Primary source ยท literary
Periplus of Hanno
Hanno the Navigator (attrib.)
Composition
c. 500 BCE
Language: greek
Reliability
contemporary access
0A short text, under a thousand words, recording a Carthaginian expedition along the Atlantic coast of Africa, founding colonies and reaching as far as (most likely) the Gulf of Guinea or the Cameroon highlands. The voyage is dated to the 5th century BCE. The text describes fortified outposts, encounters with peoples and animals, fires seen from the sea, and a return prompted by exhausted supplies. Specifics, including the famous "gorillai", are uncertain in identification, but the document is unique: a near-contemporary Carthaginian record of Carthaginian activity, not a Greco-Roman description from outside.
Bias and reliability notes
The text presents itself as a Greek translation of a Punic original, the account of Hanno's voyage along the Atlantic coast of West Africa, said to have been inscribed on a stele in the temple of Baal (or Kronos, in Greek interpretatio) at Carthage. The translation is undated; the original inscription, if real, was 5th-century BCE. The text's authenticity has been debated since antiquity. Most modern scholars accept it as broadly genuine, a real Punic geographic record, transmitted via Greek, though with corruptions in the place-names and animals that have accumulated in transmission. Whether genuine in detail or not, it is the closest thing we have to a Punic-authored text surviving from Carthage's classical period.