Ancient Mediterranean thalassography

With the start of maritime activity by human beings during the Prehistoric Age, the Mediter-ranean Sea began to come to the forefront as a centre of this activity and, at the same time, became its extension area. In antiquity, in line with developments in these maritime activities, many sailors from various nations or tribes sailed for various purposes on different routes from one port to another. In the following period, military, political, religious and -rarely social-based maritime expeditions, as well as continuing commercial activities rapidly increased and this increase, on the face of it, caused a general perception, shared among all nations or tribes participating in and within the field of maritime actions. So, seafaring began to be more widely understood as forming an essential area of advanced human activity. Essentially, con¬forming with this perception, seafarers who had obtained knowledge and experience of the routes they sailed, began to commit their observations, experiences and knowledge, no longer only through oral tradition, but to written record. The primary purpose in keeping written record of maritime activity was initially based upon everyday concerns and had a practical perspective. In fact, it was necessary that infor¬mation concerning the unknown conditions and the unforeseen dangers in different areas of the sea and seas could be clearly communicated to other seafarers by means of literary data. Thus, the scope of the aforementioned purpose was extended in subsequent periods in line with the different needs of seafarers, and the recorded information was rectified and updated through various submissions. As a result, a sophisticated store of knowledge was established over time concerning different aspects of maritime affairs, the basic features of the navigated seas, on important winds and currents, navigable/unnavigable rivers, dangerous peoples/tribes living on the shores, coastal topography, the plant-animal species on the shores, and rules and principles between seafarers. Over time, the foundations of an extremely comprehensive and useful integrated maritime-databank accumulated in antiquity, with additions made to it in the Medieval Age, and this literary heritage and framework has been adopted by many scholar in many aspects down to the present day. With the title of Ancient Mediterranean Thalassography from the outline of the informa-tion presented above, this study aims to examine the ancient written sources concerning mari¬time activities on the Mediterranean Sea, including literary texts and inscriptions, numismatic and other inscribed depictions of maritime affairs, on vases and mosaics etc. It also focuses upon the evaluation of Greek and Latin texts within a complementary synthesis within the scope of ancient maritime literary studies. In the context of this evaluation, particularly in the case of the ancient sources, navigation records will be analysed, i.e. periplous and anaplous texts. Subsequently, written sources belonging to the ship's captains/owners, admirals or commercial-military ship personnel will be examined. Further, it is planned to integrate the surviving legal maritime texts (in particular the Rhodian sea laws) that include rules and principles concerning aspects of maritime affairs within this study. Finally, a signi¬ficant part of the study will focus upon terminological evaluations concerning the naming of the Mediterranean and its inland seas. In consequence, the scope and focus of the above-mentioned study aims primarily at de-termining the areas and the limits of the Ancient Mediterranean Thalassography (= maritime writing tradition). Further, it also aims to determine the contribution of thalassographic inves-tigation to the field of ancient research. In this respect, parallel to the thalassographic synthe¬sis of the texts and inscriptions examined, it is argued that current ancient maritime studies can be supported from philological-based data, in addition to the material culture remains obtained as a result of archaeological research. In this way, the aim is to create a philologi¬cal-maritime database related to the ancient period and to present this database for the use of scholars who study the various sub-disciplines of ancient, medieval and modern maritime studies.