Evidently Critias had himself first told the story to Plato who, as was his style, had worked it into the dialogue. But where would Critias have received the story?
Critias explains that it had long been in his family; his great-grandfather had first been told it by a relative, a prominent Athenian, the famous Solon. And along with the story Solon had passed across his detailed handwritten notes. These notes would have been available to Plato, a century and a half later.
Solon was a highly revered figure in Greek history, especially for the Greeks of Plato’s day. It would have been unthinkable for Plato to have attributed any falsehood to him. Solon was credited too for being one of the wisest men of his generation, for it was he who had devised the legal system used by Athens.
During a period of considerable civil tension Solon had been asked to form some legal and political settlement which would satisfy all sides. He did so very effectively but, knowing that he would subsequently be the target of men attempting to plead their own causes, he decided to remove himself from Athens so that all would have to find some way of living with the laws as they stood. Accordingly, as soon as the system was in place, he left Athens on an overseas trip, beginning with a voyage to Egypt.
Like most Athenians, Solon had a trade; he was a merchant and ship-owner. Egypt was a likely port of call for him because there was a well-established Greek presence there. The pharaoh Amasis (570–526 BC) had allowed the Greeks to establish the port of Naucratis as a trading settlement near to his royal capital Saïs, in the Nile delta. It was during his reign that Solon arrived.
Solon resided in Egypt for some years. During this time he visited Saïs, and spoke at length with Sonchis, a priest there; he also visited the Heliopolis where he again became friendly with a priest, Psenophis, who also communicated much of the ancient wisdom held in the temples.3 Both priests were later regarded as ‘the most learned of the Egyptian priests’.
It was in conversation with a priest – perhaps Sonchis – in a temple at Saïs that Solon first heard the story of Atlantis. Perhaps the priest had allowed anger to overcome his usual reserve.
In the temple Solon had begun pontificating upon the antiquity of Greek history when one of the Egyptian priests present, an inordinately elderly man, finally could stand it no longer.
‘O Solon,’ he cried in exasperation, ‘Solon, you Greeks are always children: there is not such a thing as an old Greek.’4 Solon, taken aback, asked what he meant.
The priest explained, ‘You possess not a single belief that is ancient and derived from old tradition, nor yet one science that is hoary with age.’
The priest described the many destructions of mankind in the past: in Greece, for example, there had been a great flood which had swept all the cities of the land into the sea. Because none of the survivors had known how to write, the culture had to start afresh and all memory of the times prior to the disaster was lost. However, the priest continued, in Egypt none of these calamities had caused any such destructions; in consequence, ‘all such events are recorded from old and preserved here in our temples’.
Upon hearing this Solon grew excited about the possibility of learning something of the past and eagerly requested the priest to continue. The priest, it appears with an initial reluctance, decided not to withhold the story of Atlantis from Solon. This is an indication that perhaps the priest’s anger had got the better of him and had placed him in the position where he was to reveal something about which he would perhaps have preferred to keep quiet. Certainly, the absence of any subsequent information regarding this story could indicate that it was knowledge kept for the inner circle of priests only. Reluctant or not, the priest revealed to Solon the story of what had occurred 9,000 years earlier: he told him the story of Atlantis.
Solon was caught by the drama of the narrative and resolved to work it into a major epic poem like those written by Homer about the Trojan War. After the conclusion of his travels, Solon returned to Athens and began to work on it. But he abandoned it. Perhaps he was staggered at the immensity of the task he had taken on. Whatever the reason, he passed both the story and the notes he had made over to Critias’ great-grandfather. It then began its family descent to Plato.
Plato remains the original source for the story. Did he invent it? Against this is the fact that in all his other writing he has never been accused of inventing material. Solon too was a man with a strong reputation for honesty and wisdom. The very specific pedigree for the transmission of the information from Solon to Plato also seems plausible. But could we be dealing with a story to which everyone, including the Egyptian priest, had added details? A story which, beginning mostly true, ended mostly false? It certainly appears to contain elements which could derive from a number of separate sources.
Even Plato knew that what he had was close to the limits of belief, to the extent that he felt the need to state explicitly that it was ‘a tale, though passing strange… yet wholly true’.5 In fact, four times in his Timaeus he feels compelled to insist that it is true. Such repeated assertions are a measure of his expectation that some of his audience, at least, would refuse to believe it. In this he was correct: his pupil Aristotle rejected it out of hand as a fable.
We can accept that Plato accurately passed on something he, at least, believed to be true. Solon, though, could have garbled some of the information from the priest or fumbled in his rendition of the hieroglyphic texts, some of which, Plato makes clear, Solon translated himself. The Egyptian priest too could have been simply creating a story to outdo the assumptions of antiquity which Solon was claiming for Greek culture. Perhaps in his irritation the priest blended a measure of dramatic fable with true history.
There are three basic problems with the story:
1) That only Plato reports it.6 Hence it is evident that the story, if true, was not commonly known or recorded elsewhere in ancient Egypt. Later the Greeks under the leadership of Alexander the Great invaded and took control of Egypt; hundreds of Greek scholars were to gain access to Egyptian records. During the subsequent Greek kingdom of Egypt the famous Alexandrian library was built which held all the knowledge available to the ancient world. If any details of this story had made their way into the library, many of those who worked there over, the centuries would surely have mentioned it. Neither have any modern archaeologists reported finding any papyrus or inscribed versions of it. But it remains true that much has been lost from ancient Egypt. It also remains true that certain knowledge was always kept secret.
2) That the story asserts that 9,000 years earlier – around 9565 BC – a culture existed which knew the use of metals, ships, dressed stone for building and agriculture. This is typical of the Bronze Age which is known only from around 3200 BC. The story appears to be set over 6,000 years too early.
3) That a huge island holding this culture disappeared beneath the Atlantic in a day and a half as a result of earthquakes. There does not appear to be any other record or corroborating evidence of this catastrophe.
Leaving aside, for the moment, the use of metal, cultures of this level of advancement are not too far away from the early date claimed by Plato. Work over the last thirty years or so has shown that a complex trading culture existed, as we have seen, at Çatal Hüyük in Anatolia; stone city walls and towers were built at Jericho in the Jordan valley very early, perhaps around 7000 BC; metal working, however, began perhaps 2,000 years later.7 So the assertion of such a culture existing in 9000 BC is not at all impossible – we simply have not yet found any evidence for it. Of course, many cultures have been completely lost; we are still occasionally uncovering remnants of completely unknown empires from the past.
Nevertheless, most investigators have accepted the level of civilization described in the story at face value but have rejected the early date as unrealistic. They have argued that if the story has a core of truth, then this vanished culture should be sought around 1500 to 2000 BC, during the Late Bronze Age, rather than far earlier.
There is l
ittle doubt that Atlantis, as described by Plato, reveals a Late Bronze Age civilization. Either we have to consider Plato’s date wrong and look in known areas of Bronze Age culture, or we have to decide, against all currently known archaeological evidence, that the Bronze Age began very much earlier – about 6,000 years earlier. Naturally, the scholars have chosen to look at known Bronze Age sites.
Have any great Bronze Age cultural centres simply disappeared? Sunk for ever beneath the waters after volcanic or tectonic catastrophe? In fact, at least two have.
Attention has been drawn away from the Atlantic Ocean – which is regarded as a wild exaggeration – and refocused upon the Mediterranean area. For here, in the revised time period, one cultural centre exploded, and another, racked by earthquakes, sank beneath a lake leaving only wall-shadows under the waters.
The Eruption of Thera
One summer, around 1628 BC, the Greek island of Thera exploded with the force of thirty hydrogen bombs.8 The middle of the island vanished, vaporized, pulverized and ejected miles into the sky. Instead of the fertile farms and vineyards there was but a very large and very deep crater into which the sea rapidly poured. The few parts of the island which remained at the crater’s edge were rapidly and deeply covered by volcanic debris, mostly layer upon layer of superheated ash.
These shattered remnants, uninhabitable for many generations, perhaps for hundreds of years, are the five small Greek islands today collectively known as Santorini – the largest of them being Thera. Like all Greek islands, Thera is now a popular tourist spot, impressing all visitors with its high volcanic cliffs rising steeply out of the deep azure Aegean. Bright white houses clutch at the sharp crater rim like squatting sea-birds ready to leave at the first hint of danger. Wisps of smoke occasionally escape from a small island at the centre of the sea-filled crater reminding visitors that the volcano has not yet forgotten how to erupt.
Thera has its classical Greek ruins: the remains of temples, houses, public buildings and a theatre. But it has been known for many years that deep below the layers of volcanic detritus was solid evidence of a once forgotten civilization. Over the years, erosion has uncovered traces of walls and pottery. And last century small excavations exposed the remains of three houses, one revealing ornate painted decorations. But excavation did not continue: archaeologists were few and funds for digging were limited.
Archaeologists very early on learned that funds were generated by dramatic discoveries and so islands like Crete, with its massive palaces, attracted and absorbed the archaeological interest. For on Crete were dramatic remnants of a huge, sophisticated seafaring and trading civilization which had previously been unknown. Its capital was the impressive palace of Knossos where Sir Arthur Evans began excavating in 1899. This is now named the Minoan culture – after one of its kings, Minos, famous in the later Greek myth of the Minotaur.
A particular feature of Minoan culture was its love of decoration; its pottery was ornately painted and its houses had revealing wall paintings – frescos – which have given us a good idea of Minoan life. Especially, it has allowed us a glimpse at the culture’s defining religion, the bull cult.
A peculiarity discovered by the archaeologists was that this widespread and successful culture was suddenly overwhelmed and destroyed. Palace and villa walls were broken, houses were burned, pottery was smashed. Its power too vanished, seemingly overnight. It appeared that suddenly its ships no longer commanded the seas and its traders no longer imported goods from every part of the known world.
Scholars were not slow to see glimmerings of a parallel between Plato’s description of Atlantis and this ornate Cretan Bronze Age culture, both of which came to an abrupt end. In fact, within ten years such a link was suggested – albeit anonymously.9 During the following fifty years further parallels were advanced. Finally, in 1967, one of the most enthusiastic theorists, the Greek archaeologist Professor Spyridon Marinatos, finally began to seek proof under the ground.
Professor Marinatos conducted systematic excavations on Thera for seven years until he died, on the site, in 1974. During those seven years dramatic discoveries were made of parts of a very large ancient town. Two important aspects had been clarified. Firstly, he now had proof that Thera had indeed exploded catastrophically during the height of its Bronze Age culture. And secondly, it was evident that the inhabitants of Thera were closely linked in some direct way with the Minoan culture of Crete. Thera might have been a Minoan outpost, a colony or a close ally. Thus the Bronze
Thera and Tantalis: both possible sites for Atlantis.
Age Atlantis thesis was defined: the explosion of Thera caused the demise of Minoan Crete and its ‘disappearance’ from the Bronze Age world. Thera – or perhaps Crete – was ‘Atlantis’.
Samples from the seabed revealed that debris from Thera was to be found over much of the southern Aegean and allowed an estimate to be made of the depth of ash which probably fell upon Crete: almost eight inches, enough to poison the land. Pumice too was found there together with evidence of widespread destruction: three major royal palaces, four large country villas and six entire towns were destroyed simultaneously. Coastal sites also showed great damage consistent with the destructive effects of tidal waves, tsunamis, which undoubtedly would have followed such an eruption. Walls had fallen outwards and shattered personal objects were found, their pieces widely scattered.
Professor Marinatos, along with many other scholars, believed that these excavations on Thera and Crete had finally solved the mystery of Atlantis. They concluded – and books rapidly appeared in print repeating and reinforcing their ideas – that Plato’s story of Atlantis essentially described the Bronze Age Minoan culture of Crete and its sudden demise as a result of the volcanic explosion of Thera. They also concluded that the combined disasters of ash, tidal waves and probably earthquakes so disabled Crete that it rapidly vanished into impotence and obscurity.
But in this conclusion the scholars were to be proved wrong.
The classical Greek world was well aware of Crete and its history. Plato even visited the island with a view to establishing a community there. There was too a rich Greek mythological tradition which revolved around Minoan Crete and King Minos. It is inconceivable that Solon or Plato should have failed to identify Atlantis as Crete if that had been the intention of the original story. That they did not do so is very strong evidence that they were viewed clearly as two separate places. In addition to this, the prime heroic figure in the Atlantis story is Atlas, after whom both the island and the sea were named. Yet there is no Greek myth concerning Crete in which Atlas is accorded a role such as this.10
But history and archaeology too finally bring the Thera argument to a conclusion. The much-discussed sudden cessation of Minoan trade simply did not happen. There was no abrupt breaking of links between Crete and its trading partners. The final proof that Professor Marinatos was wrong came when archaeologists discovered layers of volcanic ash from the Thera eruption beneath the layers of destruction in Crete, thus proving it to be earlier in time.11 In addition, the pottery found at Thera has been shown to date from earlier than that found in the destroyed Cretan palaces. It is now thought that the eruption of Thera could be up to 250 years prior to the destruction of the Cretan towns and palaces.12 This destruction, it is now felt, came through invasion and conquest.
The explosion of Thera did not cause the demise of Minoan Crete. It cannot explain the Atlantis story. This particular thesis is dead. Is all then lost for a classical origin for the story?
The Drowning of Tantalis
According to Plato, prior to the destruction of Atlantis its hitherto victorious army was decisively defeated in battle by the Athenians. Plato then adds a description of life in those early times which is almost intimate in its details.
Plato begins by lamenting the destruction in Greece caused by great erosion. He describes how, in those early days, the land had not yet lost its rich soil and so was covered with forests or arable fields where large
flocks grazed. In Plato’s day the soil had become much poorer, much less productive. He also gives a detailed description of the acropolis of Athens, its extent and the differing areas inhabited by the military, the craftsmen and the farmers. He describes the buildings and points out that they were all destroyed prior to the buildings which stood in his day. He also notes that a single great spring supplied water but that an earthquake had blocked it up long before his lifetime.13
Archaeology has since demonstrated that Plato’s description was completely accurate in every way that can be checked. He is not weaving a fantasy but reporting details which were recorded – where, we do not know. This ancient Athens and its inhabitants is known; they belong to the Late Bronze Age dynasty of the kings who ruled from their capital Mycenae until around 1100 BC. It was, in fact, this dynasty which invaded Crete and destroyed its palaces, thus supplanting the Minoan kings in their palace at Knossos. It was also this same dynasty which fought the Trojan War.
It has even been argued by one scholar that it was the Trojan War which provided the basis of the Atlantis story; that it was simply an Egyptian embellishment of those distant events.14 This cannot be successfully maintained because Troy remained rather obdurately non-sunken (even though it ‘fell’). It can still be visited and seen to be placed very firmly upon dry land. Consequently, Troy has to go the way of Thera: an interesting idea which doesn’t work.
Are the Bronze Age links to be explained away, then, as simply a method of providing a dramatic context for the epic poem which Solon had planned? This type of approach is common enough amongst writers and artists: the Renaissance painters often depicted biblical scenes with all the characters in ‘modern’ dress; the musical West Side Story was a recasting of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into New York. Was the Bronze Age setting for Atlantis similarly an artistic addition to package an earlier catastrophe?