The Periplus of the Red Sea (O Periplous tes Erythras Thalasses) - A Book review

By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
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[ Posted On: 2007-04-04 ]

The Periplus of the Red Sea (O Periplous tes Erythras Thalasses) - edition Megalommatis. A Book Review.

Published in Greek, in 1994 (STOHASTIS Publishing House, Athens - Greece), 272 p., the book consists in a theoretical approach and analytical presentation of a major historical phenomenon that shaped to a very large extent the World History: the development of the trade between East and West. The text of the Periplus of the Red Sea is by definition the central text in the study of the East - West Trade, an interdisciplinary field where more than two dozens of historical branches have been contributing to the scholarly research and to the academic understanding of the phenomenon in question.

The Ancient Greek text of an anonymous, but certainly Alexandrian Egyptian, author dates back to the times of the Roman Emperor Nero and the Rekem/Petra king Malichus (mentioned in the text).

The author does not accept the approach of Pirenne for a later date of the text and follows the traditional interpretation, like Lionel Casson who published his Periplus Maris Erythraei a few years earlier.

Megalommatis deploys an effort of ideological approach and interpretational skills in a way that is diametrically opposed to the Occidentalo-centric approaches of specialists like L.Casson, M.Raschke, or J.Miller, who pay little attention to the impact of the Orient over the Occident. By proceeding so throughout that book, Megalommatis proves the continuous Oriental impact in the formation of the Greek and the Roman civilisations: not only the foundations of the West are to be found in the East, but the entire phenomenon of the Classical world seems to have been a series of various Oriental influences.

The text of the Periplus of the Red Sea describes the navigation and the trade between the Mediterranean World and various confines of the East: the Eastern coast of Africa down to Rhapta (in the area of Dar al Salam and Zanzibar in today's Tanzania), India, Sri Lanka (then called Palaisimundu), Central Asia, Indochina and Indonesia (then called Chryse, which means the "Golden" in Ancient Greek), as well as China. According to the text (as well as to a myriad of other cross-checked sources in all the old scriptures of the area concerned), all these areas have been interconnected, and the land routes were an alternative, or a continuation of the sea routes and/or the desert routes.

In one word, the text of the Periplus reveals to our eyes an entire commercial net covering the area between China and the western confines of the Roman Empire. It is the first time in the History of the Mankind that a entire text describes issues covering all the area between the Atlantic and the Pacific (although both oceans are not explicitly mentioned), and refers to data and events concerning the three continents of which consisted the then known world.

In the Preface, Megalommatis first sets up his ideological approach to the phenomenon of History and to the History of the Exchanges between East and the West; he then presents a geographical, cultural and political map of the world of the author of the Periplus of the Red Sea. Finally, he offers the reader an in-depth understanding of the main characteristics of the text and of its historical preservation until the modern times. The text was thought to be composed by the famous Historian Arrian, but of course this was a misunderstanding of numerous points of the text that testify plainly to the fact that the mother tongue of the author was not Greek. Most probably he was an Alexandrian Egyptian captain and merchant who crossed personally most of the areas mentioned in the text.

To categorize the ideological approach of Megalommatis, we should refer to the works of scholars like Astour, or Martin Bernal. But, in striking contrast with them, Megalommatis presents the history of Oriental influences over the Occident as a continuous process in several levels, literature, scripture, religion, mythology and philosophy, knowledge and science, wisdom, political ideology, daily life style. Not only a Mithraic and an Isiac temple in Rome testify to an Oriental influence, but the change of the daily Roman life and the gradual application of Oriental style forms, the usage of perfumes and of frankincense, of the pompous expressions and of the majestic dress code, proves that the Imperial Romans had become more Oriental than they were thinking. There is a lot of evidence in this regard, one must admit.

The political geography of the area visited by the Alexandrian sailor and author is another subject presented extensively in the Preface of the book. Megalommatis follows the narration of the text, and draws a picture of the different states and peoples referred to within the Periplus, adding introductory information about their languages, scriptures and cultures. For the first time the Greek readership gets a first hand scholarly information about states such as Meroe, Aksum, the Yemenite colonies at the Somali coast, the different Yemenite states, Sheba, Qataban, Himyar, the Frankincense-bearing country (at the area between the modern cities of Yemen and Oman, Mukalla and Salalah), and so on.

The most important part of the book is by definition the Introduction. This is rather an introduction to the Trade between East and West, not to the text of the Periplus itself. Starting from the nucleus of the contacts between East and West, namely the area encompassed between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, Megalommatis presents all the stages of expansion of the trade down to the times of the author of the Perriplus, and further on to the beginning of the Islamic times, when for the first time the entire area between the Atlantic Ocean and China was included within the borders of one state, facilitating the trade in an unprecedented way (that kept the Christian states of Medieval Europe completely excluded).

What is also interesting in this effort of synthesis is the gradual adjunction of other areas of established and developed commercial contacts and communications to the aforementioned central one. It is for instance very interesting to observe how the "world of trade between Egypt, Sudan, Africa, the Red Sea, Yemen, Abyssinia and the area of the Horn of Africa" was linked to the "world of trade between Syria, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Persia with India, Central Asia and China". The interest lies particularly in the alternatives this adjunction offered in many levels: commercial, economic, political, and cultural.

The richest part of the book is by definition the numerous and extensive Notes to the Introduction that testify to an extremely high mark of research. By mentioning almost all the historical sources involved (from Ancient Egyptian texts to Chinese chronicles en passant by Cuneiform Assyrian - Babylonian, Elamite, Old Persian, Phoenician, Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Bactrian, Meroitic, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Yemenite, Arabic, Gueze Abyssinian, Sogdian, Parthian, Middle Persian, Coptic and other), by covering modern academic literature in more than ten languages, as well as by referring to many other linguistic points (words mentioned in the Periplus that originate from languages other than the aforementioned), Megalommatis presents a complete overview of this crucial subject, and reveals its great importance in the shaping of numerous historical developments.

Yet, by providing his readership with a strong part of insightful documentation on the cultures, the religions and the archeological evidence (related to the areas mentioned in the Periplus), Megalommatis keeps a balance between German Historicism and the French School of Annales, actually developing his own historical interpretational model.

The Ancient Greek text and the Modern Greek translation are accompanied by the Commentary, whereas maps, diagrams and pictorial material offer a better understanding of the world of navigators and merchants of the Roman - Parthian times; extremely successful in this regard must be considered the selection - for the cover page of the book - the wall painting of the Mithreum of Dura Europos in Syria with the three sanctifying Mithraic priests dressed in silk clothes.

Megalommatis dedicates this book to another scholar, who became famous for his research about the text of the Periplus and about several ancient languages, cultures and civilisations related to the Periplus, namely Maxime Rodinson. He was his professor at the famous Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris several years ago, in a specialized seminar on the very text of the Periplus of the Red Sea and, consequently, several elements from the seminar notes of Megalommatis are present in the book.

The famous anonymous author of the Periplus of the Red Sea was a merchant and sailor, who had a personal experience, certainly long, in the areas he described in his text. He narrated on a navigation itinerary basis, stopping at every point (a ‘port of call’) to enumerate merchandises, details about the local routes of trade, and last but not least information about the natural environment, the political establishment, and the cultural and religious affairs and/or traits of the point in question. Probably, there have been several "guides" like this in the Antiquity, but this is the only saved down our days.

To develop his subject (that in a modern language covers 22 to 24, regular size, typewritten pages), the author of the Periplus of the Red Sea attempted to ‘merge’ the two maritime trajectories: the way to the southernmost confines of Africa (sailing across the Egyptian, Sudanese, Eritrean, Somali, Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts) down to Rhapta, and the way to China that was not always taken up to its final point, since numerous earlier ports of call were at times the final destination. The second and longer (if carried out up to China) trip meant sailing across the Western Sinaitic Egyptian, Arabic, Yemenite, Omani (up to the Straits of Hormuzd), Persian, Pakistani, Indian (Western and Eastern) coasts and then further on to Chryse (Indonesia and Indochina).

Probably the author never reached beyond the area of Sri Lanka and/or Bangladesh. After these points, his narration becomes very brief and not well documented. It is in this second trajectory that the discovery of the phenomenon of the monsoons by the Yemenites contributed to shorten the duration of the navigation; the sailors started sailing from the area of Aden in the open sea straight to of the western coast of India. Like this, it became shorter to sail from Arsinoe/Suez to Cap Comorin, the southernmost point of India, than to Rhapta, the southernmost port of call in the area of today's Zanzibar!

What is very interesting and indeed illuminating is the interconnection of the land, the desert and the sea routes of trade as presented in some parts of the Periplus. The most important ones are in Asia: after arriving at the area of the Indus' Delta, the land route helped transport merchandises through the Indus Valley and Central Asia to China. Like this, ancient times’ merchants avoided sailing around India and through Indonesia and Indochina, reaching sooner the (North-Westernmost) confines of China.

According to another alternative, from the area of the Delta of Ganges and Brahmaputra, ancient merchants could avoid either Central Asia or Indochina, by following Brahmaputra upstream and therefore reaching the South-Westernmost confines of China. Very understandably China was thought to be two peoples and two lands area: the Seres' land and the Sines' land. What the author of the Periplus described, Justinian and other Eastern Roman emperors tried to use, in order to avoid the heavy Sassanid Iranian taxes; having the support of Axumite Abyssinia, Eastern Romans made the greatest effort to escape the Persian trade control. The result was that the Persian - Roman wars expanded from the area of Caucasus, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Syria to the area of Yemen, Arabia and Egypt, bringing about the Axumite invasion of Yemen, the Persian expulsion of the Axumites from Yemen, and even later the third Persian invasion of Egypt (by Khusraw Parvez, Cosroes II). What followed were the final and fatal battles between the two empires, their collapse and the rise of the Islamic Caliphate in the Orient.

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About The Author: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis - is Orientalist, Assyriologist, Egyptologist, Iranologist, Islamologist, Historian and Political Scientist. Dr. Megalommatis, 49, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, languages.

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