If East African trade was limited in potential, it also presented naviga-
tional problems for the type of square-rigged ship that Mediterranean sailors
used. A round trip between Berenice and Rhapta took a year and a half,
which included an 8-month layover in Rhapta. Add six months once back in
Berenice to gather a new cargo, and the total amount of time was two years,
twice as long as a roundtrip to India. The timing of the monsoon winds was
the main problem, particularly the short return trip through the Gulf of
Aden. Ships coming from Rhapta on the southwest monsoon had to make a
sudden left turn at the Promontory of Spices directly into the wind, which
stopped them dead in their tracks until the monsoon changed. On the India
trade a ship could sail all the way from Egypt to India and back, stopping
only for water and supplies, thus cutting out innumerable middlemen. The
East Africa trade, on the other hand, worked better as a series of short, con-
necting circuits: down the Red Sea to Adulis or the Bab, across the Gulf of
Aden to the Promontory, and down the East African slope to Rhapta. It still
took goods a long time to reach their destination, but using circuits did not
tie up ships, crews, and merchants on long layovers. Most goods reached
their destinations in this way although some ships from Egypt did make the
complete voyage.
Roman ships not headed for Far-Side ports or Azania were likely to stop at
the roadstead of Muza, the principal place to obtain Arabian myrrh:“The
whole place teems with Arabs,”notes thePeriplus,“and is astir with com-
mercial activity.”For its myrrh Muza took cloth and clothing, wine, grain,
and money. In addition, merchants were expected to provide“gifts”to the
local ruler in the form of horses, mules, gold, silver, copperware, and
expensive clothing. From here some ships headed directly to south India
while others cruised up the coast to Kane, the major port of what thePeriplus
calls the“Frankincense-bearing Land,”where the same Mediterranean com-
modities were traded for frankincense. A little past Kane ships left the
shoreline and headed across the Arabian Sea to northern India. A few may
have made a detour to the island of Dioscarides (Socotra) to take on cargoes
of tortoise shell. The trade here was mostly in the hands of Indians, who
brought in rice, cloth, and women slaves for the colony of merchants that
lived there.
Back on the coast, ships leaving the Arabian peninsula would slide by the
entrance to the Persian Gulf, whose sailors had once dominated Indian
Ocean commerce. With the Red Sea in ascendancy, the Gulf had slipped
into backwater status, but Arab ships from there still brought cargoes of
wine, dates, purple dye, slaves, and some gold to India. The major attraction
for Roman Empire ships would have beenfine-quality pearls. The interven-
ing coastline was another land of Ichthyophagi, where the people built
houses from whale bones and oyster shells and there was so muchfish and so
little else to eat the people are reported to have fed their cattle pounded
baked fish meal although the people themselves ate mostly raw fish.
104 Following thePeriplus