Greek Geographer Research Articles

Myth, Geography, and Ethnography at the Strait of Messina

Myth, Geography, and Ethnography at the Strait of Messina Catherine Connors (bio) Marco Benoît Carbone, Geographies of Myth and Places of Identity: The Strait of Scylla and Charybdis in the Modern Imagination. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. xv + 256 pages, $115.00. At the end of Book 12 of the Odyssey, after the last of his men have been dispatched by Zeus to a watery grave for killing and eating the Cattle of the Sun, Odysseus clings perilously to a branch of a fig tree overhanging the abyss of the monstrous whirlpool Charybdis. As he had prepared to depart from Circe, she warned him he would need to pass between the cave-dwelling dog-woman Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, and that the only way to survive was to avoid the whirlpool and thus let Scylla snatch up six of his men, and so it transpired. Now, his return from the island of the Sun brings him again into their narrow strait. Pieces of his ship emerge from the whirlpool, he drops down onto them from the fig tree, is kept hidden by Zeus from Scylla, and floats away on his nine-day voyage to Calypso’s island. Since antiquity, inquiring minds have mapped Homeric narrative onto the real world. Mount Ida overlooks the Trojan plain. Ithaca, Pylos, Crete and Ethiopia are real places. Strabo understands Homer as a repository of geographical knowledge, observing that when Homer mentions several places, these are correctly organized in a spatial sense (1.2.20). The digital project Mapping the Catalogue of Ships (Clay, Evans, Jasnow, n.d.) graphically demonstrates the “spatial mnemonic” that organizes the display of geographical knowledge in the catalogue of Greeks ships assembling for the expedition against Troy. Sometimes the relation between poem and place is less straightforward: Pharos at the mouth of the Nile could arguably be recognized in Homer’s account of the [End Page 81] travels of Menelaus, once account was taken of shoreline changes since the composition of the epic (Strabo 1.2.30). It is harder to map the realms of the fantastic beings who populate Odysseus’ own tale about his wanderings: the Cyclops, Circe with her transformative powers, Aeolus and his bag of winds, the souls Odysseus speaks to at the entrance to the underworld, the Sirens, and Scylla and Charybdis. The earliest versions of these stories may have born the traces of explorations of Italy’s western shores during the Mycenaean period.1 When Greek colonists from Euboea began to settle in Italy’s west during the eighth century bce, they were perhaps already expecting to see what they had heard of in Homeric storytelling. Odysseus’ wanderings began to be more firmly attached to places, especially in areas of Greek colonization in Italy that came to be known as Magna Graecia.2 The name Scyllaion was mentioned by the early Greek geographer and historian Hecataeus as a “height” (FrgH 1 F82); Strabo (6.1.5) describes it as a high rocky isthmus near the narrow strait between Reggio Calabria and Messina in Sicily; it is now the town of Scilla. In describing the first Athenian expedition against Sicily, Thucydides identifies the strait between Rhegium (Reggio Calabria) and Messina as Charybdis. His remark that the narrow strait caused strong currents conveys the Syracusans’ view that the currents would thwart an Athenian attack and, in combination with Thucydides’ other references to Homeric geography, also “implies that it was the fascination exerted by stories that were localized in Sicily that made the Athenians desire to travel there themselves” (Thuc. 4.24 with Rood 2012, 154–5). Eratosthenes, trying to map the known world and its encircling Ocean with observation-based knowledge rather than mere stories, discounted altogether the idea that Odysseus’ wanderings contained authentic geographical information, writing that “someone would discover where Odysseus wandered only when he found the leather worker who stitched together Aeolus’ bag of winds” (Strabo 1.2.15). Polybius, by contrast, accepts Italian identifications of Homeric places, providing rationalizing accounts of Aeolus as a local man who helped sailors navigate the seas between Italy and Sicily, and Scylla as a story based on predatory swordfish that could be observed being caught...

Древнейшие греческие географы о Понте Евксинском и его окрестностях

Anaximander of Miletus, Hecataeus of Miletus and Scylax of Caryanda, representatives of the Archaic Ionian scholarship, were the earliest Greek geographers (6th century B.C.). The philosopher Anaximander drew the first map (still very schematic one); the historian Hecataeus improved this map towards more detailed elaboration and also wrote the first periegesis (“Description of the Earth”); the seafarer Scylax was the author of the first periplus (although at such an early stage of development of Greek prose literature the genres of periegesis and periplus still had little difference between each other). The article deals with extant data of these writers on the Black Sea and adjacent regions. To be true, there is no such information in Anaximander’s fragments, and rather little in Scylax’s ones (mainly on the area of the Straits); but Hecataeus’ fragments contain it in abundance. That author’s geographical treatise was a virtually exhaustive description of lands known at his time, surely including coasts of the Black Sea and the nearby Azov Sea. Hecataeus measured the size of the Black Sea (at the map rather than “in nature”). It is he who is likely to have for the first time used the famous and very popular in antiquity image of the Pontus as a Scythian bow. Of interest is the question where in the Black Sea region the scholar drew the border between Europe and Asia; the article gives arguments in favour of the opinion that for him the border was not the Don River, as later in Herodotus, but the Kuban River. Meanwhile, the territory that is now the Taman Peninsula (it was an island in antiquity) belonged to Asia according to Hecataeus. In the “Description of the Earth”, there is the first in the narrative tradition evidence on Phanagoria – one of the most significant Greek colonies at the territory of Russia, later the second in importance center of the Bosporan Kingdom. Amazons are localized by Hecataeus near the Thermodon River rather than in the Northern Black Sea Region, as Herodotus and Hellanicus later did.

Did Aristotle Invent Library Classification?

ABSTRACT This article tests the suggestion made by the first-century CE Greek geographer Strabo that the philosopher Aristotle was the first person to systematically organize a library, and that this classification influenced the arrangement of books in the libraries of early Greek Alexandria. It broadly examines Aristotle’s classifications and systematizing activities, and sets Aristotelian methods of knowledge organization against his Greek predecessors. It outlines what we know about Aristotle’s library, and how it might have differed from other collections of books owned by his contemporaries. It then surveys several ways Aristotelian arrangements may have posthumously exerted influence over cultural institutions in Alexandria in the late fourth and early third centuries BCE. The libraries studied are state-sponsored, private, and institutional collections. Definitive conclusions cannot be drawn due to a paucity of evidence, but the article argues that Aristotelian structures of knowledge could have had a profound effect on a nascent library culture that continues to have resonances in the ways libraries are organized today.

Pandemonium in Yemen: A Historical Analysis of Yemen's Socio-political State

Pandemonium in Yemen:A Historical Analysis of Yemen's Socio-political State Naif Al Bidh (bio) Introduction In 2011, the domino effect of the Arab Spring had finally reached Yemen, initiating the mobilization of the peaceful youth within the capital, Sana'a. The frustrated Yemeni youth and women kindled the flames of socio-political change after decades of rule under Ali Abdullah Saleh's kleptocracy. Initially, the Yemeni uprising and other Arab uprisings were perceived as events that would instantly engender democratic transition after the ousting of their respective dictators. However, in hindsight, the 'Democratic Domino Theory' is irrelevant in the case of the Arab Spring. The Yemeni uprising was the result of the culmination of political and economic events that involved internal and external actors during the past two to three decades of Yemeni history. Hence, the Arab Spring should be viewed as a catalyst, and not the principal cause, for the Yemeni uprising. The West miscalculated the uprising in Yemen and elsewhere by failing to notice that the Yemeni socio-political infrastructure could not yet accommodate democracy. Thus, the events signaled the start of liberalization rather than democratization within Yemen. [End Page 84] This article argues that the Yemeni uprising and crisis stemmed from several factors. First, the injustices inflicted by Saleh's praetorian regime upon the Southern population before, during, and after the war of 1994, which allowed the Southern Secessionists to penetrate the political arena. Second, the consecutive wars against the Houthi movement and its gradual rise to power. Third, a self-destructing tribal-elite patronage system that led to rampant unemployment, inequality, and corruption, infuriating an already exhausted youth, and paving the way for the emergence of a counter-revolutionary opposition led by General Ali Mohsen and Sheikh Abdullah Al-Ahmar, which is the fourth crucial element to the events that led up to Yemeni uprisings. Diverse Historic Experiences Among the many misperceived concepts about Yemen is the notion of a united Yemeni state and identity. Prior to the union of the Yemeni Arab Republic (YAR or North Yemen) and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY or South Yemen), these two lands had never united under one polity for centuries.1 The multiple identities existent within Yemen today is the result of regionally distinct historical experiences. Arabia Felix2 was the name given to the ancient lands of Yemen and South Arabia. Within ancient Greek and Roman texts, it is evident that Arabia Felix was made up of several kingdoms and not a unified polity.3 The works of the Greek geographer Eratosthenes of Cyrene perhaps provide an idea of the diverse identities that exist within Yemen's history. Eratosthenes speaks of four distinct peoples residing within Yemen–namely, the Sabaens, the Minaeans, the Hadhramis and the Qatabanians who he named the Sabaioi, the Minaioi, the Chatramotitai and the Katabaneis.4 Today, this division is still noticeable, and there is a pattern about the polities within the regions comprising the Yemeni territory. The conquest or unity of Yemen, although rarely successful throughout history, was common by the hands of the northern polities, especially within the highlands, due to their more massive demographic structure and their aggressive nature. The existence of two or four civilizations, kingdoms, or states has predominated Yemen's history. These polities form within specific regions, namely, the northern [End Page 85] highlands (Sana'a and Sa'ada), the canyons of Hadhramaut, the Red Sea coast, and the Desert of Marib. This is mainly due to the diverse geographic terrain within Yemen, which is a vital factor in accumulating various distinct identities within a region smaller than most ancient civilizations. The geography of Yemen allowed for multiple societies to develop in isolation from one another and thus created diverse regional identities, cultural traits, and languages.5 These facts are crucial in understanding the socio-political issues within contemporary Yemen since the existence of a prolonged centralized united polity was rare. As the Ottoman and European Empires scrambled for influence and land, Yemen turned into a battlefield as various groups aligned themselves with one another to secure their interests. During the age of empires, cynicism became the status quo. As the Turks...

Влияние иврита и самоидентификация в иудео-грузинском языке и в Кавказской «Горе языков»

The Caucasus region has been called the “Mountain of Tongues”. History writers from Herodotus, 2,500 years ago, until present time have given different numbers of languages, e.g. the Greek geographer and historian Strabo (64 BCE- 21 CE) claimed more than 70 tribes speaking different languages, Pliny stated that the Romans used 130 interpreters when trading. At present more than 50 languages are spoken in the Caucasus (Catford 1977: 283). Hebrew is the ancient original language for all the twelve tribes of Israel, also after the division of the Land of Israel in 927 BCE into the Northern Kingdom, Israel, with ten of the tribes and the Southern Kingdom, Juda, with two tribes. The Israelites got exiled by the Assyrian Kings, e.g. Shalmaneser in 722 BCE. These ten tribes soon lost their language and identity. The southern tribes, Juda, got exiled by the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar, between 606-586 BCE, who destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem (586 BCE).

Medieval Bulgarian Toponyms of Romanic (Non-Protoromanian) Origin

The present article is focused on the medieval toponymy of Romanic (but non-Protoromanian) origin preserved in the territory of modern Bulgaria and some neighboring regions where (during the Middle Ages) Old Slavonic and Middle Bulgarian interacted with Romance vernaculars and probably with some Paleobalkan languages. The aim is to shed light on the phonology of these vernaculars, on their contacts with some of the Paleobalkan languages, and on the degree of their proximity to Protoromanian and on their interaction with Old Slavonic and Middle Bulgarian. The investigation is based on several kinds of sources: Works of antique and late antique Greek and Latin historians and geographers who offer a lot of information about the Balkan toponymy up to the end of the 6 th century. The Latin and Greek epigraphy from Moesia Inferior and Thrace. Medieval sources – here the emphasis is on the Old Slavonic (of Bulgarian origin) and Middle Bulgarian works, documents and epigraphic material. In conclusion, an attempt is made at describing the areal distribution of some of the extinct Romance vernaculars.

Aux origines de la cartographie

Abstract Apart from a few exceptions such as the Neo-Babylonian Map of the World exhibited in the British Museum, the first representations of the oecumene are traditionally attributed to Greek geographers. This study, however, tries to show that the earliest “realistic” cartographic vision of Asia goes back to the earlier administration of the Achaemenid Empire. The documents taken into account are the Achaemenid lists of countries published in various forms since the time of Darius I. The circular geographical order detected in their organization has indeed given rise to several cartographic reconstructions. The most complex list, that of the DNa inscription (from the funerary monument of Darius I at Naqsh-e Rustam), seems to enumerate the countries according to radial roads from the center of the empire. This scheme is however incompatible with that of other lists, like the earlier DB inscription of Bisutun, where some country sequences are reversed compared to DNa. Faced with these contradictions, I propose to reorganize the countries in a more “realistic” way within the limits of a discoid scheme divided into four quadrants (with a later annular peripheral belt), that may form a common cartographic system compatible with all the Achaemenid lists. This map was designed under Darius I, with a unique codified system of reading which allowed to transform it into lists of countries. This reading system can fit all the lists only if the map is oriented to the southwest (and not to the north as the Greek maps), thence the western-southwestern countries of the empire are positioned at the top of the map. In the earliest lists, according to this reading system, the enumeration started from the southwestern countries on the top of the map (types A and AB represented by DB and DPe), while later it started from the northeastern countries at the bottom of the map (type B lists mainly represented by DNa). The organization of the lists having a purely graphic origin, the variations between the maps reflect the expansion of the empire and do not seem to have been influenced by administrative or financial data. At the same time, this cartographical approach makes it possible to understand the other lists of countries whose logic of development is difficult to identify, such as the list on the statue of Darius at Susa and related documents like the Suez inscriptions and the texts defining the four corners of the empire (DPh and DH). It allows also to interpret certain later iconographic programs, such as the bas-reliefs of Persepolis (Apadana ramp, 100 Columns Hall and Tripylon), where the organization of peoples stems from a spatial organization, free from any ideological, administrative or economic background. The same approach may finally allow to decode the list in the later Xerxes’ Daiva-inscription (XPh), whose disorderly character has nothing to do with a change in the administrative organization of the empire, but could simply be explained by the fact that the official codified reading rules of the original maps were forgotten after Darius’ reign. This study will be developed in a second forthcoming paper that will explain how under Darius I Hecataeus was probably the only Greek geographer who had the opportunity to examine a copy of the circular Achaemenid map with the detail of the eastern regions. It will also show in what circumstances this early Greek map was lost even before Herodotus. The Greeks were not able, until the expedition of Alexander, to reconstruct a relatively correct map of Central Asia. Even then, however, they failed to identify the Aral Sea – reached by Derdas, the ambassador Alexander sent to the Asian Scythians supposed to live “on the Bosphorus” – or to locate Chorasmia, topic of this colloquium in Bordeaux, a country that had been previously properly located in the pre-Achaemenid maps and then in the geography of Darius.

Caught in the crossfire of early modern controversy: Strabo on Moses and his corrupt successors

ABSTRACTThe Greek geographer Strabo described Moses as a charismatic leader who had instilled in his followers a simple form of worship and an unconventional form of government. Subsequent generations of Moses’s successors had exploited people’s awe of the sacred, however, in order to erect a superstitious and tyrannical hierocracy. John Toland’s Origines Judaicae (1709) relied heavily on Strabo’s testimony in its denunciation of superstition and priestcraft. Strabo’s passage on Moses was well known, not only to Toland but to Christian apologists who – since the sixteenth century – had used it to defend the account of Moses in the Old Testament. Yet, by the eighteenth century, Strabo had been transformed from a quasi-Christian authority into a historical liability to orthodoxy. Attending to the often-neglected reception of Strabo, this article uncovers continuities and discontinuities in ideas of superstition and priestcraft through the writings of Isaac Casaubon, Philippe de Mornay, Hugo Grotius, and John Toland. It argues that the reception of Strabo in the early modern period demonstrates how his Geography became increasingly caught in the crossfire of religious controversy.

Scylax of Caryanda, pseudo-scylax, and the Paris Periplus: reconsidering the ancient tradition of a geographical text

O Périplo, preservado no manuscrito Parisinus suppl. gr. 443 e erroneamente atribuído a Cílax de Carianda (sexto século a. C.), é o mais antigo espécime da periplografia grega antiga. Ele pertence ao quarto século antes de Cristo. No presente artigo, todos os testemunhos da tradição antiga tanto de Cílax quanto do Périplo de Paris são cuidadosamente avaliadas. O objetivo é determinar quando e por que o Périplo de Paris foi equivocadamente atribuído a Cílax e dissipar qualquer dúvida da suposta autoria deste trabalho geográfico antigo. A confusão, ou a falsificação deliberada, é evidente em Estrabão: ele sabia que a viagem de Cílax para o Oriente e, ao mesmo tempo estava familiarizado com o texto do Périplo de Paris, que ele atribui ao antigo navegador. Autores gregos e latinos da Época Imperial Romana conheciam o Périplo de Paris, mas muitos seguiam cegamente a atribuição equivocada a Cílax de Carianda. Quando Marciano de Heracleia no período Bizantino Antigo coletou seu corpus de geógrafos gregos antigos, ele também atribuiu o Périplo de Paris a Cílax, assim transmitindo o erro aos copistas do Paris. suppl. gr. 443.

Milton and the "Savage Deserts of America"

Milton and the "Savage Deserts of America" Elizabeth Sauer "Whether a reader wishes to see a New World connection or not, the language of Paradise Lost creates it." —Rodger Martin, "The Colonization of Paradise" Tzvetan Todorov applied the descriptors "astonishing," "intense," "extreme," and "exemplary" to characterize early modern Europeans' first reported encounters with the alterity of the Americas and the indigenous peoples. Over the centuries Europeans demonstrated an awareness of Africa, India, and China; "some memory of these places was always there already—from the beginning," Todorov confirms.1 As for the Americas, given the belated public record of a European contact, this alien, captivating place still required comprehension and possession. Literary works enabled and instantiated some of these efforts—intellectual and territorial. "Of late / Columbus found the American," Milton declares in recounting the immediate aftermath of human disobedience in Paradise Lost.2 Two books later, in a long, globe-consuming epic catalog (PL 11.383–411), Milton's prophetic narrator, Michael, directs Adam's gaze slowly westward, while [End Page 3] mapping and naming capitals and historic rulers of Asia, Africa, and Europe, which, until the late fifteenth century, were the known continents. By Milton's day, the Americas were, as the geographer and antiquarian Peter Heylyn states in his massive chorographical project Cosmographie, "lately known."3 In Milton's encyclopedic epic, the Americas still lie beyond Adam's view, beyond the horizon and the ecliptic, the path of the earth with respect to the sun. Essentially, Adam needs to be hoisted on the shoulders of Atlas, Hercules, and Milton's Michael to experience "in spirit perhaps" (PL 11.406) the Americas, which extend, if not geographically then conceptually, into the unknown Southern Hemisphere. Still in Milton's day, the Americas were an otherworldly place, occupying a liminal space between the known and unknown, and thus inviting reclamation and representation. The earliest encounters with the Americas may have predated Columbus by many centuries. In the first century BCE, Greek geographer Diodorus of Sicily (Siculus) wrote of the islands beyond "the Pillars of Hercules" or the Straits of Gibraltar, "There lies out in the deep off Libya an island of considerable size. … Its land is fruitful, much of it being mountainous and not a little being a level plain of surpassing beauty. … the island contains many parks planted with trees of every variety and gardens in great multitudes." Diodorus goes on to suggest a possible encounter of a western land by the Phoenicians and Carthaginians from Northern Africa.4 The land mass in question was known as "India Occident" (India Occidentalis), "occident" meaning "going down" or, in some cases, "setting" like the sun. In the early modern era, the first terrestrial globe, produced by the German cartographer and navigator Martin Behaim in 1492, may contain some traces of the latterly identified South America, but it features no clear indications of the continent's existence. Columbus's 1492 voyage would result in the early modern "discovery" of the Caribbean islands, and in 1498 he would land on the South American mainland. Given the relative novelty of the Americas, the indirectness of transatlantic routes, and the vastness of his own imagination, Milton's virtual travels to the Americas are marked by detours, [End Page 4] circumnavigations, and chance encounters. To devote an essay to an investigation of how the New World—as a whole and as a precursor to the latterly defined North, Central, and South America—registers in Milton's works can be a daunting and frustrating exercise. Scholars venturing into the territory of Milton in the Americas readily discover that there is no conspicuous New World orientation in Milton, J. Martin Evans's influential argument in Milton's Imperial Epic notwithstanding.5 Literary evidence confirms Milton's familiarity with Walter Ralegh's Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empyre of Guiana (1596), Samuel Purchas's Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625), and Peter Heylyn's Cosmographie (1652); yet "America occupied no significant place in Milton's mental geography," William Spengeman concedes in "Milton's American Poem."6 In the few allusions to the New World in Milton's prose and verse, the Americas appear as degenerate or inferior...

Comparative analysis of soil erosion sensitivity using various quantizations within GIS environment: an application on Sperchios river basin in Central Greece

ABSTRACTSoil erosion is a prominent cause of land degradation and desertification in Mediterranean countries. The detrimental effects of soil erosion are exemplified in climate (in particular climate change), topography, human activities and natural disasters. Modelling of erosion and deposition in complex terrains within a geographic information system (GIS) requires reliable estimation of topographic factors, as well as the formulation of erosion models adequate for digital representation of spatially distributed parameters. In the current paper, two different approaches for the estimation of erosion in the Sperchios river basin are described and evaluated using GIS – the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation and the Gavrilovič method. Implementing the ArcGIS 10.2.1 programme, the necessary input data for these approaches were estimated using four different quantizations that were created using topographic maps, courtesy of the Greek Geographical Army Service. The results indicated that even though a high-resolution quantization is always preferred for more reliable results, when there is a lack of available data, coarser quantizations can also be used to extract similar estimations.

La “Vigne de Pausanias” : mythe et ADN

To develop knowledge about ampelographic heritage and grapevine genetic resources of Greece, we characterised at ampelographic and molecular levels the grapevine called the “Pausanias Vine”. This vine is located in the center of the Peloponnese (Pagrati village, Prefecture of Achaia). It is named and listed as the “Pausanias Vine”, for the Greek geographer of the second century AD, although its origin and its age are not really known. The results show that it is not an old Greek grapevine cultivar but a wild vine (Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris), whose specificity lies in the fact that it has been maintained naturally for a very long time, probably several centuries, without any specific human intervention. In this regard, and its spectacular growth, it is definitely a single and quite exceptional genotype.

Encyclopedia of geography terms, themes, and concepts

This text provides an essential reference handbook for students of geography and related social sciences. How did the Greek geographer Eratosthenes make an accurate calculation of the earth's circumstance more than 1,500 years before the first voyage of Columbus to the New World? What are the green belts of England that dominate its rural landscape? And what is regarded as the driest continent on the planet? This handbook offers a broad coverage of terminology and concepts, serving as both an encyclopedic dictionary of geography terms and an approachable overview to the human and physical aspects of world geography. Approximately 150 geographic terms and concepts are defined and discussed, providing an accessible reference for anyone who requires a deeper knowledge of the language and ideas that are important to geography as a discipline. Helpful sidebars are provided to shed light on unusual or controversial theories and concepts. All major geographic concepts and terms are addressed and comprehensively explained using examples. Contains more than 30 illustrations, comprising images, maps, charts and graphs Features sidebars that highlight and explain specific topics or provide biographical sketches of key figures in the history of geographic thought Detailed entries cover the most essential concepts of geography as an academic discipline

Piraeus, the ancient island of Athens: Evidence from Holocene sediments and historical archives

The famous Greek geographer Strabo wrote in the fi rst century A.D., that Piraeus was formerly an island and lay ‘over against’ the mainland, from which it got its name. To validate Strabo’s hypothesis, cartographic and historical data were compiled with multiproxy paleoenvironmental analyses and radiocarbon dating from a series of boreholes drilled in the Cephissus coastal plain, southwest of Athens, Greece. The results of this interdisciplinary geoarchaeological research demonstrate the reliability of Strabo’s text by revealing that Piraeus was indeed an island. In early Holocene time, the rocky hill of Piraeus was linked to the mainland of Attica. During the late to fi nal Neolithic Period (4850‐3450 B.C.), Piraeus became an island in a shallow marine bay, due to sea-level rise in the Holocene. Between 2850 and 1550 B.C., in the Early and Middle Bronze Age, Piraeus was separated from the mainland by a wide lagoon. In the fi fth century B.C., Themistocles, Cimon, and then Pericles connected Athens to Piraeus by building two “long walls” partly built on a residual coastal marsh called the Halipedon. This study reveals an impressive example of past landscape evolution.

Ancient Greek Geographer Pausanias as a Qualitative Karst Hydrogeologist

Ancient Greek Geographer Pausanias as a Qualitative Karst Hydrogeologist

The Artemidorus Papyrus: Solving An Ancient Puzzle with Radiocarbon and Ion Beam Analysis Measurements

Ancient papyrus manuscripts are one of the most fascinating sources for reconstructing not only ancient life habits but also past literature. Recently, an amazing document has come to the fore due to the heated debates it raised: the so-called Artemidorus papyrus. It is a very long scroll (about 2.5 m) composed of several fragments of different sizes, with inscriptions and drawings on both sides. On the recto of the document, a text about geography and some drawings of heads, feet, and hands are present, while on the verso there are many sketches of animals, both real and fantastic. Its importance in classical studies comes from the fact that some scholars claim that it is the first known transcription of a relatively large fragment by the Greek geographer Artemidorus. However, other scholars think that the papyrus is a fake, drawn in the 19th century AD by a well-known forger. In order to overcome all possible ambiguities, the papyrus has been studied not only on the basis of historical and paleographic criteria but also by scientific techniques. We have contributed to the knowledge about the papyrus by radiocarbon dating the document and by analyzing the composition of the ink using ion beam analysis (IBA). Results are compatible with the scroll being an ancient manuscript: accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C measurements have dated the papyrus to a period between the 1st century BC and 1st century AD, while IBA measurements have pointed out the use of an organic (carbon-based) ink, which was typical of ancient Roman and Greek times. Details of the measurements are presented to emphasize the importance of combining AMS and IBA results.

The search for the sources of the White Nile and Egyptian–Sudanese relations

The exact southernmost source of the White Nile was discovered by the German explorer Burckhardt Waldecker on 12 November 1937. It was a thin trickle of water bubbling from a spring in the hills of Burundi. Other water sources of the Nile start their journey in the snow melt fed creeks of the Mountains of the Moon in Rwanda. ‘Waldecker set up a stela to mark the spot and on the nearest hilltop built a stone pyramid to remind people of the glorious destiny of the river.’ 1 The search for the sources of the Nile has had its own history since Biblical times Herodotus, who travelled in the Lower Nile Valley in the fifth century BC, wrote that ‘Egypt is the gift of the Nile’ and that its source was lying as much southward of Egypt ‘as one can travel by land or water in four months’. The location of the source of the Nile remained for so long shrouded in mystery that the Romans had a saying ‘Quaere fonte Nili’ – or: to look for the sources of the Nile – was equivalent to ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’. Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer and geographer, made the biggest advance ‘southwards’ when he put the sources of the Nile at the foot of the ‘Mountains of the Moon’, at latitude 12’30 S. As we now know (or assume?) the real source of the Nile lies four degrees further south. 2 According to William Daniel who undertook a journey to the Nile in 1700: There are different judgments as to its origin. Some will have its beginning to be in the Upper Ethiopia . . . from very high mountains which are called the Mountains of the Moon; but our modern opinions agree that the Nile is formed from the increase of two lakes, called Zembree and Zaflan. 3

A New Presentation of Selected Greek Geographers

The Selected Greek Geographers project, recently launched, will publish a selection of ancient Greek geographical authors in English translations with short historical commentaries. The paper sets out the rationale for a new presentation of these geographical texts, and compares it with other on-going projects such as the Budé Géographes grecs and Fragmente der griechischen Historiker V. A paragraph of the author’s draft translation of Pseudo-Skylax is compared with previous versions, and a sample of commentary in SGG style offered for consideration. Finally, a longer extract from the translation (§§1–10) is analysed.

Identity Discourses on Borders in Eastern Europe

In European usage, the meaning of the word border has progressively changed from a fact of nature to a cultural, political, and ideological product of human will (Power 6-13; Harvey). Natural frontiers do not exist either in a topographical or in a linguistic sense, and the self-conscious linking of place and identity is quite a modern phenomenon, rooted in nineteenth-century Europe (Febvre, Geographical Introduction 296-314). For example, although Greek geographers looked for units that could claim some distinctive local identity, they were not able to establish hard and fast boundaries but instead identified human or natu-

A comparative study of the evolution of the geographical ideas and measurements until the time of Eratosthenes

We perform a comparative study of the evolution of the most important methods for geographical, carto-graphical and astronomical measurements developed by ancient Greek scientists and philosophers until the time of Eratosthenes. It seems that the novel geometrical method invented by Eratosthenes for the measurement of the size of the Earth did not appear suddenly but was the final outcome of long-lasting intellectual activity. It is shown that Anaximander, Pytheas, Eudoxus of Cnidus, Dicaearchus, Aristotle and Archimedes, the most famous ancient Greek philosopher astronomers and geographers before Eratosthenes, affected his thinking and contributed to his discovery. Furthermore, we briefly describe and explain the method of Eratosthenes, its significance, new errors that intruded into Eratosthenes’ measurement, as well as its application for the determination of the shape and the size of the Earth.