K. T. Frost
1913
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NOTE |
Kingdon Tregosse Frost (1877-1914) was a Classical scholar trained at Oxford and just 32 years old when he published a newspaper article on December 2, 1909 identifying Minoan Crete as the Atlantis of Plato, becoming the first person to make the case. He built on the then-recent work of Arthur Evans uncovering the Minoan civilization, and four years later he published the more developed and formal article below, one of the finest discussions of its kind, and perhaps that best argument for the position that Atlantis, while not literally real, was inspired by the legacy of Minoan civilization. The article was intended to rebut the skeptical views of Benjamin Jowett that Atlantis was wholly imaginary. This article ran in the Journal of Hellenic Studies.
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THE CRITIAS AND MINOAN CRETE
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[NOTE.--The present writer contributed an article to The Times, 19 Jan. 1909, which gave an outline of the theory that Plato's legend of Atlantis was partly based on misunderstood records of events in Minoan history. The following essay develops this view and gives reasons and references for the statements it contains.]
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The Critias after a long introduction breaks off almost at the beginning of the story. Both in form and subject it presents problems which have occasioned a vast amount of speculation. In the first place if Plato really composed it in order to shew his ideal Republic under the stress of war as illustrated by the ancient Athenians in his story, why is it that most of his introduction describes the rival state of Atlantis with a wealth of detail that is quite superfluous? Atlantis interests him much more than his ideal state, and has interested his readers in all ages to the exclusion of the Athenians. Secondly, why after a few introductory remarks does the Critias cease to be a dialogue at all? From the beginning it is an unbroken narrative on the regular lines of an Epic poem. Why, again, should the work be dedicated to Critias, of all people? The attempt to answer these questions involves a consideration of the truth of Solon's visit to Egypt, a review of the whole problem of Atlantis and a glance at the relationship between Solon, Plato, and Critias.
The search for Atlantis has given rise to so many conflicting views (most of them palpably absurd) that few scholars are prepared to take it seriously. The discovery of America gave a new zest to the search for a Lost Continent which has exercised a curious fascination, and a tradition has grown up that long before recorded history begins there was a vast island in the Atlantic Ocean which was the seat of a great civilisation when the rest of the world was more or less barbarous, and that from it other civilisations have sprung; but that it suddenly sank in the sea. It is however geologically certain that no such subsidence in the Atlantic or Mediterranean has taken place in human times or at least since palaeolithic man. Moreover the theory that the earliest civilisations were founded on the wreck of Atlantis is contrary to Plato, whose whole story depends on his statement that Athens and Egypt were as civilised and in the event even more powerful than the mysterious island. This is borne out by excavation, for the development of the Mediterranean races has been traced back to their respective stone ages, and shows no such sudden and simultaneous influence from without. [1]
It seems therefore futile to seek for the geographical or geological site of a huge island now submerged. On the other hand, a political and natural disaster, a cataclysm in the usual instead of in the literal sense of the word, can destroy an ancient civilisation as completely as any flood, and on these lines it may be possible to find the central historic fact which gave rise to the legend, which clearly is largely imaginative in the form given it in the Critias.
Most Platonists regard the episode of Solon's visit to Egypt and his projected poem as a fiction. The arguments for this view are marshalled by Dr. Jowett, who shows how characteristic it would be of Plato to invent the entire story. [2] In his introduction to the Timaeus he asks the following questions: (1) Did Plato derive the legend of Atlantis from an Egyptian source? To this he replies, ‘It is only a legend that Solon went to Egypt and if he did he could not have conversed with the Egyptian priests or have read records in their temples.’ (2) ‘How came the poem of Solon to disappear in antiquity? or why did Plato, if the whole narrative was known to him, break off almost at the beginning of it?’ This may be answered at once. Plato himself says that Solon's poem was never finished, much less could it have been published, so it is hard to talk of its disappearance. Reasons are given below for supposing that an echo of the beginning of this poem does survive in a familiar form. Further, Plato does give an outline of the whole narrative in the Timaeus. It is only in the Critias that he breaks off. The complete adaptation of the legend would have been a long and laborious work; and the break in the Critias probably marks the point where the poem of Solon stopped and where Plato would have to begin to invent the details himself. (3) ‘Whence came the tradition to Egypt?’ (4) ‘Passing from external to internal evidence we may remark that the story is far more likely to have been invented by Plato than to have been brought by Solon from Egypt.’
Internal evidence of this kind is sometimes misleading:--‘In the 4th century of our era a certain L. Septimius wrote what purported to be a Latin translation of a Greek chronicle of the Trojan War by Dictys of Crete... from the literary flourishes with which the author sought to adorn his work, and the adaptations from Sallust, Virgil, Cornelius Nepos, and other Latin writers with which it is interlarded, advocates were found of the view that the whole was a fabrication of Septimius and that no Greek original had really existed. All doubts on the matter have now, however, been removed by the discovery, due to Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt’s researches at Tebtunis, of a substantial fragment of the original Greek work.’ [4]
Since the last edition of Dr. Jowett's work so much undreamed of material has been brought to light, that the history of the Mediterranean peoples before the classical age has had to be largely re-written. Let us leave the Critias for a while and examine the circumstances narrated in the Timaeus, for on them depends our appreciation of the Critias. First, could Solon have gone to Egypt and talked with the Priest at Sais? If not, the whole story must be a fiction. Solon’s laws were passed in 594 B.C., after which he left Athens and journeyed in the East. He was already an experienced traveller, and the moment was especially favourable for a Greek to visit Egypt: above all for an Athenian to visit Sais. Greek influence in the Delta was at that time at its height. [5] Necho II. depended on his Greek mercenaries for his power abroad and for the security of his throne. He established for them the two great camps or rather cities of Daphnae and Naucratis. At sea he employed foreigners, mainly Greeks and Phoenicians, and it was he who sent the latter on the famous voyage of discovery round Africa. The same policy was continued under his successor Psammetichus II., who in his expedition to the Sudan led his Greek mercenaries in person, and it was probably on this occasion that they carved their names on the rocks of Abu Simbel, where they can still be read. So strong indeed was the Greek influence that the native Egyptians became restive, and shortly after the time of Solon a reaction set in. The leader of the reactionary movement was Amasis, who, though he could not altogether dispense with the Greeks, dismantled Daphnae and confined the Greek settlement to Naucratis, which he made a sort of Treaty-port. Shortly after 594 B.C. was therefore a most opportune moment for Solon to visit Sais, which was then the capital of Egypt and in the very midst of the Greek military and commercial activity on which the Pharaoh and his court largely depended. It is only natural to suppose that some at least of the priests of the chief temple of the Capital must have been able to speak Greek, and we know that Herodotus found ἐρμηνέες and also talked with the Assistant Treasurer at Sais as well as with the priests generally. There is thus nothing improbable in Solon’s visit to Sais; on the contrary, when we consider all the circumstances and remember the fascination which the antiquity and wisdom of the Egyptians always had for the Greeks, it would be strange if he did not go there. The statement of Herodotus (ii. 177) Σόλων δὲ ὁ Ἀθηναῖος λαβὼν ἐξ Αἰγύπτου τοῦτον τὸν νόμον Ἀθηναίοισι ἔθετο seems to imply that Solon had been in Egypt before. Plutarch, Life of Solon xxvi. says πρῶτον μὲν οὖν εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἀφίκετο καὶ διέτριψεν, ὡς αὐτός φησι,
Νείλου ἐπὶ προχοῇσι Κανωβίδος ἐγγύθεν ἀκτῆς.
This seems definite enough to be conclusive. There is no intrinsic impossibility in the account Plato gives of the conversations between Solon and the aged Priest, between those two, one of whom seemed to sum up in his venerable figure all the wisdom of the Egyptians, while the other was a type of the West by whom the ancient East was fated to be swept away: a man of a young eager active race thirsting for knowledge and adventure. First the old man wishing to show one of these young barbarians, one of the ‘Brazen men from the Sea,’ how ancient and great was the land of Egypt, enlarged on the advantages his country enjoyed both in position and climate; hence its unbroken prosperity and the preservation of the most ancient records. Then finding that his listener was both intelligent and appreciative he told him of a great but generally forgotten event which illustrated his contention that the Egyptian annals contained all history, including much which had been forgotten by other nations because of their frequent convulsions. At the same time the part played by the Athenians was a compliment to his guest. So he told him that once there had been a great Island Empire in the West which had rule over the sea and over other islands and parts of the continent ‘which surrounds the true Ocean,’ dominating Europe as far as Tyrrhenia and North Africa as far as Egypt. Then it aspired to universal conquest and made war on Athens and Egypt, but was defeated by the Athenians who were then much more powerful than the Athenians of Solon's time. Soon afterwards the Gods caused it to be overwhelmed by the sea, and Attica also became the victim of a flood which swept away its ideal inhabitants and reduced the land to its present size. The story as it stands sounds like an impossible romance. If however we are content to say that the island empire and not the island itself was destroyed suddenly and finally, then an exact parallel did actually occur.
Some eight centuries before Solon, Egypt had reached under Amenhotep the Third the zenith of her wealth and power. [6] Her dominion from the Sudan to the Taurus, from Libya to Carchemish. Temples and tombs, statues and jewellery attest to this day the might the skill of her artists. We know, too, that Egypt was in communication with her neighbours. The Tell el Amarna letters prove that there was a regular correspondence with the cities of Palestine and with Babylon. In the West was another Empire also at the height and with a history as old as that of Egypt itself. This maritime empire of the Minoans, of which Cnossus was the capital.
Of all the discoveries made in recent years that of Minoan Crete is the most amazing and the most vital to the reconstruction history. At the time of the Later Palace period (or Late Minoan II in the scheme of Sir Arthur Evans), which is contemporary with the XVIIIth Dynasty in Egypt, the Minoans had attained a very high degree of material and artistic development. In many respects it was strikingly palaces rising storey after storey with their grand staircases, the private houses with their luxury and refinement, the shops and magazines, the system of drainage, even the fashions of the ladies, are all without parallel in the ancient world. This splendour was the result of no new or sudden growth, nor did it spring from imported ideas grafted on to a primitive people. In spite of much contact with the surrounding nations it was essentially due to long indigenous development stretching thousands of years back into the dim neolithic past when man first settled on the hill of Cnossus.
The excavations show that before the final sack of the Palace there had been at least two periods of depression and upheaval in the Minoan world, which were each time succeeded by an age of yet greater progress and achievement, till about 1450 B.C. the Minoans dominated the Mediterranean. The whole sea-borne trade between Europe, Asia, and Africa was in their hands. Phoenician trade was not as yet considerable; indeed, Phoenicia seems to have done little more than take up the heritage of Crete after the Minoan power had been swept away. Even the famous Tyrian purple was due to the Minoans. The distinctive character of the Minoans was no less striking than their commercial and naval supremacy. They were different from the later Achaeans, and in dress, build, and character presented a marked contrast to Egyptians and Asiatics. This individuality was made more noticeable by the fact that they ruled the mysterious sea. During the great Palace period or Late Minoan II., the Minoan dominion, of which Cnossus was both the political and geographical centre, was a vast and well defined power with a highly centralised government, formed, it is true, of scattered islands and of cities on the coast of the mainland, but united not divided by the sea, and with a genius of its own, so that it may well have seemed to the ancient world more like a fourth continent, a kind of Australasia with all the added power and prestige of wealth, mystery, and an immemorial past. Since very early times the Minoans had been in close communication with Egypt. [7] The three chief epochs of Minoan history were roughly contemporary with the three greatest periods in the history of Egypt. Thus the Early Minoan kingdom flourished during the rule of the Old Kingdom at Memphis [8]: the Middle Minoan power was at its height when the Twelfth Dynasty reigned at Thebes, [9] and the building of the last and greatest Palace at Cnossus with its throne-room, its frescoes, halls, and corridors, which in later ages was remembered as the Labyrinth, was contemporary with the glories of the Theban Empire under the XVIIIth Dynasty. [10] It is even likely that the first Cretan Labyrinth was influenced by the earlier and greater Labyrinth at Hawara. It is certain that Minoan influence was very active in Egypt in the reign of Amenhotep III. and in Akhenaten’s palace at Tell al Amarna, and it is probable that their traders were busy in the Delta. Thus important events which happened in one country could not fail to be known in the other. Suddenly the Minoans were overthrown, Cnossos was sacked and burnt, and the might of King Minos was swept away for ever. [11] Confident in the long supremacy of their fleet the Minoans had left Cnossus and all the cities yet discovered practically unfortified. A strong raiding party could have ravaged the island in a few days. Nothing as yet is known of the circumstances of this great disaster. It is certain that it fell upon Cnossus when it was at the height of its pride and power and not in a period of depression and decline. [12] Moreover, it seems fairly clear that the loss fell more on the governing class who lived in the great palaces than on the nation as a whole. It is not unlikely that the invader was helped by a revolt of the people against their rulers, and that the whole catastrophe was largely due to rebellion against the central power of Cnossus. In any case the chief and most startling result was the fall of Cnossus.
The invasion seems to have come from the Southern coast of Greece, for at this period the centre of power shifts to Mycenae, Tiryns, Argos, and Athens, who grow great on the plunder of Cnossus. At the same time there seems to have been a partial revival among the cities of Minoan Crete, which the overmastering power of Cnossus had destroyed. But their innate vitality was spent, and in this revival Northern influence predominates. [13] So daring and epoch-making a raid must have required a bold and skilful leader. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur contains a popular tradition of the sack of Cnossus. Theseus is the most clearly defined, the most closely localised and the most human of all the heroes of the older generation. All accounts agree that he was a native of Troezen. The story that he was really the son of Aegeus was clearly invented to legitimise his seizure of the Athenian throne. Usually he is called the son of Poseidon, even by Athenian writers, which indicates a Cretan or at least a seafaring origin, and it is significant that at the end of his life he is said to have withdrawn to Scyros. If there be any truth in the deeply rooted legend of Theseus, the man who had already won fame, who had been born and bred by the sea, and who had established himself in Athens as heir to the throne, was exactly the man to lead the raid which was to shake off the yoke of Crete; nor need we be surprised at his desertion of his Cretan ally and the untimely end of King Aegeus. The subsequent synoecismus seems to have been a fact, and may well have been his work. Whatever degree of credence may be given to personal details the fact remains that the Minoans had settlements on the coasts of Greece, [14] that Cnossus was sacked by raiders from the coasts and islands of Greece, and that these ‘Minoan’ settlements in Greece became independent and powerful ‘Mycenaean’ cities. Thus the Island Empire in the West, its defeat by the ‘Athenians’ and its sudden and terrible destruction are historical facts, whether they influenced Plato or not.
What of the flood which washed away Athens? [15] The whole description of the Athenian state in these dialogues seems much more fictitious than that of Atlantis itself. Plato acknowledges it to be a continuation of his ideal Republic, and doubtless intended it to symbolise the victories of Athens over Persia, apparently omitting in both cases the parts played by other states. If Atlantis was mighty her conqueror must be mightier, and as the limits of historic Attica were obvious a flood must reduce the ideal state to its actual dimensions. On the other hand several waves of invasion did sweep over the Greek peninsula between 1400 and 900 B.C. [16] The course of events in the earlier part of this period is not yet clear, but it seems as if the men who sacked Cnossus and transformed the old Minoan settlements at Mycenae, Tiryns, and Argos enjoyed but a short-lived triumph, and that they were in turn conquered by a fresh wave of invaders from the North who occupied their palaces and became the Achaeans of Homer. Later came a greater destruction when the Dorians wiped out the Minoan and Mycenaean world, though a degraded type of its civilisation lingered on especially in the islands.
We have still to consider the attempt at universal conquest by the Island Empire in the West. This attempt is an indisputable fact and influenced the whole course of Mediterranean history. Here we pass from conjecture to certainty, from legends to contemporary official records which still survive. We have seen that the sack of the Cretan Palaces did not end the Minoan civilisation, though it changed the whole aspect of the Mediterranean world and began a new epoch of history. On the contrary, during the ‘Mycenaean’ age (which Sir Arthur Evans calls Late Minoan III.) the Minoan civilisation was more widely spread than before though in a modified form and with a lower artistic standard, much in the same way as Hellenism was more widely diffused during the Hellenistic period than in the fifth century though its creative force was spent and its excellence Until the Mycenaeans were finally conquered in the latter half of the twelfth century there was little outwardly to distinguish them from the earlier Minoans, and as a matter of fact there is no doubt that the Egyptians confused the two: both came from the Great Green Sea. [17] Historically it was these later Mycenaeans who made the great attack on Egypt and the Levant immediately before the date assigned to the Trojan War. Foremost among them were the Cretan Peleset, who afterward became the Philistines of the Bible, the Siculi, and the Danai. [18] In the inscriptions of Rameses III. we read: ‘Their main support was Peleset, Thekel, Shekelesh, Denyen, and Weshesh. These lands were united, and they laid their hands upon the land as far as the Circle of the Earth. Their hearts were confident, full of their plans.’ [19] Whatever was the precise significance of the phrase ‘circle of the earth’ to an Egyptian (a disputed point) it would certainly suggest the whole world to a Greek. The end of the thirteenth century B.C. was a period of great unrest. [20] Egypt was growing old and weak: her empire had shrunk almost to the Nile valley, she was falling under the power of the Priests, and the Libyans, who had recovered from their defeat by Merenptah, were making a determined attempt, aided by the sea-rovers to conquer the Delta. [21] She was still, however, the richest country in the world. To win this royal prize the ‘Mycenaeans’ of Crete and the Isles combined with the Dardani and their allies on the coast of Asia Minor. It was a mighty confederacy, formed as it was of the rovers of the seas, of the pirate princes and fierce warriors who live in the lines of Homer. The land forces marched slowly down through Syria carrying their families with them in wagons, for the invasion was for them not a raid but a migration. The fleet moved with them down the coast. The invaders were the most terrible foes Egypt had ever met. Surely they would occupy Palestine, plunder Egypt, and rule the whole Levant. But they had reckoned without their host. Rameses III. was one of the greatest men who ever reigned in Egypt. He is usually considered to have been only a moderately successful imitator of Rameses II., but when we consider how much greater his difficulties were at home and abroad and how completely he triumphed over them we must acknowledge that he has been underrated. He was an able administrator and a great soldier, and by his victories gave Egypt a lasting peace. He defeated and drove out the Libyans who had occupied part of the Delta. At the same time he defeated the Mycenean sea-rovers who were co-operating with them, whereby his fleet gained experience which stood it in good stead in the great battle soon after. It may well be that the Egyptians considered that the Libyan invasion aided by these Rovers was part of the general movement of the Peoples of the Sea. In the eighth year of his reign, about 1194, Rameses marched into Palestine while his fleet sailed along the coast and defeated the invaders by land and sea. The site of the battle is unknown but it must have been somewhere on the coast of Palestine or the Delta. The inscription recording the fight on land has been entirely destroyed, but the battle took place near enough to the sea to enable Rameses to march his troops up in time to take part in the destruction of the Mycenean fleet. The victory was complete and brought momentous results. The peace of Egypt was secured; and incidentally the Phoenicians must have benefited by this defeat of their enemies. Joshua's invasion of Canaan was facilitated and probably hastened by the destruction caused to the country by the opposing forces. Some of the surviving Peleset were allowed to settle on the coasts and became the Philistines who were known to Jeremiah as the ‘Remnant of the country (or island) of Caphtor.’ [22] It seems almost certain that the Trojan War was also directly due to this, the earliest known of the Decisive Battles of the World.
We have seen then that the main outlines of the story told by the Priest about Atlantis contain a true account of the closing scenes of Minoan history from an Egyptian point of view: there was a great island empire in the far West; it did make an attempt at what seemed to the Egyptians universal conquest; the islanders were defeated by raiders from Greece who were very possibly led by the chief hero of Athens; and these ‘Athenians’ were not long afterwards in turn overwhelmed.
There is much in the geographical description of Atlantis which confirms this identification. ‘This island was the way to other islands, and from these islands you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean.’ These words exactly suit Crete, which has been called ‘the stepping-stone of continents’: they are meaningless if applied to any spot in the Atlantic ocean.
The empire which Plato goes on to describe differs from all purely imaginary states such as Plato’s own Republic, in that it is not a single homogeneous power: it is a wide and varied dominion under the rule of a central capital: ‘In this island there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, as well as over parts of the Continent.’ Could the political position of Cnossus be expressed more accurately? The site of the Capital is described in terms which apply to the site of Cnossus. The island was very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the city was on a level plain sheltered from the North. Further, in the Critias we are told that the ‘earth-born’ man Evenor lived on a mountain ‘not very high on any side,’ and was found there by Poseidon on the site of the future city of Atlantis. The palace of Cnossus is built on a low hill which rises from a plain. On this hill there had been an important neolithic settlement for ages before the Palace was built; it had apparently continued from 10,000 B.C. or earlier up to the founding of the Minoan city. And on the North the plain is sheltered by hills, though it is true that these hills are very low. Again, the boundaries of the empire of Atlantis are identical with those which are specially associated with Minoan influence. Plato says that Atlantis ruled over North Africa as far as Tyrrhenia. The problem of the Etruscans is still unsolved. Pliny quotes Varro as stating that there were altogether four labyrinths, and that one of them was the tomb of Lars Porsenna of Clusium. The three others were at Cnossus, Hawara, and Lemnos. Though the statement as it stands is enigmatic, Varro clearly considered a monument in what was then known as Etruria to belong to a type of building associated with Minos. However that may be, the Etruscans were a sea-power in Solon’s day, and would certainly have formed an eastern limit to any other sea-power that was farther West. Even Carthage found it prudent to make a treaty with them and to recognise them as masters of Corsica and the Tyrrhenian sea. They were the chief power in North Italy about 600 B.C. Their fleet was destroyed by Hiero I. of Syracuse off Cumae in 474, after which they declined. Thus it would be more natural for Solon than for Plato to consider them the limit to any Western aggression.
In North Africa we have seen that the Mycenean sea-rovers cooperated with the Libyans against Egypt, and near Gurob in the Fayum Mycenean pottery was found in the tombs of the Tursha, who are probably the same as the Turusha who attacked Egypt in the reign of Merenptah.
The geography therefore no less than the history of the empire of Atlantis reproduces with surprising accuracy that of the Minoan empire as it was known to the Egyptians. There. remains, however, one obvious difficulty: Atlantis should be outside, and not inside the Pillars of Heracles. The whole treatment of the myth is much farther West, as is everything to do with Atlas. But had the original account anything to do with Atlas? Does this objection, which seems fatal to the later developments of the legend, really apply to the original Egyptian version if any such existed? It is more likely that it is this very name which has led all searchers astray. 'The actual names in their Greek form as we have them, if they were adapted from Egyptian originals, can in any case be no more than rough equivalents which would convey to the Greek mind an impression corresponding to that which the records gave to an Egyptian. And it is important to remember that we are not dealing with a translation of the annals but at best with the outlines of a poem with a purpose founded more or less on them, which is quite a different thing. The Egyptians have never been a seafaring people. We know that they did send expeditions to the coast of Palestine and the Red Sea earlier than the sack of Cnossus. But Crete lies about 400 miles to the West right out in an open sea [23] which can be really rough even modern ships, and to reach it one must sail out of sight of land, which always filled the coast-hugging mariners of the ancient world with dread. It is in the highest degree unlikely that Egyptian ships ever reached Crete in Minoan times. Even if they had done so they would have found that the Minoan empire stretched yet further West again. Even if they had ventured to voyage so far into the Great Green Sea it is unlikely that the Minoans would have been more tolerant of rivals in trade than the Phoenicians were in later times. Crete therefore and the Minoan world which we are accustomed to associate with the Near East was to an Egyptian of the Theban Empire the Far West. How far West it might be he would not trouble. The very name Keftiu means ‘the men from the Back of Beyond.’ According to Mr. H. R. Hall the word kefti means ‘behind,’ ‘away back,’ and so is often written, when it has this meaning simply, with the symbol of the hindquarters of an animal. The root is a very early one, and occurs in the Pyramid texts. These Keftiu are specifically the men of Minoan Crete and not the Myceneans, as is shown by their portraits on the monuments and their dress and the vases they carry. [23a] ‘So Keftiu lay in the extreme aphelion so to speak of the orbit of the peoples which revolved around the central sun of Egypt in the remotest part of the Mediterranean Ring.[’] [24] References to the land from which the sea-rovers came are very vague in such records as have survived. They came from beyond Egyptian ken, and that was enough. But in Solon's time the Western Mediterranean was familiar enough, and the Phoenician ships traded far beyond it. Only just before Solon's visit they are said even to have circumnavigated Africa. Farthest West therefore must lie far beyond the Pillars of Heracles. It is possible that here we have an echo of an Egyptian phrase which placed the Keftiu beyond the Four Pillars of the World. These Pillars play a prominent part in ancient Egyptian theology and geography. They were at first actual mountains on the borders of the Egyptian world. In later times, as geographical knowledge widened, they had to be idealised and placed farther away. ‘Atlantis’ seems to have experienced a similar fate; or rather, in its Greek form it starts with this later adaptation of the old idea, though its foundations were laid unconsciously on the older and geographically true tradition. In any case, if Solon hoped to sing of the vanished island, his first need would have been to find a Greek name fitted in form and associations for employment in Epic verse. As such the name Atlantis is admirable: it can be used with ease and dignity in hexameter lines, and it conveys a hint magic and mystery of that boundless Ocean which stretched beyond limits of human travel. It is thus a Greek equivalent to the name Keft. It is worth noting that before the story is elaborated the first description attributed to the Priest begins with the words: νῆσον γὰρ πρὸ τοῦ στόματος εἶχεν ὃ καλεῖτε, ὥς φατε, ὑμεῖς Ἡρακλέους στήλας . . . ‘before the Pillars,’ though he speaks of the δύναμιν ἔξωθεν ὁρμηθεισαν. To anyone sailing from Egypt, Crete is in front of the Pillars and the Atlantic is behind them. Finally there is the tradition of the shallowness of the ocean and of the mud-banks which marked the site of the lost continent. It seems impossible that the early discoverers and traders should have brought back such a report of the real Atlantic Ocean. On the other hand, if they hugged the coast too long on their way to Crete or were driven out of their course they would soon strike the Syrtes, the quicksands which were dreaded even by the Romans. When the power of Cnossus had been swept away in perhaps little more than ‘a day and a night’ and the island was considered to have been engulfed in the waves it would have been no unnatural deduction to consider that its site was marked by the shoals which were reported in that direction; especially as the Egyptians seem to have lost touch with Crete after the sack. When Atlantis was placed beyond the Pillars the mud-banks also had also to be transported.
There would have been an additional reason for Solon to locate Atlantis outside the Pillars of Heracles. From the Greek point of view the struggle would then become one between the civilised Aegean peoples and the dread forces of τὸ τέρας, i.e. that which was monstrous, beyond the limit, barbarous. Here again the name Atlantis gives a hint of a comparison with the Battle of Gods and Giants, for Atlas was one of the Titans. Such transpositions in the light of wider geographical knowledge are natural and widespread. In the Norse legends of Vineland accounts of the actual Azores were transposed so as to prolong an actual exploration of Labrador and Maine. [25] In the same way in the original Babylonian story ‘Ararat was the name of the desert mound where the Ark rested; and when the families of the younger sons of the patriarch moved off and made new settlements, they gave the name Ararat to the highest mountain they knew in honour of the spot where the Ark rested. This Armenian Ararat could no more have been the Ararat where the Ark rested than New York be York.’ [26] We have already seen how the Egyptian Pillars of the world receded as the geographical horizon widened, and many critics believe that the scene of the original Odyssey was in the Black Sea but was later changed to the West, which remained mysterious after the Black Sea had been explored. The completeness with which the glories of what we now know to have been Minoan civilisation had become dissociated from Crete is shown in Homer’s account of the Phaeacians. The picture given by the poet is substantially true of the great period of the Palace of Cnossus, but quite unlike that of Crete as he knew it. So the Phaeacians, who cannot be located, have to be found on an island which should have been almost desert. Phaeacia is to Homer just what Atlantis is to Plato with the vital difference that in the Homeric picture the catastrophe had not yet occurred. This seems to show that in Homer’s time Minoan legends and poems still survived either in their original form or in translations, and that the Epic cycle may have adapted and embodied some of them. Yet Homer is familiar with the name of Minos. Odysseus, with fine irony, is pretends that he himself is son of Deucalion son of Minos, and so brother of Idomeneus. Minos, Deucalion and Idomeneus form, however, a true sequence if they represent the last days of Minoan power, the coming of the Achaeans, and the generation of the Trojan War.
Thus both Greeks and Egyptians had records of the old Minoan civilisation before the sack of Cnossus. Both of them in time came to know Crete well, but neither connected the island with that particular civilisation, though the Greeks knew that Minos had once ruled there with fabulous power and magnificence. This unidentified civilisation must therefore have belonged to a land that had since disappeared with people. They were already familiar with a flood tradition. What more natural than that this ancient and unknown people also had been overwhelmed by a flood? In this case the transposition of the island and the theory of the flood, and indeed the whole Atlantis legend in its popular form, is due to a lack of identification.
But Plato (or Solon) still gives Atlantis rule over part of Europe and Africa. Why should he do this before their attempt at conquest, unless he had started with this idea given him by the true record? It is most significant that when the myth is pushed further west so many of the old geographical landmarks are kept.
The question next arises, How much Minoan history was actually preserved in the Egyptian state records and temple traditions in the sixth century B.C.? It is impossible to tell; but we may be sure that Minoan history as far as it affected Egypt was clearly and accurately recorded. We know for example that the attack of the Myceneans on Egypt described above was given in great detail, for much of the account remains to this day at Thebes, and the accompanying reliefs are so faithful that even if there were no inscriptions the Myceneans could be identified with certainty. But the sum of all the inscriptions which have survived is but a small fragment of those which existed in Solon’s day when the records were still complete. Especially is this the case with Sais and the Delta, the very part of the country which we should expect to have contained most evidence of the Minoans. We may safely assume, however, that some mention was made in the royal or temple records of the overthrow of Cnossus no less than of the later Minoans, for the event must have affected the Egyptians. The sudden destruction of the ruler of the seas and the chief commercial power in the Mediterranean began a new era in history. When later Greek historians tried to trace history back to its beginnings they went thus far and no farther. Behind that date all was attributed to Minos, a great though shadowy name. After him a new order of things arose; after the sack of Cnossus there was no longer any central control of the seas, and the period of the sea-rovers begins. This period culminated in the Trojan War, when the different Mycenaean states, after having combined against Egypt, were defeated by Ramses III. and baulked of their prey. This caused them to fall out among themselves and turn their arms against each other, soon after which the Achaeans were overwhelmed by the Dorians and the period Late Minoan III. comes to an end. Then begins the list of Thalassocracies given by Eusebius [27] Thus the great break in the normal intercourse between the Minoans and Egypt was caused by the destruction of Cnossus. This event affected the foreign relationships of the Minoans much more suddenly and rapidly than it affected the course of their general civilisation. Before that time Minoan influence had been strong in Egypt; from that time onwards until the attacks of the late sea-rovers, all connexion with Crete suddenly stops. The same result is shown by the excavations in Melos. [28] In Egypt, after the sack of Cnossus, the name Keftiu, which really meant Minoan Cretans, falls completely out of use and is superseded by various other tribal names belonging to the Peoples of the Sea. [29] So it is almost inevitable that the destruction of the Palace at Cnossus which ended the old régime and began such a turbulent time did find some sort of notice in the Egyptian annals. Once there it would remain, whether it was understood or not. It is doubtful whether the Egyptians Solon’s day associated the Keftiu with the island of Crete, though they certainly meant the men who we now know came from there. When consider the vagueness with which the Egyptians regarded the sea and islands, and the way in which the later Mycenaeans were confused with Phoenicians, it is more than likely that the Keftiu were regarded as a curious people, who once existed in the West and had since disappeared, as indeed they had. Closer acquaintance with the Crete of the Dorian period would tend to prevent them from locating the Keftiu there. In this connexion it is interesting to notice that Proclus says he saw references to the men of Atlantis on Egyptian monuments and that there were many such. Dealing with this question (op. cit. p. 431) Dr. Jowett remarks, ‘The story may be false—there are similar tales about columns set up by the Canaanites whom Joshua drove out (Procop.).’ But such tales of the ‘Canaanites’ tend to confirm the statement of Proclus, for they have left large numbers columns. Dr. Jowett further maintains that if the statement is true it only shows that the Neoplatonists took the trouble to forge stone monuments just as they forged books. Surely this is carrying scepticism too far. It is much simpler to suppose that Proclus saw representations of the Keftiu, whom we now know to have been Minoans and who would answer in every respect to his ‘men of Atlantis.’ Be that as it may, a fair number of public and private records of the Minoans still remain in Egypt. There is nothing therefore intrinsically impossible or even unlikely in the statement that Solon went to Sais, and was told by the Priest a story of the great island empire that once had existed in the far West; and that this story was drawn from the Egyptian records. It is equally probable that, if he did hear such a wonderful and thrilling tale, he would use it or intend to use it as the basis of an epic poem. Solon was a poet no less than a politician and it was by a political poem which still survives that he first won fame. Now that his political work was done, he would compose a patriotic poem on the ὕβρις of the forgotten island like that of Τιτηνες κακομηται ὑπέρβιον ητορ ἔχοντες [30] and its defeat by the Athenians of old, a theme which would appeal to the national pride of his countrymen and might help to smooth their dissensions. For this purpose the history would have to be modified. The glory must go to Athens and the part played by Rameses III. would not be mentioned; and the battle must come before and not after the destruction of Cnossus. It is also a fact that the Egyptians had no share in the overthrow of Cnossus and the Cretan Palaces: they were concerned only with the wars of the later sea-rovers. Further, the Epic would be a type of Hellenism against Barbarism, cosmic in scope like the Battle of the Gods and Giants. (Plato would have made it a prototype of the Persian wars.) ἵνα της ἀναλογίας ἡμάς ἀναμνήσω, διὰ μὲν του τών Άθηναίων ὀνόματος ἐπί τὴν Όλυμπίαν ἀναπέμπει τοὺς ἀκούοντας συστοιχίαν, τὴν ύπο της Άθηνάς στρατηγουμένην, διὰ δὲ του των Άτλαντίνων ἐπὶ τοὺς Τιτανικοὺς θεούς, εις γάρ πον τών Τιτανικών καὶ ὁ μέγιστος Άτλας. [31] Another familiar struggle was suggested, the strife of Athens and Poseidon τών Άτλαντίνων Ποσειδωνος ὄντων ἐκγόνων. [32] The theme was one to fire the imagination of any poet and would appeal especially to an Athenian: most of all to a poet who was also a statesman and in the position of Solon. The epic was never completed; but if Solon had really begun or planned it, had Plato any special reason for knowing it, and if so why did he associate it with Critias? Dr. Jowett says (Introduction to Critias, op. cit. p. 526) ‘It is singular that Plato should have prefixed the most detested of Athenian names to this dialogue, and even more singular that he should have put into the mouth of Socrates a panegyric on him. (Tim. 20 A).’ In the first place Plato belonged to the family of Solon: in the second this family had been friendly with that of Critias for generations. The relationship is variously given, Suidas: Lexicon, s.v. Solon, says ἕκτη γὰρ ἦν ἀπ' ἐκείνου, παῖς γενομένη Δρωπίδου τοῦ ποιητοῦ, ἀδελφοῦ Σόλωνος. [33] This is confirmed by the anonymous Prolegomena (Teubner Text, vol. xv). Olympiodorus in his Life of Plato traces his descent from Solon on his father’s side. Proclus says ώστε ο Γλαύκων Κριτίου θείος ήν, ἀνεψιός δὲ Χαρμίδης, θείος δὲ Πλάτωνος, Σόλων δε αδελφός (του) ἐπιπάππου Κριτίου, το μὲν ούν αληθὲς τοιούτον ὀ δέ γε θείος Ίάμβλιχος ἂλλως πως παραδίδωσι τὴν τού γένους διαδοχήν (Commentary, 25 F). There are also other variations, but all authorities agree that Solon, Critias, and Plato were inter-related. Again, in the opening scene of the Charmides (15 E) Plato states that Anacreon, Solon, and many other poets had composed panegyrics in honour of Critias son of Dropidas. Apart from the Timaeus and the Critias it is evident that Solon was ranked high as a poet by the old school, and that he was a friend of the elder Critias.
Though in some quarters Critias was, as Dr. Jowett reminds us, the most hated name in Athens, yet it is probable that he was popular with at least a section of the Aristocrats. Plato was essentially an aristocrat; even in his Republic the Guardians are the only class in which he really feels any interest.
Thus though the whole episode in the Timaeus of Solon’s visit Egypt and his poem on Atlantis may be a fiction it may also be true. What then of the Critias? It seems to be no less than a transcript in prose of the beginning of Solon’s epic which Plato at one time intended to complete as a Dialogue, but which he, too, left unfinished and unchanged in general form, though he may have modified it to make it further symbolical of the Persian Wars.
After a short perfunctory introduction the Critias starts from the beginning as an unbroken narrative cast in the regular form of an Epic poem, with Invocation of the Muse, detailed description of the combatants, careful mention of dates and numbers, and a Council of the Gods. It breaks off immediately before the great speech of the Father of Gods and Men which would set forth the argument of the coming struggle, at a point which is curiously abrupt in prose but which is exactly where an epic poet would naturally pause in composition.
Further the speech of Critias from the beginning of the invocation to the end of the description of Atlantis and the beginning of the Council of the Gods is almost exactly the same length as the first book of the Iliad up to the promise of Zeus to Thetis and the subsequent scene among the Gods. It is strange too that an outline of the whole story has already been given in the Timaeus, where it would be superfluous if it were going to be told again at greater length in the next dialogue. It almost seems as if Plato might have inserted the sketch in the Timaeus when he doubted whether he would ever complete the Critias. The whole atmosphere of the Critias is frankly imaginative. The city of Atlantis becomes a medley of marvels from all the non-Hellenic world. The great temple with its ‘strange Asiatic look’ seems to be inspired by the Babylon that Nebuchadnezzar was building to the wonder of the world, and the facing of the city walls may be a glorification of the glazed tiles which covered the walls of some of the Babylonian fortified palaces. The vast canals are derived from those of Egypt and Babylonia. [33] Horses and chariots were used in Crete as well as in most of the ancient world. [34] The elephants may have come from Egyptian records of the wars of Thothmes, [35] or may have been contributed by the Carthaginians. None of these non-Minoan wonders appear in the Timaeus, but they are exactly what would have struck a Greek traveller suited to embellish an epic of the struggle of Hellenism against Barbarism. Dr. Jowett remarks in his introduction to the Timaeus that the later forms of the Atlantis legend current in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries contain features taken from the Edda as well as from the Old and New Testament; also from the tales of missionaries and the experiences of travellers and colonists. Would it be surprising if in the same way Solon added to and exaggerated the wonders he had seen and heard? At the same time Dr. Jowett admits that no version of the story is known earlier than Plato. Yet in spite of these additions Minoan Crete dominates the scene. This is apparent in the details no less than in the general plan. The great harbour with its shipping and its merchants coming from all parts is typical of Crete: the elaborate bathrooms and the Stadium [36] are striking features in the Minoan scheme of life, and the solemn sacrifice of a bull was a Minoan ceremony. It is true that these points of resemblance are not in themselves enough to prove Minoan origin, but this inference is warranted when we read that ‘the bull is hunted in the Temple of Poseidon without weapons but with staves and nooses.’ [37] This cannot be anything but a description of the Bull-ring at Cnossus, the very thing which struck foreigners most, which became a very type of the rule of Minos and gave rise to the legend of the Minotaur. Plato’s words exactly describe the scenes on the famous Vaphio cups which seem to have been imported from Crete and which certainly represent catching wild bulls for the Minoan bull-fight. This bull-fight as we know from frescoes in the palace of Cnossus itself, the Temple of Poseidon, differed from all others in the very point which Plato emphasises, namely that no weapons were used.
It is not impossible therefore that Solon went to Egypt and learned what was in fact the Egyptian version of the overthrow of the Minoans, although he did not recognise it as such; that he used it as the basis of an epic which he never completed, but the plot of which Plato knew and adapted to his own use. This view is at least consistent with known facts.
The chief objections which remain are the following:--
(1) The world remembered Minos pretty clearly in the sixth century B.C. It certainly did remember a great power personified under that name just as the Minoan civilisation was typified by the fabulous inventions of Daedalus. Tradition was right in maintaining that before the Achaeans there had been a greater power and a higher civilisation of which Crete had been the centre. But its historical value when not illustrated by other evidence may be judged by the way in which the bull-fights and magnificence of the Palace of Cnossus are represented by the legends of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth which are meaningless unless we, like Theseus, hold the clue. The chief point is that neither Solon, the Priest, nor Egyptian records referred to the same fact as the Greek legends. The point of view of the Egyptians and their accurate but dry annals had little in common with Greek traditions. Even to-day many critics refuse to accept the identification!
(2) Plato was quite capable of inventing Egyptians or anything else, and gives several hints that the whole story is a fiction. He certainly could have invented a similar tale, but it is also quite in his manner to take a story from history and adapt it to his own use. The story of Gyges told in the Republic is as complete a fairy-tale as can be. Yet the characters are historical and the story without the magic is mainly true. Dr. Jowett classes the story of Atlantis with that of Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, and the Homeric poems. But while Gulliver's Travels were purposely made impossible, Robinson Crusoe and the Homeric poems, which like Atlantis have a semblance of truth, were founded on fact. [38] Plato may not have believed the story himself. That would make his involuntary evidence all the more valuable.
(3) The Priest would not confuse Rameses III. with Akhenaten even if he were to confuse the Keftiu with the sea raiders, which is also unlikely. He would not; but then we have not got his version. Our text of Herodotus, Book II., which is not an epic poem but serious Egyptian history, puts the fourth Dynasty after Rameses. [39] Solon may have consciously altered the sequence of events to make the narrative more effective after the manner of Dumas; or the two main stages of the Minoan overthrow may have been condensed into one dramatic episode when considered apart from strictly Egyptian history. Similarly, in Greek legends an earlier and a later Minos [40] and an earlier and a later Theseus can be distinguished. This tendency is almost universal in traditional history.
It would be indeed strange if so great and terrible an event as the sack of Cnossus and the downfall of the all-powerful Minoans should be left unrecorded. It would be still stranger if a thousand years afterwards a philosopher ‘evolved from his own inner consciousness’ the story of a disaster unique in human history, which he himself considered a fiction, but which agrees in its main features with that which really happened; for the parallel between fact and fiction is complete provided the doom of Atlantis be regarded as the overthrow of a political power and not as the disappearance of a geographical site. If this point be conceded, then the Minoan Empire, the sack of Cnossus, and the exploits of the Mycenean sea-raiders furnish the underlying historical facts which can be recognised in the legend.
The search for Atlantis has given rise to so many conflicting views (most of them palpably absurd) that few scholars are prepared to take it seriously. The discovery of America gave a new zest to the search for a Lost Continent which has exercised a curious fascination, and a tradition has grown up that long before recorded history begins there was a vast island in the Atlantic Ocean which was the seat of a great civilisation when the rest of the world was more or less barbarous, and that from it other civilisations have sprung; but that it suddenly sank in the sea. It is however geologically certain that no such subsidence in the Atlantic or Mediterranean has taken place in human times or at least since palaeolithic man. Moreover the theory that the earliest civilisations were founded on the wreck of Atlantis is contrary to Plato, whose whole story depends on his statement that Athens and Egypt were as civilised and in the event even more powerful than the mysterious island. This is borne out by excavation, for the development of the Mediterranean races has been traced back to their respective stone ages, and shows no such sudden and simultaneous influence from without. [1]
It seems therefore futile to seek for the geographical or geological site of a huge island now submerged. On the other hand, a political and natural disaster, a cataclysm in the usual instead of in the literal sense of the word, can destroy an ancient civilisation as completely as any flood, and on these lines it may be possible to find the central historic fact which gave rise to the legend, which clearly is largely imaginative in the form given it in the Critias.
Most Platonists regard the episode of Solon's visit to Egypt and his projected poem as a fiction. The arguments for this view are marshalled by Dr. Jowett, who shows how characteristic it would be of Plato to invent the entire story. [2] In his introduction to the Timaeus he asks the following questions: (1) Did Plato derive the legend of Atlantis from an Egyptian source? To this he replies, ‘It is only a legend that Solon went to Egypt and if he did he could not have conversed with the Egyptian priests or have read records in their temples.’ (2) ‘How came the poem of Solon to disappear in antiquity? or why did Plato, if the whole narrative was known to him, break off almost at the beginning of it?’ This may be answered at once. Plato himself says that Solon's poem was never finished, much less could it have been published, so it is hard to talk of its disappearance. Reasons are given below for supposing that an echo of the beginning of this poem does survive in a familiar form. Further, Plato does give an outline of the whole narrative in the Timaeus. It is only in the Critias that he breaks off. The complete adaptation of the legend would have been a long and laborious work; and the break in the Critias probably marks the point where the poem of Solon stopped and where Plato would have to begin to invent the details himself. (3) ‘Whence came the tradition to Egypt?’ (4) ‘Passing from external to internal evidence we may remark that the story is far more likely to have been invented by Plato than to have been brought by Solon from Egypt.’
Internal evidence of this kind is sometimes misleading:--‘In the 4th century of our era a certain L. Septimius wrote what purported to be a Latin translation of a Greek chronicle of the Trojan War by Dictys of Crete... from the literary flourishes with which the author sought to adorn his work, and the adaptations from Sallust, Virgil, Cornelius Nepos, and other Latin writers with which it is interlarded, advocates were found of the view that the whole was a fabrication of Septimius and that no Greek original had really existed. All doubts on the matter have now, however, been removed by the discovery, due to Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt’s researches at Tebtunis, of a substantial fragment of the original Greek work.’ [4]
Since the last edition of Dr. Jowett's work so much undreamed of material has been brought to light, that the history of the Mediterranean peoples before the classical age has had to be largely re-written. Let us leave the Critias for a while and examine the circumstances narrated in the Timaeus, for on them depends our appreciation of the Critias. First, could Solon have gone to Egypt and talked with the Priest at Sais? If not, the whole story must be a fiction. Solon’s laws were passed in 594 B.C., after which he left Athens and journeyed in the East. He was already an experienced traveller, and the moment was especially favourable for a Greek to visit Egypt: above all for an Athenian to visit Sais. Greek influence in the Delta was at that time at its height. [5] Necho II. depended on his Greek mercenaries for his power abroad and for the security of his throne. He established for them the two great camps or rather cities of Daphnae and Naucratis. At sea he employed foreigners, mainly Greeks and Phoenicians, and it was he who sent the latter on the famous voyage of discovery round Africa. The same policy was continued under his successor Psammetichus II., who in his expedition to the Sudan led his Greek mercenaries in person, and it was probably on this occasion that they carved their names on the rocks of Abu Simbel, where they can still be read. So strong indeed was the Greek influence that the native Egyptians became restive, and shortly after the time of Solon a reaction set in. The leader of the reactionary movement was Amasis, who, though he could not altogether dispense with the Greeks, dismantled Daphnae and confined the Greek settlement to Naucratis, which he made a sort of Treaty-port. Shortly after 594 B.C. was therefore a most opportune moment for Solon to visit Sais, which was then the capital of Egypt and in the very midst of the Greek military and commercial activity on which the Pharaoh and his court largely depended. It is only natural to suppose that some at least of the priests of the chief temple of the Capital must have been able to speak Greek, and we know that Herodotus found ἐρμηνέες and also talked with the Assistant Treasurer at Sais as well as with the priests generally. There is thus nothing improbable in Solon’s visit to Sais; on the contrary, when we consider all the circumstances and remember the fascination which the antiquity and wisdom of the Egyptians always had for the Greeks, it would be strange if he did not go there. The statement of Herodotus (ii. 177) Σόλων δὲ ὁ Ἀθηναῖος λαβὼν ἐξ Αἰγύπτου τοῦτον τὸν νόμον Ἀθηναίοισι ἔθετο seems to imply that Solon had been in Egypt before. Plutarch, Life of Solon xxvi. says πρῶτον μὲν οὖν εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἀφίκετο καὶ διέτριψεν, ὡς αὐτός φησι,
Νείλου ἐπὶ προχοῇσι Κανωβίδος ἐγγύθεν ἀκτῆς.
This seems definite enough to be conclusive. There is no intrinsic impossibility in the account Plato gives of the conversations between Solon and the aged Priest, between those two, one of whom seemed to sum up in his venerable figure all the wisdom of the Egyptians, while the other was a type of the West by whom the ancient East was fated to be swept away: a man of a young eager active race thirsting for knowledge and adventure. First the old man wishing to show one of these young barbarians, one of the ‘Brazen men from the Sea,’ how ancient and great was the land of Egypt, enlarged on the advantages his country enjoyed both in position and climate; hence its unbroken prosperity and the preservation of the most ancient records. Then finding that his listener was both intelligent and appreciative he told him of a great but generally forgotten event which illustrated his contention that the Egyptian annals contained all history, including much which had been forgotten by other nations because of their frequent convulsions. At the same time the part played by the Athenians was a compliment to his guest. So he told him that once there had been a great Island Empire in the West which had rule over the sea and over other islands and parts of the continent ‘which surrounds the true Ocean,’ dominating Europe as far as Tyrrhenia and North Africa as far as Egypt. Then it aspired to universal conquest and made war on Athens and Egypt, but was defeated by the Athenians who were then much more powerful than the Athenians of Solon's time. Soon afterwards the Gods caused it to be overwhelmed by the sea, and Attica also became the victim of a flood which swept away its ideal inhabitants and reduced the land to its present size. The story as it stands sounds like an impossible romance. If however we are content to say that the island empire and not the island itself was destroyed suddenly and finally, then an exact parallel did actually occur.
Some eight centuries before Solon, Egypt had reached under Amenhotep the Third the zenith of her wealth and power. [6] Her dominion from the Sudan to the Taurus, from Libya to Carchemish. Temples and tombs, statues and jewellery attest to this day the might the skill of her artists. We know, too, that Egypt was in communication with her neighbours. The Tell el Amarna letters prove that there was a regular correspondence with the cities of Palestine and with Babylon. In the West was another Empire also at the height and with a history as old as that of Egypt itself. This maritime empire of the Minoans, of which Cnossus was the capital.
Of all the discoveries made in recent years that of Minoan Crete is the most amazing and the most vital to the reconstruction history. At the time of the Later Palace period (or Late Minoan II in the scheme of Sir Arthur Evans), which is contemporary with the XVIIIth Dynasty in Egypt, the Minoans had attained a very high degree of material and artistic development. In many respects it was strikingly palaces rising storey after storey with their grand staircases, the private houses with their luxury and refinement, the shops and magazines, the system of drainage, even the fashions of the ladies, are all without parallel in the ancient world. This splendour was the result of no new or sudden growth, nor did it spring from imported ideas grafted on to a primitive people. In spite of much contact with the surrounding nations it was essentially due to long indigenous development stretching thousands of years back into the dim neolithic past when man first settled on the hill of Cnossus.
The excavations show that before the final sack of the Palace there had been at least two periods of depression and upheaval in the Minoan world, which were each time succeeded by an age of yet greater progress and achievement, till about 1450 B.C. the Minoans dominated the Mediterranean. The whole sea-borne trade between Europe, Asia, and Africa was in their hands. Phoenician trade was not as yet considerable; indeed, Phoenicia seems to have done little more than take up the heritage of Crete after the Minoan power had been swept away. Even the famous Tyrian purple was due to the Minoans. The distinctive character of the Minoans was no less striking than their commercial and naval supremacy. They were different from the later Achaeans, and in dress, build, and character presented a marked contrast to Egyptians and Asiatics. This individuality was made more noticeable by the fact that they ruled the mysterious sea. During the great Palace period or Late Minoan II., the Minoan dominion, of which Cnossus was both the political and geographical centre, was a vast and well defined power with a highly centralised government, formed, it is true, of scattered islands and of cities on the coast of the mainland, but united not divided by the sea, and with a genius of its own, so that it may well have seemed to the ancient world more like a fourth continent, a kind of Australasia with all the added power and prestige of wealth, mystery, and an immemorial past. Since very early times the Minoans had been in close communication with Egypt. [7] The three chief epochs of Minoan history were roughly contemporary with the three greatest periods in the history of Egypt. Thus the Early Minoan kingdom flourished during the rule of the Old Kingdom at Memphis [8]: the Middle Minoan power was at its height when the Twelfth Dynasty reigned at Thebes, [9] and the building of the last and greatest Palace at Cnossus with its throne-room, its frescoes, halls, and corridors, which in later ages was remembered as the Labyrinth, was contemporary with the glories of the Theban Empire under the XVIIIth Dynasty. [10] It is even likely that the first Cretan Labyrinth was influenced by the earlier and greater Labyrinth at Hawara. It is certain that Minoan influence was very active in Egypt in the reign of Amenhotep III. and in Akhenaten’s palace at Tell al Amarna, and it is probable that their traders were busy in the Delta. Thus important events which happened in one country could not fail to be known in the other. Suddenly the Minoans were overthrown, Cnossos was sacked and burnt, and the might of King Minos was swept away for ever. [11] Confident in the long supremacy of their fleet the Minoans had left Cnossus and all the cities yet discovered practically unfortified. A strong raiding party could have ravaged the island in a few days. Nothing as yet is known of the circumstances of this great disaster. It is certain that it fell upon Cnossus when it was at the height of its pride and power and not in a period of depression and decline. [12] Moreover, it seems fairly clear that the loss fell more on the governing class who lived in the great palaces than on the nation as a whole. It is not unlikely that the invader was helped by a revolt of the people against their rulers, and that the whole catastrophe was largely due to rebellion against the central power of Cnossus. In any case the chief and most startling result was the fall of Cnossus.
The invasion seems to have come from the Southern coast of Greece, for at this period the centre of power shifts to Mycenae, Tiryns, Argos, and Athens, who grow great on the plunder of Cnossus. At the same time there seems to have been a partial revival among the cities of Minoan Crete, which the overmastering power of Cnossus had destroyed. But their innate vitality was spent, and in this revival Northern influence predominates. [13] So daring and epoch-making a raid must have required a bold and skilful leader. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur contains a popular tradition of the sack of Cnossus. Theseus is the most clearly defined, the most closely localised and the most human of all the heroes of the older generation. All accounts agree that he was a native of Troezen. The story that he was really the son of Aegeus was clearly invented to legitimise his seizure of the Athenian throne. Usually he is called the son of Poseidon, even by Athenian writers, which indicates a Cretan or at least a seafaring origin, and it is significant that at the end of his life he is said to have withdrawn to Scyros. If there be any truth in the deeply rooted legend of Theseus, the man who had already won fame, who had been born and bred by the sea, and who had established himself in Athens as heir to the throne, was exactly the man to lead the raid which was to shake off the yoke of Crete; nor need we be surprised at his desertion of his Cretan ally and the untimely end of King Aegeus. The subsequent synoecismus seems to have been a fact, and may well have been his work. Whatever degree of credence may be given to personal details the fact remains that the Minoans had settlements on the coasts of Greece, [14] that Cnossus was sacked by raiders from the coasts and islands of Greece, and that these ‘Minoan’ settlements in Greece became independent and powerful ‘Mycenaean’ cities. Thus the Island Empire in the West, its defeat by the ‘Athenians’ and its sudden and terrible destruction are historical facts, whether they influenced Plato or not.
What of the flood which washed away Athens? [15] The whole description of the Athenian state in these dialogues seems much more fictitious than that of Atlantis itself. Plato acknowledges it to be a continuation of his ideal Republic, and doubtless intended it to symbolise the victories of Athens over Persia, apparently omitting in both cases the parts played by other states. If Atlantis was mighty her conqueror must be mightier, and as the limits of historic Attica were obvious a flood must reduce the ideal state to its actual dimensions. On the other hand several waves of invasion did sweep over the Greek peninsula between 1400 and 900 B.C. [16] The course of events in the earlier part of this period is not yet clear, but it seems as if the men who sacked Cnossus and transformed the old Minoan settlements at Mycenae, Tiryns, and Argos enjoyed but a short-lived triumph, and that they were in turn conquered by a fresh wave of invaders from the North who occupied their palaces and became the Achaeans of Homer. Later came a greater destruction when the Dorians wiped out the Minoan and Mycenaean world, though a degraded type of its civilisation lingered on especially in the islands.
We have still to consider the attempt at universal conquest by the Island Empire in the West. This attempt is an indisputable fact and influenced the whole course of Mediterranean history. Here we pass from conjecture to certainty, from legends to contemporary official records which still survive. We have seen that the sack of the Cretan Palaces did not end the Minoan civilisation, though it changed the whole aspect of the Mediterranean world and began a new epoch of history. On the contrary, during the ‘Mycenaean’ age (which Sir Arthur Evans calls Late Minoan III.) the Minoan civilisation was more widely spread than before though in a modified form and with a lower artistic standard, much in the same way as Hellenism was more widely diffused during the Hellenistic period than in the fifth century though its creative force was spent and its excellence Until the Mycenaeans were finally conquered in the latter half of the twelfth century there was little outwardly to distinguish them from the earlier Minoans, and as a matter of fact there is no doubt that the Egyptians confused the two: both came from the Great Green Sea. [17] Historically it was these later Mycenaeans who made the great attack on Egypt and the Levant immediately before the date assigned to the Trojan War. Foremost among them were the Cretan Peleset, who afterward became the Philistines of the Bible, the Siculi, and the Danai. [18] In the inscriptions of Rameses III. we read: ‘Their main support was Peleset, Thekel, Shekelesh, Denyen, and Weshesh. These lands were united, and they laid their hands upon the land as far as the Circle of the Earth. Their hearts were confident, full of their plans.’ [19] Whatever was the precise significance of the phrase ‘circle of the earth’ to an Egyptian (a disputed point) it would certainly suggest the whole world to a Greek. The end of the thirteenth century B.C. was a period of great unrest. [20] Egypt was growing old and weak: her empire had shrunk almost to the Nile valley, she was falling under the power of the Priests, and the Libyans, who had recovered from their defeat by Merenptah, were making a determined attempt, aided by the sea-rovers to conquer the Delta. [21] She was still, however, the richest country in the world. To win this royal prize the ‘Mycenaeans’ of Crete and the Isles combined with the Dardani and their allies on the coast of Asia Minor. It was a mighty confederacy, formed as it was of the rovers of the seas, of the pirate princes and fierce warriors who live in the lines of Homer. The land forces marched slowly down through Syria carrying their families with them in wagons, for the invasion was for them not a raid but a migration. The fleet moved with them down the coast. The invaders were the most terrible foes Egypt had ever met. Surely they would occupy Palestine, plunder Egypt, and rule the whole Levant. But they had reckoned without their host. Rameses III. was one of the greatest men who ever reigned in Egypt. He is usually considered to have been only a moderately successful imitator of Rameses II., but when we consider how much greater his difficulties were at home and abroad and how completely he triumphed over them we must acknowledge that he has been underrated. He was an able administrator and a great soldier, and by his victories gave Egypt a lasting peace. He defeated and drove out the Libyans who had occupied part of the Delta. At the same time he defeated the Mycenean sea-rovers who were co-operating with them, whereby his fleet gained experience which stood it in good stead in the great battle soon after. It may well be that the Egyptians considered that the Libyan invasion aided by these Rovers was part of the general movement of the Peoples of the Sea. In the eighth year of his reign, about 1194, Rameses marched into Palestine while his fleet sailed along the coast and defeated the invaders by land and sea. The site of the battle is unknown but it must have been somewhere on the coast of Palestine or the Delta. The inscription recording the fight on land has been entirely destroyed, but the battle took place near enough to the sea to enable Rameses to march his troops up in time to take part in the destruction of the Mycenean fleet. The victory was complete and brought momentous results. The peace of Egypt was secured; and incidentally the Phoenicians must have benefited by this defeat of their enemies. Joshua's invasion of Canaan was facilitated and probably hastened by the destruction caused to the country by the opposing forces. Some of the surviving Peleset were allowed to settle on the coasts and became the Philistines who were known to Jeremiah as the ‘Remnant of the country (or island) of Caphtor.’ [22] It seems almost certain that the Trojan War was also directly due to this, the earliest known of the Decisive Battles of the World.
We have seen then that the main outlines of the story told by the Priest about Atlantis contain a true account of the closing scenes of Minoan history from an Egyptian point of view: there was a great island empire in the far West; it did make an attempt at what seemed to the Egyptians universal conquest; the islanders were defeated by raiders from Greece who were very possibly led by the chief hero of Athens; and these ‘Athenians’ were not long afterwards in turn overwhelmed.
There is much in the geographical description of Atlantis which confirms this identification. ‘This island was the way to other islands, and from these islands you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean.’ These words exactly suit Crete, which has been called ‘the stepping-stone of continents’: they are meaningless if applied to any spot in the Atlantic ocean.
The empire which Plato goes on to describe differs from all purely imaginary states such as Plato’s own Republic, in that it is not a single homogeneous power: it is a wide and varied dominion under the rule of a central capital: ‘In this island there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, as well as over parts of the Continent.’ Could the political position of Cnossus be expressed more accurately? The site of the Capital is described in terms which apply to the site of Cnossus. The island was very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the city was on a level plain sheltered from the North. Further, in the Critias we are told that the ‘earth-born’ man Evenor lived on a mountain ‘not very high on any side,’ and was found there by Poseidon on the site of the future city of Atlantis. The palace of Cnossus is built on a low hill which rises from a plain. On this hill there had been an important neolithic settlement for ages before the Palace was built; it had apparently continued from 10,000 B.C. or earlier up to the founding of the Minoan city. And on the North the plain is sheltered by hills, though it is true that these hills are very low. Again, the boundaries of the empire of Atlantis are identical with those which are specially associated with Minoan influence. Plato says that Atlantis ruled over North Africa as far as Tyrrhenia. The problem of the Etruscans is still unsolved. Pliny quotes Varro as stating that there were altogether four labyrinths, and that one of them was the tomb of Lars Porsenna of Clusium. The three others were at Cnossus, Hawara, and Lemnos. Though the statement as it stands is enigmatic, Varro clearly considered a monument in what was then known as Etruria to belong to a type of building associated with Minos. However that may be, the Etruscans were a sea-power in Solon’s day, and would certainly have formed an eastern limit to any other sea-power that was farther West. Even Carthage found it prudent to make a treaty with them and to recognise them as masters of Corsica and the Tyrrhenian sea. They were the chief power in North Italy about 600 B.C. Their fleet was destroyed by Hiero I. of Syracuse off Cumae in 474, after which they declined. Thus it would be more natural for Solon than for Plato to consider them the limit to any Western aggression.
In North Africa we have seen that the Mycenean sea-rovers cooperated with the Libyans against Egypt, and near Gurob in the Fayum Mycenean pottery was found in the tombs of the Tursha, who are probably the same as the Turusha who attacked Egypt in the reign of Merenptah.
The geography therefore no less than the history of the empire of Atlantis reproduces with surprising accuracy that of the Minoan empire as it was known to the Egyptians. There. remains, however, one obvious difficulty: Atlantis should be outside, and not inside the Pillars of Heracles. The whole treatment of the myth is much farther West, as is everything to do with Atlas. But had the original account anything to do with Atlas? Does this objection, which seems fatal to the later developments of the legend, really apply to the original Egyptian version if any such existed? It is more likely that it is this very name which has led all searchers astray. 'The actual names in their Greek form as we have them, if they were adapted from Egyptian originals, can in any case be no more than rough equivalents which would convey to the Greek mind an impression corresponding to that which the records gave to an Egyptian. And it is important to remember that we are not dealing with a translation of the annals but at best with the outlines of a poem with a purpose founded more or less on them, which is quite a different thing. The Egyptians have never been a seafaring people. We know that they did send expeditions to the coast of Palestine and the Red Sea earlier than the sack of Cnossus. But Crete lies about 400 miles to the West right out in an open sea [23] which can be really rough even modern ships, and to reach it one must sail out of sight of land, which always filled the coast-hugging mariners of the ancient world with dread. It is in the highest degree unlikely that Egyptian ships ever reached Crete in Minoan times. Even if they had done so they would have found that the Minoan empire stretched yet further West again. Even if they had ventured to voyage so far into the Great Green Sea it is unlikely that the Minoans would have been more tolerant of rivals in trade than the Phoenicians were in later times. Crete therefore and the Minoan world which we are accustomed to associate with the Near East was to an Egyptian of the Theban Empire the Far West. How far West it might be he would not trouble. The very name Keftiu means ‘the men from the Back of Beyond.’ According to Mr. H. R. Hall the word kefti means ‘behind,’ ‘away back,’ and so is often written, when it has this meaning simply, with the symbol of the hindquarters of an animal. The root is a very early one, and occurs in the Pyramid texts. These Keftiu are specifically the men of Minoan Crete and not the Myceneans, as is shown by their portraits on the monuments and their dress and the vases they carry. [23a] ‘So Keftiu lay in the extreme aphelion so to speak of the orbit of the peoples which revolved around the central sun of Egypt in the remotest part of the Mediterranean Ring.[’] [24] References to the land from which the sea-rovers came are very vague in such records as have survived. They came from beyond Egyptian ken, and that was enough. But in Solon's time the Western Mediterranean was familiar enough, and the Phoenician ships traded far beyond it. Only just before Solon's visit they are said even to have circumnavigated Africa. Farthest West therefore must lie far beyond the Pillars of Heracles. It is possible that here we have an echo of an Egyptian phrase which placed the Keftiu beyond the Four Pillars of the World. These Pillars play a prominent part in ancient Egyptian theology and geography. They were at first actual mountains on the borders of the Egyptian world. In later times, as geographical knowledge widened, they had to be idealised and placed farther away. ‘Atlantis’ seems to have experienced a similar fate; or rather, in its Greek form it starts with this later adaptation of the old idea, though its foundations were laid unconsciously on the older and geographically true tradition. In any case, if Solon hoped to sing of the vanished island, his first need would have been to find a Greek name fitted in form and associations for employment in Epic verse. As such the name Atlantis is admirable: it can be used with ease and dignity in hexameter lines, and it conveys a hint magic and mystery of that boundless Ocean which stretched beyond limits of human travel. It is thus a Greek equivalent to the name Keft. It is worth noting that before the story is elaborated the first description attributed to the Priest begins with the words: νῆσον γὰρ πρὸ τοῦ στόματος εἶχεν ὃ καλεῖτε, ὥς φατε, ὑμεῖς Ἡρακλέους στήλας . . . ‘before the Pillars,’ though he speaks of the δύναμιν ἔξωθεν ὁρμηθεισαν. To anyone sailing from Egypt, Crete is in front of the Pillars and the Atlantic is behind them. Finally there is the tradition of the shallowness of the ocean and of the mud-banks which marked the site of the lost continent. It seems impossible that the early discoverers and traders should have brought back such a report of the real Atlantic Ocean. On the other hand, if they hugged the coast too long on their way to Crete or were driven out of their course they would soon strike the Syrtes, the quicksands which were dreaded even by the Romans. When the power of Cnossus had been swept away in perhaps little more than ‘a day and a night’ and the island was considered to have been engulfed in the waves it would have been no unnatural deduction to consider that its site was marked by the shoals which were reported in that direction; especially as the Egyptians seem to have lost touch with Crete after the sack. When Atlantis was placed beyond the Pillars the mud-banks also had also to be transported.
There would have been an additional reason for Solon to locate Atlantis outside the Pillars of Heracles. From the Greek point of view the struggle would then become one between the civilised Aegean peoples and the dread forces of τὸ τέρας, i.e. that which was monstrous, beyond the limit, barbarous. Here again the name Atlantis gives a hint of a comparison with the Battle of Gods and Giants, for Atlas was one of the Titans. Such transpositions in the light of wider geographical knowledge are natural and widespread. In the Norse legends of Vineland accounts of the actual Azores were transposed so as to prolong an actual exploration of Labrador and Maine. [25] In the same way in the original Babylonian story ‘Ararat was the name of the desert mound where the Ark rested; and when the families of the younger sons of the patriarch moved off and made new settlements, they gave the name Ararat to the highest mountain they knew in honour of the spot where the Ark rested. This Armenian Ararat could no more have been the Ararat where the Ark rested than New York be York.’ [26] We have already seen how the Egyptian Pillars of the world receded as the geographical horizon widened, and many critics believe that the scene of the original Odyssey was in the Black Sea but was later changed to the West, which remained mysterious after the Black Sea had been explored. The completeness with which the glories of what we now know to have been Minoan civilisation had become dissociated from Crete is shown in Homer’s account of the Phaeacians. The picture given by the poet is substantially true of the great period of the Palace of Cnossus, but quite unlike that of Crete as he knew it. So the Phaeacians, who cannot be located, have to be found on an island which should have been almost desert. Phaeacia is to Homer just what Atlantis is to Plato with the vital difference that in the Homeric picture the catastrophe had not yet occurred. This seems to show that in Homer’s time Minoan legends and poems still survived either in their original form or in translations, and that the Epic cycle may have adapted and embodied some of them. Yet Homer is familiar with the name of Minos. Odysseus, with fine irony, is pretends that he himself is son of Deucalion son of Minos, and so brother of Idomeneus. Minos, Deucalion and Idomeneus form, however, a true sequence if they represent the last days of Minoan power, the coming of the Achaeans, and the generation of the Trojan War.
Thus both Greeks and Egyptians had records of the old Minoan civilisation before the sack of Cnossus. Both of them in time came to know Crete well, but neither connected the island with that particular civilisation, though the Greeks knew that Minos had once ruled there with fabulous power and magnificence. This unidentified civilisation must therefore have belonged to a land that had since disappeared with people. They were already familiar with a flood tradition. What more natural than that this ancient and unknown people also had been overwhelmed by a flood? In this case the transposition of the island and the theory of the flood, and indeed the whole Atlantis legend in its popular form, is due to a lack of identification.
But Plato (or Solon) still gives Atlantis rule over part of Europe and Africa. Why should he do this before their attempt at conquest, unless he had started with this idea given him by the true record? It is most significant that when the myth is pushed further west so many of the old geographical landmarks are kept.
The question next arises, How much Minoan history was actually preserved in the Egyptian state records and temple traditions in the sixth century B.C.? It is impossible to tell; but we may be sure that Minoan history as far as it affected Egypt was clearly and accurately recorded. We know for example that the attack of the Myceneans on Egypt described above was given in great detail, for much of the account remains to this day at Thebes, and the accompanying reliefs are so faithful that even if there were no inscriptions the Myceneans could be identified with certainty. But the sum of all the inscriptions which have survived is but a small fragment of those which existed in Solon’s day when the records were still complete. Especially is this the case with Sais and the Delta, the very part of the country which we should expect to have contained most evidence of the Minoans. We may safely assume, however, that some mention was made in the royal or temple records of the overthrow of Cnossus no less than of the later Minoans, for the event must have affected the Egyptians. The sudden destruction of the ruler of the seas and the chief commercial power in the Mediterranean began a new era in history. When later Greek historians tried to trace history back to its beginnings they went thus far and no farther. Behind that date all was attributed to Minos, a great though shadowy name. After him a new order of things arose; after the sack of Cnossus there was no longer any central control of the seas, and the period of the sea-rovers begins. This period culminated in the Trojan War, when the different Mycenaean states, after having combined against Egypt, were defeated by Ramses III. and baulked of their prey. This caused them to fall out among themselves and turn their arms against each other, soon after which the Achaeans were overwhelmed by the Dorians and the period Late Minoan III. comes to an end. Then begins the list of Thalassocracies given by Eusebius [27] Thus the great break in the normal intercourse between the Minoans and Egypt was caused by the destruction of Cnossus. This event affected the foreign relationships of the Minoans much more suddenly and rapidly than it affected the course of their general civilisation. Before that time Minoan influence had been strong in Egypt; from that time onwards until the attacks of the late sea-rovers, all connexion with Crete suddenly stops. The same result is shown by the excavations in Melos. [28] In Egypt, after the sack of Cnossus, the name Keftiu, which really meant Minoan Cretans, falls completely out of use and is superseded by various other tribal names belonging to the Peoples of the Sea. [29] So it is almost inevitable that the destruction of the Palace at Cnossus which ended the old régime and began such a turbulent time did find some sort of notice in the Egyptian annals. Once there it would remain, whether it was understood or not. It is doubtful whether the Egyptians Solon’s day associated the Keftiu with the island of Crete, though they certainly meant the men who we now know came from there. When consider the vagueness with which the Egyptians regarded the sea and islands, and the way in which the later Mycenaeans were confused with Phoenicians, it is more than likely that the Keftiu were regarded as a curious people, who once existed in the West and had since disappeared, as indeed they had. Closer acquaintance with the Crete of the Dorian period would tend to prevent them from locating the Keftiu there. In this connexion it is interesting to notice that Proclus says he saw references to the men of Atlantis on Egyptian monuments and that there were many such. Dealing with this question (op. cit. p. 431) Dr. Jowett remarks, ‘The story may be false—there are similar tales about columns set up by the Canaanites whom Joshua drove out (Procop.).’ But such tales of the ‘Canaanites’ tend to confirm the statement of Proclus, for they have left large numbers columns. Dr. Jowett further maintains that if the statement is true it only shows that the Neoplatonists took the trouble to forge stone monuments just as they forged books. Surely this is carrying scepticism too far. It is much simpler to suppose that Proclus saw representations of the Keftiu, whom we now know to have been Minoans and who would answer in every respect to his ‘men of Atlantis.’ Be that as it may, a fair number of public and private records of the Minoans still remain in Egypt. There is nothing therefore intrinsically impossible or even unlikely in the statement that Solon went to Sais, and was told by the Priest a story of the great island empire that once had existed in the far West; and that this story was drawn from the Egyptian records. It is equally probable that, if he did hear such a wonderful and thrilling tale, he would use it or intend to use it as the basis of an epic poem. Solon was a poet no less than a politician and it was by a political poem which still survives that he first won fame. Now that his political work was done, he would compose a patriotic poem on the ὕβρις of the forgotten island like that of Τιτηνες κακομηται ὑπέρβιον ητορ ἔχοντες [30] and its defeat by the Athenians of old, a theme which would appeal to the national pride of his countrymen and might help to smooth their dissensions. For this purpose the history would have to be modified. The glory must go to Athens and the part played by Rameses III. would not be mentioned; and the battle must come before and not after the destruction of Cnossus. It is also a fact that the Egyptians had no share in the overthrow of Cnossus and the Cretan Palaces: they were concerned only with the wars of the later sea-rovers. Further, the Epic would be a type of Hellenism against Barbarism, cosmic in scope like the Battle of the Gods and Giants. (Plato would have made it a prototype of the Persian wars.) ἵνα της ἀναλογίας ἡμάς ἀναμνήσω, διὰ μὲν του τών Άθηναίων ὀνόματος ἐπί τὴν Όλυμπίαν ἀναπέμπει τοὺς ἀκούοντας συστοιχίαν, τὴν ύπο της Άθηνάς στρατηγουμένην, διὰ δὲ του των Άτλαντίνων ἐπὶ τοὺς Τιτανικοὺς θεούς, εις γάρ πον τών Τιτανικών καὶ ὁ μέγιστος Άτλας. [31] Another familiar struggle was suggested, the strife of Athens and Poseidon τών Άτλαντίνων Ποσειδωνος ὄντων ἐκγόνων. [32] The theme was one to fire the imagination of any poet and would appeal especially to an Athenian: most of all to a poet who was also a statesman and in the position of Solon. The epic was never completed; but if Solon had really begun or planned it, had Plato any special reason for knowing it, and if so why did he associate it with Critias? Dr. Jowett says (Introduction to Critias, op. cit. p. 526) ‘It is singular that Plato should have prefixed the most detested of Athenian names to this dialogue, and even more singular that he should have put into the mouth of Socrates a panegyric on him. (Tim. 20 A).’ In the first place Plato belonged to the family of Solon: in the second this family had been friendly with that of Critias for generations. The relationship is variously given, Suidas: Lexicon, s.v. Solon, says ἕκτη γὰρ ἦν ἀπ' ἐκείνου, παῖς γενομένη Δρωπίδου τοῦ ποιητοῦ, ἀδελφοῦ Σόλωνος. [33] This is confirmed by the anonymous Prolegomena (Teubner Text, vol. xv). Olympiodorus in his Life of Plato traces his descent from Solon on his father’s side. Proclus says ώστε ο Γλαύκων Κριτίου θείος ήν, ἀνεψιός δὲ Χαρμίδης, θείος δὲ Πλάτωνος, Σόλων δε αδελφός (του) ἐπιπάππου Κριτίου, το μὲν ούν αληθὲς τοιούτον ὀ δέ γε θείος Ίάμβλιχος ἂλλως πως παραδίδωσι τὴν τού γένους διαδοχήν (Commentary, 25 F). There are also other variations, but all authorities agree that Solon, Critias, and Plato were inter-related. Again, in the opening scene of the Charmides (15 E) Plato states that Anacreon, Solon, and many other poets had composed panegyrics in honour of Critias son of Dropidas. Apart from the Timaeus and the Critias it is evident that Solon was ranked high as a poet by the old school, and that he was a friend of the elder Critias.
Though in some quarters Critias was, as Dr. Jowett reminds us, the most hated name in Athens, yet it is probable that he was popular with at least a section of the Aristocrats. Plato was essentially an aristocrat; even in his Republic the Guardians are the only class in which he really feels any interest.
Thus though the whole episode in the Timaeus of Solon’s visit Egypt and his poem on Atlantis may be a fiction it may also be true. What then of the Critias? It seems to be no less than a transcript in prose of the beginning of Solon’s epic which Plato at one time intended to complete as a Dialogue, but which he, too, left unfinished and unchanged in general form, though he may have modified it to make it further symbolical of the Persian Wars.
After a short perfunctory introduction the Critias starts from the beginning as an unbroken narrative cast in the regular form of an Epic poem, with Invocation of the Muse, detailed description of the combatants, careful mention of dates and numbers, and a Council of the Gods. It breaks off immediately before the great speech of the Father of Gods and Men which would set forth the argument of the coming struggle, at a point which is curiously abrupt in prose but which is exactly where an epic poet would naturally pause in composition.
Further the speech of Critias from the beginning of the invocation to the end of the description of Atlantis and the beginning of the Council of the Gods is almost exactly the same length as the first book of the Iliad up to the promise of Zeus to Thetis and the subsequent scene among the Gods. It is strange too that an outline of the whole story has already been given in the Timaeus, where it would be superfluous if it were going to be told again at greater length in the next dialogue. It almost seems as if Plato might have inserted the sketch in the Timaeus when he doubted whether he would ever complete the Critias. The whole atmosphere of the Critias is frankly imaginative. The city of Atlantis becomes a medley of marvels from all the non-Hellenic world. The great temple with its ‘strange Asiatic look’ seems to be inspired by the Babylon that Nebuchadnezzar was building to the wonder of the world, and the facing of the city walls may be a glorification of the glazed tiles which covered the walls of some of the Babylonian fortified palaces. The vast canals are derived from those of Egypt and Babylonia. [33] Horses and chariots were used in Crete as well as in most of the ancient world. [34] The elephants may have come from Egyptian records of the wars of Thothmes, [35] or may have been contributed by the Carthaginians. None of these non-Minoan wonders appear in the Timaeus, but they are exactly what would have struck a Greek traveller suited to embellish an epic of the struggle of Hellenism against Barbarism. Dr. Jowett remarks in his introduction to the Timaeus that the later forms of the Atlantis legend current in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries contain features taken from the Edda as well as from the Old and New Testament; also from the tales of missionaries and the experiences of travellers and colonists. Would it be surprising if in the same way Solon added to and exaggerated the wonders he had seen and heard? At the same time Dr. Jowett admits that no version of the story is known earlier than Plato. Yet in spite of these additions Minoan Crete dominates the scene. This is apparent in the details no less than in the general plan. The great harbour with its shipping and its merchants coming from all parts is typical of Crete: the elaborate bathrooms and the Stadium [36] are striking features in the Minoan scheme of life, and the solemn sacrifice of a bull was a Minoan ceremony. It is true that these points of resemblance are not in themselves enough to prove Minoan origin, but this inference is warranted when we read that ‘the bull is hunted in the Temple of Poseidon without weapons but with staves and nooses.’ [37] This cannot be anything but a description of the Bull-ring at Cnossus, the very thing which struck foreigners most, which became a very type of the rule of Minos and gave rise to the legend of the Minotaur. Plato’s words exactly describe the scenes on the famous Vaphio cups which seem to have been imported from Crete and which certainly represent catching wild bulls for the Minoan bull-fight. This bull-fight as we know from frescoes in the palace of Cnossus itself, the Temple of Poseidon, differed from all others in the very point which Plato emphasises, namely that no weapons were used.
It is not impossible therefore that Solon went to Egypt and learned what was in fact the Egyptian version of the overthrow of the Minoans, although he did not recognise it as such; that he used it as the basis of an epic which he never completed, but the plot of which Plato knew and adapted to his own use. This view is at least consistent with known facts.
The chief objections which remain are the following:--
(1) The world remembered Minos pretty clearly in the sixth century B.C. It certainly did remember a great power personified under that name just as the Minoan civilisation was typified by the fabulous inventions of Daedalus. Tradition was right in maintaining that before the Achaeans there had been a greater power and a higher civilisation of which Crete had been the centre. But its historical value when not illustrated by other evidence may be judged by the way in which the bull-fights and magnificence of the Palace of Cnossus are represented by the legends of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth which are meaningless unless we, like Theseus, hold the clue. The chief point is that neither Solon, the Priest, nor Egyptian records referred to the same fact as the Greek legends. The point of view of the Egyptians and their accurate but dry annals had little in common with Greek traditions. Even to-day many critics refuse to accept the identification!
(2) Plato was quite capable of inventing Egyptians or anything else, and gives several hints that the whole story is a fiction. He certainly could have invented a similar tale, but it is also quite in his manner to take a story from history and adapt it to his own use. The story of Gyges told in the Republic is as complete a fairy-tale as can be. Yet the characters are historical and the story without the magic is mainly true. Dr. Jowett classes the story of Atlantis with that of Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, and the Homeric poems. But while Gulliver's Travels were purposely made impossible, Robinson Crusoe and the Homeric poems, which like Atlantis have a semblance of truth, were founded on fact. [38] Plato may not have believed the story himself. That would make his involuntary evidence all the more valuable.
(3) The Priest would not confuse Rameses III. with Akhenaten even if he were to confuse the Keftiu with the sea raiders, which is also unlikely. He would not; but then we have not got his version. Our text of Herodotus, Book II., which is not an epic poem but serious Egyptian history, puts the fourth Dynasty after Rameses. [39] Solon may have consciously altered the sequence of events to make the narrative more effective after the manner of Dumas; or the two main stages of the Minoan overthrow may have been condensed into one dramatic episode when considered apart from strictly Egyptian history. Similarly, in Greek legends an earlier and a later Minos [40] and an earlier and a later Theseus can be distinguished. This tendency is almost universal in traditional history.
It would be indeed strange if so great and terrible an event as the sack of Cnossus and the downfall of the all-powerful Minoans should be left unrecorded. It would be still stranger if a thousand years afterwards a philosopher ‘evolved from his own inner consciousness’ the story of a disaster unique in human history, which he himself considered a fiction, but which agrees in its main features with that which really happened; for the parallel between fact and fiction is complete provided the doom of Atlantis be regarded as the overthrow of a political power and not as the disappearance of a geographical site. If this point be conceded, then the Minoan Empire, the sack of Cnossus, and the exploits of the Mycenean sea-raiders furnish the underlying historical facts which can be recognised in the legend.
Notes
[1] The different versions of the Atlantis legend in ancient and modern times have been collected and discussed by M. Martin. After describing the various conjectures of philosophers, geographers, and geologists he remarks ‘... beau- coup de savants s'étant embarqués à la recherche de l’Atlantide avec une cargaison plus ou moins lourde d’érudition, mais sans autre boussole que leur imagination et leur caprice, ont vogué au hasard. Aussi o i sont-ils arrives? En Afrique, en Amérique, aux Terres Australes, au Spitzberg, en Suède, en Sardaigne, en Palestine, en Attique, en Perse, et Ceylon, dit-on.’ (Études sur le Timée de Platon, par Th. Henri Martin, Tom. i. pp. 257-332).
[2] The Dialogues of Plato translated into English, fifth edition, vol. iii. p. 431.
[3] If Solon could have conversed with the Priests there would have been no need for him to read the records himself and there is no suggestion that he did so. It is improbable that anyone who had not received a priestly education could read hieroglyphs.
[4] Scripta Minoa, by Arthur J. Evans, p. 108. It is an interesting parallel that this Greek chronicle is said to have been founded on tablets accidentally discovered at though their translation was clearly a fraud.
[5] A History of Egypt, by W. M. Flinders Petrie, vol. iii. pp. 335-353.
[6] Petrie, A History of Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 174 ff.
[7] The Palace in its Egyptian Relations, by A. J, Evans (Egypt Exploration Fund, Archaeological Report, 1900-1901). See also Scripta Minoa, pp. 30-31, 236-241, 263-264; Egypt and Western Asia in the Light of Recent Discoveries by L. W. King and H. R. Hall, p. 359: The Two Labyrinths, by H. R. Hall (J.H.S. xxv. pp. 320-337).
[8] Scripta Minoa, pp. 119-130.
[9] ib. p. 19, pp. 134-138, p. 142.
[10] Scripta Minoa, pp. 51-52, p. 72. 11 For the dating see Scripta Minoa, p. 52. Mr. E. R. Ayrton suggests that after the sack of the Palace some of the surviving artists may have fled to Egypt, where their art was already in great request, and that they were employed by Akhenaten, thus prolonging Minoan influence at Tell el Amarna. It ceases for ever in the reaction which followed his death.
[12] Scripta Minoa, p. 56.
[13] Minoan Pottery from Cyprus and the Origin of the Mycenean Style, by E. J. Forsdyke (J.H.S. xxxi. pp. 116-117).
[14] The whole subject of the legends and history of this period in the light of recent excavations is fully and clearly treated by the Rev. J. Baikie in The Sea Kings of Crete. He maintains that they support the identification of Atlantis with the Minoan dominion. For the wars of Minos on Athens see Apollodorus iii. 1. 3. 2, iii. 15. 8. 1.
[15] In the Critias the ‘extraordinary inundation’ which reduced Attica to its present size is said to have been the third before the ‘great destruction’ of Deucalion.
[16] Dr. D. Mackenzie, in B.S.A. xi. p. 220, xiii. pp. 424-429.
[17] Later still the Minoans were confused with the Phoenicians. Scripta Minoa, p. 80; Discoveries in Crete, p. 142. See H. R. Hall, ‘Keftin and Peoples of the Sea,’ in B. S.A. viii.
[18] Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt iv. p. 34.
[19] Breasted, op. cit. p. 38. Mr. Hall reads these names as Pulesti Takkara Shakalsha Danauna and Uashasha respectively.
[20] Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, A History of Egypt, vol. iii. pp. 142 ff.
[21] Hogarth, lonia and the East, p. 112. For the whole question of the Mycenean Sea-Raiders see The Dawn of History by Prof. J. L. Myres, pp. 205 ff.
[22] Jeremiah xlvii. 4. See also Gen. x. 6. 13. 14, Deut. ii. 23, Amos ix. 7.
[23] For the time required to sail from Crete to Egypt see Odyssey xiv. ll. 250-257.
[23a] Since this was written G. A. Wainwright in Liverpool Annals of Art and Archaeology, iv. part 2, p. 24, argues that the Egyptian name Keftiu does not mean Crete. There are strong arguments against his view, but even if he prove correct his theory will affect the name. It will not weaken the main identification of Atlantis with the Minoan power which is independent of the meaning of Keftiu.
[24] H. R. Hall, ‘Keftiu and the Peoples of the Sea,’ B.S.A. viii. pp. 162-163.
[25] Lecture by Dr. Nansen: The Geographical Journal, December 1911.
[26] Sir William Wileox, Mesopotamia: Past, Present, and Future (The Geographical Journal, January 1910.)
[27] J. L. L. Myres, J.H.S. xxvi. pp. 84-130 and xxvii. pp. 123-130.
[28] D. Mackenzic, ‘Cretan Palaces,’ B. S. A. xiii. pp. 424-429.
[29] H. R. Hall, ‘Keftiu and Peoples of the Sea,’ B. S. A. viii.
[30] Proclus, op. cit. i. 175.
[31] ib i. 172.
[32] ib. i. 71.
[33] Necho II. had begun the canal which was finished by Darius from the Eastern Delta to Suez. It was four days’ sail in length, and so wide that triremes could pass each other; vide Prof. W. M. F. Petrie, A History of Egypt, iii. p. 336. Herodotus ii. 158.
[34] Scripta Minoa, p. 42.
[35] For the presence of elephants in Mesopotamia vide Ed. Meyer, Geschichte d. Altertums, i. 263.
[36] Cf. also the ‘Dancing-place of Ariadne.’
[37] In the temple of Seti I. at Abydos the King is shown lassoing a bull for sacrifice, but the scene is wholly different from the Minoan bull-fight. For an account of the Thessalian bull-fight, the ταυροκαθάψια, and its possible derivation from the Minoan, see Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, iv. p. 25. The Thessalian hunters, however, were often mounted and gave a sort of ‘Wild West’ exhibition, whereas the toreadors at Cnossus performed on foot and vaulted over the bull.
[38] See lecture by Prof. J. L. Myres at Winni-peg, 1909.
[39] Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, J. H. S. xxviii. p. 275, explains how the mistake may have arisen. The interesting point for the present argument is that the mistake was made and was not corrected.
[40] Scripta Minoa, Preface, p. 1.
[2] The Dialogues of Plato translated into English, fifth edition, vol. iii. p. 431.
[3] If Solon could have conversed with the Priests there would have been no need for him to read the records himself and there is no suggestion that he did so. It is improbable that anyone who had not received a priestly education could read hieroglyphs.
[4] Scripta Minoa, by Arthur J. Evans, p. 108. It is an interesting parallel that this Greek chronicle is said to have been founded on tablets accidentally discovered at though their translation was clearly a fraud.
[5] A History of Egypt, by W. M. Flinders Petrie, vol. iii. pp. 335-353.
[6] Petrie, A History of Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 174 ff.
[7] The Palace in its Egyptian Relations, by A. J, Evans (Egypt Exploration Fund, Archaeological Report, 1900-1901). See also Scripta Minoa, pp. 30-31, 236-241, 263-264; Egypt and Western Asia in the Light of Recent Discoveries by L. W. King and H. R. Hall, p. 359: The Two Labyrinths, by H. R. Hall (J.H.S. xxv. pp. 320-337).
[8] Scripta Minoa, pp. 119-130.
[9] ib. p. 19, pp. 134-138, p. 142.
[10] Scripta Minoa, pp. 51-52, p. 72. 11 For the dating see Scripta Minoa, p. 52. Mr. E. R. Ayrton suggests that after the sack of the Palace some of the surviving artists may have fled to Egypt, where their art was already in great request, and that they were employed by Akhenaten, thus prolonging Minoan influence at Tell el Amarna. It ceases for ever in the reaction which followed his death.
[12] Scripta Minoa, p. 56.
[13] Minoan Pottery from Cyprus and the Origin of the Mycenean Style, by E. J. Forsdyke (J.H.S. xxxi. pp. 116-117).
[14] The whole subject of the legends and history of this period in the light of recent excavations is fully and clearly treated by the Rev. J. Baikie in The Sea Kings of Crete. He maintains that they support the identification of Atlantis with the Minoan dominion. For the wars of Minos on Athens see Apollodorus iii. 1. 3. 2, iii. 15. 8. 1.
[15] In the Critias the ‘extraordinary inundation’ which reduced Attica to its present size is said to have been the third before the ‘great destruction’ of Deucalion.
[16] Dr. D. Mackenzie, in B.S.A. xi. p. 220, xiii. pp. 424-429.
[17] Later still the Minoans were confused with the Phoenicians. Scripta Minoa, p. 80; Discoveries in Crete, p. 142. See H. R. Hall, ‘Keftin and Peoples of the Sea,’ in B. S.A. viii.
[18] Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt iv. p. 34.
[19] Breasted, op. cit. p. 38. Mr. Hall reads these names as Pulesti Takkara Shakalsha Danauna and Uashasha respectively.
[20] Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, A History of Egypt, vol. iii. pp. 142 ff.
[21] Hogarth, lonia and the East, p. 112. For the whole question of the Mycenean Sea-Raiders see The Dawn of History by Prof. J. L. Myres, pp. 205 ff.
[22] Jeremiah xlvii. 4. See also Gen. x. 6. 13. 14, Deut. ii. 23, Amos ix. 7.
[23] For the time required to sail from Crete to Egypt see Odyssey xiv. ll. 250-257.
[23a] Since this was written G. A. Wainwright in Liverpool Annals of Art and Archaeology, iv. part 2, p. 24, argues that the Egyptian name Keftiu does not mean Crete. There are strong arguments against his view, but even if he prove correct his theory will affect the name. It will not weaken the main identification of Atlantis with the Minoan power which is independent of the meaning of Keftiu.
[24] H. R. Hall, ‘Keftiu and the Peoples of the Sea,’ B.S.A. viii. pp. 162-163.
[25] Lecture by Dr. Nansen: The Geographical Journal, December 1911.
[26] Sir William Wileox, Mesopotamia: Past, Present, and Future (The Geographical Journal, January 1910.)
[27] J. L. L. Myres, J.H.S. xxvi. pp. 84-130 and xxvii. pp. 123-130.
[28] D. Mackenzic, ‘Cretan Palaces,’ B. S. A. xiii. pp. 424-429.
[29] H. R. Hall, ‘Keftiu and Peoples of the Sea,’ B. S. A. viii.
[30] Proclus, op. cit. i. 175.
[31] ib i. 172.
[32] ib. i. 71.
[33] Necho II. had begun the canal which was finished by Darius from the Eastern Delta to Suez. It was four days’ sail in length, and so wide that triremes could pass each other; vide Prof. W. M. F. Petrie, A History of Egypt, iii. p. 336. Herodotus ii. 158.
[34] Scripta Minoa, p. 42.
[35] For the presence of elephants in Mesopotamia vide Ed. Meyer, Geschichte d. Altertums, i. 263.
[36] Cf. also the ‘Dancing-place of Ariadne.’
[37] In the temple of Seti I. at Abydos the King is shown lassoing a bull for sacrifice, but the scene is wholly different from the Minoan bull-fight. For an account of the Thessalian bull-fight, the ταυροκαθάψια, and its possible derivation from the Minoan, see Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, iv. p. 25. The Thessalian hunters, however, were often mounted and gave a sort of ‘Wild West’ exhibition, whereas the toreadors at Cnossus performed on foot and vaulted over the bull.
[38] See lecture by Prof. J. L. Myres at Winni-peg, 1909.
[39] Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, J. H. S. xxviii. p. 275, explains how the mistake may have arisen. The interesting point for the present argument is that the mistake was made and was not corrected.
[40] Scripta Minoa, Preface, p. 1.
Source: K. T. Frost, "The Critias and Minoan Crete," Journal of Hellenic Studies 33 (1913), 189-206.
