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The Horn of Plenty

International Trade

From earliest recorded times Egypt traded with regions beyond her frontiers (Fig. 7.1). The land the fifth century BC Greek historian Herodotus called “the Gift of the Nile” possessed many natural resources, as we know from the large and impressive ancient remains, the artifacts recovered during extensive archaeological investigations, and from the decipherment of numerous ancient written documents. Egypt's geological wealth included soft and hard stones used for constructing temples, tombs, and secular structures both inside Egypt and abroad. Rupestral products coming from Egyptian quarries were used for statues, sarcophagi, columns, and other architectural elements that have been found all over the ancient Mediterranean world in the Roman period. Materials such as sandstone, limestone, granites, porphyries, marble, basalt, metals such as copper, tin, iron and gold, and precious and semiprecious stones like turquoise, beryls/emeralds, amethysts, carnelian, and so on were all pried from the mines and quarries of Egypt throughout antiquity for thousands of years from the earliest period of the pharaohs until late Roman times. Some of these mineral products were gleaned more easily than others; large columns and other architectural elements made of hard stone and quarried from sites deep in the desert were the most difficult and costly of all to obtain as we discussed in Chapter 4.

Yet, despite being blessed with all manner of natural resources, Egypt lacked some key assets. She did not possess adequate supplies of long-beam timber with which to build a variety of objects including large seafaring ships. In pharaonic times Egypt sought mainly the famous cedars from Lebanon, probably shipped via Byblos. Later, in the Ptolemaic era Egypt controlled regions of the Aegean, southern Asia Minor, and Cyprus, which supplied much of what she needed to construct and maintain her massive fleets in the Mediterranean.

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Fig. 7.1: Map showing important sites associated with international trade.

Pharaonic Period

In the pharaonic period Egypt's insatiable desire for gold led to massive exploitation not only of her own sources, but also of mines in the ancient lands of Wawat and Kush, in what is today Sudan. Intense exploitation of auriferous bearing regions of the Eastern Desert and Nubia continued and perhaps accelerated in Ptolemaic times and persisted in Egypt throughout the Roman and Byzantine occupation (see Chapter 9).

Although examples of silver artifacts have been found in Egypt dating as early as the Predynastic period, ancient texts indicate that the metal was mined elsewhere; silver was more valuable than gold until the end of the Middle Kingdom (2040–1640 BC). Virtually all silver used in Egypt in pharaonic times was imported—probably from Syria, Asia Minor, and perhaps from as far away as Armenia. In the fifth century BC, and later, the Egyptians may have obtained silver from mines in Greece, especially those in the Laurion district near Athens.

Egypt also lacked other commodities deemed essential. Religious and funerary customs demanded aromatics and incense, which were used in the mummification process and for burning on altars in temples. These were available only from the farther reaches of the Red Sea and northern Indian Ocean, mainly southern Arabia (Yemen and Oman) and also from the Horn of Africa, in Somalia today. The dates for the earliest appearance of this commerce in aromatics and incense with Egypt have been debated, but the exchange appears to have begun sometime during the pharaonic period, likely during the New Kingdom (1550–1070 BC), when Queen Hatshepsut (1473–1458 BC) sent her famous expedition to Punt (somewhere in the region of the Horn of Africa and/or southern Arabia). These easily transported, but relatively valuable products could have come either by sea to Egypt or via desert caravans from southern Arabia to Palestine and, thence, overland across Sinai to Egypt. Ivory, exotic animals, slaves, and other commodities also trickled in from more southerly African regions; these probably came overland mainly via the Nile Valley or were imported along an age-old route in Egypt's Western Desert called the Darb al-Arba‘in (Route of Forty Days) (Fig. 7.2).

One major avenue for Egypt's international trade passed across the Eastern Desert. Surviving written sources from as early as the Old Kingdom period (that is, from the Third Dynasty on: 2649–2152 BC) note harbors on the Red Sea coast. Despite what ancient written records report, however, there has been surprisingly little archaeological evidence found for any pharaonic port or roadstead along Egypt's Red Sea coast. Archaeologists have not discovered remains of any Old Kingdom Red Sea harbors. From the Middle Kingdom (2040–1640 BC) and early New Kingdom (1550–1070 BC), a single port has been identified and partially excavated at the mouth of Wadi Gawasis (Fig. 7.3), which lies about twenty-two kilometers south of the modern port of Safaga. Excavations by the University of Alexandria there in the 1970s unearthed a few completely effaced stones that once bore inscriptions and stone anchors (Fig. 7.4), some of which originally formed parts of a religious altar.

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Fig. 7.2: Map with long-distance trade routes.

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Fig. 7.3: Map of Gawasis, located about twenty-two kilometers south of the modern port of Safaga.

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Fig. 7.4: Stone anchors from the Middle Kingdom to the Roman period.

More recently a joint Italian-American team of archaeologists has found caves containing cedar ship planking and ropes. It may be that the remains found in Wadi Gawasis were not those of a formal port at all, but simply a roadstead that allowed ships to be pulled up onto the beach or, alternatively, a place where larger ships anchored offshore and smaller coastal lighters ferried between the ships and the beach. Some of the inscriptions found at Wadi Gawasis during the course of excavations have been removed to safety. They record activities by the pharaohs Senwosret I (1971–1926 BC), Amenemhat II (1929–1892 BC), and Senwosret II (1897–1878 BC). Until at least 1992 other steles could still be seen on the site though whatever inscriptions they may have originally borne have long since been worn away by wind and sun.

One would think that the famous expedition to Punt launched by pharaoh Hatshepsut (1473–1458 BC) in the Eighteenth Dynasty, and recounted in her funerary temple of Deir al-Bahari near the famous Valley of the Kings, would have been launched with much fanfare from a port on the Red Sea coast (Fig. 7.5). Yet, aside from a few traces at Wadi Gawasis, archaeologists have found no evidence for a New Kingdom port anywhere on Egypt's Red Sea shore. Could Wadi Gawasis have been the port used during Hatshepsut's expedition? A number of forays to Punt are reported in Egyptian records throughout the pharaonic period and we have little reason to doubt that they actually occurred. These would have had to start in the Nile Valley, traverse the Eastern Desert, and leave from some point on the Red Sea coast. The regions around Quseir, or farther south near Berenike, were likely areas of departure and arrival. The former is the nearest point on the Red Sea from the Nile Valley, while sailing to the latter would have minimized tacking against the fierce and almost constantly blowing north winds in the Red Sea. Nothing of pharaonic date has, however, been found at or near either of these ancient Ptolemaic-Roman ports or anywhere else along the Red Sea coast that archaeologists have been allowed to examine.

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Fig. 7.5: One of the ships of the famous expedition to Punt launched by Pharaoh Hatshepsut.

Ptolemaic Era

The earliest evidence we have of a permanent presence on Egypt's Red Sea coast comes relatively late in history, from the Ptolemaic period (late fourth century BC-30 BC). As we noted in Chapter 2, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BC) and his immediate successors from the third century BC on sought to systematize trade and communications in the region. These activities included the acquisition of war elephants from more southerly regions of the Red Sea, which necessitated construction of a number of ports (Fig. 7.6). The aromatics trade also seems to have grown during these last centuries before our era, as did first-time diplomatic relations with India and continued political dealings with states in the southern Arabian Peninsula, and Africa south of Egypt. Many of the contacts with these lands would have been by sea via the Red Sea ports in Egypt.

Much of this trade from southern Arabia never entailed voyages by sea whatsoever as it passed along age-old terrestrial caravan routes (Fig. 7.7). These lay east of and parallel to the Red Sea coast and stretched from frankincense and myrrh production areas in the southern Arabian peninsula winding their way north. Aromatics transshipped by sea from the Horn of Africa via southern Arabia may also have made the same caravan journeys. Eventually these routes terminated at various points on the Mediterranean Sea, especially near Gaza (Palestine). A number of documents, particularly from the Archive of Zenon, a collection of papyri of Ptolemy II's chief minister Apollonius dating to the middle of the third century BC, deal with this commerce. Later Roman era authors including Strabo, in his Geography, and Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, report caravan journeys of sixty-five to seventy days that carried frankincense and myrrh between southern Arabia and the areas of Aqaba and Petra (in Jordan). The duration of similar treks earlier in pharaonic times is unrecorded, but these may well have been close to those reported by Strabo and Pliny.

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Fig. 7.6: Map showing the important ancient harbors on the Red Sea coast.

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Fig. 7.7: Map showing some terrestrial caravan routes.

Ptolemaic Ports in Egypt

Port construction at the northern end of the Red Sea was widespread from the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus and later. Red Sea emporia founded by Philadelphus or his immediate successors included Arsinoë/Clysma/Cleopatris, called Qolzum in Islamic times, near modern Suez, which was partially excavated by French archaeologists in the 1930s. Off and on between 1978 and 2003 American and British teams excavated at Myos Hormos, which is today called Quseir al-Qadim about eight kilometers north of the center of modern Quseir. Myos Hormos also appears to have been a Ptolemaic foundation though little of that period has so far actually been excavated; most of what has been uncovered there is early Roman and medieval Islamic in date (Figs. 7.8 and Pl. 7.1).

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Fig. 7.8: Remains of Myos Hormos.

Berenike

The southernmost Ptolemaic port in Egyptian territory was Berenike (Pl. 7.2), which is approximately 825 kilometers south of Suez, about three hundred kilometers south of Myos Hormos, and on about the same latitude as Aswan. It was founded sometime before the middle of the third century BC. The site is located south of Ras (Cape) Banas, and near an Egyptian military base. Several travelers since the sixteenth century searched for the ancient port without success. The Portuguese sea captain Dom João de Castro missed finding the remains in April 1541 while patrolling the Red Sea. The French cartographer J.B.B. D’Anville failed to locate the site in the eighteenth century. The honor of finally pinpointing the ancient city fell to the intrepid Italian adventurer G.B. Belzoni in 1818. Thereafter numerous European travelers explored the heavily sanded up remains. In 1826 J.G. Wilkinson drew the first plan of any architectural structures visible above ground (Fig. 7.9). He and later visitors even conducted limited and unscientific ‘clearing’ operations of some of the ancient ruins with the Serapis temple being their main interest. Sustained scientific survey and excavations, however, did not commence until our project initiated them in winter 1994.


GIOVANNI BATTISTA BELZONI

Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823) left his hometown of Padua in 1798 to travel to Rome. There he claims to have studied hydraulics. By about 1800, however, being six feet and seven inches tall, he had become a circus strong-man in an English theater where he was known as the ‘Patagonian Samson’ or ‘The Great Belzoni.’ The highlight of his act was to lift an iron frame with twelve people sitting on it, and then walk across the stage. In 1814 he came to Egypt initially seeking employment at the court of Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha, in his case as a hydraulic engineer. Fortunately for those studying the archaeology of Egypt he failed to interest the Egyptian government in his waterwheel, which would have increased efficiency dramatically. He soon drifted into what we would call today ‘contract’ archaeology. Bankrolled by the British savant and government representative Mr. Henry Salt, Belzoni ventured far and wide both in the Nile valley and in the Eastern Desert to discover new sites and carry off those antiquities he deemed worthy of Salt's attention; those he could not sell to Salt, he sold to others. In the years following his appointment as an antiquities surveyor, he visited many sites including Luxor, Fayyum, Aswan, and he followed close behind Jean Louis Burckhardt (Sheikh Ibrahim) to the great temples at Abu Simbel. He was the first to enter the Pyramid of Khafra, and in the Valley of Kings he discovered six royal tombs, including that of Ramesses I, the founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty, and that of Seti I, one of the finest tombs in the Valley of the Kings. He also ranged throughout the Eastern Desert, visiting the emerald mines in Wadi Sikait soon after their discovery by Cailliaud. It was Belzoni who discovered the ruins of the famous Ptolemaic-Roman Red Sea port of Berenike in 1818 and reported them in his book Narrative of Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia in 1820. He published accounts of his journeys, which go some way to mitigating his often heavy-handed approach to many of the antiquities he found. In 1823, only five years after his discovery of Berenike, he died of dysentery in a small village in what is now Nigeria during an expedition to discover the source of the Niger River.


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Fig. 7.9: J.G. Wilkinson's plan of the central area of ruins at Berenike, drawn in 1826 (Ms. G. Wilkinson XLV. D.11 K.6 (c. 1823–6) MS. Wilkinson dep. a. 15, fol. 52; Gardner Wilkinson papers from Calke Abbey, Bodleian Library, Oxford; courtesy of the National Trust).

Our archaeological excavations over an eight-year period between 1994 and 2001 began to document the history of Berenike and the critical role it played in Ptolemaic and Roman commerce with lands in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Ruins of the metropolis cover an area that stretches about seven hundred meters from north to south by approximately five hundred meters from east to west. The highest point rises about seven meters above sea level and includes the remains of a temple dedicated to Serapis.

According to Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BC) founded Berenike in about 275 BC and named it after his mother. The creation of a port at Berenike was part of a broader project initiated by Philadelphus and his immediate successors to exploit the Eastern Desert and Red Sea coast not only of Egypt, but also of Sudan and other regions of the African littoral.

Our excavations have shown that Berenike was, indeed, founded by the middle of the third century BC, or earlier, thereby confirming the date Pliny indicates for the city's creation. Our excavations demonstrate habitation until sometime before about AD 550 (Fig. 7.10). After that the city was abandoned except for the rare visitor who camped there briefly as attested by the occasional remains of temporary campfires.

Our excavations indicate that Berenike enjoyed three peak periods of activity. The first immediately followed its foundation (in the mid-third to mid-second century BC) when elephants destined for use in the Ptolemaic army were in transit through the city en route from more southerly Red Sea ports to points along the Nile. Depictions of these pachyderms can still be seen along several of the roads radiating from Berenike (Figs. 7.117.12); all we have found at Berenike itself associated with this trade is a single elephant tooth and a ‘V’-shaped ditch (Fig. 7.13) where elephants might have been corralled. We also assume that ivory passed through Berenike along with the elephants and we have found some ivory, though mainly from the Roman period. This peculiar commerce in elephants and their ivory lasted from the third into about the middle of the second century BC after which time there seems to have been a decline in the fortunes of the port.

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Fig. 7.10: Berenike in fifth century AD.

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Fig. 7.11: Elephant graffito from Abraq.

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Fig. 7.12: Elephant graffito from al-Kanaïs.

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Fig. 7.13: V-shaped ditch at Berenike where elephants might have been corralled. Scale = one meter.

The terrifying appearance and huge size, loud trumpeting, and unusual odor of elephants were anathema to horses of enemy cavalry and hugely intimidating to any but the boldest infantry. The impetus to secure the pachyderms in sufficient numbers to compete with those Indian species of their Seleucid adversaries in the Eastern Mediterranean led the Ptolemies to found numerous ports along not only the Red Sea coast of Egypt itself, such as the one at Berenike, but also dotting the littoral south to the Bab al-Mandab and even beyond into the Horn of Africa, what is Somalia today.

The beasts were moved to Egypt by sea in specially designed transport ships called elephantegoi. Ports on Egypt's Red Sea coast, especially the southernmost at Berenike, had to accommodate these large vessels and other ships associated with the aromatics and spice trade as well as Ptolemaic naval units.

Despite the more diminutive size of the African pachyderms, probably the Forest elephant variety, compared to the Indian elephants fielded by their Seleucid opponents in the Near East, all evidence suggests that the elephant gathering expeditions continued until the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator (221–205 BC) or, possibly, as late as Ptolemy VI Philometor (180–145 BC). After investing so heavily in operations to capture elephants we can only surmise why these activities came to a sudden halt. Perhaps by the second century BC the Ptolemies had established a successful elephant-breeding program in Egypt and no longer needed to import the beasts by sea at such great cost and effort. Possibly, too, the Seleucids no longer had access to their sources of Indian pachyderms due to the loss of the eastern portions of their realm to the Parthian state in the late third century BC. If so, the Ptolemies may no longer have felt compelled to continue an elephant-arms race with their Seleucid rivals.

Ivory, deliberately and separately harvested or the by-product of elephant gathering operations that had gone badly, together with gold, also helped finance the Ptolemaic diplomatic and military machine, which was a hugely expensive endeavor. Much of this, too, would have arrived by sea at the Egyptian Red Sea ports for transport across the desert to the Nile. Ivory apparently flooded the market, for an inscription found on the Aegean mercantile island of Delos indicates that its price dropped precipitously during the reign of Ptolemy II.

The bulk of the Ptolemaic remains we have uncovered at Berenike are those of an industrial zone in the western part of the site. Here metals including iron and copper alloy nails, tacks and fittings, lead sheets and bricks were made. The metals would have been used in building activities, furniture making, and ship repair. Lead was commonly used in antiquity to sheath the hulls of merchant ships to protect them from the deleterious effects of boring marine creatures. It could also be used to make brailing rings. When attached to sails, ropes passed through the brailing rings allowed sails to be raised and lowered. Thus far, however, we have recovered no lead brailing rings at Berenike though we have found a large number made of animal horn and wood. The kiln-fired bricks would have been used, of course, in building activities, especially of hydraulic structures.

Marsa Nakari

Other Red Sea ports of likely Ptolemaic foundation include Nechesia, which may be tentatively identified with the ruins recently excavated at Marsa Nakari (Fig. 7.147.15), about nineteen kilometers south of Marsa ‘Alam. Archaeological excavations in 1999, 2001, and 2002 by a team from Northern Arizona University recovered substantial evidence for early and late Roman activity at this small port. However, little of Ptolemaic date, aside from a terra-cotta oil lamp and a gold grinding stone, was found. The diminutive size and presence of a fortification wall around much of the site suggests that it was not a major player in long distance maritime commerce. It may well have served as a safe haven for ships sailing between Berenike, about 150 kilometers to the south, and Myos Hormos, about 150 kilometers to the north, and, likely, other more northerly Red Sea ports as well.

Our archaeological surveys in winter 1997 and summer 2000 identified an ancient road linking Marsa Nakari to Edfu (ancient Apollonopolis Magna) on the Nile. Various stations we found along this highway, for example the one at Bir ‘Iayyan and other mining communities that it served, date from Ptolemaic times and later. This suggests that the route catered to traffic in that period including those journeying between Marsa Nakari and points in the hinterland or on the Nile.

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Fig. 7.14: Remains of the Red Sea site at Marsa Nakari (perhaps the ancient port of Nechesia).

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Fig. 7.15: Artist's reconstruction of the Red Sea port at Marsa Nakari

Other Ptolemaic Red Sea Ports

Although the Ptolemies established about a dozen ports farther south beyond Egypt's frontiers, along what are today the Red Sea coasts of Sudan and Eritrea, and may have even built one somewhere in the Horn of Africa on the Indian Ocean, only the remains of one in the general region of Adobona in Sudan have possibly been identified on the ground. Once investigated, these may prove to be the ancient Ptolemais Theron (Ptolemais of the Hunts), a port referred to by several ancient authors, including Strabo, writing at the turn of the Christian era. A famous Ptolemaic inscription called the Pithom Stele, found in the Egyptian Nile Delta, and associated with Ptolemy II's Nile-Red Sea canal building activities in that area, narrows the date of the foundation of Ptolemais Theron to sometime between 270 and 264 BC. The Pithom Stele indicates that Ptolemais Theron was a major colonizing effort involving farming and animal husbandry, but its main purpose was to support elephant gathering operations for the Ptolemaic government. Elephants were shipped by sea through Ptolemais Theron north to Berenike. Ptolemais Theron seems to have declined dramatically after the Ptolemies lost interest in the elephants, but in the early first century AD the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea reports that the emporium still exported turtle shell and small amounts of ivory. By that time, however, its halcyon days had long since passed.

Philoteras/Aenum

Another Egyptian Red Sea port whose name survives, but which has thus far eluded detection and identification by archaeologists, is Philoteras, also known as Aenum. Philoteras is reported in several ancient texts including those of Strabo, Pliny the Elder, and by Claudius Ptolemy, the mid-second-century AD scholar, in his Geography. One lesser known Roman writer, Pomponius Mela, also records Philoteras in the early first century AD. Named after one of Ptolemy II's sisters, Pliny and Claudius Ptolemy disagree on the relative location of Philoteras vis-à-vis other Red Seaports, but the general consensus among archaeologists today is that it lies somewhere in the vicinity of the modern port of Safaga; its location and identification remain to be determined. That Roman authors from the late first century BC through mid-second century AD refer to the port, however, suggests its operation well into Roman times.

Roman Period

Leukos Limen

In addition to more northerly Egyptian Red Sea ports active in the Roman period such as Arsinoë/Clysma/Cleopatris, which we do not consider here, there was, besides Philoteras, another emporium whose identification and location have eluded archaeologists for many years. Claudius Ptolemy mentions the port of Leukos Limen, known also as Albus Portus in Latin (‘White Harbor’). Ptolemy places this harbor between Myos Hormos and Nechesia. The site remains unlocated today and, indeed, Ptolemy is the only ancient source to mention its existence. Is it possible that he has somehow confused Leuke Kome (somewhere on the eastern side of the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia) with another location, calling it Leukos Limen and mistakenly placing it on the Egyptian Red Sea coast? We cannot be certain.

Leuke Kame

Leuke Kome, although more prominent in Roman times, may have figured in Red Sea commerce earlier as one of the few ports on the Arabian coast of the northern end of the Red Sea that was likely not under Ptolemaic control. At a certain point in its history, the Nabataeans dominated this harbor town. They were a nomadic Arab people first mentioned in Assyrian texts of the mid seventh century BC. Once they settled down, probably by the late fourth century BC initially in southern Jordan, parts of Sinai, and northwestern Saudi Arabia, they became deeply involved in the overland caravan trade between southern Arabia and the Mediterranean described above. Surviving Ptolemaic sources suggest that the Nabataeans were also involved in maritime activities, ranging from trade to piracy. They may well have been privateers or otherwise in the ‘official’ or ‘unofficial’ employ of the Nabataean government. Whatever their status, the Ptolemies viewed Nabataean activities as dangerous to their own interests and took measures to minimize or at least control Nabataean depredations.

It may have been from Leuke Kome that the Nabataeans raided Ptolemaic merchant ships. Although the precise location of Leuke Kome is unknown, archaeological surveys conducted in the late 1970s suggested that the area around Khuraybah/‘Aynunah in northwestern Saudi Arabia near the Straits of Tiran opposite the southern tip of Sinai, is a likely location for the port. One ancient author writes that a frequently used caravan route joined Leuke Kome with Petra, the capital of the Nabataeans.

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea also describes how Leuke Kome catered to smaller Arab vessels, but it was clearly large enough to accommodate a sizeable fleet of about 130 warships sent from Egypt by the Romans in 26–25 BC. Strabo recounts this expedition in some detail as it was commanded by a friend of his and former governor of Egypt, Aelius Gallus. Gallus’ fleet landed about ten thousand Roman and allied Nabataean and Jewish troops from the Kingdom of Herod the Great to attack southern Arabia overland. The stated objective of this expedition was to suborn those wealthy incense-producing lands to Roman control. While the expedition seems to have reached as far as the city of Marib in Yemen today, it was a military failure; the army was forced to withdraw and the Romans never permanently occupied southern Arabia. The Roman emperor Augustus (27 BC-AD 14) reports this campaign in his autobiography (the Res Gestae Divi Augusti), however, which suggests that he viewed the results of the operation in a positive light. Indeed, soon thereafter several south Arabian and Indian states sent embassies to Rome, an indication that the diplomatic consequences of the ‘failed’ military campaign were probably quite favorable to Rome.

By the time of the Periplus, Leuke Kome was clearly important enough that a fort with a centurion (a high ranking enlisted soldier in the Roman army) and a garrison were located there. No doubt part of their function was to ensure that the government official collected a 25 percent tax on goods passing through the emporium. Both the Roman and Nabataean armies used the military term ‘centurion,’ so the presence of a man bearing this rank does not in itself solve the scholarly debate about who controlled Leuke Kome in the first half of the first century AD. The same passage in the Periplus also mentions an overland track connecting Leuke Kome to Petra and to Malichus, King of the Nabataeans, but this does not tell us the ‘nationality’ of the centurion or the garrison either.

Archaeological Remains of Ports

What remains of the ancient Red Sea harbor works? Surprisingly little has come to light that provides much information about the physical appearance of harbors and wharfs at the Red Sea ports. Myos Hormos and Berenike provide what data we do possess.

Myos Hormos

Extensive excavations at Myos Hormos by American and British archaeologists between 1978 and 2003 brought to light substantial remains. Myos Hormos may have been a Ptolemaic foundation, but the vast preponderance of the ancient structures and documents found there is early Roman through the third century AD when the port ceased to operate. These indicate a thriving harbor catering to international trade between the Mediterranean world and the littorals of the southern Red Sea and Indian Ocean (Pl. 7.3). The port lay abandoned for about a millennium until it was revived in the Medieval Islamic era during the Ayubbid and Mamluk dynasties. By the fifteenth century the site was, once again, deserted. Thereafter, activities moved to Quseir, about eight kilometers south of the ruins of Myos Hormos.

British excavations at Myos Hormos uncovered a pier, jerry or artificial extension of the coast comprising many thousands of recycled early Roman amphoras (Fig. 7.16). Unfortunately, this does not give us much information about the overall appearance of the early Roman harbor works at Myos Hormos. It does indicate a rather jerry-rigged and ad hoc approach to harbor construction, which is more or less consistent with the overall appearance of the port, built as it was of coral chunks, sea shells, readily available stones, and mud brick. The emphasis in the construction of most structures at Myos Hormos and Berenike, as we shall see later in this chapter, was on basic, utilitarian architecture. The objective was clearly to keep overhead costs minimal in order to maximize profits.

Berenike

Following the early Ptolemaic period, the next era of prosperity at Berenike was the early Roman (first century AD). This was the zenith of commercial activity at the emporium with abundant evidence for extensive long-distance commerce reaching as far west as Spain and at least as far east as India.

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Fig. 7.16: Artist's reconstruction of a pier, jetty, or artificial extension of the coast in the harbor of Myos Hormos. Mercantile contacts with India, southern Arabia, and other regions of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean were at their peak and many products passed through the port from the East and from the Mediterranean. At that time Berenike was home to a population of great ethnic and social diversity. Peoples from throughout the Roman world, from India and from other Eastern lands resided at Berenike in this era of great economic growth.

Surprisingly, despite the abundance of artifacts of early Roman date that we have recovered, few of early Roman Berenike‘s buildings have thus far been excavated. These include some scattered structures in the center of the city near the Serapis temple, the Serapis temple itself (which our project has not excavated), some trash dumps north of town and a few piers, wharfs, or seawalls (Fig. 7.17) in the eastern part of the port. In 1999 our excavations reached what we believe to be the early Roman courtyard floor of the Serapis temple. Embedded in this surface were two large round-bottomed clay jars made in India (Pl. 7.4). One preserved the remains of its original wooden lid while the other contained, much to our amazement, 7.55 kilograms of black peppercorns (Pl. 7.5). Imported from southern India during the acme of Roman maritime contacts with that area in the first century AD, the peppercorns were, perhaps, temple property and may have been destined for religious rituals. This is the largest cache of peppercorns ever found within the boundaries of the Roman Empire.

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Fig. 7.17: Berenike, early Roman sea wall on the northeastern side of the site. Scale = fifty centimeters.

At Berenike we have located some architectural features that either are or appear to be harbor facilities. One is a large lunate-shaped berm from the concave side of which extend mounds of earth resembling spokes of a wheel. Their location immediately southeast of the Ptolemaic industrial area may suggest a date for construction and use. Found in scattered piles atop the berms were concentrations of vesicular basalt. Not found in naturally occurring geological features anywhere in Egypt, but imported, the vesicular basalt found at Berenike was—we estimate from chemical analysis—from Qana, an ancient port on the Indian Ocean coast of southern Arabia. This basalt was used for a variety of purposes including ballast for ships and as grinding stones for grain. These basalt stones may have been discarded from the holds of ships that had arrived at Berenike. While they remain unexcavated, the location and shape of the berms and the discovery of the basalt here suggests that this part of Berenike may well have been the Ptolemaic, and perhaps also some of the early Roman, harbor facilities (Fig. 7.18).

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Fig. 7.18: Artist's reconstructed view of the Ptolemaic/early Roman harbor at Berenike.

Aside from this putative Ptolemaic, and possibly early Roman, harbor works at Berenike, the only other maritime-related features that we have found are scattered along the eastern edge of the visible ancient remains. At the northeastern end of the site we discovered a sea wall from early Roman times that seems to be associated with a small harbor or inlet. Farther south, beneath the fifth-century church, we found another feature that appeared to be a pier or sea wall, and in yet a third location immediately south of the church we discovered a large early Roman sea wall made of huge limestone boulders. While these structures provide some indication of the location of the ancient shoreline at different periods in the city's history, they reveal no overall picture of the harbor itself.

The third and last era of commercial prosperity at Berenike began about the middle of the fourth century and carried over into the fifth. We have found no recognizable harbor structures from this time. Temples and smaller religious shrines to a variety of Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and Semitic deities, a large church (see Chapter 6), a number of private dwellings which also served as centers of commercial activity (Fig. 7.19), warehouses (Pl. 7.6), small-scale industrial areas, and a late Roman cemetery (see Chapter 8) have, however, been unearthed from this final era of the port's greatness. At that time the cult center where we found the inscriptions mentioning a Palmyrene archer and the god Yarhibol (see Chapter 6) was revived, another shrine to an unknown deity—possibly Isis—was built, and a Christian ecclesiastical center was also constructed. A new residential and commercial quarter was created just east of the Serapis temple and a huge layer of potshards was laid down to extend the late Roman city toward the receding coastline to the east. We found few ancient texts of any kind, but ample evidence of extensive trade with India and Sri Lanka in this period.

The latest ancient written reference to Berenike appears in the sixth century. It is the Sancti Martyrium Arethae, which records in AD

524–525 that Timothy, bishop of Alexandria, under orders from emperor Justin I (AD 518–527), sent ships to assist the Christian kingdom of Axurn (in Ethiopia and Eritrea) in its war with the Himyarites in southern Arabia. Two ships loaded with troops were to depart from Berenike in support of this operation; we do not know, in fact, whether the troops were ever dispatched.

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Fig. 7.19: Weights and scales found in structures in the late Roman commercial/industrial area of Berenike and Shenshef.

Yet, between these peaks in Berenike‘s halcyon days were nadirs. We have, for example, little evidence of activity at the port in the late Ptolemaic period (second-first centuries BC) or in Roman times from the late second or early third to about the middle of the fourth century AD. The port slid into its final decline later in the fifth century and lay completely abandoned except for the occasional passerby before the middle of the sixth century AD.

Causes of Death of the Harbors

At both Myos Hormos and Berenike, the harbor works and associated geological examinations have shown that the ancient residents confronted serious problems of harbor silting. Huge quantities of waterborne sediments washed into the harbors from inland wadis and this siltation process had to be confronted. There was also a rise in sea level of between one and two meters over the last two thousand years or so. The choices facing residents of both Myos Hormos and Berenike were to dredge the harbors, which they may have attempted at Myos Hormos, or move the town and harbor facilities as the harbor silted up and the seashore receded. While migration of the settlement may have taken place at Myos Hormos as a concomitant to dredging, there is no evidence of any dredging attempts at Berenike; there the town simply moved eastward and somewhat southward toward an ever-receding coastline. Despite this, Myos Hormos seems to have been abandoned by the third century while Berenike continued to operate until the sixth. Silting alone may not have doomed these emporia. In the third century, acute political, economic, and military crises throughout much of the Roman world would have adversely impacted the commerce through these ports. In the sixth century, competition from Axumite and Arab middlemen and a severe bubonic plague may also have played a key role in Berenike‘s demise.

Extent and Nature of the Trade

Ptolemaic Era

Ancient authors are clear that the Ptolemaic monarchs had a number of items they deemed to be high priority. Many of these passed through Red Sea emporia south of Egypt's frontiers. Perhaps the strangest were elephants, as already noted, but also ivory. As we pointed out, the Ptolemies considered pachyderms essential to the military campaigns they waged against their Seleucid adversaries in the Near East. Although smaller than the Indian counterparts used by the Seleucids, the Ptolemies clearly believed that they had to possess a source of elephants of their own and they expended a tremendous amount of time, effort, and money to guarantee their own exclusive source as close to Egypt as possible.

Much of the international commerce passing across the Eastern Desert in the Ptolemaic period initially seems to have been state sponsored or tightly controlled by the government. In later Ptolemaic times the initiative passed more to private entrepreneurs. It is very difficult to determine whether it was an important source of revenue to the private sector or directly, or indirectly through taxation to the Ptolemaic government itself. Some merchandise passing through the Ptolemaic domains from the East had tariffs levied on it that varied from twenty to fifty percent. While onerous, the government clearly felt it could do this, which suggests that whatever trade passed this way must have been extremely lucrative. Did these tolls, however, more than offset the high costs the Ptolemaic government incurred in its extensive Red Sea port foundations, Eastern Desert road and station construction and maintenance, and elephant gathering activities? Clearly Ptolemaic endeavors on the Red Sea and in the Eastern Desert were deemed of strategic importance whether they were financially profitable or not. The Ptolemaic navy had a presence to protect their interests and to ensure the safety of the Egyptian-bound merchantmen and elephant transport ships plying the Red Sea.

Roman Era

The annexation of Egypt as a province of the Roman Empire in 30 BC dramatically changed the nature and scope of the international commerce that landed at the Red Sea ports and traversed the Eastern Desert. Red Sea ports founded in the Ptolemaic era were enlarged and reinvigorated by the Romans whose trade in and via the Red Sea with more distant lands in the Indian Ocean dwarfed in size that of their Ptolemaic predecessors. In addition to a larger volume, a greater variety of goods also now passed along the trade routes leading to and from the Egyptian Red Sea ports during Roman times.

The lands in contact with these emporia in the Roman period were among the same as had piqued Ptolemaic interests, but included some that the Ptolemies seem not to have known. Unlike Ptolemaic times when Egyptian contacts with India appear to have been very limited and quite sporadic, during the Roman period, especially in the first century AD and later, there was extensive interaction between the Egyptian Red Sea ports of Myos Hormos and Berenike on the one hand and India on the other. Clearly, based upon the types of pottery found and the quantities of black peppercorns recovered in excavations at Myos Hormos and Berenike, favored ports in India were those of the south, along the Kerala (southwestern) and Coromandel (southeastern) coasts. There is a little evidence in the form of woven matting (used perhaps as awnings or sails), some semiprecious stones and beads, banded agate cameo blanks, and a single coin found in our excavations that Berenike, at least, was also in direct or indirect contact with some of the more northerly ports on India's west coast.

The Periplus and ostraca from our excavations indicate that wines were exported to various areas of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean via Berenike from the Mediterranean; we discuss these later in this chapter. Our archaeological record at Berenike confirms many ancient written sources that list items imported and exported via Berenike such as black pepper from southern India, but has failed to confirm others, such as frankincense and myrrh from southern Arabia or the Horn of Africa—though we have found peripheral evidence of the passage and use of these aromatics at Berenike. There is also no indication of the transport of exotic animals through Berenike in the Roman era.

Pliny tells us how Romans coveted pearls from India. He even reports that the emperor Caligula's (AD 37–41) spouse Caesonia owned a garment decorated with forty million sesterces (ten million denarii) worth of pearls! Aside from a few small samples, including some surviving on a gold earring, however, we have found no pearls in our excavations. Pliny, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, and an Indian compilation entitled the Kauṭilîya Arthaś-âstra, note the fascination that Indians had for red coral imported from the Mediterranean. Yet we have not found any in our excavations, although we have unearthed quantities of the poorer quality Red Sea variety.

Contacts between Egypt and Sri Lanka are also evident especially in late Roman times, from the fourth and fifth centuries particularly, in the form of large numbers of beads. We have found thousands of these beads at Berenike, at Marsa Nakari, and in our excavations at the emerald mining center at Sikait. These tiny monochrome glass beads appear in a number of colors, especially yellow, green, turquoise-blue, and orange-red. They have close affinities with ones made in Sri Lanka/Ceylon, known to the Romans as Taprobane or Serendip, and excavated at the site of Mantai at the northern end of that island. The occasional finds of sapphires both at Berenike and at Shenshef, an outlying desert site with close ties to Berenike and discussed further in Chapter 15, also indicate contact either with India or Sri Lanka.

There were certain restrictions on this vibrant trade. For example, in the later second century AD a Roman law specifically forbade the export of iron. This prohibition may have been due to the fear that enemies of Rome might make use of the metal for military purposes. Of course, iron had been known to much of Eastern Hemisphere for some time and, consequently, such a restriction would have had little or no effect.

Extended accounts in numerous ancient authors, surviving papyri, ostraca, and inscriptions from the Roman world as well as references in ancient, but imprecisely dated, Tamil Sangam (south Indian) poems detail many aspects of this lively commerce and how much more extensive it was in the Roman period than in Ptolemaic times. In a famous passage, written in the last decades of the first century BC following the Roman annexation of Egypt, Strabo recounts how in his day as many as 120 ships per annum sailed from Egyptian ports into the Indian Ocean for trade whereas earlier (in Ptolemaic times) barely twenty did so. We do not know where Strabo obtained these statistics, but the archaeological record suggests that the zenith of this commerce was several decades after Strabo wrote, during the period from the 40s to the 70s AD and later into the early second century.

Pliny the Elder recounts an interesting tale the truth of which can, of course, never be proven. Pliny relates the story of Lysas, the freed slave of a wealthy Roman citizen, who was shipwrecked on Ceylon/Sri Lanka. Lysas learned the Sinhalese language and impressed the local ruler with the high quality of a Roman silver coin he possessed. This, we are told, so enthused the local potentate that he is said to have desired trade relations with the Romans.

The Tamil poems recount how the Yavanas (westerners, including Romans) brought gold to India and sought sacks of pepper. These poems also report that Tamil rulers imported palace guards and maidens from the Yavanas, and were especially fond of wines from the Mediterranean and Aegean. Interestingly, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea notes that the south Arabian and Indian rulers especially liked wines from Laodicea (in Syria) and the Aminaean variety (a very expensive brand originally from Italy) and in our excavations at Berenike the ostraca we found from the city's customs house archives, dating from the same period as the composition of the Periplus, also record the export of Laodicean and Aminaean wines. Ostraca we have uncovered at Berenike also list other types of wines exported to the east. These included vintages from the Aegean islands of Rhodes and Euboea, and from Ephesus and Kolophon on the west coast of Asia Minor. In some cases Mediterranean wines with a high salt content dominated the export market; though these were not the best varieties, the salt helped to preserve them on their long voyages to the East.

Many years ago a hoard of ostraca was found recording the trading activities of the Nikanor family from the Nile city of Coptos. Spanning the period from the late first century BC into the 60s AD, these documents reflect this Egyptian family's interest over several generations, especially in trade between the Nile emporium of Coptos and the two largest Egyptian Red Sea ports at the time, Myos Hormos and Berenike. In fact, a few of the ostraca that we have excavated in the trash dumps at Berenike preserve some of the same Nikanor family names as appear on the earlier-discovered documents. The Nikanor ostraca reflect mainly mundane cargoes for consumption by residents of Myos Hormos, Berenike and by ships’ crews rather than expensive items destined for export to southern Arabia, India, or other locales.

While ancient authors, ostraca, and to a lesser extent papyri, record many of the items involved in this booming international commerce in early Roman times, they fail to list all of them. Few of these ancient authorities whose writings survive, aside from the anonymous author of the Periplus, would have had an intimate firsthand knowledge of this trade as they themselves did not engage in it. Thus, they can be forgiven for discussing only the items that were ‘high profile’ and costly such as incense and aromatics, pepper, and other spices, textiles (Pl. 7.7), precious and semiprecious gem stones, pearls, ivory, turtle shell, exotic unguents, and woods; they paid little or no attention to what they deemed more prosaic merchandise. Their readers would be fascinated about these ‘exotic’ imports, but not in more quotidian items.

Imports we have found in our excavations at Berenike include some that are nowhere recorded by any ancient texts. We must ask ourselves, then, were these items, unreported by the ancient authors, really imports destined for profitable resale, or did they have other significance? Rice, sorghum, job's tear (a grass seed), bamboo, coconut, and teakwood, among other commodities, all seem to be nowhere reported as imports to the Roman world from the Indian Ocean basin, yet all appear at Berenike. As noted above, we have also recovered thousands of beads, many of which were made in India and Sri Lanka, plus a very few from Vietnam or possibly Thailand and one even from Jatim in Eastern Java (Pl. 7.8). The presence of these beads does not necessarily indicate direct commercial contact with Berenike; small items such as beads and coins could easily be transported by second or third parties and lost while visiting the port. Also found in our excavations at Berenike, but unreported by ancient authors, are banded agate cameo blanks used to make the beautiful Roman cameos. The latter clearly came from India as our excavations at the Indo-Roman trading station at Arikamedu on the Coromandel (southeastern) coast of India between 1989 and 1992 found many of these, probably intended for export to the west. Such cameo blanks likely originated from sources in northwestern India as excavations from Kamrej (ancient Kammoni), near the important port of Barygaza, suggest. Perhaps the profits to be made from some of these unreported items were paltry and unworthy of the attentions of Roman writers or they were items brought by ships’ crews, traveling friends, or relatives of those residing at Berenike for their own personal use and were not meant to be sold at all. These objects probably never appeared on any ship's manifest as they were not intended for formal sale; perhaps some were smuggled in to avoid the high tariffs. We will probably never know.

Quantities of Indian-made pottery, including large storage and shipment containers, fine table ceramics, and coarse cooking wares also appeared in our excavations at Berenike; some of these same types of Indian ceramics have also been excavated at Myos Hormos. Unrecorded in any surviving ancient written sources, these items were either for the personal use of residents of Myos Hormos and Berenike or were employed to ship commodities; it was, after all, the contents of the containers that customers valued and not the containers themselves.

We have found teak, quantitatively the dominant wood recovered in our excavations at Berenike and, very surprisingly, even more abundant than indigenous species such as acacia, mangrove, and tamarisk. Teak derives from South Asia and those samples recovered from our Berenike excavations survive mainly in the form of sizeable wooden beams, in one instance over three meters long. These beams were mostly recycled as architectural supports for walls in the buildings of the late Roman city. From the intricate dowel holes cut in these timbers and the presence of iron nails in some beams, it is clear that their original use was not as wall supports. As a hard wood, teak would have been ideal for use in shipbuilding and repair; we know from written sources that this was one of its uses. Perhaps the teakwood beams we have found in the walls of structures at Berenike were originally parts of ships, which had been dismantled or repaired upon arrival in port after a long and arduous sea voyage from the subcontinent. In a wood-poor environment like the Eastern Desert, such beams would have been too valuable to be discarded as trash or to be burned as fuel. That would have been very wasteful and these timbers would, instead, have been recycled.

Also in the late Roman period there were continued commercial contacts between Egypt's Red Sea ports, and other emporia at the northern end of the Red Sea, and an apparent increase in trade with the African kingdom of Axum, located in Ethiopia and Eritrea today. Axum's major port on the Red Sea was at Adulis. Italian archaeologists early in the twentieth century, and more recently a British team, have worked at late Roman era Adulis; the Italians conducted limited excavations there. The British team only recently discovered the location of the earlier port reported in the Periplus; the presence of land mines in the area, however, prevents any work there in the near future. Axumite pottery and a coin found in our work at Berenike (Fig. 7.20) and pre-Axumite and Axumite pottery found in excavations at the Red Sea ports of Myos Hormos and Aila (modern Aqaba) in Jordan attest this commerce. Even in the early Roman period the Periplus notes that Adulis exported ivory, but the zenith of Adulis and of the Kingdom of Axum was from the late third to fourth century AD and later when it, together with some of its south Arabian rival kingdoms across the Red Sea, competed with and even surpassed the Egyptian Red Sea ports as major trade centers. The accounts of the sixth-century Christian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, which survive in his book entitled Christian Topography, clearly demonstrate the prominence of Adulis at that time.

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Fig. 7.20: Axumite coin of the last pre-Christian king Aphilas (AD 270/290-before 330).

Recent study of pottery shards from both early and late Roman times excavated at Berenike, Myos Hormos, and Alia indicates the presence of ceramics from southern Arabia thereby confirming what many ancient authors say was a robust trade between that region and the northern Red Sea ports. Certainly Russian and French excavations at the southern Arabian port of Qana in Yemen, and American and Italian excavations at the Omani port of Khor Rori (ancient Sumhuram, perhaps equated with the site of Moscha Limen mentioned in the Periplus) have recovered extensive evidence of trade with the Roman ports on the Red Sea coast of Egypt as well as with India, Axum and elsewhere (Fig. 7.21). The excavation at Berenike, Myos Hormos, and Alia of pottery shards made in southern Arabia also be speaks the important incense and aromatics commerce from that region that passed through the northern Red Sea ports. A study of this pottery made in southern Arabia and appearing in the excavations of northern Red Sea ports in the Roman period has just begun in earnest so we have much yet to learn about this trade and what goods other than frankincense and myrrh may have been exported from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean world.

We have found none of the fabled frankincense and myrrh at Berenike, but we have recovered tantalizing circumstantial evidence of its passage through or use at the port. Our botanical specialist identified very hard, small, brilliantly hued black and red seeds from our excavations, which are called Abrus precatorius L. Highly poisonous if consumed, this particular species of seed was used until quite recently in India as a gold weight in jewelry stores and is also mixed with frankincense and myrrh. Perhaps it had such a function in antiquity and, once the valuable aromatics had been burned, the only trace of their existence was these toxic seeds that had originally been mixed with them. The find of incense altars with burned residues preserved on their tops at Berenike and at a number of other sites in Egypt may also provide indirect evidence of the presence and use of these or similar aromatics.

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Fig. 7.21: Map with locations mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.

Of less importance to the Red Sea ports at any time of their history was contact with the Persian Gulf. Most of the commerce from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean passed via camel caravans that plodded across the wastes of the Arabian Peninsula or followed the Euphrates before crossing over to the Levantine coast at several points. One of the most important, but by no means only, routes between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean was via the Syrian Desert oasis kingdom of Palmyra. It was clearly deemed safer, more cost effective and, in some instances, perhaps faster to use various desert caravan routes than to transport goods by sea from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea ports. We have found a few potshards at Berenike that seem to have been from vessels made in the Persian Gulf, but there was no regular contact with that area and the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea somewhat corroborates this; it does not suggest that much if any trade passed between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, at least in early Roman times. The Persian Gulf's major trading partners would have been the west coast of India, other points in the Indian Ocean and with the Mediterranean via the overland trade routes just noted. We have recovered nothing identifiable from China or central Asia at Berenike though such artifacts have been excavated elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially Chinese silk found in tombs in Palmyra, Syria dating to the early centuries AD.

Other items from throughout the Mediterranean basin passed through Berenike from as far west as Spain and Gaul, from Italy and North Africa and, especially in late Roman times, from the eastern Mediterranean. The bulk of the pottery shards we have recovered at Berenike were Egyptian-made, mainly at different centers in the Nile Valley. Certainly much of our knowledge of other regions of the Roman world, which were in contact with Berenike, derives from examination of the pottery, especially the ubiquitous amphoras (Pl. 7.9). A study of the fired clays from which these vessels were made and their shapes provide information on when and where they were manufactured. These terra-cotta storage and shipment containers of varying sizes and shapes held a wide array of liquids including olive oil, fish sauce, and wine as well as other commodities. By quantifying the large number of amphora shards recovered from Berenike, we can form a picture of commercial trading patterns over centuries of the port's existence with other areas of the ancient world.

Study of fine tablewares, the equivalent of today's quality dinner china, also indicates regions in touch with Berenike and, likely, where people came from who used this dinnerware at the port. Most interesting are the so-called terra sigillata wares, which are fine highly glossed orangish-red bowls, cups and plates made in Italy, and elsewhere in the western and eastern Mediterranean (Pl. 7.10). These were popular just before the turn of the Christian era and throughout the first and, less so, into the second centuries AD. Many of these terra sigillata wares have the names of the makers stamped on the bottom inside faces of the vessels. At about the same time the Mediterranean-made terra sigillata appeared at Berenike, another type of fine dinnerware from India was also in use. Made in the shape of large flat plates with rims, and bowls, these wares were invariably black glossed, sometimes with reddish colored rims. The inside bottoms of the plates had a type of rouletted decoration while many of the bowls had impressed designs on their interiors. Well-to-do Indian entrepreneurs resident at Berenike may have used this ‘china.’

Costs of the Trade in Roman Times

We indicated earlier that Ptolemaic authorities levied a twenty to fifty percent tax or toll on many items imported from the East. From the Roman period we have several ancient documents that indicate Roman customs rates. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea reports that a twenty-five percent tax (called a tetarte) was levied on the value of the cargo by a government official at Leuke Kome. A papyrus dating to the middle of the second century AD, purchased in Egypt in about 1980, and now housed in a museum in Vienna, Austria, has been extensively studied by those interested in this international commerce in Roman times. This document confirms the levy of a 25 percent tax on merchandise landing somewhere on the Red Sea coast of Egypt that came from Muziris, a port on the southwestern coast of India. The tetarte mentioned in the Vienna papyrus was to be collected at Alexandria. The text on the papyrus continues by noting the transport of merchandise by camel across the desert to Coptos and thence down river to Alexandria. Therefore, it stands to reason that the cargo had to be carefully watched between the time of its disembarkation at a Red Sea port and its arrival at Alexandria; both the merchants and the government, through its tax collectors, stood to lose immense profits if any of the cargo were to go astray.

This amazing papyrus document then lists the nature of the cargo, its quantity and its value. The contents include nard (an aromatic root used for perfume, medicine, and in cuisine) from the Ganges, ivory, and bales of cloth. Paying this customs duty was, of course, only part of the expense that merchants had to absorb. To transport the commodities across the desert to the Nile required renting camels and donkeys. Since the Roman state had a virtual monopoly on the requisition of these animals it is likely that the government as well as the animals’ owners made a tidy profit at this point in the shipment process as well. It seems that desert convoys transporting valuable imports like the ones mentioned in the Vienna papyrus were distinct from those hauling more prosaic items such as were conveyed by the Nikanor family business. These high status caravans rated protection from troops stationed in praesidia dotting the roads between the Red Sea ports and the Nile. In fact, ostraca from recent French excavations at some of the desert garrisons on the highway between Myos Hormos and Coptos report the use of escort troops to guard such caravans.

One wonders where in the Nile Valley those operating the caravans obtained the myriads of donkeys and camels required to haul merchandise both directions across the Eastern Desert. Such beasts of burden were also needed by the large quarrying operations we recounted in Chapter 4 and would also have been critical to carrying grain from the fields to collection points on the Nile just before the seasonal flood. Thus, at certain times of year there would have been huge demands placed on the animal transport system in Egypt; this would have caused a scarcity in animal availability and would have resulted in a sharp rise in rental prices for those used in caravans between the Red Sea ports and the Nile.

There were other fees to pay including those of commercial agents, and salaries for the ships’ captains and crews. How did the merchants pay the maritime shippers, ship owners, the ships’ crews? What were the going rates? We cannot be sure; perhaps the rates were not fixed, but negotiated for each voyage depending upon the cargoes and the destinations. It may be that the salaries were calculated as a percentage of the value of the cargo or bonuses were offered; this would have increased the crews’ incentives to make every effort to arrive back in Egypt in a timely manner with cargoes intact. While we have figures and percentages for these activities along the Nile, we can be certain that the amounts were substantially higher when dealing with the exceptionally long and dangerous voyages in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to transport these commodities.

As if all these expenses were not enough, one also had to pay tolls to cross the desert, as we know from the contents of the so-called Coptos Tariff, an inscription carved on stone in Greek and dated May, AD 90. This document itemizes tolls levied on people, wagons, animals, and various goods so that they could cross between the Nile and the Red Sea ports. Not all human travelers paid the same amounts. A guard, a sailor, or a shipbuilder's servant, for example, had to pay five drachmas each to travel along the desert roads. Ability to pay, or at least the perception that this was the case, increased the toll rates. An artisan had to pay eight drachmas, a woman arriving by ship or a woman of a soldier paid twenty drachmas; a prostitute had to pay 108 drachmas! In some cases lower toll rates of one obol (1/6 of a drachma) on a ticket for a camel may indicate a rather high volume of traffic. An ass was assessed two obols, a covered wagon paid four obols, and a ship's mast was charged twenty drachmas. Even the dead had to pay: a funeral procession was levied the relatively modest sum of one drachma and four obols.

Yet, in calculating the value of the merchandise listed on the Vienna papyrus, and this was likely only a fraction of the ship's total cargo, the staggering sum of 1, 154 talents, or 6,924,000 drachmas (a month's pay for a Roman soldier at this time was about one hundred drachmas) makes it clear that merchants could reap immense profits even after deducting the tariffs, transport costs, salaries, and other expenses. Multiply this amount by Strabo's figure of 120 ships a year trading in his day, and undoubtedly more during the zenith of this mercantile activity later in the first and early second centuries, and we have a very rough idea of the value of this commerce both to the private entrepreneurs and to the government's coffers.

One of the major issues that has engendered much debate among those studying this commerce is how merchandise was paid for and how were the huge sums noted above in the case of the items reported in the Vienna papyrus acquired? Much has been written about this and the debate comes down to several issues, one of which is whether this was mainly a monetary buy-sell type of commerce or one based heavily on barter. Clearly, as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea suggests, both methods were used, at least in early Roman times. In either case large sums were involved. Lending banks in our sense of the word for large commercial ventures barely existed. Most capital for these expensive, but potentially lucrative, journeys was raised from private sources. Financiers, perhaps mainly merchants themselves, formed ad hoc associations to underwrite specific trade ventures. Following a successful voyage the group would often break up and new associations would be formed to undertake other business opportunities. These would include providing bottomry loans to the ship owners and captains, and funds to buy the products in foreign ports or purchase items in the Roman world to be used as barter or for sale overseas.

Clearly, it must have been only the most daring individuals who engaged in this trade. The price of failure in the form of pirate attacks or shipwreck meant loss of everything—including one's life. Not only were initial outlays of capital necessarily very high, but the risks of shipwreck, piracy, and problems at the various ports of call while dealing with merchants and officials there made every voyage an adventure. This was not an activity for the faint of heart.

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea

While we have repeatedly mentioned a manuscript entitled The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (the Periplus) here and in previous chapters, it is worth raising the question whether this was a unique document in its day or whether it was merely one of many similar types of guides and handbooks available to merchants and sea captains. Could the Periplus simply have been compiled by one individual based upon his personal experiences and those of others he may have known and questioned about their own activities in the same regions? The Periplus was written by a keen observer in the common (koine) Greek spoken at that time in Egypt and the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, the author remains anonymous to us. As we noted in Chapter 2, he must have been a ship captain, navigator, or merchant who made numerous voyages from several of the Egyptian Red Sea ports into the southerly reaches of the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean. This amazing guidebook discusses the political situations at various ports of call, the items available and in demand at those ports, and the navigational difficulties of sailing to and from the various emporia. It also lists the optimal times of year to leave from the Red Sea ports when sailing to India and to coastal sub-Saharan Africa. On the other hand, the Periplus has little to say about the Persian Gulf. Clearly, as noted above, it was not an important destination for ships plying the Red Sea-India-Africa route.

Individuals Involved in the Commerce

While no individual names of entrepreneurs, sailors, or others involved in this commerce, aside from a few monarchs, are mentioned in the Periplus, other documents do preserve some of this information along with ethnic origins and social standings. In addition to the previously mentioned Nikanor Ostraca we also have those ostraca, papyri, and a few inscriptions carved in stone found at Myos Hormos and Berenike. Those from our excavations at Berenike list the names of men of Egyptian, Greek, and Latin origin as well as a few Semitic ones. The men are mainly military: soldiers, lancers, officials in charge of markets, and so on. One of these individuals was Andouros who was a quintanensis (a market official). Another was a soldier possibly attached to the freed imperial slave Tiberius Claudius Dorion; there are also merchants, customs officials, and camel drivers. Frustratingly few of the ostraca detail the actual titles or functions of these individuals, no doubt because their official status was well known to all concerned parties.

Several archives have been found including those of Sosibios, Rhobaos, Andouros, Gaius Julius Epaphroditus, Sarapion, and Claudius Philetos. Men like Satornilos, the official or merchant Germanos, the centurion Julius Marinus, the cavalryman Nonnius Abaskantos, and others also appear on the ostraca from our early Roman trash deposit found north of the city. All are related in one way or another to goods passing through the customs port at Berenike and, therefore, have a connection to the passage of merchandise onto the ships.

The international and cosmopolitan nature of Berenike is evident not only from the many imported items we have examined, but also from the different ethnic groups residing at the port. So far excavations at Berenike have recovered evidence of eleven different ancient languages preserved as written texts. Most of these come from the early Roman period, some from the late Ptolemaic and late Roman. These include hieroglyphs decorating the walls of the Serapis temple, Greek on coins, ostraca, papyri, and stone, Latin on coins, ostraca, papyri, and stone, Demotic on ostraca, Palmyrene on stone and possibly on some ostraca, Hebrew as graffiti on potshards, Aramaic also on ostraca, Coptic on a terra-cotta oil lamp, Tamil-Brahmi (a south Indian language) carved on the neck of a Roman amphora (Pl. 7.11), a combination of Prakrit and Sanskrit on a fourth century AD silver coin from India (Fig. 7.22) and one unknown text either of North or South Arabian or, Ethiopic origin painted on a shard dating about AD 400. Most documents we have excavated are written in Greek, the lingua franca of both Ptolemaic Egypt and the eastern portions of the Roman Empire. These documents, together with the excavation of a plethora of finds clearly imported through Berenike or destined for export from the city, attest a robust mercantile life of truly international stature.

The bulk, though not all, of the written documents we have excavated from Berenike, which includes several hundred ostraca, papyri, and inscriptions on stone, come from the early Roman era and provide a bonanza of information on the personal names and activities of soldiers and civilians involved in the trade. In fact, we have recovered a large number of ostraca from the early Roman rubbish dumps north of the city (Pls. 7.127.13). Most of these are public records that reveal customs house documents and official passes allowing people and goods to proceed onboard waiting ships. Some objects appear to be merchandise while other goods seem to be for use by the crews. The dozens of papyri we have unearthed from the same trash deposits tend to be more private in nature and record items such as a bill of sale for a white male donkey and a packsaddle for 160 drachmas concluded on July 26, AD 60, during the reign of Nero (AD 54–68) (Pl. 7.14). Other papyri include a land register, an inventory of equipment, and private letters. The inventory seems to be for nautical equipment while one of the private letters is from Hikane to her son Isidorus. In it Hikane complains that she has not received a letter from him in some time. These documents from the early Roman trash deposit date mainly in the period of the 40s to the 70s AD, though some appear from the reigns of Augustus (27 BC-AD 14) and Tiberius (AD 14–37).

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Fig. 7.22: Indian silver coin of Rudrasena III (minted AD 362) found in the church at Berenike.

The names of several soldiers from Palmyra appear on elaborate and costly dedications they made at Berenike in the late second to early third centuries AD. Found inside a small religious area dedicated to a number of cults including the worship of the Roman emperor, veneration of the Palmyrene deity Yarhibol/Hierobol, and that of the Egyptian deity Harpocrates, some of these dedications were beyond the abilities of those offering them to afford on modest army salaries. We discussed this in some detail in Chapter 6. These fancy inscriptions and accompanying bronze statues suggest that some of these troops also had a hand in and, legally or otherwise, made a profit from some aspect of the lucrative commerce passing through Berenike.

Other individuals residing at Berenike remain anonymous to us, their presence, status, and ethnicity known only as the result of the survival of some of their belongings: a gold and pearl earring, remains of escargot as a culinary delicacy imported from the Mediterranean, marble slabs originating from the Sea of Marmora in Turkey for use as wall or floor decoration in their homes, elaborately woven floor carpets, furniture covers or wall hangings, fancy beads, and ring bevels carved with incised decoration made of semiprecious stones. These items and the discovery of beloved pets buried with their collars tell us of the elite positions held by some residents of the city, but not, unfortunately, their ethnicities. The remains of late Roman tombs from a high status cemetery at the northwestern edge of town, however, suggest a desert origin for some of its occupants.

Written Evidence from the Desert Roads

In addition to these ostraca, papyri, and inscriptions we have another fascinating source for the personal names of some of these intrepid travelers. Along the roads crisscrossing the Eastern Desert between the Nile and the various Red Sea ports travelers rested, frequently in the same places because of the safety, shade, or water available to them. Often these locales were not officially sanctioned forts or wells, but might be conveniently located natural rock outcrops or small caves or grottos that offered protection from the scorching sun and frequently howling winds and blowing sand. Here, while spending time waiting for the cooler hours of the day in which to travel, many individuals scratched their names and some provided fairly detailed accounts of their reasons for being in the desert.

One small natural grotto near Menih al-Heir, on the northern half of the route linking Berenike to Coptos, contains dozens of such messages in a variety of languages (Fig. 7.23). One man named Gaius Numidius Eros left graffiti here on two different visits, one of which dated to sometime between late February and late March AD 2. He specifically says that he was returning from India. Another man named Lysas states in bilingual graffiti in Latin and Greek that he was the freed slave of the Roman Popilius Annius Plocamus and dates his visit to the grotto to July 5, 6 BC. The Annii Plocami were a well known mercantile family from Puteoli, a major Roman port on the northern side of the Bay of Naples in Italy. The Lysas who left his graffiti in this grotto may be the same man (or a close relative) who Pliny the Elder recounts as arriving in Sri Lanka after having been blown off course by the monsoon winds and who impressed the local monarch with the high quality of Roman coinage that we noted above. Euphemos, freed slave of the Roman Lucius Attius Felix visited the same grotto on April 29, AD 44, while Primus, freed slave of the Roman centurion Sextus Mevus Celer of the XXII legion, also left his mark sometime between 4 BC and AD 6. The status of many of the travelers seems to be that of a freed slave. We know that freedmen, as the Romans called freed slaves, often undertook commercial dealings for their former masters and these desert graffiti corroborate that this was also the case with the lucrative Red Sea-Indian Ocean commerce.

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Fig. 7.23: Graffiti in a variety of languages from the small natural grotto near Menih al-Heir, on the northern half of the route linking Berenike to Coptos.

We have few if any personal names preserved from Berenike‘s latest period of existence. We do have, however, some indication that different ethnic groups continued to live side by side in the late Roman port. We recovered residues of camel, goat, and sheep remains concentrated in certain parts of late Roman Berenike from the middle of the fourth century AD on. These together with analysis of weaving patterns of textiles and matting and the find of an unusual handmade and burnished pottery called Eastern Desert Ware (Pl. 7.15), all of which were associated with the faunal remains, suggest that a group originating from the desert was living in Berenike at that time. Other areas of the community contemporary with these finds have produced remains overwhelmingly of marine life: fish bones and shells. These hint that part of Berenike‘s late Roman population was oriented more toward the sea. Together, the faunal record suggests that several disparate groups resided at Berenike at that late period in the life of the city and that these peoples may well have lived in separate quarters.

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Fig. 7.24: Indian, Arab, and Roman trade ships (with ship graffito).


SHIPS

What did the ships hauling these fabulously valuable cargoes look like (Fig. 7.24)? What evidence do we have of their sizes, the materials and methods of their construction, and the sizes of their crews? The scant remains of several Roman-era shipwrecks have been found in the Red Sea, three in Egyptian waters, and one off the coast of Eritrea, but the former three have never been excavated and the latter only partially so. Therefore, they provide no useful evidence for the sizes, appearances or materials from which ancient merchantmen were made. The Periplus suggests that merchant ships plying the Egypt-India and Egypt-Africa routes were quite large and well built. They would have to be to withstand the rigors of sailing in those regions and to convey sizeable cargoes to maximize profits on each journey. Of course, ships sailing more locally or regionally need not have been that large.

We also have the representation of a ship in the form of a graffito. One striking example scratched on a broken piece of pottery excavated at Berenike and dating about AD 50–60/70 shows a sailing ship at anchor with sails furled (Fig. 7.24). One of the early Roman ostraca from a trash dump excavated at Berenike actually preserves the name of one of the ships that came into harbor there, the Gymnasiarchis. At both Berenike and Myos Hormos excavators have found wooden and horn brailing rings which were tied to Indian-made cotton sails to facilitate raising and lowering them on the masts and nets, perhaps used to lift cargoes onto and off of the ships. Also unearthed were wooden pulleys, ropes, and lead hull sheathing noted earlier in the chapter. Teak timbers, possibly from dismantled ships and recycled into walls of late Roman buildings at Berenike were described above. Matting found in the early Roman trash dumps at Berenike was woven in a north Indian style; this may have been used aboard the large ocean-going merchantmen as awnings or sails.