Atlantis: The Antedeluvian WorldDonnelly, Ignatius
History
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Deluge; Ethnology
Uranos was the first god; that is to say, the first king of the great
race. As he was at the commencement of all things, his symbol was the
sky. He probably represented the race previous even to the settlement of
Atlantis. He was a son of Gæa (the earth). He seems to have been the
parent of three races--the Titans, the Hekatoncheires, and the Kyklopes
or Cyclops.
I incline to the belief that these were civilized races, and that the
peculiarities ascribed to the last two refer to the vessels in which
they visited the shores of the barbarians.
THE EMPIRE OF ATLANTIS.
The empire of the Titans was clearly the empire of Atlantis. "The most
judicious among our mythologists" (says Dr. Rees, "New British
Cyclopædia," art. Titans)--"such as Gerard Vossius, Marsham, Bochart,
and Father Thomassin--are of opinion that the partition of the world
among the sons of Noah--Shem, Ham, and Japheth--was the original of the
tradition of the same partition among Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto," upon
the breaking up of the great empire of the Titans. "The learned Pezron
contends that the division which was made of this vast empire came, in
after-times, to be taken for the partition of the whole world; that Asia
remaining in the hands of Jupiter (Zeus), the most potent of the three
brothers, made him looked upon as the god of Olympus; that the sea and
islands which fell to Neptune occasioned their giving him the title of
'god of the sea;' and that Spain, the extremity of the then known world,
thought to be a very low country in respect of Asia, and famous for its
excellent mines of gold and silver, failing to Pluto, occasioned him to
be taken for the 'god of the infernal regions.'" We should suppose that
Pluto possibly ruled over the transatlantic possessions of Atlantis in
America, over those "portions of the opposite continent" which Plato
tells us were dominated by Atlas and his posterity, and which, being far
beyond or below sunset, were the "under-world" of the ancients; while
Atlantis, the Canaries, etc., constituted the island division with
Western Africa and Spain. Murray tells us ("Mythology," p. 58) that
Pluto's share of the kingdom was supposed to lie "in the remote west."
The under-world of the dead was simply the world below the western
horizon; "the home of the dead has to do with that far west region where
the sun dies at night." ("Anthropology," p. 350.) "On the coast of
Brittany, where Cape Raz stands out westward into the ocean, there is
'the Bay of Souls,' the launching-place where the departed spirits sail
off across the sea." (Ibid.) In like manner, Odysseus found the land of
the dead in the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules. There, indeed, was
the land of the mighty dead, the grave of the drowned Atlanteans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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