The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (30 page)

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.

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 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 before. 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 difficulties Eudoxus faced with his royal patrons notwithstanding, Egypt was now open to the Indian Ocean trade, which flourished to such an extent that special officials were appointed to guard against piracy on the Red Sea. Apart from this, we know little of how the trade was conducted. Whether the majority of the traders at this time were from
Egypt and the Mediterranean or from the Indian Ocean; whether
Egyptian and Hellenistic merchants sailed in their own ships, in those of Indian or Arabian traders, or both; the volume of the trade; or the profits either to individuals or, in the form of taxes and duties, to the government—all these questions remain for the most part unanswered.

Even after the opening of the Nile–Red Sea canal under Ptolemy II, traders bound for Egypt usually sailed only as far as Berenike, and sometimes
Myos Hormos, but rarely up the
Gulf of Suez to
Arsinöe. Thus neglected, by the middle of the first century
BCE
the Ptolemaic canal was impassable. Had it been maintained, the course of Egyptian and Roman history might well have followed a different trajectory. Following the
battle of Actium,
Cleopatra hoped to elude capture by crossing the
Isthmus of Suez and establishing Ptolemaic rule somewhere on the Red Sea. When Marc
Antony caught up with her in Alexandria, “
he found Cleopatra venturing upon a hazardous and great undertaking … to raise her fleet out of water and drag the ships across [the Isthmus of Suez], and after launching them in the
Arabian Gulf with much money and a large force, to settle in parts outside of Egypt, thus escaping war and servitude.” Rome’s Nabataean allies burned several of her ships and, succumbing to Antony’s assurances that all was not lost, she abandoned the effort. Events proved Antony wrong. Within the year both he and Cleopatra were dead, and Rome annexed Egypt.