The Ancient World's End: The Journey of Hanno
- Feb 17
- 15 min read
The journey of Hanno is as significant as it is perhaps overlooked or unknown today by most. The story of the voyage which was originally documented by Hanno during his venture as a ship log did not survive but rather what was uncovered was a Greek translated copy- The Periplus of Hanno. Periplus comes from the Greek “peri,” meaning around, and “plous,” meaning voyage or sailing. Literally "a sailing around" although in practice it was used broadly to mean the account of a sea voyage. A periplus was used as a navigational text describing coastlines. It was recorded by Hanno during the voyage despite being rather vague, brief, and did not explain much in detail- perhaps to keep Carthaginian knowledge from Romans, a stress on time during the voyage, or maybe Hanno was simply a man of very few words- but it included rough distances, landmarks, hazards, and peoples encountered along the way, a way to recount knowledge from the journey.
The periplus of Hanno is the only surviving excerpt into Carthaginian firsthand experience of the world, not that there is much else surviving of Carthaginian writing or record. You might have not even heard of Carthage, however a long time ago it was a settlement of the ancient pre-Roman Phoenician civilization that now little knowledge remains of due to being conquered by Rome around 146 BC. As far as Rome’s telling of history (which is what is told of course), Hanno’s voyage along the coast of West Africa and beyond the only sea they knew was not as exciting or consequential as the expansive colonizations or trade-route mapping of Columbus or Pytheas. While Roman and Greek historians mention Hanno and had used what Carthaginian information of the world's geography they had found to set out on their own great voyages across the seas and into new lands, Hanno was not acknowledged the same as a great voyager to them. However, it is thanks to his exploration beyond the Straits of Gibraltar that the Greeks gained information about what lay beyond the waters around the land they knew, and perhaps it inspired them or drew out some of their curiosity for what lay South beyond the Mediterranean.
Hanno’s journey begins in his city of Carthage around 479 BCE, or what we now know as Tunisia. The Strait of Gibraltar separates the Mediterranean sea from the Atlantic ocean, and back then it separated what all of the Mediterranean knew existed of their world. It is fourteen kilometers wide at its narrowest point with Spain to the North and Morocco to the South. The edges that practically gated the Mediterranean are rock formations that the Greeks famously named the Pillars of Hercules or Pillars of Herakles- to the Carthaginians the Pillars of Melqart. The Greeks named them after Hercules, who according to Greek legends either set them up as a monument at the edge of his travels or broke through a mountain to create the strait itself. The Carthaginians named them after Melqart, their equivalent deity who is the Phoenician god of the sea, trade, and exploration. Past the Pillars of Hercules (or Melqart), the mapmakers of Hanno’s age stopped drawing any coastlines and started drawing open water- they did not yet know of what lay beyond them. For Hanno's voyage, the strait was the point of departure into the unknown. The moment the expedition passed through it and turned south, they were navigating outside their existing Carthaginian geographic knowledge. Everything mapped and known was left behind them.
Carthage was not the pre-Roman civilization you may picture when you first hear of it as an ancient Mediterranean city, although it was in relation close. It was older than Rome, and wealthier than most of its neighboring countries. It was a city-state built on its prosperous commerce and trade which held influence and power over the western Mediterranean. Understanding who they were may help us imagine and understand the voyage of Hanno who they sent with a fleet of 60 ships into the Atlantic to discover the coast of Africa.
The Carthaginians weren't originally from Carthage, or even from Africa, despite occupying North Africa. They were originally settler Phoenicians, which were a people from the eastern Mediterranean coast, or modern day Lebanon. They were a people who had been sailing and trading across the Mediterranean for centuries before anything was written about them or made them noticed by other large countries. Their prosperity began with their expansion as they built ships and established trading posts across the Mediterranean at a time when most other cultures were still yet to discover the use of sea-faring trade. By the time the settlement of Carthage was founded by Phoenicians, around 878 BCE, their merchants had already been sailing and trading in the Mediterranean. Carthage started as one Phoenician outpost among many and ended up outlasting and outgrowing all of them.
The Phoenicians originally spoke Canaanite, which is a Semitic language in the same family as Hebrew and Aramaic. Their writing system, which was the Phoenician alphabet, is the direct ancestor of the Greek alphabet, which is the direct ancestor of the one you're reading right now (or English if this has been translated). Throughout most of documented history, the Phoenicians and Greeks are usually presented as completely separate civilizations, however they were actually more interconnected and more mutually influential to each other than often credited. The version of the language that was used in Carthage is called Punic, which is the tongue that Hanno would have spoken, and written his original account of voyage in. The Greek translation of his recorded voyage that now exists is questioned regarding accuracy of the translation from Punic to Greek- something was bound to have been misinterpreted or mistranslated from the many copies it took to get to the remaining periplus.
Their faith and religion was a version of the Canaanite tradition that developed through its own distinct culture in Carthage, just as their language had done. Their main deities of worship, which were described as ‘deifications of nature,’ were Melqart (or alternatively spelled Melcarth in older texts), their god of merchants and the sea which they named the king of their city, Baal Moloch, a weather and sky god, and Tanith, a goddess which they associated with the moon and protection. Tanith's symbol has reportedly shown up consistently across every Carthaginian site archaeologists have found, from Tunisia across to Morocco and up through Sardinia and Sicily, marking traces of where Carthaginians once settled.
Carthage was at its prime a civilization that controlled the Mediterranean through commerce and had sailed into the Atlantic before anyone else from that world thought to attempt it. However due to its total destruction it became nearly invisible throughout history and now most people only hear of it in concurrence with Rome and we know of Carthage as the place Rome destroyed. What we do know of Carthage is largely through Rome's descriptions of Carthage. Perhaps studying Hanno’s periplus is the insight into what Carthage once was from the source we should be learning about it from.
The periplus of Hanno starts off with a translation that expressed the Carthaginian’s elation to Hanno’s embarkment upon his journey South, past the Pillars of Melqart- which must have been a significant achievement, being the landmark and boundary of their largest god. What is more likely the cause of their elation though is why Hanno was commanded by his country to venture far from home. Around the time nearing the decision to make such a voyage Carthage was peaking in its prosperity and perhaps too much even, as their population had grown beyond what the land around the city could agriculturally provide or sustain. The neighboring countries grew interested in this prosperity booming in Carthage too, and the wars with Greek colonies in Sicily were taking an expensive and exhausting toll.
As the western Mediterranean was already mapped, controlled, and becoming crowded, their only future lay outside of what they had comfortably near. There were rumors from beyond the strait of gold from African kingdoms, ivory and precious metals, and peoples that opened new possibilities of trade. The rumors of opportunity in new lands undiscovered had spurred a choking Carthage into action. The senate's decision to authorize Hanno and sixty ships carrying thirty thousand people excited the people of Carthage. Perhaps expansion had been Carthage's answer to its own growth, just as it had been born from the Phoenicians.
The journey Hanno had been elected to command was set with the city’s intent to discover land on the Moroccan coastline and found new settlements to expand for their population and trade. Given this, it's no surprise to most historians- although some, such as Lionel Casson, author of Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, doubt the reality of the numbers since these were also translated from Punic to Greek- Hanno was sailing with 60 ships and around 30,000 people. Authors J.G. Demerliac & J. Meirat, in their Hannon et l' Empire Punique, also suspected 30,000 was too much and the ships would be overcrowded. What they thought was realistic is closer to 5,000.
These were ships designed to transport entire colonies and all their essential provisions, as well as the tools to found these settlements and crew aboard to maintain, navigate, and row these ships. The ships themselves were each fifty-oared with twenty-five to each side. In Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, Casson's description of the penteconters reconstructs them as long, narrow, single-banked oared vessels. They were among the older galley designs in the Mediterranean tradition, and by Hanno's era were considered outdated for military purposes but practical for trade cargo and colonial voyaging where their speed mattered less than their cargo capacity. However, these were not deep-hulled merchant vessels designed for bulk cargo. They could carry supplies but the combination of oarsmen, colonists, and other supplies that Hanno's voyage carried among even sixty ships would strain what the penteconter ships could handle, which is partly why historians doubt the numbers.
Casson’s reconstruction of the ships from this era based on Phoenician archaeological evidence estimated them around 38 to 40 meters long with a shallow draft. This structure implied that they were useful for coastal navigation and river mouths but not so much for open ocean conditions. The Atlantic would have been a different environment for these ships than what their Carthaginian crew had been skilled in, since it has much heavier swells and less predictable weather than the Mediterranean sea.
As Hanno and his fleet voyaged South past the Pillars of Hercules with their mission of setting up colonies they sailed for two days, only stopping during nights, until they reached the first land that they decided to settle on. The record of their first city, which they named Thymiaterium, was built on a great plain. It was not documented how many ships, people, or supplies went into founding this first city, or any of the others. The next information which Hanno recorded in the perplus was their continuation West- stopping at a rocky headland abundant with trees that jutted out from Libya (Libya is what they called Africa- their goal being to found what they referred to as “Libyphoenician cities”). They set up an altar to Neptune- which untranslated from Roman or Greek most likely would have been an altar to their equivalent god of the sea, Melqart. After setting up Neptune’s altar they sailed East into Libya, following a river that led them half a day’s distance into a marsh. Hanno wrote of its reeds which grew tall and thick, and animals they had seen grazing such as elephants, reportedly in great numbers.
They continued South, beyond the marsh sailing for a day before settling more cities on the coast by the sea. These cities they set up were named Caricus Murus, Gytta, Acra, Melitta, and Arambys. After Hanno's fleet reached the marsh however, his direction “South” is unclear. In the periplus it doesn't specify whether he continued along the African Atlantic coast or continued inland up the river South- which might have been the Oum er Rbia. Some might speculate it would have made more practical sense for Hanno to have traveled upstream, possibly negotiating with a local chief for permission to settle his colonists on a coast nearby. A day and a half's journey up the Oum er Rbia exists a settlement now called Im'fout, which the town's name still contains an ancient form of the river's old name, Phout, suggesting the habitation of that site going back far enough to preserve the original name.
The next discovery during their journey the periplus describes is Hanno’s fleet reaching the large river called Lixos, where they encountered a nomadic people, the Lixitæs, who were pasturing cattle at the river bank. From Hanno's account it was recorded that they stayed with them long enough to establish friendly relations with the Lixitæs. This relationship that they formed with these locals then led to the most significant exchange of their voyage as the Lixitæs became their guides in their continuation South.
Which river the Lixos actually was is another contested geographic question that was unclear through reading Hanno’s record in the periplus. It is possible that it refers to the river Drâa, which connects into the Atlantic as Hanno describes the Lixos. However, J. Carcopino in Le Maroc Antique, argues it was actually further north near modern El Araïche, South of Tangier, where a Phoenician city known to the Greeks as Lixos has been excavated. The coins found there are carved with Phoenician inscriptions and a nearby river is still called the Lekkous. The evidence is convincing but it would mean that Hanno sailed back North before continuing South, which was not mentioned in the periplus or otherwise explainable.
During their stay with the Lixitæ peoples, Hanno and his crew must have learned about the land and surrounding lands through interpreters that were able to communicate with Hanno’s crew through Punic- being a nomadic people they were believed to have had contact with merchants from the Mediterranean prior to Hanno. He recorded information from the Lixitæ about the great mountains above the Lixitæs colony from which they believed the Lixos river ran from and wild beasts roamed in the land behind. There and sheltered by the mountains the Lixitæ spoke of an unfriendly people who lived with the wild beasts called the Æthiopians who are interpreted to be a native African people. They also spoke of cave-dwelling men “of various shapes” who lived on the mountains themselves and claimed them to be faster on foot than horses.
The Lixitæ were a more nomadic tribe, being described as wandering. They were mostly pastoralists which roamed the lands herding cattle seasonally along the inlands of Libya or what would today be Morocco. They had detailed geographic and ethnographic knowledge of the coast and interior south of the Lixos, including knowledge of the mountain ranges, the rivers, and the peoples living around Africa’s inlands. The Lixitae are a people who existed up until around the same time Carthage was conquered by Rome and known almost entirely through the margins of other civilizations' records, which means what we know about them is through fragments such as Hanno’s records. When Hanno left the Lixitæ people he took interpreters with them aboard to continue their journey South.
Two days of sailing along what the periplus describes as a desert shore, then one day east, they found a small island inside of a bay. They left settlers and called it Kerne, from the Phoenician “Chernah,” meaning last habitation. True to its name, this was the edge of where Hanno extended Carthage’s colonization. Hanno recorded that Kerne was located directly opposite Carthage since they recorded it to be the same amount of time to sail from the Pillars of Hercules West to Kerne as from the Pillars of Hercules East back to Carthage. It has not been definitively identified where Kerne actually was, but most likely being a small islet called Herne in the Rio de Oro bay near modern Ad Dakhla in Western Sahara. Whether that calculation Hanno recorded was precise navigation is difficult to believe however, since this would not have been such a short voyage as Hanno described. Karl Müller, the first scholar to edit Hanno's text in the modern era, suggested the manuscript originally read twelve days along the desert coast South rather than two due to a scribal error in the Greek copying that would make the geography more possible.
Their voyage continued down a great river named Chretes, and into a bay containing three islands larger than Kerne. At this point in Hanno’s journey with so many ambiguous directions that aren't plausibly matching geographic locations it is difficult to say where they were here. A day sailing past these islands they met a new civilization of people which Hanno noted in thick ethnocentrism were “savages” wearing the skins of wild beasts who threw rocks at them, preventing them from coming ashore. Without stopping there they continued until reaching a broad large river, which may have been the Senegal, where they saw crocodiles and hippopotami. Hanno returned to Kerne soon after, being the last settlement he reconveined at before venturing South, now an exploratory mission.
Leaving Kerne, they sailed South for twelve days. Along the coast they sailed close to the shore the entire way. Hanno and the crew noticed that there was a continuous habitation of the Æthiopians- the same native African peoples that lived beyond the mountains where they had met the Lixitæ. However, these people who were unfriendly folk fled from them whenever the ships came close and their Lixitæ interpreters couldn't understand their language. At some point the fleet had crossed a linguistic boundary that their guides could no longer translate for them or navigate.
On their last day, they came to mountains full of woods with trees of colorful and aromatic bark. Their location at this point being somewhere along the West and Central African coast, or more specifically Cape Verde- the trees they saw might have been African sandalwood, which was valued for its aromatic wood and historically a trade good, or African copal trees, which produce aromatic resins that were used as incense in West Africa.
Two days sailing around the mountains wooded with colorful trees brought them out into the expanse of open sea, the Gulf of Guinea or Gulf of Gambia, with a flat plain on the landward side. At night they observed fires lighting up across it, large and small, and flaring up at intervals in the darkness. They may have been at the border of what is now Liberia and Ivory Coast. Five more days along the coast brought them to a great bay that the Lixitæ called the Horn of the West, which could be Cape Three Points in modern Ghana. Inside the bay was a large island with a saltwater lagoon, and inside of it another island. They landed here and during the day they saw forest in every direction. However when night came the fires started again and they heard pipes, the beating of cymbals and drums, and a multitude of shouting. The Lixitæ soothsayers advised leaving, and in fear Hanno and the fleet left without discovering anything more of the island. The mysterious island could have been anywhere in the western delta of the Niger.
As they were hurriedly sailing away from the island of the mysterious fires and sounds coming from darkness the periplus records in the next log them sailing past a burning country full of fragrance with torrents of fire flowing down to the ocean. The heat coming off of this land kept them from coming too close and continued to burn for four days as they sailed along the coast at a distance. One flame was visible shooting into the sky above the rest of the burning land, tall enough that Hanno recorded it as seeming to reach the stars, rising from above a mountain he called the Chariot of the Gods. This volcano Hanno wrote of is most likely Mount Cameroon. It is an active volcano sitting on the Gulf of Guinea coast, the people who live beneath it call it Monga-ma Loba, which translates as “Seat of the Gods.”
Three days of sailing along the torrents of fire along the coast they had arrived at another bay, the Horn of the South, which geographically was most likely Corisco Bay. Inside the bay was an island with a lagoon, and inside the lagoon another island. They described this geography similarly before when they first came to the Horn of the West, however this was a different island and they came confidently ashore to discover what was on this island.
The periplus describes what they met as a large group of savages, some men but most of them women, with hairy bodies. The Lixitæ interpreters called them “gorillæ,” or “gorillai,” the word that gorilla derived from. They pursued these creatures- some historians through studying the text and Hanno's claims questioned the possibility that these were not gorillas or a species of ape but really a tribe of women and men. The debate of what exactly the gorillai really were has never been resolved. Hanno and his crew were unsuccessful in capturing or reaching the “men,” who escaped by climbing fast and throwing stones in defense. They caught three “women” who were taken with them, although they resisted and would not willingly follow them- Hanno did not write specifying whether he planned to bring them back to Carthage alive, domesticate them, or trade them- slavery was also still common around the Mediterranean and may have been why Hanno described them human-like. The gorillai they caught refused to go with them, even biting and scratching, and they were killed by Hanno’s men and flayed. Their skins were brought back to Carthage, where they were displayed in the temple of Tanith until the Romans destroyed the city.
The fleet turned around after this last encounter with the gorillai and Hanno made the decision to return to Carthage- bringing back discoveries of what was beyond their mapped world and new knowledge that would have proved to be useful if Rome had not wiped them out perhaps. Provisions were running short, which is the only explanation Hanno records in the periplus for their return at this point. Their return up North would have been a more difficult journey than it was to travel South, since they would now be sailing back against the North-Eastern winds and the currents that had pushed them South so quickly on their way down.
What we have left of Hanno's voyage fits easily within just a few pages. The original inscription which was carved into stone and mounted in the temple of Ba'al Hammon in Carthage is gone since Rome conquered in 146 BCE. The Third Punic War ended with the complete destruction of everything Carthage had built or recorded. They had libraries and temples of information that were burned and pillaged to ruins. What survived at some point was recovered in the Hellenistic period, by someone who had translated Hanno's inscription into Greek. The Greek text passed through many more scribes through time, most of which probably made mistakes and mistranslations with no way of checking a language that was already dead. A twelve became a two at some point, or a two became a twelve. We still have many questions for Hanno about his voyage down the African coast, geographical and ethical.
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