MISCELLANEA GEOGRAPHICA – REGIONAL STUDIES ON DEVELOPMENT Vol. 23 • No. 3 • 2019 • pp. 194-198 • ISSN: 2084-6118 • DOI: 10.2478/mgrsd-2019-0018 A concept “Riphaean Mountains” in ancient geocartography: myth, cosmology, symbol and/or reality? Abstract One of the most mysterious concepts in ancient geography are Alexander Podossinov the Riphaean Mountains that had for centuries been the object of mythological, cosmological, geographic, cartographic, and poetic discourses. Having originated as a designation of the northern (in relation to Greece) Thracian mountain, the name in the course of time became Institute for General History of Russian Academy attached to the mountains located in the extreme north of the oecumene. of Sciences, Department of Ancient Languages, Cosmological ideas explaining the rising of the earth’s surface to the Historical Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, north, the passage of the sun after sunset through the northern outskirts Russian Federation e-mail: [email protected] of the oecumene behind the Riphaean Mountains eastward, and many others were associated with these mountains. In ancient literature the Riphaean Mountains are often associated with a blessed people of the Hyperboreans who seemed to live beyond the Riphaean Mountains in a particularly favorable climate. In this paper the attempts of ancient cartographers to locate the Riphaean Mountains on a geographical map will be considered. Keywords Riphaean Mountains • ancient cartography • ancient geography Received: 12 January 2019 © University of Warsaw – Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies Accepted: 17 April 2019 Introduction Paeonia and Thrace. The Greeks were familiar with large Everybody who deals with the ancient and medieval mountain ranges – Thracian Rhodopes, Pangaion and Haemus. geography of Northern Eurasia encounters the problem of the Immediately beyond the mountains was to be either the North localization of the mythical (or semi-mythical) Ripaean (in the Latin Ocean (which surrounded all the land and over which the orthography, often Riphaean) Mountains (Ῥιπαί, Ῥῖπαι, Ῥίπαια Argonauts and Odysseus supposedly sailed), or a strip of a land ὄρη, Ῥιπαῖα ὄρη, Ripaei/Riphaei montes, Riphei, Ripheus, Rifei, between the mountains and the ocean; even the Ister-Danube Rifrei, Riffei), supposedly located in the north of Europe (Kiessling was probably not yet known to the Homeric Greeks. Ister was 1914; Bekkers 1914). Known to the ancient Greeks in archaic times, named by Hesiod in the “Theogony” in the famous catalog of the Riphaean Mountains firmly entered ancient man’s views of rivers (v. 337–345) for the first time. So, then known Europe the northern outskirts of the oecumene, most often the north- ended in the north in a certain large mountain range and, in my northeast of Europe. Moreover, throughout the Middle Ages and opinion, these are the mountains that, with the development of in the following centuries until the 16th century, the existence acquaintance with the periphery of the oecumene, were moved of the Riphaean mountains somewhere in Northeast Europe or to the north of Europe and stretch from the Alps to the Urals, North Asia was not particularly questionable. preserving their neighborhood with the northern ocean. In this paper, I would like to consider briefly the origin, In these Thracian mountains, according to ancient myths, evolution and features of this mythopoetic and geographical the Boreas wind dwelt as a mythical character (a king), which concept throughout antiquity. in time became for the Greeks a synonym of the cold, gusty north wind. Boreas as the north wind is already mentioned by The Riphaean Mountains as Thracian mountains Homer (Odyss. V, v. 295); the word Boreas was later used as Where were the northern mountains in Europe from the the designation of the entire north of Europe (see Rausch 2013, point of view of the archaic Greeks? To answer this question, pp. 9–14). it is necessary to determine what the oecumene looked like at With the expansion of the geographical horizon of the that time. Our analysis of the geographical and cosmological Greeks, the mountains that he inhabited “moved” further north,1 representations of the Homeric Greeks (Podossinov 2015) leads so Boreas soon began to denote the north in general. The to the conclusion that Europe in this world picture was confined 1Regarding this “moving”, see Beckers 1914, p. 538: “Da im Laufe der Zeit die by Greece itself, washed from the east, south and west by sea, Vorstellung vom Bereich des Nordrandes der Erde eine vielfache Wandlung and extending indefinitely to the north; it is, practically, the Balkan durchmachte, und die umgrenzende Peripherie sich der fortschreitenden Aufhellung Peninsula. nördlicher Erdräume von Fall zu Fall anpassen mußte, so wurden die Rhipäen in In this archaic world picture, the northern horizon of the späteren Zeiten höher im N(orden) gesucht und angenommen als in früheren”; see also pp. 548–549. Cf. Wikén 1939, pp. 540–552; Stenger 2001, pp. 992–993; Rausch Greeks was closed by mountainous regions – Pieria, Macedonia, 2013, pp. 16–17. 194 MISCELLANEA GEOGRAPHICA – REGIONAL STUDIES ON DEVELOPMENT Vol. 23 • No. 3 • 2019 • pp. 194-198 • ISSN: 2084-6118 • DOI: 10.2478/mgrsd-2019-0018 connection “between the North Greek mountains and Boreas periphery of the known world which became familiar during the was also preserved when these mountains “moved” far to the centuries, is very typical for the Greeks and Romans. north and when they began to be called Riphaeans. Speaking of the relationship between Riphaeans and So if, according to Kallimachos, Boreas lived in the mountains Hyperboreans, it must be pointed out that the very name of the of Thracian Haemus and was famous for his stormy tenderness Hyperboreans could have passed to the Riphaean Mountains, (ῥιπή) and the cold that he brought to Greece, and according to which were sometimes called the Hyperborean mountains. So Valerius Flaccus (Argon. I, vv. 574-575) on Pangaion mountain Servius in Scholia to Verg. Aen. XII, 366 writes: “certum sit eum also, then according to Strabo (VII, 3, 1), Pliny the Elder (NH (sc. Boreas) de Hyperboreis montibus flare” – “Certainly it (i.e. IV, 88) and the same Valerius Flaccus (Argon. II, 516), Boreas Boreas) blows from the Hyperborean mountains”; Schol. Bern. already lived in the Riphaean mountains. ad Verg. Georg. III, 196: “Hyperborei montes in Scythia, inter For the first time, we find the Riphaean name, without quos Aquilo inflat” – “Hyperborean mountains are in Scythia, indicating the mountains’ localization, in the poem of Alkman in Aquilon blows there”; Schol. ad Stat. Theb. V, 390: “Hyperborei the second half of the 7th century in the form of “Ripas” (F 90 enim montes trans Aquilonem sunt” – “Hyperborean mountains Page: Ῥίπας ὄρος); they are said to be “the bosom of a black are situated behind Aquilon”. night” – νυκτὸς μελαίνας στέρνον. They were named also by According to Apollinarius Sidonius (5th century AD), the Sophocles in the Oedipus at Colonus as Riphaean and nightly terrible tribe of the Huns left the “Scythian land” where “the white (1248: ἐννυχιᾶν ἀπὸ Ῥιπᾶν), that is, “northern”. Boreas’ breath Tanais, flying from the Hyperborean mountains, falls from the is connected with the etymology of the Riphaean name, popular Riphaean rocks, under the axis of the Bear” (Carm. II, 235–298). in antiquity (and accepted by most modern historians) – namely, In the “Cosmographia” of Julius Honorius (4th–5th century), from the verb ῥίπτειν – “throw, drop”, and from the noun ῥιπή – the Riphaean mountains and the Hyperborean mountains also “onslaught, pressure, rush”. Homer already uses the expression do not differ (see A 30 and 33: Fluvius Tanais nascitur de monte ῥιπὴ Βορέαο (Ilias XV, 171). Hyperborei Ripaei). Since “Cosmographia” is a geographical In close connection with the Riphaean Mountains, from nomenclature that has been written off the map (Podossinov 2002, which Boreas blows, there is a blissful people of Hyperboreans 107–111), it can be assumed that the author could not determine living in the narrow strip of land between the Riphaeans and the which inscription refers to the mountains (Riphaeans), and which North Ocean in a mild climate, who revere Apollo.2 As an example to the people (Hyperboreans). of the combination of these two names, I quote the words of the The westernmost point where, according to the ancient Hellenistic poet Callimachus, who in his work “Aitia” speaks of tradition, Hyperboreans could be placed, should be found “the sons of the Hyperboreans who accompany the gifts from the somewhere in the west of Europe. Riphaean mount” to Greece (Aitia, fr. 186, 8: υἷες Ὑπερβ̣ορέων Diodorus of Sicily, retelling Hecataeus of Abdera, places Ῥιπαίου πέμπουσιν ἀπ’ οὔρεος). Hyperboreans on an island in the Atlantic ocean behind Celtica, The very name Ὑπερβόρεοι meant, in the opinion of most that is practically in the northwest of Europe (Diodor. II, 47: ἐν ancient authors, those who live “behind Boreas”. Diodorus of τοῖς ἀντιπέρας τῆς Κελτικῆς τόποις κατὰ τὸν ὠκεανὸν εἶναι νῆσον Sicily explains this name in the following way: “Hyperboreans are οὐκ ἐλάττω τῆς Σικελίας). Some researchers identified the island so named, because they live further (πορρωτέρω) from Boreas’ of Hyperboreans with Britain and the round temple of Apollo breath” (Diod. II, 47, 1; see also: Mela III, 36; Plin. NH VI, 34; IV, of Hyperboreans, mentioned by Hecataeus, with Stonehenge; 89; Pomp. Fest. Ехсеrр. 8, 103 М; Vib. Sequester De flum. s. v.; others, with Jutland. On this island, swans came flying on the Martian. Capella VI, 664). holidays from the Riphaean Mountains, which turn out to be in the Let us note that for the Greeks, who suffered from the same place in Celtica. Ptolemy also calls the ocean north of Ireland cold northern wind of Boreas, the peoples who lived behind it “Hyperborean” (Geogr. II, 2, 1: Ἀρκτικῆς πλευρᾶς (sc. Ἰουερνίας must have seemed blessed, because they were deprived of this νήσου) περιγραφὴ, ἦς ὑπέρκειται Ὠκεανὸς Ὑπερβόρειος).