Was watching National Geographic earlier and they were talking about the Nazca Lines (and making a claim that some of the lines were used to point to water sources…seemed plausable, but they used dousing to test it so :rolleyes: ) and Atlantis. Basically it was the same old thing…searching for Atlantis in ever conceivable place on earth (one guy put it in Bolivia of all places).
Anyway, my question stems from something that was discussed a number of times in the show. Basically the story is that the Greeks got the story from the Egyptians (at least thats what Plato claimed) who told the story since before their civilization. Now, I always heard that the ONLY source for this story was Plato (making things lean towards the ‘completely made up’ explaination). The show though claimed that there is Egyptian corroboration of the Greek story. Is this true or complete BS? I’ve looked on the web but I don’t see anything definite. Anyone know for sure?
Plato puts in the mouth of Kritias (sometimes written Critias) the idea that Solon had gotten the Atlantis story from the Egyptians. Cite
As noted in that cite, the only independent ancient references to Atlantis are in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Kritias. (There are other ancient sources, but they report the Plato story.)
Depending on what you think that “Atlantis really was,” there’s a plethora of sources. Our friend David Waite could supply you with a plethora of Theosophical writings on Atlantis, all with every bit as much authority as any given random MyHomePage citation. There are some interesting statements in ancient writings (Hittite, in particular) that appear to be allusions to the Thera eruption which may or may not have inspired the sunken lands/destroyed civilizations meme that the Atlantis story plays on.
Certainly there are ancient “lost” civilizations. Some fit a few of the marks of Atlantis. But if you read what Atlantis really was like (huge walls made entirely out of metal, etc), then you have to know it’s made up.
Is it possible that Plato subconsiously (or consiously) based his entirely made up Atlantis on some old stories? Sure.
I agree DrDeth…I think he made it up as well (though the whole Thera/Minoan thing might have influenced his story I suppose). Was just looking for something solid on the shows claim that there are Egyptian sources for the story as I always heard Plato was the sole source.
Apparently I misspoke myself. The reason that the “Unsolved Mysteries” type pseudoscience promoters claim that “there are Egyptian sources for Atlantis” is that Plato, the writer who mentioned (and most likely invented) it, used the literary device of attributing the story back to the Egyptians, who allegedly told Solon about it, and the story came down to Plato and Socrates’s day via the great-grandfather of one of Socrates’s friends.
By comparison, imagine Cecil wanting to illustrate a point about the Knights Templar legends in one of his columns , and claiming that his grandfather told him what his grandfather heard from his friend Ben Franklin, who brought the information back from France when he was our ambassador there.
Claims that Plato’s story can be confirmed from Egyptian records are usually variations on the idea that the god Thoth originally came from Atlantis. See, for example, this webpage. (The fact that Thoth has often been thought to be the same as Hermes Trismegistus means that this idea has particularly appealed to many modern esoteric writers.)
But, as we have seen in certain recentthreads, bolting together isolated bits of Egyptian mythology - or, worse, phoney Egyptian mythology - to fit a preconceived theory can be desperately unconvincing. The Thoth/Atlantis idea is no better.
And there is no reason to think that what the Egyptians actually did believe about Thoth influenced Plato. Who, as others have said, was probably just making it all up anyway.
Why can’t Atlantis just be the garbled oral history/legend of Santorini?
We don’t know much but, 3500 years ago an advanced (for the time) civilization was wiped out by volcanic eruption and flooding. It was probably Minoan.
This was the height of civilizations in the period.
If someone is looking for the Atlantis of flying cars, probably should flag down Elvis’s UFO.
Santorini or even Crete itself is a fairly good fit.
If you haven’t encountered it, I strongly recommend L. Sprague de Camp’s book Lost Continents, which I think is still in print at Dover. Excellent coverage of all the lost continents (and Plato never claimed it as a “continent”, BTW) with a hefty Bibliography.
By the way, although i was impressed with the Thera/Santorini/Atlantis connection when I first heard it, I’ve become disenchanted through the years. I suspect any similarities are coincidental.
I am curious about the disenchantment. It is a excellent fit for the little Plato wrote about that has made it down to us.
I would lump it together with rediscovery Troy. Finding a lost city does not make all the Iliad a fact, just supports that the legend was based on a real occurrence.
Thera/Santorini the historical basis for Atlantis is not proven, but the best fit I have seen. Sounds like you may have read into this more than I have.
Is Lost Continents fantasy or a study he made? I know him for his fantasy books.
deCamp is a sadly neglected author whose range is as broad as that of Asimov (a friend of about the same age), but for some reason de Camp never got the same exposure and name recognition as Asimov. His works include fantasy, science fiction, historical novels, history of science, and others. It’s too bad his straight historical novels never hit it off – his knowledge of ancient history and science was impressive. The Bronze God of Rhodes reads like Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, only about the building of the Colossus of Rhodes, rather than a Medieval Cathedral.
Lost Continents is fact. (And ignore the most recent poster on Amazon, who obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about. de Camp would never refer to sources “before Plato”, or belittle prehistoric man.) So are The Ancient Engineers (a classic) and Great Cities of the Ancient World.
It would be easier just to claim that Ben Franklin knew a templar legend because he was a freemason, who are de facto templars and hid a ton of ancient gold that can only be found by putting lemon juice on the back of declaration of indepedence.
Okay, maybe not easier or plausible, but no doubt potentially ludicious as far as box office goes.
I noticed the book was published in 1970. Do you feel it still offers up to date knowledge?
I am thinking about buying it.
Jim[/quiote]
IIRC, the 1970 date is the date of the Dover re-issue (Dover frequently reprints older texts in a new and less expensive paperback form, some recent, some very old). The actual publication date was, I think, in the 1950s. So, no, it’s not up-to-date, and doesn’t even cover the Santorini/Thera possibility. But it’s indispensable for its coverage of the topic, just like Odell Sheperd’s The Lore of the Unicorn is.
I am drawing a blank on some of the details, but there are mesoamerican artifacts that are refered to as Atlantean, based on time, location and styles. Here is a link to a museum store replica of an Atlantean statue. Of course it is only a name and has nothing to do with the mythic, pre-historic uber city state.
Everyone should realize the true mystery is Mu.
This Thoth fella really gets around. The illustration in one of your links shows him to have the head of a bird with a long, thin bill. It’s remarkably similar to Slug Signorino’s drawings of Cecil Adams, though without the mortarboard. We can only speculate about Slug’s allusion.
Some sources even credit Thoth with the custom of decorating food with thick liquids. Today, we still speak fondly of Thpaghetti Thoth.
Now a TV special I saw a number of years ago followed some researchers who postied that the Ancient Greek phrase translated here as “greater in extent than Libya and Asia” is very similar to the phrase for “in between” or “in the middle of”, and may have ben botched in transcription. I don’t know any ancient Greek, so I can’t opine on the veracity of this. But it is my understanding that this notion is what led to Santorini being the candidate.
Later:
The ruins of the apparantly Minoan civlization on Santorini seem to indicate it could have conformed to this physical description, and earlier this year, I saw an item where geologists had located the volcano that created the earthquake that created the tsunami that took them out. It seemed fairly sound.
