the myth of Atlantis in context

[cormac mac airt]

I think it's perfectly reasonable to allow for 450 years out on Plato's timeframe of exactly "9000 years ago".

On a human timescale that's about as 'reasonable' as someone suggesting that Columbus discovered America in the middle of the Second World War. In other words, not remotely reasonable.

cormac

[cormac mac airt]

Turbidite H8 has a mean thickness of 50-120 cm and a total estimated volume of 5.8 km³ (Lebreiro et al., 1997) (Fig. 3). It is the thickest of the postglacial series and has been dated as 12.05 ka (Lebreiro et al., 1997).

It should also be pointed out that the above is rather wrong as well in regards to the date of H8, as seen below:

Source: A Review of Abrupt Climate Change Events in the Northeastern Atlantic Ocean (Iberian Margin): Latitudinal, Longitudinal, and Vertical Gradients (Copyright 2011)

As seen from the above picture H8 is placed at greater than 80,000 BP and H1 (not H8) ends c.14,000 BP/12,000 BC.

cormac

Edited October 26, 2014 by cormac mac airt

[docyabut2]

The tale starts there were no boats invented to a harbor of merchants coming and going a city with water gates, towers, palaces with pentacles, sorry guys that was not 11,500 BP years ago. The war I believe was a war of the Gods in the beginning not per say a fighting war.Every army had a God they fought for in the beginning , the war was of the kings of Athens of 1500,s bc of Athena( Athens) and Poseidon the king of the sea of Atlas in Solon`s poetry.

Edited October 26, 2014 by docyabut2

[The Puzzler]

On a human timescale that's about as 'reasonable' as someone suggesting that Columbus discovered America in the middle of the Second World War. In other words, not remotely reasonable.

cormac

If you prefer to go with Plato's timeframe, apparently given to him by Egyptian priests, go for it. They told Herodotus the Great Pyramid was built around 1000BC.

I'm going with what's archaeological feasible, within the context of his story, being able to forego the timeframe of 9000 years based on the erroneous dates given by Egyptian priests.

[granpa]

granpa, I was looking at the tall Shigir Idol and thinking how the Sami made sacrificial poles that "reached the Pole Star", so thought, OK, maybe the head is the Pole Star, which I thought, may be in some way relative to your luminaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_tree

The world tree is a motif present in several religions and mythologies, particularly Indo-European religions, Siberian religions, and Native American religions. The world tree is represented as a colossal tree which supports the heavens, thereby connecting the heavens, the world, and, through its roots, the underworld. It may also be strongly connected to the motif of the tree of life.

[cormac mac airt]

If you prefer to go with Plato's timeframe, apparently given to him by Egyptian priests, go for it. They told Herodotus the Great Pyramid was built around 1000BC.

I'm going with what's archaeological feasible, within the context of his story, being able to forego the timeframe of 9000 years based on the erroneous dates given by Egyptian priests.

Except that you're not particularly after I showed that Gutscher's H8 dating, which you were supporting as "reasonable", wasn't even remotely correct and even an H1 date would have made him off by more than 2000 years. And it really is immaterial as to what Egyptian priests are claimed to have told Herodotus as he wasn't the one who first mentioned the island of Atlantis, Plato was. Still, none of this is based on any actual supporting evidence from Egypt. In order for something to be based on erroneous dates given by Egyptian priests one would have to show that such dates/stories existed to begin with first, before making claims as to their accuracy. Yet not one Atlantis proponent, yourself included, has shown any evidence that actually supports even the most basic part of the claim.

cormac

[The Puzzler]

Some philosophical wisdom for the day...

And if you would rather receive my words in earnest, I am willing that you should; and you will find, I suspect, as I have said already, that not cowardice was the cause of the ruin of the Dorian kings and of their whole design, nor ignorance of military matters, either on the part of the rulers or of their subjects; but their misfortunes were due to their general degeneracy, and especially to their ignorance of the most important human affairs. That was then, and is still, and always will be the case,

Ath. Well, then, proceeding in the same train of thought, I say that the greatest ignorance was the ruin of the Dorian power, and that now, as then, ignorance is ruin. And if this be true, the legislator must endeavour to implant wisdom in states, and banish ignorance to the utmost of his power.

Ath. That the greatest ignorance is when a man hates that which he nevertheless thinks to be good and noble, and loves and embraces that he knows to be unrighteous and evil. This disagreement between the sense of pleasure and the judgment of reason in the soul is, in my opinion, the worst ignorance; and also the greatest, because affecting the great mass of the human soul; for the principle which feels pleasure and pain in the individual is like the mass or populace in a state. And when the soul is opposed to knowledge, or opinion, or reason, which are her natural lords, that I call folly, just as in the state, when the multitude refuses to obey their rulers and the laws; or, again, in the individual, when fair reasonings have their habitation in the soul and yet do no good, but rather the reverse of good. All these cases I term the worst ignorance, whether in individuals or in states.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.3.iii.html

[The Puzzler]

Except that you're not particularly after I showed that Gutscher's H8 dating, which you were supporting as "reasonable", wasn't even remotely correct and even an H1 date would have made him off by more than 2000 years. And it really is immaterial as to what Egyptian priests are claimed to have told Herodotus as he wasn't the one who first mentioned the island of Atlantis, Plato was. Still, none of this is based on any actual supporting evidence from Egypt. In order for something to be based on erroneous dates given by Egyptian priests one would have to show that such dates/stories existed to begin with first, before making claims as to their accuracy. Yet not one Atlantis proponent, yourself included, has shown any evidence that actually supports even the most basic part of the claim.

cormac

Because most people have accepted the 9000 years ago date he gives can't possibly be true so many have moved on to a next level of trying to decipher what he's really on about and what actual truth might lie behind it, instead of staying at kindergarten level pushing for advanced cultures with triremes at 11,600BC.

.

Plato: 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.

Karl Beloch has suggested that there was no Dorian invasion, but rather that the Peloponnesian Dorians were the Achaeans.^[7] Eduard Meyer, disagreeing with Beloch, has instead put forth the suggestion that the real-life Achaeans were mainland pre-Dorian Greeks.

During the 5th year of Pharaoh Merneptah, a confederation of Libyan and northern peoples is supposed to have attacked the western delta. Included amongst the ethnic names of the repulsed invaders is the Ekwesh or Eqwesh, whom some have seen as Achaeans,

Homer mentions an Achaean attack upon the delta, and Menelaus speaks of the same in Book IV of the Odyssey

http://en.wikipedia....Achaeans_(Homer)

Edited October 27, 2014 by The Puzzler

[cormac mac airt]

Because most people have accepted the 9000 years ago date he gives can't possibly be true so many have moved on to a next level of trying to decipher what he's really on about and what actual truth might lie behind it, instead of staying at kindergarten level pushing for advanced cultures with triremes at 11,600BC.

The timeframe and your back-handed attempt at an insult aside there is no archaeological feasibility to it, nor geological support either. Which means that we can eliminate the timeframe, location, size, technological capabilities, control of any portion of the Mediterranean and defeat by the Athenians and not the Egyptians as well as no evidence that any such story ever existed in Egypt to begin with. That together pretty much eliminates anything relevant to Plato's Atlantis and makes it nothing more than something to pin the name 'Atlantis' on. But maybe that's what some really want.

cormac

Edited October 27, 2014 by cormac mac airt

[The Puzzler]

The timeframe and your back-handed attempt at an insult aside there is no archaeological feasibility to it, nor geological support either. Which means that we can eliminate the timeframe, location, size, technological capabilities, control of any portion of the Mediterranean and defeat by the Athenians and not the Egyptians as well as no evidence that any such story ever existed in Egypt to begin with. That together pretty much eliminates anything relevant to Plato's Atlantis and makes it nothing more than something to pin the name 'Atlantis' on. But maybe that's what some really want.

cormac

Nearly every one of your posts contains back-handed insults. I just give back what I get, kind and generous person I am...

Anyway, it was more directed at your point than you, no-one (a small few maybe) is still on that level, that's why no-one is providing the information you seek.

The Berber name for Mt Atlas is Douris variations, so people of Atlas, Atlanteans can literally be called Dorians.

That was then, and is still, and always will be the case,

Edited October 27, 2014 by The Puzzler

[The Puzzler]

What it is, you have to choose a way to go.

If you go with what Plato has written you are really following what the story says and taking it at face value the conversation between characters of the dialogue. That to me, doesn't seem reasonable. Does one really think those conversations in the dialogues took place? They didn't.

Stepping out of that is your other choice, mine, to evaluate the message Plato is giving us, accepting that he is capable of knowing some extra knowledge of who said people were or finding what his interpretation of them were and then overlaying that onto a possible historical scenario that may be similar to the information he's supplied throughout the dialogue of a time when Athens and the 'Atlanteans' may have had something construed as a war and since he gives us the names of the men, which are in myth, I go with deconstructing the myth they occur in. It's the 'philosophical message with some historical truth' middle approach.

The third choice of course, it to reject it entirely as any kind of truth behind it at all and it's only a created philosophical message.

Edited October 27, 2014 by The Puzzler

[cormac mac airt]

Nearly every one of your posts contains back-handed insults. I just give back what I get, kind and generous person I am...

Anyway, it was more directed at your point than you, no-one (a small few maybe) is still on that level, that's why no-one is providing the information you seek.

The Berber name for Mt Atlas is Douris variations, so people of Atlas, Atlanteans can literally be called Dorians.

That was then, and is still, and always will be the case,

Actually no they can't as Atlanteans, as peoples of an island culture similarly named, are nowhere extant outside of Plato's writings and Herodotus' Atlantians are not only unevidenced outside of his History but as a people are claimed to "neither eat anything that has life nor have any dreams". If one takes the first part to mean they're vegatarians the latter would suggest they don't have REM sleep which isn't possible. And as much as you'd like to make Dorian Greeks west African in origin there's no scientific evidence to support such a conclusion.

cormac

[The Puzzler]

I do find a link to why he may have chosen Solon to bring us this tale. Solon was an acquaintance of Epimenides.

Ath. Have you forgotten, Cleinias, the name of a friend who is really of yesterday?

Cle. I suppose that you mean Epimenides.

Ath. The same, my friend; he does indeed far overleap the heads of all mankind by his invention; for he carried out in practice, as you declare, what of old Hesiod only preached.

Cle. Yes, according to our tradition.

Ath. After the great destruction, may we not suppose that the state of man was something of this sort:-In

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.3.iii.html

Epimenides of Knossos (Crete) (Greek: Ἐπιμενίδης) was a semi-mythical 7th or 6th century BC Greek seer and philosopher-poet.

Plutarch writes that Epimenides purified Athens after the pollution brought by the Alcmeonidae, and that the seer's expertise in sacrifices and reform of funeral practices were of great help to Solon in his reform of the Athenian state. (Plutarch, Life of Solon, 12; Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 1).

Pausanias reports that when Epimenides died, his skin was found to be covered with tattooed writing. This was considered odd, because the Greeks reserved tattooing for slaves. Some modern scholars have seen this as evidence that Epimenides was heir to the shamanic religions of Central Asia, because tattooing is often associated with shamanic initiation.

Several prose and poetic works, now lost, were attributed to Epimenides, including a theogony, an epic poem on the Argonautic expedition, prose works on purifications and sacrifices, a cosmogony, oracles, a work on the laws of Crete, and a treatise on Minos and Rhadymanthus.

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

[The Puzzler]

Actually no they can't as Atlanteans, as peoples of an island culture similarly named, are nowhere extant outside of Plato's writings and Herodotus' Atlantians are not only unevidenced outside of his History but as a people are claimed to "neither eat anything that has life nor have any dreams". If one takes the first part to mean they're vegatarians the latter would suggest they don't have REM sleep which isn't possible. And as much as you'd like to make Dorian Greeks west African in origin there's no scientific evidence to support such a conclusion.

cormac

I could take that to mean they don't have any dreams, as in they don't acknowledge they dream like Greeks or Egyptians or the other myriad of cultures that took dreams so literally they made a cult out of it. Do you dream..? Whats a dream?... = they don't dream. Or people who take drugs often don't dream, and many people take drugs to suppress hurt and nightmares from trauma, some of those mentioned eating lotus flowers and god-knows what else, no wonder they didn't recall their dreams.

Or according to you that statement must be made up, so what..? Ignore it, because obviously they do dream because as you said not having REM sleep is impossible, which means they don't eat anything that has life. The Atlanteans of Herodotus time are possibly not even connected to the Atlanteans Plato is talking about. They are named that because they live next to Mt Atlas and not in the right time period to make any sense as being Plato's Atlanteans.

Edited October 27, 2014 by The Puzzler

[cormac mac airt]

What it is, you have to choose a way to go.

If you go with what Plato has written you are really following what the story says and taking it at face value the conversation between characters of the dialogue. That to me, doesn't seem reasonable. Does one really think those conversations in the dialogues took place? They didn't.

Stepping out of that is your other choice, mine, to evaluate the message Plato is giving us, accepting that he is capable of knowing some extra knowledge of who said people were or finding what his interpretation of them were and then overlaying that onto a possible historical scenario that may be similar to the information he's supplied throughout the dialogue of a time when Athens and the 'Atlanteans' may have had something construed as a war and since he gives us the names of the men, which are in myth, I go with deconstructing the myth they occur in. It's the 'philosophical message with some historical truth' middle approach.

The third choice of course, it to reject it entirely as any kind of truth behind it at all and it's only a created philosophical message.

To your first point if one has to ignore everything Plato says about his Atlantis, and he knows the difference between 900 and 9000, the former of which some would like to be true, then they've invalidated themselves from any meaningful discussion of same as they are no longer talking about his Atlantis but are making one up of their own. And if we can ignore the conversations between supposed people in Plato's dialogues then that on its own invalidates Plato's Atlantis as it's in those dialogues that Atlantis is being discussed.

You're not deconstructing any myth dealing with Atlantis as there is nothing to suggest that it, as an island culture regardless of state of advancement or timeframe, ever existed prior to Plato. Nor, just because Plato throws out some names for people, does that automatically mean that any of said people existed. As he's pretty much wrong about every other detail one has to wonder why you think he's right in that one, based on no supporting evidence.

The latter doesn't require that one deconstruct a myth that, prior to Plato, is non-existant nor pretend to know what he meant as opposed to what he actually said.

cormac

[The Puzzler]

To your first point if one has to ignore everything Plato says about his Atlantis, and he knows the difference between 900 and 9000, the former of which some would like to be true, then they've invalidated themselves from any meaningful discussion of same as they are no longer talking about his Atlantis but are making one up of their own. And if we can ignore the conversations between supposed people in Plato's dialogues then that on its own invalidates Plato's Atlantis as it's in those dialogues that Atlantis is being discussed.

You're not deconstructing any myth dealing with Atlantis as there is nothing to suggest that it, as an island culture regardless of state of advancement or timeframe, ever existed prior to Plato. Nor, just because Plato throws out some names for people, does that automatically mean that any of said people existed. As he's pretty much wrong about every other detail one has to wonder why you think he's right in that one, based on no supporting evidence.

The latter doesn't require that one deconstruct a myth that, prior to Plato, is non-existant nor pretend to know what he meant as opposed to what he actually said.

cormac

Each to their own.

[atalante]

Plato establishes the plot for his Atlantis dialogues in the Timaeus dialogue.

Here is Plato's plot. Socrates had invited 3 military political leaders to a dinner party. The fourth person (Thucydides) could not attend because he was called away on government business. (Presumably this absence was a euphemism, because Thucydides was banished from Athens in 424 BC.) Then Socrates declared the other two military leaders at his dinner party would have to contribute the part of the missing person.

Hermocrates from Sicily is scheduled to speak last, and to clean up any messy details. Critias the Younger is scheduled to speak first, about a story Critias had heard when he was an impetuous 10-year old boy.

(Critias says his Atlantis story was originally intended to be a counterbalance to Homer's Illiad and Odyssey -- which are discussed in the actual writings of Thucydides. )

Thus Plato's plot for Atlantis dialogues was structured as a mystery-detective story. The Critias character in these Atlantis dialogues was intended to function as a sidekick. And a speech by Hermocrates, coming after Critias finishes speaking, was intended to resolve all fuzzy details that Critias has expressed (As an example of a similar sidekick -- the character Dr Watson was a sidekick to Sherlock Holmes in a famous series of mystery-detective stories.)

re: the actual Trojan War

Modern archaeologists have now collected enough data about the era near 1200 BC to pin down the underlying mundane details that Homer had glamorized as the Trojan War.

The following link (an article by Gerard Gertoux) starts by recounting classical information from Thucydides, etc., about the Trojan War and the Odyssey. Then Gerard Gertoux ties together modern archaeological information -- from letters that have been recovered recently, although written by ancient people in various countries.

http://www.academia.edu/4295118/The_Trojan_War_When_Where_Who_and_Why

In summary, the agitation of Sea Peoples movements began after Hittites seized the copper sources on Cyprus ca. 1210 BC. At first the Hittites only blocked sales of copper to Assyria's empire. But then Greeks attacked one city under Hittite protection (i.e, Troy). In retaliation for an attack on its ally-city, the Hittites placed a large export tax on any copper that Cyprus was shipping to the entire Mycenaean empire. This led to all out war. And Helen (who was the goal of the Trojan War), was in Egypt throughout the war, as some classical writers had surmised. The Spartans under Menelaus planned a two-fold mission: a) to gain control of Cyprus and its abundant copper production; and b ) to utilize copper from Cyprus as a stepping stone for conquering territory in-or-near Egypt.

A map of the actual basis underlying Homer's Trojan war is:

https://html2-f.scribdassets.com/2dd0nh9szk323sj8/images/10-8c16a71199.jpg

Edited October 27, 2014 by atalante

[atalante]

The Berber name for Mt Atlas is Douris variations, so people of Atlas, Atlanteans can literally be called Dorians.

That was then, and is still, and always will be the case,

I want to add some support for this general theme of Atlas mountain Atlanteans.

1. The Berbers call themselves "Imazighen"; and they are a matriarchal society. A merger this pair of details resulted in Diododus Siculus calling them "Amazons". (Diodorus said these Amazons assimilated Atlantes people, and then invaded the eastern Mediterranean region.)

2. About 300 drawings were created for "horse and chariot" rock art in west Africa.. Ulrich Hoffman shows a map of locations for chariot art, in frame 10 in his article -- http://www.atlantis-scout.de/HofmannU_2005_AtlantisBronzeAgeMetropolisNorthAfrica.pdf By looking at the map, it seems there were two main chariot trails, running south from the Mediterranean sea; and both chariot trails headed toward the Niger river. One of the two chariot trails began in the region of Diodorus's Amazons. And the other chariot trail began near the "corner" of west Africa -- i.e. the "kerne" of Diodorus's Atlantes people.

3. The timetable for spreading usage of chariots shows that chariots reached northwest Africa around (or shortly after) 1500 BC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chariot_spread.png Timing suggests that when the Hyksos were driven out of Egypt, some chariots and charioteers moved westward across north Africa. But in the deserts of west Africa, horses were not suited to the dry climate. Therefore the chariot phenomenon would not have lasted long in west Africa, perhaps about a century.

4. In Egyptian records, the Meshwesh (Imazichen) and Libu (Libyan) people appear suddenly and simultaneously, expanding eastward from an obscure origin in northwest Africa. They were peaceful during the reign of Amenhotep III, reigned 1390-1352 BC. (But at later dates, the Meshwesh became hostile around the time of pharaoh Seti I, ca. 1310 BC. And the Meshwesh remained hostile against Egypt until roughly the time of pharaoh Ramesses III, ca. 1170 BC.)

5. Herodotus reported that Poseidon was a "Libyan" god. Herodotus stresses that this was a strange origin, since Herodotus says all the other Greek gods came from Egypt. Interestingly, the Libyans and Meshwesh entered the vocabulary of ancient Egypt at the same time and place. So based on Herodotus, Poseidon was, most likely, a god that led the Libyan-Meshwesh-Imazichen peoples. And Critias/Plato declares, synergistically, that this version of Poseidon led the Atlantean peoples.)

[atalante]

Atalante I,ve come to the conclusion that Critias`s tale, that Plato put together all though based on a real destruction of Thera and Crete was all made up to placed the location to the beyond the western world. Everyone wanted to be the poet, they even gave the same numbers of the army of Atlantis that Homer gave for Troy.

Theodore Spyropoulus (an archaeologist who worked at the town Akrotiri that was destroyed by Thera volcano) has now located ancient Lacedemon, the capital city of mythical Menelaus.

Spyropoulus says Lacedemon was part of Atlantis, and had famous pillars of Hercules nearby. Lacedemon was connected to Taygete (daughter of Atlas), and the city was older than Mycenae.

http://www.ancient-o...atlantis-001723

http://www.ancient-o...part-two-001725

http://atlantipedia....re-spyropoulos/

Edited November 3, 2014 by atalante

[jaylemurph]

Lecedaemon was Sparta, which to the best of my knowledge was never misplaced.

--Jaylemurph

[atalante]

Lecedaemon was Sparta, which to the best of my knowledge was never misplaced.

--Jaylemurph

When Dorians arrived (and/or the Heraclids returned), they radically transformed all of Peloponnesia, especially the region known as Lacedemon/Laconia/Sparta. This is a phenomenon that Plato himself discussed in one of Puzzler's recent excerpts from Plato's Laws dialogue.

quote from: http://www.mikeanderson.biz/2010/11/spartans-as-lacedaemonians.html

The city of Sparta consisted of four settlements: Pitane, Limnai, Kynosoura, and Messoa. The tombs of the Agiadai kings were located in Pitane, while the tombs of the Eurypontidai were located in Limnai. This suggests that the two royal houses originated from these towns and their combination occurred voluntarily. How Kynosaura and Messoa may have joined the Spartan community is obscure.

It appears that the foundation of Sparta must have occurred no earlier than the beginning of the ninth century B.C. because there is no evidence of Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean culture there. The earliest that Spartan kings can be dated is through independent evidence is ~ 730 B.C. when Polydoros and Theopompos reigned. This was also the time of the First Messenian War, when Messenian names ceased to be listed among the winners at the Olympic Games.

Although we don’t know the origin of the Lacedaemonians, the Spartans and Messenians of the fifth century were speaking the same dialect of Northwest Greek as the Dorian invaders who attacked the entire Peloponnese and destroyed Mycenae. The fertile plain of Sparta and whatever wealth existed there as a result of the Mycenaean culture would have been attractive to the invaders sweeping down from the north. After the invasion, the newcomers combined with the natives to form what would become the Lacedaemonian people.

.....

In the Iliad, the land ruled by Menelaus is referred to as “a hollow” which is “scarred with ravines”, certainly an apt description of the Spartan lands as they look today. But if the setting of the Iliad was the Mycenaean Age, the residence of Menelaus would have been a castle. Where was it? Toynbee speculates that the original “Sparta” may have been at Therapne or Amyklai, nearby towns that date back to the Mycenaean time.

endquote

[R.Locksley]

Hello. I registered specifically to share my thoughts among people interested in the topic. Although almost ten years after the last publication. Unfortunately, in the segment of the Internet where I come from, the topic of Atlantis is taboo. And any research in this direction is comparable to the search for little green men or yetis.

I would like to share a few points that I came to during my search. They seemed fundamental to me in this research. If you can challenge them, I will be happy to discuss them.

First, I’ll start by clarifying my position. I am of the opinion that the state that Plato mentions under the name “Atlantis” existed in one form or another. All further fabrications will proceed from this.
I'll start.

1. Time frame.
The Egyptians witnessed the expansion of Atlantis into the eastern Mediterranean. Consequently, Egypt, as a state formation, already existed. 3500 BC is the most distant date for the events that took place. The time of the birth of the state "Ancient Egypt" and the zero dynasty of the pharaohs. 559 BC is the date of Solon's death. since he is a source for Plato, events could not have happened later than this date either.

This brings up the first question. Where did the date 9000 BC come from?
In fact, there may be many answers.
The simplest one: Solon’s date was translated incorrectly. I don’t think that the Greeks, for the most part, spoke ancient Egyptian. May native English speakers forgive me. But the culture that dominates the linguistic field very rarely deigns to study other languages, believing that if they need to, let them learn English/Greek/Chinese.

Second option. In addition to the official calendar in Egypt, there was also a religious one. In it, time was calculated according to lunar months. We remember that Solon visited the temple of Neith in Sais and communicated with the priests. He could have been given a date distant from his time not by 9000 years, but by 9000 months. 321 years old However, no significant events are recorded in Egypt during the 9th century BC.

And the third option.
We remember from Plato's dialogues that oral history was passed down from generation to generation in the family of Critias. So at one stage someone might remember 9,000 years instead of, say, 900.
And from this date completely different events appear that could form the basis of the story.

I have wondered more than once: how could such pedantic chroniclers as the Egyptians fail to note such a significant event in their history? It is more likely that Plato presented their story with distortion.
So what happened in Egypt 900 years before Solon's visit?

[R.Locksley]

2. Invasion of the Sea Peoples.
So the Egyptians witnessed the Atlanteans' enslavement of northern Africa all the way to Libya. And Europe right up to Terrenia. And then they watched the decisive battle, the fall of the Greek army into a fissure in the earth and the death of the island of Atlantis. Did this seem far-fetched to you too? Then you and I are in the same boat. It is unlikely that any Egyptian went to this war as a war correspondent. Where did they get this information from? How do they know what happened in such minute detail?
Obviously not from the Greeks. Otherwise, no matter how often cataclysms and the loss of writing occurred, traditions and legends would have conveyed to posterity such a heroic epic about the victory of the Athenians.

It turns out that the Greeks themselves knew nothing about the history that the Egyptians attributed to them? Now this is interesting. Or the Egyptians heard from third parties something that they understood incorrectly (for example, an oral presentation of the events of the Trojan War, which vaguely resembles the story of Plato). Or it was not the Greeks who fought the Atlanteans.
Now directly to the peoples of the sea. During the reign of Ramses II, the first clashes took place with foreigners who fought against Egypt on the side of the Libyans. The Egyptians called them srdn. Today historians call them Sherdans or Sardis. It was the population of Sardinia that was driven away by the migration of peoples that swept across the Mediterranean at the end of the Bronze Age. Or rather, this was the first wave of this resettlement. Much later, another Ramses, already the third, will put an end to this expansion. And this story will be immortalized, including in the funeral temple of the pharaoh, in Medinet Abu. And it is this story, as I believe, incorrectly interpreted by Solon, or voiced in broken Greek by priests who made mistakes, that will form the basis of what Plato will retell.

So where do the details about the structure of the Atlantean capital and about a certain war with the Greeks come from?
When Ramses the Great defeated the Sherdan mercenaries, many of them were captured. Later, the pharaoh himself gathered from them an elite army and even personal bodyguards. These people integrated into Egyptian society and, of course, brought their culture and history to it. For example, about their origin from the union of a water deity and a mortal woman, about the structure of their cities, about the war with foreign invaders, and about the death of their capital in the depths of the sea.
Interesting? It will be even more interesting further.

[granpa]

1000 years = 100 10's = 120 years (in Hebrew)

9000 years = 1080 years

[Trelane]

Ohhh no, not again....