Just that one word seems to spark a romanticism that is not associated with too many historical sites, fact or fiction. What follows is a synopsis of the story as well as some other comments we will make.
The origin of the story
As everyone know, Plato is credited with recording the story about this lost city or continent. He does it in the following manner:
Atlantis, a likely mythical island nation mentioned in Plato’s dialogues “Timaeus” and “Critias,” has been an object of fascination among western philosophers and historians for nearly 2,400 years. Plato (c.424–328 B.C.) describes it as a powerful and advanced kingdom that sank, in a night and a day, into the ocean around 9,600 B.C. The ancient Greeks were divided as to whether Plato’s story was to be taken as history or mere metaphor. (source)
Where did the content for Plato’s dialogues come from? It seems that Critias and Timaeus were real-life friends of Plato and the former friend had heard the story from his grandfather.
As the legend goes:
Plato’s Critias says he heard the story of Atlantis from his grandfather, who had heard it from the Athenian statesman Solon (300 years before Plato’s time), who had learned it from an Egyptian priest, who said it had happened 9,000 years before that (Ibid)
Because there are no records from any of those ancient people except Plato, the authenticity of the account is often viewed with suspicion. There are none. Because of this lack of historical lineage, Dr. Charles Pellegrino asked in his book Unearthing Atlantis if this was a game of telephone (pg. 29).
It is possible that the original story told by the Egyptian priests was not the same story as told by Plato. Embellishments could have taken place over the centuries as the story was passed down through oral tradition until Plato took it upon himself to record it in the 4th century BC. (Pellegrino, pg. 32)
Supposedly, according to the fictional work Critias (113 a-b), Solon, who told the story to Critias’ grandfather, had written the story down in manuscript form. That alleged manuscript did not survive the test of time if it existed at all (Pellegrino, pg. 32).
But even if it was written down and it did survive for 2500 years approx., that record still is not evidence that the story was true. If that was the only criterion to have a story true, then all the content of all the fiction books in the world today would be telling true stories.
But there are a few things to consider about this account.
#1. The passage on Atlantis is actually spoken early in the dialogue by Critias, a Sophist who lived c. 460 to 403 BCE. Significantly, Critias, like all Sophists (as Plato himself explained in his Phaedrus dialogue), presents his ideas with exaggeration and embellishments to capture the attention of the listener and convey the essence of the ideas only. All is opaque, nothing is exact. (source)
The reputation of Sophists ruins any credibility any one of them might think they have. It also casts doubts on the content of the story especially the time frame between the event and eventual recording.
No one can take those words as gospel truth and no one would know which words were fact and which ones were fiction. With no other physical copies of Solon’s manuscript, we cannot even be sure if Plato recorded it correctly.
There is no telling what details Plato left out and which ones he altered to make sure he got his reader’s attention.
#2. You have no antiquity of history and no antiquity of history…As for those genealogies of yours which yo have just now accounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children; for in the first placeyou remember a single deluge only, whereas there have been many previou sones… (Pellegrino, pg. 31).
This quote alludes to an attitude that the ancient Egyptians had. They had no problem embellishing their past to make future Egyptian generations patriotic toward their country (Harrison, Old Testament Times).
We can see that attitude in how the priest talks to Solon. The Egyptians are better, more sophisticated, and more cultural than the Greeks. Also in the way they speak of many deluges.
As far as historical records, go, unless the Egyptians were talking about the annual Nile flooding, there has been only 1 deluge. We have no other record of any significant deluge that wiped out continents or islands.
With the knowledge that ancient Egyptians changed their histories all the time, their records cannot be trusted to tell the truth. The idea that a flood wiped out Atlantis may have been an alteration of the biblical flood.
We know that the pre-flood world was well advanced and that the land mass of that time may not have been exactly like it is today. The many explorers who have found sunken cities, coastlines, etc., have proven this true.
Most likely, the priests of Neith had been told of the biblical flood with different content or it was changed, like the game of telephone before it reached their ears. There are many possibilities concerning the content and how it came to be in Plato’s works.
The real question is why did the concept of Atlantis capture so many people’s attention in the centuries after Plato’s time, especially in recent centuries? It is possible that the Egyptian Priests were talking about the demise of Minoa.
But that would not have been a flood but more of an explosion. The fact that tsunamis hit different coasts could have influenced the storyteller who created the story in the first place.
The 9000 years of embellishment could have come from one of the Critias who told Plato about the account. It is hard to say just as it is difficult to explain why so many people were captivated enough to look for this lost continent or city.
Other than Plato and the Bible, there are no real historical works that talk about anything remotely close to how Atlantis has been described. What comes closest to the biblical record are the 100 to 150 flood stories from the different ancient nations.
For us, Atlantis is a myth much like the gods of ancient Rome and Greece, as well as the minotaur that lived on Crete. As for the flood, we know that it is not a myth (see our book on the books for sale page) it is an account that has more physical evidence supporting its historicity than any other historical biblical event.
The biblical flood took place, that we know. Atlantis just may be a fairy tale used by Plato to make his philosophical point.
theoarch 