History of Atlantis, The

Contents

Excerpt from Preface

The History of Atlantis may, in the light of our present knowledge of Plato 's sunken island, appear as a somewhat presumptuous title for a work, the object of which is to present a general outline of what is known concerning Atlantean civilisation. But it is my earnest wish to place the study upon a scientific basis, and in so doing I attach the description of "history" to this work in the hope that the mere invocation of such a name will endow it with the spirit which should inspire all histories a desire to arrive at fundamental truth by every available means.

I have, I think, thrown much new light on the character of the Atlantean invasion of Europe, on the exact site of Atlantis, and especially on the great amount of evidence for the former existence of the island-continent which survives in British and Irish folklore and tradition. British tradition, indeed, is the touchstone of Atlantean history, and the identification of Lyonesse with Atlantis, and the grouping of Atlas with the British gods, Albion and Iberius, should go far to prove the ancient association of our islands with the sunken continent.

Excerpt

A HISTORY OF ATLANTIS must differ from all other histories, for the fundamental reason that it seeks to record the chronicles of a country the soil of which is no longer available for examination to the archaeologist. If, through some cataclysm of nature, the Italian peninsula had been submerged in the green waters of the Mediterranean at a period subsequent to the fall of Rome, we would still have been in possession of much documentary evidence concerning the growth and ascent of the Roman Empire.

At the same time, the soil upon which that empire flourished, the ponderable remains of its civilisation and its architecture, would have been for ever lost to us save as regards their colonial manifestations. We should, in a great measure, have been forced to glean our ideas of Latin pre-eminence from those institutions which it founded in other lands, and from those traditions of it which remained at the era of its disappearance among the unlettered nations surrounding it.

But great as would be the difficulties attending such an enterprise, these would, indeed, be negligible when compared with the task of groping through the mists of the ages in quest of the outlines of chronicle and event which tell of a civilisation plunged into the abysses of ocean nearly nine thousand years before the foundation of the Eternal City. Before a task so stupendous the student of history might well stand dismayed. A sunken Rome, an earthquake-shattered Athens, would have bequeathed a thousand corroborative documents.

Had Babylon or the entire Egyptian valley sunk out of sight a thousand years before the birth of Christ they would still have left behind them the witness of their trade with the Mediterranean, their pottery and other artifacts would have been found in Crete and Cyprus. Even so, let it be remembered, that the very site of Nineveh was forgotten, that until a century ago only the barest outlines of Babylonian and Egyptian history were known to us, that their written hieroglyphs were undecipherable. Is it too much to expect, then, that an archaeology which has been equal to the task of reconstructing the details of civilisations over which time had cast a depth of shadows profound as that of ocean, should not be competent to approach the discussion of the more tangled problems connected with the recon- struction of the history of a continent which has been submerged for twice as long as ancient Egypt endured?

It is here that it becomes necessary to say something regarding the writer's own views on the subject of historical science. It must be manifest how great a part inspiration has played in the disentangling of archaeological problems during the past century. By the aid of inspiration, as much as by that of mere scholarship, the hieroglyphs of Egypt and the cuneiform script of Babylon were unriddled. Was it not inspiration which unveiled to Schliemann the exact site of Troy before he excavated it? Inspirational methods, indeed, will be found to be those of the Archaeology of the Future. The Tape-Measure School, dull and full of the credulity of incredulity, is doomed.

Analogy is the instrument of inspiration, and, if wielded truly, is capable of extraordinary results. Even now Archaeology and Folklore are almost entirely dependent for their results upon analogy. Only by comparison can we cast light upon the nature of unexplained customs and objects, and in this volume the analogical method will be largely employed because it provides us with a fitting probe by whose aid we may pierce the hard crusts of oblivion which have gathered around the facts of Atlantean history.

Facts! Are we in possession of any facts relating to Atlantis? Is the very title, A History of Atlantis, not an insult to the intelligence of most readers? If, on coming to the end of this book should he reach the end the reader cannot agree that a very fair case has been made out for the former existence of Plato's island-continent, he will at least admit that the mere interest of the subject is sufficiently intriguing to permit of hypotheses being erected in its favour. But that a basis of indisputable fact lies at the roots of the Atlantean theory the writer stoutly maintains, and he pleads that in face of such an array of testimony as he has brought together it is merely childish to refuse belief to the main details of Plato's story.

For that it is founded on material, historical or traditional evidence, of still more ancient provenance is manifest from the possibility of equating the statements made in it concerning the geography, customs and religion of Atlantis with those of neighbouring regions. It is possible to take Plato's account of Atlantis, piece by piece, and compare the statements made therein with similar historical and archaeological data, to the complete vindication of his narrative.

And let it be said at once that Plato did not intend his account of Atlantean affairs as allegorical or mythical. That ancient plea is completely disposed of elsewhere in this book. There is reason to regard his narrative as more definitely related to fact than, say, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Britonum, in which the pure ore of history is mingled with tradition. That he received it from an Egyptian source is undoubted, and there is no more reason to suspect the bona fides of his narrative than there is to doubt those of any other account of antiquity in which history shades off into tradition.