During the time of the Periplus, Roman ships on African voyages did not generally sail beyond the Horn. Distant trade connections continued down the east coast of the continent, but these routes were managed by Arab merchants who sailed in small dhow-like vessels with lateen sails. Some of these Arab trade runs extended hundreds of miles down the east coast of Africa to markets and trade outposts in Kenya and Tanzania. One of the main products shipped through this route were the large tusks of Bush Elephants hunted on the African Savannah. These supplies became more important as hunting operations in North Africa brought Forest Elephants closer to extinction. Pliny reports that by AD 77, ‘only India can supply an ample supply of tusks, as luxury has reduced all other stocks’.104
Early Roman merchants knew from Arab traders about a route down the eastern seaboard of Africa. Ships sailing south passed a series of steep cliffs on the African coast known as the ‘Small and Great Cliffs of Azania’. It took six days to sail past these heights with ships averaging about fifty miles during daylight hours and mooring offshore at night. The following coast, known as the ‘Small and Great Beaches’, was also desolate and devoid of towns. It took a further six days to sail along this long featureless stretch of the African coast.105
Past the beaches, the route was divided into a long series of runs between various river-mouths and natural harbours. Each of these courses could be completed in about a day’s sailing beginning with the Sarapion Run and then the Nikon Run. The Periplus explains that each part of the sequence ‘is separated by daily stops and there are seven runs to the Pyralaoi Islands and the place called the Canal’. The Pyralaoi Islands are the Lamu Archipelago which is separated from the mainland by a narrow stretch of water.106 The islands are a thousand miles from Opone, which corresponds to a voyage of about twenty days.
Ships reaching the Pyralaoi Islands sailed south for two days on a course divided between four separate night and day runs. This took them down the Kenyan coast to a large island named Menuthias that must have been either Pemba or Zanzibar.107 The Periplus describes Menuthias as a low-lying island with rivers and woodland that offered habitat to a wide variety of birds. There were also large monitor lizards on the island, which the Romans described as ‘crocodiles that are not harmful to people’. Mountain tortoises were found inland and turtle was hunted on the coast by local people operating from dugout canoes and small craft that had timber hulls fastened with flexible wooden-cord (‘sewn-boats’). The islanders were skilled at fishing and the Periplus reports ‘they have their own way of capturing turtles with baskets, which they lower into the sea instead of nets’.108
Two runs, or about 100 miles, beyond Menuthias was a trade-station called Rhapta. Rhapta was on the Tanzanian coast and the Periplus calls the outpost ‘the very last port of trade on the coast of Azania’ (East Africa).109 Local African ships brought turtle and tortoiseshell to the port and this accounted for the name of the settlement, ‘Rhapta’ meaning ‘Sewn’. The Periplus describes how the indigenous people in this part of Africa were ‘very big-bodied men who are tillers of the soil and each place has its own chief’.110
Rhapta was more than 1,400 miles, or 24 day’s sail, from Opone on the Horn of Africa. But despite this distance the settlement was managed by Arab traders and was considered the possession of a Saba-Himyarite King who held power in Yemen. Rhapta carried on regular trade with a port in southwest Arabia called Muza which was near the entrance to the Red Sea. The Periplus reports that ‘they send merchant craft from Muza to Rhapta staffed mostly with Arab skippers and agents. Through continual transactions and intermarriage these Arabs have become familiar with the area and the local language.’ By AD 50 a consortium of merchants from Muza were running Rhapta as a business and had purchased the royal charter to collect taxes at the port.111
The Periplus reports that Rhapta traded ‘great quantities of ivory and turtle-shell’. Bush elephant tusk is relatively dense and difficult to carve, so the ivory stocks at Rhapta are described as ‘large volume, but inferior to the product from Adulis’. By contrast the turtle-shell was high-quality and considered the ‘best product after the Indian variety’. Dealers at Rhapa also received rhinoceros horn and a small quantity of nautilus shell.112 This shell was sought after by Roman craftsmen as a veneer that displayed beautiful geometric shapes with a pearl-like lustre.
Arab merchants offered traders at Rhapta weapons and tools from Muza including spears, axes, knives and small awls (a pointed tool for boring holes in wood or leather). They also traded ‘numerous types of glass stones’ which were probably replica gems produced in the Roman Empire and passed on to Arab dealers. Merchants from Muza shipped large quantities of grain and wine to Rhapta which they freely offered to visiting traders and gifted to African communities near the port. The Periplus explains that this cargo was ‘not for trade and is given to ensure the goodwill of the Barbaroi’.113
Claudius Ptolemy explains how Roman merchants gained knowledge of the route to Rhapta in the period after the Periplus was written (AD 50-150). He describes how a Greek captain named Diogenes was blown off course on an ocean voyage back from India. Diogenes made landfall below the Horn of Africa and was unable to sail north because of the strong oncoming winter winds. He therefore took the opportunity to sail south to explore the east coast of Africa and made contact with Rhapta. Ptolemy explains, ‘Diogenes was one of those people who sail to India and he was returning for the second time when he was driven back from the Aromatic Lands by the wind. He therefore sailed south.’114
This route was charted by another Roman captain named Theophilos who took twenty days to sail from the Horn of Africa to Rhapta. By this period there were two new settlements on the east coast of Somalia known as Apocopa and Essina. There was also a new trade port beyond the Small and Great Beaches called Sarapionis. Ptolemy describes Sarapionis as an emporium and a ‘station’ meaning that it was probably established by one of the regimes in southern
Arabia. Beyond Sarapionis was a ‘market-place’ called Tonice which was on the Nikon Run. Ptolemy calls the Far-Side ports ‘market-places’, so perhaps Tonice had a similar Unction. It was probably an indigenous settlement subject to a local chief who approved a gathering place for exchanges with foreign merchants. By the second century AD, Rhapta had become a regional capital and is described by Ptolemy as the ‘metropolis of Barbaria’.115
A papyrus letter dated to 5 June AD 97 reveals the concerns of a merchant who had just returned from a long-distance voyage down the east coast of Africa. The merchant was in charge of several ships that returned late in the season as the Red Sea trade winds were shifting against incoming vessels.116 The merchant informed his master that ‘the winds are against us and the boats stalled from entering the harbour at Berenice for five hours’. He retained some of the outbound cargo of multi-coloured cloaks and ‘aboard the boat there are still varieties of ‘‘parrot’’ fabric left over by the berbers’. The long voyage and late sailing gave him little time to restock before the next expedition and to his dismay the new cargo was not waiting in its designated place. He writes, ‘you did not prepare the blankets. But with the help of the gods, I shall go forth quickly. Be well.’117
Roman vessels making the voyage to Rhapta took at least sixty days to reach a location that was nearly 3,000 miles from the Empire.118 This was the limit of Roman ventures along the east coast of Africa and the seaboard beyond Rhapta was unknown territory. Roman captains speculated that the African continent ended somewhere beyond Rhapta and believed it was possible to sail from the Indian Ocean into the Atlantic Sea. The Periplus explains that ‘beyond Rhapta lies an unexplored ocean that bends to the west and extends along southern Africa, beyond Ethiopia and Libya, to join with the western sea’.119 But Roman captains had no incentive to explore this route and the Red Sea offered them a fast and easy route back to the Empire.
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