Hanno the Navigator
Hanno the Navigator was a
Carthaginian explorer, sent out with a fleet and many thousands of colonists, who founded or repopulated seven Carthaginian cities on the
Atlantic shore of
Morocco and explored the Atlantic coast of
Africa, apparently deep into the
Gulf of Guinea. He lived perhaps about 570 BC, though some classicists say his dates cannot be fixed any closer than between 633 and 530 BC.
Hanno the Navigator (Annôn, meaning "merciful" or "mild" in
Punic) is called so in order to distinguish him from the more famous but later Carthaginian,
Hanno the Great. Hanno the Navigator is said to have inscribed his account of the voyage on a tablet that was hung up in the temple of
Ba‘al Hammon (whom Greek writers identified with
Cronus) on his return to Carthage. What is generally supposed to be a Greek translation of this is still extant, in a single manuscript, under the title of
Periplus, although its factual dependability has been both questioned and ably defended (see link).
Some interpreters judge Hanno to have advanced beyond present-day
Sierra Leone as far as
Cape Palmas, partly because of his description of the sun rising and setting in the
northern part of the sky— a detail Greek geographers found ludicrously impossible. On the island which formed the terminus of his voyage the explorer found a number of hairy women, whom the interpreters called
Gorillas.
The full Greek title 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 Cronus. It was known to
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"
The noted
epigrapher Barry Fell once claimed that Hanno had crossed the Atlantic and explored
North America (see:
Bourne Stone).
*
"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, a Carthaginian navigator from Charles Smith,
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1867)
*
Carthaginian Exploration: The Voyages of Hanno and Himilco*
Annotated commentary on Hanno's Periplus by Jona Lendering.
