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Red Sea Trade andTravelStevenson Lecture Theatre, Clore Education Centre, The BritishMuseumSunday 6 October 2002

Organised by The Society for Arabian Studies

Abstracts

BLUE, Dr Lucy (and Professor David Peacock)

Quseir al-Qadim/Myos Hormos: A Roman and Islamic porton the Red Sea coast of Egypt

In 1999 the Department of Archaeology, University of Southamptonbegan the reinvestigation of an important port site on the RedSea coast of Egypt, the site having previously been excavated byD. S. Whitcomb and J. Johnson in the late 1970s and early 1980s.This paper aims to combine the six seasons of investigation atQuseir al-Qadim to provide an insight into the port, itsassociated urban infrastructure, the people that inhabited thesite and their activities during the Roman and later Islamicperiods.

Recent enquiries have confirmed the identification of thesite as Myos Hormos on the Erythraean Sea, finally closing thedebate as to the location of this important Roman harbour site.They have also highlighted the significance of the site as athriving port in both the Islamic and Roman periods, revealinga wealth of evidence relating to goods of trade with the east andwest. The harbour itself has been a focus of the Southamptoninvestigation, not only to establish its exact extent andconfiguration, but also by comparison to investigate the natureof trade that was conducted through the port during both the

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Islamic and earlier Roman periods.

Further reading

Peacock, D. P. S. (1993) >The site of Myos Hormos: a view fromspace=, Journal of Roman Archaeology 6, 226-32.

Peacock, D., Blue, L., Bradford, N. and Moser, S. (1999, 2000 and2001) Myos Hormos - Quseir al-Qadim: a Roman and IslamicPort on the Red Sea coast of Egypt, Southampton: Universityof Southampton.

Interim reports on the recent excavations, also published on theweb: http://www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Research/Quseir

CHAMI, Dr Felix A.

The Graeco-Romans and Paanchea/Azania: sailing in theErythraean Sea

The purpose of my paper is to attempt an archaeologicalcorroboration of the Egypto-Graeco-Roman literature whichappeared before and in the last millennium BC and early centuriesAD, and which point to East Africa as either the land of Punt,Paanchea or Azania/Zingion. The Classical expeditions sent fromthe Mediterranean to East Africa travelled via the Red Sea.Whereas the Egyptians and Greeks believed that the Red Sea joinedother waters to surround Africa, the Romans - especially as seenin Ptolemy - believed that the Red Sea was part of the ErythraeanSea. According to the latter viewpoint Africa joined Asia tocreate this sea. One of the most interesting aspects of theGraeco-Roman literature is the belief that East Africa was thesource of cinnamon and cassia. Pliny dismissed this by describinghow the East Africans instead obtained these commodities from farin the ocean. Earlier, the search for these spices brought oneIambulus to the islands of East Africa and the Periplus laterdescribed the trade between the Red Sea ports and an emporiumcalled Rhapta in East Africa. Recent archaeologicalinvestigations on the coast and islands of Tanzania have startedto yield invaluable data in the assessment of the earlyhistorical documents. They have also begun to illustrate thevariety of traded goods as well as evidence for earlier neolithicand Early Iron Age occupation. These new results are used todemonstrate growing knowledge about sailing in the Red Sea during

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the Egypto-Graeco-Roman periods.

A full draft version of this paper is also available

CURTIS, Matthew C.

Ancient interaction across the southern Red Sea:cultural exchange and complex societies in in the 1st

millennium BC

This paper outlines evidence of ancient interactions betweenpeoples of the northern Horn of Africa and the south ArabianPeninsula in the 1st millennium BC and presents recent researchfindings from regional archaeological research in the centralhighlands of Eritrea. Collaborative regional archaeologicalresearch carried out by the University of Asmara and Universityof Florida has shown that during the early to mid-1st millenniumBC the central highlands of Eritrea were home to sedentary agropastoral communities that lived in large village settlements. These ancient communities, part of the Pre-Aksumite Ona culture,may have been key players in regional and inter-regionalinteraction in the southern Red Sea area and likely wereimportant precursors to later complex societies, including Aksum. Archaeological and historical data from the northern Horn arereviewed in relation to data from throughout the Red Sea area inthe attempt to develop future models for investigating ancientcultural exchanges in the region and assess how interactionsimpacted the development of complex societies in the highlandsof Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. This paper argues that a newperspective is needed in which cultural exchanges across the RedSea are investigated within multiscalar and interdisciplinaryframeworks focusing on regional and inter-regional processes ofinteraction. Such a perspective moves beyond limited notions ofcultural diffusion and considers both African and Asian data,providing a more inclusive and well-rounded understanding ofcultural exchange across the Red Sea and its roles in the riseof complex society in the northern Horn.

Further Reading

Anfray, F. (1990) Les anciens Ethiopiens, Paris: Armand Colin.Curtis, M. C. (2001) >Recent Regional Archaeological Research inEritrea: Investigating

the Origins and Development of Early Complex Society in theGreater Asmara Area=, paper presented at the InternationalConference, Independent Eritrea: Lessons and Prospects,Asmara, Eritrea, July 22, 2001.

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Curtis, M. C. and Libsekal, Y. (1999) > Archaeological survey in the Adi Qeyeh area, Eritrea=, Nyame Akuma 51:25-35.

de Contenson, H. (1981) > Pre-Axumite culture=, UNESCO General History of Africa II. Ancient Civilization of Africa (Mokhtar, G., ed.), 341-361, London:Heinemann; Berkeley: University of California Press; Paris: UNESCO.

Fattovich, R. (1988) >Remarks on the later prehistory and early history of northernEthiopia=, Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on EthiopianStudies B Addis Ababa 1984 (Taddesse Beyene, ed.), 85-104, Addis Ababa:Institute of Ethiopian Studies.

_________ (1990) >Remarks on the pre-Aksumite period innorthern Ethiopia=, Journal of Ethiopian Studies 23, 1-33.

_________ (1997) > The Near East and Eastern Africa: TheirInteraction=, Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa:Archaeology, History, Languages, Cultures, andEnvironments (Vogel, J., ed.), 479-84, Walnut Creek:AltaMira Press.

_________ (2000) Axum and the Habashat: State andEthnicity in Ancient Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea.Working Papers in African Studies, No. 228. Boston: African Studies Center, Boston University.

Munro-Hay, S. and Tringali, G., (1993) >The Ona sites ofAsmara and Hamasien=, Rassegna

di Studi Etiopici 35,135-170.Phillips, J. (1995) >Punt and Aksum: Egypt and the Horn of

Africa=, Journal of African History 38,423-457.Phillipson, D. (2000) Archaeology at Aksum, Ethiopia, 1993-

7, Volumes 1-2. London: The British Institute inEastern Africa and the Society of Antiquaries ofLondon.

Schmidt, P. R. and Curtis, M. C. ( 2001) >Urban precursors in the Horn: early 1st-millennium BC communities in Eritrea=, Antiquity 75 (290), 849-859.

Tringali, G. (1965) >Cenni sulle >Ona= di Asmara e dintorni=, Annales d=Ethiopie 6, 143-52.

Tringali, G. (1980/81) > Note su ritrovamenti archeologici in Eritrea=,Rassegna di Studi Etiopici 28,99-111.

Walz, J. and Curtis, M. C. (2001) >Engaging Archaeology Overseas as Students=, TheSAA Archaeological Record 1/5,10-12.

DIXON, Dr. David M.

Pharaonic Egypt and the African Arms Trade

Aromatic substances of various kinds were widely employedin ancient Egypt in the spheres of ritual, medicine,cosmetics, etc. Their main use, however, was in the service

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of the gods on whose beneficence the power and prosperityof the land was thought to depend. The acquisition of finearomatic substances and the maintenance of supplies wastherefore not a matter of luxury but of major importancefor the state.

The choicest aromatic was a fragrantgum-resin derived from one or more species of plantsbelonging to the family Burseraceae. It was known as antiu(>ntyw), doubtless its native name as it sounded to Egyptianears. The only geographical source of >ntyw was, in general,the so-called >Land of Punt (Pwâne)= which is frequentlymentioned in Egyptian texts from the Old Kingdom onwards,though the import of aromatics certainly long antedatedthis period. Punt lay, in very general terms, in the RedSea area.

Now the Egyptians of Pharaonic timeswere, broadly speaking, not a naturally curious people sofar as exploration was concerned; they would go virtuallyanywhere if they knew or suspected that valuable or usefulitems or raw materials were obtainable there, but they werenot motivated, unlike the ancient Greeks, to exploredistant lands out of curiosity.

In their quest for >ntyw, therefore,they exploited first the sources of supply nearest toEgypt, wherever they were. However, in common with most, ifnot all, ancient peoples, they had no idea of the need forconservation: they relentlessly exploited natural resourcesuntil they were exhausted and they were then compelled, astime went on, to travel even further afield to procuresupplies.

>Punt=, therefore, did not designate afixed locality or area with clearly defined boundariesthroughout Egyptian history but instead was a shifting term(originally it was probably a common noun, perhaps meaningsomething like Astrand@, Aport@ or Atrading-place@ which laterbecame the Punt, par excellence as it were, and hence aproper name).

By the time of the New Kingdom, withwhich this paper is primarily concerned, >Punt= lay aconsiderable distance from Egypt on the African and/orArabian coast (s) and hinterland of the Red Sea. As always,as far as the evidence goes, Punt was reached by sea fromone or more ports on the Egyptian Red Sea coast. As theEgyptians voyaged further afield, a major consequence wasthat their lines of communication became increasinglystretched and their capacity, if need ever arose, toexercise military force in or around the >Land of Punt= toprotect their interests was progressively reduced. (Thesoldiers depicted accompanying the Eighteenth Dynasty

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expedition of Queen Hatshepsut appear to have been a smalland largely ceremonial escort detachment). Attempts atacclimatising >ntyw trees in Egypt by importing some fromPunt and thereby obviating or reducing the need to sailthere nevertheless proved a failure.

The problem facing the Pharaonicgovernment, therefore, was how to ensure the continuance of>ntyw supplies, in other words how to safeguard the >ntywproducing areas and the routes thither, and ensure generalstability in the region. The policy adopted was thatsubsequently pursued over the millennia by many otherpowerful states geographically distant from supplies of rawmaterials essential to their national interests: theysupported a relatively small ruling group by supplying themwith modern military hardware - in the case of theEgyptians, various types of bronze weapons - and perhapsleaving in Punt for a period a small military mission totrain the forces of the local paramount chief. In addition,they also supplied quantities of luxury items unobtainableby the recipients from elsewhere. The acquisition of >ntyw,Egyptian travel in the Red Sea area, and the export to >Punt=of military material were thus inextricably linked duringthe New Kingdom.

This paper examines the nature of thearms trade and the likely political, economic and socialimpact thereof on Punt and adjacent areas.

Further reading

Dixon, D. M. (1969) >The Transplantation of Punt Incense-Trees to Egypt=,Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 55, 55-65.

_________ (2000a) >Two Much-travelled Nile Gunboats and their Personnel:Part I The Melik=, Bulletin of the Association for the Study of Travel inEgypt and the Near East (ASTENE) 10.

_________ (2000b) >Ancient Egypt and the Gordon Relief Expedition=, DesertTravellers from Herodotus to T.E.Lawrence (Starkey, J. and el-Daly, O.,eds), 205-32, Durham: CMEIS, Universityof Durham; ASTENE 1.

FACEY, William

The Red Sea: the wind regime and location of ports

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Introduction

As a sweeping historical generalisation, one might say thatthe Red Sea is an extreme example of a sea on the way tosomewhere else. Apart from Ethiopia/Eritrea and Yemen atits southern end, its shores were not lined withcivilisations presenting desirable commercial destinationsin their own right. Only with Islam and the pilgrimage didthat change. In this it contrasts greatly with, say, theGulf, the western Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean: thecoasts of these seas were dotted with maritime, mercantilecivilisations in direct contact with the sea. Leaving asidethe Yemen Tihamah and Eritrea, the cultures in closestcontact with the Red Sea were separated from it by mountainand desert: the Nile Valley, Edom/Palestine (theNabataeans); even, if one thinks about it, the non-commercial destinations of Makkah and Madinah, inland fromJiddah and Yanbu> respectively.

This applies less to the southern partof the Red Sea B the Yemen and Eritrea (though even here onemight argue that it was the highlands, inland and away fromthe coast, that were the real commercial attraction). Itwas the climate that differentiated the southern part ofthe Red Sea from the northern: these areas benefit from themonsoon winds and rains of the western Indian Ocean. It isthat same climatic regime which also accounts for the windregime of the Red Sea, with which this paper is concerned.

I am going to make two points:$ The separation between the coasts and

the centres of trade and civilisationhas given ports in the northern part ofthe Red Sea a certain flexibility intheir location along the coasts. Asouthward creep is evident, and isexplained by the wind regime.

$ I shall illustrate the problems of seafarers in theRed Sea by reference to the experiences of Muslim,Jewish and Christian seafarers and travellers usingthe Red Sea between the 12th and the 16th centuries AD.

1. The location of ports

One would have thought that Suez, or somewhere very closeby, would, throughout the centuries, have been the majorport in the northern Red Sea. But it is not so: places likeArsinoe and Clysma have played a relatively minor role inRed Sea trade, Suez becoming important only with steam and

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the Suez Canal. It is noteworthy that ports through theages serving the Nile Valley exhibit a southward creep:Safagah, Qusair, Berenike. This is explained by what weknow of the actual seasonal wind patterns, which divide theRed Sea into two main zones, divided roughly by a linebetween Jiddah and >Aydhab (just S of Ras Abu Fatma, 22< 20=N, 36< 32= E).

Let=s take a look at Jiddah. For hundreds of years ithas been the chief port on the Red Sea. This is of coursepartly because it is the port of Makkah and the pilgrimage.But there is another reason too for its rise to prominence,and this reason tells us a great deal about the Red Sea asa whole.

It has been held by some historians that thePilgrimage itself created an enormous volume of trade, andthat as a spin-off there came to be a large volume oftrading done by pilgrims which was purely commercial andhad nothing strictly speaking to do with the Hajj, and thatthis made Jiddah an important entrepot for trade. Well, thePilgrimage certainly did give rise to a great deal of pettytrading and exchange along the routes and at Makkah itself.But I think it is wrong to think of that as a contributingsignificantly to the volume of trade as a whole. Indeed,the Pilgrimage may explain the existence of Jiddah as aport; but it cannot wholly explain its importance as aport. An important reason for Jiddah=s growth as anentrepot is its location in the wind system of the Red Sea.

Jiddah was as far north in the Red Sea as largeocean-going sailing ships could comfortably reach. Thething to know about the Red Sea is that it is very easy tosail out of it southwards for most of the year; andcorrespondingly difficult to sail northwards up it (see thehandout of the Red Sea winds during the four quarters ofthe year). That is because, in the northern half of the RedSea above Jiddah, the prevailing wind blows from the norththe whole year round. In the southern half of the Red Seathe wind blows from the north for most of the year. It isonly during a relatively short period from October to MarchB the season of the north-east Monsoon winds in the ArabianSea B that a southerly wind blows in the southern half ofthe Red Sea. It blows reliably only as far north as Jiddah.

The fact that it is easy to sail south out of theRed Sea but hard to sail north, explains why, in antiquity,ports on the Egyptian side show a tendency to be some waydown the coast. The Suez/Clysma area at the far northernend was in an obvious position geographically, but innavigational terms was ill-suited because of thedifficulties of sailing into the wind. That is why we find,under the Ptolemies and Romans, Myos Hormos and Berenike

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(Ras Banas), both of them quite a way down the coast,developed as ports and served by well-maintained routesfrom the Nile Valley.

Similarly, the main port of mediaeval trade onthe African side of the Red Sea was >Aydhab, even furthersouth than Berenike, on a latitude not far north of Jiddah.This latitude is determined by the Red Sea winds; and thePilgrimage only explains why the major port of the Red Seaduring Islam was on the Arabian and not the African side.Islam made the Red Sea and its Arabian coast a destinationfor the first time in its own right, rather than a merewaterway to somewhere else.

What happened north of this latitude? The seatrade between Jiddah and Egypt was indeed still by sea, butin smaller vessels, which coasted and used the onshore andoffshore breezes to head north, proceeding with almostcomical caution, dropping anchor at night and sailingduring the day because of the reefs.

2. The experiences of mariners, 12th B 16th- centuries AD

Now we move on to see how the actual experiences oftravellers and mariners from the 12th to the 16th centuriesbear out the idea that the Red Sea was actually two seas asfar as sailors are concerned: $ The Cairo geniza documents of Jewish traders;$ The voyage of Ibn Jubayr in the 1180s;$ Ahmad bin Majid=s advice to mariners, ca 1500;$ Afonso de Albuquerque=s voyage into the Red Sea in

1514;$ The voyage of Joao de Castro up the African coast of

the Red Sea to Suez and back in 1541.

Further reading

Broadhurst, R. J. C. (1952) The Travels of Ibn Jubayr,London: Jonathan Cape.Earle, T. F. and John Villiers tr. and ed. (1990)

Albuquerque, Caesar of the East. Selected Texts byAfonso de Albuquerque and His Son, Warminster: Aris &Phillips.

Goitein, S. D. tr. and ed. (1973) Letters of MedievalJewish Traders, Princeton.Hourani, G. F. (1995) Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in

Ancient and Early Medieval Times (Carsell, J., ed.),Princeton.

Kammerer, A. tr. and ed. (1936) Le Routier de Dom Joam deCastro. L'Exploration de la Mer Rouge par les

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Portugais en 1541, Paris: Paul Geuthner; LibrairieOrientaliste.

Tibbetts, G. R. tr. and ed., (1971) Arab Navigation in theIndian Ocean before the Coming of the Portuguese,beinga Translation of Kitab al-fawa'id fi usul al-bahr wa'l-qawa'id of Ahmad bin Majid Al-Najdi, London: RoyalAsiatic Society (repr. 1981).

FATTOVICH, Prof. Rodolfo

The APre-Aksumite@ Period in Northern Ethiopia andEritrea Reconsidered

The culture history of Tigray (northern Ethiopia) andEritrea during the 1st millennium BC was characterized by astrong South Arabian (mainly Sabaean) influence, due tointense contacts between the opposite shores of thesouthern Red Sea. The result was the emergence of an earlystate modeled on the Sabaean one in the region. In thispaper some new considerations about the dynamics of thesecontacts, the origins and development of the >Ethio-Sabaean=state, and the relationship of this state with the laterKingdom of Aksum (late 1st millennium BC-1st millennium AD)will be presented in the light of recent fieldwork inYemen, Eritrea and Tigray.

At present, we can distinguish three phases ofdevelopment of these contacts: 1) progressive inclusion ofthe Eritrea plateau in the South Arabian area of influencein the late 3rd-early 1st millennia BC; 2) rise of a pre-Aksumite state in Eritrea, and progressive inclusion ofTigray into this state in the mid-1st millennium BC; 3)collapse of the pre-Aksumite state and rise of the Kingdomof Aksum in Tigray in the late 1st millennium BC.

The emergence of the Afro-Arabian interchange circuit (2nd-early 1st millennia BC)

The northern Horn of Africa was included into a network ofexchanges and contacts with Southern Arabia since the 3rd

millennium BC. Potsherds similar to Bronze Age ones inSouth Arabia occur in assemblages of the Gash Group (ca2700-1400 BC) in the Gash Delta (Kassala). In the mid-2nd

millennium BC, a new pattern of interregional contacts andexchanges emerged along the coastal regions of the southernRed Sea, in Eritrea and Arabia (Tihama Cultural Complex).

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The main sites of this complex (Adulis in the EritreanSahel, Sihi in the Saudi Tihama, Wadi Urq= in the YemeniTihama, and Subr near Aden) share enough pottery featuresto be considered regional variants of one cultural complex.In the late 2nd-early 1st millennia BC the eastern plateau incentral Eritrea was included in the area of influence ofthe Tihama complex, as some ceramics from the lower strataat Matara (Akkele Guzay) and Yeha (Tigray) are comparableto those from Subr. The range of contacts of the Ona GroupA (late 2nd-early 1st millennia BC) in the Hamasien plateau(Eritrea) cannot be established on the available evidence.Similarities in pottery style may point to contacts withNubia, eastern Sudan, and perhaps southern Arabia.

The >Ethio-Sabaean State= (ca. 700-400 BC)

Rock inscriptions at the edge of the plateau in Qohaitosuggest that South Arabs (maybe traders) penetrated intothe plateau beginning in the 9th century BC. The dynamics ofthis penetration are still unclear. Most likely,individuals or small groups settled on the plateau andmixed with the local people, originating an Afro-Arabianelite in conformity with the later Swahili model in EastAfrica. The Ona people of Hamasien and northern AkkeleGuzzay may have had a relevant role in this process as theOna pottery formed a consistent component of the pre-Aksumite ceramics. In the 7th century BC the Afro-Arabiancomplex society (-ties) in Eritrea were included in thearea of influence of the Sabaean state, and a new statearose on the plateau. Sabaean cultural features wereadopted by the local elite in conformity with the samemodel of cultural contact we can observe in the NubianKingdom of Kush. The present evidence points to anexpansion of the so-called >Ethio-Sabaean= state along astraight and narrow transect from Qohaito in Eritrea to theTakkazze river in Tigray, and this expansion was probablymarked by the foundation of ceremonial centers such asKaskase and Yeha

The collapse of the >Ethio-Sabaean= state and the rise ofAksum

Archaeological and epigraphic evidence suggest that the>Ethio-Sabaean= state collapsed in Tigray in the 4th-3rd

centuries BC, although most likely an Afro-Arabian urban(state?) society survived in the Akkele Guzzay. At thistime, a new polity emerged at Aksum in central Tigray

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(Proto-Aksumite Period). The Proto-Aksumite politydistinguished itself from the former Ethio-Sabaean one,focusing ideologically on platforms with stele and pit-graves for the funerary cult of the elite rather than onmonumental cult temples of the gods. The remains of amonumental building, constructed in a technique reminiscentof Ethio-Sabaean architecture at Ona Nagast may suggestthat some symbols of the earlier state were maintained inProto-Aksumite times. At present, the Proto-Aksumiteculture can be ascribed to an indigenous tradition ofTigray, maybe related to the cultural traditions of thewestern lowlands. Actually, the style and symbolism of thefunerary stelae suggest a possible link with the lateprehistoric cultures in the Eritrean-Sudanese lowlands.Finally, in the early 1st millennium BC the Aksumite kingdomprogressively expanded to the east and included Eritrea andYemen into the area of political control of Aksum.

Further reading

Fattovich, R. (1977) >Pre-Aksumite Civilization of Ethiopia:a Provisional Review=, Proceedings of the Seminar forArabian Studies 7, 73-78.

__________ (1980) Materiali per lo studio della ceramicapreaksumita etiopica, Napoli: Istituto UniversitarioOrientale.

__________ (1990a) >The Peopling of the Northern Ethiopian-Sudanese Borderland between 7000 and 1000 BP: apreliminary model=, Nubica 1/3, 3-45.

__________ (1990b) >Remarks on the Pre-Aksumite Period in Northern Etiopia=, Journal of Ethiopian Studies 23, 1-33.

_________ (1992) Lineamenti di storia dell'archeologiadell'Etiopia e Somalia, Napoli: Istituto UniversitarioOrientale.

__________ (1996a) >Punt: the archaeological perspective=,Beiträge zur Sudanforschung 6, 15-29.

__________ (1996b) >The I.U.O. and B.U. Excavations at BietaGiyorgis (Aksum) in Tigray (Northern Ethiopia)=,Journal of Ethiopian Studies 30/1, 1-29 (with K. A.Bard).

__________ (1997a) >The Peopling of the Tigrean Plateau inancient and Medieval Times (ca. 4000 B.C. - A.D.1500): Evidence and State of Art=, The EnvironmentalHistory and Human Ecology of Northern Ethiopia in theLate Holocene (Bard, K. A., ed.), 81-105, Napoli.

__________ (1997b) >The contacts between Southern Arabia andthe Horn of Africa in late prehistoric and early

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historical times: a view from Africa=, Profumi d'Arabia(Avanzini, A., ed.), 273-86, Roma.

__________ (1997c) >Archaeology and historical dynamics: Thecase of Bieta Giyorgis (Aksum), Ethiopia=, Annalidell=Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 57(published 1999), 48-79.

__________ (2000a) >The Environmental History of Tigray (Northern Ethiopia) during the Holocene: aPreliminary Outline=, The African Archaeological Review 17/2, 65-86 (with K. A. Bard, M. Coltorti, M.C. Di Blasi, F. Dramis).

_________ (2000b) The Archaeological Area of Aksum: APreliminary Assessment, Napoli: Istituto UniversitarioOrientale (co-author with K.A. Bard, L. Petrassi andV. Pisano).

_________ (2000c) Aksum and the Habashat: State andEthnicity in Ancient Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea,W.P. No 238, Boston University, African StudiesCenter, Boston.

__________ (2001a) >The Proto-Aksumite Period: An Outline=,Annales d=Ethiopie 17, 3-24 (with K. A. Bard).

__________ (2001b) >Some Remarks on the Process of StateFormation in Egypt and Ethiopia=, Africa and Africansin Antiquity (Yamauchi, E., ed.), 276-90 (with K. A.Bard), East Lansing.

GUO, Li

AA Boat Named Good Tidings@: The Red Sea Trade inthe 13th Century in Light of the Quseir Documents

This presentation deals with the Red Sea commerce in the13th century in light of the Arabic documents recovered fromthe Red Sea port of Quseir (al-Qusayr al-qadîm), UpperEgypt. The Red Sea port town of Quseir was first excavated under

the direction of Drs. Donald Whitcomb and Janet Johnson duringseasons in 1978, 1980, and 1982. This work was sponsored by theOriental Institute of the University of Chicago and funded by theSmithsonian Institution Foreign Currency Program and the NationalGeographic Society. A Southampton/Leeds team has since conductedmore recent excavations (see paper by Lucy Blue and DavidPeacock). Several hundred paper fragments, mainly personal andbusiness correspondence written in Arabic, have been recoveredfrom a warehouse-like site, along with other materials. Thesedocuments form a private Aarchive@ that sheds light on the

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activities and operations of a family shipping business on theRed Sea shore during the late Ayyubid and early Mamluk era in the13th and early 14th centuries. In view of the small number ofArabic documentary collections hitherto available, the discoveryof the Quseir collection is considered an Aevent@ in the field.Compared with the well-known medieval document collections fromEgypt, such as the Cairo Geniza and the Mount Sinai Monasteryarchive, the Quseir collection distinguishes itself not only asa unique private archive known to have served the interests ofa Muslim community, but also as rare first-hand accounts ofactivities on both shores of the Red Sea, Upper Egypt and Yemen,about which previously known documents and literary sourcesreveal very little. Within this historical context and given theoverall scarcity of documentary records of any sort in theIslamic Near East in the pre-Ottoman era, the import of theQuseir documents can hardly be overstated.

Aside from its documentary significance for historicalinquiry of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade, the Quseircollection also contains specimens which bear testimony tomedieval Muslim learning and craftsmanship. Among the codicesunearthed are samples of block printing, the earliest of its kindknown to have survived; poetry; court papers; school texts;zodiac charts; prayers, and what appear to be words of magic.These will be of immense interest to specialists on the generalhistory of printing, Arabic paleography, letter writing, languageand literature, magic, astrology and astronomy.

Preliminary reports on the Quseir documents werepublished by Michael Dols and Gladys Frantz-Murphy (season1978). Fragments from the 1980 season have so far not beenstudied. Materials from findings of the 1982 season wereused by Jennifer Thayer in her 1993 dissertation on landpolitics in Mamluk Egypt. The entire body of the QuseirArabic documents, however, remains to be examined,cataloged, and published.

I have been working on the Quseir material since 1996and have so far made considerable progress. Up till now, myresearch has focused on the documents discovered in the1982 season inside the so-called ASheikh=s House,@ aresidence-and-warehouse compounds. Readings of thedocuments have identified the owner of the warehouse as oneASheikh Abu Mufarrij@ whose family shipping business wasactive throughout the 13th century. Supported by a NationalEndowment for the Humanities Fellowship through theAmerican Research Center in Egypt, I spent the summer of1999 working in the Museum of Islamic Arts, Cairo, where asubstantial portion of the Quseir documents is housed.During this stay in Cairo, I was able to examine all thefragments which can be accounted for (RN964 - RN1093).Working with the originals in their natural settingsenabled me to solve some puzzles which had occurred

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throughout the preliminary readings of microfilmreproductions available to me in the United States. Theresults of my research were published in two articles (seebelow) and have generated considerable interest amongscholars, especially those working in medieval economichistory and the Red Sea and Indian Ocean internationalcommerce. I am convinced that the time is ready to producea monograph on the textual material found in the ASheikh=sHouse.@ Donald Whitcomb, of the Oriental Institute and oneof the original excavation leaders, will accordingly writehis final report of the 1982 season excavation onarchaeological findings from the ASheikh=s House.@ It ishoped that this cooperation between the textual scholar andthe archaeologist will contribute to the new approach ofinterpreting archeological findings with the direct help oftextual evidence. To this end, I have received a generousgrant from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)to further conduct the project in the academic year 2002-2003.

In today=s presentation, I will focus on one area ofinquiry: the trade route which connected Quseir with theHijaz and Yemen. Based on an examination and analysis ofthree documents (RN 970, RN 1023, RN 1059) that reveal thedetails that may shed light on some aspects of the tradeactivities along the route, the presentation discusses thefollowing: the merits of the AEgyptian dinar@ over theAHijazi dinar@; the existence of perhaps a maritime shuttleoperated between the shores of Quseir and Yemen; and thekind of the commodities that were likely being importedfrom/to Yemen. The title is inspired by the reference insome documents to a boat called AGood Tidings@ which is saidto have come from Aoverseas@ to deliver shipments to Quseir.

Further reading

Guo, Li (1992) >Yale Landberg Arabic MS 57: A FourteenthCentury Arabic Autograph on Muslim Friday Prayer=, TheYale University Library Gazette 66 , 117-25.

__________ (1997) >Mamluk Historiographic Studies: The stateof the art=, Mamluk Studies Review 1, 15-43.

__________ (1998) Early Mamluk Syrian Historiography: Al-Yunini=s Dhayl Mir=at al-zaman, Leiden: Brill (twovolumes).

__________ (1999) >Arabic Documents from the Red Sea Port ofQuseir in the Seventh/Thirteenth Century, Part 1:Business letters=, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 58/3,161-90.

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__________ (2001a) >Paradise Lost: Ibn Daniyal=s Response toSultan Baybars= Campaign against Vice in Cairo=, Journalof the American Oriental Society 121/2, 219-35.

__________ (2001b) >Arabic Documents from the Red Sea Portof Quseir in the Seventh/Thirteenth Century, Part 2:Shipping Notes and Account Records=, Journal of NearEastern Studies 60/2, 81-116.

__________ (2001c) >Al-Biqa>i=s Chronicle: A FifteenthCentury Learned Man=s Reflection on his Time and World=,The Historiography of Islamic Egypt (c. 950-1800): TheEastern Mediterranean (Kennedy, H., ed.), 31, 121-48,Leiden: Brill.

KEALL, Dr. Edward J.

Contact across the Red Sea (between Arabia andAfrica) in the 2nd millennium BC: circumstantialevidence from the archaeological site ofal-Midamman, Tihama coast of Yemen, and DahlakKabir Island, Eritrea

Based on excavations along the Red Sea coast of Yemen, thispaper explores the possibility that people had the abilityto cross the sea in the 3rd - 2nd millennia BC. It isinconceivable that fishermen living along the Red Sea coastdid not know about the seasonality of the winds. Whetherothers had both the will and the skill to make journeysinto deep waters, is an entirely different matter. Whilethe material record for al-Midamman is unique,circumstantial evidence points to connections between Yemenand the Horn of Africa. It is hypothesised that this didnot involve the mass movement of people, with theircultural baggage complete. But it is suggested that peopleon both sides of the Red Sea may have had a commonancestry, and their cultural expressions emerge from thatcommon background.

The earliest cultural record from al-Midamman is anephemeral presence defined by the surface recovery of stoneprojectile points and scrapers belonging to a Neolithicculture, say, from before 4000 BC. The first substantialand monumental phase of the site starts in the 3rd

millennium BC. It involved the setting up of giant stonemarkers. Certain slender pillars were once set up withinfants buried beneath them, yet without grave goods; anisolated stone marked the grave of an adult male.Hypothetically, these burials pre-date the setting up of

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giant stones, an act dated roughly to 2400-1800 BC by thecache of copper-alloy tools and a core of obsidian foundburied beneath one of the megaliths.

All of the stone used had to be imported from at least50 km away. A later phase of the activity involvedrecycling the stone. Yet there is no evidence that this wasa destructive act. Rather, it appears to suggest reverencefor the past. The most impressive use of the stone was tocreate monumental buildings. Two rectilinear structureswere built with foundations and walls of stone, andpartition walls of mudbrick. A third stone building islikely slightly more recent in date, and may be an open-airshrine enclosure. Shallowly carved decorations date earlierthan the 8th century BC.

Re-used stone was also employed in a cemetery. Thepottery grave goods consist of whole vessels, of a kindknown from the domestic settlement. This ephemeralsettlement has furnished a rich record of pottery,obsidian, grind stones, and masses of fish bone. Acommonality of artifact in all of the settings is, in fact,the most remarkable of the recent discoveries. Grindstones, for instance, were found in the context of themegaliths as well as in the domestic settlement, and setdeliberately onto burnt stone, perhaps as field markers.Gold beads have been recovered from both the stoneenclosure and the site of the standing stones.

The idea of different phases of the occupation hasalways been present in the eyes of the excavators. The ideaof newcomers supplanting the old ways has always been apossibility. The most recent work has demonstrated this tobe untenable. Finding only the same kind of pottery in boththe domestic, the funerary and commemorative areas impliesthat the same people were involved throughout the site=slife. Yet clearly their cultural habits did evolve.

Despite the fact that the inhabitants appear to havebeen obsessed with stone, there are no inscriptions carvedin stone; no sacrificial offering trays of stone; no stoneincense burners; no three dimensional sculptures of eitheranimals or humans, in stone. All of these would beappropriate for a culture linked to Sabaean realm in itsbroad sense. But there are no statue-menhirs either, whichwould have made a plausible link to the people Zarins seesas reflecting a Bronze Age elite on the plateau.

From al-Midamman there is one bull=s head in relieffrom a pottery vessel; two human figurines in pottery;incense burners of pottery; and an example of alphabeticletters scratched into a pottery vessel. But pottery itemsare very rare within the corpus of finds, representing fourout of 4000 recorded (and diagnostic) fragments. As for thepottery itself, it is far superior to anything from classic

18

South Arabia. Though hand-built, it is well produced fromgood quality clay. It is often burnished and decorated withpunctate designs that call to mind Fattovich=s Afro-Arabiancultural complex theories regarding the punctate incisedpottery from Kassala in the Gash delta of southeasternSudan. And upper Nile-area specialists will no doubt thinkof so-called wavy-line punctate pottery associated with theC-Group people. Yet, the one striking absence, which cannotbe overlooked, is that Kassala does not have the same kindof obsidian record as al-Midamman where there is a clearlydefinable assemblage of obsidian microliths. It arrivesfully developed as a lithic tradition, and it does notevolve out of the Arabian bi-facial tradition. Numerousantecedents can be found in East Africa. Our expedition hasalso observed obsidian of exactly the same technologicaltradition on the island of Dahlak Kabir, offshore from theEritrean mainland. Other circumstantial evidence alsopoints to possible links between the island and the coastof Yemen. In the Islamic cemetery of the 11th and 12th

centuries, one tombstone is carved from a pillar of basaltthat is foreign to the island and is likely recovered froma Bronze Age context.

I hasten to argue that we may not find a single,common template into which all of these cultures fit. Weare not looking at a systematic expansion, with a sociallycohesive, even politically based, organization. Sodifferent expressions may have been adopted by differentgroups, as they came into contact with others. At leastfour obstacles need to be removed before the Afro-Arabianconnection becomes plausible. Our best analogy for thecopper-alloy tools is drawn from Syria. I would counterhere by saying that our knowledge of the copper-bronzeindustry from both Yemen and the Horn of Africa is so poorthat the absence of parallels for our tools may not besignificant.

The second problem is that we find obsidian with thesame technology as from al-Midamman, both in the Wadi al-Jubah, in the interior of Yemen, and in the Hadramawt, andon Dahlak Kabir island. But in the last example we havefound no related pottery. From Sabir, al-Hamid, and al-Kashawba there is generically similar pottery but noobsidian. Perhaps we may explain this as a difference oftime. At al-Midamman there seem to have been both obsidianand pottery in use at all times.

Another difficulty is that we have scratched stonedecorations that can be parallelled in the Jawf.Conveniently, Audouin has suggested that these carvings inthe Jawf could easily be dated to the late 2nd millennium BCrather than the early 1st millennium BC as previously

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suggested. What is the connection between our two areas?None, if we look at political realities.

My current hypothesis is that during the late 3rd

millennium BC, in response to a drying climate, people wereon the move. Some settled on Dahlak island. The people whosettled in al-Midamman crossed the Red Sea and settled inthe Tihama where they found a window of opportunity forlife as result of the massive flooding that was emanatingfrom the highlands, from a landscape out of control. Whenchecks and balances were put in place in the highlands, aspart of the landscape stabilisation for which Yemen becamesynonymous, the people at the coast were forced to move on.Groups may have found their way into the Jawf, and theHadramawt. They retained some of their specific lithictechnology, but generally otherwise became integrated withthe rest of the South Arabian populations.

Further reading

Keall, E. J. (2000) >Changing Settlement along the Red SeaCoast of Yemen in the Bronze Age=, First InternationalCongress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East(Rome May 18-23, 1998), Proceedings, (Matthiae, P.,Enea, A., Peyronel, L. and Pinnock, F., eds), 719-31,Rome.

Giumlia-Mair, A., Keall, E. J., Shugar, A. and Stock, S.(2002) >Investigation of a Copper-based Hoard from theMegalithic Site of al-Midamman, Yemen: anInterdisciplinary Approach=, Journal of ArchaeologicalScience 29, 195-209.

Le QUESNE, Charles

Quseir Fort and the Archaeology of the Hajj

Introduction

Recent archaeological and restoration work (1997-9) atQuseir Fort, funded by the Antiquities Development Projectof the American Research Centre in Egypt has opened a newpage in the archaeology of the Egyptian Red Sea coast,looking for the first time in detail at the materialculture of the past five hundred years in this region. Thework demonstrated not only the viability and potentialsignificance of such studies for the period - in revealing

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links through various aspects of the material culture andarchitecture to other Red Sea sites and points beyond(Yemen in particular) - but also produced further materialfor historical study in the form of around 50 lettersdating largely to the late 18th century, many of whichrelate to the transport of wheat to the Hejaz. It providesa continuation, almost to the present, of thearchaeological sequence at Quseir el-Qadim, 5 km to thenorth, which ends in the early 16th century. It isinteresting to compare the patterns of economy and tradeevident in the Islamic levels of the two sites. Equally,the evidence from Quseir Fort displays telling similaritiesand differences with the later levels at Qasr Ibrim,letters from which refer to the garrison at Quseir on morethan one occasion (they were in the same military provincein the 16th century).

Material Culture

The work at Quseir fort has, inevitably, produced a corpusof material (pottery, metalwork, glass, clay pipes)previously unstudied in the region. The pottery includesearly 17th century Chinese porcelain as well as imitationsof unknown origin; line-painted bowls reminiscent of Yemenitypes; and large quantities of grey-brown water-carriers,frequently found on Red Sea wrecks and known inarchaeological contexts from as far away as Istanbul. Themetalwork includes a range of ordnance including a mid-18th

century Swedish cannon and late 18th century British andFrench cannon. The glass is dominated by wine bottles,apparently left behind by the French and British troopsduring the Napoleonic campaigns. Of more interest, perhaps,are the glass bracelets from the earlier levels, similar toMamluk examples found at Quseir el-Qadim. Finally, animportant corpus of clay pipes from stratified contextsincludes examples dating from the very earliest years oftobacco-smoking in the early 17th century as well as fineexamples from the famous Tophane pipe workshops ofIstanbul. The letters, textiles (which include fragments ofOttoman cotton-padded armour) and leatherwork still awaitdetailed study.

The Egyptian Hajj

Perhaps the greatest significance of the findings at theFort, though, are that they provide a starting point forassessing the extensive but largely-neglected material

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evidence for the Upper Egyptian Hajj. There wereessentially two pilgrimage routes from Egypt to the Hejaz.The northern, better-known land-route, originating inCairo, crossed the Sinai from Suez (el-Agroud) in the west,via Nakhl, to Aqaba in the east. The southern route, in theMamluk and Ottoman periods at least, departed from theLuxor bend of the Nile, at Quft, just south of Qena, andled through the Wadi Hammamat to Quseir. This was, ofcourse, a long-established route to the Red Sea,distinctively punctuated by a series of fortified Roman waystations and mountain-top watch-towers. Both routes wereused by Egyptian and African pilgrims, although it wouldappear that the southern route, at least in the laterperiods, was the one favoured by Maghrebis and WestAfricans. This is supported by observations at westerndesert oases such as Dakhla, where evidence for the passageof African pilgrims has also been recognised.

By contrast with the northern route, there isapparently very little sign of the passage of Hajj pilgrimsat the wells of the Wadi Hammamat route. Studies of theroad stations have only identified Roman remains. However,this may be because this is what was being looked for (bycontrast with the northern route where some preliminarysurvey has been carried out). It seems highly likely thatthe fortified wells were used and maintained at least inthe Mamluk and Ottoman periods and many of the structureswithin and around them, upon closer examination, may wellturn out to be Islamic in date.

Forts of the Upper Egyptian Darb el-Hajj

The architectural form most closely identified with theHajj is the >Hajj fort=. While this label is used to covera broad range of installations, it is normally applied tothe fortified wells, such as those found in the Sinai andon the Syrian and Hejazi Darb el-Hajj. As is clear fromOttoman-period accounts of the Hajj, these installationswere first and foremost designed to protect water sourcesand supplies, with the pilgrims generally camping outsidethe walls. In some examples in the Sinai, where wells wereabsent, elaborate water management systems including damsand reservoirs were constructed to gather and conservewater from the heavy winter rains.

It appears that the only primary Islamic periodfortifications on the Darb el-Hajj of Middle Egypt were atits terminals: Qena and Quseir. 16th century Ottoman fortswere constructed at both of these locations. However, thesedo not appear to have been classic Hajj forts: they were

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much larger and accommodated substantial permanentJanissary garrisons. The firman ordering the constructionof Quseir fort, issued in 1571 in Istanbul, is quitespecific in stating that its purpose was to provide >defencefrom disorder makers= and that it should accommodate a>sufficient number of fort guards and armour=. It wouldappear then that the existing infrastructure of the desertroad, albeit antiquated, was considered sufficient toaccommodate the needs of the pilgrim traffic. Intriguinglythere is evidence from 18th century travellers that asignalling system, using fire and smoke, connecting Quseirto the Nile was in operation in the late 18th century, as inthe Roman period. The continuity of patterns use andactivity on the desert routes from ancient to medievaltimes is striking.

The Function of Quseir Fort

While it is clear that Qusier Fort was designed primarilyas a military installation, its role in protecting pilgrimsand the traffic of goods associated with their passage wasessential. It is the latter which the foundation firmanemphasises in describing Quseir as being the port >fromwhich the annual provision for the servants (officials) ofthe Holy Places is sent by vessels to Jedda and Yanbu=. Itis clear from both the Mamluk letters at Quseir el-Qadimand those recovered from Quseir Fort that this was, in theminds of the authorities at least, the fundamentalimportance of Quseir - that it was the port of embarkationfor the Upper Egyptian wheat that kept the Holy Citiesalive. Indeed the letters from the Fort, which have yet tobe fully studied, suggest that it may have been used tostore this wheat during the Ottoman period.

Although the fort was primarily a military garrison,in contrast to the small Hajj forts of the Sinai, Syria andthe Hejaz, it does display a number of commoncharacteristics with them. Quseir, amongst its othereconomic roles, was the main port of departure for pilgrimsfrom Upper Egypt and right across North Africa to the holycities of Mecca and Medina. So, while accommodation forpilgrims was provided within the town, the fort providedcrucial security from desert and sea raiders for the oftenwealthy travellers as well as some muscle to the endeavoursof the central government to collect customs duties. A verysimilar fortification exists almost directly oppositeQuseir at el-Dhubair, near el-Wejh, on the Arabian cost.This may indicate a concerted programme of refortificationof the pilgrimage ports by the Ottomans in the early years

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of their administration of the region.

Conclusion

The essential importance of the support of a strongcentral government is clear from looking at the history ofthe Fort. As anyone (including any archaeologist) who hasworked in this essentially hostile environment can attest,a high degree of organisation and infrastructure isrequired to support life in the Eastern Desert. Withoutsuch systems, a sedentary lifestyle is impossible. QuseirFort is a perfect illustration of this fact. Quseir, againin the words of the 1571 firman, following the attacks of>mischief-making Arabs= was >completely devastated, the portout of use, and that it would be impossible to bring backnot even one person unless a fortress ... will beestablished=. The stratigraphy of the fort strongly suggeststhat, with the weakening of central government in the later17th century, this scenario was repeated. This same patterncan be observed at Quseir el-Qadim with its abandonment inthe later Roman period and again at the end of the Mamlukperiod. This ephemeral quality - the reliance upon thepresence of the political will to perpetuate theirexistence - is a characteristic of sedentary settlements ofall periods along the desert shores of the Red Sea.

Further reading

Le Quesne, C. (1998) >Creating a future out of the Past: TheWork of the Antiquities Development Project at Quseir=,The Newsletter of the American Research Centre inEgypt (winter).

LUNDE, Paul

Islamic Sources for the arrival of the Portuguesein the Indian Ocean and Red Sea

What do Islamic sources have to say about the arrival ofVasco da Gama in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea and how hegot there? A number of references to this great event occurin Arabic and Turkish sources, but all are puzzling. Someare linked to popular millenialist ideas connected with the

24

beginning of AH 900, others to Arabic versions of the Greek>Romance of Alexander the Great=. Texts by Ahmad ibn Majid,Ibn Iyas, Piri Re'is and Zayn al-Din are examined, in aneffort to explain the conceptions and misconceptions thatunderlie their efforts to understand the geographicalconundrum posed by the sudden arrival of the Portuguese inIslamic territory.

Further reading

Surprisingly little has been written on Portugueseexpansion from the point of view of those it affected most,the Muslim trading communities of the Indian Ocean. Thefollowing books provide useful background:

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500-1700: A Political and Economic History. (London, 1993) [Particularly preface and Chapter I.]

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. The Career and Legend of Vasco daGama (London,1998).Tibbetts, G.R. Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before

the Coming of the Portuguese (London, 1971) [For Ahmadibn Majid].

Serjeant, R.B. The Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast.Hadrami Chronicles (Oxford, 1963)

Reis, Piri. Kitab-i Bahriye (Ankara, 1988) [Englishtranslation with facing Ottoman text].

PHILLIPS, Jacke Pre-Aksumite Aksum and its Neighbours

The city of Aksum has long been known as the capital of anextensive empire which, in its heyday, controlled bothsides of the southern Red Sea and therefore the entireEast-West sea trade. Our earliest record of its existenceis the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, the c. 40 ADmercantile handbook that mentions Athe metropolis of theAxomites@. The Periplus goes on to comment that Ainto it isbrought all the ivory from beyond the Nile through what iscalled Kyeneion (Kuhneion), and from there down to Adulis@(4:2:8-10). Just why Aksum rose as the capital of itsEmpire is not yet clear, as it is some 200 km over veryrough terrain inland from the Red Sea. Earlier majorPre-Aksumite sites such as Yeha and Hawalti are less than20 km from Aksum, suggesting that far inland sites always

25

have been of importance, and that Aksum and its immediateenvirons should be viewed as the centre of the civilisationrather than its western periphery. Yet little pre-Aksumiteevidence has been recorded here and virtually noinvestigations have yet been conducted farther west of thecity. Closer to the Red Sea, pre-Aksumite sites such asMatara and Addi Gelamo also have revealed complex siteswhich interacted with the region of Aksum father inland aswell as the coast.

Recent excavations by the British Institute in EasternAfrica, directed by David Phillipson from 1993 - 1997, haverevealed for the first time evidence for substantial andclearly permanent pre-Aksumite settlement at Aksum itself. This paper will discuss these remains and their importancewithin a wider examination of the evidence for pre-Aksumitetrade, travel and contact in the 1st millennium BC,especially to the west.

Further reading

Phillips, J. (1996) >Pottery and other finds from theDomestic Area, 1995=, in D.W. Phillipson, A.J. Reynoldset al., >B.I.E.A. Excavations at Aksum, Ethiopia,1995=, Azania 31, 129- 41.

________ (1997) >Punt and Aksum: Egypt and the Horn ofAfrica=, Journal of African History 28, 423-57.

________ (1998a) (with D.W. Phillipson) >Excavations atAksum, 1993-96: A Preliminary Report=, Journal ofEthiopian Studies 31/2, 1-128.

________ (1998b) >Nowe wykopaliska w starozytim Aksum=,Archeologia Zywa 1/6 (Spring), 26-30.

________ (1998c) >Aksum and the Ivory Trade: New Evidence=,Athiopien und seine Nachbarn/Ethiopia and itsNeighbours. 3. Wissenschaftliche Tagung des OrbisAethiopicus, Gniew 25-27 September 1997 (Frankfurt:Orbis Aethiopicus), 75-84.

________ (2000a) >Ostrich Eggshells=, Ancient EgyptianMaterials and Technology (Nicholson, P. T. and Shaw,I., eds), 332-33, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

________ (2000b) (with D. W. Phillipson) Archaeology atAksum, Ethiopia, 1993-97, London: British Institute inEastern Africa Memoir 17 / Report of the ResearchCommittee of the Society of Antiquaries of London 65(two volumes).

________ (in press a) >Looking Forwards by LookingBackwards: Surveying West of Aksum=, Proceedings of the>Current Research in African Archaeology in Britain and

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Ireland= day meeting, Oxford (expected 2003)._________ (in press b) >Go West, Young Man, Go West=,

Proceedings of the First International LittmannConference, Munich (expected 2003).

RAUNIG, Dr. Walter

Charting the course of antiquity=s most importanttrade route

It was around 70 or 80 AD when a travelling trader fromEgypt, whose name we do not know but who was sure to speakGreek, wrote an account which was to serve as a travelguide and information handbook for traders and mariners whowere heading south from the Egyptian Red Sea coast, i.e.into Erythraean waters. These travel instructions, whichare divided into 66 paragraphs, form the famous Periplus ofthe Erythraean Sea. This is one of the most importantancient sources of information on the countries around theRed Sea, in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, with a fewindividual reports even concerning south-east and SouthAsia.

Based on this ancient account and other travel reportsof the 19th and 20th centuries, and taking archaeologicalfinds into consideration, one can try to reconstruct theonce most important trade route from the Red Sea coast intothe interior. Moreover, I am taking into account my ownobservations in Eritrea and Ethiopia.

There is no doubt that this old trade route led fromAdulis, the very ancient trading centre south of Massawa,either through Wadi Haddas or through Wadi Komaila, orpossibly both, to Hishmale or Kohaito (both of which lienear the present-day provincial town Adi Keyh), and fromthere via Tokonda to Matara (near the modern Senafe) andthen onto the ancient capital Aksum. Since at least thetime of Queen Hatshepsut (ca. 1490-1468 BC), the ancientEgyptians, Ptolemaeans, Greeks and Romans imported highlydesirable luxury goods such as incense, precious wood,ivory and live animals from this region, i.e. from present-day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia.

Koloë, named in the Periplus as an important inlandtransfer (or reloading) point, can be identified with oneof the two above-mentioned localities, i.e. Hishmale orKohaito. With regard to the history of trade in the ancientworld in both East and West, the importance of this area innorth-east Africa under discussion is still widely under-estimated. However, future research is bound to change

27

considerably our present state of knowledge.

Further reading

Raunig, W. (1970) Bernstein, Weihrauch, Seide - Waren undWege der antiken Welt, Vienna/Munich.

_________ (1980) Schwarz-Afrikaner, Lebensraum undWeltbild, Innsbruck/Frankfurt.

TUCHSCHERER, Dr. Michel

Trade relations between the Arabian and Africancoasts in the 16th and 17th centuries

The area comprising the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden andtheir hinterlands forms a coherent environment organizedaround two complementary waterways which always stimulatedthe exchanges between both shores, the Arabian and theAfrican. This coherence is due to specific features. Theseare physical (inhospitable desert coasts with relativelywell-watered mountains and oases lying behind), as well ascultural (semitic languages with Arabic in constantprogress, monotheist religions with Islam in expansion).

The African and Arabian shores were largelycomplementary. The moostly poor Arabian hinterland wasunable to meet all the food requirements for the relativelypopulated coastal cities (Jidda, al-Shihr, Aden, Mokha,Hudayda, Mekka, etc). Therefore Ethiopia and Egyptinvariably took an important share in nourishing thesepopulations with different kinds of food. Arabia receivedalso many slaves from the opposite coast and often enrolledthem in the armies of the local rulers, or engaged free menas labourers in the port cities. The African hinterland ofthe Red Sea-Gulf of Aden area needed Arabia as well. Bysending food and other goods to the Arabian port-cities,the various populations of Abyssinia, the Kingdom of Sennarand other political entities provided themselves in Jidda,Mokha, Aden or al-Shihr with all kinds of goods flowingeither from the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean.

The commercial activities in the Red Sea-Gulf of Adenarea displayed a hierarchical pattern. At the highest levelthe long distance trade, often dominated by networks ofmerchants foreign to the area, linked together theMediterranean with the Indian Ocean. This trade was usuallybased on hard cash and sophisticated commercial practices.At a lower level, an active regional commerce sustained a

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relatively dense network connecting the ports of theAfrican coast with those of the Arabian shore. They werelargely run by local merchants and often based on barter.

The port cities being in the heart of these networks,they performed specific functions and their growth dependedlargely upon their relations with the political powersruling the entities in the hinterland or dominating thewhole area from the outside. The port cities were junctionpoints between different sea lanes, or between the sea andthe caravan routes. They were used as exporting places ofthe inland products. Some of the port cities, lying at theintersection of multiple merchant networks, served asmarkets for the regional distribution of goods, oftenforeign to the area. They also contributed to the financingof state apparatus in the hinterland or of Ottoman armiesand administration through the levy of taxes and assortedfees. Not all the ports provided together these functionsof transfer, taxation, export and distribution.

The localization and the importance of these portcities underwent many and frequent alterations due toeconomic but also political upheavals. The fierce strugglebetween the Ottomans and the Portuguese over the spicetrade ended by the middle of the 16th century with anoverwhelming Ottoman control over almost all the sea portsin the area. But soon, local entities tried to reaffirmtheir autonomy, by opening sea outlets away from theOttoman power. About 1580, the Christian king of Abyssiniastrived to rouse again the port of Baylul to avoid theOttoman control over his trade in Massawa and Sawakin aswell. In the 1640s he tried again to divert his trade, thistime in alliance with the Zaydi imam who had just succeededin expelling the Ottomans from Yemen. On the Arabian shore,Qunfudha developed into a active port, so Mekkan merchantshoped to escape taxations in Jidda. The arrival ofEuropeans did not alter this general regional pattern, atleast until the beginning of the 18th century.

If the flow of food and other goods from the Africancoast towards Arabia was permanent, it is very difficult tosubstantiate because of the lack of reliable sources,except in the case of the trade from Egypt towards Hejaz.Sources are relatively more abundant as far as activitieson the Arabian coast are concerned. If the trade of horsesunderwent a severe decline in the 16th and 17th centuries, onthe contrary textiles, mainly Indian cottons, became mainitems of trade. Coffee, first picked from the wild in thesouthern Ethiopian forests and used as a stimulativebeverage by mystic Muslim brotherhoods in Yemen, Hejaz andEgypt does not seem to have played a significant role inthe trade between Africa and Arabia, since Yemen gained a

29

position of a quasi monopoly in its production by the endof the 16th century.

The merchants from Cairo, Jidda, Mekka, Aden andlater on Mokha held a dominant position in the networksbetween the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, but lateron they encountered an ever increasing competition from theIndian merchants, especially those from Gujarat. Theiragents, the so called Banians and mainly Hindus and Jains,settled in all the port-cities, except north of Jidda whichremained a stronghold of the Cairene merchants. TheseBanians even penetrated the inland market places,especially in Yemen. They were certainly active in theregional trade between Africa and Arabia, but the extent towhich remains to be investigated. Nevertheless Arabmerchants, mainly Yemenis from different regional origins,extended their activities far inside Ethiopia, maybe evenas far as Sennar, thereby enforcing the commercial role ofthe Arabic language in the area. Not only Muslims, but alsosome Christians from the different Ethiopian principalitieswere active too, but on a much lesser scale. And by theturn of the 17th century or maybe even earlier, someArmenians created their own network stretching from Gondar,via Massawa and Mokha to India and even Java.

Further reading

Tuchscherer, M. (1988) >Le pèlerinage de l'émir SulaymânDjâwîsh al-Qâzdughlî, sirdâr de la caravane de laMekke en 1739=, Annales islamologiques 24, 155-206.

__________ (1992) Imams, notables et bédouins du Yémen auXVIIIe siècle. Chronique de >Abd al-Rahmân al-Bahkalî:Quintessence de l'or du règne de chérif Muhammad b.Ahmad. Cairo: IFAO, 225 p.

__________ (1994)>Approvisionnement des villes saintesd=Arabie en blé d=Egypte d=après des documents ottomansdes années 1670=, Anatolia Moderna 5, 79-99.

__________ (1997) >La flotte impériale de Suez de 1694 à1719=, Turcica 29, 47-69.__________ (1997) >A propos de l=assemblage de trois navires

ottomans dans l=arsenal de Suez (1762-1767)=,Méditerranée mer ouverte (Villain-Gandossi, C.,Durteste, L. and Busuttil, S., eds), vol. 1, 323-34,Malta.

__________ (1997) >Café et cafés dans l=Egypte ottomane XVIe-XVIIIe siècles=, Les cafés d'Orient revisités (Desmet-Gregoire, H. and Georgeon, F., eds), 91-112, Paris:CNRS Ethnologie.

__________ (1999) >Quelques réflexions sur les monnaies et

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la circulation monétaire en Egypte et en mer Rouge auXVIe et au début du XVIIe siècle=, Annalesislamologiques 33, 263-81.

__________ (2002) >Trade and Port Cities in the Red Sea -Gulf of Aden Region in the Sixteenth and SeventeenthCenturies=, European Modernity and Cultural Differencefrom the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, 1890s-1920s (Fawaz, L. and Bayly, C., eds), 28-45, ColumbiaUniversity Press.

Darwish, A. and Tuchscherer, M. (2000) Khulâsat al->asdjadmin hawâdith al-sharîf Muhammad b. Ahmad, being anedition of the Arabic text of the chronicle by >Abd al-Rahmân al-Bahkalî, Damascus: Institut français d=étudesarabes, 417 p.

Tuchscherer, M., ed. (2001) Le café avant l'ère desplantations coloniales: espaces, réseaux, sociétés(XVe-XVIIIe siècle), Cairo: IFAO, 408 p.

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Details of speakers and contributors of papers

Lucy Blue is a lecturer in Maritime Archaeology, Centre forMaritime Studies, Department of Archaeology at Southampton,and is chair of the Nautical Archaeology Society. Shecompleted her DPhil in Archaeology at Oxford in 1997; thiswas entitled AAn assessment of Bronze Age harbours of theeastern Mediterranean@. She has extensive field workexperience, both underwater and on land and is co-directorof the Quseir al-Qadim project where she has conducted asedimentological survey as well as investigated themaritime nature and associated artifacts of the site. Shehopes to expand the work in Quseir al-Qadim to a broaderstudy of maritime activities in the Red Sea in general. Shehas undertaken extensive maritime ethnographic fieldwork inIndia with Professor Sean McGrail, and has recently securedfunding to study boats in Vietnam. Besides studying andrecording the boats she is interested in how ship/boattechnology changes and how this reflects broader society,plus the impact on archaeological interpretation.

Felix A. Chami is an archaeologist with first degree inSociology from the University of Dar-es-Salaam, MA inAnthropology from Brown University, USA, and PhD inArchaeology from Uppsala, Sweden. He has been employed bythe University of Dar-es-Salaam since 1986 and is currentlyan Associate Professor. He is also the co-ordinator ofAfrican Archaeology Program involving 13 countries ofsouthern, eastern and west Africa. Most of his work hasfocused on the coast and islands of East Africa, and he hasrecently started a project in the Great Lakes Region. He ismarried with three sons.

Matthew C. Curtis is a Ph.D. candidate and instructor inAnthropology at the University of Florida with aspecialization in Holocene African archaeology. Hisresearch interests include the archaeology of ancientcomplex societies and urbanism in the Horn and East Africa,regional settlement analysis in archaeology, culturecontact and interaction, and cultural resource managementand education in Eritrea. Since 1997 Curtis has conductedarchaeological research in the highlands of Eritrea. During1999-2000 Curtis was a Fulbright fellow to Eritrea, servedas a lecturer in the University of Asmara Department ofArchaeology, and directed the Greater Asmara RegionalArchaeological Survey Project (GARASP). Curtis returned toEritrea in 2001 to co-teach the University of Asmara=sarchaeological field school and continue regional

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archaeological research with the University of Asmara andNational Museum of Eritrea. He is co-author of a recentAntiquity article (Schmidt and Curtis 2001) concerningregional archaeological investigations and the ancient Onaculture of Eritrea.

Barbara Davidde is an underwater archaeologist who workswith Roberto Petriaggi for the Italian Ministry of Culture=sIstituto Centrale per il Restauro-Nucleo per gli Interventidi Archaeologia Subacquea (Underwater ArchaeologicalOperations Unit) in Rome. She has been a lecturer inUnderwater Archaeology for the University of Rome 3 in theacademic year 2001-2. She and Roberto worked in Yemen asmembers of the Istituto Italiano per l=Africa e l=Oriente(ISIAO) of Rome.

David M. Dixon is an independent researcher. He studied atLondon University. He has travelled in Egypt, Cyrenaica andthe Sudan and worked on archaeological excavations inthese countries. His main fields of interest are Nubia, theSudan, and the Red Sea region, and the history ofEgyptology with particular reference to the role of theFrench and English military in the archaeology of Egypt andthe Sudan, 1798 - 1900. On this he is currently preparinga book. Among his recent publications are papers on theGordon Relief Expedition and the part played by rivergunboats during the First and Second Sudan wars (1884-85,1896-99).

William Facey was born in Zambia in 1948 and brought up inEngland. He read classics, philosophy and art history atOxford before becoming involved in the Arabian Peninsula in1974. Since then he has worked as a planning and researchconsultant on numerous projects to set up museums of thearchaeology, history and natural history of the Arabianstates. He has also carried out exhibition and museumconsultancy work in England, Europe, Central America andthe Far East. His books cover the history, architecture andearly photography of the Arabian Peninsula countries. He isa director of the London Centre of Arab Studies, apublishing, research and museum consultancy company whichwas set up in 1994.

Rodolfo Fattovich (b. 1945) is professor of >EthiopianArchaeology= at the University of Naples AL=Orientale@(formerly Istituto Universitario Orientale), Naples(Italy). He has conducted research in Egypt, Sudan,Ethiopia, and Eritrea. He has directed or co-directedarchaeological projects at Naqada (1977-1984) and Tell el-

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Farkha (1987-1990) in Egypt, and Kassala (1980-1995) inSudan. Since 1993 he is directing with K. A. Bard (BostonUniversity) the Joint Archaeological Expedition of theOriental Institute, Naples (Italy), and Boston University,Boston (USA) at Bieta Giyorgis (Aksum, Ethiopia). Since2001 he is directing the Archaeological Expedition of theIstituto Italiano per l=Africa e l=Oriente (Is.I.A.O.), Rome(Italy) at Wadi Gawasis on Red Sea coast in Egypt, incollaboration with Boston University. His researchinterests include the process of state formation innortheastern Africa and the development of the Red Seatrade in late prehistoric and ancient times (3rd millenniumBC -1st millennium AD).

Li Guo was born in China and studied Arabic in Yemen andEgypt. After receiving a Ph.D. in Arabic-Islamic Studiesfrom Yale University (1994), he taught at the University ofChicago (1995-1999) and is currently an assistant professorof Arabic at the University of Notre Dame. The author ofEarly Syrian Mamluk Historiography: al-Yunini=s Dhayl Mir=atal-zaman (Brill, 1998), he has written extensively onmedieval Arabic historiography and literature. He iscurrently at work on a book tentatively entitled Commerce,Culture and Community in a Red Sea Port in the ThirteenthCentury: The Quseir Arabic Documents. Li Guo, University ofNotre Dame, Indiana, U.S.A.

Ed Keall was never formally trained as an archaeologist,but his involvement on many different sites in the MiddleEast for forty years has given him broad experience. Bornin the UK, and trained in Greek and Latin literature, hefirst visited the Middle East on an adventure in 1962. In1970 (after learning the trade through practical experiencein countries like Iran, Iraq and Turkey), he acquired aformal PhD by studying Islamic art at the University ofMichigan. His first Canadian appointment was as anAAssistant Curator@ in the West Asian section of the RoyalOntario Museum, in 1971. He was cross-appointed in theUniversity of Toronto at the same time. He is currently aASenior Curator,@ as well as Head of the ROM=s Near Eastern& Asian Civilizations Department, territory whichincorporates everything in the art and archaeology of theOld World from North Africa to Japan (Casablanca to Kyoto).He has directed the Canadian Archaeological Mission of theROM (CAMROM) in Yemen since 1982: see Yemen/Red Sea on theROM website: www.rom.on.ca/neac

Charles Le Quesne graduated with an MA from EdinburghUniveristy in 1988. From 1989 to 1992 he worked for the Ben

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Ezra Synagogue Restoration Project in Old Cairo (Fustat).He has continued to work there and is presently part of anAmerican Research Centre in Egypt (ARCE) archaeologicalteam monitoring the insertion of a major waste-water systemin the area. From 1993-1995 he was employed by Gifford andPartners in Chester, working on a series of development-related archaeological projects. Since 1995 he has workedindependently in the UK and abroad combining smalldeveloper-funded projects with larger research projects,including the writing up of 20 years of fieldwork on theRoman defences of Chester for Gifford and Partners. In 1996he carried out an archaeological study, as part of a largerEnvironmental Impact Assessment, in Aden harbour. In 1997-8he directed archaeological investigations at Quseir OttomanFort on the Red Sea coast as part of an ARCE project toturn the fort into a Red Sea Visitors Centre. Since 1999 hehas directed excavation and post-excavation at The Grove,a large multi-period settlement site near Watford,Hertfordshire. He is presently preparing the finalpublications of both Quseir Fort and The Grove.

Paul Lunde was raised in Saudi Arabia and is a graduate ofthe University of California (Berkeley) and S.O.A.S. He haslived and studied in the Middle East and for many yearsconducted research in the Vatican Library, the archives ofthe Propaganda Fide, and the Archivo de Indias in Seville.Specializing in Arabic geographical literature, he haswritten extensively on related topics. His most recent bookis Islam: Culture, Faith and History (Dorling Kindersly,2002).

Professor Richard Pankhurst was the founder and firstdirector of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies of HaileSellassie I (later Addis Ababa) University. He has writtenwidely on Ethiopian history and culture. Currently attachedto the Institute of Ethiopian Studies his writings includean Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia(published in 1961) and an Economic History (1968).

David Peacock is Professor and Head of Department of theDepartment of Archaeology at the University of Southampton.

Roberto Petriaggi is an underwater archaeologist who workswith Barbara Davidde. He is currently Director of theUnderwater Archaeological Operations Unit in Rome and he isalso professor of Underwater Archaeology at the Universityof Rome 3.

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Jacke Phillips studied at the University of Toronto,receiving her Ph.D. in 1991. In 1993, she moved to the UKas the full-time Researcher for the Aksum ArchaeologicalResearch Project (Ethiopia, 1993-97), and contributedheavily to its two-volume final report, chiefly for theceramics. She also has worked on both excavations andsurvey in the Sudan, at Hambukol (1985-92), Old Dongola(1993), Suakin (2002) and the South Dongola Survey (1998-).An Egyptologist by training, she has never worked in Egyptbut rather specialises in >Egypt outside Egypt=, theinteraction of (mainly) ancient Egypt with its neighboursboth in the Aegean and the Horn of Africa regions, as wellas interaction between the Red Sea and its hinterland. Shedeveloped and directs the Shire District ArchaeologicalSurvey in north-western Ethiopia, investigating theeast-west land corridor of the Red Sea and the Nile Valley;its pilot season was in 2001. She has been a ResearchFellow of the McDonald Archaeological Research Instituteand Honorary Fellow of the British Institute in EasternAfrica since 1998.

Diana Pickworth was educated at UCB and received herdoctorate from the Department of Near Eastern Studies, inAncient Art and Archaeology. She is a Fellow National ofthe Explorers Club of New York. She was Assistant Professorat the University of Aden in the Republic of Yemen andField Director at the site of Kadimat as-Saff in the LahejProtectorate, Yemen; a new site potentially the capitalcity of the ancient kingdom of Tubanu. She has excavated inIraq at the site of Nineveh with the UCB team led by DavidStronach, and at the site of Tel Dor in Israel forProfessor Andy Stewart. Most recently in the Yemen she hasexcavated at Qana, Timna, Kadimat as-Saff, and BintaynMethul. Survey work has been carried out extensively inYemen by Dr. Pickworth, most recently on the Island ofSoqotra in the Indian Ocean, and south-east of the Rubar-Khali, to north-east of Marib.

Walter Raunig was born in 1936 in Innsbruck. He studiedagriculture in Vienna from 1956-59 (Hochschule fürBodenkultur), followed by cultural and physicalanthropology at the University of Vienna from 1959-64, witha D.Phil. Thesis on >Die kulturellen Verhältnisse Nordost-und Ost-Afrikas im ersten nackhchristlichen Jahrhundert -entworfen an Hand des Periplus des erythräischen Meeres=(Vienna 1964). He has lectured on African history,anthropology and art-history at the Universities ofBayreuth and Augsburg (1986-89). He was appointed aresearch assistant at the Museum für Völkerkunde Basel

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(1964-68), followed by research assistant and vice-directorat the Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich (1968-77)and finally director of the Staatlisches Museen fürVölkerkunde in Munich (1978-2001). Since 1958 he hastravelled extensively in Africa, the Near and Middle Eastand in eastern Asia; he is a member of various scientificsocieties, and co-edits the journals Mare Erythraeum(Munich) and Nubica et Aethiopica (Warsaw).

Michel Tuchscherer is a professor of modern andcontemporary history of the Middle East at the AUniversitéde Provence@ (Aix-en-Provence). He is also associatedresearcher at the IREMAM (Institut d=Etudes et de Recherchessur le Monde arabe et musulman). He spent some 15 years inEgypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Turkey, first as a teacher,then as a researcher in Cairo at the IFAO (Institutfrançais d=archéologie orientale) and in Istanbul at theIFEA (Institut français d'Etudes anatoliennes). He works onearly modern social and economic history of Egypt and theRed Sea area.