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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 »
Pyropus
Ghembaza, Thérêse
Thérêse Ghembaza is a French researcher who has a website, in French and English, entitled The Great Enigmas of Antiquity(a) in which she discusses matters such as the Hyksos, the identity of Moses and the Kushites. The site also deals with her theory that Atlantis had been situated in Meroë on the Upper Nile, a theory that she developed in a number of other papers(c), which are certainly worth a read.
While at first sight this might be seen as a wild claim, Ghembaza offers a well reasoned theory which was presented to the 2nd Atlantis Conference held in Athens in 2008. She has imaginatively linked aspects of Meroitic geography and history with Plato’s story of Atlantis. For example, she identifies Tyrrhenia with Tyre in Lebanon and claims that Tyrrhenia in Italy was a later colony of Tyre! While some of her ideas are convincing I found others a little threadbare. Nevertheless, Ghembaza must be applauded for her efforts to construct a scientific explanation for the Atlantis narrative.
>Although Ghembaza quotes Plato extensively to support her Meroë hypothesis, she fails to explain how an Atlantean Meroë situated on the Upper Nile had territory in Southern Italy and northeast Africa (Tim 25a-b & Crit 114c), a distance of around 4,000 km. Equally difficult to account for is the fact that Meroë did not exist until sometime early in the 1st millennium BC in contrast to the middle of the 2nd millennium, considered a reasonably late date for the destruction of Atlantis. Add to that, the fact that Meroë was never submerged or created ‘shoals of mud’ leaving the credibility of Ghembaza’s Atlantis claims in tatters.<
In April 2015, Ghembaza offered a short paper(d) in support of identifying Bab-el-Mandeb as the location of the Pillars of Heracles.
Ghembaza has kindly drawn my attention to two quotations from Pliny the Elder and Ovid that offer possible explanations for Plato’s orichalcum (see Document 091011). The former refers to a Cypriot copper mixed with gold which gave a fiery colour and is called pyropus, while Ovid also refers to a cladding of pyropus, a term often translated as bronze. She also mentions auricupride(Cu3Au), an alloy that may be connected with orichalcum.
>A lecture outline by Ghembaza with a slideshow can be accessed online(e).<
(a) http://antiqua91.fr/index_en.html
(b) Hecataeus of Miletus‘ Periegesis 550 – 480 “now lost, but probably the main source of Plato and Eratosthenes”
(c) http://antiqua91.fr/atlantis_en.html
(d) See: Archive 2526