A catalogue of Ancient Ports and Harbours

This web site presents work done to collect, identify and locate ancient harbours and ports. It is based on a study of existing documentation.
The result is a list of around 4000 ancient ports
based on the writings of 70 ancient authors
and over 100 modern authors, incl. the Barrington Atlas.
A few “potential ancient harbours” from a nautical point of view,
have been added,
based on nautical guides/pilots used by modern sailors.

If you are looking for the location of a specific port, use the search engine (top right of this page) that will lead you to the page where this port is mentioned.
If you are uncertain about the spelling, you may enter just the part of the name you are certain of into the search engine.

This work is published in 4 volumes, all available in pdf versions, and most of it is reproduced on this web site:

Volume I gives the list of ports and a bibliography
of ancient and modern authors.
You can also download the latest updated xls table.

Volume II gives the French translations of the texts
of the listed ancient authors.

Volume III provides some notes on ancient ships, on ancient measures and ancient maps, and on Claudius Ptolemy, on ancient structures and on some ancient ports.

Volume IV gives twenty stories about ancient mariners.