Tour of Hannon

The Périple of Hannon had been transcribed on a stele deposited in the temple of Ba' Al-Hammon with Carthage. The punic original did not reach us, but we let us have a Greek version entitled of it: Account of the voyage of the king of the Hannon Carthaginians around the regions which are beyond the Pillars of Hercules , engraved on plates suspended in the temple of Kronos.

Towards 425 Av. J. - C., the Suffète (archonte) Hannon is charged by Carthage crossing the Pillars of Hercules with a fleet of 60 ships of 50 oarsmen each one and 30.000 people on board to be unloaded with each stage to found there (where to populate counters already created) and, once reached the last counter, with carrying on its road for a forwarding of exploration.

According to the account which reached us, it breaks up as follows into five stages studied by Jerome Carcopino:

Of Gadès (Cadiz) to Thymatérion (mouth of the Sebou wadi, close to current Kénitra)
De Thymatérion with the Soloeis (Cape Cantin) and with the Wall Carrien (Safi), then return by stages towards Gytté and Melitta (old colonies of Coat and Melissa, towards Tangier) and finally a long stop with Lixus (Larache, on the current Loukkos wadi)
De Lixus with the island of Encircled (bay of Rio de Oro)
Forwarding of recognition of Encircled until the interior of the delta of the river Senegal and return to Cerné.
Of Encircled at the bottom of the gulf of Guinea, on the shores of Cameroun.

There were thus already 7 colonies based on the Moroccan littoral, immediately after Tangier, corresponding to the current ones: Larache, El-Jadida (old Mazagan), Safi and Cerné close to Villa Cisneros (Dakhla) indicated under the name of “island of Hern” on the old sea charts, to 1800 km in the south of Gadès (Cadiz). Until Encircled, the Carthaginian admiral did not travel randomly; obviously he knew the road and Cerné was to be an outpost which had been founded already, and where he leaves the last colonists of which he had the load. This extreme base of the punic world forwarding leaves. The goal of this exploration was probably to locate the coasts more in the south to found new counters later on there. From this point of view, the Tour illustrates the way well of proceeding of the Carthaginians and the phenicians before them. The Chrétès river undoubtedly corresponds to the river Senegal, and Hannon which had returned to Cerné without to have found anything conclusive supplies its ship and decides to continue front. It doubles a wooded buttress which is undoubtedly the Cape Verde then skirts the littoral dominated by the Kakoulima volcano before arriving at the “Horn of Occident” which is the bay of the Benign one. He sees with far the “Tank from the Gods”, the Mont Cameroun, to arrive at the “Horn of the south”, the bay of Biafra undoubtedly.

To have been able to take interpreters among the nomads with Lixos, this counter was to exist since already a certain time so that some became bilingual. It was moreover as many guides knowing the regions than the phenicians embarked with them, able to inform them about the populations which they would have met.

Lastly, it appears impossible that with counters practically located opposite the Canary islands - that one can sometimes see with the naked eye from the coast -, Phéniciens or Carthaginian never went there, even if we do not have any direct trace of their possible passage. Punic coins dating from the III E were on the other hand found in the island of Corvo to the the Azores, more distant, which, if they were brought there at the time, would show that existed a traffic between this archipelago and the population of the counters closest to the African coast.

Random links: