The Iliad’s Catalogue of Ships and Oral Tradition in Documenting Ethnic Diversity in North East Nigeria

The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of Homer's Iliad is one of antiquity's most extensive exercises in the documentary listing of peoples, places, and rulers, functioning as a record of collective identity and territorial claim within an oral epic framework. This study examines the Catalogue of Ships as a methodological model for documenting ethnic diversity through oral tradition, applying this lens to the examination of oral cataloguing traditions among the diverse ethnic groups of North East Nigeria. A comparative oral tradition methodology was adopted, drawing on classical scholarship on the Catalogue of Ships alongside fieldwork interviews with 30 oral history specialists, traditional rulers, and cultural custodians from Borno, Yobe, and Gombe States. The study focuses on how oral traditions in North East Nigeria enumerate and categorise ethnic groups, ancestral territories, and historical alliances in ways structurally analogous to the Homeric Catalogue. Findings reveal that oral cataloguing traditions are actively maintained in North East Nigeria as records of ethnic identity, territorial entitlement, and political legitimacy, serving social functions closely parallel to those identified by scholars in the Homeric Catalogue. The documentary density and mnemonic strategies employed are structurally similar, including genealogical enumeration and place name anchoring. The study concludes that the Homeric Catalogue model offers a productive framework for studying oral documentation of ethnic diversity globally and recommends its application in North East Nigerian oral history preservation projects.

Keywords: Homer, Catalogue of Ships, oral tradition, ethnic diversity, North East Nigeria