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A
sperm whale merging from the depths of the sea next to the board
of the boat ,1999 expedition, Occidental Mediterranean Sea.
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It is with
reference to the image ancient sailors had of the world, its limits and
abysses, monsters and gods that one must interpret these navigations, understand
the sea routes they followed, identify the seamarks/landmarks they noted
and named. Investigations have been recently intensified to understand how
the experience acquired by those navigators had been accumulated by their
captains and pilots, transmitted from generation to generation, and even
encoded in narratives and songs, before being consigned in writings and
maps. A great part of their knowledge represents the empirical knowledge
of today's fishermen and elderly sailors. Their experience, as summarized
in the ancient editions of the Coast Pilots and Nautical Instructions, is
useful to understand the choice of these routes. This throws light on the
text of the Odyssey, but, in return, Homer's song assigns to them their
furthest origin. Odysseus' navigations offer today's reader of the Odyssey
a revisited approach to the Mediterranean world. They enable him to understand
the choice of the sea routes across this Mediterranean basin, the logic
stopovers, the hazards of crossings. They tell him of the inexhaustible
marvels of the sea, its islands and coasts. 
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