In Roman times highly desirable trade goods from the East were shipped from southern India and Sri Lanka to Rome via Egypt. one reason that this trade was conducted by sea was to circumvent the overland Silk Route, the western end of which was controlled first by the Parthian kingdom and later by the Sassanian kingdom (which extended from what is now Iraq to the Indus Valley, the Hindu Kush Mountains and beyond). South Arabia and coastal Africa south of the Horn were also included in this trade network. The trade was of highly profitable luxury goods - including pearls, silk, exotic spices (especially pepper), incense, and medicinal plants. Large fleets of trading ships were financed by private merchants, with the Roman government benefiting from the high taxes collected on these imports (up to 50 percent).
Although the sea route would seem to be easier for the large-scale transport of these goods than the overland one from China and South Asia, large ships (up to 60 meters long) of some complexity to build and sail were needed to cross the Indian Ocean. Even with Roman shipbuilding technology, such voyages across the open sea were risky, as was shipping through the Red Sea, and pirates were also a big threat. In order to avoid the northerly winds on the Red Sea for much of the year and dangerous coral reefs, the eastern trade goods were unloaded at Roman ports in Egypt on the Red Sea, and then transported overland to the Nile Valley. As the terminus of this trade through Egypt, Alexandria greatly benefited economically, and from there the goods were shipped across the Mediterranean to Rome.
The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, written by an unknown author in the 1st century ad, is the most important text about this trade, including information about ports, routes, and items of trade - as well as often curious information about indigenous peoples and rulers of the visited regions. Two Egyptian sea ports are mentioned in the Periplus, Myos Hormos (now thought to be the site of Quseir el-Qadim), and Berenike in the south, which was first located in the early 19th century by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Belzoni. Other classical sources list several more Roman ports on the Red Sea, of uncertain location.
Unlike the evidence of the Middle Kingdom port on the Red Sea at Mersa/Wadi Gawasis, where there were camps but no permanent settlement (see Box 7-A), the Roman Period ports there were permanently occupied towns. A major problem for pharaonic settlement along the Red Sea was a lack of fresh water, and even today fresh water is brought to towns along the Red Sea via a pipeline from the Nile. So the Roman ports on the Red Sea, which provided part of the structure for the overseas trade network with the East, could only have operated by solving the water-supply problem by digging deep wells in the desert wadis of the inland routes and bringing that water by some means to the ports. In addition, agriculture was not possible at these Red Sea ports. Although fishing and hunting desert fauna were possible, and small herds of cattle, sheep, and goats could be kept, it would have been necessary to bring many food supplies from the Nile Valley.
The port of Quseir el-Qadim was excavated 1978-1982, under the direction of Donald Whitcomb and Janet Johnson (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago), and more recently by David Peacock (University of Southampton). Quseir was first used in Roman times (1st-2nd centuries ad), and later in the Islamic period (13th-14th centuries), with a huge gap in occupation between these two phases. Texts on Roman Period artifacts excavated at Quseir are in Latin, Greek, Demotic (Egyptian), South Arabian, and Tamil (in Brahmi script, written in southern India).
Nabataean inscriptions have also been found carved on rock along a desert caravan route leading from Quseir. The Nabataean kingdom arose in the later first millennium Bc, with its capital at Petra (in present-day southwestern Jordan), which was a center for the caravan routes bringing exotic trade goods, especially frankincense and myrrh from southern Arabia, to the eastern Mediterranean region.
In its initial plan, Quseir was a Roman town, with blocks of buildings aligned along a cardo, the main north-south street. Commercial structures excavated by the Oriental Institute expedition include a large warehouse of the same type as built in Rome’s own port of Ostia, and a row of shops aligned along a street. There was also a fort (castellum), and a large lagoon formed the harbor.
Berenike was the southernmost Roman port in Egypt (about 260 kilometers east of Aswan), and, according to the Periplus, from there ships sailed to Adulis in the southern Red Sea, the port of the Aksumite state, which was located mainly in highland Ethiopia/Eritrea. Beginning in the 1990s, a joint University of Delaware/Leiden University expedition excavated at Berenike, under the direction of Steven Sidebotham and Willeke Wendrich. Recent excavations there have been conducted by a joint expedition of the University of Delaware and the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, Alexandria. Remains of the early town are Ptolemaic, lying beneath an enormous dump to the north of the Roman site. Port structures of the Roman Period include administrative and customs buildings, and warehouses. One warehouse room still contained a number of amphoras which date to ca. ad 400 - and an ostraca with a garbled South Arabian/Ethiopic script, two scripts (and languages) written by the Aksumites. There was also a temple of Serapis on a hill on the town’s west side.
Different Indian and Persian Gulf wares have been excavated at Berenike, and Roman pottery from all over the Mediterranean - from Spain to Syria-Palestine - has been identified. Well-preserved organic remains, including over 1,200 peppercorns, coconut shells, rice, Indian resist-dyed textiles, and teak wood, as well as beads from regions in southeast Asia, attest to wide-ranging trade connections with the East via ports of trade in southern India. But incised black and red Nubian-like pottery also suggest the presence of Blemmyes, nomadic peoples known from textual sources from the late first millennium Bc onward, whose hostile presence in the Eastern and Western Deserts eventually led to the abandonment of many Roman Period sites there.
In the northern part of the Red Sea coast a late Roman fort was built at Abu Sha’ar, which has also been excavated by Steven Sidebotham (Figure 10.5). The fort was built in the early 4th century to defend the Roman frontier. The fort’s walls, which were 1.5 meters thick and
Figure 10.5 Plan of the fort at Abu Sha’ar as it appeared following the 1993 excavations. Source: K. A. Bard (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge, 1999, p. 85. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.
Up to 4 meters high, were made of local materials - cobbles from the Gebel Abu Sharer (ca. 5.5-6.0 kilometers to the west) and mud mortar. The fort has a rectangular plan (ca. 77.5 X 64 meters), with 12-13 towers made of blocks of gypsum in the four walls. Within the fort rectangular structures were laid out in blocks. These included storerooms, guard rooms, 54 barracks and other living quarters, and a kitchen with a large circular oven and food preparation and storage areas. The principia (headquarters) in the central part of the fort on the east side faced a columned street leading to the main west gate. By the early 5th century the fort was occupied by Christian monks or hermits, and the principia was converted into a church.
The Roman Red Sea ports could not have existed without well-established routes from the Nile Valley through the Eastern Desert. These were not paved roads, but tracks through Eastern Desert wadis that were the easiest routes across arid mountainous regions. Wells were dug in these wadis, and way-stations and fortified wells (hydreumata) were located at regular intervals. cairns and signal towers were also erected to guide the caravans along the major routes. The roads not only connected the river and sea ports, but some also led to mining and quarrying sites.
Built during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, the Via Hadriana began in Middle Egypt at Antinoopolis, headed eastward through the desert and then turned south along the sea toward Abu Sharer, continuing all the way south to Berenike. A road also led southwest from Berenike to the Wadi Kalalat, where there were both small forts and a very large one with a huge well (possibly the source of Berenikes fresh water), but this route did not continue to Aswan. Berenike was connected to Edfu via a desert route used in Ptolemaic times, but later the more frequently used route from Berenike was to Coptos. The desert road from Quseir/Myos Hormos also led to Coptos. Abu Sharer was also linked to the Nile Valley by a desert road leading to Qena/ Kainopolis, where there was a Roman emporium. This road was also the transport route into the Nile Valley for quarried stone from Mons Claudianus and Mons Porphyrites.
Located in the Eastern Desert mountains about 70 kilometers northwest of modern Hurghada, Mons Porphyrites (Gebel Dokhan) was excavated in the 1990s by David Peacock and Valerie Maxfield. Because of the site’s isolated location the excavators experienced many logistical difficulties - as there certainly were in Roman times. For the same reason the site has also been well preserved - until recent forays by tourists from resorts at Hurghada on the Red Sea.
Two main areas at Mons Porphyrites were occupied: a fort (castellum) in the central part of the quarrying sites, on a ridge above Wadi Abu Ma’amel, and another fort to the south known as Badia. Inscriptions on ostraca excavated at Mons Claudianus, about 50 kilometers to the south, indicate that Mons Porphyrites was the administrative center for the region’s military and quarrying activities. Two main wells in Wadi Abu Ma’amel supplied fresh water to the Mons Porphyrites workers, but all food and supplies would have had to be brought in from the Nile Valley. Because of the rugged terrain - the porphyry was quarried on mountaintops at 1,200 to 1,600 meters above sea level - workers’ huts were located close to the several quarry sites. Thus water, food, supplies, and tools would also have had to be carried to the workers’ huts.
In the 1960s a German team visited Mons Porphyrites briefly, recording the Temple of “Zeus Helios Great Serapis,” and plans of workers’ villages. There was also a smaller Temple of
Isis at the site: both temples were located near the castellum. Later the British expedition found a small temple high in the mountains with an inscription dedicating it to the god Pan-Min. This inscription also dates the discovery of the site - on July 23, ad 18 by Caius Cominius Leugas (a Roman “geologist”). The British excavations at Mons Porphyrites have yielded over 9,000 inscribed ostraca, which provide important information about operations there.
Purple was the imperial color, and this may have been a significant factor in the quarrying of porphyry at Mons Porphyrites under the Roman emperors. Purple porphyry was quarried for use in the most important Roman architecture (columns, wall veneers, and floors for palaces and temples). It was also used for sculpture and sarcophagi - and was fashioned into large basins (bathtubs!). From the quarries the huge stone blocks had to be guided down constructed mountainside slipways, which were lined with cairns to mark the way (the longest of these is 2 kilometers). There were loading ramps at the ends of the slipways, and then the stone was dragged 16 kilometers (on sledges or rollers) through two wadis to the great loading ramp. From this point the porphyry was loaded onto carts pulled by draft animals and transported to Badia - and then taken ca. 150 kilometers across the desert to Qena. Given the logistics of sustaining the quarry workers and soldiers, maintaining the forts, and getting the stone, which appealed to the tastes of Roman emperors and elites, from the Eastern Desert to Rome, the Mons Porphyrites operations represent a quite extraordinary undertaking.
Throughout pharaonic times the Eastern Desert was exploited for its gold-bearing veins of quartz, and this continued in Roman times. Near the site of Bir Umm Fawakhir, along the Wadi Hammamat route between Qena and Quseir, the Romans built wells and a signal tower, and there is also evidence of earlier pottery at mine sites to the southeast. But the more than 200 houses and outbuildings, made of rough granite cobbles, are of the Byzantine Period, dating to the 5th and 6th centuries, when possibly more than 1,000 people lived in this town. The site has been excavated by Carol Meyer (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago), and the evidence there of gold mining includes stone tools to crush and grind the quarried quartz.
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