Frontiers in the Mediterranean-Indian Ocean Exchange Network: The Eastern Desert of Egypt and its Ports (original) (raw)
This collection of papers is based on a one-day conference held at Somerville College, Oxford on 29th May 1999. Around that time, a number of Fellows and doctoral students at the University of Oxford were conducting (or had recently completed) various research into topics both directly and tangentially related to the late antique economy and long-distance exchange in the East Mediterranean (fourth to seventh centuries A.D. in Greece, Cyprus, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Libya).l This seemed an opportune moment to bring various scholars 'out from the cold' to discuss and compare fresh and unpublished results. We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all the speakers for their hard work in preparing their presentations, and for finding the time in their busy schedules to transform them into publishable form.2 This project was supported morally and academically by several scholars: Bryan Ward-Perkins and Marlia Mango encouraged some of their doctoral students to present new work at the conference, and subsequently 'endorsed' its publication. Bryan Ward-Perkins also made invaluable comments about the text, graciously permitted us to coerce him into penning a summary, and generally supported all stages of the conference and publication unreservedly and with humour; our great appreciation is extended to him. James Howard-Johnston chaired the afternoon session of the conference with his usual aplomb and charm; everyone at the event was extremely pleased that he managed to fly back from Jerusalem in time to attend. The day would simply not have been the same without him. It is a great regret that illness deprived the conference of the sharp mind, energy, and depth of knowledge of John Lloyd (Lecturer in Roman Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, and doctoral supervisor to A. Wilson and S. Kingsley), who passed away the day after the conference. Dr. Lloyd's spirit did, however, affect the proceedings deeply: amphorae, quantification techniques, landscape archaeology, and urban economies were all themes which he was fascinated by and passionate about. As unassuming as he was, we would like to think that he would have been proud of how his legacy has been received by a younger generation. Thus, it is wholly appropriate that Andrew Wilson's paper is dedicated to John Lloyd (Dr. Wilson continues his work as the new Lecturer in Roman Archaeology at Oxford, and through the ongoing excavations at Euesperides/Benghazi in Libya). The conference was enthusiastically sponsored by Somerville College. Resources were generously made available from the Katharine and Leonard Woolley Fellowship Fund at Somerville, and we would like to sincerely thank Dame Fiona Caldicott (College Principal), Miriam Griffin, and all the committee for their support and interest. Somerville has an interesting tradition in Near Eastern archaeology, having educated the Biblical Archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, and bestowed a Fellowship on Prof. Claudine Dauphin (the renowned Byzantinist specialising in demography, society, vi Preface and mosaics in late antique Palestine). It is fitting that the conference should have been sponsored through the Woolley Fund because Leonard Woolley was a pioneer of late antique archaeology in the East Mediterranean in his own right: at the turn of the twentieth century, along with one T.E. Lawrence (subsequently ' of Arabia'), he surveyed the standing Byzantine ruins in the Negev Desert of southern Palestine on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund. Our continued awe at these impressive remains, and ongoing endeavours to understand how such an arid landscape was made to blossom, derives directly from their fieldwork and published results (The Wilderness of Zin, by C.L. Woolley and T.E. Lawrence 1914-1915-PEF Annual, 3rd. Volume). Thanks are also offered to Sandy Hellig for helping arrange the conference logistics; to Phillip Munday and the catering staff for their hard work organising lunch and refreshments; to Mark Merrony for the loan of his precious laptop; to Eric Cooper for assistance proofreading. As ever, thanks to our families for trying to understand the personal sacrifices which assembling such a volume requires. Finally, a word of appreciation to Classic FM for late night moments of sanity.
2024
The stark contrast of the desert, mountains, seas, and cataracts surrounding the fertile river valley creates a dramatic separation between Egypt and the rest of the world. Despite this physical – often pretended – barrier, Egypt has historically been deeply connected to the cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean, Western Asia, and Northeast Africa. These interactions have led to a complex intermingling of culture, materials, religions, ideas, and iconography, resulting in the emergence of new forms of cultural identity. The papers of this volume, presented to prof. Marilina Betrò, aim to explore various aspects of these interactions, spanning from the 3rd millennium BC to Roman and Medieval times, encompassing regions from Mesopotamia to the Levant, from Anatolia to the Aegean, and from the Roman Empire to Syria.
Trade Contacts and Cultural Exchange between Egypt and India in the Ptolemaic and Roman Period
2018
When speaking about Egypt’s cultural contacts, only the nearest Mediterranean, African and Near Eastern civilizations are usually taken into account. However, during the Greco-Roman period, Egypt also had direct contact with Ancient India via the Red Sea trade. While this fact is in princi‐ ple well known, these contacts are usually seen as relating to Greco-Roman trade. However, this trade was physically conducted via Egypt and conse‐ quently generated a cultural exchange between Egypt and India, a fact which has not yet elicited much study. This is perhaps due to the fact that specialists in Ancient History did not have a particular interest in Egypt, while Egyptol‐ ogists were for a long time not interested in the later epochs, believing that Egyptian culture had long since declined by then. As recent research has shown that Ancient Egyptian culture was alive and thriving until well into the Roman period, this question now needs to be re-evaluated. Egyptian Contacts to the East u...
2018
Freely available at: Available at: http://books.openedition.org/cdf/5252 Here the pdf of only the first 7 pages are uploaded. The Eastern Desert of Egypt, located between the Nile and the Red Sea, has a mean annual rainfall of just 5mm and is today classified as hyper-arid, and these arid conditions were already in place well before the start of the Roman period (Zahran and Willis 1992). Consequently, vegetation is sparse, except in some well-watered wadis, and the region has seen neither agriculture nor permanent occupation during the last 10,000 years. The Eastern Desert is, however, rich in precious resources, ranging from gold and emeralds used in jewellery and other valuable objects, to high quality stone used for building, for statuary, for baths, basins and sarcophagi, employed largely in imperial prestige projects. Additionally, one of the main wadis, the Wadi Hammamat, offers an accessible way through the mountains from the Nile to the Red Sea coast, and this route has been used at least since pharaonic times; in the Roman period it formed the main route to the port of Myos Hormos (Sidebotham et al. 2008). The scarcity of water, the extreme heat and the lack of locally available foodstuffs make for a harsh environment and travel in or through the region was and is difficult and unforgiving. Nevertheless, the region was a hive of activity during the early Roman period, with the development of two major ports for the trade with India (already established during the Ptolemaic period), several quarries and mines, as well as roads and service stations to supply these. The inhabitants of these sites came from both Egypt and other parts of the Roman Empire, and included soldiers and their superiors, specialist and unskilled workmen, crafts people, passing merchants, wives, prostitutes, and possibly some slaves (e.g. Cuvigny 2003a and b, 2005). So what was life like for the people working at the ports and quarries, and at the service stations? Were they living a life of bitter hardship, away from family and friends and without the trappings of standard aspects of Roman life? Were they far removed from Roman culture, living as they did in a remote region of the Empire? Or was their work so essential to the core of the Empire that they were well-integrated and provided for? During the last 30 years many archaeological projects have addressed this and other questions, and many of the results are presented in this volume. This paper focuses on one key aspect: food. What did the people working at these various sites eat and how did they obtain their food? How varied was their diet, do we see differences between the various sites, and how did their diet compare with that of people living in the Nile Valley and other parts of the Egypt? Here the botanical remains of foodstuffs, recovered in abundance from the rubbish heaps associated with the archaeological sites, are synthesized and discussed. Such remains are available from 10 sites, all dating to the 1st - early/mid-3rd century AD, though some were occupied before or after this. The supply of meat and other animal protein is discussed by Martine Leguilloux (this volume). N.B. Only first 7 pages are uploaded. Full text can be accessed at:
In the Midst of the “Great Green”: Egypto- Aegean Trade and Exchange
In Jeffrey Spier, Timothy Potts, and Sara E. Cole (eds.), Beyond the Nile. Egypt and the Classical World, Los Angeles (Getty Museum), pp. 24-28, 2018
The mid- second millennium BC was a period of unprecedented contact between Egypt and the Aegean. It was long thought that most of the contact between these two regions was indirect and largely controlled by Cypriote and Levantine middlemen. Recent discover-ies (for example, the Minoan- style frescoes at Tell el- Dab‘a and new interpretations of known material (such as the new reconstruction of the Gurob ship- cart model or the identification of Mycenaeans on a pictorial papyrus from Tell el- ‘Amarna have made this scenario increasingly tenuous; and evidence suggests that there was, in fact, significant direct contact between Egypt and the Aegean. The means by which this contact was maintained, however, still largely escape the archaeologist's gaze. Nonetheless, through analysis of contempo-rary texts and the archaeological record, it is possible to recon-struct some aspects of interstate contact, including the types of ships that were used and the people they may have carried, the sea routes traversed, and the persons and institutions that prompted the voyages across the “Great Green.”