As geoscience edges closer to answering the riddle of “Strabo’s Channel” it may also solve one of the greatest mysteries in western literature, writes John Underhill*.
Geoscientist 18.9 September 2008
Editor's note: The web version of this feature does not contain all the figures present in the print version. This is for a combination of space and technical reason...
Geoscientist 17.4 April 2007
Industry and government are joining forces with academe in an attempt to settle the question of Odysseus's true homeland.
Ted Nield writes: Global geoscientific and geotechnical engineers FUGRO are to team up with the Odysseus Unbound project and the Greek geological institute IGME to solve the age-old mystery over the true geographical location of Odysseus...
Adler deWind reports from the Greek island of Kefalonia on progress towards proving - or disproving - the theory that the Paliki Peninsula was once separated from the main island and was the true geographical location of Homer’s Ithaca.
Geoscientist 20.12 December 2010/January 2011
Despite a clear reference in Homer to “rocky Ithaca” being the westernmost, low-lying Ionian ...
Geoscientist 17.2 February 2007
Results of an offshore seismic survey and the first borehole to test the hypothesis that the Paliki peninsula of the Greek island of Kefallinia was once Homer's Ithaca lend weight to the theory. Ted Nield reports
The theory that the home of Odysseus, which has never been satisfactorily identified, was in fact a part of the modern island of Kefallinia that was once...
Étude sur le nord-Etbai entre le Nil et la mer Rouge by Ernest Ayscoghe Floyer (1893)
Often a rare book holds more treasures than the words printed on its pages or the design on its spine. Over the summer months the Librarian was dealing with an enquiry concerning Ernest Floyer’s 1893 study of Etbai in Egypt when she found a letter stuck into its pages. Dated October 12, 1892, with...
“Οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν*”
Hearing James Diggle, Professor of Latin and Greek at Cambridge, recite the first passage of Homer’s Odyssey in the original, was one of the most memorable moments in my 20 years at Burlington House. He w...
John Underhill, Peter Styles, Kosmas Pavlopoulos and George Apostolopoulos* report on the latest progress towards discovering Odysseus’s true home.
If you are writing a very long and intricate historical narrative, it is hard enough to have to invent characters and their exploits without also having to invent the world they inhabit. It is far easier, indeed, to present the geogra...