Couverture fascicule

Ivory and Ptolemaic Exploration of the Red Sea. The Missing Factor

[article]

Année 1996 6-2 pp. 799-807
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Page 799

IVORY AND PTOLEMAIC EXPLORATION

OF THE RED SEA THE MISSING FACTOR*

Like the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the campaigns of Alexander the Great marked the beginning of a great age of exploration that profoundly changed western conceptions of world geography. For the first time, Greek geographers had at their disposal sufficient knowledge to draw relatively accurate maps of the Old World from the Atlantic Ocean to India.1 One area where the gain in Greek geographical knowledge was particularly remarkable was the Red Sea and its African hinterlands.

Despite its harsh climate and treacherous coasts, the Red Sea was one of the principal commercial arteries of the ancient world. During the second and early first millenniums BCE Egyptian and Phoenician ships plied its waters in search of the wealth of Northeast Africa and Southern Arabia. The Greeks were comparative late-comers to the Red Sea. Greek awareness of the Red Sea began in the sixth century BCE, when the Carian shipmaster Scylax of Caryanda published an account of the voyage he had made from India to Egypt in the service of the Persian king Darius I.2 Scylax' s work is no longer extant, but traces of its influence can be detected in most later classical accounts of the lands

* I would like to thank Professors R. Bagnali and W. Clarysse for their assistance with this paper.

1. Strabo 1.2. 1 [C 14] ; J.O. THOMSON, History of Ancient Geography, Cambridge England (1948), p. 123-125 ; O.A.W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps, London (1985), p. 31-35.

2. The fragments of Scylax's works are collected in FGrH 3C 709. For the influence of Scylax's works see K. KARTTUNEN, India in Early Greek Literature, Studia Orientalia 65(1989), p. 65-68.

Topoi 6 (1996), fascicule 2 p. 799-807

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