Hanno the Navigator

Route of Hanno the Navigator

Hanno the Navigator was a Carthaginian explorer who flourished c. 450 BC. He was most well known for his naval exploration of the African coast.

Etymology

This Hanno is called the Navigator to distinguish him from a number of other Carthaginians with this name, including the perhaps more prominent, though later, Hanno the Great. See Hanno for others of this name. The name Hanno (Annôn) means "merciful" or "mild" in Punic - similar to the Arabic name "Hanan" (حنان) with the same meaning, the Hebrew name "Hanan" (חנן), still used in present-day Israel, and to the Lebanese Hanna, ("حنا") still used in Lebanon today.

Expedition

As Warmington states Carthage dispatched Hanno at the head of a fleet of sixty ships to explore and colonize the north western coast of Africa. He sailed through the straits of Gibraltar, founded or repopulated seven colonies along the African coast of Morocco, and explored significantly further along the Atlantic coast of the continent. Hogan cites the visit of Hanno to Mogador, where the Phoenicians established an important dye manufacturing plant using a marine gastropod found in the local Atlantic Ocean waters. Hanno encountered various indigenous peoples on his journey and met with a variety of welcomes.

On the island which formed the terminus of his voyage the explorer found it heavily populated with what were described as hirsute and savage people. Attempts to capture the males failed, but three of the females were taken. These were so vicious they were killed, and their skins preserved for transport home to Carthage. The interpreters called them gorillas, which has provided the etymology for the species name.

Periplus account

The primary source for the account of Hanno's expedition is a Greek translation, titled Periplus, of a tablet Hanno is reported to have hung up on his return to Carthage in the temple of Ba'al Hammon whom Greek writers identified with Chronus (also known as Chronos). The full title translated from Greek is The Voyage of Hanno, commander of the Carthaginians, round the parts of Libya beyond the Pillars of Heracles, which he deposited in the Temple of Chronos. This was known to Pliny the Elder and Arrian, who mentions it at the end of his Anabasis of Alexander VIII (Indica):

"Moreover, Hanno the Libyan started out from Carthage and passed the Pillars of Heracles and sailed into the outer Ocean, with Libya on his port side, and he sailed on towards the east, five-and-thirty days all told. But when at last he turned southward, he fell in with every sort of difficulty, want of water, blazing heat, and fiery streams running into the sea."

This account's factual dependability has been both questioned and defended (see link). Both Harden and Warmington quote this account in English translation. Warminton suggests that difficulties in reconciling the account's specific details with present geographical understanding are consistent with classical reports of Carthaginian determination to maintain sole control of trade into the Atlantic.

"This report was the object of criticism by some ancient writers, including the Pliny the Elder, and in modern times a whole literature of scholarship has grown up around it. The account is incoherent and at times certainly incorrect, and attempts to identify the various places mentioned on the basis of the sailing directions and distances almost all fail. Some scholars resort to textual emendations, justified in some cases; but it is probable that what we have before us is a report deliberately edited so that the places could not be identified by the competitors of Carthage. From everything we know about Carthaginian practice, the resolute determination to keep all knowledge of and access to the western markets from the Greeks, it is incredible that they would have allowed the publication of an accurate description of the voyage for all to read. What we have is an official version of the real report made by Hanno which conceals or falsifies vital information while at the same time gratifying the pride of the Carthaginians in their achievements. The very purpose of the voyage, the consolidation of the route to the gold market, is not even mentioned."

Dating the Voyage of Hanno

While many sources date the voyage of Hanno to various dates ranging from 250 BCE to 450 BCE we know that Hanno lived earlier, at least the sixth century BCE because one of the cities founded by Hanno (Melitta) is mentioned by the Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus, who lived ~550 BCE to 480 BCE. Some sources place Hecataeus as living in the sixth to seventh centuries BCE, which would mean Hanno's voyage would have been even earlier. The fact that Hecataeus proves Hanno lived before the time of Herodotus also lends credence to the idea that Herodotus's brief mention of Carthaginians duplicating the feats of the Phoenicians in circumnavigating Libya/Africa very likely is based on the report of Hanno.

Hanno may have made more than a single voyage, as hinted in Pliny the Elder's Natural History

"When the power of Carthage flourished, Hanno sailed round from Cádiz to the extremity of Arabia, and published a memoir of his voyage of his voyage, as did Himilco when he was despatched at the same date to explore the outer coasts of Europe."

It is also possible that the brief account of eighteen lines found in the temple of Chronos in Carthage was not a full account of the entire voyage, as it is incomprehensible that the Carthaginians would have published all the details of their explorations. Navigational secrets were highly valuable and considered very much a 'state secret' to the Carthaginians, so the account memorialized in the temple could have been an abbreviated version; especially in the light of the fact that Hanno had been ordered to circumnavigate Libya.

Modern analysis of Hanno's route

A number of modern scholars have commented upon Hanno's voyage. In many cases the analysis has been to refine information and interpretation of the original account. William Smith points out that the complement of personnel totalled 30,000, and that the core mission included the intent to found Carthaginian (or in the older parlance Libyophoenician) towns.

Harden states there is general consensus that the expedition reached at least as far as Senegal. There seems some agreement that he could have reached Gambia. However, Harden mentions lack of agreement as to precisely where to locate the furthest limit of Hanno's explorations: Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Gabon. He notes the description of the Cameroon Mountain, a 13,370 foot volcano, more closely matches Hanno's description than Guinea's 2910 foot Mt. Kakulima. Warmington prefers Mount Kakulima, considering Mount Cameroon too distant.

The controversial amateur epigrapher Barry Fell claimed that Hanno had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and explored North America (see: Bourne Stone).

Earlier Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa

Herodotus recorded a circumnavigation of "Libya", by an expedition of Phoenicians sent out by "the Egyptian king" Necho II (606-593 BC), one of two seventh-century kings of the 26th Saite Dynasty

"with orders to sail west about and return to Egypt and the Mediterranean by way of the Straits of Gibraltar. The Phoenicians sailed from the Arabian gulf (Red Sea) into the southern ocean, and every autumn put in at some convenient spot on the Libyan coast, sowed a patch of ground, and waited for next year's harvest..."

Herodotus himself discounted this story on account of the assertion that the Phoenicians had the sun to the north of them as they passed along the southern part of the continent. As Harden comments, this very claim has most modern scholars accepting that Phoenicians did circumnavigate Africa. In modern times a Phoenician sailing vessel was found in the area of the "Cape Flats" found off the South African city of Capetown.

Musical reference

"Hanno the Navigator" is the fourth track on Al Stewart's 2008 album Sparks of Ancient Light.

In fiction

The Science Fiction book The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson depicts the wide-ranging adventures of several secret immortals (i.e. they never grow old, though they could be killed). A central protagonist is a Phoenician/Carthaginian named Hanno.

In the book, this Hanno is never conclusively identified with the Hanno the Navigator in the Periplus. At some point Hanno refers to him as his "namesake", but in the context of the book, where the fictional Hanno is secretly immortal and where he is often deliberately ambiguous and evasive about his past, this is not conclusive to identify him as a different Hanno. The character does mention starting off in the earlier Phoenician expedition sent to circumnavigate Africa via Egypt as described by Herodotus, but leaving it soon after the expedition set off, never learning of its true fate.

Bibliography

• Donald Harden, The Phoenicians, (Penguin, Harmondsworth) 1971 (1962)
• Herodotus, transl. Aubrey de Selincourt, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1968 (1954)
• B. H. Warmington, Carthage, (Penguin, Harmondsworth) 1964 (1960)

See also

• Himilco the Navigator

External links

• "Hanno's Periplus on the Web:" a directory of further links.
• Livio Catullo Stecchini, "The voyage of Hanno" carefully analyzed by a classical scholar.
• Periplus in English.
• Hanno's Voyage from Canaanite.org
• Hanno, a Carthaginian navigator from Charles Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1867)
• Annotated commentary on Hanno's Periplus by Jona Lendering.
• Scan of original Greek manuscript on "Hanno Carthagiensis"