“If sound is indeed perpetual the headwaters of the Persian Gulf must be filled dimly with the noise of Alexander and his armies.” – Freya Stark, Baghdad Sketches

Between 325 and 324 BCE, a Greek admiral named Nearchus explored the Gulf as part of his famous naval expedition from the Indus River to the mouth of the Tigris River. The voyage of Nearchus piqued Alexander’s interest and he then sent further expeditions as a first step to colonize the region and to gain control of the lucrative incense and spice trade. So, in the winter of 324-324 BCE, Alexander the Great ordered three exploratory voyages down the Arabian coast, as a first step in a plan to colonize the region. One voyage was led by Androsthenes of Thasos, who reported of an island called Ikaros.

Sometime after 245 BCE, a Greek scholar named Eratosthenes wrote a work entitled Geographika, a description of the known world at the time. Eratosthenes was born in the colony of Cyrene (in modern-day Libya) and became the chief librarian at Alexandria during the height of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. In his work, he mentions the journey of Androsthenes, but his work does not survive fully, only existing in later citations. Around 23 CE, a Greek scholar named Strabo completed his work Geography, which survives in full and is one of the longest extant works in Greek literature. Strabo was born in Amaseia (in modern-day Turkey); at this time, Asia Minor was under the control of Rome, which transitioned from a republic to an empire during Strabo’s lifetime. According to Strabo, Eratosthenes said that Androsthenes said that when his expedition came across Ikaros, it had a temple dedicated to Apollo, the Greek god of music, prophecy, healing, poetry, and by Hellenistic times, the personification of the sun, as well as an oracle of Tauropolos, an epithet of Artemis–the goddess of the hunt, wilderness, chastity, nurturing children, the personification of the moon, and twin sister to Apollo. Strabo writes,

He [Eratosthenes] says that he [Androsthenes], who sailed around the gulf with an expedition, said that beyond Teredon –  having the continent on his right and sailing along the coast – is the island of Ikaros, with a temple on it sacred to Apollo and an oracle of Tauropolos. Translated by Duane W. Roller, 2014

Around the year 77, Pliny (the Elder) completed his work Natural History, a 37-volume encyclopedia. Pliny was a Roman scholar who lived during the time of the Pax Romana. He, too, mentions the island of Ikaros in his work, but in an allusive way, only quoting it as a landmark in the Gulf. Around 130 CE, the scholar Arrian published The Anabsis of Alexander. It is from Arrian that we receive the tradition of Alexander naming the island “Ikaros.” You can see that he diverts from the tradition of Strabo to assert that the temple on Ikaros was dedicated to Artemis. Arrian writes,

[Alexander] was also informed that there were two islands in the sea facing the mouth of the Euphrates, the first of which was not far from the place where the waters of that river are discharged into the sea, being about 120 stades distant from the shore and the river’s mouth. This is the smaller of the two, and was densely covered with every kind of timber. In it was also a temple of Artemis, around which the inhabitants themselves spent their lives. The island was devoted to the use of wild goats and stags, which were allowed to range at large as being dedicated to Artemis. It was unlawful to chase them unless any one wished to offer sacrifice to the goddess; and for this purpose alone it was lawful to chase them. Aristobulus says that Alexander ordered this island to be called Icarus, after the island so named in the Aegean Sea, on which, as the report goes, Icarus, son of Daedalus fell, when the wax, by which the wings had been fastened to him, melted. For he did not fly near the earth, according to his father’s injunctions, but senselessly flying far aloft, he allowed the sun to soften and loosen the wax. Icarus left his name to the island and the sea, the former being called Icarus and the latter the Icarian Sea. The other island was said to be distant from the mouth of the Euphrates about a day and night’s voyage for a ship running before the breeze. Its name was Tylos; it was large and most of it neither rugged nor woody, but suitable for producing cultivated fruits and all things in due season. Translated by Chinnock, 1884

Around the year 150, The Greco-Roman scholar Claudius Ptolemy completed his work Geography. He lists Ikaros (modern Failaka) and Tylos (modern Bahrain) in his work. Ptolemy also referred to the Bay of Kuwait as the Sacred or Holy Bay (Hieros Kolpos in Greek and Sinus Sacer in Latin), which would later contribute to theologians placing the Garden of Eden in the Gulf region. Mentions of Ikaros continued into Byzantine scholarship, notably in The Ethnica of Stephanus of Byzantium of the sixth century.

Ptolemy’s Geography was important because it introduced a systematic grid of latitude and longitude, but it also contained many major errors. Notably, it distorted the geography of the Gulf. For instance, he placed the island of Ikaros (appearing as Ichara or other variations in some manuscript traditions/maps) too far south. But because Geography remained the authoritative model for European cartographers throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, these inaccuracies were repeatedly copied into maps. From the fifteenth century onward, printed editions of Ptolemy’s World Map circulated widely throughout Europe. Below you can see a 1467 manuscript copy of Ptolemy’s World Map by Nicolaus Germanus.

Below is a copy of Ptolemy’s work, printed in 1562. You can see how in Book Six, Chapter 5, he gives the location of the island and in Book Six, Chapter 7, he mentions the Sacred Bay:

Here is a copy of his work published in 1991:

Based on the Ptolemy world map, these maps are as follows:

1. 1482 Francesco Berlinghieri (Tabula Sexta di Asia, one of the rarest early maps of the Arabian Peninsula)
2. 1540 Willibald Pirckheimer (“Taula Asiae VI,” part of the “Geographia universalis, vetus et nozva,”)
3. 1541 Servetus, Michael (“Tabvla sexta Asiae” is a historical map from a 1541 atlas)
4. 1548 Gerard Mercator (“ASIAE: VI. TAB,” created by Claudius Ptolemy and Gerhard Mercator)
5. 1561 Giuseppe Moletti (“Tabvla Asiae VI,” part of “La geografia di Claudio Tolomeo Alessandrino)

The map below dates to the late 1600s. It was listed for sale on eBay, titled “1676 Cluver Jansson Antique Map.” According to the UC Berkley Library, this similar map was made by Philipp Clüver (1580-1622) and Johannes Buno (1617-1697).

European understanding of the Gulf changed gradually during the 16th and 17th centuries as Portuguese navigators, followed by Dutch and English mariners, conducted direct surveys and produced increasingly accurate nautical charts. The map below was created in 1700 by Pierre Mortier. As their geographical knowledge began to improve, scholars discussed the location of the island of Ikaros, marked on this map as Ichara.

In 1720, a French scholar and Benedictine abbot named Antoine Augustine Calmet and a British engraver named Peter Starkman published the map below marking Bahrain as Tylos, an island to the north as Ichara, and lower Iraq as Eden (although in a work later published in 1729, he placed Eden in Armenia).

According to BJ Slot in his work The Origins of Kuwait, in 1758 the French geographer and cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville worked on a comparative study in which he tried to compare geographical texts of classical antiquity such as Arrian, Strabo, Plinius and Ptolemy with classical Arab geographers and contemporary travelers. But he did not identify Failaka as the ancient Ikaros. According to Slot, in his article Recherches, D’Anville wrote,

“Nothing certain can be stated from local knowledge about the island Ichara [an island mentioned by geographers of Antiquity] if this is off the Arab coast. The maps we have of the Gulf show a small island with the name Peluche, otherwise Aguada on the Portuguese maps, but it is not far enough from the north of the Euphrates and the Tigris to be identified with the mentions of Ichara in Ptolemy and Plinius.“

The map seen below was created by D’Anville. You can see that he includes the title Sacer Sinus. He labels Failaka as “Agoada ou Peluche” (more on this here). In 1797, William Vincent wrote “The voyage of Nearchus from the Indus to the Euphrates, collected from the original journal preserved by Arrian” and identified Tylos as Bahrain, which you can see below. By the 1800s, improved hydrographic surveys had largely replaced the Ptolemaic view with a far more accurate representation of the Gulf.

It would not be until 1960 that Failaka Island would be definitively proved as the ancient Ikaros, with the discovery of the Ikaros Inscription, but here are some other noteworthy mentions beforehand:

In 1830, James Silk Buckingham wrote,

“The name of the three islands that form the northern group, beginning from the northward, are Moochan, Feliche, and Ukhar. These are all small ; and Feliche, the largest, is not more than seven miles in circumference. As far as I could learn, they were in general barren, and at present uninhabited ; but as they are said to possess fresh water, they might not always have been so. Notwithstanding this long digression, a word deserves to be devoted to these islands, for the illustration of Ancient Geography. Arrian, in recording the design which Alexander the Great entertained of invading Arabia by sea, enters into a description… Two islands were particularly reported to lie in the sea, over against the mouth of the Euphrates… This was the lesser of the two, covered with thick woods, and had a temple on it dedicated to Diana ; the inhabitants had their dwellings round ‘the temple. This island, as Aristobulus tells us, Alexander ordered to be called Icarus… We have here the measurement of about one hundred and twenty stadia, or from twelve to fifteen miles, for the distance of the Icarus of Arrian from the mouth of the Euphrates. Strabo mentions the same island, and most distinctly states that it would be on the right hand of a voyager who sailed from the mouth of the Euphrates towards Arabia, and consequently it would be near that coast. He calls the temple on it one of Apollo, instead of Diana ; but in other particulars he agrees with Arrian. Col. Kinnier, in his Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire, has fixed on Karek as the Icarus of Arrian ; though that island, instead of fifteen, is upwards of one hundred miles from the mouth of the Euphrates ; and on sailing from .these towards the coast of Arabia, must be on the left instead of the right, and at the distance of a hundred miles at least, so as not to be at all seen. he other island, continues Arrian, is about one day and night’s sail from the mouth of the Euphrates, and is called Tylus. It is very large and spacious, and not mountainous, nor woody, but produces plenty of several sorts of fruits, pleasant and agreeable to the taste, f In this we instantly recognize the present Bahrein, which retains to this day all the features here described. It seems highly probable that the present town and harbour of Graine was the Gerrhae of the ancients… If an apology were deemed necessary for so long an interruption of the narrative of my voyage, it might be replied, that the information here detailed, regarding the western side of the Persian Gulf, is almost altogether new, and must be considered as at least a valuable addition to our hydrographical knowledge of this coast.”

In 1857, the first English translation of Strabo’s Geography was completed by H.C. Hamilton and W. Falconer. They included a footnote which names Ikaros, “Peljudje, at the entrance of the Gulf of Gran.” Peljudje is a variation of the name Failichah and Gran is an old name for Kuwait.

In 1937, Freya Stark visited Failaka Island with Gerald de Gaury, the newly appointed British Political Agent to Kuwait. On March 20th, in a letter to her mother directly following her visit to the island, Freya wrote, “Gerald thought [Failaka] might be an island called Icarus which one had a temple to Apollo – so I spent some days looking up as much literature as we could lay our hands on, and there is a mound called Sa’d and Sa’id, where the Sheikh now has a little belvedere of mud, which looks as if it might be the place.” In October of the same year, Baghdad Sketches was published, in which she expanded on this,

“Nearchus the admiral coasted up the map from Carmania, but did not reach Failichah… But after Nearchus, Androsthenes the Thasian travelled down the western shore and says ‘that on the coasting voyage, which the continent on the right, one sees next after Teredon the island Icarus, and in it a temple sacred to Apollo and an oracle of Artemis.’ Eratosthenes wrote this, and Strabo copied it, but Pliny later confused the issue with improbable mileage, so that the island of Icarus has been placed far down to the south. Pliny’s distances are so misleading for other neighbouring places, and he speaks so palpably vaguely from hearsay that one is justified in preferring the older testimony, and in looking somewhere on Failichah for the Greek forgotten temples by the sea.

We meandered over the buried sites of Sa’d and Sa’id and found negative evidence there–rough pottery that might be as early as you please… Here we are told of beads and bracelets found sometimes when the ground is ploughed, and of an inscription discovered years ago and carried off by the Royal Navy; and came to the conclusion that, of all the vanished cities of Failichah, Sa’d and Sa’id is the one to look at for the temples of Artemis and Apollo”

As you can see, Freya explores the tradition of Strabo and identifies the mounds known as Sa’d and Sa’id in the southwest of Failaka Island as the most likely place for the lost temples of Artemis and Apollo. She also mentions an inscription “discovered years ago and carried off by the Royal Navy.” You can read more about the beginnings of archaeology on Failaka Island here.