Egyptenaren wilden zichzelf extra oud en ontwikkeld laten lijken tov jonge andere samenlevingen, solon kon chronologie niet verifiëren, Atlantis verhaal bestond niet in Griekenland dus hij kon se geschiedenis verbuigen

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Twenty-fourth Dynasty of EgyptLast edited: Wed, Nov 15, 2023 The Twenty-fourth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XXIV, alternatively 24th Dynasty or Dynasty 24) is usually classified as the fourth Dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian Third Intermediate Period. en.wikipedia.org

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Twenty-first Dynasty of EgyptLast edited: Mon, Apr 8, 2024 The Twenty-first Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XXI, alternatively 21st Dynasty or Dynasty 21) is usually classified as the first Dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian Third Intermediate Period, lasting from 1077 BC to 943 BC. en.wikipedia.org

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‘’FALL INTO DECADENCE’’ STORY PROBABLY INFLUENCED BY EGYPTIAN PROPAGANDA

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THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PRIESTHOOD OF SAIS

In the dialogues, Plato claims that the tale of Atlantis as described in the poems of Solon was originally retrieved by Solon from the Ancient Egyptian temple city of Sais, in the Nile Delta. Solon was a real historical figure, who was a statesman, lawmaker and poet, and often credited with having laid the foundation of Athenian democracy (Stanton, 1990). According to Diogenes Laërtius, a biographer of the Greek philosophers, who lived between the second and third centuries AD, Solon had a brother called Dropides, who was Plato’s ancestor, six generations removed (Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Famous Philosophers). This is how Plato might have gotten in contact with the tale, or even how he potentially acquired physical manuscripts containing the details, if perhaps Plato was implicitly referring to himself when he wrote through the fictional mouth of Critias:

These very writings were in the possession of my grandfather and are actually now in mine, and when I was a child I learnt them all by heart. (Critias 113b)

The Greek Historian Herodotus, who passed away around the time when Plato was born, wrote in his book ‘The Histories’ that ‘‘Solon went to visit Amasis in Egypt’’ during his political travels (Herodotus, Godley, 1683). Plato's dialogue does not mention a name for the priest from whom Solon got the story, but Plutarch, a Greek philosopher and historian who lived between 46–120 AD, some four centuries after Plato, identified the old priest in his text ‘Parallel Lives’ as Sonchis:

[Solon’s] first voyage was for Egypt, and he lived, as he himself says, near Nilus' mouth, by fair Canopus' shore, and spent some time in study with Psenophis of Heliopolis, and Sonchis the Saïte, the most learned of all the priests; from whom, as Plato says, getting knowledge of the Atlantic story, he put it into a poem, and proposed to bring it to the knowledge of the Greeks. (Plutarch & Dryden, 1859)

The places mentioned in this citation, Canopus and Sais, were real ancient Egyptian temple cities located in the west Nile delta, near the mediterranean coast. Canopus was eventually swallowed up by the sea due to the rising tide and the fact that it was built on a sandbank, but it has been rediscovered in the 21st century thanks to underwater archaeology (Shenker, 2016). Sais slowly crumbled through time, and of its ruins barely anything remains (Maspero, Wiet, 1919). This decay was sped up by local farmers who used the old decomposed mud bricks from archaeological sites, known as sebakh, as a fertiliser (Nicholson & Shaw, 1995). In the dialogues, Plato writes that Solon allegedly visited the temple complex of Sais, and heard the story there from Sonchis:

(21e) “In the Delta of Egypt,” said Critias, “where, at its head, the stream of the Nile parts in two, there is a certain district called the Saitic. The chief city in this district is Sais—the home of King Amasis,—the founder of which, they say, is a goddess whose Egyptian name is Neith, and in Greek, as they assert, Athena. These people profess to be great lovers of Athens and in a measure akin to our people here. And Solon said that when he travelled there he was held in great esteem amongst them; moreover, when he was questioning such of their priests (22a) as were most versed in ancient lore about their early history, he discovered that neither he himself nor any other Greek knew anything at all, one might say, about such matters. (Timaeus 21e-22a)

The historical context given in this citation has been proven to be factual. In the 6th century BC, when Solon lived, Egypt was ruled by pharaoh Amasis, also known as Ahmose II, originally a general who seized the throne during a mutiny (Britannica, 2014). He was part of the 26th dynasty, also known as the Saitic period, because during that time, Sais was the capital of Egypt (Dodson & Hilton, 2004). Furthermore, the war goddess Neith, the Egyptian parallel to Athena, was indeed the city’s patron, and the cult of her worship has been attested as early as the First Dynasty, which lasted roughly between 3100–3050 BC (Nicholson & Shaw, 1995).

So this host, being all gathered together, made an attempt one time to enslave by one single onslaught both your country and ours and the whole of the territory within the Straits. And then it was, Solon, that the manhood of your State showed itself conspicuous for valor and might in the sight of all the world. For it stood pre-eminent above all (25c) in gallantry and all warlike arts, and acting partly as leader of the Greeks, and partly standing alone by itself when deserted by all others, after encountering the deadliest perils, it defeated the invaders and reared a trophy; whereby it saved from slavery such as were not as yet enslaved, and all the rest of us who dwell within the bounds of Heracles it ungrudgingly set free. (Timaeus 25b-c)

This might harmonise with the account of Diodorus Siculus, an ancient Greek historian from the first century BC, who stated that the Athenians had built Sais before the deluge. This deluge had destroyed all Greek cities, including Athens, but had spared Sais and other Egyptian cities (Diodorus Siculus, V. 57). This suggests that the story of Atlantis might have survived through the tradition of the survivors of the deluge whose cities were not destroyed, and that this story was subsequently taken up into the historical record of Sais, one of such surviving cities, thus finding its way eventually through Sonchis, Solon, Dropidas and Plato, all the way up to us in the present. Atlantists often presume that the story of Atlantis was written on the temple walls at Sais, because of following passage:

All such events are recorded from of old and preserved here in our temples. (Timaeus 23a)

However, as the philologist and Atlantis sceptic Heinz-Günther Nesselrath pointed out, Plato writes that the Egyptian priest had stated:

Of the citizens, then, who lived 9000 years ago, I will declare to you briefly certain of their laws and the noblest of the deeds they performed: (24a) the full account in precise order and detail we shall go through later at our leisure, taking the actual writings. (Timaeus 23e-24a)

The last part of this passage, ‘taking the actual writings’, is translated from the Greek ‘τὰ γράμματα λαβόντες’, which contains the verb ‘λαμβάνω’, which usually refers to the act of grabbing something with one's hand (Liddell & Scott, 1940). Therefore, as Nesselrath suggests, this passage most probably refers to the act of grabbing some papyrus scrolls, onto which the story might have been written down (Nesselrath, 2001). If this is true, there might be no hope of ever uncovering the original Egyptian source written on an old temple wall buried under the Nile Delta, and any hypothetical fragile papyrus scrolls would most likely have been lost or destroyed during the decay of Sais, making Plato’s tale the only surviving account of the city in modern times. This would be in accordance with Plato’s statement that:

The record of it has not endured until now owing to lapse of time and the destruction of those who wrought it. (Timaeus 21d)

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