In the western sector of the ocean the premier maritime traders were the
Arabs. Under the Assyrian and neo-Babylonian empires, Arab entrepreneurs
managed an ongoing trade in exotic products ranging from aromatic woods
to parrots that tied the Persian Gulf to northern India and eastern Africa.
Indian vessels, at least from time to time, were prohibited from entering the
Bab el-Mandeb into the Red Sea. This may have been the work of Arab
rulers in Yemen, or it may have originated with a decree issued by the
Persian emperor Darius that favored Arabs over Indians. The result was that
Indian ships had to disembark their cargoes in ports along the south Arabian
coast. There, Indian goods became mixed with Arab and East African goods
so that by the time they reached the Mediterranean they all appeared to
come from a single source, which was assumed to be somewhere in southern
Arabia, a misconception the Arabs made no attempt to correct.
After the fall of the Persian Empire, the Egyptian side of the Red Sea
came under the kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty, who founded ports and
established afleet to patrol against pirates. Egypt-based Greek traders oper-
ated to the Bab el-Mandeb although serious trading ventures beyond this did
not begin until the late second centuryBCE. Ptolemaic economic policy was
designed to rake in as much revenue as possible to further political and
military goals in the Mediterranean. The Ptolemies had little interest in the
Indian Ocean and although from time to time they had diplomatic contacts
with states in India these resulted in no systematic commercial ties.
Ptolemaic officials purchased goods that came both overland on caravan
routes running up the western side of Arabia and from ships arriving in their
own Red Sea ports. Arab middlemen played a role in this trade, but they
paid a heavy price in taxes. In Egyptian territory the government exercised a
monopoly over all aromatics and spices, which were manufactured into
drugs, ointments, perfumes, and similar products before being re-exported.
In the later years of Ptolemy VIII’s reign (145– 116 BCE), an Indian sailor,
the sole survivor of a shipwreck, was picked up and brought to Alexandria.
This fellow, according to Poseidonius,“related that on his voyage from India
he by a strange mischance mistook his course and reached Egypt.” He
offered to serve as guide for the trip back, so the king appointed a certain
Eudoxus of Cyzicus to lead an expedition:“So Eudoxus sailed away with
presents; and he returned with a cargo of perfumes and precious stones.”
This was how the sailors of the West learned to ride the monsoons, and soon
ships from Egypt were bypassing the Arabs and sailing directly to Indian
ports. Poseidonius’account was preserved in Strabo, who was skeptical about
it, wondering aloud if“he either invented it himself, or accepted it from
others who were its inventors.” Strabo notes:“how strange Euergetes’[an
honorific name for Ptolemy VIII] scarcity of competent pilots, since the sea
in that region was already known by many men.”ThePeriplus, on the other
hand, ignores Eudoxus but attributes the“discovery”of the monsoons to a
Greek ship captain named Hippalos, who lived at about the same time.
When India was the center of the world 87