THE AGE-old rivalry between scholars and psychics – the seen and the unseen, the sceptic and the believer – has reared its head in Cyprus, prompted by American author Robert Sarmast’s book Discovery of Atlantis: The Startling Case for the Island of Cyprus.
Much has already been written about Sarmast’s book, in which he claims to have discovered that the island matches Plato’s famed account of the mythological ancient civilisation in two of his dialogues with Greek philosophers Timaeus and Critias.
Sarmast claims to back up Plato’s descriptions with a scientific survey of the eastern Mediterranean basin, which took place in the 1980s, resulting, he says, in the most accurate data about the topographic structure of the Levantine Basin and the Cyprus Arc. The data was acquired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in 1999 and used, he said, to create the most accurate bathymetric maps of the sea floor stretching between Cyprus and Syria.
“We cannot rely solely on Plato’s Critias and Timaeus to find the actual location or determine the size of Atlantis. There are inconsistencies in the text itself and uncertainties concerning our knowledge of the ancient Egyptian and Greek understanding of regional geography. It is not surprising then that today’s camps in Atlantology are divided on the issue of location,” said Sarmast.
“Nevertheless, we have before us an unambiguous set of clues concerning many other important features of Atlantis, all of which are explored in the book. These clues, coupled with new empirical data, will, I believe, offer compelling reasons for our claim to have discovered the location of the sunken isle.”
Although theories on where Atlantis was are many and varied, most believers agree that the ancient city was probably destroyed in the famous biblical flood, which is also common in the history of the Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians and South Americans.
In his writings, Plato describes a series of worldwide floods culminating in the deluge of the Deucalion, dated by Greek historians to the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 BC. Plato said that Atlantis suddenly sank after a violent series of eruptions and a flood, which has led many to theorise that the volcanic Greek island of Thera or Santorini might have been Atlantis.
Ironically, as far as Cypriot scholars are concerned, Sarmast’s theory can be knocked down in one fell swoop by Plato himself, who described Atlantis as being beyond the Pillars of Hercules, widely believed to be the Straits of Gibraltar. This is proof positive for many that Atlantis lies somewhere in the Atlantic.
“The possibility of Cyprus being Atlantis is next to zero,” Plato scholar Sofronis Sofroniou told the Sunday Mail. “There is no such evidence and no one from ancient times until today has ever mentioned such a thing, so it cannot be out of the blue like this. Cyprus is mentioned by Homer and other people and there is no mention of that. If Cyprus was Atlantis, it would probably have been mentioned. There is absolutely no basis for this theory.”
But Sarmast told the Sunday Mail in an e-mail that he had addressed that particular issue in his book. He also sees the term “opposite” rather than “beyond” the Pillars of Hercules in his nearly 50 clues drawn from Plato’s writings.
“Just know that the legend of Atlantis comes from prehistoric times and that the identification with the Straits of Gibraltar is just pure hypothesis,” he said. “We have no way of knowing the real story after thousands of years, during which the story has suffered multiple translations, interpretations and name changes. My theory rests almost exclusively on the physical description of the island itself based on 48 solid clues derived from Plato’s Critias. This information is far more reliable than name references from prehistoric people.”
Sarmast told the BBC in a recent interview that serious archaeologists “should be careful what they say”.
“The scientific process compels us to look for things that may be there,” said the author, who hopes to organise an expedition to Cyprus to look for the lost city state.
Respected Cypriot archaeologist Vassos Karageorghis remained unimpressed. “I don’t want to spend even one second on this book because it’s nonsense,” he said. Karageorghis was hesitant to rule out the existence of Atlantis completely, but was convinced it was nowhere near Cyprus. “Sorry to be so absolute, but sometimes you have to be,” he said.
Sophocles Hadjisavvas, the Director of the Antiquities Department, was in total agreement. “This is mere speculation and has nothing to do with reality,” he said. “Atlantis is mythology and even mythology speaks of Atlantis being outside the Hercules Gates in the Atlantic. They are making a lot of noise to sell the book, but it is good for Cyprus tourism,” he added.
Indeed, finding Atlantis in Cyprus would have been a dream come true for former Tourism Minister Nicos Rolandis.
When in office, Rolandis twice came under fire for his exploitation of the island’s mythological heritage, first by bringing the Miss Universe pageant to Aphrodite’s island and then suggesting the building of a theme park and a giant statue of the love goddess at sea off Paphos.
“I don’t know to what extent this thing can be capitalised on and exploited at this stage,” he said. “Of course, at a certain moment it could be exploited but it would take a lot of work and a lot of vision to do that but I believe that something in addition will be needed before anybody can look into the possibilities for tourism in this regard.”
Rolandis said the issue was a question of how you viewed tourism and its potential. “We had a different idea regarding tourism in my day. Miss Universe and the Aphrodite statue are not positions with which the new government would agree as far as I can see,” he said.
Probably one of the second most knowledgeable people on Atlantis, after Plato, was an American by the name of Edgar Cayce, also known as the “sleeping prophet”. Cayce predicted the beginning and end of both the First and Second World Wars, and the lifting of the Depression in 1933. In the 1920s, he warned of future racial problems in the US, and in 1939 he predicted the deaths of two presidents in office, and his own death five days before it happened. He also spoke of wars in Libya, Egypt, Syria, and the Gulf. In all Cayce gave over 14,000 readings between 1901 and 1945, covering more than 10,000 topics, one third of which related to Atlantis. Cayce described a civilisation that had developed hot-air balloons, flying ships, advanced forms of communication and electronic transmission, and a mysterious laser-like “firestone” that could produce power. But he also described Atlantis as a society destroyed by greed and lust whose remaining inhabitants travelled to Egypt and other places around the world founding many of the civilisations documented in today’s written history. However, none of his Atlantis material referred to Cyprus being the site of the lost civilisation.
This does not appear to deter Cypriot believers, for whom the possibility that Cyprus is Atlantis doesn’t seem to be a major revelation.
One New Ager said his wife had always been fascinated with Atlanits and had had her suspicions that “it was basically around here”.
“News of the book made us smile,” he said. “We are definitely sitting on something here in Cyprus”.
“I think it’s very big,” said another .“It has occurred to me before because Cyprus is a strange place and it’s been drawing a lot of paranormal research for a number of years. There are definitely layers upon layers of very interesting things going on. A number of well-respected psychics that have been on the island have felt the island certainly is related to Atlantis, if not Atlantis itself,
and there are a lot of people now on the island who feel that they have very strong links in past lives with Atlantis,” she added.
“There are also a lot of healers coming here and living here and I think it’s all related. Maybe now is the time for the bad things to be resolved and to bring the good things into focus again. Every place has to come to terms with its bad aspects before people there can truly evolve and I think something like that is happening on the island.”
One member of a paranormal research group on the island does not agree however. “It (Cyprus) doesn’t really fit in with a lot of information that we found about Atlantis,” she said “There are different theories but this is not a theory we’ve come across. The only other time we’ve seen this was some years ago as a April Fools story in the Cyprus Mail.”
Prophetic? Only time will tell. Either that or the story of Atlantis is merely a stark warning of what happens when ‘civilisation’ goes too far and Planet Earth decides it’s had enough.
