_Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland – Part 11_ ~ [Part 1](https://steemit.com/ireland/@harlotscurse/ptolemy-s-map-of-ireland-part-1)~ https://i.imgur.com/yZN7Ls0.jpg**Mouth of the River Modonnos** Proceeding in a counterclockwise direction around the coast of Ireland, the first landfall after Ptolemy’s Sacred Cape (Ιερον Ακρον) is Μοδοννου Ποταμου Εκβολαι, or _Mouth of the River Modonnos_. In order to correctly identify this landmark, it is necessary to examine four adjacent places on the east coast: Greek|English|Longitude|Latitude -|-|-|- Ιερον Ακρον|Sacred Cape|14° 00'|57° 50' Μοδοννου Ποταμου Εκβολαι|Mouth of the River Modonnos|13° 40'|58° 40' Μαναπια πολις|Manapia Town|13° 30'|58° 40' ’Οβοκα Ποταμου Εκβολαι|Mouth of the River Oboka|13° 10'|59° 00' In the previous article, I identified Ptolemy’s Sacred Cape with Carnsore Point, the most southeasterly point on the Irish coast. Most experts agree with this, but the identity of the three other landmarks is still a matter of scholarly debate. In the 18th century, researchers were so confident that Ptolemy’s _Oboka_ referred to the Avonmore, the river that flows into the Irish Sea at Arklow, that they renamed the lower course of this river the Ovoca. The name stuck, but in the 19th century it was replaced by the present _Avoca_ in the mistaken belief that this was the correct form (Dempsey 11-14). https://i.imgur.com/RWT7swe.png**Southeast of Ireland** If Ptolemy’s _Oboka_ is the Avoca, then the _Modonnos_ must be the Slaney, but no consensus has ever been reached on the matter, and today scholarly opinion favours the River Liffey as the _Oboka_. Over the centuries the _Modonnos_ has been variously identified with the Liffey, the Avoca, the Slaney, and even the River Moy in Connacht: Slaney|Avoca|Liffey|Moy -|-|-|- [Camden (1607)](http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/cambrit/irelandeng1.html#wex1)|-|-|- [Ware (1654)](http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/digital-book-collection/digital-books-by-subject/history-of-ireland/harris-the-whole-works-of/)|-|-|- -|-|-|[O’Conor (1766)](https://archive.org/stream/dissertationsonh00ocon#page/178/mode/2up) [Lewis (1837)](http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/digital-book-collection/digital-books-by-subject/geography-of-ireland/lewis-a-topographical-dic/)|-|-|- Orpen (1894)|-|-|- -|-|[Martin (1910)](https://archive.org/stream/recordinterprete00martiala#page/282/mode/2up)|- -|O’Rahilly (1946)|-|- Mac an Bhaird (1991-93)|-|-|- -|-|Francis (1994)|- -|Duffy (2000)|-|- Stempel (2002)|-|-|- -|Darcy & Flynn (2008)|-|- **Source: Darcy & Flynn 57** https://i.imgur.com/2AQZTsX.jpg**The River Slaney above Ferrycarrig** In an earlier article, I pointed out that the River Slaney is one of the principal waterways of Ireland, one that every Irish child learns of at an early age. The River Avoca, however, is not so well known. I cannot believe that Ptolemy would have included the latter while omitting the former. The mouth of the Slaney is only about 20 km from Carnsore Point, which in turn is about 500 km from the European mainland. In Ptolemy’s day, it probably took three or four days to sail from Europe to Ireland with favourable winds, and twice that with unfavourable winds (Casson 138-143). Wexford Harbour, at the mouth of the Slaney, would have provided weary sailors with an ideal harbourage, where they could have recovered from the crossing and taken on fresh water. They could not possibly have overlooked it. But if Ptolemy’s _Modonnos_ is the Slaney, why have so many scholars rejected this identification? Because on Ptolemy’s map, the Modonnos is too far north to be the Slaney. https://i.imgur.com/HmQniWd.jpg**The South-East Coast of Ptolemy’s Ireland** Is it possible that the _Modonnos_ and _Manapia_ have simply been misplaced? If they have, the error must have been made a long time ago—possibly by Ptolemy himself. If the misplacement had been first made by one of Ptolemy’s copyists, it would have been replicated on some but not all of the manuscript sources of the _Geography_. But the principal editions and all the early extant sources assign the same coordinates to the Modonnos: https://i.imgur.com/dF6U6nQ.jpg**Μοδοννου Ποταμου Εκβολαι (Vat Gr 191)** Edition or Source|Longitude|Latitude -|-|- Müller|13° 40'|58° 40' Wilberg|13° 40'|58° 40' Nobbe|13° 40'|58° 40' Vaticanus graecus 191|13° 40'|58° 40'| https://i.imgur.com/kqiAdKe.jpg**Ptolemy’s Coordinates for the Mouth of the River Modonnos** # Revising Ptolemy # We do not know what source or sources Ptolemy used when compiling his geographical description of Ireland. He may have simply copied a list of landmarks and their coordinates from Marinus of Tyre, the Phoenician cartographer whose work he is known to have drawn upon. Or he may have had a copy of an original _periplus_—perhaps the one compiled by Pytheas of Massalia, who is believed to have visited Ireland around 325 BCE (Tierney 259). Such a document probably contained a record of Pytheas’s voyage: the ship’s log, or a set of sailing directions abstracted from the log, or a narrative of his voyage. Taking inspiration from the _Periplus of the Erythraean Sea_, we might surmise that it contained something along the following lines: >Having reached the southeastern point of Ireland, we followed the coast, which trends towards the north. After half a day’s course, the shore receded into a bay at the mouth of a large river, known locally as the _Modonnos_. On the river, about forty stadia to the west of the mouth, stands the market-town of _Manapia_, where the Irish bring their wares to trade with merchants from abroad. Sailing north along the coast for one day, we next came to a large bay into which the river _Oboka_, debouches ... It would have been quite easy for a careless copyist to interchange the two figures—_half a day_ and _one day_—with the result that _Modonnos_ and _Manapia_ were placed too far to the north, while retaining their proximity to each other. I will be looking in detail at _Manapia_ in the next article, but the mouth of the Slaney, lying in the southeast of the island and sheltered from the sea by Wexford Harbour, would have been an ideal place for Irish and foreign traders to exchange their wares. https://i.imgur.com/XDQ1GhF.jpg**The South-East Coast of Ptolemy’s Ireland Revised** This revision is a little closer to the actual geography of the Irish coast, but it is still not particularly accurate. My argument, moreover, is entirely speculative, so I will not pursue it any further. # The Literature # The name of this landmark, which Ptolemy gives in the genitive case (governed by [εκβολαι](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=e%29kbol-h%2F&la=greek&can=e%29kbol-h%2F0#lexicon) : _outlet_, _mouth [of a river]_), varies only a little among the sources: Greek|English -|- Μοδοννου|Modonnou Μοδονου|Modonou Μοδνουννου|Modnonnou Μοδνυννου|Modnunnou Anthony Durham and his associates on the website [Roman Era Names](http://www.romaneranames.uk/) are satisfied that _Modonnos_ is of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origin: >**Μοδονου** (or Μοδουννου) river mouth (Modonu 2,2,8) was the river Slaney into the harbour at Wexford, whose name originated as Old Norse for its mudflats. Words such as Dutch _modder_ “mud” probably descend from PIE *_meu_-, also the apparent source of [Old Irish] _muad_, a word with many meanings including “damp”, which named the river Moy (at the other end of Ireland). ([Durham _et al_](http://www.romaneranames.uk/essays/ireland.pdf)) It is interesting to find modern linguistic scholars connecting Ptolemy’s _Modonnos_ with the Old Irish word _muad_, from which the River Moy takes its name. In 1766, O’Conor surmised that Ptolemy’s _Modonnos_ _was_ the Moy, which had been misplaced. In his 1745 edition of the works of James Ware, the antiquarian Walter Harris added a fanciful etymology of his own to Ware’s brief account of the _Modonnos_: >Modonus, a River: The old Name is grown out of Use, and it is now called the River _Slainy_, in the County of _Wexford_, as the Situation in _Ptolomey_ points out to us. [Harris: The word _Modonus_ may be drawn from two _Irish_ Words. _Modh-ean_, that is the greater Water, this being the greatest River in that Tract. (Ware & Harris 55) Goddard Orpen was one of the first scholars to argue that Ptolemy had _omitted to mark the mouth of the Slaney_. Initially, however, he had identified the _Modonnos_ with the Slaney and the _Oboka_ with the Avoca: >On the east coast the river _Μόδοννος_, the first river mentioned north of the Sacred Promontory or Carnsore Point, is probably the Slaney, as so important a river is not likely to have been omitted, though it is placed much too far from Carnsore Point ... The _’Οβόκα_ is probably the Ovoca at Arklow, but the modern name has been adapted from Ptolemy. (Orpen 1894:124 ... 125-126) In a paper published almost twenty years later, however, Orpen revised his opinion: >It has usually been supposed that Manapia was on the site of the town of Wexford, but this supposition seems to be based on no better ground than that the river Modonnus, near the mouth of which, according to Ptolemy, Manapia was situated, is the first river-mouth marked by Ptolemy north of the Hieron Akron, or south-eastern point of Ireland (Carnsore Point). But if we compare the relative positions of the places marked on Ptolemy’s map between Hieron Akron, or Carnsore Point, and the Buvinda, or Boyne (identifications which seem certain), with the actual east coast of Ireland, we are forced to the conclusions that Ptolemy has omitted to mark the mouth of the Slaney, that his Modonnus is the Ovoca at Arklow, and that his Oboka is the Vartry at Wicklow. (Orpen 1913:51-52) Orpen was led to this change of heart by the fact that Ptolemy placed two tribes—the Coriondi and the Brigantes—south of the Manapii of Manapia. But if Manapia was at Wexford, then this does not leave enough room for the Coriondi and the Brigantes. This is a strong argument, and I will return to it when I discuss Ptolemy’s Irish tribes. T F O’Rahilly agreed with Orpen that the _Modonnos_ was the Avoca, but he too accepted the Indo-European origins of the name: >_Modonnos_ probably represents the river (miscalled Ovoca in English) which enter the sea at Arklow ... The form of the name reminds one of _Modarn_ ... the name of the River Mourne and its continuation the River Foyle ... In case _Modarn_ goes back to _Modornā_, -_nos_, we might suppose Ptolemy’s _Μοδοννου_ to be a corruption of _Μοδορνου_. [Footnote: Equally well, of course, _Modarn_ might go back to _*Mudornā_, -_nos_, or the like, and be cognate with _Muad_, the River Moy (IE. root _meu-d-_).] (O’Rahilly 4, fn 1) In Ptolemy’s day, the letters nu (_n_) and rho (_r_) were not particularly similar, so O’Rahilly’s supposition is unlikely though not out of the question. The two letters are not entirely different: https://i.imgur.com/0UCl7ys.png**Ptolemaic Nu and Rho** It is hardly a coincidence that the Norse founders of Wexford should have named their fledgling city after the mudflats at the mouth of the Slaney: _Veisafjǫrðr_, “fjord of the mudflats”. >This town, which, as far as can be inferred from the earliest historical notices respecting it, was a maritime settlement of the Danes, is thought to have derived its name, which was anciently written Weisford, from the term Waesfiord (Washford), which implies a bay overflowed by the tide, but left nearly dry at low water, like the washes of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. (Lewis 707) To this day, the estuary of the Slaney is noted for its extensive mudflats. The mouth of the Avoca, on the other hand, is not noted for its mud. https://i.imgur.com/2zjqgGh.jpg**The Mouth of the Slaney at Wexford** ## References ## * [Lionel Casson](http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/TAPA/82/Speed_under_Sail_of_Ancient_Ships*.html), _Ships under Sail in the Ancient World_, _**Transactions of the American Philological Association**_, Volume 82, pp136‑148, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland (1951) * [Robert Darcy & William Flynn](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00750770801909375), _Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland: A Modern Decoding_, _Irish Geography_, Volume 41, Number 1, pp 49-69, Geographical Society of Ireland, Taylor and Francis, Routledge, Abingdon (2008) * [Rev P Dempsey](https://archive.org/stream/avocahistoryofva00demp#page/10/mode/2up), _Avoca: A History of the Vale_, Browne & Nolan, Ltd, Dublin (1912) * [Samuel Lewis](https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_dDQE_stxs-AC#page/n711/mode/2up), _A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland_, S Lewis & Co, London (1837) * [Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Müller](https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_i_JfAAAAMAAJ#page/n0/mode/2up) (editor & translator), _Klaudiou Ptolemaiou Geographike Hyphegesis_ (_Claudii Ptolemæi Geographia_), Volume 1, Alfredo Firmin Didot, Paris (1883) * [Karl Friedrich August Nobbe](https://archive.org/stream/claudiiptolemae06ptolgoog#page/n6/mode/2up), _Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia_, Volume 2, Karl Tauchnitz, Leipzig (1845) * [Goddard H Orpen](https://archive.org/stream/journalofroyalso24royauoft#page/n203/mode/2up), _Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland_, _The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland_, Volume 4 (Fifth Series), Volume 24 (Consecutive Series), pp 115-128, Dublin (1894) * [Goddard H Orpen](http://www.jstor.org/stable/25504164), _Rathgall, County Wicklow: Dún Galion and the “Dunum” of Ptolemy_, **_Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature_**, Volume 32 (1914-16), pp 41-57, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin (1913) * Thomas F O’Rahilly, _Early Irish History and Mythology_, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin (1946, 1984) * [Claudius Ptolemaeus](https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.191), _Geography_, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat Gr 191, fol 127-172 (Ireland: 138v–139r) * [Wilfred H Schoff](https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.57484/2015.57484.Periplus-Of-The-Erythraean-Sea#page/n9/mode/2up), _Periplus of the Erythraean Sea_, Longmans, Green, & Co, New York (1912) * [J J Tierney](http://www.jstor.org/stable/25506329), _The Greek Geographic Tradition and Ptolemy’s Evidence for Irish Geography_, _Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature_, Volume 76, pp 257-265, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin (1976) * [Friedrich Wilhelm Wilberg](https://archive.org/stream/claudiiptolemae00ptol#page/n3/mode/2up), _Claudii Ptolemaei Geographiae, Libri Octo: Graece et Latine ad Codicum Manu Scriptorum Fidem Edidit Frid. Guil. Wilberg_, Essendiae Sumptibus et Typis G.D. Baedeker, Essen (1838) ## Image Credits ## * [Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prima_Europe_tabula.jpg): Wikimedia Commons, Nicholaus Germanus (cartographer), Public Domain * [Greek Letters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals): Wikimedia Commons, [Future Perfect at Sunrise](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Future_Perfect_at_Sunrise) (artist), Public Domain * [River Slaney above Ferrycarrig](http://www.geograph.ie/photo/1234892): [Geograph Ireland](http://www.geograph.ie/), © David Hawgood, Creative Commons License * [The Mouth of the Slaney at Wexford](http://www.geograph.ie/photo/4689373): [Geograph Ireland](http://www.geograph.ie/), © [Chris](https://www.geograph.ie/profile/79357), Creative Commons License ![Kopimi](https://i.imgur.com/7kq532u.png)

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