62 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
Azores
Ten major islands in the North Atlantic comprising 902 square miles, lying
740 miles west of Portugal’s Cape Roca from the island of San Miguel. The Azores
are volcanic; their tallest mountain, Pico, at 7,713 feet, is dormant. Captain Diego
de Sevilha discovered the islands in 1427. Portugal’s possession ever since,
they are still collectively and officially recognized by Portuguese authorities
as “os vestigios dos Atlantida,” or “the remains of Atlantis.” The name “Azores”
supposedly derives from Portuguese for “hawks,” or Acores. The Hungarian
specialist in comparative linguistics, Dr. Vamos-Toth Bator, believes instead that
“Azores” is a corruption of “Azaes,” the monarch of an Atlantean kingdom, as
described in Plato’s account (Kritias).
None of the islands were inhabited at the time of their discovery, but a few
important artifacts were found on Santa Maria, where a cave concealed a stone
altar decorated with serpentine designs, and at Corvo, famous for a small cask of
Phoenician coins dated to the fifth century B.C.
The most dramatic find was an equestrian statue atop a mountain at San Miguel.
The 15-foot tall bronze masterpiece comprised a block pedestal bearing a badly
weathered inscription and surmounted by a magnificent horse, its rider stretching
forth a right arm and pointing out across the sea, toward the west. King John V
ordered the statue removed to Portugal, but his governor’s men botched the job,
when they accidentally dropped the colossus down the mountainside. Only the rider’s
head and one arm, together with the horse’s head and flank and an impression of
the pedestal’s inscription, were salvaged and sent on to the King.
These items were preserved in his royal palace, but scholars were unable to
effect a translation of the “archaic Latin,” as they thought the inscription might
have read. They were reasonably sure of deciphering a single word—“cates”—
although they could not determine its significance. If correctly transcribed, it might
be related to cati, which means, appropriately enough, “go that way,” in the lan-
guage spoken by the Incas, Quechua. Cattigara is the name of a Peruvian city, as
indicated on a second-centuryA.D. Roman map, so a South American connection
with the mysterious San Miguel statue seems likely (Thompson 167–169). Cattigara
was probably Peru’s Cajamarca, a deeply ancient, pre-Inca site. Indeed, the two city
names are not even that dissimilar.
In 1755, however, all the artifacts taken from San Miguel were lost during a
great earthquake that destroyed 85 percent of Lisbon. While neither Santa
Maria’s altar in the cave nor San Miguel’s equestrian statue were certifiably
Atlantean, they unquestionably evidenced an ancient world occupation of the
Azores, and the bronze rider’s pointed gesture toward the west suggests more
distant voyages to the Americas. Roman accounts of islands nine days’ sail from
Lusitania (Portugal) describe contemporary sailing time to the Azores. The first-
centuryB.C. Greek geographer Diodorus Siculus reported that the Phoenicians
and Etruscans contested each other for control of Atlantic islands, which were
almost certainly the Azores. We recall Corvo’s Phoenician coins, while the
Etruscans were extraordinary bronze sculptors, who favored equestrian themes,