290 PETER VAN ALfEN
certain types of clothing and perhaps core-formed glass bottles, may have dis-
appeared around the same time, if not beforehand. Making allowances for the
nature of the evidence, if we consider the list of items in Table 12.1 as a pos-
sible snapshot of items in circulation at any given moment during the Persian
period, it is clear that a far greater number, roughly 3:1, were moving westward
compared to those moving east. The ratio of east:westbound commodities is
large enough to appear quite significant,^22 but what this figure actually repre-
sents is difficult to determine. While it may be tempting to use these figures
to posit some sort of trade imbalance, that is, imports of greater value than
exports, it must be remembered that what is quantified here is class or item,
not value equivalencies or volume.
Although the Aegean’s exports were not as numerous as the imports from
the east, 70 percent of what was exported was either manufactured or heavily
refined: fineware, iron, lead, finished marble (e.g., stelai), silver, sugar of lead,
and terracottas.^23 A much smaller number of manufactured goods – mostly
glass and alabaster vessels and processed metals and pigments (Egyptian Blue,
copper, tin) – were traded west.^24 The bulk of the items in westbound trade
were raw or semi-processed: nearly one third of these goods are spices; pig-
ments, dyes, and other chemicals comprise about one-sixth of the total; the
remainder consists of miscellaneous materials like raw ebony and ivory. The
Aegean’s raw and semi-processed exports to the east, if the metals are excluded,
were quite limited: amber, fuller’s earths, unfinished marble, and styrax.
Raw and semi-processed implies that most of these items were destined for
use in industries elsewhere. Pigments, dyes, and chemicals were likely intended
for use in textile production,^25 blocks of ebony and uncarved ivory for fur-
niture (Dem. 27.9-11) and trinkets.^26 Combined these industrial goods make
up about 25 percent of the total numbers of commodities in westbound trade,
which is roughly the same percentage for the eastbound industrial goods.^27
Although 25 percent is a significant proportion, it is difficult to know what to
make of it. Raw and semi-processed goods, as the Uluburun shipwreck amply
illustrates,^28 were present in Levantine-Aegean trade from an early date; and as
might be expected, many of the same raw materials, like ebony and ivory, are
present during the Persian period as well. While a number of new pigments
seem to appear in Persian period trade, their apparent novelty, as mentioned
earlier in this chapter, could be due to faulty (textual) evidence. The only raw
material we can be certain did not appear in the trade in large volume before
the Persian period is Aegean marble, one of the few indigenous raw commod-
ities of which there was an abundance.
Besides the raw and semi-processed goods, we are left, since the remaining
types of goods do not form large cohesive groups, looking at spices from the
east, about 33 percent of the total items, and the manufactured goods from the
west, about 70 percent of the total, at the core of the Levantine-Aegean trade.^29