“In earlier times not so many as twenty vessels would dare to traverse the
[Red Sea] far enough to get a peep outside the straits, but at the present
time even largefleets are despatched as far as India.”Annual convoys of up
to 120 ships, according to Pliny, were involved. And with the Arab mono-
poly broken, Indian ships began venturing westward again,first to Somalia,
then to Red Sea ports, andfinally to Egypt itself. Archaeological evidence
indicates that Indians and other merchants settled as communities in Roman
territory although not as official trading posts or colonies representing their
home governments.
Much of the merchandise transported in Indian and Arabian ships was
different from that carried in Roman ships. A substantial commerce con-
tinued on the coastal route between India, Persia, Arabia, and East Africa
involving basic commodities, particularly cotton textiles and foodstuffs such
as rice, sesame oil, dates, and sugar cane (used as medicine), along with wood
and metals. Horses were exported aboard ship from Persia and northwestern
India to central and southern India and as far as Sumatra. Excavations at the
Egyptian port of Myos Hormos have produced traces of rice and coconut
remains likely originating in India, but this has been interpreted as evidence
for the presence of an Indian merchant community rather than as an indica-
tion that foodstuffs were among the normal exports from India to Egypt.
Roman ships would not waste their hold space on such high-bulk low-value
goods. Only the most lucrative of commodities could bear the cost of trans-
portation over such a distance.
The most important imports carried into the Roman Empire from the
Indian Ocean fall into a general category of goods that can be divided
between basic materials and the products made from them. The former
included spices, aromatic woods, and resins; the latter, incense, medicines
and drugs, cosmetics, perfumes, unguents, and ointments. Although today a
clear distinction is drawn between spices, aromatics, and medicinal drugs,
this was not the case two millennia ago–as witnessed by the Chinese, who
used the same word to designate all three. Extracts could undergo extensive
processing before or after they were transported, and compounds often con-
tained dozens, or in the case of medicines, hundreds of different substances
produced from carefully guarded recipes. Whereas peninsular India and the
eastern arc of the Indian Ocean constituted the epicenter of the spice trade as
did south Arabia and Somalia for aromatic substances, medicines and drugs
were sent in all directions with various peoples importing ingredients not
available in their own lands while at the same time exporting what they did
have. Greece, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China all had
their own traditional pharmacies that together formed a huge international
market.
Bodily health was associated with the world of scents. The most popular of
all aromatics were frankincense and myrrh, both of which were produced
from tree resins harvested from incisions made in the bark of two types of
90 When India was the center of the world