Voyage of Hanno the Navigator: Carthage Explores West Africa

The voyage of Hanno the Navigator was a Carthaginian expedition that sailed out through the Strait of Gibraltar and down the Atlantic coast of Africa, probably around 500 BC. It is known from a short Greek text, the Periplus of Hanno, which claims to translate the account Hanno set up in a temple at Carthage. It is one of the very few surviving descriptions of ancient exploration in West Africa, and scholars still debate how far the fleet really went.

Background: Carthage and the Atlantic

Carthage, in modern Tunisia, was founded by Phoenician settlers from Tyre; see our article on the founding of Carthage. By the 6th century BC it had become the leading power among the western Phoenicians, with trading posts in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain and North Africa. These belonged to the wider network described in Phoenician colonies and trade.

Beyond the Pillars of Heracles, the ancient name for the Strait of Gibraltar, lay older Phoenician settlements such as Gadir (Cádiz) in Spain and Lixus on the Moroccan coast. Carthage had strong reasons to control this Atlantic route. It offered access to metals from Spain and to gold, ivory and other goods from Africa. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, described Carthaginian merchants trading for gold with people on the African coast beyond the Pillars by “silent trade”, leaving goods on the shore and waiting for gold to be set beside them, a story told in Book 4 of his Histories.

The text: the Periplus of Hanno

A periplus is an ancient sailing guide or voyage account that lists coasts, harbours and landmarks in order. The Periplus of Hanno is a short Greek text of about 18 numbered sections. Its opening states that the Carthaginians decided that Hanno should sail beyond the Pillars of Heracles and found cities of Libyphoenicians, people of mixed Phoenician and North African descent, and that he set out with 60 penteconters (ships of 50 oars) carrying about 30,000 men and women, with food and equipment.

The text claims to be a translation of an inscription Hanno dedicated in the temple of Kronos, the Greek name for the Carthaginian god Baal Hammon. It survives mainly in a single 9th-century Byzantine manuscript, the Codex Palatinus Graecus 398 in Heidelberg, with a later copy in London. How faithfully it reflects a genuine Punic original is uncertain. The figure of 30,000 people is widely regarded as exaggerated, since 60 ships of that size could not have carried so many.

What the Periplus describes

The account falls into two parts. The first describes colonisation. Two days beyond the strait Hanno founded a town called Thymiaterion, then built a temple to Poseidon at a wooded headland called Soloeis. He then founded several more settlements along the coast, named in the text as Karikon Teichos, Gytte, Akra, Melitta and Arambys. At a large river called the Lixos the Carthaginians met friendly nomads, the Lixites, and took some of them on as interpreters.

Further south the fleet reached a small island called Kerne, where a colony was settled. Kerne was later described as a trading base for Africa, but its location is unknown; suggestions range from the island of Mogador off Essaouira to Herne Island in the bay of Dakhla in Western Sahara.

The second part reads as an exploration voyage. Hanno describes a river full of crocodiles and hippopotamuses, wild people dressed in animal skins who threw stones, and dense forests. At night the sailors saw fires along the shore and heard drums, pipes and cymbals. They passed a land “full of fire” and a towering blaze reaching the sky, which the text calls the Chariot of the Gods.

Finally, in a bay called the Southern Horn, they found an island with “wild people”, most of them women with hairy bodies, whom the interpreters called Gorillai. The Carthaginians caught three females, who bit and scratched so violently that they were killed; their skins were taken back to Carthage. The voyage then ended, the text says, because supplies ran out.

How far did Hanno go?

Every stage of the route has been argued over since the Renaissance. Most scholars accept that the colonies of the first part lay on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. The large river with crocodiles and hippopotamuses is often identified with the Senegal, or possibly the Gambia.

The most debated point is the Chariot of the Gods. A “maximalist” reading identifies it with Mount Cameroon, an active volcano over 4,000 metres high, which would mean Hanno sailed some 4,000 kilometres or more from the strait. Others prefer Mount Kakoulima in Guinea, and see the fires as grass burning by local farmers in the dry season, a practice still common today. A “minimalist” reading argues that the real voyage went no further than southern Morocco, and that later writers or copyists added exotic details.

Ancient navigation also raises questions. Ships returning north along the Saharan coast face steady contrary winds and currents, which some historians think would have made the return voyage very difficult, while others point out that rowed penteconters could manage it.

What the voyage tells us

Even with its uncertainties, the Periplus reflects real features of the West African coast. Its sequence moves from the Mediterranean-style landscapes of northern Morocco to desert shores and then to rivers, forests and large wild animals, a progression that matches the actual geography. Its description of night-time fires and music on land fits what later European sailors reported along the same coasts.

The account also shows how Carthage operated. It combined state planning, colonisation and trade, using interpreters recruited along the way and setting up bases from which merchants could work. Kerne in particular seems to have served as a long-lasting trading post.

Echoes in later writers

Greek and Roman authors knew of the voyage. Pliny the Elder, writing in the 1st century AD, mentions Hanno’s voyage and notes that no trace remained in his day of many of the cities Hanno was said to have founded. He also reports that the skins of two hairy women were displayed in the temple of Juno at Carthage until the Romans destroyed the city in 146 BC. Pliny also records a separate Carthaginian voyage under Himilco to the north-western coasts of Europe.

In 1847 the American missionary Thomas Savage and the anatomist Jeffries Wyman borrowed the word Gorillai from the Periplus to name a newly described African ape, the gorilla. Hanno’s creatures were most likely chimpanzees or another primate, if the episode is reliable at all.

Timeline

• c. 814 BC (traditional date): Phoenicians from Tyre found Carthage.
• c. 6th century BC: Carthage becomes the leading power of the western Phoenician world.
• c. 500 BC (date uncertain): Hanno’s fleet sails beyond the Pillars of Heracles and founds settlements on the Moroccan coast.
• 5th century BC: Herodotus describes Carthaginian “silent trade” for gold beyond the Pillars.
• 146 BC: Rome destroys Carthage; according to Pliny, Hanno’s ape skins were still in a temple there.
• 1st century AD: Pliny the Elder discusses Hanno’s voyage in his Natural History.
• 9th century AD: The surviving manuscript of the Periplus is copied in the Byzantine Empire.
• 1847: The name “gorilla” is taken from the Periplus for the African ape.

Why it matters

The Periplus of Hanno is one of the earliest surviving accounts of a planned voyage along the coast of West Africa, written some 2,000 years before Portuguese sailors explored the same shores. Whatever its exact route, it shows Carthage’s ambition to reach Atlantic markets and the reach of Phoenician seafaring. It also reminds readers how fragile ancient evidence can be: a single short text, copied by medieval scribes, is almost all that remains of a major expedition.