|
 Archaeologists
Uncover
Ancient Maritime
Spice Route
Between India, Egypt
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.
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