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If they came "from the West" they could not have come from Ireland; and the Scandinavians may easily have mistaken Atlantean books and bells for Irish books and mass-bells. They do not say that there were any evidences that these relics belonged to a people who had recently visited the island; and, as they found the island uninhabited, it would be impossible for them to tell how many years or centuries had elapsed since the books and bells were left there.
The fact that the implements of the Bronze Age came from some common centre, and did not originate independently in different countries, is proved by the striking similarity which exists between the bronze implements of regions as widely separated as Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, and Africa. It is not to be supposed that any overland communication existed in that early age between these countries; and the coincidence of design which we find to exist can only be accounted for by the fact that the articles of bronze were obtained from some sea-going people, who carried on a commerce at the same time with all these regions.
CELTS
Compare, for instance, these two decorated bronze celts, the first from Ireland, the second from Denmark; and then compare both these with a stone celt found in a mound in Tennessee, given below. Here we have the same form precisely.
LEAF SHAPED BRONZE SWORDS
Compare the bronze swords in the four preceding illustrations-from Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark-and then observe the same very peculiar shape—the leaf-shape, as it is called—in the stone sword from Big Harpeth River, Tennessee.
We shall find, as we proceed, that the Phoenicians were unquestionably identified with Atlantis, and that it was probably from Atlantis they derived their god Baal, or Bel, or El, whose name crops out in the Bel of the Babylonians, the Elohim, and the Beelzebub of the Jews, and the Allah of the Arabians. And we find that this great deity, whose worship extended so widely among the Mediterranean races, was known and adored also upon the northern and western coasts of Europe. Professor Nilsson finds traces of Baal worship in Scandinavia; he tells us that the festival of Baal, or Balder, was celebrated on midsummer's night in Scania, and far up into Norway, almost to the Loffoden Islands, until within the last fifty years. The feast of Baal, or Beltinne, was celebrated in Ireland to a late period. I argue from these facts, not that the worship of Baal came to Ireland and Norway from Assyria or Arabia, but that the same great parent-race which carried the knowledge of Baal to the Mediterranean brought it also to the western coasts of Europe, and with the adoration of Baal they imported also the implements of bronze now found in such abundance in those regions.
The same similarity of form exists in the bronze knives from Denmark and Switzerland, as represented in the illustrations on p. 254.
In the central figure we have a representation of an Egyptian-looking man holding a cup before him. We shall see, as we proceed, that the magnetic needle, or "mariner's compass," dates back to the days of Hercules, and that it consisted of a bar of magnetized iron floating upon a piece of wood in a cup. It is possible that in this ancient relic of the Bronze Age we have a representation of the magnetic cup. The magnetic needle must certainly have been an object of great interest to a people who, through its agency, were able to carry on commerce on all the shores of Europe, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. The second knife represented above has upon its handle a wheel, or cross surrounded by a ring, which, we shall see here after, was pre-eminently the symbol of Atlantis.
If we are satisfied that these implements of bronze were the work of the artisans of Atlantis—of the antediluvians—they must acquire additional and extraordinary interest in our eyes, and we turn to them to earn something of the habits and customs of "that great, original, broad-eyed, sunken race."
We find among the relics of the Bronze Age an urn, which probably gives us some idea of the houses of the Atlanteans: it is evidently made to represent a house, and shows us even the rude fashion in which they fastened their doors. The Mandan Indiana built round houses very much of this appearance.
The museum at Munich contains a very interesting piece of pottery, which is supposed to represent one of the lake villages or hamlets of the era when the people of Switzerland dwelt in houses erected on piles driven into the bottom of the lakes of that country. The accompanying illustration represents it. The double spiral ornament upon it shows that it belongs to the Bronze Age.
Among the curious relics of the Bronze Age are a number of razor-like knives; from which we may conclude that the habit of shaving the whole or some part of the face or head dates back to a great antiquity. The illustrations below represent them.
These knives were found in Denmark. The figures upon them represent ships, and it is not impossible that their curious appendages may have been a primitive kind of sails.
BRONZE RAZOR-KNIVES.
An examination of the second of these bronze knives reveals a singular feature: Upon the handle of the razor there are ten series of lines; the stars in the sky are ten in number; and there were probably ten rings at the left-hand side of the figure, two being obliterated. There were, we are told, ten sub-kingdoms in Atlantis; and precisely as the thirteen stripes on the American flag symbolize the thirteen original States of the Union, so the recurrence of the figure ten in the emblems upon this bronze implement may have reference to the ten subdivisions of Atlantis. The large object in the middle of this ship may be intended to represent a palm-tree-the symbol, as we shall see, in America, of Aztlan, or Atlantis. We have but to compare the pictures of the ships upon these ancient razor-knives with the accompanying representations of a Roman galley and a ship of William the Conqueror's time, to see that there can be no question that they represented the galleys of that remote age. They are doubtless faithful portraits of the great vessels which Plato described as filling the harbors of Atlantis.
SHIP OF WILLIAM THE CONQUERER.
We give on page 258 a representation of a bronze dagger found in Ireland, a strongly-made weapon. The cut below it represents the only implement of the Bronze Age yet found containing an inscription. It has been impossible to decipher it, or even to tell to what group of languages its alphabet belongs.
It is proper to note, in connection with a discussion of the Bronze Age, that our word bronze is derived from the Basque, or Iberian broncea, from which the Spanish derive bronce, and the Italians bronzo. The copper mines of the Basques were extensively worked at a very early age of the world, either by the people of Atlantis or by the Basques themselves, a colony from Atlantis. The probabilities are that the name for bronze, as well as the metal itself, dates back to Plato's island.
I give some illustrations on pages 239 and 242 of ornaments and implements of the Bronze Age, which may serve to throw light upon the habits of the ancient people. It will be seen that they had reached a considerable degree of civilization; that they raised crops of grain, and cut them with sickles; that their women ornamented themselves with bracelets, armlets, earrings, finger-rings, hair-pins, and amulets; that their mechanics used hammers, adzes, and chisels; and that they possessed very fair specimens of pottery. Sir John Lubbock argues ("Prehistoric Times," pp. 14, 16, etc.):
"A new civilization is indicated not only by the mere presence of bronze but by the beauty and variety of the articles made from it. We find not only, as before, during the Stone Age, axes, arrows, and knives, but, in addition, swords, lances, sickles, fish-hooks, ear-rings, bracelets, pins, rings, and a variety of other articles."
If the bronze implements of Europe had been derived from the Phoenicians, Greeks, Etruscans, or Romans, the nearer we approached the site of those nations the greater should be the number of bronze weapons we would find; but the reverse is the case. Sir John Lubbock ("Prehistoric Times," p. 20) shows that more than three hundred and fifty bronze swords have been found in Denmark, and that the Dublin Museum contains twelve hundred and eighty-three bronze weapons found in Ireland; "while," he says, "I have only been able to hear of six bronze swords in all Italy." This state of things is inexplicable unless we suppose that Ireland and Denmark received their bronze implements directly from some maritime nation whose site was practically as near their shores as it was to the shores of the Mediterranean. We have but to look at our map on page 43, ante, to see that Atlantis was considerably nearer to Ireland than it was to Italy.
The striking resemblance between the bronze implements found in the different portions of Europe is another proof that they were derived from one and the same source-from some great mercantile people who carried on their commerce at the same time with Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Italy, Egypt, Switzerland, and Hungary. Mr. Wright ("Essays on Archaeology," p. 120) says, "Whenever we find the bronze swords or celts,
VASES FROM MOUNDS IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
whether in Ireland, in the far west, in Scotland, in distant Scandinavia, in Germany, or still farther east, in the Sclavonic countries, they are the same—not similar in character, but identical." Says Sir John Lubbock ("Prehistoric Times," p. 59), "Not only are the several varieties of celts found throughout Europe alike, but some of the swords, knives, daggers, etc., are so similar that they seem as if they must have been cast by the same maker."
What race was there, other than the people of Atlantis, that existed before the Iron Age-before the Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Phoenician—that was civilized, that worked in metals, that carried on a commerce with all parts of Europe? Does history or tradition make mention of any such?
We find a great resemblance between the pottery of the Bronze Age in Europe and the pottery of the ancient inhabitants of America. The two figures on page 260 represent vases from one of the mounds of the Mississippi Valley. Compare them with the following from the lake dwellings of Switzerland:
VASES FROM SWITZERLAND.
It will be seen that these vases could scarcely stand upright unsupported; and we find that the ancient inhabitants of Switzerland had circles or rings of baked earth in which they placed them when in use, as in the annexed figure. The Mound Builders used the same contrivance.
The illustrations of discoidal stones on page 263 are from the "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 77. The objects represented were taken from an ancient mound in Illinois. It would be indeed surprising if two distinct peoples, living in two different continents, thousands of miles apart, should, without any intercourse with each other, not only form their vases in the same inconvenient form, but should hit upon the same expedient as a remedy.
We observe, in the American spear-head and the Swiss hatchets, on the opposite page, the same overlapping of the metal around the staff, or handle—a very peculiar mode of uniting them together, which has now passed out of use.
A favorite design of the men of the Bronze Age in Europe is the spiral or double-spiral form. It appears on the face of the urn in the shape of a lake dwelling, which is given on p. 255; it also appears in the rock sculptures of Argyleshire, Scotland, here shown.
We find the same figure in an ancient fragment of pottery from the Little Colorado, as given in the "United States Pacific Railroad Survey Report," vol. iii., p. 49, art. Pottery. It was part of a large vessel. The annexed illustration represents this.
DISCOIDAL STONES, ILLINOIS.
COPPER SPEAR-HEAD, LAKE SUPERIOR.
BRONZE HATCHETS, SWITZERLAND.
The same design is also found in ancient rock etchings of the Zunis of New Mexico, of which the cut on p. 265 is an illustration.
We also find this figure repeated upon vase from a Mississippi Valley mound, which we give elsewhere. (See p. 260.)
It is found upon many of the monuments of Central America. In the Treasure House of Atreus, at Mycenae, Greece, a fragment of a pillar was found which is literally covered with this double spiral design. (See "Rosengarten's Architectural Styles," p, 59.)
This Treasure House of Atreus is one of the oldest buildings in Greece.
We find the double-spiral figure upon a shell ornament found on the breast of a skeleton, in a carefully constructed stone coffin, in a mound near Nashville, Tennessee.
Lenormant remarks ("Anc. Civil.," vol. ii., p. 158) that the bronze implements found in Egypt, near Memphis, had been buried for six thousand years; and that at that time, as the Egyptians had a horror of the sea, some commercial nation must have brought the tin, of which the bronze was in part composed, from India, the Caucasus, or Spain, the nearest points to Egypt in which tin is found.
Heer has shown that the civilized plants of the lake dwellings are not of Asiatic, but of African, and, to a great extent, of Egyptian origin. Their stone axes are made largely of jade or nephrite, "a mineral which, strange to say, geologists have not found in place on the continent of Europe." (Foster's "Prehistoric Races," p. 44.)
Compare this picture of a copper axe from a mound near Laporte, Indiana, with this representation of a copper axe of the Bronze Age, found near Waterford, Ireland. Professor Foster pronounces them almost identical.
Compare this specimen of pottery from the lake dwellings of Switzerland with the following specimen from San Jose, Mexico. Professor Foster calls attention to the striking resemblance in the designs of these two widely separated works of art, one belonging to the Bronze Age of Europe, the other to the Copper Age of America.
- -+ FRAGMENT OF POTTERY, LAKE FRAGMENT OF POTTERY, SAN JOSE, NEUFCHATEL, SWITZERLAND. MEXICO. + - -
These, then, in conclusion, are our reasons for believing that the Bronze Age of Europe has relation to Atlantis:
1. The admitted fact that it is anterior in time to the Iron Age relegates it to a great antiquity.
2. The fact that it is anterior in time to the Iron Age is conclusive that it is not due to any of the known European or Asiatic nations, all of which belong to the Iron Age.
3. The fact that there was in Europe, Asia, or Africa no copper or tin age prior to the Bronze Age, is conclusive testimony that the manufacture of bronze was an importation into those continents from some foreign country.
4. The fact that in America alone of all the world is found the Copper Age, which must necessarily have preceded the Bronze Age, teaches us to look to the westward of Europe and beyond the sea for that foreign country.
5. We find many similarities in forms of implements between the Bronze Age of Europe and the Copper Age of America.
6. if Plato told the truth, the Atlanteans were a great commercial nation, trading to America and Europe, and, at the same time, they possessed bronze, and were great workers in the other metals.
7. We shall see hereafter that the mythological traditions of Greece referred to a Bronze Age which preceded an Iron Age, and placed this in the land of the gods, which was an island in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and this land was, as we shall see, clearly Atlantis.
8. As we find but a small development of the Bronze Age in America, it is reasonable to suppose that there must have been some intermediate station between America and Europe, where, during a long period of time, the Bronze Age was developed out of the Copper Age, and immense quantities of bronze implements were manufactured and carried to Europe.
CHAPTER IX.
ARTIFICIAL DEFORMATION OF THE SKULL.
An examination of the American monuments shows (see figure on page 269) that the people represented were in the habit of flattening the skull by artificial means. The Greek and Roman writers had mentioned this practice, but it was long totally forgotten by the civilized world, until it was discovered, as an unheard-of wonder, to be the usage among the Carib Islanders, and several Indian tribes in North America. It was afterward found that the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans practised this art: several flattened Peruvian skulls are depicted in Morton's "Crania Americana." It is still in use among the Flat-head Indians of the north-western part of the United States.
In 1849 a remarkable memoir appeared from the pen of M. Rathke, showing that similar skulls had been found near Kertsch, in the Crimea, and calling attention to the book of Hippocrates, "De Aeris, Aquis et Locu," lib. iv., and a passage of Strabo, which speaks of the practice among the Scythians. In 1854 Dr. Fitzinger published a learned memoir on the skulls of the Avars, a branch of the Uralian race of Turks. He shows that the practice of flattening the head had existed from an early date throughout the East, and described an ancient skull, greatly distorted by artificial means, which had lately been found in Lower Austria. Skulls similarly flattened have been found in Switzerland and Savoy. The Huns under Attila had the same practice of flattening the heads. Professor Anders Retzius proved (see "Smithsonian Report," 1859) that the custom still exists in the south of France, and in parts of Turkey. "Not long since a French physician surprised the world by the fact that nurses in Normandy were still giving the children's heads a sugar-loaf shape by bandages and a tight cap,
STUCCO BAS-RELIEF IN THE PALACE OF PALENQUE.
while in Brittany they preferred to press it round. No doubt they are doing so to this day." (Tylor's "Anthropology," p. 241.)
Professor Wilson remarks:
"Trifling as it may appear, it is not without interest to have the fact brought under our notice, by the disclosures of ancient barrows and cysts, that the same practice of nursing the child and carrying it about, bound to a flat cradle-board, prevailed in Britain and the north of Europe long before the first notices of written history reveal the presence of man beyond the Baltic or the English Channel, and that in all probability the same custom prevailed continuously from the shores of the German Ocean to Behring's Strait." ("Smithsonian Report," 1862, p. 286.)
Dr. L. A. Gosse testifies to the prevalence of the same custom among the Caledonians and Scandinavians in the earliest times; and Dr. Thurman has treated of the same peculiarity among the Anglo-Saxons. ("Crania Britannica," chap. iv., p. 38.)
PERUVIAN SKULL.
CHINOOK (FLAT-HEAD), AFTER CATLIN.
Here, then, is an extraordinary and unnatural practice which has existed from the highest antiquity, over vast regions of country, on both sides of the Atlantic, and which is perpetuated unto this day in races as widely separated as the Turks, the French, and the Flat-head Indians. Is it possible to explain this except by supposing that it originated from some common centre?
The annexed out represents an ancient Swiss skull, from a cemetery near Lausanne, from a drawing of Frederick Troyon. Compare this with the illustration given on page 271, which represents a Peruvian flat-head, copied from Morton's "Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines," 1846. This skull is shockingly distorted. The dotted lines indicate the course of the bandages by which the skull was deformed.
The following heads are from Del Rio's "Account of Palenque," copied into Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," p. 440. They show that the receding forehead was a natural characteristic of the ancient people of Central America. The same form of head has been found even in fossil skulls. We may therefore conclude that the skull-flattening, which we find to have been practised in both the Old and New Worlds, was an attempt of other races to imitate the form of skull of a people whose likenesses are found on the monuments of Egypt and of America. It has been shown that this peculiar form of the head was present even in the foetus of the Peruvian mummies.
Hippocrates tells us that the practice among the Scythians was for the purpose of giving a certain aristocratic distinction.
HEADS FROM PALENQUE.
Amedee Thierry, in his "History of Attila," says the Huns used it for the same reason; and the same purpose influences the Indians of Oregon.
Dr. Lund, a Swedish naturalist, found in the bone caves of Minas-Geraes, Brazil, ancient human bones associated with the remains of extinct quadrupeds. "These skulls," says Lund, "show not only the peculiarity of the American race but in an excessive degree, even to the entire disappearance of the forehead." Sir Robert Schomburgh found on some of the affluents of the Orinoco a tribe known as Frog Indians, whose heads were flattened by Nature, as shown in newly-born children.
In the accompanying plate we show the difference in the conformation of the forehead in various races. The upper dotted line, A, represents the shape of the European forehead; the next line, B, that of the Australian; the next, C, that of the Mound Builder of the United States; the next, D, that of the Guanche of the Canary Islands; and the next, E, that of a skull from the Inca cemetery of Peru. We have but to compare these lines with the skulls of the Egyptians, Kurds, and the heroic type of heads in the statues of the gods of Greece, to see that there was formerly an ancient race marked by a receding forehead; and that the practice of flattening the skull was probably an attempt to approximate the shape of the head to this standard of an early civilized and dominant people.
Not only do we find the same receding forehead in the skulls of the ancient races of Europe and America, and the same attempt to imitate this natural and peculiar conformation by artificial flattening of the head, but it has been found (see Henry Gillman's "Ancient Man in Michigan," "Smithsonian Report," 1875, p. 242) that the Mound Builders and Peruvians of America, and the Neolithic people of France and the Canary Islands, had alike an extraordinary custom of boring a circular bole in the top of the skulls of their dead, so that the soul might readily pass in and out. More than this, it has been found that in all these ancient populations the skeletons exhibit a remarkable degree of platicnemism, or flattening of the tibiae or leg bones. (Ibid., 1873, p.367.) In this respect the Mound Builders of Michigan were identical with the man of Cro Magnon and the ancient inhabitants of Wales.
The annexed ancient Egyptian heads, copied from the monuments, indicate either that the people of the Nile deformed their beads by pressure upon the front of the skull, or that
EGYPTIAN HEADS.
there was some race characteristic which gave this appearance to their heads. These heads are all the heads of priests, and therefore represented the aristocratic class.
The first illustration below is taken from a stucco relief found in a temple at Palenque, Central America. The second is from an Egyptian monument of the time of Rameses IV.
The outline drawing on the following page shows the form of the skull of the royal Inca line: the receding forehead here seems to be natural, and not the result of artificial compression.
Both illustrations at the bottom of the preceding page show the same receding form of the forehead, due to either artificial deformation of the skull or to a common race characteristic.
We must add the fact that the extraordinary practice of deforming the skull was found all over Europe and America to the catalogue of other proofs that the people of both continents were originally united in blood and race. With the couvade, the practice of circumcision, unity of religious beliefs and customs, folk-lore, and alphabetical signs, language and flood legends, we array together a mass of unanswerable proofs of prehistoric identity of race.
PART IV.
THE MYTHOLOGIES OF THE OLD WORLD A RECOLLECTION OF ATLANTIS.
CHAPTER I. TRADITIONS OF ATLANTIS.
We find allusions to the Atlanteans in the most ancient traditions of many different races.
The great antediluvian king of the Mussulman was Shedd-Ad-Ben-Ad, or Shed-Ad, the son of Ad, or Atlantis.
Among the Arabians the first inhabitants of that country are known as the Adites, from their progenitor, who is called Ad, the grandson of Ham. These Adites were probably the people of Atlantis or Ad-lantis. "They are personified by a monarch to whom everything is ascribed, and to whom is assigned several centuries of life." ("Ancient History of the East," Lenormant and Chevallier, vol. ii., p. 295.), Ad came from the northeast. "He married a thousand wives, had four thousand sons, and lived twelve hundred years. His descendants multiplied considerably. After his death his sons Shadid and Shedad reigned in succession over the Adites. In the time of the latter the people of Ad were a thousand tribes, each composed of several thousands of men. Great conquests are attributed to Shedad; he subdued, it is said, all Arabia and Irak. The migration of the Canaanites, their establishment in Syria, and the Shepherd invasion of Egypt are, by many Arab writers, attributed to an expedition of Shedad." (Ibid., p. 296.)
Shedad built a palace ornamented with superb columns, and surrounded by a magnificent garden. It was called Irem. "It was a paradise that Shedad had built in imitation of the celestial Paradise, of whose delights he had heard." ("Ancient History of the East," p. 296.) In other words, an ancient, sun-worshipping, powerful, and conquering race overran Arabia at the very dawn of history; they were the sons of Adlantis: their king tried to create a palace and garden of Eden like that of Atlantis.
The Adites are remembered by the Arabians as a great and civilized race. "They are depicted as men of gigantic stature; their strength was equal to their size, and they easily moved enormous blocks of stone." (Ibid.) They were architects and builders. They raised many monuments of their power; and hence, among the Arabs, arose the custom of calling great ruins "buildings of the Adites." To this day the Arabs say "as old as Ad." In the Koran allusion is made to the edifices they built on "high places for vain uses;" expressions proving that their "idolatry was considered to have been tainted with Sabaeism or star-worship." (Ibid.) "In these legends," says Lenormant, "we find traces of a wealthy nation, constructors of great buildings, with an advanced civilization, analogous to that of Chaldea, professing a religion similar to the Babylonian; a nation, in short, with whom material progress was allied to great moral depravity and obscene rites. These facts must be true and strictly historical, for they are everywhere met with among the Cushites, as among the Canaanites, their brothers by origin."
Nor is there wanting a great catastrophe which destroys the whole Adite nation, except a very few who escape because they had renounced idolatry. A black cloud assails their country, from which proceeds a terrible hurricane (the water-spout?) which sweeps away everything.
The first Adites were followed by a second Adite race; probably the colonists who had escaped the Deluge. The centre of its power was the country of Sheba proper. This empire endured for a thousand years. The Adites are represented upon the Egyptian monuments as very much like the Egyptians themselves; in other words, they were a red or sunburnt race: their great temples were pyramidal, surmounted by buildings. ("Ancient History of the East," p. 321.) "The Sabaeans," says Agatharchides ("De Mari Erythraeo," p. 102), "have in their houses an incredible number of vases, and utensils of all sorts, of gold and silver, beds and tripods of silver, and all the furniture of astonishing richness. Their buildings have porticos with columns sheathed with gold, or surmounted by capitals of silver. On the friezes, ornaments, and the framework of the doors they place plates of gold incrusted with precious stones."
All this reminds one of the descriptions given by the Spaniards of the temples of the sun in Peru.
The Adites worshipped the gods of the Phoenicians under names but slightly changed; "their religion was especially solar... It was originally a religion without images, without idolatry, and without a priesthood." (Ibid., p. 325.) They "worshipped the sun from the tops of pyramids." (Ibid.) They believed in the immortality of the soul.
In all these things we see resemblances to the Atlanteans.
The great Ethiopian or Cushite Empire, which in the earliest ages prevailed, as Mr. Rawlinson says, "from the Caucasus to the Indian Ocean, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the mouth of the Ganges," was the empire of Dionysos, the empire of "Ad," the empire of Atlantis. El Eldrisi called the language spoken to this day by the Arabs of Mahrah, in Eastern Arabia, "the language of the people of Ad," and Dr. J. H. Carter, in the Bombay Journal of July, 1847, says, "It is the softest and sweetest language I have ever heard." It would be interesting to compare this primitive tongue with the languages of Central America.
The god Thoth of the Egyptians, who was the god of a foreign country, and who invented letters, was called At-hothes.
We turn now to another ancient race, the Indo-European family—the Aryan race.
In Sanscrit Adim, means first. Among the Hindoos the first man was Ad-ima, his wife was Heva. They dwelt upon an island, said to be Ceylon; they left the island and reached the main-land, when, by a great convulsion of nature, their communication with the parent land was forever cut off. (See "Bible in India.")
Here we seem to have a recollection of the destruction of Atlantis.
Mr. Bryant says, "Ad and Ada signify the first." The Persians called the first man "Ad-amah." "Adon" was one of the names of the Supreme God of the Phoenicians; from it was derived the name of the Greek god "Ad-onis." The Arv-ad of Genesis was the Ar-Ad of the Cushites; it is now known as Ru-Ad. It is a series of connected cities twelve miles in length, along the coast, full of the most massive and gigantic ruins.
Sir William Jones gives the tradition of the Persians as to the earliest ages. He says: "Moshan assures us that in the opinion of the best informed Persians the first monarch of Iran, and of the whole earth, was Mashab-Ad; that he received from the Creator, and promulgated among men a sacred book, in a heavenly language, to which the Mussulman author gives the Arabic title of 'Desatir,' or 'Regulations.' Mashab-Ad was, in the opinion of the ancient Persians, the person left at the end of the last great cycle, and consequently the father of the present world. He and his wife having survived the former cycle, were blessed with a numerous progeny; he planted gardens, invented ornaments, forged weapons, taught men to take the fleece from sheep and make clothing; he built cities, constructed palaces, fortified towns, and introduced arts and commerce."
We have already seen that the primal gods of this people are identical with the gods of the Greek mythology, and were originally kings of Atlantis. But it seems that these ancient divinities are grouped together as "the Aditya;" and in this name "Ad-itya" we find a strong likeness to the Semitic "Adites," and another reminiscence of Atlantis, or Adlantis. In corroboration of this view we find,
1. The gods who are grouped together as the Aditya are the most ancient in the Hindoo mythology.
2. They are all gods of light, or solar gods. (Whitney's Oriental and Linguistic Studies," p. 39.)
3. There are twelve of them. (Ibid.)
4. These twelve gods presided over twelve months in the year.
5. They are a dim recollection of a very remote past. Says Whitney, "It seems as if here was an attempt on the part of the Indian religion to take a new development in a moral direction, which a change in the character and circumstances of the people has caused to fail in the midst, and fall back again into forgetfulness, while yet half finished and indistinct." (Ibid.)
6. These gods are called "the sons of Aditi," just as in the Bible we have allusions to "the sons of Adab," who were the first metallurgists and musicians. "Aditi is not a goddess. She is addressed as a queen's daughter, she of fair children."
7. The Aditya "are elevated above all imperfections; they do not sleep or wink." The Greeks represented their gods as equally wakeful and omniscient. "Their character is all truth; they hate and punish guilt." We have seen the same traits ascribed by the Greeks to the Atlantean kings.
8. The sun is sometimes addressed as an Aditya.
9. Among the Aditya is Varuna, the equivalent of Uranos, whose identification with Atlantis I have shown. In the vedas Varuna is "the god of the ocean."
10. The Aditya represent an earlier and purer form of religion: "While in hymns to the other deities long: life, wealth, power, are the objects commonly prayed for, of the Aditya is craved purity, forgiveness of sin, freedom from guilt, and repentance." ("Oriental and Linguistic Studies," p. 43.)
11. The Aditya, like the Adites, are identified with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Yama is the god of the abode beyond the grave. In the Persian story he appears as Yima, and "is made ruler of the golden age and founder of the Paradise." (Ibid., p. 45.) (See "Zamna," p. 167 ante.)
In view of all these facts, one cannot doubt that the legends of the "sons of Ad," "the Adites," and "the Aditya," all refer to Atlantis.
Mr. George Smith, in the Chaldean account of the Creation (p. 78), deciphered from the Babylonian tablets, shows that there was an original race of men at the beginning of Chaldean history, a dark race, the Zalmat-qaqadi, who were called Ad-mi, or Ad-ami; they were the race "who had fallen," and were contradistinguished from "the Sarku, or light race." The "fall" probably refers to their destruction by a deluge, in consequence of their moral degradation and the indignation of the gods. The name Adam is used in these legends, but as the name of a race, not of a man.
Genesis (chap. v., 2) distinctly says that God created man male and female, and "called their name Adam." That is to say, the people were the Ad-ami, the people of "Ad," or Atlantis. "The author of the Book of Genesis," says M. Schoebel, "in speaking of the men who were swallowed up by the Deluge, always describes them as 'Haadam,' 'Adamite humanity.'" The race of Cain lived and multiplied far away from the land of Seth; in other words, far from the land destroyed by the Deluge. Josephus, who gives us the primitive traditions of the Jews, tells us (chap. ii., p. 42) that "Cain travelled over many countries" before he came to the land of Nod. The Bible does not tell us that the race of Cain perished in the Deluge. "Cain went out from the presence of Jehovah;" he did not call on his name; the people that were destroyed were the "sons of Jehovah." All this indicates that large colonies had been sent out by the mother-land before it sunk in the sea.
Across the ocean we find the people of Guatemala claiming their descent from a goddess called At-tit, or grandmother, who lived for four hundred years, and first taught the worship of the true God, which they afterward forgot. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 75.) While the famous Mexican calendar stone shows that the sun was commonly called tonatiuh but when it was referred to as the god of the Deluge it was then called Atl-tona-ti-uh, or At-onatiuh. (Valentini's "Mexican Calendar Stone," art. Maya Archaeology, p. 15.)
We thus find the sons of Ad at the base of all the most ancient races of men, to wit, the Hebrews, the Arabians, the Chaldeans, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the Central Americans; testimony that all these races traced their beginning back to a dimly remembered Ad-lantis.
CHAPTER II
THE KINGS OF ATLANTIS BECOME THE GODS OF THE GREEKS.
Lord Bacon said:
"The mythology of the Greeks, which their oldest writers do not pretend to have invented, was no more than a light air, which had passed from a more ancient people into the flutes of the Greeks, which they modulated to such descants as best suited their fancies."
This profoundly wise and great man, who has illuminated every subject which he has touched, guessed very close to the truth in this utterance.
The Hon. W. E. Gladstone has had quite a debate of late with Mr. Cox as to whether the Greek mythology was underlaid by a nature worship, or a planetary or solar worship.
Peru, worshipping the sun and moon and planets, probably represents very closely the simple and primitive religion of Atlantis, with its sacrifices of fruits and flowers. This passed directly to their colony in Egypt. We find the Egyptians in their early ages sun and planet worshippers. Ptah was the object of their highest adoration. He is the father of the god of the sun, the ruler of the region of light. Ra was the sun-god. He was the supreme divinity at On, or Heliopolis, near Memphis. His symbol was the solar disk, supported by two rings. He created all that exists below the heavens.
The Babylonian trinity was composed of Idea, Anu, and Bel. Bel represented the sun, and was the favorite god. Sin was the goddess of the moon.
The Phoenicians were also sun-worshippers. The sun was represented by Baal-Samin, the great god, the god of light and the heavens, the creator and rejuvenator.
"The attributes of both Baal and Moloch (the good and bad powers of the sun) were united in the Phoenician god Melkart, "king of the city," whom the inhabitants of Tyre considered their special patron. The Greeks called him "Melicertes," and identified him with Hercules. By his great strength and power he turned evil into good, brought life out of destruction, pulled back the sun to the earth at the time of the solstices, lessened excessive beat and cold, and rectified the evil signs of the zodiac. In Phoenician legends he conquers the savage races of distant coasts, founds the ancient settlements on the Mediterranean, and plants the rocks in the Straits of Gibraltar." ("American Cyclopaedia," art. Mythology.)
The Egyptians worshipped the sun under the name of Ra; the Hindoos worshipped the sun under the name of Rama; while the great festival of the sun, of the Peruvians, was called Ray-mi.
Sun-worship, as the ancient religion of Atlantis, underlies all the superstitions of the colonies of that country. The Samoyed woman says to the sun, "When thou, god, risest, I too rise from my bed." Every morning even now the Brahmans stand on one foot, with their hands held out before them and their faces turned to the east, adoring the sun. "In Germany or France one may still see the peasant take off his hat to the rising sun." ("Anthropology," p. 361.) The Romans, even, in later times, worshipped the sun at Emesa, under the name of Elagabalus, "typified in the form of a black conical stone, which it was believed had fallen from heaven." The conical stone was the emblem of Bel. Did it have relation to the mounds and pyramids?
Sun-worship was the primitive religion of the red men of America. It was found among all the tribes. (Dorman, "Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 338.) The Chichimecs called the sun their father. The Comanches have a similar belief.
But, compared with such ancient nations as the Egyptians and Babylonians, the Greeks were children. A priest of Sais said to Solon,
"You Greeks are novices in knowledge of antiquity. You are ignorant of what passed either here or among yourselves in days of old. The history of eight thousand years is deposited in our sacred books; but I can ascend to a much higher antiquity, and tell you what our fathers have done for nine thousand years; I mean their institutions, their laws, and their most brilliant achievements."
The Greeks, too young to have shared in the religion of Atlantis, but preserving some memory of that great country and its history, proceeded to convert its kings into gods, and to depict Atlantis itself as the heaven of the human race. Thus we find a great solar or nature worship in the elder nations, while Greece has nothing but an incongruous jumble of gods and goddesses, who are born and eat and drink and make love and ravish and steal and die; and who are worshipped as immortal in presence of the very monuments that testify to their death.
"These deities, to whom the affairs of the world were in trusted, were, it is believed, immortal, though not eternal in their existence. In Crete there was even a story of the death of Zeus, his tomb being pointed out." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 2.)
The history of Atlantis is the key of the Greek mythology. There can be no question that these gods of Greece were human beings. The tendency to attach divine attributes to great earthly rulers is one deeply implanted in human nature. The savages who killed Captain Cook firmly believed that he was immortal, that he was yet alive, and would return to punish them. The highly civilized Romans made gods out of their dead emperors. Dr. Livingstone mentions that on one occasion, after talking to a Bushman for some time about the Deity, he found that the savage thought he was speaking of Sekomi, the principal chief of the district.
We find the barbarians of the coast of the Mediterranean regarding the civilized people of Atlantis with awe and wonder: "Their physical strength was extraordinary, the earth shaking sometimes under their tread. Whatever they did was done speedily. They moved through space almost without the loss of a moment of time." This probably alluded to the rapid motion of their sailing-vessels. "They were wise, and communicated their wisdom to men." That is to say, they civilized the people they came in contact with. 'They had a strict sense of justice, and punished crime rigorously, and rewarded noble actions, though it is true they were less conspicuous for the latter." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 4.) We should understand this to mean that where they colonized they established a government of law, as contradistinguished from the anarchy of barbarism.
"There were tales of personal visits and adventures of the gods among men, taking part in battles and appearing in dreams. They were conceived to possess the form of human beings, and to be, like men, subject to love and pain, but always characterized by the highest qualities and grandest forms that could be imagined." (Ibid.)
Another proof that the gods of the Greeks were but the deified kings of Atlantis is found in the fact that "the gods were not looked upon as having created the world." They succeeded to the management of a world already in existence.
The gods dwelt on Olympus. They lived together like human beings; they possessed palaces, storehouses, stables, horses, etc.; "they dwelt in a social state which was but a magnified reflection of the social system on earth. Quarrels, love passages, mutual assistance, and such instances as characterize human life, were ascribed to them." (Ibid., p. 10.)
Where was Olympus? It was in Atlantis. "The ocean encircled the earth with a great stream, and was a region of wonders of all kinds." (Ibid., p. 23.) It was a great island, the then civilized world. The encircling ocean "was spoken of in all the ancient legends. Okeanos lived there with his wife Tethys: these were the Islands of the Blessed, the garden of the gods, the sources of the nectar and ambrosia on which the gods lived." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 23.) Nectar was probably a fermented intoxicating liquor, and ambrosia bread made from wheat. Soma was a kind of whiskey, and the Hindoos deified it. "The gods lived on nectar and ambrosia" simply meant that the inhabitants of these blessed islands were civilized, and possessed a liquor of some kind and a species of food superior to anything in use among the barbarous tribes with whom they came in contact.
This blessed land answers to the description of Atlantis. It was an island full of wonders. It lay spread out in the ocean "like a disk, with the mountains rising from it." (Ibid.) On the highest point of this mountain dwelt Zeus (the king), "while the mansions of the other deities were arranged upon plateaus, or in ravines lower down the mountain. These deities, including Zeus, were twelve in number: Zeus (or Jupiter), Hera (or Juno), Poseidon (or Neptune), Demeter (or Ceres), Apollo, Artemis (or Diana), Hephaestos (or Vulcan), Pallas Athena (or Minerva), Ares (or Mars), Aphrodite (or Venus), Hermes (or Mercury), and Hestia (or Vesta)." These were doubtless the twelve gods from whom the Egyptians derived their kings. Where two names are given to a deity in the above list, the first name is that bestowed by the Greeks, the last that given by the Romans.
It is not impossible that our division of the year into twelve parts is a reminiscence of the twelve gods of Atlantis. Diodorus Siculus tells us that among the Babylonians there were twelve gods of the heavens, each personified by one of the signs of the zodiac, and worshipped in a certain month of the year. The Hindoos had twelve primal gods, "the Aditya." Moses erected twelve pillars at Sinai. The Mandan Indians celebrated the Flood with twelve typical characters, who danced around the ark. The Scandinavians believed in the twelve gods, the Aesir, who dwelt on Asgard, the Norse Olympus. Diligent investigation may yet reveal that the number of a modern jury, twelve, is a survival of the ancient council of Asgard.
"According to the traditions of the Phoenicians, the Gardens of the Hesperides were in the remote west." (Murray's "Manual of Mythology," p. 258.) Atlas lived in these gardens. (Ibid., p. 259.) Atlas, we have seen, was king of Atlantis. "The Elysian Fields (the happy islands) were commonly placed in the remote west. They were ruled over by Chronos." (Ibid., p. 60.) Tartarus, the region of Hades, the gloomy home of the dead, was also located "under the mountains of an island in the midst of the ocean in the remote west." (Ibid., p. 58.) Atlas was described in Greek mythology as "an enormous giant, who stood upon the western confines of the earth, and supported the heavens on his shoulders, in a region of the west where the sun continued to shine after he had set upon Greece." (Ibid., p. 156.)
Greek tradition located the island in which Olympus was situated "in the far west," "in the ocean beyond Africa," "on the western boundary of the known world," "where the sun shone when it had ceased to shine on Greece," and where the mighty Atlas "held up the heavens." And Plato tells us that the land where Poseidon and Atlas ruled was Atlantis.
"The Garden of the Hesperides" (another name for the dwelling-place of the gods) "was situated at the extreme limit of Africa. Atlas was said to have surrounded it on every side with high mountains." (Smith's "Sacred Annals, Patriarchal Age," p. 131.) Here were found the golden apples.
This is very much like the description which Plato gives of the great plain of Atlantis, covered with fruit of every kind, and surrounded by precipitous mountains descending to the sea.
The Greek mythology, in speaking of the Garden of the Hesperides, tells us that "the outer edge of the garden was slightly raised, so that the water might not run in and overflow the land." Another reminiscence of the surrounding mountains of Atlantis as described by Plato, and as revealed by the deep-sea soundings of modern times.
Chronos, or Saturn, Dionysos, Hyperion, Atlas, Hercules, were all connected with "a great Saturnian continent;" they were kings that ruled over countries on the western shores of the Mediterranean, Africa and Spain. One account says:
"Hyperion, Atlas, and Saturn, or Chronos, were sons of Uranos, who reigned over a great kingdom composed of countries around the western part of the Mediterranean, with certain islands in the Atlantic. Hyperion succeeded his father, and was then killed by the Titans. The kingdom was then divided between Atlas and Saturn—Atlas taking Northern Africa, with the Atlantic islands, and Saturn the countries on the opposite shore of the Mediterranean to Italy and Sicily." (Baldwin's "Prehistoric Nations," p. 357.)
Plato says, speaking of the traditions of the Greeks ("Dialogues, Laws," c. iv., p. 713), "There is a tradition of the happy life of mankind in the days when all things were spontaneous and abundant. . . . In like manner God in his love of mankind placed over us the demons, who are a superior race, and they, with great care and pleasure to themselves and no less to us, taking care of us and giving us place and reverence and order and justice never failing, made the tribes of men happy and peaceful . . . for Cronos knew that no human nature, invested with supreme power, is able to order human affairs and not overflow with insolence and wrong."
In other words, this tradition refers to an ancient time when the forefathers of the Greeks were governed by Chronos, of the Cronian Sea (the Atlantic), king of Atlantis, through civilized Atlantean governors, who by their wisdom preserved peace and created a golden age for all the populations under their control—they were the demons, that is, "the knowing ones," the civilized.
Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates these words ("Dialogues, Cratylus," p. 397): "My notion would be that the sun, moon, and stars, earth, and heaven, which are still the gods of many barbarians, were the only gods known to the aboriginal Hellenes. . . . What shall follow the gods? Must not demons and heroes and men come next? . . . Consider the real meaning of the word demons. You know Hesiod uses the word. He speaks of 'a golden race of men' who came first. He says of them,
But now that fate has closed over this race, They are holy demons upon earth, Beneficent averters of ills, guardians of mortal men.'
He means by the golden men not men literally made of gold, but good and noble men; he says we are of the 'age of iron.' He called them demons because they were dah'mones (knowing or wise)."
This is made the more evident when we read that this region of the gods, of Chronos and Uranos and Zeus, passed through, first, a Golden Age, then a Silver Age—these constituting a great period of peace and happiness; then it reached a Bronze Age; then an Iron Age, and finally perished by a great flood, sent upon these people by Zeus as a punishment for their sins. We read:
"Men were rich then (in the Silver Age), as in the Golden Age of Chronos, and lived in plenty; but still they wanted the innocence and contentment which were the true sources of bu man happiness in the former age; and accordingly, while living in luxury and delicacy, they became overbearing in their manners to the highest degree, were never satisfied, and forgot the gods, to whom, in their confidence of prosperity and com fort, they denied the reverence they owed. . . . Then followed the Bronze Age, a period of constant quarrelling and deeds of violence. Instead of cultivated lands, and a life of peaceful occupations and orderly habits, there came a day when every where might was right, and men, big and powerful as they were, became physically worn out. . . . Finally came the Iron Age, in which enfeebled mankind had to toil for bread with their hands, and, bent on gain, did their best to overreach each other. Dike, or Astraea, the goddess of justice and good faith, modesty and truth, turned her back on such scenes, and retired to Olympus, while Zeus determined to destroy the human race by a great flood. The whole of Greece lay under water, and none but Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha were saved." (Murray's "Mythology" p. 44.)
It is remarkable that we find here the same succession of the Iron Age after the Bronze Age that has been revealed to scientific men by the patient examination of the relics of antiquity in Europe. And this identification of the land that was destroyed by a flood—the land of Chronos and Poseidon and Zeus—with the Bronze Age, confirms the view expressed in Chapter VIII. (page 237, ante), that the bronze implements and weapons of Europe were mainly imported from Atlantis.
And here we find that the Flood that destroyed this land of the gods was the Flood of Deucalion, and the Flood of Deucalion was the Flood of the Bible, and this, as we have shown, was "the last great Deluge of all," according to the Egyptians, which destroyed Atlantis.
The foregoing description of the Golden Age of Chronos, when "men were rich and lived in plenty," reminds us of Plato's description of the happy age of Atlantis, when "men despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property;" a time when, as the chants of the Delaware Indians stated it (page 109, ante), "all were willingly pleased, all were well-happified." While the description given by Murray in the above extract of the degeneracy of mankind in the land of the gods, "a period of constant quarrelling and deeds of violence, when might was right," agrees with Plato's account of the Atlanteans, when they became "aggressive," "unable to bear their fortune," "unseemly," "base," "filled with unrighteous avarice and power,"—and "in a most wretched state." And here again I might quote from the chant of the Delaware Indians—"they became troubled, hating each other; both were fighting, both were spoiling, both were never peaceful." And in all three instances the gods punished the depravity of mankind by a great deluge. Can all these precise coincidences be the result of accident?
May we not even suppose that the very word "Olympus" is a transformation from "Atlantis" in accordance with the laws that regulate the changes of letters of the same class into each other? Olympus was written by the Greeks "Olumpos." The letter a in Atlantis was sounded by the ancient world broad and full, like the a in our words all or altar; in these words it approximates very closely to the sound of o. It is not far to go to convert Otlontis into Oluntos, and this into Olumpos. We may, therefore, suppose that when the Greeks said that their gods dwelt in "Olympus," it was the same as if they said that they dwelt in "Atlantis."
Nearly all the gods of Greece are connected with Atlantis. We have seen the twelve principal gods all dwelling on the mountain of Olympus, in the midst of an island in the ocean in the far west, which was subsequently destroyed by a deluge on account of the wickedness of its people. And when we turn to Plato's description of Atlantis (p. 13, ante) we find that Poseidon and Atlas dwelt upon a mountain in the midst of the island; and on this mountain were their magnificent temples and palaces, where they lived, separated by great walls from their subjects.
It may be urged that Mount Olympus could not have referred to any mountain in Atlantis, because the Greeks gave that name to a group of mountains partly in Macedonia and partly in Thessaly. But in Mysia, Lycia, Cyprus, and elsewhere there were mountains called Olympus; and on the plain of Olympia, in Elis, there was an eminence bearing the same designation. There is a natural tendency among uncivilized peoples to give a "local habitation" to every general tradition.
"Many of the oldest myths," says Baldwin (" Prehistoric Nations," p. 376), "relate to Spain, North-western Africa, and other regions on the Atlantic, such as those concerning Hercules, the Cronidae, the Hyperboreans, the Hesperides, and the Islands of the Blessed. Homer described the Atlantic region of Europe in his account of the wanderings of Ulysses. . . . In the ages previous to the decline of Phoenician influence in Greece and around the AEgean Sea, the people of those regions must have had a much better knowledge of Western Europe than prevailed there during the Ionian or Hellenic period."
The mythology of Greece is really a history of the kings of Atlantis. The Greek heaven was Atlantis. Hence the references to statues, swords, etc., that fell from heaven, and were preserved in the temples of the different states along the shores of the Mediterranean from a vast antiquity, and which were regarded as the most precious possessions of the people. They were relics of the lost race received in the early ages. Thus we read of the brazen or bronze anvil that was preserved in one city, which fell from heaven, and was nine days and nine nights in falling; in other words, it took nine days and nights of a sailing-voyage to bring it from Atlantis.
The modern theory that the gods of Greece never had any personal existence, but represented atmospheric and meteorological myths, the movements of clouds, planets, and the sun, is absurd. Rude nations repeat, they do not invent; to suppose a barbarous people creating their deities out of clouds and sunsets is to reverse nature. Men first worship stones, then other men, then spirits. Resemblances of names prove nothing; it is as if one would show that the name of the great Napoleon meant "the lion of the desert" (Napo-leon), and should thence argue that Napoleon never existed, that he was a myth, that he represented power in solitude, or some such stuff. When we read that Jove whipped his wife, and threw her son out of the window, the inference is that Jove was a man, and actually did something like the thing described; certainly gods, sublimated spirits, aerial sprites, do not act after this fashion; and it would puzzle the mythmakers to prove that the sun, moon, or stars whipped their wives or flung recalcitrant young men out of windows. The history of Atlantis could be in part reconstructed out of the mythology of Greece; it is a history of kings, queens, and princes; of love-making, adulteries, rebellions, wars, murders, sea-voyages, and colonizations; of palaces, temples, workshops, and forges; of sword-making, engraving and metallurgy; of wine, barley, wheat, cattle, sheep, horses, and agriculture generally. Who can doubt that it represents the history of a real people?
Uranos was the first god; that is to say, the first king of the great race. As he was at the commencement of all things, his symbol was the sky. He probably represented the race previous even to the settlement of Atlantis. He was a son of Gaea (the earth). He seems to have been the parent of three races—the Titans, the Hekatoncheires, and the Kyklopes or Cyclops.
I incline to the belief that these were civilized races, and that the peculiarities ascribed to the last two refer to the vessels in which they visited the shores of the barbarians.
THE EMPIRE OF ATLANTIS.
The empire of the Titans was clearly the empire of Atlantis. "The most judicious among our mythologists" (says Dr. Rees, "New British Cyclopaedia," art. Titans)—"such as Gerard Vossius, Marsham, Bochart, and Father Thomassin—are of opinion that the partition of the world among the sons of Noah-Shem, Ham, and Japheth—was the original of the tradition of the same partition among Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto," upon the breaking up of the great empire of the Titans. "The learned Pezron contends that the division which was made of this vast empire came, in after-times, to be taken for the partition of the whole world; that Asia remaining in the hands of Jupiter (Zeus), the most potent of the three brothers, made him looked upon as the god of Olympus; that the sea and islands which fell to Neptune occasioned their giving him the title of 'god of the sea;' and that Spain, the extremity of the then known world, thought to be a very low country in respect of Asia, and famous for its excellent mines of gold and silver, failing to Pluto, occasioned him to be taken for the 'god of the infernal regions.'" We should suppose that Pluto possibly ruled over the transatlantic possessions of Atlantis in America, over those "portions of the opposite continent" which Plato tells us were dominated by Atlas and his posterity, and which, being far beyond or below sunset, were the "under-world" of the ancients; while Atlantis, the Canaries, etc., constituted the island division with Western Africa and Spain. Murray tells us ("Mythology," p. 58) that Pluto's share of the kingdom was supposed to lie "in the remote west." The under-world of the dead was simply the world below the western horizon; "the home of the dead has to do with that far west region where the sun dies at night." ("Anthropology," p. 350.) "On the coast of Brittany, where Cape Raz stands out westward into the ocean, there is 'the Bay of Souls,' the launching-place where the departed spirits sail off across the sea." (Ibid.) In like manner, Odysseus found the land of the dead in the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules. There, indeed, was the land of the mighty dead, the grave of the drowned Atlanteans.
"However this be," continues F. Pezron, "the empire of the Titans, according to the ancients, was very extensive; they possessed Phrygia, Thrace, a part of Greece, the island of Crete, and several other provinces to the inmost recesses of Spain. To these Sanchoniathon seems to join Syria; and Diodorus adds a part of Africa, and the kingdoms of Mauritania." The kingdoms of Mauritania embraced all that north-western region of Africa nearest to Atlantis in which are the Atlas Mountains, and in which, in the days of Herodotus, dwelt the Atlantes.
Neptune, or Poseidon, says, in answer to a message from Jupiter,
No vassal god, nor of his train am I. Three brothers, deities, from Saturn came, And ancient Rhea, earth's immortal dame; Assigned by lot our triple rule we know; Infernal Pluto sways the shades below: O'er the wide clouds, and o'er the starry plain Ethereal Jove extends his high domain; My court beneath the hoary waves I keep, And hush the roaring of the sacred deep.
Iliad, book xviii.
Homer alludes to Poseidon as
"The god whose liquid arms are hurled Around the globs, whose earthquakes rock the world."
Mythology tells us that when the Titans were defeated by Saturn they retreated into the interior of Spain; Jupiter followed them up, and beat them for the last time near Tartessus, and thus terminated a ten-years' war. Here we have a real battle on an actual battle-field.
If we needed any further proof that the empire of the Titans was the empire of Atlantis, we would find it in the names of the Titans: among these were Oceanus, Saturn or Chronos, and Atlas; they were all the sons of Uranos. Oceanus was at the base of the Greek mythology. Plato says ("Dialogues," Timaeus, vol. ii., p. 533): "Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven, and from these sprung Phorcys, and Chronos, and Rhea, and many more with them; and from Chronos and Rhea sprung Zeus and Hera, and all those whom we know as their brethren, and others who were their children." In other words, all their gods came out of the ocean; they were rulers over some ocean realm; Chronos was the son of Oceanus, and Chronos was an Atlantean god, and from him the Atlantic Ocean was called by the ancients "the Chronian Sea." The elder Minos was called "the Son of the Ocean:" he first gave civilization to the Cretans; he engraved his laws on brass, precisely as Plato tells us the laws of Atlantis were engraved on pillars of brass.
The wanderings of Ulysses, as detailed in the "Odyssey" of Homer, are strangely connected with the Atlantic Ocean. The islands of the Phoenicians were apparently in mid-ocean:
We dwell apart, afar Within the unmeasured deep, amid its waves The most remote of men; no other race Hath commerce with us.—Odyssey, book vi.
The description of the Phaeacian walls, harbors, cities, palaces, ships, etc., seems like a recollection of Atlantis. The island of Calypso appears also to have been in the Atlantic Ocean, twenty days' sail from the Phaeacian isles; and when Ulysses goes to the land of Pluto, "the under-world," the home of the dead, he
"Reached the far confines of Oceanus,"
beyond the Pillars of Hercules. It would be curious to inquire how far the poems of Homer are Atlantean in their relations and inspiration. Ulysses's wanderings were a prolonged struggle with Poseidon, the founder and god of Atlantis.
"The Hekatoncheires, or Cetimaeni, beings each with a hundred hands, were three in number—Kottos, Gyges or Gyes, and Briareus—and represented the frightful crashing of waves, and its resemblance to the convulsions of earthquakes." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 26.) Are not these hundred arms the oars of the galleys, and the frightful crashing of the waves their movements in the water?
"The Kyklopes also were three in number—Brontes, with his thunder; Steropes, with his lightning; and Arges, with his stream of light. They were represented as having only one eye, which was placed at the juncture between the nose and brow. It was, however, a large, flashing eye, as became beings who were personifications of the storm-cloud, with its flashes of destructive lightning and peals of thunder."
We shall show hereafter that the invention of gunpowder dates back to the days of the Phoenicians, and may have been derived by them from Atlantis. It is not impossible that in this picture of the Kyklopes we see a tradition of sea-going ships, with a light burning at the prow, and armed with some explosive preparation, which, with a roar like thunder, and a flash like lightning, destroyed those against whom it was employed? It at least requires less strain upon our credulity to suppose these monsters were a barbarian's memory of great ships than to believe that human beings ever existed with a hundred arms, and with one eye in the middle of the forehead, and giving out thunder and lightning.
The natives of the West India Islands regarded the ships of Columbus as living creatures, and that their sails were wings.
Berosus tells us, speaking of the ancient days of Chaldea, "In the first year there appeared, from that part of the Erythraean Sea which borders upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, by name Oannes, whose whole body (according to the account of Apollodorus) was that of a fish; that under the fish's head he had another head, with feet also below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish's tail. His voice too and language was articulate and human, and a representation of him is preserved even unto this day. This being was accustomed to pass the day among men, but took no food at that season, and he gave them an insight into letters and arts of all kinds. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed them how to collect the fruits; in short, he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and humanize their laws. From that time nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun set, this being, Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep, for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals like Oannes."
This is clearly the tradition preserved by a barbarous people of the great ships of a civilized nation, who colonized their coast and introduced the arts and sciences among them. And here we see the same tendency to represent the ship as a living thing, which converted the war-vessels of the Atlanteans (the Kyklopes) into men with one blazing eye in the middle of the forehead.
Uranos was deposed from the throne, and succeeded by his son Chronos. He was called "the ripener, the harvest-god," and was probably identified with the beginning of the Agricultural Period. He married his sister Rhea, who bore him Pluto, Poseidon, Zeus, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera. He anticipated that his sons would dethrone him, as he had dethroned his father, Uranos, and he swallowed his first five children, and would have swallowed the sixth child, Zeus, but that his wife Rhea deceived him with a stone image of the child; and Zeus was conveyed to the island of Crete, and there concealed in a cave and raised to manhood. Subsequently Chronos "yielded back to the light the children he had swallowed." This myth probably means that Chronos had his children raised in some secret place, where they could not be used by his enemies as the instruments of a rebellion against his throne; and the stone image of Zeus, palmed off upon him by Rhea, was probably some other child substituted for his own. His precautions seem to have been wise; for as soon as the children returned to the light they commenced a rebellion, and drove the old gentleman from his throne. A rebellion of the Titans followed. The struggle was a tremendous one, and seems to have been decided at last by the use of gunpowder, as I shall show farther on.
We have seen Chronos identified with the Atlantic, called by the Romans the "Chronian Sea." He was known to the Romans under the name of Saturn, and ruled over "a great Saturnian continent" in the Western Ocean. Saturn, or Chronos, came to Italy: he presented himself to the king, Janus, "and proceeded to instruct the subjects of the latter in agriculture, gardening, and many other arts then quite unknown to them; as, for example, how to tend and cultivate the vine. By such means he at length raised the people from a rude and comparatively barbarous condition to one of order and peaceful occupations, in consequence of which he was everywhere held in high esteem, and, in course of time, was selected by Janus to share with him the government of the country, which thereupon assumed the name of Saturnia—'a land of seed and fruit.' The period of Saturn's government was sung in later days by poets as a happy time, when sorrows were unknown, when innocence, freedom, and gladness reigned throughout the land in such a degree as to deserve the title of the Golden Age." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 32.)
All this accords with Plato's story. He tells us that the rule of the Atlanteans extended to Italy; that they were a civilized, agricultural, and commercial people. The civilization of Rome was therefore an outgrowth directly from the civilization of Atlantis.
The Roman Saturnalia was a remembrance of the Atlantean colonization. It was a period of joy and festivity; master and slave met as equals; the distinctions of poverty and wealth were forgotten; no punishments for crime were inflicted; servants and slaves went about dressed in the clothes of their masters; and children received presents from their parents or relatives. It was a time of jollity and mirth, a recollection of the Golden Age. We find a reminiscence of it in the Roman "Carnival."
The third and last on the throne of the highest god was Zeus. We shall see him, a little farther on, by the aid of some mysterious engine overthrowing the rebels, the Titans, who rose against his power, amid the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder. He was called "the thunderer," and "the mighty thunderer." He was represented with thunder-bolts in his hand and an eagle at his feet.
During the time of Zeus Atlantis seems to have reached its greatest height of power. He was recognized as the father of the whole world; he everywhere rewarded uprightness, truth, faithfulness, and kindness; he was merciful to the poor, and punished the cruel. To illustrate his rule on earth the following story is told:
"Philemon and Baukis, an aged couple of the poorer class, were living peacefully and full of piety toward the gods in their cottage in Phrygia, when Zeus, who often visited the earth, disguised, to inquire into the behavior of men, paid a visit, in passing through Phrygia on such a journey, to these poor old people, and was received by them very kindly as a weary traveller, which he pretended to be. Bidding him welcome to the house, they set about preparing for their guest, who was accompanied by Hermes, as excellent a meal as they could afford, and for this purpose were about to kill the only goose they had left, when Zeus interfered; for he was touched by their kindliness and genuine piety, and that all the more because he had observed among the other inhabitants of the district nothing but cruelty of disposition and a habit of reproaching and despising the gods. To punish this conduct he determined to visit the country with a flood, but to save from it Philemon and Baukis, the good aged couple, and to reward them in a striking manner. To this end he revealed himself to them before opening the gates of the great flood, transformed their poor cottage on the hill into a splendid temple, installed the aged pair as his priest and priestess, and granted their prayer that they might both die together. When, after many years, death overtook them, they were changed into two trees, that side by side in the neighborhood—an oak and a linden." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 38.)
Here we have another reference to the Flood, and another identification with Atlantis.
Zeus was a kind of Henry VIII., and took to himself a number of wives. By Demeter (Ceres) he had Persephone (Proserpine); by Leto, Apollo and Artemis (Diana); by Dione, Aphrodite (Venus); by Semele, Dionysos (Bacchus); by Maia, Hermes (Mercury); by Alkmene, Hercules, etc., etc.
We have thus the whole family of gods and goddesses traced back to Atlantis.
Hera, or Juno, was the first and principal wife of Zeus. There were numerous conjugal rows between the royal pair, in which, say the poets, Juno was generally to blame. She was naturally jealous of the other wives of Zeus. Zeus on one occasion beat her, and threw her son Hephaestos out of Olympus; on another occasion he hung her out of Olympus with her arms tied and two great weights attached to her feet—a very brutal and ungentlemanly trick—but the Greeks transposed this into a beautiful symbol: the two weights, they say, represent the earth and sea, "an illustration of how all the phenomena of the visible sky were supposed to hang dependent on the highest god of heaven!" (Ibid., p. 47.) Juno probably regarded the transaction in an altogether different light; and she therefore United with Poseidon, the king's brother, and his daughter Athena, in a rebellion to put the old fellow in a strait-jacket, "and would have succeeded had not Thetis brought to his aid the sea-giant AEgaeon," probably a war-ship. She seems in the main, however, to have been a good wife, and was the type of all the womanly virtues.
Poseidon, the first king of Atlantis, according to Plato, was, according to Greek mythology, a brother of Zeus, and a son of Chronos. In the division of the kingdom he fell heir to the ocean and its islands, and to the navigable rivers; in other words, he was king of a maritime and commercial people. His symbol was the horse. "He was the first to train and employ horses;" that is to say, his people first domesticated the horse. This agrees with what Plato tells us of the importance attached to the horse in Atlantis, and of the baths and race-courses provided for him. He was worshipped in the island of Tenos "in the character of a physician," showing that he represented an advanced civilization. He was also master of an agricultural people; "the ram with the golden fleece for which the Argonauts sailed was the offspring of Poseidon." He carried in his hand a three-pronged symbol, the trident, doubtless an emblem of the three continents that were embraced in the empire of Atlantis. He founded many colonies along the shores of the Mediterranean; "he helped to build the walls of Troy;" the tradition thus tracing the Trojan civilization to an Atlantean source. He settled Attica and founded Athens, named after his niece Athena, daughter of Zeus, who had no mother, but had sprung from the head of Zeus, which probably signified that her mother's name was not known—she was a foundling. Athena caused the first olive-tree to grow on the Acropolis of Athens, parent of all the olive-trees of Greece. Poseidon seems to have had settlements at Corinth, AEgina, Naxos, and Delphi. Temples were erected to his honor in nearly all the seaport towns Of Greece. He sent a sea-monster, to wit, a slip, to ravage part of the Trojan territory.
In the "Iliad" Poseidon appears "as ruler of the sea, inhabiting a brilliant palace in its depths, traversing its surface in a chariot, or stirring the powerful billows until the earth shakes as they crash upon the shores. . . . He is also associated with well-watered plains and valleys." (Murray's "Mythology," p, 51.) The palace in the depths of the sea was the palace upon Olympus in Atlantis; the traversing of the sea referred to the movements of a mercantile race; the shaking of
POSEIDON, OR NEPTUNE.
the earth was an association with earthquakes; the "well-watered plains and valleys" remind us of the great plain of Atlantis described by Plato.
All the traditions of the coming of civilization into Europe point to Atlantis.
For instance, Keleos, who lived at Eleusis, near Athens, hospitably received Demeter, the Greek Ceres, the daughter of Poseidon, when she landed; and in return she taught him the use of the plough, and presented his son with the seed of barley, and sent him out to teach mankind bow to sow and utilize that grain. Dionysos, grandson of Poseidon, travelled "through all the known world, even into the remotest parts of India, instructing the people, as he proceeded, how to tend the vine, and how to practise many other arts of peace, besides teaching them the value of just and honorable dealings." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 119.) The Greeks celebrated great festivals in his honor down to the coming of Christianity.
"The Nymphs of Grecian mythology were a kind of middle beings between the gods and men, communicating with both, loved and respected by both; . . . living like the gods on ambrosia. In extraordinary cases they were summoned, it was believed, to the councils of the Olympian gods; but they usually remained in their particular spheres, in secluded grottoes and peaceful valleys, occupied in spinning, weaving, bathing, singing sweet songs, dancing, sporting, or accompanying deities who passed through their territories—hunting with Artemis (Diana), rushing about with Dionysos (Bacchus), making merry with Apollo or Hermes (Mercury), but always in a hostile attitude toward the wanton and excited Satyrs."
The Nymphs were plainly the female inhabitants of Atlantis dwelling on the plains, while the aristocracy lived on the higher lands. And this is confirmed by the fact that part of them were called Atlantids, offspring of Atlantis. The Hesperides were also "daughters of Atlas;" their mother was Hesperis, a personification of "the region of the West." Their home was "an island in the ocean," Off the north or west coast of Africa.
And here we find a tradition which not only points to Atlantis, but also shows some kinship to the legend in Genesis of the tree and the serpent.
Titaea, "a goddess of the earth," gave Zeus a tree bearing golden apples on it. This tree was put in the care of the Hesperides, but they could not resist the temptation to pluck and eat its fruit; thereupon a serpent named Ladon was put to watch the tree. Hercules slew the serpent, and gave the apples to the Hesperides.
Heracles (Hercules), we have seen, was a son of Zeus, king of Atlantis. One of his twelve labors (the tenth) was the carrying off the cattle of Geryon. The meaning of Geryon is "the red glow of the sunset." He dwelt on the island of "Erythea, in the remote west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules." Hercules took a ship, and after encountering a storm, reached the island and placed himself on Mount Abas. Hercules killed Geryon, stole the cattle, put them on the ship, and landed them safely, driving them "through Iberia, Gaul, and over the Alps down into Italy." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 257.) This was simply the memory of a cattle raid made by an uncivilized race upon the civilized, cattle-raising people of Atlantis.
It is not necessary to pursue the study of the gods of Greece any farther. They were simply barbarian recollections of the rulers of a great civilized people who in early days visited their shores, and brought with them the arts of peace.
Here then, in conclusion, are the proofs of our proposition that the gods of Greece had been the kings of Atlantis:
1. They were not the makers, but the rulers of the world.
2. They were human in their attributes; they loved, sinned, and fought battles, the very sites of which are given; they founded cities, and civilized the people of the shores of the Mediterranean.
3. They dwelt upon an island in the Atlantic," in the remote west. . . . where the sun shines after it has ceased to shine on Greece."
4. Their land was destroyed in a deluge.
5. They were ruled over by Poseidon and Atlas.
6. Their empire extended to Egypt and Italy and the shores of Africa, precisely as stated by Plato.
7. They existed during the Bronze Age and at the beginning of the Iron Age.
The entire Greek mythology is the recollection, by a degenerate race, of a vast, mighty, and highly civilized empire, which in a remote past covered large parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.
CHAPTER III.
THE GODS OF THE PHOENICIANS ALSO KINGS OF ATLANTIS.
Not alone were the gods of the Greeks the deified kings of Atlantis, but we find that the mythology of the Phoenicians was drawn from the same source.
For instance, we find in the Phoenician cosmogony that the Titans (Rephaim) derive their origin from the Phoenician gods Agrus and Agrotus. This connects the Phoenicians with that island in the remote west, in the midst of ocean, where, according to the Greeks, the Titans dwelt.
According to Sanchoniathon, Ouranos was the son of Autochthon, and, according to Plato, Autochthon was one of the ten kings of Atlantis. He married his sister Ge. He is the Uranos of the Greeks, who was the son of Gaea (the earth), whom he married. The Phoenicians tell us, "Ouranos had by Ge four sons: Ilus (El), who is called Chronos, and Betylus (Beth-El), and Dagon, which signifies bread-corn, and Atlas (Tammuz?)." Here, again, we have the names of two other kings of Atlantis. These four sons probably represented four races, the offspring of the earth. The Greek Uranos was the father of Chronos, and the ancestor of Atlas. The Phoenician god Ouranos had a great many other wives: his wife Ge was jealous; they quarrelled, and he attempted to kill the children he had by her. This is the legend which the Greeks told of Zeus and Juno. In the Phoenician mythology Chronos raised a rebellion against Ouranos, and, after a great battle, dethroned him. In the Greek legends it is Zeus who attacks and overthrows his father, Chronos. Ouranos had a daughter called Astarte (Ashtoreth), another called Rhea. "And Dagon, after he had found out bread-corn and the plough, was called Zeus-Arotrius."
We find also, in the Phoenician legends, mention made of Poseidon, founder and king of Atlantis.
Chronos gave Attica to his daughter Athena, as in the Greek legends. In a time of plague be sacrificed his son to Ouranos, and "circumcised himself, and compelled his allies to do the same thing." It would thus appear that this singular rite, practised as we have seen by the Atlantidae of the Old and New Worlds, the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the red men of America, dates back, as we might have expected, to Atlantis.
"Chronos visits the different regions of the habitable world."
He gave Egypt as a kingdom to the god Taaut, who had invented the alphabet. The Egyptians called him Thoth, and he was represented among them as "the god of letters, the clerk of the under-world," bearing a tablet, pen, and palm-branch.
This not only connects the Phoenicians with Atlantis, but shows the relations of Egyptian civilization to both Atlantis and the Phoenicians.
There can be no doubt that the royal personages who formed the gods of Greece were also the gods of the Phoenicians. We have seen the Autochthon of Plato reappearing in the Autochthon of the Phoenicians; the Atlas of Plato in the Atlas of the Phoenicians; the Poseidon of Plato in the Poseidon of the Phoenicians; while the kings Mestor and Mneseus of Plato are probably the gods Misor and Amynus of the Phoenicians.
Sanchoniathon tells us, after narrating all the discoveries by which the people advanced to civilization, that the Cabiri set down their records of the past by the command of the god Taaut, "and they delivered them to their successors and to foreigners, of whom one was Isiris (Osiris), the inventor of the three letters, the brother of Chua, who is called the first Phoenician." (Lenormant and Chevallier, "Ancient History of the East," vol. ii., p. 228.)
This would show that the first Phoenician came long after this line of the kings or gods, and that he was a foreigner, as compared with them; and, therefore, that it could not have been the Phoenicians proper who made the several inventions narrated by Sanchoniathon, but some other race, from whom the Phoenicians might have been descended.
And in the delivery of their records to the foreigner Osiris, the god of Egypt, we have another evidence that Egypt derived her civilization from Atlantis.
Max Mueller says:
"The Semitic languages also are all varieties of one form of speech. Though we do not know that primitive language from which the Semitic dialects diverged, yet we know that at one time such language must have existed. . . . We cannot derive Hebrew from Sanscrit, or Sanscrit from Hebrew; but we can well understand bow both may have proceeded from one common source. They are both channels supplied from one river, and they carry, though not always on the surface, floating materials of language which challenge comparison, and have already yielded satisfactory results to careful analyzers." ("Outlines of Philosophy of History," vol. i., p. 475.)
There was an ancient tradition among the Persians that the Phoenicians migrated from the shores of the Erythraean Sea, and this has been supposed to mean the Persian Gulf; but there was a very old city of Erythia, in utter ruin in the time of Strabo, which was built in some ancient age, long before the founding of Gades, near the site of that town, on the Atlantic coast of Spain. May not this town of Erythia have given its name to the adjacent sea? And this may have been the starting-point of the Phoenicians in their European migrations. It would even appear that there was an island of Erythea. In the Greek mythology the tenth labor of Hercules consisted in driving away the cattle of Geryon, who lived in the island of Erythea, "an island somewhere in the remote west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 257.) Hercules stole the cattle from this remote oceanic island, and, returning drove them "through Iberia, Gaul, over the Alps, and through Italy." (Ibid.) It is probable that a people emigrating from the Erythraean Sea, that is, from the Atlantic, first gave their name to a town on the coast of Spain, and at a later date to the Persian Gulf—as we have seen the name of York carried from England to the banks of the Hudson, and then to the Arctic Circle.
The builders of the Central American cities are reported to have been a bearded race. The Phoenicians, in common with the Indians, practised human sacrifices to a great extent; they worshipped fire and water, adopted the names of the animals whose skins they wore—that is to say, they had the totemic system—telegraphed by means of fires, poisoned their arrows, offered peace before beginning battle, and used drums. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 77.) |
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