Atlantis: The Antedeluvian WorldDonnelly, Ignatius
History
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Deluge; Ethnology
"'"No one shall come out alive! No man shall be preserved from the
abyss!"--Adar opened his mouth and said; he said to the warrior
Bel:--"What other than Ea should have formed this resolution?--for Ea
possesses knowledge, and [he foresees] all."--Ea opened his mouth and
spake; he said to the warrior Bel:--"O thou, herald of the gods,
warrior,--as thou didst not master thyself, thou hast made the
water-spout of the Deluge.--Let the sinner carry the weight of his sins,
the blasphemer the weight of his blasphemy.--Please thyself with this
good pleasure, and it shall never be infringed; faith in it never [shall
be violated].--Instead of thy making a new deluge, let lions appear and
reduce the number of men;--instead of thy making a new deluge, let
hyenas appear and reduce the number of men;--instead of thy making a new
deluge, let there be famine, and let the earth be [devastated];--instead
of thy making a new deluge, let Dibbara appear, and let men be [mown
down]. I have not revealed the decision of the great gods;--it is
Khasisatra who interpreted a dream and comprehended what the gods had
decided."
"'Then, when his resolve was arrested, Bel entered into the vessel.--He
took my hand and made me rise.--He made my wife rise, and made her place
herself at my side--He turned around us and stopped short; he
approached our group.--"Until now Khasisatra has made part of perishable
humanity;--but lo, now Khasisatra and his wife are going to be carried
away to live like the gods,--and Khasisatra will reside afar at the
mouth of the rivers."--They carried me away, and established me in a
remote place at the mouth of the streams.'"
"This narrative," says Lenormant, "follows with great exactness the same
course as that, or, rather, as those of Genesis; and the analogies are,
on both sides, striking."
When we consider these two forms of the same legend, we see many points
wherein the story points directly to Atlantis.
1. In the first place, Berosus tells us that the god who gave warning of
the coming of the Deluge was Chronos. Chronos, it is well known, was the
same as Saturn. Saturn was an ancient king of Italy, who, far anterior
to the founding of Rome, introduced civilization from some other country
to the Italians. He established industry and social order, filled the
land with plenty, and created the golden age of Italy. He was suddenly
removed to the abodes of the gods. His name is connected, in the
mythological legends, with "a great Saturnian continent" in the Atlantic
Ocean, and a great kingdom which, in the remote ages, embraced Northern
Africa and the European coast of the Mediterranean as far as the
peninsula of Italy, and "certain islands in the sea;" agreeing, in this
respect, with the story of Plato as to the dominions of Atlantis. The
Romans called the Atlantic Ocean "Chronium Mare," the Sea of Chronos,
thus identifying Chronos with that ocean. The pillars of Hercules were
also called by the ancients "the pillars of Chronos."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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