Evaluating the Evidence 4.3: The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
A periplus was a manuscript that described a shoreline, along with ports and the distance between them; it was similar to the sailing logs used until the advent of modern navigation technology, or to the driving directions found through map Web sites today. The earliest peripli that survive (in later copies) date from the fifth century B.C.E. This particular periplus, written by a Greek-speaking merchant of Alexandria in the first century C.E., describes the coasts of the Red Sea, eastern Africa, and India, all of which the author appears to have visited personally.
1. Of the designated ports on the Erythraean Sea, and the market-towns around it, the first is the Egyptian port of Mussel Harbor. To those sailing down from that place, on the right hand, after eighteen hundred stadia [about two hundred miles], there is Berenice. The harbors of both are at the boundary of Egypt, and are bays opening from the Erythraean Sea.
2. On the right-hand coast next below Berenice is the country of the Berbers [or Barbaroi, that is, people who do not speak Greek]. . . . [A]nd behind them, further inland, in the country toward the west, there lies a city called Meroe. . . .
6. There are imported into these places, undressed cloth made in Egypt for the Berbers; robes from Arsinoe; cloaks of poor quality dyed in colors; double-fringed linen mantles; many articles of flint glass, and others of murrhine [a substance used to make glass], made in Diospolis; and brass, which is used for ornament and in cut pieces instead of coin; sheets of soft copper, used for cooking-utensils and cut up for bracelets and anklets for the women; iron, which is made into spears used against the elephants and other wild beasts, and in their wars. Besides these, small axes are imported, and adzes and swords; copper drinking-cups, round and large; a little coin for those coming to the market; wine of Laodicea [southern Turkey] and Italy, not much; olive oil, not much; for the king, gold and silver plate made after the fashion of the country, and for clothing, military cloaks, and thin coats of skin, of no great value. Likewise from the district of Ariaca [in India] across this sea, there are imported Indian iron, and steel, and Indian cotton cloth; the broad cloth called monaché and that called sagmatogênê, and girdles [wide belts], and coats of skin and mallow-colored cloth, and a few muslins, and colored lac [lacquer ware]. There are exported from these places ivory, and tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-horn. . . .
8. After Avalites there is another market-town, better than this, called Malao, distant a sail of about eight hundred stadia. The anchorage is an open roadstead, sheltered by a spit running out from the east. Here the natives are more peaceable. There are imported into this place the things already mentioned, and many tunics, cloaks from Arsinoe, dressed and dyed; drinking-cups, sheets of soft copper in small quantity, iron, and gold and silver coin, not much. There are exported from these places myrrh, a little frankincense (that known as far-side), the harder cinnamon, duaca, Indian copal and macir, which are imported into Arabia; and slaves, but rarely.
- What types of merchandise are being traded along the east coast of Africa, and for what purposes?
- What does this document suggest about consumers in the Hellenistic world, including those in Africa?
Source: Wilfred H. Schoff, trans., The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912), pp. 22, 24–25.
