Artículo aparecido en el "New York Times" del Jueves 11 de Julio del 2002

The desert yields ruins of an ancient Egyptian port - John Noble Wilford The New York Times
Thursday, July 11, 2002

South of Suez, the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea used to be sprinkled with ports that throbbed with life and commerce in antiquity, especially the heyday of the Roman Empire. But long ago, the relentless desert buried their remains so completely that it was almost beyond imagination that these places once were pivotal links in a maritime trade route that rivaled the better-known overland Silk Road.

From here ships ventured down the coast to Ethiopia and Somalia and beyond, bringing back ivory and tortoise shells, drugs and slaves. Other vessels headed for the southern shore of Arabia, mainly for frankincense and myrrh. The biggest ships sailed the monsoons to and from India to satisfy the bounding appetites in the Mediterranean world for spices, precious stones and other exotic goods. So robust was the India trade 2,000 years ago that Emperor Tiberius, concerned about Rome's increasingly adverse balance of payments, complained that "the ladies and their baubles are transferring our money to foreigners."

Perhaps the greatest of these ports in the India trade was Berenike, near Egypt's border with Sudan. Historians knew of it from written records. Yet nothing remained on the surface at the sere and forlorn site except some lines of coral and scattered potsherds.

But archaeologists, who in their own way can be as unrelenting as the desert, have now completed eight years of excavations under harsh conditions at Berenike and found what they say are the most extensive remains so far from the ancient world's sea trade between East and West. Their spades uncovered building ruins, teak and metal from ships, sail cloth, sapphires and beads, wine and stores of peppercorns. Some of the goods show that Berenike was trading, at least indirectly, with places as far away as Thailand and Java.
Inscriptions and other written materials in 11 different languages, including Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin, Coptic and Sanskrit, attest to the cosmopolitan mix of people who lived in or passed through the town.

The co-directors of excavations at Berenike - Steven Sidebotham, a historian at the University of Delaware, and Willeke Wendrich, an archaeologist at UCLA - said the research showed that the maritime trade route between India and Egypt in antiquity appeared to be even more productive and lasted longer than scholars had thought. Also, it was not an  overwhelmingly Roman enterprise, as had been generally assumed. The researchers said artifacts at the site indicated that the ships might have been built in India and were probably crewed by Indians.

The two researchers, working under the auspices of Egypt's Supreme Council on Antiquities, reported their findings in this month's issue of the journal Sahara. They also described their work in interviews and in a recent article in Minerva, a British magazine of ancient art and archaeology.

Other archaeologists praised the Berenike discoveries as important contributions to the history of long-distance trade in the classical world. Lionel Casson, an author and a retired professor of classics at New York University, said, "It's nice to have archaeologists find concrete evidence for what is attested in the texts."

Archaeologists are also investigating the probable sites of two other Egyptian ports, Myos Hormos and Nechesia. At ruins 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Berenike, archaeologists led by John Seeger of Northern Arizona University, assisted by Sidebotham, are excavating a building from the first or second century A.D. It could be part of Nechesia, but no one can yet be sure. 

David Peacock, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton in England, is more certain that he and his colleagues have, by examining literary texts and satellite photographs, identified the site of Myos Hormos. It is 320 kilometers north of Berenike, near the present-day settlement of Quseir.

Excavations there were started in the 1980s by Americans under Don Whitcomb of the University of Chicago, and a British team under Peacock has worked there for the last four years. The place was definitely an ancient port, Peacock said, but it was not until an inscribed piece of pottery was recently uncovered that he could be sure "beyond reasonable doubt" that this was indeed Myos Hormos.

Both Myos Hormos and Berenike, also known as Berenice, were established in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, in the early third century B.C., when Egypt was under Greek influence. Berenike was named after the ruler's wife.

Writing in "The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt," Peacock said: "It appears that Myos Hormos was pre-eminent during the second century B.C. and that Berenice began to rise in importance during the first century B.C. and became dominant in the first century A.D. The India trade was thus developed in Ptolemaic times and the Romans merely took over and perhaps expanded a well-established concern." The site of Berenike was rediscovered by European explorers in the early 19th century. But it was so remote from settlements and supplies that archaeologists shied away, until Sidebotham and Wendrich came along in 1994. Their excavations revealed that Berenike experienced three periods of prosperity. The first was in the early Ptolemaic times, the third and second centuries B.C. Then after a century of decline, the port under the Romans enjoyed its second and greatest boom, in the late first century B.C. and through the first century A.D.

An enormous Roman rubbish dump, covering some of the Ptolemaic ruins, yielded a variety of ancient Indian goods, ranging from Indian coconuts and batik cloth to glass beads and gems. A pot held 16 pounds of peppercorns, one of the most
common commodities. "If you find it in the trash, then the amount transported through the town must have been mind-boggling," Wendrich said.

Sidebotham and Wendrich also reported finding a discarded customs archive, which was written on potsherds reused as a kind of notepaper. This revealed some of the trade procedures as well as goods.
The archaeologists were especially intrigued by the large amounts of teak, a hardwood native to India, found in the ruins. They surmised that the teak arrived as hulls of ships. When ships were damaged beyond repair, the teak was probably recycled in furniture or building materials. The presence of so much teak also suggested to the researchers that many of ships were built in India, one of the indications of a major Indian role in the trade.

But Casson, a specialist in ancient maritime history, said it was also possible that the teak timber was shipped to Berenike and turned into vessels there. Written records refer to ships in the India trade being among the largest of the time. That means, Casson said, they could have been as long as 180 feet and capable of carrying 1,000 tons of cargo. Such ships had stout hulls and caught the wind with a huge square sail on a stubby mainmast.

An indispensable source of knowledge of the India trade is found in "The Periplus Maris Erythraei," the circumnavigation of the Red Sea, a book written by an anonymous merchant or ship's captain in about the first century. A recent translation and commentary was prepared by Casson and published in 1989 by Princeton University Press.

A practical guide to mariners, the book described the Red Sea ports in their prime and identified landmarks on the main trade routes. A round trip to India covered about 3,500 miles. Ships left Egypt in July to take advantage of strong summer winds out of the north in the Red Sea. Out in the open ocean, ships were carried by the southwest monsoon, bound for Arabia and across to India's northwest coast, at the port of Barygaza, or headed directly across to Muziris on India's southwest coast.

As the periplus author wrote of the southwest winds, "The crossing with these is hard going but absolutely favorable and shorter."

Returning, the ships usually departed in December or January to catch a favorable shift in winds. Still, they had to buck the prevailing northerly winds in the Red Sea. This was the reason the ports were several hundred miles south of Suez: better the long transfer of goods by camel and Nile boat than the battle against unceasing Red Sea winds.
The rewards must have more than compensated for the risks and hardships, historians conclude. At times when adversaries blocked the Silk Road, the India sea trade was the only reliable alternative. At all times, historians say, it cost less to ship by the sea route because it circumvented many of the Silk Road's middlemen with hands out for bribes and commissions.

Yet the fortunes of Berenike were fickle, and it was long thought by historians that the port and town were abandoned in the third or fourth centuries. Then the archaeologists digging there came upon a surprise. Prosperity had returned for a third time to Berenike, in the fourth century. Wendrich reported finding that an entire area on the seaside was leveled and completely rebuilt and expanded.

Sometime before the mid-sixth century, though, Berenike, its harbor silted over, was finally abandoned for good, vanishing beneath the encroaching desert. The reasons are unknown.

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