Atlantis, the Antediluvian World

NOT alone were the gods of the Greeks the deified kings of Atlantis, but we find that the mythology of the Phœnicians was drawn from the same source.

For instance, we find in the Phœnician cosmogony that the Titans (Rephaim) derive their origin from the Phœnician gods Agrus and Agrotus. This connects the Phœnicians with that island in the remote west, in the midst of ocean, where, according to the Greeks, the Titans dwelt.

According to Sanchoniathon, Ouranos was the son of Autochthon, and, according to Plato, Autochthon was one of the ten kings of Atlantis. He married his sister Ge. He is the Uranos of the Greeks, who was the son of Gæa (the earth), whom he married. The Phœnicians tell us, "Ouranos had by Ge four sons: Ilus (El), who is called Chronos, and Betylus (Beth-El), and Dagon, which signifies bread-corn, and Atlas (Tammuz?)." Here, again, we have the names of two other kings of Atlantis. These four sons probably represented four races, the offspring of the earth. The Greek Uranos was the father of Chronos, and the ancestor of Atlas. The Phœnician god Ouranos had a great many other wives: his wife Ge was jealous; they quarreled, and he attempted to kill the children he had by her. This is the legend which the Greeks told of Zeus and Juno. In the Phœnician mythology Chronos raised a rebellion against Ouranos, and, after a great battle, dethroned him. In the Greek legends it is Zeus who attacks and overthrows his father, Chronos. Ouranos had a daughter called Astarte (Ashtoreth), another called Rhea. "And Dagon, after he had found out bread-corn and the plough, was called Zeus-Arotrius."

We find also, in the Phœnician legends, mention made of Poseidon, founder and king of Atlantis.

Chronos gave Attica to his daughter Athena, as in the Greek legends. In a time of plague be sacrificed his son to Ouranos, and "circumcised himself, and compelled his allies to do the same thing." It would thus appear that this singular rite, practiced as we have seen by the Atlantidæ of the Old and New Worlds, the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, the Hebrews, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the red men of America, dates back, as we might have expected, to Atlantis.

"Chronos visits the different regions of the habitable world."

He gave Egypt as a kingdom to the god Taaut, who had invented the alphabet. The Egyptians called him Thoth, and he was represented among them as "the god of letters, the clerk of the under-world," bearing a tablet, pen, and palm-branch.

This not only connects the Phœnicians with Atlantis, but shows the relations of Egyptian civilization to both Atlantis and the Phœnicians.

There can be no doubt that the royal personages who formed the gods of Greece were also the gods of the Phœnicians. We have seen the Autochthon of Plato reappearing in the Autochthon of the Phœnicians; the Atlas of Plato in the Atlas of the Phœnicians; the Poseidon of Plato in the Poseidon of the Phœnicians; while the kings Mestor and Mneseus of Plato are probably the gods Misor and Amynus of the Phœnicians.