The Atlantis Encyclopedia

72 The Atlantis Encyclopedia

The origin and meaning of “Bimini” are unknown. However, the name appears

in the Ancient Egyptian language as Baminini, which means, “Homage (ini) to

the Soul (ba) of Min.” Min was the Egyptians’ divine protector of travelers on

far-off journeys, a particularly appropriate god to be worshiped at distant Bimini,

if indeed the island had been visited by voyagers from the Nile Valley. Material

evidence for an Egyptian or, at any rate, an Egyptian-like presence in the western

Atlantic appeared during the late 1930s, when James Lockwood, Jr., an American

archaeologist in Haiti, saw a stone statue of the ancient Egyptian god of the dead,

Anubis, that had been discovered on an off-shore island.

The Lucayans knew Bimini as “Guanahani,” another curious connection with

the Ancient World, because the name translates as “the Island (hani) of Men

(guana)” in the language of the Guanches. These were native inhabitants of the

Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of North Africa, until their utter demise at

the hands of the Spanish in the 15th and 16th centuries. Although no monumental

buildings were found on Bimini, in Arawak, Guanahani meant “the Place of the

Encircling Walls”; in Arawak, hani was also synonymous for “crown” or “wreath.”

This oldest known name for the island may have referred to a large stone formation

lying in 19 feet of water less than 2 miles off Bimini’s northernmost point.

It is composed of so far unnumbered but certainly no less than 5,000, mostly

square-cut blocks running in a straight line for about 1,900 feet, before swinging

back on itself to create a J-formation. To early observers, it resembled a paved

road running across the bottom of the sea. But the general consensus of investi-

gators since then tentatively identifies the structure as a cyclopean wall, not

unlike Andean examples found in Peru, specifically, at Cuzco and Sacsahuaman.

Unfortunately, it continues to be known by its first and misleading appellation.

In 1933, Edgar Cayce, during one of his trance states, said that records from

Atlantis still existed “where a portion of the temples may yet be discovered, under

the slime of ages of sea water—near what is known as Bimini.” The little island was

not Atlantis itself, he explained, but its outpost, known many thousands of years ago

as Alta, extending (politically) to east-coastal Florida, and part of a wider Atlantean

administration known as Poseidia, comprising the Lesser Antilles. In 1940, the

If removed from its underwater location, the Bimini Road would resemble the Peruvian

walls of Sacsahuaman.