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 »
Solomon
Queen of Sheba *
The Queen of Sheba is one of the few ancient historical figures that has not been linked with Atlantis. Wikipedia refers to her as “a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she brings a caravan of valuable gifts for the Israelite King Solomon………..modern historians identify Sheba with the South Arabian kingdom of Saba in present-day Yemen and Ethiopia. The queen’s existence is disputed among historians.”(a)
In Arabia she was known as Bilqis, to the Christians of Ethiopia she was Makeda, while Josephus referred to her as Nicaule.
Nevertheless, she is mentioned from time to time on these pages, particularly regarding her identity and the time of her reign. In the 1950s Immanuel Velikovsky, proposed, in Ages in Chaos [039] that either six centuries were missing from Israel’s history or had six hundred ghost years crept into Egyptian history. One of the keys to his revised chronology was the identification of the Queen of Sheba as the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut.
This caused quite a stir at the time and generated a degree of support for Velikovsky. However, in 1986 John Bimson published a paper, ‘Hatshepsut and the Queen of Sheba’, debunking Velikovsky’s contention, which had the effect of eroding that support. Then in 1997, Damien Mackey re-ignited the controversy with a paper challenging Bimson’s conclusion(f) and so the debate continues(h).
There are a number of 21st-century commentators who still accept Velikovsky’s identification of Hatshepsut as the Queen of Sheba including Emmet Sweeney [1867.25] and Emmet Scott(d), Damien Mackey(f), as well as Ken Griffith & Darrell K. White(e) and, I might add, no lack of opponents either.
Eulalio Eguia jr. offered a different Egyptian identification suggesting Nefertiti instead of Hatshepsut(b). Riaan Booysen went further, not only agreeing with Eguia but proposing that Nefertiti was also Helen of Troy(c)!
Among the Ethiopians, there is a tradition that the Queen of Sheba and Solomon had a child, Menelik, who visited Jerusalem and returned to Ethiopia with the Ark of the Covenant. There is no evidence to support this tale which is thought to have been “originally created to legitimize Yukuno Amlak’s rule of the late 13th century AD who had killed the Zagwa king to obtain power.”
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Sheba
(b) Nefertiti – The Queen of Sheba | PDF | Tutankhamun | Akhenaten (scribd.com) *
(c) Thera and the Exodus – Graham Hancock Official Website
(d) Hatshepsut: Queen of Sheba: Scott, Emmet: 9780875869452: Amazon.com: Books (I suspect that Emmet Sweeney, a Scot, and Emmet Scott are the same person and share the same publisher)
Ophir
Ophir is referred to in the Bible as a source of gold, silver, precious stones and exotic animals. King Solomon was reputed to have received a cargo of such goodies every three years, a detail which seemingly points to Ophir having been a considerable distance from Israel.
>>The location of Ophir has been the subject speculation from at least the beginning of the 16th century, when Peter Martyr, In a letter written in May 1500, claimed that Christopher Columbus identified Hispaniola with Ophir(k).
Later in the same century, Benito Arias Montano proposed Peru as the location of Ophir, an idea popular with others at that time according to José de Acosta. The suggestion has not been abandoned as the American explorer, Gene Savoy (1927-2007), was still promoting it in the 21st century(l).<<
The exact location of Ophir is the subject of continuing controversy. In broad terms the most popular regions suggested are, or have been, India(g), Africa(f) and the Americas(a), but they were not the only proposed locations, even Australia and the Solomon Islands were considered. Emilio Spedicato has opted for Tibet, where an ancient goldmine fits the bill, which he outlines in his paper entitled Ophir, It’s Location Unveiled(h).
>>The Jewish Encyclopedia offers the suggestion that “The most probable view is that Ophir was situated in Arabia. This is indicated, as mentioned above, by the Biblical reference in Gen. x. 29. An old tradition recorded by Eupolemus (c. 150 B.C.) also assigns Ophir to this region, identifying it with the island of Uphre in the Red Sea.”(j)<<
There is also a claim that the Batanes Islands off the Northern Philippines held the site of Ophir(b). Further west, Dhani Irwanto has claimed that Punt was also known as Ophir(d) and was situated on Sumatera (Sumatra) in Indonesia(c). However, he went further and also located Atlantis in Indonesia in his book, Atlantis: The lost city is in the Java Sea [1093]. His chosen site is just north of Bawean Island in the Java Sea.
However, Irwanto was not the first to link Atlantis with Ophir, Theodore L. Urban was the author of a paper delivered to the Lancaster County Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1897. In it, he denied that Atlantis had been completely destroyed and argued that the biblical Ophir was in fact Atlantis, suggesting that it had been located in the Americas, which explained the three years that the round trip took(e).
Jason Colavito has published articles written by Thomas Crawford Johnston in 1892(i) that he later developed into his 1913 book Did the Phoenicians Discover America [1902+] in which he places Ophir in America!
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophir#Americas
(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZqYQpmRCx0
(c) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2015/11/14/land-of-punt-is-sumatera/
(d) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2019/06/16/land-of-ophir/
(e) https://openlibrary.org/works/OL10326701W/American_Indians (p.91)
(f) https://www.historicmysteries.com/lost-mine-ophir/
(g) https://www.britannica.com/place/Ophir
(h) Ophir, its location revealed (2010-q-conference.com) *
OPHIR 27-10-09 (2010-q-conference.com)
(i) Phoenicians in America – JASON COLAVITO
(j) OPHIR – JewishEncyclopedia.com *
(k) Ophir – Wikipedia *
Mackey, Damien
Damien Mackey (1950- ) is an Australian writer who has written extensively on religious and historical matters. In April 2016, he devoted a blog(a) to the subject of Atlantis and its possible historical underpinnings as well as cultural borrowings from Old Testament sources. In this regard, he echoes the views of J.D. Brady in comparing Plato’s Atlantis with Tyrus in the Bible’s Book of Ezekiel. He has also challenged(c) the chronology presented in Ahmed Osman’s Out of Egypt [1744].
Mackey has also proposed(e) “that the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, span the entire period of Egyptian history from the very first king of the First Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (as we have already learned) to, in the case of Moses, the last king (actually a woman) of the so-called Middle Kingdom.”
His MA thesis which concerned The Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian Calendar(d) is available online.
Mackey has also supported the identification of the biblical Amalekites with the Hyksos(f) noting that “Dr. I. Velikovsky’s identification of the Hyksos conquerors of Egypt with the biblical Amalekites has been widely accepted by revisionists – even those who have since rejected his Ages in Chaos.
David Rohl, whose own biblico-historical revision is some centuries apart from Velikovsky’s, had nonetheless accepted the latter’s identification of the Hyksos conquerors of Egypt with the Amalekites of the Book of Exodus (Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest, 1997).”
Mackey has written a number of papers aimed at synchronising Egyptian and biblical chronologies(g), some of which are available on the academia.edu website(h).
Additionally, he suggests that Solon could be identified with biblical Solomon(b)!
(a) https://westerncivilisationamaic.blogspot.ie/2016/04/ancient-atlantis.html
(b) https://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba
(c) Archive 6193
(e) Archive 6532 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(f) https://mosesegyptianised.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/the-hyksos-as-amalekites/
(g) (99+) Securing an anchorless Egypt to biblical history | Damien Mackey – Academia.edu *
(h) (99+) Damien Mackey | The University of Sydney – Academia.edu *
Tharros
Tharros was an ancient city on the west coast of Sardinia. It was apparently founded by the Phoenicians, who built on top of an earlier nuraghic settlement. Tharros was first identified with Tarshish by W.W.Covey-Crump in The Journal of Theological Studies 17 (1916) (p.280-290). William F. Albright supported this view in his Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan.
While there is evidence that the Tarshish of Bible which supplied the silver referred to in Ezekiel (27.12), the majority view is that it was brought from Andalusia. However, Tharros is also a credible alternative as it had important silver mines close at hand highlighted by a town in the region named Argentiera.
Recent isotope analysis demonstrated that Solomon’s silver could have been brought from Spain or Sardinia(a).
Modern researchers, such as Federico Bardanzellu, have also opted for Tharros as Tarshish(b).
(b)https://www.museodeidolmen.it/popomare.html
Solon
Solon (c.630- c.560 BC) was an Athenian archon (chief magistrate). His reputation rested on his legislative, social and monetary reforms, which contributed to an economic recovery and laid the foundation for the later emergence of democracy. Over time he was elevated to something akin to political sainthood, but not without some critics. For example, Kelcy Shannon Sagstetter of Pennsylvania University had produced a lengthy paper(c) in which she is content to label Solon’s methods as not unlike those of other tyrants of the period.
Although the story of Atlantis is normally attributed to Plato, the core of the narrative, namely the destruction of a powerful civilisation many hundreds, if not thousands of years earlier, through flooding, should be credited to Solon, whose ‘notes’ provided the basis for Plato’s work, allegedly based on the content of conversations with Egyptian priests at Sais and Heliopolis. The very detailed descriptions of matters such as the history, topography and fauna of Atlantis are probably later additions by Plato. It is highly unlikely that the Egyptians would have been concerned with the recording of such minutiae relating to their former enemies.
Many commentators, including Benjamin Jowett, doubted that an actual note of Solon’s conversations with the Egyptian priests ever existed, even though in Plato’s Dialogues Critias claims that these were handed down to his relatives. However, here again, we encounter a difficulty, in one place Critias [113b] Plato states that he is still in possession of Solon’s notes, in another Timaeus [26a] he declares that he relies on his memory for details of the Atlantis story that his grandfather had told him and which he recited as a child, indicating that he was using two complementary sources.
>Jowett’s scepticism went as far as to claim the story of Solon’s visit to Egypt was just a legend, even though Herodotus recounted Solon’s visit just over a century later. Peter James [47.59] recalls how early in the 20TH century K.T. Frost offered a rebuttal of Jowett’s various objections to the credibility of the Atlantis narrative.<
It seems that Solon had intended to use the Atlantis story as the basis for an epic poem, apparently intended to rival the work of Homer. According to Plutarch, the fear of failing in his ambition held him back!
Reginald Fessenden in defending Solon against accusations of inventing the Atlantis story wrote “ As regards the theory that Solon himself might have invented it, we know Solon’s opinion of fiction. Moved by curiosity he went to see the first play, acted by Thespis. After it was over he called Thespis aside and asked him if he were not ashamed to tell so many lies before so many people. Thespis said there was no harm to do so or say so in play. Solon struck his staff vehemently on the ground; said ‘If we honor and commend this in play we shall soon find it in our business.’ Hardly the man to think his reputation would be increased by making up traveller’s tales”(e).
The Life of Solon by Plutarch is available on the Internet(a)(d).
Damien Mackey has made a half-hearted attempt to identify Solon with the biblical Solomon!(b)
(a) Plutarch, Lives (ed. Bernadotte Perrin) (archive.org)
(b) https://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba
(c) https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/923/
(d) https://archive.org/details/plutarchslives01plut2/page/440/mode/2up
(e) The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus (Chap 3.24) [1012]