What is the source of Ma’atian attitudes towards Atlantis?

Apparently Ignatious Donnelly’s books rekindled interest in Plato’s story. They are available on The Sacred Texts Archive. His perspective was that the story was largely true and that the physical event that resulted in Atlantis’ destruction was the passage of Earth through a comet’s tail. The next most influential reference to Atlantis was the Edgar Cayce trance statement that it was located near Cuba and that records could be found in a secret underground room beneath the Sphinx.

The attitudes here may be based on the fact that no scientific evidence for Atlantis exists. However, Donnelly examines a lot of mythological evidence. Since there is a great deal of effort expended on Egyptian mythology, isn’t this evidence for non objective favoritism?

Dr. Hawass is militantly anti Atlantis since in his view it degrades appreciation of Egyptian creativity. Interestingly he appears to have a strong working relationship with Mark Lehner who got his start with the Cayce Institute.

The scientific view of the development of human life has been a generally continuous upward trend with understanding being the goal and this trend is exemplified by a thoughtless approach to life being superceded by superstition, religion, and science. Since this view doesn’t allow for catastrophes that are of such a magnitude that human culture would effectively have to start over, this may account for the rejection of the Atlantis story. This might also account for the dismissal of Noah’s flood. There is a problem here in the rising realization of the frequency and sometimes devastating nature of asteroid hits. In fact if one spends as much time on astronomy as Ancient Egypt, the likelihood of Donnelly’s scenario is much enhanced.

My view of Plato is that he was certainly one of the great philosophers and not given to flights of fancy. In addition I haven’t heard any compelling suggestion regarding the point of allegorical interpretation. It may be that the view of Atlantis on Ma’at is to be expected due to the preponderance of historians posting there.

One can favor at least two attitudes to Atlantis. One can assume it is a story intended to entertain and having no basis in fact or one can assume it is a mythological story based on fact. The second seems to me more open minded though I am not indebted to the academic community other than as an ordinary intellectual interested in their conclusions. Since historians are mainly interested in documenting civilization, maybe they have an implicit commitment to the success of civilization and see Atlantis as a threatening idea since if factual it documents the loss of civilization. However, if one favors the idea that Egypt owes its civilizing impetus to Atlantis, that suggests that while the physical existence of Atlantis was destroyed, Egypt was a new incarnation of it and therefor the idea survived. In fact that view leads to the idea that since Egypt provided the inspiration for Judaism and that led to the rise of Europe and the US, we are the current incarnation.

New things don’t just happen, they grow out of something else. So, the idea that civilization naturally followed when some goat herders were blessed with suitable weather seems overly simplistic. The Bible documents how civilization could have been transmitted from the Watchers to Babylon (more detail is in Enoch). The Silk Road seems a likely transmittal route from there to China and the timing seems plausible and the Vedas document their transmittal to India. But if an unambiguous written record is required, then we’ll just have to keep looking though since nobody among the receivers knew what was happening, success seems unlikely. Even if the Atlanteans were consciously behind it, there may have been so many millennia between the loss of Atlantis and the beginnings of Egypt we’re lucky to have Plato’s story.

My attraction to this interpretation comes from my understanding of cultural identity. As Plato described it, Atlantis was the very epitome of a masculine culture as opposed to a more feminine one such as the pre Columbus North American Indians. I wonder if that was his intent and accounts for his inclusion of the war. The Atlanteans seem to be very similar to his own culture or maybe the Greeks described by Homer.

I remember that Osiris was credited by Graham Hancock as the bringer of civilization and I understand Osiris’ title was "Foremost of the Westerners".

To the objective onlooker, this theory of civilization is at least as likely as academia’s preferred explanation and if one studies ideology to the point of realizing some generalities about it, more likely.

One should note that this story is couched within a general discussion of ideal societies and led to the Utopian concept. The idea that nature is in need of improvement is masculine.