Athanasius Kircher's map of Atlantis, placing it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, fromMundus Subterraneus 1669, published in Amsterdam. The map is oriented withsouth at the top.
Atlantis (Ancient Greek:Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος,romanized: Atlantìs nêsos,lit. 'island ofAtlas') is afictional island mentioned inPlato's worksTimaeus andCritias as part of anallegory on thehubris of nations. Purposely creating a literary contrast with theAchaemenid Empire,[1] the great land-based power that ruled the east (what the Greeks calledAsia),[a] Plato describes Atlantis as a naval empire from the west that had conquered most of Europe andLibya,[2] but then loses divine favor after an ill-fated campaign against a fictionalized Athens and subsequently submerges into theAtlantic Ocean. By portraying the victorious Athens in the image of his ideal state from theRepublic, Plato intended the Atlantis story to bear witness to the superiority of his concept of a state.[3][4]
Despite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up inutopian works of severalRenaissance writers, such asFrancis Bacon'sNew Atlantis andThomas More'sUtopia.[5][6] On the other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato's narrative as historical tradition, most famouslyIgnatius L. Donnelly in hisAtlantis: The Antediluvian World. Plato's vague indications of the time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time[b]) and the alleged location of Atlantis ("beyond thePillars of Hercules") gave rise to muchpseudoscientific speculation.[7] As a consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoriclost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films.
While present-dayphilologists andclassicists agree on the story's fictional nature,[8][c] there is still debate on what served as its inspiration. Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors from older traditions, as he did with thestory of Gyges.[9] This led a number of scholars to suggest possible inspiration of Atlantis fromEgyptian records of theThera eruption,[10][11] theSea Peoples invasion,[12] or theTrojan War.[13] Others have rejected this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato created an entirely fictional account,[14][15][16] drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events such as the failedAthenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC or the destruction ofHelike in 373 BC.[d]
Plato's dialogues
Timaeus
A fifteenth-century Latin translation of Plato'sTimaeus
The only primary sources for Atlantis are Plato's dialoguesTimaeus andCritias; all other mentions of the island are based on them. The dialogues claim to quoteSolon, who visited Egypt between 590 and 580 BC; they state that he translated Egyptian records of Atlantis.[17] Plato introduced Atlantis inTimaeus, written in 360 BC:
For it is related in our records how once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, 'thepillars of Heracles,' there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent.[18]
The four people appearing in those two dialogues are the politiciansCritias andHermocrates as well as the philosophersSocrates andTimaeus of Locri, although only Critias speaks of Atlantis. In his works Plato makes extensive use of theSocratic method in order to discuss contrary positions within the context of a supposition.
According to Critias, theHellenic deities of old divided the land so that each deity might have their own lot;Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger thanAncient Libya andAsia Minor combined,[19][20][e] but it was later sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean. Plato asserted that the Egyptians described Atlantis as an island consisting mostly of mountains in the northern portions and along the shore and encompassing a great plain in an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction three thousandstadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi]." Fifty stadia [9 km; 6 mi] from the coast was a mountain that was low on all sides ... broke it off all round about ... the central island itself was five stades in diameter [about 0.92 km; 0.57 mi].
In Plato's metaphorical tale, Poseidon fell in love with Cleito, the daughter ofEvenor and Leucippe, who bore him five pairs of male twins. The eldest of these,Atlas, was made rightful king of the entire island and the ocean (called the Atlantic Ocean in his honor), and was given the mountain of his birth and the surrounding area as hisfiefdom. Atlas's twin Gadeirus, or Eumelus in Greek, was given the extremity of the island toward the pillars of Hercules.[f] The other four pairs of twins—Ampheres and Evaemon,Mneseus and Autochthon, Elasippus and Mestor, and Azaes and Diaprepes—were also given "rule over many men, and a large territory."
Poseidon carved the mountain where his love dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circularmoats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from the mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain; they carved docks from the rock walls of the moats. Every passage to the city was guarded by gates and towers, and a wall surrounded each ring of the city. The walls were constructed of red, white, and black rock, quarried from the moats, and were covered withbrass,tin, and the precious metalorichalcum, respectively.
According to Critias, 9,000 years before his lifetime a war took place between those outside the Pillars of Hercules at theStrait of Gibraltar and those who dwelt within them. The Atlanteans had conquered the parts of Libya within the Pillars of Hercules, as far as Egypt, and the European continent as far asTyrrhenia, and had subjected its people to slavery. The Athenians led an alliance of resistors against the Atlantean empire, and as the alliance disintegrated, prevailed alone against the empire, liberating the occupied lands.
But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.[21]
ThelogographerHellanicus of Lesbos wrote an earlier work entitledAtlantis, of which only a few fragments survive. Hellanicus' work appears to have been a genealogical one concerning the daughters of Atlas (Ἀτλαντὶς in Greek means "of Atlas"),[10] but some authors have suggested a possible connection with Plato's island.John V. Luce notes that when Plato writes about the genealogy of Atlantis's kings, he writes in the same style as Hellanicus, suggesting a similarity between a fragment of Hellanicus's work and an account in theCritias.[10] Rodney Castleden suggests that Plato may have borrowed his title from Hellanicus, who may have based his work on an earlier work about Atlantis.[22]
Castleden has pointed out that Plato wrote of Atlantis in 359 BC, when he returned to Athens from Sicily. He notes a number of parallels between the physical organisation and fortifications ofSyracuse and Plato's description of Atlantis.[23] Gunnar Rudberg was the first who elaborated upon the idea that Plato's attempt to realize his political ideas in the city of Syracuse could have heavily inspired the Atlantis account.[24]
Interpretations
A reconstruction of theOikoumene (inhabited world), an ancient map based onHerodotus' description of the world, circa 450 BC
Ancient
Some ancient writers viewed Atlantis as fictional or metaphorical myth; others believed it to be real.[25]Aristotle believed that Plato, his teacher, had invented the island to teach philosophy.[17] The philosopherCrantor, a student of Plato's studentXenocrates, is cited often as an example of a writer who thought the story to be historical fact. His work, a commentary onTimaeus, is lost, butProclus, aNeoplatonist of the fifth century AD, reports on it.[26] The passage in question has been represented in the modern literature either as claiming that Crantor visited Egypt, had conversations with priests, and saw hieroglyphs confirming the story, or, as claiming that he learned about them from other visitors to Egypt.[27] Proclus wrote:
As for the whole of this account of the Atlanteans, some say that it is unadorned history, such as Crantor, the first commentator on Plato. Crantor also says that Plato's contemporaries used to criticize him jokingly for not being the inventor of his Republic but copying the institutions of the Egyptians. Plato took these critics seriously enough to assign to the Egyptians this story about the Athenians and Atlanteans, so as to make them say that the Athenians really once lived according to that system.
The next sentence is often translated "Crantor adds, that this is testified by the prophets of the Egyptians, who assert that these particulars [which are narrated by Plato] are written on pillars which are still preserved." But in the original, the sentence starts not with the name Crantor but with the ambiguousHe; whether this referred to Crantor or to Plato is the subject of considerable debate. Proponents of both Atlantis as a metaphorical myth and Atlantis as history have argued that the pronoun refers to Crantor.[28]
Alan Cameron argues that the pronoun should be interpreted as referring to Plato, and that, when Proclus writes that "we must bear in mind concerning this whole feat of the Athenians, that it is neither a mere myth nor unadorned history, although some take it as history and others as myth", he is treating "Crantor's view as mere personal opinion, nothing more; in fact he first quotes and then dismisses it as representing one of the two unacceptable extremes".[29]
Cameron also points out that whetherhe refers to Plato or to Crantor, the statement does not support conclusions such as Otto Muck's "Crantor came to Sais and saw there in the temple ofNeith the column, completely covered with hieroglyphs, on which the history of Atlantis was recorded. Scholars translated it for him, and he testified that their account fully agreed with Plato's account of Atlantis"[30] or J. V. Luce's suggestion that Crantor sent "a special enquiry to Egypt" and that he may simply be referring to Plato's own claims.[29]
Another passage from the commentary by Proclus on theTimaeus gives a description of the geography of Atlantis:
That an island of such nature and size once existed is evident from what is said by certain authors who investigated the things around the outer sea. For according to them, there were seven islands in that sea in their time, sacred toPersephone, and also three others of enormous size, one of which was sacred to Hades, another toAmmon, and another one between them to Poseidon, the extent of which was a thousand stadia [200 km; 124 mi]; and the inhabitants of it—they add—preserved the remembrance from their ancestors of the immeasurably large island of Atlantis which had really existed there and which for many ages had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea and which itself had like-wise been sacred to Poseidon. Now these things Marcellus has written in hisAethiopica.[31]
Marcellus remains unidentified.
Other ancient historians and philosophers who believed in the existence of Atlantis wereStrabo andPosidonius.[32] Some have theorized that, before the sixth century BC, the "Pillars of Hercules" may have applied to mountains on either side of theGulf of Laconia, and also may have been part of the pillar cult of the Aegean.[33][34] The mountains stood at either side of the southernmost gulf in Greece, the largest in the Peloponnese, and it opens onto the Mediterranean Sea. This would have placed Atlantis in the Mediterranean, lending credence to many details in Plato's discussion.
The fourth-century historianAmmianus Marcellinus, relying on a lost work byTimagenes, a historian writing in the first century BC, writes that theDruids ofGaul said that part of the inhabitants of Gaul had migrated there from distant islands. Some have understood Ammianus's testimony as a claim that at the time of Atlantis's sinking into the sea, its inhabitants fled to western Europe; but Ammianus, in fact, says that "the Drasidae (Druids) recall that a part of the population is indigenous but others also migrated in from islands and lands beyond theRhine" (Res Gestae 15.9), an indication that the immigrants came to Gaul from the north (Britain, the Netherlands, or Germany), not from a theorized location in the Atlantic Ocean to the south-west.[35] Instead, the Celts who dwelled along the ocean were reported to venerate twin gods, (Dioscori), who appeared to them coming from that ocean.[36]
Jewish and Christian
During the early first century, theHellenistic Jewish philosopherPhilo wrote about the destruction of Atlantis in hisOn the Eternity of the World, xxvi. 141, in a longer passage allegedly citing Aristotle's successorTheophrastus:[37]
... And the island of Atalantes [translator's spelling; original: "Ἀτλαντίς"] which was greater than Africa and Asia, as Plato says in the Timaeus, in one day and night was overwhelmed beneath the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies.[38]
The theologianJoseph Barber Lightfoot (Apostolic Fathers, 1885, II, p. 84) noted on this passage: "Clement may possibly be referring to some known, but hardly accessible land, lying without the pillars of Hercules. But more probably he contemplated some unknown land in the far west beyond the ocean, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato ..."[39]
Other early Christian writers wrote about Atlantis, although they had mixed views on whether it once existed or was an untrustworthy myth of pagan origin.[40]Tertullian believed Atlantis was once real and wrote that in the Atlantic Ocean once existed "[the isle] that was equal in size to Libya or Asia"[41] referring to Plato's geographical description of Atlantis. The early Christian apologist writerArnobius also believed Atlantis once existed, but blamed its destruction on pagans.[42]
... In like manner the philosopher Timaeus also describes this Earth as surrounded by the Ocean, and the Ocean as surrounded by the more remote earth. For he supposes that there is to westward an island, Atlantis, lying out in the Ocean, in the direction of Gadeira (Cadiz), of an enormous magnitude, and relates that the ten kings having procured mercenaries from the nations in this island came from the earth far away, and conquered Europe and Asia, but were afterwards conquered by the Athenians, while that island itself was submerged by God under the sea. Both Plato and Aristotle praise this philosopher, and Proclus has written a commentary on him. He himself expresses views similar to our own with some modifications, transferring the scene of the events from the east to the west. Moreover he mentions those ten generations as well as that earth which lies beyond the Ocean. And in a word it is evident that all of them borrow from Moses, and publish his statements as their own.[44]
A map showing the supposed extent of the Atlantean Empire, fromIgnatius L. Donnelly'sAtlantis: the Antediluvian World, 1882[45]
Modern
Aside from Plato's original account, modern interpretations regarding Atlantis are an amalgamation of diverse, speculative movements that began in the sixteenth century,[46] when scholars began to identify Atlantis with theNew World.Francisco Lopez de Gomara was the first to state that Plato was referring to America, as didFrancis Bacon andAlexander von Humboldt; Janus Joannes Bircherod said in 1663orbe novo non-novo ("the New World is not new").Athanasius Kircher accepted Plato's account as literally true, describing Atlantis as a small continent in the Atlantic Ocean.[17]
Contemporary perceptions of Atlantis share roots withMayanism, which can be traced to the beginning of theModern Age, when European imaginations were fueled by their initial encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Americas.[47] From this era sprangapocalyptic andutopian visions that would inspire many subsequent generations of theorists.[47]
The Flemish cartographer and geographerAbraham Ortelius is believed to have been the first person to imagine that the continents were joined beforedrifting to their present positions. In the 1596 edition of hisThesaurus Geographicus he wrote: "Unless it be a fable, the island of Gadir or Gades [Cádiz] will be the remaining part of the island of Atlantis or America, which was not sunk (as Plato reports in theTimaeus) so much as torn away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and flood... The traces of the ruptures are shown by the projections of Europe and Africa and the indentations of America in the parts of the coasts of these three said lands that face each other to anyone who, using a map of the world, carefully considered them. So that anyone may say withStrabo in Book 2, that what Plato says of the island of Atlantis on the authority of Solon is not a figment."[48]
Early influential literature
The term "utopia" (from "no place") was coined bySir Thomas More in his sixteenth-century work offictionUtopia.[49] Inspired byPlato's Atlantis and travelers' accounts of theAmericas, More described an imaginary land set in theNew World.[50] His idealistic vision established a connection between the Americas and utopian societies, a theme that Bacon discussed inThe New Atlantis (c. 1623).[47] A character in the narrative gives a history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato's and places Atlantis in America. People had begun believing that theMayan andAztec ruins could possibly be the remnants of Atlantis.[49]
Impact of Mayanism
Much speculation began as to the origins of theMaya, which led to a variety of narratives and publications that tried to rationalize the discoveries within the context of theBible and that had undertones ofracism in their connections between the Old and New World. TheEuropeans believed theindigenous people to be inferior and incapable of building that which was now in ruins and by sharing a common history, they insinuated that another race must have been responsible.
The French scholar Brasseur de Bourbourg traveled extensively through Mesoamerica in the mid-1800s, and was renowned for his translations ofMayan texts, most notably the sacred bookPopol Vuh, as well as a comprehensive history of the region. Soon after these publications, however, Brasseur de Bourbourg lost his academic credibility, due to his claim that theMaya peoples had descended from theToltecs, people he believed were the surviving population of the racially superior civilization of Atlantis.[51] His work combined with the skillful, romantic illustrations ofJean Frederic Waldeck, which visually alluded toEgypt and other aspects of theOld World, created an authoritativefantasy that excited much interest in the connections between worlds.
Inspired by Brasseur de Bourbourg's diffusion theories, the pseudoarchaeologist Augustus Le Plongeon traveled to Mesoamerica and performed some of the firstexcavations of many famous Mayan ruins. Le Plongeon invented narratives, such as the kingdom ofMu saga, which romantically drew connections to him, his wife Alice, andEgyptian deitiesOsiris andIsis, as well as toHeinrich Schliemann, who had just discovered the ancient city ofTroy fromHomer'sepic poetry (that had been described as merely mythical).[52][page range too broad] He also believed that he had found connections between theGreek andMayan languages, which produced anarrative of the destruction of Atlantis.[53]
Ignatius Donnelly
The 1882 publication ofAtlantis: the Antediluvian World byIgnatius L. Donnelly stimulated much popular interest in Atlantis. He was greatly inspired by early works inMayanism, and like them, attempted to establish that all knownancient civilizations were descended from Atlantis, which he saw as a technologically sophisticated, more advancedculture. Donnelly drew parallels between creation stories in the Old and New Worlds, attributing the connections to Atlantis, where he believed the BiblicalGarden of Eden existed.[54] As implied by the title of his book, he also believed that Atlantis was destroyed by theGreat Flood mentioned in the Bible.
Donnelly is credited as the "father of the nineteenth century Atlantis revival" and is the reason themyth endures today.[55] He unintentionally promoted an alternative method of inquiry to history and science, and the idea that myths contain hidden information that opens them to "ingenious" interpretation by people who believe they have new or special insight.[56]
Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists
Map of Atlantis according toWilliam Scott-Elliot (The Story of Atlantis, Russian edition, 1910)
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the founder of theTheosophists, took upDonnelly's interpretations when she wroteThe Secret Doctrine (1888), which she claimed was originally dictated in Atlantis. She maintained that the Atlanteans were cultural heroes (contrary toPlato, who describes them mainly as a military threat). She believed in a form of racialevolution (as opposed to primate evolution). In her process of evolution the Atlanteans were the fourth "root race", which were succeeded by the fifth, the "Aryan race", which she identified with the modern human race.[49]
In her book, Blavatsky reported that the civilization of Atlantis reached its peak between 1,000,000 and 900,000 years ago, but destroyed itself through internalwarfare brought about by the dangerous use ofpsychic andsupernatural powers of the inhabitants.Rudolf Steiner, the founder ofanthroposophy andWaldorf Schools, along with other well known Theosophists, such asAnnie Besant, also wrote ofcultural evolution in much the same vein. Other occultists followed the same lead, at least to the point of tracing the lineage of occult practices back to Atlantis. Among the most famous isDion Fortune in herEsoteric Orders and Their Work.[57]
Drawing on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner andHanns Hörbiger,Egon Friedell started his bookKulturgeschichte des Altertums [de], and thus his historical analysis of antiquity, with the ancient culture of Atlantis. The book was published in 1940.
Blavatsky was also inspired by the work of the 18th-centuryastronomerJean-Sylvain Bailly, who had "Orientalized" the Atlantismyth in his mythical continent ofHyperborea, a reference toGreek myths featuring a Northern European region of the same name, home to a giant, godlike race.[58][59] Dan Edelstein claims that her reshaping of this theory inThe Secret Doctrine provided theNazis with a mythological precedent and a pretext for their ideological platform andtheir subsequent genocide.[58] However, Blavatsky's writings mention that the Atlantean were in fact olive-skinned peoples with Mongoloid traits who were the ancestors of modernNative Americans,Mongolians, andMalayans.[60][61][62]
The idea that the Atlanteans wereHyperborean,Nordic supermen who originated in the Northern Atlantic or even in the far North, was popular in the Germanariosophic movement around 1900, propagated byGuido von List and others.[63] It gave its name to theThule Gesellschaft, an antisemite Münich lodge, which preceded the GermanNazi Party (seeThule). The scholarsKarl Georg Zschaetzsch [de] (1920) andHerman Wirth (1928) were the first to speak of a "Nordic-Atlantean" or "Aryan-Nordic" master race that spread from Atlantis over the Northern Hemisphere and beyond. The Hyperboreans were contrasted with the Jewish people. Party ideologistAlfred Rosenberg (inThe Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930) and SS-leaderHeinrich Himmler made it part of the official doctrine.[64] The idea was followed up by the adherents ofEsoteric Nazism such asJulius Evola (1934) and, more recently,Miguel Serrano (1978).
The idea of Atlantis as the homeland of the Caucasian race would contradict the beliefs of older Esoteric and Theosophic groups, which taught that the Atlanteans were non-Caucasian brown-skinned peoples. Modern Esoteric groups, including the Theosophic Society, do not consider Atlantean society to have been superior or Utopian—they rather consider it a lower stage of evolution.[65]
Edgar Cayce
The clairvoyantEdgar Cayce spoke frequently of Atlantis. During his "life readings", he claimed that many of his subjects werereincarnations of people who had lived there. By tapping into theircollective consciousness, the "Akashic Records" (a term borrowed fromTheosophy),[66] Cayce declared that he was able to give detailed descriptions of the lost continent.[67] He also asserted that Atlantis would "rise" again in the 1960s (sparking much popularity of the myth in that decade) and that there is a "Hall of Records" beneath theEgyptian Sphinx which holds the historical texts of Atlantis.
Recent times
Ascontinental drift became widely accepted during the 1960s, and the increased understanding ofplate tectonics demonstrated the impossibility of a lost continent in the geologically recent past,[68] most "Lost Continent" theories of Atlantis began to wane in popularity.
The continuing industry of discovering Atlantis illustrates the dangers of reading Plato. For he is clearly using what has become a standard device of fiction—stressing the historicity of an event (and the discovery of hitherto unknown authorities) as an indication that what follows is fiction.The idea is that we should use the story to examine our ideas of government and power. We have missed the point if instead of thinking about these issues we go off exploring the sea bed. The continuing misunderstanding of Plato as historian here enables us to see why his distrust of imaginative writing is sometimes justified.[69]
One of the proposed explanations for the historical context of the Atlantis story is that it serves as Plato's warning to his fellow citizens against their striving for naval power.[16]
Kenneth Feder points out that Critias's story in theTimaeus provides a major clue. In the dialogue, Critias says, referring to Socrates' hypothetical society:
And when you were speaking yesterday about your city and citizens, the tale which I have just been repeating to you came into my mind, and I remarked with astonishment how, by some mysterious coincidence, you agreed in almost every particular with the narrative of Solon. ...[70]
Feder quotes A. E. Taylor, who wrote, "We could not be told much more plainly that the whole narrative of Solon's conversation with the priests and his intention of writing the poem about Atlantis are an invention of Plato's fancy."[71]
Since Donnelly's day, there have been dozens of locations proposed for Atlantis, to the point where the name has become a generic concept, divorced from the specifics of Plato's account. This is reflected in the fact that many proposed sites are not within the Atlantic at all. Few today are scholarly or archaeological hypotheses, while others have been made bypsychic (e.g.,Edgar Cayce) or otherpseudoscientific means. (The Atlantis researchers Jacques Collina-Girard and Georgeos Díaz-Montexano, for instance, each claim the other's hypothesis is pseudoscience.)[72] Many of the proposed sites share some of the characteristics of the Atlantis story (water, catastrophic end, relevant time period), but none has been demonstrated to be a true historical Atlantis.
TheSantorini caldera on 24 June 2022, taken from the International Space Station. From theMinoan eruption event, and the 1964 discovery ofAkrotiri on the island, this location is one of many sites purported to have been the location of Atlantis.
TheThera eruption, dated to the seventeenth or sixteenth century BC, caused a largetsunami that some experts hypothesize devastated theMinoan civilization on the nearby island of Crete, further leading some to believe that this may have been the catastrophe that inspired the story.[80][81] In the area of theBlack Sea the following locations have been proposed:Bosporus andAncomah (a legendary place nearTrabzon).
Others have noted that, before the sixth century BC, the mountains on either side of theLaconian Gulf were called the "Pillars of Hercules",[33][34] and they could be the geographical location being described in ancient reports upon which Plato was basing his story. The mountains stood at either side of the southernmost gulf in Greece, the largest in thePeloponnese, and that gulf opens onto the Mediterranean Sea.
If from the beginning of discussions, misinterpretation of Gibraltar as the location rather than being at the Gulf of Laconia, would lend itself to many erroneous concepts regarding the location of Atlantis. Plato may have not been aware of the difference. The Laconian pillars open to the south toward Crete and beyond which is Egypt. TheThera eruption and theLate Bronze Age collapse affected that area and might have been the devastation to which the sources used by Plato referred. Significant events such as these would have been likely material for tales passed from one generation to another for almost a thousand years.
In the Atlantic Ocean
The mid-atlantic ridge in the Atlantic
The location of Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean has a certain appeal given the closely related names. Popular culture often places Atlantis there, perpetuating the original Platonic setting as they understand it. TheCanary Islands andMadeira Islands have been identified as a possible location,[82][83][84][85] west of the Straits of Gibraltar, but in relative proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. Detailed studies of their geomorphology and geology have demonstrated, however, that they have been steadily uplifted, without any significant periods of subsidence, over the last four million years, by geologic processes such as erosional unloading, gravitational unloading, lithospheric flexure induced by adjacent islands, and volcanic underplating.[86][87]
Various islands or island groups in the Atlantic were also identified as possible locations, notably theAzores.[84][85] Similarly, cores of sediment covering the ocean bottom surrounding the Azores and other evidence demonstrate that it has been an undersea plateau for millions of years.[88][89] The area is known for its volcanism however, which is associated with rifting along theAzores triple junction. The spread of the crust along the existing faults and fractures has produced many volcanic and seismic events.[90]
The area is supported by a buoyant upwelling in the deeper mantle, which some associate with anAzores hotspot.[91] Most of the volcanic activity has occurred primarily along theTerceira Rift. From the beginning of the islands' settlement, around the 15th century, there have been about 30 volcanic eruptions (terrestrial and submarine) as well as numerous, powerful earthquakes.[92] The island ofSão Miguel in the Azores is the site of theSete Cidades volcano and caldera, which are the byproducts of historical volcanic activity in the Azores.[93]
The submerged island ofSpartel near the Strait of Gibraltar has also been suggested.[94]
In Europe
A map showing the hypothetical extent ofDoggerland (c. 8,000 BC), which provided a land bridge between Great Britain and continental EuropeA map showing the hypothetical extent of Doggerland from now back to theWeichselian glaciation
Several hypotheses place the sunken island in northern Europe, includingDoggerland in theNorth Sea, andSweden (byOlof Rudbeck inAtland, 1672–1702). Doggerland, as well as Viking Bergen Island, is thought to have been flooded by amegatsunami following theStoregga Slide of c. 6100 BC. Some have proposed theCeltic Shelf as a possible location, and that there is a link to Ireland.[95] In 2004, Swedishphysiographist Ulf Erlingsson[96] proposed that the legend of Atlantis was based on Stone Age Ireland. He later stated that he does not believe that Atlantis ever existed but maintained that his hypothesis that its description matches Ireland's geography has a 99.8% probability. The director of theNational Museum of Ireland commented that there was no archaeology supporting this.[97]
Spanish scientists have dismissed Freund's speculations, claiming that he sensationalised their work. The anthropologist Juan Villarías-Robles, who works with theSpanish National Research Council, said, "Richard Freund was a newcomer to our project and appeared to be involved in his own very controversial issue concerning King Solomon's search for ivory and gold inTartessos, the well documented settlement in the Doñana area established in the first millennium BC", and described Freund's claims as "fanciful".[103]
A similar theory had previously been put forward by a German researcher, Rainer W. Kühne, that is based only on satellite imagery and places Atlantis in theMarismas de Hinojos, north of the city ofCádiz.[94] Before that, the historianAdolf Schulten had stated in the 1920s that Plato had used Tartessos as the basis for his Atlantis myth.[104]
In order to give his account of Atlantisverisimilitude, Plato mentions that the story was heard bySolon in Egypt, and transmitted orally over several generations through the family of Dropides, until it reached Critias, a dialogue speaker inTimaeus andCritias.[111] Solon had supposedly tried to adapt the Atlantisoral tradition into a poem (that if published, was to be greater than the works ofHesiod andHomer). While it was never completed, Solon passed on the story to Dropides. Modern classicists deny the existence of Solon's Atlantis poem and the story as an oral tradition.[112]
Instead, Plato is thought to be the sole inventor or fabricator.Hellanicus of Lesbos used the word "Atlantis" as the title for a poem published before Plato,[113] a fragment of which may beOxyrhynchus Papyrus 11, 1359.[114] This work only describes the Atlantides, the daughters of Atlas, and has no relation to Plato's Atlantis account.
In the new era, the third century ADNeoplatonist Zoticus wrote an epic poem based on Plato's account of Atlantis.[115] Plato's work may already have inspiredparodic imitation, however. Writing only a few decades after theTimaeus andCritias, the historianTheopompus ofChios wrote of a land beyond the ocean known asMeropis. This description was included in Book 8 of hisPhilippica, which contains a dialogue betweenSilenus and KingMidas. Silenus describes the Meropids, a race of men who grow to twice normal size, and inhabit two cities on the island of Meropis:Eusebes (Εὐσεβής, "Pious-town") andMachimos (Μάχιμος, "Fighting-town").[116]
He also reports that an army of ten million soldiers crossed the ocean to conquerHyperborea, but abandoned this proposal when they realized that the Hyperboreans were the luckiest people on earth. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath has argued that these and other details of Silenus' story are meant as imitation and exaggeration of the Atlantis story, by parody, for the purpose of exposing Plato's ideas to ridicule.[116]
Utopias and dystopias
The creation ofUtopian and dystopian fictions was renewed after the Renaissance, most notably in Francis Bacon'sNew Atlantis (1627), the description of an ideal society that he located off the western coast of America. Thomas Heyrick (1649–1694) followed him with "The New Atlantis" (1687), a satirical poem in three parts. His new continent of uncertain location, perhaps even a floating island either in the sea or the sky, serves as background for his exposure of what he described in a second edition as "A True Character of Popery and Jesuitism".[117]
The title ofThe New Atalantis byDelarivier Manley (1709), distinguished from the two others by the single letter, is an equally dystopian work but set this time on a fictional Mediterranean island.[118] In it sexual violence and exploitation is made a metaphor for the hypocritical behaviour of politicians in their dealings with the general public.[119] In Manley's case, the target of satire was theWhig Party, while in David Maclean Parry'sThe Scarlet Empire (1906) it isSocialism as practised in foundered Atlantis.[120] It was followed in Russia byVelimir Khlebnikov's poemThe Fall of Atlantis (Gibel' Atlantidy, 1912), which is set in a future rationalist dystopia that has discovered the secret of immortality and is so dedicated to progress that it has lost touch with the past. When the high priest of this ideology is tempted by a slave girl into an act of irrationality, he murders her and precipitates a second flood, above which her severed head floats vengefully among the stars.[121]
A slightly later work,The Ancient of Atlantis (Boston, 1915) by Albert Armstrong Manship, expounds the Atlantean wisdom that is to redeem the earth. Its three parts consist of a verse narrative of the life and training of an Atlantean wise one, followed by his Utopian moral teachings and then a psychic drama set in modern times in which a reincarnated child embodying the lost wisdom is reborn on earth.[122]
The story of Atlantis is retold by Catalan authorJacint Verdaguer inL'Atlantida (1877). After the sinking of the former continent, Hercules travels east across the Atlantic to found the city ofBarcelona and then departs westward again to theHesperides. The story is told by a hermit to a shipwrecked mariner, who is inspired to follow in his tracks and so "call the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old". This mariner, of course, wasChristopher Columbus.[123]
Verdaguer's poem was written inCatalan, but was widely translated in both Europe and Hispano-America.[124] One response was the similarly entitled ArgentinianAtlantida ofOlegario Víctor Andrade (1881), which sees in "Enchanted Atlantis that Plato foresaw, a golden promise to the fruitful race" of Latins.[125] The bad example of the colonising world remains, however.José Juan Tablada characterises its threat in his "De Atlántida" (1894) through the beguiling picture of the lost world populated by the underwater creatures of Classical myth, among whom is theSiren of its final stanza with
her eye on the keel of the wandering vessel that in passing deflowers the sea's smooth mirror, launching into the night her amorous warbling and the dulcet lullaby of her treacherous voice![126]
There is a similar ambivalence inJanus Djurhuus' six-stanza "Atlantis" (1917), where a celebration of theFaroese linguistic revival grants it an ancient pedigree by linking Greek to Norse legend. In the poem a female figure rising from the sea against a background of Classical palaces is recognised as a priestess of Atlantis. The poet recalls "that the Faroes lie there in the north Atlantic Ocean/ where before lay the poet-dreamt lands," but also that in Norse belief, such a figure only appears to those about to drown.[127]
A land lost in the distance
A Faroe Islands postage stamp honoringJanus Djurhuus's poem "Atlantis"
The fact that Atlantis is a lost land has made of it a metaphor for something no longer attainable. For the American poetEdith Willis Linn Forbes, "The Lost Atlantis" stands for idealisation of the past; the present moment can only be treasured once that is realised.[128]Ella Wheeler Wilcox finds the location of "The Lost Land" (1910) in one's carefree youthful past.[129] Similarly, for the Irish poetEavan Boland in "Atlantis, a lost sonnet" (2007), the idea was defined when "the old fable-makers searched hard for a word/ to convey that what is gone is gone forever".[130]
For some male poets too, the idea of Atlantis is constructed from what cannot be obtained.Charles Bewley in hisNewdigate Prize poem (1910) thinks it grows from dissatisfaction with one's condition,
And, because life is partly sweet And ever girt about with pain, We take the sweetness, and are fain To set it free from grief's alloy
in a dream of Atlantis.[131] Similarly for the AustralianGary Catalano in a 1982 prose poem, it is "a vision that sank under the weight of its own perfection".[132]W. H. Auden, however, suggests a way out of such frustration through the metaphor of journeying toward Atlantis in his poem of 1941.[133] While travelling, he advises the one setting out, you will meet with many definitions of the goal in view, only realising at the end that the way has all the time led inward.[134]
Epic verse narratives
A few late-19th century verse narratives complement thegenre fiction that was beginning to be written at the same period. Two of them report the disaster that overtook the continent as related by long-lived survivors. InFrederick Tennyson'sAtlantis (1888), an ancient Greek mariner sails west and discovers an inhabited island which is all that remains of the former kingdom. He learns of its end and views the shattered remnant of its former glory, from which a few had escaped to set up the Mediterranean civilisations.[135] In the second,Mona, Queen of Lost Atlantis: An Idyllic Re-embodiment of Long Forgotten History (Los Angeles CA 1925) by James Logue Dryden (1840–1925), the story is told in a series of visions. A Seer is taken to Mona's burial chamber in the ruins of Atlantis, where she revives and describes the catastrophe. There follows a survey of the lost civilisations of Hyperborea and Lemuria as well as Atlantis, accompanied by much spiritualist lore.[136]
William Walton Hoskins (1856–1919) admits to the readers of hisAtlantis and other poems (Cleveland OH, 1881), that he is only 24. Its melodramatic plot concerns the poisoning of the descendant of god-born kings. The usurping poisoner is poisoned in his turn, following which the continent is swallowed in the waves.[137] Asian gods people the landscape ofThe Lost Island (Ottawa 1889) by Edward Taylor Fletcher (1816–97). An angel foresees impending catastrophe and that the people will be allowed to escape if their semi-divine rulers will sacrifice themselves.[138] A final example, Edward N. Beecher'sThe Lost Atlantis or The Great Deluge of All (Cleveland OH, 1898) is just a doggerel vehicle for its author's opinions: that the continent was the location of the Garden of Eden; that Darwin's theory of evolution is correct, as are Donnelly's views.[139]
Atlantis was to become a theme in Russia following the 1890s, taken up in unfinished poems byValery Bryusov andKonstantin Balmont, as well as in a drama by the schoolgirlLarissa Reisner.[140] One other long narrative poem was published in New York by George V. Golokhvastoff. His 250-pageThe Fall of Atlantis (1938) records how a high priest, distressed by the prevailing degeneracy of the ruling classes, seeks to create an androgynous being from royal twins as a means to overcome this polarity. When he is unable to control the forces unleashed by his occult ceremony, the continent is destroyed.[141]
The Spanish composerManuel de Falla worked on a dramaticcantata based on Verdaguer'sL'Atlántida, during the last 20 years of his life.[142] The name has been affixed to symphonies byJānis Ivanovs (Symphony 4, 1941),[143]Richard Nanes,[144] and Vaclav Buzek (2009).[145] There was also the symphonic celebration ofAlan Hovhaness: "Fanfare for the New Atlantis" (Op. 281, 1975).[146]
The Bohemian-American composer and arrangerVincent Frank Safranek wroteAtlantis (The Lost Continent) Suite in Four Parts; I. Nocturne and Morning Hymn of Praise, II. A Court Function, III. "I Love Thee" (The Prince and Aana), IV. The Destruction of Atlantis, for military (concert) band in 1913.[147]
TheoperaDer Kaiser von Atlantis (The Emperor of Atlantis) was written in 1943 byViktor Ullmann with alibretto byPetr Kien, while they were both inmates at theNazi concentration camp ofTheresienstadt. The Nazis did not allow it to be performed, assuming the opera's reference to an Emperor of Atlantis to be a satire onHitler. Though Ullmann and Kien were murdered inAuschwitz, the manuscript survived and was performed for the first time in 1975 in Amsterdam.[148][149][150]
François de Nomé'sThe Fall of AtlantisNicholas Roerich'sThe Last of AtlantisLéon Bakst's vision of cosmic catastrophe
Painting and sculpture
Paintings of the submersion of Atlantis are comparatively rare. In the seventeenth century there wasFrançois de Nomé'sThe Fall of Atlantis, which shows a tidal wave surging toward a Baroque city frontage. The style of architecture apart, it is not very different fromNicholas Roerich'sThe Last of Atlantis of 1928.
The most dramatic depiction of the catastrophe wasLéon Bakst'sAncient Terror (Terror Antiquus, 1908), although it does not name Atlantis directly. It is a mountain-top view of a rocky bay breached by the sea, which is washing inland about the tall structures of an ancient city. A streak of lightning crosses the upper half of the painting, while below it rises the impassive figure of an enigmatic goddess who holds a blue dove between her breasts.Vyacheslav Ivanov identified the subject as Atlantis in a public lecture on the painting given in 1909, the year it was first exhibited, and he has been followed by other commentators in the years since.[151]
Sculptures referencing Atlantis have often been stylized single figures. One of the earliest wasEinar Jónsson'sThe King of Atlantis (1919–1922), now in the garden of his museum inReykjavík. It represents a single figure, clad in a belted skirt and wearing a large triangular helmet, who sits on an ornate throne supported between two young bulls.[152] The walking female entitledAtlantis (1946) byIvan Meštrović[153] was from a series inspired by ancient Greek figures[154] with the symbolical meaning of unjustified suffering.[155]
In the case of theBrussels fountain feature known asThe Man of Atlantis (2003) by the Belgian sculptorLuk van Soom [nl], the 4-metre tall figure wearing a diving suit steps from a plinth into the spray.[156] It looks light-hearted but the artist's comment on it makes a serious point: "Because habitable land will be scarce, it is no longer improbable that we will return to the water in the long term. As a result, a portion of the population will mutate into fish-like creatures. Global warming and rising water levels are practical problems for the world in general and here in the Netherlands in particular".[157]
Robert Smithson'sHypothetical Continent – Map of Broken Clear Glass: Atlantis was first created as a photographical project inLoveladies, New Jersey, in 1969,[158] and then recreated as a gallery installation of broken glass.[159] On this he commented that he liked "landscapes that suggest prehistory", and this is borne out by the original conceptual drawing of the work that includes an inset map of the continent sited off the coast of Africa and at the straits into the Mediterranean.[160]
^Plato's contemporaries pictured the world as consisting of only Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia (see the map ofHecataeus of Miletus).
^Theframe story inCritias tells about an alleged visit of the Athenian lawmakerSolon (c. 638 BC – 558 BC) to Egypt, where he was told the Atlantis story that supposedly occurred 9,000 years before his time.
^"As Smith discusses in the opening article in this theme issue, the lost island-continent was – in all likelihood – entirely Plato's invention for the purposes of illustrating arguments around Grecian polity. Archaeologists broadly agree with the view that Atlantis is quite simply 'utopia' (Doumas, 2007), a stance also taken by classical philologists, who interpret Atlantis as a metaphorical rather than an actual place (Broadie, 2013; Gill, 1979; Nesselrath, 2002). One might consider the question as being already reasonably solved but despite the general expert consensus on the matter, countless attempts have been made at finding Atlantis." (Dawson & Hayward, 2016)
^Plato'sTimaeus is usually dated 360 BC; it was followed by hisCritias.
^Also it has been interpreted that Plato or someone before him in the chain of the oral or written tradition of the report, accidentally changed the very similar Greek words for "bigger than" ("meson") and "between" ("mezon").[20]
^The name is a back-formation fromGades, the Greek name forCádiz.
^David, Ephraim (1984). "The Problem of Representing Plato's Ideal State in Action".Riv. Fil.112:33–53.
^Mumford, Lewis (1965). "Utopia, the City and the Machine".Daedalus.94 (2):271–292.JSTOR20026910.
^Hartmann, Anna-Maria (2015). "The Strange Antiquity of Francis Bacon'sNew Atlantis".Renaissance Studies.29 (3):375–393.doi:10.1111/rest.12084.S2CID161272260.
^Görgemanns, Herwig (2000). "Wahrheit und Fiktion in Platons Atlantis-Erzählung".Hermes.128 (4):405–419.JSTOR4477385.
^Zangger, Eberhard (1993). "Plato's Atlantis Account – A Distorted Recollection of the Trojan War".Oxford Journal of Archaeology.12 (1):77–87.doi:10.1111/j.1468-0092.1993.tb00283.x.
^Gill, Christopher (1979). "Plato's Atlantis Story and the Birth of Fiction".Philosophy and Literature.3 (1):64–78.doi:10.1353/phl.1979.0005.S2CID170851163.
^Naddaf, Gerard (1994). "The Atlantis Myth: An Introduction to Plato's Later Philosophy of History".Phoenix.48 (3):189–209.doi:10.2307/3693746.JSTOR3693746.
^Nesselrath, HG (2005). 'Where the Lord of the Sea Grants Passage to Sailors through the Deep-blue Mere no More: The Greeks and the Western Seas',Greece & Rome, vol. 52, pp. 153–171 [pp. 161–171].
^Plato."Timaeus".Perseus Digital Library (in Ancient Greek). Section 24a. Retrieved25 August 2021.τὰ γράμματα λαβόντες
^Muck, Otto Heinrich,The Secret of Atlantis, Translation by Fred Bradley ofAlles über Atlantis (Econ Verlag GmbH, Düsseldorf-Wien, 1976), Times Books, a division of Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., Inc., New YorkISBN978-0-671-82392-4
^Proclus,Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, pp. 117.10–30 (=FGrHist 671 F 1), trans. Taylor, Nesselrath.
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^Siculus, Didorus.Bibliotheca historica.Section 4.56.4:"And the writers even offer proofs of these things, pointing out that the Celts who dwell along the ocean venerate the Dioscori above any of the gods, since they have a tradition handed down from ancient times that these gods appeared among them coming from the ocean. Moreover, the country which skirts the ocean bears, they say, not a few names which are derived from the Argonauts and the Dioscori."
^T. Franke,Aristotle and Atlantis, 2012; pp. 131–133
^Feder, KL.Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, Mountain View, Mayfield 1999.ISBN978-0-07-811697-1
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^Ortelius, Abraham (1596)."Gadiricus".Thesaurus Geographicus. Antwerp: Plantin. Retrieved12 May 2015.
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^Evans, R. Tripp (2004).Romancing the Maya: Mexican Antiquity in the American Imagination, 1820–1915. Austin: University of Texas Press. p. 113.ISBN978-0-292-70247-9.
^Evans, R. Tripp (2004).Romancing the Maya: Mexican Antiquity in the American Imagination, 1820–1915. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 141–146.ISBN978-0-292-70247-9.
^abEdelstein, Dan (2006). "Hyperborean Atlantis: Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Madame Blavatsky, and the Nazi Myth".Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture.35: 267–291 [p. 268].doi:10.1353/sec.2010.0055.ISSN0360-2370.S2CID144152893.
^Afonso, Leoncio (1980). "El mito de la Atlántida".Geografía física de Canarias: Geografía de Canarias (in Spanish). Editorial Interinsular Canaria. p. 11.ISBN978-84-85543-15-1.
^Rodríguez Hernández, María Jesús (2011).Imágenes de Canarias 1764–1927. Historia y ciencia (in Spanish). Fundación Canaria Orotava. p. 38.ISBN978-84-614-5110-4.
^abSweeney, Emmet (2010).Atlantis: The Evidence of Science. Algora Publishing. p. 84.ISBN978-0-87586-771-7.
^abVidal-Naquet, Pierre (2005).L'Atlantide: Petite histoire d'un mythe platonicien (in French). Belles Lettres. p. 92.ISBN978-2-251-38071-1.
^Menendez, I., P.G. Silva, M. Martín-Betancor, F.J. Perez-Torrado, H. Guillou, and S. Scaillet, 2009,Fluvial dissection, isostatic uplift, and geomorphological evolution of volcanic islands (Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain) Geomorphology. v. 102, no.1, pp. 189–202.
^Meco J., S. Scaillet, H. Guillou, A. Lomoschitz, J.C. Carracedo, J. Ballester, J.-F. Betancort, and A. Cilleros, 2007,Evidence for long-term uplift on the Canary Islands from emergent Mio–Pliocene littoral deposits. Global and Planetary Change. v. 57, no. 3-4, pp. 222–234.
^Huang, T.C., N.D. Watkins, and L. Wilson, 1979,Deep-sea tephra from the Azores during the past 300,000 years: eruptive cloud height and ash volume estimates. Geological Society of America Bulletin. vol. 90, no. 2, pp. 131–133.
^Dennielou, B. G.A. Auffret, A. Boelaert, T. Richter, T. Garlan, and R. Kerbrat, 1999,Control of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Gulf Stream over Quaternary sedimentation on the Azores Plateau. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Série II. Sciences de la Terre et des Planètes. v. 328, no. 12, pp. 831–837.,
^Smith, O. D. (2016). "The Atlantis Story: An Authentic Oral Tradition?".Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures. 10(2): 10-17.
^Mauro Tulli, "The Atlantis poem in the Timaeus-Critias", inThe Platonic Art of Philosophy, Cambridge University 2013,pp. 269–282
^Bell, H. Idris, "Bibliography: Graeco-Roman Egypt A. Papyri (1915–1919)",The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Apr. 1920), pp. 119–146. "The following papyrus, 1359, which Grenfell and Hunt identified as also from the Catalogue, is regarded by C. Robert as part of a separate epic, which he calls Atlantis."
^P.Oxy. 1359. See Carl Robert (1917):Eine epische Atlantias,Hermes, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Jul. 1917), pp. 477–79.
^abNesselrath, HG (1998). 'Theopomps Meropis und Platon: Nachahmung und Parodie',Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 1, pp. 1–8.
^Heyrick, Thomas (1687).The New Atlantis: A Poem, in Three Books. London: Privately printed. Retrieved11 June 2024 – viaEarly English Books Online, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections.
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