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...what now called the Strait of Gibraltar, turning south, and hugging the coast perhaps as far as Cameroons Bay and back again, a journey of some 16,000 kilometres. The explorers' declared purpose was to found cities; no doubt they also wanted to trade for gold. Did this daring voyage really happen? If so, it may have been different, in various ways, from how it is reported in the only account of it that has come down to us.
Scholars debate that account endlessly. They debate its validity and how it should be interpreted. Some say that it 'swarms with absurd fables and glaring errors', (1) that it is an out-and-out forgery (2) or a post-classical compilation, a mere literary exercise. (3) But it has also been hailed as
the longest Punic [i.e. Carthaginian] document that has come down to us and our only specimen of a report on a Phoenician or Carthaginian marine expedition ... the only eyewitness description of the west coast of Africa that has been preserved from antiquity; in fact ... the only first-hand report on those regions that is known before those of the Portuguese, and [it] antedates them by more than one and a half millennia. (4)
Questions at issue include the date of the voyage if it did take place; how far along the coast the explorers reached; and whether the Carthaginian vessels, said to have carried a total of 30,000 people--some find that figure implausible--(5) could have withstood the fierce trade winds on the return voyage. The Greek text of the earliest surviving manuscript, written in the late ninth century AD, has been analysed and discussed word by word. For those able to read it in the original, this is said to be 'among the most engaging documents of the ancient world'. (6) But the debate is fascinating even to those of us with no Greek, not least because archaeological excavations along the West African coast may one day throw light on some of these difficult and disputed questions.
However, I...
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Thackeray at the movies *., July 01, 2003
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