A maritime perspective : looking for Hermes in an ancient seascape

Abstract

This account is essentially about perceptions of maritime space in antiquity. It is about ancient seafaring and its association with six prominent headlands and an offshore island. Of these headlands only one forms part of a Greek island, Crete. The others string the Mediterranean, except one that is outside it. One recurrent feature of these headlands and the offshore island is their association with the Greek deity, Hermes. The religious response to a maritime environment across wide gaps of time and space is the theme that is explored here. The research presented in this paper began life rather obliquely. The point of departure was an interest in Phoenician, not Greek, matters. A few years ago, as a doctoral student writing a dissertation on Phoenician and Punic non-funerary religious sites in the Mediterranean I was intrigued by a number of archaeological sites that scholars considered to have had a religious function. Plotted on a map of the Mediterranean, the resulting distribution did not reveal an apparent pattern other than that the sites were on the coast. Reading through the all-too-brief reports, it was not altogether clear why these sites had been identified with temples or chapels or shrines; some of the conclusions were easily challenged. Indeed, taking each and every site in isolation, I could not put forth a way of defending the alleged religious status they held so reverently in the literature. Yet, the proposal of seaside shrines along Phoenician or Punic seaways seemed too interesting a proposition to reject outright.