View source for Eblana

{{Short description|Possible ancient Irish settlement}}
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{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2017}}
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'''Eblana''' ({{Langx|el|Έβλανα}}) is an ancient Irish settlement that appears in the ''[[Geography (Ptolemy)|Geographia]]'' of [[Ptolemy|Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy)]],<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Darcy |first1=R. |last2=Flynn |first2=William |date=2008-03-01 |title=Ptolemy's map of Ireland: a modern decoding |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/00750770801909375 |journal=Irish Geography |volume=41 |issue=1 |pages=49–69 |doi=10.1080/00750770801909375 |issn=0075-0778|doi-access=free }}</ref> the Greek astronomer and cartographer, around the year 140 AD. It was traditionally believed by scholars to refer to the same site as the modern city of [[Dublin]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=McHugh |first=Roland |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gkGwCwAAQBAJ&dq=%22eblana%22+ptolemy&pg=PP1 |title=Annotations to Finnegans Wake |date=2016-02-24 |publisher=JHU Press |isbn=978-1-4214-1907-7 |language=en}}</ref><ref>E.g. in Thomas Osmond Summers, ed. ''Dublin: an historical sketch of Ireland's metropolis'', 1852, etc., and in [[Patrick Weston Joyce]], ''The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places'', 2 vols. 1869 (vol. I:79 in the 7th ed., 1901).</ref> The 19th-century writer [[Louis Agassiz]]<ref>Agassiz, ''Bibliographia zoologiæ et geologiæ: A general catalogue of all books, tracts and memoirs on zoology and geology'', 1848, vol.1:74.</ref> used ''Eblana'' as a Latin equivalent for Dublin. However, more recent scholarship favours the north [[County Dublin]] seaside village of [[Loughshinny]]<ref>Darcy, R.; Flynn, William: "Ptolemy's map of Ireland: a modern decoding." ''Irish Geography 41/1'' (March 2008), pp. 49–69</ref> due to its proximity to [[Drumanagh]], an important trading site with links to [[Roman Britain]]; it has even been described as a bridgehead of a possible Roman invasion. However, there is no definitive proof to tie Eblana to any location, so its exact identity remains a matter of speculation.

==Eblana as Dublin==
[[File:Eblana Street, Belfast, August 2010 (01).JPG|thumb|Eblana Street in [[Belfast]]]]
If the reference to a settlement in Ireland called ''Eblana'' is in fact the earliest reference to Dublin, this would seem to give Dublin a just claim to nearly two thousand years of antiquity, as the settlement must have existed a considerable time before Ptolemy became aware of it.

[[Eoin MacNeill]] writes that Eblana "cannot be Dublin, for no trace has been found in Irish records or tradition of anything approaching in character to a city on the site occupied by Dublin until the Norsemen fortified themselves here in 841" and speculates that Eblana "is certainly farther north than Dublin, probably on the coast of Louth".<ref>Phases of Irish History</ref>

Early Irish antiquarians, such as Sir John Ware and [[Walter Harris (historian)|Walter Harris]] believed that the name ''Eblana'' in Ptolemy's ''Geographia'' was in fact a corruption of ''Deblana'', itself a version of the Gaelic name ''Dubh Linn'' (Black Pool), from which the modern English language name ''Dublin'' derives. This is not the only instance where Ptolemy truncated the initial letters of place names. For example, instead of ''Pepiacum'', and ''Pepidii'' (in [[Wales]]), Ptolemy writes ''Epiacum'' and ''Epidii,'' and for ''Dulcinium'' (now [[Ulcinj]], in [[Montenegro]]), he writes ''Ulcinium''. {{citation needed|date=February 2014}}

There are several problems with this theory:
* The earliest Gaelic settlement on the site of Dublin is referred to in local sources as Áth Cliath ("Ford of Hurdles"). ''Duiblinn'' first appears as the name of a Christian ecclesiastical settlement which could not have existed before the 5th century.
* According to [[T. F. O'Rahilly]], Ptolemy's description of Ireland shows no trace of the Goidelic occupation of the country, which probably took place some centuries before Ptolemy's time. O'Rahilly concludes that Ptolemy's description is probably based on data collected in the 4th century BC by the early explorer [[Pytheas]].<ref>O'Rahilly (1946), pp. 39-42</ref> However, O'Rahilly's early-20th-century hypotheses about the colonisation of Ireland are not well accepted by modern scholars.
* The location on Ptolemy's map for Eblana seems to place the settlement in the north of County Dublin, several kilometres from the site of the modern city of Dublin.
* Ptolemy's Eblana did not stand on a river. In the ''Geographia'', Eblana sits between the mouths of two rivers: the ''Buvinda'' (i.e. the [[River Boyne]]) and the ''Oboka''. Because early antiquaries believed that Eblana was Dublin, they identified the ''Oboka'' with the river which enters the sea at [[Arklow]] in [[County Wicklow]], which they consequently dubbed the Ovoca (now the [[River Avoca]]). In fact, Ptolemy's ''Oboka'' seems to be the [[River Liffey]], and his ''Modonnos'' probably represents the Avoca. Eblana, thus, is located somewhere between the mouths of the Boyne and the Liffey.

==Eblana as other sites==
When Ptolemy wrote the ''Geographia'' there were two significant areas of activity in north County Dublin.

One was at the mouth of the [[Delvin River]] where two substantial groups of chamber tombs would have been clearly visible from the sea for several thousand years. The Irish language name of the river is ''An Ailbhine'', with the earliest recorded form being ''Ailbine'' c. 680.<ref name="logainm-ailbhine">{{logainm|1165364|Delvin River}}</ref> [[Metathesis (linguistics)|Metathesis]] is certainly present in Irish, with different dialects using different forms (e.g. ''bosca/bocsa'' "box" or ''deartháir/dreatháir'' "brother"), but there is no record of the name with ''-bl-'' rather than ''-lb-''.

The second area of international activity was based around the promontory fort of [[Drumanagh]] south of present-day Loughshinny, which was probably a trading post but may have been used as a potential bridgehead by Agricola. Iron Age burials on nearby [[Lambay Island]] have also yielded Romano-British brooches and metalware.

==See also==

*[[History of Dublin]]
*[[Eblana Theatre]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* {{cite book
  | last = O'Rahilly
  | first = T. F.
  | authorlink = Thomas F. O'Rahilly
  | title = Early Irish History and Mythology
  | publisher = Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
  | year = 1946
  | location = Dublin
  | isbn = 1-874045-89-5}}

* {{cite book
  | last = Harris
  | first = Walter
  | authorlink = Walter Harris (historian)
  | title = The History and Antiquities of the City of Dublin
  | year = 1736
  | location = Dublin
  }}

* {{cite book
  | last = Ryan
  | first = Phyllis 
  | title = The Company I kept
  | publisher = Town House and Country House
  | year = 1996
  | location = Dublin
  | isbn = 1-86059-028-4}}

{{Ptolemy's Ireland}}

{{coord missing|County Dublin}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eblana}}
[[Category:Prehistoric Ireland]]
[[Category:History of County Dublin]]