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the Ancient Historians

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Apollo
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« on: February 08, 2007, 10:51:42 am »

The following will feature excerpts and analysis towards what the ancients have managed to tell us about their world:

6. Refining the Ore: The Text of Hanno’s Voyage in Detail

(Beginning)

In lieu of internal evidence I accept the remarks of Pliny (V,1,8) to give us perspective:

Fuere et Hannonis Cartaginiensium ducis comentarii Punicis rebus florentissimis explorare ambitum Africae iussi, quem secuti plerique a Graecis nostrisque et alia quidem fabulosa et urbes multas ab eo conditas ibi prodidere, quarum nec memoria ulla nec vestigium exstat.

(“There were records of the Carthaginian commander Hanno, who, during the golden age of the Punic state was ordered to explore the circuit of Africa, and who is followed by most Greek and Roman writers and in their accounts of marvels and cities founded by him of which neither memory nor trace remains.”)

Many moderns have uncritically cited this passage as evidence that Hanno’s account was lost in Pliny’s time, since he speaks of it in the past tense; yet this will not do, since we have seen above that he matter-of-factly lists it in his bibliography.

The time frame is vague: “the golden age of the Punic state” may have conveyed a definite era to Pliny’s readers, but not to me. On the other hand, the phrase “of which neither memory nor trace remains” does suggest antiquity. We can narrow things down if we can verify another of Pliny’s assertions, that Hanno’s Voyage is the source for subsequent writers: if we establish that, say, Eratosthenes quotes from our text, and we know that he lived in the third century B.C., then we know that our text must date from before that time, and the events it describes must have happened even earlier. We will in fact show this kind of “descent” from Hanno’s Voyage by internal evidence in a variety of authors as we proceed: we will see that they drew not on a Punic document, but on at least two foreign-language paraphrases, of which only our present Greek text survives. We infer this from the way these writers’ work was skewed by uncomprehendingly following mistranslated or misunderstood Punic words: these errors act as “tracers” that identify a common source. Pliny must have known the other, lost version, as we will see in the notes to §10.

Pliny also preserves an account (V,1,9) of a Roman expedition into the Carthaginian Atlantic after the Third Punic War.

Scipione Aemiliano res in Africa gerente Polybius annalium conditor ab eo accepta classe scrutandi illius orbis gratia…

(“When Scipio Aemilianus was in command of Africa he put a fleet at the disposal of the historian Polybus for the purpose of exploring that part of the globe…”)

Pliny’s account of this Roman expedition is interesting: it contains less ethnography than Hanno’s Voyage, but more geography, and is quite detailed in its description of the African coast beyond the Straits, which will give us clues toward the meaning of unclear passages in our text.

There are two hands involved with this text: the author of the lost Punic original (whom I will personify as “A”), and the author of the later Greek translation that has survived (whom I will call “T”).

Before considering the text as T left it, let us try to imagine how he found it. What was the form, the medium of the Punic original? In the title we are told that it was exhibited in the temple of Kronos; I will assume that the original Hanno’s Voyage looked like the series of inscriptions on plates of gold discovered at Pyrgi, just north of Rome, in 1964. The Pyrgi plates are gold, and have holes that appear to have been nail-holes, as if they had been posted. This would account for the spareness of the language in Hanno’s Voyage and the modular nature of its narrative.

(One of the Pyrgi plates, incidentally, is in Punic, and thus may guide our mind’s eye with considerable precision as to the appearance of each of the tablets in A’s series. It is unfortunately less helpful as to content, since it is not a historical narrative. The three Pyrgi tablets record a diplomatic exchange between an Etruscan king and a king of Tyre. The first, in Etruscan, is what we would now call a cover letter that accompanied a gift from the Phoenician king; the next is a thank-you note in Punic from the Etruscan king; the third is a proclamation in Etruscan telling all and sundry of how respectfully the Tyrian king’s gift was received. At least, that is the best guess as of this writing; there are still many loose ends in these difficult inscriptions [the interested reader is referred to Prof. Fell’s groundbreaking 1977 article and my 1991 follow-up in the References]).

I will assume that T preserved the correct order of the tablets, since I see no indication to the contrary. I suggest that the title was not part of the original series, but T’s composition, not so much because it is redundant, but because, as we will see, its syntax, although awkward in Greek, is downright impossible in Punic: T is showing off. A’s work begins with #1, but we note that in that passage Hanno is “he;” thereafter, everything is “we,” which suggests that A was working from a source close to the event: perhaps even Hanno’s own log.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:JOOsrj3OcXEJ:www.skupinbooks.com/books/Voyage_in_Detail.doc+Lissa+and+Cotte&hl=en
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Apollo
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« Reply #1 on: February 08, 2007, 10:52:57 am »

We will proceed passage by passage, recapitulating the text and Ponce’s translation, with the words that merit detailed discussion in boldface.

ΑΝΝΩΝΟΣ
ΚΑΡΧΗΔΟΝΙΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ
ΠΕΡΙΠΛΟΥΣ ΤΩΝ ΥΠΕΡ ΤΑΣ ΗΡΑΚΛΕΟΥΣ ΣΤΗΛΑΣ ΛΙΒΥΚΩΝ ΤΗΣ ΓΗΣ
ΜΕΡΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΑΝΕΘΗΚΕΝ ΕΝΤΩ ΤΟΥ ΚΡΟΝΟΥ ΤΕΜΕΝΕΙ ΔΗΛΟΥΝΤΑ ΤΑΔΕ

CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THOSE PARTS OF THE LIBYAN LAND
WHICH ARE BEYOND THE PILLARS OF HERCULES,
BY HANNO, KING OF THE CARTHAGINIANS;
THAT WHICH HE DEDICATED IN THE TEMPLE OF KRONOS
IS SHOWN HERE:

ΑΝΝΩΝΟΣ
(han'nos)

It is useless to try to date this text by matching it with a historical personage of this name; Hanno (the root meaning is “favor”) was a common name throughout Carthage’s history.

ΚΑΡΧΗΔΟΝΙΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ
(karkhdo´nin basile´s).

Taken at face value, this would seem be a contradiction: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ (basile´us) means “king,” but Carthage had no kings; instead she had sufetes, “high commissioners” (the word is cognate with the Hebrew title of the Book of Judges), who were appointed by the Carthaginian senate.

Rather than merely sweep this anomaly under the rug, let us assume that the text means what it says. True, Carthage had a senate; so did Rome. Yet Rome in her earliest days had kings, as befitted times when the energies of the citizenry were directed toward the rough-and-ready skills of defense and construction, where government was unsubtle and practical; and the infancy of Rome’s great rival must have been the same.

Iura dabat legesque viris, operumque laborem
partibus aequabat iustis, aut sorte trahebat: Aeneid I, 507-8

(“She gave out ordinances and laws to men,
she distributed tasks fairly, or decided by lot:”)

Thus Vergil pictures Dido, the exiled Sidonian queen, overseeing the founding of Carthage (contemporary with the 753 B.C. founding of the Eternal City, according to the Romans, but more likely some decades earlier). But between these uncomplicated beginnings, where the monarch was as much a foreman as a legislator, and the scheming, too-clever-by-half senate that presided over the catastrophic end of Carthaginian power (the second Punic War ended in 202 B.C.), nothing is known of how the government of Carthage evolved from one system to the other. With our ignorance in mind, we could stick to knowns: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ means “king,” and that is that. Hanno’s voyage, then, would have happened very early, when Carthage was run by kings (or whatever the strongmen called themselves). In favor of this approach is the fact that Carthaginian seafaring does seem to have begun earlier in its history rather than later, which we can deduce from the dates of the ancient authors who reported them second hand: as an example of this, we will shortly consider a passage from the work of one Hecataeus of Miletus, who mentions (in slightly garbled form) two of the towns on Hanno’s itinerary. Hecataeus died in about 476 B.C., so the source he used (which was not necessarily our text) must have antedated that year, and the actual events must have been even earlier.

Against this interpretation is the fact that Pliny refers to Hanno (VI, 31) as imperator (“commander”) and (V,1,1) as dux (“leader”), titles that in Rome were granted by the Senate, and thus suggestive of a constitutional government (and hence later in Carthaginian history). Still more telling is the opening of §1, that “it pleased the Carthaginians” that Hanno should sail, which fits a commissioner better than a strongman.

With the internal evidence in mind, then, T’s use of ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ might suggest incompetence in Punic. A closer look suggests the reverse, that T is in fact hyper-Punic, which will account for many of the obscurities in this text. We note first that in the Punic Pyrgi inscription the Etruscan princeling refers to himself as (P) מלכעלכישריא (mlk ~l kysry-, “king over Caere;” as I mentioned earlier, I use “~ “to transcribe ayin, a gagging sound that doesn’t exist in English); thus if A in fact wrote (P) מלך, he could have meant nothing more precise than “in authority.” Indeed the Oxford Latin Dictionary cites an equally pertinent passage in Cornelius Nepos (Hannibal, 7,4):

(Hannibal) praetor factus est, postquam rex fuerat…: ut enim Romae consules, sic Karthagine quotannis annui bini reges creabantur.

(“[Hannibal] became a magistrate, afterward was king…: for as at Rome consuls were created, in the same way at Carthage every year a pair of kings were.”)

Thus we see that (P) מלך may have been no more than a synonym for sufes, “high commissioner,” and thus T was thinking more in Punic than in Greek. He may also have been thinking etymologically: משל (MuShiL, “in charge”) is an attested Punic word, and, since it is common for Punic m to become b, he may have had the following sound-shift in mind:

MShL à MSL à BSL à ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ

thereby anticipating by millennia Gesenius’ bold suggestion (Lexicon, s.v.) that ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ is a loan word from this Semitic root.

Thus, we account for Hanno’s apparent promotion from (probable) “high commissioner” to (anachronistic) “monarch” by T’s Punic “accent.” We will also note that T transcribes Carthaginian words without explanation, even when the result is a malapropism, an apparently Greek word of a different meaning: see the notes on ΕΣΠΕΡΟΥ ΚΕΡΑΣ (hespe´rou ke´ras) and ΝΟΤΟΥ ΚΕΡΑΣ (no´tou ke´ras) below. Consider also the grammatical note that follows. Previous analyses have been led astray by taking T’s peculiar bull-headedness at face value.

ΤΩΝ ΥΠΕΡ ΤΑΣ ΗΡΑΚΛΕΟΥΣ ΣΤΗΛΑΣ ΛΙΒΥΚΩΝ ΤΗΣ ΓΗΣ ΜΕΡΩΝ
(tn hyper´ tas herakle´ous st´las libyk´n ts gs mer´n)

Literally “of the…over the Pillars of Hercules…of the Libyan…of the land…of the parts” (the italics mark the words that go together grammatically, though separated). Here I disagree with Müller and the earlier savant he cites (“Klugius,” surely Klug or Kluge), who assert that this sprawling phrase betrays a Punic accent. I say that spare, straightforward Punic could never have supported so tangled an utterance; rather, that T got carried away with the possibilities of his adopted Greek, where words can be “tagged” by suffixes, and thus linked grammatically, even if they stand apart. The Greeks themselves preferred sensible word-groupings, but evidently T wrote with abandon, not realizing how artificial his creation was, rather like the way the modern student of German sometimes goes through a phase of coining outlandishly long words. T’s stiltedness here is not a holdover from his Punic language background; it comes rather from his intoxication with the possibilities of Greek.

ΥΠΕΡ ΤΑΣ ΗΡΑΚΛΕΟΥΣ ΣΤΗΛΑΣ
(hype´r tas hera´kleous st´las)

It is common to consider the Pillars of Hercules as the Strait of Gibraltar, but this is a modern notion. The ancients had no idea where they were, beyond their being at the western edge of the Mediterranean, as we see from Strabo’s very lengthy list (III,5,5) of the opinions of other geographers, cited (and condensed) in Ramin: mountains in Libya, various pairs of islands, or (best from the standpoint of the meaning of the Greek words) simply two brass columns located in the temple of Hercules in Cadiz, where mariners would give thanks after voyages. (One wonders: voyages to where?)

We note that two-column ornaments abound with the Phoenicians: Eusebius, in his description of the Phoenician religion (Prep. Evan. I, 10, 10) relates how a hero named ΟΥΣΩΟΣ (Oúsos), the first navigator, after his venture onto the sea, ΑΝΙΕΡΩΣΑΙ ΔΕ ΔΥΟΣΤΗΛΑΣ

ΠΥΡΙ ΚΑΙ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙ “dedicated two pillars, to fire and wind;” and when Hiram of Tyre (the builder, not the king) aided Solomon in the construction of the Temple, we read (I Kings 7:15) that שני העמודים נחשת–ויצר את (“and he cast two bronze pillars”). Instead of being “fire and wind,” they are given Biblical personal names, יכין (YaKiYN) and בעז (Bo~aZ). Or are they? LXX calls the first pillar ΙΑΧΟΥΜ (iakhoum); since the second syllable is different, then we can only be sure of the first, the “iak-;” and this is similar to the first syllable of יקד (YaQaD, “burning). Could this have been a Punic euphemism in deference to Israelite sensitivities? “Boaz,” on the other hand seems to have nothing to do with “wind,” which in Hebrew is רוח (RuaKh). The similarity of B and P, however, brings פוח (PuaKh, “blowing”) to mind. Another euphemism? We are too far away from the events to be precise.

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« Reply #2 on: February 08, 2007, 10:54:04 am »

Besides this general imprecision, there is the fact that the concept of “Pillars of Hercules” is a Greek notion, not a Punic one, so we can only guess at what A wrote.

The confusion increases when we note that in §1 we find Hanno sailing not “beyond the Pillars of Hercules” at all, but “from the Pillars,” ΕΞΩ ΣΤΗΛΩΝ ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙΩΝ (e´ks stl´n hraklei´n), and in §2 the wording suggests “through the Pillars.” Since T shows no interest in consistency, we infer that A’s original turn of phrase must have been vague, like “over the bounding main” or “the seven seas,” not a useful point of reference except for generally indicating the Atlantic or western Mediterranean.

Yet even at that we must be wary; Pliny (VI,xxxv,179) preserves a reference that mentions “pillars” clear on the other side of Africa.

Ephorus auctor est a Rubro Mari navigantis in eam non posse…ultra quasdam columnas (ita appellantur parvae insulae) provehi.

(“Ephorus writes that those sailing there from the Red Sea cannot proceed beyond The Columns [the name of some small islands]…”)

This will not be the last time we will find ambiguity and confusion over geography in ancient texts.

ΕΝ ΤΩ ΤΟΥ ΚΡΟΝΟΥ ΤΕΜΕΝΕΙ
(en ti tou kro´nou teme´nei)

This would have been redundant on tablets actually “in the temple of Kronos,” so I take this as indicating distance from the event, either geographic or temporal, and thus not A’s work. Looking specifically at ΤΟΥ ΚΡΟΝΟΥ, we note the thought-provoking contrast between the dedication “in the temple of Kronos” here and Pliny’s “in the temple of Juno” (VI,36). Kronos is identified with the Roman Saturn, which in a Carthaginian context recalls the first book of the Aeneid (ll. 13, 15-18), where Juno is identified by her epithet “Saturnia” (l.23), and is described as favoring Carthage.

Karthago…
quam Iuno fertur terris magis omnibus unam
posthabita coluisse Samo. hic illius arma,
hic currus fuit; hoc regnum dea gentibus esse,
si qua fata sinant, iam tum tenditque fovetque.

(“Carthage…which Juno, it is said, is to have favored more than any other place on earth, even more than Samos. Here were her arms and her chariot; and this was to be the ruler of nations, if the fates permitted, and she aided and strengthened it.”)

We note that in the Pyrgi inscriptions Juno (or Uni) was not merely a senior member of Jove’s harem; she is equated with Astarte, the Phoenician queen of heaven.

Yet why the confusion between Juno and Kronos? I suspect that there was an obscurity with the Punic root (P) מלך (MLK, “ruling,” the same word we have noted in the sense of “high commissioner”), which could be applied to the “queen” ([P] מלכת, MiLKaT[?]) of heaven who was ruling ([P] מלכת, MuLiKaT [?]) over Carthage, or the “dominion” ([P] מלכת, MaLKaT [?]) of another Punic deity, Moloch ([P] מלך, MuLiK [?]), identified with Saturn. Furthermore, Eusebius {whom I cite reluctantly, since he is a hostile witness, an enemy of the religion he discusses) writes that the god that corresponds to the Roman Vulcan was ΔΙΑ ΜΕΙΛΙΧΙΟΣ (“the god MeiLíKhios”), and that Hercules was called (op. cit. I, 10, 27) ΜΕΛΚΑΤΡΟΣ (MéLKatros), which is probably a careless rendering of MeLKaRT (ruler of the city [“city” is KRT in Phoenician]. The similarity of the Punic words accounts for the confusion in the Greek and Latin.

1. ΕΔΟΞΕ ΚΑΡΧΗΔΟΝΙΟΙΣ ΑΝΝΩΝΑ ΠΛΕΙΝ ΕΞΩ ΣΤΗΛΩΝ ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΟΛΕΙΣ ΚΤΙΖΕΙΝ ΛΙΒΥΠΗΟΙΝΙΚΩΝ. ΚΑΙ ΕΠΛΕΥΣΕ ΠΕΝΤΗΚΟΝΤΟΡΟΥΣ ΕΞΗΚΟΝΤΑ ΑΓΩΝ, ΚΑΙ ΠΛΗΘΟΣ ΑΝΔΡΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΓΥΝΑΙΚΩΝ ΕΙΣ ΑΡΙΘΜΟΝ ΜΥΡΙΑΔΩΝ ΤΡΙΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΣΙΤΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΗΝ ΑΛΛΗΝ ΠΑΡΑΣΚΕΥΗΝ.

It pleased the Carthaginians that Hanno should sail outside the Pillars of Hercules and build up the cities of the Libyphoenicians. He sailed transported by sixty ships, each one with fifty oarsmen, with a multitude of up to thirty thousand men and women, with provisions and war materiel besides.


ΕΔΟΞΕ
(e´dokse)

An anomaly, since longer Punic inscriptions usually include dates, at least a year, and often a month. The longer ones, however, are Phoenician rather than Carthaginian; indeed, it is not clear how Carthaginians expressed dates in the period before the Roman conquest and occupation.

Be that as it may, it is interesting to note that if the Punic original followed the Hebrew idiom here, there would have been a play on words: the second word in מצא חן בעינים (MaTsa- KheN Be~eYNaYiM, “it found favor in the eyes”) is the same as the root meaning of Hanno. To get the effect, let us avail ourselves of the fact that “Favor” is in fact a family name (although nowhere near so common as “Hanno” was in Carthage), and imagine the original thus:

(P) אחנ כ בניקרתחדשת בעינם חנ מצא

(“It found favor in the eyes of the Carthaginians that [Mr.] Favor [should sail]…”)

ΛΙΒΥΦΟΙΝΙΚΩΝ
(libyphoini´kn)
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Apollo
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« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2007, 03:11:43 pm »

We turn again to Schoff’s 1913 anthology: one article from it is worth citing here because it adduces an interesting scenario from this word, one that gives Hanno’s voyage a sinister tone. It is excerpted from R. Bosworth Smith’s Carthage and the Carthaginians (London, 1877).

All along the northern coast of Africa the original Phoenician settlers, and, probably, to some extent, the Carthaginians themselves, had intermarried with the natives. The product of these marriages was that numerous class of Libyphoenicians which proved to be so important in the history of Carthaginian colonization and conquest; a class which, equidistant from the Berbers on the one hand, and from the Carthaginians proper on the other, and composed of those who were neither wholly citizens nor yet wholly aliens, experienced the lot of most half castes and were alternately trusted and feared, pampered and oppressed, loved and hated, by the ruling state…To so vast an extent did Carthage carry out the modern principle of relieving herself of a superfluous population and at the same time of extending her empire, by colonization, that, on one occasion, the admiral Hanno, whose ‘Periplus’ still remains, was dispatched with sixty ships of war of fifty oars each, and with a total of not less that thirty thousand half-caste emigrants on board, for the purpose of founding colonies on the shores of the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

This suggests a dimension of cruelty to Hanno’s voyage. Was he dumping undesirables? I see nothing else in this text to corroborate Smith’s interpretation, but nothing against it, either.

ΠΕΝΤΗΚΟΝΤΟΡΟΥΣ ΕΞΗΚΟΝΤΑ
(pentkonto'rous heks'konta)

Although this doubtless conveyed a very clear picture to ancient readers, we moderns must go to specialists for insights. Paul Chapman, who has authored several fine books about ancient navigators, contributed several interesting ideas by letter after reading early drafts of this work. Relevant here is his observation that

A ship with fifty oarsmen would be approximately 150’ long -- twice as long as the Gokstad, which sailed the Atlantic.

This would seem to be right for carrying 500 passengers (since that is the arithmetic: 30,000 souls ÷ sixty ships = 500 on each ship). Lest the reader think this an impossible number for ancient times, let him follow Chapman’s reference to details that Luke includes in his account of another ancient voyage (Acts 27:37).

ΗΜΕΝ ΔΕ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΠΛΟΙΩ ΑΙ ΠΑΣΑΙ ΨΥΧΑΙ ΔΙΑΚΟΣΙΑΙ ΕΒΔΟΜΗΚΟΤΑΕΞ

(“And we were all in the ship two hundred threescore and sixteen souls.”)

A big ship, with two hundred and seventy-six passengers aboard; yet we read of a bigger one later (Acts 28:11).

ΜΕΤΑ ΔΕ ΤΡΕΙΣ ΜΗΝΑΣ ΑΝΗΧΤΗΜΕΝ ΕΝ ΠΛΟΙΩ ΠΑΡΑΚΕΧΕΙΜΑΚΟΤΙ ΕΝ ΤΗ ΝΗΣΩ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΙΝΩ ΠΑΡΑΣΗΜΩ ΔΙΟΣΚΟΥΡΟΙΣ

(“And after three months we departed in a ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux.”)

This rescue ship was itself big enough to take on an additional two hundred and seventy-six souls, beyond her own crew and any passengers she might have been carrying. These are not toy boats. Yet I suspect that a Punic reader would have taken note of the numbers rather than the word-picture: he would have been looking for a cue.

The reader familiar with Cyrus Gordon’s masterful analysis of the Paraiba Inscription has by now guessed the aspect of our text that has led previous scholars astray: the gratuitous numbers are a giveaway that it contains a cryptogram. We therefore will not take “sixty” at face value, nor will we laboriously plot Hanno’s course based on entries like “twelve days” here, “three islands” there, “fifteen stadia” around, and the like. This has already been done, and it leads nowhere.

For the reader unfamiliar with Prof. Gordon’s work, let us pause for background. The Paraiba Inscription, discovered in 1872 in Brazil, memorializes a Phoenician voyage to the New World in ancient times.

(In order to avoid tangling my line of argumentation, I will ask the reader at this point to suspend judgment as to the ancientness of the inscription, since a cryptogram is a cryptogram, whether new or old. I will deal with the loose ends of the Paraiba question in a forthcoming book, but for now will simply say “a plague on both your houses” to the learnèd on either side of the question: the “’tis” camp has lacked rigor in dealing with the fishy circumstances of the inscription’s discovery — if the reader will indulge an extension of the metaphor, they were oblivious to red herrings —, and the “’taint” camp has been so mesmerized by this fishiness that it has lacked rigor in examining the content of the text. My line of reasoning will not contradict Gordon’s analysis, but will consider parameters, non-linguistic ones, that he does not.)

Gordon argues for the antiquity of this inscription by internals, especially grammatical forms that were not understood or even known of until the twentieth century, and thus beyond the ken of any nineteenth-century forger. They were also beyond the ken of late-nineteenth-century Punic scholars (Movers, Gesenius and Schröder had passed on by then), but some of these savants of the second magnitude were nevertheless moved to uncomprehending pontifications to the effect that since the inscription was over their heads, it must have been a fraud. The affair quickly degenerated into a sorry soap opera; yet today there is no controversy: the peculiarities that left the learnèd of yesteryear feeling baffled and threatened are now clear even to a scholar of the third magnitude, and there are only two words (the first word of the last line and the word that ends lines three and seven) whose meanings are ambiguous (and hence left untranslated by Gordon).


1) We are sons of Canaan from Sidon, from the city where a merchant (prince) has been made king. He dispatched

2) us to this distant island, a land of mountains. We sacrificed a youth to the celestial gods

3) and goddesses in the nineteenth year of Hiram, our King. Abra!

4) We sailed from Ezion-Geber into the Red Sea and voyaged with ten ships.

5) We were at sea together for two years around Africa. Then we got separated

6) by the hand of Baal and we were no longer with our companions. So we have come here, twelve

7) men and three women, into one island, unpopulated because ten died. Abra!

Cool — May the celestial gods and goddesses favor us! (Riddles in History, p. 76)

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« Reply #4 on: February 16, 2007, 03:12:46 pm »

Phoenician inscriptions are frequently dated by the king’s regnal year, so the “nineteen” can be taken at face value; yet between the first and second abra (a word of uncertain meaning) the numbers seem aimless, and in the matter of the island simply do not add up. But note Gordon’s insight:

If we add the numbers in lines 4-7

10 ships (line 4)
2 years (line 5)
12 men (line 6)
3 women (line 7)
1 island (line 7)
10 who died (line 7)
we get as the total 38
which is twice the year date “19.”
(Riddles, p. 81)

What purpose would this serve? One answer is that the numbers make the inscription tamper-proof: if any additions or deletions were made, the numbers would not “flow,” as an accountant would say, which would alert an attentive reader that the text had been altered. Another reason is that it would seem to have been more or less expected, since number codes are so widely encountered in the ancient Mediterranean, from the Biblical 666 to artless graffiti in Pompeii, as included in Deissmann (p. 277): ΦΙΛΩ ΗΣ ΑΡΙΘΜΟΣ ΦΜΕ (phil' hs arithmo's…)}, "I love her whose number is 545," or Φ [500] + Μ [40] + Ε [5]).

Thus far we are talking about a cipher that comes through in translation: yet Gordon identifies other messages that are evident only in the Punic original, acrostics formed by the beginning and ending letters of each line, and related to the numerical value of the letters (inferring from Hebrew, where letters can function as numbers as well). I will not spell these out, since no paraphrase can do justice to Gordon’s original exposition, but let us apply the concept to Hanno’s Voyage, looking at it from a cryptographic standpoint.

First, let us consider the numbers. They seem to have the same aimlessness as the Paraiba Inscription, so let us ask if there is any indication of a cryptogram in what T has preserved. Ponce’s scrupulousness makes it plain that there is: she points out that in two instances in §8 (and only there) T writes teens oddly: "two" followed by an upper dot (ordinarily like a semicolon, but sometimes used to mean "-teen"), not "twelve" (which he writes out in full in §11); and "five" with the dot, not "fifteen." This surely mirrors the original, since in Punic usage teens are indicated by an upper dash: for “two,” || ; for “twelve” (which the Phoenicians considered “two-teen”), || ¯¯ ; “five,” || ||| ; “fifteen,” || |||¯¯. This gives us two ambiguous, "floating" numbers. We should also note that T wrote ΜΥΡΙΑΔΩΝ ΤΡΙΩΝ (myria'dn tri'n), which is not “thirty thousand,” but “three myriads,” a myriad being a unit of ten thousand. Hebrew has a word with this meaning, so we can assume a Punic equivalent.

The cryptogram is elegant, with 60 as the key, “ruled” by 3. First, we list the elements.


§1 sixty ships
three myriads
§2 two days
§8 two (or twelve) days
five (or fifteen) stadia
§9 three islands
§11 twelve days
§13 two days
§14 five days
§16 four days
§17 three days
§18 three women

Note that the fifty-oared ship is not a part of the cryptogram, but a Hellenism: this was the regular way to indicate a “cruiser” in Greek, rather like the way we mean “big truck” when we say “eighteen-wheeler.”

Dividing the elements into (what else?) three groups, we first note that

2 (days) × 2 (days) × 5 (stadia) × 3 (islands) = 60

With the two “floating” numbers we get

12 × 15 = 180 (which is 60 × 3)

The two tens expressed by dots, with the “ruling” 3, are

10 + 10 = 20 × 3 = 60

which, although not spectacular, is harmonious.

In the second part we multiply

12 (days) × 2 (days) × 5 (days) = 120

which is another way of saying that 120 is 60 × (part) 2.

In part 3 we have

4 (days) × 3 (days) × 3 (women) = 36

which may mean no more than 3 (parts) × 12 (elements); or we could avail ourselves of the two “floating” tens, multiplying them in to get

10 × 10 × 36 = 3600 (which is 60 × 60)

or the more elaborate summing up:

60 (in part 1) + 120 (in part 2) + 36 (in part 3) = 216

216 ÷ (parts) = 72

72 - 12 (elements) = 60

Doubtless the reader who has a better “feel” for numbers will refine this analysis.

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« Reply #5 on: February 16, 2007, 03:14:06 pm »

Possibility #1: T was trying to render the sounds.

There is a cognate in Hebrew, Punic’s sister language, whose sound suggests that the first element of the word was transcribed rather than translated: ΘΥΜΙΑ- (thymia-) for דומיה (DuWMiYaH, “stillness, silence”). The -ΤΗΡΙΟΝ (trion) part may in turn be an echo of דרום (DaRoWM, literally “in the direction of [the sun’s noontime] brightness”), a common way of saying “southerly” in Biblical Hebrew (and in modern Italian and French, too), as in Ecclesiastes 1:6.

הולך אל־דרום וסובב אל־צפון סובב ׀ סבב הולך הרוח

(“The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north.”)

Thus, A might have recorded that the expedition called the new site “Southern Stillness.”

(Or “Southern Ruins,” presumably from דמה [DuMaH, “lay waste”], if we follow a notation on a certain old map which claims to be compiled from “charts drawn in the days of Alexander.” At the extreme south is a notation that begins “This country is a waste. Everything is in ruin…” The rest of the passage must wait for a fuller discussion at §15.)

The reader will note that I have allowed myself a certain amount of leeway in the phonetics of the cognates I have proposed: there is not, for example, an exact sound-for-sound correspondence between “t´rion” and “DaRoWM” above, and I leave it to the reader to judge the plausibility of the derivations I suggest. The reader must set his own standards, but should remember that a certain amount of leniency is in order, considering the roundabout way that ancient texts have been handed down to us, and also the fact that the originals may not have been as strictly accurate as we would like: let us take a hint from sober, science-minded Pliny as he writes of the toponyms of the Libyan coast (V,i,1) that “the names of its peoples and towns are really unpronounceable except by native speakers.”

Possibility #2: T was trying to render the meaning.

ΘΥΜΙΑΤΗΡΙΟΝ, after all, is a good Greek word: it means “censer,” and the Punic word may have meant no more than that. We are told, after all, that the mariners subsequently established a sanctuary for Poseidon, and incense would not be out of place among these devout (or superstitious) salts.

Possibility #3: T was trying to render a secondary meaning.

ΘΥΜΙΑΤΗΡΙΟΝ is also the name of Ara, a constellation known by many names in the ancient world, all incongruously grandiloquent for such a dim constellation (its brightest star is only third magnitude): “Altar of the Gods,” “Temple of the World,” show that it was venerated. Bill Rudersdorf’s computer-assisted investigations suggest why: seen from the latitude of Carthage three thousand years ago Ara is near the horizon, with the Milky Way appearing to emerge from it like a column of smoke, like incense from a censer, drifting through the dwelling place of the gods.

Hanno’s fleet, however, is now many miles south of the southernmost point in the Mediterranean, as Rudersdorf points out, so Ara would be higher in the sky; but the old salts might have seen things differently, and ominously: not that Ara was higher, but that they were lower, below the sign that had always marked the horizon. Is it any wonder that they soon dedicated a shrine to Neptune, going, as they seemed, down into his element? Additionally, astern, they saw an unheard-of event: the Little Dipper, of which Homer says (Iliad 18, 489)

ΟΙΗ Δ ΑΜΜΟΡΟΣ ΕΣΤΙ ΛΟΕΤΡΩΝ ΩΚΕΑΝΟΙΟ

(“It alone has no part in the baths of Ocean”)

now sinking beneath the sea. This was not just any constellation to the Carthaginians, as Arrian (VI,xxvi,4) points out.

ΚΑΘΑΠΕΡ ΤΟΙΣ ΝΑΥΤΑΙΣ ΠΡΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΑΡΚΤΩΝ ΤΗΝ ΜΕΝ ΦΟΙΝΙΞΙ, ΤΗΝ ΟΛΙΓΗΝ,ΤΗΝ ΔΕ ΤΟΙΣ ΑΛΛΟΙΣ ΑΝΘΡΟΠΟΙΣ ΤΗΝ ΜΕΝΛΖΟΝΑ.

(“just as Punic mariners have become accustomed to steer their course by Ursa Minor and other men by Ursa Major.”)

Its disappearance must have made them uneasy.

(The fact that T wrote ΘΥΜΙΑΤΗΕΡΙΟΝ does not necessarily mean that A’s word meant literally “censer.” The Carthaginians may have had a different name for this constellation; if so, T ignored it, preferring to use the one that was standard in his day.)

Does the mention of this constellation provide a hint as to the latitude of the newly-founded city? I invite the reader’s opinion.

For the sake of completeness, let me mention the slight possibility that another special sense of the word, a nautical one, is preserved in Book I of the Aeneid (108-110) in the context of a storm at sea.

Tris Notus abreptas in saxa latentia torquet—
saxa vocant Itali mediis quae in fluctibus aras—
dorsum immane mari summo;

(“Thrice the south wind hurls the harried ships into lurking rocks—the Italians call rocks that are in the middle of the waves ‘altars’—an enormous ridge in the depths of the sea;”)

I recall this line not so much for its own sake as to urge keeping the door open for secondary meanings as a general rule.

Possibility #4: T made a mistake.

Let us suppose that A, consistent with his description of flatland, wrote a word cognate with the Hebrew מדבר (MiDBaR, “uninhabited plains”); if T mistook the last letter for a word cognate with the Aramaic מדבך (MiDBaKh, “altar”), he might have rendered it as ΘΥΜΙΑΤΗΡΙΟΝ. Since the original is lost, this kind of error is undetectable, unless it clashes with the sense of the passage.

This kind of error is especially likely in written Punic, as the reader may surmise from a word on the “Eshmunazar” inscription from Phoenician days, as reproduced in Schröder (Phönizische Sprache, Table 1). The three letters may look identical, like 999, but are not: context and context alone makes them D, B and R, meaning “said.” And this from an inscription whose penmanship is head and shoulders above the hen-scratchings that the Carthaginians left.


.3. ΚΑΠΕΙΤΑ ΠΡΟΣ ΑΝΑΧΘΕΝΤΕΣ ΕΠΙ ΣΟΛΟΕΝΤΑ ΛΥΒΙΚΟΝ ΑΚΡΩΤΗΡΙΟΝ ΛΑΣΙΟΝ

ΔΕΝΔΡΕΣΙ, ΣΥΝΗΛΘΟΜΕΝ.

After this, going westward, the ships arrived at Solois, a promontory of Libya covered with bushy trees; we linked up.



ΣΟΛΟΕΝΤΑ
(solo´enta)

Müller, of whom more in the next article, suggests סלע (SeLa~, which he defines as “a craggy cliff”) giving other examples of this word used as a place name in Sicily, Cyprus and Cilicia; he could have added the Edomite stronghold mentioned in the Bible as well, which evidently refers to Petra.

ΛΑΣΙΟΝ ΔΕΝΔΡΕΣΙ
(la´sion de´ndresi)

This may indicate a different derivation for ΣΟΛΟΙΣ preceding, as is suggested by an entry in one of the vocabularies in Gesenius’ Monumenta (p. 426b).

(Sardabal, Maurit[anean] r[iver] הבעלזרד (ZRD HB~L), compare זרד (ZeReD), “unruly growth of trees,” ag[ain] pr[oper] n[oun] of a river, Deut[eronomy] 2:13, 14.

(Note that הבעל is evidently taken as HaBa~aL, “of Baal.”)

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« Reply #6 on: February 16, 2007, 03:16:27 pm »

Gesenius does not give the source for this name, nor does Schröder (who, by the way, gives a different etymology [p. 168, note 6]), and I have yet to track down instances of its use in context, so the question of whether Sardabal fits here or not must remain for another day.

Instead of סער, however, another likely candidate is שעיר (Se~iR, “hairy”): there are in fact at least two mountains named Seir mentioned in the Bible.

ΣΥΝΗΛΘΟ0ΜΕΝ
(sun´lthomen)

In Ponce’s first draft this was taken as assembling for the night, but I prefer a translation that matches the vagueness of the Greek word, hence “link up” without specifying with whom.

There are two ways to picture this “linking up:” Müller (p.3) quotes a commentator who proposes

Igitur singulae naves diversum cursum tenebant, et promontorium Solois classi communis erat conveniendi locus.

(“Therefore individual vessels made their way by various routes, and the promontory of Solois was the rendezvous point for the fleet.”)

I rather imagine that Hanno’s ships sailed as a fleet, and that the link-up was with craft based in the colonies further on down the coast, vessels dispatched to Solois to guide the Carthaginians on through unfamiliar waters.

4. ΕΝΘΑ ΠΟΣΕΙΔΩΝΟΣ ΙΕΡΟΝ ΙΔΡΥΣΑΜΕΝΟΙ ΠΑΛΙΝ ΕΠΕΒΗΜΕΝ ΠΡΟΣ ΗΛΙΟΝ ΑΝΙΣΧΟΝΤΑ ΗΜΕΡΑΣ ΗΜΙΣΥ, ΑΧΡΙ ΕΚΟΜΙΣΘΗΜΕΝ ΕΙΣ ΛΙΜΗΝ ΟΥ ΠΟΡΡΩ ΤΗΣ ΘΑΛΑΤΤΗΣ ΚΕΙΜΕΝΗΝ, ΚΑΛΑΜΟΥ ΜΕΣΤΗΝ ΠΟΛΛΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΥ· ΕΝΗΣΑΝ ΔΕ ΚΑΙ ΕΛΕΦΑΝΤΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΑΛΛΑ ΘΗΡΙΑ ΝΕΜΟΜΕΝΑ ΠΑΜΠΟΛΛΑ.

At that place we erected a little sanctuary to Poseidon. Again we embarked, with an easterly course, so that we arrived at a lake located not far from the sea, full of many tall rushes; a great number of elephants as well as other grazing animals lived there.




ΠΟΣΕΙΔΩΝΟΣ ΙΕΡΟΝ
(poseido´nos hier´on)

What Punic deity was this, who suggested to T Poseidon’s attributes? Indeed, which attributes? In the earliest Greek myths he is associated not so much with the ocean as with horses. We note that on one occasion in the Iliad (XIII, 29-30) where he actually crosses the sea, he doesn’t even get his feet wet: he is in a horse-drawn chariot, with the water parting before him.

ΓΗΘΟΣΥΝΗ ΔΕ ΘΑΛΑΣΣΑ ΔΙΙΣΤΑΤΟ· ΤΟΙ ΔΕ ΠΕΤΟΝΤΟ
ΡΙΜΦΑ ΜΑΛ, ΟΥΔ ΗΠΕΝΕΡΘΕ ΔΙΑΙΝΕΤΟ ΧΑΛΚΕΟΣ ΑΞΩΝ,

(“With delight too the sea parted before him; swiftly, headlong they raced, and the bronze axle did not get wet,”)

By Virgil’s time, he was no longer high and dry, but even with his subsequent maritime identification, there are still traces of Homer’s most common epithet for him: ΕΝΟΣΙΧΘΩΝ (enosíkhthn): the Earth-shaker. In the Aeneid (II,610-12), at the fall of Troy Aeneas sees in a vision that

Neptunus muros magnoque emota tridenti
fundamenta quatit, totamque a sedibus urbem
eruit…

(“Neptune with his great trident shatters the walls, uproots the foundation, and brings the whole city crashing down…”)

A god of horses and earthquakes? Let us take this anomaly as a hint. Poseidon’s name is not explicable by Greek roots, so we infer that it is a loan word; we infer a Semitic origin (and thus one that would bear on a Phoenician or Carthaginian text) from the fact that there are two almost homonymic roots preserved in Hebrew that would fit. Let us assume that the second part of the god’s name is from (P) אדן, Hebrew אדון (-aDoWN, “lord”). For the first, let us apply the roots פרץ (PRTs) and פרש (PRSh). Let us assume that the Greeks elided the “r” with the following letter (in the same way that we elide an original “adsume” to “assume”), then consider each root in turn.

פרץ (PoReTs, “breaking in pieces”); with the elision and the Ts being softened by its unemphatic position, Po(ReT)s à Po’s + -aDoN, “the shattering lord,” which would fit an earthquake god.

Recalling the walls of Troy above, we note that walls throughout the Old Testament are פרצים (PRuTsiYM, “demolished”) as well, and on two occasions there are tantalizing references to a place named after פרציםבעל (Ba~aL PRaTsiYM; “Baal of the Shatterings” is as good a rendering as any).

פרש (PoReSh [but which to the Greeks would be PoReS as above, since they did not have an “sh” sound, and rendered it as “s”], “horseman”), or, with the elision, Po(Re)S(h) > Po’S + -aDoN, “the horseman lord.”

Thus, rather than thinking of a Hellenistic sea-god, T might have been transcribing an epithet of a Carthaginian deity.

ΠΡΟΣ ΗΛΙΟΝ
(pros h´lion)

Even a landlubber can see that this cannot be due east, for the same reason that the previous course was not due west: due east followed by due west leads nowhere. In the context of the African coast the only west is (broadly) southwest as far as the coast of modern Mauritania, where there are at least four promontories that are likely candidates for ΣΟΛΟΙΣ: Cap Blanc, Cap D’Arguin, Cap Timris and Cap Vert. I vote for the last, since from there the African coastline begins to go (broadly) east.

ΗΜΕΡΑΣ ΗΜΙΣΥ
(hme´ras h´misu)

Despite my insistence that the numbers in our text not be taken at face value, there is in fact a complex of estuaries, the largest being the mouth of the Gambia River, less than a hundred miles from Cap Vert, and it is tempting to consider whether this distance could (broadly) be considered a “half day’s” voyage; against this is the statement in the next passage (§5) that it takes the mariners a day to get across this marshy lake that has taken them only a half day to reach from the Solois promontory. I still maintain that the numbers are not to be taken at face value.

ΚΑΛΑΜΟΥ ΜΕΣΤΗΝ ΠΟΛΛΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΥ
(kala´mou mest´n polloú kai mega´lou)

This would seem to have been the source of a passage in ΠΕΡΙ ΘΑΥΜΑΣΙΩΝ ΑΚΟΥΣΜΑΤΩΝ (peri´ thaumasin akousmatn, “about amazing things heard”), concerning which anthology a few background notes are in order. It is traditionally included in the works of Aristotle, but the learnèd consider it to be spurious. The work resembles nothing so much as the old “Believe It Or Not” newspaper series, a disjointed collection of entertaining anecdotes; some are fishy, but others are factual, (e. g. #7, which tells of the birds that clean crocodiles’ teeth). “They say that the Phoenicians that live in what is called Cadiz, voyaging beyond the Pillars of Hercules for four days before an easterly wind, found a wilderness in that place full of reeds and seaweed…”

“Four days” shows how seriously the ancients took Hanno’s Voyage: this writer is using our text for reckoning, adding up two days to Thymiaterion, then one to Solois, then a “half-day” to get here. He does not consider a cryptographic interpretation of the numbers; and why should he? Since he has no way of verifying the account, he has no way of knowing that a pedantic, literal interpretation of our text simply does not match African geography.
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« Reply #7 on: February 20, 2007, 12:14:08 am »

If Aeneas is around the time of the trojan war... 1184 BC.... and Dido is in the Aenid.... ~800BC... how does Virgil make this enormous jump in time?  Could Carthage have been founded earlier?
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