ChapterPDF Available

No easy option: Nile versus Red Sea in ancient and medieval north-south navigation

Authors:

Abstract and Figures

Recent scholarship has argued that the more southerly of the ancient ports of Egypt's Red Sea coast, such as Berenike and Myos Hormos, enjoyed inherent navigational advantages over those, such as Clysma, further north. That argument arises from the fact that ancient sailing rigs perform poorly when sailing to windward: by putting in to a more southerly port, the argument goes, vessels arriving at Egypt from the southern Red Sea could avoid a lengthy struggle against the northerly winds prevalent in the sea above 23ºN. Goods could instead be transferred by camel caravan to the Nile. This argument rests in part on the implicit assumption that the Nile represented a ready, easy and speedy alternative to the Red Sea. This paper argues that such an appreciation of the Nile as benign is misplaced. It draws upon meteorological and hydrological data – the latter from before the construction of the Aswan High Dam – together with traveller accounts from diverse periods, to present a more nuanced perspective of Nile navigation. It argues that movement on the river, particularly for cargo vessels, was highly seasonal, and that, moreover, this season did not quite mesh seamlessly with the sailing seasons of the Red Sea. It argues that movement on the river was often laborious and sometimes dangerous, with grounding a frequent occurrence and wrecking not uncommon. It argues that Nile travel was much
Content may be subject to copyright.
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by the Journal of
Roman Archaeology in 2011. The reference for the published version is:
Cooper, J.P., 2011, ‘No easy option: Nile versus Red Sea in ancient and
medieval north-south navigation’. In W.V. Harris & K. Iara (eds),
Maritime
Technology in the Ancient Economy: Ship Design and Navigation
. Journal of
Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 84: 189210.
Please use the published version in any citations.
___________________________________________________________
No easy option: Nile
versus
Red Sea in ancient and medieval
north-south navigation
John P. Cooper
The MARES Project, Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies, University of Exeter,
Exeter, Devon, EX4 4ND United Kingdom.
j.p.cooper@exeter.ac.uk
Abstract
Recent scholarship has argued that the more southerly of the ancient ports of
Egypt’s Red Sea coast, such as Berenike and Myos Hormos, enjoyed
inherent navigational advantages over those, such as Clysma, further north.
That argument arises from the fact that ancient sailing rigs perform poorly
when sailing to windward: by putting in to a more southerly port, the argument
goes, vessels arriving at Egypt from the southern Red Sea could avoid a
lengthy struggle against the northerly winds prevalent in the sea above 23ºN.
Goods could instead be transferred by camel caravan to the Nile.
This argument rests in part on the implicit assumption that the Nile
represented a ready, easy and speedy alternative to the Red Sea. This paper
argues that such an appreciation of the Nile as benign is misplaced. It draws
upon meteorological and hydrological data – the latter from before the
construction of the Aswan High Dam – together with traveller accounts from
diverse periods, to present a more nuanced perspective of Nile navigation. It
argues that movement on the river, particularly for cargo vessels, was highly
seasonal, and that, moreover, this season did not quite mesh seamlessly with
the sailing seasons of the Red Sea. It argues that movement on the river was
often laborious and sometimes dangerous, with grounding a frequent
occurrence and wrecking not uncommon. It argues that Nile travel was much
slower than is apparent from such ancient authors as Herodotus. Using Nile
travel times and desert crossing times between the river and the sea provided
by past travellers, it provides an alternative perspective on the positioning of
these ports, which implies no obvious advantage held by these southern
locations. In sum, it argues that the advantage of Nile navigation over Red
Sea sailing is not nearly as clear-cut as has been argued.
Finally, this discussion has implications for our contextualisation of ancient
ship technologies. While ancient and medieval vessels may have struggled to
make progress to windward, such limitations clearly did not have a
determinant effect on the location of ports. A look at the distribution of Egypt’s
Red Sea ports over the
longue durée
shows no progression towards sites
reflecting greater ‘ease’ of navigation. Moreover, their locations show that,
whatever the limitations of ancient vessels, their navigators were well able to
access all areas of the northern Red Sea.
Introduction
The Red Sea, particularly in its northern reaches, carries a reputation as a
uniquely difficult and challenging navigational space. Part of this hardship was
a function of the adjoining landscape – the sea’s shores and their hinterlands
were mostly harsh and sparsely populated desert, with relatively few supplies
of food and water. Greco-Roman authors portrayed the sea’s coastal peoples
as grotesque barbarians1. Beneath the waves, meanwhile, coral reefs and
shoals lay just out of sight, ready to hole the hulls of unwary navigators.
However it is the problem of the winds that has most exercised scholars of
ancient seafaring in the Red Sea, since some have argued, as we shall see,
that these winds had a prescriptive effect on its maritime trade routes.
From a meteorological perspective, the Red Sea can be divided into two
unequal parts. Its southern two-thirds come under the influence of the
monsoon wind system that is centred on the Indian Ocean. Broadly speaking,
during the period that the north-east monsoon is blowing, between November
and March, winds in the southern Red Sea blow from the southerly quadrant.2
In contrast, while the south-west monsoon is blowing between June and
September, the prevailing wind is from the opposite, northerly quadrant.3 In
the two transitional periods between the monsoons, wind directions are more
variable, and less predictable.4 In sum, the monsoons induce an annual and
localised cyclicity in the wind regime of the southern Red Sea, by which the
winds are found to blow in diametrically opposing directions according to
season – in each case along the axis of the sea. From November to March,
one can expect to be able to sail northward with the assistance of a southerly
wind.
1 Thomas 2007.
2 Admiralty 1892, 11; Morgan and Davies 2002, 26-27.
3 Admiralty 1892, 9; Morgan and Davies, 27-28.
4 Morgan and Davies 2002, 26-28.
Figure 1: General map of Egypt and the Red Sea, showing locations discussed in the text
(Image: Author).
The meteorological situation in the northern third of the Red Sea, where the
monsoon regime is not felt, is not so amenable to two-way sailing. Instead,
this zone comes under the influence of a large high-pressure system that sits
perennially over the Sahara. This stable cyclone generates a pattern of
prevailing northerly or north-westerly winds over the northern Red Sea that
persists year-round, broken only by the occasional winter/spring anticyclone
tracking east along the Mediterranean.5 Thus, while sailors in the southern
Red Sea can, by choosing their seasons, sail with broadly favourable winds,
those in its northern reaches are faced with the prospect of contrary winds
whenever they decide to sail north.
This summary of Red Sea wind regimes, though brief, sets out the broad
characterisations of navigational conditions by which scholars have sought to
explain the placement of ancient and medieval ports along Egypt’s Red Sea
coast.
The ports
Egypt’s trade through the Red Sea was served by a variety of ports during
antiquity and the medieval period. Those considered in this paper are modern
Suez, known in the Ptolemaic period as Arsinoë, in the Roman as Clysma,
and in the medieval as al-Qulzum; modern Quseir al-Qadim, known in the
Ptolemaic and Roman periods as Myos Hormos and in the medieval as
Quayr); Ptolemaic and Roman Berenike; and medieval Aydhāb (Figure 1).
While others existed,6 the ports listed here provide enough geographical
scope, and have sufficiently rich historical and archaeological data associated
with them, to enable an investigation of the arguments about their relative
navigational advantages.
5 Morgan and Davies 2002, 28.
6 Ptolemy Claudius,
Geography
, 4.5.8.
Suez (Arsinoë/Clysma/al-Qulzum)
The early chronology of the port at Suez is obscure. Archaeological
investigation by Bruyère at Tell Qulzum in the 1930s yielded ample evidence
of Ptolemaic, Roman and medieval Islamic occupation,7 but his curtailed
excavations did not venture into earlier stratigraphy, and the site is now lost to
urban development.8 Remains of the extensive ancient harbour at Suez had
been surveyed some years earlier by Bourdon.9 The existence of earlier port
activity at Suez is implied by the existence of the Achæmenid canal, built by
Darius the Great, from the Nile to the Red Sea near Suez.10 If the accounts of
Greco-Roman authors are to be taken at face value, then earlier attempts to
create such a canal were also made under Neccho II (610-595 BC) and the
semi-mythical pharaoh Sesostris.11 It can be inferred from these that Suez
was already the destination of navigators in the Pharaonic period, or, at the
very least, that navigation to and from Suez was considered technically
possible. The renewed excavation of a Nile-Red Sea canal by the emperor
Trajan (98-117 AD) testifies to Roman interest in Suez,12 while the numismatic
evidence suggests activity there in late antiquity,13 by which time the more
southerly ports of Myos Hormos and Berenike (discussed below) had been
abandoned. For the first century and a half of Islamic rule, Suez was once
again the mouth of a newly re-excavated Nile-Red Sea canal. There is a
dearth of information on the port in the late-seventh and eighth centuries AD.
Thereafter, however, there is evidence that it continued to function – indeed,
sometimes prosper – as a harbour serving Egypt14 as well as the Isthmus
7 Bruyère 1966.
8 Cooper 2008 and 2009.
9 Bourdon 1925, 142144.
10 Redmount 1995; Aubert 2004, 225; Cooper, 2009.
11 Herodotus,
Histories
, II.158-159; Diodorus Siculus,
Historical Library
, I.33; Aristotle,
Meteorology
,
I.XIV.25; Strabo,
Geography
, XVII.I.25; Pliny the Elder,
Natural History
, VI.XXXIII.165.
12 Redmount 1995; de Romanis 2002; Aubert 2004, 228; Cooper, 2009.
13 Tomber 2009, 66.
14 Abū Sālih,
Tārīkh
, ٧٣; al-Muqaddasī,
Aḥsan
, 195-196; al-Ya’qūbī,
Buldān
, 340; al-Iakhrī,
Masālik
, 33; Isāq Ibn al-
usayn,
Ākām
, 405; al-Masūdī,
Tanbīh
, 20, 55; Ibn Zulāq,
Faā’il
, 3.2.685.
crossing to the Mediterranean15 until it was largely abandoned under the
Fatimids and fell to ruin and banditry.16
Quseir al-Qadim (Myos Hormos, Quayr)
Quseir al-Qadim (Quayr al-Qadīm), some 450km south of Suez, is the site of
Myos Hormos, which was first mentioned in the second century BC by
Agatharchides of Knidos (c.116 BC), whose surviving text suggests a greater
antiquity for the site.17 Indeed, it has been suggested that it was founded
around 275 BC, at the same time as Berenike.18 The port appears to have
prospered in the Augustan period, and to have persisted until at least the mid-
third century AD when, perhaps because of sedimentation of its harbour, the
site fell out of use.19 It was connected by caravan route to the Nile at Coptos
(Qifṭ). Revival came in the Ayyubid period (AD 1171-1250),20 and continued
through the Mamluk (AD 1250-1517), after which the harbour shifted to
modern Quseir.21
Berenike (Biranīs)
Berenike, a further 275 km south along the coast, was founded (or perhaps
refounded) by Ptolemy II Philadelphus (282-246 BC), who had a road built to
it across the desert from the Nile.22 At times, Berenike and Myos Hormos
appear to have operated in tandem, particularly as ports of the Rome-Indian
trade.23 The scarcity of archaeological evidence for activity at the site during
the second and third centuries AD suggests the port was in relative abeyance
15 Ibn Khurdādhbih,
Masālik
:, 153-154.
16 Ibn uwayr, in al-Maqrīzī,
Khiṭaṭ
:,1.579; al-Idrīsī,
Nuzhat
, 4.348. But see also al-Idrīsī,
Nuzhat
: 1.22, 50; 4.348-349,
which suggests that at least some activity continued at al-Qulzum.
17 Agatharchides,
On the
Erythraean Sea
, 135 (fragment 83a).
18 Peacock and Blue 2006, 3.
19 Peacock and Blue 2006, 174.
20 Rebecca Bridgeman,
pers. comm.
21 Blue 2007, 265-266; Peacock and Blue 2006, 95-115.
22 Strabo,
Geography
, 17.1.45, Pliny the Elder,
Natural History
, 6.33.168.
23 Peacock and Blue 2006, 3.
at that time. However, it appears it underwent a revival in the mid-fourth
century AD until the late fifth, after which it was abandoned.24
Aydhāb
The final port to be considered here, Aydhāb lies 200km down the coast from
Berenike, and a full 930km from Suez, in the Haylayb Triangle, a territory
claimed today by both Egypt and Sudan. Its contemporary political
predicament means that very little on-the-ground investigation has been
carried out at Sawākin al-Qadīm, the putative site of the port,25 although
nearby alternatives have also been propose.26 Aydhāb appears to have been
an Islamic-era foundation, at a time when Berenike was long defunct. Early
references to Muslim travel through the Eastern Desert on pilgrimage suggest
that Egyptian Muslims had access to a southern Red Sea port from at least
the ninth century AD, and probably before.27 Al-Yaqūbī, writing around 889
AD, is first to mention the toponym Aydhāb, describing it already as a port
“from which people sail to Makkah, the Hijāz and Yemen, and to which
merchants come, carrying gold, ivory and suchlike in boats.”28 At first, the port
appears to have been served by road from Aswan.29 However, after the
Fatimids shifted the administrative capital of upper Upper Egypt from Aswan
to Qūs in the 11th century AD,30 Aydhāb’s Nile connection appears to have
shifted with it. It was with this move, and the contemporary abandonment of
Suez, that Aydhāb became Egypt’s principal Red Sea port for commerce and
pilgrimage.31 Egypt’s Mamluk rulers showed signs of losing control of Aydhāb
to the Beja in the early 14th century.32 By the end of that century it was
24 Sidebotham and Wendrich 2007, 372-373.
25 Bent (1896, 336) visited the site in 1895, as did Murray (1926, 239) thirty years later. Murray created a plan of the
site.
26 Peacock and Peacock 2008.
27 Ibn awqal,
ūrat
: 52; al-Maqrīzī,
Khiṭaṭ
, 1.531-533.
28 al-Ya’qūbī,
Buldān
: 335.
29 al-Ya’qūbī,
Buldān
, 335.
30 Garcin 1996, 864.
31 Cooper 2008, 181-183.
32 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa,
Rila
, 2.251.
abandoned,33 leaving Quayr, former Myos Hormos, as the main port serving
the Nile valley.
With the basic chronology of Egypt’s main Red Sea ports established, let us
now consider the navigational and land-transport contexts in which they were
located.
The Red Sea as ‘difficult’
Such was the combination of hostile factors that the Red Sea has long been
viewed as uniquely troublesome for navigators. This notion was already being
articulated in antiquity: Strabo writes that the desert road from the Nile to
Berenike had been constructed because “the Red Sea was hard to navigate,
particularly for those who set sail from its innermost recess” – this recess
being, one assumes, the Gulf of Suez.34 This take on Red Sea navigation has
also been advanced by modern authors. As early as 1838, the British
lieutenant J.R. Wellsted opined that “…the same motive for shortening a
dangerous and tedious voyage has at different periods operated in causing
the transfer of the trade from the port of Arsinoë, near the modern Suez,
successively, to Myos-Hormos, Berenicé, Adulis, and, lastly to Aden, without
the Straits of Báb-el-mandeb”.35 Discussing the origins of ‘Arab’ seafaring,
Hourani in 1951 argued that, “Rather than face the terrors of the Red Sea, the
[ancient] Arabs developed camel routes along the whole western side of their
peninsula.”36 Three decades later, Casson wrote that Berenike’s far-south
location was a function of navigational prerogatives: “Berenike was well over
200 miles (320km) south of Myos Hormos, which meant, for returning vessels,
that much less beating against the northerlies which prevail in the Red Sea
above latitude 20 ºN.”37 Sidebotham drew on the Red Sea wind regime in his
33 Hikoichi 1989, 167-172.
34 Strabo,
Geography
,
12.1.45.
35 Wellsted 1838, 165-166.
36 Hourani 1951, 5.
37 Casson 1980, 22, n2.
exploration of the relative roles of the Roman port of Clysma (Suez) on the
one hand, compared to Berenike and Myos Hormos on the other38. For him,
Clysma’s effectiveness as a port was tied to its location at the mouth of the
Nile-Red Sea canal that flowed through the Wadi Tumilat (
Ṭumaylāt
). That
canal enabled bulk goods – grain, wine, textiles – to be delivered to the Red
Sea more easily that across the desert routes. The ease of canal
transportation compensated for the difficulty of sailing in the northern reaches
of the Red Sea. Sidebotham asks:
“Is it possible that Clysma was mainly an emporium exporting bulky
agricultural and “industrial cargoes” [taking advantage of the inexpensive
transport by canal from the Nile] and that few ships actually sailed into the
port thereby avoiding the prevailing northerly winds? Is it possible that the
more southerly Egyptian Red Sea ports served as both importing and
exporting ports for mainly – though not exclusively – less bulky, more “luxury”
type commodities which could more easily absorb trans-desert transportation
costs? These hypotheses would be possible explanations for the continued
use of Clysma as a port in late antiquity despite its disadvantageous location
vis-à-vis the prevailing wind patterns at the northern end of the Red Sea.”
More recently, Facey has asserted a direct causative relationship between
these winds and a putative failure of northern ports to flourish: ‘It is this fact,
that it is easy to sail south out of the Red Sea but hard to sail north, that
provides some explanation why, in antiquity and Islamic times, ports on the
Egyptian side show a tendency to be some way down the coast”. Indeed, he
goes so far as to argue that “… the place now known as Suez and in antiquity
as Arsinoë and Clysma/Qulzum has played a relatively minor role in Red Sea
trade.”39
38 Sidebotham1989, 198-201.
39 Facey 2004, 7.
Essentially, the arguments presented by these scholars rest on assumptions
about time, human labour, the sailing capabilities of ancient and medieval
vessels, and, less explicitly than these logistical factors, their economic
implications. By putting in at Berenike, Myos Hormos, or Aydhāb, the
argument runs, merchants taking goods to Ptolemaic Alexandria or Fatimid
Cairo could foreshorten their northward struggle. Halting at a more southerly
port, they could transfer goods first onto camel caravans that would take their
goods to the Nile, and then onto boats at river ports such as Aswan, Coptos
or Qus [Qū], depending on the era in question. It was by various
permutations of these routes that,
inter alia
, Ptolemaic, Roman, Fatimid and
Mamluk trade was conducted with destinations across the Red Sea and
beyond. For some modern scholars, such as Wellsted and Facey, it is also
explicitly about navigational optimisation – ports were placed south in order to
ease navigation.
An easy Nile?
If navigating in the northern Red Sea was so troublesome and slow that an
alternative north-south route was sought out, then that alternative must,
presumably, have been easier and faster. That presumption requires
investigation. On first enquiry, the auguries are good. Many scholars do
indeed often portray the Nile as a river of auspicious felicity, a function of the
apparent fact that, while the river flows mostly from south to north, the
prevailing winds are from the northerly quadrant.40 Indeed, it is often the case
that the only difficulty noted on the Nile is around the Dendera–Qena bend,
where towing or rowing was required,41 and through the turbulent First
40 See, for example, Mayhoub and Azzam 1997; Semple 1932, 159; Willcocks 1890, 39; Lane 2000, 30; Vinson 1994,
7; McGrail 2001, 16.
41 Kees 1961, 98-9; Vinson 1994, 7-8.
Cataract. Otherwise, as Semple baldly puts it: “Navigating the Nile was
easy”.42
Recent research by a number of authors has recently started question this
notion of the Nile as an inherently benign waterway offering easy sailing and
demanding little in the way of skill or labour from its navigators.43 Graham and
I have argued (separately) that sailing the Nile brought its own particular set of
challenges. Indeed, just as Facey44 characterises the northern Red Sea as
demanding “muscular seamanship, and special local knowledge of weather,
winds and coastal hazards”, so too the Nile required hard physical labour and
a wealth of expertise in the vicissitudes of the fluvial environment. Let us
examine the key factors in turn.
a) Seasonality
The Nile’s annual flood and its influence on the development of human
societies on its banks has been a staple of scholarly curiosity about Egypt’s
past since Herodotus.45 The impact of that flood on Nile navigation has been
the subject of far less enquiry, yet navigating the Nile was fundamentally a
seasonal occupation, closely tied to the cycle of the flood.
42 Semple, 1932: 159.
43 Graham 2004; Cooper 2008.
44 Facey 2004: 11.
45 Herodotus,
Histories
, 2.5.
Figure 2: Typical annual through-flow of the Nile at Aswan, before construction of the Aswan
High Dam. After Hurst (1952, 241).
Changing water levels meant variable navigability in the river channel,
especially for larger cargo vessels. The optimal time for sailing was during the
height of the inundation: the first stirrings of the flood were usually detected in
Lower Egypt just after St Michael’s Day, 12 June.46 The rise accelerated
during July and August, peaked in September, and fell away again sharply
during October to December (Figure 2). Low Nile lasted, broadly, from
February until June, during which time the flow of water was barely 7% of
what it had been at its peak. Seasonal irrigation and navigational canals –
important among them the Nile-Red Sea canal, and, in the medieval period at
least, the canal to Alexandria – were opened in a co-ordinated fashion near
the peak of the flood,47 and remained navigable for some three-to-five
months, depending on the magnitude of that year’s inundation.48
However, the navigational impact of the flood cycle was felt far beyond just
these seasonal canals. Even in the main channel of the Nile, water levels
46 Al-Qalqashandī,
ub
, 3.293
47 al-Qazwīnī, ‘
Ajā
ib
, 175; Lane 2000, 28; Baron de Tott 1786, 4.26-27.
48 Cooper 2008, 87-88.
effected navigability. A dwindling river made sand banks an increasing
hazard, threatening not only to block a vessel’s passage, but also to trap it
and, at worst, capsize and wreck it.49 Here the reports of Nile travellers –
Aquilante Rocchetta,50 George Sandys,51 Frederick Norden,52 Edward
Pococke,53 Edward Lane54, and Hillary Swinburne55 among them – are
illuminating, if too numerous to quote individually.
As the flood ebbed, navigation ceased progressively, depending on the
amount of water a vessel drew.56 A table from the Napoleonic
Description de
l'Égypte
is uniquely informative in this regard (Table 1). It shows that the
largest Nile vessels of its time, the 160t
falūka
and 200t
markab
, drew over
2m of water57, and could navigate for only five months of the year in Upper
Vessel type
Dimensions
Navigable period
Draught
Width
Cargo
ft
m
ft
m
ft
m
Ardebs
Tonnes
Months
Upper Egypt:
Markab
7.7
2.5
54.7
17.8
18.3
5.9
1000
200
5
Faluka
7.0
2.3
50.5
16.4
16.5
5.4
800
160
5
Nusf faluka
6.0
1.9
47.7
15.5
15.3
5.0
500
100
7
Faluka
from:
4.5
1.5
37.0
12.0
10.0
3.2
200
40
9
sughayr
to:
1.5
0.5
19.0
6.2
7.0
2.3
30
6
12
Lower Egypt:
Qanja Kabir
4.5
1.5
50.5
16.4
13.8
4.5
300
60
7
Nusf- Qanja
3.8
1.2
43.8
14.2
12.5
4.1
150
30
10
Qanja Sughayr
1.5
0.5
40.5
13.2
5.0
1.6
40
8
12
Kabir Qayyas
4.0
1.3
48.0
15.6
13.0
4.2
300
60
8
Nusf Qayyas
1.7
0.5
39.0
12.7
11.5
3.7
150
30
11
Qayas Sughayr
1.5
0.5
19.0
6.2
7.0
2.3
30
6
12
Table 1: Table of vessels navigating on the Nile waterways, showing their tonnage and the
period, in months, that they can navigate the river, according to the
Description de l'Égypte
(Jomard 1809-28,
État Moderne
1.123).
49 Dempster 1917, 1.
50 Rocchetta 1974, 65.
51 Sandys 1615, 117.
52 Norden 1757, 1.9, 18, 32, 34; 2.177, 192-193, 197, 200-204, 207, 210-211.
53 Pococke 1763, 1.116.
54 Lane 1890, 302.
55 Swinburne 1850-51, entries for 24 November, 4 December, 9 December.
56 Jomard 1809-28,
État Moderne
1.112; Willcocks 1889, 39.
57 The units of the original table labelled ‘
ds.
’ and ‘
o
.’ are obscure but the quantity of subdivisions of the major unit
(apparently 12) and the footnotes accompanying the table suggest that what are intended are French feet and
inches.
Egypt. The 100t
nuf-falūka
, could sail for seven months in Upper Egypt, as
could the 60t
qanja kabīr
in the Delta. The 60t
kabīr qayyās
drew 1.3m, and
could sail the Delta for eight months. The 30t
nuf-qanja
displaced 1.2m, and
could sail the Delta for 10 months. Year-round sailing was limited to boats
drawing less than 0.5m.
The impact of low Nile on navigation and trade is also noted in a letter from
the Cairo Geniza written in the 1060s AD from a trader in al-Fusṭāṭ to another
in Alexandria. He writes: “The city is at a complete standstill. There is no
buying or selling, and no one is spending a single dirham. All the people’s
eyes are turned towards the Nile. May God in his mercy raise its waters.”58
It is therefore surely for reasons of navigability that Ibn Ḥawqal writes: “Most
navigation takes place with the rise of the Nile.”59
b) Current and wind
As water levels varied, so did current velocity. Broadly speaking, a navigator
could expect currents of around 6 km/h (3.2 knots) at the peak of the flood,
and less than 2km/h (1.1 knots) during low Nile.60 All other things being equal,
that would imply that journeying downstream would be considerably easier –
and upstream concomitantly harder – during the Nile flood, compared to low
Nile situations. Thus, at the very season when the Nile was deep enough for
cargo vessels to navigate safely, their upstream journey, at least, was against
a river that was flowing three times faster than at low Nile.
By happy coincidence, it is also during this high-Nile season that the maxim of
‘current from the south, wind from the north’ is most valid. The Nile valley and
the Nile Delta are subject to two quite different wind regimes. The former
comes under the influence of cyclonic highs that sit over the Sahara desert all
year, resulting in the dominance of northerly winds in all seasons. The Delta,
58 Udovitch 1977, 153.
59 Ibn awqal,
ūrat
, 137.
60 Phillips 1924, 8-11.
meanwhile, falls under the influence of Mediterranean weather systems,
resulting in the dominance of northerlies and north-westerlies during the
summer, and a more mixed situation in the winter, as anticyclones track east
across the Mediterranean.
Figure 3: The frequency of winds blowing from the northerly quadrant (NW, N, NE) at
locations in the Nile Delta and Upper Egypt, expressed as a percentage (Ministry of Public
Works 1922: 13, 17, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, and 35).
The first thing to note is that high Nile – when larger vessels can navigate the
river – coincides with a period during which winds prevail from the northerly
quadrant in both the Delta and the Nile valley (Figure 3). Moreover, the
northerly winds are not only more frequent, but also stronger (Figure 4). For
example, at Minya in Upper Egypt, wind speeds average over 15km/h (8
knots) in September, while the frequency of winds blowing from the northerly
quadrant rises to around 95%. In contrast, wind speeds are typically less than
10km/h (5.4 knots) in December-January, and blow for less than half of the
time. Thus, not only does average wind speed maintain a positive differential
over average speed of the countervailing current during the period of optimal
water levels, but also these winds are almost always favourable. It is surely of
this season that those scholars who have argued that the Nile was an easy
navigation were thinking. Lane, in the 19th century AD, portrays it thus:
“… while vessels with furled sails are carried down by the stream with great
speed others ascend the river at almost equal rate, favoured by the strong
northerly winds, which prevail most when the current is most rapid.”61
Similar conditions are seen to hold for the entire Nile valley between Cairo
and the start of the Dendera bend at Nāj Ḥamādī. Further upstream,
however, conditions become more difficult. In September, daily wind speeds
at Qīna, Luxor and Isnā average 6.1-7.7 km/h (3.2-4.2 knots), barely
outstripping the mean current velocity. Hence, the differential between wind
speed and current falls to 1.45 km/h (0.8 knots) at Isnā, 0.75 km/h (0.4 knots)
at Qīna, and to almost zero at Luxor (Figure 4). This may be due to the
sheltering effect of the elevated ground on either side of the valley around this
bend, which runs for some 175 km. Moreover, the assistance that the
overwhelmingly northerly
61 Lane 2000, 30.
Figure 4: Monthly mean wind speed at locations in the Nile Delta and Upper Egypt, and the
monthly mean speed of the Nile at a point below Aswan (Ministry of Public Works 1922, 13,
17, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, 35; Phillips 1924, 8-11).
wind afforded those sailing upstream through the bend was undermined by
the fact that wind and current were no longer countervailing for long sections
of it – around 30km in total. In fact, referring to modern topography, both wind
and water would have been acting against upstream navigators for around
18km of this section.
Moving further south towards Aswan, the peak-season differential of mean
wind speed over mean current speed recovers again to over 4 km/h (2.1
knots), with northerly winds prevailing for 90% of the time in September.62
However, that does little to compensate for the difficulties of moving boats
around the Dendera bend in order to reach this section. Indeed, it is worth
considering that the relative difficulty of sailing upstream between Nāj
Ḥamādī and Isnā might have informed the choice of caravan routes leading
from the Nile to Roman and Ptolemaic Berenike and Fatimid Aydhāb: if it can
be argued that Red Sea navigators put in at these 'southern' harbours to
avoid having to battle further northward against deteriorating conditions, then
might it not also be argued that ancient and medieval Nile navigators often
favoured Coptos or Qū, rather than at Aswan – the latter closer by land to
both Red Sea ports – because that foreshortened their southerly struggle
upriver?
c) River navigation as labour
And struggle it often was. A study of the accounts of travellers on the Nile
indicates that movement on the river was far from easy, particularly outside
the optimal season already identified, when the waters were deep, the river
relatively broad,63 seasonal canals open, and wind and current at their best for
upstream and downstream navigators. It was not so all year round. Even at
the height of the Nile sailing season, prevailing winds did not always blow:
outside of that peak season, they often did not. Once again, the accounts of
travellers on the Nile are rich in references to the hardships faced by Nile
crews when the wind failed them. Towing is attested from various sources in
62 Ministry of Public Works 1922: ,35.
63 Said 1993, 96.
the Pharaonic period. The Ramesside Ship’s Log Papyrus64 names a ‘chief of
towing men’, and Herodotus65 says the practice was common. The practice of
towing is also encountered frequently in traveller accounts of the 18th and 19th
centuries AD. In 1873, two days into a journey up the Nile valley from Cairo,
Emelia Edward’s tourist party decided to remain at Memphis, even though a
brisk, favourable wind was blowing. Her captain told her:
“You will come to learn the value of a wind, when you have been longer on
the Nile.”66
The next morning, appearing on deck, Edwards:
“ … found nine of our poor fellows harnessed to a rope like barge-horses,
towing the huge boat against the current. Seven of the … crew [also towing]
followed at a few yards’ distance.”67
More than a century earlier, Pococke marvelled that his Muslim crew towed all
day even during the Ramadan fast.68 These and many other accounts
underline the frequency by which vessels had to be towed,69 and also
rowed,70 in order to make progress along the river. Hilary Swinburne’s rapid
19-day ascent to Aswan was achieved only through extensive use of human
power, with towing or punting taking place on 12 days: on five of these days,
the boat was towed all day, and on one of them it made no more than twelve
miles (19.2km).
As water levels fell, crews had also to work hard to avoid grounding on
sandbanks. They did not always succeed. Again, traveller accounts provide
an insight into the problems faced. In the 19th century, Swinburne, notes that,
64 P. Leiden I 359 v III, 9, 5; Jansenn 1961, 33 and 35.
65 Herodotus,
Histories
, II.29, 96.
66 Edwards 1878, 104.
67 Edwards1878, 105.
68 Pococke 1763, 1.72.
69 Norden 1757: 2.183, 188, 191, 196-8, 200, 211; Swinburne 1850-51, entry for 12 November; Edwards 1878, 67,
105.
70 Swinburne 1850-51, entries for 11-24 December.
in the Nile valley south of Asyūṭ, “…we have been continually running aground
far from the shores”.71
Lane reports that:
“… even the most experienced pilot is liable frequently to run his vessel
aground; on such an occurrence, it is often necessary for the crew to descend
into the water, to shove off the boat with their backs and shoulders.”72
Norden describes his downstream journey in January-February 1738, sailing
in a vessel a cargo vessel that drew ‘no more than a foot and some inches
water when empty’.73 It was, however, laden to capacity with dates, and
became stuck fast on several occasions. It was only by poling and towing that
Norden’s vessel did not suffer the same fate – irretrievable grounding – of
other vessels he saw.74
If sailing on the Red Sea could be dangerous, as well as hard work, so too
could navigation on the Nile. Particular locations had particular difficulties
associated with them. The dangers of the Nile’s Mediterranean mouths I have
discussed elsewhere, and are not directly relevant here.75 The cataracts
above Aswan, and the rapids and winds around Jabal Abū Fawḍa presented
their own hazards. In addition, storms were not infrequent, particularly during
winter and the Spring
khamsīn
season, when hot dusty southerly storms blow
from the desert. When Jean Coppin arrived at Alexandria in January 1638, he
learned that “more than 80 barques had been lost on the Nile in a storm” that
had just blown through.76 De Monconyon77 in the 17th century and
Warburton78 in the 19th both narrowly avoided capsize. Caught in a storm in
71 Swinburne 1850-51, entry for 9 December.
72 Lane 1890, 302.
73 Norden 1757, 2.177.
74 Norden 1757, 2.207.
75 Cooper 2008, 108-115.
76 Coppin 1970, 13.
77 De Monconyon 1973, 33.
78 Warburton 1845, 226.
December 1849, Florence Nightingale saw the capsized
dhahabiyya
of some
fellow travellers floating back down the river.79
It can be concluded from these accounts that river travel was not only
physically hard work, but also risky, and requiring skill. Navigators need to be
aware of the seasonal variability of the river and its navigable channels, of
localised wind conditions, of the ways of avoiding and escaping danger. It was
not, in sum, inherently ‘easy’. Nor were all the dangers environmental.
Robbery and theft from vessels at night is described by numerous medieval
and early modern travellers, among them, Emelia Edwards,80 Jean de
Palerne,81 Christophe Harant,82 and Johan Wild.83 Lewis characterises
banditry in Roman Egypt as endemic.84
A. Nile and Desert journey times between (the site of) Cairo and Red Sea ports (days)
(i) Absolute values
Outbound
Inbound
Destination
By Nile
By land
Total
By Nile
By land
Total
Suez
0
3
3
0
3
3
Quseir al-Qadim
14-22
6-7
20-29
9-17
6-7
15-24
Berenike
14-22
12
26-34
9-17
12
21-28
‘Aydhāb
14-22
19-23
33-45
9-17
19-23
28-40
(ii) Additional journey time required relative to Suez (midpoint value, days)
Suez
0
0
Quseir al-Qadim
+22
+17
Berenike
+27
+21
‘Aydhāb
+36
+31
B. Inbound journey times between the Red Sea at the level of ‘Aydhāb and the site of
Cairo (days).
Port used
By sea
By land
By Nile
Total
24hr
sailing
Day
only
24hr
sailing
Day
only
‘Aydhāb
0
0
19-23
9-17
28-40
28-40
Berenike
3
6
12
9-17
24-32
27-35
Quseir al-Qadim
6
12
6-7
9-17
21-30
27-36
Suez
12
24
3
9-17
24-32
36-44
Table 2 (A&B): Summary tables of the typical-journey time calculations used in
this article (from Cooper 2008, 97).
79 Nightingale 1854, 65.
80 Edwards 1887, 113-114.
81 De Palerne 1971, 26.
82 Harant 1972, 54.
83 Wild 1973, 16.
84 Lewis 1983, 203-5.
Journey times
If sailing on the Nile cannot be seen as physically or intellectually
easy
, was it
at least demonstrably faster than travelling the Red Sea? The radical changes
unleashed on the Nile by the construction of the Aswan High Dam have
rendered any form of experimental archaeology meaningless, since the
conditions encountered have changed radically. Once again, one must turn to
traveller accounts, which provide a useful data set on journey times.
For the purposes of this exercise, let us take modern Cairo, Roman Babylon,
as our northern reference point, since it represents a central node of trans-
Egyptian river traffic. Analysis of a number of journeys show that a typical
journey time up to Nile from Cairo to Qūs, near Coptos – the latter towns
being the ancient and medieval departure points for Myos Hormos, Berenike
and Aydhāb – was just under three weeks (Table 2(A)). To Aswan, it took just
over a month. These are considerably slower than the nine days that
Herodotus claims it took to get from Heliopolis (now a suburb of Cairo) to
Thebes (Luxor),85 or the frankly remarkable “eight days or less” that the
Napoleonic
Description de l’Égypte
, claims it took to get from Cairo to the First
Cataract.86 If these speeds were at all achievable, it must surely have been by
élite rowed vessels of some kind. Meanwhile, returning to our journey-time
analysis, the downstream journey from Aswan to Cairo took between 19 and
27 days, and from Qūṣ, 9-17 days (Table 2(B)).
Some caveats should be noted here. The journeys analysed here were mostly
made in early modern sailing vessels, sometimes in relatively swift tourist
dhahabiyya
s87, rather than ancient or medieval craft. Moreover, these
journeys were often made in the winter or spring months rather than the peak
of the flood, at which time journeys might have been faster. However, such
85 Herodotus
History
, 2.9.
86 Jomard 1809-28,
État Moderne 1
, 122)
87 This was not always the case: Norden (1757, 2.177) travelled in a cargo vessel.
data is the best available. If anything, more ancient merchant boats might be
expected to be slower, not faster, than the vessels for which times are
recorded here. Moreover, most Red Sea connections would have been made
during this winter-spring period (see below).
To these river journey times must be added the desert crossing times (Table
2A-B). The journey from Roman Coptos to Myos Hormos, i.e. from Medieval
to Quayr, through the Wadi Ḥammāmāt was six-seven days.88 That
from Roman Coptos to Berenike took 12 days.89 The journey from Medieval
to Aydhāb was even longer: al-Idrīsī gives the journey time at less than
20 days.90 Nasir i Khusraw did it in 16,91 but Ibn Jubayr took 23.92 By not
travelling on the Nile at all from our Cairo reference point, but rather crossing
the desert to Suez, the journey time is cut to three days or less,93 as indeed is
the northward crossing along the Isthmus of Suez to the Roman and early
Islamic Mediterranean port of Pelusium/al-Faramā for those bypassing the
Nile entirely.94 Stringing the land and river components of these journeys
together, it can be seen that the journey from our reference point at Cairo to
Myos Hormos or Quayr would typically take 20-29 days outbound, and 15-24
days inbound. From Cairo to Berenike would take 26-34 days outbound, and
21-28 days inbound. Cairo to Aydhāb would take up to 45 days outbound,
and up to 40 inbound (Table 2A-B).
Considering only the journey segments between Cairo and the Red Sea (in
both directions), it would appear that, of Egypt’s ‘southern’ ports, Roman
Myos Hormos had an advantage of around five days over Roman Berenike on
the outbound and return journeys, while medieval Quayr had an advantage
88 Whitewright 2007, 85-86.
89 Pliny,
Natural Histor
y: 6.26.102-103.
90 Idrīsī,
Nuzhat
, 1.134.
91 Nasir i Khusraw,
Safarnama
, 64-65.
92 Ibn Jubayr,
Rila
, 57-65.
93 Al-Mas’ūdī,
Murūj
, 1.237-8; Ibn awqal,
ūrat
, 9; Ibn Duqmāq,
Intiār
, 2.54; Rooke 1783, 126; Al-Isakhrī,
Masālik
,
7; al-Quā’ī, in al-Maqrīzī,
Khiṭaṭ
, 1.40.
94 Al-Nuwayrī,
Nihāyat
: 231; Maqrīzī,
Khiṭaṭ
: 1.579.
over Aydhāb of around 15 days in both directions. Add the contemporary port
at Suez into the mix, and it can be seen that this northern port had an
advantage of 22 days over Myos Hormos/Quayr on the outbound journey, 27
days over Berenike, and a full 36 days over Aydhāb. On the return, it had an
advantage of 17 days over Myos Hormos/Quayr, 22 days over Berenike, and
31 days over Aydhāb.
These comparisons, based on combined river-and-desert journey times
between Cairo and each of the ports port under consideration. We have seen
that travelling on the Nile was not necessarily easy or risk free. To this should
be added the comparative expense of land transportation compared to
waterborne freight, and the consequence that the longer journeys associated
with the southern ports must have incurred additional costs. For inbound ships
stopping at more southerly Red Sea ports, did the abbreviated northbound
sail on the sea justify the extra time and cost inherent in the onward land and
Nile journey?
The first observation to make is that, for
southbound
journeys, there was
apparently no merit at all – in terms of winds – in avoiding the northern Red
Sea, since outbound voyages enjoyed prevailing northerly winds that were
firmly in the navigator’s favour. Thus, for goods originating in Lower Egypt or
the Mediterranean, Suez offered a route by which movers of merchandise
could swap the potentially arduous journey up the Nile, followed by a long and
costly trip through the Eastern Desert, for a much shorter three-day (or less)
caravan journey – from Mediterranean at Pelusium/al-Faramā or the Nile at
Cairo – followed by an uninterrupted journey south on the Red Sea, backed
by a prevailing following wind. From this southbound perspective, the
southern ports seem to offer no navigational advantage whatsoever, but
rather impose additional burdens of time and logistics to the journey.
It follows that if the southern locations of Quseir al-Qadim, Berenike, and
Aydhāb are to be explained by reason of navigational advantage, then that
advantage surely has to based on the
inbound
(i.e. northbound) journeys of
Red Sea ships. We have seen that the total land-and-river journey from
Roman Myos Hormos to our Cairo reference point was some five days shorter
than that journey from Roman Berenike. Whitewright has calculated – based
on Roman textual evidence and the experimental performance of square sails
– that Roman square-rigged vessels would have been able to travel at a
voyage-made-good speed of 1.9 knots in upwind conditions.95 He concludes,
therefore, that the journey by Red Sea from the level of Berenike to Myos
Hormos, beating against the wind, would have taken around 3.5 days,
assuming night sailing.96 If one assumes that vessels stopped at night, then
the same northbound journey might have taken, perhaps twice as long. In
either case, the relative time advantage of one port over the other is a
negligible, being 3 days in either scenario. Thus, taking into account the
onward land and Nile journey as far as our reference point at Cairo, Roman
Berenike had no appreciable advantage over Myos Hormos. Nor, indeed, did
Myos Hormos over Berenike.
What then of medieval Aydhāb versus Quayr? Aydhāb gave way to
Quayr, 250 nautical miles to the north, some time in the late Ayyubid or early
Mamluk periods. We have seen that Quayr has a typical advantage of some
14 days over Aydhāb considering only the northbound land-and-Nile journey
to Cairo. By Whitewright’s measure, the northbound Red Sea journey from the
latitude of Aydhāb to Quayr would have taken an average of 5.5 days if
travelling day and night, and perhaps 11 days if anchoring at night. Thus the
inbound Red Sea journey to Cairo via Quayr is seen to be around 8.5 days
shorter than that via Aydhāb, presuming night-time sailing, and perhaps 2.5
95 Whitewright 2007, 84.
96 Whitewright 2007, 85.
days shorter allowing for night-time stops. Hence it is the more northerly of
these two ports, requiring a journey with the longest battle against problematic
Red Sea northerlies, that appears to be superior on these terms. Any respite
from the unremittingly contrary winds assumed in this scenario could only
have boosted Quayr's advantage in terms of journey time.
Now let us bring Suez into consideration. Using the same methodology, we
find that arriving at our Cairo reference point via this northern port as the
continuation of a northbound Red Sea journey is seen to be typically 11 days
faster than arriving via Quseir al-Qadim, assuming night-time sailing, or 5
days faster allowing for night-time stops. Reaching Cairo via Suez is about 14
days faster than arriving via Berenike, assuming night sailing, or five days
faster if halting at night. The Suez route is 19 days shorter than the Aydhāb
route if travelling also by night, or seven days shorter if stopping at night. If the
objective on arrival at Suez was to then take the goods directly to the
Mediterranean, then the three-day onward journey to Pelusium/al-Faramā
would be several days shorter again than taking goods via the Nile Delta
branches or canals,97 making this an even more superior route by this
scenario.
One more factor should be added to this model. We have considered the
seasonality of Nile navigation – noting in particular the serious problems
facing would-be navigators of cargo vessels on the river as water levels
dwindled into the low Nile period between February and June. Red Sea
navigation also had its seasons: according to Ibn Mājid, departures from the
southern part of the Red Sea towards India and the southern coast of Arabia
took place in two periods between late-March and early August. The first
lasted from late-March until 7 May if going to India, and until 10 June if going
97 Cooper 2008, 105-108.
no further than Hormuz.98 The second ran between early July and early
August.99 The
Periplus Maris Erythraei100
says that, at its time, departures
from Egypt to Horn-of-Africa ports took place in July. Pliny puts the departure
time of India-bound ships from Berenike at “midsummer, before the rising of
the Dog-star”.101
During these departure seasons, however, the Nile was not easily navigable
for cargo vessels. This raises a number of questions. Did this fact mean that
goods for export had to be shipped upriver
before
the end of the previous high
Nile in order to reach the southern ports? Were they then warehoused until
the Red Sea sailing season began? The Muziris papyrus mentions the
existence of “public tax-receiving warehouses at Koptos”.102 Did this disjoint
between the Nile sailing season and the outbound Red Sea sailing season
give Suez a further advantage in outbound trade? Certainly, Suez reduced or
indeed eliminated the exposure to river transportation during this low-Nile
period: those Mediterranean goods arriving at Pelusium/al-Faramā during the
middle of the Mediterranean sailing season could bypass the low river entirely
by crossing the Isthmus to Suez.
Meanwhile, arrivals at Egypt's Red Sea ports from the south occurred
during the early or late northeast monsoon, during which time southerly winds
blew in the southern Red Sea. In general, sailing could take place throughout
the season, although Ibn Mājid advises that its stormy peak was to be avoided
in the southern Red Sea, “especially with a large ship”.103 He says that the
time to leave India for Arabia was mid-October, with the start of the
monsoon.104 However, he also says that those bound for Jidda – and probably
therefore also Egypt, a country his guide does not cover – were better off
98 Ibn Mājid,
Fawā
id
, 225-226.
99 Ibn Mājid,
Fawā
id
, 243-244.
100 Casson, 1989, 59.
101 Pliny the Elder,
Natural History
, 6.26.104.
102 Rathbone 2000, 40; SB XVIII 13167, ll. 4.
103 Ibn Mājid,
Fawā
id
, 230-231.
104 Ibn Mājid,
Fawā
id
, 228-229.
leaving on 2 March, and no later than 11 April: mariners following that advice
could expect to arrive in Jidda in July.105 Pliny reports that Egypt-bound
vessels in the Roman era departed India in December or January,106
somewhat earlier than Ibn Mājid's timing. Indeed, when the 12th century
traveller Ibn Jubayr passed through the desert to Aydhāb during the month of
May, he found the road teaming with caravans of pepper bound for the Nile.107
Goods arriving at Aydhāb, Berenike and Myos Hormos/Quayr on southerly
winds in the
early
northeast monsoon could have made their way across the
desert to find a Nile with adequate water levels for cargo vessels. However,
those arriving from India, by Pliny's or Ibn Mājid's measure, might have
arrived at their Red Sea ports a little too early for the new flood. This implies
some need to wait for the Nile to rise. Some of the potential wait would be
taken up by the desert journey. Nevertheless, any delay can only have
reduced further the time-effectiveness of the 'southern' ports relative to Suez.
Indeed, once Cairo had been founded as the capital of the Fatimid and
Mamluk empires, making it the ultimate destination for so much Red Sea
trade, then Suez represented a point at which the Red Sea could be used to
bypass problems of the low-Nile season entirely.
Discussion and conclusion
Where does this discussion leave the relative merits of the Egyptian Nile on
the one hand, and the northern Red Sea on the other? The Nile was not the
unequivocally 'easy' and risk-free alternative to the Red Sea as has been
argued elsewhere. Like the Red Sea itself, the river demanded effort, skill and
knowledge, albeit of a different and particular kind. Moreover, diverting one’s
goods from the sea to the Nile reduced one’s exposure to the storms, labour,
coral reefs and deserts of the former, but instead exposed one to the storms,
105 Ibn Mājid,
Fawā
id
, 230-232.
106 Pliny,
Natural History
, 6.26.
107 Ibn Jubayr,
Rila
, 67-9.
labour, groundings and robbers of the latter. Already, from a purely logistical
perspective, this discussion narrows considerably the apparent merit gap
between the two potential routes. In addition, neither departures from those
‘southern’ Red Sea ports, nor all arrivals at them, occurred during the optimal
period of Nile navigation. Depending on the ultimate destination, departures
took place between late-March and Early August – covering the low Nile
period, and only the start of the rise of the river. Arrivals came during the
northwest monsoon, and into the transition period – Early arrivals from the
southern Red Sea could have connected directly to a high Nile, but not those
from India arriving in the later arrival period: they might have had to wait. If so,
then why not use that time to press northward on the Red Sea, thereby
obtaining a time advantage on the land route?
Certainly, we can infer from the very existence of a Achaemenid, Ptolemaic,
Roman and Islamic-era Nile-Red Sea canal at Suez, alongside evidence for
extensive ancient port infrastructure and settlement activity at the site, and
backed up with ample historical reference to its use, that ancient and
medieval navigators sailed on ships with the technological capability to move
north in the Red Sea. Since scholarly doubt has been cast upon the capacity
of such ships to make any ground against a northerly wind,108 then one must
assume that the crew of these vessels knew how to circumvent the technical
limitations of their craft, by drawing on fine-grained knowledge of local wind
conditions that mitigated the slog of sailing upwind. Indeed, while winds in the
northern Red Sea
prevailed
from the north, that does not entail that they
always
blew from that direction. During the northeast monsoon, when vessels
were arriving in Egypt, winds with a southerly component blow at least 10% of
108 Palmer 2008.
Figure 5: The monthly average frequency of winds with a southerly component at Suez and
al-Ṭūr, both in the Gulf of Suez.
the time at Suez, peaking at 25% in March.109 Further south, at al-Ṭūr, the
situation is not so favourable, but still, winds with a southerly component blow
for 12pc of the time in April,110 an important period for arrivals into Egyptian
ports (Figure 5). Add to this the assistance provided by current patterns in the
Red Sea,111 as well as the potential of utilising diurnal winds, and the
northbound journey, even in the northern Red Sea, might not have been as
unremittingly gruelling as the generalised picture that scholars have inferred
from the prevailing winds data.
A glance at the broad chronology of the ports under consideration here shows
that, of all them, it was Suez – supposedly the most difficult destination – that
endured longest as a port. Even when it was abandonment by the Fatimid
régime in the 11th century AD,112 the move appears to have been one driven
by geopolitical threat – from the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the
109 Ministry of Public Works 1922, 29.
110 Ministry of Public Works 1922, 15.
111 Whitewright 2007.
112 Al-Maqrīzī,
Khiṭaṭ.
, 1.549-550.
growing threat of the Seljuk Turks – rather than by navigational priorities that
favoured more southerly ports. Having dealt with those threats, the Mamluks
restored Suez as a military harbour, and under the Ottomans it became a
supply centre for the Red Sea navy.113 Therafter, Suez persisted until the end
of the days of sail. In contrast, the more southerly ports under consideration
here are characterised by sporadic use – at least over the
longue durée
and
lengthy periods of disuse. Certainly, the pattern of occupation of these ports
does not reflect a process of navigational optimisation that progressively
favoured those more southerly ports. Indeed, in different periods, Egypt’s
premier Red Sea port has variously been as far north as possible, at Suez, as
far south as possible, at Aydhāb, and somewhere in the middle, at Quseir al-
Qadim. In different periods, the north-south route has variously maximised
exposure to the Red Sea, to the Nile alternative, as well compromising by
using the Quseir al-Qadim route.
Rather than seek purely navigational explanations for the placement of these
ports, it is perhaps better to consider the broader picture of state interests in
the Eastern Desert as a whole. Historical evidence from the early Islamic
period suggests that the early development of Aydhāb as a port was closely
linked to Muslim settlement of the Eastern Desert, and in particular to the
colonisation of the gold mines of the Wadi al-Allaqi (al-Allāqī) in the eighth
century.114 Indeed, until the Fatimid abandonment of Suez/al-Qulzum in
favour of Aydhāb in the 11th century, the main route to the latter port appears
to have been from Aswan, the first capital of upper Upper Egypt115, via the al-
Allāqī mining settlements. Thus, military and logistical resources deployed in
securing Aydhāb were, for much of that route, also securing communications
to and from the mines. Only when al-Qulzum was forcibly abandoned did the
Fatimid state invest in a new route across the desert, and the capital of upper
113 Schulze 2009.
114 Al-Maqrīzī,
Khiṭaṭ
, 1.530.
115 Ibn ‘Abd al-Ḥakam,
Futū
, 173.
Upper Egypt shift to Qūs. By this time, the al-Allāqī mines appear to have
been abandoned, so the advantange of combining the route through the
desert was no more.
Securing the route through the desert appears always to have been a
combination of force and persuasion directed at the Beja population. Muslim
historical accounts addressing the 7th-9th centuries AD report a series of
Muslim incursions, Muslim-Beja pacts, Beja “violations” and mutual conflicts
that identify the Eastern Desert as a contested space.116 Even during
Aydhāb’s Fatimid heyday, the state had to share revenues from the port
equally with the Beja “king”.117 By the mid-fourteenth century, Ibn Baṭūṭa
recalls the split as 2:1 in favour of the Beja.118 The ultimate abandonment of
the port appears to be connected with renewed conflict with the Beja.119
Can the same be said for Egypt’s earlier ‘southern’ ports, such as Myos
Hormos and Berenike? Certainly, these ports should be contextualised in
terms of the wider state interests in the Eastern Desert. In the Roman era, this
did include the trade in luxury goods with south Arabia, Adulis, the Horn of
Africa and India, as depicted in the
Periplus Maris Erythraei
. But, this trade
could have equally have been conduced through Suez, and probably was in
the later Roman period. Perhaps, as Sidebotham has suggested,120 the
movement of lighter, luxury goods passed through these ports, while bulky
goods – grain, textiles – went through Suez. That would have made the
onward journey on the Nile more feasible for inbound goods arriving at
southern ports, given that they arrived during low Nile, or at least at a time
when the river had not yet fully risen.
116 Ibn ‘Abd al-Ḥakam,
Futūḥ.
, 169-70, 189; al-Ṭabarī,
rīkh
, 3.3.1429, 1433; Ibn awqal,
ūrat
, 52; al-Maqrīzī,
Khiṭaṭ
, 1.530-534.
117 Al-Idrīsī,
Nuzhat
: 2.135.
118 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa,
Rila
, 1.110.
119 Hikoichi 1989, 167-172.
120 Sidebotham 1989, 198-201.
Again, however, Roman interests in the Eastern Desert went beyond merely
the southern ports. The desert routes that served the ports served also, in
part, the routes to and from the great imperial quarries – Mons Porphyrites,
Mons Claudianus, Mons Smaragdus, the emerald mines,121 etc – that so
attracted Roman interest in the region. Augustan-era development of Myos
Hormos coincides with new investment in quarries around the Wādī
Ḥammāmāt and its decline follows with the abandonment of forts through the
wadi in the late second-early third centuries AD.122 The quarries at Mons
Claudianus were exploited from the mid first-century AD through to the third,
peaking under Trajan.123 Those at Mons Porphyrities were occupied from the
first to the early fifth centuries, peaking in the late-second/early third.124 The
Beryl mines of Mons Smaragdus (Kheshm Umm Kabu), en route to Berenike,
were exploited until the fifth century AD.125 Thus the state infrastructure –
military, watering stops, roads, caravanserais – that supported these mining
enterprises also enabled and controlled access to the southern ports, which
would otherwise have been inaccessible to merchant transport through hostile
territory. Moreover, they provided the means by which taxation of cross-
Desert traffic could be effected, creating an incentive to the state in ensuring
that mercantile traffic passed through ports of its choosing.
In sum, the logistical advantages of Egypt’s southern Red Sea ports cannot
be clearly demonstrated with reference solely to our current understanding of
Nile and Red Sea navigation, and of the logistics of Eastern Desert crossings.
In terms of journey times, there appears to be little, beyond a week here or
there, to separate the various routes used in antiquity and the medieval period
to move along the north-south axes presented by the Nile and Red Sea.
Given the seasonality of Nile and Red Sea navigation, it is worth recalling
121 Strabo,
Geography
, 17.1.45.
122 Brun 2003, 192, 201.
123 Maxfield & Peacock 2001, 423-452.
124 Maxfield & Peacock 2007, 413-431.
125 Sidebotham et al. 2000, 356.
Udovitch’s observation with reference to the Mediterranean, that “... the
significant unit of time was the sailing season.”126 In other words, on long-haul
voyages, the seasons only allowed for a single round trip to or from Egypt in
any case. In that context, the relative time advantage in days to be gained
from one port over another appears marginal. In terms of effort and
technological capability, the very existence of a port of great longevity at Suez
suggests that neither labour nor technology presented an insurmountable
obstacle to moving north. The conclusion must be that it was other factors that
drove the placement of ports along Egypt’ Red Sea coast over the
longue
durée
, and that for these one should look to the wider economic and
geopolitical picture informing the state’s interests in securing and raising taxes
from the Eastern Desert routes – the vital factor in making Egypt’s southern
Red Sea ports viable.
References
Abū Sālih,
Tārīkh:
Evetts, B.T.A. (trs.),
The Churches and Monasteries of
Egypt: Attributed to Abū Sālih, the Armenian
(Oxford, 1895).
Admiralty,
The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Pilot
(London, 1892).
Agatharchides,
On the
Erythraean Sea
: Burstein, S.M. (ed.),
On the
Erythraean Sea/Agatharchides of Cnidus
(London, 1989).
Aristotle,
Meteorology
: Page, T.E., Capps, E., Rouse W.H.D., Post L.A., and
Warmington E.H. (eds.),
Aristotle Meteorologica with an English Translation
by H.D.P. Lee
(London 1952).
Aubert, J.J. “
Aux origines du canal de Suez? le canal du Nil à la mer Rouge
revisité”,
in M. Clavel-Lévêque, and E. Hermon (eds),
Espaces intégrés et
ressources naturelles dans l’Empire romain
(Luxeuil, 2004), 219-252.
126 Udovitch 1978: 514.
Bent, J. T., “A Visit to the Northern Sudan,”
The Geographical Journal
8
(1896), 335-356.
Blue, L., “Locating the Harbour: Myos Hormos/Quseir al-Qadim: a Roman and
Islamic Port on the Red Sea Coast of Egypt,”
International Journal of Nautical
Archaeology
36 (2007), 265-281.
Bourdon, C., “Anciens Canaux, Anciens Sites et Ports de Suez,”
Mémoires de
la Société Royale de Géographie d’Égypte
7 (1925).
Brun, J.P. “Chronologie de l’équipement de la route à l’époque gréco-
romaine,”
in Cuvigny, H. (ed.)
La route de Myos Hormos: L’armée romaine
dans le desert Orientale d’Égypte
, Fouilles de’Ifao 48/1 (Cairo: 2003), 187-
205.
Bruyère, B.,
Fouilles de Clysma-Qolzoum (Suez) 1930-1932
, (Cairo, 1966).
Casson, L. “Rome's trade with the East: the sea voyage to Africa and India”.
Transactions of the American Philological Association
100
,
(1980), 21-36.
Cooper, J.P.,
The Medieval Nile: Route, navigation and landscape in Islamic
Egypt
, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis (2008), University of Southampon.
Cooper, J.P., 2009, “Egypt’s Nile-Red Sea canals: chronology, location,
seasonality and function”, In L. Blue, J.P. Cooper, R. Thomas and R.J.
Whitewright (eds.),
Connected Hinterlands: Proceedings of Red Sea Project
IV held at the University of Southampton, September 2008.
(Oxford).
Coppin, J.,
Relation des voyages faits dans la Turquie, la Thebaide, et la
Barbarie: contentant des avis politiques qui peuvent ſervir de lumieres aux
Rois & aux Souverains de la Chrétianité, pour garentir leurs Etats des
incurſions des Turcs, & reprendre ceux qu'ils ont uſurpé ſur eux
: Sauneron, S.
(ed.),
Voyage en Egypte
.
Collection des voyageurs occidentaux en Égypte
4.
(Cairo, 1970).
Dempster, G. H.
Note on the Effective Control of the Nile in Egypt
.
Unpublished manuscript (FO 141/773) (1917), The National Archives, Kew.
De Palerne,
Peregrinations dus Iean Palerne Foresien, secretare de ſeu
monseigneur François de Valois, duc d'Anjou, d'Alençon &c. Frere de ſeu
Henry III. Roy de France & de Pologne:
Sauneron, S.,
Voyage en Egypte. Collection des voyageurs occidentaux en
Égypte
2 (Cairo, 1971)
.
De Monconyons, B.,
Iournal des Voyages de Monsieur de Monconys,
Conſeiller de Roy en ſes Conſeils d'Eſtat & Priué & Lieutenant Criminel au
Siege Preſidial de Lyon
: Amer, H. (ed.),
Voyage en Egypte
.
Collection des
voyageurs occidentaux en Égypte
8. (Cairo, 1973).
De Romanis, F., “Τϱαϊανς ποταμός. Mediterraneo e mar Rosso da Traiano a
Maometto”, In R. Villari (ed.),
Controllo degli stretti e insediamenti militari nel
Meditarraneo
(Roma, 2002), 21-70.
Diodorus Siculus,
Historical Library
. Page, T.E., Capps, E., Rouse W.H.D.,
Post L.A., and Warmington E.H. (eds.),
Diodorus of Sicily, with an English
Translation By C.H. Oldfather
(London, 1946).
Edwards, A. B.,
A Thousand Miles Up The Nile
(Leipzig, 1878).
Facey, W. “The Red Sea: The Wind Regime and Location of Ports”. In P.
Lunde and A. Porter (eds.)
Trade and Travel in the Red Sea Region
(Oxford,
2004).
Garcin, J.C. 1995. “Al-Ṣaīd”, in C.E. Bosworth, E. Van Donzel, W.P.
Heinrichs, and G. Lecompte (eds.),
Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition.
Leiden, E.J. Brill.
Graham, A., “Plying the Nile: not all plain sailing”, in K. Piquette and S. Love
(eds),
Current Research in Egyptology 2003. Proceedings of the Fourth
Annual Symposium University College London 2003
(Oxford, 2004), 41-56.
Harant, C.,
Voyage de Christophe Harant, Seigneur de Polžice et Bezdružice,
du Royaume de Bohême à Venise, puis en Terre Sainte en Judée, et plus loin
en Egypte, au Mont Oreb, au Mont Sinaï et au Mont Sainte Catherine dans
L'Arabie Déserte
: Brejnik, C., and Brejnik, A. (eds.),
Voyage en Egypte
.
Collection des voyageurs occidentaux en Égypte
, 5. (Cairo, 1972).
Herodotus,
Histories
. Capps, E., Page, T.E., Rouse, W.H.D. (eds.),
Herodotus
with an English Translation by A.D. Godley
(London 1921).
Hikoichi, Y., “On the Date of the Decline of 'Aydhāb, An International Port of
Trade on the Red Sea”,
Journal of East-West Maritime Relations
1 (1989),
167-172.
Hourani, G.F.,
Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early
Medieval Times
(Princeton, 1951).
Hurst, H. E.,
The Nile: A general account of the river and the utilization of its
waters
(London, 1952).
Ibn Abd al-Ḥakam,
Futū
Mir
: Torrey, C.C.,
The History of the Conquest of
Egypt, North Africa and Spain: Futh Misr of Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam
(New Haven,
1922).
Ibn Baṭṭūṭa,
Tufat al-nu
&
ār fī gharā
ib al-amār wa-
ajā
ib al-asfār
[
al-Rila
].
Defrémery C., Sanguinetti B.R., (eds.),
Voyage d'Ibn Batoutah: texte arabe,
accompagné d’une traduction
(Paris, 1853-9).
Ibn Duqmāq,
Kitāb al-intiār
:
Vollers, K. (ed.)
,
Description de L’Égypt par Ibn
Doukmak
(Cairo, 1893)
.
Ibn awqal,
Kitāb
ūrat al-
ar
:
Kramers, J.H (ed.)
, Opus geographicum,
auctore Ibn Ḥauḳal (Abū ʾl-Kāsim ibn Ḥaual al-Naṣībī), secundum textum et
imagines codicis Constantinopolitani conservati in Bibliotheca antiqui Palatī
no. 3346 cui titulus est "Liber imaginis terrae"
(Leiden, 1938-9)
.
Ibn Jubayr,
Rila
: Wright, W., & de Goeje, M.J. (eds.),
The Travels of Ibn
Jubayr, edited from a MS. in the University Library of Leyden. E.J.W. Gibb
Memorial Series
, 5 (Leiden, 1907).
Ibn Khurdādhbih,
Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik
: de Goeje, M.J. (ed.)
Kitâb al-
Masâlik wa'l-Mamâlik Auctore Abu'l Kâsim Obaidallah ibn Abdallah Ibn
Khordâdhbeh accedent excerpta e Kitab al-Kharâj Auctore Kodâma ibn
Dja'far
. (Leiden,1889).
Ibn Mājid,
Kitāb al-fawā
id fī uūl al-baḥr wa-l-qawā
id:
Tibbetts, G.R.,
Arab
Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming of the Portuguese: being a
translation of Kitāb al-fawā’id fī usūl al-ba
r wa-l-qawā
id by Amad b. Mājid
al-Najdī (London,
1971).
Ibn Zulāq,
Faḍā
il
Mir
:
In Kamal, Y.
Monumenta Cartographica Africae et
Aegypti
(Leiden 1933), 3.2.685v-r
.
Al-Idrīsī,
Nuzhat al-mushtaq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq: Cerulli, E., Gabrieli, F., Levi
Della Vida, G., Petech, L., & Tucci, G. (eds.). Al-Idrīsī (Abū Abd Allah
Muhammad ibn Muhammad Abd Allah ibn Idrīs al-Hammūdī al-Hasanī): Opus
Geographicum
. (Napoli
,
1970-84)
.
Isāq Ibn al-Ḥusayn,
Kitāb ākām al-murjān fi dhikr al-madā
in al-mashhūra fī
kul makān
:
Codazzi A.“Il compendio geografico arabo di Isāq ibn al-Ḥusayn”
, Rendiconti
della R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e
Filologiche Serie 6
,
5
(
1929), 373-463
.
Al-Iṭakhrī,
Kitāb masālik al-mamālik
: de Goeje, M.J.. 1870.
Viae regnorum:
Descriptio ditionis moslemicae. Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum
2
(Leiden, 1870).
Jomard, E. F. (ed.),
Description de l'Égypte : ou, Recueil des observations et
des recherchés qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l'expedition de l'armée
française. Publié par les ordres de Sa Majeste l'empereur Napoleon le Grand
(Paris, 1809-28).
Kees, H.,
Ancient Egypt: A Cultural Topography
, (London, 1961).
Lane, E. W.,
The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians
(London,
1890).
Lane, E.W.,
Description of Egypt: Notes and views in Egypt and Nubia, made
during the years 1825, -26, -27 and - 28: Chiefly consisting of a series of
descriptions and delineations of the monuments, scenery, &c. of those
countries; The views, with few exceptions, made with the camera-lucida
(Cairo, 2000).
Lewis, N.,
Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule
(Oxford, 1983).
al-Maqrīzī,
al-Mawā
idh wa-l-i
tibār fī dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-l-āthār
[
al- khiṭaṭ
]:
Sayyid A.F.
Al-mawa`iz wa-al-i`tibar fi dhikr al-khitat wa-al-athar: li-Taqi al-Din
Ahmad ibn `Ali ibn `Abd al-Qadir al-Maqrizi
(London, 2002).
Al-Masūdī,
Murūj al-dhahab wa maādin al-jawhar
: Barbiers de Meynard, C.,
Pavet de Courteilles, A.,
Les Prairies d'Or
(Paris,
1861-77
)
.
Al-Masūdī,
Kitāb al-tanbīh wa-l-ishrāf
:
de Goeje, M.J.
Kitāb at-Tanbîh wa'l-
Ichrâf auctore al-Masûdî. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicurom
8. (Leiden,
1894)
.
Maxfield, V.A. & Peacock, D.P., “The Phasing and Dating of the Complex”, in
V.A. Maxfield and D.P. Peacock,
Survey and Excavation: Mons Claudianus
Volume 2: Excavations, Part 1
. (Cairo, 2001).
Maxfield, V. & Peacock, D., “Discussion and Conclusions”, in D. Peacock and
V. Maxfield,
The Roman Imperial Quarries: Survey & Excavation at Mons
Porphyrites, 1994-1998
(London, 2007).
Mayhoub, A.B., and Azzam, A. “Data Bank: A survey on the assessment of
wind energy potential in Egypt.”
Renewable Energy
11 (1997), 235-247.
McGrail, S.,
Boats of the World
(Oxford, 2001).
Ministry of Public Works,
Climatological Normals for Egypt and the Sudan,
Candia, Cyprus, and Abyssinia
(Cairo, 1922).
Morgan, E., and Davies, S.,
Red Sea Pilot
(St Ives, 2002).
Al-Muqaddasī,
Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maārifat al-
aqālīm
:
de Goeje, M.J. (ed.),
Kitab ahsan al-taqasim fi ma'rifat al-aqalim/jam' Shams al-Din Abi 'Abd Allah
Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Abi Bakr al-bina' al-Shami al-Muqaddasi al-ma'ruf
bi-al-Bashshari
.
Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicurom
3. (Leiden, 1877).
Murray G. W. 'Aidhab.
The Geographical Journal,
68 (1926), 225-34.
Nasir i Khusraw,
Safarnama
: Thackston, W.M.,
Nāser-e Khosraw's Book of
Travels (Safarnāma)
. (New York, 1986).
Nightingale, F.,
Letters from Egypt,
(London, 1854).
Norden, F.L.,
Travels in Egypt and Nubia: Translated from the original and
enlarged by P. Templeman
(London, 1757).
Al-Nuwayrī,
Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab
.
Anon.,
Nihāyat al-'arab fī funūn
al-'adab: ta'līf Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhāb al-Nuwayrī
(Cairo,
1923).
Palmer, C., “Windward Sailing Capabilities Of Ancient Vessels”,
International
Journal of Nautical Archaeology
38.2 (2009), 314-330.
Peacock, D.P.S. and Blue, L.K.,
Myos Hormos - Quseir al-Qadim : Roman
and Islamic Ports on the Red Sea
(Oxford 2006).
Peacock D. P. S., & Peacock, A. C. S., “The Enigma of ‘Aydhab: a Medieval
Islamic Port on the Red Sea Coast”,
International Journal of Nautical
Archaeology
37.1 (2007), 32-48.
Phillips, P.,
The Discharge and Levels of the Nile and Rains of the Nile Basin
in 1919
(Cairo, 1924).
Pliny the Elder,
Natural History
: Rackham, H. (ed.),
Pliny: Natural History, with
an English Translation in Ten Volumes
(London, 1938).
Pococke, R.
A Description of the East and some other countries, Vol. 1:
Observations on Egypt.
(London, 1763).
Ptolemy Claudius,
Geography
: Stevenson, E.L.
Geography of Claudius
Ptolemy
(New York, 1932).
Al-Qalqashandī,
@ubal-ashā
: Anon.,
Kitāb ubal-ashā: ta
līf Abī al-
Abbās Aḥmad al-Qalqashandī
(Cairo: 1913-22).
Al-Qazwīnī,
Ajā
ib al-makhlūqāt wa-ghārā
ib al-mawjūdāt:
Wüstenfeld, F.
(ed.)
El-Cazwini’s Kosmographie
. (Göttingen, 1848).
Rathbone, D., “The 'Muziris' papyrus (SB XVIII 13167): financing Roman trade
with India
D Rathbone - Alexandrian Studies II in Honor of Mostafa el Abbadi”, in
Bulletin de la Société Archéologique d’Alexandrie
46 (2000), 39-50.
Redmount, C.A.,
“The Wadi Tumilat and the ‘Canal of the Pharaohs’”,
Journal
of Near East Studies
54 (1995), 127-135.
Rocchetta, A.
Pelegrinatione di Terra Santa e d'Altre Provincie
: Burri, C.
Sauneron, N. and Sauneron, S. (ed.),
Voyages en Egypte
.
Collection des
voyageurs occidentaux en Égypte
8, 11-111. (Cairo, 1974).
Rooke, H. 1783.
Travels to the Coast of Arabia Felix; and from thence, by the
Red Sea and Egypt, to Europe, containing a short account of an expedition
undertaken against the Cape of Good-Hope.
(London, 1783).
Said, R.,
The River Nile: Geology, hydrology and utilization
(New York, 1983).
Sandys, G.,
A Relation of a Journey begun An. Dom: 1610
(London, 1615).
Schulze, R. "al- Suways or Suez." In P. Bearman , Th. Bianquis , C.E.
Bosworth , E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Encyclopaedia of Islam,
Second Edition
(Brill Online, Exeter University, 18 December 2009).
Semple, E. C.,
The Geography of the Mediterranean Region: Its Relation to
Ancient History
(London 1932).
Sidebotham, S.E., “Ports of the Red Sea and the Arabia-India Trade”, in
Fahd. T. (ed.).
L'Arabie préislamique et son Environment historique et culturel
(Strasbourg, 1989), 195223.
Sidebotham, S.E., Wendrich, W., and Bagnall, R.S
., Berenike 1998 : report of
the 1998 excavations at Berenike and the survey of the Egyptian eastern
desert, including excavations at Wadi Kalalat
(Leiden, 2000).
Strabo,
Geography
: Jones, H.L. (tr.),
The Geography of Strabo
, Loeb
Classical Library (London, 1917-32).
Swinburne, H.
Nile-Cruize 1850-1851 (with Robert Stevenson)
. Unpublished
manuscript (1850-1851), London, Institution of Civil Engineers.
Al-Ṭabarī,
Tārīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk
:
de Goeje, M.J,.
Annales quos scripsit
Abu Djafar Mohammed Ibn Djarir At-Tabari
(Leuven, 1883-1884).
Thomas, R.I., “The Arabægyti Ichtyophagi: Cultural Connections with Egypt
and the Maintenance of Identity”, in Starkey, J., Starkey, P., and Wilkinson, T.
(eds.),
Natural Resources and Cultural Connections of the Red Sea:
Proceedings of Red Sea Project III, Held in the British Museum, October 2006
(Oxford 2007).
Tott, François, Baron de,
Mémoires du Baron de Tott Sur les Turcs et les
Tartares
. Woods, J.E.,
Memoirs of Baron de Tott
. (New York, 1973).
Udovitch, A.L., “A Tale of Two Cities: Commercial Relations between Cairo
and Alexandria During the Second Half of the Eleventh Century”, in H.A.
Miskimim, D. Herlihy, and A.L. Udovitch (eds.),
The Medieval City
(New
Haven, 1977).
Udovitch, A. L. “Time, the Sea and Society: Duration of Commercial Voyages
in the Southern Shores of the Mediterranean During the High Middle Ages”,
Settimana di Stidio de Centro Italiano di Studi Sull'Alto Medioevo XXV.
(Spoleto, 1978).
Vinson, S.,
Egyptian Boats and Ships
(Princes Risborough, 1994).
Warburton, E.
The Crescent and the Cross
(London, 1845).
Wellsted. R.J,
Travels in Arabia, Vol.2
(London, 1838).
Whitewright, R.J. “How Fast is Fast? Technology, Trade and Speed under
Sail in the Roman Red Sea”, in Starkey, J., Starkey, P., and Wilkinson, T.
(eds.),
Natural Resources and Cultural Connections of the Red Sea:
Proceedings of Red Sea Project III, Held in the British Museum, October 2006
(Oxford, 2007).
Wild, J.,
Neue Reysbeschreibung eines Gefangenen Christen Anno 1604
:
Volkoff, O.V. (ed.), Voyages en Egypte. Collection des voyageurs occidentaux
en Égypte, 8 (Cairo, 1973).
Willcocks, W.,
Egyptian Irrigation
(London, 1890).
Al-Yaqūbī,
Kitab al-Buldān
:
de Goeje, M.J. (ed.)
Kitab al-Alak an-Nafisa
Auctore Abu Ali Ahmed ibn Omar Ibn Rosteh et Kitab Al-Boldan Auctore
Ahmed ibn abi Jakub ibn Wadhih al-Kitab Al-Jakubi. Bibliotheca
Geographicorum Arabicorum
7 (Leiden, 1892), 231-373.
... Some have postulated that the channel was to be used in the forthcoming war against the Parthians, while others suggest that it was intended to foster trade in the northern Red Sea area. Equally unclear is whether or not the canal was actually navigable, or if it was only meant for irrigation in north-eastern Egypt (Faville 1902-03;Calderini 1920;Bourdon 1925;Posener 1938, 25-26;Sijpesteijn 1963, 70-83;Oertel 1964, 18-52;De Romanis 1996, 71-95;Aubert 2004, 219-252;Cooper 2009, 195-209;Cooper 2011;Aubert 2015). Often quoted against such a reductive interpretation is a passage of Lucian of Samosata, who in one of his works tells the story of a young man who sailed from Alexandria to Clysma, and then from there to India (Lucian, Alexander sive Pseudomantis, 44, 16-18). ...
Chapter
Full-text available
... But for centuries Muslims rarely entered the Red Sea (Humphreys 1998;Paine 2015;Power 2010;Cooper 2011). Traffic had waned here before the Roman empire itself did, and then plummeted with its fall and the Aksumite's retreat south (Phillipson 2012;Power 2010;Crone 2013). ...
Article
Full-text available
A chronological worldwide map of sailing history is presented, emphasizing when sailing as a technology/activity appeared for the first time in each coast of the world, due to local invention, technological diffusion, or mere routes expansion. The map is the product of compiling and synthetizing historiographic works dealing with sailing history across regions and epochs; an effort that is presented to make explicit the map’s foundations. The map necessarily shows each world region’s precocity or lateness in sailing, while also, interestingly, exposing places that acted as persistent barriers to the expansion of sailing. Hopefully the map will be a useful tool to better visualize sailing history, and will encourage the search for explaining the non-trivial patterns of its spread over the world.
... When excavations at Egyptian Red Sea ports of the Roman period reveal South Arabian and Aksumite ceramics (Tomber, 2012), it is quite clear how and from where they arrived-by ship from South Arabian and Aksumite ports. Onward transport to the Nile and to the Mediterranean entrepôt of Alexandria can also be reconstructed on the basis of documented infrastructure, literary and papyrological sources, along with topographical and hydrological data (Cooper, 2011;Sidebotham, Hense, & Nouwens, 2008). Other questions, some answerable, others not, remain open: Did ships move across open sea, or along one of the reef-infested coasts? ...
Article
Full-text available
Historians and archaeologists often take connectivity for granted, and fail to address the problems of documenting patterns of movement. This article highlights the methodological challenges of reconstructing trade routes in prehistory and early history. The argument is made that these challenges are best met through the application of modern models of connectivity, in combination with the conscious use of comparative approaches.
Chapter
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.
Article
This article examines Ptolemaic papyrological sources (Demotic and Greek) indicating the existence of marketplaces located next to the river during this period, which have so far been completely overlooked in the discussion on Egyptian markets. It focuses particularly on the location of marketplaces and their relation to settlements and the markets’ setting – whether they were surrounded by farmland or by buildings, and of what type. This analysis points to the highest parts of the riverbanks as the most likely location of marketplaces. Additionally, the article contains terminological remarks regarding the terms for the marketplace and the Nile in both Demotic and Greek.
Chapter
Beneath the waters of Aboukir Bay at the edge of Egypt’s north-western Nile Delta , lies a vast submerged landscape. Here in this marshy and lagoonal area a major port developed in the early first millennium BC at the end of the Canopic branch of the Nile.
Article
Papyri concerning river grain transport give evidence about the importance that time factor holds in the organization of State grain transport as well as in economic choices of trade’s actors. Our main goal in this contribution is so to attempt a reconstruction of grain transport times both in the context of State grain transport and in the context of grain trade. Our second goal is to study the repercussions of times of transport on the economic behavior of trade actors. To this purpose, we will focus in a first time on the specificities of Nile and maritime navigation departing from Egypt. In a second time, we will propose a quantitative analysis about grain transport times from Egyptian chôra to Alexandrian and Mediterranean redistribution markets. Finally, we will focus on public and private responses to time constraints of transportation.
Article
This paper examines the evidence for the time taken for a circuitous flow of goods between Italy and India to occur. It is argued that the distinct nature of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trading spheres meant that it was often not possible for this circuit to be completed within one year. In particular, a comparison of papyrological, epigraphic and literary sources indicates that a variety of natural and manmade factors greatly impacted on these schedules. Consequently the goods which were traded between these two economic zones fluctuated in volume, nature and the prices for which they were sold.
Book
Mons Porphyrites, in the heart of the Red Sea mountains which dominate the Eastern Desert of Egypt, was the only source of imperial porphyry known to the ancient world. The quarries seem to have been worked from the Tiberian period until the early fifth century AD. A five-year programme of investigation of the quarries was undertaken between 1994 and 1998 and the first volume on the topography of the area appeared in 2001 (EES Excavation Memoir 67 by V A Maxfield and D S Peacock). This second volume includes reports of the excavations and provides a review of the overall development of the quarry complex. 450p, b/w illus (Excavation Memoirs 82, Egypt Exploration Society 2007)
Book
Edward William Lane (1801-76) published this work in two volumes in 1836. Resident in the country for many years, and fluent in Arabic, he devoted his life's study to Egypt. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Institut de France, Lane translated One Thousand and One Nights and selections from the Koran. His major work was an Arabic-English lexicon; a monumental undertaking, he was working on the sixth volume when he died. Volume 2 of Modern Egyptians primarily details Cairo's vibrant public space, covering drug use, games, street music and dancers, as well as snake charmers, storytelling, celebratory festivals, and funerals. it also examines Egyptian industry and the Jewish and Copt minorities. A bestseller in its own day, this well-illustrated work remains a key text for students of nineteenth-century Egypt and the Arab world.