MOUNT MERU
THE HOLY MOUNTAIN OF ATLANTIS
NAVEL OF THE WORLD

The Mountain-Temple is the most grandiose, but also the most widely-diffused form of ancient religious architecture. This type of structure is to be found all over the world, virtually unchanged, except, obviously, for widely differing styles and techniques peculiar to each race of people. Hundreds of stepped pyramids raise their massive structures from the plains of Mexico and in the United States, Honduras, Guatemala, Perù , Chile, Mesopotamia and throughout Africa and India, as well as Indonesia, Indochina, China and Europe itself. They are to be found even in Polynesia.

The Mountain-Temples expressed symbolically the beliefs connected with the gods that were supposed to inhabit them. This symbolism was evident in the dispositions, the decorations and the furnishings. They were the faithful representation of the "Cosmic Mountain", or Sacred Mountain, or "Meru”, situated in a no better identified "Center of the World" - almost always named the "Navel of the World", where the gods had their abode from which they ruled Time and Space. The Mountain-Temple is often to be found in the center of a city, near to the royal palace, thus expressing materially the centre of the Universe in which the king resides, being the agent on earth of the gods. Upon the walls of the shrine are figures which show scenes from the lives of the gods and their deeds, as well as -those of the sovereign, while all around there are statues of divinities and deceased rulers. This lay-out is to be found, exactly as described here, throughout the centuries, since the sacred texts call for it, but also because it was too charged with magic powers to be deliberately altered.

In the face of the universality and the unity of conception of the Mountain-Temples, the theory that they were all conceived separately by each race, thanks to the "natural tendency of human beings to see their divinities on mountain-tops", is surely absurd.

"Come let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into Heaven and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."
Thus in Genesis Chap.11:4 the invocation to build the Tower of Babel is made, which vas the Mesopotamian prototype of the Mountain-Temple. It was the people themselves who insisted upon its construction; in fact, the Mountain-Temple was the symbol of the unity, the greatness and the power of the people who erected it, at the cost of immense sacrifices.

Within the depths of Mountain-Temples very often are to be found the tombs of the monarchs who had them built. This custom was taken to excess by the Egyptians. Their pyramids were in fact built exclusively as tombs. Yet it was just the Egyptian pyramids which put the Mountain-Temples in the shadow, almost eclipsing their importance. The world of science, blinded by the vast size and the perfection of those splendid funereal monuments and concerned largely in revealing their mysteries, true or presumed, passed over in embarrassed silence the by far greater mystery that surrounds the origins of this grandiose religious conception common to all the world's races.

What these great temples are, the very same people who built them have told us, they are the image of the "Sacred Mountain", from which the gods control the destiny of the world. It is clear that all the Mountain-Temples, in whatever part of the world they exist, were inspired by a unique model, which couldn’t be none other than the sacred mount of Atlantis, the political and religious heart of the world of that time, being the royal palace and the temple of Poseidon.

The following Plato’s long and detailed description is the best proof of it:

Near the plain, in the center... there was a hill, low on all sides... Poseidon, in order to fortify the hill, broke it down all around, and there placed alternatively greater and lesser walls, of earth and sea water, two of earth and three moats of sea water, which described almost a circle from the center of the island, putting them down at equal distances on every side, so that there was no access for men. Beginning at the sea, they led to the last wall, a canal three pleters wide, a hundred feet deep, fifty stadia long, which gave access to ships from the sea, up to that wall, as in a port, with the entrance enlarged so that the largest ships could enter; and the earth-walls that separated the sea-moats cut across them along the bridges, so much that triremes could pass one at a time and they were roofed so that ships could sail underneath; because the edges of the earth-walls were sufficiently elevated above sea-level. But the largest of the three belts that connected with the sea was three stadia wide and the following one of earth was equal to it; of the two following belts, the sea- belt was two stadia wide, the earth- belt was equal to the preceding sea- belt; finally that which surrounded the island in the center was one stadium.

Upon the hill the royal palace and the fabulous temple of Poseidon, previously described, were built, surrounded by three arrangements of walls,

... and all around were set houses and plantations of trees and even pools, some under the open sky, others covered for hot baths, on one side those for the king, on the other those for the citizens, elsewhere those for the women, elsewhere further, those for the horses and beasts of burden. Within each of the external walls many shrines consecrated to various divinities were built, as well as many gardens and gymnasia, some for men, others for horses... and in the greater of the two walls, there was a hippodrome, a stadium wide, and all it's length, entirely encircling the island, was used for horse racing.

The Mountain-Temples are faithful copies, down to the smallest detail of this hill, just as it was described by Plato. Let us take as a typical example, a classic mountain-temple, that of Ta-Keo at Angkor in Cambodia. The temple itself, seat of the god, is built on the peak of an artificial mountain, consisting of a truncated pyramid made up of three superimposed steps. These three steps symbolize the three successive sets of walls which encircled the Poseidon temple. Around the artificial mountain there are two enclosure-walls alternating with three moats. These represent respectively the three moats and the two earth walls "taken all round the hill" of Poseidon. There are also numerous baths for the cleansing rites, which represent the bathing pools described by Plato. Within the walls of the Ta-Keo temple, there was a temple to the principle god's mount, plus other small temples dedicated to minor deities and their mounts.

Fine representations of the sacred hill of Atlantis are to be found in Japan. It will be remembered that the Atlantean rulers were buried in that hill. The tombs of ancient Japanese rulers consisted of a high tumulus - a truly artificial hill - surrounded by three moats alternating with two earth walls. The reader should observe the tomb of the Emperor Nintoku, at Sakai in the Prefecture of Osaka. It clearly represents the hill of Atlantis, surrounded by two earth walls and three sea-water moats.

All the mountain-temples in the world have a structure more or less similar to that described by Plato. The only discrepancy would be the location of the royal palace; the philosopher puts it on the second step of the hill on which top there is the temple, while in the case of the mountain-temples, it is never placed within the enclosure of the pyramid, but is always found in the near vicinity, outside the outermost external wall. This variation is due to obvious practical reasons, since the king, unlike a stone idol, needed a much greater space to accommodate the large numbers of people who made up his court, space which was not available inside the complex of the temple. This is the only difference, but it is also clear proof that Plato did not “invent” a hill based on the model of the Babylonian mountain-temples that he probably knew about.
It is therefore likely that Plato described a hill that had really existed and there can be little doubt that it was THAT hill which served as a model for all the mountain-temples in the world. Upon its top there was the most sacred temple in Atlantis consecrated to its divine founder, Poseidon; and there the royal palace stood, where the supreme political power of the empire sat. It was on that hill that the Empire was born, thus becoming the symbol of its greatness and its eternal power. Why should it be a matter of surprise that every race descended from the Atlanteans should have reproduced that very symbol to demonstrate its own power and greatness and so identify, through it, its affinity with Atlantis? On the contrary, how could those races conceive their temples in any different form?

The existence of the mountain-temples all over the world is an excellent proof in favor of the theory that Plato’s Atlantis really existed and that all the ancient civilizations have their origin on it.

Plato is not the only one who described the holy mountain of Atlantis, with its temple on the top and the town around it. Incredible as it could seem, a much more detailed and precise account than Plato’s has come to us. So much that on its basis the temple can be reconstructed room by room, meter by meter.

This account was written two centuries before the Greek philosopher, by a character who had completely different culture, sources and objectives.

It was on the sixth century b.C., in Babylon. A slave population was dreaming about going back to its own country, Palestine, reconstituting its own kingdom and rebuilding the temple which had been destroyed by Nebucadnezar a few years earlier. As always during the most critical phases of his history, this people generated a prophet, Ezekiel. He was a well educated person, who had access to the Babylonian royal household and temples. In the ancient great Babylonian culture he found the principles to prepare the restoration of his people. It has to be reminded that Mesopotamia is an area where the remembrance of the Flood was kept in the most vivid and precise way, and where the “ziggurats” were built, the mountain-temples par excellence. We have to presume that the priests serving on those ziggurats knew very well why they were built that way and that they possessed written documents on the matter.

Ezekiel had a vision, probably right on top of a ziggurat: the Almighty set him “upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city” (Eze.40,2) and showed him in great detail “the form of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the goings out thereof and the comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the laws thereof.” (Eze. 43.11), asking to write them down and to show them to Israel, because that was how they had to built the temple and the city around it, once back to their land. This description takes almost entirely the last nine chapters of the book of Ezekiel, 261 verses in all.

Obviously Ezekiel does not say that this is temple of Atlantis; and surely he ignores this name, that appeared only two centuries later with Plato. He must have had only a map, a very detailed one, with the plan of the buildings and several other details; but, if there were any inscriptions, they must have been indecipherable. Ezekiel, in fact, only describes very meticulously that map, as he interprets and understands it.

The result let absolutely astonished, because both the temple and the city around are exactly the same of those described by Plato, so much that there is no doubt he is describing the same thing. The temple, in fact, is built on the top of a mountain (EZE 43.12); it has the same size of the one described by Plato and it is also surrounded by a wall; inside and outside the temple there are lots of statues; it is surrounded by a wonderful garden, irrigated by a spring inside the temple; beyond the border of the garden there is a second wall with a ditch all around, and then a third wall surrounded by a moat. Beyond this moat there is the immense city, also surrounded by a wall and a moat. Everything like in Plato’s description.

There are obviously some significant differences, due to the fact that the two authors belonged to different world, as age, mentality and cultural background. And above all they had different sources. This last element is important not only for the fact that one source was Egyptian and the other Babylonian. Plato describes with words the temple and the city around it basing himself on an orally description, or at the best on a “sketch”; his information is in fact too vague, schematic and often approximate, to believe he has got it from an original “map”. But there is no doubt that Ezekiel describes in verses a very detailed and precise map, which he can observe and measure by himself. On the base of this description, in fact, it is possible to redraw the temple room by room, with a small margin of error (see Ezekiel, chapters 40, 41, 42).

So, for shape and size of the mountain and the city we must refer to Ezekiel, rather than Plato. Plato, for instance, does not say anything about the shape of the “ belts of land and sea” around the mountain, or the shape of the mountain itself. The traditional iconography represents them circular and the mount with a conic shape; but Ezekiel says clearly that the temple, the walls and the moats had a square shape, and give the measures of the sides.

The comparison between the two sources shows some imprecision in Plato’s description. According to him, in fact, the central island had a diameter of 5 stadium (about 880 mt): too small to be a “very high mountain” and have on its top a temple, a garden dedicated to Poseidon and a castle. According to Ezekiel, instead, the walls and the moats that divided the temple’s area from the civilian side of the city, had a side of 3.000 cubits, corresponding to one mile, that is almost double. Therefore the 5 stadium “island” mentioned by Plato corresponds only to the temple area, built on a plane on the top of the mountain, and to the gardens, the “Poseidon wood”, laying on the terraces around it. Ezekiel for this complex reports an area of about half a mile (1.500 cubits), perfectly matching the 880 mt of Plato.

Not very likely are also the figures given by Plato for the width of the defensive moats around the walls, respectively of 180, 360 and 540 mt. The figures given by Ezekiel look more credible, that is 25 and 130 mt, respectively for the second and the third moat. The first is not mentioned; at least not as a defensive moat: it only was the stream formed by the spring inside the temple. Also in this Ezekiel seems more trustworthy; the “wall” mentioned by Plato must have been the one surrounding the Poseidon wood, irrigated by the waters that sprung from the temple and that formed a “stream” that flowed around the wood; it had the only purpose to fence, and not to defend; that’s probably why Ezekiel does not mention it.

Obviously the two authors used different units of measure: plectrum and stadium for Plato, respectively corresponding to 29,6 and 177,6 mt; cubit for Ezekiel, corresponding only to 53,34 cm. Clearly, both of them rounded the measures. But in any case the figures they provide are not too different from each other. Those of the temple are almost the same (160 mt by 106, according to Ezekiel; 177 by 90, according to Plato). The same is for the area of the temple and the wood around it, about 800 mt (1.500 cubits) for the first, and 880 (5 stadium) for the latter. The first ring of defensive walls, surrounding both the temple and the royal palace, had a “diameter” of 1.950 mt (11 stadium) according to Plato; 1.600 (3.000 cubits) according to Ezekiel. The second 3.700 (21 stadium) and 2.400 mt (4.500 cubits) according respectively to Plato and to Ezekiel.

If we consider that they are describing, with a lapse of centuries between themselves, with different units and different sources, a city disappeared 9.500 years before, the agreement of the figures is astonishing and gives the most evident proof of the fact that they are describing the same thing.

Only the figures given for the external perimeter of the town, consisting of a wall and a canal, present a larger difference: 22,5 km (50 + 27 stadia) according to Plato, only 13,3 km (25,000 cubits) according to Ezekiel.

Another difference is to be found in the statues. Plato says that around the temple there were the statues of all the kings who had reigned on Atlantis, while inside there were the statues of Poseidon and its court, comprising 100 “nereides”. Moses’ law forbids the representation of God and of any human or animal figure in holy areas. So, Ezekiel should have had problems on this point. We could expect that he omitted the detail of the statues; but even here the prophet sticks to the original document, at such a point that he gives a description even more accurate and detailed than Plato. In fact he says that the statues around the wall of the temple were in relief (as in the Babylonian temples of that epoch), they had two faces and between them there were reproductions of plants (EZE 41.18-20). Inside the temple there were real statues, not of kings or gods, but of “cherubs” (EZE 41.18 and following).

Ezekiel is more at ease with the altar, which is described in every small detail (EZE 43.13-18), while Plato simply says that “for the size and the craft it fitted the place”.

Finally the description of the city inside the outer perimeter. Plato says only that the outer wall “contained lot of houses, close to each other, and the canal and the larger harbor were full of ships and tradesmen coming from all over the world”. Ezekiel, instead, gives also for this area a very accurate description, clearly based on a detailed and trusty map.

Anyway, the prophet shows that he did not understand the meaning of the signs on his map; or perhaps, he understood it well, but deliberately twisted it. We have to bear in mind that he is giving instructions to the Jews on how to built the temple and the surrounding city, once back to Jerusalem: he cannot give instructions that make no sense in a dry and mountainous land like Palestine. But evidently he does not want to deviate from the original model.

What he sees traced on the map is clear, because he describes it in a way that makes no allowance for doubts. The area surrounding the mountain at the center of the town was divided in zones, that Ezekiel explains as terrain, or “contribution”, that must be “given” to Israel (EZE 45).

The central zone, including the holy mountain, is 25.000 cubits large (13,3 km) and 10.000 cubits high (5,3 km), and is the “contribution for God”. The upper zone has the same size and it is the “contribution for the priests”. The lower zone has half the size of the other two and it is the territory where the city is built. Overall, as we can see, it is a very large town, which spreads on an area of almost 180 square kms.

The three zones are surrounded by narrow corridors, that Ezekiel calls “contribution for the chieftain”. Around the “city” and the walls that surround the central hill there are stretches of terrain that must be left for the “pasture”. But it is quite clear from the verses 47.1-5, that these “pastures” were real canals. In fact Ezekiel, following the angel along the course of the stream that springs from the temple, has to cross several times some real canals.

Ezekiel description enables to draft a precise map of the city. Combining his description with the information given by Plato, and taking into account the structure of the “models” of the holy mountain, that is of the mountain-temples of every part of the world, it is possible to reconstruct the capital city of Atlantis, with a relatively small margin of error.

At the center of the town there was the holy mountain, the religious and political heart of the Atlantis’ empire, the navel of the world. It was about 6/7 hundred meters high on the sea level. On the top of the mountain there was a square plane about 320 meters sides; on the plane there was the temple, completely surrounded by a wall with 260 mt sides. Inside the temple there was a thermal spring (the mountain was an ancient extinct volcano) which irrigated the “Poseidon’s wood”: a luxuriant garden that sloped down on successive terraces for more than 300 mt, to a second plane with a 1.600 mt side.

So, the temple to Poseidon and the gardens around it constituted a sort of pyramid, made of several steps, with a side of about 800 mt, that rose for 250-350 mt from the center of the second plane. All around the “pyramid” there was a flat area, 350 mt wide (about 180 hectares in total) on which the royal palace was built. A jump of about 150/200 mt, constituted by a huge wall all around, led to a third plane, with an external side of about 2.400 mt. At the bottom of the wall there was a 26 mt moat. The flat stretch around the moat was about 400 mt wide and on it there were built “lots of temples dedicated to several gods, lots of gardens and gymnasium and also pools, some indoor and some others outdoor... and a race course one stadium large and as long as the circumference of the island... And on both sides of the race course there were barracks for the soldiers”.

This plane sloped down with a jump of about 50/100 mt in the surrounding moat, a canal of 130 mt width . At first the moat had a defensive purpose, but then it was linked to the sea with a canal about 100 mt wide and almost 5 km long, and it was used as a harbor, probably reserved for the ships of the empire dignitaries and for the supply of the temple and the court. Under the mountain there was an artificial basin, probably reserved to the king of Atlantis.

According to Ezekiel description, beyond the moat there was the “new city”, all surrounded by a wall and a wide canal, with a side of more than 13 km. The city was divided in zones, used for different purposes, surrounded by canals. The upper zone, a 13 by 5 km rectangle, must have been the residential quarter. It was not plane, but it had in the center a volcanic hill about 6-700 mt. The central zone had the same size and included the “historic center”, constituted by the “holy mountain”. The area around the mountain must have been the political, administrative and financial core of the empire and must have included ministries, banks, financial offices, fairs, markets, and so on.

The last zone, the one by the sea, half large of the previous two, must have included the harbor of the Capital with all its facilities. It was probably divided in two separated areas: on one side the military harbor (which, according to Plato, had 1.200 war ships), with the arsenal and the barracks; on the other side the civilian harbor, with warehouses, building yards and facilities. Practical reasons suggest the entrances of the two harbors and the canal for the imperial moat should have been different and separated.

This, according to the descriptions we have found, was the center of the antediluvian world, the capital of Atlantis, the “Great Babylon” of the Apostle John, destroyed by the Deluge about 11.600 years ago and, since then, buried under the ices of the ice packs of Filchner and Lassiter, in Antarctica.

Here, on a hill of Berkner island, the cultures of the whole world, including our western culture, have their roots.

The pack ice is constantly moving, and it certainly has discharged in the sea everything that was on the plane, eroding it till the rock. But on the top of the hill there could still be areas not touched by the moving ices. Under the millenary snow, there should be the ultimate proofs of the theory presented here.