"
It thus appears that the very statement of Plato which has provoked the
ridicule of scholars is in itself one of the corroborating features of
his story. It is probable that the ships of the Atlanteans, when they
returned after the tempest to look for their country, found the sea
impassable from the masses of volcanic ashes and pumice. They returned
terrified to the shores of Europe; and the shock inflicted by the
destruction of Atlantis upon the civilization of the world probably led
to one of those retrograde periods in the history of our race in which
they lost all intercourse with the Western continent.
The Preservation of a Record.--There is a singular coincidence in the
stories of the Deluge in another particular.
The legends of the Phoenicians, preserved by Sanchoniathon, tell us that
Taautos, or Taut, was the inventor of the alphabet and of the art of
writing.
Now, we find in the Egyptian legends a passage of Manetho, in which
Thoth (or Hermes Trismegistus), before the Deluge, inscribed on stelae,
or tablets, in hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, the principles of
all knowledge. After the Deluge the second Thoth translated the contents
of these stelae into the vulgar tongue.
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