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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 »
precession
Babylonia *
Babylonia was one of the great nations of ancient Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq. Its capital, Babylon, was founded towards the end of the third millennium BC(a). For many, it is best known for its frequent mention in the Bible. The region has also produced what is arguably the earliest epic narrative in the form of The Epic of Gilgamesh, who was a semi-mythical king. In it, we have a flood myth, which is accepted by some as an earlier version of Noah’s Deluge account(b).
Babylonian astronomy can be traced back to the fourth millennium BC(c), although some argue that their interest was in astrology rather than what we would call scientific astronomy(d). The idea that the Babylonians had knowledge of precession has also been challenged by Gary David Thompson(h). A similar debate concerns the claim that the Babylonians had used trigonometry more than a thousand years before Hipparchus(e).
Another claim that has produced additional controversy relates to what has been claimed as ‘the oldest map of the world’. This relates to a clay tablet discovered in 1899 and now housed in the British Museum. The claim to be a world map stems from what appears to be a depiction of the ‘ocean’ that at the time was thought to surround the known world. This is similar to the later Greek understanding of the world. According to one interpretation of the tablet, the Babylonians saw themselves at the centre of a world that we would consider now to be regional in extent(j).
Stephen Kershaw, an Atlantis sceptic, noted that “Herodotus’ History includes a memorable description of the city of Babylon, which may have had a considerable influence on Plato’s description of Atlantis in the Critias.” (i).
Dieter Bremer has identified references to Atlantis in various ancient Mesopotamian traditions(g) that, for him, justify his claim that Atlantis was a space station! This daft idea of an Akkadian connection he supports by quotations from the Bible and Homer and also some modern writers. All his ravings are in German only, but MSEdge will translate them automatically.
Any suggested connection between the Babylonians and Atlantis is lacking any real foundation. Thorwald C. Franke summed it up as follows:
Babylon = Atlantis?
The city of Babylon has a many-fold symbolic meaning for the history of humankind: First, as the best-known Mesopotamian city, it is a symbol of the development of urban civilization in the course of the history of humankind. Secondly, from the biblical records, Babylon became a symbol of decadence and arrogance which lead to decay. Because of this symbolism, some identified Babylon with Atlantis.
But similar symbolism should not seduce to an identification. Babylon is not on an island, it is a quadratic, not a circular-shaped city, and the biblical myth of the Tower of Babel has no correspondence with Plato’s Atlantis account. Indeed, Babylon is old enough for Atlantis but the Bible especially refers to the neo-Babylonian empire 626-539 BC.
For adherents of the invention hypothesis, Babylon is considered to be one of the models after which Plato allegedly invented the Atlantis account. But even under this perspective, the similarities are much too vague in order to make reliable statements on the question.”
More recently (2018), an ‘off-the-wall’ Dutch commentator, Leon Elshout, has also written extensively, in Dutch and English, linking Atlantis and Babylon(k) with details in the Book of Revelation.
(a) Babylon – World History Encyclopedia (archive.org)
(b) https://www.gotquestions.org/Gilgamesh-flood.html
(c) https://www.livius.org/articles/person/kidinnu-the-chaldaeans-and-babylonian-astronomy/
(d) https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/babylonians-scientists/462150/
(e) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/tsikritsis-minas/
(f) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_bible.htm
(g) Mesopotamian traditions | Atlantis Mythology (archive.org)
(h) Archive 6896 | (atlantipedia.ie) *
(i) https://open.conted.ox.ac.uk/resources/images/babylon-and-atlantis
Archaeoastronomy *
Archaeoastronomy is a relatively new scientific discipline, which as the name implies combines archaeology and astronomy, particularly in the study of ancient megalithic monuments and their possible alignment with various celestial bodies.
Arguably the most famous example is Stonehenge, but our globe is littered with ancient monuments incorporating solar, lunar or astral alignments. Not all are as impressive or accessible as Stonehenge, Callanish or Newgrange but in remote places such as Nabta Playa or Fajada Butte (see Hadingham[1308.152]).
The subject was initially considered by some to be a ‘fringe’ topic, but in 1999 Clive Ruggles was appointed Professor of Archaeoastronomy at the University of Leicester(a) and is the author of the encyclopedic Ancient Astronomy [1310]+.
The University of Maryland has had a Center for Archaeoastronomy since 1978(c).
The subject has never been central to Atlantis studies but has hovered in the background, with writers such as Egerton Sykes(b) and Graham Hancock[855][1119] who employed aspects of the discipline in their publications.
Giulio Magli (1964- ) is an Italian archaeaostronomer with a website in English(e) dedicated to the application of the discipline in Egypt. In 2013, Magli proposed that aspects of the Göbleki Tepe site are related to the recent appearance of Sirius in the night sky around 9300 BC(f). Andrew Collins and Rodney Hale argue against this interpretation(g), which is perhaps understandable as they support a linkage with the Cygnus constellation. A 2004 paper by Magli, on precessional effects in ancient astronomy(h), has recently been applied by Lenie Reedijk to her contention that the Maltese temples were oriented to Sirius[1631].
A further application of the discipline was employed by Martin Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis who used it to interpret the carved symbols at Göbekli Tepe. In a 2017 paper(d) they concluded that the pillars there were used to record meteor showers and cometary encounters. They believe that one such encounter involved the explosion or impact of part of Encke’s Comet around 13,000 years ago, which triggered the Younger Dryas Event that kick-started the Neolithic Revolution. Scientists who have worked on the site responded critically(i), which in turn evoked further comments from Sweatman and Tsikritsis(j).
Sweatman later expanded their theory in his book Prehistory Decoded [1621].
The Sixth Oxford International Conference on Archaeoastronomy and the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Société Européenne pour I’Astronom~e dans la Culture (SEAC, European Society for Astronomy in Culture) was held jointly on the days around the summer solstice of 1999 at the Museo de la Ciencia y el Cosmos, in the historical city of La Laguna, in the island of Tenerife. One hundred participants from more than 20 countries of the five continents and almost 60 talks indicate undoubtedly the relevance of this meeting. The Proceedings of that Conference are available online(l) offering a global view of the subject.
Noah Brosch of Tel Aviv University offers a wide-ranging paper on ancient sites and artefacts around the world that clearly had astronomical functions(k).
Archaeoastronomy is one of only a few dozen words with four consecutive vowels.
[1310]+ Available online: https://archive.org/details/an-encyclopedia-of-cosmologies-and-myth-in-ancient-astronomy-clive-ruggles/mode/2up *
(a) Professor Clive Ruggles — University of Leicester (archive.org)
(b) Seachild: Fields of Study: Archaeological Evidence 2 – Archaeoastronomy
(c) https://terpconnect.umd.edu/~tlaloc/archastro/
(d) Wayback Machine (archive.org) *
(e) Archaeoastronomy egypt (archive.org)
(g) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Gobekli_Sirius.htm
(h) https://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0407/0407108.pdf
(j) https://www.academia.edu/33931844/MORE_THAN_A_VULTURE_A_RESPONSE_TO_SWEATMAN_AND_TSIKRITSIS (See the end of the paper)
(k) (99+) (PDF) Thinking about Archeoastronomy | Noah Brosch – Academia.edu
Reiche, Harald A.T.
Harald A.T. Reiche, (1922-1994) was born in Germany and studied in Switzerland before arriving in the United States. He received a BA degree in c
lassics from Harvard in 1943, an MA in 1944 and a PhD in 1955. He was a professor of classics and philosophy at M.I.T from 1955 to 1991. His principal interest was Greek cosmology and astronomy, subjects on which he lectured and wrote extensively. Reiche offered an astronomical interpretation of the Atlantis story, based on precession*; a concept discussed at length in Hamlet’s Mill[524] by Santillana and Dechend who were colleagues of Reiche at M.I.T. Their view is that “myths were vehicles for memorising and transmitting certain kinds of astronomical and cosmological information”. A comparable suggestion has been proposed by Kenneth Wood and his wife Florence, built on the research of his mother-in-law, the late Edna Leigh, which they outlined in Homer’s Secret Iliad[391], a book that attempts to prove that the Iliad was written as an aide memoire for a wide range of astronomical data. Guy Gervis has adopted some of their work and specifies a date of around 2300 BC for the events described in the Iliad and Odyssey, based on an analysis of this astronomical data(b). Hamlet’s Mill has received widespread critical acclaim but perhaps it might be no harm to also consider a more sober view presented by Jason Colavito(a).
>Some years ago, in a paper [0525] also published in Brecher and Feirtag’s Astronomy of the Ancients [1883.153],< Reiche suggested that Plato’s description of the city of Atlantis mirrors “features of the southern circumpolar sky”. Understandably, this quote has been gratefully seized upon by the Flem-Aths to bolster their Atlantis in Antarctica theory.
*Precession is the name given to the astronomical feature whereby the gradual change in the direction of the Earth’s axis of rotation, producing a shifting of constellations around the celestial sphere.
(a) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/12/hamlets-mill-precession-or-solar-symbol.html
(b) See: Archive 3606