T: Tahiti to Tyche 267
Atlas by the Atlantis, Maia. The Theban Recension of the Egyptian Book of the
Dead quotes Thaut as having said that the Great Deluge destroyed a former world-
class civilization: “I am going to blot out everything which I have made. The Earth
shall enter into the waters of the abyss of Nun [the sea-god] by means of a raging
flood, and will become even as it was in the primeval time.”
His narration of the catastrophe is related to the Edfu Texts, which locate the
“Homeland of the Primeval Ones” on a great island that sank with most of its
inhabitants during the Tep Zepi, or “First Time.” Only the gods, led by Thaut,
escaped with seven favored sages, who settled at the Nile Delta, where they created
Egyptian civilization from a synthesis of Atlantean and native influences. The Edfu
Texts are, in this regard at least, in complete accord with Edgar Cayce’s version of
events in Egypt at the dawn of pharaonic civilization.
(See Siriadic Columns)Thule
After Plato’s story of Atlantis became generally known during the early fourth
centuryB.C., a contemporary Greek natural scientist, Pytheas, set out on a voyage
of discovery to locate remnants of the sunken civilization. His account, which still
exists, tells how he sailed into the Atlantic Ocean, going north toward the Arctic
Circle. Historians are uncertain whether Pytheas reached Iceland, the Shetland
Islands, or visited Norway’s coast above what is now Bergen. In any case, he called
this land Ultima Thule, the “farthest land.” Its native people told him they did
indeed know of a great island that had collapsed under the sea many ages ago,
when its survivors, their forefathers, sailed north and east to save themselves. The
new land was named after their lost homeland, Thule, just as, during the 17th-
century, Englishmen arriving from York on the eastern seaboard of North America
named their settlement, “New York.”Tiahuanaco
An Aymara Indian rendition of the older Typi Kala—“Stone-in-the-Center,”
in the native Quechua language—suggesting the city’s prominence as an ompha-
los. “Tiahuanaco” derives from Wanaku, “Powerful Spirit Place,” referring to an
island, now sunk beneath nearby Lake Titicaca, formerly the center of the Andean
culture-founder Kon-Tiki-Viracocha and his followers. Whether this Aymara tra-
dition refers to Atlantis or the actual stone ruins found beneath the surface of
Lake Titicaca, or both, is not clear. The Spanish chronicler, Cieza de Leon, re-
corded a local Bolivian legend to the effect that “Tiahuanaco was built in a single
night after the Flood by unknown giants.”
The ruins comprise an important archaeological site, a pre-Inca ceremonial
center, featuring spacious plazas, broad staircases, colossal statuary, and monu-
mental gates.
(see Navel of the World, Viracocha)