ABSTRACT
Ethiopia’s traditional exports, gold, ivory, musk, incense and slaves, were known to the people of the Mediterranean civilization from ancient times. Colonies of foreign merchants, Greek, Egyptian, Arab and possibly Indian, prospered on the Ethiopian coast as early as the first millenium B.C. while caravans originating in Egypt reached the Ethiopian plateau still earlier. Most of Ethiopia’s luxury products were produced in the southern and western part of the plateau, and caravan trade between these areas and the north must have developed at an early date. To some extent the growth and development of the city-states in northern Ethiopia and later of the Axumite empire are due to their having been centres of caravan trade and to their domination of the routes connecting the coast and the interior.
