Atlantis Pyramids Floods by Dennis Brooks Read Free Book Online

a certain district which is
called the district of Sais, and the great city of the district is
also called Sais, and is the city from which King Amasis came. The
citizens have a deity for their foundress; she is called in the
Egyptian tongue Neith, and is asserted by them to be the same whom
the Hellenes call Athene; they are great lovers of the Athenians,
and say that they are in some way related to them.
    To this city came Solon, and was
received there with great honour; he asked the priests who were
most skilful in such matters, about antiquity, and made the
discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth
mentioning about the times of old.
    On one occasion, wishing to draw them
on to speak of antiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient
things in our part of the world—about Phoroneus, who is called “the
first man,” and about Niobe; and after the Deluge, of the survival
of Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their
descendants, and reckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many
years ago the events of which he was speaking happened.
    Note : The
story of Deucalion and Pyrrha is the Greek version of Noah’s Great
Flood. They thought the flood was a means to punish
humankind.
    Greek Version of the Great
Flood:
    www.authorama.com/old-greek-stories-6.html
    Thereupon one of the priests, who was
of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never
anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon
in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that
in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down
among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with
age. And I will tell you why.
    There have been, and will be again,
many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the
greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water,
and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a
story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time
Phaethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his
father’s chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path
of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was
himself destroyed by a thunderbolt.
    Now this has the form of a myth, but
really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens
around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the
earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such times those who
live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable
to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore.
And from this calamity the Nile, who is our never-failing saviour,
delivers and preserves us.
    When, on the other hand, the gods
purge the earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in your
country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the mountains, but
those who, like you, live in cities are carried by the rivers into
the sea. Whereas in this land, neither then nor at any other time,
does the water come down from above on the fields, having always a
tendency to come up from below; for which reason the traditions
preserved here are the most ancient.
    The fact is, that wherever the
extremity of winter frost or of summer does not prevent, mankind
exist, sometimes in greater, sometimes in lesser numbers. And
whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any
other region of which we are informed—if there were any actions
noble or great or in any other way remarkable, they have all been
written down by us of old, and are preserved in our
temples.
    Whereas just when you and other
nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other
requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream
from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only
those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you
have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of
what happened in ancient times, either among us or