To answer this question it is necessary to look at the customs and beliefs of one of the greatest and most long lived civilisations in the ancient world - Egypt. Everyday life in Ancient Egypt changed very little during the three thousand years of Pharaonic rule. The Egyptians respected their gods and their laws, anxious to ensure an eternal life in the Hereafter and pass on to their children the land and beliefs of their ancestors. From the beginning of the third millennium BC they developed a complete system of written and figurative forms of expression which has enabled Egyptologists to reconstruct the life of these ancient Nile-dwellers. The population, which consisted mainly of peasants, lived under the double law of the Nile and the pharaoh, the respective guarantors of fertility and order. The Nile floods that irrigated crops and perpetuated myths coupled with the patient toil of the peasant-farmers brought prosperity to the land of Egypt. The ebb and flow of the great river determined not only the three four-month seasons of the year but also the main events of the Egyptian calendar - akhet (inundation), followed by peret (emergence) and then shemu (low water).

Rather than worship the various attributes of their Deity as One God, the Ancient Egyptian people believed in a pantheon of gods and goddess identifiable with the forces of nature and natural substances. Certain cities and districts were appropriated to certain gods of the pantheon who were the chief deities of the place. While Amun had his principal temple at Thebes, Memphis was the great city of Ptah, as Heliopolis of Re or the sun, no two neighbouring districts, or chief cities, being given to the same god. The Heliopolitan priests were also custodians of the state cult, the pantheon was the Great Ennead of gods and was recognised everywhere. Heliopolitan theology rested on the creation myth:

'In the beginning the universe had been filled with a dark, watery nothingness called the Nun. Out of this inert cosmic ocean rose a mound of dry land on which Re [or Ra], the sun god, materialised in his self-created form as Atum (sometimes depicted as an old bearded man leaning on a staff). Conscious of being alone, this blessed and immortal being created two divine offspring from his body - Shu the air god and Tefnut the moisture goddess. This couple created Geb the earth god and Nut the sky goddess. Geb and Nut mated, but their father Shu, who as the air, came between them and lifted the canopy of the sky away from the earth, thereby parting the divine lovers. In spite of this Nut, gave birth to four anthropomorphic gods who lived on earth. These were Osiris and Seth, two male gods, and their sisters, Isis and Nephthys, and so completed the Ennead, the full company of the Nine Gods of Heliopolis.

The sky goddess Nut whose outstretched body canopied the earth swallowed the sun each night for it to be reborn from her loins each dawn. Re the sun god passed each night into a dangerous realm the kingdom of death. He sailed through 12 perilous territories and their frightening creatures, in the last hour Re faced Apep, the serpentine nemesis, he survived to rise again each day with his offering of maat (order).

Osiris, a man as well as a god, became the first king of Egypt and his sister Isis became his consort. He was a good king and established the rule of law (maat). With the help of his vizier, the god Thoth he taught men religion and the arts of civilisation. He taught the people how to plant and harvest grain, how to lay out fields and measure their boundaries, and how to irrigate the land with canals and dams. Egypt became prosperous and it was at peace with itself.

Success made a missionary out of Osiris, but when he returned from his travels to his sister and consort, Isis, not everyone was happy - especially his evil brother Seth. At a banquet, Seth and his 72 co-conspirators tricked Osiris into reclining inside a box, built like a coffin, exactly to his measure. Swarming around him, they closed the lid, nailed it down and sealed it and then dumped it in the Nile drowning Osiris. This was on the seventeenth day of the month of Athyr, when the sun set in Scorpius, in the twenty-eighth year of his reign. His casket floated downstream, out of the Nile, into the Mediterranean. Isis followed it, found his body at Byblos, in Syria, and carried it back to Egypt. Although unable to revive him, she managed through magic to conceive a child by him. She hid his body in the thickets of the Delta marshes and nursed, in secret, the newborn son of Osiris, Horus. One night, while hunting by moonlight, Seth chanced upon the body of Osiris. He tore it into 14 parts and scattered them up and down the Nile. Once again Isis set out to retrieve the body of her husband, all but his sexual member was retrieved. The symbol of his vitality remained lost in the Nile. Isis embalmed and mummified him, and with the help of Nephthys he was transfigured into a star being [Orion] and went on to rule the Heavenly Kingdom of the Dead - called the Duat.

Horus grew up to become a powerful prince, and challenged Seth to a dual to see who had the right to rule Egypt. During the fight, Horus lost an eye and Seth lost his testicles. Geb, lord of the gods, commanded the Nine Gods to gather to him. He judged between Horus and Seth and ended their quarrel. He made Seth king of Upper Egypt, up to the place in which he was born, which is Su and made Horus king of Lower Egypt, up to the place where his father [Osiris] was drowned which is 'Division-of-the-Two-Lands' at Ayan. Then it seemed wrong to Geb that the portion of Horus was like the portion of Seth. So Geb gave to Horus Seth's inheritance, for Horus was the son of Osiris and banished Seth. Horus arose as king of Upper and Lower Egypt, uniting the Two Lands in the [District] of the wall [Memphis]. He was the first in the line of the pharaohs '.

What Did the Myth Mean?

'We Greeks are in reality children compared with this people with traditions ten times older. And as nothing of precious remembrance of the past would long survive our country, Egypt has recorded and kept eternally the wisdom of the old times. The walls of its temples are covered with inscriptions and the priests have always under their own eyes that divine heritage. The generations continue to transmit to successive generations these sacred things unchanged: songs, dances, rhythms, rituals, music, paintings, all coming from time immemorial when gods governed the earth in the dawn of civilisation'.

Plato [c. 427-347 BC]

The myth told the people of their gods and their deeds, the story adapting over time as war and invaders split the land. For example, Osiris stood for good, the Nile, fertility and order. As Osiris's adversary Seth stood for sterility, the desert, mindless force and violence - the personification of chaos.

Numbers were included in the myth as a way of transmitting important seasonal and astronomical events to successive generations. The complicated Egyptian calendars believed to have been a legacy received 'from the gods'- the lunar religious calendar and the solar civil calendar.

The calendar year was originally divided into twelve lunar months - the 'month' hieroglyph being the crescent moon. Most of the days of the lunar month had names that referred to feasts or priestly activities thus emphasising its religious nature. It governed the sequence and timing of the festivals and events that defined Egyptian life and was administered by the priests who fashioned an ordered Egypt from the cycles in the sky.

The 28 years of Osiris's reign in the myth being derived, according to Plutarch, 'from the number of days the moon takes to perform her course round the earth'. This was linked with the Nile through the river's maximum peak of 28 cubits occurring in the month of Athyr. By the month's seventeenth day, it is obvious the moon has started to wane. So the death of Osiris marked the "death" or fall, of the Nile from its annual flood height and coincided with the day of the moon's monthly "death". The 14 pieces of the body of Osiris symbolise the 14 days of the waning or "dying" moon.

Just as the dead Osiris floated out of Egypt, followed by Isis, Orion eventually leaves the nighttime sky, followed by Sirius a little later. Orion like Sirius is absent from the night sky for 70 days. This period is equated with the time Osiris spent in the transitional underworld and is equal to the stipulated period for the process of mummification. Orion's heliacal rising occurred a few weeks before the reappearance of Sirius and the Nile flood.

As a lunar cycle is 29.5 days this makes the lunar year about 11 days short of the solar year. The Egyptians solved this problem by adding an extra month Wen-renpet the "opener of the year". Sirius's (Gk. Sothis) heliacal rising was the signal happening every 365.25 days, it fell close to the summer solstice and coincided with the time of the Nile's inundation. Isis as Sirius, was "the mistress of the year's beginning", and the Egyptian New Year was set by this event. Isis coaxes out the Nile and causes it to swell. The metaphor is astronomical, hydraulical and sexual, and it parallels the function of Isis in the myth. Sirius revives the Nile just as Isis revived Osiris. Her time in hiding from Seth is when Sirius is gone from the night sky. She gives birth to her son Horus, as Sirius gives birth to the New Year, and in texts Horus and the New Year are equated.

'It is at Heliopolis that the most learned of the Egyptians are to be found ... all agree in saying that the Egyptians by their study of astronomy discovered the solar year and were the first to divide it into twelve parts, and in my opinion their method of calculation is better than the Greeks'

Herodotus [c.485-425 BC]

A solar-based calendar was also used from the earliest times by business and government. It was subdivided in 12 "months" each by definition 30 days long and essentially independent of the phases of the moon. Each 30-day period was in turn spilt into three 10-day intervals called decans. But as it was soon discovered that the seasons were disturbed, an addition to the myth explains: 'the goddess Nut, wife of the sun god Ra, was beloved by the god Geb. When Ra discovered the intrigue he cursed his wife and declared that she should not be delivered of a child in any month of any year. The year consisted of 12 months of 30 days each. Then the god Thoth, who also loved Nut, played at tables with the moon and won from her five whole days. These he joined to the 360 days of which the year then consisted. On the first of these five days Osiris was brought forth; and at the moment of his birth a voice was heard to proclaim that the lord of creation was born'. The five days of the Epact were introduced at the end of the last month and associated with the birth of the five gods - Osiris, Isis, Seth, Nephthys and Horus. Therefore 36 decans with five extra days at the end metered out the civil year.

The heliacal rising of Sirius was supposed to coincide with New Year's Day in the civil calendar. However this was rarely the case, by observation the Egyptians calculated that 1460 Sothic years were equal to 1461 calendar years, meaning the two would only coincide on the same day/month position every 1461 calendar years. The oath imposed on the Egyptian kings 'that they would not intercalate any month or day, but that the sacred year of 365 days should remain as instituted in ancient times' meant that the civil calendar which recorded the dates of the kings and other historic events was allowed to slide through the seasons.

However, there is evidence that intercalation was used from 1322 BC when the heliacal rising of Sirius happened to coincided with New Year's Day in the civil calendar. Thus enabling the Egyptians to relate the civil and religious calendars.

'Let those, who believe in observations, cause the stars to move around the poles of the zodiac by one degree in one hundred years [meaning the precession rate] towards the east, as Ptolemy and Hipparchus did before him know ... that the Egyptians have already taught Plato about the movement of the fixed stars...'

Proclus Diadochus student of Alexandria [Fifth Century AD]

Numbers were also included in the myth that may refer to astronomical calculations recorded by the astronomer priests of Heliopolis:

The 12 months that equally divide the year could be the same method as the 12 constellations in the zodiac were divided.

The 30 days of the month could be equated to 30 degrees or 30 x 72 = 2160 years the time required for the sun to pass through one full zodiacal segment, called the Great Month.

The 72 co-conspirators could be equated to the 72 years required for equinoctial sun to complete a precessional shift of 1 degree.

The 360 days that made the year could equate to 360 degrees or 360 x 72 = 25,920 years (or 2160 x 12) the time required for a complete precessional cycle, called the Great Year.

Precession is caused by the sun and moon exerting a gravitational pull on the earth's equatorial bulge, causing the plant to 'wobble' in a very slow cycle. The main astronomical effects of this motion are an equally slow change in the celestial north pole, which sometimes coincides with a 'pole star'; changes in the altitude of all the stars above the horizon as they cross the observer's meridian at any given latitude; and changes in the constellations against the background of which the sun rises due east at dawn on the spring and autumnal equinoxes and the winter and summer solstices.

When was the Time of Osiris?

'Great is the Truth, enduring is its effectiveness, for it has not been disturbed since the Time of Osiris...'

'Great is the cosmic order, for it has not changed since the time of Osiris, who put it there...'

Ptahhotep, Fifth Dynasty high priest during the Pyramid Age
and creation of the Pyramid Texts [c. 2600-2450 BC]

Zep Tepi was the first golden age when the gods fraternised with humans and was invariably referred to as the Time of Osiris; it loosely translates as the 'First Time'. The Ancient Egyptians believed that the gods had established the system of cosmic order and its transference to the land of Egypt - called duality - in this remote epoch.

The gods ruled Egypt for many millennia before entrusted it to the mortal yet divine line of pharaohs. Citing Manetho a third century BC Heliopolitan priest directly, Eusebius begins by reeling off a list of the gods of the familiar Ennead of Heliopolis - 'these were the first to hold sway in Egypt. Thereafter, the kingship passed from one to another in unbroken succession ... through 13,900 years ... after the Gods, Demigods reigned for 1255 years; and again another line of kings held sway for 1817 years; then came thirty more kings, reigning for 1790 years, an then again ten kings ruling for 350 years. There followed the rule of the Spirits of the Dead ... for 5813 years...' then began the reign of the mortal kings. This is a total of 24,925 years. Alternatively, Diodorus was told by the Egyptian priests 'at first gods ruled Egypt for a little less than 18,000 years, the last of the gods to rule being Horus, the son of Isis ... Mortals have been kings of their country, they say, for a little less than 5000 years...'.

The pharaoh (from Per-Aa meaning Great House) was the sacred connection with the gods and, by extension, represented the link with the First Time. They were the custodians of its established laws and wisdom, which served as a sort of covenant of kingship, to abide by and to explain their actions and deeds. Hence, the careful re-enactment of mythical cosmic and secular events combined in a duality by the power of symbols and rituals. It also applied to all natural events, the movement of the celestial bodies, the unexplained phenomena of nature and the ebbing and rising waters of the Nile. All pharaohs saw themselves as the reincarnated Horus, the Living One. In death the king became a Reborn One who had departed into the astral Afterworld and become an Osiris or star soul.

What Is the Link between Osiris, Duality and The Duat?

'The positions and arrangements of the stars as well as their motions have always been the subject of careful observation among the Egyptians ... From ancient times to this day they have preserved the records concerning each of these stars over an incredible number of years...'

Diodorus Siculus [First Century BC]

At Heliopolis, the city of the sun, was the Benben Stone, symbol of Osirian rebirth that was placed on the pillar originally belonging to Atum. The Heliopolitan priests were high initiates in the mysteries of the heavens and their dominant occupation was the observation and recording of the various motions of the sun and the moon, the planets and the stars. The priest-astronomers knowledge was kept sacred until the end of the Pharaonic era and enabled them to weld enormous religious and political power over Egypt.

The priests left nothing to chance when setting the correct duality on both the ground as well as the sky to enable the departed king to be reborn as an Osiris. The correct ceremonial setting was also provided for each successive king to become the son of the Sun and then perform the 'journey' into the Duat to visit the twofold realm of Osiris in the 'horizon' and become Horus, the son of Osiris. The ceremony took 70 days to prepare the time required to embalm and mummify the departed king. The climax was reached with the dawn of summer solstice when the sun had journeyed backward across the sky along its elliptic path and rose between the paws of Leo.

'[The council says to Horus]: Indeed this journey of yours, indeed these journeys of yours [sky and land] are the journeys of [the first] Horus in search of his father Osiris' [PT1860]

To set the scene, it is 2500 BC when the Pyramid Texts were compiled, and the location is at Heliopolis on the observatory platform of the astronomer priests. The time of year is the heliacal rising of Sirius close to the summer solstice, the moment of observation is the pre-dawn, and the priests are looking in the direction of the eastern horizon. Looking east also means that the priests are looking at the Duat, in particular to Rostau - the three stars of Orion's belt glimmering in the pre-dawn. Having registered this image the priests look across the Nile to the west, towards the Pyramids, the 'Horizon of Heliopolis in the West'. The bodies of the distant monuments are still cloaked in darkness but the first hint of the rising sun lights up the golden cap stones with an astral glimmer and form a reflection in the west of the three 'stars of Rostau'.

The religious procession starts from Heliopolis and travels due west, across the Nile to Letopolis, then due south on land to Rostau to the Gate of the Duat and the sky beyond.

'I have travelled by the roads of Rostau on water and on land... these are the roads of Osiris; they are in the sky...' to 'the Highland of Aker, which is the Dwelling Place of Osiris'

The Book of the Two Ways

The priests ensured that the ground-correlation map was sacred by building on primeval mounds of the First Time and made their geodetic sightings by observing gilded objects on top of obelisk-like monuments. The two mounds of Heliopolis, the city of the Sun and Letopolis, the city of Horus which were aligned along a latitude and meridian and straddled the river Nile. This was the eastern horizon of the terrestrial Duat. Heliopolis represented the place of sunrise, which is east of the Milky Way and its terrestrial counterpart the Nile. Letopolis represented the heliacal rising of the star Sirius, in astral terms 'Horus who is in Sirius' [PT632]. It was on this meridian that Imhotep as Chief of the Observers, fixed the position of the Great Pyramid - which once completed was capped with a gold pyramidion. This was located Rostau at the centre of the Duat on the western side of the Nile. Rostau existed in the sky as the three stars of Orion's belt. On the ground as the three pyramids were built the first two were entirely covered in Tura limestone facing blocks that caused their edifices to glow brightly while the third smaller pyramid's lower courses were of red granite while its upper courses used the Tura limestone.

With the link established between Heliopolis and Letopolis, the great funerary procession could then proceed to Letopolis and collect the 'Horus' and his 'four sons'. 'Horus' brought along his magical adze and his 'four sons' acting as pallbearers for the coffin of the Osiris-king. In great pomp and grief the procession headed for Rostau, gateway to the Duat. Osiris was personified as Sokar and called the Lord of Rostau and Aker the earth god in the form of a double sphinx, was the entrance to the Duat.

'This is the land ... [of] the burial of Osiris in the House of Sokar...'

Shabaka Texts

In Rostau the coffin was placed in the mortuary temple before being taken into the Great Pyramid the point of departed king's departure for the sky on the 'bark of Osiris'.

The Sphinx the guardian and symbol of royalty represented Re-Harakhte, the sun god at his eastern rising at dawn. Between its paws is the Dream Stele describes the Sphinx as the embodiment of 'a great magical power that existed in this place from the beginning of all time' and the 'Splendid Place of the First Time' standing beside 'the House of Sokar'. The Horus-king approaches the Gateway to Rostau by walking between the paws of the Sphinx to join with the Sun and become his son. By completing the questions, ordeals and adventures of the 'Followers of Horus' (or Akhus) the Horus-king would then 'journey' to Osiris in the First Time.

'O Horus, this (departed) king is Osiris, this pyramid of his is Osiris, this construction of his is Osiris, betake yourself to it...' [PT1657]

The opening of the mouth ceremony performed by the 'Horus' with his adze, giving new stellar life to the mummified king allowing his soul to rise through the northern shaft to the circumpolar stars. 'May you lift me and raise me to the Winding Waterway, may you set me among the gods, the Imperishable stars...' [PT1759]. Here he takes 'possession of the sky, its pillars [the cardinal points] and its stars' and activates the great cosmic cycles.

The departed king also makes another celestial journey through the southern shaft towards Orion. '... Behold, he has come as Orion, behold Osiris has come as Orion… O king, the sky conceives you with Orion, the Duat bears you with Orion, you will regularly ascend with Orion from the eastern side of the sky, you will regularly descend with Orion in the western region of the sky...' [PT820-2]. Osiris-Orion is united with the stellar form of his consort Isis-Sirius to create and give power to the new Horus-king, Horus who is in Sirius. Here he maintains the calendar and administers the seasons.

Where are the Sacred Records of Osiris?

References to that important 'records' brought to Egypt 'after the flood' and concealed in a 'Hall of Records' which preserved the entire knowledge and wisdom of a lost civilisation have continued to fascinate people through the ages. Spell 1080 of the Coffin Texts (c. 2000 BC) speaks of a secret 'sealed thing' belonging to Osiris of Rostau and spell 1087 suggests that it was 'writing material' linked to Heliopolis and hidden somewhere in the desert sands. In the Kore Kosmou (Hermetic writings) of the first and second century AD - The goddess Isis claims that Thoth deposited in a secret place the 'sacred books' which contained 'the secret things of Osiris ... these holy symbols of the cosmic elements' and then cast a spell that these books shall remain 'unseen and undiscovered by all men who shall go to and fro on the plains of this land until the time when Heaven, grown old, shall beget organisms worthy of you ...' Meanwhile, Coptic legends report that 'there exists a single subterranean chamber under the Sphinx with entrances to all three Pyramids ... Each entrance is guarded by statues of amazing abilities'.

In the 20th Century, the American psychic Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) known as the 'Sleeping Prophet' made some 700 'life readings'. The essential message of these readings is that a number of 'Atlanteans' escaped the terrible deluge that supposedly caused the destruction of their continent and somehow reached the Nile Valley in Egypt in the eleventh millennium BC. Cayce himself claimed to be the reincarnation of their high priest Ra-Ta. References are made to indicate where a vast underground repository for the records of Atlantis and ancient Egypt during the time of Ra-Ta was located - 'there is a chamber or passage from the right forepaw of the Sphinx to the entrance of the record chamber'. According to the readings, this Hall of Records is to be rediscovered and re-entered when 'the time has been fulfilled'.

The history of Atlantis is '... a tale which, though passing strange, is yet wholly true, as Solon, the wisest of the Seven, once affirmed'.

Plato [c. 427-347 BC]

The writings of Plato are the first to mention Atlantis and its destruction through the account of Solon (c. 638 - 559 BC) who was one of the seven acknowledged wise men of ancient Greece and founder of Athenian democracy.

'He [Solon] spent some time studying and discussing philosophy with Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Sais, who were the most learned of the Egyptian priests. According to Plato it was from them that he heard the legend of the lost continent of Atlantis...'.

Plutarch (c. 46 BC - 120 AD)

The story of Atlantis was told to Solon in c. 560 BC by the Egyptian priest whom Plutarch identifies as Sonchis. '... And the duration of our civilisation as set down in our sacred writings is 8000 years. Of the citizens, then, who lived 9000 years ago, I will declare to you briefly certain of their laws and the noblest of the deeds they performed: the full account in precise order and detail we shall go through later at our leisure, taking the actual writings.'

Plato's writings conjure up a feel for what Atlantis was like. Its capital city also called 'Atlantis' could not be outshone for sheer size and beauty. The capital was arranged in a series of concentric circles 23 kilometres in diameter. All the city's commercial and transportation needs were met by an intricate system of canals that reached beyond the city into the great plain where the canals irrigated immense areas under cultivation and further up to the very source of the bountiful waters, the mountains.

A massive carved outer wall, crowned with dwellings, traced a 72-kilometre girth around the city and was the first view of Atlantis that ships saw. Ships would begin preparations to enter the first of the great canals that would guide them through a 10-kilometre route to the city centre. Providing the lifeblood of the empire, the prosperous merchants enveloped three-quarters of the outer city. Trade and barter hummed constantly as foreign fleets crowded the massive docks dominating the port. These docks were an integral part of a fortress equal to any ever conceived. Built in defence of the Atlanteans' precious material and spiritual treasures, they were carved from the white, black and red rock of the land itself as were the towers and gates guarding the entrance.

No one could fail to be impressed as they sailed across the stretch of water half a kilometre wide separating the inner city from the mercantile quarter. This expanse led to a shining wall of brass that concealed the only entrance to the inner city. Once granted admittance, the full spectrum of the great civilisation could be glimpsed. The first ring of land contained a racing stadium, gymnastic areas, and gardens blooming with exotic flowers, plants, and trees from around the world. Beyond this leisure area the pattern of water and land was repeated. The next belt of land was elevated and surrounded by a wall of tin. It protected the palaces, gardens, and fountains of the lesser noblemen of Atlantis. And then, after the last belt of water still higher land came into view with a wall this time covered in orichalcum, a metal unique to Atlantis that 'sparkled like fire'. It was from this central island, the pinnacle of the pyramid city of shinning walls, that the Atlantean Empire was ruled.

On the central island the 'Grove of Poseidon' surrounded the temple. Hot and cold water flowed through the gardens, providing cooling pools in the summer and warm baths in the winter. A gold-encrusted wall protected the temple and palace and the temple itself was coated with silver. Its interior was graced by statues, and at the altar of the temple of the ocean-god were enshrined the laws governing the ten prices of the ten provinces of Atlantis. They were engraved on a pillar of orichalcum and the king and princes would gather '... every fifth year, and then alternately every sixth year' to take part in an ancient ritual designed to renew their blood links. The first order of business was always the enforcement of the laws '...and when thus assembled they took counsel about public affairs and inquired if any had in any way transgressed and gave judgement'. Atlantis lived in peace and prosperity, enjoying and exploiting her empire '...for many generations; and the wealth they possessed was so immense that the like had never been seen before in any royal house nor will ever easily be seen again'.

Sonchis then attempted to explain to Solon the nature and location of Atlantis. In order to give an accurate account he had to reach beyond the Greek's limited notion of the globe - as an island disc, divided into Europe, Libya (North Africa) and Asia (the Middle East), floating on an ocean of water. Atlantis was an island 'beyond the Pillars of Heracles' (the known world to the Greeks) in 'a distant point in the Atlantic Ocean'. 'To being with the region as a whole was said to be high above the level of the sea, from which it rose precipitously ... [and the mountains] were celebrated as being more numerous, higher and more beautiful than any that exist today...'. It was '... larger than Libya and Asia combined; from it there was passage for the sea-farers of those times to reach the other islands, and from them the whole opposite continent which surrounds what can truly be called the ocean. For these regions that lie within the strait we were talking about seem to be but a bay having a narrow entrance; but the other ocean is the real ocean and the land which entirely surrounds it may with fullest and fitness be named a continent.'

The priest finished his story with Atlantis's destruction that was caused by 'a change in the path of the sun' and 'earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence'.

Conclusion

Osiris came upon earth for the benefit of mankind with the titles of 'manifester of good and truth'; he was put to death by the malice of the evil one; he was buried and resurrected; and became the judge of the dead. This was the great mystery, and this myth and his worship were of the earliest times and universal in Egypt enduring until the acceptance of Christianity.

As for the sacred books of Osiris, did they contain the astronomy, science and history of a civilisation more ancient than their own? And how did the Egyptian priests come by the Atlantis documents? We may never know but the story is a fascinating one.