Hanno: the Carthaginian admiral who sailed down Africa’s west coast

Sixty ships, 30,000 men and women, and with them wheat and supplies. This is not the account of a war fleet but of an expedition to found new settlements. It set out about 2,500 years ago from the North African city of Carthage, passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic Ocean and went south along the west coast of Africa. Its commander was Hanno, and his account of the voyage, only a few pages long, is among the most famous ancient travel narratives in the world.

Background: Carthage and the gold trade

Carthage was a Phoenician settlement near present-day Tunis. It gradually grew into a major trading power of the Mediterranean. Herodotus, who is cited repeatedly in this connection, records what he heard from the Carthaginians. On a coast of Africa beyond the Pillars of Hercules, they would lay out their goods on the shore, return to their ships and make smoke. The local people would come and put down gold in exchange for the goods, then withdraw. If the gold was enough, the Carthaginians took it and left. Otherwise they waited on their ships until more gold was added. According to Herodotus, neither side cheated the other in this exchange. It shows how important this coast was to Carthage.

The story of the account

Hanno’s account survives in a Greek translation known as the “Periplus”, meaning a coastal voyage. In the 1912 English translation by the American scholar Wilfred H. Schoff, its title reads: “The voyage of Hanno, commander of the Carthaginians, round the parts of Libya beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which he deposited in the temple of Baal”. Writing in the World History Encyclopedia, Mark Cartwright says the original text was in the Punic language on a commemorative tablet. The Greek translation survives only in one medieval manuscript, now in the library of Heidelberg University in Germany. According to Schoff, the text was first printed in 1533 in Basel, Switzerland.

The voyage: settlements and elephants

According to the text, the Carthaginians decided that Hanno should sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules and found cities. He set out with 60 ships of 50 oars each and about 30,000 men and women. Two days beyond the Pillars, they founded the first city, Thymiaterium. They then built an altar to the sea god on a wooded headland called Soloeis. Further on they came to a marsh with tall reeds, where elephants and other wild animals grazed in large numbers. Beyond this they founded five more settlements along the coast.

They then reached a large river called the Lixus, where nomadic Lixites grazed their flocks. Hanno’s men stayed with them for some days and became friends, and it was here that they took interpreters. After sailing south for 12 days along a desolate coast, they found a small island in a bay, 15 stadia in circumference. They settled it and named it Cerne. Hanno calculated that the voyage from Carthage to the Pillars was equal to that from the Pillars to Cerne, so Cerne lay opposite Carthage.

Coasts of fire and the “Chariot of the Gods”

Beyond Cerne, people dressed in animal skins stopped them from landing by throwing stones, near a lake. Then came a very large, broad river full of crocodiles and hippopotamuses. The notes to Schoff’s translation identify it as the Senegal River.

The rest of the voyage is more mysterious. They passed mountains covered with forests of fragrant wood. At night, flames could be seen all along the shore, some large, some small. On an island in a bay called the “Horn of the West”, only forest was visible by day. At night, fires burned and the sound of pipes, cymbals and drums, and great shouting, could be heard. Hanno writes that “fear seized us”, and the soothsayers told them to leave the island at once.

They then sailed past a burning, fragrant land from which streams of fire flowed into the sea. The heat made it impossible to approach the shore. Four days later, at night, the whole land appeared covered in flames. In the middle, one fire was higher than the rest and seemed to touch the stars. By day it was found to be a very high mountain called the “Chariot of the Gods”.

The “Gorillai” and the return

After sailing three more days, they reached a bay called the “Horn of the South”. In a lake on an island there was another island, inhabited by people whose bodies were covered in hair. The interpreters called them “Gorillai”. The men escaped by climbing the cliffs and throwing stones. Three women were caught, but they bit and scratched and refused to go along. The sailors killed them and took their skins to Carthage. Hanno’s last sentence is: “We did not sail further, because our provisions were running short.”

According to Cartwright, the Roman writer Pliny says the skins were placed in a temple in Carthage. It cannot be said with certainty who these beings really were, humans or some kind of ape. However, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, in 1847 the American missionary Thomas Savage took the name “gorilla” from this text for a large African ape.

How far did Hanno go?

The date of the voyage is not known. Schoff quotes the 19th-century British scholar Bunbury as saying it may be about 520 BC or about 470 BC. Cartwright places it between the late sixth century BC and about 425 BC.

How far Hanno went is the biggest question about the account, and scholars still disagree. Some say he reached Sierra Leone, others Cameroon or Gabon. Some take the “Chariot of the Gods” to be Mount Kakulima in Guinea, others the volcano in Cameroon. Cartwright writes that supporters of a shorter route argue that going so far would have been difficult in the number of days the text gives. Even then, the outward journey alone comes to about 5,000 kilometres. He also quotes the Italian historian Moscati’s view that the text’s geographical errors may have been deliberate, so that other merchants could not find Carthage’s trade routes.

Significance

Hanno’s account is among the oldest written descriptions of the coast of West Africa. It has marshes full of elephants, rivers with crocodiles, fires burning at night, the sound of drums, and a mountain whose fire touched the stars. According to Bunbury, as quoted by Schoff, hardly any other ancient text of such brevity has attracted such lengthy commentaries. The oldest of them was added in 1550 by the Italian editor Ramusio and was based on Portuguese sources, because in modern times Portuguese sailors were the first to reach these coasts. These expeditions of the ancient world, from Egypt to Punt, the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa, Scylax’s journey to the Indus and Hanno’s voyage down the west coast, were the first lines on the map of the ancient world. In the next instalment, we will meet the traveller who first gathered many of these stories in one book.

Next instalment: Herodotus: the father of history, who travelled and asked questions himself.