Still, pretty close to the coasts except for the sail to Cyprus/Alashiya
Posted on 06/02/2024 12:01:48 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
The monsoon trade with India antedates Roman expansion into Egypt, apparently dating back to Sumerian times. The Sumerians themselves wrote that they arrived in the region with their oldest presence being in Persian Gulf ports, and their placenames (rivers, cities) are not Sumerian words.
Egyptians themselves had an intermittent but continual interest in expanding beyond the Nile valley, into Sinai and beyond, even in the predynastic or "dynasty zero" era. Egyptian navigation of the Red Sea reaches back at least into Middle Kingdom times.
'The Story of Wenamun' has an uncertain date but records (or dramatizes) a Late Kingdom voyage to get cedars from Lebanon, a practice that began well before the Late Kingdom, as there are Old Kingdom examples, but those could have arrived via merchant ships from what is now Lebanon.
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“The Story of Wenamun” — fascinating, i’ve not heard of that before. Thank you! i’m going to read that!
Still, pretty close to the coasts except for the sail to Cyprus/Alashiya
There’s an evocative scene in the text, where Wenamon is pleading his case to a Phoenician king, who is (if memory serves) seated on a sort of knee-wall or windowsill with the waves washing the Mediterranean shoreline below.
Drawing his route to Dor as if it hugged the coast isn’t evidence of hugging the coast. Ships sailing to the next town left town going west to get to deep water.
Sidebar, a preceramic population colonized Cyprus 8000 years ago, taking along their food critters, and they got their by sea. The obsidian trade was broad and is evidenced by mainland obsidian artifacts on Aegean islands.
And yet, it was so perilous that it took Odysseus ten years to get home. I am not too sure it was that much calmer than open ocean. The perils were getting dashed on the rocks while listening entranced to sirens, getting eaten by a cyclops, getting drowned by scilla and charibdis, which were depicted as monsters, but probably was just a violent tidal action, and finally all were lost at sea in a storm after being driven to eat the Sun’s cows while marooned on the Sun’s island, except for Odysseus, who refrained from eating cows for fear of global warming, I suppose. Then there was the witch who turned everyone into pigs, the trip to the spirit world, and the fat chick who didn’t want to let Odysseus leave, so he managed to escape to the Phaeacians, who gave him a lift to Ithaca. All perils of going to sea and sticking around the coast.
On the other hand, there was no discernible reason to brave the open ocean, other than the Indian Ocean to get to India and the China Sea to get to China, which the author of this video said was something that the Romans were after for the silk trade. When an emissary managed to steal some silk worm eggs, and a pandemic destroyed both empires for a while, that all became moot.
Good point - but his adventures were not just sea bound. We must also remember that they didn’t have the technology in sails etc.
During Cato’s time, he said “an olive was in Carthage just three days ago” which was at the highest speed. And that was in 200 BC. Odysseus is from nearly 1000 years earlier.
Well, the Roman empire was from at least 300 BC to 1453 AD - so nearly 2000 years. The Romans got their silk via overland routes
Silk worms I believe came across in the Eastern Roman (post 476 AD) period
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