Latest News
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 »
Roger Grosjean
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.
(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
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 
location 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
(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) *