{"id":13166,"date":"2010-11-05T13:49:19","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T13:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/?p=13166"},"modified":"2026-02-13T07:14:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T07:14:05","slug":"ghembaza-therese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/ghembaza-therese\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghembaza, Th\u00e9r\u00ease"},"content":{"rendered":"

Th\u00e9r\u00ease<\/strong> G<\/strong>hembaza <\/strong>is a French researcher who has a website, in French and English, entitled The Great Enigmas of Antiquity<\/em>(a)<\/sup> in which she discusses matters such as the Hyksos<\/a>, the identity of Moses and the Kushites. The site also addressed her theory that Atlantis had been situated in Mero\u00eb<\/a> on the Upper Nile, a theory that she developed in a number of\u00a0 other papers(c)<\/sup>, which are certainly worth a read.<\/p>\n

While at first sight this might be seen as a wild claim, Ghembaza offers a well-reasoned theory which was presented to the 2nd<\/sup> Atlantis Conference <\/a>held in Athens in 2008. She has imaginatively linked aspects of Meroitic geography and history with Plato\u2019s story of Atlantis. For example, she identifies Tyrrhenia<\/a> with Tyre<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Although Ghembaza quotes Plato extensively to support her Mero\u00eb hypothesis, she fails to explain how an Atlantean Mero\u00eb, 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 Mero\u00eb did not exist until sometime early in the 1st millennium BC, in contrast to the middle of the 2nd millennium, considered a reasonably late <\/em><\/strong>date for the destruction of Atlantis. Add to that, the fact that Mero\u00eb was never submerged or created ‘shoals of mud’, leaving the credibility of Ghembaza’s Atlantis claims in tatters.<\/p>\n

On her homepage, Ghembaza has a link in which she claims that in his Periegesis<\/em>(b)<\/span><\/sup> Hecateus of Miletus provided some of the details used by Plato in his Atlantis narrative.<\/p>\n

In April 2015, Ghembaza offered a short paper(d)<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0in support of identifying Bab-el-Mandeb <\/a>as the location of the Pillars of Heracles.<\/p>\n

Ghembaza has kindly drawn my attention to two quotations from Pliny the Elder and Ovid, which offer possible explanations for Plato\u2019s orichalcum <\/em>(see Document 091011<\/a>). The former refers to a Cypriot copper mixed with gold, which gave a fiery colour and is called pyropus,\u00a0<\/em>while Ovid also refers to a cladding of pyropus, a term often translated as bronze. She also mentions auricupride<\/em>(Cu3<\/sub>Au), an alloy that may be connected with orichalcum.<\/p>\n

A lecture outline by Ghembaza with a slideshow can be accessed online(e)<\/span><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

(a)<\/span><\/sup> http:\/\/antiqua91.fr\/index_en.html<\/a><\/p>\n

(b)<\/span><\/sup> Hecataeus of Miletus<\/a>‘ Periegesis<\/em> 550 \u2013 480 \u201cnow lost, but probably the main source of Plato and Eratosthenes”<\/p>\n

(c)<\/span><\/sup> http:\/\/antiqua91.fr\/atlantis_en.html<\/a><\/p>\n

(d) <\/span><\/sup>See: Archive 2526<\/a><\/p>\n

(e) <\/span><\/sup> https:\/\/slideplayer.com\/slide\/3878434\/ (link broken)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Th\u00e9r\u00ease 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 addressed her theory that Atlantis had been situated in Mero\u00eb on the Upper Nile, a theory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1192,2808,6593,285,2812,86,3762,48,924,7758,1376,46,2439],"class_list":["post-13166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2008-atlantis-conference","tag-bab-el-mandeb","tag-hecateus-of-miletus","tag-hyksos","tag-meroe","tag-orichalcum","tag-ovid","tag-pillars-of-heracles","tag-pliny-the-elder","tag-pyropus","tag-therese-ghembaza","tag-tyre","tag-tyrrhenia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13166"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66515,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13166\/revisions\/66515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}