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Maps of the ancient sea kings
REVIEWS
‘27
Way of the Wilderness: A Geographical Study of the Wilderness Itineraries in the Old Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Pp. G. I. DAVIES, The
xii + 138. E7.95) The first thing to be said about this book is that no one in future will be able to lift his voice in academic circles when the Wilderness itineraries are being discussed without having read it. And for those who normally address non-academic audiences, a familiarity with the book will prohibit any confident dogmatic approach to the Old Testament material. The author deploys a remarkable range of knowledge, not only of the sacred text and its recensions but of other less obvious sources such as the pilgrim routes taken by Jews, Christians and Moslems in visiting the sites associated with their faith. He has to take account not only of Hebrew sources but of those in Aramaic and Greek as well. The bibliography contains 176 items relating either to books or learned articles on the subject and there are 25 pages of detailed notes. The Cambridge doctorate which the author received for his work was hard-earned and richly deserved. So much for the academic credentials of the work, which are beyond dispute. What then of the conclusions? It is a surprising fact that, as the author says, “in surviving Christian literature of the first three centuries AD there is surprisingly little evidence of any acquaintance with a geographical interpretation of the Wilderness itineraries despite the fact that by this time. . . a number of identifications were current in Jewish circles”. This is partly due to the fact that, for a variety of reasons, pilgrimages to the Holy Land only became common among Christians in the fourth century. Perhaps also the early Christian fathers were more concerned with the typological significance of the wilderness and the theological significance of the exodus than with the exact location of these events. It could be that, as for so many of us, the identification of the sites associated with the history of Israel is just too difficult. Even with the wealth of knowledge at Dr Davies’s disposal, it remains impossible to be sure of the places associated even with the most dramatic events of the wilderness period, for example the exodus itself and the giving of the law. On the whole, the author inclines to the view that the traditional itineraries offered by generations of biblical maps and biblical atlases remain the most likely, namely a crossing north of the Gulf of Suez, a journey to the south of the Sinai peninsula to Horeb-Sinai and then north to Kadesh Barnea. But the reader needs to be warned that he will have to follow the author through this academic jungle with considerable care if he is to achieve this reassuring conclusion. I have only one criticism to offer and that is a minor one. The maps provided in the book are no doubt accurate and, quite properly, are academically neutral. But I have exercised more patience than many readers could muster in picking my way across the maps as I studied the text. I could have done with a map like the admirable one in the Oxford Study Bible (NEB) which boldly sets out three possible itineraries. Even if they prove in the end to be misleading they at least help to reduce the options for the hapless orienteer who finds himself in this formidable and unfamiliar wilderness. But I am grateful to have done the journey. York
CHARLES H. HAPGOOD, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings
STUART EBOR.
(London:
Turnstone
Books,
revised edn, 1979. Pp. ix + 276. ;E7*95) In 1929 there was discovered in the Top Kapi Library in Istanbul the western half of the lost world map of 1513, compiled by the well-known Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. As one of his sources, Piri mentions a captured map that had belonged to Columbus; and the eminent orientalist, Paul Kahle, in some studies published in 1932,
228
REVIEWS
demonstrated that this map of Columbus must have shown the coasts and islands of East Asia as he believed them to be before his voyage, with his own discoveries superimposed thereon. In 1956, the Turkish map came to the attention of Professor Hapgood, and with the aid of his colleagues and students at Keene State College he began a series of studies which concentrated on the patterns of lines which overlie the map and on the coastline which runs eastwards across the south Atlantic from the vicinity of southern Brazil. They were led on to other sixteenth-century maps and further evidence, and concluded eventually that the map of Piri Reis was derived from charts drawn by a vanished worldwide civilisation of the Ice Age whose technical expertise made possible surveys and cartography of an accuracy not equalled until the eighteenth century of our own era. These startling conclusions, first published in 1966, are reached through much diverse evidence, of vanished islands, Babylonian mathematics, Mexican pyramids and the like, and rather than to deal with all this it seems fairer to begin with the singular features of the Piri Reis map which launched Professor Hapgood on his quest. These are the remarkable accuracy of the longitudes in the Atlantic, and the significant location of the “centre” of the rhumbs near Syene on the upper Nile. Now we still have much to learn about portolan cartography, but we do know that the patterns of rhumbs were superimposed on these maps after the topography had been copied, and that they were drawn mechanically with compasses and rulers, with no reference to features on the maps but simply to provide the user with a widespread system of reference for checking directions. The rectangles which emerge from within the patterns of radiating lines are meaningless, and not basic lines of latitude and longitude as Hapgood supposes. Dead reckoning and observations of latitude were quite good enough in the early Age of Discovery to explain the accuracy of the Atlantic on the Piri Reis and contemporary charts. As for the shoreline across the southern Atlantic, it is evident from the captions that Piri had no evidence for it. This coast was probably inserted by analogy with the shores of Zanj and Wak Wak which in conventional Muslim cartography extended across the southern Indian Ocean eastwards from Mozambique. If the basis of the argument is mistaken, the rest can be ignored. Unfortunately, the book is so pompous, garbled and inconsequential that it is not even much use as amusing fantasy. University of Mancltestel
WILLIAMC. BRICE
ROBERT R. REED, Colonial Manila. The Context of Hispanic Urbanism and Process of Morphogenesis (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, University of California Publications in Geography, 1978. Pp. xiv + 129. $10.00) Robert R. Reed gives us a compact, informed, well constructed, readable monograph on the development of Hispanic Manila during several decades after its founding in 1571. The title suggests a central concern with urban form, but the author’s real interest in Spain’s characteristic colonial geometric plan, it turns out, is to show it as emblematic of a design for empire. By the end of the book, Reed has located Manila’s city core within a series of concentric rings: the immediate suburbs of non-Europeans, the hinterland or foodshed that supplied the city, the settlement pattern of Luzon and the whole Philippine archipelago, and the flow of trans-Pacific trade for which Manila was the linchpin. He also traces the plan of Manila to its sources in Spanish America and contrasts Spain’s Far Eastern imperial strategy with those of other European powers. The deepest research is on the city itself, but the larger frames provide, as the title indicates, illuminating “context”. Reed frequently refers to Spanish American urbanization as both archetype for, and analogy to, the Philippine case. He might have reminded readers, however, that the urban enclave, or fortified entrepot, used by the other Europeans in the Far East was in fact essayed in primitive form during the first decade of Spanish settlement in the Carib-
‘27
Way of the Wilderness: A Geographical Study of the Wilderness Itineraries in the Old Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Pp. G. I. DAVIES, The
xii + 138. E7.95) The first thing to be said about this book is that no one in future will be able to lift his voice in academic circles when the Wilderness itineraries are being discussed without having read it. And for those who normally address non-academic audiences, a familiarity with the book will prohibit any confident dogmatic approach to the Old Testament material. The author deploys a remarkable range of knowledge, not only of the sacred text and its recensions but of other less obvious sources such as the pilgrim routes taken by Jews, Christians and Moslems in visiting the sites associated with their faith. He has to take account not only of Hebrew sources but of those in Aramaic and Greek as well. The bibliography contains 176 items relating either to books or learned articles on the subject and there are 25 pages of detailed notes. The Cambridge doctorate which the author received for his work was hard-earned and richly deserved. So much for the academic credentials of the work, which are beyond dispute. What then of the conclusions? It is a surprising fact that, as the author says, “in surviving Christian literature of the first three centuries AD there is surprisingly little evidence of any acquaintance with a geographical interpretation of the Wilderness itineraries despite the fact that by this time. . . a number of identifications were current in Jewish circles”. This is partly due to the fact that, for a variety of reasons, pilgrimages to the Holy Land only became common among Christians in the fourth century. Perhaps also the early Christian fathers were more concerned with the typological significance of the wilderness and the theological significance of the exodus than with the exact location of these events. It could be that, as for so many of us, the identification of the sites associated with the history of Israel is just too difficult. Even with the wealth of knowledge at Dr Davies’s disposal, it remains impossible to be sure of the places associated even with the most dramatic events of the wilderness period, for example the exodus itself and the giving of the law. On the whole, the author inclines to the view that the traditional itineraries offered by generations of biblical maps and biblical atlases remain the most likely, namely a crossing north of the Gulf of Suez, a journey to the south of the Sinai peninsula to Horeb-Sinai and then north to Kadesh Barnea. But the reader needs to be warned that he will have to follow the author through this academic jungle with considerable care if he is to achieve this reassuring conclusion. I have only one criticism to offer and that is a minor one. The maps provided in the book are no doubt accurate and, quite properly, are academically neutral. But I have exercised more patience than many readers could muster in picking my way across the maps as I studied the text. I could have done with a map like the admirable one in the Oxford Study Bible (NEB) which boldly sets out three possible itineraries. Even if they prove in the end to be misleading they at least help to reduce the options for the hapless orienteer who finds himself in this formidable and unfamiliar wilderness. But I am grateful to have done the journey. York
CHARLES H. HAPGOOD, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings
STUART EBOR.
(London:
Turnstone
Books,
revised edn, 1979. Pp. ix + 276. ;E7*95) In 1929 there was discovered in the Top Kapi Library in Istanbul the western half of the lost world map of 1513, compiled by the well-known Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. As one of his sources, Piri mentions a captured map that had belonged to Columbus; and the eminent orientalist, Paul Kahle, in some studies published in 1932,
228
REVIEWS
demonstrated that this map of Columbus must have shown the coasts and islands of East Asia as he believed them to be before his voyage, with his own discoveries superimposed thereon. In 1956, the Turkish map came to the attention of Professor Hapgood, and with the aid of his colleagues and students at Keene State College he began a series of studies which concentrated on the patterns of lines which overlie the map and on the coastline which runs eastwards across the south Atlantic from the vicinity of southern Brazil. They were led on to other sixteenth-century maps and further evidence, and concluded eventually that the map of Piri Reis was derived from charts drawn by a vanished worldwide civilisation of the Ice Age whose technical expertise made possible surveys and cartography of an accuracy not equalled until the eighteenth century of our own era. These startling conclusions, first published in 1966, are reached through much diverse evidence, of vanished islands, Babylonian mathematics, Mexican pyramids and the like, and rather than to deal with all this it seems fairer to begin with the singular features of the Piri Reis map which launched Professor Hapgood on his quest. These are the remarkable accuracy of the longitudes in the Atlantic, and the significant location of the “centre” of the rhumbs near Syene on the upper Nile. Now we still have much to learn about portolan cartography, but we do know that the patterns of rhumbs were superimposed on these maps after the topography had been copied, and that they were drawn mechanically with compasses and rulers, with no reference to features on the maps but simply to provide the user with a widespread system of reference for checking directions. The rectangles which emerge from within the patterns of radiating lines are meaningless, and not basic lines of latitude and longitude as Hapgood supposes. Dead reckoning and observations of latitude were quite good enough in the early Age of Discovery to explain the accuracy of the Atlantic on the Piri Reis and contemporary charts. As for the shoreline across the southern Atlantic, it is evident from the captions that Piri had no evidence for it. This coast was probably inserted by analogy with the shores of Zanj and Wak Wak which in conventional Muslim cartography extended across the southern Indian Ocean eastwards from Mozambique. If the basis of the argument is mistaken, the rest can be ignored. Unfortunately, the book is so pompous, garbled and inconsequential that it is not even much use as amusing fantasy. University of Mancltestel
WILLIAMC. BRICE
ROBERT R. REED, Colonial Manila. The Context of Hispanic Urbanism and Process of Morphogenesis (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, University of California Publications in Geography, 1978. Pp. xiv + 129. $10.00) Robert R. Reed gives us a compact, informed, well constructed, readable monograph on the development of Hispanic Manila during several decades after its founding in 1571. The title suggests a central concern with urban form, but the author’s real interest in Spain’s characteristic colonial geometric plan, it turns out, is to show it as emblematic of a design for empire. By the end of the book, Reed has located Manila’s city core within a series of concentric rings: the immediate suburbs of non-Europeans, the hinterland or foodshed that supplied the city, the settlement pattern of Luzon and the whole Philippine archipelago, and the flow of trans-Pacific trade for which Manila was the linchpin. He also traces the plan of Manila to its sources in Spanish America and contrasts Spain’s Far Eastern imperial strategy with those of other European powers. The deepest research is on the city itself, but the larger frames provide, as the title indicates, illuminating “context”. Reed frequently refers to Spanish American urbanization as both archetype for, and analogy to, the Philippine case. He might have reminded readers, however, that the urban enclave, or fortified entrepot, used by the other Europeans in the Far East was in fact essayed in primitive form during the first decade of Spanish settlement in the Carib-