Synopsis
It is about 500 BCE. You embark on an epic voyage from the Great Sea to the west coast of Africa in a vessel with only a single huge sail. Your captain is a greedy, lazy and lecherous bastard. Crowding your deck and daily in your face, are soothsayers whose top navigational skill is to read chicken livers. They cause havoc amongst your crew, undermine your authority, give life threatening advice. You face opposition from those you meet along the seaboard and get lost in a myriad of lagoons, inland seas and mosquito infected waterways. Many of you die. The rest of you cling on to life, and love, with all your might.
The way out of this mess is to convince your captain he must trust the stars. Unfailingly the north star has led you home in the past. Yet he is bored by astronomy, hostile even. Furthermore the sky remains overcast for much of the time. You can’t get to land to do your star gazing calculations. You encounter a volcano, fight gorillas and the love of your life loses the baby she carries for you in tragic circumstances.
Afterwards how can you explain these events to the powers that be? Because explain you must. The minute you return to safe harbour you are taken prisoner and put up before an enquiry. Your sponsors want to know why the voyage failed. Who was responsible? Was it you or the captain? Was there a mutiny? What does the crew say happened and can you trust your inquisitor to tell the truth? He has not been a friend to you in the past.
Historical Note
This multi-voiced book is a historical adventure which fictionalises a famous voyage allegedly taken by Hanno the Navigator from the Mediterranean to either Sierra Leone or Gabon hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. If true it is one of the first ever recorded contacts between Europe and sub saharan Africa.
Evidence for the voyage is found in ancient Greek fragments lodged in monastries and libraries scattered across Europe. The original account of it was carved onto the walls of a monumental temple in Carthage. Hammered alongside it were two animal skins, supposedly gorillas, which were placed there, presumably, to add credence to what is still an almost unbelievable voyage. This temple, along with the rest of the city of Carthage, was completely destroyed by Rome in 146BCE and all its records lost.
Historians have speculated for years about why Hanno’s voyage took place and why it ended; even whether the story itself is actually true. I have chosen to believe it and think that what lay behind it was a search for gold and a genuine spirit of empirical enquiry typical of the kind of ground breaking thinking the Miletian philosophers engaged in in the Archaic period of Ancient Greece.
Sample Chapter One
Star Map
It is made of fine animal skin and the marks the navigator has laid out on it have smeared at the centre, the constellations fuzzy, and the ink blobbed. ‘All I had to do was lift my wrist as I marked them down,’ Dubb grumbles at himself, as he runs his finger across the document, his nail cracked and hand bony. ‘Instead, I’ve made a mess.’
On the side of the page, Orion drops down the sky like a shower of comets and the stars below have melted into dark grey water lines. Even so, he thinks, a frown gouged above bloodshot eyes, I can recognise them, those black dots on the skin; I can still see where they’re supposed to be. He licks his thumb to rub at the corner of the hide and see whether the water line can be removed. It cannot. His eyes slide to the writing at the top of the map: “Days since leaving the Strait of Calpe: Season 6, 9th moon, day 12”. Fortunately, that has not smudged. A heavy sigh pushes through his lips and his hair puffs about his cheeks. He looks up and along his battered vessel, The Delphis, then skywards, to the upturned bowl of blue above them. Heat haze, pale as ducks’ eggs, undulates above the vessel. Low clouds cream the horizon and judder in the heavy air. An inconsistent breeze pushes them homewards and what is left of his crew keeps time to Berek’s rowing tune, thrrrummmm, beat, beat, beat. The oars slice the grey-green tide beneath them, and an onshore bird swoops low over their foaming wake.
‘You’ll be leaving us soon,’ he murmurs, as his eyes follow it. In the far back reaches of his mind, his voice adds, If it please you, Mighty Melqart, if it please you, we’re going home.
As though to pray, he kneels beside the tiller platform and hunches forward to lay this star map on top of the rest. The records lie one below the other in a pile, displaying how the stars looked in the sky above The Delphis at every different stage of their journey since they first set out. The bottom one, of what might be six seasons ago, is the night they left the strait behind and Melqart was overhead as usual. He runs his finger down the edge of the pile and stops at one where the skin juts out. He raises the rest, heavy on his wrist, and peers at it. This time, Orion is a quarter of the way across, at the place where Hanno became commander and things began to go wrong. He flicks fast through the others. There’s a series of blanks, which are relentless in their emptiness. This is the part of the journey where the clouds lay thick above all day and all night, where the night sky vanished and no stars could be seen. This is where the lightning began. His mind goes heavy with memory and fear. And here, with wet splodges at the bottom, is where Nyptan…. His thoughts freeze and the frown on his brow deepens as his heart races off on its own. He flaps a hand across his face. Stop looking at them, he thinks. Stop dwelling on it. He pulls his hands away and lets them all slap back into place. With his teeth clenched and mouth in a straight line, he uses both palms to smooth the top one down. He puts his thumbs at the bottom of the pile and starts to shove them all into a large roll. They overlap each other, curl in like seashells, and he lifts and juggles them under an arm while his other hand searches for the leather cylinder at his side. These are his written records, his evidence for his master, Hekataios of Miletus, of his journey with Hanno, the Carthaginian, beyond the Pillars of Herakles. He promised he would make records of everything he saw in the sky above and sea below and, blank as some are, smudged or imperfect the rest, these are them, his, the navigator’s account of every day that’s passed, or night sky observed, since the expedition began.
He finds their container and raises it to his nose. It is beaten about in places with long, thin scratches scored down the sides where it’s caught the timbers beneath the tiller platform. Despite this, the leather container holds its shape, a strong case for this precious store of goods. Each time he opens it, he sniffs inside, convinced that, despite all its time at sea, the smell of the Academy in Miletus lingers in the musty air. A wave of longing sweeps through him, to pace the familiar docks with Hekataios, to discuss the seasons, eat Miletian food and drink Miletian wine.
His bottom lands, without warning, on the edge of the tiller platform. His knees have given way, too weak to hold him up. Yet his mind races onwards. What if we were sailing through the Pillars right now, the sun on our starboard, the tuna alongside, ploughing through the familiar waters of the Great Sea? Heat flushes through his body and infuses his head. I know these winds, the certain swell, the flights of the birds and the balm of the hillsides. He puts a hand to his forehead and it comes back to him drenched in sweat. Oh, it’s the fever again. The shakes start. His heart sinks and his eyes close in resignation. It’s turning my mind, making me soft, weak, cowardly. I cannot allow myself to think of home. Another thing which must just stop.
It takes all the strength he has in his torso to reach for the roll under his arm and slot it into the cylinder. The records chock into place. He clamps the lid on top, lifts them over his head by their strap and then slumps forward, elbows on his knees, head bowed as a donkey’s. I must be strong. I must not give up hope. The crew needs leadership, Nyptan needs strength and oh, by the gods, I need to find my courage. I will get us back to the Great Sea safely. I will hand over my records to Hekataios, my master. I will do these things or I will die in the trying. His shoulders shake, his throat longs for water, the day’s heat rises and makes his blood boil.
Text Of Hanno’s Periplus
A reputable account of ‘Hanno the Navigator’s’ trip to West Africa can be found here. Translated into English it was originally written in Punic and carved into the temple walls of Carthage. Sometime before the city was destroyed in 146BCE it was badly copied and re translated into rudimentary Greek.
Chapter Headings
Star Map
The Enquiry – Day 1
Landing in Lixus
The Enquiry – Day 2
Lixus Town
The Enquiry – Day 3
The God’s Blessings
The Enquiry – Day 4
A Desert Shoreline
The Enquiry – Day 5
Pastoral Paradise
The Enquiry – Day 6
Men will be Men
The Enquiry – Day 7
What the Stars Say
The Enquiry – Day 8
Life on Board
The Enquiry – Day 9
A Thunderstorm
The Enquiry – Day 10
King of the Western Sea
The Enquiry – Day 11 – Part One
A Baby
The Enquiry – Day 11 – Part Two
What a Fright
The Enquiry – Day 11 – Part Three
The Enquiry – Day 12 – Part One
The Sky
The Enquiry – Day 12 – Part Two
The Heat, the Smell
The Enquiry – Day 13 – Part One
The Hunt
Heading for Home
The Enquiry – Day 13 – Part Two
An Unwelcome Guest
On a Hillside
Historical Note
Major Characters
The only person History would recognise is Hanno the Magonid, AKA ‘Hanno the Navigator.’ All others are fictional.
The Delphis story line
Qart – street boy who ran away from Carthage and left his mother behind.
Dubb – ship’s navigator of renown on the Great Sea. The latest in a long line of famous Phoenician navigators, he is named after a star in Ursa Major. Hekataios, the eminent Miletian philosopher, is his friend from youth, now his master.
Chares – old friend and sailing companion of Dubb’s. A Hellene.
Rabs – sailor from Carthage.
Nyptan – wife of Dubb, originally from Tyre. All the women in her family have been healers. Their practice reflects the ancient tradition of Sumerian medicine. Her godess, Gula, is associated with dogs. She has been married three times.
Tanu – Nyptan’s daughter by her first husband.
Lord Rath – an Etruscan high priest and diviner. Leads a small pack of diviners.
Hanno – Aristocrat from Carthage, sent by his uncle to make his fortune and embellish the family name, Magonid. The Magonids had already been powerful in Carthage for several generations.
Bostar and Kadmi – both are Hanno’s aristocratic mates.
Kama – an interpreter who, along with his brothers Pa and Tala, joins The Delphis half way through the voyage.
Oydediran – Monarch of the Western Sea, in West Africa.
The Gadir story line
Lord Apsan Asrupal Nimiran – Carthaginian bureaucrat. Educated at military school in Motya, Sicily, he has been in post as Commissioner for Trade in Gadir for too many decades and despises the place.
Tasiioonos of Knutes – slave and lover of Lord Apsan. Born in a poor family in Tartessos, he was educated as temple boy at the great Shrine to Melqart on the Western Sea. Tartessos was the predominant political power of the region and traded with Carthage.
Gatit – Lord Apsan’s meek body guard
Adyat – Lord Apsan’s anxious house girl
Shipit Eli – security chief from Malaka and his colleages, Halo from Sexi and Aris from Abdera.
Gargoris – Street Cleaner and Tartessan.
Gry – Gargoris’s frightened son.
