Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland – Part 41

~ Part 1~

Ivernis

In his Geography, Claudius Ptolemy records seven inland “cities” in Ireland. The last of these is Ἰουερνις [Ivernis]:

Greek	Latin	English	Longitude	Latitude
Ἰουερνις	Hibernis	Ivernis	11° 00'	58° 10'

Source: Nobbe 66, Wilberg 103, Müller 80

Toponym

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

Source	Name	English
Most MSS	Ἰουερνις	Ivernis
B, E, L, Arg, 4803, S	Ἰερνις	Iernis
Ed 3, Ed 4	Ἰουρνις	Iournis

• B and E are two of the Codices Parisini Graeci in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris: Grec 1404 and Grec 1403 respectively.

• L is a manuscript from the library at Vatopedi, the ancient monastery on Mount Athos in Greece.

• Arg is the Editio Argentinensis, which we have met several times before. It was based on Jacopo d’Angelo’s Latin translation of Ptolemy (1406) and the work of Pico della Mirandola. Many other hands worked on it—Martin Waldseemüller, Matthias Ringmann, Jacob Eszler and Georg Übel—before it was finally published by Johann Schott in Straßburg in 1513. Argentinensis refers to Straßburg’s ancient Celtic name of Argentorate.

• 4803 is one of the Codices Parisini Latini in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. It is a Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geography by Jacopo d’Angelo: Latin 4803.

• S is Mediolanensis D, 527, a manuscript currently housed in the Ambrosian Library in Milan, Italy.

• Ed 3, Ed 4 These are the third and fourth printings of the first complete printed edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, the editio princeps. This was the famous Greek version of Erasmus—based on a manuscript provided by Theobald Fettich of Kaiserslautern. It was published by Hieronymus Froben in Basel in 1533.

The presence of two versions of this toponym—one with the digraph -ου- and one without it—should come as no surprise to you if you have been following this series from the beginning. You will not have to be told why Ptolemy uses this Greek digraph ου to represent the Celtic letter v (which was probably pronounced as the semi-vowel [w]). But for those who have not read the previous installments, here’s the explanation:

The name ’Ιέρνη, “Ireland”, had probably been picked up by the Massaliot Greeks, from merchants and from their Celtic neighbours, as early as the fifth century B.C. ... The digamma had disappeared from Ionic as early as the seventh century B.C.; and when Massaliot Greeks first heard the name Īvernā [Ireland], they presumably had no means of indicating the -v- and simply dropped it. Later the Greeks adopted the expedient of representing v in foreign names by ου ... We may take it that Pytheas retained the traditional name ’Ιέρνη ... whereas in dealing with other names previously unrecorded, we find him representing Celtic v by Greek ου, as for instance in ... Bouvinda [Βουουινδα] ... Ptolemy, or some near predecessor of his, modernized ’Ιέρνη into ’Ιουερνία [Ivernia] ... (O’Rahilly 41-42)

It is probably safe, therefore, to assume that both Ἰουερνις and Ἰερνις represent the Celtic pronunciation Iwernis. As for the other variant, Ἰουρνις [Iournis], this is probably a late editorial emendation of Ἰουερνις [Ivernis] made by a scholar who did not understand that the digraph -ου- represented the semivowel [w] and was not a diphthong or vowel.

A Note on Ptolemy’s Diacritics

For the fourth time in this series, I quote Amalia Gnanadesikan, the Technical Director for Language Analysis at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language, on the use of diacritics in ancient Greek. In her book The Writing Revolution, she makes the following pertinent comment on the question of smooth and rough breathing in Ptolemy’s Alexandria:

In the process of accumulating and copying texts, the Alexandrian scholars began to show concern for matters of orthography. They found that at certain points the lack of a written form of [h] made for ambiguity. They noted that the Greeks living in Italy had been more free-thinking than the Athenians. While they had gone along with the adoption of the Ionic alphabet, they continued to write [h] by cutting the hēta in half and using ├. The Alexandrians adopted the Italian Greeks’ half H, but wrote it as a superscript on the following vowel, so that, for example,

ho

was ho. Loving symmetry, they made the other half of H stand for the lack of an [h] sound before a vowel:

o

These diacritics came to be termed “rough breathing” (for [h]) and “smooth breathing” (for lack of [h]). Their use was for many centuries largely reserved for cases where ambiguity could arise without them. These marks later became ‘ and ’, so that ὁ was ho and ὀ plain o ... Only by the ninth century AD (well into the Byzantine period, AD 330–1453) did the use of breathing and accent diacritics become fully regular, with all vowel-initial words marked for “rough” or “smooth” breathing and all words marked for accent. (Gnanadesikan 220 ... 221)

I take these remarks to imply that Ptolemy probably only employed the diacritics for smooth and rough breathings in cases where the correct reading was not already obvious to the reader. In other words, he probably did not include the breathing in common Greek words, as its presence in such words was too well known to require inclusion. In the case of foreign toponyms, however, he probably did include them. Hence we have Ἰουερνις rather than Ιουερνις.

The pitch accents—acute, grave and circumflex—were probably not employed by Ptolemy at all. This is the practice I have followed in this series.

It need hardly be repeated that Ptolemy lived in an age before the development of what we today might call the lowercase Greek letters:

Another invention of Byzantine times was the small letters, or minuscules. Ancient Greek was written entirely in what we now consider capital letters. All in all, ancient Greek inscriptions are rather difficult for modern readers, used as we are to visual cues such word spacing, punctuation, and capitalization. (Gnanadesikan 221)

Ptolemy’s Coordinates for Ἰουερνις [Ivernis]

Position

One variant figure is found in the manuscript sources for the longitude: 14° 00', which places Ivernis three degrees to the east of the longitude found in the majority of the manuscripts—in the Irish Sea. Only one manuscript records this variant, and as it involves replacing Ptolemy’s alpha (Α) with a delta (Δ), it is probably safe to dismiss it as a simple error of transmission. These two letters are of similar appearance and could quite easily be confused. The fact that a longitude of 14° 00' drops Ivernis into the Irish Sea only strengthens this conclusion.

Two manuscripts omit the latitude altogether, while another substitutes 58° 30' for the much commoner 58° 10'. This places Ivernis 20' to the north of its usual latitude. In this case, Ptolemy’s digamma, representing one sixth of a degree, has been replaced by the symbol for one half. There is a definite similarity between these two symbols, so this variant can probably also be dismissed as a simple error of transmission:

Ptolemy’s Symbols for One Sixth and One Half

Source	Longitude	Latitude
Most MSS	11° 00'	58° 10'
ב	14° 00'	58° 10'
D, Ξ	11° 00'	-
Π	11° 00'	58° 30'

• 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.

• D is one of the Codices Parisini Graeci in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (Grec 1402).

• Ξ is Barberinus, a codex from the library of Cardinal Francesco Barberini. It is now housed in the Vatican Library

• Π This manuscript of Ptolemy’s Geography was formerly in the Library of St Gregory on the Caelian Hill in Rome. In 1872 the government of the recently established Kingdom of Italy confiscated the contents of the library, which were subsequently dispersed. Many of the volumes were expropriated by the Vittorio Emanuele II National Library of Rome.

Ivernis and The South Coast of Ireland after Ptolemy and Marcian

Inland or Coastal

Ptolemy lists Ivernis among the inland settlements of Ireland, but there is a strong possibly that it actually lay on (or close to) the southern coast. In an earlier article in this series, I presented Goddard Orpen’s case, based on the work of the 4th-century geographer Marcian of Heraclea, that Ptolemy’s Southern Promontory (57° 45') was the most southerly point in Ireland rather than the mouth of the River Dabrōna (57° 00'). Let’s review the evidence.

In his Periplus of the Outer Sea, Marcian quotes Ireland’s dimensions as 2,170 stadia from west to east and 1,834 stadia from south to north (Miller 103-104). He measures these lengths from two of the promontories of Ireland: the Southern Promontory in the southwest and the Rhobogdian Promontory in the northeast. Goddard Orpen’s analysis of Marcian’s figures demonstrates that Marcian agreed with the commonly accepted Ptolemaic latitude for the latter of these landmarks (61° 30') but that he placed the former headland five minutes of arc further north than Ptolemy (57° 50' versus Ptolemy’s 57° 45')—a minor discrepancy that need not concern us.

Orpen believed that Marcian used these two landmarks to measure both the longitudinal and the latitudinal width of Ireland because on Marcian’s map of Ireland these headlands were not only the most easterly and westerly points on the island but also the most northerly and southerly. In most modern editions of Ptolemy, however, the mouths of the two south-coast rivers, the Dabrōna and the Birgos, are placed further south than the Southern Promontory:

Indirectly, however, the plan of measurement adopted by Marcian supplies an argument of some force bearing on the positions of the rivers Dabrona and Birgus. It is plain that Marcian had Ptolemy’s geography before him. The fact then that he measures the maximum breadth of Ireland (from south to north), by the difference of latitude between the Notium [Southern] and the Rhobogdium promontories strongly supports the correction suggested as to the position of those rivers, for if Ptolemy placed the Dabrona in lat. 57, why did not Marcian take his measurement of the greatest breadth from it? (Orpen 121)

It is, of course, possible that Marcian, or one of his predecessors, simply assumed that Ptolemy had called the southwestern headland Notion Akron, or Southern Promontory, precisely because it was the most southerly point on the island, and amended Ptolemy’s figures accordingly. It has to be said that neither version of the south coast resembles the actual south coast of Ireland. Ptolemy’s version is V-shaped, and Marcian’s is Λ-shaped, whereas the real thing is more like /¯. Marcian’s outline is, perhaps, closer to the real thing.

Geography, Book 8: Data for European Map 1

Book 8 of the Geography

In Part 36 of this series, we saw that the inland “city” of Rhaiba was one of two Irish cities that Ptolemy included in Book 8 of the Geography, a book that some scholars believe was actually written many years before the rest of the work (Berggren & Jones 5). Ivernis is the other Irish city Ptolemy includes in Book 8:

Ptolemy’s Geographike Hyphegesis (GH/Geography) compiled in about 150 AD contains a location catalogue in Books 2–7 with about 6,300 ancient localities and their positions expressed by geographical longitude Λ and latitude Φ. 360 of these localities are additionally listed with coordinates in Book 8 of the Geography. In contrast to the location catalogue, the positions in Book 8 are expressed by means of
– the time difference A (in hours) from the location to Alexandria,
– the length of the longest day M (in hours) at the location,
– the ecliptic distance S (in arc degree) of the sun from the summer solstice at the time when the sun reaches the zenith (for locations between the tropics).
The localities in Book 8 are selected cities, the so-called poleis episemoi (“noteworthy cities”). They are arranged in 26 chapters; each chapter is related to one of the maps Ptolemy divided the Oikoumene into (the inhabited world known to the Greeks and Romans) ...
A conversion of the A- and M-data in Book 8 into geographical coordinates can be found in Cuntz (1923) and in Stückelberger and Mittenhuber (2009). (Marx PDF 1-2)

For Ireland, Ptolemy chose two noteworthy cities, Ivernis and Rhaiba. The relevant passage from Book 8 reads:

§4 The noteworthy cities of the island of Ireland. With a similar name to that of the entire island, the city of Ivernis’s longest day is 18 hours, and it lies three and one quarter hours to the west of Alexandria.
(Nobbe 2:197, Ptolemy 8:3:4)

The time difference between Alexandria and one of Ptolemy’s noteworthy cities is relatively easy to convert into degrees of longitude: 24 hours corresponds to 360°, or 1 hour to 15°. Therefore, his estimate of Ivernis’s temporal distance from Alexandria—three and one quarter hours, or 03:15—corresponds to precisely 48° 45'. But to convert this into a longitude, we need to know the longitude of Alexandria—and this is where things become messy:

Ptolemy gives two different values for [the longitude of Alexandria] in the Geography, in the location catalogue [4:5:9] 60° 30' ... and in Book 8 [8:15:10] 4 h[ours] (8.15.10; the distance between Alexandria and the zero meridian); in GH 7.5.14, he gives both values. The difference between both parameters is ... 30' = 2 min[utes of time].

Therefore, Ptolemy’s three and one quarter hours, if taken as an exact measurement, corresponds to a longitude of either 11° 45', which is 45' further east than he gives in Book 2 (about 35 km), or 11° 15', which is 15' to the east of the location in Book 2 (about 12 km). However, Ptolemy does state categorically (Geography 8:2:1) that the time differences in Book 8 are approximations only (Marx PDF 3). Therefore, it is always possible to choose an appropriate emendation to ensure that the longitudes in Books 2 and 8 agree with each other. The time difference between 11° 00' (Book 2) and Alexandria’s longitude of 4 hours east of the zero meridian, or 60° 00' (Book 8) is 3 hours and sixteen minutes, which is pretty close to Ptolemy’s three hours and one quarter. So there is really no discrepancy between Book 2 and Book 8 as far as the longitude of Ivernis is concerned.

Turning to the latitude, Ptolemy believed that the length of the longest day varied from 12 hours at the equator to 24 hours at the arctic circle. But the relation between the maximum length of day (M) and the latitude (Φ) is not a simple linear one, and it also involves an estimate of the latitude of the arctic circle (Φ = ε):

The length of the longest day M increases from 12 h at the equator (Φ = 0) to 24 h for Φ = 90° – ε. Ptolemy derives the computation of Φ from M and vice versa in his Mathematike Syntaxis (MS) 2.3. The modern formulation of that relation between M and Φ is:

... Ptolemy does not explicitly mention the ε underlying the conversion between Φ and M in the Geography. In GH 7.6.7 he gives the ratio ε : π/2 ≈ 4/15, that is the roughly rounded value ... 24° =: ε_r for ε. In MS 1.12 ... ε becomes 23° 51' 20" =: ε_m ... The correct value of Ptolemy’s time is 23° 41' =: ε_c so that ε_m has an error of about 11'. (Marx PDF 5-6)

Let’s take ε_r = 24° for ε, as that is the rounded estimate Ptolemy gives in the Geography. Solving that horrendous equation—WolframAlpha—yields a latitude for Ivernis of about 57° 48'. This is about 22' south of the value given in Book 2. On the ground, this amounts to approximately 31 km. Taking Ptolemy’s approximations into account, however, this is still reasonably close to the longitude in Book 2.

City	Geography	Longitude	Latitude
Ἰουερνις	Book 2	11° 00	58° 10'
Ἰουερνις	Book 8	11° 15'	57° 48'

Stephanus of Byzantium

Ptolemy’s Ivernis is also mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium, a geographer who flourished in the 6th century CE. His Ethnica, an alphabetic gazetteer of ethnographic terms, survives only in scattered fragments and an abridged epitome by an otherwise unknown scholar Hermolaus. Under the letter iota, we find the following entry:

Ivernē, a city among the Pretanians. The people: Ivernoi (Stephanus Byzantius 335)

It is probably safe to assume that a corrupt copy or epitome of Ptolemy’s Geography was Stephanus’s source for this entry and its presence does not imply that Ivernis was still in existence in the 6th century. By then the descendants of Ptolemy’s Ivernoi were known by their Irish name Érainn, so Stephanus’s Ivernoi is anachronistic.

Ivernis Candidates in Western Munster

Identity

Ivernis is another of those toponyms whose identity has never been pinned down, despite the fact that Ptolemy singled it out as one of the country’s two noteworthy cities. Over the centuries it has been identified with at least eight different places. All of these are in western Munster, but they are distributed over three of that province’s counties:

• Dunkerron Castle (Dún Ciaráin), Kenmare, County Kerry (Ware 1654)
• Limerick City, County Limerick (O’Conor 1766)
• Cork City, County Cork (Orpen 1894)
• Teamhair Érann, Ballahantouragh, County Kerry (Mac Neill 1919)
• Ard Nemid, Great Island, Cork Harbour, County Cork (O’Rahilly 1946)
• Dún Cermna, Old Head of Kinsale, County Cork (O’Rahilly 1946)
• Near Kinsale, County Cork (Stempel 2002)
• Caherdaniel, Iveragh Peninsula, County Kerry

The fact that Ivernis may have been an inland settlement or a coastal settlement leaves the field wide open, with no shortage of plausible candidates.

Dunkerron Castle (Dún Ciaráin)

In the early 17th century, the English antiquarian William Camden identified many of Ptolemy’s Irish toponyms, but he never committed himself to the identity of Ivernis. In his description of the former territory of Desmond, however, he mentions the castle at Dunkeran on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry. He never actually identifies this place with Ivernis, but he does suggest that the similarly name River Iernos (or Ivernos) may have been the Maire or Kilmaire River—today’s Kenmare River, the inlet on which Dunkerron castle stands.

Half a century later, the Irish antiquarian James Ware took some liberties with Camden’s text when he wrote:

IUERNIS Camden takes this Place to be Dunkeron, near the River of Kilmare. I know not what Judgment to make of the Matter; but must confess myself wholly in the dark. (Ware & Harris 40)

The Welsh Celticist William Baxter also understood Camden to have identified Ivernis with Dunkerron:

Ibernis In Ptolemy, this is a city in Ireland, situated on the River Ibernus. If this is Dunkeran (as seems to be the case according to both Camden and myself), it may have received its name from the Corinavii, a colony in Dumnonia [Devon], as though Dun Kernaü or City of the Corinavii. It is certainly of ancient standing, as it was once a Bishop’s Seat. (Baxter 135)

The pertinent question is, however: Was this the site of Ptolemy’s Ivernis? The building whose ruins still stand on this spot only dates back to the early 13th century. As Camden himself notes, it was originally constructed by the Carews, a Cambro-Norman family that participated in the Norman Invasion of Ireland in 1169 (O’Donovan 188). The name of the place, however, clearly suggests the presence of an earlier Irish fortress: Dún Ciaráin, Kieran’s Fortress, which may refer to St Kieran. There were several saints with this name, but St Ciarán of Saigir has been associated with west Kerry (Smith 93). Presumably this is what Baxter meant when he identified the site as a Bishop’s Seat.

I have not been able to discover much about the prehistory or archaeology of the site, so, like James Ware, “I know not what Judgment to make of the Matter; but must confess myself wholly in the dark.” I should point out that in an earlier article in the series I initially agreed with Camden that Ptolemy’s river Ivernos probably referred to the Kenmare River (or the River Roughty, which flows into it). However, in a later article I revised this opinion (see below).

Dunkerron Castle

Dún Cermna

In 1939, T F O’Rahilly suggested that Ptolemy’s Ivernis might refer to Dún Cermna, an ancient fortress situated on the Old Head of Kinsale. His account is worth quoting at length:

Previous to the invasion of the Goidels (Q-Celts), which took place not long before 50 B.C., Ireland was inhabited by other Celtic peoples, who spoke a dialect of P-Celtic and were closely related to the Britons. Foremost among these were the Builg, or, as they were later called periphrastically, the Fir Bolg. These were also known as Érainn, a name which underlies the classical names for Ireland, Ivernia, Hibernia. In Irish literature the name Érainn is often more or less restricted to the pre-Goidelic population of the South of Ireland ... and that this usage is of very old standing is shown by the fact that Ptolemy in his description of Ireland places the Iverni (=Érainn) in what is now Co. Cork, and mentions a ‘city’ called Ivernis (presumably their capital) in the same region. Ptolemy wrote in the second century A.D., but his account of Ireland is based on older material, and relates to a time when no Goidels had as yet set foot on these shores ...

There are two places (as distinguished from districts) in Munster which Irish tradition associates with the Érainn of pre-Goidelic times ... The second place associated with the Érainn of Munster is Dún Cermna ... situated on the Old Head of Kinsale ...

Early tradition so unmistakeably connects Dún Cermna with the Érainn of Co. Cork that we may justifiably equate it with the town of Ivernis which, as we have remarked, Ptolemy places in this very district. The genealogy of the Érainn (G. Érand) in [The Book of Leinster LL 324 d] begins with ‘Duline, son of Mael Umai, son of Cacher, by whom was built Dún Cermna, son of Eterscél, son of Eógan’ ...

As a result of the Goidelic invasion the Érainn (Iverni) of Co. Cork were in the course of time deprived of a good deal of their territory ... Once it had ceased to be a fortress of the Érainn, Dún Cermna seems to have lost its former importance ... In view of the apparent unimportance of the place in early historical times, it is all the more striking to find the tradition so clearly preserved that it had been at a remote period an important seat—one might say, the capital—of the Érainn of Munster. (O’Rahilly 1939:16-19)

O’Rahilly goes on to describe how the place came into the possession of Patrick de Courcy following the Anglo-Norman Invasion. The de Courcys constructed a new castle on the site, Downmacpatrick Castle, the ruins of which still stand to this very day.

Downmacpatrick Castle, Old Head of Kinsale

In 1939, when O’Rahilly published his paper on Dún Cermna, no archaeological excavations had yet been carried out on the site, so he was left with only literary traditions in support of his hypothesis. Since then, however, an archaeological survey has been carried out, and O’Rahilly’s position has come under attack:

It has for long been assumed that the large fosse which cuts across the isthmus linking the Old Head peninsula with the mainland is an indication of an early promontory fort. However, an archaeological survey carried out in 1991 reported that the stone-built fortifications were late medieval in date (obviously connected with the adjacent fifteenth-century de Courcy tower-house). They are described as ‘built in line with a substantial rock-cut fosse which could be of an earlier date’, but there were no apparent traces of prehistoric habitation on the headland itself (Denis Power et al., Archaeological Inventory of County Cork (Dublin 1994) II 65). These findings were confirmed by a partial excavation carried out in 1996, at the time the Old Head was being developed for use as a golf course. Two trenches were then excavated across the main fosse. (A second fosse, to the south of the keep, was left untouched.) The excavation was undertaken by a team from the Department of Archaeology, University College Cork, under the direction of Rose M. Cleary, who concluded that there was no indication of an early phase of occupation within the excavated area. Furthermore, on the headland area, neither archaeological monitoring of the work on the golf course nor geological surveying uncovered any new archaeological features (Rose M. Cleary, ‘Old Head, Kinsale, Co. Cork’ JCHAS 106 (2001) 1-20) (Ó Murchadha 2004:82-83)

Ó Murchadha goes on to track down what he believes is the true location of Dún Cermna:

A possible site for the actual dún is in the townland adjoining Creadan to the south, namely Dunmore, in which is the fishing village of Dunmore East. Close by the fishing port, on a small peninsula called ‘Shanooan’ (? Seandún), also ‘Black Knob’, are the remnants of a promontory fort, no doubt the eponymous Dún Mór (Ordnance Survey 6 in. map, Waterford 27 (1841 edition)). It appears to have been an extensive and well-fortified dún, judging by Westropp’s description of it early in the last century (T. J. Westropp in PRIA 32C (1914-16) 212-14). Regrettably, as the most recent account informs us, ‘the defences were levelled and the topsoil removed in the 1970s to create a carpark’ (Michael Moore, Archaeological Inventory of County Waterford (Dublin 1999) 66)—surely a lamentable fate for what might perhaps have been the once-celebrated Dún Cermna. (Ó Murchadha 2004:88)

Ó Murchadha, however, does not suggest that this dún was Ptolemy’s Ivernis—his article is concerned with O’Rahilly’s location of Dún Cermna on the Old Head of Kinsale, not Ptolemy’s “city” of Ivernis. As it happens, Dunmore East lies too far to the east to be a plausible candidate for Ivernis.

Dunmore East (Shanooan is Bottom Left)

Ard Nemid

Returning to T F O’Rahilly’s article on Dún Cermna, we quote again:

There are two places (as distinguished from districts) in Munster which Irish tradition associates with the Érainn of pre-Goidelic times. One of these places was called Ard Nemid (‘Nemed’s Height’), and was situated somewhere on the Great Island [in Cork Harbour], but it has not, so far as I am aware, been more precisely located. From this place the Great Island was known as Ailén Arda Nemid, a name which after the Anglo-Norman invasion was altered to Oileán Mór an Bharraigh, ‘Barry’s Great Island.’ Nemed was one of the designations of the ancestor-deity of the Érainn or Builg. I Lebor Gabála [The Book of Invasions] Nemed appears, quite appropriately, as leader of one of the early invasions of Ireland, and he is said to have died in the Great Island (LL 6 a 42) (O’Rahilly 1939:17)

To my knowledge no archaeological excavations have ever shed any light on the existence or precise location of Ard Nemid. All we have are traditions and speculation. In the late 19th century Feargus O’Farrell, a local historian from Redington House on the Great Island, wrote the following:

There were formerly four tumuli or mounds on the Great Island ... and one of Mr. Hugh Walsh’s farm on the ploughland of Corbally.

This last was named Móinteán an tSígean (pron. Mone-tawn-a-tee-un), meaning Fairy Hill. It stood fifteen feet [5 m] high; but was levelled by the present tenant all but a small portion, which yet remains untilled. In clearing the mound three cists or graves were found here with human remains in them. The graves were arranged in a circle equi-distant from one another. at a depth of four feet [1.2 m], some twenty yards [18 m] north of the mound, a covered passage leading from it was discovered; but instead of being followed up it was closed in immediately. This mound also stands on the summit of a hill, and might possibly have been that which covered the remains of Nemedius, whose death on the Great Island gave it its ancient name of Oileán Ard Nemeidh. (O’Farrell 35)

• móinteán: land growing rough, coarse herbage; reclaimed moor, peat-land, a bog, turbary.

• síḋean a hillock, a fairy-knoll or abode.

Ten years later, another local historian, F J Healy, could only identify seventeen of the twenty-three raths described by O’Farrell—and Ard Nemid was not one of them (Healy 112).

Corbally, Great Island

In his later work Early Irish History and Mythology, O’Rahilly repeats his belief that Ivernis is probably to be identified with Dún Cermna or Ard Nemid, but he does not elaborate. Nor does he discuss the etymology of the former of these two toponyms:

Ivernis is placed by Ptolemy a little to the north-west of the mouth of the Dabrona (the Lee). The name has not survived; but the place intended is probably either Ard Nemid, situated somewhere on the Great Island in Cork Harbour, or Dún Cermna, situated on the Old Head of Kinsale. (O’Rahilly 14)

According to the traditional history of Ireland, the latter fortress was named for Cermna Finn, a legendary High King of Ireland. His historicity, however, is much to be doubted.

Cork City

Goddard Orpen also placed Ivernis in this part of the country, but he opted for the site of the modern city rather than the nearby Great Island:

Now Cork Harbour is much the most important natural harbour on the south coast or indeed in the whole of Ireland, and it would be strange if Ptolemy omitted to notice it. The site of Cork city, too, must always have been an important site. The ancient name for the river Lee, which flows into Cork Harbour, was the Sabhrann (see “Four Masters,” sub anno 1163), the equivalent of the Latin Sabrina and the Welsh Hafren, and I suspect that Ptolemy’s Δαβρώνα [Dabrōna] ... is a corruption of Σαβρώνα [Sabrōna]. If then the mouth of the Sabrona be Cork Harbour, and if we are justified in supposing that Ptolemy placed it in lat. 58°, the town of Ἰουερνίς [Ivernis] would occupy approximately the site of the city of Cork. This must always have been an important site, and the Great Island in Cork Harbour, under the name of Oilén Arda Neimhedh, is associated with one of the earliest legendary colonists, the Nemidians. The town of Ἰουερνίς, being homonymous with the island [of Ireland], was presumably in Ptolemy’s time its chief town. (Orpen 121-122)

There is little to be said for or against this hypothesis. The location is certainly a fine fit for Ptolemy’s coordinates if Marcian’s emendation of the south coast is accepted. However, from an archaeological point of view no settlements in this area are known that predate the early Christian community of St Finbar, who settled here around 600 CE.

Cork City

Teamhair Érann

According to Robert Darcy and William Flynn, in the early part of the 20th century the Irish historian Eoin Mac Neill suggested that Ptolemy’s Ivernis was to be identified with Teamhair Érann, the alleged “capital” of the Kings of Munster in ancient times. Darcy & Flynn also identify the location of Teamhair Érann with Ballahantouragh in County Kerry. In support of this, they cite Mac Neill’s Phases of Irish History. They may, however, be putting words in Mac Neill’s mouth. On the subject of Ptolemy’s Irish “cities”, Mac Neill writes:

Several “cities”' are likewise named by Ptolemy. These, no doubt, were places of assembly or royal towns—“oppida,” like Tara and Emania. None of them can be identified with any approach to certainty. Two bear the name Regia polis, and this I think is taken from Latin, meaning “royal city.” (Mac Neill 117)

He never actually mentions Ivernis, though he does identify Ptolemy’s Ivernoi with the Érainn and does identify Teamhair Érann as their capital:

The Clanna Deadhadh, which is another name for the Iverni or Érainn of Munster, are summoned to meet their king, Eochaidh Mac Luchta, at his royal seat of Teamhair Érann. (Mac Neill 104)

And that’s it: no mention of Ivernis itself or of Ballahantouragh. The latter has actually been identified with Teamhair Luachra, another place identified in Irish literary sources as the royal seat of the Kings of Munster. Two other scholars, Stückelberger & Graßhoff, have identified Temhair Luachra with Ivernis (Stückelberger & Graßhoff 146 §10).

It is not at all clear whether these were two different names for the same place or two different places. Both appear in the literature as strongholds of the Ernean kings in western Munster. It is possible, however, that neither of these similarly named places actually existed. T F O’Rahilly was satisfied that both were literary fictions:

As I have elsewhere suggested, Temair Érann as a Munster stronghold is a storytellers’ fiction. (O’Rahilly 183)

In a note to J C Watson’s edition of the tale Mesca Ulad [The Intoxication of the Men of Ulster], O’Rahilly argues that Temair Luachra|Érann was a legendary site that originally referred to the more familiar Hill of Tara in pre-Goidelic times, when it was an important ritual site associated with the Érainn (Watson xxxvi ff).

It is probably safe to dismiss both as candidates for Ptolemy’s Ivernis. None of the places that have ever been suggested as possible locations for Temair Luachra or Temair Érann is on the coast, as is required by Marcian’s emendation of Ptolemy’s map. And even if Ivernis was after all an inland settlement, as Ptolemy says, the strong doubts surrounding the historicity of both Temair Luachra and Temair Érann incline me to search for Ivernis elsewhere.

Iveragh Peninsula

The etymologists at the website Roman Era Names also dismiss Ballahantouragh as a plausible candidate. They have returned to the Iveragh Peninsula in western Kerry in search of Ptolemy’s Ivernis. But unlike William Camden, they believe that the best place to find potential candidates is not near Kenmare but much closer to the ocean:

Ιουερνις (or Ιοερνις) πολις (Iwernis 2,2,10) is obviously related to Ιερνου river mouth above and the Ἱουερνοι people below, as a possible overwintering place like Ibernio in England. Its past identification with Teamhair Érann at Ballahantouragh in County Kerry is not convincing. Southwest Ireland is full of stone circles and other megalithic monuments ... but they are particularly thick on the ground around Kenmare. Even where the megalithic stonework visible today is quite late (Christian era), it inherited a farming tradition stretching back to the Bronze Age. To find a fort that might qualify as Ptolemy’s πολις one needs to look further out towards the ocean on the Iveragh peninsula, for example at Caherdaniel. (Roman Era Names)

As they had earlier identified the River Ivernos with one of the rivers that flows into the sea at the Iveragh Peninsula (either the River Maine or the River Roughty), it is not surprising that they should return to this area in search of the similarly named Ivernis.

As for Caherdaniel, this stone ring fort is currently dated to 600 CE—much too late to be Ptolemy’s Ivernis. The nearby Staigue Fort, which bears a close similarity to Caherdaniel, is also identified as a late Iron Age structure. It is alleged to be about three centuries older than Caherdanel, so it too is too young to be identified with Ptolemy’s Ivernis.

Caherdaniel Fort, County Kerry

Other Candidates

A few other candidates may be briefly mentioned. According to Darcy & Flynn, the 18th-century scholar Charles O’Conor identified Ptolemy’s Ivernis with Limerick City. This requires quite an adjustment of Ptolemy’s coordinates.

Another 18th-century scholar, William Beauford, relied heavily upon the work of Richard of Cirencester for his analysis of Ptolemy’s geography of Ireland. This is unfortunate, as The Description of Britain, which was formerly attributed to the 14th-century Richard of Cirencester, is now known to be an 18th-century forgery:

Ἰουρνις Edit. Pal. Ἰερνις. According to Richard of Cirencester there were two Ibernia, one he places on the east side of the Shannon, the other on the Blackwater, the port of Insovenach. The former being an inland city was most probably Ἰουρνις of Ptolemy, and thought by Whitaker to be Cahir near Bruff in the county of Limerick, where there still remains some raths, cromlecs and other monuments (Beauford 71)

Insovenach itself is of uncertain identity. In an article published in the Journal of the Cork Historical and archaeological Society in 1959, Diarmuid Ó Murchadha suggested that it referred to Fota Island, which is in Cork Harbour, just north of the Great Island (Ó Murchadha 1959:61).

More recently, Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel has suggested that Ivernis was somewhere in the vicinity of Kinsale.

Conclusions

In the light of the doubt cast by Diarmuid Ó Murchadha on O’Rahilly’s placement of Dún Cermna on the Old Head of Kinsale, I am much more inclined to settle upon Ard Nemid on Cork’s Great Island as the likeliest candidate for Ptolemy’s Ivernis. I set aside the assumption—easy to make—that Ivernis must have been on the similarly named river Ivernos. Both names—the river’s and the city’s—were clearly derived from that of the local people, the Iverni (of whom more in a later article). All we can really conclude is that Ivernis lay somewhere in the territory of the Iverni.

It is, however, possible that Ivernis was on the River Ivernos after all. Ptolemy places Ivernis 15' (12 km) west and 70' (108 km) north of the mouth of another river, the Dabrōna, which O’Rahilly identified with the Lee, the river that flows into Cork Harbour. In a recent article in this series, however, I suggested that Ptolemy’s two rivers, the Dabrōna and the Ivernos had been inadvertently switched at an early date: the Dabrōna was the River Roughty (whose ancient name was Labrann), which flows into Kenmare River, and the Ivernos was the Lee (whose ancient name was Sabrann). This interpretation supports the claim that Ivernis was Ard Nemid, for the latter does lie north of the entrance to Cork Harbour, which could be regarded as the mouth of the Lee from the point of view of a foreign mariner. Moreover, if we adopt Marcian’s revision of the south coast of Ireland, the mouth of the Dabrōna must be moved about 1° to the north of Ptolemy’s location, so that Ivernis is a mere 10' (15.4 km) north of it. If Ard Nemid was on one of the high points of the Great Island, then it would be a fairly good match for the Ptolemy-Marcian settlement of Ivernis.

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References

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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
• T F O’Rahilly: Copyright Unknown, Fair Use
• Geography, Book 8, Data for European Map 1: Willibald Pirckheimer (translator & editor), Geographia Universalis, Henricus Petrus, Basel (1540)
• Dunkerron Castle: © Mike Searle, Creative Commons License
• Downmacpatrick Castle: © Copyright TI Media Limited, Fair Use
• Dunmore East: © 2019 Marinas.com, Fair Use
• Corbally, Great Island: Imagery © 2019 DigitalGlobe, Map Data © 2019 Google, Fair Use
• Cork City: © UCC 2019, Fair Use
• Caherdaniel Fort, County Kerry: © Robert Linsdell, Creative Commons License