-1 101 Z Sailing manuals giving details of routes, hazards and ports of call were obviously of great utility to ancient traders. A surviving example by an unknown Greek shipmaster, of around AD 60, 'The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea' (i.e. the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf), furnishes the extracts on this map.
# autoopened PW
#Route 1: Myos Hormos down E. African coast.
XX 101 X 'Of the designated harbors of the Erythraean Sea and the ports of trade on it, first comes Egypt's port of Myos Hormos.'#Myos Hormos
XX 101 X 'From Adulis it is a journey of [eight] days to the metropolis which is called Axomites; into it is brought all the ivory from beyond the Nile.'#Adulis
XX 101 X 'Beyond this, with the coast by now trending to the south, is the Spice Port and a promontory, the last along the coast of the country of the Barbaroi towards the east, a precipitous one. The harbor, an open roadstead, is dangerous at times, because the site is exposed to the north.'#Spice Port
XX 101 X 'Very big-bodied men inhabit the region; these behave, each in his own place, just like chiefs.'
#Rhapta
XX 101 X 'Beyond this area lies unexplored ocean that bends to the west, and extending on the south along the parts of Ethiopia and Libya and Africa that turn away, joins the western sea.'
#(terra incognita)
Route 2: Myos Hormos round Arabian coast to India
XX 101 X 'The area inland has villages and pasturages inhabited by people.. who are vicious: they plunder any [who] fall among them, and they enslave any who are rescued by them from shipwreck. To set a course along the coast of Arabia is altogether risky, since the region.. is fearsome in every respect.
#Leuke Kome (but put hot spot inland, a little further down)
XX 101 X 'Muza, a legally limited port of trade on the coast.. teems with Arabs - shipowners or charterers and sailors - and is astir with commercial activity. For they share in the trade across the water and with Barygaza, using their own outfits.'
Muza
XX 101 X 'A port of trade on the coast, Kane. All the frankincense grown in the land is brought [here], as if to a warehouse, by camel as well as by rafts of a local type made of leathern bags, and by boats.'
#Kane
XX 101 X 'After sailing by the mouth of the [Persian] gulf.. you come to another port of trade.. called Omana. Customarily the merchants of Barygaza deal with it, sending out big vessels to both of Persis' ports of trade with supplies of copper, teak-wood and beams, saplings, and logs of sissoo and ebony.'
#Omana
XX 101 X 'The Sinthos River, mightiest of the rivers along the Erythraean Sea and emptying so great an amount of water into the sea that far off, before you reach land, its light-coloured water meets you out at sea. The throne is in the hands of the Parthians, who are constantly chasing each other off it.'
#Sinthos (Indus)
XX 101 X 'In this port of trade there is a market for: wine..copper..Roman money, gold and silver, which commands an exchange at some profit against the local currency. For the king there was imported in [former] times precious silverware, slave musicians, beautiful girls for concubinage, fine wine, expensive clothing.'
#Barugaza (=Barygaza)
XX 101 X 'These ports of trade.. export pepper, grown for the most part in only one place.. Kottanike. They also export: good supplies of fine-quality pearls; ivory; Chinese [silk] cloth..all kind of transparent gems; diamonds; sapphires; tortoiseshell. For those sailing here from Egypt, the right time to set out is around the month of July.'
#Muziris, Nelkynda, Tyndis
XX 101 X 'Near this river [the Ganges] is an island in the ocean, the furthest extremity towards the east of the inhabited world, lying under the rising sun itself, called Chryse. It supplies the finest tortoiseshell of all the places on the Erythraean Sea.'
#Chryse
XX 101 X 'Beyond this region, by now at the northernmost point, where the sea ends somewhere on the outer fringe, there is a great inland city called Thina from which silk floss, yarn and cloth are shipped by land via Bactria to Barygaza and via the Ganges River back to Limyrike. It is not easy to get to this Thina.'
