If Atlantis is history's greatest jigsaw puzzle, the Shepherd's Journal is
its most coveted text.
 |
| The Mythical World of Atlantis, the companion booklet to the Disney anime, Atlantis, The Lost Empire |
Now here's a cause for speculation;
imagine that a shepherd (by all means, uneducated) and considered a lunatic in
his time authored man's most elusive literary work. Disney's fictional grimoire
is a bit of an internet sensation, as well. When I created an article comparing
the
Shepherd's Journal with Lovecraft's Necronomicon, I didn't have the
slightest idea I was on to something. But here I am today to tell you the page views
that post has received speak for the popularity of the two fictional grimoire of
forbidden lore. (It's been viewed about 3,000 times!) And it's all thanks to Google search redirects-surfers, it appears-just never get enough of the
Shepherd's Journal.
And there's the reason for this hard,
short look at the mystery of the book called the Shepherd's Journal and
formerly, the Scrolls of Aziz; it comes shuttling through the foyer of popular
demand. At least, surfers now have an alternative text discussing the respected
grimoire besides the fact it's on the same blog (well, it's my idea, isn't
it?). And though this post may not be as big a hit as it's harbinger, it'll
serve as a much-needed supplementary component that improves intelligence on
the revered journal.
The bulk of details I'll be dribbling
about has been acquired from The Mythical World of Atlantis—Theories of the
Lost Empire from Plato to Disney, the companion booklet to the Disney
anime, Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Every time you read the phrase, the
booklet on this page, I refer to this single companion text.
It was authored by an Arab called Aziz,
a shepherd who was considered a lunatic in his own time. The work itself was
first thought to be the writings of a mad man, but later proved to be a
detailed account of Aziz' encounter with a vast underground civilization
assumed to be Atlantis.
Aziz,
the shepherd while tending his sheep, slipped through a rift in the ground and
disappeared only to resurface a full two years later babbling gibberish.
The Shepherd's Journal is said to be a
firsthand account of the lost Empire of Atlantis and its exact location.
Formerly known as the Scrolls of Aziz before Pope Sixtus V rechristened it the
Shepherd's Journal, the text was originally in scroll format before monks cut
them and bound them into journal format adding illustrations to the material.
It came into the hands of the monks when a Turkish fortune hunter who stole the
grimoire for its value from the library in Constantinople, took ill and died
while receiving treatment in their monastery. But before revealing the
importance of the journal to these monks.
The Greeks were the first to study the
journal and discovered the text was written in Atlantean (language of
Atlantis). Solon who proposed the journal was written in Atlantean language
showed the journal to Plato.
Charlemagne took the journal to
Constantinople where it was stolen and ended up in Lindisfarne. The Vikings plundered
Lindisfarne and took the text to Iceland. After the Viking expedition to
Atlantis was destroyed Thorfinn, the sole survivor of the expedition returned
the journal to Iceland.
 |
| The fictional book, The Shepherd's Journal as seen in the animated film, Atlantis: The Lost Empire |
Vespucci, the Portuguese explorer was
gifted the journal by the Mayans who considered it an honorable gift. Vespucci,
after fruitless efforts in interpreting the content, took it to his friend,
Leonardo Da Vinci to decipher it. According to the booklet, Da Vinci was
perhaps, the first modern man to fully translate the Atlantean language. The
journal documented the fact that the sun does not move long before Galileo and
his companions came on the scene.
Da Vinci was left-handed, and after he
saw the journal, he had taken to writing from right to left so that his notes
could only be read in a mirror. Da Vinci
was probably afraid his writing would be controversial, if not heretical.
Benjamin
Franklin mentions studying the Shepherd's Journal during a visit to Versailles
in 1788, in his diaries.
Napoleon's troops recovered the
long-lost journal in Egypt. They stored it there for a time, with other artifacts,
which included the Rosetta Stone. It got into the hands of the British who
shipped it to Great Britain where it was stored in the British museum. Scholars
of the day thought the journal of no particular historical significance and it
was given to the British library.
Ignatius Donnelly, an American senator
with Irish ancestry borrowed from the British museum and smuggled it to Ireland
and then to Iceland. It remained there until the Whitmore-Thatch expedition retrieved
it and brought it to Washington for study. It is the same Thatch who became the
grandfather of Milo James Thatch—the cartographer and linguist. Milo formed a
part of the team, which discovered Atlantis in the animated movie.
You can believe any of the facts about
the Shepherd's Journal so long as you keep it at the back of your mind that the
journal itself was nothing but a plot device.
Keep your pen bleeding.
Akpan
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