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NY Times, July 9, 2002Under Centuries of Sand, a Trading HubBy JOHN NOBLE WILFORDSouth of Suez, the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea used to be sprinkled withports that throbbed with life and commerce in antiquity, especially theheyday of the Roman Empire. But long ago, the relentless desert buriedtheir remains so completely that it was almost beyond imagination thatthese places once were pivotal links in a maritime trade route that rivaledthe better-known overland Silk Road. From here ships ventured down the coast to Ethiopia and Somalia and beyond,bringing back ivory and tortoise shells, drugs and slaves. Other vesselsheaded for the southern shore of Arabia, mainly for frankincense and myrrh.The biggest ships sailed the monsoons to and from India to satisfy thebounding appetites in the Mediterranean world for spices, precious stonesand other exotic goods.So robust was the India trade 2,000 years ago that Emperor Tiberius,concerned over Rome's increasingly adverse balance of payments, complainedthat "the ladies and their baubles are transferring our money to foreigners."Perhaps the greatest of these ports in the India trade was Berenike, about600 miles south of Suez, near Egypt's border with Sudan. Historians knew ofit from written records. Yet nothing remained on the surface at the sereand forlorn site except some lines of coral and scattered potsherds, hardlysufficient to flesh out the bones of texts into a semblance of the seamenand merchants in their milieu at Berenike, in prosperity and decline overeight or nine centuries.But archaeologists, who in their own way can be as unrelenting as thedesert, have now completed eight years of excavations under harshconditions at Berenike and found what they say are the most extensiveremains so far from the ancient world's sea trade between East and West.Their spades uncovered building ruins, teak and metal from ships, sailcloth, sapphires and beads, wine and stores of peppercorns. Some of thegoods show that Berenike was trading, at least indirectly, with places asfar away as Thailand and Java. Inscriptions and other written materials in11 different languages, Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin, Coptic andSanskrit, attest to the cosmopolitan mix of people who lived in or passedthrough the town.The co-directors of excavations at Berenike � Dr. Steven E. Sidebotham, ahistorian at the University of Delaware, and Dr. Willeke Wendrich, anarchaeologist at the University of California at Los Angeles � said theresearch showed that the maritime trade route between India and Egypt inantiquity appeared to be even more productive and lasted longer thanscholars had thought.Also, it was not an overwhelmingly Roman enterprise, as had been generallyassumed. The researchers said artifacts at the site indicated that theships might have been built in India and were probably crewed by Indians."We talk today about globalism as if it were the latest thing, but tradewas going on in antiquity at a scale and scope that is truly impressive,"Dr. Wendrich said.The two researchers, working under the auspices of Egypt's Supreme Councilon Antiquities, reported their findings in this month's issue of thejournal Sahara. They also described their work in interviews and in arecent article in Minerva, a British magazine of ancient art and archaeology.Other archaeologists praised the Berenike discoveries as importantcontributions to the history of long-distance trade in the classical world.Dr. Lionel Casson, an author and a retired professor of classics at NewYork University, said, "It's nice to have archaeologists find concreteevidence for what is attested in the texts."In the scholarship of early maritime commerce, the Indian Ocean's role hasbeen eclipsed by the richer body of literary and archaeological evidencefor activity in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. And the Silk Road, anAsian network of camel caravan routes, is legendary as the primary culturaland commercial link between China and Europe between about 100 B.C. and the15th century."The Silk Road gets a lot of attention as a trade route, but we've found awealth of evidence indicating that sea trade between Egypt and India wasalso important for transporting exotic cargo, and it may have even servedas a link with the Far East," Dr. Sidebotham said.As developed by Greeks and Egyptians, then expanded by the Romans, the RedSea ports served as transfer points for cargoes to and from India and otherplaces in Africa and Arabia. Goods unloaded at the ports were hauled bycamel train across the desert to the Nile, at Koptos, and carried by boatto Alexandria. From there they moved by ship to markets throughout theMediterranean basin.The course was reversed for exchange goods, wine and glass and finetableware, bound for Indian Ocean markets.Archaeologists are also investigating the probable sites of two otherEgyptian ports, Myos Hormos and Nechesia.At some ruins 100 miles north of Berenike, archaeologists led by Dr. JohnSeeger of Northern Arizona University, assisted by Dr. Sidebotham, areexcavating a building from the first or second century A.D. It could bepart of Nechesia, but no one can yet be sure.Dr. David Peacock, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton inEngland, is more certain that he and colleagues have, by examining literarytexts and satellite photographs, identified the site of Myos Hormos. It is200 miles north of Berenike, near the present-day settlement of Quseir.Excavations there were started in the 1980's by Americans under Dr. DonWhitcomb of the University of Chicago, and a British team under Dr. Peacockhas worked there for the last four years. The place was definitely anancient port, Dr. Peacock said, but it was not until an inscribed piece ofpottery was recently uncovered that he could be sure "beyond reasonabledoubt" that this was indeed Myos Hormos. Both Myos Hormos and Berenike, also known as Berenice, were established inthe reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, in the early third century B.C., whenEgypt was under Greek influence. Berenike was named after the ruler's wife.Writing in "The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt," Dr. Peacock said: "Itappears that Myos Hormos was pre-eminent during the second century B.C. andthat Berenice began to rise in importance during the first century B.C. andbecame dominant in the first century A.D. The India trade was thusdeveloped in Ptolemaic times and the Romans merely took over and perhapsexpanded a well-established concern."The site of Berenike was rediscovered by European explorers in the early19th century. But it was so remote from settlements and supplies thatarchaeologists shied away, until Dr. Sidebotham and Dr. Wendrich came alongin 1994. Their excavations revealed that Berenike experienced three periodsof prosperity. The first was in the early Ptolemaic times, the third andsecond centuries B.C. Then after a century of decline, the port under theRomans enjoyed its second and greatest boom, in the late first century B.C.and through the first century A.D.An enormous Roman rubbish dump, covering some of the Ptolemaic ruins,yielded a variety of ancient Indian goods, ranging from Indian coconuts andbatik cloth to glass beads and gems. A pot held 16 pounds of peppercorns,one of the most common commodities. "If you find it in the trash, then theamount transported through the town must have been mind-boggling," Dr.Wendrich said.Dr. Sidebotham and Dr. Wendrich also reported finding a discarded customsarchive, which was written on potsherds reused as a kind of notepaper. Thisrevealed some of the trade procedures as well as goods. The archaeologists were especially intrigued by the large amounts of teak,a hardwood native to India, found in the ruins. They surmised that the teakarrived as hulls of ships. When ships were damaged beyond repair, the teakwas probably recycled in furniture or building materials. The presence ofso much teak also suggested to the researchers that many of ships werebuilt in India, one of the indications of a major Indian role in the trade. But Dr. Casson, a specialist in ancient maritime history, said it was alsopossible that the teak timber was shipped to Berenike and turned intovessels there. Written records refer to ships in the India trade beingamong the largest of the time. That means, Dr. Casson said, they could havebeen as long as 180 feet and capable of carrying 1,000 tons of cargo. Suchships had stout hulls and caught the wind with a huge square sail on astubby mainmast.An indispensable source of knowledge of the India trade is found in "ThePeriplus Maris Erythraei," the circumnavigation of the Red Sea, a bookwritten by an anonymous merchant or ship's captain in about the firstcentury. A recent translation and commentary was prepared by Dr. Casson andpublished in 1989 by Princeton University Press.A practical guide to mariners, the book described the Red Sea ports intheir prime and identified landmarks on the main trade routes. A round tripto India covered about 3,500 miles. Ships left Egypt in July to takeadvantage of strong summer winds out of the north in the Red Sea. Out inthe open ocean, ships were carried by the southwest monsoon, bound forArabia and across to India's northwest coast, at the port of Barygaza, orheaded directly across to Muziris on India's southwest coast.As the periplus author wrote of the southwest winds, "The crossing withthese is hard going but absolutely favorable and shorter."Returning, the ships usually departed in December or January to catch afavorable shift in winds. Still, they had to buck the prevailing northerlywinds in the Red Sea. This was the reason the ports were several hundredmiles south of Suez: better the long transfer of goods by camel and Nileboat than the battle against unceasing Red Sea winds.The rewards must have more than compensated for the risks and hardships,historians conclude. At times when adversaries blocked the Silk Road, theIndia sea trade was the only reliable alternative. At all times, historianssay, it cost less to ship by the sea route because it circumvented many ofthe Silk Road's middlemen with hands out for bribes and commissions.Yet the fortunes of Berenike were fickle, and it was long thought byhistorians that the port and town were abandoned in the third or fourthcenturies. Then the archaeologists digging there came upon a surprise.Prosperity had returned for a third time to Berenike, in the fourthcentury. Dr. Wendrich reported finding that an entire area on the seasidewas leveled and completely rebuilt and expanded. Sometime before the mid-sixth century, though, Berenike, its harbor siltedover, was finally abandoned for good, vanishing beneath the encroachingdesert. The reasons are unknown.Louis ProyectMarxism mailing list:http://www.marxmail.org