Athanasius Kircher
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Athanasius Kircher was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jesuit Roger Joseph
Portrait from Mundus Subterraneus (1664)
The Coptic alphabet, from Prodromus Coptus sive aegyptiacus.
Athanasius Kircher, Prodromus Coptus Sive Aegyptiacus, Rome 1636
Frontispiece to Kircher's Oedipus Ægyptiacus; the Sphinx, confronted by Kircher's learning, admits he has solved her riddle.
Atlantis
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Atlantis is a fictional island mentioned in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias as part of an allegory on the hubris of nations. By describing Atlantis as a naval empire from the west that had conquered
Athanasius Kircher
…mountain ranges as the Earth's skeletal structures exposed by weathering. Mundus Subterraneus includes several pages about the legendary island of Atlantis including a map with the Latin caption "Situs Insulae Atlantidis, a Mari olim absorpte ex mente Egyptiorum et Platonis Description," translating as…
A fifteenth-century Latin translation of Plato's Timaeus
The Santorini caldera on 24 June 2022, taken from the International Space Station. From the Minoan eruption event, and the 1964 discovery of Akrotiri on the island, this location is one of many sites purported to have been the location of Atlantis.
The mid-atlantic ridge in the Atlantic
A Faroe Islands postage stamp honoring Janus Djurhuus's poem "Atlantis"