Atlantis

[Ikki]

Rather than try to remember if I've covered everyone in personal visits, I'd like to wish my fellow posters best wishes for all good things in the New Year. At least if I say it here, most of you will see it!!

And a very frolicsome New Year to you as well!

Now, for the New Years bets -- how many places will Atlantis be located in 2010? Who has 50? 60? Any higher? =D

[jaylemurph]

Ha ha. I forgot that no one set foot on American soil before good old Christopher Columbus. Never mind maybe something else will come up eh?

I'm not at all suggesting that. However I /am/ asking for some sort of source or evidence for your rather suspect claim that NA groups went around calling the New World "America" before Vespucci was born.

I was referring to the language yes. Not one people but many descended from the one that probably crossed the bering strait during some ice age or other or fled Atlantis or elswhere at some point. Pre history is vast and we don't have much of a clue in the context that we find ourselves in. To think we can say with precision what happenned in the distant past. To do so would be arrogant and a little ignorant. It will all come out in the wash I suppose.

Prehistory may be vast, but the sort of claims you're making (well, I assume from some the unsourced "facts" you're throwing around and their blatant disregard for current historical and archaeological consensus it's some manner of pseudo-historian making these claims and you're just sort of parroting them) aren't, nor do they align with the not-as-insubstantial-as-you-imply knowledge we do have.

Your point is somewhat valid, that pre-history, especially in the New World, is vast. But your ignorance of what we do know is no excuse to make it larger. It's things like the historical linguistics you refer to sloppily or that you blithely pass over that give us glimpses into that past: it's a huge linguistic and sociological error to assume all New World mythology has a common source or even a shared existence, to say nothing of the massive error in logic that pseduo-historians use that all mythology has any base in reality.

--Jaylemurph

Edited January 2, 2010 by jaylemurph

[jaylemurph]

And a very frolicsome New Year to you as well!

Now, for the New Years bets -- how many places will Atlantis be located in 2010? Who has 50? 60? Any higher? =D

As Puzzler has already located Atlantis on no fewer than three separate instances in 2009, you might want to be a little more conservative on your gaming!

--Jaylemurph

[kmt_sesh]

Personally, I have no problem with you droning on!! One of the items Mr. Allen is trying to imply is that the red skinned people from S. America made it to Palestine. He also says that the pharaoh of Egypt after capturing some of the Sea People, settled them in certain areas such as Palestine. Do you know of this? I have noticed myself that some of the pictures on the walls in Egypt show different colored people. Some black, some bronze (red) some almost white. Can you explain?

I'll re-post some of Mr. Allen's statement:

Re: Atlantis in South America (the Evidence)

« Reply #173 on: Yesterday at 05:02:42 am »

Quote

Greetings all on this First Day of the New Year and here are a few answers to save Morrison the bother of having to look up all the information most of which is available on the Interent.

(1) Quote Qoais “Finally, some of the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt were in fact settled by the Egyptians in a part of the land under their control

Could you clarify this sentence please?”

Answer, the people known as the “Sea Peoples” comprised a large federation made up of many different nations. You may remember that Plato said “Atlantis” was a confederation that controlled Libya up to the borders of Egypt and also tried to “enslave” the eastern Mediterranean. . Well the “Sea Peoples” carried out naval assaults on Egypt in the Nile Delta and also along with their allies tried to invade Egypt both from Libya and also from Palestine. The invading armies brought whole families with them so theirs was no simple act of aggression but an attempt at conquest and settlement.

They were all defeated by the Egyptians and some of the invaders, for example the Philistines were settled by the pharaoh in what is now Palestine which takes its name from the Philistines who were settled there.

That Ramesses III settled certain bands of Sea Peoples in the Levant is well attested. It is stated in the Harris Papyrus that this king, after a great battle in Year 8 of his reign, placed defeated Philistines in garrison towns in the western Levant, near the coast. However, dedicatory battle inscriptions at Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramesses III, intimate that bands of Philistines may have already been in residence in the western Levant. It seems likely that displaced people from the northern Aegean had been settling in the Levant for some time. By placing larger numbers of defeated Philistines and other Sea Peoples in the western Levant, Ramesses III was in effect creating a buffer or safe zone between Egypt and the collapsing and chaotic regions farther inland in the Levant and Syria.

Naturally I believe Allen is playing fast and loose by trying to associate these defeated Philistines with native peoples from the Western Hemisphere. He might be playing on the fact that the Philistines had long been considered foreigners by their own Canaanite neighbors, a fact even mentioned in the Septuagint (Robbins 2001: 315), where the term "Stranger" is used in place of "Philistine." However, I do not see how that gives him license to identify them as people from the Western Hemisphere. Nothing in the archaeological record or material culture would substantiate that notion. In fact, analysis of Philistine pottery has clearly established a direct link with the northern Aegean, particularly Mycenaean and Cypriot. In other words, it is probably most accurate to associate the Philistines with proto-Greeks.

[kmt_sesh]

How do you know? That is simple assumption. You think he wrote the Egyptians told him to lend more weight to the story. That is an opinion you have, not facts. Anyway I have made it clearer than clear if it happened the way Plato said the word used by the Egyptian priest would not have been ATLANTIS, it was a longer form of Atlas and if they did not say Atlas (remember the translating from Egyptian) they sure as hell didn't say Atlantis!! By trying to combat this with it can't be true because their is no legend of Atlantis in Egypt is really ridiculous imo, said with utmost respect for you but can you not see how dumb that is?

It doesn't matter which word the Egyptians would have used, and I agree it would have been different. The point is, we cannot make a theory based on a vacuum of evidence. The only source we have for placing the origin of the Atlantis story in Egypt is Plato's writing, and that is indeed significant. That is fact, not opinion. What is also fact is that despite the massive body of writing that has come down to us from Egypt, everything from historical to fable, not one shred of Egyptian writing bears anything similar to the story of Atlantis. Trust me or not, but one cannot deny the fact that the Egyptians possessed no identifiable Atlantean tradition. In fact, the story as related by Plato is pure Greek and does not even mesh with the style or material the Egyptians employed in their own literature.

I have to stand by what I said: Plato was employing Egypt as a literary device, something other Greek writers were known to do. Herodotus' writings are filled with the same, in as much as he continually tries to tie the Egyptian and Greek religions together, though the truth is there was no connection.

That an inscription at Sais might have existed but is now gone due to the ruination of the site also cannot be used as an argument. It is considerably unlikely that the story of Atlantis was preserved at only one temple precinct. In fact it's next to impossible. This is not the sort of thing the Egyptians would've recorded on a stela but rather on papyrus, and copies would've existed at other important state temples. This was something commonly done by the Egyptians and is one of the main reasons so much of their written material has come down to us.

I wanted to comment on this quote:

Anouke, a goddess from Asia Minor was worshiped by immigrants to ancient Egypt. This war goddess was shown wearing a curved and feathered crown and carrying a spear, or bow and arrows. Within Egypt, she was later assimilated and identified as Neith, who by that time had developed her aspects as a war goddess.

I don't know of anything that would substantiate this claim. Neith is one of the oldest goddesses of Egypt and is attested from the very dawn of state formation. Her symbol of the crossed arrows actually dates back to prehistoric times (Wilkinson 1999: 291), so it's likely she was venerated even before state formation. Sais is indeed a very ancient site, but I would say it's more likely that immigrants brought Anouke into Egypt, where Neith already existed, and Anouke was absorbed into the cult of Neith. That's how it often happened with foreign deities who found their way into Egypt (e.g., Bes and Baal).

And finally:

Recalling that even Manetho gives the 1st 10 Kings of Egypt a time frame back thousands of years around 9000BC I don't think it would be that unusual for him to be using a time frame given to him by Egyptians.

As entertaining as Manetho's chronology tends to be, the farther back in time one goes, the more inaccurate he is. There are far better sources to consult when examining the chronology of Egyptian kings, and in general writers of the Classical period are not among them. Archaeology has demonstrated beyond dispute that Manetho's dating for the earliest kings is grossly in error. While we lack a full understanding of the proto-kings of late prehistory, we know with certainty due to archaeology at Abydos and other nearby centers of late prehistory that the proto-kings date to no earlier than late Naqqada II (circa 3200 BCE) and more likely within Naqada III (3150-3000 BCE).

I'm editing to add this to The Puzzler: I make assumptions and opinions just like everyone else, but when I do so in one of my posts, I will clearly state it as such; otherwise, what I write can be fact-checked in the professional literature. If I'm wrong I welcome you to correct me with the proper substantiation and citation so I can learn from it, but otherwise be assured that I am not making assumptions or opinions.

Edited January 3, 2010 by kmt_sesh

[Qoais]

I know you regulars in this forum are clever and know a lot more than I do, and you've put me through the wringer trying to teach me what you thought I didn't know. Or getting me to accept the orthodox view at any rate!! All well and good. Not one of you have a patch on the beatings my mom handed out so although I was confused a lot by your reactions, it was not new to me so of course I tried to adapt. Please. I'm not whining and I don't need any sympathy But I've been watching a bit more lately what exactly you answer and what you ignore. Not one of you has made a comment about the pictures I posted of Jim Allen's theory of Atlantis in Bolivia. Why not? You've made comment about the atl and you've said there's no way Bolivia influenced Plato's story. Three years ago, I read Jim Allen's web site and pooh poohed it, not because I knew from crap what the word ATL meant, but because I was trusting in science, and science said there was no communications between the two sides of the ocean. Gradually, after doing a lot of looking around, I came to the conclusion that science was wrong. It had to be. There's too much evidence that's been recently discovered that shows the Americas were populated longer than science said. I've been screaming it from the roof tops that the time line is wrong. I thought it was Plato who got the time line wrong. It wasn't. I think it was us.

It's been a kind of secret belief of mine (kept secret for fear of being ripped to shreds because I don't have proof and can't really go out and get any) that the Egyptians sailed secretly to the Americas. Science said that there were no ships that could sail the ocean. I believed it. Science said that the Egyptians stuck to the coasts when they sailed. I believed it. Then I started changing my mind. I figured they HAD to have sailed across the ocean for certain things to exist. Then when they found the hidden ships in Egypt by the Red Sea, I was elated. Those ships proved to ME that I was leaning in the right direction. The Egyptians DID have ships that could sail the ocean and the barnacles on the bottom showed the ships had been in the water at least 2 months. The very fact that they were such beautiful ships, and that they were totally hidden, means to me that someone very high up, had a big secret.

I'm sure I'll be ridiculed for this, but a little light bulb only came on earlier today. Here I've been trying to figure out the details of what Plato said, and trying to fit what he said into what was going on at the time, and checking out the histories to see when ships were first built and trying how to figure out how Athens could be in a war when she hadn't even been created yet, and driving myself nuts with the details. A lot of others have been doing the same thing for over 2000 years. We couldn't make the story work. No matter what detail we tried to fit, it wouldn't work. So we said it was a story, an allegory, that the basis for this story was another story, or maybe a whole bunch of stories that Plato used to teach a lesson, or a story to entertain his comrades, to celebrate the birthday of the founding goddess.

I think it IS a story and it definitely would be one that could be started with "once upon a time in a land far, far away", because now that I've had time to re-hash some of Jim Allen's work, and correlate it to my beliefs that the Egyptians had a secret, I find it is very possible that (please read each word) THE STORY OF ATLANTIS IS BASED ON A STORY OF ANOTHER CULTURE THAT WAS TRUE.

No one needed to have ships 9000 years before Solon. It doesn't matter if the Egyptian gods are the same as the Greek gods. What needs to be shown is that SOMEONE told this story to the Egyptians and that someone only had to tell it to the priest so much as a day before Solon showed up in Sais because it was a story from another place. Or someone BROUGHT the story home with them after being to S. America.

I don't think this story was written in stone on the pillars. I think it was written on papyrus. The line where Plato talks about what is written on the pillars, is I think, the constitution. The constitutions of Egypt and Greece were written on the pillars and they could verify that later, but I doubt this story of a far away land was important enough to carve in stone and so was lost. Something pretty drastic must have happened for those ships to be hidden away and totally forgotten about. Who could afford to forget about their expensive ships?

Once upon a time I was going to research the actual ocean currents and winds for sailing back and forth but I never did. I figure they came out of the Red Sea, down the coast of Africa and across on the currents. Going back, they went with the current and came in through Gibraltar, never knowing what their own continent really looked like.

[Qoais]

Oh I forgot. Remember how Plato said

Yet, before proceeding further in the narrative, I ought to warn you, that you must not be surprised if you should perhaps hear Hellenic names given to foreigners. I will tell you the reason of this: Solon, who was intending to use the tale for his poem, enquired into the meaning of the names, and found that the early Egyptians in writing them down had translated them into their own language, and he recovered the meaning of the several names and when copying them out again translated them into our language. My great-grandfather, Dropides, had the original writing, which is still in my possession, and was carefully studied by me when I was a child. Therefore if you hear names such as are used in this country, you must not be surprised, for I have told how they came to be introduced. The tale, which was of great length, began as follows:

?

What we miss all the time is that there has got to be words that AREN'T changed as well. Like Atl and antis put together for Atlantis. Atl meaning water and antis meaning copper. Why change something that already made sense? For instance, if we travel to a different country, do we change the name of the country, or of it's cities? No, we don't. So why would Plato change the name of a foreign country or the name of one of it's cities?

[Swede]

I know you regulars in this forum are clever and know a lot more than I do, and you've put me through the wringer trying to teach me what you thought I didn't know. Or getting me to accept the orthodox view at any rate!! All well and good. Not one of you have a patch on the beatings my mom handed out so although I was confused a lot by your reactions, it was not new to me so of course I tried to adapt. Please. I'm not whining and I don't need any sympathy But I've been watching a bit more lately what exactly you answer and what you ignore. Not one of you has made a comment about the pictures I posted of Jim Allen's theory of Atlantis in Bolivia. Why not? You've made comment about the atl and you've said there's no way Bolivia influenced Plato's story. Three years ago, I read Jim Allen's web site and pooh poohed it, not because I knew from crap what the word ATL meant, but because I was trusting in science, and science said there was no communications between the two sides of the ocean. Gradually, after doing a lot of looking around, I came to the conclusion that science was wrong. It had to be. There's too much evidence that's been recently discovered that shows the Americas were populated longer than science said. I've been screaming it from the roof tops that the time line is wrong. I thought it was Plato who got the time line wrong. It wasn't. I think it was us.

It's been a kind of secret belief of mine (kept secret for fear of being ripped to shreds because I don't have proof and can't really go out and get any) that the Egyptians sailed secretly to the Americas. Science said that there were no ships that could sail the ocean. I believed it. Science said that the Egyptians stuck to the coasts when they sailed. I believed it. Then I started changing my mind. I figured they HAD to have sailed across the ocean for certain things to exist. Then when they found the hidden ships in Egypt by the Red Sea, I was elated. Those ships proved to ME that I was leaning in the right direction. The Egyptians DID have ships that could sail the ocean and the barnacles on the bottom showed the ships had been in the water at least 2 months. The very fact that they were such beautiful ships, and that they were totally hidden, means to me that someone very high up, had a big secret.

I'm sure I'll be ridiculed for this, but a little light bulb only came on earlier today. Here I've been trying to figure out the details of what Plato said, and trying to fit what he said into what was going on at the time, and checking out the histories to see when ships were first built and trying how to figure out how Athens could be in a war when she hadn't even been created yet, and driving myself nuts with the details. A lot of others have been doing the same thing for over 2000 years. We couldn't make the story work. No matter what detail we tried to fit, it wouldn't work. So we said it was a story, an allegory, that the basis for this story was another story, or maybe a whole bunch of stories that Plato used to teach a lesson, or a story to entertain his comrades, to celebrate the birthday of the founding goddess.

I think it IS a story and it definitely would be one that could be started with "once upon a time in a land far, far away", because now that I've had time to re-hash some of Jim Allen's work, and correlate it to my beliefs that the Egyptians had a secret, I find it is very possible that (please read each word) THE STORY OF ATLANTIS IS BASED ON A STORY OF ANOTHER CULTURE THAT WAS TRUE.

No one needed to have ships 9000 years before Solon. It doesn't matter if the Egyptian gods are the same as the Greek gods. What needs to be shown is that SOMEONE told this story to the Egyptians and that someone only had to tell it to the priest so much as a day before Solon showed up in Sais because it was a story from another place. Or someone BROUGHT the story home with them after being to S. America.

I don't think this story was written in stone on the pillars. I think it was written on papyrus. The line where Plato talks about what is written on the pillars, is I think, the constitution. The constitutions of Egypt and Greece were written on the pillars and they could verify that later, but I doubt this story of a far away land was important enough to carve in stone and so was lost. Something pretty drastic must have happened for those ships to be hidden away and totally forgotten about. Who could afford to forget about their expensive ships?

Once upon a time I was going to research the actual ocean currents and winds for sailing back and forth but I never did. I figure they came out of the Red Sea, down the coast of Africa and across on the currents. Going back, they went with the current and came in through Gibraltar, never knowing what their own continent really looked like.

Qoais - A bit short on time, but just some factors to ponder;

1) I did not personally respond to the photos because I was uncertain of their purpose. Are they to represent the location of the proposed "Atlantis". If so, where is the evidence for the supposedly advanced civilization that inhabited the area?

2) As I have noted before, the demise of the Clovis First theory has been in process for quite some time. That said, the time-line has not been altered in as drastic a manner as you may perceive, i.e. 13,200 to +/- 16,000. Given genetic and linguistic information, it is my personal observation that with further investigation the presence of humans in the Western hemisphere will eventually be pushed back to circa 20,000 to 25,000 BP. This factor does not, in any manner, support oceanic contact between the two hemispheres via the Atlantic during the time in question. The genetic evidence demonstrates quite clearly that the predominate early populations of the Western hemisphere were of Asian origin.

3) The incidence of two month old barnacles does not, in itself, support trans-Atlantic crossings. In fact, this evidence is more supportive of short distance coastal travel. Also, the "hidden big secret" concept may be rather difficult to empirically demonstrate.

4) What, specifically are you referring to in regards to "HAD to have sailed across the oceans for certain things to exist". This can be addressed in a detailed manner.

5) Based on another story? I'm sure you are aware of the speculations regarding Thera. Not necessarily supporting this one, but a bit much more realistic than trans-Atlantic travel within the apparently proposed broad time frames.

6) And time frames would appear to be a major problem. From what you have presented, Allen seems to be utilizing supportive evidence that spans + 12,000 BP - +/- 1,500 BP. From my perspective, these numbers are rather untenable.

Addendum - It has yet to be demonstrated, at least to my satisfaction, where the derivation and meaning of the word "antis" are coming from. Can Allen address this. Is he combining Nahuatl with "modern" Quechua?

Edited January 3, 2010 by Swede

[The Puzzler]

I know you regulars in this forum are clever and know a lot more than I do, and you've put me through the wringer trying to teach me what you thought I didn't know. Or getting me to accept the orthodox view at any rate!! All well and good. Not one of you have a patch on the beatings my mom handed out so although I was confused a lot by your reactions, it was not new to me so of course I tried to adapt. Please. I'm not whining and I don't need any sympathy But I've been watching a bit more lately what exactly you answer and what you ignore. Not one of you has made a comment about the pictures I posted of Jim Allen's theory of Atlantis in Bolivia. Why not? You've made comment about the atl and you've said there's no way Bolivia influenced Plato's story. Three years ago, I read Jim Allen's web site and pooh poohed it, not because I knew from crap what the word ATL meant, but because I was trusting in science, and science said there was no communications between the two sides of the ocean. Gradually, after doing a lot of looking around, I came to the conclusion that science was wrong. It had to be. There's too much evidence that's been recently discovered that shows the Americas were populated longer than science said. I've been screaming it from the roof tops that the time line is wrong. I thought it was Plato who got the time line wrong. It wasn't. I think it was us.

It's been a kind of secret belief of mine (kept secret for fear of being ripped to shreds because I don't have proof and can't really go out and get any) that the Egyptians sailed secretly to the Americas. Science said that there were no ships that could sail the ocean. I believed it. Science said that the Egyptians stuck to the coasts when they sailed. I believed it. Then I started changing my mind. I figured they HAD to have sailed across the ocean for certain things to exist. Then when they found the hidden ships in Egypt by the Red Sea, I was elated. Those ships proved to ME that I was leaning in the right direction. The Egyptians DID have ships that could sail the ocean and the barnacles on the bottom showed the ships had been in the water at least 2 months. The very fact that they were such beautiful ships, and that they were totally hidden, means to me that someone very high up, had a big secret.

I'm sure I'll be ridiculed for this, but a little light bulb only came on earlier today. Here I've been trying to figure out the details of what Plato said, and trying to fit what he said into what was going on at the time, and checking out the histories to see when ships were first built and trying how to figure out how Athens could be in a war when she hadn't even been created yet, and driving myself nuts with the details. A lot of others have been doing the same thing for over 2000 years. We couldn't make the story work. No matter what detail we tried to fit, it wouldn't work. So we said it was a story, an allegory, that the basis for this story was another story, or maybe a whole bunch of stories that Plato used to teach a lesson, or a story to entertain his comrades, to celebrate the birthday of the founding goddess.

I think it IS a story and it definitely would be one that could be started with "once upon a time in a land far, far away", because now that I've had time to re-hash some of Jim Allen's work, and correlate it to my beliefs that the Egyptians had a secret, I find it is very possible that (please read each word) THE STORY OF ATLANTIS IS BASED ON A STORY OF ANOTHER CULTURE THAT WAS TRUE.

No one needed to have ships 9000 years before Solon. It doesn't matter if the Egyptian gods are the same as the Greek gods. What needs to be shown is that SOMEONE told this story to the Egyptians and that someone only had to tell it to the priest so much as a day before Solon showed up in Sais because it was a story from another place. Or someone BROUGHT the story home with them after being to S. America.

I don't think this story was written in stone on the pillars. I think it was written on papyrus. The line where Plato talks about what is written on the pillars, is I think, the constitution. The constitutions of Egypt and Greece were written on the pillars and they could verify that later, but I doubt this story of a far away land was important enough to carve in stone and so was lost. Something pretty drastic must have happened for those ships to be hidden away and totally forgotten about. Who could afford to forget about their expensive ships?

Once upon a time I was going to research the actual ocean currents and winds for sailing back and forth but I never did. I figure they came out of the Red Sea, down the coast of Africa and across on the currents. Going back, they went with the current and came in through Gibraltar, never knowing what their own continent really looked like.

OK Q, that's coming out of the closet! I saw your posts and what was going through my head was this.....what the hell is Q on about here? Is this her theory or this Jim Allens, I did notice that it seemed like you were posting to say hey this part looks like Atlantis and then some text on the next one bit but no poo pooing from you in the post so I was really confused and it was like 3am here so my brain was trying to decipher it...

Those ships in Egypt hidden, were really old weren't they? Can you tell me when they are dated to again? So you think it was these ships that could have made the journey accidently to South America I assume. Tell me more about the ships, links etc...

[The Puzzler]

Q...Here is something Herodotus said...

Libya (Africa) clearly is bounded by the sea, except where it borders on Asia. Nekhau king of Egypt first discovered this and made it known. When he had abandoned the digging of the canal which leads from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he sent Phoenicians in ships, with orders to sail on their return voyage past the Pillars of Heracles (the straits of Gibraltar) until they came into the northern sea (the Mediterranean) and so to Egypt.

He says Necho was first to discover this...hmm, how did he find this info out? Did he discover something already known?

Then it says he got Phoenician sailors to do the journey, so here they are sailing around taking 2 years, I think it may have entered their heads at some point while sailing up the West Coast...I wonder what we will find if we sail further West...? Looking out West from the West they would have to have been curious...

So, they get back and tell Necho he's right, you can circumnavigate Africa with the knowledge that if they sailed out the Pillars and then west some more a possible undiscovered source of something might be there...

They were already masters of both Carthage and Gades by then on either side of the Pillars basically, what did they have to lose by going back out the Pillars which by then they knew was safe to do since they had already been out of them, only coming in instead..I'm talking c.600BC here.

My point is from that time on I think it could be quite a possibility that Phoenicians did sail out and westward.

But to earlier times, a bit tricky...

What the??... Egyptian seagoing ships were inferior to those used by other peoples, despite remarkable feats achieved, among them the expeditions along the eastern coast of Africa during the reign of Hatshepsut at the beginning of the 15th century BCE and the crossing of the Indian Ocean with seventy metre long ships in the times of Ramses III 300 years later.

So in the time of Rameses they had 70 metre ocean going vessels that could sail across the Indian Ocean...?

All pretty interesting really...

Transferring people, minerals, and goods between Ancient Egypt and other faraway places was much more extensive and common than is generally imagined. The seas were not barriers, but high roads for active international commerce. Traveling by water has been (and continues to be) the most effective, economical, and safest way to travel for both people and goods. Travel by land complements travel by water for major/large goods.

The Ancient Egyptians had the means to travel the high seas—with a large number of high quality ships. They also had the geographic knowledge to travel the open seas. The evidence shows that their means and knowledge enabled them to reach the farthest countries of the earth. The following pages will detail the wealth of high quality ships and the Ancient Egyptian knowledge of high seas travel.

Previously in chapter 11, Total Science, we showed the Ancient Egyptian knowledge of the stars as well as the surface of the earth (including water).

Ancient Egypt had the means, knowledge, material, and experience to transport people and goods by sea and land. The quality of the Ancient Egyptian ships were truly recognized and appreciated when the Khufu (Cheops) boat (4500 years old) was found next to the Great Pyramid in Giza, during the 1970s. That boat, now housed in a museum next to the Great Pyramid, is superior and much more seaworthy than Columbus’ Santa Maria, the Mayflower, or the Vikings’ ships. The physical evidence is clear that the Egyptians had the means to travel on the high seas. Sizes of even larger ships than Khufu’s will be detailed later.

Khufu’s boat is one of the largest ancient ships found to date. The longest of Viking boats found in Europe was about 98.5 ft [30m], while Khufu’s boat is 142.5 ft [43.4m] long. It is about 19.4 ft [5.9m] wide and 5.75 ft [1.75m] deep and has a displacement of over 40 tons. The prow, formed in the shape of a papyrus-bundle, is about 20 ft [6m] tall. Its stern rises to 23 ft [7m]. Its rudder consists of two massive oars. The boat has several cabins on its deck. There is some evidence that Khufu’s boat was actually used in water. Marks caused by abrasion between the ropes and the wood of the vessel are still clearly visible in many places.

The boat consists of several pieces of wood that are held together with ropes. The ropes shrink when wet, while the wood expands when wet. Such shrinkage and expansion provided tight, secure seals, and eliminated any need for metal nails. This method of boat construction allowed the Ancient Egyptians to disassemble the boat and carry the pieces, while traveling on land, until they reached a safe and navigable waterway. This ingenious construction technique allowed the Ancient Egyptians to travel deeper inland. Numerous Ancient Egyptian papyri from all ages testify to this method of land-water travel.

The Ancient Egyptians were famed for their shipbuilding throughout the Mediterranean Basin, even though the timber necessary for large-scale carpentry and for boat building was unavailable in Egypt. The Ancient Egyptians had a large fleet, as evident from the huge quantities of timber that they had imported from Phoenicia. The need for timber supplies explains, at least in part, the importance of the permanent settlement—a kind of protectorate—which the Egyptians had with the Phoenicians, from the earliest days of the Old Kingdom [c. 2575 BCE].

The Egyptians built a whole range of practical boats, well adapted to different uses and to the geography and climate for the transportation of both passengers and freight. The Egyptian ships traveled the waters of the Nile and the high seas, since the most ancient times. Ships varied enormously in size. Some of them were huge. Diodorus mentions one, made of cedar, built during Sesostris’ reign, which measured about 450 ft [140m].

All types of commercial and military vessels were known, more than 5,000 years ago, transferring goods to the northern shores of Britain, Ireland, and Europe. This was long before the Phoenicians became seafarers in the 1st millennium BCE.

In very early times, boat building was carried on extensively. Even under the Old Kingdom [2575–2150 BCE], boats were built of large dimensions, thus we hear of a

broad ship of acacia wood, 60 cubits long and 30 cubits broad. . .

i.e. nearly 100 ft [30.5m] long and 50 ft [15.25m] across, and a boat of this immense size

was put together in 17 days. . .

The pictures under the Old Kingdom represent several types of boats, such as square boats, stern boats, towboats, etc. Each type is fit for certain functions/situations. Several types of boats were utilized at harbors such as Canopus (pre-Alexandria), to suit harbor operations. Besides the freight vessels, there were special small boats that were used for carrying smaller loads.

http://www.egypt-tehuti.org/articles/ships.html

[Qoais]

Sorry guys. It seems I forgot to take off the moccasins from the other forum when I came over this time. Over there I just post whatever pops into my head and anyone who has been following me along the way, knows that I just muck about until I can make sense of stuff. I guess I was pretty hurt (and shouldn't have been) about what one of my detractors said in the other forum, because I do so hate to hurt anyone's feelings and it's been distracting me. Usually when I get my little feelers hurt, it means I've been less than sensitive and someone has jacked me up about it, so I figured I'd better go back and see why Jim Allen didn't want to talk to me anymore. After reading his web site again, the penny dropped into place. I see what he means now. IF one puts aside everything and thinks about it - without anything but the description of the place, Bolivia fits.

THEN, once one has found the PLACE, one has to answer to the skeptics and orthodox critics.

I hate to say it, but really if it's true, Plato did plagiarize someone else's story. Now all Jim Allen has to do, is prove that someone came from S. America and told the Egyptians the story of their homeland that sunk.

There is no power coming in from the Atlantic, there is no one who has held sway over the western end of the Med., there was no war between "this power" and Athens. All there was, was possibly a survivor from a ship wreck that managed to tell the story of his homeland and it's history possibly to a Phoenician sailor who may have found this person stranded somehow, and then that person passed the story on. The rest is - embellishment. OR the Egyptians had a secret.

If you spend some time reading Jim Allen's web site and look at the pictures, what he says matches quite well with the description of what Atlantis supposedly looked like. Keeping in mind that they always called a land an island until they'd sailed around it, they would call a continent an island until they knew better. Remember, they thought the ocean was a river encircling the world, so any land out in the ocean would have to be an island. Until proven otherwise.

Here's a link to Cheryl Ward, who rebuilt the ship, but I can't find my other pictures. Will keep looking.

http://mailer.fsu.edu/~cward/Building%20Min.htm

Edited January 3, 2010 by Qoais

[The Puzzler]

Sorry guys. It seems I forgot to take off the moccasins from the other forum when I came over this time. Over there I just post whatever pops into my head and anyone who has been following me along the way, knows that I just muck about until I can make sense of stuff. I guess I was pretty hurt (and shouldn't have been) about what one of my detractors said in the other forum, because I do so hate to hurt anyone's feelings and it's been distracting me. Usually when I get my little feelers hurt, it means I've been less than sensitive and someone has jacked me up about it, so I figured I'd better go back and see why Jim Allen didn't want to talk to me anymore. After reading his web site again, the penny dropped into place. I see what he means now. IF one puts aside everything and thinks about it - without anything but the description of the place, Bolivia fits.

THEN, once one has found the PLACE, one has to answer to the skeptics and orthodox critics.

I hate to say it, but really if it's true, Plato did plagiarize someone else's story. Now all Jim Allen has to do, is prove that someone came from S. America and told the Egyptians the story of their homeland that sunk.

There is no power coming in from the Atlantic, there is no one who has held sway over the western end of the Med., there was no war between "this power" and Athens. All there was, was possibly a survivor from a ship wreck that managed to tell the story of his homeland and it's history possibly to a Phoenician sailor who may have found this person stranded somehow, and then that person passed the story on. The rest is - embellishment.

If you spend some time reading Jim Allen's web site and look at the pictures, what he says matches quite well with the description of what Atlantis supposedly looked like. Keeping in mind that they always called a land an island until they'd sailed around it, they would call a continent an island until they knew better. Remember, they thought the ocean was a river encircling the world, so any land out in the ocean would have to be an island. Until proven otherwise.

Here's a link to Cheryl Ward, who rebuilt the ship, but I can't find my other pictures. Will keep looking.

http://mailer.fsu.edu/~cward/Building%20Min.htm

Without anything but the description many places fit but. It has to fit the whole story.

What is the war against this shipwrecked sailor partook in against Athens?

Called land an island until they sailed around it?? R U sure? I don't think I'm buying it mate. Seems very little of anything fits about it except a bit of land layout, in Bolivia and from what I know South America is attached to North America so they could never have sailed around it, South America is not an island...he says they called it an island until someone sails around it...hmmm, dunno.

[Qoais]

Min of the Desert

http://mailer.fsu.edu/~cward/Sailing%20Min%20photos.htm

Min is 20 meters (66 feet) long and could have carried a cargo of about 15 tons in addition to crew and supplies. The modern reconstruction was built in only six months at an Egyptian shipyard. Photograph by Stephané Begoin (sbegoin@gmail.com).

Edited January 3, 2010 by Qoais

[Qoais]

Puzzler, you're going too fast.

Without anything but the description many places fit but. It has to fit the whole story.

What is the war against this shipwrecked sailor partook in against Athens?

Called land an island until they sailed around it?? R U sure? I don't think I'm buying it mate. Seems very little of anything fits about it except a bit of land layout, in Bolivia and from what I know South America is attached to North America so they could never have sailed around it, South America is not an island...he says they called it an island until someone sails around it...hmmm, dunno.

I was just trying to explain why Atlantis would be called an island even if it wasn't. It's because in those days, they thought the ocean was a river encircling them so any land out in that river would have been called an island - see? No one ever did sail "around" it so it was "an island" to them. No, it doesn't have to fit the whole story. It is the story. Plato did the embellishing. I said it could have been that a sailor from S. America somehow ended up shipwrecked or carried by the currents way beyond his homeland, possibly he was rescued and he told his story of his homeland. The priests said they wrote down everything they heard of interest, whether in their own land or any other.

There was no war with Athens. That's Plato entertaining the company.

[kmt_sesh]

...

It's been a kind of secret belief of mine (kept secret for fear of being ripped to shreds because I don't have proof and can't really go out and get any) that the Egyptians sailed secretly to the Americas. Science said that there were no ships that could sail the ocean. I believed it. Science said that the Egyptians stuck to the coasts when they sailed. I believed it. Then I started changing my mind. I figured they HAD to have sailed across the ocean for certain things to exist. Then when they found the hidden ships in Egypt by the Red Sea, I was elated. Those ships proved to ME that I was leaning in the right direction. The Egyptians DID have ships that could sail the ocean and the barnacles on the bottom showed the ships had been in the water at least 2 months. The very fact that they were such beautiful ships, and that they were totally hidden, means to me that someone very high up, had a big secret.

...

I'm not sure what the "big secret" is supposed to be, Qoais. The discovery of the ancient port at Wadi Gawasis was very exciting and helped to add to our understanding of Egyptian sailing vessels and ports, but the discovery was by no means earth shattering and did not change our understanding of ancient Egypt in any fundamental way. As I've written at UM before, the site dates primarily to the Middle Kingdom, so the fact that it was abandoned is not unusual.

The collapse of the Middle Kingdom (during Dynasty 13) was followed by dissolution of central authority and led into the Second Intermediate Period, which included the brief dominion by the Hyksos of Lower Egypt. There would not have been many, if any sailing expeditions to Punt during this troubled time. The port at Wadi Gawasis was evidently used to a small degree again during the New Kingdom, but Wadi Gawasis was never a major port and never contained a permanent settlement.

Please understand that archaeologists had been excavating that area since the 1970s before the ship and equipment were discovered in 2006. So I'm not sure what you mean by "big secret," whether you're referring to a provincial administrator in ancient times or some murky government cabal in modern times, the latter of which is of course unrealistic to imply.

The fact that barnacles may have been found on the vessel doesn't say much. Barnacles can adhere to a wooden hull in a short amount of time. Wadi Gawasis was simply one of numerous way-stations along the Red Sea coast for the Egyptians to launch expeditions down that coast, and probably primarily to Punt. As far as I know the vessel uncovered at Wadi Gawasis was rather typical for the period (we have a similar type on display at the Field Museum, from Dynasty 12), and there is nothing at Wadi Gawasis that suggests expeditions across the seas.

One thing I should add about the fuss we've all been making about the word element "atl." It can be dismissed summarily on linguistic grounds, of course, but there's also the significant factor that speakers of Nahuatl were not native to pre-columbian Bolivia. I believe the principal native language of Bolivia was Aymara, which is still spoken there today. If I am wrong in this identification, please feel free to correct me, but Nahuatl tongues were not spoken in Bolivia. Nahuatl belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family, which is located mostly in central Mexico. The most famous speakers of Nahuatl were of course the Aztecs, who migrated in from the north. And they did not even exist in the time of the great cultures of the ancient Near East.

Allen is engaging in flights of fancy, I'd have to say. From what you have posted thus far, I do not see anything of substance that would make me sit up and take notice. Respectfully, all I've seen is rather sloppy fiction. To balance the equation I think you'd get an eye-opening experience by digging deeper into these subjects with literature produced by professional historians.

[Qoais]

Min of the Desert

The Red Sea, Egypt

Nearly 3,500 years ago, the female pharaoh Hatshepsut ordered five trading ships built for a voyage over the Red Sea to the legendary Land of Punt. Now, Florida State University maritime archaeologist Cheryl Ward has plied the same waters on a similar vessel, a 66-foot-long, 30-ton reconstruction of an 18th Dynasty trading ship. Called Min of the Desert--in honor of the powerful Egyptian fertility god commemorated in stelae and shrines at the Middle Kingdom lagoon site of Mersa Gawasis--the ship was partly based on a detailed relief depicting Hatshepsut's fleet in her funerary temple.

Ward also relied on archaeological data recovered from Mersa Gawasis, where since 2003 archaeologists have unearthed wooden ship parts, anchors, and ropes still tied in original knots, evidence that ships were dismantled at the site. She used measurements from the artifacts, including a complete hull plank, in her design.

Last December, Ward and a crew of two dozen students, engineers, and sailors embarked on an 18-day voyage on the Red Sea aboard the reconstructed ship. The trip indicated that the Egyptians were much more proficient shipwrights than previously thought. "When the wind picked up and filled our sail, we just took off," she says, about twice as fast as she'd expected. "My hope was that we would be able to have a nice, solid voyage in which we could test the capability of the ship. I had no idea it would be so exhilarating, so easy to operate, and such a direct reflection of what we see in the ancient reliefs."

http://www.archaeology.org/0907/underwater/egypt.html

[Qoais]

Hi kmt

Thanks for helping out here, I can make such a mess of things without even trying

In my mind, the big secret would have been wealth. Whatever that meant to the ancient Egyptians. Cocoa, cocaine, gold, gems, minerals, whatever. If you had a secret source for any of these things, would you tell everyone about it? Or would you hide your ships until the next trip? It's like the outlaws of the Wild West. The Hole In The Wall Gang. No one knew where they went after they did a major heist but they'd hide and then come out and do another robbery. Same with the ships maybe. Hide the ships until the next expedition goes out. It wasn't meant to be a port. Not like a trading port anyway. More like a private port for pirates!! I think those ships would have been worth a lot of money back then, and even a crew member who could tell some entrepreneur where to find them, could earn big bucks for the information. Yet no one found them. It wouldn't matter what government was in place at any given time except that it might have made it difficult for the owner to get back and make another expedition. I don't think anyone would deliberately abandon such an expensive piece of equipment on purpose.

I can't seem to find the original article regarding these ships, but it talked about the barnacles and what type they were and in what water they would have grown and how old they were. I can't find the original pictures of the lovely rope coils and so forth either.

One thing I should add about the fuss we've all been making about the word element "atl." It can be dismissed summarily on linguistic grounds, of course, but there's also the significant factor that speakers of Nahuatl were not native to pre-columbian Bolivia. I believe the principal native language of Bolivia was Aymara, which is still spoken there today. If I am wrong in this identification, please feel free to correct me, but Nahuatl tongues were not spoken in Bolivia. Nahuatl belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family, which is located mostly in central Mexico. The most famous speakers of Nahuatl were of course the Aztecs, who migrated in from the north. And they did not even exist in the time of the great cultures of the ancient Near East.

I can't remember all what Jim Allen did say regarding the languages but I do know he said ATL meant water and antis meant copper. I think he does explain about the different languages be I'd have to go back and recheck it. I'm re-reading it so much I'm getting re-confused.!!

[The Puzzler]

It doesn't matter which word the Egyptians would have used, and I agree it would have been different. The point is, we cannot make a theory based on a vacuum of evidence. The only source we have for placing the origin of the Atlantis story in Egypt is Plato's writing, and that is indeed significant. That is fact, not opinion. What is also fact is that despite the massive body of writing that has come down to us from Egypt, everything from historical to fable, not one shred of Egyptian writing bears anything similar to the story of Atlantis. Trust me or not, but one cannot deny the fact that the Egyptians possessed no identifiable Atlantean tradition. In fact, the story as related by Plato is pure Greek and does not even mesh with the style or material the Egyptians employed in their own literature.

I have to stand by what I said: Plato was employing Egypt as a literary device, something other Greek writers were known to do. Herodotus' writings are filled with the same, in as much as he continually tries to tie the Egyptian and Greek religions together, though the truth is there was no connection.

That an inscription at Sais might have existed but is now gone due to the ruination of the site also cannot be used as an argument. It is considerably unlikely that the story of Atlantis was preserved at only one temple precinct. In fact it's next to impossible. This is not the sort of thing the Egyptians would've recorded on a stela but rather on papyrus, and copies would've existed at other important state temples. This was something commonly done by the Egyptians and is one of the main reasons so much of their written material has come down to us.

I wanted to comment on this quote:

I don't know of anything that would substantiate this claim. Neith is one of the oldest goddesses of Egypt and is attested from the very dawn of state formation. Her symbol of the crossed arrows actually dates back to prehistoric times (Wilkinson 1999: 291), so it's likely she was venerated even before state formation. Sais is indeed a very ancient site, but I would say it's more likely that immigrants brought Anouke into Egypt, where Neith already existed, and Anouke was absorbed into the cult of Neith. That's how it often happened with foreign deities who found their way into Egypt (e.g., Bes and Baal).

And finally:

As entertaining as Manetho's chronology tends to be, the farther back in time one goes, the more inaccurate he is. There are far better sources to consult when examining the chronology of Egyptian kings, and in general writers of the Classical period are not among them. Archaeology has demonstrated beyond dispute that Manetho's dating for the earliest kings is grossly in error. While we lack a full understanding of the proto-kings of late prehistory, we know with certainty due to archaeology at Abydos and other nearby centers of late prehistory that the proto-kings date to no earlier than late Naqqada II (circa 3200 BCE) and more likely within Naqada III (3150-3000 BCE).

I'm editing to add this to The Puzzler: I make assumptions and opinions just like everyone else, but when I do so in one of my posts, I will clearly state it as such; otherwise, what I write can be fact-checked in the professional literature. If I'm wrong I welcome you to correct me with the proper substantiation and citation so I can learn from it, but otherwise be assured that I am not making assumptions or opinions.

Thanks. I know you are smart and don't answer lightly, but to me is all assumption when it boils down to it, you have no actual proof that some story that could align with Atlantis did not exist in Egypt, it's just we don't know what to look for.

I know Neith is very old in Egypt but consider this...her form changes along the way...

she becomes associated with water since her name can be seen to mean this so became the personification of the primordial waters of creation, in this role she became associated with being the mother of creation.

Some other interesting things about Neith - She is also aligned with Tanit, of the Berbers and that her name coincides with Astarte and Ishtar.

OK, what we know is not what the ancients thought either. We know now people like Manetho may have been incorrect and that it seems ludicrous that time in Egypt could have gone back as far as he says but those people did believe this. By looking for this using todays standards I don't think helps. Archaeology has shown plenty of stuff that doesn't add up in myth but that never stopped the ancients in believing it.

But even back in predynastic times at Naqada it can be found that trade was made with Sinai, Palestine and even Mesopotamia. I don't know kmt, I reckon this can be found to have some credence rather than Plato got it off the top off his head...just how and where is the big questions, that he uses a date of 9000 years is not surprising to me even if it doesn't gel with arhcaeology because it is really what they thought at the time particularly in Egypt, Herodotus confirms this by saying even the God of Heracles is 17,000 years old to the Egyptians.

[The Puzzler]

Puzzler, you're going too fast.

Without anything but the description many places fit but. It has to fit the whole story.

What is the war against this shipwrecked sailor partook in against Athens?

Called land an island until they sailed around it?? R U sure? I don't think I'm buying it mate. Seems very little of anything fits about it except a bit of land layout, in Bolivia and from what I know South America is attached to North America so they could never have sailed around it, South America is not an island...he says they called it an island until someone sails around it...hmmm, dunno.

I was just trying to explain why Atlantis would be called an island even if it wasn't. It's because in those days, they thought the ocean was a river encircling them so any land out in that river would have been called an island - see? No one ever did sail "around" it so it was "an island" to them. No, it doesn't have to fit the whole story. It is the story. Plato did the embellishing. I said it could have been that a sailor from S. America somehow ended up shipwrecked or carried by the currents way beyond his homeland, possibly he was rescued and he told his story of his homeland. The priests said they wrote down everything they heard of interest, whether in their own land or any other.

There was no war with Athens. That's Plato entertaining the company.

Yep I see, Georgeos says a similar thing with island being a peninsula really, nesos...although it did get explained to me as not being right, the Pelopponese is exactly that, not an island even though the word does mean island..?? I think..

From kmt-

One thing I should add about the fuss we've all been making about the word element "atl." It can be dismissed summarily on linguistic grounds, of course, but there's also the significant factor that speakers of Nahuatl were not native to pre-columbian Bolivia. I believe the principal native language of Bolivia was Aymara, which is still spoken there today. If I am wrong in this identification, please feel free to correct me, but Nahuatl tongues were not spoken in Bolivia. Nahuatl belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family, which is located mostly in central Mexico. The most famous speakers of Nahuatl were of course the Aztecs, who migrated in from the north. And they did not even exist in the time of the great cultures of the ancient Near East.

I did leave a post explaining this and that as well as being an Aztec Valley word, not Bolivian, broken down there is no ATL it is Nahua - tl. Not Nahu ATL.

Edited for 2 PS comments: Happy New Year to you dear Q!!

And also thanks for the Egyptian boat links, very interesting. It always comes across like the Egyptians could barely build build anything but a reed boat for the Nile...

Edited January 3, 2010 by The Puzzler

[Qoais]

Thanks P. I loved the article too about how smart the Egyptians were with their boat building.

I'm going to have to try harder to keep things straight in the future. I don't want to criticize someone if I really don't have my ducks all in a row. I really didn't understand that Jim Allen had basically lifted the one story out of the other story. If you do that, then it does make sense. All he wanted to do, was try to find the location. Because really, I know myself from trying to fit the pieces together, the story Plato gave doesn't work. As I've said before, too much information. That's because it's a tale. A story. But he could have taken the description from someone else's real story.

If he did, and then just made up the rest for entertainment, none of the rest needs to be proven because it can't be, it's make believe.

[The Puzzler]

I think it is a possibility that Neith or Nit actually came into Egypt from the area of Libya maybe even when the early Egyptians migrated East from the area of the drying Sahara. Meshwesh kings finally ruled Egypt with Shoshenq. So the people whom the Egyptians could possibly have once been a part of came back and took them over..from Libya, we know they were against Egypt in the time of the Sea People too.

Was Neith the goddess of war and wisdom from Nit the original who became Athena.

The word Athena is pre-Greek and of unknown origin. It could be seen therefore that both Neith and Athena came from Libya and the Berbers. Related in some way...were the earliest Greek inhabitants of Athens from Libya and are Berbers, it could be likely since there is paintings from Akrotiri that show prior to Thera travel to the African coast, is there some evidence that disputes this? That original Athenians with the word Athens are actually Berber people and that the goddess Athena came with them when they settled in Athens at a very early time. If the original Athenians are actually Berbers rather than the later Mycenaeans who bought in early Greek words it could be they are from Libya and sailed over during the timeframe prior to the Thera eruption since we have evidence in the paintings. The myths also have the Greeks around the area of Libya and Poseidon and Libya as a couple giving birth to sons who went on to become Kings of Egypt and Phoenicia respectively...

Trade mentioned at Naqada could have bought these early Libyan Berbers into Palestine and then into Greece. The Phoenicians reckon they had been trading at Argo prior to the Trojan War according to what Herodotus says in his opening.

So, if we look at this it could be the myths are truer than we know...

Checking out Athena some more:

The Greek philosopher, Plato (429–347 BC), identified her with the Libyan deity, Neith, the war-goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient predynastic period, also identified with weaving. This is sensible as some Greeks identified Athena's birthplace, in certain mythological renditions, as being beside Libya's Triton River.[4] Classicist Martin Bernal created the "Black Athena Theory" to explain this associated origin by claiming that the conception of Neith was brought over to Greece from Egypt with "an enormous number of features of civilisation and culture in the third and second millennia."

The Black Athena Theory makes sense actually.

I will also add this for back up:

Plato, in the Laws, attributes the cult of Athena to the culture of Crete, introduced from Libya during the dawn of Greek culture.

So, Plato himself sees Athena as coming in from Crete FROM LIBYA during the DAWN of Greek Culture.

Now, it doesn't matter what archaeology, or DNA testing says THIS IS WHAT PLATO THOUGHT.

In relation to Atlantis I find this an important point. I often try to reference Plato's own thoughts and opinions so as to try and make sense of this. If Plato thought the word was a rectangle you would have to look at his works as the world being a rectangle.

His thoughts here say that Athena came from Libya - just as Neith (as Nit of the Berbers) would have.

[jmccr8]

Qoais,thanks for the links on min of the desert i really enjoyed some of the other articles about the finds on the wari.jmccr8

[The Puzzler]

Athens may have been founded by Athena in the "3rd or 2nd millenium" before Sais...is there any evidence to the contrary?

In Linear B we find Athena appearing before Zeus. This does not mean Athena was a Mycenaean Goddess, simply the Mycenaeans that integrated into Cretan life wrote her name down. She appears before Zeus (= to a son of El (Cronus).

Daughter of Tor Ul The Bull God - El.

From Santhuniation again:

Fragments attributed by the Christian Eusebius of Caesarea to the semi-legendary Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, which Eusebius thought had been written before the Trojan war, make Athena instead, the daughter of Cronus, a king of Byblos who visited 'the inhabitable world' and bequeathed Attica to Athena.[19] Sanchuniathon's account would make Athena the sister of Zeus and Hera, not Zeus' daughter.

So, it seems to be saying Athena came from Phoenicia...

Athena from Libya to Phoenicia to Crete to Greece.

A daughter of El.

FOR ANYONE NOT GETTING THE YAHWEH is 2 Gods morphed into one, this simple sentence explains it clearly from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_%28deity%29 (I recommend reading the whole El article to understand this enigmatic deity who became many other Gods)

According to The Oxford Companion To World Mythology (David Leeming, Oxford University Press, 2005, page 118), "It seems almost certain that the God of the Jews evolved gradually from the Canaanite El, who was in all likelihood the 'God of Abraham'...If El was the high god of Abraham - Elohim, the prototype of Yahveh -

Athens may have been founded by Athena in the "3rd or 2nd millenium" before Sais...is there any evidence to the contrary?

In Linear B we find Athena appearing before Zeus. This does not mean Athena was a Mycenaean Goddess, simply the Mycenaeans that integrated into Cretan life wrote her name down. She appears before Zeus (= to a son of El (Cronus).

Edited January 3, 2010 by The Puzzler

[The Puzzler]

I just watched Troy tonight, I like it alot, the characters of Hector and Achilles are well played by Eric Bana and Brad Pitt, the character of Agamemnon is really interesting too as it belies the real story of him wanting the power of Troy. I know it's just a movie but it makes me think more all the time about Troy being a possible Atlantis.

I can not get past a part in the Laws by Plato where it says:

Ath. Then, now let us speak of a third form of government, in

which all other forms and conditions of polities and cities concur.

Cle. What is that?

Ath. The form which in fact Homer indicates as following the second.

This third form arose when, as he says, Dardanus founded Dardania:

For not as yet had the holy Ilium been built on the plain to be a

city of speaking men; but they were still dwelling at the foot of

many-fountained Ida.

For indeed, in these verses, and in what he said of the Cyclopes, he

speaks the words of God and nature; for poets are a divine race and

often in their strains, by the aid of the Muses and the Graces, they

attain truth.

Cle. Yes.

Ath. Then now let us proceed with the rest of our tale, which will

probably be found to illustrate in some degree our proposed

design:-Shall we do so?

Cle. By all means.

Ath. Ilium was built, when they descended from the mountain, in a

large and fair plain, on a sort of low hill, watered by many rivers

descending from Ida.

Cle. Such is the tradition.

Ath. And we must suppose this event to have taken place many ages

after the deluge?

Ath. A marvellous forgetfulness of the former destruction would

appear to have come over them, when they placed their town right under

numerous streams flowing from the heights, trusting for their security

to not very high hills, either.

Cle. There must have been a long interval, clearly.

Ath. And, as population increased, many other cities would begin

to be inhabited.

Cle. Doubtless.

Ath. Those cities made war against Troy-by sea as well as land-for

at that time men were ceasing to be afraid of the sea.

Cle. Clearly.

Ath. The Achaeans remained ten years, and overthrew Troy.

Cle. True.

Ath. And during the ten years in which the Achaeans were besieging

Ilium, the homes of the besiegers were falling into an evil plight.

Their youth revolted; and when the soldiers returned to their own

cities and families, they did not receive them properly, and as they

ought to have done, and numerous deaths, murders, exiles, were the

consequence. The exiles came again, under a new name, no longer

Achaeans, but Dorians-a name which they derived from Dorieus; for it

was he who gathered them together. The rest of the story is told by

you Lacedaemonians as part of the history of Sparta.

Meg. To be sure.

Ath. Thus, after digressing from the original subject of laws into

music and drinking-bouts, the argument has, providentially, come

back to the same point, and presents to us another handle. For we have

reached the settlement of Lacedaemon;

Ilium was built when they descended from the mountain in a large and fair plain....

Bolivia this is not but there you have the same description as on the island of Atlantis:

Looking towards the sea, but in the centre of the whole island, there was a plain which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and very fertile. Near the plain again, and also in the centre of the island at a distance of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain not very high on any side.

Forgetfulness that a destruction had come over them...

Is it just me?

I personally find it an intriguing match that I am finding it hard to get past.

[The Puzzler]

Plato appears to be telling us that their was a prior Ilium city there a long time ago that was hit by a deluge and by the time the Trojans came around and built Troy they had forgotten that this deluge had happened.

Not forgetting myself who actually founded this area:

In Greek mythology, Dardanus (Greek: Δάρδανος, English translation: "burned up", from the verb δαρδάπτω (dardapto) to wear, to slay, to burn up)[1] was a son of Zeus and Electra, daughter of Atlas, and founder of the city of Dardania on Mount Ida in the Troad.

His son was King Erichthonius of Dardania...

And those men he mentions that are in the time of the war where Atlantis is trying to subjugate all of the Mediterranean - Cecrops, and Erechtheus, and Erichthonius, and Erysichthon, who are they?

One is Erichthonius, where in myth we have 2, funny enough, one of Athens in the time of Cecrops and one in where else? Dardania...remember? the son of Dardanus.

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

The mythical King Erichthonius of Dardania was the son of Dardanus or Darda[citation needed], King of Dardania, and Batea, (although some legends say his mother was Olizone, descendant of Phineus).

Fundamentally, all that is known of this Erichthonius comes from Homer, who says (Samuel Butler's translation of Iliad 20.215-234):

"In the beginning Dardanos was the son of Zeus, and founded Dardania, for Ilion was not yet established on the plain for men to dwell in, and her people still abode on the spurs of many-fountained Ida.

Note that this info is the same that Plato says Homer wrote about, so the source is the same, Homer.

Now, what about King Erichthonius of Athens in the time of Cecrops...

King Erichthonius (also written Erichthonios, Ancient Greek: Ἐριχθόνιος) was a mythological early ruler of ancient Athens, Greece. He was, according to some legends, autochthonous (born of the soil, or Earth) and raised by the goddess Athena. Early Greek histories do not distinguish between him and Erectheus, his grandson, but by the fourth century BCE during Classical times, they are entirely distinct figures.

It mentions Erectheus too, so there are the 4 names of the men Plato mentions as being in the narrative of this war by Solon.

This I infer because Solon said that the priests in their narrative of that war mentioned most of the names which are recorded prior to the time of Theseus, such as Cecrops, and Erechtheus, and Erichthonius, and Erysichthon, All Plato text from Internet Classics.. that part is from Critias http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/critias.html

So, in the time of Dardanus, founder of Dardania in the Troad, the father of Ilion, there was a city that was forgotten in memory as being destroyed from a deluge, what is a deluge anyway? I have seen it referred to as a cleansing and rather than seeing it literally like a flood one can view it as a flooding of the evil on the Earth to start anew, even the Biblical Flood can be viewed like this. It's to rid the world of annoying, naughty, bad, immoral, Godless people.