Atlantis: The Antedeluvian WorldDonnelly, Ignatius
History
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Deluge; Ethnology
The museum at Munich contains a very interesting piece of pottery, which
is supposed to represent one of the lake villages or hamlets of the era
when the people of Switzerland dwelt in houses erected on piles driven
into the bottom of the lakes of that country. The accompanying
illustration represents it. The double spiral ornament upon it shows
that it belongs to the Bronze Age.
Among the curious relics of the Bronze Age are a number of razor-like
knives; from which we may conclude that the habit of shaving the whole
or some part of the face or head dates back to a great antiquity. The
illustrations below represent them.
These knives were found in Denmark. The figures upon them represent
ships, and it is not impossible that their curious appendages may have
been a primitive kind of sails.
BRONZE RAZOR-KNIVES.
An examination of the second of these bronze knives reveals a singular
feature: Upon the handle of the razor there are ten series of lines; the
stars in the sky are ten in number; and there were probably ten rings at
the left-hand side of the figure, two being obliterated. There were, we
are told, ten sub-kingdoms in Atlantis; and precisely as the thirteen
stripes on the American flag symbolize the thirteen original States of
the Union, so the recurrence of the figure ten in the emblems upon this
bronze implement may have reference to the ten subdivisions of Atlantis.
The large object in the middle of this ship may be intended to represent
a palm-tree--the symbol, as we shall see, in America, of Aztlan, or
Atlantis. We have but to compare the pictures of the ships upon these
ancient razor-knives with the accompanying representations of a Roman
galley and a ship of William the Conqueror's time, to see that there can
be no question that they represented the galleys of that remote age.
They are doubtless faithful portraits of the great vessels which Plato
described as filling the harbors of Atlantis.
SHIP OF WILLIAM THE CONQUERER.
We give on page 258 a representation of a bronze dagger found in
Ireland, a strongly-made weapon. The cut below it represents the only
implement of the Bronze Age yet found containing an inscription. It has
been impossible to decipher it, or even to tell to what group of
languages its alphabet belongs.
It is proper to note, in connection with a discussion of the Bronze Age,
that our word bronze is derived from the Basque, or Iberian broncea,
from which the Spanish derive bronce, and the Italians bronzo. The
copper mines of the Basques were extensively worked at a very early age
of the world, either by the people of Atlantis or by the Basques
themselves, a colony from Atlantis. The probabilities are that the name
for bronze, as well as the metal itself, dates back to Plato's island.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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