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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 »
Poseidon
Ten Lost Tribes of Israel
The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel is a reference to the ten of the twelve tribes deported from the Kingdom of Israel after its conquest by Assyria in 722 BC. It has been pointed out that the Hebrew Bible has relatively little to say on the matter.
In 1865, Brasseur de Bourbourg discovered some of Bishop Diego de Landa‘s lost documents. He studied the thoroughly flawed interpretation of Mayan hieroglyphics by de Landa, produced in the 16th century and proceeded to develop his own faulty translation.
Nigel Davies has revealed [1635] that Brasseur, as well as Lord Kingsborough (1795-1829), concluded that the native Americans were the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Kingsborough spent a £40,000 fortune publishing The Antiquities of Mexico in nine huge volumes, an extravagance that landed him in a Dublin debtors’ prison for non-payment of bills relating to publication costs and sadly, he died there.
The variety of identifications put forward for some or all of these groups is quite remarkable, ranging from the reasonable to the ridiculous. At one end of that spectrum, the view “is that the “lost tribes of Israel” were never really lost. Many of the Jews who remained in the land after the Assyrian conquest re-united with Judah in the south (2 Chronicles 34:6–9). Assyria was later conquered by Babylon, who went on to invade the Southern Kingdom of Israel, deporting the two remaining tribes: Judah and Benjamin (2 Kings 25:21). Remnants of the northern tribes would have thus been part of the Babylonian deportations. Seventy years later, when King Cyrus allowed the Israelites to return to Israel (Ezra 1), many (from all twelve tribes) returned to Israel to rebuild their homeland.” (a)
At the other end is the entertaining idea that the Lost Tribes inhabit the interior of a Hollow Earth, which is defended by flying saucers!(b)
Another unexpected claim, with a tenuous Atlantis connection, comes from “Dierk Lange(a), Prof. Dr Emeritus, of Bayreuth University in Germany, who has performed extensive research concerning many West African groups and their origins in the Near East. In the abstract to one of his many essays, “Dierk Lange: Origin of the Yoruba and “The Lost Tribes of Israel”,” Dierk confirms the traditions of a Levantine (Israelite) origin of the Yoruba Nigerians.”(d)(e)
Nearly as extreme is the attempt to link the Lost Tribes and Atlantis, a combination that would not normally leap to mind. However, some have attempted to justify such a linkage in spite of the contradictions between Plato’s story and the details of this minority opinion.
This alleged relationship between Atlantis and Israel points out that the Biblical patriarch Jacob who had twelve sons, excluded two of them, Levi and Simeon. Jacob is then presented as having been Poseidon with the ten remaining sons ruling Atlantis. One of Jacob’s sons, Gad, is assumed to have been Gadeiros, one of the ten sons of Poseidon. After that, no further parallels are offered to connect Jacob’s other sons with the remainder of Poseidon’s offspring.
In Britain, “Richard Brothers (1757–1823), a retired naval officer and a radical Calvinist, revealed himself as a prophet of the lost tribes in 1794 in London. The fact that he was writing from the confinement of Fisher Mad-House, Islington, did not deter many from following him and producing the doctrine of Anglo-Israelism: a fiercely nationalist theology based on the idea that the British Isles were the home of the lost tribes.” (c)
>A 2016 paper by Prof. W.A Liebenberg begins the Introduction(g) with “ Dolmens and Megalithic Monuments originated in Ancient Israel. The prophet Jeremiah (31:21) is instructed to make it clear that the Ten Tribes will construct a trail of Megalithic Monuments from their homeland Israel to their places of deportation and further migration into the nations, and evidence of this path will be a vivid reminder of their forefathers and will also enable them to return. Such a trail undoubtedly exists and is embedded in the earth’s crust! It is the Trail of the Dolmens from the Middle East to the various nations.”
To suggest that the megaliths mark the tribal dispersal routes is to my mind utter nonsense. Judging by the number of megaliths spread throughout the world there should be thousands of ‘lost tribes’, not to mention that the lost tribes disappeared in the 8th century BC, even though the megaliths are scientifically dated to the 5th millennium BC!<
Also See: Agartha, Baer, Baucum, Bible, Davidiy, Eurenius, Olivier, Salverda and Wauchope.
(a) https://www.gotquestions.org/lost-tribes-Israel.html
(b) https://www.ourhollowearth.com/ourhollo/index.html
(c) The Lost Tribes of Israel (archive.org)
(d) The Bantu Branch of ‘Africans’ are Hebrew Israelites PART I of II – Aria Nasi Research
(e) The Bantu Branch of ‘Africans’ are Hebrew Israelites PART II of II – Aria Nasi Research
Teleguin, Sergey
Sergey Teleguin is a Russian professor of Philology and a leading advocate of the idea that the city of Tripura (Triple City) in Vedic tradition was the original inspiration behind Plato’s city of Atlantis. In support 
of his contention he has outlined a number of parallels between Plato’s account and the sacred texts of India, the Puranas and Mahabharata, in an extensive English excerpt(a) from his 2005 Russian book, Anatomy of a Myth[1122].
A further claim by Teleguin is that the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya gives clears evidence that they came from the far north – Ultima Thule. He goes further and attributes a North Pole origin to both the Maya and the Indo-Europeans(b).
He has recently outlined his ideas further in an article for (Nov/Dec 2013) Issue 102 of Atlantis Rising magazine.
He recently reiterated, in an email, his view that Plato’s Atlantis story should only be accepted literally or not at all. It is difficult to accept that an academic could write such nonsense. He cannot be unaware that Plato’s narrative is composed of mythology, history and within the bounds of literary licence, some embellishment of his own. Otherwise, according to Teleguin, we are expected to believe that Clieto actually gave birth to five sets of male twins, that Athens fought a war before it existed and that Poseidon and Atlas were real people! The same absence of critical thinking allows people to believe that the world was created in seven days.
Ancient Astronauts and Atlantis *
Ancient Astronauts and their technology is often promoted as the inspiration behind aspects of many ancient religions such as the vimanas of the Hindus, the flying chariots of Ezekiel as well as the gods of Mesopotamia. The most widely known proponents of these ideas are Erich von Däniken and the late Zecharia Sitchin.
However, I must also include Josef Blumrich who proposed that the biblical Ezekiel had encountered an alien spaceship in his 1973 book [0692]. It is worth noting that a decade earlier Arthur W. Orton wrote The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel which was recently republished [1735] and offers similar ideas as Blumrich. Ulrich Magin has written a critical review of Bloomrich’s interpretation of Ezekiel’s visions(m).
Extraterrestrial visitors have been suggested by a few of the more imaginative and sometimes unscrupulous authors and their publishers, as the source of an advanced civilisation in the past, remembered today as Atlantis. Martin Brady makes such a claim in a brief paper available online(s).
Another example of this genre of b.s. is offered by Tricia McCannon, who delights us with an account of Atlantis as “the seat of a Great Galactic Empire, with many extraterrestrial races coming and going from its shores”, with lots more of the same(t).
Decades before von Däniken, Harold T. Wilkins was already suggesting prehistoric extraterrestrial visitors in the 1950s. He also wrote a couple of books about Atlantis[363][364]. Not long after that, Egerton Sykes wrote some short articles for his Atlantis magazine(i) that were sympathetic to the idea of ancient astronauts.
R. Cedric Leonard is another Atlantis researcher who has written about Atlantis and ancient alien technology. A more recent attempt to link Atlantis with ancient astronauts came from Kevin Falzon, who closely follows Sitchin while locating Atlantis in his native Malta[869]. Richard Mooney speculated on a connection between Atlantis and ancient aliens four decades ago[842].
However, Professor Emilio Spedicato may have added some degree of respectability to the concept when he wrote(u) “There are significant indications in worldwide traditions that intelligent people from planets within a few hundred light-years from Earth visited our planet and intelligently interacted with our biosphere”. He went on to claim that around 5500 BC some of these visitors landed in the Hunza valley of Pakistan where they engaged in a little genetic engineering which led to the ‘creation’ of Adam and Eve!
It should be noted that Plato’s account does not relate any technology beyond that of a Late Bronze Age society, whereas any civilisation founded by alien astronauts should offer some evidence of technologies at least equal to if not more advanced than that of our present-day capabilities.
Nevertheless, the idea of visitors from other worlds is often traced back to the 18th century and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)(e), who not only argued that extraterrestrial beings had visited our planet, but that he had met them[1583]! Greg Little has also recently(g) credited Swedenborg as the originator of the alien visitors’ idea, but Jason Colavito has rubbished Little’s article(f) and traced the concept of extraterrestrial encounters back to Lucian (125-180 AD) together with a few others before Swedenborg. Colavito and Little are not ‘best friends’, so I can only conclude that Colavito simply wished to undermine Little’s credibility as a researcher.
Ever since Kenneth Arnold saw ‘flying saucers’ near Mt. Rainier in 1947, his report paved the way for the ancient astronaut idea to evolve into the prolific writings of W. Raymond Drake and later Erich von Däniken, among others. In turn, this seemed to lead naturally to speculation of a possible linkage with Atlantis.
Jason Colavito has also drawn attention(a) to an exhibition held in Beijing in July 2012, which purported to offer evidence of these ancient visitors, and has published(b) the official U.S. Government view on ancient astronauts. He also offers an overview of alien theories and scathingly criticises their proponents(c). In 2011 Colavito published a free ebook with the self-explanatory title of The Origins of the Space Gods(j).
Colavito has also an interesting blog for 29/08/14 which quotes from a 1977 magazine that has an article suggesting that Jesus was an American astronaut who came back from the future, no doubt inspired by the film Planet of the Apes!(d)
Bill Hanson and Bert Thurlings are some of the more recent promoters of this idea of an alien origin for Atlantis. Hanson has been joined by the German researcher, Dieter Bremer, who claims(v) that the winged disks found in Sumerian art represent a space station, which crashed! Bremer also provides a spirited defence of The Manna Machine[755] by George Sassoon (1936-2006) and Rodney Dale, combined with some bizarre theories regarding Christ. Incredibly, Bremer was invited to deliver a paper to the 2011 Atlantis Conference on the concentric circles of Plato’s Atlantean capital. He has published two books on his view of Atlantis[1022/3]. A more rational review of The Manna Machine is offered by Frank Dörnenburg(w).
The late Flying Eagle and his partner Whispering Wind specified the planet Xylanthia((aa) in the Sirius star system as the original home of a visitor who fell in love with an earthling and later became known as Poseidon!
The History Channel’s series entitled Ancient Aliens(y) has been heavily criticised on the Bad Archaeology website(x) and elsewhere. October 2011 saw another claim that the Maya had contact with extraterrestrials and that a documentary providing evidence is planned(z).
A sceptical review of extraterrestrial visitations was published in the 26th January 2014 edition of Ohio’s Columbus Dispatch(ab).
I feel compelled to include a quote from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson who wrote “The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that they have never tried to contact us.”
Perhaps even more disconcerting is the results of a survey(h) carried out by Chapman University that show 20% of Americans believe in ancient astronauts!
In 2020, we had a bizarre tweet from the billionaire, Elon Musk, claiming that “aliens built the pyramids”(l), I hope that this was a tongue-in-cheek comment!
Nevertheless, there are still (2021) attempts to promote the ancient astronaut idea using the same material that has failed to convince in the past(k).
An example of this is the 2023 book, Prehistory Explained [2007] by Shane Leach, who recycled some of the ideas of von Däniken and Sitchin and then for good measure threw in the old suggestion that our Moon and the Martian moon Phobos are artificial. Of course, Atlantis was not ignored, which he placed in Antarctica and deemed that Stonehenge had been laid out like the Pleiades constellation!
More depressing is the study by Graham E.L.Holton, which surveyed the ancient astronaut literature and found nothing but superior white blond ‘gods’, usually male, such as Quetzalcoatl(n). This theme was continued in later UFO reports. Erich von Däniken is arguably the best-known of the ancient astronaut proponents, but he was not the first and certainly not the last(n). Jason Colavito has reviewed the racism expressed by von Däniken(o). Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews was equally critical of Däniken’s racist views(p).
2023 also saw the publication of Gods of the Bible [2059] by Mauro Biglino, who also wrote a paper as ‘Author of the Month’ for Graham Hancock’s website(q). In both, he explores the Bible for evidence of ancient extraterrestrial visitors who interacted with humans, just as Zechariah Sitchin had done nearly half a century ago using Mesopotamian texts.
There are also some who have endeavoured to use the Palermo Stone as evidence of extraterrestrial visitors in our ancient past(r)!
Avi Loeb who is probably better known as a contributor to the Ancient Aliens TV series has recently (Nov. 2023) endeavoured to develop his ‘fame’, by offering by offering an alternative to the conventional theories offered to explain UFOs, now redesignated UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena). Jason Colavito(ad) has drawn attention to an attempt by Loeb to suggest that UFOs, sorry, UAPs, might be remnants from a very early highly technologically advanced civilisation.
“Any technological infrastructure left on the surface of Earth from that early civilization could have been demolished by geological activity including subduction, covered by water or tarnished by meteor impacts and weathering.
However, functional relics could have been preserved in space. Within the past century of modern technology, our civilization has launched many thousands of functional devices in orbit around Earth. A more advanced or longer-lived technological civilization could have used more sophisticated devices. Are there unfamiliar technological relics in our sky?” (ac).
For those interested in having a look at other entries touching on the subject of Atlantis and ancient astronauts see: Jack Countryman, Christos A. Djonis, Andrew Greig, Kurt Jurgen Hepke, Marius Lleget, Louis Millette, Semir Osmanagic, Hubert Zeitlmair.
(a) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/07/chinese-government-endorses-ancient-astronauts.html
(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/the-von-daniken-letter.html
(c) http://www.swans.com/library/art18/jcolav01.html
(d) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/a-bizarre-1977-article-on-jesus-the-ancient-astronaut
(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20200731011955/https://www.swedenborgproject.org/2007/09/08/the-life-on-other-planets-question/ or See: Archive 2262
(g) https://apmagazine.info/index.php/component/content/article?id=570
(h) https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2015/10/13/this-haunted-world/
(i) Atlantis, Volume 20, No.3, May/June 1967.
(j) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/origin-of-the-space-gods.html
(k) Evidence of Aliens and Ancient Astronauts – Strange Unexplained Mysteries (archive.org)
(m) Spaceship or God’s apparition? The Visions of Ezekiel – Mysteria3000 (link broken)
(n) https://www.academia.edu/30755438/Ancient_White_Astronauts_Race_and_Religion
(o) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2014/01/the-astonishing-racial-claims-of-erich-von-daniken.html
(p) https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/is-pseudoarchaeology-racist/
(q) https://grahamhancock.com/biglinom1/
(r) Reddit – Dive into anything (archive.org)
(s) Earth, Aliens and The Universe | PDF | Atlantis | Calendar (archive.org)
(t) https://www.triciamccannon.com/dvd-time-travel-ufos-atlantis-and-world-changes/ (Link Broken) *
(u) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-2090/
(v) https://www.atlantisbremer.de/
(w) https://web.archive.org/web/20201021072640/http://fdoernenburg.de/alien/alternativ/manna/man01_e.php
(y) https://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/episodes/season-3#slide-9
(z) Mayan Filmmaker Offers Photo as Proof of Aliens, Says Hawking Agrees (Exclusive) (archive.org)
(aa) https://atlantis-today.com/Great_Atlantis_Flood.htm
(ab) See: Archive 2098
(ac) https://avi-loeb.medium.com/are-uaps-relics-from-an-earlier-civilization-on-earth-86d1190c6539
Ukraine
Ukraine has not escaped the attention of Atlantis seekers. The state symbol is a stylised trident, the emblem of Poseidon. The use of this icon can be traced back to at least the first century AD.
>Some years ago a book[138], by Whispering Wind and the late Flying Eagle claimed to have identified the Sea of Azov, north of the Black Sea, as the resting place of Atlantis. They further identified the Acropolis of Atlantis with the Hill of Mithridat in the presentday Crimean city of Kerch. In addition, they also asserted that the Mediterranean did not burst into the originally smaller, freshwater Black Sea but that the Black Sea rushed into the Mediterranean. This would have been fine except that as you plunge deeper into the book’s website(a) you encounter benign alien astronauts establishing Atlantis and so on, undermining the credibility, if not the rationality of the authors.<
The book has only 168 pages but contains over ‘200 colourful images, graphics and maps’, which certainly leave little space for any useful text. The authors are best described by the blurb on the website for the book; “Flying Eagle, great grandson of the famous American Indian Chieftain, Quanah Parker, is a dynamic lecturer, a philosopher, a geologist, an artist, an astrologer and an ad-lib piano composer. Whispering Wind is an artist, counsellor, a dancer, an actress and an adventurer. These two inseparable scientists have extensively researched throughout the entire Earth, to finally solve the world’s greatest mystery; the location of the ancient civilization of ATLANTIS. This 28 year research has opened doors into the innumerable quandaries of almost every field of science. Their research has created a demand for seminars and lectures. They are formulating the nucleus of a worldwide cultural superstructure; The Cosmic Vortex family. This rapidly expanding multinational family is composed of dedicated persons who possess a strong desire to find their true identity and purpose, to facilitate the harmonious rejuvenation of our cultural heritage and to restore balance to our beautiful Earth and ATLANTIS-MOTHERLAND”. This is definitely one for the feeble-minded!
Ukraine is also home to the Association of Ukrainian Mythologists and Atlantologists (AMAU)(b). The site includes a few interesting papers (use your translator), but unfortunately the content does not appear to have been updated for some time.
(a) https://www.atlantis-motherland.com/home.html
(b) https://atlantida.primordial.org.ua/ (Ukrainian/Russian)
Sexual Undertones
Sexual Undertones in the Atlantis narrative have been identified by J. Warren Wells, who maintains that Clieto or Kleito in Greek is the diminutive of Kleitoris, which is rendered clitoris in English. He further contends that the name of her husband, Poseidon, can have its constituent elements, Pos and Eidon, translated as ‘penis idol’(a). His ideas have been supported by Ulf Erlingsson(b).
Sex at a more blatant level was achieved by John Grant with his Sex Secrets of Ancient Atlantis delivered with all the accuracy and sincerity we could expect from tabloid journalism.
David McMillin has an extensive article on sex in Atlantis(c), unfortunately the valueof his speculations are, in my view, marred by an over reliance on the ‘readings’ of Edgar Cayce.
(a) https://greekatlantis.warpco.com/Sexcentric.html (offline 1.07.14)
(b) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20190727102713/https://www.ireland-hotels.net/en/atlantisinireland.html
(c) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180627092444/https://www.mcmillinmedia.com/atlantis-sex/
Poseidon
Poseidon was one of the twelve Olympians of ancient Greek mythology. He was also the Greek god of the sea who was given the island of Atlantis as his realm. The Romans later knew Poseidon as Neptune. Herodotus (II.50.2) claimed that the Greek gods were imported from Egypt with a few exceptions including Poseidon. Some have suggested that the ancient Egyptian god Sobek was the equivalent of Poseidon, but the connection seems rather tenuous.
>Eire Rautenberg has proposed that Poseidon was not originally a Greek god but instead came from the Libyans of North Africa(b).<
Some writers have suggested that Noah was to be equated with Poseidon. His symbol was a trident.
Poseidon is also credited with having been the first to tame horses. Others, such as Nienhuis, have equated Poseidon with Sidon referred to in Genesis 10:15.
The Phoenician sea god Melqart is frequently seen as the son of Poseidon whereas others, such as Jonas Bergman, consider them to be identical. The Nordic sea god Aegir is also seen as a mirror of Poseidon. In Portugal, Saint Bartholomew is considered a Christianised Poseidon, where statues of him are similar to those of Poseidon including a trident.
The Celtic god of the sea was known as Manannán Mac Lir who is frequently associated with the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.
When the Greek gods divided the world among themselves, Poseidon received Atlantis as his share. He fell in love with a mortal, Clieto, who bore him five sets of twin boys, of whom Atlas was the firstborn and primus inter pares. Atlantis was then shared between them.
In December 2017, Anton Mifsud, Malta’s leading Atlantologist, published an intriguing suggestion(a) , when he pointed out that on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Neo-Platonist Michelangelo, something odd can be perceived in the central panel, known as The Creation of Adam. There, we find ‘god’ surrounded by five pairs of flightless ‘cherubs’. This is reminiscent of Poseidon’s five pairs of twin sons. Atlantis. However, Christian iconography invariably shows cherubs with wings, so it begs the question; why this departure from the norm? Mifsud contends that together with other aspects of the fresco, this depiction is closer to Plato’s ‘god’, Poseidon, than that of the Mosaic creator in Genesis!
(a) https://www.academia.edu/35425812/THE_CREATION_OF_ADAM_-_Genesis_or_Plato?auto=download
(b) Poseidon is not a Greek god! – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *
Plato *
Plato (c. 428-347 BC) came from an aristocratic family; his father, Ariston, was descended from the early kings of Athens and his mother, Perictione, was related to the renowned Solon, who was to play a major role in the Atlantis story. In turn, Solon’s ancestry is traced back to Poseidon. Furthermore, classical Greek mythology has claims of a virgin birth for Plato(c)!
Plato and his elder brother, Glaucon, were students of Socrates until the latter’s 
death in 399 BC at the hands of the Athenian authorities. After Socrates’ demise, Plato travelled extensively, including visits to Egypt and Sicily.
While in Sicily he angered the king, Dionysios, who had him seized and brought to the island of Aegina to be sold as a slave, but fortunately Plato was recognised by a fellow Athenian, who bought his freedom and sent him home.
After returning to Athens in 387 BC Plato founded the Academy, a school of science and philosophy, that was to become the model for the university of today. The Academy lasted nearly a thousand years until Emperor Justinian closed it in 529 AD. Perhaps the most famous student of the Academy was Aristotle whose teachings have had a tremendous impact on philosophy right up to the present.
Although many of Plato’s works have survived, we do not have any original Greek texts but are limited to Greek translations of Latin translations of earlier Greek transcriptions, now lost. His extant writings are in the form of letters and dialogues, of which The Republic is considered the most famous. It is two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias that contain the earliest unambiguous references to Atlantis.
It is interesting that in a paper(d) by Jean-Luc Solère he noted that “Plato has pointed out the dangers of written works. In his Seventh Letter, he states that he never himself wrote in ‘the sublime questions of philosophy’ (341B-D )and that no serious man will seriously write on serious problems, because he would so lay his thought open to the misunderstanding of the crowd(344B).” Prescient?
June 2010 saw Dr Jay Kennedy, a science historian at the University of Manchester, announce(b) that he had discovered a hidden code in the writings of Plato. “It is a long and exciting story, but basically I cracked the code. I have shown rigorously that the books do contain codes and symbols and that unraveling them reveals the hidden philosophy of Plato. This is a true discovery, not simply reinterpretation.” Kennedy’s findings were published in US journal Apeiron and “reveal that Plato used a regular pattern of symbols, inherited from the ancient followers of Pythagoras, to give his books a musical structure. A century earlier, Pythagoras had declared that the planets and stars made an inaudible music, a ‘harmony of the spheres’. Plato imitated this hidden music in his books.” An more recent (2021) review of Kennedy’s paper is also available(e).
In the opinion of many, Saint Augustine plagiarised some of Plato’s philosophical concepts, effectively ‘Christianising’ him posthumously.
An extensive bibliography of publications relating to all of Plato’s work is available on the Internet(a).
Sadly, Plato’s grave, reputed to have been situated in the grounds of his Academy, has not been located.
However, in April 2024 it was reported that “Italian researchers from the University of Pisa say that they may have identified the burial site of ancient Greek philosopher Plato, potentially ending a centuries-old mystery.
Using advanced technology to analyze texts from the ancient library at Villa of the Papyri, researchers have uncovered previously unknown information about Plato’s life and burial in the city of Athens.” (f)
(a) https://platosociety.org/plato-bibliography/
(b) Science historian cracks “the Plato code” (archive.org) *
(c) Origen, Against Celsus, Book 1, Chapter 37.
(d) https://dlib.bc.edu/islandora/object/bc-ir:100270/datastream/PDF/view
(e) Secret Plato Code Discovered and Solved Claims Historian (greekreporter.com)
(f) Italian Research Team Claims They May Have Found Plato’s Tomb (allthatsinteresting.com)
Libya
>>Libya is defined in William Smith’s 1854 Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography [1719] “as the general appellation given by the more ancient cosmographers and liistorians to that portion of the old continent which lay between Aegypt, Aethiopia, and the shores of the Atlantic, and which was bounded to the North by the Mediterranean sea, and to the South by the river Oceanus. With the increase of geographical knowledge, the latter mythical boundary gave place to the equatorial line.” (f)
Tehenu and Temehu are words used in the ancient inscriptions of Egypt when referring to the Libyans. . When the term Ta Tehenu, is first mentioned in Egyptian texts around 1200 BC, it was applied to a relatively small district in the Western Nile delta. western Nile delta.<<Unfortunately, the Libya mentioned by Plato and other early writers is not geographically delineated with any degree of clarity. This is just another example of the unintentional ambiguity that is common in the writings of classical authors. Sometimes Libya appears to refer to all of Africa while at other times it is just the name for the land immediately to the west of Egypt. Robert Temple[736.414] quotes Percy Newberry, who referred to the variety of meanings applied to the term Libya by different ancient commentators. Temple also offers evidence that North Africa was a fertile region as late as 2500 BC.
Herodotus stated that there were only three continents, Europe, Asia and Libya and that the latter was surrounded by sea except where it joins Asia (Bk IV.42). He also mentions that the names of all the Greek gods came from Egypt except Poseidon who came from Libya where he had always been worshipped (Bk II.50). This is interesting since Plato pronounced Poseidon the founder of Atlantis.
Ancient Libya had a megalithic culture, the remnants of which can be seen in the likes of the Terrgurt valley where “there had been originally no less than eighteen or twenty megalithic trilithons, in a line, each with its massive altar placed before it” according to H. S. Cowper, a 19th-century explorer[1566.279].
In the context of the Atlantis story Plato declares that Atlantis was ‘greater’ than Libya and Asia together. On the face of it, this might appear to be a geographical comparison, but it has been shown that the Greek word ‘meizon’ which was used had a primary meaning of ‘greater’ or ‘more powerful’ rather than larger according to the respected lexicon of Liddell & Scott.
An English Professor of History, P.B.S. Andrews has suggested that Plato may have misread Solon’s notes and used the word for ‘larger than’ instead of ‘midway between’ where there is a difference of only one letter. Diego Ratti has also opted to translate meizon as ‘between’ in his 2021 book Atletenu [1821]. When challenged on his interpretation he produced a spirited defence of his position(d).
Irrespective of the exact meaning of ‘meizon’ in this text, it is quite clear from it that ancient Libya as known to Plato was a separate entity to Atlantis. Notwithstanding this, the Cyrenaica region of modern Libya has now been identified as the home of Atlantis itself(a) by an anonymous German researcher who planned to lead an expedition to their proposed site in late 2006. Based on a study of satellite images he is convinced that a 590 x 320 km plateau to the east of Benghazi (ancient Berenice) is the location of Plato’s Atlantis. This mysterious researcher, using the pseudonym ‘a. petit’, claims that this area had been a large island in ancient times. The results of that 2006 expedition are now available, in German, in book form, entitled Expedition nach Atlantis[673].
The Penn Museum, part of the University of Pennsylvania published a paper by David O’Connor in which he offers a view of the relationship of the Libyans with the New Kingdom Egyptians.(e) The paper also indicates that the New Kingdon had territorial control deep into what was known as Marmarica providing the Egyptians with a military ‘buffer’.
In an address[0750.419] to the 2008 Atlantis Conference, George Sarantitis quotes a number of ancient authors who describe journies in and around Libya that have led him to conclude that the flooded chotts of Tunisia and Algeria had been linked to a much enlarged Lake Chad(b) further south creating a large Libyan peninsula. This situation, he believes, pertained until the 3rd century BC when the waters dried up and eventually led to the topography we have today.
An interesting overview of the history of Libya from the earliest time can be read on the temehu.com website(c).
(a) https://www.expedition-atlantis.com/index.html
(b) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150629162542.htm
(c) https://www.temehu.com/History-of-Libya.htm
(d) More on Atlantis between Asia and Libya (archive.org)
(e) https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/egyptians-and-libyans-in-the-new-kingdom/
(f) https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofgree02smit/page/174/mode/2up *
Kings of Atlantis
The Kings of Atlantis were, according to Plato, originally the sons of Poseidon and Cleito. They were ten in number and consisted of five sets of male twins. The firstborn was Atlas who was given authority over the others, each of whom controlled their own territory. Some commentators reacted with such incredulity to this story, that they have either dismissed this detail or in some cases the entire Atlantis tale as pure fantasy. Of course, it is highly improbable, if not virtually impossible to accept that Clieto had five sets of all-male twins. However, we are dealing here with a myth that is an echo of the legends of many other cultures describing their antediluvian origins. Lenormant & Chevallier wrote [424] of this over a hundred years ago:
“…The ten kingdoms of Atlantis are perpetuated in all the ancient traditions. ‘In the number given by the Bible for the Antediluvian patriarchs we have the first instance of a striking agreement with the traditions of various nations. Other nations, to whatever epoch they carry back their ancestors…are constant to the sacred number of ten… In Chaldea (Babylon), Berosus, writing in the third century BC, numerates ten Antediluvian kings whose fabulous reigns extended to thousands of years. The legends of the Iranian race commence with the reign of ten Peisdadien (Poseidon?) kings…. In India we meet with the nine Brahmadikas, who, with Brahma, their founder, make ten, and who are called the Ten Petris, or Fathers. The Chinese count ten emperors, partaking of the divine nature, before the dawn of historical time. The Germans believed in the ten ancestors of Odin, and the Arabs in the ten mythical kings of the Adites”.
Cosmas Indicopleustes, in the 6th century AD, contended[1245] that Atlantis was the Garden of Eden and that Plato’s 10 kings of Atlantis were the 10 generations between Adam and Noah!
It may be just a coincidence, but Plato tells us that the domain of Atlantis extended as far as Tyrrhenia (modern Tuscany), just south of which was Rome, a city, which according to legend was also founded by twin brothers, Romulus and Remus. It has been claimed that the story of their origins is a variation of the story in the Hindu epic Ramayana concerning the twin sons of king Sri Rama, Luva and Kusha(c).
In the same region, Sicily has the legend of the divine Palici twins (Palikoi in Greek).
>Aelian in his Natura Animalium has recorded [0619 xv.2] how the natives who live on the shores of ‘Ocean’ have a legend that tells of the Atlantean kings, who, to symbolise their authority from Poseidon, wore a crown reminiscent of the white band that ran around the forehead of the male ‘ram fish’ while their queens wore headgear made from the skins of ’marine ewes’.
“Ram-fishes, whose name has a wide circulation, although information about them is not very definite except in so far as displayed in works of art, spend the winter near the strait between Corsica and Sardinia and actually appear above water. And round about them swim dolphins of very great size.” (15.2)(f)
Although these animals have not been clearly identified, their size suggests a species of whale. I suggest that it was a fin whale which has a grey or white chevron marking on top of its head and is frequently found in the Strait of Bonifacio, between Corsica and Sardinia, at the southern end of the Pelagos Sanctuary.
“Fin whales, the second largest animal on the planet after blue whales, are represented in the Mediterranean by a resident population separated from the Atlantic.“(e)
So, it would appear obvious from this excerpt that Aelian did not have any doubt regarding the reality of Atlantis. Perhaps even more interesting is that Aelian seems to also associate these kings of Atlantis with Corsica and Sardinia. For me, this is compatible with a Central Mediterranean location for Atlantis.<
Although Babylon is supposed to have had ten kings before the Flood, it must be noted that they reigned successively rather than concurrently, as was the case in Atlantis.
Attention has been drawn to the fact that Manetho (c. 300 BC), the Egyptian historian called the first sequence of Egyptian god-kings ‘Auriteans’, which has been seen as suspiciously like a corruption of ‘Atlanteans‘.
Plato gives the names of the first ten kings as; Atlas, Gadeiros (Eumelos), Ampheres, Euaimon, Mneseos, Autochthon, Elasippos, Mestor, Azaes, Diaprepres (Critias 114b).
Some writers have attempted to link these names with specific regions; such as Atlas with Morocco, Eumelos (Gadeiros) with Gades (Cadiz) and Elasippos with Lisbon. Beyond these three there is very little agreement. Lewis Spence correctly points out “Plato expressly states that these names had been Egyptianised from the Atlantean language by the priest of Sais, and subsequently Hellenised in Critias, so that there is little hope that they were transmitted in anything like their original form.” Spence also commented on the similarity of the Phoenician gods and the early kings of Atlantis, an idea suggested earlier by Ignatius Donnelly.
Reginald Fessenden claimed to have identified at least six of Plato’s Atlantean king-list with names in the Caucasus.(d)
Even more distant locations were proposed by the French cartographer Guillaume Sanson (1633-1703), who generously distributed the Americas among the ten brothers, allocating Mexico to Atlas.
R. Cedric Leonard is convinced that Manetho’s list of Egyptian god-kings is in fact a list of the first kings of Atlantis and expands on this idea on his website(a). However, in his 1979 book, Quest for Atlantis[0130], Leonard has suggested that the kings of Atlantis were human-alien hybrids and that humans are the result of alien genetic experiments!!
Another site(b) identifies the kings of Atlantis with the pantheon of Phoenician gods, an idea first mooted by Ignatius Donnelly (part IV. chap. III). But Donnelly, also suggested, unconvincingly, that the gods of the Greeks were just the deified kings of Atlantis (part IV, chap. II), while it is also possible that they were just personifications of natural phenomena.
An unusual feature of the Atlantean kings is the meeting every fifth and sixth year. Plato explains this as a way of honouring odd and even numbers. However, Bacon & Galanopoulos suggest[263.152] that in fact, this may have been the result of an awareness of the eleven-year cycles of rains. I believe that this explanation is equally weak and the subject requires further investigation.
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20170608084749/http:/www.atlantisquest.com:80/Hiero.html
(b) https://phoenicia.org/godidea.html#Atlantis
(c) https://vediccafe.blogspot.ie/2014/05/the-ramayana-in-roots-of-pre-christian.html
(d) The Deluged Civilisation of the Caucasus Isthmus [1012] (chap 3.29) *
(e) https://tethys.org/activities-overview/research/fin-whales/ *
Jurikov, Vlaceslav
Vlaceslav Jurikov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences announced in 1994 that Atlantis had been located near the Lipari or Aeolian Islands off the northern coast of Sicily. He specified a point 15km from Cape Peloro at a depth of about 500 feet. This region is also favoured by Winfried Huf as the centre of the Atlantean sphere of influence.
He questions Plato’s report that Atlantis was submerged in a day and a night, suggesting instead that it was a much slower process allowing its inhabitants time to emigrate.
Jurikov further asserts that refugees from Atlantis fled to the Ukraine bringing with them the symbol of Poseidon, the trident, which is now found on the coat of arms of Ukraine.
>In 2015, the Atantisforschung.de website reported that evidence had emerged suggesting that Jurikov had never been a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and that the whole Lipari claim was just an invention(a)!
(a) https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Vlaceslav_Jurikov<