[Chapter Seven: Jewish Kingdoms―Israel and the House of David]

Chapter Eight: Adam and Atlas―Eden and the Fall of Atlantis

In the legend, Heracles sailed between the Pillars
to reach the garden of the Hesperides
from which he was to bring back the golden apples.
Many commentators think the garden
is a reference to the Canaries.
We are, in fact, on the ancient gold trail
that came up from Senegal and followed
a sea route along the African coast.
―Gilbert Pillot, The Secret Code of the Odyssey

On your journey 'cross the wilderness from the desert to the well,
you have strayed upon the motorway to Hell.
―Chris Rea, "The Road to Hell"

Having now ventured into the realm where the biblical account contains multiple points of contact with the consensus historical narrative, thus grounding its later end in the historical bedrock that leads inexorably to the rise of Alexander and the dawning of the modern world he so brilliantly, if fleetingly, inaugurated, it is time to turn to the very beginning of the biblical account and its equivalent in the Greek legendary material. Only in Egypt, as we will see shortly, had civilization advanced to the point where we can begin to distinguish the historical context in which this purported first king of what would ultimately become the Jewish nation supposedly lived out his life. That he was later thought to be the first man is understandable. His position at the head of the great biblical genealogical tree fairly begs to be seen as that of the first human either created by the god of the deep or born from the very body of that god's chosen wife or consort. In one version of the Greek account, this first man is Atlas, and along with his nine brothers he rules over a large island called Atlantis.

Now the problem of Atlantis is nowhere nearly as difficult as the authors who have written about it make it out to be. Here we exclude those who obtain their information through psychic trances and flights of imagination that see the so-called lost continent as the prototype of the ideal new-age society. Plato himself used the tale of Atlantis to elaborate some of his own theories on ideal government and city planning, but there is enough hard information in the works of the tutor of Aristotle, when placed alongside other surviving accounts of this ancient kingdom and river valley civilization, to extract its true identity along with that of the biblical version of the same land, called "Eden" by the authors of those ancient works that were later edited and incorporated into the book of Genesis.

The obvious place to begin, in this work of a primarily chronological nature, is the critical question of when, exactly, the events that led to the fall of Atlantis would have occurred. If Solon is correct, as reported by Plato, that the latter's ancestor derived his knowledge from an Egyptian priest, then we may begin to narrow the date of the events described by that priest to the recorded history of Egypt, which has never gone back much farther than the end of the 4th Millennium BC, no earlier than the first few centuries before the year 3000. This immediately destroys any suggestion that Atlantis fell 9000 years before Solon and we can begin to suspect a systematic lengthening of the timeline similar to the one we have already discovered in the biblical account. In this case it would appear, despite the widely held opinion that the priest to whom Solon spoke mistranslated the number of years by a factor of ten, that he actually managed to get the units wrong, for it turns out that the Egyptians used a three-season year, spring, summer, and winter, as I noted in the chapter "The Tarot of the Greeks" in my Origins of the Tarot Deck, so that the relevant figure was 9000 seasons.

Seasons of the Egyptian Year³

If we are to use our already carefully extracted biblical timeline to identify the true era of Atlantis, we must first determine where this cataclysm fits in the series of catastrophes described, sometimes clearly, often obliquely, in the bible. The reader may consult the following table at this point. This will allow him or her to see the direction in which we are headed in our elucidation of the underlying forces that led to the notion of world ages and regularly repeating global catastrophes, two of which were anciently described in the tales of the destruction of the Atlantic kingdom and the expulsion from Eden. The table contains data from dendrochronology, the initial years of periods of minimum yearly tree growth; biblical events of a decidedly naturalistic nature, i.e., famines, floods, fallout from apparent volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, all adjusted for chronological inflation; mythological data, again, those that took a specifically naturalistic form, floods and inundations in particular, where they can be placed with any degree of certainty in a proper chronological context; and theological data where that agrees with the specific system of world ages, catastrophes, and the notion of the return of avatars on a clearly defined schedule.

There has been some limited attempt to edit the results with an eye to extracting the actual temporal cycle of the events described, though this was to a large extent unnecessary due to the relative simplicity and consistency of the chronological system involved. In short, the nominal cycle consists of 600 years, a specifically luni-solar period, divided into 29 equal divisions that approximate 20.69 years. These are grouped almost exclusively into clusters of six, very close to 124 years in total, except that every fifth cycle there is one that consists of only five of these subcycles, or about 104 years in total. Because the overall cycle is always close to 600 years, or one neros period, each subsidiary period also repeats on a 600-year cycle. What caused these events is at present unclear, though we will take a closer look at the possibilities later on. If it weren't for the very real dendrochronological data, it would be truly tempting to take the whole system for an astrological chimera. As it is, the tree-ring data forces us to take this system of floods, famines, and avatars quite seriously, though there is still some small amount of room for human intervention in the natural process. That the ancients ascribed these events to the "gods" is not at all helpful unless we can identify just exactly what, or whom, they were talking about. Though we have already suggested that Atlantis was Eden and, by extension, Atlas was Adam, I will take this opportunity to compare the two tales and to use each of them to fill in some of the gaps in the other account, as well as to use the combined narrative thus obtained to try to determine when and where this event occurred.

Global Cyclical Cataclysms and Their Associated Avatars

Eden and Atlantis

My earliest exposure to the story of Adam and his garden when I was quite young immediately raised a topological question in my mind about a basically geographical detail in the story as it is presented in Genesis. Upon being expelled from Eden, Adam finds his return blocked. "So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubim, and the flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way to the tree of life." Now there is something peculiar about this arrangement, for what the text is really saying is that there is only one way to get to the garden, and that it is from the east. Using Ignatius Donnelly's translation of Plato, we have the following description of the location of Atlantis:

This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which you call the Columns of Heracles: the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from the islands you might pass through the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbor, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a continent.

So the way to Eden is blocked from its eastern side, and Atlantis is only accessible from the east through a relatively narrow channel. Could it be that a pair of cherubim with flaming swords are sufficient to block the way to Eden because they guard that entrance to the Atlantic and that, in fact, they sit upon the so-called Columns of Heracles―the modern Punta Almina in Morocco and Europa Point in Gibraltar, on both of which there are now lighthouses―which serve as boundary markers past which those who once inhabited that land may no longer pass, access having fallen into the hands of some new power? This is only the first of a long series of congruencies between the accounts of the two antediluvian realms that we will now explore.

On the scale of a large city-state, the unit most familiar to Plato and his earliest audience, Eden and Atlantis share a peculiarity that is not immediately obvious to the casual observer, their descriptions having been passed through quite different intellectual filters, one generative and metaphysical, the other civil and utopian. These two expressions of the geographical peculiarity that compounds that previously mentioned anomaly, their limited easterly means of access, involves the place of the liquid element in the layout of this ancient prototypical human habitation. The Garden and the land of Atlantis beyond its central city are pictured above all else as ideal agricultural domains where it is either relatively easy or completely free of human effort to reap the fruits of the climate and the soil. This condition is due, first of all, to its mild weather and, second of all, to an abundant source of water applied, not haphazardly, but in the form of a highly organized irrigation network. In the case of the biblical account, this system is not described directly but is only hinted at.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food.... And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads.

Four heads: this terminology has literally boggled the minds of the most erudite and acute scholars to have studied the bible and the history of religion in general, especially because this statement is followed by an identification of the four "heads" that supposedly include the Tigris and the Euphrates and two other rivers in the same part of the world. This peculiar topology is covered by the authors of Hamlet's Mill, where they relate it to certain cosmological beliefs of the ancient world.

Yet taken in the context of Plato's description of Atlantis, the meaning of these words is obvious.

I will now describe the plain, which had been cultivated during many ages by many generations of kings. It was rectangular, and for the most part straight and oblong; and what it wanted of the straight line followed the line of the circular ditch. The depth and width and length of this ditch were incredible, and gave the impression that such a work, in addition to so many other works, could hardly have been wrought by the hand of man. But I must say what I have heard. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length. It received the streams which came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain, and touching the city at various points, was there let off into the sea. From above, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut in the plain, and again let off into the ditch, toward the sea; these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, and by them they brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into another, and to the city.

Atlantis was clearly irrigated on an extensive, one might say massive, scale. Eden's river became four, no less of an enormous undertaking when it came to applied hydrodynamics.

A third point of intersection between our two primary sources on the antediluvian kingdom is the matter of its ten kings. In the biblical version, they rule consecutively, though there is no overt reference to the fact that they were kings and not simply patriarchs. In Plato's account, they rule over different parts of the island. It would appear that the biblical account is correct in this regard, for Plato's tale contains the only list (with the exception of the daughters of Atlas) in which the ten kings do not follow one another in linear sequence (I have appended a preliminary table of the various examples of these kinglists). In fact, if we identify the Atlantean ruler Diaprepes with Deucalion, the Greek equivalent of Noah―the circumstances of the lives of the two men are even more closely allied than the events currently under discussion―then the fall of Atlantis must be identical with the flood of Deucalion, an event which took place, according to Georgius Cedrenus, 248 years after that of Ogyges. Cedrenus, purportedly a monk, wrote a history of the world to the year 1057.

Comparison of Antediluvian King-Lists

It is Solon's mention of Phoroneus, the Greek Adam, and Deucalion that leads his informant among the Egyptian priesthood to launch into the following exposition concerning the limited historical memory of the Greek people.

O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children.... In mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you the reason of this: there have been, and there will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes. There is a story which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Phaëthon, the son of Helios ... burnt up all that was upon the earth.... Now, this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long intervals of time: when this happens, those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the sea-shore; and from this calamity the Nile, who is our never-failing savior, saves and delivers us. When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, among you herdsmen and shepherds on the mountain are survivors, whereas those of you who live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea; but in this country neither at that time nor at any other does the water come from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below, for which reason the things preserved here are said to be the oldest.... And whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed ... has been written down of old, and is preserved in our temples; whereas you and other nations are just being provided with letters ...; and then, at the usual period, the stream from heaven descends like a pestilence, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education ... and know nothing of what happened in ancient times.... As for those genealogies of yours which you have recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children; for, in the first place, you remember one deluge only, whereas there were many of them.

Perhaps if Solon had mentioned the flood of Ogyges that occurred during the lifetime of Phoroneus, the Egyptian priest might not have been quite so overarchingly arrogant (or perhaps not), for this similarity of chronological contexts constitutes a fourth alignment between the two legendary systems. Both refer to a catastrophic event that occurs prior to a later, greater catastrophe of wider extent and level of destruction. Furthermore, both occur during the lifetime of the "first man." Adam was 65 at the time of the expulsion from Eden, and the Greek legends tell us that Phoroneus was still alive during the flood of Ogyges.

A fifth identity that presents itself for the reader's consideration is the creator or father of the first man. In Plato's version, Atlas was the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea. In the local Greek version, Phoroneus was the son of Inachus, the river god. According to de Moor, the Phoenician version of Yahweh was Yam, again, a sea god. The identification of Yahweh himself with the sea is not quite so obvious, but it is hinted at fairly blatantly. We need only look at the means by which he begins his creation of the world.

Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. And God said: 'Let there be light.' ... And God said: 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.' And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.... And God said: 'Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.' ... And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas.

Location of the Garden

The key question that has perplexed those who have previously dealt with either the biblical primordial human habitation or with the legend transmitted by the Egyptians to the Greeks of a lost civilization somewhere west of the Straits of Gibraltar has been its exact location. Ultimately, even their general locales have seemed to recede as the investigators have ardently followed the available clues. This is not surprising, staring, as they have been, through the haze of bad translations and editors with an axe or two to grind. From the point of view of the Greeks, Atlantis was clearly to the west, beyond the limits of Mediterranean Europe.

Now there is a second major source on the history of Atlantis, though, on the face of it, he is peripheral and secondary in nature. This perception is due to the overvaluation normally given to Plato's account, with all of its philosophical and idealistic preconceptions. The source, of course, is Diodorus Siculus, or rather his source, Dionysius "Scytobrachion" of Alexandria, where presumably he had access to the Library. Diodorus transmits from Dionysius, at least superficially, an entirely different tale. In his geographical and historical survey of the ancient world, Diodorus eventually gets to Libya, i.e., the area of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. It seems that at the far western end of Libya was a nation ruled by women known to the Greeks and their successors as Amazons. These Amazons inhabited the city of Chersonesus (or Cherronesus) on an island in Lake Tritonis (or Marsh Tritonis) in that region currently known as Tunisia, the seaward district of which later became the capital of the Carthaginian maritime empire. Thus, in the eyes of Andrew Collins in his Gateway to Atlantis, Carthage was the vector by which stories of Atlantis reached the Hellenistic world. In this regard, as it says in The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906, "a wide-spread rabbinical legend identifies the land of the Amazons with Carthage ..., or with Africa ..., in both instances agreeing with classical tradition."

According to Diodorus, these Amazons under Queen Myrina embarked upon a wave of conquests that rapidly brought them into conflict with the tribes of the Atlantioi (or Atlantians [sic]) based at Cernê, an island on the Tropic of Cancer just off the African coast in what is now the much disputed country of Western Sahara, formerly the Spanish Sahara. After bringing these tribes under their sway, the Amazons went on to conquer the land of the Gorgons, another nation of female warriors, according to Livio Stecchini in an unpublished article entitled "The Voyage of Hanno," the people in whose Fulani language the word gork means "man." Stecchini identifies Hanno's island of the Gorgades with São Tomé on the Equator. The Amazons then concluded a treaty with the Egyptians under Horus before attacking and defeating the Arabians and subduing Syria. Now Horus, the son of Isis, was one of the predynastic "gods" whom Manetho has ruling Egypt before Menes united the north and the south under the double crown. Horus had a brother Typhon, who appears in the accompanying table, who is sometimes known as Set or Seth, so that we now have our first, admittedly weak, link between the Hebrew timeline at this early age and that of the Egyptians, for Seth was the third son of Adam, the final member of another of those apparently artificially constructed trinities mentioned by Godfrey Higgins. By the best astronomical evidence, this war of the Amazons was roughly synchronous with the great war in India described in the Mahabharata in which Krishna was a participant, the latter dying in the year that began the Kali Yuga, 3102 BC.

The actual alignment