page_title: Incense trade route
section_title: Greco-Roman bypassing of land routes
hierarchical_section_title: Incense trade route / Greco-Roman bypassing of land routes
caption_attribution_description: Map of the Arabian peninsula according to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
context_page_description: The incense trade route included a network of major ancient land and sea trading routes linking the Mediterranean world with eastern and southern sources of incense, spices and other luxury goods, stretching from Mediterranean ports across the Levant and Egypt through Northeastern Africa and Arabia to India and beyond. The incense land trade from South Arabia to the Mediterranean flourished between roughly the 7th century BC and the 2nd century AD. The incense trade route served as a channel for the trading of goods such as Arabian frankincense and myrrh; from Southeast Asia Indian spices, precious stones, pearls, ebony, silk and fine textiles; and from the Horn of Africa, rare woods, feathers, animal skins, Somali frankincense, and gold.
context_section_description: The Nabateans built Petra, which stood halfway between the opening to the Gulf of Akaba and the Dead Sea at a point where the Incense Route from Arabia to Damascus was crossed by the overland route from Petra to Gaza. This position gave the Nabateans a hold over the trade along the Incense Route. In order to control the Incense Route from the Nabatean a Greek military expedition lead by Swan was undertaken, without success, by Antigonus Cyclops, one of Alexander of Macedonia's generals. The Nabatean control over trade increased and spread to the West and the North. The replacement of Greece by the Roman empire as the administrator of the Mediterranean basin led to the resumption of direct trade with the east. According to a historian "The South Arabs in protest took to pirate attacks over the Roman ships in the Gulf of Aden. In response, the Romans destroyed Aden and favoured the Western Abyssinian coast of the Red Sea." The monopoly of the Indian and Arab middlemen weakened with the development of monsoon trade by the Greeks through the discovery of the direct route to India (Hippalus), forcing the Parthian and Arabian middlemen to adjust their prices so as to compete on the Roman market with the goods now being bought in by a direct sea route to India. Indian ships sailed to Egypt as the maritime routes of Southern Asia were not under the control of a single power.
  According to one historian:
  The trade with Arabia and India in incense and spices became increasingly important, and Greeks for the first time began to trade directly with India. The discovery, or rediscovery, of the sea-route to India is attributed to a certain Eudoxos, who was sent out for this purpose towards the end of the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes II (died 116 BC). Eudoxos made two voyages to India, and subsequently, having quarrelled with his Ptolemaic employers, perished in an unsuccessful attempt to open up an alternative sea route to India, free of Ptolemaic control, by sailing around Africa. The establishment of direct contacts between Egypt and India was probably made possible by a weakening of Arab power at this period, for the Sabaean kingdom of South-western Arabia collapsed and was replaced by Himyarite Kingdom around 115 BC. Imports into Egypt of cinnamon and other eastern spices, such as pepper, increased substantially, though the Indian Ocean trade remained for the moment on quite a small scale, no more than twenty Egyptian ships venturing outside the Red Sea each year.
  An earlier commentator on the significance of the trade, in terms of the connectivity of civilisations on both sides of the Red Sea from the time of the Queen of Sheba, was the British explorer Theodore Bent; it was Bent who identified the trading site of Moscha Limen in February 1895. Frankincense from Dhofar was collected at Moscha Limen. It was shipped to Qana and taken overland to Shabwa and further North to Najran, Mecca, Medina, Petra and to Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea. It was also shipped to Babylon and Palmyra via the Persian Gulf.
  The Roman trade with India kept increasing, and according to Strabo (II.5.12.):
  At any rate, when Gallus was prefect of Egypt, I accompanied him and ascended the Nile as far as Syene and the frontiers of Ethiopia, and I learned that as many as one hundred and twenty vessels were sailing from Myos Hormos to India, whereas formerly, under the Ptolemies, only a very few ventured to undertake the voyage and to carry on traffic in Indian merchandise.
caption: Areas around the Arabian peninsula according to the Periplus Maris Erythraei.
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