das Entraselte Atlantis [0016] being published in 1953.  It was later translated into English and published as Atlantis of the North [0015] and is now available to read on the internet(a).

Spanuth’s basic thesis was that following a major catastrophe in the North Sea around 1250 BC, the Mediterranean experienced an invasion of Scandinavians, whom he referred to as the ‘North Sea Peoples’. Part of the physical evidence he produced was the horn-helmeted Sea Peoples depicted at Medinet Habu. Since we are all used to seeing Vikings depicted with horned helmets, many are surprised to find that it is a late 19th-century invention(e)(f).

Spanuth’s theory implies that such helmets had been a standard army issue in the region for over a millennium. In fact, the Vikings used rather plain helmets which they did not manufacture themselves but traded for them from other Germanic peoples in mainland Europe(d). On the other hand, one of the Sea Peoples, the Shardana, generally believed to have come from Sardinia, did use horned-helmets. However, there are aspects of this claim that are the subject of continuing debate, but the suggestion of a North Sea connection has weakened considerably.

Spanuth considered Basileia, the royal island of Atlantis, to have been located near Heligoland. He produced a mass of evidence to support his views but found his book under severe attack by many academics, which, in general, had the support of the public. After being publicly labelled, among other things, a liar, Spanuth was forced to challenge his detractors in the courts. After some six years, he was vindicated when ten professors withdrew their plea, admitting that their arguments against the pastor were untenable. Felix R. Paturi has more information[1339.215] on this disgraceful episode, as well as a note of scientists who supported Spanuth.

>The late Bernhard Beier expanded on the list of academics who did endorse Spanuth(i)(j) and in some ways more interesting is an article he wrote giving an account of the efforts of many academics to silence Spanuth completely. Coincidentally, around the same time, Immanuel Velikovsky was under a similar attack in the USA.<

A study of Spanuth’s references would suggest that he had access to the prehistoric research archives of the Ahnenerbe and has successfully collated and analysed a lot of this extensive material in his books. Vidal-Naquet bluntly labels him a Nazi[580.124], although his publisher, Wolfram Zeller, denied it. It may be relevant to mention that in the 1930s, Heinrich Pudor an avowed German anti-Semite also proposed Helgoland as Atlantis, but I have been unable to find any reference to Pudor by Spanuth!

The German Wikipedia claims that Spanuth was a member of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) from 1933 until 1945. Similar claims that he had been in the SS have also been refuted(c). In 2002, Frank Doenenburg, on his website(b) discussed Spanuth’s politics at length. In my view, all these matters, however unsavoury, risk distracting us today from discussing dispassionately the merits or otherwise of Spanuth’s Atlantis theories.

Spanuth’s second book[017] had a much better reception. His final offering was Die Atlanter(1976), which was also published in English[015], however, this is just a revised and expanded version of his 1965 book[048].

Atlantisforschung has highlighted Spanuth’s opposition to the Minoan Hypothesis in a discussion paper on its website. I have published here a translation of a short excerpt from Die Atlanter that shows his disdain for the idea of an Aegean Atlantis.

“Neither Thera nor Crete lay in the ‘Atlantic Sea’, but in the Aegean Sea, which is expressly mentioned in Crit. 111a and contrasted with the Atlantic Sea. Neither of the islands lay at the mouth of great rivers, nor did they “sink into the sea and disappear from sight.” ( Tim. 25d) The Aegean Sea never became “impassable and unsearchable because of the very shallow mud”. Neither Solon nor Plato could have said of the Aegean Sea that it was ‘still impassable and unsearchable’                                     

or that ‘even today … an impenetrable and muddy shoal’ ‘blocks the way to the opposite sea’ ( Crit. 108e). Both had often sailed the Aegean Sea, and their contemporaries would have laughed at them for telling such follies.”(h)

Spanuth has still a lot of supporters and is constantly referred to, particularly by German investigators such as Arn Strohmeyer[557] and Gerhard Herm[382]. Felice Vinci, who strongly favours a Northern European origin for Homer’s epic tales, also places Atlantis in a northern context. The Danish writer, Kirsten Bang, published a short book [679] in which she also placed Atlantis in the Wadden Sea where Helgoland is located. She also supports a date of 1300 BC for its destruction.

Another recent supporter of Spanuth’s Atlantis theory is Holger Kalweit who has written a trilogy, the first of which is Irrstern über Atlantis [1024]. This initial volume is concerned with the destruction of Atlantis by a comet (Phaeton) in 1222 BC, leaving Helgoland as a remnant. Refugees fled south to the Eastern Mediterranean leaving their cultural imprint on the region. Unfortunately. this huge 700-page book is to be followed by two more in which the author moves on to expand on the subject of ‘lizard people’, which for me has him as a fully paid-up member of the lunatic fringe.

(a) https://archive.org/details/atlantisofnorth00span/mode/2up Read Only

(b) https://www.fdoernenburg.de/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1213 (page closed, July 2017)

(c) https://groups.google.com/group/sci.archaeology/tree/browse_frm/month/1999-10/f5357cd7bdf26eef?rnum=211&_done=%2Fgroup%2Fsci.archaeology%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fmonth%2F1999-10%3F

(d) https://www.quora.com/Where-did-the-myth-about-the-Vikings-having-horned-helmets-originate

(e) https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Shardana+horned+helmets&hl=en-GB&rlz=1T4GUEA_en-GBIE623IE623&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi40t7ht7TNAhWBEhQKHcaSAegQ_AUICCgB&biw=881&bih=399#imgrc=kbbujC1RTkgdIM%3A

(f) https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/exposing-roots-viking-horned-helmet-myth-005292?nopaging=1

(g) Atlantis placed at the island of Heligoland, off the coast of Germany in the North Sea. From LIFE magazine, Sep 8, 1952. : HighStrangeness (reddit.com)

(h) Jürgen Spanuth über ‘Atlantis in der Ägäis’ – Atlantisforschung.de 

(i) An “illustrious society” – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

(j) An “illustrious society” (II) – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

 

Medinet Habu

Medinet Habu is the site of the imposing mortuary temple of Ramses III at medinet habuThebes, which is situated on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor. Adorning its walls are graphic images of the pharaoh’s victory over the ‘Sea Peoples’. A number of Atlantologists, who subscribe to the idea that these vanquished warriors were Atlanteans, have seen these carvings as firm evidence for the existence of Atlantis.

Jürgen Spanuth is probably the best-known exponent of this theory in which he refers to them as ‘North Sea Peoples’. He supports his view with images from Medinet Habu depicting some of the invaders with horned helmets similar to that to that generally believed to have been used by of the Vikings. However, the Vikings did not use horned helmets(a) and those shown by Spanuth were in fact for ceremonial purposwes, showing no signs of any combat damage. Apart from that, I suggest that it is highly improbable that headgear failed to evolve between the time of Medinet Habu and that of the Vikings. However, there is evidence that horned helmets were used by Bronze Age warriors from both Sardinia and Corsica.

More recently the idea of identifying the Sea Peoples with the Atlanteans has been adopted by two other German investigators, Jürgen Hepke and Rainer Kühne.

(a) https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/10/viking-warriors-didnt-wear-horned-or-winged-helmets/

 

Joseph, Frank *

Frank Joseph (1944- ) or more correctly Francis Joseph Collin, was born in Chicago. His father was Max Simon Cohen, who is said to have spent time in Dachau concentration camp. Incredibly, in the late seventies, Frank Joseph was the leader of the American Nazi Party. In 1981, Joseph was arrested and convicted of molesting young boys. He was released after serving three of a seven-year sentence (a)(b).

Since his release, he has established himself as an author, writing a Frank Josephnumber of books on Atlantis and Diffusionism[102108]. In them, he has emphasised at length the enormous quantities of copper mined in ancient times in North America that he maintains were brought to Europe to feed the demand there, for bronze making. He maintains that this is clear evidence of trading contacts between the Old and New Worlds in prehistoric times. Among his more unusual claims are that Noah was an Atlantean and that the Trojan War was just part of the conflict with the Sea Peoples.

One of Joseph’s early books, Edgar Cayce’s Atlantis and Lemuria[106], was heavily criticised in some quarters(e) including an accusation of including in the book a ‘heavily retouched’ photo of the underwater Yonaguni site.

In Joseph’s The Destruction of Atlantis, he dates that event to 1198 BC(o) quoting such sources as the Ipuwer Papyrus and temple inscriptions at Medinet Habu.

He then claims that eight years later the Atlanteans re-emerged as the Meshwesh, one of the Sea Peoples, attacked Egypt and were defeated by Ramses III [1535]. The authoritative D’Amato & Salimbeti have identified the Meshwesh as possibly being a tribe related to the Libyans [1152.8].

The author concurs with others that the catastrophe was triggered by an impact from a comet/asteroid in the region of the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Joseph supports an Atlantis located in the Atlantic of which the Canary Islands and Azores(g) are among its remnants. He draws attention to the fact that The Laws by Plato also refers to the ‘Great Deluge’. In the same book, Joseph returns to his hobbyhorse of the huge amounts of copper that were mined in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in prehistoric times. He is convinced that Atlanteans carried out this massive extraction and transported it to the east to feed the emerging Bronze Age. This book is useful for someone coming to the subject for the first time but it contains little that new and is really just a reworking of existing material.

His next offering, The Atlantis Encyclopedia, was promoted as an encyclopaedia of Atlantis-related references, yet it omits any mention of many of the leading theories and their promoters, which is not what you would expect from such a reference work on the subject. It also suffers from an overabundance of references to Native American mythologies, which at best have only the shakiest connection with Plato’s Atlantis.

Although The Atlantis Encyclopedia was published in 2005, it was only recently (July 2022) that Thorwald C. Franke, in his newsletter #197(r), applied his very sharp scalpel to the contents of the book. Franke points out a number of errors, but reserves his most detailed criticism for Joseph’s entry relating to the ‘Third Reich’. Franke’s conclusion is that Joseph has produced ‘a really bad book’. When Franke’s comments are combined with the many errors that I have listed below, it is obvious that Frank Joseph is a most unreliable source of information regarding Atlantis.

He followed this with Survivors of Atlantis, a sequel to The Destruction of Atlantis, which focuses on four global catastrophes linked to the cyclical return of a comet, that led to the destruction of Atlantis and the subsequent dispersal of its survivors and their influence on the cultures of their adopted homelands. As usual, he returns to the mystery of the Michigan copper mines but covers a wide range of global prehistory speculating on possible links with Atlantis. Unlike its prequel, ‘Survivors’ does not include an index.

For a number of years, Joseph was editor-in-chief of Ancient American magazine(c), owned by Wayne May, a Mormon, whose church has a vested interest in demonstrating the existence of early, advanced pre-Columbian peoples in America. A one-hour lecture given by Joseph in 1997 is available on YouTube(h), in which he outlines a number of very early pre-Columbian contacts between West Africa, particularly Mali and the Americas that led to the giant stone heads being carved by the Olmecs.

In 2008, Joseph published Unearthing Ancient America in which he revisits the pre-Columbian remains of North America. As usual, he denounces orthodox archaeologists as a means to bolster his own extreme ideas. For example “Louisiana’s Poverty Point, the ‘oldest city in North America’, is a dead-ringer for Plato’s description of Atlantis…[108.178]

With his book The Opening of the Ark of the Covenant[670] Joseph moved into slightly different territory, linking the Ark with Atlantis and the Templars. Joseph co-authored this book with Laura Beaudoin who claims to be a descendant of the founder of the Knights Templar in Jerusalem.

Not one to miss an opportunity, the prolific Mr Joseph then jumped on the 2012 bandwagon with the publication of Atlantis and 2012[694]. As the world did not end, Joseph revised this book and republished it as Atlantis and the Coming Ice Age[1074] in 2015. An excerpt is available online(i).

April 2012 saw Joseph as editor of Lost Worlds of Ancient America[824]  which is an anthology of articles describing various pre-Columbian visitors from both east and west. It also includes a suggestion that the Bahamas had a landmass to match Plato’s description of Atlantis. Jason Colavito, a well-known sceptic, has written an extensive and highly critical review(f) of this collection of articles culled from the Ancient American magazine.   While the book has little to do with Atlantis, Colavito’s comments cast doubts on Joseph’s credibility as well as that of the other contributors.

Before Atlantis[1459]  was published by Joseph in 2013, in it he focuses on the ‘aquatic ape theory’(k) and the existence of ‘pre-human cultures’ going back 20 million years. Atlantis plays a minor part in this offering and it is probable that it is only in the title to assist sales! In May 2017, we have a report(l) of pre-human remains dated 7.2 million years ago being discovered in the Balkans. How Joseph can apply the term ‘culture’ to such primitive creatures is hard to understand.

In 2016, Joseph published Our Dolphin Ancestors [1871] in which he reveals that we and dolphins are both descended from the aquatic ape! For good measure, he “explores the ‘connections’ between dolphins and Atlantis and Lemuria.”

Joseph frequently touches on the subject of Lemuria and in 2006 published The Lost Civilisation of Lemuria [107] which was devoted to it. Leaving aside that Joseph equates Lemuria with Mu and that both names are inventions from Philip Sclater and Brasseur de Bourbourg respectively, the advertising blurb for his book tells us that “Joseph painstakingly re-creates a picture of this civilization in which people lived in rare harmony and possessed a sophisticated technology that allowed them to harness the weather, defy gravity, and conduct genetic investigations far beyond what is possible today.” This is reminiscent of some of the b.s.produced by Blavatsky and Cayce, among others.

Joseph then followed ‘Lost Worlds’ with Lost Colonies of Ancient America in 2014[1124], receiving rave reviews on Amazon, while Bradley T. Lepper(j) cites Larry Zimmermann(n), an archaeologist from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who offered a different view in the July/Oct 2015 edition of American Antiquity.

In 2014, Joseph republished Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds[636] as a paperback and a Kindle book. which is just a recycling of some of his earlier material and adds nothing of value. His reliance on speculation rather than evidence has not diminished. While his conjecture is bad enough, his misquoting of Plato is unforgivable. One example is his claim that Atlantis had 14,400 naval personnel, for 1,200 ships, which would mean that each ship had only a crew of 12! The only ships mentioned by Plato were triremes, which had a crew of 200(m). What Plato actually said (Critias 119a-b) was that in time of war each of the managers of the 60,000 allotments on the plain of Atlantis, had to supply four men for naval duty, which amounts to a total of 240,000 and matches the number of men required for 1200 triremes. This is just one of a number of similar errors in that passage. However, the same book also sets a record for the number of mistakes that Joseph managed to squeeze into a single sentence. At this point, I decided to look back at all my references to Joseph’s work and was shocked to find that he has been consistently guilty of at least sloppy research, if not dishonesty, and for me, must therefore be considered unreliable.

I was recently perusing the Kindle version of Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds and discovered a number of obvious inaccuracies. For example, Joseph refers to G.R.Corli as a French astronomer, whereas in fact his name was Carli and he was born in Capodistria, formerly Italian, but now part of Slovenia (loc.2511). Joseph claims that Carli believed that a fragment of a comet had hit the Earth, when, in fact, he had only postulated that a close encounter with a comet had occurred.

He added a ‘d’ to Edgerton Sykes name (loc. 2543, 3573) and removed the ‘e’ from that of Arthur C. Clarke (loc.2783). In an article in Atlantis Rising magazine #35(p), he retained the ‘d’ in Sykes’ name and described Hanns Hörbiger as a physicist when he was a mining engineer by profession. He also recycled his errors relating to Giovanni Rinaldo Carli mentioned above. Still, on the first page of the article, he claimed that meteorites were not recognised by the scientific establishment when Ignatius Donnelly wrote Ragnarok in 1884, when, according to Smithsonian magazine, meteorites were discussed much earlier, in 1803(q). 

His section on the Atlantean Army and population(loc.312) is full of numerical errors. He has the whole population of Atlantis at over one million, whereas Plato tells us that on their own, the Atlantean armed forces totalled around a million, including 480,000 foot -soldiers, 120,000 horsemen, 160,000 manning the 10,000 heavy chariots and 60,000 light chariots, and 240,000 sailors. From this, Otto Muck extrapolated a total population of between 20 and 40 million for Atlantis. Joseph proposes that the 1,200 Atlantean ships were serviced and manned by 14,400 men (just twelve each). However, the triremes referred to by Plato, each required a crew of 140 rowers!

Joseph ends the book with a Bibliography, but heads it Biography!

This book was clearly not proofread and its research was slipshod. Unfortunately, this does not appear to have been an isolated example. I therefore decided to review all Atlantipedia entries that referred to Frank Joseph.

Amber is not exclusive to the Baltic and can be found in the Americas, Lebanon, Siberia, Australia and Japan. A highly prized blue amber is to be found in the Dominican Republic. Frank Joseph in an effort to support his speculations regarding mythical Electra claims[0636.109] that the Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira and the Canaries are one of the two major sources of amber. This is blatantly untrue, as revealed in a comprehensive website(a) by Susie Ward Aber, a mineralogist at Emporia State University, Kansas. Amber sources worldwide are listed, but nothing in the Atlantic. Mr Joseph has, once again, some explaining to do.

However, there is also another trend becoming more obvious, which is that there are an increasing number of instances, particularly on the internet, of the Ark of the Covenant being linked to Atlantis. There is, of course, no evidence ever offered to support such speculation. One of the most recent of these is Opening the Ark of the Covenant, co-authored by the inventive Frank Joseph, where he traces the Ark back to Atlantis. There are probably few people that don’t accept that the Ark had been a real artefact, while many doubt the reality of Atlantis. It is possible that by linking the two, the authors hope to achieve credibility transference from one to the other!

In his Atlantis Encyclopedia, Frank Joseph has suggested[104.33] that Atalya or Atalia was, through time, transformed into Italy, adding that Atalia means ‘Land of Atlas’. This entry has been copied on a number of websites. However, the etymology of ‘Italy’ is not clear, but the most common proposal is that  “Latin Italia may derive from Oscan víteliú, meaning “[land] of young cattle” (from Latin vitulus “calf”, Umbrian vitlu), via Greek transmission (evidenced in the loss of initial digamma). The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes”. In passing, I should mention that Plato tells us that the Atlanteans who controlled southern Italy as far as Tyrrhenia also had a bull cult.

The following excerpt from a paper entitled Atlantis and the Great Pyramid from the July/August 2006 edition of Atlantis Rising magazine. “They (the Egyptians) somehow foresaw some inevitable celestial catastrophe with a potential for extraordinary destructiveness. As the object’s orbit began to noticeably decay, ground observers concluded that an impact with our planet was unavoidable, and began to prepare for the event by constructing a device that would bolster earth’s ionosphere, thereby deflecting the course of the falling object. The pyramid builders erected their geo-transducer because they understood that the earth was periodically endangered by recurring cycles of celestial bombardments. The Great Pyramid was built to guard against future collisions from outer space.”

The Balearic Islands of the Western Mediterranean were not occupied until around 2200 BC. Although the two larger islands of Majorca and Minorca have many megalithic monuments, principally taulas and talayots, they have not, so far, been part of any Atlantis location theory. The only mention that I can find is the unsubstantiated claim by Frank Joseph[0104.66] that the early settlers were invaders from Atlantis.

Frank Joseph erroneously claims[0108.117] that the only known ‘Cerne’ was Cerne Abbas in England, the site of the famous naked giant carved into the chalk. There is certainly no suggestion of any Amazon invasion there and the physique of the giant was certainly never matched by even the most butch Amazon. There is also the island of Cerne off the west coast of Africa and mentioned in the voyage of Hanno. Furthermore, Cerne is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus (iii.54) and is considered by some to be the Tunisian island of Kerkennah. Clearly, there was more than one Cerne known in our ancient past and so, not for the first time, Joseph is blatantly wrong.

Joseph also proposed that copper was the foundation for the wealth of Atlantis. He is convinced that there is evidence of extensive copper mining activities in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula around 1000 BC. He refers to these miners as Atlanteans[0102] and maintains that the extracted copper was brought to the Mediterranean, as he claims that there is no trace of it in North America. Joseph offers no real evidence.

Frank Joseph incorrectly claimed in the July/August 2011 issue of Atlantis Rising magazine that DeCamp “formerly a staunch disbeliever in Atlantis, was later convinced it did indeed exist in south-coastal Iberia.”  No evidence was offered for this wild claim.

Frank Joseph echoed others with the idea that “the Etruscans were themselves nothing more than the late Atlanteans who colonised western Italy, so their surviving material culture offers us a glimpse of Atlantis at is cultural height.”[0636.21]  This is an odd claim as Plato twice, unambiguously, placed Tuscany (Tyrhennia) beyond Atlantean control (Tim.25b & Crit.114c).

Evaemon (Euaemon) is the name of one of the fourth pair (with Ampheres) of twins who became the first kings of Atlantis. Frank Joseph[0104] identifies Euaemon with the ‘pre-Celtic’ king of Ireland, Eremon! This is somewhat incorrect as the Milesians are generally accepted as having been Celtic, with Eremon being one of eight Milesian brothers who invaded Ireland from Spain and defeated the Tuatha dé Danaan.

I found more of Joseph’s entries relating to Ireland that were, for me, particularly annoying. The first was his entry in his Encyclopedia for ‘crannóg’ where he attempts to link it with a sunken city. Crannógs are small artificial islands built in lakes for defensive purposes. When abandoned they usually became covered in small trees. The word is derived from the Irish word crann which means a tree, while óg means young or small. There are many such crannógs to be found among the numerous lakes of County Leitrim where I live. My second gripe is the entry ‘Tir-nan-Og’, which should in fact be ‘Tir na nÓg’ which means Land of Youth, implying land of perpetual youth. There is no connection with Og or Ogygia. I respectfully suggest that Frank Joseph and anyone else should tread more warily when trying to link similar-sounding words from different languages.

Frank Joseph has related speculative ideas claiming that “the early date for New Grange, its circular construction, sophisticated solar orientation and mythic tradition all point to Atlantean origins.” [0636.70] A nonsensical conclusion based on nothing but his fertile imagination

Frank Joseph erroneously claims that Plato could not have been influenced by the Helike disaster, because according to Joseph the Atlantis dialogues were written 25 years before the obliteration of Helike[1074.14], when in fact Plato wrote his last dialogues about 25 years after the demise of Helike.

Lemmings are small rodents that primarily live in northern regions. Early zoologists and the more gullible readers assumed that the creatures have been seen committing mass suicide in an attempt to find their ancient homeland, Atlantis. Unfortunately, Frank Joseph[0102.51], among others, has chosen to perpetuate this canard. It should be obvious that if Atlantis had been destroyed 12,000 years ago, as Joseph claims, the lemmings should have all died out millennia ago due to their alleged destructive homing instinct.

Frank Joseph links the destruction of ‘Lemuria’ with the Plagues of Egypt [0106][0107]!

Frank Joseph contends[0636.42] that the Phaistos Disk was ‘a sophisticated astrological chart’ and ‘is an example of Atlantean Bronze Age technology’.

Frank Joseph contends that conflict between the Egyptians and the Sea Peoples was part of the Trojan War[0108.11] and has identified the Meshwesh, one of the Sea Peoples, as Atlantean [1535].

Christopher Volpe records that in 1906, Alexander Strath-Gordon founded the Atlantean Research Society, in East Orange, New Jersey. This date conflicts with the foundation date of 1928 proposed by Frank Joseph. A book published by Strath-Gordon in 1934 confirms the 1906 date on its cover and records him as the founder and life president of the Atlantean Research Society.

In view of all of the above, it is more than reasonable to classify Frank Joseph as unreliable.

(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20190127004837/https://www.flavinscorner.com/collin.htm

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20100612064814/https://www.robertghostwolf.com/kimball.htm

(c) Ancient American Magazine (archive.org) *

(e) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/atlantida_mu/esp_lemuria_4.htm

(f) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/05/the-los-angeles-monolith-frank-josephs-archaeology-by-hearsay.html   (and subsequent blogs)

(g) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgEgzGsc9DOpnLlIP5Q8DAQ

(h) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7n7kPnuZUY

(i) Archive 2627   

(j)   https://web.archive.org/web/20161204161137/http:/www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2015/09/20/01-book-about-americas-discovery-gets-it-all-wrong.html or See: Archive 2694

(k) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis

(l) https://popular-archaeology.com/issue/spring-2017/article/scientists-find-7-2-million-year-old-pre-human-remains-in-the-Balkans

(m) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trireme#Crew

(n) https://www.academia.edu/15087000/Book_Review_Lost_Colonies_of_Ancient_America-A_Comprehensive_Guide_to_the_Precolumbian_Visitors_Who_Really_Discovered_America

(o) https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/eternal-atlantis

(p) Atlantis Rising magazine #35   http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At 

(q) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1803-rain-rocks-helped-establish-existence-meteorites-180963017/ 

(r) Review of: Frank Joseph, The Atlantis Encyclopedia – Atlantis-Scout

Atlantis of the North

Atlantis of the North [015] was the third book written by Dr Jürgen Spanuth on the subject of Atlantis. His first book[016] published in German, led to court action by Spanuth after being labelled ‘a peddler of lies’. The matter ended when his detractors, ten professors, admitted that their objections to his work were groundless.

Spanuth’s book controversially locates Atlantis in the North Sea near Helgoland and attributes its destruction to the consequences of widespread natural catastrophes that the world experienced in the 13th century BC. These disasters led to large-scale migrations, one of which was from Scandinavia into the Mediterranean where Spanuth insists that the migrants were known as the ‘Sea Peoples’, or as he calls them ‘North Sea Peoples’ and portrayed on the walls of the temple of Medinet Habu. He claims that there is considerable agreement between Plato’s Atlantis story and the carvings at Medinet Habu.

Furthermore, Spanuth identifies a cometary impact with the Earth as the cause of these upheavals. He claims that this impact is preserved in mythology as Phaëton by the Greeks and others as Typhon, Sekhmet, Anat, and Tistrya etc. Incidentally, the Carolina Bays visible today have been linked with this event.

It has been pointed out that much of the material used by Spanuth seems to have been drawn from the research archives of the Nazi Ahnenerbe-SS. The result is a closely argued work that is worth reading, however unacceptable the Heligoland location is now seen.

In 2015, Spanuth entered the world of controversy again when The Mystery of Atlantis Unravelled[0127]  was published by Amazon’s self-publishing department, CreateSpace, with a new title The Mystery of Atlantis and the author’s name changed to ‘John Lock’! This is simply a badly scanned copy, blatant plagiarism and possibly breach of copyright as Spanuth only died in the 1998!

Corsica .

Corsica together with Sardinia was the home of megalith builders long before it became an Etruscan colony. The island was seldom mentioned as a Corsicalocation for Atlantis until the end of the 18th century when>according to Joscelyn Godwin [0746.36],<Antoine Court de Géblin proposed Corsica and Sardinia as the location of Atlantis.

>However, Atlantisforschung claims that as far as is known, Corsica was first associated with Atlantis, later, in 1840. At that time it was the lawyer Angelo Mazzoldi, an ardent Italian nationalist, who claimed in a treatise that Italy had once been Atlantis, the center of which was somewhere near Corsica. He dated the sinking of Atlantis to 1986 BC(e).

Corsica did not feature again for over a century until 1929 when this idea was proposed at a meeting of the Society for Atlantis Studies, held in the Sorbonne in Paris, a delegate threw two tear gas bombs in order to prevent the dissemination of such ‘heresy’.

It may be worth considering that the Weshesh, listed as one of the Sea Peoples, have been identified with the inhabitants of Corsica among others. In the latter part of the 2nd millennium BC, a civilisation known as the Torreans occupied the region around Ajaccio. Like the Nuraghic people in nearby Sardinia, they also built towers, but smaller in size.

Before the Torreans, there was a string of megalithic dolmens stretching from southern Corsica across to northern Sardinia as if outlining a pilgrimage route. Frederico Bardanzellu’s website(a) offers more information on this and other aspects of the prehistory of these two islands, including a study of any possible astronomical significance that might be deduced from the orientation of the dolmens on both islands.(d)

Luigi Usai is currently (2021) promoting [1814] the idea that a conjoined Sardinia and Corsica had constituted the island of Atlantis!(c) He has named Sulcis at the southern end of Sardinia as the location of its capital.

In July 2021 I was sent a number of images that purported to show anomalous underwater images in the Central Mediterranean northeast of Malta. At first sight, they appeared to show extensive manmade features. However, further investigation by the person who sent them to me eventually discovered that the images were the consequence of the flawed computer interpretation of sonar data. In December 2021 Luigi Usai produced the same flawed imagery as evidence that he had discovered a lost submerged civilisation!

So that there is no misunderstanding let me state that I have advocated a Central Mediterranean location for Atlantis for some years. If Sardinia and/or Corsica hold that location, I am more than happy to congratulate Usai and Frau. But, I am not convinced by satellite imagery that has so often been proven to be flawed.

The Torreans have only been recognised since 1954, thanks to the work of archaeologist Roger Grosjean (1920-1975). A 1966 article by Grosjean is available online(b). The title of his paper, The Mysterious Horned Warrior – Torreans of the Isle of Corsica, brings to mind the horn-helmeted Sea Peoples depicted at Medinet Habu, a similarity not lost on Grosjean.

‘The Sea Peoples’ have been suggested, by a number of Atlantologists, as a collective name for the Atlantis federation.

(a) http://www.museodeidolmen.it/englishdefault.html

(b) https://medium.com/the-bronze-age/the-mysterious-horned-warrior-torreans-of-the-isle-of-corsica-853b5e98c677

(c) https://www.atlantisfound.it/2021/01/24/why-didnt-scientists-find-atlantis-before-usai-luigi/

(d) https://www.museodeidolmen.it/englisharcheoastr.html 

(e) Corsica (island) – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *