An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

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Benjamin Jowett




Apulia, Izabol




(a)  See:

(b) (about half way down page)

(c) or See Archive 2566

Andreas, Thomas (L)

Thomas Andreas is the compiler of a short e-book entitled The Truth about Atlantis: What Plato Really Said[932] which includes the translation of the Atlantis sections of Critias and Timaeus, by Benjamin Jowett as well as Jowett’s commentary on those passages. The book also includes a very brief ‘fact sheet’. This offering provides little additional information on the Atlantis question.

Susemihl, Franz



It should be noted that Susemihl was an Atlantis sceptic.




Shepard, Aaron (L)

Aaron Shepard is an American writer who published[857] the Atlantis related passages of Timaeus and Critias using the 19th century translation of Benjamin Jowett and entitled it The Atlantis Dialogue. In a short introduction, he expresses the view “that Atlantis was an invention designed to help illustrate his (Plato’s) philosophy” and should be treated as just an allegorical tale.


English Translations (L)








Spence, Lewis













Minoan Hypothesis


It is MinoanWorldclaimed(a) that Minoan influence extended as far as the Iberian Peninsula as early as 3000 BC and is reflected thereby what is now known as the Los Millares Culture. Minoan artefacts have also been found in the North Sea, but it is not certain if they were brought there by Minoans themselves or by middlemen. The German ethnologist, Hans Peter Duerr, has a paper on these discoveries on the website(e). He claims that the Minoans reached the British Isles as well as the Frisian Islands where he found artefacts with some Linear A inscriptions near the site of the old German trading town of Rungholt, destroyed by a flood in 1362(f).

The advanced shipbuilding techniques of the Minoans are claimed to have been unmatched for around 3,500 years until the 1950s (l).



As early as April 1909, media speculation was already linking the discoveries on Crete with Atlantis(h), in spite of Jowett’s highly sceptical opinion.



In 1939, Spyridon Marinatos published, in Antiquity, his opinion that the eruption on Thera had led to the demise of the Minoan civilisation. However, the editors forbade him to make any reference to Atlantis. In 1951, Wilhelm Brandenstein published a Minoan Atlantis theory, echoing many of Frost’s and Marinatos’ ideas, but giving little credit to either.



Alain Moreau has expressed strong opposition to the Minoan Hypothesis in a rather caustic article(i), probably because it conflicts with his own support for an Atlantic location for Atlantis. In more measured tones, Ronnie Watt has also dismissed a Minoan Atlantis, concluding that “Plato’s Atlantis happened to become like the Minoan civilisation on Theros rather than to be the Minoan civilisation on Theros.” 

Further opposition to the Minoan Hypothesis came from R. Cedric Leonard, who has listed 18 objections(q) to the identification of the Minoans with Atlantis, keeping in mind that Leonard is an advocate of Atlantic location for Plato’s Island.



Gavin Menzies has now attempted to become the standard-bearer for the Minoan Hypothesis. In The Lost Empire of Atlantis[780], he argues for a vast Minoan Empire that spread throughout the Mediterranean and even discovered America [p.245]. He goes further and claims that they were the exploiters of the vast Michigan copper reserves, which they floated down the Mississippi for processing before exporting it to feed the needs of the Mediterranean Bronze industry. He also accepts Hans Peter Duerr’s evidence that the Minoans visited Germany regularly [p.207].


Oliver D. Smith has charted the rise and decline in support for the Minoan Hypothesis in a 2020 paper entitled Atlantis and the Minoans(u).

Frank Joseph has criticised[802.144] the promotion of the Minoan Hypothesis by Greek archaeologists as motivated by nationalism rather than genuine scientific enquiry. This seems to ignore the fact that Nicaise and Figuier were French, Frost, Baikie and Bacon were British, Luce was Irish and Mavor was American. Furthermore, as a former leading American Nazi, I find it ironic that Joseph is now preaching about the shortcomings of nationalism. 

While the suggestion of an American connection may seem far-fetched, it would seem mundane when compared with a serious attempt to link the Minoans with the Japanese based on a study(o) of the possible language expressed by the Linear A script. Gretchen Leonhardt(r) also sought a solution in the East, offering a proto-Japanese origin for the script, a theory refuted by Yurii Mosenkis(s), who promotes Minoan Linear A as proto-Greek. Mosenkis has published a number of papers on the website relating to Linear A(t). However, writing was not the only cultural similarity claimed to link the Minoans and the Japanese offered by Leonhardt.

Furthermore, Crete has quite clearly not sunk beneath the waves. Henry Eichner commented, most tellingly, that if Plato’s Atlantis was a reference to Crete, why did he not just say so? After all, in regional terms, ‘it was just down the road’. The late Philip Coppens was also strongly opposed to the Minoan Hypothesis.(g)


Excavations on Thera have revealed very few bodies resulting from the 2nd millennium BC eruptions there. The understandable conclusion was that pre-eruption rumblings gave most of the inhabitants time to escape. Later, Therans founded a colony in Cyrene in North Africa, where you would expect that tales of the devastation would have been included in their folklore. However, Eumelos of Cyrene, originally a Theran, opted for the region of Malta as the remnants of Atlantis. How could he have been unaware of the history of his famous homeland?


More extreme is the theory of L. M. Dumizulu, who offers an Afrocentric view of the Atlantis. He claims that Thera was part of Atlantis and that the Minoans were black!(m)

In February 2020, art historian and museum educator, Roger Dell, presented an illustrated lecture on the art and religion of the Minoans titled “How the Matriarchal Minoans Began Western Civilization; And Why They Disappeared,” which offered a new dimension to our understanding of their culture(p).








(g) (June 3, 2011)

(h) discovered&searchLimits=sortby=dateAsc














Jowett, Benjamin

jowett-benjamin01Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893) was a 19th century translator of Plato who famously declared that “no one knew better than Plato how to invent a noble lie”. His 1871 translation of Plato’s work is probably the most widely used, as it is now out of copyright.

The late Flying Eagle and Whispering Wind offered Jowett’s translation ‘with extra paragraph breaks, headings and clickable table of contents’(c).

Some Atlantis researchers such as Georgeos Diaz-Montexano are highly critical of the translation of certain key words and phrases by the more popular translators such as Jowett.

Jowett’s commentary(a) shows that he was thoroughly sceptical about Atlantis Jowett2and some believe that this view may well have coloured his translation.*He voiced the opinion that Plato’s Atlantean War was inspired by the Persian Wars with the Greeks. Those wars took place between 500 and 449 BC, while Solon lived circa 630-560 BC, so it would not have been possible for Solon to refer to the Persian Wars in the Atlantis story he brought from Egypt. We are therefore forced to conclude that Jowett was at least accusing Plato of lying about the provenance of the story, if not the actual contents of the narrative.*

A concordance of the Atlantis sections of the Dialogues is available as an inexpensive download(b)or in hardcopy.


*(b) (link broken July 2018)*

(c) Go to: Atlantis History by Plato.