Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly (good books to read txt) 📖

great kings and navigators.

The Atlanteans were, as Plato tells us, a maritime, commercial people, trading up the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Syria, and across the Atlantic to “the whole opposite continent that surrounds the sea;” the Phœnicians, as their successors and descendants, and colonized on the shores of the Mediterranean, inherited their civilization and their maritime habits, and with these that invention without which their great voyages were impossible. From them the magnet passed to the Hindoos, and from them to the Chinese, who certainly possessed it at an early date.

In the year 2700 B.C. the Emperor Wang-ti placed a magnetic figure with an extended arm, like the Astarte of the Phœnicians, on the front of carriages, the arm always turning and pointing to the south, which the Chinese regarded as the principal pole. (See Goodrich’s “Columbus,” p.

31, etc.) This illustration represents one of these chariots: In the seventh century it was used by the navigators of the Baltic Sea and the German Ocean.

CHINESE MAGNETIC CAR

The ancient Egyptians called the loadstone the bone of Haroeri, and iron the bone of Typhon. Haroeri was the son of Osiris and grandson of Rhea, a goddess of the earth, a queen of Atlantis, and mother of Poseidon; Typhon was a wind-god and an evil genius, but also a son of Rhea, the earth goddess. Do we find in this curious designation of iron and loadstone as “bones of the descendants of the earth,” an explanation of that otherwise inexplicable Greek legend about Deucalion “throwing the bones of the earth behind him, when instantly men rose from the ground, and the world was repeopled?” Does it mean that by means of the magnet he sailed, after the Flood, to the European colonies of Atlantis.

already thickly inhabited?

A late writer, speaking upon the subject of the loadstone, tells us: “Hercules, it was said, being once overpowered by the heat of the sun, drew his bow against that luminary; whereupon the god Phœbus, admiring his intrepidity, gave him a golden cup, with which he sailed over the ocean. This cup was the compass, which old writers have called Lapis Heracleus. Pisander says Oceanus lent him the cup, and Lucian says it was a sea-shell. Tradition affirms that the magnet originally was not on a pivot, but set to float on water in a cup. The old antiquarian is wildly theoretical on this point, and sees a compass in the Golden Fleece of Argos, in the oracular needle which Nero worshipped, and in everything else. Yet undoubtedly there are some curious facts connected with the matter. Osonius says that Gama and the Portuguese got the compass from some pirates at the Cape of Good Hope, A.D. 1260. M.

Fauchet, the French antiquarian, finds it plainly alluded to in some old poem of Brittany belonging to the year A.D. 1180. Paulo Venetus brought it in the thirteenth century from China, where it was regarded as oracular. Genebrand says Melvius, a Neapolitan, brought it to Europe in A.D. 1303. Costa says Gama got it from Mohammedan seamen. But all nations with whom it was found associate it with regions where Heraclean myths prevailed. And one of the most curious facts is that the ancient Britons, as the Welsh do to-day, call a pilot llywydd (lode).

Lodemanage, in Skinner’s ‘Etymology,’ is the word for the price paid to a pilot. But whether this famous, and afterward deified, mariner (Hercules) had a compass or not, we can hardly regard the association of his name with so many Western monuments as accidental.”

Hercules was, as we know, a god of Atlantis, and Oceanos, who lent the magnetic cup to Hercules, was the Dame by which the Greeks designated the Atlantic Ocean. And this may be the explanation of the recurrence of a cup in many antique paintings and statues. Hercules is often represented with a cup in his hand; we even find the cup upon the handle of the bronze dagger found in Denmark, and represented in the chapter on the Bronze Age, in this work. (See p. 254 ante.) So “oracular” an object as this self-moving needle, always pointing to the north, would doubtless affect vividly the minds of the people, and appear in their works of art. When Hercules left the coast of Europe to sail to the island of Erythea in the Atlantic, in the remote west, we are told, in Greek mythology (Murray, p. 257), that he borrowed “the cup” of Helios, in (with) which “he was accustomed to sail every night.”

Here we seem to have a reference to the magnetic cup used in night sailing; and this is another proof that the use of the magnetic needle in sea-voyages was associated with the Atlantean gods.

ANCIENT COINS OF TYRE

Lucian tells us that a sea-shell often took the place of the cup, as a vessel in which to hold the water where the needle floated, and hence upon the ancient coins of Tyre we find a sea-shell represented.

Here, too, we have the Pillars of Hercules, supposed to have been placed at the mouth of the Mediterranean, and the tree of life or knowledge, with the serpent twined around it, which appears in Genesis; and in the combination of the two pillars and the serpent we have, it is said, the original source of our dollar mark [$].

COIN FROM CENTRAL AMERICA Compare these Phœnician coins with the following representation of a copper coin, two inches in diameter and three lines thick, found nearly a century ago by Ordonez, at the city of Guatemala. “M. Dupaix noticed an indication of the use of the compass in the centre of one of the sides, the figures on the same side representing a kneeling, bearded, turbaned man between two fierce heads, perhaps of crocodiles, which appear to defend the entrance to a mountainous and wooded country. The reverse presents a serpent coiled around a fruit-tree, and an eagle on a hill.” (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iv., p. 118.) The mountain leans to one side: it is a “culhuacan,” or crooked mountain.

We find in Sanchoniathon’s “Legends of the Phœnicians” that Ouranus, the first god of the people of Atlantis, “devised Bætulia, contriving stones that moved as having life, which were supposed to fall from heaven.”

These stones were probably magnetic loadstones; in other words, Ouranus, the first god of Atlantis, devised the mariner’s compass.

I find in the “Report of United States Explorations for a Route for a Pacific Railroad” a description of a New Mexican Indian priest, who foretells the result of a proposed war by placing a piece of wood in a bowl of water, and causing it to turn to the right or left, or sink or rise, as he directs it. This is incomprehensible, unless the wood, like the ancient Chinese compass, contained a piece of magnetic iron hidden in it, which would be attracted or repulsed, or even drawn downward, by a piece of iron held in the hand of the priest, on the outside of the bowl. If so, this trick was a remembrance of the mariner’s compass transmitted from age to age by the medicine men. The reclining statue of Chac-Mol, of Central America, holds a bowl or dish upon its breast.

Divination was the ars Etrusca. The Etruscans set their temples squarely with the cardinal points of the compass; so did the Egyptians, the Mexicans, and the Mound Builders of America. Could they have done this without the magnetic compass?

The Romans and the Persians called the line of the axis of the globe cardo, and it was to cardo the needle pointed. Now “Cardo was the name of the mountain on which the human race took refuge from the Deluge . .

. the primitive geographic point for the countries which were the cradle of the human race.” (Urquhart’s “Pillars of Hercules,” vol. i., p. 145.) From this comes our word “cardinal,” as the cardinal points.

Navigation.—Navigation was not by any means in a rude state in the earliest times:

“In the wanderings of the heroes returning from Troy, Aristoricus makes Menelaus circumnavigate Africa more than 500 years before Neco sailed from Gadeira to India.” (“Cosmos,” vol. ii., p. 144.) “In the tomb of Rameses the Great is a representation of a naval combat between the Egyptians and some other people, supposed to be the Phœnicians, whose huge ships are propelled by sails.” (Goodrich’s “Columbus,” p. 29.)

The proportions of the fastest sailing-vessels of the present day are about 300 feet long to 50 wide and 30 high; these were precisely the proportions of Noah’s ark—300 cubits long, 50 broad, and 30 high.

“Hiero of Syracuse built, under the superintendence of Archimedes, a vessel which consumed in its construction the material for fifty galleys; it contained galleries, gardens, stables, fish-ponds, mills, baths, a temple of Venus, and an engine to throw stones three hundred pounds in weight, and arrows thirty-six feet long. The floors of this monstrous vessel were inlaid with scenes from Homer’s ‘Iliad.’” (Ibid., p. 30.)

The fleet of Sesostris consisted of four hundred ships; and when Semiramis invaded India she was opposed by four thousand vessels.

It is probable that in the earliest times the vessels were sheeted with metal. A Roman ship of the time of Trajan has been recovered from Lake Ricciole after 1300 years. The outside was covered with sheets of lead fastened with small copper nails. Even the use of iron chains in place of ropes for the anchors was known at an early period. Julius Cæsar tells us that the galleys of the Veneti were thus equipped. (Goodrich’s “Columbus,” p. 31.)

Gunpowder.—It is not impossible that even the invention of gunpowder may date back to Atlantis. It was certainly known in Europe long before the time of the German monk, Berthold Schwarz, who is commonly credited with the invention of it. It was employed in 1257 at the siege of Niebla, in Spain. It was described in an Arab treatise of the thirteenth century. In A.D. 811 the Emperor Leo employed fire-arms. “Greek-fire” is supposed to have been gunpowder mixed with resin or petroleum, and thrown in the form of fuses and explosive shells. It was introduced from Egypt A.D. 668. In A.D. 690 the Arabs used fire-arms against Mecca, bringing the knowledge of them from India. In A.D. 80 the Chinese obtained from India a knowledge of gunpowder. There is reason to believe that the Carthaginian (Phœnician) general, Hannibal, used gunpowder in breaking a way for his army over the Alps. The Romans, who were ignorant of its use, said that Hannibal made his way by making fires against the rocks, and pouring vinegar and water over the ashes. It is evident that fire and vinegar would have no effect on masses of the Alps great enough to arrest the march of an army. Dr. William Maginn has suggested that the wood was probably burnt by Hannibal to obtain charcoal; and the word which has been translated “vinegar” probably signified some preparation of nitre and sulphur, and that Hannibal made gunpowder and blew up the rocks. The same author suggests that the story of Hannibal breaking loose from the mountains where he was surrounded on all sides by the Romans, and in danger of starvation, by fastening firebrands to the horns of two thousand oxen, and sending them rushing at night among the terrified Romans, simply refers to the use of rockets. As Maginn well asks,