{"id":4162,"date":"2010-06-12T18:02:38","date_gmt":"2010-06-12T18:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/lake-tritonis\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T07:58:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T06:58:22","slug":"lake-tritonis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/lake-tritonis\/","title":{"rendered":"Lake Tritonis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lake<\/strong> Tritonis<\/strong> is frequently referred to by the classical writers<\/a>.\u00a0Ian Wilson<\/a> refers to\u00a0 Scylax of Caryanda<\/a> as having “specifically described Lake Tritonis extending in his time over an area of 2,300 km2<\/sup><\/em>.“<\/em> He also cites Herodotus<\/a> as confirming it as still partly extant in his time, a century later, describing it as a ‘great lagoon’, with a ‘large river’ (the Triton) flowing into it [185<\/a>.185]<\/sup>. Herodotus recorded that it covered an area of 2300 sq.km.<\/p>\n

Lake Tritonis\u00a0was considered the birthplace of Athene<\/a>, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, after whom Athens is named. The exact location of the lake is disputed, but there is some consensus that the salty marshes or chotts<\/em> of central Tunisia<\/a> and North-East Algeria<\/a> are the most likely candidates. It appears that these marshes originally formed by a large inland sea connected to the Mediterranean, but due to seismic activity in the area, were cut off from the sea. Diodorus Siculus<\/a> records this event in his third book.<\/p>\n

Luigi Usai <\/a>contends that Lake Tritonis refers to an area in southern Sardinia<\/a>(g)<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

I should also mention that Lake Tritonis, along with the Greek island of Lemnos and the river Thermodon in northern Turkey, now known as Terme \u00c7ay, have all been associated with the Amazons(d)<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Edward Herbert Bunbury, a former British MP, included a chapter(a)<\/sup> on Lake Tritonis in his 1879 book on the history of ancient\"\"<\/a> geography [1531<\/a>.v1.316]<\/sup>+<\/span><\/strong><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

In 1883, Edward Dumergue, published[<\/sup>659<\/sup><\/a>]+<\/strong><\/span><\/sup> a brief study of the Tunisian chotts, which he concluded were the remnants of an ancient inland sea that had been connected to the Mediterranean Sea at the Gulf of Gabes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lucile Taylor Hansen<\/a> in The Ancient Atlantic<\/em>[572<\/a>]<\/sup>, has included a speculative map taken from Reader’s Digest showing Lake Tritonis, around 11.000 BC, as a megalake covering much of today’s Sahara,<\/a> with the Ahaggar Mountains turned into an island. Atlantis is shown to the west in the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

In 1967, Egerton Sykes<\/a> published a paper entitled The Sahara Inland Sea,<\/em> in which he describes a vast inland sea of ‘remarkable proportions’ and “is <\/em>attested not only by classical references but also by the fact that beneath most of it lies a layer of brackish water ranging from 200 to 500 feet below the ground. The various<\/em> oases are believed to be located on patches where the depth is only about 50 feet, conducive to plant survival.\u00a0The climatic change seems to have happened quite recently, around 5000 BC.\u00a0B.C., since the classics contain numerous references to its [the inland sea] existence.”<\/em>(e)<\/sup><\/p>\n

I should mention here that the Atlantis theory of George Sarantitis<\/a> is entirely dependent on extensive inland waterways, including the chotts<\/a> of Tunisia and Algeria as well as several other large lakes and rivers in what is now the Sahara.<\/p>\n

In modern times, Alberto Arecchi<\/a> has taken the idea further[<\/sup>079<\/sup><\/a>]<\/sup> and suggested that the inland sea, where the chotts are now, was the original \u2018Atlantic Sea\u2019 and that the city of Atlantis was situated on an extended landmass to the east of Tunisia and connected to Sicily<\/a> due to a lower sea level. Arecchi’s identification of the chotts with Lake Tritonis has now been adopted by Lu Paradise in a May 2015 blog(c)<\/span><\/sup>. <\/b>The Qattara Depression of Northern Egypt also contains a series of salt lakes and marshes and is believed by others to have been Lake Tritonis.<\/p>\n

Cindy Clendenon is the author of a book [801<\/a>.397]\u00a0<\/sup> on hydromythology in which she concludes that \u201cthe now-extinct Lake Tritonis once was a Cyrenaican lagoon-sabkha complex near today\u2019s Sabkha Ghuzayyil and Marsa Brega, Libya\u201d(b)<\/sup>, not in Tunisia! Clyde Winters <\/a>also placed Lake Tritonis in Libya(f)<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

[<\/sup>659<\/sup>]+\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/sup>https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/chottstunisorgr01dumegoog\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

[1531.v1.316<\/sup>]<\/sup>+ <\/span><\/strong><\/sup>https:\/\/archive.org\/stream\/historyofancient01bunb#page\/n6\/mode\/1up\/search\/Tritonis<\/a> Vol.1<\/p>\n

(a)<\/sup> Lake Tritonis – Jason and the Argonauts (archive.org)<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

(b)<\/sup> https:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/9780981842103\/Hydromythology-Ancient-Greek-World-Earth-0981842100\/plp<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(c)<\/sup> https:\/\/ancientpatriarchs.wordpress.com\/2016\/05\/23\/were-sea-peoples-invading-egypt-from-atlantis-due-to-global-climate-change\/<\/a>\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(d)<\/sup> https:\/\/www.myrine.at\/Amazons\/mobilIndex.html<\/a><\/p>\n

(e)<\/sup> The Saharan Inland Sea \u2013 Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(f)<\/sup> https:\/\/africanbloodsiblings.wordpress.com\/2013\/11\/21\/fertile-african-crescent-by-clyde-winters\/<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(g)<\/sup> https:\/\/www.atlantisfound.it\/2025\/11\/26\/revisiting-the-geo-mythological-cartography-of-the-western-mediterranean-a-critical-assessment-of-the-proposed-correlates-of-lake-tritonis-in-southern-sardinia\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lake Tritonis is frequently referred to by the classical writers.\u00a0Ian Wilson refers to\u00a0 Scylax of Caryanda as having “specifically described Lake Tritonis extending in his time over an area of 2,300 km2.“ He also cites Herodotus as confirming it as still partly extant in his time, a century later, describing it as a ‘great lagoon’, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[5411,234,151,606,408,607,1874,608,4123,5414,265,520,398,266,4326,1948,180,2280,1631,5115,3787,5613,1280,5485,233,669],"class_list":["post-4162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ahaggar-mountains","tag-alberto-arecchi","tag-algeria","tag-athene","tag-chotts","tag-cindy-clendenon","tag-classical-writers","tag-cyrenaica","tag-edward-dumergue","tag-edward-herbert-bunbury","tag-egerton-sykes","tag-george-sarantitis","tag-gulf-of-gabes","tag-herodotus","tag-hydromythology","tag-ian-wilson","tag-lake-tritonis","tag-lemnos","tag-lucile-taylor-hansen","tag-qattara-depression","tag-readers-digest","tag-river-thermodon","tag-sahara","tag-scylax-of-caryanda","tag-tunisia","tag-turkey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162","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=4162"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67208,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162\/revisions\/67208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}