Ne-Mu
Demigods or giants recalled by the Kai of New Guinea, the Ne-Mu are said to have been much taller and stronger than today’s men, and ruled the world before the Great Deluge. They introduced agriculture and house-building to Kai ancestors. When the Flood came, all the Ne-Mu were killed, but their bodies turned to great blocks of stone. This final feature of the myth betrays the Kai’s reaction to megalithic structures found occasionally in New Guinea, often composed of prodigious stonework they identify with the pre-Flood Ne-Mu.
Nemquetheba
Also Nemtherqueteba, another name of the Muysca flood hero, who arrived on the shores of Colombia following a fiery cataclysm in the Atlantic Ocean that destroyed his homeland.
Nephilim
Described in the Old Testament as a fallen race of giants, they ruled the world before the Great Flood, which obliterated their power. Their descendants, the Emin, “a people great, and many, and tall” (Deuteronomy 2:11), were also known as the Rephaim or Anakim, who perpetuated pre-deluge religious practices atop a sacred mountain, Seir. The Nephilim appear to have been late fourth-millennium b.c. Atlanteans.
Neptune
The Roman Poseidon. His name stems from the earlier Etruscan Nefthuns As the mythic creator of Atlantis, he symbolized either the natural forces which formed the basis of the city into alternating rings of land and water, or personified alien, pre-Atlantean culture-bearers who arrived at the island to found a hybrid civilization with the natives. In Plato’s account, the sea-god mates with an indigenous woman to sire the first kings of Atlantis.
Nereides
Daughters of Nereus and Doris, both oceanic deities. Although fleetingly mentioned by Plato, they are significant because the Nereides were poetic descriptions of dolphins ridden by very young men. The famous “Boy on a Dolphin” was the emblem of an Atlantean mystery school, which initiated male youth into personal spiritual development through intimate rapport with dolphins, what today would be understood as a kind of inter-species communication with a strong religious emphasis. Like their avatar, the dolphin, the Nereides were notable for their devoted protection of shipwrecked humans. They were also said to be oracular, a suggestion of their cultic function.
Some Nereide names are overtly Atlantean: Arethusa, after the mother of the Hyade Atlantises; Calypso, an Atlantis; Leukothe, after Leukippe, the first woman of Atlantis; Plexaura and Pasithea, after the Atlantean Hyades, Plexarus and Pasitheo, respectively; and so on. In Greek myth, the Nereides are given as 50, but in Kritias they number twice as many attendants of the sea-god, Poseidon, as consistent with Plato’s (or possibly Solon’s) error in translating numerical values from the original Egyptian account of Atlantis into Greek. As such, it represents contributing internal evidence for the overstated size and age of Atlantis in the Dialogues.
Neshanu
Creator-god of the North American Pawnee Indians, he was so disgusted by man’s cruelty and disrespect, he commanded a worldwide deluge to destroy all but a few individuals. These he changed into seeds. After the flood, Neshanu harvested an ear and molded it into Mother Corn. She went about the Earth, finding the hidden grains, released the survivors, then taught them the arts, ceremonies, and agriculture. Her work done, Neshanu transformed her once more into a cedar. Ever since, the tree has been venerated as a sacred, living memorial to the Great Flood and the reeducation, that is to say, cultivation of its chosen survivors, their ancestors.
The Pawnee version shares a major theme—the corruption of mankind— with Plato’s Atlantis account, and explains the universal North American reverence for cedar as a holy wood. Pacific Northwest Coast tribes carve their so-called “totem poles,” which sometimes symbolize the Great Flood, from cedar.
Netamaki
The Delaware Indians tell how their virtuous ancestors were subverted by Powako, a high priest, who instituted Intake, or self-indulgent serpent-worship. To chastise them, a terrible cataclysm drowned their luxuriant homeland. “All this happened very long ago,” states the Delaware Hymn of the Flood, “at the first land, Netamaki, beyond the great ocean, Kitahikan (the Atlantic).” Obviously, Netamaki is a Delaware cultural inflection of Plato’s Atlantis.
The New Atlantis
A 1629 Utopian novel by Francis Bacon, it was the first written discussion of Atlantis since the fall of classical civilization and probably sparked Athanasius Kircher’s interest in the subject, when he published his own scientific study of Atlantis in The Subterranean World, 36 years later. Although a work of fiction, The New Atlantis came about through excited discussions in contemporary scholarly circles of reports from travelers to America. They stated that the indigenous peoples had oral accounts of a land comprising numerous points in common with Plato’s sunken civilization. The New Atlantis actually incorporates some Atlanto-American myths Bacon heard repeated in London.
Ngaru
The leading culture hero of Mangaia Island, he was said to have defeated Miru, the Underworld god, by unleashing a flood so colossal it extinguished the fires of hell.
Nichant
The Gros-Ventre Indians remember Nichant as the god who sent a punishing “fire from heaven” to burn up sinful humanity. Those who survived were mostly killed by a global deluge he caused immediately thereafter to extinguish the conflagration, lest it incinerate the rest of the world.
Nina Stahu
In tribal myth, the name of a cavern in which the ancestors of North America’s Blackfoot Indians sought refuge from the Great Flood. They later emerged reborn as a new people.
The story of Nina Stahu is the mythic background for kiva rituals, wherein participants emerge from a subterranean chamber while being doused with water, as a symbolic reenactment of ancestral survival from the Deluge.
Ninella
In Babylonian myth, the name of a mother goddess said to have been worshiped before the World Flood, in which Ninella perished.
Nirai-Kanai
A culture hero cited throughout the oral traditions of the Ryukyu Islands, south of Japan. Nirai-Kanai was said to have arrived very long ago from his enlightened kingdom, far over the sea, where it was swallowed in a tempest of fire and storm. He taught the natives how to cultivate cho-mei-gusa, the “plant of immortality,” and built the first stone castles in the islands. Coincidentally (?), his legend is venerated at Okinawa and Yonaguni, where underwater ruins were discovered in the mid-1980s and late 90s. Nirai-Kanai is also “The Homeland Very Far Away In The Sea,” regarded as a kingdom from which the forefathers of the Japanese Ama arrived after it was engulfed in the western Pacific Ocean.
Noah
Although he appears in Genesis, Noah is certainly not an original biblical conception. Virtually his entire story was lifted from Assyrian, Babylonian, Akkadian, Eblamite, Sumerian, and other Mesopotamian traditions which predated the bible, sometimes by thousands of years. He was cited to lend legitimacy to the pedigree of the Hebrew patriarchs, who claimed to trace their lineage from Noah.
The name is a corruption of Nu, or Nun, the Egyptian god of the primordial deep, who submerged the first “mound” on which gods and men once lived in harmony. “Noah” was taken directly from Ma-Nu, Nun’s cohort and goddess of the ancient ocean, and embodiment of the Great Flood, as it was known both in the Nile Valley and the Indus Valley. The Hebrew letter, nun, means “fish.” Even the Hebrew “ark” was originally the Sumerian arghe, a “moon vessel” that rode out the Deluge millennia before the Old Testament version was composed.
Noatun
Literally, the “Enclosure of Ships,” a variant in Germanic myth of Atlantis; palace of the Norse sea-god Njord, at the bottom of the ocean. “Noatun” is also a segment in the Nordic zodiac equivalent to Pisces, the Fish, a sign that concludes on the vernal equinox, March 21, Njord’s feast day. Noatun’s philological similarity to the biblical Noah suggests it is a variant on an original Atlantean name both Norse and Hebrews received independently from a common source—namely, one of the Atlantis catastrophes.
Nostradamus
Born Michel de Nostredame in Saint-Remy, France, December 14, 1503, he is history’s most famous astrologer. During his mid-40s, Nostradamus began making prophecies, which he published as a topic, in 1555. It is composed of rhymed quatrains, or four-lined stanzas, grouped in hundreds; each set of 100 quatrains was identified as a “century.” Hence, its title, Centuries. Its popularity was so widespread, especially in high places, he dedicated an enlarged, second edition to the King. Having thus gained royal favor, Nostradamus was everywhere in demand. Catherine de Medici invited him to cast the horoscopes of her children, and he became the personal physician to Charles IX, who ascended the French throne in 1560.
Because of these important political contacts, Vatican hostility was postponed, but inevitable. In 1781, the Roman Catholic Church officially condemned Nostradamus, his prophecies, and any Catholics who read them, under the inquisitorial Congregation of the Index. This was a body of bishops and cardinals who busied themselves with rooting out perceived heresies. Since then, the “centuries” of Nostradamus have gained international attention for many predictions that have apparently come to pass, and especially because at least some of those which are yet unfulfilled seem strangely relevant to our time.
One of his prophecies may be an enigmatic reference to the future discovery of Atlantis. It reads:
Le camp Ascop de Europe partira,
(The Ascop company leaves Europe,)
S’adjoignantproche d’ I’sle submergee
(Approaching in concert the sunken island)
D’ Arton classe phalange pliera Nobril du Monde.
(with Arton’s tight group of individuals united for a common
purpose near the Navel of the World:)
plus grand voix subrogee.
(a greater voice will [then] be subrogated by a lesser one; or, a great voice will be substituted [then] for another.)
Like all his prophecies, Century II.22 is open to interpretation. Nonetheless, Nostradamus refers to “l’sle submergee” as “Nobril du Monde”; Atlantis, “the sunken island,” was also known as the “Navel of the World.” His “classe phalange” suggests highly motivated investigators working together on a common project. He implies that two different groups will cooperate: Ascop and Arton. Neither have been certainly identified with anything known before or since the 16th century. They are more like modern amalgams for industrial firms, perhaps different research companies cooperating in a common underwater investigation. “Plus grand voix subrogee” hints that the long-standing opinion, or “voice” of conventional scientists, who insist that Atlantis was strictly legendary, will be displaced by Ascop and Arton’s joint discovery of archaeological evidence establishing the city’s physical existence.
The two best-known prophets in history—Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce— both spoke of Atlantis.
Nowah’wus
Cheyenne name for Bear Butte, a 1,200-foot high mountain standing alone in a South Dakota prairie not far from the Black Hills. Geologically, the formation is classified as a laccolith, an irregularly formed body of solidified magma intruded between layers of sedimentary rock, making them bulge outward, about .5 million years ago. Together with Minnesota’s Pipestone, Bear Butte was and is the most sacred site dedicated to the Great Flood, and a pilgrimage center for tribes from all over North America. Bear Butte was the scene for the Mandans’ mee-nee-ro-da-ha-sha, or “Settling of the Waters.” The performance of this annual ritual was an adjunct to their Okipa commemorative ceremony intended to prevent a recurrence of the cataclysm by assuring the Great Spirit that the Mandans had kept his laws and sacrificing sharp-edged implements symbolic of the tools which made the “big canoe” in which the deluge-survivors saved themselves.
The mee-nee-ro-da-ha-sha took place when the willow leaf was in full growth at mid-spring, because it was a leaf from this plant that was brought back in the bill of a turtle dove to Nu-mohk-muck-a-na, the Mandan flood hero, as a sign that “The Settling of the Waters” had begun. He then followed the bird’s flight to Bear Butte, where Nu-mahk-muck-nan instituted the commemorative mee-nee-ro-da-ha-sha ceremony. Ever since, both the dove and the willow leaf were revered as the Indians’ most sacred images.
Resemblance of Nu-mohk-muck-a-na to the biblical Noah is remarkable, even to the Cheyenne name for the butte, Noawah’wus. Sioux Indians refer to the laccolith as Mato Paha, or “Bear Butte,” supposedly because it resembles a crouching bear when seen from the northeast. Be that as it may, more cogently, the bear symbolizes regeneration after a death-like winter hibernation. It awakens with the onset of spring, when the willow leaf is in full bloom, signaling the beginning of the mee-nee-ro-da-ha-sha ceremony. So too, the Atlantean people were reborn after the death of their homeland, commemorated at Mato Paha, in the survivors who settled among the Mandan.
The site may have been originally chosen for the mee-nee-ro-da-ha-sha because of its physical resemblance to Atlantis. From the mid-spring celebration until early fall, Bear Butte stands towering among waving prairies resembling a great island in the sea.
Ntlakapamuk
A British Columbian tribe in residence at the Thompson River. Ntlakapamuk shamans speak of a time when the Earth was consumed by a fire so universal only a worldwide flood succeeded in extinguishing it.
Nuadu
He led one of several waves of refugees from the final destruction of Atlantis to Ireland, where they battled the resident Fomorach, themselves descended from earlier Atlantean settlers, led by Eochaid. In the decisive Battle of Mag Turied, Nuadu lost his left arm, so he called for a truce. During negotiations that followed, Eochaid rejected the proposed terms, so Nuadu had him assassinated before the Fomorach king could return to his people. Due to his infirmity, Nuadu abdicated thereafter.
Numbers
In Kritias, Plato wrote that the numbers 5 and 6 were sacred in Atlantis, where they were encoded in architecture, art, and ceremonial life “to honor the odd and even days.” The Atlanteans’ choice of these numerals reflects their holistic religion, the “Navel of the World,” whose adherents strove for spiritual synthesis and balance. The number 5 represents the male principle of conscious outward action, while 6 stands for female intuitive receptivity.
Numinor
Atlantis in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy, Lord of the Rings, before the kingdom vanished beneath the sea. Following the deluge, it was known as Atalante. Tolkien claimed to have been plagued since childhood by nightmares he believed were past-life memories of the Atlantean catastrophe, but they never returned to disturb his sleep after he wrote about Numinor-Atalante. His son, too, experienced similar nightmares, but they ceased, as well, with the same description. Numinor was also known as Ele’na and Westernesse.
Nu-mohk-muck-a-na
The “first” or “only man” to survive the Great Flood, impersonated by an actor in an annual religious ceremony conducted by North Dakota’s Mandan Indians. He portrayed Nu-mohk-muck-a-na, his body painted overall with white clay to resemble a white man, then entered the village from the east, the direction in which their ancestors arrived from the Deluge. There he was welcomed by all the chiefs, as though for the first time. Following their official greeting, he entered a secluded medicine lodge, where he participated in secret rituals. Emerging later, the impersonated Nu-mohk-muck-a-na stopped before each family lodge, where he wailed until he was asked what ailed him. He always replied that he was sad because he was the “only man” to survive a horrible flood which destroyed the outside world. He escaped in a “big canoe” which came to rest on a mountaintop in the West.
Nurrundere
An Australian culture hero who eventually became the supreme being. Upon attaining that august position, Nurrundere unleashed a universal deluge that drowned his own wives (an illimitable number) and their families for their wickedness.
Nyoe
The “New Land,” an island that appeared from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean several miles out from Iceland, in 1783. Nyoe was so large it featured great cliffs. Within a year of its emergence, however, it collapsed back into the sea. Atlantologists cite Nyoe to show that the former existence and final disappearance of Atlantis is within the geologic experience of the Atlantic Ocean.
Ireland’s New Grange is rife with Atlantean implications.
