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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 »
Scandinavia
Troy Towns
Troy Towns is the name given to turf mazes in Britain and their counterparts, the many stone lined labyrinths to be found in Scandinavia, the Baltic countries and as far east as Russia, where Arkaim is considered by some to be a form of troy town(d).
>A German website (in English) offers a detailed review of Troy Towns in Sweden(f).<
W.H. Matthews (1882- ) listed a total of thirty-seven extant English turf labyrinths in his 1922 book [1686], noting that there were once many more, including some in Scotland and Wales. Today, only eight historic turf labyrinths survive in England, only two of which still bear the name of Troy: The City of Troy in Dalby, North Yorkshire, and Troy at Troy Farm, Somerton, Oxfordshire. Saffron Walden is home to the largest, and some maintain oldest, surviving English turf labyrinth.(e)
All these are supposedly inspired by the ‘original’ labyrinth on Crete. To suggest(c) that labyrinths or Troy Towns are in any way intended to memorialise Plato’s description of the layout of Atlantis is just unbridled conjecture.
(a) https://www.mymaze.de/trojaburg_en.htm
(b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Town
(c) The mystery of the labyrinth (archive.org) *
(e) https://www.dailygrail.com/2017/07/the-labyrinths-of-troy/
Diaprepes
Diaprepes was the name of the youngest of the fifth pair of twins whom Plato records in Critias as the tenth king of the Atlantean confederation/alliance.
The Schoppes, based on a rather vague similarity of sound alone, have suggested that Diaprepes gave his name to the region of the River Dnieper, which flows into the Black Sea, where they claim Atlantis had been located.
Riaan Booysen provides a very different etymological interpretation of the name, proposing that it means something like “among [those who were] before everyone else”. David Hughes suggested in 2007 in The British Chronicles (Book I) that the province ruled by Diaprepes was Scandinavia.(a)
(a) Diaprepes – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *
Divine Twins *
Divine Twins (Dioscurism) occur frequently in many cultures worldwide(c), Greek mythology being no exception, although Plato’s report that five sets of twins were the original rulers of Atlantis, provides one of the more unusual elements in the account. Could there be any connection between the male twins of Atlantis and the male twins, Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome, or Amphion and Zethos who established Thebes?
Jürgen Spanuth expressed the odd idea that the five trilithons at Stonehenge “most probably represented five pairs of twins.” [0015.85] an idea echoed later by Dieter Braasch(h).
The Arcus-Atlantis website offers other instances where twins are encountered in Greek mythology(j).
Greek and Roman mythologies also shared the twins, Castor and Pollux. Furthermore, a Christian reference to them can be found in the Acts of the Apostles (28.11), where St.Paul is said to have left Malta for Rome on a ship displaying the sign of Castor and Pollux.
The idea of Divine twins is also found in the old Slavic pantheon according to Michael Shapiro in a 1982 paper(g) and found across European mythologies(i).
According to Jim Allen, the leading proponent of the idea of Atlantis having existed in the Andes, the Aymara kingdoms which existed on the Andean Altiplano also governed in pairs, so he does not doubt that the story of Atlantis had its origins in a Bolivian legend(a). It is accepted that ‘The Hero Twins’ are part of Mayan mythology in the form of Xbalanque and Hunaphu. The anthropologist Robert L. Hall has detected twins in the native symbolism as far north as the Mississippi. The existence of twin rulers also existed in Bronze Age Scandinavia – one being the chief of war, the other the chief of rituals.
Also interesting is the paper presented by Thérèse Ghembaza to the 2008 Atlantis Conference in which she referred to the Oromos of Ethiopia, who also were governed by five pairs of rulers[0750.519].
A recent paper by Alastair Coombs entitled The Atlantis Twins offered further thoughts on possible prehistoric references, including a suggested link with Göbekli Tepe. This article was expanded and retitled Göbekli Tepe & the Atlantis Twins and was later published on Graham Hancock’s website(d).
In December 2017, Anton Mifsud, the doyen of Maltese Atlantologists, published an intriguing suggestion(f), 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 that ruled 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!
My view is that the story of the five sets of male twins is just one of the mythological threads in Plato’s Atlantis narrative. P.P. Flambas who has taken a generally literal view of Plato’s account, admits the improbability of happening to one couple through natural means. However, in correspondence, he defensively quotes the somewhat dubious(e) case of “the greatest officially recorded number of children born to one mother is 69, to the wife of Feodor Vassilyev (1707–c.1782), a peasant from Shuya, Russia.”
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20190213205922/http:/www.atlantisbolivia.org/twinsofatlantis.htm
(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twins_in_mythology
(d) https://grahamhancock.com/coombsa1/ or see Archive 3642
(e) https://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151020-did-one-woman-really-give-birth-to-69-children
(f) https://www.academia.edu/35425812/THE_CREATION_OF_ADAM_-_Genesis_or_Plato?auto=download
(g) Michael Shapiro, Neglected Evidence of Dioscurism (Divine Twinning) in the Old Slavic Pantheon, JIES 10 (1982), 137-166.
(i) https://herminiusmons.wordpress.com/2019/09/17/arentio-and-arentia-lusitanian-divine-twins/
(j) Twins in ancient Greek myth (archive.org) (new link) *