by Phil Masters
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE LAND OF ATLANTIS
POLITICS AND POWER
RIVAL NATIONS
THE FIRST ATLANTEAN WARS
RESISTANCE AND COUNTER-ATTACK
THE AFTERMATH
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION: HISTORIANS OF THE ATLANTEAN AGE
The study of the Atlantean Wars is the art of extracting truths from ancient texts.
In general, the deeper scholars look into the past, the more they are obliged to study physical objects rather than textual sources. The transformation from history to prehistory comes when this shift from history to archaeology is complete; when there are no written texts, knowledge must be derived from the artefacts and other physical remains.
Atlantean studies flip this right back around. Atlantis is, famously, lost – sunk beneath the ocean waves. Our knowledge of that era comes almost exclusively from written materials, themselves quite ancient, and from more exotic sources yet. There are few physical remains of the Atlantean age.
PLATO
The name of Atlantis comes to us, originally, through the father of western philosophy. The classical Greek philosopher Plato presented his ideas in the form of a series of ‘dialogues’ between the earlier philosopher Socrates and other citizens of Athens. One of these, the Timaeus, is primarily about the creation and nature of the world, but early on, one of the speakers, Critias, mentions a story which he heard in his childhood from his aged grandfather, also named Critias. The old man claimed in turn to have received the story from Solon, a legendarily wise Athenian leader, who was a friend of his family.
Solon visited Egypt at one point in his life, and according to this story, while he was there, in the city of Sais, he fell in with some friendly local priests. One of them, amused by Solon’s discussions of ancient history, told him that the Athenians had forgotten most of their own past – but the Egyptians had preserved much important information, notably including the story of Atlantis.
Atlantis was, the priest said, a great island in the Atlantic Ocean (‘beyond the Pillars of Hercules’, those being the promontories on either side of the Straits of Gibraltar), which was once ruled by a great empire. This was linked to the history of Athens because, when the Atlanteans grew arrogant and attempted to conquer the rest of the world, the Athenians of the time took the lead in stopping them and driving them back. However, shortly afterwards, Atlantis sank beneath the sea in some kind of catastrophe, which, the priest implied, also shattered civilization in much of the rest of the world, explaining why so few records or memories remained from the era.
However, Critias stops himself before the digression goes too far; the intention is that the details of the story should appear in the next dialogue, known as the Critias. This does indeed take up the story of Atlantis. However, unfortunately, although this describes the geography and government of Atlantis in some detail, the text is incomplete; it seems that Plato never finished the book. It actually stops at a point where the gods have observed that the Atlanteans have fallen into decadence, and are about to decide how to chastise them; the implication is that, if the war of conquest had not already started, the gods probably encouraged it, and then devastated Atlantis in its aftermath because the inhabitants had shown themselves to be beyond hope.
However, none of this is stated or described, and no one else offered any continuation of the story. Some of Plato’s followers thought that the whole thing was a fable; others believed otherwise, even travelling to Egypt in search of confirmation, but although some Egyptians were prepared to agree with them, nobody turned up any more of the history at the time. And so the story of Atlantis went on hold for a few centuries.
Plato. The father of western philosophy is also our primary source for the history of Atlantis. This image is based on classical sculptures and descriptions of the great man.
THREE KEY ATHENIANS
Solon (c. 630–560 BC), a politician, poet, and traveller, was known as one of the ‘Seven Wise Men of Greece’. When Athenian society seemed to be on the verge of collapse, he was given the power to revise the whole system, which he did, replacing aristocratic rule with something more democratic and rewriting the whole legal system. However, because his changes were basically moderate, designed not to hurt anyone too badly, he didn’t really satisfy anyone, and to escape the controversy, he left the city to travel the world for a few years, taking in Egypt along with other lands.
Socrates (c. 470–399 BC) is one of the founding figures of western philosophy, although none of his own writing survives. He apparently developed a method for examining subjects – mostly issues of ethics and morality – by intensive questioning. Ultimately, his habit of questioning everything seems to have led to his demise, as he was put on trial for ‘impiety’ – actually, perhaps, for challenging the customs of his society at a time of large-scale insecurity – and condemned to death.
Plato (428/427–348/347 BC) was a student of Socrates who sought to understand everything about the universe, primarily by looking at the most basic ‘forms’ of things. It has been said that all philosophy since Plato is a set of footnotes to his analysis. Plato has also been called the father of fascism, as the ‘ideal state’ described in some of his writing is totalitarian and anti-democratic. His descriptions of Atlantis and its Athenian enemies may be coloured by this aspect of his thought.
DIODORUS SICULUS AND AFTER
The next major source of Atlantean lore is Diodorus Siculus, a Sicilian-born Greek historian who worked in the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC. His encyclopaedic Historical Library includes a section on the mythic history of the ‘Atlanteans’. However, he appears to be describing a rather different people here – specifically, the inhabitants of north-west Africa, around the Atlas Mountains, who in Roman times would have been native tribes or Phoenician colonies. His stories of divine ancestors and battles with Amazon warriors don’t relate clearly to Plato’s version – but by Plato’s account, Atlantis did invade and conquer that part of the world, which hints at an answer to the problem. His Atlanteans could have been colonists and conquerors from the island, who first fought and then allied with local Amazon tribes; the stories of their divine ancestry may be seen as garbled versions of the history of Atlantis given by Plato, and Diodorus’ accounts of the Amazons launching eastwards wars of conquest should be read as garbled descriptions of the actions of combined Atlantean-Amazon armies.
After Diodorus, though, Atlantis was largely forgotten, in any form. A few medieval writers referred to Plato’s story, but they were mostly interested in his philosophy, and tended to see Atlantis as a mystical symbol rather than as anything historical. Things picked up a little in the Renaissance, when the ‘rebirth of learning’ brought more scholars back to Plato, just as Columbus and other explorers were proving that there were in fact lands across the Atlantic Ocean. (Plato had hinted briefly that there were other continents beyond Atlantis.) Some thought that the Americas actually were Atlantis, others stuck with the idea of a lost and sunken island, and others again suggested that Atlantis was somewhere else entirely. And some simply used the name, or borrowed a few ideas or images from Plato.
Solon and the Priests. According to Plato, when the Greek traveller Solon arrived in the Egyptian city of Sais, he fell into conversation with some friendly local priests, the oldest of whom told him the story of Atlantis.
THE VICTORIAN AGE
This sort of theorizing reached a climax in the late 19th century, when mysticism collided with garbled versions of the new sciences of the time. Notably, American politician and all-purpose fringe theorist Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901) declared that Atlantis was the source of all great early human achievements,
being the original home of human civilization; any human religious myths that didn’t actually derive from Atlantean sunworship were really garbled stories of the Atlantean royal family.
Thus, the idea that Atlantis might really have existed, perhaps somewhat as Plato described it, came back into vogue. A weirder version of the legend appeared courtesy of the mystical Theosophical movement, and especially its leading figure, Helena Blavatsky, who wrote about great cycles of human evolution, involving a series of superhuman but oddly limited races, among which the Atlanteans were relatively recent. The idea of lost continents was popular at the time, with theories about ‘Lemuria’ in the Indian Ocean and ‘Mu’ in the Pacific, and Blavatsky also made use of the former.
Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901). The noted American politician, writer, and fringe theorist concluded that Atlantis was the source of all humanity’s early great achievements, bringing the story back to the centre of popular attention.
THE HALL OF RECORDS
In the 20th century, researchers and mystics on the fringes of conventional science and archaeology began to accumulate enough information that existing Atlantean lore could be collated into a coherent story – especially once certain long-predicted discoveries came to pass.
Edgar Cayce, was an American Sunday School teacher, faith healer, and psychic. Although he defined himself as a more or less mainstream Christian (despite his evident belief in reincarnation), he was noted for providing psychic readings and prophecies while lying in a hypnotic trance. Hence, he became known as the ‘Sleeping Prophet’.
Edgar Cayce (1877–1945). The ‘Sleeping Prophet’ was an American psychic who probed Atlantis’s history, surviving remnants, and place in the world’s destiny with his mental powers.
Some of his pronouncements concerned Atlantis, although what he describes often seems to resemble Blavatsky’s visions more than Plato’s account. However, he did predict the rising of Atlantis, starting in 1968 or 1969, which has been taken as a prediction of the discovery of an underwater road (which cynics claim is natural ‘beachrock’) off Bimini, in the Bahamas, or possibly an underwater earthquake in the region of the Azores.
The most important prediction made by Cayce, though, was that an Atlantean ‘Hall of Records’ would in time be discovered under or very near to the Sphinx, in Egypt. (Actually, Cayce said that there were three great troves of Atlantean lore awaiting discovery, one in the Yucatan, one in a sunken area which would rise again, probably near Bimini, and one in Egypt – but it is the last which concerns us here.) This collection of data, left as a kind of time capsule in the wake of the disaster which destroyed the island, would restore a great deal of lost knowledge about the ancient history of humanity.
Cayce’s modern followers therefore naturally take a lot of interest in archaeological research in that location, including the use of ground-penetrating radar and other modern tools. Around 2011, rumours began to circulate that the Hall of Records had been discovered. This was of course great news for students of Atlantean history, although converting such ancient texts, written in the most obscure of languages and scripts and prone to crumbling under the sheer weight of time, into useful data must necessarily be a huge and lengthy task.
Thus, the rest of this book builds on a combination of currently available sources – Plato as the primary reference, Diodorus Siculus as a secondary source, and whatever can be extracted from the Hall of Records to tie them together, reconcile them, and fill in the gaps. In the process, various other legends and fringe theories also turn out to fit the story – although there are still some tantalizing gaps and uncertainties.
THE AGE OF THE SPHINX
Mainstream scholarship considers that the Great Sphinx of Giza, the world’s oldest monumental sculpture (and it is truly monumental – around 240ft long and 66ft high), dates back to the reign of the Old Kingdom Egyptian Pharaoh Khafre, around 2,500 BC. Khafre was the builder of the nearby Pyramid of Khafre and the son of Khufu, the builder of the even larger Great Pyramid; one theory is that workers quarrying stones for the Great Pyramid left a large outcrop of less useful rock, which Khafre subsequently ordered sculpted into a sphinx with his own face.
However, there are radical alternative theories about the age of the Sphinx, largely based on erosion patterns in the surrounding enclosure, which seem to have been caused by water – despite the fact that Egypt in Khafre’s time lacked the rainfall necessary to cause such erosion. The last time that the Egyptian climate would have been wet enough to cause such erosion may have been around 7,000–5,000 BC. Some theories suggest that the Sphinx is even older, though that may be an attempt to make this theory fit with Edgar Cayce’s visionary prophecies.
This leads into the whole question of the dates of the Atlantean Wars. According to Plato, the Egyptian priests said that they took place some 9,000 years before their time (that is, in around 9,500 BC), which is also the age they give for the first foundation of Athens; however, they also said that their own city was founded a thousand years after Athens – and yet they had records from that time, and Egypt took part in those wars. Cayce described the fall of Atlantis as a multi-stage process, spread over centuries and even millennia, but dates the final disaster to about 10,500 BC. However, none of these dates can be taken as completely reliable; in the absence of dateable remains (at least until the contents of the Hall of Records are made accessible to the public), it’s probably best just to think of the Fall of Atlantis as taking place in a misty prehistory.
The Great Sphinx of Giza. The Sphinx is an ancient and monumental relic of Egyptian civilization; quite how ancient is an interesting question. Edgar Cayce revealed that an Atlantean Hall of Records would in time be discovered under or very near to this gigantic sculpture, allowing the full history of the Atlantean Age to be told.
THE LAND OF ATLANTIS
Atlantis was a large island, apparently located not very far west of the Straits of Gibraltar. Plato described it as being ‘larger than Libya and Asia put together’; this could mean anything from North Africa west of Egypt plus modern Turkey, up to an impossibly large combination of all of what are today called Africa and Asia. Even the smallest interpretation would make it a very large island, so it may be safe to assume that any geographical records were garbled over time, or that the Egyptian priests exaggerated to Solon. Still, Atlantis was able to support a nation that could conquer and hold much of the Mediterranean region.
It was certainly a fertile land, producing a wide range of edible fruits, pulses, and chestnuts. It was also rich in minerals; the Atlanteans constructed a lot of impressive buildings out of local stone, and were skilled in working a range of metals for both decorative and practical purposes.
The Foundation of Atlantis Having fallen in love with a mortal woman on the island of Atlantis, the god Poseidon here manifests his full divine power to create three circular ‘moats’ – great channels of water – around a low mountain on the central plain of the island, so his offspring can grow up there in safety. He will also draw springs of hot and cold water up from the mountain. As his pregnant lover watches, the god creates a whole lush landscape that will one day become the heart of an imperial capital.
THE CREATION
When the senior gods divided the world between them, the island that would later be called Atlantis was assigned to Poseidon, presumably because it was in fact an island rather than a full-size continent, and hence came under the authority of the god of the sea. When he surveyed this territory, Poseidon found that there was a great fertile plain on the south-east coast of the island, facing onto the sea. A little more than six miles from the sea, in the midst of that plain, stood a low mountain – not much more than a hill – which the god discovered one day was the home of a mortal family.
The father of this family was named Evenor; his wife was Leucippe, and they had just one child, an adult daughter named Cleito. At some point after Poseidon first encountered them, Cleito’s parents died, and Poseidon found that he was falling pas
sionately in love with their daughter. Being a god, he offered to make her land a home fit for his lover and any demi-divine children she might bear. He created a series of three vast circular moats around the mountain, with bands of land between them. As humanity in general had not yet really mastered water travel, this made the mountain very secure. To make it comfortable, Poseidon drew two springs of water up from the earth – one of warm water and one of cold. He also ensured that the land would produce all sorts of food in great profusion.
POSEIDON
The god credited with the foundation of Atlantis was one of the greatest of the Greek deities. Along with Zeus, the king of the gods, and Hades, the lord of the underworld, Poseidon was the son of the Titan Cronus, the former ruler of the universe. After Zeus led a successful revolt against the Titans, the three brothers divided the world between them, and Poseidon became ruler of the seas. Hence, he was often worshipped by sailors and fishermen. He was also responsible for earthquakes and other natural disasters, commanded countless huge and terrible sea monsters, and was a god of horses and charioteers.
Although Poseidon was secondary to Zeus, he was supreme in his own realm, and could not be expected to back down from his brother over important matters without an argument. He was certainly not a god whom mortals should annoy; he was perfectly willing to devastate whole cities if they angered him. He wasn’t especially malicious, as Greek gods went, but he commanded a lot of violent power.
The royal family of Atlantis weren’t Poseidon’s only mortal descendants; like other gods, Poseidon took a healthy interest in mortal women, despite his marriage to the sea nymph Amphitrite. She appears to have been more tolerant of her husband’s infidelities than some goddesses, although she did transform the beautiful nymph Scylla into a hideous monster in a fit of jealousy. She too could control sea creatures, especially seals and dolphins.
