Author:
Publication: Popular-Science.Net
Date: April 1, 2004
URL: http://popular-science.net/history/india_egypt_trade_route.html
Archaeologists from UCLA and the
University of Delaware have unearthed the most extensive remains to date
from sea trade between India and Egypt during the Roman Empire, adding
to mounting evidence that spices and other exotic cargo traveled into Europe
over sea as well as land.
"These findings go a long way toward
improving our understanding of the way in which a whole range of exotic
cargo moved into Europe during antiquity," said Willeke Wendrich, an assistant
professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA and co-director
of the project. "When cost and political conflict prevented overland transport,
ancient mariners took to the Red Sea, and the route between India and Egypt
appears to have been even more productive than we ever thought."
"The Silk Road gets a lot of attention
as a trade route, but we've found a wealth of evidence indicating that
sea trade between Egypt and India was also important for transporting exotic
cargo, and it may have even served as a link with the Far East," added
fellow co-director Steven E. Sidebotham, a history professor at the University
of Delaware.
Wendrich and Sidebotham report their
findings in the July issue of the
scholarly journal Sahara.
For the past eight years, the researchers
have led an international team of archaeologists who have excavated Berenike,
a long- abandoned Egyptian port on the Red Sea near the border with Sudan.
Among the buried ruins of buildings
that date back to Roman rule, the team discovered vast quantities of teak,
a wood indigenous to India and today's Myanmar, but not capable of growing
in Egypt, Africa or Europe. Researchers believe the teak, which dates to
the first century, came to the desert port as hulls of shipping vessels.
When the ships became worn out or damaged beyond repair, Berenike residents
recycled the wood for building materials, the researchers said. The team
also found materials consistent with ship-patching activities, including
copper nails and metal sheeting.
"You'd expect to find woods native
to Egypt like mangrove and acacia," Sidebotham said. "But the largest amount
of wood we found at Berenike was teak."
In addition to this evidence of
seafaring activities between India and
Egypt, the archaeologists uncovered
the largest array of ancient Indian goods ever found along the Red Sea,
including the largest single cache of black pepper from antiquity - 16
pounds - ever excavated in the former Roman Empire. The team dates these
peppercorns, which were grown only in South India during antiquity, to
the first century. Peppercorns of the same vintage have been excavated
as far away as Germany.
"Spices used in Europe during antiquity
may have passed through this port," Wendrich said.
In some cases, Egypt's dry climate
even preserved organic material from India that has never been found in
the more humid subcontinent, including sailcloth dated to between A.D.
30 and 70, as well as basketry and matting from the first and second centuries.
In a dump that dates back to Roman
times, the team also found Indian coconuts and batik cloth from the first
century, as well as an array of exotic gems, including sapphires and glass
beads that appear to come from Sri Lanka, and carnelian beads that appear
to come from India.
Three beads found on the surface
of excavation sites in Berenike suggested even more exotic origins. One
may have come from eastern Java, while the other two appear to have come
either from Vietnam or Thailand, but the team has been unable to date any
of them.
While the researchers say it is
unlikely that Berenike traded directly with eastern Java, Vietnam or Thailand,
they say their discoveries raise the possibility that cargo was finding
its way to the Egyptian port from the Far East, probably via India.
The team also found the remains
of cereal and animals indigenous to
sub-Saharan Africa, pointing to
the possibility of a three-point trade route that took goods from southern
Africa to India and then back across the Indian Ocean to Egypt.
"We talk today about globalism as
if it were the latest thing, but trade was going on in antiquity at a scale
and scope that is truly impressive," said Wendrich, who made most of her
contributions as a post-doctoral fellow at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
"These people were taking incredible risks with their lives and fortune
to make money."
Along with the rest of Egypt, Berenike
was controlled by the Roman Empire during the first and second centuries.
During the same period, the overland route to Europe from India through
Pakistan, Iran and Mesopotamia (today's Iraq) was controlled by adversaries
of the Roman Empire, making overland roads difficult for Roman merchants.
Meanwhile, Roman texts that address the relative costs of different shipping
methods describe overland transport as at least 20 times more expensive
than sea trade.
"Overland transport was incredibly
expensive, so whenever possible people in antiquity preferred shipping,
which was vastly cheaper," Sidebotham said.
With such obstacles to overland
transport, the town at the southernmost tip of the Roman Empire flourished
as a "transfer port," accepting cargo from India that was later moved overland
and up the Nile to Alexandria, the researchers contend. Poised on the edge
of the Mediterranean Sea, Alexandria has a well-documented history of trade
with Europe going back to antiquity.
Over the course of the grueling
project, the researchers retraced a route that they believe would have
moved cargo from Berenike into Europe. Wendrich and Sidebotham contend
cargo was shipped across the Indian Ocean and north through the Red Sea
to Berenike, which is located about 160 miles east of today's Aswan Dam.
They believe the goods were then carried by camels or donkeys some 240
miles northeast to the Nile River, where smaller boats waited to transport
the cargo north to Alexandria. Cargo is known to have moved during antiquity
from Alexandria across the Mediterranean to a dozen major Roman ports and
hundreds of minor ones.
The team believes that Berenike
was the biggest and most active of six ports in the Red Sea until some
point after A.D. 500, when shipping activities mysteriously stopped.
Shipping activities at Berenike
were mentioned in ancient texts that were rediscovered in the Middle Ages,
but the port's precise location eluded explorers until the early 19th century.
The former port's proximity to an Egyptian military base kept archaeologists
at bay until 1994, when Wendrich and Sidebotham made the first successful
appeal for a large-scale excavation. At the time, Egyptian officials, eager
to develop the Red Sea as a tourist destination, had started to relax prohibitions
against foreign access to the region. But the area's isolation remains
a challenge for the team, which has to truck in food and water, and to
power computers and microscopes with solar panels.
"The logistics are really tough
there," said Wendrich, who is affiliated
with the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
at UCLA.
The Berenike project received major
funding from the Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research. The National
Geographic Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Utopa Foundation,
Gratama Foundation and the Kress Foundation also provided support, as did
private donors.
