Atlantis: The Antedeluvian WorldDonnelly, Ignatius
History
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Deluge; Ethnology
Berosus tells us, speaking of the ancient days of Chaldea, "In the first
year there appeared, from that part of the Erythræan Sea which borders
upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, by name Oannes, whose
whole body (according to the account of Apollodorus) was that of a fish;
that under the fish's head he had another head, with feet also below,
similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish's tail. His voice too
and language was articulate and human, and a representation of him is
preserved even unto this day. This being was accustomed to pass the day
among men, but took no food at that season, and he gave them an insight
into letters and arts of all kinds. He taught them to construct cities,
to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles
of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the
earth, and showed them how to collect the fruits; in short, he
instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and
humanize their laws. From that time nothing material has been added by
way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun set, this
being, Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the
deep, for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals
like Oannes."
This is clearly the tradition preserved by a barbarous people of the
great ships of a civilized nation, who colonized their coast and
introduced the arts and sciences among them. And here we see the same
tendency to represent the ship as a living thing, which converted the
war-vessels of the Atlanteans (the Kyklopes) into men with one blazing
eye in the middle of the forehead.
Uranos was deposed from the throne, and succeeded by his son Chronos. He
was called "the ripener, the harvest-god," and was probably identified
with the beginning of the Agricultural Period. He married his sister
Rhea, who bore him Pluto, Poseidon, Zeus, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera. He
anticipated that his sons would dethrone him, as he had dethroned his
father, Uranos, and he swallowed his first five children, and would have
swallowed the sixth child, Zeus, but that his wife Rhea deceived him
with a stone image of the child; and Zeus was conveyed to the island of
Crete, and there concealed in a cave and raised to manhood. Subsequently
Chronos "yielded back to the light the children he had swallowed." This
myth probably means that Chronos had his children raised in some secret
place, where they could not be used by his enemies as the instruments of
a rebellion against his throne; and the stone image of Zeus, palmed off
upon him by Rhea, was probably some other child substituted for his own.
His precautions seem to have been wise; for as soon as the children
returned to the light they commenced a rebellion, and drove the old
gentleman from his throne. A rebellion of the Titans followed. The
struggle was a tremendous one, and seems to have been decided at last by
the use of gunpowder, as I shall show farther on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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