Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland – Part 40

~ Part 1~

Dounon

In his Geography, Claudius Ptolemy records seven inland “cities” in Ireland. The sixth of these is called Δουνον [Dounon]:

Greek	Latin	English	Longitude	Latitude
Δουνον	Dunum	Dounon	12° 30'	58° 45'

Source: Nobbe 66, Wilberg 103, Müller 80

Two variant readings of this name have been recorded by Ptolemy’s modern editors Friedrich Wilberg (1838) and Karl Müller (1883).

Source	Name	English
Most MSS	Δουνον	Dounon
Φ, Ψ	Δεουνον	Deounon
O	Bunium	Bunium

• Φ and Ψ are two manuscripts from the Laurentian Library in Florence: Florentinus Laurentianus 28, 38 and Florentinus Laurentianus 28, 42. The third manuscript in this library of Ptolemy’s Geography, Florentinus Laurentianus 28, 9, which Karl Müller designates with the siglum Σ, has a lacuna where Dounon should be (Müller 80).

• O is Oxoniensis Seldanus 2, 45, one of the Selden Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Two alternative figures are found in the manuscript sources for the longitude: 11° 30' and 14° 30'. The first of these is one degree to the west of the longitude found in the majority of the manuscripts, while the second is a full two degrees to the east, which actually drops Dounon into the middle of the Irish Sea. There are also two alternative figures for the latitude: 58° 30' and 58° 50'. The first of these places Dounon 15' to the south of its usual latitude, while the second places it 5' to the north.

Variant Locations for Dounon

Source	Longitude	Latitude
Most MSS	12° 30'	58° 45'
M, O	11° 30'	58° 45'
ב	14° 30'	58° 45'
Bertius	12° 30'	58° 30'
1540	12° 30'	58° 50'

• M is Vindobonensis 1, a codex in the Austrian National Library in Vienna.

• ב is identified by Müller as Scorialensis Ω, I, 1. This is a manuscript in one of the libraries in the royal seat of El Escorial in Spain.

• Bertius Petrus Bertius, a Flemish cartographer, whose printed edition of Ptolemy’s Geography was first published in Amsterdam in 1618.

• 1540 This is a Latin edition of Ptolemy, Geographia Universalis, which was printed in Basel in 1540 by Henricus Petrus.

Ptolemy’s Coordinates for Dounon

Over the centuries, Dounon has been identified with a handful of sites distributed over a wide area of the country, without any scholarly consensus ever being reached as to its true identity.

Downpatrick

In the early 17th century, the British antiquarian William Camden identified it with Down (ie Downpatrick) in the northeast of the island:

Next, on the east, lies the County of Down, very large and fruitful ... Upon the Coast, the sea winds-in with so many chops and creeks ... that it makes two Peninsulas, viz. Lecal on the south, and Ardes on the north. Lecal is a rich soil ... The utmost promontory in it, now call’d by the Seamen S. John’s Foreland ... In the very neck stood Dunum, a flourishing town, mention’d by that name in Ptolemy, but not in its proper place. It is now call’d Down, and is very ancient, and a Bishop’s See, and remarkable for the tombs of S. Patrick, S. Brigid, and S. Columba, who had this rhyming distich writ over them,

Hi tres in Duno tumulo tumulantur in uno,
Brigida, Patricius, atque Columba pius.
One tomb three Saints contains; one vault below,
Does Brigid, Patrick and Columba show.
(Camden 1399-1400)

It is perhaps understandable that Ptolemy’s Dounon should come to be identified with a native stronghold whose name derives from the Proto-Celtic word for stronghold: *dūnom, even if Ptolemy himself did not place Dounon in this part of the country. It has been long accepted that Dounon is a Celtic toponym of the same etymology as the modern Irish word dún:

Dunon is a good Celtic word (Ir[ish] dún, ‘fort’, W[elsh] din); but in a place-name one would expect to find it forming part of a compound, and not standing alone. (O’Rahilly 13)

In Old Irish, dún was usually applied to the residence of a chief or a dignitary, and included royal seats. It occurs so commonly in placenames, however, that one would be hard pressed to say with any certainty which was meant by Ptolemy. Camden’s identification with Downpatrick seems to my mind wholly arbitrary and unjustified. Nevertheless, Downpatrick is clearly of ancient standing. Mainstream archaeology has identified some local sites as Neolithic and Bronze Age. In the Short Chronology, which I have been espousing in these articles, these remains belong to the Bolgic and Laginian phases of Ireland’s Celtic history, the former dating roughly to 500-250 BCE and the latter to 250-50 BCE.

Camden’s transference of Dounon to Downpatrick has continued to receive support from other scholars. The Welsh Celticist William Baxter cites it in his Glossary of British Antiquities (Baxter 110). In the late 19th century, however, Karl Müller criticized Camden’s identification, though he did not hazard a guess of his own:

Camden—mindful only of the deceptive similarity of the names in this as in other cases—transferred this town, which was situated according to Ptolemy in the interior part of the island, to the northern region of County Down, where the town of Downpatrick is situated on the coast. (Müller 80)

To be fair to Camden, Downpatrick is close to the coast, but it is not on the coast. But Müller’s point is well made.

The Rock of Dunamase

Dunamase

The Irish 17th-century antiquary James Ware identified Dounon with Dunamase, a rocky outcrop in County Laois:

DUNUM Dunamause, in the Queen’s County [now County Laois], as may be gathered from the Situation of the Place in Ptolomey, who enumerates it among the inland Towns. Some Ages since the Earls of March had a Castle there very strongly fortified, and seated on an Eminence, the Ruins of which are yet to be seen. Camden places it, as it were, in another Climate, and would make it the same with Dunum (Down Patrick) in the County of Down. Dunum, among the antient Gauls, Britons, and Saxons, denoted a Mountain or Hill; from whence came Lugdunum in France, and Dunelmum, Camalodunum, Sorbiodunum, and the like in England. (Ware & Harris 39)

Ware’s editor, the Irish antiquary Walter Harris added the following comment:

[Dunum] bears the same Sense in Irish, and signifies also a Fort, and sometimes a Dwelling or Place of habitation.] (Ware & Harris 39)

Ware, at least, has chosen a site that is in the general area where Ptolemy’s text places Dounon. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Dunamase was occupied prior to the 9th century of the present era. The earliest reference to it in our native records is in the Annals of the Four Masters:

The Age of Christ 843 ... An army was led by the foreigners of Ath-cliath [Dublin] to Cluain-an-dobhair [Cloney], and burnt the fold of Cill-achaidh [Killeigh]; and Nuadhat, son of Seigen, was martyred by them. Dun-Masg was plundered by the foreigners, where Aedh, son of Dubdhachrich, Abbot of Tir-da-ghlas [Terryglass] and Cluain-eidhneach [Clonenagh], was taken prisoner; and they carried him into Munster, where he suffered martyrdom for the sake of God; and Ceithearnach, son of Cudinaisg, Prior of Cill-dara [Kildare], with many others besides, was killed by them during the same plundering excursion. (O’Donovan 466-467)

Notwithstanding the relatively young age of Dunamase—admittedly only confirmed by archaeological excavations in the 1990s—its identification with Ptolemy’s Dounon has received widespread support. The Irish architect and antiquary William Beauford, writing in 1789, agreed with Ware:

Δουνον. From Ptolemy’s tables, this city and Ραιβα [Raiba] were not far from each other; yet Camden will have it to be Downpatrick in the county of Down; whilst Ware very justly thinks it Dunnamaes in the Queen’s county, the ancient seat of the chieftains of Leix, situated on an isolated rock, where still remains the ruins of a castle built by Lord Pembroke in 1216 In respect to Dunum and Reban there seems an error in Ptolemy’s tables, that is, the latitude and longitude of Reban is given to Dunum, and vice versa. (Beauford 71)

Beauford does not explain why he thinks the coordinates of Dounon and Rhaiba have been interchanged. I can only surmise that he requires this interchange simply because he has already decided that Dounon is to be identified with Dunamase and Rhaiba with Athy: Athy lies 15 km east-southeast of Dunamase, whereas Ptolemy places Rhaiba far to the north-northwest of Dounon.

Rathgall Hillfort

Rathgall

In the early 20th century, Goddard Orpen reopened the debate when he identified Ptolemy’s Dounon with Rathgall, an ancient hillfort in County Wicklow:

... my attention has been called ... to the name Dún Galion, mentioned in the Book of Leinster, as possibly a forerunner of Rathgall. The investigations I have made into this suggestion have led me to think it probable not only that Rathgall is to be identified with Dún Galion, but also that both these names refer to the “inland town” marked Δοῦνον (Lat. Dunum) on Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland ... The passage in which the fort is mentioned may be rendered as follows:—

“Galió[i]n and Domnand, names for Leinstermen [Lagin], as is told in the Táin Bó Cúalgne. There came a band of Gauls with their fosterling Labraid Loingsech [Labraid ‘the Exile’], to Erin, and they sacked Dind Ríg, &c. From them the Galió[i]n are named, as if Gall-lion [‘Gaulish multitude’] and their posterity continued for a long time in the land, witness Dún nGalion among the Dál Mesi Corb.”

It may be inferred from this passage that at the time when the tract was first written there was in existence in the territory then known as Dal Mesi Corb [West County Wicklow] an ancient fortress call Dun Galion, and traditionally associated with a foreign people, usually called Galióin (more properly Galiáin) or, as we may call them, Galians. Was this the fortress now known as Rathgall? (Orpen 1916:42-43)

T F O’Rahilly has questioned Orpen’s arguments:

Orpen would identify [Dounon] with the fort of Rathgall, in the south-west of Co. Wicklow, a few miles from Tullow, Co. Carlow; but this is a place concerning which there are no traditions in our literature, and whose name is not attested in any Irish document. [Footnote: Orpen would further identify Rathgall with Dún nGalion, known only from a reference to it in LL 311 a 27 (and 377 a 45), where it is said to have been situated in the territory of Dál Mesi Corb. He conjectures that Rathgall represents *Ráith Gall [we should expect rather Ráith na nGall], and that Gall is a substitution for Galion. The first of these conjectures is doubtful; the second has no basis.] (O’Rahilly 13)

Mainstream archaeologists date Rathgall to the Bronze Age, which in the Short Chronology corresponds to the Laginian period of early Irish history (probably after 250 BCE). As I have pointed out on numerous occasions during this series, T F O’Rahilly proved that Ptolemy’s principal source for his information on Ireland must have visited the country before the Laginian invasion. This greatly weakens the case for identifying Rathgall with Dounon. Nevertheless, the excavations carried out at Rathgall by Barry Raftery in the 1970s were only partial, so there remains the possibility that the site is much older than currently believed.

Orpen’s identification faces the same objection. T F O’Rahilly has elsewhere demonstrated that Lagin, Domnainn and Gálioin were three names that designated the one people, the Laginians, whose invasion of Ireland probably occurred after Ptolemy’s principal source visited Ireland. So even if we concede that Rathgall is Dún Galion, and that Dún Galion was established by the Lagin after their conquest of the southeast portion of Ireland (to which they gave their name, as Leinster derives from Lagin), this is too late for Ptolemy’s Dounon.

One other point is worth making. According to T F O’Rahilly, the story which Orpen cites in which the Galians invade Ireland with Labraid Loingsech and sack Dind Ríg is none other than a garbled account of the invasion of Ireland by the Lagin around 250 BCE (O’Rahilly 92-140).

Dind Ríg

Dind Ríg

Orpen first suggested that Ptolemy's Dounon might be Rathgall in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy in 1916. Twenty-two years earlier, in a paper on Ptolemy's Map of Ireland, he had expressed quite a different opinion:

I should be inclined to place the Coriondi a little more inland, and perhaps we might regard Δουνον as representing their chief seat. This name probably represents the Celtic dun, a fort. What particular dun it refers to, it is perhaps vain to inquire. It might from its position be the famous Dinn Righ on the Barrow below Leighlin Bridge. The form Dunion, which Ptolemy gives as a town of the Durotriges in the modern Dorsetshire, Professor Rhys regards as more Goidelic than Dunon, which would be the Gallo-Brythonic form. If we can rely upon such minute variations of spelling, this would point to the possibility of the Coriondi, like their neighbours the Brigantes, being a Brythonic people. (Orpen 1894:125)

T F O’Rahilly, without mentioning Orpen's earlier paper, also identified Ptolemy’s Dounon with Dind Ríg in County Carlow, the very fortress which the Lagin are alleged to have sacked when they first arrived in the country:

If conjecture is permissible, I would equate [Dounon] rather with Dind Ríg, on the Barrow, near Leighlinbridge, which in point of situation would suit Ptolemy’s data better than Rathgall. As its name, ‘fortress of kings’, suggests, it was once an important royal seat; [Footnote: ... The absence of the article in Dind Ríg ... is a mark of antiquity.] and from the legend of Labraid Loingsech we infer that it had been such in pre-Laginian times, and that it was captured and sacked by the Laginian invaders. Possibly the Lagin themselves may have occupied it for a time; but there is no evidence to show that it ever was a royal residence within the Christian period. (O’Rahilly 13)

I am not aware of any archaeological excavations at the site of Dind Ríg, which sits on the western bank of the River Barrow, less than 1 km south of Leighlinbridge. According to Darcy & Flynn, Charles O’Conor proposed the identity of Dounon and Dind Ríg as early as 1766, but I have not been able to confirm this (Darcy & Flynn 58). In his Dissertations on the History of Ireland O’Conor lists a Dinree among the noted Places in Munster in Ptolomey’s Time (O’Conor 178). This may refer to Dind Ríg, which is actually in Leinster. The foldout map between pages 171 and 172 includes Dind Ríg, calling it Din-roy, but there is no Dinree.

Dind Ríg in 1845

P W Joyce has the following to say about this site:

One of the most noted, and probably the oldest, of the Leinster palaces was Dinnrigh [Dinnree : the ‘dinn or fortress of kings’]. Besides being very often mentioned in the records, it was the scene of a tragedy which is related in detail in the historical story called “The Destruction of Dinnree,” contained in the Book of Leinster, which has been edited and translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes. Some two centuries and a half before the Christian era, Cobhthach [Coffa] the Slender murdered the king of Ireland—his own brother—and also the king’s son Ailill, and usurped the throne. But Ailill’s son, Lavra the Mariner, who fled to the Continent, returned after some years with a party of Gauls, and landed at Wexford, where he was joined by large contingents of the men of Leinster and Munster, who hated the usurper. Marching quickly and silently by night to Dinnree, where the king then happened to be holding court, he surrounded the palace, and, setting fire to the houses while the company were engaged in feasting, he burned all—palace, king, and courtiers—to ashes. The fine old fort still exists in good preservation. It is situated on a high bank over the River Barrow on the west side, half a mile [800 m] south of Leighlinbridge, and is now commonly known by the name of “Ballyknockan Moat.” The moat or mound—figured in the illustration, last page—is 237 feet [72 m] in diameter at the base; the circular plateau on the top, on which stood the timber houses, is 135 feet [40 m] in diameter, and 69 [21 m] over the River Barrow. (Joyce 333-334)

How much of this remains today I cannot say:

A substantial structure there called Ballyknockan Moat was reported in the 1800s but seems to attract little interest now. (Roman Era Names)

Knockaulin (Dún Ailinne)

Knockaulin

In his Atlas of Irish History, Seán Duffy tentatively identifies Ptolemy’s Dounon with Dún Ailinne, or Knockaulin, in County Kildare. This ceremonial site was for many centuries the royal seat of the Kings of Leinster.

The Kingdom of Leinster, or Lagin, was established by the Laginians, who, as we have stated above, only arrived in Ireland after Ptolemy’s principal source had visited the island. T F O’Rahilly has proved beyond all doubt that Ptolemy’s Ireland was one on which the Lagin had not yet set foot:

As the foregoing discussion has shown, the most striking feature of Ptolemy’s account of Ireland is its antiquity. The Ireland it describes is an Ireland dominated by the Érainn [Bolgic Celts], and on which neither the Laginian invaders nor the Goidels [Gaels] have as yet set foot ... There is nothing to suggest that Ptolemy’s account of Ireland is a composite one, or that it incorporates later names, or that, apart from the small orthographical changes just mentioned, any attempt has been made to bring it up to date. (O’Rahilly 39-40 ... 42)

(The only reservation I have concerns the nine islands Ptolemy assigns to Ireland: these, I suspect, derive from a contemporary British source, and not from the much earlier source O’Rahilly speaks of, as most of these islands are not really Irish at all, but belong to Britain. This is a subject I will return to in due course.)

If Knockaulin was created by the Lagin, then it cannot have been Ptolemy’s Dounon. Nevertheless, there is some archaeological evidence that the site was in use from the so-called Neolithic era (recte the pre-Laginian or Bolgic era, which probably began around 500 BCE), so the possibility remains that it was a royal seat at a remote period. I cannot, therefore, discount its candidacy.

It might be noted that Duffy hedges his bets by also tentatively identifying Dounon with Dind Ríg. The authors of Volume 9 of A New History of Ireland have also opted for both Knockaulin and Dind Ríg (Moody, Martin & Byrne 16).

Other Candidates

I might briefly mention two or three other sites that have been proposed. Charles Trice Martin, in The Record Interpreter, has the following entry for Dunum:

Dunum—Down, Ulster; Doncaster, Yorks[hire]; Dundalk, co. Louth; Salisbury; Waterford, Ireland (Martin 276)

As usual, no sources are cited, so I have no idea where Martin got his information. Down (ie Downpatrick) has been dealt with above. Dundalk is a coastal town, which rules it out. Waterford City was founded on barren land by the Norse jarl Ottir in the year 914 CE. It could not possible be Ptolemy’s Dounon.

More recently, Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel has suggested that Ptolemy’s Dounon was an unidentified site somewhere in the vicinity of Mallow, County Cork. I have not yet read her paper, so I do not know what argument she makes in defence of this identification.

Leighlinbridge

Conclusions

In my opinion, T F O’Rahilly’s suggestion that Ptolemy’s Dounon refers to Dind Ríg on the Barrow is the most plausible one that has yet been made. This was a stronghold of undoubtedly ancient standing. It was so old, in fact, that when written records began to appear in Ireland in the early 5th century, Dind Ríg had already been abandoned and had fallen into ruin. The story of Labraid Loingsech also supports the claim that this was an important seat of power at the time of the Laginian invasion. Louis Francis suggests that it was the seat of the Brigantes, a pre-Laginian tribe that Ptolemy locates in the southeast of the country (Francis §11). If true, then it would be strange if it did not appear in Ptolemy’s list of inland settlements.

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References

• William Baxter, Glossarium Antiquitatum Britannicarum, sive Syllabus Etymologicus Antiquitatum Veteris Britanniae atque Iberniae temporibus Romanorum, Second Edition, London (1733)
• William Beauford, Letter from Mr. William Beauford, A.B. to the Rev. George Graydon, LL.B. Secretary to the Committee of Antiquities, Royal Irish Academy, The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Volume 3, pp 51-73, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin (1789)
• William Camden, Britannia: Or A Chorographical Description of Great Britain and Ireland, Together with the Adjacent Islands, Second Edition, Volume 2, Edmund Gibson, London (1722)
• Robert Darcy & William Flynn, 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)
• Seán Duffy, Atlas of Irish History, Second Edition, Gill & MacMillan, Dublin (2000)
• Ptolemy, Louis Francis (editor, translator), Geographia: Selections, English, University of Oxford Text Archive (1995)
• Mr & Mrs Samuel Carter Hall, Ireland: Its Scenery, Character, &c, Volume 1, Jeremiah How, London (1846)
• Patrick Weston Joyce, A Smaller Social History of Ireland, M H Gill & Son, Ltd, Dublin (1906)
• Charles Trice Martin, The Record Interpreter: A Collection of Abbreviations, Latin Words and Names Used in English Historical Manuscripts and Records, Reeves and Turner, London (1892)
• T W Moody, F X Martin, F J Byrne (editors), A New History of Ireland, Volume 9, Maps, Genealogies, Lists: A Companion to Irish History, Part II, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1989)
• Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Müller (editor & translator), Klaudiou Ptolemaiou Geographike Hyphegesis (Claudii Ptolemæi Geographia), Volume 1, Alfredo Firmin Didot, Paris (1883)
• Karl Friedrich August Nobbe, Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia, Volume 1, Karl Tauchnitz, Leipzig (1845)
• Karl Friedrich August Nobbe, Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia, Volume 2, Karl Tauchnitz, Leipzig (1845)
• Charles O’Conor, Dissertations on the History of Ireland, G Faulkner, Dublin (1766)
• John O’Donovan (editor & translator), Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, by the Four Masters, Volume 1, Hodges, Smith, and Co, Dublin (1856)
• Thomas F O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin (1946, 1984)
• Goddard H Orpen, 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, Rathgall, County Wicklow: Dún Galion and the “Dunum” of Ptolemy, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Volume 33 (1914-16), Section C, pp 41-57, RIA, Dublin (1916)
• Claudius Ptolemaeus, Geography, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat Gr 191, fol 127-172 (Ireland: 138v–139r)
• Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel, Ptolemy’s Celtic Italy and Ireland: A Linguistic Analysis, in David N Parsons & Patrick P Sims-Williams (editors) Ptolemy: Towards a Linguistic Atlas of the Earliest Celtic Placenames of Europe, University of Wales, CMCS Publications, Aberystwyth (2000)
• James Ware, Walter Harris (editor), The Whole Works of Sir James Ware, Volume 2, Walter Harris, Dublin (1745)
• Friedrich Wilhelm Wilberg, 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: Wikimedia Commons, Nicholaus Germanus (cartographer), Public Domain
• Greek Letters: Wikimedia Commons, Future Perfect at Sunrise (artist), Public Domain
• The Rock of Dunamase: © Celticclog65, Creative Commons License
• Ptolemy’s Ireland (Duffy): © Seán Duffy 2000, Fair Use
• Rathgall Hillfort: © Simon Dowling, Creative Commons License
• Dind Ríg: Imagery © 2019 DigitalGlobe, Map Data © 2019 Google, Fair Use
• Dind Ríg in 1845: Mrs Hall, Ireland: Its Scenery, Character &c, Volume 1, p 413, Public Domain
• Knockaulin (Dún Ailinne): Copyright Unknown, Fair Use
• Leighlinbridge: © Sarah777, Creative Commons License