Scheria

Published June 10, 2010

Scheria is the name of a Phaeacian island mentioned by Homer in his Odyssey and identified by some, including Ignatius Donnelly, as Atlantis. Scheria has been noted as only second to Atlantis for the array of locations ascribed to it. For example, Heinrich Schliemann, as well as many ancient and modern commentators, considered Scheria to have been Corfu. K. T. Frost in the early part of the 20th century associated Atlantis with Homer’s Scheria and both with the Minoan Empire, an idea also supported by Walter Leaf^(l⁾.

Others, such as Felice Vinci suggest Norway, while Iman Wilkens^[⁶¹⁰^] offers the Canaries.

A recent paper by Gerard Janssen, of Leiden University, also places Scheria in the Canaries, specifically on Lanzarote^(f⁾. This is one of an extensive series of papers by Janssen, which links Homer’s geography with locations in the Atlantic^(g⁾. An introductory paper^(h⁾ might be the best place to start.

An Atlantic location for Homer’s epic poems is advocated by N.R. De Graaf, the Dutch author of the Homeros Explorations website⁽ⁱ⁾. Specifically, he also concluded that Scheria can be identified with Lanzarote in the Canaries concurring with Wilkens and Janssen.

According to Pierluigi Montalbano, his native Sardinia was the Homeric land of the Phaeacians^(j⁾. Massimo Pittau offered the same conclusion “However the fact is that the Odyssey- as we have seen before – never mentions Sardinia. How, therefore, can this great and singular historical-documentary inconsistency be overcome? It can be overcome by assuming and saying that the poet of the Odyssey actually mentions Sardinia, but not calling it with his name, which will later become traditional and definitive, but with some other name relating to one of its regions or its population. And this is precisely my point of view, the one I am about to indicate and demonstrate: the poet of the Odyssey mentions Sardinia and its Nuragic civilization when he speaks of the «Scherìa or island of the Phaeacians».”^(k⁾

Armin Wolf (1935- ), the German historian, suggests⁽^b⁾ that Calabria in Southern Italy was Scheria and even more controversially that the Phaeacians were in fact Phoenicians!

Wolf also claims^[669.326] that although the country of the Phaeacians is in some translations called an island, the original Greek text never calls it ‘island’ just Scheria, which, Wolf informs us, etymologically means ‘continent’ – perfectly fitting Calabria. Even today, when people from Sicily go to Calabria they say they are going to the ‘continente’. Wolf puts Scheria in the vicinity of Catanzaro, the capital of Calabria. It has been suggested to me in private correspondence^(d) that the etymology of Catanzaro is strongly indicative of a Phoenician influence! Catanzaro is also known as ‘the city of the two seas’, having the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west and the Ionian Sea to the east. It is Wolf’s contention that it was across this isthmus that Odysseus travelled^[p.327].

A further mystery is that, according to Dr Ernst Assmann quoted by Edwin Bjorkman, “both the vessel of Odysseus, as pictured in Greek art, and the term applied to it, are of Phoenician origin.”

Daniel Fleck⁽^a⁾ lists ten similarities between Scheria and Atlantis. Jürgen Spanuth^[⁰¹⁵^] quoted and added to an even more extensive list of comparisons between the two compiled by R. Hennig. Rainer W. Kühne has also written a paper^(c) on the similarities. Walter Leaf perceived a connection between the two and wrote accordingly^[⁴³⁴^]. Edwin Björkman went further and wrote a book^[¹⁸¹^] that linked Tartessos, Scheria and Atlantis. More recently, Roger Coghill stressed the similarity of Homer’s Scheria to Plato’s Atlantis in The Message of Atlantis ^[0494].>>Additional comparisons are offered on the coda.io website⁽ⁿ⁾.<<

Ernle Bradford notes that the name Scheria itself is thought by some to be derived from the Phoenician word ‘schera’, which means marketplace, which is not incompatible with Plato’s description of Atlantis as a hive of commercial activity. ^[1011.204]

Michael MacRae in his Sun Boat: The Odyssey Deciphered^[⁹⁸⁵^] also thinks that Scheria could be identified with Atlantis and as such was probably situated at the western end of the Gulf of Cadiz near Portugal’s Cape Vincent. A number of 20th-century researchers such as Sykes and Mertz have placed the travels of Odysseus in the Atlantic. More recently, Gerard Janssen has followed this school of thought and as part of his theories identifies Scheria as the island of Lanzarote in the Canaries ^(e).

This identification of Scheria with Atlantis has induced Eberhard Zangger, who advocates Atlantis as Troy, to propose that Troy is also Scheria!^[^483]

However, Ernle Bradford, who retraced the voyage of Odysseus, voiced his view that Corfu was the land of the Phaeacians and noted that “the voice of antiquity is almost as unanimous about Scheria being Corfu as it is about the Messina Strait being the home of Scylla and Charybdis.”

A paper by John Black concluded with the following paragraph that fairly sums up what we actually know about the Phaeacians. “Who were the Phaeacians and where was their place of abode? No definite answers and no clues have been found but yet their extraordinary seafaring abilities and the intriguing description by Homer make them appear to be either a fascinating advanced civilization of the past yet to be discovered, or a fiction of the imagination for the sake of a good story. It is worth mentioning that Homer’s description of Troy was also once considered to be a work of fiction. However, the city of Troy has now been discovered, turning myth into reality.” ^(m)

⁽^a⁾See: Archive 2087

^(b) Wayback Machine (archive.org)

^(c)(PDF) Did Ulysses Travel to Atlantis? (researchgate.net) *

^(d) Private correspondence Jan. 2016

^(e) https://www.homerusodyssee.nl/id16.htm

^(f) https://www.academia.edu/38347562/ATLANTIC_SCHERIA_AND_THE_FAIAKANS_LANZAROTE_AND_THE_FAYCANS

^(g) https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/GerardJanssen

^(h) https://www.academia.edu/38537104/ATLANTIC_TROY

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://www.homeros-explorations.nl

^(j) Honebu History and Archaeology Newspaper: Search results for Atlantis (pierluigimontalbano.blogspot.com)

^(k) Massimo Pittau – The Odyssey and Nuragic Sardinia (www-pittau-it.translate.goog)

^(l)Miscellanea Homerica, VI, The Classical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 8 (May, 1928), pp. 615-617 (3 pages)