Georgios Díaz-Montexano: Atlantis

[Abramelin]

56 minutes ago, Harte said:

The Mauritanian King Atlas is a mythical figure that was actually the Greek Titan.

Harte

"King Atlas was a legendary king of Mauretania before 500 BCE. He was credited with the invention of the celestial globe."

https://thinkafrica.net/kingdom-of-mauretania/

But who had the oldest legend about Atlas? The Greek or those from 'Mauharim' as the Phoenicians named the Maghreb?

[atalante]

12 hours ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

And who was Plato's source for his version of Atlas?

Did he fabricate the ancestors of his Atlas, like he fabricated the Atlantis story?

Interesting wiki about Atlas, btw.:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(mythology)

loco,

The Critias dialogue indicates that the Atlantis theme will use an equivalent of euhemerism while updating some legends about deities.

In Critias 107b-108a, the Critias character asks for indulgence (and Socrates agrees to absolve Critias from criticism): because Critias will discuss "humans and geography", instead of discussing "deities and geography".  The Critias character argues that:  a) very lax standards are used when commenting on paintings (and discourses) about "deities and geography"; but b)  harsh critiques are common when commenting on paintings (and discourses) about "humans and geography".

The Critias character (presumably) wanted this indulgence (107b-108a) because he intends, for later parts in the Critias dialogue, to apply euhemerism to old legends about the far west:

a) to convert Hesiod's mythical deity Atlas, into a human warlord Atlas;

b) to completely eliminate usage of Hesiod's geographical word Ocean - by renaming one particular part of the previously so-called "Ocean", with the new name "pelagos of Atlas";

 

Hesiod's lines 270-300 of his Theogony, discuss three regions that Hesiod had described as "beyond the Ocean" at Hesiod's time (ca 700 BCE).  For Theogony text, see:  http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0130%3Acard%3D270

1) Perseus had crossed the Ocean (and went "beyond glorious Ocean", according to Theogony line 275), to reach a place near Lake Tritonis, where Perseus killed Medusa.  i.e. Medusa and Lake Tritonis were in a region we now call Tunisia. 

2) Heracles crossed the Ocean (and went "beyond glorious Ocean" according to lines 290-300), while visiting a "gloomy meadow" (= dusky sunset) land called Erytheia where mythical Geryon lived, i.e. while Heracles visited a region we now call southwest Iberia. 

3) Heracles drove his stolen cattle across a "ford in the Ocean", according to lines 290-300, (i.e. across the Rhone River, near modern Marseille France) when Heracles headed home from this legendary exploit.

 

These three examples demonstrate that Hesiod (ca 700 BC) had applied the name "Ocean" to the region we now call the western Mediterranean Sea.  Hesiod's era could have presumed the "Ocean" was fresh water (i.e. not salty seawater) because previous early Greek explorers had only traveled west, to approximately the mouth of the freshwater Rhone river, while following shorelines on the north side of what we now call the western Mediterranean Sea.

Solon's understanding (ca 570 BCE) of geography for the western Mediterranean sea would have been somewhat different than the so-called Ocean of Hesiod for at least 3 reasons: 

1) because Colaeus (ca 640 BC) lived after Hesiod, and had discovered the Strait of Gibralter (a.k.a. Pillars of Heracles);

2)  Greeks had planted a colony at Marseille ca 600 BCE;

3) Stesichorus (ca 600 BCE) wrote a famous epic poem titled Geryoneis, from which only fragments survive. Stesichorus provided additional details about the mythical character that Hesiod had called Geryon, and about Heracles's legendary theft of the cattle. 

 

In Tim 25a, the Critias character is able to use some newer terminology than what Hesiod had used, to evoke what Solon's era understood about the western Mediterranean region.  "25a  For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real pelagos, ....."

But Plato was not the only classical era person to accept that the western Mediterranean sea had previously been considered part the mythical river Ocean.  Homer had called the Adriatic sea by the name Ocean (Odyssey 10.508)  https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136%3Abook%3D10%3Acard%3D503 ).  Cicero and Seneca also referred to the western Mediterranean Sea as the Atlantic Ocean.  https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/ocean-or-sea/

 

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by atalante

[Harte]

1 hour ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

"King Atlas was a legendary king of Mauretania before 500 BCE. He was credited with the invention of the celestial globe."

https://thinkafrica.net/kingdom-of-mauretania/

But who had the oldest legend about Atlas? The Greek or those from 'Mauharim' as the Phoenicians named the Maghreb?

Since Atlas the Titan is not Atlas the king of Atlantis, the question, while it may be an interesting one, has no bearing on the thread topic.

Harte

[Harte]

7 minutes ago, atalante said:

loco,

The Critias dialogue indicates that the Atlantis theme will use an equivalent of euhemerism while updating some legends about deities.

In Critias 107b-108a, the Critias character asks for indulgence (and Socrates agrees to absolve Critias from criticism): because Critias will discuss "humans and geography", instead of discussing "deities and geography".  The Critias character argues that:  a) very lax standards are used when commenting on paintings (and discourses) about "deities and geography"; but b)  harsh critiques are common when commenting on paintings (and discourses) about "humans and geography".

The Critias character (presumably) wanted this indulgence (107b-108a) because he intends, for later parts in the Critias dialogue, to apply euhemerism to old legends about the far west:

a) to convert Hesiod's mythical deity Atlas, into a human warlord Atlas;

b) to completely eliminate usage of Hesiod's geographical word Ocean - by renaming one particular part of the previously so-called "Ocean", with the new name "pelagos of Atlas";

 

Hesiod's lines 270-300 of his Theogony, discuss three regions that Hesiod had described as "beyond the Ocean" at Hesiod's time (ca 700 BCE).  For Theogony text, see:  http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0130%3Acard%3D270

1) Perseus had crossed the Ocean (and went "beyond glorious Ocean", according to Theogony line 275), to reach a place near Lake Tritonis, where Perseus killed Medusa.  i.e. Medusa and Lake Tritonis were in a region we now call Tunisia. 

2) Heracles crossed the Ocean (and went "beyond glorious Ocean" according to lines 290-300), while visiting a "gloomy meadow" (= dusky sunset) land called Erytheia where mythical Geryon lived, i.e. while Heracles visited a region we now call southwest Iberia. 

3) Heracles drove his stolen cattle across a "ford in the Ocean", according to lines 290-300, (i.e. the Rhone River, near modern Marseille France) when Heracles headed home from this legendary exploit.

 

These three examples demonstrate that Hesiod (ca 700 BC) had applied the name "Ocean" to the region we now call the western Mediterranean Sea.  Hesiod's era could have presumed the "Ocean" was fresh water (i.e. not salty seawater) because previous early Greek explorers had only traveled west, to approximately the mouth of the freshwater Rhone river, while following shorelines on the north side of what we now call the western Mediterranean Sea.

Solon's understanding (ca 570 BCE) of geography for the western Mediterranean sea would have been somewhat different than the so-called Ocean of Hesiod for at least 3 reasons: 

1) because Colaeus (ca 640 BC) lived after Hesiod, and had discovered the Strait of Gibralter (a.k.a. Pillars of Heracles);

2)  Greeks had planted a colony at Marseille ca 600 BCE;

3) Stesichorus (ca 600 BCE) wrote a famous epic poem titled Geryoneis, from which only fragments survive. Stesichorus provided additional details about the mythical character that Hesiod had called Geryon, and about Heracles's legendary theft of the cattle. 

 

In Tim 25a, the Critias character is able to use some newer terminology than what Hesiod had used, to evoke what Solon's era understood about the western Mediterranean region.  "25a  For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real pelagos, ....."

But Plato was not the only classical era person to accept that the western Mediterranean sea had previously been considered part the mythical river Ocean.  Homer had called the Adriatic sea by the name Ocean (Odyssey 10.508)  https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136%3Abook%3D10%3Acard%3D503 ).  Cicero and Seneca also referred to the western Mediterranean Sea as the Atlantic Ocean.  https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/ocean-or-sea/

From what I know, Okeanos (in Hesiod's time) referred not only to the world-encircling river, but also to a lesser extend every body of water, though possibly (but not necessarily) only moving bodies of water, i.e. all rivers.

Harte

[Abramelin]

2 hours ago, Harte said:

Since Atlas the Titan is not Atlas the king of Atlantis, the question, while it may be an interesting one, has no bearing on the thread topic.

Harte

I am not going to claim to know much about Greek mythology, but Plato appears to be the only source of Atlas being a son of Poseidon, just like he is the only source of an island continent called Atlantis.

IF he made up Atlas' ancestry like he created Atlantis, then it does have bearing on the thread topic.

 

 

[Abramelin]

3 hours ago, Harte said:

From what I know, Okeanos (in Hesiod's time) referred not only to the world-encircling river, but also to a lesser extend every body of water, though possibly (but not necessarily) only moving bodies of water, i.e. all rivers.

Harte

https://www.theoi.com/Kosmos/Tartaros2.html

Strabo, Geography 3. 2. 12 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :

"Tartessos [a river near Gadeira in Southern Iberia] was known by hearsay as ‘fathermost in the west,’ where, as the poet [Homer] himself says, falls into Okeanos (Oceanus) ‘the sun's bright light drawing black night over earth, the grain-giver.’ Now, that night is a thing of evil omen and associated with Haides, is obvious; also that Haides is associated with Tartaros. Accordingly, one might reasonably suppose that Homeros, because he heard about Tartessos, named the farthermost of the nether-regions Tartaros after Tartessos, with a slight alteration of letters; and that he also added a mythical element, thus conserving the creative quality of poetry."

Okeanos must have been, according to Homer, located in the extreme west.

[Harte]

3 hours ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

https://www.theoi.com/Kosmos/Tartaros2.html

Strabo, Geography 3. 2. 12 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :

"Tartessos [a river near Gadeira in Southern Iberia] was known by hearsay as ‘fathermost in the west,’ where, as the poet [Homer] himself says, falls into Okeanos (Oceanus) ‘the sun's bright light drawing black night over earth, the grain-giver.’ Now, that night is a thing of evil omen and associated with Haides, is obvious; also that Haides is associated with Tartaros. Accordingly, one might reasonably suppose that Homeros, because he heard about Tartessos, named the farthermost of the nether-regions Tartaros after Tartessos, with a slight alteration of letters; and that he also added a mythical element, thus conserving the creative quality of poetry."

Okeanos must have been, according to Homer, located in the extreme west.

Okeanos, to Homer, was in all directions, since it circled the disk of the Earth.

Harte

[Harte]

3 hours ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

I am not going to claim to know much about Greek mythology, but Plato appears to be the only source of Atlas being a son of Poseidon, just like he is the only source of an island continent called Atlantis.

IF he made up Atlas' ancestry like he created Atlantis, then it does have bearing on the thread topic.

The mythical Mauritanian Atlas doesn't have any bearing on the topic, as he was modeled after the Titan.

Plato actually states that the Atlantic Ocean is named after his demigod Atlas, son of Poseidon. That is why I said I believe the name Atlas was used - in order to match what the ocean was already called by the Greeks of Plato's time.

It's actually still called that today.

Harte

Edited May 14, 2022 by Harte

[Abramelin]

1 minute ago, Harte said:

Okeanos, to Homer, was in all directions, since it circled the disk of the Earth.

Harte

Ok, so he didn't consider Okeanos to be about pools and ponds and mere rivers.

[Abramelin]

Just now, Harte said:

3 hours ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

The mythical Mauritanian Atlas doesn't have any bearing on the topic, as he was modeled after the Titan.

And how do you know? Couldn't it have been the other way round?

[Harte]

1 minute ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

Ok, so he didn't consider Okeanos to be about pools and ponds and mere rivers.

The god was present in all waters. Whether those waters were actually referred to as part of Okeanos is what I don't know, but IIRC such usage varied with time and with the teller of whatever story.

Harte

[Harte]

7 minutes ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

And how do you know? Couldn't it have been the other way round?

I'm no classicist. I've read the analysis of this somewhere though. You can probably find it if you look.

These are definitely two different mythical personages.

Harte

[Harte]

8 hours ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

"King Atlas was a legendary king of Mauretania before 500 BCE. He was credited with the invention of the celestial globe."

https://thinkafrica.net/kingdom-of-mauretania/

But who had the oldest legend about Atlas? The Greek or those from 'Mauharim' as the Phoenicians named the Maghreb?

Hesiod wrote about him 250 years before that, if it helps.

Your own link states that the Kingdom of Mauritania came into existence in 225 BC. 

Hard to have a king before there was a kingdom.

Harte

[Abramelin]

Ok. Greek mythology for me is like wading through the family history of an incestuous mob family, jesus.

Puzzler, where the hell are you?!

 

But let me return to the language the Tartessians, who are maybe part of the story, may have spoken.

I have said earlier that I thought these Tartessians may have spoken a Berber-related language.

There happens to be another hint in that direction: rabbits.

In Dutch a rabbit is called "konijn", in German "Kanin-chen". That word is supposedly derived from Roman "cunin-culus". And that Roman word is derived from an Iberian word for the critter. The European rabbit has its origins in Iberia and NW-Africa. The Romans took these rabbits with them wherever they went, as food and as pets.

"Spain" has actually been named after these rabbits by the Phoenicians: "i-Saphan", or 'land of the rabbits', "Espania".

The Berber language has the following words for 'rabbit':

alqnin; awunin; lqninat; tawtult; tqnint.

You must have noticed the 'qnn' part. These Hamito-Semitic / Afro-Asiatic speaking people do not write the vowels of a word, but you must have noticed the similarity of 'qnn' with 'konijn' or 'cunin-culus'

Source: pdf of a Tamazight-English dictionary:

link

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by locomekipkachelfantje

[Abramelin]

26 minutes ago, Harte said:

Hesiod wrote about him 250 years before that, if it helps.

Your own link states that the Kingdom of Mauritania came into existence in 225 BC. 

Hard to have a king before there was a kingdom.

Harte

Then I wonder about that date in my link: "before 500 BCE."

My bet: the source of that date is on a site written in Tamazight.

 

 

[Harte]

2 hours ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

Then I wonder about that date in my link: "before 500 BCE."

My bet: the source of that date is on a site written in Tamazight.

Maybe not. The date might come from Mercator himself, who may have been the first to use the term "atlas" for a collection of maps.

Atlas - Wikipedia

Harte

[Abramelin]

5 hours ago, Harte said:

Maybe not. The date might come from Mercator himself, who may have been the first to use the term "atlas" for a collection of maps.

Atlas - Wikipedia

Harte

I've downloaded the pdf, and I don't see Mercator mention a date.

[Harte]

6 hours ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

I've downloaded the pdf, and I don't see Mercator mention a date.

Just a guess. It's misinformation any way you look at it, and Mercator didn't know as much about the ancient Aegean people as we do.

The myth of Atlas was most probably among the myths of the people the Greeks called the Pelasgi, or Pelasgians. That's like 12th Century BC. 

[Abramelin]

8 hours ago, Harte said:

The myth of Atlas was most probably among the myths of the people the Greeks called the Pelasgi, or Pelasgians. That's like 12th Century BC. 

Are you suggesting those Pelasgians were Berbers? And that they were part of the Sea Peoples who attacked Egypt around that time?

The Lybians did attack Egypt, and they must have been the Berber people. But they attacked from land, not the sea.

 

[Hyperionxvii]

I thought we'd already found Atlantis so many times that the science is settled? 

[Abramelin]

2 minutes ago, Hyperionxvii said:

I thought we'd already found Atlantis so many times that the science is settled? 

We - or maybe just I - are trying to find the source or sources that inspired Plato to write his Atlantis story.

Atlantis as described by Plato most probably never existed, but he didn't just pull his story from a high hat.

[Harte]

53 minutes ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

Are you suggesting those Pelasgians were Berbers? And that they were part of the Sea Peoples who attacked Egypt around that time?

The Lybians did attack Egypt, and they must have been the Berber people. But they attacked from land, not the sea.

 

No.

The Pelasgians were Aegean.

Berbers are indigenous to Africa and are not.

The Atlas (titan) myth likely comes from the Aegean peoples - long before the Hellenes, and not from Africa.

Harte

 

[Harte]

38 minutes ago, locomekipkachelfantje said:

We - or maybe just I - are trying to find the source or sources that inspired Plato to write his Atlantis story.

Atlantis as described by Plato most probably never existed, but he didn't just pull his story from a high hat.

The inspiration for Plato's story was the state of the republic in Athens in his time.

Harte

[Piney]

6 minutes ago, Harte said:

The inspiration for Plato's story was the state of the republic in Athens in his time.

Harte

And how many times has many of us said this? 

[Abramelin]

14 minutes ago, Harte said:

No.

The Pelasgians were Aegean.

Berbers are indigenous to Africa and are not.

The Atlas (titan) myth likely comes from the Aegean peoples - long before the Hellenes, and not from Africa.

Harte

 

Well, you must have expected this: what are your sources?