Land of gold

If Mesopotamia boasts the earliest civilization, the lower Nile River valley is credited with being second by only a few centuries. Egypt and Mesopotamia shared many similarities, but in long-distance trade, they also show many differences. Mesopotamia was bordered by diverse environments containing a variety of raw materials and peoples. Egypt was surrounded by desert, a comparatively sterile environment supporting few potential trading partners. Egypt opened to the outside world only at two main points. Control over the Nile delta meant a monopoly over trade north into the Mediterranean and eastward to Asia. On the other side, control over the entry to the cataract region in the south meant a monopoly over trade with Nubia and the interior of Africa. This was a very different situation from Mesopotamia, where numerous routes criss-crossed, and it was impossible to monopolize the multitude of entry points except under a powerful empire like the Akkadian. Geography determined that the Egyptian economy would be far less

impacted by foreign trade than the economy of Mesopotamia, but Egypt was never completely isolated even in the period before the rise of the pharaohs. In the fifth millennium BCE, Upper (southern) Egypt traded with nearby desert regions importing metals, pigments, and beads of jasper and carnelian, as well as shells from the Red Sea and ivory from Nubia in exchange for finely made eggshell-thin pottery. In the fourth millennium, the city of Maadi at the base of the Nile delta in Lower (northern) Egypt served as the nodal point for trade with Sinai and Palestine. Copper and turquoise arrived from Sinai carried on donkey caravans by local tribesmen, and there was a steady trickle trade with Palestine for products such as wood, wine, and olive oil. At the time, Palestine enjoyed overland contacts stretching north to Syria and beyond to Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran. Maadi seems to have traded more with Palestine than with Upper Egypt as witnessed by the obsidian trade: obsidian coming into Lower Egypt originated in Anatolia, but obsidian used in Upper Egypt came from the areas of modern Yemen and Eritrea. In the late fourth millennium BCE, the struggles between warrior groups

up and down the Nile Valley for control over internal trade and access to

external routes were a major factor leading to the unification of Egypt. From the beginning of the pharaonic period, long-distance trade, like the rest of the Egyptian economy, was under strict state management and remained so for the next several thousand years. During this time foreign trade always existed but had less impact on the overall economy than in most other complex societies. Foreign goods entered Egypt through large-scale expeditions organized and directed by royal officials to obtain specific items. Some observers have concluded that expeditions could not have satisfied all the country’s needs; therefore, something like ongoing trade, entrepreneurial or not, must have existed. If so, this remains a well-kept secret. In all the official documentation left by the Egyptians, virtually nothing refers to trading practices outside of expeditions. Imports were consumed directly by the court in its enormous building projects or redistributed to the country’s elite in the form of luxury goods. Egypt provides a classic example of a general rule among powerful states in the ancient world: trade with the outside was designed to secure desirable imports, not to create export markets. Sometime in the late fourth to the early third millennium BCE, overland

trade with Palestine began to taper off in favor of sea contact between Egypt and the Levantine littoral, the eastern shore of the Mediterranean extending north of Palestine to the border of Anatolia (today comprising Lebanon and northwestern Syria). This shift may have been due in part to the construction of larger, faster, more seaworthy ships; which side, the Egyptian or the Levantine, initiated the contact is not certain. Lebanon-Syria offered a much wider range of products than Palestine, foremost of which was high-quality timber strong enough for heavy construction. Timber in large quantities was a difficult product to pass along through trickle trade; fetching wood meant sending out expeditions. The new tie with Lebanon and Syria plugged Egypt more directly into the

main trunk line of the long-distance commercial network that ran from Anatolia to Afghanistan. The cities of the Levantine coast became emporia for products bound for Egypt, ranging from silver and precious stones to perfumes and oils. Egypt, in return, had a product the rest of the word was eager to get: gold. And Syria was directly connected to Sumer, a relationship facilitated by inland cities such as Elba, Mari, and the Sumerian colonies on the upper Euphrates. A direct route from Sumer to Palestine, although shorter than from Sumer to Syria, was not operational due to desert in between since camels were not yet used as pack animals. Palestine became a commercial cul-de-sac. The earliest Sumerian objects recovered in Egypt are from the late fourth to the early third millennium BCE and consist of stone cylinder seals. Some Mesopotamian ceramics in the form of small liquid containers also reached Egypt, but no object of Egyptian manufacture has been found in Mesopotamia from this period. Considerable speculation has been made about a Persian Gulf to Red Sea maritime connection tying Sumer and Upper Egypt. Curiously, for a brief period, some indications of

Mesopotamian and even Iranian cultural influences appear in Upper Egypt that are not found in Lower Egypt. However, there is no conclusive evidence for an early sea-route trading relationship, and whatever contacts were made were not sustained into the pharaonic period. Egypt and Sumer did not become direct trading partners. Egypt’s integration into the long-distance trade network that spanned

southwestern Asia must have been heartily welcomed even if it often led to war with Mesopotamian and Anatolian states over control of the lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean shore. As a trading partner, Egypt had much to offer. From the pharaoh’s workshops came exquisite craft goods ranging from ivory-inlaid furniture to amulets in the form of scarabs (dung beetles, which became a widely used motif symbolizing resurrection) cut from semi-precious stones or products in faience, a ceramic made from powdered quartz. These were mostly luxury items designed to reinforce the status of elites. Like Sumer, Egypt also produced a huge grain surplus, an archaeologically invisible product that is assumed to have been traded to people who lived in less bountiful environments like the desert or mountains. Nevertheless, what the outside world wanted most from Egypt was gold. Gold deposits were located in Upper Egypt, the most productive being

in the wadis (dry river beds) of the eastern desert between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea. It was this gold that first attracted outside traders, including, perhaps, Sumerians, to Upper Egypt. The need to organize the mining and control the trade prompted the early states of Upper Egypt to become more centralized and militarized: it was no accident that Egyptian unification was achieved by the rulers of Upper Egypt who conquered Lower Egypt. Early in Egyptian history royal expeditions were dispatched to the most productive of the wadis, the Wadi Hammamat, but in later periods permanent camps were established in some wadis and the mines worked by gangs of criminals, political prisoners, and slaves under the most horrid of conditions. In addition to exploiting their own deposits, the Egyptians got much gold

from Nubia, the land immediately south of Upper Egypt. The Nile below Egypt has a deep channel that in places provided a good transportation corridor but is broken over the length of 1,000 miles by a series of six cataracts, each a lengthy sequence of impassable rapids. Land caravans had to move traffic around the cataracts, or there was an alternative route that took travelers west of the Nile Valley across the desert through a series of oases that exited in Upper Nubia. This was the quickest, if not the most comfortable or sometimes most secure, road for tapping into the products of Africa’s interior. In Nubia gold could be found in shallow surface workings as well as in

riverside deposits. Amethyst, carnelian, and diorite were also available; one quarrying operation is reported to have involved 1,000 men and an equal

number of donkeys. The Nubians and the Kushites further up the Nile were famous for their herds of cattle, which brought high prices in Egypt. An interesting piece of Nubian ware from the late fourth millennium BCE has turned up in the Sumerian colony of Habula Kabira in Syria, which doubtless came via Egypt. Other products from farther south included ivory, animal skins (particularly leopard), ebony, and incense, for which there was a tremendous demand in Egypt. What the Egyptians used in payment is less clear but is believed to have included copper, gems, textiles, clothing, wine, beer, oil, honey, faience, and stone products. The Egyptians established a trading post at Buhen near the second cataract early in the third millennium, from which expeditions set out southward to the Dongola Reach area of Kush between the third and fourth cataracts. In c. 2300 BCE they dug five channels to overcome obstacles in the first cataract that allowed ships to penetrate by river. Four centuries later these passages were cleared so that much larger vessels could be accommodated. Work was also done on the second cataract to allow ships to be dragged across it. The best documented Egyptian expeditions southward were led by

Harkhuf, who lived in the late twenty-fourth to the early twenty-third centuries BCE and left an account of his adventures on the walls of his tomb. Harkhuf was no petty trader but a high court official with a list of impressive titles, including “Adviser to the Pharaoh for All Affairs South of Upper Egypt.” He made four trips to the land of Yam, which is difficult to pinpoint except that it was somewhere south of Lower Nubia. His father accompanied him on the first of these, which was intended mainly to find the best way to get to Yam although it is clear that they were not the first Egyptians to go to this country. They accomplished their mission in seven months and returned with an unspecified load of goods identified as “gifts” or “tribute” (depending on translation). Harkhuf went on the second expedition alone, which took eight months, and

again he returned with large quantities of goods “of a kind which nobody had ever brought to Egypt before.” On the third trip he took the oasis road. He found the King of Yam busy fighting the Tjemehu (Libyan desert nomads), who were also enemies of the Egyptians, so Harkhuf joined him. After what was apparently a successful campaign, Harkhuf returned home via the river road with 300 donkeys “laden with incense, ebony, hekenu oil [for perfume], grain, panther skins, ivory, boomerangs, [and] all kinds of beautiful and good products.” The King of Yam provided him with a substantial military escort lest the King of Irtjet, who controlled Lower Nubia, attempted to plunder the caravan. The King of Irtjet was so intimidated he sent bulls and other livestock to Harkhuf as his own gifts and personally guided him through some tricky hill passages. As for the fourth expedition, it is not mentioned in the account detailing the other three but is referred to in a letter the pharaoh sent to Harkhuf that was copied verbatim on another part of the tomb. Gifts are mentioned, but, as in expeditions one and two,

they are unspecified except for a dancing dwarf (sometimes translated as pygmy), which especially pleased the pharaoh. Harkhuf’s trips are usually seen as trading ventures even if he claimed to

be returning with gifts or tribute and never mentions any reciprocal gifts. Egyptian pharaohs preferred to interpret their exchanges with other states in this light rather than as straight commercially based trade. Yam was obviously beyond the reach of Old Kingdom Egypt’s limited striking force, and if Harkhuf’s expeditions were designed for nothing more than extorting gifts or tribute, the King of Yam probably would have become pretty tired of it. Instead Harkhuf seems to have received more and better gifts on each successive trip doubtless because he was bringing his own gifts. This little detail just did not make it on to an already crowded tomb wall. The most commonly proposed site for ancient Yam is the area around

Kerma above the third cataract. A great brick structure was built there, although dating from the second millennium BCE several centuries after Harkhuf’s visit. This was once believed to have been the site of a Middle Kingdom Egyptian trading colony but is now recognized as the center of an independent state that reached its peak during Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period (1783-1540 BCE) and was bound to Egypt by strong commercial ties. The role of Nubian states in Egypt’s trade with the interior of Africa is still not completely clear; scholars are uncertain whether they were actively involved as middlemen or were content merely to extract tariffs and duties from caravans passing through. Egypt’s interest in the south was not confined to overland and riverain

traffic. To the immediate east of Egypt lies the great ditch that separates Africa from Arabia, the Red Sea. Like the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea was a corridor into and out of the Indian Ocean. However, it was larger and less inviting than the Gulf owing to its dangerous shoals and wind pattern that brought rough weather from June to December. Its main advantage was that it was closer to the Mediterranean Sea than the Persian Gulf, an important consideration since the Gulf and the Red Sea often competed for commercial preeminence. Occasionally a powerful empire would control both waterways, giving it a monopoly of trade between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, but this was unusual. During the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, ships sailed down the Red

Sea to a land the Egyptians called Punt, determining the location of which has been a favorite pastime of ancient armchair geographers. From its flora and fauna as described by the Egyptians, it was clearly in Africa not Arabia, but the Egyptians always went to Punt by the Red Sea, never overland even though under the New Kingdom Egyptian control penetrated far up the Nile Valley. Recent studies appear to show Punt as being located in modern Eritrea or on the coast of southeastern Sudan although proposals putting it even farther northward, closer to the Egyptian border, or much farther southward, in Somalia, have their advocates. Punt may have been a

crossroads for trade coming from the interior of Africa, the western and southern coasts of Arabia, and points in the Indian Ocean as many of the products Egyptians brought back could not have originated there. The Egyptians sometimes referred to Punt as “God’s Land” because it was blessed with products often used for religious purposes. Foremost of these were the gum resins frankincense and myrrh, burned as incense in temples and used in embalming and perfume. The trees that produced these grew only in Somalia and on the southern reaches of the Arabian peninsula. Ivory and the skins of giraffes, leopards, and cheetahs, all of which were worn by temple priests, probably did not originate in Punt but from farther into the interior as did live animals such as a particular type of baboon the Egyptians considered to be sacred. The Egyptians could also obtain gold and cinnamon in Punt, both of which came from elsewhere. The earliest known expedition to Punt was sent out by Sahura (2458-

2446 BCE), a pharaoh of the V Dynasty. It returned with 80,000 units of myrrh plus some electrum (a mixture of gold and silver) and two commodities that cannot be identified. Other expeditions followed, the normal procedure being to march from the Lower Nile across the desert to the Gulf of Suez, where boats would be constructed on the beach. Under the VI Dynasty (2345-2184 BCE), the members of one such expedition were attacked by desert raiders while in the process of building their boats and massacred. Such expeditions could bring back very large quantities of goods, but they did not represent a regular or continuous trade, and long periods often intervened as, for example, between the VI and XI dynasties. One expedition sent out by Pharaoh Mentuhotep III (2004-1992 BCE), consisting of 3,000 men, marched from the Upper Nile down the Wadi Hammamat to the sea with a caravan of donkeys carrying materials to build the ships. Wells had been dug by an advance party and soldiers sent ahead to secure the road. The most celebrated of Egyptian expeditions to Punt was that of Queen

Hatshepsut (1473-1458 BCE), who ruled as pharaoh in the XVIII Dynasty. She was reportedly told by an oracle to send an expedition to Punt and in compliance dispatched five ships, galleys that may have been up to 90 feet in length. Hatshepsut commemorated the event in a series of reliefs depicted on the walls of her mortuary temple, which include lengthy inscriptions. The ships are shown arriving in Punt, where they are being greeted by a bearded chief and his deformed wife, who seems to have been suffering from some disease like lipodystrophy. The local people lived in beehive-shaped reed houses raised on stilts above the water. They did, however, have many riches, “marvels of the land of Punt” as the inscription reads, including bags of myrrh and frankincense, ebony, ivory, gold, fragrant woods like cinnamon and khesyt, eye cosmetics, panther skins, and live animals, including monkeys and dogs. In return, the Egyptians are shown trading beads, bracelets, weapons, and tools.