Atlantis

Image of Atlantis

Atlantis (in Greek, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος}, "island of Atlas") is the name of a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias.Atlantis: the Myth by Alan G. Hefner

In Plato's account, Atlantis, lying "beyond the Pillars of Hercules", was a naval power that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9500 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune".

As a story embedded in Plato's dialogues, Atlantis is generally seen as a myth created by Plato to illustrate his political theories. Although the function of the story of Atlantis seems clear to most scholars, they dispute whether and how much Plato's account was inspired by older traditions. Some scholars argue Plato drew upon memories of past events such as the Thera eruption or the Trojan War, while others insist that he took inspiration from contemporary events like the destruction of Helike in 373 BC or the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415-413 BC.

For lessons on the topic of Atlantis, follow this link.

The possible existence of a genuine Atlantis was actively discussed throughout classical antiquity, but it was usually rejected and occasionally parodied by later authors. While little known during the Middle Ages, the story of Atlantis was rediscovered by Humanists in the Modern period. Plato's description inspired the utopian works of several Renaissance writers, like Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis". Atlantis inspires writers today, from science fiction to comic books and films as its name is a byword for prehistoric but advanced civilizations.

Plato's account

Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written in 360 BC, contain the earliest known references to Atlantis. For unknown reasons, Plato never completed Critias; however, the scholar Benjamin Jowett, among others, argues that Plato originally planned a third dialogue titled Hermocrates. John V. Luce assumes that Plato — after describing the origin of the world and mankind in Timaeus as well as the allegorical perfect society of ancient Athens and its successful defense against an antagonistic Atlantis in Critias — would have made the strategy of the Greek civilization during their conflict with the Persians a subject of discussion in the Hermocrates. Plato introduced Atlantis in Timaeus:

For it is related in our records how once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, 'the pillars of Heracles,' there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent.Timaeus 24e–25a, R. G. Bury translation (Loeb Classical Library).

The four persons appearing in those two dialogues are the politicians Critias and Hermocrates as well as the philosophers Socrates and Timaeus, although only Critias speaks of Atlantis. While most likely all of these people actually lived, these dialogues as recorded may have been the invention of Plato. In his written works, Plato makes extensive use of the Socratic dialogues in order to discuss contrary positions within the context of a supposition.

The Timaeus begins with an introduction, followed by an account of the creations and structure of the universe and ancient civilizations. In the introduction, Socrates muses about the perfect society, described in Plato's Republic, and wonders if he and his guests might recollect a story which exemplifies such a society. Critias mentions an allegedly historical tale that would make the perfect example, and follows by describing Atlantis as is recorded in the Critias. In his account, ancient Athens seems to represent the "perfect society" and Atlantis its opponent, representing the very antithesis of the "perfect" traits described in the Republic. Critias claims that his accounts of ancient Athens and Atlantis stem from a visit to Egypt by the Athenian lawgiver Solon in the 6th century BC. In Egypt, Solon met a priest of Sais, who translated the history of ancient Athens and Atlantis, recorded on papyri in Egyptian hieroglyphs, into Greek. According to Plutarch, Solon met with "Psenophis of Heliopolis, and Sonchis the Saite, the most learned of all the priests" (Life of Solon). Because of the 500+ year distance between Plutarch and the alleged event, and that this information is not provided by Plato in Timaeus and Critias, this identification is questionable.

According to Critias, the Hellenic gods of old divided the land so that each god might own a lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined,Atlantis but it afterwards was sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean. The Egyptians described Atlantis as an island comprising mostly mountains in the northern portions and along the shore, and encompassing a great plain of an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 555  km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi]."

Fifty stadia (10 km; 6 mi) from the coast was a

mountain that was low on all sides...broke it off all round aboutCritias 113, Bury translation.

...
the central island itself was of a stade's breadth [607 feet]

Reception

Ancient

Other than Plato's Timaeus and Critias there is no primary ancient account of Atlantis, which means every other account on Atlantis relies on Plato in one way or another.

Many ancient philosophers viewed Atlantis as fiction, including (according to Strabo) Aristotle. However, in antiquity, there were also philosophers, geographers, and historians who believed that Atlantis was real. For instance, the philosopher Crantor, a student of Plato's student Xenocrates, tried to find proof of Atlantis's existence. His work, a commentary on Plato's Timaeus, is lost, but another ancient historian, Proclus, reports that Crantor traveled to Egypt and actually found columns with the history of Atlantis written in hieroglyphic characters. Plato never mentioned these columns. According to the Greek philosopher, Solon saw the Atlantis story on a different source that can be "taken to hand". Marcellus remains unidentified.

Other ancient historians and philosophers believing in the existence of Atlantis were Strabo and Posidonius.

Plato's account of Atlantis may have also inspired parodic imitation: writing only a few decades after the Timaeus and Critias, the historian Theopompus of Chios wrote of a land beyond the ocean known as Meropis. This description was included in Book 8 of his voluminous Philippica, which contains a dialogue between King Midas and Silenus, a companion of Dionysus. Silenus describes the Meropids, a race of men who grow to twice normal size, and inhabit two cities on the island of Meropis (Cos?): Eusebes (Εὐσεβής), "Pious-town") and Machimos (Μάχιμος), "Fighting-town"). He also reports that an army of ten million soldiers crossed the ocean to conquer Hyperborea, but abandoned this proposal when they realized that the Hyperboreans were the luckiest people on earth. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath has argued that these and other details of Silenus' story are meant as imitation and exaggeration of the Atlantis story, for the purpose of exposing Plato's ideas to ridicule.

Zoticus, a Neoplatonist philosopher of the 3rd century AD, wrote an epic poem based on Plato's account of Atlantis. Instead, the Celts that dwelled along the ocean were reported to venerate twin gods (Dioscori) that appeared to them coming from that ocean.

A Hebrew treatise on computational astronomy dated to AD 1378/79, apparently a paraphrase of an unknown earlier Islamic work, alludes to the Atlantis myth in a discussion concerning the determination of zero points for the calculation of longitude:

Some say that they [the inhabited regions] begin at the beginning of the western ocean [the Atlantic] and beyond. For in the earliest times [literally: the first days] there was an island in the middle of the ocean. There were scholars there, who isolated themselves in [the pursuit of] philosophy. In their day, that was the [beginning for measuring] the longitude[s] of the inhabited world. Today, it has become [covered by the?] sea, and it is ten degrees into the sea; and they reckon the beginning of longitude from the beginning of the western sea.

Modern

Francis Bacon's 1627 novel The New Atlantis describes a utopian society, called Bensalem, located off the western coast of America. A character in the novel gives a history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato's and places Atlantis in America. It is not clear whether Bacon means North or South America.

Isaac Newton's 1728 The Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms Amended studies a variety of mythological links to Atlantis.

In middle and late 19th century, several renowned Mesoamerican scholars, starting with Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, and including Edward Herbert Thompson and Augustus Le Plongeon proposed that Atlantis was somehow related to Mayan and Aztec culture.

The 1882 publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Ignatius L. Donnelly stimulated much popular interest in Atlantis. Donnelly took Plato's account of Atlantis seriously and attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from its high Neolithic culture.

During the late 19th century, ideas about the legendary nature of Atlantis were combined with stories of other lost continents such as Mu and Lemuria. Helena Blavatsky wrote in her book The Secret Doctrine that the Atlanteans were cultural heroes (contrary to Plato who describes them mainly as a military threat), and are the fourth "Root Race", succeeded by the "Aryan race". Rudolf Steiner wrote of the cultural evolution of Mu or Atlantis. Edgar Cayce first mentioned Atlantis in 1923, and later asserted that it was located in the Caribbean, proposing that Atlantis was an ancient, now-submerged, highly evolved civilization which had ships and aircraft powered by a mysterious form of energy crystal. He also predicted that parts of Atlantis would rise in 1968 or 1969. The Bimini Road, a submerged rock formation that of large rectangular stones just off North Bimini Island has been claimed by some to be evidence of the lost civilization.

It has been claimed that before the time of Eratosthenes about 250 BC, Greek writers located the Pillars of Hercules on the Strait of Sicily, but there is little evidence for this. According to Herodotus (c. 430 BC) a Phoenician expedition had circumnavigated Africa at the behest of pharaoh Necho, sailing south down the Red Sea and Indian Ocean and northwards in the Atlantic, re-entering the Mediterranean Sea through the Pillars of Hercules. His description of northwest Africa makes it very clear that he located the Pillars of Hercules precisely where they are located today. Nevertheless, the belief that they had been placed at the Strait of Sicily prior to Eratosthenes, has been cited in some Atlantis theories.

Nationalist ideas

The concept of Atlantis attracted Nazi theorists. In 1938, Heinrich Himmler organized a search in Tibet to find a remnant of the white Atlanteans. According to Julius Evola (Revolt Against the Modern World, 1934), the Atlanteans were Hyperboreans—Nordic supermen who originated on the North pole (see Thule). Similarly, Alfred Rosenberg (The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930) spoke of a "Nordic-Atlantean" or "Aryan-Nordic" master race.

Recent times

As continental drift became more widely accepted during the 1960s, most “Lost Continent” theories of Atlantis began to wane in popularity. In response, some recent theories propose that elements of Plato's story were derived from earlier myths.

Plato scholar Dr Julia Annas (Regents Professor of Philosophy, University of Arizona) has had this to say on the matter:

The continuing industry of discovering Atlantis illustrates the dangers of reading Plato. For he is clearly using what has become a standard device of fiction — stressing the historicity of an event (and the discovery of hitherto unknown authorities) as an indication that what follows is fiction. The idea is that we should use the story to examine our ideas of government and power. We have missed the point if instead of thinking about these issues we go off exploring the sea bed. The continuing misunderstanding of Plato as historian here enables us to see why his distrust of imaginative writing is sometimes justified.

Kenneth Feder points out that Critias's story in the Timaeus provides a major clue. In the dialogue, Critias says, referring to Socrates' hypothetical society:

And when you were speaking yesterday about your city and citizens, the tale which I have just been repeating to you came into my mind, and I remarked with astonishment how, by some mysterious coincidence, you agreed in almost every particular with the narrative of Solon. …

Feder quotes A. E. Taylor, who wrote, "We could not be told much more plainly that the whole narrative of Solon's conversation with the priests and his intention of writing the poem about Atlantis are an invention of Plato's fancy."

Location hypotheses

Since Donnelly's day, there have been dozens – perhaps hundreds – of locations proposed for Atlantis, to the point where the name has become a generic term rather than referring to one specific (possibly even genuine) location. This is reflected in the fact that many proposed sites are not within the Atlantic at all. Some are scholarly or archaeological hypotheses, while others have been made by psychic or other pseudoscientific means. Many of the proposed sites share some of the characteristics of the Atlantis story (water, catastrophic end, relevant time period), but none has been proven conclusively to be a true historical Atlantis.

In or near the Mediterranean Sea

Most of the historically proposed locations are in or near the Mediterranean Sea—islands such as Sardinia, Crete and Santorini, Sicily, Cyprus, and Malta; land-based cities or states such as Troy, Tartessos, and Tantalus (in the province of Manisa), Turkey; and Israel-Sinai or Canaan. The massive Thera eruption, dated either to the 17th or the 16th century BC, caused a massive tsunami that experts hypothesise devastated the Minoan civilization on the nearby island of Crete, further leading some to believe that this may have been the catastrophe that inspired the story. In the area of the Black Sea the following locations have been proposed: Bosporus and Ancomah (a legendary place near Trabzon). The nearby Sea of Azov was proposed as another site in 2003. A. G. Galanopoulos argued that the time scale has been distorted by an error in translation, probably from Egyptian into Greek, which produced "thousands" instead of "hundreds"; this same error would rescale Plato's Kingdom of Atlantis to the size of Crete, while leaving the city the size of the crater on Thera. 900 years before Solon would be the 15th century BC.

In the Atlantic Ocean

The location of Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean has certain appeal given the closely related names. Popular culture increasingly places Atlantis there which perpetuates the original Platonic ideal. Several hypotheses place the sunken island in Northern Europe, including Sweden (by Olof Rudbeck in Atland, 1672–1702), or in the North Sea. Some have proposed the Celtic Shelf and Andalusia as possible locations, and that there is a link to Ireland.[Atlantis "Evidence" Found in Spain and Ireland [1]The Canary Islands have also been identified as a possible location, west of the Straits of Gibraltar but in close proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. Various islands or island groups in the Atlantic were also identified as possible locations, notably the Azores. The submerged island of Spartel near the Strait of Gibraltar has also been suggested.[2]

Other locations

Other locations include Antarctica, Indonesia, underneath the Bermuda Triangle, and the Caribbean Sea have been proposed as the true site of Atlantis. Areas in the Pacific and Indian Oceans have also been proposed including Indonesia, Malaysia or both (i.e. Sundaland) and stories of a lost continent off India named "Kumari Kandam" have drawn parallels to Atlantis. So has the Yonaguni monument of Japan. Even Cuba and the Bahamas have been suggested. According to Ignatius L. Donnelly in his book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, there is a connection between Atlantis and Aztlan (the ancestral home of the Aztecs). He claims that the Aztecs pointed east to the Caribbean as the former location of Aztlan.

Art, literature and popular culture

The legend of Atlantis is featured in many books, films, television series, games, songs and other creative works. Recent examples of Atlantis on-screen include the television series Stargate Atlantis and the Disney animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The video game Tomb Raider features Atlantis as the basis of its plot and the location for its climactic ending. It is also featured prominently and somewhat philosophically in Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's epic Illuminatus! trilogy.

Notes

1. Atlantis: the Myth by Alan G. Hefner
2. Timaeus 24e–25a, R. G. Bury translation (Loeb Classical Library).
3. Atlantis — Britannica Online Encyclopedia
4. Critias 113, Bury translation.
5. Critias 115e, Bury translation.
6. Timaeus 25c–d, Bury translation.
7. Nesselrath (2005), pp. 161–171.
8. Proclus, In Tim. 1,76,1–2 (= FGrHist 665, F 31)
9. Timaios 24a: τὰ γράμματα λαβόντες.
10. Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, p. 117.10–30 (=FGrHist 671 F 1), trans. Taylor, Nesselrath).
11. Strabo 2.3.6
12. Nesselrath 1998, pp. 1–8.
13. Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, 7=35.
14. Fitzpatrick-Matthews, Keith. Lost Continents: Atlantis.
15. Bibliotheca historica - Diodorus Siculus 4.56.4: "And the writers even offer proofs of these things, pointing out that the Celts who dwell along the ocean venerate the Dioscori above any of the gods, since they have a tradition handed down from ancient times that these gods appeared among them coming from the ocean. Moreover, the country which skirts the ocean bears, they say, not a few names which are derived from the Argonauts and the Dioscori."
16. Selin, Helaine 2000, Astronomy Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Astronomy, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands, pg 574. ISBN 0-7923-6363-9
17. Isaac Newton (1728). The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended
18. Robinson, Lytle, 1972, Edgar Cayce’s Story of the Origin and Destiny of Man, Berkeley Books, New York, pg 51.
19. J.Annas, Plato: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2003), p.42 (emphasis not in the original)
20. Timaeus 25e, Jowett translation.
21. Feder, Kenneth L., Frauds, Myths and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, Mayfield Publishing, 1999, p. 164.
22. The wave that destroyed Atlantis Harvey Lilley, BBC News Online, 2007-04-20. Retrieved 2007-04-21.
23. Atlantis Motherland https://atlantis-today.com]
24. Galanopoulos, Angelos Geōrgiou, and Edward Bacon, Atlantis: The Truth Behind the Legend, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969
25. Lovgren, Stefan (2004-08-19). "Atlantis "Evidence" Found in Spain and Ireland". National Geographic. Retrieved on 2007-12-05.
26. https://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/kuhne/ A location for "Atlantis"? Rainer W. Kühne Antiquity Vol 78 No 300 June 2004
27. Hanson, Bill. The Atlantis Triangle. 2003.

Further reading

Ancient sources

• Plato, Not full version: Timaeus. Full version: Web archive backup: Timaeus, translated by Benjamin Jowett; alternative version with commentary.
• Plato, Not full version: Critias. Full version: Web archive backup: Critias, translated by Benjamin Jowett; alternative version with commentary.

Modern sources

• Bichler, R (1986). 'Athen besiegt Atlantis. Eine Studie über den Ursprung der Staatsutopie', Canopus, vol. 20, no. 51, pp. 71–88.
• Cayce, Edgar Evans (1968). Edgar Cayce's Atlantis. ISBN 9780876045121
• Crowley, Aleister - Lost Continent
• De Camp, LS (1954). Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature, New York: Gnome Press.
• Castleden, Rodney (2001) Atlantis Destroye'd', London:Routledge
• Donnelly, I (1882). Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, New York: Harper & Bros. Retrieved November 6, 2001, from Project Gutenberg.
• Ellis, R (1998). Imaging Atlantis, New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-679-44602-8
• Erlingsson, U (2004). Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land, Miami: Lindorm. ISBN 0-9755946-0-5
• Flem-Ath R, Wilson C (2001). The Atlantis Blueprint: Unlocking the Ancient Mysteries of a Long-Lost Civilization, Delacorte Press
• Frau, S (2002). Le Colonne d'Ercole: Un'inchiesta, Rome: Nur neon. ISBN 88-900740-0-0
• Gill, C (1976). 'The origin of the Atlantis myth', Trivium, vol. 11, pp. 8–9.
• Gordon, J.S. (2008). 'The Rise and Fall of Atlantis: and the mysterious origins of human civilization', Watkins Publishing, London. ISBN 978-1-905857-24-1
• Görgemanns, H (2000). 'Wahrheit und Fiktion in Platons Atlantis-Erzählung', Hermes, vol. 128, pp. 405–420.
• Griffiths, JP (1985). 'Atlantis and Egypt', Historia, vol. 34, pp. 35f.
• Heidel, WA (1933). 'A suggestion concerning Platon's Atlantis', Daedalus, vol. 68, pp. 189–228.
• Jordan, P (1994). The Atlantis Syndrome, Stroud: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-3518-9
• Luce, J V (1982). End of Atlantis: New Light on an Old Legend, Efstathiadis Group: Greece
• Martin, TH [1841] (1981). 'Dissertation sur l'Atlantide', in TH Martin, Études sur le Timée de Platon, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, pp. 257–332.
• Morgan, KA (1998). 'Designer history: Plato's Atlantis story and fourth-century ideology', Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 118, pp. 101–118.
• Muck, O (1978). 'The Secret of Atlantis', Book Club associates London
• Nesselrath, HG (1998). 'Theopomps Meropis und Platon: Nachahmung und Parodie', Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 1, pp. 1–8.
• Nesselrath, HG (2001a). 'Atlantes und Atlantioi: Von Platon zu Dionysios Skytobrachion', Philologus, vol. 145, pp. 34–38.
• Nesselrath, HG (2001b). 'Atlantis auf ägyptischen Stelen? Der Philosoph Krantor als Epigraphiker', Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 135, pp. 33–35.
• Nesselrath, HG (2002). Platon und die Erfindung von Atlantis, München/Leipzig: KG Saur Verlag. ISBN 3-598-77560-1
• Nesselrath, HG (2005). 'Where the Lord of the Sea Grants Passage to Sailors through the Deep-blue Mere no More: The Greeks and the Western Seas', Greece & Rome, vol. 52, pp. 153–171.
• Phillips, ED (1968). 'Historical Elements in the Myth of Atlantis', Euphrosyne, vol. 2, pp. 3–38.
• Ramage, ES (1978). Atlantis: Fact or Fiction?, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-10482-3
• Settegast, M. (1987). Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. in Myth and Archaeology, Cambridge, MA, Rotenberg Press.
• Spence, L [1926] (2003). The History of Atlantis, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-42710-2
• Robert Sarmast, Discovery of Atlantis: The Startling Case for the Island of Cyprus, 2nd Edition, First Source Publications, ISBN 0977932605
• Szlezák, TA (1993). 'Atlantis und Troia, Platon und Homer: Bemerkungen zum Wahrheitsanspruch des Atlantis-Mythos', Studia Troica, vol. 3, pp. 233–237.
• Vidal-Naquet, P (1986). 'Athens and Atlantis: Structure and Meaning of a Platonic Myth', in P Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 263–284. ISBN 0-8018-3251-9
• Wilson, Colin (1996). From Atlantis to the Sphinx ISBN 1-85227-526-X
• Zangger, E (1993). The Flood from Heaven: Deciphering the Atlantis legend, New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0-688-11350-8

External links

• Ancient Atlantis Texts : Plato, Diodorus Siculus, et. al.
• Atlantis: the Myth from Encyclopedia Mythica