The Shepherd's Journal: The Map to Atlantis

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