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NEWS September 2023
September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]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 »
St. Paul
Croatia
Croatia has been mentioned several times within these pages. Apart from being the birthplace of Rudolf Steiner and Flavio Barbiero, it also offers a serious rival to Malta as the place where St. Paul was shipwrecked, namely on the island of Mljet! Coincidentally, Mljet is also claimed by some as the home of Calypso’s Ogygia(a).
Vedran Sinožic in his book Naša Troja (Our Troy) [1543]. “Sinožic provides numerous arguments that prove that the legendary Homer Troy is not located in Hisarlik in Turkey, but is located in the Republic of Croatia – today’s town of Motovun in Istria.”
Pero Metkovic recently announced that he had identified a number of pyramids in the vicinity of Dubrovnik. Not content with that revelation, he also claims to have located Atlantis nearby(b). For good measure, he supports the idea of Croatians in America in ancient times!
When the sunken ruins of a city, dated to around 1500 BC were discovered in 2015, near Croatia’s oldest city, Zadar, it generated the usual flurry of Atlantis speculation. There was a media report(c) in early 2017 in which treasure hunter Mark Kempf claimed to have discovered the remains of Atlantis 30 miles off the coast of Croatia.
So, with links to St. Paul, along with Ogygia, Troy, Atlantis and a collection of Egyptian-style pyramids within its territory, it has got to be the holiday destination of all time.
>Nevertheless, although it cannot be directly linked to Atlantis, I feel obliged to add a May 2023 report that a “prehistoric road was discovered under layers of sea mud at the sunken Neolithic site of Soline, and helped connect the Hvar settlement to the now-isolated island of Korcula in Croatia(i). The ‘road’ has been dated to around 5000 BC.<
(b) https://perometkovic.medium.com/mistery-of-dubrovnik-pyramids-3dea77cedc57
(c) http://empirenews.net/lost-city-of-atlantis-uncovered-in-mediterranean-sea/
(d) https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3u7rce/archeologists_in_croatia_announced_their/
(f) http://empirenews.net/lost-city-of-atlantis-uncovered-in-mediterranean-sea/
(h) http://www.acam.it/tracce-di-atlantide-a-venezia/
(i) 7,000-Year-Old Ancient Road Found Buried Underneath the Mediterranean Sea! | Weather.com *
Syrtis
Syrtis was the name given by the Romans to two gulfs off the North African coast; Syrtis Major which is now known as the Gulf of Sidra off Libya and Syrtis Minor, known today as the Gulf of Gabes in Tunisian waters. They are both shallow sandy gulfs that have been feared from ancient times by mariners. In the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 27.13-18) it is described how St. Paul on his way to Rome was blown off course and feared that they would run aground on ‘Syrtis sands.’
However, they were shipwrecked on Malta or as some claim on Mljet in the Adriatic.
The earliest modern reference to these gulfs that I can find in connection with Atlantis was by Nicolas Fréret in the 18th century when he proposed that Atlantis may have been situated in Syrtis Major. Giorgio Grongnet de Vasse expressed a similar view around the same time. Since then there has been little support for the idea until recent times when Winfried Huf designated Syrtis Major as one of his five divisions of the Atlantean Empire.
However, the region around the Gulf of Gabes has been more persistently associated with aspects of the Atlantis story. Inland from Gabes are the chotts, which were at one time connected to the Mediterranean and considered to have been part of the legendary Lake Tritonis, sometimes suggested as the actual location of Atlantis.
In the Gulf itself, Apollonius of Rhodes placed the Pillars of Herakles(a) , while Anton Mifsud has drawn attention[0209] to the writings of the Greek author, Palefatus of Paros, who stated (c. 32) that the Columns of Heracles were located close to the island of Kerkennah at the western end of Syrtis Minor. Lucanus, the Latin poet, located the Strait of Heracles in Syrtis Minor. Mifsud has pointed out that this reference has been omitted from modern translations of Lucanus’ work!
Férréol Butavand was one of the first modern commentators to locate Atlantis in the Gulf of Gabés[0205]. In 1929 Dr. Paul Borchardt, the German geographer, claimed to have located Atlantis between the chotts and the Gulf, while more recently Alberto Arecchi placed Atlantis in the Gulf when sea levels were lower(b) . George Sarantitis places the ‘Pillars’ near Gabes and Atlantis itself inland, further west in Mauritania, south of the Atlas Mountains. Antonio Usai also places the ‘Pillars’ in the Gulf of Gabes.
In 2018, Charles A. Rogers published a paper(c) on the academia.edu website in which he identified Tunisia as Atlantis with it capital located at the mouth of the Triton River on the Gulf of Gabes. He favours Plato’s 9.000 ‘years’ to have been lunar cycles, bringing the destruction of Atlantis into the middle of the second millennium BC and coinciding with the eruption of Thera which created a tsunami that ran across the Mediterranean destroying the city with the run-up and its subsequent backwash. This partly agrees with my conclusions in Joining the Dots!
Also See: Gulf of Gabes and Tunisia
(a) Argonautica Book IV ii 1230
(c) https://www.academia.edu/36855091/Atlantis_Once_Lost_Now_Found?auto=download*
Josephus, Flavius
Flavius Josephus, the 1st century AD historian and Jewish priest, has been invoked by Georges Diaz-Montexano to support his belief in an Iberian location for Atlantis(a). Diaz-Montexano refers to Book II. 374-375, which records the incursion by, what appears to have been a tsunami, onto the Atlantic coastal lands of modern Spain and Portugal, while at the time occupied by the Lusitanians and Cantabrians. Diaz-Montexano claims, let it be said, without proof, that this could only have been the same inundation that destroyed Atlantis.
Ralph Ellis has made the wild claim that Josephus was in fact St. Paul!(b) This idea has been put forward by others(c). On the other hand Flavio Barbiero offers the theory that Josephus and St. Paul were certainly known to each other(d). In his book, The Secret Society of Moses [1102], Barbiero expands on the idea that Josephus played an important role in the development of early Christianity.
*Some doubt has been cast on Josephus’ reliability as an historian(c).
(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsNOAUMyKIo
(c) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread206916/pg1&colorshift=yes
(d) https://www.q-mag.org/mithras-jesus-and-josephus-flavius.html
*(e) https://www.allabouthistory.org/how-reliable-is-josephus-work-faq.htm*
Ogygia*
Ogygia is the home of Calypso, referred to by Homer in Book V of his Odyssey. It is accepted by some as an island in the Mediterranean that was destroyed by an earthquake before the Bronze Age. The Greek writers Euhemerus in the 4th century BC and Callimachus who flourished in the 3rd century BC, identified the Maltese archipelago as Ogygia. Others have more specifically named the Maltese island of Gozo as Ogygia. Anton Mifsud has pointed out[209] that Herodotus, Hesiod and Diodorus Siculus have all identified the Maltese Islands with Ogygia.
John Vella has added his support to the idea of a Maltese Ogygia in a paper published in the Athens Journal of History (Vol.3 Issue 1) in which he noted that “The conclusions that have emerged from this study are that Homer’s Ogygia is not an imaginary but a reference to and a record of ancient Gozo-Malta.”
Adding to the confusion, Aeschylus, the tragedian (523-456 BC) calls the Nile, Ogygian, and Eustathius, a Byzantine grammarian (1115-1195), claimed that Ogygia was the earliest name for Egypt(j).
Isaac Newton wrote a number of important works including The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended [1101], in which he discussed a range of mythological links to Atlantis, including a possible connection with Homer’s Ogygia. There is now evidence that he concurred(c) with the idea of a Maltese Ogygia in The Original of Monarchies(d).
Strabo referred to “Eleusis and Athens on the Triton River [in Boiotia]. These cities, it is said, were founded by Kekrops (Cecrops), when he ruled over Boiotia (Boeotia), then called Ogygia, but were later wiped out by inundations.”(i) However, Strabo also declared that Ogygia was to be found in the ‘World Ocean’ or Atlantic (j). To say the least, these two conflicting statements require explanation.
Richard Hennig opted for Madeira following the opinion of von Humboldt. Spanuth argued strongly against either Madeira or the Canaries[0017.149] and gave his support to the Azores as the most likely location of Calypso’s Island.. Not unexpectedly the Azores, in the mid-Atlantic, have also been nominated as Ogygia by other 20th century researchers such as Sykes(e) and Mertz[397]. In a 2019 paper(f), Gerard Janssen also placed Ogygia in the Azores, specifically naming the island of Saõ Miguel, which both Iman Wilkens [610.239] and Spanuth [015.226] also claimed. Spanuth added that until the 18th-century Saõ Miguel was known as umbilicus maris, which is equivalent to the Greek term, omphalos thallasses, used by Homer to describe Ogygia in chapter eight of the Odyssey!
Homer in his Odyssey identifies Ogygia as the home of Calypso. The Roman poet Catullus writing in the 1st century BC linked Ogygia with Calypso in Malta(g). However, Gozo’s claim is challenged by those supporting Gavdos in Crete(k). This opinion has been expounded more fully by Katerina Kopaka in a paper published in the journal Cretica Chronica(l), where her starting point is the claim that Gavdos had been previously known as Gozo! Another Greek claimant is Lipsi(o) in the Dodecanese. We must also add Mljet in Croatia to the list of contenders claiming(p) to have been the home of Calypso. Mljet is also competing with Malta as the place where St. Paul was shipwrecked!
>Further south is the beautiful Greek island of Othoni near Corfu where local tradition claims an association with Calypso. An article on the Greek Reporter website(r) suggests that “Evidence confirming this legend appears in the writings of Homer, who described a strong scent of cypress on Ogygia. Many cypress trees are grown on Othonoi.
Shortly after departing the island on a raft, Odysseus is shipwrecked on Scheria, which we know of today as Corfu. This implies that the two islands Homer described were relatively close. Likewise, the islands of Othonoi and Corfu are separated by a relatively short distance. Due to this mythological connection, during the 16th century, many naval maps described Othonoi as ‘Calypso island.‘”
Mifsud quotes another Roman of the same period, Albius Tibullus, who also identified Atlantis with Calypso. Other Maltese writers have seen all this as strong evidence for the existence of Atlantis in their region. Delisle de Sales considered Ogygia to be between Italy and Carthage, but opted for Sardinia as the remains of Calypso’s island.
Other researchers such as Geoffrey Ashe and Andrew Collins have opted for the Caribbean as the home of Ogygia. Another site supports Mesoamerica as the location of Ogygia, which the author believes can be equated with Atlantis(h). An even more extreme suggestion by Ed Ziomek places Ogygia in the Pacific(b)!
In the Calabria region of southern Italy lies Capo Collone (Cape of Columns). 18th-century maps(m) show two or more islands off the cape with one named Ogygia offering echoes of Homer’s tale. Respected atlases as late as 1860 continued to show a non-existent island there. It seems that these were added originally by Ortelius, inspired by Pseudo-Skylax and Pliny(n) . Additionally, there is a temple to Hera Lacinia at Capo Colonne, which is reputed to have been founded by Hercules!
By way of complete contrast, both Felice Vinci and John Esse Larsen have proposed that the Faeroe Islands included Ogygia. In the same region, Iceland was nominated by Gilbert Pillot as the location of Ogygia and Calypso’s home[742]. Ilias D. Mariolakos, a Greek professor of Geology also makes a strong case(a) for identifying Iceland with Ogygia based primarily on the writings of Plutarch. He also supports the idea of Minoans in North America.
A more recent suggestion has come from Manolis Koutlis[1617], who, after a forensic examination of various versions of Plutarch’s work, in both Latin and Greek, also placed Ogygia in North America, specifically on what is now the tiny island of St. Paul at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, a gulf that has also been proposed as the location of Atlantis.
Jean-Silvain Bailly also used the writings of Plutarch to sustain his theory of Ogygia, which he equated with Atlantis having an Arctic location[0926.2.299], specifically identifying Iceland as Ogygia/Atlantis with the islands of Greenland, Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen (Svalbard) as the three islands equally distant from it and each other.
The novelist Samuel Butler (1835-1902) identified Pantelleria as Calypso’s Island, but the idea received little support(q).
However, Ireland has been linked with Ogygia by mainly Irish writers. In the 17th century historian, Roderick O’Flaherty(1629-1718), wrote a history of Ireland entitled Ogygia[0495], while in the 19th century, Margaret Anne Cusack (1832-1899) also wrote a history in which she claimed[1342] a more explicit connection. This was followed in 1911 by a book[1343] by Marion McMurrough Mulhall in which she also quotes Plutarch to support the linking of Ireland and Ogygia. More recently, in The Origin of Culture[0217] Thomas Dietrich promotes the same view, but offers little hard evidence to support it.
>In 2023, an article on the Greek Reporter website renewed speculation regarding the possible identification of Ireland with Ogygia(s).<
This matter would appear to be far from a resolution.
[0495]+ http://archive.org/stream/ogygiaorchronolo02oflaiala/ogygiaorchronolo02oflaiala_djvu.txt
(a) https://greeceandworld.blogspot.ie/2013_08_01_archive.html
(b) https://www.flickr.com/photos/10749411@N03/5284413003/
(c) See: Archive 3439
(d) http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00040
(e) ‘Where Calypso may have Lived’ (Atlantis, 5, 1953, pp 136-137)
(f)https://www.academia.edu/38535990/AT LANTIC_OGUGIA_AND_KALUPSO (Eng)
https://www.homerusodyssee.nl/id26.htm (Dutch)
(g) Lib. iv, Eleg. 1
(i) Strabo, Geography 9. 2. 18
(j) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogygia
(k) https://gavdosgreece.page.tl
(m) https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/734438651719489108/
(n) See: Note 5 in Armin Wolf’s Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(o) http://www.wiw.gr/english/lipsi_niriedes/
(p) National Park The island of Mljet Croatia | Adriagate (archive.org) *
(q) https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/snap-shots-samuel-butler-esq-1893-94
(r) https://greekreporter.com/2022/10/17/othonoi-island-westernmost-point-greece/
(s) https://greekreporter.com/2023/01/21/odysseus-travel-ireland/
Mljet *
Mljet is a Croatian island in the Adriatic nearly opposite Dubrovnik. It is one of the many locations claimed as Homer’s Ogygia, 
which in turn has been identified by some as Atlantis. This is not the only controversial matter associated with the island, Mljet in Greek is Melite a name it shares with Malta. For centuries there has been a strong tradition on Mljet that St. Paul was in fact shipwrecked on their island. The evidence(a)(b) is quite strong and worthy of investigation.
The claim was expounded in a 1730 monograph by Ignjat Durdevic (Ignazio Giorgi)(1675-1737) who hailed from Dubrovnik. A refutation[1462] by the Maltese poet Giovanni Antonio Ciantar (1696-1778) followed a few years later.
Recently, new information in The Geography of Ananias of Širak, written between 592-636 AD, confirms that Saint Paul stayed in Dalmatia following a shipwreck that happened on the Adriatic island of Melita (Mljet)(a).
A 2012 paper, from archaeologist Marija Buzov, adds further support to the claim of Mljet as the site of St. Paul’s shipwreck(g). Interestingly she recounts that there is also the legend of Paul being bitten by a snake according to the traditions of Mljet. However, the idea that he banished snakes from either Mljet or Malta is belied by the existence of snakes on both islands today. It brings to mind the ancient story that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland, which, for different reasons, is also untrue as there were never snakes in Ireland.
An extensive and more recent contribution from Fr. Noel Muscat brings the debate up to date (2018). As a native of Malta it was no surprise that he concluded that Malta rather than Mljet was the location of St. Paul’s shipwreck. His essay can now be read online(f).
According to Heinz Warnecke, another serious contender for the location of Paul’s shipwreck is Argostoli near the island of Cephalonia(c). At the other end of the spectrum, Kenneth Humphreys offers evidence, which demonstrates that the entire Pauline story is a concoction(e).
Further rivalry concerns the origin of the name of the toy dog breed, the Maltese. Callimachus around 350 BC attributing the honour to Mljet, while John Caius, physician to Queen Elizabeth I, maintained that he was referring to Melita in the Sicilian Strait.
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20180319155027/https://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/st_paul.html
(b) Miho Demovic: Two millenia of St Paul’s shipwreck near the Croatian island of Mljet (archive.org)
(c) St. Paul’s journey to Rome and his shipwreck near Cephalonia. Find out more about it…. (archive.org)
(e) Shipwreck – Jesus Never Existed *
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) *
Ellis, Ralph
Ralph Ellis is an airline pilot by profession with a passion for ancient history and religions. His 
revisionist views has been heavily criticised. He has authored a number of books(a) focusing, in the main, on ancient Egypt.
>The scale of Ellis’ revisionism, is, to say the least, breathtaking.
Jerusalem was not the capital of the ancient Jewish state!
King Solomon was in fact an Egyptian Pharaoh!
The Queen of Sheba was from Egypt!
Kind David and the pharaoh Psusennes II were the one person!
The Exodus of the Israelites describes the departure of the Hyksos! etc., etc.
Ellis concluded an old Atlantis Rising article(m) with the following,
“In essence, the whole of the Judaic—and therefore the later Christian – belief systems and iconography were based upon Egyptian antecedents. More importantly, perhaps, the historical characters whose lives spawned this religion, and the very book in which their entire history was written, were also Egyptian. The time has come to take a deep breath, to reassess all that we know of these religious beliefs, and to rewrite the entire theology of the world’s Judaeo-Christian cultures.”<
As noted elsewhere he has drawn attention to evidence for re-dating the pyramids. In an Atlantis Rising article in 2000, he argues that the ‘collapsed’ pyramid at Meidum was damaged by erosion that in his opinion would have taken more than the 5,000 years usually ascribed to it. He then turns to Khufu’s pyramid at Giza where he has identified evidence of erosion of pavement slabs that again seems to indicate a greater age than conventionally thought. Ellis proposed an age of 10,000 rather than 5,000 years. He has similar comments to offer on the state of ‘Bent’ Pyramid(j).
In a 2015 article(e) he claims that the four small shafts in the Great Pyramid had nothing to do with alignment with stars but were associated with the value of pi, an idea first suggested in 1859 by John Taylor (1781-1864)(i) in a book entitled The Great Pyramid: Why was it Built, and Who Built it? [1451]
Ellis’ 2013 book, Eden in Egypt [0951], locates the Garden of Eden in Egypt and claims that Adam and Eve were Akhenaton and Nefertiti!(n) He has also proposed(f) that Flavius Josephus was in fact, St. Paul! This latter idea has been taken up by others(g).
He has also co-authored a number of articles with Mark Foster(b).
In his trilogy, The Gospel of King Jesus, Ellis ‘reveals’ that Jesus was the great-grandson of Queen Cleopatra(o) and was King Izas of Edessa, in what is now northern Syria. Understandably, this has stirred up quite a controversy(a).
Ellis first touched on the subject of Atlantis in his book Thoth[0517] locating Plato’s island in the Atlantic, but in a later book, Tempest & Exodus[0656] he changed his opinion and subscribed to the Minoan Hypothesis.
Ellis has now turned his attention to ice age theory since the exact cause of the onset of an ice age is still a matter of active debate. He has now proposed a new theory based on a cyclical alteration of polar albedo by atmospheric dust(c).
In a recent paper published(d)(p) in Atlantis Rising magazine, Ellis reviews the mystery of the Carolina Bays, but offers little that is new and supports the growing consensus that the ‘Bays’ were the result of a cometary impact in the Great Lakes region, which was at that time covered by the Laurentide ice sheet. The impact shattered the ice and ejected millions of ‘slush balls’, many of which survived their high-speed journey through the atmosphere, creating the ‘Bays’ on landing.
>The World Mysteries website has a range of Ellis’ articles available(k).
For some sort of balance, you can read an extensive critical paper by Daniel O. McClennan, with some of Ellis’ responses to it(l).<
Another of Ellis’ weirder claims is that “there exists a large copy of the Great Pyramid way up in the Himalayas, highlighted in an article(h) and book, K2: Quest of the Gods” [1563]!
(a) https://edfu-books.com/news.html
(d) Archive 3025 [Atlantis Rising Mar/April 2016-# 116] and see (p) below *
(f) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsNOAUMyKIo
(g) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread206916/pg1&colorshift=yes
(h) https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/star-shaft-theory-great-pyramid-busted-001787
(i) https://sites.math.washington.edu/~greenber/PiPyr.html
(j) Atlantis Rising # 23 http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At *
(l) https://danielomcclellan.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/again-on-ralph-ellis/ *
(m) Atlantis Rising magazine #39 http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At *
(n) Atlantis Rising magazine #50 http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At *
(o) Atlantis Rising magazine #60 http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At *
(p) https://www.academia.edu/20051868/The_Carolina_Bays_and_the_destruction_of_North_America *
Shoals of Mud
A Shoal of mud is stated by Plato (Tim.25d) to mark the location of where Atlantis ‘settled’. He described these shallows in the present tense, clearly implying that they were still a maritime hindrance even in Plato’s day.
Three of the most popular translations clearly indicate this:
….the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.
…..the ocean at that spot has now become impassable and unsearchable, being blocked up by the shoal of mud which the island created as it settled down.”
…..the sea in that area is to this day impassible to navigation, which is hindered by mud just below the surface, the remains of the sunken island.
Wikipedia has noted(h) that “during the early first century, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo wrote about the destruction of Atlantis in his On the Eternity of the World, xxvi. 141, in a longer passage allegedly citing Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus.
‘ And the island of Atalantes [translator’s spelling; original: “????????”] which was greater than Africa and Asia, as Plato says in the Timaeus, in one day and night was overwhelmed beneath the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies’.”
Since it is probable that Atlantis was destroyed around a thousand years or more before Solon’s Egyptian sojourn, to have continued as a hazard for such a period suggests a location that was little affected by currents or tides. The latter would seem to offer support for a Mediterranean Atlantis as that sea enjoys negligible tidal changes, as can be seen from the chart below. The darkest shade of blue indicates the areas of minimal tidal effect.
If Plato was correct in stating that Atlantis was submerged in a single day and that it was still close to the water’s surface in his own day, its destruction must have taken place a relatively short time before since the slowly rising sea levels would eventually have deepened the waters covering the remains of Atlantis to the point where they would not pose any danger to shipping. The triremes of Plato’s time had an estimated draught of about a metre so the shallows must have had a depth that was less than that.
The reference to mud shoals resulting from an earthquake brings to mind the possibility of liquefaction. This is perhaps what happened to the two submerged ancient cities close to modern Alexandria. Their remains lie nine metres under the surface of the Mediterranean.
Our knowledge of sea-level changes over the past two and a half millennia should enable us to roughly estimate all possible locations in the Mediterranean where the depth of water of any submerged remains would have been a metre or less in the time of Plato.
Some supporters of a Black Sea Atlantis have suggested the shallow Strait of Kerch between Crimea and Russia as the location of Plato’s ‘shoals’(e) .
The tidal map above offers two areas west of Athens and Egypt that do appear to be credible location regions, namely, (1) from the Balearic Islands, south to North Africa and (2), a more credible straddling the Strait of Sicily. This region offers additional features, making it much more compatible with Plato’s account.
By contrast, just over a hundred miles south of that Strait, lies the Gulf of Gabés, which boasts the greatest tidal range (max 8 ft) within the Mediterranean.
The Gulf of Gabes formerly known as Syrtis Minor and the larger Gulf of Sidra to the east, previously known as Syrtis Major, was greatly feared by ancient mariners and continue to be very dangerous today because of the shifting sandbanks created by tides in the area.
There are two principal ancient texts that possibly support the gulfs of Syrtis as the location of Plato’s ‘shoal’. The first is from Apollonius of Rhodes who was a 3rd-century BC librarian at Alexandria. In his Argonautica (Bk IV ii 1228-1250)(a) he unequivocally speaks of the dangerous shoals in the Gulf of Syrtis. The second source is the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 27 13-18) written three centuries later, which describes how St. Paul on his way to Rome was blown off course and feared that they would run aground on “Syrtis sands.” However, good fortune was with them and after fourteen days they landed on Malta. The Maltese claim regarding St. Paul is rivalled by that of the Croatian island of Mljet as well Argostoli on the Greek island of Cephalonia. Even more radical is the convincing evidence offered by Kenneth Humphreys to demonstrate that the Pauline story is an invention(b).
Both the Strait of Sicily and the Gulf of Gabes have been included in a number of Atlantis theories. The Strait and the Gulf were seen as part of a larger landmass that included Sicily according to Butavand, Arecchi and Sarantitis who named the Gulf of Gabes as the location of the Pillars of Heracles. Many commentators such as Frau, Rapisarda and Lilliu have designated the Strait of Sicily as the ‘Pillars’, while in the centre of the Strait we have Malta with its own Atlantis claims.
Zhirov[458.25] tried to explain away the ‘shoals’ as just pumice stone, frequently found in large quantities after volcanic eruptions. However, Plato records an earthquake, not an eruption and Zhirov did not explain how the pumice stone was still a hazard many hundreds of years after the event. Although pumice can float for years, it will eventually sink(c). It was reported that pumice rafts associated with the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa were found floating up to 20 years after that event. Zhirov’s theory does not hold water (no pun intended) apart from which, Atlantis was destroyed as a result of an earthquake. not a volcanic eruption and I think that the shoals described by Plato were more likely to have been created by liquefaction and could not have endured for centuries.
Nevertheless, a lengthy 2020 paper(d) by Ulrich Johann offers additional information about pumice and in a surprising conclusion proposes that it was pumice rafts that inspired Plato’s reference to shoals!
Andrew Collins in an effort to justify his Cuban location for Atlantis needed to find Plato’s ‘shoals of mud’ in the Atlantic and for me, in what seems to have been an act of desperation he decided that the Sargasso Sea fitted the bill [072.42]. Similarly, Emilio Spedicato in support of a Hispaniola Atlantis also opted for the Sargasso. However, neither Collins or Spedicato were the first to make this suggestion. Chedomille Mijatovich (1842-1932), a Serbian politician, economist and historian was one of the first in modern times to suggest that the Sargasso Sea may have been the maritime hazard described by Plato as a ‘shoal of mud’, which resulted from the submergence of Atlantis. However, neither explains how anyone can mistake seaweed for mud!
The late Andis Kaulins believed that Atlantis did exist and considered two possible regions for its location; the Minoan island of Thera or some part of the North Sea that was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age when the sea levels rose dramatically. Kaulins noted that part of the North Sea is known locally as ‘Wattenmeer’ or Sea of Mud’ reminiscent of Plato’s description of the region where Atlantis was submerged, after that event.
An even more absurd suggestion came from the American scholar William Arthur Heidel (1868-1941), who denied the reality of Atlantis and wrote a critical paper [0374] on the subject (republished July 2013(g)). He claimed that an expeditionary naval force sent by Darius in 515 BC under Scylax of Caryanda to explore the Indus River, eventually encountered waters too shallow for his ships, and that this was the inspiration behind Plato’s tale of unnavigable seas. Heidel further claimed that Plato’s battle between Atlantis and Athens is a distorted account of the war of invasion between the Persians and the peoples of the Indus Valley (Now Pakistan)!
(a) https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/argo/argo53.htm
(b) The Curious Yarn of Paul’s “Shipwreck” (archive.org) *
(c) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523144110.htm
(e) Index (atlantis-today.com)
(f) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread61382/pg1
(g) A Suggestion concerning Plato’s Atlantis on JSTOR (archive.org)
(h) Atlantis – Wikipedia_?s=books&ie=UTF&qid=1376067567&sr=-