Atlantis and the Silver City

by Peter Daughtrey

  A more likely contender for Arganthonius’s capital could have been Niebla: but Kolaios, the Greek mariner mentioned earlier who was blown off course and ended up at the capital, would have made port at Palos at the mouth of the Rio Tinto—not Niebla, which was much farther upriver.

  Estoi, or Conistorgis, as it was probably known then, could be considered as a possibility, but that would not correspond with the silver clues from Carlos Castelo and Plato. The fact that Arganthonius’s capital was never recorded by ancient chroniclers implies that it was hidden and in a region that was not so well visited by merchants and sailors as the Atlantic coast closer to Gibraltar.

  If the capital was Silves, where did the old king obtain such vast quantities of silver? From the same place as the old Atlantean kings, of course: some from Portugal, but the majority from mines he controlled a short distance away in the Sierra Morena mountains, north of Huelva. Shipped down to Palos or Moguer via Niebla, it would only have taken a day at sea to reach the Arade River mouth en route to Silves, or it could conveniently have been exported directly to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

  This would also explain how Arganthonius came into conflict with Cádiz, which at that stage was an autonomous city-state, largely peopled by Semites of Phoenician stock. Traders, they were inevitably meddling in the metals business from the far eastern corner of his kingdom. They were constantly needling Arganthonius, and he successfully moved to shut them up, ending up defeating them in a sea battle.82 He proceeded to throw the city open to Greek immigrants and traders.

  After much research, an archaeological organization in Tavira, an old town on the Algarve’s coast, produced a map that shows the dispersal of the various peoples existing in the Algarve and across into Spain at around 200 B.C., at the beginning of the Roman period. It shows the Conii (Kunii) and Turdetani (Tartessians) peoples overlapping and merging into one culture from Lagos, in the far western Algarve, right across to beyond Cádiz at the eastern extremity. It encompasses the whole surviving area of Atlantis.

  It is not a big step to assume that it had been melded into one kingdom, with one king and one capital—Silves, just as it was more than a thousand years later by the Moors. The Tartessos country has generally been thought to have been a relatively small triangle, extending from Huelva to Cádiz and then northeast to Seville—another reason why Arganthonius’s capital has not been considered to have been farther west. This is a very small area for such a famous and enigmatic civilization, one important enough to have been frequently mentioned in the Bible and one that wielded control over such vast wealth. It would have been too small to stop a more powerful expanding empire from invading. This did eventually happen with the Carthaginians; but, before that, the region had retained its independence for several thousand years. A few brave voices have already suggested that Tartessos extended into Portugal’s Algarve. The evidence would seem to prove them right.

  It is thought that there were influxes of other races into the region, like the Celts and perhaps the Libyans, but no strong evidence of warlike invasions and conquests exists. They appear to have been largely absorbed, or coexisted amicably—maybe after a little local hostility.

  (IMAGE 36) A map depicting what is thought to have been the disposition of the tribal groups inhabiting the Algarve and the Costa de la Luz in 200 B.C.

  Consider this hypothesis: Tartessos could have been a kingdom stretching from the far west of the Algarve to Cádiz in Spain, one big enough to have had clout, in fact occupying the remnants of Atlantis. (SEE IMAGE 36 ABOVE.) At one stage, its ruler was King Arganthonius, who probably had some Greek blood from earlier settlers. He was known to be exceptionally well disposed to the Greeks, even imploring them to come and settle in his kingdom. Had the latter been a small triangle of land between Cádiz, Huelva, and Seville, he would hardly have been so forthcoming.

  He has been recorded in history as “The Silver King” partly, perhaps, because of his name (argan means “silver”), but principally for the vast amounts of silver he possessed.

  Silves, which was known as “The Silver City,” could have been his capital. It could have been given that title because of his name, his wealth, and the amount of silver used for basic city adornments like horse troughs.

  According to Strabo, records had already existed in the region for more than six thousand years. He said the Tartessians were a “refined, cultivated, civilized, ingenious, and laborious society, to have poetry, laws, and a written alphabet.” That certainly sounds more like a substantial organized state than a small primitive tribe. Did their records include the legend of Atlantis? Had he recreated his kingdom on the land that remained from Atlantis and rebuilt Silves in its image as the capital, complete with the topmost wall covered in silver?

  He was reputed to have lived to the age of 120, but what happened to him, how he died, and what became of his city is not known. He lived too early to have witnessed the Carthaginian invasion, despite having foreseen it. Perhaps he died a natural death, since anything more remarkable would probably have been recorded. Soon after his death, the ruthless, merciless Carthaginians would have swept through, laid waste to the citadel, looted it of its silver and other precious metals, and destroyed those ancient records.

  Eventually, it was probably reoccupied and rebuilt by the indigenous Conii/Tartessians and called Cilbes by the time the Romans arrived a few centuries later, but it was by then but a shadow of its former glory. Local archaeologists are inclined to the opinion that ancient Cilbes was on the same site as the earlier Phoenician post on the embankment, but it appears too small for anything other than a very modest settlement such as a trading post. The Conii would have had many settlements larger than this, so why would the Romans single out Cilbes for special mention? It must have been substantial. Roman artifacts were also found on the old embankment site, but that is not surprising if they maintained the harbor there. The Conii had probably developed Conistorgis (Estoi, Milreu) as the new main capital instead. Later still, the Moors appreciated the unique position of Silves— and maybe also had an inkling of its history—and set about reestablishing it as the capital of the region. Toward the end of the Moorish era in Silves, its occupants and rulers were Berbers from the Atlas Mountains, an area quite likely to have once been part of the Atlantean Empire.

  This theory ticks all the boxes and would explain why, for centuries before the rise of the Carthaginians, the Phoenicians had considered it important enough to have a trading base next door. It is certainly a plausible scenario and would solve another of history’s enduring mysteries.

  It emboldens me to present yet another fascinating hypothesis, one that would explain many of the questions and uncertainties that have haunted Plato’s accounts for centuries. What if Plato did not get all his information via the Egyptians, but most of it from Greeks who knew southwest Iberia well, from either living there or trading with it? It would appear they had been involved there for a good few decades before Plato wrote his Dialogues. Strabo has told us that ancient records also existed there and the people were cultured and civilized.

  This would explain the amount of detail in Plato’s accounts. If some of the information was also from firsthand observation, it would explain the extraordinarily accurate measurements, such as the distance from the sea and those from the embankments on the harbor side back to the hill, as well as the specification about the three colored stones. It would also explain his knowledge about the Atlantic, its islands, and America—as, apart from any written records the Tartessians may have possessed, local ports like Cádiz had played host to Phoenician fleets for a good few centuries. These ships sailed forth to trade with the Atlantic islands, the tin mines in Britain, and, if author Andrew Collins is correct, South America. Inevitably some residual knowledge about the great ocean and the great continent on the other side would have been left embedded in local lore. Elena Wishaw thought so and that it helped Pinzón hire crew for Columbus’s boats.

  Plato passed his info
rmation on in two separate Dialogues, produced some time apart. The first, Timaeus, gives only the barest outline of the Atlantis legend (clues 1 to 17). A considerable amount of this is concerned with the unprovoked attack launched against Egypt and Greece and the Atlanteans’ subsequent defeat by the brave Greek Hellenes. It contains very few facts about Atlantis. It occurred to me that these sparse details could more logically equate to those preserved by the Egyptians for nine thousand years. Even then, many researchers and academics have queried some of this first account, specifically the part recording the role played by the Hellenes. It has been argued that this smacks of embellishment, of Plato playing to his local audience to get their attention. Could the second account in Critias, with all its amazing detail, be the result of information that came into Plato’s possession after his publication of Timaeus and, therefore, the reason he decided to produce a second, more detailed account of the legend?

  I must stress, however, that this theory—as well as that about The Silver City—is only that: just a theory. We will have to be patient and wait to see if archaeology produces any supporting evidence.

  I have frequently referred to those written records preserved in southwest Iberia that Strabo told us about. Ever since I saw that broken stone in the museum with its mystifying alphabet, mentioned in the first chapter, I had yearned to discover more about it. Did those records and the stone use the same alphabet?

  Now, having pinpointed the fabled lost land, I felt justified in also asking if, perhaps, the script could even be a relic from Atlantis.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A Lost Alphabet

  The old man rubbed at his tears with his sleeve as he watched the priest labor over the stone. It was huge, about three feet by five, and it had taken the help of several of his friends to lift it onto the cart and bring it to the priest. It was evident that this cleric was no artisan and wasn’t used to wielding a wooden mallet and iron chisel. The words he was crudely carving into the stone had been agreed on the night before. They paid tribute to the old man’s son and spoke of a great warrior who had been killed defending the village from the Northern Tribe who constantly troubled them. The father could not read the words in the strange alphabet the priest was using, but he knew that his wishes had been translated faithfully into the ancient tongue. Legends told of how, at one time, many people had known this age-old script but, sadly, only the priests had perpetuated it, passing it down from old to young.

  The priest stood, stretched his aching limbs, and, with a nod to the grieving father, indicated that the work was finished. It did not look particularly grand with the crude, misshapen letters spiraling inward from right to left, but it made the old man’s breast swell. Very few went to this trouble these days, but, oh, how he had loved that son.

  The priest had worked on-site by the grave, and now they all struggled to erect the stone upright and secure it in position. When the old man was satisfied, the priest mumbled a few words over the grave; then it was over, and they shuffled away.

  This sad, poignant event, or something similar, probably took place during the Iron Age, six or seven centuries before Christ. You can see and feel the evidence; it is not a figment of my imagination. The stone, recently discovered, can be examined in the museum at Almodôvar, a small town in southern Portugal. (SEE IMAGE 37 IN THE PHOTO INSERT.) It is just one part of a growing body of evidence that suggests that the history of the Western world’s alphabet needs reassessing. That may appear to be a bold, revolutionary, even an impertinent statement—but see what you think after reading this chapter.

  In clue 100, Plato wrote: “… these [laws] were inscribed by the first king on a pillar of orichalcum at the temple of Poseidon.” So it is clear, then, that the rulers of Atlantis possessed an alphabet and a form of writing.

  It has long been taken for granted that the Western alphabet evolved from the Phoenician, with a little help from its later Greek nephew. That is not in dispute, but there is now overwhelming evidence that the Phoenicians did not invent their alphabet but adapted, and added to, a much older one.

  The evidence points to this ancient script having originated in southwest Iberia, but it was also in use over a much wider area for many thousands of years before the Phoenicians. Samples have been discovered from more than twenty different cultures, including Minoan Crete, predynastic Egypt (before the pharaohs, that is), France, Spain, the Canary Islands, Morocco, Palestine, Pakistan, and Romania—with the greatest number of finds in southern Portugal. Some of these indicate that the characters were in use thousands of years before the Phoenician era. My interest was first aroused when, in the late 1980s, I came across that sample of the script in Lagos. Since then, I have inspected dozens of examples in other Algarve museums. They were all crudely engraved on large, flat stones or broken fragments, believed to be gravestones or monuments—known in Portuguese as herouns— dedicated to illustrious dead personages. The inscriptions are usually between drawn lines, spiraling inward from right to left. (SEE IMAGE 38 IN THE PHOTO INSERT.)

  Academics refer to it as the “southwestern” script, acknowledging that it emanated from southwest Iberia where the most finds have been made and where it appears to have been perpetuated the longest. Samples of a similar script called the “northeastern” exist elsewhere in Spain.

  The dates originally attributed to some of these earliest discovered Algarve specimens go as far back as 2300 B.C. Archaeological and academic circles have wrestled with the enigma these inscriptions present, and for a while have put forward a unified front. Because the script shares some characters with the Phoenician and Greek alphabets, rather than face the traumatic possibility that it might represent a source of writing that predated them—with the consequent need to completely redraft the history of the Western alphabet—academics have shoehorned it into accepted dogma: that the Algarve script must have developed from Phoenician and Greek influences in the region from about 900 B.C. The samples unearthed must, they reason, therefore date from the late Iron Age, around 500 to 900 B.C. (The Phoenician alphabet is thought to have emerged around 1050 B.C. and the Greek to have developed from it sometime afterward.) On analysis, this date for the southwest script is clearly nonsense. Consider the following evidence.

  First, there are several references by ancient Greek writers indicating that the Phoenicians did not invent their alphabet. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, who flourished between 60 and 30 B.C., wrote: “Men tell us … that the Phoenicians were not the first to make the discovery of letters; but that they did no more than change the form of the letters, whereupon the majority of mankind made use of the way of writing them as the Phoenicians devised.”83

  Tacitus, a Roman historian (A.D. 56–117), wrote: “The Phoenicians gained the reputation of inventing a form of writing, which they merely received.”84

  The writings of the famous Greek Strabo (64 B.C.–A.D. 34)—known as “the Geographer”—which I have referred to in earlier chapters, are relevant. He said that the Turdetani peoples of southwest Iberia had a written script as long as six thousand years previously—an inconvenient and unwelcome statement dismissed by the establishment. “They are the most cultured of all the Iberians; they employ the art of writing and have written books containing memorials of ancient times, and also poems and laws set in verse, for which they claim an antiquity of six thousand years.”85

  If the script existed in 6500 B.C. in a form that was in regular use, it would have taken some considerable time to develop. It may even have been inherited from an earlier epoch. We do not know where Strabo obtained his information, but it smacks of the truth. What did he have to gain by inventing it? His most likely source was Greek merchantmen trading with the Turdetani region along the southern Algarve and Spanish coasts and, like Plato and Solon before him, the Egyptians. Why have none of the books to which he refers survived? The most likely culprits were the merciless Carthaginians. If anything survived, then other Lusitanian tribes from north of the Algarve destroyed cit
ies and their contents in the south in retribution for the Conii cooperation with the Romans. Other villains could have been the Romans themselves. Then, of course, we have to take into account the periodic disastrous quakes, followed by fires and tsunamis.

  Fortunately, solid examples have survived: the herouns. The samples were mostly found in the mountains, in their foothills, or just north of them, well away from any coastal inundations and the destruction of cities. They were monuments, erected in private places for personal reasons.

  A number of Portuguese historians have published books on the subject since 1983, but the expert is a local Algarve man: Carlos Alberto Basilio Castelo, an amateur epigrapher. He has spent decades and devoted much of his life to solving this enigma. He is now able to translate the script and can even trace its subtle evolution over millennia. This enables him to attribute an approximate date for each find, according to the engraving displayed. In his opinion, many of them definitely predate 1050 B.C. and the Phoenicians. He may not be a professional academic, but his research is impeccable.