Historical criticism: "Moving" dates & places

[Proclus]

And therefore I'm still interested when/how did the legacy of Plato came to us for the first time? I can't find much information on it.

All is debated what he should or shouldn't have meant, should or shouldn't have been in what age etc.

Do we have first hand material of this 'figure', or only references by others that were 'discovered' some centuries later?

We have information by many on Plato, such as Xenophon, Aristotle, Theophrastus, etc.

I found this pretty interesting and conducted a topic on it, to which kmt and others as well as reading as much as I could on the archaeology assurred me the Great Pyramid was built c. 2600- 2400BC - but still, rather intiguing the way Herodotus explains it and just pops it into that (much) later time frame....

So, would you call it reasonable to say that Herodotus got a piece of true information which we today can combine with the right date?

This simply means "moving" the wrong date assumed by Herodotus to the right date we know today, for the pyramids, etc.

What are those good reasons? I dont know any.

Imagine please, that somebody asks you: "I heard about this king Menes mentioned by Herodotus, but he dates him on 11340 or so years before which clearly is wrong, could you please give me a more proper idea on when this alleged king Menes mentioned by Herodotus most probably lived, if he lived?" - What is your answer? And why?

[Big Bad Voodoo]

Imagine please, that somebody asks you: "I heard about this king Menes mentioned by Herodotus, but he dates him on 11340 or so years before which clearly is wrong, could you please give me a more proper idea on when this alleged king Menes mentioned by Herodotus most probably lived, if he lived?" - What is your answer? And why?

Since I dont know history of Egypt I would search for answer elsewhere.

I know he is from Old Kingdom. But what dynasty I would have to check.

Edit: 3100–3050 B.C

Edited January 2, 2013 by the L

[Proclus]

Since I dont know history of Egypt I would search for answer elsewhere.

I know he is from Old Kingdom. But what dynasty I would have to check.

Edit: 3100–3050 B.C

Thus you have drawn a connection from the 11340-years-Menes of Herodotus to a date around 3000 BC.

This is what this thread is all about :-)

Does anybody disagree?

[Antilles]

Well, I 'll just remove my post.

Except I can't. So you're stuck with it.

Your English is pretty good but not conversational.

Edited January 2, 2013 by Antilles

[Big Bad Voodoo]

Thus you have drawn a connection from the 11340-years-Menes of Herodotus to a date around 3000 BC.

This is what this thread is all about :-)

Does anybody disagree?

Im. Because I know what Herodotus didnt knew.

How come that he wrote 11340 instead of 3000?

Did they count years differently???

[Antilles]

Good to read that someone else isn't enjoying this didactic thread.

You need to loosen up man.

[Proclus]

Im. Because I know what Herodotus didnt knew.

How come that he wrote 11340 instead of 3000?

Did they count years differently???

No. It's more complicated. The Egyptians lived with a calendar of 365 days, so one year is almost exactly one year for them. The mistake was done elsewhere: It has to do with the Saitic priests forging their ancestry in order to justify their position in the temple. Herodotus took these forged genealogies for truth and brought them in connection with the king list he heard elsewhere. The result was a big misinterpretation. Details can be found in this book: Franke, Mit Herodot auf den Spuren von Atlantis, 2006; German only.

[Tutankhaten-pasheri]

While we want to know the real facts about this or that, what precise date such and such event happened, I think it is more important that we know in which order events happened. For instance, I doesn't really matter if Rameses II lived 5 000 years ago instead of 3 200, approx. But it matters if we put his life and times before, say, Akhenaten, or pyramid building. Gross errors clearly, but if we don't know the correct timeline, what followed what, cause and effect as it were, then we are in trouble. Knowing precise dates working back from our time is far less important. We must know in what order events happend. This is one of the areas were Fomenko falls very heavily on his face.

Edited January 2, 2013 by Atentutankh-pasheri

[Proclus]

While we want to know the real facts about this or that, what precise date such and such event happened, I think it is more important that we know in which order events happened.

That's a good thought. Knowing the order is indeed more important. There are a lot of relative chronologies.

Concerning Plato's Atlantis we know for example, that Herodotus' king Menes lived before the date Plato gives for Atlantis.

Isn't this exciting? Both were dated wrong but this order could help us find Atlantis!

[Big Bad Voodoo]

That's a good thought. Knowing the order is indeed more important. There are a lot of relative chronologies.

Concerning Plato's Atlantis we know for example, that Herodotus' king Menes lived before the date Plato gives for Atlantis.

Isn't this exciting? Both were dated wrong but this order could help us find Atlantis!

But how do you know that Herodotus and Plato have made same mistake or count years in same manner?

[Proclus]

But how do you know that Herodotus and Plato have made same mistake or count years in same manner?

Philology brought to light that Plato not only knew the works of Herodotus (this is anyway clear) but also used them affirmingly in this case. Nobody of the Greeks questioned the dates given by Herodotus. To the contrary. Plato speaks in the Laws of 10000 years +X of age for Egypt. You can rely on this. It's "official" science, not my own idea.

[Abramelin]

I always found the next idea concernig the source of Plato's Atlantis story to be quite enlightening:

Most theories about Atlantis have been constructed by believers, who have identified its 'real' site in myriad locations from the British Isles and Greenland to Carthage and Thera. On the other side are the sceptics who have dismissed the search for Atlantis as futile. Many years ago I decided that the only way forward was to suspend any naive hope of finding a 'real' Atlantis, and to concentrate instead on the key question: can we identify a source behind Plato's claims? It had an unexpected bonus.

The crux of the problem is the supposed Egyptian connection. The ancient Egyptians took a dim view of foreigners and the idea that they preserved a detailed tradition describing two remote civilizations - Atlantis and its rival Athens - is highly improbable. Even more far-fetched is the idea that the Egyptians, who took pride in being the 'oldest' civilization, could have recorded events which took place a thousand years before their own beginnings.

Alternatively, is it possible that Plato was right that Solon gathered the story on his travels, but mistaken in assuming that this was during his famous visit to Egypt? Solon travelled elsewhere, notably to the kingdom of Lydia in western Anatolia (Turkey). There, at the court of king Croesus - proverbial for his riches, but historical nonetheless - Solon is said to have swopped stories not only with the king, but with the great fable-writer Aesop.

It was to Anatolia that many other clues began to lead, beginning with Atlas, the famous Titan of Greek myth who was condemned to the edge of the world to support the skies when his race was defeated by Zeus and the Olympians. Atlas, Plato tells us, was the first king - and eponym - of Atlantis. Analysis of the myths surrounding Atlas and his family suggests that the Greeks believed that his 'home', before he was banished to the west (i.e. the 'Atlantic'), lay to the east and that the Greeks may have learnt the idea of the sky-supporting giant from that quarter. This is confirmed by a mass of pictorial and literary evidence from the Hittite civilization of Bronze Age Anatolia, which provides exact parallels to the classical Greek concept of Atlas.

It was a short step from there to see what the classical traditions of Anatolia - and in particular Lydia - had to say about the 'original' Atlas. Classical scholars have long accepted that another mythological figure, Tantalus, is essentially a Lydian version of Atlas. Tantalus, too, crossed the Olympians, and was condemned to an eternal torment which gave us the word 'tantalise'. In the version given by Homer his punishment was everlasting hunger and thirst, but the more common tale was of a rock which perpetually swayed over his head. Other versions say he was attached to the rock, that he was condemned to support it and that the 'rock' was the sky itself. And Tantalus, like Atlas, is once thought to have ruled an earthly kingdom. When Tantalus was struck by Zeus' lightning for his sins, the city he founded was shattered by an earthquake and drowned beneath a lake. The name of his city was Tantalis.

I could have stopped with this bizarre mixture of cosmological myth and local tradition. There was already enough circumstantial evidence to vindicate Plato's claim that he had not invented the Atlantis story. His putative source, Solon, could have picked up in Lydia the story of Tantalis which had all the key elements for its later exaggeration into Atlantis - from its fabulous wealth and transient empire to its catastrophic transformation into a 'sunken kingdom'. As Tantalus was identified with Atlas, the scene could have been mistakenly transferred to the far west, the location of Atlas after his downfall. Once in the Atlantic, the story of the 'sunken kingdom' could grow uncontrollably during its retelling through the generations from Solon to Plato.

However, I was tempted to go further: could the site of the legendary Tantalis be located, and did such a place ever exist? Clues from classical writers such as Pausanias made it clear that Tantalus' lost city was believed to lie near Mount Sipylus, modern Manisa Dagh, twenty or so miles inland from the modern port of Izmir (Smyrna) on the Aegean coast. Classical writers describe Tantalis/Sipylus not only as the original capital of Lydia, but as the ancestral seat of the Mycenaean kings. Substance was given to this by a lengthy text from the archives of the Hittite Emperors, composed about 1400 BC, describing the troubles they had with a vassal ruler from a western vassal in league with the Mycenaeans. His seat, 'the mountain land of Zippasla', can be reasonably located in Lydia, and identified with Sipylus. Slice by slice, the ruler of Zippasla (Madduwattas by name) swallowed up all the smaller states of western and southern Anatolia and even challenged Hittite authority in Cyprus. How far the men from Zippasla got is hard to say - but Hittite authority was only properly re-established in Anatolia some fifty years later.

If the kingdom of Zippasla lay at Sipylus, where was its capital? Here history, archaeology and legend seem to converge neatly. When I went to Turkey in 1994 it was not too difficult to locate the site of legendary Tantalis. Until about thirty years ago there was a small lake just to the north of Mt Sipylus and a few miles away from a magnificent (and almost undatable) rock-cut tomb which Pausanias described as 'the by-no-means inglorious grave' of king Tantalus. A hundred and fifty years ago the lake was much bigger, and I was pleased, after doing the initial groundwork, to find that 19th-century scholars, including Sir James Frazer, had already identified it as the spot where the ancients believed the lost city lay submerged underwater. As the location for a real city, it would be hard to improve: it lies on a fertile plain between the ancient caravan route skirting the mountain and the river Gediz, main artery of Lydia. Yet we are not reliant on merely theoretical considerations. Three hundred feet up the mountain-side a thirty-foot sculpture of a Mother Goddess gazes out over the very spot where Tantalis was thought to lay. Pausanias claimed that it was carved by the son of Tantalus and that it dates to the Late Bronze Age is undeniable - from its style and from the Hittite hieroglyphics which were incised into the carving about the 13th century BC.

It would be strange to imagine that this unique sculpture was not prepared for the worship of a highly organised community, settled in the plain below. For this, and a host of other reasons, I am happy to believe that here there was once an important Late Bronze Age centre. Most likely it was the Zippasla of the Hittite documents and almost certainly it was the Sipylus or Tantalis of classical texts. For its fate we only have the traditions to go on, but the belief that it was totally devastated by an earthquake is not outlandish. The Izmir region, as travellers to Turkey will know, lies in one of the worst earthquake zones of the world, while the appalling damage suffered by the cities of Lydia during the great earthquake of AD 17 is well documented. Hopefully excavation will one day determine whether a Bronze Age city at Mt Sipylus - like the Atlantis of legend - was really destroyed by an earthquake and consigned to a watery grave.

http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/james/

.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Abramelin

[Abramelin]

Add to that that "Atlantis" is an anagram of "Tantalis".

[Proclus]

The crux of the problem is the supposed Egyptian connection. The ancient Egyptians took a dim view of foreigners and the idea that they preserved a detailed tradition describing two remote civilizations - Atlantis and its rival Athens - is highly improbable. Even more far-fetched is the idea that the Egyptians, who took pride in being the 'oldest' civilization, could have recorded events which took place a thousand years before their own beginnings.

According to Herodotus the Egyptians did not consider themselves to be the oldest people. And maybe the events were not thousands of years ago, but less, and the later priests confused this? (Or Solon did confuse it?)

Anyway, I want to add in this thread on historical criticism another info from an other thread:

Studying the philosophy of science, such as reading Karl R. Popper, or minimalist works on biblical archaeology like "The Bible Unearthed" http://en.wikipedia....Bible_Unearthed are very useful to understand how science works.

There's a very good youtube docu on "Bible Unearthed", see it here:

I clearly recommend this to everybody who wants to foster his scientific understanding of history.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Proclus

[Abramelin]

YOU study what I posted.

You wanted sources for Plato's tale? Well, read my post again.

I think it's one of the best explanations I have read concerning Plato's tale.

[Proclus]

Alternatively, is it possible that Plato was right that Solon gathered the story on his travels, but mistaken in assuming that this was during his famous visit to Egypt?

It was to Anatolia that many other clues began to lead, beginning with Atlas, the famous Titan of Greek myth who was condemned to the edge of the world to support the skies when his race was defeated by Zeus and the Olympians. Atlas, Plato tells us, was the first king - and eponym - of Atlantis.

I find it difficult to believe that a Greek confused Egypt with some Anatolian state.

The king Atlas of Atlantis has nothing to do with titan Atlas of Greek mythology. These are two different characters. You will find this conviction in many scientific works on Plato's Atlantis, and I agree with this: Titan Atlas is not part of the story. But you are free to see it differently.

[Big Bad Voodoo]

Philology brought to light that Plato not only knew the works of Herodotus (this is anyway clear) but also used them affirmingly in this case. Nobody of the Greeks questioned the dates given by Herodotus. To the contrary. Plato speaks in the Laws of 10000 years +X of age for Egypt. You can rely on this. It's "official" science, not my own idea.

Plato speaks in Laws about Egypt 10 000 old? Where?

[Big Bad Voodoo]

Abramelin

Tantalis is Lost Bronze age city in Turkey, probably near today Izmir. Historian Peter James was first as I remember that connected name Tantalis and Greek myths of titan Atlas.

Thanks to Homer Tantal is now known as mythical characther in Haddes who seek for fruit and water but cant get any. But other stories are similar to story of Atlas who carry weight and his city being destroyed in cataclysm.

But if Tantalis is Antlantis that mean that Plato was wrong about time and place. And fact that Tantalis wasnt island.

OP often said that time can be easily explained but what about pillars and island?

Edit: Okay, now I read your post and seen that you posted his link. Nevertheless my critic is valid.

Edited January 4, 2013 by the L

[Big Bad Voodoo]

According to Herodotus the Egyptians did not consider themselves to be the oldest people.

Who was older then they according to Egyprians and source please?

Studying the philosophy of science, such as reading Karl R. Popper,

Pianist and murderer of Fraud and Marx.

[Proclus]

Plato speaks in Laws about Egypt 10 000 old? Where?

Plato The Laws Book II 656e.

"And you will find that their works of art are painted or moulded in the same forms which they had ten thousand years ago;-this is literally true and no exaggeration-their ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than the work of to-day, but are made with just the same skill."

http://classics.mit..../laws.2.ii.html

PS:

On the Egyptians granting the older age to the Phrygians:

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~goodwin/spcom305/herodotus.html

Edited January 4, 2013 by Proclus

[Big Bad Voodoo]

Proclus this is what I picked up reading Proclus in his Commentary on Timaeus

For, according to Heraclilns, he who passes through a region very difficult

of access, will arrive at the Atlantic, mountain, the magnitude of which is said to

be so great by the Kthiopic historians, that it reaches to the a-thcr, and sends forth

a shadow as far as to live thousand stadia. For tin- sun is concealed by it from

the ninth hour of the day till it entirely sets. Nor is this at all wonderful. For.

Athos, a Macedonian mountain, emits a shadow as fur as to Lcmnos, which is

distant from it seven hundred stadia. And Marcellus, who wrote the Ethiopic

history, not only relates that the Atlantic mountain was of such a great height,

Kthiopic historians? Ethiopic? Marcellus? Where is that Ethiopic history? I didnt knew that early Ethiopics had such rich history so that they have had Historians.

[Big Bad Voodoo]

On the Egyptians granting the older age to the Phrygians:

So they think that IE were oldest.

I did once stumble upon Phrygians because of Cybele.

[Proclus]

Proclus this is what I picked up reading Proclus in his Commentary on Timaeus

For, according to Heraclilns, he who passes through a region very difficult

of access, will arrive at the Atlantic, mountain, the magnitude of which is said to

be so great by the Kthiopic historians, that it reaches to the a-thcr, and sends forth

a shadow as far as to live thousand stadia. For tin- sun is concealed by it from

the ninth hour of the day till it entirely sets. Nor is this at all wonderful. For.

Athos, a Macedonian mountain, emits a shadow as fur as to Lcmnos, which is

distant from it seven hundred stadia. And Marcellus, who wrote the Ethiopic

history, not only relates that the Atlantic mountain was of such a great height,

Kthiopic historians? Ethiopic? Marcellus? Where is that Ethiopic history? I didnt knew that early Ethiopics had such rich history so that they have had Historians.

This ebook is unfortunately a bad OCR scan. The Ehtiopic history by Marcellus is a lost book. We know only of him because he is mentioned here. Most probably he had no vital information on Plato's Atlantis (how could he have). I recommend to go to a library and find the book there if you do not want to buy it. A good discussion of all these ancient sources is e.g. in Gunnar Rudberg: Atlantis and Syracuse.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Proclus

[Big Bad Voodoo]

What about Spartel?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartel

[cormac mac airt]

Philology brought to light that Plato not only knew the works of Herodotus (this is anyway clear) but also used them affirmingly in this case. Nobody of the Greeks questioned the dates given by Herodotus. To the contrary. Plato speaks in the Laws of 10000 years +X of age for Egypt. You can rely on this. It's "official" science, not my own idea.

This would not appear to be correct as per Herodotus Book 4: Melpomene (183-184) he makes the Atarantians (Atlanteans) near the Atlas Mountains contemporary with the Garmantians/Garamantes which are only known from c.1000 BC. Obviously this doesn't match Plato's date of c.9600 BC so nothing has been "affirmed".

It's not "official" anything.

From your Post #34:

Concerning Plato's Atlantis we know for example, that Herodotus' king Menes lived before the date Plato gives for Atlantis.

This is also not in evidence. Herodotus says the following, from Book 2: Euterpe (99):

Hitherto my own observation and judgment and inquiry are the vouchers for that which I have said; but from this point onwards I am about to tell the history of Egypt according to that which I heard, to which will be added also something of that which I have myself seen.

Of Min, who first became king of Egypt, the priests said that on the one hand he banked off the site of Memphis from the river: for the whole stream of the river used to flow along by the sandy mountain- range on the side of Libya, but Min formed by embankments that bend of the river which lies to the South about a hundred furlongs above Memphis, and thus he dried up the old stream and conducted the river so that it flowed in the middle between the mountains: and even now this bend of the Nile is by the Persians kept under very careful watch, that it may flow in the channel to which it is confined, and the bank is repaired every year; for if the river should break through and overflow in this direction, Memphis would be in danger of being overwhelmed by flood. When this Min, who first became king, had made into dry land the part which was dammed off, on the one hand, I say, he founded in it that city which is now called Memphis; for Memphis too is in the narrow part of Egypt; and outside the city he dug round it on the North and West a lake communicating with the river, for the side towards the East is barred by the Nile itself. Then secondly he established in the city the temple of Hephaistos a great work and most worthy of mention.

http://www.sacred-te...a/hh/hh2090.htm

Nowhere in this does Herodotus place Menes prior to Plato's date for Atlantis. And we know that the Nile has wandered considerably in its course over the last 5000 years, per the following:

The Nile on the move. Bunbury, J. M. and Lutley, K. (2008)

cormac