Trade from the Red Sea was not confined to Roman subjects and pottery shards scratched with Himyaritic and Sabaean writing have been found at Myos Hormos. These fragments indicate the presence of south Arabian merchants in Roman territory.100 The homeland of the Minaeans was a landlocked region in southwest Arabia, but graffiti from their merchants has been found on the road leading from Myos Hormos to Coptos.101
Indian merchants travelled to Roman Egypt aboard their own ships and businessmen from the subcontinent were regular visitors to Alexandria. Indian pottery has been found at Myos Hormos including fragments of fine tableware and ordinary cooking pots. A few of these pieces are marked with Prakrit letters, which was a common form of the Indian language Sanskrit. Others were labelled with Tamil-Brahmin script, the preferred writing system in southern India.102 Some of the pottery is scratched with Tamil names, including ‘Catan’ and ‘Kanan’, who were probably senior merchants.103 Fragments of Roman amphorae are also marked with Tamil names, possibly to indicate ownership of the delivery batches being forwarded to India.104 One piece of pottery recorded the names of three individuals called Halaka, Vinhudata and Nakada along with a list of possible stores including oil, meat and wine.105
The Greek orator Dio Chrysostom mentions how Indian people could be seen at large gatherings at Alexandria, including the crowd that came to hear his speeches. He describes how ‘Ethiopians and Arabians from distant regions and Bactrians, Scythians, Persians and a few Indians all help to make up the audience in your theatre and sit beside you on each occasion’.106 These exotic travellers caught the imagination of Roman subjects and Xenophon of Ephesus wrote a popular fiction set in Egypt which included an Indian character named Psammis. Psammis is a Greek name, but in the story he is an Indian merchant-prince, ‘an Indian ruler, come to see the city and do business’. Psammis purchases the heroine Anthia, who has been wrongfully sold as a slave in Alexandria. He then takes her on a caravan journey back through the Eastern Desert with ‘a host of camels, asses, and packhorses carrying a great deal of gold, silver and clothing’. But fate intervenes and the caravan is attacked by bandits who kill Psammis and capture Anthia before she can be sent to India.107
Some Indian businessmen visiting Alexandria travelled onward to Rome. This is evidenced by Martial who complained about a Roman woman named Caelia who gave her affections to exotic foreigners. Martial depicts Caelia associating with Egyptians from Alexandria and a ‘dark-skinned Indian from the Eastern Ocean’.108
World History
