David-Léon Cahun
1841–1900
Biography
David-Léon Cahun, also known as Léon Cahun, was a French writer, traveller, orientalist and scholar. He was born at Haguenau in the Bas-Rhin on 23 June 1841 and died in Paris on 30 March 1900. In 1875 he was appointed to the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris, where he worked on an analytical catalogue, and he contributed literary, geographical and ethnographical articles to journals and learned bulletins of his time.
His best-known books are historical adventure novels that take their readers into the ancient and medieval past. They follow the older tradition of the imagined travel narrative set in Greece, and they aim to bring little-known episodes of history and geography to a general readership. Les Aventures du capitaine Magon, published in Paris in 1875, follows Phoenician seafarers about a thousand years before the Christian era. La Bannière bleue carries its readers through the Crusades and the Mongol conquest.
The site holds Pericla Navarchi Magonis, a Latin version of the Phoenician voyage story made by Arcadius Avellanus. The book credits Cahun as the author, with the translator named beside him, so the French novel and its Latin rendering can be read as one story told in two languages.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Pericla Navarchi Magonis; sive, Expeditio Phoenicia Annis Ante Christum Mille
by David-Léon Cahun (translated by Arcadius Avellanus)
The Sidonian sea captain Mago tells how King Hiram of Tyre sent him west to Tartessus for silver and rare goods for the temple King David means to build in Jerusalem. With his scribe Hanno, his old pilot Himilco and a Tyrian sailor, Bodmilcar, who bears Hanno a grudge, he sets…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.