54 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
required to have their skulls artificially deformed after the example of their high-
priest, Pharaoh Akhenaton, a practice that would identify them for the rest of their
lives as important worshippers of the Sun Disk. Surviving temple art from his city,
Akhetaton (current-day Tell el-Amarna), show the King’s own children with deformed
heads. On the other side of the world, the sun-worshipping elite among the Mayas
in Middle America and the pre-Inca peoples of South America all practiced skull
elongation. At both Akhetaton and Yucatan, the newborn infant of a royal family had
its head placed between cloth-covered boards, which were gently drawn together by
knotted cords. For about two years, the malleable skull was forced to develop into an
oblong shape that was considered the height of aristocratic fashion.
According to chronologer Neil Zimmerer, Aton-at-i-uh was originally a cruel
Atlantean despot who crushed a rebellion of miners by feeding them to wild beasts.
He was supposedly responsible for the destruction of Atlantis when he blew up
its mineshafts during his frustrated bid to assume absolute power. Aton-at-i-uh’s
reputation lived on long after his life, eventually transforming into the Aztec God
of Time, which destroys everything. As the sun was associated with the passage of
time, so Aton-at-i-uh personified both the supreme solar and temporal deity.At-o-sis
A monstrous serpent that long ago encircled a water-girt palace of the gods
located across the Sunrise Sea, according to the Algonquian Passamaquoddy
Indians. Their concept is identical to the Egyptian Mehen, with its mythic portrayal
of Atlantis. Many tales of At-o-sis describe him as lying at the bottom of “the
Great Lake” (the Atlantic Ocean), with the remains of the gods’ sunken “lodge.”
Interestingly, the Passamaquoddies’ “Sunrise Sea” is in keeping with the Egyptian
sun-god, Ra, encircled by the Mehen serpent.
(See Atfih, Ataentsik)At-otarho
Among the North American Iroquois, a mythic figure with a head of snakes
for hair, similar to the Greek Medusa, who was herself associated with Atlantis.Atrakhasis
“Unsurpassed in Wisdom,” the title of Utnapishtim, survivor of the Great
Flood portrayed in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Scholars believe the story
predates by 1,000 years its earliest written version, recorded around 2000 B.C. in
cuneiform script on 12 clay tablets. The prefix “At” combines with the epic’s early
third-millenniumB.C. origins to indicate that Utnapishtim belonged to the First
Atlantean Deluge, in 3100 B.C.