A NEW THEORY ON ATLANTIS:
ATALANTE AND THE PERSIAN EMPIRE
By
August Hunt
Copyright © August
Hunt 2014 All Rights Reserved
Cover Art: Winged bull
between two floral friezes, circa 510 BC,
Palace of Darius I, Susa, Iran
FOR
THE PEOPLE OF THE LOST LANDS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface 5
Introduction 10
Part One 12
Part Two 51
PREFACE
Few
subjects generate more of a mixed sense of wonder and disdain than that of the
Lost Continent of Atlantis. For centuries now, scholars and charlatans and
“True Believers” have launched upon an Indiana Jones’-like quest to be the
first to discover what Ignatius Donnelly in 1882 called the antediluvian
world.
The
myth of Atlantis has evolved considerably since Plato’s time. It is now often thought of as a sort of
high-tech or magical utopia, ruled over by super-sophisticated beings. Often the city or countryof Atlantis is
associated with aliens or ancient astronauts, UFOs, crop-circles, imaginary
planets and the like. Psychics such as
Edgar Cayce, J. Z. Knight and Gordon Michael Scallion have weighed in,
and national or ethnic pride has encouraged many a patriotic pseudo-scientist
to “find” this sunken land pretty much everywhere and anywhere.
So
silly has become the study of Atlantis that professional academics now
inevitably choose to shun the topic entirely, rather than have their
reputations tarnished by the stigma of New Age nonsense that drowns the Lost
Continent just as surely as the sea did all those millennia ago. This is a shame, of course, for certainly
Plato’s account is worth examining critically and objectively.
I’ve
always been keenly interested in the Atlantis legend, not only because it poses
a mystery that begs to be solved, but because it is a splendid morality tale,
one that does an excellent job of showing the ultimate consequence of human
hubris. In this day and age, when we are so busily destroying the integrity of
our biosphere, it is easy to imagine our entire civilization suffering the same
dreadful fate as the Atlanteans. Certainly,
it is in part our conscious or subconscious acknowledgment of our own arrogance
in the face of environmental degradation that imparts a large degree of popularity
to Plato’s cautionary story. The
resurgence of interest in the “post-apocalyptic” genre in literature and film
is a testament to a latent belief that we will, indeed, perish horribly in some
kind of self-inflicted catastrophe.
In
answer to the question “Did Atlantis exist?”, I can only answer “Maybe” or,
perhaps better, “Sort of.” It all
depends on exactly what we mean when we ask the question. Are we willing to accept a thoroughly
plausible, “grounded” explanation for Plato’s story? Or do we insist upon the sensational, the
outlandish, the conspiratorial, the spiritually self-aggrandizing? In the following brief study, I can offer a
small degree of satisfaction to those who prefer the former, and nothing at all
to those demand the latter.
The
reader will not find here the next Da Vinci Code. Neither will he be tempted to run to his
astrologer for interpretive advice.
Lastly, Indiana Jones will not take the job. He probably won’t even
return your phone calls.
What
I have tried my best to present in these pages is a logical analysis of Plato’s
story. Boring though logic can be , if
logical fallacies can be avoided a person has a fighting chance to obtain a
workable hypothesis. And, sometimes, especially when dealing with arcane
matters for which little or no evidence exists, a workable hypothesis is all
one can really hope for.
INTRODUCTION
According to Plato’s _Critias_,
9000 years had elapsed from the time of the war of Atlantis and the
Mediterranean powers to Solon’s visit to Sais in Egypt in c. 590 B.C. Sometime after this war occurred the
earthquake in which Atlantis, greater in extent than Libya and Asia, sank
beneath the sea.
The problem with this calculation
of 9000 years is simply this: in Plato’s
_Timaeus_, we are told that is was the Athenians – Solon’s own people – who by
themselves had defeated the Atlanteans.
As we know from a combination of archaeology and written sources, Athens
did not come into existence until around 3000 B.C. Furthermore, although the city seems to have
more or less weathered the Dorian Invasion, its only solitary defeat of a
massive invading force did not occur until the Battle of the Plain of Marathon,
fought c. 490 B.C. In this battle, the Athenians,
without help from allies, defeated Darius the Great and his Persians.
The Persian or Achaemenid Empire
at the time of Darius embraced and had spread beyond both Libya and Asia. I find it odd that no one has thought to
associate this geographical entity with the Atlantis described by Plato.
PART
ONE:
THE
PERSIAN EMPIRE
Let us propose, for the sake of
argument, that what Solon actually received while in Sais was not, originally,
a story of the distant past, but instead a
prophecy. The prophecy told of the
upcoming war of the Greeks and the Persians.
The reference to Atlantis being outside the Pillars of Herakles in the
Atlantic Ocean is an error; the real pillars were probably those twin pillars erected
at the Bosphorus by Darius the Great himself:
(Herodotus) “And having viewed the
Bosphorus, he [Darius] erected two columns of white marble on the shore… Now
these columns the Byzantines some time afterward removed into their city, and
used in building the altar to the Orthosian Artemis, except one stone; this was
left near the Temple of Bacchus in Byzantium…”
This Artemis
Orthia/Orthias/Orthosia is said to have been named from the mountain called
Orthosium or Orthium in Arcadia. The
heroine Atalanta, for whom the Atalante (or Atalanti) place-names in Boeotia
are named, is associated in Greek myth with both Boeotia and Arcadia. Furthermore, Atalanta was a favorite of
Artemis.
The Persian Anahita, goddess of
all the waters and the source of the cosmic ocean, was identified with Artemis. It stands to reason, then, that the text
inscribed on one or both of the pillars of Darius mentioned Anahita and it was
for this reason that the Byzantines adopted the said pillars for the altar of
their own Artemis Orthosia.
One cannot help but wonder if
Darius's inscription also invoked Verethraghna, the Persian equivalent of
Herakles. Although our only real
evidence of the presence of Verethraghna in Achaemenid Zoroastrianism comes
from the late period and has to do with a calendar day named for this deity, it
is generally believed that the faience tile from Persepolis, showing a falcon
battle standard, is a representation of Verethraghna.
The founding at Herakleia near the
Bosphorus, according to Gocha R. Tsetskhladze in his “The Greek Colonization of
the Black Sea Area (1998)”, took place:
"ca. 560-550 B.C. Pseudo-Symnos says, 'they founded it, having
set off from Hellas, about the time when Cyrus [the Great] took Media,' i.e.
about the time of Astyages' defeat by Cyrus... The new colony was just over 200
km east of the entrance to the Black Sea..."
A large component of Megaran
Herakleia Pontus was actually Boeotian, a group who claimed Atalanta as their
own.
Herodotus also describes the twin
pillars of Herakles (= Phoenician Melqart) at Tyre on the coast of
Lebanon. During the reigns of Darius and
Xerxes, Tyre was a part of the Persian Empire.
He also briefly discusses another temple to 'Tyrian Herakles' on the
island of Thasos off the coast of Thrace.
This Thasos was subdued by Darius.
Sometime between 469-464 B.C., not
long after the Greeks defeated the Persian Xerxes, son and successor of Darius
the Great, at Platea in 479, a terrible earthquake struck the region of
Sparta. The most important accounts of
this earthquake are found in Thucydides, Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus:
(Thucydides) "In the ensuing
summer the Peloponnesians and their allies, under the command of Agis the son
of Archidamus, the Lacedaemonian king, came as far as the isthmus. They
intended to invade Attica, but were deterred from proceeding by numerous
earthquakes, and no invasion took place in this year. About the time when these
earthquakes prevailed, the sea at Orobiae in Euboea, retiring from what was
then the line of coast and rising in a great
wave, overflowed a part of the city; and although it subsided in some
places, yet in others the inundation was
permanent, and that which was formerly land is now sea. All the people who
could not escape to the high ground perished. A similar inundation occurred in
the neighbourhood of Atalantè, an island on the coast of the Opuntian Locri,
which carried away a part of the Athenian fort, and dashed in pieces one of two
ships which were drawn up on the beach. At Peparethus also the sea retired, but
no inundation followed; an earthquake, however, overthrew a part of the wall,
the Prytaneum, and a few houses. I conceive that, where the force of the
earthquake was greatest, the sea was driven back, and the suddenness of the
recoil made the inundation more violent; and I am of opinion that this was the
cause of the phenomenon, which would never have taken place if there had been
no earthquake."
(Plutarch) “a greater earthquake
than any before reported rent the land of the Lacedomonians into many chasms,
shook Taygetos so that sundry peaks were torn away, and demolished the entire
city [of Sparta] with the exception of five houses."
(Diodorus) “While the Athenians
were thus religiously employed, the Lacedaemonians, with their confederates in
the Peloponesses, encamped in the isthmus, and there consulted together
concerning the invading of Attica again.
But there then happened such terrible earthquakes in several parts of
Greece that it so terrified and possessed them with fear and awe of the gods
that they all returned to their respective countries. For the horrible concussions of the earth
were so great, that many cities near the sea were sunk and drowned. And whereas that tract of land near Locris
was before a peninsula, by the violence of the earthquake a channel was made
through the isthmus, and the place turned into an island now called
Atalante."
According to Strabo (Geography
9.1.14, 9.4.2), there were two islands of Atalante, one off the Boeotian-Lokrian
coast and the other near the Athenian port of Pieraios.
Plato says of the sinking of
Atlantis in _Timaeus_:
“… and in a single day and night
of misfortune all your (i.e. Greek!) warlike men in a body sank into the earth,
and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the
sea.”
So what we have is an empire the
size of Atlantis, being defeated by the Athenians around 490 B.C., the final
defeat of the Persians on the Greek mainland in 479 B.C., and the destruction
by earthquake and tsunami of an island named Atalante between 469 and 464 B.C.
But then what do we make of this
9000 years? From Solon’s time of 590
B.C. to the Battle of Marathon in 490 was only a century and to the “sinking”
of Atalante in 469 (at the earliest) merely 121 years.
The solution to this problem
resides in the fact that 9,000 here mistakenly alludes to the years that have
passed since the war between the Atlanteans and the Athenians, when in reality
the number refers to the number of warriors Athens sent to Marathon to battle
Darius the Great.
In his “Description of Greece”,
Pausanias (iv. 25. 5) says the Athenian force was under 10,000 strong. But later (xx. 2) he claims that inclusive of
boys, old men and slaves, the number did not exceed 9,000! Cornelius Nepos (“Miltiades”, 5) states there
were 9,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans at Marathon. Plutarch (_Parallela, I) also numbers the
Athenians at 9,000. Justin increases the
amount to 10,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans.
It is obvious, then, that the
number 9,000 as found in Plato’s account does not refer properly to the years
intervening between Solon’s visit to Sais in Egypt and the war between the
Atlanteans and the Athenians, but is instead the number of Athenian warriors
present at the Battle of Marathon in c. 490 B.C.
If the Persian Empire was
‘Atlantis’, where was its great capital city?
The Persians had several chief cities, among them Persepolis,
Pasargadae, Ectabana, Susa and Babylon. Ectabana was the capital of the Medes,
but was taken by Cyrus the Great, father of Darius. Susa was Elamite, but was conquered and
rebuilt by Darius; Herodotus in his “Histories” mentions only Susa as Darius’s
chief city. Babylon was also not
originally part of the Persian heartland. Pasargadae and Persepolis, the former
a capital of Cyrus, the latter of Darius, are the only two primary cities
actually found in the Fars region, named for the Parsi or Persians. Of these two cities, Persepolis sounds in
some respects like Plato’s city of Atlantis.
For example, Plato says of Atlantis that
“The entire circuit of the wall,
which went round the outermost zone, they covered with a coating of brass, and
the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which
encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum.”
Diodorus Siculus, in describing
Persepolis, states that
“The citadel is a noteworthy one,
and is surrounded by a triple wall. The
first part of this is built over an elaborate foundation. It is sixteen cubits in height and is topped
by battlements. The second wall is in
all respects like the first but of twice the height. The third circuit is rectangular in plan, and
is sixty cubits in height, built of a stone hard and naturally durable.”
Atlantis’s central hill is echoed
in that of Persepolis, according to the British Institute of Persian Studies:
“The site is marked by a large
125,000 square meter terrace, partly artificial and partly cut out of a
mountain, with its east side leaning on Kuh-e Rahmet ("the Mountain of
Mercy").
Unfortunately, Plato's city of Atlantis is said to be on an
extremely broad plain. The description of this plain does not resemble that of
the Marv Dasht Plain upon which Persepolis sits. Nor can it be said to be the Kur River Basin,
the largest alluvial plain in southwest Iran, which itself contains the Marv
Dasht.
(Critias) “The whole country was
said… to be very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country
immediately about and surrounding the city was a level plain, itself surrounded
by mountains which descended towards the sea; it [the plain] was smooth and
even, and of an oblong shape, extending in one direction three thousand stadia,
but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia. This part of the island looked towards the
south, and was sheltered from the north.”
Plato says the plain of Atlantis
is 3000 stadia long and 2000 stadia wide.
Much debate has focused on what exactly Plato meant by a stade. As he was an Athenian from Attica, from the
period 428/27-348/47 B.C., the obvious solution to this problem is to propose
that he was referring to the Attic stade, which was equivalent to 184.9 meters
(on the Attic stade being of this size, see Footnote 10 to J.L. Bergren’s and
Alexander Jones’ _Ptolemy’s Geography: An Annotated Translation of the
Theoretical Chapters_, Princeton University Press, 2000). The size of the plain using 184.9 results in
an area of 205,350 square kilometers or 127,599 square miles.
There is yet another major problem
in identifying Persepolis with Plato's Atlantis: the absence of canals at the
former site. I at first tried to explain
the presence of "canals" at Persepolis in the following two
ways. From CAIS (The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies):
"Archaeological excavations
and geophysical studies by the joint Iranian-French team in Fars province led
to unearthing of an irrigation channel belonging to the Achaemenid dynastic
(550-330 BCE) in an area between Persepolis and the city of Estakhr in Fars
province.
The remains of an irrigation
channel belonging to the Achaemenid dynastic era have been discovered in the
northern part of Persepolis which according to geophysical studies must have
continued to the Estakhr city. Archaeological evidence shows that this channel
was constructed using natural elements. However, in some parts the channel was
blocked by hard cliffs but the people of the time scraped the stone and by
using rubbles they constructed the path of the channel to direct the water of
Polvar (Sivand) River to Marvdasht Plain where the ancient palace of Persepolis
is located,” said Mohammad Feizkhah, Iranian head of Iranian-French archaeology
team in Marvdasht, Fars province.
Last year the remains of another
irrigation channel had been discovered in Persepolis which was used to collect
water in the palace. However, this new discovered channel is longer than the
previous one. “This channel is 4 kilometres in length and is considered a long
channel considering the time during which it was constructed and the limited
facilities that were available at that time. The channel started from Polvar
River with a steep slope and the closer it got to Persepolis, the less steep it
became which indicates that the purpose of its constructors was to speed up the
transferring of water to Persepolis during that time,” added Feizkhah.
Archaeological excavations in
Marvdasht Plain in Fars province are currently being carried out by a joint
Iranian-French team. Moreover, a geophysical map is being prepared by experts
which would help the archaeologists get more familiar with the area near
Persepolis. Last year this team succeeded in discovering some residential
settlement areas belonging to the Achaemenid dynasty in this region. Discovery
of a big dam belonging to the same period was one of the other prominent
accomplishments of this team of archaeologists and experts in this historical
area."
CAIS also has this on drainage
canals discovered at Persepolis:
"Archeologists, renovation
experts and surveyors plan to venture into 2,500-year-old drain canals in
Persepolis in order to dredge them.
”Achaemenid engineers designed
these ducts to collect rainfall and waste water from the great palaces and
archeologists have already recognized 2 km of these canals, whose height varies
between 1.2 m to 2 m while measuring 0.45 m to 1.2 m in width.
“Since most water on the surface
of Persepolis enters these ducts and since they have become run-down over the
years, we intend to dredge as many as 100 sq m of them,” said Hassan Rahsaz,
the technical head of Persepolis, adding the operation would cover those canals
located beneath the southern part of the treasury and the so-called Half-Built
palace.
”A team of 6 experts are going to
enter the ducts, hoping to find some valuable artifacts and potteries in there.
Another team had dredged 610 m of the canals in 2002."
It is also possible that the story
of Atlantis’s famous canals may well owe its origin to the ancient qanats or
underground canals of Persia. These were
more sophisticated than any other watering system in the ancient Near East, and
were to be rivaled only much later by the Romans with their aqueducts. To quote from George B. Cressey’s “Qanats,
Karez, and Foggaras”, American Geographical Society, 1958:
“Qanats are found across the Arab
world and beyond: in Iran they are present by the thousands. The essential idea is that of a gently
sloping tunnel, often along the radius of an alluvial fan, which extends
upslope until the water table is tapped and emerges at the downslope end to
supply an oasis. To give access to the
tunnel, vertical shafts are dug at closely spaced intervals. The length of a qanat ranges from a few yards
to tens of miles, and the upper end may be several hundred feet below the
surface… By this means thousands of acres are irrigated and hundreds of
villages receive their sole water supply.
The idea is of Persian origin and dates back more than 2,000 years; the
palace city of Persepolis is thought to have been supplied by qanats about 500
B.C.”
Neither explanation - the presence
of irrigation channels or qanats at Persepolis - adequately account for the
canals of Atlantis. And the "3000
stadia by 2000 stadia" can also not be related to any plain at Persepolis.
The best candidate for the city of
Atlantis turns out to be Susa, which in the “Histories” of Herodotus is the
only known capital of Darius. We know of
several rivers in the vicinity of Susa, which lay on the Susiana Plain, and
there were certainly man-made canals there.
An early Elamite prince named Karibu-Sa-Susinak boasts of building the
canal of Sidur at Susa. To quote from
Pierre Briant's “From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire”:
"Xenophon claims it [Babylon]
a 'considerable city' and describes the traffic he saw all around: 'There are
canals that branch off the Tigris. There
are four of them. They are a plethra
[approximately 30 m] wide and very deep'... Navigation was not restricted to the great north-south routes represented
by the Euprates and the Tigris. The two
rivers and their tributaries were linked by many canals, which especially
facilitated trade between two extremely important Achaemenid centers, Babylonia
and Elam (Susiana)."
The following passages are from
Strabo, Book XV, Chapters 2-12. They
represent the best ancient description we have of Susa.
"I might almost say that
Susis also is a part of Persis; it lies between Persis and Babylonia and has a
most notable city, Susa. For the Persians and Cyrus, after mastering the Medes,
saw that their native land was situated rather on the extremities of their
empire, and that Susa was farther in and nearer to Babylonia and the other
tribes, and therefore established the royal seat of their empire at Susa. At
the same time, also, they were pleased with the high standing of the city and
with the fact that its territory bordered on Persis, and, better still, with
the fact that it had never of itself achieved anything of importance, but
always had been subject to others and accounted merely a part of a larger
political organisation, except, perhaps, in ancient times, in the times of the
heroes. Memnon is said to have been
buried in the neighbourhood of Paltus in Syria, by the river Badas, as
Simonides states in his dithyramb entitled Memnon, one of his Delian poems. The
wall and the temples and the royal palace were built like those of the
Babylonians, of baked brick and asphalt, as some writers state. Polycleitus
says that the city is two hundred stadia in circuit and that it has no walls.
“Although they adorned the palace
at Susa more than any other, they esteemed no less highly the palaces at
Persepolis and Pasargadae; at any rate, the treasure and the riches and the
tombs of the Persians were there, since they were on sites that were at the
same time hereditary and more strongly fortified by nature. And there were also
other palaces — that at Gabae, somewhere in the upper parts of Persis, and that
on the coast near Taocê, as it is called. These were the palaces in the time of
the empire of the Persians, but the kings of later times used others, naturally
less sumptuous, since Persis had been weakened, not only by the Macedonians,
but still more so by the Parthians. For although the Persians are still under
the rule of a king, having a king of their own, yet they are most deficient in
power and are subject to the king of the Parthians.
“Now Susa is situated in the
interior on the Choaspes River at the far end of the bridge, but its territory
extends down to the sea; and its seaboard is about three thousand stadia in
length, extending from boundaries of the Persian seaboard approximately to the
outlets of the Tigris. The Choaspes River flows through Susis, terminating at
the same seaboard, and has its sources in the territory of the Uxii; for a kind
of mountainous country intrudes between the Susians and Persis; it is rugged
and sheer, and has narrow defiles that are hard to pass, and was inhabited by
brigands, who would exact payments even from the kings themselves when they
passed from Susis into Persis. Polycleitus says that the Choaspes, the Eulaeus,
and also the Tigris meet in a kind of lake, and then empty from that lake into
the sea; and that there is an emporium near the lake, since, on account of the
cataracts, purposely constructed, the rivers cannot receive the merchandise
that comes in from the sea nor bring down any either, and that all traffic is
carried on by land; for the distance to Susa is said to be eight hundred stadia.
Others, however, say that the rivers which flow through Susis meet in one
stream, that of the Tigris, oppose the intermediate canals of the Euphrates;
and that on this account the Tigris, at its outlets, has the name of
Pasitigris.
“Nearchus says that the coast of
Persis is covered with shoal-waters and that it ends at the Euphrates River;
and that at the mouth of this river there is an inhabited village which
receives the merchandise from Arabia; for the seaboard of the Arabians borders
next on the mouth of the Euphrates and the Pasitigris, the whole of the
intervening space being occupied by a lake, that is, the lake that receives the
Tigris; and that on sailing up the Pasitigris one hundred and fifty stadia one
comes to the raft-bridge that leads from Persis to Susa, being sixty stadia
distant from Susa; and that the Pasitigris is about two thousand stadia distant
from the Oroatis; and that the inland voyage on the lake to the mouth of the
Tigris is six hundred stadia; and that near the mouth there is an inhabited
Susian village, which is five hundred stadia distant from Susa; and that the
voyage inland from the mouth of the Euphrates to Babylon, through a very
prosperous land, is more than three thousand stadia. Onesicritus says that all
the rivers empty into the lake, both the Euphrates and the Tigris; but that the
Euphrates, again issuing from the lake, joins with the sea by its own separate
mouth.
“There are also several other
narrow defiles as one passes out through the territory of the Uxii in the
neighbourhood of Persis itself; and Alexander forced his way through these
passes too, both at the Persian Gates and at other places, when he was passing
through the country and was eager to spy out the most important parts of the
country, and the treasure-holds, which had become filled with treasures in
those long periods of time in which the Persians had collected tribute from
Asia; and he crossed several rivers that flowed through the country and down
into the Persian Gulf. For after the Choaspes, one comes to the Copratas River
and the Pasitigris, which latter also flows from the country of the Uxii. There
is also a river Cyrus, which flows through Coelê Persis, as it is called, in
the neighbourhood of Pasargadae; and the king assumed the name of this river,
changing his name from Agradatus to Cyrus. Alexander crossed the Araxes near
Persepolis itself. Persepolis, next to Susa, was the most beautifully
constructed city, and the largest, having a palace that was remarkable,
particularly in respect to the high value of its treasures. The Araxes flows
from the country of the Paraetaci; and this river is joined by the Medus, which
has its source in Media. These rivers run through a very productive valley
which borders on Carmania and the eastern parts of the country, as does also
Persepolis itself. Alexander burnt up the palace at Persepolis, to avenge the
Greeks, because the Persians had destroyed both temples and cities of the
Greeks by fire and sword.
Alexander then went to Pasargadae;
and this too was an ancient royal residence. Here he saw also, in a park, the
tomb of Cyrus; it was a small tower and was concealed within the dense growth
of trees. The tomb was solid below, but had a roof and sepulchre above, which
latter had an extremely narrow entrance. Aristobulus says that at the behest of
the king he passed through this entrance and decorated the tomb; and that he
saw a golden couch, a table with cups, a golden coffin, and numerous garments
and ornaments set with precious stones; and that he saw all these things on his
first visit, but that on a later visit the place had been robbed and everything
had been carried off except the couch and the coffin, which had only been
broken to pieces, and that the robbers had removed the corpse to another place,
a fact which plainly proved that it was an act of plunderers, not of the
satrap, since they left behind only what could not easily be carried off; and
that the robbery took place even though the tomb was surrounded by a guard of
Magi, who received for their maintenance a sheep every day and a horse every
month. But just as the remoteness of the countries to which Alexander's army
advanced, Bactra and India, had led to numerous other revolutionary acts, so
too this was one of the revolutionary acts. Now Aristobulus so states it, and
he goes to record the following inscription on the tomb: "O man, I am
Cyrus, who acquired the empire for the Persians and was king of Asia; grudge me
not, therefore, my monument." Onesicritus, however, states that the tower
had ten stories and that Cyrus lay in the uppermost story, and that there was
one inscription in Greek, carved in Persian letters, "Here I lie, Cyrus,
king of kings," and another written in the Persian language with the same
meaning.
Onesicritus records also the
following inscription on the tomb of Dareius: "I was friend to my friends;
as horseman and bowman I proved myself superior to all others; as hunter I
prevailed; I could do everything." Aristus of Salamis is indeed a much
later writer than these, but he says that the tower has only two stories and is
large; that it was built at the time of the succession of the Persians, and
that the tomb was kept under guard; and that there was one inscription written
in Greek, that quoted above, and another written in the Persian language with
the same meaning. Cyrus held Pasargadae in honour, because he there conquered
Astyages the Mede in his last battle, transferred to himself the empire of
Asia, founded a city, and constructed a palace as a memorial of his victory.
“Alexander carried off with him
all the wealth in Persis to Susa, which was also full of treasures and
equipment; and neither did he regard Susa as the royal residence, but rather
Babylon, which he intend to build up still further; and there too treasures lay
stored. They say that, apart from the treasures in Babylon and in the camp,
which were not included in the total, the value of those in Susa and Persis
alone was reckoned at forty thousand talents, though some say fifty; and others
have reported that all treasures from all sources were brought together at
Ecbatana and that they were valued at one hundred and eighty thousand talents;
and the treasures which were carried along with Dareius in his flight from
Media, eight thousand talents in value, were taken as booty by those who slew
him.
“At all events, Alexander
preferred Babylon, since he saw that it far surpassed the others, not only in
its size, but also in all other respects. Although Susis is fertile, it has a
hot and scorching atmosphere, and particularly in the neighbourhood of the
city, according to that writer. At any rate, he says that when the sun is hottest,
at noon, the lizards and the snakes could not cross the streets in the city
quickly enough to prevent their being burnt to death in the middle of the
streets. He says that this is the case nowhere in Persis, although Persis lies
more to the south; and that cold water for baths is put out in the sun and
immediately heated, and that barley spread out in the sun bounces like parched
barley in ovens; and that on this account earth is put on the roofs of the
houses to the depth of two cubits, and that by reason of this weight the
inhabitants are forced to build their houses both narrow and long; and that,
although they are in want of long beams, yet they need large houses on account
of the suffocating heat; and that the palm-tree beam has a peculiar property,
for, although it is rigid, it does not, when aged, give way downwards, but
curves upwards because of the weight and better supports the roof. It is said
that the cause of the heat is the fact that lofty mountains lie above the
country on the north and that these mountains intercept all the northern winds.
Accordingly, these winds, blowing aloft from the tops of the mountains and high
above the plains, do not touch the plains, although they blow on the more
southerly parts of Susis. But calm prevails here, particularly at the time when
the Etesian winds cool the rest of the land that is scorched by heat.
“Susis abounds so exceedingly in
grain that both barley and wheat regularly produce one hundred-fold, sometimes
even two hundred; on this account, also, the people do not cut the furrows
close together, for the crowding of the roots hinders the sprouting. The vine
did not grow there until the Macedonians planted it, both there and at Babylon;
however, they did not dig trenches, but only thrust into the ground
iron-pointed stakes, and then pulled them out and replaced them at once with
the plants. Such, then, is the interior; but the seaboard is full of shallows
and without harbours. On this account, at any rate, Nearchus goes on to say
that he met with no native guides when he was sailing along the coast with his
fleet from India to Babylonia; that the coast had no mooring-places, and that
he was also unable to find any experienced people to guide him.
“Neighbouring Susis is the part of
Babylonia which was formerly called Sitacenê, but is now called Apolloniatis.
Above both, on the north and towards the east, lie the countries of the Elymaei
and the Paraetaceni, who are predatory peoples and rely on the ruggedness of
their mountains. But the Paraetaceni are situated closer to the Apolloniatae,
and therefore treat them worse. The Elymaei carry on war against both that
people and the Susians, whereas the Uxii too carry on war against the Elymaei;
but less so at the present time, in all probability, because of the might of
the Parthians, to whom all the peoples in that part of the world are subject.
Now when the Parthians fare well, all their subjects fare well too, but when
there is an insurrection, as is often the case, even indeed in our own times,
the results are different at different times and not the same for all; for some
have benefited by disturbances, whereas others have been disappointed in their
expectations. Such, then, are the countries of Persis and Susis.”
The Susiana Plain, like that of
the Kur River Basin, is not anywhere near large enough to be Plato's Atlantean
Plain. But according to Strabo, the
seaboard of Susa is three thousand stadia in length. This is the exact length of Plato's Atlantean
Plain. The Pasitigris is the modern Karun, which flows through Susiana. The Oroatis is the Tab/Hindyan, now called
the Zohreh. The two rivers provide a
south-north measurement of two thousand stadia - the width of Plato's Atlantean
plain.
Arrian, citing Nearchus in his
_Indica_ (XLII) confirms this distance of two thousand stadia: "The length of the voyage along Susian
territory to the mouth of the Pasitigris is two thousands stades."
Pliny the Younger in his _Natural
History_ gives the same length of three thousand stades for the coast of Susa,
only he calls it the coast of Persia:
“Here is the beginning of Persia,
at the river Zohreh, which separates Persia from Elymais [i.e. Elam]... Persia
itself occupies 550 miles of coast, facing west.”
The confusion over or conflation
of Susa and Persia (i.e. what is now Fars) in the early sources may in part be
due not only to their being adjacent regions, but to the early political
relationship that once existed between them.
According to Professor Daniel Potts of The University of Sydney, ancient
Elam was essentially the prototype for the later fusion of Susa and the Persian
heartland at Persepolis and Pasargadae.
Anshan, modern Tal-e Malyan, is in the Kur River Basin very near to the
two Persian cities. The twin centers of the Elamite Empire were Anshan and
Susa. The empire was destroyed by the
Assyrians, creating a vacuum which the Persian Achaemenids were more than happy
to fill.
PART
TWO:
THE
ELAMITE EMPIRE
To quote from Professor Potts on
the extent of the Elamite Empire:
“There's no real evidence that
Elamite control extended beyond Khuzestan and Fars, and for Fars there's really
no evidence of the east, i.e. anywhere east of Shiraz, but certainly it did go
down to Bushehr (ancient Liyan, where Elamite inscriptions have been found) on
the Persian Gulf, so it's more or less a big triangle extending from Susiana in
the west, across (east) to Tal-e Malyan (Anshan), and down to the Liyan on the
Persian Gulf coast. Beyond that it's all speculation. More or less on the
northern limits of the Elamite-controlled region we have Elamite inscribed
bricks attesting to Elamite temples and royal construction projects from the
area near Lordegan (Tol-e Afghani) in the Bakhtiyari mountains and from near
Yasuj.”
The modern province of Khusestan
is primarly composed of the Susiana Plain.
If we add together the areas of Khuzestan (64,055 sq. km.), Bushehr
Province (22,743 sq. km.) and Fars Province (122,608 sq. km.), we get a total
of 209,406 square kilometers. This is
again very close to Plato’s figure of +205,000 square kilometers for the
Atlantean Plain. If we then deduct the
eastern half of Fars, and the southern half of Bushehr, and add in that portion
of Chahar Mahaal and Bakhtiari Province (16,332 sq. km. total) which contains
Lordegan, and that portion of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province (15,504 sq.
km. total) which contains Yasuj, we again come very close to Plato’s figure.
The Susa-Persia region also
matches Plato’s description of the great plain surrounded by mountains, which drop
away on the southern side towards the sea.
According to Dr. E. S. Sherratt of the University of Sheffield, “The
Zagros Mountains effectively lie from northwest to southeast of the Susiana
Plain.” The Kur River Basin is
completely ringed by mountains, although these mountains to the west and south
eventually drop down to the sea. This
last can readily be observed in a satellite image (courtesy Dr. Petrie
Cameron), which shows the varied terrain of Southwestern Iran, where the folds
of the Zagros separate the lowland plains of Khuzestan (which abut Mesopotamia)
from the highland plains of Fars.
Another point in favor of Susa as
the city of Atlantis is Plato's insistence on placing sacred bulls within the
latter's Temple of Poseidon. The god of
Elamite Susa was named Inshushinak or Insusinak, and he took the form of a
bull. According to Professor Matthew W.
Stolper of the University of Chicago, the etymology of this god's name may go
all the way back to Sumerian times:
"The conventional explanation
is that it is originally Sumerian, not Elamite - en (lord) + Shushin (Susa) +
ak(a) [genitive], for 'Lord of Susa".
This could well be. Of course, it
could also be a sort of scholarly folk-etymology, ancient or modern. I don't know of ancient evidence for this
interpretation. But I don't have a
better idea, either."
Close to Susa is the famous
ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil, dedicated to Insusinak and described byThe Circle of
Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS) thusly:
“Chogha Zanbil was long considered
the only surviving ziggurat in Iran, but excavations of Konar Sandal at the
Jiroft ancient site in the southern Iranian province of Kerman have revealed
that it is another ziggurat.
Chogha Zanbil is a major remnant
of the Elamite civilization, which was constructed in the Elamite city of Dur
Untash. It is located near Susa , the ancient capital of Elam , and was
registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1978. Built about 1250 BCE
under the direction of the Elamite ruler Untash-Gal during the Middle Elamite
period (c. 1500–c. 1000 BCE), the complex was dedicated to Inshushinak
(Insusinak), the bull-god of Susa. The square base of the ziggurat, 344 feet
(105 meters) on each side, was built principally of brick and cement. It now
stands 80 feet (24 meters) high, less than half its estimated original height.”
According to the Wikipedia article
on this ziggurat,
“It was built about 1250 BCE by
the king Untash-Napirisha, mainly to honour the great god Inshushinak. Its original name was Dur Untash, which means
'town of Untash', but it is unlikely that many people, besides priests and
servants, ever lived there. The complex is protected by three concentric walls
which define the main areas of the 'town'. The inner area is wholly taken up
with a great ziggurat dedicated to the main god, which was built over an
earlier square temple with storage rooms also built by Untash-Napirisha. The
middle area holds eleven temples for lesser gods. It is believed that
twenty-two temples were originally planned, but the king died before they could
be finished, and his successors discontinued the building work. In the outer
area are royal palaces, a funerary palace containing five subterranean royal
tombs. Although construction in the city
abruptly ended after Untash-Napirisha's death, the site was not abandoned, but
continued to be occupied until it was destroyed by the Assyrian king
Ashurbanipal in 640 BCE. Some scholars speculate, based on the large number of
temples and sanctuaries at Chogha Zanbil, that Untash-Napirisha attempted to
create a new religious center (possibly intended to replace Susa) which would
unite the gods of both highland and lowland Elam at one site.”
Susa as the City of the Bull-god
Inshushinak once had its own ziggurat mountain-temple; this has not survived,
but we have a record of the Assyrian Ashurbanipal having destroyed it. We can propose, then, that this
ziggurat-mountain of the bull-god is the ‘Atlantean’ hill of Poseidon and that
the capital of ‘Atlantis’ is Susa.
One also cannot help but wonder if
Plato did not make yet another connection with Susa as his city of
Atlantis. I have mentioned above that
the bull god of Susa bore a title, “Lord of Susa”, which appears to be not
Elamite or Persian, but Sumerian.
Several Sumerian deities have bull-like attributes, notably the father
god Anu and the moon god Nanna (Sin).
But the Sumerians also knew of a
star-bull who ushered in the Spring, this being a reference to the Vernal
Equinox being placed in Taurus sometime between the fourth and second
millenniums BC. In Babylonian astronomy, the constellation was listed as
"The Heavenly Bull" (MUL, ‘star’, GU ‘bull’ AN.NA, ‘of heaven’). Because it marked the spring equinox, it was
also the first constellation in the Babylonian zodiac and was thus known as
"The Bull in Front”. The Bull of Heaven known best from the Gilgamesh Epic
was closely associated with Inanna in early Mesopotamian art. One of the
earliest depictions shows the bull standing before the goddess's standard. As the animal here has three stars depicted
on its back (the cunieform sign for 'star-constellation'), there is good reason
to regard this as the constellation later known as Taurus.
In the northeastern quadrant of
the constellation of Taurus lie the Pleiades, also known as the ATLANTIDES,
because the stars that make up this grouping were daughters of Atlas. Is it too
much of a stretch to propose that Plato or his source knew the Bull of Susa was
to be associated with Taurus, and that this star deity thus had something to do
with the Atlantides? And that Susa was,
therefore, the city of Atlantis?
CAIS tells us, furthermore, that
Susa was quite large, which again would match Plato's description of the city
of Atlantis:
"The ruins of Susa, situated
at the north of Ahwaz, form a number of immense tells which cover an extent of
four and a half to six square miles on both banks of the Kerkha."
Admittedly, Persepolis has its own
bulls. The most remarkable are the two
at the Gate of All Nations. But there
are also protomen capitals surmounted by bulls and the bull statues of the
Throne Hall of Xerxes.
Darius the Great followed the
Zoroastrian religion. His god
Ahura-Mazda had created a great bull, which was sacrificed by Mithra. From the dying bull proceeded all wholesome
plants and herbs that cover the earth; from his spinal marrow came corn, from
his blood the vine. At the end of the
world Mithra would descend to earth on another bull, which would again be
sacrificed. From its fat would be brewed
the elixir of immortality.
Yet all in all, we are never told
in Zoroastrianism that Ahura-Mazda was the bull. And Persepolis's mountain-encircled position
is difficult if not impossible to reconcile with the access to the sea
'Atlantis' supposedly enjoyed. Through
rivers and doubtless canals, Susa did engage extensively in traffic with the
Persian Gulf.
In summery, we can say that Plato,
who lived from 428/427 to 348/347 B.C., had a story about Solon receiving a
prophecy concerning the future of the Greeks from an Egyptian priest at
Sais. This prophecy told of the war of
the Greeks against the Persians under Darius, culminating in the victory of the
former over the latter at Marathon. The
prophecy concluded with a reference to the great Spartan earthquake, which
would ravage the island of Lokrian Atalante.
Included in the story was a description of the Persian capital of Susa.
By virtue of the fact that a story
featuring such an accurate prophecy was obviously first told only after the
future events it purported to relate had actually transpired, we can safely
surmise that the tale of ‘Atlantis’ was not concocted until the Spartan
earthquake of c. 469-464 was already a matter of history. Details of the story were garbled or lost,
indicating it was probably oral in nature until being committed to writing by
Plato. The 9,000 Athenians present at
the Battle of Marathon were wrongly taken for the number of years spanning the
interval from the war of Atlantis and the Greeks to the time of Solon. This great war was made utterly anachronistic
by placing it in the past, rather than in Solon’s future, where it
belonged. The Pillars of Herakles
marking the western terminus of the Mediterranean were substituted for those on
the eastern side of the sea. And the
island name Atalante was wrongly associated with that of Atlas and the
Atlantic, as well as with the Persian Empire itself.
Of course, it is also possible
Plato himself made all these alterations in the story intentionally – and may
even be the sole author of the tale. He
may not have been beyond such creative efforts if they served the purpose of
philosophical edification.
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