Reenacting the first circumnavigation of Africa

[Jona Lendering]

Here is a nice article on an attempt to circumnavigate Africa, just like the Phoenicians did in c.600 BCE, as Herodotus informs us. I have some doubts about the scientific relevance of this project, but it's interesting anyway.

[MARCVS PETRONIVS MAIVS]

Hmmn. The hardest will be pirates will no doubt be aware a team of british citizens will be onboard. Good pickings one might say.

[M. Demetrius]

I'd have to say a 20 meter wave would be nothing to ignore, particularly in an open sail boat...but pirates are trouble, no doubt about it. It would be sad, indeed, if lawless men ended the expedition simply for their own gain.

[Eleatic Guest]

Here is a nice article on an attempt to circumnavigate Africa, just like the Phoenicians did in c.600 BCE, as Herodotus informs us. I have some doubts about the scientific relevance of this project, but it's interesting anyway.

Didnt somebody suggest the Phoenicians were actually Greeks? I seem to have read something to that extent in our forum here...

[M. Demetrius]

I have heard there is a close connection between the Phoenicians and the Carthagenians. Wasn't Carthage a Phoenician colony originally? Some vague memory trigger says that the Phoenicians were indigenous East Mediterraneans, not Greeks, but I could be wrong.

[Jona Lendering]

I have heard there is a close connection between the Phoenicians and the Carthagenians. Wasn't Carthage a Phoenician colony originally? Some vague memory trigger says that the Phoenicians were indigenous East Mediterraneans, not Greeks, but I could be wrong.

You are right, dear David. The Levant (Canaan) was in the second millennium divided by the Hithites and Egyptians, but the Hithite Empire fell in c.1200, and the Egyptians recalled their garrisons at the same time, when the "Sea Peoples" destabilized the Near East. New nations arose, well known from the Bible: from north to south you will find the Neo-Hithite states (e.g., Karchemish), the Phoenicians along the coast, the Aramaeans (capital Damascus), the Philistines (Gaza strip), and Israel - mentioned as "their seed is no longer" by pharaoh Merneptah.

Carthage was founded in 814 (according to a traditon that has C14-backing) by Phoenicians. Many other Phoenician colonies date form the archaic period as well. When the Phoenicians mother cities were captured by Nebuchadnezzar (about the same time as the fall of Jerusalem, c.586), the colonies looked for leadership, and found it in Carthage.

[Arahne]

Yes the poeni is the greek word for phoenicians, and the karthaginians were poeni. THis is why the wars are called Punic wars.

[Eleatic Guest]

Would you say that from Herodot onwards, the island-like shape of Africa became common knowledge among Greek intellectuals, or was it soon after again forgotten?

[Timotheus]

Hmmn. The hardest will be pirates will no doubt be aware a team of british citizens will be onboard. Good pickings one might say.

No likely. A Trireme isnt safe enough to send on its own so at least one other ship will go allow for emergencies. Not saying it would be a warship but it would be a large ship with lots of cameras.

Not something pirates would want to mess with.

[Jona Lendering]

Would you say that from Herodot onwards, the island-like shape of Africa became common knowledge among Greek intellectuals, or was it soon after again forgotten?

That's debated. Most people read Ptolemy's Geography as if he states that the Indian Ocean is surrounded on all sides by land (and that you could walk from southern Africa through a southern land to China); it was read like this in the Middle Ages, until Bartolomeu Dias proved this to be untrue. However, Lacroix has stressed in his remarkable Africa in Antiquity that Ptolemy does not actually say that you can not circumnavigate Africa. So, we do not really know whether the ancients believed the story Herodotus disbelieved.

[Eleatic Guest]

So, we do not really know whether the ancients believed the story Herodotus disbelieved.

So I guess, Herodot left the only ancient textual evidence we have about the 'island shape' of Africa?

Loosely connected, there were two Roman centurios who ventured as far as southern Sudan on their search for the beginning of the Nile. Fascinating.

[Jona Lendering]

So I guess, Herodot left the only ancient textual evidence we have about the 'island shape' of Africa?

No, there's also Hanno the Carthaginian. A summary of his account survives, and Herodotus, Arrian and Pliny add details from the missing part; go here.