The Infamous Map of Atlantis
Everyone knows this map of Atlantis, but it seems very few people know who made it and where it comes from. This famous map was drawn by Athanasius Kircher in the 1660's for his textbook Mundus Subterraneus.
Athanasius Kircher was a German Jesuit Scholar, polymath and professor of ethics and mathematics at the University of Würzburg. Interestingly enough, he is regarded as the Father of Egyptology. Despite his efforts at translating the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, his translations would fall to the wayside once the Rosetta Stone was discovered. However, his pioneering into Egyptology as a serious field of study makes him a relevant topic of discussion to this day.
In one of his forty four folio published volumes, Mundus Subterraneus published 1664, is a map that has sparked the minds of many over the past centuries. This map of the famed Atlantis contains a latin caption which roughly translates to “Site of the island of Atlantis, in the sea, from Egyptian sources and Plato’s description.”
Important to note, that this map is positioned with the South facing up, while North faces down. It is unclear why Kircher chose to make his map this way.
What is also unknown is how Kircher was able to discern this exact shape of Atlantis from Plato’s descriptions. Perhaps it stems from one of the unnamed Egyptian sources? Many people contend that the shape of Atlantis is actually based on a map of South America by Abraham Ortelius (pictured below).
A common internet theory about the current whereabouts of Atlantis is that it is buried under ice in Greenland. This theory is supported by the use of Kircher’s map being pictured aside an aerial view of Greenland. While they are similar, I find this to be very difficult to take as true.
Plato’s work of the Timaeus and Critias (which are the only two times he mentions Atlantis) serve as political dialogues. Plato, projected a philosophical ideal of how an ancient Athens (ancient even for him) would have led a successful city state. To further his point, the fictionalized Atlantean Empire waged war against the known world and the idealized Athens lead the resistance against it, eventually winning. Atlantis was nothing more than an enemy for a Platonic version of Athens to knock down.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t any submerged cities in the world. Take Cleopatra’s Kingdom in Egypt as an example with roughly 150 artifacts retrieved from the ocean floor by underwater archaeologists. While we may never know the truth about Atlantis, there are plenty of sunken cities to be discovered and explored that will reveal aspects of our past we never knew about.
