o s t of us have heard at som e sentations of the battle between thetim e or other of the island Gods and the Giants.
nam ed A tlantis, w hich tradition*
Pausanias, the Greek geographer,ally w as subm erged In the A tlantic describes the Cimmerians as Gauls orOcean w ithin a day and a n igh t Gaels, “ formerly called Celts," whom any thousands of years ago in a dwelt “ in the f a jth ^ tof Europ>e
convulsion of nature. Was It reality on the shores of a great s ^ unnavigaor ‘m y th ’ ?
ble a t its extfelmity, w ^^revthe sea
According to Plato, who first related ebbed and flowed^and co n ts^ d d marine
the story, the people of Atlantis formed beasts unUke th .(^ found elsewhere."
the oldest civilisation in the world. This presum ably referred to the Arctic
They possessed great cities with palaces, Oc^an w hereaboiind th e whale, polar
temples of gold with huge golden'images bear,seal. Thusof its deities, roads of size and length, the CjthtneriaiiSvd^lt in the north andchains of canals, and rejoiced in a cli­ were really thewho still hve inmate so benign th a t they reaped two Northern and Westeim Scotland.
harvests a yeair. They owned ship>s andThe Cimmerians
war chariots, and b r ^ the finest horsesand cattle.
\^ )A U S A N IA S a d d s : “ In the land ofAtlantis, says Plato, was situ at\ L t ^ Galatai (or Gauls)—flows the" in front of the straits you call the£ndanus, on whose banks people
Pillars of Hercules and led to a s u c ^ th a t the daughters of Helios
sion of islands from which you miglit.
the fate of their brother Phaepass through the whole of the opposi' \to n X ^ ,Herodotus confirms this account.
continent which surrounded\ ^ e r o ^ e s th a t the Cimmerians—whomOcean." This description
iW sttought were extinct—dwelt by thecould not have re fe rr^ toEridanus, where too, says he,island opposite the Straits <Q
were found amber and tin. Amberfor deep-sea soundings ha^^is only found in the north and once
covered any possible trace ol
was by no means rare in the Scottish
elsewhere in deep-se^"souiidin{
regions, while tin, in ancient times, wasthere survive many^
only obtained in Cornwall and adjacent
lost island in the asQ eh ts^ifiiisles.
Central America andvferuXw^ch reveal
Who were the Cimmerians? Their
undoubted relatio ^h ip Jsjth Egypt descendants in Wales to this day are
yet lack a m utual irtotherland from known as the Cymry, claimed in thewhence they< s]ancient Welsh Triads as the aboriginal
natives of Britain. Racially, they werethe Iberi, or Hebrews, after whom theEgypt, Solon, the Isles off W estern Scotland obtained thekURI
famophilosopher andname of Hebrides, Isles of the Hebrews,lawgiver,
told of Atlantis by an The Welsh tongue is full of Hebrew
priest a t ' 3s, who added; “ there words to this day. So the Atlantis
yelt in Atlantis the fairest and noblest ‘ mjrth ’ brings us irrevocably to our own
aen who ever lived, of whom you Britain !
^nd y ^ r ^ t y are b u t a seed or remPillars O f Hercules^ t . " Ttfe original Atlantis, he said,V ^ p r e i ^ i n e n t in laws, performed theo does the river Eridanus. When'iM^btest deeds, and p>ossessed the finest
analysed the word is a combination^ M titu tio n , its antiquity being such of E ri (i.e. Erinn) earliest name for Ire­th a t it was “ founded by the goddess land, and Danus, relating to the famous_Athene a thousand years before Sals." De Danaan race, which, according toK^was “ a great and wonderful empire, Irish tradition “before the Flood," inha­\^ ^ i< ;h had rule over the whole island bited the Western Islands and the West­and several others, as well as over parts ern Highlands. The Greek name forof the continent." A “ mighty power " them was Danai. Moreover, the classic
invaded it "an d endeavoured to subdue writers often referred to the Ocean (orour country (Egypt) and yours (Athens) Gulf Stream) as the ‘ River of Ocean ’and the whole land within the straits.” and this name Eridanus lets us identify
B ut violent earthquakes and floods in a the ‘riv er’ in question as the Hebridean
single day and night caused the island Sea, the sea of the basaltic pillars or
and its warlike men to sink beneath the columns, the Sea of the Erinites andsea. Such, in brief, is the legend; inva­ Danai.
T hat very sea was where
Phaeton was flung down by Jupitersion by a mighty host, a great war, andsubmersion through violent earthquakes when he tried to burn up the earth !
The columns thrown down by Herculesand floods.
are there staring us in the face !
W ar O f The Giants
We have indeed, if we have open
T H E R traditions support the minds, facing us here the real Pillars
legend. Athens held its five-year of Hercules, held in such awe and super­
festival of the Pan-Atheneia, tradition­ stition by the ancients on the Faroe
ally instituted by Erectheus, who Isles, on the Outer Hebrides, on Skye,rebuilt Athens after the Deucalion or on the Isles off Mull, and notably at
Ogygian Flood, which commemorated Giants' Causeway, Co. Antrim, On
the city's heroic deeds in the fabled war Staffa, a few miles off Mull and Iona,
between the Gods and the Giants, the with its famous vast cave, lies one enor­
latter being the invaders. In this war mous mass of amorphous material, withthe Giants hurled rocks and burning tens of thousands of these same pillars.
trees against heaven and in their plight
I assert th a t these are the real Pillars of
the Gods called on Hercules, always Hercules ! Aristotle, in describing therepresented with a pillar or column in north of Europe, washed, he says, by aeach hand, and who on this occasion vast sea along which “ beyond the Celts
buried the Giants under rocks and and Scyths, the land contracts as far asstones. Likewise the Giants represented the Sinus GalUcus and the Pillars of
as fabulous beings, with scaly serpents Hercules. In this sea are two very large
in place of legs and accorded wings, are islands, Pretannikai (Britain) and lem eengraved on the famous Pergamon (Ireland), and m any smaller isles,"Reliefs, where the goddess Athene, bear­ scenes of the most violent plutonic
ing her awful aegis is shown destroying event in the world’s history.
the Giants, and being crowned by theSky Bombardment
goddess of victory, while a t her feet, Geor Gaea, the E arth, as she sinks down­ ^ T ^ H E geological view is th a t amorX phous basalt fell in liquefied form on
ward into the abyss, gazed imploringly
old Red Sandstone, together witha t her.
On the birthday of the goddess a basaltic columns in v ast profusion. At
grand procession marched to Athene's th a t time Ben Mh6r, and the islands oftemple, the Parthenon, with Athenian Skye, Rum, Eigg, Staffa, were one vastmaidens, bearing the peplos, a hand- blaze on which the pillars were rained
woven saffron-coloured veil with which down as well of course in the adjoining
they ceremoniously adorned the fam- seas. Ben Mhdr (‘Giant M ountain’)oas statue by Pheidias. The peplos, rises today 3,169 ft. above sea level, its
it is said, was embroidered with repre­ higher rocks with indications of stria-

M

IS BRITAIIV THElO S T ATLANTIS?
ByCOMYNSBEAUMONT

T h e legend of the lost island o f A tlantis, believed to have been
subm erged in som e prehistoric convulsion of nature, hastantalised the im agination of m an ever since the daysof Plato. H ere a new and extraordinary theory ofthe island’s identity is presented.

SOA map of the West Coast of Scotland, showing the Western Isles and northern
26
Antrim, where the author locates the ancient ‘Pillars of Hercules’.

The island of Stafia, showing the eastern side where the famous cave is situated. According to the author the island is marked by tht prehistoric upheaval isubmersion of Atlantis.
tion and scorching. Prof. W. J. Judd,the seismologist, estimated th a t it
originally towered to a height of 10,000ft. or more. I t was crushed down by acelestial bombardment.
This mountain possesses a t least two
unusual features. One is a series of ter­races rising towards its summit whichlook as though artificially designed.
Another is its enormous cavern, looking
westward to the broad Atlantic, called
MacKinnon's Cave, with remains of aformer cromlech or altar named Fingal'sTable. Dominating the west, and sur­rounded by the Isles, it answers to thesacred Mount Atlas or Prometheus (oneand the same) by whose volcanic fires
Deucalion, the Greek Noah, was warnedof the coming disaster and built hisArk.

“ to the West, to the W est.” , Jt was an
arduous and d a n g e n ^ journey beyond
the seas, largriv throogh tunnels, wherelurking fiends'^^d monijsters waited todevour them u n l^ s they were provided
with magical amuiete and charms, soldthem b^y the p r ie s t^
EventuM y^^ys:^^rifed their destinatioi^ led t}^heHjy/ThiG(^ and jackalh e ^ r f Anubis, god of the dead, where
they k>ught thft Pillars of the TtuU orTat, a word akin to the Gaelic Tuath,
the North, depicted on Eygptian wall^ itin ^ \w th polygonal strijies to in­
dicate tnfeTF*illars. The T uat was deemed
to lie “ a t the ends of the earth,” always
in the West, and the name is still extant
in Lx^h Tuath, adjoining Mull.
\Arrived a t Amenta, the soul wasucted into the Hall of Judgment
ere Osiris sat enthroned, holding theMcred ankh, symbol of life, attended by
the goddesses Isis (Law) and Nepthys(Conscience). In this Hall also sat theTwelve Great Gods and Goddesses,
forming a sort of jury, and beyond
them in two rows sat the forty-two
lesser gods, each representing a name(district). •In the representation in the Papyrusof Hunifer, he and his wife Nasha are
led into the Hall of Judgm ent by
Anubis. In a tableau above are shown
all the gods and goddesses, b u t before
entry Thoth had propounded theenigma to Hunifer : " Who is he whoseroof is fire, whose walls are living
serpents, and whose floor is a stream ofw t e r ? ” The mystic answer was“ Osiris.”

Proof O f Flood
F we cross to the mainland op{x>site
Mull, not far inland stand theLochaber Mountains, dominated by
Ben Nevis. These too bear evidence ofthe past event with their series of seaterraces or sea-beaches, which range
from 847 ft. to 1,278 ft. in Glen Gloy,
above sea level. They bear proof of themost stupendous flooii in this mountainregion, where the waters were unable tosubside for long and have left behind
their detritus. I may awld th a t this partof Scotland compares completely withthe original Greek Thessaly, scene of theDeucalion Flood, as it should do if thepriest of Sais were correct in his story.
Did Deucalion or Noah learn here,
then, of the imminent danger and hastily
build his Ark ? At the base of Ben
Cruachan, is 'Glen Noe,’ and in theAberdeen country to the north-east
stand the remains of a vitrified fort orcastle in the Strath of Bogie, 1,851 ft.
above the sea, called ‘Tap O’N oth.’

IOne Inevitable Conclusion
E may identify this ‘ Hall of Judg­m ent’ in Fingal's Cave, Stafia, aW
pagan temple of a myriad columns. OnceStruck By A CometI

T may be said of ‘this most compli­
cated igneous centre of the world, ’as described in the ‘Geological Survey ofScotland,’ th a t a t some time over three
thousand years ago a celestial body, acomet. Phaeton 'th e Shining One,’
struck the earth in these p>arts, taking
a south-westward course, whereby
the Western lands received the worst
blow. Ireland, beyond Antrim, and theboglands of Co. Donegal, escaped theworst. Another p art passed over south­
west England and Wales, and apartfrom a few patches in France and Spain,
the remainder probably fell into thebroad Atlantic, while a few isolatedmasses fell in Iowa and Brazil. No
doubt great numbers of survivors
escaped, or emigrated to other regions^
including Egypt and Mexico.
In Egypt the priesthood reconstruc'completely their religious system aiv
left, as a priceless legacy, the ' Qook
the Dead.’ I t was the E g y p tia ttlS th \th a t all the spnrits of the dead must
appear before the god Osiris, a t
the region where he, akm g^
was struck down by his'^-wKbrbthfir Seth, the Comet. Therefore frbnr5istont
Egypt the souLs set o u ^ ltw a s t a ^ h ^the W est; hence theOne of Nature’s marvels whidi inspired Mendelssohn to compose a haunting pieceof music—Fingal's Caoe, Isle of Staffa, connected^ by the author of this article
with the Egyptian 'fieek, of the Dead’ from which is taken (bdow) portion of thepapyri^y^-Mvitif(r defMCling souls in the Hall of fudgment.
" 1.

it was actually a fiery mass from roof tobase, its walls living serpents of flame,its floor to this day deep under water.
I t stands solitary and aloqf, this cathe­dral-like cavern, Llain Binn, Cave ofMusic, where the winds triumph, often
furious, sometimes eerie, a t their softest
like the murmurings of a vast throng ofwhispering lips.
Fantastic realism might describe thisextraordinary so-Celtic religious belief,so faithfully held by generation aftergeneration of Egyptians, a faith deve­
loped from and based upon’the destruc­tion of Atlantis. The unique site ofAmenta lay in the area more terribly
ravaged than any other. For, as Sir
Wallace Budge says, the T uat was “ aregion of death and destruction, a place
where the dead rotted and decayed, aplace of abomination, horror, terror,and annihilation." This Underworld
belief was equally held by the Greeks.
Did not Ulysses, as recounted byHomer in the ‘Odyssey,’ sail to theentrance into Hades to consult thespirits of the dead ?
In m y opinion, the conclusion isInevitable that B ritain w as theA tlantis of Plato and that theEgyptian Underworld faith evolved
from that disaster. If it be so,
Britain em erges as the m other ofw orld c iv ilisa tio n !
27