Atlantis, the Sibylline Oracle, and Eridanus © Nicholas Costa 2024
The text refers to Eridanus. Eridanus wasn’t a city, or a person, it is a reference to a constellation:
“And then, when they shall have bewailed their land reduced to ashes, by Eridanus.”
Eridanus significantly appears in the myth of Phaeton (the shining one) who reputedly stole the chariot of the sun god Helios. In the myth Zeus angrily struck down Phaeton’s with a bolt of lightning. Phaeton fell off the chariot and met his end as he tumbled into the sacred river Eridanus. The ancient Greeks believed that the constellation of Eridanus represented the haphazard path Phaeton traveled along (Star Names — Their Lore and Meaning Richard Hinckley Allen, 1899).
Eridanus is a constellation, represented as a river, which stretches along the southern celestial hemisphere. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy,
There are a number of meteor showers are associated with it. 14 according to the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland with all but two occurring during the winter months (https://www.universeguide.com/meteorshowers/eridanus).
The Sibylline text notably speaks of winter turning into summer on the fateful day:
“And in the place of winter there shall be in that day summer.”
As noted Eridanus is featured primarily in versions of the myth of Phaeton (the shining one).
Eusebius (The Greek Chronicle 66), states that Phaethon’s burning of Ethiopia and Deucalion’s flood in Thessaly occurred when Crotopus ruled Argos (shining bright). The name Crotopus translates a “sudden loud noise face”!
Interestingly Hesiod calls Phaethon the son of Eos, goddess of the dawn. (Hesiod. Theogony. 986.). According to mytholgical chronology preserved in Syncellus this would have happened c1521 BC. (Syncelllus was a Byzantine chronographer who died sometime after 810 AD) .
Plato’s Timaeus
Plato states in his Timaeus concerning the story of Atlantis as recounted to Solon by an Egyptian priest refers to Phaethon and states that:
“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 that even you [Greeks] 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.”
Sekhmet and the South. The rise of Amun. Some coincidences and a brief resume.
It is known that in 1404 BC Halley’s Comet made a very close approach to the earth so much so that it was not possible to retro-calculate beyond this point. (The long term motion of Comet Halley, Yeomans and Kiang 1981) It was at this point that a swarm of meteor showers were generated which were in close 1:6 resonance with Jupiter resultant in an enhanced bombardment of the earth between 1404 BC to 690 BC (Resonant behavior of comet Halley and the Orionid stream, A. Sekhar, D. J. Asher, 2013). However it is something that had in all probability had begun prior to that date following some very close approaches of the comet.
Significantly the wake of the 1404 BC encounter saw the suddent rise of the goddess Sekhmet during Amenhotep III’s reign in Egypt, she evidently represented a phase of heavy meteor showers striking the earth and numerous statues were dedicated to her. Sekhmet was most notably associated with two things, the south and the early morning, these are the same two elements that underlay the Phaethon myth of the 1500’s BC and by extension the myth relating to the destruction of Ephesus/ Atlantis in the 1300’s BC
Moses who in all likelihood represents the comet is depicted as being “born” c1630 BC. It was subsequent to this that the god Amun suddenly came to the fore in Egypt with the Biblical name Moses evidently derived from the it. By the mid 1500’s BC everybody in Egypt seems the bear the Amun theorphoric in their name.
Full details and citations concerning the above can be found in the published pages of https://atlantisamazons.com/ and the following works by Nicholas Costa: Adam to Apophis, Asteroids, Millenarianism and Climate Change 2013; and Atlantis, the Amazons, and the Birth of Athene, the True Story 2023. As well as articles by Nicholas Costa published on the Ancient Origins website.
Part three: Atlantis, the Sibylline Oracles, and the location of Ancient Corcyra