At this point I would like to set a small excerpt. It is taken from the second chapter, the legend on the history and tradition will be discussed in more detail:
. . . "There are in Egypt, Delta, headed by the Nile splits, a country district, called the Saite, the largest city of Sais is, from which the king also came Amasis. This city has a protective goddess in Egyptian tongue Neith, in Hellenic, as they say, Athena was told.
begins with these words the narrative of the Critias. During the last flowering of Egyptian culture, the Nile Delta had cultural and political center and the residence of Sais. The time period, during which Solon Egypt stayed, is now referred to as "Saitic period (664-525 BC). The land of the Nile could look back at these times to a thousand year old changing history. As it had known the Egyptians that the era of the Pharaohs is slowly coming to an end, just found this in Saite period, a return to traditional values, which sometimes drove quite bizarre flowers. The ritual of the dead service of the kings of the old empire was resumed, there were occasionally repaired even pyramids again. Officials adorned with offices titles of the Old Empire and the religious cult has been cleansed of foreign and new influences. Particularly die Priester bewahrten das Wissen um die lange Geschichte des Pharaonenreiches und auch sehr alte Texte wurden noch gelesen und bewahrt.
Die antike Stadt Sais liegt heute in Trümmern und Nilschlamm bedeckt die alten Säulenhallen und Tempel. Allerdings rückt das Nildelta immer mehr in das Blickfeld der Archäologen und auch Sais (heute Sa el-Hagar) selbst ist in den letzten Jahren zum Ziel von Grabungskampagnen geworden. Den Tempel der Stadtgöttin Neith, deren Kult die Priester, mit denen Solon sprach, wahrscheinlich angehörten, vermutet man bei Kom Farray, nördlich von Sa el-Hagar. Bereits vor über 150 Jahren lokalisierten Wilkinson und Champollion den Tempel in der südlichen Hälfte einer noch heute sichtbaren, approximately rectangular approximately 0.5-acre enclosure. Champollion even wrote a plan of the building was still visible, including the temple. Today, nothing is to locate it. Probably suffered the fate of many monuments of Egyptian antiquities, and were used as a quarry.
Somewhere around much of this temple could be the conversation between Solon and the priests have taken place. During his conversation with the Egyptian priests Solon recognizes that the priests preserved ancient traditions, which could only dream of a learned Greek. To elicit the priests that knowledge begins tell it to, from the oldest traditions of the Greeks. The reaction follows immediately:
"As I said a high of aged priest: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes will always children, brings to the old men but no Hellene - Why What do you mean he...!.? . when he heard this, asked the young souls who have those answers, are you all, for it entertains them in any old opinion, founded on ancient tales still a gray-haired by the time knowledge ".
The priest begins to speak of major disasters that have struck the earth again and again. Both were caused by fire and by water the peoples of the earth has been threatened repeatedly. In this way, the written records were also destroyed and so the Greeks would have no knowledge of these events. Only the Egyptians had been largely spared from flood and fire, so have kept their ancient scriptures. The astonished Solon told that was told in these documents even from an early Athens, which was located with a mysterious power in the war...
The priest says that this island of Atlantis sent a large army of assisting the countries around the to submit to the Mediterranean. The Atlantic empire was ruled by several kings who also "many islands" and ruled over parts of the mainland. Their influence extended in Europe to Tyrrhenia and Libya, now North Africa, to Egypt. Athens soon stood alone against a superior enemy, and was abandoned by the rest of the Greeks alone. At this critical moment the tide turned: Atlantis was beaten and free the conquered lands again.
Now follow the well-known lines from the report of the priest:
"But since occurred in later times violent earthquakes and floods, sank in that only a bad day and a bad night came on, your army as a whole and with suddenly under the earth, and in the same manner was also the island of Atlantis sink into the sea through the eyes removed. This is also the local sea has become impassable and undurchforschbar because of the located in shallow mud, leaving the sinking island, became a hindrance....
