“The most precious knowledge was too sacred to be committed to paper. It was passed down by word of mouth, from high priest to high priest. Most of it died with the last priests when the Greeks shut down the temples. What little made it to paper was lost under the Romans, when the Royal Library of Alexandria was burnt during the civil war in 48 BC and the Daughter Library went the same way when the emperor Theodosius ordered the destruction of all remaining pagan temples in AD 391. We already know some of what was lost from references in surviving ancient texts. The Geography of Pytheas the Navigator. The History of the World by the emperor Claudius. The missing volumes of Galen and Celsus. Great works of history and science, compendia of pharmaceutical knowledge that would have advanced medicine immeasurably. We can barely begin to imagine the secret knowledge of the Egyptians that went the same way.”
Hiebermeyer sat down and Katya spoke again.
“I’d like to propose an alternative hypothesis. I suggest Plato was telling the truth about his source. Yet for some reason Solon did not write down an account of his visit. Was he forbidden from doing so by the priests?”
She picked up the books and continued. “I believe Plato took the bare facts he knew and embellished them to suit his purposes. Here I agree in part with Professor Dillen. Plato exaggerated to make Atlantis a more remote and awesome place, fitting for a distant age. So he put the story far back in the past, made Atlantis equal to the largest landmass he could envisage, and placed it in the western ocean beyond the boundaries of the ancient world.” She looked at Jack. “There is a theory about Atlantis, one widely held by archaeologists. We are fortunate in having one of its leading proponents among us today. Dr. Howard?”
Jack was already flicking the remote control to a map of the Aegean with the island of Crete prominently in the centre.
“It only becomes plausible if we scale it down,” he said. “If we set it nine hundred rather than nine thousand years before Solon we arrive at about 1600 BC. That was the period of the great Bronze Age civilizations, the New Kingdom of Egypt, the Canaanites of Syro-Palestine, the Hittites of Anatolia, the Mycenaeans of Greece, the Minoans of Crete. This is the only possible context for the Atlantis story.”
He aimed a pencil-sized light pointer at the map. “And I believe the only possible location is Crete.” He looked at Hiebermeyer. “For most Egyptians at the time of the Pharaohs, Crete was the northerly limit of their experience. From the south it’s an imposing land, a long shoreline backed by mountains, yet the Egyptians would have known it was an island from the expeditions they undertook to the palace of Knossos on the north coast.”
“What about the Atlantic Ocean?” Hiebermeyer asked.
“You can forget that,” Jack said. “In Plato’s day the sea to the west of Gibraltar was unknown, a vast ocean leading to the fiery edge of the world. So that was where Plato relocated Atlantis. His readers would hardly have been awestruck by an island in the Mediterranean.”
“And the word Atlantis?”
“The sea god Poseidon had a son Atlas, the muscle-bound colossus who carried the sky on his shoulders. The Atlantic Ocean was the Ocean of Atlas, not of Atlantis. The term Atlantic first appears in Herodotus, so it was probably in widespread currency by the time Plato was writing.” Jack paused and looked at the others.
“Before seeing the papyrus I would have argued that Plato made up the word Atlantis, a plausible name for a lost continent in the Ocean of Atlas. We know from inscriptions that the Egyptians referred to the Minoans and Mycenaeans as the people of Keftiu, people from the north who came in ships bearing tribute. I would have suggested that Keftiu, not Atlantis, was the name for the lost continent in the original account. Now I’m not so sure. If this papyrus really does date from before Plato’s time, then clearly he didn’t invent the word.”
Katya swept her long hair back and gazed at Jack. “Was the war between the Athenians and the Atlanteans in reality a war between the Mycenaeans and the Minoans?”
“I believe so,” Jack looked keenly back at her as he replied. “The Athenian Acropolis may have been the most impressive of all the Mycenaean strongholds before it was demolished to make way for the buildings of the classical period. Soon after 1500 BC Mycenaean warriors took over Knossos on Crete, ruling it until the palace was destroyed by fire and rampage a hundred years later. The conventional view is that the Mycenaeans were warlike, the Minoans peaceable. The takeover occurred after the Minoans had been devastated by a natural catastrophe.”
“There may be a hint of this in the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur,” Katya said. “Theseus the Athenian prince wooed Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Knossos, but before taking her hand he had to confront the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. The Minotaur was half bull, half man, surely a representation of Minoan strength in arms.”
Hiebermeyer joined in. “The Greek Bronze Age was rediscovered by men who believed the legends contained a kernel of truth. Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos, Heinrich Schliemann at Troy and Mycenae. Both believed the Trojan wars of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, written down in the eighth century BC, preserved a memory of the tumultuous events which led to the collapse of Bronze Age civilization.”
“That brings me to my final point,” Jack said. “Plato would have known nothing of Bronze Age Crete, which had been forgotten in the Dark Age that preceded the classical period. Yet there is much in the story reminiscent of the Minoans, details Plato could never have known. Katya, may I?” Jack reached across and took the two books she pushed forward, catching her eye as he did so. He flicked through one and laid it open towards the end.
“Here. Atlantis was the way to other islands, and from those you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent. That’s exactly how Crete looks from Egypt, the other islands being the Dodecanese and Cycladic archipelagos in the Aegean and the continent Greece and Asia Minor. And there’s more.” He opened the other book and read out another passage.
“Atlantis was very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, and encompassed a large mountain-girt plain.” Jack strode over to the screen which now displayed a large-scale map of Crete. “That’s exactly the appearance of the southern coast of Crete and the great plain of the Mesara.”
He moved back to where he had left the books on the table.
“And finally the Atlanteans themselves. They were divided into ten relatively independent administrative districts under the primacy of the royal metropolis.” He swivelled round and pointed at the map. “Archaeologists believe Minoan Crete was divided into a dozen or so semi-autonomous palace fiefdoms, with Knossos the most important.”
He flicked the remote control to reveal a spectacular image of the excavated palace at Knossos with its restored throne room. “This surely is the splendid capital city halfway along the coast.” He advanced the slides to a close-up of the drainage system in the palace. “And just as the Minoans were excellent hydraulic engineers, so the Atlanteans made cisterns, some open to the heavens, others roofed over, to use in winters as warm baths; there were the baths for the kings and for private persons and for horses and cattle. And then the bull.” Jack pressed the selector and another view of Knossos appeared, this time showing a magnificent bull’s horn sculpture beside the courtyard. He read again. “There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Poseidon, and the kings, being left alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to the god that they might capture the victim which was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, without weapons but with staves and nooses.”