The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  The Greco-Roman merchants who sailed in the wake of Hippalos were keen to make the fast connection between Egypt and India, and had no interest in the Persian Gulf. For the Periplous, the Gulf was best avoided; the best one could say of this ‘vast expanse’ was that there were plenty of pearls to be had near its opening.28 The author of the Periplous was happy to jump across the strait and to reach a Persian port called Omana, which was not the same as modern Oman. Wherever it was, Omana gave access to a hinterland rich in dates, wine and rice, even though the coastline only produced bdellium, not that this was to be despised – it is another aromatic resin, a close cousin to myrrh. This was one of the ports to which merchants of Barygaza, in India, sent ploia megala, large ships, loaded with fine woods such as teak, as well as copper and ebony. They took away large numbers of pearls of modest quality compared to those of India itself, cloth, including luxurious purple textiles, gold from the Persian interior and slaves.29

  Then, following the coast, one eventually reached ‘the mightiest of the rivers along the Erythraean Sea’, the Sinthos, or Indus, which emptied so much freshwater into the ocean that long before you reached terra firma you could see the river water coming out to meet you. One of the seven channels linking the Indus to the ocean was home to Barbarikon, whose exact location, after centuries during which the Indus has dumped silt all around its mouths, is unknown. Barbarikon gave access overland to Minnagar, a major city lying inland, whose royal court was hungry for textiles, plain and coloured, glassware, silverware, frankincense, coral and gems that were probably the attractive light green stones now known as peridots.30 At such points the author of the Periplous most clearly revealed that what he had written was more a manual for merchants than a book of sailing instructions. But the attractions of Barbarikon were as much in buying as in selling. Bdellium, nard, turquoise, lapis lazuli, indigo and Chinese skins, cloth and yarn were all mentioned. These Chinese cloths, however they reached the mouth of the Indus, were made of that rarest and most coveted of fibres, silk.31

  Yet even the excellent opportunities offered by the marketplace at Barbarikon were not enough. The Periplous braved difficult seas, full of whirlpools, sea snakes and turbulent waves to edge down the coast of India as far as the Gulf of Barygaza.32 Sailing into the port at Barygaza was a challenge; ships had to negotiate a narrow gulf, with sharp reefs on the right-hand side, and a rocky, rough sea bottom that could slice through anchor cables. This took one through to a desolate landscape where it was hard to see the low-lying shore, and shoals made navigation even more difficult. For this reason fishermen in the king’s service would come out to pilot ships through these waters; oarsmen attached their boats to incoming vessels and tugged them along, playing along with the tides, which were critical for access, but also extremely dangerous: ‘they are much more extreme in the area around Barygaza than elsewhere’. At the flood tide, when there was a great rumbling, hissing rush of water upstream, one would suddenly see the sea floor, and channels used by ships would turn completely dry. During the flood tide ships would be ripped from their anchorage. Not for the only time in history, a major port was built in an unpromising, seemingly inaccessible location (compare Bristol, with quite similar tidal problems).

  Barygaza was the real focus of attention in the Periplous. Known in Sanskrit as Bhārukaccha, and nowadays called Bharuch or Broach, it ought to be an important archaeological site, for its great mound awaits adequate excavation. It must be one of the most promising but neglected archaeological sites in the world; occasional finds in the general area include late Roman pottery and Roman coins.33 From lands to the east of Barygaza ‘everything that contributes to the region’s prosperity’ arrived in the port; this included semi-precious stones, such as onyx, and Indian cotton cloth, both fine and ordinary, as well as ivory, nard and bdellium transported from upcountry. Long pepper, Piper longum, was readily available; this was a type of pepper that was greatly prized in Rome, where in the first century AD it sold for fifteen denarii per pound against four denarii for standard pepper.34 Pliny the Elder could not understand what attracted people to pepper, and even less could he understand why anyone should spend vast amounts of time and money bringing it all the way from India.35 At the top end of the scale, there were Chinese silks to be had too.

  It is worth pausing to think about the implications. Roman citizens in Egypt, and beyond that the Mediterranean, were being supplied with clothing from as far away as India, and it was not necessarily luxury clothing. It was worth the while of ordinary merchants trading in the Indian Ocean to carry these goods by sea past Arabia and up the Red Sea. More than once in its description of India the Periplous remarked, in an entirely matter-of-fact way, ‘for those sailing to this port from Egypt, the right time to set out is around the month of July’.36 Here are the first signs of what, with a little exaggeration, can be called a global maritime network, linking the sea entirely controlled by Roman authority, in the west, to the open spaces of the Indian Ocean; and how far into that ocean these routes penetrated would be revealed as the Periplous made its way ever further east. The same considerations apply when one looks at the trade coming by sea from the west. Wine arrived not just from Arabia but from Laodicea in Syria and from Italy too. What condition it was in when it reached India is a question better not asked, all the more because it was often treated with salt to preserve it. But the Indians also had an insatiable appetite for copper and tin, the ingredients of bronze, as is shown by many of the beautiful cast figurines that survive from this period; the Barygazans were happy to buy the same coloured or plain textiles as the inhabitants of Barbarikon, as well as coral and peridot. Away from the royal court, they preferred cheap perfumes to anything costly. They were very happy to accept Roman gold and silver, which, as will be seen, was said to haemorrhage out of the Mediterranean into India. The royal court also purchased slaves, both to play music and to sleep in the king’s bed.

  Barygaza, in the north-western corner of India, seems like the obvious final destination for India traders coming down from Egypt; for many no doubt it was, just as this area had been the normal limit of the ships bound from Babylonia for Meluḫḫa nearly two millennia earlier. But Greco-Roman captains headed further south as well to official ports of trade (the word the Periplous uses is the familiar emporion, ‘emporium’). One kingdom after another along the Indian coast established ports of trade; these were places where foreign merchants could be both welcomed and supervised. Rulers wanted to encourage them, because, quite apart from the goods they brought, luxuries and necessities, they were worth taxing; and yet once one started taxing merchants, a system had to be in place to make sure that smugglers were kept under control, and that the quality of goods was adequately guaranteed.37

  Having braved more sea snakes, black ones with blood-red eyes and heads like a dragon – whatever these beasts really were – Greek ships could stuff their holds full along these shores: ‘ships in these emporia carry full loads because of the quantity of pepper and malabathron’. Malabathron, already encountered in the Egyptian tale of the shipwrecked sailor, is the leaf of the cinnamon tree, rather than its bark, though ancient authors did not make the connection between the spice they also knew well and the dried leaves that were used in medicine, perfumes and food recipes, and to dispel mouth odour. Malabathron was also ideal for making mothballs. The drawback in ancient Rome, though not for merchants such as the author of the Periplous, was that the best-quality malabathron was hideously expensive, as much as 300 denarii per pound. On the other hand, ordinary Greeks and Romans could buy adulterated malabathron much more cheaply, for as little as one denarius per pound. Top-grade malabathron was by a long distance the most expensive spice to come out of India, followed by the best nard at a third of the price.38 One reason for the high cost was that it was probably gathered some way into the interior, while much of the pepper was local.

  The Periplous jumps quite quickly from north-western India to the far south of the country; the book enumera
tes several ports, but the account of what they supply or buy becomes monotonous, despite occasional vignettes that show, for instance, Hindu ‘men who wish to lead a holy life for the rest of their days’ and are celibate.39 This may well reflect the ease with which ships setting out from south Arabia could strike the coast some way below Barygaza, if they heeded the advice of Hippalos about when to sail. A route running directly east-south-east from Arabia to the kingdom of Limyriké in south India would arrive near the bottom tip of the subcontinent.40 The big question is how far Greek and Roman merchants penetrated beyond Ceylon, into the eastern Indian Ocean, in the first century AD. The author of the Periplous knew a fair amount about the eastern shores of India. He identified Ceylon, under its ancient name of Taprobané, but he imagined that it somehow stretched ever westwards till it came close to Azania, that is east Africa; his Ceylon was, in a sense, the precursor of the great, semi-mythical Southern Continent of later centuries. Ceylon was rich in pearls, gemstones, cotton textiles and tortoiseshells, about which he was so enthusiastic throughout his book that they must have been one of his specialities.41 Beyond Ceylon he evidently relied on hearsay. He had heard of barbarian peoples with flat noses, and others called the Horse People, who were reputed to eat human flesh. The change in the character of the Periplous from fact to near fiction is entirely typical of travel literature throughout the centuries; it is found in Marco Polo, for example. When the author of the Periplous described the Ganges, which he knew was ‘the greatest of all the rivers in India’, comparable, he said, in its rise and fall to the Nile, he was clearly relying on rumour: ‘it is said that there are also gold mines in the area’.

  He had heard too that beyond the mouth of the Ganges there lay ‘an island in the ocean, the furthest extremity towards the east of the inhabited world, lying under the rising sun itself, called Chrysé’, that is, ‘the golden place’. And, not surprisingly, it attracted his attention because it produced the best tortoiseshell in the whole Indian Ocean. Whether this land was pure fancy, or a distant acknowledgement of what later generations would call the Golden Chersonese (the Malayan peninsula), or perhaps Sumatra, does not greatly matter, as he was by now well out of his depth, and the short tract ends with the admission that there are remote, cold and stormy lands far out to the east that nature and the gods have made impenetrable. But the conclusion that he or people with whom he had worked knew south-western India is inescapable. This was the real limit of knowledge and, for the moment, it was the limit of navigation by the so-called Roman merchants, though not for south Indian or Malay ones.

  III

  Recent archaeological research in the Red Sea, at the Roman port of Bereniké, has transformed our understanding of the scale and intensity of Indo-Roman trade that passed up the Red Sea on its way to Alexandria and the Mediterranean. Bereniké Troglodytika was founded by the Ptolemies in the third century BC, and its site was chosen with close attention to the currents in the Red Sea, from which a convenient cape protected it. Its greatest asset was, however, water, for even the Eastern Desert receives rain in the autumn, and as the wadis either side of the town swelled with water a strong, if sandy, flow became accessible.42 Still, it was hardly the most comfortable place in which to live. Drawing no doubt on plenty of horrible experiences, its excavator has written with feeling of the ‘adverse weather, with almost constantly blowing winds carrying stinging and blinding sand, swarms of biting and annoying insects – both terrestrial and airborne – scorpions, termites, snakes, large spiders, mice, and rats’.43

  The Ptolemies knew what they wanted from Bereniké, and as early as the late third century BC they were taking delivery there of the African elephants they so greatly prized. The animals were carried on short, broad, deep sailing ships called elephantegoi that were a challenge to the best captains, because their deep draught placed them at risk in a sea filled with sandbanks and coral reefs, and one classical writer, Diodoros the Sicilian, comments that they were often shipwrecked. A papyrus from 224 BC tells of an elephantegos that was wending its way south from Bereniké when it was shipwrecked; fortunately it was travelling in convoy and, since it was on the outward journey, had no elephants on board. An urgent message was sent to land and another boat was promptly despatched from Bereniké, so these ships were not in short supply.44 On at least one occasion elephants were transferred from the Red Sea to the Nile through the canal that linked the two stretches of water; but the strong prevailing winds in the upper reaches of the Red Sea made journeys to its two northern tips hazardous, and it made much more sense to stop off at Bereniké or one of its rivals, and to send goods overland to Koptos on the Nile.45 Excavation of Bereniké’s harbour has revealed that (at least by the Roman period) the berths had been built for large ships, bigger than those one might expect to find in the contemporary Mediterranean, including those elephantine elephant transports.46 Bereniké was, then, already prospering under the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, who actively promoted new economic initiatives, including shipbuilding; their main ambitions lay in and around the Mediterranean, where they built some vessels so large that there is some doubt whether they could have floated, but the Red Sea and Indian Ocean entered their calculations too.47

  It would be rash to suggest a population figure for Bereniké. Its size fluctuated over the centuries; its site moved as accumulated silt transformed the shape of the harbour; its merchants came and went. It is wisest to be vague and to talk of a population of several thousand, concentrating instead on who the inhabitants were. For this was a true ‘port city’, a place where Egyptians, Greeks, Africans from Axum, south Arabians, Nabataeans, Indians, even visitors from Ceylon, found a temporary or permanent home. A tax collector from the early Roman period was named Andouros, a name harking back to Gaul or Germany. People with Latin names also appear, and some at least must have been from Italy. The illustrious and powerful Jewish family of Marcus Julius Alexander had agents here – more of this family shortly. Some naukleroi, or shipowners, were women; around AD 200 Aelia Isadora and Aelia Olympias used that Greek word to describe themselves, and operated from Bereniké or nearby. Many languages were spoken, or at least incised as graffiti – Greek appears most often, as one would expect in the eastern Roman Empire; but Latin, the south Arabian language, Tamil from south India, the language of Axum in east Africa all appear. A high-protein diet was available to many of these people: fish, sea mammals (dugong), turtles, beef, chicken and pork, which was a favourite in the Roman army. Garum sauce was made locally from the innards of Red Sea sardines. Nile catfish were also consumed in Bereniké, probably dried and then reconstituted; edible snails were a firm favourite in the town’s kitchens. The inhabitants tried to make Bereniké an attractive place to live, decorating their houses with textile hangings; and the richer citizens owned gems, even pearl and gold earrings.48 Temples to deities such as the composite Egyptian god Sarapis were scattered around the town. By the sixth century Bereniké possessed a pillared church with space for about eighty people, as well as side rooms used in part to prepare meals.49

  The difficult conditions along the shores of the Red Sea were no deterrent, then, and other settlements also came into being on the sea’s inhospitable western shore. Myos Hormos was an important base for Roman trade towards India, and revived to become a lively centre of trade once again in the thirteenth century, when it was called Qusayr al-Qadim; it too has been excavated, with truly impressive results that confirm Strabo’s impression of the place; he heard that 120 ships sailed every year from Myos Hormos to India.50 Fortunately, the history of Bereniké can be traced not just in the physical remains of the town but in papyri and ostraka; these were broken fragments of pottery used for recording notes, contracts and several remarkable customs passes issued in Koptos and then carried to the Red Sea ports, where they had to be presented to the authorities. These customs passes mention particular goods: ‘Rhobaos to those in charge of the customs gate, greetings. Let Psenosiris son of Leon pass with eight italika of wine for loading.�
�51 Here the merchant, Psenosiris, has a thoroughly Egyptian name, though his father sounds Greek. And the goods being carried are wine brought all the way from Italy. Myos Hormos too was home to a mixed population: one building constructed out of limestone and mud brick, with stucco decoration, was perhaps a synagogue, though to base this identification on a single fragment of pottery inscribed in Hebrew may be wishful thinking.52

  Sometimes not just objects found on site, but ostraka and papyri from other parts of Egypt, talk of links to the Red Sea ports. An Egyptian papyrus known as the ‘Muziris Papyrus’ tells the story of the transfer of cargo all the way from Muziris in southern India, where it was loaded on board a ship called the Hermapollon, a good Greek name celebrating two gods; then it was sent across the desert to the Nile and up to Alexandria. This papyrus records a value of 9,000,000 sesterces for the goods brought back from India on the Hermapollon, of which the state could be expected to claim 2,000,000 in taxes. At Koptos a whole archive of ostraka has been unearthed, known as the Nikanor archive. Nikanor was the head of a small transport company that specialized in the carriage of goods across the desert, and every time he sent goods to the Red Sea ports, or anywhere else, he expected a receipt to be sent back, written on a piece of broken pottery. While it is always interesting to watch the ordinary businessmen like Nikanor in operation, his ostraka also reveal links to the Alexandrian plutocracy, notably Marcus Julius Alexander, the nephew of the Jewish philosopher Philo and the son of the official who administered customs and excise in the desert east of the Nile. Around AD 40 Marcus Julius maintained agents in Koptos and the Red Sea ports. His wife, Berenice (Bereniké), was a member of the Herodian royal family, and would later earn notoriety as the mistress of Titus, the general in charge of the suppression of the Jewish revolt in Palestine.53 That someone of great wealth and power should become seriously involved in the India trade indicates both its prestige and its profitability.