Appendix 1

The name "Atlantis" is not the original name for the mysterious Ancient civilisation searched for by the dreamers as well as trustworthy scientists during the last 2300 years. In the Critias dialogue, Plato described in much detail what was the origin of the name Atlantis. According to Plato, Solon, upon his visit to Egypt, transformed the names of all "barbarian men" into Greek based on the meaning of the words. Egyptian priests are said to use the same method to transform the names of the heroes into their language. This way, Solon also transformed the original Egyptian name of Poseidon's firstborn son and called him by the Greek name Atlas. Only the name Atlas was adopted by Plato (or Solon) to refer to the island and the sea around the island as Atlantis and Atlantic Sea, respectively. This means that the names Atlantis, Atlas, Atlantic Sea, much like the names of gods and humans (Poseidon, Cleito, Eumelos etc.) are in fact of Greek origin and have nothing in common with the original perished civilisation described by Plato in his dialogues. It is therefore naive to speculate over the name Atlantis and compare it, for example, with the nomenclature of old Maya or the Phoenician word for the west.

Atlas, the son of titan Iapetus and Oceanide Clymene, was one of the titans in the Greek mythology who were fighting unsuccessfully against the Olympus gods. According to one version of the myth, he was sentenced by Zeus to carrying the vault of the heavens on his head and shoulders after he got defeated in the war. In a different, younger version, Atlas was turned into a giant mountain carrying the vault of the heavens in Mauretania by Perseus who showed him the cut-off head of Medusa. In the original Homeric tradition, however, Atlas did not support the vault of the heavens himself. The giant of the sea Atlas was standing in the Atlantic Sea and only carried huge columns on his body which, in turn, supported the metallic vault of the heavens. The idea of Atlas carrying the vault of the heavens directly on his body originated only later. So did the subsequent personification of the fold-fault mountain range in northwestern Africa, 2000 km long, under which the Greeks imagined a petrified titan and called it Atlas for this reason. In the pre-Homeric tradition and in older sources of the Orphics, Atlas is portrayed as a rich king, astronomer and philosopher, who ruled either in Peloponesian Arcadia or African Mauretania. From very early times, he possessed the columns separating the land from the sky. According to ancient, not preserved narrations, he was a wickedly clever god who could find his way through the depths of the sea. ¹⁸³⁾v

As the king of Arcadia, he also became the father of Arcadian Maia. The territories of historical Mauretania and Arcadia have one thing in common: they are surrounded by high and impenetrable mountains and have only access to the sea. The Arcadian population was considered descendants of the original Pelasgians by the Greeks. Ancient Arcadia was considered "the seat of pure innocence and heavenly bliss" by the Hellenes.184) When Solon translated the name of Poseidon's firstborn son by its meaning from Egyptian to Greek in 590 B.C., calling him very fittingly Atlas, he succeeded in expressing at the same time that Atlas, clever firstborn son of Poseidon, astronomer and philosopher, ruled as a king over a land surrounded by high mountains where the mountains supported the metallic vault of the heavens as columns. The kingdom of Atlas - Atlantis - was located somewhere in the outer Okeános, i.e., in the Atlantic Sea, and was the seat of pure innocence and heavenly bliss, until its inhabitants did not become corrupted and governed by human nature. Here, a parallel can be seen also between the philosophical-religious teaching of Orphics, allegedly derived from the mythological singer Orpheus, and the description of the Atlanteans by Plato. In the opinion of the Orphics, all titans including Atlas were considered wicked ancestors of humans. As described in the Plato's Critias, only after the Atlanteans lost their deity due to mixing with the mortal element and their human nature gained prevalence, they became corrupted and ugly. Then, Zeus decided to cast a punishment over them. Mystical teaching of Orphics, together with Pythagoreanism, definitely had a stronger influence on Plato than the Homeric-like myth on the creation of the world.

According to Plato, the second offspring of Poseidon and a counterpart to firstborn Atlas "obtained as his lot the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles, facing the country which is now called the region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the name which in the Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of the country which is named after him, Gadeirus. C) The name of Gadeirus could have been also derived from the word "gad" (fortune in Hebrew). According to the Old Testament, the founder of one of the twelve Israeli tribes was the seventh son of patriarch Jacob and his maid Zilpah, called Gad (i.e., Fortune). The tribe of Gad lived in an area on the eastern bank of Jordan, in the Gilead Mountains, north of the Reuben's tribe in the neighbourhood of the Ammonites. 186) The area inhabited by the Israeli tribe was collectively called Gad or Gades.

Gad was also the last name of idol Bel, which was worshiped by idolatrous Israelites.187) Bel means "lord" in Akkadian. From the late 2nd and early 1st millennium B.C., the name Bel mostly designates god Marduk 188), the principal god of the Babylonian pantheon of gods. Marduk was the son of Sumerian god Enki compared with the Greek Poseidon, and the official god of the whole Babylonia. In the broadest sense of the word, the Egyptians could provide Solon with a description of the historical territory of Sumer and Akkad, and later the Babylonian empire, where the principal official god was Marduk, the son of god Enki, also called Bel or Gad. Semitic word root "gad" meaning "fortune" could have been erroneously interpreted by Solon or later by Plato. Then accepted Greek understanding of the position of the Pillars of Heracles in the area of Spanish Cadiz, called Gades (fort) by the Phoenicians, could have caused a confusion and erroneous substitution of the territory administered by Gadeir originally located in the Middle East for the Gadeir region near Cadiz in the territory of present Spain. Phoenicians, much like Hebrews, belong to the group of Semitic nations. Not later than in the 4th millennium B.C., the Semitic languages spread across the Middle East, Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestina and the Arabian Peninsula. 189) Semitic origin can be traced, for example, for the Akkadians (Sargon of Akkad) Amorites, who founded the Babylonian dynasty, Canaanites and Chaldeans. Hebrew and Phoenician languages are closely related and are based on Canaan and Amorite languages. According to Plato, one of the languages spoken in Atlantis was surely of the family of Semitic languages, as was the case in Mesopotamia under Sargon of Akkad.

In the Indus Valley cities, special triangular flat cakes of terra-cotta (caceds) are found, 3.8 to 10 cm in size. Opinions exist that these were used as toilet paper. This is because caceds are commonly found in sewers. I had the opportunity to study these caceds in detail and I have one of them in my office (see Plate 25 on p. 143, Plate 26 on p. 144 A)). I can only say this: the hypothesis on the use of the caceds on the toilet is a nonsense. By the way, make a triangle from loam 10 cm across, fire it, and try to wipe your buttocks with it. Caceds have the shape of the present triangular plastic wipers for removing snow from car windows. Large numbers of caceds have bevelled edges, as if they were used for scraping something in one direction. by someone. Caceds were found also in the furnaces of the Indus Valley dwellings. Therefore, I suggest their other usage. Caceds were used for scraping solid or loose remains into the municipal sewage system or to special containers: in toilets, furnaces (cinder from furnace) and elsewhere. When used for scraping any wet remains to the sewage system, the caceds were getting wet. They could be therefore dried in furnaces and used again. Caceds were by no means used as toilet paper. The washing method after using a toilet, already practised by the Indus Valley Civilisation, employed left hand and water, as indicated by bathrooms in Indus Valley houses.