the mediterranean and the indian ocean 463
Carol A. Redmount suggests a compromise position, that a canal linking the Red
Sea (and hence the Indian Ocean) with the Mediterranean went through periods of
functionality, silting over, re-digging and reuse, with highpoints of use in the reign
of Necho II (600 bce), Darius I (c. 500 bce), Ptolemy II (c. 275 bce), and Trajan
(c. 100 ce) (Redmount, 1995: 135). Fifth-century bce reports of Necho II’s expe-
dition to circumnavigate Africa and his canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea cer-
tainly offer additional perspective on his well-documented campaigns against the
Kingdom of Judah, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians in Southwest Asia; Necho II
may well have been driven to establish political–military control over the routes,
land and sea, linking the Mediterranean to the goods available through Indian
Ocean trade. The efforts of Necho II, Darius I, Ptolemy II and Trajan at maintain-
ing a Suez-like canal aside, some amount of overland portage to link the
Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean network was required until Portuguese
exploration c. 1500 ce. Consequently, a long succession of imperial powers would
attempt to assert control over those vital corridors, from the Egyptians and Assyrians,
through the Ptolemies and Seleucids of the Hellenistic period, the Romans and
Parthians of the early first millennium ce, the Abbasids c. 1000 ce, and then the
Ottomans.
After Necho II’s canal and circum-Africa expedition, another early political–
military encounter of a Mediterranean power with the Indian Ocean is Alexander of
Macedon’s engagement with the Kingdom of Porus, c. 327–326 bce, at the Hydaspes
River, a tributary of the Indus River. Although there had been sporadic contact before
Alexander’s campaigns, this engagement and its aftermath—the marching of
Alexander’s troops in the region of the Indus and the sailing of Alexander’s navy, led
by Nearchus, from the Indus through the Persian Gulf to the Euphrates—marked the
beginning of sustained political–military interactions between the Mediterranean and
the Arabian Sea (especially the Persian Gulf). After Alexander’s withdrawal to
Mesopotamia, political–military interaction between the Mediterranean and the Indus
region was continued by the Greco–Bactrian kingdom. J.D. Lerner has explored the
blended identity at sites of east–west interaction in northwestern India (Lerner, 2000)
and C. Rapin has found evidence for the depth of continued trans-regional interac-
tions in the treasury of Chinese, Indian, and Greco–Roman art-works at Ai Khanum
(likely Alexandria on the Oxus), one of the major inland cities of Greco–Bactria,
located on the modern Amu Darya River (Rapin, 1996). Yet Greco–Bactria is an
inland polity, separated from the Persian Gulf by the harsh Gedrosian desert and tied
to the Mediterranean primarily via Gills and Frank’s third, more indirect (as far as
Indian Ocean–Mediterranean connectivity is concerned) Aegean–Black Sea–Central
Asia “nexus corridor.”
More directly, Alexander’s Hellenistic successors in Egypt continued to foster
political–military ties in the Indian Ocean. Steven Sidebotham has suggested that
the Ptolemies were interested in Red Sea trade, and the Indian Ocean beyond,
more for military reasons (war elephants) than for any commercial purpose
(Sidebotham, 2011: 37–39). This assertion is certainly supported by the activities
of Alexander’s Hellenistic successor, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (r. 283–246 bce),
who reigned over Egypt and cemented his power with a strong navy. Scholars have
made much of Ptolemy II’s exploits in the eastern Mediterranean but have not had
as much to say about the more eastward, potentially India-looking component of