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NEWS September 2023
September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Abydos
Osirion Civilisation
The Osirion Civilisation is a term recently concocted to describe the peoples of the antediluvian Mediterranean region including pre-dynastic Egypt. The Osirion at Abydos is offered as an example of their architecture. The concept has been promoted by David Hatcher Childress in one of his books[0620] in the ‘Lost Cities’ series. Inevitably, the internet has taken up this highly speculative idea.
A 2021 video clip(a) presented by Jimmy Corsetti offers evidence that the Osirion was built 7,000 years ago allegedly by a civilisation that not only flourished before pharaonic Egypt but was global in extent!
(a) It’s impossible for the ancient Egyptians to have built this about 7,000 years ago – News 47 Daily *
Ogburn, Scott
Scott Ogburn is an Adjunct Professor in the department of Landscape Architecture at Temple University, Pennsylvania. His interests include archaeoastronomy, the influence of astronomy on sacred architecture, as well as sacred geometry.
MUFON, possibly the world’s oldest UFO network have sponsored a lecture by Ogburn on the subject of Atlantis entitled Legends and the Sacred Architecture of Ancient Atlantis, touching on structures at the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, the Osirian Temple at Abydos, the Gateway of the Sun in Bolivia, and the ruins of Puma Punku(a).
>A number of his papers are available on the academia.edu website(b).<
Cygnus Constellation, The
The Cygnus Constellation was the location of a supernova that inspired the story of Phaeton, as related to Solon by the priests at Sais, according to Michael A. Cahill in his two-volume Paradise Rediscovered [818/9].
Andrew Collins has also written[075] on the place of the constellation Cygnus in prehistoric consciousness. Arising from this study, it appears that the position of the Cygnus stars correlates more accurately with the Giza pyramids than those of Orion, which was proposed some years ago by Robert Bauval. Collins continues with the Cygnus-Giza connection in a subsequent offering, Beneath the Pyramids[0631]. Derek Cunningham has echoed(a) some of Collins’ work suggesting that there existed in ancient times a World Map based on the Cygnus constellation!
Collins has also suggested that a suspected Black Hole in Cygnus Constellation is thought to be the source of cosmic rays that changed evolution and kick-started religion(d)!
Anthony Murphy and Richard Moore have also written(b) about the Cygnus Constellation and a possible link with Ireland’s Newgrange[1441].>This idea was echoed in a recent episode of Ancient Aliens (S18E17)(f).<Paul Dunbavin also touched on the possible connection between swans in Irish mythology and astronomical events(e).
Freddy Silva has endeavoured to link Cygnus with the Osirion in Abydos in a 2019 article(c) in which he dated the structure to 10,500 BC.
(a) https://www.midnightsciencejournal.com/?s=Cygnus
(b) Mythical Ireland | Astronomy | The Cygnus Enigma (archive.org) *
(c) https://invisibletemple.com/extra/osirion-link-to-cygnus-10,500BC.html
(e) https://www.third-millennium.co.uk/irishgodkings
(f) Review of Ancient Aliens S18E17: “The Shining Ones” – JASON COLAVITO *
Aschenbrenner, Klaus H.
Klaus H. Aschenbrenner was born in 1932 in Germany and works as a software architect in Vienna. He is the author of two books[080][081] on Atlantis in which he supports the view that a collision with an asteroid in the Atlantic around 10,500 BC caused the demise of Atlantis.>He penned a paper as a guest author for Atlantisforschung in which he argued for the former existence of a large island (or small continent) in the mid-Atlantic(c).<
He also wrote a short paper(b) outlining his reasons for arguing against the Azores as the location of Atlantis, although he had previously supported that idea.
In 2011, he published a paper(a) entitled Gizeh und die erste Hochkultur (Giza and the first advanced civilization) in which he adds his support to the idea of a much earlier date for the Sphinx than is conventionally accepted. He associates the erosion of the Sphinx with increased acidity in rain caused by a cometary impact around 7600 BC, which has been identified by Alexander Tollmann. English readers can use their Google translator. In an earlier paper, Giza and Abydos: The Keys to Atlantis, he speculated that the Osireion at Abydos was possibly as old as the Sphinx. Unfortunately, it was available in German only.
(a) Gizeh und die erste Hochkultur – Klaus-Aschenbrenner (archive.org)
(b) Lag Atlantis auf den Azoren? – Klaus-Aschenbrenner (archive.org)
(c) Atlantis – Geologische Argumente für eine Großinsel im Mittel-Atlantik – Atlantisforschung.de (German) *
Abydos
Abydos, known locally as Umm el-Qa’ab, is a site in Upper Egypt that contains a variety of structures including the Osirion, which is alleged to be the burial-place of Osiris, the Egyptian deity who was the father of Horus and the brother and husband of Isis. It was discovered in 1901/2 by Sir William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) and Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963)(c).
>An illustrated tour of the Abydos Temple of Seti I and the Osirion is offered by Jimmy Dunn, writing as Peter Rome(t).<
The Osirion (Osireion) has several unusual features that have led some, such as John Anthony West(a) to reasonably conclude that it is from a much earlier period than the adjacent Temple of Seti I.
This view is based on at least three observations.
(i) The foundations of the Osirion are much lower than those of the Temple of Seti, a feature that would have been unprecedented. It is more likely that the structure was originally designed to be built at ground level in a conventional manner. However, after construction, the ground level rose over succeeding years with the deposits of silt from the annual inundation by the Nile. Consequently, when the adjacent Temple of Seti was built, a considerable number of years later, it was erected on the much higher ground beside a buried Osirion.
(ii) The Temple of Seti has an unusual unique outline being ‘L’ shaped instead of having the usual rectangular form. This would seem to suggest that during the construction of the temple, the builders discovered the buried Osirion and had to alter the original design.
(iii) For some, the most compelling reason for dating the Osirion differently to Seti’s Temple is that stylistically the structure is totally at variance with anything else from Seti’s era.
>In response to the last point, conventional archaeologists have proposed that “the Osireion was purposely archaized by New Kingdom architects to make it appear to be ancient. Such a design would be appropriate for the tomb of an ancient god. Any resemblance to Khafre’s Valley Temple, then, would be purely intentional.”
A 2006 article pointed out that “the Osirion is the only temple known from Ancient Egypt to be built below ground level!(o)<
In 1995, Graham Hancock drew attention[275] to this difference in style and a 2019 article, Freddy Silva also commented on this incongruity(h)(k), but notes that while the Osirion at first sight, does not appear to have any obvious astronomical alignment, “only in the epoch of 10,000 BC do connections begin to emerge, for the constellation Cygnus appears in full upright ascent over the horizon in conjunction with the axis of the temple, the entrance framing its brightest star, Deneb.”
Silva added that the Osirion “represents a complete departure from standard temple design. However, a geological appraisal contradicts this opinion. In ancient times the level of the Nile was fifty feet lower than today, its course seven miles closer to and beside the Osirion. When North Africa was subjected to major flooding between 10,500-8000 BC, layers of Nile silt gradually compacted and rose inch by inch until they surrounded and covered the Osirion. In other words, the temple was originally a freestanding feature on the floodplain.”
On cue(i), Jason Colavito attacked Silva, pointing out a bad mistake where Silva incorrectly quoted Diodorus Siculus, subtly implying that everything else that he wrote was also erroneous.
As noted above, it is argued(d). that the apparently archaic architecture of the Osirion is just an example of how “the Egyptians had a recurring tendency to build in a ‘pseudo-archaic’ style”, noting that the style of the temple of Khafre in Giza resembles the Osirion. If so, which was copying which? While Khafre’s temple is adorned with hieroglyphics the apparent absence of any contemporary hieroglyphics in the Osirion seems to suggest a preliterate period for its construction!
The Valley Temple and the Sphinx Temple at Giza show similar construction techniques and are also devoid of inscriptions. As I see it, there is no unequivocal evidence on offer to demonstrate that the Osirion could not be much earlier than the nearby Seti Temple. Therefore, I would urge caution before hastily dismissing Hancock, Silva and others regarding this matter.
The conventional view that Seti I was responsible for the building of both the Temple and the Osireion is expressed in a well-illustrated paper by Keith Hamilton on the Academia.edu website(j).
This suggestion of an earlier date, such as in Ralph Ellis’ Thoth, the Architect of the Universe [0517], has added weight to the more general claim that other Egyptian monuments such as the Sphinx and some of the lower courses of the Great Pyramid are also from a predynastic era. This is interpreted by some as evidence of an early civilisation that might be more in keeping with the 9600 BC date in the story of Atlantis told to Solon by the Egyptian priests at Sais. Brien Foerester has also advocated an early date for the Osirion(n).
>Another feature that appears to be unique to the Osirion is drawings of the ‘flower of life’ on one of its pillars! Gary Fletcher touched on this in a 2009 paper(s). However, it is impossible to say when they were placed there.<
A sceptic’s view of the claimed early date for the Osirion can be read online(d).
It is also worth noting that Abydos was also the site of a remarkable discovery of 14 buried boats that have been dated to at least 
3000BC and again possibly even pre-dynastic.
Klaus H. Aschenbrenner has produced an Internet article, Giza and Abydos: The Keys to Atlantis, unfortunately in German only, which bravely promotes the idea of an 11th millennium BC date for parts of both Giza and Abydos.
Hieroglyphics in the Temple of Seti at Abydos have also been seized upon by proponents of ancient technology existing in prehistoric times and possible links to a hi-tech Atlantis. These carvings suggest the outline of a helicopter and a submarine! A refutation of this interpretation, by Margaret Morris(b) and others(e)(f), has demonstrated that the carvings have been reworked and that some of the plaster infills had deteriorated.>This helicopter claim has been successfully debunked on a number of sites(q), including a December 2022 posting on The Archaeologist website(r), which is particularly graphic.<Furthermore, there is clear evidence that images of the hieroglyphics circulating on the internet were digitally ‘tidied up’.
Wayne James Howson offers some radical ideas concerning the Osireion in a 400-page book available on the Academia.edu website(l). Howson was influenced by the work of Jim Westerman(m).
In November 2016, it was announced that a city was unearthed not far from the Abydos temples, where “it is believed the city was home to important officials and tomb builders and would have flourished during early-era ancient Egyptian times.(g)“
(a) http://www.jawest.net/hall_of_maat.htm
(b) See Archive 2727
(c) https://ascendingpassage.com/Osirion-at-Abydos.htm
(d) https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Osireion,
(e) https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Abydos_helicopter
(f) http://www.catchpenny.org/abydos.html
(g) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38084391
(h) https://grahamhancock.com/silvaf4/
(j) https://www.academia.edu/37568156/The_Osireion_A_Laymans_Guide
(k) https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/osirion-abydos-0012397
(l) https://www.academia.edu/38260074/Osireion_-_One_nights_thoughts_four_years_work..pdf
(m) https://jameswesterman.org/?p=home
(n) Ancient Egypt: The Osirion And The “Mystery ” of the “Flower Of Life” Symbols – Hidden Inca Tours
(o) http://egyptiansecrets.blogspot.com/2006/02/mysterious-osirion-at-abydos.html *
(p) Who built the Osireion? (catchpenny.org) *
(q) http://www.fineart.be/UfocomHQ/usabydos.htm (link broken) *
(r) https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-abydos-helicopter-hieroglyphics *
(t) http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/setiabydos.htm *
Bull Cult
A Bull Cult is noted by Plato as one of the characteristics of the culture of Atlantis. Unfortunately, it does little to identify the location of Atlantis since the bull featured prominently in the culture of so many ancient peoples and continues today, principally in the bullfights of Spain, Portugal, and Mexico.
In northern Italy, there was a Gaulish tribe called the Taurini during the first and second centuries BC. The bull was also a symbol of the southern Italic tribes, in a region which Plato informs us was occupied by Atlanteans(e). In Sicily, modern Taormina was formerly known as Tauromenium in Roman times, which may suggest an even earlier association with a bull cult!
Mithraism, which originated in Iranian mythology and developed rapidly in Italy in the first century AD, included in its beliefs, the killing of a bull by the deity Mithras(g).
Writing in Egerton Sykes’ Atlantis in 1955 (Vol.8 No.3), Vera Howe outlined the extent of the bull cults which ranged from Assyria, across the Mediterranean and up to the British Isles. In Volume 10, No. 4, Käte Müller Lisowski (1883-1960) also wrote of bull links between Crete and Ireland. In the February 1963 (Vol.16 No.1) edition of the same journal, it is recounted that Ireland had bull feasts and bull-fighting in ancient times. There is also evidence of a bull cult among the Picts of Scotland(h). Let us not forget that the Israelites began to worship a golden bull-calf when they thought that they had been abandoned by Moses(b).
It is generally accepted that the bull was also associated with lunar religions(a) as the horns resembled the crescent-Moon. Even today the crescent is one of the principal icons of the Islamic faith.
At the 2005 Atlantis Conference, Professor Stavros Papamarinopoulos delivered a paper(i) outlining the Bronze Age bull rituals in Egypt and the Aegean and their parallels in Iberia. In the Temple of Seti at Abydos there is a well-known wall carving depicting Seti I and his son Ramses II roping a bull and further along the wall, sacrificing it.
Felice Vinci draws attention to the fact that both Plato and Homer (Iliad 20.403-404 & Odyssey 13.181) refer to the sacrifice of bulls to Poseidon.
Robert Ishoy had pointed out bull carvings in Sardinia. The Minoan bull jumpers on Crete are widely known. The Egyptians had a cult of Apis the Bull, a fact 
mentioned by R. McQuillen in support of his Egyptian Atlantis theory. When the Israelites rebelled they worshipped a golden calf or more correctly a young bull (Exodus 32). Exodus 29.36 also instructs the priests that “Each day you shall offer a bull as a sin offering for atonement.“
In the seventeenth century, Olof Rudbeck associated the ancient Swedish custom of sacrificing a bull to Odin with the bull immolation described in Plato’s Atlantis.
Carvings of bulls’ heads decorated the home of ancient Anatolia in modern Turkey. There are bull carvings to be seen at Tarxien in Malta and not far away in Northern Tunisia ancient carvings of bulls are also to be found(c). The ancient Celts also included bulls in their ceremonies. The Assyrians had a bull-god as their guardian. The oldest church in Toulouse is dedicated to St. Taur, a possible reference to an earlier bull cult. Further afield, in India, there is a bull-taming sport, jallikattu, which is practised annually in the villages of the southern state of Tamil Nadu and is recently the subject of a failed attempt to ban it(f).
Dhani Irwanto, who claims a Sundaland location for Atlantis has proposed that Plato’s mention of bulls was the result a distorted account of the original Atlantis narrative brought by refugees from Indonesia and was a reference to the local water buffalo!
Peter James in a short appendix to his book, The Sunken Kingdom[047] supports a Lydian origin for the Atlantis tale and argued that Plato’s text makes no reference to the bull-leaping game depicted in Minoan art. However, quoted the studies of the British anthropologist Jane Harrison(1850-1928) who discovered [600]+ that a coin from Troy’s Roman period depicted a bull being sacrificed in exactly the same manner as Plato’s description, namely, suspended from a pillar. The Roman bull sacrifice ritual was known as ‘taurobolium’.
James also provides other instances of possible Atlantean-style bull worship in the same region which also contains his proposed location for Atlantis, ancient Sipylus.
In conclusion, therefore, it must be obvious from the above that Plato’s reference to bull rituals is no definitive guide to finding an exclusive location and so probably has limited value in any quest for Atlantis.
[600]+ https://archive.org/details/themisstudyofsoc00harr *
(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170705055429/https://www.touregypt.net:80/egypt-info/magazine-mag04012001-magf5.htm
(b) https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0007_0_07514.html
(c) 22 | Hadrumetum – Hidjaba – Haouanet – G. Camps and M. Longerstay – Éditions Peeters (archive.org) (French) *
(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Italy
(e) Timaeus 25b & Critias 114c
(f) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-38705616
(g) https://www.ancient.eu/Mithraic_Mysteries/
West, John Anthony
John Anthony West (1932-2018 ) was born in New York City and was often referred to as a maverick Egyptologist. The principal reason for this soubriquet was his contention[452] that the Sphinx is far older than conventionally accepted. He was greatly influenced by the writings of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz who was the first to question[449] the date of the monument based on what he considered extensive water erosion that could only have occurred many thousands of years earlier than the establishment view. It was at 
West’s request that Robert Schoch, the American geologist, agreed to investigate the Sphinx. Schoch’s conclusion[454] was that water erosion was indeed evident and he controversially dated the carving of the front of the Sphinx to somewhere between 7000 BC and 5000 BC.
West has also questioned[453] the age of the Osirion at Abydos dating it back to 10,000 BC or earlier. He is convinced that a more ancient Sphinx and Osirion raises the question of a lost civilisation at the end of the last Ice Age(d) that may have been the Atlantis of legend. In an interview some years ago he revealed that “I’m very careful to use ‘Atlantis’ in inverted quotes, as, let’s say, a name applied to some lost civilization.”(c) However, he supported the idea of Atlantis without specifying a location, declaring, “Given all this evidence, ‘Atlantis’ can no longer be ignored by anyone seriously interested in the truth.” [0452.230]
In the Preface to West’s Serpent in the Sky, Peter Tompkins wrote that “interestingly, West develops de Lubicz’s notion that the Egyptian cosmology and understanding of this universe was not endemic to Egypt but came from colonists or refugees from Plato’s sunken continent of Atlantis, which could also explain the similarities and identities with the cosmologies of Central America, presumably brought there by other refugees from Atlantis”!
In the same volume West commented “Following an observation made by Schwaller de Lubicz, it is now possible virtually to prove the existence of another, and perhaps greater civilization ante-dating dynastic Egypt – and all other known civilizations – by millennia. In other words, it is possible to prove ‘Atlantis’, and simultaneously, the historical reality of the Biblical Flood.”[452.14]
>In 1991, the Los Angeles Times reviewed West’s dating of the Sphink and his claim that it was constructed by refugees from Atlantis. – West, undaunted, said, “If we can prove the Sphinx is older than we think, then we can get around to which lost civilization built it”–and the lost civilization that easily comes to mind is Atlantis.“(f)<
In the first issue of Atlantis Rising magazine (Nov/Dec 1994) Dr Joseph Ray offered a review of Serpent in the Sky and by extension the work of de Lubicz. In the same edition(c), Douglas Kenyon interviews West headlining the article with ‘John Anthony West is producing the kind of hard evidence for ‘Atlantis’ that scientists find difficult to ignore.’
Apart from his non-fiction output West has written a book of short stories, a novel, plays and film scripts. His TV documentary on the Sphinx won acclaim in the UK and USA. West also maintained a website(a).
West and Robert Schoch had formed a documentary production company, Akio Enterprises, that had a number of projects in the pipeline.
In January 2017, it was announced that West was suffering from Stage 4 cancer. Although he won his fight against cancer, his body had been badly weakened and on February 7th 2018, his death was announced(b).
There is now a website headed the Official Site of John Anthony West(e). At the end of the biography, there is one final interesting comment “A dear friend and colleague of West is working on a three-volume comprehensive update of JAW’s research, including a section on Gobekli Tepe. It is entitled: John Anthony West: Symbolist View of Egypt by John Anthony West and the Companions of Horus. The first volume is expected to come out later in 2022.”
(b) https://www.dailygrail.com/2018/02/ad-astra-john-anthony-west-1932-2018/
(c) Atlantis Rising No.1, Nov/Dec 1994, p.18 https://books.google.ie/books?id=H4R0EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=Atlantis+Rising+No.1,+Nov/Dec+1994&source=bl&ots=5aqXwduoSM&sig=ACfU3U0Xumqh-YCBf-kgNl4rzd3X2rHEpg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwilrsbnn-H4AhWFi1wKHbCPB1cQ6AF6BAgdEAM#v=onepage&q=Atlantis%20Rising%20No.1%2C%20Nov%2FDec%201994&f=false
(d) Atlantis Rising magazine No. 34 https://www.scribd.com/document/139662431/Atlantis-Rising-34
(e) About John – John Anthony West (jawsphinx.com)
(f) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-06-02-mn-331-story.html *