ABSTRACT

Roman maritime trade with the Indian Ocean began at Alexandria, which served as the Mediterranean’s main distribution point for goods coming by sea from Asia and Africa. From Alexandria merchandise was sent up the Nile in riverboats to the port of Koptos located on a bend where the river came closest to the Red Sea. There, goods were offloaded onto camels for the trip across the desert. Roads were usually little more than tracks, but the most important were paved. Strabo notes the great improvement in crossing this leg of the trip: “In earlier times the camel-merchants traveled only by night, looking to the stars for guidance, and, like the mariners, also carried water with them when they traveled; but now they have constructed wateringplaces, having dug down to a great depth, and, although rain-water is scarce, still they have made cisterns for it.” On the Red Sea coast were a number of ports, the most important being at

Myos Hormos (“Mussel Harbor”) and Berenice Troglodytica. Berenice had no harbor but was located on an isthmus that provided a number of convenient landing places. Myos Hormos, located farther north, was home to a naval station. In navigating the Red Sea, sailors attempted to shoot straight down the middle. The African coast was mostly barren, the land of the Ichthyophagi (“Fish-Eaters”), self-sufficient communities strung along the shore. According to Agatharchides, some of them lived in huts made from seaweed packed over the rib bones of washed up whales. The Chelonophagi (“Turtle-Eaters”), who inhabited islands south of the Bab el-Mandeb, lived in even stranger dwellings, “under cover of turtle-shells, which are so large that they are used as boats.” The only place that received much traffic before reaching the Bab el-

Mandeb was Adulis (Massawa), once a trading post for Arab merchants, later an elephant hunting station for the Ptolemies. The Periplus Maris Erythraei calls it “a fair sized village,” but it became an important port-of-call as the window on the sea for the inland kingdom of Axum (Ethiopia), high on the Abyssinian plateau, which reached its height of power between the fourth and seventh centuries CE. The kings of Axum took advantage of the country’s strategic position between the African interior and the Red Sea to develop a

profitable trade. Eventually they opened an overland road to the Nile Valley connecting to Egypt after defeating a number of people and imposing on them the obligation to protect traveling merchants. When a people called the Sarane destroyed a merchant caravan, the greatest of Axumite kings, Ezana, killed or enslaved the whole tribe and three related tribes to set an example. At the time of the Periplus, the Axumites were eager for trade, but their

economy was still underdeveloped. Their relationship with both the Mediterranean and India was one of providing exotic raw materials and importing manufactured goods, chief among which were textiles, principally Egyptian linens and Indian cottons, ranging from what the Periplus describes as “cloaks of poor quality dyed in colors” to girdles. From the Mediterranean came glass; copper and brass products including utensils, tools, and jewelry; and gold and silver plate for the king. Iron imported from both the Mediterranean and India was made into spears to hunt elephants. Only three exports were in demand: ivory, rhinoceros horn, and tortoise shell. As herds providing the first two were systematically hunted into extinction, the hunting grounds were steadily expanded inland. During the period of the Late Roman Empire, Axum became a principal provider of gold. This was said to come from a place called Sasu, which was reportedly near the source of the Nile. To bargain with the gold miners, the Axumite king sent royal agents who were accompanied by a caravan of private traders numbering about 500. They traded oxen, salt, and iron for nuggets over a period of five days. The round trip took about six months, and the caravan had to be well armed or tribes along the way would plunder it. If there was little to attract merchant ships to the African coast, there was

much to repel them from the central stretches of the Arabian coast, which the Periplus describes as “fearsome in every respect.” In addition to rocky shores and poor anchorage, it was plagued by pirates and wreckers. However, the southwestern corner of the Arabian peninsula (Yemen) was the key to the whole trade system of the western arc of the Indian Ocean. Agatharchides reports that gold was mined there in such quantities that it was traded for only twice its weight in iron. More valuable were the forests of aromatic trees made luxuriant by extensive irrigation systems. But most important was its strategic position as the linchpin between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. During the first millennium BCE the most powerful state in this area was Saba until its collapse in 115 BCE when it was replaced by the Himyarite kingdom. The center of maritime commerce was the port of Eudaimon Arabia (Aden), about 100 miles east of the Bab el-Mandeb, where Indian ships exchanged their cargoes: “No nation seems to be more prosperous than the Sabaeans and [their neighbors] the Gerrhaeans,” observed Agatharchides, “since they are the ones who distribute everything from Asia and Europe that is considered valuable.” To get their goods from Eudaimon Arabia to the Mediterranean, the Arabs

developed the Incense Road – the most storied trade routes were often

known by their most conspicuous product – a caravan track that ran north paralleling the Red Sea. Such a road was made possible by the domestication of the camel in the late second millennium BCE and the rise of caravan cities along the route such as Iathrib (Medina). The Incense Road was exploited by anyone who could muster enough power to threaten it or who controlled vital supplies such as food and well water along the way. Pliny provides a look at how this impacted on the frankincense trade, one of the road’s major products. Frankincense was produced east of Saba but had to be conveyed to the Sabaean capital on pain of death to be taxed by the local temple. From there it went north to the country of the Gebbanites, where it was taxed by their king, after which it passed through 65 additional staging posts, each of which levied taxes, fees, and other costs in fixed portions “so that expenses mount up to 688 denarii per camel before the Mediterranean coast is reached; and then again payment is made to the customs officers of our empire.” The total trip normally took 70 days. The transporters of these goods may have been a people separate from the Sabaeans and other Arabs whom one scholar, Alessandro de Maigret, has labeled the “Turret-Grave people” from the unique form of burial they practiced. They were thought to be an ancient, autochthonous people who organized and developed the trade system around the Arabian peninsula as early as 3000 BCE. The area between the northeastern corner of the Red Sea and the

Mediterranean came to be controlled by the Nabataeans, sheep herders from the mountains of Jordan turned plunderers turned merchants. The Nabataeans discovered they could accrue more wealth by protecting caravans and providing them with services than by attacking them, so they offered caravaneers food, water, and cool rest areas in the caves of their mountains. When the number of caves proved insufficient, the Nabataeans began carving out their own. In the end they built a caravan city, Petra (“The Rock”), one of the world’s truly unique places, a mountain refuge that became a mountain metropolis with facades of colonnaded porticoes sculpted out of the red, pink, and orange sandstone, fronting on rooms that were essentially manmade caverns. A population of 30,000 was supplied by a system of cisterns fed by channels chiseled into the rock, bringing enough spring water to irrigate fruit gardens and wheat fields. As it turned out, the Nabataeans also had a knack for commerce that made

their city one of the richest in the world between the second century BCE and the second century CE. Petra became a hub for routes running in different directions from the Incense Road to Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Levantine ports, and Damascus, beyond which the Incense Road connected to the Silk Road. Strabo notes that Petra was “exceedingly well-governed” and calls the Nabataeans “a sensible people.” They had, he observed, two very admirable traits. First, whereas foreign merchants frequently engaged in lawsuits with each other and with the locals, “none of the natives prosecuted one another and in every way kept peace with one another.” Profit-making was

essentially mandated by law since they “are so much inclined to acquire possessions that they publicly fine anyone who has diminished his possessions and confer honors on anyone who has increased them.” The Nabataeans were rivals of Ptolemaic Egypt, but they were wise enough not to challenge the might of Rome when it arrived in the area. The Roman presence brought changes as well as accelerated trends already

present. A Roman army attacked and sacked Eudaimon Arabia, and traffic shifted to Muza on the north side of the Bab el-Mandeb where the Romans exercised better control. During the reign of Augustus the Romans made an attempt to conquer Arabia because, according to Strabo, the Arabs “were very wealthy, and they sold aromatics and the most valuable stones for gold and silver, but never expended with outsiders any part of what they received in exchange; for he [Augustus] expected either to deal with wealthy friends or to master wealthy enemies.” However, a Nabataean official serving as guide took the Romans on a wild goose chase for six months, during which at one point they came within two days’ journey of reaching the land where myrrh was produced. Finally they turned around and returned to Egypt. The sources of myrrh and frankincense would remain outside imperial control. Nevertheless, under the new conditions Arab middlemen began to be

bypassed, and the long, laborious haul up the Incense Road was used less and less. Petra had offered shelter and protection to caravans, a service the Romans rendered obsolete. Although the Nabataeans controlled two ports on the Red Sea, once maritime trade from Egypt to the Indian Ocean became fully developed, the fortunes of their kingdom began a slow slide. Strabo notes that in his own time, commerce had already shifted from the Petra-toPhoenicia route to the Red Sea-to-Alexandria route. In 363 CE an earthquake destroyed half of Petra, which lingered on to the seventh century when it was finally abandoned. The Red Sea ends at the Bab el-Mandeb, where its opposite shores scrunch

together almost touching. Ships generally stopped on one side or the other to take on fresh water before heading into the ocean. Some trade took place here, mostly in frankincense, myrrh, and Arabian wine for resale in India. Smaller, lighter ships adapted to Red Sea conditions went no farther. They did circuits, transferring their goods at Arabian and African ports, where they were reloaded onto ocean-going vessels or transshipped to inland caravan routes. Local and Indian goods were picked up for the voyage back to Egypt. Once ships had passed through the Bab and out into the Gulf of Aden,

they could head in three directions: south, along the African coast, turning abruptly at the Promontory of Spices (Cape Guardafui) to cruise down the eastern side of the continent; northeast, paralleling the Arabian coast and eventually to northern India; or due east, across open waters, turning south to catch the tip of southern India. Ships bound on the first course would make for the north Somali coast, which the Periplus refers to as “Far-Side

Barbaria.” Here were a string of ports where no central government had control. Apparently it was the only area in the western arc where tramping was common. It was also a place where rafts and small craft were much in evidence. Far-Side ports offered ivory and shell but also limited quantities of high-quality myrrh, frankincense and other aromatics, a few “better quality” slaves, and large quantities of cassia. The inhabitants imported mostly staples on a somewhat lower scale than at Adulis, including foodstuffs from India such as rice, ghee (clarified butter), and sesame oil along with wine and unripe olives from the Mediterranean. Below the Promontory of Spices, Strabo’s source can provide no informa-

tion. However, the Periplus, written a century later, has much to say about the shores of East Africa, a land Mediterranean sailors knew as Azania. This was smooth sailing across waters not known for their treacherous conditions or dangerous storms. It was generally safe for craft of all sizes, which meant that small-scale merchants with modest working capital could participate by renting space on what were often flimsy craft, a very different situation than existed on the route to India. The roadsteads and ports that were frequented were not documented, and probably many of them both on the Somali and Azania coasts were little more than seasonal encampments for ships awaiting the change in winds. The major exception was Rhapta (“Sewn,” named after the local boats), which is thought to have been near modern Dar es-Salaam in Tanzania although a recent suggestion puts it farther south at Dondo in Mozambique. Despite the lack of archaeological remains, Rhapta must have been a substantial settlement. Claudius Ptolemy rates it as the “metropolis of Barbaria” but puts it “a short distance from the sea.” He provides no details of the trade down the coast. Fortunately, the Periplus does, reporting that “great quantities” of ivory, horn, and shell were available in Rhapta, probably at bargain prices. And Rhapta was likely a nexus on the Cinnamon Road from Southeast Asia via Madagascar. Rhapta took manufactured goods, including tools, weapons, and glass, and foodstuffs such as grain and wine. Despite its attractive qualities, the East African coast remained a back-

water in the Indian Ocean trade. The coast of East Africa did not serve as an easy avenue for tapping into the wealth of the continent’s interior; in penetrating inland, the best routes were far to the south, starting at the Zambezi Valley. The Zambezi led to interior gold deposits that would become a major export centuries later, but at the time of the Periplus gold did not trickle down to coastal areas. Consequently, stops along the coast could offer little more than what was available in their immediate hinterlands. Some archaeological evidence may indicate the existence at this time of an African seafaring culture, referred to as the Tana Tradition, with connections into the interior, but this remains speculative. Ships did not venture south of Rhapta, which remained terra incognita as far as the Periplus was concerned although in Claudius Ptolemy there is some indication that geographical knowledge, presumably obtained from trading voyages, went as far as Madagascar.