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SCIENCE MYSTERIES | STRANGE ARTIFACTS | MYSTIC PLACES | ANCIENT WRITINGS Egypt and the Enduring Mystery of Atlantis
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Since Plato first recorded the myth of Atlantis in his two dialogues, the Timaeus and Critias, the question of the tale's meaning has been fiercely debated. Aristotle, Plato's Academic successor, is said by Strabo to have stated categorically that the legend had no historical basis. Proclus, the often quoted Neo-Platonist of the 5th century CE, makes clear his opinion that the story should be interpreted as a spiritual allegory as well as a factual account of historical events. Modern theories on Atlantis are innumerable, ranging from the tediously scholastic (the modern Santorini hypothesis) to the fringe (Atlantis as a dramatic representation of quantum mechanics). Atlantis has been "found" over a thousand times in a hundred different locations in the last century alone, forcing us to wonder whether we may be asking the wrong questions or looking in the wrong directions. In Atlantis: Egyptian Genesis, I and my co-author, Matthew Kurtz, investigate the curious creation mythology referred to as the “Building Texts” inscribed upon the walls of the temple of Edfu in Upper Egypt as a possible Egyptian source for Plato’s famous narrative. We expand this investigation in the second part of that work to include creation mythologies from around the world, comparing the themes found within the myths of disparate cultures to those present in Plato’s tale of the lost civilization of Atlantis. Our intention here is to very briefly summarize our findings in order to give the prospective reader a sampling of the book’s contents. |
The tale speaks of an ancient, island civilization, founded by the gods, and ruled over by a group of twin deities. In the center of the island was erected the palace of the supreme lord of the land, the Earth-god, who rested upon a great pillar known as “djed”, meaning “stability” or “permanence”. Life seems to have continued unabated in this place for a great span of time, until, at some remote point in history, a great storm devastated the island. The storm, apparently brought on through the agency of a malevolent serpent, raged incessantly. It drowned the island’s original inhabitants and washed away nearly all trace of their former civilization. The island itself was entirely inundated – completely submerged beneath the advancing waves. E.A.E. Reymond, an Egyptologist who devoted much of her life to the study of the Edfu mythology, writes of the cataclysm 1:
Following this terrible destruction, a very long period of time elapses. During this time the island rested beneath the abysmal water in total darkness, with only a bit of reed plant protruding above the surface of the sea to serve as the crude grave marker of the dead civilization. But then, at some undetermined time, a light shown out in the midst of the darkness. At this, two deities emerged from the ocean. Their origins are unexplained, and the Building Texts do not provide further detail. The two deities made their way to the tufts of reed which indicated the shoreline of the sunken land. Here, they fashioned a pillar from the reed stalks and erected it in the midst of the island, at the place of the fallen “djed” of the old Earth-god. As if by magic, the waters began to recede, and a new deity – the successor of the old – was summoned. This new god (who had the appearance of a great falcon) would preside over the restoration of the fallen world, and would ultimately vanquish the malevolent serpent that brought about the annihilation of the ancient civilization of the gods.
We have said all that is necessary for our comparison. The
island homeland of the gods, with its central pillar and twin
lords, destroyed suddenly in one catastrophic storm, is clearly
analogous to Plato’s island of Atlantis, which shares all of the
same features.
Here the text breaks off, forever incomplete. We know from Plato’s Timaeus, however, that “there were earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence, and in a single dreadful day and night...the island of Atlantis was similarly swallowed up by the sea and vanished.”3 We might easily imagine a great storm overwhelming the island nation, wholly submerging it beneath the waves of a merciless ocean – a fate similar to that of the Egyptian island of the gods. The themes (which we examine in far greater detail in Atlantis: Egyptian Genesis) common to both the Edfu mythology and the narrative of Atlantis are marked, but as we explain in our book, they are not limited by the borders of Egypt. The themes present within the Atlantis story are found throughout worldwide creation myths. In the second half of our book, we utilize the creation mythologies of just eight cultures (from the hundreds possible) to demonstrate our conviction that Atlantis must be properly understood not as a record of a literal, historical event, but as a myth of creation, to be placed alongside the Judaeo-Christian Genesis and the Hindu Puranas. From the garden of Eden and Noah’s flood, to the great Norse tree of Yggdrasil and Ragnarok, to the Hindu island of Jambu, with its towering central mountain and twin inhabitants, each of the cultures featured in our book possess strikingly similar creation myths, the features of which run parallel to those found within Plato’s famous narrative of Atlantis. The question is not where, but what is Atlantis... The conspicuous similarities between worldwide stories of creation and the myth of Atlantis beg a final question, of course: what does all of this mean? If the true mystery is, as we suggest, not the location of an island, but the nature of the myth itself, how might we go about solving said mystery? In our final chapter, we explore several lesser-known theories on the meaning of Atlantis as presented by scholars both ancient and modern. Our own feeling is that Atlantis, as a creation myth, speaks to the timeless process of becoming – the transition from the formless to form. We believe that it speaks to the eternal and omnipresent creation of the world (and, by extension, the “return to the source”, as the Hermetic philosophers would phrase it). We readily admit that this is not the solution to the enigma of Atlantis, but we believe it to be a step in the right direction. The purpose of our book is to stimulate constructive thoughts and provoke questions rather than to provide pat answers. Only the reader can judge whether or not it accomplishes this goal. The quest for Atlantis continues...
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© 2010 by Ian Driscoll
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Popular Authors dealing with alternative
theories, esoteric subjects, mysticism, alchemy, aliens, Atlantis, ancient
astronauts, parapsychology:
Ian Driscoll became interested in mythology at a young age, and has spent
numerous years studying ancient history, religion, and philosophy.
His readings alerted him to a wide range of similarities between many peoples
and cultures, from Plato's Atlantis myth to Egyptian mythology, to Christian
mysticism to Alchemy.