Part 2

2.

1470 B.C. (?) Atlantis destroyed? A continent was reputedly the size of Europe. It

boasted gorgeous cities, advanced technology and utopian government. It suffered a cataclysm and was reduced to rubble that sank beneath the sea, lost forever. The legend of Atlantis has been around for thousands of years, and whatever its factual validity may be, it does claim a noble heritage, for its earliest known proponent was

Plato.

The Greek philosopher wrote of Atlantis in two of his dialogues, "Timaeus" and

"Critias," around 370 B.C. Plato said that this was a true story which derived from then-200-year-old records of the Greek ruler Solon, who heard of Atlantis from an Egyptian priest. Plato wrote that the continent lay in the Atlantic Ocean near the Straits of Gibraltar until its destruction 10,000 years before. In "Timaeus," Plato described Atlantis as a prosperous nation out to expand its domain: "Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent," he wrote, "and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia."

Plato then tells how the Atlanteans made a mistake by attacking Greece. They could not withstand the Greeks' military might, and following their defeat, a natural disaster sealed their fate. "Timaeus" continues: "But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea." Plato tells a more metaphysical version of the Atlantis story in "Critias,” where he describes the lost continent as the kingdom of Poseidon, the god of the sea. This Atlantis was a noble, sophisticated society that reigned in peace for centuries, until its people became complacent and greedy. Angered by their fall from grace, Zeus chose to punish them by destroying Atlantis. Although Plato was the first to use the term "Atlantis," there are antecedents to the legend. In an Egyptian legend which Solon probably heard while traveling in Egypt, and which was passed down to Plato years later, the island nation of Keftiu, home of one of the four pillars that held up the sky, was said to be a glorious advanced civilization which was destroyed and sank beneath the ocean.

Another Atlantis-like story is closer to Plato's world, in terms of time and geography, and it is factual. The Minoan Civilization was a great and peaceful culture based on the island of Crete, which reigned as long ago as 2200 B.C. The Minoan island of Santorini, later known as Thera, was home to a huge volcano. In 1470 B.C., it erupted with a force estimated to be greater than Krakatoa, and it destroyed everything on Santorini's surface. The resulting earthquakes and tsunamis devastated the rest of the Minoan Civilization, whose remnants were easily conquered by Greek forces. Santorini may have been the "real" Atlantis. Some have argued against this idea, noting Plato specified that Atlantis sank 10,000 years ago, but the Minoan disaster had taken place only 1,000 years earlier. Still, it could be that translation errors over the centuries changed Plato’s original writing. Alternatively, Plato may have blurred the historical facts to suit his purposes. Or, Atlantis may be purely Plato’s invention. Just the same, his story of the sunken continent has caught the imagination of succeeding generations. Other Greek thinkers, such as Aristotle and Pliny, disputed the existence of Atlantis, while Plutarch and Herodotus wrote of it as historical fact. Atlantis became entrenched in folklore all around the world, charted on ocean maps and sought by explorers.

In 1882, Ignatius Donnelly, a U.S. congressman from Minnesota, brought the legend into the American consciousness with his book, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. In more recent years, the psychic Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) became the U.S.'s most prominent advocate of a factual Atlantis. Widely known as "The Sleeping Prophet," Cayce claimed the ability to see the future and to communicate with long-dead spirits from the past. He identified hundreds of people -- including himself -- as reincarnated Atlanteans. Cayce said that Atlantis had been situated near the Bermuda island of Bimini. He believed that Atlanteans possessed remarkable technologies, including supremely powerful "fire-crystals" which they harnessed for energy. A disaster in which the fire-crystals went out of control was responsible for Atlantis's sinking, he said, in what sounds like a cautionary fable on the dangers of nuclear power. Remaining active beneath the ocean waves, damaged fire-crystals emit energy fields that disrupt ships and aircraft -- which is how Cayce accounted for the Bermuda Triangle.

3.

1704-1662 B.C. The Babylonian empire was based in Babylon, near the 33rd

Parallel. The empire stretched from the Persian Gulf to the middle Euphrates River and upper Tigris River regions. Hammurabi, the last great king of the first dynasty, developed his legal code and ordered it to be incised on a basalt column and placed in the temple of Shamash, the god of justice, for all to see.

4.

1500 B.C. Tel Megiddo: One of the most important archaeological mounds in Israel,

Tel Megiddo has the remains of historic Megiddo, a fortified city that sat strategically on the ancient trunk road from Egypt to Syria and Mesopotamia. Near the 33rd Parallel, Tel Megiddo has served as an important junction and battlefield throughout history. It is mentioned in an Egyptian document over 3,500 years old, was one of the chariot cities of Kings Solomon and Ahab, and was the site where Josiah, King of Judah, fell in battle.

Excavations have uncovered the ruins of 25 cities dating from 4,000 to 400 B.C. Ruined structures, now visible, belong to the fortified "chariot city" built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C. An ancient water system, dating from the 9th century B.C., is well preserved. It is a phenomenal piece of engineering which has a big shaft, sunk 120 feet through rock, meeting a tunnel cut more than 200 feet to a spring outside the city. The spring was hidden by a wall and camouflaged by a covering of earth.

5.

1025 - 945 B.C. Tyre, Lebanon: Home of King Hiram and the mythological Hiram

Abiff, the Terrible Twosome of Masonic legend. Tyre is less than 20 miles north of the 33rd Parallel. Hiram was the King of Tyre in the reigns of David and Solomon. He was on friendly terms with both of them. King Hiram is first mentioned in the Holy Bible at 2 Samuel 5:11, almost at the start of his reign, when he sent messengers to David with cedar trees, carpenters and masons who built David a house. The wood was floated in rafts down the coast to Joppa, then brought overland to Jerusalem. Hiram, who admired David, sent an embassy to Solomon after David’s death, as recorded in 1 Kings 5:1. Solomon took advantage of Hiram and arranged for Hiram to send him timber of cedar and fir from Lebanon. Hiram’s “stone-squarers” (1 Kings 5:18) were men of Gebal (modern Jebail) north of Beirut.

Both Solomon and Hiram were Semites. Solomon supplied Hiram with large quantities of wheat and olive oil annually for food (1 Kings 5:11), and he surrendered 20 “cities” of Galilee to Hiram (1 Kings 9:10-13). When Solomon had finished building the temple (seven years) and his palace (13 years), Hiram came to Galilee. Hiram was greatly dissatisfied when he saw the cities, and he nicknamed them “Cabul,” a term of uncertain origin which Joseph in his Antiquities (8:5:3) says means “not pleasing” in the Phoenician tongue.

Hiram and Solomon built a navy and equipped it with sailors on the Red Sea. They made expeditions from Ezion-geber at the head of the Gulf of Aqabah south to Ophir, where they purchased gold (1 Kings 9:28). They also had a “navy of Tarshish” o the Mediterranean which brought to them from afar “gold and silver, ivory, apes and peacocks” (1 Kings 10:22). No definite record has been found of Hiram’s death. Hiram had a daughter who became of Solomon’s “seven hundred” wives (1 Kings 11:1, 3).

A century later Ethbaal, who was Hiram’s great grandson, was called “king of Sidon” in 1 Kings 16:31. Ethbaal’s daughter, Jezebel, became Ahab’s notorious queen (1 Kings 16:31). Renewed troubles after Ethbaal’s death led to the emigration of Elissa, the Dido of Virgil’s Aeneid IV, and to the foundation of Carthage.

The Holy Bible does record a Hiram, a worker in brass. King Solomon brought this Hiram from Tyre to help build the temple (1 Kings 7:13, 14, 40-45; 2 Chronicles 2:13, 14; 4:11-16). This Hiram’s mother was a woman of the tribe of Dan who had married first into the tribe of Naphtali, then later a man of Tyre. However, the name “Hiram Abiff” is nowhere in the Holy Bible. His name, and the myth surrounding his death and resurrection, are the product of occultists’ imaginations.

In the period from 587 B.C. to 581 B.C., the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel prophesied that Tyre would “become a spoil to the nations” (Ezekiel 26:5), a place to spread nets upon (26:14 and 47:10), and “built no more” (26:14). In 332 B.C., pursuant to Ezekiel’s prophecy, Tyre fell to ruin when Alexander the Great besieged and stormed the city.

See Part 3