I find it somewhat embarrassing that in 2023 we are still talking about "the lost Island of Atlantis", when Plato left us a detailed description of it and its location in his dialogues, other sources point to the same area, and we can literally see the ringed city from space.
Given all of the controversy and speculation, you may be surprised to learn in this article that the location is described in quite some detail at the first mention of Atlantis in the Timaeus dialogue. This introduction to the Egyptian story clearly locates Atlantis in West Africa (particularly Northwest Africa), and further details in the Critias dialogue refine and confirm this location.
Unfortunately Plato's dialogues ended up in the wrong department of our Universities, so instead of analysing them objectively as a claimed Greek rendering of an Egyptian story (which is what they are), extracting the historical details and looking for supporting information in the vast body of Egyptian inscriptions we've been left by the ancients, Western academia has spent the past few hundred years reading "between the lines" of the dialogues and waffling on about Plato's motivations for writing them. The tragic error of making "Philosophy" a subject in its own right.
Controversially, I'm going to try interpreting Plato's dialogues by reading "the lines" themselves, on the basis that this fascinating story about forgotten history, asteroids, earthquakes, megafloods and climate change, if it is true is of tremendous importance for understanding the history and identity of mankind, and even includes statements claiming its authenticity and provenance. I am going to give Plato the benefit of the doubt, do the analysis and see what I find.
This will be the first of two articles examining Plato's dialogues on Atlantis. My intention is to try and guide you through their interpretation, pointing out the most critical passages, and examining the original Greek where necessary to extract the finer details lost in translation to English, in addition to correcting errors that have led people astray for centuries. We will examine claims made in the dialogues, and see if we can corroborate these with information from other historical sources and science, using a bit of good old fashioned reasoning.
I have deliberately avoided going into too much detail in these articles to help you see the wood for the trees, and to help me avoid "doing a Plato" and never finish writing it up. However, for those who do want the detail, to check or continue my work, there are hyperlinked [references] and (notes) to help you know what to look for. There are links to the Lamb translation of the Timaeus-Critias available on the fantastic Perseus Digital Library, noting the important words in Greek so that you can study them yourself using their Greek Word Study tool, which has proven to be an absolutely invaluable resource in my analysis for checking translations and interpreting the grammar. In this first article my goal is to help you understand all the clues and descriptions that identify Northwest Africa as Atlantis, and in the second we will do the same for the City of Atlantis in the Eye of Sahara.
Acknowledgements
Before I begin, I wish to acknowledge all those before me, whose curiosity led them to investigate this intriguing subject. Lifetimes of effort have gone into this endeavour, and I'm not going to pretend to have read or viewed all of it, but I am humbled by the effort and grateful for it. I am grateful to Hancock and Corsetti for inspiring me to investigate this fascinating legend, to Cameron, and Alexander & Rosen for their documentaries which I watch periodically to spur me on, and I am particularly grateful to O'Connell for his resource Atlantipedia, whose articles guided me towards Herodotus and Siculus for instance, and to Franke for his resource Atlantis Scout. I tip my hat to everyone actively researching this subject including Carlson, and Zhang and my friend David Hansen who has been tirelessly scouring the Sahara for canals and evidence of ancient mining. Obviously we don't all agree on every detail, but we're united by our curiosity and determination to find the answer.
I am confident we've found the answer in West Africa and the Eye of Sahara, and that those of you who know the dialogues well will be able to see this from my explanations (especially if you follow the links and check the Greek yourselves). Also the links I've found with Egypt are just mind blowing, everything I find points in the same direction, and I'm barely scratching the surface. It's incredibly exciting. I can't take all the credit though, sure I've made some discoveries, but this is absolutely a community effort. My aim, in addition to doing my own investigation and finding my own evidence, has been to present the evidence we've found between us in a way that is academically convincing, with the hope that I can inspire those historians who have retained their curiosity and excitement about the ancient past to take a look, and then to creep into the Philosophy department under cover of darkness and steal back Plato's dialogues.
A powerful empire in Northwest Africa that sought to conquer the whole of the Mediterranean.
So, let's get started. After explaining the origins of the Atlantis story in Egypt, vouching for its authenticity and stating its provenance, Critias recalls what the Egyptian Priest told Solon about the greatest deeds of the Athenians. We learn of an invasion of the Eastern Mediterranean by the Atlantean empire in the Western Mediterranean, which was repelled by the Athenians. He tells us who they were and where they came from, describing a mighty Mediterranean Empire with most of its territory in North Africa. He describes them gathering together an armada and attempting to conquer the whole of the Mediterranean, attacking Europe and Asia and implying they came from Africa.
An Empire centred on Northwest Africa
The Priest describes the Atlantean empire [25a], saying that the Atlanteans ruled their home island of Atlantis, many other islands and parts of the mainland [ipeírou], whilst the parts of the same [toútois] towards us, those here within Libya [tón entós tíde Livýis] they ruled up to (but not including) Egypt, and the parts of Europe up to (presumably also not including) Tyrrhenia (Italy) [25b, 114c]. Some English translations do not do this passage justice.
The reference to "the mainland" is significant... which mainland? This is answered in the remainder of the sentence where it says "the parts of the same" i.e. the same mainland, followed by "those here within Libya". So the sentence says that Atlantis ruled over parts of a continent, some parts of which fell within the territory of Libya, and other parts on the same continent which did not. The name Libya is being used in this instance to describe a country or region, not the whole continent. This is a potential source of confusion since Ancient Greeks from Anaximander (born 610 BC) onwards used "Libya" to describe the whole continent. However, for context bear in mind that Solon (born 630 BC) was born a generation earlier and would have been visiting Egypt and writing his poem while Anaximander was still at School, and the Egyptian Priest probably couldn't care less what some Greek whipper-snapper thought about the world anyway.
The passage describes the Atlanteans ruling over, or otherwise subjugating, territories on both the northern and southern sides of the Mediterranean, but having considerably more territory in the south. Whereas Italy begins at around 8 degrees east, Egypt begins around 25 degrees east. In other words the Atlanteans ruled over some 17 degrees more territory on the southern side of the Mediterranean, inferring that their power base extended from the west across North Africa. So there are two clues in just one sentence right at the start of the Timaeus dialogue's discussion of Atlantis, which both suggest it was located it in Northwest Africa.
The Atlanteans assembled an armada and invaded Europe and Asia from the only other continent bordering the Mediterranean, which is Africa.
The vast Atlantean empire assembled a massive navy or armada [25b the empire gathered together] before launching their attack on Egypt and Greece [25b], and more broadly on the continents of Europe and Asia [24e] in an attempt to conquer the whole of the region within the mouth (entós toú stómatos) of the Mediterranean [25b].
Significantly Africa (continental Libya) is not mentioned as one of the continents attacked, with the obvious implication that it was Africa (excluding Egypt) doing the attacking, given this is the only other continent bordering the Mediterranean. Why would the Atlanteans launch their invasion from anywhere else when they had so much territory in Africa? They wouldn't.
A vast island with spectacular mountains and a headland by the Pillars of Heracles opposite Spain
Atlantis is described as a vast and mountainous island with a headland by the Pillars of Heracles opposite Gadeira. This is a remarkably precise description of Northwest Africa, the Atlas Mountains and the headland in Morocco facing Cadiz across the Strait of Gibraltar.
In the previous section we were able to identify that most of the Atlantean Empire was in Northwest Africa and that the invasion was launched from there, suggesting that Atlantis was almost certainly there too. The additional geographical details described in this section allow us to confirm that suspicion and locate Atlantis precisely at the mouth of the Mediterranean in Northwest Africa.
A vast island the size of Libya and Asia combined
The island of Atlantis was absolutely vast. There are a couple of ways we can tell this from the dialogues. The first of these comes in the Timaeus dialogue where Atlantis is described as an island the size of Libya and Asia combined / together (áma) [24e]. This is repeated later in the Critias dialogue without the word combined [108e]. If you recall we deduced that the name Libya was being used in that section of Timaeus to describe a region within the continent rather than the entire continent. The Libya described, is most likely pretty similar to the country of Libya we have today, being geographically sandwiched between the Atlas Mountains and Egypt to the east and west, and the Mediterranean and Ahaggar mountains to the north and south. The size of the region being described as Asia is less clear. The northern boundary is not stated, so we can only assume it's geographically constrained to be the Dardanelles strait as it is today. The southern boundary seems to be either the Nile or the Gulf of Suez, as at one point the Egyptians are called peoples of Asia [24b], whilst at another its implied they are part of the continental Libya [25b], hence we get the impression that Egypt spans the geographical boundary between them. We can't get a precise size from this, but it is clearly indicative that Atlantis was huge.
In the Critias dialogue we are actually given some numbers with which we can calculate the approximate size of Atlantis. We are told that Atlantis was large enough to be divided into ten regions [113e], one for each of Poseidon's sons (five pairs of twin boys). Just one of these regions, the largest and best given to Atlas [114a], had a plain measuring 2000 by 3000 stades, or 6 million square stades. It should be noted that this "Atlantean stade" is most likely another of Solon's translations for a Greek audience [113a] and thus it is highly unlikely that the Stade used in these dialogues is numerically equal to the Greek stade, which is about 180 to 190 metres [Wiki], although it is probably the same order of magnitude. Think about it, if the Atlanteans really are a historical civilisation predating the Hellenes Greeks, then it would be most unwise to assume that they built their City using integer multiples of a unit invented by the Greeks thousands of years later. Anyway, using Greek stades, with the aforementioned proviso, the plain alone would be 370 by 555 kilometres, or 205 thousand square kilometres, which is the size of England and Scotland combined! Since this was the largest of ten regions, we can set an upper limit for size of the island as 60 million square stades, or 2 million square kilometres, which is the size of Mexico! So Atlantis was absolutely massive.
An island with spectacular mountains
Atlantis was spectacularly beautiful with mountains described as surpassing all others for their size, number and beauty, full of villages, with streams and meadows and an abundance of wood for every craft [118b]. This is a picture of the Errachidia Oasis in the Atlas Mountains [Audley Travel]. Absolutely stunning, and this is what it looks like now, so imagine what it looked like at the end of the ice age and during the African Humid Period when the mountains were piled high with snow and full of glaciers and the Sahara was green.
A headland by the Pillars of Heracles facing Spain
Twice in the dialogues we are told that Atlantis was by the Pillars of Heracles. The first instance is in the part of the Timaeus dialogue where Critias (recounting what the Egyptian Priest told Solon) is attempting to explain where the Atlantean armada sailed from, where he says at that time there was an island before (pró) the mouth (stómatos) you call the Pillars of Heracles [24e]. There are a couple of subtly different ways you could interpret this word "before". One is as in laying something before the feet of something else, i.e. immediately in front of or by it, in which case we know Atlantis is close, but not necessarily in which direction. The other is to interpret it from the perspective of an observer in Egypt, the Priest, where before means a location between him and the reference (The Pillars of Heracles), if he intended to describe a location that was further away than the reference he would have said beyond. This is another clue that Atlantis, or at least part of Atlantis was within the Mediterranean.
The second instance is even more specific. In the Critias dialogue, where we learn how the island was divided between the ten brothers, we are told Eumelus/Gaderius (incidentally his name and everyone else's would have been different in Egyptian) was given the headland (líxin dé ákras tís nísou > outermost cessation of the island) by the Pillars of Heracles (Irakleíon stilón), which was opposite (epí > upon / across from / against) the region now known as Gadeira by the people in that area [114b]. So we are given the names of two locations, used in Solon's time, with which to precisely locate Atlantis: The Pillars of Heracles, and Gadeira.
Before we jump to other historical references to locate this, it is important to show that we can work it out from the dialogues alone. We were already told that the Pillars of Heracles was the name that you (Solon, the Greeks) call the mouth [24e] and narrow entrance to the haven / harbour enclosing all this here within (táde mén gár ósa entós) [25a], which is an unambiguous description of the Mediterranean Sea shared by the Egyptians and the Greeks. So the Pillars of Heracles is clearly the mouth of the Mediterranean, that today we call the Strait of Gibraltar. Now we are told that Gadeira was opposite Atlantis. There are only two sides of a Strait, so Atlantis must have been on one side and Gadeira on the other. If you recall from the descriptions of the empire and invasion it was pretty clear that the bulk of the empire was on the Southern side in Africa, and that this was where the invasion was launched from. So we should expect Atlantis to be on the southern side of the Strait, and Gadeira to be of the northern side. As you'll see later on there are even more details that confirm this. We don't need the other sources to locate Atlantis, but they are useful for independent confirmation.
Other sources confirming the location of the Pillars of Heracles and Gadeira at the mouth of the Mediterranean
In his histories, Herodotus (~484-420 BC) in describing a people called the Geryones who inhabited a part of Europe west of Pontus, he mentions an island called Erythea on the shore of the Ocean near Gadira, outside the Pillars of Heracles [HDT 4.8]. So not that long after Solon (~630-560 BC), and before Plato (~428-348 BC) we see that the Greeks were describing the boundary between what is inside the Mediterranean, and what is outside by the Ocean as the Pillars of Heracles. In the same sentence we also get that there was an island called Erythea and a place called Gadira seemingly on the European side of the Mediterranean, outside the Pillars of Heracles.
There is a wonderful map by Kondrad Miller from 1898 [Digital Maps of the Ancient World], which is a reconstruction of a much earlier map by Pomponius Mela, which shows all of these locations. The Pillars of Heracles as "Columnaue Hercullis", and the present Strait of Gibraltar as "FRETUM" (meaning strait), the island of Erythea as "erythia". The Gadeira of Plato, and Gadira of Herodotus is here shown as an island called "Gades". There is also a reference to a region or people called "Atlantae", near the mountains on the west coast of Africa. I suspect this is probably the Atlantes people described by Herodotus as inhabiting the area near a conical mountain called Atlas [HDT 4.184] at the western most end of the ridge in Northwest Africa as this map also shows the Garamantes mentioned by Herodotus, both being located roughly in the areas you would expect from his descriptions.
Perhaps my favourite map of this area, made long before Miller's reconstruction, is by Nicolaus Germanus in 1467 [polona]. Actually this is a set of maps bound together, which we now call an "Atlas" thanks to Mercator (which etymology is a fascinating story in itself). Again we can see the Pillars or Columns of Heracles marked on this map, along with the Strait. Notably Germanus calls the island by the northern headland Gadira, using the same spelling as Herodotus.
So it is clear where the Pillars of Heracles were, which is the same area being celebrated as the Pillars of Heracles / Hercules today. We can also quite reasonably identify the Gadeira of Plato, with the Gadira of Herodotus and Germanus, and the Gades of Mela and Miller, which became Cadiz as we know it today.
Therefore we have historical confirmation for the location of Gadeira on the northern side of the Strait of Gibraltar, which means Atlantis must have been of the southern side as we already identified from Plato's dialogues. It is not insignificant that this is the same area that Herodotus located the Atlantes people, and that Miller marked Atlantae on his map, and where there is a mountain range and Ocean that derive their names from some ancient character called Atlas. There are connections in other sources too, as we'll now see.
A region named after its greatest ruler who the Greeks called Atlas and the Egyptians called Osiris
In Plato's dialogues Atlantis was named after Atlas, the eldest son of Poseidon, and the foremost ruler of a mighty empire in West Africa, which is the same area that the Greeks located the mighty Titan Atlas, which is the same area that Diodorus Siculus located the great astrologer (astronomer) King Atlas of Mauritania, which is the same area the Egyptians located their mighty ancestor Osiris, who as you will see has some remarkable similarities with Plato's Atlas. There are similarities between all of these stories, which makes me wonder if they are just different memories of the same magnificent ruler in West Africa back when the Sahara was green? Remember the story of Atlantis comes from Egypt [21c] and the names were all translated by Solon to make his poem suitable for a Greek audience [113a]. Remember also that dynastic Egypt only emerges as a great civilisation in Northeast Africa after Northwest Africa desertifies and people migrated to the Nile. Of course the Egyptian's ancestors came from the West.
The island and sea were named after Atlas
Another geographical clue we get in the dialogues is the etymology of the region. We are told that the island of Atlantis and the sea in that location were both named after Atlas, the eldest son of Poseidon [114a].
In present day, the Northwest corner of Africa is obviously not called Atlantis, but the mountain range there and the adjacent sea derive their names from someone called Atlas, although there seems to be several contenders for who this actually was, unless they are all different memories of the same person.
Other sources locate a great ruler named Atlas in Northwest Africa
So who are the Atlas Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean named after? Suggestions that it might be the Atlas of Plato's dialogues are generally met with ridicule by modern Philosophers. But are they right?
One contender often stated is the Atlas of Greek mythology. I tend to think people name places in honour of real people, so if the name does derive from Greek mythology I'd suggest it's more likely to be whomever the Greek myth was based on. I think there are similarities between the Titan and the Atlas of Plato. To start with they have the same name and are associated with the same location. In Greek mythology there is essentially a war between two dynasties, the family that Atlas was descended from in Northwest Africa, known as the Titans, the "old gods" who had traditionally dominated the Mediterranean, and the family of Zeus in Greece, known as the Olympians, the "new gods" who ultimately defeated the Titans. Thats pretty similar to the story of the Atlantean invasion and their defeat by the Athenians. I don't believe myths come from nothing, they're all based on something, and the mostly likely explanation for the Greek myths is that the are childish stories about forgotten history, which is exactly what the Egyptian Priest told Solon [22b]. As I think I've said before in a previous article, in a time when history was communicated orally, its pretty much guaranteed to become childish and exaggerated as parents attempt to make history more exciting for their kids, adding metaphor, magic and wonder to capture their attention and make it memorable so they can pass the story on to their kids and so on.
Another contender is the Atlas described by Diodorus Siculus [DS 3.60] and Mercator [Library of Congress] as the legendary king of Mauritania. Mercator was so enamoured by this Atlas that he named the greatest achievement of his life after him, so clearly he believed he was a real person. This Atlas was ruler of a people called the Atlantians who inhabited the region of Northwest Africa towards the Ocean (sound familiar?). This Atlas is said to have been a master Astrologer (we would say Astronomer), for which achievement he had the brightest star in the sky named after him, but he was tragically lost while making astronomical observations from mount Atlas which was also named after him. The budding astronomers amongst you will know that the brightest star in the sky is not called Atlas, but is called Sirius near the constellation of Orion. We will come back to that golden little nugget shortly.
The Egyptian "god" Osiris was also a great ruler in West Africa bearing striking similarities to the Atlas of Plato
Whilst Osiris has clearly been somewhat deified in the funerary texts, I think the interpretation of him as a purely supernatural green faced god of the underworld is largely of our own making, and the Egyptians would have seen him differently. More like Jesus, than God, as it were. I've found lots of references that speak of him more like a historical figure and one of the ancestors of the Egyptian civilisation who came from West Africa. In the Coffin Texts, Osiris is described as the "Foremost of the Westerners" (67, 72, 100, 149, 343, 344), which might be literally interpreted as the greatest of the ancient rulers in West Africa, and even more frequently as the "bull of the west" (31, 32, 36, 37, 42-43, 44, 229, 237, 238, 242, 251, 314) (note Atlantis was a bull culture), often in association with places called Djedu and the "island of fire". On one occasion they call him the "bull of Djedu" and "lord of the flood on the desert plateau" (241). Most fascinatingly of all is the reference to Set(h) having power over water in the "Eye of Osiris" on the night of the great storm, in the context of a spell about flooding and controlling water (353), seemingly referring to this eye as a physical location. Similarly the Pyramid texts talk about the deceased (presumably as Osiris again) taking his seat (of power) in the "Great Eye" which resides in the place of peace amongst green pastures in the land of the great overflow (or flood) out by the (western) horizon (317). So it seems Osiris's seat of power was a massive eye shaped geological feature amidst the desert plateau in West Africa that was destroyed by flooding. I kid you not. The similarities between Plato's Atlas and the Egyptian Osiris are astounding. I suspect there is a simple explanation for this... they are the same person.
There is also a link in astronomy. Recall I looked at Diodorus Siculus statement that Atlas had the brightest star in the sky named after him, and we reasoned that this star is actually called Sirius and not Atlas. Do you think Sirius sounds like it might derive from Osiris? In fact Sirius (Sothis) and Orion are mentioned several times in the Pyramid texts when the deceased (or dying?) Pharaoh is being presented to the gods as Osiris, so there is definitely a connection between them. This part of the sky was sacred to the Egyptians, with Sirius and Orion becoming associated with Isis and Osiris respectively [Tour Egypt]. Intriguingly the so-called Queen's and King's chambers in the Great Pyramid at Giza, seem to have shafts pointing towards Sirius (Isis) and Orion (Osiris) respectively [Bauval]. Perhaps then, assuming these shafts were open at some point, the great pyramid was a place the Pharaoh could escape to, away from everyone, where they could cut out the noise, and gaze up at and become one with his/her ancestors. Maybe even a place they could go to die, laying in the appropriate chamber and opening the appropriate hatch to direct their ascending soul to the appropriate place so they can spend eternity with their favourite ancestor in the heavens. Im speculating here but this is general theme of the Pyramid Texts after all. So we see there is a sacred connection between the Egyptians and this part of the night sky, and it seems plausible that at some point the star Sirius ended up deriving its name from Osiris, in which case the same star is said to be named after both Atlas and Osiris, suggesting again that they are the same person.
An archipelago in North Africa which was devastated by earthquakes and climate change.
To this day there is an archipelago in West Africa, with the Canaries and Cape Verde, which are all small volcanic islands. However twelve thousand years ago, during the African Humid Period when the Atlantean civilisation thrived, it seems plausible that some of the upmost sediment and sand in North Africa's basins would have been washed out by monsoons, the sea would have extended further inland, and there was an expansive network of vast megalakes and rivers that transformed North Africa into a tropical archipelago. If you examine Plato's dialogues carefully this is the description given of the African (Libyan) continent at the height of this civilisation.
Sailing out from the Atlantic Sea where they had been moored
In the description of the Atlantean invasion, the Atlanteans are described as coming out from The Atlantic Sea or Sea of Atlas (toú Atlantikoú pelágous) [24e]. Invariably this Sea is mistranslated into English as The Atlantic Ocean, since the translators can't help but identify Greek names with English ones they think mean the same thing. They did the same with Tyrrhenia, which Lamb translated as Tuscany and Waterfield as Etruria. However, the word pelágous derives from pélagos which simply means sea, not necessarily a particular type of sea.
The sentence in Greek is "éxothen ormitheísan ek toú Atlantikoú pelágous". The last four words translate simply as "from out of the Atlantic Sea". The first word éxothen, which sounds like exiting in English, could mean from without [Perseus], or outwardly [Bill Mounce]. The second word is really intriguing, since it could derive from two entirely different verbs according to the Greek Word Study Tool [Perseus]. The first option ormáo, used in all English translations, means to rush or hasten on. The second option orméo, means to be moored or lie at anchor. The ending of the word indicates the grammar as aorist/past participle, probably plural, making the meaning "they had been moored". This alternate translation is significant in the context of describing an armada that invaded the eastern Mediterranean.
With this change the full sentence becomes something like: "For our inscriptions say that your city stopped a mighty power, which insolently advanced against the whole of Europe and Asia, coming out from the Atlantic Sea where they had been moored". So the Atlantean armada sailed out from an inland sea, something more like the Caspian or Black Seas, rather than sailing in from the open Ocean. I.e. they didn't sail into the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar as is so often assumed, they sailed out from somewhere else.
As for the location of this part of the Atlantic Sea, it seems most likely to have been an enlarged Gulf of Gabes by Tunisia, as this is adjacent to the Atlas Mountain range and landmass extending up to the Pillars of Heracles which we have identified as Atlantis. Interestingly this is the location of the river Triton and Tritonian Lake mentioned many times by Herodotus and geographically described as a part of Libya having land to the east which was low lying and sandy, and land to the west which was exceedingly mountainous and wooded [HDT 4.191], which could only be this area. The location of the lake is shown on the map below [Atlantipedia]. In Greek mythology Triton is another son of Poseidon, who it seems was also living on the edge of Atlantis, which is another little bit of confluence adding weight to the identification of Northwest Africa as Atlantis.
An inland sea within a continent.
In telling the story of the invasion, Critias (perhaps still in character as the Egyptian Priest) finds it necessary to interrupt the narrative of the invasion to explain where the Atlantean armada gathered and sailed from. This is no easy task, as the part of the sea he is describing no longer exists, and so he also needs to explain where this body of water was in relation to the geography of his time.
He begins this explanation by saying "for at that time" (tóte gár) the land before the Pillars of Heracles (mouth of the Mediterranean) was a vast Island called Atlantis, and it was possible to sail from this island downwards through to others islands, and to the rest of the continent (i.e. Africa) surrounding that inland sea, which he emphasises truly (alithinón) was there [25a]; recognising that what he was saying would sound unbelievable. This emphasis would be unnecessary if the sea he was referring to was the Atlantic Ocean. He is trying to convince them of the existence of a sea that is no longer there, not refer to an ocean that is. The word used for sea in this instance is not pélagos, but pónton, which derives from póntos. Interestingly "Pontus Euxinus" is the Greek name for the Black Sea, which is an inland sea.
Still unconvinced they will understand him, he goes even further with the explanation by contrasting this shallow sea falling within a single continent that he is trying to describe, with the deep Mediterranean Sea which falls between continents [25a]. He says that all we have here within the mouth (the Pillars of Heracles he introduced earlier) is but a haven or harbour, whereas that which he is describing is a real sea, surrounded (periéchousa) by land that in the truest sense of the word may be called a continent. There are some pretty bad English translations of this part, which seem to have facilitated the bizarre interpretation of this inland sea by some as the Atlantic Ocean. Interestingly there is a story in Herodotus about the Egyptians circumnavigating Africa (continental Libya) after completing a canal through to the Red Sea (HDT 4.42). If this had been completed before Solon visited Egypt, then it makes a lot of sense for the Egyptian Priest to make this point to Solon.
A sea infilled with mud and sand by thousands of years of earthquakes and climate change, joining Atlantis to the mainland.
Having described the invasion, Atlantis and the Atlantic Sea as it was then, Critias ends by explaining how the geography, the boundaries between land and sea, have changed since that time. He says that sometime later there was a massive earthquake that filled this part of the sea with mud as the island subsided, preventing passage through it by ship [25d]; implying that this joined Atlantis to the mainland, so it is no longer an island. This is repeated later in the Critias dialogue [108e]. Recall he began his explanation by saying "at that time there was an island", implying that there isn't one now. However, it is not because it vanished, or was "plunged into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean", as some sensationalist translations would have you believe. It is this line that everyone focuses on in popular narratives about the destruction of Atlantis, but this is just one badly translated line, in a massive dialogue full of other details that make it absolutely clear that this is not what happened to it. Atlantis was destroyed by earthquakes and flooding, which destroyed the City and infilled the sea with mud, preventing passage through to it by ship. Thats it.
The offending line in Greek is "te Atlantís nísos osáftos katá tís thaláttis dýsa ifanísthi" [25d]. The first three words are easy, "the island of Atlantis" and the next word should probably be translated as "similarly". The words "dýsa" and "katá" combine to give "sunk down into", whilst "tís thaláttis" should probably translate as "this/that sea", i.e. the one he's gone to considerable lengths to describe. The final word, which admittedly sounds like vanished, comes from the verb afanízo which could be translated as to hide, obliterate or destroy [Perseus], and translates in modern Greek as to ravage (Google). Examining the grammar using the Greek Word Study Tool, we see its aorist/past tense and in passive voice, so should be translated as "and was hidden/concealed" or "and was destroyed". I tend to think it should probably be the latter given the context provided by the rest of the narrative. Clearly the whole island, the size of Mexico and with its spectacular mountains didn't vanish beneath the sea. However, saying it was destroyed by flooding and mud from the earthquake matches the rest of the narrative. So the full sentence should be something like "similarly, the island of Atlantis sunk down into this sea and was destroyed".
A day and night of destruction by a giant mudslide
Another point often missed in relation to the above is the context provided by "similarly" which suggests that the Atlanteans sinking into their sea was similar to the Athenians sinking into the earth. In combination I interpret this as Atlantis being destroyed by a giant sloppy mudslide, as the continent subsided and the earthquake sent soil slipping down from the mountains into Africa's basins, where it mixed with the water in the swamps and megalakes and slurped and sloshed its way out to sea, burying much of the Atlantean civilisation with it in what sounds like an absolutely horrific "day and night of destruction" [25d]. At this point, after years of studying this, it seems obvious to me that this is what happened when I look at satellite imagery of West Africa on Google Earth. Can you imagine such a thing? No wonder their Egyptian descendants have such a strong association between the west and death. In Luxor in Egypt, nobody used to live on the western side of the Nile, except for the workers who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
If we zoom in a bit and apply a topographic overlay, we can even see the waves left in the mud, as I think Carlson pointed out. These aren't sand dunes, which is clear from the satellite imagery if you zoom in enough [Google Earth], as you can see the sand dunes filling in the gaps between them. This looks to me like a standing wave structure created as the giant wave came up against and "reflected" off the mountains, with peaks larger towards the mountains and smaller in the east, which tells you this wave was travelling westward; i.e. the momentum of the reflected wave from the west cancels out the momentum of the incoming wave from east, so the mud in that area loses momentum and is deposited on the plateau in the standing wave structure it had formed.
In the Critias dialogue we also get a description of massive climate change in the region, though obviously not under that name, which is included as part of the description of ancient Athens [111b]. Here we are told that the hills used to be covered in rich loamy soil, with natural springs, trees and buzzing bees, but in the succession of earthquakes during the 9000 years since that time (12,000 years to present day), the trees have gone, the springs have dried up and the soil has slid down from the mountains leaving nothing but the "bones of the wasted body"; a wonderfully visual metaphor for climate change.
However it goes on to say that in Greece, unlike "other places", most of this soil slid down into the depths of the Mediterranean sea. Whilst it does not mention Africa (continental Libya) specifically in this section, it clearly suggests that there has been a much greater accumulation of soil in the lowlands of other places in the region. Given the references to mud filling the Atlantic Sea during the massive earthquake that destroyed Atlantis [25d, 108e], it is reasonable to assume that the same occurred in subsequent earthquakes over the millennia since that time, and that Northwest Africa is one of these "other places" where soil accumulated in the lowlands and has subsequently dried out and turned to dust.
Is it scientifically plausible for North Africa to have been an archipelago during the African Humid Period?
It is difficult for people to imagine that North Africa could have been a green archipelago, with an expansive inland sea from which you could access the entire continent as described in Plato's dialogues. However, this is just our lack of imagination and appreciation for how vastly different the world was during the ice age and how much it changed during the Holocene. In principle, if we accept that there was a mile of ice over most of the northern hemisphere, we should also expect to see changes of similar magnitude elsewhere in the world. Transforming a desert into paradise and back again is such a change.
Science has come a long way in the past few decades towards understanding the transformation that we're now confident took place, or should I say takes place in the Sahara during the Humid period that occurs during deglaciation. This puts us in a much better position to understand how West Africa could have been Atlantis than has been possible to date, and to make a plausible case for it. Most of the Science has already been done, there are just a few things that are missing, which by my reasoning not only seem plausible, but highly likely when you think of the physical processes that must have taken place as the vast mass of water stored as ice in the northern hemisphere was redistributed as meltwater across the planet. They are necessary consequences of things we already know about, that we just haven't thought of yet. I will try to explain this concisely here, and may look at it in more detail in future articles.
Scientifically I think the clues are there that North Africa becomes an expansive tropical archipelago at some point during the climate cycle from ice age to interglacial, Arabia too, and these transformations would have been critical for the survival of humanity when the northern hemisphere was ice sheets, tundra and dessert.
Topography
Examining a topographic map of North Africa, we can lock the maximum elevation at 1000 metres to show all the mountainous areas in white and enhance the detail at lower elevations, and then adjust the minimum elevation from zero up to several hundred metres to show all the lowlands in blue and gain an appreciation of how a uniform increase in relative sea levels and/or an accumulation of water inland would transform the landscape.
With the minimum set to zero, we see that there is a large basin inland of the Gulf of Gabes by Tunisia, another inland of the Gulf of Sidra between Benghazi and Egypt where some of the land is at or below sea level. If these basins have experienced infilling by soil and sand over the past 12 thousand years, then even with relative sea levels similar to today it is plausible for the Mediterranean waters to have extended further inland to partially flood these basins. As we increase the minimum threshold, the sea encroaches further inland, and a number of megalakes start to appear inland. Click through each of the pictures in the gallery below to see the impact.
Absolute and Relative Sea levels in the early Holocene
Global sea levels increased considerably during the Holocene as the northern ice sheets melted, with two notable meltwater pulses, which caused a rise of 50 metres in just 3 thousand years. By comparison in the past 3 thousand years, global sea levels have risen less than 5 metres. This would have had a dramatic and transformational effect on the landscape and anyone living there.
In a world where the topography of the land and bathymetry of the sea floor are fixed, the relative sea level now would be the highest it has been during the Holocene, now that the ice sheets are at their smallest. Whilst this assumption is often made when people think about sea level rise, that is not the physical reality of the world we live in. In reality the topography and bathymetry must change to account for the redistribution of mass.
As the ice sheets melted, meltwater would have spread out around the world within a matter of days or weeks. However the effects of that additional weight bearing down on the sea floor where the Earth's crust is thinnest, would have taken thousands of years to be realised. The weight of all that extra water must have caused a gradual depression of the sea floor, as has been discussed by Randall Carlson and others. Next the depression of the sea floor must have caused a localised increase in pressure and a displacement of magma underneath the adjacent continents including Africa, causing them to uplift. To put it another way the time constant for magma to move and settle is orders of magnitude larger than it is for water due to the much greater viscosity. Considering the physics at work, it seems plausible, even likely, that there was a period in the early Holocene where the relative sea level on the African coast was higher than it is today. The Great Flood, as they say.
Continental drift, the Cameroon line and African Shear Zones
The North African plate was almost ripped apart during the breakup of Gondwana (150 MYA), part of the land formation after Pangea (225 MYA), as the plate was torn apart from South America and rotated around, having its centre of rotation somewhere in West Africa. This is a map of what the world may have looked like 100 million years ago [National Geographic]. You can see the Tethys sea dividing North Africa in two.
I suspect this is probably what created or reopened the rifts across North Africa. The map below shows the location of the Kandi and Central African Shear Zones, which come together in an area of volcanism that extends out into the sea and inland called the Cameroon Volcanic Line [Fairhead], which has volcanos that are active to this day. Included in the paper is a description of the fragmentation of the African continental crust, describing the formation of the West and Central Africa Rift System in the Mesozoic (252-66 MYA).
We should not think of Africa as a single thick plate that moves and tilts as one, but instead as (at least) three parts, weakly bonded together that flex with the forces exerted on them. Therefore we might conceive that the existence of these rifts, would allow for greater vertical movement and deformations in response to changes in the weight bearing down on it, or magma pressure pushing up on it throughout the 100 thousand year or so glacial cycle. If so this has the potential to enhance the extremes in the transformation of North Africa from desert to a green archipelago and back again during the African Humid Period, which we will look at shortly.
Accumulation of water inland during the African Humid Period
Next we need to consider the impact of the African Humid Period, when the monsoons fell at higher latitudes and the Sahara was green. Firstly there is an isostatic adjustment to consider. North Africa has undergone massive weight loss, losing vast quantities of water and Saharan dust (fine mud and sand) as the region desertified, which must have resulted in uplift additional to that previously discussed. This makes it even more likely that the relative sea level was higher at some point in the past.
Secondly we need to consider the presence of water inland at elevations above sea level, collecting there due to the monsoon falling at higher latitudes, creating a vast network of megalakes and massive rivers across North Africa. Some of these at elevations substantially above sea level. Lake Fezzan for instance is some 500 metres above sea level. This is one impression of what North Africa might have been like (Deviant Art user Ynot1989) including a number of the dried up megalakes and rivers that have been discovered or theorised in recent decades, although it assumes the same sea level around Africa's coastline which is probably wrong.
Sediment deposits in North Africa's basins
These megalakes have been coming and going in Africas basins for millions of years, building up sediment. In fact this is "just a phase", the most recent one on geological timescales. The oldest sediment in West Africa's Taodeni basin is a billion years old [Rooney et al]. This latest phase began sometime after the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago, presumably after Pangea broke up 250 million years ago and settled into more a regular cycle after the African plate pivoted round and slammed into Europe 70 million years ago [ArcGIS on YouTube]. Fortunately for us the oil and gas industry are interested in this basin for Petroleum and have produced a cross sectional diagram [Huang et al], from which we can see there is about 800 metres of this "recent" sediment at the deepest point (along the line they measured anyway).
So our question is how much of that sediment built up over the past 12 thousand years? Has it built up steadily and linearly over that time? If for arguments sake we divide it into 100 thousand year climate cycles and say we're looking at 100 million years for this latest phase, then thats 1000 cycles and a pretty unexciting 0.8 metres of build up per cycle. But does it really work like that? That seems a bit dull for mother nature. Or could it pile up masses more sediment, then while its desertified a load of it gets carried away on the wind, whilst heavier sand forms into dunes, and then when it floods again a load more gets washed away by the rivers, so the 0.8 metres is just whats left. Obviously it's the latter. I can tell you that with a degree of certainly having just had to wash a little bit of the Sahara desert off my bedroom window, which was interesting for two reasons, firstly I live some 4000 km from the Sahara, and secondly I live on the fifth floor.
Another way to try and answer this question is to look at an overlay of topographic and satellite imagery. At the southern end of Mauritania there is a massive ancient bay. There are lakes around the perimeter of this bay at an altitude of about 120 to 150 metres, made where water runs off from the higher ground next to it. On the other hand the floor of the bay next to it, which is a massive sediment deposit is at 230 to 300 metres above sea level.
Once again there are massive regularly spaced mud ridges across this entire deposit, that are up to 100 metres high and larger where the westward moving wave has reflected back off of obstructions in its path, depositing its mud in a standing wave structure. These are mud ridges, rather than sand dunes. The path of the river, which has been constrained to flow out between ridges is also pretty telling. Contrast these with sand dunes elsewhere in the Sahara. The first image shows some of these mud ridges, with sand dunes formed between them, whilst the other images are of dunes elsewhere. Note the scale of these formations. These ridges are far larger.
It is difficult to determine the maximum extent of North Africa's megalakes, and thus the potential for an "inland sea", due to infilling. You cannot look at the topography today and assume it was the same then. We need to see through the mud and sand to get an idea of which areas could have been infilled. We could do this with Ground Penetrating Radar, but these are typically land based geophysical surveying instruments, so couldn't be used to survey an entire continent. However there are satellites built to assist with weather mapping and climate modelling that measure backscattered radar for other purposes. The ASCAT satellite does this for working out how rough the sea is to calculate wind speed; clever stuff. But their data set shows a whole lot more besides. This is what the radar imagery of North Africa looks like [BYU]. Notice that the areas where megalakes were all appear black like the sea, but so does a vast amount more of the continent.
We can see from the image that exposed bedrock is highly reflective of microwaves appearing bright white on the scale, whereas bedrock covered with a modest layer of earth reflects a little less so shows up as shades of grey. We can understand from this that the signal attenuates as it travels through the earth to the bedrock underneath. The deeper the layer of earth covering the bedrock, the more the signal attenuates and the less makes it back to the receiver. The sea is deep enough that almost no signal makes it back. The megalake beds have a deep enough layer of mud and sand that almost no signal makes it back either. But, and this is the point, there are vast areas beyond the proposed megalake boundaries where the basins have a deep enough covering of sediment to attenuate the signal to nothing. So over a vast area of North Africa there is the potential for these basins to have been infilled with a thick layer of mud and sand, much of which will be washed away by thousands of years of monsoons during the next Humid Period, once again transforming North Africa into a vast inland archipelago.
Geological clues that Atlantis was in Africa.
We have already heard that Atlantis had spectacular mountains. This means that it is in an area where tectonic plates have come together at some point in the ancient past. This is true for much of southern Europe, western Asia (especially Turkey), western Arabia, and a few areas of North Africa. Areas where the edges of plates are exposed are rich in mineral deposits, and we are told that Atlantis was extensively mined for metals in solid and mineral form, especially copper, but notably also gold, silver and tin which are pretty rare.
A land of vast mineral riches, with an abundance of metals.
Metals were used abundantly throughout the city of Atlantis, with the walls of the two rings plated with brass (an alloy of copper and zinc) and tin, and the wall of the centre island plated with the red metal orichalcum (mountain copper) [116b] which was extensively mined throughout the island [114e]. The temple on the centre island was surrounded with a wall of gold [116c], whilst the temple itself was decorated with gold, silver and orichalcum, and the temple and grounds were filled with gold statues [116d]. The Atlanteans possessed a wealth larger than any seen before, or that will ever easily be seen again [114d].
Looking at a world map of major metal deposits, we can look for an area that has all or most of these metals. A significant clue is the abundance of gold, which is found in very few places within reach of the Mediterranean. There are no major deposits of gold shown in Europe, only in West Africa and either side of the Red Sea. Silver is similarly rare, being found in Spain and Northwest Africa. Tin is also quite rare being found in Britain, Spain and Central-North Africa. Copper and Zinc are found in locations across Europe and in Central or West Africa.
There are several mines in Mauritania, which between them produce a large list of commodities, including Gold, Silver, Copper, Zinc (used in Brass) and Tin [mindat], all of the metals named in Plato's dialogues. There is also an active copper mine not far from the Eye of Sahara, the Guelb Moghrein Mine near Akjoujt, which produces most of these [mindat].
A notable feature of North Africa, and West Africa in particular is the exposure of large areas of bedrock. This is because the region spends most of its time desertified, reducing any soil to dust, which gets blown around the world. This makes the location of minerals obvious and facilitates easy mining. Minerals are also found most abundantly where the edges of tectonic plates are exposed, for instance in the mountains, or where plates overlap. As the maps shows below, the African plate is a conglomerate of bits of much older plates called Cratons [Combaluzier], which have been glued together with newer rock, exposing lots of minerals. So during the African Humid Period this makes West Africa the ideal home for a vastly rich civilisation. Interestingly the richest person ever is Mansa Musa, who came from Mali [NatGeo].
The significance of copper to the Atlanteans
Orichalcum held significant importance to the Atlanteans, not just to their wealth but to their culture. Every few years when the ten brothers met for the ritual bull sacrifice, they wore the most beautiful azure blue (kyanín > cyan) robes [120b Jowett translation] and renewed their pledges to uphold their sacred laws which were inscribed on a pillar of Orichalcum [119c]. Note that azure pigment, which is presumably what was used to dye their robes, is made from Azurite, which is mined in Northwest Africa.
Actually the Toureg men of the Sahara wear azure blue robes or headscarfs to this day, like this man near Timbuktu in Mali [BBC, Anthony Ham]. Is this an echo from the past?
Black, red and white stone
Another useful geological detail in the Critias dialogue is a description of the stone used for their buildings, which it says were simple constructions made with a mixture of white, black and red stone, which were arranged to be pleasing to the eye [116b].
If you look at buildings inland in Mauritania, West Africa, like this one in Ouadane (called Hoden on old maps), they are made using a mixture of black, red and white stone, which are the colours contained in the local rock.
Further clues locating Atlantis in Africa
People have come up with some curious suggestions for the location of Atlantis over the years, with the most remote being Doggerland near the UK, Bimini island in the Bahamas and West Antarctica. Yet, even if you were thrown by the geographical clues, and missed the geological clues there are still further clues that Atlantis was in Africa. The most notable of all these clues is the reference to herds of elephants.
Atlantis was a distinctly African landscape with large expanses of marshland and great plains full of voracious elephants
Atlantis was covered by forests, lakes, marshland, rivers, and had great plains roamed by herds of voracious elephants [114e]. You might say the latter detail is the elephant in the room! We're also told that ivory was also used in the construction of the roof for their temple on the centre island of the city [116d]. What other continent bordering the Mediterranean has elephants? Below is a photo of a heard of elephants near Kenya [Save The Elephants]. When the Sahara was green, elephants would have inhabited North Africa too.
A land of tropical abundance
Atlantis had a tropical abundance of vegetation and wildlife [115a]. This abundance and variety supports the location of Atlantis as being both close to the mainland and in the tropics. Volcanic islands out at sea, like the Galápagos Islands for instance, might have interesting species due to their isolation, but there is not the abundance and variety you get on the mainland in the tropics.
We are told that produce sprang abundantly from the ground across the island [115b], this is a clue it was in the tropics, not only for the abundance of it but also for the types of vegetation mentioned. I'm not that convinced by Lamb's translation here, but Waterfield and Jowett both mention pulses, and Jowett mentions fruits with a hard rind. The reference to pulses is interesting, as some beans (notably coffee) only grow in the tropics. This section would benefit from a more accurate translation as there may be more clues in the specific crops mentioned.
Atlantis had a tropical climate with two seasons and monsoons
We even get a description of what sounds a lot like a tropical climate, having only two seasons [118e]. In the context of describing agriculture, it says they cropped the land twice a year, making use of the rains from heaven in the winter, and the waters that spring from the earth in summer. This sounds more like a wet season and a dry season to me. In fact the word used for winter is cheimónos, which can be translated as storm or tempest [Perseus -Autenrieth], which is what you might have called the monsoon before that term existed.
A civilisation living on the edge of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ICTZ) would see one long monsoon, as opposed to one living closer to the equator who would see two. Recent science suggests that during the African Humid Period (AHP), which began its gradual end about 8 thousand years ago, the ICTZ extended to higher latitudes, bringing the monsoon to North Africa [Wright]. Clearly this would have created the conditions for civilisation to thrive in North Africa, carpeting the desert with wooded grasslands.
The significance of Twins
You've got to feel for a woman who gave birth to five pairs of twins. You might be wondering what the probability of this is. The answer often given is about 1 in 250 to give birth to one pair of identical twins (where the fertilised egg divides), whereas fraternal twins (two eggs) gets more likely as the mother gets older. In fact the prevalence of twins around the world has been increasing, especially in the West, presumably because we're having children later.
However, there is one area of the world where the prevalence of twins is significantly higher than anywhere else. You'll never guess where it is. Africa. The reason for this could be regional differences in genetics, greater quantities of trace elements in the soil which promote twinning, or food choices. For instance yams are a popular food in Africa, and yam consumption has been associated with higher levels of the female sex hormones estrone and estradiol [Wu et al], which can lead to multiple ovulations and therefore twins.
Mapping Atlantis
Previously we considered the plausibility of North Africa being transformed into an archipelago for a period during the holocene, through a combination of higher relative sea levels, less infilling of the basins than today, and the creation of a network of megalakes, rivers and marshland. We also looked at radar imagery which suggested that there has been considerable infilling of the basins by mud and sand and therefore that flooding of the continent may have been even more extensive than we realise.
Now we will attempt to bring all these things together to produce a map of what North Africa may have looked like 12 thousand years ago with such extensive flooding. The Eye of Horus represents the city of Atlantis in the Eye of Sahara. The purple sail boat marks the most likely location where the armada gathered and sailed from in the Tritonian Lake described by Herodotus, and the arrows indicate the countries attacked.
Conclusion
So Plato's dialogues tell the story of a fabulously wealthy empire in the Western Mediterranean centred around Northwest Africa where at that time there was a vast island called Atlantis which encompassed the Atlas Mountains and much of West Africa and existed for a period during the early Holocene and African Humid Period, when relative sea levels and monsoons transformed North Africa from desert into an green archipelago of megalakes and rivers. This island was not plunged into the depths of the ocean, but was devastated by earthquakes, mudslides, flooding, continental subsidence and ultimately desertification, which have made the area almost unrecognisable.
The Atlantean civilisation was not wiped out by the earthquake, but it was decimated and never fully recovered. I'll look at this more in a future article. Survivors stayed in Northwest Africa for thousands of years after the earthquake, before gradually being forced out by desertification, wiped out by wars and culturally superseeded by colonisation. They migrated to the coast, to the Nile and across the Mediterranean taking their bull culture with them. It was this mass migration of peoples from across North Africa as it desertified that transformed a modest civilisation in pre-dynastic Egypt into the greatest civilisation ever known.
It's not just Plato's dialogues that locate Atlantis in Northwest Africa. This is the same region that the Greek Myths, Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus all locate a figure called Atlas or a people named after him, and where the mountains and Ocean bare that name to this day. It is also the same region the Egyptians claim their Osirian ancestors came from, and where we should expect they came from.
We are incredibly lucky to have all of this information passed down to us, and we need to stop being so dismissive of it, writing it off as mythology or in the case of Plato some sort of morality tale or political propaganda. This level of confluence between stories from multiple sources should motivate us to investigate them objectively and attempt to extract the history from myth and metaphor. There is a vast body of record in Egypt to help us do this, which tells us the story of their ancestors.
The story of Atlantis is an Egyptian story. It's their history. I've found enough in my research to be fairly confident that Atlas is really just a translation of Osiris. They are the same person. Both seem to have the brightest star in the sky named after them, and this is called Sirius (Osiris > Sirius), not Atlas, and is located below the constellation of Orion, which is also associated with Osiris. Atlas and Atlantis are probably just Greek translations that caught on during the Hellenistic period when Greece had so much influence. Remember Solon translated all the Egyptian names for a Greek audience. Both seem to have ruled over mighty empires in Northwest Africa from an eye shaped geological feature that was destroyed by flooding. The Egyptians even left us a map of this geological feature, the "Eye of Horus", showing the rivers surrounding the Eye of Sahara (Horus > Hara), except for one river which has been buried in mud and sand [article]. There is also a scene on the ceiling of Dendera showing a ship full of people arriving in Egypt displaying the Eye of Horus as their emblem [article], and a statue of a boat in the British Museum with the Eye of Horus carved on the front of it [British Museum EA43]. Along with the examples I gave earlier from Egyptian funerary texts which collectively suggest Osiris was a great ruler in West Africa whose seat of power was an eye shaped geological feature amidst a desert plateau that was destroyed by flooding. These are just the few things I've found as an amateur doing this for the love of it in my spare time. Imagine what the professionals could find if they set aside their preconceptions and prejudices and put their mind to it.
Everything I find points towards the same conclusion, that the Egyptians really did tell the story of Atlantis to Solon, and that this is the history of their Osirian ancestors, and a missing chapter of major significance in the history of the world. I feel incredibly lucky, and excited to be living in a time where we have the technology and availability of historical and scientific information to finally decipher this enigma.
