[King Arthur in Avalon, 1890]

Atlantis re-interpreted as the fountain-head of all civilization leads to the notion that with its disappearance into the sea was lost a corpus of Ancient Wisdom, recoverable only piecemeal through the ancient civilizations that it spawned, but never in its pristine fullness. Atlantis stands for the Golden Age ended long ago and an Ancient Wisdom partially eclipsed. This hearkens to a recurrent and haunting theme in human imagination that the loss of these great glories is not final; the glory is somehow still extant, at least potentially, and may be revived or reinstated. This takes on a mythic character in such motifs as the immortality and return of King Arthur, or the resurrection and Second Coming of Jesus Christ. It can also take religious and political forms. Sixteenth-century Christian reformers appealed to the Church's pristine beginnings and sought to restore a purified Christianity. Eighteenth-century revolutionaries, inspired by those like Blake and Rousseau, asserted the freedom and equality of primitive humankind and aspired to bring it back to their cultures. Even in science, Isaac Newton believed the laws of the universe were known long ago in a wiser age and he was simply rediscovering them.

What, then, of the lost glories of Atlantis? Can they have been preserved, and perhaps even rediscovered? Atlantologists believe that Atlantis is the parent of a wide body of ancient knowledge--including Druid lore, the inner meaning of megaliths and the Great Pyramid, and sacred geometry--secrets we are the worse for losing, but which can be unriddled and recaptured by deciphering messages encoded in the works of antiquity. John Mitchell, in The View over Atlantis (1972), gives expression to this sentiment:

Written across the face of the country in letters of earth and stone

the cosmic knowledge of the ancient world is now within reach.

It appears that in recent ages the human race has lost touch with

some hidden source of power, some ultimate proof of cosmic order

which inspired the monumental achievements of antiquity and

produced the serene confidence of prehistoric life.

In this regard, the special role of Egypt as Atlantis' progeny has been emphasized. Augustus le Plongeon, an early researcher, theorized that it was a migrant queen of Atlantis who gave Egypt its civilization and became the goddess Isis. Egyptian sun- worship was said to have retained features of the Atlantean solar cult described by Donnelly. Two claimants to paranormal enlightenment, H.C. Randall-Stevens and the more famous Edgar Cayce, have spoken of a concealed Hall of Records associated with the Great Pyramid--perhaps under or near the Sphinx. This is a storehouse of Atlantean history and knowledge, they say, that will some day come to light and much that has been lost will be restored to the world again.

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