Lake Tritonis
Encyclopedia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
. In details of the late myths and personal observations related by these historians, the lake was said to be named after Triton
Triton (mythology)
Triton is a mythological Greek god, the messenger of the big sea. He is the son of Poseidon, god of the sea, and Amphitrite, goddess of the sea, whose herald he is...
. According to Herodotus it contained two islands, Phla, which the Lacedaemonia
Lacedaemonia
Lacedaemonia may mean:*Laconia, a modern prefecture of Greece*The ancient region of Greece of the same name; see Laconia *Lacedaemonia, the name borne by the city of Sparta from Late Antiquity to the 19th century....
ns were to have colonized, according to an oracle, and Mene.
Location
The location is unclear. The lake is mentioned as being in LibyaAncient Libya
The Latin name Libya referred to the region west of the Nile Valley, generally corresponding to modern Northwest Africa. Climate changes affected the locations of the settlements....
, a land the ancient Greeks believed encircled their world, "washed on all sides by the sea," Herodotus said, "except where it is attached to Asia." In their knowledge, Libya extended from Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
, the Nile Valley and its basin, to the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
and along the south of Ancient Egypt.
Both Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
in the fifth century B.C. and Diodorus in the first century A.D. described the lake, Herodotus giving it an area of 2,300 km² (900 mi²), or, half the size of the contemporary United States state, Rhode Island. Herodotus assumed that there would have to be a large river flowing into it, which he called the Triton.
History
The name of the lake appears in discussion of the geography related in Greek mythologyGreek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
.
When Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
is addressed as Athene Tritogeneia ("born of Trito"), the archaic epithet
Epithet
An epithet or byname is a descriptive term accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title...
is explained by the episode where, having sprung fully formed from the head—or thigh—of Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
—who had swallowed her pregnant mother to prevent his own downfall from the rule over the current Greek pantheon by her progeny, as predicted—the goddess was escorted to Lake Trito and attended to by the nymphs. A different interpretation, taking into consideration much earlier Greek and Minoan myths, leads translator Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
to suggest that the reverse direction of religious influence occurred, with Neith
Neith
In Egyptian mythology, Neith was an early goddess in the Egyptian pantheon. She was the patron deity of Sais, where her cult was centered in the Western Nile Delta of Egypt and attested as early as the First Dynasty...
being the deity who influenced development of the Greek concept for the goddess Athene. Neith was an ancient deity when first appearing in the earliest Egyptian pantheon, and is suspected to have originated among the Berbers.
The story of the Argonauts
Argonauts
The Argonauts ) were a band of heroes in Greek mythology who, in the years before the Trojan War, accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece. Their name comes from their ship, the Argo, which was named after its builder, Argus. "Argonauts", therefore, literally means...
places Triton's home on the Mediterranean coast of Libya. Before the epic Argonautika of Apollonius, Herodotus knew this tradition of Jason, in which winds
"carried him out of his course to the coast of Libya; where, before he discovered the land, he got among the shallows of Lake Tritonis. As he was turning it in his mind how he should find his way out, Triton (they say) appeared to him, and offered to show him the channel, and secure him a safe retreat, if he would give him the tripod. Jason complying, was shown by Triton the passage through the shallows; after which the god took the tripod, and, carrying it to his own temple, seated himself upon it, and, filled with prophetic fury, delivered to Jason and his companions a long prediction. "When a descendant," he said, "of one of the Argo's crew should seize and carry off the brazen tripod, then by inevitable fate would a hundred Grecian cities be built around Lake Tritonis." The Libyans of that region, when they heard the words of this prophecy, took away the tripod and hid it. "
As Apollonius of Rhodes
Apollonius of Rhodes
Apollonius Rhodius, also known as Apollonius of Rhodes , early 3rd century BCE – after 246 BCE, was a poet, and a librarian at the Library of Alexandria...
narrates it, when the Argo was driven ashore on the Lesser Syrtes by a fierce storm while returning from Colchis
Colchis
In ancient geography, Colchis or Kolkhis was an ancient Georgian state kingdom and region in Western Georgia, which played an important role in the ethnic and cultural formation of the Georgian nation.The Kingdom of Colchis contributed significantly to the development of medieval Georgian...
, the Argonauts found themselves in "an area surrounded by sands". They portage
Portage
Portage or portaging refers to the practice of carrying watercraft or cargo over land to avoid river obstacles, or between two bodies of water. A place where this carrying occurs is also called a portage; a person doing the carrying is called a porter.The English word portage is derived from the...
d their ship twelve days to Lake Tritonis, but the lake water was salty and undrinkable. Since they could find no outlet from Lake Tritonis to the sea, they could do nothing. Then they propitiated the deities with a golden tripod
Sacrificial tripod
A sacrificial tripod was a type of altar used by the ancient Greeks. The most famous was the Delphic tripod, on which the Pythian priestess took her seat to deliver the oracles of the deity. The seat was formed by a circular slab on the top of the tripod, on which a branch of laurel was deposited...
on the shore and Triton, the local deity, appeared to them in the form of a youth, to show them a hidden channel to the sea.
This late myth related that a lake nymph named Tritonis made the lake her home and, according to an ancient tradition, was the mother of Athena by Poseidon
Poseidon
Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
. (Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
, iv. 180; Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...
. Pytli. iv. 20.) By Amphithemis, she became the mother of Nasamon and Caphaurus.
Catastrophic natural disaster
At an unknown date, an earthquake collapsed dikes or the land structures that kept the lake from drying up, causing drainage to the sea of most of the fresh water and at the most allowing for a seasonal lake or marsh. It then became associated with Chott el-Djerid, a seasonal lakeChott
In geology, chott or shebka is a dry lake in the Saharan area of Africa that stays dry in the summer, but receives some water in the winter...
which is marshy and shallow.
This article is based partly on the entry in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography
The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, first published in 1854, was the last of a series of classical dictionaries edited by the English scholar William Smith , which included as sister works A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities and the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and...
, by William Smith
William Smith (lexicographer)
Sir William Smith Kt. was a noted English lexicographer.-Early life:Born at Enfield in 1813 of Nonconformist parents, he was originally destined for a theological career, but instead was articled to a solicitor. In his spare time he taught himself classics, and when he entered University College...
, LLD, 1854.
Sources
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, page 1175
- http://www.metrum.org/mapping/argo.htm
- http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Cyrene.html
- http://www.roman-literature-online.com/herodotus/histories-1/page-113.html
- http://www.timelessmyths.com/classical/argonauts.html#Libya
- Amazon.com: Phrase: "Lake Tritonis"
- http://www.net4you.net/user/poellauerg/Amazons/Tun2005e.html
- CHOTT EL JERID: Dry salt lake
- Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon of Classical Greek