In the early sixth century BCE, a Neo-Babylonian king established the port of Teredon near Basra, Iraq. Within twenty years of his death, Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and thereby acquired an empire that stretched from eastern Iran to the Mediterranean seaboard. Cyrus came from the province of Fars (also called Pars or Persis) in the tableland of southern Iran, a region separated from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea by the Zagros Mountains. The coast is inhospitable and freshwater often has to be brought in by canals and aqueducts. As a result, coastal rulers often operated independently of states in the interior, and ties between people living on opposite shores of the Persian Gulf could be as strong as, or stronger than, those between coastal communities and their respective hinterlands. Cyrus was a lenient ruler celebrated for proclaiming freedom of religion for all the people within his domains, which he describes as “the entire world from the Upper to the Lower Sea,” an echo of the language used in Sargon’s day 1,800 years before.
Between about 525 and 510 BCE, the Persian Empire expanded to encompass a broad swath of Anatolia and the Near East from Ionia and Egypt in the west to the Indus Valley. Before his preoccupation with punishing the Greeks for the Ionian Revolt, which precipitated the Persian Wars, Darius took an interest in the maritime borders of his empire, and he established Aginis (Ampe) on the site of Teredon. The extent of Achaemenid involvement in Persian Gulf navigation in the early centuries of the empire is difficult to judge. However in the late fourth century BCE Alexander the Great’s admiral Nearchus recorded the names of sixteen Persian river and coastal ports, and described navigational aids near an island about 150 miles from the Shatt al-Arab, where “the shallows … were marked on either side by poles driven down, just as in the strait between the islands of Leucas and Acarnania [in the Ionian Sea just north of Ithaca] signposts have been set up for navigators to prevent the ships grounding in the shallows.”
Navigation on the Persian Gulf was not as vital to the Achaemenids in the sixth century BCE as it would become, perhaps because it was overshadowed by the commerce of the Mediterranean and Red Seas. In Egypt, Darius may have completed the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea first attempted by Necho II in the previous century, and he commissioned Scylax of Caryanda (in Asia Minor) to sail from the Indus to the Red Sea. Scylax hugged the coast of Pakistan and Iran, crossed the Gulf of Oman to the Arabian Peninsula, and, according to Herodotus, “after a voyage of some thirty months reached the place from which [Necho II] had sent out the Phoenicians” to circumnavigate Africa. Scylax wrote an account of his voyage, but this earliest known description of these waters has not survived.
Darius died before his apparent ambition to initiate sea trade between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf bore fruit, and his successors had little interest in following his lead. The next comparable effort was the initiative of Alexander, Darius’s heir in spirit if not in fact. After heeding the wishes of his troops to halt his eastward march at the Indus River in 325 BCE, Alexander divided his force in three. Two armies returned to the former Persian capital of Susa overland, while Nearchus was commissioned to sail from the Indus to the Persian Gulf. According to Nearchus, “Alexander had a vehement desire to sail the sea … from India to Persia; but feared lest … his whole fleet might be destroyed; and this, being no small blot on his great achievements, might wreck all his happiness.” After building a fleet of triremes and other craft, the Greeks waited at the city Alexander founded at Patala (or Potana, near Hyderabad, Pakistan) until “the trade winds had sunk to rest, which continue blowing from the Ocean to the land all the summer season, and hence render the voyage impossible.”
The prevailing winds change around the world between winter and summer, but nowhere is this more apparent than in the Monsoon Seas of the Indian Ocean and East and Southeast Asia, where the prevailing winds shift from northeast to southwest.
This is actually a description of the southwest monsoon, the stronger of two seasonal winds—“monsoon” comes from the Arabic, mawsim, meaning “season”—that dictated sailing schedules across the Indian Ocean and the waters of Southeast and East Asia until the development of the steam engine. The monsoons are determined by the relative temperatures of the Asian landmass and the Indian Ocean. In summer, warm air rising over the land creates a high-pressure system that draws strong winds and often torrential rains from the southwest. High winds batter the coasts of the Indian subcontinent and inhibit even coastal navigation, and several times a decade tropical cyclones with winds in excess of 150 kilometers per hour devastate the northern end of the Bay of Bengal. In winter, when the land is colder than the water, a low-pressure system over the Indian Ocean draws the northeast monsoon winds from China and Japan toward the Strait of Malacca, and from South Asia toward Africa. The seasonal variation in wind direction and intensity had a far greater impact on navigation than did the distances involved. Sailors did not hesitate to sail across two thousand miles of open ocean between Aden and southern India or Sri Lanka, but they did so only when the winds were in their favor.a
Nearchus’s fleet of eight hundred “ships of war, merchantmen and horse transports” sailed in stages along the coast of Pakistan and Iran, before turning into the Persian Gulf. Hugging the eastern shore, they reached the head of the gulf and proceeded up the Pasitigris River to rendezvous with Alexander at Susa. Shortly before his death the next year, Alexander dispatched three other expeditions with a view to establishing a connection between the gulf and the Red Sea. Two explored the Persian Gulf, but no farther, while a third, under Anaxicrates, sailed down the Red Sea to the south coast of Yemen, the source of most of the aromatic gums, resins, frankincense, and myrrh so important in religious rituals. Red Sea trade would grow rapidly in the following century, but for the moment the long south coast of the Arabian Peninsula between the Red Sea and Persian Gulf remained all but unknown to outsiders.
Following Alexander’s death, the territory of the erstwhile Persian Empire was divided ultimately among the Seleucids and the Indo-Greek kingdoms of Bactria (in Afghanistan) and Gandhara (Pakistan). The Seleucids controlled the Persian Gulf and as we have seen maintained diplomatic relations with the Mauryan court of Chandragupta and Bindusara, their best known ambassador being Megasthenes. The importance of the Persian Gulf to the Seleucids is seen in their establishment of garrisons on the islands of Failaka (off Kuwait) and Bahrain. Given the lack of a military threat to their power from anywhere around the gulf, their motive may have been to protect trade from pirates and other hazards, as did the controller of shipping mentioned in the Arthasastra. A letter of 288/287 BCE detailing a donation by Seleucus to a temple in Ionia hints at the enormous revenues generated from the empire’s foreign trade: “ten talents [300 kilograms] of frankincense, one talent of myrrh, two minae [1.8 kg] of cassia, two minae of cinnamon, two minae of costus [a flowering plant related to ginger].”
These amounts pale in comparison with the ransom paid to save the prosperous northern Arabian trading city of Gerrha. When Antiochus the Great threatened to attack from the sea in 205 BCE, the Gerrhaeans purchased peace for “five hundred talents of silver, a thousand talents of frankincense, and two hundred talents of the so-called ‘stacte’ [oil of myrrh or cinnamon].” The only other Seleucid naval campaign on the Persian Gulf took place when “The governor of Mesene appointed by King Antiochus, Numenius, here won a battle against the Persians with his fleet” on the Musandam peninsula. (Which of the ten Seleucid kings named Antiochus Numenius served is unknown, although most opinion favors Antiochus IV [175–164 BCE].) Despite their victory, the balance of power soon shifted to the Parthians of northeast Persia, who achieved independence from the Seleucids in 247 BCE, and about a century later established an empire that would endure in Persia and Mesopotamia into the third century ce.
Neither Seleucid nor Parthian influence in the Persian Gulf seems to have translated into firm political control. In 141 BCE, a Seleucid satrap asserted the independence of a Shatt al-Arab port he named for himself Charax
Spasinou, “the palisade of Hyspaosines.” He extended his rule as far north as Babylonia, but after his death the Characene kingdom was reduced to the extreme south of Mesopotamia before being drawn into the orbit of the Parthians. Charax Spasinou’s subsequent political status is uncertain, but it seems to have survived as a semiautonomous kingdom known not only to traders of the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, but even to the Chinese, who called it Tiaozhi. Its fame depended on its merchants’ role as middlemen in the Indian Ocean, alongside merchants of Gerrha and Sabae, in Yemen. An inland capital near the modern city of Marib, Sabae was said to be so heavily perfumed with the fragrance of incense-bearing trees that “the people are made torpid by the aromatic plants [and] they cure their sluggishness by means of a fumigation of resin and goat’s beard.” The source of these scents was the forests of myrrh, frankincense, balsam, cinnamon, and cassia trees of the southern Arabian Peninsula. In addition to sailing east, the Sabaeans traded with the coast of Africa “using large rafts.… Not a few of the Sabaeans also employ boats made of skins.”
Sabae’s commercial longevity was astonishing. While it is sometimes equated with the biblical Sheba, the oldest account of its legendary wealth is found in On the Erythraean Sea, a second-century BCE geographical treatise by Agatharchides of Cnidus, one of the earliest extant sources of information about Indian Ocean commerce in antiquity. Written around 140 BCE, but based largely on older sources, it offers a valuable summary of exploration in the reigns of Ptolemy II and Ptolemy III. (Erythraean, meaning “red,” was the name given by the Greeks to the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea, which they also called the Arabian Gulf.) Agatharchides wrote “This tribe surpasses in wealth and all the various forms of extravagance not only the nearby Arabs but also the rest of mankind.” They were still at it seven centuries later, when a Buddhist monk named Faxian visited Sri Lanka and reported, “The houses of the Sa-poh [Sabaean] merchants are very beautifully adorned.” In the meantime, their long-distance trade catered to the wants of Ptolemaic Egypt and their prosperity was not remotely threatened until the Romans attempted to invade southern Arabia in the first century ce.
Ptolemaic Egypt and the Indian Ocean
If the Persian Gulf was a natural conduit for commerce between Mesopotamia and India, the Red Sea held less promise for long-distance trade. Apart from frankincense and myrrh in Yemen, the products of its shores were few, and it was far removed from the abundant commodities and luxuries of South Asia and the Persian Gulf. The difficulties of bucking the sea’s northerly winds, navigating its numerous shoals and reefs, and surviving the harsh environment ashore hindered the development of any but the most extraordinary trade. With an average annual rainfall of only four millimeters in the north, water and vegetation were scarce, and most provisions had to be imported from the Nile valley or from abroad. In the pharaonic period, the costs involved were too great to be borne by private merchants, and even pharaohs attempted to reach the riches of Punt, Ophir, and Sheba via sea only occasionally. The Red Sea boasted no equivalent to Charax Spasinou; indeed, in the words of a modern archaeologist, “The Red Sea ports were surprisingly squalid places,” and their remains are difficult to discern in the barren landscape.
The Ptolemaic kings who ruled Egypt for the three centuries after the death of Alexander were the first to take a sustained interest in the Red Sea trade. How much shipping there was when Alexander ordered Anaxicrates to sail there is unknown, but in 287 BCE a Ptolemaic squadron defeated Nabataean pirates in the Gulf of Aqaba, so by that time the volume was sufficient to attract predators and merit protection. Egyptian interest in the region grew considerably under Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who hoped to replenish his dwindling supply of war elephants, which the Greeks first encountered during Alexander’s eastern campaigns. At the battle of Gaza in 312 BCE, Ptolemy I captured some of the elephants that Chandragupta had given to Seleucus, but these failed to breed. Although Ashoka exchanged ambassadors with Ptolemy II and may have discussed gifts of war elephants, shipping them across the Indian Ocean to circumvent the Seleucids was probably judged impractical, though not necessarily impossible. As an alternative, Ptolemy II began to import elephants from East Africa. Even this comparatively short-haul trade required significant improvements to navigation, including, perhaps, reopening the canal between the Nile and the Gulf of Suez, and establishing ports on the Red Sea. In the 260s BCE the first load of elephants was shipped 300 nautical miles from Ptolemaïs of the Hunts (about 50 miles south of modern Port Sudan) to Berenike, a port sheltered from the north winds by the Ras Banas peninsula. Other early Ptolemaic ports included Arsinöe (named for Ptolemy’s wife) in the vicinity of modern Port Suez, and Myos Hormos (Quseir al-Qadim), due east of Coptos and about 160 miles north of Berenike and 270 south of Suez. From Berenike, the elephants were led through the wadis of the Eastern Desert to Aswan, a twelve-day journey, and then shipped downriver to Memphis. Although there are references to “elephant carriers” (elephantegos) in classical sources, how these vessels differed in design from other merchant ships and where they were built are unknown.
The elephant trade was a dangerous business on an unforgiving sea. In a grim account reminiscent of the Old Kingdom story “The Shipwrecked Sailor,” Agatharchides describes the loss of an elephant ship south of Port Sudan, where
the sea, being all shoals, is found to be not more than three fathoms [5.5 meters] in depth and extremely green in color.… The region presents no problems for oared ships as waves do not come in from afar, and it furnishes abundant fishing. But the elephant transports, which ride deep in the water because of their weight and are burdened with their gear, encounter great and terrible dangers in these areas. For running with sails set and often continuing through the night, because of strong winds, they are wrecked when they run aground on the rocks and submerged bars. The sailors are unable to disembark because generally the water is deeper than the height of a man. When they do not succeed in saving their ship with their poles, they throw overboard everything except the food. If they do not escape in this way, they fall into great despair because there is neither island nor headland nor another ship to be seen in the vicinity. For these places are completely inhospitable and rarely do people sail through them in ships.
The great dangers notwithstanding, the Ptolemies pursued elephants for their ivory as well as for warfare, and as herds were killed off hunters moved ever southward, establishing new ports at Adulis (Massawa, Eritrea), and south of the Bab al-Mandeb. By the 240s BCE, Ptolemy III had a force of some three hundred war elephants, but the African breed proved no match for the Seleucid animals and the hunt for war elephants was abandoned by the end of the century.
Even more important as a source of revenue for the imperial coffers was the luxury trade with southern Arabia and India, over which the Ptolemies exercised a tight monopoly. The nature of this trade is laid out by Agatharchides, who describes a mature network of trade down the Red Sea and across the western Indian Ocean. Once through the Bab al-Mandeb, ships may have called at the island of Socotra, about five hundred miles east of Aden, and the name of which comes from the Sanskrit Sukhataradvipa, meaning “fortunate” or “most pleasant” island. Agatharchides describes the bustle of Socotra where “one can see riding at anchor merchant vessels from neighboring countries. Most of those encountered there are from the port [Patala] Alexander built by the Indus River. Not a few, however, come from Persia and Carmania [southern Iran] and the whole nearby region.” Later, the western terminus of this Indian Ocean trade was on the African mainland, at Malaô (Berbera, Somalia) or farther east on the Horn of Africa at a place called Mosyllon.
The period in which Agatharchides wrote was a turning point in the development of Indian Ocean trade. One theory holds that this is when a Ptolemaic sailor named Hippalus “discovered” the monsoon winds, although for indigenous sailors the monsoons were a fact of life and Nearchus had ascribed his delay in sailing from the Indus to seasonal winds almost two hundred years befo
re. Government-sponsored trade between Egypt and India seems to have begun in the closing decades of the third century BCE, after a shipwrecked Indian merchant was rescued on the Red Sea and brought to Alexandria. Restored to health, “he promised to act as guide on the trip to India for the men who had been previously selected by the king.” Eudoxus of Cyzicus was probably the captain chosen for this expedition. He is said to have returned from India with perfumes and precious stones only to have them confiscated by Ptolemy VII. Eudoxus made a second voyage under the auspices of Ptolemy’s widow. “But on his return voyage he was driven south of his course by the winds to the south of Ethiopia, and being driven to certain places he conciliated the people by sharing with them bread, wine, and dried figs (for they had no share of such things), and in return therefore he received a supply of freshwater and the guidance of pilots, and he also made a list of some of their words.”
If on this second voyage Eudoxus sailed from India on the northeast monsoon and without an experienced navigator, he could easily have been driven south of his intended destination. At the same time, the fact that he could hire pilots on the African coast shows that he was still within the orbit of an active maritime trading world. Upon reaching Egypt, his goods were again confiscated. He managed to keep the stempost of a vessel he had found on the African coast and that sailors in Alexandria told him was from a hippoi, a vessel peculiar to Carthaginian Gadir in Spain. On the strength of this, Eudoxus concluded that Carthaginians must have sailed around Africa from west to east, so he fitted out an expedition at his own expense and sailed for the Atlantic via Puteoli and Gadir. Frustrated by contrary winds in the Atlantic, he returned to Spain. Around 100 BCE, he outfitted a second expedition and sailed into oblivion.
The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World Page 21
