Eblana

Eblana is the name of an ancient Irish settlement believed by some to have occupied the same site as the modern city of Dublin. The exact identity of this settlement, however, is still a matter of speculation.

History

The earliest reference to Dublin is sometimes said to occur in the writings of Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy), the Greek astronomer and cartographer, around the year 140 AD, who refers to a settlement in Ireland called Eblana. This would seem to give Dublin a just claim to nearly two thousand years of antiquity, as the settlement must have existed a considerable time before Ptolemy became aware of it. But was Eblana Dublin?

Early Irish antiquarians, such as Sir John Ware and Walter Harris believed that the name Eblana in Ptolemy's Geographia was in fact a corruption of Deblana, itself a version of the Gaelic name Dubh Linn (Black Pool), from which the modern English language name Dublin derives. For one reason or another, it seems, ancient geographers often truncated the initial letters of place names. For example, instead of Pepiacum, and Pepidii (in Wales), Ptolemy writes Epiacum and Epidii; and for Dulcinium (now Ulcinj, in Montenegro), he has Ulcinium.

There are several problems with this theory:

• The earliest Gaelic settlement on the site of Dublin is referred to in local sources as Áth Cliath ("Ford of Hurdles"). Duiblinn first appears as the name of a Christian ecclesiastical settlement which could not possibly have existed before the 5th century.

• Ptolemy's description of Ireland shows no trace of either the Goidelic or Laginian occupations of the country, both of which probably took place some centuries before Ptolemy's time. O'Rahilly (1946) has concluded from this that his description is probably based on data collected in the 4th century BC by the early explorer Pytheas.

• Some early texts of Ptolemy's Geographia call the settlement in question Ebdana (the Greek uppercase letters lambda and delta are similar and easily confused: Λ and Δ). Considering the degree of corruption which Ptolemy's work is known to have suffered in transmission, it is impossible to tell which, if either, of these variants is the correct form.

• The co-ordinates Ptolemy gives for Eblana places the settlement in the north of County Dublin, several kilometres from the site of the modern city of Dublin.

• Ptolemy's Eblana did not stand on a river. In the Geographia, Eblana occurs between the mouths of two rivers: the Buvinda (i.e. the River Boyne) and the Oboka. Because early antiquaries believed that Eblana was Dublin, they identified the Oboka with the river which enters the sea at Arklow in County Wicklow, which they consequently dubbed the Ovoca (now the River Avoca). In fact, Ptolemy's Oboka seems to be the River Liffey, and his Modonnos probably represents the Avoca. Eblana, thus, is located somewhere between the mouths of the Boyne and the Liffey.

In the light of these difficulties it is only fair to say that the identity of Ptolemy's Eblana is as yet unknown, and identification with the city of Dublin is at best problematic and highly speculative.

Eblana Theatre

The Eblana Theatre was situated in the basement of Busaras, Dublin's central bus station, operated by Bus Éireann. A tiny theatre, famously without wings, it was open from 1959 until the early 1990s. It was run by the indomitable Phyllis Ryan and home to her company Gemini Productions. Phyllis Ryan was in the 1960s and 1970s the major producer of new plays in Ireland outside of the Abbey Theatre. Phyllis Ryan and her Gemini Productions kept independent theatre alive in Dublin and premièred most of the work of playwright John B. Keane. The playwrights - Brian Friel, Joe O Donnell, Tom Murphy etc, that Gemini nurtured were later adopted by the Abbey and other theatres but owe their first productions to the courage of Phyllis Ryan.

In the mid 90's the Eblana was run for a short time by Andrew's Lane Theatre. Following this it was leased by Northside Theatre Company. It closed in 1995, was gutted, and turned into a left luggage facility.

References

• O'Rahilly, T. F. (1946). Early Irish History and Mythology. Dublin: Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. ISBN 1-874045-89-5. 

• Harris, Walter (1736). The History and Antiquities of the City of Dublin. Dublin. 

See also

• History of Dublin